Ep. 293 - Beto Says America Is A Racist Hellscape
Episode Stats
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171.91049
Summary
Beto O'Rourke went down to the border to meet with immigrants and refugees, and he proceeded to trash America. Also, AOC implies that Nancy Pelosi is racist. And I want to talk about the very common modern practice of filming troubled people so that we can laugh at them online.
Transcript
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, Beto O'Rourke went down to the border to meet with immigrants and refugees, and he proceeded to trash America.
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He's just a great guy, but we'll talk about that.
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Also, AOC implies that Nancy Pelosi is racist, which is kind of hilarious, but also, on the other hand, disgusting.
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And I want to talk about the very common modern practice of filming troubled people so that we can laugh at them online.
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I think that maybe we should stop doing that. We'll talk about the latest example today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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So Beto O'Rourke, poor fella, there was a time when he was getting a lot of hype.
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He was considered a real contender, but now he's lost somewhere in the middle of the pack with nary a table to stand on.
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And he's because, I think mainly because he's dealing with probably a fatal flaw for a Democrat in 2019, and that is that he's a white male.
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The problem with being a white male is that, number one, white males are toxic scum and should all die.
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Number two, related to number one, is that if you're a white male, then you're automatically going to be under suspicion of being un-woke.
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Okay, so un-wokeness is a condition that plagues most white males.
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So if you are a white male, people are going to suspect that you lack wokeness, which means that if you want to run for president as a Democrat, you're going to have to do quite a lot to prove your innocence, to prove that you are in fact woke, that you are not guilty of the crime of being un-woke.
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So it is a guilty until proven innocent sort of situation.
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And Beto, along with his other white male candidate compatriots, has been trying very hard to quell the suspicions that he may in fact be un-woke.
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And that is why he went to a group of immigrants yesterday and trashed America, talked about how bad America is, which is a very woke thing to do.
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And, well, we'll get into that in just a second.
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All right, so Beto, in Pursuit of Wokeness, maybe that should be the, you know, sort of Pursuit of Happiness, maybe that should be the name of his memoirs, Pursuit of Wokeness.
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He went to speak to a group of immigrants and refugees yesterday, and he said this.
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This country was founded on white supremacy, and every single institution and structure that we have in our country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression, even in our democracy.
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If you are, if it's true that America is a racist, sexist, bigoted hellscape founded on white supremacy, and to this day institutionally oppresses minorities,
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a country where the legacy of slavery still lives on, is still alive and well and affecting minorities even today,
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then why the hell would you encourage immigrants to come here?
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It seems like a very cruel and hateful thing to do.
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I mean, wouldn't it be an act of compassion, an act of concern and sympathy to prevent them from coming?
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Shouldn't you be, shouldn't you yourself then, if you hold this position, if you hold this view,
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shouldn't you, shouldn't Beto O'Rourke be standing at the border yourself saying,
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no, don't come here, save yourself anywhere but here?
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The people that hold this view, these are the same people flinging open the doors and saying,
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It's like giving a restaurant a scathing review on Yelp and then turning around and recommending the place to all of your family and friends.
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It just, it doesn't, so if you do that, it means that either your review was untrue and you really liked the place more than you said,
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or you hate your friends and family even more than you hate the restaurant, that you're trying to inflict that on them.
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So it just does, it doesn't make sense to, oh, you know, this place is terrible, I got salmonella poisoning.
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And then the next day, hey, you know, that joint down the street, you should really check that out.
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You're like a biological terrorist in that case.
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You're saying that it's a racist place, it's a horrible, and then you're, what's going to happen to all these people that you're encouraging to come here?
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Not only that, but you're saying we're running concentration camps down on the border.
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But it's worse than that, because Democrats will not only encourage minorities to come here, where they're going to allegedly be oppressed and discriminated against in locked in concentration camps.
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But they'll even say that America is their, you know, is their hope.
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It's their only chance at a better life, et cetera.
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Well, fine, but if that's the case, then you can't also say that America is a handmaid's tale.
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It can't be that we have to fling open the doors for immigrants because this country is their only hope and their only dream.
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But then also, it is a dystopian, racist, nightmare, you know, land of horrors for minorities.
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Second thing, these white male Democratic candidates have a problem.
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If it's really as bad as they say, that it's hard to justify staying in the race at all as a white male.
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I mean, shouldn't a minority or a woman or both be in charge in that case?
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Of course, all the white males in the race have said, oh, yeah, you know, I'll have a female vice president.
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But that's even worse because now you're saying, yeah, I mean, we should definitely have women in power, but they shouldn't be in charge.
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I mean, there's still got to be a man above the woman just making sure everything's squared away.
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So, yeah, we definitely need to have a woman in the White House, but no, no, no, not in charge.
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I mean, these are women we're talking about here, okay?
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That's what it sounds like when you start doing, oh, yeah, well, we definitely need to have a woman in there.
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No, not there, not sitting behind the Oval Office, but with a smaller desk, but still with a desk.
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And that's why, as a white male, you will always lose the identity politics game.
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There's no way to win, so you have to just not play it or completely submit to it and withdraw from public life entirely
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because you are, as I said, toxic scum who should die as a white male.
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Third, maybe this is the most important thing to discuss.
