The Listening Tube Welcomes Joel Racow

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, the listening tube, welcome to guests. I'm Bob Woodley. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. My guest today is a man who probably knows a lot more than he lets you believe. He's a former park ranger, so he can probably live off the grade. But he's also a former cybersecurity advisor for the Secret Service. So he can probably also see your browser history if you want it. Joel Rako spoke with me from his home in Newport Beach, California, about shadow banning, wokeism, the Constitution, and his book, Life in Woke America, a Family's Story of Truth and Betrayal Under Fire. Joel, um, I know you have a book and I want to ask you about that book and talk about it and its contents a little bit. But first, if you don't mind, I have some other more generic wokeism questions to ask, if we can move it. Okay. I'm okay. Now, you claim that your book, and and I'll the title, I'll give the title, Life in Woke America, a family story of truth and betrayal under fire, was shadow banned by your web host and your publisher. Now, I've claimed many times on this program that there is no such thing as a banned book in the United States of America. Have I been wrong all this time?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, shadow banning is not an official thing, it's a cultural thing. It's people it's like a deep state. You know how people complain about the deep state that they're making decisions that without being accountable to the voting public, and the president can give them orders, and he is accountable to the voting public. But the bureaucrats that have been there for 30 years, you know, either decide to go along or not go along with them.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

He specifically spoke of the deep state and bureaucrats who he claims betrayed him uh during his first term during his speech on Thursday night.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

But how did how what is shadow banning and how did it affect so shadow banning is unofficial reduction of visibility of your site. Now I can give you the exact way it happened, and I can tell you about the 1 a.m. battle that we had with the tech support person to prove that it was being shadow banned, getting the agreement at the end that yes, it was being reduced, and um we haven't taken it um any further than that, other than to leave that web host.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Now, why would a publisher do that? How do they benefit from stifling the sales of a book they agreed to publish?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Well, first of all, this isn't the publisher. Okay, this is the this is the web host, and a web host is an independent company, and it's actually a comp it's a billion-dollar company independent of the publisher. And I've used them many times from half a dozen different businesses, and it's Bluehost, they've been around for from the very beginning, and now they're a billion-dollar company, they're owned by somebody else. But who knows? Who is aware how high up the banning that they're aware? Now, if they don't have technical management, if the senior manager, the president, is not technical, he wouldn't know how they do it, or she wouldn't know. In fact, it is a she, she wouldn't know how it's being done. So the people down below could be doing it, and they would say, Well, we've done everything we can, it's just the way it is. But we knew better. We're very technical. I've developed 40 software applications, and I have another one underway right now that follows the book. But so here's what happened. We discovered that anybody who searched the website from a browser got access, saw the book, saw the graphics, could use the menu, it all worked. Anybody who accessed the website directly, like through an API, an application programming interface that's so that two computer systems can talk to each other, that they were being banned. They were not giving access, they were not seeing what everybody else saw. And I when I say that they're not getting access, they weren't getting full access. So, what was it that they were missing when they went to look? They couldn't see the navigational structure, they could not see any graphics that were on there. So we'll leave it at that. So all they saw was a string of text for the website.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Now, now, do you believe it did in fact stifle sales? Well, of course.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

When we so who are these people that access a website directly? Well, it's Grok, it's ChatGPT, it's credit card companies, it's anybody else that's that's got interaction. It could be any kind of uh e-commerce, you know, third-party supplier. Those people would not see the website. Okay. So we knew that those are two different, you know, we it's what two different classes of users. One's a professional user and the other is an end user, we'll say. So we got tech support on at a at one o'clock in the morning, and we did that because it's always the lowest seniority tech support person. Takes the one o'clock shift, right? Okay, and so they usually don't know what they're doing, they only know their policies and they have administrative skills. They never have network architect skills, because network architects don't have to work at one o'clock in the morning except when they're doing fun stuff. So we she would keep saying it's everything is open, everything is open, and we said, and and we kept pressing her that it's not, and it's not, and says, Well, what do you want me to do? And that was our opening. So we gave her five things to go and do to you know you know, configure it this way, change the configuration on this, change the configuration on that. She was gone 11 minutes, came back, and we had full access. Wow. So we asked her, so would you agree now that it was being that that access to the site was being uh re-restricted or filtered? And she said yes, and we caught it all on a uh transcript that we got. So she didn't even know not to send us the transcript. There you go. Now, who knows who put those configurations in? It's probably not the CEO, probably not the CFO. Who did it? We know that they look for keywords, you know. You know, patriot is a bad word in the general internet world. Um, woke is a bad word, Trump is certainly a bad word, and so you know that they get alerted when those things are there, and then someone has triggered these. This is the configuration to put if you find this profile on the website.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Now, I have a podcast that my mom tells me is conservative. Could this be happening to me and I don't even know it? How do I find out? Of course. Well, you need to get technical.

