Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: I've been described as silly, Viking, like by my wife, often grocero or rude, but I don't think I've ever been described as woke. Sadly, I don't think that I ever really.
I tried. I wanted to be part of society, but it didn't really take with me. Today we're talking about woke is broke and trying to get a handle on it together.
Understanding where we are in this process. Paul Micucci, Mike Wixon, thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and tell a friend they probably share an opinion with us as well.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Oh, I hope so. I'm sure they have lots. Mike, you know, this topic has been spiraling around for quite some time.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, it's so funny that you say sometime because, you know, we're doing our research and looking back on this to see where woke begin.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: 1938, you were telling me a few minutes ago.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: That's wild.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Well, it probably had a reason for it, right? There probably was, you know, the racial divide in the country, you know, U.S. and Canada.
I know I was telling you the story about when we came to Canada. You know, there were signs downtown that Italians weren't allowed in stores. It was after the war, you know, so the racial divide, even for no one with a physical difference was quite wide. So, you know, we had to address it. And I think woke was, you know, came from the African American terminology dealing with racial and social divides, mostly in the US at the time. So, yeah, sure, it made sense at the time for sure.
[00:01:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: And a very useful ideology.
But at that time it was a mass change, a large sea change in the sense that everybody was becoming one.
We did that then.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: We've accepted, I think by and large humanity is whoever comes into society, whether they need help or they're useful or superstars or whatever. Yeah, that was useful. It took us a long way.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Oh, sure. And I think, you know, you can criticize all the immigration we've done in the last 10 years, but one of the things it has done is made us very diverse, even more diverse than we have ever been.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: So I never had Nepalese food before.
Do you know how good Nepal? Well, you do.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I do. I married a Nepalese.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: It is so delicious. Anyway. Yeah, no, diversity brings a great deal of friendships and understanding and knowledge. We have good ideas together.
But I don't think woke was really what that was all about, you know, this modern day woke. And, and I kind of pinpointed it. Maybe you can Actually, help me out on this.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: I kind of pinpointed it to the George Floyd protest and I. Who did you. Oh, you even said Rodney King.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Rodney King further back.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I think.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Well, that lit the fires.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Around. You know, I lived through O.J. simpson, Rodney King, you did, too, so. And I think, quite frankly, you know, that was, you know, the hotbed of it at the time, you know, and it brought a lot of issues to bear. I think it was great, you know, and it was good.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: It did.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: It was bad. We saw some ugly things in that time, but we also addressed the issue and I think that's been good. And, you know, now as we. It's funny, you and I went. I was thinking about this as we were preparing for the show. We just got back from Calgary, so we were out in Calgary, and I think we had a perception of what we were going to see in Calgary. We were going to go there and I think we were going to. We're going to see a mostly Caucasian population that still was set in a very conservative framework. And we got there and we like, oh, wow, this looks like Toronto very much.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Really, Diversity is there. And once again, by and large, as Canadians, diversity works for us. I see it working all the time in the States. Diversity works all the time. There isn't massive divides that cause civil strife here, sometimes on topics or on something going else in the world, but going on else around the world that's not right here at home. But I don't see a huge amount of divide. I see more integrated diversity in Canada and the US Than you do in most parts of the world.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: So, you know, before. So Covid, you know, before COVID After Covid. That's how we talk now. But before COVID I was telling you the story. I was still doing a lot of work down in the U.S. and with U.S. companies. And it was very interesting how the culture in the US at that time was much different than, I guess today, you know, with the change of government. But, you know, so much so that quite frankly, meetings were even hard.
