The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1186 - The CDC & Buttigieg Gaslight East Palestine's Water

00:00:00.000 I want to preface this. I'm not drawing any conclusions, okay? I'm just making an observation.

00:00:09.020 And the observation is that just weeks before the massive vinyl chloride leak and burn off

00:00:17.140 that is currently poisoning East Palestine, Ohio, and likely compromising the air and water across

00:00:23.360 a much larger geographic region. The CDC changed its toxicology report on vinyl chloride and its FAQ

00:00:33.440 page for the first time in 17 years, weeks before, possibly as little as 11 days before,

00:00:42.120 but certainly it happened at some point in the month before this accident. So I've got here

00:00:46.760 the toxicology report and the FAQs from 2006. And here you just see a lot more information in the

00:00:57.320 2006 one. How likely is vinyl chloride to cause cancer? You see a lot of specific information

00:01:03.420 about an increased risk of liver, brain, lung cancer, cancers of the blood. How can vinyl

00:01:09.420 chloride affect children? There's a whole paragraph about that. Has the federal government made

00:01:15.660 recommendations to protect human health? Yes. It says the EPA requires that the amount of vinyl

00:01:21.180 chloride in drinking water not exceed 0.002 milligrams per liter of water. Talks about how

00:01:28.040 much in terms of parts per million can be in the workplace. It's pretty thorough. And then you go to

00:01:34.100 the FAQ on vinyl chloride that just dropped last month. The section on how to protect children is

00:01:41.800 totally gone. The section on cancer is a much simplified. There's a lot less detail. The,

00:01:48.240 the section about how many parts per million or milligrams per liter, that's all gone.

00:01:54.080 So it's just a little, this was January. This is just the, what are, what are the odds? All I'm

00:02:00.780 saying is just the odds are kind of, it's kind of weird. And it isn't nearly as weird as the fact

00:02:06.880 that the whole incident, the whole train derailment, chemical spilling, poison the town incident was

00:02:14.160 depicted in a movie that came out last year, six, eight months ago called White Noise, which was not

00:02:22.020 only filmed in the area in which the actual incident would occur, but even included people from East

00:02:28.660 Palestine as extras in the movie. One such extra, an East Palestine resident named Ben Ratner has told

00:02:35.540 reporters, quote, the first half of the movie is all almost exactly what's going on here.

00:02:42.900 And I'm not making any accusations. I'm actually not. Okay. I'm not coming to any conclusions.

00:02:48.820 Even though the CDC and the public authorities more broadly have completely squandered their

00:02:53.460 credibility in particular over the last few years and have lied to us on several occasions,

00:02:59.320 you know, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm really not,

00:03:02.680 but I am a coincidence noticer and it's weird. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:18.480 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Henry Bierman, who says,

00:03:22.760 happy Valentine's day from Dr. Fauci. You make my heart stop. It's not, shouldn't be funny. I guess

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00:04:37.700 smarter wireless. I think I'm going to use that. It just came to me when I was thinking about these

00:04:42.940 stories, the white noise movie, the toxicology report, the FAQ from the CDC. I'm really not a

00:04:48.680 conspiracy theorist. I always look for the least complex answer for any sort of odd phenomenon.

00:04:56.780 But I definitely am a coincidence noticer. And it doesn't necessarily mean that there is some

00:05:03.240 secret shadowy group of people that are doing all sorts of nefarious things. At the very least,

00:05:07.900 though, there is no such thing as coincidences. Modern libs believe that every strange,

00:05:13.920 no matter how big the miracle is, no matter how in your face some kind of miracle is,

00:05:19.740 they'll say, oh, it's just random chance. For Christians, though, for people who are

00:05:23.740 traditionally religious, there's no such thing as coincidences because there's providence and

00:05:28.100 there's an order to the universe. Now, what's going on in this case, in this really bizarre

00:05:34.060 incident in East Palestine, Ohio? Is that just the broad order of the universe? Is that just random

00:05:41.100 chance or something else? I don't know. I do know that it's also really weird how the authorities

00:05:47.740 are downplaying this incident. Had this been a few weeks ago, had you told me there's going to be an

00:05:55.560 environmental disaster that happens anywhere, anywhere in the West, what's going to happen

00:06:03.000 afterward? I would have said, well, you're going to get all the usual suspects there. John Kerry is going

00:06:07.680 to fly in and demand environmental cleanup. St. Greta, St. Greta of the blessed sailboat. She's

00:06:13.560 going to come in. She's going to say, how dare you? Trains derail. There would be big protests,

00:06:20.260 massive press conferences. None of that. None of that has happened. You had no environmentalists

00:06:29.260 have shown up to protest. The authorities haven't shown up. There's no Joe Biden demanding stricter

00:06:35.380 environmental regulations. His signature legislative accomplishment last year was passing a green bill,

00:06:41.560 right? The climate change bill, which he initially told us was an inflation reduction act, but then

00:06:45.500 admitted almost immediately after it passed, no, this is just about the environment. Okay,

00:06:48.940 you care so much about the environment. Where are you in East Palestine? How come nobody's talking

