Ben Shapiro is back from New Year's Eve and ready for 2020. He talks about the latest polling numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire, a new ISIS video showing Donald Trump, and the Oregon teachers' strike. Plus, he gives his take on what's going on in Oregon and why we should all be mad about it. Subscribe to Dailywire to get immediate access to all of the latest news and discuss the latest in politics and pop culture. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code POWER10 for 10% off your first month! Want to become a supporter of The Ben Shapiro Show? Just go to gimlet.fm/support-the-ben-shaperson Show and give us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. Use the promo code: PODCAST10 at checkout to receive $5 and get 10% all-inclusive when you sign up for a new year's Day Off membership. The show is now available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover, and Hardcover. Kindle $99, and AudioBook $99.99. AudioBook is also available on Audible $99 and Audible Free! All three of these are Best Fiends are also available for purchase at Audible starting January 1st, 2020. Click here to get a free trial of the epsiode $49.99 and gets you an ad-free version of the show for the month of January 1-3rd, starting on the 14th. and 5th, for the rest of the year. $99 gets the show also gets full access to the full-grade pricing. Thanks for supporting the show! Thanks again, and thanks for listening and reviewing the show and reviewing it! You'll get 20% off the show, and we'll be getting a discount on future episodes starting next month, shipping on all three months for the final month of the season, shipping free on Prime Video, shipping only $99/month, and all other places get a FREE shipping starts starting in March and shipping free, shipping worldwide, shipping shipping starts starts starting next year, shipping nationwide, starting in mid-only shipping starts available on the last two months, shipping starts, shipping first, starting shipping starts beginings only $19, and shipping only 2 months after that gets you a limited rate, shipping will get you a maximum of $99 starts, free on the deal starts next month.
00:00:38.000By the way, who do download the show, you can go to dailywired.com, and if you want to subscribe, buy yourself a New Year's subscription.
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00:01:04.000We're definitely increasing the number of people who listen, and that's really without us pushing it too hard.
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00:01:33.000Trump is still leading in New Hampshire.
00:01:35.000Cruz and Rubio and Kasich and Bush and Chris Christie are all tied together at second.
00:01:41.000They're all within margin of error in second place in Iowa.
00:01:44.000And so how this whole thing ends up going down is going to come down very much to, can they consolidate any sort of base of support behind Rubio in New Hampshire?
00:01:54.000If the answer is no, if the answer is no, then probably Donald Trump or Ted Cruz will end up winning the nomination.
00:02:00.000If the answer is yes, if somehow Marco Rubio pulls out a victory or a second place finish in New Hampshire, then this is gonna be a three-way race all the way to the end.
00:02:09.000Quick rule of thumb, as far as this election cycle goes,
00:02:13.000Don't pay any attention to the national polling.
00:02:15.000The national polling makes no difference.
00:02:16.000At this point in the national polling in 2008, Rudy Giuliani was leading the way.
00:02:20.000At this point in national polling in 2004, on the Democratic side, Wesley Clark was leading the way.
00:02:25.000So national polls don't mean anything.
00:02:27.000The only polls that mean something are the primary polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and really more specifically in Iowa, because the polls in New Hampshire will move after we find out what happens in Iowa.
00:02:42.000We'll get to that in just a little while.
00:02:44.000We will also get to, in just a little while, a new ISIS recruitment video, which reinforces something I said late last year, which is that the Obama administration has been the best recruiting tool that ISIS ever had.
00:02:54.000ISIS is using all of the propaganda points of the Obama administration to recruit.
00:02:59.000So there's a new ISIS video that apparently shows Donald Trump today, but there's a difference between how ISIS videos treat Trump and how they treat Obama.
00:03:35.000And we have an ISIS video that shows exactly that, so we'll get to that as well.
00:03:38.000But I want to start with the situation up in Oregon, because it really is quite telling.
00:03:42.000The situation up in Oregon, for people who have missed what's going on up in Oregon, you should take a closer look at what's happening in Oregon.
00:04:15.000But in any case, the two of them are now going to jail.
00:04:18.000And this has driven an enormous amount of media scrutiny and media attention, because Cliven Bundy, you remember Cliven Bundy?
