Best of the Program with Riaz Patel I 10/9/18

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Check that out.

On today's show, it's a big news day.

Nikki Haley is stepping down as

a UN ambassador, and we go into that a little bit as it kind of breaks during the show.

Also, we have the

Glenn's book, Addicted to Outrage, is out, and we had a bunch of people calling in sharing their thoughts, their questions.

Would the stuff that Glenn talks about in this book work?

We kind of get into that a little bit and discuss, you know, in a bigger sense, we all focus about the day-to-day sort of news and everyone's, you know, who tweeted what in the last 15 seconds.

What did Taylor Swift Swift say?

I know that's always on everyone's mind.

But, you know, we kind of zoom back out a little bit and take a wider view.

Where are we going as a country?

Where are we going as a conservative movement?

What can we do to make this better?

We'll get into that today.

As well as an interesting hour with Riaz Patel.

Riaz is a really great guy, and

he's a leftist and a progressive, I guess.

But he took the time after Donald Trump was elected to kind of, it was actually in the middle of the election, I guess, and he went and just

started talking to people, actual people who were Trump voters, and I think it was Alaska, and wound up coming up with a

kind of treated them as real people, which is something we always ask for in the media and never get.

And when we get it, we should talk about it a little bit.

Riaz decided to work with Glenn on a cool concept to try to see if you could put people in a room and figure out things they actually agree on

from all different backgrounds.

The results are really interesting, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

It's all on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck Program.

It's Tuesday, October 9th.

We have in Portland, Oregon, a mayor who has surrendered the town.

He has surrendered the town to Antifa.

They, apparently, not the police, can direct traffic now.

And the police were there.

They did nothing.

If you don't do what Antifa says you have to do,

they'll threaten you.

America is at a crossroads.

We have to decide,

or it will be decided for us.

My father taught me when I was very young, the most powerful words in any language

are these:

I am.

And the reason why they're so powerful is because whatever it is that you say after that,

you begin to believe and you create.

What is America saying it is right now?

We are being told over and over again we are worthless.

The Western way of life is worthless.

That America is not good, never has been.

In fact, it's a force for bad.

And unless we actively replace those things in our our heads and the heads of those around us, we will be worthless and we will be a force for bad.

We are arguing about some of the dumbest things I've ever seen.

And we are missing what's really going on.

The world is being redesigned right now.

And so many of us are worried about the future.

Today, we'll see in the New York Times and elsewhere that the world only has 10 years, and you have to be a hero in the next 10 years if you don't stop global warming.

Why, we are all going to die.

So, you must be a hero today,

and you have to take action.

The question is,

what does that action look like?

Do any of the things that the environmentalists are actually proposing, do they help or hurt?

What the world looks like in 2030 depends on how we answer questions that we're supposedly arguing about right now.

We can try to avoid it.

We cannot listen.

We cannot pay attention.

But, as Bonhoeffer said,

not to speak is to speak, not to stand is to stand.

No answer will count as

our answer.

Will we all be remembered as winter soldiers

and complicit

with what I believe will be remembered as the greatest failure

and crime in humanity's history.

Just standing by,

waving your finger or waving the flag as the Western world burns.

I do not want to be part of the problem in America.

And I fail on that all the time.

We all do.

But what counts

is the effort.

What counts

is are you trying?

Are you trying?

And are you better today than you were yesterday?

Have you found any answers or are you only shouting things down?

Are you just out in the street directing traffic?

Because because you feel it's your right well have you even looked at what your rights mean

where do your rights even come from

today I saw think progress write a whole article about how the Constitution has failed that was the headline the Constitution has failed

and then It goes on to explain how it is really a slavery document and the three-fifths in the Constitution.

All lies, all lies.

Now, you can argue that,

or we can begin to teach our children.

You can argue that

and you can throw it back in their face with some sort of epitet or

name-calling of some sort.

Here's the question that we all have to answer.

Is America a force for good

or a force for bad?

That requires real thought and discussion.

Because it is neither, in my opinion.

It is both.

It has been a force for bad, and I warn you, if we we leave the Bill of Rights, we will become the darkest force ever on earth.

With our technology, we will make the Nazis look like rookies.

Make no mistake.

We have been bad.

We have rounded up the Japanese.

We've rounded up the Germans and the Italians.

We rounded up the the blacks.

We told people they couldn't vote,

including women.

But we are also the people

that freed people.

We freed blacks and we fought for it.

We fought and died.

We fought to free the Japanese.

We fought to free the Germans and all of Europe and the world.

We fought to free

Russia from the tyranny of communism.

And we failed in the time of peace.

Are we good or are we bad?

Is the Declaration of Independence still a viable mission statement?

Because that's all that is.

The Declaration of Independence is a mission statement, period.

Do we still hold these truths to be self-evident?

Forget about the past.

Let's talk about the future.

We have never, ever reached the heights demanded by our mission statement.

