Ep 378: The Mob vs. Project 2025, with Jim Babka

Doug Stuart: Welcome to another episode of The Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of The Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network.

Doug Stuart: I am your host, Doug Stuart, and I want to share with you one of the live streams I did on August 8th with Jim Babka.

Doug Stuart: Man, he is involved in politics in so many ways, and he just has a really analytical mind, and he knows how to analyze things because he’s been in the thick of it.

Doug Stuart: He’s also really well-versed in memetic theory, and everybody was talking about Project 2025.

Doug Stuart: Well, not everybody, but the left was because that’s the latest bogeyman from them.

Doug Stuart: What I wanted to do was talk to Jim Babka about memetic theory.

Doug Stuart: How does it apply to the reaction to things like Project 2025?

Doug Stuart: How does it apply to the Trump assassination attempt?

Doug Stuart: All kinds of things.

Doug Stuart: And so basically Jim Babka and I talked for about an hour, and I wanted you to hear this episode.

Doug Stuart: You can actually watch it on our YouTube channel, if you go there and subscribe.

Doug Stuart: So anyway, I really think you’ll enjoy it.

Doug Stuart: We talk about all kinds of good things.

Doug Stuart: You’ll also probably be amused by how I fumbled my words every now and then on a few things and get a chuckle out of it.

Doug Stuart: So anyway, I know you’ll enjoy this episode.

Doug Stuart: So listen to the whole thing and let us know what you think.

Doug Stuart: All right, we are live in the LCI green room.

Doug Stuart: I am here with Jim Babka.

Doug Stuart: He’s host of the podcast Gracearchy, editor at large for Advocates for Self Government.

Doug Stuart: Jim, what else do you do?

Doug Stuart: You do a million other things.

Doug Stuart: What are the things top of mind, top of on your plate right now that people can get to know you about what you’re doing?

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: President of Downsized DC, home of the Read the Bills Act and One Subject in a Time Act.

Jim Babka: So agenda setters there and Zero Aggression Project, which is the sponsor of my show Gracearchy with Jim Babka and the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity was doing, was doing a whole bunch of different stuff.

Jim Babka: So respect America.

Jim Babka: I’m the executive producer.

Jim Babka: I wear a lot of hats, but I decided to show my hair today.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: I don’t have that option.

Doug Stuart: So I’m going to wear a hat.

Doug Stuart: So you are also big with Harry Brown back in the day, right?

Jim Babka: Yes, I was.

Jim Babka: I was his press secretary.

Jim Babka: He’s actually the guy that changed my life.

Jim Babka: I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.

Jim Babka: In 1996, I was a disgruntled Republican.

Jim Babka: Saw Harry Brown.

Jim Babka: I said, there’s my guy.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: That’s really cool.

Doug Stuart: I think it’s cool that we can all point to people who have changed our lives, mentored us, helped us see a better way.

Doug Stuart: I can only hope that when we’re older, I don’t know about you, Jim, but I hope that there are people that can look up to us and say, hey, you’ve influenced me.

Doug Stuart: That’s an indication of a life well lived, I suppose.

Jim Babka: I think that is.

Jim Babka: I think it’s a really good test.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: That’s good.

Doug Stuart: Well, you and I had a conversation a few months ago about, I mean, I don’t even remember all we talked about.

Doug Stuart: We talked about a handful of things.

Jim Babka: A lot of stuff.

Doug Stuart: I wanted to have you on today to talk about something that everybody who’s on the left, that’s a friend of mine on Facebook, is really worried about.

Doug Stuart: Ironically, one of them is really into memetic theory, which is part of why I’m having you on here.

Doug Stuart: And I’m just like, dude, do you not understand what’s going on here?

Jim Babka: So, wait, let me see if I can get this straight.

Jim Babka: You had me on because you’re having a debate with one guy.

Jim Babka: Am I like, see, Jim will tell you so.

Doug Stuart: Yes.

Doug Stuart: Oh, man.

Doug Stuart: That’s the cynical take on this.

Doug Stuart: No, I’m just thinking everybody.

Doug Stuart: OK, so, yes, but I’m also having you on because the people who are watching this and who will watch this also have that one guy who they’re arguing with.

Doug Stuart: No, actually, there’s about five or six people to defend myself a little bit.

Jim Babka: I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.

Doug Stuart: No, it’s fine.

Doug Stuart: There’s about five or six people that just they keep posting about, well, if Project 2025 happens, or if Trump gets elected, Project 2025 happens, and this evil thing is going to happen, this terrible thing is going to happen, and then all the comments are, vote blue and vote for Biden or Kamala or whatever.

Doug Stuart: And so I’m just like, guys, you’re doing the same thing that you claim the right is doing when they say that if Obama or Biden or whomever is elected, we’re going to have, you know, every kid is going to be trans or something.

Doug Stuart: You know, that’s what the right would say.

Doug Stuart: I probably just got us kicked off of YouTube for even, you know, saying that in jest.

Doug Stuart: We’ll see.

Doug Stuart: You can’t say hardly anything.

Doug Stuart: So anyway, it’s a really big phenomenon.

Doug Stuart: I mean, are you, do you, have you seen this in your own, you know, travails across social media where people are worried about this?

Jim Babka: Well, I just want to say that they had me at the part where they said, if Trump gets elected, bad things happen.

Jim Babka: You know, it’s after that that they start to go off course.

Doug Stuart: I mean, like in the specifics?

Jim Babka: As in, yeah, like we got to elect Kamala as the alternative because, you know, you could also say if Kamala gets elected, bad things happen.

Jim Babka: Yes.

Jim Babka: So, bad things are going to happen.

Jim Babka: There you go.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Jim Babka: I have seen some of this.

Jim Babka: I think the recent moves that Donald Trump made in regards to the Project 2025 is going to cause this to diminish some.

Doug Stuart: But is that when he said he didn’t know anybody who like he didn’t know about it or the other comments?

Jim Babka: Well, my understanding is that his legal team threatened court action for because Heritage kept trying to connect this to him.

Jim Babka: And I also, the gentleman who’s in charge of it, oh, shoot, I had his name down here, I lost it, resigned.

Jim Babka: I mean, this is actually kind of-

Doug Stuart: Is this Kevin Roberts?

Jim Babka: No, he’s the president of Heritage.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Jim Babka: Shoot, anyway, I don’t think we will-

Doug Stuart: I can probably look at it here.

Jim Babka: He ended up resigning.

Jim Babka: And so I think that this is Paul Dance, Paul Dance.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Jim Babka: And so, I mean, he’ll land somewhere.

Jim Babka: I’m sure he has already.

Jim Babka: He’ll have a nice cushion landing for having taken one for the team.

Jim Babka: But yeah, there’s been a lot of reaction to this, a lot of fear, and almost guaranteed hyperbole.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: It’s funny to me how this, you know, I don’t know, a year or two ago, whenever the right and Libertarians were like bringing up the great reset, I think it was probably during COVID really, because that was sort of an impetus, a potential impetus for, you know, installing, you know, whatever high authority the UN needed to have or something like that, that the left was just like, oh, you guys are a bunch of conspiracy theorists.

Doug Stuart: You know, they’re not, this isn’t, this is just, you know, made up stuff.

Doug Stuart: And we’re like, no, there’s a book, there’s a guy who’s promoting this stuff.

Doug Stuart: Look, they’re specifically saying these, oh, that’s not what that means.

Doug Stuart: And now you have everybody who’s talking about Project 2025 and being like, oh, well, if, you know, if Trump’s elected and Project 2025 happens, then gay marriage will be eliminated.

Doug Stuart: Like, they’re going to lose that, which is, you know, that would be pretty crazy.

Doug Stuart: That’s a lot of effort to overturn gay marriage at this stage.

Doug Stuart: Or they’re going to eliminate overtime or eliminate social security benefits.

Doug Stuart: And I’m just like, hang on.

Doug Stuart: I know that there might be people who want to do that.

Doug Stuart: And it might be a sort of like suggested phase out kind of thing in Project 2025.

Doug Stuart: But even when you go and read it, and I’ve seen people comment on this and say, well, no, it doesn’t say that.

Doug Stuart: It says this.

Doug Stuart: And it’s way different.

Doug Stuart: Here’s the response.

Doug Stuart: Well, they’re using coded language.

Doug Stuart: Like, OK, now who’s the conspiracy theorist?

Jim Babka: Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s a telltale sign.

Jim Babka: What’s most interesting to me about Project 2025, literally is the most interesting thing.

Jim Babka: It’s 900 pages long.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Jim Babka: It’s 900 pages long.

Doug Stuart: Isn’t it 902?

Jim Babka: So you contact me and say, hey, Jim, I want to discuss Project 2025.

Jim Babka: I’m like, OK, you know, so I’m going to go look this up and do a little research.

Jim Babka: I open, I’m like, no, no, this ain’t happening.

Jim Babka: This ain’t happening.

Jim Babka: There are not enough hours in the day as it is.

Jim Babka: I am not reading this thing.

Jim Babka: It’s not happening.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: And what that means, by the way, by the transitive theory is they didn’t read it either.

Jim Babka: The people who are criticizing this have not read it.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: No.

Doug Stuart: Well, and here’s the thing.

Doug Stuart: You can go, it’s actually pretty readable.

Doug Stuart: I mean, I can, here, let me, I’m going to add this to our screen share here.

Doug Stuart: This is just project2025.org.

Doug Stuart: This is not like some, this isn’t some conspiracy theory.

Doug Stuart: It’s, if it’s a conspiracy, it’s just out there.

Doug Stuart: And it’s basically this mandate for leadership.

