The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 33 - The Cancer In The Bloodstream Of American Culture

00:00:00.000 People will often ask me why I'm so blunt, why I'm so direct in my approach.

00:00:08.560 And oftentimes they'll phrase it in a way that's a little bit less flattering than that,

00:00:12.560 but that's basically the question.

00:00:15.020 You'll attract more flies with honey, Matt.

00:00:17.620 That's what people always tell me.

00:00:18.940 And yeah, I don't use a lot of honey.

00:00:20.620 I admit that.

00:00:21.860 But first of all, I'm not interested in attracting flies.

00:00:25.500 Why would I want to attract flies?

00:00:27.420 I've never understood that expression.

00:00:29.140 For the sake of the expression, why would you use the one thing that nobody wants to attract?

00:00:35.980 But second, I don't think the expression holds anyway, because it appears to me that one of

00:00:42.260 the great problems in American society and really kind of the film, the protective coating,

00:00:49.480 the shell that covers everything in our culture is indifference, apathy, intellectual and moral

00:00:57.520 laziness is the issue.

00:00:59.860 So if you want to get through to people, if you want to reach them, if you really want

00:01:03.160 to engage them, you got to break through that sometimes.

00:01:06.200 And that means necessarily being a little bit more blunt.

00:01:10.380 And if in the process they end up feeling attacked and judged, and if you hurt their feelings a

00:01:17.080 little bit, well, that's okay.

00:01:18.740 In fact, it could even be good.

00:01:21.180 You got to make them feel something first, make them care, even if that's how they just

00:01:25.060 just, you got to get them there first, where they actually care and they're angry.

00:01:29.040 So if people get angry at me, I can take that.

00:01:31.580 That's fine.

00:01:32.580 But at least they feel something.

00:01:34.580 At least for a moment, they actually care.

00:01:37.100 Because I think most people don't care about like anything.

00:01:42.360 We're always told that the real problem, the biggest problem for America today is that

00:01:48.340 there's so much division and there's so much partisanship and there's bigotry and people

00:01:53.980 are so firm in their beliefs and they refuse to compromise or to see from the other perspective,

00:02:01.520 hate.

00:02:02.060 They're so filled with hate, right?

00:02:04.520 So we have to fight hate.

00:02:05.520 We have to fight hate speech and hate crimes and hate in every other form.

00:02:08.680 There's just, there's so much hate everywhere, which I think is so clearly not the case, not

00:02:15.040 the case at all.

00:02:16.420 When I look around America, I don't see people who are so firm and resolute and dedicated to

00:02:22.860 their beliefs and so just on fire and passionate about life and about what they believe and

00:02:30.440 to a dangerous extent where now it's even hateful.

00:02:34.200 In fact, I'm even told, people even worry that we're headed towards a civil war.

00:02:38.760 We're going to break out in war again like we did in 1861. 0.77

00:02:42.020 I think we flatter ourselves when we start talking like that.

00:02:46.600 There's not, I hate to tell you this, but there's not going to be any civil war.

00:02:51.620 It's not going to happen.

00:02:52.900 We are far too lazy for that.

00:02:55.880 We don't care nearly enough about things for a civil war.

00:02:59.480 Now, I know the conditions are different in 2018 than they were in 1861, but just consider

00:03:04.120 what these men, during the real civil war, the first civil war, the only civil war so far,

00:03:11.600 consider what they went through, what they endured.

00:03:14.960 Okay?

00:03:16.140 I mean, we're talking about, especially in the South, we're talking about these barely even

00:03:21.780 men, a lot of them, 16, 17, 18 years old in many cases.

00:03:25.080 They didn't even, they didn't have shoes.

00:03:27.820 They didn't have food.

00:03:29.680 You know, they were, they were walking like through the, the, the Shenandoah mountains

00:03:36.220 without shoes on, marching 20 to 25 miles a day, eating salt pork and black coffee that

00:03:44.740 tastes like motor oil made from acorns.

00:03:47.200 Okay.

00:03:47.520 Um, they were charging headlong into cannon fire.

00:03:52.420 They, they, they would stand just yards apart and, and, and, and blow each other to pieces

00:03:57.600 with their rifles.

00:03:58.740 And it's not like they really had anesthetic.

00:04:01.240 So if a limb had to be amputated, well, you're going to take a swig of whiskey and, um, it

00:04:05.620 was going to be cut off.

