Guy Nohra, Author of "Not On Our Watch"

Well, as you all know, we've had a couple of weeks here at the radio station with computers and other technology issues.

We're in the midst of this election season that just gets nastier and nastier.

How about we take a deep breath and think about things not related to high tech technology or elections?

Let's talk about vintage music.

and for that we go to the news line mighty john marshal the record guy is here for his monthly visit we're so appreciative of that money music dot com is his website john marshal thanks so much for the time sir

Hey, Jeff, how

are you?

Other than that, how are you?

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln.

And folks, we mentioned this before, but if you've got some vintage vinyl, send me an email, jeffatkxl.com.

I think that still works.

Or send a text, 319-235-1540.

Tell us what you have and the condition.

We'll share it.

If you do it right now, we'll just.

put mighty John Marshall on the spot, send it anytime, and he'll address it on these monthly visits.

So those of us who know what records look like, right?

I mean, nowadays, everything's on the stupid boy, angry man yelling at clouds today in the radio studio.

But in the old days, as a disc jockey, and that's how you made your stock in trade, you'd flip through the 45s and you'd recognize what record you were looking for by the label.

And Apple was such a distinctive label, and that's where we start today.

Well, John Lennon, everybody loves this song, Give Peace a Chance.

If the song goes on, never ends.

We always have to give peace a chance.

With picturesleeve, up to $100.

Now, you should remember that $75 of that is just for the little picturesleeve the 45 came in.

That's always the case.

The picturesleeve's worth more than the actual 45.

Was this one distinctive in terms of the imagery or what was unique about this picture sleeve?

No, it's not unique in any way.

It's Lenin.

It's got Tommy Smothers, by the way, on a guitar on the record.

A lot of people don't realize Tommy Smothers and John Lenin did a record.

It turned out pretty well.

Now see Smothers Brothers, I think, was something like 67 to 69 or that ballpark.

Somewhere around there, yeah.

So, wow, that is not something people would have imagined, because you think of the Smothers Brothers and you think of the TV show, but the musicology.

I mean, that was, you know, they knew what they were doing.

Yes.

They could play the banjo and the guitar very well.

All right, so $100 if you have the picture sleeve.

For Give Peace a Chance, 1969, the Apple 45 by John Lennon.

All right, let's go a few years later to 1970 for a very famous album.

Yeah, well, Joni Mitchell, she's very collectible.

Look for her album, Ladies of the Canyon, about Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.

Current value up to $150 for an original copy.

So you said Joni Mitchell is collectible.

Why so?

Well, she has a lot of fans.

She's very creative.

She's recognized as one of the great folk singers of the day.

There's demand wherever there's demand.

There's collectability.

So I saw something in the news this week that Selena Gomez is saying that because of vaping, her voice is now different, which I guess makes some sense.

Joni Mitchell has a very distinctive voice.

Well, you know, she had polio as a child hospitalized for weeks.

And she started smoking while she had polio at the same year.

And I'm sure she denies the effect of her voice, but yeah,

come

on.

You start smoking at age nine while

you have polio.

And I don't think filtered cigarettes were all the rage at that time.

If I look back in history either.

All right.

So 150 for the Joni Mitchell LP from 1970.

All right.

Let's let's go down to the Nashville corner of the world.

Well, Loretta Lynn, her very first 45, I'm a honky-tonk girl on zero records.

That was the name of the label.

Buy the copy, up to $250 today, honky-tonk girl.

And this is just the regular old 45, we're not talking about a picture sleeve or a promo copy or anything.

Right, there's no picture sleeve involved, did not come with a picture sleeve, so just the record, honky-tonk girl on zero records.

You have included a an interesting fact which shows that Politics be darned sometimes.

Well, she was awarded the presidential medal of Freeman by Barack Obama in 2013, but was a stock supporter of Donald Trump

Yeah, the presidency is the office not you got

it

mighty John Marshall the record guy joining us live on news talk 1540 kxl month

MoneyMusic.com is the website.

So I don't know.

