The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1829 - It’s Time To Mansplain Parenting To TikTok Moms Who Resent Their Own Kids

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00:00:29.560 The Lindsay Clancy case has brought the dark side of TikTok to the forefront.

00:00:35.040 As it turns out, the dark side of TikTok is just TikTok.

00:00:38.200 There is no light side, no good side, at least not one significant or counterbalancing enough that it should dissuade us from launching the entire platform and most of the people who use it directly into the sun.

00:00:49.500 And it isn't just that platform. The case has shown the dark side of the culture more broadly.

00:00:55.160 And there are those who would argue that the culture, too, and many of the people in it belong on the same one way flight into the sun. 0.90

00:01:01.160 Over the last few weeks, we've said a lot about Clancy's fan club, a group of women all as repulsive on the inside as they are on the outside and unanimously deserving of having their custody rights and their voting rights rescinded. 0.57

00:01:13.500 rescinded, these goblins have come forward, loudly and proudly, to outright defend a murderer 0.74

00:01:19.680 who brutally slaughtered all three of her children. In the process, they have unmistakably

00:01:24.640 demonstrated that they, like their hero, have roughly the intelligence and moral reasoning of

00:01:29.700 Komodo dragons. And I choose that comparison intentionally, by the way. Young Komodo dragons

00:01:34.260 have to spend the first few years of their lives hiding high up in the trees so they aren't killed

00:01:39.400 and eaten by older Komodo dragons, to include especially their own mothers. Now, I've found

00:01:44.320 that it's a very bad idea to use any species of lizard, least of all this species, as a parenting 1.00

00:01:49.140 model, and yet that's exactly what feminists are doing now and have been doing, in fact, for many 1.00

00:01:53.960 decades. We've directed plenty of richly deserved scorn at the women who've invented outlandish 1.00

00:02:00.540 conspiracy theories around the case, often pinning the blame on the husband, who is in reality the

00:02:07.180 primary living victim of this crime, far more troubling are the women who defend Clancy not

00:02:12.600 because they think she didn't do it, but because they know she did. They understand her, they say.

00:02:18.540 They relate to her. By their own admission, that means they loathe and resent their own children

00:02:24.060 and have considered, or would consider, murder as a potential remedy. That's the only thing a mother 0.97

00:02:30.220 can mean when she says that she sees herself in a woman who systematically executed her family.

00:02:35.720 There have been at least a few moments that almost rise to unintentional humor in the middle of this profoundly unsettling saga.

00:02:45.540 This GB News clip went viral yesterday.

00:02:48.280 The female commentator is thrown into paroxysms of rage at her male colleague for daring to criticize a child killer, God forbid.

00:02:57.640 Watch. 0.80

00:02:58.680 They should be commended.

00:02:59.480 Be quiet, please.

00:03:00.560 I've had it with you.

00:03:01.860 Oh, my God. 0.99

00:03:02.440 And your sexism and misogyny. 1.00

00:03:05.300 She's a murderer. 1.00

00:03:06.360 I can't. 0.99

00:03:07.120 Okay. 0.71

00:03:08.560 Now, the star of that clip is obviously the woman on camera, boiling, seething, nearly volcanic.

00:03:14.840 But don't forget the assist from the female anchor off camera, who we don't see,

00:03:18.400 who insists that we should have empathy for what she went through.

00:03:22.800 Talking about Lindsay Clancy.

00:03:24.160 Well, the thing that Clancy went through, just to be clear, 0.99

00:03:26.580 is the slaughter of her children carried out by her own hands.

00:03:30.340 you know i don't know if if the women in that clip have kids but if they do i grieve for those

00:03:36.740 children and worry for them but beyond this especially loathsome group of lindsey clancy

00:03:42.800 groupies there has been a deluge of videos some recent some not from female influencers of of

00:03:49.740 every size in both bmi and follower count who spend their ample free time bitterly complaining

00:03:56.520 about their children online. And this is a thriving genre. And the overlap between Clancy's

00:04:02.820 Defenders and the fans of this content is, we can assume, roughly 100%. And it works like this.

