Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 247 ｜ Gaslighting, Virtue-Signaling & Social Justice

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We've

00:00:05.940 got a fun, I think it's fun, I mean talking about politics is fun for me, so I think this is a fun

00:00:13.400 episode today. We are going to be talking about two trends very prevalent in our current political

00:00:20.280 and news-centric conversations and that is gaslighting virtue signaling and how these

00:00:27.260 things go hand in hand and how they relate to social justice and leftism as an ideology in

00:00:34.280 general and then we will talk about how we as Christians in our behavior and the things we

00:00:39.620 pursue and the way that we act should oppose these things that are not only divisive and destructive

00:00:46.280 but are also sinful. Okay, so gaslighting, virtue signaling, social justice, what do all of these

00:00:55.180 things have to do with one another? Why are we talking about these things? Why is it important?

00:00:59.540 Well, I am going to tell you first, as we always do, let us define our terms. So to gaslight, if you

00:01:07.300 are on Twitter, which God bless you if you're not, honestly every day I debate whether or not I am

00:01:12.460 going to delete my Twitter because it is such a cesspool, but it's also a good tool to be able to

00:01:18.780 stay in the know and to be able to state your opinion and to insert your voice into the public

00:01:23.820 arena. And hopefully you're hoping against hope that maybe you are making some kind of difference

00:01:29.040 by putting out what you believe to be truth. But for the most part, it truly is a cesspool, which

00:01:35.400 drags you down into the dregs of its misery. And this term, gaslight, is a term that is used a lot

00:01:45.400 on that site. And what it means is it is making someone feel crazy for feeling a certain way by telling

00:01:52.800 them that they have no reason to be angry or upset or frustrated when in fact there is in reality a

00:01:59.820 reason for them to be angry and upset and frustrated. So let me give you an example of this that has

00:02:04.780 nothing to do with politics in the news. So for example, this is what abusive boyfriends and

00:02:10.200 girlfriends often do to their significant others. So because most of you who are listening and

00:02:16.100 watching are women, I will use the scenario of a guy doing this to a girl. So say a guy is cheating 1.00

00:02:23.200 on a girl. And as girls, you probably have friends who have been in this scenario. He starts doing

00:02:28.800 things that the girlfriend finds suspicious. He is staying out late without texting her back. He's

00:02:36.080 keeping his phone with him at all times, like won't let her even touch his phone, acting despondent in

00:02:41.780 their conversations. Generally, he has changed his attitudes and behavior and whatever. And as it

00:02:47.820 turns out, behind the scenes, he is actually cheating on her. And the girlfriend is picking

00:02:52.580 up on these behaviors and she starts to wonder, hey, is he being unfaithful? So maybe she starts

00:02:58.240 asking questions. Maybe even she comes right out and says, hey, are you cheating on me? And the 0.91

00:03:04.140 boyfriend, rather than just denying it, he does what is called gaslighting. He says, oh my gosh, babe,

00:03:09.900 you're so paranoid. You're so crazy. You're psycho. I don't have any suspicious behavior. I'm not doing 1.00

00:03:16.300 anything different. That is gaslighting. To take an example of how this is happening right now in the

00:03:23.540 news, and this is not the subject that we're spending the entire episode on today, but this

00:03:30.880 is just an example of gaslighting. This is happening with the Kavanaugh versus Joe Biden coverage debate

00:03:37.700 that's happening online and in the news. So as we have talked about a few times now, the media

00:03:42.580 feverishly and without discretion covered the Kavanaugh saga as if Blasey Ford's accusations were

00:03:48.620 absolute fact. Much of the same media are now tiptoeing around the issue. Not every journalist,

00:03:53.640 but a lot of journalists are tiptoeing around the issue, like the Washington Post, the New York

00:03:58.100 Times, and they are giving Biden the benefit of the doubt, writing headlines about conservatives'

00:04:04.100 reaction to the accusations, casting doubt on Biden's accuser, calling for due process, demonstrating

00:04:10.880 all of the hesitance and the investigative skepticism that they should have been using

00:04:16.960 during the Kavanaugh confirmation. That is the point that conservatives are trying to make.

00:04:21.560 Not that we should automatically believe Biden's accuser, but that we should have the same standard

00:04:26.520 of skepticism for all accusations. So conservatives have pointed this out that, hey, this is a double

00:04:32.600 standard. This is pretty obviously a double standard. And then we get this lovely tweet from

00:04:38.520 a journalist, Kirsten Powers of CNN. She's a columnist also for USA Today. She says, as I point

00:04:46.400 out in my column today, there is no double standard in the way Kavanaugh was treated versus Biden. A few

00:04:52.040 Dems called for immediate withdrawal of nomination, but the prevailing view was that the accusations

00:04:57.480 should be heard and investigated. Same should be done with Reed. Now, this is just not true. This

00:05:04.640 is what not only do we call gaslighting, and I'll explain that, but it's also what you call a memory

00:05:10.200 hauling something. So if you have never read 1984, we are going to read it in my women's book club that

00:05:15.700 I have online, but also you should just read it whenever you can. You should pick it up if you've

00:05:20.980 already read it and just give yourself a refresher. There's something called a memory hole in 1984.

