The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 199 ｜ 'A Clamp-Down Is Coming'： Walter Kirn's BIGGEST Fear About Elites ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Too many reporters are terrified to be exposed as a conservative or a centrist or even just un-liberal, I guess.

00:00:07.320 It's a creative industry, so of course it tends to lean left politically.

00:00:12.560 But I can tell you that underneath all of the division in the media, there lies a pile of industry gamesmanship.

00:00:21.300 And in this media hell pit, the true hero is the person willing to expose all of it, no matter what the cost is.

00:00:28.940 The Wall Street Journal described today's podcast guest as Middle America's defiant defender, probably because of his work to examine the real America, a country that seems to have forgotten itself.

00:00:42.720 He recently launched America This Week, a podcast with Matt Taibbi, where they perform an autopsy on the news of the day.

00:00:50.320 His latest major project is as a founder and editor-of-large of County Highway, a newspaper, a newspaper without any digital footprint at all.

00:01:04.840 It is storytelling for the real America. 0.97

00:01:07.060 Like, you know, if the New Yorker didn't portray the middle of the country as a breeding ground for inbred morons, and then also didn't have political cartoons that nobody understands. 0.99

00:01:21.660 Ultimately, he's a rebel. 0.99

00:01:23.820 Not because it's cool or fashionable, because it's in his bones.

00:01:27.120 It's who he is.

00:01:28.020 A rebel in a constant search for truth in an age when we need it most.

00:01:33.180 Buckle in for this one.

00:01:34.360 Walter Kern.

00:01:37.280 I can't wait to get to the podcast.

00:01:38.920 I'm a big fan of Walter's, and I hear he listens to the show.

00:01:42.800 So we'll see what this could be.

00:01:44.860 Very interesting.

00:01:46.100 Every Halloween, you hear about the dangers of candy your kids will get.

00:01:49.960 But this year, the real tricks are in the meat aisle.

00:01:53.420 Good ranchers want you to take the trick out of your meat that they're throwing in, you know, whenever you go into the meat aisle.

00:02:00.840 And they want to give you the treat.

00:02:02.880 Lab-grown meat is growing more and more popular.

00:02:06.180 Foreign meat dresses up as a product of USA, the little label there.

00:02:11.840 And mRNA vaccine development is on the rise for agriculture.

00:02:16.180 What's in your food and your meat?

00:02:18.260 It's more important than ever before.

00:02:21.640 Amidst these haunting truths, the real hero arises, and it's Good Ranchers as the number one place to get America's best beef, pork, chicken, seafood delivered.

00:02:32.220 Good Rancher products are transparently sourced, all American, and delicious.

00:02:36.680 When you shop at GoodRanchers.com, you don't have to question what's in your meat or where your meat's coming from.

00:02:41.840 100% American guarantee, transparent vaccination policy.

00:02:46.780 You'll always know where your meat comes from and what's in it.

00:02:50.220 Take the mystery out of the meat aisle.

00:02:53.480 Visit GoodRanchers.com, use the promo code GLEN, save $30, and free express shipping on your box of America's best meat and seafood today.

00:03:02.300 GoodRanchers.com, promo code GLEN.

00:03:06.680 I think you're one of the hardest people.

00:03:18.480 Ray Kurzweil was in your category of hard guest to book.

00:03:24.020 I've waited for this interview for a long time.

00:03:26.720 Well, that's the first case of playing hard to get that's worked for me.

00:03:31.100 When I played hard to get with the ladies, they just moved on. 1.00

00:03:34.840 I'm glad you persisted.

00:03:35.960 I'm glad to be here.

00:03:36.880 Yeah, glad to have you here.

00:03:39.460 First of all, you're a bit of an enigma in some ways, just on the surface.

00:03:51.740 You're an absolute elite.

00:03:55.500 Princeton, I think, is where you went to school, right?

00:03:57.780 Princeton and Oxford.

00:03:58.760 Let's add icing to the cake.

00:04:00.300 And Oxford, yeah.

00:04:01.500 But you're not an elite.

00:04:03.400 In fact, you're one of the biggest defenders of the middle of the country that is out there.

00:04:08.880 Yeah, I'm a fierce defender because that's where I come from.

00:04:11.580 That's where my parents come from, and that's where I live now.

00:04:15.020 I mean, the excursion to Princeton and Oxford and New York City where I had my first jobs in magazines was kind of an aberration, it turns out.

00:04:24.040 But, you know, I grew up in Minnesota, and like F. Scott Fitzgerald, everybody dreams of going to the big city when they, you know, are out there on the farm.

00:04:33.160 And I got there, and I saw what there was to see, but it was like going to the fair.

00:04:38.000 And now I live in Livingston, Montana, and I didn't last.

00:04:42.000 It's so funny.

00:04:42.720 I don't know if you're like this, but I grew up in a very small town, Washington State, boring.

00:04:49.000 I always wanted to live in New York, wanted to work at Radio City Music Hall and do radio there.

00:04:54.520 And then didn't think I'd make it.

00:04:57.400 I mean, you know, it was a dream, but, you know, lottery has to happen in many ways.

00:05:02.280 I get there, and I love it, but I don't live there anymore because I saw what was coming.

00:05:10.700 But then I find myself going right back to the small little town like the town that I was from because it's, I don't know, everything just makes sense.

00:05:25.280 Well, it's a scale that is coherent and explicable and understandable to me.

00:05:31.200 You know, I like seeing the same people over and over.

00:05:34.020 I like being able to hear their stories and then catch up on their stories a month later.

00:05:40.320 That makes the narratives around me make sense rather than, you know, seeing a strange face, never seeing it again, seeing somebody twice in a couple of years.

00:05:51.400 I get to go to the post office.

00:05:53.220 I get to have a ritual that is sort of personally nourishing and that gives me ongoing contact because, you know, we just, we don't know each other's stories anymore because we don't have a place to share them.

00:06:07.040 In a small town, that's exactly what you're able to do.

00:06:11.180 Just go to the post office.

00:06:12.880 When somebody dies, when somebody gets sick, when somebody's kid gets into college, whatever.

00:06:16.680 And I'm a storyteller and I like to know the beginning and middle and end of people's stories.

00:06:25.060 I used to walk down the streets of New York thinking about every single person here has a story.

00:06:30.740 I'd love to just follow all of them home and see what, you know, just see a little of their story.

00:06:35.820 I was sitting at lunch.

00:06:37.400 I don't remember the restaurant name, but it's right on the ice of Rockefeller.

00:06:43.420 And I was waiting for my daughter.

00:06:46.220 We were going to have lunch together.

00:06:47.260 I'm sitting there at the table and I'm all away myself and I'm just looking at the people ice skating.

00:06:50.380 And I'm right there where they're putting on ice skates.

00:06:53.840 And this woman, she's got to be 45, 50, kind of frumpy, big frumpy coat, hat. 1.00

00:07:02.640 She sits down, she changes into skates.

00:07:04.920 And the first thing I noticed is she brought her own skates.

00:07:08.080 She gets out onto the ice and she is an incredible, incredible artist on the ice.

00:07:16.640 And I thought to myself, how many people who work with her, who are around her all the time in this jungle, know that side of her?

00:07:28.060 Right.

00:07:28.280 You could work next to somebody in that city and never know it.

00:07:33.020 Well, you know, I grew up in a town of 500 people.

00:07:35.980 I thought that if a town had a Dairy Queen, it constituted a city.

00:07:40.320 The idea of being able to go out after nine o'clock and find a business open was enchanting to me.

00:07:47.140 I got to New York and I had that experience, too.

00:07:50.520 It was like opening Easter egg after Easter egg.

00:07:53.480 You met all kinds of people.

00:07:55.200 They had amazing talents, amazing stories.

00:07:57.860 They're from all over the world and so on.

00:08:00.200 But I reached a limit.

00:08:01.700 It wasn't because I didn't like that.

00:08:03.440 There was just so much I could hold in my head.

00:08:05.660 There were so many people who I could actually be friends with, whose stories I could actually relate to.

00:08:12.160 And I may like maybe I liked it too much.

00:08:16.000 I may be pigged out on the city.

00:08:18.440 You know, I would have to leave and go home every few months because I'd get sick.

00:08:24.340 I'd be staying up all night.

00:08:25.840 In those days, I drank.

00:08:27.160 I don't drink anymore.

00:08:28.360 I'd be out pushing it, pushing it.

00:08:31.140 Now my kids live in big cities and they're doing what I did.

00:08:33.960 I have no idea if they'll rebound like I did.

00:08:37.020 But, you know, it just got to be something I couldn't handle.

00:08:42.480 When you grow up in a limited, you know, small, familiar, intimate place, your senses in a way aren't built for that total circus.

00:08:54.620 I don't think we are built for that in really in any way.

00:09:00.600 I mean, we're not built for what social media is doing for us now.

00:09:04.380 I mean, you can't handle, you know, 1.5 million friends.

00:09:09.420 Well, what?

00:09:10.440 You can't handle 10,000 friends.

00:09:12.760 Yeah.

