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Auntie Kamala: Breaking Glass Ceilings or Just Bouncing Off Them?
26 Plays1 year ago
The Queens dissect the rise of Kamala Harris and ask the tough questions: Is she truly breaking barriers for women, or playing into the same old political games? What does Harris really represent for women today? And is she embodying the high-value woman ethos FDS champions?
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Transcript
Introduction to Kamala Harris as a Case Study
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to The Female Dating Strategy, the meanest female-only dating podcast on the internet.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm your host, Diana.
00:00:06
Speaker
And I'm your host, Rose.
00:00:08
Speaker
And today we're discussing Kamala Harris and looking at her political career and professional life as a case study for what we can learn and what we can apply or not to our own lives.
00:00:22
Speaker
Yep,
Impact of American Politics on Women Globally
00:00:23
Speaker
yep.
00:00:23
Speaker
We've got some major political stakes this year.
00:00:26
Speaker
And so we felt that, you know, ahead of the election, it was essential to have a discussion about what is in line for American women.
00:00:33
Speaker
You know, America is like the proverbial forest, like if a tree falls in America, everybody around the world feels it.
00:00:39
Speaker
So it's so true.
00:00:41
Speaker
No matter where I've lived in the world, I am always aware of what's going on politically in America.
00:00:47
Speaker
It is just like impossible to dodge it because it just has such a say in what goes on in the rest of the world.
00:00:53
Speaker
And actually, Diana, in our pre-talk, I was really impressed by some of the names you were kicking off in the political landscape of America.
00:01:00
Speaker
I was like, how does she know all this?
00:01:01
Speaker
Like,
00:01:02
Speaker
A lot of Americans don't know this, but I think it's exactly what you say.
00:01:06
Speaker
The political landscape here is sort of, you know, the canary in the coal mine of global politics.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:12
Speaker
For me, it's partly that, you know, I've lived in America for close to a decade.
00:01:16
Speaker
So some of these players, like I've seen them around like the time that I was there, like I was in America when Mitt Romney ran for the presidency.
00:01:24
Speaker
I wasn't always aware of American politics.
00:01:27
Speaker
You know, it's only really been the last decade that I've been there
American vs. European Political Showmanship
00:01:29
Speaker
that I've been kind of aware.
00:01:30
Speaker
But, you know, I'm just, in general, very interested in politics, history, and fairy tales.
00:01:35
Speaker
That is my specialty.
00:01:39
Speaker
And history and politics deals with both.
00:01:43
Speaker
I think, you know, as a storyteller, it's like inevitable that I'm just very interested in the construction and fabrication of narratives and no other professional field where this is done more than in politics.
00:01:54
Speaker
And American politics is just, unlike a lot of other countries, there's just a lot of showmanship.
Clarification of Non-Endorsement of Kamala Harris
00:01:59
Speaker
So, you know, it's just inevitable that people from the outside are kind of intrigued by what's going on on the inside.
00:02:05
Speaker
Because, I mean, if you look at like the average European political thing, it's never that bombastic.
00:02:11
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:02:12
Speaker
Like maybe in the world wars, like it was, but now it's kind of like, okay, this guy is upset because the peanut regulations have changed like by a slight amount.
00:02:21
Speaker
And when I lived over there, it was like every election was a life or death election, because it is.
00:02:26
Speaker
I think that one of the things we could take from the American public is that we should actually take our democratic processes a lot more seriously.
00:02:33
Speaker
That's one of the things I actually admire about the country.
00:02:36
Speaker
This is true.
00:02:37
Speaker
And also, I think what we should learn is that we need to make politics boring again.
00:02:41
Speaker
This whole like masterclass in showmanship,
00:02:44
Speaker
That's the dark side of it, because people who are so easily enthralled and people who have been cultured from a very young age to look to Hollywood and fairy tales as the dream, as the dream of what their lives should be, they are the ones who are most easily enbagled into believing false promises and false narratives that these showmen of D.C.
00:03:05
Speaker
promise.
Project 2025: A Threat to Democracy?
00:03:06
Speaker
And so with our discussion today, we were discussing beforehand, we want to make clear this is not an endorsement, but it is a case study in a politician, in a female politician, in a brown and black female politician in the United States who is vying for one of the most important political seats in the entire globe.
00:03:27
Speaker
And what can we learn from her, both professionally and personally?
00:03:31
Speaker
Yep.
00:03:32
Speaker
So shall we set the stage for the stakes?
00:03:35
Speaker
Because I think, you know, in order to understand why Kamala is so important at this juncture of politics, at this juncture of the election, is what women have to lose.
00:03:44
Speaker
Because our audience, obviously, we assume that the vast majority of you are women, probably the few scrotes that can't get over us, but you're welcome to stick around here because you're giving us the viewership.
00:03:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:03:55
Speaker
As long as you have nothing to say to us, we don't care.
00:03:57
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:03:58
Speaker
You could stick around and listen.
00:03:59
Speaker
Sit down, shut up, go to the front of the class.
00:04:02
Speaker
It's all the same to us.
00:04:04
Speaker
But you know, Taraji P. Henson, I think it was the first time during the BET Awards, she brought up this thing about Project 2025.
00:04:11
Speaker
I really do credit her with talking about it because I don't think that a lot of people would have paid attention to it.
00:04:16
Speaker
And I think it's one of those things that would just been brushed under the rug if somebody who had that position of like that kind of platform didn't speak up about it.
00:04:25
Speaker
And then suddenly there were
Influences of the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation
00:04:26
Speaker
all these like everybody was Googling what Project 2025 was.
00:04:29
Speaker
Would you like to give us a little bit of clarity on what exactly Project 2025 is?
00:04:34
Speaker
Well, can I just say, I can't get over how people haven't been hearing about this.
00:04:38
Speaker
I've been hearing about this for years.
00:04:40
Speaker
And what this is, is essentially, you know, the game plan, the final blueprint to turn our democracy into fascism.
00:04:48
Speaker
Now, this has been going on for decades.
00:04:50
Speaker
I mean, this has been going on at the behest of billionaires and political maneuverists behind the scenes.
00:04:57
Speaker
They are the individuals who helped found and fund institutions like
00:05:03
Speaker
the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, all of these were designed as sort of incubation labs for the Brett Kavanaugh's and the William Barr's of today.
00:05:16
Speaker
So what we have seen is a sea change legislatively in the last decade.
00:05:20
Speaker
That has been intentional.
00:05:21
Speaker
And in fact, that has been the playbook for the last 50 years.
00:05:24
Speaker
This is a culmination.
00:05:26
Speaker
These are the end stages of a project that was enacted and envisioned long ago.
00:05:30
Speaker
But again, I guess maybe I should understand that not everybody is so interested in politics and what's going on behind the scenes.
00:05:38
Speaker
You know, to me, politicians are sort of like the puppets.
00:05:40
Speaker
Who are the puppet masters has always been who's most intrigued me.
00:05:44
Speaker
And so if you look at things like the Koch brothers and who they've been founding and funding,
00:05:49
Speaker
If you look at Black Rock, for example, and you follow the breadcrumbs of where is the money that's been putting forth these individuals over time.
00:06:01
Speaker
And it inevitably leads to these far right, whether they're fundamentalists or radical Catholics, and radical in the worst sense, like the Opus Dei type that William Barr is a member of.
00:06:13
Speaker
And so Project 2025 is like the encapsulation of the worst values of far-right fascism.
00:06:20
Speaker
There are some viewers who are probably not from the States and they may not know what the Heritage Foundation and groups like this do.
00:06:27
Speaker
Could you just elaborate a little bit on what these groups do and why are they such a big deal?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:33
Speaker
Thank you for asking that, Diana.
00:06:36
Speaker
So the Federalist Society, I think it was founded by the Koch brothers, who are some of the wealthiest right-wing men in the United States.
00:06:43
Speaker
They're also well into their 80s.
00:06:45
Speaker
May they die soon and painfully, but their money will probably continue to speak long after they're gone because one of the institutions they helped found, I believe, is the Federalist Society.
00:06:54
Speaker
The Federalist Society is a group of individuals who sign up as law students.
00:07:03
Speaker
to join this society.
00:07:05
Speaker
And the idea is this is the ground zero for cultivating future far-right judges and states' attorneys.
00:07:14
Speaker
That is the whole point of Federalist Society.
00:07:17
Speaker
As a matter of fact, if you look at the current Supreme Court, three of the members come from the Federalist Society.
00:07:23
Speaker
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Amy Cote-Barrett.
00:07:28
Speaker
So it's an intentional sort of think tank by old white guys to install people in power, essentially, that support their agenda.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:07:37
Speaker
But specifically in judicial seats, that is the whole point of the Federalist Society is to train young lawyers to become these attorneys, generals, the Department of Justice officials, and Supreme Court justices.
00:07:52
Speaker
So I don't know what could be more terrifying than intentionally turning the entire judiciary system, which is supposed to be, you know, one of the independent checks and balances to the entire governmental enterprise of democracy, and to completely undermine it and have it rot from the pillar, right?
00:08:09
Speaker
Which is why people are up in arms right now over the Supreme Court, because the corruption is so obvious.
00:08:14
Speaker
that people are finally saying, what has happened to all of our justices?
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, guess what, guys?
00:08:20
Speaker
It's the Federalist Society.
00:08:21
Speaker
And this has been going on since the 1980s.
00:08:24
Speaker
So that's what
Liberal Complacency and Democracy's Risks
00:08:25
Speaker
the Federalist Society is about.
00:08:26
Speaker
The Heritage Foundation is the political answer to this same premise.
00:08:31
Speaker
So they are cultivating future governors,
00:08:34
Speaker
future senators, future school board members.
00:08:38
Speaker
Nothing is too great or too small for the Heritage Foundation.
00:08:42
Speaker
The idea is that they are planting, for example, I don't know if you heard about, like, I think they call them election officials.
00:08:50
Speaker
They're the ones who are responsible for certifying that they've received all the votes, they've been tallied appropriately, and that they've gone through the correct system of procedures in order to verify that the election was fair.
00:09:02
Speaker
Are these like the ballot checkers?
00:09:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:09:06
Speaker
The Heritage Foundation has been putting different individuals.
00:09:10
Speaker
Like, for example, we saw that in Georgia, we were having issues with the election being verified in Arizona as well.
00:09:15
Speaker
In fact, the Department of Justice has been prosecuting some of these individuals.
00:09:19
Speaker
Almost all of those individuals come from the Heritage Foundation.
00:09:22
Speaker
That is wild.
00:09:23
Speaker
It is wild.
00:09:24
Speaker
And this is why I'm saying I can't believe more people don't know.
00:09:27
Speaker
But again, I've always been such a political junkie.
00:09:30
Speaker
Like you say, it's the greatest story ever told, right?
00:09:33
Speaker
It's a fairy tale.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's a story of myths.
00:09:35
Speaker
And so
Women's Role in Political Processes,
00:09:36
Speaker
what these institutions have done, and again, this is all wrapped up in Project 2025.
