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Breaking Down What the Hell Is Going on in American Politics with Mr. Beat
99 Plays1 year ago
We sit down with Mr. Beat to discuss what's going on in American politics.
Project Liberal is on a mission to resurrect true liberalism. Learn more: https://projectliberal.org/
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Transcript
Discovering a Grounded Voice in Politics
00:00:00
Speaker
I was going to ask you, so let's kick off the conversation. I discovered you probably about six months ago. And since then, I've come to, when I talk to people about you, which I've had to talk a couple of people about you, I come to terms with, I basically describe you as just like a very pragmatic, normal person in a sea of crazy individuals in the political space.
00:00:24
Speaker
Now, I don't know if you consider yourself that way, but I genuinely see you that way. I see you as somebody who's grounded in history, grounded in facts. You seem to have a very good understanding of American history.
00:00:37
Speaker
And you come across as just a normal, like easy to understand, like person with a good head on your shoulders.
Journey from Teaching to Social Media Influence
00:00:45
Speaker
So I am curious, just like I wanted to know what got you to where you're at because you have a really large platform. And I feel like nowadays the people that actually grow in this space, especially in YouTube and on social media and the political space are the people that have some real extreme views. Right. Um, and I am, I am curious as to like your origin story. Like what brought you here? Cause I know you're a teacher, right?
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, I was. Well, technically, you could say I still am. You know, I just have viewers as my students because I taught in the classroom from grades as young as seventh grade all the way up to 12th grade for over 12 years, different districts, rural, suburban, urban schools. And the entire time I was making videos because my first career was
00:01:35
Speaker
uh tv and radio broadcasting and so communications was always something i uh specialized in more because i like it it's fun but also it's weird because growing up i was really bad at communicating with others like i i had a speech impediment i
00:01:53
Speaker
was really shy. When I took a speech class in college, I remember being terrified. So the fact that I do this and the fact that I later got up in front of lots of people every day is kind of amazing the more I think about it.
Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety
00:02:10
Speaker
But yeah, I also am a musician. And so I have been on stage to sometimes crazy crowds.
00:02:20
Speaker
Met all kinds of people over the years being a teacher a lot of times you get kids. You know they have to be there. So you deal with all personality types. I think when you're talking about social media though it's a very specific.
00:02:38
Speaker
type of person, though. I don't think they represent society as a whole. I will say Josh. Are you by Joshua or Josh? Either one's fine. Yeah. Okay. I when I first came across your tweets, I was like, man, this this guy is really articulate and really puts things well. So I don't know how I found I've probably found out about you about six months ago as well. And this guy. Yeah. So anyway,
00:03:00
Speaker
No, that's good. So I appreciate that. It's actually funny you mentioned the speech class so I I was also I mean just as many young people are when they're coming through school like Petrified about public speaking and I actually have a funny little story about that
00:03:15
Speaker
When I went into college, I told myself that I was going to take a speech class because I had to overcome that fear. It was one of the first things I did in my freshman year. And I decided to do it. It caused me so much anxiety. I actually threw up in the parking lot.
00:03:31
Speaker
before my first speech. That's how anxious I was about it. This was me as like a 17, 18-year-old kid. And in that speech class, I met my wife. If I never would have taken that class, I would have never met my wife. I would have never had my two sons. And it was all because of the fact that I just decided to do that as a freshman in college and changed my life. And it was a great class. By the end, I dealt with a lot of that fear, but that
Expanding Educational Content Beyond Curriculum
00:03:57
Speaker
was just a weird... You mentioned speech class is what I thought about.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool man. So okay, so you did so you did history you you you did you did you teach history? Is that what it was? Yeah, I taught everything from Geography to American history to a push its AP US history world history economics. I started the economics class at my The last high school I taught they didn't even have an economics class and I was just astounded by that
00:04:26
Speaker
I think it should be mandatory for every kid, and it's in Kansas here. I don't know where you all are from, but in Kansas, it's not mandatory. It's an elective. So I had to like hype up the class and make it fun, go out of my way to make it interesting. Because when I took economics in college, that was the first class I actually fell asleep in. I'll never forget that. But yeah, social studies overall.
00:04:50
Speaker
So when you watch my early videos, you'll see that they're purely curriculum based. I specifically made them for my students in real life. And then I noticed that I could maybe take them more seriously when I realized other teachers were playing my videos to their students. And I was like, oh, maybe I should put more effort into these.
00:05:08
Speaker
And then one day I made more money doing that than I did teaching. So I love teaching. Yeah, here I am. It's kind of crazy. So you started out by just posting really your curriculum online. Was there, did you have a specific goal? Did you want to say I want to teach this specific thing about history? Was it just kind of a broad, a broad overlook of, of topics? What, what did you, what did you have in mind?
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question, Jonathan. Yeah, I would say my first videos, I was just literally searching to see if the video already existed over a topic. So, for example, when I used to teach seventh grade, I wanted to teach the kids as quickly as possible about the Texas Revolution.
00:05:54
Speaker
So I searched for the Texas Revolution, and all I found on YouTube were student-made projects, and they were all fairly crappy videos. And I was like, alright, I guess I have to make a video about this. And so I remember staying up late one night to do it.
00:06:13
Speaker
and the kids loved it and so the I mean they I don't know if they loved it but they pretended like they did they were nice they thought it was cool the teacher actually was in the video um and so yeah my earliest videos are just curriculum based but then later on I was like well
00:06:28
Speaker
I kind of want to just follow my own curiosity.
Using Controversy to Engage and Educate
00:06:34
Speaker
Also, I want to cover what I think is important, and also what I know more about that's not necessarily curriculum-based, and so that's kind of how the channel evolved over the years.
