On February 5, 2023, The NYT Magazine published, "Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber." In this interview with writer Walter Mosley, Walter says, "We’re living in a dumbed-down culture because the education of most people in America is sad and not useful. There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. They don’t even teach kids how to deal with money in school — the one thing you think they would teach in America."
Is this true? Are we living in a dumbed-down culture and if so, is the education system failing people?
Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/06/magazine/walter-mosley-interview.html
https://spyscape.com/article/pop-culture-spies-how-the-cia-fbi-shape-movies-and-tv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Mountain_Air_Force_Station
Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
On February 5, 2023, The NYT Magazine published, "Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber." In this interview with writer Walter Mosley, Walter says, "We’re living in a dumbed-down culture because the education of most people in America is sad and not useful. There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. They don’t even teach kids how to deal with money in school — the one thing you think they would teach in America."
Is this true? Are we living in a dumbed-down culture and if so, is the education system failing people?
Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/06/magazine/walter-mosley-interview.html
https://spyscape.com/article/pop-culture-spies-how-the-cia-fbi-shape-movies-and-tv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Mountain_Air_Force_Station
Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. Hello. Hello and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to ponder Are We Living in a dumbed down culture? This is similar to another episode I recorded recently about Bjorn bull Hanson's video stop celebrating stupidity, where I pondered the question, are we celebrating stupidity? Is pop culture created in such a way that it rewards or even celebrates stupidity? And I don't bury my thesis. Yes. With pop culture in particular, it does seem that there's a celebration of stupidity, as well as a rise of pseudo intellectualism. In his video, Bjorn talks about anti intellectualism. In other words, it's not sexy or cool to be smart. I actually think it's more pseudo intellectualism, it's sexy and cool if you're considered smart in the right ways in the very mainstream, conformity driven kind of ways. So this came across my radar screen because the New York Times magazine on February 5 published an article slash interview titled Walter Mosley thinks America is getting dumber. So Walter Mosley, if you don't know, is a famous crime novelist. And in this interview, they start talking about the Marvel universe and how ubiquitous it's become. So I'll read from the interview for you now, this is the interviewer talking to Walter, you mentioned Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I know you've always been a big comic fan. But what do you make of the cultural dominance of the Marvel Universe? Because I guess one way of looking at it is that those stories constitute our modern myths. Another way is that they're ubiquity is a sign of a dumbed down culture. Walter's response. Yeah, that's true. But why is it true? We're living in a dumbed down culture because the education of most people in America is sad and not useful. There are people who don't even know how to spell. They don't know how to think they don't even teach kids how to deal with money in school, the one thing you think they would teach in America. So the fact that the people turn to comic books and pornography and other seemingly low level things, I'm not sure that they are low level. But the reason that these things sell is because of how America is dealing with its citizens. It's a symptom. He's sneezing, why is he sneezing? We live next to a pepper factory, maybe it's the pepper. So the interviewer asks, so the implication is that cultural tastes would be different if people were educated differently. And Walter responds, what's the biggest problem facing almost all Americans money, but you go to high school, and they don't teach you about money. They don't tell you, you're going to live to be 90, but you're going to retire at 65. And the money the government gives you is not meant to be enough to take care of you. That's a perfect example of how we educate in ignorance. You have these people coming out into the world, and they don't know what to do. My God, our educational system has failed 90% of people and quote, yeah, there's a lot to digest just in those two paragraphs and the two questions and then two responses that Walter gives in return a lot of meat and potatoes there for us to get into. Straight away. I think that we could, in a benevolent sense, think of these Marvel stories as being a modernized version of mythology that's been with human beings probably for all of time. Here's the hero. Here's the villain. Are we going to cheer for the hero? Are we going to boo the baddie like British pantomime? I mean, I think that it's somewhat elitist for people to look down their nose at the enjoyment of a superhero movie, like what is that really hurting for somebody to just turn their brain off for a couple of hours, and go on an action adventure ride? Maybe I'm biased because I enjoy watching a good football game. I enjoy watching a Marvel movie I enjoy watching like James Bond movies or reading Ian Fleming's novels. So hey, maybe I'm biased. Maybe it's hitting a nerve here for me because I enjoy those films. And I would not