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Joe Rogan Experience #1085 - Kyle Kulinski

Kyle Kulinski is a political activist, progressive talk radio host, social democratic political commentator, and the co-founder of Justice Democrats. His show "Secular Talk" is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/SecularTalk

Joe RoganhostKyle Kulinskiguest
Feb 28, 20183h 1mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    Boom, and we're live.…

    1. JR

      Boom, and we're live. Hello, Kyle.

    2. KK

      Hello, Joe Rogan. (laughs)

    3. JR

      How you doing? You look very good there in a suit.

    4. KK

      Thank you. Uh, you know, I like to pretend that I'm a serious human being by wearing this, but I'm just a dick. (laughs)

    5. JR

      Well, you're a youngish fellow, so maybe a suit would give you more of an air of, uh, uh, uh, com- composure or-

    6. KK

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... authority, perhaps.

    8. KK

      That's the idea. If you look like you're really serious, then people assume you're serious-

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. KK

      ... and they don't know that I'm, you know, making dick jokes and-

    11. JR

      Exactly.

    12. KK

      ... all the shit like that. (laughs)

    13. JR

      It's a good move.

    14. KK

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      It's a very smart move.

    16. KK

      Yeah, it works out.

    17. JR

      I've actually, uh, had some suits made. I had to do this function for one of my kids' schools, and I had to go to this function where you had to wear nice clothes. It's like a dress up thing. And I don't really have nice clothes, nothing that, like, fits, and so I had to have something made. So now I've been wearing it when I go on special dates with Mrs. Rogan. Put it on.

    18. KK

      So it's like... It's a suit like this? It's a-

    19. JR

      I got a nice suit jacket and tailored, the whole deal. It fits me.

    20. KK

      And how do you feel when you put it on? Do you feel like-

    21. JR

      I feel like, um-

    22. KK

      ... "Oh, I'm official now"? (laughs)

    23. JR

      ... I'm a serious person. I feel like a serious person.

    24. KK

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      Like, if I, if I dress like this with, like, a hoodie and a T-shirt, I feel like a, a shlub. I feel like a, a dork.

    26. KK

      There's this-

    27. JR

      Like I am.

    28. KK

      There's this thing that I do where, uh, especially when I'm doing my show, oftentimes you do that half-ass move where I look like this.

    29. JR

      Mm-hmm. But you have, uh, shorts on underneath?

    30. KK

      But then I might have basketball shorts on-

  2. 15:0030:00

    Sure. Who was that,…

    1. JR

      meet it head on. There are times in life like that. But whenever you can avoid that, do. And I think a lot of what arguments are, and I've failed at this in my life many times, but a lot of what arguments are is the way you've reacted to the w- the thoughts and the expression that another person has. And if you just reacted a different way or approached it in a different manner or took it into consideration a little bit more before you responded, I think the conversation could have gone another way. And I think I'm learning how to do that more and more as I get better at podcasting, get better at conversations, learning how to just settle someone down, and learning how to genuinely be a nice person. So where I don't, I don't want to, like, insult anybody. I don't want to be in a disagreement with someone. I wanna discuss ideas.

    2. KK

      Sure. Who was that, who was that skeptic guy from years back that he put you on a list of, like, "Top 10 conspiracy blah, blah, blah," and then-

    3. JR

      Uh... Brian Dunning.

    4. KK

      And then I, I remember watching that clip and it was so frustrating, uh, when you guys were going back and forth, because you would say... I think you were talking about the 9/11 thing, and you're like, "I'm 100% not saying it was a conspiracy. I'm saying it looked like the building came down in a controlled demolition." Those are two very different things. It's one thing to say, "I believe it's a conspiracy." It's another thing to say, "The way it came down, uh, looked like it was a controlled demolition." But he kept insisting and trying to tell you what you believe-

    5. JR

      Well-

    6. KK

      ... as you're sitting across the room and you're like, "No, I don't believe that."

    7. JR

      He was trying to tell me what I was saying-

    8. KK

      Right.

