S2EP8 - RICKY & BRADLEY - LIBERAL MESSAGING

TRANSCRIPT

 

Samia:  This is Make America Relate Again, presented by Better Angels Media. I’m Samia Mounts

 

We’re gonna jump right in this week, with a conversation between two West Virginia gentlemen centering around why liberal messaging seems to be so ineffective in a country where polls show the majority of the population agreeing with liberal policies.

 

Ricky and Bradley are cousins, both from southern West Virginia - coal country - and both tend to agree with liberal policies. However, Ricky considers himself a libertarian, because according to him, liberal messaging does too much to alienate anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of the “coffee-shop liberal.” From his perspective, both sides of the political aisle have very similar flaws, can be very judgmental, and feel they have the moral high ground.

 

Bradley is a hardcore liberal who doesn’t think liberal messaging is to blame for liberals losing elections so much as the fact that conservatives are more easily united under a few issues - God, guns, and lower taxes - whereas liberals are trying to do something very difficult - united ALL Americans.

 

Now, West Virginia is a state that frequently ranks 50th in the nation’s economy, education, obesity, and substance abuse, and a state that recently switched from blue to red, thanks in large part to Obama’s campaign to reduce our nation’s dependence on coal. So these guys are very much in touch with Trump’s America, and I learned a lot from them.

 

I’ll let Ricky and Bradley tell you more.

 

MUSIC

 

Samia:  Ricky and Bradley, welcome to Make America Relate Again. Let's go ahead and start by having you both introduce yourselves so the listeners know your voices and a little bit about where you're coming from, politically speaking. Ricky, let's start with you.

 

Ricky:  Okay, well, I grew up in a small area called Boone County, West Virginia, on the edge of the banks of the Little Coal River. Dad was a coal miner, mom worked at the local newspaper, and I usually vote third party. I voted for Perot and Nader and the first Bush was pretty bad, so I went ahead, instead of voting clear conscience, I voted for Kerry. I wanted to vote for Obama, actually. I thought he had a real good message, but yeah, the last election I went back to the third party. Third party to me, it doesn't matter which one, really. I kind of lean left-wing Libertarian, but I'll vote any third party candidate that has the best chance of making some margins, at least.

 

Samia:  Okay, great. Bradley, what about you?

 

Bradley:  Okay, I'm Bradley, age 47. I also have the same background as Ricky, from southern West Virginia. Father was a coal miner. In fact, we're related, so we've been lifelong friends. I lean liberal. Extremely liberal. I've always pretty much voted straight Democratic ticket.

 

Samia:  All right. I want to get into a little bit about what shaped your political leanings, but let's do that in the process of the conversation. We’re here today to talk about messaging. Specifically, you guys told me that what might be interesting for you to talk about is liberal messaging and whether or not it's effective, so where do you both stand on that? Let's continue on with you Bradley. What's your take on liberal messaging?

 

Bradley:  Well, I'm not so extreme on it. I don't think that there's so much of a liberal conspiracy. Ricky and I, we totally disagree on that, but I don't see it as something that is out to take over the country, okay. I think for the most part the liberal message is basically doing the right thing in a lot of cases. We definitely differ on that.

 

Samia:  And Ricky, how do you differ?

 

Ricky:  Most of the liberal issues America agrees with, so if they're losing elections, they're doing something wrong. The thing I think that they're doing wrong is they're doing the exact same thing that the Christian Right is doing and trying to enforce their morality through law. It turns a lot of people away because of that.

 

Bradley:  Well, keep in mind we've only lost one election, okay. It's not like that we've had five consecutive elections that the Democratic party's lost. It's at this point, it's one election, and it was just barely at that.

 

Ricky:  If most of the country agrees with most of your issues, how in the world did you lose this election?

 

Bradley:  It does baffle the mind how we lost this election, but still, yeah, we did and there's a group of people that are not being listened to and now their getting their 15 minutes worth, so…

 

Samia:  What group of people do you mean?

 

Bradley:  The small town people. They've felt for years that they've been pushed out, not listened to. 

