George Soros is an enigmatic billionaire. At once a billionaire speculator who crashes currencies and a dedicated leftist philanthropist whose network of groups influences global politics both in and out of the shadows.
On this episode, we chat with friend of the program Jim Luisi about George Soros the man… and what his actions may mean for the the rest of us.
TRANSCRIPT
| Mark Gleason: | Welcome to Apex level To Power, the podcast completely dedicated to your self-empowerment. We have a very interesting topic today. We ask all of our listeners to submit topics at info@leveltopower.com. That’s info@leveltopower.com. If you have a topic that you would like us to discuss. Many of you post-election have asked for various topics around Trump and Hilary, which I think we were going to do quite soon. Another topic which came in relevant to the election was George Soros. The shadowy leftist billionaire, who is hugely influential on the progressive left for funding, leftist courses worldwide.
|
| On this episode we have a friend of the program Jim Luisi on, to talk about George Soros. While you’re listening to this discussion, it’s important to keep in mind this thing that we see again and again and again, in our conversations. Which is a conflict between freedom versus equality. That well-meaning people when they’re trying to decide how to organize society. We all can agree on equality for all people. We all can agree on freedom for all people. The problem is, when freedom and equality are in conflict. When giving somebody additional freedom might cause inequality.
|
|
| Or giving someone equality might mean taking away freedoms. In those moments, how do we handle that? Those on the socialist left, socialists or communist left, will say that equality tramps freedom. That equality particularly of outcome, must tramp all. All those who are more libertarian want more free market, who pries freedom over equality as a virtue. That when in doubts, we must let the individual be free. Those people have a different idea of how to organize society. What fascinates me about this whole George Soros examination, is here’s a man who fled communism.
|
|
| He’s against totalitarianism. He’s against fascism, he’s against a strong government which can dominate the individual. Coming out of fascist and communist hungry. Avoiding Russian communism and instead coming to the west, one would think that he has resolved this idea of freedom over equality. That he wanted equality, why not stay in Hungary? Or why not go to communist Russia? Instead he goes to London and then the US. Because somewhere he decides that freedom is more important than equality.
|
|
| Interestingly George Soros doesn’t get all the way there to a free society. By coming to London, he becomes and inherent of Karl Popper. Who says that, ‘’No we should not have communism, no we should not have totalitarianism. However the government needs to play a role we’re going to call, quote on quote Open Society. This Open Society pretends a bit to be a civil libertarian point of view. Because a civil libertarian would say, ‘’I agree with this idea of Open Society. Where the smallest minority on earth is the individual, and therefore all the rights we have, need to be, protect the individual against the government. Or against groups of people persecuting any particular individual.’’
|
|
| This is civil libertarianism at its core. Interestingly, George Soros and Karl Popper depart from this idea and say, ‘’We want an Open Society that’s not totalitarianism. It’s not communism. We want to guarantee the equality of each individual by empowering the government. By giving the government much more power over individuals, to make sure that the government can enforce at the point of gun, its version of equality.’’ Now a problem that I have with this idea, is that once you grant the government the power to enforce anybody’s ethics, the entire game now comes down to who can seize the reins of government so they can benefit their own group?
|
|
| Once you get away from this idea, of freedom of the individual, to enforcing equality across groups of people, the end game is inevitable. Which is concentrated government power with various groups lobbying and vying to seize the reins of government, to try to benefit their own group. Eventually, one group will be so powerful that no other group will ever seize the reigns back. With this background in mind, let’s listen to this introduction to George Soros. His idea of an open society, and keep at the back of your mind this is not notional. That George Soros donates huge amounts of money, to try to instantiate his vision of what the future world should look like.
|
|
| If you change your level, you can change your life and you can change the world. Welcome to Apex Level To Power.
|
|
| 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 teach sheep to become wolves. A challenge to be sure, but one that we answer and answer, with vigor. I am your faithful host Mark Gleason. I welcome you to the program and I invite you to visit you our little corner of the web, at leveltopower.com for more information and to support the podcast.
|
|
| Now, for an episode from the Apex level To Power man on fire series. The episodes where guests find personal power, and we prove that like a masochistic narcissist, you only hurt the ones you love.
|
|
| We’re joined today by a friend of the program Jim Luisi. Jim thank you for joining us today.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Hey, if I’m a friend I’m worried.
|
| Mark Gleason: | With friends like you, who needs enemies? We had some news requests for different topics. Given the recent elections, we have a question or two on George Soros, the shadowy figure. George Soros who funds many of the political action movements, in not just the US, but across the globe. He is kind of a very interesting figure. Certainly he does smack a bit of a bond villain. Shadowy billionaire crushing currencies around the globe, funding different kinds of action groups that are staging protests that turn into riots half the time. It does seem like he certainly has … There’s a lot of questions that surround him in people’s minds.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Definitely the way he’s portrayed by the media, he is vilified to an amazing extent. Which to me makes him a very interesting character. Actually, I think we probably should look at not only George as he grew up, to see what forms his thought process, but also some of the things that his children are doing. Because they are to a large extent following in his footsteps.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Wow. Okay. You’re saying that this is an ever increasing problem?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Well, when I first started to look into George, other than what I was just coming across in the media, my position was basically that he’s a guy who has a belief that political experimentation is critical, and he uses his own money. He puts his money where his mouth is. I went in thinking that, while I may not agree with his politics, I respect the man that puts up his own wealth to effect change, and in my view a capitalist system, or democracy like ours, should be able to be strong enough to withstand any experiment by even the wealthiest individuals. Else we need to better design it next time.
|
| That’s the way I went in looking at it. I have to say, I’d like to take you through the journey of his life, and then pose what we really think of him after we look at that journey. Try to come back around and say, why is it that the media has attacked him so? Why did they go to such extent to mis-characterize him and his efforts?
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Oh boy. This is going to be … I can feel we might have some robust debate topics in here. Because certainly, I don’t think that you can really vilify somebody per say who is going to make their money legally, within the bounds of the law. Even if you’re bending a few laws here or there, and you certainly could say in a free and open system that they can fund whatever kind of political movements they would like. That does not mean they are a force to preserve a free and democratic system. Nor does it mean that what they’re doing is particularly good. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.
|
| I sense that there’s going to be some topics of debate in here which I greatly look forward to.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Definitely. I think we should start with the fact that George was born in 1930 in Hungary. We’re talking about somebody at this point who is now well into their 80s. When we speak of his children, they’re in their early 50s. When we look at someone like his children, we have Alexander who is clearly a very well educated man. Very much into philosophical thought, and then his brother Jonathan who’s also a very intellectual individual. Their sister Andrea and then I don’t know much about his younger brother Gregory. Looking at his children, he did a good job at raising them.
|
| They’re very well educated. They seem to have their heads on straight. When we look at what George has spent most of his whole life doing, it’s actually very … It’s quite a remarkable life.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, certainly. He certainly was cutting his teeth during the cold war, and all the machinations that were going on between super powers. These titans that were struggling across the globe, and toppling governments and warring with each other in various ways and various levels. Somebody who came through all of that, is certainly going to look at the world a lot differently than somebody who grew up in the ‘90s and the new millennia. This is a different world that he comes from that he’s now bringing to this current environment. You have somebody who comes from the communist system.
|
| This is one of the things I’m always amazed by. Many of the people who flee the communist system, I’m not sure if he did. I’m not sure that’s why he left. Many people who do, come to the US and they’re amazed that Americans are advocating for certain kinds of socialist or communist reforms. There are some Ukrainians and Russians I’ve worked with, who are besides themselves that we are pushing for socialized medicine. They’ve lived under it, and they know what the logical end game is for that. They hate it. They ask why would anybody want that?
|
|
| Somebody very close to me who came from a very communist country, she didn’t even believe that there was really an American communist party. Because, she figured this is America. Everybody understands how bad communism is, why would there even be an American communist party? What I’m saying is many people flee those things, but the psychology of somebody who flees something, comes to America and then tries to recreate it, has always fascinated me. You have somebody let’s say, who flees the communist system and I understand Ayn Rand for instance, who flees a communist system and comes to the United States and opposes it.
|
|
| Somebody who flees a socialist or communist system and comes to the United States, and then tries to recreate and advocate for it, it always seemed to me to be a curious psychological tick. It makes sense to me that they were not on the top of the food chain in their old system. They understand that if they’re going to institute a socialist or communist system, that you should be at the top of the pyramid, and therefore perhaps by working here, they think that they’ll be on the right side of that equation. My impression of George Soros, was he came from communist Hungary.
|
|
| Now this is the time of world war two, and Nazi fascism and all kinds of things going on. The young George Soros, what’s his opinion of communism as he is fleeing Europe?
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Let’s begin, because I think your view is commonly held among a lot of people. At least that’s a common portrayal of him. Let’s begin with his parents. George’s mother was a very religious person. In general, he views her as having a very mystical view of the world. Which George himself did not share. George’s father on the other hand, was a very well-grounded imperialist and George’s father, from what George’s memories are, in his auto-biography goes through the detailed accounts of how his dad explained to him the detailed story of his life, almost like a soap opera in installments.
|
| He got to understand what the journey of his father’s life was like. He began as a very ambitious young man. He had volunteered in the Hungarian army in World War one. He was taken prisoner in the Russian front and was sent to Siberia in a prison camp. George’s father had managed to engineer an escape from that prison camp, by selecting 30 people specifically for the skills that they had. He put together his team. The plan was to build a raft and drift to the ocean going down a river. However, his understanding of Geography was probably not as strong as it should have been.
|
|
| After weeks, they had realized that the rivers in Siberia all emptied into the Arctic Ocean. They were heading for a really bad time. They abandoned the raft, and they made their way through the wilderness, and he eventually returned to Hungary, having been a changed man. At that point in time, George recalls him as having lost his ambition. In his new form, he was really focused on ways to enjoy life and he became an attorney. He married into some money and had some property, and he sold it off just before the German occupation, which was a brilliant move. Because the Nazis would have taken everything anyway because they were Jewish.
|
|
| By the time the Nazis had taken over the country, George’s father had wisely arranged for false identity papers for his family, and even a large number of his friends and family around him. By the time George was 14 years of age, he really learned the art of survival. At the age of 15, now the Russians pushed the Germans out, and his dad asks him at this point, ‘’Are you ready to strike out on your own?’’ George says, ‘’Well, I’ve got two options here. There’s nothing really here in Hungary for me. I might as well either, go to Russia and learn that system. Because I don’t know much about that. Or I could go to England and try to make a life there.’’
|
|
| His dad was able to explain to him how the system worked in Russia. After that detailed explanation, George chose England. George then finally got his passport approved at the age of 17, and he moved to England and got a job in a financial company. He’s familiar with the drawbacks of a Soviet communist system from his father. He chooses in his young adolescence to move to England. He was later united with his parents in England in 1956, and his dad died in ’68 at the age of 75, and his mom became independent. His mom went to college at the age of 60. Then died at the age of 86 in 1989. His parents were actually quite amazing.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | He leaves Hungary because his father encouraged him to go out and have his way in the world?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. His choices were Russia or England. After learning what the system was like in Russia, he knew he didn’t want to go there.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, why? Russia at the time was what? A communist?
|
| Jim Luisi: | A communist. Yeah.
|
| Mark Gleason: | He decided that communism was not a good system for him to thrive in. An open and free liberal smaller liberal democracy with capitalism, free markets would be a place that he might be able to make his fortune?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Correct.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Young George Soros chooses the free markets over the closed markets, and heads to England.
|
| Jim Luisi: | His terminology, he refers to these as an open society versus a closed society. He felt that an open society is far more beneficial to people, than a closed society is. Any dictatorship, or any essentially controlled system is a closed society where people don’t really get to control their lives. They don’t get to vote, they don’t get to direct how they are going to spend their resistance.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. That is something that we could all get behind.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. It starts off very, very sensibly. His brother, he has a brother which is four years older. When George was young, these two boys apparently fought like cats and dogs. Later on, when George was 24 years of age, his brother was 28, they became great friends and his brother started an engineering company. He actually was responsible for revolutionizing the way technology could work to handle bulk material management at ports. George and his brother collaborated on a number of financial transactions which were very successful.