Doug Stuart: Hey, the base idea here is the Heritage Foundation, along with some other people, other think tanks, put together a policy document that like, hey, if we got our way and we got our guy in office, what would we want?

Doug Stuart: What would we recommend?

Doug Stuart: That’s kind of how I take it.

Doug Stuart: Is that how you take it?

Jim Babka: It is.

Jim Babka: And there’s lots of organizations that do this.

Jim Babka: Cato Institute does, has a version of this that they did, have been, I don’t know if they’re still doing, but they did throughout the 1990s and the first part of the 21st century.

Jim Babka: I used to read it when it would come out.

Doug Stuart: They probably were 900 pages.

Jim Babka: No, it was, it was only one volume, so to speak.

Jim Babka: Other organizations are doing the exact same thing.

Jim Babka: And then each, there’s a lot of single issue organizations that also put out smaller policy proposals, statements like this, describing what it is that they want to see happen and how to do it.

Jim Babka: And this is what think tanks exist to do.

Jim Babka: What matters is whether or not this is the platform or agenda of the candidate.

Jim Babka: Now, I’ve not been to Donald Trump’s website.

Jim Babka: But in 2015 when he was running, in 2016, when he was running the very first time, he didn’t put policy positions up on his page.

Jim Babka: That’s not how his campaign ran.

Jim Babka: His campaign is driven by a personality, by him.

Jim Babka: And it’s whatever he, it’s literally whatever he said that day, what he chose to put up on social media.

Jim Babka: There was no coherent like these will be the plans.

Jim Babka: And his administration showed that.

Jim Babka: There was a lot of ways in which his administration was tremendously ineffective, confused, the constant churn in terms of personnel.

Jim Babka: So there wasn’t a coherent.

Jim Babka: The idea that somehow or other this administration is going to be radically different than the one he had the first time should he get elected seems bizarre to me.

Doug Stuart: The pushback I’ve seen on that sort of thing is kind of like basically the Heritage Foundation and other people who wrote this document had people from his administration.

Doug Stuart: Now they’re going to come back more organized.

Doug Stuart: That’s sort of the prediction of like, hey, he’s got some momentum and now he’s got this huge 900 page policy thing, which will take him his entire candidacy to even read or presidency to even read.

Doug Stuart: And so that’s the pushback that I’ve seen, which is, oh yeah, he’s going to be more organized this time because he learned his lesson that he shouldn’t have somebody like a hot guy like Steve Bannon.

Doug Stuart: Hot guy, I just said hot guy like Steve.

Doug Stuart: You know what?

Doug Stuart: Loose cannon like Steve Bannon.

Doug Stuart: Wow, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever said ever in a podcast.

Jim Babka: Yeah, so that will not make the recorded version.

Doug Stuart: I’ll be fine.

SPEAKER_4: I’ll let it.

SPEAKER_4: I’ll allow it.

Jim Babka: But this is live, so everybody tuning in now got it.

Jim Babka: Can’t, yep.

Jim Babka: I think that’s actually a valid suggestion, OK?

Jim Babka: Because if you’ve been through something that went not so well, you would hopefully learn lessons from it and try to do different the next time you try.

Jim Babka: The thing is, I’m not seeing him campaign differently than he did before.

Jim Babka: I’m not seeing him say really different things than he was saying in 2020 when he was running for reelection then.

Doug Stuart: He’s a highly emotive person.

Doug Stuart: That’s what he’s catching you on.

Doug Stuart: He’s catching you on.

Doug Stuart: And he’s touching other people’s emotions.

Jim Babka: Yes.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, that’s what I meant.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Jim Babka: Yeah, I don’t.

Jim Babka: Maybe, maybe he will be more coherent.

Jim Babka: It would be good if they were more coherent.

Jim Babka: There’s a lot of opportunity here.

Jim Babka: There’s some good ideas in this proposal.

Jim Babka: And I would like to see some of the better ideas implemented.

Jim Babka: There’s some really bad ones in here too.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: No, there are.

Doug Stuart: I mean, I did the same thing you did when I first heard of Project 2025 with the same intent of like, oh, this is probably 30, 40 page document that I can skim through and read.

Doug Stuart: And you can do that in a sense.

Doug Stuart: I mean, it’s pretty well organized.

Doug Stuart: And you can go through and see things.

Doug Stuart: But what was it?

Doug Stuart: The dispatch went through and did a fact check, and so did PolitiFact.

Doug Stuart: So I know the dispatch is right-leaning.

Doug Stuart: Okay, fine.

Doug Stuart: But they were like, one of the things that Robert Reich shared on X was that it was going to eliminate social security benefits even for current retirees.

Doug Stuart: Like, they got that specific.

Doug Stuart: Because I know that there are libertarians who are like, yeah, we don’t need social security for people who are 10 right now.

Doug Stuart: Like, you know, eventually they’re not going to need it.

Doug Stuart: We’re going to create a society where that’s not necessary.

Doug Stuart: Okay, fine.

Doug Stuart: But that’s not, now they’re like, oh no, it’s for current retirees or whatever.

Doug Stuart: And social security isn’t even mentioned in the entire document.

Doug Stuart: Like, you could do a search for it, it’s not even mentioned.

Doug Stuart: And so it’s like, well, wait a second.

Doug Stuart: You got to be connecting some dots.

Doug Stuart: So now you got to explain why you think that, the five, six pages of whatever in this document are actually conveying what you’re saying, but you can’t, you do that with memes and now you’re scaring people, which is kind of the, that’s the reason I want to have you on.

Doug Stuart: It’s because why are these things scaring people?

Doug Stuart: And why is it that rational thinking individuals like you and me can just, I can identify that and say, well, hang on, you’re trying to scare me.

Doug Stuart: I’m not going to succumb to it.

Jim Babka: So I have a kind of a rule of thumb that if Robert Reich says it, I shouldn’t believe it.

Doug Stuart: It’s more like you should just believe the opposite, not just not believe it.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Jim Babka: He says a lot of bombastic things, honestly.

Jim Babka: And it’s surprising that he’s treated as the expert he is because he gets a lot of things wrong.

Jim Babka: And that’s an obvious case where you can just go with investments.

Jim Babka: It is.

Jim Babka: It is.

Jim Babka: So you can go and like a lot of times, I mean, it’s not like a rare thing.

Jim Babka: You can go and fact check him and find out he’s misinformation.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: Okay.

Jim Babka: Well, I think there’s a desire.

Jim Babka: So first, I think everybody needs to understand what politics is.

Jim Babka: Politics is a conflict machine.

Jim Babka: There’s a political industrial complex who is selling coercion.

Jim Babka: That’s what they’re selling.

Jim Babka: And inside this conflict machine, someone has to lose.

Jim Babka: They divide us and pit us up against each other, and someone has to lose.

Jim Babka: You’ll notice I didn’t say someone had to win.

Jim Babka: In politics, we don’t care so much that people win anymore.

Jim Babka: We, if our enemies cry, that’s sufficient reward for the activity.

Jim Babka: So we spend a lot of time at each other’s throats, and the only people that benefit are this political industrial complex that basically run this conflict machine.

Jim Babka: So if we began talking to one another, and if we were solving problems voluntarily, then we would disempower their ability to set us at each other’s throats.

Jim Babka: But this is, I want to be clear that the action that they’re undertaking, they’re playing upon human nature, which I think is mostly what we’re gonna be talking about.

Jim Babka: They’re preying on human nature, but they’re doing it on purpose.

Jim Babka: I want you to understand this is a purposeful, intentional thing.

Jim Babka: They want to scare you.

Jim Babka: So in politics, if you get a political science degree, then in the very first year that you’re studying, you’re gonna learn about a Likert scale, and you’re gonna find that you have like, let’s say somebody who’s strongly opposed, opposed, neutral or doesn’t know you, likely to support or very intensely in favor of you.

Jim Babka: You got kind of that range that you’re going across.

Jim Babka: And in politics, there’s only one vote.

Jim Babka: It’s not a win-win system.

Jim Babka: So you want two things.

Jim Babka: You want your candidate to be on the positive side, and you want the opposition to be negative.

Jim Babka: Now, your candidate does not need to be positive to win, but your opponent should be negative.

Jim Babka: And so there is a deep, deep incentive built into the system, and there’s all kinds of different ways when you start to get into like higher levels of this stuff.

Jim Babka: There’s so many different ways that this ends up being validated and true.

Jim Babka: The game becomes making the other side as negative as possible.

Jim Babka: So as we’re sitting here-

Doug Stuart: You mean appear negative or behave negative?

Jim Babka: So as we’re talking right now, we just learned this week that Tim Walz is going, is the pick to be on the ticket on the Democratic side for Vice President.

Jim Babka: He’s enjoying what’s called a honeymoon right now.

Jim Babka: He’s brand new.

Jim Babka: And everybody on the left is shiny and happy and all the news is positive.

Jim Babka: That will not last.

Jim Babka: It will be the job of a team that is selected for this exact purpose.

Jim Babka: They’re called Oppo Research.

Jim Babka: Oppo is short for opposition.

Jim Babka: To dig up everything they can negative about him.

Jim Babka: And then they take and test and study that in another department.

Jim Babka: They have researchers who focus group and survey and poll to find out whether, what of those charges are most likely to stick.

Jim Babka: And they’ll pick one that’s particularly sensational and put it in their back pocket.

Jim Babka: And they’ll release it late in the campaign with about a month ago.

Jim Babka: It’s called the October Surprise.

Jim Babka: That’s designed to really wall up the other campaign in a way that they don’t have enough time to recover from it.

Jim Babka: This is politics.

Jim Babka: This is how it works and how it’s played at that level.

