Ep. 751 - Consequence Culture
Episode Stats
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Summary
LeVar Burton is sick and tired of all the talk about cancel culture. The problem with this culture is not that people are being canceled, it's that they are being shut up or censored for having a different point of view.
Transcript
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Is cancel culture real? The left says absolutely not, you crazy conservatives.
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The culture that we're living in right now is a consequence culture of accountability,
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where people are being held responsible for their actions. And that's a very good thing.
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That's a very conservative thing. LeVar Burton, the host of Reading Rainbow, among other TV shows,
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he's sick and tired of hearing all this talk about cancel culture.
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In terms of cancel culture, I think it's misnamed. That's a misnomer.
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I think we have a consequence culture and that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society,
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whereas they haven't been ever in this country.
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So I think that there are good signs that are happening in the culture right now.
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And I think it has everything to do with a new awareness on people who were simply unaware of the real nature of life in this country
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for people who have been othered since this nation began.
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So LeVar Burton is half right. He's not even half right. He's a quarter right.
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Some people are being held to consequence in this country,
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but a lot of times they're not being held to consequence for things they ought to be held to consequence for.
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And if we've learned nothing for the past year and a half, it's that a whole lot of people who go out and pillage
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and burn and loot and steal and even murder are not being held to consequence at all.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday from Jay Hartman, who says,
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the compelled speech pronouns thing reminds me of the mask persuasion. It's not for you. It's for them.
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Don't be selfish. Just repeat lies with us and engage in superstitious nonsense because it's polite.
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This is true. It's all about this emotional blackmail to say, no, it's about, it's about them.
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Don't be mean. Don't be selfish. Just put the donut on your head and jump up and down.
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Hey, just come on, just humiliate yourself and say that up is down and black is white and east is west
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because that's so polite because lies are so polite. Lies are not polite. The truth is polite.
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The truth will set you free. Lies, very, very disrespectful and cruel.
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LeVar Burton's take here is not getting enough traction, but it's what the left has been saying
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for a long time. And I got to tell you, you know that I have a very different view on cancel culture
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than a number of other conservatives. A lot of other conservatives say that cancel culture is bad
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because it's censorship and we're free speech absolutists and you should be able to say whatever
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you want without any consequence whatsoever. And I don't think that's true. I think that when the
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left says that canceling is about consequences, that's a very good thing. When the left says that
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in the 1950s, conservatives canceled communists, I think that's a very good thing. I am all for
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canceling certain people who are trying to upend our culture. Sign me up. Where can I do that?
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The problem with this current culture is not that communists are being canceled. It's that
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anti-communists are being canceled. It's not that some people are being shut up or some people are
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being ostracized for abhorrent views. It's that people are being ostracized for holding perfectly
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ordinary views. They're being ostracized for waving the American flag. That's the problem. The problem
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here is the substance. This is the central issue that conservatives get wrong, which coincidentally,
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I talk about at great length in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,
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available now for pre-order. People who are doing very bad things are not being held to consequence at
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all. Case in point, Black Lives Matter just came out and effectively endorsed Makia Bryant's
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stabbing her, this young woman that she was living with, which was the cause of her being shot by that
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cop. BLM just tweeted out, quote, Makia Bryant, we say her name, another black life stolen, but we refuse
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to define or remember Makia by her final moments. We uplift, celebrate, and honor this black child for
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what she loved. Doing her hair, making TikToks, having fun, just being a teen. Rest in power, queen.
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Makia Bryant, whatever else you want to say, it's a sad thing when people go down a bad path,
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even if they get their comeuppance, it's a sad thing to watch it happen. Makia Bryant's life was
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not stolen. Her life was forfeited. She forfeited her life when she went in and got that knife and
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tried to plunge it into that other girl. That was when that cop did the right thing by killing her,
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by shooting her to neutralize the target, and in so doing, killing her. She just, she was doing what
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she loved. If she had not loved stabbing people, if she had not loved committing this violence,
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she would be alive today. Is it a sad thing that she went down that bad path? Of course that's a
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sad thing. Yep. Fallen world. We refuse to define or remember Makia by her final moments. You see this,
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what they're really saying is, we refuse to define Makia Bryant by the act that got her killed,
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namely trying to stab this girl. We're going to reframe what happened. If Makia Bryant was killed
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because she stabbed a girl, that's totally just. If Makia Bryant was killed because she liked making
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TikTok videos and having fun, well, that's not just at all. They are reframing the situation here,
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just like the 1619 Project reframes American history. It's the same argument as the 1619 Project,
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the author of which gleefully took credit for the 2020 riots all around the country.
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The 1619 Project says, yeah, we're not going to look at American history through the lens of
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all these wonderful, great accomplishments from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all
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the great stuff America's done in the world and all the brilliant reasoning and the wonderful acts
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that brought America into existence. We're only going to focus on the bad stuff. And so we're going
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to hold to consequence some of the greatest men who have ever walked the earth and we're going to
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let vicious people get off the hook. That's the, that's what all of this talk about systemic racism.
