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The purpose of the show is to provide a critical examination of society and culture through the intersectional lens of race, gender, and class, more specifically it seeks to provide a COUNTER-NARRATIVE. The Show encourages a reflective assessment and critique of unique standpoints and their potential contribution to popular discourse.
Rasheem, Hello and welcome. This is Rasheem of the counter narrative. This is a bonus, like political episode, and this episode is called Conversations with black men on both sides of the of the coin, black men who vote, so we have one person
say both sides of the coin now. Okay,
right? We have one person who is a Hillary supporter and one person who's a Trump supporter, and we are going to talk with both of these black men who vote and get their viewpoint. But before they do that, I'm going to give them opportunity to introduce themselves. I'm going to go ahead and start with you, Derek. Derek, tell us what is your name, something that you're passionate about, and what is your specific interest in this topic?
Derek McGowan, something that I'm passionate something that I'm passionate about, right? Well, when it has to do with this, this election, I suppose, no
so something that you're passionate about in general. And then the next question is specific to this topic? What is it that interests you about this topic in general? I guess the topic of politics in general?
Well, I'm an artist, so that's the main focus, creativity, creative stuff, that's the main thing for me. As far as this, this election, I'm I'm becoming more and more of a It's not that, not that I'm getting to the point where I don't want to vote. I'm nowhere near that, that stage, you know, you start to have your ideals, and then you realize how, how you know the candidates that are placed up aren't the candidates, and the system can't create your can't recreate your ideals. So it's like, okay, so I'm becoming less involved from that standpoint. It's like, you just realized that everyone's just like a bridge candidate, but you know that that's as far as I can go with it.
Okay? And you, OJ, tell everyone your name, what is something that you're passionate about, and what is your specific interest in this topic as it relates to politics. Okay.
My name is OJ Mallory. This is gonna sound a little like I don't know, weird, but I actually, for philosophical reasons, believe in trying to have as little passions as possible. But I'm interested in being self sufficient. I grew up in New York City, but I would like to, you know, you know, have some sort of garden. I have a garden, actually, but I only get a couple things out of it. I would like to grow most home food and and just be like a self sufficient person, or be a part of a self sufficient community, and then outside of that, I just want to have a better understanding of the true nature of reality itself, the substance of space and matter, and what existence actually is.
I could dig it. So this question is going to be for both of you, I'm going to jump back over to Derek and ask you this question, first, how do you feel about the climate of this campaign right now?
I mean, on first, first glance, it looks like it's it's okay. So first, as a as a disclaimer, I have a sometimes I have a hard time finding words. So there might be this is where I'm like pause for for a little while, while I'm trying to think of something sorry to the audience and sorry to the panelists, I guess. So I would say that it does seem adversarial. But you know, then my mind automatically says, Well, what about elections of the past? And I don't know if it's any less, any more or less adversarial than some elections of the past. Of course, there's probably been multiple ones where everything went smoothly, or back in the day when candidates were basically chosen by the mob bosses, or by the, you know, smoky handshake, smoke filled room deals and stuff. So those might, might not have had as much vitriol, but upon, yeah, if an alien came here now, they would probably say this probably is kind of aggressive.
Okay? So, but you're saying this is probably the way that it's been going the whole time. Is just where
I think that one of the main issues, of course, is social media and the news cycle nowadays, apples. Things to a higher extent. But I think, I think the the combat and see between the candidates, or their feelings towards one another, or words that they might use, or digging up history on somebody else. I think that's probably been going on, you know, 70% of the elections that we've had
Okay, and for you. OJ, how do you feel about the climate of this current campaign?
I feel very similar. I think, you know, it is probably not that far different. I remember things being said that were pretty harsh in the past about folks, but again, with social media, it is, you know, it kind of ups the Annie, I would add. And also, as far as the candidate being selected in a smoky back room, I agree that it also has probably been the case in the past. And one of the reasons why maybe things might be a little bit more accelerated now is because, you know, we have one candidate who probably was not picked in this back of a smoky room. I think that, you know that, I think that bothers a lot of people who think that they're entitled to make these decisions for the rest of the people, but I think it might be getting ahead of myself. And the last thing I'll say is I think that the nature of some of the comments, and this is on both sides, really reflects on either one, the intelligence of the electorate, or two, the perceived intelligence of the electorate, because there has been so much deviation from core issue topics that delve more into personalities, innuendo and just in a kind of not really relevant as far as policies, laws and things of that nature. And I think that there's an attempt on the part of some of those involved to really, basically try to avoid the issue and try to manipulate people on a more sort of emotional level. It seems kind of deliberate.
Okay? And do you feel like both sides are trying to manipulate people on an emotional level, or just one side?
I feel like they're both doing it, but I definitely would say that one side is doing it more than the other. But I think to get into examples of that. I don't know if that's what you want to get into right now, but I definitely think one side is doing it more, but definitely, I think Trump overstates things, and he says things in a way to try to give it an alarm or urgency that kind of exaggerates the true nature of what he's talking about. And I definitely think that there, it's definitely also done on the other side as well. So, I mean, I think that which I think that we're probably more thoughtful than the average voter, if I were to be so, you know, presumptuous is to say that just to even be willing to have a conversation. A lot of people aren't real thoughtful. For some people, it's as simple as, oh, he's racist, or, you know, he, she's a she, she lied, you know what I mean, or whatever. It's like one thing, and they're not really, you know, and it might be even being an emotional thing, and they're not really thinking it through. And I think that the candidates are aware of that, and they're smart, and they're saying, Well, wait a minute, we could either try to win over the 15% of people who are thinking, or we could try to win over the 85% of people who are not thinking. So we're more of the votes. And I think that you see this sort of a message that sort of tailored to a sort of sweet spot with amongst the people as far as mentality goes. And I definitely think that that's done on a part of one candidate more than the other.
Okay, all right, we'll get, we'll get into, deep into that. So I'm gonna, again, I'm going to ask you both these questions, but I'm just kind of flipping back and forth, and I want to take the time to if you're just tuning in, this is the counter narrative. This topic is about black men who vote, and we have one person who's a Hillary supporter, one person a Hillary supporter, one person who's a Hillary Clinton supporter, and one person who's a Donald Trump supporter, and we are just hearing having a conversation with them to learn more about their views. So the question I I'd like to ask both of you, and I'm going to start with you again, Derek, is, what with the state, with the state of the state, and the national polls being all over the place, how do you feel right now about your candidates chances? So your. Candidate being Hillary Derek. How do you feel about her chances right now?
