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Speaker 2: One of the staggering aspects when I was in elected
office it was it was amazing to me the number
of organizations that would come with their handout to government.
So any given community has anywhere from you know, even
small communities have ten twenty five of them, and the
large communities like Charlotte wud have one hundred hundred fifty
two hundred.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how many Charlotte would have, but
they would come.
Speaker 2: Someone realized that they could go. It's a lot easier
to convince three or four whatever them, four to seven whatever.
The majority of having given board is to give you
money than it is to convince the population at large.
A lotless work if I can go and get you know,
if your board is seven commissioners and I get four
of them to say, y'all give you fifty thousand dollars,
that's a lot less work on my part. But what
it means is that those commissioners or those council members
feel they feel good about giving your money to a
group that you didn't give to. So then the other
groups go, uh huh, I can go and ask for
government money, and they start going and asking. And yet
if you're a councilman or a county commissioner, you feel
heartless or they will try to make you feel heartless
for turning them down. Not the organizations necessarily, but your
fellow board members or people of the opposite political party. Oh,
Chad is so heartless. He doesn't care about those people now.
Never mind, I was involved in five or six of
those organizations and was giving my time, effort, money, going
out and knocking on doors and making calls and raising
money and doing events that will zerele. What was important
to them, my political enemies at the time, was that
I didn't care about those organs.
Speaker 3: I did. I just and I said it in commissioner chambers, where.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't feel it's my right to take
away money from people who earned it to give to
an organization that they didn't choose to give it to,
no matter how worthwhile the organization was, and many worthwhile organizations,
that doesn't mean they should be entitled a taxpayer money.
In fact, I argued, and it became true over time,
which was that the more that these organizations go and
get government money, the more removed they are from the
community they are supposed to serve. Because when a group
is out there trying to raise money and make a
difference in a community, they're out there in the community
trying to raise money and make a difference in the community.
If they can go and rely on a government handout,
they're not out there in the community asking for money
as much.
Speaker 3: They get lazy, and they die, they wither on the vine.
They serve.
Speaker 2: The people they serve may get something from government, but
that government gravy train is inconsistent, and the organization spends
more time trying to get money from government than trying
to get money from citizens. And then all of that
wonderful altruistic mindset of individuals that want to give money
and feel like giving money, they're they're gone, So your
donor base goes right and the organizations die, which is
why it's much better. It's much more heartfelt when it
comes from individuals than from government. Government wasn't designed to
have a heart. Government was designed to get out of
the way. We forget that. It's easy to forget that.
Now all on to more interesting times, and I do
one of the There are many things you can like
or not like about the president, but you can't say
he's not masterful at that provoking thought. So when Trump
talks about Canada or Mexico being you know, annexed in
the United States, people lose their minds and political fortunes
are made and lost. Just Trudeau may not be the
Prime minister of Canada, Trump suggested that Wayne Gretzky run
for office, because everyone loves Wayne Gretzky in Canada and
he should run. Gretzky said, well, I don't want to run,
and so Trump puts out there, Hey, we should draft
a petition in Canada and the Canadian should draft him.
Speaker 3: The Canadian should draft Wayne Gretzky to be prime minister.
Speaker 2: I things beautiful, but nothing has stirred commentary quite as
much as the Greenland. He did this a few years
ago when he was president, and now he's done it again,
and he's talking now about the serious nature of Greenland
with respect to America's interest. And I have said, you know,
this is acting like it's going to be a military invasion.
Is where people lose their mind. So I saw the
story this morning, I thought this was just silly. But
as Donald Trump tweets stuff out there. Days after Donald
Trump again, this is at the Washington Times, It's all
over the AP and other people have written it. Days
after Donald Trump again expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, Denmark
had said it would boost defenses on its Arctic territory.
In what it insisted was a total coincidence, the Scandinavian
country announced his investment of one point five billion in
defenses of its vast possession bordering North America.
Speaker 3: The Danes will add two.
Speaker 2: Elite Navy sled dog Navy sled dog teams. Now, if
you're going to fend off a United States invasion, if
that's really the goal, would you really send two elite
navy sled dog teams and two little patrol boats and
two new.
Speaker 3: Long range drones.