00:06:47
Speaker
Nice. I was going to make a point about, you know, both of you talked about anxiety around communication, getting up in front of people. One of the things I've noticed is that people who, people who realize that they have to work at something to be good at it, often end up being better at that thing than people who think they're just naturally good at. Right. It seems to me that people who are realized they have to put in the work for something that they tend to have a more developed, um, ability to do that. At least that's kind of been my observation. So people who are, you know, who have trouble with a stutter or,
00:07:17
Speaker
a fear of public speaking when they can overcome that they can work on that they tend to have a better grasp i think of of um of that subject so i think i think that's an interesting it's interesting to hear both of you have those stories that's a good point it's interesting to me that you've gone this you've gone through this journey matt from creating youtube videos to teach kids it's basically an educational tool for you to basically being at the center of a lot of these like i mean i don't know you had a tweet the other day that went viral about not dehumanizing
00:07:47
Speaker
MAGA, which I thought was a great tweet, by the way. And I see your stuff pop up often. I see you at the center of a lot of these conversations, which I don't know if you ever expected to be there when you started doing this years ago. But I am, and this kind of goes back to what we opened the conversation with. Like, I feel like normal people, there's a war going on against normal people.
00:08:06
Speaker
especially in the political space. People that have really rational, centrist, liberal, you know, like classically liberal views are almost like seen as outcasts and the algorithms I think play a big part of that. But I am curious, like, when you create content, like I think you created content about BLM the other day, how do you deal with the criticism and backlash? Like, do you get a lot of that or, you know, like, how do you balance that and navigate that as a content creator?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can handle the backlash. I'm ready for it. I got it when I was a teacher from, you know, 15-year-olds. And I continue to get it in my comment sections. Honestly, though... From the same 15-year-olds, probably.
00:08:51
Speaker
But I embrace the controversy because that is what tricks people into learning. I intentionally choose controversial topics to cover because I know people are going to click on the video. That's what we all do when we say—like when I did the dehumanization of Trump supporters tweet the other day, and for those who have no idea what—
00:09:14
Speaker
I basically just said we shouldn't dehumanize Trump supporters is all I said. And I usually keep it intentionally open-ended and vague on purpose because it kind of, you know, people kind of reveal themselves quickly when they respond. And the message was simple. Like we shouldn't be attacking people just because they're ignorant or whatever. We should be attacking Trump.
00:09:40
Speaker
But that message, of course, didn't get across, but that's okay because it led to all these back and forths that did lead to a good discussion. And yeah, a lot of toxicity as well and outrage, but that's just part of the platforms.
Challenges for Pragmatic Voices in Politics
00:09:51
Speaker
I mean, all social media is like that. I tried to direct a lot of that to learning whenever possible.
00:09:59
Speaker
Again, my mantra is to trick people into learning, whatever I got to do. And so that also means I can't just be bashing people. I have to be respectful and treat others as human beings, even if I personally disagree with them. But also, like what you said at the very beginning, you're like, oh, you just sound like a normal pragmatic dude. Well, it really helps that.
00:10:22
Speaker
I'm two things. One, I'm pretty cynical about anything. But more importantly, the second thing is I'm not ideological at all. I'm not married to ideas. I'm flexible. I realize that almost every issue, it's insane to be on one end of a spectrum or the other.
00:10:43
Speaker
There's always almost always you're in between on on a spectrum. And so when you view every issue that way, I think it automatically makes you like, okay, well, I can open myself up to different opinions. Yeah, it's almost like nowadays, politics programs, people to come to before you even look at a problem, you have a solution in mind, right? Like for even navigate or understand a problem, you're coming to it with a preconceived notion or a partisan bias or like,
00:11:10
Speaker
uh, some sort of stigma against, you know, um, a certain set of answers that may in fact be the most pragmatic
Social Media's Role in Societal Divisions
00:11:17
Speaker
answers. It's interesting. I, John and I come from, and I've spent 10 years in the libertarian movement, libertarian party, and I, I've always been considered myself more on the pragmatic side recently. I've stepped away from a lot of the stuff there because I've seen them kind of get absorbed into a lot of the more illiberal things that I've seen happen in the Republican party.
00:11:35
Speaker
But that happens like any political movement. People get so kind of caught up in the ideology or the dogma that they lose track of what's best to solve the problem, and then the people in the middle, the pragmatic people, are the ones that
00:11:52
Speaker
are without a platform because they can't get traction without being those dogmatic crazy people. I am curious, and that speaks to a broader division in society. You've spent a lot of time studying American history. Do you think there's ever been a time from a division perspective that
00:12:11
Speaker
is equivalent to what we're seeing now. I mean, we had a civil war, right? So I know that we've had at least something similar. But do you have any thoughts on that broadly? The only other time was the 1850s. And that was worse. I do think that was worse. I've studied that decade quite a bit. And there was a lot of violence. I mean, I live in Kansas, where a lot of that violence actually went down.
00:12:38
Speaker
They call it like the prequel to the Civil War, Bleeding Kansas, because pro-slavery people were murdering anti-slavery people and vice versa, infamously John Brown and others. And I think a lot of the division we see is between people that rarely touch grass. They are often just, yeah, like always on their phones, like, you know, you go to the store, you go to,
00:13:07
Speaker
uh the gym other places that were people of different backgrounds and beliefs congregate you don't see people shouting at each other or refusing to go to certain places because like oh they are going to be there no like most of us get along just fine i just think uh a lot of the people that are like
00:13:25
Speaker
Oh, the next civil war
The Outrage Economy in Media
00:13:27
Speaker
is imminent. I think they're just terminally online. They need to get offline and interact with really human beings. And a lot of people are lonely right now too. That's another thing we don't bring up enough. There's a lot of, there's a loneliness epidemic right now. I think that a lot of those toxic responses to us on social media, I just hate to say it, but I mean, it's, they need help. They need friends. Yeah, I think there's something absolutely to that.
00:13:51
Speaker
I completely agree. I think next week I'll be debating somebody about national divorce. I have a video about that. Say what? I have a video about that. Oh, I'll have to check that out. I did a debate last year. I might have actually watched one of yours. I don't know. I'll have to go look because I did look up what everybody was saying about national divorce.
00:14:13
Speaker
Um, but I think that it, you know, there's kind of these, these narratives kind of arise. Like a lot of people, you know, people talking about civil war is imminent. There's massive divides in this country. And I agree that there's massive divides in this country. How much of that is being fed by kind of the social media algorithms and.
