023 – PC Gone Mad: The Power Dynamics of Political Correctness; a chat with Jim Luisi

Speaker 1: Welcome to Apex Level To Power, the Podcast completely dedicated to your self empowerment. In this episode, we invite author Jim Luisi to talk about political correctness. There’s lots of high feelings around this topic of political correctness and I think Jim and I try to carve out what we term the reasonable center on this issue so I would encourage all of our listeners, if you find yourself getting emotional, if you find yourself being triggered, by anything discussed in this podcast, that you take a deep breath and you continue on. It is by challenging your ideas that you can begin to see other perspectives and perhaps reach a higher state of empowerment. I’d ask you to struggle to see the strings of power that are being used to control you on this topic of political correctness. You can change your level, change your life, and change the world. Welcome to Apex Level to Power.

Mark Gleason: Escape the herd. Rise above the pack. This is the Apex Level to Power podcast, the only place in the web that teaches you to identify and control the invisible strings that dominate all human interaction. We reach sheep to become wolves, a challenge to be sure, but one that we answer and answer with bigger. I am your faithful host, Mark Gleason. I welcome you to the program and I invite you to visit our little corner of the web at leveltopower.com for more information and to support the broadcast.

Speaker 1: And now, for an episode from the Apex Level to Power master series, the episodes where we interview the best experts to prove they have all the mistakes that are possible to be made within their narrow field.

Mark Gleason: Welcome to the Apex Level of Power podcast. I’m your faithful host, Mark Gleason. I am here with friend of the program, Jim Luisi back again to talk about some of the very, very important matters that impact the strings of power that surround you. Jim, welcome back to the program.

Jim Luisi: Thank you. IT’s very nice to be back.

Mark Gleason: So, Jim, actually, congratulations. You have the most popular episode in the Apex Level to Power to date.

Jim Luisi: How many countries?

Mark Gleason: Well, we’re definitely in over 26 countries and your podcast that you and I did, podcast number 12, Bridging the Gap, Changing the Value that Others Perceive is still by far our number one episode. It’s going like gangbusters. It’s in it’s second month and it’s actually outpacing even the episodes that are in their first month. So, it is doing very well and we thank you for that. Our last episode’s also doing quite well, the published episode. That was our first in our history series of East versus West. So, that actually is doing quite well as well. Just for our listeners, any listeners that would like to submit a topic can do so at info@leveltopower.com. That’s leveltopower.com and we’ve had quite a few emails of people suggesting topics. You and I have a list of topics.

Jim Luisi: We do. It’s actually an amazing long list that gets longer. Every time we do an episode we add ten more.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. This-

Jim Luisi: There’s no … No one ever finishes it.

Mark Gleason: This is a disturbing trend.

Jim Luisi: It really is.

Mark Gleason: For our listeners even more than for us.

Jim Luisi: You know, I feel for them.

Mark Gleason: So, from our list, we decided to pick-

Jim Luisi: Today is political correctness. We want to take political correctness apart.

Mark Gleason: Now, I’m going to guess this is from the Clinton/Trump election or maybe from Brexit, or maybe from other things happening around the world that has to do with this concept called political correctness and I think everybody intuitively understands that political correctness is about power. It’s about social power. It’s about who has it and who does it, perhaps giving a voice to people who don’t have a lot of social power, sometimes claiming power on behalf of people in society but for other purposes. So, it’s certainly a very complicated topic made moreso by our recent election where votes seemed to turn on the way people were applying this concept called political correctness. I’m thrilled to have you on the program and for all you listeners who made the request, you asked for it. We have Jim Luisi on the program to talk about political correctness.

Jim Luisi: So, we should probably start off with what’s considered to be the basic definition pf political correctness.

Mark Gleason: So, let’s start off with the internet definition, which is short for Wikipedia, which I think is probably a fair definition. The term political correctness in modern usage is used to describe language, policies, or measures that are unintended to avoid offense or disadvantage to particular groups in society. In the media, the term is used as a pejorative, implying that these policies are excessive. So, I think that’s a fair definition. Do you agree?

Jim Luisi: Yeah, I think that’s a good starting point and we can probably … I know when I went to school, there was nothing called political correctness. There was nothing that even felt like political correctness and it seems to me in my memory that it starts off as well-meaning people who are trying not to be offensive to others, but then it starts to take on this whole other dimension that people, I don’t think, ever anticipated. And I think it was with the emergence of the progressive movement … It just went off the rails.

Mark Gleason: That’s interesting because can you have too much of a good thing? Is there such a things as being too polite? So, if we go back to what a society is. A society is a group that’s supposed to function together and it’s always either A, trying to compete against nature and survive against the travails of nature, or B, compete against it’s own perfect competitor, which is someone else of its own species. So, a perfect competitor, to Jim, is someone who is exactly like Jim, who wants all the same exact things Jim wants as your perfect competitor.

So a human society competing against other societies, you can see where if you had no politeness, politeness being the oil that helps the gears of society turn, that you would have road rage incidents and social breakdown and you’d be ripe for invasion for anybody who wanted to come into your country. You also can see however that over politeness, being too elaborate in all different ways that you want to go and avoid any kind of offense whatsoever, any kind of possible offense whatsoever, might lead to a drastic loss in real productivity as you go about your daily machinations, but a society which tears through a lot of those overly complicated social dynamics is much more productive. So, on one hand, you have let’s say, the barbarian tribe with no social graced, limited amounts. Even animals have social signals that let them direct and guide violence in ways that don’t ultimately hurt the overall herd or tribe.

And on the other hand you have, let’s say, a Victoria England on steroids where everything has to be done formally, within your class, done the right way, in the right manner, and you get this American West. You have this American colony where none of the old world matters, the titles, who your father was, none of that matters. They’re just about what works, tasking what works and leaving behind what doesn’t.

So, you have these different approaches over tome and again, these are for very good reasons. We abandon some of these social conventions at our peril. This is one of those those who forget history, are doomed to repeat it. Some of the traditions we have are there for very, very important reasons and just to wipe them away in a single generation without understanding why they’re there as bumper rails, as safety guards to society, could lead us to a certain, amount of upheaval, some of which we may be seeing now.

Jim Luisi: Before political correctness emerged, you had politeness. You had … The English were very well-known for making understatements in their assessment of things. It’s just the style and a polite style or a understated style can still be very direct in communicated, but what happens when you have any sort of extreme in this, now you have a problem in communication itself. People are either fearful of saying their thoughts because they can’t formulate the right words because they have to dance around the normal direct thought, the direct words that come to mind, and so rather than saying something, they now start to just be quiet. And so, now they’re not expressing their opinion, and now the politically correct, who are … Well, the first in this new language can feel free to speak and no one else can. So, they’re shutting up people, and it seems to be the general trend that really emerged with this progressive movement.

Mark Gleason: And that’s the key here, right? At some point, you had a liberal movement, a small l, who was interested in a breaking down the old social orders, that one group should not have rights over any other group, and through the 1800’s, 1900’s, this liberal group was advocating for this idea of individual rights and the rights of everyone, and somewhere around the middle of the 20th century, in either 1950, 1960, 1970, as real gains started to be made there, this idea of the progressive came forward and amongst these ideas were that it’s not enough, that the individual be most prized, and that you protect individual rights, that certain groups need to be elevated over other groups just like we’ve been fighting forever, only we’re going to choose the groups that are elevated. And these would be their idea of the poor or disadvantaged or the minority groups who-

Jim Luisi: Well, language always had pejoratives, so you call an ethnic group something, like somebody handicapped, but it was only with the emergence of the progressives where even if you’re not trying to be pejorative … If you’re just doing plain, if you’re just conducting in plain speech, and so you’re using the word handicapped, and there were plenty of signs that we used in public for handicapped ramp, whatever it might be and then all of a sudden those direct words, which were not ever intended to be pejorative of any particular group were now declared as being inappropriate and insensitive. So now you had to find other ways of saying things. One of my favorites is George Carlin points out that in the bible says Jesus healed the crippled. The bible didn’t say that Jesus engaged in rehabilitative strategies to improve the conditions of the physically disadvantaged.

So, if you have complex ways of stating things, you’ve made it now more difficult to articulate words and thoughts, and you’ve also made it really difficult for anybody to understand what the heck you’re saying.

Mark Gleason: Okay, well just like fashion, that something comes out, which is very limited. When I was in high school, it was a Swatch. A Swatch is a colored watch, cheap plastic colored watch, but very few people could get them. Therefore, it became the in thing, that everybody had to have. After a while, when even people like me could get them, they were no longer popular anymore, because that meant that everybody could have them.

In the same way, I think, you have language, and you have these words that are merely descriptive when they start off. Nobody even knows them. For instance, let’s say retarded. Well, at some point, somebody said that mental retardation like fire retardation pr any other retardation meaning that the growth or normal progression or growth of something has been curtailed, is what the word retarded means. I’m sure it was used scientifically. It made it into maybe the academic vernacular to refer to certain kinds of students that weren’t progressing, and at some point it got adopted by the general public where they would start calling each other retarded and retard and everything else and all of a sudden it became a pejorative. It no longer was polite to use that word.

The same that goes for race discussions. The kinds of words you’re allowed to use to refer to certain kind of ethnic groups, or racial groups, go in and out of fashion. So, it’s perfectly acceptable in one generation, gets taken as pejorative several generations later, and is no longer acceptable. What happens is it permeates down to the point where you hit a class of people who begin using it as an insult, or something, right?

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: And so all of a sudden because it’s insulting, people say, okay, no you can’t say that anymore because it’s no longer used in polite society. We have to use a new word, which means the same thing, but it’s a coy euphemism, which will take at least a generation or two before people realize we’re actually insulting them, or we’re actually describing them in exactly the same way. But, by the way, that’s not nothing. It’s not nothing when I get offended by something and you decide to use alternate language, because it is a sign that you are accommodating me in some way.

So, if you use something I find offensive … I’m of Irish heritage, so you refer to us all drunken Irish mean, or mix or whatever it is and I push back on that and you actually change your language, that is a concrete action that you’re taking, that everybody must take now in society and I can be somewhat mollified that you’re taken my offense seriously, right? So, it certainly is a concrete … It seems frivolous, but it really is a concrete action that can be taken to show someone as a social signal that you’re serious about their concern.

Jim Luisi: Right, but, when you look at … I know that The Washington Post had gone on a warpath against the name Washington Redskins, the football team claiming their name was racist and insulting and demeaning and sensitive-

Mark Gleason: But, the Washington Redskins also railed against The Washington Post for the same reason. They both agreed to stop Washington.

Jim Luisi: Washington, yes. And what’s interesting is that it’s true that the name Washington Post is a problem because it takes its own name from the city, which was named after George Washington, who was a slave owner. He was a tobacco farmer. So, if you’re going to follow political correctness, then Washington is a bad name as well. So, you start to have this problem everywhere, but the funniest part is that the Native Americans didn’t feel that they were picked on in any way. It was … Others felt picked on for them and were indignant for them.

Mark Gleason: Yes. It’s amazing. I’ve seen that.

Jim Luisi: Isn’t that … That’s just incredible.

Mark Gleason: I’ve seen the stats for the Washington Redskins example where they had to get a petition from the native tribes to show how angry they were and they got-

Jim Luisi: They can’t.

Mark Gleason: And it was less than 20 our of thousands because people just don’t care and then many people said they were complimented. As a matter of fact, they found many, many people who said they were complimented by it. Now, that could be … That could go either way. People can get offended or not offended. I’m just saying it’s amazing how you’re right, you cherry pick certain people who are offended by something because it’s a storyline you’re looking for, storyline looking for victims.

Jim Luisi: It meets your agenda.

Mark Gleason: That’s right.

Jim Luisi: Yep.

Mark Gleason: It’s like Rolling Stone going story shopping for a rave story on campus, which it found and turned out to be total lies, right? It was the perfect story and guess what? It was a little too perfect for a reason. The great thing is Obama was just on Rolling Stone, the very serious news program, Rolling Stone and he was complaining about fake news and how fake news is really a problem. Now, that’s how Trump got elected, of course, fake news.

Jim Luisi: That’s what you get from the major networks.

Mark Gleason: He says to Rolling Stone, which just had to officially apologize and are facing a civil lawsuit, actually lost the civil lawsuit for millions of dollars over a completely fake story that they completely contrived out of nowhere and ar fairly unapologetic for it.