So you'd go to a meeting and no one would be saying anything. So, you know, I would fly down into Atlantic City, into Florida and all these places, and I'd have these meetings and it was very cloaked and very, like, reserved. And you go to a meeting and people were starting, you know, they were calling each other Mr. Smith and Mr. Bob and all these people, you know, they were very formal and they were very exact and.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Which was almost the Roberts rules Of order.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: We're running a government.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: And the CEO would show up, you know, and he'd have his crew of, you know, diverse people. You know, a woman, an African American man, and the HR person with him all the time. And you know, you'd be like, holy cow. Like, this is very interesting the way we're conducting this, but. And a lot of the meetings, even you were told before you went into that were taped, right? So you'd be like, okay, I get it. But I'm like, what are we doing?
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Also, that feels more like an interrogation. Like, okay, what? We're expecting you to blow up this meeting so badly, you will offend everybody in the room and cause us a potential lawsuit.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: So I thought it was a meeting.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: So we're securing ourselves. So, you know, really hard to be creative because you're right, you know, you're sitting there, forget, you know, comedy. You don't even telling a joke. You never did. You were almost told right away when you went down. You say, listen, we don't. Maybe after work, you know, if you're with someone that you really trust, you'll tell a joke.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Right?
[00:06:28] Speaker B: But quite frankly, we don't tell a joke we don't have.
And it was, it was, you know, it was. It was weird.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: It was just really weird of social credit score where you fell in that room. And it's interesting that you say that because then Covid arrives and woke got an injection. Not just a vaccine, it got a full injection of energy.
Because suddenly if you were questioning anything to do with medical treatment. Oh, yeah, Covid, overall, where the virus came from, you know, you were anti Asian, you were, you know, defying the government. You were a conspiracy theorist. You were killing our grandparents.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So woke. Woke kind of progressed past. See, you know, woke was kind of created as a racial and social kind of parameter to keep it into check. It was a system that people were talking about. And then all of a sudden it eliminated.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: And it became. It became about health and wellness. And so we kind of took that and we morphed it and we decided to basically strengthen it for some reason.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: And. And, and that was kind of, you know, and I'm not blaming Democrats, I'm not blaming liberals. I think it was kind of a culture that took place because it was self empowering to certain groups, and certain groups wanted it to keep growing.
You and I were talking about HR departments, right? Earlier on, HR was great. Quite frankly, it was job security for any HR department. Is the HR departments Went from a.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Single person to a team.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: You know, and constantly putting new programs out, reassessing how humanity deals with each other.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, let's go to training.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: All of this training comes into place, and then everybody gets sent home. So now all of this is being applied on Zoom.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: And we're all focused at the screens all day, getting ready to cancel the next person.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: And that's what started kind of next. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the woke. The woke culture began. And that felt like, okay, we're going to battle for people who need us to stand up for them. That seemed to be an easy. And a certain number of people will get on that and they'll be like, yes, we all need to vaccinate. Yes, we all need to stay in place. We all need to do something as a society. And I can see that being.
That seems normal to me.
But after reason and understanding and knowledge comes back into play and everybody. The dust settles.
What remains of woke seems a little silly. You know what I mean? And all that's left is that momentum of cancellation, that momentum of who can we take down next? And I don't think most of humanity. I think it's a human nature, but I don't think most of us act on that. And I think that's where woke is starting to come undone right now.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it did well. And I think this. What we're doing right now, podcasting, you know, and we all know because he's. He's so famous right now. Joe Rogan.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: I don't. I've never heard of him.
Yeah, he changed it, right?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: He did. Well, I think the attack on him and what was going on and people just said, timeout. You know, we need to look at this because this is crazy how we're eliminating this person from society because he has an alternative view.
And then, you know, his, you know, legendary interview with Donald Trump.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Where, you know, they just got on and chatted the whole, you know, 50 some odd million people tuned in to listen. And from there, you know, after the election, you know, he got in and he just said, we're going to eliminate it.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Well, take a look at Tucker Carlson.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know. I didn't even know that you could say something on Fox that would get you fired, but there he goes. And now he's. He and Joe Rogan and, you know, two or three others in America really are enormous.
Globally.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Where Fox has taken them to a certain place in life and then stunted them and then eliminated them.
