Hey folks, welcome to another great interview from The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist. This interview was with Lua from the Youtube channel Professor Flowers. This interview was recorded and streamed on Twitch on January 19, 2022. We talk about her channel and some debates she has had with various leftist youtubers and streamers as well as concepts that scare white folks like Black Nationalism and Landback. Topics that seem fairly consistently misunderstood by white leftists as well as liberals and conservatives.
Before I send you to the I’m going to talk about gas prices and the invasion of Ukraine but first I have to thank my new patron McNuttWhack. Thank you for supporting the show. And of course a huge thank you to everyone who supports my work. If you would also like to support this project then you can do that at patreon.com/skepticalleftist and sign up for 1 dollar per month to get access to a special patron chat room on the discord server as well as extra long videos, occasional early access and my everlasting thanks. You can also donate one time at buymeacoffee.com/skepticallefty and if you can’t afford that then share the show around, give it a thumbs up on youtube or a 5 star rating and a glowing review on apple podcasts or Podchaser.
Ok so I want to start off talking about gas prices because I’m seeing a lot of callousness from people about anyone complaining about them so I think that first of all its vital to recognize who is impacted the most by the price of oil being so high. Obviously as with all things that reduce our spending power it is those with the lowest incomes who suffer the most. Some people are saying that the higher gas prices are the price it takes to help the people of Ukraine and I firmly disagree. The choice to boycott products from Russia or companies still doing business in Russia doesn’t seem to have the impact that we want it to and while Russia does require the income from the sale of oil to maintain the war I can’t see it stopping them any time soon. I’m also seeing a lot of people who want to absolve Joe Biden and some talking about this meme. So this meme for those listening instead of watching is 2 pictures, one above the other with that guy from the office who was a jerk to the autistic fellow. In the top one he is pointing to a whiteboard with the words. “Average price of gas today March 10, 2022 is 4.32 per gallon” I’m going to ignore the obvious nonsense that is the American stubbornness over their version of the imperial system. The bottom picture is jerk guy sitting smugly with the new words on the whiteboard. They say “the peak daily average price of gas in 2008 (4.11 under President Bush) adjusted for today's dollar was 5.86.” And of course there is text underneath those pictures that says “Your link between partisan politics and gas prices is a lie” I feel like there’s a lot to unpack here. Not to get too complicated but the context certainly matters. The prices under Bush were a result of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan which was a decision that the president made so one could say that the president very much did have an impact or could be said to be partially if not wholly responsible for that increase. Prices went down when the main portion of that conflict slowed and oil production and costs were less hindered. This was all while the demand for oil based products and fuels was rising. The price dropped to lows not seen in years at the start of the pandemic. Partly because of the actions of Russian leader Putin and the member nations of OPEC who continued and even increased production despite dropping prices and demand. Again, leaders of countries making decisions that impact the price of oil. Currently the price is going up in response to sanctions on oil from Russia placed there initially by Joe Biden and then followed by many other nations. The demand for oil staying the same while imposed sanctions reduce the supply means that Biden is in fact responsible in part for the current price of oil. One of the things that trips me up on this is that well meaning people have memes like this and they use them to dunk on their political opponents but they don't seem to want to acknowledge that world leaders do make a difference. They don't decide on the price in the way that some people imagine but neither are they wholly innocent. Biden announced the sanctions knowing full well what would happen if he did it but he chose to do it because he values his stance in the conflict with Russia and felt the consumers of the world could bear the weight of his decision. I think it isn't right to put this on consumers and that oil companies should actually be losing profits but something like that can’t be done just by the president but it has to be a law enacted by the rest of the legislature and even that wouldn’t help everyone, just Americans. So it’s not partisan lies that makes Biden responsible for the highest gas prices we’ve seen in over a decade. It’s reality, it’s his actions and because of the influence and power of the US state other countries followed suit which increased a demand on a diminished oil production. I’m not trying to say that he shouldn’t have done it but this desire to dunk on political opponents combined with a media induced bloodlust has turned people I normally consider empathetic and wonderful people into callous uncaring monsters who would rather see Russian soldiers by the thousands than see a peaceful end to the war and who attack their neighbors for complaining about gas prices even though the high price of gas means that some of us have to choose between getting to work and buying groceries.
There’s already been a lot said about the hypocrisy and racism of the media and governments here and in Europe so I’m not going to talk about that again but it is worth noting whenever they point out how “civilized” Ukraine is. There are lots of people talking about Russia and Ukraine and the information is coming too fast to talk about in a way that I would feel good about so just be careful when you’re looking at this stuff and don’t jump to snap judgements.
With all that said, I’m going to send you over to the interview with Lua aka Professor Flowers
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