War. What is it Good for?

This week on Shelley's Plumbline, we look into the true meaning of war, questioning the moral center of American conflicts, and suggesting that the biggest challenge today is simply survival in America. 

The discussion exposes America's "masterful lie" of liberty and justice for all, highlighting the historical and ongoing racial injustice faced by Black veterans returning from conflicts. 

The speakers assert that white supremacy has created a generation unaware that America is currently losing a race war. Listen as the hosts warn that the failure of leaders to confront these terrifying realities is a danger we can no longer afford to deny, leading to the philosophical question: "If you knew better, would you do better?"

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hello, world, and welcome to Shelley's Plug Live. Truthful Top of Tough Topics hosted by Dr. Shelley Stewart. Shelley started broadcasting in 1949, and he has been on a journey to discover the truth for humanity ever since. And at 91 years of age, Shelley Stew sits down before the microphone as he pursues answers to tough topics, challenging us to change the experience of being human and our outlook on humanity. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to present to the newest member of the Radio Hall of Fame and the oldest podcaster in the world. Get ready. Here comes Jelly.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Now, that's the show between an old man, a young man, and a middle-aged man. Now, Ricky started this stuff, you know, about one thing. Uh Mark, you know he did that. He started it. He said, What about me?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

All right. Well, I'm glad we're ganging up on you already. Yeah. Who gang? It's a weekly thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:47

It's a weekly thing. It is a weekly thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:50

He started, uh, this is Father Son. Okay, okay, okay, Mark. Welcome, well, welcome, ladies and gentlemen. This is Blum Line, the Academy of Common Sense, Ricky and Mark, and yours truly. And uh today, uh wait just a minute, I've got to finish something over here. I'm trying to finish something. Okay, give me a little chance of people finish I think a little work to do.

SPEAKER_06 3:14

Ladies and gentlemen, here you are. I'm telling you, some of my most funky father's fun podcast in the universe, with telling the Playboy 2, who is tinkering on his phone while me and Mark sit here and just wonder what the hell is going on. I mean, it's what the real is going on here.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

My favorite song. Uh, if Edwin Starr did it, Edwin Starr, friend of mine, comes out of California, of course this was wrong, wouldn't he? But came into Detroit, and that's the word Barry Gordon hated that song.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Did he?

SPEAKER_05 3:48

Oh my God. Well, at that time, uh Barry was in between a crack and a hard place in the thing. You know, and uh the the younger group in America was going one way, and Barry was trying to hold on to his Detroit habits, you know, the old school, and the younger group, uh mobbing gay, and these guys were, you know, mobbing doing stuff like freedom, you know, city, you know, the things he was doing, and then here comes uh this now comes a war and uh recording it and Barry says, We gotta record that. Well, yes, and uh the rest is history. War. What is it? Guys, I have lived through so many wars. I was born immediately after World War World War I. During World War II, I was born. The Korean campaign, they called it, they didn't want to call it a war. They called it a campaign. They didn't want to name it a war. It was a war people died. As a matter of fact, my older brother was killed during uh the Korean War. Uh then that's uh Rick's uncle, so he's what they call it. We have a family killed in the service with that. Then uh came another war. What other wars? No, of course, of course. The Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan, the Iraq war, uh all these damn wars. And now and now uh this is what they call it, and the the president of the United States this is not a war. Well, what is it? I I'm just gonna get we don't we pull it down. Uh the song uh got opened with uh what is it good for? What has changed? I mean I'm I'm sincere about it. Uh during the uh World War II, I recall rationing uh meat. Uh you know, had ration had to buy meat, you had to have rip steps to buy meat, green stuff to get vegetables. Uh gasoline, of course, you didn't have that many cars anyway. But gasoline at that time, if I recall, it was like 21 cents a gallon, and they took it at that time immediately to compensate for the war. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Uh then they took by huge families that suffer for that during the war. Because they had a rubber drive, didn't they? All sorts of drive.