They're now doing amazing stuff that would never have been imagined by those networks that were based on Cancel culture, that were so afraid to say the wrong or have the wrong personality or the wrong mix of people.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: They were doing those meetings I talked to you about, right where. And that's where they didn't fit. You know, honestly, they just. Those guys just didn't fit in the mold, and thank God they didn't. You know, we're all lucky that that actually didn't happen. And I think a younger generation, you know, honestly, Mike, I think now you have millennials and Gen X.
They're a little smarter and they look more.
They investigate things more, right? They're more. They're. They're online, they're researching.
I think it's harder now, right? I think, you know, the generations, our generation and above, I think they just took it blind faith when they were told, you know, you should do this and you should do that.
This generation isn't. And I think that's great. They're digging in and they're looking at it.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: They're taking their own opinion. When the election was going on, we were out there and, you know, we spoke to. I think you might recall, we spoke to some youth in a number of parts of this country that were activated by things that were not of the Woke culture, which, by the way, is what it became, a culture.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, it's interesting, you know, the erosion of public trust, right, in institutions, you know, really started to happen after the. At the end of COVID right? So by the end of COVID we're all sitting there and we're saying, I don't know if I should have got this shot. You know, maybe I'm going to have a heart attack. You know, maybe.
Maybe like Ron Johnson, the center in the U.S. you know, maybe I'm going to lose my hearing in my left ear, right? Because I took the COVID shot. And everyone's going, ah, you know, pros, cons. I don't know if it was for me, you know, should I have given a kid?
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Boy, did I ever get behind it, though, didn't I? Yikes. One of the ones that stuck out in my mind in the way of Cancel culture was.
And I think this lit a huge fire. I think this is where the beginning of the end of Woke, if we. If that's where we're headed, this is maybe that moment where the TSN Turning Point, the Fonz jump, the jump the shark. And by the way, I don't think we're supposed to say jump the shark anymore for some reason. I remember that in a radio discussion. No, you can't say jump the shark because then the dolphins feel excluded.
But Dylan Mulvaney, the Bud Light backlash, I think, was really that marker where we were like, okay, Kid Rock with.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: The machine gun and the lawnmower.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: I'll be honest with you. I don't know if Kid Rock should have weaponry. I do think it's okay for people to have weapons, but maybe not Kid Rock. He seems to be a little bit off the deep end and loose and goose. Yeah. But I think that was the moment when. And by the way, if you forget, Dylan Mulvaney obviously was featured as, you know, a transgender member of the community and a Bud Light fan.
[00:13:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: And the reaction to that from people who didn't think that was necessary was enormous. It wasn't that people didn't like Dylan. It wasn't that people didn't respect Dylan Mulvaney. They just thought, wow, this is pandering.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Just to virtue signaling.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Why do we care?
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Right?
[00:14:03] Speaker B: No, we don't. You know, we were talking about this earlier. Like, I don't talk to. About my sexuality in public.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: I really appreciate that.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: On behalf of all of us, thank you. And I'm gonna try to stop talking about mine.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah, but you're right. I. Why is it even an issue? Why is somebody's sexuality anybody else's business?
Especially when it comes to a brand.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: In this day and age? I'm bored.
You're not gonna shock me with anyone's sexuality at this point. We've heard everything. Right. So why are we still talking about it? And it just seems like we passed that stage.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: You know, I get it. You know, if we're coming out of the 50s, and this is kind of new and something that people haven't seen before. Well, we got through that 70s. I don't think people cared either.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: You know, we've also forgotten, okay, Dylan Mulvaney, you look like a man. You are a woman. You identify as a woman, or you identify as a man, but you're not. Okay?
And I accept that. That's fine. However, there was a time in society where if I. I'll give you an example. If I opened my car door and it opened, like Tesla, but it was a Honda, you would say to me, that's weird, man. How did you do that? Like, what's that all about? Yeah, it would. It would inspire questions, and I would say, to you? Do you like it?
