Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Loose Lips Sink Democracy: The OPSEC Disaster in Trump's Cabinet
Two military veterans with extensive security clearance experience take you inside the shocking reality of the recent classified information leak over Signal. What makes this breach particularly disturbing isn't just what was shared, but how fundamentally it violates core security principles that every cleared professional understands.
Adam and Dick break down the critical difference between commercial encryption apps and actual classified systems: "In classified systems, we own both ends and the pipe that connects them. With Signal, you don't own either can or the string." They share personal experiences where even minor classification errors resulted in confiscated equipment and extensive investigations, highlighting the severity of sharing operational details about Israeli strikes through unclassified channels.
The conversation captures a disturbing irony - Pete Hegseth stood in the Oval Office claiming "we're clean on OPSEC" just before his security breach became public. The hosts examine how administration officials have created confusion through contradictory messaging about whether the information was classified rather than addressing the fundamental security violations.
Beyond the data spill, the podcast explores the challenging landscape for Democratic organizing and strategic resistance. They discuss the tension between youth energy and experienced activism, using the powerful metaphor of transforming "thrust into vector" - channeling generalized frustration into focused, effective action. Unlike the Heritage Foundation's multi-decade strategy, progressive movements often lack sustained, coordinated long-term planning.
Ready to move beyond frustration to action? The hosts provide concrete suggestions for getting involved locally while emphasizing that effective resistance requires marathon-like commitment through the next two years. As one host powerfully notes, "The freedoms we fought for can disappear with one simple statute change." This episode combines national security expertise with a plea for principled, sustained civic engagement.
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face. This is the Pikes Peak Region's Veterans Podcast. We talk about political things from the federal level all the way down to the local level. My name is Adam Gillard, your co-host here with Dick Wilkinson. How are you doing, Dick?
Speaker 2:Good morning Adam and our listeners. I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:Man. It is a non-stop rotating ideas of conversations for this show right now. We just sat down and had a 20-minute conversation with like 100 topics. Uh, there's just so many things going on. Right now, the first three-hour episode yeah, right um, I think let's just stay right on the uh. What we're just talking about with uh. Everybody knows by now that that this data spill classified information being passed out over Signal like an active strike. He gave times, dates, equipment.
Speaker 2:Explicit details.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was everything in the classification guide that you're not supposed to put out over these systems. Yes, and he put it out over these systems.
Speaker 2:And then, even if those details are all disparate, and then you aggregate them right. There's that aggregation concept, right Of like, even if each sentence itself is not classified when you say all five of them in a row that becomes classified Right, and so that's kind of what got Hillary in trouble with her server.
Speaker 1:That was the classified information. It was aggregating it together and consolidating it and putting it together.
Speaker 2:This was straight up. Like you don't need to aggregate this. Yeah, this is mission details.
Speaker 1:Man and we were just talking about where I was just kind of mentioning this is why it's important to have people that understand more than just the superficial aspects of our military and what the word encryption means and things like that. But, like, when we encrypt data, it goes across, it goes through. You know different. You know encryption devices.
Speaker 2:We have.
Speaker 1:We have our own lines. Things like that Signal is not a safe, a safe place to be sending that data.
Speaker 2:It's not. And you know we say it's got end-to-end encryption and it's got high-quality encryption. Okay, that's great. But the system breaks down when, as I had mentioned, the concept of most classified communication protocols is that you own the device, meaning the handset, the cell phone or the landline that's on the desk, and then the people on the other end are also cleared and own that special equipment as well. Now you got equipment on both ends. Think of those as the cans on the string from the old you know old timey phone line and then the string in the middle. We own that as well for classified systems. So we own both ends and the pipe that they talk on signal works on any device in the world and goes over classic internet and unclassified you know uncontrolled means to get from here to there. Yeah, so you don't own either can or the string in this situation and you're taking the word of an open source project that says but it's airtight, brother, and I want to say like I can't believe it, right, but then I find out that there's other sectors of government and other parts of the government that have I don't want to go as far as saying authorized use, but said consider it, and that scares the hell out of me.
