The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 123 - The Media's Most Dishonest Attack Yet

00:00:00.000 All right. Hope you all had a great weekend. Now, now here's a story that that seems too

00:00:04.680 hilarious to be true, but but it is true. Elizabeth Warren has released, actually released

00:00:09.920 DNA test results to prove that she is Native American. And here's the report from the Daily

00:00:15.760 Beast. It says Senator Elizabeth Warren has taken the extraordinary step of releasing DNA test

00:00:20.900 results that provide strong evidence, quote unquote, that she has Native American ancestry.

00:00:26.020 The possible Democratic presidential contender for 2020 has been repeatedly mocked by Donald

00:00:31.100 Trump and other Republicans over her ancestral claims. One of Trump's sick jokes is to call

00:00:37.600 Warren Pocahontas. I actually think that's maybe one of his best jokes. I think it's by far his best 1.00

00:00:42.940 nickname. Anyway, so let's get to the meat of this. The analysis of Warren's DNA was reportedly done by

00:00:51.480 Carlos Bustamante, a Stanford university professor and shows that she had a Native American in her

00:00:59.560 family. Wait, wait for this. Okay. Wait for this. Get ready. She had a Native American in her family

00:01:06.840 tree dating back six to 10 generations ago, not six to 10 years ago, six to 10, not even six to 10

00:01:16.620 decades ago, six to 10 generations ago. That's the, uh, and she's actually released this as a, I mean,

00:01:23.660 has this woman lost her mind? That that's a serious question. Has she, I mean, is she, is she, I know

00:01:28.840 she's getting up there in age. I'm just wondering if there's some kind of senility setting in or something

00:01:33.600 because all she's done here is confirm that her Native American claims were erroneous. This is no,

00:01:41.640 this is what her, this is what her opponents should be releasing. You know, we, we have information 0.58

00:01:47.800 that, uh, that Native, that Elizabeth Warren's Native American ancestral claims, uh, you know, 0.99

00:01:54.740 you know, date back 10 generations. That's what, that's what her, her opponents should be saying 0.99

00:01:59.340 this, not, not her. She's just having one Native American in your family tree sometime in the timeframe 0.70

00:02:04.840 of 180 to 300 years ago. Okay. That's what 10 generations. Uh, I think a generation is like 30

00:02:12.580 years, I think is what, so if we're talking, you know, up to, to, to, to, to 10 generations, that's

00:02:19.940 300. We could be talking about 300 years ago. She had one Native American in her family 300 years ago.

00:02:27.200 And she thinks that that confirms her Native American heritage. It does not. Elizabeth Warren,

00:02:32.380 you are, I'm afraid to say you are as white bread as ever. Unfortunately, even more actually than, 1.00

00:02:39.780 than a lot of people I'm white bread, but, um, but I mean, I, I bet I could go back.

00:02:46.220 If I, if I were to date, to look at my family tree, probably I wouldn't have to go back even,

00:02:52.460 um, six, 10 generations to find a minority, which is, and that's, that's the thing here.

00:02:58.420 What you see here is, um, how identity politics defeats itself. Because if the left accepts this,

00:03:08.120 which, which it appears they, they are, um, which is pretty funny in and of itself. But if you,

00:03:14.380 if you go on Twitter and, uh, and you, you read the thread under where Elizabeth Warren and now makes

00:03:21.360 this announcement about her Native American ancestry, and you read what her followers,

00:03:25.700 her supporters are saying, they're all celebrating it. They're saying, yeah, you, you, you really

00:03:31.200 showed them Liz. Um, so they're accepting it. But the problem is if you accept this, um,

00:03:39.240 then that means that pretty much everyone in America is a minority. I mean, almost everybody

00:03:45.700 is a minority by that definition, which is the end of identity politics, because the whole point 0.51

00:03:50.880 of identity politics is to set up this dynamic where you've got the persecuted minorities and

00:03:57.020 then the evil white people. And that's the dynamic of identity politics. But if, if you can escape the

00:04:04.000 evil white people camp simply by showing that somewhere in the distant past, in your, in your 0.56

00:04:12.820 bloodline, there was a minority, an ethnic minority. If that's enough to get you out of the, then there's 1.00