Jim Babka: And I’ll give everybody a heuristic you can use to figure out who’s going to win.

Jim Babka: It’s very evident in hindsight when you use it.

Jim Babka: But I think it has some predictive value.

Jim Babka: And that is that the game between the presidential campaigns is defined and be defined.

Jim Babka: So whoever does the defining in the race, whoever is able to define the other side successfully, will win.

Jim Babka: And Hillary was very defined by Donald Trump.

Jim Babka: And that’s why he won.

Jim Babka: And so you can watch again to see who is actually setting the definition.

Jim Babka: And that is the side that will likely win.

Doug Stuart: In terms of the debate, typically wins?

Jim Babka: Yes.

Doug Stuart: Because that’s why the people who are against critical race theory being taught in schools is like, well, they’ve already kind of co-opted the language.

Doug Stuart: So it’s a bigger fight for us to kind of get rid of that because they’re now defining the terms of what tolerance means and what life giving care means and things like that.

Doug Stuart: Those who say they’re the winners in at least currently, right?

Doug Stuart: Is that kind of how that would be?

Jim Babka: Yeah, so but Tim’s new and fresh right now.

Jim Babka: He won’t stay that way.

Jim Babka: The conflict machine, I mean, the whole process of politics, politics is war by other means.

Jim Babka: It’s really what it is.

Jim Babka: It’s a fight.

Jim Babka: It’s a battle.

Jim Babka: And only one person is going to win that office.

Jim Babka: And so they’re going to go after each other.

Jim Babka: That’s just part of the game.

Jim Babka: And the going after requires stirring everybody up, stirring as many people up in a negative direction as possible.

Jim Babka: It’s again, you want to be positive, but you need your opponent to be negative.

Doug Stuart: You said a few minutes ago that they try to stir up conflict and it’s intentional.

Doug Stuart: Who’s the they there?

Doug Stuart: Is it, because to some extent, there’s a, like, a force to be reckoned with or a force that’s sort of beyond the sum of its parts, that this is just the nature of the game.

Doug Stuart: And so everybody just happens to go along with it.

Doug Stuart: You were talking about intentionality.

Doug Stuart: How does that square with sort of what could be a mob mentality?

Jim Babka: Okay, so I just walked through an example of how the parties themselves work, right, with the opposition research and so forth.

Jim Babka: But the regime media plays a role in this as well.

Jim Babka: And a lot of that has to do with ratings or now in our more modern time, clicks.

Jim Babka: So they go for the headlines and the things that cause the most conflict.

Jim Babka: So if you start, you know, walking around YouTube, just, you know, browse it, you’re going to find that there’s a lot in the political world in particular.

Jim Babka: There’s a lot of conflict-oriented headlines.

Jim Babka: They’re sensational, they’re designed to grab you.

Jim Babka: And it’s just, it’s just the way it is.

Jim Babka: This is everything about this is about the conflict.

Jim Babka: We’ve even noticed in my podcast that we tend to do better when we are picking something that is a lightning rod, that has a specific character in it, where we have made a characterization about that character.

Jim Babka: You know, I would like people to be able to get out of what’s called the agenda-setting cycle, where they’re capable of just like, no, I care about the following things, and I’m going to research, follow and study those things.

Jim Babka: And I’m going to reward content that gives me real meat, right?

Jim Babka: But that’s not what they, that’s not the human tendency.

Jim Babka: The human tendency is to go for the sensational.

Jim Babka: They said, what about so-and-so?

Jim Babka: Hey, he’s on my team.

Jim Babka: That’s my tribe that they’re talking about.

Jim Babka: They must think that about me too.

Jim Babka: What are they thinking about me?

Jim Babka: I gotta go watch that.

Jim Babka: So people are drawn, the mob is drawn towards those places where the stonings are happening.

Doug Stuart: Well, that’s also why they’re drawn to media personalities, individual media personalities who start their own channels or start their own following or whatever it might be as opposed to maybe a group.

Doug Stuart: People like to be tribal, right?

Doug Stuart: And so why is following a personality so attractive?

Doug Stuart: Because that sets the nature of the tribe?

Doug Stuart: Is that how that works?

Jim Babka: Yeah, and that person becomes a surrogate for you.

Jim Babka: They’re speaking for you, and you identify with them because they are speaking for you.

Jim Babka: Yes, 100%.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Doug Stuart: Part of that isn’t really bad all the time, is it?

Doug Stuart: I mean, isn’t it?

Doug Stuart: I mean, look, I don’t think everybody can do all of their own thinking in every single nook and cranny of how we need to do stuff.

Doug Stuart: So there’s like, there’s experts that we look up to, there’s people that we can sort of vet in some capacity in our ability to think.

Doug Stuart: But I mean, what’s so bad about having, say, a Barack Obama who sort of embodies the spirit of liberalism in the second decade of the 21st century, and we just all like that.

Doug Stuart: And we don’t have to agree with him on everything, but he embodies the spirit of which that we are for.

Doug Stuart: And same thing with Trump, right?

Doug Stuart: And same thing with even Ron Paul, right?

Doug Stuart: Like we could go down that road.

Doug Stuart: And in some sense, it’s like, well, that’s kind of okay.

Doug Stuart: Is it okay?

Doug Stuart: Or is it just sometimes irrational and sometimes not?

Jim Babka: I want to underline and agree with everything that you said, but I do want to split a hair.

Doug Stuart: Good.

Jim Babka: That I think is actually pretty significant.

Jim Babka: And that is, if you’re going to choose Barack Obama as your role model, what Barack Obama is selling is the ability to coerce other people to achieve a social goal.

Jim Babka: And inherently, I find that immoral.

Jim Babka: I don’t want to participate in that activity or endorse that activity.

Jim Babka: So even if I thought Barack Obama shared my values and he was a good looking articulate guy, and, you know, here’s an exemplar of certain attributes, I would have a hard time following him because he actually advocates something that I inherently believe is evil.

Jim Babka: And so that’s an issue right off the bat.

Doug Stuart: OK.

Jim Babka: But you are right.

Jim Babka: We as human beings learn through imitation.

Jim Babka: It’s the number one way we learn.

Jim Babka: It’s obvious that this is the case when we’re small children.

Jim Babka: It’s harder for us to see this as adults.

Jim Babka: But we do pick people as spokespeople.

Jim Babka: We do not have the ability to take the time to weigh every option on every issue.

Jim Babka: And so even in the case of a mob, there has to be, if a mob is going to start a riot, there has to be somebody that throws the first brick and there needs to be somebody that throws the second one.

Jim Babka: And then everybody else is stirred to action.

Jim Babka: There’s somebody that is the model for everything that’s about to happen.

Jim Babka: And we have a concept called role model, which is a very positive thing.

Jim Babka: We talked about it at the very beginning of the show, right?

Jim Babka: This idea that somebody could change your life for the better.

Jim Babka: They could be a positive influence.

Jim Babka: So this is just nature.

Jim Babka: This is just who we are.

Jim Babka: It’s the limits of time and humanity that we have to figure out what is desirable and what isn’t.

Jim Babka: Our entire market economy runs on the same imitative factor.

Jim Babka: We know that certain things are valuable and others are not.

Jim Babka: How do we know?

Jim Babka: Because other people value those things.

Jim Babka: Enough people value them subjectively as individuals, that collectively we all know, oh, that’s got a value.

Jim Babka: The most obvious example is a dollar.

Jim Babka: A dollar doesn’t have any inherent value.

Jim Babka: You can’t live in it, you can’t drive it, you can’t eat it.

Jim Babka: It has no real value, but it has value in the fact that we recognize that it’s legal tender for debts public and private.

Jim Babka: It’s a way that we can handle our agreements and contracts.

Jim Babka: My money is spendable when I go to the store, or pay my taxes.

Jim Babka: I’m able to achieve certain goals with it.

Jim Babka: But that’s all because we’ve all agreed to the same collective fantasy, and we’re all imitating each other in believing that.

Jim Babka: If we stopped believing that, the dollar would disappear, it would not work anymore because it doesn’t serve any of the functions that I just described.

Doug Stuart: Right, okay.

Jim Babka: And that’s why people pay for designer brands.

Jim Babka: That’s why people want to wear certain clothes, and why they drive certain cars, and why they take certain vacations, and why they live in a certain neighborhood.

Jim Babka: Right, you could get your housing met at a very minimal level.

Jim Babka: You have a need for housing, right?

Jim Babka: But you go with something bigger and you do certain things.

Jim Babka: Why?

Jim Babka: Because you’re imitating certain models or certain things you like that you have inherited, tastes that you’ve inherited from other people.

Doug Stuart: Okay, so then how does that play into who I choose to either, well, not choose, who I would prefer to be the president or who I would prefer to be my congressman and how I want to communicate with others, like people who are friends, not just out there on the internet kind of communicate about the political nature of things.

Doug Stuart: Like where does my desire to show my preferences in politics, how does that manifest itself in conversation?

Doug Stuart: I mean, I know it, does that make sense?

Jim Babka: Kind of.

Jim Babka: So I don’t know if I’m not answering your question, feel free to interrupt me and we’ll go down another path.

Jim Babka: So just by way of metaphor, I’m just going to, this is strictly a metaphor because obviously this is not the actual reality that we live in.

Jim Babka: But pretend like the United States is a giant prison and it’s divided into gangs.

Jim Babka: And you are in one gang or you’re in another in a prison or otherwise you’re on your own as a free agent.

Jim Babka: And that could be a very dangerous place to be.

Jim Babka: Right.

Jim Babka: So and this is where the whole wasted vote argument comes along.

