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Aug. 26, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:12
DREAM TEAM Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep904
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Coming up, I'll argue that the dream team of Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
might be just the partnership that's needed to vanquish Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
I'll highlight the stakes in November by candidly outlining the worst-case scenario if Harris and Walz are elected.
And political commentator Emerald Robinson joins me.
She's going to make her case that America is already a banana republic.
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On Friday I talked about the upcoming Robert F. Kennedy statement, public statement. And boy, what a statement it was. I could anticipate it, but obviously I couldn't, I hadn't heard it yet. And it was very moving. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talking about, well, really make America healthy again.
Not MAGA, but sort of, I guess, MAGA. Make America healthy again. And the dedication that he has to the children of America.
And the decision that he had made, which couldn't have been too easy a decision.
Let's remember, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is the son of the former Attorney General of the United States, the nephew of John F. Kennedy.
He is from perhaps the most iconic, well, Well, perhaps the most iconic family in America, but certainly an iconic democratic family.
And for him to essentially team up with Trump, create a dream team as I like to call it.
To do that is a big step and its symbolism cannot be downplayed.
This is a very significant development because suddenly the concept of some notion of American unity is possible and that's what Robert F. Kennedy is stressing.
A unity ticket of a Democrat with a Republican and Trump has quite clearly agreed to put Kennedy into a prominent position with regard to health, probably Secretary of Health and Human Services.
And this would be so good because Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
would be overseeing the NIH, the CDC.
I mean, this is a prospect that makes you salivate to think that this could happen.
So I think that's a very important development.
But it's also important to notice the actual numbers.
Trump and Harris are running pretty close to each other.
There are a couple of polls that put Harris slightly ahead.
Those seem to be overpopulated with Democrats.
You know, the way they weight these polls, if they just poll more Democrats, it's like, oh, Karas is leading.
The Rasmussen survey, which tends to be more of a pro-Trump pollster source, has Trump leading pretty cleanly in pretty much all the swing states.
But nevertheless, it's not a big lead.
It's a lead of two points, in some cases three points, four points.
Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is polling in these states, and really across the country, at somewhere between 5 and 6 percent.
5.7, 5.8.
That's a pretty big number.
And so, I'm not sure you can take all of that and put it in the Trump column, but I think you can put most of it in the Trump column.
And there is a uniform disgust in that Robert F. Kennedy group with the Democrats.
So even the ones that don't vote for Trump I think aren't going to vote at all.
They're not going to vote for Kamala Harris, mainly because Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
has received the Trump treatment.
They sue him, they infiltrate his campaign, they slander him, they try to censor him, they change the rules to exclude him.
If they could go after him legally, I'm sure that they would and have.
So, he has communicated this to his followers and they are, in many cases, just done, at least with this democratic party, with this democratic establishment.
Now, what I find really amusing is that the Kennedy family... Let's look at this Kennedy family, so-called.
First of all, it's a bunch of absolute do-nothings, and in many cases, know-nothings.
You know, I'm looking at posts on my feed from Carrie Kennedy.
Well, who the heck is Carrie Kennedy?
What has she ever done?
The only distinguished Kennedy that's alive today is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And guess what?
All the other Kennedys, the sort of irrelevant Kennedys, are all piling on this guy.
So what's going on here?
Well, part of it, I think, is just nasty envy.
And part of it is all these other Kennedys have basically become, in a sense, political welfare bums, by which I mean that they are groveling for crumbs of gratitude from the Biden-Harris regime.
And so that we'll do whatever you want.
You want us to bash our brother?
Yeah, we will!
So that's what's really going on.
It's a very nasty enterprise and really reflects very badly, not on the Kennedy family as a whole, but on the rest of the Kennedys.
Not on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but on his miserable relatives.
Now, there's a further point to be made about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
that I think has gone, not unnoticed, but at least somewhat downplayed, and that is that there are some Republicans and some conservatives and some MAGA types who are still rankling against Trump's dealing with COVID.
They don't like the fact that Trump went along, even if provisionally, with any kind of lockdown.
They notice that Trump takes credit for the vaccine, and these people hate the vaccine.
So this has been a little bit of a sore spot For Trump with his own base.
But here's the good news.
Enter Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And this is a guy who hates the COVID lies.
This is a guy who's been bashing the vaccine or at least the vaccine mandates.
Here is a guy that by and large all the COVID skeptics trust.
And Trump has made it pretty clear.
