What will be the biggest story in 2023? The Abuse Of The Patriot Act

Episode 6 • 2nd November 2022 • Common Sense Ohio • Common Sense Ohio

,: 2022

Brett: But I love that theme song.

Steve: Yeah, it was great. Um, anyway, so we take a common sense approach at uh, news, at Politics, at Philosophy, at History, at Sometimes Racing because norms are racer, uh, sometimes Law, because I'm a lawyer, sometimes podcasting because uh, Brett's a podcast businessman. The idea is to drop the cloak of bias as much as possible. Open the discussion, encourage contrary opinions to ours even though they're wrong norm and uh, bring you some content that actually makes some sense. So, uh, where do you get common sense? Ohio. But very soon you'll be able to go to Commonsense, Ohioioshow.com and you'll see our website. But uh, we also have uh, it's going to be up in podcast world. Uh, that's probably happening this week. There's going to be a press release going out on social media accounts. Believe me, everything is going to stop. The world's going to look and we are going to get big. So subscribe now you don't know how, but I will tell you later. Um, anyway, Norm is not here with us in the studio because he's out racing. I don't know what kind of grown man drives a race car for a living, but this one appears maybe not even a living.

Norm: Norm? HM?

Steve: How are you doing?

Norm: Hey, doing great man, down in Texas. Uh, yes, with all the yard barks and the uh, spears and uh um, hacked eye and um, the illegal immigration. So just having a ball down here racing um, this week with um uh really an uh incredible um uh, schedule of uh, pro racing and vintage racing. So it's the final race of the year for the Trans Am series, the international uh, GT series formula, uh, four. Um, and the sports, uh, car vintage Racing Association, uh, Sprint Series, that's what I race in with my uh, uh, vintage classic historic factory, uh, built race car made in Germany by Ford Motor Company. So um, big toddworth V six in it. So I'm going to get out there and lay down some rubber and have a good time. My sons are going to join me and um, I think the weather is going to hold. Little rain on Friday, but they're predicting nice, uh, days, saturday and Sunday.

Brett: Nice. You see a lot of fathers and sons doing that together.

Norm: Yeah you do uh, husband and wife teams, uh, fathers and sons, uh, a lot of retired people, ah, involved um, a lot of uh, young nouveau reach, ah, kinds of uh, guys that um, maybe gals, maybe that hit it big on Wall Street, although not recently uh, but uh, have done well in places like Silicon Valley and uh, other kinds of growth industries. So you see people living out their fantasies or uh, in some cases they're talent. There's some incredibly talented people racing in Trans Am in some of these pro series. And I have to say also in the vintage racing, which um, I participate in. I did pro racing years and years ago. Now, uh, I'm doing um, vintage racing and club racing in the FCCA. But this weekend is vintage racing for me, not SCCA. Uh, that's a different sanctioning body. But I do two kinds of racing and this one is strictly for uh, vintage cars. Cars that have some kind of historical significance.

Steve: Got you. We said something that's going to jump me off into our dialogue and that is uh, Wall Street. People who have made a lot of money on Wall Street, but not recently. But here's the problem. There are people that have made a lot of money on Wall Street recently, and anybody who's ever played crap I'm not saying I was ever a great dice player, in fact, quite the opposite. I clearly have lost more than I've ever won gambling. But I was always fascinated by something in craps called the Don't Pass line, or the don't come line or whatever it would be, where everybody else is betting on the past line, on the uh, role coming out and you're betting against the table. And uh, so what you're doing is you're betting that it won't be a seven, uh, or eleven or whatever, or it, uh, won't be whatever the deal. Somebody is going to scream at me for not remembering the rules. But you're betting against a table. So when most people bet on the past line, you're betting on the Don't Pass line. So when everybody else wins, you lose. When everybody else loses, you win. And this is what's going on with our fabled, uh, congress. We have people who are betting the Don't Pass line. People who now it's coming out that they have been they've gotten filthy rich on very coincidental investments in companies that they make. It would be very hard to justify investing in otherwise, where they've dumped a ton of money in people or in companies that just so happen to get big contracts in the COVID shutdown time period, or in any time period, frankly, where they know there's legislation coming. Now, fortunately, Nancy Pelosi has assured us that, um, these are elite people who are smart enough to recognize, uh, the inherent conflicts of interest and not act on them. Uh, so they don't need rules to prevent them from acting on them or have a consequence if they do act on them, because they get it. Sort of like when people at Obama's, uh, birthday party up at the Vineyard, martha's Vineyard, they were smart enough, Brett, to know, uh, how to handle themselves without masks and have a gathering during COVID bill yeah. So they could handle it. But we're not good enough here at 511 to do it. So just to, uh, thumb my nose, obama and the rest of his crew I was down here with other people in my microphones broadcasting all the way through COVID, and I didn't put a damn mask on.

Brett: Once we had the microphones with a.

Steve: Sheath on yeah, we put these phone things on microphones. The plan was to change them out for each guest. Been here for three years now.

Brett: Yeah, right, exactly. Didn't really have it. The lights all can emptied.

Steve: Right. And there was once, uh, some what's, uh, that stuff hand, uh, sanitizer on the wall. That for like, a day.

Brett: And for now, we tried.