consider myself to be a dumbed down. Person who just never understood Hands anything about the world. As I've said before, I enjoy entertainment. I enjoy things like game shows, and cooking shows, I just don't sit and watch the idiot box and a continual loop. Like, it's it's not as though watching Marvel movies is the only thing I ever do in my life. I also read, I read both for pleasure and for enlightenment, to learn new things to see the world through a different lens. So, I'm a little bit touchy on this idea that if we make films that represent these classic archetypes that represent mythology that's been with humanity, probably since the beginning of time, it somehow makes us dumbed down, that part loses me. I think that if we talk about the idiot box, in a continual loop, watching Netflix or streaming content continuously, watching sports continuously, being able to give the stats of your favorite team or your favorite player and talk about these people as though they are your close friends and family members, now you don't know anything else that's going on in the world. But you can chapter and verse rattle off what's happening in the Marvel Universe, or what's happening to your favorite sports team, then yes, I will admit that becomes problematic. I just sort of wanted to get that out straight away. The Benevolent interpretation that we can give to why those films have become ubiquitous and why they're so incredibly popular is well they touch on those mythologies that we've always had with us. They represent classic archetypes, it feels good to root for the hero, and Boo the baddie. And one thing I think also that some of those films have done quite well is they've given you a baddie that you sort of love to hate or hate to love. I would say that Tom Hiddleston is portrayal of Loki is a great example of that. In the first Thor movie. You can see in my opinion, the influences of bran oz Shakespearean acting and Shakespearean training in the measles scene and the way that the story plays out. It's like you are watching a Shakespearean film, except the characters are from Norse mythology. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, why are Shakespeare's plays still so popular? Why do we all still know the stories? Well, because they translate well from generation to generation. There's nothing wrong with that. And I don't personally think that's a sign that you're a dumbed down person if you enjoy these types of stories, now, okay. That's the benevolent interpretation. Perhaps a more sinister interpretation of these films. Are they being used as propaganda? I mean, we know sometimes that war films are definitely used to foment people towards one side or the other. I'll drop a link to this article on spy scape.com So you can see it for yourself. The article is titled How CIA spies infiltrated movies, music, art, and more. In this we read, propaganda comes in many disguises a patriotic musical lyric, or a heroic and almost impossible win for the good guys. Sometimes the spin is so subtle artists and audiences don't even notice spies are pulling the levers behind the scenes. Americans and the British are the only propaganda artists around Of course, they just happen to be more talented than most. From the animated film Animal Farm to Louis Armstrong's jazz and Jennifer Garner's alias spy scape gives the intelligence agencies their close ups. The CIA secretly funded the classic movie Animal Farm 1954 bankrolling American film producer Louis de Rougemont. With $500,000 He produced a brilliant piece of Cold War anti communist propaganda about a barnyard revolution, an allegory recounting events of the Russian Revolution with a very different ending than George Orwell's 1945 book. Sonya Orwell granted the rights to her late husband's work with one condition she wanted to meet Clark Gable. Animal Farm is among the most important works of animation in British cinema history. The film was widely praised the British out Disney Disney read one headline American painters Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and other abstract expressionists were unknowingly part of the cold war effort. The CIA pulled the strings at the Congress for congressional freedom, a front group that promoted non communist leftist artists. The implication being that the Soviets would throw avant garde painters to Lubyanka as prison cells, whereas freedom loving Americans celebrated them. Spies operated a long leash policy using galleries and museums to promote painters. The rules allow the CIA to sidestep artists who might object to having their exhibitions funded by the government. The CIA has been working with Hollywood since its inception in 1947. Offering favors and access to Langley HQ for productions that portray the agency favorably homeland Zero Dark 30 and Black Hawk Down among them. The CIA even had script approval during the filming of the TV series The Americans while shooting the Tom Clancy thriller The sum of all fears CIA film liaison Yes, the agency has a film liaison. Chase Brandon advised on the set and he was also frequently around during the shooting of alias the espionage series starring Ben Affleck's ex wife Jennifer Garner. Garner even filmed a CIA recruitment video and athletics Oscar winning Argo was the first movie permitted to film inside Langley. When director Henry Alex Rubin asked the FBI to look over a draft script for his 2012 Cyber drama disconnect he expected a few fact checking corrections. Instead, the FBI suggested changes to a scene where two agents aggressively questioned a journalist. Like the CIA, the FBI aims to polish its image by consulting on projects like the Miley Cyrus film so undercover and how desperate these films like The Miley Cyrus film so undercover in the Watergate biopic Mark Felt the man who brought brought down the White House. The FBI has had an uneasy relationship with Hollywood. Former Director J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with rooting out communist and censoring movies. Even Jimmy Stewart's holiday classic It's A Wonderful Life was considered Soviet propaganda at one stage. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't just write Sherlock Holmes is detective stories. He wrote propaganda for the British during World War One. The government asked conan doyle to help with the war effort, so he wrote a national appeal to arms. The UK also enlisted other prominent writers for His Majesty's government's war propaganda board. More than 50 of Britain's leading authors including HG Wells and Thomas Hardy also signed an author's declaration, a manifesto declaring that the German invasion of Belgium was a crime and that Britain could not idly stand by was the scorpions power ballad winds of change a CIA Rock Anthem crafted to bring about or to bring down the Iron Curtain. This song was written in September 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, with lyrics promoting the desire for change the world is closing in Did you ever think that we could be so close like brothers? kroons Klaus minor frontman for the West German heavy metal band minor deny that he was also a frontman for American spies, but us investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe argues the point in his winds of change podcast albeit without much evidence. During the 1960s and 70s, the US State Department had a strategy to introduce American music intentionally winning audiences over as ideological Cold War allies in the process. The David brew Breck jazz quartet performed in Poland, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. music legends Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie were jazz ambassadors and African Asia promoting America as a symbol of racial progress. The plan didn't always work. Armstrong criticized President Dwight Eisenhower during the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, when the National Guard prevented black students from integrating into Little Rock High School. Armstrong even abandoned his ambassadorship periodically to drive home his point. Somerset mom, the celebrated British author is one of the first espionage writers who actually work as a spy. Mom was assigned to Geneva Switzerland as a world war two Secret Intelligence Service Officer disguised as a French playwright. He isn't coded messages embedded in manuscripts. Mom was supposed to be a propaganda tool for the British government, but his effectiveness is debatable. In his foreword to Ashenden mom writes, the work of an agent in the intelligence department is on the whole monotonous a lot of it is uncommonly useless. And quote, so this goes on with a few more examples, but you get the point. These alphabet agencies have their say about what gets produced and what doesn't. And if you think that they don't create movies, to set a particular agenda or to portray the agencies in a particular light, wake up. So I think perhaps a more not benevolent interpretation about why the movies are so popular and why they're so ubiquitous, and they just keep churning out more and more content is because that's what's wanted. That's what's expected. That's what's needed. Cheer the heroes and Buddha baddies. It might also be interesting when you have some spare time. If you're not familiar with Lookout Mountain, maybe just look into Lookout Mountain you can visit the web webpage on Wikipedia. This is common public information. I'm not pulling this out of some dark corner that nobody ever heard of. On the Wikipedia page for Lookout Mountain Air Force Station, you can read that it's now the private residence of actor Jared Leto in Laurel Canyon, which Laurel Canyon in and of itself is an interesting area that just seems to be oddly full of people who are from the entertainment world, but also have all of these connections to the military industrial complex. Hmm. I wonder if that's a coincidence, I'm gonna bet that it's probably not a coincidence. So in this article, there's a section about the formation of the 109 Excuse me, the them I'll just call it the motion picture squadron because I don't want to try to rattle off all these numbers the formation of the motion picture squadron. On April 1 1951, the Air Force established the air pictorial service or APS with the primary photo unit being the motion picture squadron. All photography of atomic bomb tests was quickly transferred from the air proving ground to the air pictorial service, which was under the command of the military air transport service. On April 16 1952, the air pictorial service was re designated the air photographic and charting service APCs was responsible for mapping the world and providing accurate aerial charts to military aviators of wherever they needed. It also produced all Air Force training films, public information, films and monthly newsreels. On April 28 1952, the motion picture squadron was re designated. And this is another call out number. I get a little dyslexic from time to time with my numbers. And so I don't want to call out all these numbers, you can read it in the in the article, the mission of the newly formed motion picture squadron was to provide in service production of classified motion pictures and still photographs for the Department of the Air Force in support of the atomic energy program and to provide such additional production of motion