Ep. 1638 - The Fake “Mental Health” Test Coming To Your Child’s School
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
168.51152
Summary
Illinois just rolled out one of the most horrifying and dystopian policies in American history. Also, Donald Trump prepares to send the military to deal with drug cartels to talk about why this is a good use of American military power, and scientists are saving the planet by developing a new type of butter that doesn t involve cows or plants. Plus, an EBT recipient on TikTok declares that she deserves brownies and candy provided by the government. Is that true? We ll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, it's not getting a lot of attention, but the state of Illinois
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just rolled out one of the most horrifying and dystopian policies in American history.
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It will be very bad for your kids, but very good for big pharma. I'll explain.
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Also, Donald Trump prepares to send the military to deal with drug cartels to talk about why this
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is a good use of American military power. And scientists are saving the planet by developing
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a new type of butter that doesn't involve cows or plants or anything edible. Plus,
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an EBT recipient on TikTok declares that she deserves brownies and candy provided by the
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taxpayer. Is that true? Do EBT recipients deserve free junk food? Do they deserve
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free food at all? We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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be wrong. That's AmmoSquared.com. Check them out today for a special offer. One of the ironies of
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the medical community is that at a superficial level, conflicts of interest are taken very seriously,
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but most of the time, if you look just an inch below the surface, the most obvious and severe
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conflicts of interest are routinely ignored. This happens all the time. There are all sorts of
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guidelines about how physicians can't directly take cash from drug companies in order to prescribe
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certain medications, for example, but at the same time, it's completely fine for Big Pharma to hire
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doctors as, say, consultants or speakers. And then if those doctors in turn happen to prescribe a lot
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of drugs from Big Pharma, who's to say there's any connection? We saw something similar during COVID.
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Every medical journal is supposed to inform readers about conflicts of interest that exist in any of
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their articles. And yet when every single virologist who was conducting dangerous bat experiments in
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Wuhan wrote that infamous letter in The Lancet explaining that this new virus definitely didn't
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come from their dangerous bat experiments in Wuhan, there was no disclaimer at all. Instead, virtually
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everyone in the scientific community took that letter as gospel. After all, why would the people
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involved in making a Frankenstein virus ever lie about their role in creating it? And this kind of
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corruption happens all the time in medicine, but it's rarely discussed because the pharmaceutical
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industry happens to be one of the biggest advertisers in the media. Again and again,
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conflicts of interest are brushed over or ignored completely. And one of the most disturbing examples
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by far is the way that the medical community developed something called PHQ-9. Now, even if that doesn't
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ring a bell, there's a good chance that you or your child have had a run-in with PHQ-9 at one point or
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another. This is probably one of the most scandalous untold stories in medicine. So essentially,
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PHQ-9 is a nine-item test that's used to measure whether someone might need psychiatric treatment,
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including medications. And it's used by school psychologists and nurses, as well as doctor's
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offices all over the country. Pfizer developed it, then released it into the public domain so that it
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would spread throughout the medical community. And here for reference is what the test looks like.
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It's a list of questions asking patients whether they've experienced a handful of negative symptoms
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over the last few weeks. They have to rank the frequency of these symptoms as not at all, several days,
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more than half the days, and nearly every day. And possible negative symptoms, quote-unquote,
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include little interest or pleasure in doing things, trouble falling or staying asleep,
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sleeping too much, feeling tired, poor appetite or overeating, trouble concentrating, moving or
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speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Now, typically, if five of these symptoms
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are present for more than half of the past 14 days, then you're diagnosed with depression and handed an
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SSRI. And it's supposedly a reliable system. But as I rattled off those symptoms, you may have noticed the
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problem already that many of these symptoms don't necessarily have anything to do with a mental
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health condition. At various points in their lives, every human being alive will report that they're
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having trouble sleeping or feeling tired or having a bad appetite. In fact, you might have these
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quote-unquote symptoms for years at a time. You might have it for your entire life. You know, that's
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particularly true for children as well as adults going through stressful periods in their lives. If
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you have a stressful job, if you're in school, you know, you might be tired a lot. That's pretty
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common. For example, a woman named Callie Williams was given a PHQ-9 test as part of a prenatal
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appointment with an OBGYN in 2016. Williams was recently married and she was a brand new stepmother,
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which naturally made her feel somewhat overwhelmed and tired and all those things. And after filling out
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the form, she was told that she was depressed and that she needed to take Zoloft. When she asked for
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more detailed mental health examination, she was denied. She spoke to Stat News about her experience
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and here's how they reported on what happened next. Quote, if Williams didn't take Zoloft, the doctor
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said, she would be marked as non-compliant. She was unnerved by that threat, so agreed to take the
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medication. It didn't help. It was very easy to rely on the checked boxes, said Williams, who lives in
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Sacramento, California. I didn't see an effort to dig any deeper even when I was asking for that.
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So here we have an adult, a woman who was pressured into taking psychoactive medication because of a
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survey that's obviously imprecise by design. And if you're the inquisitive type, that might lead you
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to ask a very basic question, which is who exactly wrote the survey? Is it possible that the creator of
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the survey could potentially have a vested interest in getting people to take psychoactive drugs?
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Now, as you probably guessed, indeed, there is a major conflict of interest at work here,
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but it's actually a lot worse than you're probably assuming. And very soon, courtesy of the Democrat
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Party, this particular conflict of interest has the potential to impact the lives of millions of
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children. Now, before we get to that, we'll start at the beginning of the story, which for SSRIs is the
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early 1990s. At that point, if you can believe it, it's hard to believe these days, but SSRIs were not
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popular among most doctors. They didn't want to prescribe the drug because they were untested and
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they came with a lengthy list of severe side effects. It's the exact opposite of the current
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status quo, where SSRIs are distributed like candy, but at the time, that wasn't the case.
