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Nov. 8, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:56
APPEAL TO INDEPENDENTS D’Souza Podcast Ep452
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
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Coming up, it's Election Day.
I'll make the case for why independents, who decide the elections, should vote for the GOP. Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips are out of jail, and I'll spell out what happens now.
Some weird white powder showing up in the offices of Cary Lake.
What's going on? I want to talk about threats to security affecting conservatives and Republicans.
And former Trump aide Peter Navarro joins me.
We're going to talk about an out of control FBI and how we can take it down.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Well guys, election day is here, finally.
And I say this with a sense of some relief because this is the one day in which we, the citizens, get to talk back.
We live in a democracy, but we don't live in a democracy the way that the ancient Greeks did.
In their democracy, people showed up into the agora, or the central square, and they did this many times in a year.
Every time there was an important public question, should Athens go to war with Sparta?
Should we raise taxes?
Should we collect money and build a temple?
Should we sacrifice to the gods?
By and large, the adult citizens of Athens who were eligible to vote all would come in person and they would essentially vote through acclamation or through raising their hands.
They would vote directly.
This was direct democracy.
And so you could say that the citizens had a constant and regular, not just input, But decision-making power.
Now, in a representative democracy like we have, that's not the case.
We elect other people.
We put them in our place.
They make these decisions on our behalf, and they're always invoking, this is for the people.
This is really going to help you.
But they end up speaking to us.
They end up sort of letting us know the way things are.
And they do this on all kinds of counts.
They do this on COVID. They do this on climate change.
They are often talking down to us.
But today we get to talk back to them.
Today we are in charge.
Today we decide which of them is going to represent us.
So very important day. There's no excuse whatsoever for not voting.
You must do it. If you haven't done it already in early voting, go do it.
Make sure you vote today. Now, the election looks like it's going to be in the hands.
This is fairly typically the case of the independents, the guys in the middle, the people who sort of aren't all that attuned to politics.
Here's Elon Musk. To independent-minded voters, shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties.
And therefore, I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the presidency is democratic.
Now this is a very interesting argument and I think actually one that appeals to independence.
It is the idea that the Democrats have their extremists and the Republicans have their extremists.
So there's a kind of a moral equivalence that Elon Musk is making.
And he's saying that if you have divided government, now he says shared power, but what he really means is checks and balances.
What he's saying is the Democrats by themselves are way too extreme.
They've kind of gone off the deep end.
And so Elon Musk is very clearly endorsing the Republicans in the midterm election.
But he's doing it not on the basis that Republican principles are better.
I think he does think they're better.
But I think here he's making a very strategic appeal to independence.
And by the way, this echoes things that Musk has been saying about Twitter.
Here's a... Now, certainly with regard to the neutrality of the platform, I totally agree.
But the far right and the far left don't pose an equivalent threat on Twitter.
It's the far left that wants to do the censorship.
The far right doesn't want to censor the left.
The far right simply wants to coexist and have its say.
And I think the broader point I want to make is this, and that is that the moral equivalence fails because Republicans, in the end, are willing to live with Democrats.
Republicans are willing to let Democrats live the way they want.
It's Democrats who don't want to let Republicans live the way we want.
They are out to get us, to shut us down, to torment us.
They're out to deploy the deep state against their opponents.
We don't do that kind of thing.
And so I think that the way to look at it, if you are an independent, is that you're safer with Republicans.
You are safer in all kinds of ways.
Your pocketbook is safer.
Your border is safer.
Your country is safer in the world.
So you're personally safer from crime.
You can step out of your apartment.
You can take the subway.
And so what Republicans are offering isn't just prosperity.
Usually, people think that Republicans offer opportunity and prosperity and Democrats offer security.
But no, Democrats certainly don't offer security in the very basic sense that they protect you.
They don't do that. They might try to offer you some economic security, but that comes at a high price.
And what is that high price?
The high price is not only dependency, But it's being frozen in a position where you never really move up in life.
