Today, we discuss the state of America with James Fauntleroy. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey, everyone. This is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.
Hi, everyone. My name is Jason Smith. I'm originally from sunny California, now living in beautiful Beijing. Again, today's guest is Jay Buffont or James Fauntleroy, host of the Jay Buffont Show on YouTube at underscore Jay Buffont and co-host of Revolutionary Blackout Network. Welcome to the Bridge to China podcast.
James. Thank you so very much for having me. It's good to be with you and it's good to be able to speak to the people of China. I'm delighted to have you on the show. I've been wanting to have you for a while. Obviously, my show is a China related one, but I wanted to ask you questions about America, particularly because I don't get to go there very often anymore. So you posted a video called War on the Poor, and we both know homelessness in America is out of control.
I would like to know more about what is the United States doing to address the issue and what do America's streets look like today? Unfortunately, the United States isn't really doing much to address the actual cause to homelessness. Their solutions seem to be anti-human at best when it comes to combating homelessness.
A lot of the laws, especially laws from the Supreme Court, state legislators and governors, as well as city ordinances are really criminalizing homelessness. In fact,
It was just a couple of days ago where I actually reported on a story where the residents of a neighborhood did not want a homeless shelter to be built within a mile away from them. And so now our city is resorting to housing homeless people on Greyhound buses instead.
And the amount of money that they would spend in order to retrofit these buses for homeless people to sleep in really could be used to actually house homeless people. Just giving an example, just under 5,000 people within the Orlando area where I reside are unhoused or homeless, but there's over 160,000 vacant housing units within the city alone. And yet we cannot put them in that housing facility.
We're going to put them in buses and spend that same amount of money while giving it to what I like to call the nonprofit industrial complex that likes to keep the problem existing so that it gives them a reason to exist. So
As far as the United States goes, they do not, they want to pass down laws where you cannot sleep in public places. They will, police will pick you up and take you to jail. They won't put you in housing. Or if they do try to put you in housing, they place a lot of barriers before you can actually get into housing. There are certain barriers, like, you know, a lot of people who are
People who are unhoused, they may encounter substance abuse, right? But it's because a lot of times they're unhoused. Or they may be encountering mental health issues, but instead of housing them, they rather just put them in jail. So, and plus we don't have universal health care within this country. So,
In fact, the housing issue is not being truly addressed in a humanitarian, humane way for the citizens of the United States. It's actually you're treated as a criminal.
if you are unhoused within this country. It used to be before Ronald Reagan that we, the United States, built low-income housing. Does the United States not have any of those options available or is it just very limited? Yeah, I'm not exactly sure if I heard completely, but as far as the low-income housing, there used to be a lot more low-income housing in the past.
especially within the United States, but of course, you know, the gutting of things like welfare from people like Bill Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, and the cutting of social programs constantly from both parties, really, from Democrat and Republican parties.
Low-income housing is really far and few in between. One of the public housing programs that we do have is called Section 8, and the list is five years long. That's how long the list is. And so there's a lot of people who suffer and they are unable to get on the list because they need housing now. And so because the housing costs are so high,
It's deeply unsustainable. So you have people living there in their cars. You have people living in motels. And these motels are shanty motels. You have people that are having to sleep on the couches of other friends and family in order to be able to just...
Stay out of the elements. And so public housing programs like that, and plus you have to meet strict, very strict eligibility requirements. These are financial eligibility, meaning you can only make so much before you're not eligible, which, I mean, kind of makes sense. But at the same time, they're so strict to the point where even people who are right outside of the eligibility requirements for Section 8, they still end up unhoused.
So because that's how unsustainable and that's how drastic the cost of living is compared to the pay that is given to us. That's how the wages are given to us from these companies and corporations in this country. And so a lot of people relegate themselves to.
sleeping in cars, sleeping in, shacking up on the couches and living rooms of many different families and friends. And it's really unsustainable thing because there's more of us that are growing in unhoused. Another point though I wanna bring out
is that a lot of our elderly are becoming out of house too. A lot of the, what we like to call the baby boomer generation, they're becoming out of house because even though some of them have saved for retirement, they did not account for the inflation that has been happening within this country. And so that is eating up a lot more of their retirement savings that they've had, that they anticipated. So now that you have a lot of them that are becoming increasingly housing insecure because they're
Social Security retirement doesn't cover enough. And then on top of that, whatever they had saved up, that is going quickly. So you have a lot of elderly people trying to get back into the workforce. You have people in their 70s trying to get back into the workforce because of the system. And so you also have this, you know, factor that is, you know, showing as well.
how unsustainable the system is, including for our most vulnerable as well. May I ask, as you're a part of various political movements, what can or should be done to actually address the issue of rising homelessness in the United States? To be honest with you, it's a very simple answer. Just give people housing. Just make sure that housing is... A lot of people have been saying housing is a human right. I've been switching my wording to housing is a necessity, is a human necessity.