00:04:18.540 not going to be anyone left. There are going to be no evil white people left because now we're all

00:04:22.640 minorities, apparently. Um, it's just, uh, it's pretty incredible, but I'm sure we'll continue to

00:04:30.800 follow this breaking news story as it develops. In the meantime, um, two other things I wanted to

00:04:35.140 talk about. First of all, over the weekend, the media launched what I think is, is one of the most

00:04:42.360 dishonest attacks of president Trump that we've yet seen, which I know is saying quite a lot,

00:04:49.040 but Trump was at a rally in Ohio and he began at this rally. He, uh, he went off on this thing

00:04:57.800 about, um, about Ulysses S Grant because Grant is a native of Ohio. So he was complimenting general

00:05:07.120 Grant, um, which is a perfectly fine thing to do. He said that the general was quote incredible.

00:05:14.060 And he pointed out how, um, Grant beat Robert E Lee, which Trump said is, is especially impressive

00:05:21.860 because Lee himself was a great general. He was saying, I forget the exact quote, but Trump said

00:05:27.000 that, you know, Lee was beating everybody. Lincoln was scared of him, couldn't figure out. And then

00:05:31.320 Grant comes in and kicks his butt. You know, so this is all in the context of trying to, trying to

00:05:37.620 pump up Ulysses S Grant, but the media, um, had all it need needed right there. As soon as I think

00:05:47.020 the media, they were, they, they, they started licking their chops. As soon as they, as soon as

00:05:50.720 they heard Trump start talking about civil war generals, they were ready. They were ready to copy

00:05:57.480 and paste and do what they had to do because that was going to give them all the material that they

00:06:01.040 needed. All they needed. Well, it didn't matter the context. All they needed was for Trump to say

00:06:06.500 something vaguely positive about a Confederate, about a, about a, you know, prominent Confederate

00:06:13.580 figure. That's all they needed. And so they took that, they, they isolated the part where Trump called

00:06:19.620 Robert E Lee great. And they took that and they accused him of praising Robert E Lee without, without

00:06:28.580 mentioning that it was within the context of praising Grant. And so if you went online on

00:06:35.360 Saturday, you would, this is what you would have seen all over the place. And if you were watching

00:06:38.760 CNN, this is what you would have seen that, Oh, Trump, Trump was at a rally and he just started

00:06:43.200 praising Robert E Lee. In fact, NBC blatantly lied about what he said. Um, they went beyond, they,

00:06:50.200 they took him out of context. They did that also, but they went beyond simply taking him out of

00:06:53.500 context. And they, they just lied about it. They said that, um, they sent out a tweet reporting that

00:06:59.700 Trump called Lee incredible. When in fact, Trump called Grant incredible. He never used that word

00:07:07.880 for generally NBC did issue a correction. We should say, um, but they issued it two days later

00:07:14.620 in the meantime, which there's no reason why it should have taken two days. All you had to do was

00:07:20.180 actually watch the clip in question and you would have seen what he actually said. So are we to

00:07:27.760 believe that NBC, it took NBC two days to actually watch the clip that they reported on? Um, and in the

00:07:37.340 meantime, in, in, in between those, uh, those two days, uh, they, along with the rest of the leftist

00:07:43.480 media allowed this false narrative to seep in and fester. And then they came back when, and corrected

00:07:51.680 it when everyone had already moved on and the narrative had metastasized in the subconscious of

00:07:56.940 many people. And then at that point, they issued their little correction. This is the game that they

00:08:01.600 always play. Now this tactic by the media was dishonest and absurd, obviously. Um, and the worst part

00:08:11.440 is that they completely divorced Trump's content comments about Lee from the overall context.