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All this is about is reframing the narrative so that some of the, some of the greatest people on
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earth, George Washington, right, are held to account for all the worst things they've ever done.
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And people, other sorts of people who are in favorite groups never get held to consequence at
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all for the bad things that they've done. Lindsey Graham was asked about this on, on Chris Wallace's
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morning show. Is there systemic racism in the United States? His answer, an excellent answer.
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Of course not. Senator, is there systemic racism in this country, in policing and in other institutions?
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No, not in my opinion. We just elected a two-term African-American president. The vice president
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is of African-American Indian descent. So our systems are not racist. America is not a racist country.
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Within every society, you have bad actors. The Chauvin trial was a just result. What's happening in
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Ohio, where the police officer had to use deadly force to prevent a young girl from being stabbed to
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death is a different situation in my view. So this attack on police and policing, reform the police.
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Yes. Call them all racists. No, uh, you know, America is a work in progress, but best, best place
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on the planet. And Joe Biden spends a lot of time running the place down. I wish you had to stop it.
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Much of the talk about systemic racism is explicitly not, is designed explicitly so that people are not
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held to consequence for their actions. Because according to the systemic racism argument, only
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straight white men who know that they're men have any agency whatsoever. So they have to be held to
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account. The cops, good example. Somehow, even if they're a black cop or a Hispanic cop, somehow it's
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still part of the white supremacy system. Cops held to account all the time. They have to wear body
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cameras. Even when they engage in a just killing, like this officer in the Makia Bryant case, he's
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going to have his life ruined. He's going to have LeBron James say, you're next. He's going to be doxxed.
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He's going to face all sorts of consequences. But what about everyone else? What about people who
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are committing crimes? Well, they're only committing crimes because of systemic racism. The systemic
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racism made me do it. What about people who are not taking care of their families and their
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communities? The systemic racism made me do it. Johnny, where's your homework? Oh, the systemic
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racism made my homework. That's where it is. It's not designed for accountability, to use the
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fashionable word. It's designed to allow people to evade consequences. Now, if you have a gripe, if you
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can even contrive some sort of gripe or some complaint, you can get away with basically anything,
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which is why people always want to keep grievance at the forefront of one's mind. The Oscars were the
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other night. You didn't watch. I didn't either. Nobody did. There was an award given out for the
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best live action short film. Not exactly the most prestigious category here, but the winner. If you
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were to win an Oscar for anything, including best live action short film, and these are people,
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the ones who are working in the short films usually are not the superstars here, right? These are people
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who've been working in obscurity in Hollywood for a long time. They finally, their work of art that
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they've created gets the, the industry's highest honor. What would you, you'd probably go up there
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and say, gosh, thank you. I'm so honored. Uh, wow. What a privilege it is to be here. You'd either do
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that or, or you would go whine about police killings or whatever. Today, the police will kill three
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people. And tomorrow, the police will kill three people. And the day after that, the police will kill
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three people because on average, the police in America every day kill three people, which amounts
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to about a thousand people a year. And those people happen to disproportionately black people.
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And, you know, James Baldwin once said, the most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to
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other people's pain. And so I just asked that you please not be indifferent. Please don't be
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indifferent to our pain. The most despicable thing that a person can be is indifferent to other
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people's pain. Like this guy, like this guy who's spouting off and saying every day, the police
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kill three people. Who are the police killing? They're killing, they're killing largely black
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people. Not most people, largely black people. Okay. What sort of black people? He doesn't say that.
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The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of these police involved killings
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are justified. The cops are killing bad guys who are committing crimes.
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But you're being insensible to the suffering of others. What about the suffering of the victims of
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those crimes? What about them? This guy is doing exactly what he's accusing others of doing
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when he is defending criminals. Here, I'll give you another, another slogan that you can lump in with
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your James Baldwin slogan. This one from Adam Smith. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the
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innocent. We just saw a clear example of this in San Francisco.
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A seven-month-old baby is dead in San Francisco because the district attorney refused to do his job
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because the narrative that now exists is that any use of police force is evil and wrong, that
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going after criminals is somehow unjust because the criminals, they didn't choose to become criminals.
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They're just, it's the systemic racist, injustice, patriarchy, white supremacy, toxic. It's everybody's
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fault but their own. You know, now, thank goodness we're living in a consequence culture, as LeVar
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Burton says, and that, and in this consequence culture, all the criminals get to go free. Even
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the Republicans are endorsing this kind of nonsense. It was, it was the most misguided action of the
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Trump campaign, or of the Trump administration, rather. I thought Trump did such great stuff.
