Citizens Prerogative Podcast Closed Caption Transcript
S3 E57 We Were Warned 

10:04:27 In times like these. Being a citizen is a big job.
10:04:31 Thank you for joining us to celebrate the virtues of self- rule and debate the state of our Republic.
10:04:38 Welcome to the citizens prerogative podcast This is the voice of your nerdy host, Michael Piscatelli, and we are inspired by a co-host whose passion for our republic precedes him.
10:04:47 Everywhere he goes. Raymond, one Jr: Thank you.
10:04:51 Thank you, and I recall Mark Twain saying that history doesn't repeat itself.
10:04:57 But it does rhyme. This is episode Number 57.
10:05:05 We are still in season. 3. The title of this episode will be We were warned.
10:05:11 So we're gonna be talking about today is revisiting this very real quick attempt against our Republic.
10:05:23 And our have the will of the people through our election process and the risks that all of that poses to the liberty that we're promised in any other freedoms or you know a false sense of security
10:05:41 anonymity might all be at risk and there's this interesting thing we do in this country.
10:05:47 I'm just going to go on a little bit of a digression on this false sense of security, because I would say up until this point in time other than when certain people were ahead of the FBI in the past and things like
10:05:59 that, like jaygger hoover and whatnot we know what it's like when people with personal vendetas get the power of the government behind them.
10:06:08 A anyone can Now, I think of it, like the eye of Sauron for anybody who's familiar with the Lord of the rings, because, you know, once you're in government, and you have access to that data, and you have authority, in the set and
10:06:20 the other thing any individual can be singled out. Any one of us can easily lose our anonymity.
10:06:27 We can lose our freedoms. We can lose anything and everything and especially if you're executing your rights for free speech.
10:06:35 You know, dictators, and people like that don't appreciate things like that, and they can eventually do whatever they want.
10:06:42 So our sense of security and and freedom, and being able to move from point A to Point B without being stopped and checked for our papers and things of that nature, I mean, I we take that for granted today.
10:06:56 I mean people freaked out when we close the borders, and then North and the South and Americans up into that point, maybe a quarter of us, or a third of us had passports.
10:07:04 Everybody basically had to go get passports because a lot of people live on the border and they go to Canada.
10:07:09 They go to Mexico, you know, and so like I said this was a digression.
10:07:14 But when I think about liberty and the promise of liberty and the opposite of that, some of these totalitarian regimes, you see how much power putin has within Russia, that's not where we wanna be and we've been
10:07:28 warned I mean. the warnings were carried by the founders into the creation and the establishment of several iterations of our government.
10:07:40 Before we got to the one we're on now and part of the reason why they had to keep iterating was because they didn't want a king.
10:07:45 They didn't want a president, They did not want a supreme authority over them.
10:07:50 They were worried about their own liberty, their liberty to discriminate and have slaves, and all that, too.
10:07:58 I'm gonna pause. Well, I i'm glad you clarified that it was lord of the rings you were talking about because of all the British news.
10:08:08 I I don't know. note, Lord, of the ring so I thought it would have been like Oh, gosh!
10:08:11 Just another royal I didn't care or knew about and I have to learn about.
10:08:16 I suppose so, cause I This is relevant news. but thank you.
10:08:20 And I will say that you know i'm glad you brought up and it's an important point for us is that the the Presidency role wasn't supposed to exist because there is inherent risk with the strong man ideal
10:08:31 right, this. These were enlightened ideas that a people could self rule.
10:08:36 These were, I enlightened a a a enlightened approach to governance and self-rule.
10:08:45 And unfortunately the the nation just wasn't ready yet so the Presidency came in as a necessity to try to rally people and unite them.
10:08:54 And so that's the core role the role of that Presidency was to unite the fractions and the and the discord to create a common voice.
10:09:02 So if the president's not doing that they're not doing their job
10:09:11 A 100%, Thank you, and to one degree or another ray and I have been seeing this, I mean, we've been sensitive to it for a long time, because we've interacted with bullies.
10:09:23 Our whole life. So we've always count counted on our system to essentially not promote bullyism, but promote reason and enlightenment.
10:09:32 Ideals, and we're not there anymore. and the things we've been watching steadily over administration over administration, and this is probably rooted down into the parties and Their interests to have power over one another.
10:09:47 Congress has not done anything to him in the power of the Presidency.
10:09:50 So decades over, decades, over decades you go back every presidency at some point a President overstepped the line, and Congress did nothing to pull it back.
