Glenn Beck is back in Grand Rapids, Michigan filling in for The Glenn Beck Program on WOOD Radio's WOOD-TV's Justin Barkley. Glenn talks about the massive media blackout in Georgia, the water main break-in at a farm, and much more.
00:02:36.920There are 10 ways to demonstrate that this election was stolen, that the votes were phony, that there were a lot of them, dead people, felons, phony ballots, phony mail-in ballots.
00:02:51.540How is it that in every single Republican county in this state, state senators ran ahead of the president by four to six percent?
00:03:30.100It's ultimately a question of courage.
00:03:31.800Do you have the courage to stand up to the obligation the Constitution of the United States put on you to save our people from fraud, to save the reputation of the state of Georgia from, in history, certifying a phony vote that led to the wrong result in an election, which will be the verdict of history?
00:03:52.980Or do you have the courage to put up with what's going to happen if you, in fact, change that certification and do the right thing?
00:04:01.100The president's attorney, there's former mayor Rudy Giuliani there, letting it out.
00:04:07.620The problem is, Americans aren't hearing it.
00:04:10.740And even with the fact that most Americans aren't hearing it, there are a lot that stand up and say, hey, we think maybe something's a little off.
00:04:20.300But, you know, it's interesting because you can't have that conversation.
00:04:26.760And social media is censoring everything.
00:04:29.040And, in fact, that video, I still, have we heard, I think we've yet to even hear, what happened with that video where they're pulling boxes, cases, out from underneath the table after they closed things down.
00:04:47.220That night, it was reported that a water main had broken in State Farm, and they had to get in there and repair it.
00:05:00.360And then just a bit later, after all the folks have left, the observers, well, they pull these cases out from underneath the table and go to town counting these things.
00:05:10.980We have yet to receive an explanation of what happened.
00:05:13.820We have yet to hear from those people who were there in the room.
00:05:20.200You know, if this was any other day and age, we'd have investigative reporters knocking on their doors, asking questions.
00:05:25.900They'd be sitting down and they'd be answering these questions.
00:05:28.360In fact, this Georgia Senate or the legislature, they would have these people testifying in front of them as to what happened.
00:05:37.660Look, if there's nothing to see here, be transparent about it.
00:08:48.200He was actually there at the TCF Center, the big convention center in Detroit.
00:08:53.140You've probably seen the video and the photos where, again, for transparency purposes, in the middle of this counting, not only did they stop in the middle of the night like a handful of other states, but in the middle of the counting the next day, they decide for transparency purposes, you know, best practices.
00:09:13.420What they were going to do was put up cardboard over the windows.
00:09:21.260So that folks that were outside trying to get in, after they'd kicked observer after observer out, trying to get in, they wouldn't be able to see anything.
00:11:05.160And Happy New Year, I guess I can say that.
00:11:07.260Well, we've got a lot of ground to cover here.
00:11:10.320But, Pat, yesterday in Georgia, I don't know if you're going to be able to hear this or not.
00:11:13.980I'm just going to play a little bit of this audio from this bombshell that broke down about the Dominion machines being connected to the Internet.
00:11:23.760This was broke early in the weekend last week about connected devices.
00:11:28.860At this very moment, at a polling location in the county, not only do we now have access through the devices to the poll pad, the system, but we are in.
00:11:41.740And it's not supposed to have Wi-Fi, and that's not supposed to be able to happen.
00:11:46.940So we've documented now it's communicating two ways in real time, meaning it's receiving data and sending data.
00:13:04.760I mean, looking at these results, Patrick, and what we're hearing, how should any of us have any faith or trust that our elections are secure?
00:13:15.600Well, we should listen to our folks out in D.C. who told us that this is the most secure election in American history.
00:13:31.860You know, I think the key point of what happened in Georgia in particular yesterday is, number one, realize that the official narrative was that there was no Internet connection with these devices.
00:13:46.240Number two, the only way that they could demonstrate that there was an Internet connection was they got some white hat hacker to get into the system and demonstrate that there was two-way communication going on with these election devices.
00:14:02.020Now, just for listeners who don't know what a white hat is, a white hat is a good guy that hacks ethically.
00:14:09.540A black hat is a bad guy that hacks unethically.
00:14:12.720We think there are a lot of black hats involved in this election.
00:14:15.880In fact, we think a lot of those may have been representative or agents of other countries like China and Iran.
00:14:24.340Another key point to take away is, why did it take a white hat hacker to go in and demonstrate that these machines were accessible to the Internet?
00:14:34.840And the answer to that question is because everybody has been denied access to the electronic data all across the country, with one notable exception, and that was in Antrim County,
00:14:45.940where Judge Kevin Elsenheimer granted access to a third-party team working with Matt DiPerno, the attorney you were mentioning earlier.
00:14:56.000Matt would have been a rock star on this.
