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Merry Christmas from Man in The Arena!
School Bathroom Controversy, White Privilege and Boomers At It Again.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Media.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Welcome to man in the Arena. I'm Jonas Schultz and today we are talking the leftist takeover of our schools. Caitlin Clark apologizes for being white and the selfish generation. But first, a reminder. You can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Good Pods or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you check us out on Facebook, X Instagram, TikTok and Truth Social at Man in the Arena PC. And now Rumble. YouTube took down our most recent video, our most recent podcast for some medical misinformation. We had the audacity to question some of the 200 vaccines that we are now giving our children and question some of the COVID guidelines that took place. So now we are navigating over to Rumble where free speech is made a priority. So make sure you are checking us out there at man in the Arena PC and subscribing. That will be the place moving forward where you can find our videos podcast. Now. Let's go.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Wal.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: I have a dream.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: My four little children one day live.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: In a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream. Today, the eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: People everywhere march with you.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Ask what you can do for your country.
On this Christmas edition of man in the Arena, I want to remind us of some very simple truths. America was once great. That is something that you've heard me say a thousand times and you'll hear me say it a thousand more. We were once a shining beacon to all of the world that represented what man was truly capable of when he pursued a government and a lifestyle that aligned most closely with God's intentions. Now, regardless of your belief system, if we intend to be great once more, we must accept the fact that America was founded as a Christian nation. It was not founded as a Jewish, Muslim or secular state. Our laws, our culture and lifestyle were once rooted explicitly in Christian language and doctrine. Understanding that this is how we achieve how a nation achieves greatness through an adherence to that which is inherently great, a divine creator. And this is why our celebration of Christmas matters. To many, Christmas has become just another holiday. A time to shop, take time off work and indulge in food and drink. And while I will also be taking my part in these traditions of Christmas, like so many areas of our modern lives, we have forgotten the meaning of what we do. Holidays of all kinds are Important because they bind societies and people together. They allow us to celebrate what has been and what is. And they remind us of how we got here today.
Holidays are an essential part of any civilization.
So what makes Christmas so special? We did not begin to celebrate Christmas because of Santa Claus, candy canes, time off, school or twinkly lights. We celebrated Christmas because it reminds us who we are, or at least who we ought to be as a people, as a nation, as an individual. It calls us to examine our own lives, our generosity, our purpose, our earnestness, our love or lack thereof. It reminds us that our lives mustn't be devoted to self serving pursuits, but to great and lofty goals and ideals that lead to human flourishing and happiness. It teaches us that our lives, no matter how small or insignificant we consider them, can be used to lighten the burden of another and bring light into a world that desperately needs it. But most importantly, it lifts up mankind if but once a year. In closer examination of the fact that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came into this world and walked among us. So this Christmas, I encourage you to take moments of reflection, to examine your own life, the value that you have and where you can do more in this world for your fellow man to remember those who are not with you this Christmas who would be so proud of who you've become and would urge you to continue forward, to give thanks for all that has been given to you and to spend some quiet time building a closer relationship to the God who made you and loves you beyond measure. Simply put, make Christmas great again. Now it's time for today's calibration.
All right, I'm joined here at the desk today by James Feakes. James is just awesome dude. He's a college student at John Carroll University and a guy that worked really hard on my congressional campaign as we really had a boots on the ground. There's nobody who knocked more doors, did more things and just a really great young man from Gen Z that I'm excited to have talking today. So welcome James.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Jonah, thank you for having me.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So today we're going to get into some things on a personal level, some personal stories that we've experienced on our short time on this earth. And if you've been listening to this show, you have certainly heard me talk about the issue of transgenderism, what's been going on. And maybe you're at the point where you're saying you're bringing this up every episode. Why? And I bring this up on such a regular basis because one, there's so much content out there. There's so many stories happening on a daily basis with this insanity where it's being forced down our throats as individuals and as families and as a country. But specifically because I think it's a defining issue of our time, because it is. It is. Like I've said on the show before, it is sanity versus insanity. And it is spilled over into so many other issues where that is really the battlefield that we are fighting on. And this has gone, this issue, like we've talked about in the last couple episodes, where this started progressing from the gay rights movement of civil unions to gay marriage, then now to the point where we're talking about putting young boys and young girls on puberty blockers and altering their bodies in a permanent fashion. And, you know, we're talking about men playing women's sports. We're talking about men using women's bathrooms, using women's changing rooms. And this has gone all the way up to Capitol Hill, where we have seen the battle that we talked about with Nancy Mace, who's kind of been the face of this. Like, she likes to be the face of everything.
And getting out there and talking about the fact that we have this transgender man who's a man who's, you know, dressing up as a woman, who wants to use our facilities, and this is not comfortable for the women here in the Capitol. All of these different things that very short time ago would have been completely unthinkable. So, James, he has a very intimate experience with this that we kind of went through together in some ways when we were working on the congressional campaign together. And I want to just open up the floor to him to tell this story of what he experienced at Medina High School at his time as a senior there.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, crazy story. And you're right, Jonah. This is an issue that there is. It is not going away. This is just the early parts of it. And I know you talked in past episodes about how, you know, it started with the gay rights movement, with the Supreme Court, and now here we are in 2024, and it's exponentially growing. This happened in the fall of 2021. It was my senior year of high school. So really about the beginning weeks of August, all the way up through, let's say, like, week 10. And so throughout those 10 weeks, what we were seeing is every time I would go to the bathroom, my other male classmates would go to the bathroom. We'd find a group of two or three or four girls just standing there in the bathroom. The guy's bathroom. And it's not like they were using the bathroom, but they're there standing there, congregating, just kind of hanging out. Hanging out. And so there was story after story, you know, in the first few weeks. I didn't ever witness it, but then it got to, like, week four, and I went to the bathroom after my first class, and here we are, the group of three or four, right? And it made a problem. It was a problem for me because, number one, I watched the one girl pick up her phone and kind of just walk along the stalls. We went from urinal, urinal, urinal, to stalls. And it's just not comfortable for me. At the time, I was 17 years old. But, you know, come February, I was gonna turn 18, right? And so my biggest fear was, okay, I'm gonna turn 18. They all know I'm a Christian, I'm a conservative, and that's what they hate.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: So what's up?
[00:09:44] Speaker A: You have a target on your back.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: A huge target. And so my first fear is that, well, these girls make up anything. We've seen it all the way for years. You know, they'll make up anything. And the woman is always right.
And so my biggest fear is I'm going to be 18 and one of these girls is going to make something up. That, oh, James feet, James Feakes showed me his penis. Or this happened X, Y and Z. And they're going to be right. I'm going to be kicked out of school. I'm going to be a sexual, you know, whatever. A predator. And none of it is true. I would never do such a thing. So I got mad. Jonah and I. This is when we were working on his. His campaign there, and we had met a woman who was a former state representative, but now a state Board of education member. And so I sat down with her and I talked to her about, you know, what we were witnessing. And I sent, you know, she advised me to send an email to every single one of these principals that we had. We had five of them at the time. And continue to, you know, write down in your notes and document everything that you are witnessing.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: And hold on one second. Was it just at your one high school you had five principals?
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Four associate and one head.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: That's insane in itself. And we talk about education and the spending on it, and I'm not going to get out of that rabbit hole. But the fact that you had five principals blows my mind. You had five people doing the job of one. But go on, continue your story.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Trust me, you were completely Right there. And so I sent an email and this was a Saturday afternoon and. Do you care if I read it?
