The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 310 - Why This Keeps Happening

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, of course, we'll be discussing the horrific shootings that happened

00:00:03.740 over the weekend, but I hope to go beyond talking points today on the show, beyond the partisan

00:00:08.420 blame game. And I want to talk about what factors are really contributing to this epidemic. I have

00:00:14.400 a few ideas that I think get to the heart of the matter, or at least close to that. And we'll

00:00:18.700 talk about it today on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:20.900 Well, it was a terrible weekend in America, and there's really no other way to put it.

00:00:33.100 I'm sure a lot of you had a similar experience to me. I went to bed on Saturday night thinking

00:00:38.040 about the shooting in El Paso that claimed 20 lives. As it stands right now, 20, maybe that

00:00:44.220 will go up because there are dozens that were injured as well, some still in the hospital.

00:00:48.700 Went to bed on Saturday night thinking about that horrible thing. Wake up in the morning,

00:00:53.640 go online. I see people talking about a mass shooting. It takes me a couple of minutes to

00:01:00.000 realize they're not talking about El Paso. They're talking about Dayton. There was another mass

00:01:04.240 shooting while I was sleeping, you know, less than 12 hours after the first one. In the span

00:01:11.660 of 12 hours, we had two mass shootings. What I want to do today, as we're discussing this,

00:01:19.540 well, let me tell you first what I don't want to do. What I don't want to do is say the same things

00:01:24.440 that we always say, the same things that I always say. I don't want to give you talking points and

00:01:28.760 bumper sticker slogans. There's no point in that because we all get it. I don't want to make this

00:01:34.960 a simple left versus right thing because it's not. And because there's something just so hollow and

00:01:40.640 empty about that game. So devoid of humanity is that game, the simple partisan political game that

00:01:50.800 we play with dead bodies after something like this. And I call it hollow and empty. I think it's even

00:01:57.080 worse than that, really, because nobody will ever admit this. No one's ever going to admit feeling

00:02:01.460 this way. But I detected, I'm pretty sure, real glee coming from some people after the El Paso

00:02:12.040 shooting when it turned out that the El Paso shooter was a white nationalist Trump fan,

00:02:15.760 you know, someone that the left could pin on the right. And among some leftists on social media,

00:02:21.060 at least based on their social media posting, there's no indication of anything like sadness

00:02:25.900 or mourning or anything. It was just, see, see, this is you. See, it's Trump. I told you, see.

00:02:31.480 Um, that's what it seemed like. They were really happy. They were happy. It seemed as though they

00:02:38.440 were happy it happened, some of them, because, uh, they could, it was something they could use now

00:02:42.940 against the other side. See, for them, it became automatically just a thing to use, just a, just

00:02:50.360 ammo, um, in a, in a, in a, in an argument. And then on Sunday, when it turned out that the Dayton

00:02:57.760 shooter, um, seemed to seem to be a self-described leftist supported Elizabeth Warren and Antifa,

00:03:03.080 according to what he posted on social media, again, it seemed like some on the right, there

00:03:08.060 was real glee, real happiness, like no mourning, no, no sadness. See, no, no, this one's on you.

00:03:14.040 I got you now. See, no, no, this is your fault. In so many words, right? Not quite using those words,

00:03:22.800 but almost. It's just so sickening. You know, it, these are human beings. This is a real,

00:03:30.580 these are real people who died. This isn't just some thing to argue about. It's a, it's a real

00:03:35.700 human tragedy. In fact, you could see even in real time, as the narrative shifted on both sides,

00:03:41.080 it was interesting on Saturday morning, um, watching as some conservatives insisted that the

00:03:46.860 politics of the El Paso shooter didn't matter while people on the left were saying, oh, it does matter.

00:03:52.880 And then with the Dayton shooter, now all of a sudden there are some people on the right saying,

00:03:56.640 no, no, no, no, no. Now, now politics do matter. It didn't matter before. Now they do. Yesterday

00:04:01.500 morning didn't matter. Now it does. And then people on the left though shifted. And when they were saying

00:04:06.880 yesterday, uh, oh, the politics matter. And now on Sunday, they're saying, oh, no, no, it doesn't

00:04:11.320 matter. It doesn't matter. It's just the hypocrisy, um, on both sides is, is disgusting. And the thing is,

00:04:21.840 the people on both sides will justify this kind of hypocrisy, this kind of double talk, this kind

00:04:27.300 of manipulation, this kind of game playing. Um, they played political games with the bodies of

00:04:33.560 murdered women and children and men. And they justify it by saying, well, the other side is

00:04:37.980 doing it. They're doing it too. And then they'll say, well, we have to do it so we can win.

00:04:44.840 Win what? What are you winning? What do you think you're winning? What contest do you win

00:04:51.360 by giving up your soul? Okay. When you, when you, when you forfeit your humanity, when you become

00:04:56.940 nothing but this partisan machine that just sees everything immediately through the lens of how

00:05:04.520 can I use this to win an argument? When you become that, what do you think you've won? Because you've

00:05:10.300 given up yourself, your soul, your humanity, you're nothing anymore. You're just a, you're just this

00:05:15.800 thing. You're just this zombie. And you think you win that way? What do you think you've won? 1.00

00:05:21.260 You've won nothing. Let me tell you something. If you're so worried about the other side,

00:05:25.760 well, when, when, for, for the other side, from their perspective, since you've given up your

00:05:29.600 humanity and your soul, um, they, that's a win for them. And so if you care so much about winning,

00:05:35.040 the minute you become an unthinking human partisan machine capable of, of only seeing anything in

00:05:43.040 partisan terms, the minute that happens, you lose. I mean, you lose everything, literally everything

00:05:48.600 you lose, you lose yourself. Okay. So, uh, congrats. You're a good Republican. You're a good

00:05:57.340 Democrat. Nicely done, but you're a bad human. Is that a trade worth making? It's like, we all think 0.99

00:06:03.260 now, well, yeah, I can be a bad person, but as long as I'm a good member of my party, it's fine.

