Hello! Hello! Hello! Welcome to episode twelve of We Don’t Talk About P-word. For Christmas, I spent a couple of weeks visiting my family. Unfortunately, we don’t all get together very often, largely because I live so far away. Since our parents passed, we try to do it at least once a year, but of course the pandemic threw that off. It was nice to see them again after a couple of years away. It is always interesting when I return home. Being from a small town in the deep south and living in a major city, things are just… different. The culture, the pace, and even the restaurants. There, everyone is a little less in a hurry. You drive down the street and people you don’t know wave hello. Not to mention, all you need to do is throw a stone and you can hit a good Tex-Mex or barbeque restaurant. No offense to other regions, but barbeque not influenced by Texas just isn’t as good. This isn’t to say that the country is inherently better than the city. In the city, I can go to the theater and see stage productions any night of the week. I can catch any professional sport I desire. I can visit a museum. I can eat at any number of diverse and delicious ethnic restaurants. The point is that it is just different. Not better. Not worse. Different. Both are essential to the ecosystem that is our nation, but they are different. The same can be said for my family, too: we are different. My siblings and I all live in different places, and each area is very different from one another. Even those living in a different city have many different experiences than mine. Those different experiences shape our thoughts on the world around us. This is even more prominent when it comes to politics. I like to recognize those distinctions. I like to try and understand how we arrived at those differences. There are five factors that shape our political views. You could include more, but most are derivative of these five. They are family, gender, religion, ethnicity, and where we live. Many would include education as well, but education can be tricky. Often education is about regurgitation and not knowledge. Sometimes it is even used for indoctrination. It is one thing to learn facts; it’s a completely different thing to know what to do with those facts. If you don’t learn critical thinking skills, an education is worthless. If you aren’t encouraged to question what you are taught, that’s not education. It often makes you more susceptible to propaganda. My family grew up in the same household, so that gives us all the same foundation to build our worldview. We all lived in the same religious household, and over time we have made up our own minds when it comes to religion. To this day, we still maintain our faith. We share the same ethnicity, so that doesn’t change anything. Gender does make a difference. But I am of the mindset that when it comes to issues concerning females, I defer to my sisters and other women in my life. This leaves only home regions as the largest contributor to our differing political views. Despite how similar we grew up, the paths we have taken in life make our thoughts on the world around us different. Again, not better or worse… just different. Me being the political nerd that I am, I inevitably turn conversations to politics. My family politely humors me. One of the things I enjoy about talking politics is listening to other people’s perspective. I love hearing why people believe what they do. I like to understand what drives them to the views that they have embraced. I enjoy a nice discussion about these views. I love a healthy back and forth that ends with both sides gaining something to think about. These discussions with my family over the holidays provided an opportunity. Like many, my family is often susceptible to the political propaganda. It offered me a chance to explain things from a non-partisan point of view. It allowed me to plant a seed that I hope will give them some things to think about. With any luck, it makes them consider why they believe what they believe. For me, it also provided some insight into views with which I didn't have firsthand experience. This is important. When you are attempting to debunk propaganda, you must understand why it is appealing. You cannot debunk something you don't understand. From the moment I launched this podcast, I have tried to stress the importance of this. I am not trying to change what you believe. My goal is to encourage you to understand why you believe what you believe. If you don’t understand this simple truth about yourself, then you can never be an informed voter. If you don’t understand why you vote the way you vote, you are being controlled by propaganda. When propaganda guides your actions, you don't vote in your own best interests. You are supporting the Corporate Political Agenda. The benefit to having these types of discussions with your family is that they are raw. Most of the time, you aren’t trying to hide who you are from your family. If you are, well, here is an uncomfortable truth for you: they already know. When that is the case, you get honest feedback, and it gives you a chance to truly understand another side. I found our discussions encouraging. As we spoke, it was obvious that we recognize many of the same issues facing our nation. Of course, we didn’t always agree on the answers to these issues. That was often where our geographical differences came into play. We did, for the most part, agree on why they were an issue. We all see the disfunction of our government as a byproduct of the partisan nature of our politics. We recognized that the wealthy keep getting richer at the expense of the working class. No matter where you live, if you are honest with yourself, these two truths are undeniable. The biggest difference in our views was in solutions, if they saw solutions at all. I see possibilities, whereas my family sees an insurmountable mountain to climb. They say, “yeah, that sounds good, but we’ll never get there.” They agree, then say “but you'll never get people to work together or put in the effort.” They see politics as hopeless and broken. They see a system that they believe they have no power to affect. They have lost faith in the most fundamental truth of American Democracy: We the People are the power. I bring this up because it is important to remember. We must keep in mind that as different as we may all live, we all share the same cause for our problems. Some of us live in a city, sharing walls with strangers; others live in the country with neighbors’ miles away. Some of us have a front row seat for immigration concerns. We may face low wages or even unemployment. We may face healthcare concerns. Some have to deal with systemic racism as a daily burden; others have the privilege of never facing it. Whatever obstacle we face, it all stems from the same root cause. We all suffer from a government controlled by money, and the politicians it buys. We suffer because politicians refuse to uphold their oath to the Constitution. We suffer from politicians more concerned with wealth and power than the People. We suffer because political elites have elevated themselves above those they represent. Unfortunately, we also suffer because of our own inaction and defeatist attitudes. We convince ourselves that we have no power to make a difference. That way when things get worse, we can deny responsibility for our own inaction. We suffer because we concede without fighting. We suffer because we have surrendered to propaganda. We suffer because we have accepted defeat in a war we’ve been convinced isn’t worth fighting. The most tragic reason we suffer is because we've convinced ourselves we are in this alone. We ignore the other 200 million Americans in the same boat. We must embrace that we are all in this together. We must come together, learn to trust our neighbors, and recognize this is a class war that we are losing. The only way to be stronger than corrupt politicians, is together. Until then, we are nothing more than a fly on a horse’s back. We’re a nuisance, to be sure, but not something that requires more than an occasional flick of the tail. There are some fundamental truths that we as working Americans must admit and come to grips with. We must do this if we ever hope to fix our broken political system and move our nation forward. Here are a few important examples of these fundamental truths. Sixty-three percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Just because someone makes more money than you do does not mean they are better off. It seems obvious, but I will point it out anyway. Where we live changes our perspectives; it also changes our income requirements. Urban living is considerably more expensive than rural living. We are all getting a crash course in inflation right now. It plays a huge role in life in the city, even during normal times. Eleven percent of Americans live in poverty. Some might consider living paycheck to paycheck being impoverished. Poverty means that you don’t make enough money to provide all the necessities for life. This includes food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. Paycheck-to-paycheck means that you can afford it, if only barely. It also means you are one missed paycheck, or one unavoidable emergency, away from poverty. There is no shame in living in poverty or paycheck-to-paycheck. There is no shame in busting your ass and getting nowhere. There is no shame in providing for your family as best as you can. The shame of our nation comes from this next truth. Only 10% of all working Americans control 68% of the nation’s total wealth, while 50% of working Americans own 3%. A more astonishing fact is that 1% of earners control 31% of the wealth. That is 3 million people in a nation of over 330 million controlling 31% of ALL the wealth of our nation. Have you ever wondered why Politicians attack the IRS? Or why politicians claim taxes are bad, and try to convince us of the same? How about why the propaganda wants you to believe that government programs are bad? Look no further than these three truths. The wealthy have only one goal: gain more wealth. • Government employees tasked with ensuring the wealthy pay their fair share • Taxes on the wealthy • Programs that lift the People up using the taxes from the wealthy who exploit them These aren’t popular programs to those who keep politicians on their payroll. It is all propaganda. Political elites know they can’t come out and tell us the truth. They can’t say they are protecting the wealth of ten percent of Americans to the detriment of the 90%. Instead, they tell us the IRS is coming for your hard-earned money. They tell us that the poor are stealing from your pockets. They tell us taxes are bad. The truth is that the IRS is only necessary because the wealthy evade their taxes. The poor are poor because the wealthy pay slave wages. The wealthy starve government programs designed to lift the People out of poverty. And those evil taxes? They ensure a military, police, fire services, EMTs, roads, bridges, and so much more. What they don’t want you to know is that if we made the wealthy pay their part, working Americans could pay less. We must understand that the labels are only meant to divide us for the benefit of the elites. Liberal. Conservative. Neither label concerns the wealthy. While we fight over Democrat or Republican, the wealthy hedge their bets and donate to both. They laugh at the label because they know it’s irrelevant. They laugh because the labels divide the true power in our nation: the People. They laugh because as long as we are preoccupied with the parties they own, they remain in power. They don’t need a particular party to win to maintain control. All they need to do is keep the People divided. Remember: the parties don’t work for the People. The parties are the political arm of corporate interests. Their goal is to keep us divided and the wealthy… well, wealthy. It reminds me of an episode of South Park and a topic one of my listeners suggested on Twitter. One of the biggest disagreements we have in this country is over patriotism. I support war; I’m more patriotic than you. I call for peace, so that makes me more patriotic than you. I love guns; I am the ultimate patriot. I encourage protests; no one is more patriotic than me. Here is another uncomfortable truth for you. No one owns patriotism: no person, no party, not even the government. South Park is the ultimate satirical snapshot of America and the