We Should Abolish Elections

So, what's your take? Uh, my take is that we need to stop having all elections of any kind and we need to choose all of our politicians and leaders through a completely randomized lottery system.

100% disagree that that's the one of the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life. I'm genuinely shocked that you're saying that.

What do you mean you're shock? I'm shocked that you're saying this. What? What? What's bad about it?

So, no more voting. It's all just random.

Well, first of all, no one really votes that much anymore. I mean, turnout is pretty low. True.

And second of all, what are you afraid of if you do that? We might get bad politicians.

Yes, that is what I'm afraid of. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Thinking about how stupid it sounds. Would you say it? [Music]

It can't really get worse. I mean, Donald Trump— Look, he's not good.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of a randomized could— Completely rand like the guy at Starbucks who can't like pronounce your name. He's in your uncle substitute teacher that you're dressed like that guy.

He's in. So my uncle could be Raza.

Well, I mean— Farooq.

Yeah, man. Farukq, bro. Because I figure like really the politicians all they are doing is they're trying to come to an agreement, right? They just got to make a deal. And a lot of time that's about common sense. And this way you wouldn't have political parties anymore, which is good. You wouldn't have like campaign finance.

That would save a lot of time and money. So we get rid of all of that.

You're a little bit changing my mind here because— Okay. Yes.

Right now we have people that want to be politicians cuz they want power— That yes.

But if the random bodega guy— He just wants to get out of there.

If you— All he wants is to go back to the bodega. Think about like jewelry duty, right?

Yeah. You just got to do it. Like nobody wants to do it. You just go, you got to do it. You can't get out of it.

Now, anyone who wants to do jury duty— You don't want them on a jury.

No, you don't. You know what I mean? That's bad news.

So, similarly, anyone who really wants to be a politician— Cuz right now, I guess we got crazy people who also want power, right?

But worst case scenario, we have crazy people who just want to go home. They're pretty much random people anyways.

Fully random. Donald Trump is the most random. It's just a guy.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a guy on reality TV. He's a landlord.

Exactly. Yeah. I figure like you know the people who actually make things run that the guy who can really do math. Yeah.

At the Treasury. So the deep state. The deep state.

Oh, we keep the deep state. We keep the deep state.

Yeah, bro. Come on, man. How do you think like—

So we're not replacing the deep state? No. No. That would be bad. Yeah. I [expletive] with those guys. Like [Music] I mean, do you think we should have any tests? You think there should be like a basic—

They should take the Rishi test. I just found out about the Rishi test. What did you find out about?

I found out that there's a test named after you that's like the Beel test. Yes. Right. But for Muslims and—

It is, it is. The Rishi test is basically a couple of um academics in the UK that studied like representation in film said that if a film doesn't pass like three to five different like tests— Then it's failing in terms of representing Muslims. So if it's showing Muslims as being like terrorists and anti-modern and all this kind of stuff and what it found was unfortunately a lot of like actual bangers that we probably love did not pass that test.

Were you involved in the creation? I've got to say actually wasn't involved at all.

They just said— They randomly took my name and put it on it. But I'll take credit for it if you like it.

Does Four Alliance pass the test? No.

That's what I'm trying to say, bro. My test cancels a lot of my own filmography. You work on so much stuff. Writer, director, producer, actor, musician. How do you pick and choose what you want to work on?

A lot of the time I feel like it chooses you, right? The longer I've been doing this, I realize that the project that you need for any particular moment in your life, it finds you. So, you might be thinking like, man, I want to go here. I want to do left. But actually, what's going on in your life is you you're not getting invited onto any talk show, so you're stuck doing subway takes and stuff like that, right? It's something like that is actually going on in your life. Yeah. I like subways.

And um and um what a script like that will suddenly find you. And so I feel like a lot of the time the thing the stories have a kind of mystical power I believe in my own hippie-ish kind of spiritual way and I feel like the things choose you and you just know. It's kind of like you don't really make a lot of decisions and honestly I feel like your best work is where you've made the fewest possible conscious decisions and choices. Right.

You know, it's like the river just kind of carries you and it's it's a float. Yeah. But I often times find that what I'm once I'm once I feel satisfied, I immediately no longer feel satisfied.

Wow. Like like I I get to the point where I go, you know what? I I think I made it—

And then all of a sudden I'm like, you know what? I need to win an Emmy now. And so I'm unhappy again. And what was that when when you had that happy feeling? What was that feeling? What was the thoughts? Like I've made something I care about with people I like. I went through a creative process. I've grown.

Yes. But then what you want, the junky hit is like the validation.

It felt like when you're on a really long flight and you touch down and you go, I made it. Alhamdulillah. I'm here. I've arrived. Yeah. Yeah.

And then usually what happens to me at least is that I get to that place and I go, all right, well, where are we going to go next? Like Paris is cool, but what about London? I guess like for example, you won an Oscar, right?

You won an Oscar for what was it called again? Is a short film called The Long Goodbye, but it was really a music video.

Kind of. It was a long music video, but also—

On my spot basically. Yeah. You don't want to be a—

Music video out there just— Yeah.

When you said when you made the Long Goodbye? Was it even a consideration in your mind where you were like, you know what? I think I'm going to go for the Oscar.

No, of course not. I mean, look, if you're chasing the validation and the work is usually [expletive]— Usually the best kind of dancing is when you're dancing like no one's looking, right?

Do you know what I mean? If you're self conscious, you're conscious of how you're being perceived, you can't flow. You can't forget yourself. You can't be in the moment. So, generally, the things that really bang are like the things that you barely think people are going to see, you know, let alone you're going for that external validation. My my whole take on it is that like the there's this inherent contradiction between like the creative process and the creative industries, right? The creative process is generally at its best when it's egoless. You literally forget yourself, right? It's not the thinking mind. It's not about control. It's when you forget yourself and you're just part of that moment, right? That's the best creativity. The creative industries, it's all about a brand. It's all about adorning this brand and this personality.

But even with you, we've been walking around here, people like, "Yo, Subway Takes. Yo, I love that." Makes you a bit more self-conscious, a bit more self-aware. So— That's the great contradiction is the more you think about, get involved in, get too sucked into the kind of industry side of it, which is about—