Look at the black community, the inner city black community.
Look at Native American reservations where the problems of poverty, the problems of crime, the problems of alcoholism are exactly the same today as they were 20 years ago as they were 50 years ago.
So you ask, you've had this war on poverty.
Why does poverty always win?
And the answer is it's not because poverty is smarter.
It's because the Democrats need poverty.
Poverty is their friend because poverty keeps people with their arms outstretched.
So despite Elon Musk's, I think, well-meaning attempt to appeal to moral equivalence, my appeal to independents is that you should vote Republican not simply to balance things out, but because one party is pretty much across the board really better than the other.
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That number again, 833-690-7246 or go to relieffactor.com Right on Election Day and the days before, the Democrats have suddenly become moderates.
And what I mean is that we are seeing a rhetorical moderation coming from some of the key Democratic candidates.
Why? Because their pollsters and their consultants have told them that We're seen as too extreme.
We're seen as bonkers.
We're seen as insensitive.
We're seen as nuts. We're seen as pro crime.
We're seen as pro open border.
We're seen as anti market, anti capitalist.
We're seen as people who love to control other people's lives.
And the consultants say, not that we aren't those things, but rather it's time to let out some smoke and mirrors.
It's time to tone the rhetoric and make it seem like we are all moderate Republicans.
We're centrist.
We are problem solvers.
We're very pragmatic.
And we listen to people.
We try to find solutions that work.
It's the Republicans who are ideological.
It's the Republicans who pose a threat to your...
And this approach is now being taken by, well, Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Mark Kelly in Arizona.
I mean, this guy acts like, well, you know, I'm just a pro-American guy.
I'm an astronaut. Remember, aren't we the guys that put the American flag on the moon?
So all of this is intended to distract Arizona from the fact that Mark Kelly is Is a votes 100% or close to 100% with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Same with Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.
She's trying to save her seat from a challenge by Adam Laxalt.
I'm a problem solver.
I'm a moderate.
I reflect the centrist values of Nevada nonsense.
So none of these people are centrist.
But centrism is now their political pose.
And so, normally Democrats are defund the police, let's restructure our economy to fight economic and racial inequality, let's practice racial preferences, let's give government money to the blacks first, and you get a place in line depending on the color of your skin.
This is how these people are.
These are what their true values are.
This is the progressive agenda.
It's Obama's agenda.
We want to remake America.
The remaking of America.
Now, Republicans are very wisely hit out at what the effects of Democratic policies have been.
Here's Peter Thiel speaking about California.
He goes, it's just such an ugly picture.
The homeless poop, people pooping all over the place, the ridiculous rat-infested apartments that don't work anymore, the woke insanities.
I mean, in a way, I think this, you know, even though Peter Thiel isn't running...
Poop kind of symbolizes what the Democrats are all about.
I mean, if you see a homeless guy, like, taking a massive dump in front of a nice restaurant, and everybody is kind of grimacing and can't really eat their food, the person you should think of is Nancy Pelosi.
Why? Because she unleashed that guy.
She basically told him, hey, listen, this is your spot.
Go for it. And the Democrats have literally been pooping all over us for two years.
So my point is, this is our one chance to speak back.
And if we don't speak back, then it's sort of like, hold your peace.
Stop complaining. Because the rest of the time, it's only talk.
It's just kind of bloviation.
It's jabber. But this is a chance to act.
There was a... A literary scholar many years ago named Austin and he talked about what he called speech acts.
So a speech act is something you say or something you write down but it performs a practical function.
It gets something done.
So think, for example, about Debbie and I taking our marriage vows.
I do. We're just saying something, but just by saying I do, we become married.
Our whole relationship changes.
We are now connected, not just spiritually, yes, but also legally.
Obligations arise out of that.
Contracts are like this.
And voting is like that.
Voting is a sort of a speech act.
You make a mark on a ballot, but it does something.
