What's going on,
everybody?
Welcome to the show.
You get the Rational Revolution, you get Mark Becker.
That's me on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm so glad you're here.
And we've got my returning friend and yours.
I think this is like our MVP guest here is what we're talking about.
And if you don't know, it's Mr. Carlton Huffman, hailing from beautiful North Carolina.
What's up, man?
Not too much of a spring is in the air and I was telling a friend the other day It seems like the United States is living through a tradition I've gone through now three times in my life first as a elementary school student in 1991 as a senior in high school in 2001 and now as a 42 year old elder millennial going to war in the Middle East It seems to be the record that is all stuck on repeat right
now terrible.
Yeah, and I'm glad you're here to talk about that because
You know, I think, yeah, millennials, you know, this is not tales all this time, but like, and this one's different, because I mean, Iran is a completely different beast.
There's a reason why there's what seven presidents haven't like gone to war and done this, because this ain't going to end well.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, you could sit here and say with the first Gulf War in 1991, we had a simple objective and we knew what it was, like get the Iraqis out of Kuwait, the end, which we were able to do very quickly.
2003, obviously, whenever we kicked in the door, going after Saddam Hussein, yes, some of the rationale for the war was wrong, but we knew what we were trying to do, which is go all the way to Baghdad, get Saddam Hussein out, find the weapons of mass destruction.
This war,
I have no clue what we're trying to do.
It seems to change every day that the president opens his mouth and we the American people are in for a ride on this one.
Well, and like people don't realize, I hope people realize, but like the population of Iran, it's like 90 million people.
And by comparison, like the population of the United Kingdom is under 70.
So this is not a small country.
This is a very populated country that is the bully of the Middle East.
This is not Afghanistan.
That's not Iraq.
This is a different beast.
Absolutely.
And I would say that the thing with Iran that we all, if you look at the map and you just understand the flow of global commerce,
20% of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz.
And one thing that you could tell very quickly with this military operation is that we expected after we killed Ayatollah Khomeini, and I mean, I will say he deserves every like ugly incel version down there, South of Purgatory.
But the thing is that we seem to
think- South of Purgatory.
We seem to think that once we killed him, that that was it, that the regime was going to be destabilized and that would be the end of it.
But instead, here we are two weeks in now and the straight of four moves is shut down.
Americans are feeling it at the pump and we don't seem to have a clear plan of, are we gonna keep bombing until we run out of bombs?
Are we gonna keep bombing until the regime quits?
What's the plan?
Nobody seems to be offering us anything on that one.
There's no plan.
No.
Absolutely not.
No, and like, okay, so you started this and we're bombing the bleep out of people.
Where where does this end?
We have one of the senators Said that he was in a classified briefing And like there's no plan.
I was at Blumenthal said that there's he doesn't see he sees we're gonna send troops like totally crap
It's I mean basically
Either we get a ceasefire and the regime is still standing and we will have expended however many like 10 or 12 billion dollars just in the first week of the war alone.
And we've had global commerce, especially with the oil markets, but so much more that touches on.
commerce just beyond the oil shut down for two weeks to basically leave in power at the regime that we said was so evil which yes they are they have killed a lot of Americans they killed over 30,000 of their own people just in the first two weeks of January but at the end of the day if we're gonna go to war let's actually go to war with the plan that you've explained to the American people and had us on sign on for instead we went to war on a whim and now the thing is that
This is not going to stop.
I mean, we might get a ceasefire, but the Israelis were bombing them last year.
We joined in on bombing them last year.
Here we are again in March.
And this conflict is not going to be one that just we quit bombing them one day and we live happily ever after.
That's just not what happens in the Middle East.
No.
And it's like with COVID.
They're, I mean, these deeply unserious people, their plan was to just pretend like it didn't exist, right?
And that cost millions of Americans their lives.
And so now, you know, I don't know how this ends.
I wonder, you know, I'm nervous that it's going to be a Trump thing where he'll declare victory, you know, peace out Iran, suck on that.
I hope you liked those bombs.
And then, and then just pretend like this didn't happen.
And Iran's not going to go for that.
No, absolutely not.
Memories are very long in the Middle East on every side of things.
And I would just say that the Iranians remember back in the 80s, whenever Reagan was president during the Iraq-Iran War, we escorted tankers through the Straits of Hormuz to secure the oil and we sank the Iranian Navy.
during
the
1980s.