 

Samia:  So you're talking about the Trump base. All right. So what about liberal messaging do you think is making all this worse, Ricky? And feel free Bradley to jump in with your questions and your responses without waiting for me. I will just be over here on the sidelines being quiet, unless I feel like I need to jump in.

 

Ricky:  Okay, the first thing is the left-wing media is as guilty, not as guilty, but guilty of sensational journalism as it is. So when you watch Fox News, it's all sensationalized right-wing leaning. The only liberals you really see are in the most negative light, right, but the left wing does about the same thing. If you're just as guilty, if the only news you get is NPR and CNN and CNBC, you're just as guilty as the people that all they get is Rush Limbaugh and God forbid, Alex Jones, or Fox News. You end up in this bubble and you see the opposition through a limited prism.

 

Bradley:  Now see I think you live in a bubble. I think you live in a conservative bubble that you are forcefed the conservative Kool-Aid and I don't get that. So I'm out in the middle. I see the middle of the road on a daily basis. I feel like that you're almost locked in a conservative prison down there.

 

Ricky:  Well dang, you don't get much more right-wing these days, than the coal fields, yeah they feel abandoned by the... West Virginia was blue for what? Seventy, eighty years and as soon as the EPA ... I kinda…

 

Bradley:  It breaks my heart that West Virginia went back to conservative.

 

Ricky:  Yeah.

 

Bradley:  It just, oh, I die.

 

Ricky:  Well that was, you know there's no more blue dog democrat as there is.

 

Bradley:  Right.

 

Samia:  But wait, you were about to say why West Virginia went back conservative. Could you expound upon that a little bit, because I don't that people outside of West Virginia would really understand the issues involved there.

 

Ricky:  Oh, okay. The first thing is that coal never had a competition, and natural gas, the natural gas industry, in my opinion put the fleece over the EPA’s eyes, saying that they had a product that burned cleaner than coal and would have no environmental drawbacks. Of course, we know that's not true. It contaminates the water supply, but once there was an alternative to coal, that gave the Democratic party enough leverage to do what they've been wanting to do, which is...

 

Bradley:  Kill coal.

 

Ricky:  Kill coal.

 

Bradley:  Plain and simple.

 

Ricky:  And once you did that, that was the, I don't want to say sole employment opportunity in that state, for as long as I can remember.

 

Bradley:  That's all that's there. I mean is coal mining. There's no flat land there to build factories and to bring in other opportunities for people. All they ever had was timber and coal, and coal made up 90% of their income. That's what the population was based off of. And absolutely, I voted for Obama, but I will admit that he absolutely killed the coal industry. He took the opportunity. Now I think he did it for good reasons. I mean you can't go to the rest of the world and say, hey, we need to start fighting global warming, when he himself is burning coal like crazy, okay. So it's kind of instead of a, do as I say not as I do, he set the example. He did kill the coal industry. There's no doubt about that, but I think it was for reasons that has to - we just have to get there.

 

Samia:  So it sounds like it was a pretty unfortunate situation for the state of West Virginia, but from your perspective Bradley, also from mine, the coal industry needed to die.

 

Bradley:  Its time was up. Coal’s time was up. 

 

Samia:  Ricky do you agree with that?

 

Ricky:  The thing is, that's the reason West Virginia is went red. There's no recovering West Virginia now.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, it's lost.

 

Ricky:  It will never turn back blue because of this. I'm just giving the reason. We know their logic.

 

Bradley:  Their morals already were in conflict with the Democratic party, their stance on abortion, guns, many things. They already felt conflicted. When they killed the coal industry, that was the last straw that drove the entire state over to the red.

 

Samia:  I think there's a side conversation we could have here about the need for environmental regulations and fighting global warming and all that. Do you have an interest in pursuing that, or should we get back to the topic of liberal messaging?

 

Bradley:  I think we should stick with liberal messaging. I mean, what's going on in West Virginia is going on in many places. It might not be that their industry died, but still yet that small town, they feel conflicted to try to vote Democratic. So I think we should stick with that.

 

Samia:  So what about the liberal messaging, then, nowadays is exacerbating this situation? For you, Ricky, since you're the one who really has an issue with it?