Speaker 2: So you've got two dog sled teams two patrol boats
and two long range drones that are going to defend
Greenland against the United States. Now, imagine, if you will,
that you are one of the guys in charge of
the dog sled team and your commanding officer comes to
you and says, you know what, we are very concerned
about those Americans. You will defend us. You will defend
the country against America, You and your eight dogs. You
would feel how would you feel? Honey, I'm sorry, I
have to go to Greenland.
Speaker 3: I've been called up.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is going to invade Greenland and me and
the dogs were off. How many dog teams are going
with you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: F well, just Fred down the street. Fred and I.
We're going with the two dog sled teams. We're going
to stop the Americans. It's like a dubbed bad sci
fi movie, isn't it. Two dog sled teams against the
entirety of the US military. I love alleys that they
beefed up their security forces. They're gonna add two dogs
led teams, two patrol boats, and two long rangeo Now
the interesting thing to me about this, that's funny enough
to me. The other funny thing is they haven't been
paying their fair share of NATO.
Speaker 3: Now if they were.
Speaker 2: We have a military bank, fifty thousand people in all
of Greenland, we have a military base there. We are
providing a lot of the defenses for Greenland, more so
than almost the Danes are. And they're not even paying
for their fair share of the defense of their own
country in Europe through a NATO where Trump says you're
gonna pay your fairs shirre and so lest you think
this has never been done before, and I'm not talking
about the invasion, we negotiated a purchased and seating of
territory from the Danes before. And if you've ever been
to the US Virgin Islands, you're welcome. That happened, same country,
same people had autonomy over it. If you ever go
to a rub but the Danes kind of have that.
Speaker 3: It's kind of back and forth as to who's running things.
Speaker 2: But this isn't as violent and horrific as you may think.
And when we come back from the break, I'll kind
of go through this because it's not We haven't acquired
property quest and I think the last was about nineteen
seventeen when we got Guam, the Philippines in Puerto Rico
from the Spanish.
Speaker 3: It happens.
Speaker 2: So this thing with Greenland is interesting. The thing with
Canada's imagine if you will, that in a couple of
years that the Canadians decide we don't we like this
whole concept.
Speaker 3: Maybe Quebec goes.
Speaker 2: Quebec is its own thing with the French and let
the French be as a French. But let's see if
we what would it look like if there were five
more states in Canada and another state was Greenland. Fifty
thousand people's all, and if you put it up to
the people from Greenland, they might say, we want to
be part of the United States.
Speaker 3: We like that idea.
Speaker 2: They might say that.
Speaker 3: Probably, I don't know.
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Speaker 2: I'm sitting in for pee calendar here at Newstalk eleven
ten ninety nine three WBT seven oh four five seven
oh eleven ten. That's the phone number should you want
to desire to be a part of what we are
doing here today. Always an honor and a pleasure and
great staff. Right now, I do want to say here
at WBT, we are committed to amplifying community voices and
providing hope and resources in the mental anderal health domain.
In collaboration with Ecklenberg County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. For
the month of December, we are navigating the holidays with resilience.
Providing us with the toolbox needed to navigate is Hope
Haven Incorporated.
Speaker 3: Ms. Karen King, Senior Vice President.
Speaker 2: This program is presented by the Mecklenburg County Alcoholic Beverage
Control Board. Visit mechabc dot com for more information on
their community outreach initiatives. Always making a difference. As we
said earlier in the show.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump had kind of Trump. He is remarkable. And
there's actually a video if you go out there and
look for it, you will find a video of how
Trump kind of creates his tweets with team and he
just says stuff off the cuff, and he says, yeah,
put that out there, and he does. And so he
unlike Biden, who we know clearly doesn't write his tweets
and many other people who don't, he does.
Speaker 3: He does.
Speaker 2: And what makes it so unique is he's not going
to his consultant saying, hey, what do the polls say
about this. It's not like Josh din or like Governor Cooper,
who have to consult with someone to say should I
say that? Or they have a team that writes it.
And in fact, it's so bad that if you go
to Roy Cooper's Twitter feed, you will find that anything
they have to go out of their way to say
something that comes from him has an RC at the
end of it, meaning that he actually did that.
Speaker 3: The rest of them are.
Speaker 2: Not him, even though it's his name, but he's gone
out of his way to make sure only these and
also a governor that has almost no email trail through
his years of.
Speaker 3: Public service, one of the most secretive.