picture and still photography as directed by the commanding general err, pictorial service. So you might think, Okay, well, I mean, so they were in Laurel Canyon, they were out there in Hollywood, I mean, couldn't not just be a coincidence, maybe they really just were making these military films and they didn't have any other involvement. So let's scroll down to productions. In an average year, Lookout Mountain produce 150 reels of finished film a reel being 10 minutes of film, or roughly 35 to 40 finished films. In addition, Lookout Mountain provided film input for the monthly Air Force newsreel. Shown to Air Force personnel around the world and briefing films for HQ, the US Air Force and unclassified film clips for the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information to distribute to TV media from film received daily from the photo squadron documenting Air Force combat operations of Vietnam. Many of the film reports, training films and special film projects featured well known Hollywood actors and voice over narrators. Among those who have starred in the Air Force films shot at the hill, as lookout personnel called the studio were Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Gregory Peck, Marvin Miller, Kim Novak, Glen Ford, and Lee Marvin. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's totally just a coincidence that this studio was there, in Laurel Canyon, I'm sure that they didn't have any input in the rest of Hollywood at all. So as I said, the less benevolent the nest, the less of beneficent interpretation of all this is that these films are ubiquitous, and they're popular, because that's the direction that they are supposed to go in. We are supposed to be watching these films. We are supposed to be cheering for the hero and booing the baddie, and we're supposed to perceive the government. And these agencies in very particular well thought out ways. And so I think if people are being lied to and manipulated and steered in a very particular direction, to believe very particular things, you can't act as though will everybody is just dumbed down and it's all their fault. And they want to read comic books and watch comic book related movies because they're all a bunch of morons. I think that's oversimplifying things quite a bit. Do I think that the education system in America is failing? 90% of people? Hell yeah. No disagreement for me there whatsoever. Are you looking for more? Don't forget you can find Sarah on her blogs at Causey consulting llc.com and At Sara causey.com, you can also read her content on medium, and substack. On with the show. I'm not sure that anyone with a straight face is going to tell you that the American educational system is still top tier, and that all students graduate fully prepared to take on the world, whether they're going to go to trade school and learn a trade, whether they're going to college to continue studying, they're going to go out and seek a job. They're fully prepared and they're ready to roll. They know everything that they need to know about managing money. They know about the dangers of credit cards and too much debt. They understand how to pay taxes, they know how to balance their bank account without logging on and having some bot do it for them manually. They know what they need to know they're in charge of things. I don't know a single person that would agree with any of that. I think we sort of all know that the school system is severely lacking, but nobody's really coming up with good solutions to the problem. It's interesting to me, because I know several people over the past few years that have opted to homeschool. And they told me we never would have imagined that we would be homeschooling the kids, we're not super religious. We're not trying to push a particular political agenda or a political party onto the kids. We're not trying to brainwash them so that they're exactly like us. We want them to be individuals. We just saw that they were not growing and developing intellectually at the pace that we thought would be normal. We started looking at the schoolbooks and asking questions, very pointed questions about what what do you do all day? When the teacher gets up? What do they teach? What what's happening in there. And they found that it was a lot of reliance on devices, like using digital tools, as a babysitter. Here, have an iPad, get on your Chromebook, I don't care what you do. As long as you're not looking at pornography or trying to burn the building down, I don't really care. Just amuse yourself. Well, if stuff like that is going on, it's not a wonder that kids are not developing at the intellectual pace that they should sort of like what I've been saying about the idiot box if you sit and watch the TV or Netflix and a continuous loop, and you're not seeking out things to challenge your brain, or to challenge your worldview. Let me read something that is not from an echo chamber, I want to read something that's going to challenge me I want to hear some opinions and some ideas that I've never heard before. Talk to people that I disagree with. Of course, you're gonna be dumbed down here, kid, take an iPad, and go sit down and shut up. Don't look at anything nasty, just go sit down and shut up. What what kind of education is that? You know, and then you have that statistic I talked about before, I'm only 17% of people in the country would say they read books on a regular basis. We are they haven't been trained to read, they're not accustomed to reading. If you tell the kid go take a Chromebook or go take an iPad and sit down and shut up. I'm gonna guess that most kids given to their own predilections are probably going