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Founded on white supremacy implies that white supremacy was sort of the point.
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Like the founders were looking primarily to establish a country where whites would be supreme, where they would be in charge.
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But the thing is, they already had a country like that.
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The country they broke away from, that was already the case.
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America was founded on principles of liberty and limited government.
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Were those principles consistently and fully applied?
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Is it true that, as Beto says, to get the exact quote,
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every single institution and structure we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery?
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And if it were true, then what will, here's my question.
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If it's true that America is still institutionally racist and that the legacy of slavery lives on its own,
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what will make it so that that isn't true anymore?
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Well, it's already been 150 years since slavery, and you're still saying that the legacy of slavery is there.
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Well, we had a black president for eight years, and that apparently didn't even make a dent in institutional racism.
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We had a black person running the whole system, the whole institution.
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And apparently that, and if you thought that that meant that institutional racism was gone,
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well, it would seem to mean that that would be a logical conclusion.
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If a black man can successfully become the most powerful person in the country,
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it would seem to indicate that we don't have a very serious problem with institutional discrimination against black men.
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Or it means that the institutional discrimination is so incompetent and ineffective
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that a black person can still become the president of the country.
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Either way, but see, that would be a logical conclusion.
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Not only will they disagree with that conclusion, but they will heap scorn on you if you even suggest it.
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Oh, you mean that just because we had a black president, there's not a problem with institutional racism?
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It's kind of like when, you know, leftists, they make these racism charges.
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And they accuse everyone of being racist and everything of being racist.
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And they set it up so that it is an accusation that simply cannot be disproven.
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Because any evidence that would seem to indicate otherwise, they immediately discard as invalid,
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So they'll say that America is institutionally racist.
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Evidence against that view would seem to be we had a black president.
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But it's a similar thing to if, you know, it's a sort of classic faux pas that if you're accused of racism,
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you're not allowed to point out that you have close friends who are black.
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What we're told is that actually that makes you even more racist if you use that as evidence that you're not racist.
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If you try to say, oh, well, I can't be racist.
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Isn't that, in fact, evidence that someone isn't racist?
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If they really, now, if they're claiming they have black friends and they don't,
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But if they really do have black friends, isn't that evidence that, I mean,
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it's at least an indication that they probably aren't racist.
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Because if you're racist against a particular race, you're not going to be friends with people in that race.
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It just seems like that's part of the whole racism thing.
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To me, it seems like a good, like a solid piece of evidence in somebody's favor.
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Because there can, there's just no, if you are accused of being racist,
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you're not allowed to present any evidence to clear you of the charge.
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Is it true that they were bigots and sexist by our modern standards?
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Well, the answer to those questions, finally, is yes.
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But, and don't take this the wrong way, but what's your point?
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See, this is why this conversation, if your point is simply to observe that fact and say,
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But this conversation is so pointless and fruitless, this sort of moral relitigation of the past,
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where we go back and we observe the sins and foibles of our ancestors.
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I think that probably regardless, that would be a fruitless endeavor, a pointless endeavor.
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I'm not really sure what the point could possibly be.
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But it's even more fruitless and pointless because we are so determined to relitigate the past through a very narrow lens.
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A lens that pretends that these white racists existed in a vacuum, a lens that looks not at the historical context,
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not at the whole picture, but just focuses in on white people and pretends that there was something unique and especially terrible about their racism.
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But if we were to widen the scope a bit, we would see that everyone, everywhere in the world, in every country,
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was a racist and a sexist by our standards today.
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If you go back 200 years or earlier, so any time up to 200 years ago,
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you will find that every country on the planet is filled with tribalistic bigots by our standards.
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Does that fact excuse the individual bigotry of any particular person who lived back then?
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Does it mitigate, to some extent, their own personal moral guilt for being racist?
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And this is a concept I think people struggle with.
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There's a difference between the objective moral quality of something
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and the moral guilt of the person who engages in that activity or has that thought or whatever it is.
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So racism has always been wrong all throughout history.
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However, a racist 200 years ago or 500 years ago probably does not have the same moral guilt for that racism as a racist today.
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And the reason is that, yeah, it's a taken for granted.
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Now, we may look at it today and we say, well, it should be obvious to you that you shouldn't be racist.
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Well, maybe it should have been, but it wasn't.
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It's very clear that for thousands of years of human history, it was not obvious that racism was wrong because almost everybody was.
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And for a long time, it wasn't even questioned.
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And the idea that all people in the world are equal, no matter what they look like, no matter what language they speak, that is a very modern concept.
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That just didn't occur to people for thousands of years.
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So we could say, oh, I should have, but it didn't.
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And so we are left with the choice between condemning everybody in history, pretty much, as just utterly bigoted, horrible, worthless scumbags, or we can start to look at them in historical context, understand that they had some serious blind spots, try to understand those blind spots, why they had those blind spots.
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And then we can try to, you know, rather than staying focused on that, we could say, well, what are our blinds?
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It seems though, as though people in every era have moral blind spots, just immoral things that they take for granted.
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We know for our ancestors, that moral blind spot was racism and for a long time slavery too.
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Well, maybe we should look and think, well, what are our blind spots?
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Or is it possible that there are things that we take for granted that are actually horrible?
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I think maybe that would be a more, um, worthwhile endeavor.