00:09:41
Speaker
Project 2025 is just really sort of like the crystallization of all of these moves that they've been making, because as they've been making them and solidifying their power in various branches, well, now we've got even more and greater ambitions, because now we see that we actually can't, perhaps we can outlaw a no-fault divorce.
00:09:58
Speaker
Perhaps we can outlaw divorce in
Showmanship and Political Manipulation
00:10:01
Speaker
general.
00:10:02
Speaker
I remember, you know, like in 2019, like five years ago, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I mean, I never knew about this project 2025 stuff.
00:10:10
Speaker
But I wonder if part of the reason why people especially the coastal people don't know much about it is that sometimes when you're in like a liberal bubble,
00:10:17
Speaker
or you're like in a liberal state.
00:10:19
Speaker
I think that like the feeling I was getting and that I was getting really increasingly frustrated by was just like the complacency and the drinking of the Kool-Aid that a lot of liberal people had at the time of like, they never played the long game.
00:10:31
Speaker
It was always like, as long as we win this election, we're good.
00:10:34
Speaker
Without thinking about like what the long-term ramifications of not installing, you know, more fair, impartial people to like the biggest seats in the country, what that meant.
00:10:44
Speaker
And like my entire show, I remember telling somebody, I was like, my problem is that in a weird way, you guys are not angry enough about the way that democracy is being eroded in your country.
00:10:53
Speaker
And it's very obvious to anyone who can see from the outside that there's a severe level of corruption and rot in your institutions.
00:10:59
Speaker
And there used to be a point when, you know, you might not have agreed with a Republican to
00:11:04
Speaker
But there was a way to be partisan with them because you could agree with them on single voter, like single issues.
00:11:09
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:11:09
Speaker
Like there were certain issues that crossed over where you were like, okay, as a woman, I may be a Democrat, this other woman might be a Republican, but we are united on like, you know, women should have no fault divorce or we're united on the fact that women have like absolute say about what happens to their bodies because we understand that this is not a left or right issue.
00:11:26
Speaker
This is a women's issue and neither left-wing men nor right-wing men have any place in this discussion.
00:11:32
Speaker
And it just felt like too many women are weirdly complacent and too trusting of the men that represent them, whether they're left or right.
00:11:39
Speaker
I mean, we kind of expect right wing women to be, no offense, a little bit more brainwashed, you know, because they're buying into a religious ideology.
00:11:47
Speaker
It's not just a political
Project 2025's Strategic Control Dynamics
00:11:48
Speaker
one.
00:11:48
Speaker
Right.
00:11:49
Speaker
And it's running on the assumption that men are these benevolent creatures that want the best for you.
00:11:52
Speaker
And if you just submit to them, everything will be fine.
00:11:55
Speaker
But in liberal spaces, like I found a lot of women kind of adopting the same kind of mindset about like, well, this man identifies as this.
00:12:01
Speaker
I don't give a shit whether he identifies as a porcupine.
00:12:04
Speaker
What are his actual policies?
00:12:05
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:12:07
Speaker
I do, I do.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I think this is such a good point.
00:12:10
Speaker
I mean, it's as applicable in the political as in the personal.
00:12:13
Speaker
Absolutely, we are not nearly furious enough
00:12:17
Speaker
with what has the state of affairs has gone to.
00:12:20
Speaker
But I wish women would really fully internalize is the political is personal.
00:12:25
Speaker
Nothing is more personal than the political because our bodies are ground zero for all the politics that are at stake.
00:12:34
Speaker
with this election and in future elections.
00:12:36
Speaker
And you know, something that I hadn't thought about until you were talking about like, oh, the complacency, this is so true, there is so much complacency.
00:12:43
Speaker
And also, I think there's a real lack of foresight as to what digitally has been happening with bot farms, and trolls, and the Russian disinformation and misinformation campaigns.
00:12:54
Speaker
I mean, it is hypercharged far right activity in the US.
00:12:58
Speaker
And so this Project 2025 could not be more macabre.
Women as a Resource in Capitalism
00:13:02
Speaker
It's like a fascist sweat dream, essentially.
00:13:06
Speaker
It's paving the way for America to become a theocracy, you know, a kind of an oligarchy where there's like a few people that have power, but they're also religious nutjobs.
00:13:15
Speaker
Not all of them, but enough of them.
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, the thing is about being a religious nutjob and speaking as a person who comes from a country with a lot of religious nutjobs.
00:13:22
Speaker
They don't need to be religious to have that level of control.
00:13:25
Speaker
They just have to maintain an image of being pious.
00:13:28
Speaker
And that's enough.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:30
Speaker
We're looking at like around in 1970s, 80s, that sea change.
00:13:35
Speaker
We're looking at that, but with billionaires as well.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:38
Speaker
Also, Project 2025 is like a 920 page document.
00:13:43
Speaker
They have given whatever their ideology is a great deal of thought.
00:13:47
Speaker
It's not coming out of nowhere.
00:13:49
Speaker
They want to roll back discrimination protections for women in the workplace.
00:13:53
Speaker
They want to prevent women from being able to divorce easily.
00:13:57
Speaker
They don't want them to be able to have access to abortions.
00:14:01
Speaker
You know, there's like a lot of things that are being rolled back like that second wave feminists fought really hard for.
00:14:07
Speaker
And I mean, already it's starting, right, where like certain states have already banned women from being able to get abortions and made it that much harder.
00:14:14
Speaker
I always think of like Ireland, you know, for the longest time being a Catholic nation, they didn't allow women to get abortions.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so many of the women had to go to England in order to get abortions.
00:14:24
Speaker
And the ones that couldn't afford to do that, they basically had to give up their kids to adoption.
00:14:29
Speaker
And I mean, it's strange that people think that, you know, not allowing women to abort is somehow going to save the American family.
00:14:36
Speaker
If anything, what it's going to do is it's going to force women to do these back alley abortions.
00:14:41
Speaker
It's going to put them in a very, very dangerous position of like, if you were sexually assaulted and you got pregnant, you can't get rid of that baby.
00:14:49
Speaker
You're forced to carry out the baby with your rapist.
00:14:52
Speaker
There's just so many aspects of it.
00:14:53
Speaker
There's certain cultures in the world where you are still forced to marry your rapist if you have a baby.
00:14:59
Speaker
So America is pushing its women back into a dark age.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I think that whether you identify as left-wing or right-wing, you need to understand what position that you're in right now because it affects you regardless of your politics.
00:15:13
Speaker
There's this very interesting book to anybody who's listening today.
00:15:15
Speaker
It's by Silvia Federici.
00:15:17
Speaker
It's Caliban, the Witch, and Primitive Accumulation.
00:15:20
Speaker
And it's this idea that, you know, under capitalism, the first resource,
Criticism of Biden's Presidency on Women's Rights
00:15:23
Speaker
the most valuable resource in capitalism is not owning land, as Karl Marx, you know, once originated, like the landowners are the ones who have absolute power.
00:15:32
Speaker
It's actually owning women.
00:15:33
Speaker
Women become the primary resource in capitalism.
00:15:36
Speaker
And that's why left wing men and right wing men are in cahoots.
00:15:39
Speaker
Like people are always like, oh, they, you know, Biden would never do Biden is friends with a lot of those career Republicans, by the way.
00:15:44
Speaker
He goes and plays golf with him after fighting with him for two hours.
00:15:46
Speaker
It's like, you'd be surprised how much men can roll around with people they fundamentally disagree with.
00:15:51
Speaker
I mean, are we really that surprised?
00:15:52
Speaker
Like we know men who are best friends, like, you know, we've all met that guy who's like best friends with like a serial creep and a predator.
00:15:58
Speaker
And he's like, oh, that's just Matt.
00:15:59
Speaker
You know, that's just my buddy, Matt.
00:16:02
Speaker
Matt's a great guy.
00:16:04
Speaker
I mean, I know he roofied someone one time.
00:16:06
Speaker
Like, you know what I mean?
00:16:06
Speaker
We know men who are like that in real life.
00:16:08
Speaker
So why are we assuming that like men in office are being held to this weird high moral standard?
00:16:14
Speaker
They're not.
00:16:15
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:16:16
Speaker
And all of this shit that's happened to women has happened under Biden's presidency.
00:16:20
Speaker
He's watched the erosion of women's rights under his presidency, promising women that he's going to help protect them.
00:16:27
Speaker
And he has not done that.
00:16:28
Speaker
So I think it's very important for women to understand first and foremost that these men are not going to protect you.
00:16:33
Speaker
It doesn't matter what side of the aisle they're on.
00:16:35
Speaker
So it's up to you to protect yourself and to make sure that you're allying with women who have your best interests at heart.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:43
Speaker
If I can add, it's not just that they are not your ally.
00:16:46
Speaker
They are actively allied against your interests.
00:16:49
Speaker
They're actively in cahoots to exploit us.
00:16:52
Speaker
That is their status quo.
High Standards and Internalized Misogyny in Politics
00:16:54
Speaker
So in order for us to protect ourselves, we have to be actively acting with that in mind, that these are not individuals who are ever going to be coming to our aid or doing, you know, what we feel is the most noble thing, because it doesn't suit the status quo.
00:17:09
Speaker
And that is always what they're going to default to, because it's always served them well.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yep.
00:17:14
Speaker
And the thing is, a lot of people end up giving their vote to these less than perfect men because it's like, oh, he's in the right party and stuff.
00:17:20
Speaker
And this is where we come back to Kamala, because I think that in general, women have exceedingly high standards for other women.
00:17:28
Speaker
And if they're not perfect and they don't uphold this moral standard that is impossible for anyone to reach, especially in politics, then they're not deserving of being voted for it.
00:17:36
Speaker
And now, I mean, don't get me wrong, I do believe that, you know, we should be expecting some level of civility from our public officials.
00:17:43
Speaker
We expect some kind of moral standard for them in order for them to sit in office, because if they're just as terrible as us, like, why would we vote for them, right?
00:17:52
Speaker
I mean, you know, but I think that people are very quick to dismiss women when they are less than perfect, as Kamala is, you know, just as any other human being.
00:18:00
Speaker
And they vote for people who will claim that they'll do a lot for your rights and they do nothing.
00:18:04
Speaker
Like, I mean, in all of this time that, you know, Trump has done all of this really messed up stuff to women, like what has Biden done to reverse all of that?
00:18:11
Speaker
We're in a position where we're so vulnerable right now, you know?
00:18:14
Speaker
So we have to think about supporting who actually represents our best interests.
00:18:19
Speaker
This is a really good and this is a topical time to examine our own internalized misogyny.
00:18:26
Speaker
Because why are we holding women to these standards that we don't hold other men to?
00:18:30
Speaker
Well, it's because of internalized misogyny.
00:18:32
Speaker
So I think Kabbalah is a really interesting case study because we're smack dab against a mirror looking at ourselves.
00:18:38
Speaker
looking at all these things that we're feeling and thinking about her.
00:18:42
Speaker
And we're having to decide, like, are we just going to kind of accept that?
00:18:44
Speaker
Or are we really going to interrogate our own implicit biases and our prejudices that we too have?
00:18:50
Speaker
How could we not?
00:18:51
Speaker
Like you said, frogs or lobsters in a boiling pot.