Because as a result of that, Catherine Cortez Masto is out, and Adam Laxalt is in.
As a result of that, Carrie Lick becomes the governor of Arizona.
As a result of that, we send a big, loud message to Joe Biden.
How? Again, it's not just we're telling Joe Biden.
Joe Biden goes over to the Congress and he suddenly notices the Speaker's office is no longer occupied by Nancy Pelosi.
And he goes, oh, well, maybe I can make a U.S. ambassador to Italy.
Nancy Pelosi has a new job.
Suddenly you go looking for Senator Schumer in the Senate Majority Chamber.
He's nowhere to be found.
Instead, there's a very sly Mitch McConnell probably looking under the desk and measuring his office and doing all the weird stuff that Mitch does.
But hey, Mitch McConnell is far preferable to...
Chuck Schumer. And I also noticed that Josh Hawley has said that he's not supporting Mitch McConnell for leader.
Now, that's the first prominent senator to come out and say that.
I don't think he's going to be the only one.
It's signaling that there is a movement afoot to replace Mitch McConnell as majority leader, and that can only be a good thing.
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Today on Election Day, I'm noticing some kind of last-minute operations being deployed in various different places.
And as I think about them, they're very telling about these races themselves and about the overall fate of the midterm election.
So... Here we see that John Fetterman's campaign is suing the state of Pennsylvania to have mail ballots with no date, or the incorrect date, be counted.
So we're talking here about improperly filled out ballots.
And I guess what Fetterman is thinking is, listen, I'm in trouble.
The latest polls show things very close to being tied, but usually Oz a little bit ahead.
I'm going to need, I may not even have mules this election.
I may need these kind of questionable ballots that don't comply, by the way, with the rules.
And the state's law says this is what a ballot needs in order for it to be considered a valid ballot.
And the election guidance even spells out that ballots that don't fit this criteria won't be counted.
But Fetterman thinks because he knows that the courts in Pennsylvania are left-wing...
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is left-wing.
He's hoping that he can kind of find a way.
Now, there was a recent court decision that said, listen, you can't count these ballots.
But I think Federman is thinking, I'll try to sneak my way around it.
And of course, I've got cooperative officials.
Why? Because the Secretary of State and the election establishment in Pennsylvania is in Federman's camp.
But that's revealing because it tells me that Federman is worried, really worried, that he's going to lose.
The Florida Department of State has sent a letter to Biden, the DOJ, saying that federal election monitors are banned from going inside polling places.
This is the deployment by Biden of all these federal election monitors, security guys, FBI guys, agents.
And quite frankly, even though they're supposed to be monitoring irregularities, in my opinion, this is actually Biden's voter intimidation brigade.
Because in the name of fighting voter intimidation, just think about it. You show up to vote, you have all these sort of militarized guys, all these FBI guys, all these election monitors. If anything, it's going to say to people, what's going on? You know, I don't want to do the wrong thing here and be somehow held accountable for it. So in other words the very presence and
And I think what Florida is saying is, listen, by Florida election law, you're not allowed to have all these outsiders, quote, monitoring us, particularly because, frankly, no problem has even been identified.
All that the federal government does is a very interesting letter that the Florida Secretary of State Have said, your letters simply provide a non-exhaustive list of federal election statutes as the basis for this action without pointing to any specific statutory authorization.
So sort of, here are the 10 election laws, that's why we're here.
And Florida's like, no, we're not letting you in.
Sorry. Catch you later.
Now, turning to Arizona, think about this.
First of all, Katie Cobbs has been running a terrible campaign.
I think she's going to get crushed.
Her latest rally, by the way, they said, we're having a rally, but they didn't tell you where.
In fact, you had to RSVP first, and then you would be notified of the location of the rally.
Frankly, I've never heard of this in all my years in American politics.
And Cary Lake has been running just a brilliant campaign.