We were just so far, you and I were both too young to remember that, but it seemed like the American public didn't register as a real war.
But the Iranians remember that and they've been training for revenge and screaming death to America for, like I said, even longer than both yours and my lifetimes.
And they're not going to stop whether
we decide that we would just want to quit and pretend this didn't happen.
And at the end of the day, if we're going to go to war, we actually need to go to war and we actually need to be prepared for it as a public.
So, I mean, what happens if we do that?
I mean, gas is $200 of barrels, not without, it's not out of the realm of possibility.
I mean, this is, it seems like we got into this thing.
with no freaking idea of why.
And now it's like, okay, how do you get out of it?
Yeah, and the enemy gets a vote on this one.
And I can say that we exchanged one commony for another.
And this guy had his dad, his wife, and I believe some of his children killed in the initial strike.
And he was definitely not a...
Like I said, soft touch person before, and he's even more hardline now after seeing his family killed and almost killed himself by the Israelis.
So this thing is going to be far from over, regardless of whether we decide to just call it quits or not.
Well, and, and Kamani sucked.
He was a bad person.
Like, but we had a deal in place.
If the real objective was Iran can't get a nuclear weapon, we did that.
We had that.
And it didn't cost us a thing because in that deal, all it did was unfroze their own assets.
It gave them
their money back that was in foreign banks.
It didn't really cost Americans a lot other than just, here you go, Iran.
And they didn't do anything.
And they were like, pacified, okay, buy and go away.
No, it's just, it's all gone with no plan.
And I would say too that the whole balance of power even before we started bombing them on February the 28th was
Ever since October 7th, 2023, with that horrible attack on Israel, Israel had basically shredded Iran's proxy networks.
They had shredded Hamas.
They had destroyed most of Hezbollah's capabilities.
They had shown their own ability to go all the way to Tehran and declare air supremacy over the entire country.
They could bomb anywhere in Iran at will.
So this problem was contained.
It's just seen that Donald Trump wanted the legacy option and BB Netanyahu saw an opportunity to cut the head off the snake.
Yeah, and I think you know There are people out there.
There's a this is a distraction from the Epstein files.
It's like I don't even know if that's accurate.
I mean, I'm sure that has some to do with it, but like I Think that's taking the easy way out to say that that's what that is
I've heard it said that ever since
What happened with Venezuela whenever we were able to go in and get Maduro in such a bloodless fashion that people that they get that first hit of a great drug and then that first hit is not enough for them.
They've got to keep on chasing that high and.
to be able to sit there and say that, hey, I took out Maduro, the chance to say I freed Iran, and now he's saying he wants to free Cuba.
The thing is that the other side gets a vote on it.
These regimes that have been in power for decades know that the best that they can hope for is a human rights tribunal versus getting ripped to limb from limb by their own people.
These people are not going to go away quietly.
They're going to fight to the death no matter
what.
You look at what happened in Venezuela, you just replaced Maduro with the freaking vice president.
It wasn't a regime change.
It's the same people that are in charge just without the top guy.
And he thought that they would be that the Iranians would be as pliable with a new head of state as the Venezuelans approved to be.
And unfortunately, that is not the case.
We've had seven Americans killed in action so far to date.
And this conflict has no end in sight.
So what?
What is the path forward here?
What happens next in Iran?
We are going to continue the air campaign against them.
But at the end of the day, it comes down to what are the world markets going to go through with the oil being cut off?
I mean, we just had the biggest release of oil this week by the IAEA.
And that is a good thing for temporary relief.
But if this thing goes into a month, two months, it is only going, it's going to be the worst oil shock according to the Wall Street Journal since the 1970s when the Arabs declared the oil.
embargo on the United States in reaction to the Yom Kippur war.
And if we go through that, I mean, we're looking at a
prolonged economic recession.
We've already seen the job reports of the last few months, keep on getting like downgraded in terms
of
the amount of jobs that the economy's created.
So if we're not in a recession yet, we will absolutely be in one.
And especially when Americans are paying close to $4 a gallon gasoline, we saw, I think you posted a picture of Tom Tiffany celebrating to both get crossings under Donald Trump that we'd ever seen.
And yet
made promises kept.
But here we are turned right around.
We're getting into some of the highest gas prices that we've experienced since 2008 and definitely 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.
We're almost getting to a point where even a complete flip of power from Senate, House, all of that.
That's not going to help.