00:06:08.580 Um, so what I want to do today is, um, I want to try to get beyond that and, uh, not use these

00:06:18.300 tragedy tragedies to support talking points because there's no point anyway. I mean, even if I were

00:06:23.040 going to do that, you already know everything I, if I'm going to do that, then everything I say,

00:06:27.220 you already think, and it just, there's no point in even saying it really. Right. So rather than do

00:06:31.320 that, um, what I want to try to do is investigate which, what kind of factors are really driving

00:06:37.640 this epidemic of mass shootings. And I think I have, and I don't have the answer. Okay. If there

00:06:44.000 is the answer out there, I don't have it. I'm not smart enough for that, but I do have, I think

00:06:48.620 some answers, a few answers. And, uh, I want to talk about those today, but before I do, you know,

00:06:53.420 in order for this show to exist, we need to, we need support from our sponsors and that's why,

00:06:57.640 uh, and that's just the reality. Right. And so that's why I want to start by thanking,

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00:08:09.100 time and money today. All right. So what can we say about this? Um, what can actually be causing

00:08:16.060 the mass shootings? You know, what we know is that nine of the last, uh, nine of the top 12 or 13

00:08:23.320 worst mass shootings in history, deadliest mass shootings in history have Pat have happened in the

00:08:28.720 past 12 years, just a little over a decade. We've had nine of the, of the top, uh, deadliest mass

00:08:34.160 shootings ever. Five of the deadliest mass shootings have happened in the past seven years.

00:08:38.860 Three of the five deadliest have happened in the last three years. Now, if you expand this a little

00:08:42.860 bit, um, look at it, look at a, you know, the, a bigger picture, you're going to find that something

00:08:48.080 like, uh, 16 or I didn't, I don't have the exact 16 or 17 of the top 27 deadliest shootings in

00:08:56.720 American history have been in the last 12 or 13 years. If you're a millennial like me, almost all

00:09:04.540 of the worst mass shootings in American history have happened in your lifetime, except maybe two or three

00:09:10.340 of them. Now these statistics matter. Okay. It's true that when you hear from the media, you know,

00:09:16.740 what you'll hear from the media this week, what you'll always hear is, is that there are hundreds

00:09:21.580 of mass shootings every year. In fact, I just read an article. I forget where I read it, but the article

00:09:26.660 claimed that there were 250 mass shootings just this year alone, 250 already, which of course is a,

00:09:35.300 is a grossly inflated number and grossly in, in multiple meanings of the term there for gross.

00:09:42.400 Um, it's an extreme inflation. It's also gross. Just it's disgusting to, to try to inflate the

00:09:47.680 numbers of mass shootings when it's already bad enough. Like you don't need to pump up the statistics.

00:09:53.240 It's bad already. So no, 250, 249 in a year. No, it's, it's, that's not what we're talking about

00:09:58.540 because in order to get to that number, um, they're counting any shooting where four or more

00:10:04.880 people are injured or killed. So it doesn't even, you know, to be, to count to this statistic, you

00:10:10.460 don't even, even if nobody was killed, they'll still call it a mass shooting. And they include

00:10:15.920 things like gang shootings, drug related violence, um, domestic violence. All of that is bad.

00:10:24.500 Obviously, anytime someone's killed, it's a terrible thing. All of those are problems.

00:10:28.840 Nobody denies that, but it's not the same thing as somebody walking into a crowded place in suburbia

00:10:35.760 somewhere or into a school and shooting everybody in sight. That's a different sort of thing from

00:10:41.700 domestic violence and certainly from gang shootings, which again are bad. And that's a, it's a, it's a,

00:10:47.480 that's a, that's an issue unto itself, which we've been talking about, especially the last few weeks.

00:10:51.700 But you can also easily, the thing about a gang shooting is that you can easily sort of avoid

00:10:56.800 most of the time being shot in a gang shooting. If you don't, if you don't engage in gang related

00:11:01.400 activity, if you don't sell drugs, you're probably not going to be, you, the likelihood of you being

00:11:06.020 a victim of a drug related drive-by is decreased substantially by just not selling drugs, right?

00:11:13.520 The thing that makes it, and when we hear about mass shootings, that's not what we think about.

00:11:19.160 But we think about the sort of thing that happened in Dayton, Ohio or in El Paso. And the thing that

00:11:23.920 makes those so scary is that those can happen anywhere. And these people weren't doing anything

00:11:29.660 risky or dangerous. They were just going about their day. They were shopping. They were going out

00:11:33.820 to eat. They were going to a bar, just normal things. And next thing you know, it turns into a

00:11:38.480 bloodbath. So it's this specific sort of shooting that is mostly a modern phenomenon. Obviously people

00:11:46.920 being killed, murder is not a modern phenomenon. That's been going on since the dawn of time.

00:11:51.680 But this specific sort of incident has gotten a lot worse in recent years. Yes, you're still

00:12:02.220 probably more likely to die from a shark attack than to die in a mass shooting. That's true.

00:12:07.220 But we're at the point now where a few times a year, something like this happens. And it hasn't

00:12:14.300 always been that way. It hasn't always been that common. I just gave you the statistics.

00:12:19.360 To have nine of the top 12 deadliest mass shootings in just the last 11 or 12 years,

00:12:24.820 that's incredible. That is an incredible fact that we shouldn't just get used to or say,

00:12:30.820 ah, you know, okay, but still. Overall, the murder numbers are down. We're not talking about

00:12:36.420 overall numbers. This is a problem. It shouldn't be like this. We shouldn't take it for granted.

00:12:41.640 I remember being a kid. I remember when Columbine happened. And it was the only thing anyone talked

00:12:48.940 about for months on end because no one had ever heard of anything like this happening before.