00:14:57.860He got access to the data on those Antrim County servers, but the report that came out at the request of the Michigan Attorney General was redacted,
00:15:07.860and the redactions removed some key information that, frankly, conflicted with the information conveyed by Dominion CEO John Paulus,
00:15:17.460who was under oath testifying before a Michigan Senate Oversight Committee.
00:15:24.740So those are kind of some three key data points.
00:15:27.580Number one, election official narrative was that they were not connected to the Internet.
00:15:32.360Number two, it took a white hat hacker to go off and demonstrate that that was false on the face of it.
00:15:41.360And number three, why are we being denied access to this data in the first place?
00:15:48.140This should be accessible to everybody to go off and look at.
00:15:52.280Again, we're talking about transparency, and we've had about as much transparency as they had in Detroit with the cardboard over the windows in this entire thing.
00:16:00.140Speaking of Detroit, Pat Kolbeck's with us right now.
00:16:45.260And actually, a little bit more pertinent background to this topic is that I'm a certified Microsoft small business specialist,
00:16:51.940which means I've connected my share of networks in my time.
00:16:55.800And when I walked into the TCF Center, which is the home of the Detroit AV accounting board, I zeroed in on how these machines were connected.
00:17:04.900Now, we weren't allowed to take photographs, and I've seen some places where they've actually been able to go off and do that.
00:17:10.560I couldn't do that, although we did have some folks that did it.
00:17:13.640If I would have done it, I immediately would have been kicked out of the facility, and my usefulness for the night would have been over.
00:17:19.300But I did note and took note of the connectivity between all the different devices in that facility.
00:17:29.260And the first thing that I noticed was that all of the tabulator machines, these tabulator workstations, were connected together via Ethernet cables to a router.
00:17:38.820That router was, in turn, connected to another router that was connected to a series of adjudicator machines.
00:17:45.500Now, the adjudicator machines, just for your audience, whenever the scanner can't read a ballot correctly, it dumps it into kind of a flex file, a flex bin, if you will,
00:17:55.620that allows people to go off and change the votes as they see fit.
00:17:59.540And you're supposed to have a Republican and a Democrat reviewing that when it happens.
00:18:03.360But anyway, in any case, from a network perspective, the tabulators, where they were scanning the ballots, were connected to the adjudicators,
00:18:13.000which were also connected to a local data center, if you will.
00:18:16.480It was like the master mission control center for the whole enterprise, and there's 503 precincts in the Detroit A.V. County Board.
00:18:54.340I'd love to hear from you if you are in Georgia.
00:18:56.120What happened there yesterday, this video?
00:18:59.580This was broke early in the week and last week about connected devices.
00:19:04.660At this very moment, at a polling location in the county, not only do we now have access through the devices to the poll pad, the system, but we are in.
00:19:17.480And it's not supposed to have Wi-Fi, and that's not supposed to be able to happen.
00:19:22.700So we've documented now it's communicating two ways in real time, meaning it's receiving data and sending data.
00:19:58.900He's got that background in engineering and not just some guy off the street, but he saw this and raised alarms about it.
00:20:06.760In fact, he's dug into the reports of Antrim County.
00:20:10.700What did you guys see when you spoke with Mr. Ramson about what happened there in Antrim County specifically?
00:20:19.880Well, in Antrim County, what they found was an amazing error rate.
00:20:23.460We were talking about punting data from the tabulator scanners, and when they couldn't read it, it would dump it to an adjudicator, right?
00:20:30.420Well, in Antrim County, what they found out was there was an error rate of around 68 percent where they couldn't read these scans, and they'd dump it to an adjudicator.
00:20:39.040Now, that's supposed to be the exception, not the rule.
00:20:43.140Most of the time, this is well below 1 percent that any of this stuff should be transferred over an adjudicator.
00:20:49.620And what happens with an adjudicator is essentially that's what tees it up for a man in the middle where you can actually go off and adjust what the vote was.
00:20:57.400And that's what happened in Antrim County.
00:20:58.980And for those of your listeners who don't recall what happened, but if it wasn't for the alert attention of a regular old citizen, Bill Bailey, who highlighted that Antrim County doesn't build blue, he said something's not right here when they saw there was like 6,000 votes slipped.
00:21:18.980It's done by putting them into this flex pool called the adjudication pool.
00:21:22.520And that's what they identified in Antrim County.
00:21:24.560They also identified that the ranked choice voting algorithm was enabled.
00:21:29.160And John Polis, the CEO of Dominion, denied that that was – he denied under oath before a Michigan Senate committee that that was the case.
00:21:37.080But the ranked choice voting algorithm, for those of your listeners who don't know, is what enables fractional voting, i.e. decimal points in your votes.
00:21:45.480So my vote may be worth 1.2, and your vote may be worth 0.8, depending on who I vote for.