Speaker 2:Now not for classified conversations, but for government conversations that need to be transmitted with an extra layer of security. And that's really what they're trying to say is don't talk about. Even like Pete Hicks says, just travel itinerary should be classified. That would be something that maybe, if it wasn't classified or you had to talk about one staffer to another, hey, we changed the plan, we're not going to get there till five o'clock, we were going to be there at two o'clock, we were going to be there two o'clock. Like that little detail that sounds like what signal maybe should be for, yeah, is that live moment to moment, not classified, but sensitive movement, right, that kind of stuff. Yeah, not warheads right?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, it's just so crazy. You know, working in the in the classified world for so long, you know I had my SEI for a very long time and there was leaks and spills and things would happen. And it's funny to hear the White House has spent on this where they're like well, the SEC def says it's not classified. Yeah, he can say that. He can 100% say that because he's the classified authority yeah it doesn't mean it's right.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean that's the proper protocol, yes, so like, yes, it's the legal authority to break protocol, right, but then we've got to still admit that protocol was broken, right yeah.
Speaker 1:There was one time we were working in a mission and there was a four star general. He identified the location, like to the news, and it was a classified location and all of a sudden that became unclassified because you know it's like. Well, there it is yeah, it's out there yes, it is unclassified now, but it should not have ever been.
Speaker 2:And having a reporter on the chain that is just so inept of them why I mean if the Atlantic as a publication and this reporter as a person are just public enemy number one to Donald Trump?
Speaker 1:why?
Speaker 2:would anybody in his staff have that dude's contact information? Like if you got it from somebody and they're like, if you ever need so-and-so's contact info, here it is. You're like, I will never need to talk to that guy.
Speaker 1:At least the Watergate scandal took effort. They had to figure things out and actually investigate this journalism. This guy just handed this on the platter. He was like here's a scandal for you.
Speaker 2:The Daily Show did a joke on that. They did a skit where there was these two reporters that were supposed to go out and, you know, gumshoot their way through the case. And then the one guy he gets a blip on his phone. He's like, oh, oh, no, don't worry about it. And she's like, well, no. Then one of their sources in a trench coat comes in and he tells them some detail and he's like, yeah, I already knew that.
Speaker 1:And then he reads the whole thing to them. I already knew that.
Speaker 2:It was actually pretty funny. That proves the point, and I mean the people who have made these mistakes, which is a whole other ripple in this raisin is the way that there's no. Get your story straight, you know. Get coherent. You all could have an 18 person deep text message chain with each other, but you can't do one-to-one calls and be like, hey, what are you going to say when you go on tv later? You know so they're all like it's classified, it's not classified. It happened, it didn't happen text message, not a text message.
Speaker 2:War plan, not a war plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh. Yeah, and that's just their plan is to get into the weeds of, like, the semantics of it all split the hairs all the way down until it doesn't matter, right?
Speaker 2:if you just get frustrated, like, okay, that's never mind, yeah, never mind, that's it For sure. And man, I used to be a Tulsi Gabbard fan and I was still a Tulsi Gabbard fan after she became a Republican. I said, all right, maybe she's kind of like me, maybe she can play both sides of the fence and say something useful in both rooms and bring value. I think she can bring value to almost anything she does. Right?
Speaker 2:That's what I wanted to believe until like a year ago, right, and then, ever since then, it's just she, just. I guess once you get into Trump's orbit you realize you're, you know you can't get out of it, basically right, and so assimilate. Or why did you even come here? You know so Well, so what?
Speaker 1:repercussions can there be right now for folks like her, even Hegseth himself, that perjured themselves, you know, in front of Congress you know they can't say that there's no classified when the National Security Councils came out and said there was, you know, so like they immediately contradict themselves. And you know, under all the perjury of themselves, what kind of consequences can there be if we're people in those roles Cause they're not getting fired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think there's going to be anything. You know and this was I saw a guy on the soon as the news broke he was on LinkedIn. He's like oh, is going to happen, and that's going to happen. And here's all the rules that were broken. And I just said, man, nobody's getting in trouble over this, you know because it was one.
Speaker 2:It's too many and this is one of those. Like there was like 10 cabinet members in it. You know, right, there are 18 people on the chain. Like 10 of them were the most senior people in the government, right, and so you can't fire them all. You're not going to scapegoat one of them.
