Glenn and Stu discuss the assault weapons ban, the Bill of Rights, mass shootings, and why we should ban cars in the United States. Plus, a special guest appearance from Bridget Phetasy.
00:06:57.060That's what our Declaration of Independence means.
00:06:59.500That's what's different about us than any other country.
00:07:02.940We say that man is born with certain rights.
00:07:07.400And one of those rights is to defend yourself.
00:07:12.640Well, how are you going to defend yourself?
00:07:14.780What, you're going to defend yourself against the United States military?
00:07:18.580Well, yeah, it seems to me that ISIS and Al Qaeda and everybody else was doing a pretty good job.
00:07:24.720Seems like the rebels in the Middle East are doing a pretty good job.
00:07:28.120What is it that why are they holding up flags, American flags and signs that say we need a Second Amendment in Hong Kong today?
00:07:37.580Because, yes, if that's your only, if that's the last resort, if your government has become so tyrannical, yes, I will defend myself against fighter jets and tanks.
00:08:43.920Any gun, any knife, any pair of hands is a weapon of war.
00:08:52.580What's happening right now is Peter King and others on the Democrat or Republican side, they don't understand the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, any of the amendments.
00:09:05.740They don't understand them, shall not be infringed, infringed, shall not be.
00:13:19.960Should we not be working on a pill, and maybe perhaps working on ourselves, to be able to see people for who they are, and where they're going, and what's happening in their life?
00:13:39.360Depression is something that hits, and you think it's logical.
00:13:46.180It starts someplace logical, and then it's like a snowball, and if you're prone to clinical depression at all, and we all go through periods of time in our life where this happens to us.
00:14:06.180You're not getting the endorphins in your brain that you need, and so what happens is it starts out logical, and then it becomes clinical.
00:14:16.440Then it becomes chemical, and you go further and further and further down until you start thinking, you know, the answer is the world's better without me, but I'm not going alone.
00:14:26.460Who's having a serious conversation about the mental health of our society?
00:18:50.100Yeah, I kind of always refer to it as my factory settings.
00:18:53.340It was more, you know, it was like I was in a Google self-driving car, and I just was born and raised a liberal Democrat and worked really hard and was chasing, you know, paycheck after paycheck and never really paid attention.
00:19:10.620I was told that people like yourself are evil and just kept moving until I came out of my coma in 2013.
00:19:20.800And you came out of your coma because you started saying things that all of a sudden were not politically correct.
00:20:52.540I always say this because I got sober in 2013, and I say if you had told me in 2013 that I would have been friends with Glenn Beck, I would have been like, what drugs are you on?
00:21:03.320So you, in this article, you talk about how you're just, you're somebody with a brain, you have your own ideas, you might disagree with people, but you're not in a tribe, and this has got to stop.
00:21:21.820I think, you know, I get a lot of fair criticism on this, obviously, from the tribes, and I'm not so naive to think we live in a two-party system, essentially, when people might feel this way.
00:21:37.780But then when the going gets tougher, it comes to voting day, they have to pick something.
00:21:44.580But what, you know, I set up an email for people to tell me how they felt about this, and some people say nobody's shifted politically, they just are, they just think they might be more conservative, but the culture has shifted, which in a lot of cases is probably true.
00:22:04.400And obviously, what I'm hearing is self-selected because I represent these people who don't feel represented, so these are the people who are writing me.
00:22:13.740Now, what is interesting are the people who have shifted politically and are in swing states.
00:22:22.040Those are the ones who are fascinating to me.
00:22:24.940Like, a woman wrote to me from Florida, and she came center from the right because of Trump's often demonizing rhetoric, and she just doesn't like the way that he speaks.
00:22:37.320And as she mentioned that she just doesn't know if she can stomach voting for him, but she certainly can't get on board with the left either.
00:22:49.040And I said, you know, I asked her what she would do, and she doesn't know.
00:22:52.580She, my biggest fear is that people like that woman will sit the election out completely.
00:23:02.620But there's a lot of people who are just saying, it's disgusting to me on both sides.
00:23:09.800And not to be, you know, I think ultimately, too, the other refrain that I hear over and over and over again are people who have been alienated by the left.
00:23:21.160And essentially, they say, Trump is a limited problem that we have to deal with.
00:23:30.540What they're seeing on the left, socialism and free speech erosion in a social way, that kind of approved message that everybody needs to get on board with or be canceled,
00:23:46.040that that is more insidious and dangerous in the long term than whatever is going on in the right.
00:25:41.920Yeah, this is this is what's deeply concerning to me is when I, you know, on my good days, I feel like that kind of cancel culture, in particular, where I'm seeing it on the left and progress and progressives.
00:26:06.600It's like a snake eating its own tail.
00:26:08.800Eventually, it has to eat itself and maybe fizzle out.
00:26:12.600But then I see something like what happened with Sarah Silverman, for instance, last week, where she went on a podcast and she was talking about how she got she lost in a movie role because of her because of the sketch she did in 2007 in which she was in blackface.
00:26:30.620And and and apologize for in like 2010 on her own show and apologizing.
00:26:37.700Yeah. And and it was I believe it was a it was a criticism.
00:26:43.080You know, she was making fun of racism.
00:26:45.000And so this is the stuff that is deeply worrisome to me because we have to offer people paths to redemption.
00:26:58.880And when you're canceling people for things that they've apologized for, that they maybe have learned from it, I don't know from from the perspective of somebody who was a Democrat and looking at perhaps what the Democrats are doing going into 2020.
00:27:17.120I don't actually see how that's helpful to them.
00:27:20.740Now, you know, people on your show are like, good, they're walking right into a brick wall again, which I I understand.
00:27:28.940But from the perspective of somebody who is I often hear that, you know, if you're in the center, all of these YouTube is creating this path to the right.
00:27:40.240And there's only a path to the right. Well, that's because the far left has eroded the center left.
00:27:47.220And there is no path to the left, essentially, if you're if you're a moderate even at all, you're essentially, you know, I don't I don't even know if you're right.
00:27:58.580If you're right of Bernie, you're essentially a conservative now.
00:28:02.900You're as bad as me. Yeah. You're as bad as me. And I'm bad as Hitler.
00:28:06.400Sure. Yeah. Hang on. We're going to continue our conversation with Bridget Phetasy.
00:28:12.480You can find her and follow her at Twitter at Bridget Phetasy and Bridget Phetasy dot com.
00:28:18.800Back in just a second, more on the battle cry of the political homeless.
00:29:10.460And I was emotionally reacting as is completely understandable in those situations online.
00:29:18.340And I was like, I don't know anything about I don't know how to I don't know anything about them.
00:29:25.800I don't know any. I don't know anything about the laws.
00:29:28.600I don't even know how to hold one or load one.
00:29:32.220And and so I realized, you know, I understandably why I would react emotionally, but perhaps I should maybe get some information before I was spouting my mouth off.
00:29:58.460They have no idea what they're talking about.
00:30:00.760And yet they're coming off and pontificating.
00:30:03.380And look, I'll have a reasonable gun conversation with anybody.
00:30:06.400If you know what you're talking about, right, if you're just if you're just making stuff up, well, an assault weapon, what's an assault weapon?
00:30:19.040I mean, you know, that's you can't have a conversation.
00:30:22.300That's like trying to talk about if we should go back to the moon or not with a kindergartner.
00:30:27.800It's interesting because I put out a call to my listener or to my at that time following on Twitter.
00:30:37.080And I said, you know, I don't know anything about this.
00:30:39.380I'd really like to hear what you have to think about it.
00:30:42.420And I got such thoughtful, intelligent, long written answers about people's feelings, primarily independents and conservatives, about the, you know, responsible gun owners in most cases.
00:30:56.740And then I started just doing my own research and and being that and and now I'm, you know, starting to shoot and I, I.
00:31:20.960It's crazy because I was told that the people that I wrote that in the battle cry of the politically homeless, I was told we don't exist, you know, they're by both sides.
00:31:32.820Everyone's like and people like you don't exist.
00:31:35.900Oh, I think you're the I think you're the majority.
00:31:39.200But again, the question is, OK, so we're confused, which and maybe feeling morally conflicted about what to do in the upcoming election or politically conflicted.
00:31:53.400Or there's one, you know, there's one thing that we believe in that will have us vote one way or another or are strongly against.
00:32:03.120And and so I understand when people say they don't exist, I know what they're saying, that at the end of the day, people have to pull the lever and vote.
00:32:12.800Yeah. Bridget, it's a lot easier to just throw people in categories, though.
00:32:15.800We only have about one minute left, but I wanted to get your take on this Joe Rogan article that came out from the Atlantic.
00:32:26.880I just think it's an insidious attempt to undermine the very real need for men like Joe Rogan and masculinity, what that is, fans represent.
00:32:38.340And I know what they're doing and also comedy.
00:32:41.900I know what pieces like this are doing because they've been kind of implying that Joe is this person who is, you know, a gateway drug to the outright.
00:32:51.420And pieces like this lay the groundwork very insidiously for that.