to play games and look for things that give them that little bump of serotonin or that little bump of dopamine in their brain. They're not going to sit there and say, you know, I should probably read the classics, I should probably look for something that's going to challenge me intellectually. That's, that's maybe not the direction that they're going in. If you just randomly hand them a device and say, Don't burn the place down. Just go sit down and shut up. The irony is in some respects, that does train them for what's yet to come. In. The episode I recorded about is the future filled with dead end jobs. You know, I talked about what Russell Brand said is sort of a throwaway comment or a joke. The robots are going to escort you from dead end job to dead end job. Maybe that's not so far off the mark. If you watch that dystopian cartoon from the WEF, about your boss, being able to read your brainwaves, if your brainwaves are good, and you're being productive, you'll get your puppy treat. But if your brainwaves are not good, and you're not being productive, or you're conspiring with a colleague to leave the company and have your own startup, you're in trouble. Maybe sit down and shut up in the corner with your iPad, don't look at porn and don't burn the building down. Maybe that is training for the future. Sit down in your cube. If we like your brainwaves, you'll get rewarded. If we don't, you'll get punished. But what you're going to do is sit down and shut up. Maybe the dumbing down of the culture is more about pacifism, docility, sit down, shut up and comply. I think Walter is spot on when he talks about how kids are not taught how to deal with money. And as he says the one thing you think they would teach in America, but they don't? Why is that? You know, to me, it's almost like they want you dumb, especially about finances because debt is easy to get into and hard to get out of. I've lived that nightmare. And I've talked about this publicly many times. My first iteration of self employment that failed and failed spectacularly. I know what it's like to play credit card roulette. I know what it's like to look at your statements and just have a churning stomach ache. feel sick, feel sick at yourself, for what you've done, feel sick about the business? Why is this not working out? How is it possible that I could be so good doing this job for other people, and be so lousy doing it for myself out here, this is all I've ever wanted. All I ever wanted was to be free to be at home to be around my animals all day to be out of that stinking cube farm. I wanted to say something a lot more forceful, but I'll keep it clean. I wanted to get out of there dammit. And so now I've done that, and I can't make a go of it. It's easy to run up the debt. And then it takes years to get rid of it. It takes hard work and effort, a lot of budgeting. And it sucks. I've quoted Jared a Brock's article many times as well about how the hyper elites want your stuff. They want to engineer yet another recession yet another economic crash so they can swoop in and take your stuff on the cheap. This is another reason why we could make the argument that the fat cats and the power brokers want you dumbed down. You don't know what's going on. You're not going to ask questions. It I feel pity. And I'm not trying to be condescending here. I'm trying to be genuine. I feel pity for people who still think that these economic cycles happen on accident. Oops, a daisy, we couldn't see it coming. We just had no idea oh my god, we're so sorry. We didn't we didn't think this was going to be the outcome. These boom cycles happen on accident. These bust cycles happen on accident. Well, that's just the way of the world as though it's the same thing as gravity. What goes up must come down. Same thing in the economy. It's belying the fact that there are bankers and hyper elites and people like the F E. D, pulling the strings behind the scenes to ensure that the economy goes in a particular direction that benefits them. I feel sad for people who don't get that yet. I've also said many times that I feel like whatever it is, we're in now. recession, depression, stagflation. It's going to separate out people who paid attention from people who didn't. And I think people who have been relying on social media, looking at snippets, they believe that we still somehow have a 3.4% unemployment rate. And that there really are two open jobs for every one unemployed person and that those are legit jobs that someone's going to hire for and pay you a living wage. That's sad to me, because I don't know how any rational person could think that. So I believe what Walter is talking about, is very relevant. I think that there's more to the story. I feel that it's easy to blame movies or popular music, and just say, well, this is the culprit. All these Marvel films are so ubiquitous, and that's a sign of a dumbed down culture. Well, maybe let's get off our high horse a little bit here. I'm not opposed entirely to bread and circus. I have some bread and circus you've got to after you read a book, like no place to hide, and you're sitting there and you're digesting all of this mass surveillance and the fact that you can't so much a sneeze or blow your nose without somebody knowing it. I don't have any delusions right now, as I'm sitting here talking into this microphone, recording this episode for you. Someone else is listening. Long before you ever hear this episode for yourself. Someone else is listening. That's creepy is weird. Yet it's the reality that we live in. After you read a book like that, you have to decompress if I sat and just read Read book after book after book