Steve: I wasn't as, uh, smart as Obama and the rest of his celebrity crew, his birthday party, to make this to do it. But you know what? I'm still here. I didn't die. Nobody died. Normally, we're not dead. How do we survive?

Norm: I shudder to think of the grade school video of kids putting prophylactic over bananas, uh, that must have been very similar to your, uh, silly little covers over microphones. I can't unsee, um, that in my head, and I don't want that spot there.

Steve: These are foam covers for the microphones. Everybody. They're actually there guards.

Norm: There you go. Yeah, I don't want that in my head. The idea of. Uh. Somebody unpeeling that. Uh. Off of a microphone like a prophylactic yeah. I mean.

Steve: They're giving those away. Too. But all right. So anyway. If it ever comes to vote that you should not be able to. As an elected official. Benefit.

Norm: Uh.

Steve: In the market from legislative changes that. Uh. You know. Are coming. Well. I would think that everybody would agree that that is a bad practice. Like for the rest of us. We have a word for it called insider trading.

Brett: Right.

a year as Congressperson, or: 4000

Brett: You make a good point in looking at it commonsensically, if that's a word. Um, that all this legislation. When somebody starts to walk out, why now? And then take a look backwards, what did you do then? Now it's okay that you are actually maybe making some sense, walking out that legislation that you're proposing makes sense. Why now? And what did you do?

Steve: Yeah, it's cover it's like, I'm going to champion this clause because I'm the one that benefited the most from it.

Brett: Anybody else doing it now?

Steve: We're not going to do it anymore because it's bad to do, even though I made millions doing it. And don't tell me they didn't. Uh, that's what's crazy. So normal. I want to talk to you a little bit about the Tim Ryan, JD. Vance, uh, ongoing political, uh, I'll, uh, call it a saga, but we'll just say it's right around the corner for the midterms. And it's funny now that we're talking about people in Congress. Ah. And one of the things I hate the most is political puffery, I'll call it, where people take positions. And we talked a little bit about this last time, um, where you run to the right in the primaries and you run to the middle in, um, the general or you run to the left in the primaries and you're in the middle. Well, it seems like all these Democrats were anti crime, uh, or maybe pro crime. We don't think crime is a big deal. We should let, I think who was in Pennsylvania champion to let so many people out of prison and, uh, reform everything and defund the police. I'm still old enough to remember, it seems like just yesterday that defund, uh, the police was the most popular platform there was. And everybody was behind that cause with signs out in their yards for Black Lives Matter, defund the police and whatever, whatever. And all of a sudden you've got Tim Ryan here in Ohio sort of taking a different stance. He's now saying crime, uh, is an issue, and I don't care what anybody says about that. That's a quote. We need more cops, we need better paid cops, and we need to make sure that we invest in the police training. Well, where was this when my city was shut down and, uh, the police were chastised and, uh, narrow? A compliment for the Blue Lives Matter flag. But, uh, in fact, if you had that out, you were almost considered a fascist Nazi. Uh, so it just seems so transparent when they take a position like this. Normally, I have a lot of respect for you on your ability to do this. You tend to, uh, take a position and you live it. You live it out, you stay consistent. And even when you're wrong, ouch. But no, it's hard to do. It's really hard to do. It's really hard to say, look, I understand that there's a lot of crime on the street, or there's a lot of police, or there's some questionable police work out there, but it doesn't mean we should defund the police altogether. It means that we need to focus on better police work. But Tim Ryan didn't say that three years ago, when Columbus was shut down and all the cities were shut down, there were riots, and, uh, I had to be at my office praying that my windows didn't get smashed in by lunatics. Um, it was the opposite message. And now he's taken the politically popular message that, wait a minute, now I can't even go outside without, uh, fear of crime. So now crime is an issue. It just seems so transparent, uh, how these people flip. And in the US. Supreme Court, we call these people flippers when they take one position on one, but another on another. Um, and then it just seems like a hollow attempt now to, uh, ride the political wave that currently exists.

Brett: I think we make they make decisions way too quickly about, uh, anything. Take some time to think about it.

Steve: But you know what?

Brett: Maybe it's not even a decision, maybe not.

Steve: It's just following the popular vote at.

Brett: The time it is following the tide. Step back. Don't follow that tide. Be your own person.

Steve: Be your own and look, maybe a little dose of common sense ohio, Mr. Ryan could benefit from. Come here and talk to us because we would have said at the time, that doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense at all to say, we're going to get rid of.

Brett: All the police, spend a couple hours down here, you'll come out a better man.

Steve: You'll come out, like running through our filters, get you all washed up. You'll be in good shape. Then you wouldn't have this problem. You wouldn't have us criticizing you for flipping, right?

Brett: Not a bit.

Steve: Norm, what you say?