But have we gotten better?

Is it still worth striving for?

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.

That means we're born equal.

We all have an equal chance.

Don't judge somebody by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Do you have everything the baby laying next to you has when you're born?

As far as human rights and dignity,

do you still believe that?

And I'm not talking about, well, that's not the way.

I'm asking you as an aspirational mission statement.

That is the mission statement of our country.

Do you want to live in a country that strives and falls short, but picks itself back up again?

Do you want to live in a country that says all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator?

Why would you have to throw God into it?

I don't care what you put there,

it just must be bigger than man.

The reason why the creator is important

is if you don't have something bigger than man,

then man will print and take away rights.

So, if you want to say the moon,

the eternities,

the great cosmos, whatever,

but it endows each of us with certain unchangeable rights.

And those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, there's a lot more,

and that's where the Bill of Rights comes in.

Do we still believe in this?

As an aspirational statement we are only talking about the past we're talking about the mistakes of the past you cannot fix the mistakes of the past without saying where we're going

so where are we going Antifa

you want to tear us down now I read your website I read your mission statement I strongly disagree Capitalism is not the problem

capitalism that is that has no moral sentiment is.

But you don't fix that by

a state-run economy.

By co-ops.

It always fails.

Now,

you

and your allies in the press refuse to point out that that is exactly what you're looking for.

It's a failed system.

This one has failed us

because it has been usurped.

The Constitution no longer means anything.

The Bill of Rights no longer means anything.

Why?

Because it's not taught anymore.

Anybody who takes the oath of office in Washington, 90% of them are liars.

Not even intentional liars.

They don't know it.

They don't believe in in it.

They will tell you they do.

As was told to me by a very powerful individual once, look, Glenn, we all believe in the Constitution, but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

No.

No.

You do not do what you have to do.

That's ends justify the means.

We either believe in this or we do not.

And that is the question, America.

Do you believe?

Neutral, half-assed, not thought out,

sitting on the sidelines?

All of those answers mean nothing in the end.

Only those who know it, who understand it, who have done their homework, who can intellectually defend it.

Those are the winter soldiers.

Those will be be the ones that restore freedom for all mankind.

Everything else is lip service, a game,

and actually a tool in the hands of those who wish to create chaos and destroy all we have.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Let me go to Greg.

Greg is a contributor for the Federalist.

Wow.

Hi, Greg.

How are you?

Good morning, Glenn.

Good to hear from you.

Nice to talk to you.

I understand that five years ago, you may not have been my biggest fan.

No, no, not at all, actually.

I'm with you, Greg, on that one.

No, totally with you.

He has different reasons.

You were on the left?

Oh, yeah, very much so.

Tell me about it.

Well,

I was raised by

far left, kind of ex-hippie parents.

And, you know, that was just kind of pushed into me from a young age.

And it was just

how I saw everything.

It was like a filter over the entire world.

And I walked around looking suspiciously at everybody.

thinking that, you know, there's something deeply broken within them, that they're out to get somebody, that they don't understand what I do,

even though I didn't understand very much at all.

It was pure emotion and it was raw and ill-informed.

So what happened?

And well,

one of my close friends,

we were having a discussion and he actually mentioned

Fox News and

just kind of said that that was his news source and I was appalled and I was furious and I I went home from that you know just thinking what what I thought I knew this guy well you know I all along I had no idea he's he's some kind of monster like how could how could this be

and

I got curious

as to how how this could happen and I went home and I started watching and listening to some people on the other side.

And it was quite a slap in the face.

This was prior to

Trump and the whole situation now and all this flame-throwing.

And what I saw were

people who celebrate what we've overcome instead of what we've had to overcome.

And it was really powerful and

very restorative

to me.

And

looking at your book through through

the lens of addiction,

looking at the way that we approach our politics and the way we regard one another through that lens, I think is so important.

I've gone through addiction myself, and

as an addict, you learn about

real humility.

And you find help, you find comfort in some of the most unlikely places.

And, you know, it really kind of becomes clear to you that

you can say that diversity is our greatest strength.

But, you know, it's more than that.

It's the cooperation between, you know, diverse people.

It's the humility of diverse people, I think.

One of my favorite quotes is

where there is doubt, there is freedom.

And

we we we flip that up on its head.

We we are now so

I mean, look at Antifa directing traffic.

They are so convinced that they are right, they will bludgeon you if you disagree with them.

There's no freedom there.

Where there is doubt, there is freedom.

Where there is humility, there is freedom.

Absolutely.

And, you know, when

intellectual exploration, when curiosity

going against the grain in any way, when that becomes punishable,

I think they really risk

driving

good people down some unsavory roads.

And

there's no good in that.

Great

tradition.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely, Glenn.

Thank you so much for reading the book.

And I'm going to send you a signed copy.

But thank you for reading and calling in.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?

If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

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Heather in Virginia.

