Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the Libertarian Party's cultural fracture over race and culture wars, critiquing the party's avoidance of progressive narratives. They condemn government hypocrisy regarding masks at funerals versus protests, citing Dr. Fauci's double standards alongside the 32% GDP drop blamed on lockdowns rather than the virus. The hosts argue that a unified elite—spanning media, Hollywood, and Democrats—orchestrated election interference to block Trump, fearing his unpredictability threatens their control over the "deep state" and exposes past secrets. Ultimately, they suggest economic collapse and scapegoating are tools used by this coordinated establishment to maintain power while ordinary citizens suffer. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Cultural Issues and Underwear00:12:58
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, and I also happen to be the most consistent motherfucker you know.
And I'm joined by the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
Look at me.
I'm glowing.
That's how good my life's going.
I got, I got a night.
I just walk out on the street with light and brightness that I'm sharing with the world.
Is that like, are you facing a window or whatever?
No, that's not the lighting.
That's my new look.
That's what I do now.
I just try and that's the effects of COVID.
Talks about shooting people.
You got to make sure they know you're white.
No, and there's no chance they could even, you know, under any circumstances, get it wrong.
Like, no, that's a white dude.
Yeah.
And, well, there you go.
You're the most privileged of all of us.
Okay, so there's a few things I wanted to talk about on today's episode, but I thought I would start by just giving a few thoughts on our last podcast that we had with Spike Cohen, who is, of course, the vice presidential nominee on the Libertarian Party.
And I really, you know, I've been talking for a while now, and we've done, we did a podcast on this just recently on the kind of split within libertarians and the, you know, kind of, I guess, cultural divide between the different camps within the libertarian world.
And man, was that on full display?
I was really kind of shocked by the response to the podcast.
So people, you know, a lot of our listeners were like, couldn't stand them.
Like thought, they were just like, I can't stand this guy.
A ton of negative comments, far more than I expected, to be honest.
I maybe didn't realize how much people were fed up with the cultural views that Spike was, you know, putting forward.
And then there were, you know, like the left libertarians were like, this is the greatest thing ever.
The just incredible.
And then everybody in, like I saw in the Mises caucus page, it was basically like just like a split.
Like some people were like, hey, I agree with him on the cultural issues.
Some agree with, I agree with me on the cultural issues.
But we thought it was really great that you guys had this conversation and he's a great champion for liberty and stuff like that.
And I just thought it was kind of like it was really fascinating in a way because we, you know, truthfully, if you think about it, right?
The people who are listening to this podcast who are like really like, we're just like, I can't stand this guy, listen to my show.
Like, that's what they're here for.
They're listening to me and you.
And in terms of policy, there's basically no difference between what he was promoting and what I promote.
There's, I mean, perhaps there were a couple minor differences, but even down to the detail of how to deal with the riots, he basically agreed with like, okay, we should let, we shouldn't prosecute people who defend their themselves and their property with weapons.
The local police should, you know, arrest people if they're violating people or property.
And, you know, like it was basically the same thing.
And it just, it almost goes to show how powerful the cultural issues are, even within libertarianism on both sides of it, right?
Like there were, I saw left libertarians who were just so thrilled that he was talking about systemic racism and that he was on board with, you know, like addressing those issues and internalized racism and things like this.
And then right-wing libertarians, I suppose, for lack of a better term, who were like furious about that and were like, well, this guy's just a social justice warrior.
I want no part of this.
I'm out.
And to me, you know, obviously I disagree with Spike on the cultural stuff.
But really, like, I just like, I'm like, oh, I really loved what he said about war and the Fed and the role of government and all of that shit.
So I don't know.
It's just interesting to see where these all these different camps come down on this issue.
And you would think, right?
Like, like, like, if you just take a step back and think about it, you would think if you're like such a small percentage of the population are like libertarians or anarcho-capitalists.
I mean, that's like a very tiny percentage of the population.
And it's just interesting that if you find someone else who's basically lines up with all of your policies, these cultural issues are still so red hot that they'll make people be like, well, no, that's a deal breaker for me and vice versa.
The other side, like I would be a deal breaker for a lot of the left libertarians.
And this is just, you know, obviously I have my feelings on it, but it's really wild to see it kind of play out like so dramatically.
I, you know, I would say I was a little bit conflicted about how to handle the podcast because honestly, I wanted to put Spike on the spot about some of the questions.
But then I kind of felt like I don't know if it even makes sense to push that hard on some of these issues.
The truth is that the Libertarian Party is not going to run the style campaign that I would like them to in terms of how they talk about the culture war and issues of race and things like that.
Now, by the way, it's not as if I'm saying they should jump into the culture war on the right side, the right wing side.
I don't like, I would think that was stupid if they were just posting like all lives matter or something like that.
I'd be like, this is like completely not going to do anything positive.
But they're not going to talk about these issues the way I want them to.
But he does have a really great message when it comes to ending wars, cutting the budget, ending the Fed, getting government out of our lives.
All of that's really positive, really positive stuff.
So I don't know.
There's not like, do I really want to press him about all this other stuff, which I know they're not going to run the way I would want them to run anyway?
I kind of just want, you know, to get him on the record on where he stands and then be like, okay, well, listen, I hope you can attract as many people as you can to that.
You know, I hope you can introduce as many people to these ideas with the way you're running as possible.
I guess part of it is just that I don't, you know, I believe, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe if someone were to run the way I would like them to run, I think they would get a lot more negative attention.
I think they would get labeled all the nasty words in the book.
You know, you get called racist and all of this other shit a lot more.
But I also think you would attract a lot more people and wake a lot more people up to the message.
That's just kind of my feeling.
But I don't know.
That's how I think.
What did you think, by the way, of the podcast?
I know you didn't finish it, but what'd you think of Spike Combo?
Well, first, in the first 20 minutes of this thing, I got to say, I was getting jealous.
You guys were finishing each other's sentences.
I was like, man, these guys are hitting it off.
This isn't good for your boy, Robbie, the fire, over here.
Your spot is only safe, Robbie.
