Staci England and Scott Nance

00:00 Hi. My name is Staci I am 56 years old, and I live in Crozet, Virginia. Today's date is May 1, and my conversation partner's name is Scott.

00:10 Hi. My name is Scott. I am 66 years old, and I live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today's date is May 1, 2023, and my conversation partner's name is Staci Okay, awesome. So the first question I want to.

00:25 Ask is, what got you guys interested in this program?

00:32 I really enjoyed talking about politics and thinking about politics and big issues. I understood the concept behind the program, and frankly, I'm not sure that it really works. There's this idea that if we just sit down and talk, we'll find that we have more in common than we have differences and on some really important issues. I'm not sure that's true, but I thought the way to find out would be to actually go into a program like this and see if maybe I was wrong.

01:09 So, initially, someone from church asked for volunteers. And similarly, I'm interested in other people's thoughts and philosophies. And because maybe because I work in the public school system, I'm very invested in civility and trying to teach kids the importance of being civil and civil discourse and figuring out how to move forward in positive ways. Awesome. So my last question before I kind of handed it off to you guys is, again, you'll see that you have a copy of what your partner wrote about themselves as an introduction.

01:52 So I'm going to ask each of.

01:53 You to take a moment and read out loud what your partner has written. And once you finish reading that out loud, if there's any immediate question that comes to mind, feel free to ask.

02:02 It, and then we'll kind of move.

02:03 More into those floating memories.

02:06 Okay, this is for Staci I was born in Nevada and grew up in Utah in a small town. I attended the air Force academy for two years prior to becoming a missionary. I've worked in public schools for over 20 years as a science teacher, volleyball coach, and now as a principal. I don't support either political party and usually vote split ticket. I only recently married, but wish I had been able to do so sooner because I always wanted to be a mom. I greatly value diversity and enjoy learning about others. Why did you decide not to stay in the air force? Oh, I'm so sorry. Before you ask the question she's going to ask, and then you can. Oh, okay.

02:46 I'll read your bio, and then I'll answer that. This is Scott. What do you do when you realize that you have benefited enormously from a system that is gravely and perhaps fatally flawed.

02:57 Yeah, it doesn't really tell you much about me, does it?

03:00 I thought she had miscopied and pasted something. Oh, you can interrupt. Okay. So you asked why I left the air force.

03:10 Yeah. Why didn't you decide not to stay with the air force?

03:13 Yeah, sometimes I ask myself that question, too. I always wanted, growing up, I don't know if always, but for many years, wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to serve a mission for my church. And so at the academy, they asked you to go two years at least, before leaving, and then you'd have to reapply to go back in. And I just didn't feel right to reapply, even though it was a formative experience and valuable. And 13 of us left to go on missions and eleven went back. It just wasn't the right path for me, my friends. It wasn't any kind of philosophical, if that's what you're getting at. I don't know.

04:05 I was curious because it's so hard to get into the academy and it's so prestigious that deciding not to go forward actually strikes me as showing a lot of self consciousness and willpower, that it would actually be easier just to keep on the path you were on. So the idea that you started down this path and then said, no, this isn't really, for me, is kind of significant.

04:36 Well, thank you. It was a fantastic education, and it was the first time that I'd ever lived away from home. And to be thrown into an environment that was very different from the way I was raised. And people from all 50 states and even some other countries, it was really fantastic.

05:01 And what was. Can I just ask any questions? I want to. Now, what was the way you were raised? I noticed you said small town, where.

05:09 You know, in the west, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, some people call Mormons, and our town was like half Mormon and half minors. And so growing up, I thought either you were. I mean, this is an overgeneralization, of course, but people who were members of our church or people who hated people from our church, kind of. Although I had friends on both sides, but just. Just to leave a small town and the small town experiences that you have. And because my faith was so important to me, that was. And I went to a place where there weren't very many people of my faith. And which was where? The air force academy.

06:00 Oh, I thought you were talking.

06:01 Where did you go on mission to Uruguay? Yeah.

06:06 Where in Uruguay?