    9. JR

      ... even though it was very clear. You know, okay, how do I say this? Uh, I don't think Brian is a bad guy. I don't think his brain works correctly.

    10. KK

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      I'm, I'm being honest. I think there's, there's a real problem there. And when he does these science... these videos, he sounds like a strip club DJ. Do you know what I mean? Like, there-

    12. KK

      I've never seen his or-

    13. JR

      There is some way-

    14. KK

      ... original content.

    15. JR

      ... that people talk where they take on an affected-

    16. KK

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Uh, uh, there's a way-

    18. KK

      I hate that.

    19. JR

      But that thing is done by people that are trying to achieve a desired result. Like, the- it's not that they're themselves talking about a very specific thing. It's that they're trying to put on an air of intellectual authority. And, you know, he talks of himself as a science writer, whatever that is. Look, I don't hate that guy, I'm not mad at him. The whole thing was kinda foolish and it was very damaging to him, and he wound up going to jail afterwards. Not-

    20. KK

      Really?

    21. JR

      Yeah, not because of that, but because of something that he did. He was involved in some sort of a scam with, uh... Was it Amazon or Google?

    22. NA

      eBay.

    23. JR

      eBay, that's right. He was involved in some sort of a scam where he had embedded cookies. You would go to his site, it'd make it lo- made it look like when you were buying things online that you had gone through his site first, when in fact you hadn't. There was just a cookie that was embedded, some, some, something along those lines. Whatever it was, it was illegal and he wound up going to jail. So, and even his defense of that, it's like, I think there's something wrong there.

    24. KK

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      I don't know what that something is, whether there's a, there's a spark plug that's not screwed in all the way.

    26. KK

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      There's something wrong.

    28. KK

      Well, speaking of, uh, fake personas, I feel like that's the worst when it comes to politics.

    29. JR

      Yes.

    30. KK

      And I do feel like o- one, there's very, very, very, very, very few upsides of Trump in my opinion, but one of the upsides of Trump is that he did kinda break the mold in terms of what was viewed as-... um, the right way to communicate as a politician. Because before him, you had all these very measured people who had the proper posture and they spoke with their thumb pointed down because they don't wanna be-

  3. 30:0045:00

    I agree with you…

    1. KK

      I just can't have my tax dollars going towards." You know what I mean?

    2. JR

      I agree with you 100%, but is it any better to have those people locked up in a cage for the rest of their life until their body stops working?

    3. KK

      Well, I guess the idea is if you have them locked up and you have people like The Innocence Project working on trying to overturn cases-

    4. JR

      Hm.

    5. KK

      ... where there was a wrong conviction-

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. KK

      ... that eventually you can right the wrong of getting those w- wrong people 4% of the time. But it's finite if you say, "No, you're gonna... we're gonna put you on-"

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. KK

      "... on death row and you're gonna die in eight years," or whatever it is. Then, you know, sometimes you can't finish the case in time to overturn it, and...

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    11. KK

      So, that's my whole thing about the death... Like I'd... I agree philosophically, and that's something many people to my left have come after me for, and said, "No, you're wrong. You should be against the death penalty in principle." But I say, "No, I get it theoretically and philosophically, but it's just that when you..."... actually implement it, there are pragmatic problems. Like, you're gonna kill the wrong fucking people-

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. KK

      ... and I'm not okay with that. You know what I mean?

    14. JR

      Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's better to kill the wrong people or to keep the wrong people locked in a cage suffering for the rest of their life. Who, where did, where did William Gacy live?

    15. KK

      John Wayne Gacy was in-

    16. JR

      John Wayne?

    17. KK

      ... uh, Chicago.

    18. JR

      Chicago?

    19. KK

      His middle name was Wayne, John Wayne? (laughs)

    20. JR

      Yeah. John Wayne Gacy.

    21. KK

      I didn't know that. (laughs)

    22. JR

      Yeah. Why'd I say it was William Gacy? I'm thinking of William Macy, the guy from Shameless. I'm all fucked up.