00:14:30
Speaker
like it feeds social media really tends to kind of feed the negative way more than the positive and you there's just such a huge imbalance between those two i'm sure somebody somewhere has done a study on on why why or how much negative stories get promoted more than positive ones um but how do you think that's fed into the discourse of the day is it the driver behind the discourse or is it really just revealing kind of the undercurrents um that were already pre-existing
00:14:59
Speaker
Or is it kind of a probably mixture of both? It is a mixture of both, but I would say it's mostly, I mean, it's just, I don't think, uh, I have seen studies on this, but that doesn't mean it's like, this is a, I mean, I would say this claim is mostly true that most of the division we see is driven by.
00:15:18
Speaker
Somebody put it this way, it's an outrage economy because, and that's what I admitted earlier, I use the outrage economy to my advantage when I'm trying to educate folks. Really what I'm trying to do is spread empathy, like almost ironically, is expose people to different things they would never be exposed to otherwise. And so when you are, I mean our entire economy since the, or at least for the last 20 years, has been built on
00:15:50
Speaker
trying to get people to click on crap online. I mean, so much is just get them to click, get them to stay on that website, and you gotta do whatever you can to get them to stay on that website. And that's how algorithms work on YouTube. They've made reforms. It's not as bad as it used to be, but that's where the incentives are, and I think the incentives have to change because
00:16:16
Speaker
We are naturally, as human beings, drawn towards fear and loathing. The two things that drive so many people politically right now, fear and loathing, we've got to figure out how not to
00:16:31
Speaker
Actually, I call people out all the time on Twitter, I say, you profit from hate and division. A lot of pundits, they know, a lot of them don't even believe what they're tweeting out or saying. They know they're gonna get a reaction and they know they're gonna get attention. And negative attention is good press even these days. It's not just, it's almost like you get rewarded for the more toxic you are
00:16:59
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, because right now I'm thinking of an individual, and I want to say his name, but I don't want to say his name. Don't say his name, yeah. Well, what do you guys think about? Like, what's the solution to that? Well, that's what I was going to ask you. I'm not sure there is much of one except trying to put out positive, empathetic content. I think, you know, empathy is something that really gets lost online.
Audience Capture and Influencer Extremism
00:17:24
Speaker
Like, for example, my grandmother, she...
00:17:29
Speaker
I don't want to call her a racist, but she grew up and she was born in 1913. And one day we were sitting with her and we were showing her pictures of the past year. Yes, kids, I was born back in the time when we had photo albums, physical photo albums. But we were showing her pictures of like the past year or something and pictures came up of where we had, I forget, I think they stayed with us or we stayed with them for a night or two. I forget the situation, but with a black family.
00:17:57
Speaker
And we just had pictures of us. We didn't think anything about it. My grandmother looked and goes, you guys stayed with a colored family? And she just had this look on her face. And I just, I remember even as a nine, 10, 11 year old thinking, why does she have that look on her face? And I didn't realize until later on, um, that it kind of offended her, I guess, in some way, shape or form. Um, and, and so I think that,
00:18:23
Speaker
But if that black family had shown up at her doorstep and asked for food or asked for clothing, she would have given the clothes off her back to help them. But it was because we had stayed with, like, so she's, you know, it's this contradiction of she has these social norms built into her brain of blacks and whites could need to kind of be separate for, I don't know the extent that she believed that cause she ended up having Alzheimer's in my, you know, in my teens. So I didn't really get to know her. Um,
00:18:48
Speaker
But I think that she had this conception of where the proper social norms were, but she still would have helped them if they had asked. But I think about this. If Twitter had existed back in the 1930s, maybe she would have been saying some horrible, awful things.
00:19:05
Speaker
But in real life, she would have actually helped people, right? So I don't, I hope she wouldn't have been online saying really awful things, but I think that I kind of try to tell that story in the way that, hey, people, you know, people have different conceptions and the personality they put online is probably not who they are in real life. I certainly hope that's the case. Yeah. And I've been seeing this and you probably see this too. All both of you guys probably see this. Audience captures a real problem.
00:19:29
Speaker
The algorithms are absolutely incentivized people to go completely and totally apeshit. They incentivize you to get extremely, what's the word, to make things out to be far more extreme than they are, to
00:19:48
Speaker
you know, exaggerate things, et cetera, et cetera. But I think the thing that's been the most shocking to me is audience capture. And I think that that's effectively what's going on with a lot of these big influencers is they build an audience, they build an audience, they build an audience, and they put something out there and they see what gets resonates and what doesn't. They do more of what resonates. And at some point, they become something that they aren't even personally believe anymore.
Economic Insecurity and Societal Division
00:20:11
Speaker
And it's incredibly hard to fight that, especially when you get to levels that I'm sure like Tim Poole or I just think of somebody in the libertarian movement like Dave Smith. No names. No names, Josh. We're not going to name them. We're going to say, show them how to be named. Exactly. But I mean, these people get massive platforms and they grow these audiences and they say when they see it, right, they know they can't maybe say what they believe truly and they know what works and what resonates. And then they get rewarded for that. And it's just a vicious cycle.
00:20:38
Speaker
Um, you know, uh, so I, I don't know how to, yeah, I think that there's also an asset like Alex Smith. I just, uh, I just said I wouldn't name the Alex, uh, Jones said, said I wouldn't name names, but here I am. I think they, um, a lot of them.
00:20:54
Speaker
create a personality to be online. And then that kind of morphs them into, they become that personality, right? They create this almost alter ego of a personality, of a belief system, and they kind of portray that online, and they don't really believe it. They don't really follow through with it, but then it kind of becomes something that they have to, they have to be that alter ego all the time. I'm not a psychologist, so take that with a grain of salt. But I think there's, I think that, you know, you talk about solutions, we have to figure out ways to identify those people.
00:21:24
Speaker
and identify what they're doing. And that's a tricky thing. I would say that the root of most societal problems, structural problems, are economic. And I think that we are... I mean, I know we're all market-driven folks. I do lean to the right economically in terms of free markets, yada, yada. But at the same time,
00:21:46
Speaker
Sometimes you need government to step in to make it competitive. You want competitive markets. Well, we don't have competitive markets. We have just a handful of media companies that own it all. We're even seeing like, I just saw a video today, like streaming. Remember when streaming back 10 years ago when you could watch Netflix for like six bucks a month, no commercials. And you didn't have to have like seven different accounts just to find the movie you want to watch.