Again, I'm not, I'm not as deeply watching it as some people may be, especially because the information is out there right now, they are trying to get people involved with the election cycle. More and more they're making it more out to be a reality show, which might have some pluses and benefits to it, but they are. They are making the information available. I'm I'm not following it as close it could be the in general, I go through a cycle of when I'm listening to news and then when I'm not. And so this might just fall into that category, I guess. How do I feel about her chances? I still feel good about her chances. I feel like, well, I could start a debate by saying something crazy like, well, Trump can't win because he's, you know, of
course, they're not gonna Elect Trump. The people would never stand for such a thing. But no. But seriously though, um, I believe that, as OJ was saying, Trump is, um, saying Trump is
reaching out and energizing, reaching out emotionally to energize, I think that unfortunately, he's only energizing A small percentage of the full electorate. Now, of course, the full lecture doesn't come out and vote anyway. I mean, so we don't know how it's going to pay. I'm not going to prophesize, but I believe that the people who are the most vocal, or the or the small percentage of people who's peeling off and going in his ways, still represent a very small percentage. So I think just from numbers alone, I don't think that he could win.
Now, with what the polls are saying, with him being like either two points ahead or two points behind, that would give the impression that is not such a small number. Well,
you could, you could easily use that same information you just gave to lens to lend support to what I'm saying in that the vocal minority, or the highly energized base, are the ones who's going to go out first and vote early voting. And so when the general comes around, if all of that, if that whole section of the base has been exhausted, then there's gonna be no one left. You know, saying to continue to power votes on in his side again, I'm not gonna prophesize what's gonna happen, but I do still feel strongly that she would, she would win.
Okay, and to you, OJ, with the polls being all over the place, how do you feel about your candidate Trump chance of winning? Well
before I answer the question, I want to say that I think that these types of questions are like the least helpful questions, because it turns the the election into almost like a sport or a game instead of and it makes it about a competition between two people, as opposed to a competition between ideas and issues. So but that being said, I'll briefly say that I think that Trump is doing very well. I don't believe the polls. I think it's very clear that the media, the corporate owned media, is is very slanted against Trump. I think that's blatantly obvious, and very pro Hillary Clinton, and I think they're trying. And I also don't fully trust the election process. I hope that it is fair and honest, but I don't, I don't think it's beyond reason to suspect that it may be toiled with. And I think that if you give the illusion that the race is a lot closer than what it is, then it gives you the opportunity to play some shenanigans after the fact and make it look plausible. But if you look at a Trump rally, okay, where you have, you know, 50,000 plus people, with another 10 20,000 outside that couldn't even get in. And this is happening pretty much at every rally. And then you look at a Hillary Clinton rally, if you want to call it that, and it's not even 1000 people. There's a few 100 people, not even 500 people. It makes it pretty clear, like on a grassroots level, you know, who the people are more strongly supporting? I think that the media has given the illusion that Hillary Clinton is even in the race at all. I think it's a purifier. Fauci. So that's how I would characterize
when you say it's a facade that she's even in the race at all. Are you saying that she they're making a facade in terms of like she don't have the numbers that they're saying she has
Correct? I don't think that there are that many people. I don't think it was even close the number of people that want Hillary Clinton to be president, as compared to the amount of people that want Trump to be president. You know, I would even venture to say that the people who are probably well over 50% of the people that are voting for Clinton are voting for her merely because they don't want Trump to be president. I don't think that even of her voters, I don't think very many of them actually want her to be president.
Do you think that there's people who are possibly voting for Trump just because they don't want Hillary? Yes,
and I'm probably leaning more towards that side myself, although I don't think it's merely that. It's not Hillary. I think he has a lot of good components that he brings to the table. It's not merely that, but that's definitely, for me, at least, at least 50% of it, but, but just, just, all you got to do is look at a Trump rally and look at a Hillary rally. I mean, it's literally 10,000 to one, you know what? I mean, it's crazy. It's not even close. And I and also you have to look at the voter turnout in the Republican primary, and you see these historic numbers of folks that are voting. And I think the prime reason for the increase of participation is because of the enthusiasm that Trump has ginned up. I don't think that there's people jumping up, running excited to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, but there are people excited, I think probably doing very well.
So so it sounds like you're, you're, you're saying that you feel like he's doing much, much better. And the reason for that is because when you look at his rallies like it's obviously more people there, so it's obviously more people who are interested in voting for him, and
the turnout for the primaries as well.
And you also mentioned a little bit the voting process. Do you agree with Trump that the voting process is rigged?
Again, Trump tends to overstate things. I don't think that we can know for sure that it's rigged, but we definitely have reason to suspect is rigged. For one, there's been a big move away from paper ballots into this electronic voting. And actually, we've had electronic voting for a while, but we generally have had at least a paper backup where you can count the paper ballots to make sure that the electronic count is correct. And in more and more instances that is being moved away from you also see areas where people who are newly sworn in as citizens being bused away to cast votes by the Democratic Party, which is some sort of violation. I believe could be wrong about that, but I believe I'm hearing report that there was some voting violation that was done involving basically using somewhat coercive tactics against newly sworn in citizens. So, you know, between those sort of illegal tactics and the fact of just it's a machine. And, you know, at the end of the day, you're talking about literally, a black box, you hit a button and it tells you how many people voted for this person and how many people voted for that person. Unless you understand the inner workings of that box, you have no idea whether or not the count is accurate. You just have to trust the maker of the box. Oh, and we have no reason to just basically trust the box. We just hope that the box is counting correctly. Now, if there's paper ballot and we some at some point after the fact, suspected the box wasn't right, you can always go ahead and count the paper, which gives more of an incentive to the creator of the box to create it so that it performs as we wanted to perform, because they know that at the end of the day, the box can be validated and verified. If they know ahead of time that, hey, there's really no check for this box, then why not put put a bug in the software that makes it you know, so for the vote, I
did fill out a paper ballot machine, but they still have a paper ballot backing it up.
Yes, each state is different, and it may even be even the jurisdictions may even be different, but not all the electronic machines have a paper backed up. Some do, some don't. I hope that most of them still do, but many don't,
okay, and the switch from early voting is a little different
as well. I think with early voting, even in Maryland, it might be electronic, but I do believe I do. I do remember hearing something to the effect of, now you can always google this on the spot. Now this is beautiful. Google. Is with early voting, is a is a paper ballot, but with voting on the day, and
that's the thing that makes, makes you feel like it's it's untrustworthy because it's on paper.