Speaker 2: One of the most non open, non transparent governors in
the state's history. It's true, factually true, just doesn't seem
to care about that. So because what he learned as
a Democrat was that they use those weapons against Republicans
all the time. So he doesn't want to have a trail,
so he tells other people what he wants done, they
do it.
Speaker 3: Then he has.
Speaker 2: The two most important words in politics are plausible deniability,
and that has been the way in which Governor Cooper
has operated its entire career. I didn't write that, I
didn't say that. You have no proof that I wrote
that or cared about that issue. Can't say that I
did it unless it happened in front of a camera.
It doesn't exist. Now, what I was going to say
about Trump, the way he operates is that when he
throws stuff out there and it becomes fodder for everybody
to get in there, argue, haggle, throw stuff, get mean,
and he just watches, here's what happens.
Speaker 3: I'll throw it out there. We'll see what they do.
He doesn't do it with any defender. He should, we should,
we should do this.
Speaker 2: And make no mistake, Greenland is strategically important. He is
correct in that we should take it over. That doesn't
mean he will. But if you were to listen to
the mainstream, which is dying slowly in the death throws,
they go.
Speaker 3: Out of their way. See he Trump's gotta be a dictator.
Speaker 2: On day one, He's gonna invade Greenland. He's gonna send
Fort Liberty formerly noticed Fort brag He's gonna invade. He's
gonna send the eighty second Airborne in. He's gonna send
the one on one from Kentucky. The screaming Eagles are
gonna go Land. They're gonna take it over. Trump is
a dictator, and that's none of that is true, of course,
but that doesn't stop the Danes. The Dutch say, oh,
we need to defend Greenland against the US.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna put some dogs led teams out. Not
a joke. They seriously said they're gonna do that. Here's
this is from the dossier.
Speaker 2: And I like these kind of they're almost like blogs,
they're like edit files and stuff like that. They're actually
legitimate people. This is a good one that OSSI is
actually a publication. This is by Jordan Chattel. I'm gonna
say his name wrong, shash Tel, and he wrote the
annexation of Greenland would be the first major US acquisition
in well over century. It would positively shape President Trump's legacy.
What I like about this column is it's giving you
something to think about. It's not saying he will or
won't do it, but what would it look like if
he did. President Elect Tromp made quite the buzz over
the weekend when he expressed a strong interest in acquiring
the Danish controlled autonomous territory of Greenland, a land that
is both immensely resource rich and strategically a high priority
to the interest of all major powers, including China. Whether
you're studying abroad dreaming, I'm sorry in a post a
truth social On Sunday, Trump announced the nomination of PayPal
co founder Ken Howary to serve as the next US
Ambassador of Denmark, writing quote, for purposes of national security
and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America
feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an
absolute necessity end quote. As we said, it's incredibly recent,
rich with rare earth mineral deposits valued in the hundreds
of billions of dollars, and its geopolitical position is incredibly
significant to our interest visa our great power rivals. Should
Greenland fall under the Chinese umbrella, it would have a
devastating national security application for the US. Denmark's hyperliberal political
leadership has sought to preserve Greenland for Gaya, you know,
the Earth Guide, and Copenhagen has essentially cut the territory
all for most human contact other than tourism. There are
about fifty thousand people who live there because they have
bought into all the climate hoax stuff and DEI narratives.
The current Prime Minister of Greenland, a socialist politician named Mute,
egged love those names, don't you Mute? His name is
Mute m Mute. Mute responded to the Trump Post declaring
that Greenland is not for sale. I don't think Trump
said it was for sale. He just said it was
strategically important. Respectfully, Greenland is autonomous Danish territory, so it's
sale wouldn't really involve the locals, though it would be
wise to accommodate their interest and get their consent. Don't
be surprised if the Trump administration reaches out to Copenhagen
and starts the very real process of negotiating over the
future of Greenland. They can start by leveraging Denmark's failure
to live up to the two percent defense spending as
a NATO member. The United States already maintains one military
base in Greenland, known as Patefic Space Base, which supports
critical mission missile warnings, missile defense, and space surveillance missions.
It's been quite a long while, but the United States
has annexed territories numerous times in its history.
Speaker 3: That has shaped our country.
Speaker 2: Now I want you to give you this just in
case you think when the media tells you.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is terrible, as horrible, we have done it.
