The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1319 - Why I'm Actually Siding With Radical Environmentalists

00:00:00.000 Environmentalists have dialed up their publicity stunts in recent years,

00:00:03.900 throwing soup on priceless art, gluing themselves to buildings, and shutting down traffic,

00:00:10.220 even sometimes as people are attempting to drive their children to the hospital. 0.99

00:00:15.080 All extremely stupid and lawless stuff, which is presumably why Nevada tribal rangers decided 0.99

00:00:21.880 to ram through a group of climate activists with a truck. 0.99

00:00:25.460 You can see the climate set up there.

00:00:31.520 They've got all their signs.

00:00:33.720 They're blocking the highway.

00:00:37.620 The truck then rams through it and then turns around and comes back at the activists.

00:00:48.640 The hippie is not used to the tribal rangers.

00:00:55.460 The rangers then pull their guns, and those guns are not loaded with flowers and pixie dust.

00:01:05.120 This is not how ordinary police behave.

00:01:08.560 This is not how the cops who have their hands tied in New York or Chicago or wherever behave now.

00:01:15.160 But the tribal rangers, like the honey badger, do not appear to give one little wit about their feelings. 0.80

00:01:24.360 So a lot of people are cheering this on, and I understand the temptation to cheer.

00:01:30.800 Environmentalists are extremely annoying.

00:01:33.900 But context is key here, as it is in all of politics.

00:01:39.240 In this case, what were the environmentalists doing?

00:01:43.940 They were attempting to shut down the Burning Man Festival.

00:01:48.160 That's what they were protesting.

00:01:49.740 Those were the cars they were stopping.

00:01:51.460 They were trying to shut down the Burning Man Festival,

00:01:53.480 which is a week-long bacchanal of drugged-out hippies having orgies and worshipping a fire idol in the middle of the desert.

00:02:00.340 So in this case, much as I hate to side with the radical environmentalists,

00:02:07.300 I guess I'm on their side here.

00:02:10.800 Burning Man is bad, and people should shut it down.

00:02:15.800 How did I end up on the side of these weirdo hippies who are getting their clocks knocked in on the highway by the tribal police? 0.74

00:02:23.020 Politics makes for strange bedfellows.

00:02:26.980 So forget about Burning Man, forget about Nevada, forget about the environmentalists.

00:02:32.260 This is why, for instance, many conservatives right now are embracing Bobby Kennedy Jr.

00:02:38.500 This is why never-Trump-lifelong Republicans right now are embracing Joe Biden.

00:02:44.740 And it is why conservatives are going to have to rethink our tactics and our alliances

00:02:50.080 if we want to break out of a pattern of perpetually losing.

00:02:54.800 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:56.980 Welcome back to the show.

00:03:16.620 Oliver Anthony, the guy who went from a nobody to a big star with that dobro guitar,

00:03:22.060 singing about the rich men and rich mend.

00:03:25.080 He just came out to explain how angry he is that conservatives like his music.

00:03:30.580 So we'll get to that in just a moment.

00:03:34.200 First, though, I don't want to move past the environment too quickly.

00:03:41.960 Conservatives are right about everything.

00:03:43.340 We're right about everything. 1.00

00:03:44.920 And when we say things, we're called idiots and rubes and ignoramuses and uneducated. 0.99

00:03:51.800 And then six months to two years later, we're proven right about every single thing. 1.00

00:03:56.960 In this case, the stupid paper straws. 1.00

00:04:01.040 Everything. 1.00

00:04:01.860 We're right about the COVID vax.

00:04:03.580 We're right about the lockdowns.

00:04:05.200 We're right about human life and borders and the economy and all of those issues. 1.00

00:04:13.300 But even down to the stupid paper straws. 0.99

00:04:15.840 Do you remember when a nine-year-old in Canada had a school project where he called up some straw companies 0.99

00:04:23.420 and then extrapolated the data, quote-unquote, he got from a handful of straw companies out to a whole nation

00:04:29.520 and then made this claim that we're wasting a bazillion, gazillion tons of plastic every minute.

00:04:36.440 And then the liberal activists decided to run with this little kid as the face of environmentalism

00:04:41.420 and then got all of the restaurants to take away our straws

00:04:44.260 and force us to drink our iced coffees out of those paper things that turn to just pulp and mush within three sips.

00:04:51.780 So you just can't drink your coffee.

00:04:55.740 Remember when that happened over the last five years?