06:09 Several different places. Have you been there? Tell me, where have you been?

06:12 The only place I've been to is Sacramento de Colonia.

06:15 Oh, I never made it there.

06:16 It's pretty. The river from Buenos Aires. It's not that big a deal, but it was really neat.

06:22 I went close for just a day and cobblestone sweet streets everywhere. So I spent time in Durazno, which is the center, and then near Montevideo, and Rocha, which is by Las Palomas.

06:38 I mean, you've got to love any country whose national beef involves french fries, beef and fried eggs.

06:44 That's true. Yeah. No, and great, great, great people. Did you grow up in Charlottesville?

06:51 No, we moved around the south a lot. I was born in Tennessee, but we moved around a lot. I grew up mostly in South Carolina.

07:00 Were you military? Is that what you.

07:02 No, but it was the sixties and my dad kept getting better jobs. So, like, we moved from Tennessee to Alabama to Louisiana to Texas, back to Louisiana, back to Tennessee, Tennessee, and then South Carolina. And I graduated from high school in South Carolina and then came to Charlottesville to go to the university.

07:20 My brother lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

07:24 Yeah, I graduated from high school in Florence, which is over in the eastern part of the state.

07:29 Okay. I know how to get to his house, is all. So why did you write a question as your biography?

07:39 Because I was really trying to sharpen my thoughts about what exactly this is all about. And there is this tension because I have been incredibly fortunate. At the same time, I can not only see the inequities of the current system, I can really wonder, is this sustainable at all? And how do I reconcile all that? And just recently, I read a book that explains why I'm thinking like this. So I actually feel a lot better.

08:16 Yeah. What's the book?

08:18 It's called the weirdest people in the world. I've not heard of it. And the short answer is, the weirdest people in the world are us westerners. That the premise of the book is we think western being northern and western. Europe, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. We think differently from pretty much everybody else in the world in some very basic ways. Like, we tend to be really analytical. Well, there's a great test. You've shown three items, a glove, a hat and a hand, which to go together.

09:01 It could be any. It could be the glove and the hand. It could be the hat, and the glove could be by color.

09:11 See, it's interesting because I would say, well, the hat and glove, because they're both items of clothing you wear to keep warm, which is classic western analytical thinking. To divide things into categories and then to compare them that way while saying glove in hand, you know, well, that's synthetic. That's looking at relationships. So somebody in China would be more likely to say glove and hand. Somebody in Netherlands is probably more likely to say glove and hand, or somebody like me who says glove and hand.

09:42 So when you say system, tell me more about what you mean, because it could be more local, it could be.

09:51 Well, this is at the highest level. Early 21st century century capitalism with a theoretical liberal democracy is the form of politics system. I'm really thinking more about the economic.

10:12 System, although combined with the government system.

10:16 Well, combined with government. But you can't separate that from society. You can't separate that from psychology. So I look at just the way I live, and I live better than anybody in the history of mankind. Statistically, nobody else comes close. But I look at the cost of that system, what it costs to have that sort of lifestyle, and I wonder, I, is this sustainable? Can people keep on living like this? And is this a healthy way to live? I used to think that a lot more when I lived up in McLean and worked in Washington as an attorney. As an attorney. Now that I'm in Charlottesville, the stress level is much, much lower. But I remember I'd be sitting in traffic on my way into work, thinking, this is not good for me. Like, this isn't good for me physically. And then I multiply that by 330 million people in the US, and I ask myself, is this really the healthiest system for people?

11:30 Yeah.

11:32 If you don't mind me jumping in.

11:33 I'm gonna go ahead and move forward.

11:36 So now we're gonna head into part.

11:38 Two, sort of looking at the formative memories.

11:41 So if you guys don't mind going.

11:43 Ahead and asking each other those questions. Scott, who's been the most influential person in your life, and what did they teach you?

