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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again, back again, back again. You know what? I think, boys, episode 50? I think this is. I think it's 50. Five-zero is the number.
Man, this is like a... Not canceled. And today, I got to tell you, this is like an after-school special today, if you will. It is. This is going to be a very special episode of The Power Move. Because you're not the best-looking one. I'm not the best-looking one? Well, I definitely don't have the best hair today. There's a question on that. We definitely don't have that.
Welcome to the Power Move. My name is John Gafford. I am your host. To the left of me is, as always, Colt of the Bulgarian Mongoose Amidon. Colt? Or Cold. It's Starbucks. Cold. Cold. You know what? And also across from us is Chris, the counselor, as with us as always, and a very special guest in the studio today. Hair. For those of you who may wonder what it's like to...
To live in my house and be part of my life, I've actually got Hayden Von Gafford I, my one and only son, in studio today. Hi, Hayden. Hi. There you go. How you doing? First. I like that. Yeah. I mean, look, we're going to joke. I'm just going to add that to the end of mine. I want to say a lot of people, you know, I go to events and I go to things and I see people and they placate their kids on the stage and they...
Put them on stage and they put them here and I get it. Everybody's happy for their kid and everybody's proud of their son. I'm as proud of my son as you can be of anything. Well, maybe that's not true because I got to tell you something I'm almost more proud of, Connell.
Colt. Colt got an iPhone. He did. Don't get me started. Our text groups are no longer ruined. They can have names. My life is ruined. No more green bubble. My life is ruined. Why is she? I am telling, no, my life. Like, mi vida. It's horrible. Can you tell us the story of the iPhone? No, because I, look, like, I'm a,
I'm like, oh gosh, I had one client was like, oh my gosh. And legit, really, I thought was mad about it. And I'm like, all right, this could be affecting my income. Plus with other business ventures, you know, half people were on WhatsApp signal. And I'm like, this is just getting too much of a headache. I seriously would have like 30 different things going at once. So I said, you know what? I'm going to buy the bullet, do the iPhone, do
And can I tell you? Here it comes. Holy. More than Tom Hanks? Cover your ears because I'm about to hurt. No, no, because he's green. He's supposed to run the ears. More than Tom Hanks? Worst fucking decision I've ever made in my life. And I've made some bad decisions. Sitting in this room with us every week is a bad decision probably. Seriously. No. Oh my gosh, you guys. So I'm like, okay. So I had the original iPhone.
okay then i got like the iphone 3 got rid of that three months later it was the original iphone still pretty much got the i think fifth and sixth generation had both of those got rid of those sweet
no they're not they're the same phone so this phone i get on like cool something cool is going to happen oh it's vibrating that's what it's doing that's pretty cool yeah buddy it's the original iphone it's slow it sucks the camera sucks it's not user friendly i have to use two hands with it because it's not everything's all over the board with it it's an absolute horrible phone and if you like it's for three reasons you're either a follower
And if you like Starbucks, you're also a follower. Two, you're ignorant. You're ignorant because you've never had a better phone. You've never had the Samsung. Or three, you're just so tied into Apple.
So one of my clients who is a big Apple, works for Apple, been with Apple from day one. He's like, oh my God, you got an iPhone because you were texting. He goes, why would you do that? He goes, the new foldable Samsung, like we are all salivating. Like this thing is so...
So amazing. Why would you go to an iPhone? I'm like, thank you. It's the worst decision. So three things. Are you following? And I'm shocked John likes the iPhone because he's usually on top of the good stuff, like everything that's good. No, you have to understand, John is a Mac user. So John is in the Apple...
ecosystem. You're one of the three. He likes everything to work together. But is it worth having a shitty phone for that? John, have you ever once thought your phone was doing something other than exactly what you wanted to do? No. Well, that's because one of us believes their phone apparently plotting against them and the rest of us don't. It's just like
It's an absolute garbage phone. I'm serious. I was hoping to love it. Listen, boomer. Settle down. At this point, we're going to go to the first youth of America opinion. Now, look. I want to say something before. So Colt's committing a common fallacy.
