BIG DAWG with Soul

all working from home. But I do have an episode prepared. Um, I just forgot to ask anyone to be a part of it. Uh. This is very strange and peril times. Um, but if you're all ready to get into it, it'll just be this time. Um you guys, okay with that? Me and my other coworker, the politics, y'all. Right, now, politics, y'all. So this episode is called big Out picked Out. Who do I mean by the big dog? Well, at this point, in a normal episode, what I mean, what is normal?

I would have asked my guests what the big dog is and how all that stuff work. Here, I'll drop it in with you in a lot of gang life. Well, maybe not inside of gangs in general, because remember, your host has just lived in a lot of place is and lived around this culture for a long time. But you know, I never gang bang the day in my life, just from a lot of areas that have had I don't need to readjudicate this, but here's the thing. A lot of gang stuff is really just in relation to

the other gangs. A lot of times it's it's a pissing contest. Let me just I don't know how else to say this. And the people that are what you know, actual gang members will call civilians, were kind of inconsequential. It's really more like the beef. We're not even the beef, but just the war on perception of who got bigger guns, who can run the hoods better, who can run the streets better. It's a desire to sort of win the

allegiance or the hearts of the civilians. That's really just a transactional relationship anyway, because they kind of really don't care. It's just more about their own bravado and authoritarian rule. So they do a lot of things to make sure that their perception of strength and benevolence are widely known by us. Civilians ultimately, so they can run their illegal economy in relative peace and to secure a whole a

neighborhood full of watchful eyes to protect their assets. One of those ways they do that is by leaving bodies on the streets in the mornings. Right now, granted, this is not the nineties, like this, this is a very stylized version of a very nineties version of what gang activity is. Nowadays, it's much the most of that stuff is happening online now. I don't want to like sort of minimize parts of our countries that are still living in active hot areas, but you know, it's just it's

just not the way it was when I grew up. Anyway, you would leave bodies on the streets, and they were signals, not even to the neighborhood, there were signals to the other gangs just about this is how we handle things. But then they would also doing things like and I experienced this personally when I was living in the Sink

Valley in La Pointe or specifically Valinda. Anybody from Cali would know that the ice cream truck would pull up and one of the big dogs you know, or or your neighborhood like O g would come out and just basically buy the whole truck out for everybody, so all the kids would be able to have ice cream. You know, we would look at this guy like, dang, that's amazing. He got all this money, he could buy us all things. But he was in a lot of ways that again,

it was a war on perception. You were presenting yourself as this benevolent ruler, this protector that I get to say, no matter what happens, when the police comes, when when this happens, when this happens, when somebody asked for this, when somebody comes around this block looking for him and they're shooting, and all this stuff, Like I'm going to remember how well he took care of me, or this hood took care of me when my bike got stolen, you know, by the dudes a couple of blocks over.

You know my laot Valinda guys came and take care of me. You know what I'm saying, it's a war on perception. This is no different than politics. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, but we are in the middle of a war on perception. M M M. War on perception. Now, if you guys would allow me to take off the propaganda hat and put on the Mr. Petty hat again. Those who have been following my career

for a while, you know that I taught history. I taught ninth grade social science and history for a long time, which is kind of where the whole concept of hood politics came from. How do I make um geopolitics makes sense to people that have no in roads to it? Well, you find an in road anyway. A war on perception is not a new thing. Governments have been doing pissing contests for a long time. And the truth is you've experienced them multiple times. Now, pending on your age, you

may have experienced like fox five of them. Let me let me drop in on two of them for you. The first one I would like to say is something that maybe you haven't experienced. If you're an American, you probably haven't seen this, maybe not on your own soil, but you've seen them on the news. It's a it's

a military parade. You know a lot of times when the when when the news flashes to like North Korea and they show the guys like marching with these big tanks and then Kim Jong uh either whichever Kim Jong you want because it's been Three of them are standing on some sort of balcony above this parade of people screaming, and the guys are marching in lockstep, and then it's like tanks and stuff like that just parading down this