And so, at the very last minute, just a day or so, two days before the election, white powder arrives in Cary Lake's office, suspicious white powder, accompanied by, quote, incredibly vulgar and threatening letters, according to Lake. So obviously her staff was freaked out.
They notified the police, local law enforcement, the FBI, even the bomb squad all show up.
And as of now, we don't know what this is.
The government, in fact, has not told the late campaign what they found out.
They haven't revealed anything about what that white powder really is.
But we're dealing here with a problem, and that is that Is that Cary Lake is targeted, not just by the Democrats, but also by the cartels.
Remember, the cartels are running a very profitable cross-border operation.
They stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions.
So think of the threat.
I mean, here's Kerry Lake who's promised to announce an invasion of Arizona and block it.
And Kerry Lake says, I'm going to set an example for Texas.
If Texas hasn't done the same thing, they just have to basically do what I do.
And we will stop this cold.
So think about it. Arizona, Texas, and Florida are in a position to make a real difference here.
And Carrie Lake says, quote, I'll be honest, this is minor compared to what I'm going to go up against when I win this race.
We're going to secure the border and take down the cartels at the border.
Now, it should be said that Adrian Fontes, who is running for Secretary of State, I'm not going to call him a cartel member.
I don't think he's a cartel member.
But let's just say that he's worked for the cartels.
He's quite likely sympathetic to the cartels.
He certainly takes the cartel's position on illegal immigration.
He's going to look the other way.
So, in other words, what I'm saying is it's not just the governor's race that's important in Arizona.
It's important that Abe Hamaday win for Attorney General.
It's important that Mark Fincham win for Secretary of State.
And, of course, I think I saw a poll that says that Blake Masters is either even or now pulling slightly ahead of Mark Kelly.
I'm looking for a clean sweep in Arizona.
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I'm really happy to report that Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips of True the Vote are out of jail.
Now, this was way overdue.
These are guys who were put in jail for failing to reveal the identity of a confidential informant, apparently a confidential informant to the FBI. And when it first happened, I thought, well, this judge is basically just trying to throw his weight around, show he's a big man on campus, they'll be in for 24 hours.
But no, a day passed, and a second, and a third, and a fourth, and I'm like, what?
Is this judge going to leave these guys locked up indefinitely?
And then as I looked more closely at his order, the answer was, yes!
Yes! He said that the order will be in place until the defendants, quote, fully comply with his demand that he reveal information including the full identity of this informant.
By the way, Catherine and Greg offered to reveal the identity of the informant to the judge in closed chambers.
In other words, confidentially, but this was not satisfactory for the judge.
Now, when Catherine and Greg got out, Debbie and I were just texting them, letting them know we were so happy that they were out.
And they said, in fact, I wanted Greg to come on the podcast today, but they're understandably drained.
They're a little exhausted.
They're apparently having meetings with their attorneys.
They're plotting their next steps.
So... Greg was like, let me take a rain check on it, and that's fine.
Here's the order from the U.S. Court of Appeals.
So, by the way, it's not that this judge, which is Kenneth Hoyt, and if you can believe it, this lunatic is a Reagan appointee.
So, I think what happens even with Reagan appointees is over time, they sink deeper and deeper into the swamp.
They become swamp creatures.
And they also, their arrogance gets Why?
Because they are lord of their own chambers, what they say goes.
In any event, Catherine Gregg appealed over this guy's head to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, quote, It is ordered that petitioners oppose motion for release from detention is granted pending further order of this court.
In other words, you've got to let them out, and so they are now out.
Those who thought that imprisoning Greg and I would weaken our resolve have gravely miscalculated it is stronger than ever.
The right to free and fair elections without interference is more important than our own discomfort, and even this detention now reversed by a higher court.
That's a statement by Catherine I'm quoting from an article in the Epoch Times.
Now, The strange thing here is that this judge seems to have bought into the idea that somehow Catherine and Greg, quote, hacked into the Connick computers.