00:09:12.940 An average person is you should have a handful of friends.

00:09:17.940 If you if you get to the end of your life and you've got maybe two or three really good friends, you did pretty good.

00:09:23.980 Right.

00:09:24.600 And that's the other thing.

00:09:26.400 Besides the fact that you're surrounded and constantly stimulated in a big city, you also can have moments of crushing loneliness where nobody, you know, everybody is busy.

00:09:37.480 Nobody is there for you.

00:09:39.600 You get sick.

00:09:41.580 Something bad happens.

00:09:42.940 Everybody's at the office chasing the dream.

00:09:45.140 Small town people tend to have more time and thus they have the ability to sort of break out of their routine to help each other, to care for each other and so on.

00:09:55.920 And it's just a human scale that works for me.

00:09:59.980 So when you look at the news of the day, one of the things I like, I'm going up to the mountains actually tonight and I'm going to be with farmers tomorrow.

00:10:12.420 And the one thing I like is they're just it's so much more common.

00:10:16.980 It's not complex.

00:10:18.400 Right.

00:10:18.580 You know, it's it's not that hard to solve some of the problems that we're dealing with right now.

00:10:25.000 You know, it will be painful to be difficult, but it's it doesn't take, you know, all of Harvard to figure it out.

00:10:34.240 In fact, that may be the problem in many ways.

00:10:38.060 Well, you know, the Greeks believed that the city states should be of a certain size.

00:10:42.780 Yeah.

00:10:42.900 And that when they grew beyond that, things became chaotic.

00:10:47.360 Right.

00:10:47.640 And impossible.

00:10:48.660 And that may be true.

00:10:50.140 You know, when I used to write for GQ magazine and really wore my sort of slick magazine journalist hat, I once said to the editor, I want to go out to Nevada where Basque shepherds live. 0.99

00:11:06.820 And I want to find the person who is least in touch in America.

00:11:10.980 I want to find a guy who's literally been on top of a mountain with his sheep for a couple of months.

00:11:15.360 And then I want to ask him questions from the news.

00:11:18.480 Like, what do you you know, how should we solve this problem?

00:11:21.040 How should we solve that problem?

00:11:22.420 Because I started to realize that even back then, and this was the late 90s, the information glut was making it almost impossible for people to reach common sense conclusions.

00:11:35.360 And so I was like, let's let's swing the other way and find people who are completely isolated with their common sense and their their memories and maybe a little bit of reading that they've done and see if they don't have a more sane perspective.

00:11:50.740 So is there I mean, because honestly, you talk to people and they're like, we can't spend this much money.

00:11:58.140 And we could solve this at a table, you know, around, you know, around a diner table and we could solve the spending or we could solve, you know, a lot of different things.

00:12:10.060 But nobody when you get to Washington or when you get to New York.

00:12:15.400 You are not an expert in that.

00:12:17.660 And so we defer to all of the experts.

00:12:20.020 And it seems to me the experts have really screwed things up.

00:12:23.320 Right.

00:12:23.800 Well, the experts tend to withdraw into circles in which they are not criticized, in which they affirm each other's conclusions, in which they're looking for advancement within that circle, circle.

00:12:38.340 And they get further and further from the primary data.

00:12:43.280 And, you know, for example, I was just last week in Elko, Nevada, which is a very isolated central Nevada city.

00:12:51.900 And I'm talking to people about economic problems and the adversities they're facing.

00:12:59.220 And I'm noticing that around the edges of this town, people are really poor.

00:13:02.700 A lot of people are living in their cars.

00:13:05.060 A lot of people are obviously intoxicated on drugs that maybe didn't exist 10 years ago because they're acting differently.

00:13:13.760 And I just wish I could bring people from, you know, inside the Beltway or whatever, Hollywood, to just see what their country is and what it's facing.

00:13:24.280 And I don't have to argue you should spend less money.

00:13:28.000 I can show you that there is want, there is need, and there is difficulty.

00:13:35.180 But just not being able to see that makes people go crazy, I think.

00:13:40.580 They become abstract, $100 billion off to here, $100 billion off to there, inflation rates and so on.

00:13:47.620 But they need to see its toll, its real world effects.

00:13:52.400 And I think a lot of people, between the phone and between just the isolation that comes in living in these sort of walled-off, paradisical places that our rather wealthy leaders live in, they're just missing what's happening.

00:14:07.720 I think that's the problem with this society that's being led by the elites is they can't be bothered with the small little problems.

00:14:17.500 They'll just have to deal with that themselves.

00:14:19.380 We're building this new whole big world.

00:14:22.940 And so they don't actually see the effects that it has on regular people because they're going for this big abstract paradise.

00:14:33.560 Well, they're looking upstream at where the money is coming from, where the power is flowing from, and so on.

00:14:39.760 And they're not looking downstream at the effects of the decisions they make.

00:14:44.220 And if they could see, hey, man, there's a flood down there.

00:14:46.780 People are hurting.

00:14:47.900 People are trying to survive.

00:14:49.380 Instead, they're looking at where the money is being printed, where the credentials are being handed out.

00:14:55.600 And they literally, actually don't see their country anymore.

00:15:06.080 Invisibility, inability to discern one another's true state and true predicament is, I think, the biggest problem we face.

00:15:18.300 It's not ideological division, necessarily, because ideological division ends when you see someone who's living in their car.

00:15:27.520 Correct.

00:15:28.280 You both want to do something about it.

00:15:30.120 You might have slightly different ideas.

00:15:32.140 But the first thing you want to do is remedy the immediate situation.

00:15:34.940 And we're not even doing that.

00:15:36.100 When you tweeted recently, you've been listening to talk radio back from the 90s.

00:15:44.740 Yeah.

00:15:45.440 What are you searching for?

00:15:46.820 What are you looking for?

00:15:47.620 Or what do you find?

00:15:48.580 Well, for various reasons, I have to be somewhat triptych about this, but I'm writing a movie about a famous talk show host from the 90s.

00:16:01.540 And you might be able to guess which one, because he broadcasts at night.

00:16:07.380 And in his show, which was an open line show, it included callers from all over the country, in which I listened to at the time.

00:16:16.620 I can't wait to see this.

00:16:18.460 You got an incredible portrait of who and what was going on.

00:16:23.280 But there was...

00:16:24.360 Well, in a different way.

00:16:25.600 A different one.

00:16:26.260 You got the night side portrait of America.

00:16:28.680 Right, right.

00:16:29.280 You got America after 11 p.m.

00:16:32.020 Right, which is not necessarily America, as we know.

00:16:35.760 A lot of truckers, a lot of insomniacs, a lot of maybe night watchmen or people with jobs that kept them awake.

00:16:44.000 And my point in that tweet was that they were all talking about the end of the world.

00:16:50.220 This is the late 90s.

00:16:51.420 I mean, remember Y2K. 0.98

00:16:53.380 They remember, you know, the beginnings of the global warming scare when people thought, you know, there were going to be super storms with 300 mile per hour winds.

00:17:04.640 They're still saying it.

00:17:05.660 People aren't buying it as much as they used to.

00:17:07.820 Right, right.

00:17:08.740 But there were like a hundred reasons why we weren't going to make it to the year 2000.

00:17:13.220 And this radio show concentrated all the fear and all the panic.

00:17:17.860 And it even had fun with it.

00:17:20.820 We're talking about Art Bell.

00:17:23.600 And in any case, when you listen to it and go, wow, these people were as panicked as panicked can be in many cases.

00:17:35.220 And now it seems quaint.

00:17:36.920 You know, you shake your head and go, oh, my gosh, the problems that they had were nothing like the ones we have.

00:17:44.100 But they believed them to be right.

00:17:46.880 Important.

00:17:47.560 Right.

00:17:48.400 You know, everybody from people who expected, you know, a religious style apocalypse, you know, a theological apocalypse to people who thought the weather was just going to turn on us.

00:18:00.200 He's always talking about volcanoes and earthquakes and sunspots.

00:18:03.780 Right.

00:18:03.940 You know, I know, I know, I know.

00:18:07.240 I used to love that.

00:18:08.340 I get up in the middle of the night because I'd have to get up at, you know, two, three o'clock in the morning and I listen to him and I just love it.

00:18:14.500 I heard him do an interview once with a guy who swore that if he was safe in his house or in his car or somebody else's house.

00:18:24.440 But the minute he stepped off his porch or anything that was over his head, it would begin to rain rocks and it would only rain rocks on him.

00:18:35.400 And I remember Art just saying this, hmm, rocks.

00:18:41.720 It was unclear, it was unclear what Art thought of his audience.

00:18:49.500 You know, some nights he seemed to have total contempt for them.

00:18:52.860 You know, they'd call in and they'd say they'd hit a Bigfoot with their car or they'd found a hole on their ranch.

00:18:58.420 They dropped a rock down and it never hit bottom.

00:19:03.320 You know, the alien abductees and so on.

00:19:06.320 What's funny is just as they thought the world was going to end back then, they were equally obsessed with aliens, UFOs, all the things that are still in the news now.