Hello, Heather.

You're on the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, Glenn.

How are you?

I'm very good.

I overall agree with everything in the book.

I think it's awesome.

I want to talk about kind of a minor point, I guess.

Okay.

You're talking about how AI is going to come in and replace almost all the jobs.

And

I know you don't necessarily agree with UBI, but you've said that we need to at least have a conversation about UBI because of it.

And I think we need to be careful about even

considering UBI.

I think that they're really using fear over AI to try to come in and institute this, which is

something that they want to push us towards socialism.

I think that AI,

while it will certainly change everything, obviously,

we've run into this in the past and all the other technical revolutions where, you know, the Luddites, they were afraid that technology was going to to come and replace their jobs.

That was their problem.

Correct.

And so

I understand that AI is definitely coming and it's going to change things, but it's not going to take over everything, all the jobs.

In addition, obviously, to the people that will need to create the machines and keep the AI running, there's certain things AI just can't do, like

being...

fixing a leak in your plumbing in your house.

Probably AI is not going to do that.

As far as service, obviously I think McDonald's is a great example where AI, you know, I don't think many people are going to be upset if they go into McDonald's and not have to deal with anyone.

But Chick-fil-A is known for their service.

And I think that Let me ask you this.

Let me ask you this.

First of all, I just, and I there's I don't mean any offense or anything.

I just want to know

how up to speed you are on this.

What books are you reading on AI?

Are you just a generalist or have you dug in deep on this?

Yeah, I'm more of a generalist.

I have not done deep work on this.

So I'm coming just from a different perspective, not having done the deep research that I know that you have on this.

But

just my feeling, like

AI is going to absolutely be able to diagnose cancer quicker and more accurately than a doctor.

But are you going to want to sit in front of a robot and have the robot tell you that you have cancer and explain your options?

Okay, so Heather, Heather, there is a, and I can't remember the name of it on the, uh, on this particular subject, but I will look for it.

Uh, there is a whole book based just on this.

Uh, nursing is probably one of the jobs that will be the last to go.

However,

there are two companies right now that are doing studies on emotions, the emotion of being able to detect it in someone and being able to reflect it in face.

The reason why

we don't connect with robots is because they cannot see our emotions and read them and also reflect emotions in their eyes and in their face.

So there are companies now that are specifically just working on cracking the code of emotional connection.

It's going to take a while, but a while is, what, 10 years, 15 years in today's world?

And I think that's a long while.

So there are

those

ideas that are being worked on right now.

You have to understand that

Silicon Valley is currently working on the utopian idea of 100% unemployment, that no one has to work, that everyone will be able to have plenty because robots and everything else will be able to manufacture.

This is different than any other technological leap that we've ever made.

Yes, we are going to shed jobs, and yes, there will be other jobs that will be created.

That is one theory.

The prevailing theory is there is nothing that a human can do that true AGI and especially ASI will not be able to do much, much better, including breaking the news to people.

Because the idea is that that that system will be able to go through every bit of information about the individual they're about to tell.

So they will know everything that they've ever posted about.

Let's say their mom just died.

They'll be able to see everything they've ever written to their mom, every text message to their mom.

They will know the exact relationship, and they will be able to temper the message much better and much more personal than anyone else.

The bigger problem is on AI and doctors is this will happen quickly.

Already, and I can't remember the name of the system, but it is in New York.

And you'll have to excuse me.

I read about this about three, four years ago.

The New York Board of Medicine already has a computer on the board.

And what they're doing is they are feeding in all kinds of information.

And

it is not like a human doctor, the best human doctor that has seen a lot, done a lot, really up on the latest research and all of the facts and studies and history, everything else.

This has perfect recollection of it.

And they have found that it can diagnose so much better.

I think it's

50% for the doctors and it's 98% for the computer, way in advance.

At what point do we say, I don't want a human to do the diagnosis?

I don't want the best specialist.

I want the IBM, please.

So you have to understand that there is a fundamental shift that the world has never, ever seen before.

And we're about to experience that shift between 2020 and 2030.

And the world will not be like it is today.

You started your comment about the section of the book where there's a chapter where I talk about UBI, universal basic income.

I am against universal basic income.

I do not think that that is the way we should go.

But we as conservatives must be willing to listen to the debate.

And I'm not talking about the people who are socialists in Washington.

I'm talking about the people who are studying the culture, studying humans and studying technology together that are now looking for

what is it that will give people value?

What is it when we do hit high unemployment?

If your goal is 100%,

Bain Capital says we will have 30% of unemployment and it will be a permanent 30% unemployment.

That, so you know, is about the size of the Great Depression.

When you have that,

how do you stop civil unrest?

How do you give people meaning?

And how do you

give people enough money to be able to live and further their life?

It's fraught with problems and even universal basic income I think misses the fundamental point that

People don't want to live without a purpose and too many people get their purpose from their job, especially men.

