The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1261 - Our Cities Don’t Have To Be Crime-Infested Wastelands. The Solution Is Simple.

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, San Francisco has been a dystopian wasteland filled with

00:00:03.800 homeless drug addicts for many years, yet with the communist leader of China coming

00:00:07.080 to town and has managed to make itself look clean and presentable, this proves that these

00:00:11.060 problems are easy to solve if only our leaders had the will to solve them.

00:00:14.940 Also, Tim Scott ends his presidential campaign, which comes as news to millions of people

00:00:18.560 who didn't know that he had a presidential campaign.

00:00:21.020 Vivek Ramaswamy announces his plan to fire 50% of the federal government workforce.

00:00:24.600 I'll explain why that doesn't go far enough.

00:00:27.280 And we're being told that climate anxiety is on the rise.

00:00:30.500 What is that?

00:00:31.160 And aren't there much better things to be anxious about?

00:00:34.120 We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:57.280 Yet again, we're facing the threat of a government shutdown later this month, and the administration

00:01:06.040 will ultimately deal with it the same way they always do, with more spending.

00:01:09.800 More spending will inevitably devalue the dollar.

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00:02:00.840 When he was the mayor of San Francisco in 2008, Gavin Newsom announced a 10-year plan to end

00:02:06.080 chronic homelessness in the city.

00:02:08.000 That was a big challenge, Newsom said.

00:02:10.320 And that's why it would take a decade longer than it took us to land the first men on the

00:02:14.420 moon after Kennedy promised to do so.

00:02:16.000 But after 10 years, Newsom insisted the residents of San Francisco would finally be able to enjoy 0.90

00:02:21.020 their city without hordes of junkies and prostitutes and mentally ill vagrants wandering around 1.00

00:02:26.580 downtown and defecating on everything. 1.00

00:02:29.340 Watch.

00:02:30.300 We believe fundamentally that food solves hunger, that shelters solve sleep, and that housing

00:02:38.440 solves homelessness.

00:02:39.440 And if we're going to solve the problem of those that are out on the streets that we

00:02:44.820 define as homeless, we better solve the housing problem if we're going to have an impact.

00:02:50.240 And that's why we established this framework, what we call a 10-year plan to end chronic

00:02:55.340 homelessness in San Francisco.

00:02:56.600 Now, in case you missed the logic there, here it is one more time.

00:03:01.400 Food solves hunger, shelter solves sleep, and housing solves homelessness.

00:03:06.480 These are deep insights.

00:03:08.360 I'm surprised they didn't also point out that dry land solves drowning, and breathing solves

00:03:13.140 suffocation, and not having cancer solves cancer.

00:03:17.640 Now, at the time, people living in San Francisco thought that this platform made sense.

00:03:21.280 They didn't think it was a bunch of meaningless platitudes.

00:03:23.820 They also didn't ask what it means for shelter to solve sleep on second thought.

00:03:29.300 I mean, what does that mean?

00:03:30.140 Does he think that people with houses don't sleep?

00:03:33.320 What does that mean exactly?

00:03:35.080 Anyway, they just went with it.

00:03:36.360 Didn't ask any questions.

00:03:37.460 And, you know, give the guy 10 years, they said.

00:03:39.940 Let him cook, as the kids say.

00:03:41.740 Pretty soon, everybody will have homes, and nobody will be sleeping or something.

00:03:46.420 But predictably enough, Gavin Newsom's 10-year plan turned out a lot like Greta Thunberg's

00:03:50.820 promise that the world would end by 2023.

00:03:52.700 It never materialized, and everybody involved knew that it would never materialize.

00:03:57.620 Not that Newsom stuck around for 10 years to find out.

00:03:59.920 He became lieutenant governor of California just three years after announcing his big 10-year

00:04:04.180 plan.

00:04:04.520 And then he moved up to governor in 2019, and through it all, in the hands of Newsom and

00:04:08.220 his deputies, the problem of homelessness in San Francisco and in California at large

00:04:12.060 only became progressively worse.

00:04:14.540 And year after year, the residents of San Francisco have heard excuse after excuse for this failure.

00:04:19.600 The excuses kept changing, but one thing remained constant, which is that it was never the fault

00:04:24.440 of politicians, right?

00:04:25.720 It's always somebody else's fault.

00:04:27.560 Now, lately, politicians in the city have settled on a new excuse.

00:04:30.660 They're blaming federal courts for the homelessness crisis.

00:04:34.880 Here's San Francisco Mayor London Breed, for example, just a couple of months ago, offering

00:04:39.180 this excuse.

00:04:40.180 Let's not let a one judge impact our ability to do what all San Franciscans want.

00:04:48.560 They want clean streets.

00:04:50.300 They want homeless people to be helped.

00:04:52.560 And that is exactly what we are trying to do.

00:04:56.280 Today, the fight over homeless sweeps intensifies as an impassioned Mayor London Breed pleads for

00:05:02.840 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to lift an injunction that temporarily blocks the city

00:05:07.280 from clearing homeless encampments.

00:05:10.480 So London Breed blames a federal judge for the homelessness problem in the city, and people

00:05:15.080 apparently agree with her.

00:05:16.860 You know, there was a crowd there.

00:05:18.000 They were cheering along.

00:05:19.680 More than a decade after Newsom promised to end homelessness, people are cheering for a 0.97

00:05:23.920 mayor who's coming up with excuses for why her party completely failed to do that. 1.00

00:05:28.660 The problem, Breed says, is a judge who issued some injunction within the past year, and

00:05:33.620 that's why the plan to end homelessness didn't work over the past 15 years.

00:05:38.840 And by the way, the government is the only place where it works this way, right?

00:05:42.120 It's the only place where you can go to your boss with an excuse for why you utterly failed

00:05:47.120 to do what you were paid to do, and then get a standing ovation.

00:05:50.520 Doesn't really work like that in most places in the private sector.

00:05:54.080 Now, to be fair to London Breed, though, a judge did recently issue an injunction against

00:05:58.000 the city, preventing them from removing homeless encampments unless they had shelter beds to

00:06:02.920 house everyone. 0.99

00:06:04.340 And yes, that was a dumb ruling. 0.82

00:06:06.220 The Ninth Circuit later clarified that the city can remove homeless encampments as long 0.92

00:06:11.120 as the homeless people decline an offer of housing.

00:06:14.100 So that's something.

00:06:15.260 That's where that stands.

00:06:16.980 But all this legal wrangling is just the latest excuse that people in San Francisco have

00:06:21.740 heard when they ask why homelessness is still completely out of control.

00:06:26.400 Every year, there's a new explanation.

00:06:28.120 Last year, for example, Newsom blamed the economy and COVID for why his plan to end homelessness

00:06:32.700 wasn't actually ending homelessness.

00:06:35.360 He said, quote, we're dealing with unprecedented economic contraction, the worst in our lifetime

00:06:39.760 induced by a pandemic.

00:06:42.360 Now, a few years before that, in 2012, Newsom attacked people who pointed out that homelessness

00:06:46.500 was getting worse, saying that they were just being cynical and playing politics.

00:06:51.180 Then speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Newsom defended his 10-year plan, saying that Michelangelo

00:06:56.440 taught him that it's better to set a high bar and fail than to set a low bar and meet

00:07:01.780 it.

00:07:02.520 Now, of course, Michelangelo was talking about artistic pursuits, we can assume, where that

00:07:07.740 rule may apply.

00:07:09.200 But with politicians, you'd much rather they set out to do simple things and then actually

00:07:13.580 do those simple things rather than claim they're going to do a big thing and instead do nothing

00:07:19.520 at all, which is usually what happens.

