About Charlie

Although this is our second episode, it's not the second one we recorded. To give you a good start listening to 2PP, we went back over our first 20 recordings and picked the notable ones and put them up front. The episodes where we make rookie errors and stumble through figuring things out will come later.

In this episode Scott & Shawn talk about Charlie Kirk a week after his murder. 

What is 2 Parachutes Podcast?

The Two Parachutes Podcast is a collaboration, well, more like a conversation, between a CEO and an FBI Agent. Shawn Baker-Garcia and Scott Olson first met when they were working at US Embassy Baghdad; Scott for the FBI and Shawn for the US State Department. Over the years they’ve worked together, given advice and assistance to each other, and now see that the synergy which comes from open, civil, and thoughtful discussion is very much needed in the modern discourse. Join them as they dive into everything interesting to humanity. The goal of 2PP is to recreate the experience most people have had when they stumble into an insightful conversation with a new acquaintance at a conference or a dinner party. The kind of conversation that makes the rest of the room stop talking and listen. The kind of conversation that gets your mind working as new thoughts tumble out. Let the 2 Parachutes Podcast drop into your world!

Shawn: 00:08

Hey Scott.

Scott: 00:09

How are you?

Shawn: 00:11

I'm doing well. How are you?

Scott: 00:13

I'm doing pretty good. It's Friday and yeah. Wrapped another week.

Shawn: 00:19

Yeah, yeah. It was a busy one.

Scott: 00:22

Yeah. Yeah. It's busy and it's good.

Shawn: 00:26

Yeah.

Scott: 00:28

Yeah, ready for the weekend.

Shawn: 00:30

Same.

Scott: 00:31

Yeah, I know you and I have been talking offline little about the Charlie Kirk assassination and all those things. You know, I don't know if your brain is in that space today and which way our conversation But could I did what's top of my brain is, we see a lot in this thing and in a lot of things that people don't stop. What I'm seeing the, even with the Jimmy Kimmel thing where said stuff that he said and his show got, maybe not canceled, but taken off the air indefinitely. There's a lot of, we don't want this chilling effect on what we say or how we're feeling and my view on that is, just because we have the ability to speak publicly without wearing pants from the privacy of our couch, doesn't mean that we always should. I mean, sometimes if you need that, yeah, but what I've really enjoyed about the way that we've been working through how you feel and how I feel about this is we haven't felt the need to be public about it.

Scott: 01:58

And I think that there's a difference between when you're talking with your friends and when you're talking with the public. And it's not all about preparing for a great episode. It's really about sometimes you need to work through things and not be in public. And I just, I wonder if that shakes anything loose for you in terms of, you know, choosing the public private balance. Maybe we should be paying attention to when we scream to the world and when we scream inside our own heads and when we grab a good friend and say, Hey, I got some things to say.

Scott: 02:40

Where

Shawn: 02:40

are you?

Scott: 02:42

I don't know

Shawn: 02:42

if it's

Scott: 02:42

with you.

Shawn: 02:43

You know, I kind of sit back now and have the benefit of a little bit of space, time, distance from the events of of that, tragedy, I, you know, and and I do believe it was a tragedy because I think it was not only, you know, just materially repulsive to me, you know, the taking of any life. I'm I'm fairly on the record with people in my life that I am, you know, not and I don't even think this is driven by my faith as a Catholic. I just, you know, I'm very pro life. You know, I I don't think that it is ever defensible, you know, to to take the life of another human being outside of extraordinary circumstances that I think probably we can all mostly agree on. Where I see significant developments in how people are responding to this individually, as well as sort of societally, is that, you know, people don't take the time to process, particularly people who are platformed, you know, sort of speakers in some form or fashion.

Shawn: 04:02

For me personally, yeah, I'm not an on air personality, right? I mean, we are building something that I think hopefully one day may, if we're successful, that will be where, you know, my future is. But for now, I'm not. And so that's a real privilege to be able to process this in the sort of privacy of my own spaces and domains. I think that there are other people out there who do have platforms and they're very large platforms and whether that's the you know platform of being a very famous late night TV host of a show, or whether that is a political pundit or, you know, variation of a media or journalistic sort of, you know, stakeholder, those people have an obligation to probably address it.

Shawn: 04:57

Now, how they're choosing to address it, I think, is really where there's some interesting dynamics unfolding and then how others are responding to that, I think, is also an interesting sort of series of discussion points that as a society, the Americans are now engaged in for probably for better, you know, that maybe that's a silver lining as we're starting to take a hard look at what are the limits of free speech, what are the, you know, limits of government as it pertains to infringing on those expressions of free speech, and what do we want to do about any of that? So because I've been so sensitive to the you know, I'm not a professional media presence, and so I still have a very undeveloped armor in terms of my skin. And so I was not, you know, if you get people like Megan Kelly or some of the conservative sort of voices in America today, you know, Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles, all those guys, they got very thick skins. And they're going to go and they're going to whether they wanted to or not, they're going to have to look at some of the more hateful things, I think, that were being spoken about, Charlie.

Shawn: 06:18

The majority, I would probably be willing to wager, was not contextualized and probably not even validated that it was even true, that that is something he did or said or a sentiment that he expressed. So I didn't see what Jimmy Kimmel said and deliberately avoided looking at some of the more hateful stuff because it just hurts my heart that humanity can be so callous and coarse to each other. So I don't know what was said or not said. I also don't know who or what levers of government were involved in sort of like tearing somebody's show down like that. You know, here's my problem.