00:08:16.060 They lied about it. But even aside from that context, what we also have here on display yet

00:08:23.280 again, is this, this, this idea, um, that, I mean, I mean, even if let's say that, um, uh, Trump was in

00:08:36.040 Virginia doing a rally. And, uh, and so he complimented Robert E Lee, not even within the

00:08:42.740 context of, of complimenting general grant. Well, so what, why would it even matter if he had done

00:08:50.020 that? I mean, this idea is so silly that you, this idea that you must not ever say anything positive

00:08:59.020 about historical figures who we have decided are villains. It is a silly, childish, dimwitted way

00:09:07.580 of looking at history. And it makes any serious study of history, any insightful or useful analysis

00:09:15.440 of history impossible. If that's the way you're looking at it. You know, I got into this argument

00:09:22.300 on Twitter on Saturday, it was a travel day for me. I was on planes all day, so I didn't have anything

00:09:26.160 better to do, but argue about the civil war on Twitter. So that's what I was doing. And, um,

00:09:30.880 when this controversy was going on, I pointed out that, well, first of all, Trump was taking out of

00:09:35.200 context, but, but secondly, I said, um, Lee was a great general. So, so who cares? It's true what he

00:09:42.640 said. Lee was a great general. And a lot of people responded to that by saying, well, how, how could,

00:09:47.720 how could you say, how dare you say that? Lee supported slavery. He fought for slavery. He was pro-slavery,

00:09:55.240 fought for slavery. How could you call him a great general? Now this shows not only historical

00:10:02.220 ignorance, but an attitude about history that makes it, as I said, impossible to actually analyze

00:10:10.780 historical events and have a conversation about history. First of all, the question of Robert E.

00:10:18.560 Lee's feelings about slavery and his relationship to slavery has nothing to do with the question about

00:10:25.220 whether or not he was a great general. Those are two completely different questions. They are not

00:10:31.060 related. To the first question, it's simply untrue. And this is where the historical ignorance comes in.

00:10:37.940 It is untrue to say, it is, it is not true to say that, that Lee was some big proponent of slavery

00:10:44.900 and that he went to war to protect slavery. Um, that's not true. Lee did not own slaves personally.

00:10:50.700 His feelings about slavery were not enlightened by, by modern standards, but by the standards of the

00:10:57.980 time, they were relatively moderate. His stance on slavery was relatively moderate, even liberal by

00:11:04.100 the standards of the time. Um, Lee also would certainly have qualified as a, he would, if you

00:11:10.840 were to take Robert E. Lee and, and put them into modern day society and, and put all of his views and

00:11:16.880 everything, again, divorced from context in modern day society, he would definitely qualify as a, as a

00:11:23.000 terrible racist. But, but so would Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln explicitly opposed equality of the

00:11:29.940 races. And he said so, um, that he, he, he said that he does not in, in any way support the social

00:11:39.320 political or political equality of, of the black and white races. Um, Ulysses S. Grant also would

00:11:45.900 qualify as a racist. His wife owned slaves. Grant himself for a time owned a slave. But the bigger

00:11:54.800 point here is that, so you see, I'm making this point all the time that you, you have to analyze

00:12:03.500 the views and opinions of historical figures within the context of the time.

00:12:10.760 Um, and what you certainly can't do is select individual historical figures and hold them to

00:12:20.500 a modern standard, but not anyone else from that time period. You know, we, you can't do that. You

00:12:26.900 can't, um, take Abraham Lincoln and say, well, he was a great president, great man. Yeah. He was an

00:12:34.220 avowed racist, but, but yeah, you know, we got to see that within the context of the time. We can't do

00:12:38.880 that with Lincoln if we're not going to do it with Robert E. Lee. So we have to decide, are we going

00:12:44.000 to see historical figures within the context of their time or not? And if not, then we have to

00:12:49.220 treat everybody in history in the same way, which means that everybody in history, we have to see

00:12:55.940 that we have to write them all off as just a bunch of racists and bigots and everything because,

00:12:59.580 because if you go back 200 years or 150 years, and then go back to any point in history after,

00:13:07.720 you know, um, before that, everybody was bigoted to, to, to one, you know, to one degree or another.