00:22:15.320None of this is being examined or looked at or even given the time of day by any of the broadcast networks, any of the mainstream sources.
00:22:24.580Well, they're the ones casting the negative votes for Trump.
00:22:30.060So, Pat, I've got to ask you, big news yesterday.
00:22:33.020I mean, this was a bombshell that kind of made its way out.
00:22:36.620But also, Senator Hawley comes out, Josh Hawley comes out and says, you know, I'm going to stand up on the 6th and object to this certification, the Electoral College.
00:22:51.980So, tell us what he says and what does that mean in this whole process as it comes down?
00:22:59.540Well, this is important because on January 6th, when Vice President Pence opens up all the envelopes from the states with the Electoral College votes,
00:23:07.820there's an opportunity for House members and Senate members to object to the votes that were cast.
00:23:15.160And we've got a lot of House members that have been very outspoken on it.
00:23:19.900And I remember Congressman Mo Brooks in particular has been very outspoken on this topic.
00:23:24.940But we hadn't had any senators until Senator Hawley from Missouri, which coincidentally is a show-me state, stood up and said, no, I'm in on this.
00:23:36.100And I'm hoping that some other senators, like Senator Rand Paul and Senator Ted Cruz, are going to step in.
00:23:41.840I know Senator Ron Johnson's expressed sentiments along those lines.
00:23:45.140It's a case where the more the merrier.
00:23:46.780If you're just singled out, what happens in caucus discussions, it gets kind of ugly.
00:23:51.800You don't want to be the only one stating a particular opinion.
00:23:55.040So it would be good for him to have safety in numbers, and I don't understand why every single member of the Republican Senate caucus is not standing with Josh.
00:24:06.320If this happens, and I know it's only part of the process, what are the chances that the next steps are taken?
00:24:17.400And what's the likelihood, and maybe follow us down that road of what that looks like and possibility of outcome.
00:24:26.300Okay, well, if you get one House member and one Senate member objecting to a particular vote, it goes back to a nice little huddle in the House and a huddle in the Senate.
00:24:39.300And they'll come back and say, hey, do we accept them or do we reject them?
00:24:42.480And if they reject them, then those votes, or if both of those chambers don't accept them, those votes don't go into the tally for the Electoral College votes.
00:24:52.060And if you don't get to a majority number, you don't get to the 270 mark inside when all the Electoral College votes are cast, then it goes to invoke the 12th Amendment.
00:25:04.020And 12th Amendment, what happens is that the U.S. House decides who the next president is.
00:25:10.760And before everybody panics and says, wait, don't we have Speaker Pelosi in there right now?
00:25:17.100Right. It's actually not cast by all 435 members of the U.S. House.
00:25:25.560What happens is that each state gets one vote, and that's based on their delegation.
00:25:31.340So if you have a majority of Republicans in your delegation, then you have control of that particular state's vote.
00:25:37.560And what happens when you actually look at the layout of the U.S. Congress, there are 26 states with Republican-controlled delegations and 24 with Democrats.
00:25:48.860So in that context, President Trump would get another four years as president if all those delegations voted to along party lines.
00:26:49.660Now, what they've been doing is just going through the motions.
00:26:52.200You know, they actually, I highlighted at the beginning of the segment that one of the key problems we've been having is getting access to the electronic data.
00:27:00.360It's taken an act of God to get it from Antrim County.
00:27:03.400So the legislature, and this is how it works, they went off and actually subpoenaed that electronic data.
00:27:09.600But guess when they put the deadline for when they get that data back?
00:27:13.440They submitted this as subpoena on December 15th.
00:27:16.360They said, hey, can you get that data to us from Detroit electronic election data?
00:27:21.540Can you get all that electronic data to us by January 12th?
00:27:26.320Well, the meeting we were just discussing takes place on January 6th, right?
00:27:41.940Matter of fact, meanwhile, we've been in an emergency here to lock down this entire year, almost.
00:27:48.580And the question of what really constitutes an emergency has been something else that we've been talking about, not just in this state, but all across the country.
00:29:51.120Back when Jill Stein went off and did a call for a recount in Michigan, for all the people that say, hey, you wouldn't be pushing this election integrity thing so much if Donald Trump had won.
00:30:01.600Well, no, unfortunately for them, that's exactly what I did back in 2016.
00:30:07.000I called on our Michigan attorney general and secretary of state to do an investigation in the wake of the 2016 election to go off and see what was going on, in particular, in the city of Detroit, where they had at least one instance where we discovered that there were 306 votes on a poll book.
00:30:27.000But when you actually looked in the machine, there was only 50 ballots.
00:30:31.100So did somebody find a ballot that they liked and just run it through a few times?
00:30:34.920So there are games that were being played back then.
00:30:39.000The investigation revealed 31 counts of voter fraud in 34 jurisdictions that did not comply with data requests.
00:30:45.100So there was already smoke back in 2016, 2017 time frame.