Shawn: 07:05

Again, full disclaimer, knowing I don't know anything. You know, if you have Ben Shapiro coming out, who is a very, very famous conservative pundit, saying it is not appropriate for the FCC to get involved in dictating what American viewers watch on TV. And therefore, the implication was that they had a hand in getting Jimmy Kimmel's show suspended or taken off the air, whatever that means. I don't know what the actual legal meaning behind any of that is, other than he's not on the air now. Then yeah, I would agree.

Shawn: 07:41

I think that's a problem, right? Because this is a market economy and even if his views are reprehensible, that is the whole basis of a market economy is for consumers to then make a decision about whether or not what the product being offered is so reprehensible that they opt out of consuming. Well, if that choice is taken from us by a federal government lever, then that to me is just as it's not just as bad as an assassination of somebody like Charlie Kirk, but it is an inappropriate response to essentially make your point that this person who we have lost meant a great deal to this community of American citizens, regardless if you happen to share that view. A lot of us did share that view. So, I guess what I'm seeing in some is just I'm glad I have the freedom to grieve privately because I'm not anybody super famous or known.

Shawn: 08:40

I feel for the people who don't have that privilege because they have forfeited it as a result of their sort of, you know, famedum. I don't know if that's an appropriate use of term, but I also know that how we respond, know, there should be a we should expect that there's a result or a consequence, right? Like even if the, you know, the FCC or the government hadn't intervened, again, I don't know that they did. It's just, you know, if Ben Shapiro says they did, given his sort of sympathy with the the Charlie Kirk, you know, situation, I would be shocked if that was inaccurate information, but it's possible. Then we have to be really consistent about what we're trying to say as American citizens here about what we expect out of our government and what we expect for our freedoms.

Shawn: 09:30

And, you know, I just I urge everyone to just be responsible. Be responsible with your words. Be responsible with your actions. And even though we're in pain right now, I do think it's incumbent on us if we do see overreach by our government entities, because maybe some of the people at the highest levels of government have been personally very wounded by this. And I understand why they would be for sure.

Shawn: 09:57

But just you have a big responsibility to make sure you don't let your personal tragedy turn into something that will not only undermine the country right now in this moment, but that may undermine your party's platform in subsequent outlying years because what's good for the goose is going to be good for the gander. And so that's exactly why you have to not politicize these things and just let them play out in the marketplace.

Scott: 10:25

Yeah. And that's I mean, are so many points you're making, but I'm seeing a through thread that joins them all. And it's really is impacting me is how non modern the concept is. And I would have to look up this quote to be able to accurately attribute it, but it was John Adams or Patrick Henry or you know somebody two fifty years ago who said, I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to

Shawn: 11:06

say it. Absolutely. And

Scott: 11:09

this is not only what Charlie Kirk says, it's what Jimmy Kimmel says. And you know people when they get angry about being criticized, and this is another part of the thread that I'm seeing, right? So this is the old concept of, you know, we should not shut people up. The thread goes to this, well, you're taking what I said out of context. You're taking what Charlie Kirk said out of context.

Scott: 11:44

You're taking what Jimmy Kimmel said out of context. I actually love the context response, even though a lot of people see it as the frustrated screaming of somebody who's got nothing else to say. Saying 'hey, context matters' to me that is the entry into 'let's talk about this, let's discuss'. You're quoting a bible verse to me? You're taking it out of contact.

Scott: 12:15

Well no, I'm not and here's why, and now we're having that conversation and I think the thread continues now right into you and me, know, the 2 Parachutes Podcast, which is if somebody says a thing and it offends another person and that person says, well, you know, here's my critique and the speaker says, you took me out of context, that's now an opening to a discussion. How do we have that discussion not only without violence but without screaming? And what I see in a lot of the commentary on Charlie now is that he had strong opinions and I don't know that I've seen the word rude, but sometimes he was aggressive or unrepentant in how he shared them. And I think that's part of the thread that I see, that's part of the I'll defend to the death people saying things that I disagree. Part of that thread is how do we say it's a, you know, I'm not going to shut you up but I also want to speak and I also want to be heard.

Scott: 13:30

And so mobs shouting people down to me in the speech realm is equivalent to murdering somebody because that shuts them up, and it is in some ways equivalent to anybody, whether it's the owner of a TV station or the government pushing that TV station or the government saying, you know, Twitter or X or you know Facebook you have to take this stuff down. And it's I think part of what we need to address as people is you know is the line? Where is the line? And I see that we need to place two lines. One line is when does it become important to shut somebody up?

Scott: 14:26

And I think the current line, at least in The United States, is actively inciting other people to take specific criminal act. So if person A is convincing person B to commit a crime, that speech legitimately can be stopped by, the government. It can already be legitimately stopped by a private citizen. A private citizen can tell another private citizen to shut up. That's fine.

Scott: 15:02

I think the other question though is, you know, when is it okay? When is it morally okay? When is it okay to kill? You know, and it's funny, biblically my understanding is that the commandment isn't thou shalt not kill, the commandment is thou shalt not murder, and killing and murdering are different. And it's, you know, is there, and I would say there is a fundamental difference between the assassination of Charlie Kirk and drawing your own weapon and killing somebody who is engaged in an active shooter incident.

Scott: 15:49

Somebody walks into a school and starts shooting people. I think that it is absolutely moral and that you know to draw your own weapon and kill that person because it's the only way you're going to stop them from killing. And you know, I think the discussion then becomes, is it morally acceptable? Is it morally consistent to commit murder to stop murder? And where I am is it absolutely is.