|
| His brother had a design that in a small number of years, it was handling a third of the world’s trade for bulk materials. His brother is considered a genius in his own right. Here’s two brothers who obviously George … George is extremely intelligent. Here we have his brother also who is also extremely intelligent.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. They go into their 30s in London in England, with some money in their pocket because they built up some successful business, and then what happens?
|
| Jim Luisi: | At this point, George’s thought process is very interesting. He speaks very heavily about how he was influenced by a philosopher … A philosopher named Karl Popper.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Oh, goodness gracious.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Who from his point of view was a great teacher and philosopher who was anti-fascist and anti-communist. That’s an interesting piece. This is where he gets the terminology for open society. Because Popper was an advocate of open society. His book Open Society and its Enemies was in George’s words, was a revelation to his way of thinking. When George started out, he struggled in the beginning like many of us starting in the sales … First he started in sales of a tobacco products company.
|
| Then he was hired by a financial institution where the managing director hired him because he was Hungarian. Listeners should probably go back to your excellent podcast on in group preference for a little insight into this. This was probably the only way on earth George was going to get a foothold in the financial industry. In England, George did not do good in the trainee in the financial company. Even in a variety of roles, he failed in one job after another. One of other trainees, whose father owned a small brokerage firm in New York, mentioned to George that there was a position opened up in his father’s company.
|
|
| Later in ’56, George got a job in a company called FM Mayor, and with a visa at the young age of 26 as an international over charged trader. He was focusing on oil stocks. When the political landscape changed in the Suez region caused that business to decline precipitously, George created a business specialization called internal [obitrouge 00:19:48]. Basically, he saw stock issues came out combining, or security issues came out combining common stocks, warrants and bonds that were not available immediately to be traded separately. George figured out a way to trade them separately while they were in the process of being securitized.
|
|
| This at the time, was a great leap over what other companies were doing. George did this trading for two years, and then joined a company called Worth Timing Company, as a combination analyst and trader. As an analyst in 1959 to 1961, George produced investment data about European investments. He understood Europe really well. He understood the politics, he understood the way companies were able to operate there, and these investment analysis were consumed by companies like Driver’s fund and JP Morgan. This was really what he considers to be his first big career breakthrough.
|
|
| For example, George was the first to show that German banks stock portfolios were worth foreign access of the capitalization. They were able to make a tremendous profit on that. After that, George focused on the insurance industry where there were companies that had many cross holdings. Where they traded a deep discount from the values that would be valid if you took into account the cross holdings. All these stuff in the US at that point in time, was original work. Then President Kennedy introduced a 15% surge charge on foreign investments to protect the balance of payments and that business was destroyed just with a stroke of a pen.
|
|
| These lessons early in George’s life, showed him the connection between politics and economics. Then from ’63 to ’66, George spent his focus on rewriting his philosophical dissertation, and philosophy was a real foundation for George. As we look at philosophy, we look at it as something that, in order to be guided in life, you need to have a philosophy. You need to be aware of philosophies. As it should be, for many who wish to be successful. It’s one of the perks of the thought process that one should encompass and embrace. Some day we should probably discuss when a philosophy is important, and when it is not.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | That was very, very helpful that background. Right away I begin to understand more about where he’s coming from. Karl Popper himself, I believe started off as a pretty hardcore communist. Somewhere in an uprising, a lot of his friends were killed or something. He ended up turning away from hardcore communism, and moving on to something more which is called social liberalism. Which is a center left, you still believe in a free market to a certain extent. You believe in individual liberty to a certain extent, but you feel it is the proper role of government to go about social justice.
|
| Using government as a means to adjust inequality throughout the system. That’s in contrast to a true free marketer who would say we live in a meritocracy that there can be a social safety net, but at the end of the day, the government should not be in a role of taking property that some people earn, and giving it to people who didn’t earn that property. Because that is the road to disaster. Once that happens, then everybody tries to grab the gears of government to take other people’s property. You have these two different center left, center right philosophies.
|
|
| It’s interesting that Karl Popper starts off as a communist, decides it’s too radical, ends up backi8ng off to the social liberalism. Where he does believe we’ll have our golden goose and we’ll eat it too. Which is that we’ll have the free markets. We’ll have this open democracy, but we need to have government playing a role in social justice. Now you have George Soros who comes along from a communist background. Is influenced by Karl Popper, and also ends up it seems, in that same mode and that explains why he’s active in American politics.
|
|
| Which is … Not in American politics. It explains how he’s active in worldwide politics. Which is a very center left approach. It’s very much about agitating for a larger government role in distribution of value and wealth. To use government to right social wrongs. It’s interesting. Right off the bat, it begins to take shape where George Soros is coming from.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. He feels that he is a philosopher, possibly a failed philosopher in his own right. What he does is he wrote his own full philosophical essay entitled The Burden of Consciousness. He printed it by using the copying machines at the Worth Timing Company. They ended up being his publisher in a strange way. This is like in ’61, ’62. Really ended up being just a re-gurgitation of Karl Popper, but George still felt that he had something important and original to say. One of the key things about George is that, his philosophy is that when you look at so many things in life, and markets are one of them.
|
| Is that markets are imperfect. In his view, everybody’s understanding of the world is inherently imperfect. What he does, is he looks at the gap between what is reality and this imperfect view.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Can you give me the name of this essay again?
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s called The Burden of Consciousness. When this gap is large enough, it becomes an important factor in determining say, the course of events. He feels that history … Historic events are really made when the participants’ errors, or the biases, or misconceptions collide with reality. This philosophy has helped George in life especially when times were difficult, but it also helped him in understanding investment opportunities as well. One of the things that separate George from I think most of the other paradigms in investing, is he has this fund called the quantum fund.
|
| George uses what he terms macro investing. Macro investing is basically the concept that you look at the larger political trends. Instead of picking companies here and there, he would pick how industries are going to react or be affected by certain things that are happening in society, in politics. Especially where there is a pent up distortion of reality. If the government interferes say for example. The government creates an distortion of reality, and that would be a perfect example of something that George would recognize in his framework, and look to take advantage of, from a of speculation perspective.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | There’s something called The General Theory of Reflexivity.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes. Reflexive, George looks at things as you have facts which are true. You have facts which are false, and you have facts which are reflexive. The differences is that, when you look at a fact that is true, it’s verifiable. There’s either something in nature, or something that you can do scientifically to prove that something is true. Or something is false. Then there are these things which are not necessarily true or false, or you don’t know the degree to which the true or false. There’s no way to determine that. According to the way George looks at the world, these reflexive facts or these reflexive concepts, represent the overwhelming majority of what people make their decisions upon.
|
| If you look at say something like, let’s say the temperature of this room is 70. We can take a thermometer and measure, if we’re worried about the accuracy of that thermometer, we can get five thermometers and see if they all say the same thing. Whereas, there are reflexive facts like, I love my cat. That may be true, may not be true, there’s no way to prove it one way or another. There’s no way to determine the degree to which you may love your cat. There are all of these many facts that you operate on in your life, that you are going to make decisions using this information. You take this information from other people.
|
|
| You take it from many other sources and when you or I listen to things, I know we’re very careful trying to identify what is truly a fact and what is just an opinion. George has built this into a whole way of thinking. That this is a normal filter that he puts things through. That when he gets information, he knows what is verifiable, what is true, what is false, and what is all of these stuff that is reflexive? Which is now suspect. If all of these stuff is reflexive, he looks for what is reality compared to this reflexive view of the world? If that view is only slightly off of reality, there’s not much opportunity to be had there.
|
|
| If there’s a large gap, there’s going to be a reckoning, and he knows that there’s got to be some way to take advantage of that from a speculative perspective.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. That seems pretty non-controversial.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. George’s view of reality’s always changing. It’s a moving target because as we make decisions, we’re changing reality. It’s an interesting thought process that you go through. As you see what other people are doing, as they make decisions, and as you make decisions, you’re changing reality. There’s still the reflexive view of the world. The discrepancy between that reflexive view and reality is a key component. People really make decisions based upon their interpretation of reality and all of these decisions affect the reality, and further change reality. Possibly making the gap wider or bringing it together.
|
| Mark Gleason: | In his writings that I pulled up to our discussion, he discusses this idea of reflexivity. He says, ‘’I can state the core idea in two relatively simple propositions. One, is that in situations I have thinking participants. The participants’ view of the world, is always partial and distorted.’’ Which is what you indicated. You can’t know everything. Man is fallible. Is a way to say that. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence a situation to which they relate. Because false views, lead to inappropriate actions. He ends up saying later, these are … At first blush appear to be pure common sense.
|
| Then he says, ‘’This is the principle of reflexivity. For instance, treating drug addicts as criminals, creates criminal behavior. It misconstrues the problem, and interferes with the proper treatment of addicts.’’ That’s another example declaring that government is bad, tends to make for bad government. That is taking an additional step which is interesting, but I don’t know for sure if it’s true.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Just to go a little deeper into his philosophy, he refers to the interaction between the interpretation of reality, and the effect of making decisions based upon this interpretation of this reality. As a two way reflexive feedback mechanism. Where the two functions work in opposite directions, so they occasionally can interfere with one another. George starts off by saying that, he himself must be imperfect. He’s always questioning his decisions. I know we spoke briefly once about super forecasting. Super forecasters have an uncanny ability to be highly accurate within their field of their expertise, to make predictions.
|
| He seems to be stating a lot of the same principles that the most talented super forecasters tend to cite. Which is that they take a problem apart into its various components, and look at the probability of each of those components happening and being accurate. As more information comes in, you’re constantly adjusting. You’re understanding of the validity of each one of those components and what they earn. You’re rapidly adjusting. You don’t become married to the concept. You don’t try to justify it, or you don’t try to justify yourself. Instead, you take the position that most likely, you’re flawed, and you’re constantly looking for these flaws.
|
|
| The thought process itself is that of a super forecaster constantly adjusting their assumptions. As information comes in, try to get a more accurate prediction of what’s going to happen.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | I agree with his principles of fallibility and reflexivity up to a certain point. His application of them, for instance, his statement where he says, ‘’Declaring that government is bad, tends to make for bad government.’’ Well, if you’re of them position, if you’re libertarian for instance, and you’re of the position that the larger government is, the worse it is for individual liberty. By definition of what government is, which is limitation on individual liberty. Advocating for that position, and saying it is bad to have too much government, we shall bless government.
|
| That does not necessarily follow that you’re going to make bad government. That does not necessarily follow, that by calling government bad, you’re government is then going to become bad, where before it was not. Which is his implication. His previous example is similar, where he says, ‘’ Treating drug addicts as criminals, creates criminal behavior.’’ That’s a bit of cleaner example at least, because if drug addicts … If you treat anybody as a criminal, that may encourage certain kinds of criminal behavior. Because you take away some of the stigma of being a criminal. If you treat them like a criminal anyway, anybody regardless of whether they’re an addict or not, then you may …
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. I think likewise that if we treat government officials like criminals, that the same type of effect happens there as well. I do agree with you that government is bad, thereby makes it bad is somewhat tenuous.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, declaring that government is bad, tends to make for bad government. That seems to be a reach. The way he states it. The most generous way I can interpret that, if you’re always criticizing your government, how terrible it is, perhaps they too lose the incentive. They try to win you over, and therefore is do whatever they want, and therefore they become the exact bad thing that you were trying to criticize. I suppose what he means, and the most generous way, interpreting that, that’s all I can think of. It’s interesting. I think it explains a lot about his approach. So far I remain unconvinced. I can be convinced though.
|
| Let’s push a bit [crosstalk 00:34:13].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | We have to go a little deeper. It’s interesting because at this point, my thought process by the time I got to this point, was that I could see George already having learnt the lessons of how the political dimensions can affect the widening of the gap between people’s perceptions, of where things are versus where reality sits. That can itself create investment opportunities. Hence, if you can push it in a direction, to your advantage for an economic gain, that in my interpretation at this point, my thought was that maybe he was willing nudge things in good or bad directions. Because there was a potential profit to be had, that was bigger.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. Now, again I’m not sure how much of this is original. He made a huge amount of money, so maybe he was the first to see some of these opportunities. Every single salesman and or conman, essentially does the same thing. You’re trying to build up the perception of value, beyond what the actual value is. The difference between those two things, when you get paid is your profit. Certainly some salesmen operate that way. Now, if he takes it to an art form of saying, ‘’Wow why do this on a one for one basis? Why not have a massive propaganda campaign where you convince a whole lot of people to do certain things?’’