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But Pfizer, which was producing the SSRI known as Zoloft, a competitor of Prozac,
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had a plan to change that. They were going to find a way to make psychiatry a matter of primary care
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instead of a specialty that involved far fewer patients. A big part of that plan involved funding
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the creation of the PHQ-9 test. So without Pfizer's funding, which amounted to hundreds of
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thousands of dollars, there would be no PHQ-9. Everyone involved in the project has now admitted
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that. But the PHQ-9 was not the brainchild of a hardworking, earnest Pfizer scientist who wanted to
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ensure the most accurate diagnostic test that he'd come up with. In fact, it wasn't even the brainchild
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of an MD. Instead, it was the creation of a marketing guru named Howard Croplick. Croplick
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is not a doctor. He's not a scientist. He has an engineering degree from Stony Brook University,
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an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And that's it. And immediately
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after graduating from Wharton, he went to work at Pfizer. And very quickly, he became one of the most
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influential figures in modern medicine. Croplick is the reason that, for example, Viagra ads don't
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mention the word impotence because they don't want to insult or demean their potential customers.
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Quoting again from Stat News, Janet Williams, a Columbia University professor, confirmed Croplick's
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role in creating the PHQ-9, saying he came up with the idea and recruited her and a renowned
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psychiatrist, Robert Spitzer, to develop a tool. Both Williams and primary care doctor Kroenke said
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that they understood the form would be beneficial to Pfizer as a way to sell more of its medication.
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Potential conflict of interest around the PHQ-9's development is a good point, said
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Croplick. But he said Pfizer didn't interfere with the research.
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And the last part may be true. It's quite possible that Pfizer didn't explicitly state that these
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doctors and the marketing guy had to come up with a test that would result in doctors over-prescribing
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their products. In fact, they probably didn't say that explicitly because that's not how these things
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work. But the whole point of a conflict of interest is that even without this kind of explicit
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quid pro quo, everybody understands what needs to be done. There was clearly a strong incentive here
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for these doctors, along with Pfizer, to present the PHQ-9 as a diagnostic tool, not merely a survey.
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And it appears they did exactly that. A paper published in 1999 states, quote,
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the PHQ is the first entirely self-administered diagnostic instrument designed for use in primary
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care. Now, on their website, as Stat News pointed out, the PHQ is described as both a screener
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and a diagnostic tool. But it's not especially useful for either purpose. Here's the title of a paper
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published just five years ago, quote, patient health questionnaire nine scores do not accurately
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estimate depression prevalence. Our researchers looked through dozens of studies involving PHQ scores,
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and here's what they found, quote, an analysis of 44 studies in 9,200 patients found that when the
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PHQ is used to gauge the prevalence of depression, it's more than twice as likely to find patients
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have the illness compared to when physicians conduct a clinical evaluation. By other estimates,
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including one from the psychiatrist Nicholas Badre, up to two-thirds of the results from this test
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are false positives. Two-thirds. So to recap, Big Pharma wanted to market an SSRI. They hired a
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marketing guy to invent a survey that resulted in mass over-diagnosis of depression, which could then
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be treated by SSRIs made by Big Pharma, and it worked. They made billions of dollars off it. Within a
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decade, SSRIs started printing billions of dollars every year, and through all of this, no one has any
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idea how SSRIs even work or if they work. In fact, a study released just a few years ago from
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researchers in Saudi Arabia and published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-1 found that, quote,
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the real-world effect of using antidepressant medication does not continue to improve patients'
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health-related quality of life over time. And as we've discussed many times, even establishment
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scientists have abandoned the notion that depression is somehow related to serotonin levels or chemical
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imbalances, which is how it was sold for decades, and now they have admitted that that's not true.
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So with this recent history in mind, which no one outside of the niche publication Stat News has
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bothered to cover, it should be apparent that no one in their right mind would try to expose millions
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of children to these kinds of phony diagnostics. Mental health screening is an unreliable and often
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fraudulent tool that has been used to justify the over-prescription of powerful psychoactive
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medications, and that's not debatable. That is a fact. That is what has happened. At a minimum,
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it's extremely error-prone, even when you're talking about adults who have voluntarily gone to the doctor
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to seek this treatment. So very clearly, we should be reducing the use of these kinds of broad
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diagnostic tests as much as we possibly can. That's especially true when there's no reason
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to make someone take one of these tests because they're not complaining of any problem.
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The risk of a bad diagnosis is astronomical. But the Democrat Party, well, they're not limiting
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the use of these tests. Instead, they've just announced a plan to drastically expand
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these diagnostics and to compel children to take them, at least unless parents go through some kind
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of opt-out procedure, which most of them won't. And this doesn't seem to have gotten very much
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attention, but it should because I think it's one of the most horrifying policies in modern American
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history. And I mean that sincerely, no exaggeration. So here's what's happening. The state of Illinois is
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now demanding that children, beginning in the third grade in public school, undergo annual
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psychiatric evaluations. In other words, even if there's nothing wrong with them, a third grader
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will probably be asked the same kind of questions that I just ran through. Now, as of right now,
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Illinois hasn't announced the specific tests they're going to implement, but it stands to reason it's
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going to resemble, if not replicate, the test that Pfizer has put out in the public domain.
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After all, that's the gold standard. Children will presumably be expected to tell their school
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psychologists whether they've been having trouble focusing or having trouble sleeping or whether
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they're, you know, sad going to school every day. Completely normal childhood behaviors and feelings
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will be reclassified as symptoms of major mental health disorders, and millions of more children
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will be put on these dangerous, potent drugs. Watch.
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Now, Illinois students will soon be taking another type of test, but this one has nothing to do with
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their report cards or their fitness. The state of Illinois will now start screening for mental health
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issues. The governor's signature today at the Chute School in Evanston makes Illinois the first school
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in the nation to roll out universal mental health screenings to its schools. At a time when our kids are
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struggling with anxiety and depression more than ever before, it's our responsibility to ensure that
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young people have all the support that they need to get the help that they deserve. The new law will
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require public schools to offer age-appropriate screenings to identify mental health concerns in
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students in the third through twelfth grades. The process will be overseen by the Illinois State Board of
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Education who will develop model procedures for districts. The screenings are designed to be
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confidential, and parents who don't want their kids to participate must opt out. The screenings
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will also connect families with the Beacon Portal that helps them find psychiatric care in their
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communities. What we have heard from families and from young people is that an annual check
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on sadness, worry, fear, and other problems would help to identify young people who need to talk.
