The Centerpiece of Modern Life

Dan: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Jackson. And I think we're actually early.

Dean: I think we're actually.

Dan: Early is better.

Dean: Early is under time.

Dan: Yeah, well, early is better than on time, actually.

Dean: That's right. I've learned. Yeah. From I know that you will be and I will be. And there we go. So welcome to Flatlandia.

Dan: Yeah. And everybody can appreciate that we've seen some power of Cloudlandia over the last two weeks in the Ukraine, Russian war.

Dean: I was very anxious to get your take on all of the proceedings here.

Dan: Yeah, well, I think the biggest thing for me, first of all is what is happening was from my standpoint, what I had read before. You know, I'm a daily news reader. I'm not a news watcher news listener,

Dean: but I am, I would say also you are you lean to geopolitical observation too. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, very interesting. I mean, when I was, you know, in grade school going through school, history and geography were always favorite subjects. And. And so that's continued, you know, that's continued since then. But one is that, you know, first of all, it's a really bad part of the world. I mean, the history of that area of Eastern Europe and anything having to do with Russia, generally speaking, you don't find it ever being a good place to be.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, just historically and. But one thing that I think was demonstrated that was not predicted was the degree to which the automated financial networks and Cloudlandia, and specifically I'm thinking of a particular system which has the acronym SWIFT and SWIFT and swift. I hadn't really gone deep into it until they started, you know, exploring just what this is and how it was used to counter Russia. And the best way to think about it is to think of the way that transactions happen on a global scale. And these are transactions between major banks in the world money is being used for. Generally speaking, if corporations are transacting those transactions are actually taking place between one corporation's bank and another corporation's bank.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Okay. Because that's what gives it credibility. And the banks are good at doing. The banks are good at doing this. And so the number that popped up is that around the world, if you think of every day, there are globe major global transactions going on. And David Serber, who is a longtime friend of mine here in Toronto, who is a wealth manager and he really pays attention to these sort of things, he said that every day the total amount of dollar transactions in the world is $5.4 trillion.

Dean: I was going to say. It's so funny. I just saw Jamie Dimon talked about that same thing. The head of JP Morgan Chase, anything, some great percentage of those transfers are them moving money between their own accounts. Like people have somebody's buying something from a merchant that also has an account with JP Morgan. So some more than half of the transactions are within their own accounts, which is interesting.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. The numbers, you know, and you know, you know, 100 years ago, the whole world economy was maybe worth $5.4 trillion. You know, I don't even know if you could evaluate it like that. But this is happening every day. Yeah. The important factor here is 90% of those transactions are in American dollars. They're US dollars. So 90% of all the major transactions. And this would be all transactions. This would be you ordering something on Google prime or Amazon prime and having it sent to you. Okay. So everything that everybody's doing every day is 5.4 trillion and 90% of it is in American dollars. And that' when you. That simply is a testimony to the fact that the American dollar is the reserve currency in the world. Okay. You know, in other words, that it gives relief to the other side that you're going to use a currency, for example, a Russian ruble would not give, would not really a sense of security to someone operating on the other side of the world or a Japanese or a Chinese yuan that they would not accept that. But if those countries, you know, said, no, we're going to do it in dollars, and they say, oh good, it's going to be in dollars.

Dean: That's great. Yeah. You know, what was really interesting to me was that brought to my mind was when the COVID relief things were happening. I remember seeing on, I think it was on 60 Minutes or on a pretty major show, one of the heads of the Fed were alluding to the fact that they learned in 2008 that there's almost a bottomless availability to absorb new money that they print into the economy without the fears of rampant, you know, the repercussions that might come from flooding the money system with new money. And I think they were giving the impression that it's certainly, it's almost bottomless. The, the ability to be able to do that.

Dan: What do you think that, I mean, from your standpoint, why might that have not been thought that before that, but is now thought that. What do you think? Because they're probably tested it.

Dean: They have never tested it. Right. And the thing that in 2008, it's all economic theory that if you flood the market with Dollars that you're Venezuela. Right. But Venezuela is a much smaller ecosystem than that. Right. So the capacity to absorb it. Nobody's holding Venezuelan dollars in reserves. It's not the global economy. Right. There's not warehouses full of Venezuelan dollars just in reserve. Right. That I think that what they were saying is that as a store of value, it's almost like nothing like the real thing in a way. Right. Getting the. That because 90% of the world's global economy, and I forget what percentage of the actual dollars are not even in circulation. They're in storage. They're in physical storage somewhere. And I think that that's what, you know, you look at that, that even, you know. So that was something that they didn't even get to. There was no practical way to. To test that in the field until 2008.

Dan: That was the first opportunity they basically had to, you know, they had to bail out the.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Primarily the American banking system at the largest level. They had to because they had involved themselves in the subprime loans. In other words, that they were.