Norm: Well, it's part of the moral relativism that has left the country, I think, since the decline in belief in higher order. Uh, the belief in the Constitution, belief in, uh, the process of the, uh, court system, belief in God, belief in, um, moral, uh, boundaries, moral limits, uh, the rise of anything goes. Uh, if it feels good, do it, all of that kind of stuff. The hippie generation is now the early boomer segment, uh, of the hippie generation. Those are the people at the, uh, controls and the dials of the media, of government. And, um, they're just, uh, pleasure seekers. There are people who believe that everything else is corny. Uh, you should seize the day, uh, just carpet diem. Um, just that any kind of laws or restrictions on a human being, including what kind of genitalia you're born with, or, uh, whether, uh, what color your skin is or what your ethnicity is, the logical outcome of, uh, that kind of philosophy, um, leads to chaos, leads to nihilism. And that's what our culture is experiencing. How else can you explain the election, if you will, the rejection by suburban moms of Donald Trump just two years ago. They had to get rid of him because he tweeted mean things and he was, uh, crap and all that. And now they're complete and total revulsion of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Uh, and if it feels good, do it philosophy. They're doing a 180. They're rejecting the women of The View, and they're coming back to common sense, normal moral structures. And, uh, I don't know how else to explain it. It's a little like Brett says, I feel whipsawed. Culturally. We went to one extreme, and now all the lemmings are running over to the other extreme. And in the meantime, I haven't changed. I'm still in the same place I always was, at the same place I would intend to be. Um, I have a belief system, and I try to live my life very imperfectly, I admit, but I try to live my life according to my code of how to treat other people and what is right and what is wrong. Yeah.

Brett: Luckily, a higher percentage of people are like us, uh, with common sense than those without. And we seem to have a microscope on those folks.

Steve: Well, for sure, because it's so obvious.

Brett: It is.

Steve: When you put the lens of common sense and dare I say, morality in front of you and look at what's going on, it can only be exposed. Norm, you mentioned something in there when you use the term moral relativism. It, um, got me thinking. Last summer, I reread Crime and Punishment and a, uh, fascinating expose of the dangers of that. It's like the riskolnikoff is sort of the guy who thinks he's going to act like he's crazy anyway, but he's going to act on this notion that, all right, well, it's okay to kill. It's okay to commit these crimes, because I could use this old lady's money for far better purposes than she ever could. So he goes through this internal dialogue with himself to work up enough courage, uh, and justification morally, even though he knows in his consciousness is telling him otherwise. But he, uh, goes and he goes and kills this old lady, and immediately there's collateral damage. It's not just he's going to kill the old lady, take her money because she's a greedy pawnbroker. It turns out her sister's there, so he kills her, too. And next thing you know, it's like Edgar, uh, Allen pose a telltale heart. He starts having these delusional, um, irrational fears that, uh, everybody is on to him. And then you have, like, uh, he has his best friend I forget his best friend that he went to school with, but Rachel Nikov dropped, uh, out of school. His best friend. There's this dialogue at one point where his best friend is walking him home, because I think maybe, uh, Roscoanikov was sick or whatever it was. And he goes into this rant about how all these elitists think that they know better and they are better people, and they can make these decisions that the morality, the rules of morality shouldn't apply to them because they are above it. They're smarter. They're Obama on his birthday party. They're nancy Pelosi getting rich. They are these people who just know better. Norm. They don't need, uh, to follow the moral rules because they can make their own moral rules. And then the ultimate consequence of crime, uh, and punishment, is that he was wrong. He was absolutely, categorically wrong. He had that inherent guilt, the pain, the suffering that he caused himself by killing this old lady and her and her friend and committing the crime. He actually buried the money and never even used it for anything. And then he went up to prison and had redemption. I mean, really, it's such a fascinating story. Every time I dig into it, there's something deeper there, and it's very relevant for what's going on today. It's like there's these people out there thinking that they know better, that we can say black is white and white is black, and night is day, and day is night, and you're a woman and not a man, and you're a man and not a woman, and we can have it any way we want, and it's all relative. And you can go read Foucault and the rest of those lunatics who espouse this philosophy. And um, I think at the end, a lot of those guys, foucault particularly, ended up back to Christianity, back to on his deathbed, sort of, uh, um, having a priest or whatever his, uh, denomination was at that time, sort of having his own redemption and recognizing that there was no way to live. So I'm hoping there will be a backlash.

Norm: Yeah, well, uh, it looks like it's going to be a red tsunami, a red tidal wave, um, coming in a week. But I'm a little worn out with this is what the political consultants all say. Very typical in the Midterms for a president's party to lose seats, because there's this pendulum effect that people believe, oh, goodness, um, Obama went too far, or Trump went too far, reagan went too far, bush went too far, now it's Biden went too far. It wears me out because what it tells me is that the average voter and maybe this is because we are increasingly making it so convenient and quick and easy without great deliberation being brought to bear. You don't have to drive to the polls, stand in line, go to a booth, draw the curtain. And actually, during that entire process, the whole mechanics of it, you're thinking most people would be thinking about what they're about to do and thinking about how they feel about issues, thinking about the candidates. No, no, no. Now we're just well, like, the state of Oregon has no in person voting. The state of Oregon is all mailing. No in person, that's a zero.

Steve: That is insane.