00:05:25.860 They shoot newspapers down this memory hole, never to be seen again. So you don't know what

00:05:33.700 the news was yesterday. So if yesterday you thought you read in the newspaper that we are at war with

00:05:38.440 Eurasia, the next day the headline could say that you are at war with East Asia and you would have 1.00

00:05:43.280 no idea whatsoever, no history book, no literature, no newspaper to tell you otherwise. And so you really

00:05:51.180 never know what was reality yesterday versus what is reality today. So that is something that a lot of

00:05:57.400 journalists, unfortunately, including Kirsten Powers, is attempting to do with this whole Kavanaugh thing. 1.00

00:06:02.460 They are trying to memory hole what the reaction was so they can say they're not holding a double

00:06:07.060 standard now. But the truth is that every single Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the

00:06:12.020 time of the whole Kavanaugh thing, and most Democrats beyond that committee, both in the House and the

00:06:17.180 Senate immediately called for his nomination to be revoked. They immediately and unconditionally

00:06:23.460 believed not only Christine Blasey Ford, not just gave her the benefit of the doubt, not just said,

00:06:30.320 hey, you know, it's probably rare that a victim is going to falsely accuse someone, especially

00:06:36.940 this publicly. They didn't just say that. They completely unconditionally believed her,

00:06:42.940 but they also believed the accusations of Julie Swetnick, who took back her own accusation, and Deborah

00:06:48.800 Ramirez, whose story of Kavanaugh flashing people at a party when he was in high school was never

00:06:54.180 corroborated and was even contradicted. They ran with these stories feverishly full steam ahead. Kirsten

00:07:00.460 Powers, this woman who wrote the tweet that said there's no double standard, she herself wrote for USA

00:07:06.920 Today in 2018 that while Kavanaugh should be forgiven, he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. She said,

00:07:13.300 if the person who sexually assaulted me and my friend turned into an outstanding citizen,

00:07:18.360 good father and husband, do I think that he should be put on the Supreme Court? No, I don't. Kirsten

00:07:23.320 Powers says, we should send teenage boys the message that they can, we should, we cannot send teenage boys 1.00

00:07:30.000 the message that they can sexually assault someone, and as long as they eventually become good citizens,

00:07:35.020 we will elevate them to one of the most important positions in our society. We cannot send the message

00:07:39.400 to teenage girls that attacks on their bodies don't matter because the perpetrator is young 0.99

00:07:43.980 like them. She then wrote on May 1st, 2020 for USA Today regarding the Biden allegation,

00:07:51.320 you can believe Reed, that's Tara Reed, and vote Biden. All right, so let's try to square this.

00:07:58.080 Her reasoning for Kavanaugh not sitting on the Supreme Court was that we need to make sure that

00:08:02.020 teenage boys get the right message, that they know that their actions matter, and that teenage girls

00:08:06.500 know that they should be respected. So why doesn't that same reasoning extend to Biden? According

00:08:12.600 to this logic, by saying that, by staying in the race and by voting for him, would we not be telling

00:08:21.060 men that as long as they're powerful, and it happened a long time ago, that they can get away with

00:08:27.040 whatever they want and run for president with impunity? And are we not telling women by Kirsten 1.00

00:08:33.340 powers is logic, that their stories aren't to be believed if their perpetrator is a democrat?

00:08:38.660 Or is, for some reason, Tara Reed's story less believable than Blasey Ford's? For reasons that

00:08:45.660 honestly escape unbiased logic. This is what is called a double standard. Just own that. She also

00:08:54.600 reportedly deleted all of her anti-Kavanaugh tweets. If there wasn't a double standard, then why would you

00:09:01.120 need to delete them? This is what gaslighting is. Gaslighting is making you feel like you are crazy

00:09:07.120 or wrong for your reaction by telling you the thing you're reacting to doesn't actually exist when,

00:09:14.020 in fact, it does. This is a tactic. Unfortunately, it does happen on the right and the left, but it is

00:09:19.780 so prevalent on the left because this is what the ideology is built on, and we'll get more into that

00:09:25.380 in just a second. Now that you know about it, you will see it more and more. So here's another example

00:09:31.040 of this happening. As you know, conservatives and Republican governors who are, most of them are in

00:09:38.040 favor of strategically reopening the economy so, you know, people can get back to work and provide for

00:09:43.860 their families and can get the kind of non-COVID-related medical treatment that they need. They are being

00:09:50.860 accused. We, as conservatives, are being accused of sacrificing people. Sacrificing people for a 401k,

00:09:57.820 sacrificing people to get a haircut, sacrificing the elderly. The Washington Post wrote a story

00:10:03.420 titled, Many Parts of America Have Already Decided to Sacrifice the Elderly. The article argues that states