00:19:15.820 So, can we go there for a second because I've always been the guy you don't want to be on the Titanic with on the first half.

00:19:29.580 Because as it's going out, I'm saying, why are the engines running at full speed?

00:19:35.100 We're producing way too much.

00:19:36.980 Why are we doing that?

00:19:38.220 We're headed towards icebergs.

00:19:39.680 Have you noticed?

00:19:40.240 Have you counted the lifeboats?

00:19:41.500 There's not enough lifeboats.

00:19:42.740 I'm that guy.

00:19:43.620 Oh, I know that.

00:19:46.140 I've bought food and extra water and maybe even gold on your advice over the years, you know.

00:19:53.160 Right.

00:19:53.980 So, you know.

00:19:55.900 However, I don't think I fall for everything.

00:20:02.120 Right.

00:20:02.420 You know, all of the catastrophes.

00:20:04.460 These things, though, I was beginning to question.

00:20:08.200 Maybe I was wrong about all those things.

00:20:09.640 But they're all now happening.

00:20:12.140 Yeah. 0.96

00:20:12.340 We are getting into some serious crap. 0.95

00:20:16.920 Yeah. 0.96

00:20:17.180 That we have.

00:20:18.340 I've done radio for 50 years.

00:20:20.840 We didn't have this.

00:20:23.380 Right. 0.99

00:20:23.580 This is everything in the crap hole. 0.99

00:20:26.660 Do you wish you hadn't cried wolf back when? 0.99

00:20:28.680 Do you think, oh, maybe I was, you know.

00:20:31.360 No, I didn't cry wolf.

00:20:33.160 I was way too early.

00:20:35.080 Right.

00:20:35.680 You know, I have a real problem on timing.

00:20:38.500 But, you know.

00:20:39.800 This is what my wife says about me, too.

00:20:41.500 She said, Walter, you tell me things are going to happen in your four years early.

00:20:45.200 Yeah.

00:20:45.400 And it actually isn't helpful because I've been stressed for four years, whereas everybody else has just been stressed for two weeks.

00:20:54.260 Right.

00:20:54.700 And now I'll say to my wife, honey, this it's getting really bad.

00:20:59.080 It's it's coming hard.

00:21:00.200 And she'll say.

00:21:00.840 Yeah, I know.

00:21:03.060 I know.

00:21:03.720 But you're always wrong on time.

00:21:05.780 So I think we have time.

00:21:06.980 Relax.

00:21:07.580 I feel like.

00:21:08.380 Right.

00:21:09.500 But anyway, are you.

00:21:12.440 I'm.

00:21:12.760 I'm a.

00:21:14.720 I'm an optimistic catastrophist.

00:21:17.180 I see catastrophe everywhere, but I believe in human.

00:21:21.140 I believe in people in the human spirit that it may go dark for a while, but there will be flashes that will bring us into something new and great.

00:21:32.480 Where are you?

00:21:33.780 Yeah.

00:21:34.240 I wouldn't say a catastrophist, but this all has to do with our story and may have to do with my relationship to radio.

00:21:41.920 When I was a kid living in Phoenix, Arizona, in the mid 70s, there was a late night talk show by a radio preacher called a Garner Ted Armstrong.

00:21:51.760 And he had a kind of end of the world show, which which predicted that every little war or something was going to end a nuclear catastrophe and so on.

00:22:00.980 And this was around the time my family converted to Mormonism and Mormonism.

00:22:06.320 In the mid 70s, was very concerned with things like stockpiling food, canned goods and so on.

00:22:14.420 And between the two things, I became sensitized to the idea that things could change very suddenly.

00:22:21.980 And maybe they didn't do that for a while.

00:22:26.300 But when something like COVID came along, I had long been prepared.

00:22:31.740 And in a strange way, it didn't affect me as seriously.

00:22:35.640 Yeah, me too.

00:22:36.880 As it did others.

00:22:38.140 Yeah.

00:22:38.460 Because I was emotionally ready.

00:22:40.600 It was like, this has actually been delayed a bit.

00:22:44.020 All right.

00:22:44.660 You know.

00:22:45.120 Yeah.

00:22:45.800 Art Bell's talking about pandemics in 1997.

00:22:49.620 Right, right.

00:22:50.720 So catastrophe.

00:22:52.200 But I am optimistic in the sense that, you know, you started by saying you're a champion of the middle of the country.

00:22:58.260 And I am, in some ways, because it needs a champion.

00:23:02.940 It's definitely, you know, taken its knocks.

00:23:05.960 It's used as the foil for everything now.

00:23:10.820 You know, and the middle of the country has survived economic distress, deindustrialization, opiate plague, forever wars that have inordinately taken its young people and sent them back injured in the mind and the body.

00:23:32.420 And it's still standing.

00:23:34.380 That's a pretty stalwart set of people to go through all this, I think.

00:23:40.700 But in any case, I'm optimistic because when I get out among people and I drive around, I probably put 20,000, 30,000 miles on my car a year.

00:23:54.880 I drive everywhere I can.

00:23:56.260 And I see a reservoir of goodness, I guess, charity, kindness, basic, you know, you can call them Judeo-Christian values or you can call them human values, I don't care, that haven't been as disturbed by events as you would fear.

00:24:23.200 Though, I think that's fraying now.

00:24:26.680 I think the American dream or the simple hope of owning a house, you know, someday paying off your car, putting your kids through college and so on, is escaping people even in the kind of sensible, stoic middle part of the country.

00:24:46.960 And that's heartbreaking to watch.

00:24:49.500 Right.

00:24:49.560 I've been talking to you about Jace Medical and for the Jace case for some time now.

00:24:55.820 Well, it's needed now more than ever because there are critical shortages of essential drugs right here in the United States.

00:25:02.640 You wouldn't think that this kind of thing could happen in America.

00:25:05.180 Normally, it wouldn't.

00:25:06.360 But these are not normal times we live in.

00:25:08.760 This is why you need to have a Jace case on hand.

00:25:11.520 It is personalized emergency medication kit that contains five essential antibiotics, which treat the most common and deadly bacterial infections.

00:25:20.420 It's customizable with dozens of add-on medications available so you can choose the ones that best fit you and your family's needs.

00:25:27.840 They even have ivermectin as an add-on.

00:25:30.920 Jace is simple.

00:25:31.580 You just go online, fill out a form, and then you get a prescription, life-saving medication delivered right to your door.

00:25:39.000 The Jace case gives you peace of mind so you're not just hoping you have access to medication in emergency.

00:25:43.680 Go to JaceMedical.com.

00:25:45.960 Enter the promo code BECK at checkout.

00:25:47.800 Get a discount.

00:25:49.220 JaceMedical.com.

00:25:50.900 What do you—I want to talk to you about Israel, but I first want to talk to you about the shocking amount of acceptance of anti-Semitism.

00:26:06.100 Is that just on the campuses?

00:26:08.860 What is that?

00:26:10.560 Where you can watch—I mean, it's one thing to say, for instance, Ukraine.

00:26:17.980 I don't know.

00:26:18.820 I think they're both kind of bad guys.

00:26:20.380 One's really bad.

00:26:21.600 Another guy's really bad.

00:26:22.900 You know, bad.

00:26:24.160 I don't see a good guy in there.

00:26:26.140 I don't want to pick sides.

00:26:27.320 Yeah.

00:26:27.740 This one, when you cross the line of going in and just executing men, women, and children, raping, kidnapping, that's not war.

00:26:37.200 That's not war.

00:26:38.340 That's terror.

00:26:39.620 That's genocide or wannabe genocide. 0.68

00:26:42.920 And you—I'm seeing a shocking number of people dismissing it, claiming it's not real now, thinking that somehow or another it's justified.

00:26:56.620 What do you think of—what does that say about us and the world?

00:27:01.760 Because it's happening all over the world.

00:27:03.400 So I answer every question with a story because that's how I think.

00:27:09.300 I grew up in rural Minnesota, and the first time I met a Jewish kid was at Princeton.

00:27:16.240 And I started to find that all my friends were Jewish.

00:27:19.920 They had something in common.

00:27:20.800 They were all Jewish.

00:27:21.660 Why?

00:27:22.040 Because they shared my sense of humor.

00:27:23.980 Why?

00:27:24.420 Because they had a kind of skepticism toward power.

00:27:28.600 Sometimes they were kept on the outside of some of the sort of fancy clubs in Princeton and so on.

00:27:34.060 So I ended up with a lot of Jewish friends.

00:27:35.900 And then I entered the media in New York, and I had even more.

00:27:38.760 And it was strange to me coming from a small town.

00:27:43.780 These were the greatest people in the world.

00:27:45.960 And I hadn't been exposed to anti-Semitism as a kid in the same way I wasn't exposed to racism just because there were no one different. 0.75

00:27:53.700 Right.

00:27:53.880 There were Lutherans and Catholics, Swedes and Norwegians.

00:27:56.500 That's exactly the way I grew up.

00:27:58.340 Yeah.

00:27:58.720 And so I was kind of an innocent, you know, like in a Russian novel, something coming to the big city.