Oh, thanks.
All right.
Good to know.
But then when you guys transitioned into what we were being most critical of them for, I still, I mean, towards the end of it, it seems like he did somewhat admit to the fact that they are what we were kind of warning against is, hey, you can't win with these people.
So let's not even try and placate to them.
I think that's a losing game.
And towards the end of it, he does kind of describe where we are trying to placate these people because we think that there's a way that we can win them over with our messaging.
So that doesn't change the fact that we kind of did call them out for that strategy and said that we think it's a losing strategy and that these are people that we'd rather be taking head on head on because to me, they're the worst of all of America.
Maybe war stuff's worse and maybe Fed stuff's worse.
But in terms of the people that are coming for my job and the people that are really changing my lifestyle, it's those group of people.
So I don't really know that they're the ones that I want to team up with.
And if there's some, if there's ground to stand on, it's against them.
In terms of the conversation about anti-race, like the anti-racist thing, that I almost find, I'm starting to get a little confused on it because like I myself am anti-rac.
I don't like, I don't want anyone to be racist.
Yes, okay, I'm fine, sure.
Yeah, let's do things that should be anti-rape, but like, but then he's also not discovering the government being anti-racist, like, because, and then it goes back to the way that you and I would normally define the anti-racist, which is like, unless you swear allegiance to this thing, then you're not.
And then that seems like anti-free thought.
So I'm a little bit confused on that, on that topic.
And exactly, it seemed like they were jumping through mental hoops to try and make it seem like that fit into a libertarian narrative.
But then when we pressed it, you pressed him on it enough, he admitted to the fact that they're trying to bring these people in and that there's a way to do it by using this language.
And so that circles back to exactly what we were saying.
Oh, we really don't like that.
Yeah, it just seems like, and look, I do think, and I'm not trying to knock Spike when I say this, but I do think that politics, it unfortunately just brings out this thing where people get a little bit slippery almost by necessity.
Like you just have to.
You can't admit certain things.
Someone like me or you has so much more freedom to just say what they want to say than somebody running for office.
And people have certainly in the LP, it seems like the vast majority of people have bought into this idea that we cannot go against the left-wing narrative about systemic racism and the oppressor versus oppressed classes.
And that just cannot happen.
We cannot do that.
It will turn off everybody.
And also acknowledging systemic racism is the pawn piece by which they're going to be exploitive of you and I.
And I know that.
That is what they're trying to say.
Hey, there's this thing that needs to be corrected.
So even if we're aggressively anti-white, well, we need to correct for this systemic racism.
That is the thing that like, so for us to use that language to try and accomplish a different goal, it's foolish because like, let's understand what they're trying to do with it.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second and thank our awesome sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear.
You know, we're all about liberty on this podcast, but if you want some liberty for your man parts down there, you got to get a pair of sheath underwear.
It's the most comfortable underwear I've ever owned in my life.
It's all I wear at this point.
It's got cooling fabric.
It's just a must-own for the summer months.
It was developed by a soldier in Iraq where you can imagine you would really want some cooling underwear.
And now they're here.
They're supporting our show.
They have a dual pouch that kind of keeps everything where it's supposed to be.
I'll tell you, I was a little skeptical about it.
It's a game changer.
I love it.
Keeps all your parts exactly where you want them.
And for those of you who may not be interested in keeping man parts separate, perhaps you feel like it's a family that should be kept together.
Well, you can just wear them like normal underwear as well.
You don't have to use it either way.
It's the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you've ever owned in your life.
They also have a line of women's underwear as well.
Go to sheathunderwear.com.
Use the promo code problem20.
That's going to get you 20% off your order.
It's going to be the best pair of underwear you've ever owned.
Like me, I bet you're going to just switch to it full-time.
Sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Well, I also, you know, I just, I think a lot of people, and this happens, I noticed this in the LP more so than with libertarians outside of the Libertarian Party, where it does seem like oftentimes they're very removed from the moment, from the culture, from all of these other things.
I had a really hard time believing that Spike didn't know what tweet I was referencing when I went to the point.
Control, Borders, and Victimhood00:15:37
No, he was playing that off because I need to acknowledge it was not being lawyerly, but he did a good job with it.
I suppose, but it's like also to say that, well, I'm looking at the data and it seems to me that it's been more of a benefit than a negative.
And you're like, but are you like, are you aware that like Tim Poole did a whole episode on how terrible that was?
And this is somebody who gets hundreds of thousands of downloads.
That so many people, us included, were like critical of this.
Like if you look at the tweet, the tweet got ratioed like a motherfucker to the point that she had to come back in and tweet out something else to clarify, hey, I didn't mean the group of Marxists, which really wasn't most people's problem with the tweet to begin with.
But so I understand where, and I want to be sympathetic to Spike here, where if you're running for office, particularly when you're the VP running for office, you can't really, like, just hypothetically, if he didn't know what I was talking about and did think it was wrong, he couldn't really come on here and be like, yeah, that was really stupid.
Joe needs to get control of her Twitter.
I'm okay with the move of not acknowledging what you were talking about until you said it first, because the worst thing that can happen is there's some worse tweet or some worse thing that he disagrees with more.
And then that comes out of his mouth because that's what he thinks you're talking about.
So it's always better to let the other guy clarify what the criticism is.
Sure.
But by the way, with what I'm describing with the systemic racism being a principle by which they're going to enact new policies that work to our detriment, I want everyone here to know that Joe Biden is in talks or he's talked about that at the Federal Reserve, they need a third mandate.
It's not enough like this whole employment or whatever.
The Federal Reserve actually needs to start monitoring the economic opportunities of black individuals.
And it's like a systemic racism mandate that, unless the economic output of the economy in some way reflects that it's not even minorities, I don't believe.
I believe it's specifically African-American individuals.
If African-American individuals, if the economic policies of the Fed have an end result where African Americans are not, I guess, doing as well proportionately as everyone else, they need to enact new policies.
Now, if you start to unravel the framework of the Fed and how none of their tools work and the power that they have and how they use these things to basically just give over money to the big banks and bail them out, and now you're going to create some new metric, which doesn't even exist.