this downtown area. And it was a funny thing because Trump said he wanted to do one of these pre rona. You know, RNA's a watershed issue where our life will be if you haven't figured that out yet, pre Corona and post corona. But some are arguing that there may not be a such thing as a post Corona, and just like there's no such thing as post HIV anyway, that would mean it's an endemic. But that's a whole other story. Let me stay on topic here. So the

military parade actually serves no real purpose. I mean, what what are we celebrating? What are you signaling to the community? What do you I mean, what what is the point of this? I mean, and who are you actually talking to? Is this really for the general public to celebrate the nine trillion dollars you spent on tanks? I mean, who is this? Who is this for? Well, if you're following the story, it's not for North Korea does a military parade. It ain't for North Korea. It's for the rest of us.

It's a flex You're just you're flexing, and it's historically has been rather effective. The Nazi regimes did it all the time. You know those those images, you know, the black and white images of like dudes goose stepping and again the same it's the same motif with like Hitler standing aloft some sort of balcony looking over of all of this military power and process. It's just you're just it's a flex. It's it's it was it's geopolitical instagram.

Before there was such thing as Instagram. You did a military parade, your your it's your trash talk, and you sell it as though you're talking to your own people, but you're not talking to the rest of us, Which was why it was so interesting and why there was there was such a visceral effect as to why President Trump wanted to do this, because it harkened back to this sort of authoritarian kind of way of showing might. Now, some of you might check my history and you say,

probably we've done parades. Yeah, but we do parades when we come back from wars. Right, So the famous photo of the guy that grabbed a lady and leaned her over and kissed him. After World War Two, I believe you know the tinker tape parades of our boys coming

back home. Um, the famous shot of President Bush Jr. On the aircraft carrier with all of the military, or not all of it, but a lot of the military, you know, flanked around him as he proclaimed the end of the war in the Middle East, which now seems rather comical that moment. It's not really for us, it's for everyone else, the pissing contest. It's just the war

on perception. Now there's another war on perception that you may not even know really was actually just that in the nineteen sixties we were in a hurry, an absolute hurry, to get to the moon. We know it as the space race, right, there was other things happening during the

space race. It was the Cold War. And if you don't know what the Cold War is, it was a time where the idea of a Western liberal democracy and an authoritarian communist regime ultimately was having this idea war as to who could who should be running the Nation's what concept, what ideal should win? In the hearts and minds of the people, and what will history say is the best way to run a country. It was a

race to be a superpower. And the superpowers, if I'm gonna make them as full as possible, was the West or the United States and Russia. All of these different things, The Korean War, the Vietnam War, all these different things were really just ultimately, at the end of the day, pissing contest, who's got the juice, Which one of these people got the juice, which one of these ideas can

show that they can run the nation's better. And the space race, ultimately, if we're honest, was not about science. Do you think it really cared what's on the moon, what's in space. All we wanted to do was to be able to say we were there first. So when Sputnik got into space, everybody was worried. You were saying, we want to continue idea of the American exceptionalist, which is true. It would be rat It's a that's a mighty strong flex to say we was first to the moon,

and that's what we sold everybody. So we drained all of our Money's black people just got their right to vote. We they'll think about figuring out what we're gonna do with Vietnam. But in the middle of all that, we're trying to put somebody on the move. Gil Scott here and dropped a song, why do you own the Moon? Was it about science? No? Was it about beating the Russians? Yes? Was it ultimately about beating the Russians? No? It was

ultimately about liberal democracy. It was about the Western way of life and proving that this way of life, Western small government, capitalistic liberal democracy is the best way to rule the Nation's that's what's the point of getting somebody on the moon first. Now, every historian has a different take on this, but I'm trying to explain to you the idea of a war on perception. The argument is