00:06:53.700 about this? How come everyone wants to play this down? The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg,

00:06:59.500 took a little break from his paternity leave, his perpetual paternity leave,

00:07:02.980 to go on television now, what, two weeks after the incident? And he went on television to downplay

00:07:09.640 the significance of the derailment. Look, rail safety is something that has evolved a lot over

00:07:15.460 the years, but there's clearly more that needs to be done. Because while this horrible situation

00:07:21.760 has gotten a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year

00:07:27.700 of a train derailing. So it's no big deal. Actually, guys, I know that there is this major derailment

00:07:36.140 where all the water and the air around this area has been poisoned. And I know that actually about

00:07:43.620 10% of the country gets its drinking water from roughly around this region. But hey, there's a lot

00:07:50.020 of derailments every year. It's really not. It's not a big deal. Move along, move along. These are

00:07:53.840 not the droids you're looking for. It seems like a big deal to me. And it seems like a big deal that

00:08:02.520 the authorities are saying this is not a big deal. That's really weird. Maybe it's that Pete Buttigieg is

00:08:09.560 just trying to CYA. It could be. Maybe he feels that he's totally exposed here and he's a flop of a

00:08:16.140 transportation secretary, a job that is essentially a no-show job. It's one of the least important,

00:08:21.920 least notable jobs in the government. Pete Buttigieg got it, as the Chinese pointed out in

00:08:27.320 their correct propaganda yesterday. He got it as a kind of vanity political appointment to appease

00:08:33.900 some of the left-wing base and to check off some politically correct boxes. But you got to do

00:08:41.960 something, right? And where are the other people? Senator J.D. Vance, new senator from Ohio,

00:08:48.460 he's calling BS on the elected officials and the EPA, the EPA, which is saying, oh, no, the water is

00:08:54.380 totally safe to drink. This kind of thing happens all the time. Move along, move along. Well, J.D.

00:08:59.320 has a challenge for the EPA administrator. You know, it reminds me of that scene in Erin Brockovich where

00:09:04.640 she puts the water in front of them and says, if you think it's clean, we brought this water from

00:09:08.400 you know, the community that was affected. Look, I think that if the EPA administrator wants to stand

00:09:14.480 here and tell people that the tap water is safe, by all means, they should be willing to drink it.

00:09:19.360 Are you? No, I just told, I told Tom, I think that if I was living here, I would drink the bottled

00:09:27.000 water for now, better safe than sorry, especially since it's being provided for free. That's the

00:09:31.200 guidance I would give it again. You know, residents are going to make their own decisions on this,

00:09:34.420 but my honest personal advice is I'd be drinking the bottled water right now.

00:09:38.400 I love the reporter's question. Maybe he meant it in an innocent way, or maybe it was sort of a

00:09:44.480 gotcha where J.D. Vance says, look, if you really think this is all fine, EPA administrator, come down

00:09:49.720 here right now and drink the water. He says, well, will you drink the water? And J.D. looks a little

00:09:54.260 bit confused almost. He says, no, did you not hear what? No, I wouldn't drink the water. I think it's

00:10:00.220 poison. And I would drink the bottled water, especially when it's being provided for free.

00:10:04.120 I don't believe the EPA administrator. And I doubt that the EPA administrator believes the EPA

00:10:10.200 administrator. Does anybody seriously believe after what, a million gallons of this, or a million

00:10:18.920 pounds, I sort of forget whatever the measurement is, of this vinyl chloride, to say nothing of the

00:10:23.480 other toxic chemicals that leaked out, then were set on fire turning to phosgene and sulfuric, or

00:10:29.580 hydrochloric acid rather, and possibly sulfuric acid, but certainly hydrochloric acid. You think

00:10:34.420 that two weeks after that, the water's fine, the air is fine? Nobody believes that. In fact, there's

00:10:39.400 a resident of East Palestine who just went out to show you on video how not fine the water is.

00:10:46.580 So this resident goes out to a little creek in the woods. She gets a little piece of wood and throws

00:10:52.340 it into the water. So the water looks fine at first, but then the minute she disrupts the water

00:10:57.440 with the water, with the wood, then you see all the chemicals bubble to the top.

00:11:06.720 There's rainbow colors everywhere.

00:11:12.740 You look down, it's like, it's an oil slick.

00:11:15.560 It's worse than an oil slick, though. It's much more poisonous than an oil slick.

00:11:29.560 So it might look fine. If you're an EPA administrator, you're going in, you're testing

00:11:34.160 the water, and you're just testing the water on top, maybe it looks fine. Maybe the point

00:11:38.300 that she's making is all the poison was down there at the bottom. So you throw a rock in,

00:11:41.920 you throw a log in, then all that, those chemicals rise up to the top. So sure, we can all trust that

00:11:50.260 the water is safe in East Palestine, Ohio, the minute that Joe Biden or the EPA administrator or

00:11:56.760 Pete Buttigieg or whoever go and drink it. But none of them are going to do that. This reminds me of

00:12:03.060 in Indian elections, candidates who are running for office in India will often go to Varanasi,

00:12:09.140 this holy city considered very holy in India. And that's where the Ganges is. And they'll go and

00:12:15.700 they'll either wash themselves in the water from the Ganges, maybe they'll jump into the water from

00:12:20.380 the Ganges. Sometimes they'll even drink some of the water from the Ganges, which is horrifying because

00:12:25.140 that's the river where people throw dead bodies, bodies that have been burnt along the side of the

00:12:31.280 river, or in some cases, even with human flesh on it. And so it's just teeming with bacteria.