00:04:24.000Back in 2014, Cliven Bundy was a rancher who had a run-in with the Bureau of Land Management with the federal government, and he refused to pay fines that the federal government wanted him to pay.
00:04:34.000And so a bunch of militiamen came and stationed themselves around the SWAT teams with their guns drawn, presumably ready to shoot people, and it was an armed standoff.
00:04:43.000That was happening in the middle of the desert between the federal government and this one rancher.
00:04:47.000Well, now the Bundy family is getting active in this Hammond case.
00:04:50.000So let's first explain the background of the Hammond case, because you're going to hear today a lot of misinformation about what exactly is going on in Oregon.
00:04:57.000The first thing is you're seeing this hashtag trend on Twitter, Oregon under attack.
00:05:17.000But I want to focus first on the Hammonds.
00:05:40.000Should you have sympathy for this rancher family that the Bundys are now expressing support for?
00:05:46.000And the answer is yes, you really should.
00:05:48.000You should have a great deal of sympathy for the Hammond family because they are just a microcosm of the growing power of the federal government and how it's going to touch off actual violent conflagration sooner or later, probably sooner.
00:05:59.000Over the break, you may have missed it, but the Klein family, these two bakers from Oregon,
00:06:05.000This is the family, the religious Christian family with seven kids, and they didn't want to cater a lesbian wedding.
00:06:10.000They didn't want to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding.
00:06:12.000They were fined $140,000 by the state of Oregon for not catering the lesbian wedding.
00:06:17.000They were fined and then they were sued by the lesbian couple for pain and suffering, which is insane.
00:06:22.000And they were given $140,000 judgment against them.
00:06:24.000They ponied up the dough so that they could file their appeals.
00:06:27.000So basically a Christian family is now at point of gun being forced to pay enormous sums of money
00:06:32.000So that they don't have to cater a lesbian wedding, and if they do it again, presumably they'll be put out of business.
00:06:37.000So keep that in mind when we talk about what's happening with the Hammonds.
00:06:40.000So here's what's happening with the Hammonds.
00:06:41.000The Hammonds are an old ranching family in Oregon.
00:06:44.000Now the Bureau of Land Management, the federal government, controls a huge swath of territory in the western United States.
00:06:51.000In the eastern United States, most land is privately held.
00:06:54.000It's not owned by the federal government.
00:06:55.000If it is owned by the government, it's owned by the state government.
00:06:59.000State ownership of land is the rule, not the exception under the Constitution of the United States.
00:07:05.000The way that it works under the Constitution is that there are only really two provisions dealing with federal ownership of land.
00:07:11.000One is in Article 1 with regard to the legislature and what Congress can do to buy land.
00:07:15.000And the second is with regard to Article 4.
00:07:18.000There's a provision in Article 4 of the Constitution talking about how the federal government can treat the land that it owns.
00:07:24.000Can the federal government just confiscate land from a state?
00:07:26.000The federal government cannot do that under the Constitution of the United States.
00:07:30.000Well, regardless of that, the Bureau of Land Management controls, these percentages are really quite stunning, 84.5% of all land in Nevada is controlled or owned by the federal government.
00:07:42.00085% of all land in the state of Nevada is controlled by the federal government.
00:07:45.00053% of all land in Oregon is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, meaning they own all of that land.
00:07:51.000And even in California, nearly 50% of all land in the state of California is controlled by the federal government, and specifically, the Bureau of Land Management.
00:07:59.000Well, because the federal government controls all of this territory, it says it does so for environmental reasons.
00:08:04.000We're all gonna die unless the federal government controls all of this territory to protect the birdies and the beads and such.
00:08:11.000What's happening in Oregon, and this has been happening in Nevada too, is that the federal government wants to expand its ownership of land.
00:08:18.000It's not enough for them to own 85% of Nevada or 53% of Oregon.
00:08:23.000So what they've been doing is they've been going and buying up all the land around particular ranchers, land that used to be privately held, and then they are restricting the land use for the ranchers who remain.
00:08:35.000So if you're a rancher, your cows need to be able to graze in surrounding fields.
00:08:41.000Most of the time when you see cows grazing, many states, I think a majority of states, a large number of states in any case, many states have rules that say your cows can graze outside of your land on public property because obviously they're not going to do much damage, they're just eating grass and we have an interest in cows being able to graze off land, we don't want you to have to buy thousands and thousands of acres just to feed your cattle.
