01 - Introducing the Band

Transcript

welcome to the show my name is jason and i'm here with dimitri uh this is our uh

you know our new show our um our premiere episode and we just wanted to talk a little bit

about uh in this show why it is that we want to do this in the first place

there's a lot of different podcasts out there and there's a lot of different um places to people that people can go for

for news or for you know information or you know even just to share ideas and um you know

we sort of asked ourselves what you know you know what made us want to start doing a podcast in the first place and um you know it had been sort of

something that we both flirted with for i think a few years and um it was really the last you know the um the epidemic or

the pandemic um that has been really the thing that was the prime

motivator to get something in like things you know have been getting pretty crazy and sort of continue to be um

modestly insane and we want to um sort of jump into the fray and sort of

um you know figure things out like figure things out i think you know in combination with

people that might listen to us or even if it's just the two of us talking together figuring out like what is the

best way out of this because right now um you know there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world and i think uh

we want to um sort of help uh help find help find answers in some

way so that's basically what this this we're hoping that this podcast will become we still don't have a name for it

but maybe we will by the time this goes to air and maybe i'll just edit this part out

to start with i'll say

the thing that sort of made this whole idea of um feeling like i needed to do a podcast um

uh the thing that really drove it home for me was a sort of a fight that i had with

my dad um and when i say fight that i had with my dad it was a very um you know the the

the the fights that we would have are pretty mild by comparison i think what most people would think of it when we

fight my dad is a fairly easy going person and we had for a long time um you know the

kind of relationship where you know we disagreed on a lot of things um but we would have very respectful conversations

with each other and we'd have um you know i guess debates just to

some extent on various issues and we would usually fall on different sides but we could always

sort of come to an understanding and um i think it would um

it always seemed to sort of work out in the end and we'd go for a beer and like blah blah blah everybody was everybody was happy but uh over the cobot pandemic

things got a little bit crazy yep my dad and i had always been uh

the type of people um that would uh you know we'd go we'd go out for beers we'd we talk politics

Politics

and we're both pretty into politics pretty into like current events the news history stuff like that

a lot of our conversations would um over the years um get to be you know they're fairly rich

with you know i always found myself like learning something from them at the end of the day and i always always felt more

um you know like i understood the issue more comprehensively because of his input and

uh you know i hope he did the same for me but maybe not as much but it was um you know i was also you know a kid for

part of it and i might i just wasn't as wise um to say that i am now but i do feel like

now i can at least bring something to the conversation or a perspective but why can't i yeah yeah why um what do you

think has changed now that has made it into a different like this um

amicable sort of disagreement what has happened now that has changed it fundamentally to

be able to disagree with people you love the most who brought you onto this earth but now the schism is just so huge

yeah it's it's a good question i asked myself this and because it's it's a it's a massive fissure like it's it's not uh

it's not like it's um well we agree to disagree and let's go have our uh have our beer now um

it was uh i think probably started uh you know around the time of trump like i think when trump got elected it became

you know it was just and you know some of that was trump some of it was just his like his personality

and some of it was the media reaction to that and whatever the case this sort of maelstrom of like

um just polarizing opinions seemed to be bouncing around

every space and it it it certainly found its way into um you know i i found

myself at the time getting more and more um skeptical of what i was hearing on the news and in the media just like trump

was sort of such a polar counter reaction to the mainstream

narrative yeah that people found themselves either on completely one side of the uh

schism or the other side and that sort of middle ground where people could find some overlap just completely collapsed

yeah right right where i never felt such a divide between left and right or you know different

different just change of thought in general like there was no very little room for middle ground and if you were in the middle you're considered to be

kind of wishy-washy and and hadn't thought clearly about the issues right right if you had thought clearly you would have picked one side or the other

side and that's it yeah and it's an easy he's an easy figure to be polarizing about because he comes well he is a very

bombastic kind of guy and he's like comes off his arrogant sexist like there's a million like negative

adjectives you could ascribe to him um but you would get people you know

uh like i think the argument on one side would be that well yeah he is but he's also a real person which is almost

doubtful in some to some capacity but it's like you know a lot of politicians are like this sort of have the same

um characteristics they're just it's not as visible or it's not as you know it doesn't make the does it make trump a

you know i don't want to go down a whole thing with trump like i you know and to be clear like i was never a trump fan like i always thought i think that his

time in in politics they really took down the office of the presidency took down the respect of

america abroad um is that taking down the respect of the establishment let's say including

you know whether it's regulatory bodies or the white house itself also be part of where people no longer can

if you're not going to respect the presidency maybe people aren't going to respect each other's personal opinions on the street anymore either yes suspect

in general has just completely faded yeah yeah you know because it's one thing to meet a jerk on the street and disagree or whatever but they're like

okay well this is a doctor's a phd this is the president of america yeah there's a certain level of respect but when i

don't know when all the priests have been caught doing something next thing you know you don't want to respect the church or maybe anything else in society

like everything just crumbles from that point i think every culture needs its narrative and when you start to blow these um

foundational pieces out of the water then you're left at the dinner table with your own family not agreeing

yeah that's a good way to put it actually when the when when the fissures are run so deep that you have um you

civility

know the president of the united states you know uh just being such a such a you know again

polarizing figure where you know um you know the things that he's saying and

the you know like he's just not doing it the way that people used to do it and they're supposed to be of a higher mind like it's one yeah yeah sort of you know

be belligerent with somebody you know your family member there's no filter because you've known them for 40 years

of your life yeah but when you hear the people in power talking the same way

then all sort of uh civility and conversation just erodes yeah he sounded like the sort of uneducated jock in high

school who's just kind of like running his mouth off and you just kind of roll your eyes and be like okay donald or everybody's crazy uncle yeah or

everybody's crazy uncle um and with that being said you know in terms of like

you know if you strip away his personality like he was in power and his administration did do some positive