You're my guy to deal with these kinds of issues.
So that by itself, you know, there's somebody like Trump needs to back down.
Trump needs to apologize.
Well, first of all, if you know anything about Trump, he's not going to apologize.
It's not like him to apologize.
But more importantly, he's remedying the cause of your concern.
He's remedying the cause of your concern by bringing in a guy that you trust.
To deal with this issue going forward in a sensible way.
And that, I think, will satisfy the grumblers and solidify Trump's support even on this one issue where there is some residual dissatisfaction.
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I'm going to after this segment interview Emerald Robinson.
I just saw a post that she did basically saying that the worst-case scenario is already here.
America is already a Banana Republic, we've kind of lost or mostly lost our constitutional republic.
We'll go into all that.
But what I'm thinking about right now is just a recent event.
Debbie and I went to a fundraiser.
In Texas for Ted Cruz, we're obviously supporting Cruz and his tough reelection campaign against a very heavily funded Democrat, this guy named Colin Allred.
But Ted Cruz very memorably at the end of his talk, Basically laid out the positive scenario if we win and the negative scenario if we lose.
And the positive scenario is pretty awesome.
It is if Trump wins, chances are pretty good that we will take the House.
Chances are also pretty good that we will take the Senate.
And all of that means that we can start undoing the bad policies of the Biden regime, but also passing laws.
Let's remember that Biden has not been able to pass laws.
Even the fact that Republicans have had a very narrow House majority, and the fact that the Democrats don't have 60 in the Senate.
So that's why Biden has been doing all these executive orders.
It's the only way that he can get his things done, but he can't get laws done.
And in fact, he hasn't passed a single significant piece of legislation in his presidency.
But then Ted Cruz said, well, what if we lose?
What if it goes the other way?
Well, if Trump loses, chances are it'll be very difficult to hold the House.
And the Senate is very, very close.
Now here I see an article in the New York Post about the fact that Chuck Schumer is now talking about the fact that if he gets the Senate, they will look to end the filibuster for the purposes of passing voting rights and abortion legislation.
So voting rights is a way of trying to make permanent the Democratic majority.
And I'm not today going to go into the details of that legislation.
I will subsequently do that.
But this is the so-called H.R.
1.
This is the bill that sort of, from the Democrats' point of view, expands the franchise, but it creates all kinds of opportunities for illegals to vote, for fraud, for more mail-in drop boxes.
So they want to ram this through.
And the other is abortion legislation, but it's also clear that that's the starting point.
If the Democrats get their way on those two things, why would they end the filibuster?
Why wouldn't they also put aside the filibuster for other things?
They want climate legislation.
Let's roll over the filibuster on that.
You want Medicare for all?
Roll over the filibuster for that.
So, this is a very telling public confession or admission by Chuck Schumer that this is where they're going.
And once again, it reflects the willingness of the Democrats to run roughshod over the architecture of our, the checks and balances of our constitutional republic.
The basic idea here is that the reason you want a Senate filibuster is so that you can hold up and not allow kind of a crowd mentality to hastily pass legislation that doesn't go through deliberation and win a significant majority of the Senate.
So not just 51 versus 49, but rather let's say 60 versus 40.
And this is what Schumer is planning to end.
Now, they tried to do this, by the way, but were thwarted by Senator Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
But guess what?
Both of those guys are getting out.
In fact, they're basically getting out even of the Democratic Party.
They're certainly leaving the Senate.
So, we're headed for perilous times ahead.
And I see here also an interesting post by a European conservative, Eva of Lardingerbroek.
I think she's from Holland.
But in any event, she says, hey, Americans, pay attention.
Look at what's happening in France.
Look at what's happening in the UK.
France just arrested Pavel Durov.
This is the guy who's the founder of Telegram and the CEO of Telegram.
So they're arresting the head of a digital platform, kind of trying to get him on censorship, get him on terrorism, browbeat him, lock him up.
The UK is locking up its own citizens for years, basically for speaking out against mass migration, writing posts on it online.
None of this is taking into account Europeans getting stabbed by illegals on a daily basis and all of this is not even often reported in the European media.
Nothing in the BBC, nothing in Le Monde in Paris, nothing in the German newspapers.
And then says Eva, it's so clear what they're doing and it's not looking good for us.
She goes, we don't have a second amendment.
They don't even have a First Amendment, by the way.
So the two of the core protections that we have in the United States, although, hey, again, what the Biden-Harris regime is trying to do is run roughshod over both those as well.