 

Ricky:  Okay, the first flaw that the left has is this image that we're, well, all these red states are uneducated, they don't know what's good for 'em. They don't know that their vote is actually counterproductive to their well-being, their livelihood. They should be voting Democrats because the Republicans benefit the one percent. 

 

Bradley:  Yeah. Corporations.

 

Ricky:  Tax cuts. Corporations.

 

Bradley:  Business. 

 

Ricky:  The Democrats are the guys that's fighting the good fight for the little guy in the town and-

 

Bradley:  But the little guy doesn't feel it. The little guy doesn't understand.

 

Ricky:  And they're just undereducated, and they don't know what's good for 'em. They should just listen to us and come on over.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, that's, that message is not working.

 

Ricky:  That is not gonna work. You can't help somebody, a dummy head.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, you know...

 

Ricky:  And say, hey dummy.

 

Bradley:  I'm the one that's educated so you need to listen to me and vote Democrat. That message is not working.

 

Ricky:  And the message that benefiting them is not gonna ring true, 'cause they don't want the government to come in and benefit them. They want to be self-reliant like they were in the old days, when they all had these factory jobs and they could buy their own house and do all these things on their own without government assistance. That's what they want. They don't want government to come in and protect 'em and be their parents and guardians and all of that.

 

Bradley:  So question for you, Ricky. Do you feel that the liberal message is weak, or do you feel that the conservatives are just doing better at staying on point with their message? 

 

Ricky:  Those conservatives stay on point with their message. They know where they're at. God, guns, what's the other one? 

 

Bradley:  Abortion, we've got abortion, God...

 

Ricky:  That's God, guns, and what's the third one? Lower taxes?

 

Bradley:  Yeah, yeah. Taxes.

 

Ricky:  All they have to do is say God, guns, lower taxes. Hey, come on over.

 

Bradley:  I hear abortion a lot. 

 

Ricky:  That's God, that's under the God context.

 

Bradley:  Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay.

 

Ricky:  And the Democrats, they don't have a unified front like that. A liberal from California is going to be far different from a liberal living in Kansas, but a conservative in California has a lot more in common with a conservative in Kansas. So it's harder to wrangle and narrow the message down to something clearcut and concise. 

 

Samia:  Why do you think that is?

 

Ricky:  You know, I'm not sure. I don't know. If you look across the board, almost every poll or liberal idea, say like legalizing marijuana, that's been a liberal idea for a long time, and polls in the 80s, probably, it was not supported by the majority of the population, but today every poll shows it's a liberal idea, a liberal platform that most of the population agrees with. Who cares about this? This is an old issue. We know marijuana's got public approval on its side now. Yet you still can't get it passed, and you fight tooth and nail with it. Liberal, Democrat platform talking points across the board, with the exception of a few wedge issues, the public approves of, agrees with. So they agree with a lot of the message, like regulating Wall Street, raising taxes on the one percent, most of America wants to raise taxes on the one percent. It's logical, but the detractors that the left has supersedes the positives and they can't get that message across. They should stand on the messages that what the polls say the people want, and hammer those home. 

 

Bradley:  You are not heading into the direction that I thought you were going to head. Okay, I thought for sure that you were going to…a lot of the liberal messages just tear you apart. You can't handle it. Okay, you use words like fragile little snowflake, and things like that. So you're holding back pretty well on what you actually think about the majority of the liberal message, and you feel that they should drop a lot of this in order to bring back middle America. Now see, I don't see it as liberals enforcing their moral message. I see that as corporate America enforcing the liberal message, but though it has nothing to do with the Democratic party. Okay, they pretty much, it's over getting sued that they got to where you can be fired over something from Facebook. So if you post something racist on Facebook, you can be fired for it. You see that as the liberal message, okay, being enforced.

