The Democrats have apparently discovered the fountain of youth. Rage. Speaking last week, Senator Bernie Sanders, a crazed, elderly loon, was recently spotted wandering around the country shouting about wealth and equality while closing on a second vacation home. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, speaking to Politico, said, If we only turn that anger inward, I fear we become the permanent party of opposition. Over the next couple months, we d better get our act together. The Democrats are late to the game. During the 2016 election cycle, Republicans expressed their anger routinely and richly. Trump himself cultivated that anger. As Ian Tunnell rightly wrote at National Review in 2015, Now, anger is nothing new in politics. But something new has happened to American politics in the last few years. Politicians have realized that the simplest path to power is to humor everyone s anger. If you take someone s anger away from them, you ve emotionally castrated them. More important, you run the risk of driving them into the arms of someone who will feed their anger, an anger that will now turn on you for the sin of having discounted that anger in the first place. This is deeply unhealthy, and it s why such pandering is endemic on a national level. It s why generic congressional support is so low, but support for local incumbents is so high, and why the faraway government, full of cronies and fools, simply doesn t get your message across to you. this is why your local congressman hears you and understands you, but your local Congressman does not. All of course. All which makes very toxic politics, and so doesn t listen to you, does not understand you, and doesn t understand you. And so they don t get the message that you need to be angry, do they understand you? And they simply don t care? and they simply coddle you, do not get your point of view? And they coddling you, they don't get it? And so on and so on, and they do not understand that you don t have a problem with your anger, they just don t understand your anger? And that you're not angry enough, do you want to be mad about it? and you don't want to get angry about it ? they just want you to get mad at you, right? They don t give you a chance to complain about it, they're not enough, they do they do you?
00:00:03.000Speaking last week, Senator Bernie Sanders, a crazed elderly loon, recently spotted wandering around the country shouting about wealth and equality while closing on a second vacation home, stated, quote, you should be angry.
00:00:13.000Take your anger out on the right people.
00:00:15.000Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles speaking to Politico explained, quote, if we only turn that anger inward, I fear we become the permanent party of opposition.
00:00:22.000Over the next couple months, we'd better get our act together.
00:00:32.000As Ian Tunnell rightly wrote at National Review in 2015, quote,
00:00:42.000Now, anger is nothing new in politics.
00:00:44.000Anger has dominated political discourse since the days of Moses.
00:00:47.000Ask him how he felt about a stiff-necked people seemingly ready to throw him overboard every few weeks.
00:00:52.000And some anger is, of course, justified.
00:00:54.000If you're angry at corruption in DC, you have every right to be.
00:00:57.000If you're angry at a heedless Leviathan grasping at your wages, that anger is justified.
00:01:02.000Even if you channel that emotion in the wrong direction, we can at least understand the anger.
00:01:06.000But something new has happened to American politics in the last few years.
00:01:09.000Politicians have realized that the simplest path to power is to humor everyone's anger.
00:01:14.000If you take someone's anger away from them, you've emotionally castrated them.
00:01:17.000More important, you run the risk of driving them into the arms of someone who will feed their anger, an anger that will now turn on you for the sin of having discounted that anger in the first place.
00:01:28.000One of the great lies of psychology, dominant since the era of Freud, is that coddling emotions leads to more emotional fulfillment.
00:01:35.000Actually, coddling emotions leads to emotional unhealthiness.
00:01:37.000It even leads us to wallow in our emotions.
00:01:41.000Anger feels good, and it feels even better when someone tells you you're not wrong to be angry in the first place.
00:01:46.000If you crave emotional payoff, and if those around you are taught to cosset your emotions, you're likely to engage more and more often in emotionally overwrought behavior.
00:01:54.000Bad psychologists indulge their clients' emotional states.
00:01:57.000Good psychologists ask whether those emotional states are justified.
00:02:00.000As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, among others, states,
00:02:03.000Cognitive behavioral therapy, a technique used to treat those with emotional disorders, is generally as effective as antidepressants for anxiety and depression.
00:02:11.000Therapy consists of identifying illogical links in a chain of thought that lead to an emotionally hazardous place.
00:02:17.000You might figure out, for example, that you're attributing motives to someone even though you have no evidence about his motives, or that you overgeneralize, or that you're looking only at the bad things in your life rather than at the good things.
00:02:27.000Once you've identified your own faulty thinking, you can stop the emotional runaway train.
00:02:31.000Politicians, however, are trained to do the opposite.
00:02:34.000Politicians spend their lives seeking the favor of others.
00:02:36.000That means they find it wildly beneficial to nurse the emotions and the grievances of constituents.
