Glenn Beck and Stu discuss whether Bert and Ernie are gay or not, Clarence Thomas' confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh, and how to measure our addiction to outrage, and the tactics that push us to be more outraged.
00:00:17.260I could stay here until maybe Thursday night. It's just, it's one of those forever places.
00:00:23.160Anyway, today's podcast is a lot of fun. We start with the, I think the controversy that we've all been waiting to have, but it's just been so politically oppressive that we haven't been able to speak our mind and ask the question, Burt and Ernie, are they gay or what?
00:00:44.400Vitally important to our future to sort that one out.
00:00:47.460You would not believe the conversation on social media yesterday about Burt and Ernie. It is, we've gone insane. They're puppets made of felt. They have glue on eyes.
00:00:59.580We also have as close to a real answer to that question as is humanly possible with felt puppets.
00:01:07.000Also, we are going to cover a little bit of Kavanaugh and, and we look at it from the eyes of Clarence Thomas and what he said when he was being confirmed in 1991.
00:01:18.400Yes. And we'll also get into the idea of, is there a way we can look at our addiction to outrage and quantify it from the perspective of looking at how we see the other side and how we see ourselves.
00:01:32.380Yes. And that you kind of have a section of this in the book, which is out now if you, if you want to pick it up at bookstores or Amazon.
00:01:38.640But it is a, it's, it's, it's weird because you answer these questions and you know you're guilty of some of them.
00:01:47.840Yeah, you look at the other side and you're like, okay, well, they are definitely doing this.
00:01:51.320Which kind of goes to a little bit more of your outrage, but we break down in today's podcast, the three different kinds of outrage or the three tactics of those who are engaged in this peddling of outrage and what it does to them.
00:14:08.800There was a student at the University of Michigan who posted, when asked by the university or given the right to use any pronoun he wanted and to enter it into the system under his profile, chose, quote, his majesty.
00:14:27.160And so I posted, I simply posted a link to that article, having, you know, thousands of leftist friends, a lot of trans friends at that time.
00:14:36.080And the vitriol, the outrage, the hysteria was just unbelievable.
00:16:13.080And after I was done talking to her, I said, there's really nothing, what I've said here needs to be said.
00:16:18.540And I actually want to put my name on it, frankly, because I think it's, there's, there's nothing objectionable into some, you know, there's nothing fundamentally abhorrent or deplorable about it.
00:16:30.180And it's just, it's just another viewpoint and it's a vantage point I think needs to be aired.
00:16:39.120She took a picture of me laughing and that made the heresy, you know, somewhat doubled.
00:16:45.900And then all hell broke loose within my university.
00:16:50.200You were called in the middle of a class, were you not?
00:16:52.180I was called out in the middle of the class by the dean and said, you know, can you come over to see me?
00:16:56.680And he, and I said, sure, I've got, I had an idea what it was about.
00:17:01.000Although I was saying that this really is happening.
00:17:02.980I'm being called in for my political views.
00:17:05.680And so I go over and he comes up really close to me, but pulls me into the office, I come into the office.
00:17:12.200He pulls me real close with by a handshake, you know, Michael, I want you to know, this has nothing to do with your Twitter account or of the publicity you're getting.
00:24:26.060And it is part of the message of the book that came out yesterday, Addicted to Outrage.
00:24:35.660It is, this is a, an in-depth explanation of some, by somebody who has lived it and taught it.
00:24:45.760And it's what gives me hope that things can change because a guy who was a published communist can come out and say, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:24:57.260This is going off the rails right now.
00:24:59.440And they are doing everything they can to destroy this guy.
00:26:33.840This is one of those things that I'm telling you about a product in a commercial that I learned about in a commercial and from somebody else.
00:26:42.300I was like, oh, my God, like I started looking into it and you realize it like the FBI is saying this is like one of the fastest growing crimes in America.
00:26:49.880Because it's it's if you don't know it, it destroys your life.