00:04:07.160 So that's the kind of conviction that these men had in the civil war.

00:04:12.000 They, they, they really believed in something.

00:04:14.220 And they really believed in a cause you could disagree with the cause that we, we could

00:04:18.480 debate what the cause actually was.

00:04:19.860 You know, that's not the point.

00:04:20.720 The point is they believed in something they believed in a cause and, um, on both sides

00:04:25.480 and they were, and they were willing to fight for it.

00:04:28.180 We don't have that kind of conviction.

00:04:31.000 Most of us, we don't have anywhere near that kind of conviction.

00:04:34.920 I'll tell you why a civil war wouldn't happen because a civil war, uh, would almost certainly 0.94

00:04:40.140 mean that we're all going to lose, that there's not going to be cable or internet for a while.

00:04:45.660 There's probably not going to be Netflix.

00:04:47.100 There's not gonna be time to watch it.

00:04:49.060 The moment we started losing our luxuries, we live in this country with such insane, indulgent

00:04:56.340 luxury.

00:04:57.360 The moment we started to lose those things, we would say, oh, nevermind.

00:05:03.520 Nevermind.

00:05:04.860 Forget it.

00:05:05.480 Like our electricity goes off and we're out with, we're without air conditioning for two

00:05:09.560 days.

00:05:09.900 That would be enough.

00:05:10.800 All right.

00:05:11.080 And forget the whole thing, guys.

00:05:12.500 Let's forget this civil war thing.

00:05:14.040 What do you think?

00:05:15.260 I mean, I did, I, I thought we were fighting a civil war.

00:05:17.580 I didn't know.

00:05:17.880 I didn't know I'd have to sacrifice my video game time.

00:05:20.180 I mean, nobody told me that was part of the bargain.

00:05:22.320 Now I don't say this with, with disappointment, by the way, I don't mean to come across like

00:05:25.900 I'm disappointed.

00:05:26.360 Like I want a civil war.

00:05:27.500 Of course I don't.

00:05:28.960 600,000 people died in the civil war was a horrible, horrific thing.

00:05:32.260 I'm just trying to make the point that hatred is not the thing destroying our society.

00:05:35.780 Hatred could destroy society.

00:05:37.620 It's an awful thing.

00:05:38.680 It's destroyed many societies in the past.

00:05:40.940 Division, partisanship, all those things can be, can literally split apart countries

00:05:46.600 as we witnessed ourselves.

00:05:48.800 But our case is different.

00:05:51.440 The cancer in our bloodstream, I really believe, is indifference.

00:05:55.220 It is apathy.

00:05:57.580 The problem is we've misdiagnosed all the symptoms.

00:06:01.560 So for instance, we see these occasional bursts of violence and chaos in the streets on the

00:06:05.780 part of BLM or Antifa or that one time when it was white nationalists.

00:06:09.420 And we see that and we say, okay, well, that's bigotry.

00:06:11.300 It's hatred.

00:06:11.700 See, we're on the verge of civil war.

00:06:13.040 No, you know what that really was and is?

00:06:15.500 It's nihilism.

00:06:17.640 There's people, they're just looking for an excuse to throw rocks and to burn cop cars

00:06:21.840 and they found a convenient excuse.

00:06:23.900 But that's really, it's just a destructive impulse.

00:06:27.460 Remember famously, the mayor of Baltimore, during the riots in Baltimore, she said, well,

00:06:31.540 we have to give them space to destroy, right?

00:06:34.040 It's a great leadership on her part.

00:06:36.000 But that's really what they wanted.

00:06:38.200 It was really, they just wanted a space to destroy.

00:06:41.320 Why they were destroying things, you know, didn't really matter.

00:06:44.600 In fact, if you had asked, if you had pulled any one of them out and interviewed them,

00:06:48.940 and some people did do this, well, what are you, what are you so upset about?

00:06:53.100 But in many cases, they couldn't even tell you what they were upset about.

00:06:55.420 Just not, not because they're not upset.

00:06:57.500 They just were looking for a reason to do this.

00:07:00.220 And so they did.

00:07:01.040 That was nihilism.

00:07:02.400 The same can be said for many of the recent mass shootings.

00:07:05.840 I make this point every time there's a mass shooting, because I think it's, it's so

00:07:09.260 important to realize that in most cases, when you hear about these, these,

00:07:14.600 these monsters who go in and slaughter innocent people, in most cases, this is, they are not

00:07:21.620 really bigoted.