00:04:58.060 Well, it turns out the paper straws are not safe for the environment.

00:05:04.700 The whole reason we did that, they are not better at bringing your drink into your mouth.

00:05:11.080 They're not more convenient.

00:05:12.900 They're not cheaper.

00:05:14.360 They're not any of those things.

00:05:15.680 The entire reason that we did it was because a nine-year-old told us that the plastic straws were bad for the environment

00:05:22.900 and that the paper straws were good for the environment.

00:05:25.160 Well, the paper straws are bad for the environment.

00:05:26.700 New study shows that there are toxic chemicals in there.

00:05:30.360 According to this study, the straws contain poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS,

00:05:38.640 which are long-lasting, potentially destructive to human health.

00:05:43.500 But who cares about that?

00:05:44.480 And we've got to prioritize the delta smelt over human beings these days. 1.00

00:05:47.560 They're also bad for the environment.

00:05:49.480 According to Dr. Timo Groffen from the University of Antwerp,

00:05:55.040 straws made from plant-based materials such as paper and bamboo

00:05:57.180 are often advertised as being more sustainable and eco-friendly.

00:06:00.200 But the PFAS in there means that is not necessarily the case.

00:06:04.380 They looked at 39 different straw bands, and it turns out that they're all pretty bad for the environment. 1.00

00:06:09.820 Yeah, of course.

00:06:11.520 Of course.

00:06:13.280 This always happens.

00:06:14.680 We're always proven right about these things.

00:06:16.520 And so here's my recommendation.

00:06:18.180 I've made this recommendation on the show before with regard to totally different kinds of issues.

00:06:24.000 My recommendation is be normal.

00:06:28.000 You should endeavor at all times in your life to be normal.

00:06:35.820 This is true in your work.

00:06:38.060 It's true in your private life.

00:06:41.100 It's true in your relationships.

00:06:43.000 It's true even in the straws you drink.

00:06:46.260 How anybody could conclude that grinding up a bunch of industrial-made pulp

00:06:52.520 and upending the entire beverage industry in five seconds is going to be good,

00:06:58.120 and there was going to be no consequence to that is just crazy.

00:07:00.680 Just be normal.

00:07:01.500 This is the consequence of rationalism in politics and people thinking that their own very small stock

00:07:08.500 of reason unfettered from tradition or eternal principles or anything else

00:07:13.600 is sufficient to remake society into a wonderful utopia.

00:07:17.320 It never happens.

00:07:18.280 And when it comes to the straws, nobody really cares.

00:07:20.660 It's a minor inconvenience, and maybe it's slightly bad for the environment.

00:07:24.140 But again, we were using plastic before, so who really cares?

00:07:26.400 But this can have far more deleterious effects for human beings as we're seeing in a very,

00:07:32.940 very similar kind of study with regard to the N95 masks that all of the experts from the liberal

00:07:40.460 establishment, including conservative commentators, told us to wear for years.

00:07:44.820 Turns out those aren't so great either.

00:07:47.140 You know, they say the eyes are the window to the soul, and the mouth, which was covered up by

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00:09:25.300 opt out. Go to windowappointmentnow.com for full offer details. Thought the straws were bad. A new

00:09:30.400 study out shows that the N95 COVID masks may expose wearers to dangerous levels of compounds that are

00:09:39.920 toxic and linked to seizures and cancer. 0.99

00:09:46.580 Initially, we were told that the masks, just the stupid little hankies, were going to stop you from 0.99

00:09:50.960 getting COVID. Then the experts admitted that wasn't true. Then we were told, no, no, no, it's not 0.99

00:09:55.500 supposed to stop you from getting COVID. Those stupid masks are supposed to stop you from spreading 1.00

00:09:58.780 COVID. Then we found out that wasn't true. Then we were told, well, no, the hanky masks that you were 1.00

00:10:04.180 forced to wear for a while, they don't actually do anything. But the N95 masks, those are the good 1.00

00:10:09.620 ones. Even conservatives got duped by this. Said, well, look, we all know the hankies don't do much,

00:10:17.060 but the N95, those are great because some other expert told me that. Turns out, no, the N95 masks

00:10:22.900 are not particularly effective at stopping you from catching COVID or spreading COVID. And it turns out

00:10:29.000 they're bad for you. They're bad for your health. The surgical N95 mask, which was the gold standard,

00:10:35.880 has been proven to be toxic by researchers from Jeonbuk National University in South Korea.

