Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 34- Rich's Quick Take on Calling out Both Parties
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Rich takes a moment to explain why both extremes want to take him to task, and how it's proof that we'll find answers, and why he started The Common Bridge.
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[inaudible] . Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy . Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife, Leslie, are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger , and from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. All right, rich, I've done it to you again. This is a , I got you in the end of the week. This is going to be quick takes , um , I gotta tell you that the audience for this is starting to really jump. And with that I do get some comments. Uh , I've got a couple of comments and I , I hope you address them. Um, about , uh, you know, I thought this was, I thought this was common bridge or I thought this was in the middle. Um , explained to us what this is because I've really kind of thrown this on you and we do have a little bit of fun with it, but uh, explain why you're this isn't really, you know, partisan on either side of the other still kind of falls in line. [inaudible] hello by the way and thanks for joining.
RHWell, always good to hear from you Brian. And yes, common bridge is designed so that we have to acknowledge that one partisan poll is not going to convince threatened insult or by any means drag somebody to their end from the other partisan pole . And that we have attempted to be policy heavy, attempted to be nice and attempted to be nasty. It's sometimes irrespective of party affiliation or or partisanship. I find it interesting that we've heard from folks that said, Hey, this sounds partisan and we've heard it from both ends of the spectrum. And Brian , I've been called everything from a neo-con to a bleeding heart liberal and everything in between, probably people are pushing for my side, you know, whatever their side might be, they're on a hair trigger to react to anything that's not doctrinally , uh, compatible. Uh, there's a lot of , uh , extrapolation that, you know, if you agree or disagree with a political party or the president or the speaker or whatever, that doesn't necessarily mean you agree with everything that they do or the kind of person they are. It just means on that topic that maybe there's some common ground there. And you know, there's been great speechwriters over the years that have said, you know, we don't care if it's a Republican idea, democratic idea or , or whatever. And I know Barack Obama repeated that yet. In reality, a lot of times people really care about who's saying it. We've seen people flip flop from one set of standards to another depending on who's doing it. And we have to get out of there. We've had people on this show who absolutely loath our president but will admit that they like a lot of what he's getting done in terms of his policies. And the thing that we have to understand as a people politics is not buying Neri . And , and we've been led to this false choice by two major parties who have done everything to cement their position in. They're really good at attacking the other side there aided and abetted by a 24 hour news cycle that wants to fuel outrage and anger and other ism. And it's coming from both sides. And when you step back and say, okay, where is this going to lead? It's no place good. And it's sad that something as simple as saying, you know, this isn't true, can get one labeled as a quote Trump supporter or a Trump apologist or you must love Nancy Pelosi and you can get yourself, you know, cancelled and cut off from people and none of that is healthy. So we need to understand that everybody that is trying to set policy and politics are human beings. They're going to be flawed to one degree or another. And that we have to give ourselves some time for introspection. This hair trigger, let's hate on the other side because things didn't go our way is crazy. It doesn't lead any place. Good. So I'm doing the best I can to be fair, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to call out things and blood is running down my throat now biting my tongue cause I've got some great examples, but I don't want to trigger anybody.
BKAll right , so, so I'm going to get you in trouble again, but I might, I'll get you in trouble with that . Those last two guys. Um, T tell me if you can pass this along to the next week if you want, but how the heck has his , uh, his tower read , um, being , um, uh, neglected by the me too movement right now.
RH[inaudible] while you were right about that, you would get me in trouble. But look , um, I've, I've said about the design of the common bridge and I've told everybody that will listen, expect to come to hear something. You will dislike it . There's lots of places to go if you want to be comforted by a particular dogma, doctrine, party person, what have you. And I've seen families divided along these fault lines, siblings. Okay. And it's nuts. So none of us are in position to judge whether char Reed is telling the truth or not telling the truth. Yeah. It's an accusation that's been made. She deserves a fair hearing. Vice president Biden deserves an opportunity to explain his side of it and then let people render their own decision on the veracity and how much they're going to let that affect what they might do in the voting booth. It doesn't belong on the front page. Headline run over and over again on cable news and it doesn't belong buried. Okay. We don't have to make a judgment in 48 hours, but I , you know, let's examine it. Let's see what's there. And then people can apply their own experience and their own values and , and reach a conclusion whether they think it's true or not true. And if they do believe it's true, then they can decide how much they want to let it affect them.