Let's kind of farm out censorship to the digital platform so that private companies can do it.
Let's try to figure out ways to either confiscate guns or make it more difficult to acquire.
You can't do anything about the gun.
Let's try to restrict the flow of ammunition.
The First Amendment and Second Amendment are not secure as long as you have Democrats with designs against them.
All of this is a way of saying that there is, we're facing a very difficult, I'm reluctant to prophesy the end of the Republic, but we're facing a very difficult time going ahead if Harris and Walz make it across the finish line.
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Guys, I am delighted to welcome back to the podcast our friend Emerald Robinson.
You know who she is, independent journalist.
She was chief White House correspondent for Newsmax.
She also worked for OWN, the One America News Network.
Her articles have appeared in Gateway Pundit, Real Clear Politics, Citizen Free Press, Revolver News, and many other media outlets.
You can follow her on X at Emerald Robinson.
And here's the website, Emerald.
E-M-E-R-A-L-D dot TV.
Emeril, welcome, thanks for joining me.
I look to you to make incisive comments that get me thinking and you had one just a day or two ago on social media.
Well, you basically said America is officially a banana republic.
Now, I've sort of been warning for some time that we're approaching that point, we're nearing the precipice, but I kind of took you to be saying that, you know what?
We sort of have to recognize we're already off the precipice.
We're, like, dangling in the air right now, and it's a very bad time for the country.
So I want to push you on that a little bit and have you begin by just explaining What is it that you mean when you say that we are officially already there?
I think you only have to look at the people who have already been jailed as Political opponents to the current regime.
You can call it the Biden regime, but it's really now a re-transfer to the Harris regime.
Our friend Steve Bannon is currently in jail.
Peter Navarro just got out of jail.
President Trump could soon go to jail.
That is definitely still their intention.
Tina Peters in Colorado is headed for jail.
There are electors in Michigan and Georgia who they are still trying to put in jail.
So I would say that we are already a banana republic.
And look, when you have a party that can just switch out their candidate, just as they did with Biden and Harris.
Though they say they have a democracy, they're making it pretty clear that there is not a democracy that they adhere to at this point.
And they are currently in power.
And I don't see any sign, Dinesh, that they plan on letting go.
Even if Donald Trump wins the election, if he manages to overcome the steel and the rigging, you have General Michael Hayden out there saying there will be civil war.
They're already preparing for, even if he wins, not to turn over power.
So, wow.
What you're saying, Emerald, I take it is that, listen, you know, when any of us brings up the 91 criminal charges against Trump, they go, well, yeah, but, you know, that's because you stupid Republicans picked a habitual criminal.
Had you picked somebody else, none of this would be happening.
But you're saying, wait a minute.
Look at the January 6th political prisoners.
Look at the guy who was jailed for doing a meme about Hillary Clinton, Douglas Mackey.
And then you've given several examples.
You're saying that there is a kind of, almost a systematic campaign underway to not only intimidate, but lock up critics of the regime.
And this is one of the standard hallmarks of tyrannical regimes and banana republics.
Absolutely.
And look, you have pro-life grandmas going to jail under the Biden regime.
And it's not just America.
It's not that we're isolated in this banana republic that we've turned into.
It's really the Western world at large.
Look what's happening in the UK.
People being jailed for voicing opposition to Islam and the Muslim overtaking of their culture.
You have the CEO of Telegram being jailed in France.
There are people who are concerned.
I would be concerned myself right now, Dinesh, to go to France or even the UK, as much as I love to travel.
And I don't think we're very far behind that in America.
I think that should they hold on to power during this election, the Harris regime, that we will see those kind of free speech arrests happening here in the United States.
They're just holding off for now, but I guarantee you they are ready for if they hold on.
On to power.
And when we're talking about a banana republic, look, they tried to assassinate the former president, the current candidate for the Republican Party, and failed.
And then I believe they tried again.
The mechanical plane failures that happened to J.D.
Vance and Donald Trump appear to only happen to Republican candidates.
So if they can't beat him or rig the ballot box, they're looking at actually offing the guy, which I predicted would happen.
I think Tucker Carlson said it as well, because they intend on hanging on to power.
And when you have something like that, yes, we're in a banana republic, but you even see it now sort of at...
Bleeding into the state and local levels because it's happened so much at the federal level.
And they've done such a great job of infiltrating even local and state institutions.