I'm not going to say that it is, that it is wrong or that it is not reflecting the true results, but what I am saying is that we should not blindly just believe that it will do so and not question. I think that we should look, wait and see how it goes and if it appears to be good correct, fine, but be ready for the possibility that it may not be correct, and then be willing to do like what Al Gore did, and ask for recounts and things of that nature. But I'm certainly basically not putting it past anybody to try to pull some shenanigans. I mean, okay, have already been pulled is certainly within the scope of that, right? And, you know, so, you know. So basically,
okay, and you're not saying this, that it's rigged in this election. You're just saying the process of voting itself is rigged. I'm
not saying it's rigged. I'm saying that it's vulnerable to being rigged. Okay? And what I'll reserve judgment as to whether this election is rigged until after the election, like there's ways of, kind of determining that, or he's getting some evidence about that. For example, exit polls, historically, exit polls have matched the actual numbers to within 1% okay. But if you suddenly see exit polls differs from the actual results by 5% or 10% that would be an indication that, you know something happened that was, you know, improprieties. You know what I mean. Now it that may not occur. The exit polls may match the results in a way that we expect, but there's no way of knowing that until after the fact. So I'm not going to say that it's rigged, but I'm going to say that there's a potential that it could be rigged, and that we'll have to wait and see until after the results to make that determination.
Okay, gotcha.
And Trump caught a lot of flack for saying, You know what, we'll see if I don't know if I'm going to accept the election maybe he didn't say it. And again, that's one of his downfalls. He doesn't say things in the clearest, most eloquent way, but I think what he meant to say is, I will accept the election results and not contest them if they appear to be fair and accurate. Well, what he actually gonna be fair and accurate until after it occurs. But what
he actually said was, he will accept it if he wins. Those were the work or not. We could argue about what he meant to say, but the words
that he said, I think when he the question during the debate was, oh, not during debate, and he said, he said, we'll see. It'll be something. He said something, I think the word he used was suspense.
Yeah, he did say during debate that he will see at the time. But afterwards, there was a rally where he said, If he wins, he will accept,
well, just be Yeah, him saying that if he wins, he will accept it, does not mean that if he doesn't win, he categorically won't accept it. Of course. Why would he challenge the election if he wins, if he expects that he should win anyway,
if he feels like it's rigged, then that's the reason not to accept it. Of course,
okay, but he's not going to know if it's rigged until after the election.
Right? Then I would say, I would then I think that the that's a better statement that he said was the one that he said in the debate, in terms of, I'll see at that time, as opposed to if I win, because that that does not sound like a fair imbalance. That sounds like if I win, I'm not going to push it because I want to win. That sounds like the focus is on winning and not fear and balance. Well,
I can understand how it might sound like that, but that's not what he's saying. If I say that, if you don't run around the block, I'm not going to pay you $5 it doesn't mean that if you do run around the block that I am going to pay you $5 I'm only telling you what I will do if you don't run around the box. So him, likewise, him saying that if he wins, he won't challenge. It actually says nothing about what he will do if he doesn't win.
I feel like he said what he how he would handle it in both situations.
Oh, okay, well, I'm not familiar with that. I can't comment on that. I hear you. I can only comment on what you said that he said, and what I heard him say, if is with regards to the with regards to him saying that if he wins, he won't challenge it, that only says about what he will do if he wins, if you're saying that, he said what he will do if he doesn't win categorically without equivocation, then I didn't hear him say that. But if he did, in fact, say that, then I don't agree with that statement. I don't agree with everything he says. But what I gathered from what he his intentions are, from the debate, what I did here is that if it appears to be. Like there's some funny business going on, then he will challenge which he should which is outward.
Okay, all right. So I want to say again, if you are just joining us, this is the counter narrative. We are talking having conversation with black men who vote one hillary supporter and one Trump supporter. Question I have for you there you mentioned about how you are starting to you're not at the point where you don't want to vote anymore, but because of the candidate choices, you're kind of getting this, not disillusioned. You're kind of getting not as enthusiastic about the voting process. And to me, that kind of hints at something that Trump was saying around it being the possibility of it rig, and something that OJ kind of hit on when he's saying just not, not as much trusting the process, really. And it sounds like you're having a little bit of, I
don't have any problem with the process. Okay? I'm saying that. I'm saying that the philosophical growth, I guess, that I've had over the over a number of years has pointed me in a certain direction, and the systems that we have in place right now. I don't mean system of voting. I mean systems in general. I mean structure in general, are very likely not going to say, Okay, say, for example, anyone who's a Bernie Sanders supporter, right? If you're Bernie Sanders supporter, you might be down with him saying free college for everyone. Right there. You might be down for a bunch of stuff that he says that's very much ideal. If he would have got elected, none of that stuff would actually happen because the system isn't conducive to the things that he was saying, not simply because he wouldn't be the, you know, leader of the free nation or the strongest country in the world, but he has a whole Congress to deal with. He has a whole, you know, a whole, an entire population, 300 plus million population, where is most of the people have an adverse effect to wear a socialist and he wears it probably like a badge on his jacket. I mean, he none of those things would get through, you know, universal health care. We already, we tried that, you know. I mean, I'm and again, that doesn't mean that it won't happen in the future. I'm saying that the system that so that we're dealing with right now is not conducive to Sanders ideals, is not conducive to many of my ideals. So it's like, okay, so, so in other words, when I'm voting, I'm not voting, and you were right to say that I'm not at the point where I'm going to stop voting. That's not the point. It's just that I'm not enthusiastically voting. Like, yes, this person is going to bring a sweeping change that we need. My thoughts is this person is going to do a 5% advancement, or, you know, a 2% advancement, and I'm just happy with that. You know, I'm saying that's so you don't really get enthusiastic about the 2% advancement, but, you know, I'll take it.
So for you, it's not really, not necessarily, whether or not you trust the process is just you're not just as excited about the options that we have. No,
you Okay, did I miss it? Yeah, it's not about the options, it's not about the process, okay,
oh, the the,
I keep using the word system, but it's about the structure that we actually live in. Now, okay, so, so, so, for example, the Bernie Sanders thing, if 90% of the Congress is against free college, then that's a system that he would be working in if he was the president. In other words, it's not going to work, you know, saying it's just not gonna happen. So I'm saying the ideals that I may have are not going to work in the system that we have right now. And I don't mean the system of voting. I mean just like people's mindsets. I mean like, the way the hierarchy works that, you know, just, I'm saying just the, just the structure of the culture, you know, yeah, the culture, let's call it that. I'm not, you know, the the ideals that I may have, that some people may have, that people in the opposite end may have cultures, you know, they move slow. They don't, they don't change overnight, you know. So you just gotta accept that, that no president is going to come in and make any sweeping changes like we expect, like a lot of people expect, to happen, it's just not
gonna happen. Okay, so let me see if I'm getting this right. So you're just getting to a point where you're understanding that the. Power that the President has is extremely limited. Is limited, and so that makes you what?