things like you know what i mean so it's it's it can't all be bad and i the media narrative was that it was all bad he was

you know a russian agent all this stuff like it was just so out of control he could have cured cancer and they still would have found negative about it or

even when the vaccines came out was it kamala i'm not taking it if donald trump says it's good yeah right

right wow yeah that's horrible now she has to run around so you better get your vaccine or you're going to lose your career yeah right you know so now so now

people like what the hell am i supposed to believe in yeah it's a good point because it's it really uh you know you

have on the one hand trump denigrating the office by his behavior she's doing

just the same by denigrating you know because she's showing a lack of faith in everything in government in the process

and the democratic process the very institutions that he is saying are going to create the solution to the problem

she's denigrating them yeah and then when she's in power she's like no these are fabulous and you must take them otherwise we're going to have all these repercussions against you yeah yeah

yeah so you know i mean and uh i think the polarization started there i think the

polarization

media found a bone they could latch on to you know the sort of dying media they were already sort of on their way out

and it was like trump was almost like an incredible to me how they used to bash him because it

was really their meal ticket for so long like and they were in the donald trump bashing business and cnn is in the

middle now of downsizing they're in huge financial trouble their numbers may have been lower yeah because biden doesn't go around you know i mean he has his own

moments but like you can only watch sleepy grandpa for so long right but yeah i think the polarization started

there and the fact that i wasn't just bashing trump along with everybody else because i you know i it really makes me

suspicious when i see cnn or cbc like don't forget these are the networks that would you know went along with weapons of mass destruction in iraq like you

know there's there's constant like lies being pushed and um you know so when they're saying you know

when you hear them saying all these things about trump and then you're sort of reading deeper and being like well actually he you know he did um you know

you know a lot of you know this is i can't think of something off the top of my head but like you know a lot of

sometimes he would say something and uh you know you would you would hear about it on the news and then you would fact

check it and it's like oh no he actually didn't say that or he they took his clip out of context where he said something he's like well actually what he said in

context did make sense just by nature once when something goes all in on one side yeah i get very skeptical because

nobody's inherently very like 100 evil 100 good yeah so they're just telling

you this person is 100 evil every single thing he touches does administers talks

about is wrong and uh antithetical to what america is all about like that just can't be the case

right so now i got to deal with the idiocy of donald trump but also with the perceived you know what what what is the

truth that's being thrown at him and not truth yeah because it can't be all just the way they're saying it yeah and then

you end up in the middle somewhere which can be a political faux pas because then you're back into the center again

everyone's like well what do you mean pick a side man you gotta you know you gotta choose choose your master

and um that that hollowness that hollowing out of the middle has never existed in my

lifetime right usually people gravitated towards the middle and flirted with the edges

yeah now we're picking the edges and flirting somewhat with the middle yeah yeah

Donald Trump

yeah and i think um and i want to get more to that later because there's like i do think that that's kind of crucial

um uh so coming back to you know the whole

polarizing force of donald trump i think was where the whole fissure with my dad began and um you know uh

it was sort of paralleled in canada with um trudeau and you know i was never a trudeau fan from the get-go

and um [Music] you know and i'm happy you know maybe we'll have another episode we could just get into just a big vlog

very optimistic initially yeah you know yeah there was maybe a moment of time where i was like you never know but he

really stopped he my initial impression of him was was negative and then i was kind of like give him a chance like

don't be um like i didn't vote for him but i is certainly the most unqualified person

never take office yeah yeah from an academic and for sure scholastic uh occupational point of view yeah it's

really like having the babysitter take over the country like it's he hasn't done much of any notable yeah

thing whatsoever before he took office but i was going more on the spirit of is he a good guy

is he got strong morals is he going to try to heal some of the division that came out during harper um and uh of course at the

time we were dealing with you know radical islam and things like that right testy like someone in the middle might

be exactly the recipe we need emotionally at this point and then hopefully would surround

himself with very qualified individuals and you got a running team yeah that that's okay that's an okay um

platform for me in order to build your your party off of yeah but the huffington post ran a 2014 story at

the time we'll get back to your data set but i remember and it just kind of resurfaced is don is is trudeau in 2014

a dictator because he was mandating that everybody on the liberal party must vote for

uh like pro-choice and if you didn't you're off his team

2014 when did he come into office 2015. oh i see i think so some right there the

article i believe came out 2014. and so even the huffington post which is very left of center was like how can you tell

your own party members how they're supposed to vote and if you don't vote this way you're off the team right that

should have set off red flags like what is this man's true nature is he the healer i was looking for

or is he sort of a sheep in wolf's clothing yeah i don't know yeah it's um

wolf and she's clothing correct but either way yeah no we'll do a lot of

that um yeah that's interesting i think in retrospect it's it's it's easy to kind

Trudeau

of look back and you can always find somebody and you know huffington post that is interesting that because it's you know they are very i would think

they would have been his biggest cheerleader but um that's interesting to uh to hear that

um i think you know as the years went on with with um uh with trudeau in office like um and

and things would come out like you know i just even the obviously the jody

raybull thing was um you know i the fact that my my dad was still sort of uh i wouldn't say

cheerleading him but he was a liberal party and by the way you know getting back to where you said i do think i agree with you in that like at the time

when harper was sort of in his final years was uh there needed to be some sort of a change

like it was getting a little stale and uh you know and i think that he overall like if you look back he did a pretty good job um but it was you you could

sense that there needed to be some sort of a change and uh yeah maybe trudeau at the time it seemed like a breath of

fresh air like um but uh because you know we're all we're still relegated to you know like i mean

you could say well we have more parties running than just democrats and republicans because we're in canada but it's uh not much more like it's like and

nobody really realistic like uh oh for sure no trudeau sort of went on a de facto there was no strong competition