 

Ricky:  Yeah, those are EEO laws that are backed by the left. That's what their suing them on the basis of. Okay? So if you're at work and you get offended by something, and let me preface this with, the reason those laws started and began with were of noble intentions, because there is a lot of horrible things that happen that you shouldn't be exposed to at your job. Agreed. The same thing can be said with the Christian right. Their intentions are noble efforts to say I think that, morally, the country should be like this, so let's enforce a law like prohibition, 'cause I don't think anybody should be drinking alcohol. I've got the moral authority through my representatives to pass prohibition. The left does the same thing through the equal opportunity laws and the harassment laws that infiltrate the business. That's how they enforce it. They get - you know, the company surely doesn't want to get sued. There's parts of it that has not only necessary but needed. You have to have something to where workers are protected equally, but it's a fine line from fair to overextending your morality. And overextending your power to be offended and cost me my job.

 

Samia:  Do you have any personal experience with this?

 

Ricky:  We had a harassment meeting. Training meeting last week, and they were going through all the things that you could basically get in trouble for, some of them are very, I just, they're ridiculous. Some of 'em - if you, you know people decorate their cubicle with maybe a comic strip or something out of the newspaper, and if somebody comes by your cubicle and is offended by the comic strip that you cut out, that's an EEO complaint, which could eventually... I mean, you're not gonna get fired for a first incident, but that could be the trigger point for this wave of outrage that the Left is capable of doing now, and you could end up losing your job, and at the crux of it was a comic strip that somebody didn't like. They brought examples up in the meeting about people getting fired for Facebook posts and things like that. 

 

Bradley:  Now, whether or not you should be fired for a Facebook post, that's a different argument. Whether a company should even be looking at your Facebook to fire you is a totally different argument, but at the core of it, it's about… See, to me, freedom of speech means that in my house, I can say whatever I want inside my house. Now, if I go over to your house, and I'm standing in your house, and I start saying what I think, and you disagree with it, you have the right to throw me out of your house. It's the same thing with a company. Okay? When you're working for that company, you're in their house. You represent them. And anything that can damage their reputation, or hurt their employee relations, is something that you gotta address. So I don't see it as a liberal agenda thing as much as I see it as just doing the right thing. Now, I have an example. Someone at my place of work made a noose and hung it up at work. Needless to say, it offended quite a few people. He didn't lose his job over it, but he got substantial time off for it. A lot of people felt that it was just silly. That he just was playing around, made a noose, hung it up. And other people saw it as a threat. So it's a fine line, but at the same time I think it's one that you gotta take into consideration and use your brain.

 

Ricky:  But here's the thing. It's a double standard, because you just said if you go to your place of employment, well, when they're kneeling at the Anthem, who's mad about that? The conservatives are mad, and the liberals are saying, “Oh, it’s his freedom of speech." Well, he's in his place of work. So what's good for the goose is not good for the gander, when it comes to it. And the reason is those laws are constructed by, and facilitated by the left.

 

Bradley:  Okay. But if you're saying that when they kneel at the Anthem, that they're just stating that they hate America.

 

Ricky:  No. I'm not. Don't put words in my mouth. That's a strong word.

 

Bradley:  No I'm just saying that would be what the conservatives take it as. 

 

Ricky:  No they just find it offensive.

 

Bradley:  They find it offensive.

 

Ricky:  They find that very offensive. They're doing it for-

 

Bradley:  Okay. They don't try to see both sides that he is actually protesting an injustice in his country.

 

Ricky:  Well it wouldn't be an effective protest if it didn't make the people you were protesting mad. 

 

Bradley:  Right.

 

Ricky:  It wouldn't even be a protest. I'm just saying. If I can't cut out a Lockhorns cartoon and tape it on my locker, then what's the difference in that and kneeling at the Anthem?

 

Samia:  I think there's actually a big difference there, and I love that you brought this up, because last week's episode was actually about that specific issue. That is an interesting analogy to make, to say, well, this kneeling at the Anthem thing is offensive to the conservatives, and why is that not being held to the same standards that we're holding other things in workplaces. Like things that are offensive to liberals. I get that, but at the same time, the kneeling during the Anthem thing is a very peaceful form of protest, whereas hanging a noose in your office speaks to a violence of our past as a country that is deeply traumatic for a lot of people. I see a huge difference there. What do you think, Ricky?

