Welcome to The Lost Debata Show for Politically Ecclectics.

I'm Robbie Gupta and in this episode, I will go through many of your voicemails that you've sent me over the past week or two.

And I'll also give some big picture thoughts on where we are today in our politics.

Before we get there, I just want to tell you a story about Thursday night.

I went to this veterans fundraiser.

And the keynote speaker was this guy who was a veteran, I think, of the Afghanistan War,

and he was telling the story of how it might have been an IED or a grenade had impacted near him

and took off a chunk of his face and his body. And he told the story

about how over the course of months, medical professionals and other members of the military

and nonprofit community worked together to reconstruct his face and body, save his life,

and give him the opportunity to stand on that stage.

And it should have been an inspiring moment. But as this guy was speaking, I looked around my table

and over half of the people at the table were staring at their phones. And I peeked over to

the woman next to me just to see what she could have possibly been looking

at. Maybe she was anxious about the election and that's what was captivating her attention,

which still wouldn't be great, but it would have been better than what I saw, which was

that she was picking out furniture. And I mentioned this because this is a symptom of something larger going on in this country.

There's something deeply wrong with where we are right now.

And it goes beyond our inability to pay attention.

It has to do with what we do when we're not paying attention to what's in front of us.

Like, yes, our ability to recognize when we're not paying attention to what's in front of us. Like, yes, our ability to recognize

when we're standing on holy ground and when we're in the presence of greatness, right, that is one

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