00:18:55
Speaker
You know, we've all been a part of this like soup that's slowly been simmering over the last couple of decades.
00:19:00
Speaker
And now we're at a real, we're at a flashpoint.
00:19:03
Speaker
So let's turn to Kamala and look at what is at stake with her election and with her policies.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yep.
00:19:10
Speaker
And also just also her as a person, you know, because she's an interesting and complicated person.
00:19:15
Speaker
And
Kamala Harris' Upbringing and Multicultural Identity
00:19:16
Speaker
I think that it's important that we understand who we're electing.
00:19:21
Speaker
And I mean, if we are electing this person, you know, and why should we take her seriously?
00:19:24
Speaker
Because obviously we're at a position now where we should.
00:19:27
Speaker
So what would you like to start with?
00:19:30
Speaker
I would like to start with her background as a child of academics.
00:19:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:37
Speaker
So I come from an academic background myself.
00:19:39
Speaker
And when I was looking over her biography, what was apparent to me was that in the first 10 plus years of her life, she and her parents and her, I think she has a younger sister, were hopscotching every year or every other year to different places like
00:19:54
Speaker
Idaho, Minnesota.
00:19:57
Speaker
They think they ended up in Quebec.
00:19:59
Speaker
And that, to me, I find it very interesting because that is definitely the life of early academics.
00:20:03
Speaker
Like before you get a tenure track position, if you ever do, you're typically spending one or two years as a visiting assistant professor in the hopes that you will then achieve, you'll secure a tenure track position.
00:20:14
Speaker
But often that's not the case.
00:20:16
Speaker
Visiting assistant professors almost never get that.
00:20:19
Speaker
So what I noticed was that they were going from different region to different region.
00:20:23
Speaker
And of course, you're looking at her father was a professor of economics and her mother, a professor of biology.
00:20:31
Speaker
And so you have two disparate fields of study.
00:20:35
Speaker
I mean, in order to get a double hire for that kind of faculty, it's really difficult.
00:20:39
Speaker
It's one thing if like, you know, one is in
00:20:43
Speaker
romance languages and the other is in the Spanish department.
00:20:48
Speaker
Those are roughly under the same branch.
00:20:50
Speaker
But to have sciences versus social sciences, they have nothing to do with each other.
00:20:55
Speaker
So I can only imagine how much stress was put on the family in those early years of each parent trying to pursue a successful career in academia.
00:21:04
Speaker
And I think that's something that, have you ever had to move to somewhere new or start school after everybody's already been schoolmates for a couple of years?
00:21:12
Speaker
Yep.
00:21:12
Speaker
You know, when you're the outsider, I think it actually does strengthen you in the long run because you have to learn how to be likable to people and you're at a disadvantage because everybody already has those bonds.
00:21:23
Speaker
I mean, I feel like that now as a 30 something, you know what I mean?
00:21:26
Speaker
Because a lot of people have friends from like college or from high school or like from their master's program.
00:21:31
Speaker
And like once you reach a certain age,
00:21:33
Speaker
it becomes very difficult to have an in into a new group.
00:21:36
Speaker
But I think that if you have practice from childhood where you've always had to like, you know, be the person that has to make friends, you kind of do develop this kind of outgoing sort of, it's necessary, right?
00:21:46
Speaker
You develop like an outgoing spirit because you kind of have to be able to adjust and deal with the change.
00:21:52
Speaker
Right.
00:21:52
Speaker
It's a survival mechanism.
00:21:53
Speaker
And so I think that's something that we really haven't seen stressed from her end.
00:21:57
Speaker
The fact that she's had to be so pliant and malleable and socially adaptive from birth.
00:22:03
Speaker
Not only that, she comes from two very different backgrounds.
00:22:06
Speaker
Her mother, I believe, is South Asian.
00:22:08
Speaker
She's Indian from South India.
00:22:10
Speaker
Am I correct?
00:22:11
Speaker
She's Tamil.
00:22:13
Speaker
So Kamala Harris is like her family.
00:22:15
Speaker
Her Tamil side is very interesting because her grandfather, P.V.
00:22:19
Speaker
Gopalan, was he worked as like a civil servant for the government of India.
00:22:24
Speaker
And she's kind of named him as very instrumental in her interest in politics because he was a member of the Imperial Secretariat Service, and he oversaw the exodus of refugees from Zimbabwe during their War of Independence.
00:22:36
Speaker
And he was also an advisor to the president of Zambia.
00:22:40
Speaker
and a joint secretary of the government of India in the 1960s.
00:22:42
Speaker
So
South India's Educational Influence
00:22:43
Speaker
he was one of those people that was very, very involved in a lot of major operations in not just in Africa, but in India and South Asia as well.
00:22:52
Speaker
Like he was also the senior commercial officer in Mumbai, and he worked on like rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh to India, because they had a war as well.
00:23:02
Speaker
Like he worked with a lot of refugees.
00:23:04
Speaker
And he was always very progressive, and he had incredibly progressive political views on democracy and women's rights and their right to education.
00:23:12
Speaker
And in the South at the time, especially during our Indian independence in the 1940s, South India was at that time in a very strange political place because they were almost considering seceding from the rest of the country.
00:23:26
Speaker
and especially Tamil Nadu, has always been very politically different, I would say, from the rest of the country.
00:23:32
Speaker
They had like a lot of focus on like on just education in general.
00:23:36
Speaker
I wouldn't even say it's education of women, specifically because we're such a poor country that there was a focus on educating people in order to bring them up to speed because we saw that colonialism put people at a disadvantage and a lot of people were illiterate.
00:23:49
Speaker
He was kind of one of the instrumental people in advocating for women in his state to be educated.
00:23:55
Speaker
And so she always came from a background which compared to a lot of Indian women who are deprived of their education, she came from a very progressive background that prioritized education.
00:24:03
Speaker
And we can see that with her grandfather.
00:24:05
Speaker
We can see that with her mother as well, because her mother obviously was like an endocrinologist.
00:24:09
Speaker
I think she studied endocrinology at Berkeley and then had like a thriving career as a professor.
00:24:14
Speaker
So this is a woman that comes from like a reign of like a long line of women and like politically influential people even back in her home country.
00:24:21
Speaker
Like, I mean, where her
00:24:22
Speaker
ancestors are from, who kind of influenced her early interest in politics.
00:24:26
Speaker
Damn.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:28
Speaker
Diana.
00:24:29
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:24:30
Speaker
I didn't find any of that on the internet when I went looking for her history.
00:24:34
Speaker
I just know that she mentioned her grandfather and said that like, I mean, you know, when they put out that picture, when Donald Trump was like, oh, is she even black?
00:24:40
Speaker
Like I've only ever seen her in pictures like where she's an Asari and shit.
00:24:44
Speaker
And she mentioned in one of the interviews that I watched a long time ago that her grandfather was very influential in her understanding of politics.
00:24:51
Speaker
And she mentioned that, you know, he was, I don't know whether he was involved in the Indian freedom struggle.
00:24:56
Speaker
I
00:24:56
Speaker
Because I mean, you know, to be honest, everyone in South Asia says that they're involved in like the Indian independence movement because it's like this scab I got was from the time I punched this British guy in the face.
00:25:08
Speaker
You never know.
00:25:11
Speaker
So colonialism makes revolutionaries of everyone, but it's just that not everybody is worthy of being documented.
00:25:16
Speaker
So it's hard to know what
Kamala Harris' International Policy Initiatives
00:25:18
Speaker
like the extent of her grandfather's politics were in that domain.
00:25:21
Speaker
But it's suffice it to say that he did have a powerful political role as a civil servant, and he did a lot of work.
00:25:27
Speaker
So I wouldn't be surprised if he did inspire her early on.
00:25:30
Speaker
And obviously, you know, he held to those values with his own children because his daughter, who is Kamala Harris's mom, ended up having an incredibly successful academic career.
00:25:40
Speaker
It seems like she was equally concerned with making sure that Kamala Harris had like a connection to her American side and her Indian side.
00:25:47
Speaker
So I feel like Kamala Harris, like, you know, she is both, guys.
00:25:50
Speaker
You can be both, right?
00:25:52
Speaker
You can be Black and you can be Indian.
00:25:54
Speaker
It's not impossible.
00:25:55
Speaker
It's impossible.
00:25:57
Speaker
Diana, you have just given us a snapshot that I have not seen in any political media anywhere about Kamala.
00:26:04
Speaker
That is so fascinating.
00:26:06
Speaker
I did not know that.
00:26:07
Speaker
And that is so interesting, like the Zambia connection and the Bangladesh-East Pakistan connection.
00:26:12
Speaker
Like, oh my gosh, no wonder.
00:26:14
Speaker
You know, I've noticed when I was looking at some of her policies, she's actually done quite a bit on the international stage.
00:26:19
Speaker
And I was sitting there thinking like, wow, she's really done a lot as a vice president on the international stage.
00:26:23
Speaker
But of course, that makes sense if that's literally...
00:26:26
Speaker
her like matriarchal lineage.
00:26:28
Speaker
And can I just say too, like, I think one of the reasons why we're talking about this side first is because ultimately she was raised by her mother because her parents divorced very shortly after they were married, I think three years later.
00:26:39
Speaker
So Kamala would still have been a toddler at that time.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yep.
00:26:42
Speaker
And that's why I think it's very important to explore the connection she had with her mother and her Indian side, because I know that people think that there's like a lot of political cachet in like prioritizing her blackness in the political sphere.
00:26:54
Speaker
And obviously, she's very, very proudly black as well.
00:26:56
Speaker
This isn't to erase that from her.
00:26:58
Speaker
But her formative years and most of her political ideology and like the key primary caretaker of her life was a Tamil woman.
00:27:06
Speaker
And to ignore, you know, the contributions and like the kind of engagement that she received from that half of her family is to do a disservice to her political ideology because they shaped who she was as a person.
00:27:17
Speaker
And so it's important for us to also talk about that connection.
00:27:21
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:27:21
Speaker
And not only that, but I think it's all too easy for us to once again, erase and ignore the maternal side of people's formation, even though that tends to be the more formative side of things.
00:27:32
Speaker
And so once again, this is, I think like, let's flag this as a bit of internalized misogyny where we're like, sure, she's Indian, but like, you know, she didn't grow up there.
00:27:39
Speaker
So it doesn't count.
00:27:40
Speaker
If your mom is Indian, what kind of food do you think you're eating every day at the dinner table?
00:27:45
Speaker
What kind of language are you speaking?
00:27:47
Speaker
And who's the society that you're with on your holidays?
00:27:50
Speaker
Like that's going to be instrumental.
00:27:52
Speaker
And yeah, and what are the cultural values you're being raised with?
00:27:55
Speaker
I mean, she visited her grandfather every couple of years, like every two to three years, they went to visit their family in South India.
00:28:01
Speaker
So, you know, she's not one of those Indian people who grew up in America and are completely detached from India, like they've never been back.
00:28:06
Speaker
They have no family connections, there are no roots there.
00:28:09
Speaker
For all intents and purposes, they are completely American.
00:28:12
Speaker
I know a lot of Republican Indians, like the, you know, the Indian Americans who run for Republican office, like they do that a lot because obviously they don't want to confirm how ethnic they are.