SPEAKER_05 6:34

Rubber collection papers tortured things up. I've never seen so much of uh you know confusion and a kid uh and uh had to fight the war that I saw the uh in the little community where I was born, I never would forget trucks. I'm picking big trucks, and I would see these men with the Negroes, and we would see them and they were just waving and waving 25, 30, 40, 15 Negroes on these trucks. And we were wondering who were they going? They said, they're going to war. Uh they're all negroes on act on these trucks, they picked them up from the hills and anywhere. And we would stand on Highway 31 and say, where are they going? So they're going to Montgomery, swearing in Montgomery, and then they're going on to war. They picked them up in the streets, little boys. They went to war. Uh, I didn't understand what a war meant then. I still don't understand what it means now, really. Not really. But uh I know that we want war, fighting for America, but then we have the internal things that uh we have to fight for help. You understand? I don't want to clean up our own house, but we can clean up someone else's house. You'll see that we can clean up we can clean up theirs over there, but ours is dirty here. So I've seen that. Uh so we've gone through all these times and years, and uh here we are. And I'm here to listen to myself talking. I want to hear you guys what do you think? You guys came along. Uh Mark, you were born a little a few years before Ricky. What you were you how were you the the one you remember, the war that you remember?

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Well, Vietnam was the um the war that I grew up in. I wasn't you know, I wasn't in danger of having to go to it. My brother was, as a matter of fact. And um he was of age where he could be drafted, and it was a pretty scary thing for him. He he was the age where he could be drafted to World War. To the Vietnam War. Yeah. And um, you know, the thing that I do remember was there was a lot of conflict in the family. So my father had served in World War II, his brothers had served, and um, you know, as you know, there was a what they called back then the generation gap, which was, you know, the young young folks are saying, no, hell no, we won't go. Yeah, they didn't want to go to this war that they didn't feel was justified or or worth going to. And the parent generation came from a generation that said, Well, you know, your country is calling you to do service, you have to redo that. And um, so there was a lot of conflict between the two of them. And um, you know, a lot of his friends and and people that he went to school with would go were going to Canada or contemplating going to Canada. He never did that, he never actually was drafted. Um, I think his number, he just missed being drafted. But I do remember one story where um, you know, I as I mentioned, my uncles served in World War II. One of them was um a he was driving the ships that would supply um the landing crews. So after after, say it was he was actually in Okinawa. So after the invasion would happen, then those ships would come in and they'd be bringing Jeeps and tanks and things of that nature. So he he wasn't really in the action. Um, none none of my my father, in fact, was a telegraph operator. But they were in the war. Yes, they were. Yes, and he was a telegraph operator in Hawaii, okay. Um so one I remember one time um all these brothers were at a party, and another uncle of mine, who was actually not one of my father's brothers, he was um an in-law, actually. He had married one of my father's sisters, and he was a Marine, and he was on Iwo Jima, and he saw some bad things. And he these guys were all arguing about you know the hippies who were protesting the war, and this generation doesn't get it, and they should be going to war. And he pulled my brother aside and he pointed at my dad and he said, He was a telegraph operator, this guy was in a boat, this guy was in an office. He said, I was on Iwo Jima, and I would not wish that on anybody. So, you know, he kind of basically said, Stand your ground, these guys don't know what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

So his feeling was that we're fighting for America. But I you talked about Iwo Jima.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah. So we he's there fighting for America. Right. For a necessary cause. You know, he he was sort of on the on the side where no this thing in Vietnam wasn't wasn't.

SPEAKER_05 11:50

Yet there were those in your well family and friends who said, Oh, what the hell are you doing over there fighting over there? We have problems here.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

No, the the other the other brothers were saying, you young kids, you hippies, you shouldn't be protesting this war. You need to go serve your country, you need to go fight in this war. And and my brothers of the of the attitudes like no. And that was which war now? The Vietnam. Vietnam. Okay, what year are you talking about now? That was about um 67, 68 in that period.

SPEAKER_05 12:22

Uh that was uh after uh doing uh the song that I played, war. Yeah, uh, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Okay, now Ricky, uh you are a little younger than talk. Do you remember any war, sir, in your lifetime?