[00:11:08] Speaker A: No, no. Go ahead please.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: It says good evening. With all the confusion and rumors going around Medina High School regarding opposite genders in bathrooms, I would like to know what Medina's policy is on this issue as well as what is being done to solve this problem. This was a well known problem at the time. Everybody knew about it. I have personally witnessed women in the men's bathroom during our short time in school. I have also heard a rumor, was not a rumor, a video floating around that captures three women in the men's bathroom. There was like seven different videos. There is also a rumor of a male and female student having sexual intercourse in our bathroom at our school. Also true. They had a staff meeting about it. Whether these rumors are true or not, these rumors are things all revolving around the opposite gender bathroom issue at Medina High School. Let me remind you that this has not been a one time issue either. We students are going into our 10th week of this academic school year and it appears that this is happening every other day. I do not understand what is so difficult for students and staff to realize about this issue. You wake up in the morning, you go to the bathroom and you look down and you either have an innie or an outie. You then use the corresponding bathroom. No personal mindset or belief is going to change that. As I turn 18 years old in the coming months, I am extremely uncomfortable with the possibility or idea of an underage woman coming into the man's bathroom while I, an 18 year old adult, use the bathroom at the same time. This can only lead to false rumors, claims and other allegations that could be spread and ruin my life and the lives of other students at Medina High School. And then I went on to continue and send links. This is all when the Virginia transgender was in the bathrooms there.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: And then the governor, thank God, got involved. Yeah, but you know, so I sent that email and let's see here. So you know, I sent the email and that was on a Saturday. So the following Monday it was like right around 1:00. So it's like, I mean I get there at 7:30. So Medina, I get a pass to go down to the principal's office and I meet with my head prince or the head principal and my associate principal. And then I told them again what my concerns were of being an 18 year old adult. They came up with a plan which didn't solve anything. But their plan was to place staff members who are there to teach or have specific duties. This is not one of them.
They were going to place staff members in front of two men's bathrooms. There's nine sets of men, female bathrooms throughout the school, but only two were being guarded. And the principals understood my 18 year old claim. But however, instead of getting these three or four girls who are these continuous repeaters, you know, they told me to say, or they said you can use the family bathrooms or the one stalled bathrooms. And here are their locations around the school. Yeah, so they would rather inconvenience me, the one person who has spoken out against this, than tell the four nut jobs who can't figure out who they are to go use the private bathrooms. Because they're clearly not in a space where they can do any of this.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Deciding, well, this story, and it's a story where you're obviously not alone, this has happened to many people around this country. Many men that have been put in your position specifically, and then many girls that have had to live with the opposite side, the flip side of this coin obviously with men using their restrooms. And it's so infuriating because I think the important context around this as well is this is in Medina, Ohio. This is a red community in a red county in a red state. This is not la, this is not New York City. It wouldn't be okay in a deep blue area either. But the fact that we're talking about this happening in a, in a, in a small, you know, suburban, semi rural community that is historically conservative, that's where you start to see that this isn't something that you can escape. Right? This is something that is infecting every, every area of our country geographically. And you can't just flee to some different school system, you can't just flee even to a private institution to escape this. It's coming for everybody. And your story is, I think it really gives a lot of more context to this whole situation because you came with a genuine concern. You didn't come at this from a perspective, you didn't do something rash. You came at this from a very diplomatic approach. You tried to say this, this is making me uncomfortable because of the potential, especially the potential legal ramifications. Even putting aside the fact that this makes me uncomfortable physically, that that should be enough. You're talking about legal ramifications that you could face if something were to happen. And we have seen through the news, we just saw with the Duke lacrosse players, the prostitute that made up that story that ruined those kids lives, ruined those kids lives. This happens on a regular basis. And the women who make up these fantasies face any legal repercussions. So they're not in a position where they can even lose anything from making this up outside of a damage to their reputation if years go by and they're proven wrong. So in your case, you know, you were put in this situation where you're physically uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable because of these legal ramifications.
The, the. Your. Your principal, your. Your school administration, they, they didn't care about any of that, or at least they didn't care about it, to the fact where they thought they probably had a meeting. This is probably the way that it broke down is they went in and they said, listen, we're having all these complaints, we're having all these problems, but if we insult, if we.
If we get on the wrong side of one person who's a member of this transgender community, there's going to be a target on our backs. Right. Our families are going to receive death threats because we said, no, you're a woman. You have to use the man.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: The whole school system will go under.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah. You'll have such a legal presence and battle to fight. Now, I would say that regardless, you need to have courage as an individual. If you're charged with the protection of students, which you are as a principal, you're charged with the protection and their well being. Not just. They're not just getting them in and out of the four gears that they're there. You're supposed to educate them, you're supposed to protect them. You're supposed to push them into the world ready to contribute and live a good life. And in this case, what they're doing is they're saying to you, you don't matter. Your feelings don't matter. This is simply about protecting us from any kind of legal ramifications or any kind of, you know, scrutiny from the outside community, which we don't want because we're ultimately cowards in that way.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: But I'm a. I'm a. I'm available to be put at a disadvantage because they don't want to hurt the whole masses.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: But then going off of this, too, that following week. So I had the meeting with the principals on that Monday, you know, and then Monday through Friday, throughout that whole week, I'm getting more and more videos sent to me because kids knew what I was doing at that point.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Of other girls using the guy's bathroom. Right. And so what did I do? Every time I received, you know, a group of them, I just go Right into my associate principal's office, show them each video, and he would say he'd pass this along, you know. And so what began to happen was their master plan that they had their meeting for. And now the two bathrooms are being guarded. What do the kids do? They went to the other seven that were unguarded.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: And so this was never ramified. Nothing was ever fixed. And so I really reached out to Diana Fessler, God bless her, the state Board of Education member. And I just kept updating her on what was going on. What was going on, and she responded with, you really have two options, Right. Your first option is you can go in front of the school board and you can give a speech that outlines everything that you're doing. But what's going to happen is they're going to protect themselves, and you're going to be labeled as anti transgender, which is not the case. I'm pro myself trying to protect myself and others.
And this was right during COVID too. This was just after all these people, you know, great people, would go in and confront the school boards for wearing masks even into 2021, when it was no longer necessary, shutting down school, putting kids on zoom. And she goes, it's just going to be an uproar. And she goes, what you should do is continue to document what you've been doing and write a letter to each board member addressing the ongoing issue. And they're clearly going to have to do something because they're going to get all this public outrage. Whatever happened, or what happened, though, is that all these parents went to Facebook. There's like a Medina moms. You know, all the moms come together, and they blew it up. And so. And then at that point, I graduated, you know, went on to college, where this madness still continues, which we'll get into.
But from what I've heard, it may still be going on. But then we've got DeWine passing this bill to stop all the madness. Yeah, just the last few weeks. So I'm hoping it's been stopped before, but now officially.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Well, yeah, you hope so. And obviously, Mike DeWine's, you know, not a favorite of mine, but this is one of. This is one of the issues where, thank goodness that, you know, some common sense prevailed. But you're. You're seeing. You're.