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Now, if you listen to Republicans' reaction to this really evil plan that's been concocted by
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devious people, you'll hear the generic claim about government overreach and so on. But the actual
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problem here is much more straightforward, a lot worse, and it needs to be spelled out. The point of
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these annual screenings is to ensure that they drug as many children as possible with psychoactive
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medications so that those children become loyal customers of big pharma for life. And of course,
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they'll also become profoundly unhappy people, which accounts for roughly 100% of the Democrats' voter
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base. So it's a win-win for politicians like J.B. Pritzker and for big pharma. And it's a lose-lose
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for you and for your children. If big pharma was able to prescribe millions of SSRIs to adults based
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on bogus tests that were invented by Pfizer's marketing department, then there's no doubt that
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children in public schools in Illinois will be extremely easy targets. And not just for SSRIs.
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We all know that ADHD medications, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and so on will be distributed
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to minors as well as a result of this program. These are drugs that aren't simply unnecessary.
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They're actively harmful for children. In the case of ADHD drugs, even the so-called experts in the
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field have admitted as much. The New York Times, of all places, just published a lengthy article on
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the topic with the headline, Have we been thinking about ADHD all wrong? Yes, we have. But the drugs
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aren't being pulled from the market. No one's being prosecuted. Instead, the pill pushers are coming up
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with new tactics to convince more children to take these drugs. And politicians in Illinois,
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many of whom take a lot of money from big pharma, are happy to oblige. This is an unmistakable
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escalation in the ongoing effort to medicalize normal human thoughts and emotions and behaviors
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and to corrupt and profoundly and permanently alter the lives of children for financial and political
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reasons. For decades, the school system has been a conveyor belt feeding kids to big pharma.
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And now that conveyor belt will work at warp speed. It'll begin in Illinois, but it's not going to
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end there. Before long, the only children who will be spared this sales pitch, the only ones who will
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be insulated from this heavy-handed effort to drug them, will be the children who don't attend public
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school at all. You probably didn't need another reason to keep your children far away from the public
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school system, but in case you did, here it is. If these people can pressure adults into taking drugs
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they don't need, then they can do it to your children as well. And with this new law, some of
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the most prominent Democrats in the country are making it abundantly clear that one fake diagnostic
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test at a time, that's exactly what they intend to do. Now let's get to our five headlines.
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pressure off. Let Tax Network USA handle your tax issues. Now, the big news today is, as you probably
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heard, is that Donald Trump has announced that he's going to federalize law enforcement in D.C.
00:19:35.420
And I'm going to talk about that tomorrow. We're going to do a big monologue on that tomorrow and
00:19:39.920
break it down. Spoiler, I'm very much in favor of it, but I want to go into that in much more
00:19:47.120
detail tomorrow. For today, I wanted to hit on a couple other things and some other initiatives,
00:19:54.520
recent initiatives from the Trump administration that were announced. This one I also like a lot.
00:19:59.200
This is from Fox News. President Donald Trump has secretly authorized military force against Latin
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American drug cartels designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations, according to
00:20:08.220
reports. The move reported by New York Times would give U.S. forces permission to engage the cartels
00:20:15.060
with which traffic drugs like fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border. The New York Post, according to
00:20:21.220
the White House, said, according to New York Post, the president is determined to not just dismantle,
00:20:25.300
but completely destroy Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro's cartel de los Soles and obliterate their
00:20:32.420
operations in the Western Hemisphere. Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum on Friday said the U.S.
00:20:38.140
military would not be entering Mexican territory following reports that Washington could take
00:20:41.900
action to combat the cartels. It has nothing to do with Mexican territory, she said. It has nothing
00:20:45.960
to do with, it has to do with their country. It does not involve our territory. Now, this is military
00:20:53.900
intervention that I support. This is how we should be using the military, clearly in defense of the
00:20:59.920
homeland. Go into whichever countries these cartels are operating in and kill them, kill them all.
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The Mexican president, she says the U.S. won't be entering Mexico. Mexico has nothing to do with us
00:21:13.360
as that country has just been funneling drugs and gangs and violence into our country for decades.
00:21:20.020
But, of course, we should just disregard that. What is she going to do about it? I'd love for Trump to
00:21:29.800
say that to her. It's the kind of thing he would say. Yeah, we are coming in. What are you going to
00:21:35.000
do about it? What are you going to do about it? You're the president of Mexico. Oh, yeah, we're coming
00:21:40.260
in. Oh, you think we're not? Yeah, no, we totally are. And there's absolutely not a damn thing that you
00:21:45.220
are going to do about it or can do about it. What now? Yeah, sit down. Sit down in the corner over
00:21:52.040
there like a little child and behave. Okay? How about that? I would totally support Trump speaking
00:21:59.940
to other world leaders exactly like that. Hey, you, just sit down over there. No, this is not,
00:22:06.520
you know, go in timeout. Yeah, you'll speak when you're spoken to, Claudia. How about that?
00:22:15.220
You know, Mexico has been sending crime again and drugs and violence and gangs into our country
00:22:20.980
for a very long time. And so we'll do whatever we need to do to protect our country. And we don't
00:22:29.520
give the slightest damn how you feel about it. You know, how about get your own country out of
00:22:34.600
control? How about take care of this problem yourself so we don't have to come down and do it
00:22:37.880
for you? You know, it's like, it's like my, it's, it's, this is my kids know this. If they're
00:22:45.620
having a, if they're having, you know, if they're having some kind of squabble, right? They're down,
00:22:50.960
they're down in the basement in the playroom and they're, and they're fighting. And they know if I
00:22:55.800
call down and say, look, you guys better figure this out because you don't want me to come down and
00:22:58.620
figure it out for you. Okay. You got about five seconds to figure out your little problems.
00:23:02.940
If I come down to figure it out, you're not going to like the solution. How about that?
00:23:08.520
And that's, uh, that's kind of how we have to deal with these other countries like children.
00:23:16.340
Um, because really they're lucky that, uh, Claudia Scheinbaum is lucky that we don't go down and just
00:23:21.960
conquer the whole country and turn it into a vassal state. We'd be entirely justified in doing so
00:23:27.640
entirely justified. All the problems you've caused for us,
00:23:32.940
of all the nations in the world, Mexico is the greatest threat. One of the greatest threats.