00:10:09.920 that have lax rules or are opening parts of their state back up are sacrificing old people. The Atlantic 0.99

00:10:16.720 had a similar piece titled, Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice, talking about Governor Kemp starting

00:10:22.380 to strategically and slowly allow businesses to open back up. And just a reminder, none of these

00:10:28.660 governors, none of these government leaders are forcing businesses to open up or forcing individuals

00:10:33.940 to go outside. It's about, okay, we've got to have some level of mutual trust here in order to function

00:10:39.700 as a society and in order for you to be able to provide for your family. That's what is happening

00:10:45.900 here. But all over, liberal media and Twitter, conservatives are being accused of being heartless,

00:10:51.040 of not caring about the most vulnerable because we believe in strategically opening things back up

00:10:57.000 while still practicing or while still protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. It's like saying this

00:11:03.600 is a form of gaslighting because it's like saying you are crazy for wanting to open back up. 0.99

00:11:08.980 You are completely irrational. You're illogical for wanting to do this. Don't you see you're a bad 0.99

00:11:15.200 person for wanting to sacrifice all these people? But the reality is, again, that we're not. Abuse is

00:11:20.780 up. Suicide is up. Depression is up. Loneliness, anxiety. Like I said, people can't get their surgeries

00:11:26.060 and cancer treatments. People can't provide for their families. People need work for both provision

00:11:31.080 and purpose. Lockdowns have fatalities too. So we're not crazy. Of course, we care about the vulnerable

00:11:37.840 and the sick and the dying. And I think that people should take responsibility and still distance and

00:11:42.460 all of that. But none of the people, by the way, calling us crazy can tell us what the actual

00:11:49.700 solution is. What will an indefinite lockdown do? When do we open up? And why do we open up? What

00:11:57.320 exactly are we waiting for? So if not right now, since the curve is already flat, the hospital system is

00:12:02.920 not overwhelmed. In fact, lots of nurses have been laid off, furloughed because hospitals around the

00:12:09.160 country are across the country are empty. People can't stay inside until a vaccine is developed.

00:12:15.560 We don't even know if that's going to be effective. We don't know when that's going to happen. It could

00:12:20.640 be two years from now. But the people that are saying that we are crazy, that we are irrational,

00:12:26.300 that we are heartless and lack compassion don't have a solution themselves. This is just a way to

00:12:32.360 gaslight, to make you feel immoral and insane. And yes, to virtue signal, which we will get to

00:12:38.740 that in a second. All of this, by the way, brought to you by the same people who are for abortion and

00:12:45.320 assisted suicide. So I'm not really interested in taking cues from people who think that you should

00:12:50.040 be able to dismember a defenseless baby inside the womb on compassion, not taking cues on compassion 0.54

00:12:56.380 from those people. Meanwhile, and this is just another part of this. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo of

00:13:02.180 New York issued an order on March 25th, according to the New York Post, that elderly coronavirus

00:13:07.640 patients still positive with the virus must be accepted into nursing homes. That has been disastrous

00:13:16.040 and absolutely deadly for the New York elderly population. According to the New York Times,

00:13:21.540 at least 14 New York nursing homes have had more than 25 virus deaths. And that was reported mid

00:13:28.500 April. But no conservatives who want to slowly and strategically open things back up for the sake

00:13:34.260 of people's lives and livelihoods. We are the ones who are heartless and are sacrificing the elderly 1.00

00:13:39.360 on the altar of our 401k, right? Here's another example of this gaslighting that is just so prevalent

00:13:46.520 right now. John Favreau of the Favreau, I don't know how you pronounce his last name, of the left

00:13:51.560 wing angst podcast, Pod Save America, tweeted this the other day. He said, I can't imagine being in a

00:13:58.020 political party. I just can't even say this without laughing. He said, I can't imagine being in a

00:14:05.680 political party that has an entire propaganda network at its disposal. Do GOP staffers even prepare

00:14:12.200 their bosses for Fox interviews? No hard questions, no gotchas, no follow-ups, nothing even remotely

00:14:18.840 challenging. Oh my goodness. So this is a form of gaslighting, making you a conservative feel crazy

00:14:25.980 for thinking Democrats have propaganda networks when in fact, according to this person, it's the

00:14:31.960 Republicans that do. And Democrats apparently, apparently are all alone out there in the big,

00:14:38.840 bad, journalistically rigorous world of mainstream media. He goes on to say in a little tweet thread

00:14:45.080 that if MSNBC is considered a democratic propaganda network, he wants a different one. Okay, great.