And we're really at a dire point in our constitutional republic, Dinesh, where you can debate whether we even have one now.
And if we do, we only have a short time.
This is really a pivotal election to take back our constitutional republic, ensure that we have freedom in the future.
Because I feel like if they hold on to power now, It's going to be nearly impossible for us to get a constitutional republic back.
I was reading an essay about the American founding and the writer, a very good guy, said that in a constitutional republic, losing an election should not be like losing a war.
Because when you lose a war, you're at the mercy of the other side.
They get to decimate you, rip you off, take your stuff.
They pass arbitrary rules and you have absolutely no say in the matter.
Uh, however, in a constitutional republic, uh, losses are supposed to be temporary, and that's why, by and large, in all the years I've been in America, you lose an election, it's like, oh, well, you know what?
We need to try harder next time, we gotta organize better, we gotta do this, we gotta do that.
I think what you're saying is that these kind of guardrails of our republic are ...are or even have already collapsed.
Is that what you're saying?
And what about the Supreme Court, which appears to be at least something of a holdout against the trend you're describing?
Somewhat, but they're rather unpredictable, aren't they?
You can't really count on them to actually adhere to the Constitution.
I think that the bullying tactics used by the left has been successful in intimidating Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch to a certain degree.
Now, some of the other conservative justices are better, but as far as the Trump picks, I think they've been pretty Pretty effective in intimidating them into, you know, not always making the decision that we would have seen before they went through such volatile confirmations and were bullied and intimidated.
I would say that, yes, the guardrails are off.
Let's just think about it.
The politicization of these institutions that are supposed to serve as checks and balances.
Has gone so far and we've seen that.
I always say the Biden regime, or I have said for some time now, I'll say the Harris regime, has the CIA.
That's for sure.
They have the FBI.
They have the Department of Homeland Security.
They have the Pentagon.
They have all of these non-profits that are embedded into our elections in nearly every state in the union.
They have the media, Dinesh.
They have Hollywood.
They have largely had big tech, right?
There's the holdout on Elon Musk and X and maybe a couple others, but mostly they have Silicon Valley.
What institution does the right have that would put a stop to the authoritarian tactics and measures that we're seeing from the Biden-Harris regime and that will continue past the election?
I mean, I do agree with you that when you look at the institutions that are pushing back against this, they're few and far between.
I mean, presumably one could count Elon Musk's X, but again, X is only one platform.
What about Meta?
What about Instagram?
What about YouTube?
What about Google, which has the power to rig a search?
Anyone searching for the name Trump, Google decides what they see and what they don't see.
So I agree that there is a very grave problem that we're dealing with here.
And I also agree that this goes beyond the election because, let's say Trump wins.
The simple truth of it is, and let's say Republicans take the Senate and take the House.
All the institutional power that you describe remains largely intact and remains largely the property of the left and of the Democrats.
Isn't that right?
I absolutely agree.
And I'm not even sure.
I mean, look, Democrats like Jamie Raskin, and then as I noted a moment ago, General Michael Hayden, have already indicated what they plan to do should Donald Trump somehow, and I still think it's an uphill battle.
Do I think the people's with him?
Absolutely.
Do I think his support even surpasses 2016 and 2020 and now is greater in 2024?
I do.
But I also feel they've gotten better at their cheating tactics.
And I don't think there's been enough done to fix it.
But let's say because the support is so overwhelming, and I do feel like the moment with RFK Jr.
has been helpful from Friday and him endorsing Trump, I think that for people who had questions about, say, The vaccines and Operation Warp Speed, that kind of absolved some of that for him.
And also for America that's looking for a healing, right?
They're looking for hope.
That was a hopeful moment.
As skeptical as I am today, I found myself feeling that warm feeling of hope and optimism and the idea that America could be that country that we had years ago.
But let's say he prevails in the election.
They have already told you that they plan to fight it tooth and nail, whether that be jailing him, going ahead and putting him in prison, whether I think that being killing him still.
I don't think they're going to stop trying because I don't think they have stopped trying.
And look, the Secret Service continues to show that they're not in the business of really, really protecting him.
And then they planned the contest to the electoral count, which people are literally sitting in jail for right now.
But when you're a Democrat and when it's against Donald Trump, it's perfectly permissible by the law.
So I think that there will still be challenges.
And I don't I.
I don't discount that they would even create civil unrest in order to enact some kind of special security measures.