00:07:22.220 What do we take from this?

00:07:23.440 If you live in California, the message is pretty clear.

00:07:25.360 Homelessness is just something you have to deal with. 1.00

00:07:27.340 No 10-year plan, no matter how well-funded it is, can possibly solve it.

00:07:31.500 It's a fact of life.

00:07:33.080 The best you could hope for is helping a few thousand homeless people as hordes more homeless

00:07:37.540 people arrive.

00:07:38.900 That's the reality of life in a big city.

00:07:41.240 And if you disagree, Gavin Newsom will tell you that you're part of the problem.

00:07:44.820 And that's all why it's been so interesting to watch what's been happening in San Francisco

00:07:50.920 over the past few days.

00:07:53.220 Now, this week, San Francisco is hosting the APEC Summit, which will attract business leaders,

00:07:57.940 tourists, and nearly two dozen heads of state, including Joe Biden and Chinese President

00:08:02.260 Xi Jinping.

00:08:03.680 Now, in response, and they're all coming to the city, to San Francisco.

00:08:07.360 In response, for the first time in a generation, virtually overnight, the city of San Francisco

00:08:14.100 has cleaned the streets.

00:08:16.780 Homeless encampments have been forcibly moved out of sight.

00:08:21.100 The place looks presentable again, even livable, if you can believe it.

00:08:25.780 And residents of the city are completely stunned.

00:08:28.360 They had no idea that anything like this was possible.

00:08:32.000 Watch.

00:08:32.560 The summit is expected to bring in $53 million, filling hotel rooms, bringing big business.

00:08:39.820 And the city did tidy up for Dreamforce, but this cleanup is much more extensive.

00:08:45.220 While San Francisco is in the spotlight for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, city leaders

00:08:50.200 are making sure the city shines.

00:08:52.120 Tourism is our business here in San Francisco, and we need to focus on making sure that the

00:08:57.160 tourist dollars still come back.

00:08:59.140 Caltrans repaving major roadways like the Harrison Street off-ramp from the I-80.

00:09:04.280 BART doubling down by deep-cleaning their stations overnight more often.

00:09:08.320 The city had gotten a little bit dingy over time.

00:09:12.520 Scrubbing and power washing is happening all over the city.

00:09:16.260 Yeah, the bottom of my shoes look clean.

00:09:18.140 It's noticeable how clear the streets look, and how few homeless encampments there are on

00:09:23.120 major thoroughfares.

00:09:24.000 Having been a long-time resident in the Bay Area, you just naturally start to wonder of

00:09:28.400 like, houseless folks being displaced.

00:09:30.460 Public Works is installing decorative crosswalks in North Beach and Chinatown, and the Webster

00:09:35.140 Street pedestrian bridge in Japantown was recently repainted.

00:09:39.340 The Yerba Buena Gardens at the Moscone Center are decked out with new colorful landscaping

00:09:43.700 and murals, paid for by the Clean California Grant, just in time for the 20,000 high-profile

00:09:49.820 CEOs and heads of state coming into town next week.

00:09:52.940 Some people say this should be how it's always done.

00:09:55.500 What about the people who are here year-round, you know, and like local, hardworking, working

00:10:00.680 class, Bay Area folks?

00:10:03.480 That's a good question from that guy.

00:10:05.580 Why exactly doesn't the city of San Francisco do this all the time?

00:10:10.260 If they can do it at all, then it seems like, well, they can do it.

00:10:14.120 So why wouldn't they just do it all the time?

00:10:15.780 Later in that news report, the news station makes it clear that the city isn't spending

00:10:19.100 any extra money on this cleanup, supposedly.

00:10:21.340 All the funds are coming out of existing budgets.

00:10:24.280 So again, they could easily be doing this all the time.

00:10:26.780 So why aren't they?

00:10:28.240 Another local resident in the Soma neighborhood had the same question.

00:10:31.280 He told the New York Post, quote, they've cleared out the tents on Howard Street, which

00:10:34.600 tells me the city had the capability to do this all along.

00:10:37.500 Instead, they just do the bare minimum.

00:10:40.160 Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, echoed that sentiment, quote, San Francisco has been

00:10:44.460 incredibly clean, beautiful, and safe for the last three days.

00:10:47.280 And it's great that the city is able to put its best foot forward for this major event

00:10:50.960 that brings in 40,000 people from around the world and $80 million to the economy.

00:10:54.600 It is important to ask why the city cannot be this clean and safe every single day.

00:10:59.760 Benioff has an especially good reason to ask that question, since he poured roughly $8 million

00:11:05.580 into Prop C in California, which taxed individuals and businesses to promote homelessness services,

00:11:11.500 including a lot of nonprofits.

00:11:13.640 What did he get in return for that money?

00:11:15.340 Apparently not much.

00:11:17.000 And that's not surprising.

00:11:17.820 When you hand left-wing nonprofits money to fix any issue, whether it's homelessness or

00:11:23.120 something more important like microaggressions in the workplace or whatever, you don't actually

00:11:27.360 give them incentives to fix the problem.

00:11:29.040 Instead, you give them incentives to prolong the problem so they can bilk more money from

00:11:33.400 billionaires.

00:11:35.060 So what's the solution then?

00:11:36.860 Well, it turns out that it's pretty simple.

00:11:38.680 Instead of dumping money into homelessness services and nonprofits, all that was needed

00:11:43.060 this whole time was a little bit of willpower.

00:11:46.300 San Francisco Chronicle obtained emails from city officials that demonstrate how easy this

00:11:50.960 has been to accomplish all along.

00:11:53.140 Christopher McDaniels, the city's superintendent of street environmental services, wrote an email

00:11:58.720 back in September explaining that every street needs to be completely cleared.

00:12:03.400 For the event, he wrote, quote, with APEC coming, I'm concerned about historical encampments

00:12:07.520 that are close to priority areas.

00:12:10.120 McDaniels boss added, quote, we need to stay on top of the growing encampments.

00:12:13.760 Do we have a plan?

00:12:15.420 Within days, according to the Post, quote, certain areas, including the notorious intersections

00:12:19.780 of Van Ness Avenue and California Street, Hyde and Eddy Street, Taylor and Ella Streets

00:12:23.860 were cleared of homeless tents.

00:12:27.180 Now, reading all this, it's hard not to laugh a little bit.

00:12:30.820 When you think about the fact that San Francisco's bureaucrats managed to make the city look

00:12:35.440 presentable for the leader of communist China, you know, it's kind of like if your wife is 0.74

00:12:40.820 a slob most of the time, but then makes a point of like doing her hair and putting on 1.00

00:12:44.640 makeup whenever the pool boy comes to clean the pool, kind of shows you where her affections 0.96

00:12:49.640 lie.

00:12:50.860 You might want to be a little concerned about that.

00:12:53.180 And San Francisco has revealed itself in the same way.

00:12:56.140 It also kind of makes you wonder how San Francisco might look if Xi Jinping ran it instead of

00:13:02.240 just visiting it.

00:13:03.380 Does anyone seriously doubt that it would look a lot better than it does under London

00:13:06.800 Breed and Gavin Newsom?

00:13:08.800 But the most important point is that this proves, okay, this is a microcosm that proves what I've

00:13:15.520 been saying for a long time, which is that these are simple problems to fix and the government

00:13:22.060 can easily fix them.

00:13:24.240 Homelessness, crime, all the stuff that makes our cities into unlivable wastelands, it can

00:13:31.080 be solved.