Speaker 2: The Louisiana purchase was in eighteen oh three, eight hundred
twenty eight thousand square miles from France. Which double the
size of the US. The annexation of Texas in eighteen
forty five we took We got that from Mexico at
the end of the Mexican American War the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo eighteen forty eight. We got five hundred and twenty
seven thousand square miles added to the US, which included
California and Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming,
andt Oklatre. We had the Gadsden Purchase in eighteen fifty three.
We had the annexation of Hawaii. In eighteen ninety eight,
we had the Spanish American War, which led to US
acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines from Spain. The Philippines
letter became independent in nineteen forty six, but Puerto Rico
and Guam are still US territories. See it's not American Samoa.
Speaker 3: After the Second Samoa Civil.
Speaker 2: War, the US formerly annexed the eastern part of the islands,
which became American Samoa. So it isn't unheard of, and
it could be acquired and it might be worth it.
The Dutch may say, you know what if the people
at Greenland are cool with this and it's financially good
for our country and financially good and strategically important to
the US.
Speaker 3: Hey, we're all in all right?
Speaker 1: Hey real quick, if you would like to get your
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Speaker 2: I saw a funny one a meme and because we will,
I will not belabor the climate change. I think we're
going to the beauty of twenty twenty five. In my
opinion on this subject is, I think we're gonna have substance,
substantive discussions about climate I think that we're finally going
to break through this cult mentality and have some discussions
about it.
Speaker 3: What does it mean, what are the implications.
Speaker 2: And this meme is it's a meme and it's the
like the Mayans, you know, taking someone to the top
of the temple and cutting their heart out and throwing
it down the temple steps. And it says government protecting
us from climate change since thirteen.
Speaker 3: Fifty because that's what they were trying.
Speaker 2: If you think about it, all of those human sacrifices
were about the government at the time, the rulers wanting
to make the crops work rain or too much rain
to get rid of it, too little rain. Add more so,
it's about climate change. They were human sacrificing their way
to climate change. And the people involved in this whole ordeal,
like John Carey, that's the same thing they want. They'd
love population control for climate change. If we just do this,
we'll fix the climate. It's an existential threat to humanity.
So if we have to sacrifice a few humans along
the way, then we're okay. It's all good. And that's
just kind of the way they see things, and it
is unfortunate, but nonetheless that's the way the way they
see I.
Speaker 3: Would love for us to be able to do this.
Speaker 2: By the way, just about two hours ago, the president
took off and left to Saint Croix.
Speaker 3: He's been traveling.
Speaker 2: And the president who's taking more time off than any
president in history.
Speaker 3: This is the guy. I mean.
Speaker 2: Think about that Franklin Dell and Roosevelt had Pollion, was
in a wheelchair, and he didn't take off as much
time as this president did. This president has been just lacked.
He's not one of you, He's not one of us,
not even close to one of us.
Speaker 3: Just the way it is.
Speaker 2: Even member of his own party are kind of wondering
what the heck is going on with him?
Speaker 3: But who knows?
Speaker 2: Now on the class as we had raw the top
of the hour do this is kind of an uplifting story.
A little bit that it was originally published back in
twenty eighteen, but I think it's worthwhile as we reflect
on our country and where we are what is it
Because a lot of what is great about this country
is timeless. A lot of what is wonderful about its founding,
about the recognition that others saw in it over time,
that's timeless. And you have to believe the sacrifice is
made by countless millions over that period of time. We
owe it to them to make it prices and to
preserve the prices nature of being American. And this is
originally published in the Twentiesslawliberty dot Org and it's originally
published in December twenty fourth to twenty eighteen. Miracle on
thirty Fourth Street from nineteen forty seven is the finest
cinematic exploration of the commercialization of Christmas. The central story
is that Chris Kringle, a man who looks like and
believes he is Santa Claus, is hired to play Santa
Claus at Macy's. When it is revealed that he believes
he is the real Santa Claus, he must defend his
sanity in court. Rather than condemned commercialization. Miracle on thirty
Fourth Street recognizes that Christmas and commercialism are like milk
and cookies. You can't have one without the other. It
pragmatically accepts commercialism as part of the celebration of Christmas.