Speaker 2:If that was going to happen, it would have happened within the first like two hours. They would have been like this guy under the bus, here he comes. It's too early in the game If anybody had any other. Here's the thing if this happened, like six months from now, somebody on that chain would have been on the bad graces of Donald Trump, so they would have had a wrong little rub last week. They would have said something in the news that he didn't like. They would have said I don't think this plan is working, or something, and that would have been off with their head kind of situation right, but it's so early in the game right now that nobody's in a position of being like with the dunce cap on right, and so, because they don't have the dunce cap on, it wasn't clear, cut right. But if there was anybody that was in a spot, that could have been standing on the ledge scapegoat Right there, bam. But because there is no scapegoat, it's like the plan.
Speaker 2:That's what's leading to this incoherent messaging where each person is trying to cover their own assets but then, at the same time, acknowledge that it happened and then just blow smokescreen about well, it's classified, not classified, authorized. And then just blow smokescreen about well, it's classified, not classified. You know, authorized, not authorized. This was on my phone when I got it, when I became the CIA director. Okay, bro, your job is to decide if that's a good idea or not. That's literally your job. You authorize or unauthorize the use of communication channels. That is on you. You can't say the last director gave me a phone with this thing on it, or the staffers that were here after that person left said this is how we've been doing business.
Speaker 1:That doesn't matter. You're the director. That just goes to show they're unqualified for it.
Speaker 2:It does yeah.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I want to point out that's kind of comical about the situation is the day before Hegseth was in the Oval Office talking about how we used to be an embarrassment, but no longer.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then it comes out that he's doing this shit and just blabbing ourselves.
Speaker 2:We're clean on OPSEC yeah, we're clean on OPSEC. Yeah, what an ironic, just beautiful irony right Like poetry couldn't be written more elegantly.
Speaker 1:What Pete Hexeth?
Speaker 2:said to the journalist in the classified, unclassified, open source chat we're clean on OPSEC. I mean, jokes write themselves sometimes right.
Speaker 1:One thing that bugged me about that meeting in the Oval Office is that he had a flag as his pocket handkerchief thing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he's got those veteran squares, pocket squares, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm pretty sure Title 10 of the flag code says don't do stupid shit like that. Don't wear the flag as an accoutrement. Oh, as clothing yeah as clothing and as a.
Speaker 2:Maybe I don't know. I mean, I didn't notice it, so it didn't catch my eye. Yeah, at first I thought he was wearing his military ribbon, that's why I had to zoom in. I was like no way is he wearing military ribbons in New England but I wouldn't put that past him either.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so yeah, I don't know, it was just the dude got drunk that night. I guarantee you. I guarantee you he got drunk that night. That's a whole other story right there.
Speaker 2:When I very first saw the story, before the real weight of it had become exposed, my comment on it was the text messages were you know, especially with the emojis and the different things. I was like man, this sounds just like literally like people putting together a frat party. You know it's Saturday at 11 am and you're? I was like man, this sounds just like literally like people putting together a frat party.
Speaker 1:It's Saturday at 11 am and you're like hey man?
Speaker 2:whose place are we having it at?
Speaker 1:Who's getting beer? Who's getting the girls?
Speaker 2:Who's getting the pizza, and like, who are we going to invite? And then they're just hitting each other up with emojis like score picture of the keg, fist, pump the american flag, you know. So that's that's what it felt like to me, right?
Speaker 1:that's what the conversation felt like, and actually that's fine if that's how the staff communicates, but if they do that in classified channels, right, we were going on a mission somewhere and the location was classified, and somebody accidentally leaked, uh like a mwr mission, that we were going on and that was enough to to like locate where we were going to be sure. And so, uh, all of our computers got confiscated oh, yeah, like yeah that's how serious this stuff is.
Speaker 1:Like we start talking about times and locations and like where our troops are going to be, like that all of our like hundreds of computers got confiscated just to make sure that everything got wiped clean, and things like that. These types of errors need to have some repercussions.
Speaker 2:Data spill. I've been through the same thing. Where it's usually it was something that should have been fully top secret ends up on zipper. That happened a lot. So, you're still in a classified channel, but you got a lot of people in zipper that are not authorized to see the other stuff. So when I was deployed in afghanistan seemed like that happened three or four times when there was a pretty big you know like oh no, well, I wasn't.
Speaker 2:I was involved in that I received. I was the first person to report one time that I had received something that I was like. This is for sure. Yeah, not supposed to be on this network, right, and so, as I did, you do when you follow the procedure, that is basically pencils down right, don't touch anything leave the room, you know, and go get someone and say like I'm not going to delete, I'm not going to forward, I'm not going to take any more action.