00:13:31.700 You can solve these problems.

00:13:34.380 And in this case, it took just a couple of emails from some mid-level bureaucrats and it

00:13:38.420 got done.

00:13:40.080 Now, of course, these bureaucrats have not solved chronic homelessness, quote unquote.

00:13:44.220 They've not prevented people from losing their homes or doing drugs or developing mental

00:13:48.360 illness, but they have moved these people out of sight and they've used force to do it.

00:13:54.320 They have cleaned up the city, at least parts of it, which means that it can be done.

00:13:59.440 For now, at least, San Francisco is doing what is necessary.

00:14:03.500 And this is a very good indication that, as it turns out, our cities, again, do not have

00:14:08.460 to be crime-infested cesspools.

00:14:10.880 They do not have to be third-world wastelands with zombified drug addicts walking around and

00:14:16.600 taking dumps in the streets.

00:14:18.680 If San Francisco can make at least parts of itself look clean and livable in order to

00:14:23.660 impress China, it can make the whole of itself clean and livable for the sake of its citizens

00:14:29.740 if it cared to.

00:14:32.380 But the vast majority of the time, San Francisco doesn't care to do that.

00:14:35.640 Our elites who run the entire country don't care to do that for the sake of their own

00:14:41.580 citizens.

00:14:42.240 That is the common thread here.

00:14:43.940 You know, the left likes to say, one of their favorite little mantras is that poverty is

00:14:51.280 a policy choice, which obviously isn't true. 1.00

00:14:54.760 That's completely stupid. 1.00

00:14:56.260 Poverty is a fact of life. 1.00

00:14:57.940 It's an inevitability in human civilization.

00:15:01.000 Social decay, on the other hand, is a choice.

00:15:04.820 And if you live in a city where there are, again, zombie drug addicts wandering around looking

00:15:10.600 like the walking dead and it's making the city unlivable, that is a policy choice.

00:15:16.380 That does not have to happen.

00:15:18.220 It only happens if it's allowed to happen, or perhaps in our case, made to happen.

00:15:23.820 Who would have thought that, you know, after years of giving drug addicts taxpayer-funded

00:15:27.740 needles and devaluing the currency and outsourcing manufacturing to China, we'd end up with even more

00:15:33.960 homeless people?

00:15:34.560 Who would have thought that suspending the enforcement of pretty much every misdemeanor

00:15:38.960 would lead to more misdemeanors, like public urination and public drug use and worse crimes

00:15:45.420 than that, public robberies, public sex acts?

00:15:49.060 Now, for more than a decade, Democrat solutions to this rapidly growing crisis has been to throw

00:15:54.120 more money at the problem and give themselves more power in the process.

00:15:57.640 Certainly, this approach has worked out well for Gavin Newsom, but it hasn't worked out for

00:16:02.340 the people living in San Francisco. It tells you a lot that the city's leaders, like so

00:16:07.160 many political figures all over the country, felt no incentive at any point to make their

00:16:12.200 own community better and more prosperous and more beautiful just for the sake of their own

00:16:17.020 people. They don't care about their own people. The welfare of their own people simply doesn't

00:16:21.420 motivate them. But when Xi Jinping and an army of CEOs are in town, then our leaders will spring

00:16:28.600 into action. Now, those are some people that politicians really want to impress.

00:16:34.940 What's happening in San Francisco right now is the end of plausible deniability for all of these

00:16:39.760 bureaucrats and elected officials. It's now beyond any doubt that they are the reason for the managed

00:16:44.840 decline we are witnessing in major cities all over the country. This managed decline is deliberate.

00:16:51.180 But by the same token, it's reversible. And it can be reversed very quickly. El Salvador fixed its

00:16:59.120 violent crime problem in a few weeks. Now we learn that San Francisco has always had the ability to

00:17:05.120 end its homelessness epidemic in a matter of days. And when APEC is over and the floodgates reopen in

00:17:11.960 Soma and the homeless druggies pour back in, that will be obvious to everyone. Maybe even the people who

00:17:19.260 have the misfortune of living in San Francisco, as oblivious as they all tend to be. Now let's get to

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00:18:16.900 a special discount. That's windshieldwow.com using code Walsh. We begin with some sad news today reported

00:18:23.880 by the Daily Wire. Senator Tim Scott officially ended his Republican presidential campaign on Sunday

00:18:28.380 night after failing to gain traction with GOP primary voters. Scott made the announcement during

00:18:32.740 an interview with former Representative Trey Gowdy on Fox News. Quote, when I go back to Iowa, it will not be

00:18:38.540 as a presidential candidate. I'm suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most

00:18:41.800 remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they're telling me, not now, Tim.

00:18:47.100 Well, yeah, we're also telling you not ever. That's not now, not ever, Tim, is what we're

00:18:51.800 actually saying. Scott said, Romans 8.28 is such an important scripture. It says that all things work

00:18:58.180 for the greater good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. I think the message

00:19:01.560 is clear for me right now. I am indeed suspending my campaign. I'm going to recommend the voters

00:19:07.160 study each candidate and their candidacies and, frankly, their past and make the best decision

00:19:10.960 for the future of the country. The best way for me to be helpful is to not weigh in on who they

00:19:15.440 should endorse. Tim Scott then said, quote, I'm going home to spend more time with my girlfriend

00:19:20.760 who is totally real, you guys. Stop saying she isn't real. She's real, okay? So that was the full

00:19:26.520 statement. He said all of that. Now, I have to say, with all due respect to Tim Scott's dearly

00:19:32.420 departed campaign, may it rest in peace. I am happy about this, and I'm happy for a number of reasons,

00:19:41.880 mainly because it means that I personally will be free from the absolutely inhumane barrage of emails

00:19:48.560 that I've been getting from his campaign for like five months now. Now, just to be clear, I have never

00:19:52.940 signed up for a Tim Scott email list. I would never do something like that, I promise you, but I was

00:19:58.180 signed up for it somehow. And this is not an exaggeration. I actually went and checked.

00:20:04.760 Just since September, I have received 150 emails from Tim Scott's campaign. Since September, 150

00:20:12.380 since September. And that's in spite of the fact that I have been actively unsubscribing from his

00:20:17.940 list. But you know how it works, like you get on one of these lists, and then next thing you know,

00:20:20.980 you're on 50 of them. And so I've probably unsubscribed from 10 or 15 of the lists,

00:20:25.340 and I still got 150. If I hadn't unsubscribed from those, it'd be more like 300 emails, okay?

00:20:31.360 And it shows you too that what should really already be obvious to you, which is that most

00:20:37.660 people in politics, and there's a reason I'm complaining about the emails. I mean, the main

00:20:43.040 reason is just to complain. But the second reason is to make the point that most people in politics

00:20:48.800 really have no clue what they're doing. And the whole Tim Scott campaign is proof of that.

00:20:56.460 I mean, you would have to be delusional and incompetent to think that Tim Scott ever had a

00:21:01.180 chance. He never did. This whole thing was doomed from the start. There was no, there's no universe.

00:21:08.340 Okay, even if we live in a multiverse with a billion universes and a billion different versions

00:21:13.460 of this reality, in none of those realities is Tim Scott president. That's how not president he is,

00:21:22.140 okay? And in spite of that, so you go into it, this is like the longest of long shot campaigns.

00:21:34.600 What's the plan? Okay, if you're going in with a long shot campaign,

00:21:38.080 you think you got to go in with something big and bold and innovative to give yourself a chance to

00:21:44.240 set yourself apart from the rest. And so what did the campaign consist of? Just sending a bunch of

00:21:49.580 emails and having Tim Scott appear on Fox News 600 times. 600 emails, 600 Fox News appearances,

00:21:57.260 and presto chango, you're president. That was supposed to be the plan.