11:51 It's obvious it'd have to be my parents, especially my father. Hard work, that if you want to accomplish anything, you've got to work hard and don't be a jerk. And it's perfectly fine to be interested in things that other people aren't interested in. Both my parents gave my sister and me freedom is the wrong word. They always seemed to assume that we were smart enough to figure stuff out on our own. Like, the only piece of advice my dad gave me about college was, well, would prefer that you didn't go to a school in California, because California is a long way away. Other than that, it was completely up to me to where I wanted to go. Then I was talking to him about what I wanted to study, and he said, you should study international relations because that's what you're really interested in. So that sort of experience, the idea that I was completely free, empowering you, empower you. I could do anything I wanted to, but I had to realize I was going to have to work hard at it if I wanted to accomplish anything. And it wasn't sort of an external thing like anybody was judging you. It's just like, you work hard because it's how you empower yourself. It's an expression of your identity. If you're going to do something, you might as well go ahead and do it, you know? And that didn't necessarily mean, oh, you've got to work 100 hours a week, although I've done that. And it's really, really unhealthy, you know, but more the idea that you can't expect to accomplish anything unless you work at it, you know? And that's not just job, it's family and friends and church and every other interest you have. Yeah, you can sit around watching tv all day, but you're probably not going to find that very satisfying. Who's the most influential person in your life?

14:08 Same. It would be my parents, but mostly my mom, I would say. She was raised in a farm family in southern Colorado, and she described it as they were the poor ones who got hand me downs from other people in your community. And so she also taught me how to work really hard. My dad did, too. My mom was a teacher and a collector of sayings. And her life's motto is always living is giving. The importance of giving back, helping other people. But she also said things like, get over it or die with it on your mind when you were mad about something or whatever. But yeah, I would say her and teaching me a lot of important things, as you've described. Can you recall your earliest memory of politics? Oh, both of them, yeah. My earliest memory of politics is my dad running for school board, and he was elected. And I thought that was weird because I didn't think he knew anything about schools.

15:39 How old were you?

15:41 I think I was probably in the 6th grade, something like that. And he was on the school board for one term, and I, and maybe as early or about that time, I remember asking who they voted for, since I was aware about voting. And my mom and dad always said I voted for the winner. They would never say which way they were voting. How about you?

16:11 The presidential election of 1964. I just. I knew there was an election going on. I knew it was Johnson and Goldwater. I knew Johnson was going to win. I knew that Goldwaters had this. Goldwater had this commercial that was really controversial at the time. If you had asked me what their positions were, I don't know that I would have been able to tell you. I would have said, well, Johnson's a Democrat and Goldwater's a Republican. That's probably about as much as I knew.

16:42 And how old were you? You were seven.

16:48 And then the 68 election I actually paid really close attention to all through the conventions and everything. I thought it was fascinating.

16:57 You have been interested in politics your whole life.

17:01 When I was eleven, I wrote an essay about why there was a revolution in France. Not for school. I was just interested in it and wanted to get my thoughts down. Had no idea what I was talking about, but it was fun.

17:13 Do you still have it?

17:15 I think my mom does. I think I actually saw it somewhere in their house. I remember what I wrote and my reasoning was wrong, but the idea that I thought this was a fun way to pass the time by thinking about this and trying to explain it. And that was all because I'd read a comic book about the french revolution. So I thought I understood french history. I've always had an exaggerated sense of my own capabilities.

17:46 Let us go to the next one. So could you briefly describe in your own words, your personal political beliefs?

17:56 Work hard and take care of each other if you had to categorize me. I've taken a test and it says, I'm a left libertarian. I've described myself as a right socialist revolutionary, which doesn't mean anything to most people. I believe very strongly in personal autonomy, that people ought to have the right to live like they want to, that people have the right to do things that I have no interest in doing. People have the right to do things that I personally find disgusting. Some people like liver, but they have the right to do that. At the same time. Again, if you want to accomplish anything, you've got to work hard. And then finally, in greek mythology, the most powerful guide was not Zeus, it was Tyche. It was luck. Luck has such a huge impact on our lives, and it's really easy to think that we're successful because we're good people who accomplished all these things without realizing all the advantages. We had to look at other people and say, oh, they're worthless. Without understanding what they've gone through. So I don't know if that really answers the question that doesn't sound like much of a political explanation. Oh, and, well, democracy. Everybody's got a right to have their own voice. And how about you?