00:10:43.020 Apparently, the hanky masks are no good either.

00:10:47.420 You know, I hate to say I told you so. I know a lot of you told people so with regard to the masks,

00:10:52.540 too, though. So the question I have is, how did we know that? How did we? I don't have a

00:10:59.900 particularly advanced degree. I barely got out of 12th grade science class. I don't know anything

00:11:07.800 about masks. I don't know anything about viruses. I'm not an epidemiologist. I don't have lots of

00:11:12.380 fancy degrees like Mr. Detective Ogie, who's probably going to come back to public life. How is it that I

00:11:18.720 and you and your hick ignoramus hillbilly uncle Billy Bob were all much more correct about the 0.72

00:11:30.640 scientific questions than all the geniuses with the advanced degrees at the NIH? How is that the case? 0.74

00:11:38.260 Because we know that human beings were not made to breathe into a big hunk of plastic

00:11:47.940 or cotton or any other kind of mask all the time. I think that's why I think that's how we knew it.

00:11:54.740 Because we knew no matter what the advertising said, no matter what the Fauci said,

00:11:59.120 that human beings are not supposed to do that. That's not what we're for. That's not what our

00:12:03.540 lungs are for. Our lungs are not for exhaling into a mask or inhaling through some stupid mask. 1.00

00:12:10.420 We know that's not what our faces are for. We know our ears are not for holding the mask 1.00

00:12:14.600 bans on. We just know that's not normal. And because it's not normal, there's a good shot

00:12:22.100 it's going to have some negative consequences for us. I think that was my thinking, at least.

00:12:28.580 I didn't look at studies. I think studies are bogus. I cite them when they back up my point,

00:12:33.400 but I think most social science and most surveys generally are claptrap. And you have your statistics

00:12:40.860 and I have my statistics and 152% of statistics are made up. But we, at the very least, know

00:12:47.040 ordinary normal people with even a modicum of common sense know that human beings are not

00:12:55.680 supposed to act like weirdos all the time. And the libs just incessantly try to get us to act like 0.99

00:13:00.680 weirdos as a matter of public health, in our schools, in our jobs, certainly in our sex lives,

00:13:07.960 they're always pushing that. And it's just, if you have any common sense, you know, it's just,

00:13:14.000 it's probably not good. This was a point that Santana just made, the rock star. Santana got in

00:13:21.540 big trouble. I'm so late to this story. I'm glad I'm late to this story because there was the first

00:13:27.300 headline and then, because we didn't report on the first headline, then we already got the inevitable

00:13:32.740 backtracking. So now we just get the full story all at once. Santana made headlines for his shocking,

00:13:40.360 unhinged rant. Someone reported this as crazy rant that women are women and men are men. 0.52

00:13:48.620 Or you're lying your ass up. There is no virtual reality. When God made you and me, before we came out of the 0.99

00:14:03.400 womb, you know who you are and what you are. Later on, when you grow up and you see things, and you start

00:14:15.700 believing that you could be something that, it sounds good, but you know it ain't right.

00:14:28.200 Because a woman is a woman and a man is a man. 0.99

00:14:34.100 Listen to those cheers.

00:14:35.160 Whatever you want to do in the closet, that's your business. So I'm okay with that. I am like this with

00:14:45.720 my brother Dave Chappelle.

00:14:47.620 Okay. So this is a very clear articulation of Santana's rejection of transgenderism and maybe

00:14:55.860 all of LGBTism, maybe the whole sexual revolution. As he says, what you want to do in your closet, 0.95

00:15:02.200 that's one thing. But just don't do it in public. And then even at the end, he says, I'm with my

00:15:06.820 brother Dave Chappelle, totally lined up on this. Dave Chappelle famously got in trouble for making

00:15:11.560 fun of transgenderism. So clear as day what he's saying. I even love, he talks like a normal guy.