00:26:54.240And the longer you wait, the harder it is.
00:26:56.940And there's really, truly only one group of people that I think have the ability to stop it because they are the repository of all of the titles for all of the homes in America are like 98 percent of them.
00:27:27.900OK, this is the point where the Brett Kavanaugh saga becomes absolutely toxic.
00:27:34.460The Kavanaugh situation couldn't be any more flammable as it is.
00:27:38.160Yet Senator Dianne Feinstein pulls out a flamethrower.
00:27:41.600Hey, everybody, look what I just got from Elon Musk.
00:27:45.040It is the favorite playground of outraged junkies.
00:27:50.140She says Republicans are trying to block an FBI investigation into the allegation of the California college professor, Christine Ford, that Kavanaugh has been accused of sexually assaulting at a high school party in 1982.
00:28:04.320Remember, her deal is we are trying to block an FBI investigation now.
00:28:11.280Now, as a 126 year veteran of the U.S.
00:28:15.100Senate, you would think that Feinstein would know the kinds of things that the FBI can investigate.
00:28:25.540Apparently, she and many of her fellow Democrats don't know.
00:28:31.220Perhaps they forgot or they have such little respect for the American people that they think you just don't know because you're just a bunch of hayseed hicks.
00:28:45.280They just don't know what the FBI does.
00:28:47.640You hear FBI and you're like, oh, they investigate everything.
00:29:04.880To explain to America's lawmakers what the FBI does, the Justice Department had to issue a statement.
00:29:14.340It says, the FBI does not make any judgment about the credibility or significance of any allegation.
00:29:21.960The purpose of a background investigation is to determine whether the nominee could pose a risk to the national security of the United States.
00:29:31.560This allegation does not involve any potential federal crime.
00:29:37.360So the Democrats were hoping for this epic, you know, Mueller-length investigation.
00:29:50.260Unfortunately, they have to settle now for some testimony from Kavanaugh and Ford, which is scheduled for Monday.
00:29:56.740That is, if Christine Ford even agrees to show up.
00:30:00.460Late yesterday, her lawyer submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee requesting that law enforcement do a full investigation before anyone testifies.
00:30:13.120Democrats turned Kavanaugh's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into an embarrassing circus of sad clown activists.
00:30:21.360Imagine what they might have up their sleeve or on their nose on Monday's testimony.
00:30:27.720The left is already billing this as a sequel to the 1991 Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas fiasco.
00:30:35.240Anita Hill herself wrote in the New York Times yesterday that the committee has a chance to do better by the country than it did three decades ago.
00:30:56.300If there's one thing we've learned from Hollywood, it's that sequels made 30 years after the original usually really suck.
00:31:04.100This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.
00:31:12.740So I don't know if you've seen, but while Maduro, the president of Venezuela, was having dinner the other day, he solved the economic problems of Venezuela.
00:32:04.240Take a moment after your incredible leadership and rise from a normal, everyday bus driver to these heights of leading this incredible, glorious socialist revolution.
00:33:06.360And it's so amazing to look at how far we've come so fast.
00:33:10.960It is not that long ago that people like Sean Penn were visiting and praising, you know, Hugo Chavez, Danny Glover, you know, Michael Moore.
00:33:20.900These people who were telling us that this was the future and that this, our experiment was failing compared to theirs.
00:35:27.940Some of those quotes were even more recent than that.
00:35:30.300In fact, if you go back and you look at popular culture, you will see, as we will show you here, in the show Parks and Recreation, there was a whole episode that was building the economy of Venezuela up and denigrating us.
00:35:50.860The concept was, and it's a funny show, and it was a funny episode, but the concept was the Parks and Rec Department had the Parks and Rec Department from Venezuela, their sister city.
00:35:59.240Some city in Venezuela, come visit them.
00:36:01.440And, you know, it was just one of these dumb government things.
00:36:05.260And it was interesting to see, because you saw the streams they went down with the comedy.