Like you're already working with like interest rates are a real thing.
The Fed's ability to control them or the ability to target the exact one that would be good for the market.
Well, that's false, but at least the starting point is a real thing.
Can you imagine what the Fed might do working off of this?
Like, I mean, what economic reporting is going to come into that so that they have the right metrics by which to try and correct against that with tools that their tools don't even work.
But you got to like start looking at the layers of how ridiculous of a concept that is.
Well, that's what it's like, it's like just being aware of the moment that you're living in and what's real going on and what people are proposing.
Yeah.
And that's what I just think is kind of tone-deaf about it.
And it's just, look, man, here's my thing, right?
I understand the point that Spike's making about saying, well, look, if I go into these rallies and I say it's not racism, it's just the state, they're going to tune me out.
And truthfully speaking, from what Spike made pretty clear when I was pushing him on the tweet, he really is saying it's not racism, it's the state, or at least that's what he's saying when he's on the show with me.
Now, I did read back his quote and I didn't push him that hard on it, but he basically said, We're not saying you have to call somebody out every time you see racism.
But what he tweeted was being anti-racist means calling it out when you see racism.
Now, of course, he didn't, you know, this puts you in the weird box where it's like, okay, well, what?
I mean, are you calling out any of the racism of Black Lives Matter, which is a very identitarian movement, which speaks about white people in large, you know, as a collective?
Are you calling out the systemic racism of affirmative action or anything like that?
Like that meets the definition of systemic racism far more than the war on drugs does.
But when I ask him about that, he goes into a long history lesson about the evils of slavery and Jim Crow.
And I'm just saying a lot of people, not people who deny that slavery and Jim Crow were horribly, you know, racist and evil institutions, but a lot of people are just kind of sick of this.
They're sick of this narrative being used to paint America in 2020 as this horrible white supremacist country, which it's not.
And, you know, there's just, there's these things where Spike uses the language of left-wingers.
You know, at one point we were talking about Black Lives Matter and he started talking about black people and then he mentioned, you know, disenfranchised people.
Like he mentioned gay people and sex workers at one point.
And you're like, oh, like, what?
What do gays and sex workers have to do with us talking about black people?
Like, why are they even lumped into the same group?
This is only in this left-wing ideology that people even think of these things in the same and even something, by the way, I know this is nidpicking, but even just calling them sex workers.
Like what?
It's weirdly like taking the language that is really associated with a movement that I just don't really like or agree with.
Of course.
But I mean, like, just calling, like, I don't know, I just say prostitution, just because that's like what people have been saying forever and all of them.
Great.
Lot lizards, great term.
But again, okay, that's kind of silly and nidpicky.
But I guess my point is that I understand being concerned about what will turn the left wing off.
I also make it impossible to appeal to these guys.
You know, despite what some of my detractors might say, I'm not that bad at doing outreach to the left.
I mean, I got a great response from when I went on Jimmy Doerr's show, a really great response from his left-wing audience.
I got a phenomenal response when I was on Rogan.
I don't know if people really consider him left-wing or not, but I mean, he was a Bernie supporter in the last election.
Are you there?
Is that me?
Yeah, no, I'm back.
Sorry.
I lost you.
No problem.
So I'm saying, like, you know, Rogan was a guy who supported Bernie Sanders, who was very, you know, complimentary of a lot of left-wing people.
I got a great response on his show.
I understand how to do outreach to the left.
And I also understand that without compromising what you believe, there's certain things you'd rather present to them than others.
You know, like I get that.
I just think that there's like a blind spot to the LP about the same thing about the right wingers.
Like, okay, I understand you don't want to turn off the left wingers.
But when you say being, you know, the anti-racist tweet, do you realize how much that turns off the right-wingers?
So I'm also concerned about not turning right-wingers off.
Like, I don't want to turn anyone off who we could possibly attract to the message of liberty and all the great policy stuff that Spike stands for.
I just think that, you know, look, even part of the reason why I'm concerned with when LP guys talk about open borders is because, well, first of all, I'm not for open borders.
I mean, ultimately, I'm for private borders.
But I just think you're like, do you realize that if you present this just, hey, I'm for open borders, you're losing like everybody from right of center on to the right end of the spectrum.
And that's like, again, I know that a lot of the left libertarians' attitude is kind of like, good, we don't want those racists over here.
But I'd like to convert anyone we can from left or right.
I don't really think we're in a position to like turn people away if they could potentially be convinced that liberty is the way to go.
And in the same sense that you wouldn't want to just lead with, well, we believe in the right to discriminate to the left.
Like I get that.
I get that's not where you'd want to lead with.
But you also want to find a way to not lead with this stuff that's going to turn a whole other group of people off.
And I feel like there's just, I don't, for whatever reason in the LP, we're just not getting candidates like that.
And it's, I think it's too bad.
I think also part of it, like, if you're in sales, let's say you got a product that is high quality, but more expensive.
So you got to sell it on the quality.
Whereas if you got a product that's cheap, then you just go off the price.
Why are we trying to appeal to these people's like, I don't know what the fuck they're selling, but we got something better.
And it's called freedom.
And it's called economic prosperity called You Can Forge Your Own Path.
And there's a ton of stuff that we have to offer.
So why are we trying to sell their bullshit?
Let's sell what we have.
Let's educate people to it.
We're offering a lot of value here.
Go out and explain that to people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I guess like, again, you got to find a way.
And I understand that like the way I do it maybe isn't perfect.
And I know that the way I sell the message of liberty turns some people off, but it certainly has appealed to a whole lot of people.
And I think that when you say these things, it's almost like if you if you come out and you say something like that would have been a talking point in 1992 or in 1968 or something like that.
And you just say it in 2020.
It's like, you really haven't like kind of caught up to what's going on in the culture.
You're kind of living in this past.
And when you say things like, you know, black people are constantly told by society that they're not as valuable as others.
It just, I think it rings untrue to a lot of people in 2020.