00:07:24.800 The Charleston church shooting is a different case.

00:07:27.860 Okay, that clearly was bigotry.

00:07:29.540 But most of the time, I think it's not bigotry.

00:07:33.600 It's not even really hatred.

00:07:35.760 Even if the person is shooting up a school and he has some grudge against the people in

00:07:39.960 the school, but I think that's not really what's driving it.

00:07:43.420 And because what, what do you hear from the survivors of these shootings, the ones who

00:07:48.420 witness this happen and they see the guy in the act, what, what do they always say?

00:07:54.420 You almost never hear about a guy walking into a building, screaming obscenities and just,

00:08:05.440 there's, you know, his face is red and he's on fire with rage and he's spraying bullets at

00:08:12.240 these people that he hates.

00:08:14.340 That's kind of the, the scene you would expect to see, right?

00:08:18.580 But no, what you always hear is that they walk into a building and they have a blank expression

00:08:24.240 on their face.

00:08:25.000 And they are practically yawning while they go around killing innocent people. 0.99

00:08:32.060 They do it casually.

00:08:33.640 And if you could zoom in and just see their face and see nothing and see and hear nothing

00:08:38.440 else, you would almost think, well, that's the face of a man waiting in line at the post

00:08:42.380 office or at the DMV, you know, that's what you would think because it's just, or that's

00:08:48.280 just the face of a guy sitting in traffic.

00:08:50.720 It's this bored, despondent, empty face.

00:08:56.600 So again, that goes to this emptiness and this indifference.

00:09:01.280 Every, every day on the news, you see another example of, of this kind of thing.

00:09:06.060 Some of the most extreme examples stand out.

00:09:08.420 We remember them.

00:09:09.140 You may remember the case a couple of years ago of, um, the, the people who kidnapped the

00:09:15.900 disabled man and, um, tortured him and broadcast it live on Facebook. 0.67

00:09:22.500 I don't know if you remember that case, but right after it happened, there were people

00:09:26.600 saying, oh, this is a hate crime.

00:09:28.080 It's hateful.

00:09:29.520 No, because they were laughing while they did it.

00:09:32.280 They didn't hate this guy.

00:09:33.900 It wasn't hate.

00:09:35.200 They didn't have anything against him personally.

00:09:38.000 They were just utterly indifferent to his life.

00:09:41.580 And so they thought they would amuse themselves by torturing him.

00:09:44.840 That's all.

00:09:45.900 They didn't hate him.

00:09:47.760 What they felt towards him was something even lower than hatred.

00:09:51.780 Another case of teenagers who, uh, laughed and made fun of a guy while he drowned in a

00:09:58.140 reservoir.

00:09:59.420 There was a very troubled man who went out and drowned that, I guess he trying to drown

00:10:04.100 himself in a lake or a reservoir.

00:10:06.900 And there were teenagers that happened to be standing on the shore and, um, on the bank.

00:10:12.880 Like, uh, and, and they, they saw it happen.

00:10:15.120 They made no attempt to call 9-1-1.

00:10:17.440 They made no attempt to save him.

00:10:19.420 And instead they just laughed and they made fun of him.

00:10:22.140 Again, they didn't hate the guy.

00:10:23.120 They didn't know him.

00:10:24.740 They were just completely indifferent to his life.

00:10:27.400 Think again of all the cases of, unfortunately, there are so many cases of, uh, people committing

00:10:31.920 suicide, uh, and, and live streaming it.

00:10:34.780 And what do you hear about every time one of this, these things happen, you'll always

00:10:38.060 hear about the people that watch the live stream and they cheer and they encourage the

00:10:43.540 person to kill themselves.

00:10:44.780 Do they hate that person? 0.97

00:10:46.100 No, they don't hate the person.

00:10:47.520 They don't know them.

00:10:48.200 They have nothing against them.

00:10:49.380 They just feel nothing towards them.

00:10:52.260 Less extreme, but still another example is, is most of the vitriol and the vile, putrid

00:11:00.480 filth that you see people spewing at each other online.

00:11:04.460 You look at the comments under a YouTube video or on Twitter or whatever, and people say the

00:11:10.240 most vile, awful things to each other and about other people.

00:11:14.400 But there's not really hatred in it.

00:11:16.740 It's just complete emptiness.