You probably worked at a radio station that was much more in tune with things than I did, no pun intended.

But the 45 for Queen, we will rock you.

Wasn't that we will rock you on one side and we are the champions on the other, the 45?

Yes.

And so, of course, at the station I worked at, it became popular to play them back to back on the radio.

Right.

And and so, you know,

Folks who knew what they were doing would put it on tape right into a cart or something so that you could just hit it and it would go back to back We had to wait for the side a to finish Turn down the pot flip it over real quick and drop the needle down To get the same image.

That's how we rolled.

I'm just gonna say that I'm not proud 45

not worth much money is for the 12 inch

single which were very popular in the seventies eighties twelve-inch singles

yes

queen we will rock you i'm not sure what's on the flip side the twelve inches i think about it but we will rock you of course the inside uh... twelve-inch single currently up to three hundred dollars for a copy today

these were very popular in uh... uh... clubs right i mean it's much easier for the disc jockey to grab a twelve-inch single as opposed to forty-five

and generally the quality of the twelve-inch single was far better than

that of a seven inch forty five.

Very, very popular song in terms of historical relevance.

In 2009, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Now, lead singer Freddie Mercury, he was born in Zanzibar, which is now part of Tanzania.

His stamp collection is displayed in the collection of the Postal Museum in London.

So he rocked stamps.

You know, we all need hobbies.

Well, I don't think I have any John, but we all need hobbies.

I'm not sure I would have pegged Freddie Mercury as the, as the stereotypical philatelist.

You know?

Well, we all have our strange little hobbies.

Mine is collecting records, so you know, come on.

I understand, you're saying you're not one to talk.

All right, that's fair.

He's Mighty John Marshall, the record guy joining us on KXEL.

Ah, the great Chuck Berry shows up in this month's list of your favorites.

Well, we included it because people ask me those old 78s worth money.

Well, if they rock and roll 78s, yes.

So 1978, Chess Records released the 78.

Rock and roll music, current value up to $350.

And John Lennon once said, if you could call rock and roll another name, you would call it Chuck Berry.

That's how much respect he had for him.

I really love the fact.

And again, those folks, the Beatles, et cetera, throwing some bouquets to folks like the Everly Brothers and others who, again, were it not for that foundation in this country, they never would have done what they did in theirs.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right.

The 78 chess 78 chess is the label.

Chuck Berry rock and roll music up to 350.

All right.

As you're looking through boxes at home this weekend and you find something worth money, you might shout.

Look at that for a segue that took no no work on my part.

Oh boy, so far from smooth.

Tell us about shout.

Well, the Ice We Brothers, that big hit, you know, you make me want to shout.

The album is where the money is, 1959 on RCA, currently up to $400.

In 1978, the song, this time by Otis Day and the Knights, became a party classic, thanks to the movie Animal House, where it was featured.

So everybody likes to shout.

Song that I played at every wedding I ever did.

I always played shout.

That's the Macarena back to back.

Oh, it was wonderful.

It does tell you the age when if you if you said shout or then you said Macarena.

Yeah, I think I had Billy Idol.

Rebel yell.

No, not no, no, no, no, not.

What's what was the remake?

Billy Idol did the remake of Moni Moni.

Thank you very much.

Yes, we had to play the Billy Idol version of Money Money in.

Yeah.

And you had to make sure that they didn't use lyrics they shouldn't use.

When they were shouting it out.

Okay, Isley Brothers, RCA LP, 1959.

Shout, $400.

And the always collectible Elvis Presley makes your list this month.

Everything by Elvis is worth money.

His very first album simply called Elvis Presley.

Black and white cover with pink and green lettering.

It currently is up to $1,000.

And I'm guessing that's because it was the first.

Well, it was the first, and because it's Elvis, everything by Elvis commands

a pretty good money.

Sure, sure.

But that one in particular, because the first one out there, and obviously no focus group at RCA to come up with a fancy title for the record, Elvis Presley.

It's Graceland.

We think of that, and that's still a going concern today as a museum, correct?