Jim Luisi: Dan Rather. So, you have-

Mark Gleason: That’s right. And the story was true. It was just the facts were false. He said something-

Jim Luisi: It’s true but it was a story.

Mark Gleason: No, he said after he got caught with that, he said-

Jim Luisi: Just everything else was false.

Mark Gleason: He said it was true, it’s just our facts are wrong.

Jim Luisi: So, what we have is this emergence of this political party that compete and agree to which they can have their sensibilities offended and outraged, even though it’s for no apparent social value./ It’s only to try to affect others and this is what I would characterize this, either evil level ones trying to impose their will on others and it’s a form of tyranny, or evil level twos trying to control other people as well.

Mark Gleason: Okay, so just to take a step back, a level one is somebody who can only see their own perspective, and they are locked in their own perspective, and level two is somebody who can see their own perspective and other people’s perspective. They have the ability to begin … They can be good counselors because they understand what somebody else’s perspectives are. They also can be manipulators and con men because they know what makes other people tick.

Jim Luisi: They can definitely manipulate level ones so that they can create and army of level ones that do their bidding to scare people.

Mark Gleason: Well, let me ask you a great question though.

Jim Luisi: It’s a silence. But, yes, go ahead.

Mark Gleason: It’s a great question because I thought of it. In a society of only level twos, do you need more or less politeness. What I mean is is it more important to have strict traditions in a society of level twos or a society of level ones?

Jim Luisi: It depends on the type of society you want to achieve. Let’s take a Oriental society where people are painfully polite.

Mark Gleason: Just because it’s part of the topic here, there was an Asian gentlemen on TV about a week ago on the news saying he would be offended if anybody offended to him as Oriental. That’s what he said. I’m just throwing it out there.

Jim Luisi: I feel bad for him. So, as I was saying, if you have a culture that is extremely polite, you have other disadvantages in the population’s ability to communicate, and I think one of the stories, and I think it was … I read that spoke about the crashes that occurred and Asian based airlines was higher like Singapore Air and another Oriental airline whereas you don’t see those types of accidents, or the probability of those accidents taking place say with American or European airlines and in the research, they found that the problem was when they listened to the flight recorders and things like that, it was a situation where the flight crew had noticed something was wrong and they were so polite and so into this hierarchy of never offending the captain, that they spoke too polite to communicate the fact that they were in danger. And so, instead of like an American … If you were from Brooklyn, and the airplane was heading towards a building, the co-pilot would say Al Akbar. God no.

Mark Gleason: If you were in a plane over Brooklyn, and your plane was heading toward a building, somebody would be saying Al Akbar.

Jim Luisi: Yes, but hopefully it’s not your captain or co-pilot. When you think of people from Brooklyn, they speak-

Mark Gleason: Come on. That was funny.

Jim Luisi: It was. When you speak of people, say from Brooklyn, they’re very direct speaking people. New Yorkers are very direct in their speech, and you say what’s a matter with you. Look at it., We’re heading for a building. What’s wrong with you. What’s a matter, you, they’d say. So, but in an Oriental or Asian society, they might say, captain, our altitude may be lower than what we usually do. Well, it doesn’t really point out the problem. They should have enough time to do something about it.

Mark Gleason: And I don’t think people really understand this, but do you know they actually rate languages based upon how quickly you can communicate certain concepts? In other words, how dense is your language in it’s ability to store information, the density of information?

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: So, you have certain languages that are very machine gun. Lots of information, no niceties, and you have other languages that are flowery and literally it might take twice as long to communicate the same concept because of all the flowery stuff and I know people go, well, if you’re headed toward a mountainside, you’ll speak up. But imagine if you’re driving with your family member and they’re going to make a wrong turn and maybe put you in jeopardy, and your boss’s boss’s boss is sitting next to you in the car doing the se thing … Well, right away, when your brother is turning into a dangerous situation, there’s no barrier between saying, Watch out. Watch out, you idiot. There’s a car there.

Jim Luisi: Exactly.

Mark Gleason: What happens is you see the danger. You go to react and something in your brain goes, oh, it is my boss’s boss’s boss. What’s the appropriate way to say this?

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: And all of a sudden, you say, look, there’s something there. Careful, right? Now, all of a sudden, you’re modulating your thought. I’m just trying to get people an example who say, oh, that’s crazy that somebody from some other country would do things different ways. Now, in other languages though, honorifics are extremely important. How you address somebody who’s considered your superior or your elder are extremely important and people observe those kinds of things and certainly to imply that an elder or superior is at fault in certain of these societies is considered extremely rude and very, very bad.

Jim Luisi: You know, direct to your point, the solution that they decided to implement, which had very positive effects was to retrain Asian pilots in English so that in flight, they would be speaking in English terminology, which gave them two advantages, one, you have the compressed meaning, so you’re able to communicate more in fewer words, and two, you didn’t have the … Since you are departing from whatever language that they were used to where they would have a tendency to fall into being overly polite. It freed them from that type tendency and they could speak in English very directly because this was the job. This is how they were trained to behave.

Mark Gleason: Yeah, I believe it. I absolutely believe it. Look, even in French, which is a romance language, which is fairly similar to English, simply saying numbers like 80, you can’t say 80 in French. You have to say 4 20’s. So, you say 86, you have to say 4 20’s, 6. It ends up being quite long. You say long numbers in French like you’re communicating engineering math numbers back and forth. My goodness, literally it takes you two and three times the-

Jim Luisi: You know, that’s an excellent parallel. You have arabic numbers, but could you imagine doing long division in Roman numerals? It’s just a nightmare.

Mark Gleason: Well, exactly. That;’sone of the reasons why they think that Romans did not come up with some of the advanced mathematics. That’s where Greeks did better in math. The Greeks made certain advancements and the Roman era, in the beginning there were not very many mathematical advancements and it’s because of language. It’s because of their notation system, because doing long division with X’s and V’s and L’s and everything else is extraordinarily difficult and they tried. There were some scholars who tried to use the Roman numerals to do advanced mathematics. Valiantly they tried but it is really, really confusing.

Jim Luisi: How many computers would work if everything was based on Roman numerals? Yeah.

Mark Gleason: Yeah, computers probably wouldn’t care actually.

Jim Luisi: Well, you have to-[crosstalk 00:23:51]

Mark Gleason: If they had gone straight to decimal, they would have been fine.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. They would have been fine, exactly. They should have just skipped and gone to binary.

Mark Gleason: Well, let me answer my question though. I think that a society of level ones, people who can only see their own perspective, they need lots of tradition and rules of the road built in because they don’t know any better. They can see so little about ow what they’re saying impacts others. Remember, a level one can only see their own perspective. Therefore, I’m going to say Jim’s an idiot, when Jim’s sitting there and maybe I have some dim idea of other people I’ve called idiots and how they responded, but I don’t really see his perspective and my ability to see how that’s going to impact him and then impact me and maybe my work situation is limited because I’m only a level one.

So, therefore, rules of the road that get built into my society, like, don’t say this about another man’s wife. These are very important because I can’t see that for myself because I’m a solid level one. A level two society of only level two’s … We’re on a space shuttle. They selected us by level twos and we’re on a space shuttle. Well, you have a whole set of other problems quite frankly, but among them is not, kif I say something, I’m going to consider how you take it and how you’re going to take that I take it, and how you’re going to take that I take that you took that I take it, right?

Jim Luisi: So, you create a generation of thin skinned people who are offended at everything and hence they can’t function in society.

Mark Gleason: Well, level twos though see many paradigmatic so they’re better able to adapt to that given situation and therefore they’re less reliant upon strict rules, but as you and I have talked about, most of the society are levels. Seventy, eighty percent are level ones at any given moment on any given issue. Ten, fifteen, twenty percent are level twos. So, the rules they lay down for the herd are very important.

Jim Luisi: Right, but it only became a problem when it penetrated into the educational system.

Mark Gleason: Hold on. Well, hold on. So, you’re talking specifically about political correctness.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: I’m talking about social conventions that even gorillas and chimpanzees have that when the alpha walks by, everybody drops their eyes and if you raise your eyes and look at the alpha, he will come over and pound you into the ground. Even if you’re a human and look at the gorilla, you’re too much like a gorilla for him to ignore that, and he’ll come over and pound you in the ground. These are basic social conventions that are important for a society to function in ways where it won’t destroy itself.

Jim Luisi: Right. If you’re on the trail in Belize and you’re walking towards the Mayan ruins and there’s a troop of monkeys, they tell you do not look directly into their eyes.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. That’s right, and-

Jim Luisi: Bad stuff happens.

Mark Gleason: Exactly, and because you are too ape-like, and they know it, certain predators, you’re supposed to look in the eye to establish dominance, and certain predators you’re supposed to look down and away so that you’re giving them dominance and you’re acknowledging that they should not come attack you, and monkeys, other monkey tribes … I don’t even know of any other case. Do your own due diligence on this one, but I believe i any monkey is staring you down, you do not stare them back because they will come rip your face off. But these are all the social conventions that are very, very important for a tribe, any tribe, any animal tribe or human tribe.

So, because you have a bunch of level ones who don’t know any better, there fore you program the social convention so that everything works out, because they all follow the same rule set and then you’re good. Thew issue is, when you get some level twos at the top who decide that they’re going to high jack social convention, this built in nature that we have to follow social convention to make society work.

Jim Luisi: Right. It’s a convention … What you’re pointing to is that the natural tendency of somebody to feel shamed if they’ve offended somebody is something that somebody could use as a tool.

Mark Gleason: Exactly right.

Jim Luisi: Or be a club that’s used on an individual or it could be a club that’s used on an individual or it could be a club that’s used on a group of individuals that now exhibits some sort of control over that individual or group.

Mark Gleason: The thing is if nobody’s in charge of it, then social conventions evolve for the good of the tribe. So, you’re always best suited for survival because your only criteria is your suitability for survival. The moment some bright scholar decides that they can re-engineer society, the moment you depart from survivability, you’ve departed from survivability. You’re now adopting-

Jim Luisi: Progressives have now to prove their chances of survival as members of society.

Mark Gleason: Society’s chances for survival … Now, this is important.

Jim Luisi: Even society’s chances of survival has dimmed.

Mark Gleason: This is important. The moment … So, let’s just go over this again. Any organism who’s following the pressures of evolution, be it a society, or be it a mammal or whatever. They are under certain pressures. If they are following the pressures, which most lead them to survivability, which is what they do naturally, they will always end up in a state of better survivability. The moment there is an artificial pressure on that organism, any kind, by definition they are less able to survive than they were before. Look at the animals that can no longer survive in the wild because they’ve had too much interaction with humans. They forgot how to hunt or something.

Jim Luisi: Those are domesticated animals … Their ability to survive in the wild is greatly reduced.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. So, you have these social conventions that were the truth because it let people survive in reality. Now you have people who say look, we are civilized. We can start toying with the social conventions for the better. We’re going to re-engineer. We architect a human society which we’re going to pull ourself by our boot straps essentially and we’re going to be more than we were before. We’re going to be what we want to be. Well, the problem with that is, if you get that one iota wrong, your society could collapse, it could get invaded, it could tear itself apart, because you’re no longer building your conventions based upon your ability to survive. You’re building it upon some smart person’s idea of what they think it should be.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. Actually, it’s interesting how, to return back to political correctness how much conflict it creates. The reason is is that you take something, which is good, some thing say tolerance. Tolerance I think everyone would agree, is a favorable attribute. Just take that as a given. Now, if I can be so extreme that I’m actually intolerant, disguising something as tolerance, I’m now taking something which is bad, disguising it as something good. So, now I’m being intolerant of this group, this group of individuals that goes to this football game and they call them the Washington Redskins. How dare they? And the thing is even though it’s being disguised as tolerance, its not. It’s like a form of fascism. It’s like a speech control. It’s mind control and it makes people run away. They’re not speaking out against you because you have claimed that something important and generally known as good, which is tolerance is something that they are short of. So, they are deficient. They are not tolerant.

Mark Gleason: Right. So, I’m largely in agreement with you on these issues, but let me give you the devil’s advocate position here, which is if we’ve done some lamentable things, this is the other side. The other aside would argue that we’ve done things in the past that are unacceptable in the [resent. Now what’s done is done. I think they would refer to it as empire and conquering other peoples and warfare and of course-

Jim Luisi: Even slavery, things like-

Mark Gleason: Slavery, that’s right.

Jim Luisi: Excellent. Excellent choices.