00:13:17.740 So clearly we have to see things within the context of the time, but the bigger point here

00:13:22.780 is that Lee's opinions on racial issues had nothing to do with his decision to fight for the

00:13:28.140 Confederacy. Um, Lee was not even in favor of secession. He opposed secession. Now, whatever

00:13:34.320 reason the Southern politicians had for seceding and slavery was a significant part of their reasons

00:13:40.080 for sure, but for Lee and for, um, most Confederate officers and, and, um, and, uh, just soldiers,

00:13:49.700 the problem was different. Um, and for Lee, you know, he knew that if he fought for the union,

00:13:56.260 he would be marching against his own home, his own community, his own family, his own sons,

00:14:04.820 you know, he would be fighting against them. He would be taking up arms against his family and his

00:14:11.040 home and his country. And when I say country, we have to understand again, for the third time,

00:14:16.840 understanding things within the historical context. If we do that, then we, then we, then we,

00:14:21.460 we, we, we realize that back in those days, especially in the South, when, when you talked

00:14:27.620 about your country, you were talking about your state. That's what you considered your country to

00:14:32.720 be. Most people, especially in the South, they didn't feel this allegiance in this. They didn't

00:14:41.500 really identify themselves with the country as a whole. They identified themselves with their

00:14:46.540 communities and their States. And that's, that's the way the country was originally set up.

00:14:53.040 That we are a union of different States, but each, but you know, you cared first and foremost

00:14:57.820 about your community and your state, because that's your home. That's where you live. That's

00:15:01.980 where your family is. And especially back then without modern technology, without the internet and

00:15:07.260 phone and all that kind of stuff, you really, you could, how could you identify with the entire

00:15:10.860 country? It didn't really mean anything to you, the entire country. You know, you had no,

00:15:16.280 you had really no concept of the whole country. You had no, what I should say is you had no real

00:15:21.360 direct connection with it or to it, but you did to, to your land and your home and your family.

00:15:29.200 And so that's just the way people saw it back then.

00:15:35.320 So that was the, that was the, the decision he had to make. He could march against his, his country,

00:15:40.700 his family, his home, or he could fight for the Confederacy and defend his family and his home

00:15:49.140 and his country against those who were invading it. And he chose the latter. 0.99

00:15:58.520 And that was by far and away his primary personal motivation. It was not because he wanted to go and

00:16:04.100 defend slavery. It just, it was, that's just not the case in terms of his generalship. There's no doubt

00:16:09.300 that he was a great general. He was always outmanned, outgunned, lacking in basic resources

00:16:14.460 like food and clothing and shoes. He was facing an opponent with superior numbers, superior technology,

00:16:21.340 superior resources. And yet Lee won battle after battle after battle against enormous odds. And

00:16:26.980 that makes him a great general, no matter how you feel about him personally. I actually think that

00:16:30.580 Trump gave too much credit to general Grant. Yeah. Grant beat Lee, but, but Grant also faced Lee at a

00:16:36.820 point when, uh, Lee was even more depleted and this was after the failure at Gettysburg. So the writing

00:16:43.340 was already on the wall at that point and Lee knew it after he failed in Gettysburg and had to retreat.

00:16:49.380 It was, I mean, it was pretty much over at that point. And this was also after Lee had, had lost

00:16:55.740 Stonewall Jackson. So Grant was facing an already outmanned and outgunned opponent at a point when that

00:17:01.780 opponent was, was, was even more weakened and he won, which good for him, but I'm not sure that I

00:17:10.140 just, I don't see why that's considered some sort of incredible accomplishment. Um, we only see it as

00:17:17.280 an accomplishment because up to that point, Lee had just been spanking every single union general 0.98

00:17:22.780 thrown his way. And so that was kind of where the bar was, was, was set. If you went up against

00:17:28.720 General Lee, it was kind of expected that he would just spank you, but, um, he didn't with,

00:17:32.980 with Grant. So we consider it this huge achievement, but I still think you have to consider what Lee was

00:17:37.140 up against, but wherever you fall on the, on the question of, of who is the better, better general,

00:17:41.940 it is silly to suggest that we have some sort of moral duty to immediately side with Grant on that

00:17:49.160 question of who was the better general, because you just can't do history that way. History, it doesn't

00:17:54.380 work like that. That's like, if I insisted that the only great musicians in history have been the

00:18:01.320 ones who were, were, had personally great character and were, you know, had, had an integrity and all

00:18:08.400 of that. But if I insist on studying music that way and viewing musicians through that lens, I'm going

00:18:17.180 to have to bypass like almost all of the great musicians of the last 200 years. Um, so you just can't do

00:18:24.320 that. Also when it comes to analyzing the character of anyone, including historical figures, we can't

00:18:34.300 look at them as cartoons, as caricatures. I think the truth is when you study history, you'll see that

00:18:41.360 there have been relatively few straightforward villains in history. Okay. Um, that is there,

00:18:49.220 there are relatively few people who were just plain evil with no shades of gray, nothing, just

00:18:56.240 straightforward evil. And that's it. I think there are very few historical figures who fit that mold.