yeah but if they're i don't know if it pertains to trudeau or his or his uh those around him but there's a certain

amount of like emotional intelligence i think he has he can read a room he could read a vibe yeah maybe it's when you're

on trend and you can just see where the world is going and just kind of see the arc of time unfolding in front of your

eyes and there was that one commercial where i think he was lead he was losing to uh both the ndp and

pc party in the polls when they first started campaigning and they had one very famous tv commercial where he was

walking up the escalators that were coming down and as he got to the top of it he kind

of said we're all about change we're going to do things different and the metaphor of walking against the escalator going down

and trudeau being sort of very physically active and a dynamic kind of person yeah just really i think that

really and he said no we're going to spend money and go actually a little bit of the deficit because we need to build a country forward and i think that

resonated i think people got tired of the penny pinching a little bit and whatnot right unfortunately no they had no idea where spendthrift he was yes yes

so that might have been fine in normal times but that personality trait throughout the pandemic has created the

greatest debt we've ever had yeah in the country yeah and um yeah that's interesting i

don't know the commercial you mean but uh or the but um it reminds me of donald trump coming down when he announced his

presidency like that kind of thing where he's impactful there are strange parallels i think to trudeau and trump where they were both elected mostly

under superficial features right yeah for different reasons we're a different country from america but both

neither were like a deep man's thinking's position right you know sort of thing he's like i like the vibe i like the energy i like the direction

i like the uh the sort of image the person portrays yeah that's my gut

feeling you know that's my alpha male let's say or alpha female you know whatever but in the age of putin and

dictators around the world i think every country was looking for their own dynamic leader right to match up

and when you were to put hillary versus putin versus trump versus putin a lot of people instinctually are just going to

vote for trump because they see the match up as a better for their side rather than hillary yeah

i think the same sort of thing with trudeau yeah i mean you've only got two choices so it's it really does become um

Leadership

you know unfortunate like it but but that's uh it becomes a lesser of evils in many

ways and i think like you know a leader is first and foremost a symbolic you know figurehead so like you don't

necessarily even have to be like a deep like you don't have to be it was like joe clark or like you know

who's the other one stefan uh was it stefan he was running for

i remember when he won and he was a big environmentalist and i was like i i even at the time i was like you know what good i hope this guy like really like

this was in i think the mid-2000s i think i was going to remember the name somewhat yeah yeah but

it's just he couldn't i mean he would just have the charisma of a dying turtle like it was like there was no

um uh you know anything he got like voted out the next year later or something but

you know those were people who probably had a lot better ideas they just didn't have that magnetism that you get in like a trudeau or trump but you know

magnetism only sort of gets you so far um especially in a crisis especially in a

crisis yeah yeah you kind of want somebody who knows what they're doing and the whole thing with um you know wilson rayball where you know um

i you know i would say like look like i i told you this guy's a kind of a tyrant like there's a lot of things he's doing

and it's like you know my dad would sort of pass it off like um you know it's like well you know every there's always

corruption you know what i mean there's always some thing and there was a thing with uh snc lavalin where that whole thing came

around around the same time it's like yeah yeah a lot of things like that and um for only a five-year period or so he's

been in he's one of three elections there's a lot of scandals yeah yeah yeah yeah but um you know and it was and um yeah

like i said like it wasn't like my dad was an apologist for him and he sort of recognized the whole situation he's like

look i'd rather him still it's the liberal party i'm voting for this and that and it's like okay fair enough but

you know um it's just that some of this stuff was really some of

the stuff would get really bad and really sort of you know and then you know get later in when the pandemic started and there's

um you know things just kind of went off the rails and like i remember at the beginning of the pandemic

you know i you know i was one of the first people like i would follow that little chart that when it just was in china and i was like watching the

numbers and i was like oh because it's like you know all those end of the world scenarios are just fascinating high score board how many yeah yeah

yeah exactly when you watch the numbers go up and look to see if it went to another country and then would go to italy and you're like oh like what's you

know and then you know when it started when it came here and we had our first case in toronto i stopped taking the ttc

i started i was like you know what i don't want to be anywhere near this i don't know what's going on with it and and you know i was like everyone was

kind of like oh what do you uh you know i would get a lot of like sort of eye rolling behaviors if i was you know a

germaphobe which you know to some extent i guess i am but uh i didn't want to be anywhere near it and

i i think that's in retrospect funny that you know it's almost like the opposite reaction i get now when i talk

about these things but we didn't know what it was and it was like um well i would say you were ahead of the curve

you were ahead of the curve in terms of being proactive you saw things coming i was the same i was wearing gloves

outside because it was more contact-based and we didn't know you know definitely gloves out while pumping gas

you know sort of thing right yeah uh by late february march first you know i just had a lot of you know latex gloves

around like i'll just put these on no problem i don't know what's going on grocery shopping let's put some gloves on it was all about the gloves the first

six eight weeks or so the the masking didn't come in like april may june that's yeah you know

well because i think it was contact a lot of people thought it was you know you'd get it from picking up i remember sterilizing my groceries like constantly