That's not going to help because we're knee-deep in this excrement.
I mean, beyond...
cutting the money off.
And that's the thing that Democrats are always resistant to do.
And I can understand too, when American soldiers are in
the
firing line that you only give them the support.
And we obviously, we wish the best success for our men and women that are over there in the Middle East.
But at the same time, good politics and just being like good patriots means that we want them to have a mission.
We want their
mission
to be clear and we want them to be able to come home in victory and success.
And as far as just what we are going to be dealing with in terms of the political calculus, it feels a lot like 2006.
The economy is uncertain.
Gasoline is going up.
The Republicans run both houses of Congress, but we've got a new and unpopular war in the Middle East, and it feels like deja vu all over again.
And we're going to continue this discussion on the other side, too, with Carlton Huffman.
I saw as well.
Um, a thing that said that, uh, that even in the early days of the Iraq war, 77% of the Americans supported it too.
So it's, it's, it's wild.
And, uh, I don't know where this gets us, but we're going to continue the discussion about this.
We're going to talk about, uh, you know, bye-bye, Kristi Noem.
The witch is dead, uh, right after this here with Carlton Huffman on the rational revolution on the civic media radio network.
Stick around.
Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
We're doing the popcorn pick of the week.
Brian Newton is here.
Okay, you go see a movie in a theater.
Yes.
What are the things you have to buy?
It's gotta be popcorn and then something chocolate.
I partake in one thing and one thing only when I go to a movie.
Jack Daniels?
I've partaken two things and two
things
only when I go to a
movie.
I always get an icy.
If I can fill my own icy cup, I will come back.
If they're doing it, I will never come back
again.
Well done here by Erin behind the microphone producer extraordinaire, queuing up the theme song for Christine Ohm's delightful exit of federal government service.
Well, I suppose she was given a promotion.
by my dear old Donald and we're talking here on the rational revolution with Mark Becker and I've got my my dear friend and yours Carlton Huffman Yeah, I mean one of the one of the more delightful things that have happened recently is is Kristi Noem is no longer with with with the federal government her and her hat and her Botox and all of the things that come with her
Although she's been replaced by a guy that that asked to openly fight someone in the hearing.
So I don't know.
Another deeply unserious person.
But Carlton, what do you think of that?
Well.
I'm going to be sad that we don't have our dog killing plastic surgeon aficionado who makes every chair her husband sits in the cuck chair.
It is just going to be one of the just saddest things that we don't have her to kick around anymore.
But I've got to say it was a delight to see my friend and United States Senator Tom Tillis just rent her and take her to the woodshed in that hearing.
But I mean, just once again, you talk about unserious people.
The fact that she is asked if
she is having a relationship with Corey Lewandowski in front of God and everybody with her husband sitting right there and she can't even lie enough to deny it.
between that and what was it?
She had, uh, Air Force pilot fired because she, the person forgot her blanket only that she had to rehire the person's like, there's so many hits that we can talk about with her.
I mean, obviously on the serious note, we definitely want to just commend the people of Minneapolis for
coming
out and resisting.
And we just remember the souls of Alex, Freddie and Renee good, who she slandered on her.
Like I said, before the corpses were even cold.
She's already calling them domestic.
And so it's good that she's gone at the same time.
Mark Wayne Mullen, as you referenced, wanting to fight the Teamsters president in the middle of a Senate hearing, which in some ways, the redneck in me would have delighted to see that, but on the serious side of things, he does not strike me as the smartest bulb in the bunch.
And I think that he'll be there, much like Christie.
to take orders and say yes, he
just
does not seem to have his own ambitions as she seemed to with the $220 million ad campaign that you and me paid for as taxpayers.
Yeah, it's good investment.
It's an investment, Carlton.
That was an investment.
Yeah, Mark Wayne Miller.
What was we ranked as his very famous line asking Linda McMahon, what was we ranked in education?
I don't know.
It's wild.
to see, but that's, I mean, there's no guardrails.
You know, Trump 1.0, we had people that actually, you know, had some experience and some patriotism.
You know, Rex Tillerson was one of them.
John Kelly was another one.
You know, people that were like, yes, yes.
Right.
And the sad thing is, you know, from Tom Tillis leaving the Senate to Mark Wayne Mullen becoming part of the administration, the people that
People are getting promoted who shouldn't be, and people are leaving who are the guardrails of the crazies.