We can't just look at the money problem

and you can't just give people stuff.

If you give people stuff, they value it less.

And most importantly on this,

when you have a universal basic income and 70%, 5% of the people can work,

What stops

people who want control and power or just basic human instinct or human reaction, what stops that 30% from saying, well, wait a minute, I don't have a job.

I can't even get a job.

How come I have to live on this and they have that?

It will be the same old story, but we must have these conversations now

and stop with the nonsense that we're dealing with.

We want to try something a little different this hour.

I want to talk about a major issue, but I don't want to get stuck in the same rut.

So let me bring in my friend Riaz Patel.

He hates the labels, and so do I, because I hate the labels that, you know, I have.

You're a progressive, gay, Muslim, immigrant, left-handed,

well, I am too, Hollywood producer.

Yes.

And there's no reason we should be friends.

No, because of your labels.

You are a conservative, anti-gay, anti-minority.

So, you know what's amazing about that is those labels that I gave you were actual things, a part of you.

Almost everything you said about me is not true.

I was saying, but I'm thinking about before we met.

Yes.

So I'm thinking about before we met what I came in thinking you were.

Right.

And we became good friends, and we still disagree on stuff.

Many things.

But we're good friends.

When we met, things that you have said changed the way I see the country, the world.

and I think there's real importance in having friends, having relationships with people who think completely differently from you.

Because we are in the situation now where it's us versus them.

Yes.

And there is no them.

There shouldn't be because I think it's us versus the problem.

Whatever the problems are, it's all of us on one side.

But the more we demonize each other, the more it feels like we're against each other.

And there's no nuance.

There's no nuance.

It's either I'm absolutely right and you're absolutely wrong, or, you know, you're thinking that about me.

And this is kind of why we wanted to do this podcast.

So the premise is simple.

Can we look at the things that divide us in a way that from a different angle, maybe a more human perspective, a more personal perspective that allows us to see the connections?

So I gave you the impossible task.

See if you can have a reasonable conversation with people on all sides about guns.

Guns, this constant gun debate.

And the reason we chose guns, because it seems like a funny topic for the first one, is that inspired by all these school shootings that have been happening, we all want the same thing.

We don't want the children to be harmed.

So, knowing we all want the same goal, how do we work together to achieve that goal?

And so, this journey of exploring how do real Americans engage with each other, this whole thing started with the simplest, simplest sounds.

Um, because you're a father and I'm a father, and so this whole thing started with these little voices.

It's raining

with your

That's Zara, who's two, pointing out that it's raining and that I need an umbrella, tenzing,

her little brother is one

and agrees.

Generally speaking, I am a liberal.

So this is the sound that the children of a liberal make as they eat pieces of French toast before school.

And this is the sound that the children of conservatives make as they eat their breakfast.

Soon our kids will intermingle and mix as we take them to school.

And as they all say their hies, I say my goodbye.

And sometimes, not every time, but sometimes when I leave, I think

that thought.

Please don't let anything...

bad happen here.

A thought I'm sure all parents have from time to time.

But when a school shooting has happened, instead of coming together to make sure it never happens again, we divide.

Shame!

Shame!

They're ruining this country.

Jesus would not be holding those signs.

And we demonize each other even more in the endless gun debates that follow.

It's the guns are stupid.

Democrats are much more concerned with the moral issues than Republicans.

We took away our rights a little bit at a time and we accept it and we accept it and before long we won't have that.

Our approach to debating this is you don't support the Second Amendment and you support mass killings and certainly there's something in the middle.

But we all want the same exact thing to keep all those French toast eating kids safe.

So this was my question.

In an increasingly divided America, how do we work together to achieve the same thing?

Keeping our children safe at school?

So a few weeks ago, I asked seven very different Americans to sit down with me and help me find an answer.

And we did.

We found an answer, but it wasn't at all what I thought it would be.

The answer, as it turns out to my complete surprise, is a single-digit number.

A number that was hastily written on a pink post-it note and passed over to me with a handful of others as part of a kind of warm-up exercise as the seven were just sitting down to begin our conversation.

As you hear me read all the numbers back to the group several weeks ago.

Six, three,

ten, ten or one?

One.

Keep in mind, one of them is our answer forward.

Let me start by telling you about the seven.

I am a high school teacher, mother of three boys, three teen boys.

I am a firearms instructor.

I was a police officer in Arlington Police in Virginia for 37 years.

I wanted their politics to be very, very different.

I would be probably considered a constitutional conservative.

I find the older that I get, the more progressive and liberal that I become.

I am very much

on both sides.

I always vote for the person that scares me the least.

I even wanted their experiences and feelings about guns to be different.

My stepdad was was South.

He had a shotgun in the closet.

Kids or not, he had a shotgun in the closet.

I'm a retired Navy combat pilot.

We have guns in our home.

They are locked up.

I've never seen them.