00:22:16
Speaker
I think that consolidation has been a bane on Capitalism for a long time and we fought monopolies in the late 1800s early 1900s with the progressive era That's how we save capitalism and I think we need to save it again because I think at the root of it is you have so many people that are desperate to make money and they will do whatever they can they actually throw out ethics because they like well, I've got to pay the bills and I I
00:22:44
Speaker
I mean, you mentioned some pundits, you know. I feel like if you sat these people down and hung out with them, I think they'd be decent people. I think they would—you know, we would get along, actually, probably. But like you were saying, Josh, they've found—
00:23:00
Speaker
out what makes them money and their audience has taken control and when they say when we say the audience really it's like it's just the audience is just also manipulated so it's not like it's one way both sides are kind of just like
00:23:18
Speaker
So these problems are systemic is what I'm trying to
Economic Freedom vs. Protectionism
00:23:21
Speaker
say. And I think at the root of it, we have to have, it has to be easier for people to have economic opportunity because this is a scarcity kind of mindset where you see it the same thing in poor communities around the world. Like, Oh, they're always looking for the quick way to make money. You know, you notice that pyramid schemes are thriving.
00:23:42
Speaker
con artists are like look the biggest con artists in the world whoever existed you know who what his name is running for president again this year he's the greatest con artist of all time but the reason why he exists is not him it's he's a symptom of the of our society why we need to ask ourselves why are we falling for con artists it's because we're desperate
00:24:06
Speaker
Like wealth inequality is worse now than it was during the Gilded Age. Something has to be done. We don't want it to be, we don't want it to be communism, but we also don't want it to be fascism. And so we folks that are kind of in the middle need to speak. I mean, we know, we see countries where it works, where capitalism works.
00:24:28
Speaker
across the world. We see it. Places like Hong Kong and Singapore and Europe. Most European countries, for the most part, there's still problems. But like, well, I mean, even people are going to be continue like populism. The only way to fight populism and radicalism is we have to give people make it so that they feel like they don't have to do whatever they can to make money. And I think that's the root of the problem. Sorry, I talked too long.
00:24:58
Speaker
No, not at all. No, I didn't mean to cut you off. You're completely dead on. I think there's a lot of things you said I agree with. I think the devil's in the details when we talk about, you know, like which things constitute a monopoly and which things don't. I definitely personally agree with you that, like, you know, there's a role for antitrust. And if the government is going to step in into a market, it needs to be done in order to make markets more competitive. Right. Exactly. If there is a role of government in the market, it's to make markets more competitive.
00:25:23
Speaker
So I couldn't agree more with you on that. And you're right, in times of economic uncertainty, in times of unrest like this, con artists and strong men always do better. And the best way we can fix that problem is by enriching people's lives and reducing inequality and doing all those things to make markets competitive and give people a chance to thrive. It's worth noting that a lot of the countries, even the ones that communists,
00:25:47
Speaker
talk about all the time. I was in a debate the other day on Twitter about with a communist on spaces and he was saying, oh well you know Scandinavian countries are an example of how socialism works and I go Scandinavian countries on average have higher economic freedom or rank higher in the economic freedom index than the United States does.
00:26:08
Speaker
They're not socialist. Although they do pay too much taxes to my liking, income taxes, but for what they get,
Formation of a Centrist Movement
00:26:18
Speaker
okay, fine. Yeah, they have a bigger welfare programs, a bigger state in that regard, and they have a higher tax rate. But like from an economic perspective,
00:26:27
Speaker
They have more freedom. And that's one of the things that you point to. And it's actually, it's the same thing I hear from communists about China. They go, oh, China's this amazing success story about pulling all these people out of poverty. And I go, that only happened after they reformed in the 1990s to allow people to have more private property, 70s, 80s, and 90s. So I think it was in the early 90s, right, when those major reforms happened. You know this. It began in the 70s, yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
It was really only their liberalization, their market liberalization that resulted in that. I think that is the most powerful tool. That's what concerns me the most about the rise of right-wing populism, especially Trumpism, is they're regressing. They see a problem. The problem is a lack of economic competition. The problem is a lack of free markets that's causing this consolidation.
00:27:17
Speaker
a lack of competitive markets, right? And their response to it is more isolationism, it's protectionism, it's government intervention in the market, it's subsidies. These are things that will only take the problems that they're experiencing and make them far, far worse, right? If you want to fix those problems, you need to create a more competitive market, give people the ability to have economic mobility, and by, you know,
00:27:40
Speaker
making the cost to buy things overseas way more and increasing prices on consumers and then subsidizing the people that are the farmers that you like. That will not result in that economic mobility. It will only make the problem worse. It's like a death spiral. That's why I think it has to be addressed. That's why it's such a big problem right now. Again, now I'm talking your ear off, but I couldn't agree more with you on that.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, I I'm kind of it's kind of a meme at this point where I I rail against tariffs and my videos sometimes I don't like to like share my opinions in my videos too often, but when I do it's like Tariffs, I hate them and people are all like So guys let's talk about the jones act now So dorky yeah Yeah, hi boy. I um, yeah tariffs are one of those things. It's one of the you can always say well the other country pays for it No
00:28:29
Speaker
No, we pay for the tariffs. Companies don't pay taxes. Their customers do. At the bottom line, you can tax a company all you want to, but at the end of the day, they're going to pass most of that off to their consumer.
00:28:44
Speaker
We've kind of talked about some algorithms. We talked about, tried to talk about some solutions.
Combatting Misinformation through Education
00:28:50
Speaker
Do you see, do you think you just need, do we need more Mr. Beats out there, uh, spreading empathy? Do like, what other things can people do? Um, not just try to, you know, top down solutions, but bottom up solutions. Do we need more people out there calling out bad faith actors? Um, what other, what other things can we do from the bottom up?