00:09:02.000You know, buy your cattle, keep your cattle on your land, make sure you gather your cattle back to you so they don't damage the environment too much, but they're allowed to graze.
00:09:09.000Free grazing has been a rule, not the exception, in the United States since the founding of the United States.
00:09:14.000Well, what the federal government has been doing is they've been buying up all the fields around the Hammons' estate, their farm, and then they've been restricting their access to water and they've been restricting their access to the grass.
00:09:25.000So they've forced them out of the cattle business and they've been trying to restrict their access to water.
00:09:31.000And they've been doing this with a lot of ranchers
00:10:13.000The Hammonds have been convicted in 2001 and 2006.
00:10:15.000They were convicted for two arson offenses, which we'll discuss in a moment.
00:10:19.000In their plea bargain in 2012, their plea bargain, one of the provisions of the plea bargain was that if the Hammonds had to sell their property, the right of first refusal went to the federal government.
00:10:32.000Normally when you have a plea bargain, and as somebody who's worked in criminal law a little bit, I did a summer with the Los Angeles District Attorney, when you do a plea bargain, you're typically bargaining that you will serve a given sentence, and you won't take us to court, right?
00:10:45.000We won't go through the rigmarole of a trial, and we won't have to drag in witnesses, and maybe you'll give up testimony on somebody else, and we will, in turn, reduce your sentence, right?
00:10:55.000I've never heard of a plea bargain before where the federal government got to buy your stuff.
00:11:00.000That's kind of a shocking plea bargain.
00:11:01.000Imagine, for example, that you killed somebody and the federal government came in to do a deal with you and they said, OK, we're not going to go death penalty, we're going to go life sentence on the condition that you sell us your house.
00:11:11.000Wouldn't you think that that's kind of weird?
00:11:13.000And wouldn't it suggest sort of that they were trumping up the charges just to get your house?
00:11:17.000Well, that's sort of what happened here.
00:11:19.000In 2012, the federal government had a provision inserted in the plea bargain that says that the Hammonds, if they sell, have to sell to the federal government.
00:12:32.000They proceeded to accidentally burn one acre of federal property.
00:12:36.000And again, they were brought... criminal charges were brought against them for arson.
00:12:41.000Now, all of that would be kind of questionable.
00:12:44.000What makes it super-duper questionable is that the federal government, when they brought the charges, they brought the charges under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.
00:12:52.000They didn't bring it under just federal arson charges.
00:12:56.000They brought it under an Anti-Terrorism Act.
00:12:58.000An Anti-Terrorism Act that has, as its standard, its criminal penalty standard, a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.
00:13:06.000Right, so for burning your own property and then it gets out of control a little bit and burns some worthless land and we expend no resources, the federal government wanted to put both these guys away for five years.
00:13:17.000Well, the judge in that particular case, he said, and there's a quote from the judge in that case, he says,
00:13:21.000With regard to character letters and that sort of thing, they were tremendous.
00:13:24.000These people have been salt in their community and liked, and I appreciate that.
00:13:28.000I am not going to apply the mandatory minimum, because to me, to do so under the Eighth Amendment would result in a sentence which is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here.
00:13:38.000And with regard to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,
00:13:43.000This sort of conduct could not have been conduct intended under that statute.
00:13:46.000In other words, he's saying that that anti-terrorism act, the arson provision, was designed for, for example, we've had suspicions that some of the California wildfires were set by terrorists.
00:13:56.000It wasn't for a rancher who sets a fire on his own property, it goes out of control, burns a little bit of land on federal property, and no harm is done.
00:14:04.000Well, the 9th Circuit, the prosecutors,
00:14:06.000Because the prosecutors wanted to make an example of the Hammonds for having the temerity to try and ranch near federal property, they decided that they were going to appeal the judge's decision.
00:14:15.000The judge sentenced one of them to three months and one of them to a year after they had completed their sentence.
00:14:21.000After they completed their sentence, the prosecutors then went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, appealed the judge's decision, and said the mandatory minimum is five years.
00:14:28.000We want them back in prison for another four years and four years, nine months respectively.