SPEAKER_06 12:42

Yeah, not Vietnam. I mean, I was born in '67, so um, I think America pulls out of Vietnam, what, 73, 74? And so I wasn't really conscious of the impact of that on the on the country. Of course, when I um was became a teenager, I was actually in the military. You know, I went to Naval Academy Prep School in Rhode Island, then to the Naval Academy on my first two years of college. And at that time, as we're moving into the um late 80s, the primary threat was the Soviet Union then. So we were really, really prepped. You know, it was just like this this impending thing was gonna happen with the Soviet Union. But the first actual war I remember was actually after I left the military and I remember the Gulf War. Um, and then of course you have a series of wars around Iraqi war the incursion into Afghanistan. So it seems like it's been like a series of many wars. But I think the most interesting thing for me that uh Mark brings up, and I think it's relevant to the conversation now, as uh American empire is kind of expanded into um um Iran right now. I mean, and we see we did in Venezuela, and this goes to what what your brother I think was speaking to, Mark. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this stuff? And and I think uh a serious question that America and Americans have to ask themselves is are we or the or the decision makers in this country behaving like the bad guys? I mean, we're kidnapping foreign leaders, we're obviously the people are being lied to, being told that you know this attack from Iran was imminent. No matter what you think about their system of governance, there's been no, absolutely no evidence that that is true. Um, and and people are going in, you know, killing men, civilian men, women, and children. And you've seen America aid, um, what what's happened in Palestine as well. Again, in estimates of over 40,000, 50,000 civilians killed in in Palestine, many of them children and babies. And and Americans don't want to have the conversations about what is the moral or immoral center of these wars. So when you talk about what is it good for, certainly the expansion of empire, influence, raping of resources, all of these things and international fear, but I don't know what it's good for when you talk about things that are actually noble, just, and true.

SPEAKER_05 15:13

The wars that we are discussing, how it affects each of us. Now, me personally, I love America. I was born here. I love America. I love the things freedom, liberty, and justice for all. I I love I do too. I I I I that I love that's why it disturbs me to see them do things. That is what I'm saying now. Things that I that I love that to fight for, uh, I do not get it here at my own home country. What I'm fighting for over there, they're saying what they are doing over there, and what we are doing and not doing over here.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Liberty, freedom, equality, and justice for all. Well, let me bring up another point, uh, Shelly. So so you said, you know, you'd see those those men on the on the trucks going down to be sworn in. You know, that that was a big thing too. That that changed, you know, the black the blacks that did service in World War II, it was generally what? They were driving trucks, they were delivering things.

SPEAKER_05 16:33

They were blacks were getting killed. Yeah, blacks were losing their lives, blacks were fighting for freedom, yet at the same time, they're they're fighting for it. But when they came on the American soil, they are saying, You cannot eat at this restaurant with me, you cannot attend the same school with me. You cannot enjoy the quality of life in this country. Yet you served and you were killed in these countries on foreign soil. So that's where I'm saying, oh, we really ease your ears, are ease your eight people, you understand discussing these things. And uh look at the big picture. Yes, we talk about the oil. Oh, but now you talk about I look at listen to this little new stuff that I listen to now. The price of oil, you know, the price of this and how much we're gonna make, uh, how much we how much how much we gonna make, then I never say how much of it the quality of life is gonna be for all people. I I have a problem with it. Really? I have no problem with fighting for freedom.

SPEAKER_06 17:58

But yeah, but that's but that's the lie, though, pop. You know, right? That's that's the lie. Um what you're talking about when you're talking about the oil and all that stuff, that's just rapacious greed. That's capitalism run amok, where people feel like they can do anything to anybody anywhere as long as they make a profit. But even when we talk about this freedom, liberty, and justice for all, when people say, Well, I love America. No, I think people love the idea of America, because even when those black men, black people fought in every war in this country, yeah, from the war of independence all the way up. But even as late as World War II, you they still had segregated forces in this country until Harry Truman delivered an executive order uh desegregating the military. So not only were black soldiers treated poorly when they came back to America, many of them were killed, in fact, for wearing uniforms once they got back to this country. They were also mistreated while they were in the military fighting and dying for this country. There's so many reports of black soldiers saying that German prisoners of war were treated better by American forces than the black American soldiers were by their own. And so, you know, it it's it's difficult for me to say I love America, the reality of America. I love the promise of America, I love the idea of America, and that's where the long-standing Cold War really uh is continuing to percolate in this country. A country says that it's founded on freedom, liberty, and justice for all when it was founded on slavery, when it said all men are created equal, but a good percentage of the founding fathers themselves were slaveholders. So that's an idea, and we still have people who are fighting against, and they'll mask it in this DEI talk and all of that foolishness, but they're still fighting against racial equality. So America needs to have a good, long, hard, honest conversation about itself, talking about it's going overseas to free people when it doesn't respect freedom or equality or liberty or decency or humanity here at home. They don't respect it at all.