In America, gift giving requires a marketplace. Chris is not
opposed to working for a department store where the prime
purpose of having children visit Santa is it so that
moms and dads will buy things while they're there. He's
highly knowledgeable about the toy market. He knows where and
for how much toys are sold. As if to drive
the point home, Chris Kringle sings the nursery to market
to market to Susan young Natalie would insofar as markets
are where toys are bought and sold, Kringle accepts them
as useful and legitimate part of Christmas. In Democracy in America,
by the way, if you have someone under the age
of like eighteen, find a way to get them to
read Democracy in America, I know it's times like trying
to get them to read Shakespeare, which is also a
worthwhile endeavor. No whatdy understands human nature the way Shakespeare
quite did. I think he's way ahead of most of
psychiatric care by centuries. Democracy in America by Detopable explains
that the American morality is the doctrine of self interest
rightly understood enlightened selfishness. But it sounds like I'm Gordon Gecko,
doesn't it greed is good? That's not what he says.
Enlightened self selfishness motivates Americans to be honest and self restrained,
for they know that these virtues are the surest way
to get what one wants. From others by being honest
and self restrained. Americans dtop Will observes love to praise
how their self interest produces the common good. Nevertheless, detop
Will sees evidence of Americans giving themselves over to unreflective
impulses of goodwill towards others. Americans are, he says, better
than they say. They demonstrate through their actions, not their words.
Sincere self forgetting behavior.
Speaker 3: Miracle on thirty.
Speaker 2: Fourth Street explores how calculated self interest can ameliorate some
of the worst tendencies of commercialism. Self interest, rightly understood,
does what Deteufel says. Self interest also provides cover for
characters stacked on more noble grounds. Characters make decisions that
require loyalty and resolve.
Speaker 3: That go beyond just self interest.
Speaker 2: In the first half of the film, Chris inspires Macy's
to adopt a policy that furthers its profits and the
customer's interest. After the head of Macy's toy department gives
Kringle a list of over stocked toys to suggest for children,
Chris Kringle rips up the list. He objects on the
grounds that a child should not be manipulated into asking
for a toy that they don't want the head of
the toy department mistake of ordering too many of the
toys using the child's trust and center to do so
violates that child's trust. Making the child happy is the
job of Santa Claus after all, and Kringle sees how
self interest can be better harnessed to produce a better outcome.
Speaker 3: When you go through.
Speaker 2: This, this entire exercise, as you're reading through these kind
of pieces, what you realize is is that in spite
of what the left says about how horrible capitalism is
and how horrible capitalistic enterprises are, there not they operate
best when they are self interested and that they are honest.
Here's what I'm going to provide you, and yes, I'm
going to make a profit on it. I'm telling you
every Apple iPhone soul there's profits. When you see all
these companies saying, hey, buy three lines, get one free,
that's not as honest, is it, Because they're not free.
Speaker 3: They're not free.
Speaker 2: We're gonna give you now, you're not you're not giving me,
You're not added up. And that's why I think there's
a lot more distrust gimmicky stuff. It's like when you
go to a car dealership these days, and you want
to buy a car and you say, hey, I want
to pay you cash for that car, and they're like, well,
you actually save money if you get a lease, and
if you finance that lease. What do you mean I
save money because there are kickbacks from the banks that
want those interest loans and the financial institutions that want it,
so in a way, they're providing you a benefit. But remember,
back in the days of real honesty, you could if
you pay cash for carr hekay, what's your best deal?
Low ball offering a cash car for a cash But
it's very different. It's much more gaming now.
Speaker 3: Isn't it.
Speaker 2: The best image of the meaning of Christmas is in
the movie The Miracle on thirty Fourth Street. Alfred's description
of the Christmas look on the faces of kids. We
see joy, we see hope in kids, and we adults
are joyful and hopeful. In turn, Christmas recognizes a community
of the joyful and hopeful reflected in the faces of
its members, and this way Christmas prefigures the Christian hope
to one day see the face of God. Knows the
goodness of Christmas by seeing it reflected in the face
of children. And so what this article seeks to do,
and I think it does a really good job of this,
is that it combines what Detoke will recognized about the
greatness in America and Americans because we aren't Americans. Aren't
we we're Americans, So we look at that a miracle
on thirty fourth Streets. Happy resolution is driven by the
self interest of the judge, the prosecutor, the US Postal workers,
and mister Gaily. Nevertheless, self interest alone is insufficient to
explain all the ways in which characters go out of
their way for each other. Americans are, as detokefl says,
better than they say, but the doctrinelets Americans appear more
self sufficient than they really are as well.