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Uh, speaking of racism or alleged racism, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just essentially called Nancy Pelosi a racist.
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She was interviewed by the Washington Post and, uh, this is what she said.
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She said, um, talking about Nancy Pelosi and the comments that Nancy Pelosi has been making about her supposedly.
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She said, when these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm's distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood.
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But the persistent singling out, it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful, the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.
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She just accused Nancy Pelosi of singling out women of color.
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Um, now, is there any evidence at all that Nancy Pelosi is singling out women of color?
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Is there any reason to believe that Nancy Pelosi has an issue with AOC because of her color and not because of, uh, the fact of her harebrained policy ideas and her general attention seeking behavior?
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And I understand the conservatives who laugh about this and say, Hey, let them eat their own.
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And they're even conservatives that kind of encourage it and try to, Oh yeah, Nancy Pelosi, she is a racist.
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It's, it's a smart strategy, but I just, I hate this race baiting garbage so much that, um, I have to take Nancy Pelosi side.
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The race baiting thing, I, I really just despise it.
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Um, because, you know, there, there are enough real problems in the world and there's enough real bigotry still.
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I, I, what we were talking about a few minutes ago, I don't mean to suggest there's no bigotry left in the world.
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There's plenty of, plenty of it still left, especially in other countries.
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Um, uh, where, you know, people who are in ethnic minorities can be killed and stoned to death and so on.
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Um, but so there's, there's so much of it really out there that to try to invent it for your own, um, purposes, uh, to try to exploit it.
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Um, these people who have made racism into a game, into a tool for them to use into a hammer, they can beat over the heads of their opponents.
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And, and do it, you know, sort of indiscriminately or just, I mean, with, with AOC, it's just anyone that opposes her is a racist and a sexist.
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It doesn't matter who, even if it's Nancy Pelosi, it's a racism.
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And it's also, it's so intellectually cowardly.
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There's so much intellectual cowardice in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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She refuses to engage with anyone in an honest way.
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Instead, it's just, if you oppose her, you're a sexist and racist, period.
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I actually have to take Nancy Pelosi's side in this, which is a very bizarre sensation, and I don't like it.
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I hope you're ready to cringe, because I have a very cringey thing to show you.
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I, I, I actually, I, I think I've been saying her name wrong this whole time.
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Well, I'd never heard of her until, you know, a few weeks ago.
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Um, and now I find her to be one of the most insufferable people on the planet.
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Because of videos like that, holding the trophies, like, I deserve this.
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I mean, just the statement itself, I deserve this, is annoying.
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But she even said it in a way that's extra annoying.
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Um, now, a lot of people have said that the criticism of Rapinoe, Rapinoe, Rapinoe, is
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Is, um, the criticism is unfair, and, you know, male, male athletes never get criticized
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Well, first of all, male athletes get criticized all the time.
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They're constantly criticized, especially male athletes who are perceived, whether rightly
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or wrongly, for, as being egotistical, attention-seeking, um, sorts of people.
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Those kinds of athletes, those sorts of people in general, no matter what they do for a living,
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Second, male athletes don't usually do some of the stuff that Rapinoe is out there doing.
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Um, like hoisting the trophy that you just won as a team and shouting, I deserve this.
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I mean, most male athletes, um, have the concept of teamwork just hammered into their heads
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from a very young age, so almost reflexively, when they're interviewed or when they achieve
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something, they're, they're almost always going to bring it back to the team.
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Eh, it's not about me, it's about the team, whatever's good for the team, the team did
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this, the team did that, which is good, it's good, it's a good thing, it's, that's one of
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the great things about team sports for kids, is that it, it, it, it has this humbling
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effect. Um, so if Tom Brady ever hoisted up the Lombardi trophy and shouted, I deserve
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this, uh, he would be roasted for that by everyone and there would be no one defending
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it. But see, the thing is Tom Brady, even though I think he is a narcissist, uh, and
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maybe with good reason, considering he's the greatest quarterback in the history of the
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league and he has, and he's won, uh, you know, approximately 65 super bowls. But if
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he were to ever hoist the Lombardi trophy and say, I deserve this, he would be roasted
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by everyone, rightfully so. Uh, but he wouldn't do that. Whether or not he would like to do
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that or he has those thoughts, I don't know, but he would never actually do that. When he
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hoist the Lombardi trophy, which he's done several times, uh, he's always about the team.
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He's talking about the team. But again, if any male athlete were ever to do something
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like that, they would be criticized by everyone. In fact, it's, oh, this is where female athletes
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have the privilege because a female athlete does that. And yeah, she's going to be criticized
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by some people like myself who are consistent because I would criticize anyone who did that
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male or female. But then she's also going to have a chorus of defenders that the male athlete
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won't have for the male athlete. No one's going to defend that. Everyone's going to say,
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oh, come on, man. That's disgusting. It wasn't just you. It was your team. Okay. What do
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you mean? You deserve this? Your team deserves it. What is this? I stuff. There is no I in
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team, right? But there is a me, right? Okay. Um, that's what would happen. But with female
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athletes, there's going to be that chorus, the feminists who'd say, oh, in fact, I saw that
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video online yesterday, um, with a caption from someone saying, I forget what they, the exact
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words they use, but they said, uh, this is empowering. It's a, um, you know, it's a basically
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making it about empowerment. I don't remember the exact words they use, but they were saying
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that this is empowering for women. It's a declaration of, uh, female strength and so on.