00:12:53.900 And now it's, you know, these mass shootings, by Wednesday, we won't even be talking about them

00:12:58.760 anymore because we're so used to it. And that is a problem, obviously. Now, just to put this in

00:13:04.960 perspective, imagine for a second that rather than having these mass shootings that were so common,

00:13:12.500 imagine that they were serial killings, okay? Imagine that twice a year, a different serial

00:13:18.860 killer murdered 15 or 16 people in a string of murders. Imagine that serial killers that prolific

00:13:25.840 were that common, that it was two or three times a year. You had, you know, one of the worst,

00:13:32.000 imagine that almost every year now we have one of the worst serial killers in history pops up.

00:13:38.180 Now, if that were the case, we would all be saying, yeah, I mean, your likelihood of being

00:13:43.080 killed by a serial killer is still very, very low, but what's going on? How could this be so common?

00:13:47.660 How are we producing so many serial killers in comparison to times in the past?

00:13:55.300 Well, it's the same thing with mass killings. It's just, mass killing is the same thing, 0.58

00:13:58.880 basically. It's just that you kill everybody all at once rather than one at a time. 0.89

00:14:02.200 So it's the same sort of thing where we have to ask ourselves, why is this happening?

00:14:07.360 What explains why it's so commonplace now? We all know the usual suspects, right? The usual things

00:14:13.280 we blame, guns, mental illness, ideology, all of those things are relevant. But what I said is I want

00:14:18.620 to talk about this without focusing on those things we always talk about. So I'm not going to focus

00:14:26.160 on those, even though it's relevant. Now, in many cases, the mass shooters, they obtain their guns

00:14:31.440 illegally or they're using guns that aren't theirs. They're using their parents' guns or something like

00:14:35.300 that. And it's true that they should be prevented from using those guns, but that often involves

00:14:40.600 enforcing laws that are already on the books. So when it comes to guns, if we just enforce the laws

00:14:47.040 that were already on the books, we would have prevented a number of these already just from the

00:14:51.120 existing. We don't need to add more laws. We just need to enforce the laws that are already

00:14:56.340 on the books. We have a ton of laws in this country. Our law book, if you were to just look

00:15:03.740 at a book with every law listed in it, in every state included, it would be thousands and thousands

00:15:10.960 of pages long. There are tons of laws. We don't need more of them. The laws that are on the books

00:15:16.260 need to be enforced. The Dayton shooter apparently had a hit list when he was in high school.

00:15:20.560 He was caught with a hit list and a rape list of people who wanted to kill and people who 0.53

00:15:26.700 wanted to rape. He was suspended from school for it. Now, every sane person agrees that if

00:15:32.140 you have a hit list and it's known that you have a hit list, you shouldn't be able to buy

00:15:36.000 a gun. I think every sane person agrees with that. I mean, I'm a big Second Amendment advocate,

00:15:41.300 but if you're telling me it should be illegal for someone with a hit list to buy a gun, I totally

00:15:45.300 agree. Obviously, I agree. I'd be crazy not to agree with that.

00:15:50.560 But it should already be possible with the laws on the books to prevent someone who's

00:15:57.260 known to have a hit list from buying a gun. And at the very least, if it's difficult,

00:16:01.480 then just a few tweaks to the existing laws should make it possible. Now, I think we still

00:16:06.740 don't know exactly how this guy got his guns or why he was able to get them even though

00:16:10.540 he was known to have the hit list. Maybe it's because he was a minor. So maybe we make some

00:16:16.160 adjustments to the laws that already exist. That's fine. But even by doing that, it's

00:16:24.600 not going to solve the problem. And it still raises the question, why are there so many

00:16:31.060 people? I mean, forget about for a second how they get their hands on the gun. Why are there

00:16:35.820 so many people who want to do this in the first place? You know, when you get to the point where

00:16:41.640 someone is looking for the opportunity to kill lots of people, they really want to do it and

00:16:46.400 they're going to do it. Now they're just looking for a place to do it and they're looking for the

00:16:50.520 tool to do it with. When you get to that point, that's bad news. We need to figure out how do we

00:16:55.760 stop people from getting to that point? How are they getting there to begin with?

00:17:01.780 So I don't think focusing on guns is the key. It's true. Now, mental illness. It's true that many of

00:17:09.520 these people suffer from mental illnesses of some kind. And it's true that sometimes ideology is a

00:17:14.200 factor. And where it is, you know, we should look at that. The El Paso shooter was a white

00:17:19.640 nationalist who wanted to kill Mexicans to stop them from invading the country, according to him. 0.99

00:17:24.860 He made that clear in his manifesto. That's something we need to look at. This is the third 0.92

00:17:29.820 white nationalist mass murder incident in just the past several months. So white nationalist terrorism 0.99

00:17:37.520 is a problem, a big problem, and it needs to be named, condemned, and dealt with. No question. 0.98

00:17:42.400 There's no downplaying this. Again, three of the worst mass shootings ever have happened at the hands

00:17:49.500 of a white nationalist in the past few months. Okay, so that's something we need to look at for sure.

00:17:57.360 But here's the thing. There have always been guns in this country, and a lot of them. And in fact,

00:18:05.840 prior to, I think, 1986, machine guns weren't even banned. Okay, machine guns are banned right now,

00:18:13.480 and these shootings are not being carried out by machine guns. 30 or 40 years ago, 40 years ago,

00:18:19.420 it wasn't illegal on a federal level anyway to buy a machine gun. Yet, these kinds of things

00:18:27.340 weren't happening. Mental illness. We've always had mental illness. Okay, and if you're saying that

00:18:33.920 there's more of it now, that people are more mentally ill or more people are mentally ill than

00:18:38.180 were before, well, now you've just punted the ball back because now we have to ask, well, why is that

00:18:42.920 the case? So just focusing on mental illness doesn't, doesn't, it won't get you to the root of the

00:18:49.860 problem. Racism and ideology. Again, all of that existed. And certainly, at least in this country,

00:18:57.740 racism was worse 40 years ago than it was today. Now, you could argue that racists of today, like

00:19:05.120 the El Paso scumbag, feel desperate and powerless, which leads them to these kinds of acts as opposed 0.98

00:19:10.500 to the racists of the past who lived in a society that was tailor-made for their racism, a society 0.99

00:19:15.720 where their racist fantasies were actually enacted in the real world, where the people they were racist

00:19:21.380 against legally were not treated as equal, were not even treated as human. And so you could say that,

00:19:26.980 well, if you were racist back then, you had less incentive to go out and carry out these acts as

00:19:30.840 opposed to the racists up today. And there's probably truth to that. But the fact is, again,

00:19:36.180 racism has always existed. There's always been violent ideologies. And, you know, those top nine

00:19:42.260 worst mass shootings in U.S. history that have happened recently, only one of them, or two of them,

00:19:48.500 I think, had anything to do with race. And if you were to look at the top, you know, 30 mass shootings

00:19:55.320 in American history, again, you're going to find that a small minority of them were motivated by race.