 

Samia:  This is Make America Relate Again, presented by Better Angels Media. I’m Samia Mounts

 

We’re gonna jump right in this week, with a conversation between two West Virginia gentlemen centering around why liberal messaging seems to be so ineffective in a country where polls show the majority of the population agreeing with liberal policies.

 

Ricky and Bradley are cousins, both from southern West Virginia - coal country - and both tend to agree with liberal policies. However, Ricky considers himself a libertarian, because according to him, liberal messaging does too much to alienate anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of the “coffee-shop liberal.” From his perspective, both sides of the political aisle have very similar flaws, can be very judgmental, and feel they have the moral high ground.

 

Bradley is a hardcore liberal who doesn’t think liberal messaging is to blame for liberals losing elections so much as the fact that conservatives are more easily united under a few issues - God, guns, and lower taxes - whereas liberals are trying to do something very difficult - united ALL Americans.

 

Now, West Virginia is a state that frequently ranks 50th in the nation’s economy, education, obesity, and substance abuse, and a state that recently switched from blue to red, thanks in large part to Obama’s campaign to reduce our nation’s dependence on coal. So these guys are very much in touch with Trump’s America, and I learned a lot from them.

 

I’ll let Ricky and Bradley tell you more.

 

MUSIC

 

Samia:  Ricky and Bradley, welcome to Make America Relate Again. Let's go ahead and start by having you both introduce yourselves so the listeners know your voices and a little bit about where you're coming from, politically speaking. Ricky, let's start with you.

 

Ricky:  Okay, well, I grew up in a small area called Boone County, West Virginia, on the edge of the banks of the Little Coal River. Dad was a coal miner, mom worked at the local newspaper, and I usually vote third party. I voted for Perot and Nader and the first Bush was pretty bad, so I went ahead, instead of voting clear conscience, I voted for Kerry. I wanted to vote for Obama, actually. I thought he had a real good message, but yeah, the last election I went back to the third party. Third party to me, it doesn't matter which one, really. I kind of lean left-wing Libertarian, but I'll vote any third party candidate that has the best chance of making some margins, at least.

 

Samia:  Okay, great. Bradley, what about you?

 

Bradley:  Okay, I'm Bradley, age 47. I also have the same background as Ricky, from southern West Virginia. Father was a coal miner. In fact, we're related, so we've been lifelong friends. I lean liberal. Extremely liberal. I've always pretty much voted straight Democratic ticket.

 

Samia:  All right. I want to get into a little bit about what shaped your political leanings, but let's do that in the process of the conversation. We’re here today to talk about messaging. Specifically, you guys told me that what might be interesting for you to talk about is liberal messaging and whether or not it's effective, so where do you both stand on that? Let's continue on with you Bradley. What's your take on liberal messaging?

 

Bradley:  Well, I'm not so extreme on it. I don't think that there's so much of a liberal conspiracy. Ricky and I, we totally disagree on that, but I don't see it as something that is out to take over the country, okay. I think for the most part the liberal message is basically doing the right thing in a lot of cases. We definitely differ on that.

 

Samia:  And Ricky, how do you differ?

 

Ricky:  Most of the liberal issues America agrees with, so if they're losing elections, they're doing something wrong. The thing I think that they're doing wrong is they're doing the exact same thing that the Christian Right is doing and trying to enforce their morality through law. It turns a lot of people away because of that.

 

Bradley:  Well, keep in mind we've only lost one election, okay. It's not like that we've had five consecutive elections that the Democratic party's lost. It's at this point, it's one election, and it was just barely at that.

 

Ricky:  If most of the country agrees with most of your issues, how in the world did you lose this election?

 

Bradley:  It does baffle the mind how we lost this election, but still, yeah, we did and there's a group of people that are not being listened to and now their getting their 15 minutes worth, so…

 

Samia:  What group of people do you mean?

 

Bradley:  The small town people. They've felt for years that they've been pushed out, not listened to. 