Jim Babka: Because if you break this down really rationally, you Doug or me Jim or everybody watching here, none of us is going to change the outcome of this presidential election.

Jim Babka: So I’m going to vote.

Jim Babka: I’m just going to be very open about this.

Jim Babka: I’m endorsing Chase Oliver.

Jim Babka: I’m going to vote for Chase Oliver for president.

Jim Babka: And I will be told by people, well, you’re wasting your vote.

Jim Babka: Well, if I switched sides and voted for one of these other candidates, I’m not going to increase their odds of success.

Jim Babka: Not even a little bit.

Jim Babka: You can’t even measure.

Jim Babka: There’s not a political microscope small enough to do it.

Jim Babka: So what is it that people feel attracted to?

Jim Babka: Well, it’s a sense of identification with something larger than themselves that is somehow or other like a security.

Jim Babka: And there are varying degrees of this.

Jim Babka: So some people are going to do, are going to vote strictly out of fear.

Jim Babka: They’re going to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Jim Babka: And that’s actually a very sizable portion of the electorate that will do that.

Jim Babka: They’re going to side with one gang more than they are with the other.

Jim Babka: But there’s others who will adopt certain attachments and certain rhetoric that shows, and we call it, we have a name for this, we call it virtue signaling.

Jim Babka: It goes on in the left and the right.

Jim Babka: But people adopt certain language patterns.

Jim Babka: They say certain catch phrases.

Jim Babka: They even adopt things that are extra wrong.

Jim Babka: I’m trying to think of a way to categorize this.

Jim Babka: They will make almost like flat earth claims, claims that they know aren’t true.

Doug Stuart: Not even wrong claims?

Jim Babka: Not even wrong.

Jim Babka: Like the election was stolen in 2020 because there were people that drove ballots in and out.

Jim Babka: There was all this fraud and so forth.

Jim Babka: So people will advance a theory like that, and it shows who is actually in the tribe, right?

Jim Babka: And you want to be in this group.

Jim Babka: These are your friends now.

Jim Babka: These are your acquaintances, the people you’re connected to.

Jim Babka: So I’m aware of a situation where an individual converted to Christianity who was previously an atheist and very quickly thereafter was working at a creationist organization.

Jim Babka: Now, he had not had the time to sit down and analyze whether or not Young Earth Creationism was a better scientific explanation of things.

Jim Babka: He didn’t bother with all of that.

Jim Babka: The culture that he had just joined, identifying and being with the people that he had just come to like and with whom he wanted to be closer is what they were doing.

Jim Babka: So he did it too.

Jim Babka: Even though a year previous or five years previous, he would have completely out of hand 100% rejected that.

Jim Babka: So I think this has to do with identification and social connection.

Jim Babka: I want to be part of the group.

Jim Babka: I think it has to do with fear of the other side.

Jim Babka: I think all of these factors play in in how to do it.

Jim Babka: But how do they know, for example, that they’re supposed to advance certain theories, like Donald Trump was a Russian spy?

Jim Babka: How do they know they’re supposed to adopt that?

Jim Babka: That’s strictly because of imitation, because they have no actual firsthand knowledge of the event.

Jim Babka: And I think even the reason you invite me here today to discuss something like Project 2025 is, people are posting memes about this or expressing concerns about a document they have not read, let alone taking the time to talk to people involved in writing it to try to understand what their motives and real opportunities are.

Jim Babka: They’re skipping all of those steps, just like the friend that switched faiths and suddenly switched his views radically because the team has told them, be scared, be very, very scared.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of something Steve Jobs said when they were asking him, why doesn’t the iPhone, this is way back in the first or second iPhone, why doesn’t it have the better camera?

Doug Stuart: You guys know how to make a better camera, there’s better equipment out there.

Doug Stuart: And his answer was people buy things in packages and they assume things or they make choices based on the package of whatever it is that they want.

Doug Stuart: I don’t know, somehow that reminds me that everything’s a package deal for a lot of people to join a child.

Jim Babka: It is a package deal.

Doug Stuart: The other thing about your metaphor that, I know you said it was just a metaphor about America being in prison, whatever, but the one thing that’s probably really a poignant thing to make note of, I think you said this, is that to not be part of a gang is dangerous.

Doug Stuart: And in some ways, maybe you didn’t say it, but I’m saying it, that to not be part of a gang is dangerous because now you’re vulnerable.

Doug Stuart: And now you don’t have a tribe, and what are you going to do?

Doug Stuart: And I think most libertarians would probably say, we’ve kind of felt that way among family who like there’s the blue side, the red side, and wait, why aren’t you on this side?

Doug Stuart: And there’s the joke about, well, you sound like a liberal.

Doug Stuart: My leftist friends think I’m a conservative, my right-leaning friends think I’m a liberal.

Doug Stuart: And I’m like, well, okay, I guess my belief, okay, fine, if that’s how you want to categorize it, or whatever.

Doug Stuart: But the fear of not belonging, it’s almost like I have to share that meme to tell everybody that Project 2025 is terrible, and it’s gonna be implemented if Trump’s elected.

Doug Stuart: So is, you’re saying, I think, is it’s an act of belonging or identification with a group that they want to belong to, like showing them proof, like, hey, I’m part of your group.

Doug Stuart: Because if you’re quiet, well, that’s, well, silence is violence or something, right?

Jim Babka: Yeah, yeah.

Jim Babka: That is what I’m saying.

Jim Babka: That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.

Jim Babka: I think, and I, listen, the consequences right now are strictly social and they’re relatively small.

Jim Babka: And yet there are people already reacting to those consequences and engaging in certain behaviors based on that.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, yeah.

Jim Babka: But they could get more dramatic.

Jim Babka: They could, you know, in Europe, in the 1920s and 30s, they had paramilitary gangs as part of their political parties.

Jim Babka: And they would go to polling places.

Jim Babka: And if there was a polling place that they knew had a lot of communists in, the Nazis would club them over the head and with their brown shirts.

Jim Babka: And then the black shirt communists would show up at Nazi polling places and beat them over the head.

Jim Babka: So they would take their people to the polls and they would drive away the others.

Jim Babka: So this could actually turn into a prison gang system.

Jim Babka: I’m actually a little bit concerned with the heat and the rhetoric that I’ve witnessed over the last roughly decade now, because this is not how things were in the 1990s.

Jim Babka: I’m just saying flat out, it wasn’t this way.

Doug Stuart: I meant to ask you this a little bit earlier, kind of got on to some other things.

Doug Stuart: What do you make of somebody who comes out as a candidate and wins allegedly based on being a unification candidate?

Doug Stuart: I know in some sense we can always look back and say, oh, well, Bill Clinton was a lot more unifying, or Ronald Reagan might have been, or Jimmy, whoever.

Doug Stuart: We pick people, right?

Doug Stuart: And sometimes there’s reasons why that happened.

Doug Stuart: Like there’s a war, and after 9-11, everybody approved George Bush for at least a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months until the Iraq war.

Doug Stuart: And then it’s like, wait a second here.

Doug Stuart: And it was all split again.

Doug Stuart: But at least that’s how I remember it.

Doug Stuart: But picking somebody who’s a unification candidate as opposed to, not picking somebody, but sort of that phenomenon, as opposed to politics is all about conflict and it creates conflict and it wants us to be at odds with one another.

Doug Stuart: Why do we sometimes get, and why do people sort of still clamor for, a unification candidate or somebody who’s, yeah.

Jim Babka: So I don’t really think there’s a good example of that.

Jim Babka: I mean, I recognize what you’re saying after 9-11.

Jim Babka: No, no, I do, I recognize how like there was kind of this temporary coalescing behind one individual.

Doug Stuart: Well, it’s because we had our enemy.

Doug Stuart: We had a common enemy and it was a Taliban, it was those who had just attacked us.

Doug Stuart: George Bush was the enemy for before then.

Doug Stuart: So now there was a new enemy and George Bush was slightly less evil, at least toward the left, from their mindset.

Doug Stuart: And so there was no, to me that would be one explanation, is there was a more powerful enemy that everybody was laser focused on for a short period of time and then that fizzled away at some point.

Jim Babka: Okay, so I want you to notice what happened there.

Jim Babka: There’s this phenomena where I am rival with my brother, Cain versus Able, right?

Jim Babka: Goes all the way back to the beginning of recorded history.

Jim Babka: So Romulus and Remus, right?

Jim Babka: There’s just these rivalries that occur between brothers.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, founding of civilization.

Jim Babka: But we all recognize that if somebody outside the family attacks the brother, suddenly the brothers are very united, right?

Jim Babka: It’s okay for me to say anything I want.

Doug Stuart: I don’t have to go back that far Jim.

Doug Stuart: I can see my kids do this.

Doug Stuart: They fight all the time until someone, yeah, like it’s there.

Jim Babka: Okay, so George W.

Jim Babka: Bush was one of us on 9-11.

Jim Babka: We had an attack that happened in the country that made, that was clearly of the other, not one of us, on us, from the other, and he was one of us.

Jim Babka: So you might have hated his guts on September 10, but on September 12, he’s your brother.

Jim Babka: So this is what politicians do.

Jim Babka: There’s always an enemy.

Jim Babka: And this is what politics is.

Jim Babka: So Carl Schmitt figured this out all the way in the 1920s.

Jim Babka: He writes a book called Political Theology.

Jim Babka: For people who don’t know who Carl Schmitt is, he figured out the conflict machine long before I did.

Jim Babka: He says that what we do is we literally make another, people who believe differently than we do the enemy.

Jim Babka: Like that’s what happens.

Jim Babka: Like we, they have a goal, we have a goal.