00:20:02.640 And in fact, a small minority of them were motivated by any kind of discernible ideology

00:20:07.580 whatsoever. So I think if we want to understand the current epidemic, we have to look at factors

00:20:13.960 that are themselves current. See, that makes sense to me.

00:20:18.020 If we're noticing that this problem is getting worse in modern times, especially in the last 10 or 20

00:20:24.540 years, then it makes sense to look and see, okay, what has changed in society in the last 10 or 20

00:20:31.060 years or the last 20 or 30 years even? So let me, that's what I want to do now. I want to look at

00:20:38.640 contributing factors that are recent that may then be more directly correlated with the mass shooting

00:20:47.900 epidemic. Let's look at some of those. Number one, the internet. Okay. I think the effect the

00:20:56.020 internet has on our culture and on us psychologically as people, as individuals, is something that we

00:21:02.120 haven't even begun to understand or appreciate. The internet has certainly caused a massive, massive

00:21:12.340 shift in the way that we operate as people, in the way that we see the world, in the way that we

00:21:17.880 interact with the world. Now, obviously the internet can't cause someone to go out and be a mass shooter.

00:21:24.080 The only thing that can cause directly someone to be a mass shooter is their own choice, their own

00:21:28.520 free will and volition, which is why if we're looking at who to blame directly, the only person

00:21:33.620 who gets direct, immediate blame for a mass shooting is the mass shooter, right? Not Donald

00:21:38.620 Trump, not, not Republicans, not Democrats, um, the mass shooter. But if we're looking for contributing

00:21:44.680 factors, then I think obviously the internet is going to be one of them. Absolutely. The more time we

00:21:51.580 spend online, the more detached we become from reality, from, from the world, from each other,

00:21:58.300 it seems, you know, I'm obviously not the first person to point this out. It's become almost a

00:22:02.620 cliche to say, you know, the more connected we are, the more disconnected we are. Um, and, and, uh,

00:22:09.220 people that want to sound profound make those observations all the time. But in fact, you know

00:22:13.220 what? That is a profound observation, even if it's a cliche, even if we all recognize it, it's profoundly

00:22:19.360 true actually, and not something we should just gloss over. It's like we have trouble now recognizing

00:22:29.700 people, other people as people. In fact, on the internet, we get used to seeing people as just

00:22:38.480 words on a screen, right? Um, because that's what they are. You know, we, uh, back before the internet,

00:22:47.480 you know, you could only really interact unless you got on the phone with someone. Um, you're only

00:22:54.560 really interacting with people that are direct directly around you. When you're interacting with

00:22:59.760 someone directly around you, you, it's harder to get around the fact that they're a person when

00:23:03.980 they're right there in your line of sight and they're a physical person, right? You got their

00:23:08.300 body language. You got to, you can see everything. They're right there next to you. It's harder to

00:23:12.920 get around the fact that they are people, but when you're just putting something out there on the

00:23:18.360 internet, especially when you're not even talking to anyone directly, you're just sort of putting it

00:23:22.520 out there for everyone to see. It's a lot easier to become detached from the fact that other actual

00:23:30.800 people that you are communicating with actual other people. Um, and that's, that, this is an

00:23:38.520 attitude that you find. I think the people don't even, don't even realize they have. Um, it's like

00:23:42.660 what, you know, uh, well, when I just began the show talking about how awful people are on social

00:23:48.140 media after these mass shootings. And anytime I talk about something like that, people are always

00:23:53.280 going to say to me, Oh, well, that's just Twitter. That's not, that's just the internet. Get off the

00:23:57.640 internet. And you'll see that's not real life. People aren't like that in the real world.

00:24:02.380 Well, what do you mean? Those are actual humans on the internet saying those things, expressing

00:24:08.720 their views. So when someone says, well, yeah, you know, you get a lot of hate mail on the internet.

00:24:12.940 People are awful. They say, that's not the real, that's not the real world. What are you talking

00:24:17.400 about? It's, it's, this isn't, these aren't, yeah, there are some bots on the internet that aren't

00:24:22.240 real people, but for the most part, these are real people that are, that are expressing what they

00:24:27.300 really think. It is the real world, actually. Um, it's like if, uh, you know, if someone wrote

00:24:33.880 you a letter and said awful things in a letter on a piece of paper and gave it to you and you

00:24:39.620 were upset by it, would it make any sense for me to say, ah, it's not the real world. It's

00:24:42.840 just paper. Well, yeah, obviously the paper isn't the thing saying the bad thing, but those

00:24:48.920 ideas were expressed by a person. Yet we get so used to this. Well, if it happens on the internet,

00:24:55.660 it doesn't count. And I think then what you have are, are, are people who, uh, you know,

00:25:01.140 they'll go on the internet and they'll say awful things to people. Kill yourself. I hope you get 0.99

00:25:06.400 cancer. I hope your children die. I mean, again, we're so used to seeing that kind of stuff on the 1.00

00:25:11.760 internet. And, and there are millions of people who act this way on the internet and they tell

00:25:17.500 themselves that it's okay because it's just the internet, but it's not. Morally, there's no difference

00:25:23.540 at all between saying someone in a YouTube comment section, kill yourself and saying it to their face. 1.00

00:25:28.940 In fact, it's worse on the comment section because you're a coward on top of it. 0.99