SPEAKER_05 20:03

But but Ricky, you're saying these things. That is why that uh it made my bad habit to bring this matter to for discussion today on the plumb line. Oh, yeah, I'm with you. That's why I'm here saying that. Because people are saying, why are you discussing this now? Why why are you talking about this now? All things are equal here now, everything is fine here now. Oh, this is what you say just then? They they're lying, they're telling lies. Then what is it? They're saying, Why are you stirring up trouble now? Why are you bringing up this now? Why are you talking about uh you don't want to uh you take these people what meant? What is it? What are you angry with me? Because I'm saying I'm seeing a problem now that promise, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:01

I mean, I'm with you. It's a long contradiction, it's a long lie, and it's a masterful lie that we've been taught. I remember James Baldwin talking about growing up watching Westerns on Saturdays, you know, watching the cowboys and Indians, and and little black boys, little black girls, just like little white boys and little white girls were rooting for those cowboys. And Baldwin said, It's a hell of a thing when you grow up and you realize that you were rooting for the wrong doggone side. These cowboys are the ones who had taken those Indians' land. They were the ones who had killed those people, they had killed their children, right? They had lied to them, they had absolutely terrorized them, and we're sitting rooting for them. So here we are cheering on folks, even to this day, saying that they are they're abroad fighting for freedom. No, they are terrorizing people. People are saying, oh, well, all is well now. Everybody's free. It's a level playing field. Anyone who has any sense of history, not just a sense of history, but of contemporary reality, especially along lines of race. Understand that that argument is a lie. So, in many ways, in many ways, America is a lie. So the question is: can we, as American men, women, and children who are with us and children who are yet to be born force America to really, really live up to the ideal that it presented in the first place? Because up until this point, it absolutely has not. This idea of a multiracial democracy, that's an idea that's been in existence at best since 1965. You know, with passive voting and subrights action, we're still going.

SPEAKER_05 22:49

We have it all. We don't have to struggle anymore. We got equal pay, we've got equal education opportunities, we got everything. I'm hearing young black people, young black men, young black women saying that. And this is 2026. Now, are they trying to themselves?

SPEAKER_06 23:07

No, let me tell you what's happened to them, Pop. What's happened? One thing, one thing that we have yet to do, we have not acknowledged how incredibly masterful and effective white supremacy has been in this country. It has been so effective that it has created a generation of black people who have no idea what's happening to them. As they talk about equal access to education, I'm witnessing it right now. The dismantling of a racial support architecture that took over 50 some odd years to build at many of these predominantly white institutions, they have dismantled it in less than 50 weeks. It is it's done. Most of these schools, it's done. A war is underway on them, and the sad part is they are losing it and don't even know they're in a war.

SPEAKER_05 24:28

And it's almost over son, just just a minute, just a minute now. Just I'm not jumping on you. You use that term war. Yes, you use that. I didn't mention that. You said war and we are in a war now. So you're saying that we are in a war in the United States of America.

SPEAKER_06 24:54

I firmly believe we are in the midst of a race war in this country, and black people are losing. Well, that is my belief. Oh, and they are losing badly and decisively. And it and the the victory has been so so incredibly overwhelming that many of them don't even know they've been beaten.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Oh my goodness. I I thought maybe I was dreaming, you know, you know that thing I said that uh, you know, if Martin Luther King Jr. his dream be a nightmare, then I'm hearing the conversation today from my son, an educator, educator now, educated well educated, Mohaus. I'm sitting there with you, a very educated, and you and you stand up saying, oops, Malcolm, there it is, oops, there it is, that we are in a war within this country, within ourselves, and it's about money. M O N E Y Now you can say uh uh you know the golden rule. I said to this the white friend of mine, I said, Lives the golden rule. He says, Yellow, let me tell you about the golden rule. Do unto others as you have a good note, do it to them before they do it to you. Uh I said, What he says do it to them before they do it to you, and them that's got the gold rules. So I have to listen and share these conversations with these younger people and with them as often as I can. This is something that I've been saying, and they said I was a damn fool. The same conversation, Ricky and Mark, that I'm hearing right now. Ricky Sindova saying now, I have made the same comments in 1955. Wow, I made the same comments in 1965, immediately after the march. Black people came, Shelley, we got it now, baby. We got it. So then the black men and women, Trump, who were were nowhere to be seen during the fight for equality. They were the ones who ran through the front front lines. Look, look what we did together.

SPEAKER_06 27:36

Yes. Oh my god, yes.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

Well, I'll be honest with you. Unfortunately, I see so much of it today. People put it, they were civil rights activists. I was born, I was involved in all of this. Uh, but they said I'm a they refer to me as the pioneer foot soldier. Yeah, and uh I can tell you now, I've never seen so many people come from nowhere. All of a sudden, we're civil rights icons.