00:14:51.460 Well, you've got a wide array of choices here, John Favreau. You get to choose from a few. You can have

00:14:56.560 CNN, you can have ABC, who are totally ready to and willing and actually are right now bowing down to

00:15:05.500 any part of the democratic platform, or I could interest you in some newspapers like the New York

00:15:09.840 Times or the Washington Post. There's some online outlets like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, like if

00:15:15.140 you're feeling fun, or you could take a magazine like the New Yorker or Time, or maybe you're looking

00:15:21.520 for like a whole social media platform. Maybe you're looking for Twitter or Facebook, or you can just go

00:15:26.880 ahead and take all of Google. That includes YouTube. Great. And just for good measure, you can have all of

00:15:32.440 Hollywood do your bidding as well. So if you don't have the propaganda networks that you like,

00:15:38.860 if MSNBC is cutting it for you, you've got a wide array of options to choose from. But no,

00:15:46.000 apparently conservatives have one mainstream network that is somewhat sympathetic to Republicans and

00:15:52.580 conservatism, and it's labeled a preposterous propaganda machine. Okay, got it. So that is him

00:15:59.260 trying to make you feel crazy for thinking that the media is biased, is biased towards the left,

00:16:06.740 which of course, in fact, you are not. That is like the cheating boyfriend that we talked about

00:16:12.540 at the beginning of this, accusing his girlfriend of cheating, of her being the one of cheating,

00:16:17.600 when in fact, she is not. That is this form of gaslighting. And we see this kind of stuff

00:16:23.100 constantly being accused of the very thing the other side is doing, being accused of overreacting

00:16:30.040 or reacting wrongly altogether when our reaction, not all the time, but so many times, especially in

00:16:36.800 the last few months, is in fact justified. This is exactly what happens when outlets like the

00:16:42.020 Washington Post report, quote, conservatives pounce rather than on the thing on which we are pouncing,

00:16:47.900 which is the actual story. So gaslighting is inextricably intertwined with virtue signaling,

00:16:55.800 what is known as virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is a phrase that I hear a lot, but I'm not sure

00:17:01.380 if everyone knows what it means. It often can be the same thing as gaslighting, but it is slightly

00:17:08.280 different. A virtue signal is when you literally signal virtue. You're over there and you're standing

00:17:13.800 up on the hill and you're like, I'm virtuous. You're signaling that you are virtuous, but

00:17:18.560 there's no real virtue behind it. You were just saying something to make you look awesome,

00:17:24.440 to make you look like a good person, but you saying it doesn't accomplish anything. Does it mean

00:17:29.760 anything? There's no substance or action behind it. Or you stated something really obvious that no one

00:17:35.880 disagrees with and, or maybe, uh, you don't even really truly agree with it. And your actions actually

00:17:42.400 belie your virtue signaling. So some examples, the U S women's soccer team refusing to go to the

00:17:47.980 white house after they won the world cup virtue signal. That's not brave. It didn't accomplish

00:17:53.380 anything. It didn't actually do anything that doesn't make anyone moral or virtuous. Sure. That's

00:17:58.560 their prerogative and that's totally fine, but it wasn't courageous. It wasn't virtuous. It wasn't

00:18:03.700 moral. They did it to signal their supposed virtue to the left wing world. Uh, there is a form of

00:18:11.160 virtue signaling that is also not just meaningless, but totally hypocritical. So putting on a show of 0.77

00:18:18.240 virtue while contradicting that show with their actions. So this hilarious thing happened with

00:18:24.140 Andrew Cuomo. You might've heard on the news last week that, wow, New York city is doing this

00:18:28.900 awesome thing. They're sanitizing the subways and the media put this out there. Like we're all

00:18:35.180 supposed to applaud, but we're kind of like, good. Maybe you should have done that. I don't know.

00:18:42.340 Maybe you should have been doing that for the last forever, but you especially should have done it

00:18:46.720 eight week, uh, eight weeks ago, six weeks ago. Come on. Like, okay. And so now there's this picture

00:18:53.760 of Andrew Cuomo. He is, um, going out there and he is spraying down the subways with sanitizer and the

00:19:02.920 media is like, wow, this is the leader that we need. The left is like, gosh, Trump would never do

00:19:07.680 this. Cuomo was a man of the people. This is amazing. This is a virtue signal because it's not

00:19:13.380 virtuous. He doesn't have to go out there and actually spray down the subway. What would have

00:19:18.360 actually made a difference is if he had allocated some funds and, uh, issued a directive to have that

00:19:25.980 happen. I don't know, eight weeks ago, that would have made a huge difference. They should have been

00:19:31.580 doing that every night. New York city never shut down the subway and they're wondering why cases

00:19:37.860 keep occurring. Not to mention the fact, which we talked about in the episode titled little tyrants

00:19:42.760 everywhere. Their hospital system is a complete mess. The state of New York is a complete mess

00:19:48.660 because of Cuomo's corruption, because of his lack of integrity, because of his mismanagement of the

00:19:54.260 budget. And he is using this crisis as not just PR for his own reputation, but also to try to get as

00:20:00.780 much federal money as possible to make up for the $4 million budget hole that he had created with his

00:20:06.380 own irresponsibility. Not to mention mayor bill de Blasio, the most incompetent mayor in the Utah,

00:20:12.000 you entire United States of America, uh, not to mention his own corruption and his own lack of 0.80

00:20:18.820 leadership and his own total incompetence. We haven't even talked about him targeting the Jews 0.70

00:20:24.100 because he is, I'm sorry. I don't know how to say this, but an antisemitic scumbag. The guy is just a 1.00

00:20:29.600 scumbag. So virtue signaling. This is what Andrew Cuomo was doing by making, uh, sanitizing the 1.00

00:20:37.100 subways, this, uh, PR opportunity, this photo opportunity, when really that's not virtuous at

00:20:44.860 all. That looks virtuous, but in reality, what you should have done was have the subways sanitized a

00:20:51.120 long time ago, and you should have continuously had them sanitized. I mean, that's just crazy.