00:04:08.500 The influencer posts her complaints on TikTok so that other women, also bitter, also with too much 1.00

00:04:14.440 free time, can watch and validate her. Except they're not really validating her, they're 1.00

00:04:19.260 validating themselves through her. The whole thing is a kind of orgy of self-pity. The comments say

00:04:26.340 stuff like, you're so brave, and thank you for your honesty. But those are affirmations that

00:04:31.920 the commenters mean more for themselves. The influencer takes it as encouragement and posts

00:04:37.220 more, the echo chamber grows ever louder, the whimpering and whining rises and swells, and the 0.59

00:04:43.400 pity party runs on forever, a perpetual motion machine fueled by bitching. There's a lot of this

00:04:49.340 content, and in a moment we'll play a mercifully brief sample and then discuss it, but the first

00:04:54.340 thing to say before we watch any of it is the thing that shouldn't need to be said at all,

00:04:59.760 which is that even if you hate motherhood and hate your children and hate the world and everybody in

00:05:05.200 it, that still does not excuse murdering your family. Just for the record. Now, until the last

00:05:11.740 couple of weeks, even in my most cynical moments, I would not have thought it necessary to clarify

00:05:18.080 that there is no valid excuse for methodically strangling your children to death. Apparently,

00:05:23.620 I was not nearly cynical enough, which is a depressing fact all on its own. And with that

00:05:29.020 said, here it is. Watch. Lindsay Clancy is all of us somehow. Just one slip on the banana peel

00:05:37.000 and it could have been any of us.

00:05:53.620 Being a stay-at-home mom is doing a million things before 10 o'clock in the morning and

00:06:00.620 looking around and feeling like you've done nothing. It's picking up the same things over

00:06:05.980 and over again. It's having the same conversations. I am stuck in St. Four Walls 24-7. It's exhausting.

00:06:14.200 I genuinely feel like I have no purpose in life. I'm just so tired of the need and the want

00:06:20.780 and the questions and the snacks and wiping asses like honest to god them needing to eat 0.70

00:06:29.240 every single day is really killing me i'm completely overwhelmed trying to take care 0.55

00:06:36.600 of the kids i'm drowning every day i feel guilty that i'm spending my family's money

00:06:41.220 and not making any i feel like i spend way too much she wrote that right

00:06:44.840 today has been literally so hard i'm so touched out

00:06:57.660 and i know he just had surgery but like i just want my own space

00:07:14.840 It's bittersweet to think about the damage that we do

00:07:20.680 Cause I was going wrong but I was doing it with you

00:07:23.440 Yeah 0.99

00:07:44.840 Now, keep in mind, this is not a phenomenon confined to TikTok or only to women.

00:07:54.120 Parents openly hating their children is something of a trend and being more and more normalized,

00:08:00.820 although it's not an entirely recent trend.

00:08:03.680 Plenty of adults today know the concept very well from their own childhoods.

00:08:08.960 Time magazine recently published a lengthy essay about the, quote, parents who regret having children.

00:08:14.120 And then Canada's state media organ, the CBC, followed with its own report a few months later, as did BuzzFeed.

00:08:20.020 A Facebook group for parents who regret having children has tens of thousands of members.

00:08:24.600 The Regretful Parents subreddit has hundreds of thousands of active users and 70,000 weekly visitors.

00:08:31.460 We've covered this forum before a couple of years ago.

00:08:33.960 It is perhaps, as a piece last week in Futurism dubbed it, the darkest place on the Internet.

00:08:40.080 And here's a representative sample picked basically at random.

00:08:42.540 somebody posted this yesterday or two days ago title i hate being a mother and i'm not going

00:08:49.540 to read the entire thing but this woman echoes many of the sentiments of those moms on tiktok 1.00

00:08:54.560 and all the lindsey clancy fans she hates being a mother she hates being home with her kids she 0.77

00:08:59.500 hates quote everyone she especially hates her husband now she says and wants to leave therapy

00:09:05.420 she reports has been no help these are two persistent themes on this forum hating the

00:09:11.780 husband and therapy not working. Other posts are even more depressing. One woman brags that she

00:09:17.760 just gave up custody of her five-year-old, her five-year-old son, and is so relieved that she's

00:09:23.000 finally, quote, free. Another describes her life with a seven-year-old son and the fairly run-of-the-mill

00:09:28.860 challenges she's faced with him. He's impatient. He asks for snacks. He yells when he doesn't get

00:09:34.960 his way sometimes. And she says that it's hell on earth and that she hates her life and resents her

00:09:40.000 son. And she hates parenting this boy, quote, more than anything. These are just a few posts

00:09:45.980 from this week, and I chose the more cheerful varieties. It gets a lot worse. The point is that

00:09:52.100 this kind of noxious material is all over the place these days, which means that parents who

00:09:57.700 harbor these dark feelings have no shortage of outlets. They have no scarcity of pots to stew in

00:10:04.300 where they can join each other in their shared hatreds and resentments and persecution complexes.