00:23:39.500
It's caused the greatest damage to this country. I think that's like inarguable.
00:23:46.600
So, um, now the only reason I'd oppose doing that is just that it's, there's easier and cheaper ways
00:23:52.000
of dealing with the problem. So send in the military, obliterate the cartels, kill every single
00:23:56.900
cartel member, hunt them down, kill them and, uh, go full Sicario on their asses basically. And
00:24:03.880
that's what we should be doing. You know, which is why, you know, I get accused of being some kind
00:24:09.380
of libertarian anti-war hippie, but I'm not any of those things. Certainly not libertarian or a hippie.
00:24:17.460
I'm also not anti-war. I mean, anti-war is a ridiculous position. Speaking of children,
00:24:23.820
that's a childish, that's a childish position. That's the kind of thing that like a six-year-old
00:24:27.600
I'm anti-war. Okay, sweetie. Yeah. Yes. War. I, of course you are, but it's like saying you're
00:24:35.840
anti-sadness or something. Like there are times when war is the right path. There's time,
00:24:42.500
times when war, uh, is obviously necessary. Uh, war is a part of life. It's a part of human
00:24:48.800
existence, a part of having a civilization. You can't have a civilization without war. Every war,
00:24:53.380
every civilization requires war, requires the military to maintain civilization. And the entire
00:25:02.380
history of human civilization clearly shows us that. Although without civilization, you end up
00:25:07.500
actually with even more war. So that's kind of the catch 22. So, um, anti-war, no, that's just a dumb,
00:25:15.060
that's a dumb, useless thing to say. Uh, I'm anti-bad wars. I'm anti-unjust wars. I'm anti, uh,
00:25:22.240
wars that we get involved in that have nothing to do with defending our people and our homeland. I'm
00:25:28.840
anti-wars that are waged on behalf of other countries that are not the United States of
00:25:32.760
America. I'm against those. I'm against wars of liberal colonialism, wars that are waged to export
00:25:41.280
liberal values across the, the, the globe to be, to be distinguished from wars of sort of traditional
00:25:48.620
colonialism, wars work where we are conquering a land, bringing it under our control and subjugation.
00:25:55.640
Um, I'm not opposed to that in principle, you know, because historically, uh, that kind of
00:26:02.500
colonialism has clearly been on balance, a force for good in the world. Our country wouldn't exist
00:26:06.760
without it. So that's where I stand. And this would be, uh, this would be a war, not, not, uh,
00:26:12.860
if not a full scale war, then a use of military power, a use of military force that is clearly in
00:26:19.720
the name of national defense, clearly, uh, you know, actual national defense. And I'm very much
00:26:26.180
in favor of it. Uh, here's one that I'm not in favor of though. This is the New York post reporting
00:26:32.960
president Donald Trump is reportedly eyeing reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous
00:26:38.400
drug, a move that could expand medical marijuana research and ease industry restrictions at a $1
00:26:44.180
million plate fundraiser at his New Jersey golf club earlier this month. Trump told attendees that
00:26:48.820
he's interested in pursuing the change fundraiser guests include Kim rivers, chief executive officer
00:26:54.280
of true leave a top marijuana company who encouraged Trump to pursue the change and expand medical
00:26:58.900
marijuana research, uh, according to the report. Um, so this is one that I'm not in favor of,
00:27:05.620
and this is where I, I tick off a certain portion of the audience, but that happens like every show,
00:27:11.260
I guess. So this is nothing new. Uh, I think this is a terrible idea. Um, I hope that Trump does not pursue it.
00:27:18.820
I hope he goes the opposite way. There's, there's nothing good that will come out of
00:27:23.620
normalizing weed even more than it already has been and making it even more accessible than it
00:27:28.480
already has been even less stigmatized, right? There's nothing good that will come up. And I know
00:27:33.400
that nothing good will come of it because we've watched it as I, as I've said, every time, you know,
00:27:38.240
whenever this comes up, this, the great thing about this topic, if there's anything great about it
00:27:42.160
is that we don't have to speak in hypotheticals anymore. We don't have this, we don't have to engage in
00:27:46.780
thought experiments. We don't have to guess how this will go because we have now evidence. We have
00:27:54.080
now real world experience. We have watched as marijuana has been progressively normalized and
00:28:00.180
legalized, made more accessible and less stigmatized, uh, over the past decade plus. And we've seen the
00:28:06.920
results and the results are terrible. I mean, it's just, it's right in front of your face.
00:28:13.120
The results are bad. The results are in and they're not good. Okay. Um, and I've made this
00:28:21.940
point many times. I've yet to hear a pothead engage with it, honestly, but here's my contention.
00:28:28.000
Every single city that has legalized weed has in the aftermath become measurably worse by just about
00:28:34.140
every metric. Okay. Cities are dirtier, filthier, grimier, less livable places now with legalized weed.
00:28:42.160
than they were before. That's my contention. Now you could easily disprove it. If it were possible
00:28:49.120
to disprove, all you have to do is point to an example of an American city. I don't care about,
00:28:55.600
don't give me some city in Europe somewhere. Although I think this holds true in most of those
00:29:00.640
cities too, but we're talking about America. So give me an example of an American city
00:29:04.220
that has seen measurable improvements that has become a better place to live after weed was
00:29:12.920
legalized. So go ahead and give me an example. I know the comment section will be filled with
00:29:19.380
potheads that are, you know, freaking out and crying about it. I'm not interested in your tears.
00:29:25.120
I'm interested in just like, put what I want to see is a whole list of cities in the comments. Go
00:29:29.180
ahead. Go ahead. List the American, give me, give us the American city. You say, oh, this place is a
00:29:34.500
lot better now. I would, I'd love to see it. I'd love to see you try. Um, here's another way of,
00:29:42.860
of kind of looking at it. And I was thinking about this, like think about a task that you might want
00:29:50.460
a group of people to complete. Okay. Maybe you're an employer, maybe you're a homeowner and you
00:29:57.140
need, you know, the roof fixed or whatever, any task. Now, can you think of a task where you would
00:30:04.080
want your workforce that you've put on this task, whatever it is, to consist of people who smoke weed
00:30:09.960
every day? Okay. Like in what context would you look at the people that you've assigned to a task
00:30:16.320
and see them smoking weed and say to yourself, oh good. Oh, oh good. These people are, are perfect
00:30:22.780
for the job. If you needed it, if you had a task, you want to complete it and you had to choose and
00:30:29.380
someone gave you an option, well, we got group A and group B and you don't know anything about them.