Dean: And that's what they learned. That's what they were essentially saying. We learned that the first time that we were super conservative and we've got. We could have done more and we can do more. And it was almost like with a wink and a nod kind of, you know, we can, we're going to be fine, basically. We can print whatever we want. That was the sense that I got. Yeah.

Dan: And I don't know if Jamie Dimon would talk about this or there's someplace else where he talked about it, but the, the real problem is they didn't. When they didn't do enough, it's testimony they didn't do it at the local level. And the difference between what they did in 0809 with the subprime meltdown and what they did at the beginning of COVID they flooded the local market, small businesses, with money. And, and the whole point is it's just as bottomless at the local. The, the use of money if you make it available is.

Dean: Yeah. You can actually, I think it's actually,

Dan: I think it's probably more bottomless than it is at the. At the highest.

Dean: It's certainly more of a multiplier. Right. You give people on the front line money and they're going to use it, and then people. Those small businesses are going to use that money again. And I guess on the circulation, economic impact of the dollars is much.

Dan: Yeah. It's really funny. We went through David Riling, who's a Member of the Free Zone. And he's got banks in Minneapolis, Minneapolis. And. And we just asked him, we said, you know, you have these PPP loans that they're bringing out. And I said, can we, as strategic coach, insofar as our US Company goes in Chicago, can we apply for. Our ppa, says, absolutely. He says, just send it through. We had the money in three days. You know, we had the money. And David. I mean, David will tell you that the last two years have been the greatest two years of his bank. And the reason was. And story. I didn't know, but David said that he represented the independent community bank with the post mortem that the finance department in Washington did after 08 09. They were doing an experience transformer. You know, what worked, what didn't work. Next time we have something like this, what. What could we do better now that we have the experience? And he said, get the money to every local bank that you have in the United States. He said, first of all, it'll. It'll keep the banks totally active and ambitious, you know, getting money out to people. And so he was a key advisor, a key person to that. And then he did it. And he said it was remarkable how it could get there. And it was so funny because my company knows that in our previous, let's say, 31 years, as it was first year of COVID we had never once taken any money from the government for any of their programs. You know, the governments are.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and. But we did with the Canadian version of the PPP and the American version, and I justified it because you have to justify. If you said one thing before and then you do different, you have to justify it. Right, right, right, right. Do you believe that? Have you ever done that in your life?

Dean: Of course. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: And I said, we're not actually taking government money. We're just taking the money that's ours, that government sees from us, and we're taking it back and using it better than government can. That was my justification. That was my justification.

Dean: There you go. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Dan: Do you still respect me?

Dean: I do. Even more.

Dan: Oh, good.

Dean: If that's possible.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So go on with a. We were talking about the bottomless. Okay.

Dean: Yeah. And so that was only.

Dan: You only have access to this bottomless money if you're in the system.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And that brings us to what happened over the last two weeks.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Russia got thrown out of the club.

Dean: Mm. Well, I realized what I did not know is that Russia is not Part of the central banking system. And that's an interesting thing when you look at the, you know, the grander conspiratorial, you know, sense of what's going on, of the, you know, all the suspicion or that everybody has about the Rothschilds and, you know, central banking, Illuminati ruling the world kind of thing, that Russia is not part of that. And the whole. The bigger narrative of the moving to the one world government kind of, you know, thing is, requires, of course, having Ukraine as part of this. And they, you know, so it's really, it's so, you know, it's amazing to see. Lupa was, of course, is, of course, from Ukraine. And so Luba and I've been watching things and she is suspicious of some of the ways things are being presented. Like what's made.

Dan: You made, you know.

Dean: Yeah. Tell me what you're thinking. Because that it's. So what you realize now is that there's these. The things that are happening because of social media being prime media now. That there's. So that's the important. That's the narrative that gets through.

Dan: This is one of my Cloudlandia proofs that I was going to bring to this conversation is that you can't. In war. If you go back to the Second World War, basically, the battlefront news is what the generals and the government officials determined would be allowable battlefield news. And it's neither the militaries involved or the governments involved that are now doing the reporting from the battlefield. It's individuals who are using their cell phone to catch this incident and catch that incident. And there's such a multitude of prime mediums that they can immediately transmit their video or they're recording to that. The government no longer has any control or power unless they just completely cut off the Internet. Okay. Which Russia has probably done, I would say, in the last two weeks, they probably shut down about 50% of the access to information inside Russia to their own citizens about what's happening. They've cut down 50% of what's happening in Russia. Yeah. So that the outside world does not know what's happening in Russia because apparently there's riots and protests over 50 cities and, you know, and. But going back, you know, work to World War II time, and probably a long time after that, actually until the Internet, they could stuff it. You know, they could really shut things down. And that power has been lost. So that's all the. I just want to put. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Right now, I think part of what it is, Dan, is that the tools of Communication, the tools of being the media are, have been demonetized and democratized to the point now where there's no advantage to being or having the big resources of a traditional media company. Anybody with their iPhone and cell phone service can publish to the world from where they are. And that the people who care the most have the opportunity to get their message out. You know, like the news media, the outlets, the, you know, bureaucratic ones or the, the sort of organized ones don't. Those people don't have, they don't care. The same way that, you know, the movement, the, the front line, the people who are passionate about their side of it and those voices have the opportunity to.