I don't want to see them.

Ask me how I started shooting.

I just stay with my dad and his redneck buddies out in the country.

These seven were thoughtful, well-informed, good-hearted people who all agreed to spend an entire evening talking to people they didn't even know.

Why?

To come up with a list.

I wanted us to find a list, even if it was a very short one, of specific, practical things that we could all agree upon to help combat this intangible threat to our kids that we all think about from time to time.

An intangible threat that Alicia, our teacher in the room, explained from the perspective of being inside the schools each and every day.

Anytime there is any sort of anything out of the norm at school, the kids get weird, they get upset.

It's just a feeling among among the entire school that something is dreadfully wrong.

And I think it's all over the country.

I think that you hear a noise in the hallway when your class is quiet and everyone's head turns.

With that awareness, we began talking.

The story of that conversation has two parts.

The content, the stuff that was said, and then the impact.

What happened because of what was said.

So, content.

As we searched for the list for almost four hours, I'd like to share with you the three biggest impediments we came up against.

Because in this new era of communicating and communication, I think they're worth considering.

Remember, same children, same goal.

Impediment number one, opinions outnumber people.

I soon realized that in this age of unlimited access to opinions, that although there were seven people physically sitting around me, there were many more opinions and voices brought into our conversation.

Listen to the following exchange between two mothers, Anna, a progressive, and Mona, a Christian conservative, and see how many people's opinions and perspectives are brought into the mix other than their own.

From my side, what I hear is, oh,

I don't infringe on any of my rights and I don't want any restrictions on myself.

And it's kind of, and I'm not saying this is what you're all, but this is kind of the debate that's been in place.

And it's kind of like, come on, there are reasonable ideas we can come up with that's not going to inconvenience you.

But and you're right, there are probably solutions there and you're reasonable, but the leaders of your movement are not reasonable.

That's actually.

Why is it that when there's a school shooting or a mass shooting someplace, the first thing we hear is, we need gun control and the NRA is the bad guy.

Bad guy, bad guy.

So many other opinions and voices, most of them extreme, jumped right into our conversation on minute 39.

Everything was heightened from the get-go.

Denise, our firearms instructor who almost missed the roundtable because she had food poisoning, speaks about the problem with letting other people speak for us.

The inflammatory super, you know, agitators that are being the talking heads on the media is speaking for you, speaking for me.

They don't represent that.

That kind of craziness does not represent me.

And I would like to think that when I see these ultra-liberal screaming about all this stuff and calling people like me gun nuts and all that, I would like to think that that's not representative of you.

So how do we solve that problem with getting these people to stop being the ones that are out there trying to send a message?

Because it's, for me, I think it's the wrong one and it's not productive.

I became aware very quickly that it's almost impossible to have a productive conversation with so many other voices referenced and repeated.

How could I get each person just to speak for themself?

We'd get there, but it would take a while.

For me, one of the most eye-opening things, and I think it was the same for you.

And you had asked me something about

why had I said the things that I had said about President Obama.

And it wasn't the inflammatory stuff.

It was, why did you think he was so bad?

Or why did you think that administration is so bad?

And I gave you several stories.

And I remember going up with the chalkboard and I said, there was this story.

Did you know about it?

Yeah, this story.

This story.

You'd never heard this story.

You'd never heard of any of them.

You'd never heard of any of them.

And that was the beginning of my awareness of how loud and separate these echo chambers are.

And that was the moment I was like, oh no, people, we think they know things.

We think they hear things.

They don't.

They don't.

And you know what?

Because of that moment, I redoubled my efforts to read.

There are many times that I'll hear people say, well, you won't find that in the Times.

Actually, yes, that's exactly where I found it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean?

And so when we talk about the problems,

we have those in common, that whether it's keeping our children safe, whether it's drugs, whether it's the weaponization of information, those are big problems that we need to discuss.

But the in-person quality of it has to happen because

it's posting these awkward, awkward things.

Even though it got hot.

It's difficult to come up with a solution where one side doesn't want to talk about guns at all.

And I'm sure you guys think that's all we want to talk about is I want to come take away your guns.

And that's not the case.

Impediment number two, we can't hear all the options.

Potential solutions may already be on the table, but we aren't even hearing each other.

This exchange between Anna, our progressive mother, and Chad, a libertarian father, shows this phenomenon.

All we're trying to see is what reasonable measures

are you all willing to agree to to help solve this problem and to really solve this?

And what steps are you willing to take?

But I'm not sure.

I'm willing to sign on to the NRA's Project Exile, which has worked very well in Virginia.

So what was Anna's Anna's response to Project Exile?

What is that, sir?

I don't know.

Project Exile?

Oh, committing you committed gun crime, mandatory sentencing.

You go to the top of the rocket docket for prosecution.

A practical, tangible solution already on the table.

Never heard of it.

But wait, this wasn't a one-way phenomenon.