00:14:42.000And the Oregon Farm Bureau, again, a lot of this is specifically designed to prevent the farm from running so that the federal government can buy it.
00:14:50.000The Hammonds are supposed to pay a grand total of $400,000 to the federal government.
00:15:28.000Okay, so this is why, forget whatever you think about the Bundys, the Hammonds are being just jacked here.
00:15:33.000I mean, there's no question that the Hammonds are being jacked.
00:15:36.000The idea of being sent to jail for five years because you did a controlled burn that went out of control is ridiculous.
00:15:41.000The federal land management rules and laws and regulations are out of control themselves.
00:15:47.000Okay, now this brings us to the second question.
00:15:49.000And that is the question of the Bundys.
00:15:51.000So, first of all, it is worthwhile noting, again, as with the Klein case in Oregon, and the Hammond case,
00:15:56.000The bigger the government, the more intrusive the government, the better the shot that somebody is going to feel the necessity to fight back against the government.
00:16:03.000If you have a government that is intruding in every aspect of your life, that is taking away rights that you thought that you had, and more importantly, rights that you actually did have,
00:16:12.000In the case of the Kleins and in the case of the Hammonds, if the government is taking away those rights or attempting to deprive you of your rights so as to make a better bargain on your property, well at a certain point people are going to react badly to that.
00:16:24.000A bigger government risks more resistance from the public.
00:16:28.000A bigger government risks more resistance from the public.
00:16:48.000A federal facility, which is basically an empty house in the middle of the woods in this wilderness preserve that is next to the Hammonds.
00:16:54.000And they said, we are going to stay here until the Hammonds are released.
00:16:58.000We're going to stay here until the Hammonds are released.
00:16:59.000And the truth is that they have precedent for the federal government backing down.
00:17:04.000For all of the crap that the Bundys got and for all the crap the militias got in the original Cliven Bundy case, the federal government ended up backing down and basically cutting a deal with the Bundys, you know, for good or ill.
00:17:15.000So, they're doing all of this, and the media are going nuts.
00:17:18.000People on the left are saying, we should shoot these people, they're terrorists.
00:17:22.000I don't remember the last time terrorists took over an empty building and sat there.
00:17:27.000That's usually not a high terrorist priority.
00:17:31.000Idiot Cenk Uygur, who does a YouTube video show, used to have a show on MSNBC, The Tanked, he was saying that if these were Islamic terrorists who would have killed them already, Islamic terrorist gangs don't take over empty buildings and sit there waiting for things to happen.
00:17:46.000They go into highly populated buildings and murder people.
00:17:49.000So these people are sitting out really in the middle of nowhere with their guns, and Cliven Bundy's son, Amin, he cut this tape he put up on Facebook and told people that he wants them to come join him.
00:18:00.000Are you calling for more people to come up?
00:18:59.000And so if they come to bring physical harm to us, then they will be doing it only because of a facility or a building.
00:19:08.000And I don't believe that warrants killing people or trying to basically stop people from expressing their rights and doing what they know is right.
00:19:20.000Okay, so there are a couple things that are really interesting about what he's saying here.
00:19:23.000He's saying, basically, this isn't worth anybody getting killed over, so the federal government really ought to take a second look.
00:19:30.000So far, it is important to mention, no violence has actually been done, right?
00:19:33.000This is no different than a student takeover of a building on a college campus, which we've seen a thousand times before, and the left loves.
00:19:41.000This does raise a couple of questions.
00:19:43.000One is, is he actually threatening violence against members of the government?
00:19:47.000He's taken over federal property, right?
00:20:53.000What this brings into stark relief is the fact that not every law, and once you ask that question, it becomes pretty clear what kind of laws are worthy of being on the books and what kind of laws are not, right?
00:21:05.000Like, for example, let's take a simple law, okay?
00:21:12.000I mean, if you have somebody who's just routinely running red lights, for example, that is endangering the public and the cops would rightly shoot them.
00:21:19.000Is it really worth shooting somebody over
00:21:22.000them grazing their cattle on public land as they have historically done because you want to protect a desert tortoise as they did in Nevada.
00:21:31.000Is it really worth shooting somebody over taking advantage of rights that they already had like the Hammond family?