unknown 8:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Well, that's not gonna happen anytime soon. Now, I did search uh on Amazon for your book, and you'll be happy to know that it's readily available in both printed and digital formats.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Well, okay, but you searched by name, didn't you? I I did, yes. What if you searched what literary what literary novels exist for uh uh about woke culture? You wouldn't, I'll bet you wouldn't get it. There may not be very many.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Well, there aren't very many, and you wouldn't get any of them. Okay. All right. Well, yours is the only one that matters, though, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Well, you know, people come to books in different ways, and to be shadow banned means that it's a percentage. It's 15, 20, 30 percent off the top.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Now, do you have a definition of wokism?

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Well, I can it's sort of um the framework of it is there's an oppressor and there's an there's the oppressed. Now, once you think about that in those terms and you think, well, that's the problem, when you come up with solutions, you get solutions that are woke. Now, what is that? Well, I think some people should not be oppressed, and we want to make sure that they're no longer marginalized. So we take it upon ourselves that in our community we're not gonna send out messages that say this, messages that say that, products that come from these people, you know, they're gonna so that's a woke activity, right? Coming from that model, and I'll give you an example of how this is done in schools. So at the University of Southern California, every freshman goes through a writing class. You can write on any topic you want. The requirement is that you analyze it in terms of oppressor and the oppressed. That's how they do it. No, that's the only thing you can talk about. That's the only way you can analyze it. Now, is that free is that free thought?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Uh no, and but based on your definition or your description of wokeism, could the woke people be the oppressors? Well, they are. They are they will be, but they're blaming, but they're blaming the other people of being the oppressors.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Well, and they will be the oppressors because what socialistic communistic government doesn't become oppressive? None. Okay. So so woke and wokeism is part of the color revolution. You ever heard that term, color revolution? I I'm not sure that I have. Okay. Well, it's a but it's a Marxist term. I'm I'm getting a little bit out of my real expertise, but it's a Marxist term for how you um you take over a country, is a color revolution. And so you there are like three or four or five things you do. You take over their institutions, like they've taken over our institutions with the deep state, with the university professors that are you know beyond progressive, beyond liberal. They're not your liberal, not my liberal, they're progressive.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Um, they take over the you know the um the small governments, you know, where they can get in, the school districts, you know, the um the local, you know, smaller cities. They uh um apply the these woke principles. They decide who's the oppressed and who's the oppressor. And so, like if you're a landlord, you're not doing a service to the community by investing in these houses and then renting them to people who are gonna have nice lives in your property. So you tax them more, you you put rent controls on them, you do, you know, they're you know, that's that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Now, speaking of our education systems, uh, West Virginia University recently opened the Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship, as they had been required to do by law. And the governor there in West Virginia said it would push back on the woke ideology that has infected our schools and help return higher education to its true purpose. Right. But only one student enrolled for any of the classes. Supporters say it's because the courses are not yet accredited. Opponents say it's a big waste of money anyway. How do you see it?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

I see that as shadow banning. They they have it, they say they have it, but they have not done what they needed to do so that it would attract students.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

So you uh by shadow banning, one could also interpret that as a lack of effective marketing.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