Jim Babka: We, these goals seem mutually exclusive to us.

Jim Babka: And now we’re enemies.

Jim Babka: And so we are going to acquire power so that our enemy doesn’t get that power first and impose their will upon us.

Jim Babka: And then there’s this escalation that goes along with that.

Jim Babka: And that’s how politics works.

Jim Babka: So norm, right now, it’s Democrats versus Republicans, it’s progressives versus nationalists, right?

Jim Babka: That’s the argument that’s going on in the country.

Jim Babka: Those are the choices that are being put in front of us.

Jim Babka: But if we had a terrorist attack, then there would, like we did in 9-11, then it’s not the enemy’s further from home, it’s not at home anymore.

Jim Babka: So we prefer to spend most of our time fighting with our sibling, so to speak.

Jim Babka: That’s where we prefer to spend our time.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Doug Stuart: So you were talking about how you don’t think there was a really good example of a unification moment.

Doug Stuart: And I interrupted you with explaining 9-11.

Jim Babka: No, I think 9-11 is a really good example of what you’re trying to suggest.

Jim Babka: But even in that situation, what I’m suggesting though is that that just meant the enemy moved further outside of the circle for a temporary period of time.

Jim Babka: Eventually, they were going to get back to fighting with one another.

Jim Babka: Like after your children are done fighting off a bully that picks on one of them.

Doug Stuart: They go back to fighting with one another.

Jim Babka: They’ll go back to fighting each other.

Doug Stuart: So a political candidate can’t really run on unification, it’s just not going to work, you don’t think?

Jim Babka: I think it’s highly unlikely.

Doug Stuart: I mean, Arnold K is trying to, but he doesn’t have any sort of left, he doesn’t have any sort of GOP Democrat Party momentum or backing.

Doug Stuart: So he can’t even, it’s not like he’s a Democrat, and he’s going to pull in 10% of the Republicans and make it a landslide.

Doug Stuart: He’s not doing that, but he seems to be running on somewhat of a, hey, I’m for America, I’m not necessarily about left and right, I’m for good old classical liberal values or something.

Doug Stuart: I don’t know if that’s all he’s saying, but I don’t follow him, but that’s what I’ve heard.

Jim Babka: Yeah, I think he is trying to run a relatively positive campaign.

Jim Babka: He is very policy oriented.

Jim Babka: He’s also going down to the polls the closer we get to the election.

Jim Babka: So there was a point a couple of months ago where he was at 8%, and I just heard from somebody I was talking to, he’s following this a tad bit closer than me, that he’s down to like 5.5% at the moment.

Jim Babka: And I know from my own experience working in third party politics that whatever he’s at in September is going to be half or maybe even a little less than that by election day.

Jim Babka: So if he’s at 5.5 now, and let’s say he’s at 5 in September, let’s be generous, he’s probably a 2.5% guy, ballpark.

Jim Babka: Because everybody starts gravitating towards one of the top two candidates in a defeat, the one we hate the most mode.

Doug Stuart: Why do you think the media, especially the regime media won’t give him the time of day and let him on debates and all of that?

Doug Stuart: Explain the phenomenon of somebody who probably of anybody since maybe Ross Perot, he just doesn’t have that much funding, is able to at least get that much attention.

Doug Stuart: I mean, the Libertarian Party for being number three isn’t saying much, right?

Doug Stuart: We could say it’s number third largest party.

Doug Stuart: Okay, that’s great, but like, you know, you’re a distant third majorly.

Doug Stuart: And RFK seems to have at least, I mean, 8%, that’s pretty enviable for a third party in America.

Jim Babka: So, do you watch any professional sports?

Doug Stuart: No, I watch the Super Bowl maybe, and then forget the time we watched.

Jim Babka: Because one of the things that’s happened, because politics is war by other means, is it’s been turned into a sporting event.

Jim Babka: And if you notice, if you watch something like football, they use a lot of war metaphors there too, right?

Jim Babka: So, there’s a battle that’s going on, right?

Jim Babka: And there’s gladiators and people who are successful at defeating their enemies or whatever.

Jim Babka: So, there is, in politics right now, most of what the coverage is about, and this has been true for a very long time.

Jim Babka: I used to blog in a now defunct blog called Positive Liberty.

Jim Babka: And I would close every one of my, inspired by a Roman senator who used to say Carthago de Linda asked, Carthage must be destroyed.

Jim Babka: I would sign off all my blog posts by saying Hardball must be destroyed.

Jim Babka: Now, Hardball was a TV show that was on MSNBC hosted by Chris Matthews.

Jim Babka: It’s gone now.

Jim Babka: It was destroyed, but it was-

Doug Stuart: Because of your email signature?

Jim Babka: I wish.

Jim Babka: I wish I could say that.

Jim Babka: I can’t claim credit for that.

Doug Stuart: I would have read that in your bio if that were true.

Jim Babka: But he was presenting every night The Spin.

Jim Babka: So this tribal identification thing, you could see this in action.

Jim Babka: So he’s covering the 2012 election, which was between Romney and Obama.

Jim Babka: I’ll pick these because now we’re not as emotionally invested in these events.

Jim Babka: And he literally covered that election.

Jim Babka: So something would happen in the news.

Jim Babka: And he would wonder what was the impact on each of these campaigns.

Jim Babka: And how are they going to respond?

Jim Babka: And what would their spin be?

Jim Babka: Spin is basically a euphemism for new lie or invented phrase, designed to capture people’s attention and defeat the other side.

Jim Babka: So how would they spin this?

Jim Babka: What were they going to do?

Jim Babka: Who’s up, who’s down?

Jim Babka: And people will tune in, unaware that something important, subtle, but very important has happened, which is they’re not talking about you, Doug.

Jim Babka: So let’s say the question is, you know, what’s the tax rate going to be?

Jim Babka: You know, is there going to be a tax increase?

Jim Babka: You know, so-and-so is proposing that we need to fund the government properly, you know, and he’s gaining the polls because of it.

Jim Babka: Everybody thinks he’s a real truth teller.

Jim Babka: So what’s the effect on the other candidate going to be?

Jim Babka: Oh, wait, they’re not talking about you anymore who has to pay the taxes.

Jim Babka: They’re not talking about the impact of any of these policies on you, the viewer.

Jim Babka: They’re talking about the captain of your team, the representative of your team.

Jim Babka: So you start investing, you start to lose your individuality as you get deeper kind of into this party or this gang, because you’re like, wait a minute, they’re criticizing my guy.

Jim Babka: And by extension, they’re criticizing me.

Jim Babka: You become that connected or attached to the idol and not aware that your individuality was sacrificed into the system and you no longer are paying attention to what its impact is on you and the people you care about, the people who are actually in your real terrestrial, I can feel touch, see, wave to life.

Doug Stuart: Wow.

Doug Stuart: Sorry, sometimes I don’t know how to respond to all the stuff that you just throw out there and I’m like, okay, what’s my next question?

Doug Stuart: And whatever, and I don’t have any, I’m not a Chris Matthews as despicable as he was.

Jim Babka: No, no, see, because we’re having a conversation here that’s incredibly real.

Doug Stuart: That’s fair.

Jim Babka: And it’s also spiritual.

Jim Babka: We’re getting into stuff that is not, these are things hidden.

Jim Babka: They’re not things that are immediately evident, but when you start to understand these things, all the stuff that’s happening in evidence, including stuff that’s pretty illogical or pretty irrational, you go, oh, okay, now I see how those things connect together.

Jim Babka: I see what drives the behavior.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Doug Stuart: So I want to get your take on some other events that have happened this summer.

Doug Stuart: I listened to, I think it was the reason I round-tabled it was Matt Welch who said, man, what a year it’s been this week.

Doug Stuart: I was just like, that describes it.

Doug Stuart: I mean, it was not the Monday after the assassination attempt, but the Monday after that, which I believe was when Biden dropped out or something.

Doug Stuart: I don’t know.

Doug Stuart: I mean, this was all in the last five minutes, of course.

Doug Stuart: But assassination attempt, all kinds of things going on on the internet.

Doug Stuart: Oh, it was staged.

Doug Stuart: Oh, it was a conspiracy so that the Secret Service would, oh, the FBI didn’t want to assist.

Doug Stuart: There’s all these different either conspiracies or actually legit like, well, wait, what about this?

Doug Stuart: I mean, there was a lot, especially early on, and I’m not saying it’s been solved yet, of course, but there’s a lot of legit questions because there was a lot of video footage.

Doug Stuart: Generally speaking, how would you use a memetic lens to assess how both the left and the right were reacting in the wake of that?

Doug Stuart: Because you had about a week before something else major happened, which was Biden dropped out.

Doug Stuart: I think it was a week, maybe it was two.

Jim Babka: Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back even a step before that, because we had a debate in June.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, that’s right.

Doug Stuart: Wow.

Jim Babka: Okay, so I…

Doug Stuart: See, it’s all…

Jim Babka: With the people who are closest to me in my life, I am on record as suggesting that there was no guarantee that either candidate that was going to be the likely nominee of their party, Biden or Trump, was going to finish the race.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: And Trump’s issue was legal and Biden’s issue was H.

Jim Babka: And I thought there was a very good chance that one or both of them was going to be taken off.

Doug Stuart: I think you even said that when we had our conversation on my show a few months ago.

Jim Babka: Okay.

Jim Babka: So people can go back and check the record on that one.

Jim Babka: It wouldn’t surprise me because I was pretty steadfast that Biden was going to be ousted by his own party.

Jim Babka: It was extraordinary that they would have a debate in June.

Jim Babka: That’s never happened in the television age.

SPEAKER_1: That was weird.