19:33 I describe myself as an independent, and I feel like I'm pretty moderate in most things. Some things conservative, some things more liberal. I also. I talk about agency and accountability being really important. I think they have to go together. Somebody should have choice, and we all should be held accountable for our choices.

20:03 Well, my son actually had an insight into me. I told him I'm very liberal socially. I said, for somebody who's as socially liberal as I am, I'm amazingly Methodist in my personal conduct. And his response was, dad, you're a Calvinist. And I realized that he's right. He's right. You know, that other people have the right to live however they want to, but I choose to live in a very specific way.

20:36 They used to say that my rights end at the beginning of your nose.

20:41 And that's pretty much what it is. Again, you have the right to do pretty much anything as long as it doesn't keep me from doing things. I may disagree, I may not understand, but I don't have the right to say, no, you can't do that. And I can give you all sorts of examples, but I suspect you can. Some of those are.

21:05 Yeah, I had a question for you, Staci You said you were pretty moderate in, like, most things, but there were some things that you were more liberal and others more conservative.

21:17 Do you have some examples of where.

21:20 You differed on certain issues in regards to liberal and conservative? I would say I feel like in some ways, I'm fiscally conservative. I think that we should use taxpayers money wisely. And at the same time, I feel like we need a better safety net in our society. I think that we victimize or we scapegoat. Scapegoat's a better word. Yeah. Thanks, people. I just. I was telling Ony I went to graduation, and one of the quotes that somebody used was something like, we all warm ourselves at fires that we didn't make and something, you know, else, like, we. We all benefit. We've all benefited from people who've gone before us, and some of us more privileged than others. And I think that sometimes we say we're a meritocracy, and I think in some ways we are. I think hard work matters. And yet there are some people who just. They. Like. I see families who work. I feel like I work really hard. But there are some parents who work way. They even work more hours than I do, and they're not getting ahead. So I think the social supports and the social networks and just help that, that we should give to people and like, I don't know. I don't know all of the best policy. I hope you figure it out.

23:03 But, yes, see, that's the heck of it. We do know the best policy.

23:07 I don't know.

23:08 We've got examples for this. We just refuse to look at them because they're in other countries and we won't apply them for a uniquely american reason.

23:24 Well, I mean, tell me what you think the uniquely american reason is. But I think the wealthier the wealthy get wealthier all the.

23:34 That's the uniquely american reason. Race.

23:37 I think that's part of it. I think wealth is also an important.

23:42 Aspect, but the two actually tied together, wealth.

23:47 Agree. I'm reading a book, the great Migration, that I'm finishing up, and you know.

23:55 Well, and you're right, I lived for a while in Netherlands, and Netherlands actually has really high wealth inequality in that for a fairly small country, there's some really, really rich people. But university is free, so even if you're from a poor family, you can still go to university and get an education and move up in the US. Increasingly, that's just about impossible. And that's a big change from when I was growing up and probably from when you were growing up. Could go to UVA out of state and pay for it, working summer and Christmas. My sister went to Clemson, which was in state, and I used to joke, she paid for Clemson with the chain she found under the cushions of the.

24:51 Couch now, and there are pockets, like Texas, if you graduate with a certain GPA, you can go to any of.

25:00 The state schools that you can get into.

25:06 I could have misread, but, you know, they're pockets of things, but. And the issues are complex. I don't know that we have the answers because kids, the math they're taking in fifth grade often determines whether they go to college or not. Like fifth grade. That's not fair. And the. And Uruguay had a system wherever you could go to college, if you could get in. But there are barriers that are some invisible and some visible, and I don't know if that happens in the Netherlands.

25:40 Or not, but there are barriers everywhere.

25:43 But our race issues are definitely race.

25:47 I won't say race determines everything, but race permeates everything, and that has all sorts of knock on effects in ways we don't even think about. You know, like, does the United States have the same attitude towards guns? If we weren't so worried about slave rebellions.