|
| Then that causes this lack of sync with reality. Then there’s opportunity. Or, if we didn’t do anything, we just came across a propaganda situation, where people had a distorted view of reality, that’s what we call a bubble. Where there’s this huge opportunity or potential to make money. It’s funny that he might stumble upon these opportunities early in his career, but I think probably created some of those opportunities later in his career. Because he has this propaganda arms that he funds. He learns the value in having his own outlets who put forth his own message.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. At some point in my thought process, I showed the view that you just stated. I agree that George is looking for the cases where a large gap forms say, between the perception of reality, and the reality of … There’s perception, and there’s reality, and the bigger gap that exists there, are really things that create history. It’s the shock wave of when perception crashes towards reality in one big jacked motion. George is extremely thoughtful as far as he thinks about the way people think. He thinks about the interpretation and the actions of all the major stakeholders.
|
| From their actions, he’s trying to discern what is it that their beliefs are? Their interpretations of reality are? It has a very uncanny resemblance to some aspects of what we look at. In being able to see what kinds of personalities we’re dealing with, and how to make sure that we don’t fall prey to somebody else’s manipulation or try to remain empowered.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Exactly. Putting his political conclusions aside, his methodology is very, very similar to what the Apex Level To Power Level is. Understanding that you are fallible, and you’re guard against fallibility is to see as many perspectives as you can.
|
| Jim Luisi: | And self-inspection.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yes. Because by the very nature of you taking another perspective, you’re able to examine your original perspective and see it from the outside for flaws. Certainly his approach is sound. The problem is … See in Level To Power, we have this concept of good level two, and Newer level two. The good newer courses and it been in the eye of the beholder. If you’re in level two, somebody who can see the game. You can see those different paradigms. You can see it’s possible to manipulate those paradigms. Then there’s a temptation to do that for good or for ill. A counselor for instance might be able to manipulate quote on quote, for good.
|
| Whereas a conman, would manipulate for the ill certainly of the person that they were conning. The salesperson probably falls in between those two things somewhere. He undoubtedly has his level two capacity. What he chooses to do with it, is pretty fascinating. Funding propaganda outlets.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. We’re going to get to that. Because that’s … It’s very interesting. Here we have an LTP. We look at not only the interpretation of key stakeholders, but we also look at the interpretations of people that have the ability to see the interpretation of stakeholders. We have the level ones, we have the level twos. We separate out the level twos, and also the level threes. George is to a good extent doing the same thing. Second guessing people who are actors in any sort of a system. Right now the media places tremendous amounts of the number of accusations that George Soros has wielding power.
|
| One of the interesting things KeyPoint said is that, whenever he’s made any sort of a speculative bet on something, it either is in the direction that the society is going and will shift it over to very quickly, and hence he’s right and he’s going to make money. If it’s a direction that society is not going to go, and het gets it wrong, he’s going to lose money. He doesn’t have the ability to change the direction. He just has the ability to take advantage of whatever the direction is going to be anyway.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s not true. He funds many, many, many of his own media … Media Matters is one of his outlets. Which is basically a pure propaganda tool that he created, because he was opposing George Bush, and George Bush’s international policy. That is not sitting there, certainly not as an investor. If you’re an investor, and you’re looking at the way things are going, and you’re making speculative bets. That is how most investors are, because most investors cannot influence the outcome. He obviously tries to influence the outcome with propaganda.
|
| My objection to what he does, my understanding of what he does let’s say, I don’t have a problem if he funds let’s say, the Center for American Progress which is a center left policy think tank. They will write the papers on why a left ideology in regards to education or healthcare. The real brass tax. How things would really work, and positioning things, writing the laws, making recommendations. That’s all solid stuff. That’s reality. Now, they have their opinion and maybe right or wrong, but at least they’re making attempts to put forward the real positions and have an open dialogue about the current society that we should live in.
|
|
| That’s different than this network of shadowy operatives they have. Where … Media Matters is one run by David Brock. That’s a fairly despicable organization. It’s not just me saying this. For instance, people on the right certainly would despise it. People on the left who are supporters of Bernie Sanders, learn to despise the last election cycle as well. Because David Brock was aligned with the Clintons. The things they would do, this is not putting forward a policy paper. This is trolling the internet, suppressing stories, gaming search engines of bad stories about certain candidates don’t appear high in the search engines.
|
|
| Having a bunch of different websites that self-refer to each other. Creating fake news so that you have it published one place, referencing another place, referencing another place so that it appears legitimate. This is sheer propaganda.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Let’s throw a little more fuel to that fire a moment before we take it down. George stated explicitly on Soros that he’s most interested in events like regime change and revolution. I have to say in all honesty, that saying that he’s interested in this, and causing this in the US would be to really take him out of context. I didn’t realize that until more inspection. He notes that self-reinforcing interpretations eventually become self-defeating. If they don’t self-correct, then they eventually lead to significant historical burst. Key pints to things like the housing bubble. Any bubble of any type is basically is something like that.
|
| These bubbles have a formative period, and then usually a period of acceleration, and then they finally meet the moment with the truth, where that nasty thing called reality intervenes. He needs to try to time it, so he’s in there at the right time.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. If you’re trying to catch as a speculative investor, you want to try to catch events so you can be profitable. That’s different than using your wealth to push events toward a certain direction, or a certain outcome. Then betting on it. Right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. As he points out the opposite trend when something takes a correction, the opposite trend can be a more powerful reversal causing catastrophic acceleration backwards. Which is basically a crash. Those crashes are by far the most profitable events. You can wait a long time and do nothing, and just sit there anticipating those events that everybody is ignoring that is going to happen.
|
| Mark Gleason: | There’s a lot more money remaining in the falling market, than in a rising market. That’s for sure.
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s an interesting point. George didn’t create the imbalance of the Lire’s value or the sterling’s value to the dollar in the market. He really points to the fact that the government authorities really did that all by themselves. The speculators are there simply to exploit the flaws in the rate setting mechanisms. To avoid the large flaws that authorities create, they could have just let market rates determine what the value should be. The political agendas of nations cause these free markets to become manipulated. If the manipulation’s large enough, then the speculators can take risks for very great profits.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. I have no problem with that. If countries are trying to distort reality, by saying that their currency for instance has higher value than it does, and then trying to prop it up artificially. Then yes, they risk the weight of the market crashing them for that distortion. That’s simply a free market function.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Great. Now starts the beginning of where I started to have a touch of a paradigm shift on George. George donates … Or he started donating sizeable amounts of money to combat communism, which he terms closed societies, in his native home Hungary. He had great success there. He created charitable foundations before he was well known. Or before he was extremely wealthy. He was a low level millionaire at the point in time when he started to create these foundations. Because, he was so impassioned with trying to facilitate open society and defeat closed societies in Eastern Europe.
|
| When he did these things, he did them carefully without taking any personal credit, and he expanded his charitable foundations into Poland and China. Then to 25 countries mostly in Eastern Europe. What he’s found is that, as he became more wealthy, that success, that great success tended to bring him under more and more attack by other people. Once you make yourself different enough from everybody else, you’re basically out there to be attacked.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, yeah. That’s … Hold on, hold on. That’s inherently true, but when you are actually crashing countries’ currencies … Look, wasn’t he convicted? Where in the story was he convicted of insider trading?
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think France had some sort of a case against him for insider trading for one of the French companies. I am not sure where that ended up.
|
| Mark Gleason: | According to the internet, it was upheld that he has an insider trading conviction in France. It was upheld by the highest court. He appealed it all the way 2006, and then went to the European convention on human rights, and protested that. He lost that as well. Apparently he does have a conviction of insider trading.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes. The French don’t like him.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is the thing. If you are somebody who sees the levers of power, and he’s clearly level two, and you don’t draw a distinction between, there’s simply reality, and there’s simply distortions of reality from which you can profit. Well, then little things like international laws or insider trading, those are simply obstacles to be managed. If you need information, if you can get that information, you can make a ton of money, so what’s standing in your way? I would say in the French case for instance, he apparently had inside knowledge that there was going to be a group that was going to be involved in a takeover defense … A take-over attempt of societies general, in France.
|
| Therefore, he bet extraordinarily heavy on that idea, and that’s exactly what happened. Which is the very nature of insider trading. The whole issue of insider trading of course is that an open markets, a free and fair market has to have equal information for all people, so they all can bet. It is one thing if you’re sitting in your living room and you have access to the same internet everybody has, and you are trading on the information, and you make a bag of money. It’s something else if you hire private detectives, and bug people’s offices, or whatever you do. Or in this case, you have friends who you made arrangements with, that they’re going to do something so you can profit wildly from it, and maybe pay them off later.
|
|
| That is not a free and fair market. That is simply cronyism and rigging of the market. The same thing like taking steroids before a game, or rigging the World Series. There’s a line here is what I’m trying to say. There’s a line between … I appreciate his perspective to say, ‘’Look, let’s make the money, and then we’ll worry about everything else later.’’ This is where some of these lines start being crossed. We go from, well there’s some dislocations out there in the universe, and if you find a dislocation, a lot people have a view point of reality, it’s different than reality, and there’s a big enough gap there you can profit from it.
|
|
| Well, I think we can all agree on that. I think that we can all agree that that’s an excellent approach for investing. The moment you say, ‘’Yeah, there’s a dislocation there,’’ that’s not quite big enough. What can I do to lead people down the garden path, to create a larger bubble than existed before? So that then I can cash in. You’ve crossed a moral line there, and my impression is he’s crossed that line many, many times in his career.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Let’s start to take that apart. I think there’s two key points that I think are worth addressing in this conversation. One is, is the accusation that he tried to crash the British economy. The other is that he uses his funds to fund radical leftist groups that are quite harmful.
|
| Mark Gleason: | For the record, crashing the British pound, I don’t have a problem with that. There’s no international law against hedging against a nation’s currency. Him betting against the currency because he thought that it was undervalued or overvalued, is simply currency speculation. As long as he does not have inside information, or as long as he’s not paying somebody off in the British office to give him … Feed him information that other people don’t have in the free market. I’m saying morally here. I know in the reality it happens. Where people who are very wealthy are able to get information that nobody else can. As you influence government policy.
|
| Jim Luisi: | The position you just stated, that would be at odds with many of the views of people out there who think he’s like a criminal for crashing the pounds. I think the key point there is that, when you look at how he built his companies, he trained people in his own system of thought. He didn’t want people who just knew how to make money. He didn’t want people who were just smart. He wanted people he could indoctrinate with his view of looking at things, and make sure that he could trust them to follow a system of his thought.
|
| If he didn’t understand the way somebody worked, even if they were successful, he eliminated them out of the organization. Because he wanted a very specific style of investing. In 1989, he delegated control over to a gentleman called Stanley Druckenmiller. Stanley was actually the one who brought to him the opportunity he saw the way the British government had been distorting the value of the British sterling. In 1992, George’s company made a billion dollars just on one event. It’s interesting that people blame George himself, but it was just one of the people who worked for him. Who was one of many people who bet on the pound crashing.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is not helping. Whatever case you’re trying to make. This is frivolous. You’re saying that, ‘’Oh it wasn’t really Hitler, it was that darn Goebbels who came to him and said, maybe we should go do this.’’ Hitler said, ‘’Oh all right.’’ You got Hitler all wrong. It really was Goebbels the entire time whispering in his ears. Look its George Soros’s money. It’s George Soros’s company. Of course he wasn’t doing this all himself. Of course somebody came to him and said, ‘’Hey, there’s an opportunity here to make money, right? It’s neither here nor there.’’ I have no problem with the currency speculation on its face …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Nor do I. [crosstalk 00:50:58].
|
| Mark Gleason: | Now, there is a bit of people I think who feel in their gut a hypocrisy. On one side he’s saying how he’s for the common man, and he’s going to establish these propaganda arms to move democracy in a way that helps the common man. When many of the people that get hurt, in a currency crash, are the working class people. Who have … Who suffer [crosstalk 00:51:20].
