So why do you think we are not in a meritocracy?

But there's also, but remember, corporate media is the matrix and they plug you into cable, right? In the old days. Now it's a little bit different because of online media, but especially 10 years ago. And remember we started 22 years ago. So I've been losing my mind over how obvious corporate media corruption has been for decades now. Right. But no one acknowledged it until online media got stronger. But one of the myths that corporate media creates is the myth of meritocracy. Not that meritocracy can't exist or shouldn't exist, but they pretend it exists today. So the problem with that myth, Lex, is that it gets people thinking, well, if they're already rich, they must have merited it by definition. So all the rich have merit. And the reverse of that, if you're poor or middle-class, well, you must not have merited wealth. So you're no good. We don't have to listen to you. And that's a really dangerous, awful idea. And so if we get to a meritocracy one day, I'll be the happiest person in America. But right now it's, look, here I'll give you an example that I put in the book. And it's not us, this other folks did this YouTube video. I can't even quite find who they were, but it was a brilliant video. And they said, okay, we're going to do a hundred yard race, but hold on before we start. Anyone who has two parents take two steps forward. Anyone who has went to college, take another two steps forward. Anyone who doesn't have bills to pay for education anymore, take two steps forward. They do all these things, right? And then at the end, before they start, somebody's 20 yards from the finish line. And a lot of people are still at the starting line and then they go okay now we're going to run a race the guy who's right next to the finish line wins and they go meritocracy okay so

the the challenge there is to know which disparities when you just freeze the system and observe are actually a result of some kind of discrimination or flaw in the system versus the result of a meritocracy of the better of the better runner being ahead that's

right there are some parts that are easy to solve lex so you know um if you donated to a politician and he gave you a billion dollar subsidy that's not meritocracy right so if you fall on the money

you can see the flaws in the system exactly

and so and again nothing's ever perfect at any snapshot of history right or of the moment you're going to be at some point in the pendulum swing but if you let if you trust the people and you let the pendulum swing but not wildly then you're going to get to the right answers in the long run so

you think this woke mind virus that the right refers to is a problem, but not a big problem?

No. So the right wing drives me crazy. So look, guys, your instincts of populism is correct. Your instincts of anti-corruption is correct, right? And I love you for it. And so, and in a lot of ways, the right wing voters figured out the whole system screwed before left wing voters did it. I shouldn't say left wing voters because progressives and left wing have been saying it for not only decades, but maybe centuries. Right. But democratic voters, a lot of democratic voters, some of them actually like this current system. A lot of them have been tricked into liking this current system. And the left should be fighting against corruption harder than the right. But right now, unfortunately, that's not the case. So there's a lot that I like about right-wing voters. But you guys get tricked on social issues so easily, right? So how many people are involved in trans high school sports and a girl who should have finished first in that track race in the middle of Indiana finished second? First of all, this is the big crime. And how many people are involved? About 7, 13 out of a country of 330 million people. And you can't see that that's a distraction right so and every everything that is like bait that the right-wing media puts out there they run after i mean tucker carlson doing insane segments about m&m should be sexier uh potato mr potato head has gender issues guys get out of there get out of there. It's a trap, okay? Yeah, that doesn't mean that there's larger

scale issues with things like DEI that aren't so fun to talk about or viral to talk about on an anecdotal scale. is, DI does create a culture of fear with cancel culture and it does create a kind of culture that limits the freedom of expression and it does limit the meritocracy in another way. So you're basically saying, forget all these other problems.