Norm: So this is where we're going, guys. And once you make choices so casual, so easy, so, uh, convenient, I don't think a lot of deliberation goes into it. And I don't know how else to explain the whipsaw effect that we're seeing in our political lives, uh, in, uh, the last couple of decades. I don't get how people can vote for one guy four years ago and then vote for the opposite of that guy at four years hence. It's like people have no code. It's like they don't have a philosophy, or they're not reading enough, or they're not deliberate in their thinking. It shows americans are very susceptible to marketing, uh, to peer, uh, pressure, to influence, and they're not doing their homework. And I always like to say in political consultants, every now and then you'll hear an old timer say, well, the American people are very wise and you can put your trust in the American people. And that's why we have twelve jurors in a trial, that the average person will generally always do the right thing, and all that kind of home spun kind of thing to make you feel better? I don't know, man. Uh, I don't know. In this media culture that Americans are really doing the heavy lifting of thinking about what the hell they're choosing to do.

Brett: I was going to say your example of the twelve jurors. Those twelve jurors do, do the right thing, but they have tons of I don't want to call regulations, but rules, um, they must follow to come up with that decision. Otherwise they could go haywire. Correct. Be bribed.

Steve: I think what is more significant, it's a great point. It's not the rules that they have to follow, it's the rules that the lawyers have to follow. Okay, so I'm not allowed as a trial attorney, to do certain things or say certain things, or, uh, maybe, um, make certain arguments in front of a jury, because the idea would be it would contaminate their opinion or decision making process. Now, I don't always agree with it, but it does restrict what I can do. And I'm certainly not advocating for restricting media sources or anything else or censoring. But it's an interesting point. And going back to your point along the same lines. There was that documentary, I think it was on Netflix, and I can't remember what it's called. I could look it up, but it was on Facebook. It was about Facebook. And there were some studies done how Facebook can, uh, influence the outcome of an election. I think what the guy did, it was a college professor who did this sort of controlled study where he invented two imaginary, um, candidates and exposed, um, people to, uh, certain information about the candidates and could impact how a controlled group of people would actually vote about it, or vote and who they would vote for. And he could change the outcome depending upon how he manipulated it. And we have ad guys have been doing this for decades to say, right.

Brett: Yeah, Mad Men situation. Yeah, for sure.

Norm: Well, if you can do it for a bottle of Coca Cola or a tube of toothpaste, uh, you could do it for a political candidate. Yes, I'm a free speech, 100%. But what bothers me is the lack of seriousness that is put into a person casting their vote. It's becoming more and more just, um, driven by, um, some perception of retribution. Or you vote in order to be, uh, virtuous, uh, with a certain peer group, or, uh, you're striking a blow for this cause or that cause, instead of really doing your homework and really thinking about what are the policy positions of JD. Vance, what are the policy positions of Tim Ryan? Let me look back through their history, pro and con on each person, and try to make a judgment about whether they're going to keep their promises and what the real core values and beliefs are. Who in the hell really does that these days? Or do they just watch a little 32nd blurb and go, oh, that's so nice. He's holding hands with his wife and he's cuddling his baby. Come on.

Steve: Look, politicians have been kissing babies now from the dawn of politics. But no, I think you're right, and I think it's a reflection of a broader phenomenon, for lack of a better way to put in our society, where our attention spans have been reduced to a ten second TikTok video.

k your average, I don't know,: 1516

Steve: I, um, was a guy who would read The Wall Street Journal or a full newspaper as a kid. But you know what I did, and.

Norm: I'm not saying no, i, ah, didn't say full newspaper, but what I'm talking about is that this is a pre internet culture that I grew up in, and I think largely you grew up in.

Steve: Correct?

Norm: Yeah. And so we were looking at print on paper. We were having to make a deliberate effort to go out and get information. The young people today have been ill served by this, uh, John Stewart. You know, there was a survey that said most kids of a certain age, when he had The Daily Show on, we're getting their information from John Stewart about what the news was.

Steve: But that's what they want. Here's the backlash, though, and it's good. When I was a kid, I could still watch the nightly news without an extreme amount of veiled bias coming at me. So the mainstream media, I'm sure they had their bent, but it didn't seem so obvious then, and now it does. And it started it became so painfully obvious to me with Trump when they would report out of context things that Trump would say and I was saying this at the time, guys. I would say, Trump says enough stupid stuff that you can go after him. You don't need to take the other stuff out of context and make it look like it's bad. And that's exactly what they did. And I remember talking to, um, People right here on my show saying, pull up the speech now, and you will see that it wasn't they took it out of context. It's not what he was trying to say. And as an attorney, that means everything. It's like you can't just take somebody's one sentence out of an entire statement and say that defines it. And they were doing it regularly, and they were doing it shamelessly, and they were doing it with the intent to influence people's opinions on Trump. And there's a backlash because of that. It got so bad that now there's a backlash. And you know what it is? Common sense Ohio. Conservative podcasts. Liberal podcasts guys in their basement. It's like the old, uh, ham radios guys just broadcasting to see who's listening. And people it's starting to change. And I think we experienced in our lives, Norm, pre Internet, pre mass media, we also experienced the apex of it. And now there's a backlash where we're experiencing something totally unique, the rise again of the populous news sources. Like, it used to be that, remember when the printing press, all of a sudden it wasn't a church that could just print everything, uh, anybody with a printing press could print. And, um, it changed everything. And you can even go back further than that, when there was this notion that only the church could have copies of the Bible. And then all of a sudden, everybody could have a copy of the Bible. And then the church didn't have total or the government didn't have total control over the religion. And it's like, now we have podcasting. And not to be too self serving here, but we're here talking about this in long form, and people are listening. People are listening. And we can be wrong. And I don't mind it. Call me and tell me I'm wrong, fine. But I'm not going to try to indoctrinate anybody. And I think, uh, even if I were, there's going to be somebody else that cries foul with, uh, an equal platform. We are in Hyde Park, in London, in 19 whatever, in Victoria and England, where guys would stand up and just start talking. This is the bastion of free speech. It's as broad as it's ever been. And hopefully we can preserve it.