00:12:36.620 And then what happens? The people get sick. Well, okay. I give the politicians some credit,

00:12:43.080 actually, in their own religious tradition. They're willing to subject themselves to that.

00:12:46.500 Okay. Leftist government administrators, drink that water in East Palestine. Drink that water in

00:12:52.360 East Palestine, which could affect water throughout a lot of the country. Drink that, make us all feel

00:12:57.920 better. Until they do, I ain't buying it. Speaking of stuff in the water, speaking of things in the

00:13:07.060 water, turning the freaking frogs gay and maybe turning other people into other things. The

00:13:13.900 Crane & Company, guys, broke this story a couple of days ago. I meant to get to it yesterday.

00:13:18.580 Fortunately, we're able to get to it today. The story is from this interview with one of Leah

00:13:24.960 Thomas's teammates. Leah Thomas is actually named Will Thomas. He's that hulking dude who swam on

00:13:31.060 the UPenn women's swim team and then beat all the girls and took their trophies. And he's just

00:13:35.600 obviously a big guy. But he pretends to be a woman. And so we've all got to pretend that he's a girl and

00:13:41.300 he's smashing the glass ceiling. And it's so wonderful and brave and stunning. So one of

00:13:46.780 Will Thomas's teammates comes out and gives a great interview, which I strongly recommend you go

00:13:51.560 check out at Crane & Company, where she says, man, this is gross. This guy showed up to the

00:13:56.680 locker room. He strips down naked. All of us girls had to be subjected to looking at him back when he

00:14:01.700 still had the male parts. And then she spilled a little bit more tea. The part that everyone is

00:14:08.960 focusing on from this interview is that Will Thomas's boyfriend, it's a boy who thinks that he's a

00:14:16.920 girl. I don't know. Will Thomas's paramour was photographed holding up a jar with what appeared

00:14:25.340 to be pickle juice and then two spherical objects in the jar. So two, I don't think they were olives.

00:14:36.300 I don't think they were little onions that you put in the cocktails. Okay. So that was what everyone

00:14:43.020 is focusing on in this interview with, with one of Will's competitors. I misspoke, not one of his

00:14:47.200 teammates, one of his competitors. And there's something more interesting about the interview

00:14:51.860 though. And the pictures that were uncovered and the details about Will Thomas's personal life.

00:15:00.080 There's a bunch of weird satanic stuff. There's a bunch of really weird sexual stuff

00:15:05.040 that was, if not posted by Will Thomas, at least liked by Will Thomas on Instagram.

00:15:11.100 Things that talked about autogynephilia. Autogynephilia is one of the explanations for

00:15:16.640 transgenderism. There are within, I was going to say historically, but because the whole phenomenon

00:15:22.980 is so modern, there have been proposed in recent decades, two types of transgenderism.

00:15:28.900 Homosexual men who view themselves as women and also men who are sexually aroused by the thought of

00:15:36.640 them having female genitals. And that's called autogynephilia. So Will Thomas seems to have liked

00:15:43.100 some of these posts about autogynephilia, which might suggest that Will Thomas, Will Thomas's identity

00:15:53.540 is a little weirder, is a little more sexual in nature. But then what I find even more interesting

00:16:01.380 than that is all the weird satanic imagery. So one post liked by Will Thomas jokes that Will will

00:16:11.300 bring about the, quote, collapse of Western civilization. Another one is a picture of Will

00:16:17.320 as a demonic dominatrix character. There are posts that refer to Will Thomas as being in a polycule.

00:16:26.940 That's a group of sexually confused people who all do weird stuff with one another.

00:16:33.900 In fact, the person who wrote Nice Polycule is a user named Crybaby Hellbitch.

00:16:43.380 Beyond Crybaby Hellbitch, there is another transgender identifying person who has photos in a very

00:16:52.900 sexualized, sexualized, abusive, kind of fetishistic way. It's gory and stunning, as one commenter writes.

00:17:02.820 And so I'm not making any particular claims about Will Thomas or any of Will Thomas's friends or

00:17:10.240 friends with benefits or more than friends. I just can't help but notice something that I've noticed

00:17:16.880 for a long time. It's always the same imagery. It always gets back to weird, devil, demonic,

00:17:28.700 horns and tails and pitchforks kind of imagery. I made this point at the Grammys when Sam Smith got

00:17:34.900 on stage dressed like a lesbian Lucifer and jiggled around with a bunch of androgynous,

00:17:40.180 transsexual looking people. And the clip ended up going viral because my publicists over at Media

00:17:46.400 Matters were very shocked and offended that I made the point that very often depictions of the demonic

00:17:51.660 are quite androgynous or trans, and depictions of transgenderism and androgyny are quite often

00:17:57.460 demonic, which is just true. So when Media Matters posted it, I just retweeted it. I thought,

00:18:03.100 yeah, that's very true. What a great point I made. It's always this kind of imagery, isn't it?