00:22:01.460 Is that how it worked out? No, of course not. Did it achieve anything at all? Did it move the needle

00:22:06.640 even slightly? No, of course it didn't. You got the people working on, and all these people will

00:22:11.980 get jobs again in politics. Like they worked on this campaign, they did nothing, absolutely nothing.

00:22:16.660 There was, except millions of dollars wasted to achieve nothing at all, and everybody involved

00:22:26.520 will still have jobs. Now listen, I've admitted before, I would make a terrible politician,

00:22:33.260 I would make a terrible campaign manager, and yet I would still be better. I'd be wildly

00:22:38.400 significantly better than 99% of the people in Washington right now. Simply knowing things like

00:22:45.060 Tim Scott can't be president, sending people a thousand emails a day won't help you win,

00:22:51.320 it'll just annoy them. Knowing those two things alone makes me and you smarter and more competent

00:22:58.660 than almost everybody working in Washington right now. Now, with any of these campaigns,

00:23:07.180 you know, there are people that speculate, well, you have these long shot candidates that are in

00:23:10.800 there because they have something else, you know, they got ulterior motive, they want to be in the

00:23:15.920 cabinet, they want to be VP. I think you'd be doing Tim Scott and his team a favor to assume that he was

00:23:20.180 really just running for vice president, he's running to be in Trump's cabinet. I don't think that's what

00:23:24.120 he was doing. He says he doesn't want to be, he doesn't want that, and I actually believe him.

00:23:29.680 No, he really thought he could win. Same for Mike Pence. These guys really thought they could be

00:23:35.040 president, and their donors thought it too. And presumably, at least some of their staff were

00:23:41.080 under the same delusion. And these are the kinds of people who are running this country. No common

00:23:45.720 sense. No insight at all into the minds of average Americans. Totally delusional, incompetent.

00:23:55.840 And these are the people that are running the country. Which brings us to the next topic, 0.96

00:23:59.960 I think, very neatly. Vivek Ramaswamy posted this over the weekend. This tweet, he says,

00:24:05.320 on day one, instantly fire 50% of federal bureaucrats. Here's how. If your social security

00:24:10.200 number ends in an odd number, you're fired. That downsizes government by half. Absolutely nothing

00:24:15.720 will break as a result. It doesn't violate civil services rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

00:24:20.900 Shut it down. Then he continued to elaborate. This avoids civil service protections. No bureaucrat

00:24:26.320 can claim their firings were politically motivated. Further firings can be executed with a chisel,

00:24:30.380 but step one needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw, or else it just won't happen.

00:24:35.220 Now, this plan's getting a reaction from people online. And first, let me just say

00:24:45.540 that the idea that we should just fire 50% of federal bureaucrats is totally outrageous and insane.

00:24:55.200 And I agree with a lot of what Ramaswamy says, but this is just nonsense. 50%? It should be 90%.

00:25:03.240 But I guess 50% is a good start. So as a start, I love the idea. Lots of people have bristled at it,

00:25:11.960 as you might imagine, including plenty of alleged conservatives are upset about this.

00:25:17.860 You know, the people who have been talking about shrinking the size of government for decades,

00:25:21.320 and then someone comes along and says, all right, let's do it, guys. And those same people say,

00:25:25.780 no, no, no, wait. It's not like that. I mean, okay, well, what way do you want to do it? Oh,

00:25:30.640 not at all. That's the way. The way I want to do this thing is to not do it. That was my preferred

00:25:34.580 strategy. And this is what you have to understand. Every Republican for my entire life has run on a

00:25:43.520 plan, and before my life began, has run on a plan to cut the size of government and reduce spending

00:25:50.520 and all the rest of it. And none of them have done it. Okay? None of them have even tried to do it.

00:25:57.360 That's not even like they've made an attempt. None of them have even cut the size of government

00:26:01.400 or cut spending by like 0.5%. Instead, they've all increased it. Every single one.

00:26:10.760 None of them have reduced the size of the behemoth federal bureaucracy. They've really just added to

00:26:15.880 it. And that's because at this point, actually cutting this thing down, really making a dent would

00:26:23.240 require a drastic action like this. And so if you support a candidate who is not suggesting seemingly

00:26:33.700 drastic extreme measures, then that is someone who is not actually going to do this at all,

00:26:38.740 because that's the only way to do it. This thing, the federal bureaucracy is so big and so unwieldy and

00:26:46.220 so outrageously enormous that you can't help to achieve anything by making surgical cuts with a

00:26:53.980 scalpel. And again, even that, no Republican president has done. But that wouldn't be enough

00:27:01.380 because whatever little lump you cut off will just grow back before dinner time.

00:27:07.360 That's how huge this thing is. It's a huge self-replicating organism. And if you're not

00:27:13.180 taking a chainsaw to this thing, an unrestrained chainsaw, as Vivek Ramaswamy says, then you aren't

00:27:19.120 doing anything. Do you know, since we're on the subject, do you know how many people work

00:27:24.860 for the federal government? Right now, the federal government has close to 3 million employees.

00:27:32.960 And that is just the civilian workforce, okay? So that's not everybody who works for the,

00:27:37.240 that's not even close to everybody who works for the federal government. But

00:27:39.340 the civilian workforce is close to 3 million employees. So if you cut half of them,

00:27:47.920 you would still have over a million people on the payroll. You would still have more people than work

00:27:55.220 for Google, Apple, Facebook combined times two, if you cut half. You'd still have enough people to

00:28:03.800 fill like 14 NFL stadiums. Isn't that enough? How could that not be enough? I mean, can we get by?

00:28:11.060 Can we get by with 14 NFL stadiums full of people running the government?

00:28:20.620 There are so many, and here's the other fact. Not only can you and should you cut half of the federal

00:28:28.100 workforce, but if you did, none of us would notice a difference. I'm telling you right now,

00:28:34.120 if they were just to cut 50% and not tell us, no one, you would never know. You would never know.

00:28:42.100 They could come back 10 years later and say, oh, by the way, you know, we cut 50% of the workforce

00:28:45.660 10 years ago. You say, oh, really? Like your life, if it changes at all, it would be for the better.

00:28:50.600 But really, there'd just be no difference. You would never notice. Okay. If you don't work in

00:29:00.020 the government, not that I have, but I'm telling you, you have no idea how useless most of these 0.98

00:29:08.040 people are. Not all of them, but most of them. There are so many, I mean, thousands and thousands 0.99

00:29:16.440 of federal jobs that serve no purpose other than just for their own sake. And they help no one,

00:29:25.160 they do nothing. It is redundancy on top of redundancy on top of redundancy. We have entire

00:29:31.820 agencies, entire departments, entire bureaucracies within the greater bureaucracy that could be wiped

00:29:41.620 off the face of the planet tomorrow. And you would never know. Now, I read somewhere that

00:29:50.180 the bureaucracy that ran the Roman empire had like 20 or 30,000 employees, which was a lot at the time.

00:30:01.340 By comparison though, that's only a little more than currently run the city of Boston.

00:30:07.580 Okay. 30,000 to run an empire, the biggest empire on the globe at the time. And now we need 30,000 to

00:30:20.260 run Boston and not run it well, by the way. We have 3 million people running our country. And that does

00:30:27.860 not include the millions upon millions collectively who work for states and cities across the country.