Speaker 2:Now that I've seen this thing, yeah, I'm not going to touch it anymore. And then you freeze my account and like I won't use it for the next few days until somebody does what they're supposed to do, and then I'll get my account back, right, and so I did that, right. And then the guy who sent it to me, he was out, further deployed, you know, I was at the headquarters, he was a little further down range and, uh, I wasn't really able to communicate with him quickly and easily, right, and I worked at night, so it was like I had no idea how to get in touch with him at 2 am. So I just walked down the hall to the, where you probably would have worked, right, and said, hey, uh, I got.
Speaker 2:You know, it's number four for this deployment. Here it comes, you know, come down the hall and come, look at this. Right it it was. It ended up not being a big deal, right, and I think in the end it was still considered a spill, but I was the only account that it had gotten to Right and so it was easy to fix. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, that was just one email with something that was from one classification to another, still classified level in the slightly wrong spot, yeah Right, and that still required multiple people to get involved in like four days of checking stuff before I got my account back.
Speaker 1:When there's a CMI classified messages and we take your hard drive out and we actually wipe it, like for like four days, like send it through the system that just goes through and looks for keywords and key things and things like that and just keep deliterating the data that's in there. Yeah, so it takes days to like wipe hard drives, but these guys have it on their iphones.
Speaker 2:Yes, another level of detail that with 18 people, you don't know the mixture of personal phone versus government handset. Right, that was still an unclassified government handset, but the the real problem there is that all of these people have a staff that carry around classified. They're super cell phones. That's the thing.
Speaker 1:Secret cell phones are the thing.
Speaker 2:And there's someone that follows them around all day long with a secret cell phone in their bag or their pocket.
Speaker 1:for this reason, yes, and we do exercises for these reasons to make sure those comms work for all the right reasons For this exact reason. And it works. But this is one of those things that came out of the Project 2025 handbook where it says use third-party apps to avoid subpoenas and to avoid being tracked and things like that.
Speaker 2:And the policy that everyone has acknowledged and that's the weird thing is, some things are getting just acknowledged wholesale and then other things are getting shoved under the carpet. But the policy that has been acknowledged pretty regularly is well, if you have official messages and official communication that needs to be under some kind of inspection of records act, right then you have to take that whole email train. You're supposed to take screenshots of it and unclasp, email it to yourself so that you can get it into a government system, so that if someone comes to say, hey, show me these communications, they can just check your inbox. Or you know the history of your deleted messages in your inbox. And even if you just email it to yourself and then delete it, you've now gotten it into the record right and that's a requirement.
Speaker 2:If you find yourself basically in extenuating circumstances where you can't use government channels, then you can do this and then copy it over Nobody does that, nobody would do that. And, of course, if you create a situation where it's authorized for use anyway, then people are just going to say well, then this is, this is the record, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're not going to comprehend that they need to follow that rule.
Speaker 1:And then what staffer?
Speaker 2:are you gonna hand it to me like here? Do this like every day are you gonna do that, so it's a broken system, but that you know it's absolutely. There is the intention of well, check my emails. There's nothing in there, right? Yeah, for a reason.
Speaker 1:You know these other apps we saw it after the how the Secret Service deleted all their messages after January 6th. Ooh, you know like there's no repercussions from that either. And those are all supposed to be after how the Secret Service deleted all their messages after January 6th too. There's no repercussions from that either. Those are all supposed to be permanent records. They're just like. We don't have them. What are you going to do?
Speaker 2:It's called a retention policy for all you non-tech people out there. When are you allowed to delete things, or what information do you have to keep forever? Doge has reset all the retention policies in the government too. You know one day.
Speaker 1:Basically, if we decide we want to delete it, then it's fine, yeah yeah, which is scary because, yeah, they're definitely got rid of all the the other watchdog groups too, so it's oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then somebody said, well, they were talking to Trump in the Oval Office and they said do you think the Inspector General for the DOD should investigate this? And he was like, oh yeah, sure. And I just thought to myself there's not one, he fired them all. If he's going to go handpick some dude that works at his golf club to come and be the IG at the DOD.