I've talked on the show before. We. I think it was a few episodes ago where we talked about the fact that Democrat policies are so unbelievable that people, when you bring them up to an average voter, they actually won't believe Them, Right. If you, if you say that, you know, they are promoting this type of behavior and allowing it and want to carve out legal protections for it, there are a large portion of voters who won't even believe you because it's so, it's so unbelievable. It is so outside of what could possibly consider realistic. But in Northeast Ohio, there are literally, there are schools who have literal litter boxes in their bathrooms in high schools, and I think even in some middle schools where students who are claiming to be cats can use the litter box. Now, first of all, can you imagine being the janitor in that situation?
You have the job of cleaning a high school bathroom in general, which sucks. You have to go in and clean a litter box where some crazy chick just took a dump. I mean, my God, come on. But this is how crazy things have gotten. And you and I are, we're only nine years apart. And when I was in high school, this type of situation, at least in my community, which the community I grew up in, is similar to yours, it would have been totally unthinkable, right? It would have, it would have been a joke. I mean, you could watch south park or Family Guy or anything back in that time period of the, of the, you know, the 2000s or early 2010s. And then this type of situation was mocked as, you know, it was a caricature of a situation. And now it's happening in real life to real people like you. And fortunately it didn't, it didn't really take a toll on you in the way that you feared that it could, but it has to many people. And, you know, we've, you know, I, I went to the University of Finley for, for college. And, you know, I went back there just about a year ago and they had gender neutral bathrooms for the first time. And I was shocked by it because Finley, it's a school that's based with the Church of God. It was a school that when I was there in 2016 as a senior, Trump won the student vote. So it's actually a conservative tilting school base, a school body. And still even there in this private institution, this private faith based institution in a rural, deep red area of the country, still bowing to the LGBTQ and whatever they want. And so that's where you see the fact that keeps coming back to us as parents. We have tried to constantly hide from the situation where things weren't going well in public schools and continue not to go well in public schools. So parents went specifically to private schools, specifically to Catholic schools. It's infected there, too. Right. It's happening in Catholic schools, It's happening in private institutions. And so parents started to say, all of a sudden, okay, now we have to homeschool. Well, we shouldn't be in a situation where we are forced. With. Our only choice to avoid this type of scenario is to homeschool our own kids. Because not everybody has the resources, means and ability to do that. I think it's an admirable thing to do, and I think as many people as want to should do it, but we shouldn't have to, is my point. But increasingly we are pushed in that direction because parents feel like their kids like you, that you're going to wind up in a bad. You're either going to be brainwashed, groomed, or put in a situation where you feel incredibly uncomfortable just by going to school, which is a horrendous situation we find ourselves in.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: You're absolutely right. And then it continues on to the college level. Right. So I'm a junior at John Carroll, and so the last two and a half years now that I've had there, you're now with the 18 plus crowd.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: So you start in at 18, and this is when people can do really whatever they want. They're the first time without their parents. And with that, all the liberal ideas that they, you know, were groomed to in. In public or private, high school, even middle school, continued on now to the university level. And so especially my freshman year, I saw a lot of this. But, you know, I'd go to the library and I'd go to the bathroom, and it's a, you know, single stall bathroom. And you go up there and I go to the men's room, you know, and there we are with. With tampons in the male room. And so my buddies and I, and, well, maybe it wasn't me, but I won't admit this. Would go in there, into the men's room and steal all the tampons and throw them right into the garbage. Because I don't know about you, Jonah, but I don't have a period, you know, And I think not yet at least same for every single man at John Carroll University, that you're not gonna need it. So therefore, let's throw it away because this is ridic.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Did anybody put some Tim Walls stickers on that? That would've been a great opportunity for some tampon Tim branding that I probably would have done when I was in college. But anyway, sorry to take away photos.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: It's the best. I'll show it to you later. But I Got a photo with Tampon Tim that you'll love, but not even that. So then trying to get a dorm for sophomore year, because you're required to live on campus there, you're required to go to this mandatory inclusiveness seminar for an hour and a half of your time on a Wednesday or Tuesday afternoon where they basically, it's, you know, the one chick with 18 different colors of hair and she's gonna.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: They're always the same person. They're always the same person. It's never. It's never anybody that looks any different. Like you can. Everybody watching this, listening to this can picture the person in their mind and it's exactly what they look like.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Yes. It's the short hair, blue on the left and pink on the right. And there's some other yellow dyed, you know.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: But, you know, so she sits us down and she goes on with this discussion that, you know, we need to be inclusive for their more than two genders. All the. Whatever number she said, all of these genders, you need to be inclusive and you need to use correct pronouns. Right.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Is this a staff member?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: This is a staff member.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: So again, another important thing to point out is you go to a Catholic, private Catholic university.
This is not. This is not.
This is not, you know, Ohio State or oe. This is not a public institution. This is a private, faith based institution in Northeast Ohio.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Right. And so, you know, minute five into this, we all realize how BS this is, and so we're being as rude as possible. We got our phones out, computers, doing other homework. Because if she's gonna waste my time, I'm gonna waste hers.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: I'm not gonna pay attention to anything that she's got to say because I don't care if you're black, brown, gay or straight, I'm gonna treat you the exact same because that's how God would want me to treat you. Of course, you're not getting special privileges because you identify with these 500 different things.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah, Right.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: And then transitioning to other parts of the university here, you've got things that they host. It's called a consent carnival. Right. And so that's where all these freak nut jobs try to teach me all. It's literally this. It's more than nothing. More than the promotion of sexual perversion.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Of course.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: It's how to put on a condom, where to find contraceptives, women's health care like abortion pills, and where to get an iud. And how the university will cover half or whatever, all of it. And then they continue on to have their little drag shows where it's like, everybody should come and be inclusive with this. And we get to the point that it's like, you know what? I'm not having it. And it was the best thing to watch, you know, because there are the people that go and they're all cheering it on, but then the people that actually step away. Right. It was my friends and I, where we just get as far away as possible, and it's like, we are 18, 19, 20 years old. What are we doing? They're bringing in some guy that graduated in 2004 that's putting on all this makeup, dressing as a woman, and calling himself whatever female he wants to be. It's perversion.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: And I'm not gonna allow, and especially at a Catholic university, allow this to be forced upon me. So we get in and get out.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And that. And that's where we're always asked, why do you care so much? And I've equated it to the idea of, you know, because I have a brother who's nine years older than me who sat on this panel multiple times, and when I was a kid, he used to do that thing where he'd take my fist and hit me, and he'd say, why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? And it's like the older brother or the bully. And these people, they will make you sit through a seminar, they'll make you go to a carnival where you have to clap like a seal for their perversion. They will make you have to use a bathroom with them when you feel uncomfortable. They will shove you in some private stall. If you feel like you can't be around them, they will. They will take everything away from you and force you to participate and celebrate and at the same time say, well, why do you care so much? Well, you obviously care because you're making me be a part of it. You're not content with just going and doing your thing. You have to make me actively participate, which is exactly what's happening there and again at a private Catholic institution, which is sickening. You're making me participate in this. And so that's why I think so many people like me and like you care so much, is because we're seeing that this is taking over every single avenue of our lives. And you. You can't run away. You can't get away from it. You're. You're just. You know, you can't just live and let live, because when you are the type of person that you may want to live and let live, but they don't. So if they don't want to live and let live, they just want to make you, they want to wrap their bubble around you, then you can't. You either have to submit to them or fight back. Those are your only two options. And so for many people like me, we're saying, well, we're not going to submit to this because I don't want, I don't want this to be my world, but even more so, I don't want this to be the world my daughter grows up in, or my wife has to live in, or anybody has to live in. I want this to be a society like the one that I grew up in, only better in many ways, where I don't have to worry about sending my daughter to college someday, where the first thing they're going to teach her on campus is that there's 500 genders and teach and teach her how to get, you know, the most accessible way to get an abortion and sleep with as many strangers as possible. And that's, that's, that's the reality of the situation where you really have to provide, and obviously you have been provided. You have to provide such a strong foundation at home or kids being thrown into this situation. You think of a kid, 17 year old, 18 year old kid, going into this situation, it's their first taste of any kind of real freedom in their lives. In many ways, if they don't have that foundation and faith and family and in what is, what is truly good and right and true, there's no way that they can survive that as far as getting through those four years and coming out as a sane person. And that's why you're seeing this huge shift to the left and so many, specifically with college graduates.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: And this just goes to show, Jonah, how far from God that our generation, or at least mine and the whole population itself has really gotten. You know, and the question is, where does all this kind of stem from? And it really starts with, at least for my, my group here is since the beginning, since first grade, since kindergarten, we've been told by teachers and parents that we can be whoever we want to be. Not in more of like a job sense, but more of a self identity, you know, Persona. And you have to accept your classmates who are transgender with their new names and their pronouns. No matter how crazy it is, it is wrong for you to go against that. Right? And it's a zero tolerance policy. And that's how it's been my entire life. Middle school, high school, now into college. But on the flip of that, it's not allowing me, a Christian conservative, to be who I want to be and express myself right. And this can go back to. To high school, where my ideas are viewed, you know, by people, by teachers, as extreme.
