Daily Wire Backstage: The Commies Are At It Again
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 42 minutes
Words per Minute
219.6311
Summary
Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and myself, we all talk about Joe Biden s continual decline, social media censorship, and the growing movement that emphasizes quitting over accomplishment. Trust me, this is an episode you definitely need to hear.
Transcript
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This episode of Daily Wire Backstage is one you definitely don't want to miss.
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Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and myself.
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We all talk about Joe Biden's continual decline, social media censorship,
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and the growing movement that emphasizes quitting over accomplishment.
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Trust me, this is an episode you definitely need to hear.
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Nobody actually knows me as the God King, but I say it every time with persistence.
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Will protesters in Cuba have to burn the American flag rather than march with it
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if they want to get any mainstream media coverage?
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Will Joe Biden continue to snap at female reporters until they let him sniff their hair?
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Does the White House teaming up with Facebook on a censorship campaign against misinformation
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make anyone else feel like we're living in the authoritarian moment?
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I mean, physically I feel fine, but emotionally I'm just, it's not fun for me anymore, you
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And so I think I'm just going to, I've got to take some time for me.
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But I am still a winner in my own heart, right?
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Joining me to discuss all the news and more is the Ben Shapiro, the Candace Owens, the Matt
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Walsh, the Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan, also guest starring.
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Mask mandates are back on the table as the COVID Delta variant rears its ugly head and
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While some state leaders are holding their ground, others are forcing their citizens to
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adhere to government authority at the expense of personal freedom.
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Ben Shapiro, of course, predicted all of this in his latest book, The Authoritarian Moment,
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which hit bookshelves yesterday and is already trending third under Amazon's list of bestsellers.
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Get your copy now anywhere books are sold, or you can pick up a signed copy for just $30
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On tonight's backstage, Ben's going to, I have to, this is longer than any ad I've ever read
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for any paying customer, but it's because we love Ben.
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Ben's going to offer us some insight into this very unique moment in American history
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and detail some of the examples he writes about in The Authoritarian Moment.
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As usual, you can watch this live on social media or on our website, but we want to announce
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that you can now enter to win the ultimate backstage experience where you and a friend
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can come lounge with us here at Daily Wire HQ, have some good conversation.
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You can even spark up a cigar if Michael's feeling generous and get signed copies of Ben's
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If you want to know how, you go to dailywire.com slash backstage, use code backstage, you'll
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When you do, you'll automatically be entered to win our VIP experience, which includes two
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tickets plus travel to see an episode of Backstage Live, a meet and greet with me and the other
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backstage hosts, signed copies of Ben's book, and a tour of Daily Wire studios and offices
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Current Daily Wire members, you can get your questions into the chat box right now for our Q&A
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The title, God King, is just an honorific they give you if you make it through all the copy
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Michael, I have to say, that was one of the bravest things I've ever seen in my life.
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Thank you very much for recognizing my courage and that I need to take care of myself.
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Of course, we should talk about this story of Simone Biles, actually one of the great
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American athletes, one of the great gymnasts of all time, perhaps the greatest gymnast
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of all time, walking off of her team challenge at the Olympics because she had the SADS.
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And what are we to make of a culture in which such a thing is possible?
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I think it's important for everyone to understand here.
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And I think I could speak for most people in the room, at least myself.
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So I wouldn't, if she just walked off and quit and then apologized afterwards and said,
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hey, you know, I really just felt like I couldn't do it.
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And then everyone reacted with appropriate disappointment.
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The problem is when the media tells us that we have to celebrate this thing.
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And I'm not saying that she's nothing but a coward, but this was a cowardly act.
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She didn't want to do, and she decided not to do it.
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That's, you know, that's something we've all done that before.
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When you tell us that that is now, I think the New Yorker called that, or the New York Times called that radical courage.
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And there's also a double standard here, too, because we know, you know, you cannot imagine Tom Brady in the middle of the playoffs, third quarter, they're down by a couple scores, and he walks off the field, goes to the sideline, and says, hey, coach, you know, I'm just not in the right space right now.