00:15:19.280 So he's not giving some erudite lecture on anthropology or something. He's just saying,

00:15:24.580 look, man, you know what you are. And like, maybe you hear something else and like,

00:15:28.560 maybe it sounds good or whatever, but like, he's not true, man. Cause a woman's a woman,

00:15:32.340 the man's a man. So after this, because Santana is a big rock star and because he has all sorts of

00:15:38.620 fancy agents and publicists and people plugged into the liberal ruling class, they of course had

00:15:43.500 the obligatory apology. No doubt. They say it was written by him. It was obviously written by some

00:15:49.940 PR flack. I am sorry for my insensitive comments. They don't reflect that I want to honor and respect

00:15:54.940 all persons, ideals, and beliefs. I realized that what I said hurt people. And that was not my

00:15:59.340 intent. I sincerely apologize to the transgender community and everyone I offended. Sorry, I woke 1.00

00:16:04.860 up. I want to honor and respect all persons, ideals, LGBTQ or not. This is the planet of free

00:16:10.920 will. And we have all been given this gift. It takes great courage to grow and glow in the light

00:16:15.580 that you are and to be true and genuine and authentic. I don't know what transvestite 21 year old 1.00

00:16:22.560 intern at CAA or William Morris Endeavor wrote this claptrap, but it certainly wasn't Santana.

00:16:29.260 But anyway, he told you what he thought in, in the monologue on stage. And what he said

00:16:35.380 was more perspicacious than just saying men are men and women are women. That's obviously true. 1.00

00:16:43.160 We shouldn't trans kids. That's obviously true. We shouldn't trans adults. That's also true though, 1.00

00:16:48.860 less obviously so to some people in our culture. But he went even further. He defended the idea

00:16:54.260 of a totally taboo place and notion. And that is the closet. The closet. He says, you can do whatever

00:17:04.860 you want in your closet. And this is what the LGBTQ people say. They say, you can't chase us back into

00:17:09.780 the closet. I'm coming out of the closet. You think I'm a man, but now I'm saying I'm a woman. So I'm

00:17:15.680 out of the closet. And Santana says, go back in the closet. Do what you want in the closet,

00:17:21.640 but don't make me deal with it. And don't come into my bathroom and don't be weird. Just be normal.

00:17:26.040 Okay. And the closet is not ideal. And I recognize that some people either are born with or at the

00:17:35.740 very least have early ingrained desires that are particularly disordered. And I recognize it's easy

00:17:41.360 that if you don't have those desires, we can just sort of say, be normal. And it's probably harder

00:17:46.780 for these people. So I want to be as charitable and gracious as I possibly can. But also everybody's

00:17:52.500 got certain disordered desires. Okay. And it's not all like a man thinks he's a woman or a man is

00:17:58.080 attracted to someone of the same sex, but it could be, I don't mean to trivialize sexual desire,

00:18:04.600 but like for me, I really like fatty Italian meats. Okay. I like mortadelle. I like prosciutto.

00:18:10.760 I like even gabagool. Okay. And it left to my own devices. If I had fatty Italian meats and nice,

00:18:18.220 delicious provolone and Parmesan cheese in the fridge, I would eat all of it all the time. I

00:18:22.280 would never stop myself. That's a disordered desire of mine that tends toward the vice of gluttony.

00:18:28.160 And so I've got to stop myself. And even after the three slices of mortadelle and the one slice of

00:18:34.240 gabagool and a little hunk of provolone, even if I still want to eat more, I just don't fulfill that

00:18:39.840 desire. Okay. And yeah, I get, I don't know if you've got some weird sexual thing, maybe that's

00:18:47.700 even harder, but what's the alternative? This is what Santana's raising. He's saying, what's the

00:18:53.480 alternative to doing weird stuff in the closet? The alternative to doing weird stuff in the closet

00:18:58.140 is doing weird stuff in the streets, which is what's happening now. And it's bad because it's

00:19:03.400 extremely scandalous for everybody, but especially for young children. When young kids are being brought

00:19:08.540 to these pride parades where weirdos in leather jackets are smacking each other half naked on

00:19:13.080 parade floats, that's obvious. It is obviously preferable that if those guys are going to do

00:19:18.440 that at all, they should do it in a closet away from the public where we don't have to look at it.

00:19:23.160 Now the ideal is to not do anything like that in the closet either. And this gets back to something

00:19:32.040 we've, I've been bringing up on the show a little bit more recently because it's, it used to be the

00:19:36.840 basic understanding of virtue that now people are not only ignorant of, I think they don't even think

00:19:42.960 it's possible. And it's this notion, Aristotle talks about it in the Nicomachean Ethics famously,

00:19:47.420 which is that there are four kinds of people when it comes to virtue. They're the self-indulgent who do

00:19:51.480 bad things and they love doing bad things. They're the incontinent who do bad things,

00:19:56.640 but they know they should do good things. There are the continent who do good things and they know

00:20:00.480 they should do good things, but it's a real struggle. And they really, they want to eat more

00:20:04.420 of the mortadelle than they should. Maybe I'm somewhere around there, hopefully. But then there's

00:20:10.200 actually another category. And these are the people who are truly happy, who have achieved what

00:20:13.780 Aristotle would call eudaimonia. And those are the people who enjoy doing virtuous things.