I always say, Dinesh, and I think you probably agree with me because you've seen it as much as I have, when they tell you something, when they tell you there will be civil war like General Michael Hayden just did on X, you should listen.
Because nine times out of ten, though they lie, though they lie all the time, when they tell you something like this, and you know that they're saying it and it sounds so off the wall, but nine times out of ten, you should listen because they're telling you what they're about to do.
And they did it in 2020 with the mail-in ballots and with the delaying the count, you'll recall.
As early as May of 2020, you have people like Stacey Abrams saying, oh, well, there's going to be so many mail-in ballots.
It's going to cause chaos.
And, you know, the counts won't be done for days and days and days.
And, you know, we've had in our elections, we never thought that you would take days and days and days to count like that in multiple states.
Right.
And that's exactly what happened.
And so many people were called, were called, were blinded.
But they had told us for months.
That they were going to do that.
And I asked the RNC chairwoman at the time, Ronna McDaniel, what are you doing to prepare for this?
Because they're telling us this is going to happen.
Are you already filing lawsuits against these massive mail-in ballot measures that they're putting in place that is totally illegal?
And they told me they had it under control.
They were on top of it.
And they weren't.
And I fear that I'm hearing a lot of the same false assurances from the RNC now related to 2024.
It seems that, you know, one way to look at this is that there are people who believe, these are the people who say things like, you know, nobody ever went wrong, you know, by underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
They sort of blame the American people for being super dumb, paying no attention to any of this going on.
So that, you know, you're in the position of kind of the wildebeest, where the lion keeps jumping and eating one of them, but the others are just pretending like it's all okay.
But I think what you're saying is, no, the people actually have kind of figured out that there are a lot of bad guys around, but the people who haven't gotten the message, or at least who haven't responded with anything like the appropriate degree of alarm and severity, is the GOP.
In other words, the behavior of the Republican Party is, to me, extremely mysterious because it's kind of like, you know, it's almost like in the old Western where the outlaws are already here, they're in the saloon, they're beating people up, they've taken over the proprietary store, you know, and then you've got the old sheriff.
That, to me, is the old GOP, right?
They know that something very serious is happening, but they refuse to respond with the appropriate degree of alarm and severity.
Now, why is that?
You know, that's a great analogy.
And I've thought a lot about this.
And I think they break up into different camps.
There's different motivations for what you could call a normie bias, right?
That everything's good.
Normalcy bias.
Everything's going to be just fine.
Now, some people are just simply paid.
To play that way, Dinesh.
They make a lot of money playing in this machine where the GOP always essentially loses.
In the end, they usually lose because even when they win, they still lose on policy, right?
And we know this because it's been one of the most frustrating trends for decades.
But then there are some people who aren't knowingly realizing they're being paid and flat out selling out, but because their job is to do this, whether it's campaigning, strategy, coming up with policy, supporting campaigns, supporting administrations.
If what we are saying is true about the state of our constitutional republic, the state of our elections, and the state of our institutions, if that's true, then they're basically obsolete.
They're serving no purpose and it's an existential crisis.
And then there are just some people within the GOP who are lazy and dumb.
There are some of those.
I think I think probably it's more one and two, right?
It's a split of one and two of people working in elections.
And then when you get the grassroots to come in and people who really see it for what it is, and I've been really amazed with the American people who were not politically involved before, especially in Georgia, because, you know, I cover that extremely closely, the push to clean up the elections in Georgia.
And I will say, Dinesh, these people who come from all different backgrounds, we're talking about a A pizza shop owner.
We're talking about a stay-at-home mom.
We're talking about a retired engineer.
A former, yeah, a former military intel guy.
But, you know, people from all walks of life who were not involved in the political process.
But when 2020 happened and they saw that this was wrong and they knew it was wrong, the engineer knew the numbers didn't add up.
You know, the pizza shop owner who has to do his own books says, this doesn't make sense.
Um, but when the grassroots come in with common sense and say, hey, this is a right and we're willing to help you fix it, they are pushed away by the political operatives who are already working on all of this.
They don't want help from them.
And I think to them again, they're a threat of their own.
Of their own effort and of their own, you know, use within the machine.
So you have this butting up against each other and it's making it hard to get anything done.
And there are people, you know, people who are really concerned about the state of our country who are willing to come forward and they're being pushed away.
And we're seeing that kind of play out right now, particularly in the Trump campaign and the RNC.