Soon after, Mona, our mother of three teenage boys, was explaining how her sons and their peers can sense when a classmate may pose a threat.

And they're called school shooters.

Oh yeah, he's a school shooter.

She's a school shooter.

They've got that label because everybody knows who is capable of doing that.

True.

I think that's what, you know, what I mentioned earlier, the red flag laws.

I think that's the purpose of those, where you see a kid who is, you know, like this kid is trouble.

And that enables you to go in and remove the guns.

And the response from Alicia, our teacher in the room, who had literally just been talking about kids exhibiting red flags, had this to say about the idea.

I had never heard the term red flag law.

How is that even possible?

On my side, I hear the term red flag laws almost daily in campaign ads.

But Alicia lives in a different state and gets different ads.

Again, it's not about whether you think either of the ideas are good ones or bad ones.

It's about the fact the other side has never even heard of them.

When we're talking about trying to protect our kids, shouldn't every idea be considered?

Impediment number three, either or thinking.

This is another exchange that fascinated me between Anna, our progressive mother, and Mona, who identifies as a Christian conservative, about what each of us can do now to help keep our children safer.

I know from my side is, you know, reaching out to my legislators and saying, this is what I want.

And if the legislators refuse to take action, it's helping to elect people who will, who are more in line with those thoughts.

And perhaps on your side, you can do the same.

But we all have a part to play in this.

And first is making our voices heard.

It might be futile, but that's one step we can all take.

If we started even

one step,

I can't find the right word.

Take one step back and start at a community level instead of relying on our legislators to fix this problem.

So you go into the schools and you say to your principal, I'm a retired Marine.

And my two kids go to this school and I really want to help keep this building secure.

This is all I can do.

I can only work within the confines of my life in my time, but I'm a parent here.

I have expertise.

I want to do something.

How can we gather the parents in this school to help fortify the build?

I think there probably, there's so many restrictions and issues against, I mean, I don't know.

I'm not involved in the school system, but.

Two approaches both felt valid and worthwhile to me, but in that moment, it felt very either or and a little dismissive.

And this happened a lot jumping back and forth between opposing ideas as opposed to spending time discussing, integrating them, or combining the approaches.

And I just hope that the divide over the first approach, the constant fight over election day, doesn't demonize us so much that we aren't able to work together on the second, community-level approach.

We need both, not either or.

So those three impediments, opinions outnumbering people, not hearing all the options, and either or thinking, were our biggest obstacles as we searched together for my list

and as we talked well you have to get to see they have to be their mental health as well

and talked yeah i think i think that has to be part of the guns out of danger

we just kept running up against them but then also you can't say that well the danger is the child

and never got around them there are weapons that he could then use to act out

all the knives out of the kitchen too and then move the cars to

finish too.

In the room, hour after hour, it was tense, defensive, and hot.

The air conditioning wasn't working, and my premise wasn't working.

And I feel like that's what happens a lot.

Both sides, every time.

Somebody gives an example, somebody else tells you why that example is not going to work for them specifically, and then it turns it to a different conversation.

My stupid list was only making us more frustrated the more we couldn't find it.

Because although there were so many moments of connection, it was the moments of disconnect that controlled the mood of the room.

We already have the laws on the books for exact weeks.

We do not, we do not.

There are laws.

But you see, there's 25,000 of them.

You're willing to let

all of those go just for your point.

And then it happened.

The moment I had been fearing.

We reached it.

Now, are you willing to put some responses?

That's the impasse, because you're not even willing to listen.

No.

The impasse.

Soon after, Anna summed up how a lot of us were feeling.

Coming in here,

I thought our chances of getting a list together was, I was more optimistic.

You know, I see why we are where we are today.

It's this sort of, you know, impasse.

The conversation ended shortly after.

We all said goodbye, and I sat in the room alone and texted my husband two words.

It failed.

I could not get the enemy lines to go away in that room, even for a little while.

But I was wrong.

There's content,

and then there's impact.

How surprised were you that

this fell apart?

Because to me,

that's where they all end.

Right there.

Yes.

I was not just shocked, but personally gutted because I had found all these people and with the best of intentions, I had said, look, out there in the world, no one's talking.

Let's try and create this environment with the seven of us that we can go past that.

We'll know each other.

You're all good people.

And I could not believe that with all that prep of them coming in, that the guards went up.

And she's not.

It's because you're not integrated.

It's not the seven people.

It's...

All of the voices that are in each of their heads that they're all battling.

I understand why he said what he said and cut her off.

And it has nothing to do with the people in that room.

Exactly.

The people in that room could compromise.

Could potentially, hypothetically, yes.

Yes.

And so.

If that was their community and it was only about them, they could come up with it.

The next day,

I honestly couldn't get out of bed.

And when I looked at my phone, there was this flurry of texts and emails from other people in the room saying, how did we miss?

We all tried.

We missed.

So what'd you find out?