In other words, when you look at the civil suit, what Connick is basically saying is that we have our servers and we have our company, and these two individuals, in an unauthorized way, quote, broke into our systems.
Now, For a moment, let's pause and ask.
Even if Catherine and Greg broke into their systems, what they discovered is seemingly rampant illegality.
They discovered that these guys, Conic, an election software company that has made contracts with cities like Los Angeles, and in the contracts clearly specified that the only access of this data is going to be in the United States to U.S. nationals, it will not be stored on foreign servers, and yet... In violation of these contracts and in violation of law, this was done.
U.S. election data.
We're not just talking about the names of poll workers, but their addresses, their phone numbers, their social security numbers, their bank accounts.
Imagine giving the Chinese officials, the Chinese government, access to this kind of data.
So, you would think that this Reagan judge would screw his head on right and see that the main issue is the security of our election data.
It's not how did Catherine Gregg obtain this information, but as it turns out, as you look more closely, Catherine Gregg got this information from an informant.
There was apparently a meeting in a hotel room in which the informant turned on his computer and showed them this is what's going on.
And then Catherine and Greg were able to, number one, talk about it publicly when they had their event called The Pit.
Number two, share it with a grand jury in Los Angeles, which led to the arrest of Eugene Yu.
Uh... But Catherine and Greg never had the data.
Catherine and Greg had nothing to do with Connick's computers.
And so while Connick has made it seem like they, quote, hacked into our computers, Catherine and Greg didn't hack into their computers.
Oh, they broke into our servers.
No, they didn't. There's no indication that these guys did anything directly with Connick themselves.
They were shown this data at this rendezvous that they had with these informants.
But being shown the data is not the same thing as I'm responsible for having somehow gotten it from Connick.
So, they didn't access the Connick computers, at least as far as I can see.
And so, what's happening is that this judge has, in a buffoonish way, and I just don't know if he's out of it with regard to technology, he simply thinks that because Catherine Gregg knew about this...
That somehow they are the ones who must have somehow illicitly obtained it from Connick.
And this is the basis for his draconian decision.
I'm going to lock you up until you tell me the facts.
Listen, reporters and researchers and journalists all the time use confidential sources and the issue is not where did you get the information, but is the information actually true?
So I'm really glad that a higher court stepped in.
I'm really glad that these guys are out.
I'm really impressed by the courage they've shown throughout this.
And I think that their vindication will come when, I hope, Mr.
Jean Yoo is safely behind bars.
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Is Donald Trump going to run for president in 2024?
I think we know the answer to that one.
I think you know the answer to that one.
And the answer is yes.
However, the question is, when will he announce?
When will he jump into the ring?
When will he become a candidate for the presidency?
Now, this matters because...
Obviously, if Trump gets in, it's going to send a powerful message to everybody else that, look, we've basically got a giant in the ring and do you want to kind of get in or is it better to wait it out and perhaps think about a candidacy the next time around?
My own view is that guys like DeSantis will not get in if Trump gets in.
And so Trump's early entry into the race will signal that the Republican nomination is pretty much locked up for 2024.
Now, there is speculation on social media that this is not so.
And I'm not saying that no one else will get in, but I think the people getting in are going to be, by and large, token candidates that don't really have a chance I mean, I don't even know if someone like Pence even thinks he has a chance, but the idea that he could defeat Trump for the Republican primary is just laughable and absurd.
Now, there was rumor all over Not just social media, but media also, that Trump was going to announce at the rally that he had in Ohio for J.D. Vance.
And in fact, Danielle was texting me, I wonder if he's going to announce.
And at one point she said, Trump mentioned 2,000 mules.
So I decided, I don't normally watch rallies, but let me go check in and see what's going on.
And Trump was talking about J.D. Vance.
But I think wisely Trump abstained from making any kind of announcements.
Let's remember, this is right now about the midterms.
It would be a little bit of a distraction for Trump to jump in the ring now.