00:20:55.580 And the leftist media just falls all over this guy. Uh, here's another one. So she should have been 0.59

00:21:01.900 included in our tiny tyrants or little tyrants everywhere episode, but I didn't know about this

00:21:06.660 then. So Chicago mayor, mayor Lightfoot, uh, she does a speech and she says, if you have a party,

00:21:14.940 we are going to arrest you. If you even talk about having a party, we also might at least track you

00:21:22.380 down. Uh, here is a little video for saying that. And this is how it's going to be. We will shut you

00:21:28.220 down. We will cite you. And if we need to, we will arrest you and we will take you to jail period.

00:21:36.940 There should be nothing unambiguous about that. Don't make us treat you like a criminal,

00:21:43.320 but if you act like a criminal and you violate the law and you refuse to do what is necessary to

00:21:49.980 save lives in the city in the middle of a pandemic, we will take you to jail.

00:21:55.820 So she wants to seem really tough while, by the way, so mayor of Chicago, by the way, their, uh, 0.99

00:22:03.500 gun death numbers are up from last year. So I'm wondering if she could maybe focus a little bit

00:22:08.580 more on that. And here's just the icing on top of the virtue signaling cake for her, because this is

00:22:14.380 what she's doing. She's trying to seem really strong and virtuous. She went out and got her hair

00:22:19.000 done a couple of weeks ago. You know what her excuse was when media thankfully reported on this? 0.95

00:22:24.660 She said, well, you know, I'm a public figure and I need to look good. And I take, I take hygiene

00:22:32.660 very seriously, as opposed to all you peons who are just coughing and sneezing in people's faces.

00:22:38.900 She takes her hygiene very seriously. This is what a virtue signaling is. It is also a little bit of a 0.96

00:22:45.120 gaslight, making you feel crazy while she is the one that is doing crazy things. This is what it

00:22:51.160 means to virtue signal. It is both meaningless and it is hypocritical. Bernie Sanders. This is another 0.93

00:22:56.460 example. Anytime he talks about the capitalism is evil and rich and you're a bad person. If you don't

00:23:01.100 agree with that. Meanwhile, he has two more houses than most of us do and a lot more money than most of

00:23:07.680 us do. Uh, he says things that don't have any formidable principle underneath it. And yet he gets

00:23:13.400 thousands of likes on social media because Twitter loves empty virtue signals. They don't care at all

00:23:19.760 about virtue. And here's a great one. Here's a great example of virtue signaling from this week,

00:23:24.700 courtesy of representative Ilhan Omar. She tweeted, she tweeted this, that we should cancel rent and

00:23:31.980 mortgage payments. No stipulations, no qualifications for that. No caveats. We should cancel all rent and

00:23:39.440 mortgage payments. This is a huge, ginormous virtue signal because it is meaningless. It is worthless.

00:23:45.440 It is counterproductive. It's not even actually virtuous or virtuous sounding. It is meant to signal

00:23:51.340 compassion, but it's not compassionate at all. Let's think about this. This is what's required of

00:23:56.140 virtue signals. Let's put our thinking caps on for just a second. Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman for the

00:24:02.640 United States of America. Okay. Not a state representative. She's a congresswoman in DC.

00:24:08.080 She says that we should cancel all mortgage and rent payments, no conditions, no qualifications,

00:24:13.360 no stipulations that she put on that. This is supposed to be compassionate. Does she realize,

00:24:18.620 I don't know if she realizes this or not. She might not realize that very often tenants are richer than

00:24:24.560 their landlords. There's this communistic idea and you'll see it a lot on Twitter that landlords

00:24:28.620 are leeches, that they're evil. Well, that's a very bigoted generalization. Landlords are probably

00:24:34.620 representative of the rest of the population, which there are some good and generous people

00:24:39.320 and some selfish and not good people. I don't see why landlords are any different than that,

00:24:45.060 but this is this weird communistic idea that rent is evil and that therefore landlords are evil.

00:24:51.400 It's real weird. Millionaires, here's the reality, and they should understand this because

00:24:57.560 they're all about hierarchy and oppression. Millionaires who rent a $10,000 a month apartment

00:25:04.580 in New York City, I don't even know because I don't live in the city, but really expensive apartments

00:25:11.120 in New York City, they shouldn't pay rent to their landlord who probably takes home a lot less than

00:25:17.000 their tenant does. If you make $60,000 a year and your landlord takes home 40K a year, why is it

00:25:23.660 compassionate for you to screw him over by not paying your rent? Does that sound right to you?