00:25:34.360 But I think we get so accustomed that way to treating people that way that, that, um, 0.96

00:25:39.720 that eventually it does bleed over into, you know, into three dimensional space. Um, when you get so

00:25:47.840 used to just being an awful person and treating people terribly and being, uh, you know, at a 0.52

00:25:54.440 certain point, I guess this is the point when you're a sociopath on the internet, it may be

00:25:59.240 possible for a while to be a sociopath on the internet and act like a normal person in quote,

00:26:05.020 the real world and three dimensional space. Eventually though. So you're not going to be able

00:26:09.340 to keep up that double life, that split personality forever. Eventually you're either going to start

00:26:14.640 up being a decent person on the internet or more likely what happens is that you end up being a

00:26:18.500 sociopath in quote, the real world also. And so I think that's part of the problem. Um,

00:26:26.180 number two, 24 hour cable news. You know, the problem with 24 hour cable news is twofold. For

00:26:31.940 one thing, it makes every mass shooting into a whole big television event and thereby encourages

00:26:36.580 mass shooters to do this because they're looking for attention. They're looking for infamy and they

00:26:40.280 know they're going to get it. So we all know that part of it, right? We point that out all the time.

00:26:43.420 The second thing though, uh, the slightly less discussed element here is that 24 hour news

00:26:51.000 encourages us again to be detached from reality. It encourages us to see these shootings like their

00:26:56.900 TV shows, like it's a plot line on law and order or something. What do cable news come, uh, these,

00:27:02.500 these channels always do anytime there's a big tragedy, they have a, they have a graphic for it.

00:27:06.660 They have theme music, you know, they do a little, um, they bring in all the different analysts.

00:27:12.780 They go, they go on site, even though there's no reason for them to be on site whatsoever,

00:27:16.820 recording, you know, doing a show. Uh, yeah, you send a reporter out, but you don't need to bring

00:27:20.920 the anchor out and have a table set up and have the whole, have an analyst chat. You don't need

00:27:24.980 to be on site for that at all, but you're just there because it just, it makes for more engaging

00:27:29.920 television. And so what the cable news channels are doing is that they're trying to turn these

00:27:35.100 real human tragedies into engaging, entertaining television events. Now they would never say

00:27:43.160 they're trying to make it entertaining. And the people that are at these cable news channels,

00:27:46.220 they're not directly in their head thinking, how are we going to make this entertaining?

00:27:49.960 It's just, they're doing their job. And the fact is they need you to watch and, um, and they need

00:27:56.160 ratings. And so they're going to do the things that are going to up those ratings.

00:27:59.380 And after a while, you know, when you get used to seeing murder and tragedy and mayhem and chaos

00:28:10.360 as entertainment, as a television event, I think it's going to further that detachment.

00:28:17.680 Um, so that's an issue. And again, recent internet and cable news, both are very recent things that

00:28:25.140 didn't exist, you know, up until the last couple of decades. Um, at least we're not nearly as

00:28:31.720 ubiquitous up until the last 20 years or so. Uh, number three, broken homes, broken homes have

00:28:40.860 always existed. There's always been divorce. There's always been deadbeat dads and so on. But, um, as

00:28:46.680 almost everyone knows that problem has gotten worse in the last few decades. And, um, we now have

00:28:53.640 two generations of people, my generation and the next generation who, you know, a wide swaths of

00:29:00.220 people in those generations are, have grown up in or did, or, or are growing up in, um, homes that,

00:29:08.920 you know, there's no father present. The marriage is, is, is broken or falling apart. They're living

00:29:17.660 amidst emotional turmoil. And that obviously plays a factor here. If you look at these mass shooters,

00:29:25.720 now these, the two recent scumbags, I don't know, maybe, maybe they, they both come from intact homes. 0.97

00:29:31.640 I'm not sure. But if you look at them, you're going to find that a disproportionate number of them, 0.94

00:29:36.420 um, come from divorced families. That is, that's not a coincidence. Again, that doesn't mean

00:29:42.960 that if you get divorced, your kids are automatically going to become mass shooters. It's just a, this,

00:29:47.480 we're talking about contributing factors. Think of it like, like a, you know, like an avalanche,

00:29:53.040 like a snowball going down the mountain. It's just one thing after another, after another,

00:29:57.320 and eventually you end up with a huge, deadly avalanche. Uh, the fourth thing, psychiatric drugs.

00:30:05.860 Okay. Um, we know that dozens of, of violent attacks in schools have been carried out by kids

00:30:13.340 on or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs and, but not just kids and not just schools. The Las Vegas

00:30:19.880 shooter was on anxiety medicine. The Colorado theater shooter was on antidepressants. The Charleston

00:30:24.260 shooter, uh, was on psychiatric drugs. The Virginia tech shooter was on psychiatric drugs. Um, many,

00:30:31.000 and again, the most recent ones, we don't know, but we're not going to be surprised to find out

00:30:35.740 if it is the case that they were on some kind of medication or just came off of it.

00:30:40.580 Now, defenders of these drugs will claim that, well, you know, you can't draw a straightforward

00:30:44.200 connection between psychotropic drugs and violent or suicidal behavior. And that's true.

00:30:49.860 Now we know that these drugs leave a lasting mark on the brain. Um, but we don't know exactly what

00:30:55.240 sort of mark they leave or how long it will last or how it might manifest itself. As a pediatric

00:31:02.080 psychologist, Ronald Brown, uh, he said, this was his quote. He said, the, the, there's more use of

00:31:07.560 psychotropic medication with children than there is research data on it. In other words, we're using,

00:31:13.700 we, we're using it more, um, than, you know, we, there's greater use of it than there is knowledge

00:31:20.600 of it. I suppose is the way to put it. Um, it would seem to me that the lack of data about this stuff

00:31:29.940 is reason enough to pull way back. I'm not saying never use it. I'm not saying there's nobody out

00:31:34.640 there who's a good candidate for psychotropic drugs, but, um, the, the use of these drugs has

00:31:42.020 skyrocketed in, in recent years, even though we know so little about it or how it affects people.