Doug Stuart: Do you think there was a little bit of strategy going on on both sides there?

Doug Stuart: Like the Democrats are like, yeah, let’s do this.

Doug Stuart: Especially the Democrats.

Doug Stuart: See, I didn’t even think of it that way.

Doug Stuart: I just figured Trump wants to get him to look forward to it.

Jim Babka: No, they were throwing him under the bus.

Jim Babka: They were throwing him under the bus.

Jim Babka: There’s a host of reasons.

Jim Babka: We won’t get into all of them, why they were doing it.

Jim Babka: But they all boil down to they recognize they were going to lose.

Jim Babka: At the moment that that happened, it was pretty obvious that Donald Trump was going to win.

Jim Babka: Now, that’s six, eight weeks ago.

Jim Babka: It’s not that long ago that we’re talking about here.

Jim Babka: That Donald Trump was probably going to get more than 300 electoral votes.

Jim Babka: Now, it was well understood on the right.

Jim Babka: They had no trouble recognizing it.

Jim Babka: But the left, I don’t know if you remember this, this is literally just a week before the debate.

Jim Babka: The White House issued, through their press secretary, said, you guys are putting up these images of Biden making him look old or look confused.

Jim Babka: And these are what they call, listen to me closely now, cheap fakes.

Jim Babka: Now, we know what a deep fake is in an AI sense, right?

Jim Babka: It’s an invented piece of video.

Jim Babka: They found a word that rhymed and said cheap fake.

Jim Babka: And they started suggesting that, like if you believe that he’s too old to serve, right?

Jim Babka: So the signal sent out to the tribes, right?

Jim Babka: If you believe he’s too old to serve, then you’re not, you lack context.

Jim Babka: You don’t have enough context to understand.

Jim Babka: You’re just giving people a small snippet of a video.

Doug Stuart: Did you just go Kamala on me, Mr.

Doug Stuart: Coconut?

Doug Stuart: That’s a deep cut.

Jim Babka: Yes.

Jim Babka: Yes, it is.

Jim Babka: Go ahead.

Doug Stuart: Sorry.

Jim Babka: Yes, it is.

Doug Stuart: I’m interrupting you with humor.

Doug Stuart: This is not fair.

Jim Babka: No, no, it’s fine.

Jim Babka: But the cheap fake was put out there.

Jim Babka: Now, by the way, if there was debate strategy going on, the rule for debates in a political sense is to lower expectations for yourself and raise them for your opponent, because it’s an expectations game.

Jim Babka: You want to leap the bar.

Jim Babka: You want the bar you’re leaping to be as low as possible.

Jim Babka: You want to have your opponent have to povult to get over his.

Jim Babka: And they were raising their own bar.

Jim Babka: Like, don’t worry, he’s going to, man, he’s going to show up at this debate and he’s going to clean up.

Jim Babka: But they were, they got everyone on board.

Jim Babka: So there was a shock to the system, and it happened almost instantly.

Jim Babka: Twitter was live five, six minutes into the debate with people terrified because this was the very first time that in their world, this idea had been evident.

Jim Babka: Like, it couldn’t be ignored.

Jim Babka: It was right there in front of them.

Jim Babka: So they had believed their tribal leaders so much, and they had committed to the fundamental song so much that it came as a complete and dispiriting shock to them.

Jim Babka: They were really crustfallen.

Jim Babka: They were really sunk.

Jim Babka: And that they were so sunk that instantly it went up the poll, and you had the top leaders within the party within a matter of two weeks, all rolling over on top of them.

Jim Babka: So that starts our summer.

Jim Babka: That’s the first big event here, and Trump’s up.

Jim Babka: Then the next thing is that Trump gets shot, and we have almost forgotten, and we’re just, we have, a month hasn’t gone by yet.

Jim Babka: As you and I are sitting here talking, we have almost forgotten that he raised his fist and said, fight, fight, fight.

Jim Babka: I had friends in my life who told me right away, oh, he’s won the race.

Jim Babka: It’s all over because the shot had been taking him, he’d been hit, he comes up emerging.

Jim Babka: He’s completely different than Joe Biden right then, right?

Jim Babka: He came up strong.

Jim Babka: Joe Biden came, couldn’t even get through a debate.

Doug Stuart: He was tired, he was tired, Jim.

Jim Babka: By the way, if there was a moment that we could have had peace and harmony over again, it was initiated by Joe Biden when he came out and did a rare and extremely rare message from the Oval Office.

Jim Babka: He gave a talk and said, listen, it’s not acceptable, violence is not acceptable.

Jim Babka: There was a moment where maybe there could have been a little bit of coming together and a little bit of harmony.

Jim Babka: It didn’t last.

Jim Babka: It didn’t last very long, did it?

Jim Babka: Because that’s not really the way that politics is played.

Doug Stuart: People want to either somehow.

Doug Stuart: That’s not what they want.

Jim Babka: So we saw that everybody got back to rivalry again.

Jim Babka: And now Kamala is running.

Jim Babka: And right now, I was just on a radio show this morning.

Jim Babka: And I said, if Donald Trump’s going to continue to campaign this way, the way that he’s campaigning at president, he’s going to lose the race because he’s running, he’s running on grievance over what happened in the 2020 campaign, which doesn’t matter to anybody, except him and the people who are already hard-core going to vote for him.

Jim Babka: He’s not winning any votes with that argument.

Jim Babka: And he’s spending a lot of time on this stuff.

Jim Babka: And this week, he advanced this crackpot theory on his own social media that Biden’s going to show up at the convention to reclaim a nomination that was stolen from him by the people he hates the most in his own party.

Jim Babka: And he wants to debate me.

Jim Babka: Why is he still running against Joe Biden?

Jim Babka: So, I think he’s actually in a bit of trouble.

Jim Babka: Just on a pure political level.

Jim Babka: There’s an old adage from James Carville.

Jim Babka: It’s the economy is stupid.

Jim Babka: That’s the issue he needs to run on.

Jim Babka: He’s not running on that issue.

Jim Babka: He’s kicking every sleeping dog around.

Jim Babka: He’s name calling.

Jim Babka: He’s bringing up old news.

Jim Babka: I start to wonder if he’s actually going to be able to pull this off now.

Jim Babka: It’s still early, relatively early.

Jim Babka: But I start to wonder, because this is clearly not the winning strategy.

Jim Babka: But what’s interesting is, in making these arguments, if I go to a Republican group and say these things, they will say a bunch of Republican talking points about how strong he is, and how brilliant he is, and how he’s playing 4D chess, and all the rest of the stuff.

Jim Babka: They’ll make arguments that work with them.

Jim Babka: They’ll make arguments that they have learned, they should embrace by being part of the team.

Jim Babka: They will not make arguments that are persuasive with the other side.

Jim Babka: So, you know, we kind of exist in these isolation chambers, these echo chambers, where we say the things our team says.

Doug Stuart: And so you win extra votes by people finding a way to identify with the team that just feels the best.

Jim Babka: Well, you’ve got to figure out a way to get people who are undecided to want to associate with you.

Jim Babka: That’s how it works out.

Jim Babka: In fact, it’s down to seven states at this point.

Jim Babka: Like if you’re running for president, there’s seven states where it’s the undecided voters in those seven states.

Jim Babka: So it’s not the ones tuning in to these shows.

Jim Babka: It’s not the ones that are on your team singing from your hem book.

Jim Babka: It’s just not.

Jim Babka: Yeah, right, right.

Doug Stuart: So I think a lot of people who are strongly opinionated in a certain direction, you’ve already announced that you’re going to vote for Chase Oliver, as long as he’s alive at the time of the election, right?

Doug Stuart: Because we just don’t know what will happen this year, right?

Doug Stuart: Somebody might want to take out the libertarian candidate.

Doug Stuart: No jokes, please.

Doug Stuart: So whatever.

Doug Stuart: You and I are probably decided, right?

Doug Stuart: I look at people who are, I was like, who hasn’t made their decision?

Doug Stuart: Who’s wavering between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Kamala, however you pronounce her name, right?

Doug Stuart: Why are there certain people who haven’t chosen who they are?

Doug Stuart: I’m not saying that they’re stupid for not choosing already and just deciding now.

Doug Stuart: I mean, obviously, there’s a reason why there’s an election day.

Doug Stuart: That’s when you make your choice as of that day.

Doug Stuart: You know, but can you, do you have any thoughts on the phenomenon of the undecided voter in when it’s so politicized?

Jim Babka: Yeah, my thoughts are generally negative, by the way.

Doug Stuart: That’s fine.

Doug Stuart: I often wonder why that’s the case.

Doug Stuart: Not why it’s negative, but why there’s an undecided voter in the first place.

Jim Babka: So I think it’s one thing to be wrong but convicted, right?

Jim Babka: Because there’s a lot of people in politics that are convicted about things and I’m persuaded that they’re wrong.

Jim Babka: These people don’t really pay attention or care.

Jim Babka: I don’t know.

Jim Babka: I don’t know how to…

Jim Babka: It doesn’t make sense to me and I can’t relate to it.

Jim Babka: Not paying attention, not being concerned about your own future, not having an opinion on these things strikes me as very foreign.

Jim Babka: But we know that these people exist because we can see their numbers in the polls.

Jim Babka: We can see the polls going up and down.

Jim Babka: It’s not people flip-flopping with 100% either or.

Jim Babka: No.

Jim Babka: So I was in Tangential or at the Edge about five years ago of a project where there was survey work done, where the people that were in the focus group study were people who had voted for the winner in the 2012 and 2016 races.