I remember, you know, my. I guess it was senior, maybe junior year of high school, there was a kid two years younger than I was who started a Republican club with Turning Point. And so, you know, he had to go fight the school, the administration, take it up to the school board. And finally, and this was just in 2021. So this was after, you know, January 6th, which.
Where people viewed Republicans as crazy people who are gonna start fighting and all this.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that was the way everybody was. Republicans were painted. Anybody on the ground.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Totally not true. And you can watch all this news that continues to come out with the FBI come. You know, and so what we get into is the school board says, okay, you can come into this club. You can join the club, but the second you walk in that door, you have to sign a waiver saying that we're gonna use our words, not our fists. We're not going to be violent. And this is no different than, you know, there's a Democrat club, there's a Gay Straight alliance club, all of this stuff where. Why don't they have to sign it? Why are we being singled out as the violent ones when we haven't done anything different than the other two groups?
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they're trying to preemptively shame you, essentially. Is. Are you sure? It's like, are you sure you want to be a member of the Nazi party kind of thing. Like, you're signing a waiver that, like, wait, are you sure? There's that gay club down the hall. Maybe you'd be a better fit in that club. You shouldn't be part of this dirty Republican club because you see them, they tried to blow up the Capitol and rape aoc, even though she was in a totally different building and nobody even got close to her. Those are the types of situations that I've run into similar things. And I was in the situation that I'm sure you've been in before, where you have certain papers of certain topics to write. And I remember in English class, and I went to a Catholic high school, I had an English class, and we were supposed to write about a certain topic, and I wrote about gun control. And my teacher said that, you know, she gave me a bad grade because she disagreed with the facts that I proposed and from the areas that I sourced them from. And that's, you know, you had people like me whose grades suffered as a result of being very stubborn and not going along with, I'm not going to just write a paper that you want me to write type of thing, but people have been beat into that. But to your point of our, of our generation being, being godless in many ways, we, we, you know, our generations, millennial and Gen Z generations continuously are, you know, have lower and lower levels of attending church, of identifying as a certain faith. And this is a result of being in this type of society where you're pushed a certain direction. It's like east and West Germany to this day. If you go to West Germany, West Germany has a very high rate of Christianity. If you go to East Germany where it was obviously during the time of the Soviet control, it was illegal to be religious, such as illegal to practice your faith. To this day.
They have extremely low levels of Christians and a faith based population. So this stuff, you know, it, it does come, it can come from the top down, we're told all the time while it's, you know, it trickles up. As far as, you know, you build this around the culture. But our institutions, our government, our schools play an active role in the direction of society, even from a religious standpoint. And I, I think if we're going to take something positive out of all this, it's what we saw in this previous election where your generation, my generation, specifically men, we've had to interact with this at a much higher level than anybody who's come before us. And as a result, young men shifted 20 points for Donald Trump, I think over 20 points for Donald Trump and young women shifted double digit points even for Donald Trump in this past election. Because I think at a certain point you have young men, young 20 year olds like yourself who are saying why am I seeing a. Why is everywhere I go I see a pride flag where everywhere I go I see condoms in my own bathroom when I'm not using those, no man is using those. Why everywhere I go do I have to be active participant in this? Why can't I just live my life?
And why can't beyond just living my life, why can't I live my life to its highest purpose, which is to follow what God, the way God intended us to live. And that's why I think you're seeing this huge shift. But one other thing as well, you talked about how many teachers and how society at large has kind of pushed us in the direction is Be whoever you want to be.
It used to be the American and Christian and Western belief was, you can be whatever you set your mind to, obviously, as far as what you achieve in life.
But you need to reach your fullest potential as an individual in the way that you create. It's essentially you can be whatever you want, but that includes being who you are. So, like, when we tell these kids all the time, like, you can be whoever you want to be, or you need to be that version of yourself that, no, you, you, you, or you need to be who you really are. In some ways, the way they phrase it, be who you really are. They'll tell a transgender person, well, they're just being who they really are. No, they're not being who they really are. They're being a mutation of themselves. They're not being who they're meant to be, who they're created to be, the person who's going to achieve their highest potential. And so I talk a lot on the show about having true empathy for people, and that includes pushing people to be the best they can be, and that includes pushing them towards the truth and to goodness. To your point.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Well, it boils down to just brainwashing. These educators want them to be on. Want you to be on their level, accept their beliefs of thinking, their liberalism. And it even got down to this, too, where, you know, growing up and especially in elementary school, you saw a lot of children who are literally 5, 6, 7, and 8 years old who have a bunch of energy and don't want to be forced to be. To sit in a chair from, you know, 7 to 3:00. And so what we saw was, you know, any little straggler that couldn't sit down or focus on his work was referred to a doctor to be examined for adhd, add. And what happened was the. The doctors get money out of this, so they're gonna, you know, say, okay, the kids got it. And what happened was you get all these kids hooked on Adderall.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: You know, a kid I went to school with, he was the funniest guy in the entire world, and he gets hooked on this Adderall, and then it's like he's, you know, just staring at a blank wall for the rest, you know, for at least three or four years until he got off of it. But it just straight. It strips kids of every single great thing that God gave them. Their personality, their laughter.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: It turns them into a zombie.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: It turns them into a zombie.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: And. And I think as well, they'll prescribe A drug. But they won't look at the diet of that kid. That 8 year old kid might have been eating a huge bowl of Froot Loops every day before they came into school with tons of sugar, Red 40 and all of these artificial things that made them behave in a certain way. And also they might just be a rambunctious kid that isn't built to sit in a desk for eight hours a day. I'm sorry, most kids aren't. And that's why girls typically do much better than boys, especially at an early age in functioning in a classroom as far as their behavior and also their academic performance. Because girls are much, much more well built to be able to sit and focus for longer periods of time in a classroom setting than boys are. Where for me the first thing I was doing as a kid, I'm sitting down in the classroom except wanting to take a nap. Sometimes I'm just staring out the window and I want to go play. I can't wait for gym class, right. I can't wait to do something where I'm up out of this desk, I'm hands on or any of those things. I was never great at focusing in. I never had, you know, I never had difficulty paying attention when I would focus. But it was just a matter of. I just always felt like I was kind of almost imprisoned in a way.