26:15 I would have to take more time to think about that and consider that. But I, you know, I, until I'd say five, six years ago, I never really thought about my race. Like, it didn't play a big part in my life. And that's a privilege that I have, that not everybody has. I always, I had to consider being a woman and walking outside and was I going to be safe or was it. And you've never had to. So there are different privileges that we have. Oh, we're totally getting off the topic now.

26:46 No, I think this is the topic. I had exactly the opposite experience from you. Race was always something I thought about because I grew up in the south, the high school I graduated from.

27:02 I'm not saying I didn't think about race, but, like, how much of my identity was me thinking about being white?

27:08 And whiteness, see, and that's the difference between growing up in Utah and growing up in South Carolina. Could be that growing up in South Carolina, being white is a huge part of your identity. At least it was.

27:22 In what way?

27:24 Well, because there's black and there's white, and that determines almost everything. That is the big divide.

27:37 And did your whiteness, like, we, we had Chicanos and navajos and one black family in my town. So I thought about it in those ways, but I didn't think about, like I'm saying, when I, when I decided, you know, what I was going to do at night, I had to consider, am I going to be safe? Partly because I'm a woman. And I didn't, I didn't consider, I'm white. So do I have to do this x, y or z? Whereas friends I have, who are, you know, black or brown, or they consider that in some of their decisions. Like, I consider my being a woman, my female.

28:21 See, and being a white male, I never had to worry about any of that, and I was fully aware of that.

28:29 So it's just, and that's a privilege that I carry that I didn't earn in any kind of way. And it's a systematic problem. And I. So those kinds of complexities, I don't know. Like, I think about it all the time now. How do we help the next generation? I'm not saying give up on now, but if we can, maybe I can share an example. So title Ix played a big part in my life when I was an athlete in school. And we had, in my high school, we had the girls gym and the main gym. And until I was a junior in high school, we never got to play any games in the main gym, and the girls gym had a rubber floor, and it was smaller, and it was just a concrete block. And so because my coach pushed it, and this is in the eighties, title ix, we got to play our games in the big gym. And then the next year, we got to actually practice playing the big gym, and the girls gym stopped being called the girls gym because the boys now had to use it. So that's my experience, and in some small way, that's how I've experienced the lack of privilege, and I don't. And I bring that up because now, girls, that would be a foreign experience to them. They do not have that experience in what I've seen, because in part, title ix and in part, their dads have done more coaching, and so they've seen the inequities, and they've helped stop them. So how can we do that sort of thing for other inequities that we experience in our culture?

30:18 Title ix is a great point because we're only ten years apart. But when I was in high school, there, girls had basketball, track, and field. Intense. I think those were the only three sports girls had. Title ix changed not just the legal framework, but it changed the culture.

30:39 That's what I'm saying.

30:40 It became acceptable for girls to be athletes. And now when I walk around grounds, I tend to see more women running than men, and that's great. So your question, how do we do this? My short answer, we die. That her generation, I think, actually has much better attitudes than mine does.

31:09 Oh, for sure.

31:10 And I've talked to a friend of mine who's 20 years older than me, and we sort of agreed. The question is, are we going to blow things up before we die and they can take over?

31:22 But I don't think we can leave it at that. I mean, the founding fathers, from what I understand, some of them said slavery will just go away if we give it enough time. And this many years later. And the inequities, I'm not saying, you know, I'm no expert on any of this, but we have to actively work towards good. If we just passively die, I don't think it's gonna.

31:55 Well, no, that's my point. It's not passively die. It's we have to keep other people from blowing the system up before Ony and her friends can take over that there are people who have attitudes that, frankly, leave me aghast. I can't believe people say the things they do. And, you know, when I saw the pictures of the Wright rally, you know, carrying torches through grounds. I just, I almost couldn't process it. It was so far outside of my experience.

32:39 So I want to cut in and pose this question to you guys. Have you ever felt misunderstood by people with different beliefs in you?

32:47 And in the reverse, have you ever.

32:50 Felt troubled by people with the same beliefs as you?

32:53 Can I start on that one?

32:55 Yeah, please.