00:31:49.780 Now, you know, the, the side effects for these drugs, if you look on the bottle, it'll say things

00:31:57.900 like suicidal thoughts, um, you know, violent or erratic behavior, that kind of thing. And it says,

00:32:05.940 oh, well, if you, if you experience that, if your kid experiences that, go talk to a doctor.

00:32:09.740 Well, think about, we're talking, we're dealing with drugs here that according even to the, to the

00:32:17.940 bottle itself, even to the side effects, we're dealing with drugs that can put thoughts in your

00:32:24.760 head. That's always freaked me out. When you see a drug that has suicidal thoughts as a side effect,

00:32:33.780 well, how does that work exactly? You're telling me that this drug, if I take it, it could make me

00:32:38.660 think something, not only make me think something, it could make me think that I want to destroy

00:32:44.340 myself. Okay. For the third time, I'm not saying we, you should never take a drug with a side effect

00:32:50.920 like that. There may be occasions where it's, you know, where, where it's justified, but

00:32:55.640 we are, we're just, we're dealing with something that is pretty mysterious. The relationship between

00:33:04.100 consciousness and the brain, where exactly your consciousness comes from, what exactly neurologically

00:33:10.520 drives somebody to do these kinds of things. We don't know that exact fact. We know very little

00:33:16.460 about that. That's still a mystery to science. And I think it will always remain a mystery to some

00:33:21.220 extent, because I think that the answer is not completely scientific. Um, but regardless,

00:33:27.260 and yet we're, we're shoving these drugs into kids' faces. And, um, when, you know, when you've,

00:33:37.140 when you're, when you're given a drug to someone and a known side effect is that it could make them

00:33:42.140 destructive or suicidal, and then they go and they act destructively and suicidally. I feel like that's

00:33:47.660 probably not a coincidence. The last thing, and this, and this kind of, uh, maybe summarizes

00:33:54.220 everything else is nihilism. Now with this one, also nihilism is not new. There's always been

00:34:02.560 nihilists out there. There's always been a tendency in some people towards nihilism, but

00:34:06.120 nihilism now has become a way of life. It's become, um, although, although unnamed most of the time,

00:34:14.600 most nihilists won't call themselves nihilists. And probably many of them probably don't even know

00:34:18.320 what the term means, but it's, it's, it's really the most mainstream philosophy in our culture today.

00:34:25.160 It's how our culture operates. There is a general purposelessness in our society. People don't know

00:34:30.520 why they're here, what they're for, why any of it matters. The most essential question that we can ask

00:34:38.180 ourselves, a question that, that human beings have been asking themselves since the dawn of time,

00:34:42.500 since the dawn of human civilization is why am I here? What am I supposed to do? What am I for?

00:34:51.720 What are people for? It's the name of a, it's the name of a great essay collection by, um, by, uh,

00:34:57.180 Wendell Berry. And that's, uh, that's the question. What are people for? What am I for?

00:35:05.140 People don't have answers to that. And atheists get mad when you point to godlessness and nihilism,

00:35:11.420 purposelessness as a cause or a factor in these things. And they say, well, just cause I'm an

00:35:15.640 atheist doesn't mean I'm going to go kill people. And that's true. And they'll also point out that

00:35:19.480 many of these mass killers, uh, are not atheists. In fact, probably most of them aren't, um, aren't

00:35:25.100 officially, uh, you know, announced atheists. And that's true too. But, and those are fair points, 1.00

00:35:32.180 but it's also true, profoundly true that people need a sense of transcendent purpose in their life.

00:35:43.040 Um, they need a sense of, of the transcendent. And if they don't have that, if we don't have that

00:35:50.040 as people, then we're lost. Okay. So combine all these factors and you can throw in the first three

00:35:59.200 that I kind of skipped over because those are what we always talk about. You could, you know, um,

00:36:04.640 but if you have someone from a broken home, from with a history of living in a home of, of emotional

00:36:14.860 chaos and abuse and abandonment and neglect, put them on the internet for hours a day. Um, uh,

00:36:24.280 you know, uh, maybe, maybe start shoving some psychiatric drugs into their, into their head,

00:36:31.640 uh, have them watching cable news, watching the other mass shooters and seeing the, the,

00:36:40.840 the infamy and notoriety that those other mass shooters attain, get them used to watching mass

00:36:46.880 killings as, as if it's some sort of entertainment. And then you throw in maybe an extremist ideology,

00:36:53.120 you throw in a little bit of racism, some hatred, you throw in, um, laws that are not being enforced

00:37:01.160 that make it easier for them to attain deadly weapons when they shouldn't be able to, even

00:37:06.020 according to the laws we already have on the books, put all that together. And it's not hard to see

00:37:13.600 how we end up where we are right now. So what's the solution? Well, as I said, I don't have

00:37:20.680 the one solution. I don't think there's a flip we can switch or a switch we can flip rather,

00:37:27.560 I should say. Uh, there's not a switch we could flip and just, and just boom, like turning off

00:37:31.780 the lights and it's, and we've solved the problem. Obviously that doesn't exist, but I think we could

00:37:37.300 look, the solution is going to be something, um, it's not going to be, it's not going to be easy.

00:37:43.700 It involves massive cultural shifts and also massive shifts in our own lives so that we don't

00:37:53.620 end up like this ourselves and our children don't end up like this. And I say, we don't end up like

00:38:00.660 this. I know you might say, well, I would never do this. And I believe you wouldn't, I wouldn't

00:38:04.700 either. But you know, the fact is all of these people that go out and commit mass shootings,

00:38:10.260 I'm sure at some point in their life, many of them, they also would have said, I would never do

00:38:14.300 that, but they end up spiraling and going into a very dark place because of a lot of these factors,

00:38:25.640 I think. And so if we aren't worried about ourselves, uh, at the very least, we, you know,

00:38:34.760 we should be worried about the next generation, about our kids and their, and our kids' friends.

00:38:40.620 And, you know, so we need to look at all of these things. And so it's going to involve little things

00:38:46.740 like don't spend as much time on the internet. Don't spend as much time watching cable news.