00:28:04.180 And I love my Jewish friends.

00:28:06.060 I had grown up in a family where my mother had been teased at school because she was thought to be Jewish.

00:28:13.280 She had dark hair and dark eyes.

00:28:15.180 And she'd grown up in Ohio.

00:28:17.300 And I'd heard that story.

00:28:19.640 And I saw actual anti-Semitism, I think, on the Princeton campus.

00:28:26.020 And then I saw it at Oxford, definitely.

00:28:28.960 And it was a kind of upper class British anti-Semitism that Americans maybe don't, wouldn't be able to recognize in any case.

00:28:39.740 Explain it.

00:28:39.900 What is it?

00:28:40.460 Well, it's a kind of aristocratic condescension toward people who dirty their hands with business and commerce and so on.

00:28:50.000 And haven't had, you know, lands in Scotland and Kent for 500 years and don't have these lineages.

00:28:58.160 People who maybe were refugees from another place or who, you know, work trades or cobblers and, you know, traders. 0.72

00:29:08.380 I mean, I'm sure lots of wonderful people and everything.

00:29:12.460 But on the surface, just what you said, I don't even want to talk to you. 0.80

00:29:17.160 You sound so narrow, boring, and inbred. 0.76

00:29:21.520 Right. 0.98

00:29:22.040 You know what I mean?

00:29:22.720 Right, right, right.

00:29:23.940 So, in other words, I was sensitized to anti-Semitism.

00:29:27.400 And also, I've got to say, as a young man in the early 70s, the wars of Israel against its neighbors, you know, the Yom Kippur War and the Six-Day War, were portrayed rather heroically, you know, as a little guy fighting off enemies that surrounded him.

00:29:52.220 So, that's where I come from culturally and in terms of my, you know, social life.

00:29:59.480 When this war, I guess we could call it that already, broke out, my breath was taken away.

00:30:08.500 Because it's not that this is modern terrorism.

00:30:13.000 This is some sort of medieval pogrom.

00:30:15.380 Big time. 0.99

00:30:15.800 Where, you know, where Cossacks come through a village and cut off heads and rape people and so on. 0.64

00:30:22.220 I was with my son when it started and I said, Charlie, you're going to see a reaction from Jewish people that comes out of the deepest reservoirs of fear and memory here. 1.00

00:30:37.860 This isn't just a horror in the moment.

00:30:40.780 This is going to stir trauma from generations and hundreds of years of, you know, of ostracism and violence.

00:30:51.820 So, I was shocked.

00:30:54.180 And I'm still in shock, Glenn.

00:30:55.600 I really am.

00:30:58.380 It was the first major attack, too, that I've seen where the thoughts of many immediately went to the victimization of the attackers.

00:31:10.720 You know, I didn't expect it to turn so quickly into a referendum on Israel's treatment of Palestine.

00:31:19.740 It took, it only took them responding.

00:31:24.180 As soon as Hamas said, OK, we're done, and Israel began to respond to it in an organized fashion, it was over.

00:31:33.620 I mean, that's when people started changing.

00:31:36.280 I mean, with 9-11, it took, what, a month maybe before you started to hear some things where, you know, well, America really is.

00:31:45.500 Right.

00:31:45.600 This one happened that fast.

00:31:49.000 Well, I'm going to kind of revise what I said, because at the same time, I was horrified.

00:31:58.380 And at the same time, my heart went out to the victims and to all my friends who have family there, you know, who travel back and forth and so on.

00:32:07.300 And I was afraid that the intense emotionalism that was being released by this would become the pretext for some giant mistake.

00:32:21.200 You know, I wish after 9-11, I knew what I knew now.

00:32:27.080 Yeah.

00:32:27.180 I don't think that we went to Iraq on real.

00:32:32.500 We thought, I think there's a difference.

00:32:34.340 I think the people think one thing, leadership may be on a completely different page.

00:32:40.720 Yeah.

00:32:41.080 And I don't know what our leadership is going to make of this.

00:32:44.380 And my, and I'll just confess, frankly, my education in the Palestinian predicament is not what it might be, OK, and what it should be.

00:32:56.280 And I'm still in a learning process about what a possible solution to all this might be or how to understand it.

00:33:05.680 But I'm not in a learning process as a human being about the abhorrence of killing civilians of, of.

00:33:15.940 Intentionally.

00:33:16.720 Intentionally.

00:33:17.320 Yeah.

00:33:17.860 This wasn't collateral damage.

00:33:20.340 This was absolute targeting of, in many cases, really vulnerable people.

00:33:26.380 People at a party, at a dance, you know, at a giant outdoor dance in, in little isolated villages, children taking hostages.

00:33:37.960 The taking of hostages, the taking of civilian hostages itself is, is a horror.

00:33:45.220 It's a war crime. 0.92

00:33:46.700 Yeah.

00:33:47.240 Yeah.

00:33:47.780 You haven't heard that, though.

00:33:49.160 I don't hear people talking about war crimes.

00:33:51.400 These were all what you just described are war crimes.

00:33:54.680 If Israel would do it, if the United States would do it, Britain would do it, France would do it. 0.91

00:33:59.100 It's a war crime. 0.92

00:34:00.860 Well, it is.

00:34:03.220 And, and, and, but at the same time, we've got this incredible passion going.

00:34:08.360 And also America is playing both sides here in some ways.

00:34:12.820 I mean, or the administration, we, we have this relationship with Iran that I don't quite understand.

00:34:20.000 And, and Hamas and Hamas. 0.66

00:34:23.120 And, and, uh, whether this gets sorted out in any, uh, in any practical way, uh, it may become the pretext for giant power moves that don't really reflect necessity.

00:34:41.060 Correct.

00:34:41.260 I, I mean.

00:34:42.020 But really has, I mean, we look at World War II with Hitler and, you know, we see that as a necessity to act against him. 0.89

00:34:51.460 And it was, but really it was a setup from World War I and, you know, the peace so-called peace made by World War I and World War I was caused by a bunch of elites wanting to change the face of Europe.

00:35:04.700 I mean, when this happened, my first thought was, okay, we have Ukraine.

00:35:12.700 That wasn't going well.

00:35:14.100 People started to turn against Ukraine.

00:35:15.960 And now this, and this one is viscerally going to get everybody involved on one side or another.

00:35:22.780 This, I mean, we haven't talked about anything really, um, nationally.

00:35:29.480 We have so many things that are on fire right now.

00:35:32.440 All the focus has been there.

00:35:34.600 This could easily spiral out of control into a global war.

00:35:40.020 And global war is what you need to reset everything.

00:35:44.140 Everybody just wants the war to end and they don't really care if it doesn't go back to the way it was.

00:35:49.460 You know, when, when I was in college, uh, studying poetry and English literature, I read about an American poet, Robert Lowell, who was a pacifist and who agreed to go to jail rather than, uh, fight in World War II.

00:36:05.340 And that seemed crazy to me.

00:36:07.320 Um, I didn't understand if ever there was a just war, at least as it was portrayed to me, it was World War II.

00:36:13.460 What kind of, um, egotist, in a way, would sit it out for his principles.

00:36:21.580 But I'm, I, I'm not saying I've become a pacifist in the meantime, but I'm starting to understand more and more that violence is not the answer to violence.

00:36:31.500 I think if this had just been a normal attack, it would be possible to take that position a little bit more, um, in a more untroubled fashion.

00:36:46.500 But I saw pictures, I saw things that I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.

00:36:51.940 Um, and to pretend that they didn't lodge deep and that they didn't inflame me is to lie.

00:36:57.720 Uh, but at the same time, to know what the next step is and in terms of what I support and how I talk about it and who I listen to.

00:37:07.460 Um, see, it's funny because I, I think, Walter, that the, the answer, and it's not necessarily our answer, it's Israel.

00:37:16.240 Um, Israel has a right to respond and defend itself in the way it feels.

00:37:21.440 Um, I think the answer is, is very clear.

00:37:26.480 The problem is I don't trust any of the players, including us.

00:37:31.160 I, I'm not sure.

00:37:32.740 I don't either.

00:37:33.420 I think all of, all of the time, I think all the world is but a stage and we are merely its players.

00:37:40.340 It, it, it, we're watching stuff.

00:37:42.800 I don't know what's true anymore.

00:37:44.480 I'm not a conspiracy guy.

00:37:46.700 But, I mean, there's some things now you're like, I don't know.

00:37:50.920 I don't know.

00:37:51.400 A rich Texan, a billionaire once said to me, conspiracies, how the hell else do you think things get done?

00:38:00.640 Um, and, and that's always stuck with me.

00:38:02.880 I mean, we know that people, uh, make agreements and meet in rooms and make deals above our head because they come out historically afterwards.

00:38:12.160 And we find out, you know, uh, about secret treaties and, uh, and all sorts of things that weren't apparent at the time.

00:38:20.740 And all I know is that we're going to find out around this, uh, set of events that there are things we're blind to now.

00:38:29.860 Mm-hmm.