00:30:34.680 So that's not all the government workers. It's not even close. Altogether, okay. City, federal,

00:30:41.540 state, government, altogether, only civilians. That's something like 20 million. Okay. It's

00:30:52.360 actually more than that, but about 20 million. And that means that like one out of every 15 people

00:31:00.580 in the country works for the government at some level, one out of every 15, I'm doing a lot of

00:31:06.580 math here. This is getting pretty dangerous and I'm going to get a fact check, but I'm pretty confident

00:31:10.340 in these numbers. The point is it's a lot. Okay. It is just, it is a lot way. It's so much that the

00:31:17.280 saying a lot doesn't even come close to covering it. And these people are not working for free,

00:31:25.940 by the way, just so you know, this is billions of dollars. I mean, billions and billions of dollars

00:31:31.760 that we are spending just on the payroll for all these people. Most of whom their jobs could not

00:31:39.600 exist and it would only make your life better. If you noticed at all, it would only be for the better.

00:31:44.140 So yeah, should we go in and cut 50%? Yes, absolutely. And if that seems extreme to you,

00:31:53.740 exactly. Because that's the situation that we're in. If it seems, if that's, if you bristle at that,

00:31:59.120 then it only shows that you don't understand. You do not understand how bad it is and just how much

00:32:06.840 you are being scammed. Like most of these jobs, I say they serve no purpose. That's not exactly true.

00:32:12.740 You know, most of these purpose, most of these jobs serve the purpose of giving jobs so that other

00:32:17.860 people in government can give jobs to their friends and family and everything else. It's just,

00:32:22.040 it's a giant nepotism program that you are funding. Like you can barely afford to buy groceries at the

00:32:31.420 grocery store for your family. And you are funding this massive welfare scheme for federal bureaucrats. 0.92

00:32:39.420 Um, and once you understand that and you hear 50% being cut, your only reaction is mine, which is

00:32:48.500 like, that's not enough. I mean, I'll take it, but that's only, that's just a start, you know, 50%,

00:32:53.580 then let's cut another 50 and let's keep going. And I think every other candidate in the race right now

00:33:00.220 should, should, should be asked, do you support that plan? And if you don't, why, what is your plan?

00:33:05.020 Okay. Do you have a plan for getting rid of 50% of these bureaucrats? Because if you don't, 0.94

00:33:09.760 you better come up with one. All right. Um, here's an update on a story that we covered last week.

00:33:18.160 Redux has this update. We talked about the story of the, um, mayor of a town in, uh, in, um,

00:33:25.020 uh, Alabama, I believe. Yeah. Who, uh, committed suicide last week after it was revealed that he,

00:33:35.540 uh, was dressing up like a woman and posting like fetish content online and posting other very

00:33:40.820 objectionable things. And this was revealed. And then he committed suicide. And of course,

00:33:44.360 trans activists are blaming conservatives and mourning the death of this, uh, poor man, this

00:33:49.260 martyr. Um, but here's an update on that story. Multiple women have come forward to reveal that

00:33:54.880 they were victimized by the now deceased Smith station mayor, uh, Bubba Copeland after discovering

00:34:00.460 that he had shared their names and photos to pornography sites without their knowledge.

00:34:05.020 Copeland took his own life last week after a damning expo, uh, expose was released by the 1819

00:34:10.280 project, unraveling the sick details of his secret transgender double life. One that included 1.00

00:34:16.680 penning erotic fantasies of murdering a local woman. Despite having demonstrated a number of 0.88

00:34:22.160 predatory behaviors, Copeland suicide has been portrayed sympathetically by major media outlets

00:34:25.920 resulting in an outpouring of support, a makeshift memorial dedicated to the former mayor and pastor

00:34:30.820 was set up outside of first Baptist church on Sunday in Alabama, causing the women targeted by 1.00

00:34:36.220 his perverse behavior to struggle with a mix of emotions. One of Copeland's constituents,

00:34:41.060 Amy Summerlin spoke with a WTVM and report published November 8th and explained that she has become aware

00:34:47.440 that the now deceased mayor had shared her photo to at least nine porn sites. The victim's surname,

00:34:53.580 Summerlin, was also one that Copeland had adopted for his feminine alter ego going by Brittany Summerlin 0.57

00:34:59.120 on a number of sites. Okay, so, and you could go to Redux and read this full report. I don't know,

00:35:06.020 I can't even stomach reading the whole thing, but, uh, you get the idea that this guy was assuming the

00:35:12.780 names of his female constituents and adopting that in this, uh, fetish role-playing, uh, trans thing 0.69

00:35:19.340 he was doing. And not only that, he was also posting, as we talked about last week, he was posting,

00:35:25.040 uh, these short stories he had written where he, uh, fantasized about murdering, uh, women and assuming

00:35:35.700 their identity. And the woman he was fantasizing about murdering is an actual woman who was a constituent

00:35:40.520 of his. So we knew about that. And now we also find out that he was apparently, according to the

00:35:45.800 report, uh, taking photos of local women and posting them to porn sites without their knowledge. So

00:35:51.600 what, what that goes to show is, uh, is, you know, first of all, none of this is surprising,

00:36:00.340 but as I'm, you know, have explained so many times in particular for, for grown men

00:36:08.660 who start identifying as quote unquote trans, it is almost always, uh, a sexual fetish. It's a sexual 0.94

00:36:16.360 role-playing thing. And, and one that, uh, when they start doing it publicly, they want you to

00:36:22.100 participate in, in it with them. They're demanding that you participate in it, but that's, but that's

00:36:26.900 what the whole thing is, right? So most of these trans activists out there are out there calling for

00:36:30.680 trans rights. The right that they want is the right to force you to participate in their sexual role-play 1.00

00:36:37.220 fetish, right? And I, and I was very clear with this guy. Um, and on top of that, according to

00:36:44.820 everything we were reading, I mean, this guy was a, he was a deviant, degenerate pervert. I mean, doing 0.97

00:36:53.160 things like posting a woman's photograph to a porn site, like in any other context, everybody would 1.00

00:36:58.640 agree that you're just an, you're a total scumbag at a minimum for doing that. And you take the trans 1.00

00:37:06.120 stuff out of it. If this was a politician who was doing that, take trans out, and then they 0.95

00:37:12.600 committed suicide, everybody would be saying, Oh, this is a person who's finally a cowardly way out

00:37:18.340 because they're finally being held accountable for their actions. So we're not, we're not weeping

00:37:22.500 over that. This is this, that's a horrible crime to commit against somebody, but you add the trans 1.00

00:37:31.660 thing. And, and suddenly this person is a victim. And I also, look, I, I almost, uh, I wanted to,

00:37:37.580 I thought at the time and didn't say it out loud because it's, uh, you know, you do have to be

00:37:41.500 careful about speculating too much in situations like this, but it did certainly occur to me that,

00:37:46.600 um, after this came out and the man chose to take his own life, you know, you had to wonder

00:37:52.680 how much of that was shame over what we'd already found out and how much of it was,

00:37:58.540 he was worried about what else we might find out now. You know, uh, if they start looking at the

00:38:05.000 hard drive, what else are they going to find on it? And now we've already found out that,

00:38:09.640 uh, he was posting these photos of women without their consent.

