 Clearly, I have been amongst them, meaning the politicos and the 1% and the ruling class, for a little bit now. And I haven't been able to really make sense of things in general. In fact, during this election cycle, I think I turned to my wife and said, you know, I have a pretty good imagination, and I've seen a lot of stuff for someone who's 48, different economic classes, different parts of this country, from rural to city. And the amount of sexism that's going on here has just passed me. I couldn't get my head around it. And there came another point when I felt the same thing about race. So I kind of tried to go back to basics. I didn't know if this is supposed to be hopeful or what we're supposed to offer up in five minutes or so here. It's an interesting obstacle ball of what to do next. And we can be kind of pollyanna-ish about it. I have some ideas. There's a lot of really good things that are happening, believe it or not. I mean, we all live in San Francisco. We're all in California. You know, the fact that the brain trust didn't bleed into a Hillary Clinton administration means people like Eric Holder, people who are ready to work for the NRDC, for the ACLU, for the environment. These people are all there, and they're going to be working for us. And we have to implement it because these are unbelievably scary times. I don't know how much I have to tell you that or break it down. Or how much it's being run down in your mind. I mean, this isn't really a checklist type situation of Russian invasion and how much or the FBI coming out and why. I mean, it's all pretty odd. The other good news is that despite what happens now, if a game plan is put together, I think going back, reading through a couple emails, I just spent five minutes and went back almost a year to see what I was thinking about. And so I'd like to read a couple of those and then leave you with like maybe one last sort of linking thought about what may be like progress or what that could look like. So on February 10th, in speaking to Trump, what can you say, but this is not our finest moment as a nation. It reminds me of those nativist parties in Europe where outright racists and anti-Semites get skinhead backing and anti-immigrant in vote, but they don't have the same system. They just get a few seats or a minority voice in parliament or something. This small block could hijack the presidency. February 12th, and Trump has the ignorant vote, which won't become educated anytime soon. The conservatives are splitting their third of the Republican Party with the rest of the candidates by allowing these net jobs to hijack their Tea Party. February 18th, since I brought up gambling and it used to be sports betting for me, indulge my next sports analogy of this primary and general election. Boy, we're still in the primary. Those were the good old days. Regardless of how good you are, it is difficult to sweep a world series. So when Hillary's camp says they were going to sweep the world series, primaries and general election, I'm skeptical. It just doesn't happen often. And when I analyze a team, my gambler self says this is not the team to sweep. They're going to lose at least one game if not more. That doesn't mean Hillary won't win the world series, but as a spectator over many years, I've seen what happens when a team underestimates its opponents and gets put back on its heels. In fact, I've seen the same Hillary team claim they were going to sweep the world series and in fact lose to another underdog long shot already. An underdog is used to losing and can take their losses and stride and still put forth their best game. A favorite often has problems with losses and doesn't put their best game forward when they encounter setbacks, especially if they didn't prepare for those setbacks. Hillary is again unprepared. I think they've underestimated the youth vote, the black vote, the feminist vote, and most importantly, the blue collar vote. She's going to lose a few games and even if she wins these games, they're going to be much closer than she thinks. I bet on it. I'm still not certain Hillary is electable. She doesn't inspire Dems and she may motivate Republicans to oppose her in mass. I don't see Cruz people switching. I don't see Trump's people swaying. And I don't know how many of the Republican establishment will venture over regardless of how crazy Cruz and Trump are because they hate Hillary so much and have had bad blood with the Clinton machine. This is a much, much, much longer conversation. But yes, this is like two weeks later. But yes, it is sad that Americans believe that Trump is a hero instead of a carnival bark or snake oil salesman that he is and should be tarred and feathered and run out of town or any decent civil society. Unfortunately, both Republicans and Dems are responsible for this mess caused by faulty public schools, deregulation of industry, vilifying workers' unions and the corruption within those unions, massive incarceration, Citizens United, dominant drug addiction ranging from oxy-cotton to crank, alcohol and marijuana, over-the-counter and prescribed pills, not to mention the dopamine hits from video games, TV and cell phones, and that loop of constant consumption and advertising, negative food value, depression. You can't suddenly want people to think clearly or analytically from that clusterfuck. May 16th, by the way, Trump is scaring me. He understands the medium of celebrity in TV and Middle America on its gut instant gratification, no sense of history, fearful, worst level. The Sunday front page New York Times piece was a good example of a hit piece that will only convert the already converted. This was the one where there was a talk about the beauty pageant women. And secretly sway the undecided to the dark side. It's a closed loop. Meanwhile, he feeds the beast, even President Carter lusted it in his heart, so not too many men are going to blame Trump for groping Miss America contestants, even if it is a clear crime. They'll think, isn't that why the pageant exists? It will be tycoon man's man Trump versus the word of a sachet wearing bimbo who wanted it. As Hillary camp keeps pretending, there are more voters who watch girls on HBO than NASCAR or the apprentice, or that she's actually likable and eventually people will come to their senses and vote for the less odious of two candidates. Is that even sensible? Remember Chicholina, Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Jesse Ventura, hell, Al Franken, Eva Perron, who with any such name value and celebrity success has lost. So I guess rushing through that makes you wonder like what is it that we can do this next time, this next easy election cycle? And so just to take a quick minute of a kind of Pollyanna's collection, I would say we're writers and we're smart. We need to control the narrative and take back words. We have to be very, very careful with the words that we use and we have to shift those words that aren't working and are bloated or no longer valuable, that they've inserted. The same kind of thing happens when the Pentagon gives us words like collateral damage. That means women and children, right? You can't, we can't go on talking about these things. We have to call lies lies. We have to use other terms too to think about things. And this is one of them, like a growth economy. I mean, what does that look like in a real