00:21:45.000Then why are those laws on the books in the first place?
00:21:47.000Because every law, you have to at least consider that eventuality, that the government is going to have to come in and enforce the law, and if somebody resists that enforcement, then that person could get shot.
00:21:56.000And if you think about it in that way, then what the government ought to do and what the government ought not to do, that actually becomes a relatively simple enterprise.
00:22:04.000Ought not to do very much because the government is not enabled or empowered to shoot people on behalf of that many laws.
00:22:09.000Or at least they shouldn't be if we're right-headed.
00:22:12.000The fact that the left is so gung-ho about going in and shooting... I'm in Bundy and I'm talking Jonathan Chait over at the New Yorker has been writing this.
00:22:19.000There are a bunch of people on the left who have been saying, yeah, just go in and shoot these guys.
00:22:22.000You're really willing to shoot these guys for sitting in an empty building in the middle of a wilderness?
00:22:27.000Is that really what you're willing to shoot these guys over?
00:22:30.000Now, if they took over a populated building, they posed some threat?
00:23:04.000They always come from the perspective of, what rights do you have against the government, as opposed to, what rights does the government have against you?
00:23:11.000The left's question is, why shouldn't we pass this law?
00:23:35.000One is, when is armed resistance necessary and when is armed resistance not necessary?
00:23:40.000And two is, how far is the left going to push here before things become necessary?
00:23:44.000So, is armed resistance necessary with regard to the Hammonds?
00:23:48.000No, I don't think armed resistance is necessary with regard to the Hammonds.
00:23:51.000The Hammonds themselves say that armed resistance is not necessary with regard to the Hammonds.
00:23:55.000They don't want any part of what the Mundies are doing.
00:23:56.000They're trying to work out a deal with the government.
00:24:00.000But I could foresee a scenario in which armed resistance to the government was necessary.
00:24:04.000Let's say, for example, that the state of California, I've said this before, the state of California has already said that it is mandatory that public schools teach gay and lesbian history to your kids.
00:24:12.000Let's say you decide to homeschool your kids.
00:24:15.000And let's say the leftists in California say we're not going to accredit any homeschooling program that doesn't educate your children in the decency and beauty of the homosexual lifestyle.
00:24:25.000And let's say that they go a step further and they say well because we're not accrediting your kids are now truants and we are going to grab your kids and put them under the care of Child Protective Services if you don't allow us to educate your kids the way we want to educate your kids.
00:24:37.000Would that be a time for armed resistance?
00:24:42.000And this is actually beginning to hit the fan a little bit because President Obama is really going directly at it when he's trying to push now executive orders on guns.
00:24:51.000He says that he wants executive orders on guns.
00:24:53.000He wants to be able to control the buying and selling of guns.
00:24:56.000Now I was asked this morning, I do a morning radio show in Los Angeles, I was asked by my leftist colleague Brian Whitman, I was asked am I in favor of background checks?
00:25:03.000And what I said is background checks are wonderful in theory and do pretty much nothing in practice.
00:25:07.000President Obama wants to push universal background checks
00:25:30.000Again, I don't really have a problem with them conceptually, I just don't think they're that useful.
00:25:33.000President Obama is pushing executive orders on guns because President Obama really does not like guns, and he doesn't like guns in the hands of the public.
00:25:41.000Greg Abbott is the governor of the state of Texas, and Greg Abbott came out and he said if President Obama tries to enforce his unlawful gun grab in the state of Texas, we will resist.
00:25:53.000This is when the rubber is going to hit the road.
00:25:55.000As the federal government expands, forget the federal government versus the individual, eventually there will be state actors, like Texas, who say, you can't try to enforce that on our property.
00:26:05.000You try to bring that in here, and we will forcibly stop you.
00:26:07.000We will meet you at the border with guys with guns.
00:26:10.000The bigger the government gets, the more likely you're going to get these kinds of scenarios.
00:26:15.000And by the way, the more likely that the scenario will actually be justified.
00:26:19.000Because if the government gets that big and is violating that many rights, there will be people who eventually say, look, I'm not going to let you take my kid from me without a fight.
00:26:26.000I'm not going to allow you to take my land from me without a fight.
00:26:29.000I'm not going to allow you to take my gun from me without a fight.