Yes, now on March 17, 1957, Elvis outbids the YMCA's offer of $35,000 and buys Graceland from Mrs. Ruth Brownmore for $102,500.

Now at one time, Graceland had been a place of worship used by the Graceland Christian Church, named after the builder's daughter Grace Toof, sales from Elvis' first album, made the purchase possible.

So Graceland is named after the builder's daughter, Grace.

Here's what I don't understand.

Maybe this explains why Elvis had some money problems at times.

YMCA's offer was 35, and he wanted to outbid them.

36 would have done it, John.

A hundred and two five certainly would do it, but I mean.

Want to make sure.

I think 40 would have been better anyway.

And this wasn't during COVID where everybody outbid everybody else.

That's a very good point.

All right, the great Jimi Hendrix is on the list.

Jimi Hendrix, very collectible too.

Look for the album, Are You Experienced?

Now, if you have a stereo copy, maybe $100, but a monocopy of Are You Experienced on reprise records, current value up to $1,000.

Of course, it features the classic purple haze.

Now, obviously, the value is because there were far fewer mono ones pressed.

Why were there any mono ones pressed in 1967?

Well, in the mid-60s, record labels didn't know which way to go.

People still had high-fives, and they would need mono, and other people had stereos, and they wanted stereos.

So by the end of the 60s, just about everything was in stereo.

All

right.

So if you have a mono version of Hendricks in 1967, that'd be $1,000.

The Velvet Underground.

When you sit around and try to make up band names, there's one.

Well, the psychedelic 60s had a lot of great names.

Velvet Underground was one.

The lead singer was Nico, a very earthy female singer.

And of course, Lou Reed was part of the Velvet Underground.

Now, this is a little known 45, but we mentioned it because it's worth so much money.

The 45 was called All Tomorrow's Parties on Verb Records.

Now, the record itself up to $750.

But find a copy of the picture sleeve.

It's worth up to $5,000 by itself.

And is it the rarity, the uniqueness of the design of the picture sleeve or what?

Rarity is the big factor velvet underground overall very collectibles, so to have something rare by them really really sets the value high

Well, usually you bring in something three five thousand dollars, and we all get excited and find out we don't have it at home If you folks at home don't take time this weekend to look for this one.

You're you're not doing it, right?

Well of all the people at Sun Records Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis You probably never heard of DA Hunt who also recorded at Sun Records with Sam Phillips Now about 20 years ago in Detroit a fellow bought a record for 20 cents in a used record store He sold it for $20,000 that record lonesome old jail by DA Hunt on Sun Records $20,000

$20,000

Just a drop in the bucket for you, Jeff.

$20,000.

Yeah, you and me both, sister.

This radio pays so well.

But 20.

OK, so why?

Why why that much?

Well, first, sun is very collectible.

Records on the sun label, very collectible.

This was 1953, really early sun that really adds to the value.

Blues.

And this is extremely bluesy record.

Blues are extremely collectible.

And rarity, again, a big, big factor, lonesome old jail.

So Sam Phillips Obviously well-known and hung out in Memphis and Decided if you owned a radio station you could put your records on it.

I think that's probably the the idea here

Well, he actually bought a talk station.

Oh,

okay W. H. E. R. Memphis.

Oh,

okay, and the entire news department was female So their slogan was and now the news from abroad

You couldn't do that today, probably.

I'm not sure we should have just now, but that's W H E R and an all female news department.

Yeah, my oh my.

We've got just a couple of minutes and we're a week away from Halloween.

And so it wouldn't be appropriate to have you on without talking about some of the spooky records over the course of time.

Well, here are a few to look for Bobby Boris Pickett everybody knows the monster mash the value was for the original 45 on Gar packs records currently up to $100 1978 Warren Zevon came out with werewolves of London Now this is a picture disc a picture of a werewolf right on the vinyl itself makes it worth up to $100 Ted Cassidy he played the lurch TV show the Adams family

and he put out a 45 called do the lurch and with its picturesly up to one hundred fifty dollars michael jackson thriller fifty million copies sold what makes it worth money well the picture disc versions with michael's picture on the vinyl itself now there are quite a few of them out there but they're still worth up to four hundred dollars and the big one that i could find most valuable halloween record

by Bobby Bear.