00:30:33.740
All you know is that group A, they smoke weed every day and group B doesn't. Who, is there any
00:30:38.500
world where you'd say, oh, give me group A? Yeah. Give me the weeds. Definitely them.
00:30:42.220
I mean, I don't know. Maybe if you needed to write a song or something, then maybe the people
00:30:49.280
that are smoking pot would be, maybe. I'm not even, in fact, I'm not even sure if that's the
00:30:55.920
case. Maybe it depends on the genre. But aside from that, it's hard to imagine any task where
00:31:01.080
pot smoking would be considered an asset. And all that proves again, is that marijuana is a net
00:31:07.600
negative for society. And if it's a net negative, then we shouldn't encourage it or normalize it
00:31:12.820
or legalize it. It seems like a really simple calculation to me. As you know, I am a simple
00:31:17.500
man and I, and I look at things in a simple way. I, I, I, I'm accused of that often. Oh,
00:31:24.240
you simplify. Yeah, you're right. That's what I do. Because I actually think that a lot of
00:31:28.660
problems and one of the reasons why problems aren't solved in this country is because we just
00:31:32.480
make them way more complicated than they actually are. And a lot of times that, you know,
00:31:36.940
there are some problems that are more complicated, but most problems are actually pretty simple.
00:31:42.100
Really pretty simple. How do you solve obesity? It's not, well, we need the right equation,
00:31:48.060
the right this, we need the, you got to figure it. No, just, just get some exercise and don't
00:31:51.680
eat as much. It really is that simple. No, you don't understand it. No, it's really that simple.
00:31:57.260
It really is that simple, but it doesn't work. No, you're not doing it because you're lazy.
00:32:03.320
Don't, don't lie. You're not, you actually haven't tried it. You're claiming you've tried to be
00:32:06.600
haven't. So that's, so that's how it works for most things. And, um, in this case, uh, I think
00:32:14.000
it's also very simple that it's kind of clear from the recent historical evidence that marijuana is a
00:32:21.040
net negative for society. And if it's a net negative for society, then, and we're asking
00:32:24.560
ourselves, Oh, should we continue to legalize this and make it more accessible? Well, it's a net negative.
00:32:31.500
So no, why, why, why would you, if it's, if it's undeniable that this like overall is harmful to
00:32:40.460
society, then why, what, what would be the reason? And you can't respond, well, why don't we want to,
00:32:46.980
if it's net negative, why don't we want it? I don't know, because it's a negative. That's why
00:32:51.400
that's the answer is in the question. Marijuana makes people lethargic, lazy, unmotivated. These
00:33:01.260
days that also can make you psychotic. I mean, the kind of weed people are smoking these days is
00:33:05.300
very potent, way more potent than stuff back when I was a teenager or when, when my parents were
00:33:10.520
teenagers. And, um, for plenty of people, it causes psychotic episodes. I mean, that's a real
00:33:16.120
thing. And again, the potheads will scoff at it and they'll laugh. Oh, when is that ever happening?
00:33:19.820
I don't know. It happens all the time. I mean, there's a lot of research on this. There's a lot
00:33:23.940
of literature. There's plenty of just example. It's a thing. I'm sorry that it upsets you, but
00:33:28.440
it is actually a real thing. And you just going, yeah, right. That's not an argument. Okay. That's
00:33:34.780
not an argument. Rolling your eyes and going, yeah, okay. Not an argument. Marijuana does in fact
00:33:41.500
cause psychotic episodes. It happens all the time, especially the stuff people are smoking these days.
00:33:45.420
So, uh, why would we do anything but prohibit it?
00:33:49.820
And you could tell that I'm right because the only thing that potheads can or will do in response
00:33:54.940
is to claim that alcohol is worse, right? That's the number, that is the go-to every time. Oh yeah.
00:34:01.560
What about alcohol? You know, now I think that alcohol's effects on society is very, uh, these
00:34:08.400
effects are very demonstrably better than weed's effects. Again, history speaks for itself. Um,
00:34:14.100
societies where everybody smoked tobacco and drank booze, uh, thrived. Our own society went from horse
00:34:20.440
and buggy to rocket ships in, in a span of a few decades and everybody was drinking whiskey for
00:34:26.900
lunch. Okay. Now I'm not saying that those things happened because of the booze. What I am saying
00:34:33.500
is that the booze obviously didn't prevent it. So I can make a factual statement that is 100%
00:34:40.380
proven by history, which is that a society can thrive while people are also drinking booze and
00:34:49.500
smoking cigarettes. That's a factual statement. There is historical evidence of it. Lots of it,
00:34:56.020
hundreds of years of historic, thousands of years, really.
00:34:59.600
I can also make another claim, which is that societies of stoners have not thrived.
00:35:08.000
There's really no example of that. I mean, the, the, the societies of stoners,
00:35:11.580
you're talking about people that wear loincloths, cloths and sleep in mud huts. Okay. Um,
00:35:17.860
societies where everyone is stoned all the time. It's like you had a society where people drink whiskey
00:35:23.220
for lunch. Well, I'm not saying that that's good. I'm not saying you should drink whiskey for lunch,
00:35:26.020
but we know that we know that that, that, that, that doesn't, it's not, it's not going to send
00:35:30.740
society crashing down. We've seen it. A society where everyone is smoking weed at lunch. Well,
00:35:37.200
all the historical evidence tells us that what you end up with is a mud hut. Okay. And sleeping in pig
00:35:44.220
in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, you know, in a tent, right. That's, that's what those societies
00:35:49.840
look like. Okay. That's it. And that's the, uh, that's the, the, the, but, but regardless, again,
00:35:57.440
even if I were to acknowledge, yeah, alcohol is terrible. Even if I said alcohol is worse than
00:36:02.160
weed, I don't think it is, but if I did, that, that doesn't help you at all. All that would only be
00:36:07.360
an argument for also prohibiting alcohol. It's not an argument for, for, uh, permitting marijuana.
