Do You Trust the Government?

Transparency and truth must always be more important than narrative and messaging.

Transcript

Will Loconto:

I'm Will Loconto and I'm here with my partner Cindy Bass. Today we have a fundamental question. Do you trust your government?

Cindy Bass:

That would be a no, I don't.

Will Loconto:

Well, trust in government is near an all time low. In a Pew research poll, the percentage who say they trust the government to do what's right just about always, or most of the time is 20%. Only 2 out of 10 people. My own personal answer is it depends on what the government's saying and what the issue is. Sometimes I will trust the government, sometimes I will ask questions. I think that some skepticism and discernment is important even more now that the media who normally would be skeptical of the government seems to be working together with the government. It seems like the government works with the press and social media companies to control narratives to manipulate public opinion.

Cindy Bass:

You mean the Democrats?

Will Loconto:

Well, I'm sure everybody does it, but right now the government,

Cindy Bass:

The media is liberal.

Will Loconto:

Well, most of the media is liberal. Yes. And the government working with media, including social media companies is a dangerous thing.

Cindy Bass:

Yes, it is. It sways elections and everything else. I trust, I guess, the government. That sounds bad, doesn't it? I don't trust their money the way they use our money. Our money, the American citizens, money, taxes that we pay in, they are, I believe, mismanaging our money. There's too many, it's too big of a government. They're adding to it daily.

Will Loconto:

Well, just the concept of every single year, the funding for a government program has an assumed increase. That's not called an increase. Every year a program's funding goes up based on a certain cost. And if they don't go up that amount, they call it cutting. They call it cutting the funding. And the idea that we have just this endless money supply and this huge money pit where it all goes.

Cindy Bass:

We have a good printer.

Will Loconto:

Yes. That's not good. That's how inflation happens. And that's print more money than happening. Printing the money is where our problems are coming from right now. So I generally trust the government until we're not allowed to ask questions.

Cindy Bass:

I don't trust everyone's agendas,

Will Loconto:

Motives?

Cindy Bass:

And motives. Watching this over my adult life learning more and more, you see how they pack in stuff on the bills, the pork and stuff. And that's kind of another form of bullying where people get their whatever they want. If this or if you vote this way,

Will Loconto:

And the two-party system feeds into that too. Because if you get elected tomorrow as a freshman congressman coming in as Democrat or Republican, there's expectations on how you are going to vote by the party, whether no matter what your personal convictions are, you are assumed that you're going to listen to the party leaders in the Senate or in Congress and generally vote with them, or you are not going to get any support from the party. And so there's all kinds of backroom back scratching that goes on.

Cindy Bass:

Yeah, I know.

Will Loconto:

And so the agendas are suspect.

Cindy Bass:

I learned a long time ago that I recognized a bill that needed to go, and my congressman said to me, well, that won't even fly why I asked. Because the biggest PAC at that time in Texas was the real estate pack and what I was saying needed to be done, which he agreed, which I'm not going to go into, but he said, "PACs rule."

Will Loconto:

Right. Because they would be against it. Yes. There's no way that the idea would be accepted.

Cindy Bass:

So he explained to me that and kind of broke my heart because,

Will Loconto:

Because it was the right thing to do?

Cindy Bass:

It was the right thing to do. And I had identified something that needed to change, my little self, and it had to do with environmental stuff, which had to do with land. And he said, "it's not going to fly with the real estate PAC." And that was that. So that was my very blunt first,

Will Loconto:

Introduction.

Cindy Bass:

And I was in Austin in his office at the Capitol.

Will Loconto:

Right.

Cindy Bass:

That's who I am. I go all the way that way if something's happened. Anyway, my distrust started with the Clintons. I can tell you that I know men cheat and women cheat, whatever, but I know politicians have a lot of power and money and influence, and I know that they can get their way and do what they want to do. But I guess I hold so many people in a higher standard. And when all of that came out with that Lewinsky scandal, just because Bill Clinton did do some good, he's a good speaker. He's a smart guy. But he lost my respect when he had some woman an aid under his desk or the cigar stuff. This I'm just saying that we as a country had to go through that and hear it and listen to it. And I lost respect for him. And then it started making me lose respect for government. And I follow rules. I actually love the government. That was my favorite subjects in school history and government. And it's sad to me, it's really sad,

Will Loconto:

Disillusioning,

Cindy Bass:

Disillusioning that these men that have been our presidents, I don't like anybody benefiting from something or in cahoots with other countries or their kids getting money because of who they are. I think it's sick.