 

Samia:  So you're talking about the Trump base. All right. So what about liberal messaging do you think is making all this worse, Ricky? And feel free Bradley to jump in with your questions and your responses without waiting for me. I will just be over here on the sidelines being quiet, unless I feel like I need to jump in.

 

Ricky:  Okay, the first thing is the left-wing media is as guilty, not as guilty, but guilty of sensational journalism as it is. So when you watch Fox News, it's all sensationalized right-wing leaning. The only liberals you really see are in the most negative light, right, but the left wing does about the same thing. If you're just as guilty, if the only news you get is NPR and CNN and CNBC, you're just as guilty as the people that all they get is Rush Limbaugh and God forbid, Alex Jones, or Fox News. You end up in this bubble and you see the opposition through a limited prism.

 

Bradley:  Now see I think you live in a bubble. I think you live in a conservative bubble that you are forcefed the conservative Kool-Aid and I don't get that. So I'm out in the middle. I see the middle of the road on a daily basis. I feel like that you're almost locked in a conservative prison down there.

 

Ricky:  Well dang, you don't get much more right-wing these days, than the coal fields, yeah they feel abandoned by the... West Virginia was blue for what? Seventy, eighty years and as soon as the EPA ... I kinda…

 

Bradley:  It breaks my heart that West Virginia went back to conservative.

 

Ricky:  Yeah.

 

Bradley:  It just, oh, I die.

 

Ricky:  Well that was, you know there's no more blue dog democrat as there is.

 

Bradley:  Right.

 

Samia:  But wait, you were about to say why West Virginia went back conservative. Could you expound upon that a little bit, because I don't that people outside of West Virginia would really understand the issues involved there.

 

Ricky:  Oh, okay. The first thing is that coal never had a competition, and natural gas, the natural gas industry, in my opinion put the fleece over the EPA’s eyes, saying that they had a product that burned cleaner than coal and would have no environmental drawbacks. Of course, we know that's not true. It contaminates the water supply, but once there was an alternative to coal, that gave the Democratic party enough leverage to do what they've been wanting to do, which is...

 

Bradley:  Kill coal.

 

Ricky:  Kill coal.

 

Bradley:  Plain and simple.

 

Ricky:  And once you did that, that was the, I don't want to say sole employment opportunity in that state, for as long as I can remember.

 

Bradley:  That's all that's there. I mean is coal mining. There's no flat land there to build factories and to bring in other opportunities for people. All they ever had was timber and coal, and coal made up 90% of their income. That's what the population was based off of. And absolutely, I voted for Obama, but I will admit that he absolutely killed the coal industry. He took the opportunity. Now I think he did it for good reasons. I mean you can't go to the rest of the world and say, hey, we need to start fighting global warming, when he himself is burning coal like crazy, okay. So it's kind of instead of a, do as I say not as I do, he set the example. He did kill the coal industry. There's no doubt about that, but I think it was for reasons that has to - we just have to get there.

 

Samia:  So it sounds like it was a pretty unfortunate situation for the state of West Virginia, but from your perspective Bradley, also from mine, the coal industry needed to die.

 

Bradley:  Its time was up. Coal’s time was up. 

 

Samia:  Ricky do you agree with that?

 

Ricky:  The thing is, that's the reason West Virginia is went red. There's no recovering West Virginia now.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, it's lost.

 

Ricky:  It will never turn back blue because of this. I'm just giving the reason. We know their logic.

 

Bradley:  Their morals already were in conflict with the Democratic party, their stance on abortion, guns, many things. They already felt conflicted. When they killed the coal industry, that was the last straw that drove the entire state over to the red.

 

Samia:  I think there's a side conversation we could have here about the need for environmental regulations and fighting global warming and all that. Do you have an interest in pursuing that, or should we get back to the topic of liberal messaging?

 

Bradley:  I think we should stick with liberal messaging. I mean, what's going on in West Virginia is going on in many places. It might not be that their industry died, but still yet that small town, they feel conflicted to try to vote Democratic. So I think we should stick with that.

 

Samia:  So what about the liberal messaging, then, nowadays is exacerbating this situation? For you, Ricky, since you're the one who really has an issue with it?