continuously. About, here's all of this mass surveillance. Here's how the economy is rigged. Here's how the middle class is dying. Here's how working poor people are baited and switched. I just would just have to crawl into the coffin, you have to be able to let off some steam and do something for fun for pleasure. Animals play. That's the thing people want to act like, farm animals are all dumb. It's almost like they just lay in a crate all day. And that's nature's way it is not. Animals play. They fall asleep and they dream. It's a very normal, natural thing to want to play. And to have fun. I don't feel that there's anything wrong with that. And if you enjoy reading comic books, or watching superhero films, I don't feel like there's anything wrong with that. It all comes back to balance. Are you doing those things in a continual loop? Or are you peppering in learning experiences? Are you growing your mind? Are you trying to figure out the truth for yourself as opposed to just buying whatever pablum is dished out for you? Take your medicine, take your pablum little baby and go to the corner and hush. How much of that? are you balancing out with something that stimulates your intellect and causes you to think about the world in a different way? Do you ever read about religion or philosophy? Do you ever challenge the lens through which you see the world? Or are you still whatever church or belief system you were raised in as a kid? Have you ever read about something that might be different? Whatever politics your parents grew up with, when you were a kid? Have you ever challenged that? Have you ever stepped outside the comfort zone enough to see that there are opinions that differ from your own? I think all of that's important. And I think Walter walks it back a little bit because he says so the fact that people turn to comic books and pornography and other seemingly lower level things, I'm not sure that they are lower level. But the reason that things are selling is because of how America is dealing with its citizens. It's a symptom. Yeah, it sure is. A symptom is an allergy. Well, why why are we sneezing? Because we live next to a pepper factory. Maybe it's the pepper. Yeah, maybe it's the propaganda. Maybe it's social engineering. Maybe this is happening because this won't the hyper elites want to hamper the dumber you are you're not looking into things like bank bail ins instead of bank bailouts. You're not looking into? Why are we suddenly being bombarded with UFOs? What is this? Is this some foreign government? Is this made up BS? Is this a fake alien invasion? Is this like the Battle of Los Angeles as a part of World War Two? I mean, what is this crap? You're not asking those questions? If the government tells you, this is UFOs, and we're about to see little tiny green alien man, you'll go Wow. Okay, I guess that's what we're doing. Yeah, it's a symptom. Of course, it's a symptom. So to return back to these questions, are we living in a dumbed down culture? Yes, I think is Bjorn asked the question, you stop celebrating stupidity. Is pop culture just celebrating stupidity? Yes. Yes, I think it is. I just think that you can't put all of that down on the individual level. Of course, there's personal responsibility. Of course, people, if you want to break out of the matrix, so to speak, I know that's a very hackneyed example. But if you want to break out of this matrix of being dumbed down, you have to want that for yourself. You have to go and pursue the information and read books, and listen, really sit and have dialogues with other people that you might not on the surface agree with. You have to pursue those things for yourself. Unfortunately, I think because of the partisan politics, anytime that you start using the word systemic, you're going to have certain people that bristle, whether you're talking about systemic racism, or you're talking about a rigged and broken financial system, just the fact that you're using the word system makes some people suddenly turn into very big fans of crony capitalism, and understand that, like they think that the CEOs and Wall Street fat cats really give two shits about them. It's absurd. Oh well I think these people gonna do what's best for me. You'll have some guy who doesn't have two nickels to rub together that acts like any day now he could get a call from Jamie Dimon. And Jamie's gonna say I want you to be my successor. I want you to become the King of JP Morgan Why are you defending these fat cats? There were people on Twitter. Well, I say people could be bots, trolls, paid shills pieces of AI programming who the hell knows but individuals entities of some kind on Twitter talking about how Jerome Powell should be paid more. He is so important and his job is so crucial. He should be paid more than 190k to do what he does. And I'm like, Are you nuts? And you know, these people are probably like what I'm talking about. If they actually are human beings, it's like they think any day now they're going to get anointed to have Jerome pals job. I think in this interview, Walter asks the right question. The interviewer says, another way is that their ubiquity is a sign of a dumbed down culture. And he said, Yeah, that's true. But why is it true? I think we should all ask ourselves that question, if we are living in a dumbed down culture, why is that the case? Who benefits from that? If we're in a culture that celebrates stupidity that idolizes pseudo intellectualism, bread and circus and have fun all the time mindlessly scroll all the time, who benefits from that? I will leave you to draw your own conclusions. As always. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.