Mark Gleason: Right. So, here we are in the present. We can’t do anything about what’s happened in the past. I think they would argue is what we can do is have some acknowledgement in the present that we all agree collectively that was the wrong way to go. Now, the problem is at my peace/love rally and seminar, we learned how to weave some baskets and we all agreed that was true. But for the other 95% of humanity that loves in my country, how do you break through the den? How do you get them to acknowledge what I feel to be this every, very important point as well?

Well, one thing you do is you take something every public, very visible, and you make an issue out of it like the Redskins so people start saying, well, that’s ridiculous. Why would you change the name of a football team, and then that sparks the discussion of well, it’s because we have this imperial past and because we broke treaties with the Indians and because these following things and therefore if they’re offended, it’s disrespectful, and that broaches the entire conversation, with in this case, a lot of football fans, which are exactly the demographic not attending your peace/love and basket weaving seminars.

So, everybody knows it’s frivolous in one way. But it’s highly symbolic and highly public in another, and it’s engaging exactly the people they want to engage because they understand that at the peace/love and basket weaving seminar, they aren’t the people who are likely going to be invading the next country or voting for the guy invading the next country. It’s probably the NFL crowd who will partly be very supporting that candidate their view.

So, here’s a way you could engage a topic with those people, slap them out of their stupor, of their football stupor, and force them to acknowledge something that you feel is important. That’s the devil’s advocate here, which by the way is not-

Jim Luisi: Right, which is either-

Mark Gleason: Entirely unreasonable.

Jim Luisi: Right, which is either important or not important, but for a major news outlet to take that banner and go ballistic over it when there are so many important issues to discuss rather than a fabricated, concern in society about people’s sensitivities is somewhat irresponsible for them from a business perspective, their business.

Mark Gleason: No, not tall. No, no, no, no, no. Is-

Jim Luisi: Do you think improves their readership?

Mark Gleason: Absolutely. Look, it’s irresponsible from some kind of objective journalistic measure perhaps. Welcome to the new millennium. From a highly partisan moral entrepreneur standpoint, which is how can I invoke a moral panic and get a bunch of people to come buy my papers and click on my website and get them all excited and angry over something-

Jim Luisi: Hey, if they can create a moral panic-

Mark Gleason: Mock raking journalism, right?

Jim Luisi: Pretend you create a moral panic over-

Mark Gleason: A mock raking journalism is journalism.

Jim Luisi: But can you create a panic over something like-?

Mark Gleason: They have. What do you mean?

Jim Luisi: It was never more panic to call a football team by-[crosstalk 00:34:03] name.

Mark Gleason: Absolutely. It absolutely was. So, I-

Jim Luisi: With who though? With progressives only.

Mark Gleason: So, I have a podcast on this. The podcast of moral panic requires several things and I think you’ll agree when I define these.

Jim Luisi: Okay. Go ahead.

Mark Gleason: And moral panic that you have a moral entrepreneur, somebody who’s willing to point to a group, which is not ready to defend themselves immediately as somebody who is threatening you. That’s the first thing that’s required. The second thing that’s required is to find a danger, which is relatively minor and blow it all out of proportion so that your tribe you’re speaking to gets all mad and energized and it raises you in money or recognition and anything else. The nature of a moral panic itself is a frivolous cause that’s been ginned up to be much more than it is. So, here you have these media leaders, some of them, who’ve decided that empire, imperialism, in particular white Christian male imperialism is a threat to the world and you’ve convinced a bunch of people that this is also … They seeded emotional triggers with a bunch of people to confirm that this also could be true.

Now, we find this case of the Washington Redskins and they see an opportunity to advance themselves in this tribe. They don’t care about the people who don’t like this idea. They’re trying to advance themselves and the people who do care about this idea. So, they trumpet it far and wide and the harsher they are, the bigger social signal they’re sending that I’m one of you, I am a champion for you. So, they do it. To the outside person, a moral panic looks absurd. When you have mothers burning Beatle records because they think their kids are satanists, from the outside a moral panic looks ridiculous. But when you’

Inside the moral panic, it looks absolutely reasonable. You say, well, this is making a lot of sense to me right now because my trusted leaders are telling me that this is a serious threat and my kids, my home, my whatever it is they’re keying onto are about to be stolen, destroyed, killed, taken away from you, and we need to all rally behind this cause now. The media, understand, they’re looking for ratings. They’re looking for clicks. They’re looking for a constituency. So, the ones that have these people as their constituency, meaning moral entrepreneurs, are looking for people who care about these issues. They’ve targeted them. It’s not an accidents. They’ve targeted them. I’m sure 20 years ago, that somebody tried to float the Redskins thing and they got no attraction and 20 years later they tried it again, and guess what? They got a lot of attraction.

Jim Luisi: I don’t think they got a lot of attraction. I would disagree. I think if they’re lucky, they’ve achieved rising a topic to some sort of a moral outrage. However, very few topics achieve that level.

Mark Gleason: A moral panic never achieves whatever it says it’s trying to achieve, ever. Al Gore, whenever you think about global warming, 2008, in four years, there’ll be no polar ice cap. Polar bears will be extinct. Four years passed. None of that comes to pass.

Jim Luisi: I think that’s a great example of a moral panic, which was also tied to political correctness.

Mark Gleason: But, exactly. My point is-

Jim Luisi: But, I think they’re two distinct things.

Mark Gleason: But, let me explain why they’re not. Because eight years later, ten years later, twelve years later, whatever he was screaming about, never came to pass. He made $300 million. This Redskins thing … It came, it went. The owner refused to do whatever. Those journalists … They sold papers. They got some awards from the people they care about to get awards from.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, if you create a moral panic, yes, you sell papers.

Mark Gleason: People got promoted. People got money. People got rewarded within the social group. There’s probably someone writing a documentary right now for the Sundance Film Festival who’s going to win an award over the Washington Redskins. That was their goal. That’s what they want. They don’t care about you.

Jim Luisi: Right. I think nobody got ginned up over the Washington Redskins. I don’t think it was a moral panic at all. It was just a … If you look at political correctness-

Mark Gleason: It was an attempt at a moral panic.

Jim Luisi: Yes. It was an attempt. I agree with that completely.

Mark Gleason: And do you know what I call those people by the way? If you’re going to stampede a herd, it’s hard to stampede a herd. You go up against your cattle, and you fire off a gun, a few cattle get startled, but it’s not a stampede.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: You need cannon fire to get the herd to stampede. So, you know what I call people like the people and the Redskins who were trying to do a stampede and ended up failing? Moral entrepreneurs who tried to stampeded the herd and failed. I call them firecrackers because all they were doing was setting off firecrackers trying to startle the herd and make them run.

Jim Luisi: Right, trying to get a stampede going.

Mark Gleason: And they could not.

Jim Luisi: Hence the moral panic.

Mark Gleason: But, it’s a numbers game. Sometimes they succeed because the herd happens to be ready to run.

Jim Luisi: Right. One of the objectives is clearly a moral panic, but I think the other objective, which is very powerful and you have to be very aware is that we’re looking at people who are trying to restrict criticism of certain groups and eliminate free exchange of ideas on certain topics and so, if I have any criticism of the Islamic world, all of a sudden the political correctness crowd, all of the progressives come out of the wood work to attack me, but I can simply state very sound facts, like in the top 100 universities, is there one university to be found in an Islamic nation? Answer, no. There are 7.5 billion people on this planet. 2 billion are Islamic. So, roughly a third, and yet the top hundred universities appear anywhere but not in an Islamic country.

Mark Gleason: Any in Jerusalem? Any in Israel? Just asking?

Jim Luisi: In the top 100? Yes.

Mark Gleason: There’s probably like 15.

Jim Luisi: But, listen up Dearborn, Michigan, there’s no world class university in your town either. And it’s largely due to the culture. However, people are unwilling to even speak about these topics and why they have these issues.

Mark Gleason: There is low hanging fruit here.

Jim Luisi: Oh, yes, definitely.

Mark Gleason: The low hanging fruit here is that you have progressives who have added to their list of aggrieved parties who can not be questioned and/pr insulted and/or you must bow down to these people, different kinds of minorities, you have women, you have … They’ve added on Muslims as well.

Jim Luisi: You can even a=go after majorities. You can go after Christians.

Mark Gleason: So, how do you have feminists-?

Jim Luisi: It’s not restricted.

Mark Gleason: But how do you have feminists attacking criticism of Muslim societies where women are not allowed to drive and are made to wear bags to walk around and leave the house?

Jim Luisi: I bet those are fashionable bags.

Mark Gleason: Well, the moral relatives would step in and say who are we to question that that’s how they want to go in their society. Well fine. I’m not the feminist who is out there protesting because we’re not paying … The tax dollars aren’t paying for her birth control. You would think that that that feminist would be somewhat concerned that women are allowed to go to school and read over here, I’m concerned about that. I think it’s horrible. I think we should take a stand against a society that says women shouldn’t go to school and shouldn’t be allowed to read. Somehow, they still want the tax dollars for the birth control, but the same person in the same groups will say well we can’t question those societies where women are allowed to read or they get beaten with whips if they … There was woman who was just beaten because she was found outside the company of a male relatives and she was lashed for it. There’s women who are raped. There’s a British women just recently-

Jim Luisi: Right, but if this is a criticism of Islam, the progressives side with the Islamic to a certain extent. You can’t even have the conversation.

Mark Gleason: But that’s what I’m saying.

Jim Luisi: Even global warming. They say the conversation is over. There’s science for you.

Mark Gleason: Well, yeah. Those same people who say that-

Jim Luisi: Not to mention that global warming is a farce.

Mark Gleason: Well, the same people who criticize Christian creationists for questioning evolution and the scientific method saying this is all settled by the bible … The same people who say, are you kidding me? There’s a scientific process. It’s sacred. The scientific process we have to question and learn and know more things about the reality we live in except for climate change. It’s settled science such a question or we’re going to come after you, and-

Jim Luisi: Right. So, here we have the evil level twos manipulating the level ones out there for personal gain and that gain can either be financial awards or it could be political control.

Mark Gleason: But, isn’t it all some big game to guilt people into giving resources. At the end of the day, all these games-

Jim Luisi: You know how many people are saying I have Jewish mother and I’ve been guilted to do everything I’ve ever done in life?

Mark Gleason: All these games at the end of the day … We cut through the power dynamics … It’s about resources. Some people are working. Some people are producing things. You can’t get around that. Either you need to go work yourself for those or you need to figure out how to get those people to give you those things and across the world there’s many different ways to do it. You force them with a gun, you chain them at the neck, you guilt them and tell them horrible of people they are, but it’ll be okay as long as they give you the park of their labor, you’ll forgive them.

Jim Luisi: In New York City, I don’t know how many people have been to New York City as a visitor as compared to living there. When you first arrive out of the Port Authority or the subway system and you see these people who are begging and you feel really bad because these people are begging. And if you live there, you see that these are career positions, that these same people are begging year after year and they have their spot and when I worked in the city, I adopted my beggar. And whenever I passed him, I would take care of him and I’d see him in the morning and I’d see him in the evening. That was his spot and then these people are picked up. A lot of them are picked up by vans at the end of the day and the money is taken and it’s a big business.

Mark Gleason: There are people who think that you’re being ridiculous right now.

Jim Luisi: There are.

Mark Gleason: Yeah.

Jim Luisi: There are people who think I am totally out of my mind.

Mark Gleason: And let me just say that in almost every city that I’ve ever heard of, what you don’t really understand is that there’s something called the king of the beggars. Anytime there’s a place where you can get money, there’s violence to decide who gets to stand there, whether it is an illegal shopping cart, whether it’s a legal hot dog cart, whether it’s a beggar, whether it’s a musician who’s playing his fiddle … If it’s illegal, if it’s not being licensed by the state, and sometimes even if it is being licensed by the state, it is … Violence ends up settling who gets to stand where and make the money, because some street corners are very, very profitable.

Jim Luisi: Location, location, location.

Mark Gleason: Well, what ends up happening is a hierarchy develops where if the state has let the vacuum there then an underworld develops where you have the king of the beggars meaning for a piece, any employees, some leg breakers, and he will make sure that he decides who stands on one corner, but he gets a piece of every dollar that flows into anybody’s pockets. It is regulated in a strict sense. Now in some ways for better, because if he has some weird person doing weird things to people as they’re walking past, the cops like it sometimes that the king of the beggars takes care of that guy and there’s another guy or girl at that corner next week, right?

