Ep. 4 Free Speech: Good for the Goose, Good for the Gander

Romeo and Taye reflect on January 6 and discuss events and triggers that stoked acceptance of untruths and polarization in and between parties. As attention is focused on Former President Trump, Trumpism and Republican Party leaders for accountability, Romeo has something to share for the Left. Perhaps there was an echo chamber hiding in plain sight.

Full Transcript

Taye 0:11

I'm Taye Mohler. And this is Anatomy of Change, a podcast series about the struggle and connection in making courageous change, in the systems and structures that thread our lives.

On this episode, it's the feedback I didn't know I needed to hear. Romeo and I reflect on January 6, and discuss events and triggers that stoked acceptance of untruths and polarization in and between parties. As attention is focused on President Trump, Trumpism and the Republican Party leaders for accountability, he has something to share for the left. Perhaps it uncovers an echo chamber hiding in plain sight,

Romeo 1:02

You're actually going to light a match under a tinderbox. If you're telling someone day in day out, you know, their candidate they voted for is a Russian Stooge...how do you think they're going to take that? You know, their basically going to become more radicalized and they're going to become more angry, and they're going to become more ready to do mayhem.

There is impeachment under way, obviously. So if the message is that we should trust that process of impeachment, you know, it follows from that, that we should also trust the outcome of that process, whatever that is, for me, the much more important question is how we got here. And maybe it's good to revisit the last four years of this Trump administration, and basically, where we are, and what happened that is causing all this. Again, the rhetoric about incitement and contesting elections and democratic outcomes, and this and that, I mean, we probably should remember that four years ago, the Democratic Party did exactly that.

We had three years, three full years of media, challenging indirectly, the legitimacy of the Trump administration, by basically yelling Russia, left and right, and how Trump benefited from that, and how there was direct connection between Trump and you know, the Putin regime and everything else, you know, I mean, all you have to do is go online and look up clips from that period. And you will see

Taye 3:03

that's true, but his actions didn't help him,

Romeo 3:05

Oh sure. But we're not talking about that now. We're talking about how how we got here, right. So, so basically, what happened, the Democratic Party established the precedent, because, you know, they were the one driving this conversation. They were the one driving the media campaign, and they were the one driving the impeachment the first time around. So they basically did everything in their power to challenge the legitimacy of the Trump administration, you know, with, in my mind, the goal of stopping Trump from winning the second mandate, I mean, you know, first mandate, water under the bridge done deal, nothing to be done about it, short of proving gross interference in the elections, which they weren't able to, like I said, because if they did we know that the election would have been overturned.

Taye 4:00

And so leaning into what Romeo was sharing with me, we went back to 2016. And he was right. Articles and major news media had headlines like this...Hillary Clinton: "Trump is an illegitimate president." Jimmy Carter says: "he sees Trump as an illegitimate president." Jerrold Nadler: "Trump's election, illegitimate, won't attend the inauguration."

Romeo 4:26

There is a saying that I'm sure everybody's familiar with what's good for the goose is good for the gander...so if a political party in the United States spent most of the last four years challenging, you know, the legitimacy of the prior election, and weaponizing their links to mass media and basically saturating media channels with that message for three years in a row, how is it that we expect that the people that are on the other side side of the fence, you know,are going to react any different. So the problem that we're having is that these things create precedents. When you create a precedent like that. You expect that, you know, lsooner or later, you're going to deal with some kind of fallout, or some kind of pushback or some kind of blowback. Really,

Taye 5:24

are you saying that you believe that was the largest or the biggest driver for why we have this provocation? Because I look at the last four years, and I'm going to marinate on what you said, because the years even before he was President, to say, elections are rigged. He said that before he was even elected in 2016. And I remember, I may have shared this with you, but I was in Romania, the eve of the election, and he said something like, if he doesn't win, the election is rigged. He said some pretty inflammatory, crazy, things.

Romeo 6:04

Yeah, no disagreement from me that there was a lot of inflammatory comments and statements. And clearly, you know, there are parts of the society that can interpret those in a bad way. To me, this is the number one question I would ask: what was the purpose of the Russia, relentless Russia message, who benefits and how they benefit from from that message? So here, it was all about delegitimizing the Trump administration, you know, and if they could do that indirectly through these headlines and through these attacks, by doing that, the Left opened the door for the same to be done, you know, in return by the Right. And it's a very dangerous time, because now you have there is basically there is gates of hell has opened, you could say right, and there is no there is no stopping back, you know, like the Pandora's box is open. Now.

Taye 7:11

That certainly played a part. But I think it's a smaller part to what was happening with the telegraphing of the release of emails, and the statements and actions being made by now President Trump and his sidekicks. And so it was very suspicious, like they led us if we're the mystery gang, it wouldn't be Scooby Doo could find it, you know, like it was, you wouldn't act that way. You know, normalcy wasn't there. I also think social media has grown up, it's no longer the teenager, it's moved out of the house, it's in college, and it's learning how to be a grown up. We were exposed.