    23. KK

      Haven't seen that show.

    24. JR

      Um, yeah. Well, uh, we were talking about something before the podcast, and I think, um, uh, this is... I think this is really the future, whether it's in our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes. But I think that they're going to be able to read minds, and I think it's not... We're not far away from that. We're gonna, we're gonna really be able to know the actual contents of your thoughts.

    25. KK

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      Whether or not you really did murder a bunch of kids and bury them in your backyard. We're gonna know. And until then, we're dealing with a bunch of really big fucking problems. One of the biggest problems is people's memories. People's memories are so bad.

    27. KK

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      They're so bad. So when you have eyewitness testimony and you can convict people wrongly, which happens every day, and they think they're right. They think... They, they really do believe they're right.

    29. KK

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      They really believe it. That's a fucking problem, man. That's just a giant problem is the human memory is incredibly flawed. And when someone's life is on the line and, you know, you're gonna convict a guy who didn't do anything. He just looks kind of like what you remember this person who murdered that guy looks like.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    ... because as of…

    1. JR

    2. KK

      ... because as of right now what they're trying to do is they're trying to fight back against their base. So their base, it's people like me, and what we want ... I'm very clear about what I want. I'm not-

    3. JR

      What do you want?

    4. KK

      It's not hard for ... to please people like me who are on the left. We want a living wage, we want Medicare for all, which, you know, every other modern nation has one version or another of a single payer healthcare system. We just wanna be like the rest of the modern world. We want free college. Again, Slovenia has fucking free college. We can't afford to do free college when we just spent seven fucking trillion dollars on the Iraq war? We wanna end the wars. So I have very clear policy goals that I want. And guess what? Bernie Sanders came along, spoke about those issues. He went from being this obscure senator from fucking Vermont, which has a population of 12 people, to getting 47% of the vote in a race against a political juggernaut, a behemoth that had the entire Democratic Party machine behind her. So-

    5. JR

      Not only that, they were rigging the primaries.

    6. KK

      100%. Yes, and that's what we learned, and that's why, uh, Julian Assange went from being viewed as, "Oh my God, this guy is great." That's how the left used to view him. And now many people, Democratic partisans, are like, "Oh, fuck this guy."

    7. JR

      Russia. He's with Russia.

    8. KK

      That, I ... That's ... And I was just talking to you about this before the podcast, I was watching CNN before I came here for about an hour and 30 minutes, non-stop Russia coverage. Non-stop fucking Russia coverage. And then guess what? Now when Donald Trump goes out there and he's a, "Fake news CNN," everybody's gonna go, "Yeah, you know what? All they do is fucking talk about Russia all day long, so maybe the guy has a point." So the institutions that we have and the establishment as it is, it opens up the door for a demagogue and a liar and a fake populist like Trump to come in there and exploit it.

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. KK

      So i- if you give people a choice between a broken system that's fucking them over, where half of workers in America make $30,000 a year or less, you give people an option between keep everything as is or take a fucking human bowling ball and throw it at the establishment-

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. KK

      ... and they're gonna say, "Okay, fuck it. We'll roll the dice on this Trump guy." And then meanwhile, look at his agenda and everything that he's done since he got elected. It's the opposite of his populous rhetoric on the campaign trail. His fucking tax bill had a 33% favorability rating and they were bragging about it when they passed it. This is a bill that cuts corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, at a time when corporations are already paying a historically low percentage of the tax burden, and it raises taxes on everybody that makes $75,000 a year or less over a 10-year period. I mean, you couldn't get a piece of legislation that spits in the face of working people more than that. But the saddest thing is, this guy is so comically easy to beat, but the Democrats can't get their shit together 'cause they're fighting back against the grassroots who care about the issues because they're in bed with corporations. The Democrats are in bed with corporations just like the Republicans are. So if you got this corrupt party establishment and they're trying to tamper down the wing of the party that can actually win, well then guess what? You're gonna keep losing to these monsters, these comic book villains on the right.