It makes me have a reduced enthusiasm. And I'm saying the emotion, yes, I'm saying that I'm still going to vote. But it's not like, I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna get my man in there, because my man is going to do such and such, you know, because, in my opinion, they ain't going to do such and such, you know, say, if I'm gonna keep going to Bernie, because Bernie is someone who had a lot of high ideals, and everyone knew it okay. So if I was supportive of him, and I'd be, then I'm down with his ideas. He's going, he's gonna get in here, he's gonna change everything. And I'm saying, from my realistic standpoint, is he's gonna get man, he gonna do 98% of this stuff. He say, so yes, if I was supportive of him, I would still vote him in, because I would still look for that 2% change that he can make. But I'm not going to be all, you know, all going nuts, you know, over thinking that the Second Coming is about to happen and everything is going to be different, and and those on the other side, they're going to get their just desserts, and, you know, saying the awakening and all that. So it's,
yeah, well, Stephanie agrees with you. She said power in the government is very limited. And I want to also say hello to Crystal. For others who are in I won't be able to see you unless you say hi, or if you have a question for our guests, please do feel free to drop it below. So you mentioned how you felt, Derek about the
let me. Let me give another example. Okay, another example would be because, as we had mentioned, I am hillary supporter. I'm a Clinton supporter. Okay, I do not give credit to Bill Clinton for the economic boom to happen in the 90s. And I also do not give place blame on bush for the down to for the recession to happen in his time. In other words, that person as a president does not have that sort of power that the economy is, is, is controlled by hundreds of millions of transactions, you know, on a worldwide scale, and the President is, yeah, that's like, the President's like, saying the President has something to do with the price of gas when we clearly had OPEC and so on. Now, if we, if we had 100% ownership of our gas supply, then I would say yes, then that case, the president can have a very real effect on the price of gas. But in the system right now, where we got people who's prospecting stock, people, commodities, people, OPEC, multiple countries with their own agendas. President has no effect on the price of gas, you know? I mean, unless they were going to go straight, dictate the route and just say, I'm fixing prices. But that, you know, again, this is a democracy. That's not the system that we're in right now. They would, the people wouldn't stand for that sort of thing. Mm, thing. So I just wanted to follow up with some real world I did, you know, the whole economics thing. I do not blame bush for the reception, and I do not give credit to Clinton for the for the, you know the great the 90.
I kind of agree with that for the most part, but I would just tweak it by saying that the things that the President could do, oftentimes they don't do, like for example, with the price of gas, yeah, if you just leave it to the open market, fine, but the fact of the matter is, the OPEC nations will name these Saudi Arabia, you know, they rely wholly on the US for protection, and there's no we have 100% leverage to make them, you know, charge, but we want them To charge for the oil, but we just, for whatever reason, choose not to exercise that leverage, and also this strategic reserves of gasoline that we could use to sort of buffer whatever price fluctuation. So if the price goes way down, we could just buy up a bunch of gas off the free market, and then if the price goes up, we can just unload some of the strategic reserves, and we just choose not to do that. But I agree 90% what you're saying, generally there is limited control. But also I would say that there are some controls, but lots of times is deliberately just not, not exercise. No. I agree.
There are things that could be done. That's why I broke the dictator example. I'm saying in our system. And okay, let me stop using the word system. Our culture will not allow certain things. So for example, if, if, if the President said, If a president said, I'm going to do X to this country in order to get them to do what we want to do. Okay, there's a certain limit as to how far they can go with that, even though going, you know, to attend might get exactly what we want. There's gonna be members in Congress, so there's gonna be the voting people who say, we don't want you to go to a 10. You're going too far. They going, you know, it's gonna be some blockages that happen. Therefore, our culture does not allow for a dictator, sort of, for those dictators or monarchy sort of commands that would get certain things done. You know? I mean, yeah,
I agree with you for the most part. I'm not gonna go to the first extent on the minor what we're saying, but I agree 90% of what
you're saying, Yeah, I want to say that there's some comments in the chat section. Stephanie mentioned the legislation that actually drove the derivatives market into a tailspin went into effect when the Clintons were in office. Anyway. Miguel ride says, nice, nice conversation going. Another person said, I agree with Derek for the most part. Another person said the president is a figurehead period, and another person said, I feel as though Trump would abuse his executive order ability. So here's the question before we get to whether or not Trump would abuse his executive order ability. You both expressed, you both expressed some, just some general feelings about the process, whether it's about the that the ballot and the voting process, or it's about the level of power that the President has to even make any substantial change, or, more specifically, change that affects your life as an individual or even your you know, greater family, extended family, community. What do you say to those people then who don't vote, and why do you still feel the drive to vote, even with some of the some of the challenges around it that you mentioned? I'll go ahead and start with you. OJ,
honestly, and generally speaking, I can understand why you wouldn't want to vote in in like national elections. I I think that culturally, as black people, we're conditioned to think that voting is so important because the sacrifice that was made so that we could have the ability to vote. But I would, I would say this, this might sound a little taboo, but just because people fought and died for something, does it make it valuable? Right? I believe that something's value does not come from its cost, but rather comes from its usefulness. So voting is actually only as valuable as it is useful. It's not as valuable as with equating to the sacrifice made so that we can vote. And if, if it so happens that there is not a candidate that you support or feel enthusiastic about, you probably shouldn't vote, because at that point, the process is not really legitimate to you, and you're just legitimizing something that perhaps doesn't deserve legitimacy. And you know, there were times and places in this country where black people were doing a lot better than they are now, prior to having a nationwide protection to vote or having any meaningful nationwide voting power. Now that's on a national level, on a local level, I think it matters a whole lot, as far as you know, on a on a municipal level, county, county government, city government, I think that's very important. Even on a state level, it's probably important also, but the further you move away from your locality, the less important it is. And you can just point to examples like Black Wall Street, not only Black Wall Street, there were other black towns that were thriving and doing well, and honestly, there was they were so self sufficient and produced so much value for themselves. They were sort of insulated from the more national issues, and didn't need to even worry about it. And I think that's where the effort is probably best placed. I think that a lot of the rhetoric around voting and being it being so important, especially on a national level, is deliberately done to emphasize the importance of politicians. It's sort of like a it's sort of a way for politicians to self. Emphasize and make them, make themselves more important to us, or appear more important to us than they actually
are. I really love that quote that you said, OJ, about, um, the cost not making it value, but it's usefulness. I really think that that's a that's a very I like the statement. I like the statement, but galrod says, I'm willing to see what is going to happen with whoever wins in office. You never know what is going to happen when the person gets in and stuff responded that he doesn't have a choice but to wait to see So Derek, back to you, how do you feel about the person who or how do you feel about the state of people who deciding that they're not going to vote, and with all of the challenges, not the challenges, with all of your concerns that you have, why are you still voting?