00:10:10.760 They marinate like chicken breasts in Ziploc bags in the fridge, soaking in the spite and venom,

00:10:17.280 which they then direct toward their families.

00:10:20.120 The cultural effect of all this stuff is horrendous.

00:10:23.860 Young people encounter this content and become as demoralized and hopeless as the people posting it want them to be.

00:10:30.820 Marriage rates continue to plummet as a result.

00:10:33.300 And on a personal level, the effect is cataclysmic, even potentially fatal.

00:10:38.000 I would bet every dollar in my possession that Lindsay Clancy spent plenty of time on these Reddit forums or forums like them and watched countless I hate motherhood type videos.

00:10:50.280 This spectacle does not merely describe the misery these people are feeling. 0.51

00:10:54.860 It encourages it and spreads it like a virus.

00:10:57.580 now if i were inclined to be sympathetic to some of these people and i'm not really but

00:11:04.940 if i were you know they would forfeit that sympathy the moment they publish their complaints

00:11:10.400 online now we'll get to what to do with your resentment toward your children in a moment

00:11:15.340 but the first thing you should know is this don't talk about it in public the first thing you should

00:11:22.420 do with your resentment is not talk about it in public especially not in a forum that puts your

00:11:26.520 feelings on the permanent record immortalized so that anyone, including your children,

00:11:30.840 sooner than you might think, can read them. If you're struggling, you need to understand this

00:11:36.000 fact. No stranger on the internet can help you. Even if your struggle is real, which it often

00:11:42.980 isn't, even if your feelings are justified, which they often aren't, a stranger watching your video

00:11:49.780 can do nothing for you. They can leave supportive comments, I guess, but supportive comments on the

00:11:56.220 internet are an emotional band-aid at best. Worse, actually. They're more like a prescription

00:12:00.860 painkiller whose effect fades as fast as it becomes addictive. You'll need ever more comments

00:12:06.300 and encouraging emojis, and none of it will ever be enough. And meanwhile, by offering your

00:12:11.740 psychological state for public discussion, you've invited the mean and rude comments, too.

00:12:17.580 And an infamous quirk of human nature is that the rude ones land about 100 times harder than

00:12:22.360 the supportive ones. And that leaves you more desperate for reassurance, which invites even

00:12:26.420 ruder feedback. And before you know it, you're being clipped and featured on podcasts by notorious

00:12:30.880 right-wing bullies like me. Now, this kind of stuff, the public vomiting of your personal 0.92

00:12:37.340 anxieties and grievances, is in effect a sort of emotional exhibitionism. You know, it's not so

00:12:43.160 different from some weird nudist traipsing around in public with his grotesque and malformed body 0.65

00:12:48.660 on full display, various parts of himself dangling and flopping in the breeze. So I will say to you

00:12:55.240 what I would say to him, which is keep it to yourself. Have some dignity. Practice some basic

00:13:00.340 level of decorum. In other words, whether literally or metaphorically, put your damned clothes on. 1.00

00:13:07.700 But at least the women simply complaining about their kids aren't quite as bad as the women who 1.00

00:13:11.980 stage emotional meltdowns for the camera and use their children as props in the performance. 0.79

00:13:18.660 This is another very popular genre. Here's one example.

00:13:48.660 this as we said is all staged for the camera of course the child doesn't understand that it's fake

00:14:11.880 though or why mommy is pretending to have a nervous breakdown over a little liquid spilled

00:14:17.000 on an uncarpeted floor. And the point of the charade is for the woman to brag that she didn't 1.00

00:14:23.440 hit her daughter or scream at her over a minor accident, though she did growl like a werewolf 1.00

00:14:29.100 and clutch her head in agony over liquid spilling on the ground. This is what's supposed to be good 0.71

00:14:36.400 mothering on TikTok. This is the good advice. If these are the good mothers, you hate to see the

00:14:41.520 bad ones. In fact, we have seen them. One is on trial right now in Massachusetts. So the bar

00:14:46.600 gets very, very low. Now, let's get to the part of this mansplaining lecture that might, just might,

00:14:54.400 however slim the chance, be helpful to these women or any other parent who relates to them.