00:26:39.000Do I think that as the government gets bigger, and unchecked, and feels no qualms whatsoever about shooting people over this stuff, that it's going to risk further violence?
00:26:49.000I do, and there's a reason why there's been a big run on guns during the Obama administration.
00:26:52.000The bigger the government gets, the more people feel the need to defend themselves against the possibility that that giant, powerful machine of government
00:27:00.000Okay, I want to talk a little bit about the Trump vs. Hillary race right here.
00:27:11.000So let's talk about the Trump vs. Hillary race.
00:27:13.000Trump has been doing a great job of turning the narrative on Hillary.
00:27:16.000So Hillary made the mistake during the last debate of calling Trump a sexist.
00:28:36.000As a businessman, I would always stick up for various people, whether they were friends or not, because in many cases I needed them, I needed their votes to get things done.
00:28:45.000Okay, and Trump went on to say that Hillary was basically an enabler for Bill, which is correct.
00:28:49.000And Hillary is having a tough time with this.
00:28:51.000So Hillary was at a New Hampshire town hall meeting, and this lady got up and started heckling her.
00:29:40.000I asked her how in the world she can say that Juanita Broderick and Kathleen Willey are lying when she has no idea who Juanita Broderick is because she told me this summer that she doesn't know who she is and she doesn't want to know who she is.
00:29:56.000And how can she assess that they're lying, which is what she told someone last month.
00:30:00.000And she says that rape victims should be believed.
00:30:17.000And as a state representative, I have constituents who tell me that they're drug addicts because they were sexually assaulted and overdid everything.
00:30:29.000Coming here to question her, though, coming here to question her at an event, putting her on the spotlight, that makes her look, you know, not in a perfect light.
00:30:57.000And Hillary Clinton is going to have to battle this one off and she's going to have a really tough time.
00:31:00.000Fortunately, she has Bernie Sanders out there to save her.
00:31:03.000So Bernie Sanders, who spent this entire campaign really just defending Hillary Clinton, is pretty amazing.
00:31:09.000Bernie Sanders says there's so much more important than Hillary Clinton's sex life or Bill Clinton's sex life.
00:31:14.000I think that Donald Trump might want to concern himself with the fact that he is dead wrong when he says we should not raise the minimum wage.
00:31:22.000He's dead wrong when he says that wages in America are too high.
00:31:26.000He's dead wrong when he thinks we should give huge tax breaks to billionaires like himself.
00:31:31.000And he's dead wrong when he thinks that climate change is a hoax when virtually the entire scientific community thinks it's the great environmental crisis that we face.
00:31:40.000Maybe Trump should worry about those issues rather than Bill Clinton's sex life.
00:31:44.000Only Bernie Sanders can segue from Bill Clinton's sex life to climate change.
00:31:48.000That was impressive, but what is the answer to the question, is it fair game or not?
00:31:54.000No, I think we got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life.
00:31:59.000By the way, I love how Dana Bash treats him.
00:32:01.000Only Bernie Sanders could be such a genius as to segue from Bill Clinton's sex life to climate change.
00:32:06.000It actually isn't that difficult to segue, but
00:32:10.000It's more difficult to do without using words like hot and wet and moist and such, and just getting really awkward.
00:32:15.000So, in any case, Bernie Sanders is trying to save Hillary Clinton.
00:32:17.000She will win the nomination, but this is going to be an issue that dogs her, and Trump is unafraid to attack, so that'll make things pretty entertaining.
00:32:23.000Okay, time for some stuff that I like and some stuff that I hate.
00:32:27.000This time around, the stuff I like is actually the stuff that I hate, so I'm gonna warn you
00:32:31.000Ahead of time that there will be spoilers here.
00:32:33.000Okay, I'm gonna go I saw Star Wars I finally saw Star Wars I saw it Saturday night and there will be some spoilers in what I'm about to say So if you haven't seen the Star Wars movie yet, and you don't want it to be spoiled Then then you can you can tune out now or you can stick around and be a little bit spoiled The truth is there's there are no really huge surprises in in the new Star Wars film So when I first saw it, I did like the film.
00:33:30.000So, when I watched this film, I came out, and I felt pretty good about it.