world that's connected, right? What is growth? I mean, not to sound too much like a Marxist, but what is the capital? Well, if the capital is the world itself, then anything that rises is gonna fall down somewhere else. There is no growth. I mean, physics tell us that, right? So now we have to talk about an active economy. Otherwise what you're seeing is basically growth going up like a circus tent. And it looks really big, but when you get in there, it's only serving the poll. The poll is the only thing going on in that. The rest is just air. And within that tent, we need activity and that's the way we need to count it. So back to that activity is gonna have to be us getting together and making human choices and airing on the side of being human. And that's also gonna be not airing on the side of convenience. And looking at some of the things that we have that we use, not necessarily as services, but the people behind them. Because when we want our Uber cars here faster, or our driverless cars that are about to unemployed five million truckers or more, what is the name of this? This is some kind of profit. This is some kind of growth. It's a very small thing. So not to sound like a complete technophobe, but part of the thing is we need to move away from some of the electronica and some of the ease and we need to move back into a kind of a human realm. And then that's gonna be the crux of it. I told a friend of mine who's the head of the Department of Transportation, we were talking about things and I ended up saying, look, there may not be anything better than a damn bus stop. There may not be anything better than a subway station. You have to, it's a very democratic place. You have to meet your neighbor. You have to look at them. You have to interact with them. You have to learn to get along with them. You have to force to care on some level. Whereas if you get in from point A to point B and rush in your back seat of your driver this car, there's just nothing there. And it turns out too, the same thing happens when every time, you know, all the stuff, we're all from San Francisco. Hopefully this is preaching to the converted, 101. We have to buy locally and act locally and walk around our own damn communities and clean them up. And I don't mean law and order clean it up. I mean, pick that up. I'm a father of four. Pick that up from the environment on down. Wonder where that rapper came from. Look at it. Think about how when Amazon comes here, it's a jet stream with packaging that comes to you and you did not have that conversation with whoever that cashier was that you should have in that other store that you should have walked down there and spent all that time in your community. And that's just on a basic consumption level. But I see that. I see two dear friends here. We're gonna use bookstore. And the conversation about books, which we should all care about, you know, you just see the buffalo of Amazon's returns. Right? Now, Amazon is saying that they have X amount of jobs and they're expanding in this growth economy. But the truth is, Macy's is closing, like all these other places and retail places are closing, these anchor stores are closing and everybody feels the hurt of all of that. And the conversation is gone. The flesh and blood conversation is gone and we're losing our communities and we're becoming more fearful and depressed in this sort of loop. So I think next time around, we can beat this guy across the board. I mean, seriously, I mean, it should be, you know, Russians and FBI aside, freedom of speech, it's gonna come under a complete attack right now. I mean, we're ready for this kind of thing. The other good news that nobody in this room really wants to hear is I think the CIA has had enough. Aside from laying off five million truckers, I would not fuck with the CIA. So, you know, he doesn't have, let us get back into the hopeful realm. He doesn't have a consolidated front. He doesn't have any ideology, no ideology. He's somebody that wants to get richer and bloated and like it's alarming, right? But it's a good news for us because ideologically, crews, pants, cassettes, all these other people, sessions, I mean, these are horrible fucking people. Trump is horrible as well. But he has no ideology to get anybody much more motivated than instant corporate interests. And his corporate interests actually are not consolidated either. And there's other factions that we can get behind, especially here in California, right? Where we do have renewable energy. We have all kinds of things with the sixth biggest economy. So, this is the other thing I have to say. And I don't know how it's gonna work. But you guys are all smarter than I am in this room. Watch the tech sector. They are not our friends. They are not our friends, I have to say. Sorry about that. I know they helped put up the library. They put their names on a lot of things. But for the most part, they're not our friends and they're consolidated. They're much more interested in this merger. I forget what they're calling it. I don't wanna sound completely out of it. But the merger of AI and humanity? I mean, no. Like, what the fuck is that? Like, you should be worried in all kinds of it. Cleaning the bay, getting clean air. Like, that is a really weird thing to, and in your own home, fine, right? In the privacy of your own home. I'm from San Francisco, do whatever you want. But you can't inflict that on all of us here. So the one thing that we're gonna have to think about in California, the six biggest economy, is how do we tighten our laws and woo the tech sector, the Silicon Valley, to stay here? Because Peter Thiel and other people will go. They will go and the deregulation that they're going to give to the states will create tax loopholes and laws for these corporations to leave. Google, Amazon, right? These are big companies. Google already tried it in Ireland, right? They will leave, they will reduce our revenue here in California for blue state causes and they will go into red states. They will be wooed by Texas, they will be wooed by other places, and those are the alarming places that we have to keep that business and that corporation here. So their revenue doesn't go into red states to control women's bodies and to continue with xenophobia and all kinds of climate-denying craziness. So we have to be vigilant and we have to be human. So just err on humanity and watch the tech sector and our laws here when we can get more states' rights, let's sew them up for a pathway for immigration, for better labor. Labor's been under siege. I know there's corruption within the unions, but the only connection that our Berkeley economists that won the Nobel Prize can see between the massive amounts of wealth, right, in this country and elsewhere, we just saw that eight people own as much money as half the goddamn world and that's probably not including some Saudi who's got a bunch of gold bricks and who knows what somewhere, right? That's all stuff that's been accountable for, right? Not just saying. Labor, unions are decreasing and wealth is increasing. So we've got to unionize and unionize means every day, again, from neighborhoods to work, solidarity, solidarity across everything. So that's what I leave you with. Error on humans, error on human side and let us watch the tech sector and let us beat the shit out of Trump the next time.