[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm whether you're a new or long time listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit [email protected] and now here's your host. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Ler welcome or welcome back, whichever is applicable specific to your situation. Casual talk radio. We have a very short episode today because the topic in question does not require too much context. Hulk Hogan, we lost. Hulk Hogan passed away. Cardiac heart related and everybody Hulk Hogan was in that slice of people, celebrities that in it didn't matter where you are in the world and it didn't matter your age. Everybody knew the name Hulk Hogan. Nobody really knew the man as much. Terry Bellea But Hulk Hogan was one of those icons. He was, he was known across the world not just for what he did in the wrestling business, but also what he did in movies. He was in movies, he was in TV shows, he was on cartoons. Hulk Hogan was an icon. He was the definition of an icon. He was up there with thing, you know, guys like Elvis, guys like Michael Jackson, guys like Prince, girls, ladies like Aretha Franklin, that slice of of people, Madonnas in that category that they just transcend the normal human. Now people will look and say, well, Hulk Hogan's all steroids. Yeah. And he admitted that he was steroids. And then some people will say, but Hulk Hogan's a racist. It is this that I wanted to talk about because we can understand, I think, where that's coming from. It's coming from comments that Hulk Hogan made in private. He was in private. He was, he was recorded against his knowledge in some places. That's illegal, but he was recorded against his knowledge. I'm going to piss some people off and it's okay because I don't care. Only because I've gotten to this world of why do you care if somebody else is pissed off? Here's my thoughts on that. Is it fair to say that Hulk Hogan is likely racist? Yes. Was likely racist. This is likely the case not just because of his words, but some people don't understand that from that era there is an endemic racism. It's part of people's daily lives without them realizing it. Sometimes it's subconscious. Hulk Hogan has outwardly called people very terrible things to their face and behind the back. Hulk Hogan comes from that generation where their parents, it was normal for their, for those people's parents to be racists. But what is that right? And society doesn't accept this. And I always, I'm always curious about that. But it's the truth. Society doesn't accept this. What is that? Racism takes multiple forms. There's just an illogical, irrational hatred of that which is not like you, okay? That's the most egregious form of racism. Then there's not wanting certain people to be in your neighborhood or in your store or in your whatever. You don't want them around. Again, it's irrational, it's illogical. There's no logic behind it. Then there's just the generic property oriented, you know, redlining and things that we knew are still around and took place for a reason. They took place because if you think about neighborhoods, and I tussle with this now where I am. If you think about neighborhoods, everybody wants to feel safe in a neighborhood. Everybody that's over 18. I should clarify, everybody over 18 wants to feel safe in their neighborhood. Everybody wants the value of their property to increase, not decrease. Everybody wants to feel as though they are not a drain on their community. Some people want to contribute to the community. I had a conversation with, you know, I've talked to both my neighbors on the left and right and then on the street, you know, the neighbor's kids, they wave, they, hey, how you doing? It's very, generally a very polite place. You have some bad eggs, but they're not bad eggs as in bad people. They just, they're living their lives and it's not a. I wouldn't call this a low income area by any means, but unfortunately it is saddled with people who dress a certain way that does not lend itself well to professional, to safety, to quality, to the very sight of them lessens the value of the, or at least the perceived value of the neighborhood. It's just the truth. That's not about racism. But unfortunately that perception is, I would argue, 98% African Americans. And they all come from the same place, which is an apartment complex that's not far away. It's right around the corner. That's all. That's where they all come from. There's some that live in the houses here, but they're not the ones that are walking around. We're talking ones that walk around in pajamas during the day, sometimes the school. Like there's no pride in appearance. They're loud, they're fighting, tussling, they're riding scooters on the sidewalk, they're littering like crazy. There's no, you think of all these, like, there's no pride in yourself and there's no pride in your community because everybody plays a part in what that is. And in some communities, it's hard to create that narrative again that it takes a village to raise a child because there's no desire for the children. And I blame the parents for this. To take pride in yourself or pride in the community, to start with this, when we see that then causes certain races, and it is racial, racial lines to perceive those other races as the cause for the decline of their own property, it causes those races to see those people and perceive them as inherently unsafe and as a threat to them. And I would argue, in my opinion, they're not wrong to some degree. And I'm always stunned to see how bad it is here. I grew up in an area that was a gang neighborhood. That's. This is the truth. The area I grew up, predominantly grew up in was a gang neighborhood. Piru, one of the kids, it was a little brother of