00:00:48.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:54.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:47.000I was inspired by and I did model the book after the 12-step program of AA.
00:01:52.000And also in a more nuanced and subtle way, but I think one that would appeal to your listeners because they tend to follow him a lot, is Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life.
00:02:04.000Yeah, that number 12 is very powerful.
00:02:06.000It's enough to get your point across, but not too comprehensive where people kind of lose focus.
00:02:11.000Tell us about your book, Dr. McDonald.
00:02:16.000So the first book that I wrote in November of last year, which was United States of Fear, was a synopsis of the antecedents that led us into the pandemic of fear, into mass delusional psychosis, so that people would understand how we got here.
00:02:30.000Because if we don't know how we got here, just like you don't know how you got sick, then you can't diagnose the problem.
00:02:49.000I was speaking multiple times a week in front of live audiences and off of my computer through Zoom, all across the country in the last year, year and a half.
00:03:09.000What do I do for my family, my neighbors to get them out of this fear pandemic?
00:03:14.000Well, I wrote a book about it and I tried to make it simple, direct, didactic, and illustrative so that every individual person, or if he knows somebody who's afraid, can overcome his or her fear.
00:03:26.000And I also took it at a different, I'd say, different perspective than the first book, which was sort of focused on the national.
00:03:32.000And I believe now, after being in this battle for a couple of years, that the answer, the solution is not top-down.
00:03:39.000It's let's reform our own garden, our own backyard.
00:03:42.000Just like Peterson said, you've got to start by making your own bed, cleaning your own house.
00:03:46.000I firmly believe now as a psychiatrist and as a social observer of cultural trends in the country that we need as individuals to acknowledge and face our fears, to overcome them, and then from there to spread upwards and transform the nation, not top down, bottom up.
00:04:04.000You open the book with a story about a girl that's 10 or 12 years old with a mask, and you ask her, why is she wearing the mask?
00:04:24.000But the argument that you're making, the contention is that there is a relationship between fear itself and us, as if we keep on going back to it, even though we know it is destructive.
00:04:37.000Can you explain a little bit more about the addictive qualities?
00:04:48.000The reason why I chose consciously to use addiction as a metaphor and an analogy for the fear pandemic is: one, I believe it's accurate.
00:04:58.000I do believe that people have become actually taken by fear, just like they're taken by alcohol, by gambling, by pornography, all problems that are facing our society.
00:05:08.000Also, because I wanted to reduce the stigma.
00:05:11.000I wanted people to not have to say, no, I'm not afraid.
00:06:08.000It's an arrest issue because you cannot face life's problems and grow up and be mature if you are addicted.
00:06:14.000Because every time you take a hit of that drug, or every time you express your fear by avoiding a challenge, avoiding a conversation that might be difficult, avoiding firing someone from your office, avoiding taking that trip that you know is really important for your family because you are afraid, you are deferring a more important problem that you are not facing.
00:06:39.000And so addiction is kind of a cop-out really to facing life.
00:06:45.000And when it becomes virtuous, when it becomes the altar at which we start to pray, when we start to worship fear addiction as opposed to courage, now we've really lost our way.
00:07:00.000We're giving the wrong message to our children to develop an addiction into our youth generation, which is then going to grow up believing that being afraid is not bad.
00:07:40.000And the hardest part when I work with patients is for patients to come in and actually acknowledge and agree that we're both going to start with a position of reality.
00:07:49.000I had a woman come into my office a few months ago who was wearing a face shield, two masks, gloves, hand sanitizer everywhere.
00:07:56.000And she said to me, shockingly, I know that I'm addicted.
00:08:30.000If they haven't acknowledged that they're afraid, there's no point in talking to them.
00:08:34.000If you have an alcoholic who hasn't acknowledged that he's a drunk, if he hasn't acknowledged that the reason why his wife left him is not because she's an idiot, but because he's actually lying sloshed every night and he lost his job and he beats her when he gets drunk.
00:08:48.000If he hasn't acknowledged that is the problem, there's no point in taking him to AA.
00:08:53.000He has to acknowledge that he has a problem first.