Common fallacy. Which is? This, what we call, what is it? Adveracundium. He's got these irrelevant appeals. Can't even Google it now. Irrelevant appeals to authority, right? So what he does is this. You ever seen those terrible memes online on Facebook?
I know a guy who served in the military, and this is what he said. Therefore, that opinion is now somehow very valid, right? The argument from anecdote. No, I've had both sides of this now. I've had a good phone, and now I have a shitty iPhone. You talk to one guy, right? Everyone I know that is in filmmaking and stuff swear by Apple. They go, this camera...
does stuff that you don't understand. Oh, really? Is that why John is like, oh, all time in Cabo. Colt, take the photo with your phone. No, literally because he probably didn't even bring his phone with him. That's me placating you. And if I don't have a phone, it's easy to be charcoal sketching the event. And I lost all my freaking Cabo pictures. Stupid.
stupid. You know, Apple backs it up right to the cloud. So it's just funny. You can look at it. It's called an adveracundium. I believe it's my job sometimes to throw out some scrabble words. And that was a perfect, I don't even know how you'd spell that. So I can't even Google check you on that. Adware. I'm sure your iPhone will complete the search for you on Google. It probably would. Probably would. Did you mean adveracundium, Colt?
Well, I tell you what, my son is drifting into, do we come on here to have a spelling challenge or are we going to talk about some stuff? So no, the reason that I had my son on today, and yes, it's not going to be all downers today and it's not going to be all serious talk, but I did want to talk about a couple of things. Today on the Power Room, just to let you know what we're going to talk about, we're going to do this kind of two separate segments today, right? So the segment A is going to be, we're going to talk about some political stuff and I want to get...
a use view of America. I mean, I think it's funny for all of us to sit in here and just pontificate on whatever it is. And I had the next generation, my son just graduated top of his class from his private school, eighth grade class, which I guess is already disqualifying him from having an opinion that's gonna be the better part of America. But just, you know, he's a normal kid, right? He plays the video games, he does all this stuff, he sees all the same stuff. And I just wanna get his kind of view of where America is based on current events, 'cause obviously yesterday,
Shocker shocker happened again senseless tragedy of school and and you know, thank God I got to pick my kids up from school yesterday because 19 people did not and You know and immediately today everybody jumps on you know the bandwagon of the same bandwagon They always jump on every single way that they do it and I want to talk about some of the stuff I saw people say I want to talk about I just want to kind of get his idea of the view so
Hi, Hayden. How are you? I am. I'm good. You're good. So first of all, I guess before we get to the serious stuff, I'm going to allow Mr. Connell and Colt to question you about me and anything they want. Because I think that people right now are hoping you say something that probably embarrasses me or sheds some light. I don't feel that way in the very slightest. On the fact that I might put you in a closet. Go ahead, Colt. What's the first question for Hayden? How long does he take on his hair?
His hair? I can answer that. He wakes up like that. That probably takes like 30 minutes on his hair. It's not too long. Not too long? That is way long. See this right here? This is why you always need a counselor. We do. I've been with John. Yes. I've traveled with John.
Yes. Five minutes. Yeah. No, that's because he's not getting ready when he's in Egypt the same way he's going to the office. Of course I am. 30 minutes. We heard it from somebody. Five minutes. Okay. So now we've established my son has no concept of time. We've established that. I don't wake up at the same time you do. Exactly. That's the problem. I'm going by when you do my hair. Yes. We have like the same, similar hair. That doesn't say it'd be 30 minutes to do your hair. It feels like it. It does.
It feels like it because you'd rather throw a hat on is what happens. John, could you do my hair? No. Is that why your hair looks so good? What do you beat him in? What do I beat him in? Pretty much any fighting video game. Any video game. Any video game pretty much anymore, which is humiliating to me. Which is weird that you haven't sort of put some time into it to try to make that not happen. No. I kick my kid's ass in freaking video games. I don't let my kids win anything. I don't let them win anything.
My wife would get so mad. She's like, let him win. No. He's still for that. Well, I'm going to start asking some questions because I'm curious what you think. And again, we had a conversation before this and I said, do not answer this stuff in a way that you think I want you to answer. If you say the wrong thing, you're grounded. But that's what we're essentially playing here. No, no. That's the thing about opinion. I just won a Supreme Court case. Yes.
