Keep on riding with us, says, we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Sipher. I'm your host, Rams' job.
He is Ramsey's job. I am q Ward. You are tuned in the saving site for hopefully still with us or just joining us.
Yeah, if you're just joining us, please go back and listen to that first part of the show. Because Q he's bat in a thousand today. He took a loss all week. CE this guy down lot on my heart and I got a lot to say. Man, I appreciate that, and we all appreciate all of us in the studio listening to you appreciate that because it's a moment. But yeah, stick around. We do have to talk some more. We are going to be discussing and this should really go with the second or with the first part of the show.
We're going to be discussing Republicans versus conservatives. I feel like that's kind of an important distinction to make these days, because there's a lot of people who are conservative and not Republican and vice versa, and I think we need to have that conversation. But before we get there. It's just time to discuss Baba becoming a better allied baba. So why don't you grab this one? Youre bye Ba.
Sponsored by Friends of the Movement. You can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's fotmglobal dot com. Donate to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Please from their website. The National Museum of African American
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U, I want to make sure that people know that the SI in that website. Of course you can google the National Museum of African American History and Culture and get the website, but that SI stands for the Smithsonian INSTITUTIONE.
That SI is important, yes.
Because that is a national It's not like, you know, a group of black folks got together and put it together. No, that belongs to the United What is it? The the something of the United States of America. Like it's like they put the of America part on it. So it's a big deal. But we've also been there. We've been to this museum. It's a very special and transformative place.
So and for those very necessary So any amount that you can give matters. You don't have to be able to change the world with your single donation.
But also if you're able to please go visit it as well, and in doing so, I think that that's also becoming a better ally now Republicans versus conservatives. Before we get there, I'm going to share something that I came across that I feel is potent and this will be kind of a launch pad for the conversation we're going to have. So this comes from a writer named William Weir. He's responding to an online forum and I just just copied it and I wanted to share it
because I think that this kind of paints a picture this. First, we're going to have a conversation between Democrats and Republicans, and then we're going to have a conversation between Republicans and conservatives. But first, this is where we'll start. So the question posed to William Weir was if we had two countries, one filled with liberals only and the other filled with conservatives only, in the long run, which country
would perform better? And this is his response. There are a lot of other variables that could influence this, but let's just take a look at America. The states with the highest poverty rates are Louisiana, New Mexico, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas. New Mexico lean's blue, but the others are deep red. The states with the lowest poverty rates are New Hampshire, Maryland, Utah, Hawaii, and Minnesota. Utah is red,
but the others are all blue or lean blue. Okay, so that's you know, who has the lowest poverty versus who has the highest poverty. All Right, The states with the best education are all blue or lean blue, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The states with the worst are New Mexico, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Idaho. Again, all are deep red, except for New Mexico. New Mexico has some other things
going on there. Let's go to the incarceration. The states with the highest incarceration rates are Louisiana, Delaware, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Alaska. Once again four red and one blue, which is Delaware. The states with the lowest are New Hampshire, North Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Maine. And the trends and the trend holds with one red state, which is North Dakota, and the others are all blue or landing blue. Let's
look at healthcare. The best are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and California. A clean sweep for Team Blue. Actually, the top ten are all blue as far as healthcare is concerned, with Utah scoring the highest of the red states at number eleven, and the worst are Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, West
Virginia and Louisiana. A clean sweep for Team Red. Ten of the bottom eleven are all red, with only one swing state, Georgia, coming in at number forty three, and with Nevada coming in lowest of the blue states at number thirty nine. As if that wasn't enough, eight of the ten states who pay the highest federal income taxes per capita are blue. And that's you know, states with surpluses and states with where people are doing enough to
afford that and paying in for national funds. You know, because states pay to the federal government, and eight of the ten states that rely the most on federal funding are read. That means the government has to give money. So California is paying money to the government. The government then gives that money to Alabama, and then people in Alabama are like, at least we don't live in California, you know, and it's like they're that delusion that you spoke of in the first half of the show. Anyway,
where was I all? Right? Eight of the ten states that rely most on federal funding are read. The five states with the highest COVID death rates were all red, and three of the five with the lowest death rates were blue. That's Alaska and Utah were the only red states, and they're very sparsely populated. There's not a lot of folks in Utah or Alaska, so obviously there are other factors involved, or we'd see clean sweeps for every category. But the overall trend is clear. Red states are by
and large terrible at everything, while blue states perform much better. Okay, again, this is the writing of William Weir.
Want to I want to interject, please, because it might seem like he's being light there, but they're only fifty states. If you're in the bottom five of everything, you're performing terribly. I don't want to hear the word terrible and what that's being mean or hyperbolic or he's writing with colorful language.