00:18:10.040 Isn't that a little bit odd? Isn't that a little bit weird? It's almost as though

00:18:15.900 you can't really separate the physical from the metaphysical. It's almost as though

00:18:21.260 symbols matter. And so the reason that people with these weird sexual desires keep going back to the

00:18:29.280 same symbolism, the same symbols that we've seen all the way back to antiquity with the bad guy,

00:18:35.060 the little bad red demon with the horns and the pitchfork and the tail and the fangs and the

00:18:40.120 goatee and whatever, all of these symbols is because they might actually represent something.

00:18:45.780 Why do we talk about people who struggle with these kinds of psychological problems

00:18:49.720 as having demons? Today, we think that we're just speaking metaphorically. Oh, it's just a metaphor.

00:18:55.600 It's a metaphor for chemicals going off in their brains. Well, I don't even know what that means.

00:19:01.440 I mean, if we're talking about metaphor, we're talking about something beyond the physical world.

00:19:05.640 But all of us, I don't care how hardened a materialist you are, you behave as though there

00:19:11.620 is something beyond the material world. You behave as though there is some kind of moral order.

00:19:16.880 You behave as though there are things that are immaterial that still matter, like loves and

00:19:21.280 joys and mathematics and I don't know, all the intangible things that you can't quite touch or

00:19:26.060 smell or see, but nevertheless, you know are there. And you know those things are often represented

00:19:31.320 by physical objects. We all behave that way. And so I just think we need to pay a little more

00:19:38.480 attention to symbols. I mentioned at the top of the show that I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all.

00:19:43.480 I'm actually rather grounded and always seek a rational explanation when one is available to me.

00:19:49.280 But I also can't help but notice things. And I find that's especially true when we're talking

00:19:54.240 about symbols. The modern world refuses to acknowledge symbols. In fact, it explicitly

00:19:59.880 denies symbolism because in its thought, if not in its behavior, it tries to deny that there's any

00:20:05.140 metaphysical reality beneath the physical world. But for Christians or Jews or Muslims or even pagans or

00:20:12.760 anybody with any even quasi-traditional understanding of religion and man's place in the universe,

00:20:21.080 there is no such thing really as coincidence. There is a broader providence. There is meaning.

00:20:30.560 Okay? So if you believe that there is meaning, then there has got to be meaning to the fact that all

00:20:37.080 these sexual deviants keep going back to the same image of that same old devil. It's got to mean

00:20:46.200 something. You know who loves talking about signs and symbols and meaning and psychology? Our friend

00:20:53.440 Dr. Jordan Peterson. And I'm very excited to announce that we have a new five-part series with

00:20:56.900 Jordan available at Daily Wire Plus. Here is a first look at the trailer.

00:21:00.680 What you already know is not sufficient to guide you into the future.

00:21:07.920 The future is indeterminate. You cannot compute your way through the present into the future.

00:21:16.740 You need to use your vision to weave your way through life.

00:21:22.720 You're going to face tyrants and you're going to face mobs. Is there a vision that can sustain you

00:21:28.360 in the face of that? You should accept yourself just the way you are. What does that say about

00:21:33.400 who I should become? Is that just now off the table because I'm already good enough in every way?

00:21:38.680 So am I done or something? Get the hell up. Get your act together. Adopt some responsibility.

00:21:45.320 Put your life together. Develop a vision. Unfold all those manifold possibilities that lurk within.

00:21:52.320 Be a force for good in the world and that'll be the adventure of your life.

00:21:58.360 That sounded so persuasive that I am going to start doing this show in a Canadian accent.

00:22:08.360 Tomorrow, you're going to see me get on the show and I'm going to say,

00:22:11.520 I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show. Fuckaroo. I can't pull it off,

00:22:16.560 but Jordan can. He's got fabulous advice in this series that can really help you improve your life.

00:22:22.520 Episode one is available now. New episodes are coming online every week, but it's all exclusive

00:22:28.100 for Daily Wire Plus members. If you're not a member, now is a great time to join. Get 40% off

00:22:33.180 right now on an annual membership. You will unlock over 50 5-0 hours of exclusive Jordan content,

00:22:38.940 along with our entire library of movies, docs, specials, kids content, all coming this spring,

00:22:45.580 and our first major scripted series coming later this year. We've also got some exciting new

00:22:50.360 exclusive content in the works for this year that we can't tell you about yet. You don't want to

00:22:55.500 miss it. If you need some inspiration and help building a compelling vision for your life,

00:23:00.600 join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Vision and Destiny.

00:23:06.520 Speaking of demons, really troubling report from the CDC. Speaking of the CDC too, it's all kind of

00:23:13.820 looping back today, isn't it? Very coincidental. According to a new CDC study, 57% of high school

00:23:20.880 girls reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021. That is a 58% increase from 2011.