What or operations that just didn't get the teachers, they didn't get the books, they slow walked everything. So what's being banned? What's being banned? What is being banned is conservative culture, collapse, the teachings of Western civilization, that's where you would go and get it in that school. Now, there are a number of successful places like the Hamilton School at the University of Florida, just started not long ago, and it does the more Western classical education for students, and um, it's doing fairly well. I mean, it could be doing very well. I don't really know, I don't monitor it that much, but it's an example. One's an example uh where the the administrators kept that from happening, they got the money for it, but then they didn't do it. So you're wondering, is that money going to is it sitting in a bucket or did it go to you know homeschooling where there's no schooling? It that's what you know that's the kind of stuff that's going on. Building a train, like in California, they build a train for 17 billion or 7 billion, and it's got 1400 miles of concrete. They haven't even laid the track, but they get like the foundation, doesn't get done. Nope. Housing in LA billions of dollars, I think maybe it's hundreds of millions, go into housing, but it's the problem isn't getting extinguished, it's getting exacerbated.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Well, I think that's probably because there are too many interests who have money to be made by perpetuating the problem.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Well, yeah, right. So, like if you look at the border, how long did it take Trump to close the border? A thing right, it's a little bit more, like a month or so. Kamala Harris wanted to go down into you know Central America and talk about the root causes. Remember that? And she's yeah, I do remember that.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I think I remember thinking we already know what the root causes are. She's she's not educating anybody. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

It's that's that's a form of shadow banning that we're surrounded by now, and that's woke America. No, so my story. So my story is not anti-woke. It's not at all anti-woke. It could just as easily have been life in a sports crazy America, and it would have somebody, it would tell the story of a family that's doing things, and how they run into all these people that all they want to do is talk about sports, everybody's going to sports games, people are watching on sports thing, and how they react to it. You know, it's a cultural thing, it's a cultural story. So that's what I did with woke. The protagonist bumps into them in the army, has a little skirmish, leaves the army, goes around. Some of the people kind of still keep him on the watch list. He's got to deal with that every time he gets stopped at a traffic stop. He he's he can't fly some you know, places, and he just does. He works around it. He just he leads his life and his family, builds a family and all that, runs a business, um, and he's doing it without, and he's hiring people who are woke into his business. You know, he's doing business with people who are woke. He goes into their homes when he has you know these service jobs. It's just the story of a family going in um and living their life.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Now you're okay. You're obviously talking you're talking about your novel now.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

So now now I wanted to ask about the premise, and you the I think you just gave us a little bit of a clue about the premise. It's uh it's a a former soldier who is somewhat of a protagonist, and he's he's tasked with dealing with that label for the foreseeable future. Am I correct there?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yeah, yeah, a couple of things. So the premise is he he comes from nothing, he's an orphan, he's ambitious, and he's talented, and knows almost nothing because he's coming out of this institution, going into another institution that's gonna help him do the next step. And so he's in encountering, he's encountering these things, one of which is a real event. And the real event is a Chinese, a secret Chinese bioweapon lab in California was discovered, went to, was investigated by Congress. Congress had a hearing and they produced a report. It's true. Did you ever hear about it? I certainly did. I followed it closely. Oh, did you really? You're one of the few. Okay, from Pennsylvania. You know, they found another one in Las Vegas, same guy, same people. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more. And me too. So the point is, is he got involved in that. And so, and he saw what he saw, and they wouldn't let him talk it. We wouldn't let him talk about it, wouldn't let him do anything, wouldn't let him talk to the people. You know, he just like, you know, it became suppressed. Now, when you have if you have that experience, you you kind of get um it changes you a little bit, and he gets changed, and he's kind of realizes that you know the world is in a lot of ways. He sees a lot of things that he saw in the group homes, living in a bureaucracy, going to a public school, doing everything on public stuff. He sees that the world is um is uh is filled with those things.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

What do you hope people learn about the experiences of the family in your book?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Well, a lot of people I hear say, what is woke? Isn't it gone now? What's wrong with it? Well, there's plenty of if for people who really want to know, you can learn about it pretty easily. In probably three days, you could read substantially everything you need to read to understand it, but no, not most people, most people are not like that.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Well and and that's why that's why I let me answer your question.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