which one of us can run the world better. Now, having said all that, anyone who's ever been on a playground at any point in elementary school, which now some of our children will have a big gap on that experience. But we all know when you're We all know when we're witnessing a pissing contest. Um any I hate to say it because of how toxic masculinity works, but any young lady who has found themselves the object of affection of two male steeds often find themselves in the middle

of witnessing a pissing contest. And at some point, ladies, you understand and you know you know what it is when you see it, when this contest, this this world for your affection stops being about you and just starts being more about them two dudes proving their prowess. Any parent has children, um understands that their children often get in just what we would call pissing contests, meaning the argument between the two kids is really more about them

being able to stand their ground. I found that my own children oftentimes battle for our affection and I don't know what I've done to them, what my wife has done to them to make them think they need to do that. But it's something in us that needs to prove that we are the big dog. So you know what it is when you see it. Now. It gets real tricky when we apply it to what's going on in our news. Now we are hopefully all of you sheltering in place, maybe considering when do we get to start,

as the government say, open our economy back. When can I start going outside again? I know I would love to have my coworkers go back to their own office. Here's the my coworkers, all my children, and that's that's the joke I'm trying to make. But I would love to see them go back to other places so that I could record politics in peace. But we're all kind of asking that question. You know, where's our masks, where's our ventilators, where's our leaders that are helping us lead

the way in flattening the curve? And as a side note on my um instagram, I tried to give it a little explanation of how exponents work and what we mean when we say flattening the curve. You could go to my instagram for that anyway. That's a side note. But we're all trying to figure out how do we do this. And what's interesting about a virus, which some of you already know, is that, uh, borders are made up, so your virus really don't care. It makes no distinction

between California and Nevada. The lines made up. It's imaginary. It makes no distinction between France in Germany. So whatever a government says they're doing for their people, it's important to couple that with an understanding of how viruses work. It's not like the ron us all came to the border and tried to show its passport so it can

go to the next place. It just that don't. But we're all in a race to see if we could cure this thing and how to sort of protect the people that if you're a nation or a governor that you are put in charge of and responsible for keeping safe. And every nation has responded different as to how to get the messaging out as to a number of things, Um, what we're doing for it, how we're gonna fix it,

and whose fault is it in the first place. And if you've been following the American news, it's simple, we blame in China, easy, right. And now China also, if you're following the news, are now having a second wave of coronavirus and they're blaming um tourists. It was like, look, we had it under control, and now y'all coming back and bringing it back for us. And we're all trying to figure out how we're gonna make sure our messaging comes out clear and that our people understand that their

leaders are doing the best they can for them. But what I would like to submit to you is what we're witnessing is a whole bunch of big dogs trying to prove that they more gangster than the other ones. I feel like I know what I'm looking at, because ultimately the argument is who got the better system of government, who can fix this quicker, who can show they got more power, more authority over an unforeseen virus than the

other person. And it's interest same way that they're that that that countries are responding as to how to control their media. If you're watching Trump, you understand he just tried to bully everybody through and just say only talk about the things I've done. Well, right, I mean, that's not new Russia, however, says listen, you get five years in prison if you spread false info about the Rona. They locking fools up. It's Bekistan. You get a ten

thousand dollar fine. Zimbabwe you get twenty years for spreading any fake news. Didn't you hear me? You get twenty years if you spread some fake news about about the Rona. Turkmenistan. Listen, they banned the word of Corona from the media. Turkey. You know what they did. They gave their president absolute power. Listen to me, absolute power. India said they wanted all reports are add that for the media to always report everything.