00:23:31.540 30% seriously considered suicide. That is a 60% almost increase from 2011.

00:23:39.880 24% made plans for suicide. That is a 60% increase from 2011.

00:23:49.620 42% of high school students overall felt persistent sadness or hopelessness. 22% seriously considered

00:23:59.480 suicide. 18% made a plan for suicide. 10% attempted suicide.

00:24:09.880 You might be tempted to say, well, this is a problem from COVID. Because COVID upended the

00:24:15.800 world, locked students at home, and that's why this happened. The trend long predates COVID. It's

00:24:21.100 not as though it was 2011, and then do-to-do is going along fine, and then boop, there goes COVID.

00:24:24.620 Now it spikes, and then it'll go back to normal. No, this has been a trend for a long time.

00:24:29.780 And 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong. By which I mean, there is something structural here beyond just

00:24:40.740 the personal problems or personal quirks of these students who are engaging in this. There is a

00:24:46.380 structural social problem that is impelling people to do this. And we don't want to acknowledge any of

00:24:54.040 it. I don't think it's very complicated. I think that when you have a national policy that incentivizes

00:25:04.180 the destruction of the family, the entire world for young people, that's probably going to make

00:25:11.100 them pretty sad. That's going to make them feel pretty hopeless. When you have an educational apparatus

00:25:16.400 that denies objective truth, that's probably going to make people pretty sad and pretty anxious,

00:25:24.220 pretty hopeless. When you have an educational apparatus, again, that encourages vice and

00:25:31.620 discourages and mocks virtue, that's going to make people pretty sad and pretty hopeless, I suspect.

00:25:38.720 When you have a national policy that discourages religion, don't forget, this isn't just the culture

00:25:45.620 and, you know, politics is just downstream of the culture. It's a national policy that bans the Bible

00:25:51.000 from schools and that prescribes weird gay porn in schools. That's a national policy. That's probably going

00:25:58.840 to make kids pretty sad and pretty hopeless. When you have a national policy that encourages kids to deny

00:26:06.380 their true identity and to embrace deviant and false and delusional identities, national policy from the

00:26:14.280 federal government saying, hey, kids, hey, boys, you're not really boys. You're a girl. You need to pump

00:26:21.020 yourself full of all sorts of hormones. You need to chop off your body parts. You need to engage in very

00:26:27.100 destructive behavior. And your parents don't understand you. Big Daddy Biden, I understand you.

00:26:33.720 I, oh yeah, me, Richard Levine, the very confused, ghoulish Assistant Secretary of Health. Oh yeah,

00:26:41.400 I understand you. You just need to go on a bunch of drugs and deny who you really are. Don't talk to

00:26:46.220 your parents. Oh, don't, well, your parents are awful. They're evil. They don't really get you. I get

00:26:50.660 you. That's probably going to make people feel pretty, pretty hopeless. And when you have a pervasive

00:26:57.560 national policy of denying religion, which means denying hope, people are probably going to be

00:27:09.640 hopeless. That's a national policy because of a novel and wrong interpretation of the First Amendment,

00:27:17.460 which says that there will be no established religion at the federal level, which has been

00:27:22.500 misinterpreted against all of American history and against right reason to say that the state has to be

00:27:29.100 functionally atheist. It's a very new idea. We still have blasphemy laws in some states because

00:27:36.120 the states haven't caught up to this new and wrong idea, which purports to speak for the American

00:27:41.620 project and the American experiment. That's going to make people feel hopeless. If you really believe

00:27:48.780 that there is no meaning to anything, that there is no hope, that you're going to just

00:27:55.960 walk around as a kind of a cosmic accident, you're nothing more than meat, you're nothing more than flesh,

00:28:01.960 you should live for nothing more than your own pleasure, and then you're going to take a dirt nap and turn to

00:28:06.000 worm food, you are going to be pretty depressed. To say nothing of the economic factors, to say nothing of

00:28:14.520 the job prospects don't look as good for young people right now, to say nothing of the economy is not looking

00:28:19.840 as good for young people, to say nothing of the prospect of war is higher now than it was 20 years ago.

00:28:25.460 That's what everyone else is going to focus on. I think that is actually part and parcel of the

00:28:30.440 same problem, the same materialist lie that Barack Obama peddled when he said, well, we need to go

00:28:39.180 into different countries in the Middle East because we need to give them iPhones. Yep, if we just give

00:28:45.660 people a little bit more money and some iPhones, then they won't want to perpetrate jihad. Then they'll be

00:28:52.500 peaceful as if to say that man is just purely an economical being and all we care about is

00:28:57.280 acquiring more stuff. That is not true. That doesn't motivate people. Money will not ultimately

00:29:02.960 make you happy. We used to know this. This was really basic stuff in our culture. And now not even

00:29:08.460 the conservatives half the time believe that. Is it any wonder that people are depressed? Is it any

00:29:14.780 wonder that people are suicidal? Absolutely predictable. That's what we're seeing.