I mean, like, do you notice any part of society that's telling white people that they're guilty of original sin, that they inherently have privilege?
I mean, like, again, like white fragility is like a bestseller.
It's like a very influential book.
And so it's, again, I just think it's like you have to find a way to, at least if you're going to get into this culture war stuff, to find a message to both sides that tells both sides that their best bet is liberty.
Like, okay, you can't have everything you want.
You're not going to declare victory in the culture war.
But what you're going to do is we're going to declare peace in this war and you can live your life the way you want to.
And you don't have to feel demonized for doing so.
And I think that that's like both sides of the culture war can get that message out of libertarianism.
And I just, I wish the LP was a little bit better at that.
But honestly, you know, I just go, okay, Spike certainly is.
He's a good communicator.
And it almost makes you wonder.
I can't believe it's that hard to find that in the Libertarian Party, but he's like one of the only ones that I've really seen in a position like this who you at least go, okay.
He was so good on explaining how bad the Fed is for people.
Like he had those, he just had great stats about, hey, there's all these federal policies that have done poorly.
Here should be their message.
They should go, hey, I want you as an individual to be able to take more control over your health, your well-being, your economic prosperity.
And I want to unwind the Fed.
Here's the detriments of the Fed.
Here's what they've done to your education standards.
Here's what they've done to your currency.
That's why I want to return more power to you and your state so that you can have more control over your own life and its outcomes because government's done a poor job of that for you.
Yeah.
No, I like that.
That should be the message.
Let people have more control over their own fate.
By the way, for people wondering, Rob's having a little some internet issues, so we cut his video so things come out a little bit smoother.
I stopped blowing and I don't want to be seen like this.
We're just a regular white guy.
White guy.
So, yeah, I mean, look, I'll say this.
The only real substantial policy disagreement that I had with Spike, or not even policy, but just libertarian philosophy disagreement, because everything else, it's not even like really a true disagreement.
It's just, I don't know.
I just, sometimes I think libertarian guys like him are really red-pilled on the state, but really blue-pilled on the culture.
And there is this thing, like I talked about before, like the cultural Marxist thing or whatever you want to call it, where you just have this really dominant view in your mind.
And I think to some degrees, it's kind of under the surface, like not exactly subconscious, but it's not exactly like in the front of your mind where people think that say like, you know, one group has to be the victimized group and the other ones have to be the oppressors.
And so it's very hard and uncomfortable for them to ever call out something that the victim group could be doing wrong.
So if we talk about the looting or the violence of the mobs, you have to like kind of immediately retreat to like, well, this is what the police want.
You know, it's like they're the ones really causing this.
Or maybe it's like outside agitators or it's some white people coming in and doing that.
Or maybe it's a far right winger coming in and doing that.
And it's just very hard to ever say, call out just black people who are looting.
It's a little bit like.
Why can't they be called out for their bad behavior too?
I'm for calling everybody out with like, I'm all about equality, you know?
It's kind of like I think they say most pedophiles had been pedophiled against.
And that's kind of how they end up with that orientation.
So that argument would almost be like pedophile shows up in the court.
Well, we can't prosecute this guy because he's the victim.
When he was a child, someone was, so he can't do anything wrong.
I guess he shouldn't have done this to this person, but he's a victim.
Well, that's the problem.
That's one of the main problems with the oppressor versus oppressed narrative is that quite often it's just enormously more complicated than that.
And people who are oppressed turn around and oppress other people.
And people who have been treated shitty end up treating people around them shitty.
And it becomes a very complicated thing.
Which means it's just a false criteria.
Exactly.
And a lot of times people from the supposed oppressor class actually end up really helping out people in the oppressed class.
So it's just, it's much more complicated than all of that.
But again, these are just, you know, I don't know.
I guess I just have to give up on expecting the LP to be kind of on my page with some of these issues.
The only issue, as I was getting to before, in terms of a fundamental libertarian principle that I really strongly disagreed with Spike on was that he said that he did not think blocking traffic was a violation of the non-aggression principle.
And I absolutely think it is.
And I really think there's like no, there's no other way around it.
Now, of course, people can like any other violation of the non-aggression principle, it has to be applied within reason.
So I'm not suggesting that someone crossing the street, if they, you know, miss the light by five seconds, is violating the non-aggression principle.
But if you in a group of people get into the street and detain somebody and tell them that they cannot pass and they must turn around, that is absolutely the initiation of aggression again or aggression against that person.
Absolutely.
Now, you can say that if there's no other car behind them and they can easily just turn around, that they can avoid conflict.
The Ticket to Inclusion00:02:16
And that might be true, but that's not really the question.
Listen, that is like you, obviously things get a little bit murkier on government property, but not that much murkier.
Like if you punch someone on the face on a public street, that's still an assault.
Doesn't matter who owned the street, but you have no right to enforce rules on property that was expropriated from the taxpayers.
You have absolutely no right to do that.
And it's interesting to see people like Spike, like the open borders type, all of a sudden say it's not an act of aggression to stand in the middle of the road and tell someone they have to turn back.
I wonder how he would feel applying that logic to immigration.
I mean, we're not surrounding them according to Spike's logic, right?
We're just telling them they have to go back to Mexico.
So anyway, I just think it's absolutely a violation of the non-aggression principle.
And if you're in a mob of people who are shouting at the cars while you're doing it, and if there are cars behind them and they can't easily pull out and they're trapped there, there's just no question that that's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
And so I think that should be called out.
I think sometimes people who are coming from it the way Spike does don't want to call that an act of aggression because then it would lead to some, you know, it would make them have to have some takes that they don't feel super comfortable.
We're trying to include these people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look, I mean, again, at this point, this is the ticket.
It's not the ticket that I, you know, supported at the beginning of this campaign.
This is what they are.
I hope they do more good for the liberty movement than bad.
I don't know.
We'll see how it goes.
It's just it's a tough, it's a tough time.
When you're in the middle of a culture war and you don't really have a strong cultural message, you're going to have trouble.