00:38:30.280 And they may cause us to regret moves that we make in a more, in a triggered, reflexive way now.

00:38:37.080 In fact, we can be certain that will happen.

00:38:39.040 Um, so I guess, I, I, knowing the extent to which Hamas went to inflame me, one of my ways of resisting, uh, their, their maneuver, their manipulation, is to not be driven into some panicked, angry response.

00:39:00.620 I, I, I, I mean, it's weird.

00:39:03.000 I just talked about this today about how there is, uh, the president said, when we went in after 9-11, we made mistakes.

00:39:14.060 We should learn from them.

00:39:15.040 I agree.

00:39:15.980 Right.

00:39:16.300 And he said, don't get angry.

00:39:17.840 Don't let passion, don't let your feeling get control of you.

00:39:20.900 And I mean, I think that's amazing coming from the side that tells us that feelings are real.

00:39:27.200 Feelings are everything.

00:39:28.780 But he's right.

00:39:29.900 I don't, uh, the, the, the worst thing that can happen is knee jerk reaction.

00:39:36.080 When you're angry, you never make, when you're afraid, you never make a good decision.

00:39:41.080 But that doesn't mean that you don't fall back, watch, learn.

00:39:47.300 And then if it's the right thing to do reason wise and morally execute it, do it.

00:39:56.220 What I, what I'm most concerned about as we sit here speaking is the anti-Semitism in the United States that's flowing out of this.

00:40:04.000 Because, I mean, I've got friends whose kids are in school or at college, Jewish friends, uh, who wish their kid could come home now. 0.98

00:40:13.000 Um, even kids in, uh, younger, you know, elementary schools where the teachers are espousing a certain kind of anti-Jewish rhetoric that, that's making them uncomfortable.

00:40:27.800 So I, I'm concerned about my friends here, um, and, and not just my friends, but their families and the extended community.

00:40:35.600 Because anti-Semitism, as I studied at college, and it was a big topic in the late seventies and early eighties when I went to college, how did the Holocaust happen?

00:40:46.660 Uh, we studied the literature that came out of it.

00:40:49.520 In many ways, we weren't able to understand it for 20, 30, 40 years.

00:40:54.460 Um, I still didn't understand it until the last 20.

00:40:59.020 Yeah.

00:40:59.640 You know, how does Germany become that?

00:41:02.000 Right.

00:41:02.260 Well, we're, we're actually, you can read about it and then you can watch it and it's a little disturbing.

00:41:09.040 And, and, and we like to think that our hindsight on that event, um, has something to do with the run-up, but they're very different.

00:41:17.540 I mean, people weren't seeing, uh, concentration camps as they went to work regularly.

00:41:23.180 Yes.

00:41:23.420 Uh, we didn't enter the war to save the Jews, the Jews. 0.78

00:41:27.160 Um, and, and certainly in the 1930s, as the anti-Semitism was congealing and consolidating itself in the Nazi party, some of the arguments that were being made against Jews were similar to ones that are being made now.

00:41:41.900 Yes.

00:41:42.240 And, and, and so I, I, I don't know that a lot of people who have a superficial education now would recognize that run-up, uh, to the final solution if it hit them on the head.

00:41:57.180 Um.

00:41:57.700 It's a little frightening.

00:41:58.880 Yes.

00:41:59.880 But maybe it is hitting them on the head because the conspiracy theories, uh, that really matter, those racial conspiracy theories, which take out entire group, give them common characteristics.

00:42:11.240 But that, isn't that what an evil history, isn't that though, what DEI and, and social justice and all of that is, you're taking the white man.

00:42:24.020 I don't care if it's white, black, yellow, it doesn't matter to me.

00:42:26.260 You're taking in this case, the white man because of their history, who they, you know, were related to, even if they weren't directly related, the things that happened, that makes them inherently bad and evil.

00:42:40.400 And they have to be stopped.

00:42:42.120 That's really what antisemitism is, except it's about Jews.

00:42:46.740 Well, you know, German antisemitism came out of German scientific racism, which was a, a kind of late 19th century, um, belief that the races were really distinctive.

00:42:59.940 Language and, uh, and, and, and heritage made them groups with specific qualities that could be discerned.

00:43:09.260 Maybe they could be, uh, graded on, in terms of intelligence and other characteristics.

00:43:14.640 And so it was this, you know, if, if you said, trust the science in 1905 in Germany, racism was the science.

00:43:24.240 Eugenics. 0.69

00:43:24.620 Yeah.

00:43:25.000 And here in America, it was stronger here in America.

00:43:27.760 I mean, this is, this is Darwin, then his cousin, what was his name?

00:43:31.740 Galton that comes up with eugenics and going, Hey, wait a minute.

00:43:35.040 There are different races of people and some of them are farther behind.

00:43:40.400 Maybe we can make the superhuman, right?

00:43:42.720 That's, and it, I mean, well, you know, recently someone, someone I would call left wing, uh, said to me, uh, this is all about Israel oppressing Brown people, or this is part of the general trend around the world to oppress Brown people.

00:44:01.340 And I said to this young person, when I was young, Jews were Brown people.

00:44:08.400 They were the Brownest of people. 1.00

00:44:10.200 The idea that they're now the ultimate insiders, the colonists, the oppressors, uh, really takes a big leap.

00:44:18.560 Um, what they were, were the ghetto dwelling outsiders of Europe who barely had rights as people and, uh, were not top of the ladder. 0.99

00:44:30.000 Um, and if they've managed somehow, if many Jews, because of Israel and other reasons have, you know, have managed to live secure, prosperous lives and gain, uh, wealth and influence and so on, that doesn't mean you're dealing with society's ever present winners. 0.68

00:44:48.980 Right.

00:44:49.880 In many cases, I know, at least with me, that a lot of people tell me, I can't do this.

00:44:56.420 You can't do that.

00:44:57.160 You can't do this.

00:44:58.060 You'll never, hmm, that's, that's not, that's a subtle form of oppression, I guess.

00:45:04.140 Right.

00:45:04.280 But I always took that as, oh, really?

00:45:06.860 I mean, I think sometimes that, uh, the, the Jewish success can come from the fact they can't depend on anybody else. 0.98

00:45:17.460 You got to depend on yourself.

00:45:19.280 You learn these things, you educate yourself and you work hard.

00:45:24.700 When, when that happens, success comes.

00:45:28.820 Well, you know, I don't want to trade in even positive stereotypes, uh, too heavily, and, uh, it's not an area of expertise, but I will say that I see the potential in the United States right now for an outbreak of real anti-Semitism. 0.79

00:45:51.840 Not the subtle kind that's used to cancel people and so on, but, but actual, no Jews allowed violence.

00:46:02.020 A Berlin synagogue was firebombed the other day.

00:46:05.280 Uh, I, I believe a Tunisian, uh, synagogue too.

00:46:10.140 Um, and this can be a conflagration that gets out of control because I don't think young people in this country have been sufficiently.

00:46:21.840 Efficiently educated about what happened in the 20th century and how it happened.

00:46:28.120 They may know what happened, but they don't know how it happened.

00:46:31.280 And it happened because the state needed an enemy.

00:46:35.360 It needed an excuse.

00:46:37.240 Germany had been humiliated, uh, had economic problems and all sorts of things after world war one.

00:46:44.200 And it wanted a scapegoat and, uh, and, uh, and the easiest one was the oldest one.

00:46:54.220 Right.

00:46:54.600 And, and, and, and in this time of racial sensitivity in the U S, uh, it's probably hard to find an outside group to scapegoat anymore.

00:47:06.140 Um, you know, most of them have been, you know, have, there's been a campaign for understanding, uh, of all sorts of races, people of different persuasions and so on.

00:47:19.860 But I don't know that it's been done very well for the Jewish population here.

00:47:27.160 I, I, I, I think they maybe thought that never forget job was done or maybe we've, we've, we thought that was done.

00:47:35.800 We have a museum.

00:47:36.940 We have a Holocaust museum.

00:47:38.500 We've, we've got this literature.

00:47:39.980 We, we, we all saw Schindler's list.

00:47:43.200 Um, but vigilance on that, on that front is imperative.

00:47:52.140 According to a recent study of hundreds of post-abortive women, 60% of women report that they would have preferred to give birth had they received more support from others and had more financial security.

00:48:06.120 Wow.

00:48:07.640 That's where pre-born steps in.

00:48:09.280 And pre-born is there for women in their darkest hour, deciding between the life and death of the precious child.

00:48:14.760 The reality is women are being pressured to make this fatal decision. 1.00

00:48:18.720 Um, and they're being told that their babies are just a clump of cells.

00:48:21.420 Well, they're not pre-born welcomes women with God's love and introduces them to the beautiful life growing inside of them, which doubles their baby's chance to live.

00:48:30.840 When you support pre-born, you not only support women, you empower them.

00:48:34.660 And your donation of $28 will help a woman make that choice because she doesn't want to regret it for the rest of her life.

00:48:41.640 It gives her the ultimate blessing, life.

00:48:44.460 Dial pound 250.