Romeo 7:58

Well, we may have to agree to disagree on the importance of that Russia investigation, because you have to remember, I am not a participant in the US political process. So my views are completely independent of this, Left versus Right divide or you know, allegiances or loyalties. It's not about that it's just looking from the outside, when you put out a message through your media channels that aims to pre determine, you know, the outcome of an investigation and to color it in the way that you know, you want it to be taken by the people, that absolutely is propaganda. What's gonna happen is that you're actually going to light a match under a tinderbox with that message and that kind of propaganda being disseminated. You have now effectively, alienated, the amount of Trump voters from the first time around, which was what 64 million something I believe, right? If you're telling someone day in day out, you know, that they're the candidate they voted for is a Russian Stooge, how do you think they're going to take that, you know, they're basically going to become more radicalized and they're going to become more angry, and they're going to become more ready to do mayhem.

Taye 9:30

What are the different pieces that have fed this soup that we are in? And certainly you make a good point when you say that process created more polarization? I agree with you.

Romeo 9:50

There has been something that on the Left again has been weaponized, heckling, and harassing and harangouring people. For different political affiliation or or political leanings, Maxine Waters calling on supporters to confront and harass members of the Trump administration. That was something that sort of legitimized this kind of behavior where it's okay to harass and, you know, harass people that, that you don't agree with, politically right? So we now have the Right doing exactly the same thing. You know, and that's polarization that the society doesn't need, but

Taye 10:38

do you think the President of the United States you have his communications people and the people around him, I mean, you have Charlottesville and white supremacists in Charlottesville, you know, when it would be so easy for him to denounce white supremacists and racism, he plays these mixed messages. And it's because your audience has that fraction. So, you know, Proud Boys and all of these things, and I just, I wonder, I can hear you and I can meet you to say these things fed where we are. But it's not the only thing.

Romeo 11:14

So I, and I never said that right? I would agree that Trump was playing to his base, whatever the faction was in that base. So what you described is the radical, Right, which has these factions of white supremacist, and, you know, whatever. So he didn't want to exclude those supporters from his base, and then he kept on with the mixed messages. So there's no argument there. But if we're talking about this, let's talk about the radical Left too. The radical Left, which is Antifa and Black Lives Matter burning down to the ground buildings, and, you know, very violent demonstrations that were whitewashed by the media. And moreover, you know, weren't condemned by the Left politics, either. All politicians are self serving like that, Biden, certainly had opportunities to condemn those kinds of violence on the Left, and he didn't do it either, because again,

Taye 12:17

I think he did.

Romeo 12:17

No, No, he didn't.

Taye 12:19

I think he did condemn it.

Romeo 12:20

Well, maybe you will have to show me when he condemned that.

Taye 12:23

Okay.

So to the question, if now, President Biden has condemned and Antifa, what we should be looking for is if he has condemned it by name, we can find examples of him condemning violence, no matter who it is, what is more difficult to find is him calling out and Antifa by name, it may seem like a nuance where the interviewer presents the word and Antifa instead of him. But, this is what we should be looking for.

Romeo 12:57

If you're asking Trump to condemn Proud Boys and you know, call out violence in white supremacism by name, then the same demands has to be done on the Left side.

Romeo 13:14

For me, it is only when people can have a normal conversation about these things and can discuss based on the facts on the table and not with emotions in the way but you know, just recognizing that there are bad actors on both sides. And there will always be this is the the bell curve, you know, principle where we always have like a center of the bell, which is most of the people and then you have outliers to the left and to the right. So if you pull out the outliers on the right, you have to call out the outliers on the left too. You're gonna have people that are happy to, to demonstrate peacefully, and you know, they have a voice and they want to be heard and that is what I call, you know, activists from the inside. But then you will have these minorities of activists on the outside that consider that, you know, in in the pursuit of their cause, they are justified in going to the extremes. And sometimes guess what?, they are. And even in history, some things have been regarded when, when they first started or, you know, events that they first occurred. They were regarded as very bad things. But think about it, what if actually, there would have been more major or more widespread support for that type of movement that was not known or not visible. And, in fact, a lot of people, you know, majority of the people in the United States would have thought that the political process and the political representatives that are there are no longer representative for for the people. Then they would have been in their rights to do that. Right. And again, I'm not saying that that's what happened.

Taye 15:05

But what you just said, I think about the people that did storm, the Capital, because I've been trying to think about what were they thinking. Felt compelled based on being, you know, the words that in what they heard was 'its time'. And given sort of the chatter before the event with 'STOP the STEAL', they had this belief, but in their mind of why they did it, and some of them former military, I really believe that they believe that. And even in my Facebook feed, I found after the storming of the Capitol, there are people that are buying in to the QAnon conspiracies, and posting the black chess piece. So going back to the people that storm the Capitol, in their minds, they felt that they were protecting, they were patriots, and they were protecting us from going into some sort of rapture. If we really want to bring down the heat on this, what do we have to understand better?

Romeo 16:11

We have to understand each other better. And we have to stop with the radical messages, and we have to stop with the demonization of the others. And it should be acknowledged that it's okay to have different beliefs. And in fact, sometimes those beliefs are, are going to be extreme. And they're going to be like that on the Left and on the Right. And the answer is not to smother down those beliefs or or eliminate those people, you know, out of the public arena or of the out of the light. And that's not the answer, the answer is to simply go ahead as a society and demonstrate to those extremes that they are wrong.