Jim Luisi: Replacements.

Mark Gleason: It’s just simply what it is.

Jim Luisi: So, if you and I dressed up as beggars and tried to go into a territory that was lucrative for beggars, we’d get the living daylights beat out of us.

Mark Gleason: Oh, look if I … Forget begging, if I just took my drum set and my guitar and I went to a subway station-

Jim Luisi: That’s for a whole different reason. Have you heard you play?

Mark Gleason: In any city … Yeah, I am pretty bad. The onlookers would be jumping in. If I went to any city in the world, let’s say any city on the country, any major city in the United States, very civilized place, very controlled, police everywhere, law and order, went to a relatively safe, nice area of the train station or whatever, sat down, started playing my tunes with my little hat out there trying to make a few bucks, there would be confrontations. I’ve upset the local order. There’s money flowing at me that should have been flowing to someone else or has been flowing to someone else, and someone else is going to have a problem with that, and that’s just the way of the world. As they say in Risky Business with Tom Cruise, you never mess with another man’s livelihood, particularly if I’m there for a lark, someone else is there to get paid and feed their family or fed themselves.

Jim Luisi: So, let’s go back to political correctness for a moment and look how George Carlin views this because he tends to be able to cut through nonsense when he looks at things. He says guilty white liberals, they’re designed to restrict language, restrict rigid rules. Their tools are shame, and basically it’s tyranny with manners and actually it was his line that I so eagerly stole, when Jesus healed the crippled, he didn’t send the gage in rehabilitative strategies to improve the conditions of the physically disadvantaged, and when you look at the attack say that’s on Christmas where you’re not allowed to say Merry Christmas because it might offend people, I mean, gee whiz, when I say Merry Christmas to somebody, they say, thank you, Merry Christmas to you too. They want to-

Mark Gleason: And you’re not an overtly religious person.

Jim Luisi: No, I’m not.

Mark Gleason: Okay, but-

Jim Luisi: I still believe in Santa though.

Mark Gleason: I know, but when you sit in his lap it gets disturbing.

Jim Luisi: I always wanted top sit on Mrs. Santa’s lap, but you know-

Mark Gleason: Okay, but let me ask you, let’s say you have a group, and you have a minority in that group, doesn’t matter what kind of minority. It’s a racial minority, a religious minority, political minority, whatever, and you have in-group preference for both groups. Let’s say we have a society and there’s a certain amount of in groups preference, so evil trying to be fair, it’s a meritocracy. Everybody advances according to what value they show they can produce, total meritocracy. But, if things are unknown and close, I’m not sure, which way to go, I go with my in group and let’s just say that’s the nature of the society.

Well, if you have a small enough minority, that can prove to be a very big disability because the out-group, they minority group, time and time and time again, it’s like when you’re in the casino and there’s certain kinds of blackjack you can play where the house wins on the draws. You get a draw, the house wins. That’s a huge difference over time. So, some of the legitimate criticism that some of the people who are in this area would make is that if you have a society of a majority and any kind of minority, that sheer in-group preference, even if everybody else is trying to do the right thing, can be enough to make it very unfair to the minority group.

Their remedy for that, therefore, is to have it’s heavy handed compensatory things to make sure they always have a voice, to make sure they’re always heard, to make sure the majority always gives special attention to them because they’re voice is louder than anybody else’s because there’s fewer of them.

Jim Luisi: Right, but this is normal in the realm of maintaining representation. Even the US government was set up on these principles where you have a senate and a house of representative. So, the house of representatives have the numbers of representatives based upon the populations of the districts and the senate has two senators for every state regardless of how small or large the state is house is partially populated might be or heavily populated it might be to try to balance out the mob rule type of effect that could occur.

Mark Gleason: Well, it’s not about numbers obviously to these people. It is about what’s right and wrong to them.

Jim Luisi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Gleason: Our dear president, Barack Obama, past executive voter that said anybody, any grown man who identifies as female in the country in any bathroom can go into a girl’s bathroom and go to the bathroom next to your little girl. This is not pie in the sky Polly Ann type stuff. Our President of the United States issued an executive order that said that .0000002 of the population matters enough that .999999998% of the population needs to change everything they’re doing to make sure that these people don’t feel uncomfortable when they go to the bathroom and don’t know which door to go in to, right?

Jim Luisi: Right. But I think he is an unusual president and then I think history would look at him as being the king of the progressives as far as presidents once.

Mark Gleason: What I’m saying is that it’s not about numbers. It’s about victim hood, who’s a victim, and how can we help them, for better or worse? Maybe-

Jim Luisi: Right, because, well, those victims are outnumbered and hence it’s trying to make them have more-

Mark Gleason: That’s why they’re [crosstalk 00:50:35]. That’s right. So, the president might say I have to speak for them because if I don’t who else will? And that might be his very reasonable kind of case. Now clearly, passing executive orders-

Jim Luisi: What passes as inevitable is not necessarily reasonable for anybody else.

Mark Gleason: Well, I think we might argue that part of the reason why Trump got elected is because of vast majority of the country probably agrees that wherever the line is between making sure that out groups have an equal voice to in groups-

Jim Luisi: Maybe they went over it a little itsy bitsy-

Mark Gleason: That having grown men, walking to the bathroom next to your daughter, along with your daughter, who’s going there is probably not where the line should be.

Jim Luisi: Right, which gets us into the next topic, because the thing following political correctness is PC outrage. So, here we have something that is the PC of opposition. This is the political correctness of the opposition. So, the group that is averaged against the political correctness is the counter measure so to speak. But they themselves use a form of political correctness to battle the initial wave of political correctness. So, it’s almost like fight fire with fire.

Mark Gleason: Well, it’s even worse than that. Once you live in the ocean of this language, you forget your prisoner who doesn’t even see the bars and that is where the Republican party was on this issue before election of Trump.

Jim Luisi: Hey, they were deer in the headlights. I couldn’t believe-

Mark Gleason: They would use language to attack Ben, who’s the [inaudible 00:52:11]?

Jim Luisi: Shapiro. Ben Shapiro, okay.

Mark Gleason: One of the most egregious … Do you remember when in the Trump election when some reporter claimed that she was thrown to the ground by Trump and his-

Jim Luisi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Mark Gleason: Manager, and he finally got video on it.

Jim Luisi: The video showed otherwise.

Mark Gleason: She was publishing a book pretty soon and clearly she manufactured it entirely, but Ben Shapiro, who was a conservative, who had-

Jim Luisi: So, she was in manufacturing as Ben was saying-

Mark Gleason: That’s right.

Jim Luisi: She went to the same school as Dan Rather.

Mark Gleason: Right, but that didn’t really surprise me too much. Who knows where her background is? But Ben Shapiro is a conservative, orthodox Jew working for Brightbard. He was on the Harvard debate team. He’s a very intellectual, conceptual conservative on ideas. He’s very well grounded in ideas. He was opposed to Trump during the primary because of Trump’s ideas. So, that I get. You thinking that a primary candidate would be good. He jumped on the bandwagon alone with her to cry his violence towards women that ended being a canard.

Jim Luisi: Yep.

Mark Gleason: And as did some other Republican leadership who was trying to take Trump out of the primary. Now, it’s one thing when the Republicans who have been victim to this identity politics for so long and they decry it. When it happens to them, they all say, but this doesn’t make sense. This is unfair. Well, what’s going on here? The moment they can use it to their advantage, they pick up that same club they say has been unfair and they use it to try and club Trump with. That’s one of the reasons why the electorate turned on them. They didn’t turn on-

Jim Luisi: As they should have, yes.

Mark Gleason: Right, because the electorate’s … The people who voted for Trump are tired of being told what horrible people they are when all they do is go to work every week and oh, by the way pay the majority of social security, oh and by the way, pay the majority of welfare, oh, and by the way, pay the majority of the entire welfare state that’s been giving out goodies to everybody and don’t get anything back for it. These are the people who pay the bills.

Jim Luisi: Well, the only thing that gives progressives power is the person who’s reacting to the political correctness cry and Trump was one of the very few people in our country that took the right stand, which was to be fearless and not worry about what they say.

Mark Gleason: As Brightbard said, you have to walk toward the fire.

Jim Luisi: You do.

Mark Gleason: They call you a racist, bigot, sexist, homophobe.

Jim Luisi: You walk right towards it.

Mark Gleason: And it’s a lie. You just walk right towards it and say no I’m not and you keep on going.

Jim Luisi: Yeah.

Mark Gleason: And then when they double down and they say, no, no, but you really are-

Jim Luisi: Then you double down.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. You keep on walking towards it.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Because it’s all they have.

Jim Luisi: Yes.

Mark Gleason: They’ve departed from the realm of critical analysis and real ideas, which by the way is the lament of many liberals, and by the way, I’m a political centrist.

Jim Luisi: Yes. Isn’t this like the emperor that has no clothes?

Mark Gleason: It really is. I’m a political centrist, basically libertarian. I’m not social conservative by any means, so I tend to fall in the center, the reasonable center as I call it, which hasn’t had a home in a really long time in American politics. The reasonable center … Every candidate that gets up there, you’re just like, wow, what two wacky extremes, and I got to choose the least of two evils here, and that’s where it’s been. I know some of our listeners will have a hard time believing this, but Trump has actually politics back to the center because he is not a religious … The social wars are over and liberals should be congratulating themselves. The social ears are over.

Trump is from New York. He’s not going to take any steps to reverse gay marriage or anything like that. He’s concerned about productivity. He’s concerned about the GDP. He’s concerned about business. He wants to cut takes. He wants to get the economy moving again. Those are his focal points. That’s one of the reasons why the extreme religious rite couldn’t stand him. So, some of our listeners may not think that Trump is in the center, but let me ask you. The far left hate him. The far right hate him, hate him with a passion. Bush said he was voting for Clinton, yet he won anyway. Well, there’s only one piece left, right? If the far right hate you, and the far left hate you, and you win anyway, it’s because you captured the center, and that’s what Trump did.

Jim Luisi: Now, that’s an excellent point.

Mark Gleason: By exactly what you said, by walking toward the fire, by saying hey, maybe a nation state should actually control its border. Oh, you’re a bigot, you’re a racist. Okay, but seriously maybe a nation state should at least talk about controlling its border and he just walked into the fire and into the fire into the fire in artful ways sometimes.

Jim Luisi: Right, and I think the safe reference-

Mark Gleason: And all of a sudden we were having conversations about should we secure our border? Even if he never got the primary-

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: He helped because-

Jim Luisi: He forced all sides to be discussing the right time.

Mark Gleason: At least now you could talk about it.

Jim Luisi: The best response and there are a number of decent responses, but the best response when challenged or being charged any sort of political correctness violation is to say, my goal is not to be politically correct. It’s just to be correct, and it is that simple.

Mark Gleason: Let me ask you as question. Have you faced an accusation of political correctness in your personal life or in your work life? Has anybody ever leveled some kind of charge at you or at least pressured you in some way that you fel like they were trying to unduly influence you? Have you ever experienced that?

Jim Luisi: So, I would say in my personal life in, the business that we have in freehold now, it was in Marlboro, that business where … We have a multicultural customer base and the only issues we’ve ever had regarding racism has been black customers who when you look at American blacks, they tend to have a chip on their shoulder more likely than say a European black person, and it’s fascinating when you see somebody who is unhappy because of something. Their first go to statement is, well, you’re a racist. You are taking care of your white customers first ahead of me, or that you prefer your white customers and this is absurd.

Mark Gleason: People use what has worked in the oast.

Jim Luisi: Oh, yeah, yeah. And so what that ends up doing, is that ensures that they will never get on the book again. Oh, we have no openings that day, nor that day, no, no we don’t have one that year either.

Mark Gleason: Yeah, and to be clear you have a multi-racial family. It’s a family owned business run by your multi-racial family.

Jim Luisi: Right, and the family would never … No one in the family would ever say that they didn’t get something because of their race. Everything is based on merit and if you even try to have the attitude that it’s based upon race, that is just a falsehood.

