The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 120 - Don't Apologize To The Mob

00:00:00.000 Well, this is pretty exciting. I just read that Bill and Hillary Clinton are launching

00:00:05.600 a national stadium tour. They're going to be, I don't know if they're going to be speaking

00:00:09.940 or dancing, singing, I'm not sure, but they're going to be doing a whole stadium show going

00:00:14.960 around the country, packing stadiums. And I think they're stopping at a stadium near

00:00:21.640 me, in fact. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to make it because I had plans

00:00:26.620 to gouge out my own eyes that evening, but I'm sure it will be a lovely, lovely event.

00:00:32.580 And so I think that's pretty wonderful. All right. I want to mention two stories here.

00:00:36.820 First, very briefly, I got to mention this from, the headline is from CNN, Heidi Heitkamp,

00:00:43.280 the senator from North Dakota, was ready to vote yes on Kavanaugh. Then she watched him

00:00:49.500 with the sound off. That's the headline. Having been just one of three Democratic senators

00:00:56.460 to vote to confirm President Donald Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch,

00:01:00.380 Heitkamp had already instructed her staff to begin drafting a statement explaining why she

00:01:05.060 thought Kavanaugh deserved her vote as well. Then Christine Ford came forward and accused 1.00

00:01:10.520 Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her. She watched Ford's testimony, it says, and then she watched

00:01:18.180 Kavanaugh's, and then she watched Kavanaugh's again, but this time with the sound off.

00:01:24.840 It's something I do, she said. We communicate not only with words, but with our body language

00:01:31.680 and demeanor. I saw somebody who was very angry, who was very nervous. I saw rage. And a lot of

00:01:39.260 people said, well, of course you're going to see rage. He's being falsely accused. But it is at all

00:01:44.680 times that you're supposed to acquit yourself with a demeanor that's becoming of the court,

00:01:48.760 what Heitkamp said. So she's literally admitting that she judged him based on how he looked when he

00:01:56.720 spoke, not based on what he said, not based on the content of what he was saying, but based on the

00:02:02.760 mean faces that he made as he said it. That's what she's saying is, well, well, maybe he was telling

00:02:09.400 the truth, but he made mean faces while he did so, so I voted against him. Now, I don't really believe

00:02:19.680 that she did that. I don't think that she watched the Kavanaugh hearing and then she watched it again

00:02:23.740 with the sound off, because that would be a very strange thing to do. But I think this is her way

00:02:31.040 around kind of the charge that she voted against an innocent man based on false charges. What she's

00:02:38.500 saying is, well, I wasn't even listening to what I would just go on based on body language.

00:02:43.660 Okay. Yeah. You can, you can read a lot based on body language, but you have to pair that with what

00:02:50.140 the person is saying. You can't, you can't just watch them devoid of context, devoid of what they're

00:02:57.360 actually saying, and then make, make judgments based on their body language, obviously. Now,

00:03:03.940 speaking of feelings over facts, maybe you heard about this. The astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted a

00:03:09.800 Winston Churchill quote a couple of days ago. The tweet got him into some trouble. This is what the

00:03:16.040 tweet said. The tweet was, this is what he said. One of the greatest leaders of modern times,

00:03:22.260 Sir Winston Churchill said in victory magnanimity, I guess those days are over.

00:03:31.180 And that was a very controversial. You could tell there, right, where the controversy is.

00:03:36.240 You hear that, that tweet and you say, wow, that's controversial. I, I, that's some controversial

00:03:41.600 stuff. That's pretty edgy there, Scott Kelly. Now this was, I'm assuming an attack on Republicans

00:03:48.420 who were celebrating the Kavanaugh confirmation because that's, he tweeted it when, I assume

00:03:54.100 that's what he was doing there. So he was agreeing with, it should have made liberals happy. He was

00:03:59.380 agreeing with them. He was criticizing Republicans. They should have been pleased with that, but they

00:04:06.360 weren't. They came after Scott Kelly, apparently on the basis that Churchill was a racist imperialist,

00:04:13.960 et cetera. So then Kelly followed that tweet with possibly the most embarrassing tweet ever published.

00:04:22.680 Even amidst the daily deluge of, of embarrassing tweets. This is what he said. He said,

00:04:28.720 did not, did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill. My apologies. I will go and educate myself further on

00:04:35.840 his atrocities, racist views, which I do not support. My point was we need to come together as one nation.

00:04:43.060 We are all Americans that should transcend partisan politics. Now there is so much to unpack here.

00:04:51.780 Uh, there's so much in this one little incident because it's emblematic of where we are as a society.