Will Loconto:

Right. Well, my own personal journey with trusting the government kind of goes like this. I have family members that are military. I'm very patriotic, love the country, generally trusted the government, was interested in politics even all the way back in high school. I was a Reagan fan back in high school. I was a George W. Bush fan. I liked him, thought he was a good governor for Texas, thought he's a good president. I trusted the government with the response to nine 11, trusted the government in Iraq with the W M D. Looking back on that is probably some of the first time I looked at things with a skeptical eye, seeing the stuff about the C i a torture program, things like that. And then with Obama targeting the press with legal investigations from the doj, the guns in Mexico, fast and furious thing,

Cindy Bass:

Benghazi,

Will Loconto:

The Benghazi thing was a disaster. And then they're dissembling about how the Benghazi thing was caused by an internet video, which is debunked completely now. But the real disillusionment for me came during the Trump term as President, just to see the Russian collusion basically being a hoax, mostly a hoax that was perpetuated by the FBI itself. The impeachments of Trump. When you take a critical eye and look at these things, there's so much narrative over truth, which is a bad look for a government. And I'm somebody, I was a Trump voter multiple times. I don't have to trump as a person to how his term policy-wise was. It's possible to agree with the policy and not necessarily love the man that it applies to anybody. But during that whole thing where basically the entire apparatus of media and even the government itself under his administration, people in his administration constantly leaking things that whether true or not were designed to damage him.

The whole Russian collusion thing pretty much goes back to a Clinton plot to kneecap him at the beginning. If it didn't work to keep him from being elected, then it would work in a way to slow him down as president and keep him mired in all kinds of controversy. And he brought a lot of the controversies on himself. But there certainly are invented things that steel dossier, there's so much of it that was invented that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. And even now classified documents. Well, in the classified documents thing, now the media pushed the idea that he had nuclear secrets that he was trading, selling, or trading to other countries. There's pretty much no way that that's the truth. And then it's even more ironic when they found boxes of classified documents at multiple locations for Joe Biden when he never even had the authority to declassify any of it. So there's a narrative there that you have to kind of willfully ignore the truth to support this crazy narrative. I'm kind of tired of the narrative over the truth. We get covid and all through covid, the C D C pushed the idea that natural immunity was never as good as what the vaccine would give. And the whole idea of the C D C being credible fell apart from me when they started to censor things and dismiss things.

Cindy Bass:

Well, it doesn't feel good on my end because I took two vaccines and a booster and now all this stuff is coming out.

Will Loconto:

Well, the narrative was that if you had the vaccine, you weren't ever going to get covid. Right. And that was I got it. Well, they're pretending now that nobody ever said that. But it was absolutely, that was the official position of the government. The C d C Joe Biden, they're was that if you get this vaccine, which turns out isn't even really a vaccine, they had to rework the meaning of the word vaccination to lend credibility to the shot. Pretty crazy that they changed the definition of a vaccine because a vaccine traditionally confers immunization, which means in most cases, you do not get the disease that you've been vaccinated for. You do not catch it. And when the few people who did get it after getting a vaccine breakthrough, it would be called breakthrough cases. Now, the covid narrative fell apart because they pushed that this was an immunizing shot, and then suddenly the number of breakthrough cases shot through the roof. And suddenly there were so many breakthrough cases that they had to stop using the term breakthrough cases, and they stopped using the term immunization. And then they went to the narrative that, well, it lessens the severity of covid and keeps people from dying. Which the evidence, I wonder

Cindy Bass:

If that's a lawsuit.

Will Loconto:

No, because they're using it under the emergency use protocol. Oh, there is no liability. Because

Cindy Bass:

I'm thinking myself. That's what I believed when I took the vaccination, was I was not going to get covid. Yes. And I got it as quick as I could. Yes. Because I didn't want my elderly parents to catch it. Yes. Through me

Will Loconto:

Or your disabled sister. Yeah. Yeah. And you knew you would give it to them if you caught it.