Bobby Bear had a lot of hits back in the 60s, 500 miles away from home, Detroit City, but his early recording of Vampira is where the money is, up to $2,500.

Bobby Bear had a very diverse career and yet Vampira just kept coming back in the discography, didn't it?

It's sort of like, oh, why are you mentioning that one again?

Did the lurch ever catch on?

As a dance or as a play

you can Google it.

You can hear it.

It's not bad, you know, especially with a deep voice

Oh,

sure.

Oh, you know, however you did it when he answered the phone.

He always like you Ray.

Yes.

Yes, I got excited when I saw the Michael Jackson picture disc, but then I remembered I think I own a J5 picture disc

It probably was illegal, probably came in from another country.

I don't know, I'll have to see if I still have that.

MoneyMusic.com is the website.

Every day there's a new posting with a story about a certain record and all of the guides and John Marshall's books as well, MoneyMusic.com.

Mighty John Marshall, I always appreciate you being so kind and generous with your time and letting us

play along here on a monthly basis, and we'll do it again next month, sir.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Jeff.

All right.

Take good care.

And Mighty John Marshall joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.

and it is always a privilege to welcome mark mechler mister mechler is president and co-founder of convention of states action their online at convention of states dot com mister mechler thanks so much for taking the time how are you sir

i'm doing great i got to tell you here in texas it's always two a two six

and two a wednesday and thursday and

Well, I'll tell you, you know, I think about you and I think about Texas and I look at my home state of Iowa and there are a lot of folks nationally who would want you to believe that the blue wave is a common.

I'm not sure that I think that's wishful thinking or an attempt to try to make Republicans sit home on November 3rd.

What are your thoughts?

Look, I think if there's a single word for polling in this era of America, it's garbage.

It's just wrong.

We know it's wrong.

History tells us it's wrong.

They've been wrong on Trump every single time.

In the last midterm, every swing state ended up between five and nine points off in favor of the Democrats.

That's enough to swing every single race in favor of Republicans.

And there's a lot more, but that's enough to tell you these polls are wrong.

And they're intentionally wrong.

I agree.

And if you look at these polls, and I don't want to get bogged down in garbage stuff like this, but in the fine print, it tells you the margin of error.

And typically the margin of error is three or four points.

Well, when you've got a result that is close in terms of the poll, then you throw in the margin of error.

All it tells you is you got to show up and vote because it's too close to stay home.

Yeah, they're literally when you've got a race in the margin of error, what the pollster is actually saying, this should be the headline.

pollsters have no idea what's going to happen.

It's up to you.

You could use that in a lot of contexts.

Pollsters have no idea.

But when I had the opportunity and when I got the text last night saying, could you fill in for Todd, I thought of you because I had just seen some of these great posts that you've put on the Twitter X machine at Mark Mechler about this stuff going on in Europe.

And I think personal view is for too long, we've said, well, that's over there.

That'll never come here.

Well, first of all, it already has, but second of all, I mean, this stuff is game-changing in terms of hopefully waking up Americans, is it not?

Yeah, it can be game-changing in this election alone, but I hope it's game-changing on a broader scale.

Yeah.

These countries have wholesale imported the third world and specifically the radical Muslim third world into their country.

And the people who've been imported have nothing to do with their countries, their culture.

In fact, they are the antithesis of those things.

They

hate those things.

And their goal is to tear down and overrun those cultures.

And we're watching it live on TV.

They're doing it.

I'd say I'm going to really do feel sorry for all those students who are short on crayons that are rioting in the streets and feeling Cartier watches them like.

Yeah, this is just student protesting, right?

I mean, it's not organized.

It's all organic, except do you see any

Students in any of these events, these protests and all this, this is highly organized from people from the outside that have infiltrated at the invitation of these host governments.

Yeah, and people here in America should understand what's going on.