00:25:29.180 Is that compassionate to you? If you're paying a mortgage on your house and you and everyone else

00:25:33.740 you know stops paying your mortgage, the bank that gave you that loan is going under. And that bank

00:25:39.480 teller, that single mom at that bank trying to provide for her family on $35,000 a year if that 1.00

00:25:45.840 is now out of a job. Does that sound compassionate to you? Of course it doesn't because that's not fair.

00:25:52.380 That is unjust. And this of course is why virtue signaling is wrong and why social justice, which

00:26:01.240 we'll get to a little bit more in a second, sounds good but is wrong because it never looks at the

00:26:08.320 other side of the equation. It is always doing what sounds good, trying to even the playing field

00:26:13.960 and to create equal outcomes at the expense of another group that they subjectively perceive

00:26:19.500 as privileged landlords, people who are requiring payments. When those people aren't necessarily

00:26:25.980 privileged and even if they were privileged doesn't mean that they should be punished by you

00:26:29.920 not paying your rent or mortgage. Does that make sense? So this is why whenever you see something like

00:26:35.520 this, whenever you see a suggestion that sounds virtuous and you're being gaslit by being told,

00:26:41.120 hey, you are a bad person for wanting to open up the economy. You're a bad person for wanting to

00:26:46.860 collect rent or for believing that other people should pay their rent or pay their mortgages. You're

00:26:52.300 a bad person if you believe that the rich shouldn't pay more in taxes. Every time you see this virtue

00:26:57.760 signal or this gaslighting that sounds really good and makes you feel like a bad person for not agreeing

00:27:03.600 with it, you got to think. You got to think a little bit more deeply about the consequences of it and

00:27:08.760 if any of it even makes sense. So you hear this a lot like cancel all student loan debt, cancel all

00:27:14.260 mortgage and rent payments, make the rich pay their fair share, free health care for all, abolish ICE,

00:27:19.640 it's time for racial reparations or in the form of politicians making particular promises like

00:27:26.040 Elizabeth Warren saying that she is going to get a trans kid to help her pick her head of department

00:27:30.720 of education or when Joe Biden promises to pick a woman as his VP. These are all nothing more than

00:27:37.320 empty, hollow, meaningless signals of virtue that when looked at carefully, when thought about 1.00

00:27:43.680 critically, are meaningless and to be frank, they're stupid. Why? Because they're not economically feasible, 1.00

00:27:50.180 they're not effective, they're not beneficial to society. Canceling student loan debt puts the cost

00:27:55.820 of college on the taxpayer who didn't choose to, many of whom didn't choose to go to college and

00:28:00.920 who may actually make less money than the parents of the kid going to college or even some of the

00:28:06.100 people who are in college. Is that fair? Making the rich pay their fair share is built on a false

00:28:12.620 premise. What is fair? The rich already pay the vast majority of taxes in this country, whereas the

00:28:18.280 poorest pay nothing and actually can make money from the government. Free health care for all means less

00:28:23.660 choice. Lower quality. We've done an entire podcast episode on this because the profit margins for

00:28:29.060 hospitals will be almost non-existent, which means laying off nurses and doctors, but also stymied the

00:28:34.840 motivation for innovation. That's not to say that our health care system doesn't have problems, but

00:28:39.480 forcing people off of their private health care plans that they like and forcing them onto government

00:28:45.640 run care, which just like all government run programs will be both inefficient and ineffective is not

00:28:52.600 compassionate. It's also not just considering that you will be forced to subsidize things to which you are

00:28:58.960 morally opposed like abortion and gender reassignment surgery, for example. Abolishing ice only makes the

00:29:06.420 country less safe. Racial reparations are impossible to calculate. Choosing a woman as your VP rather than the 0.99

00:29:13.300 most qualified person just makes you a discriminatory sexist, not virtuous. So if you poke at the holes of these

00:29:20.760 things that sound good that is currently building what is the new and what a lot of people would say

00:29:27.540 is improved ideology of leftism, if you just prick it just a little bit with your pin of critical

00:29:34.040 thinking, it falls apart. I've heard Dan Crenshaw say in his speech, leftism works as activism, not

00:29:40.840 governance. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually work. And this is why I talk so often that social

00:29:48.960 justice is not justice. It is what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic justice. Social justice sounds good.

00:29:56.980 It even sounds good to the Christian because you think that you are helping the least of these.