It's a necessity for life in our Constitution. Well, really, in our Declaration of Independence and the Preamble, it says, But the thing is, here's the problem.
How can you have life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness if you do not facilitate things that are essential for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? Things like housing, healthcare, food, education, utilities, clean water, things like this. If you're paywalling it, by paywalling I mean making it so that people have to pay a cost for these things. And I'm not totally against people paying for it. Right?
Right. As far as, you know, if you need to purchase a house, things like that. Right. I do believe in government subsidized housing, I believe, and really just government owned housing so that people, you know, if, you know, housing should really just be like if you are unhoused, then you get a place to live. And so I think that's really the solution.
But then that would mean that would take a lot of money away from the landlords within this country, especially the corporate landlords, as well as the corporations that thrive. And the system here is cruel because they need homelessness to exist. Because homelessness provides an example to workers to see that,
That if you do not accept your exploitation, then this is where you're going to end up. You're going to end up on the streets. You're going to end up destitute. You're going to be looked down upon in society if you do not accept your exploitation. As far as the answers to homelessness, there are some ways that people can go about it. Legislatively, they can try to go through the route of things like ballot initiatives, things like that. That's one way to go about it.
A lot of times what state legislators will do is that if it goes the way of what the workers or what the people or proletariat, whatever word you want to use, if it goes in that direction, then they will try to undermine it by adding different hurdles to it. And I'll give you an example.
So here in the state of Florida in 2018, we actually voted to give the right to vote back to former felons who are no longer in prison and are incarcerated. We voted that as a direct democracy initiative. The Florida legislator then says,
Okay, well, we can't really combat that, but what we'll do is that anybody that is a former felon, now we will put a paywall to them that you have to pay for all these different court fees, filings. If you had an ankle monitor, then you're going to have to pay money for that.
all these different fees and it's like you have to pay for all this back before you get the right to vote back, essentially saying that you have to pay for the right to vote. And so this puts another barrier in front of people who are, you know, poor or working poor. And particularly this affects a lot of the black and brown community within the state. So there's there's different avenues like that where they will put barriers between people. And so as far as the housing goes, a lot of times politicians
politicians will say, well, we just need to build more affordable housing. Well, affordability is subjective, right? Instead of subjective thing, because the thing is, is like to somebody who's making two, $300,000 a year. Well, I mean, Alexis is affordable, right? But it's not affordable for me, but it's affordable for them. So that's why I say it's subjective. And so when it comes to what we consider affordable housing,
It should really be if they do not have an income, they get basic housing. You don't have to give them the Taj Mahal, but give them a roof over their head, a room to sleep in, you know, a simple kitchen, a simple bathroom, a storage, you know, or a closet to place their belongings, you know, and give them electricity and utilities. And utilities also count as internet, things like that.
And then that's it. You know, you can subsidize for, you know, furnitures and stuff and electronics that they need and things like that. But we're not asking for the Taj Mahal. We're just asking for something so that people actually have shelter.
permanent shelter. Problem is they don't want to do that because then also you also are fighting against what I like to call the non-profit industrial complex where a lot of these non-profits, these 501c3s and 404s here in the United States, they make a lot of money off of quote unquote helping the homeless. And so if you actually were to get rid of homelessness then the purpose for these 501c3s and 404s goes away.
that, you know, hefty salary that the people at the top, the presidents and directors and the CEOs of these nonprofits goes away, which means that their livelihood goes away. And so, of course, they don't want that to happen. So they're OK with the homelessness crisis being exacerbated within this country, too. So as far as, you know, the answers are.
Really, the answers within the United States really is a grassroots answer to help organize our communities. That's the best I can possibly say. But there's a lot of barriers to combating homelessness. And it's not just one party because we live in a duopoly that I like to call it. They say it's a two-party system, but it's really a one-party system with two sides. You're listening to The Bridge.