Cindy Bass:

Yes. So I got it as soon as I could with that thought. But now knowing that it was, I mean, that's misrepresentation

Will Loconto:

Probably pisses you off.

Cindy Bass:

Yeah.

Will Loconto:

But the craziest part of it is that the whole idea of the narrative that the vaccine was better than natural immunity and the vaccine was an immunization, turns out in hindsight to not be true. And three years later, we're still operating under an emergency use authorization for these boosters.

Cindy Bass:

Do you trust your government?

Will Loconto:

It's crazy. I mean, talking about this stuff, this isn't conspiracy bullshit. No. This is reality. And the idea that the government lied to you is real. You know, thought back when I was watching the Iraq War on television, and then you see Baghdad Bob talking about that the Americans aren't really here, or this is not really happening. You know, wouldn't think that there'd be a Baghdad bob version of a United States official telling you lies. It just wasn't. That's not the America that I believe in. We need to get back to an idea. And I know somebody's going to say, well, this never truly existed where we had a transparent government. But I believe that ideally we want a transparent government. Ideally we want people that critically the idea of the press being the ones holding the government accountable. It shouldn't just be when Trump is the President. It should be when anybody's the President. The press should be aggressively pushing on every element of all of this rather than being a willing, complicit participant in the narrative over the truth. It's dangerous. And what it's going to do is it's going to lead to more and more people not trusting the government. And you know what happens then? You get all these weirdos advocating for a national divorce or a civil war, and that's fucking insane. But we need to have a priority of where this transparency is the norm rather than an exception.

Cindy Bass:

Well, I think money and power, which one and the same is the root of all of this and lobbyists and who owes who a favor backdoor deals.

Will Loconto:

Well, many people would tell you that the intention of all of these government officials in Congress and in the Senate is just to get reelected, not to actually do anything. And then they use the fear, whether it's the fear of Trump or the fear of illegal aliens to raise money. Because when people are worried and afraid, they donate more money. Right. And so it's an extension of the media saying that if it bleeds, it leads. And the idea is that if you can scare enough people into believing something, then they're going to spend money and they're going to vote for it. And part of it is even seen from day-to-day in what these senators and Congress people do. I brought up something to you this morning that I said you're going to see when they talk about Biden's student loan forgiveness, you're see an even stronger push by Schumer to condemn the Supreme Court and claim that they need to pack the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is extremist right wing nuts.

It's funny and sad both that they're going to talk about these things and use it to raise money. They're going to talk about abortion and use it to raise money. But when they had both the Senate and the House and the presidency, they didn't codify abortion rights. They didn't pack the Supreme Court. So somebody might actually have a valid argument to say a lot of this is theater. They think it's the W w E. They're out there screaming for people to protest against the Supreme Court when they could have actually tried to do something about it. And it happens on the right too, that people will say, oh,

Cindy Bass:

I think most of these people are narcissists. I think that they are egomaniacs and they like to see their face and hear their self talk.

Will Loconto:

Well, one of the saddest things is when you think about it, what Right? Thinking human being that loves his family would put himself in the position of running for office because of what happens to them and what gets done to them and how they are scrutinized and how they are shit on, and how they're, I don't know, that truly good people are running for

Cindy Bass:

Office. It'd be very scary.

Will Loconto:

I know plenty of people that wouldn't do it for that reason.

Cindy Bass:

We were just talking earlier about that Kavanaugh, I still think about that because it was

Will Loconto:

Mostly a fabricated narrative. Even

Cindy Bass:

Going back to Clarence Thomas. It just goes back so far that these freaking weird things come up Do. Don't you remember Clarence

Will Loconto:

Thomas? Oh yes. Yeah. Yep.

Cindy Bass:

That, that's disturbing.

Will Loconto:

Well, the character destruction to me is more disturbing than the alleged incidents.

Cindy Bass:

Oh yeah.

Will Loconto:

Which is

Cindy Bass:

I I'm just saying that the

Will Loconto:

Destruction of

Cindy Bass:

The, here it goes, the character

Will Loconto:

Goes just like is

Cindy Bass:

Just DeSantis. He hasn't even officially come out and said that he's running and they've already blasted something about him partying with young girls. And that was just, I can see that that's just the start for him. I hate that part of this.