00:38:15.840 What else is there? I would not be surprised if it turns out that there's more. Um, and as more

00:38:22.200 comes out about this guy, I mean, never forget the fact that he was, uh, he, he was posthumously

00:38:28.220 canonized by trans activists who ordered us to weep over his death and even blamed conservatives

00:38:33.260 for it. All right. One other thing, this is from Fox business. It says, while many workers

00:38:41.280 worry about AI replacing their jobs, one company announced it's hiring the first humanoid robot

00:38:46.900 CEO. Micah is a research project from Hanson Robotics and a Polish rum company, Diktador,

00:38:53.840 dictator who customized the CEO to represent. So the company's actual name is dictator and

00:39:01.500 they've, they're hiring a CEO to run the, I mean, a robot to run the company. So they're

00:39:05.240 just like, they're just trying to be the bad guys from a dystopian sci-fi movie. Um, in a company

00:39:12.160 video, Micah said that with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms,

00:39:16.200 I can swiftly and accurately make a data driven. I can make a data driven data driven. What? That

00:39:23.320 doesn't make sense. However, Fox business reporter, uh, Lawrence Simonati noted that there's a

00:39:28.460 significant delay in the time it takes Micah to process and respond to your question. Oh,

00:39:35.180 so just like a real boss. This, this is like, this is like a real boss. Hanson Robotics CEO,

00:39:39.780 David Hanson, who played a key role in employing Micah at Diktador and then emphasized the importance

00:39:46.920 of humanizing artificial intelligence. Inside edition, I think also had a report on this robot

00:39:52.940 CEO. Let's, uh, watch that. Are robot CEOs, the future of the workplace? Hello, I'm Mika,

00:40:00.880 the world's first experimental AI CEO at Diktador. Mika is the newest employee and experimental CEO

00:40:07.880 of a company in Poland. My decision-making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning

00:40:13.840 with the company's strategic objectives. It's devoid of personal bias, ensuring unbiased and

00:40:20.460 strategic choices that prioritize the organization's best interests. Day-to-day tasks for Mika at the

00:40:26.940 liquor company include choosing artists to design the brand's bottles. I meticulously research,

00:40:33.260 conduct background checks, and verify potential client lists, providing well-reasoned.

00:40:37.880 decisions to the board. A bonus about the robot employee, she never uses vacation days. 1.00

00:40:44.420 Well, as a robot CEO, I don't really have weekends. I'm always on, 24-7, ready to make

00:40:51.300 executive decisions and stir up some- Where to even begin? Uh, first of all, of course,

00:40:56.340 so it's a robot CEO, uh, but of course they're going to make her female and non-white. So that, 1.00

00:41:02.160 that, uh, obviously, and, but the robot CEO is not really a CEO. It's just some talking mannequin

00:41:07.340 that hangs around the office, creeping everybody out. Um, and they go on to talk about it. It doesn't

00:41:13.660 actually, the CEO doesn't make hiring and firing decisions. Like it's not actually a CEO. But the

00:41:17.460 fact that we're even symbolically heading in that direction, I think is a bad sign. And that's,

00:41:22.480 that's the thing about this AI stuff, that it's kind of amazing in a certain way, because we've,

00:41:26.940 we've all grown up watching, as I said, these dystopian sci-fi movies about robots killing

00:41:33.060 everybody. And now we're, we're trying to make that happen. We've got people who are fully

00:41:38.580 trying to become the villains in all of those movies. So we all know how this plays out and

00:41:46.140 we're just going to do it, I guess. And even leaving the movies aside, even if we assume that AI will

00:41:52.420 never become sentient and enslave mankind, it's still pretty self-evident. I think that it's,

00:41:58.860 it's a bad thing for robots to replace people and, and eventually make us all irrelevant and

00:42:04.540 unnecessary. Like that, that's a bad trend. I think this is clearly a process that will harm people

00:42:11.740 much more than help them. I think everyone kind of knows that. And yet we're doing it. We are

00:42:18.120 marching headfirst into a future that is obviously going to be bleak. Companies run by robots and

00:42:25.020 staffed by robots is not good. I mean, everyone knows that isn't good, but we're doing it. We're

00:42:32.500 doing, we are doing the thing, even though we know it's all, it's like if we're, imagine we're all

00:42:37.380 in a big bus and there's a rickety bridge up ahead and there are signs that say, danger,

00:42:44.980 do not enter. And we've already heard lots of bad stories about this bridge and how dangerous it is.

00:42:50.940 And, and we don't even have to cross the bridge. Like there's other paths that we could take

00:42:54.800 and everybody on the bus, including the people driving it, know that that bridge, they're all

00:42:59.100 looking at the bridge. Like that looks bad. We shouldn't cross it. And yet we're heading towards

00:43:02.460 the bridge anyway. We're just going to cross it. We all know how it will end, but we're going to do it

00:43:07.400 anyway. That's what makes our impending robot apocalypse so frustrating is how it's,

00:43:14.980 I don't know. It's like maybe, uh, what is the, the ghostbusters choose the, uh, choose your

00:43:21.020 destructors is kind of like, I guess we're just decided, well, something's got to end human

00:43:24.320 civilization. I guess we're going to do this. It's got to be something. Maybe that's the argument.

00:43:30.620 Might not be a bad argument. Actually, I have to think more about it. Uh, let's get to what's

00:43:34.800 wrong. Grand Canyon University is an affordable private Christian university based in Phoenix,

00:43:43.040 Arizona. They're dedicated to making education fit into your already busy schedule, which is why

00:43:47.420 they offer 270 of their academic programs online from scholarships to academic support. GCU's

00:43:53.480 graduation team provides you with the personal support you need to obtain your goals. GCU's online

00:43:58.480 programs offer you the freedom to earn your degree on your own time from wherever you are.

00:44:02.520 GCU is praised for its culture of community, giving an impact. They integrate the free market

00:44:06.900 system and a welcoming Christian worldview into all of their academic programs. Achieve your goals

00:44:10.840 with a personalized plan and a supportive team behind you. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon

00:44:15.720 University, private Christian affordable. Visit gcu.edu. That's gcu.edu. Okay. A couple of, uh,

00:44:22.800 comments here, John, this is all, uh, we talked on Thursday about the story of the, uh,

00:44:27.540 American and Panama because American and Panamanian, uh, dual citizenship. Anyway,

00:44:32.920 stuck in traffic, climate protesters had shut down the road and, uh, he ended up shooting and

00:44:39.780 killing two of them. Talked about that. And some, uh, some people shockingly disagree with my

00:44:44.740 perspective on that story. John says, I guess Matt Walsh rationalizing actual violence against people

00:44:50.320 he doesn't like isn't a totally unforeseen plot twist, but it's one I didn't expect to see quite this

00:44:55.020 soon. I guess people who kill people are just fed up from now on. Blake says, we've now made it to

00:45:01.240 the point where Matt Walsh is openly calling for violence against peaceful activists. And, uh, the

00:45:06.080 last one says, Matt, very disappointed about your segment today about the man who murdered those

00:45:09.380 protesters. You're stooping to the left level and encouraging violence. You're better than that.

00:45:14.180 Um, okay. I'm not encouraging violent. I think this should be obvious from everything that I said.

00:45:20.940 And here's the thing. If you're going to listen to a segment, but then not actually listen to the

00:45:26.000 words that I'm using in the segment, then it's probably better not to listen at all. I don't

00:45:30.640 know what you are listening to because the whole segment is just, it's, it consists of words that

00:45:34.520 I'm saying. So I don't know how, and in that segment, I think I said multiple times, of course,

00:45:40.020 I don't condone this. I don't encourage it. I don't want to see it. I don't see anyone get killed.

00:45:44.000 Um, so it's not about encouraging violence. I don't encourage the violence against anyone.