00:28:21
Speaker
So it's like, I'm as American as apple pie.
00:28:23
Speaker
Like, no.
00:28:26
Speaker
She's not a person who shied away from claiming both sides
Navigating Racial Complexities with a Multicultural Identity
00:28:30
Speaker
of her heritage.
00:28:30
Speaker
And that's what we should honor, you know, because she's both.
00:28:34
Speaker
She's both.
00:28:35
Speaker
And you can be both.
00:28:36
Speaker
You can be both.
00:28:37
Speaker
You can absolutely be both.
00:28:39
Speaker
Look at this.
00:28:39
Speaker
She was coming up in a time where this was pre-social media.
00:28:43
Speaker
It's not like she had any examples of her kind of mixed lineage in some of the places that she was going to.
00:28:49
Speaker
Like when they went to Quebec, I think it was, right?
00:28:53
Speaker
Her mother was fortunate enough to be able to put her into an English speaking language school because apparently she was struggling with French.
00:28:59
Speaker
I think at that point she was like 10 years or older, which it gets harder and harder as you get older.
00:29:03
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:29:03
Speaker
And I mean, like, you know, the people of Quebec are known to be incredibly kindly towards people who are studying French, especially women of color studying French, you know what I mean?
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
That's their favorites.
00:29:15
Speaker
They're absolutely their favorites.
00:29:16
Speaker
But so...
00:29:18
Speaker
I was just reading up her background and thinking like, we don't hear a lot actually about her personal life.
00:29:22
Speaker
And I was reflecting on that.
00:29:23
Speaker
And it's like, well, of course, this was pre-social media.
00:29:26
Speaker
She was growing up in the analog era.
00:29:28
Speaker
I feel like if you're younger, if you're of the younger generation, you might not remember because you were born after the advent of computers and the internet.
00:29:37
Speaker
And I was born pre that.
00:29:39
Speaker
And there's so much of my life that you will never know about because you
00:29:42
Speaker
It wasn't ever published online.
00:29:44
Speaker
And so she sort of had that benefit as well of being able to grow up anonymity without any sort of repercussions about any of her personal decisions when she was younger.
00:29:54
Speaker
But again, that also put her at a disadvantage in that time, because think about what an odd man out she must have been wherever she went.
00:30:01
Speaker
part of the reason why it's so funny that Donald Trump was like, well, she said she was Indian now, she always said she was Indian, now she's Black.
00:30:08
Speaker
The thing is, like, the American construction of multiracial or biracial people is essentially that anybody who's biracial is half white.
00:30:15
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:30:16
Speaker
Biracial people are automatically thought of as half white.
00:30:19
Speaker
They're half white and then half other.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yes, that's such a good point.
00:30:24
Speaker
And that's why it's like, oh, what do we do with this Malaysian woman?
00:30:26
Speaker
Like...
00:30:28
Speaker
Oh, Glacian.
00:30:30
Speaker
I love that.
00:30:31
Speaker
Also, she's not coming from an African-American father.
00:30:34
Speaker
She's coming from a Jamaican father.
00:30:36
Speaker
which is like one more degree removed from that whole biracial experiment that we tend to think of as, right?
00:30:43
Speaker
Half white, half other.
00:30:44
Speaker
Exactly.
00:30:45
Speaker
And both sides of her family are like essentially immigrants to the country.
00:30:48
Speaker
You know, she comes from an immigrant household.
00:30:50
Speaker
And I think that's another thing is like the idea of Blackness in America is also like the traditional Black American experience of like you were descended from slavery.
00:30:58
Speaker
And so that's your cultural experience.
00:31:00
Speaker
And like that's one half of your family, the other half is white.
00:31:03
Speaker
And so I think for her, like to navigate the space where she's being raised by an Indian mom in this Western country, I don't know how involved her father was in her life at all.
00:31:12
Speaker
I think that they separated when she was quite young, if I'm not mistaken.
00:31:15
Speaker
I don't know much about what happened to her parents' marriage.
00:31:17
Speaker
But I mean, for all intents and purposes, she was raised by an Indian mom.
00:31:20
Speaker
And that Indian mom seemed to have placed a huge emphasis on her keeping in touch with her
00:31:24
Speaker
I don't know if she kept in touch with her Jamaican roots, but she certainly kept in touch with her Blackness.
00:31:28
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:31:28
Speaker
She certainly, she went to Howard College.
00:31:31
Speaker
She interacted with a lot of Black people.
00:31:32
Speaker
She dated a lot of Black people early in her life.
00:31:34
Speaker
She definitely had more cultural exposure to other Black Americans than she did South Asians.
00:31:40
Speaker
And so, I mean, it's weird that Trump is saying that she prioritized being Indian for most of her life, because if anything, most of her experiences were in predominantly black spaces.
00:31:49
Speaker
So that's really strange.
00:31:50
Speaker
But besides the fact that it's incredibly strange to say, you know, moving along the timeline of her life, I believe her sisters, Maya Harris, is also like a successful lawyer.
00:32:00
Speaker
She was a prosecutor.
00:32:01
Speaker
I think she went to Howard College and then she started her career off as a prosecutor.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:06
Speaker
And as we know, she's an unusual woman in the context.
00:32:10
Speaker
She didn't fall out of a coconut tree.
00:32:15
Speaker
I've been hearing that more and more.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's become like this whole meme.
00:32:18
Speaker
And I just think it's so hilarious.
00:32:20
Speaker
Oh my gosh, because it's such a specific cultural reference, isn't it?
00:32:25
Speaker
She exists in the context of everything that came before her.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:30
Speaker
Thank you, Kamala.
00:32:31
Speaker
Why is this so hard to understand?
00:32:33
Speaker
But again, I think, you know, this is another part of sort of the American experience and American conscious where we have never fully grappled with race in this country.
00:32:42
Speaker
Although we are one of the most racially mixed countries in the history of like ever.
00:32:48
Speaker
Like that's one of the things that I noticed when I started to travel overseas was like how homogenous most countries are.
00:32:54
Speaker
Because they haven't had this like the immigration waves.
00:32:57
Speaker
And like, it's such an interesting history here when you look at the different ethnicities and races that have come.
00:33:02
Speaker
And then the mix that happens over time.
00:33:04
Speaker
I think it's so fascinating.
00:33:05
Speaker
I think it should be a strength.
00:33:06
Speaker
But again, since we haven't actually grappled with that, it tends to be sort of like the dirty secret that people just don't want to talk about.
00:33:12
Speaker
And so I think she's another example of like, can we bring this out?
00:33:15
Speaker
And can we have this like talked about openly and honestly, and not have this become like a sort of moral indictment of all of our ancestors?
00:33:23
Speaker
Can we just talk about what it means in the context of today?
00:33:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, honestly, what is there to say?
00:33:29
Speaker
I think that she represents the best of America in that way.
00:33:32
Speaker
Like when I was a kid, you know, before I ever visited the States, my understanding of America was that it was a melting pot.
00:33:38
Speaker
And it was an experiment in whether people of different groups can coexist and can live in harmony.
00:33:44
Speaker
And
Kamala Harris' Parents' Influence
00:33:45
Speaker
it's one of the only countries that's entire ideology and like its entire principle is founded on the fact that like, it's a country that welcomes people from all walks of life and all racial groups.
00:33:54
Speaker
I mean, that's in theory, right?
00:33:56
Speaker
The reality of it is something totally different.
00:33:58
Speaker
But from a child's perspective, I used to think, oh, America is this country where they celebrate Thanksgiving, and then all these, you know, they'll sing Kumbaya, and they'll go and celebrate Diwali.
00:34:07
Speaker
And then, you know, then you go to your black friend's house and celebrate Kwanzaa, and then you do Hanukkah and do bat mitzvahs with your Jewish friend.
00:34:14
Speaker
Like, I really thought like, it was just like multi racial, multi ethnic harmonious place where like, everybody is sitting and eating food from all these different cultures.
00:34:22
Speaker
And like,
00:34:22
Speaker
In theory, like, I mean, you know what?
00:34:24
Speaker
The truth is it could possibly be like that, you know, but it's not.
00:34:27
Speaker
It has the potential to be like that.
00:34:28
Speaker
And that's why people carry on the hope of that, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
Is that in different stages of its history, it's invited all sorts of people who had nowhere to turn.
00:34:35
Speaker
And that's its strength.
00:34:36
Speaker
And that's also what's ended up costing it severely.
00:34:39
Speaker
And I think in Kamala Harris's case, she represents that kind of modern life that you can live in America where her parents met.
00:34:45
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:34:46
Speaker
Like these are two people whose only thing in common is really that they both are immigrants to the country.
00:34:51
Speaker
and that they're probably incredibly intellectual people who have a focus and affinity for academics.
00:34:56
Speaker
And it brought these two people from completely different groups together.
00:35:00
Speaker
And their union formed Kamala Harris, you know?
00:35:02
Speaker
So she is, if anything, as American as apple pie.
00:35:06
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:06
Speaker
I was going to say she is the American dream.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, she is.
00:35:10
Speaker
You know, there's just too much scrutiny about people's backgrounds as a way to, you know, and Trump has done this before with Obama as well.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's a question whether he's American enough and he wasn't born here and all this other stuff.
00:35:20
Speaker
And it's only ever brought in context of black politicians, right, of questioning their Americanness when the country has been founded on the labor of black people.
00:35:29
Speaker
I was going to say, what's more American than Black people?
00:35:33
Speaker
To me, that is the default American, right?
00:35:35
Speaker
But again, I mean, when you're dealing with conservative ideology, God forbid that ever be acknowledged.
00:35:40
Speaker
So when we were talking about what we wanted to discuss today, what the topic of this podcast was going to be, we brought up Kamala because we're both talking about just how important this political moment is, not just for the United States, but globally, because we've been seeing the ascent of far-right political parties all over the world, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
who have been emboldened, right, by Trump's tenure and the sort of Project 2025 momentum that's been happening here.
00:36:05
Speaker
We often talk about in FDS a high-value woman.
00:36:08
Speaker
What do we think a high-value woman is, Diana, and how has or how has Kamala not exemplified this professionally?
Kamala Harris' Career as a Prosecutor
00:36:15
Speaker
Should we get into that?
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:17
Speaker
Obviously, you know, there's going to be limitations to what we know about her personally.
00:36:21
Speaker
So we can never fully know whether this is a person who's high value or not.
00:36:24
Speaker
But based on the fact that she has lived her values in her prosecution role, people are quite upset with her for being very strict about prosecuting people.
00:36:31
Speaker
And I'm like, this is her job, is it not?
00:36:33
Speaker
Like, I mean, it's not literally in the jail.
00:36:35
Speaker
Like, this is her job.
00:36:36
Speaker
Like, I mean, it sucks that like people are being thrown to prison, but if they committed crimes, that's the thing about the judicial system, right?
00:36:41
Speaker
You have to have some faith in law and order.
00:36:43
Speaker
Right.
00:36:44
Speaker
If the two lawyers have spoken their piece and they've said that this is the evidence to try this particular scrote and to send him to prison.