Dan: Yeah, and it's really interesting, the most passionate voices that, I mean we, there's hundreds of different passionate voices coming from the Ukrainian side.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But the really passionate things that are coming from the Russian side is from 18 and 19 year old conscripts in the Russian army who are saying they didn't tell us that they were sending us here. They didn't tell us what we were going to do. We're killing people, they're killing us. And we don't know what is, we don't have, we don't have any food and we don't have any fuel and everything. And the other thing is that the Russians have been telling a lie for what's. Also, this is a bigger context. You know, it's not like, you know, I mean it's not like anybody, anybody has reported this. But the general, what I would say takeaway from the last, that the Russians have been telling us how modern their military is and how super breaking, breaking edge their weapons are. But we're getting dozens and hundreds of reports and they said, you know, the stuff that they have, their tanks, their trucks, their, you know, everything they're doing, their walkie talkies and everything are 40 years old. You know, they're, they're from the 19 1980s and we're, we're working with weapons that are cutting edge from America, from Britain and from Turkey. Turkey supplying drones, you know, that can fire rockets at Russia. And that's a huge context, that's a huge context that this is a paper tiger army that the Russians have, you know, it's not what we had been told to expect that he said we're going to do it in a day we'll invade and in a day it'll all be over. The Ukrainians will surrender and the, you know, the Western European countries, the NATO countries won't do anything. And that's turned out not to be true.

Dean: Yeah. And now. Now feels like dragging on and not getting. Yeah.

Dan: And it's the worst possible situation because what they wanted was a conventional army, their army against our army. And our army will prevail. But it immediately went into guerrilla warfare. I bet the average size unit on the Ukrainian side is maybe a dozen men. But they have these latest rockets. They have these latest rockets that can knock out tanks.

Dean: Yeah. Tank launcher.

Dan: The Javelin is an American weapon. And, you know, you see the tank on your screen, it's two and a half miles away, it's over a hill, it's behind it for us. And you lock it in. That locks it into the missile. You press the button, the missile takes off. The missile knows exactly where to go, and it goes up high and it finds the tank I got locked in, and it goes right into the tank and blows it up. But meanwhile, the people who fired the rocket can be 100 yards away by the time the rocket actually hits the tank.

Dean: 100 yards away from two miles away. Right.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In other words, if you're. If you saw the rocket launch and you sent a rocket to kill them, that's where that is.

Dean: Right.

Dan: So my feeling is this is Cloudlandia stuff. This is all Cloudlandia stuff.

Dean: The.

Dan: The reporting on the battle, you know, the reporting on the war from the front lines is Quadlandia stuff. But the big thing was the fact is that there's this financial club that if you're going to be anything as a country in the world, you have to bond to the club and you have to be a member in good standing of the club. And Russia was deemed to be not a member in good standing. And except for one bank, they've been thrown out of the. And it's the one bank that simply controls the transactions of oil and gas. That's the only bank that's still operating all the other banks in Russia that have been thrown out of the club.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: And that was not predicted and it was not expected, you know, And I think it's a significant crossover moment from the mainland war to Cloudlandia war.

Dean: Well, and it's really. Yeah. Please wonder, like on the ground. I. There was on YouTube, there's a YouTuber that Luba and I found a couple of years ago. It's a guy from England who goes. And he's basically been touring around the former Soviet outposts. Right. All the former Soviet places, and he goes in just to see how they're all doing that places you would never go the Remotest Russian areas. He goes into Belarus and goes into all of. Exactly all of these. And he goes like deep into the villages, like these tiny villages. He just meets people. He speaks Russian, but he brings them vodka and comes and goes in their homes and talks to them and you get a real sense of what it's like to live in rural, deepest rural Russia. And I thought to myself, you know, he would be a good perspective of what's actually going on. He goes into Ukraine all the time, too. So a couple of. When it was all going on, I went to his channel and of course, he was already on his way to Ukraine, going in through the Polish side before. Before the invasion, before the thing. And he was really. You got a sense of that the Ukrainian people were peaceful and they were not. It was no panicking and there was no sense of, you know, worry or dread or anything like that. It was all very calm before it. And then he was behind on a couple of. But he took, you know, refugee train out of. They went all the way to Kiev. Then he went from Kiev, took a refugee train back to Lviv. And yeah, it was just, you know, an inside look that the Ukrainians are very stoic and.