There is a power struggle going on right now because there are those who realize, look, we're in a bad situation and we have to act with unprecedented courage, faith and effort and work harder than we've ever worked before for this election.
And then there are those who are making a lot of money who don't want to let go of power.
And there are those who just want to go because this is how they do things.
So we're in the next few weeks.
I think we're going to see how this plays out.
I'm a little bit more encouraged than I say I would I was 2 to 3 weeks ago by the people working on working on the Trump side and the RNC because there have been some changes made and there I do believe.
I know I sound like such a doom and gloom person, and I sound like such a pessimist sometimes, but I just want people to understand the situation that we're in, so you can wake up, you can prepare, you can try to get in the fight, because I do believe there is hope, but it's gonna take everybody, and it takes a real, a real, looking at the real situation to understand what we're in, and Trump's team needs to do that, and the RNC has to do that.
I agree completely, guys.
I mean, obviously, if we're having a debate about whether we are approaching the precipice or already over the precipice, you know that the situation is pretty dire.
Guys, I've been talking to Emerald Robinson.
Follow her on X at Emerald Robinson, the website Emerald.TV.
Emerald, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh, so much for having me.
I'm now moving to Chapter 9 of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, and he begins with a discussion of Christmas in the town of Tuskegee.
Now, his description is a little bit shocking because he begins by saying that all over Tuskegee, people are celebrating Christmas, but they are not celebrating Christmas.
Let's see how he talks about it.
He says that, by and large, he says everybody is drunk.
He says that it's difficult for people to get any work done from the day before Christmas until New Year.
He says all over the town you hear Gunshots from pistols, guns, gunpowder.
So now this is not really fireworks, it's people discharging their weapons, very often in the air.
But what Booker T is getting at is two things.
One is he says, quote, the sacredness of the season seemed to have been almost wholly lost sight of.
So that's one of his points.
And it's a religious point, it's a spiritual point.
Hey, like what's Christmas all about?
It's about the birth of Christ.
No one's really talking about the birth of Christ.
There appears to be a lot of drunkenness and revelry and gunshots going off in the air.
Now Booker T. Washington immediately gives you the reason for why this is the case.
And he goes, this is exactly the way it was for hundreds of years, well at least 150 years, under slavery.
Under slavery, the one holiday that was consistently celebrated on all the plantations was Christmas.
But again, it wasn't celebrated in a religious manner, at least not for the slaves.
The slaves were basically given plenty of food, even more to drink.
And he says, Booker T. Washington says that under slavery, not just the men, but even the women were fully expected to be drunk.
And drunk for the whole week in between Christmas to New Year.
And now, of course, we're not in slavery anymore.
It's not that Booker T. wants to dwell on it, but he wants to give you the reason for how these kind of customary and cultural practices continue.
They endure beyond slavery and they are, I think Booker T is suggesting, although he doesn't explicitly say, the habits developed by blacks under slavery are going to be an obstacle in moving forward even in the decades after slavery.
He gives a couple more examples of this.
He says he goes to visit a guy and he says in the cabin, which has nothing in it, all he finds is a jug of cheap whiskey.
And he says he was even more surprised, this is again his sort of slightly sly type of humor, or wry is probably a better word for it.
He goes, he was a little surprised to find out that the husband was a local minister.
So the guy is a clergyman but apparently imbibing heavily of the whiskey in an otherwise empty cabin.
In other homes he says members of the family had bought a new pistol.
And he says in the majority of cases there was nothing to be seen in the cabin to remind one of the coming of the Savior except that the people had seized work in the fields and were lounging about in their homes.
And he said there were often also fights in the street where people would either get shot or they would cut each other up with razors.
So here you can see Booker T. Washington viewing with Some sadness, but also some historical perspective.
Like this is the kind of madness.
And he goes, he goes, how can a people like this be expected to advance?
He says, when I was making the Christmas rounds, I met an old colored man who was one of the numerous local preachers.
Remember, everybody wants to be a preacher.
Nobody wants to work in the fields.
I've been called to preach.
And he says, and this man tried to convince me from the experience that Adam had in the Garden of Eden that God had cursed all labor and that therefore it was a sin for any man to work.
For this reason, the man said he wanted to do as little work as possible.
Now, Booker T. doesn't bother to analyze the biblical passage and show that that is actually not what God was getting at at all.
But he is simply diagnosing a kind of a malady, a malaise, a condition among the newly freed blacks.
They had to work under slavery.
They were forced to work.