So the answer the question is is I can write a scholarly book, but I didn't want to. I've done enough. Um, I wanted to have fun and write fiction, but I wanted it to be meaningful. So it's kind of like 1984. It's like animal farm. You're reading a book about an uh the politics of an animal farm, you know, animals on a farm, you know, kind of it's like you learn, you get the feelings of what you're encountering, of what's around there, but it's not technically portrayed. And I figured that I would like to write something that's entertaining, fast moving, informational in terms of life, help kids, younger people, young adults who are trying to figure out how do I make this world work for me when they're being told that they're the oppressed, they're being oppressed, or they're being told they're the oppressor. And to feel the feelings of both sides and get comfortable with it and regain their sovereignty.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Now, you said something that caught my attention. You said you could probably learn everything you need to know about wokeness in three days. Yet West Virginia University opened up a whole center for it and it only got one student. So I guess my my logical question then would be: do people No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I don't think that's what that no, no, no, that isn't what they're doing. That center was not supposed not going to teach people about woke. It was going to teach them about the stuff that you learned when you were in school that's no longer being taught.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Okay. But that now that that's a good thing. I I agree with you there, but the the governor did say it would push back on the woke ideology.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Well, it's only pushing back. I mean, it could you can push back by taking your hands and shoving, which or you can push back by just taking space. Right? When you're in a crowd, you're you're pushing back because you're holding your ground, right? The crowd's bumping you. If you were, if you're not careful, you're gonna get knocked over, you're gonna get stepped on. But you don't do that. You hold your place. That's pushing back.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Okay, and and and I get it. I get your your point. And it's I do think it's important that we do start teaching those fundamentals that people like you and I learned in school that probably students today are not being taught. But do people really need to be taught to recognize and try to live independent of woke culture?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Well, okay, it's not you it's not independent. Uh I'd say it's more like inter interdependent. You know, I mean, but but if I have I have employees, I have emp old employees that I love, but they're um, you know, we don't, you know, they're more woke than I am. Doesn't mean they're bad. So nobody so so we don't need to be taught that then. Well, no, no, I I'll tell you where they do. And this gets to the software that I am developing. The US Constitution and the values that it embodies, and I can tell you four or five of them that are the you know important, is oppositional to wokeism. You cannot have the two together. One has to dominate. Now, there are four groups that are pushing the woke initiative that are hoping to become dominant, as at least the four of them, how they're gonna be dominant amongst themselves, they're not worried about at this point. But they right now that's what's happening. I mean, I you know I take the position that the government, the US government is trying to be taken over. There are entities that are trying to take it over, change it, move away from the Constitution. So, what are those values of the Constitution? The rights belong to the individual, not the group. It's not the oppressed, it's not the gay people, it's not the transgender people, it's not the people who can have that have a claim to being oppressed, right? Being marginalized. They have a claim, it's legitimate, but the group doesn't have rights. The individual does. And those rights are inalienable, cannot be alienated from the individual. It cannot be taken away, cannot be transferred, cannot be distributed, it's inalienable to the individual. Very important point.

unknown 26:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

I look at it all the time. Okay. Well then you'll know. Free speech, right? That's you know, that's a main pillar. Um, equal opportunity under the law. We all know that there's never justice. Getting going to court, you don't get justice, you get a resolution. That's all you get. It's a pragmatic approach. They hope you get justice, they try and make it blind, but people are people. And they're always trying to push their own interest. So you have to have you have a judicial system, you apply the laws to the individual. So you can't have that and have, well, there's two groups: there's the oppressor and the oppressed. They can't coexist. So there's a battle that's brewing here.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Yes, there is a battle that's brewing, and it you see it more and more often now, especially with organizations like the Democratic Socialists who want to eliminate the Senate. They want to have the president uh elected by the House of Representatives. Right. Uh, certainly they want to tear down uh the Constitution and rebuild a country based on some other uh philosophy. That's what I'm saying. And that may be because we're not teaching our kids about the constitution anymore, and they don't understand how valuable it is.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

And so teaching some kids about the constitution is pushing back.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

That that would be pushing back, yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

That's that's what that's that's how I'm answering that question. We probably need a little bit more of that then. And so, and the reason that that we need a little bit more, I mean the fact that we need a little bit more is why I wrote a book that's not polemical, it's not argumentative. I'm not advocating that that there be a thousand or five thousand Xaviers who are gonna form an army and are gonna beat up the woke. I mean, I'm not, you know, we're not doing that. We're telling the story so that everybody can. The reason you read is so that you're not a prisoner of your own experience. So if people hear this story, read the story, they will feel the feelings of someone who is gonna who is advanced beyond them, and will give will illustrate a pathway, illustrate a mindset, illustrate the per the value of knowing yourself, self-awareness, and then making trying to make yourself be the best person you can be, even when nobody else is around. And you start with a story that's fun. I mean, it's like you know, girls are getting seduced and and people are fighting, you know, in the streets, and and you're working your way, you know, through that society.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Well, it sounds like a fun read, and uh certainly we should all strive to be uh better versions of ourselves. And I I had never heard it put quite like that before, as as the way you said that reading takes you outside of the definition of your own experiences.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

And uh I I've never heard it put quite that way before, and but thank you for enlightening me on that uh uh that viewpoint. I I appreciate that. But now we we were talking about individuals. So, as an individual, is it best to ignore woke culture and hope it goes away? Or should we call it out when we see it, or or will it go away if we ignore it?