00:11:18.480 Look, I get, I get a lot of the, I mean, take it from me.

00:11:20.700 I get so much of this myself and I would even, I'll even, you know, for, for lack of a better

00:11:25.960 term, I'll call it hate mail.

00:11:27.400 And I get so much of it and anyone right now, you could look at the comment.

00:11:31.320 I mean, I, no matter what I say or do online, the comments section will be filled with people

00:11:35.960 who are just ripping me to shreds.

00:11:38.460 Right.

00:11:39.560 But on the rare occasion, when I make the mistake of reading some of that stuff, what I find is it's

00:11:43.960 not, it's like, they don't even really seem angry.

00:11:47.000 They're just, these are just empty, sad people who are just reacting this way.

00:11:52.240 They're reacting this way because they find some amusing, it amuses them.

00:11:55.800 It's entertainment.

00:11:56.920 And also for me personally, the kind of things I talk about where I'm trying to get to, you

00:12:00.600 know, if I'm, if I'm trying to break people out of that apathy and out of that, um, out

00:12:06.240 of that indifference, well, they're going to react strongly against that because for them,

00:12:11.960 they, they, they cling closely to it and to, and to be, you know, when you try to separate

00:12:17.160 them from it, they start to feel vulnerable and scared and afraid because this apathy and

00:12:22.280 this indifference is also kind of a defense mechanism.

00:12:24.460 So all of that, it's just in there.

00:12:26.560 The rising suicide rate itself is speaks to this indifference.

00:12:31.000 The drug abuse epidemic, our, our supposed mental health crisis, throw in all of our

00:12:36.200 obsessive TV watching and, uh, our addiction to smartphones and the internet and the rabid

00:12:41.440 kind of materialism that you see in our culture, the collapse of the family, the decline

00:12:45.320 in religion, all of this goes back to the same thing, emptiness, indifference, apathy.

00:12:51.240 So here, here, here's the secret about the nature of the disputes in our country.

00:12:56.180 Most of the combatants screaming and fighting at each other, you know, and, and,

00:13:00.980 and, and, and throwing insults back and forth.

00:13:03.280 Most of them don't actually care that much.

00:13:07.380 They're saying talking points.

00:13:09.380 They're, they're, you know, saying what they think they're supposed to say.

00:13:13.080 They're repeating their lines that they've been given.

00:13:17.140 And the people on the other side are, are giving their lines, but it's all just theater.

00:13:22.680 Most of these people, they don't care.

00:13:25.000 They haven't even thought about these issues.

00:13:27.440 They've given no thought to them whatsoever.

00:13:29.480 I shared this story a couple of days ago.

00:13:31.520 I was just, just one example of so many that you see online, but I was scrolling through

00:13:36.040 Facebook a few days ago and I saw on my newsfeed, someone had posted something about Trump's

00:13:42.540 Jerusalem policy.

00:13:43.540 And so in the comment section, there were five, five or six people going back and forth fighting

00:13:47.940 over this.

00:13:48.520 And it was a very contentious, angry fight and they were insulting each other.

00:13:52.400 But just reading through it, I got, I got the distinction, distinct impression reading

00:13:57.160 through this exchange between these people.

00:13:58.880 I got the distinct impression that number one, nobody involved in this discussion knows what

00:14:05.840 they're talking about.

00:14:07.040 It really appears that none of them had even thought about this issue prior to that morning,

00:14:13.420 prior to it being in the news.

00:14:15.080 They had not even thought about it.

00:14:16.500 They'd given it no thought whatsoever.

00:14:17.800 And, but now suddenly they're pretending to not only know about it, but to feel passionately

00:14:24.040 all of a sudden they've, they're, they're on fire with passion about it.

00:14:28.620 But, um, it's, I find their passion really unconvincing.

00:14:33.400 So you get the impression, number one, that they don't know anything about it.

00:14:35.760 And number two, that they don't really care.

00:14:38.300 And if they're having this fight and it's just something to do, and then they'll quickly

00:14:41.720 go on to the other thing.

00:14:42.720 You can even imagine, I mean, in your head, you can imagine like one of these guys in line 1.00

00:14:46.980 at Starbucks, typing furiously, no, you're so stupid. 1.00

00:14:50.860 You're wrong. 1.00

00:14:51.520 This is blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:53.420 Oh yeah.

00:14:54.000 I'll have a venti mocha with a, yeah.

