Can William Beteet III Save the World in 2024? We had a wide-ranging conversation with this half African American, half Indian British National who at age 29 has the wisdom and political instincts of many people twice his age. If you’re looking to have your faith in the world’s younger generation restored, this is a must listen!

Show Notes

Special guest William Beteet III

• Living in France because of Phew’s recommendation
• Chose to move back to France willingly
• Lockdown given him an appreciation for freedom that he didn’t have before
• Drones and 100K police officers
• Have to carry a form with place of birth
• Felt the loss of freedom for the first time

Isolation: a mirror to your soul

• Confront personal demons
• Connecting with people in France
• Limitation on how much natives will tolerate in terms of language gap
• Nobody liked him in his language class

Similar Experiences in moving to France

• What it was like for Phew when he went to France
• Brendon working at the US Embassy in Paris
• Same as what William described
• You can’t rely on the same excuses
• Using language to solve problems
• Can’t happen when in a foreign country

Living under lockdown in a foreign land

• Lockdown half of the time he’s been in France
• Five cops roll up on a couple walking on the beach a bit too leisurely
• Lockdown not working
• At first, very productive
• Faded into doing the bare minimum to stay sane

I am very, very American

• Every time I leave America, I am reminded that I am very, very American
• I love America
• Living in France, you feel so American

A great way to feel pride in being American: leave

• A great way to feel proud being an American: leave America
• Posted on Facebook: I LOVE AMERICA
• People freaked out and came at him

Seeing overt corruption first hand

• Being African American and Indian
• Been to places where things don’t work
• Corruption is out in the open

Self-victimization one upmanship

• Borrowing narratives from prior generations
• People are not talking about reality anymore
• William more conservative than Phew
• Pursuit to become the most victimized in a situation

Race is an imprecise tool for determining policy

• There should be Affirmative Action, but it should be NEED based, not RACE based
• Poor people are disadvantaged, regardless of color
• “Obama didn’t do enough for the black community;” WTF is “the black community?”

Stop giving in to victim-based narratives

• A lack of even PRETENDING to be objective
• Stop commodifying victimization on both sides
• We’ve given medals out for how victimized you feel or claim you are
• Stop giving in to people’s victim narratives on both sides

Taking personal responsibility

• Our own behavior might be the problem, not because we’re being victimized
• A lack of taking personal responsibility
• It’s not the world’s responsibility to pave the way for you
• When I started taking responsibility? THAT’S when my life starting getting better
• Jordan B. Peterson constantly attacked for stating simple and obvious truths

Programmed not to take personal responsibility

• Weird, under the hood background programming going on in America and in the west
• Impetus to not have to take personal responsibility
• Study done with monkeys: under-rewarded monkey will quit doing the task for which the monkey are being rewarded
• Concept of fairness that is built so deep into primates that is being exploited by the media on all sides
• Everyone feels injustices are being thrust upon them, and that makes them not want to take personal responsibility

Dangers of echo chambers and feedback loops

• Major media are simply narrative dispensary machines
• Everyone is looking for their narratives to be validate
• Disjuncts between beliefs and behaviors
• The danger of echo chambers and feedback loops: we feel we’re being attacked when we hear conflicting points of view, because we haven’t heard them in so long

No one trusts the other side’s media

• If you want real news, go to where the news buys its news from
• Peterson: “Stop saying things that make you weak”
• No one trusts the other side’s media
• We cannot even agree on “facts” anymore
• People continue to search for validation for their narrative, even when it’s not in their best interest to do so

Reasons Trump won and Hillary lost

• Trump was elected, at least in part, because he validated EVERYONE’S narrative
• Democrats get too hung up with trying to please Twitter
• A reason she lost: there was no appeal by Hillary to the flyover states
• The left diminishes the people in the flyover states by telling them why they’re wrong rather than trying to understand them

Racism is not binary; it’s more of a bell curve

• Went to college in the deep south (Baylor University in Texas), and never really felt any overt racism
• There is definitely progress being made, but nobody is acknowledging it on the left
• That prevents us from focusing on the real problems
• Black Lives Matter didn’t speak with enough nuance and made them less effective
• That’s why Malcolm X was a less effective leader than Martin Luther King

One perspective: consistent decline in racism

• What Unc has seen in his lifetime: very little in the way of racism
• Obama being elected, the celebrity of entertainment and sport
• Michael Jordan and ESPN’s The Last Dance
• Popularizing basketball all over the world

Tribalism more powerful than racism

• We distinguish on clothing BEFORE race
• Happens on a biological level
• We don’t spend enough time team-building on that kind of a level

Another perspective with the same conclusion

• There HAS been an immense level of progress from a racial perspective
• The left has tried to appropriate William’s grandfather’s plight
• The media is radicalizing people based on false assumptions
• Victim mentality can keep you from realizing the truth about yourself

The impact of Obama on the rise in racial tensions

• Almost no racial tension until Obama was elected
• Uptick in the narrative about discrimination
• A real detriment to a hyper focus on racial issues
• Reached a fever pitch in 2016
• There is too much of a focus on racial identity in America

Racial identity destroys ethnicity

• Everything gets pigeonholed into “White” or “Black”
• You participate in ethnicity; you don’t participate in being one of those generic, catch-all categories
• The misuse of the word “we”
• We create a myth of connection that is just an illusion
• Political disinterest is a problem: we have what we have because of it

The problem with Colin Kaepernick

• Problem with Colin Kaepernick: making an issue without pointing it anywhere
• Taking a knee as a symbol: it feels good, but it didn’t translate into anything
• The black community is too focused on symbolic victories
• Importance of Thurgood Marshall

Confusing virtue signaling with actually doing something

• People conflate voicing their opinion, and getting validation for doing so, with actually trying to solve the problem
• Therapeutic rather than practical
• Fatalistic attitude: the system is stacked against me
• Young people bitch a lot, and then do nothing

“I think Black History Month is ridiculous”

• We’ll know we’ve made real progress when we stop talking about it
• What is the purpose of creating separate groups?
• Morgan Freeman’s point: stop calling me a black man

Completely different racial dynamic in France

• Illegal to talk about race in France
• American racial dynamics seem alien in France
• French are not racists, they are culturist – they honestly think they have the best culture in the world

Great advice from WB II

• Older sister wanted to go to Howard, William’s dad wouldn’t let her
• Dad said, “If you strive to surround yourself with just one type of people, you are setting yourself up for failure”
• The role of complexion in trial
• Complexion plays such a key role
• The places where we are most tribalistic: the justice system
• The problem: the intellectual laziness of most human beings, and no race has a monopoly on that

If you’re an American, you’re an American

• Facebook was a missed opportunity
• Minorities need to stop talking about being a part of Western civilization
• Don’t believe in sectioning off parts of our history
• If you’re an American, you are an American all the way

Not enough focus on nuance

• Fight the trigger and understand why you are feeling the way you do
• Why there is such a propensity for violence among young black men: they’re frustrated, and don’t have the vocabulary to express their frustration adequately
• We don’t spend enough time focusing on the nuance when we label something like that a “black issue” or a “white issue”
• Let’s arm each other with vocabulary to communicate the nuance of emotion that we feel so we can have better discourse
• Everyone is Hitler

Below is a random video of WB III and Phew walking the streets of Chicago…

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