Just wanted to throw that out there. Just wanted to throw that out there that you did that. Connell Law, 702 Connell. Is that really? Yeah, I did. Good for you, man. Good for you. It had to do with the rights of free speech. Good for you. It was a free speech First Amendment issue. Good for you. And we won because somebody tried to sue my client for their opinion, an opinion on Yelp. And as the Supreme Court held, Court of Appeals held, that you can't have a false opinion.
Okay. So in order to sue someone for defamation, I have to make false statements about you. So essentially what you're saying is I am constitutionally protected from looking dead into camera two and saying, screw you, Chili's.
Serve me six margaritas and tow my car. What kind of service is that? That's... Chili's, that was really shitty service. That's it. You have an absolute constitutional protective rights set because if they sued you for defamation, you file what's called a special rule of motion to dismiss under anti-SLAPP, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Got it. Okay, cool. Anyway, sorry to throw that out there. You cannot have a false opinion. You can't have a false opinion. All right, cool. So...
First I want to say this so so the first question I'm gonna get before we get in the degree of specifics is What do you what say you about? American politics, what do you think is good about it? What do you think is bad about it? Just curious American politics kind of scare me they scare you why I never really like to dive deep into that because Like a while ago. I remember like a long time ago. Mm-hmm. It was the red and the blue play Michael a closer your face back. Okay, so
Okay. The red and the blue. And everybody knew what the red was doing. Everybody knew what the blue was doing. And you were very firmly on one side or another side. And now it seems like every side is doing bad things. And it's really hard to stick to one certain side because they're always doing something you like and something you don't like. So that's why I just like to avoid it entirely. So, but, but how do you, so how, so avoiding it as far as just listening to what they say, or like, say you're 18 years old, like say tomorrow, which in four years you will be.
Do you think that registering to vote is important, the way that you see the roadmap? I think it definitely is important, but I really don't have a whole lot to base my ideas off of based on voting. If I were to vote for somebody, I would want to do a lot of extension research. Not by how much good they're doing, but by how little bad they're doing, because there's no other choice. Vote the candidate. Yeah. Vote the candidate, not the party. Right. Yeah, I've done that. I've voted for both. Yeah. Do you think that's going to...
I think that we're going to see that with this newer generation. And I think with people following and idolizing so many people like Elon Musk and stuff, and they sit there and go back and forth, I think this younger generation is not going to stick to one side or the other.
In my opinion, is the older generations before us. You think that way? It could go one of two ways. It could go idiocracy style. Yeah, that's true. Right? Where it just keeps getting people, their parents. Because here's the reality. Most people's dumb ideas come from their dumb parents. Like, that's a fact. Oh, yeah. That's why people are racist. Yeah, your racist opinions come from your racist parents. Your religion comes from your parents. That's how it is. People go, oh, no, no, no. My religion is the right one because...
Because the house you're born into literally the house you're born into if you're born into a Muslim household you'd be Muslim It's it's I don't know why people don't understand that like intuitively understand I am the culture and habits and traditions of how I was exposed to this world sure so When people have dumb opinions, it's difficult for kids to come up with independent views now I'm finding though which is giving me hope in a different way not politically but just sort of from a sense of how to treat people and
The younger generation is absolutely intolerant of racism in a lot of ways. You're going to find fractions and there's nothing that's... Sure. There's no 100% anything. But my daughter's generation, they see racism as being such a... I want to walk this back because I don't want to downplay anything. But they're very...
I think they blow out of proportion how often racism is an issue, and everybody thinks racism's all the time. But on an index, most people go throughout their lives, right, and can have a lot of lateral movement in this country. It's not as high on the index as a lot of other countries are in terms of racism, how it affects you. Like India has caste systems where if you are here, where they hate each other based on not color of skin, but caste systems, right? I think it's almost like, for example, let me ask you another question, dude. Here's a question.