And it's interesting to see even within the libertarian movement, like the thing that's so interesting to me is that even like, say, the like the left-wing libertarians, they were like thrilled that Spike was talking about systemic racism and they, you know, are not fans of mine.
Quitting Nicotine with Lucy Gum00:02:54
And then a lot of the people who are fans with my are mine, same thing.
They like hate that stuff about him.
And it's like, I don't know, guys, we did spend like, you know, almost a half hour talking about war and the Fed and all of this stuff.
And even to you guys, that was all drowned out in terms of importance by the cultural stuff.
And so you can imagine to the general public, like they're just much more moved by the culture war than they are by any of this other stuff, which is somewhat tragic to me.
But I do understand it's important.
Like even when you were saying, Rob, when you were like, well, you know, because like as a comedian, you're here and you're like, well, I don't know.
I mean, these are the people who are going to like come for my job and come for my livelihood at some point and cheer if they ruin me, you know?
And so this is, you'd imagine how most people feel when they're like, well, this is actually what affects, you know, my life.
Now, of course, all that other stuff affects their life too, but it's just a little bit more abstract and the culture is like right in front of their face.
So that's going to be the challenge for the Libertarian Party this year.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Lucy.co.
Our newest sponsor, Lucy Nicotine, it's a company founded by former smokers who are finally making tobacco alternatives that don't suck.
It's the year 2020.
Get rid of your old cigarettes, unplug your vape, throw out your can of dip, and go get some Lucy nicotine gum or lozenges that actually taste great.
I can swear by this stuff.
I have tried nicotine gums in the past.
They're just awful.
They would make me nauseous.
The thought of them would make me sick.
Lucy nicotine gum really tastes great.
Go give it a shot.
Everybody, look, nobody wants to be on these nicotine products anymore.
You want to quit.
This is going to help you do that.
It's the real deal.
A subscription to Lucy comes directly to your door each month.
It's that simple.
It's 2020.
Lucy has delivery down.
Use the promo code problem and you'll get your first trial order of gum or lozenges at the lowest price they're allowed by law to charge you.
The government has rules, believe it or not, the wonderful government has some rules against giving nicotine away for free.
So the team at Lucy is working with us at gas to get you your first trial order of gum for right around a dollar and lozenges for right around $2.
Go to lucy.co.
Use the promo code problem at checkout.
Get rid of your old SIGs or vapes and live a healthier life.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, so let's talk about a couple other things.
Can I plug a live date before we do the next topic?
Yeah, of course, absolutely.
Hell yeah.
So firstly, Summer Porch Tour is in section.
Run your mouth podcast.
Check it out.
We're going out.
We're doing porches and I'm lining up some outdoor comedy shows.
First one is near Baltimore.
It's like an hour drive from Washington, D.C.
It's in a big open backyard.
So, you know, you can socially distance.
You can bring your chair.
Filibuster at a Funeral00:05:44
That's going to be on August 21st.
And then August 22nd, I'm near Philadelphia, also doing a backyard show with some pals.
So if you live in those areas, you want to come to the show, email me, robsnewsroom at gmail.com.
It's $10 tickets and I'll email you back with the show info.
Very cool.
Very cool.
Go see Rob Bernstein, everybody.
Absolutely hilarious comedian.
And check out Run Your Mouth.
Great podcast.
Okay.
You've got a show to plug.
Don't you got a show in Pennsylvania with Lewis or something?
Oh, yeah.
I'll plug that on the next episode because I don't have the information in front of me.
But yes, I am doing a gig with Lewis co-headlining in Pennsylvania coming up soon.
I think it's August 18th, I believe.
I'll tweet the info for that out and I'll mention it on the next show.
So there were two deaths recently that I thought were interesting and said a little something about where we're at in this wonderful country of ours.
So John Lewis died, as people probably know, and he had a big funeral.
I don't know.
Did you see any of the speeches from the funeral, Rob?
So I know that he passed away, and I also know that it was newsworthy.
It's not one of the topics I checked out till you told me we were going to talk about it.
I went and I watched a little bit of Obama and he really turned on the blackness.
Like it was like a totally different Obama.
He was coming in with a different accent.
There's a few different Obamas.
All these people too, like Hillary Clinton, all of them, they've got a few different vernaculars that they use when advantageous.
The filibuster call is immensely interesting, especially as it looks like the Dems might flip the Senate.
That's scary to me.
I don't like that policy in any way, but it's, I just thought that that's such an interesting one because both sides lose.
It's an erosion of freedom to take that away.
So it's a weird card to try and play when you think you're going to have, you know, the Senate to get rid of the filibuster.
Yeah, I could not believe, but I guess I shouldn't even be surprised at this point, but just how unbelievably politicized Obama's entire speech was that there was so little.
I mean, you know, he did talk about John Lewis, the man, a little bit, but it was like right into this is why you need a vote.
He's talking about gerrymandering.
He's talking about the filibuster, like all of these things.
Like it's a funeral.
I just, can you imagine, just as a regular person, like if someone you really cared about died and then someone started coming and just giving a political speech and like inserting all of this at their funeral, wouldn't you find that like profoundly disrespectful and just in bad taste?
And I got to say, not if you stand for the shit.
Like if I don't know, if you were to go and I'd start talking about liberty, kind of, it's fitting.
We're going to carry on the message.
It's not, please don't die.
And I won't continue this podcast.
It's dead if you die.
So no.
But I'm just saying it's not, I don't know that it's horribly disrespectful because he's trying to build off the guy's thing.
I guess so.
I would think that if I died and I had a funeral, it really wouldn't be the time to start talking about the Federal Reserve or something like that.
It would, I would more be concerned with like my wife and my daughter and my mother and sisters.
Don't you get how interest rates work?
Like it would be weird.
Even in your example, I think it'd be kind of weird to start talking about it that sits here cold and it's still at 0.1%.
But it's right.
But it's literally, you know, it's just one of the things that's horrible about big government in general and the culture war and all this stuff is that it's like, this has to take up all of our lives.
And I don't know.
Anyway, it was just a thought that I had that it was a weird moment.
What I was more outraged by in the whole thing is that, you know, it's just like one more example.