Fox did a great report last night.

They showed that there are officially 54 groups, quote unquote, leading this protest of the 54, 18 are allegedly student groups.

That doesn't mean they don't have international contacts or funding or influence.

But of the 54, 36 of them are actually, you know, the adults in the room.

And this is an international movement.

If you really want to know what's going on and you want to dive deep, one of my favorite follows on X is data Republican.

He's got all the receipts on this.

She's done the deep dive on the data.

This is an international movement intended to destroy the Western world.

And because we have looked the other way, to some degree, or been too naive,

Or, in the case of some, on the far left, encouraging it.

We've invited them in here, Mark Mechler.

No different than the French did.

And the folks here are just, I assume, waiting for their orders or the right time to do the same darn thing.

Yeah, I agree.

And so what you see is a combination.

The two main leading factions here, what I would call the Islamo is in the communist.

So it's an Islamo-communist movement.

This is a takeover that's been done in other countries.

If you want to see how this plays out,

The best place to look, if you want to see what it looks like, is look at what happened in Iran.

In Iran, you had a combination of the Islamists and the Marxists.

They got together, they threw out the Shah, they took over the country, and then immediately the Islamists killed the Marxists and imposed Sharia law.

And that's the model for this all over the world.

Mark Mechler is our guest.

Mr. Mechler is president and co-founder of Convention of States Action, their online convention of states.com.

These days, he's also CEO of Just the Network.

That's tied to John Solomon and Just the News.

Mr. Mechler joins us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker Line on the Todd Starrin Show, Jeff Stein filling in for Todd today.

You've now got the French leadership, quote-unquote, saying,

Yeah, maybe we should step aside.

We really missed the boat on this.

Sorry.

I mean, they're a little late to the party.

Is there a way that they can stem the tide, some of these European nations?

And is there a way we can stem the tide here?

Well, look, I mean, at this point, it's very difficult for them to stem the tide.

I think it would require major state sponsored violence.

And I don't mean to sound blunt.

or graphics people, but it will require the killing of people in the streets.

And I know that sounds hard for, and I intend to say it exactly like it sounds, but I believe that looting should be, they should be able to shoot looters on site.

There's no other way to stop that because people often understand when you live in a society governed by the rule of law, that requires mostly voluntary compliance.

And what I mean by that is people are not opportunists, they don't just go break the law because they think they won't get caught.

they choose not to break the law and the way that you create that situation in a society that's become lawless is you just make it a capital offense to be looting and so if you're out there and you're looting i don't think the police officer should have to ask you any questions and i actually think we want to stop this in the united states america especially in red states will never get this in blue states but we have to make it legal and we have to make a policy in our states that looters get shot if

you think about

And I'm thinking particularly about American business owners, Mr. Mechler, and I'm thinking about some of these supposedly peaceful protests post George Floyd back in 2020.

These were folks who were, they put all of their money into their businesses.

And in just a few moments, everything they had worked for to serve their local community was taken from them, looted, burned, etc.

for no cause other than these out of town agitators trying to make a point.

I feel for those folks and if law enforcement is not there to back them up, the business owners, how do you possibly expect businesses to flourish especially in high crime areas that have been proven to be difficult to pencil out from a balance sheet standpoint to begin with?

Yeah, I don't think you can.

I don't think most people understand if they've never been a small business owner, the margins are tight.

You don't make a lot of money.

You put everything into it.

heart and soul and all your bank accounts and you work late at night and early in the morning.

And then that goes up in flames or it goes off in the hands of looters.

You lose everything and you don't just lose the business, you don't just lose the money, you lose the heart to do it again.

You only have to go to Minneapolis.

That was there not too long ago.

Drive through the areas where the workstores flowed, rides where they're still boarded up stores.

businesses that went away.

By the way, most of the minority owned businesses that went away and never came back.

And so I think we need to take that very seriously and we need to be ready to stand against it very strongly.

You'll note, by the way, that none of that took place in Texas.

And I don't mean that to brag on Texas.