00:20:19.580 And so that's what you really want. You can't have a society as liberalism, classical and modern

00:20:24.960 tells us we can, of just pragmatic solutions all the time to constantly competing ideas and, and of

00:20:32.980 the good and the true and the beautiful and of personal interest where we just have these pragmatic

00:20:36.660 solutions and we leave everybody alone and we remain totally skeptical about ultimate truths.

00:20:41.520 You can't really do that. Okay. You've got, you have to have a society in which the people are

00:20:49.000 cultivating the right kind of desires and, and, and uniting their actions with their desires and

00:20:57.500 uniting their, their actions and their desires with the use of right reason. This sounds all so

00:21:02.520 mamby pamby pie in the sky. I know this is how societies operated for like all of human history

00:21:08.840 to some degree or another reached its flourishing in the West in what we used to call Christendom.

00:21:13.500 And it's totally cracked up in liberalism and it's taking a political philosopher like Santana

00:21:19.280 to point us back in the right direction. We got to talk about these things, whether you're on stage

00:21:24.760 with Santana or whether you're sitting at home with your pure talk cell phone right now,

00:21:29.400 go to pure talk.com slash Knowles. Is your cell phone in desperate need of replacement? You know,

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00:22:11.800 slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S for your free, super durable 5g Samsung galaxy. When you switch to pure

00:22:18.140 talk, that is pure talk.com slash Knowles. Then make the switch to my cell phone company. That would

00:22:24.400 be pure talk, the official wireless partner of the daily wire. When Dr. Jordan B. Peterson made the

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00:23:43.720 slash subscribe to become a member today. Speaking of conservatism in the public square. Nothing gold 1.00

00:23:54.000 can stay. Nothing even with gold-hued red-headed beards like Oliver Anthony can stay. Conservatives

00:24:03.780 loved Oliver Anthony. He's the guy with the Dobro guitar in the woods with the very slick, high-production

00:24:10.940 quality music video that was presented as a creed de coeur from a guy with a handy cam in the middle

00:24:15.840 of the woods. And he sang about the rich men north of Richmond, close to near rhyme. And the

00:24:23.020 conservatives rallied around him and made him the biggest star in the country. And then now Oliver

00:24:28.660 Anthony is irritated by that. And he doesn't want conservatives claiming his music.

00:24:33.900 It's aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I'm one of them.

00:24:40.940 It's aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we're buddies and and act

00:24:47.720 like we're fighting the same struggle here, like that we're trying to present the same message.

00:24:54.980 You know, I've had a lot of people reach out to me and I've tried to be polite to everybody and

00:24:59.260 I've talked to hundreds of people the last two weeks. It seems like certain people want to just

00:25:06.140 ride the attention of this song to maybe make them their own selves relevant and that's aggravating as

00:25:11.980 hell. The other thing that I find aggravating is, uh, well, you know, like it was funny seeing my

00:25:19.520 song in the, it was fun. It was funny seeing it, the presidential debate because it's like, I wrote

00:25:26.100 that song about those people, you know? So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, uh, that

00:25:31.100 cracks me up. Uh, but it was funny kind of seeing the response to it. Like that song has nothing to do

00:25:39.700 with Joe Biden, you know? It's a lot bigger than Joe Biden. Um, that song is written about the people

00:25:49.400 on the, on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but, but definitely them.

00:25:54.660 All right. Little, little incoherent here. This is what I pointed out about Oliver Anthony's song,

00:25:59.420 which I thought showed clear talent. He's obviously a pretty talented folksy artist,

00:26:05.280 but the lyrics didn't make a ton of sense because they melded new populist impulses

00:26:12.740 with kind of generic establishment chamber of commerce, GOP complaints about welfare queens and 0.92

00:26:19.980 things like that. So I said, the lyrics aren't totally coherent, but as far as a first shot goes

00:26:25.540 musically, he said he at least has a good voice. The whole character and persona works pretty well.

