Demetria Brown quit her job as a law enforcement officer in Los Angeles, California, a week after the death of George Floyd. She packed her bags, stuffed her belongings into 13 duffel bags, and moved to Puerto Vallarta on Mexico s Pacific coast.
00:00:00.000Today on The Matt Wall Show, we'll discuss the very funny but also instructive story of a woman who left America because of its violence and racism and moved instead to Mexico, a country that is, of course, far worse than America in every category and by every measure.
00:00:15.900Also, five headlines, including Joe Biden continuing to fall apart on camera and supposedly the supposedly surging QAnon movement that the media is talking a lot about.
00:00:25.100Why are they talking so much about QAnon? We'll talk about that. And in our daily cancellation, I'll cancel Ryan Reynolds for being the latest celebrity to issue a groveling and ridiculous apology.
00:00:36.100All of that on the way. But first, the show today is brought to you by Policy Genius.
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00:03:03.900On June 1st, a week after Floyd's death, Brown quit her job as a detention officer for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
00:03:11.080In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, she sold her house, stuffed her belongings into 13 duffel bags,
00:03:16.900and relocated to Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast.
00:03:24.460Brown, 42, is one of many African Americans leaving the United States permanently for many reasons, including racism and fear of police brutality.
00:03:32.540Her flight landed in her new hometown on June 25th, a month to the day that Floyd died.
00:03:38.160We're then informed that a number of black Americans have chosen to engage in what is apparently by some people being called Blacksit.
00:03:49.960While there are no official statistics on how many have left the country, black people have turned to social media to get insight from those who've relocated,
00:03:57.880especially to African and Caribbean nations, where some say they feel safer as part of the majority.
00:06:24.440USA Today reports that immigrants in Mexico are treated, quote, much worse than they are in, quote, any other country.
00:06:31.340Someone who moves to Mexico, especially from countries to the south,
00:06:34.100faces a significant chance of being kidnapped by a cartel, robbed or extorted by police or other government officials.
00:06:42.740Mexico is indeed far tougher, both in legal and illegal ways, on immigrants and refugees.
00:06:49.920And if Brown thinks that, well, at least Mexico is a place where income equality reigns supreme, she is again delusional.
00:06:56.420The vast majority of the wealth in the country is concentrated in the hands of the elites, while nearly half of the population lives in poverty.
00:07:04.480By comparison, the poverty rate in the United States is less than 12 percent.
00:07:08.920It's like 48 percent or around there in Mexico, 12 percent in the United States.
00:07:13.940Mexico is less safe, less equitable, less tolerant, less progressive, right down the line in every category.
00:07:22.420Though I'm sure it's still nice in the resort towns, I guess, and maybe pretty there.
00:07:28.320There's pretty views, provided you don't travel too far outside of them and find yourself getting robbed at gunpoint by a federally or kidnapped and beheaded by a cartel.
00:07:40.860Those who complain about all of the alleged systemic problems in America tend to have a childishly simplistic, if not hallucinatory view of the issues in question and the world at large.
00:07:51.620You know, they look through a cartoon lens and believe, despite a total lack of evidence or logical reasoning, that America is uniquely racist, uniquely unjust, uniquely evil.
00:08:02.720The absurdity of this perspective becomes all the more obvious when they act on it by leaving and seeking shelter on some other country's shores.
00:08:10.160Because the fact is that wherever they choose, especially if they choose Mexico, but the same holds true almost anywhere else, they will end up somewhere that has quite a bit more of whatever it was they were trying to escape.
00:08:22.520In fact, they may well find themselves in a place where the cartoon in their head has come to life.
00:08:28.820Police in America are not prowling the streets, robbing and murdering innocent people for no reason, despite what BLM tells us.
00:08:37.360It's not happening. It is not happening.
00:08:40.240Police in Mexico actually are doing that.
00:08:44.160People like Brown, you know, invent problems that don't exist in America and then move to countries where they really do exist.
