#1599 - Tulsi Gabbard

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Good to see you too. You got notes, look at you, you're prepared.

Tulsi Gabbard (0:17)

Yeah, you know, just thinking, something like that. I was, I was.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

Does it feel weird to be a former congresswoman?

Tulsi Gabbard (0:27)

I don't know. It's, it's, it's a crazy time and I'm back in Hawaii. I'm getting a lot of surf in and yoga, meditation and yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Does it feel better?

Tulsi Gabbard (0:39)

Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I'm, I'm so grateful to the people of Hawaii that I had the privilege of being able to serve them and represent them.

Um, it's, it's getting crazier and crazier to see the divisiveness in the country and and the divisiveness in Congress. And unfortunately, it's just getting worse. I mean, it seems to be getting progressively worse over the time that I've been there.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

But, but especially now, the thing that really concerns me is I don't see a way it turns around. Like I don't, I don't see a method. I don't see a mechanism where this ship just goes and turns, turns back in the port of Normalville. It seems like once the division becomes so strong and so polarizing, the other side wants to destroy the other side. And the two are in locked in mortal combat. And there's no recognition that we're all part of one gigantic continental community called the United States means that that's what it's supposed to be. We're supposed to be a part of this.

We're a country. We're supposed to be a part of a community.

We're the United States of America. We're literally in a, I want to say completely nonviolent, but semi nonviolent civil war. That's what it seems like.

Tulsi Gabbard (2:01)

It's I mean, it's not rocket science on how and why we got here. When you look at politicians, people in both parties, capitalizing off of this divisiveness for fundraising for themselves, their campaigns, their political parties, stoking these divisions so that they can win elections and so on. And then you have so much of the mainstream media doing the exact same thing.

Big tech and social media doing the exact same thing, stoking these divisions, fueling that fire because they figured out it gives them better ratings. They get more eyeballs watching. And same thing on social media. They start pushing so much of this divisive rhetoric towards people that stokes more of these flame and gets more clicks and more attention and more views, which goes to kind of the heart of, okay, so how do we start to turn this ship?

I mean, it comes down to leadership. It comes down to who we as voters choose through our elections to lead us in this country, people not motivated by their hunger for power. And also, making decisions about, you know, hey, where are we getting our information? How are we responding to kind of this divisive rhetoric and this hate?

Joe Rogan (3:23)

Yeah, I'm in the middle of Matt Taibbi's book, Hate, Inc.

Tulsi Gabbard (3:27)

I haven't read it yet.

Joe Rogan (3:28)

It's very good. Although I sent him a message today, I'm like, why don't you read your own books? Because I'm listening to the audio book.

Tulsi Gabbard (3:35)

Those are always best when the author reads their own book, right? Yes, that's what I think.

Joe Rogan (3:39)

Especially when it's someone who's distinct as Matt. His voice is very distinct. I want to hear him read it, but it's probably annoying to do. But also I think a lot of the publishers don't want the authors to read it. They want to hire a professional to do it.

Tulsi Gabbard (3:52)

Really?

Joe Rogan (3:52)

Yeah, I've had friends that have written books that have encountered that. But anyway, the book is excellent, and it sort of highlights how all these factors sort of coalesce together and created this tsunami of shit that we're living in right now.

And it's really confusing, because you could sit around with total peace of mind and try to imagine a way that this resolves itself. And I don't see it other than, like you said, some spectacular leader, like someone who...

But even that, if you find someone, the other side will find some way to demonize them, or distort their positions, or take anything they've said out of context and paint them as the worst person that's ever lived. We live in this world of no nuance. We live in this world of clickbait and the social media algorithms that really fuel hate in the most spectacular way, I think, that our civilization has ever seen. I don't think we've ever seen a force like social media, like the algorithms that people are locked into with Facebook and with all these other platforms that literally send all the things that piss you off your way, because those are the things that we engage with more.