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Um, and that's just, again, that's, that is not something you would ever hear for a male
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athlete. If a male athlete acts like an insufferable blowhard, narcissistic, attention
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seeking jerk, nobody is going to say, oh, it's male empowerment. No one is going to say
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that. It's, it's only women who can partially get away with being jerks, um, on the basis of
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it's female empowerment. They're the only women are the only one. I'm sorry. If you're a woman,
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you're the only one who could potentially dress up your jerky behavior as empowerment. Men can't
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do that. They're not going to get away with it, nor should they. Meanwhile, though, as a nice
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palate cleanser, um, so that was kind of sports at its worst and let's look at it at its best.
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Um, this is a video of an unidentified hockey coach talking to his players and his message
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while colorful is I think truly good and empowering. Watch this.
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Hey guys, listen up for a second. First day of camp. Something really important. Okay. We're not
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women's soccer. We're not the NFL. If there's anybody here, it's going to be disrespectful to
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either the American or the Canadian national anthem, grab your gear and get the out now.
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Cause you'll never see the ice in this arena. Um, we don't have that problem in hockey. We're
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better than that, but there was no sense in wasting anybody's time if that was going to happen.
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I don't believe it would happen here. Um, we're the, we're the most patriotic sport that they have
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out there. So just keep that in mind. Thank you. So that's, that's good stuff. Um, and that is,
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I mean, that reminds me of, I didn't play hockey, but that reminds me of some of the coaches I had
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growing up. Um, just, I mean, everything, the way he looks, the way he speaks, the cussing and
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everything. It's just, it's part of the coach. It's part of the male coach thing. And, um, and the
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message, which is, Hey, you know, this isn't about you. Don't go out there, uh, trying to disrespect
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the country, trying to make it about yourself. It's we're not doing that here. Just that kind of
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really frank getting down to it. Um, if you don't like it, get the F out that kind of stuff.
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I really think that the boys, especially, especially teenage boys, um, need
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a voice like that in their life. And hopefully they have it at home. Hopefully they have a father
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who's, you know, even if he doesn't drop the F bomb, he's still going to say, still going to have
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a message similar to that. Like, Hey, you know, you're not doing that here. Cut it out. Cut out the
00:29:18.600
crap. It's not happening here. You need, I think children need it. Boys especially need
00:29:24.720
that. Um, but unfortunately there are a lot of boys growing up in this country who don't
00:29:29.280
have that, who don't have that kind of, um, disciplined, take no crap, male voice and guidance
00:29:39.780
in their home. And that's where sports even more become important. And that's why I think
00:29:46.560
coaches do such an important thing. Um, because they can, they provide something to a lot of
00:29:52.640
these boys that they aren't getting anywhere else and that they need. I mean, you just,
00:29:56.900
you need someone in your life as a kid to say, cut it out. Um, so I think that was, that was great.
00:30:04.680
Good stuff. Well done coach. Well done. I wanted to talk about one other thing here before we get
00:30:10.580
to emails. Yeah, I guess we'll talk about this. Um, it would be easier to discuss if I played the
00:30:19.520
video for you, but I'm not going to do that because it would seem hypocritical for me to play
00:30:23.800
it. So I'll just describe it. There's a vibe. Maybe you've seen it. There's a viral video,
00:30:28.900
which went viral, I think yesterday, millions of views showing a man in a bagel shop. I think
00:30:34.560
in New York, I'm not sure where, um, probably New York having a complete meltdown. There's no
00:30:39.440
context provided. The video cuts on and he's screaming at pretty much everyone in the
00:30:43.880
establishment, customers, employees. Um, and he's screaming, he screams at some women in the store
00:30:50.620
at one point and starts talking about all the women on dating sites who make fun of him and reject
00:30:55.180
him. Um, and then he yells at some guys who are standing there. One of the guys proceeds to
00:30:59.920
essentially tackle the guy, knock him on his butt. Um, and then I think after that, in a second video,
00:31:05.520
he's screaming at the employees. He's still talking about women on the dating sites who reject him.
00:31:10.880
Um, and the guy's very short, which is important context to understand the video. He's a very short,
00:31:15.360
looks like he's, I don't know, five foot two or something. He's very short guy. Um, very short for a
00:31:20.560
grown man. And he says that women on the dating sites make fun of him for being short.