00:38:51.280 Uh, as, as adults, we can keep our marriages together, give our kids a good, a good home

00:38:59.380 life, be very careful about the drugs we put them on, um, discover a real purpose in life

00:39:08.420 and instill that sense of purpose in our kids. All of those things. I think if we did even just

00:39:13.220 those three or four things I just mentioned, if we did that from here on out, I think this problem

00:39:18.820 would almost completely go away. I mean, you could change not a single law, you could change

00:39:27.600 nothing else, but if we just made a few changes, less time on the internet, keep our families and

00:39:34.540 marriages together, sense of purpose, uh, just that three things, this problem would almost completely

00:39:42.140 go away. All right. Let me get to a couple of emails before we wrap things up here. Uh, this

00:39:51.300 is, uh, Matt Walsh show at gmail.com is the email address. This is from QB says, Matt advising people

00:39:57.640 to be paranoid in public places and calling mass shootings routine is deeply irresponsible. Fear

00:40:01.700 mongering. You said on Twitter that white supremacists have killed 80 people globally in the last 10 0.93

00:40:05.740 months. That's about a hundred people per year on average out of a population of roughly 7.5 billion.

00:40:10.200 That's less than lightning fatalities. These incidents are not so much as relatively routine

00:40:14.540 and to call them that is absolutely annoying and accurate. Causing panic is in no way conducive to

00:40:19.400 your stated goal of limited government as every expansion of government is called for in response

00:40:23.460 to a panic. Stop it. Millions of Americans go out every day. And even the Washington post admits that

00:40:27.700 only 1,700 Americans were killed in mass shooting since 1966. That's fewer than peanuts have killed.

00:40:33.760 Stop the fear mongering. It's sickening. All right. Uh, QB. Well, and, and, and he's referencing,

00:40:39.280 I said on Twitter that we need to have situational awareness when you go out in public. First of all,

00:40:44.540 you should protect yourself, defend yourself, uh, be able to protect and defend yourself and give,

00:40:48.480 give yourself the, yourself the means to do that. But also look, when I go out in public with my kids,

00:40:52.880 especially, I took my kids to the theater, to the movie theater, uh, the other day. And you better

00:40:58.720 believe I, I took note of where the exits are. I made sure to sit close to them. I made sure I had a

00:41:02.720 path to them. And when I, whenever I go into a cloud, crowded public place, especially with my

00:41:07.140 kids. Um, and I admit that for me, I'm in a slightly different position from, from other people

00:41:14.460 and that, you know, there are people out there who know who I am and don't like me. And so that gives

00:41:20.500 me even more reason to be aware. But even aside from that, even if I didn't do this for a living,

00:41:24.520 I would still be situationally aware. And I would recommend the same for others. Now, QB doesn't like

00:41:29.820 that. He says that, uh, he says that that's, that's being paranoid. I don't think it's being

00:41:33.740 paranoid. Now, as I said, yes, there, there are statistically, um, your chances of being killed

00:41:40.380 in a mass shooting are very low. Fine. But you can't get around the fact, QB that, uh, as I've

00:41:48.860 been talking about nine of the deadliest mass shootings in, in American history, that's 250 years

00:41:54.920 of history. Nine of the worst ones have happened in the last decade, almost. Okay. You can't just,

00:42:02.600 ah, whatever. So you accuse me of paranoid fear mongering. I accuse you of just waving your hand

00:42:08.680 at it. Like, you know, I don't even worry about it. That's what you're saying, right? Don't worry

00:42:11.960 about it. I think that's irresponsible and reckless. Why shouldn't you at least be aware of

00:42:19.140 your surrounding? Are you actually telling me that it's irresponsible for me to tell people to be

00:42:24.200 aware of their surroundings? It's irresponsible to call for irresponsibility. Come on. I think you

00:42:29.540 need to wake up and realize just because it's still very, look, there could be a disease that

00:42:36.160 wipes out 10% of the American population and it would, you'd still have a 90% chance of not dying 0.65

00:42:42.800 from it. Okay. You're still a very good chance. If there was a flu epidemic that, uh, that, uh,

00:42:49.120 took down 10% of the American population, the chances of you being among that percent are,

00:42:54.460 you know, you, well, you have a 90% chance of it not being you or about a one. What if, what if,

00:42:58.820 what if 1% of the population was wiped out by some sort of a pandemic? Well, you still have a 99%

00:43:04.400 chance that you're not among that. That's still a lot of people and it's still a huge problem.

00:43:10.220 And it's still something you should be aware of. And if it's a disease, you know, do little things

00:43:14.640 like wash your hands and just be careful when you've got these mass shootings happening everywhere

00:43:20.520 in the country. Yeah. It probably won't be you. It could be though. So just be aware.

00:43:28.900 This is something, look, I agree that we shouldn't inflate the numbers. I did that at the beginning

00:43:36.400 of the show. I, I stipulated as people say 250 mass shootings in a year. Well, if you define it a

00:43:43.320 certain way, then yeah. But if you're, if you're, if we're talking about the kind of mass shootings

00:43:47.200 that we all think of when we say mass shootings, then no, it's not anywhere close to 250 in a year.

00:43:53.100 Um, if we get to that point where it's 250 of this kind of mass shooting in a year,

00:43:57.020 then that's just the end of American civilization completely. That's, that's the, you know,

00:44:00.900 it's probably the end of human civilization. If it's that, if it's that come. So yes, I agree

00:44:05.140 that we shouldn't inflate the numbers and it's good to point that out. But I think that some people on

00:44:09.640 the right, some conservatives have a tendency to go way to the other extreme and just deny that it's

00:44:15.220 even a problem and say that it's, ah, yeah. And I think that's really stupid also. 1.00

00:44:20.480 And, uh, and it seems like you're just sort of stepping over the dead bodies because you're 1.00

00:44:28.940 worried that it'll be politically inconvenient if you acknowledge it. And so it comes across QB,

00:44:34.100 like incredible political cowardice. All right. Um, let's see here.