10:10:01 They Don't there's a lot of reasons why they don't want to be beholden to some of the decisions that some of these Presidents are willing to make like going to war, which used to be or is a technically something
10:10:10 only Congress can do declare. war right just one minor Oh, one minor little detail, one minor little function of our government. we know where that's led.
10:10:21 But that's just one example of where the the balance the checks and the balances, and and the things between the 3 core components that judiciary, the executive in the legislative or I should say, in the order of
10:10:34 the Constitution. Article One is Congress, the legislative branch.
10:10:40 Number one, number 2 is the President, and then number 3.
10:10:43 Is this religious Supreme Court we have nowadays. Those are the first 3 articles.
10:10:48 So, Congress, being the body of the people, is theoretically should be more of a supreme authority.
10:10:55 But the truth is, they all kind of have checks and balances on each other for good reason, because people in groups sometimes don't behave very well.
10:11:07 So do the checks and balances behave very well, is the question, and it is.
10:11:13 It appears that checks and balances will only be as effective as the people.
10:11:19 So we have to be open to what the signals are telling us we can't sit back and remain idle you have to listen to what's happening.
10:11:29 Yeah, and there's something embedded in what you just said that's always scary to me. and other politicians have made this point as well as like.
10:11:35 Well. the rule of law only exist when we behave as a defic, as if it exists.
10:11:42 Democracies or public's. Rule of law self rule all that only exists in our minds and on paper.
10:11:49 You only make it a reality by living the virtues right, by believing in the words and upholding the words.
10:11:54 And this is why people say when you've taken an oath to the Constitution, it's all we have, and if you lie and you cheat and you steal and that becomes the norm then there's no republic anymore, right if you
10:12:09 have enough people who are lying, cheating, and stealing, that washes away all the words, all the writing, all the laws, all the freedoms right gone, and nothing.
10:12:21 No document has changed nothing's been amended that's the That's the real risk we're seeing right.
10:12:28 I do want to chime in that. When January 6 originally happened, we did do a special episode, and I think we were very sympathetic.
10:12:36 We were very open to what people were feeling that did attack the capital.
10:12:41 But we things have changed. No one on that side seems willing to reconcile.
10:12:45 That should have been the moment, in my opinion, to say whoops, this is gone a little too far.
10:12:51 The Republic matters way more than my personal opinion, or my made in China hats.
10:12:59 You know this is bigger than this but it didn't Happen it's doubled down on on the other side double down.
10:13:07 So we It's unfortunate that it forces a group like even ours to focus on something like this because we're not current event focused. We're that's not our mission is to be we want things that will endure
10:13:18 we're about policy. we're about long term strategy and in a lot of ways.
10:13:23 I feel but This clear in present danger is evident now.
10:13:30 More than ever I mean up until this point I had only seen it in the history books, and it wasn't pretty then, and it doesn't seem very pretty now.
10:13:40 The parties. are a bit of a problem we've talked about this before. they're very much challenged in their own ways.
10:13:48 They're they're both enabling greater corruption legal or otherwise. and they're also creating other stresses on institutions as a whole.
10:13:57 And now the hard right whole against the extremists within.
10:14:04 The you know, former conservative republican party. is pretty intense and in alignment with the global rise, and that type of thinking the Democrats are kind of being pulled along.
10:14:20 I don't know that the Democrats necessarily at their core or that are better as a party than the Republicans.
10:14:26 It's just that the Republicans have gone so far in one direction that the Democrats can easily steal the ground of what stand for democracy.
10:14:33 We stand for the Republic. but there's a fair number of conservatives like this Cheney, right out there.
10:14:38 That also believe in the rule of law, and so it's really important for us to be focusing on individuals at least nowadays, who believed in the rule of law, and are not not feeding into the corruption.
10:14:51 So you know, we talk about the elections and everything. One thing we have to be careful of is, if the Democrats do take too much control for too long.
10:14:59 And I I you know I I am an anti-party type of person.
10:15:03 So I fear that the people in power like in the democratic party, if they feel like they're gonna have majority for a while that the deep-seated monies moneyed corruption is gonna pool in there even more right and it's like
10:15:21 that in of itself is a thing we have to deal with on the side. And again, we'll probably talk more about that specifically also in a later episode before the election.
10:15:30 But it's. the money the dark money and the massive amounts of money, and how the wealthy are manipulating these things now is like it's on high. but we're so distracted by the absolute insanity, we're not even
10:15:45 focusing on some of those facts right and so that's the big risk.