00:30:49.400And regrettably, nothing was done about it.
00:30:51.580Congratulations, by the way, former Michigan State Senator Pat Colbeck, recovering from this COVID-19, the coronavirus.
00:31:00.820I know you talked a little bit about that, but you've got some interesting information up on your website, letsfixstuff.org.
00:31:09.120Just briefly, we've only got 30 seconds left with you.
00:31:11.740Tell us what you did and what worked for you.
00:31:14.500Well, I wasn't feeling too good for a few days right after Mayor Giuliani came in and testified before our Michigan house.
00:31:21.560And that's when I think I picked up the bug.
00:31:23.700But so a couple of rough days there, I finally went off.
00:31:26.820Once I started getting respiratory issues, I got tested.
00:31:29.380And literally, once I tested positive, I sought treatment and all the cocktails that everybody's trying to discourage here in the state of Michigan, featuring hydroxychloroquine, Z-Pak, and zinc with a little bit of steroids thrown in.
00:31:47.580And I took that treatment that are being actively discouraged by despots like our Governor Whitmer here in Michigan.
00:31:54.280And within five hours, I was feeling pretty much 100 percent, except for some lingering respiratory issues.
00:35:30.240She's a Holocaust survivor who is witnessing some eerie parallels to what we're seeing play out right now during this last year of the pandemic.
00:35:40.380Vera Sharov has a lot to say, in fact, about what is happening here in America, if not the world.
00:35:50.060When medicine veers away from the Hippocratic oath that promises to respect the individual right, to do no harm to the individual,
00:36:02.360then you're going to harm the community as well, because the community is a bunch of individuals.
00:36:09.440There are crossroads in life where you have to make choices.
00:36:13.320And if you don't, someone who will make the choice for you is not going to make it for your best interest.
00:36:21.440The idea of just following authority without considering, what if they're wrong?
00:37:09.120And what do we need to keep in mind here?
00:37:11.620Your call to all Americans and folks throughout the world right now?
00:37:16.140Essentially, not to blindly listen to authority.
00:37:20.220This is really, it's so against what America was about.
00:37:24.840America, unlike other countries, guarantees to its citizens rights, individual rights, the right to religion, to speech, to assembly, and all of these things are being wiped away by would-be dictators.
00:37:45.180I mean, in the United States, you have different governors.
00:37:56.460He just had one of his restrictions on religious services knocked out by the court just now on Monday.
00:38:06.180I mean, the courts are about the only institution left where they take seriously those rights that are in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.
00:38:19.960And I think that people need to understand that it's really up to us.
00:38:25.520If we don't insist on our rights, they will be taken away from us.
00:38:31.060And we can see that with this so-called pandemic.
00:38:36.260I know a lot of folks who have even asked questions throughout this entire process.
00:38:39.720I mean, well-meaning and well-intentioned individuals who are just trying to understand what's happening.
00:44:16.820And now, it's not just an identity card.
00:44:22.200Now they're planning, essentially, to have on one card everything, your health record, your vaccination record, your bank account, you name it.
00:44:34.420Your life, essentially, all the things that you need to use in daily life will be all in one, and soon it's going to be a chip, not even something you have to carry, but that'll be embedded in you.
00:44:50.620I think people need to say, hey, you're going far too, far too extreme as a government.
00:44:59.580We never really voted for any of this.
00:45:04.400What have you seen in your time, and specifically in those instances during the Holocaust, that this is leading us down a road that we really need to think about?
00:45:19.080Well, one of the things that I learned later, I was a child, remember, I was a little child, was that the IBM punch card system, the censorship that was done in Germany, Austria, everywhere, really,
00:45:39.220that facilitated the roundup, the identification, the eventually extermination of the Jews of Europe, okay?
00:45:54.580And as I said, doctors were involved right in the front lines.
00:46:01.540Actually, originally, the first victims were young German babies and children under three, children who had some abnormality.
00:46:21.020They were identified by midwives, by doctors, preschools, which sent reports to the government, and then doctors selected those children that they deemed to be not worthy of life.
00:46:44.320And the children were taken away from their parents.
00:46:52.200They were told that the children would get special treatment.
00:46:57.220That special treatment was later known as the program T4.
00:47:02.000However, the children were killed, they were murdered, either by lethal injection, and some were even subjected to starvation diets so that the doctors could document how long it would take for a child to survive without nutrition.
00:47:29.240Vera, Vera, this isn't that far off, though.
00:47:32.300I mean, we think about this Holocaust and how long ago this Nazi Germany and these things were, and it may be a different world, but in fact, these types of experiments and things have happened on American citizens.
00:47:45.940And, you know, most people don't know about these things, and some don't want to know.
00:47:55.180But I think it's very important that we know exactly the fact that, you know, governments, if they're not being watched, if they're not being watched, that they only rule in areas that they're supposed to, not where they're not supposed to.