BKSure. Okay, fair enough. Well, I appreciate you clarifying that because that's the way I see it too. I , I've , uh , we've been doing this since last year and uh , and I've seen you run both sides of this. You talk about the topic and you don't jump on a , uh, on a political position on it. And I always thought that was really good. So,
RHright . Brian, one of one of the episodes I did that I got a lot of really positive strokes for, I went after the president heavy about the response to the pandemic. And in that same podcast, you know, I lampooned Joe Biden for his conduct on the campaign trail. And in my humble opinion, they both deserved it in my opinion. And that was my take on it. I'm going to be very candid. Here's my structure of looking at president Donald J. Trump, and I've had this since the primaries of 16. I've repeated it often and it's very simple. It's, we have somebody not prepared for the full job, the president of the United States. We have someone that does not appear to want to learn how to be president. Of the United States and we have a person that has massive personal issues and you can pass just about everything through that. But this is the president we chose and for people that have an interest if they want to go to my website, I've written two essays, one about how our president and the governor of Michigan got themselves , uh , locking horns on cable news and another one about why we got Donald Trump as a president. It didn't just happen and we have a very UN usual president to say the least. Now you'll also hear me talking about how easy it would be had the other major party behaved a lot better over the last four years and there's a lot of misbehavior going on during that time. And think if they were coming forward with a candidate that had no experience running, a government still had all their mental faculties, did not have a 40 plus year history of saying inane things, had no history of saying racially tinge remarks and the like who didn't have boundary issues with women who didn't have unaddressed corruption issues and who didn't descend into tokenism. As it relates to put in a woman , um , the ticket, think of how easy the Democrats would take the white house come November, but instead, look what they've done. It's, it's no secret that Joe Biden is not firing on all cylinders. It's plain as day. I don't hear anybody defending it. You know, God bless them for the service he's given to the country and God bless him for trying. But really in our heart of hearts, is that the answer? We all want an off ramp, but can we have a better off ramp than that? And I just think about if we were demanding as a people, better behavior from government, better behavior from news reporting, and you got to hear from more crim who was outstanding last week, then we would have better government, we'd have better people in government and we'd have more honest reporting. But as long as we keep consuming this, as long as we keep thinking it's a binary world all my way, or I'm going to dehumanize and ostracize you, we're going to keep getting fed this and we're going to keep ending up with Lord knows what type of person entering the oval office and we're a better people than that. And we've got to start rejecting this binary polarization period. I don't know, Brian, what was the question of kind of centered around here ?
BKI think, I think we're, you know, we're , I think we should leave it at that because you know, we're , we're, we're writing about , uh , I was promised you I'd do these in 15 minutes quick takes and we're about that right now. But I thought that was so , um , uh ,
RHI hope everybody comes to the common bridge to hear policy. I promise I will stay there. I hope everybody comes and understands. I don't have a partisan dog in this fight. I think we as a people can do a lot better if we come together and talk policy and be a little less sensitive and a little more respectful that there are other people out there that have reached their points of view one way or the other. Okay, and let's understand, and I thought more crim did a great job explaining why we need everybody, why we need liberals, why we need conservatives, why we need everybody in the middle and we'll get the government and the and the news reporting that we demand right now. There's no incentive to behave better on either front of those because we keep rewarding them. Let's stop doing that.
BKI hope that you know your voice and voices that are similar out there that take a look at doing it this way and trying to bring things together to a common bridge maybe starts to gnaw away at that because I think you're right. We need to get to the middle. We need to start talking to each other instead of canceling each other out as soon as we're upset just doesn't work. Especially in GovIT right and pandemic world.
RHThe coven virus. A DOE
Speaker 2knows no party affiliation at what we know today and the data is coming in. But one of the things that appears at the moment is that it affects men more strongly than it affects women. And of course there's a correlation with age. The older you are, the more deadly it can be. And there's also a correlation with a health status going in, including obesity by the way, which is starting to reveal itself. Uh , again, we have to get more data in, but if anybody ever wanted an incentive to exercise more and eat better and, and the like, it's a tragic way to get there, but that's what the data says. Sure, sure. Well, listen, I'll let you go. I know you're a busy man and thanks for giving me this extra 15 minutes or 16 on this today and um, you know, have a good weekend, stay safe , uh, and uh , stay healthy and , and we'll pick this up again next week. Great, thanks Brian . Um , same view for everybody there. Uh, please stay away from all the human beings. Let's get past this. You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and postproduction provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy . For more information, visit Richard helpy.com .