Well, the people who don't vote are partially the reason why the culture hasn't changed the system in place as far as the actual congressman or the candidates or whatever, that's all based on who we're voting and if we're only, if only a certain selection of people voting is going to keep being the same thing. So that's my, my number one answer is that you need more people to vote, so that change will come with it. With people voting. This the system is not well, the culture is not isolated and impervious to votes. It just, we just haven't had done enough people to vote. You know, we're always in like a 50% range. It was horrible to find out recently that here in Baltimore we had a a city mayor, mayoral election that was outside of the normal schedule, so it didn't so you weren't voting for your Senator, you won't voting for the President. At the same time when we were voting for for mayor. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but Baltimore is is about 600,000 people, and only, like 30,000 people voted and and the numbers were such that only 6000 men voted in the entire city, you know, out of 600,000 it was only 6000 people voted, you know. And it's like when, of course, that's the extreme example, but when you but it's a real example. And when you have things like that, you know,
yeah, I agree that's terrible. Like I said, that I think voting on the local side, definitely on a city level, is definitely big, big deal. And that's that's unfortunate,
right? And, and even the presidential elections, you know, we're not talking we're not getting actually, I should look it up right now, but I doubt we're at this 60% rate. Yeah, let me see. I
will say that still. I say that voting is important. If there's a candidate up there that you support and that you want to see in office, but if there, if there is such a candidate for you, then you should 1,000% vote. It's extremely important to do so, but if need none of the candidates, or anybody that you're enthusiastic about, and you don't really see the difference between them, then I think a non vote also sends a message. It sends a message that you know, you don't you don't agree with the process.
Okay, so I just looked it up and that in the past 20 years, the highest voting percentage was 2008 which was 57% hmm, you if you go back 30 years, the highest is, actually, is More than 30, you go back to 1960 the highest is 62.8
you've got to go all the way back to 1900 to have a 70 plus percent voting. And that's that's clearly going to have an effect. It's been times where I've gone to a
local neighborhood association meeting, and you get the feeling that those people who's there are the people who always show up time and time out. You know, it's an open it's an open forum, but the same 10 people keep showing up. And in reality, and I'm of course, extrapolating that out to the larger scene, but reality, that has a big effect, because now it's like in reality, those 10 people have had all the power, you know, whereas if you had the whole neighborhood show up, who knows what would happen? So I'm I'm for pushing people to vote, because the possibilities are endless. I don't know if it. Going my direction, but at least it would be something different. You know, you take a survey, you take a quick scan of the of the of the floor at Congress, and you see everyone that has white hair, and, you know, they've been in there for 40 years, stuff like that. You know, it's time for something different. However it goes, it's just time for something
different. So we have two comments in the chat. One a person is saying, but it's very rare that there's only one person on the ballot. So saying you shouldn't vote if there isn't a candidate for you is saying there are no candidates at every level of government that represent your ideals. Or, I should say one office on a ballot, so it sounds like she's saying there's multiple offices on the ballot. So if you choose not to vote, you're not just not voting for the President. You're not voting for
that's a good question that I wanted to actually ask OJ, too, and I'm sure you'll, you'll you, you will ask him his response to her comment, but I also would like to ask you, OJ, you're voting for Trump Republican. Are you voting Republican now the ticket as well, or is it going to be something different?
No, I don't consider myself a Republican. I actually think that the establishment politicians on both sides of the ticket, or probably, you know, in most cases, corrupt or inept or both. I'm somewhat cynical toward most of your run in the middle politicians. I'm going to vote for the people that I have some opinion about if it's if there's not a person that I know or have any opinion about, is a good chance I won't make a selection for that, for that particular office that I'm voting for. And again, I definitely make a distinction between voting at a local level and then voting at the more and more general, generalized elections. And of course, the most generals probably for the President and for the senators and so forth. But yeah, you know so that that's pretty much the answer to that question. Definitely not gonna vote Republican down the line, I'm definitely don't consider myself to be Republican.
Okay, some there's a question, and I believe this is for you. Derek. Person wrote, I don't see how a low voter voter turnout changes if you don't have enough of a variety to help change the culture.
Well, let's say, for example, you know, I'll say right now, I did early voting, and I voted Hillary democratic at the top, but everywhere where there was a chance, I voted Green Party. Now, if there were more people who did that, just, let's just increase, let's just increase, me by, you know, by a million voters, you know, then the Green Party or the, or, you know, socialistic party of the Bernie Sanders, they will become viable. They will become actual force to deal with. You know, you just have to have more people come out and say, and I'm talking about just increasing. I'm not even saying increasing, changing people to my mindset. I'm not saying Take, take, take the voters mentality and shift it. I'm saying simply increase the number of people who actually had my mentality, if you simply increase them, if, if the Green Party, for example, if they were to get or the Libertarian Party, if they were to get short, they might not still win the election. But if they actually received 50 million votes, you know, 20 million votes, then it would be like, hold on, we really have something going on here. They would actually have a, a some leverage to make it a three party system, or at least, at least bring out donors who will provide funding for them, you know. And then it could, in the future, it could be it could be different. You
know, in the future, we have to have another discussion which might even be more interesting this one, and that would be socialism versus capitalism. He would,
Derek would love that topic. He wrote a book on capitalism. Why shouldn't say it's the going capitalism? I think it's on the death of capitalism. Is that an accurate
description? I was thinking I should write a book myself, not to not to be overly, whatever, overly, Oh, absolutely, we got to emphasize it myself. But I actually have a lot of ideas about that. And that's one good thing about these Facebook back and forth, is that a lot of I got to put a lot of that stuff down in writing that I've kind of been thinking about. Mm,
hmm, yeah, you got to inbox me about that. We got to set that up. Yeah, yeah. So we talked about so I'll say one other thing that that someone in the chat room said, and I want to say, if you are just joining us, this is the counter narrative. We are talking about black men voting Trump. We have a Trump supporter as well as a Hillary supporter, and they're sharing their viewpoints on voting and all things related really. Steph says higher voter turnout from an empirical perspective, helps to legitimize the results. Have the people spoken? If only 57% show up? I guess she's saying like, How can you say The people have spoken if only 57% show up? And I think she's actually making that comment in reference to something that someone else said in the chat. The question that I have for both of you right now, and I can start with you. OJ, is you mentioned some people are voting, not really for a person, but they're voting again. Some people don't trust the process. Some people are, you know, just weary about, I mean, this is just in a general conversation, worry about the level of power and engagement that an actual President has for you as a Trump supporter, are you enthusiastic about him? I am. Okay, don't
get me wrong, I think he's flawed in a lot of ways, but in the most important ways. I think he's on the money about a lot of things. And so to answer your question shortly, yes, I am. And I guess the reasons why I will come out once we get into the I guess the other phase of the conversation. So
I guess, I mean, we could get into it now, I guess it sounds like a little bit of what you're saying are the trade offs. So tell me the aspects of him that you feel like he's flawed, but also the parts where you feel like you're really enthusiastic and because of these other things, you're okay with, whatever way you see him to be flawed.