No, you're in the twentieth or what is it the twentieth period? Objectively terrible? Yeah, that's that's fair, all right. So, based on the data, in a hypothetical scenario where we divide the Red states from the Blue states and form two different countries, the Blue country would prosper while the Red country would be quickly filled with poor, uneducated, sick criminals starving to death with no one to pay for
their food stamps. Actually that's not entirely true. I'd imagine that before that red country devolved to the point that they look like the set of a mad Max movie. They start listening to some liberals and turn some things around.
I wonder why he said that as the last sentence. And I'm not just talking to our listeners. I'm asking Ramses and not that knows this or can speak for you. But why on earth would anybody think that, instead of, as he said, turning into the set of a mad Max movie, that they would just start listening to liberals and turn some things around. Why does he think that's that's not happening today in real life?
Yeah, well again, what they would do is.
Double down on support for the people who have them under their thumb or that, because what it sounds like here is that while that country was was filled with sick, poor people, he's leaving out that someone's in charge, and the people in charge would be very wealthy. Oh yeah, it's and those people in charge will be very wealthy. By convincing the people who are not in charge it is not his fault or not their fault that things are so bad like they're doing right now in real life.
They would convince them that some other source, because.
They're kind of are to Americas. Now another problem, right, The thing that happened in the wake of nine to eleven September eleventh, two thousand and one, was that our then Republican president, who and this is objective fact, did not respond fantastically to that situation, could have been prepared, but ignored information and data coming from analysts after the fact. Found someone to other, because that's what we're really good at.
Found an entire group of people to other. And for a very brief amount of time, we were the United States of America. Even if that was united in bigotry and hate and fear, we were united. We had an enemy, we had someone to point to, we had someone to blame, and we got to look at each other as brothers and sisters as we were either scared or hateful. You were one of the other, as you waved your flag
and singing the Star Spangled banners. Start to feel a little different, even if temporarily because you were afraid of a group of people or because you hated a group of people, or both. Since then, and maybe not since that moment, but now this is very very much two different Americas, with two different agendas, with two different points of view.
Two different sets of facts, two.
Different sets of values. We are not united in our request against anything. The most vulnerable and weak our country has ever been. Now that's true.
Ever because we see one another as the enemy. Isn't that weird?
So we see one another as the enemy. So why in this story does he believe that things would get so bad that one side would ever look at the other side and say, you know what, you guys are doing this thing better than we are.
Yeah, Because, and I'll add to that, there's there's a lot of countries around the world where they do a lot of things better than the United States, and we don't try. Well. There are some of some at least liberals, that that point to those countries as examples, the countries like Finland and in Switzerland and so forth.
And social problem with pointing at any other country. You just said one of those bad words socialist our country and those imposers problem want to keep us weak and poor, have turned those those type of governments and to bad words. There are people in this country that hear the words socialist and think that it's a bad word. They have no idea what it means. Yeah, they are socialists. They hear communists. They hear anything that's not democracy and capitalists,
and it's a bad word. So it could not be better. So the idea that you could get sick and go to the doctor and get help, help is without being rich, should sound great to everyone.
It feels scary to them. Yeah, So here's let me make sure that I'm very clear. I know that when I when I mentioned like Finland and Switzerland, places like that, those are capitalistic countries with very robust.
Socialist program as is Canada a much closer, a great example to and I know that socialism and socialist programs are kind of.
The enemy of you know, our brothers and sisters who are in the Republican Party. However, the point I was making was to bolster your point, which is, we have clear examples of countries that are doing great things. You know, they've they've socialized health care, they've they've done a lot of things that really make the citizens on the ground, the people that live in the countries, the human beings and the environment, the animals and the trees and so
forth better. And so with those examples, certainly a lot of books on the right will ignore those examples and continue to double and triple down on what they're doing. So I think you're right in that they might ignore the liberal side of things that he's that he.
Mentioned no question, our leaders, and this is just subjective fact. Our leaders in general have prioritized profit and capitalist endeavors over well being of the citizen. For sure, that's a fact across the shore. But our Republican leaders have done that to a far more extreme end and continue to do so.