00:39:50.960But let's make sure that everyone knows that the Marxism and the utopia, the socialist utopia that is Venezuela, is thriving while we are not.
00:40:07.900Just a few short years later, and no one is being held accountable for their shower of praise for Hugo Chavez and the plan of bringing Venezuela into the leadership of the world.
00:40:28.160This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:40:33.220Where did all of this outrage come from?
00:40:49.460Because it's truly a brilliant system that has flipped this thing upside down and made the conservatives look like the angry ones.
00:41:01.400That we're the ones that have started this outrage.
00:43:40.100One of the most effective ways to demonstrate one's own social value is by wearing the trappings of outrage on behalf of others, especially if the others are in a minority social group.
00:43:51.060The earlier you are and the more loudly you demonstrate that you're outraged, that some or another group has been wronged, the more virtue you demonstrate.
00:44:32.140Another reason why it's effective is because it acts as a shield from judgment.
00:44:39.100If you are morally outraged, it functions as a mechanism to protect the purveyors of the outrage against any evaluation of their own actions, tactics, honesty, or morality.
00:45:00.120Now, the people who are outraged that the Republicans could just go on and dismiss this woman, they are so outraged that Brett Kavanaugh might or might not have done this, it stops any charges of saying, wait a minute, this is immoral what you're doing.
00:46:04.140Moral outrage expressed against opponents can strike them with any one or all three of these instruments at any given time.
00:46:12.200The instant that someone outside of your tribe slips up, says or does something that you think has the slightest chance to work to your advantage, if you can paint them as insensitive, racist, politically incorrect, outdated, judgmental, insulting to a protected class or group,
00:46:32.400that person has opened up the opportunity to attack with a weapon that they cannot possibly resist.
00:49:18.840This is page 22 of Addicted to Outrage.
00:49:22.660By far the most destructive aspect of outrage addiction is that over time, it tends to overtake and replace the addict's identity.
00:49:34.340They surrender the responsibility of developing a caring, rational human persona.
00:49:41.060Hallmarks of genuine and healthy human personalities tend to be smothered below a facade of impulsive, manic, emotional responses driven by the addiction.
00:49:51.080Rather than actual empathy for the misfortune or suffering of others, addicts respond with oversized and obnoxious levels of self-righteous indignation,
00:50:02.380always scattering blame against the alleged perpetrators of the crime, against some victims, or against humanity itself.
00:50:09.720Rather than quiet, reasoned introspection, addicts instead make a grossly obvious grand spectacle of their sympathy and protestations that bespeaks their inner disquiet and self-loathing.
00:50:24.880Wrongdoers didn't simply make a mistake.
00:50:27.420They've acted in a subhuman manner and must be castigated from the tribe, fully and wholly shamed in the public square,
00:50:35.280ostracized from the group, and ultimately destroyed.
00:50:39.500Only this victory will fill the void, the hole that has been left in the moral outrage addict,
00:50:46.920the hole left by the absence of an actual human soul.
00:50:51.900This is why outrage addiction is so dangerous to our culture and mankind.
00:50:56.480It deprives human beings of genuine humanity, replacing it instead with an outwardly facing caricature of the virtuous human being wrapped around a rotting corpse.
00:51:10.700Look, it's not that all outrage is wrong all the time.
00:51:14.320There are times, of course, when outrage is perfectly appropriate and reasonable as a response to actions we see in others.
00:51:20.960As with any addiction, the problem is not the chemical or the behavior itself of the addiction.
00:51:29.700America isn't having an opioid crisis because opioids are inherently bad or evil.
00:51:34.660It's the abuse and the involuntary need of the object of the addiction.
00:51:40.920The unhealthy dependence upon the thing in order to feel or to function.
00:51:45.320Expressing moral outrage has become the automatic, compulsive response to anything that we see or hear that challenges our tribe's beliefs
00:51:55.320and instantly and automatically supports the outrage of others is even more important.