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Huge fan of the president, former president now, I guess I have to say. But he focused so much time
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and energy on what, on springing people out of the clink. Why? Why would we do that? When, when did
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Republicans become the party of springing criminals out of the clink? You know what happens when you
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spread, spring criminals from the clink? More people suffer. Chesa Budin, I don't know how to
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pronounce this guy's name. He is a radical district attorney in San Francisco, elected not that long
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ago. Chesa Budin, with his lax policies, allowed a guy with a long rap sheet to get out of the clink.
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He was already booked on domestic violence, but hey, you know, it's just not fair because
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disproportionately men of certain communities are targeted. The, the argument is that black men are
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targeted. It, it, in fact, the criminals are being targeted by the criminal justice system. If there's
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some overlap there, that's a coincidence, I guess. That's not, not the primary motivator. So, okay,
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you let the guy out on all these cockamamie racial theories. What happens? Kills a seven month old kid.
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Where is the consequence for that guy? Okay, now, now he'll go back to jail, I hope, I guess.
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Where's the accountability? Where's the justice? Where are the crocodile tears from the Oscars stage?
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What about this compassionate, wonderful district attorney for prison reform? We do need prison
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reform in this country. We need to put more criminals in prison for longer and they need to
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face stiffer consequences. We, I don't think that anybody can look around at the last year and a
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half as the country is going up, cities being torched every other night and say, you know the,
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you know the problem in this country? We don't have enough criminals on the streets. We need to let
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criminals out of prison. I don't think so. I don't think that's the problem. The Oscars, however,
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were not all bad and not everyone made these stupid speeches like this short film guy, Tyler Perry,
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very, very, very successful filmmaker, came out and made an important point I felt, which is you
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shouldn't judge a book by its cover and we shouldn't vilify people on the basis of their race or even,
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even if they're cops. My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment.
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And in this time and with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that
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wants us to think a certain way, the 24 hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us would teach
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our kids and not only to remember, just refuse hate. Don't hate anybody. I refuse to hate someone
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because they are Mexican or because they are black or white or LBGTQ. I refuse to hate someone because
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they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope that we would
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refuse hate. And I want to take this Gene Herschel Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who
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wants to stand in the middle, no matter what's around the wall, stand in the middle because that's
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where healing happens. That's where conversation happens. That's where change happens. It happens
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in the middle. So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment
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and to help lift someone's feet off the ground. This one is for you too.
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Basically a good speech. There are three kinds of Oscar speeches. One is the typical leftist. You
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whine about everything. The second type of Oscar speech is the one where you say nice political
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things and you take the temperature down a little bit. And then the third kind of Oscar speech is where
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you thank the Academy for recognizing your artistic work. And really all the Oscar speeches should just
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be that third one. But I guess that's out the window now. I guess people don't really do that
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very much anymore. So if you're going to have to deal with a political speech anyway, I guess we want
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one that says what Tyler Perry said. Tyler Perry, notice how clever this is. I don't think Tyler Perry is
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any particular conservative. He doesn't present himself that way. But he goes out there, he says,
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refuse hate. It's kind of this slogan-y bumper stickery line. Okay, refuse hate. Refuse hate
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against Mexicans. Okay, yeah, I know. Everyone's really harsh on the Mexicans, right? Refuse hate
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against black people. Yeah, right. We're living in a white supremacist country, right? Of course,
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everyone hates black people, right? Refuse hate against white people. Well, that's interesting because
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we live in a culture right now where it's the only socially acceptable form of racism is against
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white people. Tyler Perry calling that out. Refuse hate against police officers. Whoa, that's
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interesting. Now we are basically told that if you don't come out and hate cops, that you're somehow
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a white supremacist. So that's a very interesting line. Refuse hate against Asian people. We have
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enshrined in our law discrimination against Asians and whites in the form of affirmative action.
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That's interesting. He's slipping these very important things in here. It's actually a pretty
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productive speech, I think. But the best speech of the night, the one, you know, this is a really
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tailored down Oscar because nobody was watching. We'll get to that in a second. This is a really
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tailored down film year. But in this small room, a musician named Jean-Baptiste, never heard of him.
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He won an award for Pixar's Soul. And this guy got up there and he gave the best Oscar speech I have
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heard in years. Man, you know, what's deep is that God gave us 12 notes. It's the same 12 notes
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Duke Ellington had, Bach had. It's the same 12. Nina Simone and all the nominees. I just want to
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first point out that every gift is special. Every contribution with music that comes from the divine
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into the instruments, into the film, into the minds and hearts and souls of every person who hears it,
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the stories that happen when you listen to it and watch it, and the stories you share,
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the moments you create, the memories you make, man, it's just so incredibly special. And I just want
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to first recognize the nominees and say that I'm incredibly, I'm speaking for all of us, we are
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incredibly humbled and grateful to the Academy for this recognition. And I'm just thankful to God for
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those 12 notes, man. That's so dope. I love that line. I'm just so grateful to God for those 12
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notes. Man, that's so dope. It is. It is. That's the right answer. That's, that's, and it's not false
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modesty, by the way. I was talking about this with Tim Poole and, and the whole show the other night.