00:29:23.760 Before we go, speaking of depression, poor Senator John Fetterman has just checked himself into Walter

00:29:27.920 Reed for depression. He was in a hospital. It was GW Medical Center a week or two ago. And people were

00:29:33.960 wondering, is this another stroke? He's had health problems since the campaign's real, since he had a

00:29:38.980 major stroke that even the New York Times reports has rendered him unable to process a lot of language.

00:29:43.680 He has difficulty speaking. He has difficulty understanding words, especially when he's

00:29:47.640 stressed and being a senator is a stressful job. It's good that he's getting help. It's good that

00:29:52.400 he's saying, I can't take this right now. And he's a lot better than the alternative. But

00:29:57.680 Democrats need to let this poor man go home. Okay. The Democrat argument was, even if he's a stroke

00:30:04.520 victim, even if he doesn't have a functioning brain at the moment, he needs to recover. We're going to send

00:30:09.800 him to Washington because it doesn't matter. You don't need to have a functioning brain to be a

00:30:12.880 senator. And frankly, you really don't because the point of these senators very often is just to

00:30:17.920 rubber stamp whatever leadership wants them to do. That was the campaign pitch for this guy.

00:30:22.560 So, okay, fine. If that's what they want to do, that's what they want to do. It's the same argument

00:30:26.400 for Joe Biden. Joe Biden might not know what end is up, but it's fine. He'll just go along with whatever

00:30:32.160 the Democrat establishment wants. Let the poor man go home. This is obviously ruining his life.

00:30:40.980 And this is not some random clinical thing. What you're going to hear is the same nonsense that

00:30:45.180 you're hearing about the kids who are depressed and suicidal. Say, oh, this is just clinical.

00:30:50.380 It's clinical depression. No, you know what? We just need to prescribe them more pharmaceuticals.

00:30:55.800 Yeah, that's it. We'll just give them more drugs and ply them to be numb. And that's really the problem.

00:31:00.120 No, the depression is a symbol and a symptom of a deeper problem. John Fetterman has a lot of reason

00:31:06.480 to be down in the dumps. He does. He's being used by his, probably his family, certainly by his

00:31:13.700 political party. He's being put in a terrible spot. He is genuinely frustrated because he's lost a lot of

00:31:22.400 his abilities, the abilities that he once had. And he's not being allowed to get the help that he

00:31:26.380 needs. Yeah, I'd be pretty down in the dumps too. The way to fix that is not just apply the guy with

00:31:32.340 more drugs. The way to fix that is to change the behavior, change the society, change the ritual,

00:31:39.960 change the way that we're all interacting with one another. Same thing goes for the kids.

00:31:44.680 Same thing goes for all of us. These are structural problems, which until we fix those,

00:31:50.320 until we even acknowledge that those exist, we're just going to keep sliding in the same direction.

00:31:57.420 No question about it. I want to talk about depressing things. The cost of eggs has surpassed

00:32:02.540 the price of beef. Eggs are more expensive than beef right now. We'll get into that more next week,

00:32:09.720 but that's an amazing statistic. Makes us feel like we're becoming a third world country. Our trains

00:32:14.620 don't run. We've got poison seeping out everywhere. We can't afford food. People are depressed. The

00:32:20.280 average life expectancy is decreasing because of deaths of despair. We don't have a functioning

00:32:25.600 border. Whatever we are doing right now, we always want to project our power overseas and say,

00:32:31.580 we're going to solve all the world's problems and we need to go spread democracy around the world or

00:32:36.380 whatever. How about we spread a flourishing society here at home? We are becoming like a third world

00:32:43.720 country. Until we get that in check, it's going to be very hard to help the rest of the world.

00:32:48.420 This mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk. Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, enter code Knowles,

00:32:53.540 K-N-A-W-L-E-S to get 50% off your first month. Take it away with the first voice mailbag question.

00:33:00.140 Dear Mr. Knowles, my name is Noah Meshack, 23 years old. I've watched every show of yours for the

00:33:06.300 last nine months and haven't heard a question quite like this. After dating my now ex-wife

00:33:12.180 for four years while in the Marine Corps, we decided to get married about six months before

00:33:16.780 the end of my contract. One month after getting married, she began having an affair. After buying

00:33:23.240 a house together, a year and a half of marriage counseling, and some time being separated, she

00:33:28.860 still continued to see him. After all of that, I decided to divorce her. It was the hardest

00:33:35.700 decision of my entire life, but I couldn't let the woman I wanted to spend the rest of

00:33:39.720 my life with continuously break our vows and our vows to God as well as my heart. I would

00:33:46.440 like to see what you think about this as I hold your opinion with the utmost respect, and

00:33:51.060 I hope to see you on the campaign trail someday. Thanks, Mr. Knowles.