Money is the biggest problem. So first of all, on AOC as an example and I don't mean to pick on her but she won through the great work of her and Shoykat Chakrabarty and Corbyn Trent and others who are leaders of the just democrats that went and helped her campaign they were critical help and we all told her the same thing so it's not about me me me and so we all said you've got to challenge the establishment and you've got to work on money and politics first because if you don't work on money and politics and you don't fix that you're going to lose on almost all other issues but she didn't believe us because it's uncomfortable and all the progressives that went into congress they drive me crazy. They think, oh, no, no, you're exaggerating. No, these are, and the minute they get in, all of a sudden, my colleagues, right? Your colleagues hate you, and they're going to drive you out. You're a sucker. And Jamal Bowman, Cori Bush, what did they do? They drove them out. Marie Newman drove them out, right? And because they are not on your side, they're not your colleagues. And what happened to $15 minimum wage? And I remember talking to one of those Congress people, I won't leave out the name, and saying, hey, you know, they're not going to do $15 minimum wage. And he's like, oh, Cenk, you're out of the loop. Nancy Pelosi assured us that they are going to do $15 minimum wage. I'm like, I love you, but you're totally wrong. Moneyed interests are not going to do $15 minimum wage. You have to start fighting now, right? And they didn't get it. So they lost on almost all those issues because it's all about incentives and disincentives and rules. If you don't fix the rules, you're going to constantly run into the same brick wall. Now, the second issue that we were talking about is in the culture wars, the rest of us are stuck between the two extreme two percenters, right? On both sides. So the two percenter on the left goes, you know, if you're a white woman, you need to shut up and listen now. Okay. That's ridiculous. No, you don't. If you're a white woman, you have every right to speak out. You have every right that every other human being has. And so would I love for all of us to listen to one another, to have empathy for one another and go, hey, I wonder how a right winger thinks about this. I wonder how a left winger thinks about this. I wonder why they think that way, right? I love that and I want that. So I want you to listen but i don't want you to shut up so that two percent gets extreme and i and i don't like it but on the right wing you got your two percent who think that that's all that's happening on the left and that's all that's happening in american politics and they think the entire left believes that tiny two percent right and so they hate the left and they're like, oh, I'm not going to shut up. I'm not going to wear a mask. I'm not going to do any of these things and I'm not going to do any, that's a freedom. And then a Republican comes along and goes, oh yeah, that thing you call freedom, that's deregulation for corporations because you shouldn't really have freedom. Companies should have freedom,

right? And

then the guy goes, yeah, freedom for ExxonMobil. No, brother, they tricked you.

Yeah, the 2% on each side is a useful distraction for, yes, for the corruption of the politicians via money. Still, I'm talking about the 96% that remains in the middle and the impact that DEI policies has on them. Yeah,

so here's where it gets absurd. I'll give you a good example of absurdity so um in in a school i believe in california uh they uh noticed that latino students were not doing as well in ap and honors classes so they canceled ap and honors classes oh come on what are you doing you're that's nuts no your job is to help them get better grades get better opportunity etc that's the harder thing to do and the right thing to do that your job isn't i'm going to make everything equal by taking away the opportunity for higher achievement for other students if that's what you're doing and you think you're on the left you're not really on the left i actually think that's like an authoritarian position that no progressive in their right mind would be in favor of. But it's all definitional. So here's another example of definitional, communism. Like they say, oh my God, Kamala Harris is a communist. Well, when you're telling on yourself, brothers and sisters, when you say that, that means A, I don't know what communism means. And B, I don't have any idea what's going on in American politics. Kamala Harris is a corporatist. That's her problem. Not that she's a communist. She's on the other end of the spectrum, right? The idea that Kamala Harris would come into office and say, that's it. There's no more private property. We're going to take all of your homes and it's now government property, all your cars, etc. She was not going to get within a billion miles of that. Her donors would never allow her to get within a billion miles of that. That is so preposterous that when you say something like that, it's disqualifying. Like I can't debate someone who thinks that Democrats are communists when they're actually largely corporatists. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So let's go there. So when people call her

communists, they're usually referring to certain kinds of policies. So do you think, I mean, I think it's a ridiculous label to assign to Kamala Harris, especially given the history of communism in the 20th century and what those economic and political policies have led to the scale of suffering that led to. And it just degrades the meaning of the word, right? But to take that seriously, why is she not a communist? So you said she's not a communist because she's a corporatist. Okay. But that can't be... Okay. Everybody in politics is a corporatist. Almost. Almost everybody in politics is a corporatist. But that doesn't mean the corporations have completely bought their mind. They have an influence on their mind on issues that matter to those corporations.