You know, you really bring up an interesting point because a lot of Americans, they like to say, well, this is an issue in a capitalist system like America for philanthropists to solve. But you're actually pointing out the fact that philanthropy is also a root cause of not solving these issues because people who work in philanthropy, if they solve the issue, they lose their –
their job as being part of the philanthropy enterprise. That's really troubling. So it looks like the only way to solve the problem is to the use of the state to provide for people's needs. Would you agree or disagree with that statement? Absolutely. In fact, I mean, you know, some people would say, oh, you want the government to provide housing? Yes. Yes, I do. Because what is the goal of government? What is the purpose of government?
What we do as a people is come together, pool our resources together. And I'm a firm believer in the phrase to each according to his ability, to each according to his need. That being said, you know, if somebody does not have housing, let's give them housing. If they don't have food, let's give them food. If they do not have water, let's give them water. And then, you know, it's funny when people's material needs are met,
then they start to think of other things that they start to consider. Well, I would like to do this job or that job. And the next thing you know, they go into the workforce and they start contributing to society as well.
People think it's the other way around where you have to contribute to society in order to get the basic needs, where I think it should be reversed. You should have the basic needs already set as a foundation. And then it actually encourages you to do so. And science is really on my side here because people who are unhoused, you know, they go through mental crises, what's called diseases of despair.
And so these diseases of despair also hinder a person from really being able to be the best versions of themselves in order to, you know, put their best foot forward and be, you know, I hate to use the phrase productive members of society, but it really does hinder them from being productive members of society. And so it's,
You have to make sure that people have a good foundation. And these things are food, housing, clothing, shelter, education, utilities, and the like. And also, it's okay to say that people also deserve a measurable amount of leisure as well. And so if you don't have any of these things, if you're unhoused, then you're even looked down on.
even if you want to do something leisurely, because to them, it's like, well, you're poor, you don't deserve it. And so I'm very, I feel very strongly about this. But yes, to answer your question, I feel like the government does have a duty or responsibility to make sure that the material needs of the people are met so that they can achieve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You can still do it through hard work.
But the problem is not everybody is set up in the same situation as the next. We have a very incongruent system where there are certain people of certain identities that are doing better than others or they're depending on where they live, they're doing better than others. So some people may need a little bit more help.
equitably than others. And so we should be able to provide these things and pull our resources together as citizens in order to be able to make sure they're okay so that they can do better. But to just say that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which is the phrase that a lot of people like to use, that's unsustainable because
Even the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps is kind of a joke because it's like me trying to lift myself up off the ground by my shoelaces, my entire body off the ground. That is completely impossible. That doesn't obey the laws of physics. And so therefore, you're asking me to do the impossible. That's what lifting yourself up by your bootstraps means. You're asking humans to do the one thing that's unhuman.
to build yourself up without the use of community, when humans are naturally, by our very nature, a communal species. We did not survive hundreds of thousands of years by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We've done it through community.
And now to walk away from that really, to me, is is unhuman. Well, I just want to point out for the people listening from the United States that in China, they do have low income housing and they also have no income housing. So, you know, some of the places where they did poverty alleviation, they just didn't
gave people apartments. They literally built them in areas of China that were too poor to build them for themselves. The government came in, built entire communities, entire apartment complexes, and they just said they spent years researching all of these impoverished families that had existed there for hundreds of years, really.
And they just identified all of them and said, okay, here's your apartment, here's your apartment, here's your apartment. And that's extreme cases. But in less extreme cases where people are just poor, the threshold is very low or the rent is so cheap that it's like practically nothing. And so basically everyone is, there is homelessness. I don't want to say there's no homelessness. Most of the homelessness that exists are extreme mental health issues where they just basically can't live in a home.
don't want to live in a home, don't want to be told where to live. But like the homelessness exists is so marginal, especially as a percentage of the population that it practically doesn't exist. Can you find homeless in China? Yes. But if you tried to talk to them to get them to go to a home, they probably wouldn't even go with you. That's how extreme those cases are. So there are solutions to homelessness and it does exist here. And I agree with you about healthcare.
China has basic health care for everyone. 96% of people are covered. There are, again, extreme examples where it's not covered. So, I mean, there are examples. And China is doing well. Its economy is growing. GDP in China grew 5% last year. So people are contributing to society. And like you said, that foundation...
that provides people with their basic needs exists to allow people to begin to pursue higher levels of pursuit in society, whether it's self-cultivation, communal cultivation, work, education, and so forth. So the fact is that it does work.
I mean, the idea that some people in the United States think that we need to scare the workers into working, it's unnecessary. Instead of extrinsically motivating them, we can intrinsically motivate them. Can I add another point? Because there's going to be some people who go, well, if you just give them housing, then they're never going to work. Wrong. Because if people's material needs are met, they still will work.