00:02:41.000The customer is always right, of course.
00:02:43.000It means that if a constituent is angry, the best option isn't to help break the chain of emotional volatility, it's to channel that volatility into beating back enemies.
00:02:51.000If you wonder why generic congressional support is so low, but support for local incumbents is so high, this is why.
00:02:57.000Your local congressman hears you and understands you, but the faraway government, full of cronies and fools, simply doesn't.
00:03:03.000On a national level, such pandering has become endemic.
00:03:06.000It's why Hillary Clinton presided over the intersectional Olympics in 2016.
00:03:09.000In which voters must constantly be reassured that their anger at alleged victimhood isn't illegitimate and why Trump spends an inordinate amount of time talking about Rust Belt voters who must be reassured that their anger at the system and China and Mexico is worthwhile.
00:03:22.000All of which makes very toxic politics.
00:03:24.000The founders knew public passions were constantly at risk of demagoguery.
00:03:28.000They believed in a system that would check passion with passion.
00:03:31.000And they believed in a system in which each politician would be forced to answer to so many different factions, he would be fully incapable of satisfying all of them.
00:03:39.000In Federalist 10, Madison eloquently laid out the problem of demagoguery.
00:03:51.000The despotism of the majority would rule, quote, if the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control.
00:04:01.000Madison was not wrong to rely on the intricate framework of the American government as a bulwark against the perverse passions of the majority.
00:04:09.000But he also relied on local interests to supersede national interests and diffusion of power to defeat virtually all interests.
00:04:15.000The growth of the federal government has rendered all such notions obsolete.
00:04:19.000On the one hand, local interests can now dictate national interests.
00:04:22.000President Trump can cater to the anger of a factory worker by promising tariffs that affect everyone.
00:04:26.000On the other hand, every local politician can now campaign nationally.
00:04:29.000Eric Garcetti barely presides over the potholes in LA, but he's seen as the national face for his party.
00:04:39.000And that means, unfortunately, politicians have to be brave.
00:04:42.000They must tell voters when their anger is both misplaced and unearned.
00:04:45.000They must be willing to stand with truth rather than with the power of sympathy.
00:04:48.000If they don't, the anger that politicians have attempted to channel for their own ends will eventually burst loose in ways those politicians never anticipated.
00:05:01.000Okay, we're gonna get to all of the latest with regard to this horrific shooting in Alexandria, Virginia today.
00:05:07.000For those who don't know, there was a leftist, apparent leftist, psychopath who went and shot a bunch of members of Congress and their aides over at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia.
00:05:19.000They were practicing for a congressional softball charity game.
00:05:22.000It's the only nice thing in Washington, D.C., and it has to be ruined by a radical leftist who decided to murder people.
00:05:29.000We'll talk about all of that, the fallout from that, what it means for free speech, and who gets to be blamed for all of this, and I want to be as clear on that as humanly possible.
00:05:36.000But before we get to any of that, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blue Apron.
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00:09:07.000And Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who was also there, said it would have been warming up in a batting cage during this practice.
00:09:13.000He was just heaping praise on the Capitol Police, who he says happened to be there because the majority whip, Steve Scalise, was there.
00:09:21.000He said had they not been there, it would have been a massacre.
00:09:25.000This morning, Rand Paul and others are praising the police,
00:09:29.000Specifically for their bravery on this Mo Brooks as a congressman on the scene He also described the shooting and then there's another GOP representative Who said that before the shooting this this guy?
00:09:39.000Hodgkinson walked up to him and asked him if Democrats or Republicans were playing on the field So yes, there was political motivation.
00:09:45.000This would fall under the category of political terrorism here is representative describing This this murderer come or attempted murder because I don't think anyone has died yet except for the shooter
00:09:55.000Asking whether it was Republicans or Democrats practicing on the field.
00:10:00.000What I'd like to talk to you is give you an overview of what took place.
00:10:04.000We received a call of an active shooter.
00:10:30.000We do know that officers from the Office of Capitol Police, as well as three officers... Okay, so terrific response by Capitol Police.
00:10:38.000They get there within three to five minutes.
00:10:40.000Governor Terry McAuliffe, who is the governor of Virginia, he of course came out immediately with the Democratic talking points whenever there's a situation like this.
00:10:47.000The Democratic talking point is it must be the guns.
00:12:08.000It's key image is a picture of Bernie Sanders in the Uncle Sam outfit.
00:12:11.000He's got pages up that he's been tweeting, that he's been putting out on his Facebook page, talking about how corporations write bills and Congress is bribed until it becomes a law.