 

Ricky:  Okay, the first flaw that the left has is this image that we're, well, all these red states are uneducated, they don't know what's good for 'em. They don't know that their vote is actually counterproductive to their well-being, their livelihood. They should be voting Democrats because the Republicans benefit the one percent. 

 

Bradley:  Yeah. Corporations.

 

Ricky:  Tax cuts. Corporations.

 

Bradley:  Business. 

 

Ricky:  The Democrats are the guys that's fighting the good fight for the little guy in the town and-

 

Bradley:  But the little guy doesn't feel it. The little guy doesn't understand.

 

Ricky:  And they're just undereducated, and they don't know what's good for 'em. They should just listen to us and come on over.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, that's, that message is not working.

 

Ricky:  That is not gonna work. You can't help somebody, a dummy head.

 

Bradley:  Yeah, you know...

 

Ricky:  And say, hey dummy.

 

Bradley:  I'm the one that's educated so you need to listen to me and vote Democrat. That message is not working.

 

Ricky:  And the message that benefiting them is not gonna ring true, 'cause they don't want the government to come in and benefit them. They want to be self-reliant like they were in the old days, when they all had these factory jobs and they could buy their own house and do all these things on their own without government assistance. That's what they want. They don't want government to come in and protect 'em and be their parents and guardians and all of that.

 

Bradley:  So question for you, Ricky. Do you feel that the liberal message is weak, or do you feel that the conservatives are just doing better at staying on point with their message? 

 

Ricky:  Those conservatives stay on point with their message. They know where they're at. God, guns, what's the other one? 

 

Bradley:  Abortion, we've got abortion, God...

 

Ricky:  That's God, guns, and what's the third one? Lower taxes?

 

Bradley:  Yeah, yeah. Taxes.

 

Ricky:  All they have to do is say God, guns, lower taxes. Hey, come on over.

 

Bradley:  I hear abortion a lot. 

 

Ricky:  That's God, that's under the God context.

 

Bradley:  Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay.

 

Ricky:  And the Democrats, they don't have a unified front like that. A liberal from California is going to be far different from a liberal living in Kansas, but a conservative in California has a lot more in common with a conservative in Kansas. So it's harder to wrangle and narrow the message down to something clearcut and concise. 

 

Samia:  Why do you think that is?

 

Ricky:  You know, I'm not sure. I don't know. If you look across the board, almost every poll or liberal idea, say like legalizing marijuana, that's been a liberal idea for a long time, and polls in the 80s, probably, it was not supported by the majority of the population, but today every poll shows it's a liberal idea, a liberal platform that most of the population agrees with. Who cares about this? This is an old issue. We know marijuana's got public approval on its side now. Yet you still can't get it passed, and you fight tooth and nail with it. Liberal, Democrat platform talking points across the board, with the exception of a few wedge issues, the public approves of, agrees with. So they agree with a lot of the message, like regulating Wall Street, raising taxes on the one percent, most of America wants to raise taxes on the one percent. It's logical, but the detractors that the left has supersedes the positives and they can't get that message across. They should stand on the messages that what the polls say the people want, and hammer those home. 

 

Bradley:  You are not heading into the direction that I thought you were going to head. Okay, I thought for sure that you were going to…a lot of the liberal messages just tear you apart. You can't handle it. Okay, you use words like fragile little snowflake, and things like that. So you're holding back pretty well on what you actually think about the majority of the liberal message, and you feel that they should drop a lot of this in order to bring back middle America. Now see, I don't see it as liberals enforcing their moral message. I see that as corporate America enforcing the liberal message, but though it has nothing to do with the Democratic party. Okay, they pretty much, it's over getting sued that they got to where you can be fired over something from Facebook. So if you post something racist on Facebook, you can be fired for it. You see that as the liberal message, okay, being enforced.