10:15:50 Right now, and it's important for us not to be blinded by party, because they're kind of blind in themselves.
10:15:56 Well, let's be sympathetic with each other as citizens really quick, because when we weren't blinded by the sensational stuff that was going on, we were blinded by distance, I mean the Internet is new
10:16:10 telecommunications are earlier, cool 100 years plus.
10:16:12 So when we think about it it's nothing new like the populace was always blind, and a little bit uneducated about what was going on in Washington.
10:16:21 Now their goal is to You can see you can open up a boo.
10:16:26 You can look at the Channel, you can watch c-span.
10:16:28 You can do whatever you want to see and hold your government accountable But if you're too busy dealing with the noise, all the white noise right, you can't see what's what's what's happening behind the curtain and
10:16:39 before it just you could never get to the curtain.
10:16:43 Washington is how many miles away from where even Michael and I said, a 1,000 plus so miles. So we are.
10:16:50 This is not different. so do be sympathetic like what the problem is, is what I've said before.
10:16:56 Like, Do we become the stupid ages? Do they look back and say, Well, they had all the info like they created this great Internet, but they still let it collapse.
10:17:04 They still let their country collapse. They were all interconnected like that, and and to be a joke right if we still failed because we had, we had fixed the one issue that government used to control us, which is our ability to
10:17:17 communicate, untethered.
10:17:25 Yes, tricky tricky the solution simple it's just I think difficult right, because it takes each of us to pay attention.
10:17:37 I'm gonna throw out a quote There we're gonna hark them back to George Washington.
10:17:44 He was her first president. He said he felt he knew being our first President.
10:17:50 There was a lot of precedences that would be set by his presidency, and so his is the one we always go back to for that transition of power, peaceful transition of power.
10:18:01 Because there was a lot of worries that the commander in chief might choose to stay in power.
10:18:09 They had the arm, you know, they had the military and all that stuff so physically to say, just because you don't have the votes.
10:18:20 It doesn't mean much when you can threaten people to stay in power.
10:18:26 But Washington didn't do that and when he left office. I mean he he decided he could have won a reelection.
10:18:34 You know it's not until fdr that we actually limit presidents to 2 terms.
10:18:37 So Washington could have kept running and could have kept getting elected because it's just Congress that selecting him and he knows all those people he chose to leave, and for good reason to set the precedence of how someone should leave in
10:18:52 this very brand new first edition, Experimental Republic.
10:18:59 So his farewell, addressed in 1796, he opined for us his hopes for the people and their new experiment and self rule.
10:19:12 Paraphrase them Here your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual, and that the free constitution which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained, and then it's administration is in every department may be
10:19:28 stamped with wisdom and virtue. He had high hopes for us, and at the same time he also went on to warn us of tyranny, and how political parties will set the stage for some of our potential demise of
10:19:42 this grand experiment, I quote him again: Unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted
10:20:04 them to unjust dominion. We might argue that the engine, the engines, are at risk.
10:20:15 Our elections, and they are right now ever more potentially able to uplift these people into unjust dominion.
10:20:24 And when they do get there they will dismantle everything they use to get there.
10:20:28 They will destroy the bridge behind them, and they will leave us all to be ruled by them.
10:20:38 On that note. Think it's time for us to take a break
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10:22:00 Us Page. Thanks for your support. I started the episode kind of with a quote
10:22:09 That i'll hope is correct, and then that it really I think captures a concern.
10:22:16 I've always had, and yeah, that that idea that history repeats itself.
10:22:20 And if history does repeat itself, you know the the nation should fail.
10:22:26 Right, the the, the the grand experiment could fail because it has all the similarities.
10:22:29 Everything's right in line but stumbling across across that Mark Twain quote which I do enjoy his insights.
10:22:39 And that that one really spoke to me that it it doesn't repeat itself.
10:22:41 But it actually rhymes and I can see it I hope that we're seeing it right now, that it definitely rhymes. but it's it's the character of the people.
10:22:50 It's the character of the base it's character of the citizens which make power.
10:22:56 How a nation deals with tyranny and hopefully we're showing that we're patient we give people a chance to to make it right more than they deserve apparently if you're rich, and and that's just the
10:23:08 equity. we have to pull back right so to me There's a huge effort of really pulling back the power structure and the labor movement.
10:23:18 I think more and more. The big problem with government not getting behind labor.