Mark Gleason: So, I have run across people from time to time who have tried to use this power dynamic because they assume if I’m a level one white male who’s been marinated in this stew of ideas and recrimination that-

Jim Luisi: You’re going to feel offended, but you’re also going to feel like you have no strong defense and the fact is is that the other person doesn’t have a strong attack, and that you don’t need to give any credence to their attack by being defensive whatsoever. I’m not defensive. When somebody wants to call me a racist, I’m like, yeah, go try that one. That’s a good one. Run with it. Bet the ranch on it. Go all the way.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. But, I think what they might argue is that … Well, what I’ve heard people like Van Jones, the CNN commentator, former Marxist argue, is that if you are for meritocracy, you’re a racist.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, he has a chip on both shoulders.

Mark Gleason: Yes he does, and he even borrows a few people’s shoulders. But, his argument is this. His argument is similar to the line I made before, which is that if you have an in-group and an out-group, you have a majority in-group, and you have an -out-group and you’re a meritocracy where things seem to be about tied, people tend to go with their in-group.

Jim Luisi: Yeah.

Mark Gleason: Then that is going to more heavily advantage certain people over others, even in a free market, even in a meritocracy. Now, that’s … Stated the way I said it, I think it sounds pretty intellectually fair. I’ve never heard him express it in that way, but I’m trying to position his argument in the strongest way possible. So, I think that there is … If we’re interested in a free society, that there isn’t a discussion to be had there.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: So, if you have a-

Jim Luisi: But, there discussion has to go down the path if then, what is the alternative to a meritocracy and that if someone is going to be dulling out favors, how is the one dulling out those favors?

Mark Gleason: No, ut I think what the fair position would be is if you have a majority in-group with in-group preference, and you have this out-group who has in-group preference of their own by the way, that making the majority aware of their in-group preference is fair pool.

Jim Luisi: That’s fair game.

Mark Gleason: Which is what I think he would argue he’s doing and some of these other social justice warriors are doing by making people aware of their quote/unquote white privilege. Now, the problem with the way all these people are going about this, … At a base it’s not entirely unfair, what people try to go about doing. At some point though, it becomes about power and it becomes about social signaling to try to gain power, your group that you’re involved in. And it’s not as simple as I’ve just laid it out quite frankly.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Because what happens is this. Obama wins 95% of the sub in-group and 53% of the majority group because smaller groups tend to be more loyal to their own members than the larger groups. So, you end up having some reasons-

Jim Luisi: So, the in-group worked in his favor more than not.

Mark Gleason: Well, you end up having some weird advantages enjoyed buy in-groups because they all say this is our person, whether you’re Irish or your black, or you’re whatever. It doesn’t matter. You have these [inaudible 01:02:08] and the smaller the community by the way, the more rabid they are to coalesce and support somebody from their group who was broken out and is involved in some other thing. So, that has to be factored in if you’re going to be doing the calculus of how do we make the meritocracy fair. It’s a lot harder whenever 95% of the majority group than it is to win 95% of the majority group clearly because it happens again and again and again, right? It’s a much more complicated situation than Van Jones is painting I guess is my point. I’m trying to find the reasonable intellectual side of what that argument is. I think it’s somewhere close to what I’ve stated, but I think I’m trying to show it’s much more complicated than I’ve initially stated because the subgroups have advantages too. Look at music.

Jim Luisi: Right, but it’s not concerns with the fairness-[crosstalk 01:02:56].

Mark Gleason: Well, he’s not concerned with fairness whatsoever. He’s concerned with the power.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, but we have to be clear here. I’m never talking … We’re talking a manipulator. Right away he drops the race card out if 52 cards in the deck. That’s his 52 cards.

Mark Gleason: There’s no question. Look. I’m trying to paint that position in the most, in the most reasonable light.

Jim Luisi: And I feel sorry for him because he doesn’t realize how people who are reasonable perceive because when somebody sees somebody else, sees that they didn’t get what they wanted, they’re disappointing. They didn’t get whatever it might be. They didn’t get the job. They didn’t get the election. They didn’t get the candy, whatever it might be. They say, oh, it’s because everybody is a racist. Really? Is that how you view the entire world? And this is like the Native American tribe who attributes everything to the Sun God. Okay. That’s the way you want to look at it? Fine. But there are actually people who are able to look at it with the understanding of the other factors around you and that empowers them much better.

Mark Gleason: Yes, and look, to Van Jones credit, I’m not one to ever compliment Jimmy Carter or Van Jones, but to Van Jones’ credit actually, he foes, I’m curious wether he’s a level one or level two. He strikes me as level two who occasionally … He can see many perspectives. Occasionally he’s a bomb thrower just to throw red meat to his crowd to gin up some controversy. But sometimes he actually believes his own propaganda and gets lost in it as bit. But, just to his credit, he … And by the way I believe he’s also from a multi racial household, he went to the Midwest.

Jim Luisi: Yeah.

Mark Gleason: But he went, to his credit, he said as lot of reprehensible things. Well certainly intellectually dishonest does not even begin to cover a vast majority of what he says on CNN. But, it is interesting. He went to … So, Trump flipped 200 counties that Obama won twice.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: That Trump won.

Jim Luisi: Because overnight, they became racist.

Mark Gleason: That would be the argument that many people who have [crosstalk 01:04:50] of looking at the world would make.

Jim Luisi: Subscribe to Van Jones newsletter.

Mark Gleason: So Van Jones went and he interviewed some wite working families.

Jim Luisi: Yes. In fairness to him, he actually went to discover a shred of truth here.

Mark Gleason: And it’s interesting to see how astonished he was, which is where I think I downgraded my opinion of a bit ironically because I thought he was more playing the mob and wasn’t buying into it as much.

Jim Luisi: No, I think he’s a true believer.

Mark Gleason: But, he was so astonished that these people weren’t Nazis. They just were working people who’s factory that their dad used to work at got raised to the ground and there was no work and Hillary Clinton just breezed this state but never even bothered to even show up and make a speech.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: And they were tired of being taken for granted. They voted for Obama twice and they wanted a change. And hearing them talk to him, and they’re good people, and nice people, and they’re lifelong democrats and they’ve never voted Republican before in their life … She, the wife, didn’t vote for either. She couldn’t bring herself …She voted Democrat down the ticket, but would not vote for either Hillary or Trump because you couldn’t stand either of them. The father and the sons who had voted Democrat their entire lives like their fathers had because they were all union and what not, they voted Trump because they felt taken, for granted. They lost their livelihood. They lost their jobs and another fascinating moment of this interview was when Van Jones said to them tell me about guns because when I hear gun control, I think inner cities and I think we need to outlaw guns. Tell me how you hear that and this is fascinating. Boy, did Van Jones pick the right guy. He was a sensitive thoughtful, blue collar guy.

Jim Luisi: True. It’s true. It’s anecdotal, but I think he would have had a similar reaction for many people as well.

Mark Gleason: I think it was he chose the right person to show this dichotomy between what the liberals think is happening and what’s actually happening. This guys says look, work has not been great in my area. In the wintertime it gets cold in Michigan. Do you know how much a steak costs when you’ve been out of work for three months? My sons and I as a family, go out hunting every hunting season and we stack our freezer with venison and we I hear someone talking about gun control and taking away guns, I think, not only am I not getting a job, I can’t feed my family because demeans about eating and so Van Jones literally looked shellshocked.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. I think this is a very good example that shows that somebody who lives in this echo chamber can actually take themselves out of that echo chamber for a moment, leave their bubble, out of their comfort zone and learn what the real world is like.

Mark Gleason: Okay, but let’s talk about level one, level two for a second, level three.

Jim Luisi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Gleason: I didn’t need to go to Michigan to know that guy exists.

Jim Luisi: Oh, of course not. That’s why he looked at Van Jones that was a true believer and more as a level one.

Mark Gleason: But, I don’t need to go to Chicago or Newark to-

Jim Luisi: No. It’s obvious.

Mark Gleason: I can put myself in the place of the kid who has no other choice than to start slinging drugs because he has no other options. I can put myself in the place of the family who used to live in a decent neighborhood, the black family, and now can’t walk out their door at night because they might get short because drug dealers have taken over. I can put myself in the place of the police who’ve got to control that neighborhood. I am able to stand in many places at once.

Jim Luisi: Right. Right, we actually enjoy immersing ourselves into as many different subcultures as possible.

Mark Gleason: But this is what an Apex Level to Power person can do, is to be able to juggle all the different paradigms and then be able to weigh them and forecast what they may be … I’ve never been to Michigan. But if you and I set this microphone, we could theorize that exact conversation Van Jones had with that family pretty easily.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: But we also could have theorized what the conversation would be with the inner city family from Compton, the black family from Compton because the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, the ability to step outside your own perspective is the ultimate power. The power perspective is the ultimate power and to have these people blindsided in this way for this lection and not see this coming … And look, Hillary didn’t have to lose. There are scenarios where Hillary could have won. That would not have fixed the anger that was there that you and I both saw.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Now, we saw the anger. Now, wether that was enough to help Trump win this time around, look Hillary could have won and in four years or eight years, we could have a whole different level of anger from people who felt ignored. But you and I saw it. You and I have the ability to change paradigm in our listeners, have the ability-

Jim Luisi: Change paradigm and also to be able to view things from multiple paradigms at the same time. So, it’s almost like having many voices in your head all having a different opinion. You can see those opinions.

Mark Gleason: But, this is what we mean by level one, so your own perspective. Van Jones in that case was seeing only his own perspective. His mind was blown-

Jim Luisi: But to his credit I’m sure that you could have other people go on there and had that conversation and still come back out not believing and saying those people must be lying or something, wether they’re just so programmed they can’t break out of their level one thinking. But he was able to-

Mark Gleason: Well, just the act of going is admitting that there’s another possibility, right?

Jim Luisi: Yeah.

Mark Gleason: I think that’s certainly he deserves … That’s why I said I’m not one to compliment that guy because I think he hurts the people he claims to represent. The minorities he claims to represent as a champion-

Jim Luisi: I think he’d be a great student. We should bring him in.

Mark Gleason: Unfortunately, the people he claims to represent he actually disempowers, because rather than-

Jim Luisi: Without realizing it. He means well.

Mark Gleason: Well, you know what? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know if he does or not.

Jim Luisi: I think it really does seem like he means well.

Mark Gleason: I don’t know about that. I don’t know.

Jim Luisi: I think hew truly believes what he’s been saying.

Mark Gleason: There are level ones that are clear level ones. I’ve heard him in debates which I’m going to do some analysis on. Actually one of the debates I’ve chosen … This is why I demure from your opinion. As you know wee have coming up in the Apex Level; to Power schedule, a-

Jim Luisi: We have to know if he wrote his own speeches and things like that.

Mark Gleason: No, no, no, no, no.

Jim Luisi: It’s a straight debate.

Mark Gleason: It’s a straight debate and he clearly is measuring the crowd and his opponent and exactly how far he’s going to go with this or how far he’s going to go with that.

Jim Luisi: So, he knows how to work a crowd.

Mark Gleason: He 100% does.

Jim Luisi: Yes, but does that in itself … This is a good conversation. I like this. Does that in itself make the distinction between a one and a two?

Mark Gleason: I’m not disputing that he collapses level one issues. When he’s calm and collected the strategic, is he still level one? I don’t know the answer to that. He may cynically decide that I want to gin up this controversy because I’m trying. Overall I need to have a podium and I’m going to help anybody at all. So, let me just sell my soul now, get the podium, and worry about the rest later, which is what many people do. So, he’s not alone in that.

Jim Luisi: It might be oversold.

Mark Gleason: But, the problem is the people that he claims to represent get deserved by the hand ringing. If UI can count the number of times, which is several, that he’s said how am I going to explain to my son what just happened. Breathlessly he says this.

Jim Luisi: Right. But, at that point in time, I think he truly believed that statement.

Mark Gleason: Maybe. But if he did, that’s even worse. Maybe it’s not worse. Maybe it’s not worse. It’s worse in an different way.

Jim Luisi: It’s worse in a different way. I agree.

Mark Gleason: My point is though that the level one, level two and three, this is where it happens. This is the front lines of being level one, level two, level three.

Jim Luisi: We should take a part one of his debates and look at-

Mark Gleason: I have one. I have one to debate.

Jim Luisi: You have a good one?

Mark Gleason: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jim Luisi: Okay, because your analysis of the [inaudible 01:12:24]-

Mark Gleason: Peter Joseph.

Jim Luisi: Peter Joseph debate-

Mark Gleason: Which is upcoming-

Jim Luisi: That, by the way, people are going to listen to an analysis of a debate, this is the best ever. I love this. The debate is excellent but Mark’s analysis of this thing is staggeringly insightful.