00:48:20.420The dark is the best way for horrors to happen.
00:48:23.900And right now, we, the people, are being kept mostly in the dark, and any scientists or doctors or any of us speaking about these things are being censored all over the Internet, and, of course, the mainstream media doesn't allow any such voice.
00:48:48.980That's, you know, that's exactly how dictatorships work.
00:48:55.320That's how the Nazis kept the German people in the dark.
00:48:59.340Look, most, most German people did not commit the crimes, but they stood by and did nothing.
00:49:07.720What do you say to people, Vera, as someone who survived the Holocaust and your background here, with speaking out, who say, you know, I'm afraid I'm going to end up on a list?
00:49:18.360I think you and I might already be on one, but I'm afraid I'm going to end up on a list.
00:49:25.740I mean, people are really facing decisions.
00:49:27.720They really, you know, fear is the way that the Nazis did it, that the Soviets did it, that the Chinese did it.
00:49:36.980They all operate on that same formula.
00:49:40.580You keep the people in dread and great fear, whether it was, you know, it used to be about war, the enemies coming.
00:49:50.080Now we have a situation where our government is pointing, you know, the gun essentially at us, as if we were the enemy.
00:49:59.400Now, one of the aspects of this vaccination is that under Operation Warp Speed, there's going to be tracking, and the tracking is going to be done by the military, technology companies, and intelligence agencies.
00:50:46.740Why we're talking about this now is that so you can have these conversations early.
00:50:51.660You don't want to wait to the last minute to have to make that decision.
00:50:54.900This is something that you want to hear about now so that you can have a conversation.
00:51:00.840You know, one of the things is that informed consent, you know, that's really the holy grail.
00:51:06.920And informed consent was mandated by the Nuremberg Code, the Nuremberg trials of the doctors, of the Nazi doctors, in their decision, in that trial, they handed down the Nuremberg Code, which is ten items like the Ten Commandments.
00:51:30.780But the first and foremost is the voluntary, informed consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
01:01:08.860My wife, Michelle, and my daughter, Quincy, both did not have shoes on.
01:01:12.880And so we get to the to the street and it's, you know, looks like a war zone.
01:01:18.680I've never been in war, but just from watching movies and, you know, just there was debris everywhere on the sidewalk.
01:01:24.460And literally right across from us was a car that had exploded and was completely engulfed in flames.
01:01:31.620Another interesting thing is that the night before we we were there, I was going to park my car right in front of the condominium.
01:01:38.940There was a spot on the street, a metered spot.
01:01:42.260And, of course, the meter ran out about 6 p.m.
01:01:44.380So I thought, well, I'll just park here and then, you know, get the car in the morning.
01:01:48.120But I didn't know what time we'd get up.
01:01:49.600So, you know, I think the Lord was just kind of directing me that, yeah, don't park here.
01:01:53.200So I went and parked across the street in the surface parking lot, which turns out was a big thing because if the car had been there, it would have been destroyed.
01:02:01.760So anyhow, yeah, my wife and daughter had no shoes.
01:02:05.740The girls kind of ran to the corner and I looked and my wife, I mean, we're all in shock.
01:02:09.920But my wife was kind of frozen, trying to slowly step her way around all the debris.
01:02:15.640And I'm thinking, I don't know what's going to happen.
01:03:36.680As I said, you just keep replaying that moment in your mind.
01:03:40.320And, you know, sometimes you'll just have it pop in your head and, you know, start crying about the whole thing because you're just so emotional.
01:03:47.620So I think, you know, I don't like to use the term PTSD because I think that's reserved for soldiers that have been in war.
01:03:55.880But we definitely have some kind of emotional trauma that we probably need to talk to some people about, kind of work through that.
01:04:40.560And I am so glad that you shared this story with us because this, and especially the time that we're in right now, is the glimpse of hope, that glimmer that we all need right now.
01:04:53.620No matter what is happening, I just appreciate you sharing it with us today.
01:05:01.040And we really appreciate all the support and loves and prayers that people have been giving to us on Facebook and people that we don't even know.
01:05:09.640And I just also want to say I'm just so proud and grateful for all the police and fire personnel that were there.
01:05:17.180Those police officers certainly saved many lives.
01:05:20.280And if you watch on the body cam video at the two-minute mark, you'll see them walking by that RV.
01:05:26.460And obviously, if it exploded at that point, they would have been killed.
01:05:29.840And so they just moved into the face of danger without any regard to their safety, and they saved lives.
01:05:37.760And some are calling to defund the police.
01:05:39.720The heroes are running towards the danger, not away from it.
01:05:44.880And, boy, there is no greater moment than what took place that day and what happens every day when those folks go out to serve and protect.
01:05:56.340Buddy, thank you so much for being here with us today.