00:33:54.640 Pal, I am sorry to hear about those problems. That is really, really tough. One, thank you

00:34:01.920 for your service. Two, thanks for listening to the show for this long. And three, really

00:34:06.620 sorry to hear what you're going through. The first thing that I would do if I were in

00:34:12.560 your position, well, I would do exactly what you did. I think you did the right thing. You

00:34:17.180 tried to get marriage counseling. You tried to forgive your wife. You gave her the opportunity

00:34:21.220 to correct her behavior. She still wouldn't do it. So what do you do? The conflict here

00:34:28.140 is that many Christians, certainly Catholics, but some other shades of Protestant as well,

00:34:36.500 believe that marriage is indissoluble. So it's not, can you get divorced? Do you have a right

00:34:42.480 to get divorced? It's a denial of the ontological possibility of divorce, that what God has joined,

00:34:47.820 let no man separate. So there is one method available if you hold to that view, which is

00:35:00.940 annulment. And annulment is not an investigation into things that have happened after the marriage

00:35:09.400 took place. You know, why did she have this affair? Who is this guy? It's a question about

00:35:14.320 was the marriage valid in the first place. And I don't know. I just don't know enough about your

00:35:18.620 situation to say one way or the other. It would seem if your wife so quickly started this affair,

00:35:28.380 so quickly and persistently engaged in these behaviors, I wouldn't be surprised, let's say,

00:35:35.240 if she was keeping certain things from you before the marriage. I would not be surprised at all.

00:35:41.720 If that were the case, probably there is a good argument to be made that the marriage

00:35:47.300 was not valid in the first place. Again, I don't know. This is above my pay grade. You would,

00:35:52.140 if you're Catholic or if you're a member of an ecclesial community that views things this way,

00:35:59.280 you would want to have an annulment investigation to check that out. In which case, it wasn't a real

00:36:05.280 marriage. You go on, maybe get remarried or something like that. Some people

00:36:09.520 believe that adultery is actually a justification for formal divorce, not an annulment, but a divorce.

00:36:19.640 They have come up with this idea in the recent centuries based on what they view to be the

00:36:24.380 acceptive clause in the Gospel of Matthew, that no man can separate what God has joined except for

00:36:33.100 porneia is the word, which is often translated as whorishness or adultery or something like that.

00:36:37.840 But this is not the traditional interpretation of that line. The idea of the acceptive clause

00:36:42.520 is relatively novel in Christianity. So I wouldn't hang your hat on that if you do happen to be

00:36:48.300 a Christian. What I would seek here though, in any case, is some spiritual guidance. You did the

00:36:57.540 thing that we're all supposed to do, which is marriage counseling, if one finds oneself in this

00:37:03.280 situation. But now your problems are almost purely spiritual. What do you do now? And so that is my

00:37:14.660 view. That's my kind of truncated version of my view of where you go from here and what the situation

00:37:19.060 looks like. But I would pursue more expert spiritual advice. And we can all pray for you in the meantime.

00:37:25.600 Really, really tough situation that you're in. And I guess, as all suffering is, an opportunity

00:37:32.040 to be sanctified. Although one is very often not happy for the opportunity to be sanctified in

00:37:40.500 suffering while one is going through it. But that is a central Christian idea is that our suffering binds

00:37:46.740 us to the suffering of our Lord on the cross. I mean, St. Paul writes about this quite clearly,

00:37:53.360 and this is the traditional understanding. Though it's sometimes easier to view it in the rearview

00:37:59.120 mirror than it is while you're going through it. Next question.

00:38:02.340 Hey, Michael. Matt here in Des Moines, Iowa, calling. I'm a small business owner. But more

00:38:07.820 importantly than that, I am a believer in Christ, as well as a husband and a father. I have a very

00:38:13.760 strong desire to be involved in local politics on the city level, the county level, be it school board

00:38:21.260 meetings, standing up, and then speaking what's right and true. But I do have a fear that doing

00:38:27.480 so could negatively affect my business. I work in a very liberal industry. I've seen others be

00:38:34.000 blacklisted for doing what's right. And I have employees. So I'm worried that if I stand up and

00:38:41.160 say something, whether it's true or not, I could be negatively affected. My ability to provide for my

00:38:48.780 family would be affected and the ability of my employees to provide for their families be affected.

00:38:53.780 So I'm wondering if you could give us some advice on when to do that. When do you stand up? Is there

00:38:59.220 a good way to do that that could mitigate those effects? Or is it just on or off, throw caution to

00:39:08.160 the wind and say the thing and deal with the consequences later? Thanks for your time, Michael.

00:39:13.580 God bless you. Have a great one. The first thing you have to recognize is that business is political.

00:39:20.320 In recent decades, there have been some libertarian sloganeers who have tried to

00:39:25.340 suggest that business is not political. That politics is just for the politicians and the

00:39:30.400 government. But business, the private sector, that's not really political. But it is political

00:39:34.760 because political just means public. Politics just refers to public life. It's how we all get along

00:39:39.660 together. It's much more intricate and it's much more complex than just a senator and a congressman

00:39:49.100 and going to the ballot box on Tuesday. Politics is all of public life. And frankly,

00:39:55.640 the way businesses operate, the way that zoning is done in your town, the way that schools are

00:40:00.340 established, the way that neighbor interacts with neighbor, that constitutes much more of politics

00:40:06.020 than what some congressman says at a press conference. So I think you need to recognize

00:40:12.320 that you are in politics already. And even the illusion that some businesses were not political

00:40:18.320 was simply that. It was an illusion. Businesses certainly had standards that they had to observe.