So let's do this. Let's I want to make a distinction. It might be a very small distinction, but I want to make a distinction between Republicans and conservatives. This show was started in Phoenix, Arizona in twenty twenty. That was the first place to give us a home. KKFR Power ninety eight point three, the first person outside of Phoenix, Arizona that welcomed our show and allowed our show to
be syndicated. That birthed the Now we're on seventy five radio stations around the country, sharing these concepts and hopefully creating better allies out of you, our listeners. First person that give us a green light and allow us to air this show is a man named Steve, and Steve has mentioned to me that he is a conservative man, and I had to wrestle with that because I'm about
as left as they come. Well, I guess I'm not as left as they come, but you know, I'm like bleeding heart liberal with mine, you know what I mean. I want to help the world. I think we can all make it rainbows and butterflies and unicorns. This is what you calls me, and has called me that for years.
But I really do believe that that's the best way to be, you know, to be kind to each other, to love each other, and to refer to each other as brothers and sisters, because it reminds us that we're all kind of playing the same game here and we can go a lot further together. Right. This is just ramses, you know. And Steve is a more conservative guy, you know.
And yet and still he saw his brother trying to do something for his people, and he says he didn't even just say, yeah, it's fine, go ahead and do it because of the cultural climate. He said, I love the show, How can I invest more into it? Right, So I'm going to go back even further. Sorry Steve for putting your political beliefs out there on the radio, but you know it happened that way, and we love you. Man. I'm going to go back further, if I'm not mistaken.
My birth mother was a conservative, right She was a preacher's wife. She loved her from Jesus, and she found herself kind of having more conservative beliefs right now. She was not a Republican. She didn't, or let me say, she did not vote Republican as far as I know, you know, I didn't spend a lot of time with her. She left my life when I was very young, but well not very young, but young enough before I started paying attention to these sorts of things. But she was
admittedly a conservative person. And she was black, not quite as black as I am, but black. She lived the reality of a black woman, you know. And I know lots of black people who feel the same way. And I know lots of non black people who are just very conservative, very traditional, traditional values, these sorts of things, and their only option, well not their only option, but the option that they feel is closest to that way
of thinking is the Republican Party. And it's like if I was to say, I'm not a fan of Joe Biden, but I'm going to vote for him. I could see a similar thing happening from folks on that side saying, I am not that this Republican Party is not I'm not a fan of this Republican party, but that's the only option, and I'm going to vote Republican. I'm a
conservative person. I believe in conservative values. I believe in this and and the third and so I feel like somewhere in there is the dividing line between a Republican and a conservative, and I don't know where that is, but I do know that there are some people who, based on their walk through life, they are nothing like a Donald Trump figure. They don't like a Donald Trump figure.
They actively work against the Donald Trump figure. And yet they are conservative people and their only option to vote based on their conservative beliefs is Republicans. So they either vote Republican, which is a vote for Donald Trump, or they don't vote because they do not espouse a more progressive liberal philosophy. And in the same way that I don't espouse a conservative philosophy. It's a weird place to be.
This is such a scary, strange place to be because you have to marginalize the plight of others.
A whole group of people in order to get your conservative vote off right or a Republican vote off.
Saying it might be true for both parts for both parties around, though they're always there, typically true, but this time around worse than ever before. Our tax dollars paid during this current administration's time in office directly funding what many have coined and I count us among them as genocide. So typically you get to stand on the moral ground of man. This this group is actively working against an entire.
People.
That being true for both parties is a crazy position to be, and it's in it's almost impossible to say, but hey, here at home, here at home, one party is looking to disenfranchise citizens of this country. It's a cruel distinction to make, but it is a distinction to make. There is a group that is looking to disenfranchise citizens of this country a whole.
And the mass.
But then we have brothers and sisters who are citizens of this country, who are also ethnically members of our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world, who are dealing with some of the worst circumstances in the history of humanity, funded by our current administration today. It is a very very very impossible place to be right now with trying to encourage anyone to participate in our political landscape.
And yet and still the only way that Eyebramses believes that it gets better is a vote for Joe Biden, because it gets worse and it stays worse when you vote for the politics.
As usual versus maybe a perpetual dictatorship.
Yeah. Well, and we're gonna have to leave that one right there. With that in mind, I'd like to thank you all for tuning in to Civic Cipher once again. I've been your host. Rams' Jaw.
He is Rams' Jaw. I am qward. We are Civic Cipher indeed, and grateful for every person that hears our voice. Grateful for every listener that writes in. Whether you agree with us or not, the fact that you listen, that you care enough, and that you participate is really a big deal for us.
Do us a favor lock in with us. We just posted a video on our social media earlier this week describing the conditions in Palestine, as referred to the video of active bombs being dropped around the people in the households. We're tapped in. We're at Civic Cipher on all platforms. You can find us at civiccipher dot com. You know, shoot us a question the topic, make a donation, download this in any previous episode, and like I said, lock in with us and until next week y'all peace,