    13. JR

      Don't you think that the parties themselves, th- th- there's a giant issue with the momentum behind them? The lobbyists, the special interests groups, the embedded just sort of ecosystem that they both carry with them. For someone new to step in and sort of represent the actual people like yourself that, that have this-

    14. KK

      Right.

    15. JR

      ... very clear view.

    16. KK

      Well, that's why-

    17. JR

      That's why they have so many people that they're beholden to by the time they get into a position where they can even run for president, they've all been vetted and checked and-

    18. KK

      Well, that's why, there, there are some keys here. So one of the most important things is when you look at a politician who's running, thing number one is check. Do they take corporate PAC money? If the answer is yes, fuck 'em. Not interested. If you don't take corporate PAC money, that means okay, at least I know you're being honest and you're being open. And when you talk, I can believe you. There's a-

    19. JR

      But if some problem comes along is that successful politician, someone who could actually possibly win, they do take corporate PAC money, but they're a better alternative than say, uh, (laughs) you know, Pence. If Pence-

    20. KK

      Sure.

    21. JR

      ... decides to be president-

    22. KK

      So-

    23. JR

      ... after ... Then you go, "Okay, we gotta choose the lesser of two evils." That's essentially what we did with Hillary.

    24. KK

      Right.That's right, and I think-

    25. JR

      You get into that weird position where, yeah, she's kinda corrupt, but look, she's, uh, it's gonna be historic. She's a woman. She's infinitely more qualified than him and...

    26. KK

      Yeah. The lesser evilism thing is a, is a big issue because that's the game that's played on the American people. And I think Americans know that it's being played on them. You know, like if you look at the, um, the opinion polls on Congress, Congress oscillates between a 14% approval rating and a 21% approval rating, and we're supposed to be a democracy. So in other words, you vote these people in, and then two weeks later you go ask people, "Hey, what do you think of the Congress you just voted in?" And like, 14% of them are like, "I think they're good." Everybody else is like, "Fuck them." So we all know that there's a problem here, and the root of the problem is the corruption of the system and the corporate money flooding our politics, and then the politicians get in there and all they do is represent the corporations, and they don't represent the people. So to your point, yeah, in order to rise up through this system, that's why they l- that's why the establishment loved Hillary Clinton-

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. KK

      ... because she played by the rules in this corrupt system.

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. KK

      Did you know that, uh, her and Bill through their entire career, they raised over $3 billion in private donations?

  5. 1:00:001:04:27

    I don't think they…

    1. KK

      so I don't think he's gonna run even though he wants to because he'll get his ass handed to him. Mark Cuban is another guy with a giant ego who's thinking about it, but I don't think he'll end up doing it.

    2. JR

      I don't think they want that scrutiny, like-

    3. KK

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      ... I mean-

    5. KK

      A lot of shit comes out.

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. KK

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      I mean think about who Trump was pre-election and Trump is now.

    9. KK

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      Before the election, he was kind of lovable. He's like this lovable-

    11. KK

      Hmm. (laughs)

    12. JR

      ... egomaniac weirdo guy. I mean before-

    13. KK

      He had a role.

    14. JR

      ... the election.

    15. KK

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      Well, you know, let me take that back because it was all that birther shit that was pretty wacky. But pre-birther shit.

    17. KK

      He was the guy who played the role of the "I'm the big boss corporatist" guy-

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. KK

      ... who's like-

    20. JR

      I'm the guy with the-

    21. KK

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      I'm the don, the king of real estate.

    23. KK

      I'm the decision maker.

    24. JR

      He was like a bigger-than-life character. Large hair, big fucking name on the buildings.

    25. KK

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      Gold, gold lettering everywhere. Gold bathroom. Gold toilet paper. Like he would just-

    27. KK

      He's so silly.

    28. JR

      He's-

    29. KK

      Does he not know that like-

    30. JR

      (laughs)

Episode duration: 3:01:25

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