What do you think about people and be honest? Cause if anybody, what do you think about people that smoke cigarettes? People that smoke cigarettes? Yeah. I think it's stupid. Okay. I don't think that they show if they, if it was super easy to stop smoking cigarettes, I think a lot of people would have already. I think nicotine is a problem. And the thing with cigarettes, it,
They're addiction. It's addictive. If it wasn't addictive, then I don't think nearly as many people would be doing it. And that's why vaping is so popular. Right. Okay. So let me ask a question. Out of your friend sets and the people that you know, eighth grade level. Sure. Right. Have there people have been like vaping looks cool or is it just like, or smoking just like nonsensical? I'm just curious. Any eighth graders, you know, smoke cigarettes? No, no, not, not that I know. Any eighth graders vape? It's more likely, but I don't know any personally. Yeah.
Yeah, because I think the point I was trying to make there is if you look back, when I was his age, eighth grade,
you're like a guy tells you know whatever his family's a little backwards there from their little billies they tell some off-color jokes just the way it is ah yeah they smoke cigarettes but i think this generation is going to look at smoking as are you nuts saying yeah are you nuts that you would do that that's going to kill you like are you nuts and i think that they're going that this generation is going to view racism that same way they do and that's where i think that's what gives you hope right yeah i think that's where kids don't smoke anymore they have they're just
They're just very open about things. I think they'll probably have changed opinions on guns. I think, like I said, 70% of the world we live in is probably going to have what would be considered 10 years ago more progressive views, right? Old people are the ones that sort of carry on old traditions. Like, I think you should beat children with weapons, right? Well, it was like Elon Musk said. Well, Elon Musk said the reason that...
The reason that he doesn't want science to make people live forever is people need to die. So ideas can advance. But like I said, your grandparents, we drank from the hose and we got beaten with a truck handle or whatever that, you know, parents are just sort of not finding that that's the right way to do it. You know, more open, intelligent, emotionally intelligent sort of actions and behaviors. Yeah. So,
But yesterday, you know, we talked about it earlier. There was a school shooting yesterday. Again, it was like, and it happens constantly, constantly, constantly. What says if you were, now you're president of your school, let's pretend you're president of the country. Okay. Okay. What would you like to have see done there? I feel like.
I almost feel like we've seen everything we possibly could have seen done there, and it just hasn't been working. There's always something. We think we fixed it, and then a month or two later, it happens again on a bigger scale. We have to tank everything down again and start rebuilding again. Whether it's trying to take those kids that don't really fit in and try to get them to fit in more, whether it's making guns less accessible, it always seems to happen all the time. So I really...
They don't know what I do in that situation. It's okay. The president of the United States don't know what they're doing. Do you guys have that Josh Stevens Foundation thing about being kind and all that? We did back in elementary school, yeah. And then do you guys have sort of media? Have you guys ever had like active shooter drills?
We run them. It's a hard lockdown, which has existed for a long time, but they fit it more to fit that kind of shooter identity. They're more popular now. How do those make you feel when you're going through them? When I go through them, it...
It kind of worries me how often we have to run through them, like how we just have to... We always have to be prepared for this because it really could happen at any time. They say there's 144 days gone by this year and 212 mass shootings. Yeah. Yeah, but the mass shootings...
That takes some gang shit, like a lot of that, right? But I get that point. It's sad because, like, as a kid, we never thought about going to school and getting shot, right? No. Or anything. Like, I mean, honestly, I go to concerts and I'm still afraid, right? I go to movie theaters. I'm always looking for exits, right? Like, that's a tough thing. I mean, that's ugly. Yeah.
Well, kids and stuff. I mean, like I said, I was affected by October one. I sat in a house the next day of someone that was killed, watching the parents and the kids cry and being shocked. Right. And this is, I can't imagine kids. Speaking of October one real quick, not to change the subject, but a guy on my team name or, um,
young kid he's 21 uh over the last two years they've put together a documentary on october one faced uh focused on the first responders and it just came out i'll post a link to it if you're watching this on youtube or vr check that out it's it's a really cool documentary i thought it was really good it was it was alarming to see that in in apropos but back to you buddy do you think that um does it make you feel safer less safe or indifferent the fact that there are armed guards at your school
That could really go either way depending on how you look at it, right? I mean, it makes you feel safe that there's armed guards there just in case anything were to happen. But at the same time, the fact that we would need him just in case anything were to happen, that also makes me worried, like how much of a chance is there that this could actually happen? Yeah. How many of those, you know, you always see that, John, we were talking about it. You see these platitudes. Oh, well, there's these veterans that come back from war. It's like, well, how are they doing?