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah, I do think it is important to I think the most important video I made in recent months was How do you know if something is true or not? So that's it's just a media literacy video and I wish I were to learn these things when I was younger because I used to fall for
00:29:29
Speaker
Scams, you know, I and I also was very religious growing up and I do I just didn't critically think and and so yeah like I think so many people like You know, you just give them a little bit. I mean people are naturally naturally curious Sometimes it just needs to some work to you know to
00:29:47
Speaker
Unleash that and so but yeah if they are able to critically think and be media literate That's a start And then from there they'll be able to see the con artists more more easily in the demagogues and etc. Yeah And then on the other part of it is I think we just need to keep encouraging people to be
00:30:09
Speaker
Active civically not just at the federal level, but especially the local level like my hometown is They're making big changes in terms of zoning which I think is one of the biggest reforms that we can all make at the local level across the country is like It's another example of how there's this too much
00:30:40
Speaker
The zoning reforms that I'm seeing and this is a lot of times grassroots. It's really inspiring and
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, I said earlier I'm a cynical guy, but I also like to see like there are glimmers of hope. What's it called? The Yimbee movement. I think that's one example. So getting involved with local politics I think is also kind of another important part of that.
00:31:05
Speaker
I actually wanna, if you don't mind, Jonathan, I got a quick comment on that, because you talk about Yimbyism, that's actually indicative of what I see as a major civil war happening on the left. So, for the sake of our audience, it may be explaining to you kind of where we're at with this whole thing is, I see both on the left and the right right now, massive civil wars and infighting going on. On the far right, it's like the, I'd say it's the liberal Republicans versus the liberal MAGA, right? It's these kind of like,
00:31:32
Speaker
right-wing populists and demagogue lovers versus some sometimes these reformer establishment people especially just pro-market kind of conservative people on the left actually see it as a fight between the far left many of these people are pretty illiberal especially when you look at the way they responded like October 7th and what happened after the whole Israel Palestine thing anti-market leftists and pro-market liberals and
00:32:01
Speaker
And I see this playing out in our political space.
Shifts in American Political Parties
00:32:04
Speaker
And I almost think that we're in a moment. And that's what the talk goes back to the hope that we talked about, where there is a space now for actually a legitimate liberal kind of centrist pro market, you know, pro liberal values movement that kind of unites those two sides that were cast out from by the far left and the far right. And the success of the YIMBY movement, I think is a great example of that. That's been led in many cases by
00:32:30
Speaker
people that are considered themselves center left, that in my mind, when I was growing up, when I was younger, would have been considered Democrats and maybe even like less pro market. But I'm seeing a departure on the left, like a move towards free markets. Like they're recognizing the role that markets play in enriching people. And I think they're kind of joint, this is the early stages of this new coalition. It's the whole reason why we started Project Liberals, because we see this kind of thing forming. And I think it presents an unprecedented opportunity, electorally,
00:33:00
Speaker
That could really push things in the right direction. There's a lot of things that have to happen to make it work, but that's been a huge glimmer for me. Cool. It is interesting to watch Democrats particularly start to take on kind of the pro-free market side of things as Republicans are tilting away from it, right? Pro-teras, pro-isolationism.
00:33:21
Speaker
Um, it is interesting. It is interesting to see that kind of that shift in the political parties happen in real time because, you know, 2030, you know, back in the, the, the, the Reagan through Clinton through Bush Harris, it seems to me, and I know there were definitely changes in there. It seems to me that they, both of the parties were very, you know,
00:33:41
Speaker
Very stable. They both had their own viewpoints. There was plenty of overlap during that time Between the parties, right? You had pro pro-life Democrats. You had pro-choice Republicans during that time And generally speaking they kind of they kind of sailed along pretty evenly Obviously some would win some would lose etc, etc But generally speaking the parties themselves didn't change that much over that time Whereas in the past decade or two, we've just seen this major internal changes within the parties I'm curious
00:34:11
Speaker
Is there any other time in American history where we've had both political parties just really kind of flipping the script on? internally, that's why I think we're entering the the next party system if I mostly have videos about American political history in my channel and we have the different party systems, you know, like we've
00:34:30
Speaker
My entire life, basically, I mean, when I was born, Ronald Reagan was president and we've been in the Reagan era pretty much up until
Future of Political Movements Post-Trump
00:34:39
Speaker
Trump. Trump has tapped into something new, but it wasn't just Trump. It was also Bernie. And I think it's populism, but at the same time I.
00:34:47
Speaker
Populism doesn't have to be bad like a lot of people I think automatically get these oh like it's a pejorative because there are things that are popular that ordinary folks are Acutely aware of and they agree on it like there are so many issues where it's like 65 to 70 percent of Americans agree for example like
00:35:07
Speaker
The first example I always go to is marijuana legalization. I mean, come on. That's above 70% now at this point. Another issue that's really popular is some version of either public healthcare or universal healthcare, something where it's not, I mean, our healthcare system is a disaster. So pretty much most Americans agree that we want something better.
00:35:35
Speaker
The devils are in the details, yes, but that could be another unifying issue. Even like universal basic income, I see potential there as a unifying issue because what it does is it takes away the identity politics, it takes away the culture war, and it just says, hey everybody, you know, if you are a citizen,
00:35:53
Speaker
Also, when you talk about the Trump wing of the Republican Party, which is basically most of the party these days, I think it's mostly just reactionary. And I think after he dies,
00:36:08
Speaker
I think a lot of that will die with him because when I look at the future of the party and I look at folks like Ron DeSantis or the Vivek Ramaswami, I noticed they actually have ideas and Trump really doesn't have that many ideas. Like he really looked like my wife asked me this the other day She's like, what is his platform? Like what is he running on? All he does is just like make fun of people but some of the younger
00:36:34
Speaker
I mean, I really do think it's not all bad, like some of his supporters, because they do have ideas, and a lot of them are actually open to ideas that I think would appeal to those on the left end of the spectrum as well, so that is also inspiring to me.