Brett: I think also, you know, the more information we have, it's a double edged sword. So the more information that you do have, which we are in that glorious age of you're also kind of sit back going, tell me what I'm supposed to know, and, uh, I got to go. We've lost that thought process too much, maybe too much, because you're inundated with so much information, you want somebody to filter it for you because you don't have the time. Or it's so much information. I think we trained over the years to do that. And all of a sudden now where's my one source to really tell me what the hell is going on?

Steve: And when you can't trust your mainstream sources, you have to start looking. But I found something that I can read, and I can say, generally speaking, I can trust this source. Uh, and you know, what the source there are sources who do not veil their bias. So if I want to get a conservative news source, I will look for somebody who says, I am a conservative news source. So then, you know, there's no masquerade. It is not a trick. They come at you recognizing the angle from which they're coming, and then only then can I actually trust it, because they're telling me what their bias is. It is when people conceal the bias, like we're trying to do here at Commonsense.

Brett: No, that's exactly the platform we're on with this way with this podcast.

Steve: Right? We recognize that we all have backgrounds, we all have biases, and we're trying to have a common sense dialogue to get to the truth. The only thing I know, the only remedy I've ever heard that makes any sense for too much information is more information or, uh, misinformation is more information where if you leave dangling misinformation or biased news and say, that's the only source we can have, then that's, uh, a path to hell, man.

Norm: Well, what I'm talking about is not the, um, tsunami or the, uh, ocean of information. What I'm talking about is the lack of cognitive, uh, crunching of that information. Correct. Where are the lessons on how to use your mind? Where is the unshackling of the mind? Who is advocating to young people for them to review all this information, contradictory information, information from the left, information from the right, information from the middle, uh, statistics, etc. And for them to then deliberate and to think through what ought to be the solution, instead of putting on black jack boots and leather pants and running out into the street and saying, you know, uh, fried pigs like bacon and burn down the police station, because that's junk food. Because that's something that they heard somebody say on TV that they think is really cool. Madonna or Taylor Swift or, you know, whoever, whoever, uh, their thought leader is that they want to mimic. Where is, uh, who is telling kids to make up their own mind? And from my point of view, it's conservatives. Conservatives are not trying to brainwash generally. Most conservatives are trying to give their kids and give young people and give the general population the tools to think through a problem and in a socratic way to come up with their own answers after they go through the information to resolve the problem for themselves. Because we all know, you certainly know, Steve, from presenting to a jury, we all know that a person's beliefs are much more tightly held when they come to that conclusion themselves, rather than when you try to stop a thought down their throat and say, that's the truth. That's propaganda uh, that's what I want you to believe, and by golly, you better believe it. No, a person will adhere to their belief system when they digest the information and come up with their own conclusions and their own decisions. And that's what I'm in favor of.

Steve: What is the verse? Uh, I think it's in maybe first. Peter if it's in Peter, maybe first Peter. I don't remember where where, uh, it discusses be ready to defend your beliefs. Be ready to, uh, explain, in other words, why you believe in Christ or why you believe in God, but take that outside that context, because I'm not going to preach to people here. But the idea is, once you have reached your own conclusion, once you have gone through your journey, once you have, uh, sort of sorted through it or work through it on your own, then you can explain it to somebody else and what they're really saying. I think, Norman, this is a great point you just made, and it gave me this thought. What you're really saying is if you can do that, then implicitly, you know that you have worked through it on your own, logically, to the point where it makes sense to you. You've done your homework. Instead of just shouting it out loud and saying, believe me, you're a man, not a woman, or I can be a woman and not a man without being able to defend it, uh, logically. And now, instead of a logical defense of things, you get shouted down for questioning it. And that's, again, what I'm trying to do here is fight it. So it seems like to me, the more I hear you shouldn't even question this because it's how I feel, the more I hear it's nonsense in my head, because if somebody can't explain to me how they feel, then that's a problem. That's a problem, right?

Norm: Uh, when you hear somebody with great contempt, uh, come back to you with, well, my feelings are just as valid as yours. You want to say, Listen, young person, I don't have these beliefs because of feelings. These are not my feelings. That there are two genders, OK? There are two genders, male and female. It's not based on a feeling. It's not based on something that I was hypnotized in grade school by, uh, uh, my teachers or something. I don't know what kind of conspiratorial mindset somebody has. My belief in a factual, real world is, um, based on the five senses that I have in my brain. It's not based on feelings. And, um, I'm fascinated with anybody who thinks that admonishing them about facts is me trying to project my feelings on them. It is not that I'm actually trying to help you understand the real world, the actual physical reality of the world, which some people want to deny, like their Peter Pan, uh, they want to live in a fantasy world. But this is not a fantasy world.