And so what Trump did say, which is pretty significant, is that he's going to make a major announcement from Mar-a-Lago on November 15th.
And, well, I mean, he could make a major announcement on, I suppose, more than one matter.
But the matter, on everybody's mind, is Trump declaring his candidacy.
Now, I don't know if a declared candidacy protects Trump in any way from all these measures that the Democrats are trying desperately.
Clearly, you know, you could almost say they found the criminal and they're looking for the crime.
They don't have a crime.
Well, he instigated January 6th.
Well, no, he didn't.
He called for violence.
No, he didn't. He caused the violence.
No, he didn't. Well, he was storing classified information.
Well, even if you read the Records Act, that's not a crime, and there's certainly no penalty prescribed for that.
That's something that you would think could be worked out amicably between bureaucratic agencies and former presidents.
So they've got really nothing on this guy.
Oh, he's got some corrupt corporate practices.
I don't even know if that's true, but let's say it is true.
It would obviously precede anything that occurred, and those things would have to be dealt with in their own way.
So the left is really in a desperate effort to prevent, I think, what Trump is about to unleash, which is basically more Donald Trump to deal with for the Democrats.
And let's remember, he's now entering in some ways in a more powerful position than he ever was.
Why? Because we've all got the Trump record.
We've got the record of a strong U.S. foreign policy, a very effective way of dealing with world leaders.
Does anybody think that Brittany Griner would be rotting in a Russian prison if Trump were the president?
I mean, this guy has the ability to get things done and get things done even with people that you think would be absolutely impenetrable.
Not to mention the fact that we all remember a flourishing economy.
We all remember a patriotic fervor throughout the country.
Things were actually going well until COVID. And things can be going well again.
So once you start in your mind, just whatever your politics, so even if you have no politics at all, start contrasting the sort of just, I mean, Biden is basically like a car that's broken down in the middle of the highway.
And everybody's just staring hopelessly and idly at this immobilized vehicle.
Trump is more like a Ferrari that's just running smoothly.
So look, this is going to be really exciting in 2024.
I'm glad Trump is holding off his announcement.
But once he gets into the ring, you may almost say that the 2024 campaign has begun.
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Today we're going to read Mikhail Zoshenko's story about electrification.
Now this is when the Soviet regime in the early part of the 20th century decided that it was a necessary mark of progress that all of the rural areas of Russia be electrified.
And now, of course, this has been occurring all over the world.
And of course, in places like America, electrification was already everywhere.
But nevertheless, it hadn't come to Russia, at least not all over the place.
And so the Soviet communists to go, we can't be behind anyone else.
We got to have electrification.
So here comes Zoshenko.
Nowadays, the most fashionable word that can be is, of course, electrification.
Great way to begin the story.
And then he goes on, and this, as you can tell, is a right tone here.
I won't argue that this isn't a matter of immense importance to light up Soviet Russia with electricity.
And then he goes, I lived, comrades, in a very large house.
Notice he uses the word comrades.
He's kind of speaking the communist lingo.
And you get the idea that he's on board.
He wants electrification, too.
The whole house had been using kerosene.
Some had kerosene lamps, and some had nothing, just a candle flickering away.
He goes, real hardship.
And he's speaking slightly sarcastically here because, of course, in the 19th century, people used kerosene lamps and candles, and that was pretty much all you had.
And then they started installing electric lights soon after the Revolution.
So the landlady of this apartment complex, her name is Elizaveta Prokhorov, said, it's time to have electrification.
Quote, everybody, she says, is installing them.
And why would we be more backward than other people?
You get here the progressive rhetoric.
It's all about claiming the future.
And so the narrator goes, yeah, we began to install.
And... But he goes, something funny happens that once they put in the electric lights, he says, suddenly everybody starts looking around.
And of course, they can really only now see their rooms for the full, clearly for the first time, before you have a lamp or you have a candle.
And it throws a little bit of light, but not everywhere.
So he goes, now we start looking around our apartments.