00:48:45.960 $28 buys an ultrasound, gives it to her for free.

00:48:50.000 Keyword baby at pound 250 or go to pre-born.com slash Glenn.

00:48:54.560 It's one thing to say that you don't see it, um, you know, 15 years ago.

00:49:04.940 You start to see the rise in anti-Semitism and, and you're like, but when you are, when you're having people around the world and even here in America, uh, UPenn just had a bunch of students that were holding a major Palestinian, uh, march.

00:49:23.580 And they were, they were chanting about the, there's only one solution for the Jews.

00:49:32.540 Well, that's the final solution.

00:49:35.060 How do you not see it when you're chanting in Australia, gas the Jews, gas the Jews, or you're talking about a final solution?

00:49:44.260 Well, I, I, as I say, I, this all kind of took me by surprise.

00:49:53.780 I, I would like more time to understand the situation.

00:49:57.820 I, I would like more time to understand the potential solutions to what has been a problem my whole life.

00:50:06.000 I mean, I, I, I, I'm expected to come up with a, with an answer to, uh, a question that has been broiling my whole life and that they haven't solved, you know, um, I, I, I, I, I look at Gaza and I don't think it looks like a very good place to live. 0.97

00:50:23.680 I don't think it looks like a happy way to live.

00:50:26.060 Um, and, and there needs to be a better way and I'm not sure what it is, but it's not paragliding into music fest.

00:50:36.000 Yeah.

00:50:36.640 And, and, and killing people.

00:50:39.140 It's not, you know, slaughtering mothers and children.

00:50:43.320 Um, and I sometimes feel like we are in the 1930s in which we are watching a kind of escalation and, and a madness take hold that demands a climax.

00:50:57.340 And I don't know what that climax is going to be.

00:51:00.560 Uh, and I, I wish we could step back from it.

00:51:04.540 uh i'm no military expert i don't know how israel um isolates this group isolates the guilty

00:51:13.860 rescues its hostages if that's possible and and creates a secure situation into the future

00:51:21.280 you know but uh i i wish i hope that that's possible rather than what becomes a domino

00:51:31.560 series of other powers getting there seeing an advantage for themselves you know trying to get

00:51:39.960 leverage using this with their own populations you know um iran keeps its people down too man i know

00:51:48.580 and it had them in the streets um and there were we weren't and until covid we once we stopped paying

00:51:57.160 attention because of covid all those people marching in hong kong all those people in iran

00:52:03.240 they just disappeared yeah they just disappeared we were insufficiently supportive of that yes

00:52:08.920 democracy movement in iran and here we are you know um the problem is that the time

00:52:17.380 the time to be calm the time to be reasoned uh never seems to come when violence uh stalks the land

00:52:27.980 everybody wants to get their licks in first before they sign that peace treaty um as we speak israel has

00:52:37.980 not yet really responded um in any large scale way um so i i don't know what's coming every one of us

00:52:47.820 is poised every day to open the newspaper in the morning or turn on our phones and see a conflagration

00:52:55.580 that they didn't expect and don't want what's frightening in a completely different way is um

00:53:03.660 um my company is mercury radio uh arts orson welles company was mercury radio theater

00:53:11.620 loved him and i i often have wondered how could people have fallen for war of the worlds the father

00:53:18.800 of fake news orson welles yeah how could they have done that um we're kind of in that period just in a

00:53:27.020 different way we're more you know we have too many sources for one source to fool us but now

00:53:33.420 with ai and the complete lack of belief in any institution um you can see i mean we are in the

00:53:43.880 1930s again in many ways just so so the so so politics in some ways always reflects the dominant

00:53:52.220 technologies of the moment and i remember watching a speech of hitler at one of the nuremberg rallies

00:53:59.420 and thinking hitler isn't possible without the megaphone without the loudspeaker system correct

00:54:05.880 there was no way for him to address tens and tens of thousands of people without loudspeakers and

00:54:13.160 klieg lights all right and he was the master of those two technologies he's sort of the dark master of

00:54:19.000 them now we're in a different technological age and uh there are some that tell us that uh you know

00:54:26.400 social media and the free internet are luxuries we can't afford because they can be manipulated

00:54:31.880 by by tyrants disinformation agents and so on i tend to think though that they may be protecting us

00:54:42.620 somewhat uh oh yeah yeah i i think we've learned more about our leaders and learn more about the deals

00:54:50.900 that get done and you know the truth not that we've gotten to it about covid uh would never have

00:54:58.340 come out without social media my fear is that the clampdown is coming yes and and that the power that

00:55:05.180 be powers that be that want to wage war you know whether it's warranted or not or in ways that

00:55:12.300 you know we might not wish uh will get total control of this thing and engineer the conversation in the

00:55:20.720 way they want de-amplify the voices uh of critics skeptics and others and are yeah but i mean real

00:55:29.780 control of it is terrifying and i and glenn as we as we sit here that is my biggest fear for for this

00:55:37.700 country other than the real world uh problems that are going on you know the opiate crisis and so on

00:55:43.700 but you see everything else is downhill of freedom of expression see once that goes you no longer have

00:55:50.700 the ability to see even see your own problems clearly you're you're you're a pure captive of

00:55:56.720 propaganda um and so just this week uh the new york times reports oh israel bombed a hospital uh and

00:56:05.640 there are 500 dead well a day and a half after that we know that that wasn't exactly the story

00:56:11.320 and the reason we know that is because there are other sources uh correct and almost immediately

00:56:17.940 we got skepticism about those claims and we got other reports and so on and we've kind of worked out

00:56:24.900 what happened now uh pretty close to the truth two days later that's a tribute to the freedom of the

00:56:33.080 internet and the freedom of social media and independent media especially if we were to lose

00:56:38.400 that though maybe the new york times or whoever's on the top of the info he wouldn't have wanted to

00:56:46.100 admit error in that and uh maybe they wouldn't have had to so uh if we lose if we lose this this

00:56:56.780 complexity and this multifarious uh source that allows people from all sides to chime in even the

00:57:06.800 worst sides we may not be able to process events and we'll just become the captive of masters who will

00:57:13.980 whip us this way and that way and they're going to use this as an excuse because whatever the right

00:57:21.240 or wrong of the palestinian israeli conflict is there are people who see it as an opportunity

00:57:26.060 to um gain control sure i mean in the weirdest uh event ever the new york times gets this story wrong

00:57:37.040 and then i see people calling for the internet censorship because there's uh you know too much

00:57:43.000 disinformation out there well in other words the most trusted sources get things wrong and uh that

00:57:51.280 becomes a uh pretext for for censorship um it's only the places like the new york times that really

00:57:58.960 deserves scrutiny because little people on little accounts saying weird things don't cause major

00:58:05.740 protests across the world correct but but they get a story wrong and maybe a capital city burns down

00:58:12.300 an embassy is stormed and every news um newsroom in america follows the new york times sure they do

00:58:21.800 i've worked for them i've written for them one of my you know out of all my issues and i'm not really

00:58:28.980 a political person by background i you know i've written novels i've been a literary critic and so on

00:58:35.460 i like to bring the legacy of human wisdom to bear on the moment and and and the great wisdom of the

00:58:43.360 ages is that uh people are proud arrogant self-centered often wrong unwilling to admit mistakes and tragedy

00:58:52.100 happens when they commit themselves to egotistical uh pursuits rather than check themselves using

00:58:59.960 using using traditional basic wisdom um and and and uh i'm very glad that at the moment

00:59:10.220 we have a relatively free uh internet that can you know uh even show the extremists involved i i mean i

00:59:20.120 when when when this blm chapter in chicago put the paraglider on their uh social media i want to see that

00:59:29.060 i do too i mean um i don't want to be i i don't i don't want to be saved from these expressions of

00:59:37.660 extremism the notion is that if i see them i'll somehow imitate them that's that's kind of the

00:59:44.220 rationale behind censorship that we are all monkey see monkey do uh it's the elitist yeah mindset i'm

00:59:52.800 uneducated i can handle it they can't exactly exactly but i think that woke more people up to

00:59:59.320 the oh yeah potential for organized anti-semitism in the country than anything else say that had been

01:00:07.800 censored you know somebody would say somebody said that that's an extremist view that could cause

01:00:15.100 violence whatever their usual rationales are we're going to keep that out i think because people saw

01:00:20.940 that they got a snapshot of what's possible i also think that you know i've gotten heat for so long

01:00:29.200 for you know you're just stirring people up i don't view myself as that i view myself as a safety valve

01:00:36.540 if if you if you express it you get people to express it to take positive steps prepare whatever

01:00:47.640 you're you're less likely to have a blow up if if the government shuts everybody up and shuts

01:00:55.920 everybody down you just stuff it down and stuff it down and stuff it down that's not healthy nor healthy

01:01:02.920 for a republic well uh absolutely suppression and and authoritarian control are always recipes for

01:01:14.160 outbursts later um and people who take the palestinian side of the israeli conflict would say that right 1.00

01:01:21.000 now um uh you know gaza is pent up and something had to explode well let's take a lesson from the fact