00:35:55.340And it's easier for me because I don't have kids in a school system.
00:35:59.540I don't have a job that's corporate where I'm dealing with HR.
00:36:03.660I, when people ask me what they should do, depending on their situation, I, especially, um, coming from the left in particular, I, I'm usually understanding of why they have to keep their head down and be quiet.
00:36:17.880But I'm less so, I used to be more so, I'm less so now because it's not my country, it's not your country, it's all of our country.
00:36:49.400And I've, I've, I've risked my livelihood.
00:36:51.500You know, I've put my livelihood and my life in some regards, my family's, uh, on, on the line.
00:36:59.480So, um, so let me change subjects because I brought up guns with you a minute ago because, uh, we're now talking about banning assault weapons, which we've already done that.
00:37:20.440But I don't think that we should be having the gun debate.
00:37:24.060Quite honestly, I think this is because we're a society that is run by politicians that want to divide us and nobody wants to actually talk about the truth.
00:37:32.780The truth is we're having more shootings and mass shootings and shootings in Chicago because there's a hole in us.
00:37:41.660We are a sick nation and a sick culture and, and all of us, the, the drug epidemic is because there's a hole in us.
00:37:51.940It's so complex, you know, when you really look at all of these situations and there are many different ones that you just mentioned, it is incredibly, I'm fascinated about the psychology and the social psychology that happened, that's happening.
00:38:12.960And I do feel like there's a certain amount of, I always joke on Twitter.
00:38:55.300Or they do, and it's, it's in a way that, um, isn't helpful.
00:39:01.520So if you're talking about mental health, it's in a way that's kind of still making it seem, I feel like, I don't know anybody who doesn't have mental health issues.
00:39:41.500What I, what I learned, um, in writing for Playboy all those years was that men in particular, there's a lot of resources for women to kind of talk about their feelings.
00:39:52.240And it's when I would reach out and say, Hey guys, how are you doing?
00:39:57.320I would get these long essays because they didn't really feel like they could open up to somebody or they didn't feel like it was socially acceptable to admit that they were struggling.
00:40:08.060So there's a lot of secretive ness around struggle, feeling like you're struggling.
00:40:17.020I think people feel isolated by their own struggles because they feel like they don't want to admit that publicly because it will make them seem weak.
00:40:26.560They don't, they don't believe or know yet that everybody is going through something that they're hiding.
00:40:32.440Everybody is going through something that they're shamed of, or they think they're alone on and they're not, they're just, they're just not alone.
00:41:33.960I had to build my core and my self-esteem basically from the ground up.
00:41:40.740And this is where I am an advocate for reaching out, asking for help and personal responsibility, because no one can give that to us.
00:41:50.040We have to go outward for help and inward to look, hold that mirror up to ourselves and truthfully look at where our weaknesses are, where we are.
00:42:04.040You know, a lot of people will be struggling and I'll be talking to them.
00:42:07.780And I, my email is always filled with people telling me their stories.
00:42:11.200And then you find out perhaps that they're drinking too much or et cetera.
00:42:16.140So there are certain things that people can do to change their life and they, they're hard choices and changes to make.
00:42:23.560But the easy thing to do is sit around and whine and blame everybody.
00:42:27.500The hard thing to do is to look at ourself and say, you know, it truly is changing yourself.
00:42:34.160And then, um, then change the world kind of changes around you just by, by the very act of you taking control over what you can't control, which is essentially your, your self.
00:42:49.540Bridget, do you feel you still battle with days where you're like, I'm worthless for?
00:44:43.320I go, I volunteer, I work with people who are addicts.
00:44:47.400I feel like being of service is a way to find meaning instead of hashtag resisting online all day and expecting the meaning to come find you.
00:44:58.480And this is, I mean, I think the biggest problem in America, honestly, other is a two pronged sense of entitlement and victim culture.
00:45:07.720And this is all across the board, left, right, and center.
00:45:23.340We live in just a whiny culture in general.
00:45:27.700It is the, it's the air that we, we breathe and live in.
00:45:31.940And I have to, you know, he's writing about being underway and getting bombed every day for two months and then calls himself out for self-pity.
00:45:42.760I'm like, Grandpa, you can feel sorry for yourself.
00:45:55.840And it, and we're out here like, well, you know, that's why when, when you called me brave, which thank you, I appreciate it.
00:46:02.880I think it is some of the speaking out is an act of bravery.
00:46:07.060But I mean, I read my grandpa's letters every day to keep me in check because that was a brave man who was fighting for something that he believed in and with no self-pity or victimhood at all.