00:33:34.000I felt like it was a fun film, well done.
00:33:37.000Derivative, because the plot is basically the exact same plot as A New Hope.
00:33:40.000It's the same plot, pretty much measure for measure, as A New Hope, which is episode 4.
00:33:48.000But what really depressed me... I had a tough time sleeping a little bit, and I realized that the reason I had a tough time sleeping because of the new Star Wars film is because it breaks the cardinal rule of the fictional universe.
00:34:01.000The cardinal rule of the fictional universe.
00:34:05.000It's because of the entire concept of a relaunch here.
00:34:07.000The cardinal rule of the fictional universe is that there is such a thing as happily ever after.
00:34:13.000That when you hit the end of a story, when you hit the end of a movie, you either feel good or you feel bad because it's the end of the movie.
00:34:19.000When you watch a TV show, not so much, because you know there's another episode next week, but eventually there will be a series finale, and people will go off and they will live or they will die, and that'll be the end of it.
00:34:38.000The fact is that happily ever after, eventually, it ends up becoming just life.
00:34:44.000And what's particularly depressing about the Star Wars film is when you end Return of the Jedi, when Return of the Jedi ends, everything has pretty much been square to Ray, right?
00:34:52.000Darth Vader has been turned good at the end, and Luke has become a Jedi, and Han and Leia have gotten together, and Han has become a responsible person because he's learned that he has to give up his smuggler ways, and the new movie starts, and you fast forward 40 years,
00:35:22.000The Rebellion is still called the Rebel Force, so presumably the Empire is still governing, although nobody really knows how, after the Emperor died and the second Death Star was blown up.
00:35:31.000And beyond that, we don't know what the Republic is doing, we don't know if the rebel force is governing, and we know that Han and Leia—this is the spoiler-laden part, folks—we know that Han and Leia
00:35:44.000have now basically had marital trouble.
00:35:46.000So the happily ever after didn't happen for them.
00:35:49.000And not only did it not happen for them, it really didn't happen for them, right?
00:35:52.000They had a kid, and the kid ends up being the bad guy, ends up being Kylo Ren.
00:35:57.000And it's really depressing, the idea that Han Solo, who's this great character who you watch transform from a guy who cares only about himself to a general in the rebel army at the end of Return of the Jedi, and presumably a governing force in the new universe, in the new galaxy,
00:36:13.000That he has basically turned back into a smuggler.
00:37:20.000It's a sad ending to a great character.
00:37:23.000And that kind of kills my childhood for me a little bit, because when you hit the end of Return of the Jedi, and everything is great, and the teddy bears are celebrating with the golden robots, and everything is terrific, you want there to be an ending.
00:37:36.000And violating that, coming back, and for everything to be just as dingy and dark and terrible as it ever was, and for all your heroes who had happily ever after to now be divorced?
00:37:45.000I mean, would you really want to go back now and watch
00:37:48.000Cinderella, if you knew that the prince was gonna cheat on her, and she was gonna throw him out of the house, and then get fat.
00:37:55.000It's not like, would that be a story that's worth re-watching?
00:37:58.000And so in a sense, it sort of corrupted the original trilogy.
00:38:01.000So I'm, in my own mind, I'm trying to kind of seg off this, this particular, sector off this particular film from the earlier films, just as the first three films don't exist to me.
00:38:41.000Is that instead of it just kind of reveling in the nostalgia and giving everybody the happy ending that they deserve, it instead takes those characters and it plunges them back into the chaos from whence they sprang.
00:38:52.000I mean, how much fun would it be at the end of Lord of the Rings if it turns out that when Gollum falls into the volcano and the ring falls after him, that the ring actually survived and there's a creature at the bottom of the lava who's gonna take the ring and do something with it, right?
00:39:04.000It'd be kind of depressing and you'd go back and say, okay, this whole saga was about what again?
00:39:08.000Especially because everybody makes exactly the same mistakes, right?
00:39:12.000Everyone makes exactly the same mistakes.
00:39:14.000So Luke makes exactly the Obi-Wan Kenobi mistake.
00:39:16.000Obi-Wan Kenobi takes Anakin under his wing, Anakin kills everybody, Obi-Wan Kenobi goes off and lives in a cave somewhere, and so does Yoda.