00:36:17.220
Like by pointing to, right. By, by it's like, if I said that a carjacking is bad and you said,
00:36:26.980
well, murder is a lot worse. Well, yeah, but that doesn't make carjacking any better.
00:36:32.700
And if we lived in a society where murder was legal, actually we do, it's called abortion.
00:36:39.540
That would not be a reason to make things even worse by also legalizing carjacking. That's,
00:36:45.680
that's actually argument, not for legalizing carjacking, but for making murder illegal.
00:36:51.260
Right. So if, if someone is saying that something is bad and your response is, yeah,
00:36:56.800
maybe it is, but this other thing's also bad. All you've done again is if you've done
00:37:02.420
anything, all you've done is make an argument for also prohibiting that other thing. That is in no
00:37:07.380
way an argument for permitting the thing that you're ostensibly trying to defend.
00:37:14.160
All right. Um, I have some, uh, news here that will actually interest, uh, the, the potheads. It's
00:37:23.140
about, it's about butter. And that's news that I, that I also take seriously because I am a devoted
00:37:29.380
fan of butter. So CBS news reports on a new company backed by Bill Gates that, uh, makes butter
00:37:38.260
without the use of cows. And, uh, and I know you're, you're probably thinking, well, haven't we've
00:37:44.900
already done this a million times plant-based, no cows, no plants, nothing, nothing edible is involved
00:37:51.720
in the creation of this new butter that Bill Gates is gracing the world with. This is another way to save
00:37:57.420
the planet allegedly, but, uh, let's watch the, uh, the clip from CBS news. Here it is.
00:38:02.380
It looks, smells, and tastes like the butter we're all familiar with, but without the farmland,
00:38:07.880
fertilizers, or emissions tied to that typical process. And this butter breakthrough, it's
00:38:13.900
happening right here in Batavia. In the middle of an industrial park in a suburb west of Chicago,
00:38:19.940
Chicago, something unprecedented is happening. So you're using this gas right now to like cook your
00:38:25.940
food. Um, and we're proposing that we would like to first make your food with, with that gas.
00:38:31.860
The company is called Saver and you better believe it. Their pioneering tech uses carbon and hydrogen
00:38:38.680
to make the stick of butter you see on this plate. This is pretty novel to be able to make food that
00:38:45.240
looks and tastes and feels exactly like dairy butter, but with no agriculture whatsoever.
00:38:50.800
And no long ingredient list the average person can't pronounce.
00:38:54.960
It's really just our fat, some water, a little bit of lecithin as an emulsifier,
00:39:01.400
How? Fats are made up of carbon and hydrogen chains. The goal here? Replicate those chains
00:39:08.240
without animals or plants. And they did it. They tell me, to simplify,
00:39:12.920
they take carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heat them up and oxidize them.
00:39:19.700
The final result? It looks like a wax, like a candle wax at first.
00:39:24.360
But they're fat molecules, like the ones in beef, cheese, or vegetable oils.
00:39:30.380
Sustainability is why we are here. It's all done releasing zero greenhouse gases,
00:39:36.280
using no farmland to feed cows. We're like not at full capacity in this facility yet.
00:39:43.680
I love butter, so I'm going to take a really healthy amount.
00:39:55.260
Yeah, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. You are a filthy liar. You are lying. Now, I have two major
00:40:04.720
problems with this. The first is that I know damn well that it does not taste like butter. We all know
00:40:09.620
that. Every day they have some new alternative product on the market, you know, alternative butter,
00:40:15.060
alternative milk, meat, cheese. Thousands of alternatives. I've tried many of them,
00:40:19.760
always just sort of out of morbid curiosity. And it never tastes like the thing that it's
00:40:26.720
imitating. Never. Here's another statement I'll make. There is not an alternative product like
00:40:34.120
this on the market that actually tastes like the thing that it's imitating. That does not exist.
00:40:37.780
And yet there will always be someone who will swear to you that it does, no matter what it is.
00:40:44.560
There's always going to be someone handing you the glass of like fake milk made out of liquefied
00:40:49.760
mulch or whatever it is, claiming, claiming, oh, dude, this tastes just like right. You will never
00:40:55.640
tell the difference. If I gave you this in a blind taste test, you'd never even know.
00:40:59.540
And then you taste it and you say, no, that's, yeah, that's mulch. That's definitely mulch. That
00:41:06.140
tastes exactly like mulch, undeniably, unmistakably. So I guarantee this is no different. This is,
00:41:13.640
I absolutely guarantee it. Second, regardless of the taste, I really just object in principle to
00:41:21.480
artificial slop made in a laboratory. I reject it. I object to it in principle. And if you think the
00:41:31.080
word, if you think the word slop is, is too harsh, well, let me call your attention back to the video
00:41:35.780
because you might not have noticed this, but let's look at the freeze frame from minute 138.
00:41:42.920
There's the freeze frame. And there you can see it. There's a giant vat in the background at this
00:41:48.500
factory that literally says slop water. I mean, they are literally calling this stuff slop water.
00:41:57.200
So if you want to be a good little planet here and eat your emulsified slop water, then you go
00:42:03.120
ahead. I'll pass. I'll take a pass on the slop water. I'll take a pass on the slop water that
00:42:08.340
they turn into candle wax and then expect you to spread it on your toast. You know what I want?
00:42:18.500
This is my cry in the wilderness. This is, uh, this is my, this is my, uh, cry, my, my protest
00:42:26.200
against the, uh, the darkness. I will not go, I will not go silently into the, into the dark
00:42:32.500
because I'm sick of, I'm sick of fake. The last thing we need is more fake. Give me something real.
00:42:39.640
Everything's fake. Now you go on social media, half the accounts are bots. So much of what you see
00:42:44.020
is generated by AI. It's people, people spend all day, you know, staring at their screens, the
00:42:49.660
reality filtered through curated by algorithms. And it's all fake. Even the real people are still
00:42:58.000
fake, right? Everything. I saw another video the other day, one of 900 million of a woman crying and
00:43:04.920
having a meltdown on camera on a selfie video. It's fake. The emotions are fake. It's all fake.