00:08:51.220And that is that is the great irony here.
00:08:56.960So, you know, the response to America haters for a long time from the other side has been, hey, if you don't like it, get out.
00:09:05.340And the interesting thing is that I guess now, according to CNN, some of the America haters are saying, OK, fine, we will.
00:09:14.760But it's only proving the point of the other side because they get out and go to a place that's way, way worse.
00:09:22.980Because as it turns out, you know, the United States of America is certainly not a perfect country by any means.
00:09:28.780There are changes to be made. There are things to improve.
00:09:32.640There always will be because countries are human institutions and we are a fallen species.
00:09:37.880And that's just the way it's going to be.
00:09:39.740So you keep working to make it better.
00:09:41.460But in spite of all that, America is in a much better position and a much better state, again, by almost any measure when compared to nearly every other country on Earth.
00:09:58.780And by the way, that's especially the case, especially the case when it comes to issues like racial tolerance.
00:10:06.700Racial tolerance in many other countries, especially non-Western countries, isn't even a concept.
00:10:15.500It's not even something that is, it's, it's, there is no real concern for it.
00:10:20.840It isn't even discussed on an aspirational level.
00:10:24.900Meanwhile, the United States of America, being the most diverse country on Earth, with 330 million people of many different races and backgrounds and ethnicities, all living together.
00:10:38.240I mean, if you, if you tried that experiment in many other countries, it would be a total unmitigated disaster.
00:10:44.420Um, and, uh, here it works better than it would work anywhere else.
00:10:50.380And that's just the simple fact of the matter.
00:11:50.720I know you're trying to goad me, but, I mean, I'm so forward-looking to have an opportunity to sit with the president or stand with the president in debates.
00:12:31.160I really want him to get through it and perform well in the interviews.
00:12:33.840I don't want him to win the election, but just from the sheer weight of the second-hand embarrassment watching this, I want Joe to do well.
00:12:46.140Though, watching this, I'm not really sure if dementia is the problem versus drunkenness because he really came off like a drunk guy, especially in the first part of that interview.
00:13:48.060Whatever else you say about Donald Trump, you don't really get the impression that he's plunging into senility, even though he's not much younger than Joe Biden.
00:14:39.740Was one of the kindergarten students in a drug gang or something?
00:14:44.240He was trying to – I don't remember.
00:14:46.800Anyway, that's now on the chopping block.
00:14:48.820It was supposed to be shown at a film festival in Portland, and it was pulled after activists complained about it, which really is not a surprise.
00:14:56.220I mean, it's a film festival in Portland.
00:14:59.000I would already assume that you can't show any movie in Portland unless it's a movie about a black transgender polygamist furry overcoming adversity and learning to embrace his sexuality.
00:15:12.860As far as I know, there isn't any such movie.
00:15:15.000So I guess that's another way of saying you can't show any movie in Portland until someone makes that movie, and then that will be the only movie you can show in Portland.
00:15:22.120But anyway, Kindergarten Cop got pulled, and get this, the reason it got pulled is because it normalizes the police, and it promotes the idea of having police in school.
00:15:35.380And that's a very terrible thing, apparently.
00:15:38.400I was actually surprised by that because the moment I saw the headline of Kindergarten Cop getting canceled, I assumed they were dumping the movie because of this scene.
00:15:48.320Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.
00:17:00.200You've got the young lady, unbuttoned mini shorts, the shirt hiked up, Falwell too, horrifyingly has his own pants unbuttoned and his midriff showing.
00:17:10.320And, you know, now I, looking at this, really feel the urge to burn out my eyes with a soldering iron.
00:17:17.200Like I said, these pictures were deleted.
00:17:18.740And from what I've read, this was on a yacht, some kind of, or some other kind of boat, and was apparently a costume party.
00:17:25.280I'm not sure what costume this is supposed to be.