No, not necessarily. But I'm curious how you got to this place with this door opening this way where it's not supposed to. Yeah, okay. We had dialogue. And I say to you, hey, man, if you ever decide that you change your mind and you want a door like this, I know where you can get it done.
Yeah, not likely, but okay. That was interesting. Thanks for your time.
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Yeah, Done.
Right.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: We're past it, you know, I guess, you know, there's. Are there many things on the sexuality side that actually shock you anymore?
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Show of hands. How bad was my analogy? Very bad. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah, my apologies.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: No worries.
No, no. But you know, there's not many. There's not too much in the world that actually shocks me when I hear it anymore. So quite frankly, I'd rather not talk about it. There's other things, you know, I'm spending my time trying to get from A to B now.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Right, yeah.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Like everybody, quite frankly, what your sexuality is or what your race is or what anything is.
No, no offense, I don't really don't care. So if you're helping me get there and we're doing it kind of in a happy way, it's kind of what I care about at this point. And I think pretty much everyone else is the same.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: If we could put that aside, that might even be cumbersome. That we don't need it in our way. This discussion, this thought. Yeah, These are thoughts I wasn't even having. I was thinking about how collectively we all get to be.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's where we've gotten to, you know, and. And you know, woken. It's in its original origin, quite frankly. Probably didn't even contemplate that it contemplated more of a racial divide.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And I think, quite frankly, with diversity, you know, we kind of did. We woke ourselves out. I think we talked about that earlier too, you know, did diversity actually over time just neutralize the original definition of wokeness?
[00:17:18] Speaker A: I'm.
I think that I don't even remember anybody referring to anybody's ethnicity at all recent. In recent days, to be honest with you. Unless it was in a complementary cultural way.
[00:17:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: In a storytelling. So, yeah. You know, in Canada, we tell a lot of stories about our backgrounds and where we come from and, you know, our origin or culture, but we do it kind of in a fun, playful, you know, it's not meant to be harmful. It's actually kind of educational. So we all learn from each other. And, you know, I haven't been in an environment where anyone, you know, since. I guess you're gonna laugh. You know, I was trying to think through it as we're talking. Probably since kind of the elimination of the bar.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Really?
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, before coven, you know, bars kind of. You remember sports bars and all that, they kind of disappeared out of our culture. You know, we have more restaurants now. You know, years ago, you know, crazy stuff would happen while people were really drinking and having fun in bars. But then when bars kind of eliminated and people kind of became more civil, you know, it just faded, I guess. And people.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: I think I see your point. People, we need to get back to heavier drinking.
Oh, that wasn't the point.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: No, no, that's not my point.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: But. But we, I do. The interaction between humans, we self deprecate, we poke at each other, we have a laugh, but we still have love among ourselves. And I think that those moments where you can poke at me and say, I know the kind of sandwiches your mom made with the skinny cheese. Mike, I ate a real sandwich because my mom knew how to make one.
I know what you mean. I'm a caker. Your mom was an amazing Italian cook.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: It's funny on the basis of you presenting it that way.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Dave Chappelle.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: You know, make fun of your. If you can't make fun of yourself, how can you make fun of anyone else?
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: So it makes total sense. I think we got past that. I think we're. I hope we are. And. But you know, it actually wonders, so what's next? So, you know, it's interesting if you think about it. So, you know, okay, the word woke disappears.
So it comes out. So what's next?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I hope it's not nap or sleep because we really kind of need to get to work. Well, it's funny because Disney and major networks have all lost trillions of dollars because they've made movies that pandered to this notion of wokeness that just didn't deliver. The audiences didn't want them.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: So as I.
In answer to your question, I think that the first thing we see is movies that are a lot less woke. I think that it won't be a gradual transition back. I think we're going to see some shocking examples of, yeah, we're not woke anymore. That didn't work.