Dan: Well, especially when in respect to the Russians. They are, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, they're. That. That anything bad the Russians can do to another people, the Ukrainians have already experienced. There's no surprises. Yeah, there's no surprises. And, you know, and there's probably 70 or 80 year old in the Ukraine who can tell you exactly what the experience with the Russians have been, you know, so my sense is that they didn't have any. They didn't go through any period.

Dean: What.

Dan: What's happening to us, you know, like.

Dean: Right, yeah.

Dan: You know, it's like, you know, people in Beverly Hills being locked down, you know, I mean, that's never happened in the history of the world.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know. You mean our restaurant isn't open and you say no, oh, my God, the world's falling apart? Well, not really, but you have, you know, they have Ukrainians who lost three and a half million of their population in the 1930s because Stalin decided that instead of them having a wheat crop to eat, he would sell their wheat crop to get more foreign credit to, you know, to. For other reasons, you know, so three and a half million Ukrainians starved to death, you know, and he said it's. It's a neat thing because we get more money and we get rid of people who are just bothersome to us, you know. Well, then, you know, that, you know, the stories get passed down from person to person, you know, over almost 100 years. And, you know, so they have that as part of their mentality. The 19 and 20 and 21 year old Russians who are fighting the war haven't a clue what, you know, they have nothing from their history. And of course their history, you know, doesn't include any accurate history and what the Russians did to other people, you know, so they're mystified. He says, why are these people fighting so hard? Why do they hate us? Why are they so ruthless? And they said, well, you didn't learn history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's, but the big thing is that you, the world that's in agreement about the financial, in other words, the attributes that you have to have as a country to be eligible for membership in the SWEPSYS system, like you can communicate with other banks and you can, you know, you can facilitate transactions that can be used as a policing mechanism to, to, you know, to respond and sort of push back against a country that's showing itself to be unfit for, you know, wrongdoers, unfit for membership.

Dean: Wow. So what do you, where does it go from here, Dan? What do you see playing out here? What?

Dan: Well, the Russians, you know, can literally, they've got the means to level, you know, to level the Ukraine, you know, they can just flat, they can just flatten it.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But they can't change one mind or change one heart and doing that. Right, okay. And the other thing is then they would have to occupy it. They would have to occupy it and every day, you know, every week, 100 of their people would be killed by the guerrilla bands. Yeah, yeah. And enormous amounts of aid. I mean, that's, it would be hard to control the borders. You couldn't control the borders. So you, you have no control over weapons coming across and information coming across. And so my sense is they've gotten themselves into quicksand here. The Russians, I think, have gotten themselves into a situation that is going to be ten times more costly than they ever reckoned. And I think the Ukrainians will bleed them to death. They'll bleed them to death where that will force a crisis. There is no crises in the Ukraine. And the reason is because the Ukrainians have not been surprised, okay. If you haven't been surprised, there's no crises, okay. The Russians have been totally surprised. So that's really how.

Dean: That they didn't just lay down. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dan: And that the NATO countries all banded together. Germany has done 180 degree backflip in the last two weeks, all of a sudden, they put 100 billion into their military program. They said within two years, we're, we're going to be at full force, highly trained and everything. So if anything, the invasion has.

Dean: Germany will be back. Never again. Right, that's probably their mindset for sure. Yeah, never again.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And the. That part of. So there's a number of countries that just absolutely love this. One is Britain, one is the United States, one is Sweden and one is Switzerland and one is France. And these are major weapons manufacturers in the world and they just get a chance to test out the latest stuff on Russians. And who better to test your weapons out than Russians, you know, I mean, Right. Are there Russians anywhere who are fighting that? We can test our latest weapons out and. Wow, the Javelins, the ones that they're using, the shoulder held rockets, and they weigh 30 pounds, the launchers weigh 30 pounds, and the rocket weighs 19 pounds. Dean, you could comfortably take out another house in your gated community. Sitting and. Yeah, sitting in your.

Dean: In my courtyard.

Dan: In your courtyard, you could. And they would never know where it came from.

Dean: I see a hole right here. I'm sitting in my courtyard.

Dan: You have open skies. Do you have.

Dean: I do. I see it under roof, but I could go. I could roll out into the opening there.

Dan: Yes, yeah. And you could fire that and there, you know. Yeah, you could fire that and that's. Well, they tested these because the Russians put a lot of armaments and they put a lot of troops into Syria to support Syria. And so the. Your local Javelin distributor said, hey, there's a really good example to test out. Our Javelin records are weapons against Russian tanks, you know, and Russian tanks. Russian tanks. Let's just see if we can. So these were tested over the last five or six years, you know, and it's two men. You need one man to do the firing and hold the launcher, and you need another man to carry the rockets. Up to, you know, up to six of them, probably. They can carry, you know, strong man, 20.