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False modesty is not the same as humility. False modesty is another form of pride. So when people
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refuse to take a compliment, that's very often false modesty. Or, you know, when they make a big,
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big deal about getting a compliment, that's a form of false modesty. True humility though,
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is the sincere and totally justified acknowledgement that you are not totally responsible
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for your accomplishments. You're not because you're not responsible for your own life.
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You did not choose to be born into this world. You did not create your own life. Your life is a gift
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from God. Your inborn talents are a gift from God. Even the things you work at, even the, the ways you
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cultivate those talents and nurture them and express them are direct, derived from God. Your work ethic,
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your energy, the, the food of this world, the coffee that you drink to give you energy,
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all, all of that is a gift. And you work in accordance with that grace or you don't,
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you can reject it too. But ultimately you've got to just say, well, thank God for all this stuff,
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right? If you, if you're being really humble and really honest with yourself,
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that's what you would do. That, that would be a great consequence culture to use LeVar Burton's
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phrase. If we were to acknowledge that all these great things in life that we want to take credit
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for, they're not really ours. All these bad things in life that we do, they are our fault when we
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reject the free gifts that we have been given because of this fallen world that we're living in.
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And because of our compromised and corrupted free will, that would be a real consequence
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culture. But what we're seeing right now is the, the opposite of that. What we're seeing right now
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is we're, we're pretending that we deserve all the wonderful things in life. And the minute that
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something doesn't go our way, we complain and we say, this is a grievance and we are victims and
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things are being taken away from us because of the, the patriarchy or the white supremacy or the
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whatever. And then we refuse to take responsibility. We refuse to face consequences for the evil things
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that we do. A world in which you can go out and stab somebody. And then if you are in any way held to
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account for that, you can complain and say, that's unjust. I'm all for a consequence culture. What we're
00:23:54.900
living in right now is the total opposite of that. Ben is going to be talking about some political
00:24:00.560
consequences right now in the redistricting and in the addition of, of congressional seats. That's
00:24:06.740
actually going better for Republicans than for Democrats. Go check that out. Also join us tomorrow
00:24:10.680
for a special episode of Backstage where we will be watching Joe Biden's first congressional speech
00:24:14.460
live. Apparently this is invite only. Uh, we will be giving our expert genius analysis in real time.
00:24:21.960
And as Joe Biden daughters along there, we're going to be drinking a lot of whiskey. So the analysis is
00:24:27.020
going to get more and more expert throughout the night. Make sure to go check that out. Streams
00:24:31.320
tomorrow at 8 30 Eastern, 7 30 central on dailywire.com and on our YouTube channel, the daily wire
00:24:37.400
channel. Also another excellent high energy episode of Candace coming at you this Friday. Candace is
00:24:42.660
going to be talking to Dave Rubin. They're going to be talking about all sorts of stuff, especially
00:24:45.580
what's going on in California because Gavin Newsom is officially being recalled and he's running
00:24:50.320
against Caitlyn Jenner because we are living in a very strange world. Candace streams on Friday,
00:24:56.400
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00:25:00.260
Candace at dailywire.com slash subscribe. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:25:16.420
How do we come back from the political brink? You've got BLM torching the country and defending
00:25:21.840
kids, stabbing other kids just to own the cops calls for abolishing the police entirely. And now
00:25:29.160
the Republican standard bearer, at least in, in California is a man who thinks that he's a woman.
00:25:34.080
We have really, something has gone wrong in our political world. Do you know who has the answer?
00:25:40.880
One of the few politicians with crossover appeal in this country, Tulsi Gabbard, who says,
00:25:46.400
hey guys, chill out, hang loose, and just embrace the spirit of Aloha.
00:25:53.720
My dear friends, my fellow Americans, please, please let us stop the racialization of everyone
00:26:02.720
and everything. It's racialism. We are all children of God and are therefore family in the truest sense,
00:26:11.340
no matter our race or ethnicity. This is Aloha. And this is what our country and the world need.
00:26:19.820
The mainstream propaganda media and politicians, they want us to constantly focus on our skin color
00:26:25.860
and the skin color of others because it helps them politically or financially. Aloha means respect
00:26:33.560
and love for others. It's what enables us to see beyond our skin color and see the soul, the person
00:26:41.400
within. So let's do our best to cultivate this Aloha in our hearts and see and treat others through this
00:26:49.960
prism of love, not through the prism of race and ethnicity. Please let us not allow ourselves to be led
00:26:58.120
down this dark and divisive path of racialism and hate. Love this. Absolutely brilliant. What most
00:27:07.260
people are going to hear is this sort of platitudinous thing about, you know, it's just
00:27:11.180
about Aloha. Just chill out and pop a coconut, you know, and have a few drinks. It's cool, man. We're
00:27:16.520
all, we're all people. Let's just sing Kumbaya. That's not what she's saying. She got a little bit
00:27:21.460
of that because she's a politician, but what she's saying is more specific and more insightful.