Scott: 16:17

And the reason it absolutely is is because when a person has chosen to commit murder, the only way to get that person to stop is to kill them. Convincing them with words to stop never works because they can always change their mind again. They can stop and then they can start again without notice. But I think that maybe we need to have that discussion as a society because it's already embedded in our law. Yeah.

Scott: 16:49

The law of self defense, and we, you know, argue about that. But, you know, when we have something that is and this is sort of not connected, but I can't get away from this thought when it comes to Charlie Kirk. You know, when you look at previous incidents, and this is the way my brain works, I'm looking for something that is external and unconnected that will help me shed light on what this is. The most similar previous assassination that I am aware of that is the closest analog is the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. Both Martin Luther King and Charlie Kirk, were non politicians engaged in political activity, pushing a political agenda.

Scott: 17:45

They both speaking in public and they were both murdered by somebody who wanted to shut them up and they were both members of a, at the time, disfavored ethnic class. And I think that what I'm saying is probably gonna make a lot of people mad because they're gonna say essentially some form of how can you make a white male equivalent to a black male? And my answer is, I think males of all different colors and females of all different colors are equivalent. And I would be looking for the debate on how they're different because both are wrong.

Shawn: 18:31

Oh, well, and I think that you're also what you're really explicitly and I have to assume this is where what drove you to that statement is that we are in a season and have been for some time now where there is an active cancel culture that is specifically targeted white males in America because of the perception of, you know, some sort of like ongoing ever present since time immemorium privileged position that they hold in society, and as a result, disproportionate share of the power. And I'm not saying that that hasn't been true. Certainly it was going back to our origins, and I think that depending on, you know, sort of how you understand the role of men and women in society and, you know, taking that a step further and looking at sort of the ratio of men in power and what ethnic background they, you know, represent, then sure, by all sort of rational, pragmatic metrics, the six foot tall white male has been in a pretty good spot for a bit. But what I think that in the last ten years, particularly that what I've seen is, you know, an uncomfortable pivot from not just holding white male Caucasian, you know, sort of, know, I guess, WASP, right, the white Anglo Saxon Protestant male in America accountable to just being a little bit more self aware about, you know, the space they take up in a room, not saying, you know, no judgment about what that relatively to any circumstance means, but just saying, you know, just know that when you walk into a scenario, you might have a leg up or you might have, you know, a more comfortable time of it because of just history.

Shawn: 20:31

Okay. So, but what started is, I think, just a call for self awareness and maybe a change in certain types of, behaviors in social settings or in workplace settings, turned into a complete witch hunt and turned into not just holding the Scott Olsons of the world accountable to his actions, but you're now beating into the heads of children from a very young age. There's an attempt to then say, you know, historically, you've been better than this class. And so as a result, you know, you need to bear all this guilt and you need to, you know, be sort of on the hook for the sins of your forefathers. You know, and so it's And then it gets really ugly when you start getting into the high school age and young college males where they're just constantly being told that they're, you know, that they're privileged and therefore they are less than because they are, you know, responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened to anybody who doesn't look like them in the history of time, you know.

Shawn: 21:43

And so, yeah, so I hate thinking in that sense, you're going to take sort of a clinical definition of being sort of a minority that was, you know, sort of attacked for all the reasons that you that they are part of a minority group right now that's being sort of culturally punished for just who they are due to the gender, you know, and color of their skin. So I can understand what got you there.

Scott: 22:14

Yeah, and it's interesting because there's a lot there that I see as a white male that people who are not white males don't see. And I'll give you a concrete example. In the 2018, 2019 timeframe, I was, involved in, leadership development, leadership training, and I had a consulting business open and running to, you know, do training and lectures and that sort of thing. And I had a couple of people that I worked very closely with, and it was one of those that I had a guy that I knew that would get contracts in New York and would pull me onto his contract and so we sort of traded contracts back and forth although he hired me and I'd never had a contract that, could hire him but at one point since he was dialed into New York State and New York City, he sent me a open contract that was an immediate open contract for leadership development for the city of New York in one of their agencies and it was being offered on their fast track, and he said, I looked at this thing and I thought of your specific products and I looked at this thing and I ticked off every single box, and so I went to apply and they wouldn't take my application and the reason they wouldn't take my application is because my business was not, my business was me.

Scott: 23:53

So I wasn't minority owned. And for the city of New York, they, didn't even have the disabled veteran owned, which is the other way to, still in some ways get government So part of the reason, not all of the reason, but part of the reason that my business failed in struggling to get clients is because I actually couldn't get government contracts because I was white and I was male and the language of the, contract solicitations specifically excluded me Yeah. And that is what happened to, African American business owners forty years ago. They couldn't get contracts and they couldn't run businesses. Now many people will listen to me and say, oh there's you know white male guy complaining about how unfair it is and it's about time he got his own and I'm not making that point.

Scott: 25:02

I understand the reason for these contracts but the idea that even within the last ten years that white males have an advantage in government contracting, You can't even apply if you're a white male and the advice that I got in those times offered as legitimately helpful advice was to bring on a minority partner, give them a majority ownership stake in my company, go do the work, at least I could get the work and then share the 51% of the income with them. Which is probably, I don't have an instance to share, but probably what many, Black people were told forty years ago. You couldn't be front of house because of the color of your skin and what I actually try and do is pull myself out of it, because it's too easy to say I got screwed over and it's not fair. That's not what this is for me. What I'm trying to do is pull myself out of it and look at it from almost a data perspective.