00:31:25.180
Uh, and anyway, he's, he's having a total meltdown breakdown, um, acting like a jerk to
00:31:31.100
everybody in the store. Well, this was secretly filmed of course, and put online. And now the guy
00:31:37.040
has been humiliated across the country, um, along with being humiliated at the store when he was
00:31:42.940
humiliating himself. Millions of people now have taken part in the public shaming and many have left
00:31:48.360
comments adding additional scorn and mockery and talking about how short he is and, and, and,
00:31:53.820
and everything else. Now, first of all, obviously his behavior is unacceptable. If you saw the video,
00:32:01.740
you know, I mean, it's unacceptable behavior, wrong, atrocious behavior. Um, he deserved to get
00:32:07.000
his butt kicked in the moment. I believe he had that coming. Uh, nothing can, can justify the way
00:32:12.620
he was acting. And if you start mouthing off to the wrong person in public, you might get knocked on
00:32:17.300
your butt. And I am a, I'm an advocate of that. I'm fine with that. I mean, I think that's the way
00:32:21.800
it should work in society. They're just, you know, sometimes it's like, if you can't go around just
00:32:27.680
screaming at anyone, acting like a jerk to anyone you want, if you choose the wrong person, he's going
00:32:32.200
to knock you on your, on your butt. All right. But here's my thing. Did this incident really need
00:32:40.040
to be broadcast to the entire world? Did his mental breakdown need to become an episode of
00:32:46.360
reality TV for us all to watch and gawk at? Was the butt kicking in the moment enough, or did he
00:32:52.540
really need massive public shaming on top of it? Is the public shaming proportionate to the infraction?
00:33:01.400
When I watched this video, honestly, I, my first reaction was, I felt bad for the guy. I'm not saying
00:33:06.920
that this is because I'm so compassionate and I'm so much better than you. If you watched it and
00:33:10.820
laughed, look, I've watched videos like that plenty of times in the past and probably laughed and even
00:33:16.980
shared it myself and taken part in the gawking festival. Um, but on, I'm trying to get away from
00:33:26.200
that. I think we should all try to get away from that. And when it came to this video, my first reaction
00:33:29.920
was, I just felt bad for the guy. Uh, even though there's no excuse for his behavior, even though he was
00:33:35.860
acting like a jerk, it seemed obvious to me that this was, is a lonely, sad, broken man. Um, for him
00:33:45.620
to be shouting about being rejected on dating sites that may seem funny to us, but it seems clear that,
00:33:51.480
yeah, I mean, this is a guy who's, I mean, in his, I don't know, forties or fifties still alone,
00:33:56.080
uh, probably has been rejected by women his whole life because he's very short. It is difficult for
00:34:00.860
guys who are really short sometimes to find a, you know, to find a woman. Women, a lot of times
00:34:05.860
don't want to be with a guy that's a lot shorter than them. You know, if you, if you don't suffer
00:34:10.620
from that problem and I, you know, I don't, I'm six foot, I say six foot one. That's what I say.
00:34:16.520
That's my, that's unofficial, unofficially six foot one, I think really six foot, but anyway,
00:34:20.700
so I don't, I, you know, I don't have that. That's not a particular problem that I have,
00:34:23.680
but, um, it is a, you know, if it can be an issue for some guys and if it leads to you being alone
00:34:30.360
for 40 years, it's a pretty serious freaking issue. Right. Um, and so it seems like this guy
00:34:37.180
was at the end of his rope, the rope snapped and he essentially had a psychotic breakdown.
00:34:42.700
Um, we have no idea what prompted it or what led to it. And that's another problem I have with these,
00:34:46.560
with these out of context videos, again, not that any context could make that behavior, right,
00:34:51.220
but we don't even know, like what, what were they, was someone in there needling this guy
00:34:56.720
and trying to get him rallied up? I don't know. We don't know. Maybe not. Maybe he just ran in
00:35:01.680
and started shouting for no reason. We have no idea that that part isn't shown either way. Uh,
00:35:06.980
he's having a breakdown seems to me a breakdown partially from a life of disappointment and,
00:35:15.280
and loneliness it seems. Um, so is it really funny? I mean, can we not, should we be laughing
00:35:25.620
at that? I just, should we be laughing at broken, troubled people? What does that say about us?
00:35:32.560
If you say, Oh yeah, it's hilarious. Well, what does that say about you though?
00:35:38.680
This is one of the reasons why you remember that video, um, of the, uh, quote unquote, trans,
00:35:46.640
the quote unquote, trans woman in the, I think it was a GameStop, really a biological man in the
00:35:53.340
GameStop shouting, uh, you know, because he was addressed as, as, uh, sir. And he's saying,
00:35:58.480
you know, call me ma'am. I'm sure you've seen that video or at least heard about it. Now I,
00:36:03.360
I believe, uh, I never played that video on this show. And the reason I didn't play it is because
00:36:10.180
it's a similar sort of thing. Now, you know, how I feel about the transgender thing. I, you know,
00:36:13.740
I, I think that if you're a man, you're a man. So this guy's a man period. Uh, but it's pretty
00:36:20.780
clear to me that this was a very troubled person who was having a breakdown in public, a meltdown.
00:36:28.420
Um, and it's not funny to me. I don't really think that's funny. And this is real life. This
00:36:34.160
is a real troubled person having a meltdown, living a life that clearly is filled with misery and
00:36:41.400
despair for them and confusion. I don't know. I don't, I guess, I, I guess I just don't see the
00:36:46.940
humor, honestly, in it. Um, I have in the past, as I said, I'm not, this is not a holier than now. I
00:36:53.460
have in the past seen the humor in some of these kinds of things. I think we all have, but what I'm
00:36:57.820
saying is maybe we should all together try to pull back from this and realize that what we're
00:37:04.500
seeing on the internet, these are real people. This is not, this isn't actually reality TV.