00:30:01.880 But here's the problem. I just did a PragerU video that just came out. It's my second PragerU video

00:30:08.080 that I've done. And I'm really proud of how it came out. And it's about why social justice is not

00:30:14.300 justice. It is subjective. It is not based on truth. It is not based on reality. It is about these

00:30:22.040 contrived rules of the game in order to try to achieve equal outcomes, which is impossible. It's

00:30:30.500 just impossible to achieve equal outcomes without absolute tyranny to force people into mediocrity in

00:30:36.900 order that they will be equal. So I did a video on that and I got a comment from someone who was

00:30:43.640 very respectful of no problem with this person's comment. She said that she was very disappointed in

00:30:49.540 the video and that I should, I think she recommended, no, this was, I got this from someone else

00:30:56.720 recommending Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice, which I just agree, just totally disagree with the

00:31:01.700 premise of his book. But she talks about how people are born into certain kinds of families and they

00:31:08.480 have certain disadvantages that they didn't choose. And so social justice is about showing these people

00:31:13.300 mercy, not handouts. But the problem with that is that who gets, what is mercy? Who gets to decide

00:31:23.160 what that mercy is? Who gets to decide who gets that mercy and why? What are the qualifications for

00:31:31.660 the mercy? What's the mercy? And who gives it? Who gets to decide all of that? That's why social

00:31:37.080 justice being not blind and being, uh, weighing the intersectionality points and the oppression

00:31:44.100 points of the people that it is allocating so-called mercy to, that's why it is inherently unjust. It is

00:31:51.940 built on nothing more than gaslighting and virtue signaling, telling you that you are crazy for not

00:31:57.980 believing the set of totally subjective and brand new virtues that so many of the people that purport

00:32:03.760 these virtues don't actually fall behind. Quest for Cosmic Justice is a book. It's also a speech

00:32:10.600 by Thomas Sowell. He is the amazing economist who has so much good work out there, but he talks about

00:32:18.020 the inherent injustice of social justice. I highly recommend you read Quest for Cosmic Justice.

00:32:24.900 And what he talks about is that people who want social justice, they want equal outcomes rather

00:32:31.180 than equal opportunities. And they try to, uh, they try to contrive certain scenarios in which

00:32:40.040 everyone will be equal and end up with the same, but it's just impossible. People are different.

00:32:45.360 People of the same backgrounds have different outcomes in their life. And when you try to make 0.79

00:32:50.820 everyone have the same results in their life, uh, you end up suppressing innovation, you suppress

00:32:56.400 success, you suppress motivation, you suppress people's willingness to work. And it ends up in

00:33:02.220 tyrannous ruins. This is just the case. He talks about this in his speech quest for cosmic justice.

00:33:08.320 And I just want to read you some of that. He says traditional concepts of justice or fairness,

00:33:14.340 at least within the American tradition, boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone.

00:33:19.460 This is what is meant by a level playing field, at least within that tradition, uh, though,

00:33:24.480 the very same words mean something radically different within a framework that calls itself

00:33:28.620 social justice. Words like fairness, advantage and disadvantage, likewise have radically different

00:33:34.580 meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice versus social justice.

00:33:39.540 A fight in which both boxers observed the marquee of Queensberry rules would be a fair fight

00:33:44.440 according to traditional standards of fairness, irrespective of whether the contestants were of

00:33:49.220 equal skill strength experience or other factors likely to affect the outcome and irrespective

00:33:54.820 of whether that outcome was a hard fought draw or completely one-sided beating. This would not,

00:34:00.660 however, be a fair fight within the framework of those seeking social justice. If the competing

00:34:06.660 fighters came into the ring with very different prospects of success, especially if these differences

00:34:12.580 were due to factors beyond their control, presumably the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found

00:34:19.380 everywhere are the fault of quote society, uh, according to social justice advocates. And so the

00:34:25.620 redressing of these inequalities is called social justice going beyond the traditional justice of

00:34:31.620 presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. In a sense, proponents of social justice are

00:34:37.300 unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos.

00:34:44.180 What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for.

00:34:50.340 Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man, but the oversights of God,

00:34:56.500 or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made

00:35:02.260 to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice. Um, he goes on and, and I won't,

00:35:10.180 uh, read the entire thing, but he talks about how social justice advocates want to destroy the entire

00:35:16.500 rule of law and the idea of, uh, the traditional idea of fairness and equality. He says, ironically,

00:35:23.780 the quest for greater economic and social equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of political

00:35:29.860 power. If rules cannot produce cosmic justice, only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds

00:35:36.100 of results being sought. In a democracy where power must gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule

00:35:43.300 of law be violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice,

00:35:50.660 arbitrary power, and shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in its direction. As noted at

00:35:58.100 the outset, the devastating costs and social dangers, which go with these attempts to achieve the

00:36:03.700 impossible should be taken into account. So like what I was saying, it is impossible to achieve

00:36:09.540 the ends of social justice, which is equal outcomes without absolute tyranny. And those who fight for

00:36:16.980 equal outcomes, you notice that it's always equalized downward rather than upward. So success is made into

00:36:24.100 mediocrity rather than mediocrity being made into success. And that's why it always ends so disastrously.

00:36:32.100 Every communist, every socialist regime that has started out with the premise and the goal of social

00:36:37.540 justice, higher literacy rates, more success, more food, more equality. And it ends with destruction.

00:36:46.260 It ends with suffering. It ends with starvation because the goals of socialism and this, uh, leftist

00:36:52.820 contrived social justice, it goes against human nature. And human nature is that there will be

00:36:59.380 always unequal outcomes. America is based on the premise that we should have equal opportunity,

00:37:06.580 but not equal outcomes because we know that it's impossible without absolute dictatorship. And that is

00:37:11.940 what the argument is. And social justice is not based on any kind of impartiality or unbiased truth.

00:37:19.380 It is based on trying to create new rules to lift one group up that someone that the social justice

00:37:25.780 advocates see as oppressed and hold another group down that the social, social justice advocates see

00:37:31.540 as privileged. And that inherently is unjust. That is why we Christians care about what our definitions

00:37:39.940 are. That is why we as Christians care about seeking truth and seeking true virtue and seeking true

00:37:47.060 justice and not seeking false accusations that come with gaslighting, not seeking a virtue signaling that

00:37:54.180 is completely hollow and meaningless and not can, and not, uh, pursuing a type of social justice that has

00:38:00.420 no true, just outcome. All of these are the makings of modern day leftism that when you tap it

00:38:07.540 with just a little bit of weight of critical thinking completely crumbles under the weight of human

00:38:13.860 nature and reality and the necessity of democratic governance, uh, Micah six, eight tells us to seek

00:38:20.820 justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. The question is what is actual justice? What is

00:38:28.100 actual truth? What are the things that we should really care about? Should we be gaslighting and memory

00:38:34.580 holding stories that we don't want to be true? Should we be making other people feel crazy for the things

00:38:40.500 that we are doing or that they do have a justified, uh, a reason to be crazy for? Should we be signaling

00:38:47.140 virtue in a way that doesn't really mean anything? Should we be pursuing a justice that the secular

00:38:52.260 world tells us is just, but isn't actually justice according to God is a impartial Leviticus 19 15.

00:39:00.420 You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great,

00:39:05.540 but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. God's justice is also be, uh, based on evidence and

00:39:12.100 truth throughout Deuteronomy. As God is laying out his rules and statutes for the people of Israel,

00:39:16.740 we see his desire for due process to see if someone is guilty. Israel is too told to inquire,

00:39:22.660 to search diligently, to find proof that someone is innocent or guilty. Guilt is not assumed. Social

00:39:28.740 justice as Thomas Sowell says is not about the rules of the game. It's about, uh, it's not about an even

00:39:34.420 playing field. It's not about equal opportunity. It is about subjective rules based on some subjective

00:39:42.580 idea of intersectionality and oppression. And that does not fit the biblical definition of what justice

00:39:50.260 is. And neither does gaslighting and virtue signaling and all of these attempts that the left

00:39:56.420 makes in order to, in order to force their ideology onto people so that you feel morally obligated to be a

00:40:03.460 leftist, uh, that doesn't fit God's qualifications for what is virtuous for what is true and right and

00:40:09.460 good. Second Peter 1 31, three through 11 says his divine power has granted to us all things that

00:40:16.420 pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence

00:40:21.540 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them, you may become

00:40:27.300 partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of

00:40:32.340 sinful desire for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and

00:40:38.580 virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness

00:40:46.020 with godliness and godliness with brother brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

00:40:52.260 For if these qualities are yours and increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the

00:40:58.740 knowledge of our lord jesus christ for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind

00:41:04.740 having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins therefore brothers be all the more

00:41:10.100 diligent to confirm your calling and election for if you practice these qualities you will never fall

00:41:16.260 for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our lord

00:41:22.580 and savior jesus christ this is true virtue it has substance this is what truth looks like it's the

00:41:30.180 gospel of jesus christ this is what justice really is it's what god says is good and right and true it is

00:41:37.460 impartial it is based on evidence it is based on the author of truth which is god himself uh which is the

00:41:45.460 gospel of jesus christ and so if you've got any question about what is true uh if you are being

00:41:52.980 gaslit feeling crazy about something that you know is right if you are seeing virtue signals and you feel

00:41:58.980 guilty about not buying into these virtue signals and doing the same kind of virtue signaling if you are

00:42:03.780 being told that you need to be a social justice advocate just remember that uh if you need to know what

00:42:10.100 is true if you need to verify what is right and good and what justice is you have an objective

00:42:15.700 standard and that's the word of god like you don't have to you don't have to be swirling around the

00:42:22.260 cesspool of twitter in order to know what is true there are headlines and there are tweets and there are

00:42:29.380 lots of different directions that the news can pull you but ultimately at the end of the day we have a god

00:42:34.180 who created virtue who created justice and who created truth and we don't need to borrow secular

00:42:40.020 standards of morality we don't need to borrow secular terminology in order to inform our world view or

00:42:46.260 our vocabulary regarding what justice is okay that's all i have for you today we will be back here on friday

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 06, 2020

Ep 247 ｜ Gaslighting, Virtue-Signaling & Social Justice

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