But there's, they just had a funeral, no social distancing, lots of people not wearing masks, just kind of sitting there right next to each other.
You know, it's such a fucking slap in the face to people.
And I think sometimes they don't even realize it.
But everybody else should at this point catch up to this thing.
No matter what rules the elites want to impose on you, whether it's rules about, you know, carbon emissions or whether it's tax rates or anything you can think of, just know that it does not apply to them.
They will be just fine.
They're not going to suffer from the rules that they impose on you.
It's always the case.
People have really been through it with this thing.
I mean, Chris Cuomo had to spend two weeks in the basement.
This is no joke.
People have made sacrifices.
And then the government's just out there telling us we got to be home with masks enjoying a good old funeral.
Well, right.
But I mean, do you know how many people have died in the last few months and their families didn't get to have a funeral for them?
I mean, how like, I just think that's what have done that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's so outrageous to tell people that they can't have a funeral, but oh, one of the elites died.
So we will go have a funeral for him.
Like, how do you get, how do you get to decide that this man is more important than your father or brother or grandmother or whoever, you know?
Like, how do you get to just tell people that?
It's really just outrageous to me.
And what about leading by example?
And that if we do this, we're going to encourage other people that it's okay to be out without masks.
Right, right.
No, no, there's none.
There's none of that.
Convincing People Without Masks00:04:00
And the weird thing is like it's like this virus just seems to be very much on board with the Democratic agenda.
It's racially conscious.
It just understands that if there's racial issues, these are not the people to infect.
They're already have it so bad.
COVID is so much more woke than just the common cold or these other viruses.
COVID really knows what's up.
So, you know, it's like, oh, if you're like a fucking... pro-gun or pro-Trump or anti-lockdown protester, COVID will get you.
If you're protesting police brutality or racial inequality, COVID's going to chill.
If it's a civil rights hero, COVID's not going to spread because that's obviously like that would that would be so insensitive of COVID.
So it's, I just, you know, I'll tell you the thing about it that I love is I do think, and this has been a theme of ours from the beginning of the COVID lockdowns and all this shit, is that I just do think there's tremendous opportunity for red pilling out of all of this to really kind of show people, like, look, come on, man, these people are full of shit.
Like, I've always said on this show that if there's, you know, people who are coming from all different, you know, political backgrounds and belief systems that end up tuning into this show.
And I've always said, like, look, I may not convince you to be an anarchist.
I may not be able to do that.
I mean, for me personally, I fucking read a lot before I was convinced.
Like, I flirted with the idea of anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism in general and all this stuff.
But it took me a long time to be convinced that that's the way to go.
And I happened to come at it at a time when I had a lot of free time on my hands and I was able to really just do nothing but dive into this literature.
I mean, I think about like now I'm fucking married and I got a kid.
I got a much busier career than I had back then.
There's no way I would just be like, oh, okay, I'm going to sit down and read six Murray Rothbard books and then think about all this shit.
I mean, it's just not, it really probably wouldn't happen.
So I understand for a lot of different reasons some people, you know, like I may not be able to convince you to be an ANCAP.
I'm going to do my best, but I may not be able to convince you.
But I can decisively convince you that all of these people are full of shit.
Like I can convince you that this whole system is bullshit.
I can convince you that Democrats, the Republicans, the corporate press, academia, all of these people are full of it.
Like that I'm confident in.
And I know there's a lot of people who listen to this show who are like, well, I'm not completely sold on every libertarian issue, but yeah, you're absolutely right that all these people are full of shit.
And this is just a really great opportunity to demonstrate that to people, that they will literally sit there.
This is such bullshit.
They pretend that you're putting grandma at risk if you want to go to the beach.
You know, remember all this stuff for months and months.
But then if they want to go have a fucking funeral, that's no big deal.
Oh, and also you can have a protest.
Oh, and also Fauci is asked by Jim Jordan if he's against the protests.
And he goes, well, I'm not really in a position to say.
I'm not really in a position to say what the government should or shouldn't do.
Meanwhile, he's making recommendations about people having funerals, seeing friends and family.
He's telling you whether or not you can get a haircut, but he can't tell you that 500,000 people can't march together if it's for a left-wing cause.
I mean, come on, man.
Come on.
How can anyone look at this and not just see through this shit?
The other thing that the other death that happened recently was Herman Kane.
And it was, you know, I was never a big Herman Kane guy, But he died and it's sad, you know, whatever.
Economic Pain and Protests00:15:48
And he uh, they love it.
I don't know if you've seen any of the articles in the newspapers about this stuff, but they love just celebrating that he went to this Trump event and didn't wear a mask.
And look at him now.
Here we go.
Proof that you all need to wear masks.
And it's, there's something really sick about it with the kind of mask cult crowd who really seem to get into, you know, an example.
See, here we go.
We proved it.
Look at this guy.
He's dead now.
What an idiot.
And you're like, Jesus Christ, you're really just like spitting on the guy's grave.
I mean, it's just died.
But don't, that's another thing to keep in mind.
Like, they will dance on your grave if it suits their narrative.
And that's what they're doing with Herman Cain, who, from what I understand, had a heart, like had heart problems and had stage four cancer a couple years ago.
And, you know, had a lot of different health risks.
But, you know, it's like, I remember watching like when they kept you, you would see these reports on different people.
You know, there was like a Trump, was it a speechwriter or something like that who got COVID and all these things?
And you could just tell the corporate press, they were just dying for Trump to get it.
Like they were like, they hoped he got it.
It's Trump.
Yeah.
He just magically gets away with it.
It's wild.
He's got like a Keith Richards quality.
Oh, he really does.
It's really quite something.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
I want to thank our awesome sponsor for today's show, which is Blue Chew.
If you like sex, you're going to love Blue Chew.
Blue Chew.com offers men a performance enhancement in the bedroom.
And at Blue Chew.com, you can get the first chewables with the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis.
Chewables can work faster than pills, up to twice as fast.
The chewables from BlueChew.com can be taken on a full or empty stomach.
The online physician consultant is free.