00:36:50
Speaker
And she's like, well, yes, here's my much more solid case for proving why the scrote belongs in prison.
00:36:56
Speaker
Then she's done her job well.
00:36:57
Speaker
And you can't be mad.
00:36:58
Speaker
Like, I'm sorry.
00:36:58
Speaker
It just sounds like you're mad at her for doing her job well.
00:37:00
Speaker
And it's very confusing to me.
00:37:02
Speaker
Like she sent too many people to prison.
00:37:03
Speaker
I mean, she's good at her job.
00:37:05
Speaker
And what about this being the party of law and order?
00:37:07
Speaker
You think they'd be lighting up behind her then?
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:10
Speaker
And I mean, look, the judge that's there in charge of, you know, adjudicating on these cases, they're supposed to be an impartial party.
00:37:17
Speaker
So it's not like she's alone in like sending these people to prison.
00:37:21
Speaker
Like her job is to provide a case for her side of the argument.
00:37:24
Speaker
And if she's providing a solid case, and again, here at FDS, we are not I mean, I'm at least not a big fan of the let's reform men and like give, you know, incarcerated men a chance because it's dangerous to women.
00:37:36
Speaker
I think that this is another way that our empathy is preyed on.
00:37:38
Speaker
Like some of these men have committed serious crimes.
00:37:41
Speaker
I'm not talking about your general, you know, weed dealing guy.
00:37:45
Speaker
Although I will say that, you know, society is set up for men by men.
00:37:48
Speaker
Like why the fuck can that guy not just get a regular job?
00:37:51
Speaker
You know what I mean?
Strategic Alliances and Political Navigation
00:37:52
Speaker
Like, why are you putting your own family at risk of being, you know, like, again, men who play these kinds of risky games, the only people who end up paying for other families, because then they go to prison.
00:38:01
Speaker
And then guess what, you're a single mom now raising all of his kids, and he's going to get out of prison and not be able to find a regular job.
00:38:07
Speaker
So you know what I mean?
00:38:08
Speaker
I'm not in support of these men who are like, I'm just trying to hustle and make it out here.
00:38:11
Speaker
There's plenty of other ways to hustle.
00:38:12
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:38:13
Speaker
Like, you're choosing to make a choice in like in a society where that is against the law, you're choosing to make decisions that are against the law.
00:38:20
Speaker
You know, again, people are upset with her for being good at her job, which to me is very strange.
00:38:26
Speaker
But it seems like, you know, her early political career, like seeing as you know, we are a dating podcast in the context of her relationships.
00:38:32
Speaker
It seems like Kamala Harris has made a lot of strategic alliances.
00:38:35
Speaker
Like we had this discussion about is it possible to be high value in Washington?
00:38:39
Speaker
I think both of us are in agreement that it's not.
00:38:43
Speaker
No, not possible.
00:38:44
Speaker
And it's not possible, I would say, in any kind of high publicity career like, you know, Hollywood, Washington, Wall Street.
00:38:50
Speaker
Like these are fields that are completely inundated with scrotes, extremely corrupt people, narcissists, psychopaths, the worst of humanity.
00:38:59
Speaker
And if you are a person who is a woman who is trying to fight for power in this system, in a very corrupt system, it's inevitable that you will dirty your hands.
00:39:06
Speaker
And it's inevitable that you have to form strategic alliances with people who may not be all that great.
00:39:11
Speaker
So I don't know anything personally about the kinds of deals that Kamala Harris has done, obviously, but I think it's safe to assume that, you know, she can't possibly conduct herself in a high value way.
00:39:21
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:39:21
Speaker
It's not the system.
00:39:22
Speaker
You're in the dirt, you're in the mud.
00:39:24
Speaker
So it's like asking, oh, is there a way to keep your white trousers clean if you jump into a pile of mud?
00:39:30
Speaker
No.
00:39:32
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:39:33
Speaker
And why would we hold her to that standard when we don't hold any other politicians to that standard?
00:39:38
Speaker
We seem to acknowledge that part of the standard of being a politician is that there is duplicitousness, there is double dealing, there is backstabbing, there is two-timing, right?
00:39:47
Speaker
It seems to be that that's part of the process of being a politician.
00:39:50
Speaker
And so if we're asking her to be different from all the rest of the other politicians, then what is the point of her being in politics?
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:39:57
Speaker
And like to talk a little bit about maybe one of the dubious things that she's done, which, you know, for example, when she was 29, she dated a guy who was 30 years old senior called Willie Brown, who at that time was like a much more established Californian.
00:40:10
Speaker
I don't know what he was governor or something.
00:40:12
Speaker
But he was a politician like who had like a lot of sway back in the 90s.
00:40:15
Speaker
And I think they dated for like less than a year.
00:40:18
Speaker
And somebody had interviewed him and asked him, you know, just to like dig up dirt about Kamala, obviously like, oh, is it true that you dated Kamala?
00:40:24
Speaker
And he's like, yes, I did date her.
00:40:26
Speaker
And they're like, oh, and that's why you supported her.
00:40:27
Speaker
He's like, well, I've supported a lot of early career politicians.
00:40:30
Speaker
I supported Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, like a lot of people.
00:40:34
Speaker
So yes, of course, I supported Kamala Harris as well, because I was dating her at the time.
00:40:37
Speaker
But bear in mind, I've also supported a lot of other early politicians in California.
00:40:42
Speaker
So you know what I mean?
00:40:43
Speaker
And I genuinely believe that she's good at her job.
00:40:45
Speaker
Like, it's quite interesting to see that a lot of the men that she's dated actually still speak highly of her and still speak highly of her prowess as a professional, which I think, you know, a lot of them can be extremely messy.
00:40:55
Speaker
Like, I mean, men in general, like, you know, you have to be careful who you date.
00:40:58
Speaker
Like, if you are running for the highest office in all of the land, like you need to make sure that the run to that is smooth.
00:41:04
Speaker
And it seems like everybody who has been involved in her life in the past have come out saying that, you know, she deserves the job.
00:41:09
Speaker
And I think that that says a lot about who she is as a person professionally, you know.
00:41:14
Speaker
And I think that, you know, 29, you're grown enough to know they shouldn't get involved in age gap relationships.
00:41:19
Speaker
But again, I think, you know, we cannot measure our ordinary lives by somebody who's in politics and somebody who is like a public figure, essentially, because it seems like this is a very ambitious young woman.
00:41:29
Speaker
And it seems like Willie Brown was also a mentor to her.
00:41:31
Speaker
So it wasn't just as simple as he was dating her.
00:41:33
Speaker
He was definitely like,
00:41:34
Speaker
you know, priming her for a political life.
00:41:37
Speaker
And I think as a person who was an outsider, who did not have those kinds of connections, like the average Kennedy would, she needed those people who understood DC and who understood California and politics to help her get ahead.
00:41:50
Speaker
And she did.
00:41:50
Speaker
I think she used what she learned and got ahead.
00:41:53
Speaker
And that's the thing, right?
00:41:53
Speaker
Like we have to look back at these people and we have to think about like, do they follow FDS and stuff?
00:41:58
Speaker
And it's like, honestly, this is probably one of the few situations in which I think I was talking to you about this earlier.
00:42:03
Speaker
I was like, we're expecting like Ned Stark level morality in DC.
00:42:08
Speaker
And as we know, in Game of Thrones, Ned Stark gets his head chopped off.
00:42:10
Speaker
You know, we're expecting like a level of morality and honor in politicians that is not possible in a system that is as corrupt as politics.
00:42:19
Speaker
It just means that she's a very complicated person.
00:42:21
Speaker
You know, we can't speak to who she is as a person.
00:42:23
Speaker
I can't say she's high value or she does an FDS thing or anything.
00:42:26
Speaker
I mean, as far as she's concerned now, like, I mean, she met her husband in 2013.
00:42:30
Speaker
They've been together a long time and he seems to treat her with love and respect and, you know, good for her.
00:42:35
Speaker
But we don't know enough about these people's lives and politicians in general are very, very careful about covering up their tracks as well.
00:42:41
Speaker
You know, we might not fully ever know the full picture of like whether everything she's ever done is high value.
00:42:46
Speaker
All I can say, though, is that the people that she's been involved with, they speak highly of her.
00:42:51
Speaker
And that says a lot about her.
00:42:52
Speaker
I was going to say the facts on the ground point to her being a relatively unobjectionable person, which is honestly, that's just the standard I want our politicians to clear.
00:43:02
Speaker
Okay, like that's a bare minimum that I would request of our politicians, especially a female politician, because I can't imagine.
00:43:08
Speaker
I mean, we are one of the last, I guess, would you say like, I don't know if we're a developed country.
00:43:13
Speaker
It feels like we're going backwards.
00:43:14
Speaker
But as far as being a developed country, we're the only one that has never had a woman president or prime minister.
00:43:20
Speaker
And here we are in the year of our Lord 2024.
00:43:25
Speaker
And we're trying to pretend like somehow this woman needs to be a paragon of a saintly hood of virtue, a virtue.
00:43:33
Speaker
Like, I don't understand.
00:43:34
Speaker
Like she's married.
00:43:36
Speaker
They seem to have a successful marriage.
00:43:37
Speaker
He seems to be completely inoffensive, which as you were saying, Diana, before, like,
00:43:41
Speaker
That's the standard for any sort of female politician's husband is that he'd be completely unobjectionable.
00:43:47
Speaker
And he doesn't embarrass her in public, which is more important.
00:43:50
Speaker
You know, he seems like he's genuinely proud of her.
00:43:52
Speaker
I mean, that was one of the things you were talking about Hillary Clinton as well, is that the stain of his presidency was always going to be baggage for her when in her political run, because at the end of the day, he publicly humiliated and embarrassed her and she took him back.
00:44:04
Speaker
And that is not an FDS move.
00:44:06
Speaker
Absolutely not.
00:44:07
Speaker
And even less so when she threw a young woman under the bus.
00:44:10
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:11
Speaker
And I think with Kamala Harris, the other thing that's interesting to note is all these other men that she dated was not for very long and definitely as a career up.
00:44:19
Speaker
You know, I think that strategic alliances and navigating scrotes in a high stakes game is something that she's played really, really well.
00:44:26
Speaker
And I think in the case of Doug, she met him when she was in her 40s, I think her early 40s.
00:44:31
Speaker
And she vetted him.
00:44:32
Speaker
So like, I mean, for all the women out there who are like, oh, it's impossible for me to find anyone decent after I turned 30.
00:44:37
Speaker
And like all this other bullshit, like men are not going to care.
00:44:40
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:44:40
Speaker
Like he had a family, he had kids, he did not care.
00:44:44
Speaker
If you are a high value woman, there's never going to be a time when men are not clamoring for you.
00:44:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:49
Speaker
You are infinitely renewable resource.
00:44:52
Speaker
Never believe that they don't know that about you.
00:44:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:55
Speaker
And if I'm not mistaken, I think she's currently 59, I want to say, or 60 around thereabouts.
00:45:01
Speaker
And they married, she and Doug Emhoff married in 2013.
00:45:05
Speaker
So in fact, she may have well been in her late forties.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, she's 59.