It's hard to be an independent thinker and be a Republican these days, because you are expected to salute and say to dear leader, how high should I jump on this one?
I
mean, we see just last night that Trump was in Kentucky going after Thomas Massey, who was doing the Lord's work.
There'll be some stuff that I disagree with him on, and others of your listeners might disagree with Massey on.
But when it comes to the Epstein files,
The president himself promises transparency on these things.
Massey has pursued it and in return the president and all his acolytes are going to northern Kentucky trying to take him out.
And we still have RFK Jr.
in charge of health and human services with the largest measles outbreak in the United States this century.
him admitting that he snorted coke off a toilet seat.
I mean, that expires once again.
These are the people that are running the United States of America.
And you've got our Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth.
Once again, seeming to take his jollies off of watching things blow up on television, while at the same time, we're only finding out in days afterwards that over 150 US soldiers have been wounded in this conflict with Iran right now.
So we are not getting the full picture of what damage is being done to the United States, our assets in the Gulf.
And we could do an entire program of just the mistakes of cabinet by cabinet secretary of what's going on under this administration.
It's and yeah, there's no no plans for anything.
You know, I look back at we got talking with Carlton Huffman You'd like, you know with This this war in Iran we can't fight a forever war.
I mean those interceptor missiles They are hundreds of millions of dollars a pop for those fads and Patriots they take a long time to build and we have to fire many of them at one missile and They're not always successful.
So like I mean they're gonna run out
This is not an endless thing.
We've known this for a while now, definitely during the first Trump administration, but also to do with our assistance to Ukraine during the Biden administration, we found out how quickly we can burn through all this high-tech ordinance in a very quick fashion.
Whereas the Iranians, we're taking down $30,000 drones with a $3 million missile.
That's an exchange rate that is not sustainable in the long term.
No.
And before we head to break, what kudos to Ukraine for stepping up and sending their drone folks, taking them away from their front lines and sending them to us when we really haven't been the best of friends to them?
While we're talking about taking the oil sanctions off of Russia, which is basically Putin's financial lifelines.
My God.
We are in...
the upside down right now is what's happening.
But I'm excited to talk to you about, on the other side of the break, the downfall of also RPW, Republican Party of Wisconsin.
What is going on there?
What does that mean for 2026?
And talk about our buddy Tom Tiffany.
So stick around with Carlton Huffman on the rational revolution on the civic media radio network.
Welcome back.
Welcome
back.
That's my WS public radio voice.
Welcome back to the Rational Revolution on the Civic Media Network.
You got Mark Becker and our friend Carlton Huffman, which by the way, if you like what he has to say,
He's got a new little project going on, keeping it real, right?
What do you talk about that for a little bit?
Yeah, it's a crazy thing.
You never knew who you're going to meet along the way, but I met a professor at East Tennessee State University by the name of Dr. Elwood Watson.
If anybody's interested in his commentaries on just race, pop culture, society, I definitely encourage everybody to check him and his works out.
But he came to me and said, we should do a podcast.
And so we started putting it together last week and we just put out our first episode.
So it is Elwood and Carlton keeping it real.
Apple podcasts and Spotify and if anybody's interested in checking it out Similar to some of the rantings here, but we
go
into anything from race pop culture I'm sure I'm gonna get a sports reference in here or there somewhere as well as talking about The experiences we've had along the way and like said mark You're one of those people that I got to meet along the way through my time at the Republican Party of Wisconsin
Speaking of lava that for a little segue
The Republican Party of Wisconsin, you know, I was recruited.
Obviously, I didn't ultimately do it, but I recruited to potentially run for Congress.
And one of the things that was interesting was learning about how, you know, just the downfall of where the RPW is right now.
You worked for the RPW, and you know a lot of the behind the scenes.
Talk about what's going on over there.
Just to me to back up and just give everybody just the reputation or RPW.
It used to be considered the elite state party in the country.
I mean, under Tommy Thompson, obviously Republicans were dominant at the state level.
We always struggled in presidential years, but at the state level, we maintain control of the state assembly, the state Senate.
And we came very close to flipping the state in 2000 and 2004 under George W. Bush.
We ran into some troubles, obviously, when Barack Obama came along and just swarmed the state in 2008.
But between the backlash to Obamacare and the Great Recession, RPW reached its highest point yet with Scott Walker taking the governor's mansion, and they just had a stranglehold on everything that was going on in Madison.