100 but also i think then you're also ahead of the curve to know when the majority of the

danger has passed now yeah and science is you're you're reading the

science and your instinct and you're seeing what's going on number wise whether it's natural immunity and

vaccine you know really once you've got 80 90 of the population vaccinated which would have been in canada

september october november at that point yeah i would call it over if not you know for all intents and purposes it's

over because we've done the major step yeah everything also be sort of like small things to keep it going you know a

little masking perhaps here or there going into a hospital setting ttc sure maybe 75 capacity not 100 sure but to

then have to go through a full lockdown after that while watching the rest of the world open up simultaneously yeah it

was um so i just think to your point i think you were ahead of the curve being proactive and you've been ahead of

the curve knowing when the exit is nearing right but some people have latched on to this so deeply they just

can't let go now yeah like we're almost i would say we are adaptable to a fault

and many kids even are just used to wearing the mask now and feel almost like naked if they're not wearing

it right you know yeah it's a weird psychological dynamic um

and here to your going back to your father and just sort of the uh trying to figure out um why the difficulties are more now if you

were to ask your dad dad where do you fall on this topic and have him answer it

regardless of the party affiliation what do you think on taxation what do you think at hospitals what do you think on university care and then i actually

measured that as a score i bet you he wouldn't be as positioned where he's actually saying

he's positioned i think people just kind of inherently gravitate to a certain team and blow off a lot of these

scandals and whatnot but if you actually line them up and give it a sort of score tabulated a result he'd probably fall

a little bit to the left of where he's saying or a little bit to the right but not exactly where he's portraying himself to be that's just familiarity

and comfort i think yeah you know yeah so um you know

even before the vaccines came out i i sort of had my doubts in the in the sense that you know i i've

you know i i know how um uh um this sounds very bumpkin-ish to say this

but it's like i've never gotten the flu and i've never gotten the flu vaccine so i to me this is just another coronavirus

it's like okay i get that it's serious and i get that i'm you know i'm it's not like i know better than the doctors but i know my body i know what

you know i know what i've done before and i and i can read a risk i can do a risk analysis of something so it's like

for me i thought the risk did not seem that great i wanted to us to achieve herd immunity or if for

some reason the vaccines were the spectacular thing and there was no dissenting opinions and it was just like

you know um then then maybe i'll get the vaccine i don't know but i but it to me it just didn't make sense like with my

the risk profile and uh you know given that i was of uh you know sort of middle age or younger middle age and you know

how dare you you're thinking for yourself no no comorbidities so you know it just didn't make sense for me to get

it to put in something that was experimental and at the time um and uh so and you know i sort of told everybody

that but i guess the news sort of didn't percolate to my dad because he you know he had his uh had a big birthday party

on uh in 2021 and uh i sort of you know i was on the phone like just asking what to bring i was

like oh by the way and like you know kind of a bit of a dick move to not sort of give him a heads up beforehand but it

literally didn't occur to me i thought he knew and i said yeah just you know i haven't been vaccinated so i don't know if you want me to like and uh was this

summerish 2021 yeah it was july it's like the numbers are at very low levels

yeah yeah they were low yeah and it was like and um and to me and yeah i think the day

i think it was like it could have gone both ways here's a big yard and everything i was like okay we'll probably be outside anyway so i was like

you know no problem right but then uh you know then we started getting cloudy i'm like well just so you know if it rains or whatever and go inside i'm not

vaccinated like you know my my girlfriend's vaccinated like um and you know i'll wear a mask inside whatever

and we got into this back thing it was this whole thing and i was like oh like you know why are you not vaccinated it's

just and we started having a bit of a back and forth and at this point i was everything i was listening to dark horse

a lot and i was you know i was really kind of into you know i was like why are they using ivermectin like why is this

not even being explored and i was getting really skeptical about uh the motivations behind pushing these

vaccines and all the censorship on google uh youtube and everything like that it was like you know this seems

very um you know if somebody's telling you don't look into this like

like we're gonna put this box over here in a corner don't ever open this box it's like well i want to open the box well it's a very similar energy once

again if you say you know um like you were saying before the the news saying trump was 100 evil and that was right

the only direction you could go yeah just by by virtue of like not letting any wiggle room for some gray matter to

appear like i'm skeptical because nothing can be 100 percent one way or the other right so then when obviously

the vaccines are safe and effective and buy it and be on tv if you get it you're not going to be spreading it you will

kill grandma and you won't end up in the hospital right and then you're watching the news come out of israel and that by

summer 2021 they were talking third dose soon then i was like well wait a sec

they're human we're human they got coronavirus we got coronavirus so that doesn't drive what biden's saying

because he's saying you got your two shots you'll be done you're not going to spread it but

with very very high vaccination rates in israel at the time the highest in the world because it was so early

the numbers were still going up so much they needed a third dose so obviously they're spreading it to each other yeah

so forget about this i'm gonna do it for the community because every it isn't like you brought over your cousin seth

to the bar mitzvah who's unvaccinated in this case you would be seth at your father's birthday party and got everybody sick that just wouldn't work

out numerically and if that happened you'd be hearing about that all the time yeah one unvaccinated cousin came over and kicked off everybody who was

vaccinated right that's what the whole point they have protection against yeah yeah so i'm like just by sheer numbers at that point in

time just by sheer numbers at that point in time

when even even if the unvaccinated person was spreading it more they are vastly in the minority of the population

in general right so you know if they spread it at twice the rate let's say i'm just making up a number but they

represent 10 percent of the population that's never going to have an effect greater than the 90 or spreading it at

half that rate yeah because they're in the 90 percent right so i'm like okay it might have some mitigation and then it's

waning and you need a third shot so for me at that point it was like i'm just going to play cautionary precautionary

based on health based on community i'm like i don't know if this is the right move for everybody certainly grandpa

grandma comorbidities go for it but to have this unfortunate situation where your father is sort of like calling you

out thinking you know why didn't you get the vax and really your torch probably was was uh why should i get the backs right

and these talking points he wouldn't know about because he's just sort of following mainstream hearing the typical

like biden get it you're good this is the way out of the pandemic yeah yeah and you know often as often happens it

sort of it almost comes back to the the messaging and the media and stuff like that and like you know at the time you

know i you know we so we argued a bit then and it was uh

we both i i'll never forget his saying like like i follow the science like literally you know saying saying that

which has become such a meme now it's like um and you know when i was kind of it's not like i was sitting there

rationally discussing i was angry too because i was flustered and i was like well i've just been listen i just listened to this episode of dark horse