00:45:11
Speaker
And that was 11 years ago.
00:45:14
Speaker
So she was like 40 something.
00:45:16
Speaker
She's 48.
00:45:17
Speaker
Late 40s, ladies.
00:45:19
Speaker
She apparently never compromised on what she was looking for in a man.
00:45:23
Speaker
She wasn't willing to get married until she found someone who fit her standards.
00:45:27
Speaker
And they seem to be a very happy couple because of that.
00:45:30
Speaker
Yep.
00:45:31
Speaker
And you know what, like, even in FDS, right?
00:45:33
Speaker
Like a lot of women come to us and say, Hey, I made some incredible mistakes in my dating life, right?
00:45:38
Speaker
And at an age is where you should know better, like your late 20s, early 30s.
00:45:42
Speaker
Like, you know, I think we should to a degree be forgiving of it, because people come into their own and understand things much later in life, it's sooner and some people learn that later.
00:45:49
Speaker
And a lot of it has to do with your cultural environment, your upbringing, whether religion had a role in your life, what kind of community you live in, which part of the world you live in, there's so many factors that contribute to your sense of self esteem.
00:46:00
Speaker
As long as women are finding us and they are rethinking what they want from their life, it's never too late to ask for a better life and to demand more for
Maintaining Personal Values in Politics
00:46:09
Speaker
yourself.
00:46:09
Speaker
And I think that, you know, for her, she really waited it out.
00:46:12
Speaker
I think the only two popular people I could think on she dated, because I obviously don't know every single person, but I know that she was with Willie Brown and I know that she was with Montel Williams.
00:46:20
Speaker
And neither one of these men are all that.
00:46:22
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:46:22
Speaker
I think it's safe to say it is a long story short.
00:46:25
Speaker
Neither one of these men are like husband material.
00:46:27
Speaker
And I think that she knew what purpose they served in her life.
00:46:30
Speaker
And maybe she just had some fun with them and moved on.
00:46:32
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:46:33
Speaker
And we don't know the full extent of these relationships, right?
00:46:35
Speaker
But it seems like she was trying to come up in a world where she had very few connections and these men paved the way for her to make those connections.
00:46:42
Speaker
And she used those connections and leverage that in order to be able to secure a much better prospect for herself as a partner.
00:46:47
Speaker
And she didn't compromise and she could have very well married or, you know, forced some kind of relationship with these men, had children with them and then been sad.
00:46:55
Speaker
She doesn't even have any kids, right?
00:46:56
Speaker
I think Doug was her first husband.
00:46:59
Speaker
Her first and only?
00:47:00
Speaker
First and only husband, married late, got to avoid like the early divorces of, you know, marrying wrong in your 20s.
00:47:06
Speaker
No baby mama situation as far as I can see, right?
00:47:09
Speaker
So it seems like she has followed those standards for herself and she didn't compromise, you know, what she wanted from her partnerships.
00:47:16
Speaker
So, you know, it's like if you're in a situation where you are trying to get those kinds of men who come from these extremely well-established political and social spheres, then don't be too eager to get the first prospect just because they have a lot of power.
00:47:29
Speaker
Because with both the case of Montel Williams and Willie Brown, they're obviously much more established.
00:47:33
Speaker
At the time when she met them, they had way more power than she did.
00:47:36
Speaker
And they were much more established professionals in their industries, like, you know, in entertainment industry.
00:47:40
Speaker
and politics than she was.
00:47:42
Speaker
And she could have very well settled for like the first person who had a lot more power than her in order to, you know, cement her power.
00:47:48
Speaker
And she didn't do that.
00:47:48
Speaker
She saw them for what they were, politically expedient people to use to get to where she wanted to go.
00:47:55
Speaker
And you know what, for that, I applaud her because she didn't settle for people who she knew couldn't give her what she wanted because who you select as a partner is very different than who you collaborate with in a professional capacity.
00:48:04
Speaker
And the truth is that if you work in a high powered industry, you may have to ally and work with people who you don't agree with 100%.
00:48:10
Speaker
Like, you know, in politics, they may even be dangerous men.
00:48:13
Speaker
That's a scary thing, right?
00:48:14
Speaker
Is that like, it's strange how much you have to compromise when you're in politics, because you don't get a say.
00:48:19
Speaker
And there's so many vultures in that industry.
00:48:22
Speaker
It attracts like some of the most despotic, deranged men in the world.
00:48:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:48:27
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:48:29
Speaker
Especially in the United States, where there's so much money at stake, right?
00:48:32
Speaker
Like, you have truly vile, reprehensible, dare I say, evil men who are drawn to this realm.
00:48:39
Speaker
And you have to survive.
00:48:41
Speaker
So the fact that she has not only survived, but apparently thrived, because here she is, as the Democratic Party's nominee for president, is
00:48:47
Speaker
I don't think you can thrive more than that as a politician.
00:48:51
Speaker
Kamala, we salute you.
00:48:52
Speaker
We commend you.
00:48:53
Speaker
And fellow FDSers, like, what can we learn from her if we look at her strategies for how she's had handled alliances and also how she's handled scrotes?
00:49:02
Speaker
You know, one of the things is, like, when I look at her marriage to Doug, outside of the fact that he doesn't embarrass her, another thing I just want to note is that she found a partner that, for all intents and purposes, is very supportive of her political ambitions and is okay with being, like, the second dude, as he likes to identify it.
00:49:17
Speaker
You know, he is completely okay with her shining.
00:49:20
Speaker
And I think that that's something that, you know, if you are a high powered woman who is vying for the highest office in all the land, like then you need to make sure that the partner you're with is not an insecure idiot.
00:49:30
Speaker
And he doesn't seem to be that at the very least.
00:49:32
Speaker
He seems to be quite content with being her second dude.
00:49:34
Speaker
You know, he's being presented by the media as being a very cuddly figure.
00:49:38
Speaker
Obviously, we never know the internal dynamics of anyone's relationship, but he's not actively out here like embarrassing her like Bill Clinton was.
00:49:45
Speaker
He's not saying anything in public about wanting to sleep with his daughter like Trump was.
00:49:51
Speaker
I know these are very low bars and nobody should settle for a low bar at all.
00:49:55
Speaker
I'm not saying that this is what makes him great.
00:49:57
Speaker
I'm saying that this is the thing about your goals, right?
00:50:00
Speaker
I don't think her goals were to marry well and to have like the cutesy Norman Rockwell painting image of the American family.
00:50:08
Speaker
Because she doesn't.
00:50:09
Speaker
She comes from a blended family.
00:50:10
Speaker
She's a stepmom to his children.
00:50:12
Speaker
They call her Mamala.
00:50:14
Speaker
I love that.
00:50:15
Speaker
That's so cute.
00:50:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:18
Speaker
Another thing that's a very interesting note is Doug Emhoff's ex-wife came out in public and spoke very highly of Kamala.
00:50:25
Speaker
And again, a lot of people who are involved with her have spoken really well, like really highly
Kamala Harris' Public Image Management
00:50:31
Speaker
of her.
00:50:31
Speaker
And I think that says a lot about who she is as a person, right?
00:50:35
Speaker
In that, like, again, every single ally you have on your way to the top is very essential because those are the building blocks of your success.
00:50:41
Speaker
And if one of them is shaky or one of them is incredibly corrupt, that will be the house of cards that falls right in, that caves right in.
00:50:48
Speaker
And so I think that she has made strategic alliances with people, not just in her romantic life and her platonic life.
00:50:54
Speaker
She's made friends with people and she's made connections with people that have served her political agenda and interest and her career goals and her success.
00:51:02
Speaker
And she has prioritized that.
00:51:03
Speaker
And I also think that she's one of those people that strikes me as somebody who actually decentered men.
00:51:07
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:51:07
Speaker
Like she doesn't strike me as a person who had to be partnered and had to always constantly be dating.
00:51:12
Speaker
As much as the media is trying to paint this narrative of like, she slept her way to the top.
00:51:16
Speaker
That seems to be far from the truth because it seems like if anything, she was single-mindedly focused on her political ambitions.
00:51:21
Speaker
And it seems to have paid off for her in a way that it didn't pay off for Hillary Clinton.
00:51:24
Speaker
And also just take a look at like how the media is so, they are so blinkered and blinded to the fact that you can decenter men.
00:51:32
Speaker
Not only are they so blinkered and blinded to that, they actually have flipped it on its head and presented it as, oh, she's the biggest slut around.
00:51:39
Speaker
Like that's the only...
00:51:41
Speaker
party line they know when it comes to women who are not a missus.
00:51:44
Speaker
Oh, she must be a whore.
00:51:46
Speaker
Like, can we just not?
00:51:47
Speaker
Can we not?
00:51:48
Speaker
Can we cut that out?
00:51:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:50
Speaker
And like, to
Comparison with Hillary Clinton's Political Journey
00:51:51
Speaker
compare Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton for a second, right?
00:51:54
Speaker
Hillary Clinton's entire political candidacy was affected by the fact that she supported Bill Clinton.
00:51:59
Speaker
And I think, again, because we are a society that holds women to a higher standard than men, people are just going to scrutinize their actions that much more.
00:52:05
Speaker
I know for a fact that, you know, for me, Hillary Clinton always left a bad taste in my mouth because of the Monica Lewinsky thing, because I'm like, this is a very pick me move to support your scrot of a husband in him sexually harassing a woman who was this intern who had way less power than he did and making it out to be the clothes that she wore and whatever else.
00:52:21
Speaker
I know it's the 90s, but again, these things catch up with you.
00:52:24
Speaker
Because then when it was her turn to run for the presidency, here she has this guy who everybody knows is just like morally just, you know, a not a great guy.
00:52:31
Speaker
And it affected her because then it was easy to pick apart the threads of everything she'd ever done wrong.
00:52:36
Speaker
The emails and Benghazi and all these other things that they kept bringing up, right?
00:52:39
Speaker
It was very easy to break her down bit by bit because of these flaws and because of her selecting the wrong partner.
00:52:46
Speaker
And if you are a person who is vying for power, having the wrong partner on your side can completely affect whether you're going to get the highest job or not.
00:52:53
Speaker
And I think in Kamala Harris' case.
00:52:55
Speaker
But not just in the political sphere.
00:52:57
Speaker
Ladies, this is exactly what we're talking about when we caution against marrying scrotes.
00:53:02
Speaker
Because your entire personal life is undermined.
00:53:05
Speaker
The entire trajectory of your one brief and precious life can be undermined if you choose the wrong man.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yep.
00:53:12
Speaker
And like in the case of Kamala, right?
00:53:14
Speaker
Like the only thing that I ever hear about Doug is what a cuddly little boy he is.
00:53:18
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:53:19
Speaker
It's like second dude.
00:53:20
Speaker
And I, you know, he's just like chilling over there telling her how proud she is.
00:53:24
Speaker
And again, we don't obviously know who this person is, right?
00:53:28
Speaker
But publicly, he does not humiliate her and that they can't use her relationship against her as a way to break her down.
00:53:34
Speaker
And that's what's making them mad.
00:53:36
Speaker
And that's why they're going back into the history of her life and who she slept with and who she was with in the 90s.