I just mean we are heavily armed people here in Texas and most people in Texas

Despite the liberal leanies of Austin and places like that most people would simply not tolerate that kind of behavior

Well and to make a broader point even stronger You've got somebody who's clearly disturbed who goes and shoots up an elementary school in Oregon and is only stopped from doing so by what?

A parent who had a gun a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun Seems to me guns are not the problem

Yeah, by the way important to know that that good guy with a gun according to law in Oregon right now is a criminal because they that school district and that Jurisdiction banned guns on campuses and there's no exception by the way if there's a shooting going on on campus It doesn't allow you to bring your gun on the campus not allowed to do what he did.

I I hope pray they won't prosecute him I can tell you in place like California.

They probably would

Mark Mechler is our guest president co-founder convention of states action convention of states.com I jumped right into the conversation without allowing you to remind people COS action who are you folks and what do you do?

We're using article five of the US Constitution to call a convention of states to propose amendments to restrain federal tyranny and you do that by getting 34 states to want to call that convention they pass resolutions in the state saying they want it

They gather, and the goal is to propose amendments to restrain federal tyranny.

If you're watching this election right now, and you don't think that the federal government's out of control, I don't know what to tell you.

If you don't think the idea of the DSA taking over Congress is bad, I don't know what to tell you.

And by the way, whatever happens in this election, and I hope and pray, and I'm working for the Republicans to retain power, if we lose the House, if we lose the Senate, if we lose both, I mean, honestly,

All bets are off.

I don't know what they're going to do.

They won't impeach President Trump.

They won't convict him, but they will impeach him.

They'll impeach any Supreme Court nomination.

We, the people, have to take the power back.

The only way to do that is to impose term limits, impose a balanced budget amendment, take power away from DC.

You can only do that by calling a convention of states.

Folks who are interested can go to conventionofstates.com.

Mark Mechler, it's always a great conversation.

I appreciate your time.

Keep up the great efforts.

I don't have to tell you that.

You're going to do it.

It's in your blood.

Absolutely.

Hey, thanks for filling in and talking about Texas today.

We always like talking about Texas too.

Well, it's a pretty good place to be.

Thank you, sir.

Take good care.

God bless.

Mark Mechler is with Convention of States Action.

He is president and co-founder conventionofstates.com.

and he joined us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker Line.

Follow him on the Twitter X Machine at Mark Mechler.

You can follow me there at Iowa Politics.

It is a privilege to welcome now on the news line, Guy Paul Nora.

Mr. Nora is the author of a book that was released just a few weeks ago called Not On Our Watch, A Young Soldier's Warning to America.

Further subtitle is A Memoir from the Lebanese Civil War.

Guy Nora, thank you so much for taking the time.

How are you, sir?

Good very well, and thank you for having me.

Tell us what led

to putting this book together.

Obviously memorializing your experience is helpful for you and potentially cathartic as well, I would trust, but there's a broader audience that you're trying to reach.

So why this book at this time?

Yeah, Jeff, the number one reason why I wrote this book is because after I got involved in the public arena,

in 2022 running for governor here in the state of Nevada.

I was paying a lot of attention to our politics in our country, and I realized how polarized we were becoming, how we were beginning to not listen to each other.

And then there were several signs that felt eerily close to what I had gone through as a 15-year-old in Lebanon.

and I was in a war then.

So I just, none on our watch means you and me and everybody that we know, we're not gonna let that happen here.

Tell the story, if you would, and it's documented in this excellent book, but tell the story of how it was you came to be at such a tender age fighting in a civil war and then rather rapidly winding up in the United States for an entirely new life.

Yes.

The way these things work is, imagine, it's not going to be a greater analogy, but it's close enough.

Imagine a precocious 14-year-old today who is looking around, watching riots in the United States, watching political unrest, watching polarization,

Seeing all these things that I'm sure you discuss every day on your show and thinking to themselves, this doesn't look good.

Now, the added tension that we had in Lebanon, which we don't have here, thank God, was that there was actually the Muslims in Lebanon who were politically less powerful than the Christians in Lebanon.