|
| Jim Luisi: | The currency crash was going to happen one way or another.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m sure that was his view.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I didn’t believe that that is also true. Wherever there’s a manipulation by the government. He could have just not bet on it. It could have happened anyway. He would not have made anything.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I think, there’s all kinds of way to look at that. What I’m saying is, I think people feel the hypocrisy from, on one hand you say you’re for the working class, yet you are doing things which ultimately hurt the working class. I would argue as a free marketer that could be performing a service essentially, by removing bubbles from the system before they get too big. However, there are other things he could have done that would not have made him money. He could have used some propaganda campaigns to try to move the government policy in a different direction to reduce the bubble.
|
| He didn’t have to try and crash it and cash in for a billion dollars. He chose to do that.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | He wasn’t there to do favors for the British government. He was there to make a profit.
|
| Mark Gleason: | No, but you’re not doing favors for the British government, you’re there … What I’m saying is, you can’t wrap yourself in the cloak of the working class man of the people, and then decide to take actions which ultimately can hurt the working class people.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I don’t look at it that way at all. I don’t look at it as he is acting against the working class on one side, and saying that he’s for the working class, on the other side. I think when he states that he’s taking action or doing things for people, what he’s doing is he’s putting money into fighting closed societies. He’s putting money into fighting communism, Nazism, and when he puts money into these funds, what he found was that, he had to re-adjust the management staff a number of times because it just kept going the wrong direction. He found that quite often, he didn’t have the bandwidth to make decisions about how the money should be spent in these countries.
|
| He tried to set the direction, and have these people … He tried to find people who were likeminded with him. Then, he tried to allow them to make all of the decisions, the tactical decisions on the ground to affect change in a positive direction. In some cases, these people were corrupt, and he had to realize that things were going in the wrong direction, and he had to clear them out. Put a new management regime in there. Sometimes the same thing happened again. He had to clear them out. What he found, was that there was quite a number of cases where money went into the wrong types of things, that he would never have supported, but that these organizations ended up doing so.
|
|
| You might be two steps forward, and one step back. When I look at that type of problem, especially at his age. He is not involved in the choosing of what organizations to fund in the US down to the level of worrying about, did Black Lives Matter get money out of one of his foundations. Or did one of this other radical groups get money from one of his foundations. I thought that maybe one of his children had, because they’re stepping into the role of being a philanthropist now as well.
|
|
| I thought maybe one of his children had maybe directed money there as well. I started looking at them. When you look at his children, at least as far as what you could find on Alexander, who’s a very thoughtful, introspective person who understands things like philosophy, and poetry and politics. He’s a real intelligent thinker. When you look at Jonathan, who has a clear stance against the corruption in elections because too much money goes to certain candidates, and so how do you control that. In some countries you have a limit on the amounts of money that could be donated.
|
|
| In other countries, you have limits on the amounts of money that can be spent, and he feels all those methods are flawed. There are always all these ways of getting around it. It’s a very imperfect type of systems to try and control that. That all these things lead to corruption. I do look at all the things like what happened with these radical groups, is that yes, some money went to the wrong people. Some of these people should have been fired. He’s not in the driver’s seat for these stuff. He’s empowering people, and sometimes they’re just the wrong people.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. That is absolutely not the case. That’s absolutely not the case. You have … I’ll go back to my original example. If he was funding let’s say, The Center for American Progress, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, the liberal groups ACLU. Which he probably does. I think he does fund those groups. Those are policy groups. Now, if some of the money that went there, ended up funding a riot in Baltimore, because someone took the petty cash and 20 grand went missing somewhere, and it ended up funding some other radical organization somewhere, well then you could try and say, ‘’Look, he did not in any way donate this money and fund these groups with the intention of either violence and or propaganda.
|
| He has serious policy wonk who wants to put forward serious policy.’’ That is not at all what he does. He does fund some policy groups. He also funds sheer propaganda arms. He created out of whole cloth, Media Matters, and a whole network, constellation of groups like it for the sheer purpose of combating what they saw as George Bush’s wrong headedness around the world. Now, just like I …
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Oh, I would agree that he’s liberal. He’s certainly not …
|
| Mark Gleason: | Liberal, he went out and funded groups that create fake news that try to rig search criteria. That troll comment on websites. That try to up gin up controversy. False controversy. Sheer propaganda. I can conjure a defense for that, and say that he understands the game. That in order to win any fight, you have to win the virtual war. You also need to win the propaganda war. Because you can be right on the facts, and you can lose propaganda. I can conjure up a defense where I could say, ‘’Well, maybe he thought he’s equivalent on the right was pushing forward some propaganda that was winning over the American people.’’
|
| That had to be combated. I think the Media Matters stated mission is to combat distortions of conservatives in the media. I think that’s exactly what their mission statement is. Now, the way they do that though is not by some innocent fact checking. They do that with a smear propaganda full-fledged operation of their own. To say that he doesn’t do that, cannot possibly be true. He deliberately created out of whole cloth this … I think he even says he did it. He created all of these organizations to combat George Bush. Again, I think we can argue that it’s because who better than him understands the value of propaganda?
|
|
| He is the one who sees how government propaganda is creating bubbles. He’s the one who sees how he uses propaganda. He can push matters in situations where he can profit, even more than he would have profited before. He’s not an innocent by stander speculating on events over which he has no control. At some point, many years ago, he had enough money that he himself could influence events as long as he had the proper mechanisms in place.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | He had money go into Akon, and he had money into the variety of the groups that you and I have great disdain for. I don’t see him as somebody who’s trying to crash the US economy. I don’t see him as somebody that’s trying to make the country go communist, and I don’t see him trying to make the country go Nazism. I do see him …He’s got over $30,000,000 in wealth, and he’s giving large amounts of this money away. Now he has his children giving it away as well. As he points out, sometimes some good stuff happens. Sometimes bad stuff happens.
|
| I think with the US political frontier, there are probably some good cases where you and I would recognize that these organizations that he created, are quite contrary to our political … Our politics. It’s still within the realm of democracy, is for the liberals. Whereas, we tend to be a little bit more libertarian or conservative.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure, but look, this show is about the levers of power. This show is about people who wield the levers power. He wields the levers of power. He wields the levers of power when it comes to money. When it comes to using money to buy influence. When it comes to buying politicians. When it comes to funding different groups. When it comes to staging mobs of people to protest something. Ginning up these kind of fake mobs. These rented mobs that show up and do stuff. These are all within his realm of him trying to influence events. [crosstalk 01:00:01].
|
| Jim Luisi: | I have a friend who was swept up in one of those mobs, who was severely injured. They did nothing in Florida.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. To betray him, as the philosopher king who doesn’t really know where his money is going anymore, is just absolutely in our position to everything I’ve ever seen about the man over the past 10, 20 years. Even what I’ve read in preparation for this. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Now, is he a maniacal bond villain? No, I’m willing to accept that he has a center left view point, and that he is a level two who is skilled in the levers of power. Understands that to move herds in certain directions, that emotion works a lot better than reason.
|
| Therefore, he puts forward some reason over here, and for everybody else who’s just the herd level one, he puts forward … He spews forth out of this network of organizations emotional propaganda, and moral entrepreneurs with these moral panics over ridiculous nonsense. Because he feels, when it all comes out in the wash, it will help him move the herd in the direction he wants it to go. That’s where everything I think you’ve said confirms that. That’s why I’m disagreeing with your opinion that he sits just on a mountain top and doesn’t know what’s happening. He knows exactly what’s happening.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | No. I don’t think he knows exactly what’s happening. I do think he is far left of us, and I do think that the groups he has created, are distasteful to our values.
|
| Mark Gleason: | He handpicked David Brock to run Media Matters, which is a sheer propaganda organization. Not a news organization, they are supposedly a media watch dog organization. In the last election cycle, they let cameras in their organization. You saw banks of people and computers, putting fake comments in. Good comments for Hilary, bad comments for whoever. Because trying to sway public opinion of people who read those, and try to bury bad stories of Hilary with the same search term.
|
| There was a New York Times article on Hilary Clinton, with certain search terms. They would bury with fake stories of websites, to make the search engines move that legitimate story down. This is not somebody who is [crosstalk 01:02:08].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, and I can add to these stories as well, but I think the point I’m trying to make is, not that this guy is an angel. I’m just saying that the common belief that he’s trying to crash a western civilization to make it go communist, is completely false. That in his view, communism is a failed system. It’s a bankrupt system, and it’s proven to have been detrimental to the people involved in it. That’s one distinction. Do I agree with his politics? No. Of course not. As you don’t. Did he push for liberal values in this election cycle more to try to get Hilary elected? Did he take advantage of it economically? Or is this truly his value system as far as his politics go, and it was so important to Hilary to win, that he took all these rather drastic and rather despicable measures.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. I’m sure it’s both. I’m certainly prepared to accept that he rejected communism, but he still thinks that socialism is a pretty good alternative. Some kind of socialist democracy, hybrid that in his mind is probably the right balance between a free society, and this open society where governments are in charge of doing social justice. I think that you’re inevitably going to slide into communism anyway because you’re on that road.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, I agree. Dancing so close to the edge because it’s so far left, that you could easily slide into that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Governments accumulate power even when you trial for the free society. Over time, governments just become stronger and stronger and stronger. I’m perfectly prepared to say that he has that as an endpoint. He wants to have a center left open society as he calls it. Then, he uses his wealth to try to move things in that direction. Not only in the day light, and in the factual …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes. I’d say open left but not center left.
|
| Mark Gleason: | In the … Well, not the center left, all I’m saying that’s not a radical … Radical left is communist. Center left means you’re tending towards the center, but you still believe in a free market economy, but you’re left of center if you want strong … Strong government intervention in this [crosstalk 01:04:21].
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think he’s closer to brilliant than Hilary is as far as his politics go.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Oh, I think so.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Bernie’s far left of center.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. There’s no question. What I’m saying is … But I don’t have to agree with the man’s politics to look at the mechanism of actual levers of power that he’s using. That’s what people need to be made aware of. When the wool’s being pulled over your eyes, you need to be pointed out. Here‘s a perfect case where you have a shadowy figure, who actually is funding a lot of these groups to influence you unduly. In ways that you do not even realize you’re being influenced. Now, is he the only one doing it? No. There’s an equivalent I’m sure on the right.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I’d be hard pressed to see whose has influential, but [crosstalk 01:05:03]. He’s like the twenty third richest man in the world. There’s 22 other possibilities who might be able to do better than him.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Not anymore. 20 … Not if he has $30,000,000.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. 30,000,000. Can we look it up?
|
| Mark Gleason: | No. He must be top 10.
|
| Jim Luisi: | We’re going to look up where he is.
|
| Mark Gleason: | He’s one of the 30 richest people in the world.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Where is he in the ranking? I think there are a number of people who are … No you or I, but there are a number of people who are wealthier. If you count our likes on YouTube, then we’re much wealthier than he is.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Number 10 has 42,000,000.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I came in just thinking the man was trying to drive us into some sort of a collapse. Or some sort of a communist society. I learnt that he is not. Clearly …
|
| Mark Gleason: | Number 32.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Number 32, so there’s a [crosstalk 01:05:56].
|
| Mark Gleason: | As of the beginning of last year, it says number 32. He … They declare his worth at 21,000,000.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Oh, he dropped?
|
| Mark Gleason: | As of the beginning of last year. He just lost a billion dollars on the election
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s right. I had the general opinion of the man in the street. I knew that was the sense of it, but I didn’t necessarily know any details behind that. As I learned more about it, I became more measured in how I position him. I can’t classify him as a bonafide bond villain. We’re going to have to look for somebody else to give that award to. Because he’s fails to make the grade.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is one of the grey areas for me. What he does … On the left in general, the classic market strategy is you divide by class, and you divide by gender, and you divide by race. You cause as much friction as you can between those things. Then you control it. Because it’s Saul Alinsky is, this is Classic Marxism. You feed envy, you feed all these things, and you bring about revolution. Then you pick up the pieces of the revolution and build your perfect society. This is the blueprint format. I don’t know what his intentions are, but I do know that he wants something left of center as you said.