01:06:07.020I don't know if you saw the story or not, but one of the officers said he heard what he could only describe as a voice from God warning him to move in the opposite direction.
01:06:20.500And just moments later, that RV exploded in Nashville.
01:06:56.660I don't know if you've seen the story of this Nashville police officer who said he heard the voice of God that saved him that Christmas morning.
01:07:06.660Which is the parking garage and then a second to commerce to get out of the blast radius.
01:07:12.460And at that point, I get out and I'm starting to go back toward Llewellyn and Hosey.
01:07:20.540And as I'm getting ready to walk toward them, walking back toward the RV, and this might not be politically correct, but this is my truth.
01:07:28.420And I literally hear a guy tell me to turn around and go check on Topping, who was by herself down on Broadway.
01:07:34.540And as I turn around, for me, it felt like I only took three steps.
01:18:25.460A country that collectively sees itself as a victim will not rise to their challenge, but instead resign themselves to their dark fate and continue to be oppressed by dictators from within their own country or beyond.
01:18:42.020Donald Miller joins us right now on the Glenn Beck Program.
01:19:30.880One of those memoirs was turned into a major motion picture and so studied story even more and was fascinated as I discovered the power of story and the power of narrative transportation.
01:19:43.080So narrative transportation is a term that describes what happens when you believe a story.
01:19:49.860And what's interesting is if you can frame a narrative that people will buy into, the narrative is so powerful in their mind, they will begin to reject facts that would threaten that story.
01:20:03.860And so what narrative transportation proves is that story narrative is actually more powerful than truth.
01:20:11.320And so it becomes very important that we begin to tell stories that are true and live stories that are true.
01:20:18.320And I think in this day and age, it's fascinating that on the left, on the right, in every facet of society, we have people who are believing things that simply aren't true.
01:20:28.920And not only that, we have a difficult time really getting to the heart of what is true.
01:20:32.240You know, on Christmas morning here, Justin, in Nashville, Tennessee, where I am today, at 630 in the morning, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth.
01:20:40.740And I just felt the earth rumble a little bit and kind of wondered what that was.
01:20:46.660And about 30 minutes later, it came on the news that a gentleman had pulled into downtown Nashville and set off a bomb in an RV.
01:20:52.820And my wife said, gosh, you know, what do you think he was thinking?
01:20:59.020There were three people injured, but it could have been much more devastating.
01:21:02.060I said, honey, you know, I don't know.
01:21:03.520But what they'll uncover eventually is that this person had bought into some kind of narrative in which they were playing a role in a story, whether he thought he was doing something heroic or he wanted to be the martyr.
01:21:15.920However, it will probably be uncovered that that he subscribes some sort of narrative.
01:21:21.060And so the FBI begins to investigate that.
01:21:22.760That's exactly what they're uncovering is that he, you know, he believed in some conspiracy theories about literally about lizards and 5G networks controlling lizard aliens and things like that.
01:21:37.060But is it it still affects us, right, because he did go down in this fictional mindset and in the real world blow up a big portion of Nashville, Tennessee, at least two or three blocks.
01:21:49.940So the roles that we believe we play in a story dictate how our lives go.
01:21:55.480And and so what you read on Instagram was just a piece of some writing that I was working on and thought, you know, I might let the public see this and see what they think, because it seems very culturally relevant.
01:22:06.140You know, you go on to say Donald Miller's with us, by the way, and he goes on to say in this post, as an American, I grew up in a country that, though certainly flawed, perceived itself as heroic inside an evolving story, attempting to perfect liberty for all to lay today.
01:22:22.540The collective consciousness is increasingly attracted to political messages in which we are described as victims in need of rescue by political parties or their representative strongmen.
01:22:34.520And we've seen that play out a lot in the last few years in some really damaging ways, in some divisive ways, whether it be identity politics or just the polarity of everyone picking a tribe.
01:22:48.780But how do we get back to seeing our story, whether it's as individuals or this this country itself as a heroic story and to recognizing, although there are flaws, right, that that we've got a great country and that we have greatness inside all of us, those seeds anyway.
01:23:10.800Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's the greatest country in the history of the world.
01:23:14.400Our economic system is the greatest experiment in the history of the world at reducing poverty.
01:23:18.960You know, it's got flaws. We need to change some things in the tax code and tweak some things in capitalism to make it work even better for everybody.
01:23:26.200But you can't argue with the fact that this has been the greatest exercise.
01:23:30.120We we we did that with a heroic mentality.
01:23:33.060You know, as I studied story, what I discovered was there are four major characters, the victim, the villain, the hero and the guide.
01:23:39.080Those are the four major characters and stories.
01:23:41.720And those characters are the major characters and stories because they're the major characters inside of us.
01:23:47.620On any given day, Justin, I play the hero, the victim, the villain, the guide.
01:23:51.140Right. The hero wakes up early and gets started on his goals.
01:23:53.540You know, within my computer, I forgot to charge it last night.