But along the way, there were certain things that happened in terms of
The Republican Party of Wisconsin became what a lot of people, including some folks that we both know up there in the Green Bay area would call the Republican Party of Walker.
It became
a
vessel that was about his ambitions, both as governor and eventually it would become about his ambitions to be president of the United States.
And I would say that between him.
Deciding to make RPW just central to his identity that had a short-term benefit especially during the 2012 recall but as time wore on people were getting bored with that and then Walker decided to run for president and then Donald Trump came down the escalator and I would say if I had to pinpoint a certain time where the trajectory of RPW started to change I would say that that's when it peaked and had its good moments obviously with
Trump flipping the state in 2016, Ron Johnson being re-elected.
Trump obviously was able to win the state in 2024, but under the hood, especially at the state level, the party has definitely lost more than a step in terms of its ability to influence candidates.
And definitely we saw it with the announced retirement of Annette Ziegler a year ahead of her re-election.
Like I said, all the levers of state government seem to be slipping away from them and slipping away fast.
I wonder, you know, is it, is it due to, because like here locally, they're like turning point USA is recruiting candidates left and right.
They have a turning point guy is like on the executive committee for the eighth congressional district.
I mean, is that kind of becoming the new thing or what, what is, it's such a weird dynamic going on.
I mean power of course vacuum and once again when the state party became all about Scott Walker you had
Other candidates had to go and do their own thing.
Mike Gallagher, while he was up there in the eighth district, had to do his own thing.
Reed Ribble, before him, had to do his own thing.
All these other candidates had to go and do something else.
And I would say to the party, because there was a sour taste left in a lot of people's mouths, they looked to these third-party groups.
Before TPUSA really came into its own here in Wisconsin, it was these third-party, like, patriot groups that you
would just
see sprung up especially.
especially whenever COVID happened and like moms for liberty and these folks who are protesting education and vaccines.
Once they came online, RPW had lost most of its credibility.
It was a good vessel to be used by the national party and by the presidential candidates, but at the state and local level.
Most of these other candidates are having to fend for themselves.
And that's why we saw the state Supreme Court races have gone the last few years, the way that they have.
And that's why I believe that Chris Taylor is just going to wallop Maria Lazar whenever April comes along.
And our mutual friend, Dan Schaefer, did a great profile down in Waukesha County.
You're starting to see, you're starting to see Democrats penetrates into Waukesha of all places.
And that is a sea change that
You could not have imagined that whenever RPW was in its heyday.
Well, you know those players down there.
Yeah, that article is fantastic, and it's very, very in-depth.
And I think you look at some of the things that happened during the first Trump election where you had Robin Voss, and Nygren, and Steinke, and all of that.
The never-Trump movement started in Wisconsin.
Yeah, I mean Wisconsin was the last state where Trump lost a serious primary was whenever Scott Walker and company came out against him and that too I think so deceives for a lot of these Trump folks that whenever Trump won the nomination They didn't trust RPW anymore and they decided that They were going to like not have anything to do with the party until after Trump won the election and the apparatus Decided there was not room for people like you and they did
Once I decided to become vocal, there wasn't room for people like me, and we see Robin Boss, basically.
He barely won his primary a few years ago, and now he is like hanging it up because now that the state Supreme Court stepped in and we have fair maps, the Republicans are likely to lose the state assembly, if not both houses of the legislature.
you just see the state, we remember what it was whenever 2010 or at the beginning of 2011, you had Scott Walker as governor, you had Republicans held all but one statewide office, and now Ron Johnson, and that's about it now at this point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, you know, and all of those Republicans, I think Robin Voss is the last one to leave, but, you know, they all had to
uh, you know, tuck their tail and go kiss the ring when, uh, when Trump won.
And, and yeah, it's just ugly.
I so, you know, I don't know what happens.
And I think, you know, some of what you're, what we saw with the RPW is I, if I look into my crystal ball, a lot of what Trump is doing with the, with the Republican party nationally.
Yeah.
And I can say it is the
Trump party.
Yeah, I can sit here and say as someone both here in North Carolina and having the unique advantage of having been in Wisconsin, it was a similar trajectory that the Republican Party in both states gained control of the levers of power, but then with that coming of the Trump era.
You just saw people fall off deciding that they could not go along with it, but the Republican Party is in that, like, symbiotic relationship with him where it cannot pull itself away because too many of the base will revolt.