00:12:21.000Here's something that he just said, quote, I want to say, this was two days ago, I want to say, Mr. President, for being an a-hole, you are truly the biggest a-hole we have ever had in the Oval Office.
00:12:31.000Same day, make America great again, resign.
00:12:33.000Then he tweets, puts out on Facebook a graphic that says, all in all, it's just another bleep in the wall picture of Trump with his hand against
00:12:40.000The Western Wall says, same day, Trump is guilty and should go to prison for treason.
00:12:44.000He has, on June 11th, please read and pass on.
00:12:47.000And there's a quote from Alternet, stop fighting over who created the world and fight against the people who are destroying it.
00:12:53.000In March, he put out on his Facebook page, Trump is a traitor.
00:12:58.000It's time to destroy Trump and company.
00:13:01.000This is leading to the same conversation that we always have in the country when a domestic, politically motivated terrorist decides to go on a rampage.
00:13:09.000In Portland, the guy who was responsible for murdering a couple of people with a knife was a Bernie Sanders supporter.
00:13:15.000Democrats have always tried to claim that Republicans are responsible whenever there is a violent crime.
00:13:20.000They tried to claim that Jared Loftner, who is legitimately an insane person, was responsible for killing Gabby Giffords because of Sarah Palin for some odd reason.
00:13:28.000They tried to claim the Oklahoma City bombing was because of talk radio.
00:13:31.000Going all the way back to the 1960s, JFK and his administration, after his death, tried to claim that it was the toxic political rhetoric and the climate against JFK that led to his assassination, not a communist stooge who shot JFK because he was a communist.
00:13:44.000Again, there's always this conversation that happens.
00:13:47.000And I think that there are several points that need to be made here.
00:13:51.000One, I am not going to blame Bernie Sanders for the attempted murder of these congresspeople.
00:14:02.000Yesterday, there's McAuliffe going out there about gun control.
00:14:04.000Clip one, he was talking about how there are treasonous Americans, presumably inside the Trump administration, coordinating with Russia to steal the election.
00:14:11.000Do you think that there are Americans who committed treason?
00:14:15.000It seems to me that Russia was actively involved in destabilizing our democracy.
00:14:19.000But were there American people helping?
00:14:21.000Somebody, I believe, had to give them a roadmap.
00:14:23.000Somewhere in this, somebody was directing the Russians on whose names to use, what impact a certain people sending a memo would have on the American electorate.
00:14:33.000I mean, they just didn't sit over in some cubicle over there somewhere in Moscow and figure this out.
00:14:39.000Okay, so there he is basically humoring the idea that somebody has committed treason.
00:14:43.000The penalty for treason under the Constitution of the United States is death.
00:14:47.000Is that because Terry McAuliffe actually wants some nutcase to go and shoot up a bunch of people?
00:14:54.000So, I want to point out a couple... So let's start with this.
00:14:58.000Just because Bernie Sanders says inflammatory things does not make him responsible.
00:15:01.000for what this guy did any more than the fact that Donald Trump says inflammatory things would make him responsible if somebody had gone and done this to Democrats.
00:15:08.000That's not how political rhetoric works in the country.
00:15:10.000I judge whether political rhetoric is directly responsible for violence if the political rhetoric directly tells people to commit acts of violence.
00:15:19.000That's when political rhetoric is responsible for violence.
00:15:21.000Otherwise, we're going to get into very dicey territory where we decide to shut down free speech because it could promote violence.
00:15:27.000That's the direction everybody likes to move.
00:15:29.000Barack Obama did a whole campaign-style rally after the Gabby Giffords shooting, in which he blamed toxic political rhetoric from the right, and he blamed lack of gun control, and then he suggested that basically the right and its toxicity was responsible in some way for all of this.
00:15:42.000I'm not going to do that because I thought it was immoral when Obama did it, and I think it's immoral when anybody does it.
00:15:46.000The way that you can connect rhetoric and ideology with actual violence is if that rhetoric and ideology is actually calling for violence.
00:15:52.000So, for example, radical Islamic jihadism actually calls for violence.
00:15:56.000Governing Sharia law is a call for actual violence against human beings.
00:16:00.000And one of the ways that you can judge whether the rhetoric is actually calling for violence is whether this is a rare exception to a general rule or whether it is a widespread belief, a wide-held belief, and a lot of people are participating in it.
00:16:28.000I'm not seeing the upsurge from the left saying, I'm so glad that this guy went out and shot a bunch of a bunch of Republican Congress people.
00:16:36.000So I'm not going to equate American leftists with jihadists.
00:16:38.000And just because the left does this to the right doesn't mean it's okay for us to do it.