|
| His tactics, and his propaganda arms seem to be trying to push the US down this path of class division, and class warfare. Building envy between groups. That is a wild fire which can easily burn out of peoples’ control. People who think they can harness it for a political gain. Which some politicians do. They try to play with the race baiting, thinking that they can ride that wave and they can keep a lid on it. Well, that’s not how these things work. It burns out of control. Whether it’s white racist, trying to gin up hatred so they can win an election. Or whether it’s black racist, trying to gin up anger towards other people. This spills over. This explodes. There are riots. People die.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think a lot of this though, is syntagmatic of the last president that was in office for the last eight years. When Obama came into office, many people like myself felt that this was an opportunity to have somebody who is like a Nelson Mandela enter the realm of politics and we would have better race relations. I think what we found was that, sadly Obama actually was more racist himself than he was a Nelson Mandela. His own actions, and his own community organizing and his influence went towards creating a bigger divide.
|
| As if it was really to create or carry favor for him personally. To give him influence. To a large extent when you have somebody in power like that, and you have somebody like a wealthy George Soros, who’s left anyway. Very left leaning. You have somebody like an Obama, I could see Obama having influence on how some of these things get funded. Like Akon. A lot of them damage that’s been done in the country over the last eight years domestically, is largely due to this view that, now time to reverse white supremacy.
|
|
| It’s time to reverse the exceptionalism of the United States, and it’s time to make us just like one of everybody else. That movement does intersect in a very strange way with some of the bizarre organizations that we see in politics. Especially in this last acrimonious cycle of somebody like Trump running against the daughter of the democratic party.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | You have the Koch brothers on the right, who are libertarian business men billionaires who fund different kinds of causes and think tanks and what not. They could be a corollary I suppose. Say they are certainly put up as the boogeyman of the right. The difference between us too is somehow a function of the left, that you need strikes, mobs, riots, bodies in the street is somehow worldwide. You go to France, it’s not the people on the right who are clogging up the square with matches every other day. It’s people on the left. Part of their mobilization. This movement of herds.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Nine times out of 10, it’s the leftists.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. That’s a function we can do a whole podcast on that probably. It’s an interesting question of exactly why? The way they want to enact their politics, is about movement of herds. Therefore, it’s less about making rational arguments that are going to sway a few people. It’s more about making the emotional argument that’s going to make a huge mass of people go do something. This idea of social unrest. This idea of people on the streets. The idea of people being made so angry, that they’re going to burn cars and shoot a policeman. Yeah, that’s one way to bring about social change, but that’s not building social stability.
|
| That’s building social instability deliberately, because you think you could control that outcome. That’s where the Koch brothers who are happy with the world order in the United States are trying to enforce the order. By the very nature, they’re trying to preserve things, keep things stable. The revolutionaries in this case, if you will, the people who are going to upset the order, have various ways of going about that. They can work within the process [crosstalk 01:11:17].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Or at least they drag us left. Yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yes. Or sort of that … That’s what I’m trying to say. Try to upset the order. They’re trying to turn over the apple cart a bit. They have various ways they can do that, but certainly flirting with violence is something that every true leftist doesn’t seem to shy away from too much.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Besides the damage that Obama did, with racial relations, the people that he brought in, and the people that he empowered in the various branches of government, also brought violence about authority like these attacks on the police. We’re leaving at the end of the Obama administration. Look at how many police are being shot in all different parts of the country. This is off the rails, and this is not Trump that’s causing this. This is Obama.
|
| Mark Gleason: | For a false narrative. For the hands that don’t shoot, which have never happened. That’s a total fiction. Even the justice department where they did their investigation, admitted that that never happened. The question though, since this is a show on George Soros, George Soros shares culpability on all these stuff. If his money is funding fringe groups and fringe propaganda groups, along with the other more legitimate groups, he’s funding both. Certainly he deserves some of the bad feelings he gets. Bad vibes he gets.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Oh, he definitely deserves criticism. There’s a difference between having an accurate depiction of what he is, and should be held responsible for. We’re having that discussion now. Is very different though, than what the over the cliff type of arguments that are being made out there. If you go on YouTube for example, and you do a search on Soros. You have all these images of him looking like the devil, and it’s just an amazing set of things of how he’s depicted. While these hurt the cause to shed light on him, because they are in a way too extreme.
|
| They are too far from the truth, but I think if these depictions were accurate, they would actually be stronger. Even though they’d be less extreme. They would be stronger because they’d be more digestible by the general public. They would ring true, as opposed to just looking like they’re a lot of content out that they’re from a lot of crazies.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, sure. People are not doing in depth research. What they know, what they see through their anecdotal experience is, here’s a group that’s rioting and burning cars. It’s a George Soros funded group. Here is another group that’s doing something else that’s rent a mob which is doing something. Oh. They’re a George Soros funded group. You begin to see a pattern after a while, and its anecdotal experience, because most people are not going and researching all the groups that he’s funding. Certainly, you don’t hear Bill Gates funded group is out there rioting on the streets every other day.
|
| Just clearly something that he’s doing differently to deserve some of this criticism. The way Bill Gates made his money, and the way that …
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Bill Gates has not donating money to effect politics as much as he might be fighting disease or hunger. There are easier ways of being a philanthropic as far as being controversial. If you want to play in the dangerous space, definitely George is in that dangerous space.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, in a dangerous space for all of us. That’s the problem. If you’re going to set a match to the house, or you’re going to set a fire. You say, ‘’Don’t worry I’m only going to burn this corner of the house,’’ and the rest of us are all on the same house. I think everybody has the right to be concerned with, what if your fire spreads? If your answer is, ‘’Well if it spreads don’t worry, we’ll rebuild the house the way I want to build it.’’ That is a little comfort to everybody else. Who’s saying, ‘’Why don’t we just do a remodeling job of the right way, and not keep on setting fires everywhere?’’
|
| Jim Luisi: | See, one of the reactions that I had to one of these extreme leftist groups that I clearly disdain them. I thought that they had a positive effect in that the people who are normal people, will say that the more typical average … People who tend not to vote very often. I think what these radical groups did, was they created enough emotion in the people who tended not to vote usually. Got them off their butts, and got them to the polls, and so you had people voting who never voted before.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, sure. Yes, fantastic. Wow. We found a bright silver lining somewhere in this dark morass of propaganda and race baiting and class warfare, and all these stuff, great. It actually made people look at some issues. Now, however look how polarized this country is. Look how half the country thinks that Donald Trump is Hitler. I mean, they think that they were fighting Nazism by working against Trump’s elections. Now that Trump is elected, they’re convinced we’re one step away from fascism, and when it doesn’t happen, they’re going to say, ‘’Oh, it was only … Like any other cult with a dooms day prediction.
|
| They’re going to say, ‘’It’s only because we worked so hard in our protest, that fascism didn’t come about.’’
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | This is the mission of Level To Power. To point out the fact that there are these herds out there that are being stampeded by these power brokers. This is just a perfect example of exactly that. The power broker.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. Therefore, what I’m trying to point out, the power brokers that are pulling levers of power, and pulling your strings so you understand why they’re doing it, and you can understand whether it’s to your benefit or not. You come on and say, things like, ‘’Well, Soros sure he funds a few things, but I’m not even quite sure he knows what he’s funding. Really, other people are kind of doing it and at the end of the day, he’s not that bad a guy.’’ Well, look I don’t know whether he’s a good or bad guy. What I do know is a lot of his money goes to fund groups that are not dealing in an above board open dialogue type way.
|
| They’re waging a pitched propaganda war, including by the way inciting violence at opponent’s rallies. That was George Soros funded groups. The guys that were caught on tape, they were trying to get Trump supporters to fight them and incite violence at Trump rallies? So they could go on about this meme about how violent Trump supporters are? This all George Soros funded. Those are groups funded by George Soros. By the way, that’s their only mission. It’s not like they’re legitimate groups. These are front groups. All they do is the dirty tricks. Again, what does that tell us about George Soros? All it says is, that he is a realist. He knows how things work [crosstalk 01:17:52].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think to be fair, I’m responding mostly to the fact that people are certain here’s a man coming from a communist country, and he’s trying to make this place where he lives, just like where he came from and that’s clearly not true.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. He’s making it communist light, right? Seriously though, he … I’m not even sure what he’s doing here. Why isn’t he still in England? For instance, Michael Moore, there is something funny obviously about Michael Moore living in mostly socialist Canada. Coming into the United States, and then saying, ‘’It’s not socialist’s not for me. I want to do all I can do to make this place more socialist.’’ Well, you left the socialist place. They’ll be happy to have you back I’m sure. Go do socialism stuff there, and then come here and … Again, he probably pays higher taxes there that he doesn’t like. He probably comes to you guys for tax reasons.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think part of the conversation could go into, is this system … Is there a form of democracy or republic and capitalism, or semi capitalism strong enough to withstand the attacks from people like this? Such that it will eventually collapse because of their efforts. Or, is it simply the fact that the design is fine the way its is, and these people can’t crush it? Just the fact that the government itself keeps growing and the judiciary keeps making up ways of interpreting laws so they can make decisions the way they want to along with their politics. Instead of following the interpretation of the constitution.
|
| As soon as they start introducing these other things into the constitution that isn’t there, that’s probably going to be the thing that causes the system to collapse.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | I agree. George Soros is responsible for both those things. Let me just say, there’s a legitimate danger of both those things happening. Either one happening.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | If no single event takes us out, then we’ll die the slow death of government encroachment until you basically have is a totalitarian regime. Unless you figure out how to adjust it back. Reset it back. However, our system’s pretty flexible. It’s one of those stronger systems out there. Because people feel vested in their society. Once you start taking that away, or people no longer feel vested in society, they think that somehow they’ve been put upon in society. They feel like they’ve been left out, and that somehow they are victims in society. People who don’t feel like they’re victims, feel justified in doing almost anything.
|
| You play with this fire, can our country survive in its current form in all our race war? There are people who are shooting each other in the street because of the color of their skin. Can our country survive an all out class war? This is what many of these groups try to bring about. Because they feel that they can bring that about. They can restructure society afterwards in the way they want to. They think it’s good. You have the Saul Alinsky and all those who have been trying to crash the system from within, by overburdening social security. By overburdening Medicare. By legally essentially bringing about the collapse of the system because you throw so many people into the system, eventually it’s going to collapse.
|
|
| It’s their stated goal now for 60 years. That’s what Alinsky said. Alinsky said, ‘’We don’t need violent revolution. All we got to do is get enough people get involved in government, make sure we open the spout of government largeness for as many people as you can, and the system will collapse because it’ll go bankrupt. Then we get to reorganize it the way we want.’’ What I’m saying is, that could happen. You could have one of these … We survived this last one, but the next one, the next one after that. These things are only getting worse.
|
|
| One of these things where people are ginning up racial controversy, or class controversy to win an election, and when one side wins or one side loses, and since they’ve been telling them the entire time that they’re being robbed and disenfranchised, and this and that. You will see it spin out of control. You won’t be able … Once you let that cat out of the bag, you’re not going to be able to let it get back in very easily.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think the problem is probably even bigger. Because you have … Look at how long the Roman Empire lasted. We are two hundred and something years into this experiment called the United States. At the rate we’re going, we’re already a way ahead of the Romans at deflating our currency. We’re already ahead on creating the sense among classes of people. We’re rivaling the corruption that exists in various parts of the government. We have distortion of the judicial system occurring. For things to swing the other way, it takes people to wake up and realize that they’re not just passengers on a train that they can’t control where it’s going. Or how fast it’s going.
|
| They are participants in this, and if they want to, they can relinquish all responsibility and it’ll be express train to help. Or, they need to realize that, hey we do actually have say in this. If we get off our butts, get out in front one of the TV sets, take notice from our daily lives that we’re only focused on our daily lives. That then, people will have the ability to set the course of that. The crazies in society. Which I hope are the minority. I really believe that they really are the minority. In this climate that we’re going through right now, this minority is getting so much press, so much advertising, so much visibility. Because of the extremes of the far left press.