Speaker 3: And that's the truth about America.
Speaker 2: We are community, and we do better when we function
as a community. We are and selfishness is not. It
sounds terrible. Capitalism sounds inherently selfish, but it ultimately benefits
the most people do. What to mention, this is an
interesting uh kind of anniversary as as people are apt
to claim that, I mean that there are people that
try to say earthquakes are caused by climate change. I
mean the new movie, The New miniserials on Netflix called
The Palma, which I spoke about.
Speaker 3: The other day.
Speaker 2: At one point in the movie, they we're trying to
say that this massive volcanic explosion, that that that rips
an island apart and generates history's most you know, largest
tsunami was caused by climate change and more rains hitting
that area, causing erosion which opened the earth to allow
the volcano. Now, luckily that theory got shot down, and
I loved how it is one of the few instances
where the scientist in the main scientists in the series says, no,
come back to me when you have some facts, not
this stuff that you were just regurgitating because you want
to believe it it was taught to you.
Speaker 3: That isn't true. He pushed back against her in in
the movie.
Speaker 2: In the series, but it's a it's a European thing,
so maybe there's a chance that I think that's why
I find some of the European and British series even
though they infuse a lot of that crap in there too.
But anyway, my point being, it's good to reflect on
actual tragedy tragedies because they are instructive and they're useful
and they're not full of gobbledegoog. I mean when you
look listen about the wild fires in California, on the
one hand, you're going to hear news media say, well,
you know, because of climate change, the fires are hotter
and they're worse, And on the other that you don't
hear as much as forestry officials say, hey, we've had
years where we don't burn underbrush where it does build up,
the fires are hotter, and it's a lot of mismanagement
of forestry practices.
Speaker 3: North Carolina has forest fires, but there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of active forestry management in our state that
is remarkable.
Speaker 3: They are regular burns. If you get down to the
Green Swamp, you get down.
Speaker 2: The East Alligator Reserve, those areas are they do regular
burns to get rid of a lot of the underbrush,
and fires in many places are necessary to promote future growth.
It's a part of nature. Forest fires have always been
a part of nature, so worth knowing. But it's also
instructive to look at actual disasters.
Speaker 3: Twenty years twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: It's hard to believe this because I remember like it
was yesterday, but there was a horrible earthquake. It was
a nine point one over in the Indonesia Banda I
say area of Indonesia. I probably said that name wrong,
but today I mean so that there were people that
gathered on Thursday visiting mass graves in Indonesia's I say province.
Twenty years since that tsunami hit, one of history's worst
natural disasters. And when we think of terms and it's horrible,
what happened to North Carolina. You know, one hundreds dead.
Speaker 3: I don't know the actual count.
Speaker 2: I don't think we'll know the actual number of dead
for a while, but we're getting there. But that, to
put it in perspective, a couple hundred dead is absolutely
a tragedy. Any death is due to an accident or
a weather event or flow, ud fire, a tornado, anything,
that tsunami that that after that nine point one magnitude
ginormous earthquake, two hundred and thirty thousand people were killed.
That's that's a staggering number. It's hard to from an
American standpoint, due to the way our infrastructure is, the
warnings we have, we have. We have earthquake prone areas
on the West Coast. We even had heck, we had
a horrible earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina, about one hundred
and twenty thirty years ago. So there's no part of
our country that isn't prone, whether it's tornadic activity in
the plains, whether it's horrific winter events that happened in
tornadic outbreaks up there is when the northeast, we have hurricanes,
we have nor'easters, we have fires, we have we have
our every There isn't a place of the planet that
isn't prone to having some kind of horrific naturally occurring event.
That does not mean it's man made or man caused.
That's a little bit of hubris and a little bit
of falsehood there. Now, the remarkable thing about what's happened
since that time. That one grave that they're talking about,
fourteen thousand unidentified and unclaimed tsunami victims are buried in
that one grave, one grave, fourteen thousand people. More than
one hundred and seventy thousand people died in Indonesia alone.
Could you imagine if we had that kind of death.
Speaker 3: So all, let's hope we.
Speaker 2: Never do in any way, but looking at this not
but in addition, looking at this, after this occurred.
Speaker 3: People from all over the world.
