Americas health
Saagar your message on improving personal health is so incredibly important so thank you for that. My question for you both is have you seen any movements within the government that seek to address the underlying health issues of our country? Such as food deserts, subsidies for unhealthy (and environmentally damaging ) monocrop agriculture, school lunches, I could go on forever. I’m in biotech sales in a lot of rural and underserved areas for a company often mentioned on the show but not by name (moral dilemma on some days but it pays the bills). I have become so black pilled by the health care system that’s controlled by pill pushing pharma companies so even if Medicare for all comes to fruition the care people would get is in most cases rotten and it seems that addressing the overall health of the country could fix a lot of problems.
Returning to school amid pandemic
There's a big push to get students back in school in the middle of the pandemic. Similarly, I've noticed the official line on Covid and its Omicron variant now is that it's becoming "endemic," that we have to get used to it and that we need to get back to normal -- all of this coming from the same official sources who have consistently lied to us on this subject for two years. They also tend to dismiss the fate of Americans with "comorbidities" who might suffer severe consequences, as if the many tens of millions of Americans whose every vital organ isn't in tip-top shape is expendable. Many students, however, appear to be exercising an appropriate degree of skepticism: https://truthout.org/articles/students-are-walking-out-of-school-rather-than-returning-to-an-unsafe-normal/ Additionally, everyone in major media appears to be ignoring the very large-percentage likelihood that Covid sufferers, even those with initially mild cases, will suffer Long Covid, which at this stage appears to be a lifelong, disabling affliction whose symptoms in many cases resemble Alzheimer's paired with Black Lung. Some analyses I've read say Long Covid cases globally could easily mount into the hundreds of millions and gravely impair nations' functional capacity. My question in the light of these developments is whether you're willing to reconsider your stance that children should return to school? Yes, there are major consequences for keeping children out of classrooms. But the consequences for a return may be (and I think are) are good deal worse. Children are not the most likely to suffer the worst health consequences of Covid, but they are major vectors spreading the disease -- both to their teachers and to their families when they return home. And schools appear to be doing nothing to provide the ventilation needed to minimize the danger, possibly turning crowded classrooms into hotbeds of contagion. So is it time to rethink the return-to-school-and-normal narrative that our thoroughly discredited elites now seem so eager to thrust upon us?
Social Issues as a Distraction.
Krystal, a couple years ago on "that other show" you were asked what social issues you would compromise on to get the economic issues passed through. Your response was the only time I really felt like you were trying to dodge a question. As I've watched the politics of today unfold it's clearer and clearer that the establishment has very carefully positioned these social issues as a distraction and so I keep thinking back to that clip over and over again. My question for you is this: would you be okay with tabling social issues for a full term if it meant that Washington was forced to focus on poverty issues? Do you think that the social issues would iron themselves out a little when people aren't hungry and worried about basic necessities?
"responsible Story-Telling" in History and Journalism
I have been in the workforce for about fifty years. Its been long enough for me to have been poor, exploited, and underpaid, to have worked for millionaires, to have worked in public sector jobs and private. I have seen poor people shamelessly steal from their employers and from public assistance programs. I have seen the same manage to pull out of death spirals with the right assistance at the right time. I have seen wealthy business owners with several homes who play golf all day and then deny 25 cent raises to 20-year employees who can barely afford to pay for the gas to get to work. I have taken care of the children of wealthy people who required those children to work for their allowance. I have seen how generous they can be. I have seen people use something like a rent moratorium to buy curved HD TV sets while their struggling landlord goes bankrupt. You get the point. I have concluded that the line between good and evil (civic virtue and selfishness) cannot be drawn down the middle of some religious, racial, or income level demarcation. It goes down through the middle of all of us. I know in the teaching of History (what I do for work), I admire what I would call “responsible story tellers” – people who just call a spade a spade and don’t put their thumbs on the scale of blame and praise. You two seem to embody a lot of these ideals – the desire to be transparent and honest - in your work but I wonder how close you think you come and where you see the most room for improvement? Specifically, are you ever critical of the some of the things that the working class does for example? Do you ever argue that a government assistance program is not being helpful? Thanks for your time. Philip