Panic, Authoritarians, and What History Keeps Repeating

Bruce Anthony: [00:00:00] Chaos and history. We gonna get into it. Let’s get it.

Bruce Anthony: [00:00:16] Welcome, first of all, welcome. This is Unsolicited Perspectives. I’m your host, Bruce Anthony. Here to lead the conversation in important events and topics that are shaping today’s society. Join the conversation to follow us wherever you get your audio podcast. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our video podcast, YouTube exclusive content and our YouTube membership rate review.

[00:00:40] Like, comment, share, share with your friends, share with your family. Hell even share with your enemies. On today’s episode,

Bruce Anthony: [00:00:44] I’ll be talking about the snow chaos, given a history lesson and talking about why being a kid back in the day is better than being a kid now. But that’s enough for the intro. Let’s get to the show.

​

Bruce Anthony: [00:01:04] Yo. I often talk about how stupid we are collectively as a people, and I probably need to come off that. But let me tell you why I’m bringing this up. This snowstorm hit and here in the DMV area, DMV area is the district, Maryland, Virginia. If y’all are new to the show and don’t know where I’m located, I am in the Washington DC area.

[00:01:30] Snow coming to this

Bruce Anthony: [00:01:30] area, everybody starts to panic. And in several grocery stores apart across Maryland, DC and Virginia shelves are empty. I’m talking about all the bread, all the meat, all the food gone empty shelves. Now my local Harris Teeter, shout out to Harris Teeter. They’re not a sponsor of the show with love for if you would want to be a sponsor of the show.

[00:01:55] As much money as I give y’all Harris Teeter was fully stocked. I didn’t have a problem getting anything, but I go to my local Aldi, also another show that I store that I shop at one sponsor. I’m not upset ‘cause I give y’all a lot of money. I go to Aldi to get my keto bread. Because, you know, I, you know, keto dot and trying to get ready for, you know, my, my 46th birthday trying to get lean and all the bread of at Aldi is gone.

[00:02:25] Like there’s no bread left. Even the keto bread, which lets me know people was just panicking and grabbing anything because there is a dramatic difference between regular bread and keto bread. And I feel sorry for those people that got keto bread, expected regular bread. First of all, they should have realized that the cost of it was a lot higher, but maybe they weren’t thinking in their mind that because everybody’s in a panic grabbing stuff off of shelves.

[00:02:50] Maybe they’re thinking inflation bread is just high. No, it’s keto brand. But they done snatched everything and snatched all the toilet paper. Uh, and, and this is the first time this has happened during COVID, we lost our minds. I don’t know why people think that whatever comes our way, whether it’s a pandemic or if it’s a snowstorm, that it’s going to lead to diarrhea.

[00:03:10] It doesn’t. And I was talking to a friend of mine and I was saying this, I’m not saying that. This is solely white people doing this. ‘cause it’s not, it’s everybody. But I will say, will say, generally speaking in the black household, one thing that we are going to buy in bulk on a regular basis are toilet paper.

[00:03:35] Paper towels, trash bags, soap, body soap and dish soap. And you might say to yourself, what about hand soap? We do buy that We do. But dish soap can double as hand soap. And you know what else? We gonna have plenty of lotion. I got lotion in every single room in my place, all over the place. It’s at the bathroom sink.

[00:04:00] It’s right next to my bed. It’s right, it’s at the kitchen sink. It’s in the living room. I got it everywhere and my place ain’t really that big. So even if we do wash our hands with dish soap, we gonna be all right ‘cause we’re gonna lotion our body. Generally speaking, I know a couple black folks out there that’s ashy as hell, but these are things that we normally buy in bulk so we don’t panic when storms hit, generally speaking.

[00:04:25] And it’s not just black folks, I know other races do it as well. I’m just speaking from my specific life. This is what I see. So it just boggles my mind how people don’t ha how people just go to Steria anytime something big is happening. And I. Tend to say, well, people generally are stupid, but it’s a lot deeper than that, and I really need to stop saying that.

[00:04:50] I did a little research, did a little bit actually for this show today. It was a lot of research that I did, but I did a little research on this particular topic and found out some really important information that

Bruce Anthony: [00:05:01] explains why most people, the majority of the population respond this way. People tend to overreact in big events because our brains are wired to prioritize survival, copy the crowd, and grab for control when things feel uncertain or threatening.

[00:05:25] That last part is kind of interesting, right? When things are uncertain, uncertain, or threatening, we tend to grab for control. I’m gonna talk about that more in a second segment, but that’s interesting. Core reasons why people panicked by, right? What people did this week. What’s panicked by, what are some of the core reasons?

[00:05:45] Fear and uncertainty. When a crisis hits a pandemic storm or attack, people feel a real or perceived threat and don’t know how bad it would get. So they’re prepare for the worst case scenario. I’m one of those people that always prepares for a worst case scenario in my life. However, I don’t panic by, I, impulse by, but not panic by.