Speaker 2:That's how an IG is going to come and do this right, the guy who's in charge of Mar-a-Lago, making sure the grass gets cut and the meals get served on time he's going to become the IG over at the DOD.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whoever lied on his scorecard that won him that championship, he's going to be pretty big in the government pretty soon. That's it. So yeah, bring in all the IGs you want you know, because I'm going to handpick them and just they're going to sit in there playing you know Rubik's cubes all day, until somebody's going to write a report about nothing. So to bring the national stuff down to our level here. This Friday we have Steve Bannon coming to town Going to be up at the music Phil Long Music Hall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so he's going to be up at the music Phil Long Music I always say yeah, so going to be up there, there's going to be protesters obviously. I think they've planned some things for like over at Bass Pro and kind of send some folks over that way just to kind of slow down traffic, things like that, whatever.
Speaker 2:What is the point of? There's no election? The election's over, right. What is? Why is bannon on a uh political messaging tour, right? If they've got all three branches government, they've got everything is in, you know, under his uh, him and trump and elon, they kind of have their you know power of everything.
Speaker 1:So what's?
Speaker 2:the point of going out and rallying the base when you've already got popular vote win. You've got high approval ratings. You've got blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Right, like everybody that knows about Project 2025, thinks it's great, so there's no more educating.
Speaker 2:That's required to do. What is there to do?
Speaker 1:now? Well, I think the next step that they're looking for is to make sure that they have enough people riled up Because people are going to start getting upset and Trump's going to be yeah, exactly. Like they're going to start seeing pretty direct influences on that.
Speaker 2:All the tariffs, yeah, where you can't buy a car in six months because there's 25% tariff on an already too expensive car If you have a job, to even begin with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Too expensive car if you have a job to begin? Yeah, exactly. Um. So I think they need to get their more loyal base riled up to be intimidators and make sure that they try to keep people in line and just make sure that people don't speak out and speak up against the bit of a sheepdog kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Right, it was just like staying. Stay in flock, you know. Yeah, exactly strong. Yes, make sure that people you know stay focused swallow that Kool-Aid up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be a little hard for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the billionaires need us on this one, the guy who got fired but wasn't a government civilian that gets fired but still thinks Trump has his best interest in him, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're literally saying yeah, I wasn't really doing my job.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Yeah, like you're literally saying like yeah, I wasn't really doing my job.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Like, yeah, I wasn't earning my paycheck. Yeah, but like who? Nobody out there is going to say that, because everybody that works in the government like hates the government, right, like it's just, it's a frustrating bureaucracy, yes, but it's one of those things that just kind of needs to happen to make sure that we don't have the abuses of the systems or things like that. And obviously you can always trim things, but for the most part, like these big hacks that are happening right now, they're not like targeted, they're just hacks and trying to get to a number, and so the things that are going to be missing and the things that we have to fix on the back end are going to cost us twice as much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no depth of thought. It's all numbers on a page that are not realistic, and then a lot of times you add a tail to it of like, well, there'll be a $10 million immediate savings and then $50 million over the next five years, 10 years, whatever. There's no way to project that.
Speaker 1:There's no idea. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:The rest, the 10 10 of the estimate is real and 90 of it is completely fabricated right, yeah, I mean that's just well, and you know what's happening and they've, they've, uh.
Speaker 1:Actually, I heard uh aoc talk on that on one of her podcasts, where they throw out a first number where you know 393 trillion have been saved, and then comes out, you know, a week later yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like a million, yeah, but they never correct it, or? It never goes back. Once people know that first number, they see that first number, they think that they're doing god's work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and, and I mean as we'll talk about it all the time politics are. You know, the headline is the goal sometimes and with doge man they've taken that and just run it to death. You know the idea that the headline is the story, that the story doesn't matter. The rest of the content doesn't matter. A big number on the headline is all that matters. And yeah, the retraction to that is not a headline. Right, it's part of the story, but it's not a headline, so no one reads it right, yeah, I think usually those updates are at the bottom of those stories and the headline's still the exact same yeah, it is like you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's uh just complete misinformation that people swallow up, but at this point I really think it's willful, like at some point we have to hold people accountable for the information that they're swallowing the yeah, I mean if you stand in your echo chamber and you enjoy being in the echo chamber, but then you I don't know conceptually you go home from the echo chamber and when you get home, you can't afford to pay your bills and one of your incomes has disappeared. And the things that you needed to do haven't changed, right, your responsibilities haven't changed, but your resources and your ability to meet those needs have changed. And then you go back to the echo chamber. How many times can you do that back and forth before it doesn't match, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Right, Because now they're starting to say well, Biden left us a terrible economy.