Mark Gleason: Well, for a student of human power we talk about these kinds of things and it is somewhat insightful, but it’s so interesting to be a fly on a wall during a debate and to analyze each side and what their seeing and what they’re not seeing and the triggers they’re using, what they;’re not using, actually apply it in real time, because that’s where we live. We live in real time, right?

Jim Luisi: Its like professional use of logical fallacies. It’s all the tricks of the trade are out on the table. It is wonderful.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. Yeah, so that is the Stephon Molyneux, Peter Joseph debate, which will be published quite soon. The Molly Joe debate report.

Jim Luisi: Molly Joe, yes. It’s worthwhile listening to it beforehand and you can go to Stephon Molyneux’s website, or to YouTube and pick it up there.

Mark Gleason: You can search for the Molyneux, Peter Joseph debate, Molyneux, M-O-l-Y=N-E-U-X-

Jim Luisi: Yes.

Mark Gleason: And peter Joseph but my analysis includes the entire debate.

Jim Luisi: I watched the debate first. Then I watched the response that Peter Joseph had to the debate and the response that Stephon had to the debate and then I listened to Mark’s step by step analysis of the debate and that should be a college course all by itself. It is that good.

Mark Gleason: It’s good stuff. Look, I think the Apex Level to Power insights that we have a re very profound, and I think once you grasp those, merely pointing them out, people say wow, that’s profound, and you say yeah. Yeah it is.

Jim Luisi: It really is.

Mark Gleason: It really is. We stumbled onto a way of looking at the world which reveals some truth to it. It cuts through … It’s another lens where Van Jones, let’s say has one racial lens of looking at the world.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, unfortunately it’s for a debilitating to him.

Mark Gleason: Well, that’s right. Unfortunately, once you start looking at things through any one lens, you’re blind.

Jim Luisi: And it could be a really intelligent man in general, but that one lens is definitely a drawback.

Mark Gleason: The whole point of the Apex Level to Power is that it is not about intelligence. Intelligence does not protect you like I think it should. I started off saying, look if you’re smart you’re better off and you’ll see more, you’ll do more, you’ll outmaneuver other people. It ended up being completely wrong.

Jim Luisi: Right. You can outmaneuver yourself better.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. People who were less smart were able to outmaneuver people who are more smart. A students working for D students. How’s that possible? How’s that possible on a large scale if intelligence is the critical factor. It’s not. Perspective is the critical factor and intelligence may be one component of perspective.

Jim Luisi: An important tool-

Mark Gleason: Well, you need to have some conceptual framework in there.

Jim Luisi: Right, but if you have both, that is a tools et.

Mark Gleason: Absolutely. So, intelligence with perspective, but perspective’s even more important. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. It doesn’t matter that I’m racing against Lance Armstrong in a bicycle race. If he’s blind and I got one eye, well, you know what? I’m going to beat him to the finish line only because I can see where the finish line is. It’s just what it is. Perspective is the ultimate arbiter of where you’re going to try to get to where you’re going, because you can see the battleground. You can see the world around-

Jim Luisi: You can predict the moves that other people are going to make. It’s one of the most important factors that one has to consider.

Mark Gleason: Which is one of the topics I wanted to bring you back for, corporate politics. If you box it … We can expand it to personal life as well. Some moments in time-

Jim Luisi: I think it’s useful in the context of corporate politics because a lot of people end up having conflicts in their corporate that they never have in their personal lives.

Mark Gleason: Well, it helps us box the problem a bit.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: But-

Jim Luisi: And this is their livelihood. Their looking to support their family and they need to have the tool set to survive in that environment.

Mark Gleason: So, having some situations we talk about where you’ve been able to see five moves ahead and why could you see that? What happened? How were you able to use your experience to judge what was going to happen next and play the situation the right way or hilariously the wrong way? Either way, we can learn from. Now, on this topic of political correctness, again, you have this whole idea of in-group, out-group, majority, minority. You have this idea that politeness and social rules matter and save you some kind of pain or self damage that can be caused in society because you’re going to follow certain traditions and then you have this idea that people can grab ahold of those traditions and socially engineer some kind of change they dreamt up that they think are the proper ones.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: So, where do you fall on this whole thing? I know you’re a person who is actually a very polite person at work. Do you deal very politely with others? You follow social convention. You wear a tie when you go to work. There’s certainly many, many social conventions that you follow. You’re not against those. I know intellectually you understand that there’s such a thing as majority groups and minority groups and that in-group preference is probably real meaning people tend to … Either they’re being fair minded in a case of a draw, they’ll just tend toward the in-group because that’s probably how they evolved to be-

Jim Luisi: Right. A lot of it has to do with understanding just the psychology of people. A lot of mY AI background and my research and analysis and that base has helped and my ability to observe helps me understand a number of factors that people can take advantage of in their professional life. So, to take a simple example, very example in that as a management consultant, I know that image is important so I make sure I have a nice gold watch and I wear a suit and-

Mark Gleason: Okay, but why is image important? I agree with you it is, but why is it. We’re in a meritocracy. You should be awarded for the work you produce and you produce and you produce and you produce good work. So, why would wearing a suit, wearing nice clothes, wearing a nice watch. Why would any of that matter at all?

Jim Luisi: Because not everybody makes their decisions based upon what you produce. A number of people make judgements about you as soon as they see you, within seconds they’ve made judgements about you. Before you’ve said a single word, and for me, for somebody to have a conversation with, depending on the topic, I could impress them very quickly, or it might take me a hell of a long time depending on what their interests are and what’s important to them. So, it really has to do with how you would react if you’re the hiring manager or if you’re the manager people for the job of helping you out, taking care of problems that exists in your department.

When somebody walks in and says hi, I’m Jim Luisi. Glad to meet you and let’s have a conversation. That conversation now has a whole bunch of things going on. First of all, did I extend my hand to have a handshake? Did I have some grip, or did I give him the dead fish handshake? All these things leave impressions with the people you interact with and then this is important tot hem because they know you’re going to be interacting with people on their staff as well.

Mark Gleason: And why should that matter from a handshake? Why does that matter? I agree it does matter.

Jim Luisi: Yes.

Mark Gleason: But, why>?

Jim Luisi: It’s a psychological tell for most people to say that this person is a stronger individual or a firm individual or a confident individual. If they walk in and they don’t offer a handshake, the it indicates the anti-social type of tendencies that some people have.

Mark Gleason: Okay, but aren’t you making the PC case for them. Then? Because, let’s say a smaller woman with a less firm handshake maybe at a disadvantage merely because … There’s been studies for instance, which says people who are taller tend to make more money over their lifetime because tend to accept them as a manager more readily because they’re just taller. Well-

Jim Luisi: I don’t think it’s PC in that sense though. I think we;’re talking about the social conventions, the social norms, the psychology of people, and-

Mark Gleason: Which is precisely what the PC warriors are trying to change. They’re trying to change social norms.

Jim Luisi: Oh, they are. I agree that they’re trying to change them.

Mark Gleason: They agree there’s level one herd following social norms.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: They’re trying to change the norms-

Jim Luisi: To their own. Right, to their own rules.

Mark Gleason: So, the herd does something else.

Jim Luisi: Right, to their own rules, which are unfortunately just bizarre. If their own rules actually made sense, then these guys would stand some sort of a chance at making some progress, but because they’ve taken such bizarre impractical, nonproductive positions, they’ve only brought ridicule upon themselves.

Mark Gleason: Well, perhaps. Perhaps some have gone too far. What would you suggest somebody that does not have a firm handshake do?

Jim Luisi: Well, I think you do have some exceptions in there. So, say the hiring manager was a woman, and let’s say there are two people being interviewed this myself and say there’s also an orthodox Jew. The orthodox Jew would not be able to shake hands with the woman. It would be against his religious practice. But most people in New York understand that, and so the fact that he stood with his hands by his side and I extend my hand to shake the manager’s hand is understood. So, there’s already built in to the understanding that people have in these positions.

Mark Gleason: There are tolerance certainly, meaning in the current social convention, it allows for certain things to happen. So, in the case of orthodox Jews, they are highly regarded in many industries and people make allowances outside their social norms to make sure that they can get those candidates. But, what do you do for somebody let’s say who’s from the black inner city? What is your advice to them when they’re going on an interview? Would the same adjustment for social norms be allowed for how their parents named them, how they speak, their way of behavior?

Jim Luisi: That’s a very good question and to an extent there are allowances that are automatically offered and I think when I speak to managers, I find that their true opinion is that they would love to hire somebody if they’re an ethnic minority as long as they have acceptable communication skills. If you just can’t understand an individual and they have to work at a job that unfortunately interacts with other people, wether externally or internally within the organization, there’s not much you can do if they’re almost impossible to understand. Now the same thing happens say with somebody who say is Chinese applicant and his accent is very difficult to understand. If you can make out what he is saying and if an African-American van be understood, then they’re good strong candidates for the job.

Mark Gleason: Yeah, communication is going to be the key if you’re a white candidate from the middle of Arkansas or Louisiana where my family is from, and nobody can understand a word you’re saying, you’re going to be hard pressed. Communication is one of the most important things.

Jim Luisi: There’s a story where I was driving my wife and her friend and her friend’s relatives who are from the South, and the kids were talking to one another in the back and I could not understand what these kids were saying. So, I asked my wife, I said, can you understand them? She said, no way. And I asked her friends, can you understand them, and she said, a little bit. But it’s pretty hard to understand them. So, I said to the kids, I said kids, if you ever plan to get a job and work for as living, you have to learn to speak clearly. Your parents are not helping you. You watch television shows and they don’t sound like you. I don’t even know if you understand what I’m saying, but if you’re going to get a job, speak English and these kids I think were in shock. They did understand, but-

Mark Gleason: Well, but that’s the fascinating thing. If they … In [inaudible 01:24:33], I think they have a chapter devoted to subgroups that intentionally name their children extreme, non-mainstream things, has a social signal that I am one of you. Now, they’re handicapping their child probably.

Jim Luisi: Maybe. In some cases, yes.

Mark Gleason: But, they’re doing this.

Jim Luisi: But ion other cases, no. I think some people look at unusual names and say, oh that’s quaint, or that’s nice. But, if it’s-

Mark Gleason: Look, we have a president named Barack or is it Obama, I’m not sure.

Jim Luisi: Right. Look at some Indian, names. It is amazing how long these things are. I think you and I both know somebody who has the longest known name in India. Its just massive.

Mark Gleason: Or close to it. How many letters was it?

Jim Luisi: Massive. It was many different parts.

Mark Gleason: It was every descendant, every ancestor he had was tacked on to his name.

Jim Luisi: From Adam and Eve, I think.

Mark Gleason: Yes.

Jim Luisi: And as a result, he had ID that had abbreviations. Every form of ID had a different abbreviation for his name, and so his credit cards were different than his driver’s license, which was different from his passport, which was different than everything. One day he’s on the New York City subway platform and he tends to be a smoker so he smoked and a policeman came over and said, you know, you’re not allowed to smoke down here, can I see your ID.

So, he pulled out ID and he pulled out two forms of ID and they didn’t match. So, now the policeman’s like, do you have any other iD/ So, he pulled out more ID and that didn’t match. So, then he was pulled into the police station where he proudly explained to the authorities there that he was proudly the person with the longest name in all of India and that every system in America had certain limitations on the length of name and so they had different abbreviations and different ways and conventions for capturing this and only in India was there any sort of automation that can handle the entire paragraph, which was his name.

Mark Gleason: Has this ever happened to you?

Jim Luisi: Not often.

Mark Gleason: This is the example of your white privilege.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, it’s all automation systems are geared for my name.

Mark Gleason: If you have never been hauled in because your name was too long, this is an example of your white privilege.

Jim Luisi: The system is rigged against Indians. I just want to say.

Mark Gleason: Or for Italians.

Jim Luisi: So-

Mark Gleason: Well, it may be rigged against Indians, they actually make much more than the white ethnic group in the United States.

Jim Luisi: Yes.

Mark Gleason: The white ethnic groups make like number 17 in terms of earning power as other ethnic groups. So, Indian is quite high up there actually. The average Indian family in American does extremely well.

Jim Luisi: Not in India.

Mark Gleason: Well, I imagine in India there’s that bottom half a billion really drag the average down.

Jim Luisi: I would think.

Mark Gleason: That [inaudible 01:27:14] half a billion at the bottom just really … The half a billion making zero really just dragged that average down.