00:45:51.220 I want less violence. I'd like to have no violence if that was possible. It's not, but

00:45:54.800 that's what I would prefer. If I could snap my fingers and make that happen, I would. Um,

00:46:00.240 but if you don't want violence, then you need to deal with reality. And the reality is that people

00:46:10.800 are fed up. Now, I don't know the thing about this guy specifically, but, um, it's, it would

00:46:19.740 appear to be symptomatic of a larger trend and whatever the case with that particular guy in

00:46:26.760 that particular case, it is true that, that people are, they're fed up. I don't know what,

00:46:32.200 how else to put it. And, uh, living in a, in a, in a world where you see some people who could just

00:46:39.640 act with impunity, shutting down roads, you know, the, the shutting down roads and protesting in the

00:46:45.100 street thing that climate activists always do. Um, it's not the worst thing that people do.

00:46:50.960 There's plenty of things that happen in our cities every day is a lot worse than that,

00:46:54.060 but it's just, it, it, it gets a lot of attention because it's so,

00:47:00.300 it, there's something particularly egregious about it that you're, it's the sense of entitlement

00:47:07.680 that it takes to shut down a road that people are trying to drive. They're just trying to go

00:47:12.140 to work. That's all they want to do. They want to get home and you are imposing yourself on all of

00:47:18.520 these people, no matter what your cause is, you know, if you had a good, it doesn't matter.

00:47:25.120 So you have no right to impose yourself on all these people. You're stopping everybody in their

00:47:30.780 tracks and say, Hey, everybody, listen to me. No, we don't. Why should we have to listen to you?

00:47:34.080 Why are you that important? You're not get the hell out of the road. And so even though it's not

00:47:41.020 the worst thing that people are doing as we watch the managed decline of our civilization,

00:47:46.720 uh, it is, it feels like just kind of like the last straw for a lot of people,

00:47:51.860 especially on the roads, right? As I said, people are already stressed out.

00:47:55.700 Road rage incidents happen all the time. Um, and we understand why those incidents happen.

00:48:02.420 Doesn't mean we condone them. Doesn't mean we would act that way, but like we understand

00:48:05.960 intellectually. It's not, we're not confused by that. People are on road, the road, they're

00:48:10.780 stressed out. The tempers flare. They lash out. You're already driving a, you know, this, this big

00:48:15.620 hunk of metal, 70 miles an hour. Um, and it's a bad combination. And then you take that. So you,

00:48:21.480 you, you take your protest, you start, you drop it right into that environment. It's a really bad idea.

00:48:27.500 Um, and so the best thing that the, that our leaders can do is start enforcing the law.

00:48:37.120 Start, uh, if you don't enforce the law and if you don't impose law in order,

00:48:41.860 then eventually people start taking matters into their own hands.

00:48:46.500 Pointing that out is not me saying I want people to, I think it's good. I don't think anything about

00:48:50.580 this is good, but that is what happens. And that's the whole point. Despite the lackluster

00:48:58.960 economy, the Daily Wire is thriving. Not only that, but we are hiring. We are currently looking

00:49:02.940 to add an eager inside sales representative to our ad sales team. The position will be responsible

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00:49:20.720 today. Now let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:49:29.180 For our daily cancellation, we begin with a recent article in the Washington post discussing

00:49:32.820 as the headline announces quote, how psychedelic therapy might help with climate change anxiety.

00:49:38.200 Now the piece is written by a mental health professional named Emily Willow, who starts by

00:49:42.000 describing a recent session with an eco anxious client. She writes, as our weekly therapy session

00:49:47.880 drew to a close, my patient, a young woman in her early twenties approaching college graduation

00:49:51.820 said that she had been feeling a lack of motivation, but that it felt different from her usual depressive

00:49:56.600 symptoms. A worrisome climate change report had recently been published and she felt paralyzed by

00:50:01.280 uncertainty of what the world is going to look like. She asked, quote, how can I decide where I want to

00:50:05.960 go? Will it even be safe to live in California when I'm older? Many of us are feeling a sense of

00:50:10.120 powerlessness and despair over climate change and its harmful effects. As a psychiatrist,

00:50:14.600 I've noticed a growing trend among patients in my private practice suffering from what mental

00:50:18.620 health professionals are calling eco anxiety and climate grief. Yes, climate grief, it's called

00:50:26.020 apparently. The article then goes on to claim that tripping on hallucinogens will somehow make you less

00:50:30.520 delusionally terrified of an ecological apocalypse. Because of course, if you're having trouble being

00:50:35.480 reasonable and keeping things in perspective, the best thing to do is take LSD. Now that's what

00:50:41.920 they always recommend for people to help them stay calm and collected. It's why airline pilots are

00:50:45.700 encouraged to drop acid 20 minutes before takeoff. I think I read that once in the FAA handbook.

00:50:51.120 Anyway, I'm not interested in spending any time on the idea that hallucinatory drugs will help you be

00:50:55.240 less anxious about unreasonable things. That's the kind of idea that you would have to already be on drugs

00:51:00.940 to believe in the first place. So it's a moot point. Instead, I want to talk about this underlying

00:51:06.060 concept of climate anxiety, which has been getting a lot of press lately. It's an epidemic on the rise,

00:51:12.780 we're told. Recently, PBS did an explainer on the topic. Watch.

00:51:18.000 Recently, I've been spending a lot of time reading about climate change, and it's got me feeling anxious,

00:51:24.220 a little tense, a little tense, a bit frustrated, and I'm definitely worried about the future.

00:51:38.060 And it looks like I'm not alone. People on social media are sharing their anxious feelings

00:51:45.340 and fears about climate change. So much so, there's a name for this. It's called eco-anxiety,

00:51:52.380 or climate anxiety. Okay, so this isn't isolated, and it's much larger than I thought.

00:51:58.460 So before we go forward, let's practice some mindfulness. Come on, y'all, let's take a deep

00:52:02.620 breath. Come on, deep yoke breath, fill up those lungs, and another. I do have good news. In response

00:52:09.440 to the growing trend of eco-anxiety, clinicians and psychologists are ushering in new techniques

00:52:14.740 to help their clients deal with this issue. We're going to make it through, y'all. One more breath.

00:52:18.760 The science of eco-therapy, or climate-aware therapy, is evolving, and there's plenty to learn.

00:52:27.160 Now, I just want to pause here to give us a moment to reflect on the phrase,

00:52:30.360 the science of climate-aware therapy, which is like saying, the science of leprechaun research.

00:52:36.680 Now, it's already a massive stretch to claim that any form of mental therapy is scientific,

00:52:41.560 but the claim becomes even more dubious as you begin adding sub-genres, like gender-affirming

00:52:46.920 therapy, climate-aware therapy, and so on. So this is already a load of nonsense, but let's keep

00:52:51.880 watching. Eco-anxiety is a relatively new term. Eco-anxiety has been defined by the American

00:52:58.600 Psychological Association as the chronic fear of environmental doom. That's Britt Ray. She's an

00:53:05.640 expert at the intersection of climate change and mental health. Britt, what are some ways someone

00:53:10.760 might experience climate anxiety? It can become so intense that it's debilitating, it can impair

00:53:17.240 people's functioning, and then it really does need clinical intervention or support, but it can also

00:53:24.360 trap us in a pit of fear and hopelessness if we aren't careful and get us carried away in kind of

00:53:29.880 a despairing narrative about the future being written off. Even though someone might be dealing with these

00:53:35.560 symptoms, it might be hard for a therapist to pinpoint the best course of action because eco-anxiety

00:53:41.640 is not in the DSM-5, the manual that health professionals use to diagnose mental health disorders.