They're gonna say, you gotta run it through the government first. Not a Supreme court shut that down. It was like, now you listen, you're going to you're doing too much. That's that's you can't be doing all that. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we're trying they're trying to control the narrative. That's not necessarily wrong, but control the narrative for who. And none of these laws define what they mean by fake or false news or media about the RONA ain't no definition for it. Are we really

going to ride in the streets now? Do you think the people don't actually understand that they presidents, they prime ministers can't control of virus. You think I don't know that, You think we all don't know that. No, the race to get this thing covered and get that curve flattened faster than everyone else ain't really about the people, suppissant contest. I'm trying to prove to you that our way of

life is better authoritarian governments. What they're doing, they're acting authoritatively by saying everybody, shut up, you're not allowed to do this. If you talk, you're going to jail. This is what we're doing. Everybody stay home, and I'm approved to these Western liberal democracies that we can do this better than you. Why is China not telling everybody what's happening right now? I'm trying to prove to y'all that

I'm the big dog. It's not about the RONA. It's about my way of life the president of the United States, and about the RONA. It's about my leadership. Aren't you watching the briefs. It ain't about the RONA. It ain't about us, It's about his leadership. I'm trying to prove to y'all and to the world that I'm your guy, big dog. You've got governments refusing to receive aid from other countries. Boris Johnson rejects Trump's offered to help with

the coronavirus stuff. He's like, now, I don't need your money. Your money got strings attached number one and number two, I got stuff to prove. You got the President talking about day he cutting funds from the World Health Organization because they're not doing this correctly. It's a pissing contest, y'all. They're just trying to prove they the bullies on the block. Why would anyone not help anyone. One would think that

when the RONA came that all bets were off. But it don't matter because they understand the RONA gonna leave at some point and I need to prove to the rest of the world that I can get to the moon first. Gang bang. Now, we already talked before about gathering the money, securing the bag, and why it was so interesting to see Donald Trump being so serious about this uh malaria medicine and you know, I mean, he's

got stake in it. We talked about countries being doing their best to get to cure, but then at some point somebody got a patent that cure. We talked about these things, and of course there's back seccurance, but there's also flex rights. Everybody wanta flex because at some point the ron is gonna be done and I need to prove to the world, big dog, this is my block. I do what I won't. I got powers and authority

over viruses. Now, I don't want to move into conspiracy theory thoughts, because that's not really what this pots about. It's not about those things. It's about understanding what we're looking at. However, it's not like biochemical warfare is not a thing. And if I'm a government, I need to prove that my guns are better than yours. I'm not here to say no body COVID nineteen was creating a lab or nothing like that. Again, this pot is not about that space. This pot is about looking at governments

and going, oh, y'all just gang banging. So if I'm a hood and I know that country got guns that look like this, and I can prove that your guns ain't effective on me, I feel like I've just proven to you I'm the bully on the block and maybe you shouldn't bring this over here. And everybody in this neighborhood, whether civilians or gang banging, all understand that I got the best interests in mind. Because I was able to prove I got mind control and virus control over y'all,

I am the big dog. Well, that's our hood. Take a lot of my information has come from obviously, you're always welcome to check my sources. The main source of this episode came from Al Jazeera News. Uh, there's a number of stories about authoritarian versus liberal democracy. Just scroll through their app or website and just it's a ton of stories. I again highly suggest that during this time you take take the opportunity to look at news sources outside of our country. It just it just gives you.

It's just like you know, if you're going to counseling, especially like relationship or couples therapy, it's good to have someone not in the marriage, not in the relationship, to talk about the relationship. They just got a different vantage point. It's not right or wrong, it's just a different vantage points. So you can have someone show you yourself. So that's

my suggestion. Pull up on the BBC, pull up on Al Jazeira, and it may help you see the point of this whole podcast, which is politics is just gang banging in nice suits. We'll see you next week and hopefully I will uh have a better plan. This podcast was recorded in my bedroom while my child was having a great time. Um. It was mixed and mastered by our man Matt. I was our sky. I should take this break to learn his last name. The theme music I can't even focus right now. The theme music is

for not even for it. The theme music was created by our boy, DJ Shaun p. I'll see you next week with a better prepared pod. Oh yeah, believe that you all oh, yeah, thank you,