|
|
| That maybe we need to see a cycle of the fake news outlets. Maybe CNN has to go under. Maybe The New York Times has to go under. Maybe some of these other fake news or extremist political organizations, that are not trying to help society, but they‘re just pushing their own agendas manipulating herds. Maybe these outlets have to go under. In a capital society, if nobody’s buying those newspapers, if nobody’s turning on those TV stations, the advertisers will flee as surely as rats on a sinking sheep. They will be gone.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | They’ll need advertisers if they have George Soros. That’s exactly the point.
|
| Jim Luisi: | 30,000,000 … If he spent the entire 30,000,000 on just crazy stuff, I’m not sure that he can tip the entire game into far left craze. Just as we saw that even with Hilary spending an incredible fortune …
|
| Mark Gleason: | 1,000,000,000.
|
| Jim Luisi: | How much did Trump spend?
|
| Mark Gleason: | A fraction of that.
|
| Jim Luisi: | A tiny fraction. Trump won, Hilary lost. Money didn’t do it.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s true. It does not mean though, that $1,000,000,000 properly applied … How much did Osama Bin Laden spend knocking down the towers?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Oh, yeah. That’s an excellent point. Very little.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Not very much. Very, very little. It cost billion and billions of dollars even more if you factor in all the security. You have the loss or proactivity from all those security provisions we now have.
|
| Jim Luisi: | With the things around the world, it must have cost the western society … western civilization at least a trillion dollars.
|
| Mark Gleason: | You hear George Soros say things like, he was donating money heavily against Bush, and I guess for John Kerry. He said that he would give away his entire fortune to ensure … If someone would guarantee him that Bush would not be president, he would give his entire fortune away to make sure that didn’t happen.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Damn, I would have given him that guarantee.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Now, think about if we say he’s not a radical in his thinking, think about what a radical statement that is. That you really think there’s a big significant difference between George Bush and John Kerry, how they would have governed. Now, sure, Kerry would have been more to the left, and sure George Bush would be more to the right. They’re deliberately handicapped by congress, and congress’s ability to approve things and checks on power. What’s really the difference that’s worth giving up your $20,000,000,000 fortune, just to make sure that one four year cycle, or eight year cycle, George Bush is not the president and Kerry is?
|
| You know what? Kerry goes to the left and there’ll be another republican after those eight years. Its statements like that that kind of indicate that he takes these stuff extremely seriously. When you look at all his funding of all these radical groups, that’s what I think gives him this patina of a radical. Versus just a socialist left guy who donates to some groups.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah Bernie supporters wouldn’t consider these people radical by the way. At this point in this set.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s why I say there’s center. Whatever that means. There’s political center. There’s center right, and center left. Meaning fairly close to the center, but I think you’re right or left of that. There’s far right and far left. I think Bernie Sanders proudly declares himself far left. Hilary ran as center left. I think I agree with your assessment that Soros is probably a lot closer to Bernie, than he is to Hilary. Which is why I’m sure people on the left love George Soros. He’s the one businessman I’m sure they love. Because he donates to the causes.
|
| That does not do anything to reduce his radical agenda let’s say. If you say that you thought he had radical agenda, you researched and you figured out it was a little less nefarious, than one might think, there’s a lot of stuff that he does that are pretty questionable. That’s what I’ve been trying to push back on. Is that, it’s not that [crosstalk 01:27:06].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I certainly would not characterize him as somebody who is fair minded, or balanced from a political perspective. He’s not as crazed as one might think, but I think one of the most interesting things about him is that, when you look at the people who pull the strings of power, the fact that we look at how they think, and what they consider to be important, they themselves spend a good amount of time about thinking about how people think. What comprises logic and reasoning? How one might be able to use that to potentially brainwash the herd.
|
| I think this is a common factor. No matter whether it’s on the right or the left. These people have recognized that there’s a skillset for brainwashing herds of people, who have given away all of their own reasoning, and given control to somebody else. They are completely un-empowered. Our goal has been to get people to realize that … How to recognize when this happens, and if the government should take a position. If they’re going to take a stance, do so knowingly. Don’t just do it like a robot because somebody pulled your string, and now you’re just a puppet or a dog that’s following orders. That somebody else is getting what they want done, and you’re just the toy.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | That is why I am distrustful of what George Soros is doing, and anybody on the right who would be the equivalent. Because, we’re about empowering people. Bring them to level two where they can make their own decisions, and then convince them with the arguments. Real arguments that can be critically analyzed that they should agree with my position. They may or they may not, but that’s the way that people should deal with other people. Imagine if George Soros took his fortune and his philanthropy, and still focused on that goal of empowerment. Of teaching people to think for themselves.
|
| Knowing that they may not agree with him. If he was really confident in that strategy. If he was very confident in the rightness of what he was doing, then what are you afraid of essentially? If you’re teaching people to think for themselves, and to reason to do critical analysis …
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Excellent point.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Then shouldn’t you also have faith that a lot of them will come around to your point of view anyway? It reveals a lot about somebody who says, ‘’Well, I want to achieve some things, but let’s not go that route. Let’s shortcut it a bit and go with these propaganda arms that will emotionally trigger people to go my way.’’ That means to me that he wants to use the herd for his advantage in some way.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Do we know of anybody, or any organization that is focused on using their wealth and power to achieve empowerment?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. Objectivism. Ayn Rand. That was exactly Ayn Rand’s position. Which was, I want to teach people to reason and then I want you to worry about my philosophy. I want to teach you [crosstalk 01:30:01].
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Do we have a top 50 wealthy person setting up foundations to do those?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well. Look there’s an objectivism organization which does that, and [crosstalk 01:30:11].
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s more grassroots than anything though.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure, but then there are people … Anybody who I think subscribes that philosophy.
|
| Jim Luisi: | They mustn’t be profit out of it. That’s why these people who are wealthy are not for empowering. This goes back to your initial point in one of your very first podcasts. Which is helpers that’ll help you, but she’s not there to teach you about how to compete with her on her outlets and competing against her in a business perspective.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Now, is even too generous. She’s also not there so that you become a well-balanced person who doesn’t need to watch daytime TV anymore. Right? That’s not why she’s there. Otherwise she would work herself right out of a job.
|
| Jim Luisi: | She’s building her brand for self-gain now.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Doesn’t mean she can’t help you along the way in this way or that way. It just means that [crosstalk 01:30:55].
|
| Jim Luisi: | It makes you feel good. It’s like eating potato chips. They make you feel good.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. It’s like somebody’s lonely and depressed, well, she can make you feel better for an hour. That’s great. How about we fix the problem and make you not lonely and depressed? Well, then you don’t need to watch her anymore. Her goal, while it is not against you, it’s for her. It’s important to understand that’s the relationship with many of your leaders. I’m distrustful. Even if somebody is not focusing on critical analysis, but they are funding open dialogue. They’re about transparency. They’re about facts. They’re about policy. They’re about arguing on the merits of things in good faith.
|
| I respect those people. The people who donate to the Heritage Foundation which is conservative, and the Center for American Progress which is liberal. Look, at least they come out with policy positions in writing and they debate them, and that’s what we need to be able to have a free and open society. It’s the rest of the stuff. It is the propaganda. It is the use of emotion and triggers. It is the movement of herds behind the scenes that I am extremely distrustful of. Because any time somebody says, ‘’I have a super worthy goal. I just need a bunch of people blindly following me in order to achieve it.’’
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think the only problem that I see at this scale, there are a lot of problems that we see, but at this scale. For somebody to become elected to an office, if they want to have an empowered discussion with their potential voters, and they see their opponents manipulating herds. They pretty much don’t stand much of a chance. They have to be able to do both. They need to be able to manipulate herds as effectively as their opponent does. Then try to appeal to the few hopefully in the center that are listening to the actual message.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I agree. I agree. I think there are ways to do that, and ways to do that.
|
| Jim Luisi: | And there are ways not to do that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | You look at for instance Ross Perot, who came into an election speaking about real facts and real numbers and real problems. It was this breath of fresh air that people really responded to. I think Donald Trump to a large extent, captured a lot of that as well. He’s a plain talking person who says things in very in-artful ways, but he addresses real problems that are on people’s minds. He hasn’t backed down when asked to pander to certain constituencies. There was not much of that going on. A lot of criticisms of the way Donald Trump ran his campaign, but bowing to sensibilities of certain constituencies was not something that he … I don’t think he ever did.
|
| That’s not what I’m talking about though. What I’m talking about is George Soros. I’m saying, if you come to me and say, I’’ have a fantastic idea. Perfect vision of a future society.’’ I go, ‘’Great. How are we going to achieve that? How can I help?’’ Your answer is, ‘’Well, people are stupid and we just need to kind of emotionally manipulate them into herds, and get them all driving in that direction. Because we’ll never get there if we have to talk anybody into it.’’ That to me, there’s red flags, flashing warning signs all over that approach. Because, once someone seizes the reins of the herd, they have so much power. It has to be a disaster.
|
|
| Nobody can be trusted with that much power.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I would agree with that. It’s so interesting to see these organizations that are for open society. When you think of open society, you have to find people who are more open as far as the way they think. They have to be open thinkers. You’re looking for people to run these things, who are able to take advantage of all the things going on around that particular environment. Where they are. You are really looking at somebody who is themselves fairly empowered. If you’re really trying to get an open society. Maybe what we’re seeing is also an effect where instead of finding empowered people, it seems like he has people working for him who understand his philosophy.
|
| Who understand the way he approaches investing. I can’t tell whether or not he’s looking for people who are empowered in of their own selves. Or, if they just fit the mold where they can work as controlled individuals within that vertical.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Both. He has need for both. He has need for level ones, who have adopted his system of thinking, and who will behave in very prescribed ways. He needs level twos, who are masters of the art of seeing other perspectives. Then bending them to their will. Which is evil level twos by the way. If you’re running a propaganda machine, you need somebody who’s going to function as an evil level two.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Whereas a good level two using the same skills would be working to improve the team. Improve society. Not just themselves.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Good and evil of course are relative [crosstalk 01:35:53].
|
| Jim Luisi: | You can say they’re wiping their organization, their company.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is what I’m going to say though, good and evil are relative to the herd. The good and evil of a particular herd, it can be construed differently. However, just like the Jedi in Star Wars [crosstalk 01:36:04].
|
| Jim Luisi: | There’s a larger herd, or to the largest herd, you have to look at it that way first.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Maybe they do. However, just like the Jedi in Star Wars, you have some dark arts that are just so antithetical to being a good Jedi. You can argue more relative as both sides of the equation. The empire versus the rebellion. You can argue both sides right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. A lot of these manipulation techniques are these dark art.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s what I’m saying. You have … It takes a certain kind of person to say, ‘’I’m going to disempower people to achieve my goal.’’ Knowingly. Intentionally. Right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. That’s evil level two approach.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s what I’m saying. Regardless of whether [crosstalk 01:36:44].
|
| Jim Luisi: | You’re disempowering people, reducing them down from ones to zeros, twos to ones. That is a despicable act when it comes to treating another person. I don’t know what the right word is, unfair, but in a non-constructive way.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. You have let’s say David Brock of Media Matters and this is what he does. What he does, is make it harder for the people he claims to be helping. The liberals he claims to be helping. He makes it harder for them to know what is true. More difficult to evaluate. More difficult to use critical analysis. Because he throws so much of a cloud of confusion, and emotion around these things. So they behave quote on quote, the right way. Which is the way that he wants them to behave.
|
| Jim Luisi: | These guys make such great sound bites though. When you have on Fox News, the clip of CNN interviewing people like that, and you listen to the crazy coming out of them. It makes for a great comparison to what most people would consider to be sane.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s why I’m saying that he must have as being part of his model. He must have these evil level twos who have no compassion about disempowering the very people he claims to be helping.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. I’m hard pressed to determine, if he were made familiar with the taxonomy that we use at LTP, would he identify with the act of empowering evil level two as an objective of his. Because it’s clearly some of the things that he does.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Look, I think if he accepted our taxonomy, and we’re speaking our vocabulary, that it seems to me he would say, evil level twos are necessary part of life. That it’s kind of a real politic type approach. Where part of change and fighting on a war of ideas. He would say I would love it if all we could do is go to a philosophy seminar and argue on ideas. Unfortunately, that’s not how the world works. How the world works is, you do need to have emotional triggers, and manipulate people so the herds will do what’s best for them.
