Ramadan Mubarak and Slava Ukraini (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_796)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
131.97646
Summary
Trump and Zelensky got into a heated exchange this week, and I weighed in on it. I m not a chameleon, but I do know how to act in certain contexts according to social norms and the norms of that particular environment. And so the way I might speak to my soccer buddies in the locker room is different than how I speak to the president of a university.
Transcript
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Hi everybody, I just returned last night from another trip.
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I went to Savannah, Georgia to speak at a Republican party event.
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And subsequent to which I went to Jackson, Mississippi to meet some people from Ole Miss
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and many of the powerful politicians in Mississippi, all of whom were absolutely wonderful.
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And then went to Oxford, Mississippi to visit Ole Miss and visit the Center, the Declaration
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of Independence Center, met the director, the associate director and all the rest of people.
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I've never experienced so much love and support, so it was a truly wonderful trip.
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But the point of today's episode is to talk about two things.
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Number one, what took place between Zelensky and Trump and Vance this week, the interaction.
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Admittedly, I did not watch the full clip, which puts things in context.
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But I certainly watched the snippets where there was heated exchanges.
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When I weighed in on social media about those exchanges, it in no way is a position on whether
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My position was absolutely independent of anything about Putin and anything about who is the aggressor
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or the victim or the aggressor in this dynamic.
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But of course, I receive endless hate about, you know, I'm so disappointed in you.
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My point was to talk about the importance of protocol.
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And believe me, it's not as though I'm someone who, you know, tempers their speech to be phone
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But I do know how to act in various contexts according to the social demands and the norms
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And so the way that I might speak to my soccer buddies in the locker room is different than
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how I speak if I'm meeting the president of a university.
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It makes me someone who is sufficiently socially gracious that I know how to modulate my actions
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When Zelensky shows up and litigates his position openly in front of the media in a very, very
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hostile and disrespectful manner, that matters.
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It's as if I invite someone to my house and I give them a huge panoply of hospitality in
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terms of food, but they're pissed off because I didn't have the right kind of wine that they
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prefer, or I didn't buy the type of fish that they wanted, even though I spend $4,000 to
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You would probably say that's an ingrate and polite guest.
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Now, in this case, there are different estimates.
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Trump says that the U.S. has given $350 billion.
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Others have said it's in the order of $125 billion.
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But many, many billions of U.S. taxpayers have been spent in the defense of Ukraine.
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I'm not discussing whether it is money well spent or not.
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I'm talking about the sense of petulance, the sense of entitlement that you come and
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It doesn't take a fancy expert in geopolitics to understand that if you're going to beg for
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more money, then you probably should be very modulated in how you speak to those who are
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going to open the purse strings to give you that money, to open up the coffers.
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Secondly, today I opened up my Twitter feed and literally almost every single post on my feed
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was Ramadan Mubarak and Ramadan Kareem from every basketball team, every soccer team, every
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NFL team, every government agency, every politician, every athlete.
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20 years ago, nobody said Ramadan Kareem and Ramadan Mubarak in the West because the number
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of Muslims in the West weren't sufficiently high that you felt the pressure to pander to the Islamic
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Now, if the Muslim population is 3% or 5% or 10% in different places and you're already having
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halal in cafeteria, halal in all restaurants, halal in all groceries, religious accommodations
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Do you think that that might be the reason why 56 countries today around the world are
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Not everywhere that Islam goes, it is only done through the sword.
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It is done in a multitude of ways, oftentimes precisely because of the West's suicidal empathy.
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The parable of the boiling frog is really apt here.
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So what if there is public prayers that block the sidewalks and the streets?
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Can't you just wait a few minutes until we finish our prayer?
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So what if the corridors in the plane are blocked because I now have to pray?
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Can't you be respectful and suicidally empathetic a bit more?
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So what if we conform to halal even though the great majority of the country is not Islamic?
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Shouldn't you be kind and at least appeal to us?
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It doesn't take much for you to walk around and give the religious salutations to every religion.
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But I don't remember the last time I faced having to give salutations to Hinduism, to Jainism, to Buddhism, to Shintoism, to Seventh-day Adventists, and on and on.
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10,000 plus religions, it used to be Judeo-Christian, but now it's Ramadan Mubarak.
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So remember the boiling frog parable and remember who warned you.