Will Loconto:

Yes. Because there there's going to be disgusting accusations that are most likely not true. I

Cindy Bass:

Mean, he's the governor and anybody, he's the governor of Florida. Why didn't it come out before

Will Loconto:

Now? Well, that's like the Kavanaugh thing. It just happens to show up when he's going to be on the Supreme Court as opposed to it didn't come up when he got confirmed for the lower court.

Cindy Bass:

Right. Why not? Why didn't, it wasn't important. Maybe it takes years to come up with all these wild stories. I don't know. Look good, Photoshopping. I mean that's not really, do you trust your government with those types of

Will Loconto:

Things? Well, part of it is though, because it was absolutely one side politically government officials making this happen. I mean, it was the government providing the hearing for these false things.

Cindy Bass:

I know. And

Will Loconto:

It wasn't even a hearing. It's a manipulation. It's just like when they just had Matt Tybee and Michael Shellenberger on at those

Cindy Bass:

Kinds

Will Loconto:

Of Governor Congress talking, well,

Cindy Bass:

Whatever she said.

Will Loconto:

And basically they had them on there talking about government censorship and how dangerous it is. And the entire contingent of Democrats spent the entire day trying to paint these journalists as fringe weirdos that aren't credible. Even though they were both Democrat more left than

Cindy Bass:

I. Sometimes I just get, it's just too much. I don't understand how this happens. But one thing I was thinking of the other day is the oil reserves with Biden just selling our oil reserves. I don't trust the government when they do that.

Will Loconto:

No. And the idea that selling them mostly for a pre-election

Cindy Bass:

To China

Will Loconto:

Price drop to China. To China, but also to anybody else. But it's selling 'em and putting the country at risk.

Cindy Bass:

That's what

Will Loconto:

I'm saying. But, and the idea that we're going to fill 'em back up when it gets cheaper, you don't know that it's going to get cheaper. And you're not drilling for oil anymore. We're not approving new drilling in the United States. So you're going to pay a premium to refill those

Cindy Bass:

Reserves. You're going to give away our reserves and not drill. I don't trust the government

Will Loconto:

And then we're going to buy 'em from another country to refill

Cindy Bass:

Where they probably do it in a very

Will Loconto:

Less environmentally friendly

Cindy Bass:

Way, not environmentally friendly. And I am all about that. I just don't trust the government. These are one after another reasons that I don't trust the government.

Will Loconto:

Well, and this is crazy too, because we don't trust the government and we're not conspiracy weirdos.

Cindy Bass:

No.

Will Loconto:

I’m not telling somebody that the moon landing is fake and we took down the towers on 9/11. I'm not, so this isn't something where I don't trust the government because I'm some weirdo. This is a critical thinking person being skeptical in a healthy way because transparency and truth should be the goal above narrative and messaging. And the government needs to focus a lot less on messaging.

Cindy Bass:

Another thing is social security. It was implemented to be supplemental money. It wasn't supposed to be lived off of. That's the way it was put in place. But you had to pay in to receive. And now they have people getting in the system that never paid in. When they get in, they start paying. But if they haven't prior, but yet they reap the benefits of the money when things just don't make sense. Just common sense. And I'm not a political scholar or I'm not a C P A, but I have owned businesses and I see things in a very simple way. And you need an accounting of money. You don't give billions and billions and billions to Ukraine. You secure your border with the military. Our military secure our border because I don't trust what they're doing. They're letting in millions and millions of people on our border, which is making people have more crime. It's a burden, burdening our system and bankrupting us. And that right there, I don't trust the government for what I mean by this is I'm, I'm an average female citizen of the United States and I don't feel like the government is working to my best benefit to protect me and my family and my future in the fairest way.

Will Loconto:

And the less transparent the government is, and the more they just push narrative over truth, the more people are going to feel that way.

Cindy Bass:

Yes.

Will Loconto:

And it's really a bad thing.

Cindy Bass:

It's not a good thing. It's not a good thing because when you have a big portion of the country that doesn't trust the government, just like you said it, it can become a civil war.

Will Loconto:

Yep. It's terrible. So let us know if you trust the government. Come to our website, push Back Nation and let us know what you think. That's it for us today.

Cindy Bass:

See ya.