00:37:09.300
Reality TV is fake. These are most of the time. These are actually just actors pretending. So you
00:37:13.720
want to laugh at them. Fine. Go ahead. Um, I mean, that's what they're there for. And they,
00:37:17.700
they signed up for it literally. Um, and they enjoy obviously being spectacles, but these people
00:37:25.000
that just end up their viral videos and everything, you know, they, they, even if they're having
00:37:29.980
meltdowns in public, they weren't looking to be celebrities or be stars. They weren't looking
00:37:34.620
for their 50 minutes of fame. And, um, I, I always think what if, and I'm sure this has already
00:37:41.800
happened and we wouldn't necessarily know about it, but one of these days, what if we find out
00:37:47.460
one of these days that one of these people who had their meltdown filmed for our amusement
00:37:53.380
then proceeded to kill themselves? Is it, is it far-fetched to think that that could happen
00:37:59.440
and maybe has happened? Not at all. I mean, you're, if someone who's already troubled, already,
00:38:05.200
uh, feeling, you know, persecuted, whether rightly or wrongly, and then you add on top of that,
00:38:11.620
the scorn and mockery of millions of people, literally. Now, if you've never experienced
00:38:19.700
scorn and mockery from millions of people, even if it is just on the internet, that doesn't matter.
00:38:24.560
These are still people that are saying this about you. If you've never experienced that level of
00:38:28.820
mockery and scorn, maybe it's hard to understand, but it's a very overwhelming thing, even for a,
00:38:32.480
even for a, uh, a mentally stable person. But if you're unstable, if you're having an episode of
00:38:38.680
some kind, and then you add on top of, I mean, it's not hard to see how we could, someone could
00:38:43.380
be driven to suicide. Are we going to say then that it was still worth it for the laugh? Or,
00:38:48.860
ah, he had to come into a, you know, and I'm not, look, I'm not taking an issue in principle with
00:38:55.860
public shaming. I, I have, I'm, I have, I'm on the record as an advocate of public shaming
00:39:00.660
in principle, but that doesn't mean that every person is, should be public, publicly shamed.
00:39:06.920
I'm just saying that public shaming can be inappropriate response. Sometimes I don't
00:39:13.040
think that public shaming, um, of someone who has a mental breakdown for the purposes of our
00:39:18.900
amusement, you know, if it's public shaming so that we can amuse ourselves at the expense of someone
00:39:24.380
who's troubled and having a breakdown, that's bad public shaming. That is not good. Now, if we're
00:39:29.140
talking about, remember that video a few months ago of the grown of the man who, uh, who kicked an
00:39:35.120
elderly woman in the face while she was sitting on the subway and that video went out there and I,
00:39:40.760
I put it on the show. And, uh, and that's the fact that the video and viral is part of the reason why
00:39:45.500
this guy eventually was apprehended. Now that's good public shaming. Okay. That's someone who's
00:39:49.280
dangerous, who committed a violent crime, who did something that is so horrifically horrible,
00:39:55.800
uh, that, that it just, the punishment fits the crime. So it should be public shaming,
00:40:01.320
get this guy's face out there everywhere. So everyone knows that this guy's an elderly abusing
00:40:05.940
scumbag and then put them in jail. I think that's totally, uh, the punishment fits the crime there.
00:40:12.640
But in this case, what's the, the crime is the guy was a jerk at a bagel shop.
00:40:17.320
Um, the punishment of massive public shaming. I don't think it fits.
00:40:26.840
Uh, all right, let's go to very quickly. We'll get to a couple of emails here. This is from,
00:40:33.060
uh, uh, Matt wall show at gmail.com is the email address. This is from Joe says, hello, Matt. Um,
00:40:40.440
when you are dictator of the universe, which temperature will you mandate every building to
00:40:44.780
be set at give a winter temp and a summer temp. I will abide by these temps in preparation for
00:40:49.400
your pending rule. Also, I'm so glad that feminists have brought this subject up because it needs to
00:40:53.960
be addressed. There are many men out there who are victims of females and their affinity to warm
00:40:57.620
temperatures. I am a victim, Matt. And now I must become an S and SJW for the victims of temperature
00:41:03.360
abuse. I temperature abuse. I like that. I, you know, I'm surprised feminists haven't come up with
00:41:07.960
that term. Maybe they have. I am a socialist and only one subject I must admit that subject is room
00:41:12.220
temperature. The room, the woman, the women who have somehow tricked men into forfeiting the room
00:41:16.340
temperature need to be forced by the government to distribute a few degrees to the fellows. Maybe
00:41:20.860
somewhere in the mid seventies will be enough for the fellows to survive the summer. We live in Arizona.
00:41:25.060
My wife prefers 78 to 80 degrees. It's excruciating. Please help. Uh, your wife prefers it to be 70
00:41:34.440
inside. Look, uh, Joe, I would never advocate divorce, but no, I'm kidding. Of course it's a joke. Um,
00:41:42.200
all right. But, but your wife needs to, I mean, it's 80 degrees. That's, that's crazy. This, I mean,
00:41:48.620
maybe public shaming, maybe you should probably shame your wife for this one. This one does,
00:41:52.980
this, this punishment does fit the crime. 80 degrees inside is crazy. I mean, we are,
00:41:58.660
we're civilized people here. Okay. We live in modern civilization. You don't live, you don't need
00:42:03.600
to live in 80 degree temperatures inside. You want 80 degrees inside, go to a sauna. Okay. Your living
00:42:09.780
room is not supposed to be a sauna. Joe's wife, you're going to kill this man. He's going to
00:42:17.320
literally melt into a puddle. How dare you? Uh, as for the appropriate temperature, well,
00:42:25.500
I'm glad you asked that question. Of course, I do have a very specific, um, demands as far as that
00:42:30.760
goes. So the appropriate temperature inside in the summer is 68 degrees period. That's the appropriate
00:42:37.560
time. You want to go down to 66 or 67. I will allow it. Uh, you want to go up to 70. I might allow
00:42:44.960
it maybe if you have a lot of fans in there, but 68 is the ideal. That's where it should be set. 68,
00:42:50.880
uh, as for the summer, I mean, the winter inside, you know, 70 to 71, I wouldn't go above that.
00:42:58.940
Um, so really you're, you're in that 68 to 70 range, regardless. That's just what temperature
00:43:03.360
should be inside all the time, but thanks for the email. Um, this is from James says,
00:43:11.820
hi, Matt. I am a fourth year medical student in the middle of my psychiatry clerkship. And I just
00:43:16.480
wanted to hop in briefly on the discussion about psychiatric disorders. You asked why people get
00:43:20.880
upset when you question the legitimacy and medical significance of psychiatric disorders.
00:43:24.800
The reason is because psychiatry is the only field of medicine where we face constant accusations
00:43:29.000
of inappropriate medicalization because of disease symptoms that occur on a continuum
00:43:33.060
of normal experience. A perfect example of this is when people resist viewing psychiatric conditions
00:43:39.020
as disabling disorders, because we all feel anxious sometimes, and we all get distracted.
00:43:44.920
Many common nine psychiatric conditions, such as type two diabetes, asthma, hypertension,
00:43:51.340
um, and obesity exist on a spectrum of normality. And every field uses somewhat arbitrary guidelines
00:43:57.960
to distinguish between normal and abnormal. The reason we use a hemoglobin A1c level of 6.5%
00:44:03.960
to diagnose type two diabetes is simply because the American Diabetes Association decided that 6.5%
00:44:09.660
is the point where it's severe enough to call it, to call a disease. Up until recently, hypertension
00:44:14.840
was defined as a blood pressure greater than, uh, 140 over 90. Two years ago, the American Heart
00:44:21.420
Association changed their guidelines and now anything higher than 130 over 80 is called hypertension.
00:44:25.560
These kinds of conditions that exist on spectra are increasingly becoming the norm across all of
00:44:31.040
medicine as a result of Western lifestyles leading to chronic disease. And yet the lay press constantly
00:44:36.160
paints continuum disorders as something unique to psychiatry. We have a growing body of research
00:44:41.120
clearly delineating ADHD and major depression as distinct syndromes, and the American Psychiatric
00:44:46.540
Association establishes thresholds for diseases just like every other professional organization does.
00:44:50.860
I've never heard any conservative medical traditionalist question whether or not type
00:44:54.600
two diabetes is a real disease. I never hear any anti-medicine groups ask if doctors are over
00:45:00.040
diagnosing hypertension so that the pharmaceutical industry can make money putting everyone on ACE
00:45:05.140
inhibitors. This kind of skepticism and conspiracism seems to be almost exclusively reserved for the
00:45:12.780
fields of psychiatry. And it gets very tiresome. Thanks for reading. Okay. Uh, I wish I'd save that email
00:45:18.060
for tomorrow because I don't have a lot of time and there's a lot there to address. Um, maybe I'll get
00:45:22.880
back to it tomorrow, but I will say, first of all, just for the record, I think that, uh, all fields of
00:45:28.400
medicine are subject to this criticism of over-diagnosis, over-prescribing. And I think for a good reason,
00:45:34.580
um, you know, I, I, I think that, uh, many things are over-diagnosed and, and there is a problem with people
00:45:41.880
being put on prescription drugs too readily. And that's why we have a nation of prescription drug
00:45:48.180
addicts. I mean, prescription drug addiction is a huge problem in this country, as I'm sure you're
00:45:51.360
aware. And, um, many of those drugs are, you know, psychiatric drugs, but not all of them. I mean,
00:45:57.120
think about painkillers now the medical community. Why has, I talked about this on the show. I think
00:46:01.520
that I, you know, I tore my Achilles, go to the doctor with a torn Achilles. My calf muscle feels like
00:46:07.580
it's on fire. It's the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Um, and, uh, and at, at no point
00:46:13.500
while I had the torn Achilles was I ever prescribed painkillers. They said, just take Tylenol. I was
00:46:17.940
given, um, prescription narcotics for, you know, like five days worth after my surgery, only used it
00:46:23.160
for two days because I really don't like that stuff. Point is, um, why were they being so tight-fisted
00:46:28.600
with the prescription narcotics? And that's because it had become a huge problem with people getting
00:46:34.080
addicted to this stuff. The medical community had come under fire for it, rightly so. And so they
00:46:38.400
pulled back. So your claim that this is exclusive to psychiatry, I think is not true. Second thing,
00:46:44.180
um, you know, ADHD, let's just focus on that for a moment. You, uh, I don't think you've really
00:46:53.840
addressed my point on just ADHD for a second here. My point is, yeah, ADHD exists. That is people who
00:47:05.980
have struggled, struggled to paying attention and are hyperactive. Now I think the term attention
00:47:12.100
deficit is kind of strange because that, that seems to suggest that there is some ideal amount
00:47:19.820
of attention that you're supposed to be able to give. And if you can't give that amount, then you have a,
00:47:23.820
deficiency in attention. It's just a, to talk about a deficiency in attention is a very weird concept
00:47:29.920
to me. Um, and again, it is arbitrary, it seems, but regardless, okay, not to split hairs. There are
00:47:36.080
obviously people who struggle to pay attention, raise my hand for that, um, and struggle to sit still,
00:47:43.260
raise my hand for that one and struggle to, you know, keep their thoughts on one track and their thoughts
00:47:47.920
tend to go in a million directions at once. I raised my hand for that too. So I'm, I'm guilty on all three
00:47:51.800
accounts. My point is that maybe that's just how some people are. Maybe that's just a personality
00:48:04.140
type. Maybe that is simply a type of person. Maybe that is a way of being who is to say that it's a
00:48:12.180
disorder. Because when you say it's a disorder, what you're saying is people shouldn't be that way.
00:48:18.320
And so my question to you as the medical student is how do you know people shouldn't be that way?
00:48:26.480
Especially when we know that if you, if you have quote ADHD, yeah, it's difficult in school. It's
00:48:32.680
different. It's difficult if you work at a cubicle and you sit at an office desk for eight to nine
00:48:37.640
hours a day. But if you do other things, if you have a creative job, like, like I do, if you work
00:48:44.240
outside, if you're more hands-on, then it becomes a, actually a benefit. It's, it's a, it's an asset
00:48:51.000
for me with the job that I do. I've got to think of, you know, a million different topics a day and
00:48:55.640
I'm writing, I'm doing the show and I'm, you know, constantly in my head for me to have this condition
00:49:03.940
while it made me feel totally deficient and crazy when I was in public school. Now it makes me feel
00:49:09.960
like, okay, I need to be this way in order to do this. Um, it may seem like an easy job in some
00:49:15.960
ways it is, some, some, some ways it's not even a job at all, but actually to think of, you know,
00:49:21.500
to come up with commentary for several different topics every single day and then deliver it in
00:49:26.400
two different forms, writing and speaking, you know, there are some, there are some challenges
00:49:30.660
with that. Okay. Um, and so I find that having my mind work the way it does, while again, it made
00:49:37.800
it very difficult in math class. It actually works well here. So given that fact, my question again
00:49:45.780
to you is who are you to say it's a disorder? Who are you to say I'm not supposed to be this way?
00:49:51.600
Maybe this is just how I am. I think with physical diseases, it's a little bit easier to say, well,
00:49:58.140
yeah, people aren't supposed to be that way with something like diabetes, as you know, um, a diabetic,
00:50:03.140
if they don't get that treated, they could die. So that's pretty good indication that you're not
00:50:07.940
supposed to be that way. And so you need to get that treated. ADHD is not going to kill you.
00:50:15.020
It's not going to make your brain deteriorate. It's not going to give you cancer.
00:50:20.300
You know, it won't. It's just, it just makes, it makes it hard in some contexts, but then it also
00:50:28.220
helps in other contexts. So for the third time, and really for the millionth time, I say, maybe this
00:50:34.580
is just how I am. Maybe this is a valid personality type. That's, that is my assertion. And I think you
00:50:45.540
need to come up with some kind of evidence that it is not a valid personality type, that it is in fact
00:50:52.420
an invalid, um, disordered, um, type that shouldn't exist. I think you're going to struggle to come up
00:51:02.880
with evidence for that and quoting the American psychiatric association. I don't think that's
00:51:10.000
really going to help much because this is actually in many ways, a philosophical question
00:51:17.500
because the underlying question is now there's nothing really philosophical about diabetes. I take
00:51:23.580
your point about it exists on a spectrum. Okay. Good point. But, um, it's not philosophical. I don't
00:51:29.220
think there's really any philosophical discussion about whether or not diabetes is a disease.
00:51:34.640
There is a philosophical discussion with something like ADHD because the philosophical question is
00:51:38.960
how should a person be? It's a very deeply philosophical question. Actually.
00:51:47.500
And when you say, well, a person shouldn't be like that, you are making a profoundly philosophical claim
00:51:55.980
that I happen to disagree with. All right. Um, and, uh, as I said yesterday, there are, you know,
00:52:04.840
there are other mental conditions like, uh, you know, schizophrenia where someone is hallucinating or,
00:52:10.520
or, or has no grip on reality. I think it's clear to me there that people shouldn't be that way.
00:52:15.540
Um, because that just, you, you, in that case, you, you cannot really function at all as a human
00:52:23.360
person at all in any context. Um, so, you know, there you have a clear good case. I think with ADHD,
00:52:32.100
it is not nearly so clear, but all right, we will leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching.
00:52:50.760
President Trump hosts a social media summit at the White House today to combat big tech censorship.
00:52:55.800
Meanwhile, star Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls Nancy Pelosi a racist.
00:53:01.980
We ask the important question, has politics ever been this fun? Check it out on the Michael Knowles show.