Scott: 26:23

We are still discriminating on the basis of how people look. You know, it's the tall white male that gets the job twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Now it's the tall white male that doesn't get the job. Now, and no matter what you say, whether it's Martin Luther King or Charlie Kirk or, you know, Scott Olson or somebody who's, five foot six, African heritage. All of those things impact interpersonal relationships because we're human, but using them to place a value judgment that doesn't correlate.

Scott: 27:19

It's an interesting thing to see that, and it really is interesting to me that people continue to say that tall white males have all the advantages. And I saw some news that said, George Floyd was murdered and the country blew up in riots. Blackmail. Charlie Kirk was murdered. Where are the riots?

Scott: 27:52

Where's the outrageous

Shawn: 27:53

Jimmy Kimmel got Jimmy Kimmel got canceled, Scott.

Scott: 27:56

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Shawn: 27:57

I don't mean to be glib, but No.

Scott: 27:59

No. No. But it's it's it's a good humorous way to make the observation that, you know, when a when a black male was murdered, cities burned. When a white male was murdered, cities didn't burn. So how was the white male advantaged?

Scott: 28:16

And it kind of takes me to another thing, which is people don't believe what is proved to them. People believe what they believe, and belief is powerful. But again, that's why it's so important for us to talk. And what was so great about Charlie is he would very often say, I haven't seen a lot of his clips, I've seen a lot of them since he was killed, but, he would always say, almost always, Well that's where you and I disagree. And I love that.

Scott: 28:55

That's where you and I disagree.

Shawn: 28:58

See a difference. So much I could comment on everything you just said. You know, going back to kind of way earlier in the conversation, you know, as a Catholic Christian, I'd have to go back and actually look up because I'm, you know, I feel like that's one of the things that I should just know, like, as a Christian is like, you know, the 10 Commandments. I think, you know, but I've heard a lot of actual debate within, you know, probably not so much within the Catholic church itself, but between sort of like Catholic and non Catholic Christian denominations about interpretations of, you know, scripture and how it started in one language and then it was translated into Greek and then it was translated. So I will look into that one, though, because that is a uniquely important distinction.

Shawn: 29:44

I'd not ever heard anybody make that about whether the directive was to not kill or to not murder, but I think it's an interesting one. So that's just a footnote for me to just acknowledge and say that will look into that because I think that's important. Going I'll make one point about what you just described, because I think this is what Charlie would want us to do, you know, is to see out a conversation that was of cultural relevance and importance, right, to this moment in time. And, you know, in honor of that, I will say, you know, discrimination and specifically systemic discrimination, which I know is what a lot of the left wing perspective sort of drums in, you know, to sort of their talking points, which is that people don't appreciate how discrimination is woven into the very fabric of our American systems, whether that's in the education system or in the political system or in the professional systems that we sort of work within or live our lives within. And to that, what I will say is this, from my experience, right, as a female who happens to have, you know, a very diverse ethnic tapestry, which I love and I get excited by because if it were up to me, I'd be a little bit of literally everything.

Shawn: 31:12

I think the saddest thing I found out when my DNA tests came back was that I didn't have really any detectable East Asia. And I was like, Oh, that's like the one thing I'm missing. I'm like, Come on. And I really wanted it, you know, not least of which because I was really hoping there's a chance I might be related to Genghis Khan. You know, so I was really bummed about that.

Shawn: 31:32

But know, but I had everything else, Scott. I mean, literally, you know, all over Europe and all over North Africa and Native American here in The United States area. So I appreciate that, but I present as, you you name it. Like if I don't open my mouth and I show up in a lot of places in the world, they just assume I'm one of them. If I'm, you know, in The Middle East, I'm Arab, or if I'm around South Asians, I'm South Asian, or if I am, you know, in United States, I'm clearly, you know, of Latina heritage of some sort.

Shawn: 32:11

So, you know, but funny story. When I moved to Boston in 1994 for a year because I was doing some work that I had to relocate, The weirdest comment I got was they thought I was Armenian. And I was like, have you never seen a Puerto Rican? You know, because

Scott: 32:31

I've seen an Armenian. Yeah.

Shawn: 32:33

Or an Armenian. I was just like, that's a And I'm honored because I am from Fresno, which is very proud to host the largest, at least they used to have the large population of Armenians outside of Armenian. So again, it's just funny. I blend wherever I go and people just assume when I was in Bulgaria, they thought I was Roma. And I love that.

Shawn: 32:56

But here in America, I'm a good old Mexican, whether that's true or not. And it is only a little true, by the way, but yes, that's true. Well, not a little true, I shouldn't say that. But again, it's an amalgamation, right, of native and European blood. So I got told my whole life, well, not my whole life, starting probably when I was in college actually, because we hadn't talked too much.

Shawn: 33:23

I was very blessed to grow up in a city, you know, shout out to Fresno, California, because it is one of the most integrated tapestry like sort of beautiful, you know, cultural, know, knitted blankets that I've ever seen. And, you know, it's not to say that racism doesn't exist there and that there aren't gangs and they are ethnic, often based gangs, but we had everything there. Literally, it was like a little mini United Nations, like just in the heart of California. So I didn't really grow up with hate in my heart. I didn't grow up thinking anybody was lesser than, you know, we had the normal schoolyard bullying stuff, but nothing along the lines of calling each other biracial slurs or anything like that.