I'll give you an example: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Charles Koch, Bill Gates. They still work. They have all their material needs met. They don't need to work at all for the rest of their lives, but yet they still do. Why? Because that's what humans do. We're interested in doing things.
Some of us like to cook. If we want to flip burgers, fine. If we want to be a barista, fine. Some of us like numbers. If we want to be an accountant, fine. If we want to work in communications or in IT, fine. Some of us like to cultivate. Some of us want to be farmers. Some of us want to be ranchers. These are things that we're interested in. But the thing is that humans naturally actually want to work. The funny part is I actually asked the question,
of a lot of viewers on my TikTok as of recently, I did a video asking about education. And one of the questions I asked in regards to education was if you could go to school
absolutely free, what type of education would you get? And can I just read off a couple of these? If you don't mind. Somebody said, I get my fine art degree and then psychology. This is if higher education was absolutely free. They would go back to school and they would get their fine arts degree. One guy said film school or mechanical engineering. I definitely would like to learn what it takes to build high-speed trains.
One says art therapy and urban planning. Person said psychology, English and sociology. Let me see, another one says fine art and writing. Another person said learn to code, art history, literature. I got a person that they wanted to get a degree in linguistics. Another person said they wanted to go into forestry, environmental science or electrical engineering.
Let me see, this one is ethnomusicology. They said they currently work in cyber infrastructure and they have a master's in computational biology. So I had studied plant ecology and plant genetics. So this is just an example of the many 689 comments I got on this video of people saying what type of education they would want if education did not have a paywall.
You mean to tell me that these people would not also want to do this same type of work after they're finished being educated out in the field in order to be able to do these things? You know, so that's that goes to show that humans actually do like to work by our very nature. It's just we don't want to be exploited for it. You're listening to The Bridge.
Also, I mean, I agree with you. Moreover, I think a lot of people with higher education degrees in the United States often can't go into their field of choice and end up working at, you know, in what is it called minimum wage or sub minimum wage jobs in the United States? I can't even believe such a thing as sub minimum wage exists. Firstly, I mean, there should be a living wage. I mean, OK, let's go to that. Let's actually transition to that. So the cost of living is rising. We watched years of
massive inflation in the United States. I was actually calling my relatives in the United States to make sure that they were okay because we had about 1% or 2% inflation. But the minimum wage and the sub-minimum wage remain insanely low. I think the sub-minimum wage is less than $3 an hour in a lot of places. How are regular Americans able to survive in this kind of new reality? They're not. That's the best answer I can give you. Wow. Our homelessness rate has been going through the roof. Our homelessness rate
has skyrocketed. Homelessness is skyrocketing across this country, so much so that they're talking about putting them on an island. Wow. That's what people like Donald Trump are saying. It's unsustainable. You know, when here in the state of Florida, and I was just talking about this earlier, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, their Out of Reach program,
Florida, the state where I live in, is currently the 10th most expensive state in the United States. In my area, or really in the state of Florida, you need to make at least $35.27 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Florida, where currently our state minimum wage is $12 an hour. The federal minimum wage is even lower at $7.25 an hour, and it has not been lowered since the Bush administration.
Now, it got so Bush was the one under Bush administration that got approved and then it took place under Obama administration. But it was Bush that actually raised the minimum wage, not Obama. And so people are not surviving because the cost of living is so high that now you have people stealing eggs, stealing eggs because they can't afford it.
You have people that, you know, I don't know how many of your listeners or viewers have been to the United States, but if you go to some stores in here in the United States and you go into some of the aisles and you try to get baby formula, you literally have to get somebody to unlock the cage so that they can get the baby formula because baby formula is one of the most stolen goods in a store.
Because people become desperate because they can't afford to feed their babies. That's one of the most locked, this one of the most stolen goods in the United States. It's not because people just want to steal it just for the heck of it. It's because people can't afford it. And so, and we also live in a country where
It's forced upon, not forced upon us. Well, technically, yes, we're under duress. We're the processed food, which is unhealthy for us. It's pushed on us more and it's typically cheaper than the healthy food like fruits and vegetables and grains, whole grains that we would get. And so it is. So now you also couple that with food deserts.
where you have many places where they do not have a local grocery store. And so people have to go to the convenience store, which has not really many fruits or vegetables, not very many whole grains, and they have to eat processed food day in and day out. So even though they may be eating a lot of calories, they have a lot of low nutritional value. And this contributes to diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease,
Stress levels are constantly high, so high cortisol levels that are within these people. People who are in low-income areas are constantly – brain functionality, we're constantly in fight-or-flight mode, so therefore our cortisol levels are super high, causing us to have a myriad of different health problems. And so people are suffering, and it's growing more and more day by day, to the point where now they're saying that there is no more of a middle class in the United States.