And I don't think it'll be that they're going to defy humanity or be offensive or try to go, but they'll just get back to letting humans be humans, demonstrating that we can get along with our diversity, demonstrating that we can have a laugh, we can get through a difficult moment. I think media is going to be the first lead on this.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Oh, I hope so. I hope so. And, you know, well, they're the buggers.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Who dragged us into it in the first place. They dragged.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah, they did. Until. Until really, you know, the podcast world came to bear. Until people started listening to some rational thinking around it. And then, you know, we've kind of seen the lead in the US right now going the other direction. How many companies have even totally eliminated DEI from their vocabulary and wokeness? So, yeah, I think it's a great thing, but, you know, I wonder. I kind of wonder. Okay, so it eliminates.
So we don't use it anymore. We don't have it in our vocabularies.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: So.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: What are we going to lean on? So then can diverse groups make any claim?
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Well, I think the claims should be made on the basis of that moment in time, that specific incident, that misstep. Okay, so can we get back to a place where we say, yeah, we all recognize that was a misstep. Some of you don't see that as a misstep or a mistake or. But by and large, as a society, we see that as a misstep. Let's avoid that.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Like a hate crime.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: A hate crime would be a great example.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: So what really is a hate crime, I think is worth defining in a place where we're less woke and we actually are concerned about humans.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Exactly. So then the next step is actually to kind of gravitate to that.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: So is it a. Is it a crime based on a past cultural difference, or is it something that occurs now going forward? You know, and I know that's a complicated question, and I asked that because as we kind of morph about awokeness.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: And you know, at some point.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Our physical cultural differences will sort of disappear.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: As we integrate.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: I would say, yes. Society overall, Globally.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: We're integrated as humans more than we've ever been. And we're going to. You know, I've heard. I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I'm. I've heard that at some points, pretty much everybody will have a similar look, you know, genetic similar coding on the base of basis of us having a global society.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Well, we see it in Canada right now.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Honestly, you know, I'm. I'm the. I'm the offspring of Scottish and Italian cultures, and quite frankly, you know, I look kind of in between both, you Know, I can see it.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
And, you know, as people. As more people come from India and as more people come from China and different places and they integrate, we're going to create new cultures of people. So in the end, and it's pretty close now. I don't think we're that far away.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: It doesn't seem like it.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: No, no, it does seem. Before.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: It's almost like the generation right now that's getting married is the biggest wave of that in our lifetime. And it's. It's notable.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's wonderful, to tell you the truth, and it's great. But then. Then are we eliminating. So then the great thing is we're eliminating that.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Yeah, Right.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: And I think we've kind of jumped over, you know, and I hope we're getting through it. Kind of the male, female divide.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: So I think so, yeah. I think, you know, there's so many successful women now and doing so many great things that I think we're, you know, they're bashing down the walls of that were there before and might be a bit disrespectful.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: This, the experience that we've had for women who are really amazing executives and leaders in every field, to feel like, oh, they got there based on dei. Once you strip that away, the women that remain in those positions and the people that stay in those positions are the ones that actually are the most important to us.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, no, I agree.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: So you look at those barriers, and those barriers are sort of dissolving away.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: So they dissolve away. So we're really left with probably past, you know, and it's interesting. It looks like part of what's left is stuff that comes from a history of past.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: So if there's anything going on, it seems to be now.
And if you look at the world, it seems to be generating from beefs between cultures of people that aren't even starting here in Canada, but are happening somewhere else. So as we're immigrating more people and integrating more people, the only challenges, or some of the challenges we're seeing, quite.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Frankly, are old challenges, stuff that comes from their native country and it arrives here. And two cultures that normally wouldn't get along are here together, and that could be the.
The moment.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, but, you know, hopefully. So then my hope for that is because, you know, it's interesting. I always ask people when they say something about another culture, you know, that they have a beef with from the past or from where they came from. I said, well, why did you come Here, Right.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: You could have had that beef there.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: You could have stayed at home.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: If it was so, you know, number one, it was so great back home, you would have stayed back home, quite frankly. You know, you can tell me a story about how great back home was, but quite frankly, you decided to come to Canada. You decided to immigrate here.