Jim Babka: Now, if you recall then, that’s Barack Obama on the Democrats in 2012, and then it becomes Donald Trump in 2016 on the Republican side.

Jim Babka: So these are people who literally voted Democrat and then voted Republican just four years apart.

Jim Babka: What Barack Obama and Donald Trump couldn’t be more different.

Jim Babka: Right?

Jim Babka: And they voted for these people.

Jim Babka: So what’s the coherent view that takes them through this stuff?

Jim Babka: I’ll be honest with you, I don’t understand.

Doug Stuart: Do you think it might be the populist impulse there?

Doug Stuart: I mean, wasn’t it the, I guess they call it the Rust Belt?

Doug Stuart: I mean, I don’t know who this was surveyed to, but who that survey was for, but it would seem to me that the blue collar anti, I know it’s kind of funny for me to say this, the anti-elitist rhetoric, there’s probably blue collar people tend to like that, right?

Doug Stuart: And Trump is really good at it.

Doug Stuart: But yet Obama somehow tapped into a populist mindset that was like for the everyman kind of person.

Doug Stuart: And I wonder if that’s the small…

Jim Babka: Romney is kind of an institutional elite and Hillary Clinton is an institutional elite.

Doug Stuart: Well, that, I mean, who was, Obama defeated who?

Doug Stuart: Romney, right?

Doug Stuart: Or McCain?

Jim Babka: Yes.

Jim Babka: Well, Romney, Obama defeated both McCain and Romney.

Jim Babka: Right.

Doug Stuart: Okay.

Doug Stuart: Those were both institutional, like, you know, like, what do you call them?

Doug Stuart: Legacy assets in the political machine, right?

Jim Babka: So was Hillary.

Doug Stuart: Right.

Jim Babka: And Obama was…

Jim Babka: So who’s the legacy here?

Jim Babka: If that’s the standard, who’s the legacy here?

Doug Stuart: I don’t know.

Doug Stuart: I mean, yeah, that’s a good point.

Jim Babka: And was Biden somehow rather less legacy than Trump in 2020?

Doug Stuart: No, I think Biden has always been the legacy candidate in that sense.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: I mean, this is a really old guy that had run before and got bounced out for plagiarism, right?

Jim Babka: They caught him.

Jim Babka: They found out that he plagiarized and lied about his academic record.

Jim Babka: And Biden…

Jim Babka: Oh, yeah.

Jim Babka: Back in the late 80s, he ran for president and he got caught in a plagiarism scandal.

Jim Babka: But see, he’s so old now, everybody doesn’t even remember that, right?

Doug Stuart: We’re so old, we don’t remember that.

Jim Babka: Yeah, it’s…

Doug Stuart: Yeah, okay.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, I had to train a thought there.

Doug Stuart: You were saying that the voters, I mean, I’m interested in this question.

Jim Babka: I mean, I don’t know.

Jim Babka: Like, I’ve had a lot of pontifications here today and a lot of analysis.

Jim Babka: The one thing I got to admit, I’m ignorant on.

Jim Babka: I don’t understand how people don’t know what they want in a presidential candidate at this juncture.

Jim Babka: Like, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, I mean, it’s only speculative.

Jim Babka: The news is just full of this stuff and it’s like you want it to stop, right?

Jim Babka: I’ve had enough of these people.

Doug Stuart: I feel like I kind of sometimes wonder if…

Doug Stuart: There’s been these jokes all through the month of July of this being the season finale of America, right?

Doug Stuart: Like, it’s the show.

Doug Stuart: It’s really funny.

Doug Stuart: I mean, it’s great because it’s like, again, everything was truncated into the month of July.

Doug Stuart: We got an October surprise early Christmas in July, whatever, right?

Doug Stuart: Yeah, because of that phenomenon, okay, so we’re highly entertained, whether it’s the news media, whether it’s things like streaming shows.

Doug Stuart: Are you not entertained?

Doug Stuart: It’s there, right?

Doug Stuart: Here’s what we’re doing.

Doug Stuart: We’re having a little bit of fun here.

Doug Stuart: We’re having a good conversation.

Doug Stuart: Hopefully, it’s helping people.

Jim Babka: Oh my gosh.

Jim Babka: Just so within the last 72 hours or so, we found out, again, we’re sitting here at the beginning of August, that the third candidate in this race had already made national news.

Jim Babka: We just didn’t know it 10 years ago when he hit a bear and decided to dump it and stage an accident in Central Park.

SPEAKER_1: I didn’t even hear about that.

Doug Stuart: I heard the jokes about it, but I didn’t know that was new news.

Jim Babka: It’s real.

Jim Babka: No, that really did happen.

Jim Babka: It was news at the time that it happened, and they were investigating how it happened.

Jim Babka: It turns out a woman had hit a bear and he was going to skin it, but he couldn’t actually take it.

Jim Babka: He was going to have to fly out that night.

Jim Babka: He couldn’t take it where he needed to go.

Jim Babka: The whole story is really extraordinary.

Jim Babka: In fact, it’s a day in a dilettante’s life.

Jim Babka: It’s just incredible.

Jim Babka: But at the end of the day, he leaves the bear.

Jim Babka: So many bear in Central Park.

Jim Babka: And there was a joke about bicycle riders and new trails at that time.

Jim Babka: And he was playing off of a joke that was very much of 2014 New York City.

Jim Babka: And now he’s running for president.

Jim Babka: But this is a guy who’s already at this point, 60 years old when he’s doing this.

Jim Babka: This is like a sophomore prank and he’s 60 years old.

Doug Stuart: Well, okay, so we’re entertained.

Doug Stuart: And my thought process there is we’re all sitting here watching, I mean, we’re not, most people aren’t, the people who are going to rallies are probably decided voters, maybe not.

Doug Stuart: Maybe they’re bringing their friends who are undecided.

Doug Stuart: I don’t know.

Jim Babka: No, they’re decided.

Doug Stuart: They’re, well, the most of them are.

Doug Stuart: So they’re there to support and rally whatever.

Doug Stuart: But you got everybody else, the undecided voters are not politically invested enough to have already decided.

Doug Stuart: And so they’re watching this, they’re observers, they’re the audience.

Doug Stuart: And so if they’re the audience, then they’re waiting for the twist.

Doug Stuart: They’re waiting for, well, as it is right now, if I were required to vote on, well, we’re recording this on August 8th, 2024.

Doug Stuart: So if election day were tomorrow, they would have their choice.

Doug Stuart: And we would know what that means, because that’s what the polling is.

Doug Stuart: It’s like, well, if the election were held today, but, you know, who would you vote for?

Doug Stuart: Well, I don’t know who I’m going to vote for on November 2nd, because, is it November 2nd?

Doug Stuart: Whatever, November.

Doug Stuart: I don’t know who I’m going to vote for on November.

Doug Stuart: I’m not in November yet.

Doug Stuart: I mean, my wife and I planned our vacation that was in the first, second week of July, at the last week of June.

Doug Stuart: And there was this joke between us.

Doug Stuart: We were like, well, what should we do?

Jim Babka: What should we do?

Doug Stuart: And we were like, well, we don’t know what we’re going to want to do in July.

Doug Stuart: So there’s a little bit of that that I wonder.

Jim Babka: Okay, but didn’t you have literally an infinite number of choices?

Doug Stuart: Well, no, because, not to get too personal, but the ones that we wanted, we couldn’t do.

Jim Babka: So no, but I mean, that might explain the number of choices you have available to you and the number of circumstances that may change your ability to do X or Y.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, the configurations of the three, four options we had were 100 percent decided by us.

Doug Stuart: So it was just between the two of us to compromise however we wanted.

Doug Stuart: So your point is that we’ve got two choices or four choices maybe, and like, come on guys, can you pick between the four choices or at least the two that you’re given?

Jim Babka: Yeah, nothing’s going to change.

Jim Babka: These two people are still going to be there come election day.

Doug Stuart: Okay, so let’s say we have between now and early August, we got what?

Doug Stuart: One, two, three months, economy tanks.

Doug Stuart: And now you hear-

Jim Babka: Well, it’s already started.

Doug Stuart: Well, fine, but now it’s very obvious to everyone and no one can ignore it.

Doug Stuart: And we’re on October 25th and literally everybody just has to be talking about this because that’s what we’re told to be have to be talking about.

Doug Stuart: And it’s actually hitting our bank accounts, our bosses, or our companies are laying people off.

Doug Stuart: It’s just kind of, we can’t ignore it.

Doug Stuart: How Trump talks about it and how Kamala Harris talks about it is going to change people’s minds.

Doug Stuart: Would that make sense?

Doug Stuart: Like, I don’t know what it’s going to be like in the world.

Doug Stuart: Who cares about the candidates?

Doug Stuart: Because the candidates are going to change based on events in the world.

Jim Babka: It’s as possible an explanation as any I can come up with.

Doug Stuart: Well, fair point.

Doug Stuart: I’m speculating, but.

Jim Babka: Yeah, it is.

Jim Babka: See, I pay enough attention to this stuff that I think I could predict how they’re going to respond and what their solutions are going to be and the way they’re going to go about doing it.

Jim Babka: I mean, so again, it’s just foreign to me.

Jim Babka: I don’t, there are certain things we are always handicapped at being able to understand because we have our, our greatest frame of reference is our own personal experience, right?

Jim Babka: And I’m just admitting openly, I don’t know the answer to this.

Jim Babka: My frame of reference is to pay attention to this stuff and understand this stuff and know it.

Jim Babka: And so I have a hard time relating to people not caring about it.

Jim Babka: I really do.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: No, I mean, I hear you.