|
| Otherwise, they’ll vote against their own interests. You have to use any means necessary to help them do things for themselves. Even if that means manipulating them. I think he’ll say that’s just the way the world is. I come to the world this way, and this is the way the world functions. Therefore I’m simply game that’s in front of me. Now, that’s how he behaves in business. The rules are all just transparent lines to him. Whatever you got to do to make the money, you make the money. Oh, over here we’re in politics. Whatever you got to do the politics … Who cares about legality?
|
|
| Who cares about morality? The ends justify the means. We’re going to help these people by, we’ll disempower them. We’ll help them. They’re better off living in a disempowered socialist utopia. This is one of these things where, everybody does that to a certain extent. When you disempower your herd, so they remain your herd. Otherwise, you’re going to work with if you’re relied upon on the power of the herd. Religious leaders do it. Other political leaders do it. I think he would take a very real politic approach to this.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Great. One has to wonder what he has planned for these herds in the future.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That is exactly my point. Anybody who comes to me and says, ‘’I have a grand vision of how I can help everybody. All I have to do is disempower them and hook them with emotional triggers. Snap my fingers and they’ll do exactly what I say. Once I can do that it’ll be fantastic. Good for them. I’ll build a society then that’ll be good for them.’’ I’m heavily suspicious. I don’t even think if the person is well-intentioned, even that’s not going to work. Forget if there’s some flawed person who admits they have distortion in their thinking.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think then the possibility … He doesn’t have many more years, but he still has a chance then to win the bond villain award if he keeps working at it.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Hold on, that’s how you get Hitler. Every argument ends when Hitler gets to listen to the conversation. I’m saying, when you get a society people feel like victims, which they were. Somebody comes along and tells them that you’re all victims, but I can solve that problem for you. I can lead you all to the Promised Land, but you need to give the power to me and have this emotional triggers that are based upon the reality I’m telling you. Your misery is because of the following things. Because of the Jews. It’s because of this. It’s because of that. You have this oppressed … They feel oppressed. They feel victimized. They are ready to follow a leader like that.
|
| Now, this is the problem. Is that things get way out of control. Every time this ever happened in history where you have a bunch of people for their own good following some leader in a very disempowered way, abandoning critical analysis, working on emotional triggers. Be it a religious leader or a political leader, it always ends badly. That is against our mission. Our mission at the Apex Level To Empower, is the more empowered people in the world, the better for the world. Better for us all.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Absolutely. I think to sum up George Soros at this point. I feel we have a pretty decent understanding of George at this point. While he is clearly a highly intelligent man, highly successful man, has highly intelligent children, has great success financially and it looks like in all the things he has wanted to achieve. Every so often he trades in his wife for someone who’s younger. He always has someone half their age. He’s been able to live his life to take advantage of the ambition that his father had in his early years. The goal of enjoying life that his father had in his later years.
|
| He was able to accomplish both. To that goal, he definitely had a very successful life as far as what he set out to do.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, very good. Let’s … Hitler had a fair degree of success as well.
|
| Jim Luisi: | He was freaking insane.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, it all depends on just how it all works out. Right? Look, certainly he’s a human man. He has some ideas and he’s trying to create the best world he can as he sees it.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. As misguided as we claim he is, and even though he seems like a very intelligent man, I think we can challenge him on the concepts when you look at empowerment versus being another self-important people. Who just manipulate herds. In response to the notion that he does [inaudible 01:42:58] without trying to take credit for it. The word credit and blame have some overlap there. Although some of the causes have been great, and some of the combat against communism has been laudable. Definitely there are some major mistakes along the way. Especially in the later years.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. I would say that from an empowerment standpoint, I think against his goals, his stated goals, and also against his methodology. In particular his methodology. Because, we can be against his goals, but he’s dealing in a way of empowerment, then you could say, ‘’Well, maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m right, but we’ll all get there eventually. People make their own decision.’’
|
| Jim Luisi: | Problem we think that an open society where one is going to have the freedom of choice. Clearly to us, empowerment goes hand in hand with that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is one of those words though. What does a quote on quote open society mean? If you’re saying a free and open society in a classical sense, that’s what a free society is. It’s a meritocracy. It is that you’re not going to force any individual to deal with any other individual. That you have total freedom. That is what a free society is. That is what he’s saying he does not want. What he’s saying, he wants something else besides that. He wants government to be involved, to force people to do some things. Forced associations essentially.
|
| Because he wants to create what he’s going to call a quote on quote, open society. This is Karl Popper. This is George Soros. This is Barack Obama. This is all the stuff on the left. Government’s proper role is to wield power against the individual. To force them to do things that they may not want to do themselves for some kind of greater good. The question is, who’s the government? Who controls the gears of government? Who gets to vote for their neighbors to tell them what to do and what not to do?
|
|
| This is where this complication comes in. I’d be very hesitant to read too much into this quote on quote open society that he’s advocating for. Until we actually define what actually open means. Because everything he’s arguing for, is certainly against openness and freedom in a classical free market and open democracy sense.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think one of the dangers is that we look at closed societies where you have a small elite that is running the communist government or the Nazi government. That it’s closed, even people who are very smart, who could be potentially very manipulative of herds of people. That if you have an open society, then people who can use the strings of power to manipulate people are far more empowered themselves, to be able to operate and achieve the things that they want to achieve.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Closed society for instance would be where, if you went to a political rally that people didn’t like, they could just show up outside and if they have to be the local majority, and beat you up as you left the political meeting? Would that be an indication of a closed society or an open society?
|
| Jim Luisi: | If you’re looking at trying to be a member … an influencing member of the communist party or the Nazi party, and you come from a Jewish background, that you aren’t getting in. It’s closed to that person. I think the key point is that the thing that protects society from these pitfalls that disempowers people. The thing that protects people from disempowerment, is the type of open debate that you would see say in Roman society. That you tend not to see very much in American society. Well, now it’s starting to emerge a little more.
|
| You see rancorous debate going on. It’s getting the attention of more people. More people are involved. I think that’s exactly what we need. We need more people involved. More people at range. More people that realize that they have to participate. Unless we have a greater percentage of participation. Because the thing that eventually took out Rome, was the fact that hey, they tried to get to people to come and vote. They tried to pay people to come and vote. They couldn’t get people to participate anymore. Their system died due to lack of interest. Just fizzled.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m going to throw some situations at you, and I’d like you to base them from what you’ve learnt. Tell me … You have two options. That George Soros’s money and funding and effort, and everything he’s doing over the past 10 years, has helped this move along? Or, has fought against it? All right? Black Lives Matter protest leading to cops being shot in the street. As a result of this racial tension. Do you think his money and efforts have worked to help that along? Or have fought against that?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Definitely has helped that along.
|
| Mark Gleason: | In California and numerous places, when people were going to a political rally to hear [crosstalk 01:47:48].
|
| Jim Luisi: | These questions seem a little slanted, but yeah.
|
| Mark Gleason: | No. These are very good questions that certainly reveal a lot. You have people leading a political rally in California being hunt down and beaten by protestors, while the cops stand there and look on. Because the local authority decides that they are okay with it. You think George Soros’s money has helped that or hurt that? Has helped that along?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Has helped it along.
|
| Mark Gleason: | You think that this [crosstalk 01:48:14].
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s sort of like the anti-help, but yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Do you think that the [crosstalk 01:48:19].
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s been detrimental to society and all of these organizations. Even Akon. We don’t have to point to every one of these extremist groups and I don’t know that they’ve accomplished anything good. Even though the intent initially … You can look at Akon as a group that helps to get people who weren’t registered to vote, to go out there an vote. Now, the fact that it ended up making fictitious registrations and went off the rails. You could say, well [crosstalk 01:48:49].
|
| Mark Gleason: | Actually, Akon was also … It was a housing.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. It was also into housing.
|
| Mark Gleason: | It was a mechanism to help provide poor people their options when it came to housing. It became a shell front for dumping federal money to [crosstalk 01:49:05]. That’s right. Why did republicans let that kind of stuff just exist? I have absolutely no idea.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. That’s a very good question. Because they knew it was happening.
|
| Mark Gleason: | My point is I could go down a list of the many things facing society, none of it would be the liberal insanity on campuses where you can’t even speak about opposing ideas, without this idea that you have aggressed somebody, and they can come do violence to you because you have attacked them first. With your idea they don’t like. My point is that, if you look at all these things which I think are really serious problems in our society that have cropped up over the past five, 10 years. You look at whether George Soros is on the right side of that in history, he seems to always be on the wrong side of those things.
|
| Those things, I could go back to that list again and say, ‘’Do you think that would make us a more open society? Or a more closed society?’’ I think beating people outside, poke our eyes means this is more open or closed? That’s why I’m dubious of this label of this open society he’s working towards. Because it sounds like one of those misnomers that if we really understood what he meant, we would not agree it was open.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, like the fairness doctrine. Can you check when was Black Lives Matter created?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Just a couple years ago. After Ferguson.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Okay. I’m thinking that when you look at some of the worst of the worst of these things, these type of things didn’t crop up when Bill Clinton was president. He had left of center as well. It’s really, I can’t help but to feel that it’s a byproduct of the Obama legacy that’s caused a lot of this.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, look, Obama made it worse because Obama was willing to play the [redderick 01:50:37] more. When your own party is in power, you can’t burn the place to the ground because your enemies will come back into power. You try to work within the system as much as you can. Which is why things would happen in the Bill Clinton’s watch, everybody goes hush, hush, hush. Nothing to see here. He didn’t have … When your opposition’s in power, the of course something goes wrong, you scream to the [inaudible 01:50:59].
|
| Jim Luisi: | He didn’t have a vengeance in the administration when you had Clinton.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Clinton was a centrist. That’s why the ideologues don’t like the Clintons. Because the Clintons … Well, he went left Clinton. He lost the mid-term elections, and swung back to the center to make sure he won again. He took all the republican issues from them. The welfare reform. He went back and did it his way. There’s a laundry list of issues the republicans had, and he was a master at it. So was Reagan by the way. That’s how stuff gets done. Right? Reagan came out and said I want the following things, he went to Tip O’Neill and they worked it out.
|
| Yes, he fought for his stuff, but he worked it out.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think my point [crosstalk 01:51:37].
|
| Mark Gleason: | Clinton and Gingrich did the same thing. Your point about Obama being worse, the reason it was worse is because Obama came in and said, ‘’I want these things,’’ and refused to work with the republicans on anything.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. What I’m trying to articulate as a point is that, when you look at … George Soros had been creating a foundations and donating money to different causes since around 50 years of age. The last 30 years easily. 35 years, he’s been donating vast amounts of money. You don’t see the kind of craziness that you see now back in the Clinton years. I just find it odd that why didn’t you see it under Clinton? Then after Clinton it just goes off the rails.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I just told you why. If you’re [crosstalk 01:52:21].
|
| Jim Luisi: | No, but Soros was still there. Soros could have acted [crosstalk 01:52:24].
|
| Mark Gleason: | No. If your democrats in there … The democrats in there, that’s a left party. Then you want to do what you can to bring him to heal, but you do not want to lose the election next time around. You can’t do too much. There’s unrest in the streets, then a republican’s definitely going to win the next election. You can’t go too far. A better question is, what was happening under the first Bush and the second Bush? Is that a corollary to today? I would say, yeah. Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember code pink?
|
| Don’t you remember the craziness that was happening with the first Bush? Don’t you remember the craziness that was happening with the second Bush? All the crazy leftists come out when the right’s in power. It doesn’t mean it’s all on George Soros. There’s a bunch of crazy groups.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | They continue to come out during Obama’s administration. I like the theory in general [crosstalk 01:53:09].
|
| Mark Gleason: | Encouraged. Encouraged by Obama though.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Obama embraced it.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Part of the … You can make a theory that says [crosstalk 01:53:17].