Well, firstly, I think that the biggest problem facing people in this country is either they don't have a job, or they have a job but they're not making enough money at their job, or they're making enough money at their job but they're paying too much taxes on that money. I think those are the three main problems, right? If the person has a job and they're making enough money and they're left with enough money after they pay taxes, then I believe all their other problems are essentially that, you know, theirs is theirs to solve. I think they can pretty much solve it on their own. And I'm not really looking for the government to really do anything, but stay out the way and help to create an environment which is conducive to economic opportunity. Like, like, not to, not to, quote a famous Republican, because, again, I'm not Republican, but the best social program is a job, a good job. And I think the main reasons why, one the main the main problem is lack of economic opportunity. The main reason for that is that so many companies have outsourced or their their work overseas, or have straight, just moved their manufacturing facilities or call centers or whatever have you overseas. So the jobs literally are not here to be had, and then the money that is made from these products is shipped out of the country, and it's not available for Americans to earn so and I think that Trump is the main is he's the only politician that's really addressing that. He's the one that even brought it to the forefront. Because, remember, prior to Trump's candidacy, uh, globalism was, that was, that was, was the hot term. It was, you know, if you were smart, you were in and you knew what was going on, you knew globalism was the way to go, and it's good, and all that stuff, once Trump started breaking it down and making it plain, you know, all of a sudden it's like, well, wait a minute, yeah, NAFTA actually didn't help us. The jobs are overseas. Um, it's not so he's addressing basically the main, the main issue,
which is jobs. And like he he will create jobs.
It's not so much that he will create jobs, okay, so much as it he will one not endorse any legislation that or treaty that would make it easier for jobs to go away, and he will incentivize companies to come back and disincentivize them to remain abroad. And so. So the jobs already exist. Okay, let's be clear, the jobs didn't really disappear. They just went someplace else. So it's a matter of bringing the jobs back, more so than creating the jobs.
So that's a that sounds a little bit like, and you correct me if I'm wrong, a little bit like government getting involved in businesses in our in a really big way in turn, I agree,
I think that the government should be 1,000% involved in business and in commerce, as it pertains to business and commerce that crosses over the border within the boundaries of the United States. Now, once things are in the United States, they should be as hands off as possible and not participate, touch or affect it at all, if possible, or if necessary, least as possible. But certainly, as far as things coming into the country, it should definitely be controlled and regulated. And this has been the history of this country from the very beginning. In fact, they used to not even be an income tax imagine think about think about everybody who has a job okay, and think about every issue they have that they want the government to address and ask them, would they trade not having to pay any taxes at all? Or would they rather continue paying taxes to get the things that they want to see the government do? And I will guarantee you, 90% of people say, You know what, I'd rather just not have any taxes taken out of my check, and that way I can get more things I need for
myself. The issues that people face are only economic, and none of them are social. Like them go ahead, well like let's say our policing in this country, I don't know how that would be fixed by people. I
think it's economic in affluent neighborhoods, they don't have this policing issue because it's not a high crime area, because people aren't desperate to commit crimes to earn money. And so where you have a very low occurrence of crime, the police, one is not as many police because they're not as needed. Two, the police that are there aren't as hyped up, jacked up, ready to go, because they don't feel like there are, they are as much at risk, and they don't feel like, is that as likely that they're going to have to take action? So I think even that is an economic issue.
Okay, all right, that's the point. So let me um, so then
let me, let me interject real
quick. Go ahead,
because it's I don't know what I will be able to advertise this any other time. And that is, I actually wrote a paper, probably about a year ago now, where the central theory is whether or not, and I'm on the on the positive side, the taxes are actually good in a mathematical sense. And I guess that's something that if we do schedule the capitalism debate or talk, then I guess I can go into that a little bit further. But it did come to me one day like, well, one day if taxes aren't, like, mathematically good, and that's, that's where I
I would make the argument that even if taxes are mathematically good, they are morally wrong, because it's basically theft. Whenever you take something from somebody at the point of a gun stolen from them, so it doesn't matter if you take those resources to go feed children you stole and paradigm you've created a bad situation
going going to feed children is a moral argument. And that's, yeah, that's not what I was saying in the paper. I was saying
mathematically. But, oh yeah, right, okay, that's
interesting. I did start the paper off by saying that, yes, the involuntary nature of taxes is immoral, though. Okay, I 100% agree. The involuntary nature is is, uh, isn't more. But this, again, the body of it was about the mathematical side of it,
right? I get you, I get you, yeah, yeah, I get you, I get you. It might make sense mathematically in the proper proportions, but I would, I would, I would suspect that that proportion is about the same proportion you would get if you had voluntary contributions anyway. But the reason why I brought up taxes is because, like I said, they used to be not, not being income tax, and the federal government used to fund itself entirely through things like tariffs and things of that nature, that, of course, are voluntary payments, because you don't have to import things if you don't want to. But that's the way it used to fund itself, through these tariffs. And so I mentioned the. Trade off between the taxes to say, okay, would it better to be have higher tariffs and less income taxes, which would actually lead to more jobs as well, you know? So that's the reason why I brought that up, as far as the trade off between getting money through taxes, but rather as opposed to tariffs from imports, okay, which is what Trump is pushing for.
So one of the so I'm gonna read some things from the chat section. Let's see, see, see one person said, I like having 911, in paved roads. Another person said, I like, I like being that my tax dollars make it possible for poor children, I like knowing, oh, sorry, I like knowing that my tax dollars make it possible for poor children to have health care. And another person mentioned that making a living wage does not equal affluence. Now we are as we're talking about taxes and each, each one of your parties has specific tax plans. When I looked over Donald Trump's tax plan, and I'll try to pull it back up and see if I could share it as well, it doesn't look like he's talking about creating any type of when you say, like, is this economics. It's out his plan looks like it's going to cost more money, and it also let me pull it up, and it also looks like the wealthier people get taxed less and poor people get taxed more. But I mean, there may be a
when you say Less and More, do you mean a higher percentage of their money or low percentage of money, or do you mean more money? Because I think, well,
nope, that's not what I mean. I don't mean more money. I mean higher percentage. Okay, um, so I'll just read this and I'll share this link so everybody can know what I'm talking about, or what I'm looking at. So let me put it first here with the panelists in this chat section, so you guys could definitely be able to have a look at it, and then I will share it in the chat room. Yeah,
I'm on the Trump site now.