They weren't paid for their work.
So instead of saying, now I need to work harder because I get to work for myself, some of them say, well, That was all very sinful, what happened under slavery.
Let's go back and read the book of Genesis.
Clearly, we're not meant to work at all.
Well, how can the people who adopt that ethos or philosophy be expected to advance at all?
Now, right away Booker T. Washington makes a pivot and he says, in our school, meaning at Tuskegee, we made a special effort to teach our students the meaning of Christmas.
The season now has a new meaning.
And then he goes on to say that what really impresses him is to watch the teachers and students at Tuskegee administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the unfortunate.
So there's another helpless old woman who's 75 years old.
She couldn't rebuild her cabin.
The students and teachers at the school volunteer.
They rebuild it for her.
There's a very poor student who catches a horrible cold because he needs a coat.
Booker T says, the next morning two coats were sent to my office for him.
And then, also continuing in this hopeful mode, Booker T says, I have referred to the disposition on the part of the white people in the town of Tuskegee to make the school a real part of the community in which it was located.
Now he's crediting the white people.
But the credit really belongs to him.
Why?
Because he, Booker T, realized that, you know, it's one thing to go get money for the school from the Northeast, go to New York, go to Boston.
But how is the school going to be accepted in Tuskegee, Alabama, if you don't make friends with the people of Tuskegee, Alabama, not just the blacks?
In other words, he doesn't want this to be, it is a black school, it's for black students, for the most part.
However, he wants people to think and believe, sincerely, that the school is there to serve the whole community, that the blacks who graduate from the school are going to become productive workers in that society, and help the South, and help the country, and help their community.
So, he says, while we wanted to make friends in Boston, for example, we also wanted to make white friends in Tuskegee.
And then he says that the Tuskegee School at the present time has no warmer and more enthusiastic friends anywhere than it has among the white citizens of Tuskegee and throughout the state of Alabama and the entire South.
Booker T is very clear.
He says, from the first, I've advised our people in the South to make friends in a straightforward, manly way with their next-door neighbor.
Now, when you read Booker T. Washington, even though you're reading this kind of seemingly homespun autobiography, you have to read carefully.
Almost every word is significant.
He wants you to make friends.
But not just make friends in the old way because in the old way there was a kind of built-in hierarchy.
The white man was on top, the black man was at the bottom.
It was sometimes said that even the most lowly white guy, the most ignorant white guy who couldn't hold a job was nevertheless had a higher status than even a reasonably educated black guy.
So, this was the totem pole of slavery.
So, even though Booker T. Washington has been accused of replicating it, surrendering to the white man, it's very clear what he's saying.
He goes, let's make friends with the white man in a straightforward, manly way.
And what he means by this is, on a plane of equality.
Hey, I'm your neighbor.
Hey, I am here to be a productive member of society.
I'm not here to cause any trouble any more than you are.
And we can be friends as long as that productive role that I'm playing is accepted and is appreciated.
Just as, in other words, he wants to have friendship on the basis of true reciprocity.
And by the way, that's the only way to have friendship at all.
You can't really have friendship between a master and a slave.
The friendship is fake.
The master could be kind, the slave could be obedient and friendly, but the disproportion of power is so great that no real friendship is possible.
Friendship is rooted in a certain parity between the two people who are friends.
And then finally Booker T makes this observation.
He says, at the end of three months, enough was secured to repay the loan of $250 to General Marshall, and within two months more we had secured the entire $500 and had received a deed of the 100 acres of land.
Remember that he wanted to buy this dilapidated plantation with a broken down church, a broken down cabin, and he had to borrow money to do that.
Not only did he pay General Marshall back in two months, but he also got the full $500 so that they now own the property outright.
So what are you seeing here?
You're seeing that Booker T. Washington is showing by example.
He's not going to incur debt.
When he's forced to, he'll take debt.
But on the other hand, his first goal... Notice, he could have said, hey, listen, I've got the 500 bucks.
We're going to build another building on the property.
And then we'll, you know, we'll eventually pay off the debt.
This would be kind of the approach of the US Congress.
Not the approach of Booker T. Washington.
First, I retire the debt, and then I build up.
So what he's constantly emphasizing is the importance, and this is just as true for a society as it's true for an individual, to build on a foundation that is secure and firm.
And if you don't do that, ultimately you endanger what you are building, because it can all be relatively easily, and sometimes in an unexpected way, wiped out.
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