Jim Luisi: But, likewise-

Mark Gleason: If we had an Indian here on the program he could explain the math to you.

Jim Luisi: In Indian culture you have many different dialogues, may different languages in India and as a result, many Indians can not understand other Indians and the only way, unless they came from the same villages, the only way for them to communicate is to use English as the common language to be able to understand one another. As a result, when you speak with Indian coworkers, it’s often very difficult to understand what they say, and sometimes it’s very easy. It depends on getting used to the way the rhythm and the consonants and the pronunciation goes. So, [inaudible 01:28:01] is determined, but you have a lot of these different things you just have to be prepared for.

Mark Gleason: Well, you have British English, so people learn British English, not American English first of all.

Jim Luisi: And that’s sometimes difficult to understand as well.

Mark Gleason: Absolutely, and then there’s an accent on top of that. So, for instance, I once spent ten minutes with somebody as they said they wanted to get on my [inaudible 01:28:22]. I said, I’m sorry. What’s that? I want to get on your [inaudible 01:28:25]. My what? My diary. So, then they realized I did not understand what they were saying and they said oh, well, I’m sorry because you’re American. Your [inaudible 01:28:38]. My what? My [inaudible 01:28:41]. My what? My [inaudible 01:28:42]. Finally they wrote it down.

Jim Luisi: Schedule.

Mark Gleason: Schedule, finally. Now, original they said diary because in London-

Jim Luisi: You keep your calendar-

Mark Gleason: Your calendar you keep your appointments in is called your diary. But with an Indian accent it ended up coming up as something I did not identify as diary. Even an English person saying diary, it would take me second to realize the first tome what they were referring to which would be my calendar because I don’t want to hand them my diary. My diary is for me and me alone, right? So, how do they even know about my diary? So, first of all there are people who are learning a foreign language, but they are also learning a different variation of that language.

Jim Luisi: And I salute them because if I had to speak in any of the Indian dialects I would be toast.

Mark Gleason: Well, imagine somebody from a foreign country learning the local dialect in Georgia. I had to work on my Russian who only learned how to speak English in Georgia for the program. So, you have this PC topic. Society is of the different groups of people. You have social conventions of politeness. We have people who try to move those lines of social politeness in those traditional rules.

Jim Luisi: Right, but unfortunately by doing bullying techniques on other, yes.

Mark Gleason: But you have people who do it for their own reasons and then you have-

Jim Luisi: For whatever the reason, the technique is always some form of bullying. That’s the problem.

Mark Gleason: Well, not always. You have people who just try to make things work better in society, but then you have this extreme name and shame strategy-

Jim Luisi: That’s really what the political correctness is.

Mark Gleason: And that is perhaps where it goes off the rail.

Jim Luisi: That’s the competition to see how more outraged I can be, than you can be for the same type of thing. It’s like a game.

Mark Gleason: Well, what’s your social signaling, right?>

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Look how legitimate I am. See how offended I am at this? I am even more offended than anybody else. That;’show good I am. That’s all social signaling. You’re signaling to your group-

Jim Luisi: That’s why my response is I don’t care wether or not I care. It shows that I don’t care to a better degree than even you.

Mark Gleason: So, what’s the answer? So, we have these social justice warriors who want certain kinds of change. They are being emotionally triggered left and right whenever anything happens in these same spaces.

Jim Luisi: Right. I think they need to go out and find a job. If this is their goal in life, this is how they think they are going to succeed, I think that circus is leaving the town.

Mark Gleason: No, but this is the problem. They have gone out and gotten jobs and they’re working as your HR representative, and they’re working as your manager, and your administrator-

Jim Luisi: Yeah, not for long id the executive has any sense.

Mark Gleason: Well, this is the issue. Certain companies … So, there is somebody who I’m aware of that I think you’re aware of as well who actually looks for companies that are hiring for social justice reasons like engineers just so he can short the stock.

Jim Luisi: I was just going to say I would short the stock.

Mark Gleason: That’s right, because engineering company, like a software engineering company who is looking for the best talent to get something done-

Jim Luisi: Right. They’re a force to be reckoned with.

Mark Gleason: And it is not hiring the best talent. They are hiring for some other reason other than talent which is-

Jim Luisi: Something that actually thwarts talent-

Mark Gleason: To meet some kind of-

Jim Luisi: Hey, one of the things that is paramounted in any organization is there is this whole concept of having a business [inaudible 01:32:03] or a taxonomy for that organization. Every organization in every industry has its own taxonomy and when you realize that, you know you have to have a very good hand along making sure people use the right terms for datas and processes so that they actually understand one another when they speak. So, they might be speaking about either from business people to business people, from one department to another department, or for IT people to business people and vice versa. And if everybody makes up their own words and uses them all differently, then people are going to talk past each other and it’s going to be quite a mess at the end of the day.

But, if they have an agreed set of words, just their language, and if somebody is coming into an environment and is going to start messing with the language, then that organization, yeah, that’s not going to do too well.

Mark Gleason: I’m not sure if I agree with that because I know, I myself, driveway, care, plate, cloud, leaf, driveway, pavement, concrete. I use all of those word my own way and I am very happy to do so.

Jim Luisi: Right. Yes, and people run away for good reason.

Mark Gleason: For other reasons entirely actually, but, okay can wee wrap this up then on two points? First I’d like to ask you your advice for people who find themselves under pressure from advocates of political correctness in their personal life, in their family, in their relationship, in their job. What’s your advice to those people who feel themselves guilt-tripped or feel the under pressure unduly, rightly or wrongly? Who knows?

And then the second question is the people who are putting forward, who feel that their mission is to look out as the language police because they feel that their-

Jim Luisi: Right, they’re victims as well.

Mark Gleason: Exactly, but they feel their mission is true.

Jim Luisi: They do. They are, for the most part they are the believer.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. So, they are the believers who feel their mission is true. They’re not such jaded people. We’re not trying-

Jim Luisi: Right. They’re trying.

Mark Gleason: So, those are the two groups I’m interested in empowering here. So, the first group, the group that is at work. They’re at Thanksgiving dinner. They’re with their family. They’re with their friends.

Jim Luisi: They’re on the receiving end.

Mark Gleason: They’re on the receiving end and somebody starts criticizing their language patterns. All they’re trying to do is communicate, I was at the game, I saw a friend, I was at work. And somebody jumps all over them, what they feel to be very innocent language patterns. What is your advice to them?

Jim Luisi: My first advice to them would be do not fall victim to feeling shame. You use words to communicate. You use words to state things that are correct. Your best course of action is to feel sorry for the person who takes offense to this, who’s so thin skinned that they have to have you alter your speech patterns so that they can survive ion this world, because otherwise they will fall apart. They are the ones with the problem. You should really just turn around and try to counsel them and sat that if you plan on getting through life, it’s sometimes very difficulty. You know, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names should never hurt you, except you. You seem to have broken bones with slightest offense. On the other side-

Mark Gleason: Well hold on, to add to that-

Jim Luisi: Okay.

Mark Gleason: I would say, I’m in complete agreement with you, that all of our listeners do not accept unearned guilt of any form. If you did not do it, don’t be guilty for it.

Jim Luisi: I had a manager once who said that if you were accused of something that you clearly could not be guilty of, to accept blame for it and that if it was something you were truly guilty of, never accept blame for it. Now, he did rise to high levels, but I don’t know that I would give that advice for strangers. I’m just saying.

Mark Gleason: Well, with a true religion, it’s your political party. It’s your work. It’s your friends. It’s your family. People will sometimes try to make you feel guilty to control you. They don’t realize they’re doing it, or maybe they do-

Jim Luisi: And we may not realize we do it as well. We might be doing it to our spouse, or our children, or something like that. It’s something which is … We know it’s a tool of psychology and we fall to it.

Mark Gleason: But, the acceptance of unearned guilt. What I mean by unearned guilt is if I did something wrong, I should apologize for it. If I wronged you in some way, and you explain it to me and I listen to it, and I critically analyze it and I agree that I agreed to meet you at 3:00 at the mall, it’s now 4:30. You waited for an hour-and-a half and you were inconvenienced, I should apologize. Sincerely, I should apologize. But, if my speech patterns in some way offended you, okay, I certainly can apologize that you’re offended. But I do not need to accept the unearned guilt for what my great, great, great grandfather did, or what my tribe did a hundred years ago, or what somebody else did to you before we even met. I’m only responsible for my actions. So, I would caution people whoever you are-

Jim Luisi: Right. A son is not responsible for the actions of his father.

Mark Gleason: That’s right. So, I would caution people whoever you are, do not accept unearned guilt and the flip side of that. The other side of the coin is-

Jim Luisi: Also don’t try to go out and earn it either.

Mark Gleason: Well, and the other side of that coin is you need to take personal responsibility for yourself. What you say, what you do, how you offend people, sure. Take responsibility for that.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: And if somebody says, look, you should have known better at this point that you shouldn’t have done these things and you listened to it and agree with it, well then by all means, wholeheartedly apologize.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: But do not accept-

Jim Luisi: Be polite. Be polite.

Mark Gleason: But don’t accept unearned guilt.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Now, just one more. I want to underscore this. People try to make you feel guilty for a reason and it’s to get your head bowed in guilt because a person who has their head bowed asking for forgiveness is easier to control. So, if you can make somebody feel guilty, and they bow their head and say I’m so sorry, please forgive me to whatever authority has now vested themselves with the ability to forgive, that is the seed of power. That is why this is so critical. Self-empowerment is about refusing to accept unearned guilt. If you didn’t do it, don’t feel about it. So, that’s what I would say to the people who are being pout upon.

Now, to go to the second group, which is the people who are true believers, who think they’re standing up for some other group other than themselves, and therefore they’re going to go about pulling the levers and pulling apart social mechanisms to try to enact how language is used, how social interaction happens, and they’re going to change the gears of society for the better for some kind of social engineering dream, what would you say to those people?

Jim Luisi: To those people, I think the first thing they need to look at is what on earth motivated them towards this activity?

Mark Gleason: And that’s a very good point.

Jim Luisi: Who inspired them into doing this?

Mark Gleason: When you were young trying to figure out what you wanted to do with your life-

Jim Luisi: What convinced you that this is how you should spend … You only have a certain amount of time on the planet. What convinced you that this is the most productive way for you to spend your timer on this planet?

Mark Gleason: Let’s say I take you at your word. Let’s say I put myself back when I was 18 years old or 20 years old, my first college class, I met a professor who put me on this path. I’m thinking about that now. What should I be looking for to try to figure out what was it that got me to this point?

Jim Luisi: And I think it goes back to looking at identifying what you want to achieve in life and if you go through that exercise and say what is the thing, what are the things I want to achieve in life, and then you can start going through the second process, which is to say well, now how do I … What are the steps I have to take to be able to achieve those things. It is quite doubtful that in and of yourself you would arrive at the conclusion that you need to spend your life trying to push political correctness on others.

Mark Gleason: So, let me put this in real terms. I know somebody who’s a personal friend and she went through and decided that any of these foundational concepts were very, very important. She chose a career as an HR person and she’s working human resources in a company because that’s where she thinks she can do the most-

Jim Luisi: Damage?

Mark Gleason: Social change. She’s given up salary. She’s given up position because she thinks that this is the right path for her. Now some of there issues that she feels are really pivotal to her role, to an outsider, look very frivolous. I literally had a discussion with her about a transgender policy and I asked her if we had any transgender people in the company and she said, no. Now, she was fighting for this as one of her priorities, even though there was actually no use case to whom this applied.

Jim Luisi: Yeah, it’s interesting. I worked in a company, a Fortune 1000 company and this company had a transgender individual. He was obviously a man and he wore a dress and the whole show and that individual-

Mark Gleason: But I never judged you for that.

Jim Luisi: Right, but I never … No one on my team, no one I know of ant the company ever said a bad word about this individual. They did their job. They were diligent. Their motivations were towards the betterment of the company and the team and although it was a little bit bizarre in working with them, it wasn’t such that it would inhibit people from conducting the professional activities during the day and that was before there were any policies or anything like that. There was no policy that I knew of in the company and that people just act like professionals and that’s what you want to have in your organization, people who act like professionals, period.

Mark Gleason: So, the people who are true believers, you would say question your premise, what is it that got you into what you’re doing?

Jim Luisi: Yeah, the first things is-

Mark Gleason: How is it helping you?