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And if it did happen, I don't think there'd be anyone celebrating his courage for doing it.
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So she came out, and because one of the arguments was, well, Simone Biles, a woman who I had never heard of until last night, by the way, that's how little I care about the Olympics.
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I guess I just, I don't care about the Olympics, kind of to your point.
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I wouldn't be talking about it except for this reaction.
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And they said, well, Simone Biles let her teammates down.
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And then the teammate came out and said, this is wonderful.
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And so it's true that the athletes don't owe us a gold medal.
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I mean, she's a, I take it to be, she's a wonderful athlete.
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We sent them to go represent us and go try to win some medals.
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And so there is a sense of duty, I think, or there used to be.
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I think that the big question, there's a sort of preliminary question and there's the secondary question.
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The preliminary question is why she actually walked off.
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So if she actually walked off because she was suffering from what they're now calling aerial disorientation, which apparently is a thing, where you get up in the air and you don't know where you are.
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Like if you see what she does, I mean, if you actually see her performance, unbelievable.
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It's just, I mean, it's incredible what the woman's capable of doing.
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And she's been the best gymnast on Earth for the last eight years.
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If she was actually in a place where mentally she had lost her ability to orient her body and so she could really hurt herself and so she said, I'm not going to do this.
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That is understandable, but it's still not heroic.
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And this is the part, that gets to the secondary question.
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So putting aside whether she's wrong or cowardly, like that depends on what she actually, the reason why she actually walked off.
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They worked their way to this aerial disorientation argument.
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That isn't the actual, that's not what was being said at the time.
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We're all trying to interpret what was the real reason.
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She said she was, she was under a lot of pressure.
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She wanted to do it for herself, not anybody else.
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But the real bigger question is the one that you're asking, which is why as a culture,
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because I care less about her as an individual and why she did what she did, why as a culture,
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there are multiple op-eds, one in the Times, one in the Washington Post,
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talking about how we have to redefine victory to include not participating.
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And what makes the hero the hero of any story is overcoming the obstacle, not sitting down.
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Like if Michael Jordan played famously a game in the playoffs where he had the flu,
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and he plays this unbelievable game, he scores over 40 points,
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It was one of Michael Jordan's kind of storied moments in his career.
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If he had sat down and said, listen, I have the flu tonight, I can't play.
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Nobody would have been like, wow, that's terrible.
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But what made him the hero is that he played through the flu, right,
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And the move from I did what I was supposed to do for my teammates despite the obstacle
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is the heroism to I've honored my own authentic feelings of what I ought to do.
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We have decided as a culture that we care more about you honoring your own authenticity
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than we care about you fulfilling your obligations to others.
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After all, all they're doing is like flipping through the air,
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and the reason you do that is to demonstrate excellence.
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And to demonstrate excellence, you have to overcome the obstacles.
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There's no, it's not exactly a shame to say I cannot do this.
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It is a shame to hold that up to people as heroism.
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In the same way to send out a soccer team that kneels, that's the American soccer team that kneels.
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Well, honestly, I was happy that they lost to the flag.
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I felt like a bunch of Swedish blondes beat these purple-headed, you know.
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Donald Trump's never said anything truer than America is glad that they lost.
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Of course we're glad that they lost because they don't represent us.
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Why would I be happy that they win when they are choosing not to represent me?
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The entire argument that we can have people at the Olympics who kneel or don't pay attention to the anthem,
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it's the equivalent of the Yankees signing somebody for $100 million,
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and they go out on the field and like, you know what, I hate the Yankees.
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I'm just going to rip the stripes right off my shoulder.
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Who in their right mind, the owner wouldn't allow that to happen.
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I'm so confused as to why we as a country who sponsor these athletes to go to the Olympics
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I also find like this is just, it's kind of almost circular.
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Like we started at, I guess, the women's movement being like,
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we really just need to have women into these spaces.
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And then it just seems to be over and over again,
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it's the women that are throwing down the towel and saying,
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You've got like Naomi Osaka, you've got Simone Biles walking away.