00:19:01.780 There are some, obviously Hitler falls into that category, Nero, Caligula, uh, Stalin, Pol Pot, Attila the 0.90

00:19:10.140 Hun. Um, but, and there's a reason why we remember all those names because these were just down to their

00:19:17.920 core evil people, um, who were, you know, but that's unusual. Most historical figures are complex,

00:19:27.220 layered, multifaceted. Uh, there are shades of black shades of white. They may have fought on the wrong 0.52

00:19:33.840 side of an issue yet been personally heroic. They may have fought on the right side yet been personally

00:19:38.900 debauched all kinds of different combinations. And what makes history so fascinating is precisely this

00:19:47.500 dynamic because it reveals the hidden complexities of our past and of, and of past, uh, of, um, you know,

00:19:55.040 historical figures of the past. That's what, that's what makes it interesting to study history.

00:20:00.720 Yet it seems we're just too dumb, too ignorant, too childish to study history in this way anymore,

00:20:06.920 which means that we cannot study it at all. So if we're going to look at this, at the, at the civil war

00:20:13.320 and we're going to say, well, everyone who fought for the South, they're all a bunch of scumbags, evil,

00:20:18.080 terrible, nothing good can be said about them. If that's the kind of attitude that we bring to a

00:20:25.620 historical analysis of something as complex and complicated as the civil war, then it's just,

00:20:31.980 we're not going to be able to learn anything about history. We're going to be children who know

00:20:37.480 nothing about history. And that's the kind of country that we're living in now. All right. Um,

00:20:44.300 one other thing I wanted to talk about stepping aside from, um, anything politically political or

00:20:52.360 related to politics for a moment on Facebook over the weekend, I shared a story that has been getting

00:20:58.760 some attention after going viral. And I'll just give you the brief synopsis of this story. As the story

00:21:06.740 goes, an elderly man, a cancer survivor, tragically disfigured from a life-saving surgery, which,

00:21:13.460 which left him without a nose, without, um, with an empty eye socket. Um, so he's, you know,

00:21:18.580 so he's been tragically disfigured. And this man sat down to eat at a convenience store and, um,

00:21:27.080 was asked by the owner of the store to cover up so that he didn't upset her other customers.

00:21:32.340 And he left the store, obviously, uh, uh, very upset himself. And he went home and he talked to

00:21:39.680 his daughter about it. His daughter then put this story out on Facebook, giving the store owner's name,

00:21:45.760 her business, and a picture of her. Um, and then the post went viral and the woman, the daughter

00:21:52.220 immediately started a GoFundMe account, of course, and began sharing that all over Facebook as well.

00:21:58.060 Um, interestingly, the GoFundMe account doesn't actually say what the money's being raised for.

00:22:05.660 I guess you would think, well, maybe this, the money is to, is for reconstructive surgery for the

00:22:10.120 father, which would be a great cause. But the GoFundMe account doesn't say that. It doesn't,

00:22:15.220 doesn't say what the money's going towards. It doesn't even say who's going to get the money.

00:22:18.860 Um, it's just, this woman started the GoFundMe account and it's already raised like $70,000 or

00:22:24.680 something like that in a couple of days. Meanwhile, the owner of the store is getting

00:22:29.060 blasted by everyone across the country. And, uh, you can imagine she's getting a ton of hate mail,

00:22:34.200 um, probably a significant amount of death threats as well. I don't know if that's the case or not.