00:14:56.340 Extra whip.

00:14:56.940 Yeah. 1.00

00:14:57.120 But you're so stupid. 1.00

00:14:58.280 I can't believe. 1.00

00:14:59.260 Yeah.

00:14:59.420 I mean, it's just, it's nothing.

00:15:00.620 It's just something.

00:15:01.240 It's just something for him to do while he's doing other things.

00:15:03.600 And that's how most of our discussions go.

00:15:05.980 We're not really a hateful people.

00:15:07.860 I think we are callous, but we're not hateful.

00:15:12.020 I think it's indifference that informs every aspect of American life.

00:15:16.980 And hollow, indifferent, callous people, they don't fight civil wars.

00:15:22.920 They just kind of float softly into oblivion.

00:15:27.140 And I think that's going to be our fate if we don't stay on our current trajectory, if

00:15:30.760 we do stay on our current trajectory.

00:15:33.280 The country is not going to break apart.

00:15:35.100 We're going to remain stuck together.

00:15:38.980 But our unity is not any kind of, it's not due to any kind of common understanding or

00:15:47.160 shared understanding.

00:15:48.700 It's just sort of this paralysis.

00:15:51.840 Or maybe it's more accurate to say that we're together because what else are we supposed to do?

00:15:57.020 Indifference is far worse than hatred.

00:16:00.700 Far worse.

00:16:02.300 We worry so much about hatred.

00:16:03.580 Hatred really isn't, hatred isn't such a terrible thing.

00:16:07.460 I mean, it's not good, but you can work with hatred.

00:16:11.580 When somebody is hateful, you know, like if somebody really hates you, really hates you,

00:16:17.820 well, it's not good.

00:16:19.040 It's not, you know, you'd prefer if they didn't.

00:16:20.860 But that means that they, there's something, they feel something towards you.

00:16:25.720 They care about you.

00:16:26.900 They care about you in a negative way, but they do care about you.

00:16:30.600 So there's a real feeling there.

00:16:32.420 There's a, there's a caring, there's a, there's a passion directed at you.

00:16:37.820 And so it's not that difficult.

00:16:39.640 You know, you've got the raw material to work with.

00:16:41.940 Hatred is just love turned upside down.

00:16:43.760 So all you got to do is just turn it right side up.

00:16:46.280 It's not that hard to turn a hateful person into a loving person.

00:16:49.300 Because you've already got that fire and that passion there.

00:16:54.180 I mean, all you got to do is just, you've just got to make things right.

00:16:57.340 You've just got to put them in their proper place and context.

00:17:00.660 But indifference is nothing.

00:17:02.620 There's no raw material.

00:17:03.820 There's nothing to work with.

00:17:05.200 Indifference is just a blank space.

00:17:08.760 And if somebody's indifferent to you, well, then that's the worst thing because there's

00:17:14.280 nothing there to work with.

00:17:15.840 And I think that's what we struggle with in our society.

00:17:18.140 I certainly don't know how to solve that.

00:17:21.680 I mean, we can't.

00:17:22.900 On our own, you can't take an indifferent person and make them not that anymore.

00:17:27.600 So we have to rely on prayer and rely on God.

00:17:31.360 But in the meantime, I really think that if there is any antidote aside from prayer to

00:17:38.200 indifference, it is real passion and conviction.

00:17:41.800 And so I try to bring that to a discussion because, as I said, I think that's the only

00:17:46.860 way to break through that.

00:17:48.000 If there's any way to break through that indifference and get to the core of a person and make them

00:17:53.020 care, I think that's the way to do it.

00:17:55.160 All right.

00:17:55.680 Thank you for caring enough to watch this whole ramble.

00:17:59.140 And I will have a great weekend.

00:18:00.520 I'll talk to you on Monday.

00:18:01.380 Godspeed.

00:18:01.680 See you on Monday.

00:18:03.260 Bye.

00:18:03.500 Bye.

00:18:03.720 Bye.

00:18:05.480 Bye.

00:18:05.820 Bye.

00:18:06.360 Bye.

00:18:08.500 Bye.

00:18:14.900 Bye.

00:18:19.900 Bye.

00:18:20.080 Bye.

00:18:24.000 Bye.

00:18:25.080 Bye.

00:18:29.760 Bye.

00:18:29.880 Bye.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 18, 2018

Ep. 33 - The Cancer In The Bloodstream Of American Culture

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