Concerns Over Populist Candidates
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, I I wonder I wonder what that where we're gonna land in coalition wise because I I see it I I have a bit of skepticism like especially with the people like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis Like Vivek Ramaswamy for example a lot of people in my orbit are big fans of his and I think that's because he he kind of tries to tap into like
00:37:09
Speaker
what would be traditionally libertarian sentiment in a lot of ways. Yeah, he's like Ron Paul, basically. Yeah, exactly. He tries to lean in. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of stuff that he stands for that I don't agree with, and there's some stuff in there that I find incredibly dangerous. The fact that he's talking about great replacement theory and stuff like that, he calls transgenderism like a mental illness, and he's called climate change a hoax and all that.
00:37:33
Speaker
There's stuff that I think is rhetorical. I don't think he believes it. I really say, and I don't know my concern is that they want to hear. Yeah. Yeah. And you could be right. You could be right. I am torn between the idea that, hey, we might have this whole like new slew of solutions that come out of this. And the other idea that once Trump dies, we're going to have
00:37:54
Speaker
a illiberal right-wing populist that gets, you know, gets like in control of things but actually isn't, is like conniving and smart and doesn't just care about people kissing his ass. And then that might actually present a far more of a dangerous threat. People say that about DeSantis, yeah. Yeah, you can say what to say with or Vivek. Vivek's got a lot of stuff I agree with, but there's this stuff that I disagree with that I see is far more dangerous that overshadows a lot of that. And that's the reason why I've spoken out against his campaign a lot. Did you make a video?
00:38:24
Speaker
Donald Trump sounds much worse than a lot of other candidates, as far as what he plans on doing and what he says he's going to accomplish. But I'm not afraid of his presidency simply because he's not politically savvy. He doesn't know how to get legislation passed. He's not able to really implement a lot of these things. Now, don't get me wrong, he could put people in place. He could have advisors that do that. So that worries me.
00:38:47
Speaker
But I think that I kind of want, I would rather choose an inept candidate who says things that I disagree with than a skilled politician who would actually get things done that are really bad. Now that's not a good, I don't like either of those choices, don't get me wrong. Yeah, you'd make a good point, yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
But I do think that's why DeSantis scared me a lot more than Donald Trump, per se.
Promoting Critical Thinking in Education
00:39:13
Speaker
But I kind of want to go back. I think a lot of people really want a candidate who is willing to lie to them, to make them feel good. And I've seen this a lot, especially with Vivek Ramasamy, where they say, well, you know, he's
00:39:29
Speaker
he's or no no really Nikki Haley and and Trump they say well Trump so many people so many libertarians say well Trump was against the wars he didn't stop any wars he actually droned by droned war people but no Nikki Haley's for the wars but we're gonna we're gonna say that Trump is better on this issue because he actually says things against it well no he should have done something against it if he actually was against the wars so yeah sure criticize Nikki Haley for her
00:39:56
Speaker
for her neocon policies all you want to, but Trump actually went through with those policies when he was in office. But sure, he talks against it now. What does that do? Actually vote for people who are going to get things then that you want and not just soothe your ego a little bit by saying things you want to hear.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah, actions speak louder than words, but apparently not to a lot of voters. They do. You're right. Again, it's rhetoric. I think a lot of times people, oh, what they're saying makes me feel good, so that's it. They don't actually look at their records or they don't look at the policies. Yeah, that's the dark side of populism, I guess. Yeah.
00:40:40
Speaker
You touched on this a second ago, Matt, and I actually want to come back to it. You were talking about the importance of raising your children and helping other people understand how to identify misinformation and be educated voters and civically active. I'm sure you have an incredible amount of things to talk about in that regard because you've spent time teaching K through 12, and I'm sure you probably lived that life for a long time.
00:41:06
Speaker
Uh, I just, I, you know, I've got two kids under two right now and I think about that a lot. Like I was also raised in a very religious family. Um, I was from a group of people. I'm going to just be honest. I love all my family. I love my extended family, but they were incredibly conspiratorial. Uh, it wasn't a, it was like, it was like they would.
00:41:25
Speaker
They go hand in hand, by the way. Huh? They do. Yeah, they do. Especially where I was. And I don't know where you were. I don't know where you were, Matt, but I was Pentecostal, evangelical Christian growing up. That stuff's pretty common in those spaces, right? Especially the ones that are very radical.
00:41:46
Speaker
And I think it was only my mother, because I was never went to public school, I was K through 12 homeschooled. I did do some co-ops when I was in middle school and high school, but I think there's something about my mother, we delve really deep into history. We really did try to look at the facts. I was taught young earth creationism, but I was taught like a framework of thinking that helped me almost pick apart my own education.
00:42:12
Speaker
And I don't know what it was. I'm still trying to figure that out for the sake of my own children. But it was something that after I actually got into high school and started looking online, I realized a lot of things that I was taught were actually wrong. And I started rethinking those things. And it's caused me to basically have skepticism in going into everything. So do you feel like the education system adequately prepares young people today? I mean, it may not be a monolith.
00:42:38
Speaker
I'm curious as to whether or not you have any commentary on just tactics. As me as a parent, somebody who's taught young people for as long as you have, do you think there's anything that you could do that makes people more likely to be curious or more likely to be critically think, question narratives? Yeah, that's the challenge, I think, is because I think the reason why you and I probably escaped this fundamentalism is because of our natural curiosity that just kind of
00:43:06
Speaker
We just kept asking questions, whereas a lot of people, they stop asking questions because, well, I have all the answers I need, so why do I need to keep answering questions?
Role of Educators and Parents in Questioning Beliefs
00:43:16
Speaker
And so I do think that there needs to be a lot of reforms with schools in terms of getting kids to
00:43:24
Speaker
Keep asking questions and never be satisfied because so much of schooling is, and this isn't just the United States, but I think this is a lot of countries. It's just so much about obedience and like, follow the rules, jump through these hoops. Then we give you the diploma. And even in college, the same thing. You just got to like keep jumping through the hoops and you don't even necessarily have to know this stuff that well, but you are accomplishing what you need to accomplish.
00:43:50
Speaker
I mean, I actually taught seventh grade through 12th grade, so I didn't get the youngins. But my daughters are 12 and 9 now. And so I can already tell you that they're fine, because I do constantly challenge them. And then they're challenging themselves. I mean, one of the best things you can do is just keep asking questions.