Speaker 2:Well, when Biden left. Every president always does that. Yeah, like.
Speaker 1:Biden like you had a job, yeah Right you know so, right, and how.
Speaker 2:Why do you believe that when every president gets into their first hundred days and goes look at what the last person, how bad they messed it up. Right, you know, give me time to fix it. We don't need to even hear that anymore. Yeah, we already understand. Like no one's ever thought that day one of anything like a massive government turnover is going to just hit the ground running, right, no one's ever thought that, right, and so yes, and of course, the policy from a partisan group to the next opposite partisan group is going to take a lot of effort to swing that pendulum the other way in all these policy movements, right, so we all get that.
Speaker 2:So the whole pointing backwards and blaming the last guy, last guy or gal is just so stupid. Like, it's not. It backwards and blaming the last guy or gal is just so stupid. It doesn't matter anymore. It does to the base. If hate is part of the message, just remember how bad we hate those guys. Which man? Trump couldn't talk about plastic in the ocean without saying that President Biden put it all there, right? I mean, it wouldn't matter what topic it was. You know Biden did it and people ask him questions that have nothing to do with presidential election type stuff. And he'll be like well you know, if Biden hadn't been such an incompetent fool, then that thing wouldn't have happened. Right, and you're like how?
Speaker 1:Why.
Speaker 2:You know, but he just again. It is that remind, just say it out loud at least five times a day. We still hate Joe Biden. That's just part of the game plan for him. Yeah Well, if we get caught up in his false messaging and crazy you know, backwards looking everything, let's switch gears and talk about. You attended some events in the last week that were, you know, the counter to all this misinformation. Right, it's a way for Democrats to get together and try to establish what can be a game plan when the actual legislators don't really have any power to do much. So tell us about. You know what you've been to this last week and what you learned from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So starting last Thursday, senator Bennett had a town hall here and it was a good town hall. I guess he had like three that day or in a couple of days there, so he was pretty worn out and on the on the mountains he took quite a beating because at his town halls it's not a Republican Democrat, it's a constituent thing. Right At the AOC Sanders rally on Friday, that was a Democrat, yeah that was a little more one-sided.
Speaker 1:But at the Senator Bennett's town hall, you know there was definitely some strong feelings and hostile feelings there. But he stood there and listened and took it and, you know, stood by, you know things that he said. But one thing that I keep hearing, you know, stood by, you know things that he said, uh, but one thing that I I keep hearing, you know, at his town hall and then at, you know, friday up in Denver, you know, with those, uh, the 35,000 that showed up there, um, people keep screaming about, you know, what's the plan, what's the action plan like, what are we doing? Things like that. And Senator Brennan didn't have a great answer. When AOC and Bernie talked the next day, you know they kind of talked about grassroots movements and stuff like that, which is, you know, an answer, but not a great answer. You know we see this a lot with, like the Occupy Wall Street movement and the other movements throughout the ages. Here, that, you know, people get a lot of thrust and not a lot of vector.
Speaker 2:So everybody, that's a great way to say it that people get a lot of thrust and not a lot of vector.
Speaker 1:That's a great way to say it. So we kind of sputter our energy all across the spectrum and we don't really have a lot of focus. So I think at the federal level, we need a leader to say, hey, this is what we're doing, this is the type of protest that we want to do. These are the type of things that we want you guys to talk to your senators about, you know, and kind of start putting those things and start kind of like giving a structure for people to work on the way down. But until that happens and I don't expect it to happen, okay, fair Well, you know, I told Senator Ben, I had his ear for a quick second.
Speaker 1:I was like when people say that to you, point them to your local party office, point them to the local Democrat office, even if you're not a Democrat, you call here and say, hey, I want to do something. They'll have a list for you can talk to these people. These people, these people, go forth, you don't have to be just in the Democratic Party, but they're a good nexus for information and we're trying to consolidate some of those things and be a good focal point and yeah, there you go, funnel and focus energy from thrust into vector, exactly focus it down so that when people call up, the phone rings off the hook in the office.
Speaker 1:Now, when people call up and say what can I do, we have answers, and that's what I work on with some other groups of folks. You know, we kind of want to have something that we can give people answers for and not just stand there with our mouth open like there. But at this point there's so many people out there doing stuff that if you, if you're still on the sidelines screaming like what are you doing? Like you're not, you're just not talking to the right people. Yeah, like, call the offices of your Democratic Party or Indivisible. Indivisible is an incredible organization. They have a meeting tonight that will probably have over 1,000 people at, where they break up into groups and like solve problems.
Speaker 1:There's these organizations out there that are doing stuff. So if you're standing on the sidelines screaming like what are you doing? Or what's the plan, like get involved man.
Speaker 2:Like we have plans, but we need bodies, so I first, I want to agree completely that the idea of you know, the senior leaders, being able to turn that energy around and put it back into the local environment and say hey there is a way for you in your own community to affect things at the state level and at the county level.
Speaker 2:You can be visible and you can make pressure in this political environment. But I also, I completely understand the position of those representatives and senators man, their hands are so tied as far as what can really be done on the legislative. Representatives and senators man, their hands are so tied as far as what can really be done on the legislative side of things. So I guess it turns. I think it turns all of our local effort and this is what I hope maybe people that are volunteering is that this is now a marathon over the next two years okay over the next two years.
Speaker 2:Okay Till the midterms.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is not a go to a rally once right now or, you know, pick an event once this year and go rah, rah, rah. Yeah, that won't work, because midterms are the goal. At this point. There's nothing between here and midterms that can that the legislators can really do so, between here and midterms that the legislators can really do so we have to be. The goal here is be vocal, be present, be visible, be active for the next almost two years so that when our candidates are on that ballot and the people who are suffering economically, who don't have a job, who do have measles, who do have all these other problems that they look around and go.
Speaker 2:I don't like what's been going on for the last two years, and the most visible thing they see as a solution to the problem is the Democratic Party or you as a person, whether you're Democrat or not, the effort that you're putting in to change the narrative and change the community. That hopefully leads to a midterm situation where some level of balance of power can be brought back to a partisan balance, right At a minimum of balance, and so you know that it's a long run for me.
Speaker 1:It's a long run. Well, and even you know the two years is kind of still a sprint for us. When you talk long term, you look at like what the Heritage Foundation has laid out over the last 40, 50 years. You know that's a long term plan that that the left just doesn't have. Oh no, you know they don't have something like that because they wrote it down to where. You know you focus on school boards, city councils and you really build up those little extra, those bases, and that helps you to get your messaging across. On up, you know it's kind of like a reverse pyramid, you know, or like a standard pyramid. You know you build the base. I'm not great with geometry.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so Leave it to Donald Trump to build an upside-down pyramid, right. Leave it to Donald Trump to build an upside-down pyramid, yeah, but the left needs something like that that has just long-term vision and goals with an actual plan and not just putting out fires as the Heritage Foundation throws them at us.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so like I've never witnessed something that is a multi, multiple, decade type of plan. I guess civil rights like and making sure that like again, just you know, once those laws change. That we did. It wasn't a pop and fizzle and everything went back to the way it was.
Speaker 2:That was a sustained and enduring effort from the left to make sure that those rights were truly galvanized yeah and that that I could see as a counter representation of something that was 20, 30 years long but then post that era right, I'd say 1990s, early 2000s into where we're at now. It has, I feel like it's been a lot of shiny ball. You know what's the hottest thing right now? Whether it's the environment, it's been a long-term messaging thing, but not really a Universal healthcare same thing.
Speaker 1:You know Clinton started it but we didn't really build off it. And then you know Obamacare's been fought.
Speaker 2:So yeah, everything kind of ebbs and flows a lot more as far as the political movements and the things that are top priorities within the Democratic Party, they tend to be a little more. You know. They can come and go and not have that 20, 30, 40 year. You know, push that. We've seen from the other side where it's like 50 years to overturn Roe v Wade, but like the day that it happened they were like we're going to overturn this someday. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And they set it up and I couldn't believe it when people were telling me when I first got out of the military and I started to look at running for office, some people at the state level were like man, abortion rights and like enshrining X, y and Z. Is this huge deal in New Mexico? And I just thought Roe v Wade is like locked in?
Speaker 1:We got this, yeah. What Roe v Wade is like locked in? We got this, yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And they said and the one woman who was in charge of the Senate, the state Senate, there she said how would you vote in this type of situation? There's this law. Basically, she was trying to count votes before I was even in the seat.