Dean: I was gonna say, I don't know that I could carry £120 worth of rocket.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, this has not been your career choice, Dean.

Dean: That's true. It's a good thing. That's funny. Yeah. I'm already carrying around the extra 100 pounds, so in addition to. That would be something else.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. But. So it's really interesting to me and I, I think it's unexpectedly, Cloudlandia is playing a part that would have not been in the thinking I think of the rush. Well, Putin, that wouldn't have been in.

Dean: Right. Yeah.

Dan: So.

Dean: Yeah. And it's definitely, it is definitely playing out in the, in social media, though, the whole everybody, all eyes on.

Dan: Yeah. The other thing is that zelensky is like Mr. Beast, the president. Well, he's charming.

Dean: He's, he's love it, would you say?

Dan: Yeah, he's, he's a guy you would love. You know, he was the guy you wish was the Prime Minister of Canada. You know, I mean, you would have those feelings immediately. Gee, I wish we could maybe, maybe send our Prime Minister to the front lines in Ukraine and bring in the, you know, bring in the President of the Ukraine as the new Prime Minister. You know, it's all done digitally anyway, so.

Dean: Right.

Dan: He could probably run Canada from the front lines of the Ukraine, So, you know, you never know. But anyway. And it's made, you know, you know, it's made Putin look like a mean, bloated, bad, evil, nasty person.

Dean: Yeah, right, right.

Dan: He's not attract. He's not an attractive. He's not an attractive person. And you know, and there's a lot of conjecture whether he's not in fact, suffering from cancer and he's using overusing steroids to, you know, to. Oh, really his energy up. Yeah, he's very bloated. If you compare photos from a year ago to now, he's very bloated. And that's what steroid, steroid use does. Also makes you erratic and aggressive, you know, which he's demonstrated is true. You know, it's conjecture. You know, it's conjecture. Yeah, yeah. It's not proven. Yeah, yeah. So these are just some of my thoughts. These are just some of my.

Dean: They're amazing. And you wonder, like, I often wonder, how do you, like, how do economies just keep rolling? Like even this whole, you know, the occupation that they've been under for in Crimea, in Ukraine, it's been going on for years now that there's. Yeah, there's been. And economy just rolls on. Like the day to day life of things just keep rolling.

Dan: Well, I think, I think that, I think that's the point that Jamie Dimon was making, that it was bottomless, that there's a bottomless desire to do economic activity, to transact with. And I think we've crossed some sort of threshold, we've crossed some sort of tipping point that with the cell phone being the major instrument of economic creation, marketing, you know, everything, you know, it's

Dean: the main thing of. I don't think, I think You, I don't think it would be unfair to characterize it as the centerpiece of modern life. I mean, yeah, I try and think about like I have been thinking about the, you know, removing part portions of that like just observing. I've been going in parallel at a few days where if I remember to do it, I think about like just go parallel in the day and see 1992 versus 2022. And where does the day go? Where does the day go off? Like different, right. Where does it fundamentally differ? And there's not. You can't get a minute into your day without it already being different. In terms of my first, you know, the phone is right there to tell you the wake up. Whereas you know, in 1992 it was the dependable clock radio that you had that was, and I think you've heard, I've heard you mention you've got the same, that standard one.

Dan: 40 years. 40 years.

Dean: 40 years. Still reliable.

Dan: Very sort of pukey beige looking cheap plastic. Sony got only one job in the world and that is to wake me up at the correct time in the morning and it says, you know, I've got nice AM and FM stations, you can listen, you know, I notice you listen to your subpar, you know, stick to your lane, you know, you're good, yeah, you're good at waking me up and then every nine minutes, you know, I'll hit the button and nine minutes from now you can wake me up again. Nine months, you know, nine. That's all. It's done. I bet the total usage of that clock over 40 years doesn't add up to more than three months, right?

Dean: Yeah, it's interesting, right? So you think about that then if I, you know, going, I realize I walk. If I'm going to go to my car, I've got an electric car, for God's sake, that I'm driving that drives itself. So that's pretty different than 1992. I try and sometimes not bring my phone when I go to the local cafe here but I realized that I pay for my coffee with my phone. Yeah. That I use my Apple Pay, I just hold my phone up and I push the button and it, hey, I don't need cash because it's all electronic. Right. And then I realized those, if I do that and then put my phone in the car that gives me two hours of your 1992. That's what I'm left with. But that's how I carve out my 1992 hours, you know. And it's really, it's interesting to go with those, to go with those things. And I realized when you had said something about when you, how long now for no TV for you it'll be.

Dan: And last week in July, this coming July will be four years without tv.