you know what i mean why would you stick it why would you put people in a situation where they just came back from probably one of the most traumatic things you know again not everybody sees it as traumatic there's a lot of soldiers that return and can't wait to go back there's something that can go um a guy i do jiu jitsu with you know has described flashbacks to me yeah and just the horrifying nature of it so you're putting people in a situation where
you know violence is paramount on your mind i don't know you know i don't know what that solution is i i never thought i'd live to see a day where we're advocating to arm elementary schools it's just really crazy to me but well i get i mean i gotta tell you i mean luckily you know we're in a position to send him to private schools and one of the first things that my wife really liked about the high school he's going to go to was the fact that there are
they're armed guards at the high school. There's four of them and they're all ex police. Yeah. And, uh, and she loved that, you know, and, and, and it's unfortunate that you see that as, as a necessity now, but you do. And, and that's one thing I want to talk about was they said that, you know, somebody put a post up that said, you know, it was be 9.8 billion or whatever it would be to, uh,
Pay $75,000 a year to put an arm together. 131 schools. Whatever, 131,000 schools, whatever it was. It was that dipshit that we were talking about. But then he said, you know, but we sent $40 million to Ukraine to protect their kids against armed invaders, whatever. Which is true. I mean, we break our taxes. My first thought of this was, my first thought of this was, of course, you don't want it to happen in a school.
But is it any less impactful because they can't go to school because there's an armed guard? They go to Walmart instead? No. They go to a preschool? Let's be honest. Let's call it what it is. Let's say I want to walk into a school and you have an armed guard. That's just one more person I'm going to kill before he realizes. Because they have armor. Is he like in the trench? Come on. It's just those are platitudes. They're not solutions to anything. You don't have...
you know, a frontline assembly of, of guys with machine guns at a school warding off these waves of attackers. That's just, it's nonsense to think that a good guy with a gun has got, we've seen how many situations where the good guy with the guns is the first guy shot. Yeah. Well, I'm not, look, I'm not, I don't want to get into necessarily the debate over guns because everybody can debate on that today. That's not what today is policy. The problem, the problem is with all of this, I think is the problem is further upstream.
Like by the time it gets downstream to the point where they're having a debate about guns and violence and all these things, I think the problem is way further upstream because it shouldn't have even got down here. And like we were talking earlier, there are plenty of people. There are plenty because of the two party system in this country. There are plenty of Republicans. There are that believe that you shouldn't have a large capacity, high power, two to seven assault rifle. There are plenty of them that believe that.
But they can't say that because it'll upset the NRA because they're Republican. There are plenty of Democrats, there are plenty of Democrats that feel that maybe there should be some restrictions on firearms, but you don't need to ban them all. But they can't say that because that'll upset the far left. I don't think, I've never heard any Democrat, I've never heard any Democrat talk about banning all guns. Never heard that once. It's never been a policy, and I hear Democrats talk about that and say, it's not about banning guns, it's about...
It's about waiting periods. It's about access to them. Well, I think where that comes from is there's a lot of comparisons that get made to the UK. There's a lot. Guns are illegal. So I think you see a lot of that comparison. And people here, when a Democrat politician starts talking and comparing guns,
look at, we'll look at the UK. They don't have these problems. So, I mean, that's the leap. I think a lot of, I think everybody realizes the genie has been out of the bottle for a while. And here's what I, here's in there. Here's the worst part. I think, I think part of the narrative is we need to stop saying conservative or Republican. And we need to start saying pro NRA. Like, I think I look, here's the thing.
If you want to be pro NRA, be pro NRA. You want to be anti NRA, be anti NRA. But I think you should be able to be in either party and be either one of those things. Well, that's part of it. That's part of my upstream problem. How about like pro sensible legislation versus unfettered access to, you know, machines? Well, again, well, again, we got to get further upstream and that's all about one thing, which is money in the system. Right. And again, I don't believe anything's ever going to happen. That's going to change it. Part of me believes the genie's out of the bottle.