And the institutions of power just continue their rot and just spoil or alert, none of us live forever.
And Donald Trump
is
as old as Joe Biden was at this point of his presidency.
He's not getting any younger.
He's obviously lost some of his fastball and the party is going to have to decide what it looks like after he's gone.
But they're not willing to have that conversation now because anytime he senses that anybody's a threat to him, he comes down all of
them.
Well, look what he's doing in Texas.
You know, he's like, I'm going to endorse.
I'm going to endorse.
But then he just sits back on his hands and lets people grovel.
I think he likes that.
I mean, the fact that several people that I worked for, just and I won't name names for politeness sake, but several people I
worked
for, would go down to Mar-a-Lago just to kiss the ring.
I had one candidate, I will sit there and say,
that did not.
He was the last person that I worked for there in Wisconsin did not go down to kiss the ring, which to his credit.
But because of that, he didn't win that primary.
He did not win that primary for governor.
You had Tim Michaels end up kissing the ring and winning that primary and losing Tony Evers.
And I just.
I was just there and say, I was in the room when Scott Walker announced his presidential campaign.
I was also in the room when Scott Walker found out that he had lost that 2018 election.
And so it was just a unique vantage point to sit there and see the party at its height.
And then just the beginning of the decline that we are seeing it today.
We're talking with Carlton Huffman, Republican strategist and dear friend.
What is their path forward?
Or do they not know until Trump figures it out?
They don't know until Trump figures it out.
As far as Wisconsin, we'll see if Tom Tiffany is able to defeat whoever emerges from the Democrat primary.
I know you and I have talked offline about some of my critiques of certain members of the Democrat candidates family, but I would still say that.
with the national environment being what it is and obviously with this war in Iran putting extra stress on the economy is just another log on the fire that I think is going to consume the republicans that as long as the democrats stay out of their own way that I think that it will be a similar to 2018 if not a 2006 scenario where the republicans just get bludgeoned but they made this bed they have to lie in it you had a candidate that promised no more wars well here we are so another war
the Middle East, that the economy was going to get better, it hasn't, and that we were going to have transparency in government, whereas we still don't know what all is in the Epstein files, while his family is raking in billions, including getting gifts from foreign powers that we would lose our minds over if that happened if Barack Obama or Joe Biden did the same thing.
And people of the United States, I mean, you see it with Trump's approval rating, it is lower than Joe Biden's was at this point in his presidency.
It was lower than George W. Bush's.
approval rating at this point in his presidency.
So I just think that the Republican Party, if they bind themselves to him so inextricably as they have, they're going to suffer in November.
And I think the Democrats will take the governor's mansion once again in Wisconsin and probably take one, if not both houses of the legislature.
Yeah, I do think it's the Democrats.
Race to lose but and and like what's what's so frustrating is you look at approval ratings You look at the fact that you know promises made promises, you know broken type thing But there's no there's no seriousness.
It's oh, yeah, well my approval ratings.
It's it's the highest of any other president what?
Like they there's no it's not even It's not true and people still eat it up.
It's I don't know
ah
I can sit here and for some of your younger listeners, you might not remember this.
You might, I think you might have remembered this, but in 2003, speaking of Middle East wars, whatever.
the United States was going to Baghdad.
There was this Iraqi propaganda minister, and we nicknamed him Baghdad Bob,
who was
sitting there saying that the Americans are not anywhere near Baghdad at least a split screen on the other side with the American tanks rolling into the city.
But people prefer to live in their land of delusion until reality smacks them upside the head.
Come November, I think it's going to
and it's it's really wild and crazy and insane that we have that here in the United States of America.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Yeah, Carlton Huffman, dude, I really appreciate you being here.
I appreciate your friendship.
You're a good dude and you keep in touch.
I know we got some exciting things coming that we'll talk about offline, but hey, stick around with us.
I got one more segment, Carlton.
Be well, brother.
Alright, stick around for the Rational Revolution on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Mark Becker.
Welcome back!
Oh,
you got the Rational Revolution!
I'm Mark Becker on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you so much to Carlton Huffman.
I appreciate him so much.
He's a good guy, you know, and a good friend and he's always such a fun time to talk to.
I want to switch gears just a little bit.
I was reading a book this weekend and there was a part of the book that talked about how people can fall victims and not really know it.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
Because it really just goes to the center of why I do this.