Brett: Yes. You bring up that term feelings, and I had to look it up and go, well, what is the definition of feelings? And the second definition of feeling? A belief, especially a vague or a rational one.

Steve: Yes. Uh, but I'll bet you that since we've spouted it out here, they'll probably change that definition.

Brett: Probably. So it falls right along with what you're talking about. The norm is that a belief, but it's an irrational or a vague one. Again, let's refine that we have lived.

Steve: Up until now well, I don't want to say completely, but human existence is based upon, I think, this notion of objective reality. We can see and we can touch and we can feel and we can taste and we know. And we also know certain things inherently in our beings. And that's an argument in favor of God. Take it or leave it. But objective reality is what it is. And you can't change objective reality to match your feelings. And you can certainly have feelings about objective reality. Like, I would say, yeah, it sucks when it's too hot outside, but it's just hot. Me saying it sucks is saying nothing about, uh, the fact that it's hot out there or nothing to change that it's hot out there. It's still hot. Now, if you start defining or redefining what terms mean, it's a slippery slope that goes, like you said, Norman, it ends in complete chaos. And all the greatest thinkers of all time have understood this, except for maybe M, uh, the thinkers who, uh, created the foundation for things like communism and, uh, fascism as an issue.

Norm: Sure, we just went through trick or treat, right? And it's a child's holiday. Uh, I'm talking about the secular part of All Souls Day, where we go out on Halloween and we trick or treat it's for children, and they dress up as Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman or Catwoman or whatever DC Comics or Marvel person. Uh, they want to be the Black Panther or whatever it is, and God bless them, but as parents and as people who love them. And I love everybody. I love my political foes. I love everybody. But you would not indulge in adult with the idea that because he puts on a $15 costume or whatever they call it, probably $115 now with inflation, Batman ah, suit. You would not say to that guy, oh, you really are Batman.

Steve: You're Batman. I feel like Batman. Would you let him jump off a cliff with a grappling hook?

Norm: Right. So, uh, it's a childish thing to think that, uh, facts don't matter, and to think that, uh, you can change reality if you just close your eyes and say, I want to go home. I want to go home and poof little Dorothy's back in Kansas. That's a wonderful idea, but it's fiction. It's fiction, folks. The reality is, you are who you are. You're not Batman. You're not Superman. Those are things of your childhood. So you can't say to yourself you can't say to yourself that I wish Nor Murdoch is a mixed race white male. Whatever. I, uh, can't say to myself, I wish I was a young Oriental woman, and then close my eyes. And then you can't go around demanding that other people address you with the pronouns that norm, I want to call you, uh, no, you've got to call me Miss, uh, Whatever, this new character that I've invented for myself that is completely ridiculous and childlike.

Steve: Well, it's yes, go ahead.

Norm: Well, I was just going to say, to wrap up the point that we're not doing our kids any favors by creating this cognitive dissonance in our culture where, uh, we tell them they can be anything they want, including things that are outside the bounds of reality. Well, it's this what we're doing, it's.

Steve: This notion, and again, this sort of foundational understanding of our existence. They are trying to rewrite it. And anybody who is eating too much sugar knows that they're eating sugar. It's not good. Uh, and it's not even how you know it, but you just know. You know it's leading nowhere. It's not good. And when life is too easy, and, uh, you expect everything to be easy, there is no satisfaction in that. All you have to do is look at, uh, these spoiled rich kids, um, who have been given everything. They end up miserable, they end up in depression, they end up committing suicide, they end up doing ridiculous things, and they end up espousing this nonsense because they don't have a framework by which they can understand life. And anybody who knows that, anybody who has completed a project, a difficult one, at school, um, at work, uh, or even at home, if you've got like, oh, crap, I got to do the leaves in my backyard, something so simple. Or make your bed, or put your clothes away, or do your laundry, everybody knows that when you're done doing that, it feels good. It feels like you've done something. And there's a satisfaction there that nobody can take away. It's not dependent upon anybody else or any other thing. You've done it yourself. And it's repeatable over and over again. What is not repeatable is a fluffy, easy life, and it's one that ends up in misery. And to those who, uh, it seemingly is repeatable, they are just that. They're miserable because they've never had to accomplish anything. And I'm not saying that rich people are miserable altogether, because I know plenty of wealthy people who work their tails off either in their job or in their life, or in their spirituality, or in their faith, or whatever. It would be like they overcome obstacles like even I was just, uh, texting a buddy of mine about boxers the other day, and I read this article about, uh, Mike Tyson, and some commentator is saying he's a good boxer, but he's not among the greatest, because whenever he was tested the most, he failed on some level, like he bit the ear or he got knocked down. It was too easy for him. And this is so true, I think, of a lot of people where they're naturally good at things. Um, it becomes too easy, and they end up falling on their face at some point in very dramatic fashion. And then we started to talk about maybe, like, Muhammad Ali, or even Sugar A. Leonard. Um, while I'm going here, I don't know, but I've done some reading and watching and thinking about these guys. They seem to always put challenges in front of them, even when they were skillfully as good as, if not better than everybody else. But they always pick the next challenge and intentionally put it in front of them. Why did Ali want to go fight homes at the end? I don't know. Maybe you could just say it's because he was punched out or whatever, but it was a challenge. He was never comfortable. He always wanted another challenge, and he would always work at it. He would get out of shape and then come back. Um, sugar a would have his eye. He had that detached retina. And then he got sort of embarrassed by Duran, and he came back. When you hear him talk about it, he's not really saying this expressly, but what's going on, I think, is he needed a challenge to overcome, to have satisfaction in life. And if somebody would have just given it to him. It's never good enough when somebody forfeits. It never feels good. When you're just handed a trophy without earning it, it feels crappy. Um, this participation culture of ours, um, is resulting, I think, in misery. That's my concern.