Because there are more guns in America than people. What do you do? It would take 40, 50 years if you had buyback programs and cleanups and disposals or whatever. Just for AR-15s would take 40 years. Well, apparently, I don't know what they were. Apparently, Australia implemented some sort of... Yeah. And I don't know what they were. There's 20 million people in Australia. Yeah, that's it. Again, I don't want to sound like... These people always have a single shot answer. Like that Jim Jefferies clip where he's talking about they had this...
It's Port Arthur shooting, massive shooting, and the government came in and said, that's it, no more guns. And everybody's like, yeah, these people are killing children or whatever. But in a country of 20 million people, in a country like in Canada, that actually has as many guns per capita, I think, as America does, they're just all rifles and shotguns. They just don't have high-capacity guns. And again... So he's going to go on that Canadians are superior. No, no, no. Watch him go. Watch him go. To say that there's no way to have any kind of sensible legislation, right, where you can say, look...
If you're caught with a 30 mag, those are now illegal. You have to get rid of them like we did with bump stocks. Everybody I know who's pro-Ghana is going to say that's not the answer. It's all mental health. But again, it's difficult to make comparisons across countries. That brings me to another question because I do take issue with some of this stuff. I do take issue with some of the stuff in this. And I want to ask Caden. You're 14, yes? Yep. Yes. We fought it for a long time, but you have played the Fortnite, yes? Yes.
Sure. Sure. Right. You've played the call duty. Yes. Yep. Do you think the realism of those games desensitizes kids your age to that level of violence?
okay well i don't want to get fortnight wrapped in this because i i don't he's not trying to get ostracized i don't i don't think fortnight is it goes for the very realistic take on things you could take plenty of other games fortnight's not one of them they've got laser rifles and jack-o'-lantern launchers it's just not very realistic cod on the other hand that definitely focuses more on real life things and um call of duty for the uninitiated yes
I really don't think video games are the problem. I don't. I know a lot of people like to say that. I think clinical research and psychology also suggest that that's true. They're not the problem? So they've done a lot of studies. I'm just asking his opinion. Yeah, no, and I think modern clinical research would agree with you. Would agree with me. Really? So I saw the video of the kid shooting at Buffalo. I saw the whole video before it was taken down. Yeah, I'm fucking weird like that. But it looked like a video game, man.
Like, honestly, like just walking through just, man, I have a hard time thinking it doesn't. Like that, just them. I see these video games. I don't let my kids play that stuff. Because in my opinion. In that case, the fact that he's streaming it on Twitch when he's doing it or whatever. Yeah, but that could be more about like like culture or shock value. And when you don't care about yourself and you're in it, I guarantee you every one of these kids has unaddressed traumas.
- Yeah. - So whatever it is, it's finding it's, I'm not likable so I'm gonna do something where my name will be known. I'll finally do one thing that's worthwhile. I'll be notorious. But that's not because a kid goes and plays a video game. Part of that actually, there's an argument that that's called sublimation, right? Where if you have rage or anger issues and you put it towards something like a video game or healthily towards boxing or martial arts. - Well let me ask you this. I'm gonna stop you 'cause I'm curious about something you just said.
What if part of, okay, so let's say these kids seem to all want to be known, remembered, notorious, all of those things. Is there a way, and I'm not saying this fixes the problem. I'm saying is this fixes one of the leaky pipes in a house full of leaky pipes. Is there a way to regulate that?
or even fine media outlets, whatever else, for publishing the names of these kids that did it. If you make it a permanently anonymous crime, because they're not, I mean, now great, now you get people with free speech and I should be able to print whatever, blah, blah. But I would say if you make this a completely anonymous crime and nobody's ever going to know or remember your name. I think that that's a good policy that individual publishers should implement. Yeah.
They don't. But they won't. They won't because there's going to be some asshole shot. They don't make money. They don't watch the fucking video. Yeah. No, trust me. I didn't. I thought it was going to stop, right? Because it was. The one I saw earlier was a crappy video, but it stopped. And that's all I wanted to see is like Kim getting out of his car. And it just kept going. I'm like, holy shit. But...