00:27:25.640
She says, a lot of people in this country who are in very powerful positions have a financial and
00:27:34.560
political stake in keeping us divided, especially on this fault line of race. She's saying that the
00:27:42.460
establishment, which doesn't like her any more than they like Donald Trump, actually. They're in
00:27:47.060
different political parties, but the liberal establishment, the blob, the corporations, you know,
00:27:52.880
the multinationals, the administrative state, the sort of permanent government, the big tech sector,
00:28:01.960
all of these, the things that all work in tandem don't like Tulsi Gabbard because she contradicts
00:28:08.440
their narrative. And she's saying those guys have a real incentive to keep you all divided up so they
00:28:15.860
can maintain their grip on power. It is just like what Amazon does, for instance, when various local
00:28:24.780
Amazon worker groups want to unionize. You've seen some memos come out about this. Amazon will always
00:28:32.720
go in and find ways to get them to hate each other. And they, and it's not just Amazon. Big companies
00:28:38.220
have been doing this for a long time. They'll go in and figure out the fault lines in the company among
00:28:42.240
the workers so that the workers don't unionize. And then once they get all the workers to hate each
00:28:47.220
other, the big corporation gets to maintain power. The left has, has recognized this for a long time
00:28:53.680
and the right for a long time, especially when the right was shilling for big corporations,
00:28:58.000
refused to acknowledge it. But this is true. This is just what, this is a very basic political
00:29:02.760
strategy and it's obviously what's happening right now. And it does account, I think, for a lot of the
00:29:07.500
focus on these physical characteristics. Notice what she says here. She says, we're all children of
00:29:12.200
God. We're told to think in a racial way primarily, but we're all children of God.
00:29:17.460
What she's saying here as a matter of philosophy is we're told to think about the physical,
00:29:23.620
but actually we have something that binds us at a metaphysical level. This is, by the way,
00:29:29.600
why Christians, regardless of their views on evolution or the origins of mankind, the church
00:29:36.980
has always insisted upon the descent of the human race from two parents. Regardless of how that all
00:29:43.920
came to be, human beings must descend from these two parents. It's called monogenism because
00:29:49.040
that, that accounts for our human dignity and our human solidarity. Now we are made in the image of
00:29:55.660
God. We all have this common link all the way back. Tulsi Gabbard pointing that out. Really,
00:30:01.240
really good stuff beneath all of the lines you've heard about how we should all get along. That key,
00:30:08.400
the propaganda media, that's what you've got to be on your guard against. People don't like it. People
00:30:14.060
don't like the messages that we're being told by the establishment media right now. However, they
00:30:21.080
continue to do it. The numbers are in from the Oscars. This was the lowest rated Oscars ever. Not the lowest
00:30:30.080
rated Oscars in the last five or 10 years ever. The total viewers dropped 58% year over year. So just
00:30:40.780
from last year. But last year was also a record low. So this is an absolute cratering, an absolute
00:30:48.600
collapse. Last year, you had 23.6 million people tune into the Oscars. This year, 9.85 million.
00:30:57.940
Fewer than 10 million for the first time ever. And in the key demographic, 18 to 49, these are the
00:31:04.920
people who are going out and buying stuff, a decline of 64%.
00:31:08.980
15 years ago, Michael Moore got up and gave a political speech at the Oscars bashing George Bush
00:31:16.560
and he got booed. He was actually booed even by the Hollywood liberals because that sort of thing was
00:31:23.500
frowned upon. The Oscars have had political moments for a long time, but they were few and far between.
00:31:30.660
This really began in the 70s when Marlon Brando did not show up to accept his Oscar and he sent
00:31:36.280
a woman who was part Indian to give a speech protesting the treatment of Indians in Hollywood.
00:31:47.440
My name is Sachin Littlefeather. I'm Apache and I'm president of the National Native American
00:31:54.300
Affirmative Image Committee. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell
00:32:00.760
you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, but I will be glad to
00:32:08.460
share with the press afterwards that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award and the
00:32:17.820
reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry, excuse me,
00:32:26.980
and on television, in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.
00:32:43.700
I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will, in the future,
00:32:51.720
our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon
00:32:59.900
Brando. So you can hear in the background when she goes out and gives the somber speech about
00:33:04.480
this relatively minor issue in Hollywood. It wasn't even, you know, he's not going to take this
00:33:10.160
because he's protesting the Vietnam War or he's not, because he's protesting whatever, some other
00:33:15.320
major. He goes, he's protesting the depiction of Indians in Hollywood movies in the seventies. What?
00:33:25.340
And you hear people boo and some people applaud and some people boo and that seems about right.
00:33:31.060
It's gotten so much worse though. Now nobody would boo that speech. Now you'd have to say, wow,
00:33:36.440
oh, that was so beautiful. Every speech has to be Sachin Littlefeather now. Nobody likes it. The audience
00:33:41.940
is totally going away. Why does the left keep this up? Because they have the power.