And so yeah, you talk about in all of these different ways kids are being groomed, where you're putting kids already at such a disadvantage mentally, emotionally. I mean, think about it from this perspective. You take what is a very average kid now who is being shipped back and forth between parents, doesn't have two parents in the home, might not have parents who are hands on at all, who is in daycare most of their growing up, then goes to school and gets put on drugs because they're not behaving exactly right. So by the time that they've reached into their puberty stages, they've already experienced so much emotional trauma and they're on psychoactive drugs. What do you think is going to be the outcome?
And these kids, they're just, they are primed to be victims of this.
And that's why it's so sad and why it can be sometimes somewhat depressing sometimes to look at the big picture and see how many things need to change to dig ourselves out of this hole because.
But we have to start somewhere, right? And it, it goes to our. It starts in the family, it starts in the household, it starts. How do we start keeping these families together and put Parents in a better situation to stick together, to hands on, raise their child. And then how do we fix our school system where parents can feel safe to send their child to school? But with that, I do want to move on to another topic of conversation because we could talk about this all day. This is a topic that there's a reason it comes up every episode because there's so much material there, there is so much to talk about to delve into. But there's a story in the news talking about, you know, talking about people at a disadvantage. Maybe this is a good segue.
If you have been paying attention to sports over the last year or so, you've certainly heard about Caitlin Clark to the standpoint, because Caitlin Clark is an individual who's an incredibly talented basketball, women's basketball player who was a superstar in college and has done really well for herself in her first in the wnba. Now, up until five seconds ago, nobody cared about the wnba. The WNBA is an organization that the only reason it exists is because the NBA pays its bills. It runs a huge deficit every year. It wouldn't exist otherwise. It's a organization that, you know, nobody watches, nobody attends games. Caitlin Clark was the first individual that people cared about in the wnba and there was a reason why she went from college to the pros. And people, you know, we're filling arenas to watch her because she's, you know, even as somebody like myself who doesn't care for women's basketball, you could watch her and, and really appreciate her level of skill and her ability that you just don't see out of, out of any women's basketball players. She was, she was really in a league of her own. So she was the center of attention for a long time in the, you know, in this first season of the WNBA because there was this pressure on her that the WNBA has this entitlement, this kind of entitlement syndrome where they feel like they deserve way more than they deserve. They deserve more money even though they bring in negative dollars, right? They deserve more attention even though women. It's always the man's fault, right? People need to watch them more while they don't have an entertaining product. There's a million different things. It's constant whining from the wnba, which is another reason why it's so off putting and you don't really have many people to root for in the wnba. And so Caitlin Clark comes along and she steals the spotlight and the WNBA players are just pissed, right? They're pissed about this because God forbid in this situation what it really turned into, for the most part, was a lot of these black WNBA players saying that Caitlin Clark was only getting attention because she was white. It wasn't because she was a generational talent. It's because she was a white player. Now, the WNBA has had white players before. Never made anybody want to watch the WNBA until Caitlin Clark came in the door. But. But Caitlin Clark recently went out and did an interview where she admitted to her white privilege. And this was a disappointment to a lot of people because a lot of people saw Caitlin Clark as. She just wanted to be. She wanted to be out of politics. She didn't ask for any of this specifically. She didn't ask to be involved in politics or anything. She hasn't made any kind of social statements that have made waves or anything like that. But for the first time, she caved to the pressure and said, you know, I have white privilege, and I know that's a reason that I'm popular and all of these different things, and a lot of people were upset with that.
I have a little bit of sympathy for her. I would like her to be courageous. But she is in a position that she didn't ask to be in. She's in a position where she's in a league that's dominated by black women who hate her. And she's, you know, when you're in a sport, you're only, you're one, you know, elbow to the eye away from never being able to play again. Right. That's so you. There is pressure on her in that regard. But I wanted to dig deeper, kind of into this whole white privilege illusion fantasy that has taken grip over our society. If you were to come up to me and tell me about white, you know, white privilege in the 1960s. Okay, I can hear you out. Right. I can understand if you're going to come 60 years later to me and tell me that for some reason I have a privilege that my black neighbor doesn't. I'm not going to take you seriously, and here's why. Let's look at, specifically at the statement that Caitlin Clark has white privilege.
White privilege in sports is probably the most laugh in professional sports is probably the most laughable statement that can be made because in the WNBA, the WNBA is a 64% black league, only 19% are white. In the NBA, it's 70% black, 17% white. In the NFL, 54% black, 25% white. So whites are in all professional sports. And it's become a joke of itself. Right. A lot of the times when we're first, the first time this year in what, like 30 or 40 years, we're seeing a white cornerback in the NFL, right? So it's not like whites have been dominating sports for some time.
African Americans have been dominating every major sports league outside of hockey and baseball for a long time now. The idea that somehow you're privileged in sports if you're a white is so taken out of the realm of reality that you can't help help but laugh about it. But more specifically, looking at society at large, we talk all the time about white supremacy.
You talk about your white privilege and systemic racism that within our institutions themselves, within the structures of our society, there is racism that holds minority groups down, specifically blacks and sometimes Hispanics.
But in reality, whites are the only group in the United States that can be systemically oppressed, can, can be systemically discriminated against. You look at the black community at large in the United States because of the Civil Rights act specifically, and because of affirmative action laws that are now, they're being tried to phase out because the Supreme Court has ruled them unconstitutional, obviously because it's giving special privileges based on race. But because of affirmative action, blacks are more likely to receive scholarships, they're more likely to receive job offers.
The whites are the only group in society that can be openly mocked, that can be openly slandered. You can turn on any TV show, you can turn on the news, you can turn on Saturday Night Live, you can make fun of white people all you want. And, and most white people don't care because we don't have that. We don't have a hair trigger reaction to it. But whites are the only group in America that doesn't have any type of legal protections. And this was really illustrated.
We talk about right privilege and institutional systemic racism.
There's great statistics that back up these. The claims that I'm making here. If you look at, you know, there's this great survey by resume builder.
How often do you pass on qualified candidates because they are not, quote, diverse enough? Less than a quarter of hiring managers reported almost never. Meaning that over 75% of hiring managers at some point or another have made a decision not to hire a white person or a straight person specifically to reach their diversity standards within their company or within the government or within whatever. If you actually look at the statistics, nearly half answered very often or somewhat often. Meaning this is on a regular basis, people like you and I, to no fault of our own, we're applying for a job or a scholarship or what have you. And our resume doesn't matter. Our achievements don't matter. Our work history doesn't matter. Our character doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the fact that they scroll down and see that we put that we're Caucasian. Right. Or we're a man.
That is systemic racism. That is institutional racism.
That is not white privilege. Right. So I think that we have these discussions that are not rooted anywhere in reality. And specifically, you and I, we are born in a time where we certainly have not experienced any kind of privilege for being white, for being straight, for being a man, for being Christian, for anything.