Brett: It is, right?

Norm: It is. Well, um, to me, the most amazing thing, the most important story. Yeah. The elections are important. I think there's going to be a red wave. So that is highly, highly topical. But I think what we're going to see unpeeled over the coming year. That is going to be the biggest story. Or at least ought to be the biggest story. If Americans really care about facts. Really care about the First Amendment. Really care about the government weighing our thoughts. Or the government trying to manipulate us. And that is the abuse of the Patriot Act by the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI. And the deep state. And this is being unpealed by the technicians that Elon Musk, uh, has, um, from his empire, his rockets, his electric cars, etc. But he is redirecting that talent onto Twitter as we speak. And some of the early indicators are this week. Just things that are bubbling up. Is that he is going to be able to discourage the algorithms and the shadow banning and the blocking. And the. Uh. Meetings that. For example. Uh. Zuckerberg has said that he had with the FBI agents he said that on the Rogan show. Zuckerberg said he was in meetings with the FBI. Wherein they asked him. They asked Facebook. And of course they asked Twitter. They asked YouTube and all the rest. They asked them to censor the news. Censor speech dampen, uh, down certain people. So if Alex Baronson wants to talk about masking or faxes, uh, uh, on YouTube or Twitter, turn him off, deplatform him, get rid of that. And they did this under the auspices of the Patriot Act. The idea they perverted the intent of the Patriot Act, which was to allow the FBI to do counterinsurgency, counterterrorism investigations and counter espionage against radical Islam fascists in this country, because, you know, of 911. And instead, just like Ron Paul predicted, and I was wrong about this, I said, no, the good hearted people at the CIA and the FBI and the Department of justice would never do this. This is Nor Murdoch being totally naive. It's ron Paul. It's other voices who were suspicious and understood that there is evil inside each of us. And people who want to manipulate people like Comey, uh, people of that ilk who would construct a false narrative and then put out the Russian collusion hoax, uh, or dampen down people's ability to discuss budget issues, whatever it is. The government, what's going to come out over the next year or so is going to be incredible. And the American people have to decide, do they want Big Brother to, uh, be our government? Is that what we want? We want that orwellian future, uh, where we are passive, and they tell us what to think? Or do we want an open marketplace of ideas? And this is the biggest scandal maybe in all of American history. This is abuse of the highest order of the First Amendment.

Steve: Well, look, there's another machination of that is occurring as we speak, um, in Ohio and everywhere. There are people out there, namely the teachers union. I forget who it was, but I saw his speech asking to give a pass to all those draconian, authoritarian dictators who cram down this insane COVID policy during the shutdowns. And not only were they completely, 100% wrong, now, uh, there's evidence coming out that they knew it, that they were doing it. Uh, they suppressed evidence that they were wrong in order to do what they were doing, and then later to justify what they did. And there are people looking or advocating to give those people a pass because it was just such a hard time in our society. And I say bullshit. I say no way. Anybody who intentionally crammed down bad policy, or, uh, intentionally maintained incorrect facts or lied, we'll say it to justify stupid decisions they made. Uh, I think they ought to pay. I think they had to pay at the election booth, and I think they had to pay if it was criminal. Some of this COVID stuff that happened was nothing short of criminal. They took people's lives away from them forever. They took people's businesses, they took people's money, and they did it all for this collective cause. Um, and I was saying it at the time when they were skewing death numbers, and everybody knew that they were skewing death numbers. Um, they were doing it because they didn't want to be exposed for the stupid decisions they made. And I'll say this, too, and I mean this. Look, if they were wrong and they had bad information, or they misinterpreted information they had and they just made a mistake, or they just got emotional and thought, oh my gosh, I'm afraid, and then made a bad decision with bad policy, fine, admit it, move on. Um, everybody here at this table would give him a pass for that, but not for the COVID up.

Brett: No, exactly. Well, how many of us have ever gone through a COVID pandemic before in our lives? So, yes, we're going to make mistakes.

Steve: Five mistakes are fine.

Brett: They are, quite frankly. But let's adjust and come up with the best knowledge that we have at the point in time and do the right thing.

Steve: But blind eye mistakes are not fine. They're not.

e I read an article about the: 2020

Steve: Well, that was my go ahead.

Norm: Yeah, go ahead.

Steve: That was my point with the COVID stuff. Uh, it's the same thing.

Norm: Right?