00:22:41.020 We haven't really heard much from her, which is part of the point here, but that's the way these

00:22:45.540 things always go. Anyone who's familiar with internet outrage, you know that there's always death

00:22:51.060 threats involved. So I would say it's almost a hundred percent certain that she's gotten death

00:22:54.100 threats. Um, which, which would be concerning because her, not her, not only her name, but her

00:22:59.360 picture was put out there as well. Now the owner of the store did try to defend herself. Apparently 1.00

00:23:05.420 she, she left a comment on the original post by the daughter saying that, uh, she, the store owner

00:23:12.180 didn't mean to upset the man or hurt his feelings. Uh, she said that he comes in every day

00:23:17.060 and eats, uh, you know, at the store. And according to her, it was driving customers away.

00:23:23.720 And so she says that finally, after however many days of this, she pulled the man aside

00:23:29.120 privately and, uh, talked to him about it. And she insists that she handled it the best way that

00:23:35.180 she knows how now. Uh, but obviously that did nothing to quell any of the outrage that's coming

00:23:42.860 her way. Now, now here's the thing. I obviously feel very bad for this man. It's a terrible thing

00:23:52.440 that he's going through and I won't defend the store owner's behavior. I think that she did the

00:23:58.180 wrong thing. We're really only getting one side of the story, but based on what we know, I'd say that

00:24:04.240 she did the wrong thing. I, I, there's really no scenario where it would be appropriate to say that

00:24:15.220 to a cancer survivor, but I don't want to spend time analyzing the particulars of this story. What I

00:24:21.000 do want to say is this, we really need to stop turning personal grievances into fodder for public

00:24:30.900 consumption. I'm really uncomfortable with that. I'm really uncomfortable with the way

00:24:36.200 that people will now take a personal slight or insult that they suffered or someone that they

00:24:41.300 loved suffered. And then they put it out there for the entire world, stirring up a mob and trying to

00:24:47.500 get revenge that way. I think it's, uh, uh, even if there really was a slight or an insult, even if

00:24:54.840 something bad really did happen, even if the person being singled out really did do something wrong,

00:25:00.900 the point is I just, whatever happened to handling personal disputes privately,

00:25:09.380 whatever happened to personal disputes, it's like nothing is personal anymore. Everything is,

00:25:15.340 you have a problem with someone in your community. You just put it out there for everyone so that

00:25:19.260 people that are a thousand miles away can chime in. People have no idea about the situation. Don't

00:25:25.260 know anyone involved. Don't know anything about the context. Don't know anything at all about the

00:25:30.180 situation. And yet they can, uh, come in and, and, and, and their outrage can be heard as well.

00:25:35.920 Uh, I, why does the whole world need to know about it? Why does the whole world need to know about

00:25:42.040 this situation between a woman, her father and the own owner of a rest stop convenience store?

00:25:49.160 I think the internet has given everyone the ability to use public outrage as a weapon,

00:25:55.500 not only as a weapon, but to monetize public outrage as well. Now we all have that ability and,

00:26:02.000 and I'm really uncomfortable, uncomfortable, uncomfortable with it. Um, for a number of

00:26:07.480 reasons, number one, it's dangerous. You know, again, even if you suffered, even if you really

00:26:14.440 have a legitimate grievance, which I think that certainly this man does, even though he's not the

00:26:18.920 one who put this on Facebook, his daughter did, he has a legitimate grievance. Um, even

00:26:25.520 if you have a legitimate grievance, even if someone really did do something wrong, which

00:26:30.500 I think this owner did, it it's, it, this is, it's a dangerous game to play. When you put

00:26:38.600 someone's name out there, you put their face out there and you send the mob after them, you

00:26:43.300 have no control over what happens next. And let me tell you something, if you send the mob after

00:26:49.440 somebody with their picture and their name attached, even if they did something wrong again,

00:26:54.600 and then something happens to that person, which you haven't, which could happen. But if that were

00:27:00.620 to occur, it would be partly your fault. Not just partly actually would be, I mean, it would be pretty

00:27:04.940 much a hundred percent your fault. It's just, it is very dangerous. And I think that, um,

00:27:13.000 maybe if you've never been the target of overwhelming internet outrage, maybe you just

00:27:20.200 don't understand what it's like. Okay. If you've never been in a situation where you're getting death

00:27:26.080 threats from all over the country, left and right, all, you know, and, and, and, or people are showing

00:27:30.640 up at your business or your house and threatening, if you've never been in that situation, maybe you

00:27:34.160 don't understand what it's like, but it's a very terrifying thing. And when you're in that

00:27:37.360 situation, you know, that you're, I mean, your life's in jeopardy. It only takes one crazy person

00:27:41.100 who's really upset to show up and do something terrible. So it's a dangerous game.