And if you listen to the show, you know about my experience with domestic abuse.
If you don't, you can find that episode on civicmedia.us where I talk with my incredible friend, author, domestic abuse survivor, advocate, who are you tech?
I tell my story for the first time about when
I was a victim and it nearly cost me my life.
And there was an incident that I've never talked about and I'm gonna talk about it right now.
And what happened to me was shortly after the divorce was final and my ex was kind of losing her grip on her power over me.
This was well over a decade ago.
Yeah, I was so young then.
She was trying to use the one thing that she had that could control me and that was our son.
And a couple of weeks after the divorce was final, I was at my house and I got a call from the police.
And they said, we need to talk to you.
And I was like, ah, OK, I'm waiting for my son.
I'm kind of busy.
And they said, oh, you're not seeing your son until you speak with us.
I was terrified.
I was like, I didn't do anything wrong.
I had no idea it was going on.
I called my parents.
My parents showed up and the detective came and they took me outside and they said, we have it on good authority that you're seeking out male companionship while your son is at your house.
I started to laugh.
I was like, okay, uh-huh, right.
Oh wait, you're being serious?
Yeah, no, I'm not doing that.
And the police officer, this is not funny.
And he handed me a stack of printed out emails and I was like,
What is this?
Where did you get this?
And he said, your ex-wife gave this to us because she had access to your emails and she was concerned about the well-being of your son.
And I was like, oh, she did.
How noble of her.
Yeah, I didn't do that.
That's not, I didn't do that.
And the fact that she was accessing my email, she'd be quite a red flag.
Where's my son?
Let's be done with this.
And he's like, you're not getting your son until we figure this out.
And if you didn't...
Do that.
Well, that's a bigger issue and we're going to need to investigate this further.
And so I said, OK, so hold on.
You're telling me if I lie to you and say I did this, you'll go away.
This whole thing goes away.
I'll get my son and we can move on with our day.
But if I tell you the truth and say, no, this wasn't me.
Well, now that becomes a bigger deal because we got to have a bigger investigation and I don't know where I'm going to see my son next.
Yes.
OK.
Well, then you got me.
Red hand, a great detective work.
I'll never do that again.
But I never did in the first place.
My son came over and that was that.
Well, I wasn't that because I absolutely addressed that with his mom.
My point to that whole thing is, how many people are put in a situation like that every single day?
How many people have their lives completely ruined because of something like that?
That's not fair.
On that show, Hua herself talked about how she was accused of horrific things from her spouse that was completely untrue.
Things that she never did.
This happens all of the time, every single day.
It's not okay.
Abuse is real, whether it comes from someone with a badge or someone with your last name.
And just look at what's happening in Minnesota.
You have these police officers that come to people's houses, wrap on the door, say, I've got a warrant.
And they don't.
It's not a real warrant.
And people have no clue.
They have no idea what that is and what that means and what that really isn't.
They have no idea what their rights are.
If I knew what my rights were at that point, that story would have been completely different.
I would have stood up and fought it just like who it did.
And people don't know.
That's why I fight these fights.
That's why I love this show and that's why it matters so much because standing up for people matters.
It matters so much.
I was at a show last weekend in Milwaukee and it was at the Turner Hall and they had this display that was giving people free classes on what your rights are, knowing your rights.
It was for people that were documented, undocumented, white, black, brown, whatever.
And it was all for people who are in situations like the one I just discussed.
Because so many people have no idea what their rights are.
And then when they're in a situation, I tell you, when I was in that situation, my head is spinning.
I'm terrified.
I didn't do anything wrong.
But here you are being accused of things that are horrific.
It happens every day.
And so it's so important to understand what your rights are and what they're not and what people can do to you and what they can't.
Madeleine Somerville talked about that a couple episodes ago because she's an attorney and she had some great thoughts on how to better understand what your rights are and where you are as a person.
Man this happens all of the time And yeah, if you want to listen to that show I Tell my story for the the only time I've ever told that publicly and it's it was crazy when I remember that episode so well that the entire day after talking about that it brought back so many just horrific
Memories.
I was sick for an entire day following that show.
It was wild.
I don't wish what happened to me on anyone in the world.
Nobody.
And don't let it happen to you.
Be your advocate.
Know what your rights are.
And know what you can accept and what you can't.
We're all here for you on The Rational Revolution.
Thanks for listening to me.
We'll see you next week.
on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Catch you later!