And he goes, quote, muck and filth all around.
Yeah. So, he goes, the way it was before you go to work in the morning, come back home in the evening, drink some tea, go to bed.
And he goes, and nothing of this kind was visible as long as you're using kerosene.
He goes, but now when we turn on the lights, we see somebody's old bedroom slipper lying around.
You know, there's wallpaper torn to shreds and hanging down.
They're a bed bug running away trying to save himself from the light.
You're a rag. You're a cigar butt.
So suddenly you realize you're living in filth.
And of course the reason you know this is you can see it.
It's right in front of you. So the electricity has the paradoxical effect of exposing to you how bad your life is.
And he goes, take that couch that stood in our room, for example.
He goes, I used to think it's alright.
It's a couch. It's a good couch.
I often sit on it in the evening.
And he goes, now I'm burning electricity.
Oh my gosh, what a couch!
Everything's sticking out, hanging down, spilling out from the inside.
He goes, I can't sit on this couch!
So, a reassessment of his own belongings as a result of being able to see more clearly.
He goes, I'm suddenly realizing I don't live very well.
He goes, I began to develop a negative attitude.
And then he says, I noticed that other people were feeling the same way.
And he goes, my landlady comes up to me and she goes, my dear man, I never thought I was living so badly.
And he goes, sure enough, I look around her apartment, all around, quote, disorders, strewings, litter, rubbish.
And he goes, all of us were beginning to feel a little depressed.
And so now they begin to think about like what to do.
So, initially the narrator goes, well, I thought maybe I can, you know, try to do some things around my apartment.
So he goes, when I got my pay, I bought some whitewash, I started to work, I shook out the bed, I tried to kill off the bed bugs, I tried to paint over the woodwork, I tried to bang the couch back together.
And he goes, it made me feel a little better, but things were still kind of a shambles.
And then he goes, my lamb lady had sort of a little bit of a different idea.
And he says he comes home one day and she has cut the lights.
She has, in a sense, unplugged everything.
She has shut it down.
And he's like, what's going on?
What's going on? And that lady goes, quote, I don't want to live with the light.
I don't have the money to make all these repairs.
And he says, well, maybe I can help you.
Maybe I can do the repairs.
And she goes, no, no.
She goes, listen, I've managed without these lights for all these years.
I can totally manage without them going into the future.
And so the bottom line of it is...
This initial advocate of electrification, because electrification represents the future, it makes things better, decides we can do without electrification after all.
So that's how the story ends.
And again, it's not that the narrator is against electrification.
What he's actually doing is he's...
Targeting Soviet propaganda.
He's targeting this idea that somehow your life is better if you have lights by saying, wait a minute, our life is actually very bad under Soviet communism.
And all that the lights do is shine a light on it.
I decided to do a second Zoshenko story today, and this one is called The Bathhouse.
Now, Zoshenko has three or four bathhouse stories, and in fact the title of his collection, at least in the University of Michigan edition that I have, is called Scenes from the Bathhouse and Other Stories of Communist Russia.
But this is just a very introductory kind of bathhouse story.
It's almost like Zoschenko's kind of getting a little wet before he really gets into his bathhouse narratives.
He goes, hey, citizens, they have some excellent bathhouses in America.
Now, he's not talking about the gay bathhouses.
He's talking about places, public baths.
By the way, a very ancient practice that goes back to the Roman baths, where citizens go to a public bath...
And they kind of wash themselves, and they sort of disrobe, and sometimes they sit around talking, and then they essentially pay and collect their clothes and go home.
He goes, well, we have bathhouses too, but not as good.
And then he says, in our bathhouses, there's a problem with the tickets.
And he goes, that's because when you show up to the bathhouse, they give you a ticket.
But he says, but where is the naked man gonna put tickets?
He goes, there's no place to put tickets, no pockets.
So, anyway, he, nevertheless, he takes his ticket, and he kind of keeps it in his hand, and he walks in, and he goes, I'm now looking around for a bucket.