00:17:28.460And let me also point out that Falwell is 58 years old, and this really only proves my point that grown men, grown adults, should not wear costumes.
00:17:36.840Certainly not that costume, but really any costume.
00:17:40.440As a male, once you get over the age of, like, 10, you're too old for costumes.
00:17:47.120And if you're a grown man, you're especially too old.
00:17:50.740Now, you can say that this isn't a huge deal, and it isn't in the grand scheme of things.
00:17:57.040But the problem is that he's the president of Liberty University.
00:18:02.600And Liberty has very strict guidelines and rules.
00:18:05.120And according to those rules, students could be fined or even expelled about five times over for taking that same picture.
00:18:42.760But it is, to put it mildly, extremely poor leadership to go and do, not just do, but then publicize yourself doing the very thing you punish other people for doing.
00:18:53.580And, you know, I've never been a big Jerry Falwell fan, to be honest with you, and for this reason.
00:19:15.460There's been a lot of coverage recently of the QAnon conspiracy theories and, you know, followers of Q.
00:19:21.760And just to be clear, a follower of Q is someone who's a follower of random trolls who post things on message boards claiming to be operatives in the government.
00:19:31.780Of course, no evidence is ever provided for any of these claims, and no one asks for it.
00:19:41.500That doesn't stop, you know, with the conspiracy theories, of course, that never stops anyone from latching on.
00:19:46.760But there's been a lot of coverage of this recently.
00:19:48.720The media is trying to gin up concern about QAnon.
00:19:52.960And this is not to be conspiratorial myself, but I think this is deliberate.
00:19:57.200The outlet Axios, which the ones who did the interview with Trump yesterday, they have an article claiming that QAnon is rising, becoming more prominent.
00:20:06.220This is what they say, among other things.
00:20:09.480They say conspiracy theories tied to QAnon are growing more popular.
00:20:12.480There was more than 10 times as much Google search interest in QAnon in mid-July than in mid-January, according to Google Trends data.
00:20:20.720QAnon pages and groups on Facebook had nearly 10 times more likes at the end of last month than they did in July or last July.
00:20:28.000There has been a 190% increase in the daily average number of tweets with popular QAnon hashtags since March.
00:20:36.500And the article claims parts of the mainstream Republican Party have latched on, helping drive its conspiracy theories mainstream.
00:20:43.06011 QAnon supporters are now 2020 Republican congressional nominees.
00:20:47.880That I would have to look up myself before I would take them at their word on that one.
00:20:51.680But either way, two points to be made here.
00:20:55.340The first, as I said, I think there's a deliberate attempt right now by the media to make the QAnon people more visible.
00:21:01.860And the obvious reason to do this is to discredit conservatives and, by extension, Donald Trump.
00:21:07.960And this is one of the main reasons why I hate these delusional, idiotic conspiracy theories, because they make us all look like morons.
00:21:17.880And even though QAnon are in a tiny fringe, it doesn't matter.
00:21:24.240The second point, you know, the question always is, like, why do people go in for these kinds of conspiracies?
00:21:31.660Especially one like Q, that is so absurdly lacking in any supporting evidence whatsoever.
00:21:39.020And I think part of the reason for that, as I've been thinking about it, in fact, I was reading a book recently, not about QAnon,
00:21:43.820but that mentions this phenomenon called agent detection.
00:21:46.980And this is a phenomenon in all sentient creatures where, you know, animal or human assume, we tend to assume that there's purposeful intention behind events
00:21:57.340that may or may not actually have purposeful intention behind them.
00:22:01.120And this is an evolved capacity, and it's necessary for survival.
00:22:06.040So, for example, a deer in the woods hears rustling in the leaves and runs off, assuming that the rustling was caused by a predator.
00:22:13.900It could have just been the wind, but instinctively the deer assumes intent, assumes there's an intelligent agent behind the noise, and runs off,
00:22:23.620which you can see how that would aid in survival.