my god like don't you know what's going on so it's like there's you kind of get both of that right like and there's no that's not conducive to like having a

real uh dialogue so i don't and i you know there was some part of me that i'm like you know what i i don't want to get anybody second i don't i don't know 100

right so like i want to make sure i respect everything so i wore a mask there and everything like that but it really made me think this is where like

things have broken down like if i can't i was saying no i'm like listen like like you're okay you said you followed the science but let's talk about the

science then he's like well you're not a virologist or you're not a doctor it's like i know i'm not a doctor but like you know i can still you know read a

read you know read things and listen to other doctors these are opinions from other doctors

yeah yeah one doctor might say uh you need a hip replacement and we need to do this very you know invasive

surgery you're like i don't know i'm going to ask someone else well don't you just listen to that doctor you're not a

doctor even though it's your hip but wait a second i found another batch of experts they may be in the minority but

they're well regarded and they seem to have a good effect and then you have free sovereignty over your own body yeah you pick the choice

so far anyway so far yeah yeah that's a whole other topic like how far you know can you mandate something

on somebody's body when it's actually still disagreed upon so much around the world right like a polio vaccine

everyone's like yes polio is very dangerous and this is an excellent vaccine and we have like a 99.9

agreement amongst uh the intellectual community globally but when you have this sort of um

gray zone where maybe 75 percent of doctors agree in one direction and 25 of the countries in the

world and doctors are going to go in a different direction is that the level in which you can start mandating things i don't know yeah so at that point that

gray zone is where you find yourself of your father because you're not in a 99 one scenario you're like in a 50 50 75 25

scenario right but they're acting like it's a 99 like a sure thing yeah

Scientific Method

so and so what i'm trying to say to him at this point is like you know i you know you're saying you

follow the science okay then let's do this scientific method kind of let's look at it as if we were

you know using scientific method like let's look at some studies let's compare that with the risk profile that i've

assessed of my myself and um you know and look at the stats as to how many people are getting seriously ill like

based on their age and based on their co-morbidities etc but he didn't want to hear that and it's like you know never mind the the you

know the censorship the stuff about the various database like i didn't you know without even getting into that insight why he didn't want to hear it

i think you know i've asked i've asked a couple people about this as well and i think it's just overall people as they

get um people are from it depends on the generation that you're

at and i think his generation is such that you could trust the media to some extent in the government to some extent

like um and you know they still had you know vietnam and everything like that so it's not like there's blind trust but

at some point you're like you have to um defer and there's some wisdom to this you have to defer to the experts

so-called experts right and i and there is a wisdom in that i do get that like it's more you want a doctor making a

decision over your health like you're not just going to go in you know and like you go in for treatment on

something you have like well i did all these google searches this is what i think you should do going back to vietnam if you were the soldier the individual a sovereign soldier like i

think we should just go take this village i'm going right right yeah yeah it's like wait a second i've got a plan

it may not be the perfect plan right right but we should win and there'll be some attrition along the way but yeah

overall on a population national level yeah we'll win the battle yeah it's like

yeah and i'm a general so i kind of know what i'm doing and to some extent but it's um yeah and i think so i think

there's some wisdom in that but i think it's like we live in an age now we have access to a lot of uh different um data

that we didn't have before and you can't kind of discount that we also happen to live in an age where you know i don't

find you know politicians are not necessarily in the game for the right reasons anymore and by politicians i

also would stretch that to be like you know the leaders of various governmental organizations as well so

um and i think i think that between that and this kind of like media always-on like you know nobody

wants to look bad everyone wants to sort of stick to the talking points like you it's it's become this cauldron of like

uh potentiality for like just a bad sort of bad things to happen where bad decisions can be made and they can be

amplified and when you it's like when you shoot for the moon um you know if your calculations are off a little bit

you know it might be off like you know an inch or something like that you know because of the distance you're just going to be way you know way off of your

trajectory um and it's kind of like that so it's like and i think that um

it really pays you know i hate using the word holistic but it pays to have a holistic view of these kinds of things

now like you have to get your information from more than one source you have to question everything and you have to advocate for yourself and

short-term planning versus long-term planning like for instance you might be looking out after your personal health over the next 50 years yeah whereas

to be honest i think the government's just worried about oh my god our civilization nearly collapsed right

right what do we need to do to get to the next fiscal quarter right right right this vaccines will get us that

quarter some people most people will have a good experience with the vaccine some won't but that's

acceptable losses we need to move on we'll deal with the losses as we go yeah but it doesn't really feel good when

you're you're you're thrown into that batch or told you're a bad person or you you know you've had your two shots or third one

and then you have a really bad reaction on an emotional individual level like i don't want to do anymore

you know that has to be respected at a certain point like you're going to be on your seventh booster and be like i think i need to stop the last three really

made me feel sick well then i guess you're just an anti-vaxxer right right what is this yeah the verbage has

changed now they come you don't have your vacs you don't have it updated yeah so um uh you know they're trying but this is

very windows-esque you don't have the best update you can't run the software what's the software

yeah freedom why you don't want to go to windows 11 like what's wrong with you you've got the hardware just do it yeah you can of course you cannot upgrade but

you know you know this and that right so right right so that's the scary part i don't like freedom as a subscription

service yeah yeah that's good you know um brian peckford was is the last living

signatory that's been he's suing the government over the uh he's one of the last architects

over the uh uh the charter of rights and freedoms so he's alive and he's suing the government

because like what they're doing right now is illegal right so i don't know if it is illegal or not

illegal my point is though he's certainly a qualified politician

a storied history of age now living architect of the charter rights and

freedoms big court case not on the news whatsoever yeah yeah i i i know i know who you mean

and i yeah it's kind of like having uh you know in the us like somebody who one of the original authors of the uh

constitution and and you sort of get into you'll because you'll often get into this interpretation game where it's like well