00:08:55.000And that is so difficult because it means you then have to face the problem and face reality.
00:08:59.000And if there's anything that we haven't done in the last two and a half years, Charlie, as Americans, it's faced reality.
00:09:06.000I mean, and the question is, what even is reality?
00:09:08.000And that, well, for us, it's rather evident, right?
00:09:10.000You have your five senses, you have reason, but there is this subjective idea pathogen, a mind virus that has infected so many.
00:09:21.000And how much of this is the subjectivist kind of curse over our land that plays into this where people just reject biological reality and every other kind of reality in front of us?
00:09:32.000It is, in my view, a direct consequence of the bombardment, the infestation day in and day out, 24-7, of propaganda and lies coming from media through devices.
00:09:46.000And this is why we have to fight back against that.
00:09:49.000Because if we don't get a hold of the dealer of this drug, which I call the media, that is our drug dealer, then we will forever live in this matrix of subjective reality and we will not be forced to confront the actual physical tangible world, which is out there, not through our computers and our Zoom screen.
00:10:07.000Are you like every one of us that thinks our country has gone nuts, whether it's Russia Gate market crashes or selling oil to China or this insane inflation?
00:10:15.000Well, right now, you need a financial mind who understands your concerns, but the same time as a Christian worldview of money.
00:10:22.000That's why you should talk to my friends at PAX Financial Group.
00:10:25.000Look, I've given my money to PAX Financial to manage.
00:10:27.000If it's good enough for me, I think it's good for you.
00:10:30.000Like all of us, they have concerns, but they also have hope.
00:10:33.000In this market, you must have a financial person who shares your hope and at the same time can help you with biblical responsible investing, B-R-I, biblical, responsible investing.
00:10:43.000That's why I want you to text the word Charlie to 74868.
00:10:48.000That is Charlie to 74868 to connect with my friends at the PAX Financial Group.
00:11:13.000One of the biggest problems that I saw when I was in Bosnia and Macedonia and Kosovo for the last six weeks, in distinction with what's happening in the U.S., the problems that I didn't see, I should say, is that there were no sheep there.
00:12:09.000We didn't go out and get shots because we didn't believe that what we were being told by our government was accurate and truthful and that they had our best interests at heart.
00:12:18.000And with good reason, because the government has screwed them in the last 40 years.
00:12:22.000Here in the United States, it's the opposite.
00:12:25.000Rather than what they believe in, which is disobedience, non-compliance, and freedom, sloboda, we believe in obedience, compliance, following the collective order.
00:12:46.000And this is a big, big problem, especially in the context of being afraid.
00:12:51.000If you are both fearful and you are compliant, then you are committing suicide as an individual and as a nation.
00:12:58.000So one of the biggest and most important steps after accepting that you're addicted to fear, in my view, in bringing back something as a sense of health, is to start challenging and rejecting the collective so-called wisdom or collective thinking, which is what has over the last two and a half years brought us to this state of near financial, political, social, and urban collapse in this country.
00:13:23.000I mean, with Bosnia being more freedom-loving than America, you'd think that in their kind of muscle memory in their past would be to kind of bend the knee to totalitarianism, living under vast communist governments for quite some time, kind of in the Soviet bloc and under Tito.
00:13:40.000It's just so interesting that they would actually be more kind of of the spirit of 1776 than us Americans.
00:13:47.000Doctor, why do you think that Eastern Europe actually has a flavor for freedom more than America, which is always thought of as kind of the land of the free?
00:13:55.000Well, one of the answers, there's probably many answers to that question, is that when I asked people in Kosovo and in Sarajevo and in Skopje, the capitals of these three republics, where do you think you get this idea in your culture, especially young people?
00:14:10.000I asked them, where does this come from?
00:14:42.000They were inspired by what the U.S. used to represent, which was freedom and democracy.
00:14:47.000And they still believe that that's what the U.S. represents because they have not traveled to the U.S. because they can't get visas, because they're not going to cross the border illegally, because they believe in the rule of law.
00:14:57.000So they still live in the America of 20 or 30 years ago, not the America that we live in today, Charlie.