So he wants to have a wash, but there's no bucket.
Now, in these days, there are no showers, so you're not going to be able to just stand under a shower.
You have to actually pour water over yourself, and frankly, this is kind of how I grew up, that we didn't have showers.
We had water that had to be heated.
And then you poured it over yourself with a bucket.
So he goes, I see one citizen washing himself with three buckets.
So this is what happens whenever you have some group activity.
And this is almost a small metaphor for communism.
One guy comes in and goes, well, I'll take three buckets.
And so that means other people don't have a bucket.
And... And so he goes up to the guy and he's trying to get a hold of one of those buckets and the guy goes, what are you up to stealing people's buckets?
Now, think about this.
It's not his bucket.
He's taken three.
But nevertheless, he acts like it's his private property.
Again, notice that there's no real private property under communism.
Everything belongs to the state.
So, nevertheless, the rhetoric, people still can't lose sight of the idea that this belongs to me.
So, even if the bucket is only temporarily in my possession, it's my bucket and you're, quote, stealing it.
He goes, so he had to walk away from that guy, and then he sees another guy who has more than one bucket, but as the guy looks away, the narrator, you can assume it's Zoshenko, I lifted his bucket and made off with it.
So he had to kind of grab the bucket and run off with it.
And then he says that...
He says everybody around him is washing, not just themselves, but since they don't have washing machines in Soviet Russia, he goes, people actually start washing not just themselves, but they start washing their clothes.
So he goes, here's one guy washing his trousers, another guy is rubbing his underwear, a third guy is wringing something out.
And he goes, no sooner, get yourself washed and you're dirty again.
So what he's implying here is that the combination of dirty clothes being washed is producing kind of dirty water.
And besides, the water itself may not be all that clean.
So we're getting a feeling here of how depressing life is under Soviet socialism.
You're in what would otherwise seem to be kind of a pleasant place and a pleasant experience, but it's not all that pleasant at all.
And he goes, oh man, he goes, I'm going to probably have to go home and take another bath.
So, in other words, the point of the bath is defeated.
So then he goes back to get his clothes, and they hand him his clothes, and he goes, yeah, he goes, the trousers aren't mine.
They give him somebody else's pants.
And the attendant says, hey, listen, you know what, just kind of take it.
And he goes, okay, fine, I'll take it.
And he puts his pants on, and he says that he then goes, give me my coat.
And they go, well, where's your ticket?
Because you need a ticket for everything.
Now he can't find the ticket.
Because remember, he didn't know where to put it.
He had it in his hand.
He had to go kind of find a way to get the bucket.
And somehow the ticket has now disappeared.
And he goes, listen, I don't have a ticket, but I'll identify my coat.
It's got one pocket is torn.
There's no second pocket.
And he goes, it has only a couple of buttons.
And so the guy finally agrees.
Okay, fine. Yeah, this is your coat.
You can have it.
And then this is how the story concludes.
And notice how the story, it's not really about anything.
It's not any kind of complex plot.
It's just a guy going in for a bath.
And it's the very ordinariness of his experience that makes you begin to see the kind of drab banality, the fact that sort of nothing really works all that well and everything leaves you feeling a little depressed.
I remember when Debbie and I went to Prague.
We went, you know, two decades after communism.
And if you watch, Prague is a beautiful city, but all its beauty comes from pre-communist days.
And then if you look at the citizens, they just look downcast.
They're always looking at the ground.
They always look harassed.
It's almost like even years and years after communism, the psychological feeling of communism remains.
And then this is how the story ends.
He goes... Many people might ask me, well, what kind of bathhouse did you go to?
Where was it located?
What was the address? And he goes, what kind of bathhouse?
The usual kind, where it costs 10 kopecks to get in.
And basically what Zoshenko is saying is, no, it wasn't this particular bathhouse.
Every bathhouse is like this.
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