Jim Luisi: The first thing would be-

Mark Gleason: How’s it helping you?

Jim Luisi: Right. If this is what they decided … If they went through the exercise of saying this is how I want to sp[end my life and these are the steps I need to take to get there, and this is what they actually arrived at, this is their life’s vocation, some people might want to be the Dali Llama. Well, there’s certain steps you can take to go off and try to achieve that. If this is what somebody decided to do, then more power to them. What I would explain to them though also is that this role in the corporate world is not providing the benefit that they believe and that it actually causes a number of different ill effects.

Mark Gleason: Well, that’s the key here. These are well-intentioned people who are trying to have a good impact. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is-

Jim Luisi: I’m going to say they have to become-

Mark Gleason: They have a negative impact-

Jim Luisi: I would say they have to become a student of Apex.

Mark Gleason: I agree, but they end up undermining their own cause. At some point when you’re trying to engender sympathy for a certain downtrodden group, whoever that group may be-

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: If you approach it in a certain way, everybody’s going to be on your side and they’re going to say wow. We’re all on your side for this downtrodden group. Other ways you can approach it, everybody’s going to be against you and that downtrodden group probably because you-

Jim Luisi: Yes. The poor downtrodden group wasn’t truly down trodden [crosstalk 01:43:30].

Mark Gleason: [crosstalk 01:43:30] because you’re trying to beat them over the head, right? Well, if you go beat them over the head with it, then they’re going to say, okay, well, now I’m not for you or your group. People undermine their own cause. Let me go one more step further and explain I think when it happens. What happens is the goal of the tribe is to sell insurance. The goal of the tribe is to sell cars, whatever your tribe is.

Jim Luisi: Right. Right, and this is a subversion of that mission.

Mark Gleason: Well, the moment that you as an individual go from helping the tribe do what they do better … We’re going to sell more widgets in a more socially empowered way, okay? We are going to sell less widgets because social advancement’s more important than our cire business.

Jim Luisi: We want to have a majority of transgender employees just for the heck of it.

Mark Gleason: Well, we want to have a majority of the writers who are recognized be from, some subgroup regardless of wether or not they do good writing or not. This is social justice gone amuck.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: You have now rejected the priority of the tribe,.

Jim Luisi: You’re working against-

Mark Gleason: For your own personal objective.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: And that’s wrong … The stated goal of the tribe is I agree with you that we’re all going to accomplish this together. The moment I subvert that with my own personal goals, no matter how lofty they are-

Jim Luisi: Yeah, to defend them just a moment, at least it’s not the selfish reasons that this is going to enrich them. Obviously this person that you’re speaking about is somebody who’s willing to make less money and dedicate themselves to this thing-

Mark Gleason: Thank you, Ellsworth Toohey.

Jim Luisi: However-

Mark Gleason: Thank you, Ellsworth Toohey.

Jim Luisi: Exactly.

Mark Gleason: This has been an Ellsworth Toohey moment.

Jim Luisi: However, the fact that they’re working against the stated goals, objectives of the tribe that they’re employed by is wrong nonetheless.

Mark Gleason: Wee;’re adults. If we all agree we’re going to try to build a structure, we’re going to build a tower together, and you’re going to be in charge of the bricks, I’m going to be in charge of the architecture, and someone else will be in charge of whatever, and we’re all going to do that, and it turns out that you know what? You were in charge of the bricks, but you’re spending all your time trying to move forward some kind of social justice campaign, and if the tower never gets built and if it doesn’t get built, it falls down because it never had the proper bricks because you spent all your time on some other’s goal than your stated commitment to the tribe.

Jim Luisi: Right. Right.

Mark Gleason: This is where this goes wrong. If you came and said it up front, this is what I want to do, then everybody can say-

Jim Luisi: Everybody can agree-

Mark Gleason: We agree or do not agree.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: This is where these things get a bad name.

Jim Luisi: I also ant to know the companies that agree that should be the stated goal because I want to short those stocks well.

Mark Gleason: I want to be tied into that as well.

Jim Luisi: Yes.

Mark Gleason: This sounds like a fantastic thing from an investment standpoint.

Jim Luisi: Oh, dear.

Mark Gleason: Okay, so is this going to kill us? In society, is Trump a bounce back? Trump is probably the least politically correct public figure, certainly politician that we’ve seen for a long time.

Jim Luisi: Trump is obviously a strong enough opponent to PC that it actually goers into the category of PC outrage. Is that a bad thing? If it’s overdone, absolutely. At small does to counter political correctness, it seems to be the right medicine at the right time.

Mark Gleason: Okay. So, four years of Trump, you think that’s going to be the cure? Already on college campuses, they’re pushing back against this idea of save spaces where the precious snowflakes can’t hear an idea. They just agree with it as long as they fall out of tears.

Jim Luisi: I think that four years isn’t necessarily the measure, four years, eight years. I think it’s all the dialogue that exists in the culture and Trump has created the dialogue and really gotten it out there. He succeeded wether or not he won the election or not regardless orf wether Hillary had won. There was going to be a backlash against political correctness because the success with the dialogue opposing political correctness. Will there be more benefits by him being in office? Absolutely. There are many, many appointees throughout our many levels of government that now have to be cleared out to make the government more efficient.

Mark Gleason: Well, look, when Bush was in office, they had what they called Bush derangement syndrome, which are people who are just pathological against Bush. When they Obama in office, they-

Jim Luisi: There are a lot of pathological people, period.

Mark Gleason: But, when Obama was in office, they called that Obama derangement syndrome where people were just deranged. The way off of the charts, then they just actually called them racist, rightly or wrongly.

Jim Luisi: That’s why we have a secret service, though.

Mark Gleason: But, now you have … Look at CNN. It’s the media who’s suffering Trump derangement syndrome at the moment.

Jim Luisi: Yes, but we got to keep those media people away from the president.

Mark Gleason: I agree. I agree, and that’s why one of the reasons they’re so angry is because he can tweak his cabinet picks. Doesn’t even need them anymore. There’s no press conference anymore. He just announces them.

Jim Luisi: I know our list is large, but I think one of the things I’d like to add to our list is Donald Trump form the perspective of a Level to Power view and look at how he has affected the culture and how he’s been able to rise from being one of 14 people on the podium to being the president elect that I think would be a fascinating conversation because I think we have a different view than most people on this topic.

Mark Gleason: It’s a fascinating conversation to have certainly. I think that Trump certainly represents somebody who was on the drug, high on the drug of political correctness and this represents the cold bath of cold turkey for four years. He’s going to say everything. They’re trying. The media’s already trying to build a little firewall for themselves where they can live in their politically correct universe.

Jim Luisi: But, they can’t hide because his cabinet is like [inaudible 01:49:12] proponents and-

Mark Gleason: Well, this is where I want to get your opinion, because this is actually serious. The Democratic party is in existential schizophrenic crisis right now of their own making.

Jim Luisi: Yeah.

Mark Gleason: Half the party are centrist liberals interested in individual liberty and some other traditional liberal concerns. The other half are progressive and racial identity politics people who believe that certain agreed groups should be given special rights in society and that is a nonstarter to not acknowledge that upfront, that you are the enemy unless you by default admit that is true.

Jim Luisi: Yep.

Mark Gleason: So, that was fine as long as they were winning elections that way and that’s why democrats-

Jim Luisi: But now the [crosstalk 01:50:00]

Mark Gleason: Has led that fire, right?

Jim Luisi: The oxygen is out of the room and those-

Mark Gleason: Well, yeah.

Jim Luisi: Those causes are going to suffocate.

Mark Gleason: That was fine. It went well, but what happens? Does the democratic party become the Rump party who can never win a major election again? Look, you have a dedicated, radical progressive left. They want Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi, as you know, won the minority house leadership again.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. I think that’s awesome.

Mark Gleason: After seeing … After ten years of the biggest landslide loss democratic seats-

Jim Luisi: I would miss Nancy if she hadn’t won, and so I personally am very happy.

Mark Gleason: And she says … And by the way, she says that people don’t want to change. Their messaging was just a little bit off.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Gleason: And the great thing is … This is even more sweet. You ready for this?

Jim Luisi: If I lived in San Francisco, I would have voted for her as well.

Mark Gleason: This is even more sweet\, you and your boyfriend. This is even more sweet. It’s even more sweet that they say we’re going to repeal Obamacare and she said, and then we’re going to replace it, and she said, you can’t just repeal it without telling us what you’re going to replace it with. And somebody actually did answer her and say, well you have to wait to see what we replace it with so you can see what’s in it.

Jim Luisi: Yes. That is the correct response.

Mark Gleason: On one side, you have . They elected her again, gave up the [inaudible 01:51:17] white working class guy in Ohio who ran against her for Nancy Pelosi, the West coast liberal. On the other hand you have the Bernie Sanders spokesperson, this woman, this black woman. I forget her name, who said that no white people should been apply to run the democratic national committee.

Jim Luisi: Right.

Mark Gleason: Now, you just lost the election because you lost all the white working class in the Midwest, yet you don’t think any white person should run your party, forget the most qualified person. As long as they’re not white in your view.

Jim Luisi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mark Gleason: This is the problem the Democratic party’s facing. They have their reasonable center Democrats and they have this monster of their own making, which is this racial identity politics and the fact that the group is above all, that they’re aggrieved and that they need special recompense and my God, if you even question that, you are done. They fed this monster and now they’re … What happens over the next four years?

Jim Luisi: Yeah, but in the end you have these swings and say Trump is in here for years. At the end, does that put the Republicans in a really advantageous position? I don’t think so. I think most people don’t like either party, and it’s only the people that Trump is bringing in. Now, when Trump is no longer in there, it’s going to be back to the same old nonsense as before.

Mark Gleason: Well, not if Trump remakes the Republican party. Trump only won by winning more Latinos and blacks and working class whites-

Jim Luisi: Right, but he was in control-

Mark Gleason: Than Romney did.

Jim Luisi: Right, but he doesn’t control who is put up for congress and the senate.

Mark Gleason: I agree. I agree, but if Trump-

Jim Luisi: The house and the senate you mean.

Mark Gleason: If Trump wins black votes by going to black neighborhoods and giving them jobs and giving them success they’ve never had-

Jim Luisi: Oh, yeah, well clearly the Democratic party will have to reinvent itself. Can it? Absolutely.

Mark Gleason: Maybe.

Jim Luisi: No, mo. They can definitely reinvent themselves.

Mark Gleason: I agree they maybe can. They’ve created a real monster here.

Jim Luisi: Oh, well it’s not just the democratic [crosstalk 01:53:17]. The liberals have created a monster.

Mark Gleason: The radical left is a steamroller. They’re a boulder going down a hill.

Jim Luisi: Yes. Yes. There are factions on the left now that are fighting against one another in this-

Mark Gleason: When they were protesting Hillary, because of the war she voted for however many years ago and I think she said 20 years ago, this is a party at war with itself.

Jim Luisi: This is a topic all by itself though.

Mark Gleason: This is reaping what you sow.

Jim Luisi: Yeah. But this is a topic all by itself.

Mark Gleason: I agree.

Jim Luisi: This is a fascinating topic.

Mark Gleason: I agree,

Jim Luisi: There’s a lot to analyze there.

Mark Gleason: Well, then thank you very much for coming on. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about political correctness? I know it’s a huge topic. We could actually probably … We will be revisiting it again, but is there anything else you’d like to share on this?

Jim Luisi: My preference is nonpolitical correctness.

Mark Gleason: Very good. Well, Jim it’s always a pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you so much for coming by and I-

Jim Luisi: Thank you for having me.

Mark Gleason: I hope you come back real soon. Every time you’re on the program we have a lot of listeners apparently in Australia and Washington D.C. I’m not sure why those two places.

Jim Luisi: I’m not sure. I like the Australia one, but if I could go visit the folks down under-

Mark Gleason: But, all of the episodes that you’re on I experience honestly a very, very broad support, but in those two places we have special interests, so-

Jim Luisi: Yeah, maybe we could do a podcast down there.

Mark Gleason: I would love to go down unda-

Jim Luisi: Down unda-

Mark Gleason: I would love to go down under for a podcast-

Jim Luisi: Have some shrimp on the barbie, I know that, yes.

Mark Gleason: Great, we just lost half of our listeners in Australia.

Jim Luisi: Dear God.

Mark Gleason: Thank you, Jim. Come back soon. You can change your level, you can change your life, change the world. Welcome to Apex Level to Power.

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