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America's bickering is becoming boring: Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman

Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman shares his views on the nature of national discourse around various topics including vaccines and where average Americans most likely stand on them

Video Transcript

- In the midst of this pandemic, one thing is clear manners may have taken a backseat and in the words of Yahoo Finance's, Rick Newman saying as we take stock of 2021, the second year of a once a century pandemic was obviously a time of challenges relentless COVID 19 and delayed economic recovery. A whiff of inflation did we overcome with grace or grit. So which is it Rick grace or grit?

RICK NEWMAN: Neither. I'm disgusted with the country as 2021 draws to a close. I think all we did all all year was bicker, we're a nation of bickerson's and we are arguing over relatively small things but we obviously face challenges with COVID but there is a simple thing to do, which is get vaccinated, be smart, and try to get through to the other side and we're having a lot of really dumb arguments about whether we should even do that. We've got almost 40 million Americans still resisting vaccines. I don't know what their plan is, we seem to read every day about somebody who resisted vaccines and then contracted COVID, some of them die.

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And it's not just that Jared. I mean, the divisiveness in the country has led us all to just label the other side as if we can only be one thing or other in the America. You're either a liberal or conservative, each side kind of hates the other. I realize I'm generalizing here but if you ask yourself, were there any big ideas that really captured the nation's imagination this year? I don't think there were.

There were really important things happening. We saw civilians going into space. Space is really becoming an important frontier for real not just science fiction. Other kinds of technology breakthroughs and of course, we had scientists give us these vaccines, which were a remarkable development but we just seem to be mired in small mindedness. I hope it's temporary, perhaps we'll have bigger ideas in 2022.

- And Rick we have a couple of minutes to talk here. How do we fix this? What's the grand plan and you know, let's say everybody gets vaccinated, people could still have chips on their shoulder could be in foul moods, there's been a lot of mental damage done because of the restraints of the pandemic. How do we get back to this point? Not that we were there in 2019 but to a more decent civilization where people kind of respect each other. Just walking down the street and doing simple things.

RICK NEWMAN: I think one of the things that really defines life today is people focus too much on these national battles that basically take place on cable TV but don't really represent real life. You know people do ask me this and I invite people to respond to my stories and tell me what's on their mind and I have conversations like this with people and you know what I say to them, you don't live in Washington DC, you don't live on Fox News, you don't live on MSNBC or wherever you spend a lot of your time, you live in a local community. And I think when people think about living in their local community, critical race theory is not usually a big issue in your local community.

All these political issues that we get all fired up about whether it's immigration or taxes or whatever, these are just not big issues so much where people actually live, where you talk with your neighbors, your family members, you go to church, you see people you know in the grocery store, you see other parents at school, you try to get your kids through school. I mean, a lot of Americans work hard, I understand people are busy. They don't have a lot of time to figure out some of these complicated issues but honestly, I think if we sort of tune out, the National news which is really just become a kind of inside the Beltway reality show with people squabbling and battling and fighting all the time and live where you actually put your feet and where you go to bed at night. I think life is better in local communities than it is in this kind of artificial world we see on TV.

- Well, Rick I kind of have to agree with you there because I've seen--

RICK NEWMAN: You have to agree or disagree.

- Oh well, I just happen to agree here because I see the same problems in a microcosm. Not only around me but in my own building. So I pray for mankind, I guess the bottom line here is just kind of tune out the noise, tune out the news except for Yahoo Finance and live to see another day hopefully with a smile on your face. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman, thank you for stopping by.