Steve: So you had government suppressing information about COVID Entire groups of doctors who wanted to say, look, we're not seeing what you're seeing, we want to talk about this. This isn't right. We have a different idea, we have a different way to treat this. And the government is not only suppressing that, and through pressure, all of a sudden, the American Medical Association and other, uh, groups in the medical field start delicacy people, and then they have no platform on social media. YouTube won't present the videos. Facebook wouldn't let them, uh, put posts out there. I a was COVID denier because I didn't want to get vaccinated. It was a pandemic, uh, of the unvaccinated, and it turns out it was all BS. Even Pfizers come out and said, we have no studies that supported that. The vaccination would have stopped the spread of the illness, irrespective of whether it worked. Um, it wasn't going to stop the spread of the pandemic or of COVID And that's what Biden was saying out loud. And anybody who said differently was shouted down as a denier. Same thing with the election, same thing with climate. If you question any of their science, it's like, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense to me. Please explain. You get shouted down into your point norm, which is a very scary one. And I agree. This should be a scandal. This should be topic a Number one for everybody who cherishes freedom is that you have the government using its power levers to control social media.

biggest story going into the: 2024

Steve: What it is is it is a shout down of any challenge to the logic that may not make sense. And if you can't defend your position, you shout it down with those emotional phrases. There are aspects of crime that involve race, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to talk about crime and punish those who commit crime irrespective of the race. Those things are not mutually exclusive. It's absurd. And what it does is it ultimately, uh, drives the debate underground, and it results in what I will call extreme radical ideology on both sides because it becomes untested, unchallenged. It's like a fungus. It lives in the dark. And if I had a stupid idea, norm and Brett are, uh, right here to tell me and challenge me on it, and then I can adjust my course in real time and say, okay, that doesn't make sense. I better go to a different direction. But if I'm left to fester in my closet alone with other people, or festering in their closets alone, then you end up with people like the KKK, or you end up with people like some, uh, of these Black Lives Matter extremists who have no ability to think about anything rationally on their own. And shame on me, they'll say, for comparing the two. Well, shame on you for not listening. You know, it's like I'm not saying that one's good and the other s bad, or one's bad and the other good. Both ideologies at extremes are bad. And the only way to combat that, the only way to get logic to people, is to be able to talk in the open market of ideas.

Brett: That's my two cent well, and as you said, to all these ideas and concepts go underground. And I went through a, um, luncheon talking about the Dark Web in regards to what's there, what's not really wanting. You can get there, but you don't really want to go there. The Dark Web represents a very high percentage of what goes on in Internet traffic for websites.

Steve: That's interesting.

Brett: It's like in the Dark Web, is that's an access point that the government designed it. It's for information traffic that you can't access. So it's deep, deep. You got to know the code. You got to know where it is. But that's where the information is sold. That's where your Social Security numbers are sold. Anything it's stolen can be bothered. You could buy anything. In the dark, dark Web, they were showing these images of guns and drugs.

Steve: I've had plenty of cases involved in.

Brett: Everything, and I don't know how it works either, but we're talking about that stuff exists, and it is a very high percentage of what goes on in the Internet. So don't think that telling somebody that your ideas are, we need to shut them up. They're going to find. A place to talk about them.

Steve: Sure. Nothing lives in the vacuum, right? It always escapes.

Brett: It's like you cannot nazism and fascism, they still survive.

Steve: They still survive, right? You can say you're not allowed to talk about Nazis or fascists or any of their ideology. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You can say that, uh, uh, gun control, we're going to have gun control and, uh, ban all the firearms in the world, but they still exist. So making your stupid law to look good isn't going to change the fact that guns exist or isn't going to change the fact that bad ideology exists on both sides, whether they're the extreme fascist, racist, uh, assholes on one side, or the extreme, fascist, racist assholes on the other side. And I use that term, they're the same. They are the same. Just manifesting in different ways. So it just is, uh, the Marxist and the communists on the far extremes, uh, it's all the same ideology that is left to fester, unchallenged. It will grow.

Brett: And it's upon us, the common sense people, to shed light on it, shed light on it, to talk about it, talk it out and show them for what they are.

Steve: Yeah. All right, well, uh, we're an hour in. We didn't cover much news today, guys, but that's okay because, uh, we're just here to espouse common sense and challenge each other and challenge our listeners to challenge us. So what does that mean? That means you can reach out to us. That means you can say, uh, uh, hey, talk about this, or hey, you're wrong about that. And how do you do that? Well, for now, you can just go to Lawyer Talk Podcast.com and send comments there. Very soon we will have Common Sense Ohio show.com out there with our website, ready to rock and roll. Uh, like I said, we've been on, uh, two interstates at the same time and they're about to split off. And by the way, I got a call over the weekend or last week. It doesn't mean lawyer talk is gone. It doesn't mean I'm done with the Q and A. It doesn't mean with any of that. Spend a little bit of time here right now, but, uh, both are still alive and well, and both are going to start, uh, emerging. I've got great plans for lawyer talk. Be, uh, prepared for the rogue edition. I'll explain what that means going forward, but I got some cool stuff happening, uh, when the weather breaks again. So, uh, that's that. Elections around the corner, the big drop, the big podcast. Common sense, Ohio. Uh, it wouldn't surprise me if presidents, uh, call us, if world leaders call us, if intellectuals of all ilks want to be on our show. Why? Because we are speaking common sense right from the middle. Common sense, Ohio. At least until now.

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