00:43:10.640
The food is fake. The emotions are fake. The butter is fake. So this is the dividing line. Um,
00:43:17.060
I think in, in the future, there will be those of us who are satiated by all the fake stuff.
00:43:27.580
Those people who will eat the fake butter and watch the fake movies generated by fake AI
00:43:33.300
and just sit in this totally fake world, not numbed by it, satiated by it.
00:43:41.460
There'll be people like that. And then there'll be the people who, uh, you know, and, and these
00:43:47.100
are people who, who, who no longer hunger for authenticity because their souls have grown numb.
00:43:52.540
They don't even have the urge for it. Like they don't even understand.
00:43:59.460
These are people that they'll never even look outside the window ever again.
00:44:03.300
They have, they have no interest. There could be a beautiful sunset and, and you'll tell
00:44:08.040
them, go look at the sunset. They won't even turn their necks to look at it. It's not worth
00:44:11.400
the effort. Um, and so they do those people. And then on the other hand, you're gonna have
00:44:16.940
people who just deeply long for what is real and what is natural and what is authentic and
00:44:22.200
what is genuine. You're going to have those people too. And that, that really is going to
00:44:27.800
be, I think sort of the core issue. Like the, the, the, the dividing line in the culture
00:44:35.320
will be that people that are satisfied with fake and people who want something real and
00:44:40.840
they want it. They want what is real for its own sake. It won't matter. I mean, this will
00:44:46.120
be, this will be why AI will not take over everyone's lives. It probably take over a lot
00:44:51.600
of people's lives. It won't take over everybody because if you still have a soul, it won't
00:44:56.840
matter how realistic it is or how close it is to the real thing. It won't matter. You
00:45:04.580
just want the real thing, right? It's like if, if they put you in a windowless box and, and,
00:45:12.960
and replaced all the windows with screens so that it looked like a beautiful sunset, it looked
00:45:18.740
exactly like the real thing. Well, they're going to be, they're going to at least be some
00:45:25.040
people who still have a soul and say, no, I want, I want to see the real sunset and it'll
00:45:30.440
be no use to say, yeah, but this looks exactly like it. Yeah, but it's not it though. It looks
00:45:34.800
like it, but it's not it. And I want the thing that is it for its own sake. And you can have
00:45:41.880
people that understand that and people who don't and the fake people will go off and live
00:45:47.080
in their fake world and in a, in a matrix that they willingly plug into while the rest of us
00:45:53.680
take what is real, what is true, including the butter, especially the butter. Am I making too much
00:46:02.740
of this? Maybe, but, but no, I'm not. I don't think I, you know, I've talked before about one of
00:46:11.240
the problems that we have in society is that sometimes there are too many choices. And when you
00:46:14.540
got a lot of choices, it's a, it, it, it kind of causes this, this analysis, paralysis analysis,
00:46:20.220
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00:46:24.420
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You want culture that fights back? You want daily shows that are uncensored, unapologetic,
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00:48:13.860
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Food stamps have been a topic of conversation on the show several times over the past few weeks.
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The EBT program has been in the news thanks to extremely belated efforts by a number of states
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to exercise some basic level of control over the kinds of food items that people on the program
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can purchase or can force taxpaying Americans to purchase for them, I should say. We've also
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talked about the rise of EBT influencers. These are food stamp users who upload videos showing off
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their tax-funded grocery hauls. In the process, they confirm every negative stereotype about EBT
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recipients. It's almost as if these videos are really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to turn
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public opinion against welfare programs. Here's just a case in point. Here's another example of a
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recent entry in that genre. Watch. First thing I got is these jumbo beef meatballs. I got these.
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These go in the refrigerator. I've been seeing these soy loin, no, these sliced grass-fed beef soy loin.
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They go in the refrigerator as well. I've been seeing these on TikTok. So I got this.
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We got, I don't know if these are new, but these are the marshmallow crispy cookies. So we got that.
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I'm going to go fast because it's hot. We got this chicken milk. There's 15 individuals in here.
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I see these. I see these on TikTok too. These brilla and cheese. These stuff and cheese. I've got these.
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These go, these go in the refrigerator as well. Obviously, we had to get these pizzas for the kids.
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Now, if I were to script a video designed to portray the EBT production,
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program in the worst possible light, it would look exactly like that video. Everything from the
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morbid obesity to the food selection to the smoke detector beeping in the background. It so perfectly
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proves the point that it seems staged, but it's not staged. And there are hundreds of videos like
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this. In every case, their grocery haul consists predominantly of junk food with no nutritional value.
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If there's any protein or anything resembling actual nutrition, it's always a pre-cooked or frozen
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meal, which is almost certainly really high in sodium among other problems. These are people
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who definitely don't need more sodium in their diets. The vast majority of EBT recipients don't
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have full-time jobs. Keep in mind, most of them don't have jobs at all. And yet they refuse to take
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the time to cook a fresh meal from scratch. They only buy meals that can be reheated in three minutes or
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less, saving even more time so that they can, you know, waste it by staring at a TV or their phones.
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Now, maybe that wasn't fair. EBT recipients don't just watch TV and scroll TikTok. As we've covered,
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they also make TikTok videos, which takes time as well. Several minutes of their day, which is why
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they can't cook, I guess. And of all the EBT influencer videos I've seen or played on this show,
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this next one is perhaps the most obnoxious. And it does perhaps the best job of demonstrating
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everything that's wrong with the food stamp program and the welfare state generally,
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particularly because of one word that she uses that I want to spend a little time
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I am so dumbfounded right now. There are people that genuinely think that people who use EBT
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don't deserve soda, candy, or desserts. You're going to tell me that my daughter doesn't deserve a
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popsicle. You're going to tell me I don't deserve to get brownies. You're going to tell me I can't
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have Dr. Pepper with my dinner. And all I'm hearing is be grateful, be grateful. It's free food. Get off
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of your throne of entitlement and take a look around you guys. Everyone is one bad day away from being
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homeless or even needing government assistance. Do you guys not see how that makes you look? Your lack
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of empathy and understanding is outstandingly atrocious.