And, you know, at that point, you must have thought to yourself, oh, wow, I'm going to leave some of that baggage back at home because I want to start a new life. I want to have a family, I want to grow. I want to go to a place where has the largest landmass, second largest landmass in the world, you know, opportunity. So therefore, why am I coming?
[00:26:14] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:15] Speaker B: So we should. So, you know, this is a very idealistic kind of perfection. Look at it.
But we should be able, at some point, right. When wokeness disappears, hurdle all of those other issues that come with the history of people.
[00:26:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Because those should be the easier ones.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:34] Speaker B: We're here.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Well, if the new culture wasn't woke, but it was more brother and sisterhood under one nation, we might look out for ourselves and others in that scenario and say, okay, we need to, within our communities, eliminate this discussion. We need to eliminate this beef and get the support of other Canadians saying, we can get through this together. You're now here. And those that don't like it, they certainly bubble to the top of the stew pretty quickly.
And you can see who they are in society. No matter what we do, you're going to be angry. No matter what we concede, you're going to be angry no matter what we present, you're going to oppose.
You don't want to be here, right?
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Time to go home. You know, it's not for you. It didn't work.
And you weren't able to shed, unfortunately, the bad history that you brought.
So maybe you should go back and just live it out.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: But in a woke culture, where these layers of formality have been put in place, it's easy to hide with your poor attitude, it's easy to hide with your hatred, it's easy to hide behind cultural beefs because we would never talk about that.
We're woke, we don't talk about your cultural beefs, and we're woke. Everybody's accepted and, you know, you might have a criminal mind, but you're here now, and that's our.
Once you strip away woke, it's easy to see, well, that's a criminal, and that person's never going to be happy here. Okay, so at least we understand, right? You're welcome here. Yeah, Stay, go, whatever you wish. But now we actually really understand who you are as an individual.
[00:28:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: I think that's what happens. Woke creates individuality, robs us of individuality, and removing woke gives us our individuality and freedom back.
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: So now is there an end date?
So, you know, as we talk through it, you know.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the pendulum is going to go back even further and we're going to be super woke and we'll have to stitch our lips shut.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: No, no, but I mean, like, at some point when woke goes away and it's. We're not talking about it anymore and there's no racial discussion, you know, because we've. Diversity is kind of eliminated, you know, and equality is, you know, getting better, quite frankly. So we see equality. You know, Canada doesn't, I don't think, have a huge issue with inclusion, in my mind. But, you know, I think what we.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Do next is forget what woke was and continue being good humans, good Canadians, good members of society.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: Great.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: That can manage our own.
Our own approach to each other.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: So then that's great because that has all kinds of really positive economic benefits.
So we don't have to. So then we don't have to be subsidizing diversity anymore.
We don't have to be subsidizing groups. We don't have to be putting programs in place to deal with it.
We can eliminate those. Because, you know, I think that. And that's kind of interesting because what. What we've seen by podcasting and what's going on now, by kind of talking about it and having it kind of wokeism going away also ties to all these other things that eventually will go away.
Therefore, all the economic programs and stimuluses and training and coaching that we put into it, they also go away.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Well, okay, I have another analogy. We've got a laundry line, and on the laundry line, which is woke, you can hang a lot of dirty laundry. Yeah, it's easy to just hang that on woke. That's. You know what? We've got it. We have to have it this way because we're woke. We have to have it this way because we're woke. And I think once that line is taken down or disappears, there have to be other things that those issues attach to. Real support, genuine community enlightenment.
But not just because it's hanging on the line.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.