that's not what they meant by you know freedom of blah blah blah george washington taking the government

again it's beyond my pay grade but it should be talked about and these these are serious issues right yeah um

and i did see one speech of his and there's many great podcasts of them you can find on youtube or whatnot like you

know one two three hour long discussions but he's like these are your these are not your familiar rights these

are not your provincial rights these are not your country rights these are your individual rights right you know and i

think it's a way of speech that we don't even have anymore like your father when he's talking to in the yard he's talking

to you from a familial point of view a group immunity a group you know setting

right be like yes but as an individual i don't wish to do this you know so yeah you know and that's

that's where i think the schism it's almost like it's conceptual it's way beyond just whether it's a vaccine or not yeah are you part of our tribe

therefore you must do this because the tribe survival matters most right right right which is acceptable way of

thinking if like you said the vaccine was of a certain efficacy and of a certain uh prevention of transmission

and infection which it isn't yeah so so you know my dad and i argued then

My Dad

um and it wasn't just him it was sort of everyone in my family like and you know i i want to you know take this

opportunity like i'm not trying to bash my dad uh you know or anyone you know it's like i i um i really think that the

way i was talking to him i it's not like i was like like some stage of wisdom and i and i said oh

sit down let me let me explain to you like i've got some tea brewing like it's it's it's very um you know i was like

just as heated so and one of the the reason i bring all this stuff up is just to think like this

is really the catalyst i think for me where i i thought like why can't i talk to my dad anymore like why can't we have

this kind of discussion where we used to have and like we would take different sides of a debate and it would be like

cool um yeah we'd figure it out like you know what i mean and uh and by the way is it because there's life and death

involved yeah i don't think so you know because i even from the beginning of the trump era i

would say our conversations would end in this whole you know this thing where it's like well we have to agree to

disagree and it's this whole like but it's not really they're not we're not agreeing to do anything like we're just it's just a way of saying like i don't

agree with you at all and like this is [ __ ] but like um so i think that in um in some ways

you know it's um it just this sort of amplified things with the um with kovid where yeah like you said maybe there's

life and death and my dad's older too so like i and i understand it from his perspective i you know i was happy when they got the vaccine like which is i

hope i don't end up regretting i hope you know but like i was you know i'm like they're older i'm i'm worried about

them getting coded more than i'm worried about me getting covered so it's like um but you know in the end of the day maybe

that maybe i shouldn't have worried that much about it and maybe they would have been fine if they didn't get the vaccine but like nobody knows

and they were certainly my parents too they're in that age bracket where you're like you know what put your seatbelt on drive slow and have

airbags yeah yeah exactly i can do it right for sure um so this became the catalyst where i

Psychological Pressure

thought you know what i can't even talk to my dad anymore what is happening in society that because and you would hear

stories about this all the time like people you know families like dinner tables like and i knew a few people who are quite a few people who were

unvaccinated and you know we would hear the same sorts of things from their families where they

would constantly be getting in you know fights at the dinner table couldn't come over or whatever i guess the dinner

table in the garage or wherever but um but uh it it was like a national and

international uh phenomenon so you know i started thinking like how how do i even communicate with

you know everybody is so calcified in their response to this did you hear that the canadian military

it was in i believe most major publications admitted that they had been using

military-grade psychological operations on the canadian populace to test them out

did you hear that so what we've been under in the last 12 to 4 24 months now

is a military-grade psychological like psyops in order to coax the population

into a certain uh direction so your and your father and we're all subject to this

has let's say you used to have reasonable disagreements and now because of this you're having unreasonable disagreements

and that's not the way your relationship was normally geared up and that's where psychology is starting to take it's like it's shaping

the the the bipolarness of the conversation with very little middle ground

and the fact that that can happen on a national level is scary enough but now it's happening on a familial level right

right and so i don't think you can discount the amount of psychological pressure

everybody's taking a hit during this time it could be financial relationships occupational and psychological yeah

right and um i think that's what you're experiencing and the only antidote to

that would be just more information but that takes time it depends on who is giving the

information you standing in the backyard with the beer in your hand telling your father i know about all these wonder drugs right isn't going to resonate the

same way it's coming from the mayor of the city and the chief medical officer and what's on the national news you know

like at that point your father as much as he loves you he's going to be like these people are getting paid big bucks

right research this to death and i love my son and he kind of knows a few things but and then she's not about it yeah

yeah but they're going to shift back to you know because nine times out of 10 that's going to be the right answer you know

those who are the bona fide experts right and that's where that's where the narrative because you know it doesn't take much you have elected and can we

have elected officials but they're now listening to science tables of unelected

scientists who are small in number and um and not taking in as you said earlier a holistic approach to society

so the politician i would like to think would listen to these medical experts regarding the you know

coveted crisis but also talk to mental health experts economists

uh spousal abuse um social workers and whatnot and take a whole picture and

figure out what's going on that type of um perspective has not been propagated in mainstream media whatsoever it is

simply there's one problem covid and there's one solution the vaccines and

any deviation from that is like being a heretic right you know and that's where you get you get gamed into this psychological

painted into a corner yeah sort of thing so like any animal when you're stuck in a corner that's when they lash out

right yeah there's little wiggle room in the corner in the room anymore you're painted into a corner and this is the only exit and the messaging and you know

um speaking about like a psyop like the messaging is so consistent and so just

constant um that you you you can understand where it's like any deviation from that it's like like what are you

talking about i follow the science everyone follows the science so you got to follow the science you've seen the movie in 1984 you know

you've seen the imagery and when you have the big face and the screen bearing down telling everybody the war on

oceania is going like this and we've always been a war and peace and whatever and it's some tyrannical face and as

kids you would watch you're going well obviously like who would listen to a screaming person just their one face

talking on the screen with the same message day after day but you turn on cp24 and then 75 to 80