00:40:22.600 They had an ideology that they were following, even during the height of what we might call the

00:40:26.540 liberal consensus in the middle to the slightly post-middle part of the 20th century.

00:40:32.820 So you're already there. And therefore, if you're engaging in politics, you have to be prudent.

00:40:38.400 You need to articulate your convictions, do the right thing. Don't do things that are immoral and

00:40:43.840 unjust. But within prudential limits, because politics exists in reality with real people,

00:40:50.500 and it applies eternal principles to changing circumstances. So I would recommend in these

00:40:56.300 questions as ever, prudence. Don't lie about what you believe. Don't compromise on the things that

00:41:02.640 you hold most dear. But you don't need to be flamboyant about it either. You don't need to wear

00:41:06.940 a MAGA hat behind the cash register every single day. We're called to be wise as serpents and innocent

00:41:13.440 as doves. Next question. Hi, Michael. My name is Caitlin, and I've really enjoyed listening to your

00:41:18.520 show for the past two years. I first discovered you when I stumbled upon the Wall Street Bets sea

00:41:22.880 shanty video on YouTube. And since then, I've been hooked. So I have a question for you today.

00:41:27.460 I am the worship leader at my church, and I recently discovered that there are at least

00:41:32.400 five guys in our church who are involved in Freemasonry. And that's a little bit concerning

00:41:37.420 because of the research I've been doing. I've kind of discovered that it has some satanic roots

00:41:43.500 and that the further up you get in the organization, the more they tell you that actually it's Satan

00:41:48.520 you're worshiping and not God, like they say at the beginning when you're initiated. Anyway,

00:41:52.720 I'm just kind of concerned about my congregation because I don't want these guys to start recruiting

00:41:58.460 other people and people to be led astray. Especially as the worship leader, I feel a

00:42:03.760 sense of responsibility. So do you have any thoughts on anything I can do or thoughts on Freemasonry?

00:42:09.020 I'd love to hear your opinion. Thank you so much. Certainly. I don't know anything they tell you

00:42:13.800 about Satan in the highest levels of Freemasonry. I'm not a Mason myself. So I don't know about that.

00:42:20.340 I've certainly heard rumors. We've all heard rumors like that. But I would say even putting

00:42:24.580 that aside for a second, because I just don't know the reality of that. At a really basic level,

00:42:31.280 the problem with Freemasonry and why a Christian really can't be a Freemason is that it is a

00:42:39.900 kind of a rival religion. It has all of the aspects of a religion. It has its own initiation

00:42:46.060 rituals, its own burial rituals, its own altar, its own garments, its own, it has even its own

00:42:54.120 higher beliefs in as much as it makes a kind of religion out of naturalism and rationalism.

00:42:59.880 This is why it crops up during the Enlightenment. This is why the first enemy of Freemasonry was the

00:43:07.860 Catholic Church. It was established. Again, I know Freemasonry has changed over the centuries, but

00:43:12.540 an objective, a major objective of Freemasonry in the earliest days was to dismantle the Catholic

00:43:17.880 Church, which it viewed as a kind of supernatural and tyrannical body. And it was going to, following

00:43:27.080 the doctrines of the Enlightenment, it was going to bring about this new kind of religious view based

00:43:34.320 on naturalism and rationalism. It also posits indifferentism, which is the idea that it doesn't

00:43:40.000 matter what formal religion you adhere to, you know, that all of those can be equally pleasing to

00:43:45.380 God. And so plenty of people believe those ideas. That's why I'm not really knocking the Freemasons

00:43:50.420 in particular. Lots of people believe those ideas today, but those ideas are not compatible with

00:43:56.560 anything even slightly resembling an orthodox understanding of Christianity. So that would be

00:44:01.480 the problem. You know, I don't think you need to go to the idea that your buddies who essentially

00:44:06.140 joined a fraternity and, you know, I mean, I know people who have been involved in Freemasonry and

00:44:11.880 that, you know, they think it's just like a fun thing to do and it's a fraternity and it's, you know,

00:44:15.600 no big deal. So I, you know, I don't think you need to impugn their motives or, you know,

00:44:21.280 think that they're intentionally worshiping the devil or anything like that. But you just might point out

00:44:25.380 that when we participate in certain rituals and in certain organizations and we sign off on certain

00:44:32.400 creeds and certain dogmas, sometimes those can contradict other creeds and dogmas that we have

00:44:37.640 assented to. And when those two things are in conflict, well, you have to pick one. If you want

00:44:43.540 to be consistent, you don't want to violate the law of non-contradiction. And so you got to pick one.

00:44:47.380 And if you got to pick one, I would, I guess you would probably agree with me that I would,

00:44:51.200 I would recommend the church, but it's a modern world. So many people don't make that choice.

00:44:56.680 We've got more voicemail bag. We've got more written mail bag and we've got fake headline Friday.

00:45:01.200 All ready to go. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Go to dailywire.com

00:45:07.580 slash Knowles. Use code Knowles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 17, 2023

Ep. 1186 - The CDC & Buttigieg Gaslight East Palestine's Water

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