[00:06:10] There’s also a need for control In a situation where you can’t control the virus or the weather, you can control how much food or toilet paper you have. So shopping becomes a coping mechanism. And then there’s survival, wiring, meeting. Basic psychological needs. Physiological needs like food, water, toilet paper, warmth is the first layer of Maslow’s hierarchy.

[00:06:35] So under stress, people drop back to keep. My body’s safe first. So that’s all interesting, right? It’s, it’s, we’re wired this way to survive. And that’s really what it is. That’s the reason why people are doing these panic buys. But what’s specifically happening in the brain, like under high stress? The rationale, the planning part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex goes offline and the emotional

Bruce Anthony: [00:07:00] alarm system dominates, pushing quick defensive decisions instead of thoughtful ones.

[00:07:10] So when we get into survival mode, our prefrontal cortex, the things that create rational thought, it just goes offline. It just says, you know what? I’m out. And our body, our alarm system takes over and it’s just like, look, we gotta defend ourselves. This is what we need to do. Now, all rational thought goes out the window.

[00:07:35] Defend yourself becomes the preeminent emotion and driving force behind your actions. When, when people are emotionally flooded, they literally see the last pack of toilet paper as survival, not just a household item, which makes grabbing it feel urgent and justified to them. So you see what we’re going on here?

[00:08:00] It’s, it’s our brain, our mind playing tricks on us. Kind of like the ghetto boys pre-frontal cortex thing that controls rationale thought, just says overload, can’t deal with this. And survival instincts are spider sense, quote unquote, and our body says we need to survive. And that last little bit of toilet paper, that’s what I need to survive, even though I got a lot of packs at home.

[00:08:25] I need that one because I’m in survivor mode. There’s also social and horrid

Bruce Anthony: [00:08:30] behavior. Lemme explain. Emotionally fear spreads person to person. Seeing empty selves or long lines or frantic posts online makes other feel a the same urgency, even if the actual risk has changed. So your bomb, your body is already in this defense mode, right?

[00:08:55] Rational thought has gone out the window and everybody is panicking, right? ‘cause it spreads from person to person. And then you’re looking at the fact that yo, the grocery stores are selling out. And then it becomes a sense of urgency, whether or not it’s real or not, that you gotta go and stock up your house for a snowstorm that’s happening one day.

[00:09:20] It started Saturday night, snow through Sunday, stopping Monday. It’s one day. But your body and your mind. I can’t reconcile with that ‘cause that prefrontal cortex has gone offline. Let’s talk about herb mentality. If everyone else is stocking up, people assume they must know something or that shortages are coming so they f follow.

[00:09:40] To avoid being the only one left out without supplies, follow the leader. That’s what that essentially is. If everybody else doing it, I’m gonna do it. I mean, everybody getting toilet paper, I must need toilet paper. No, you got plenty of toilet paper at home. I, I gotta have bread, milk. ‘cause they say that you gotta have bread, milk.

[00:10:00] You don’t eat bread and milk the majority of the time in your life, but all of a sudden a storm hit and now you got to have bread and milk because all the bread and milk is going to be gone. Okay, availability cascade. What is that Repeated? Scary messages, rumors or images of chaos. Make a belief there will be no food.

[00:10:25] Or there will be no toilet paper feel more true just because it’s repeated so often. So you see how this, once again, our mind is playing tricks on us, rationale out the window, images flooding us, spidey sense taking over. We need to survive. That’s what our body is telling us. And so these are the reasons why we act this way.

[00:10:55] What about something else? Biases and overreaction.

Bruce Anthony: [00:10:56] There’s a threat bias under anxiety. We interpret ambiguous situations as dangerous. So a normal storm becomes, this could shut down everything for weeks. Kind of like the pandemic. When the pandemic people were back and forth. I’ll even admit that. I was like, man, it’s not gonna be no big deal.

[00:11:20] I was saying that because I thought my work was going to be affected. I was afraid financially what shutting down would do. Little did I know I’d be just fine and actually flourish, but when you don’t know what something is going to be, or even if it’s something that is normal, like a snowstorm, you tend to think, well, even though this is ambiguous, I’ve got all these images flashing in my head.

[00:11:45] Once again, that prefrontal cortex shut down, that means this storm is gonna last for weeks. And even the newscasters were saying in certain areas you might get three inches of ice, which will shut down power. And we could have a repeat for Texas now, Texas. Was an anomaly here in the States. That doesn’t typically happen.

[00:12:10] People aren’t without power for a full month. That is something specific to Texas and everything like that. But because it happened, even though this is a normal storm now people panic and they say, we could lose power. What are we gonna do? I talked about in the last episode how I don’t know how to handle not having power.

[00:12:30] What am I gonna do? Life is boring without my electronics. So you panic and something that’s a normal snowstorm, which probably won’t even knock out your power, which is only gonna be a day. We’re gonna be back on the streets on Monday, right? Monday night, Tuesday by the latest. You tend to think, well, this is gonna happen over weeks.

[00:12:50] This, this is the threat bias. Then there’s a confirmation bias. People latch on to post or news that support their fears, and then they see shelves are empty. Stores closing and ignore calmer, corrective information. And then there’s overall confidence and rumor. Some are sure their prediction of disaster is right.