No, it's because they make money, right? Like when my friend got killed in October 1st. Yeah, I know. I agree. But when my friend got killed the October 1st, every single part, my phone blew up for two days straight.
And it was purely, I'm like, I'm not speaking on behalf. The family can speak and say, no, no, you need to get out of there. But no, they didn't give a shit about her. They just needed somebody to be on there to bring viewership. Like they don't care. Like they truly don't care. Well, that was the premise behind that natural born killers movie, right? That Quentin Tarantino written Oliver Stone movie about how, who is the guy who killed all the kids and had them in his basement? What's his name? Dahmer.
No, he's the guy with eight people. Oh, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Well, I guarantee you a poll, nine out of ten people are probably going to know John Wayne Gacy. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Most people know that. Gacy. Who's the guy that came up with the process for pasteurization? Don't know. Just like. But you don't. But you don't know. We don't celebrate our heroes. There's just no value in. Name one Columbine kid that died.
That's right. You can name both the shooters. Absolutely. Isn't that just a symptom of our, that's something dark about us. Yeah. I think we're dark creatures as it is. I think everybody's got a little dark side. Yeah. Well, buddy, let me ask you this.
If you could change anything, what would you change? If I could change anything? Yeah, pull the mic a little closer, a little closer. In politics or just? No, no. Like new dad? It's when the alliance comes up a little bit. No, no. No, I'm just saying, you know, if you could change the way the country works or the way anything happens, what would you want to change? I don't like how everybody in this country seems to think that freedom is just a natural given thing, that everybody should have, and it's not. We all have to work for freedom.
And it seems like a lot of people in this country just think, oh, it's a necessity. Everybody needs to have freedom. That's why a lot of policies that could fix a lot of these problems in America don't get implemented because they violate people's freedom in this country. And I genuinely think America should be less focused on freedom because what is it doing for us? It's getting a lot of kids killed. It's getting a lot of people killed because of just these situations that are happening that can easily be prevented. But we just can't stop them. That's a really astute point when you think that
People always focus on freedom, but they forget about corresponding duties. Yeah. Because all rights come with duties.
'Cause where your freedom stops is where my freedom to be free from you begins, right? And people always say, oh, I have the right, I have the freedom to carry a gun into a grocery store like an asshole. It's like, yeah, you do. You got a gun on your hip. But now am I free from you? - But now do you have the freedom to shoot the weird person with the gun because you felt threatened? - You know what I'm saying? So it's like the freedoms aren't just about your freedoms. It's shifting the me to we, right?
And if people had empathy for their neighbors and actually cared about other Americans, as an American, your primary duty, if you're a true patriot, should be to care about the health and safety and wellness of all your other American brethren. That is a huge thing people forget, is that freedom of is... The corollary is freedom from. So you have a very good point, Hayden. I love that. That's a great answer. Because honestly, like, the thing is that...
It's the perfect scare tactic to get you to vote for them. It's the same shit every single... I mean, I haven't been alive that long, but 40 years, the same thing. They're going to take abortion rights away. They're going to take guns away. They're going to take our rights away. Like, America, like... No. No.
Like, just we can all agree, stop making it. NRA needs to just step out politics. They've got to get rid of lobbyists. They've got to get rid of all this stuff, man. Like, that's what's killing this country is everybody cares about their freaking bank. You know what? Just give every politician a million bucks, say, there you go. You can't make any more. Yeah, my policy is 10. Make it the most sought-after job. Make it like a professional athlete where there's, let's say there's 500 and some members in the House of Congress, right?
500 million. Bam. 100 senators, 434. I can't remember. 400 and change or something. I think they, anyway, redistrictize. Who knows what there is now. But if you gave each of them $10 million, and I'll do that bad math, the same one that I took umbrage with earlier. You pay them all $10 million. Well, you're looking at a...
Not a ton of money in terms of you're looking at, what, a fighter jet, right? Make it so that the prime, the most elite, the people at Wharton and Stanford and MIT and Harvard are competing for that job, right? And it's not just a matter of a popularity contest because of what color is on your badge. It's who's bringing value to this equation, right?