If we have experienced anything, it's been the opposite in what I'm describing here.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. And what's essential from Caitlin Clark's quote there, Right. And I have it pulled up here. It says this. This is from the Times. Right. It says, I've earned every single thing. But as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of these players in the league that have been really good have been black players. The we. The league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible. I think that is very important.
So basically, what. And you've said this, too, is what has gone on is that the media articles TikToks have blown Caitlin Clark up.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: She started at Iowa. She went very well. She had a few plays. But what happened was that these plays get blown up all over TikTok and overnight she becomes a sensation. We saw this with. With Kamala when she got brought in as to replace Joe. And you saw this now with the CEO murderer. But these people get idolized.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And part of it is they're artificially propped up, too.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Because you have of the sports centers of the world or the. The NBAs of the world, these organizations that have a lot of money and a lot of financial resources, they understand that if they can turn the WNBA into a profitable industry, it benefits them. Right. So they. So it's not so much that people had this huge demand for women's basketball or for Caitlin Clark in general. People appreciated what she did, but she was blown up to a level artificially, and it had nothing to do with her skin color or anything like that. And. And not to cut you off, but the one thing I want to touch on that you said you. About the fact that, you know, you have all these companies involved and Caitlin Clark's calling on people to invest and things of that nature, a lot of this always comes Back to like a financial blackmail. Right. They will say if you're not investing in the wa, it's because you're racist or you're sexist. Right. It's not because you might not turn a profit. It's not because you don't want to lose money. It's because you're a bad person. And that's what like BLM and these organizations have done to so many corporations, is they've used this type of blackmail to bully them into submission. But go ahead.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: No, and you're absolutely correct. What these companies are doing is they're investing into a marketing decision. They're going with Caitlin Clark and they're selling these, you know, to make a profitable return. Now, what she's not acknowledging or we haven't gotten to yet, is that there are companies that have gone after these black players and are also endorsing them and doing the same things they're doing with Caitlin Clark. You got Angel Reese, you got Ajah Wilson have also had these huge deals with big companies like Amazon, Reebok, Sonic and Nike.
[00:52:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And the thing is, I don't even know who that second player you mentioned is. So the fact that these players are getting huge deals shows that they would not be getting a huge deal if there wasn't a DEI standard to get them these deals. Because quite honestly, nobody cares about them. The average person does not care about. They're not going to buy Reebok because of. What's her name? Aisha Wilson. Aisha Wilson. Okay. I don't know who this is. Nobody knows who this is. And it's not to say she's not a very talented person at what she does, but it is to say that if she wasn't a black woman, she wouldn't have gotten anything.
[00:52:52] Speaker B: No. Well, and then article that I read today, Pastor Corey Brooks, he's out of Chicago, and he basically took this whole situation and he kind of analyzed it, right. And one of the things here he said is there's a problem with Clark saying that the league was built on black players. No, it was actually built on players and their talent. It doesn't matter if you were black or white. It was built by the women players. Now, it's not as successful as the man's league, however. It's. I mean, we almost had a team here. They just decided to go to Denver. But how long is it. And this is what he continues to say. He says, how long is it going to be until we realize that blackness is not an obstacle to fame? And one of the hardest things is to create a group like the WNBA that stands out and has an enormous fan base.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: And then he continued on to say, when are we gonna stop letting the black victimization and the white savior roles define us? Did the music stars like James Brown or Aretha Franklin, people who suffered real oppression, get saved by whiteness? No. They took on their own fate and, you know, built their own way.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you look at any other professional sports league, there are tons of. You turn on the tv, you'll see endorsements of tons of black athletes because they make up the majority of the situation. It's like we always talk about representation in society. Right. They'll say in stem. Right. In science and technology that women. Or they'll say, blacks are underrepresented, but black people make up 13% of the population. But they expect them to make up 50% of our actors or 50% in our entertainment industry. But when you start to apply that same standard to sports and say, wait a minute, white people aren't being accurately represented in, I want to be able to turn on the TV and see a six foot white dude like myself playing in the NBA or else I can't achieve what I want to achieve. There's only so many Matthew Dellavedovas to go around until you hit a little bit of a wall. So I guess when I was growing up, this just wasn't a topic of conversation. It was simply, you had superstars on your team or I'm a Cleveland sports fan, so usually they weren't on my team. And you admire these people based on their skill and ability, regardless of their skin color. And then all of a sudden it got turned into this very aggressive situation. And another thing I wanted to touch on, because we're talking about white privilege, we're talking about representation, all of these things. In 2020, during the BLM when BLM was really at its peak, talking about the same things that we're talking about now, there was this huge push in corporate America to hire blacks. Specifically that corporations are doing a bad job. They're not hiring enough black people. They're not hiring enough people of color. In that year, the year of BLM, the S&P 500 companies hired 94% people of color. 94%. Just 6% of 302,000 jobs, they hired white people. So. So when you want to talk about representation, obviously they didn't get 94% of their applications from black people. Right. People of color, obviously they didn't get 80% or 70%. I doubt even Half of the applications that they received were from people of color because the numbers just wouldn't add up. But, you know, you had somebody in hr, white, white, white, white, throwing out these papers or putting them in the shredder. And that is where we have to have a real conversation. And. And it gets hard when you're talking to specifically minority groups about this because they've been fed these lies their entire lives. So it's hard for you when somebody who's coming from a black community, let's say they're coming from East Cleveland, right? Which incredibly impoverished, incredibly high, drug use, crime, all these different things, terrible education.
If you have a child there who's to say your age, who's been fed these lies their whole life. And then all of a sudden I come around, you know, some white dude comes to them and say, you know, actually, none of that is true. They're not going to believe me. Even if I lay out everything statistically, factually, it doesn't matter. So that's where we have to start having open conversation. We can't hide from it. But, you know, people like you're talking about who are leaders in the black community have to start stepping up and ending this black victimization and ending this, you know, pinning every single thing in life that doesn't go the way you want it to on white people, because that's been the narrative that's been pushed by the media, by our education system, by now our entertainment and corporate America, and certainly from our government.
[00:57:38] Speaker B: And, Jonah, what we're starting to see, and especially with the wnba, is that they're starting to bring in all these social issues that are just going to further divide Americans, Americans. The whole purpose, part of the whole purpose of watching these sports is to escape reality, right? For one hour, two hours, Americans get to turn on the tv, go to the game, and separate from the craziness of this world.
[00:58:03] Speaker A: Unite and unite in support of your team.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: Right. One of the few things that Americans can actually unite on. And now what they're doing, these players, they're bringing in social issues that's just going to further divide that United fan base there. We saw it with LeBron when he would start talking about politics in the NBA side. And now you've got Caitlin Clark, which honestly is going to just, if this continues, further divide and destroy the wnba because you've got all these social issues that people do not want to hear about while watching a sports game.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what makes certain, if you look at certain actors or certain sports figures that's what makes them popular many times, or some of the most beloved as they stay out of those issues. Like Michael Jordan. And he used to say, you know what he said, like, republicans buy shoes, too kind of thing, where he had his own beliefs, and I'm sure they probably weren't like mine, at least I would guess.