00:44:43.120 I'm just going to do one more. Do I have anything that's not related to the shooting?

00:44:54.340 This is from, no, I don't. So I'll just do one more. This is from Erica says, hi, Matt,

00:44:58.800 something you tweeted this weekend really resonated with me, how you always check your nearest exits

00:45:02.640 when you go places and especially with your children. I do the exact same thing, but also I

00:45:06.140 can't help but have this fear when I'm in confined spaces with my kids where I'm hardly focused on

00:45:10.160 what's going on, uh, who is entering and leaving the exits. I really go to the movies. I rarely go

00:45:15.000 to the movies, but even when I do, I'm constantly looking over at the entrances. And when someone is

00:45:17.880 just standing over by the hallway to the exit, I find myself just staring at that person, wondering

00:45:21.800 if he or she is plotting to hurt everyone. And obviously the rational part of my brain knows that

00:45:25.440 the likelihood of that occurring is just so small, but I feel like this is my life now. Now I'm pro-gun,

00:45:30.240 but also as a parent, I want some sort of action taken, maybe an armed guard or police officer at major

00:45:34.920 buildings and churches. I don't know the solution, but as far as I could tell, gun laws haven't changed,

00:45:38.540 but clearly there are more evil and mentally disturbed individuals now. And honestly,

00:45:41.640 I feel like it's removing God from everything. People say you don't need God or religion to know

00:45:45.540 good versus bad. But I argue that that's how we've been living for the past 30 years. And look what's

00:45:50.000 happened. What does a real solution look like to you? Um, how can we stop these events from happening?

00:45:54.560 Well, of course I've just talked about what I consider to be some solutions and, uh, okay. So we've

00:45:58.380 got two sides of this issue about should we be aware of our surroundings and maybe two kind of extreme

00:46:03.520 sides. QB says, ah, don't worry about it at all. Whatever. Erica admits that

00:46:08.380 I think she sort of admits that she's got some real paranoia. Um, no, I don't think that every

00:46:12.840 time someone enters a room or standing near an exit, we need to be worried that they're about

00:46:17.540 to kill people, but just, just awareness. So, um, look, I was, we were at a theater, uh, I don't know,

00:46:23.840 a couple of years ago and, um, uh, some, somebody walked into the theater, uh, a guy by himself

00:46:32.940 walked into the theater with a bag, you know, like a, like a big book bag. And so that's a

00:46:39.160 sitting in both my wife and I, we kind of looked at each other and thought, what's he doing here

00:46:42.160 with a big book bag? How did he even get into here with a book bag? You can't even bring that

00:46:45.400 stuff into a movie theater. So, so we went and, uh, and told security and it turned out that I

00:46:50.720 don't know, like he probably was just trying to sneak snacks and wasn't trying to get him in trouble.

00:46:53.940 Right. I mean, if you want to sneak snacks and go ahead, I do it all the time to be honest,

00:46:56.640 but, um, that's the kind of thing that's, that's out of place. Uh, and I think that's the sort of

00:47:03.580 thing we should be aware of. It's the same thing they tell you at airports, just be aware. You know,

00:47:07.280 if you, if you see someone leave their luggage and go walk away from their luggage, it's probably

00:47:13.080 nothing. They probably just forgot it. But if someone is going to commit a terrorist act at a,

00:47:17.980 at an airport, you know, if they're going to try to blow up an airport, that's what they're going to

00:47:23.220 do. It's what the Boston bombers did. They, they took a book bag, left it in the crowd.

00:47:26.640 You see someone doing something like that, you know, tell someone it's just, it's better safe

00:47:31.920 than sorry. So just to be aware of those kinds of things, things that are truly out of place.

00:47:37.660 Someone just walking into a room is not out of place. Someone walking into a theater with a book

00:47:42.380 bag that's out of place. So be aware of that. Right. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, I think that,

00:47:49.380 I think it's a good idea to be that it's unfortunate we have to live that way, but we do. And I don't

00:47:54.340 think it should make us, it doesn't mean we never leave the house just means that we have an

00:47:59.700 appropriate amount of caution. Um, and as far Eric, as you said, you said about, uh, having armed guards

00:48:06.280 and so on, I'm all for that. I think churches should have security. I think that, um, I think,

00:48:12.680 I think big buildings with lots of malls and those sorts of things, they should have security. I don't

00:48:17.860 think the government should come in and do like a TSA type of thing for every single building in

00:48:22.220 the country. Obviously now that is where you get to the infringement of Liberty that QB was talking

00:48:26.260 about, but these places I think should, it'd be a good idea for them to on their own look into

00:48:34.440 security. Um, because the cops can't always be there in 30 seconds. Cops got there in 30 seconds

00:48:40.420 in Dayton, Ohio. And, uh, if they had, if they, if it had taken the cops, if it, if it had taken the

00:48:45.180 cops two minutes to get there, there'd be hundreds of people dead possibly. Um, so you can't always

00:48:54.120 rely on the cops being there in 30 seconds. And even if they are there in 30 seconds,

00:48:57.580 that might not be enough to save you. So that's why we should just be aware and cautious and able

00:49:05.380 to defend ourselves. All right. Heavy subjects, difficult subjects today on the show, but, uh,

00:49:11.140 that's just what needed to be discussed. So thanks everybody for watching. Godspeed.

00:49:30.040 In El Paso, Texas, an eco-fascist slaughtered 20 people in a shopping mall shooting. The next day

00:49:35.860 in Dayton, Ohio, a socialist Satanist leftist slaughtered nine, including his own sister at a

00:49:41.380 bar. Leftist partisans rushed to blame Trump and conservatives. Conservatives eager to fight the

00:49:47.020 unfair attacks, try to disavow any connection whatsoever to the ideology of the El Paso shooter.

00:49:52.700 We will examine the reality. There are very terrible people on both sides. Check it out on the Michael

00:49:58.360 novel show.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 05, 2019

Ep. 310 - Why This Keeps Happening

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