SPEAKER_06 28:07

Yeah, they were all dead, right?

SPEAKER_05 28:12

No, no, I'm not being honest with you. Oh, Shelley, you were you're airing our dirty linen. No, I'm not. I'm putting it out here saying you gotta liars too.

SPEAKER_06 28:25

They're liars too. All these all these black folk who talk about how they were out there fighting and know they ain't hit a lick at a snake, and then want to pop up when you know some battles here won, battles there won, because they're ashamed of themselves because they were cowards and fools, want to say that they were there, they were they are liars too, and they need so you nicer to me, they need to be exposed from Louisville to Birmingham to Atlanta.

SPEAKER_05 28:54

Unfortunately, not only Birmingham, Atlanta, but all throughout these United States of America. Um seeing the same thing. Uh, they scratch each other's back, and you know the back scratch into each other, but they don't want the truth of that. They do not really want the black children to know the truth. No, they have access. I will tell you that I've seen before we get to the end of this uh podcast today. I've seen black people who are in position. I mean, I knew how they got there. Uh, they were one or two in the major corporations. Uh, and uh the owners, the CEOs will come to me, Shelly. Uh, we appoint so in front of charge. I said, Are you sure? Yeah. He said, Everything's okay, everybody's happy. They talk to the black people, they say, all the black people are happy. I said, They're the top black people in the country. Do they ever speak for other blacks? They say everybody's okay. Everything is the blacks do it isn't that oh fine, I'm here. Uh uh I'm fine, y'all treat me good. Will you tell everybody else that we treat you good? Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, we're gonna do a commercial. On the commercial, you said, My company, I represent this company, I am this episode, I'm the black leader. So I'm seeing all of that. I'm seeing uh it didn't so high as uh anytime a person did not even serve in the Boy Scouts, did not go in anything. He's the president of the United States and start a war. Yeah, yeah. So I don't fault anybody, but it's the truth. Uh we are living in some dangerous times. Dangerous times because we are not facing reality. We are not facing reality, we're not facing the truth, but the people who actually vote now, who actually voted the blacks in the position, they don't want them to vote for anybody but them. They will not create a nice base now. They don't go and they just say, Don't don't worry about voting. I'm already in office. So I'm seeing some misinformation, I'm seeing miseducation, but this is why you, Mark, you, Ricky, and Mr. Shelley, we sit down openly talking about it. No other place on earth is doing it this way. No, no, no. They're afraid of themselves. They're afraid to look in the mirror and tell what's in the mirror the truth. They're afraid to tell that Michael Jackson's song, you know, the man in the mirror. Well, anyway, I think that uh it's about time that we as human beings in this country and in the world look at it and say, listen, at the mirror, me, what am I worth being me? And I am I'm able to be better. I think that Ricky won by the episode. If you knew better, would you do better? Uh and I think how did you answer that, Ricky? I said, if you knew better, would you do better? How did you answer that?

SPEAKER_06 32:40

Unfortunately, Pop, what we've seen is a lot of people across lines of race, they know better, but they still refuse to do better. That's the terrifying world in which we live in right now.

SPEAKER_05 32:55

The most terrifying world world we're in now. If we knew better, you're afraid to do better. So you're satisfied with what you got.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 33:09

So damn anyone else, just give me mine. And yeah, give me mine. I got mine, and you got yours to get. So that is the attitude that I'm leaving with the people saying that to themselves. Mop, I'm so proud to sit with you and Ricky. Y'all taking time to bother with me. And uh Ricky, I'm I'm happy you didn't start nothing today. You know, um, I you know, because he always starts nothing today. He starts if it don't start. So he laid out some pretty hard things.

SPEAKER_06 33:48

Yeah, I'm not starting anything, but but Papa would like to say this. I think it's very important that we say uh we certainly would like all the listeners of the Plum Line to uh join us in wishing my daughter, my father's granddaughter, Jordan, a happy 18th birthday. She turned 18 this week, and so we're happy to bring her through uh with a lot of love in our family, and we appreciate the love that you all are giving us. Please, you know, please like the plum line, share it, right? Give us a nice rating.

SPEAKER_05 34:16

Happy birthday, Jordan. Happy birthday.

SPEAKER_06 34:25

There's your side. There's my side. Somewhere in the middle, there's the truth.

SPEAKER_05 34:32

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Remember, what is it good for? We're talking about it.