Dean: Four years. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: And I'm noticing, you know, I don't know what was happening four years ago. I don't think, you know, four years ago anything particularly big in the world was happening. And I, I just did it is that we had a terrific summer, July and August. And instead of watching, instead of watching TV in the evening, we were just out on, you know, out on the patio and we were having a nice dinner. And you know, I generally reading, you know, I had Kindle and I was reading my Kindle and I, I, so I got to. About Labor Day and I said, you know, I haven't watched TV in six weeks. I wonder how long I can keep this going.

Dean: Well, it just happened.

Dan: Yeah, it just happened. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't an intention at all.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Until I realized what had already been happening and then I just said, yeah, I just wonder how long I can keep it going. And I'm into my fourth year. Right. And I do know that my general, what I would say positive spirit and you know, and general generally good focus throughout the COVID period was very much supported because I wasn't watching what other people thought about what was going to happen, what was happening. Because, you know, I mean, as far as they're concerned, there's no hour that doesn't have major drama that's more important than the previous hours. Major drama.

Dean: Right. And we're most urgently kept up to date with it.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Through our. Yeah. Beacon.

Dan: So.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And so, you know, but I found, you know, probably another dozen sources of really great, in depth, thoughtful articles, you know, that you can access on the Internet. And you know, and I save them. I've got good files of articles and everything else and you know, it's, you know, a really well thought out article. You know, a couple, you know, a couple thousand pages takes you, you know, takes you six, seven minutes to.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Seven, eight minutes to read it is more useful than a 15 second, you know, emergency urgency update from or to listen to commentators on TV who are not journalists, they're not reporters, they haven't been there. They have no basis for actually proving anything that they're saying. They've just been told what to say. So, you know, wow.

Dean: I got the latest numbers on YouTube are. It's 300,000 hours a day uploaded to YouTube right now.

Dan: Wow. Wow. Yeah. And just think of all the Ukrainian stuff that. Going up.

Dean: Absolutely.

Dan: Yeah, Yeah. I was just watching and there was this picture of Russian helicopter flying across the field. And it was very low, it was like 50ft off the ground. And Stinger rocket suddenly comes from the next field and just obliterates. I mean, it just becomes a fireball and, you know, and that goes up and I bet, you know, the Russian troops are watching that, you know, saying, Jesus, yeah, what have we gotten ourselves into? You know?

Dean: Yeah, yeah, this is.

Dan: And then there was, you know, they were. It was in the control room for these Turkish attack drones and they were just caught up with a convoy of Russian tanks and troop carriers. But they also had the mobile missiles and they're like six on a truck. Six missiles on a truck. And you can see the little square, you know, the, the drone operators doing say, okay, we got it and you push it and then you just watch it. All of a sudden there's just this massive explosion of six, six rockets, you know, and everybody said, yeah, yeah, good, good. You know, like, I'm sure the Russian troops are picking this. The guys who are, you know, in other trucks carrying six missiles six feet behind them.

Dean: Yeah, they're probably like, oh, yeah, they see it all.

Dan: That's what I think. I think I need a bathroom break.

Dean: Yeah. I'll be right back. Pull over. Yeah,

Dan: I'm only going to go a quarter mile. I mean, I mean, I mean, it's deadly stuff, but if you can't have a sense of humor about it, you're not going to come to grips with it anyway. But, you know, it's. Yeah, it's just a very. And you know, you were talking 1992 and 2022, but what would war have been like in 1992? Same war, same people, same place.

Dean: You know, it would have been.

Dan: It would have been one day work. It would have been a one day war.

Dean: I wonder. Yeah, may have. Right. Like what was. Well, 1992. When did, when was the Gulf War?

Dan: Yeah, it was the Gulf War. The first Gulf War was. Well, just trying to think here. The first one, Desert storm was actually 91.

Dean: 91, right. Yeah. And that was, you know, when you look at. That was all we had was CNN and.

Dan: Yeah, CNN was it. Cnn was it actually.

Dean: And I think back then, I think they weren't. I don't know that. I don't know, maybe my whole life you've just been naive to it. But I don't know that the. I don't know that the networks were showing their bias as readily back then. Were they? Or was as it always been that way? Has it always?