Speaker 2: Especially the US donated their time, they donated their money,
they donated resources, international donors and organizations. They helped the
region recover. Schools, hospitals, and essential infrastructure that were destroyed
by the disaster have been reconstruction, reconstructed with enhanced strength
and durability. So we learned, we adapt, ensuring better preparedness
for future challenges. We also claimed the lives of over
eight thousand people in Thailand, including many who remain missing.
Nearly four hundred bodies there remain unidentified, unclaimed, but early
warning systems have now been installed in the coastal areas
from Africa over to in the Asia area. So we
learned from We adapt. That's what we humans do so
remarkably well, and we've done it here. I mean, you
look at we learned from those. I mean when you
had a Katrina happen, what I marveled that was those
people live below sea level. You live below sea level,
a hurricane's coming, You get out of there.
Speaker 3: You leave it.
Speaker 2: To me, Katrina was not a natural disaster. It was
a government enhanced disaster. That was bad governance, that was
horrific planning, That was that was utterly preventable. What happened
in North Carolina. By and large, the amount of rain
that fell in the short amount of time.
Speaker 3: There was very little. There was warning, but there.
Speaker 2: Was no way to know that how bad it was
going to be in the mountains of North Carolina, other
than we do know that four or five, six eight
inches of rain can create problems, and they had twenty
twenty five thirty forty inches of reiin in many places.
Speaker 3: That that is very little.
Speaker 2: You can do a lot about missing fifteen miles of
an interstate, having roads completely wash out, where you have
to get into communities by mules and ATVs. Now, having
said that, what I've seen people do. Friends of mine
that have gone up there to help donate. I've donated,
many of my friends have. WBT has done a lot
to help. That's what to me has been remarkable to watch,
not with the government, the government. The stories are so
too numerous to even cover here about the lack of
the way government has responded to this. There's been a
lot of misinformation, there's been a lot of myth. There's
been a lot of I think honest attempts by government
officials to help, but some misguided ones as well.
Speaker 3: But we do know that that.
Speaker 2: I was very pleased at a talents Bruce Pine where
people can come they know how to get to a
given place and get supplies. And now we're heading into winter,
and let's just not forget about them. And what can
we learn from that? What can we learn to make
things more resilient? We can make them better, and that's
what we should be doing. So as we head into
twenty five, you can be sure about this.
Speaker 3: With hurricanes, I.
Speaker 2: Always tell me I lived down at the coast, it's
not a matter of if we're going to have another hurricane.
Speaker 3: It's a matter of when.
Speaker 2: We've dodged so many bullets in the past twenty five years,
ever since ninety eight, ninety seven, niney eight, those horrible ones.
We've had some, but nothing like we did with Floyd
and Frand and those a long time ago. But it's
gonna happen again. And the beauty of this one I
ride around down the coast is I've seen structural changes
in the way things are built. I've seen people that
have built even concrete houses, and these concrete houses withstand
astounding forces of nature. But we know and it'll happen again,
and it doesn't mean I think we look for reasons
to blame. So you look at you say, well, it
must have been because I drove that suv, that that
storm was three miles an hour faster or more powerful
than it was or would have been. And there's really
no way to discern if that is true, because you
can have a year we were below activity overall, but
when you have a horrible storm, it's easier to blame
something than to say that's just the raw power of nature.
It's hard for us to accept. If Yellowstone were to blow,
if that caldera were to explode, there would be nothing
that rivals at going back toward dinosaur times. It would
be nothing like It would make Pompeii look like a
walk in the park. It would fundamentally alter this country forever.
I don't even know what this country would look like
after that. The northern hemisphere, it would be it would
be winter in July. That that's just and we wouldn't
be able to blame climate change on that. But would
people try to. I'm sure somebody would. A John Carrey,
an al Gore, and the rest of the acolytes and
bishops and priests in the Church of climate Change would
probably try to do that, but nature is just cruel.
It's unrelenting, and you can't. The other thing, you don't
blame God for these you can. I think God turned
over the planet. This is me and I'm going to
irritate some people in the audience. You don't pray. If
you pray for people not to get hurt and hurcane,
that's an admirable thing. But what if it turns and
it hits other people? Did those people get Oh? This
is just sacrilege. What I'm saying is the planet.
Speaker 3: Is a wild and unforgiving place.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.