00:04:57.500 So first you see again, as I frequently remark, you see the way that the left is just never satisfied

00:05:07.460 ever with anything. Even if you agree with them, even if you take their side, they'll still go after

00:05:16.780 you. If you don't agree and take their side in the right way, using the right words, avoiding all the

00:05:25.020 various different landmines that are set out. If you don't do that, then they'll attack you and they'll

00:05:32.780 attack you in the same way that they would have if you were all the way on the other side, on the

00:05:37.400 opposite side from them. So you're either 100% on, on their side. We talked about this yesterday.

00:05:43.360 It's the way the left operates. Either you're 100% on their side with everything and in everything that

00:05:51.620 you say, or you're the enemy. There's no in between at all. Right. Um, this is liberal. I mean,

00:06:01.200 they're basically like, they're like the kid on Halloween that goes up to the, to the, to the bowl

00:06:07.240 of candy left out on the porch and then cries because it doesn't have Snickers. Like you're

00:06:12.220 being given free candy and you still find a reason to whine about it. Actually, I think this is a

00:06:17.380 better analogy. I've used this analogy before, but, um, the modern left is very similar to, if you've

00:06:23.440 ever read that book, when you were a kid, the book, if you give a mouse a cookie. Um, and as you may

00:06:29.580 recall in that book, the child gives him a cookie to a mouse and then the mouse wants a napkin

00:06:38.580 and then the mouse wants a glass of milk. And then he keeps demanding more and more things until

00:06:45.620 finally the child has given away all of his belongings and all of his food and his family

00:06:51.100 is left destitute on the street and they all starve to death. Um, well, that's not exactly how the book

00:06:58.520 ends. I don't, but that's, that's the, but that's the idea. And honestly, I'm not sure what the moral

00:07:05.700 of that story could be other than as a cautionary tale about appealing left, appeasing leftists.

00:07:12.300 Right. I don't know what else. I mean, maybe that, but it could be practical advice too.

00:07:17.100 Don't give a cookie to a mouse. Good, good practical, unless it's laced with rat poison or

00:07:22.640 something. But aside from that, I mean, this, this, this is really exactly how the left operates.

00:07:27.920 You give them a cookie. They want the next thing. They want the next thing. They're never going to

00:07:31.260 be satiated, never satisfied. Uh, so that's the first thing. Second, I think for a moment,

00:07:37.620 we should just kind of step back and admire the sheer cowardice on display here because it's,

00:07:45.020 it's almost artful. It's almost beautiful. The cowardice, just how perfect the cowardice,

00:07:52.620 cowardice is. Okay. This is an astronaut. Okay. A guy whose job most definitely does not depend

00:08:01.220 on public approval. This is, this is basically the last guy in the world who should worry what

00:08:08.720 the mob thinks. It, it makes no difference at all. What are people going to do? Boycott NASA?

00:08:15.000 Um, this guy, I mean, he spends his time off the earth. He's literally off the earth in space.

00:08:21.680 He should be as, as far removed in a literal sense. Um, and as unconcerned with the opinions of

00:08:30.020 the, of the peanut gallery as you could possibly be yet. He backed down and apologized. Why?

00:08:37.040 And, and look at this remarkable turnaround. So he sent the original tweet at noon, um,

00:08:43.460 about the Churchill quote. And then he sent the next one apologizing at 7 PM. So in seven hours,

00:08:49.940 he went from believing that Churchill was one of the greatest world leaders in modern history

00:08:54.980 to believing that he was a racist, guilty of various atrocities.

00:09:01.520 That's, and you have to believe that, um, Scott Kelly, you know, he's, he's, he's quoting Churchill

00:09:07.220 saying he's a great world leader. So he's probably thought that Churchill was a hero for his whole life.

00:09:13.000 I'd imagine. You don't generally go around quoting people unless you have an affinity for them,

00:09:17.380 unless you admire them. So Kelly abandoned a presumably long held conviction that Churchill

00:09:24.400 was a great world leader and ran all the way to the other extreme, labeling him a racist,

00:09:31.320 guilty of atrocities in the span of an afternoon. That's all. That's all the time that it took

00:09:37.760 for him to say, you know what? Yeah, I was wrong about this my whole life. Third, third thing. Um,

00:09:44.160 and this gives me a chance to underline a point that, uh, I'm constantly making,

00:09:50.580 but it's an important point. Never apologize to the mob. This is what happens. Never ever apologize

00:10:01.080 to them. The problem with apologizing to the mob is that first of all, it's, it's always going to be