00:15:00.840 If you genuinely hate being a parent, here's what you need to know. And I say this with all

00:15:07.740 sincerity, okay? There is something wrong with you. Nobody will tell you that. Probably nobody

00:15:14.980 ever has. In our culture, you're never supposed to inform anyone that there's something wrong with

00:15:19.740 them, even especially, in fact, if there obviously is. Well, I'm breaking that rule to tell you that

00:15:26.920 there is something wrong with you. You should enjoy being a parent. You should enjoy it. Not

00:15:32.920 all the time, not every second of every day. I'm not saying you should live in a state of constant

00:15:37.440 maternal euphoria or that you should never be frustrated or angry or sad or irritated.

00:15:42.140 But generally, as a rule, you should enjoy being a parent. It's not hard to enjoy. Opportunities for enjoyment present themselves every day. A couple of nights ago, to give one random example, I took my kids out to dinner and then to a bookstore. That's our idea of a night out on the town, okay? And it was fun, not just for them, but for me.

00:16:02.980 The time I spent with my kids was not some great sacrifice.

00:16:06.740 It was not a burden that I heroically shouldered for their sake.

00:16:11.200 I actually just like hanging out with them.

00:16:12.680 They're smart.

00:16:13.280 They're funny.

00:16:13.720 They're fun to be around.

00:16:15.300 Now, yeah, they can annoy me sometimes, but anybody can annoy me.

00:16:17.800 I mean, I've never spent considerable time around another human without being annoyed

00:16:21.520 by them on occasion, and I've never spent considerable time around another human without

00:16:25.440 causing them annoyance in return, I'm sure.

00:16:28.480 That's life.

00:16:29.180 generally though and i definitely cannot say this about everyone i've known or even probably most

00:16:35.360 people i like spending time with my kids and this is how you should feel about your kids it doesn't

00:16:41.240 take a great saint or a person of exceptional virtue to feel this way if it did i wouldn't

00:16:47.140 but i do if i can enjoy being a parent so can you if you find that you hate parenthood and resent

00:16:55.340 your kids and wish for nothing more than to be free of the responsibilities of caring for the

00:17:01.060 children that you brought into the world, there are two potential causes of this dysfunction.

00:17:07.580 You're not going to like hearing about either of them. Okay, I'm just warning you, both are

00:17:11.960 unflattering. But someone in your life needs to tell you the unflattering thing. And I suspect

00:17:18.040 that nobody ever has. So here it is. One potential reason that you hate being a parent

00:17:24.340 is that you are so stuck in your own head, so consumed by your own ego, that you have never

00:17:30.520 put in the minimal effort required to develop a real relationship with your children. You despise

00:17:35.740 being around your kids because you despise being around anyone who makes any demands on your

00:17:40.920 attention or your time. This is called narcissism. And narcissists can't enjoy the company of any

00:17:46.360 other human for very long because other humans are other. They are outside of you. They are

00:17:51.100 different from you and they are useful to you or sources of delight or satisfaction for you

00:17:56.040 only as long as they serve your own needs. The moment they commit the sin of having needs that

00:18:03.100 differ from yours, they have overstayed their welcome. And I would surmise that the vast

00:18:08.780 majority of parents who hate their kids or at least hate being around their kids,

00:18:12.580 and the distinction, by the way, is quite fragile between those two things, hate it for this reason.

00:18:20.720 The Lindsay Clancy Moms of America, LCMA, we'll call their unofficial organization,

00:18:25.900 certainly fall into this category. They feel about their kids the way Clancy felt about hers

00:18:30.860 because they, like her, place themselves at the center of the universe and automatically despise

00:18:36.920 anyone or anything that would try to jostle them from that central position.

00:18:42.580 Now, the other possible reason that you find your children tough to be around,

00:18:47.020 related to the first and not necessarily mutually exclusive,

00:18:50.640 is that your kids actually are tough to be around. 0.99

00:18:53.660 They really are needy, miserable, obnoxious, grating, 0.97

00:18:57.900 to a degree that even the most patient person would struggle to endure. 0.96

00:19:01.860 I mean, it's possible that your kids would have Mother Teresa 0.62

00:19:04.400 silently rolling her eyes and plotting the politest possible exit.

00:19:08.880 If that's the case, and maybe it is, the reason they've turned out that way so far is that you have done an extremely poor job of raising them.

00:19:20.280 It's your fault.

00:19:22.280 It would not be an oversimplification, or at least only a very slight one, to say that your whole job as a parent is to help your kids become the kinds of people other people like to be around.

00:19:32.680 Jordan Peterson has often made this point.

00:19:34.800 If you don't even like being around them, imagine how other people, potential friends,

00:19:39.820 potential employers, potential spouses, will feel about them in the future.