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Well, if we adhere to the constitution and we build the country around the constitution and on the constitution, and we fight for it, wokeism will disappear. Now, maybe it won't disappear because we've always got 10, 15, 18 percent of the population are very are disenfranchised and you know are susceptible to you know, what can the government give me? And so there's always that pressure, but I mean it'll be it'll disappear as a foremost initiative in our culture.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

So ignoring it, ignoring it isn't the answer, and calling it out isn't the answer, but actually advocating for the opposite of it, which as you describe as our our constitution is the answer, right? It really is.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

And the fact, and that's a reason why there's a reason why it's not taught in school anymore. Why what is not? It's part the constitution, okay, it's part of the color revolution, that's what they've done. And you remember the time when they started knocking down all the all the uh statues, yes, and they started changing the names of all the schools that have prominent you know people of founders. Well, and military bases. That's what they're doing, that is the opposite. So we have to do like Trump, he put those names back, he puts the statues up. That's how we you know do that pushback. Now you mentioned we hold our position.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

You mentioned 1984 and uh animal farm. So uh is wokeism what George Orwell was trying to warn us about? Is it the modern day equivalent of truth speak?

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Just different language, different words, different vocabulary. It's like if you watch, if you get close to baseball, you can barely understand baseball uh if you you know today. I mean, they got so many different pitches now, they got they look at you know, they look at things in different ways. Uh it's an improved way to um prepare to play a baseball game. Oh, the analytics are crazy. But it's yeah, it's a totally different um language, and so then the cultural, the slang, and that stuff's come off of that, and it's like you it, you know, what was it? Bobby Richardson, was it Bobby Richardson? Remember him? Uh the Yankees, it was like the Yankee manager, the little hustling, you know, second baseman type kind of guy. Yeah, really a real just Tommy Lasorda wouldn't recognize baseball now.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I love Tommy. Now, um Joel, we we only have a few minutes left. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you you just want to share?

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Well, since you carry your um your constitution, I want to tell you about a thing that that um uh the software that I'm working on. It's the um it's the Liberty Meme Machine. And what it does is it's an app that you put in your phone, and you can find out what every um public-facing official in the government, whatever institution and every book or movie, how it aligns with the Constitution. And what it does is it goes out, it's AI driven, it goes out, it looks at everything that like a Supreme Court justice, every ruling they've made, every opinion they've written, every dissent they've they've done, and it scores them on a scale of one to a hundred and how aligned they are with those values that we talked about. So, like Clarence Thomas, 96.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Kamala Harris?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Well, she's not a Supreme Court justice. Please don't bring her into this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

It's only for Supreme Court justices.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Well, no, no, no, it's for everybody. We could look at her, but she'd be like in the she'd be like in the 20. Mondame's like 28. Got it. And so it gives a score, and it gives four to five reasons why that score. And ideally, you can point it at your super school superintendent, your mayor, your your congressman for your district, and you and like in election times, you can put it next to their opponent, and one will have a score of 48, another will have one of 72, and it'll telling you without having to do a bunch of research how they align with the constitution, which is really important in voting, right? Yes, it is. But it's hard to figure out on your own. What's the name of it, and when will be we be able to get it? Well, let's do life. Let's just stick with Life in Woke America because it's it's in the book and it's on our website. So Life in Woke America is the name of the book. You did a good job announcing it already. You can find out everything at online at www.life in wokeamerica.com.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Many thanks to Joel Rako for spending some time in the listening tube with us today. The title of that book again is Life in Woke America: a family story of truth and betrayal under fire. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as Joel and I did. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com for more interviews, not the headlines, and let's go back through the listening tube. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou ad Infinitum.