Doug Stuart: One, okay, I’m going to speculate one more thing here just to kind of continue the conversation just for a few more minutes here, is that sometimes I wonder if these votes aren’t even necessarily related to the candidate themselves.

Doug Stuart: So, for example, if you have a large swath of Ohio voters losing their jobs because of an industry collapse, you know, not just the economy, but like a particular part of the economy, you’re going to have that feeling feel different.

Doug Stuart: And it’s going to they’re going to either, well, for whatever reason, they’re going to blame the Biden economy because that’s who we that’s what they’ve been living under for four years.

Doug Stuart: Why didn’t this, why didn’t your economy, Mr.

Doug Stuart: President, your Democratic Party climate help make my job sustainable or not worth being fired?

Doug Stuart: And so it may not necessarily be even related to the candidate themselves.

Doug Stuart: And in some ways it won’t be because if they’re going to blame Biden, they have to sort of do guilt by association by not voting for Harris.

Doug Stuart: So the point I’m trying to make is sometimes I wonder how much of this is even about the candidates, but about people’s feelings about their circumstances.

Jim Babka: Well, I know that many campaigns over history have run on the issue of whether or not you’re better off than you were four years ago.

Jim Babka: They’ll ask that question.

Jim Babka: It’s supposed to hit you viscerally.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: You know what my favorite piece of that is?

Doug Stuart: I’ve literally seen leftists, the same leftists talk about, you see the chart, the stock market’s gone up under your candidate, under this candidate.

Doug Stuart: Look how happy you should be.

Doug Stuart: When Republicans do it, you know what they say?

Doug Stuart: Look, Wall Street’s getting wealthy.

Doug Stuart: This now, under Biden, they’re promoting this as, look how great the stock market is doing, guys.

Doug Stuart: As if that’s their evidence.

Doug Stuart: They play both sides.

Jim Babka: So everybody does this, by the way.

Doug Stuart: Oh, sure.

Jim Babka: And I used to have a line when I was out doing radio interviews for Downsized DC about how one side, when the party switched from majority and minority status, as they pass each other in the halls, they hand each other their yellow dog-eared scripts.

Jim Babka: It was an injustice that they’re ramming these bills through without giving us the ability to dissent and use these parliamentary procedures.

Jim Babka: But when we become the majority, we change the rules.

Jim Babka: So we take all those things out.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, right.

Jim Babka: We so desperately wanted when we were the minority.

Jim Babka: So there is special pleading on all sides.

Jim Babka: But there’s also memetic stuff going on there too, right?

Jim Babka: Because they don’t really stop and think about they just, again, some of this is parroting things that they’re hearing other people say, and then they’re spreading it.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: So you’re trying to make a case for yourself.

Jim Babka: And literally, each party puts out a set of things called talking points.

Jim Babka: The talking points go out to their favored media sources.

Jim Babka: The favored media sources say it.

Jim Babka: And then you start to see multiple headlines on news channels, on websites, and you notice the similarities between them.

Jim Babka: They’re almost identical, if not identical, to each other.

Jim Babka: Because everybody’s gotten the talking points, and they’ve learned how to say the thing.

Jim Babka: And, you know, I understand the people that are playing on the team saying those things.

Jim Babka: Like, you’re playing on the team, you’re part of the political party, you’re trying to get your candidate elected.

Jim Babka: I get where that comes from.

Jim Babka: It’s a little less justifiable that the media seems to play along with a lot of this stuff.

Jim Babka: I mostly ascribe it to laziness, but, yeah.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, it’s getting them clicks, it’s getting them their revenue.

Jim Babka: Oh, certainly, the people that are coming up with the materials are thinking about how it’s going to be useful to the people they’re handing it to, right?

Jim Babka: I’ll write your press release for you, I’ll practically write your article, you know.

Jim Babka: Oh, okay, and then, you know, but I got to get clicks.

Jim Babka: Well, yeah, I mean, I definitely think they are thinking that way, but they shouldn’t be doing that.

Jim Babka: Like, if they were real reporters, they wouldn’t parrot these lines, but see, there’s this massive imitation game going on.

Doug Stuart: Yeah, yeah.

Doug Stuart: All right, between now and the election, what predictions do you have?

Doug Stuart: What can you be certain that we will see?

Doug Stuart: And I don’t even mean special events or, you know, the economy tanking, but like in terms of the phenomenon of human culture and what you just, it is inevitable to happen because that’s what happens.

Doug Stuart: How would you assess what we’re about to experience in the next three months?

Doug Stuart: What can we observe?

Jim Babka: Do I have to limit it to three months?

Doug Stuart: Well, okay.

Doug Stuart: So until now, until now, until, I don’t know, until a new president, I don’t care.

Jim Babka: So near future.

Jim Babka: One of the things that bothers me, and this is stepping completely out of the memetic mold now, right, is that we have identified too much with these people and we’ve lost sight of the things that they will do and how that will impact.

Jim Babka: And the reason I’m kind of pushing back on this is there are the top five issues right now.

Jim Babka: The top five issues, I can tell you what they are.

Jim Babka: Number one is the debt, number two is the debt, number three is the debt, number four is the fact that next year, the budget will still run a massive deficit and will be planned to for the next 10 years, and number five is the debt.

Jim Babka: So the fact that they’re not doing anything about this, we saw a little bit of an economic earthquake this last few days.

Jim Babka: Is it all coming in?

Jim Babka: Is the recession just begun?

Jim Babka: There’s evidence that the recession may have just begun.

Jim Babka: And how bad is it gonna get?

Jim Babka: Like what’s coming next?

Jim Babka: And neither of the candidates that are the front runners for this race are going to do anything, anything about the deficit.

Jim Babka: And I think everybody should be scared of this.

Jim Babka: So while everybody is worried about who’s gonna win, and like, you know, the right, they’re worried about, you know, trans issues, and on the left, they’re worried about protecting abortion and gay marriage.

Jim Babka: These things are not really the high stakes things that everybody’s pretending they are.

Jim Babka: But this economic reality of what’s coming down the pike because of government spending and the printing of more dollars, the inflation, these things are coming, and they’re already hitting people.

Jim Babka: So, you know, both of these parties claim to care about regular working people.

Jim Babka: But inflation has hit those people really hard.

Jim Babka: Yeah.

Jim Babka: And when you start extolling the virtue of the stock market, it’s true that what you’re talking about is the ownership class, the leader class.

Jim Babka: And if the Democrats are ever advocating for that, that means they’re overlooking what they’ve traditionally considered to be their constituency.

Jim Babka: It is, that to me is the real thing that everybody should be focused on.

Jim Babka: Not who’s going to win or who’s going to lose, but much more so what’s going to happen to our country over the next 18 months to two years.

Jim Babka: Are we going to go through a severe economic downturn?

Jim Babka: Because that hits all of us right where we live.

Doug Stuart: Well, now you’ve left us hanging and I can’t make this a financial advice podcast, so we’re just going to have to leave it there.

Doug Stuart: Do you have anything positive to say, Jim?

Jim Babka: I do.

Jim Babka: I do.

Jim Babka: You have the ability once you become aware that everybody’s got kind of this imitation game going on, to step outside of it, retain your individuality.

Jim Babka: To me, this is a spiritual question.

Jim Babka: Like, who am I imitating?

Jim Babka: My imitation should be of Christ.

Jim Babka: That’s who my imitation should be.

Jim Babka: That’s what being a Christian is, the little Christ.

Jim Babka: I am supposed to be imitating Christ.

Jim Babka: How do I do that?

Jim Babka: And once I start to do that, I stop fearing because a lot of this imitation game as we’ve discussed today is driven by fear.

Jim Babka: And I can step off of that.

Jim Babka: I don’t have to be fearful because I know how the story ends.

Jim Babka: And I know that stuff matters more than the present moment.

Doug Stuart: All right.

Doug Stuart: Well, Jim Babka, I’m going to let you have that last word.

Doug Stuart: But I do also want to ask you to tell our listeners and our viewers who are viewing us live on YouTube right now and who will watch this maybe a little bit later.

Doug Stuart: Where can they find you?

Doug Stuart: What channels are you on?

Doug Stuart: What names do you go by?

Doug Stuart: What handles do you go by?

Doug Stuart: Where can they come tell you all the things you’re wrong about?

Jim Babka: So that you can engage.

Jim Babka: They do post a little bit to Facebook.

Jim Babka: But the main thing I promote is my podcast, which is called Gracearchy with Jim Babka.

Jim Babka: And it’s on most of the platforms that are out there.

Jim Babka: YouTube, Rumble, Apple now.

Jim Babka: We just got on Apple here a short time ago.

Jim Babka: We’re on all kinds of different platforms.

Jim Babka: So you should be able to find Gracearchy with Jim Babka.

Jim Babka: But I work with Downsized DC, the Advocates for Self-Government.

Jim Babka: You can check out those things too.

Jim Babka: In fact, we’re working on a big new project over at the Advocates.

Jim Babka: So I just hope people will come and check out the stuff that we’re doing.

Jim Babka: And thank you.

Doug Stuart: Yeah.

Doug Stuart: Well, thanks for being here, Jim.

Doug Stuart: I’m sure we’ll have another conversation.

Doug Stuart: And for those of you tuning in live, thank you very much for doing that.

Doug Stuart: Subscribe.

Doug Stuart: If you haven’t done it, you might have already subscribed.

Doug Stuart: If you subscribe, like it, share it with other people.

Doug Stuart: And also check out Jim and all the things that he just described there as well.

Doug Stuart: So we’ll see you next time.

Jim Babka: Thank you.

SPEAKER_4: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast.

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LCI uses automated transcripts from various sources. If you see a significant error, please let us know.