Dan: Well, I think that here's my take. The communications media was set up in such a way there only could be one bias. Okay. And what changed it? What changed it was, it's very interesting. There was a thing that FM radio was possible technologically in the 1940s. It's very like you could have had perfectly good FM radio in New York City or any place in the world. And FM is always local because it doesn't have a reach. You know, I mean, once you get 40 miles away, FM radio isn't any good, but within the area. And NBC and rca, who basically were in collaboration with each other, said this is going, this is going to completely undermine AM radio. We can't have that. We can't have this new medium. So it wasn't until the 1970s that FM radio came in. And when it did, who went for FM radio? Well, all the non profit, like npr. First of all, NPR grew up National Public Radio. And then there's another national radio station. It's not as, it's not npr, but it's another thing. And it was basically university based. It was university. All the universities around the United States anyway went to npr. And then you had, you know, you had local. And it tended to go to a more well educated upper echelon audience. FM radio did okay. And they abandoned AM radio. And it was just about the time that a guy named Ross Limbaugh. Yeah, Rush Limbaugh, it came across and you could buy AM space for nothing like this and all these local towns. And the other point of view, the other bias completely swept across the country and gobbled up all the AM stations. And all of a sudden you had a different point of view. And it's called the radical right. Okay, right.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Well, well, well. When you call something radical, it just means that you're hearing opinions that don't agree with your opinions. You know, you're biased. I mean, Dean, you and I are not biased. People who disagree with us are biased.

Dean: Right, exactly. We're completely rational. Yes.

Dan: People who don't believe in Cloudlandia, they're right. They're knuckle Jaggers, you know, they're, you know, they're these one eyed people, you

Dean: know, you know, we're completely fair and balanced.

Dan: So the whole point, when you hear that something's radical, it just means that someone has a point of view that's different from your normal point of view. You're normal, you're rational, you're reasonable. And someone who doesn't, radical, someone who disagrees with you is extreme, you know, and. But you're right. I think in 91 and 92, that hadn't become a big thing yet. And I think the thing that crossed over. It crossed over was Ross Perot running for president in 1992, and he got 26% of the vote. And they said, where are these voters? Well, they're local. You know, they're. They'd be rural, they'd be small town. They'd be.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And he got 26% of the vote.

Dean: And that was an exciting time.

Dan: Yeah. And then in 94, the Republicans just swept the Congress out for the first time in 40 years. The, the Republicans just took over the House of Representatives. And that was the rise of.

Dean: That was the rise of Frank Luntz and the Contract with America.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: That was the big. Yeah, the factual Republican wordsmith. You know, that was when they really took a liking to language.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And then you had Sarah Palin in 2008, and she just got savaged by, you know, savage by the mainstream media. And, you know, she took a lot of hits. But the people who are attacking her are the people who came out looking bad. Not she didn't look bad. I mean, she didn't win and probably, you know, wasn't properly trained or in any way prepared for the role that she was being asked to play. But the way that people just went out of their way to trash her didn't make her look bad. It made the people who are trashing look bad. The sophisticated journalists and commentators at the mainstream media. And that's where I think the negativity that I don't like these people. I don't like these people. And it's gotten worse and worse. And Trump was totally prepared just to flip that. He said, you know, these are awful people. You know, these awful people at, you know, at the networks, abc, cbs, NBC, oh, cnn. You know, just what a trash bin of people this is. You know, they're over educated, pompous, conceited, contemptuous. You know, just listen to them, listen how they talk about people who actually work for a living. So I think that's where you get the crossover. It's that 90s. I think it probably happened during the 90s.

Dean: Yeah. And then, and then, and then, then

Dan: the Internet and podcasting. I mean, I mean, you didn't realize when the board that when barn doors were left open that there were a million horses in that Barn.

Dean: Well, the first wave, of course, were blogs. That was the big thing in the 90s, as you know. That was the most reliable thing you could update. And that's where, you know, the Drudge Report got its foothold.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Very famously, you know, breaking the Monica Lewinsky story. Yep. That, that put Drudge Report on the map. It was like a Washington political insider with the news kind of thing.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And, boy, what an empire he's built. That's something. Just a simple single page hasn't changed in the entire time.

Dan: The big one in that medium is Breitbart. Breitbart is, yes, a major, I mean, they're a, I mean, they're the, I mean, they're far superior to cnn. And, you know, I mean, they're not a broadcast, they're not a. That, you know, they're a pod.

Dean: What is. Like, how would you. I don't know that much about Breitbart, so.

Dan: Well, as Andrew Breitbart himself, he died 10 years ago. They're just celebrating his, his death 10 years ago. But he was kind of, he was a journalist and he, he owned various news, you know, news enterprises of one sort or other. But he just, you know, contrarian point of view that all the people who thought that they, who were in charge because they were smarter, he said, they're not smarter. They're not even as smart as the average person who does. And, but they do control the news media. And we're going to break, we're going to break their hold on the news media. You know, fascinating to listen to. You know, not inflammatory, not inflammatory at all, but just basically saying, you know, you know, they, they think they're 2 times 2 equals 40. And he says, I'm just going to show you that they're two by two. Doesn't equal anything more than anybody else's two by two. And yeah, a lot of facts. And. But he said that the one thing, you know, right off the bat is that they, they are unwilling to debate, he says, because their knowledge isn't based on any. Anything real. You know, they're not. So anyway, so, yeah, major figure. Major figure. I say he and Ian Limbo are the two big historians. If there is a Mount Rushmore with contrarian.