Well, it seems like the media in the US are made up of the upper middle class or the lower upper class. And so they don't seem to report on that side of the economy as much. Most of the international media, the big media, the mainstream media in the United States that I get to see in China says, oh, stock market goes up, stock market goes down. But I hear very little about the other half of the American society. So actually, I want to pivot a little bit.
Um, it, I recently saw some articles from here in China about the United States that show that people are being arrested and deported for using free speech to be anti-war and so forth. Is the first amendment dying in the United States? There never was a first amendment for everyone. Please elaborate. So when the United States first began back 249 years ago,
When they wrote the Declaration of Independence, when they wrote the Constitution, it was for a particular set of people. This was for wealthy, white, landowning men. That was who it was for. Everybody else, it didn't really count.
So when they said the First Amendment for free speech, it meant for the people who were wealthy, white, and landowning. That was all it was meant for. So as far as the whole free speech aspect, there have been fights for us to have free speech given to all of us. However, even when people have spoken out against what the government is saying, what the government is doing, they have been silenced.
So, when it comes to our speech in many ways, like, you know, the other one, the most famous ones was Julian Assange, you know, the United States was going after him. That was a free speech issue. What's going on with Mahmoud Khalil is also another free speech issue. But the students who have been protesting against the genocide in Palestine on college campuses have had been beaten by and corralled and gassed by police.
in our country, that is a free speech issue. They're not harming anyone, they're not doing anything to anyone, and yet free speech.
The George Floyd protests, where George Floyd was murdered in front of the eyes of millions, if not billions of people around the world for eight minutes and 46 seconds, where his life was snuffed out by former officer Derek Chauvin. People went out, protested. But because they were protesting...
Well, they said, no, you can only protest between these hours and those hours. I thought free speech didn't have a set of hours that you could protest. But unfortunately here in the United States, free speech is only given to the people who have the money. And that directive really never changed. Maybe about them being white, maybe. But wealthy and landowning, basically owning capital,
and being the richest among us, those are the only people that have free speech. Those of us here who are workers, we don't have it. And also just to add the Uhudu Three, Chairman O'Malley, Ushatalla, Penny Hess, and Jesse Neville, they were part of the African People's Socialist Party here in Florida, out of St. Petersburg, and out of I think it was St. Louis, Missouri. They were
Indicted as co-conspirators in a quasi government conspiracy basically saying that they were basically Russian agents because they spoke out against the American government all because they spoke out against the American government and they beat the greater charge of being official Russian agents, but they still are under probation for
for being listed as unofficial Russian agents, even though, yes, they had contact with somebody from Russia, but their criticisms of the United States government does not come from Russia. Their criticisms of the United States government come from lived experience. But here you have, and this was the Biden administration that actually indicted them. It was the Biden Department of Justice that indicted them.
And so now you have what happened with them. You have the Trump Justice Department going after Mahmoud Khalil, as well as many other people who are speaking out against the genocide. And now if they are green card holders, also known as permanent residents, they are being threatened with deportation. There is Mahmoud Khalil.
I'm blanking on his last name. My apologies. But Mobudu, I've had him on RBM before, but he also spoke out against genocide and they want to ship him back or they want to deport him back to a country in Africa, even though he is from England. He's a college professor at Georgetown or New York University. Yeah. And so it's crazy that, you know, there is really no true free speech.
in this country. When people say, oh, we have freedom of speech, that depends. Also, let's talk about a little bit of the history of COINTELPRO, where they've actually went against people who are more for a leftist government. You have COINTELPRO that have attacked not just activists, but even entertainers.
that dare to speak out against what the United States government is doing, that actually want a different economic system that was more better for workers instead of the capitalist system that we're under. This is the government that we live under. And now you have, for instance, people who spoke out against, you know, look at what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was all good when he was speaking about race, but then once he started to go into class,
and speak about class politics and wanting to organize the sanitation workers and things like that, then he was murdered. He was assassinated. Same thing with people like Malcolm X. Fred Hampton, for speaking out against the government and for actually organizing to feed his community, he was killed at the age of 21 years old right next to his pregnant wife. And so...
These are the examples throughout American history where even though we can speak, we speak out against our government, our government always comes back and they will, you know, put a stranglehold on us for trying to actually change the system fundamentally for something that's better for the workers instead of the corporations. Well, point taken. That was quite a litany. Oh, yeah.
You're listening to The Bridge. I want to switch gears because this show is ultimately a China show. Kind of concerned about the image that China has because, you know, in 2001, 2002, there was obviously a huge buildup of anti-Iraq propaganda in the United States. And that was leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
And now it looks like maybe there's a lot of anti-China propaganda in the last few years, an escalation over where it was 10 years ago. So, you know, may I ask, how do most people that you talk to see China? And are people interested in coming to China to see it for themselves? Or what's the general outlook among Americans? For the uninitiated...
into Xiaohunshu. The opinions on China are very antiquated here in the United States.
A lot of people still think, "Well, all cheap goods come from China, and they have very cheap labor, and China exploits their workers." This is what's being said by other Americans. And they'll still tout the, "Oh, well, they had to put nets around the building because some of the workers may try to jump out of the building and harm themselves."
Or, you know, they will say that they work for this many pennies an hour. They don't really work, you know, to make it's almost like they view the whole entire country of China as one giant sweatshop that is full of exploited people. Then some who think that they are more educated will start to think, well, China is also a
in their view, a government that will do imperialism too, we just don't know it. And they'll say how they're doing a genocide of the Uyghur Muslims, right, in China.
And then they will believe what the United States propaganda says about China stealing intellectual properties. They will believe that China is trying to take over all the farmland in the United States.
They will believe propaganda about China is really just a continuation of the yellow peril, right, that has come out of the United States back then. The United States has never really been friendly to China. Remember the Chinese Exclusion Act that was done many years ago because really they were angry that, you know, the Chinese were taking all the jobs. And so this revamp is really because China is...
doing for its people better than the United States has. And the United States really can't take it. And so they have to make lies about China. That was going to be my question. I wanted to ask you to split this into kind of an A and B. Is it because Americans are just generally not well-informed about people living in other countries? Or is it because, like you just mentioned, that the United States government doesn't want people to know that there is an alternative to
to the way things are going in the United States? It's both. It's both because most Americans do not have a passport. They do not go outside of the country. They do not know what's outside of their country. You can go, you can be a European and I'm willing to bet at least between 60 and 70% of people from France have been to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, England,
Spain, Italy, right? They've been to all these other countries. They probably even know more than one language. They probably can speak two to three languages, right? Most Americans can only speak English. We're monolingual. And so we barely leave our own country. And so we don't get to see what's beyond and what different systems exist out there. Number one. Number two,
On top of that, our government does not want the people to know of a different system. One of the interesting things is, and this is one of the reasons why there is this blockade and sanctions that are constantly going on in Cuba.
Now, the majority minority in this nation is now Latino, Hispanic. So that means that if people start hearing Cubans from Cuba who support their revolution speak about their government systems, well, then they're going to be able to understand every single word they say. Or if they start hearing people who are Venezuelan start talking about the system of Venezuela on Facebook,
under Hugo Chavez, formerly Hugo Chavez, and presently under Nicolas Maduro, then they may be swayed to start to embrace another system. This is exactly why the United States has suppressed the voices of people in Grenada because they actually tried to turn Grenada into a country that has a different economic system. But Grenada was a country of Black people that spoke English. You know, one thing that
I would like your listeners to know is that when it comes to culture in America, it is driven really by black Americans in America. And then once it is saturated in black America, then it reaches out into the general audience and it becomes a trend and everybody starts to embrace it.
or most people start to embrace it. And so if Black people started in the United States, started speaking with people, to Black people in Grenada, then they may be influenced by another economic system, which is what a lot of our revolutionary leaders who we praise today were actually trying to do. People like Fannie Lou Hamer, people like Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but they all were pretty much either exiled or killed
So they don't want them to know about that. And so, of course, they do not want people. This is why they were trying to ban TikTok, because TikTok was becoming too popular. And now they actually had unmitigated or unintended, I should say, consequences by driving Americans into Xiaohunshu.
And so now, because they have been driven by Xiao Hongzhu, more Americans are now more educated about China than they ever have been. Literally, Americans crying in tears, finding out how the Chinese have a much better system, better quality of life than the Americans do, simply because they didn't know, simply because the United States government doesn't want them to know.
And so, you know, to answer your question, it is both. It is a suppression and it is an ignorance of us Americans in a suppression by our government so that we don't know of this system and how people have it better in many different ways. I was going to ask about that specifically. Now that there has been a few million people on Xiao Hongshu and there are some –
a great deal of lower class, middle class Americans. I'm not sure middle class exists anymore based on our conversation, who are highly educated and do know more about the world. So in this sliver of American society, probably mostly on the extreme left,
Are they more aware of things that China has accomplished, for example, like 45,000 kilometers of high-speed rail, which could run back and forth in the United States several times? Are people aware that this exists and are people starting to say, hey –
We could have this. You know, the United States is extremely wealthy, especially per capita, much more wealthy than China is. And yet we have all of this infrastructure that the United States doesn't have. It almost doesn't make sense. America is supposed to be one of the maybe the wealthiest country in the world by nominal terms and certainly per capita as a major world economy, not just one of these small, super rich countries like Switzerland. But the United States per capita income for a country of its scale should be doing a lot
better. And yet the United yet China, this country that is still a developing country has all of this infrastructure. Like we're starting to get humanoid robots, not just at Boston dynamics or whatever it's called, but like actually out on the streets, you know, we have robots in hotels. We have a high speed rail, we have near universal healthcare. And yet the United States doesn't have these things that China seems to be doing a lot more with less.
are people seeing that there's an alternative, that there's more possible for the bottom half of American citizens. It is growing. And it's funny that you mentioned that because I was just on Twitter.
And somebody shared a video of a Twitch streamer, a famous Twitch streamer. His name is iShowSpeed. Yeah. And he actually came to China and he rode in a Chinese car for the first time. And he was amazed because he spent $250,000 for his Lamborghini. And a car that is comparable to the Lamborghini would retail here in the United States for only $70,000. And he was shocked.
There was another one where he was walking. I forget what city it was. It might have been Shanghai. I saw him in Shanghai, but I don't know if he was in other cities also. But the video I saw of him, he was walking on the Bund in Shanghai. Okay. And so he's walking and he's looking at China and he's seeing how...
advanced and how beautiful it is. He's like, this is China? And he was in shock. iShowSpeed has millions of young viewers who watch his content daily. And somebody commented, I think it was Carl Jopp. He says something up to the effect of, I think, of over $1.6 billion in anti-China propaganda, completely wiped out
by a Twitch streamer because he showed the truth on the ground of what's actually happening.
Because he was curious. Because ISO Speed was a very curious young man who wanted to see, okay, people are talking smack about China. People are talking bad about China. Let me go to China and see exactly what it's like. And when he came to see what it was like, it was like, oh my goodness. The United States is like a parent where they want you to eat this nasty, bitter food. And they say, mmm, yum, it's good for you. It's good?
It makes you feel sick. But then they discourage you from going over to that table where the other kids are eating fruits and veggies and they got some healthy stuff over there and it's really good for you, but it's very yummy. And then you sneak off and you go to the table where the kids are eating the yummy food and you're like, wait a minute, this tastes delicious and it's healthy for me. And you're in shock.
because the people have been lying to you about what you have. But they lie to the American people because they want to keep all the wealth and resources concentrated among a very small few. And so this is the propaganda that has been sown within the United States for decades. And it's being broken down now because people are becoming more and more curious.
And now you have videos upon videos upon videos of Americans coming to China going, "Hey, I'm just a traveler. Here's my trip to China. This is what it's like." And next thing you know, they are impressed.
Because they'll look at their train stations and they'll think about the subway stations in New York or in Boston or in L.A. or in Chicago and go, these things are horrible compared to what's in China. And so they see, they go, wow, China is amazing.
And they're doing amazing things just for the people. It's not concentrated at the top. It's all the wealth that's created and it's being equally and equitably distributed among all the people. And they're trying to work on equally distributing it even more, more, even more as we speak. And people like myself, when I found out that 800 million people, Chinese people that were
taken out of abject poverty, out of extreme poverty. I was like, wait a minute, if they could, that's more than double the population of the United States taken out of abject poverty. That's huge. And so, of course, you know, no country is perfect. I'm sure China has some of these issues. But I'm not trying to go for perfect. I'm just trying to go for good and better.