of the screen is usually a single face talking to you telling the single message but you never thought it would be screwed for

sprinkled with the traffic updates and the weather vertical and horizontal on the two bottoms inside corners

but 80 of the screen is very much like 1984. it is a single face telling you a

single narrative day after day after day sprinkled with some traffic updates and weather updates and of course you have

other opinions you have other narratives you have other people who are doing research that come to different conclusions and that stuff is

either ridiculed or it's you know it's shoved aside or it's uh you know it's uh

Demonetization

you know demonetized i guess like you know like if if you can't vocalize that anywhere or if when you do you're sort

of you know you're castigated as like a like a fake news spreader or whatever or um an anti-vaxx or whatever the

pejorative that you want to use to describe somebody like that it becomes very difficult you start to think like well do you want to spend your days like

making a living and supporting your family or do you want to spend your days telling the truth which happens to be different than you know what um what's

currently going being the messages that are currently being sent for us so like um

you know it there really is like sort of a general narrative and whether it's like some sort of conscious like you

know i i don't know how much you're talking about the being a military psyop to some extent which you know but it's

like uh is this you know even if it's just some sort of like um uh sort of

you know almost like a communal subconscious thing where like all the governments of the world have all agreed like you know like trudeau for example

like you know i remember the beginning you know i would question some of the some of the the

stances he's taking we started locking things down he's like well he's following the health canada protocols it's like okay well that's like you said like

that's one thing he should be listening to for sure like you want to base your opinion on the experts there but there's

other opi there's other like fields that you have to take into consideration as the leader of a country there and there was a country called sweden

right right serious country doing things in a different way we had our live experiment happening right in front of

our eyes and of course you know these these viral things come in waves so you're going to signs be you know

you're going to be having more and more outbreaks and then lesser depending on what mechanisms you're having and the weather and everything else

but um yeah there was the fact that like it was about one year ago now that we were all looking on tv seeing uh costco had a

thousand people inside but the small florist down the street that has like normally like six customers a day had to

be mandated closed and every person at home is going this can't be science all right can you show

me how you can have i can meet my parents in aisle 36 at walmart right but but we can't sit at the dinner

table with the window open the house fine i'll play ball it's okay and and i totally did i would give

myself an a plus and challenge anybody on a personal level who did more over this period of time i just hugged my

mother for the first time on tuesday after since october since christmas 2019.

okay but at a certain point yeah hand on my heart i would sneak hugs to my mom

we were both like a silent compact we had that's wonderful and i'm a little annoyed that i actually

was such a good soldier the whole time you know but there does come that moment where you have to like reconcile your actions

with the data and you can't just become habitual you know it's like it's like the masking at a certain point yes my wife made over

a thousand masks and gave him the family members and sold them at a very like at a loss we're just happy to hold to

help out but there is going to be a point in the pandemic where like the efficacy

of the mask and face of the omicron is no longer uh what it's worth but why are they still

telling us to wear it now becomes more like a psychological muzzle this is what the good people do you know

this is how the intelligent ones behave and act right these are the conscientious people and it becomes a

self-propagating kind of new norm you know like this is it's really like this is you know it's like a wearing a

bicycle helmet do you think there's a cop hiding behind a tree every second that's going to give you a ticket you know yeah but it becomes a new norm it

becomes ingrained in civilization and i think that's the point now in masking that we're facing is that it's actually

become the norm to be the person wearing the mask the better person right the more conscientious person that's where

it becomes like a psyop yeah you know because that was not the original intention and to sell it as anything more than that is not disingenuous yeah

so i yeah um i think that um like

podcasting is really emerging as one of the few mediums left to have

conversations about this kind of thing with uh you know sort of a community of

people who want to hear a different side and um

want to sort of engage in that like um you know it's it's nobody wants to feel

Podcasting

alone you know and even like you could think like imagine there weren't any podcasts well imagine there weren't any like articles coming out you'd be like

okay this doesn't feel right to me but i don't know like everybody else seems to be doing it like historically you know people would meet in cafes and taverns

and have a bottle of wine or coffee shops of europe and just have intellectual conversations and

overhear a conversation and join in and you know it was a you know or like in europe you also have which we should

have more in north america like piazzas and squares where people would congregate and someone might start like

speaker's corner like um talking and people will just listen and the podcast i think is the single

best method to do that because it's slower it takes more time there's lots of room for nuance and it really is um

the digital equivalent of the global village whereas when you watch television and there's money involved power structures um subsidies by

governments and narratives that have to be pushed you're saying and of course shorter time frames you're not going to

have the room for that nuance and certainly typing something on facebook or or twitter isn't simply not going to give you the the breadth of space to be

able to engage with the person the same way yeah so i actually think conversations like this are imperative

to repair some of the damage that's happening within families and society at large because i overwhelmingly believe

most people the vast majority of most people just want the best for everybody they truly do

and um that's not how the anger and the fissure in society is being portrayed whatsoever

the people on one side you know anti-massacres really think they're doing the right thing for society the truckers

this was like some of them were willing to die that's how much they believe they're doing the right thing you know and the people on the other side think

they're they're doing the right thing too and the only way to get through that is long conversations yeah you know

one neighbor to another you know in my business i talk to a different person for an hour every hour five six days a

week and um there's always a moment i kind of treat some of the information it knows like as a prescription like how much can

i possibly give them but i try a little bit to like just wake them up or nudge them and certainly i'm more than willing

to have it come back at me because the last thing i want are my own stale thoughts banging around my head right right that's growth that's like watering

a plant yeah you know and as long as you know both people are approaching it from a human kind trying to solve the issue's point

of view that is what matters not the actual information yeah the information will sort itself out the point that

we're actually having this dialogue trying to fix it is the most important thing the moment we stop talking to one

another and just listening to our tv sets is when it's the game over yeah i agree and and to some extent