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Yes. Get off your throne of entitlement, says the able-bodied woman demanding that American
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taxpayers buy her a brownie. This is an adult whining because other adults won't give her a treat.
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And somehow we're the entitled ones. Now, nevermind the fact that even if she was banned from buying
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popsicles and brownies with her EBT card, she'd still be able to have popsicles and brownies.
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I mean, she could buy that junk with her own money, or she could even use her EBT card to purchase the
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ingredients to make that stuff herself. Now, I'm not much of a baker, admittedly, but I do know that
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you can make brownies with some flour, a couple eggs, sugar, cocoa powder, a few other ingredients.
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Making a popsicle is even easier. Buy some fruit, blend it with water, throw it in the freezer.
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You're done. Again, you have the time to do all this. You don't have a job. So keep in mind,
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when food stamp users complain that they can't buy junk food, they're actually complaining that we
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won't provide them with ready-made junk food that they can purchase and eat right away. So they want
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it for free, and they want it quickly, and they want it with maximum convenience and minimum personal
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effort. This is not just entitlement. This is a kind of snobbishness and sense of privilege that
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used to be reserved for the children of billionaires and royalty. And now we find it among people who have
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no wealth at all. People who, by their own testimony, can't afford to buy a popsicle.
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It's the worst of all worlds, really, coming together. You have the vices of wealth, but none of the wealth of
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wealth. It's really just the worst possible thing for a person. But is it even true that they can't
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afford it? Well, let's go back to the woman in the last video. Not to keep picking on her, but she did
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volunteer for it. I mean, don't post a video demanding that we buy you brownies if you don't
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want to be heavily scrutinized. And so what do we notice in this video? Well, this woman has manicured
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nails, wearing lots of makeup, highlights in her hair, obviously has a smartphone, obviously has an
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internet connection. There's a TV on in the background. Which streaming service is she subscribed
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to? How many streaming services? So just in that brief selfie video that we just played,
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I can see, I can see more than enough money to buy brownies and popsicles for like several months.
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Now, I want to take a moment to reflect on a word that she uses repeatedly in that clip. It's a word
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that comes up a lot in these kinds of videos. It's a word that comes up a lot when we talk about welfare
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and EBT and food stamps and all the rest of it. It's a word that finds its way into our political debates
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in this country all the time. It's a word that a lot of people seem to use hundreds of times a day.
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And it has become maybe my least favorite word in the English language. And that word is deserve.
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This woman is offended by the idea that she doesn't deserve soda, candy, or desserts.
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You're going to tell me that I don't deserve a brownie, she asks incredulously.
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You don't deserve a brownie. You don't deserve soda. You don't deserve candy, cookies, cake.
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I'll take it a step further, ma'am. You don't deserve any of the free food that you receive.
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Okay? You don't even deserve bread or rice from the taxpayers. You don't deserve any of it.
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You don't deserve a single dime from your fellow Americans. Not a single one.
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Every single thing you own that was paid for by the taxpayers, you don't deserve any of it.
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What does the word deserve mean? Well, it means, literally, merit.
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To deserve something is to merit it. It's to have a claim to it.
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In other words, earn. You deserve what you earn.
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If you get a job at a certain salary, you deserve the salary.
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If your boss tries to pay you less or nothing at all, you'd be justified in marching into his office
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and demanding that he pay you what you deserve, what you merit, what you've earned.
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You would agree to perform a certain task for a certain amount of money,
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assuming you actually perform the task in a satisfactory manner,
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then you deserve that money in both a legal and moral sense.
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The word deserve has another word that's implicitly attached to it,
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The other word that's attached to deserve, the other side of that coin, is owe, okay?
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If you deserve something, it means that someone else owes you something.
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Nothing can be deserved by one party unless it is owed by another.
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That's why it wouldn't make any sense to, say, jump off a building
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and then say that you deserve to land safely on the ground.
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I mean, you could say that as you're plummeting to the ground.
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You could say that, but it won't matter because who are you making the claim against?
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You can only deserve what another person owes you.
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If you have an obligation to me, then I deserve to have that obligation fulfilled.
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If I pay you to build a fence in my backyard, I deserve to have that fence built after I've paid you.
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If I lend you money, I deserve for it to be paid back.
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Now, sometimes you can deserve something that isn't explicitly owed to you,
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but that requires that you make the case and essentially convince the indebted party that they are in debt to you.
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If you're performing well above expectations at your job and your value far exceeds the salary that you're paid,
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then you should go to your boss and make the argument that you deserve more money.
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If you win the argument, it won't be because your boss agrees that you possess some kind of mystical entitlement written in the stars,
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It'll be because you've successfully made the case that your work merits the pay increase.
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So let's go back to our friend with the manicured nails and the EBT card.
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What did we do to suddenly find ourselves in debt to you?
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What did you do for us that puts us in debt to you, lady?
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I mean, if we could just impose a debt on a stranger out of thin air, then it's kind of a wash.
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I mean, you're placing that magical debt on me, but I'm placing it back on you.
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Well, I say you owe me a brownie and ice cream and whipped cream and a cherry.
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See, this is the problem with throwing the word deserve around so carelessly.
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In reality, you can only deserve a brownie from us if you've done something to earn it.
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What have you done for us to merit this reward?
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The answer is you've done nothing for us, which means we owe you nothing.
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Now, does that mean that I think all forms of welfare and quote-unquote social safety nets should be abolished outright?
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I think there's a reasonable argument to be made for that, but it's not my argument.
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I think it's good to have programs in place to temporarily help people who are actually in a desperate situation until they're able to get back onto their feet.
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But even then, we are not helping because it's owed.
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When you're on EBT, you get what you don't deserve.
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In this case, it's forced charity, but that's what it is.
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And the only appropriate response to charity, the only appropriate response to getting what you don't deserve, the only words out of your mouth should be, thank you.
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And like JFK said, you should spend a lot more time thinking about what you owe the country rather than what you think it owes you.
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And that's why all entitled EBT recipients demanding tax-funded junk food are today canceled.
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Hey there, I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley.
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And I'm Georgia Howe, and we're the hosts of Morning Wire.
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We bring you all the news you need to know in 15 minutes or less.
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Watch and listen to Morning Wire seven days a week, everywhere you get your podcasts.