a friend of mine. And the friend of mine was younger than me. This little kid, I don't remember what, how old he was 4. Killed in the drive by shooting. Sitting at the bus stop. Killed at the drive by shooting. One of the most shocking things I think we'd ever heard. However, despite being a gang neighborhood, right, it was clearly a gang neighborhood. Despite that, from my recollection, we never had a break in. We never had an attempt at a break in. I'm pretty sure we didn't have an alarm because if we did, I would have set it off multiple times. No alarm. There were bars, but they eventually removed them from the door. That was just the way that they built the houses back then. But no alarm, no break in or attempt to break in that I can recall. My friends, no break in or attempt to break in that I can recall. None of them. I think one of them might have had an alarm. Just because that family was a little bit paranoid. I'm pretty sure that they had something outside of that. And then, yeah, the girl around the way she had, her parents had an alarm. Ours were right in the dead center next to a park where gangs hang out. And we didn't have any of this stuff. But here it is mind boggling just how negatively these people are perceived by the neighborhood. I've talked to the neighbors and they've said, you know, when I come in me, you know, they look, I have the finest lawn in the neighborhood. Everybody has said it. The commercial has said it, the neighbors have said it, the contractors have said it. Everybody has said it. All the street workers, the city workers, everybody, everybody calls it out that I have the. I have the finest lawn in the hole because I put effort into it as a byproduct of having the finest lawn. There's they. They look at you different. It doesn't matter that I'm an African American. They look at you different because they see and the house but they see this person is putting effort into the house. They're putting effort into the value, the perceived value. The retain wall I just put up everybody comments on how amazing it is. I don't think it's excellent amazing. Certainly not for the price I had to pay for it. But it's a nice looking. It's certainly better than what it replaced by far in a way the windows that I did, nobody's windows touch my window on my front that I'm staring right at the front door. These things that I'm doing are curb appeal related and then I'm putting veneer on and then it's going to be staining. All of these things are curb appeal related. Every homeowner that puts that invests money and time into their house collectively improves the value or the perceived value of the neighborhood. Where am I going with this story? Because I went around and I went around because I'm telling a story of how you make it not matter as much. The reason that there's so much of the true racism where it's just a discomfort to have certain people in the neighborhood. It is perceptive. Somebody comes in, they're dressed a certain way, they don't take care of themselves, they're not respectful, they're playing loud music, there's drugs, there's weed, there's all sorts of. The perception is off. Contrast that with somebody who comes in regardless of their race and the first thing that they do is they're improving the perceived value of their property by doing so. Everybody else's value is going to be improved simply because of comps. That's how it works. So there's an appreciation if it looks like a okay. This person clearly had the money to do it because they see the types of things I'm doing were not cheap. They were not cheap things. They're not. I own two cars fresh out. I have no car payment whatsoever. I made sure of this when I bought each one. I've not had a car payment since what, 20, 21 late because I don't need to. I said I'm going to buy the cars fresh out, have them then I can drive them when I need to. I put money in them to fix their underlying main issues which are critical issues because I knew I was not going to be buying a new car for the foreseeable, possibly for the rest of my life at this point. When people see that somebody is actively trying to be a positive contributor in the neighborhood and not somebody who's going to come in and be a blight on the neighborhood, it's different. You're perceived different. The latent racism may still be there. It might still be there, but you can change the perception of it. You're appreciated for what you're doing. So even if they ultimately don't like you and really don't have a reason to, some people will question themselves. Some people will say, you know, I don't like them, but my home value just went up 30,000 bucks because they're here. So I'm going to learn to like that person or I'll learn to tolerate that person. In my case, I would argue both neighbors are positive. I don't have a negative impression of either one of them. I think one is a little weird, but he's not a negative person at all. And then the other one, I get it. She's. I believe she might be a widow. That's fine. I've lived with near widows before. It's. You help them out where you can. Obviously, I'm not in a physical capacity to do everything, and she's asked me to do certain things that I cannot do much as I'd like to. I don't have the physical capacity that I once did, but I work as best I can to help because I want her to have an improved situation, and it's inspiring. She just did. She just did a whole renovation on her garage. That's not cheap. Her garage was in terrible spot. I told her her garage is in terrible, terrible shape. It's gonna collapse if something's not done. And she just did all the concrete, all the cleanouts, the whole nine over multiple days. They ripped out the whole driveway. Redoing the driveway, that is expensive, folks. But I have to take a victory lap because I know that a lot of my improvements, she said, inspired her to step up the game. She has to do hers because it's what we need to do. The other one, they're disabled. They can't do those things. They can't go any further than what they are. They're retirement age. That's not going to happen. But they understand, okay, his yard is amazing. We probably should. She's even said, the one that owns the house on the other side, you know, perhaps you could teach my son, because the son's the one that I was talking about before. That's weird. Perhaps teach him how to do the yard right, because. And he does a decent job. But nobody is. Nobody is making the yard look better. They're just maintaining the current state. At least if you maintain it, that's better than nothing. I chose to step up my game because if I'm going to be here, I want to be a positive in the neighborhood, not a negative. Because I want to offset that perception that it's a negative space. The whole area. There's a perception of a negative space. And I see where it comes from. It comes from the way most of these people in that apartment, how they dress and how they walk around. They're loud and they do all sorts of chaos. That's what's doing it. It's not. It's not what the. The city would tell you. It's really. You've got this apartment complex. And I don't think. I don't even think it's low rent, but maybe I haven't looked deep, but just. It seems like there's just really negative people coming from that complex. And then they create a blight on everything else. So I do my part. Hulk Hogan and the racism, you know, being called a racist. And nobody wants to. Nobody wants to feel bad that he died, etc. And hey, I am gonna. I said I'm gonna piss some people off. Is it likely he was racist? Yes. Does it matter? No. Because a lot of his. It's just he was grown. He didn't own his racism. That's true. He never owned it. He never. He never owned. You know what? This is probably how I really do feel. And I probably should try to do better or at least be honest, if nothing else, about who I am instead of pretending like he's not when we know he has to be. Because a lot of what he was saying in. Even though. In private. Hey, that's what it is. Now. I'll. This is where I'm going to flip on you. And then we'll wrap up all of what he said that he was caught out on. And the reason I said that, this is kind of endemic. It's all over the place. The things he said were done in private. I'm pretty sure there's stuff that you're doing and saying in private that are just as terrible and nobody gets to call you out because you weren't recorded all these things. That's just the truth. In his case, him saying about the basketball and all that kind of stuff. You can understand if you were in his situation, why he might have felt the way he did about his daughter. He's a protective father. Many fathers feel the same way about their daughters. They feel overprotective and in some cases don't want their daughters dating a certain something. I told the story about the. The one girl, Geraldine, same situation, father didn't want her dating outside of the race. They wanted plural. It's just endemic. It's natural, it's normal. I'm saying, in summary, there was nothing of what I heard of him or knew of him that told me he was any more or less racist than pretty much anybody else I would have met. Like, I. I kind of go in assuming there has to be latent racism. If you're an certain age or older, it's just the way it was. That's the culture. Whether good, bad, right or wrong, that's the way it was. How we respond to that, that's the measure of a person. My response is to simply say, I'm going to do what I can to improve property value, not just for myself, but for the neighborhood in general. Because I believe that that's my role. Since I'm here. I don't want to be a blight, I don't want to be a drain. I want to be a positive. And what I've seen doing that and focusing on that again, everybody in the neighborhood, I'm acknowledged, period. I'm positive, acknowledged. The only negative I've had was a salesman that I had to halfway cuss out. Everybody else has been positive and great to meet and talk to and I've had a good time and I've been inspired to try to get involved with some sort of something so that we can say, okay, now I'm a real contributor to the community, playing a larger role, whatever that role is. I haven't decided or committed to do that. But it is something I thought of. I haven't got that far yet. That's one where I want to get where there's financial security that I don't have any real worries in the world. From a financial perspective, the only worries I would have would be obviously your health, any family, immediate family type deals. Those are things we think about all the time. But I'm not as worried as I used to be in 2021. By far and away, it's a different era and I'm smarter than I was. I've made better decisions than I did. The big picture now the perception is different. I've changed it, but I don't. I'm not Going to pretend as though racism is not there. People who swear that racism is not there, they're lying to themselves. It's everywhere. It's. It's palpable. You can smell it, you can taste it, you can feel it, you can sense it. It's everywhere. You can choose to react to it in a negative way, as some of the Democrats have been doing for years, or you can simply say, I'm just going to focus on my stuff, get to a point. Command respect. That's what I chose to do. I don't regret that choice. And it is the choice that I would recommend for anybody that's curious about a different way of thinking about it. I have a different perception about what life is than I used to. I've never been bothered as much by racism as many others. But even now I recognize it and use that recognition as my own source of power and then go on about my own merry way. Because think about it too. Some people even said. And I laughed at it. Well, yeah, but if you live in something, it looks all rich. You're going to be a target. The funny thing about that, right? I told a story, and if you're new, welcome. You didn't hear this story, but I told the story about the guy. You know, I was. I was the girl the blind set up, and she brought her cousin and whatever, and the guy got up in my face, threatened to shoot up the neighborhood and all this. And I turned my back on the guy now because I figured he was bluffing, so I turned my back on him. Could have got shot in the back, but I had a feeling he was bluffing. He seemed like a punk. When I'm listening to him, I. It's like, okay, you put nice stuff up and we're not talking things that make it look like a mansion or anything. These are things that simply are modern upgrades. They're not fancy crazy. They just look so much nicer because the house was so declined. It's not like falling apart, but it's. It was left behind. There was things that. Whatnot. But I got to. I got to the point where I was thinking, geez, I kind of want somebody to get bold enough to try to step up and do something to. While I'm here, I. I actually kind of wish they were bold enough. First of all, it'd be hard for them to get past the. The glass. But let's assume that they did. Thinking about that, it's like, well, if you're that bold enough, if you're that stupid enough, was I targeted? Probably not. So then if I wasn't targeted, we're assuming desperation. Somebody's desperate for something. Okay, if you're desperate for something and you're so desperate that you'll try to break into the house, which is not easy, I'm assuring you right now it would be nigh impossible to break in to the house. Is it doable? Yes. But it's nigh impossible it be for multiple reasons. And there's somebody got to the point of getting inside, they're going to be in trouble because of multiple reasons. All of that puts me at ease because the people who would do it aren't doing it, aren't doing it for racist reasons. They're not doing it because they hate me. They're not doing it because of my skin. They're not doing it because of anything. They're doing it because they want something that I have that they don't. Which means I'm above them, which means I'm a level up, which means I am the superior. See that that's power. That's power. When you understand that you have it, but you don't floss it because you don't need to. You don't have to flaunt or floss. You just have and you're stable and controlled with what you do and why you do it. And then at some point somebody thinks they're going to strike it rich but they're going to be in trouble to try to break in because you are protective of what you have. But it comes back to I'm above them. I'm way above them. Even though many of them, they've been here for years, they probably have, you know, full on families that have all sorts of stuff and they might have lived an amazing life, you know, they might have made crazy amounts of money. They're not on my level, folks. They're not on my level. So I guess what I'm saying to you, the idea of racism and the vitriol pointed at people like Hulk Hogan for racism we knew was there. There are so many people that are just stuck in a victim syndrome. They're stuck in their own victim mindset. They will never mature past being a victim. When I say be a victim, I'm talking about things where somebody thinks something and for whatever reason you want to raise a stink about it and get the government to do something for you. That's a victim mentality. I don't do do that. What I'd rather do is simply surpass them, excel beyond them, be that the guy be above. Because when you can train yourself to focus on being above, that's power. Nothing else matters. Nothing. In closing, finally closing because I thought it was important to tell my story on this. In closing, the most wealthy people that you can think of in this world have all felt thought a certain way that does not conform to the way you feel or think. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. All that matters is that you identify your own path, your situation, your setup, what is what is important to you. You focus there and ignore the noise because it's noise. Once you can train yourself to do that, then it's just to execute. And I don't propose that. It's simple. I'm saying that it's necessary. Next week I'm going to talk about a variation of this topic because I think it's good to go this route. I listened to and I'll give you a spoiler now because I think it's again, it's a variation of the topic. I listened to an interview from 2022 from Michelle Obama and I was surprised given how much I dislike Barack Obama. I really respect Michelle Obama and the stuff she was saying. I really think she has her head on straight. I think she's a very well educated person and it's unfortunate that she was. She was paired with somebody that I think is an idiot, frankly. But Michelle Obama is. She has amazing responses to questions asked. And that is what I'm going to be talking about because I'm going to share it from my lens as not only a male, not only as an African American male male or a black American male, I should more clearly say, but also as somebody who she echoed a lot of things I said even though I have not traveled the same she did. That means I took a shortcut. I ended up to that reality earlier than she did. She had to live through a lot to get to that same outcome. And I take pride in the fact that we got to the same answer. That is what I will chat about. I assure you. That will be a fun episode to have.