But he chose to go the route of, I'm not a politician, right? I'm trying to. I'm trying to. I'm going to build my own brand, build the NBA's brand. I'm trying to build. He built a business empire, obviously. But also, you know, when you look at athletes, their responsibility is also to unite people. And I think we've taken on such a divisive nature that has infiltrated every area of our lives. And when we go back to the conversation of, like, why do you care so much? Because all of these issues have. I can't escape it. I can't even turn on the. I can't turn on SportsCenter. I can't go to a. I can't go to a professional sporting event without having any of this stuff on the social ends of politics pushed on me. And that's where people are saying they're just exhausted and have a fatigue of these type of conversations and situations. And I don't blame anybody for feeling that way because that's certainly the way I feel.
So moving on, there's so many things I could get into in regards to white privilege, and there's a lot of stuff on the show that I've covered before that I don't want to beat a dead horse.
I do want to move into talking about because we're two young Americans here that are inheriting a country that regardless of what happens over the next four years, this is a tumultuous time. We're inheriting a country that is in a very bad spot, that's in the worst spot it's ever been in for any generation taking over.
But I've talked on this show, I think I talked about it in my monologue leading up into last episode, specifically about the boomer generation and how the boomer generation was born into a country that was. Was at its peak. It was born into a country that was more economically powerful, had more cultural influence and power and just beauty than any society, any nation in the history of the world. They. They came into the perfect situation. That's not anything that I talk about here. For if you're listening and you're of the older generations, anything I talk about is not I'm not attacking you as a person. Right. I am saying we have to have an honest conversation about how we got where we are, because things are a mess, right? So the boomer generation has had, because of their numbers, population numbers, they have had such firm control over our government, over our politics for forever. I mean, you turn on the news, everything is still geared towards the boomer generation, right? Even though they are kind of on their way out. And I don't mean that in a bad way. We're all going to be on our way out at some point. Point.
That is the situation where our government, it's the reason they won't talk about things about Social Security, Right? Because if they touch Social Security, they know it is a. They know it is a political, you know, it's political suicide because, you know, boomers control our government, and anything taking away from them kills you electorally. But there was a very interesting survey that I found out of Charles Schwab that it kind of goes hand in hand with what we've been seeing out of the boomer generation. And I'll go into some more statistics, but really the question was, you know, they asked wealthy. They would ask wealthy Americans across millionaire Americans across the financial spectrum or across the generational spectrum, I should say. They asked millennials, they asked wealthy Gen Xers and wealthy boomers, you know, what are you going to do with your money, right? What do you want to do with your money? Do you want to preserve it, your money for the next generation? Do you want the next generation to enjoy that money with you while you're alive? Do you want to use that money yourself while you're still alive, or distribute it? Distribute your wealth through various means, or are you going to pass on that wealth during your lifetime?
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, boomers were the largest group that I want to enjoy. They answer that question, 45% answer that question. I still want to enjoy my money for myself while I'm alive. 45%. That's a significant number. Only 11% of Gen X answer that way. Only 15% of millennials answered that way.
The huge portion of these boomers, and you can go survey after survey are saying, I want to spend my money while I'm alive, having a good time. You look at our country as a whole, 70% of disposable income belongs to boomers. In this country, still 70%.
If you look at the spending in older households, it's increased over 34% since 1982. So they're spending at higher rates than any generation before them. It is a situation where you have millennials and Gen Z like us, and we've been blamed over and over for being selfish, for being lazy, for being all of these things. But at the same time, you have the boomer generation who is essentially giving them. And actually the way they vote in many cases, actually they went for Kamala giving a middle finger essentially to their children and to their grandchildren, saying, you know, I built up all this. You know, I inherited a lot of money, first of all, because they did. I built up a lot. I'm not saying boomers didn't work hard. They built financial things. I'm just going to spend it. You figure out your life after I'm dead. That is having a child.
I can't imagine having that position. Because every generation in American history and in world history, essentially the goal was, how do I leave my children and grandchildren better off than I was? Right. This is not the view of the boomer generation. When you look at the view, and I'm talking statistically, I'm not talking about you as an individual, when you look as a whole, the boomer generation, the view that they have taken is, this is my money. I earned it. And that's true. That is true. And I'm going to do whatever I want with it. I'm going to have a good time. That's not who we're supposed to be as Americans. That's not who we're supposed to be as Christians. We're supposed to say, like, there's nothing wrong with having a good time and enjoying yourself while you're alive. But you should be saying, I, I want my children to have a better life than I did. I want my children to have some advantages. I want my children to, if my child's struggling, I want them to be able to enjoy their life while I'm alive. And I would sympathize most with if I had a million dollars, which I don't, I would probably find myself in the position where I want to enjoy my money while I'm still alive with the next generation and do the things that I can with them to build experiences and memories and pass on on as much as I can. But I think this is indicative of a larger problem that we have in America where it's not just these kids who are selfish. It's not just these kids who are the problem. This was kind of taught to them by the actions of their elders. And I'd be curious to hear your perspective on this. As somebody in that Gen Z generation, you're right, Jonah.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: I think that there's really two ways to kind of look at this. The way that you've kind of laid out, and I 100% agree with everything you've said. However, looking through their eyes, right? The boomer generation, looking down upon their children, their grandchildren, you kind of have to see a little bit where they're coming from. Right. So for me, these are my grandparents, the people born between 1946 and 1964 there.
But looking especially at the grandchildren, kids my age, the question is, do they deserve to have this multi million of dollars, you know, money here? Only because if you look at the kids my age, they're lazy, Right. So many kids are waiting for these inheritance checks, not working hard and hoping on banking out on something like this, you know, to then spend it and not have to work a day in their life. Yeah. I mean, if you look at my generation, like I've said, laziness is through the roof. You know, friends that I go to school with, all they do is lounge on the couch all day after class. They have no job, no driver's license. I mean, you're 21 years old, no driver's license.
[01:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's sad.
[01:07:06] Speaker B: What's the problem here? You know, when it comes to school work, they're using chat to write the paper, to do the homework, to have on the quiz. You know, you're not learning anything. And essentially people are going into the work field and not knowing anything and therefore contributing more to this unemployed, you know, unemployment rate and then the laziness overall.
And you could look at it that way and see that like, you know, if you're not going to put the effort in, while you should be putting in your effort here during your working years, then I'm not gonna save you later on. You need to find out the hard way that this is what life's gonna look like.
As if I wasn't here.
[01:07:44] Speaker A: Yeah, and I'll let you finish your thought there and maybe this is where you're going a little bit. I don't mean to steal your thunder if you are, but that is something that 100%.
It's not to say that nobody deserve. Right. They don't deserve to enjoy life or they don't deserve the money that they, they've earned. I think that's sometimes the way the argument gets twisted, I think. But I, I think one thing, and you and I have both experienced this a lot. I experienced this a lot as I was running for office because I would deal with a lot of folks who are in older generations. And they'd always ask me, what's wrong with your generation? What's wrong? Why are they so lazy? Why are they so this? Why are they so that. But at the same time, these folks who might be saying, like, you're so lazy, I'm not going to give you any of my money. I'm not going to do this, I'm going to do that. They raised them, though. So. So these kids were failed by them. Right? So not only are they not sharing the wealth in that sense, and I'm not arguing that we should be having any kind of government programs that share wealth or redistribute or anything like that, but the same people who make the argument that I want to personally hold on to all my money are the same people who also didn't hand down any kind of foundation to their children so that they. You wouldn't be reliant on them financially. So I lost a lot of sympathy for that argument, specifically from boomers who were saying, well, these young generations are so lazy and they're so dumb and they don't know anything. Well, they were raised by you specifically.