world as it reacts to us. You could teach a history and civics class based on South Park. When we are all long dead and our era forgotten, South Park will survive. Historians will use South Park to chart American history and the events of our time. Due to its comedic nature, it is often overlooked. I am an avid fan of South Park, and the episode I am referring to happens to be one of my favorites. It comes from season seven, episode four. It is entitled “I’m a Little Bit Country.” For those of you who may not remember or don’t watch, I will give you a quick recap. The town is bitterly divided between those supporting war in Iraq and war protestors. The boys are caught in a lie, and it becomes woefully obvious that they have no idea who the Founding Fathers are. As punishment, their teacher assigns their class a report on what the Founders would think of the war. Trying to induce a “historical flashback,” Cartman puts himself into a coma. He travels to 1776 and attends the debates surrounding the Declaration of Independence. I won’t spoil the ending, but the lesson learned is that patriotism doesn’t belong to anyone. Patriotism is nothing more than a red herring. It’s just another way to keep the People from finding common ground. If I can convince people that protestors aren’t Patriotic, they’ll never look for issues where they agree. They’ll just dismiss all they do as unpatriotic. If I convince gun owners that gun haters are unamerican, no need to worry about them working together. If I assure Christians this is a Christian nation, they’ll never find common ground with atheist. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that patriotism is bad. I consider myself a patriot. What I am saying is that patriotism can be a slippery slope to nationalism. The difference in the two is propaganda. So, what is patriotism? Merriam Webster defines it as “love for or devotion to one’s country.” That seems pretty general to me. Love or devotion to one’s country; both, like religion, cannot be quantified. They are constructs of our mind. You can show love; you can show devotion, but you cannot measure either. My best advice to you is if someone claims they are a patriot, believe them. Recognize that you have found a common spirit. Instead of arguing over differences, learn to listen to each other and work together. If you just can’t help yourself, and must judge someone’s love or devotion to our nation, here are the best indicators. 1. Do they support the Constitution? 2. Do they support American values? 3. Do they accept the People’s voice as the ultimate authority? Sounds simple, right? Yeah, it really is. Now when I say support the Constitution, that doesn’t mean you can pick and choose. You can’t support the second amendment and then get up in arms when someone exercises their first. You can’t complain that your religion is being persecuted, and then try to impose your beliefs on others. One of the most important things to remember as an American is that our rights do not apply only to you. Secondly, you cannot consider yourself a patriot if you deny American values. You cannot deny justice for all. You cannot disrupt the peace through threat of violence, insurrection, or terrorism. You cannot deny the life and general welfare for all Americans. You cannot deny access to the American dream. You cannot invade someone’s privacy. You absolutely cannot deny equality for all. You cannot be devoted to a nation and deny the values outlined in its founding documents. I encourage you to revisit episodes two and three if you need an American Values refresher. Lastly, and most importantly, no one is a patriot that denies the People as the ultimate power in our nation. All these are very specific yet nuanced. That’s why I gave the previous advice. If someone calls themselves a patriot, believe them... until they show you otherwise. Because they always will. A true patriot is a patriot whether you agree with them or not. A true patriot will look for common ground with their countrymen A true patriot will treat you with respect as an equal. A sunshine patriot will eventually let his nationalism show. A sunshine patriot is only a patriot when it is convenient. A sunshine patriot is only a patriot when it benefits them. A sunshine patriot believes rights are only theirs. Be wary of the patriot who seeks to deny rights to make America 'great'. Be wary of the patriot who wants to ignore the general welfare, but then bailout corporations. Be wary of the patriot that weaponizes their own partisan inaction... using it to vilify the People’s government. Before you gatekeep who and who is not a patriot, understand what being a patriot requires. Then and only then will you understand the most important fact about patriotism. No one owns patriotism. Like our nation’s government, our population requires a system of checks and balances. That is the only way democracy thrives. Whether you are a gun toting, God fearing, country loving conservative… … or… … a latte drinking, welfare supporting… well, country loving liberal… You are a patriot. Our nations strength is different opinions finding consensus. E pluribus Unum… “Out of many, one.” I know it doesn’t seem like that these days. I know it feels like it’s all discourse and no consensus. We have let dysfunctional partisan politics control our government for too long. There was a time when we agreed on the values that guided us, and merely disagreed on how to get there. Now, we have parties standing in opposition to the People’s government. The parties ignore the People’s voice in favor of corporate elites. These parties fail to protect the People, while working to protect monied interests. The time of corporate politics must end. I know it is hard to see how one person can make a difference. I understand how impossible of a task what I propose sounds. We all think we are in this alone. We all believe that no one understands. We are not. They do. Your fellow Americans, down the street or across the country in a city you’ve never heard of, all understand. We can do something about it, but it takes a movement. It takes dedication. It takes understanding what being a patriot means. And then deciding if you are one. We the People are the Power.