00:44:15
Speaker
As a teacher, I was always the devil's advocate because even if a student like, you know, I teach American government as well. That's another class I taught. I love teaching that, obviously. When I taught that to high schoolers and a student said something that I agreed with, I would challenge them. And I was not afraid because like, and also my students sometimes change my mind.
00:44:36
Speaker
I always bring up the example of, I used to have debates on different issues. One of the key things we always debated was whether or not it was justified to use atomic bombs against Japan at the end of World War II. And I used to be firmly on the side of, no, it was not okay. It was a mistake that Truman authorized that, yada, yada. And now I'm actually, I lean more towards the side of, he probably should have done that.
00:45:00
Speaker
Um, and that is a big reason why is doing those debates. Like I had students that literally like change my mind. So I think whatever teachers have to do and whatever parents have to do to get kids to constantly, constantly challenge their own beliefs, um, and not be ideological.
Moving Away from Dogmatic Beliefs
00:45:17
Speaker
Um, I think that's, that would go a long way. I really think that would go a long way. That is something that's huge. Avoiding ideological it's, it's, I don't like using word. Yeah. Dogma in the classroom. Like.
00:45:30
Speaker
the role of an educator and I think this should be something, if you're going to talk about education policies, this is relevant, and the role of an educator should be, again, to challenge people's misconceptions. That's really powerful to say. I think a lot of educators, I mean...
00:45:42
Speaker
I don't think they think through things in that framework. Are they paid enough to think through things in that framework? They're probably not paid enough to think that way. I'm sure we can get into a whole discussion about the bureaucracy of the school system and how that affects teaching. Boy, I'll bet that's a rabbit hole. But one thing I was going to bring up here is we talk about people not thinking critically enough.
00:46:07
Speaker
kind of the same thing as a lot of people who, you know, a lot of people call themselves, you know, red-pilled or, you know, they blame everybody else for being blue-pilled because they don't believe anything they see, right? We hear, we talked about people who believe everything they read or hear or see. Then there's the people who call, well, I'm red-pilled, so I'm just not going to believe anything I read or see or hear. And yet somehow they always come to the exact conclusions that they really wanted to at the beginning, right? So they only believe the evidence that they actually want to believe in the end.
00:46:36
Speaker
It's not actually that they're that much more critically thinking than other people. It's just, hey, they're going to reject everything to come to their own conclusions as opposed to believing everything to come to their own conclusions. So it's just a flip side of the other coin. And how do you reach these people who just don't refuse to believe any kind of evidence that you put forward to them, and they're always falling back on that position?
00:47:01
Speaker
I think treating them with kindness, but also epistemology. Ask them how they know what they know. Ask them why they know what they know. What are their sources? You don't have to be antagonistic.
00:47:18
Speaker
um citation needed ha ha ha you know as we do online no but like just have a conversation back and forth like how were you getting this information and a lot of times like you can kind of see them i mean what happens whenever i do that often the field field goal uh post is the goal post is moved that's usually what happens like oh yeah but uh um and i think that but i think i do think it's effective i've found success like
00:47:43
Speaker
I just also think about my own life. That's how I change my mind on things is because, you know, I used to think I had everything figured out when I was 18 years old. Yep. People did the same thing to me. They're like, how do you know what you know? I don't know. Getting people to question things is the number like one. I grew up very much like Josh with evangelical background, but I grew up in more of almost a cult setting.
00:48:08
Speaker
So I've kind of come from that background and one of the things I've been very interested in is studying how do you bring people out of cults and the reality is you have to get them to question what they believe. You cannot question it yourself because then you're attacking them. The motivation to question things has to come from within
Street Epistemology for Critical Engagement
00:48:27
Speaker
them. So you're just asking questions, being willing to learn from them. Tell them, I want to learn about what you believe and why you believe it and the purpose behind it. That's the best way to get people to open up. And it's not just, you're wrong. Here's what you're wrong. Here's the facts list. This is one, two, three, four, five. You're wrong. This is it. You know, your whole view and the worldview is nonsense. You know, stop believing it. It's never going to change anybody's mind. It has to come from within somebody. They have to change their mind. You can never convince somebody else to.
00:48:57
Speaker
Well said, if you guys haven't checked this out, you should. This was something, again, I find interesting how much religion is tied to this conversation because that was my entry point as a young person and to really challenging my entire world view and kind of going down this path was like answering those questions from my childhood.
00:49:13
Speaker
If you haven't checked out street epistemology, have you guys seen that? I've heard of it. There's an entire group of people that do this thing, street epistemology. This is a YouTube channel I used to watch back in the late 2010s. They'd scrap a GoPro on their chest, they'd bring out a little clipboard, and they'd go sit up somewhere, like at a park.
00:49:34
Speaker
or at an event or something, and they would just basically say, hey, will you guys, will you be willing to talk to me for 60 seconds to answer some questions about your worldview? And they would do the, you know, they would do epistemology with these people, just ask them questions and watching people.
00:49:51
Speaker
Really wrestle with their own worldview when challenged with these questions It's it's funny because those just by asking questions those people came back and said, you know months later that it Completely changed their framework on their own their own mindset and that actually goes back to something I think you do an amazing job of Matt, which is just like if you're empathetic and you're kind You don't attack people personally
00:50:15
Speaker
But you call out the liars and the charlatans if you need to. You stand on a foundation of facts, and you just ask people questions. You can change the world with that model. I really do believe that. And you can dispel so much misinformation if
Proposing Reforms to Unite Americans
00:50:30
Speaker
you can get people thinking. But I think that's a really powerful tool that anyone can use, politics, religion, et cetera, to help people get to the bottom of things.
00:50:39
Speaker
If you haven't checked that out though, John, you should check it out. Street epistemology is a very interesting YouTube channel I used to watch. And they still do stuff. Yeah, it sounds like they should. Yeah, I think I've seen a couple of his videos. Didn't you go to college campuses, right? Yeah. Yeah, you did that a lot. Yeah, it's the same guy that's pretty good stuff. I ran into Anthony Menabasco, I think. I ran into him at Polyticon a couple years ago. He's a very interesting dude. Oh, nice. Yeah, very, very interesting dude.