Algorithms

we're all slaves to the algorithms right like we're all um we all have our little silos and we

we are reinforced by the algorithms always telling us what we should do and um

and prying the worst parts of our personalities to the most extreme forms yeah for sure and i and i that that is

i mean it's pretty clear to me that that's at least one of the major things that's happening and why we sort of behave this way so it's like

like a good analogy with watering the plant like whenever i listen to a podcast or read or read a book like like

i find those two are very analogous in the sense that it's very like nourishing like i feel nourished when

i'm doing it and um and not everyone obviously but it's like um but but it like if everybody did that and we could

have conversations like this it's like everything gets better again you know like the sad thing for me i would love

to hear more information about why the stances and points of view i have

are wrong from a well-balanced calculated educated well-researched point of view

yeah overwhelmingly when i talk to people by large in the regular world and of course on tv i don't get that i just

get very little cliche slogans thrown back do your part roll up your sleeves

you know take two shots and go to aruba like it's it's just you know

yeah um yeah i mean shots and aruba kind of go together but maybe not in terms of vaccines

yeah um but um the fact that i'm not getting the nourishment back from the other

mechanisms i wish i am wrong about everything that would be the easiest thing in the world

you know but i don't see the information to say that i'm wrong right anywhere

and and then you said your radar goes up your bs meter starts ticking going there's no way i'm 100 right but there's

no way i'm 100 wrong the truth is in the middle and i'm not hearing any any of my talking points even 20 25 30 of them

being spoken about in regular conversations regular media and the people i talk to are pretty open

like i feel like they they trust me the nature of my work and whatnot i give them their space to be them you

know it's what it's all about so sometimes i get some back but not nearly

enough so that's where then you start feeling like sort of like they've been like damaged a little bit over the way

and they're just reclusive yeah they know it's a little bit like peer pressure like nobody wants to say they

um you know they they like the top bands and do the top styles in their hair like back in the 80s you know and this you

must be on trend it's almost like information has to be on trend yeah and if you want to deviate from that at all

be ahead of the curve or a little more nichir you're going to be just ostracized like a high school yeah and it's it's it's

like intellectual ostracization via peer pressure and lack of well-balanced information you

made a good point the other day where you kind of likened it to you know the bands and like which like

liking the cool bands or whatever and and it's almost like this signal that you know when you get to a new juncture

so it's like okay things are started opening up now omicron seems to have really like you know finally sort of flattened the curve um and you get

people almost fishing for what's the next thing i need to uh you know cling to and and sort of signaling like are

you going to be wearing your masks like all the time or not i get asked daily it's it's testing me out yeah like i'm

like yes i think the mass could have came off september october really to be quite

honest um so i feel like the government is behind the curve not going too fast

right that being said i wore it no problem throughout the winter i don't want to be extra safe but based so even

though i saw that data clearing up in september october okay i'll give it a little extra time right i feel like we've already used

that buffer of time whereas most people are like okay here's the cutoff date but how much buffer of extra time do i want

to give until i'm really sure right um you know and so i made this point to my

own parents i'm like well if the government is usually behind and we should have done this then then definitely you can take it off now because the government is usually erring

on airing on the side of extra precautions and safety right so if this is their cut off date you can almost

guarantee it was safer two three months ago yeah so yeah i think you know as it

you know taking all this into consideration what oh you know and you know my own experience so i think some a

lot of your experience as well which we didn't really get to today but uh we can in the future um is

uh what we want this show to be about for the most part is to deconstruct arguments and to get i

what we need to abolish in this country and in you know the western world is

um you know throughout the whole world let me say that uh is uh this idea where we can't talk to each

other anymore like we can't live like this like nobody can live like this so let's start having conversations again

unless both you know both parties try to get to a point where they're just both seeking the truth um i

completely agree with you and we'll get into that in the next episode but it's gonna be a hard one because the

authoritarianism and centralization of information and opinion is really running opposite of democracy

and individual individual points of view almost it's a very strange energy these days but that's why you almost when you

have to take a step back and look at look at an argument you know any argument and say okay let's you know

let's reverse engineer the argument let's let's find out what it is somebody's saying somebody's telling me uh you know you have to you have to get

the vaccine why do i need the vaccine here are the here are the statistics like why why when i have a you know 99.9

chance of survival and there's no real known major side effects um you know

when people talk to this vague log and covet okay maybe there's something like that there but even still i'm there's a pretty good chance i'm going

to be pretty okay or do i go with the vaccine and you know what i mean you get the the you have the risk profiles you

have the the um you know uh getting back to ivermectin it's like uh when persuasion turns to coercion it's a

failure of transparency and messaging i think that's exactly the problem because it was a persuasive like get it

it's good for you until about june in the states june-ish because they're ahead of us june 2021 and that's when

it's when they hit 50 57 and they noticed that the average person is going to come out has now stopped how do we

take it from 50 60 to 70 80 90 percent yeah that's when the wheels of coercion

kicked in and that is a failure of messaging and why do we have that failure you know why is there lack of

transparency why does the fda want to release the papers of pfizer's data over a 75-year period red flags go off right

right out of a base if a person is on a side of precaution and they see that those who are

administering the drunk drug are delaying the release of the information regarding

this drug for a 75-year period they are going to be naturally cautious going forward right yeah so

that that's unfortunate that's to your point i think that's the problem is that the switch from persuasion to coercion

because of a poor messaging and transparency yeah yeah and i think on that we should uh

leave it for today and um uh you know this is our first podcast so

i don't know we're talking to ourselves at the moment but it's been a blast it has been a blast and it will get better

and better and you know this is how what it's all about um learning together talking uh working it

out just always being intellectually curious and kind-hearted

well said well said um we got to think of a cool tag line um at some point right now we'll just say a very abrupt

goodbye goodbye peace out