Well, what was interesting was that one of the texts was an invitation from Denise, our firearms instructor, to Anna, our progressive activist mother, saying, you want to continue the conversation?

Why don't you come down to the shooting range and we can?

And so I conveyed this and Anna accepted in a second.

I was shocked.

And so the next day, this progressive activist went to the shooting range at the base of the NRA's building to continue the conversation with this firearms trainer.

And that's where we we go now.

Of course, I'm going to take out an AR-15.

Okay, okay, happy to try out.

And I'm also going to start you off on a 22 semi-automatic handgun, very low recoil.

Okay.

And as I somewhat nervously watched them engage each other one-on-one, the memory of their interaction from not even 48 hours prior was still pretty fresh.

Well, let's take out all the knives out of the kitchen too.

And still not remove the cars.

It's my parents finished.

That has to be hard to remove

They began this new conversation with basics.

So how do you take the safety off?

Because they say keep the safety on and then take the safety office.

So if it has,

it depends on the specific type of firearm.

So this one.

And then they started talking more specifics.

This is Denise explaining some of the existing gun laws that don't make sense.

So if someone were to hold this like this and put it up against their shoulder, well you're now shooting it like a rifle.

So now you're in violation of the law, and you're technically a felon.

Why would there be an issue if you're holding it as a rifle?

Why would it be considered illegal?

Because now

one of the pieces is not registered as a rifle.

You didn't purchase it as such.

So if you purchased it as a pistol and now you're shooting it as a rifle, they're saying that now you're in violation of the law.

Again,

complete, makes absolutely no sense.

And then this happened as they were talking about bullets.

Extremely much larger bullet, tons more powder.

This is a 308, so that's a typical hunting round.

So you can just see the difference in the power and penetration between the bullets and the amount of powder that goes in them.

So size does matter.

I love that.

And as they giggled over a size joke, that was it.

The enemy lines weren't there anymore between them.

It was no longer us versus them, Anna versus Denise.

They were on the same side, just two people, trying to figure something out.

They had connected.

Let's go shoot some guns.

This is Anna, coached by Denise, through her first shot.

Nice.

Take sights.

Shoulders forward.

Focus on that front side.

Slow, steady.

Good.

Finger off the

job.

And for the record, her shot was just off the bullseye.

And afterwards, they started talking specifics again.

But there was a willingness to work together and limit the number of opinions to their own.

So it's like, okay, rather than you and I meeting in the parking lot and purchasing the gun or wherever, let's go to the licensed dealer, run a background check on me to make sure, you know, that I'm not a felon, I don't have a history of domestic violence, etc.

And then just hand the gun off in that sense.

So it's not.

The big argument with that is going to be that

we're guilty until proven innocent.

You know what I mean?

I'm not 100% against it because that's pretty much how I do things now.

I'm just saying

I'm like 80% there, if that makes sense.

I mean, where you are.

To repeat, Denise says I'm 80% there.

Anna excitedly responds by saying, I'll bring you over.

But it's what Denise says next that got me.

Or you come 80, I come 80.

We figure out somewhere in the middle.

I love that.

You come 80, I come 80.

And we figure out somewhere in the middle.

One-on-one, there was a personal connection now.

Anna, who just the other night felt so hopeless.

You know, I see why we are where we are today.

It's this sort of, you know, impasse.

Now, not even 48 hours later, had this to say.

We're really, on most of it, like 80% of it, we're all on the same side, like, of the issue.

It's just we may be speaking a different language.

There's nuance.

And how do we understand someone's different language and nuance?

By spending time with them in person.

This is how Anna felt when I spoke with her a few weeks later.

To come back and to sort of have formed some sort of a bond with the, you know, NRA, someone who works with the NRA as their top trainer and stuff.

I mean, that was a refreshing surprise.

And that sort of thank God for that.

Because that sort of gave me a glimmer of hope that, okay,

we can come to some sort of an agreement.

The problem isn't always the other person.

The problem isn't always the other side.

Denise explained how this shifted.

For you two to come out to the range with me, just...

Putting your toes in the world of another person and understanding it, actually getting to see it were not the problem.

Weeks later, Denise and I spoke about her perspective on America after our time together.

It's just a very combative,

you know, very argumentative environment, and it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be, you know, you can agree to disagree on things, but, you know, like what you're trying to do, find some things that you do agree on.

And I don't think that it is that hard.

It isn't that hard.

So the question remained, how did we get to this point of connection and optimism what had happened in the room during the conversation with the seven that had prompted denise to want to reach out to anna and invite her to the gun range in the first place

it's like just people being open i think is the first step too that's what's important that's why i appreciated talking the other night yeah well thank you because i know there were others who were not so open enough to see the side and it was just i know it wasn't

frustrating on both sides was it Yeah.

Did you feel that?

I mean, that's why I started defending her.

I was impressed.

Defending her?

That's right.