00:53:41
Speaker
Like that matters.
00:53:42
Speaker
Like look at who Donald Trump was with in the 90s.
00:53:44
Speaker
Okay, like this man has all he's ever had is like a history of failed marriages and nobody is holding it against the guy.
00:53:51
Speaker
And he's become like the pillar of the American family hell.
00:53:56
Speaker
Right.
00:53:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:59
Speaker
And I like how you're describing him as this cuddly.
00:54:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:01
Speaker
What I like about him is that I know nothing about him.
00:54:03
Speaker
How refreshing is that?
00:54:05
Speaker
Right.
00:54:05
Speaker
It's just, he's apparently just a regular degular shmegular dude who embraces that and is the cheerleader to his wife, his successful and ambitious wife.
00:54:14
Speaker
And like, don't we all love to see that?
Introduction to Tonic Masculinity through Tim Walz
00:54:16
Speaker
And in fact, this brings us to our last point, which is, I just saw this coined, I think this week,
00:54:22
Speaker
Now that the vice presidential nominee has been confirmed, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, they have coined him as an arbiter and as an exemplar of tonic masculinity.
00:54:35
Speaker
Now, Diana, when I first brought this up, you thought I had perhaps had a typo, right?
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah, because I was like, what is tonic masculinity?
00:54:43
Speaker
Exactly.
00:54:43
Speaker
I was like, well, let me tell you.
00:54:45
Speaker
No, I think it's so interesting because something we've been saying in feminism is like to all these toxic masculinity people, to all these male chauvinists and misogynists, we're shouting into the wind as women if we're trying to talk to them and get our points across.
00:54:58
Speaker
They are never going to listen to us.
00:55:00
Speaker
Do you know who they will listen to?
00:55:02
Speaker
Other men.
00:55:03
Speaker
And so men like Doug Empoff and Tim Walls are this antidote.
00:55:07
Speaker
They're a tonic to all this toxic masculinity that we're seeing.
00:55:11
Speaker
Like when Tim Walls was interviewing with Kamala, she was asking him like, you know, do you want to be the last person in the room with me before I make, you know, a major political decision?
00:55:20
Speaker
And he said something like, if you want me to be, I will.
00:55:24
Speaker
And she was like, well, what do you think about this other thing?
00:55:27
Speaker
He's like, well, if that's what you want, then that's what I want.
00:55:29
Speaker
And I mean, is this not an example of like a number of exemplary number two in your life?
00:55:35
Speaker
Yeah, you know what?
00:55:36
Speaker
I remember before she announced him, I remember telling my friends, I was like, she's going to announce a man who is whiter than white bread.
00:55:42
Speaker
He's going to be unimpeachable.
00:55:43
Speaker
He's going to be a veteran of some kind.
00:55:45
Speaker
He's going to have a track record of success.
00:55:48
Speaker
And it seems like all these things are true.
00:55:50
Speaker
And she also got the one category that matters a lot to a significant contingent of women, apparently.
00:55:56
Speaker
He's a Swifty.
00:55:57
Speaker
Okay?
00:55:58
Speaker
She managed to...
00:56:02
Speaker
Swifties are an incredibly powerful political force.
00:56:05
Speaker
I hate to say it, but they just are.
00:56:08
Speaker
I hate to say it, but it's true.
00:56:09
Speaker
And I wish more of their power, Taylor Swift, was used for good.
00:56:13
Speaker
I know.
00:56:14
Speaker
Could I just give a brief resume of him?
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:17
Speaker
Beyond being a Swifty, we need to know what he's actually about.
00:56:20
Speaker
This is why he's also been nicknamed Tampon Tim by the right, which I think is ironic because I'll get to that in a minute.
00:56:26
Speaker
But so Tim Walls started out his career as a social studies high school teacher.
00:56:31
Speaker
He was the high school football coach.
00:56:33
Speaker
He actually led his team to state championship.
00:56:36
Speaker
He was the advisor to the LGBTQ group back in the 90s.
00:56:43
Speaker
He was a 24-year Army National Guard servant.
00:56:49
Speaker
He's also a father of two children, one who was conceived after seven years of IVF treatment.
00:56:55
Speaker
And he goes hunting, he goes fishing, he makes dad jokes.
00:56:59
Speaker
He's the one who coined the whole weird thing to describe Trump and Vance, which has really taken off
00:57:05
Speaker
He's like, they're just weird, man.
00:57:07
Speaker
And he's a very plain spoken Midwestern sort of salt of the earth individual, which is exactly what we thought.
00:57:14
Speaker
And here's another interesting thing.
00:57:15
Speaker
He's financially disclosed his assets as well, and he owns no stocks, bonds or real estate.
00:57:21
Speaker
Let's repeat that, Diana.
00:57:23
Speaker
I said that mostly, you know, with candidates, they never disclose their financial assets.
00:57:27
Speaker
And he owns no stocks, no bonds, and no real estate.
00:57:31
Speaker
I'm repeating that.
00:57:32
Speaker
He has no stocks.
00:57:34
Speaker
He has no bonds.
00:57:35
Speaker
He has no real estate.
00:57:37
Speaker
I don't know any other politician who could claim the same.
00:57:40
Speaker
Not one.
00:57:41
Speaker
His current salary is $127,629.
00:57:43
Speaker
And he was eligible for a raise last year to $149,000, but he chose not to accept it, according to the state.
00:57:45
Speaker
Okay, folks, he chose not to accept it.
00:57:54
Speaker
So, I mean, and it's interesting because Minnesota, it's a blue state.
00:57:59
Speaker
I think since Nixon, it's always voted blue for presidents.
00:58:02
Speaker
The reason it votes blue is because of the Twin Cities.
00:58:05
Speaker
It's because of its major metropolis, Minneapolis and St.
00:58:08
Speaker
Paul.
00:58:09
Speaker
Aside from the Twin Cities, it is uber red in the entire rest of the states because it's all rural apart from the Twin Cities, basically.
00:58:17
Speaker
And so, yeah, you have some cities like Rochester or Duluth, but these are cities of like a couple hundred thousand max.
00:58:23
Speaker
The majority of the populace is centered in the Twin Cities, and then it's as rural as the day is long.
00:58:28
Speaker
So this is a huge dairy state.
00:58:30
Speaker
This is a state that is a huge agricultural center.
00:58:33
Speaker
It's a breadbasket state, in other words.
00:58:35
Speaker
And so the fact that he's been able to win the governorship year after year in a place where there are a lot of Republicans in
00:58:44
Speaker
in that neck of the woods and for him as well, because he's just that good.
00:58:49
Speaker
So the tampon Tim comes into play because apparently he enacted a few laws under his governorship.
00:58:55
Speaker
One, there are no taxes on feminine products in Minnesota.
00:58:59
Speaker
I'm sure you've heard of the people.
00:59:00
Speaker
That is wild.
00:59:02
Speaker
That is wild.
00:59:03
Speaker
I've never lived in a state when I haven't paid extra for feminine products.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, we talked about the pink tax and how much more it costs just to simply have a female body.
00:59:12
Speaker
He actually passed a law that there is no taxes on feminine products.
00:59:15
Speaker
Not only that, he passed a law that mandated free tampons and pads be available in all public and private schools and charter schools in the state of Minnesota for their students.
00:59:27
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:59:29
Speaker
Again, like, you know, as far as the financial information is concerned, I got that from a very quick Google search.
00:59:35
Speaker
So it seems like he's a very financially transparent politician as well, which is quite rare.
00:59:40
Speaker
There's like a lot we don't know about how much our politicians make.
00:59:43
Speaker
And I knew that like when she selected a running mate, I knew it was going to be a white man.
00:59:47
Speaker
But I also knew that it was going to be one that was like very difficult to question that had a track record of being a very outstanding public servant.
00:59:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:56
Speaker
I'm so delighted.
00:59:57
Speaker
I'm so delighted.
00:59:58
Speaker
In fact, when they started listing her potential list of nominees for vice president, I remember thinking, like, why aren't they looking at Tim Walz of Minnesota?
01:00:04
Speaker
Like, he's an exemplary dude.
01:00:06
Speaker
So you can imagine my delight when he ends up becoming her actual vice presidential candidate.
01:00:11
Speaker
I was like, she must have been listening to me.
01:00:13
Speaker
But no, obviously.
01:00:16
Speaker
And again, she selected a person who won't embarrass her because he doesn't have those kinds of political scandals.
01:00:21
Speaker
Like within like a week of Donald Trump selecting J.D.
01:00:24
Speaker
Vance, like we've got like, you know, hit lists of articles about all the fucked up things he's been saying.
01:00:29
Speaker
Like it's like a never ending compendium of all the stupidest things compiled by mankind.
01:00:34
Speaker
Like incredibly embarrassing running mate.
01:00:36
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:00:37
Speaker
Because he keeps contradicting himself.
01:00:39
Speaker
I mean, of course, in the Trump campaign, that doesn't even matter.
01:00:42
Speaker
It doesn't matter, right?
01:00:42
Speaker
Because they completely...
01:00:44
Speaker
He contradicts himself every five seconds.
01:00:46
Speaker
I mean, it's so funny that JD Vance was also going at Kamala about being biracial.
01:00:50
Speaker
And it's like, dude, you're married to an Indian woman.
01:00:52
Speaker
Like, what do you think your kids are?
01:00:53
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:00:55
Speaker
I remember he was like, I know a lot of people are pointing out the fact that I'm married to, you know, an Indian woman, a brown woman, but I love her.
01:01:02
Speaker
And it was like, oh, my God, you couldn't have said this in a more like degrading way.
01:01:06
Speaker
Let me say my last point about Tim Walsh.
01:01:08
Speaker
So this man who has provided, who has mandated free tampons and feminine products for all his students, who has deleted and erased for eternity any tax on said products.
01:01:18
Speaker
The thing that I really find so commendable about him, and I think you'll understand this because in the context of U.S. politics, who often is harmed the most by the Republican policies?
01:01:28
Speaker
It's children.
01:01:29
Speaker
And I think he did that was the most admirable is that he implemented a free school lunch program for breakfast and lunch free for any child public private charter school in the entire state.
01:01:40
Speaker
And I think it's very commendable that he got rid of the pig tax as well, because truth be told, you know, for example, in India, one of the number one reasons girls drop out of school is lack of access to menstruation products.
01:01:50
Speaker
And like, you know, they can't menstruate safely.
01:01:53
Speaker
There's like a lot of segregation that happens as a result of a girl menstruating.
01:01:56
Speaker
And
01:01:57
Speaker
If you come from a low income household, I mean, I'm on a menstrual cup now, but, you know, it's expensive to buy sanitary napkins and tampons and stuff like that.
01:02:05
Speaker
Like it's not cheap.
01:02:06
Speaker
And if you come from a low income household, that adds up, you know, and the taxes add up.
01:02:11
Speaker
And so for him to be mindful of that and, you know, considerate of the kids that might be struggling, I think that speaks very highly to what his politics are.
01:02:19
Speaker
And so this is what tonic masculinity is and what it can be.
01:02:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:24
Speaker
I think it's very important that, you know, a lot of politicians talk the talk and very few, you know, do the actual walk.