01:01:29.860 that america is getting pretty pent up in some ways um and i i'm a little upset with conservatives

01:01:36.840 who so recently were on the uh business end of censorship getting their accounts canceled

01:01:43.360 or maybe libertarians who were trying to say something about covet or their resistance to

01:01:49.460 vaccination and so on and now they're suddenly you know they're pro-israel and and they're

01:01:55.740 they're suddenly taking the side of censorship against no uh you know no yeah i mean

01:02:03.640 you cannot pick and choose yeah you know the only stuff that deserves protection is the stuff that

01:02:12.900 people don't like right and it depends on who's in power on you know i don't like this i don't like

01:02:17.700 that if you can't stand in front of the person who is being shut told to shut up and say i so agree

01:02:27.420 with you that this is abhorrent hands off hands off he has a right to say it not to incite violence and

01:02:37.900 all of that but he has a right to his opinion no matter how wrong he is the the i think the progressives

01:02:44.100 and the left they are so mentally weak because no one has ever thrown them up against a wall

01:02:51.260 intellectually and said defend that you can you when you spend your life i was a much better christian

01:03:00.860 in new york than i am in texas because i'm in a sea of christians here right i had to defend it

01:03:08.660 and i was more of a oh you call yourself a christian so you watch yourself you think about things so much

01:03:15.540 more when you're challenged you know what i mean the problem is that across society groups move into

01:03:23.880 the spaces in which they won't be challenged and if you're on a major university campus right now in

01:03:30.920 the last few years um you are in a pretty uh monocultural political uh zone um every you know

01:03:44.400 people who might come on from the conservative or libertarian or dissident side can't even speak on

01:03:52.040 campus anymore i mean or or or it's turned into some zoo with security and so on um so

01:04:00.900 people going on challenge for a long time seems to be uh you know a hazard of the age it happened but

01:04:08.980 it happens on it does happen on every side oh yeah you know it's just this time is is on

01:04:15.080 conservatives but conservatives and bigots and everything else have but but having been on the

01:04:20.440 outside and having been the subject of i think a lot of censorship and suppression uh if they turn

01:04:29.000 around and and say oh but this time it'll go to your favor it'll go to my favor i don't want it uh

01:04:36.840 they're they're wrong yeah they're absolutely wrong this is a weapon that can be turned at anyone

01:04:42.340 the the censorship speech suppression disinformation industrial complex as some reporters have called

01:04:49.800 it can can be is a cannon that can be swung at whoever they need to swing it at when they do 0.99

01:04:56.000 and um if people haven't realized that by now they're not just naive uh they're morons 0.99

01:05:05.180 um and and frankly if if if you are a supporter of of the palestinian cause right now you also face 0.98

01:05:16.780 the possibility if policy makers should decide you're on the outs of being silenced you know um

01:05:25.820 so i i i like to think that i extend to my adversary

01:05:31.660 the same courtesies i wish them to extend to me and i just want to live in a country where we all

01:05:41.740 agree on the bill of rights that's it right can we can we just agree on those things because i

01:05:47.660 don't it doesn't force me to agree with your opinion or disagree with your opinion or do anything

01:05:51.520 about it so my dad was a patent attorney an intellectual property attorney he worked for

01:05:56.460 the 3m corporation he patented things like post-it notes and scotch tape and in the 80s

01:06:03.020 it was thought by american industry that japan was going to eat our lunch it was going to take over 0.91

01:06:08.420 and a lot of the patent uh fights my dad was fighting were against japanese infringement of

01:06:14.960 american patents they were stealing our product and i remember asking once i said dad is is japan going to

01:06:21.180 take over the world you know uh is all our industry going to collapse and move to japan and he said

01:06:27.160 walt it won't happen um and they were making movies you know yeah yeah that sort of portended that

01:06:35.640 and he said we've got a creativity a spontaneity and a kind of argumentative creative nature in america

01:06:44.040 where people don't move with the pack and that's where inventions come from and as long as we have

01:06:51.300 that sort of inventive skeptical creative slightly chaotic nature in america we're all going to be fine

01:06:59.220 um and he and he framed it in terms of you know industry and in terms of economics and so on

01:07:06.240 but i think that's true socially as well um as long as we still have it you know yeah as long as

01:07:13.440 we're as long as we're fighting fighting fair um challenging ourselves challenging one another

01:07:20.080 striking sparks we are you know there's hope for us but as when once we start trying to figure out

01:07:30.380 which line to get in according to which authority and who to be afraid of and what to shut up about

01:07:36.800 right when not to when not to speak out we're gonna slowly probably economically uh contract to

01:07:45.380 because that you have to that that fear of being different can either you know that fear of it can

01:07:54.140 shut you up but can also shut down the mind finally just let the ai answer the question 0.81

01:07:59.120 right you know i'll ask the ai and then find out what to say right um and i mean there are people

01:08:05.400 who do that now remember in the day when you could do all the normal things you wanted to do in a day

01:08:11.480 without feeling like you were made entirely out of broken glass remember when you didn't have to

01:08:16.260 decide whether or not it was worth something to do something is it going to be worth it tomorrow

01:08:21.160 well living with pain is no joke and it's the kind of thing that can ruin your life

01:08:27.080 i know i've been there i discovered relief factor my wife made me take it and if you have been dealing

01:08:34.800 with pain in your life and you feel like you've tried everything that's where i was i wasn't going

01:08:39.000 to try this this is all natural it's uh you know inflammation i i i'm sorry i've just never seen

01:08:46.380 you know any kind of ibuprofen that has ever worked for me and that's what i thought this was

01:08:51.080 it's not if it works for you you get your life back three week quick start try it now 1995 it's

01:08:57.040 not a trial pack um or it's a trial pack and it's not a drug uh hundreds of thousands of people have

01:09:03.400 ordered relief factor about 70 of them go on to order more month after month so try it please

01:09:08.160 relieffactor.com or call 800 the number four relief 800 the number four relief relief factor.com

01:09:14.000 um let me talk to you about uh conspiracy theories sure um because i i'm questioning everything i mean

01:09:24.920 we went to the moon i believe that i know that um but i think we're entering a time where that could

01:09:30.540 go away should we lose our fight for civilization in the west um we i i oswald killed

01:09:40.480 kennedy was somebody else involved i don't know um but now that i see that the cia knew about oswald

01:09:50.040 i don't know now i'm starting to question it were they involved 9-11 it was al-qaeda um george

01:09:58.940 bush didn't blow up uh the world trade center however something's not right they keep too many 0.97

01:10:05.120 secrets something's not right just because of sandy berger uh going in and stealing documents from both

01:10:11.060 clinton and the bush uh records i don't know what that was um but they didn't blow up the world trade

01:10:18.720 center covid happened when i could investigate and had the resources to investigate myself and

01:10:30.020 that thing as dirty as it gets how much of our history is that or is this a on this scale i mean

01:10:43.800 millions of people died well i i i i tend to look at conspiracy theories as folklore first they're

01:10:53.580 they're usually a sign that people can't make sense of an event or a sign that the official story

01:11:03.320 is lacking in some way right um they that's not necessarily the case but it means that they read

01:11:10.800 it means that the official record reads as somehow suspicious and and people have every right to use

01:11:18.720 their minds uh and their knowledge and their sources and gossip to connect the dots as they see fit and

01:11:26.320 then put their thought or their theory into the arena and see if it survives scrutiny um every journalist

01:11:34.180 has a before they have uh fully reported a story has a theory as to what the real story is and it may be

01:11:41.900 disproved in the reporting or it may or that theory may survive or maybe something even more

01:11:48.520 outlandish may turn out to be true so the basis i i can't criticize people for having um theories

01:11:56.900 novel theories about things especially about stories where common sense tells us suppression has taken

01:12:03.360 place and i talked about i'm talking about my dad again he died at 82 he had uh um uh lou gehrig's

01:12:10.820 disease yeah and it was a very painful death and one of the last things he wanted to talk about

01:12:16.440 hours before he died was the kennedy assassination he'd been a young lawyer in washington working as a

01:12:23.680 clerk in a court that was down the hall from the ap the associated press and he remembers when the

01:12:29.440 assassination happened all of a sudden all of the teletypes going going in the ap office and going in

01:12:35.260 there and the most catastrophic event of his young life he was 25 had just happened he died at 82 that was

01:12:45.620 1963 he died at 82 and he looked at me and this was an educated man he himself had gone to princeton he

01:12:52.200 it was a chemical engineer a rationalist a corporate lawyer all his life and he said we still don't know

01:13:00.180 what happened i can't believe i'm i'm dying without knowing what happened that day and he said all i know

01:13:07.220 is that we didn't get the full story and and i've spent a lot of time as a journalist and talked to

01:13:15.820 people over the years who might have some insight into that story and i don't think we have either

01:13:20.800 i mean i know we haven't i i don't have a substitute theory um i i knew when when you come when you come

01:13:30.900 to things like epstein i mean christopher ray is the one with the black book now the power there is a black book