00:16:41.000Just because the Southern Poverty Law Center tries to connect every act by a loon who once listened to Rush Limbaugh,
00:16:49.000with Rush Limbaugh's views does not mean that I'm going to participate in the same thing because I think it's disgusting when they do it, so it'd be equally disgusting when we do it.
00:16:56.000And I want to talk about, though, I do want to talk about when rhetoric is responsible for creating a toxic climate and what that actually means generally.
00:17:05.000So I've talked about when rhetoric is directly responsible for violence, and I'll talk about, in a second, when it's sort of indirectly responsible for creating a climate that creates more of these sort of isolated events.
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00:18:23.000About the idea that left rhetoric, you know, Terry McAuliffe's rhetoric, Bernie Sanders' rhetoric, I'm not going to blame that rhetoric for this guy going out and doing this stuff.
00:18:31.000And by the way, I'm not going to blame even Kathy Griffin's rhetoric.
00:18:34.000I'm not going to say that Kathy Griffin is responsible for this guy going out and shooting Congress people.
00:18:38.000Because I don't think Kathy Griffin told this guy to go out and shoot Congress people or said, I think it's okay if you go out and shoot Congress people.
00:18:45.000If the Secret Service actually thought that she was advocating assassination, they would have arrested her.
00:18:50.000It is not a crime to say gauche things.
00:18:52.000A lot of people today on the right are going to do the Shakespeare in the Park routine where Julius Caesar is played by Trump and assassinated.
00:18:58.000That this is what led to the events of today.
00:19:01.000I'm not going to do that because I think it's gross when the left does that.
00:19:04.000Yeah, I think that there can be a badly interpreted play.
00:19:07.000I think that there can be a play that I would think crosses some lines without saying that it is directly responsible for the violence.
00:19:13.000Now, it is true that as rhetoric and violent rhetoric escalates on both sides of the political aisle, and it's been ignored on the left by the media, the right is pointing it out with regard to Trump, and it is certainly true.
00:19:26.000A toxic political climate is not going to make rational people go out and shoot Congress people, but it is going to have an outsized impact on what we in the legal field call somebody with an eggshell skull.
00:19:37.000The idea that somebody is right on the verge, and now the climate has become so toxic that he's going to go nuts and start shooting people.
00:19:45.000The toxic political climate is indirectly responsible for this.
00:20:17.000I am not shy when it comes to using rhetoric.
00:20:19.000If you've ever seen the show before, if you've ever seen any of my videos, I'm not shy about speaking what I believe to be the truth, and I'm not even shy about using harsh language.
00:20:27.000But when it comes to advocacy of political violence, or giving the go-ahead to anything that remotely hints at political violence, that's where we all need to take a step back.
00:20:34.000Not because it's going to lead to widespread battles in the streets, although we have seen some of that with Antifa, which actually is a violent terrorist group.
00:20:41.000Not only have we, but it's going to have an impact if the entire culture goes toxic.
00:20:46.000If the entire culture just becomes a war of all against all, then that doesn't mean it's going to turn into open warfare in the streets, but it does mean that more nutty people who are right on the brink are going to be pushed over the line into doing something
00:21:19.000Let's all just take it down a notch because
00:21:22.000I don't think that either you or the guy you're posting with is gonna go and shoot somebody, but I think that somebody who's reading might be outside, might be impacted in an outsized fashion.
00:21:29.000Now, I don't make decisions, and I don't think anybody needs to make decisions about their personal behavior based on the nutcase who could go nuts.
00:21:36.000But, I also think it's kind of immoral to talk in these ways as a general rule, so I think that we should all take a step back.
00:21:42.000In that in that sort of in that sort of notion.
00:21:44.000And again, I'm not saying we shouldn't use harsh language.
00:21:46.000I mean, for goodness sake, I've signed books punched back twice as hard using the Obama rhetoric with regard to political battles.
00:21:53.000But that is not the same thing as openly advocating for violence against people on the other side of the aisle.
00:21:59.000Obviously, meaning things figuratively is not a good thing.
00:22:01.000And I think that people including me should maybe take a step back on all of this.
00:22:07.000In other words, instead of blaming Bernie Sanders, instead of blaming Donald Trump for people who are bad doing bad things, I think we should recognize it's a free country, people should say what they want to say, but people should also take care that maybe it's not a great thing if we decide to inject the toxicity of violence into our rhetoric at every available turn, and it's been just upped dramatically in recent years.
00:22:30.000More toxicity in our political culture.
00:22:31.000But you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now because we're going to discuss the Sessions hearing, what actually happened yesterday in the Sessions hearing.