So it's cheaper than those other two.
It only takes a few minutes to connect with a bluechew.com affiliated physician.
And if you qualify, you get prescribed online quickly.
So there's no in-person doctor visit, no awkward conversation, no waiting in line at a pharmacy.
It ships directly to your door in discrete packaging.
The chewables from bluechew.com are prescribed online by a doctor and made in the USA.
Blue Chew gives you the confidence in the bedroom every time.
You and your partner will love it.
And here's a great deal for you guys.
If you go to bluechew.com, that's B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W.com, you can get your first order free if you use the promo code problem.
You just pay $5 shipping, but the order is absolutely free.
That's bluechew.com promo code problem.
All right, let's get back into the show.
But anyway, so this is a this is kind of just the state of things that they really like you'd have to be, it's like if you bring up COVID concerns about John Lewis's funeral or about the protests, you're like laughed off.
Like, oh, this is stupid.
But if you want to do anything else, you know, here we are, what is it?
Like well over 100 days after we were initially supposed to flatten the curve.
And that's like, no, no, no, don't, you know, fucking talking about curves anymore.
When was the last time you heard about a curve?
The curve's been over for quite a while.
That was just to get in the door.
Yeah.
Oh, the curve's been flattened for quite a while, but no one cares.
Is it a flat curve?
Oh, well, it's flattened.
That's for sure.
It's not as curvy as it once was.
Okay, so the other thing that I think is pretty important to talk about is the new economic data that came out the other day.
So it was the biggest drop in GDP in the history of the United States of America for the last quarter.
They measure these things compared to the quarter annually compared to last year's quarter to this year.
So, I guess that was the second quarter in the year compared to last year's second quarter.
And it was something, the drop was 32% or something along those lines.
Did you see any of that stuff, Rob?
Well, we're socialists now and we're sending out free checks to everybody.
So, really, not a whole lot to worry about.
Yeah, there's an economy anymore.
It's modern, modern monetary theory.
Deficits don't matter.
You don't need an economy.
You don't need anything.
We're good.
Yeah, looks like that's the direction we've gone to.
So, this is obviously, I mean, it's predictable.
This is something that we've all kind of known.
It turns out that you can't just shut down the economy and think that, you know, this isn't going to have a massive effect on people in the country.
We've got to save lives.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the things that's interesting to me is that it's like, so this is this is despite all the injections of money into the economy, right?
So, all of this stuff going on, it's still down this much.
You can imagine what the real numbers would look like if it hadn't been for all of these, you know, kind of stimulus packages.
And of course, that's just kicking the can down the road and something we're going to have to deal with eventually.
But from what I understand, I believe the COVID unemployment stuff is drying up and is going to run out in the next few weeks.
I know that they're talking about another, you know, injection of Trump bucks or whatever people were calling it.
But don't get it twisted.
There's a lot of pain out there and there's going to be a lot more coming.
I think a lot of this stuff is the bill's going to finally come due.
And there's going to be a lot of pain in this country in a lot of different ways.
Not to say that there isn't already, but I think that we're still, we're going to be feeling this for quite a while.
And it's really something where, you know, if you see like in the media a lot, when they're talking about the economy, they talk about the effect of COVID on the economy.
You know, they'll be like, you know, as a result of the virus, the markets have plunged or stuff like that.
And I just think it's important for people to remember that this is not a result of COVID.
Feel however you feel about the virus or how serious it is.
This is not about COVID.
This is about the governments, particularly the state governments, shutting down their economies.
This was a choice.
This was a choice that our wise leaders made.
This is something that we did to ourselves.
And you can argue that it was better than not doing it, which I certainly don't agree with.
But, you know, don't get it twisted.
This wasn't the virus that did this to us.
This was our government that did it to us.
And that's, you know, I really hope people remember that as we're feeling all this pain, that there is a culprit here and it's the state, as usual.
Anywho, we'll see.
We'll see how this all goes.
My guess, I don't know what you're thinking on this is, Rob, but my guess is that they're going to have to do another round.
Yeah, they're for sure doing stimulus.
It's a fight right now between one, the Republicans want $1 trillion, the Democrats want $3 trillion.
But what's scary about that is like that stimulus after the last round of stimulus.
And then you look at the deficit against a falling GDP.
So I don't, the financial climate here really scares me.
It just feels like we're, I don't know, they're talking about more free health care.
They're talking about giving people free money and that that's the only way to handle the fact that the economy is falling.
But I don't really understand how that doesn't cause some sort of hyperinflation.
I just don't, I really don't understand how the monetary system is holding up here.
I don't get it.
And gold and silver prices are through the roof.
At the same time, stores don't have change.
Apparently, there's no cash problem, but stores don't have change.
I'm not saying there's going to be inflation tomorrow.
I'm just saying that I really don't understand the financials of this country and the fact that the economic climate is getting worse and their way of dealing with it is just by giving people free money.
That is like a more advanced degree of socialism than has ever existed in our lifetime.
Yeah.
You know, I remember you saying on this podcast years ago, and I thought it was a really astute point that you made.
And it was right around the time when Charlottesville was happening and the kind of, you know, the alt-right became a big thing that people were talking about.
And I remember you said something along the lines of like, look, if there is like for your perspective, kind of as a Jew, you know, you were like, if there is this rise of like anti-Semitism or something like that, what you really want to combat it is a strong economy.
And I remember like, I'd never exactly thought of things exactly along that line.
And I thought it was a really good point.
And you were like, well, look, the truth is that these type of movements are never going to really gain traction and become really dangerous unless there's a really bad economy.
And when there's a really bad economy, then it's really easy to scapegoat other people and to actually work people up into like, you know, committing some heinous acts of violence against these other people.
People just want to live a good life.
If they've got an opportunity to be home with their family and they know that they've got a job, they've got no reason to be a racist.
They've got no reason to be an anti-Semite.
And even if they are a little bit racist or a little bit anti-Semitic, they're not going to act on it.
They're not going to be able to do it.
They've got to show some work on Monday.
Exactly.