01:23:56.780So I'm the victim and I've got to sit around and wait for this computer to charge.
01:23:59.700I got a bad attitude with my wife. There's the victim.
01:24:01.840And then she says, well, you know, if you just remember to charge your computer before you go to bed.
01:24:05.300And I say, well, you know, I get vindictive and get mad at her.
01:24:52.420You know, we see this person is the hero and they separate the identities into different people.
01:24:56.180But the truth is, it's much more nuanced in real life.
01:24:59.160What we'll find, though, in life is that when you play the victim, your fate ends up very similar to the way the victim ends up in stories.
01:26:12.660Hamish in The Hunger Games is the guide.
01:26:14.920This is a strong character who's already played the hero for many, many years and is now teaching other heroes how to win.
01:26:21.260This would be our elder class in America, the greatest generation, those who've gone before us who can turn around and teach us something.
01:26:28.280What I'm finding more and more and what troubles me, Justin, is that political messages that say you are being threatened by outside forces, people are out to get you, you deserve better, there's nothing you can do, you're helpless.
01:26:41.860Let the government step in and be your rescuer.
01:26:46.740Well, if the government is our rescuer, then who are we?
01:26:50.060And so what happens to a country when it collectively identifies as victims is what happens to a victim in a story.
01:26:58.380They either decline and make somebody else look good or they perish.
01:27:04.220And, you know, I don't want to be too dramatic, but the reality is, you know, those days when we were putting a man on the moon and we were building our economy and even in the civil rights movement, you know, we played a heroic role.
01:27:19.240People look at the civil rights movement as a bruise on our country, and certainly it is.
01:27:23.500But it's also a country that was willing to fight with itself to become better.
01:27:30.740And so, you know, there's this heroic identity that is America.
01:28:08.700And we're talking with Donald Miller right now who is sharing, you know, some of his thoughts behind this post that I saw on Instagram that really resonated with me.
01:28:18.060And we're talking about how you can transform, not only in your life, but maybe we as a country, as a society, can transform from victims into victors.
01:28:29.760And, Don, you just mentioned some of this, how we've been hearing the messaging from politicians and the media and different places.
01:28:38.700About this victim mentality and why we've kind of all sort of settled into this in some ways, maybe individually in our lives.
01:28:54.120Just run through those quickly again, and then we'll get to, like, how we can maybe do that, not just in our country, but in our lives as well.
01:29:03.180Well, you know, there are a few things to remember.
01:29:05.540One is that there are actually victims in the world.
01:29:07.740I mean, there are people, you know, Henry Cloud, a friend of mine, describes a victim as somebody who has no way out.
01:29:15.020So if you actually use that definition, a victim has no way out, the majority of the time when we see ourselves as a victim, we are actually not victims.
01:29:24.100It's just that the way out is hard, or the way out is going to request that we sacrifice.
01:29:30.300And so a lot of times when we're playing the victim, a little bit of self-awareness would show that, you know, the reason we're playing the victim is that victims can get out of their responsibilities because, you know, they're in too dire a situation to take care of whatever they need to take care of.
01:30:33.180And so I think we want to have a lot of compassion for people playing the victims because it is a survival mechanism.
01:30:38.960But what changed my life personally was when I realized it was, and I'm embarrassed to say it was even in my early 20s, it took that long, when I realized that everything I wanted in life, I wasn't going to get by playing the victim.
01:30:51.100That it was, in fact, it was just an unattractive role to play in life.
01:30:56.860And when I realized that and began to take some responsibility for my life, things slowly transformed over the next 10 years.
01:31:03.940And I was able to, you know, develop a work ethic, lose some weight, start dating, write a few best-selling books, start a company.
01:31:13.660And now, you know, I'm not embarrassed when I look back on the way I thought and the way I lived in my teens and early 20s.
01:31:21.880But I do find myself completely unrecognizable.
01:31:24.820So one of the things that happens in stories that's so exciting is that characters transform.
01:31:32.140The hero changes and becomes a better version of themselves.
01:31:35.880They are ill-equipped at the beginning, and they are confident at the end.
01:31:39.540You know, if you look at Star Wars, he doesn't know, Luke doesn't know if he can be a Jedi.
01:31:43.700By the end, he's destroying the Death Star.
01:31:46.160In King's speech, King George doesn't know if he can do this.
01:31:49.060He thinks the wrong person, fate, if you will, has chosen the wrong person to be king.
01:31:53.220But he works with his guide, that is Lionel, the drama teacher, teaches him how to talk.
01:31:57.300And by the end of it, he delivers a speech without stuttering, and he is transformed.
01:32:02.940When we meet somebody who hasn't changed in 5 or 10 years, they're complaining about the same things.
01:32:07.920You're in the presence of somebody who sees themselves as a victim.