But the United States doesn't even want us to do that because it's a threat to their power. You know, you point out something really interesting. Both of us in this conversation are essentially talking about
making the United States a better nation. And when I'm online telling people, hey, over here in China, we have X, why can't we have the X in the United States? People in America go online and troll me and like, oh, you're China-loving shill, you hate America. No, I'm saying this precisely because we can do better. We can actually make the United States into the kind of nation that we
deserve, that all people deserve. And so it gets frustrating for me, you know, because a lot of what I'm over here doing is essentially like
Okay, that's how this can exist. You know, people like to point out that the high-speed rail network is not very profitable, that it costs the Chinese government far more than it makes from it. Exactly. The state should be responsible for building the kind of infrastructure that anyone can access, and it doesn't depend on the profit margin.
margins for a few, but rather the convenience of everyone. And so when I see people saying things like, oh yeah, but we can't have that in the United States, that costs more than we would make.
We should have it precisely because it costs more than it can make. Not everything should be based on profits. It should be based on people. And I want to ask you one last question. We don't have a lot of time left, but, you know, I would like to encourage more Americans not just to travel to China, but to come here.
And I think the easiest way to do that is to study. You mentioned affordability of education, what people would study. You know, you don't need to be coming to China because you're only 17 or 18 years old and getting a bachelor's degree, which you can, but you can also come like you at, you know, your more mature age and
for a master's degree. That's considerably more affordable. And you might even be able to get scholarships. So I want to ask you, what is stopping Americans from coming to China to get a master's degree or a PhD here in China with scholarships? Because I think that would draw our people closer together and more Americans could understand and experience what China is like
And it doesn't have to be like taking China and making it in the United States. That's obviously ridiculous. We're Americans. We want an American country. But we can take the parts that we like and maybe replicate them similarly in the United States. How can we get more Americans to come to China to study is my question. Well, to answer your question, there's two barriers that is...
preventing that. And one of them is brainwashing and affordability. A lot of people are brainwashing and thinking that China is still the same China from the 1960s and the 1970s. They don't see the China that we see. They don't see the modern China that has actually came out of the years of humiliation. And now they're basically
They are the shining city on a hill that Reagan spoke about, but he thought it was going to be America, but it's actually China. It's also affordability. It costs over $100 just to get your passport, not on top of the amount of money that would cost to get a plane ticket to come to China as well. And then it's kind of daunting because people think, oh, my God, China's on the other side of the world. I got to go all the way over there.
And they think it's kind of daunting, right? When in reality, to be honest with you, it's not. Because if you can get the passport, get the plane ticket, and get the accommodations, then you can go there. And I wouldn't just say for people who want to study. Let's say you're just about to retire. You're 65 years old. You're about to retire. You got a little bit of a nest egg saved up.
and you got your social security check, could you get yourself a passport? Could you get yourself, you know, save up a few coins and actually go to China and visit China for two weeks, three weeks? Instead of taking that trip to Disney World and spending all that money...
on a multinational corporation here, could you use that money to get tickets to take you and your kids, maybe let's say you're a family of three or four, and go take a trip to China. Go to Guangzhou, go to Shanghai, go to Beijing, and, you know, go see, right? I encourage anybody who is able to. Now, most of us aren't going to be able to because most Americans, we're living paycheck to paycheck. We just can't afford to go to China.
We can't. Now there's other ways that we can still kind of quote unquote go to China. You know, it'd be channels like this one. Go ahead and speak to people like you. You know, see what's going on on the ground in China. There's other different people who are in independent media who actually cover what's going on in China. I think of a couple of people called Jia Jingliling. Danny Highfog is really good, you know, talking about China. He goes on to China trips very often.
And then it is, you know, the streamers who aren't political at all, who go visit China just to see what it's like on their own. Just just, you know, just to see at least you get to, you know, live vicariously through the people who are filming, you know, their real life experiences out in China. But these are some of the things that we can do.
But I do encourage if you want to study for a subject and if it's more affordable for you to travel to China than to pay for school here, go to China. Do it because you'll save money and also you'll also get an education of being more well rounded and seeing what's going on outside of your. Certainly a lot of the great leaders that you mentioned earlier who were taken out or exiled.
They traveled the world. That was part of their experience that informed them about how America could be made improved, essentially. How can we improve America? They went and they went to Africa. They lived there. They spent time traveling around Latin America. They came back to the United States and they saw
what is possible and how we can make the United States a better nation for all citizens. I want to thank you for your time. That's about all of the time we have. Thank you so much. For people who want to learn more about James, you can follow him on YouTube at underscore Jbefont. That's J-A-Y-B-E-F-A-U-N-T. Thank you so much for your time again. Thank you so very much for having me and thank you for the great conversation. It was awesome. Thank you so much.
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