By kind of cutting that line down, we're not going to hang anything on the line anymore. Therefore, politically, we're not Going to talk about it.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: So unless. Unless a group decides they want to get together and actively work for the benefit of their community to do something. Because we do, you know, we're a melting pot. So we like different communities. So, you know, if the. If the Italians want to bring. Build an Italian community center or, you know, a new temple for the Indian community or whatever they want to do, you know, there's a whole group of things they might want to do politically to help that happen and to try to get some funding for.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: So those are things that could take.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: Okay, so genuinely appeal to the community with your story. Don't just hang it on the line and expect the support.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Put on that laundry and go out into the community and appeal to us. And I think you'll be surprised that we do want your Indian temple, that we actually do want you to build that hospice in town that. Oh, my God. Did you know that my friend has a construction company and I can help connect you guys to me.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: That's where the community actually builds on itself. And that's, I think, maybe been lost through all of this.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. You know, and we deal with a lot of charities and community groups. Right. So we see different things and we. And we always try to kind of stress that. That, you know, we're doing this not because of the social issue in it, we're doing it because of the community issue. So.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: And we're trying to get away. We're trying to decouple them all the time, and I think that's super important. But. But, you know, I. I really look at it and I say to myself, like, before the end of my life, will. There'll be an end date. And the. The end date will be. We'll just say, well, we don't need to do anything more individually with these groups to stimulate, to subsidize, because I think they're now on there. They're now here. They've assimilated question. They're moving forward. And, you know, we don't have any of the. The issues seem to go away, and I think they're almost gone. The interesting thing is I don't. I don't know if I could have said this when I was 40, because I wouldn't have felt the same way, because I felt they still existed, but now getting into my 60s.
[00:33:22] Speaker C: What?
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, I do feel that they are. They're disappearing. And the nice part is they're gonna be eliminated hopefully in the next decade to the point where we won't talk about it anymore. And quite frankly we won't.
We'll be talking about Canadians of a different culture, but we won't be talking about supporting Canadians of a different culture.
So.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Well, you take a look at this example right now. When's the last time you ever heard anybody in business say no, no, no, no, we'll do this. The broads are no good at doing this.
No, if somebody said that now you would.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: No one says that.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: What do you talk, who talks like that? There was an era.
[00:34:07] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: That would be heard that. I mean that era has passed. It's passed to the point where if somebody said that in front of you, you would probably, what the hell? Where did that come from? You don't say that.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: No.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: So in your lifetime, when somebody has one of these issues or a cultural issue bubbles up or we can't support it from the community because we need the government's involvement because it's too large or between here and that point, it seems to me we could work it out right ourselves.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: No, no, we can and we shouldn't. So we should be non tolerant now. So the nice part is where we're at now, we should just say to groups that want to do it, stop.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I would agree.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: So we should, we should really amongst ourselves and create a system where we say stop doing that. We don't want to do that. So if you want it to your point about, you know, if you're going to do it, go back home.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: We should have a really difficult or hard line in the sand where we say stop.
So you can't, you can't self impose an issue or create an issue that you think needs to be addressed.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: We are doing that because now if I say, you know Nick, our producer, he's kind of woke.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: You and I might go, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: We laugh about it kind of.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: It's a pejorative. It's so quickly become a pejorative because woke represents nonsensical.
Woke represents disingenuous pandering. All of these things no humans really want.
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: We really want to be equal. We really want to be cared for by one another. That's really what we want. There can't be a rule put in place to make society behave better than it does by tamping it down and closing its mouth.
I don't think that your dad made and your grandfather made any friends here in Canada by keeping their mouths shut. It was when the community started to welcome them, that they became part of the community, that they started to build this nation that they became leaders, people that we respected, they had offspring.
[00:36:25] Speaker C: They.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: That does amazing things.
All of that you can't write a prescription for. We can remind one another in churches and synagogues and temples to be kind to one another.
