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CLAY: One of the things that I think is so striking right now is the two different worlds that many of us live in. If you are listening to me right now in a red state, your life is almost 100% normal. It’s covid never really existed, by and large. If you are listening to me even in a blue state in a rural area, I think that could also very much be true. But if you’re in New York City or you’re in L.A. or you’re in a major coastal city?

By and large, you are still living under the authoritarian footprint of your mayors, your governors, and certainly your president. I always find that dichotomy to be really interesting in experience. And, Buck, you had that experience on steroids, I would say, this past weekend.

Because you got on a plane in New York City — (laughing) had almost no freedoms — and when you landed two-and-a-half hours later in Birmingham, there were almost no restrictions at all, you. And our producer, Ali, both said how jarring was that dichotomy for you to go from the center of restricted America to the wide-open red states?

BUCK: It’s a little bit in 2021, I would assume, the closest thing an American can get to crossing from East Germany to West Germany in the 1950s. That’s really what it feels like. It feels a little bit like, “Hold on a second. Why is it that this part of the country has embraced normalcy?” And in New York, I’ll tell you, it keeps getting more… As we get close to winter… Everyone knows the wintertime is the worst time for this virus and that’s just clear.

CLAY: All viruses, historically.

BUCK: It’s obvious. Even Fauci says that, and that’s one of the things that he says that’s actually true. So they’re dealing with that anxiety building up, and they’re doing it by masking up outside. You see a lot of people here outside with masks on. I wouldn’t say everybody by any stretch, but it’s 20 to 30% walking around in Midtown of people outside, folks, by themselves, masks on.

You see people riding bicycles in the bike lanes here. For some reason, there’s a correlation between bicycle lane people and mask wearing. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s there. Clay, I would point this out, though, too. What you see in Alabama is there are signs everywhere that say “masks preferred” or “consider wearing a mask.” Everyone’s just like, “We’re not doing that,” you know?

There’s a very different attitude about it with few exceptions. But on the plane, plane there, plane back…? As long as some vestiges of Fauciism remains, it’s only a matter of time before Fauciism returns. That’s the problem. This is what I’ve been saying all along. Even when they felt the vaccine was the end, Clay, I said, “Notice they never got rid of masks on planes.” Why? They never got rid of masks on planes because they know if people cast off all of the vestiges of Fauciism, then it can actually disappear forever. And there are a lot of people that want there to be a new health security state.

CLAY: Were you more optimistic, though, seeing on the ground in Alabama what red state people do? ‘Cause here’s what I’ve been saying all fall. I go around to a different college town every weekend. And we were in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, this weekend — and, by the way, we met a ton of listeners. It was fantastic. Took a lot of pictures. Great to hear so many of you coming up.

And we’ll get Buck’s review of his first college football game. But before we get to that, I have been arguing that college football and NFL fans are leading us in many ways to freedom because there are millions of them showing up every weekend — sold-out stadiums — tailgating, living the best version of their life.

And I can’t imagine them giving up the freedoms now that the stadiums are full again. That’s one reason I thought sports is such an important symbol, even if last night you were watching — like I’m sure 25 million-some-odd people end up watching, 20 million, whatever the number will be — Tom Brady on the road against Bill Belichick in Foxboro.

That’s New England, that’s Massachusetts, that’s an area that has been one of the “strongposts” of Fauciism. Sold out. Not a mask in the crowd that I saw. And I think that’s an important sign of normalcy. Are you more optimistic about people being willing to fight back having been and seen what you saw over the weekend?

BUCK: I gotta tell you, Clay, I think it’s… My takeaway was, I don’t know how the country goes along as it is right now with people that view it so differently.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I don’t have an optimism that New Yorkers and Californians and Massachusettsans…?

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Whatever they are. Whatever we say for that.

CLAY: I think that’s right.

BUCK: Massachuttians? I don’t know. But I don’t have an optimism that they’re gonna change their minds any time soon at all. And I would also say that I’m concerned… Remember, the federal mandate, the Biden administration hasn’t backed off their vaccine mandate, their federal mandate yet. And if anything, the experience of New York City is they think that the “get the shot or you’re fired” program was a smashing success. Now 97 or 98% of teachers in New York City — I think, at least, the number is about 97% — got the shot.

CLAY: People have to work.

BUCK: There was a surge of thousands.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: People need a paycheck. People need their jobs. So they figure, “Oh, okay. That coercion worked in New York.” I can assure you the numbers going into the winter there will be other places that will say it’s time for more coercive mandates. And the federal government is gonna be the one pushing it.