00:33:49.660
We, I think, like to delude ourselves in this country and say, look, either in the political
00:33:55.620
realm, you say, look, this is a democracy, okay? The people get what they want. Democracy is the
00:34:00.100
theory that the common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard,
00:34:03.700
as H.L. Mencken said. Or this is a capitalist country, okay? The almighty dollar is what decides
00:34:10.000
what's going on. If Hollywood's pushing a bunch of crazy propaganda, it's because they're going to
00:34:13.800
make an extra buck out of it. No, you get, it's, both of those are so reductive. The, the political
00:34:20.460
view actually does not encompass the way that our system of government works in reality. And the
00:34:27.100
economic view reduces man to a purely economic animal, which is not what he is. That's not what
00:34:32.220
we are. We are much more than that. What's actually going on here is something that I document
00:34:38.000
in my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now, by the way,
00:34:40.760
for pre-order. What's actually going on is that radicals who had a very, who have very,
00:34:46.220
very unpopular views were able over decades and decades to attain positions of power and influence
00:34:55.200
throughout the culture, in this case, specifically in the entertainment industry.
00:34:59.220
And they've been able to slowly change the culture, try to get a hold and create a cultural
00:35:05.240
hegemony that the common people are still resisting. They're still tuning this stuff out.
00:35:11.420
But because they have the positions of power, they are not directly accountable. They're not
00:35:15.820
directly responsible. They are not directly held to consequence for their craziness. Eventually,
00:35:22.660
if things trend in this direction long enough and there are no viewers left, at a certain point,
00:35:26.840
you think the Oscars are probably going to have to call it quits, but they'll go on for a very long
00:35:32.340
time. This is not a responsive system right now. This is a minority of, of radical ideologues have
00:35:40.860
taken over huge positions of power everywhere, and they're going to keep pushing their garbage,
00:35:45.600
whether the common people like it or not. They don't like the common people. They think the common
00:35:49.260
people are deplorable and irredeemable. They tell us that to our face when they tell you that
00:35:53.700
you should believe them. Now, occasionally, some people face some consequences for their incompetence
00:36:00.840
and radicalism, as is happening to Governor Newsom right now, Mr. Nusselini out there in California.
00:36:07.020
It is official. This is relatively breaking news. Gavin Newsom will be recalled. The threshold for
00:36:14.680
the recall on the, the signature petition was 1,495,709 signatures. That's the number that they
00:36:23.520
needed to get to. Now, you might say, Michael, they got 2 million, way more than 2 million signatures.
00:36:28.680
So he was obviously going to be recalled. No, because what happens in politics is then you go
00:36:32.500
in and you take out signatures that you can say, oh no, that address wasn't right. That signature
00:36:37.420
doesn't look right. That person moved. So you take them all out. And what, what Newsom was hoping was
00:36:41.180
that he could disqualify enough signatures that he wouldn't even have to face the recall. That's
00:36:45.160
long gone. He's now at 1,626,042 signatures. It's going to go up and up from there. So this guy is
00:36:52.900
officially getting recalled. He might survive it. The reason he might survive it is that the recall
00:37:00.340
process is set up to favor the incumbent. What's going to happen is there's going to be one question
00:37:06.220
on the ballot. Because even though he's being recalled, you still have to answer the ballot
00:37:10.180
measure should Governor Newsom lose his job. And if the majority of people say yes, then they will
00:37:18.060
look at the answers to the next question, which is who should replace him. There are going to be
00:37:20.960
seven zillion candidates. So the only way that the Republicans are going to have a chance is if they
00:37:24.920
solidify around a candidate. Now, as of now, at least in the media, the leading candidate is
00:37:31.340
Caitlyn Jenner. And we talked yesterday on this show, can a conservative go in for Caitlyn?
00:37:38.300
On the one hand, his policies will be better than Newsom's. On the other hand,
00:37:42.460
we'll be mainstreaming transgenderism. That would be absolute death for any sort of conservative movement.
00:37:48.760
And you know that misguided conservatives are going to start parroting stupid things like,
00:37:53.300
you know, Democrats, they're the real transphobes. Oh, we're totally cool with men putting on dresses
00:37:57.520
and pretending to be women. So how do you do this? I was speaking to some friends of mine last night.
00:38:02.200
I said, is there any way for a conservative to get behind Caitlyn? And they made a somewhat,
00:38:06.860
I'm not sure that I'm totally persuaded by this yet, but they did make a somewhat compelling case that
00:38:10.920
the only way to do it is if you had a group called Conservatives for Bruce.