10:23:23 Big time is because I think after we deal with the labor issue we'll deal with the Government right like after we deal with pay and equity in the labor market, I think the concern is that we'll turn around and say well wait a
10:23:34 minute. Why, don't we hold our government as as much as we do our bosses and our corporate leaders?
10:23:39 They've got all the money in the world but yet our government.
10:23:43 So I I think that it's it's another distractionary method, keeping us busy dealing with our bosses, which are the biggest problem in our life right now, which it should be the government frankly because they they are affecting everything and
10:23:56 our boss, and times like these. There are many fronts on the war.
10:24:03 Citizen has to pay attention to too many battles, too many battles for people who are too depressed, poor, hungry, tired.
10:24:15 You name it. This country has a lot of citizens that are hurting They're addicted homeless, whatever and then there's everybody else, and we can do so much better I know it's hard to focus on that sometimes because
10:24:36 all the anger. all the all the negativity that's out there seems to have gotten some some addiction addiction into many people.
10:24:47 And we hope we can do our part to help make that pass so we're going to move in for this episode.
10:24:54 We're gonna move into calls to action we're probably gonna be on time.
10:25:00 Congressional action to reinstate their authority and ensure proper overstate.
10:25:05 Excuse me oversight of the executive and the judicial branches would be a really good start.
10:25:13 I mean, I i'm not gonna say at the same time, We should always be fighting for pay equity, and you know having unions in places that are making sure people are getting good benefits, and etc.
10:25:26 You know we still live in a world where Ceos and C suite.
10:25:31 The people who report to the Ceos are making many times more in every year, or 2 years, many more times, many more times what the lowest paid employee of any company takes home, and at the end of the day all the employees who work there
10:25:46 are actually doing the work of that company so it's we've got a long way to go.
10:25:52 I'm just glad Certain states like California. and new York right now are starting to potentially pass laws that require postings to actually have salary related ranges on them. Wow!
10:26:02 Is not funny, anyway. it's a big digression but thank you Ray, cause it is all these fronts on us, but Congress can act, but Congress can only act if we act when we vote.
10:26:17 So when we say, you know, Congress needs to reinstate its authority.
10:26:20 Well, we need to identify the candidates that we can get into office that are gonna reinstate that authority.
10:26:26 And I know fundraising. it's still a very difficult thing We used to just be able to talk about how bad fundraising is for political campaigns, because it's always big corporate donors causing all kinds of problems, that's
10:26:38 still a problem, too. Keep an eye out for that. Is that representative actually interested in making things better for you, or are they making you afraid?
10:26:48 And if you don't vote for them you are gonna be ruined that that's awful.
10:26:54 So get involved. get involved in your local party. you know we you can't beat them. join them right now.
10:27:03 The apparatus, that gets elections executed Besides, you know Obviously it's every county. but the parties are very involved in what's going on.
10:27:13 And since the are like the right now they're kind of like the power centers that are trying to corrupt everything, it's a good place to be to see what's going on, so you know get involved with your local party help add
10:27:22 your voice, monitor, witness, or, you know, volunteer to run a pool where votes are going to be happening that way.
10:27:36 We can hopefully have people that are concerned about the Republic in the right places.
10:27:41 During these elections, cause there's going to be a lot of people are only concerned about winning not concerned about conducting elections, and that's where we're really going off the rails.
10:27:54 So get involved in your local party. both parties have extreme elements at the helm.
10:27:58 They're skewing. our candidate options you know they're moving our options towards the polls rather than somewhere northern towards the middle, and only when we get involved are we able to get better candidates than we have
10:28:11 today. And then one more thing we'll put on the citizen you know we need citizen action to elect candidates to office that they'll take big corporate donations, like I said they advocate for free and fair elections
10:28:24 and they will pass laws to save her nation from authoritarianism.
10:28:29 Corruption and climate change. I mean these are these are huge all of them, I mean, we won't have a country after climate change takes us out.
10:28:38 So these are all existential rests to the Republic.
10:28:54 That's going to do us for this episode we have been your host.
10:28:59 Thank you to Mr. Raymond, one junior, and thank you, Mr.
10:29:05 Piscatelli. I truly hope that lady Liberty's writings are not the future prediction of the United States, and and that we truly are headed towards a light that shining light but I feel like the
10:29:17 huddled masses. more and more is just the the American people left behind
10:29:26 Yeah, it'd be nice to get back to a shining city on a hill.
10:29:30 Well, this has been something that's for sure for information on this and other episodes head over to citizen Do good dot com and click on podcast while you're there hit up the contact us page and leave a comment we'd love to hear from
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