 

Ricky:  Yeah, those are EEO laws that are backed by the left. That's what their suing them on the basis of. Okay? So if you're at work and you get offended by something, and let me preface this with, the reason those laws started and began with were of noble intentions, because there is a lot of horrible things that happen that you shouldn't be exposed to at your job. Agreed. The same thing can be said with the Christian right. Their intentions are noble efforts to say I think that, morally, the country should be like this, so let's enforce a law like prohibition, 'cause I don't think anybody should be drinking alcohol. I've got the moral authority through my representatives to pass prohibition. The left does the same thing through the equal opportunity laws and the harassment laws that infiltrate the business. That's how they enforce it. They get - you know, the company surely doesn't want to get sued. There's parts of it that has not only necessary but needed. You have to have something to where workers are protected equally, but it's a fine line from fair to overextending your morality. And overextending your power to be offended and cost me my job.

 

Samia:  Do you have any personal experience with this?

 

Ricky:  We had a harassment meeting. Training meeting last week, and they were going through all the things that you could basically get in trouble for, some of them are very, I just, they're ridiculous. Some of 'em - if you, you know people decorate their cubicle with maybe a comic strip or something out of the newspaper, and if somebody comes by your cubicle and is offended by the comic strip that you cut out, that's an EEO complaint, which could eventually... I mean, you're not gonna get fired for a first incident, but that could be the trigger point for this wave of outrage that the Left is capable of doing now, and you could end up losing your job, and at the crux of it was a comic strip that somebody didn't like. They brought examples up in the meeting about people getting fired for Facebook posts and things like that. 

 

Bradley:  Now, whether or not you should be fired for a Facebook post, that's a different argument. Whether a company should even be looking at your Facebook to fire you is a totally different argument, but at the core of it, it's about… See, to me, freedom of speech means that in my house, I can say whatever I want inside my house. Now, if I go over to your house, and I'm standing in your house, and I start saying what I think, and you disagree with it, you have the right to throw me out of your house. It's the same thing with a company. Okay? When you're working for that company, you're in their house. You represent them. And anything that can damage their reputation, or hurt their employee relations, is something that you gotta address. So I don't see it as a liberal agenda thing as much as I see it as just doing the right thing. Now, I have an example. Someone at my place of work made a noose and hung it up at work. Needless to say, it offended quite a few people. He didn't lose his job over it, but he got substantial time off for it. A lot of people felt that it was just silly. That he just was playing around, made a noose, hung it up. And other people saw it as a threat. So it's a fine line, but at the same time I think it's one that you gotta take into consideration and use your brain.

 

Ricky:  But here's the thing. It's a double standard, because you just said if you go to your place of employment, well, when they're kneeling at the Anthem, who's mad about that? The conservatives are mad, and the liberals are saying, “Oh, it’s his freedom of speech." Well, he's in his place of work. So what's good for the goose is not good for the gander, when it comes to it. And the reason is those laws are constructed by, and facilitated by the left.

 

Bradley:  Okay. But if you're saying that when they kneel at the Anthem, that they're just stating that they hate America.

 

Ricky:  No. I'm not. Don't put words in my mouth. That's a strong word.

 

Bradley:  No I'm just saying that would be what the conservatives take it as. 

 

Ricky:  No they just find it offensive.

 

Bradley:  They find it offensive.

 

Ricky:  They find that very offensive. They're doing it for-

 

Bradley:  Okay. They don't try to see both sides that he is actually protesting an injustice in his country.

 

Ricky:  Well it wouldn't be an effective protest if it didn't make the people you were protesting mad. 

 

Bradley:  Right.

 

Ricky:  It wouldn't even be a protest. I'm just saying. If I can't cut out a Lockhorns cartoon and tape it on my locker, then what's the difference in that and kneeling at the Anthem?

 

Samia:  I think there's actually a big difference there, and I love that you brought this up, because last week's episode was actually about that specific issue. That is an interesting analogy to make, to say, well, this kneeling at the Anthem thing is offensive to the conservatives, and why is that not being held to the same standards that we're holding other things in workplaces. Like things that are offensive to liberals. I get that, but at the same time, the kneeling during the Anthem thing is a very peaceful form of protest, whereas hanging a noose in your office speaks to a violence of our past as a country that is deeply traumatic for a lot of people. I see a huge difference there. What do you think, Ricky?