Yep. Right?

Yep. Outside of that, they're still thinking for the voters because they still have to win the votes. Barely. Okay.

So here, let me give you an example so you see what I'm saying. So if you just wanted votes, you would do a lot of what Tim Walz did, okay? And by the way, a lot of what Bernie did, that's why Bernie, who had no media coverage, went from like 2% in 2015 to by the end about 48 because he's just doing things that were popular right and that american people wanted etc right because he's not controlled by corporations by the way neither is tom massey on the right wing side on the republican side right so it's not all that's why i always say almost all right so if you're doing things that are popular, people love it. So today, what would Kamala Harris do if she actually just wanted to win, right? So number one, she was trying to pass paid family leave right now. Why? It pulls at 84% and even 74% of Republicans want it. Why? Because it says, hey, when you have a baby, you should get 12 weeks off. Bond with your baby. Right now, in a lot of states that don't have paid family leave, you have to go back to work the very next day or you have to use all of your sick days, all your vacation days, just have one or two weeks with your baby, right? So conservatives love paid family leave. Liberals love paid family leave. That's why it polls so high. So why isn't she proposing it? It's not in our economic plan. Tim Wall's already passed it in Minnesota. He showed how easy it was. If you want votes, and then you know what's going to happen if you propose paid family leave. The Republicans are going to go, no, our beloved corporations don't want to spend another dollar on moms. Right. And they fall for that trap. And then you're in an infinitely better shape. So why doesn't she do it? She doesn't do it because her corporate donors don't want her to do it. $15 minimum wage layup over two thirds of the country wants it because it not only gives you higher wages for minimum wage folks, but it pushes wages up for others. And what do the elites say? Oh, that's going to drive up inflation. No, you shouldn't get paid anymore. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. So you're saying all other prices should go up, but the only thing that shouldn't go up is our wages. No, our wages should go up. Okay. So these are all easy ones. Here's another one. Anti-corruption. Why isn't she running on getting money out of politics? It pulls at over 90%. Why isn't Trump running on it anymore? He won when he ran on it in 2016. He didn't mean a word of it, but he ran on it. It was smart. They don't do it because their corporate donors take their heads off if they do it. So in contradiction to that, why did she propose to

raise the corporate tax rate from whatever, 21% to 28%

Because that's easy, because that is something that's super popular, and she's not going to do it. That's why. So guys, this is where I break the hearts of Blue Maga. Blue Maga thinks, oh my God, these Democrats, they're angels, and the right wingers,ers and the Republicans are evil and they work for big business, but not Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden, right? Okay, well, Donald Trump took the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. So that's trillions of dollars that got transferred. Because guys, you got to understand, if the corporations don't pay it, we have to pay it because we're running up these giant deficits and eventually either they're going to not eventually keep raising our taxes in different ways that you're not noticing. They keep increasing fees and fines and different ways for the government to collect money. So we're paying for it. And on top of that, eventually they're going to cut your social security and Medicare because they're going to say, oh, we don't have any options left anymore. Yeah. You don't have any options left anymore because you kept giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations. So we're going to have to pay for that. So then Trump, then Biden says, oh my God, I'm going to bring corporate taxes back up to 28%. I'm like, wait, hold on. They were at 35. You already did a sleight of hand and said 28 okay then he gets into office and mansion says no 25 that's the highest i'll go and he goes okay fine 25 and then while you're not looking they just dump it they don't even do 25 it's still at 21 so i hear me now quote me later i do predictions on the show all the time because you you should hold me accountable you should hold all your pundits accountable if you held all your pundits accountable, we'd be the last man standing, and that's kind of what happened. Okay. So I guarantee you, she will not increase corporate taxes.