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I just can't do this because I'm under emotional pressure.
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this might be an argument for trans women in the Olympics.
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and it kind of ties in with the excellence point that you made, Drew,
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the head of the Olympics broadcasting agency said,
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we are not going to focus the camera angles on the women's bodies
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and we're not allowed to marvel at that anymore.
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I actually want to pick up on this idea of marveling,
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you know, genetically unbelievable specimens of humanity
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And I thought, well, no, that's what a model is.
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we're actually saying that they are the ideal form.
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The reason that we send people up to do these things
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I don't care about football enough to be Tom Brady.
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I don't have any of the innate capabilities of Tom Brady.
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And that kind of connects with what Ben is saying.
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So saying that it's actually a larger discussion
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about what we're doing in society right now, right?
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and say, actually, we shouldn't aspire towards victory.
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but, you know, Bill Gates is funding an initiative
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getting the right answer in math is racist, right?
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I was never racist in math class in that class.
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Well, it's this radical kind of subjectivism, right?
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where when the friend who's on the Olympic team says,
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But we want you to be winners in reality, actually.
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You know, if you now say that there is a standard
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then math is racist and Victoria's Secret is racist.
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where that which is sort of false and wrong and ugly,
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I was talking about how we have an empathy crisis
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in this country, but the crisis isn't lack of empathy.
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On the one hand, you have people generally on the right
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with the capacity to reason and come to conclusions.
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they came to a conclusion different from your own.
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you can assess whether that conclusion is right or wrong
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and you can hold them to a particular standard.
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So you understand that the other person is a person,
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but they're still held to that particular standard.
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It's not unempathetic to hold that person to the standard.
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because you expect them to be a rational human being.
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And that creates a really asymmetrical politics
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is completely not connected with empathy, right?
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in the sense that the left is talking about it.
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that has taken everything feminine, good and bad,
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It is a simple fact that for the vast majority of human history,
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women have been primarily concerned with building the home.
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And building the home requires huge amounts of empathy
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because you're working with the most flawed people, children,
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and you're helping to rear them and make adults out of them.
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Men, historically, have been not primarily concerned
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They've been concerned with building the home for the home,
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Horrible masculinity at its worst is very barbarian.
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which were cultivated largely in Western society,
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You don't want to raise your kids justice first.
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but you have to order your society justice first.
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we've just completely eliminated one of them as evil.
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Yeah, it's an acknowledgement of our biological predispositions.
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I laugh at it and I say, okay, you know, I'm happy.
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There's no requirement for them to have to perform.
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and it's like, well, this person is a hero anyways.
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I won in our, we won in our hearts, said no male team ever.
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You know, this also goes back to what Michael was saying
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I would actually go further than what you're saying
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I believe, I believe, I mean, like everyone on earth, right?
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while they're doing the thing that I won't be watching.
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But still, I think that the truth is the truth.
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And this attraction that we feel to women's bodies
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Someone was angry about some man objectifying some woman.
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And I said, you know, the fact that men find women attractive
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In fact, the promulgation of our entire species
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To your point, that is baked in to who we are biologically.
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I'm not suggesting that we are only the sum of our biology.
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I'm not suggesting that every masculine trait is positive,
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nor am I suggesting every feminine trait is negative.
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But I am saying that unless we can have a conversation
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about how you balance those things in a modern world,
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you're only going to end up with the worst things.
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Ultimately, it's going to be negative masculinity
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I have to do an ad, and there's no way to segue.
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So instead, I'm just going to go right into it.
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How do you choose which internet service provider you use?
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The sad thing is most of us have very little choice
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the way everyone uses every monopoly power across history
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and sell that data to other big tech companies or advertisers.
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To prevent ISPs from seeing my internet activity,
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It's an app that you put on your computer or smartphone
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so that your ISP can't see any of your activity.
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or sites you've visited or videos that you've watched, Michael,
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who mine your activity and sell off your information.
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about the craziness happening in the country right now
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You'll say, well, unemployment is at record levels
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because of the unbelievable global overreaction
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should have taken place in regard to the pandemic.