Where is it i you.
But I think that we're not really in disagreements and the forest, the tax issue, me and Derek, maybe, maybe us and some of your people chatting in might disagree with us, but I think we both agree that, you know, payment should be voluntary. Well, yeah,
I think that again, if we're talking about the moral side, okay, we're talking about the moral side. I feel like everyone who would want to pay into a pool to have, you know, a military or to have paved roads, whatever like that. Should voluntarily do that. You know, if you want to pay into that, you should so if we're talking about the moral side, but I don't know, you know, as far as a platform, as far as a political platform, I still think that I can be, I can still come down on a democratic versus a Republican side. And the reason being is it kind of I don't want to mix two different thoughts. One of the thoughts I was having was the comments I made earlier about how presidents aren't don't affect the economy in such a high level, because the market works with whatever environment is in. You know, the market will figure it out, and people, people will make it happen. And one of my examples for that this, this reason why I was about to say, connect to different thoughts, is because I have to do with taxes, is that during the sixth during the 50s, and the six during the 50s, when a lot of the middle wage growth and a lot of the good things were coming out the economy after the World War Two, there was actually a 90% tax on the highest income, on the highest income bracket. And people worked it out. You know, I mean, it's just like, we'll, we'll, this is the system that we're in, and people are creative. People figure out whether it's whether it's they hide money, whether it's they find out how to make more money, whether it's, you know, that people just figure stuff out. So that's one thought. But the other thing, the other thing, as far as the political platform, as far as taxes, goes, on one hand, I do not okay. I'm going to defend, defend OJ or defend, let's say his position in saying that there are a lot of programs that we probably don't necessarily. Early need, or at least need to pay for. And the reason why I say we don't need them, because that could just sound like me in my in my world, and I'm not, and I don't need what these other people are getting. I'm saying that because I've seen many times where a budget will have a surplus, and when the surplus happens, new programs get implemented to take to take up that surplus. Instead of surplus paying back that, it'll just, you know, you just open up a new program, and it's like, well, we didn't need the program in the first place. You know, clearly we didn't. We will get along file without the program. So that's what, I
agree with that. But I would go further and say that also we should not assume that coercive payments is taxes are the only way to fund things. We have an excellent government service called the post office, which is not funded by tax dollars at all. They charge a fee for a service. Okay? You could do the same things with the roads, you can charge a register like right now to register your car cost $200 maybe it should be $2,000 you know what I mean right now in you know? So you got tolls this toll roads, you know this, you pay a total go across a bridge, you go through a tunnel. So a lot of the government services that we have could be funded voluntary payments. And I'll just be real quick. My my my uncle, actually, and my mom retired from New York City School Department, Department of Education, and they pay $30,000 per kid for awful schools. And if you do the math like my mom, she said the average classroom was over 30 children, like 36 kids. So that means that a million dollars per year per classroom. So let's just say you paid a teacher a million dollars a year, and then they spent 5000 a month to rent a space, which you could probably rent a space for much less than that for 30 kids, but that would be like $160,000 a year for just to run a space, and that teacher would still walk away with $900,000 okay, now, now on the other hand, You look at some private schools where the tuition is $7,000 and the students do excellent and have a higher percentage either going to college, of being successful. The problem is that when you don't have to turn a profit, or you don't have performance tied with your infusion of cash, okay, there's not a strong incentive to operate well and operate efficiently, and in fact, the way it currently works now, there's actually an incentive, as Derek mentioned, to operate inefficiently, because the more efficiently you operate, the more money you have left over, the more it gets taken from your budget. And that's another strong argument against taxation, as opposed to fee for service.
Oh, the thing that I'm curious about, OJ is, how do you foresee a situation wherein, if we are paying for and totally voluntarily police or the mailman or roads, and this is all total voluntarily. If a person does not have the money to pay for it, do they not deserve to get mail, police or roads?
Well, that's where they're gonna have to get help. They're gonna have to ask for help. But if you look at institutions like the Catholic Church and other churches, you know, where you got people buying jet planes and everything like that. Americans are very generous, so and, you know, I have no doubt. I mean, a person could stand on the street corner with a cup and make $40,000 a year and change. You know, Americans are very generous, and if they had more money left over, or even keep more of their money, I think that they would be that much more generous. And at the end of the day, you know, you know, that's just, that's just, that's just the way it goes. I am more trusting of the people on a whole than on a few key politicians to as far as taking care of the need, okay,
well, we're actually, I haven't even gone through all of my questions, and we probably should have did this either earlier, ahead of part one and part Two, because we are well over an hour. Um, I wanted to, I guess the best way to wrap this up is, I'll start with you. Derek, I guess it Do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to say on voting, on your candidate, or on anything that we've talked about tonight?
Yeah. Um, actually, I do, and I think this is a good closing remarks from from from myself, even though, like you just said, we could probably extend something much longer. I had a conversation with with a co worker three, four months ago, and she stated that she was voting for Trump, and that started a argument in amongst the workers. And I personally, I took her aside a little bit later on, and I wanted to have a conversation with her in order to show her that just because people differ on their political views, they could still be friends. And so I just wanted to let her know why I was against Trump. And so that's what I'm going to do now. I'm going to give you those reasons. Okay, um, early on. I was a and when I say early one, I mean years ago. I mean seven, 810, years ago. I was a big Trump fan. I read the art of the deal. You know, I remember going on the honeymoon and driving down the down the down Florida coast and seeing so many Trump's hotels. I used to watch this apprentice when it first, you know, before with celebre apprentice, I used to watch the apprentice. I was a big, big Trump fan. What changed it for me? And I used to defend them. They were individuals who would say, you know, this guy is evil, you know, because he came with the whole your fire thing. He looked like he was having fun firing people. And I would defend that action, you know, I would defend his whatever he was doing. What changed it for me was the birth of thing. When the birther thing happened, and he didn't let it go, it didn't cause me to start to look deeper into his personality. And it was because of that research that then found out about the that he didn't write the art of the deal, you know, I didn't found out that most of the most of the hotels that he they have his name on, name on, he don't own. He doesn't own. And, in other words, that hit his his facade started to collapse where it's like, it's all just like, he's just a showman. He's just, you know, he's just a showman. And I started to see that, that certain things that he would say, like, when Forbes, you know, he would complain before, because they had him only pegged that $2 billion when he was saying he was 8 billion. Now, this is about 10 years ago. And you know, Forbes does a bit of research, and they say you're only 2 billion will you? I mean, who do you want us to do? And so showboating nature that I'm against him now as a candidate, because he's liable to say anything. You know, he's liable to say anything to to make himself, to make himself look bigger than what he really is. Can
I respond to that? Oh, yeah.