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m a coordinator with it.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. You can say during democratic reign, the crazy leftist groups are going to be doing much, but under a republican reign, the leftist groups are going to go out there and create disturbances and civil unrest, so that it swings back to democratic control.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is the difference. The difference is the Clintons, we shut that down and say, ‘’Look, we got to win an election here.’’ Obama, who said ‘’Yeah guys, I’m with you. Let’s coordinate on this.’’ You stage the protest and I’ll talk about how terrible it is that you had to protest. Or, I’ll talk about how you justified in protesting.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think there’s just a subtle distinction though, between did Obama say, ‘’Yes, okay. Go ahead and do this.’’ Or, were they not inclined to do it and he was saying, ‘’Guys go off and do this.’’
|
| Mark Gleason: | They never did anything to embarrass Obama. Never. I can’t think of one time.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I don’t think he considered it to be [crosstalk 01:54:08].
|
| Mark Gleason: | They never did anything. It was coordinated. He’s a child of the left. Being new, he was an ally. They knew, he would do what they wanted. They worked with him.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Black Lives Matter came up during Obama’s reign.
|
| Mark Gleason: | And he embraced it.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Obama’s message was, that this is still the problem. His justice department was saying [crosstalk 01:54:30].
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. I recall the whole [crosstalk 01:54:33].
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. He embraced the Black Lives matter. He came out about Martin shooting and said, ‘’He could have been my son.’’ He came out immediately with the Ferguson thing, siding with his protestors against the cops. He embraced this whole thing … When you talk about why, I think that’s … A lot’s just political.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I’m just posing the question, because it’s not obvious to me that all this is Soros. To me a large part of this is Obama, and the whole mindset that he brought in.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Obama was working towards the same goals as Soros. Obama was doing what he was doing, and he also …That’s a different conversation. Soros has funded huge amounts of money into these groups which predate Obama. Which continue to flourish under Obama, and were used heavily in both or all of the elections that Obama ran. To Obama’s benefit. The money man behind the scenes from levers of power is the same.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. The police shootings that you see, and the riots that you see around the country where you have these mobs trying to create conflict, with the cops just standing back even, not even engaging them. I don’t remember this before Obama. This seems to be an Obama type of phenomenal.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. Clinton would be worried. Clinton would be worried about the law and order candidate. He’d be worried about the accusation that he’s letting the country burn down.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I get that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Obama is okay with that. He says, ‘’Yes. You got to let people protest.’’ If Baltimore burns, it burns.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I get that too. All I’m saying is that it’s interesting that out of all these years, Soros could have been making radical groups left and right all over the place, and that the worst of these scourges seem to be under the Obama president.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I know, but Obama … I would argue that Obama is the fruit of Soros’s previous efforts. That all this identity politics. Remember when I first heard the term white privilege? Which was this flip on, I’m being discriminated against to your privilege?
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s an interesting perspective. I don’t know. It’s possible. I don’t know whether he’s the fruit, or if he was the actual instigation of much of this.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Obama is the end product. Certainly of this liberal movement. Obama is the absolute posture child for that. Now, how much of that George Soros had a hand in? I’d certainly say a large part, but certainly a part. Right? There’s a huge liberal movement over 30 years.
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s my question.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Again, I don’t think you can underestimate the power of this huge apparatus of media organizations propaganda, and the ability to fund these groups that spring up. You need to protest and throw some business? Boom, there you go.
|
| Jim Luisi: | The bigger concern I have is things like manipulating the results you get on Google searches and things like that. Which distort … When people think when they go and do a Google search, that they are using a tool that is a political. To find information that they are looking for. Meanwhile, what they’re getting back are results that are engineered for bias. Political bias.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Do you remember seeing those things on YouTube? There’s a bunch of them. Where people go to Bing, Yahoo and Google, and you would type in Clinton health. The first two would say Clinton health scare, Clinton health scare. She just took a nosedive and collapsed. Google would say, Clinton health policy. Clinton health initiative. Either, in some cases Google was assisting there. Or, there were huge amounts of games being played by this apparatus, who knew how to game the engine in a way. Where they could stack just assisted links.
|
| The auto-complete stuff, is all based upon [crosstalk 01:58:08].
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I thought the algorithms engineered by the company internally had also been rigged.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, that’s the question.
|
| Jim Luisi: | And Google.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. Now you have a friendly … Google has [crosstalk 01:58:19].
|
| Jim Luisi: | It is one thing for the external stakeholders to manipulate based upon [crosstalk 01:58:24].
|
| Mark Gleason: | It’s both.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Google has their own analysis they do. If I’m a company … Companies do the same thing by the way. This is exactly what companies do. Where I have a website Apex Level To Power, and Google’s based upon how much people like it. I create 30 websites that are all linked to it. Well, that looks like there’s 30 people out there in the web who like my stuff. They’ll raise my rankings. If they discover that I’m doing this, you get into Google hell. Where you never show up in a search again. Some people end up there accidentally. If you’re trying to rig the system against them, they understand that could destroy the whole business model.
|
| They take it very seriously. If you are a political ally, and all they got to do is you show up in a little algorithm, and people go [crosstalk 01:59:00]. Should I be worried about this? You go … That’s actually okay. You can just turn an eye and that’s fine.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Turn a blind eye.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Turn a blind eye. Yes, that is surreptitious. It’s disempowering. It’s changing the way you think. It is changing the air which we all swim. The water which we all swim, with none of us realizing it. It’s like a casino pumping drugs into the air, and you don’t know it. You’re euphoric and you’re gambling like crazy. That is somehow nefarious. It’s the same thing. It’s rigging the game without people even realizing the game is being rigged, and every time somebody says, ‘’Well, all people are doing this.’’ That is just conspiracy theory. Back’s right wing conspiracy. It’s all this is.
|
| Look, the Clintons have overplayed that as we can see. Because they finally lost the election. Because they always do all the nefarious things and then claim victimhood and conspiracy, whenever they were called out on it.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. In the end you have multiple categories of strings of power. Clearly what we’ve been seeing is not only say, the result of charitable giving as influence, but also the media has been complacent. The mainstream media. You have a political cycle where you have all of these appointees that are so extreme far left. It’s almost like a perfect storm of all these bizarre stuff was brought together. Now, like we’re going into a … We’re heading towards probably one of the most conservative cabinets ever assembled. The difference in the swing is so great in the other direction. It’s very interesting.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Which shows the system still works. I’m not sure it’s always going to be the case. This is a close one.
|
| Jim Luisi: | We haven’t broken it yet.
|
| Mark Gleason: | It works because it should be that way. Where you have one party in power, and another party in power. That’s the only way this works. If any party’s in power for too long, you get New Orleans. You get Chicago.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think what you’re having is the Republican Party was becoming the little democrats, and it was all one party. Trump being an outsider where you have the republicans didn’t want him, showed that we actually got somebody who wasn’t part of the establishment. I think this was as many people point out into the establishment.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. I think this permanent majority which both parties want, if either one of them got it, would just be disastrous for the country.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Correct.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is a fascinating discussion. I’m not sure if we need to do one for political fairness on the Koch brothers as well.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Why not?
|
| Mark Gleason: | I think we have a choice there on the right. The left has their own peccadillos that we’ve named a few of them. The right has …
|
| Jim Luisi: | You don’t see riots. Like Ybor or in Florida, where a good friend of mine was attacked by a looks to be one of those Soros crowds [crosstalk 02:01:48]. Rent a mob. Rent a mob where my friend was actually rescued by the US marines. The way the story goes is my friend works for a healthcare company down in the Tampa area. He is at a function for cancer patients. He had modern case of cancer, and he’s at this function with his girlfriend. He gets a text message, and he learns that next door is a friend of his performing in a band that he likes very much.
|
| He said to his girlfriend, ‘’Let’s go next door. Let’s go see him for a little while and then we’ll come back to this party.’’ They went over there for a while. While there, they heard some noise in the street. They looked out the window and they saw that there was a mob forming in the street, with a line of cops behind them. He said to his girlfriend, ‘’Let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to our friends over there.’’ By the time they get out onto the street, the mob had already approached their side of the street. The mob ended up shoving him, and they got his teeth knocked out.
|
|
| He was beaten and bruised, and his girlfriend also, very badly beaten and it was the marines had a birthday party at the place that had the band. The marines heard this noise. The marines came out and they saw this crowd. They started chanting, ‘’USA, USA,’’ and the crowd seeing this ran. Actually towards the police line. Meanwhile the police have done not a damn thing. The marines made sure that my friend and his girlfriend got to the hospital. When he got to the hospital, he had a piece of paper that he gave the mob the instruction. One of the instruction sheets said, if someone’s injured, say you don’t know what happened. They fell.
|
|
| His girlfriend woke up at the hospital, because she had been knocked unconscious. When she woke up, she was screaming, ‘’They’re attacking, they’re attacking.’’ The nurse came over and told her, ‘’No, no, no. You just fell.’’ He was like, ‘’This is unbelievable. It was like brainwashing out there.’’ He couldn’t go to work because of his injuries for some time. He said, looking like Frankenstein, he couldn’t go out in public. He had to wait until he at least had some of those injuries healed up.
|
|
| Seeing that the police did nothing, and that it just happened to be by luck he was saved by the marines, I think that shows that this is another case where this rent a mob, who by the way when they study these rent a mob people, they realize that these people don’t vote. They’re just out there to be rented to cause riots. They seem to be more than willing. I understand completely that this is a despicable type of activity. His money is found to be in that trail.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sounds like an open society. That we can all work towards.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I hope not.
|
| Mark Gleason: | On the right, you have the Koch brothers who would be interesting to examine. They’re more libertarian. They’re more one for one probably for George Soros, even though their methods are different. Because, less shadowy groups in that case.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think that the measure would be, how are they on the scale of, are they empowering people, or are they disempowering people? Clearly George ranks high on the disempowerment side. I wouldn’t mind to do an analysis and the conversation on the Koch brothers.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yeah that’d be interesting. Look, I’m not saying that they’re not things to disempower as well. Certainly, we’re maneuvering on behalf of certain kind of corporate interest for instance. Getting people all ginned up for causes that are ultimately going to benefit some corporate interest. That is another kind of disempowerment we can look at. Yeah, very interesting comparison. You also have religious leaders on the right. Which makes it unique to the right.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Part of this may be a function of George’s the quantum funds, investments, strategy which is to use macro investing. Which looks at these political swings. Any sort of regime change, or social revolution causes the bigger swings. Maybe that places him in the crosshairs more easily, than say what the Koch brothers would use as their investment strategy.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s the problem. Right? Hearing that whole thing about the brick sails through your window with a note that says broken window, call. Right? You have a guy who’s a speculative investor, who’s making huge bets on events. He could easily for instance make a huge bet on the insurance market in Florida. Then, he could go cause a huge amount of unrest and riots in Florida, and make a huge amount of money. Because he’s actually able to influence events. The fact that he has his propaganda arms, is completely understandable from an A moral business perspective.
|
| Because you’re able to influence events. Look at North Carolina. North Carolina and Charlotte and other places has had multiple riots. Where would you think property values are like in those areas that have had riots and burnings? By the way, didn’t you say to start with, that he notes there’s a lot more money made in a falling market than in a rising market? Well, if you can engineer a falling market in a given area and you’re prepared to move on that. That seems like a great way to make money.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | What do you think when George has a party with the Koch brothers? Do they say, you bring your mob, I’ll bring my mob?
|
| Mark Gleason: | I think the Koch brothers say, ‘’Oh, I brought my mom.’’ I think they really misunderstood.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Oh, dear God.
|
| Mark Gleason: | When you say rent a mom, this makes more sense. This makes more sense.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Well, another great conversation just goes over the cliff.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, very good Jim. Thank you for your research, and thank you for the discussion. We’ll bring you back real soon and we’ll talk about some more aspects to either this, or corollary on the right.
|
| Jim Luisi: | It was a fascinating conversation. Thank you.
|
| Mark Gleason: | You change your level. You can change your life. You can change the world. Welcome to Apex Level To Power.
|
| This has been the Apex Level To Power podcast with your host Mark Gleason. The podcast where your opinion changes, but you still get to feel right. The one ability we cannot give ourselves is credibility. You have to give that to us. Please like, subscribe or write a review. Change your level, change your life and you can change the world. Welcome to Apex Level To Power.
|