So whose fault is it that they don't know anybody or they don't know anything? Whose fault is it that they're lazy? Whose fault is it that they have no financial literacy? And it's not to say that you have 100% control over your kids or your grandchildren or any of those things, but it is to say that when society trends in a certain direction, it comes from somewhere. Right. And that's where I think my message to boomers always is. You had a role in this as well. It wasn't like we popped out of the ground one day and we're like, oh, we're just a bunch of lazy freeloaders. Give us our money. It was, we were born, we were raised, or we. We weren't raised. Right. We were just thrown into the world. And this is the logical conclusion to that. So, no, I understand where you're coming from, where a lot of these folks are coming from, but I think it misses that step in between, and I.
[01:10:08] Speaker B: Think you're right, too. And to add on to that, though, there is, like, the two groups of kids where, you know, you had your. The parents or the boomers raised all of their children, you know, when you only take them so far, right. High school, college, and then they take off on their own.
[01:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:24] Speaker B: They move to California. They, you know, do a whole flip of their religion and their political beliefs, and it's More of then society that begins to kick in and raise them in a sense where you're getting more of these.
You know, you're flipping from the conservative upbringing to now the, the liberal way of going about things that passes on to the boomer's grandchildren. But you're right though, people are becoming very selfish and it is time for people to realize that what they do, their actions will have effects for future generations.
[01:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think too there's, you know, we're in a situation financially as a country that's not pretty. You know, me with a young family and you're looking to upgrade, you know, to a new home or things of that nature. It gets very tricky. And I think, you know, when you look at the boomers specifically, I said that they were born into this era of really the perfect era to be born into financially as an American. If you look at the home prices, the average home price of not a new home but just an existing home in 1980 was $47,000. The average income in 1980 was $21,000. Now you compare that to today, the average existing home cost in the United States is $404,000. Right. That's a 10, almost a 10 times increase from 1980. And the, the, the average income has, you know, less than tripled to 59,000. So we have these arguments all the time where, you know, you look at college as well, where, you know, the, the argument is always, you know, kids, you know, they take on their own loans and all these different things. And that's, that's true, it's their responsibility. But in 1970, for an in state university, it costs an average of $358 a year. $358 a year. Now it's $11,000. Right. And if you're going to a out of state or a private institution, that's up to $43,000 a year, if not more. Right. If not more. Exactly. You look at some of these institutions that are up in 50, 60, $70,000 a year if you're not getting financial aid. So, so millennials actually, funny enough, statistically save more than boomers on average, percentage wise, save more of their income than boomers did and do.
But I think that sometimes we have an unfair discourse where we talk about people being lazy. I think sometimes hopelessness is passed off as laziness. Right. Sometimes people take a look at these housing numbers and they just say, they put their head in their hands. They say, I can never afford a home. I have $100,000 in school debt. I'm not making that much money. I have a useless degree. I have this. I have that. I'm not going to be able to do it. So I'm just going to be lazy and I'm just going to try. I think that is a fair amount of people who just. They give up because they've been put in a situation that they're not ready to handle and that most human beings don't have a great capacity to be able to get out of. I mean, I can speak to myself firsthand. Graduating college with a ton of debt and trying to buy a home and all of those different things. It takes a mental, emotional toll on you when you're trying for a family that just that it didn't exist this way in 1970 and 1980 and 1990. This is a very. A pretty recent phenomenon as far as our ability to live and provide for yourself and your family and put a roof over your head. Those things are less attainable than they've ever been. So this discourse is never about pointing. Everybody's always pointing fingers at each other as generations, right? Younger generations always say, say the boomers, you suck. Boomer generation will say, no, you guys suck. And it's never about that. When I bring up this, I think it's more so to talk about the fact that we all bear some responsibility in where we are now. And if we are going to turn things around, it's going to take our boomers getting involved in a different way right back into their families. Right? And I think Christmas is maybe a good time of year to talk about that.
If your family hasn't gone the direction you'd like it to go, if your children haven't gone the direction they like it to go, it's never too late to turn that around. It's never too late to be a part of their lives or to give them wisdom or whatever you feel you can do. And not every situation is going to turn out great or going to turn out the way that you want it to. But if we're going to turn this around, it's not going to be with older generations just saying, I'm going to hold on to what I have and I'm just going to ride this thing out.
That's not going to be enough. Even if you have a younger generation that's really passionate about turning around your country, which we'll see, even if you have that with an older generation that's clinging to everything and the status quo, you're not going to see the Change you need to see, we're going to need to find a way to unite, and that means taking a hard look at who we are as a whole.
[01:15:15] Speaker B: You're right. I definitely think that. And especially during these times, during, you know, Christmas season, turn to God. You know, for these people that are on the fence of what I should do, you know, if you're between selfishness and then, you know, kind of sharing the love, if you will. Yeah. What would God want you to do? Right. Like you were saying earlier, you know, you're going to treat others how you want to be treated.
And if you came into this world with, like you're saying, this big lump sum that you inherited, maybe think about, about then turning it to the later generations.
[01:15:49] Speaker A: And the same way that we have to challenge ourselves to be better, to challenge our own generations to be better, I think we should challenge each other to be better. And that's why I bring up this conversation, because the Boomer generation is the first generation in American history that will leave their kids poorer. They'll leave their kids less happy, they'll leave their kids less or leave their kids more sick. That will leave their kids more likely to be a victim of a crime, leave their kids with a shorter life expectancy than what they had.
That's the first generation in American history that will leave their kids worse off than they were in the way that we can measure those things. So, again, it's not to dogpile on these Boomers. And I hate old people and all these things. My dad's a Boomer, so I'll tell him this stuff to his face, but he's great to me. But we have this situation we're in that's going to take all of us uniting together to understand where we went wrong. That starts with us as individuals, as families, and as a nation, ultimately, generationally, to make this change. So with that, James, I just want to thank you for coming on here today and for fighting the fight that you are in your school age now. And I know that you'll go on to do great things afterwards as well.
[01:17:05] Speaker B: Jonah, thank you for having me, and likewise.
[01:17:07] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, now it's time for Today's Uncomfortable Truth.
So today's uncomfortable truth is that I don't have an uncomfortable truth to share with you today. I actually have a very comforting truth to share with you today. And it really starts in the spirit of Christmas. What I want to share with you is a passage from one of my favorite books and movies this time of year and all throughout the year and That's a Christmas Carol. And this is from Ebenezer Scrooge towards the end of the book that I'm sure you've heard in one way or another. But I think it's a very beautiful reminder this time of year when he says, I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone. Talking about his gravestone in the end of the book. And I believe this is a beautiful passage and a reminder to all of us this time of year in Christmas that our past and even our present does not dictate our future. That we are free to write new pages to this book, that we're here for a reason, a purpose. To lighten the burden of others around us. And what better time of year, the Christmas to think about our future moving forward and how we are going to be good, good people, great people, and how we are going to make those around us happier, healthier, and more joyful citizens of this country and of this world. So I want to thank you for a great kickoff to man in the arena in 2024. And have a Merry Christmas, have a happy New Year, and we will see you on the other side in 2025. God bless.