00:51:03
Speaker
So yeah, so okay, so we're about at an hour You know, I don't want to I don't want to pull you too long because I know it's it's probably I don't know if you're central is Kansas Central time Yes, okay. So we're same time zone. It's getting a little late. I am I am curious The only other thing that I wanted to ask you about was just broadly speaking like They I think this is a good way to close up the conversation
00:51:27
Speaker
Do you feel like there are any common issues, common ground issues? Maybe we touched on this a little bit earlier, that we feel like Americans can come together on. With Project Liberal, our goal is to build a broad, centrist, liberal movement. That's what we want to do here with this project. And you touched on a couple things. I think you mentioned UBI, educational reform, things like that. But do you think there are any issues that you go, OK, if a political coalition was built around these issues,
00:51:54
Speaker
it would bring people together. I mean, does anything stick out to you other than the ones maybe we talked about a little earlier?
00:52:00
Speaker
uh i think something that unites rural voters with um urban and suburban voters so because i did make i made a video about this as well and i noticed there's there's now such a big cultural divide and i taught in a rural district school district and i even like between suburb like a wealthier suburban district and a rural district i was like wow this is like two different worlds
00:52:24
Speaker
and um overwhelmingly of course in rural areas it's you know they're about as red as you can get um yep and so like i think what drives them more than anything is fear of the like what's going to happen to them because they're seeing their towns
00:52:41
Speaker
If they're not close to a city, their town is shrinking. Farmers that are around, they're making less money than they have in generations. And the mom and pop stores that used to exist are now replaced by Dollar Generals and Walmarts.
00:52:57
Speaker
And so, again, I go back to, we're going to have to figure out, I think the most important thing, it's the thing that predicts election results. I predicted the 2020 election just by looking at economic data. You have to have economic reforms where people, I mean, that's why inflation is such an, I mean,
00:53:16
Speaker
I know inflation is going down. We're looking at promising statistics. But at the same time, people are still feeling the pain over cumulatively, the past. Ever since the pandemic, they haven't recovered. And so there has to be something. I mean, that's why I keep going back to UBI or universal health care. And I know those are big programs that
00:53:44
Speaker
Could cause inflation probably that's a concern like so I think that Continuing to pilot those at the local level. We're seeing pilot programs around the world places as diverse as Kenya to Canada to Finland and
00:54:02
Speaker
And just increasing public programs not just for certain parts of the country everywhere, but like I think if you just Seriously, if you had a presidential candidate that toured all Like these small rural areas that have never that have never been visited by a presidential candidate that guy would win that gal would win whoever it is and
00:54:24
Speaker
Because I think at the root of it is Scarcity they're scared because they can't pay the bills anymore. And that's why so many also they coincide with the um
00:54:36
Speaker
the opioid crisis, the fentanyl. I mean, it's all related. We keep pretending like, oh, that all this stuff is not related to economics, but it is. And then the other thing that we could reform, of course, is voting, but that's not as sexy. You know, like, because I noticed like the Ford party, they're like, oh, let's get on board with ranked choice voting. Personally, I like star voting. I don't know if you're aware of it. Have you heard of star voting? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Nice, nice.
00:55:03
Speaker
But anyway, obviously voting reform is probably the most important thing we can do. But yeah, it's not sexy. The voters are kind of bored by it. They don't make the connection of like, or you can increase the size of the House of Representatives. It's way too small. It hasn't been increased since 1929. But I just think you're gonna have a harder time campaigning on that. So whatever you campaign on, it has to be something where people will have more money in their pockets.
00:55:30
Speaker
Yeah, I could not agree more with you. Now, again, devil's in the details on UBI and even a healthcare option, but.
00:55:37
Speaker
I could not agree more with you on the voting reform front. It's a tragedy that it's such a non-sexy issue because it honestly, I think, is the most important issue of our time. If we found a way to introduce proportional representation, for example, it would solve the gerrymandering problem, right? If we introduce ranked choice voting, it would solve the negative campaigning problem. It would incentivize positive, optimistic, forward-looking people and positive messaging.
00:56:05
Speaker
Um, you know, if we could end this whole, like first pass the post situation, open up primaries and give independence and more of a voice. I mean, there's so many things that could be done. I do like start voting. I like approval voting, like rank choice voting. I think the silver bullet in a lot of ways though, is proportional representation and uncapping the house. If you could do that, man.
00:56:23
Speaker
you would change, we'd change the future of this country forever. Um, yeah. And Rhode Island has 500 and something people in their state state house. Like, come on, it's Rhode Island. They have, I don't know, there's a size of my neighborhood, you know? Like, come on guys. Totally. I'm in a small suburb, a small suburb of Dallas and we've got a more people than they do. Like, you know, come on. It's true. Give it the times. It's true. So I couldn't agree more with you, uh, Matt. I think there's good alignment there. Um,
00:56:51
Speaker
I feel like we've covered a lot of topics. In closing, is there anything that you have on your mind that you'd like to discuss? Or maybe just if you're thinking, maybe anything you'd like to plug, man? Anything on your mind? I mean, your YouTube channel is far larger than ours, but we're catching up. But there's anything you want to plug.
00:57:11
Speaker
Sure, I missed my My channel is mr. Beat which is just my name. It's not mr. Beast if you search mr. Beat mr. Beast will show up but it's But yeah, I also fair anything you search on YouTube he shows up
00:57:27
Speaker
That's a good point, yeah, also. But I also have another channel called The Beat Goes On, which is just more music and film history. I've written a couple books. I'm kind of known as the President's Guy online because I have lots of President's videos. But I also have a book about every presidential election in American history and a series and a book about the Supreme Court and a series about Supreme Court cases that are important as well.
00:57:51
Speaker
If you want to know anything about American political history, I pretty much got it covered. And thanks for having me. Yeah, no, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. I was going to say one more thing. Also follow him on Twitter, beat master Matt, if you want some non-crazy, non-toxic Twitter, Twitter takes. So it's good stuff. Yeah, man. Thank you again for making time for us. I really, really did enjoy the conversation. Godspeed and
00:58:17
Speaker
keeping to fight for level-headed normal takes and educating people. And hopefully we can do this again soon. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.