After he let him finish it, I thought he was done. No, he just said, Hold on his phone dinged or something.
I'm sorry I didn't hear the Hold
on. Can y'all hear me right now? Yeah, I might have took my phone out of the anyways that I'm gonna finish speaking them. I fix my phone so yeah, the Show Boat nature, bring it to the side
while I eat, so you don't have to watch me chew. Yeah,
cuz you making me hungry. OJ, and I'm feeling some type of hungry
so, so the showboat nature of it all is what has has taken me. But you know, the if you say you're successful, and then you find out that, you know, the casinos collapsing and so on, or the the deals this falling through because of or the lack of payments to to people who've worked on the buildings, or the Polish immigrants that he got in trouble for. And this isn't about, I'm not saying this stuff to dig up his past, because everyone has a past. It's not about that at all. It's about the the extravagance of the showmanship of it all. It's like, if he, if he says one thing and history shows another, then why would it be different if he was in office? So I don't want to go off of anything that he says on the trail, because all of them could just be lies. So that's, that's how I feel about that.
Okay. OJ, you wanted to respond, Yes,
one, I share a lot of those same concerns. And like I said before, Trump is flawed. That's one of his flaws. Firstly, I'll say any any flaw of that nature that you mentioned about Trump prior. Probably applies to Hillary Clinton times five. You can just pull up YouTube video after YouTube video of her being a proponent of one thing and claiming one thing, and then her saying the exact opposite thing, and even most recently with the WikiLeaks thing, she said, Well, I have a public and a private policy or stance and warning, you know, letting her supporters know, hey, don't, don't pay attention to stuff I see on the campaign trail. It's just to get votes. So you don't really gain any ground in that category by going for Clinton. She's probably one of the most corrupt people ever to be in public life, and if you do some research on her, you'll be shocked and amazed at the level of criminality. I mean, what's even on the news is like, literally the tip of the iceberg. I mean, it really runs the full game. And as far as criminality goes, I already want to, I don't want to discuss some of the things now, just because it's really horrifying. But if you just do a little research, I just would ask everybody looking at the searching to the Clintons past back in MENA Arkansas, the Tyson Foods and everything, and they're connected with a lot of stuff that's really horrifying, but, and yes, Trump is a showman, but he's also speaking true facts, and that's what like, even if you just take Trump out of the equation, even if he doesn't accomplish or do anything that he says, even if he doesn't even get elected, he's let The cat out of the bag. He's made people aware. He's brought up, I don't know if you're familiar with George Soros, but he's mentioned the international efforts to reduce US sovereignty. All right, he's and this guy is a Clinton, one of the Clinton's biggest donors, and unlike the KKK who supports Trump Clinton, this person not only supports Clinton, Clinton accepts money from him, and Clinton supports him. Clinton mentions him by name, and this guy is Express. Goal is to pretty much eliminate US sovereignty. And he considers us sovereignty to be one of the biggest threats to one world government, which is his goal. And he wants open borders, and he wants to pretty much mix everything together. Right now, I don't think this country is perfect, but I do think that this country is probably the biggest safeguard for freedom in the world. And I think the Constitution, although it's not perfect, is its strongest instrument for doing that. And Hillary Clinton, I don't think, has the intention of upholding that, and that's the reason why I'm for Trump. He's standing up to this. He mentions George Soros. He mentions the outsourcing. He mentions the issues with our open borders. Okay, in these things, whether he disappears today or tomorrow, he has made the public aware of these things, and he has done everybody a good service by doing so. And if he continues to even just do as he's doing now, and speak out about some of these issues, and if he gets into office, he's going to become more aware about even more issues, and he just continues to be vocal about it. I think he's really helping a lot to bring a lot of awareness to this stuff. And it's important. It's a big deal thing, you know, and he's the only one doing it. He's not the perfect person doing it by far, but he's really the only one doing it on the stage and on the level that he's doing it. So he's, he's not a good option, but he's our best option, and he, he brings a lot of truth to life.
Okay, um, Derek, did you want to follow up on that or at all?
No, that was my closing argument. All right. Um,
so anyone from the chat, let's see crystal says, God help us over the next four years, those are my final words. Um, so thank you both for coming on the counter narrative and sharing your um, your thoughts on this whole process, and thank you for also engaging with each other. Thank you for how you guys have engaged engage with each other, and just answering some of these questions. Is it's at the countdown now for this election, what do we have? Four days? Yeah, four days. And we. We will see what happens again. Thank you. This has been the counter narrative. This has been black men Vote Trump and Hillary. Oh, and I need to give you both. I'm going to give you both the opportunity to let people know how they can reach out to you if you are into that sort of thing. So if you are watching this right now, please do take the time to subscribe, like and share. You can also find more information on S rasheem.com you can also find me with me. Thank you for putting that on you. I am s Rasheem on every on everything. So you can find me on Twitter and on Snapchat. If you're nosy like me and likes to look at people's business, I'm on Snapchat and start Rasheem Instagram, s Rasheem on Facebook, I'm Rasheem. Rasheem. And again, you can see more content like this. Please do like, share and subscribe, yep, and subscribe. OJ, how can people get in contact with you? Are you open to getting social with people?
Yeah, sure. Probably the best thing is, probably Facebook. I'm at. OJ, Mallory, well, my Facebook name is just my name, OJ, Mallory. It's OJ, AI, like, Oh, hi. Like the place in California. That's how you spell it, Mallory. And I don't think there's too many OJ Mallory's on Facebook. So my pictures up there, so you'll know
the fake picture from 20 years ago now.
That's a picture that pictures actually recent, um, I actually had, didn't have any picture at all for the longest time, because I was paranoid about being on social media and being facial recognition
software.
Yeah, yeah, I was all paranoid, but then I was tagged. I became tagged in so many pictures. I was like, well, didn't even tagged anyways,
right? All right. Derek, can you tell people how to connect with you socially? What are you up to? You are muted right now, sir, sorry, man, I can
Okay. I'm not up to anything socially. I started off saying that I was an artist. So if you want to see some artwork, you can go to Derek of baltimore.com, which is d e r e, d E, R, E, K of Baltimore, all one word.com it's the same thing on Facebook as well.
All right, thank you guys. Again, is that it did you? That's it Okay? Um, you didn't want to tell them about your book, I guess not. Thank you guys again. I so appreciate you. Have a good night. Everybody watching. Have a good night. And thank you for joining us.
Thanks for the invite that was fun and interesting. Yeah, I want to do capitalism versus socialism.
Let me know what your schedule situation is. Time, okay, all right, now.