00:15:05.000It's incredible that they look at America as a beacon of freedom.
00:15:09.000And we don't look at ourselves as a beacon of freedom anymore, where Eastern Europe actually embraces our values better than we embrace our own values.
00:15:19.000There is a very promising movement happening in Eastern Europe, not just in Bosnia, as you articulated, but Poland and many other Hungary as well.
00:15:33.000If you're renting or a friend or family member, that is, right now is the time to make the move to homeownership.
00:15:38.000Good buddies, Andrew Del Rey and Todd of Akian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people to make that leap from renting owning.
00:15:44.000I know what you're saying, oh, Charlie, rates are too high.
00:15:48.000The problem is, though, why are you giving all of your money to rent when you could be building equity with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed?
00:15:59.000I encourage you to visit andrewandtodd.com right now.
00:17:44.000What are they telling young parents with small children who decide that they want to change their pronouns and transition over to another gender?
00:17:53.000What are the therapists and doctors saying to them?
00:17:56.000They're saying, if you don't accept this transition, if you don't support this child's gender journey, your child will die of suicide.
00:18:04.000And that becomes the parents' reality.
00:19:32.000I mean that just because you think that you're a boy and you're a girl, or just because you think you're a girl and you're a boy, that the rest of the world should not honor that and should not determine that you are now the sun around which everyone else orbits.
00:19:48.000This is a correct consequence of what we just said two minutes ago.
00:19:52.000This idea of rejecting narcissism is so central, so profound in our society today that I cannot overstate it.
00:20:01.000Babies are born narcissistic and they are born narcissistic because if they are not narcissistic, they will collapse from despair at the reality that they are so small and so insignificant outside of the mind of their parents.
00:20:15.000And as they get older, they accept that they're not the center of the universe, that just because they're wet or they're crying, that the world does not come to their beckoning and call and fix their problems as they get older, that they have a role to play in the relationship between themselves and other people.
00:20:31.000That's what it's called to be social and a social creature.
00:20:35.000But we have a whole generation of adult Americans right now that don't accept that.
00:20:39.000They believe that what I feel is reality.
00:20:43.000And so that's why those two steps are so intricately linked together.
00:20:49.000Those who are inherently narcissistic are also deniers of reality because they centralize themselves as the most important person and the most important true north in the entire world.
00:21:03.000There has to be an injection of humility in our population because without it, we will continue down this insane, subjective tower of babble path for which there is no end.
00:21:14.000And at the end, there will be no distinctions because everyone will have their own definition of language and their own definition of sex and their own definition of north.
00:22:04.000This is also a very important distinction between the U.S. and the Balkans.
00:22:08.000There is no fear in the Balkans and largely, actually, to be honest, in most of Europe now, not because I think Western Europe is the thriving democratic citadel of liberty in the world, far from it.
00:22:37.000We have people who are really speaking truth.
00:22:39.000They don't really have that kind of outlier media in Europe, but they also don't have the massive, overwhelming power of two or three media titans that are censoring all of the voices.
00:22:51.000And this is a really important distinction.
00:22:54.000That's why in the U.S., you have a phone in your pocket and you just get pop-ups all day long.
00:23:15.000So if you're an alcoholic and you walk home from work every day and you pass by a bar and you say, I'm not going to drink anymore, how many nights a week are you going to wind up in that bar drunk?
00:23:24.000You need to void the bar, walk through the park.
00:23:28.000That's why we need to avoid the media.
00:23:30.000I tell parents, do not give your son or child, daughter, a cell phone.
00:24:46.000She has now a new clip where she comes out where she says that masking stunted her toddler's language development and taught her an important lesson about trade-offs.
00:25:08.000And I have not heard that recent clip.
00:25:10.000I did listen many times to the previous one that you just raised.
00:25:13.000Interestingly, Dr. Liana Wen was also prominently featured at a awards ceremony for the Pfizer Corporation, where she was actually photographed with one of their boards of directors and their C-level people because she had been paid to actually market and advertise for them.
00:25:31.000So that already discredited her in my eyes.
00:25:35.000This woman is actually literally a shill.