[00:36:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: But I don't think that you can underwrite woke style control.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: No, no, I agree with that.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: I agree with that.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: And, you know, but how do you put the. I guess what I'm trying to figure out now as we get to the end and we keep bringing people into Canada, you know, how do we kind of stop groups from now recreating that and because we shouldn't recreate it. We shouldn't let it recreate. We shouldn't.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: Well, it should be viewed as radical.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: If you're going to come and create it, you're.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: You're right.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: You're being radical.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: And therefore you need to be talked. You know, we need to have a serious discussion with you and say stop it.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: A serious discussion.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Assimilate now. Right. You need to come in and you need to be part of the community.
[00:37:22] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Again, we're a melting pot. Keep your own culture, do your own thing. But, you know, like, I use the Italians, you know, quite frankly, a challenging time coming to Canada, given what was going on in the world. But as the need for people and trades existed, we felt, you know, we wanted to come into the community and participate, and we had to make that active.
We really did make that active jump. Whereas we could have went home again. We could not have stayed here. But we said, you know what? We're going to stay here and we're going to fit in. Because what was back home wasn't so great. And so we wanted to stay and we wanted to keep working and grow and create a.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Even if back home was equally wonderful. Your family decided to come here.
You come here and you make the effort here.
[00:38:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: We will open our arms, we will open our doors, we will open our communities. But the reality is you have to make the assimilation.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: To being Canadian.
[00:38:21] Speaker C: Not.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Not leaving your culture behind. Not. None of that. That. This is not any sort of hillbilly reckoning that I'm talking about. This is just come here and be with us.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: And, you know, don't focus on the fact that there's history with another group. Don't spend all your time, you know, sitting at home worrying about something that happened in another country in another decade. Let's get, you know, again, you know, I think what we're finding now is Canadians want to get From A to.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: B, we're trying to survive.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Yeah, we're in a tough time right now.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: So I think we got to kind of reduce the amount of friction we're feeling in that, you know, cultural sense and get on with kind of getting ourselves working.
You know, today's job report came out. You know, I'm just gonna jump into economics from it. But, you know, it went down. It was a bad, bad July.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: How can it go down in a time when we've taken 4 million new Canadians in to fill positions and feed mouths and all of that? I mean, this is, to me what woke did. Woke said, no matter what happens, we're going to save the world.
[00:39:33] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: No, but that doesn't make sense. It's going to have an impact on them. They're going to arrive here to nothing. They're going to arrive here to disappointment.
And that doesn't breed anything healthy. It would have been better to say, okay, we're going to come up with a plan because we want to bring as many people into this country as we can with their cultures in this manner rather than feel, oh, we have to react to woke up.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: You know, sorry, here's another example. Half of Canada is on fire, but we're still the number one environmental leader on earth. Why are we experts on this when we're sending so much air pollution to our lovely neighbors to the south?
[00:40:13] Speaker C: I'm with you.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I'm with you.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: This is where our virtue.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: And we can't, and we can't find people to go fight the fires or cut brush.
Yeah, but we have increased unemployment.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Why do I feel like you and I are going to have a fire? Did we just start a fire? Maybe talk. But this is a problem. You go to have these conversations.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: That mean no harm. They're meant to, you know, reflect people's genuine feelings.
And in a woke culture, that's racist or, you know, that's sexist. No, no, we, we would like everybody to have a good life.
[00:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: We can't do this at each other trying to do that.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: No, no. And if we're going to get from A to B, those people need to actually jump on the train to get to A to B.
So we need them to be, to be going and fight wildfires. We need them to be going and cutting brush. We need them and, you know, sitting and saying that I can't find employment. Sitting and saying that I'm not feeling safe here.
You know, those are all issues. I get it. But quite frankly, we're at that point where we got to be executing and making decisions to move forward as a country with plans that we have in place. And those are all the things that are more important right now.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Thanks for talking to me about this, Nick. Did we beat it to death? What's your opinion? Is everybody. Did we unwake the wake?
[00:41:35] Speaker C: I think you did it.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you so much, Paul. I appreciate it, man.
Please send your comments and woke donations to us. But no matter what, please tell a friend. Subscribe and we'll see you back here. For Paul Micucci, I'm Mike Wixom. Take care.