01:32:10.300And one of the most tender, beautiful things you can do, if it's possible, and I think you don't want to do this unless you've earned the right to do it, is just to explain what happens to a victim.
01:32:29.020And the reality is they're seeing themselves as a victim.
01:32:31.700So I want to be really careful because as soon as we start judging victims and thinking of them as lesser people than we are, we actually start playing the villain.
01:32:39.620A hero has great compassion for victims and great understanding and also great understanding for liberty and free will.
01:32:47.840If somebody wants to be a victim, they have every right to be a victim.
01:32:50.520It's not my responsibility to change them.
01:32:53.200But I think it is my responsibility to explain what happens to victims and what happens to heroes and invite more and more people into a heroic mentality.
01:33:01.700That's a great way to put it, an invitation.
01:33:08.880StoryBrand.com is a website and author of some great books, including Building a Story Brand.
01:33:14.360But you mentioned those memoirs beforehand.
01:33:16.800You might want to grab some of those or go pick some of those up.
01:33:21.140Scary Clothes, Blue Like Jazz, a couple of those.
01:33:23.440Donald, you mentioned you kind of got your ideas as you wrote these books and were part of this movie and now helping businesses do this.
01:33:34.140You got your basis and your background for the stories.
01:33:36.960So we know how those formulas work in the movies and in books and whatnot.
01:33:40.800They're very close to what happens in real life.
01:33:42.460How do we choose, you know, in the real raw moments to become either a hero or a guide and say, you know what, I'm going to stop being the victim, maybe personally in our own lives and then also as a country?
01:33:57.420Well, some things have to happen in order to play the hero.
01:34:02.560And, of course, I don't mean in order to beat your chest and be the center of attention.
01:34:06.160I mean in order to inside yourself, see yourself as somebody who's capable of change and capable of great impact.
01:34:12.260One of the things that a hero does in a story, and it works in our own lives, too, is they have a clear, defined goal in mind.
01:34:26.320This is also in line with Viktor Frankl's work.
01:34:29.340Viktor Frankl was the Viennese psychologist who was alive during the time of Sigmund Freud and contended, as Sigmund Freud said, that people's dominant pursuit and desire was a desire for pleasure.
01:34:40.500Viktor Frankl said, no, it's the desire for a deep sense of meaning.
01:34:44.340And he said, in order to find meaning, you need to take action on a goal.
01:34:50.960That meaning is experienced in motion.
01:34:53.560And so, Justin, you know, every morning, not every morning, but at least three or four mornings a week, I get up and I read my life plan that I created for myself.
01:35:47.340They want to change something, and they know changing something is going to be hard.
01:35:52.200And so, when life gets hard, instead of saying, I don't want it to be like this and this is unfair, they say, oh, this is exactly what life is supposed to do to us.
01:36:33.880And so, you know, if we say this is what I want to accomplish in life, here's what I want to change, and I'm willing to go through great challenges and condemnation maybe and even people attacking me and those sorts of things.
01:36:47.920In order to make this thing happen, we find ourselves in a heroic role.
01:36:52.200And what you'll find, since I read Viktor Frankl 15 years ago, you know, there have been days that I've woken up and life has been sad.
01:37:02.260And, you know, I don't want to do this work today, but I'm going to go do it.
01:37:06.620You know, I'm not saying life is always happy.
01:37:08.240But I promise you, Justin, in 15 years, since I've defined my goal and goals and read my life plan, I have not woken up a single day and not experienced a deep sense of meaning in my life.
01:37:21.580And its terms are, this is going to be difficult.
01:37:24.100So, being willing to face the fight, right, and knowing exactly what you want and where you want to go, these are the individual things that define us.
01:37:59.740And we elect people who want to bring down the other team, if you will.
01:38:06.040And what that means is we've got a Congress that fights with each other rather than getting things done.
01:38:11.100And I'm sick of it because I think they're wasting my money.
01:38:14.740And we have a media that incentivizes that sort of outrage at the other party.
01:38:21.060And so, if you look at all the incentives, the incentives for the media, the incentives for Democrats to bash on Republicans and Republicans to bash on Democrats, if you look at the incentives, we are incentivizing this country into decline.
01:38:33.440So, what we need is we need a leader who stands up and says, look, I think we're about to get passed by China in 2025.
01:40:12.300That is a conversation that we'll continue to have because it's, you know, it's not going away anytime soon unless we take action, as he pointed out.
01:40:24.860So what are some of those things we can do?
01:40:28.800We'll continue to look down the road and continue our conversation right here.
01:40:34.000You can join the program at 1-888-727-BECK.
01:40:59.800I just want to say it has been an honor and a privilege to fill in for Glenn during his well-deserved vacation.
01:41:15.740It's Justin Barclay from Wood Radio in Grand Rapids as we count down the remaining moments here in this year, 2020, and look forward to 2021.
01:41:25.820I guess we have some decisions to make.