[00:13:15] Share it loudly and unintentionally. Amplify group panic. So you see how all these factors turn into this big swirl of things that can cause us to panic over something as simple as a snowstorm.

Bruce Anthony: [00:13:35] Why it looks irrational from the outside, right? Most people aren’t thinking, let me be dramatic. They’re trying to reduce the fear with the tools that they have, their wallet, their cart, their pantry, even if it creates their very shorts that they’re afraid of. So people aren’t thinking, let me be dramatic.

[00:14:00] They’re just trying to deal with the fear and anxiety that they have, the fear and anxiety that they’ll be without. So they rush to the stores to stack up their pantries, to stack up their fridge, thus creating the very thing that they’re afraid of, which is empty shelves. You see this, this is crazy. When you think about it from a distance, it looks like hysteria, but on the inside it often feels like I’m just protecting my family in a system that has taught people not to trust institutions to take care of them in a crisis.

[00:14:35] Now that all sounds pretty reasonable, right? Because we’ve seen going all the way back to Hurricane Katrina, the institutions that are in place, we’ll take care of the people. We saw that in Texas. But, uh, Florida has done a really good job of taking care of the people through hurricanes, but that’s ‘cause they consistently had ‘em.

[00:14:55] For years. It was trial and error, but our systems have failed to protect us from these. Things that are either normal storms or pandemics, say what you want about the CDC. But trying to figure out a virus and keep people in check where they aren’t alarmed is a tricky thing. Do you tell people the absolute dangers and what could be the worst case scenario if you are the government?

[00:15:30] Maybe not because why? People will tend to act in this way. Right. They’ve been doing drips and drabs letting us know that we’re not alone. That we are not alone in the universe. I just saw a video. It was, uh, state Department released it and it’s legitimate. They’re having hearings. There was an unidentified spacecraft that was hit by a missile.

[00:16:00] A missile was shot at it. The missile touched the unidentified spacecraft. It shook a little bit and it kept on with its trajectory. While the missile kept going past it, the missile didn’t even blow up. We’re not alone. We are not alone. But I would understand the government slow rolling this information out, drop it in on a, on a busy Newsweek.

[00:16:25] So it kind of misses us because could you imagine, could you imagine if it was completely confirmed We got little green people. ‘cause that’s what they always say in the movies. Little green people touching down. People would go nuts. Would go nuts. So then becomes, when you know people react this way, people will lose their minds in the crisis.

[00:16:45] Do you give them that information because they’re thinking, I need to protect my family, but they’re not thinking rationally. Right. They’re not thinking rationally.

[00:17:00] Anyway. I understand why all the information doesn’t need to be presented to us people. A person can be intelligent. People panic. A person can be rational. People are ill rational, and this is the reason why we act this way. Now, I’ve explained to you that it’s not this crazy thing, it’s chaos, but that we’re not crazy.

[00:17:35] It’s a survival instinct, how irrational it is. It’s a survival instinct.

Bruce Anthony: [00:17:35] So what should you do when something like this happens again, pause. All right, pause and your first crush question to be to yourself, what’s my body doing? Am I breathing fast? Is my heart racing? Are my muscles tight? If they are, take 10 slow breaths.

[00:18:05] Shake this off before you go into the grocery store and grab a cart. Just take a couple deep breaths right before you do one of the panic buys. Second, what am I actually feeling? Ask yourself that question. I’m not just shopping. I’m scared. I’m anxious, I’m worried about my people. Name it so that it doesn’t quietly drive the bus.

[00:18:35] Own what you’re feeling. Take control so that chaos doesn’t overwhelm you. Third, ask yourself, what are the facts? Not the vibes. What do credible sources say is happening and what do they say I really need on hand? Also, do I already have some of that stuff at home? These are questions that you need to ask yourself when you are bombarded by the next storm or pandemic or anything like that.

[00:19:05] The fourth question, am I thinking for myself or am I following the herd? If the shells were full and nobody was freaking out, would I still feel like I need this much stuff? That’s an important question. Take a step back. If everybody else wasn’t doing it, would you be doing it? That’s an important question to ask yourself.

[00:19:30] Fifth, what’s your plan? Not my panic. Instead of clearing a shelf today, can I focus on some, a simple routine? Keeping a small stash of basics. I actually use all the time. This is what I said at the beginning. I always got some toilet paper, paper towels, lotion, body soap, hand soap up in the house, always.

[00:19:55] Oh, and also cleaner supplies. Got to always have fully stocked cleaning supplies, always in the house. Also got some meat in the fridge. Always got some meat in the fridge. Don’t got no vegetables in the fridge, but got some meat in the fridge. Gotta always have that six. Who can I help me think straight before I overdo it.

[00:20:15] Can I call a text somebody who’s a calm person and ask, what are you actually doing about this? Talk to somebody, right? Try to get ahead of that anxiety. Last one. What’s one small move, not a dramatic one that you could do. Charge your phone, get gas. Pull your meds together, check on a neighbor, then step away from the news for a bit, and let your nervous system calm down.

[00:20:45] If you still wanna buy, buy normal human amounts, not the end of the world amounts. That’s that’s all you gotta do, is take a step back, get control of your emotions, and let your prefrontal cortex take the charge. Let that rationale take charge, because real preparedness is calm, boring, and consistent. Not a viral video.

[00:21:15] Chaos in IL five.

​

Bruce Anthony: [00:21:23] I don’t normally do this. I haven’t done it in a while. I wrote something and I’m gonna read it. So for those people that are watching, guess my eyes are gonna be darted down because I’m gonna be reading, not a script, but, but just something that I wrote every now and then something will happen in society that will make me put on my writer’s cap.

[00:21:50] And start writing. And I don’t pride myself on being this great writer. I’m not some literary masterful writer. Uh, it’s something that I, I used to really, really enjoy. Uh, I think it brings out a lot of my personality. Um, and I actually tied in my, ah, coming in and out of love for writing and my absolute love for history and this thing that I wrote is essentially a history lesson because if you’re paying attention to what they’re doing to the education system in America, you realize that they’re stripping away a lot of the true history facts, historical events that cannot be denied.

[00:22:40] These things happen. They’re either downplaying them or saying that they didn’t exist. And there are people who actually are deniers of things that truly, truly happened. So I wrote this and um, I think it’s fitting for what happened recently, and I’ll explain all of it at the end when I’m done reading, but this is what I wrote.

[00:23:05] Lemme tell you a

Bruce Anthony: [00:23:05] story. It starts in a country that was tired, tired of losing, tired of being embarrassed on the world stage, tired of politicians who talked a lot, promised everything and fixed nothing. The people felt humiliated, economically stressed, culturally anxious. They were told the system was broken, and honestly, it didn’t feel like a lie.

[00:23:30] Then comes a man, not polished, not traditional, not presidential. But loud, confident, certain. He tells the people, I alone can fix this. He says, the media is lying to you. He says, judges are corrupt. He says, the elites hate you. He says, minorities, outsiders and undesirables are the reason things don’t work anymore.

[00:24:00] And for a lot of people, that exploitation feels good because it gives their pain a target. At first, everything looks normal. There are still elections. Courts still exists. The press is still publishing, but something starts to change. Opposition parties aren’t debated. They’re branded as enemies.

[00:24:25] Journalists aren’t criticized, they’re declared traitors. Laws are aren’t sacred, they’re obstacles. The leader doesn’t say Abolish democracy. He says the system is rigged. He doesn’t say silence, dissent. He says they’re dangerous. He doesn’t say, I want total power. He says, I need loyalty. And slowly institutions bend, not because they’re forced to at first, but because they are scared or ambitious or tired.

[00:25:05] Then comes the normalization. People get arrested for security ports. Courts begin ruling differently depending on who you are. And entire groups of citizens are described as less than human criminals, parasites, threats, violence doesn’t start all at once. It starts with rhetoric, then intimidation, then exceptions, then policy.

[00:25:35] By the time things turn openly brutal. Half the country is already explaining why it’s necessary, and the other half is asking, how did it happen so fast? Here’s the important part. None of this required the people to be stupid. None of it required them to be evil. It required them to believe it couldn’t happen here.

[00:26:00] That belief is the real danger because history doesn’t repeat itself by announcing, hello I am history. It repeats itself by sounding reasonable, familiar, protective, patriotic. Now, lemme tell you what I just

Bruce Anthony: [00:26:15] described. I wasn’t talking about modern America. I wasn’t talking about Donald Trump. I wasn’t talking about maga.

[00:26:25] I wasn’t talking about Republicans or Democrats. I was talking about Germany in the 1930s. I was talking about the rise of Adolf Hitler. That’s not a metaphor. It’s not hyperbole that’s documented history and before anyone loses their mind, no, I’m not saying America is Nazi Germany. No, this is not saying Trump equals Hitler.

[00:26:50] Scales matter. Outcomes matter. Context matters, but patterns matter too because genocide doesn’t start with gas chambers. It starts with contempt for the truth, with attacks on institution with demonetizing demoralizing of the other, with loyalty tests replacing law history doesn’t ask, are you as bad as the Nazis yet?

[00:27:25] History asks. Did you stop it while you still could, if you’re listening to this thinking, that could never happen here. That’s exactly, that’s exactly what people said right before it did. Democracy doesn’t collapse in one dramatic moment. It erodes while people argue about tone. So the lesson isn’t fear.

[00:27:45] The lesson is vigilance, because history isn’t warning us about the past. It’s warning us about complacency. And if that story felt a little too familiar, good. That’s the point.

[00:28:05] The other day, yet, another American system, a citizen, excuse me, American citizen was gunned down by ice

[00:28:20] out there peacefully protesting gunned down

[00:28:25] and. Me and my

Bruce Anthony: [00:28:25] sister talked about, ‘cause it was a white person. It was another white person that was gunned down. Me and my sister talked about allyship and how when white people lend allyship to causes that they aren’t directly affected. Civil rights, human rights, mass, deportation, inhumane, immigration tactics.

[00:28:55] You lose your whiteness. In the process of losing your whiteness and losing your privilege, you become other. They describe you as that. There are already people saying it was self-defense. When you watch the video, the graphic video, you see this wasn’t self-defense. This was another execution. And there are gonna be people that are going to be on the defense of the ice agents.

[00:29:25] This is what I was talking about and what I wrote. The complacency, the normalization of these type of actions are literally the fall of democracy. No, no. We are not Nazi Germany. Trump is not Hitler. I’m gonna get to that in a minute, but I wanna focus on right now what happened the other day with another person who was a nurse that worked with army veterans.

[00:30:00] ‘cause everybody talks about supporting the military, but they don’t really mean it because supporting military would be supporting veterans. I’ve often to said it all the time, what people often say when they say support the military is support defense. I actually believe in supporting the people no matter what their politics are, because there’s a lot of veterans who are maga.

[00:30:25] I don’t care. Those are the only MAGA people that I give a pass for because you know what they did, especially if they’re wounded or disabled, they gave up their body for my freedoms. So on that, even if we absolutely disagree on every political social issue, because you did that for me, I’m gonna stand down most of the time.

[00:30:50] Make sure that you get everything that you need so that you have a better life because you gave up so much. So I can have freedoms that are slowly trying to be eroded, but this, this, this man was a nurse helping veterans executed. Shot over 10 times. He was dead. They kept pumping holes in his body. ‘cause who are these people?

[00:31:20] We don’t know. When your cop pulls you over, your local cop, your state police pulls you over. There’s a badge number. You can see their face. You can get their badge number, you can find out who they are. We don’t know these people. We don’t know the background checks for these people and fraud and waste.

[00:31:35] That’s what Doge was responsible for, right? We’re in a struggling economy. Job creation is at a low, right, lower than the previous administration, but yet they find all types of money to fund ice signing bonus. Six figures a year. We can’t pay the kid. We can’t pay. The teachers can’t feed the kids, but we could fund ice.

[00:32:00] You know, there’s a line that Semio Jackson says and do the right thing. Wake up. That’s all I can say is wake up. ‘cause no. We’re not in Nazi Germany right now. Literally we’re not. And I get tired of people saying that, that Trump is Hitler Trump, not by any means, even a decent man. I think he’s evil.

[00:32:35] Hitler is a different ball game. What? Hitler dead. And what Trump is doing is two different things. You can’t literally pay him. You, you might say Hitler alike, but you can’t say that he’s Hitler. You can’t say this is Nazi Germany. ‘cause we still out here, we still have elections for the time being. But you need to pay attention.

[00:32:55] ‘cause everybody thought when I was reading that, that I was talking about modern day America, Trump and Maga, and I wasn’t, I was giving you a history of lessons of the very things that are happening now that happened less than a hundred years ago that led to a world war that led to the loss of so many lives.

[00:33:20] You need to wake up. Alright. Before

Bruce Anthony: [00:33:20] somebody clips 30 seconds of what I just said and runs to the internet screaming, he called Trump Hitler. Let’s slow down and be very clear because clarity is the enemy of bad faith arguments. What we are talking about is methods, not outcomes. Those are not the same thing.

[00:33:45] Okay? What outcomes are and why they matter. I’m gonna give you the reasons. Outcomes are what actually happened in Nazi Germany. The outcome was a one party totalitarian in state. The complete destruction of democratic institutions state run terror and ultimately industrialized genocide mil with millions of people being murdered.

[00:34:15] Okay. That is a historical fact. Even though there are Holocaust deniers, that scale of horror matters and nothing happening in the US today matches that outcome. Full stop. If someone tells you America is literally Nazi Germany, they are wrong. That’s not an argument. That’s not history. That’s not what I’m saying.

[00:34:45] Okay? What methods are and why they’re dangerous methods are how power is pursued and protected. They are tactics leaders use before outcomes are fully visible, and here’s the uncomfortable truth. Authoritarian systems don’t invent new methods every time they reuse the same ones over and over. Because they work.

[00:35:15] Let me break this down for you.

Bruce Anthony: [00:35:15] Authoritarian leaders don’t start by banning media. They start by telling supporters you can’t trust them. They hate you. They’re enemies of the people. Once the audience stopped believing independent reporting, truth becomes whatever the leader says it is. That method showed up before total control ever existed.

[00:35:45] Right? Method two, attack the rule of law. The courts don’t get abolished immediately. Instead, leaders attack. Judges personally, claim rulings are political. Suggest legal accountability is persecution. The goal isn’t to end the courts. The goal is to make people believe law only counts when it helps their side.

[00:36:15] Once that happens, democracy is already limping. Method three, and this is important, demonizing the other. This is a big one, and it’s always framed as security. Not these people are human beings, but that they are criminals, they’re invaders, they’re poisoning. The nation history shows this language always come before rights are stripped away.

[00:36:50] Always. You don’t start with camps, you start with contempt. Method four, undermining elections. No authoritarian leader says, I lost fair and square. They say the election was rigged. The system is corrupt. Only fraud could explain the defeat. This isn’t about winning. It’s about convincing supporters that any outcomes except victory is illegitimate.

[00:37:20] Once that belief sets in democracy becomes optional, here’s why outcomes don’t appear overnight. Here’s where people get confused. They say, well, where are all the camps? Where’s the dictatorship? Where’s the genocide? Those are end points, not the starting of the lines. History doesn’t jump from democracy to autocracy in one move.

[00:37:50] It slides slowly while people argue about tone and intent. The danger isn’t that America is Nazi Germany. The danger is believing patterns don’t matter until it’s too late. Then there’s a key distinction. So let’s say this plainly, comparing methods is not the same as equating outcomes, right? You can say these behaviors look familiar and historically dangerous, without saying these two governments are morally and materially identical.

[00:38:35] That’s not propaganda. That’s historical literacy and dismissing that conversation doesn’t make the democracy safer. It makes it more fragile. But why does this conversation matter so much? The Nazi example isn’t useful because it’s extreme. It’s useful because it shows how normal people, normal institutions, and normal politics fail when they assume someone else will stop this.

[00:39:05] It’s not that serious. It can’t happen here. Democracy doesn’t die screaming. It dies while people roll their eyes.

[00:39:20] And here’s the final word on all of this. ‘cause I hope I’m, I’m hitting my point that for people that are watching these videos and seeing their atrocities, and they might make a post or they might make a repost, but there’s no action behind it. That’s how you lose democracy. That’s how

Bruce Anthony: [00:39:45] you get to an authoritative dictatorship.

[00:39:50] Totalitarianism, that’s, that’s how that happens when there’s no action. When they’re just like, man, this is crazy. What’s going on? Or when people make excuses, not solely complacency, but being complicit. Two different things. I know I’m throwing SAT words at you, but one is, oh, you know, I mean, it is not gonna happen here.

[00:40:15] That can never happen to me. One is, well, they are invading and making our country unsafe. They are child, uh, uh, attackers and, and traffickers. They’re not like you and me. We gotta get rid of ‘em. One’s complacency, one’s complicit. So, no, this is not about calling anyone Hitler. It’s not about recognizing that authoritarianism has a playbook and history isn’t asking us to panic.

[00:40:55] His history is asking us to pay attention because the question isn’t, are we as bad as the past? The question is, are we stopping the patterns before the outcomes appear? That’s it. That’s the argument. And if someone still doesn’t understand the difference, they don’t want clarity. What they want is cover.

​

Bruce Anthony: [00:41:28] Hey, for all my Gen Xers, millennials and some Gen Z, some older Gen Z, do y’all remember snow days like in elementary, middle, and high school? You know, like right now we’re having a snow storm and back in the day we used to get snow all the time, right? We still get snow all the time. But you remember being a kid getting snowing all the time, and it might actually fall on a day that you’re supposed to go to school.

[00:42:00] So you would wake up in the morning, look outside, maybe it’s a Dustin, maybe it’s a full snow, and then you would turn on the news to see the school closings. You’d be up early as hell to see the school closings. And when you saw your school district was closed, it was party time.

Bruce Anthony: [00:42:16] You had the whole day to plan whatever you wanted to play.

[00:42:20] Look, we gonna play video games. We go go outside and play in the snow. I was never one to go outside and play in the snow. I don’t like to cold. I don’t like snow. I hate snow. I hate the cold. And that’s a young man originally from Illinois. I hate it. I don’t like it. So I wasn’t going outside to play in the snow.

[00:42:35] I don’t be, I don’t like being cold and wet. So I’d be inside playing video games. I was still in elementary school, also a little bit of middle school, playing with my wrestling men on my action figures. Just having a grand old time that nothing was better than a snow day. And if you got a couple of snow days, oh, then I would actually go outside.

[00:43:00] ‘cause I mean a couple of snow days. Everybody outside, you play football in the snow. It was a good time. It was great to be a kid in the eighties. Well, let’s, let’s go to seventies. Let’s go seventies. ‘cause I said to Gen X people, it was great to be a kid in the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands, even two thousands, tens, right?

[00:43:15] Even the 2000 tens. It ain’t that great no more. Look, I often talk about how the pandemic sucked because we lost so many new lives. I flourished personally and professionally. It was the greatest time somebody who was a hermit, who is an introvert extrovert that can only take dealing with people so, so much and doesn’t really want to leave a house.

[00:43:40] Right. The pandemic was fantastic. I would order food. I don’t even need to talk to delivery person. They just leave it at my front doorstep. I don’t even have to say a word. It was fantastic. I was getting things delivered. Amazon had, look, Amazon made so much money off of me. It was ridiculous. And when I couldn’t get it from Amazon, you damn sure I was or it from Target at Walmart.

[00:44:00] Right. I had my liquor in my house. I got, I had a fully stocked bar going out on dates, didn’t have to go out. Going out on dates was FaceTiming and then we go over to each other’s house. Oh man. ‘cause lemme tell you something, to be out here dating at this time, that’s an expense that’s expensive. Okay. I went through and did my finances for 2025 to start seeing, you know, where’s my money going?

[00:44:25] Right. Dates. I ain’t even date that much in 2025. I didn’t even date that much. But dates is expensive, right? So pandemic, you didn’t have to do all that. You ordered some food from Uber Eats, you had some alcohol. Watch a movie or stuff like that. It was a good time. It, the Pandemic was beautiful. Pandemic was beautiful because it also taught companies a, people don’t need to come into the office.

[00:44:50] Remote work became a thing. It completely changed our society for adults. You know what it also did for the kids? Take away they damn snow days. School districts have replaced snow

Bruce Anthony: [00:45:00] days with online classes. That is some bull. There is a whole generation. And for adults, you know, for some adults. The pandemic was, you know, a time of flourishing and you know, we didn’t have to go to work and you know, we figured out how good life could be when you minimize commuting times, right?

[00:45:30] You minimize the everyday struggle of just getting back and forth to work, figuring out what you’re going to eat. Some people became healthier, they joined, they got into fitness. What kids actually experienced sucked. Some kids in high school didn’t get to do their prom, didn’t get to do their homecoming.

[00:45:45] They missed those important social interacting times. Not like these kids really at our turn socially like we did anyway ‘cause they’re all on their phone. But nevertheless they miss those social interacting times and just being with your crew, man. Not, I was talking to a friend of mine who is, is early forties and they were saying, I don’t know why in high school I stayed after school and just hung out.

[00:46:10] Because my friends was doing stuff, so I just stayed after school. Hung out. Yeah. That’s what we all did. Who, who went home right away from school and high school and middle school. You, you tend to stick around you playing sports or join the clubs or whatever your friends is doing. That’s what you was doing.

[00:46:30] Call it FOMO or, or whatever. But that’s what you was doing. So there was social interaction and these kids didn’t get that during the pandemic. And people try to say, well the pandemic wasn’t that long. Bullshit. Like it was a long time for these kids. Two years, three years is a long time when you’re, when you go from eight to 11, 11 to 14, 14 to 17.

[00:46:50] That’s a long time. And they still had to go to school. They did the online classes and I don’t know, I would like to get some studies of probably the dork in me is gonna research this or how this affected, you know, things like IQ test, test score, IQ test. And then standardized tests, not the same thing.

[00:47:10] They’re two different things. IQ tests is standardized tests to see like how online as opposed to import person for the youth I’m talking about for young people, was affected. When you get to like college aids and adult, I’m sure it has some effect as well, but you’re responsible for your own, like studying when you get to college.

[00:47:30] I’m talking about like elementary, middle, and high school. So I would, they were affected, but not only that, they don’t get the pleasure because these school systems realize now online classes can work. They don’t even get the pleasure of snow days. They still gotta go to school. Now, if you had told me back in 1992, I’m in the seventh grade that I lost my snow day.

[00:48:00] I gotta do online classes. Let’s go to 95. ‘cause that’s when a OL popped. That’s when I am popped. Let’s say that you were able to do classes in 95. That puts me in like sophomore, junior year of high school. If you told me that I got a snow day, but I still gotta go to school, I’m throwing a complete fit. I remember one time there was a snow day school was canceled, but it was during the basketball season and coach was like, we’re still gonna have P practice.

[00:48:30] I’m like, bruh, that’s like six, six inches of snow. There’s no way for me to get outta my driveway. I still gotta shovel the driveway. My dad is about to make me show this driveway. I, and it’s not no short driveway. It could fit four cars. Okay, this ain’t no short driveway. So I, I already go get in. Don’t worry.

[00:48:50] Your, your teammate who lives down the road is all is gonna be on the way. It’s gonna pick you up. You just gotta meet him in the street, dammit. And I lived right off of Main Road. We had to go to practice. We was in practice. We was in practice and I was pissed. ‘cause you know what I wanted to do that day?

[00:49:05] Sit up there and play NBA live. And now these kids don’t even get that. They gotta go to school. Look, this sucked for all my parents out there. Y’all know this sucks. Y’all know because wasn’t nothing like, remember a, remember a snow day? You knew there was a chance of snow and there was a test or a project or a quiz or something that was due on that exact day where there was a chance of snow.

[00:49:35] Now if you was like me who loved to gamble, you’d be like, I know we’re gonna get a snow day. I’m not gonna do the work ‘cause I’m gonna have it extra day to do it. I’m gonna chill and play video games. ‘cause you know what I, what I did as a person who had severe generalized anxiety, didn’t know it at that time, playing video games was a coping mechanism.

[00:50:00] That’s a coping mechanism for a lot of people. By the way, if your man is out there yelling at the games, let that man yell at the games. He’s dealing with something and that’s his release. But I was like, no, this is my opportunity to play video games because I know that I’m gonna get a snow day. When ‘em snow days didn’t happen, I was screwed.