00:19:44.120 You have failed.

00:19:46.000 And that's something that I'm guessing you already know, at least at some level, and

00:19:49.060 it makes you hate parenthood and hate your children even more.

00:19:52.080 They are a reflection of your failures, and you know it, so you hate them.

00:19:57.020 These are the two options. 0.92

00:19:59.660 You hate being around your kids, either because you are a raging narcissist or because you 0.83

00:20:04.060 have failed as a parent or both. Either way, this is what we call a you problem. It is 0.97

00:20:12.000 your fault, not theirs. This falls on you. And squarely on you, by the way. Also not 0.98

00:20:19.740 on the system or the community or anyone. It falls on you. This is your failure. And

00:20:29.580 it's important that you face that reality and accept it. After all, acceptance is, as they say

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00:22:53.380 So what should you do next?

00:22:56.040 Well, now that we've established why precisely you abhor parenthood so much,

00:23:00.580 what can you do about it?

00:23:01.960 Well, here's the good news.

00:23:03.200 All is not lost.

00:23:04.480 There is one very simple and very effective thing you can do to fix everything.

00:23:07.700 And if not everything, then a lot of things.

00:23:09.900 It's the method that will solve a surprisingly large number of your personal problems.

00:23:14.520 And I'll tell you what it is.

00:23:16.580 Pretend.

00:23:17.020 If you hate being a parent and it's all your fault, which it is, then what you need to do is pretend that you don't hate it.

00:23:25.940 Yes, pretend. Yes, suppress your true feelings. Yes, put on an act.

00:23:31.520 Don't be genuine. Don't be authentic. Don't be honest about how you feel.

00:23:36.880 Pretend. Fake it. Put on a facade and maintain that facade at all times and at all costs.

00:23:44.720 Do this for the sake of your kids, because it's deeply scarring and unfair to saddle them with your issues.

00:23:50.420 And this is, as we've established, your issue. 0.99

00:23:54.060 Your kids should not have to cope with the reality that their mother or their father is a miserable, narcissistic jerk who resents them for existing. 0.99

00:24:03.160 There's nothing a child can do with that information. He can't fix it or you. That's not his job. 1.00

00:24:08.260 Your child is not your parent or your therapist or your priest.

00:24:11.760 He's not here to be the lighthouse in your emotional storm guiding you to a safe harbor.

00:24:16.900 You're supposed to be his lighthouse.

00:24:19.620 So even if you don't feel like it, even if you aren't into it,

00:24:22.680 even if it's really hard and it really sucks and you're really sad and you're really depressed

00:24:26.040 or whatever, you need to turn that light on for his sake.

00:24:31.960 You should also maintain the facade for the public, frankly.

00:24:35.540 Your kids shouldn't have to deal with your emotional fragility and vanity and egotism,

00:24:39.260 and neither should any of the rest of us.

00:24:41.100 We don't want to see your true self either, because it's unsightly and off-putting.

00:24:46.020 Nobody should be forced to bear witness to it.

00:24:48.260 I refer back to the nudist analogy. 0.99

00:24:50.720 Like, I don't want to see your exposed ass or your exposed emotions. 0.99

00:24:54.000 I don't want to see any of that for the same reason that I don't want to smell your body odor. 0.99

00:24:58.540 Now, sure, your stench after failing to bathe for a week might be more authentic.

00:25:02.080 It might give me a more accurate whiff of your true self, but if your true authentic self is repulsive, then why should anyone be forced to be in close proximity to it?

00:25:12.740 Why should there be any virtue in inflicting a repugnant personality onto the public, much less onto your family, just because it happens to be true?

00:25:22.480 There are two very popular and modern and bad ideas at work here, both of them originating from

00:25:28.900 or heavily pushed by therapists and psychologists, as very popular and modern and bad ideas so often

00:25:34.800 are. One is the notion that your most self-serving and antisocial impulses are somehow your true self

00:25:41.820 and that the height of authenticity is to act according to those impulses, as though authenticity

00:25:47.240 means nothing more than enslaving yourself to your own emotions. And the other is what has

00:25:52.300 been dubbed the hydraulic psychological model pioneered by guys like Freud, which teaches that

00:25:59.040 your inner emotions and desires are like steam building up inside the pressure cooker of your

00:26:05.540 mind. And you have to let them out. You have to vent them so that you don't somehow mysteriously

00:26:10.360 combust. And both of these have led in their most absurd and cartoonish manifestations to things