00:25:37.000Why she has now come to this conclusion, I'm assuming it's sincere, I don't know, is a very powerful and I think quite interesting development because in the last year, we have now seen a 300% increase in referrals for speech and language disorders.
00:25:58.000And in the zero to three population, there's a large percentage of American children who simply don't speak.
00:26:04.000They have been at home with their parents wearing masks for the last two or three years since their birth, and their parents know them so well that they don't even need to talk to them.
00:26:13.000There's a unspoken language between the child and the parent that just consists of perhaps pointing with a finger.
00:26:19.000Now, that works as long as you stay at home indoors with your parent for the rest of your life.
00:26:24.000But what happens if you want to leave the home?
00:26:26.000What happens if you want to go to school, a grocery store?
00:26:50.000This consequence, which is sad but profoundly important to our children, which are, of course, our literal future, I have said for the last two years may be the only opportunity we have for a wake-up call to those who have been persuaded that the only way to deal with this pandemic, this viral pandemic, is to sit at home and be afraid and suffocate our children.
00:27:16.000Now, they are the losers in this, obviously, the children.
00:27:19.000But I had hoped for a long time, and maybe this is a sign of something changing, that the misguided women, and it is largely speaking women, that are pushing this narrative.
00:27:29.000It's mostly women because they're hysterical.
00:27:32.000Because in the absence of masculinity and male courage and male containment, women have lost it, especially doctors and therapists who are now pushing all these transgender surgeries.
00:27:41.000It's all driven by women and teachers that are all women too.
00:27:45.000If these women, these mothers, can wake up and realize the harm and the damage they've caused to their own children, then perhaps they will reform their message and they will start to preach and teach reality-based common sense and caretaking for children once again.
00:29:13.000One of the big important points I make to my patients, and which is why I included it in this book, is that part of being an adult, part of being mature, part of being a responsible member of society, community, family, is actually learning and discovering and expressing a healthy way to love other people.
00:29:30.000And there's a lot of elements within that that include being less narcissistic, being less selfish, being more caring, being more patient, accepting reality.
00:29:42.000And I describe all of those subcomponents in that chapter.
00:29:45.000But maturity and being an adult means learning how to love and care for others.
00:29:52.000And I'll tell you what my definition of love is so that people are not misled into thinking that it's just some good state of feeling and being caring and sensitive and providing flowers.
00:30:01.000My definition of love is very similar to that of C.S. Lewis, who says that love is nothing more than allowing and supporting the other to attain his or her full potential.
00:30:35.000You cannot occupy more than two points, two apices on the triangle at any given time.
00:30:41.000So a lot of patients who come to me who are very, very anxious have a really hard time being sexual with their partners while they're anxious.
00:30:58.000If you are in a state of humor, if you are laughing, if you are in a moment experiencing a perspective that is different than the one that you were just holding, that takes away the power of the fear and it takes away the anxiety.
00:31:15.000So I think humor is incredibly important from a psychological perspective, meaning emotional.
00:31:21.000And it's also important from a psychological perspective intellectually because it actually provides a set of difference and a perspective that you can't get.
00:31:31.000This is why people laugh at comedy clubs because they're surprised that they were jolted into a position that they weren't in two seconds ago and they don't know how they got there.
00:32:25.000You know someone who is addicted to fear, someone who is in a rut, in a pattern, cannot get out of it, can't be humorous, can't see reality, narcissistic, doesn't know how to love, can't drop the dealer, all of these problems, maybe can't even acknowledge that there's anxiety and persistent fear.
00:32:40.000This book is for you because it offers a guide and a stepwise way out of this problem.
00:32:46.000And on a national level, if we can all work towards that, then we can remove the fear, which will allow us to express courage, which will allow us to start to think rationally and reasonably.
00:32:57.000And we can fight back against this monolith that is taking over our lives.
00:33:02.000And I believe that it is driven not just by irrationality, not just by desire for power, but it is driven by evil.
00:33:09.000I believe that there is a diabolical force upon us that is capitalizing on our fear.
00:33:14.000And if we can express courage, that is the greatest antithesis and oppositional force to evil.