[00:50:15] And trust me, it was a lot of times I was screwed. But these kids are screwed daily because they don’t even get no damn snow days. And I feel bad for the teachers. ‘cause remember I went to school to be a teacher. My degree is in secondary education and and my other degree is in history, right? I was studying to be a teacher.

[00:50:35] I have friends who are teachers and they’re just like, I gotta work this. Some, I don’t even get a snow day. Sometimes they would make teachers still come in to work on snow days, which I thought was bull. But they don’t even get to stay at home and just chill. They gotta log in online and teach these kids.

[00:50:50] Now, as an educator, I’m all for educating the kids. I believe we work the kids too hard already. That’s the reason why a lot of people don’t become well-developed human beings. We need to streamline what we’re teaching the kids and then also teach them important things that they need to have for the future.

[00:51:20] Financial literacy is not taught ever. Maybe if you take college or maybe you take a college course or something like that, accounting is not given to us, but we don’t understand credit unless our parents do it to us. These are things that’s important in life, but they don’t want you to know that stuff.

[00:51:35] They want you in debt. I got a letter about my student loans the other day. I was like, you know what, y’all kiss my ass on these student loans, I’m gonna pay ‘em. But I’m pissed off that it is double what I actually took out. I think it might be triple what I actually took out. Now I need to look at that number.

[00:51:50] Um, and it, I’ve been outta school for 20 years. That’s another side point. We’re talking about these kids right now, parents. Do something nice for your kids because you remember you got a snow day and these kids have to go to class now, even though you’re a parent, you have work, you got your other responsibility, you raising these little kids, you remember the joy that you got from those snow days.

[00:52:25] And that’s been stripped from these kids personally. These kids need to go out and protest ‘cause that’s what I would personally do. I would protest, uh, but do something good for these kids because the snow day is taken away from ‘em. That joy is gone and no generation is ever gonna get that back. It’s gone completely.

[00:52:50] Now it’s gone by the way of Blockbuster, right? It’s gone by the way of Netflix mail-in DVDs. Like certain things, technology just passes it by and there is no going back. And this is a situation where those kids will never get a snow day. They’re kids that won’t even imagine having a snow day. You’ll tell, you’ll tell your grandkids.

[00:53:20] I remember when had, which snowed and we just went outside and played and, and we didn’t have to go to school. I don’t know what that sounded like a old bang. But y’all, y’all know what I was eating, the aiming for. These kids won’t understand that. They won’t get it ‘cause they will have never seen anything like that.

[00:53:40] So for them, and to hold on to that innocence because

Bruce Anthony: [00:53:41] things get real, these kids have to grow up early and we as adults really miss our childhood. One day we wake up and we’re just responsible for stuff. Give these kids that childlike adventure for as long as you can. ‘cause ain’t no going back and ain’t no going back for snow days.

[00:54:10] And I feel sorry for gender alpha. I really do. Y’all, y’all from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That grownups ruin every damn thing. And we do. Y’all should get your snow days and they’re gone. Guess what? I’m gonna have a snow day for you. I’m gonna sit in the house and do nothing. And that’s what I plan on doing.

[00:54:30] But on that note, ladies and gentlemen, think about what I said. Think about growing, learning complacency and being complicit. Think about taking control when that prefrontal cortex shuts down and all rational thought goes out the window. Take a breath. That’s all you gotta do in life. Things get stressful.

[00:55:00] Take a breath, take a couple of them. Deep, deep breaths. Center yourself. Let that rational thought take place and don’t be bombarded by everything going on, but don’t be complacent either. I know I’m throwing a lot at you, but basically I’m saying let’s all be better. And on that note, I want to thank you for listening.

[00:55:20] I want to thank you for watching, and until next time, as always, I’ll holler.

[00:55:30] Woo. That was a hell of a show. Thank you for rocking with us here on Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Now, before you go, don’t forget to follow, subscribe, like, comment, and share our podcast. Wherever you’re listening or watching it to it, pass it along to your friends. If you enjoy it, that means the people that you rock, we’ll enjoy it also.

[00:55:50] So share the wealth, share the knowledge, share the noise. For all those people that say, well, I don’t have a YouTube. If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can actually watch our video podcast and YouTube exclusive content. But the real party is on our Patreon page after Hours Uncensored and talking straight ish after Hours.

[00:56:10] Uncensored is another show with my sister, and once again, the key word there is uncensored. Those are exclusively on our Patreon page. Jump onto our website@unsolicitedperspective.com for all things us. That’s where you can get all of our audio video, our blogs. And even buy our merch. And if you really feel generous and want to help us out, you can donate on our donations page.

[00:56:35] Donations go strictly to improving our software and hardware so we can keep giving you guys good content that you can clearly listen to and that you can clearly see. So any donation would be appreciative. Most importantly, I wanna say thank you, thank you, thank you for listening and watching and supporting us, and I’ll catch you next time.

[00:56:55] Audi 5,000 Peace.