00:26:16.120 like rage rituals where women get together and scream and beat sticks on the ground as a form of

00:26:22.100 some kind of bizarre catharsis. Watch. 1.00

00:26:46.120 Now, you might think that impotent rage can't get any more preposterous and embarrassing than that, 0.93

00:27:05.020 but a popular and recent version of this ritual somehow is even more inane,

00:27:10.400 And it involves women, usually mothers, gathering ice cubes from the freezer and then locking themselves in the bathroom and throwing the ice cubes at the bathtub, often while their kids are crying on the other side of the door, understandably confused and alarmed. 0.98

00:27:28.040 Now, the problem with this approach, aside from the fact that it makes you look retarded, 0.92

00:27:31.840 is that it does not actually release the steam or relieve the tension. 1.00

00:27:36.900 All you have done by indulging the most ridiculous parts of yourself in the most obnoxious way imaginable 0.89

00:27:43.260 is work yourself up even more. 0.99

00:27:46.540 Make yourself even more upset.

00:27:48.040 And you have conditioned yourself to behave even worse in the future.

00:27:52.760 Okay, these are temper tantrums.

00:27:54.080 A temper tantrum is an unacceptable and unhealthy coping mechanism for a nine-year-old.

00:27:58.680 If your nine-year-old is still having temper tantrums, that's an issue.

00:28:02.900 For a 35-year-old, it's genuinely insane.

00:28:07.860 Despite what Freud and his disciples have said for the past century,

00:28:10.940 and these people made up a lot of stuff, and this is one of them,

00:28:16.120 you know, suppression and repression are actually generally good things.

00:28:22.560 Okay, being a civilized adult, somebody who observes the most basic codes of etiquette

00:28:26.900 and decorum, and who is not an antisocial freak or a raging selfish brat, means spending

00:28:32.660 a huge chunk of every day presenting a version of yourself that is more tolerable, more appealing,

00:28:40.900 more composed, and more attractive than the self that is buried in the most indulgent

00:28:46.220 and egotistical parts of your mind.

00:28:47.720 That is the only way to be a functional person, and bringing it back to the matter at hand, the only way to be a functional parent.

00:28:58.120 Fake it till you make it.

00:28:59.960 Maybe the wisest and most useful cliche in the whole history of cliches.

00:29:04.780 It's the best parenting advice you'll ever get.

00:29:08.420 Act like the kind of parent you should be.

00:29:11.040 Identify all the parenting traits you wish you had, and pretend that you have them.

00:29:16.020 put on a performance. It doesn't have to be an Oscar-winning production.

00:29:20.760 You don't need to be a Philip Seymour Hoffman-level thespian to pull it off. Your kids

00:29:24.400 won't really notice. Pretend to be the sort of parent you ought to be.

00:29:29.120 Shoulder the burden of your own narcissism silently and with dignity. Wear a mask,

00:29:34.400 yes, and keep it on until your true face takes the shape of the mask, conforms to it like a mold,

00:29:40.620 until the mask and you are the same.

00:29:43.960 You can, in fact, become something by pretending you are that thing.

00:29:48.200 Now, it may not work that way in all areas of life.

00:29:50.240 It doesn't work that way, for example, with biological sex.

00:29:53.500 But in this specific area, it does.

00:29:56.140 Because if you suppress your narcissistic feelings and tendencies 0.89

00:30:00.080 and pretend to be something other than the self-involved, whiny, emotional toddler

00:30:04.340 that you are deep inside, after a while, by definition,

00:30:08.000 you will no longer be that self-involved, whiny, emotional toddler. The very act of assuming the

00:30:14.260 burden of your own weaknesses and failures and choosing not to inflict them on those around you

00:30:19.600 turns you by force of will into precisely the unselfish, mature person you're pretending to be.

00:30:26.300 Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that

00:30:30.940 Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun

00:30:36.820 if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal.

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00:30:44.860 Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

00:30:47.940 Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required.

00:30:51.860 $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.

00:30:53.740 Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.

00:30:56.840 In today's uncertain economy, American financing is helping families find a way out of the high

00:31:02.440 interest trap. We're heading into summer, but the economic clouds aren't clearing for most

00:31:07.240 middle-class families. Between persistent inflation and the cost of daily life, you're likely feeling

00:31:11.640 the pressure. You've worked hard for your home, probably have more equity than you realize, yet

00:31:16.220 the summer surge is forcing many to rely on credit cards. It's an exhausting cycle, but American

00:31:21.020 financing understands that 2026 requires a real strategy. That's why they have salary-based

00:31:26.680 mortgage consultants with mortgage rates in the fives. Their customers are saving an average of

00:31:31.800 $800 a month by wiping out high interest debt. That's money that stays in your pocket to fight

00:31:37.820 back against rising costs. No upfront fees, no pressure. And if you start today, you could delay

00:31:42.940 two mortgage payments. Call American Finance today, 866-569-4711. That's 866-569-4711.

00:31:50.320 Or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Walsh. There is no such thing as a selfish, immature person

00:31:57.780 who typically acts unselfish and mature around other people.

00:32:02.320 That's a contradiction in terms.

00:32:03.780 It's like a married bachelor.

00:32:05.760 Unselfish, mature people are people who act unselfish and mature.

00:32:09.660 Feeling otherwise and still acting that way

00:32:12.040 only makes you all the more unselfish and mature.

00:32:15.880 That's the funny thing about virtue.

00:32:17.640 To act as though you have it is to have it.

00:32:21.180 A person who feels like a great coward

00:32:23.320 but pretends to be courageous by rushing into a burning building

00:32:26.620 to save a child trapped inside is exactly what he pretends to be. A courageous man, by definition,

00:32:33.060 is a man who is scared to do something, but does it anyway. Courage is a thing you do. Good parenting

00:32:39.260 is a thing you do. You yourself are what you do. Your feelings and insecurities and selfish

00:32:43.940 instincts may also be a part of who you are, but they are the least important, most fleeting,

00:32:49.680 most tangential, certainly least interesting part. They can change on a minute-to-minute basis.

00:32:56.620 They don't exist in any kind of real, physical sense

00:33:00.380 Nobody even knows about them unless you make a public announcement

00:33:04.700 When you die, the whole hazy cloud of emotions and sentiments in your head dies with you

00:33:11.020 But what you did, what you said, the person you presented yourself to be through your actions and words

00:33:16.820 Will be remembered

00:33:18.040 That's your legacy, that will be the thing that outlives you

00:33:20.880 It will be who you were

00:33:22.980 So it is now who you are

00:33:27.280 The other thing about feelings is that they are easily influenced. 1.00

00:33:31.900 They're stupid. They can be fooled. They can be duped, manipulated, not just by other people, 1.00

00:33:37.480 but by you. You can condition your feelings through your actions. So if you pretend to be

00:33:44.360 a good and loving parent and you act as though you love your children and your spouse and

00:33:49.780 enjoy being around them, the chances are very good that one day you'll look up and realize that

00:33:54.880 you're actually not faking it anymore. You genuinely do enjoy giving your time and yourself

00:34:00.620 to those you love. This is a process, by the way, that plays out in small ways again and again.

00:34:05.780 Fake it till you make it is not just a one-time fix. You'll have to continually act in ways

00:34:11.160 other than how you feel, as we established. That's part of life. And you'll find that often

00:34:16.080 your feelings follow after. Your feelings are the freight car, not the locomotive. They will

00:34:21.820 go where you take them. I mentioned earlier the wild night out in the town with my kids a few

00:34:27.560 days ago, eating hamburgers and visiting a bookstore. Well, the dark and terrible secret

00:34:32.140 is that at first I really didn't feel like doing any of that. I was in kind of a bad mood

00:34:36.000 for no particular reason. Because that's how moods tend to work. Moods, especially bad ones,

00:34:41.080 don't need a reason to be what they are. They just are. And so what I wanted that night was

00:34:45.640 for my kids to go to bed so I could have a break. Never mind that my day really had not been

00:34:51.160 difficult. Nothing especially stressful had occurred. It was a fine day. It was a normal day.

00:34:56.340 Yet here I was after a fine normal day needing a break. A break from what? Who knows? Fine normal

00:35:04.600 stuff, I guess. But then I realized that I'd rather be the kind of dad in this moment who

00:35:09.660 spends time with his kids instead of the kind of dad who sulks off in a huff because he's moody.

00:35:14.320 So I pretended to be that better dad in that moment. I said that this little trip was no

00:35:20.020 great sacrifice, and it wasn't. It was instead like the tiniest little microscopic sacrifice,

00:35:25.880 and many of the sacrifices you have to make as a parent or as a person in general are roughly

00:35:30.280 this size and scope. Sacrifice is so small that it's embarrassing to even describe them as such.

00:35:37.360 And what do you know? Within about 10 minutes, I was enjoying myself. I became the dad that I had

00:35:42.660 so inauthentically portrayed myself to be. This is the magic of pretending. It works like a charm

00:35:49.360 most of the time. Joe Rigney on X reminds me of one of the many great C.S. Lewis quotes where he

00:35:55.860 summarizes the point more insightfully and succinctly than I have managed to do, of course.

00:36:01.640 And he wrote, C.S. Lewis wrote, as practical imperatives for here and now, the two great

00:36:06.720 commandments have to be translated, behave as if you loved God and man. Do not waste time bothering

00:36:11.860 whether you love your neighbor, act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great

00:36:17.380 secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

00:36:23.980 Now, the inverse is also true. The more you act in an unloving way towards someone,

00:36:30.980 the less you will actually love them. And that process plays out in families and destroys them

00:36:37.600 all the time. So act as if you love your family and your children and your station in life.

00:36:44.440 let the feelings follow, as they probably will. Put on the act. Never tell anyone that it is an

00:36:51.140 act. Keep it a secret known only to you. Until maybe, maybe one day, long in the future,

00:36:59.720 when your child has a child of their own and seems to be struggling as you once did,

00:37:04.500 you can sit them down and tell them, only then, about the war you waged successfully and quietly

00:37:11.400 against your own selfish, resentful nature.

00:37:14.600 And when they hear that after all those years,

00:37:16.960 they won't think, wow, my mom didn't really love me.

00:37:19.620 It was all an act.

00:37:21.540 Rather, they will think, wow,

00:37:23.800 my mom loved me even more than I ever realized.

00:37:27.620 And that will be the truth.

00:37:31.860 That'll do it for the show today.

00:37:32.540 Thanks for watching.

00:37:33.040 Thanks for listening.

00:37:33.580 Talk to you tomorrow.

00:37:35.120 Have a great day.

00:37:35.780 Godspeed.

00:37:41.400 But in all of my years of public life, I have never profited from public service.

00:37:50.500 I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their

00:37:54.800 president's a crook.

00:37:55.800 Well, I'm not a crook. 0.97

00:37:57.800 For more than five decades, from Iran-Contra to Monica Lewinsky to Russiagate, every political

00:38:02.700 scandal has been measured against one, the Watergate affair.

00:38:06.800 But what if Richard Nixon was telling the truth?

00:38:09.600 What if Watergate isn't what it seems?

00:38:11.960 What if hundreds of thousands of pages of sworn testimony, memoirs, and newly released

00:38:16.560 government documents tell a different story than the one you learned in school?

00:38:20.780 In 1972, Nixon won the biggest electoral landslide in modern American history with

00:38:26.420 grand plans to remake the federal government.

00:38:29.680 Two years later, he was out of office.

00:38:32.140 You were taught that Nixon's men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters

00:38:35.960 to spy on his political opponents.

00:38:38.160 You were taught that when he found out, Nixon covered it up and that the cover-up was worse

00:38:43.700 than the crime.

00:38:45.540 You were taught that two heroic Washington Post reporters guided by a righteous FBI whistleblower

00:38:51.760 brought the most powerful man in the world to justice, but you were never taught what

00:38:56.400 really happened.

00:38:57.400 I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

00:39:00.040 The Real History of the Watergate Scandal is available now on Daily Wire Plus.

00:39:08.160 Transcription by CastingWords

00:39:38.160 In today's uncertain economy, American financing is helping families find a way out of the high-interest trap.

00:39:46.700 We're heading into summer, but the economic clouds aren't clearing for most middle-class families.

00:39:51.880 Between persistent inflation and the cost of daily life, you're likely feeling the pressure.

00:39:55.800 You've worked hard for your home, probably have more equity than you realize, yet the summer surge is forcing many to rely on credit cards.

00:40:02.740 It's an exhausting cycle, but American Financing understands that 2026 requires a real strategy.

00:40:08.840 That's why they have salary-based mortgage consultants with mortgage rates in the fives.

00:40:13.540 Their customers are saving an average of $800 a month by wiping out high-interest debt.

00:40:18.600 That's money that stays in your pocket to fight back against rising costs.

00:40:22.920 No upfront fees, no pressure.

00:40:24.480 And if you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments.

00:40:27.400 Call American Financing today, 866-569-4711.

00:40:30.400 4711. That's 866-569-4711. Or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Walsh.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 26, 2026

Ep. 1829 - It’s Time To Mansplain Parenting To TikTok Moms Who Resent Their Own Kids

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