Dean: Right. Okay.

Dan: Those two faces are on them. Yeah, Yeah. I, I think Trump is too. I think Trump, he just created his new social media about two weeks ago, truth social. And it's, you know, it had some glitches, but, you know, he's got about 30, 40 million right off the Bat. Who are plugging in every day. And it goes. I haven't watched because I don't like reading things on my phone. And, and, but it goes to, you know, it'll go to my computer.

Dean: Yeah, that's. Yeah. I wonder about the whole. Where this is all going to land for the next election, you know. Oh, Dance. Are you there?

Dan: Yeah. We got censored. We got sensor. I mean, let's just tell the truth, Dean. We just got censored.

Dean: We just got censored. Exactly. I was worried about.

Dan: They got. They kind of. They. Yeah, they cut us off. You know, some 18 year old student was just feeling very uncomfortable listening to our, to our phone call and cut us off.

Dean: You know, Neil Young's in on it. Neil Young.

Dan: Anyway, so we just.

Dean: Sullivan.

Dan: We just, we just reconnected to say the wrap up.

Dean: So that's it.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So let's just review because this was all invented and exploratory. This was the solid 60 minutes of just, you know, kind of making stuff. Self stuff up in response to it.

Dean: It's funny, we came to the call with the similar thought that was on my mind about what was happening right now. And I knew you would have a. I knew you'd have a take on it and I thought. I was very happy to have the conversation, as always.

Dan: Me too.

Dean: I'm constantly amazed at how fast they. They go.

Dan: Well, yeah. And I think the interesting thing is that if you have a perspective that there are these two worlds. My feeling is that your take on things without talking about it previously is going to be much more similar than people who think that there's only one. One world or the other world. Right.

Dean: Yeah, I think you're right.

Dan: Yeah. And the re. The reason is that a lot of people say, well, you know, the practical world and the physical world, that doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. Wars are not. The wars that kill are not fought in Cloudlandia.

Dean: They're.

Dan: They're fought exactly right.

Dean: That's exactly right.

Dan: You don't starve to death in Cloudlandia. You starve to death in the mainland. You know, that's right.

Dean: That's true. Yeah. You can't run out of no calories in club. Yeah.

Dan: So. So I think that it pays to be familiar with both worlds and see how they interact with each other. And that's what we're doing here. I think we're having a conversation because my sense is that there are people who are rejecting the notion that Cloudlandia makes any difference and they're just saying, you know, this is fairy dust. You know, this is poopoo. This is fairy dust. And then there are people who are totally bought into the fairy dust and they say, well, you know, none of that old stuff matters anymore. And I said, no. I said, it's, you know, it. You have to include both worlds and be successful in both.

Dean: We were just. It's funny that you have to. It has to blend, right? That's. There's no. I think we're beyond where you can opt out of the clubland. It's in. You got to be in it and not of it, perhaps. I don't know. The Luba and I were having a conversation tonight. It's reflecting back, like from 1992 on looking like, when was. I was kind of looking at. When was peak happiness? I would say, like, what was. Where were the. If you're charting, are you at the peak happiness that you've ever been in your life compared to other periods? If you just look at a scorecard of things and it's really, it's a fun thing. I think that there was definitely like the early turn of the century when the Internet was. Everybody's kind of riding that wave of, you know, everything becoming Internet enabled prior to social media. I think that's been. Those were, those were really good years, I think.

Dan: Yeah. No, I mean, just answering the question for myself. There's no question right now is peak happiness and the reason of just what Zoom has given to me personally, our company, and then what becomes now possible just because of Zoom in the last two years. And, you know, I did my first in person workshop last Thursday and it was very enjoyable. It was very enjoyable. We only had 12. There was another, you know, there was another 20 who could have been there, but they said, you know, we're not, we're really not certain yet and everything. And was in Toronto. It was in Toronto. And that worried some people. But by the end of the day, I was really clear of just how much we've gained from the two years of one not being able to do in person workshops and just mastering a second way of doing workshops. And I said, you know, it's. It's both and we've gotten a. Both and situations.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So that made me very happy.

Dean: Well, I booked my. We're booked for Palm beach, which is great.

Dan: Well, you know, you know, you make sure you leave early enough to get there from Orlando. So. So, yeah, we're looking forward to it. And it's, you know, you know, and, you know, we're almost back to complete, you know, Freedom of Operation Chicago. Will be in Chicago next week and everything's clear and free for Chicago. So we're happy with that. The end of the month. Supposed to be here.

Dean: Okay, so same time for me and an hour earlier.

Dan: Same time for you? Yeah. Okay, perfect.

Dean: Okay, talk to you next time.

Dan: Bye.