32:56 I do. And from what I read, and I'm going to be clear, the MAga make America great again. The american right wing hate me more than anybody. They hate me because I'm an expert. And I'm thinking, wait. I thought I did everything I was supposed to do. I studied hard in school. I worked hard in my profession. I raised my family. I did everything I was supposed to do. Why do you hate me so much? And a lot of it is this idea that, well, we disrespect them, but that's ridiculous because look at where my family's from. We didn't have any money. I don't disrespect these people. And I'm just, I'm confused why. And hate is, I think, the right word, that they hate people like me, and I just don't get what it is. I want, you know, I want people to have healthcare and an education. What's so terrible about that? I don't want to tell anybody else what to do. I think we need to do something about guns. But I'm not saying go out and pry them out of people's cold, dead fingers. So how about you, Stacy? Do you ever feel like people misunderstand you?

34:32 Yeah, all the time. A parent yelled at me today. But the biggest one is people telling me I'm going to hell for my religious beliefs. That has.

34:45 Who tells you that?

34:47 You know, not openly now, but in college, openly. People did.

34:54 These evangelicals?

34:57 Yeah. And.

35:01 So they're not.

35:02 Or pre judging.

35:03 It's just they're not familiar with that verse about judge not lest ye be judged.

35:09 Yeah. And that's easy for me to, you know, push that back at them. But that gets us nowhere either, so. And I would also say, you know, family members of mine who were Trump supporters or are Trump supporters, I have no idea how they can. There are a million and one reasons that they are wrong.

35:35 But see, that's one thing that probably says a lot about my biography. Both of my parents were born in small towns in northwest Georgia in the 1930s, and both of them voted for Barack Obama twice. So we had, I had sort of a different experience growing up, you know, not like they're super liberal or anything. My dad's like you. He says he's an independent, except he always votes for Democrats. And it's been interesting seeing them get more and more liberal as they've gotten to the point where now they're basically as liberal as I am, which I find very encouraging because I really respect their judgments. So if I agree with them, I'm probably right.

36:26 Yeah. It's challenging when there's someone you love who you just think is so.

36:31 Yeah. But, you know, my oldest, my mom's older sister, who I adore, is like that. She'll say these things about immigration or welfare or food stamps. And I try to explain to her factually, you just, you're wrong. This just isn't true. And then I realized there was nothing I could say that could change her mind because she wasn't operating on the basis of facts. She was operating on the basis of emotion. And it's the classic thing. The people at the top have convinced the people on the second rung of the ladder that the real problem is the people at the bottom who are pulling them down rather than the people at the top pushing them down. That's exactly what it is. And we didn't realize how strong, how rewarding an emotion outrage is. Outrage gives you the same sort of dopamine jolt that looking at a beautiful sunset does. And I think people like my Ann have gotten sort of addicted to being outraged.

37:49 That would be tough.

37:50 So does that sound familiar with your relatives?

37:56 I don't know. I don't think so. I think some are actually misguided and they think they always have to vote Republican no matter what. And I think some. I don't know. I don't think outrage is the thing. I just, like I said, I don't understand.

38:17 And.

38:19 They just. I don't know. I don't know. Like, in a recent election, somebody voted for a candidate because they were a good business person. And even though they said all these lies about public school system and they know that I work in the schools.

38:46 And even though government is nothing like business.

38:51 Yeah, but it's, it's, you know, there are clear studies that even if you show me facts that go against my strongly held belief, I'm not going to change if that's what I think.

39:07 So actually, the research shows the opposite, that if I show you facts that contradict your beliefs, you're likely to hold your beliefs more firmly.

39:16 That's what I'm saying. Saying. So I think facts or research or experts don't change opinions. I think, you know, an abundance of love. You gotta show them that you care about them. Listen, and perhaps, I mean, just try and show a better way to people. But outrage is a strong emotion, and if people feel heard, that's hopefully even more powerful.

39:45 Well, and I think that's part of it. And I have a friend who was very high up in the State Department. So we're talking about the heart of the establishment, and we were talking about this idea that a lot of the MAGA people feel like we disrespect them. And I told him the reality is worse. It's not that we disrespect is that we don't think about them at all. They just don't enter into any of our considerations. And I think they sense that and they're angry. And it's like they're grabbing us and shaking us, trying to get us to pay attention while at the same time not being able to explain exactly what it is they want, except some vision of 1950s America that never actually existed. And that really wasn't that great a place if you were a woman or black or gay or anything except a straight white male.

40:52 So I think if they feel disempowered, then they have a right to be angry. It's just a different kind of disempowerment.

41:03 Yeah, but then why did they go.

41:04 Our system's got to get better.

41:06 Why did they go right instead of left?

41:08 I don't know. I don't know. So I'm going to cut in. We're getting close to the 40 minutes mark, so I'm going to lead us into the last little part and basically ask you guys if, you know, is there anything about each other's beliefs that you don't agree with? And what do you think was the most important thing that you've learned from each other?

41:31 I suspect if we went through issue by issue, we might find something that we disagree about, but I suspect it's going to be more a matter of degree rather than absolute. Yeah, we might disagree on whether the optimal corporate tax rate is 40% or 30%, but so far we have identified a lot of disagreement.

42:00 I don't. I think I disagree with you, and maybe I didn't understand you that I think you said the MAGA people are most angry. Their anger is directed most at people like you. I'm not. I don't. I don't agree with that. I don't know. I. Yeah, I think there's.

42:23 Who are they angry at?

42:25 I think well, perhaps it's you. I think they're angry at wealthy liberals.

42:32 Why?

42:33 I don't know.

42:35 I think they're seeing by a lot of standards on the wealthy liberal.

42:39 Well, and the other thing is the MAGA group is probably very diverse. I think if we talk about them as one block. But I think the far right, it's not white men they're most angry at. I don't think from what I've read.

42:57 And what I've heard, yes, I was, based on what I've read that these articles saying they have this visceral dislike for people they see as experts, which certainly include lawyers, that's the one that just puzzles me.

43:15 I'm not saying that they don't dis, I think that they do dislike experts. I'm just saying that that's probably not where most of their hatred is directed. So that's one thing I know most.

43:30 Of their anger is directed at George Soros.

43:35 When I read your biography, I did not picture a guy in your demographic.

43:42 What did you picture?

43:44 I pictured somebody who, I did not picture someone in their sixties, a white male in their sixties. I pictured somebody like maybe in their thirties of color. That's what I thought.

44:00 Now this system has been incredible for me. It's like custom designed to benefit me.

44:07 The political, socioeconomic.

44:10 Political, socioeconomic, the whole bit.

44:13 Yeah, I totally agree with you there.

44:15 Yeah. Now the point I do like to make to people is, yes, the system, I was talking to my dad about this, and he had watched the movie hillbilly Ellis on Netflix, and he says, is it really true? Are you really going to get a job at a prestigious law firm because your father was a judge? And I said, no, that's not the way the system works at that level. You have to have gone to a top law school and you have to have been at the top of your class. And if your dad's a judge, that certainly doesn't hurt. But all of this requires a huge amount of work. The rich people I know work all the time. Yes. So I think that's the sort of.

45:08 One, and I would say the poor people I know work all the time.

45:12 Well, Americans work all the time. So on the one hand, the system has benefited me enormously. On the other hand, my wife and I both worked really hard for a long, long time. So you've always, you've got to keep that in mind, I think, you know. So it's not like I'm sitting here going, wow, I didn't do anything. The system just put me up here.

45:40 Sure. And I'm not saying that that happened.

45:42 But it's easy to gloss over into that. And I think it's also easy. And my dad talks about this, you know, people will be telling him, nobody ever gave me anything. I worked for everything I've got. My dad's thinking, wait, your parents paid for your college? You know that there is this idea that if people have achieved a certain amount of success, it's all. They did it without looking at everything that went into making that success possible.

46:13 Yeah. I think that goes back to the saying that I can't remember that we all warm our hands at campfires that we didn't make and we eat food that we didn't prepare, something like that.