Lebanon was the only Christian country in the Middle East, had the PLO.

To fight for them on behalf of taking more power So imagine you're a 14 year old and you're watching this happen and You tell yourself this is just a matter of time, you know at this time every every place we want we had Checkpoints PLO checkpoints that stopped us every place we want You know my dad was submitted to in his own country to to these

Interrogations which made no sense because we are in our own country after all and they became a state within a state Because the Arab League decided hey, let's let the PLO fight Israel from that Christian country over there because Who cares what happens?

So they basically became the number one or two military power in the country The army was gonna be neutral

We we found out and that's when people started taking care of themselves At 14 I joined the militia.

I practiced I did the commando training at 15 the war started I was involved four months after my parents knowing that You know my prospect for survival were not very high and that kind of situation Pretty much whisked me out of the front

I mean, like literally out of the front and brought me to the United States to Alameda, California.

That is just so hard.

I would suggest for most people listening to the conversation to comprehend and you set it up so nicely and recited it so carefully and so we can follow it, right?

I mean, we can we can understand the words you just said, but the concept of that is just so.

out of the realm of possibility for most people.

I had to imagine that you wind up here and not only was it a culture shock, you were now expected to make your way.

Yes.

I use a light kind of lightly funny sentence and I hope

people you know i hope no one thinks that i'm down playing what i went through because it is in the book and it's awful but imagine uh... imagine jeff you go to a all-boys school you wear uniform uh... and you switch your uniform for school for a uniform of war and you're fighting for four months and literally uh... i went from uh... april to uh... mid august and literally

Two weeks after mid-August when you land 145 one the one a week ago You had a machine gun on your back You are now in high school in an Alameda high school, which is a co-ed school and Having boys and girls make out in front of your locker So that's what we're talking about culture shock

Well, and but but it's so important and yes, that is a light-hearted example, but again

One of the more basic things that some people in I you know I can't recall that happening at my high school long ago, but but the concept I understand fully I mean It to be someone coming from one culture walking into that of what is just the norm among young people

You just you just have to look around you and and wonder what's to become of you at that point I mean, it's a little it's a little hard.

I would imagine for you to find your place in other words

Oh, it was it was very difficult But I must this is a very important part which is why I wrote the book again is for me It was love at first sight with America The second I landed

And remember, I'm 15.

I don't even know what to think about things.

But the second I landed, just the beauty of the place, the people, the way they

You know, I mean I spoke pretty good English, but the way they listened to me they would always Give me compliments about my my accent, which was the opposite.

I thought that would happen So I and then of course I went to church.

I'm a Catholic so I went to church and Ironically for the first time in my life

You know, the Catholic Church in Alameda is incredibly diverse, right?

There were Filipino people, there were Hispanics, there were Irish, there were German, there were Italian.

And here I showed up.

I'm like, wow, you know what?

I know Europe, I know the world, I've traveled my whole life.

I can actually belong here.

And from that moment on, it was all about assimilation for me.

This is it.

This is my new home.

I love it.

The people are incredible.

I'm all in.

Post Hill Press, the good folks at that publishing house put this book out a few weeks ago.

It is called Not On Our Watch.

The author is Guy Paul Nora, NOHRA as you search for his name to order the book and Mr. Nora joins us on News Talk 1540 KXEL.

His website is gp, the letter P Nora dot com.

And so you engaged in a very successful career as an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist.

Now you're giving back in other ways.

And that is again, the point of the book, the warning signs.

You said you're seeing so many parallels.

between bad things in your past life and what could be happening to this country that you have come to love?

What are some of the ones that we need to be most concerned about?

So first and foremost, the book, it's a love affair to America, but it also unfortunately has to describe a lot of horrific battle scenes.

only so that the people who read it, and I hope it's going to be the huge majority of people in the United States, in the middle mostly, and kind of say, I don't want my child to go through this, or a child to say, I don't want to go through this, or a dad to say, I don't think this is how we want things to happen.