And they don't want to ruin what they have going.
And this is true historically.
And this can get really ugly.
And so that's when things tend to get ugly, when people are really in desperate situations.
And so, and again, I'm not just saying this about anti-Semitism, just any type of destructive movement where any group is kind of scapegoated.
And the thing that's disturbing now is to see the economy going through this huge contraction, the biggest GDP drop in our nation's history at the same time that you have these like nationwide riots and then the right-wingers getting really furious with the nationwide, nationwide riots and cheering on the feds coming in.
And so now you just have this mix that just seems really dangerous for the country of this kind of like, you know, like left-wing black identitarian movement that's very hostile toward white people, a reaction from the right wing being very hostile toward that movement, the feds coming in, crime going up in major cities across the country.
Really, just all of it, when you think about the economy going really south, just seems like a dangerous, dangerous recipe.
That's my thought on it.
Also, if you just kind of take a step back and wonder, why is it that our country can afford to give everybody $600, but no other country, or maybe Germany is.
I don't know what's going on in like the ECB, but why is it that in Uganda, they can't just give everyone $600?
What's going on that we can do it here?
And the answer is it's dollar demand, but is that really just sustainable endlessly?
I just, I don't know.
The financial framework of the system is so massive and complex and hard to understand that, like, I don't know, maybe this thing's going to be okay again.
Maybe like, you know, they managed to inflate the stock.
Like, it just, it turns out to be okay.
You look granular at the GDP and it's markets that will come back immediately.
It might just be less surgeries, less airfare, less restaurants.
And once we're open, it's just back.
But I don't know, man.
It fucking, it just spooks me when I think about it.
Yeah.
Well, I saw one more study the other day that said that they're estimating that 50% of the jobs lost during the lockdowns won't be coming back.
Now, I don't know if that's, you know, if this one's right.
I've seen other numbers come out, but it's going to be something and it's going to be a number that's high enough that's going to be really painful.
As to your point, how long can they keep inflating this bubble?
I really think that's anyone's guess.
It will catch up with us at some point.
We're really pushing toward finding out when that point is.
But the fact that they've been able to keep it going this long is pretty incredible.
So we can't call it a show until you got a, what do you think about the mail and voting stuff?
You know, I don't know.
Like in terms of Trump's tweet about pushing the election and stuff like that, I think it's a fraud potential.
Listen, the powers at B got to pretend like we got a working system here.
They just do.
You got to pretend like you got a working democracy.
I don't really think they can push it, but I'm also fairly certain that if it's all mail-in voting, of course, that's not going to be a real, like, it's just not, you're going to have a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me say this, okay?
I think that, and this is, I think, a fairly reasonable take is that I think that in an election year in general, there's nothing that politicians do that is not somewhat politicized.
I mean, okay, everything politicians do is always politicized, but politicized with the election in mind.
And that's true under normal circumstances.
But there is no question that Donald Trump's reelection campaign is not normal circumstances.
I mean, the entire Democratic establishment, probably most of the Republican establishment too, and the entire press and Hollywood and all of them, they are all, you know, convinced that this is the issue of our time is getting Trump not re-elected, getting him out of there.
They need very desperately.
I mean, look, they needed him to never win, but they need desperately for him to be a one-term president.
And that is something, I'll say, that is something I would keep in mind with all of the decisions that politicians have made for the last four months.
I mean, every one of them.
If you look at the lockdowns, if you look at them encouraging the protests and riots or denying the riots or any of that shit, if you look at all of these, you know, look, if you look at social media censorship, like any of these things, they are all happen to be, you know, all falling in one direction, which is trying to make things as bad for Trump as possible.
And I do think, now, I'm not saying this is the entirety of the situation, but it does seem to me like there are one major motivating aspect of all of this stuff is to make things as bad for Trump as possible, to make it as hard for him to get reelected as possible.
There are the Democrats incentivized to make the economy as bad, the state of the nation as bad, relations between people as bad as possible by November to continue this going.
And now, on top of that, they also seem to be pushing pretty hard for this, you know, voter mail-in ballots.
And so I don't know, but yeah, it seems reasonably possible to me that part of that is also to try to not let Trump get re-elected.
Barr's Fear of Trump00:02:24
Do you think there's any element in this election of if Trump stays in office, Barr can continue what we're doing and we might actually get the dirty deets on Obama and the spying on Trump or at least the deep state apparatus?
Like it does kind of feel like they're ramping up on trying to make sure that they get him out because they really don't like that effort.
But on the same note, if he sticks around, I don't really see that being exposed.
Yeah, my guess, and please keep in mind that when I say this, this is a guess.
Okay, I don't know.
My guess is that Barr is one of them and not one of the good guys.
So I don't know that they're really scared of Barr.
I think that Trump is really instructing Barr to look into all of this stuff, but I don't know if that's their biggest concern.
I agree with you.
My guess is even if re-elected, we're not getting to the bottom of any of this shit.
I just think that Trump is like too much of a wild man for them.
He does not fit their agenda and they want him out very badly.
Now, I don't know.
I don't know exactly what it is that they fear so much of him.
I think part of it might be just that Hill, he might blow the whole thing.
Trump's capable of saying anything at any moment.
And for that reason, I think they really don't like the guy.
He doesn't do what he's told, at least not always.
And he doesn't, you know, stick to the script ever.
And I think all of this stuff, you know, that they all feel somewhat threatened by.
And I'm sure they don't like the fact that they kind of, you know, they swung at him and missed.
And now they're feeling pretty vulnerable.
But this is an onslaught unlike anything I've ever seen in my life of every powerful group working together to try to get Donald Trump out of there.
And we'll see.
As of right now, it looks like they very likely might be successful.
Jim Jordan's a hero.
Well, he is a guy you really don't want to be grilled by.
I'll say that much.
I don't actually know enough about him and his policies to know how I actually feel about the guy.
I'm watching television.
He's entertaining as shit.
He's entertaining as shit to listen to grill these fucking congressmen.
Okay, but you know what?
We're going to wrap up there and we'll see you very shortly for our next episode.