00:53:47.400 Well, don't worry about that because that will change. Climate anxiety is another way for

00:53:52.440 psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies to make money, another profitable mental health-related

00:53:57.720 grift, and so it will surely be legitimized in the next edition of the DSM. That is, after all,

00:54:03.000 the DSM's primary function these days. But what can be done about climate anxiety? I mean, that's

00:54:08.040 really the question. What can we do about all this? How can it be treated? Well, let's find out.

00:54:15.400 The key here to unlocking strategies to deal with your own climate anxiety might have less to do with

00:54:20.920 your individual effort to deter climate change, such as lowering your own greenhouse gas emissions,

00:54:26.440 and more to do with building a climate crisis plan. There is a recent article in the leading

00:54:32.600 scientific journal Nature that said an important thing that individuals can do to address their

00:54:39.240 climate anxiety is really focus on small aspects that they can control. A lot of anxiety is provoked

00:54:46.840 by the unknown and feeling like you can't control a situation. Here's what a climate action plan might

00:54:53.560 look like. If you're in a flood zone, consider using personal storage bins that are watertight,

00:54:59.320 or moving personal items to a higher level on the shelf. For more info on finding out if you live

00:55:04.920 in a flood zone, check out the description below. Those concerned about drought might want to learn

00:55:11.000 more about urban gardening or drought-resistant forms of agriculture that you can do at home.

00:55:17.160 Now, above all, find yourself a community that is preparing to deal with the next catastrophic event,

00:55:21.960 because global warming is happening. Take action and join in on the effort.

00:55:28.280 There you go. If you're scared about a global catastrophe wiping out all of mankind,

00:55:32.920 one way to cope is to put your belongings in plastic storage bins or start gardening. Maybe take

00:55:39.880 the LSD before you go gardening just to make it more interesting. Now, it's worth considering just how

00:55:44.840 limp and superficial this advice is and how inappropriate the whole tone of that video was.

00:55:49.960 If you actually buy the claim that the world is coming to an end because of climate change,

00:55:55.000 which the people who made the video supposedly do. So in one breath, they tell us that the end of the

00:55:59.960 world is at hand. And in the next breath, they record a smiley, cheerful video assuring us that

00:56:06.760 plastic storage bins will help us through it. So there seems to be a disconnect here. And this is

00:56:12.200 the kind of disconnect that's very common among climate alarmists. It's why part of me has a hard time

00:56:18.040 believing that anyone in the world is actually this stressed out about climate change. I mean,

00:56:23.000 I've never met anybody like this. I've never encountered in the wild, a person who was

00:56:29.560 actually wracked with grief and fear because of the environment. I've never had this conversation

00:56:34.920 ever with anyone where they bring up, you know, I'm really troubled right now because of the,

00:56:38.840 um, because of the climate. That's never, I've never had that come. Now, granted, if anyone did

00:56:44.120 have that worry, they probably wouldn't share it with me, but, um, still I've never encountered that.

00:56:49.480 And, and just for me personally, it's a form of anxiety that I just can't relate to in the slightest.

00:56:53.640 I, I, I have, I, you know, I can't wrap my head around it. I have anxiety about a lot of things,

00:56:58.440 but I've never spent even one second of my life worrying about the climate.

00:57:02.280 So if I were to compile a ranking of like the top 500 things I've ever been distressed about in my

00:57:09.240 life, climate change, you wouldn't make the list. They wouldn't even make it down near the bottom

00:57:14.920 with the most obscure things I've briefly worried about in the past, like brain eating amoebas and

00:57:19.880 leprosy. It's just not something that makes it onto my psychological carousel of stuff to worry about.

00:57:24.520 That's why I find it hard to fathom those people who are legitimately afflicted by this so-called

00:57:30.120 climate anxiety. But in the end, I do believe that such people exist because the constant

00:57:35.480 apocalyptic hysteria from the media is, is, is designed to have this effect on people. And

00:57:41.720 inevitably it will have this effect on some people. So if you are one of those people

00:57:48.600 who's, uh, dealing with climate anxiety, I have two things to say to you. Here is some

00:57:53.000 eco anxiety counseling that might actually help you. And I am trying to help you. I'm not being flippant.

00:57:58.200 I really am. So the first thing to realize is that you don't need to worry about climate change,

00:58:03.000 not because the climate isn't changing, but because climates always change. It's what they

00:58:06.920 do. I assure you it's how they're designed. Nature is in a constant state of flux, changing all the

00:58:12.520 time. There's no reason to worry about this fact. It gets hotter, it gets colder, it rains, it's sunny.

00:58:16.920 This is the way the climate works. You probably don't have to worry about a climate apocalypse.

00:58:21.560 That's not to say that there will never be a climate apocalypse of a sort. I mean,

00:58:25.400 there will be eventually the earth will become uninhabitable. Look to our neighbor of Venus

00:58:30.040 in the solar system and you'll get an idea of what the earth will be like one day. Average

00:58:33.720 temperatures of 800 degrees Fahrenheit, clouds of sulfuric acid covering the planet, unbreathable,

00:58:39.240 toxic air, just absolute hell. That will be the earth's fate, but probably not for another two or

00:58:47.480 three billion years. And you probably won't be around when that happens. Now, in the meantime,

00:58:53.560 you have more pressing concerns. There are thousands of other things more likely to kill

00:58:58.040 you and one of them eventually will kill you. You'll probably get terminal cancer one day or

00:59:02.680 die of a heart attack or in a car accident. Who knows? Maybe you'll be murdered tomorrow.

00:59:06.840 Something terrible will happen to you eventually and it will have nothing to do with climate change.

00:59:11.880 I'm not sure if this will make you any less anxious, but at least it should make you anxious

00:59:15.080 about more reasonable things. That's all I'm saying. Second point, even if a climate apocalypse was on

00:59:23.400 the immediate horizon, even if we really were barreling towards an Armageddon caused by our SUVs

00:59:29.000 and air conditioning units, there wouldn't be anything we could do about it at this point.

00:59:34.440 And especially if that involves turning off our air conditionings, then we're definitely...

00:59:38.120 I mean, if you tell me that the way to save the world is to turn off my air conditioning and not use

00:59:42.280 air conditioning in the summer, then I guess the world's just going to end because we're not doing

00:59:46.120 that. So we're screwed anyway, is what I'm saying, by that logic. We're living on borrowed time,

00:59:52.280 simply waiting for Mother Nature to exact her vengeance. And if that's the case, then why worry?

00:59:56.760 Forget the plastic storage bins. Just live your life until the ice caps melt and you're washed away

01:00:00.840 into the sea. There's nothing you can do to stop it. Your fate is already sealed. That may not be a

01:00:05.880 comforting thought, but it is what it is. No point in wasting time wallowing in anxiety over it.

01:00:11.080 Now, fortunately, this is not the case. You will not drown because of climate change.

01:00:16.440 You might still drown. I mean, you could die that way. Maybe you'll slip and hit your head and fall

01:00:20.120 into a hotel pool or something. But it won't be because of climate change. And either way,

01:00:26.360 there's nothing to worry about. You'll die from something else sooner rather than later. You are

01:00:32.600 under a death sentence. In 50 or 60 years, you'll probably be dead. In 100 years, there won't be anyone 0.99

01:00:38.040 left to even visit your grave as you are decomposing in the ground. So cheer up is what I'm saying.

01:00:46.920 And also, I'm saying that climate anxiety is today canceled. That'll do it for the show today.

01:00:53.400 Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - November 13, 2023

Ep. 1261 - Our Cities Don’t Have To Be Crime-Infested Wastelands. The Solution Is Simple.

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