01:02:30
Speaker
Like they don't walk it like they talk it as Kamala and Kuevo say.
01:02:35
Speaker
But, you know, I think it's essential that, especially when we're
01:02:38
Speaker
looking at male politicians as well, we need to look at their track record and what they've done in terms of action.
01:02:42
Speaker
Like we always say this in FDS as well, it's like, don't look at what he says because his talk is cheap,
Potential Political Synergy of Kamala and Tim Walz
01:02:46
Speaker
right?
01:02:47
Speaker
Look at his actions and look at what he actually does.
01:02:49
Speaker
And that will tell you what his character is, right?
01:02:51
Speaker
Like I never listened to men about what they say about their families.
01:02:54
Speaker
I look at how they treat their families and that's an indication of whether they value family or not.
01:02:58
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:02:58
Speaker
Right.
01:02:59
Speaker
Because it's very easy for people to convince you that they have incredibly moral and upright values.
01:03:05
Speaker
And then when you actually do some investigation, you realize they're not about that life at all.
01:03:09
Speaker
They're just saying whatever they can say to get ahead.
01:03:11
Speaker
And it seems like Tim Balls is not that kind of guy.
01:03:13
Speaker
It makes me so joyous.
01:03:14
Speaker
And you know, one of the things I've always said about Minnesotans is that their number one export is the world's best friend.
01:03:20
Speaker
Like everywhere I've gone in the world, I'm from Minnesota originally, and I've traveled all over the world.
01:03:26
Speaker
And I could be in Bali.
01:03:28
Speaker
I could be in Ushuaia.
01:03:31
Speaker
I have been in Spain and in India.
01:03:35
Speaker
And I have met people.
01:03:36
Speaker
And when I tell them where I'm from, I inevitably get back
01:03:39
Speaker
I have a best friend from Minnesota.
01:03:41
Speaker
So apparently we are extremely successful at exporting the world's best friends.
01:03:45
Speaker
And it is no surprise to me that Tim Walls, who previously had no relationship with Kamala Harris whatsoever, they had never even met, I believe, or spoke in.
01:03:54
Speaker
When she was doing her final interview rounds with them, apparently when they met, it was just total kismet.
01:04:00
Speaker
They were of perfect accord.
01:04:02
Speaker
And I was like, of course, he's now her new best friend because that is what Minnesotans do.
01:04:06
Speaker
So I'm very excited to see the potential with this alliance.
01:04:10
Speaker
Because I've seen what Tim Walz has done for my home state.
01:04:13
Speaker
I've seen the quality of life and the improvements for people within the state.
01:04:16
Speaker
And I love that he is somebody who has a sense of humor, who isn't afraid to laugh, who embraces Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate and as his number one running mate.
01:04:28
Speaker
I think we are looking at a really interesting turning point in American politics.
01:04:32
Speaker
And I'm just really excited.
01:04:33
Speaker
For once, I'm actually excited and hopeful.
01:04:35
Speaker
And I think that says it all.
01:04:37
Speaker
I know that we say this about every election that, oh, this one is like life or death and whatever happens.
01:04:43
Speaker
It's going to affect us for decades to come.
01:04:46
Speaker
But this one is really important.
01:04:48
Speaker
You remember in like Weimar Germany, where like for the first round, Adolf Hitler lost the vote.
01:04:53
Speaker
And the second time he won it.
01:04:55
Speaker
We're looking at this is the second time.
01:04:57
Speaker
Well, one was enough, right?
01:04:59
Speaker
Right.
01:04:59
Speaker
That's all you need.
01:05:00
Speaker
Exactly.
01:05:00
Speaker
And like we've already given Trump his one term.
01:05:03
Speaker
Let's not give him any more.
01:05:04
Speaker
Also, I mean, he's also straight up said that, you know, you won't have to vote again.
01:05:08
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:05:09
Speaker
It sounds crazy to say, but we can't trust that they won't ever just turn it into a dictatorship.
01:05:13
Speaker
It's really possible that they do.
01:05:15
Speaker
It's really, you know, people always think, oh, this is just a conspiracy theory.
01:05:18
Speaker
And I honestly, you know what, like the world is filled with conspiracies.
01:05:22
Speaker
I don't think we should rule anything out.
01:05:24
Speaker
Like if you put the wrong people in power and especially corrupt people, they're going to game the system in a way to be advantageous to them at every single opportunity.
01:05:32
Speaker
And do you really want that risk?
01:05:34
Speaker
Because we're in a position now where women can't afford that.
01:05:37
Speaker
They have told us who
Global Impact of American Politics
01:05:38
Speaker
they are.
01:05:38
Speaker
Believe them.
01:05:39
Speaker
Yep.
01:05:40
Speaker
This is one of those situations where not only have they talked the talk, they have walked the walk as well.
01:05:44
Speaker
Like the thing about the Republicans is they are not playing around.
01:05:47
Speaker
I think, you know, there's been a lot of infighting within liberal and left-wing politics because people are like, oh no, this person doesn't ascribe to like my particular brand of left-wing politics.
01:05:57
Speaker
And so I need to completely erase them because they're not 100% perfect.
01:06:01
Speaker
You never get that in Republican politics anymore.
01:06:04
Speaker
Republican politics, like even if you are the most like milquetoast Republican, they are allying and they're forming coalitions and unionizing and they are becoming a very powerful force.
01:06:13
Speaker
Like, I mean, thankfully, I just recently, I don't remember, it was like Arizona or somebody, there were some Republican from Arizona that came out and said, this guy's dangerous and he's crazy.
01:06:20
Speaker
And like, that was the first time I've heard a Republican speak sense in a long time.
01:06:24
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:06:25
Speaker
I forgot his name.
01:06:26
Speaker
You know, they fall into lockstep.
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, they're more unified as a political group.
01:06:31
Speaker
So don't expect that they're not like, don't think that they're playing around, you know, and this is the same thing.
Unity Against Political Division and Exploitation
01:06:36
Speaker
Like we're looking at England right now, too, with all the violence that's happening in England, all the riots that are happening in England right now.
01:06:41
Speaker
And it's the same, right?
01:06:42
Speaker
Like people are getting angry at the wrong people, like the right wing, the extremely wealthy, they are always going to be in cahoots because it benefits them.
01:06:50
Speaker
And what they're going to do is they're going to sow the seeds of division between you and between other people who you could potentially ally with and unify with because they know that's the way to keep their boots on your neck.
01:06:59
Speaker
And so women really can't afford to look at other women as enemies right now because we are, you know, in the words of high school music, we're all in this together.
01:07:07
Speaker
And we're not going to be singing and dancing when they take our, you know, rights away and they take our ability to divorce and get abortions away.
01:07:15
Speaker
So, you know, please, please think mindfully.
01:07:18
Speaker
We cannot let perfect be the enemy of good.
01:07:20
Speaker
And I know that we women have often been taught that, you know, either we expect perfection or they're yeeted from our lives.
01:07:26
Speaker
But like no other individual is going to be as allied with female interests as another woman.
01:07:31
Speaker
That's simply how it needs to be.
01:07:34
Speaker
Exactly.
01:07:34
Speaker
At the very least, you know that she's not going to roll back on abortion rights and divorce.
01:07:39
Speaker
I mean, you know, we need those things.
01:07:41
Speaker
And I mean, Atil Wallace's background as well, I don't think that he's going to be somebody that sits idly by while women lose access to their own bodies and they're unable to have, you know, abortions or get necessary medical care or whatnot.
01:07:53
Speaker
So I think that, you know, you have to think with your head right now.
01:07:56
Speaker
And like every election, it is choosing between two devils, but it's the devil that lets you survive that you have to vote for.
01:08:02
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:08:03
Speaker
Like lots of these people are more than happy to like going back to the thing I said about primitive accumulation, like you are the asset, you are the property and the resource for capitalists.
01:08:11
Speaker
They benefit from keeping you in the home, you know, barefoot and looking after 10, 15 kids, because at the end of the day, those kids are going to grow up to be workers that they need.
01:08:21
Speaker
And they need the system to be going.
01:08:23
Speaker
And they're going to use you as a tool to get that system in that motion going.
01:08:27
Speaker
So you have to be really careful.
01:08:28
Speaker
You are the most valuable tool.
01:08:30
Speaker
You are the instrument of their exploitation.
01:08:34
Speaker
Keep that in mind as you vote.
01:08:35
Speaker
This is why they're coming out with the cat lady stuff.
01:08:37
Speaker
That's what the JD Vance was like all about.
01:08:39
Speaker
Like, oh, this country is being run by a bunch of crazy cat ladies.
01:08:42
Speaker
And it's like, yeah.
01:08:43
Speaker
I wish.
01:08:45
Speaker
From your lips.
01:08:47
Speaker
From your lips, JD Vance.
01:08:49
Speaker
But all that being said, I feel like we've covered...
Kamala Harris' Presidential Viability
01:08:51
Speaker
As much as we can cover about Kamala, who is a surprisingly opaque personality, given that she's running for president of the United States.
01:08:58
Speaker
But I actually kind of like that a little bit about her.
01:09:01
Speaker
And I'm really hopeful that following this discussion, we get a lot of feedback from our listeners.
01:09:05
Speaker
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are, if there's more insight you can provide into her background.
01:09:10
Speaker
Exactly.
01:09:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:11
Speaker
She's adept.
01:09:12
Speaker
Like she's a person who knows she's more suited to this office than Trump will ever be.
01:09:17
Speaker
And that itself is a reason to cast a vote for her.
01:09:20
Speaker
Because these are the options that we have right now.
01:09:23
Speaker
Please don't throw away your vote for somebody who is going to keep you in, you know, on your knees.
01:09:28
Speaker
Please be careful with that.
01:09:30
Speaker
And abstaining from voting is as good as voting for Trump.
01:09:33
Speaker
So keep that in mind as well.
01:09:35
Speaker
And with that being said, Diana, I feel like we have had such a scintillating and fun discussion about a very interesting political figure who was really in the background until two weeks ago.
01:09:44
Speaker
And what a difference a day makes in the world of American politics.
01:09:48
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
01:09:49
Speaker
I know.
01:09:50
Speaker
And you know what?
01:09:51
Speaker
When we do our podcast in November and if she gets elected to the highest office, like we are going to be like this is potentially the first American female president.
01:10:00
Speaker
And that's a huge deal.
01:10:02
Speaker
That's a huge deal for her to be a woman of color.
01:10:05
Speaker
And a biracial female president, no less.
01:10:08
Speaker
Like once again, black and brown women saving the day in the United States and worldwide.
01:10:12
Speaker
That's just, you know, that tends to be the history.
01:10:15
Speaker
And that seems to be the historical trajectory once again.
Encouragement for Women to Vote
01:10:19
Speaker
So with that being said, we would once again and forevermore remind Scroats to... Die mad.
01:10:25
Speaker
Die mad.
01:10:27
Speaker
And to all you women out there, make sure you're registered to vote.
01:10:29
Speaker
Make sure you're well informed about local and state elections in addition to the national stage.
01:10:34
Speaker
And we look forward to hearing from you in the future.