00:10:09.760 a disingenuous apology because nobody ever has a real authentic moment of self-reflection where they

00:10:19.080 were real, where they realized they were wrong about something. Um, because a bunch of idiots are 1.00

00:10:24.020 screaming in their face. That's not, it's possible to say something and then reflect on it and, and later 1.00

00:10:30.200 say, you know what, I was wrong about that. Shouldn't have said it. But in order for that to happen,

00:10:37.020 it requires a little bit of reflection, a little bit of, right. Uh, but if people are, if there's a

00:10:42.820 mob screaming in your face, that's not, and you, and you apologize in response to that, most likely

00:10:50.340 you're apologizing just to get them to shut up, but you won't shut, shut them up. In fact, you're only

00:10:57.600 going to make it worse on yourself because all the people who were mad at, at Kelly for, for quoting

00:11:03.240 Churchill, they're still mad and they're mad because they were never really mad to begin with.

00:11:09.000 Their, their anger is performative as anger is so often, you know, as, as so is so often the case

00:11:15.340 with anger in modern society, it's performative. They're just taking advantage of an opportunity

00:11:20.260 to jump on a dog pile. Um, they're, they're, they're not going to stop just because you

00:11:25.900 apologize. Only sincere people are satiated by apologies. If you're genuinely offended by

00:11:33.980 something that somebody said or did, and then they apologize, then that, that, that, then what

00:11:42.200 you're going to say is, okay, you know, no harm, no foul. Thank you for apologizing. And then you'll

00:11:46.860 move on. But you notice that that never happens. There's a lot of performative anger. There are a

00:11:54.300 lot of apologies happening every day, but it's like nobody ever says apology accepted. Have you

00:12:01.480 noticed that apologies are never accepted ever anymore? Nobody ever accepts an apology because

00:12:07.500 the people who are being apologized to the people that are receiving the apology, they, they're,

00:12:13.820 they were never angry. There's, there's, there's actually not anything to apologize for. So this

00:12:18.360 is a disingenuous apology being given to people who are disingenuously fraudulently offended.

00:12:28.840 So it's, it's all, it's all a charade. It's all pointless. Um, and then you just compound your

00:12:36.980 problem because what happened to Kelly is he, he originally tweeted the Churchill quote and he,

00:12:46.240 he had to deal with the performative anger of the left-wing mob. And then he apologizes

00:12:52.320 and they're still angry, quote unquote. Um, but now you also have mockery and disgust from the other

00:13:00.640 side. Now you have people like me and many others making fun of you for it. So all you've done is

00:13:07.060 you've just, you've just, you've just, you've, you've, you've turned everybody away. You've alienated

00:13:10.480 everybody, which is the way that this always works. It, I mean, how many times do we have to see it?

00:13:17.500 This, how many times do we have to see this play out before we see this is how it works.

00:13:22.660 When you apologize to the mob, it's not going to stop them. And all you do is you disappoint and,

00:13:31.000 and alienate, um, and earn the scorn of the people who would have otherwise defended you.

00:13:42.440 So don't apologize to the mob, especially if you're an astronaut and there's absolutely no,

00:13:49.220 they have, they, they, they can't do anything to you. There's no reason to worry about what they're

00:13:52.820 saying about you. But even those of us who are not astronauts, I think we could take a lesson from

00:13:58.180 this. This will be our, this is our 50th such lesson in the last month. Never apologize to the

00:14:06.760 mob. I'm not saying never apologize, period. In your life, there may be times to apologize,

00:14:12.060 but don't apologize to these people. Don't apologize to angry internet trolls.

00:14:19.220 Don't apologize to these rabid swarms of, of, of phony charlatans who are just really super excited 0.95

00:14:32.160 for the opportunity to be offended by something. Don't, don't apologize to them. And I would say

00:14:37.960 that even if you really are wrong, which obviously Scott Kelly was not wrong in quoting Churchill,

00:14:43.040 but even if you say something and you're actually wrong about what you said,

00:14:50.280 um, well, still don't apologize to the mob because they don't, they're not owed an apology.

00:14:57.760 Why are they owed an apology? Why are a bunch of idiots on the internet? Why do you have to, 1.00

00:15:02.580 you didn't hurt them.

00:15:03.580 If there really is an apology owed to a specific person, then go apologize to them, but not to the,

00:15:11.040 not to the mob, whether you're wrong or right, they don't deserve it. It only encourages them.

00:15:21.040 All right. So that's our, that's our lesson that we can all learn for the day. Thanks for

00:15:25.520 watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 09, 2018

Ep. 120 - Don't Apologize To The Mob

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