Shawn: 34:02

Now, again, not saying it didn't happen in other parts of the city or other parts of that town, but, it just wasn't obvious to me. You know, I came from a very mixed family myself, you know, so it was when I got to college and I went to a very liberal undergraduate college. I went to UC Santa Cruz. And the first time it came up was in discussions with some of my professors where when they found out what I wanted to go into, which was security, national security, you know, I was immediately told that it was an old boys club and that I was going to have a hard time and that I needed to be prepared. I don't know if I was just dumb or naive or both, but I was just like, okay.

Shawn: 34:42

Didn't really, I was like, okay, that might be a thing. Now keep in mind as well, I was raised around, with, I was basically, was Lord of the Flies. I was raised around a tribe of boys that was massive, cousins and uncles that were brothers and younger brothers and just so many boys, so, so many boys. And so I never had an issue on the gender spectrum at all with like, you know, not getting on with men or boys. So then, you know, so I go off to DC and, you know, I get a job and, you know, I start doing my thing and I'm in college and life is plodding along.

Shawn: 35:21

And the first time I ever encountered something that I would loosely probably say was somewhat discriminatory, even though again, I'm not a big fan of playing the race card at all, because I believe that I kick ass and I'm going to get what I want when I want it. And if I don't, it's because somebody worked harder or, you know, was better suited. I also, even at that time, I left a lot up to the Lord. If I don't get this job, it means that another door is going to open and I'm perfectly happy to go through that door. But I raised this particular instance because I think it's relevant in today's discourse about, you know, the sort of left wing insistence that all discrimination is systemic and that it's all, you know, these Republican white males running around, you know, because the left wing white males are not the problem.

Shawn: 36:18

It's usually the right wing ones, right? So I was about ten years older than most people in my office when I went to work at the State Department. And it was a very vocally left wing office. If there was a Republican conservative person working in that office, they were ghosts. You know what I mean?

Shawn: 36:42

I didn't know. They were either hiding it very well or, you know, yeah. They were a common thread that I saw throughout my time in DC from 2007 onward was just the massive hubris and arrogance of the left. And I have myriad stories we can go into in future episodes, so I'll save that for now. I'll just focus on this one office at the State Department who will remain nameless.

Shawn: 37:08

You know what I mean? But I wanted to advance in the office and there weren't very many opportunities to advance because it was like you were either a program analyst or manager or whatever they called us at the time. And then there was like a deputy team chief and then a team chief and then a deputy director and a director, you know. So that was kind of the chain of command. And there were probably no fewer than seven to 10 women who were in that office, the majority of which, so meaning maybe with the exception of like two or three, all sort of qualified minority brown skinned girls.

Shawn: 37:48

Okay. And most of them had PhDs or were like me, had ten years experience ahead of everybody else because most of them were fetuses. I was a reentry student. So I had gone back to college when I was 30. And so I was already pushing 40, you know what I mean?

Shawn: 38:04

Maybe had been 40 by the time I applied. I had tons of management experience and tons of leadership experience from a former lifetime of jobs and a career that I'd had. Wasn't even remotely considered. I mean, was considered in the fact that they took the resume, but I was very condescendingly just told, Oh yeah, no, you're not really what we're looking for and like move me to the side. And so I didn't really, again, I let stuff like that roll up my back.

Shawn: 38:32

But what I saw happen next really bothered me. And what I saw happen next were a series of ineffectual sort of like from my professional perspective, unqualified liberal white males who just right up the chain. And I was astonished. And so it's not systemic the way that they think it is, okay? Because if it was systemic the way that they think it is, there would be a bunch of white Republican conservative males who were all six foot.

Shawn: 39:09

No, these were like five foot six white kind of WAN males who were super smart, super pleasant, super nice. I don't have a bad thing to say about them, but of whom, not only myself, but the majority of those women who all applied for those same deputy jobs and then team chief jobs were all vastly more qualified to do. And what I sort of decided at that moment as I thought about it, I was like, you know, this is interesting because I don't think it's discrimination. I think it's A, lack of self awareness and I think it's B, intimidation, because they weren't super strong males. They were all kind of the same, like mild, kind of meekish tempered guys, sort of a little bit nerdy, like, you know, and pretty milquetoast, just very bland in a way.

Shawn: 39:58

And again, I know this is going to someday come out and everybody will hate me, but like whatever. Again, not a bad thing to say about any one of them.

Scott: 40:05

Won't hate you because I think you're right.

Shawn: 40:06

Well, pleasant people and it's fine, but they weren't the best people for the job. They just weren't. I knew because there was six other women besides myself who were qualified for that and all self proclaiming, card carrying, flag bearing Democrats and Liberals and Progressives. So to me, this isn't a systemic issue. There's nothing wrong with the white males.

Shawn: 40:28

What there's a problem with is that like hires like. And if I'm a certain quality and character, I am going to gravitate towards what makes me feel safe. Now, you can take that back to its natural sort of like origin and say, okay, well, started with the white males being in a charge. And regardless of the expression, liberal, conservative, strong, sort of like less strong, they will consolidate power and they will hire themselves because that's what they feel familiar with. That's what they feel culturally fluent with.

Shawn: 41:01

And they may not even realize it. So it may be that it is a version of systemic discrimination, but it is not the kind that you can litigate through law and affirmative action and all of that garbage. You have to teach these people what that looks like in a practical sense and to just be a better person. Create programs that coach better leaders. You know what I'm saying?

Shawn: 41:26

And the state department doesn't have that because they're government and they continue to rail against the private sector and the lessons that can be taught from the private sector. I guarantee you in a private sector context, that scenario would never have unfolded because those guys weren't producers. The producers would have been hired.

Scott: 41:46

Yeah, it's funny. It's really funny because seven years ago I would have agreed with that statement and now I don't.

Shawn: 41:58

Really?

Scott: 41:59

And yeah, and it's because now that I'm out of government and you know, now that I'm sort of retired as well and I'm spending a lot of time just with my old friends, all of whom are private sector guys. I hear so many stories just like the one you told just now in the private sector. It's, I mean, one of my, the old friend of mine, I've known this guy for forty five years, he was a banker, a construction loan guy, and he talks about, and he has multiple stories of you got a bunch of, you know, you have the loan office in a bank and you have the guy that runs that loan team and the people that were picked for those loan teams Over and over he's telling me a story about how this guy got picked and that guy got shown the door and they were both good producers and how did the bank owners and the senior managers pick this guy who destroyed the team? And what I see in it is it's still, and I'm gonna pull a thread from twenty minutes ago, it's still people see what they want to see.

Scott: 43:16

And I think what you said is one of the universal truths, like hires like. Think if you read. I think it's Donald Rumsfeld's last book, he said A's hire A's, B's hire C's. And so part of it is everybody is most comfortable with who is like them, and that's fundamentally what is wrong with promotion systems regardless of the system or hiring systems because the person that you think is going to be a great member of the team is somebody who looks and acts like you and then you get uniformity and then you get a bad team. The other problem, and that's A's hiring A's, B's hiring C's is you're hiring the person that's not a threat because you know, not to put too fine an edge on it, but you know who wants the smart aggressive brown woman who comes in and you know speaks truth to power and make things different?

Scott: 44:23

I mean people don't change if they're happy, they change if they're uncomfortable, and when something needs to be changed you need a person who can come in and have that uncomfortable conversation and if you are a person who has gotten to a level where you're comfortable, you don't want that and it's a fundamental problem. It's a fundamental problem and I'd like to show you a story, share with you a story where in this one instance I was able to defeat that. When I was in my last assignment with the Bureau, I was in the leadership development, section and one of the tasks that I was given was to update and restructure the Bureau's promotion system, and I, you know, got working groups together, pulled in executives from all levels across the organization, and we set up what is in part being used now for not just the agent population, but for all job categories to be that first time leader. One of the things that the working groups realized and really sort of hung this structure on is you actually don't know who can be a team leader until you give them a chance to do it.

Scott: 45:46

And so the metaphor we used all the time is if you're a team that is running a race car, Yeah, you have your driver and your driver drives on Sunday and you know hopefully wins the race, but when you're looking for your next driver, what you're not going to do is put that driver in the car on Sunday when it's race day, because you don't know how they can do. So what you do is you reserve the track on Wednesday, put them in the same car and let them run laps and see if they can go fast, see if they put it in the wall. What do we do in business or in government? We let our race car driver retire and then we say we think this guy is good and we put him in a race. No practice, no nothing, and that person either sinks or swims.

Scott: 46:40

So what our system did was it required people who were in supervisory positions to delegate specific tasks to people who were in this development program and so you had to pass a screen to get into the program and then you got to actually do these three things as if you were a supervisor so that the management team could evaluate how you actually did. And the thing that blew my mind when we rolled out this pilot is we had a white female who was deeply experienced. She'd been in this job for twelve years. She was young, was in her early 30s, but she had started right out of school and you know she was aggressive and grumpy and she didn't suffer fools and everybody in the senior leadership team except me didn't want to let her in this program because they thought she didn't have the aptitude. And I said, are, I remember saying this in a meeting, you are each of you wrong about her.

Scott: 47:48

And the whole point of this program is so that we see. So she wants to do this, let's put her in the car on a Wednesday and let her run laps. And it was amazing. Six weeks later everybody wanted to promote this lady because she had done extraordinarily well against their presumptions. And that's what's critical, When you have hiring, you're sitting down and having a conversation about whether the person can do the job, instead of giving them an opportunity on a Wednesday, not on a Sunday, to do the job and it just it blows my mind why people don't do this, but I think the reason is it is so much easier and upfront more cost efficient to just hire the person that's like me.

Scott: 48:46

Hire the white guy instead of the brown girl. But it's fundamentally selfish because what are you looking for if you're the senior person? You're looking for your next job and so you want somebody who's not going to make waves, somebody that is not going to run it into the ground but not create problems for you so you can get your next job. I am so I mean this is on a side, but it is part of this. I'm so fundamentally opposed to it's like the combine system in football.

Scott: 49:21

Know, Football presumes that if you can run fast and jump high, you're going to be a good football player. Sometimes you are, sometimes you aren't. Baseball has a farm team. And what they say is go play baseball in a less pressure cooker situation so we can see how you play and then we'll give you a chance in the bigs. But I think the reason for it, if I'm pulling myself back, the reason for it, the thread piece, is because we were more comfortable with what makes sense to us and what makes sense to us as people who are the same.

Scott: 50:03

And I think that when you look at the broad range of people that are, for whatever mad reason in their mind, celebrating the murder of Charlie Cook, I put them in the same category as the people who celebrated the murder of Martin Luther King or Medgar Evers. I don't fundamentally understand why a person would celebrate it. At the same time, I don't think that it's the government role to shut those people up. I think that it's my role as a citizen to say, if that's what you think, you are so far off my radar that I don't understand where you're coming from, and I don't choose to understand where you're coming from. I do not want to understand a person who thinks it was great that Charlie Kirk was killed.

Scott: 51:13

It's not that I don't have time for it, I don't care to deep dive into that brain, I don't. I'm not opposed to somebody who wants to have that discussion, but no, you can't convince me and I'm not interested in the conversation.

Shawn: 51:34

So and I yeah, I understand that feeling and I share it, you know, to quickly close us out on on the conversation of of, you know, how to get beyond the white man problem in the workforce. Right. Or hiring like like hiring like, particularly when like happens to be probably currently still a majority of white men in the workplace around the country and the private sector. I've had a slightly different experience in the private sector, that's again, but that just represents the diversity of experiences. And I think those should all be factored in as we kick this over to politicians who are now on both sides of the political spectrum trying to advocate for what they do or don't think is know, their lane to kind of try to fix a problem that they either don't think exists or does exist.

Shawn: 52:29

So what I would say to that in the end is what you described was a solution that is a professional development solution that represents actual mechanisms and methodologies that would accommodate, if implemented, the sort of capturing of a diverse candidate pool, because it is irrespective of race, religion, creed, gender, all that jazz, right? You outlined a really cool professional development mechanism that theoretically should be color, you know, gender blind, all that stuff. The reverse is not true. And, you know, of how the left is approaching to resolve what they perceive to be this pervasive inequality of access and promotion and hiring in America, whether it's in government or in the private sector, which is to say that they are equating diversity with color, religion, and politics. And so therefore, what they're trying to do is apply what, you know, I'll call it the confessional methodology based off of Lebanon's Government, which is, okay, we've got this many religious groups in the country at all times.

Shawn: 53:48

Each religious majority has to be represented by a commensurate ratio of representatives in our government. Okay, is a monstrous model because populations are always changing. You're never, you know, okay, so okay, you're always counting beans. How many Jewish people do we have? How many Catholics?

Shawn: 54:05

How many Orthodox? How many Muslims? Shia, Sunni. It's a nightmare. It's ultimately counter meritocracy, right?

Shawn: 54:14

Because that's just counting beans and labels. To me, that is what the left solution is, which is why it fails and why the right can find so much fault with it, is that they're trying to apply this very, almost like elementary school approach to diversity that produces superficial outcomes that often undermine and give the right ammunition for diversity should not be a priority. But what we're talking about, I think mostly in these conversations when we say diversity is yes, would we like to see a more ethnically, religiously, you know, gender, like diverse ecosystem of colleagues and workers. Sure. But we can get there using the methodology that you applied as opposed to enforcing these affirmative action style things that are just a, you know, a superficial band aid that's like, oh, okay.

Shawn: 55:15

Because again, what happens is if you start doing that too much, then all of a sudden you're not hiring the best candidates. You're hiring like, you know, based on race or you're hiring based on gender. And that's not a good defense or solution to the problem that is fundamentally grounded in race and gender equity. And they don't see that that's a conflict. And they haven't gotten out of that 1920s to 1950s or 60s even affirmative action model in their head because they think that's, there's no creativity of thought, there's no evolution of thought.

Shawn: 55:52

And it's just like, no, it's like round people and women. Come on, you guys. This is absurd. You want a diversity that reflects capabilities, tools, perspectives, different approaches, or stakeholders that are part of whatever the solution is that you're building towards. Not pink dress, blue dress, green dress, you know what I mean?

Shawn: 56:17

You will get there if more people were able to utilize the tools that you just described in the methodologies because by default they're going to net those fish.

Scott: 56:28

Yeah, exactly right. It's exactly right. If you're building a soccer team, don't need 11 goalies. You need one goalie, three fullbacks, four midfielders, and three strikers.

Shawn: 56:40

That's right.

Scott: 56:41

And those are different personalities and you know different body types, different attitudes, different predispositions. And that's what builds a strong team and it's not if you start with, you know, we're building a team and we need x of these and x you know, we need this color, that color, this gender, that gender, you're not starting with the team. If you're building any sort of team, you actually need to take the time to understand we need this kind of thinker, that kind of perspective, this kind of juxtaposition, and then go find those people. And if you are looking for behaviors and thought processes and perspectives, you are necessarily going to have a visible rainbow because you know that the white guy from Boston is a perspective but you know the female from Nigeria, if you foster communication is going to have a different perspective that makes the two of them together much stronger than if it's the white guy from Boston and his buddy or the female from Nigeria and her cousin. And that's the way it is.

Scott: 58:00

It's funny, I wrote a book with Liza Garber who is a public speaker. You can find her on LinkedIn and she's doing great work and it's a book about hiring And we made, I think a compelling case in the chapter about diversity that is exactly that point and you know, through Bill Bender, who is our friend from

Shawn: 58:23

Oh, General Bender, yeah. Yeah,

Scott: 58:28

from Baghdad we found our way into Leidos, the big consulting firm. Leidos does an outstanding job of this, but they have people that are devoted full time not to building teams but to building and refining their structure of who they need on their teams. You know the cynical part of me thinks it doesn't happen just because it's hard and that's part of it.

Shawn: 58:56

It's certainly part

Scott: 58:57

of it, but the other part of it is is fundamentally difficult to hire somebody or to promote somebody that makes you feel uncomfortable. But in my attitude, which I did not put in the book but I will say here, is grow up. Just freaking grow up. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, go out into the world.

Scott: 59:25

And it circles back around to one of the things that you said at the top of this hour, and we're getting close to wrap up time, which is when you're not a public figure, your skin is sensitive. And I think part of living in the world over a few decades is not to develop sensitivity, or not to numb yourself and not be sensitive, but to recognize that it sucks when you get hurt. It sucks when things don't go the way that you think they should be. It's difficult to be comfortable being uncomfortable, but it's part of what makes things better. In some ways it is easier to get behind a rifle and pull a trigger than it is to go up and talk to somebody.

Scott: 01:00:22

And I think that it is reprehensible to do the thing that's easy. Part of it is that's the way I'm wired, but part of it is I think that if you have an easy way and a hard way, and the hard way is going to produce a better response, shame on you if you don't do it just because it's hard.

Shawn: 01:00:45

Steel is forged in fire, you know? And you know, I think that's a great concluding point, Scott, to end on because it's optimistic and because it gives people a practical skill to practice and to preach. I think particularly as we enter in the next five to ten years, we're going see a lot of young people entering the workforce, and many of them who are already in the workforce from the millennial generation who have been taught to be hypersensitive. And that is only going to result in more challenge and conflict, not only in the workplace, but in society, because what they have been coached and told by overly empathetic, sympathetic parents and people all around them in their lives is that your feelings are the number one thing that matters. And if, you know, which is just to me catastrophic because my feelings don't mean shit.

Shawn: 01:01:46

You know what I mean? I mean, honestly, they don't. And I don't ever want my feelings to get in the way of my excellence. So, you have something to say to me, I'm here to hear it. I don't have to love it and I don't have to smile while you're giving me my lashes.

Shawn: 01:02:03

But you bet your bottom dollar. I'm going home after a good cry or a good rant and I am going to internalize and I'm going to look at what I was told and I am going to figure out where the truth is in it because that is the only way we get better. And the less personal you take stuff, the better chance you have at being that sword forged in fire.

Scott: 01:02:25

I'll offer this to you. I don't think as I listen to you it doesn't sound to me like you're ignoring your feelings and your feelings don't matter. It's you're owning them. You're saying, Yeah, this is the way I feel but my choice I do not either have to do the easy thing that my feelings maybe are driving me to do or ignore my feelings and do the hard thing. I can say, you know, embrace the sock.

Scott: 01:02:58

I don't like this but it's still my choice to do the right thing without dismissing how I feel. So I don't think you're dismissing your feelings. Think you're saying this is part of the stew pot.

Shawn: 01:03:12

Yeah, and that's fair. You know, to put a finer point on what I actually meant is that, yes, I believe my feelings matter and they're important to me. But what they aren't going to matter to is everyone around me who are trying to get the job done. They're going to you know, if you're in a good, healthy work environment, they're going to care, but they can't live in your feelings.

Scott: 01:03:31

Exactly.

Shawn: 01:03:32

You know what I mean?

Scott: 01:03:33

Your feelings are yours. You don't need other people to feel the way you feel.

Shawn: 01:03:39

Validate them or to cater

Scott: 01:03:41

to them. Yeah, and I think that's what a great way to say it. Yeah, you validation, don't and that's really the problem that I see. I feel a person feels a certain way and they scream at the world to agree with them. No, your feelings are valid, but they're your feelings.

Scott: 01:04:03

If you need validation, maybe you need to think about whether you really feel that way. Yeah. Because if your opinion about what's right for you isn't enough, you have work to do.

Shawn: 01:04:15

I think. No, absolutely. Your feelings are just raw energy that you have to make a decision on what you're going to do with that energy and how you're going to sculpt it and how you're going to focus it. But if you just leave them out there and just want to sit in them and you want others to sit in them, that's not going to produce anything.

Scott: 01:04:33

As usual, we're ending a session Yes. With a topic for a new

Shawn: 01:04:39

Yes.

Scott: 01:04:40

That's awesome.

Shawn: 01:04:41

Yeah. And as we close, Scott, I'm going just say one thing and then I'll put it back over to you if you want to close us out is just, you know, I think this was an important session for us to have today. I think that for me, it is my small way to honor somebody who I think was a phenomenal human being, a phenomenal speaker, orator, debater, and has made me in so many ways in what small way I could be influenced by the sort of lessons in the words that he was able to proclaim in his short time on this earth. I'm just so grateful to have had this conversation with you on Charlie and then everything that came after. And I look forward to many more conversations, and he will always be in the back of my mind when we have these conversations now.

Scott: 01:05:33

One of the things I love about you, Sean, is that you're brilliant, and that is an absolutely brilliant way to close us out. So you get the last word.

Shawn: 01:05:42

Hey, well, thanks so much, Scott. And brilliance attracts brilliance, like attracts like. So, you know, in this case, it actually works for us, but also, you know, naturally diverse. Like we are two different people. I think that that diversity in this case suits us well and it will enrich our future in this podcast and as friends.

Shawn: 01:06:02

So thanks so much for your time, Scott.

Scott: 01:06:04

Yeah, let's do another one of these.

Shawn: 01:06:06

Absolutely.

Scott: 01:06:07

All right, have a great weekend.

Shawn: 01:06:09

You as well.

Scott: 01:06:10

All right, bye.

Shawn: 01:06:11

Bye.