The moment of impasse.

Now, are you willing to put some responses?

That's the impasse.

Because you're not even willing to listen.

No.

Remember when I said there was more in that moment than I had realized?

There's Denise defending Anna by saying, you can't do that to her.

That's the impasse.

So what happened in that moment?

I asked Denise later.

I just felt very angry that someone that was supposed to be sharing my point of view and my perspective was being blatantly disrespectful,

completely shut off to a human being sitting next to me.

Honestly, just like, I needed to defend her.

Whether she was on my side, their side, it didn't matter.

In that that moment, the moment of impasse, the enemy lines had actually shifted.

Someone on the complete opposite end of the issue became an ally to Denise when there was a greater obstacle to overcome.

What greater obstacle?

So I went back to the audio of the roundtable and listened to it.

Eight, four.

Six.

Don't infringe on anything in any of my writing.

Three.

Not reasonable.

Ten or one.

And there it was.

One.

Again and again, the obstacle to consensus so many of the times was the same person, Rick.

Now, are you willing to put some respect?

It wasn't his ideas.

The majority of the room shared his ideas on, well, pretty much everything.

It was his approach to the conversation.

He became the greater obstacle.

Many times we would all agree to an idea, but in going around the room for consensus, we'd hit the block.

Is that fair for everyone around?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But the problem is...

We can't close.

Here I I am in hour two, anticipating his block to a new idea, a role I think he knew he was playing.

Thoughts about that?

What are you looking at me for?

In hour three, here I am again.

And I'm asking you specifically because you're the you're my nemesis right now.

And then this happened.

Now, are you willing to put some

It wasn't the content of what he was saying.

It was the way he was saying it, the intention behind it.

And that was because of his number.

The number he had walking in.

Eight, four,

six, three,

ten, ten or one, one.

Remember those numbers?

As the sound guy was setting up, as people were sitting down and sipping their water nervously, I wondered how could I measure the degree of hope that they were bringing to this roundtable?

How could I gauge their commitment to finding my list?

So just as audio started recording, you hear me ask them.

How do you think it is likely one to ten of finding some sort of consensus, some sort of

what you honestly believe and then hand it to me?

Numbers were privately passed to me at the beginning of the conversation and never referred to again until it was time to leave three hours and 46 minutes later.

Here is the actual moment the conversation ended, and the numbers are revealed.

You'll hear Rick at the end.

It's tough.

It's a tough one.

Can't wait to see where our numbers come out.

What

the numbers are.

It was

eight, four,

six, three,

ten, ten, or one.

One.

One.

Not as a one, but then there's a zero right next to it.

Nine.

Zero to one.

That's your range.

zero to one, but I said one.

Interesting.

Rick was a one.

We never had a chance.

In fact, the next day he sent me an email saying,

Riaz, I think this was a good cause, but the impasse is far too wide a chasm to be crossed.

End quote.

A one will always diminish the hope in any given room, just the way that negativity lately overwhelms whatever true hope there is out there.

We have all been a Rick.

For whatever reason or whatever mood, we've all been that person.

But a one is a very powerful thing, especially in a very divided America.

So to me, the answer for how do we move forward and work together to keep our children safer is to be any number greater than one.

This is Denise at the end of our roundtable.

Denise, who went on to open up her world.

to show a fellow American that she isn't a them.

Denise's number is eight.

I'm loving sitting here and like my heart is going out to each one of you for your, you know, your viewpoints and I understand it.

It may not be one that I, you know, fully get on board, but I believe you and I know where you're coming from and I appreciate that.

Appreciate that.

What's interesting is Denise has been invited by Anna to attend her progressive groups and Anna is taking progressive moms to the shooting range at the NRA to learn more.

Love it.

So the bridge is there.

The bridge starts with just sitting in the same room.

So Riaz, when I think about coming to a solution in Washington, I'm a zero.

When I think about the American people,

I'm an eight, nine.

It's funny because the only thing I said we never got my list.

I didn't say there was nothing we didn't agree on.

The only thing we all agreed on was that we had no faith in the government system that exists.

That was the only thing the seven of us all agreed on.

So I think that is part of the problem.

And I think the best progress that we have, the best shot we have, is one-on-one.

Thanks, Reyes.

My pleasure.

I think you could see in

this

episode that

outrage stops us from talking to each other.

We don't trust each other.

We don't believe in one another.

And we stop using reason.

We just block, and it always ends the same way, which stops us from doing all of the things that we can do.

We may never agree on guns, but man, look at all the other things that we can do.

If we can't get past the outrage, if we can't find our way to talk to one another, and there are ways as you're seeing in this, if we can't do that, we're finished.

So what's the plan?

What's the way where we all win?

It's addicted to outrage.

Find this book and read this book and share it with a friend.

It was written to be able to share with somebody just like the people you're meeting now.

Addicted to Outrage, available in bookstores and online right now.

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