00:27:47.340 Um, number two, what good can really come of it? What, what's the point? What does it accomplish?

00:27:57.520 Where is there's, there's like no sense of, of, uh, of proportion anymore. Where's the proportionality of

00:28:03.380 this? So this woman did a really rude thing. It's a terrible thing. So that means what we got to 0.83

00:28:09.760 destroy her life, destroy her business, put her life in jeopardy. Like that, really that, that we, we

00:28:15.400 immediately jumped to that. And this is what you see with the, with this example, we're not given

00:28:24.020 any indication at all that the daughter attempted to reach out to the owner herself privately first.

00:28:29.960 So she jumped right to, I'm going to the public. I'm getting the amount, the mob whipped up. I'm

00:28:35.740 going to have the GoFundMe account ready to go. She went right to that. She didn't even try anything

00:28:39.580 else. So it's a dangerous game. It can't really accomplish anything positive. Yeah. You can make

00:28:49.380 some money off of it. Um, you could destroy the person's life and business, but I don't really

00:28:53.960 consider that a positive outcome. And so there's no two, those two problems. And it's also, it's just

00:28:59.340 not, it's not human. You know, it's like, we've, we've lost the ability to, to live personal lives

00:29:06.560 and deal with things on a personal level. We've lost that ability. And I, and I say this, this is

00:29:15.780 just one example. You know, we see this all the time. I can tell you that every day, um, or at least

00:29:21.840 I'll say multiple times a week, I get emails from people asking me to share something that they

00:29:29.020 wrote on Facebook about an injustice that they supposedly suffered at the hands of a business

00:29:33.120 owner or a school faculty member or community member or whatever. I mean, I get this all the

00:29:38.400 time. Um, because, because of course people like to air their grievances publicly, but that doesn't

00:29:45.140 mean it's going to go viral. So sometimes you need that added accelerant. And so people will come to

00:29:49.640 me hoping that I'll be the accelerator. And of course I never do it, but, but it just shows that

00:29:53.580 this, this attitude that we have, that we have a problem with someone personally, what we're going

00:29:58.060 to do, you know, we're, we're not going to try to settle it with them. We're not going to go talk

00:30:01.560 to them. We're just going to go right to the mob and look for revenge and maybe a little bit of cash

00:30:07.820 as well on top of it. And I really don't like that. I don't think it's the right approach.

00:30:13.240 Now there are, look, there are, there are circumstances where maybe that is appropriate.

00:30:21.840 So if you, um, if you're being persecuted in some way by some much more powerful institution,

00:30:32.240 uh, especially a government institution, then I think to get people involved to come to your aid,

00:30:38.800 I think could, that could be the right approach. I don't, I still don't think it should be your,

00:30:43.120 your first step, but eventually maybe you do that. Maybe, maybe, and this is where the internet can

00:30:47.780 come in handy because it levels the playing field a little bit, but a gripe that you have with the

00:30:53.760 owner of a, of a rest stop down the street. Okay. That is not a much more powerful person who you're

00:30:59.380 being persecuted by. That's just another normal person who's, you know, and I think so much,

00:31:05.640 so much of the time, that's what it ends up being. It's not that people are going up against

00:31:10.400 the more powerful figure, more powerful institution. It's more just, they're looking

00:31:13.820 to settle a score with some other average person that they know. And, um, I think we need to be

00:31:20.020 very careful about that. And we need to think about potentially maybe, uh, trying to live our lives

00:31:27.460 personally and privately a little bit and solving our problems that way, at least trying to do that

00:31:32.260 before we jump immediately to, um, whipping up the mob. We'll leave it there. Have a great day,

00:31:39.080 everyone. Talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 15, 2018

Ep. 123 - The Media's Most Dishonest Attack Yet

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