Speaker 2:She's like if you end up in the seat. I want to know where you stand on this right and that's going to determine whether I support you or not. Right, and it was that New Mexico had a, which a lot of other states have had, this failover law, that if Roe v Wade ever gets rescinded, that New Mexico automatically goes back to whatever their law was the day before Roe v Wade got enacted right.
Speaker 2:And it's this fallback thing that, like the federal protection, is the only thing that's enshrining us. Once that federal protection is removed, we just go right back into the law books and go this was the last thing on the books. It was not the only state that was like that. There was quite a few states that had that clause built in, and so getting rid of that was a big deal right, because there was the strong belief that, like it's coming right, supreme court is getting built, built and stacked in that direction and we have to change this law in new mexico or we're going to just get rolled back in time. And uh, they did.
Speaker 1:They got it changed before good roby wood got rescinded yeah but it was a it's just crazy to think to me like the only thing keeping states from like stripping away those rights that we fought for and like people have fought and, you know, bled for, and just like that it's a one pager in the books, in the statutes right.
Speaker 2:It's a real simple one pager this goes away.
Speaker 1:This happens, yeah, that's crazy, yeah, and there and there's all kinds of issues that have that type of stuff built in, you know so yeah, it's just crazy to me that we have to go back and fight for all these things that so many people have already, you know, fought for. But but, like now, I, you know we're at a point where, like, we need those folks that fought in the past and they did some of these things in the past to come back and help teach some of these new kids.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean get the thrust from energy of the youth into a vector of leads to it, of that experience, you know, if we can get some of that, you know, because there's a lot of excited kids Youthful thrust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of excited kids that are probably going to be arrested in the next day. Yeah, you know so it's going to be really interesting to try to get those two generations to really work together To get on it. Pulling on the same oar can get the boat moving in the same direction exactly, man, you're right I mean the age, the age difference and what matters.
Speaker 2:You know if you're consider yourself progressive, but then what are you really passionate about and what are you going to show up and like fight about? Again, I would think that even with the changes the youngest generation right now would go, I don't think that abortion rights are really. Are they really?
Speaker 1:that big of a deal Because they don't remember that this is the fight that's been going on.
Speaker 2:So they're like, I think we can just vote and change it right. They're like, no, that already happened. And teaching them hey, let's not let history repeat itself. The pendulum's always going to swing back and forth, but when it starts moving back in our direction, is always going to swing back and forth, but when it starts moving back in our direction, we've got to pick up those lessons learned and go hey, how do we do this right this time? How do we get something built in so that it is like civil rights, where we believe that it's really well protected? We see that some of that's going away as well.
Speaker 2:That's the hardest thing for me, being a veteran that's here for 20 years, to sit, sit back and like just watch a nation not believe its founding principles that were all created the freedom of speech piece really gets me, because that's the one that I feel like if I was ever asked when I was in active duty, like if you were really putting your life on the line for something, what do you think it is Right? And this whole bag of you know American properties and values, what is it Right? Whole bag of you know american properties and values. What is it right? And to me, the whole. You know, I don't necessarily I don't have to agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death.
Speaker 1:You're right to say it. Yeah, I would have got that tattooed on my back.
Speaker 2:Yeah it matters right and it doesn't matter today. Right, because if you say I think palestine is cool, you can get deported to palestine.
Speaker 1:You're american citizen and they'll be like videos of it, where these students are getting. Palestine is cool. You can get deported to Palestine.
Speaker 2:You're an American citizen and they'll be like time to go Yanked off the street and do I agree with what they're saying? No, not at all. Do I agree with their harsh stance in, like pro-Hamas in some situations type situation, and you know, the blood of Israelis is the only answer? Absolutely not. But should a student face a consequence for saying anything? No, right, like. That's the first amendment. It was the first one, you know. We said there's some rules that we didn't quite get. We need this one first right. The most important thing that we ever changed was that one was first and now it's negotiable and I'm not okay with that. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, we was that one was first yeah, and now it's negotiable, and I'm not okay with that. Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, we'll leave it on that happy note. Thanks everybody for joining us here. Another episode of Left Face Tune in again next week and we'll come back and keep talking ears off.
Speaker 2:We'll tell you a little more about whatever rags have been stripped away next week.