Taye 17:06

I want to go there with you, because I think this is leading into what does that do when we close off voices. But before we leave there, you know, when we talked about blunt versus insidious propaganda? I've been thinking about that a lot. You said that the West has not really developed skills and your perspective around reading between the lines of this propaganda. And you were exposed to blunt forms of propaganda. Americans, for example, have been exposed to more insidious where there's truth weaved in that. For me, I feel like we have now entered blunt propaganda.

Romeo 17:46

I think you're right about the fact that we have moved into a phase where this type of untruths can take hold. And again, it's something that happens on both sides. But can we ask ourselves, how did we get here? Why is it possible that this type of blatant, you know, falsehoods can even take hold in people's minds? And? And the answer is, again, because of the extreme polarization, the polarization will bring with it, sort of a fence or a mental block that people are going to raise to any arguments that is not coming from within the Thought Bubble. So then the only criteria that people use to determine you know, how trustful a statement is, is no longer based on facts is no longer based on, you know, an exchange of ideas, it's no longer based on a conversation where I can change my mind, if you use the right arguments. To me, it's literally only based on who is making that statement. If the statement is coming from someone in my thought bubble, then I will accept it, I will not challenge it further. And if it's coming from outside of my bubble from you know, the opposite end from my opponent, so to speak, right? I'm not even going to bother to challenge it. I'm actually going to discard it right away. So this, is what happens here we have created the conditions for this type of blunt untruths to take hold. And if we want to address this, let me be clear, the solution is not to play whack-a-mole with the untruths where we find them. Okay, because that's a losing game, and it's a losing proposition. Okay, so it's not possible really, to smother in the crib, you know, untruths before they even take off. It's just not feasible, right? So that's, that's the phase we find ourselves right now. We, we see that there is this kind of censoring really, that it's it's censorship that's done in the name of the truth.

It seems right now, you know, we're trying to play whack-a-mole and just eliminate any untruths from the public discourse. And by doing that, guess what, you're alienating further, the people that are maybe putting out those statements and sometimes actually believing in those statements, so you're alienating them, you're driving them even further to the fringes. So as a result, you're gonna have more of the problem to begin with.

Taye 20:48

We see that right?, we're on that precipice.

Romeo 20:50

I think we are past that precipice actually, the actions of these so called platform, which was, you know, the last conversation we had, you know, I'm calling them so called platforms because they are no longer platforms, they're not a neutral actor anymore. So the actions of these platforms are, are counterproductive, what they're doing is already resulting in more alienation, more isolation, more Thought Bubbles, and they're not bridging people together, they're driving people apart. So again, the solution is not to play whack-a-mole.

Romeo 21:32

And to be honest, I am not so confident that you are in the ability of the society or of the democracy to withstand issues like this. I do think that where we are right now, if we just let things go, you know, and hope that they will resolve on their own, it won't happen. And again, it pains me to advocate for this, because we've covered this last time. For me, government should have as little as possible, you know, in the lives of people and in in the open market is it could be, honestly. I'm a libertarian at heart like that. But, in a situation like this, I'm afraid that change has to be mandated, and it won't come about by itself. So there has to be some very active and drastic measures taken from the top where these things are nipped in the bud and we we go back to a functioning society. I do not have faith, then things will, will resolve on their own. The answer is in depolarizing, educating people into the political process, stopping with the propaganda and the demonization. And, you know, I guarantee you , this is my personal belief. So I, you know, I shouldn't say I guarantee you but I firmly, I firmly believe that if we didn't have this extreme messaging coming from, from the Democratic Party, you know, 4 years ago about Trump and their administrations and this and that, I don't think we would have gotten so far where we are right now. So...

Taye 23:18

Hmmm, I don't know if I can meet you there.

Romeo 23:19

Well, that's just my opinion.

Taye 23:21

But, but that's good, because that's why we're talking. I think it fed something like you're enlightening me on here is what I saw, here's what, here's what you should have seen, Taye. And I did see it. I didn't necessarily categorize it that way,

Romeo 23:36

which you didn't categorize it as such, because you were, your political leanings were not on the side of that line that would have made you react as such. But other people that have different political leanings, and they were closer to that line, they would interpret differently,

Taye 23:56

which is why we should test ourselves. Yes. I mean, like, that's why I'm saying that about myself, and all of us,

And I also believe that the President was his own worst

Romeo 24:10

Enemy.

Taye 24:15

34 tweets a day was the average by President Trump, before he was banned on Twitter.

Credits 24:26

Anatomy of Change is executive produced by Taye Mohler with post production editing and mixing by James Fleege. Special thanks to Romeo, TM and AT. The original series music, titled "Reborn" was composed by Adrian Berenguer. Additional music featured in this episode by Kadir Demir, The David Roy Collective, Cunningham Manor, Philip Daniel, and James Fleege. Our website where you can listen to all episodes, music and artists featured and find companion content is anatomyofchange.org