01:13:40.160 yeah well i was i was told that it is in with the fbi and it is with uh christopher ray it's two people

01:13:49.740 share access to it the power of that book if it does exist is terrifying terrifying and

01:13:58.480 if this happened to a truck driver we'd know every name in it but because it's with the elite and

01:14:07.160 there's something with him and uh spy agencies uh and all these powerful people i are we ever gonna

01:14:18.480 find the truth on that one well it's pretty clear from the way he died and the mystery surrounding it

01:14:24.900 that um something isn't right i i mean being a even having the ability to kill yourself in that kind

01:14:33.460 of prison means somebody gave you something you shouldn't have um hard to believe that with

01:14:40.100 paper sheets or whatever it could be done um yeah it seems more and more glenn that the bigger an event

01:14:47.660 the more mystery surrounds it and uh is this normal well it's normal when power is involved they're

01:14:56.960 always competing um establishment interests uh if jeffrey epstein was indeed involved with

01:15:05.800 intelligence and i think he had to have been to do what he did yeah um there are people who don't

01:15:11.680 want that known um there are people who were clients of his who obviously or clients i don't know friends

01:15:19.660 confederates who obviously don't want that known right i i wrote a book about a con artist who was a

01:15:25.920 murderer um who i knew by another name he pretended to be a rockefeller and when i talked to people who

01:15:33.380 i knew had known him none of them wanted to speak up they didn't want to admit they'd been fooled they

01:15:38.800 didn't want to admit they'd been friends they didn't right want to admit they hung out epstein was a

01:15:44.540 thousand times that guy oh yeah um and uh so it's a it's a weird predicament for human beings to know

01:15:53.180 we're gonna have to live through history without understanding it i mean that that that forces

01:15:59.820 you i mean back on sort of religious and principles and basic common sense principles because

01:16:06.360 you might never find out what happened to our president john f kennedy you might never find out

01:16:15.820 um why we went to war in iraq it's still a mystery i still don't quite understand it i mean they 1.00

01:16:21.940 obviously didn't tell the truth about the weapons of mass destruction um so why did we go why did saddam

01:16:30.380 hussein become the fall guy for something al-qaeda did and what was al-qaeda that made it not our ally as

01:16:41.340 it had been or or bin laden so many years before we're not we're not going to get a lot of these

01:16:48.800 answers and the people who could give them to us have reasons not to give them to us so how are we

01:16:56.100 going to survive how are we going to make decisions how are we going to vote how are we going to um you

01:17:01.420 know form our personal philosophies we're going to have to shrink back to very basic standards because

01:17:07.460 the information sphere is especially uh occluded when it comes to big stories we learn about little

01:17:20.140 stories we learn the gossip about movie stars lives and so on but we don't know why our wars are fought

01:17:25.520 how our pandemics start and things like that i mean just since just since covid i've heard from very

01:17:32.740 good sources people you could usually rely on about 10 different stories about where covid came from

01:17:38.260 including top scientists just assuring me it's this or it's that um i'm no real i'm not any closer to

01:17:47.180 understanding it than i was i knew it didn't come from a bat cave but did it just leak from a lab

01:17:56.340 maybe maybe there are stories underneath that but how do we live with this level of doubt and

01:18:03.200 uncertainty we keep digging but at the same time we can't spend our lives no we have detectives we

01:18:09.160 have to reduce the influence of the gigantic governments on our personal lives so we can still

01:18:17.580 go about our day-to-day life and not have to worry about all of that right i mean right i think the

01:18:23.940 closer we get you know the to a federalist sort of system do you have um are you finding more people

01:18:32.420 um waking up i mean you do a podcast with matt taibbi yeah and i don't know it seems like you might be

01:18:41.000 red pilling him just a little bit well or is it just the times okay so so matt and i i it would

01:18:50.340 probably be wrong to say i'm red pilled in a traditional sense because right i i kind of have

01:18:58.060 a a certain angle on things i'm not the kind of guy who says vote for this guy or don't vote for that

01:19:05.520 person i i've i've given money to two candidates in my lifetime both were democrats who appealed to me

01:19:13.040 at the time um i don't i've written for magazines like harper's and new republic which were really

01:19:18.720 democratic party establishment mouthpieces in some ways it was around the time of russiagate that i

01:19:28.640 started to become less orthodox because i knew that the mega story about donald trump and russia was

01:19:38.480 not true and and i became offended that i was asked to subscribe to it as a you know right thinking

01:19:46.060 person and it sort of put a wedge in my relationship to the media that i had always worked for

01:19:52.580 you know and that and that's grown and it grew through covid particularly um

01:19:58.620 i saw the ways in which uh mainstream outlets were being used to whip up what i believe was hysteria

01:20:07.400 um and so it's not i'm more of a press critic or a gadfly or a cultural uh skeptic than i am

01:20:17.560 a traditional political person you won't see me on the campaign trail you said you listened to me

01:20:23.860 a lot for years yep why why did i listen to going back yeah okay i mean when i was a kid on a farm

01:20:32.940 my dad we lived on a farm in minnesota uh even though my dad worked for 3m company he was kind

01:20:39.720 of a back to the land guy who had us living 50 miles out of the city we had a radio in the truck and

01:20:46.400 we listened to paul harvey every day and then as time went on uh brush limbaugh came and art bell

01:20:54.880 and glenn beck and i loved radio i mean i i can't it was for a lonely kid out in the minnesota

01:21:04.360 countryside it was always a um uh comforting connection to the bigger world yeah and you know

01:21:14.000 you're quite a talent man and you were doing something new and it was uh arresting i i loved

01:21:19.920 listening um and you know i told you earlier my family converted to mormonism when i was a teenager

01:21:26.660 i'm no longer an active mormon but i have a lot of affection for the church and a lot of ties

01:21:34.560 to people who were much better mormons than i ever was me too and so um uh that aspect of your um

01:21:44.300 your life your personality appealed to me too where else was i going to hear somebody like me

01:21:49.920 you'd had yeah exposure to that yeah um uh the great age of talk radio probably has passed i'm not

01:21:59.880 sure what you think about that i mean oh yeah yeah but i don't think the great age of the spoken word

01:22:05.700 has passed i think it's about to renew itself even in bigger and better ways yeah yeah you know spoken

01:22:13.280 word is spoken word you know i i know you're a writer so you'll understand this i i you know you

01:22:19.840 you try to read uh you try to read huck finn or edgar allen poe in your head right it's not the same as

01:22:29.540 reading it out loud it was made to be read out loud right um and there's something about the

01:22:37.560 the storytelling ability of one individual it's the it's the only medium where if you're just

01:22:46.300 listening and not watching where it requires you to put as much into it as the storyteller

01:22:54.660 that's how that's how you see the story right is if you're engaged because then you're working it in

01:23:01.440 your head that doesn't exist yeah i mean the podcast the renaissance of the podcast is uh

01:23:10.440 a wonderful thing as far as i'm concerned i mean i wonder how people have the ability to take in that

01:23:16.420 much uh human speech um and i'm not one of those people who likes to turn up the speed to 1.5 i don't

01:23:24.060 want to see hear people talking like you know i want to hear the richness but i listen to you for the

01:23:30.540 same reason i listened to uh paul harvey back when um or larry king late at night when he had a show

01:23:37.640 um and then art bell for company i the the human voice creates a sense of intimacy uh especially when

01:23:46.260 experienced alone in the dark or out in a car or where out in the country and uh you know our politics

01:23:53.940 probably had a lot to do with the rise of talk radio in other words um you know i i remember trump

01:24:03.420 bringing rush limbaugh out not long before rush died and and thinking like that guy's probably

01:24:10.280 responsible for the president oh yeah being there oh yeah you know um it's a i i i wouldn't hesitate to

01:24:18.280 call myself a populist i i i love the people it's not the kind of populism that means huge rallies of

01:24:25.640 torch lit you know nationalist really socialist it's the populism of people doing ordinary things spread

01:24:33.700 out around the country and um and you know you'd hear you go into a garage to get a tire fixed and

01:24:41.320 you'd hear rush limbaugh you know and and the elites weren't paying attention you know they were like

01:24:47.800 uh unaware i think largely of this grassroots movement that was building and it found fruition

01:24:57.240 in this outsider presidential candidate and then president um and uh i don't think that would

01:25:05.460 happen without radio radio is a very democratic medium um and and i've always loved it and and i

01:25:14.520 haven't loved it necessarily for the ideology of the personalities but you know you were a pretty

01:25:20.380 wacky guy in a somewhat and what had become a somewhat stale medium yeah or a predictable media

01:25:27.120 yeah yeah you know yeah it is a pleasure i hope it doesn't take this long to get us back together

01:25:33.100 no i'd love come back yeah good thank you okay thanks glenn

01:25:36.860 just a reminder i'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:25:48.400 can be discovered by other people

01:26:03.100 you

01:26:06.860 you

01:26:08.860 you

The Glenn Beck Program - October 21, 2023

Ep 199 ｜ 'A Clamp-Down Is Coming'： Walter Kirn's BIGGEST Fear About Elites ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript