Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the studio with me is Hank Linderman, friend of
the show. He's been around here a few times over
the year. Well, I don't know, like twenty years worth.
I'm thinking I think I met you back in the thirties. Yeah,
Woody Guthrie and I were taking the same stage coach.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Well it was it was back when you had the
wireless with the Yeah, instead of records, you had the cylinders.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You live a very interesting life as a musician, a
creative person. You're still a musician.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You're still a musician music. Music is one of the
best things you can do for yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
It's true. It's such a great expression. I have zero talent,
but I mean I admire people. I watch YouTube videos
and watch people that learn.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, we can now make you sound good when pro tools,
we can take anything and make it. We've raised the
level of mediocrity by or hide.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I've seen well, we've seen that sometimes in performances by
big stars, and you're like, oh.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
So if I get a song, will you sing it.
I'll get you to sing a song and I'll make
you sound great.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You'll be sometime down the road.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I heard yes, I heard yes.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. You always hear. Yes, you're a positive person.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm a positive person. I am.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I like that. Hank. What is your website for your campaign?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Hank for Kentucky dot com, Hank for for the Number
four why dot com. But I'm also on Facebook and
that's probably a good place to catch me.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Okay, you're running for Congress.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm running for congress. This is my fourth time. I'm
the nominee. I'm not very smart, Terry, because I keep
doing this and as usual I'm I'm honestly in no
danger of getting elected. So the question is, why on
earth would.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
You do this? Okay, that's my part. Why on earth
would you do this? Well, you're such a kind person
and you're thoughtful, but you aren't you kind of ramming your.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Hand against the bad behavior too. I am capable of
really being a jerk. You know, I think we all are, aren't.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's the human conundrum.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
That is the you know, we are all creatures of
darkness and light.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
But but you know that the chance of you winning
or is just slight. So why do this? Well?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So, the the way this is is that there's a
lot of races in the United States that are kind
of considered impossible and the incumbent is going to win.
The incumbent win ninety five percent of the time. If
they got more money, they almost always wins, like ninety
eight ninety nine percent of the time. And so both
of our parties tend to not work in areas well.
(02:19):
We can't win, so we won't invest any time or
effort here, and that, in my opinion, is why you
get someone like Donald Trump, because Democrats gave up in
Kentucky in the first, second, fourth, and fifth for the
last two and three decades. And it's if the only
purpose is to win, then that's a terrible That explains
(02:40):
why not many people want to run. But there are
other purposes. And one of the purposes is you're now
in touch with people who are on the ground. You
actually talk to people and you have lots of conversations
with people who agree, disagree. They've got all kinds of opinions,
and you learn a tremendous amount. So you get a
sense of what the grassroots is up to, and that's important.
That's a conduit now for the party to understand what
(03:00):
they're actually dealing with. You know, the mindset that's in cities,
for example, about rural areas is not accurate. In fact,
I'm going to say that rural and city folks don't
really know each other. They don't understand each other. They've
got no idea about it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
I feel that. And you live in a rural area.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I live in a rural area and I just absolutely
love it.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And your fellow Democrats in many large cities think that
your people live in your area are aliens.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh well, they couldn't live there because you've got Trump
supporting neighbors. All my neighbors are Trump supporters, basically, but
they will drop whatever they're doing if I need some help.
Several of them tell me they vote for me. I'm
not allowed to use their names. I understand, I understand.
And only one of them calls me a communist to
my face, and when I saw him on the road
last week, he didn't even do that. So the thing is,
(03:51):
you know, there's so much division in the country. When
you're on the ground, when you're at the grassroots level,
you try various different ways to kind of make friends
or do whatever. And the thing that has finally worked
is for me to realize there's a lot of similarities
between what people need, whether they're Republican or Democrat, liberal
or conservative, there's agreement on something like ninety three percent
(04:13):
of issue.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I would think, yeah, healthcare, attention to you know, basic
needs for human beings.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I'm running even though. Look I'm a liberal, I confess,
but I don't need the liberal answer to always work.
And I have experienced times when the conservative answer is
the absolute correct answer. You know, that's it's unpredictable. I
worked in the creative arts. You don't know what the
answer is going to be other than more cow Bell.
We all know more cow Bill every time. Every time.
Well I had one time. It didn't work.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Really, it was a ballad.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Okay, anyway, it's I say, do you know who Wendell
Berry is? Yes? So Wendell Berry has a quote from
his most recent book that I just love. Now. I
have a single word explanation forty calling it, but it
rhymes with ship show. I want to Okay, you know
the word yes, Okay, So anyway, what he says is
(05:06):
what we're up against is an extractive economy run by
a tiny minority of the wealthiest people, and from that
the impoverishment, poisoning, and pollution of our natural world. The
complete dissolution of all human community and damage to individuals
and families. I can share that quote with a liberal
or a conservative and they'll go, yeah, that's right, that's
(05:27):
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
That's not just recent, that's been going on for generations.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's been going on for generations. And Wendell Berry in
fact makes the point that there are so many things
wrong in our society these days that you can't just
fix this and this, and you know, you can't fix
little things and expect it to make a difference. That
we need to make big changes. And the big change
that I'm proposing is that So I think the largest
(05:52):
group of people that's not really got great representation in
the United States. You know, people talk about, well it's
women don't get a lot of presentation in our government,
or people of color or LGBTQ. I say the largest
group is working people because only two percent of our
government were working when they got elected. But working people
(06:15):
are like two thirds of the country. So can you
imagine if we had a government with I don't know
twenty percent, thirty percent, or by all rights sixty percent
working people, we.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Call it a representative government.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, wouldn't that be nice if we actually were. Now,
some of this is just the way our society is
set up. We focus on the wind. We want to win,
we want you know, we look at the top of
the of the thing. So, for example, I spoke with
someone who was a friend of We were discussing Governor Basher,
(06:47):
and I said, you know, I think the Democratic Party
needs to move unequivocally back to being in favor of
working people with no question. And this person said, well,
Governor Vasher is all about working people. Look at all
these jobs. Okay, Well then why are twenty percent of
working people through or four bad paychecks from becoming homeless?
And why are two thirds of working people living paycheck
(07:09):
to paycheck? And I said to this person, do you
even know someone who lives paycheck to paycheck? And he said, yes,
some of my employees.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
That's how that works.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And I didn't have to say a word. No, I
don't think. And the thing is, this is a good person.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Did that person not understand the irony in that statement.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I don't know if he did. And he's a good person.
I like him. But I think we are all caught
up in our own silos of information or the group
that we hang with so we don't always have sympathy
or we don't understand what the rest of the world
is going through. I recently went to a party this
summer in a poorer section of one part of the lake,
(07:47):
and it's the kind of neighborhood that when you drive
up there are multiple cars parked in the driveway or
on the yard. But these are cars that don't work,
of course, and because they bought a car for five
hundred bucks, they drove over for a while and then
it popped a radiator, so they park it. It's going
to be three hundred to do the radiator. Okay, well
I'll spend five hundred and another car anyway. At this party,
these are the twenty percent that are close to becoming homeless.
(08:10):
And they let me know that when when you lose
your home, when you lose your apartment, the next step
for you before you actually become homeless is often the
trailer court, and they're very aware of it that the
trailer court has been the kind of the last stop.
You know. Well, they informed me that over the past
several years, Wall Street banks have been buying up trailer
courts and putting a fresh coat of paint on it.
(08:32):
And raising the rent sixty one hundred percent. So these
folks are struggling. We have made it too difficult for
working people. They should be sharing. We should be democratically
sharing our prosperity. We can't just look at the stock
market and say, wow, it's four hundred zillion. Yeah, but
we still got people that are homeless. Right.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
The land grab, by the way, is not just trailer areas.
It's it's going on. That's that's a consistent issue all
across America.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
It really is. And you know, President Trump said something
a little while ago. I know what we'll do. We'll
open up all of our national park areas. You know.
Oh boy, Look, well look, if you've been on a
plane across the country, you can see there's lots of
the country that there's kind of nothing, no development. So
I'm sure there are some federal properties that you could
make into a desirable living situation without destroying a federal
(09:23):
park or a national park. Well, on NPR, they said, oh,
but there's no jobs there, so bad idea. Well wait,
it's part of a good idea. What if we started
to imagine the rural community of the future that was
designed to withstand climate change? That was designed to be
a community that had some decentralized manufacturing going on. For example,
(09:47):
Coca Cola. Remember Coca Cola used to be everywhere. There
used to be Coca Cola bottlings everywhere, and there's now,
you know, I don't know thirty of them across the country.
Didn't There used to be dozens and dozens and dozens
and dozens all in local areas ac And when you
have a local plant, now you're connected to a local community,
as opposed to making it in Atlanta and then shipping
it to Georgia or shipping it, sorry to Florida. Atlanta
(10:08):
is in Georgia.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I wasn't even going to say that, but I get
the point.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, well maybe Atlanta is in Georgia. Some people would
say it's like it's like Austin is not in Texas,
you know.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
But yeah, I get the point. More yea, more centralized
things are taking away from communities where you have these
commissaries that deal with the huge areas.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The destruction of community is a huge, huge issue. And
I talk to people. When I talked to conservatives, for example,
they want to say, well, it's because we aren't going
to church, and church provided a community for a lot
of folks. I think another big issue was it used
to be that only one member of the married couple
would work and the other would stay home and take
care of kids. Well that's not the way it works anymore, right,
(10:53):
So there's no time for community. So these are things
that when we are able to someday decide we're going
to look past how much profit we can make in
the shortest period of time and look for what's our
long term goal here? You know, what do we want
America to look like in five years, ten years, one
hundred years.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
It probably takes a massive economic crash to get us
to see those things.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Well, that is that definitely gets said. What do they
call it the jackpot? I think there's a a necromancer.
There's there's a science fiction novel where when everything crashes
at once, it's called the Jackpot.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I'm unfamiliar with that, but yeah, I understand.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
The ATM stops working. Yeah, you know it's over.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I've seen movies like that before. That's for sure.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The road.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
There's a lot of work to do. I just want
people to read more of what you've written, and they
can find it at your website.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
They can they can indeed, well, they find it on
the Facebook is probably the most up to date thing,
and I'm pretty easy to find if you ever want
to talk.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Is it Hank Linderman on Facebook. Yes, I'm just making
sure that there wasn't another name an online Hank four
kwy dot com. We've run out of time on this segments.
Always loves talking to you. I liked your global view
of of you, kind of take like you're in a
little spaceship and you're looking down at it and saying
this would help if we can adjust these few things.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well. I appreciate how calm you appear to be. Your
shoulders are not very close to your ear lobes where
the rest of us are freaked out about this election.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I am not. I do not dabble in hysteria. I'm
sorry about that.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
You're just always happy.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Though I am a happy person.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
You're a happy person.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Life's going to go on, and life's about learning, life
is about It's great to see again, Hank Linderman.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I tell this to everyone, and I mean it from
my heart. I love you, Terry, love you more.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
There you go, double down. All you got no answer
from that one? All step beside come back, sports Next
on news radio Waight forty w h A s