So even places like Alabama. Remember, you get on a plane… So, yes, on the one hand there’s this optimism of 100,000 people living life, enjoying themselves, being out. But it is an outdoor stadium, too, right? So there were outdoor concerts in Chicago, right? But those are okay, according to Fauci, because that’s Chicago —

CLAY: Fauci, by the way, has shut up about college football and the NFL. I haven’t heard him say anything in a while about that.

BUCK: And of course the Met Gala, right? There are certain things —

CLAY: Obama’s birthday.

BUCK: — the libs are fine with that are big gatherings where no one’s wearing masks. So there’s a lot of hypocrisy around it but I feel the country actually coming more apart because you get into an Uber, you are supposed to mask. Even in Alabama, you’re supposed to mask. The drivers are all masked up. All the personnel working at our hotel were masked up the whole time, Clay.

So, yes, it’s better, but don’t you feel like it should be a lot better? If someone gets on a plane in Birmingham and goes anywhere in the country, they’re going to sit there and be lectured by flight attendants who — with Stasi-like zeal — enforce mask-up-between-bites mandate. That’s just… It’s intellectually offensive. It’s offensive on many levels. But they really say, “Mask up between bites,” and they’re tell you. They’ll say, “Excuse me, sir. You’re not actively drinking. Pull your mask up,” as if that does anything.

CLAY: It is a form of madness. I think the only way the madness is gonna be truly apparent is I really do think we’re gonna be looking back in 20 or 30 years, and a lot of people’s grandkids are gonna be saying, “Didn’t you realize that it was stupid that you could walk through an airport and you had to wear a mask but everybody who was eating and drinking at a restaurant…?

“Literally that you could reach out and touch as you’re walking through the terminal didn’t have their masks on and you guys thought that you were making a difference?” I think there’s gonna be a lot of that in the years ahead. But I do think the best way to win is to live your life normally, and I think that every single week there’s more people who are saying, “Okay. I’m gonna live my life normally.”

BUCK: Yeah, I think you have to embrace freedom and push back where you can. But know that there are some places where you really can’t. You can be the one person on a 200-person flight that says or 150-person flight that says I’m not gonna wear a mask. They’re going to kick you off —

CLAY: And ban from you the airline.

BUCK: — arrest you and ban you from the airline.

CLAY: I’m not advocating that, because everybody’s gotta be able to work. Again, I think the fact that the media is blindly covering the idea that mandates work. Yeah, most people have to have a job. And if most people are given a a choice between, “You have to do X or you’re gonna lose your job,” most people pick X because they have mortgages, because they have kids in school, because they have obligations as adults.

I respect the fact that some of you are willing to say, “No, I’m not going to bend down to this authoritarianism. I’ll find a new job. I’ll go somewhere else.” That’s where I think, Buck, the great sorting that is going on is not getting enough attention. To the larger picture here, what covid has done is make the red redder and the blue bluer.

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: Because people who had been on the border of whether or not they were gonna stay in a blue state in particular have fled to red states. And so the number of toss-up states in our Electoral College, I think, is gonna continue to diminish. I think Florida, if you have a good Republican candidate, even more in the Republican bank. Same thing for Texas. Same thing for states like Tennessee. I think Georgia likely has added some voters too. And all of that is going to create more division and dissension in the years ahead no matter what the topic is, covid or otherwise.

BUCK: And no surprise, the illegal immigrants are generally going into either places along the border right away but also blue states. And the biggest concentration of illegal immigrants as a state is California. The biggest concentration of illegal immigrants in any city is New York City, which I think people often forget. So that’s another demographic reality that is playing out before our eyes.

I just want to say, Clay, we used to talk about China’s — and by “used to,” I mean the last few years — social credit system as some horrifying dystopia. “How could anyone live with this and deal with this?” And now you have the Democrat Party in America effectively saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna need QR codes pretty soon here to make sure you get your six-month booster for the virus that’s 99.7% survivable for everybody who gets it who’s under the age of 70.” Yeah, that’s where we are all of a sudden. It’s a pretty remarkable circumstance how quickly we’ve gone from, “Well, China’s tyrannical” to “let’s get some of that Chinese tyranny over here.”

CLAY: And people are begging for more authoritarianism. That’s the crazy thing. By the way, Ali, who was there said, when she landed in Alabama, she took her mask off like a college senior tossing the graduation cap, which is pretty fantastic.