So that was the end.

for me is to get to that conclusion, but what do I see?

I'm sure Jeff, you talk about it every day.

I see polarization,

right?

We were

so polarized and we have these elections coming up and every election is 50-50 right now.

That's how close everything is.

I see politicization.

You know, we politicize everything.

We can never not politicize the subject.

It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's AI, whether it's a mother in Massachusetts, no matter what it is, we immediately land in our tribes if you want.

There's not even much of a debate.

It's just that immediately it goes in one direction.

So these are some of the things that I feel and I see.

But then there's also what I call the

political science and a political framework.

And these are also very applicable here.

People questioning the results of elections.

Yes.

By the way, both sides, you know, everybody likes to always talk about January 6, but no one likes to talk about the Russian hoax.

Yes, you're right.

So both sides do it.

When both sides do it, that means people are questioning results of elections.

The other thing is a lack of trust in institutions.

Again, I'm sounding like a political scientist.

I don't want to.

My story is about more raw, but lack of trust in political institutions.

Have we seen the numbers recently?

Congress at 18%, the Senate, whatever.

Even the Supreme Court now, people don't want to give high grades to the media.

has awful grades.

After COVID, public health has offered grades.

People don't trust their institutions.

Well, guess what happens when they don't trust their institutions?

They're not tied to them.

And consequently, if a conflict erupts, they just, they're not going to fight for them because their institutions have either failed them or disappointed them.

So the book is about people we have to, you know,

Don't go through what I went through.

That's basically the basic of the book.

And the book has many chapters of, you know, every day, you know, rural, urban combat, which would be what would happen here.

Now, that's the important thing is the cautionary note about what could happen here.

And it has been mentioned to me by others that

you know, 150 years ago, this nation fought a civil war.

But it was pretty well-defined geographically, north versus south.

And of course, those who know their history know that Congress basically set that up almost by making sure you admitted a free state along with a slave state because they, you know, and so there was a demarcation.

Well, how in the world do you do a civil war now?

When you have urban versus rural cultures, there's no dividing line.

That's potentially quite dangerous of a situation, is it not?

It's very, very dangerous.

And again, when I was doing my research, I didn't just use the Lebanese Civil War.

I looked a lot at the Spanish Civil War.

I looked at a lot of wars where basically your neighborhood was your frontier, the border.

yes

right um so so uh one side of this you wake up one morning and one side of your street uh of your main street in your city is uh once you know we know side a and the other side is side b and it happens just like that overnight it so so we are as divided

close to as divided as we were before our First Civil War, but we don't have geographical boundaries, although arguably, you know, I think I give an example in my book, you know, right around universities, you're going to have probably the last alliance.

the Red and Green Alliance, and consequently, in the neighborhoods that are, you know, normal neighborhoods two miles away, you'll probably have the other side.

And now you're looking at dividing up not just by state, but by neighborhood.

And that's what becomes very concerning because there's a chapter in my book about, and I hate to talk about it, about killing a friend who was two years older than me, and the scenario I just showed you could result in somebody killing someone with whom they played the little league with five years

ago.

And these are the things that I want Americans to look at carefully and say, we can't let that happen.

We've got to bring the tension down.

Not on our watch is the name of the book just released.

Gee, Paul Nora, the author and our guest.

I feel like we've just barely.

scratch the surface of the things that we should be talking about on this topic.

Thank you so much for the time today and I do hope you'll come back in a few weeks and perhaps after the election and we can kind of recalibrate the landscape in the framework of what we've been talking about today if you'd be willing to do that.

Thank you very much for your questions and I'd love to come back because you know we really touched on just major subjects but there are so many

details that can be added on to make the story seem as serious as it is.

I completely agree.

Mr. Nora, thank you so much for sharing these experiences and your time today, and we'll connect again in a few weeks.

Perfect.

Thank you, Mr. Stein.

G. Paul Nora, our guest, not on our watch, the book, A Young Soldier's Warning to America.

He's been here since 1975.

So he knows where he speaks.

And he joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.