00:38:16.080
Bruce. Conservatives for Bruce that insisted in all cases to refer to him as him and probably just
00:38:23.960
to call him Bruce because the Caitlyn thing is very confusing. What you would need is a real assurance
00:38:31.360
that Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce Jenner, was not going to push gender ideology on conservatives and on the
00:38:40.980
people. And as far as I can tell, the only way to do that, while still letting him prance around in
00:38:46.460
dresses or whatever he wants to do, whatever makes him feel more, more like how he wants to feel on
00:38:51.580
the inside, is if he drops the female pronouns. And frankly, if he goes back to his old name,
00:38:59.200
could, could a guy vote for, could a conservative vote for Bruce Jenner if Bruce Jenner has this sort of
00:39:05.320
strange sexual desire? Yeah, maybe, maybe. But could a conservative vote for Caitlyn who insists
00:39:13.460
on going by she and who insists on abolishing same sex bathrooms? I don't think so. I think that would
00:39:20.840
be very, very difficult. So if you're in that world where Caitlyn Jenner or Caitlyn, she is the leading
00:39:27.620
Republican candidate and probably Newsom is going to survive that and will not be held to account.
00:39:36.080
The people who are in power are very clever. They're very crafty. Who's the most powerful
00:39:41.440
politician in the country right now? This should be a simple question. If you hesitated, you haven't
00:39:46.880
been paying enough attention. It's not Gavin Newsom. It's not, certainly not Joe Biden. It's not Kamala
00:39:52.920
Harris. Come on. It's a very easy answer. The most powerful politician in the country is Dr. Fauci.
00:40:00.380
He's one of the most powerful politicians in the history of this country.
00:40:04.240
He has no democratic accountability. Presidents come and go. He's worked for five of them. He always
00:40:09.140
stays in his position of power. He is almost single-handedly crafting national policy right
00:40:13.720
now. He's, he's been doing that from the Trump administration. He's doing that now in the Biden
00:40:17.500
administration. And even Fauci knows, even Fauci knows that he's got to be sort of clever about this
00:40:22.540
because his power is not totally unlimited. Dr. Fauci has come, he's been ruling with an iron fist
00:40:31.760
now for over a year. But he went on one of the Sunday shows on, on ABC and he was asked, hold,
00:40:40.880
okay, come on. We're over a year into this now. Do people still need to wear the masks all the time?
00:40:45.940
They even need to wear the masks outdoors? Fauci said, well, you know, look, maybe,
00:40:49.960
maybe we can negotiate here. You know, I don't want to get ahead of them, George,
00:40:54.580
but I think it's pretty common sense now that outdoor risk is really, really quite low, particularly,
00:41:01.260
I mean, if you were a vaccinated person wearing a, wearing a mask outdoors, I mean, obviously the
00:41:07.040
risk is minuscule. What I believe you're going to be hearing, what the country is going to be going
00:41:12.240
to be hearing soon is updated guidelines from the CDC. The CDC is a science-based organization.
00:41:20.640
They don't want to make any guidelines unless they look at the data and the data backs it up.
00:41:25.580
But when you look around at the common sense situation, obviously the risk is really very
00:41:30.680
low, particularly if you're vaccinated. Okay. So now we have, I think this is the 17th
00:41:35.680
mask position from Dr. Fauci. Remember the first position was masks are dumb and stupid and they
00:41:42.880
don't do anything and you shouldn't wear one even at the height of a pandemic. It's not going to,
00:41:47.100
maybe it will block a droplet, but it'll be bad because you'll touch your face. So do not wear the
00:41:52.580
mask sheep. Then he changes his position and he says, actually masks are really good. They're
00:42:00.080
necessary. You have to wear the masks. I only told you that you shouldn't wear the masks because I
00:42:05.080
wanted to save them for the nurses. Okay. Then we got to wear double masks. Now we don't need to wear
00:42:11.600
masks outside. Soon, maybe. What's going on here? Fauci is not giving a scientific proclamation.
00:42:20.180
He is a very, very adept and clever politician who is navigating the political waters as best he can
00:42:28.140
in trying to hold on to power. There is no simple answer here. When people,
00:42:34.400
when people tell you that the answer in politics is clear, it's so clear what, what is, what to do.
00:42:41.140
I'm reminded of a saying of, of my priest, Father, Father Rutler, where he says,
00:42:51.620
complicated things, deep things, true things are profound. They're murky. They're a little
00:42:57.960
trickier. Someone came in and said, look, advanced calculus is clear. You say, well,
00:43:04.180
I don't know if it is. I think it's pretty advanced actually. It's sort of complicated.
00:43:08.340
That same thing here. If we want to take power back from these people, if we want to hold these
00:43:12.640
people to consequence, we're going to have to be clever and crafty and we have to ditch the old
00:43:18.300
bumper sticker slogans. This is much more complicated than, come on, just free speech,
00:43:24.560
free speech absolutism. Uh, just read the constitution. Uh, just go back to the 1780s.
00:43:31.400
That's not, it's not a serious answer. That is not going to wrest power back from these people.