Parties are trashed. This is, you know, to be honest with you, I'll go one step further. I don't think that everybody should just have the right to vote. If you've done nothing, nothing to earn or understand what you're voting for. Yep.
Okay, you have to have a basic level of stuff and have it in all kinds of different languages and have a bit of sensitivity for things you may know. But put a little effort in to understand who you're voting for. They need to have a test. Just like Caden said up front, like, I don't know who to vote. I need to actually research and do some. People don't. They just vote down the party. Yeah, they just sit there and be like, oh, this is what my race or my religion or my group or whatever it is is supposed to vote for. Well, what's...
What's really become unfortunate is, like you said, the duties of we. We've gotten away from we and it's gotten to be very much of a me country on every level. Every level. From the ultra rich to the poor that vote for what am I going to get? What's in it for me? You know what I mean? And I think...
I think unless we get back to a we idea here on all levels. Absolutely. Not what are you going to give me, but what opportunity are you going to help me achieve for myself? It's us versus them, and it has been for a while. I think social media is the driver of that, and it continues to drive that. It's creating a greater chasm for sure. Gross.
Why not just put like a red and blue button in there and just come in and smash one with that's it yeah, yeah That's what they do one more question for one more question for the youth of today ready to you. What's more important ready? What's more important the? Equality of outcome or the quality of opportunity. What do you think's more important?
What does that mean? Okay, that means should everybody hopefully wind up in the same place or should everybody be given the opportunity to start from the same place? Obviously everybody should be doing the opportunity to start in the same place because wherever you go from there That's up to you. You had that opportunity to expand and grow but you didn't and that's why you're at your level You're at now everybody winds up in the same place. Then what's the point of working hard? Everybody's gonna wind up the same place
And good Lord, there's hope for America. Thank you. Thanks so much. That was the right answer. Smart kid. Not only are you not getting your own, I think the allowance is coming up. Oh, you got a multiplier effect on that. Good job, buddy. Good job. Your mom will be proud. I know she'll be super proud. We got your hair from your dad. We're going to do this a little differently. Part two today, I might actually cut this into two separate podcasts because part two is going to be completely separate. It's actually, you know what, let's just cut it into a separate podcast.
I think today was a very special... So we got 24 minutes of bad mouth in Starbucks and iPhone. Everybody get out of here. Give me 24 minutes. So real quick, is there anything else you'd like to tell the folks, Hayden, they should know about me, you, or the world in general? What's the worst thing your dad does to you every day? Like, does he throw stuff at you? My wife throws stuff at me. He doesn't throw stuff at me. Well, hey, let him talk. Let him talk. Has your dad ever...
threaten you with a knife? Because my wife does to me all the time. No, he does not. Just my knife. Okay.
So I'm finding out that's not normal. What else? Good ask. How do you feel about going into high school? I'm pretty excited. Getting ready to meet new people, for sure. You playing lacrosse over there, I take it? Yeah. Nice. I'll do that there. All right. That's cool. Very smart kid, man. That's awesome. I've never hit him with a shoe. I have threatened him with violence because I think you need to once in a while. Sometimes I think you need to. No, I'll tell you the worst thing I do to him every day that he loves. Yeah,
- Dad jokes? - My favorite, no, it's not the dad jokes that are the worst. - They're still annoying, they're still annoying. - It's the explaining of the dad jokes that I love.
It's, it's, it's, I just assume he's not smart enough. Actually, I know he's smart enough, but I just, I torture him. My daughter just sits there. I'm like, no, do you get what I just said? She goes, I get it. But do you get it? Yeah. But do you get it? No, no, you don't understand. See, it's Mrs. Hippie, which sounds like Mississippi. Which is a river and a state. And it's a river and a state. Yeah.
Anyway. All right. Well, buddy, thanks for joining us. Super proud of you. Super proud of the answers you gave today. Hope you guys, man, you know, look, the world is a crazy place right now. And the good news is, is soon all of us geezers will be dead and there'll be kids like my son making the decisions and hopefully things will be better. So, right. So remember, it doesn't talk. It doesn't matter if you're talking good or bad. It matters. They just keep talking about you.
No, man. I'm going to get him in here. I can't even think straight. Have a good day, guys. Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.