00:43:37.740
We're going to have to be cleverer than them. We are seeing some consequences right now in our legal
00:43:43.360
system. Consequences of the past year and a half, more than that, where the liberal establishment
00:43:48.640
has told us that cops are evil, racist, terrible people. And anytime they do their job and enforce
00:43:55.360
the law, they could have their lives ruined and end up in the clink for, for life. Right now,
00:44:00.700
people are quitting the NYPD in droves. Uh, there is a 75% increase year over year in the number of cops
00:44:12.120
cops, retiring, quitting their jobs. 75% increase year over year, amounting to 15% of the total number
00:44:21.480
of officers on the force. Some people are saying, good, good. You know, the left wants to abolish
00:44:26.860
the police. Fine. Get the police out of their crappy neighborhoods and see how they like it.
00:44:31.140
Good. Give them what they want. Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want,
00:44:35.080
deserve to get it good and hard. I don't think that's the right idea. I don't think we should
00:44:40.680
cede this ground. I don't think we should allow the left to abolish the police. I don't think
00:44:44.900
we shouldn't cede any of that at all. I think that is the same failed strategy that we have
00:44:53.080
been practicing for years and years and years. It's that same strategy of forget about politics,
00:44:57.840
only focus on the culture. It's that same failed strategy of, hey, look, I don't care what you say
00:45:02.980
or do. Just don't make me pay for it. I'm for freedom in the abstract. Totally a historical
00:45:08.260
understanding of freedom that has no basis in the actual American tradition.
00:45:12.780
Founding fathers would find it completely foreign.
00:45:16.280
No, we need to get involved. We need to say, no, you want to abolish the police? We're going to
00:45:19.620
double the police and we're going to send them into your neighborhoods and you're going to call us
00:45:22.740
sexist and racist and this is to, I don't care. We're going to enforce the law. We're going to
00:45:27.120
enforce our traditional American standards. Okay. We're going to enforce the good and the true and
00:45:33.180
the beautiful and not the bad and the wicked and the ugly and the unjust and the false. We're going
00:45:38.660
to actually stand for a substantive message here, which brings me to that MMA fight between the ladies
00:45:46.520
that happened this weekend. This was the fight between Rose Namahunas and Zhang Wiley at the UFC.
00:45:53.540
I didn't watch this. We did cover it on the show a couple of weeks ago because there was this great
00:45:58.580
moment before the fight where Rose Namahunas said, look, I'd rather be dead than red. I stand for the
00:46:05.460
West. I stand for the tradition of freedom that we have here. I don't like communist China. I don't
00:46:10.580
stand for that. There's a real ideological battle going on and I stand on the side of freedom.
00:46:16.320
Wow. Love that. That's great. Totally for that. But I did not watch the fight. I had no desire to
00:46:23.020
watch the fight. I don't intend ever to watch one of these fights. I guess I'm glad that the freedom
00:46:27.740
girl won. That's good. Namahunas beat the other girl. She was very happy about that. Good for her.
00:46:34.220
We should not be watching women beat each other up. That is just wrong. That's just disordered.
00:46:40.400
A healthy society doesn't do that. Hate to be a wet blanket. Hate to be a fuddy duddy here,
00:46:45.740
but I don't want to watch a woman get her head beaten in. That's weird. That's a, that's a perverse
00:46:51.020
thing. People shouldn't be doing that. But Michael, come on. You know, they can do it. They're
00:46:55.900
really strong. They are really strong. I bet, I bet actually some of them could beat me up,
00:46:59.180
even though men are physically much stronger than women. These are pretty tough ladies. Okay.
00:47:02.780
I'm not doubting that at all, but it's still wrong. And when, when the right goes in on this stuff and
00:47:07.620
says, oh, come on, whatever they want to do, if they want to do it, that's cool. Just don't make me do
00:47:11.220
it. When the right goes in on this, we give up the whole game. No, women should not be beating each
00:47:18.800
other up in public. That's whether it's in sport or whether it's in the streets or wherever that is
00:47:24.420
wrong. We're giving away the whole, we're giving, we might as well vote for Caitlin.
00:47:27.420
We're giving away the whole, we might as well use the pronouns if we're saying that there's no
00:47:30.640
difference between men and women. No, we have to stand for something more guys. We've got to stand
00:47:37.700
for something more than just do whatever you want. We are going to live in a consequence culture.
00:47:43.040
LeVar Burton is absolutely right. But what are the consequences going to be? What is the standard
00:47:47.480
going to be against which we are judged? I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. See you
00:47:52.260
tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:48:02.900
word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple
00:48:08.400
Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other
00:48:13.960
Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:48:19.040
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our technical
00:48:24.700
director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling. Production
00:48:30.340
manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
00:48:37.500
Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva. And production coordinator, McKenna Waters. The Michael Knowles
00:48:42.780
Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
00:48:46.460
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, red and purple states gain congressional seats as blue states
00:48:51.700
lose population. The anti-cop movement continues to gain steam, and we discuss the single worst
00:48:56.920
example of woke mob targeting I've ever seen. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show. Give it a listen.