00:26:31.540 No wonder that the video went viral. Uh, now he's saying, look, this song is, has nothing to do

00:26:37.220 with Joe Biden. It's, it's about much more than Joe Biden. Well, hold on, which is, again, this is

00:26:41.480 contradictory. Does it have nothing to do with Joe Biden or is it about Joe Biden and the whole

00:26:47.180 political system? Well, he seems to be saying both things at once, but, but he's really focused on

00:26:53.400 Republicans. He's saying, no, it's the guys on the Republican debate stage that I was singing about.

00:26:57.440 They're the ones that I'm complaining about, not Joe Biden. It's the Republicans.

00:27:00.720 And there's some evidence that the guy is a Democrat. He, there was some Facebook post I

00:27:07.080 saw going around. I think it was authentic in which he was complimenting Joe Biden.

00:27:10.740 There's a video of him just mumbling through the classic liberal platitudes about, you know,

00:27:16.700 the truth, the true strength of America is our diversity.

00:27:20.280 I mean, we are the melting pot of the world and that that's what makes us strong as our diversity.

00:27:24.580 And we need to learn to harness that and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool to keep

00:27:29.440 everyone separate from each other, you know?

00:27:31.580 So that, that kind of a statement, I mean, we all like people of different cultures and things like

00:27:35.860 that, but the statement diversity is our strength. That is a very modern, extremely liberal slogan that

00:27:42.560 is used to justify mass migration and to displace and to injure the very working class that this guy

00:27:49.820 is supposedly singing about. He then tweets out, he says, I don't support either side politically,

00:27:54.140 not the left, not the right. I'm about supporting people and restoring local communities. Now go

00:27:59.420 breathe some fresh air and relax, please. I'm not worth obsessing over. I promise. Go spend times

00:28:03.180 with your loved ones. Okay. I'm not going to be too harsh on Oliver Anthony because I think what

00:28:07.220 he's doing here is probably smart. Oliver Anthony doesn't want to be ghettoized into the conservative

00:28:13.580 media sphere where he becomes, you know, the favorite folksy singer of a handful of shows

00:28:19.840 like this show, this show, maybe a few other podcasts, maybe a couple of shows on Fox news and

00:28:26.900 that's it. That's going to be his career. No, he wants to be mainstream. He's gotten a taste of fame

00:28:31.060 and money and he wants to be a real player who can sell out Stadia and go on all sorts of other

00:28:39.040 shows. So, okay, fine. What's my suspicion here? I don't think that Oliver Anthony has any particular

00:28:46.980 political philosophy or ideology. I don't think that Oliver Anthony just one day accidentally

00:28:54.820 stumbled on fame. I don't think he walked out into the woods with his dogs and his dobro and

00:28:59.180 just set up a little camcorder and then just accidentally went viral. I think this is a guy

00:29:04.020 who's been a struggling songwriter for a long time, who saw his opportunity and made a bet on a very

00:29:12.380 slickly produced music video and made the right kind of connection so that the video could go viral

00:29:17.720 and he prepared to meet the opportunity that came along and that opportunity came along because of

00:29:23.980 a specific moment in our culture. That's the key. I don't think this guy has changed popular music

00:29:32.480 or popular art. I think this guy saw which way the wind was blowing and he took his opportunity.

00:29:39.020 This happens all the time in movies. This happens all the time in music. You have one hit. You get

00:29:46.780 one little hint. Oh, our war movies are in now. Okay, then you're going to get a glut of war movies.

00:29:52.080 This particular brand of pop music is in. Okay, this one band does really well. You're going to get a

00:29:56.540 whole bunch of other pretenders who try to copy that act. And I think here, especially since the

00:30:05.860 election of Donald Trump, especially since the rise of populism, nationalism here in Britain,

00:30:14.420 in Europe, this has been building for some years now, this guy saw, okay, this is the moment for a

00:30:21.240 creed occur about the forgotten men and women of America. You saw the success of J.D. Vance's book,

00:30:26.300 Hillbilly Elegy, turned into a big movie, won J.D. a Senate seat. It's not as though the signs

00:30:31.460 weren't there. And this guy met his moments. This is why I really like the Oliver Anthony phenomenon.

00:30:36.460 I don't have any particular interest in Oliver Anthony or even in his song.

00:30:40.800 But I do like that a guy who was prepared to meet opportunity, that a pretty sharp observer of

00:30:46.960 culture saw that the culture is moving in a direction that is very favorable to us. Now,

00:30:53.580 maybe the ruling class will just clamp down on that and continue to rig the elections and continue 0.79

00:30:58.280 to censor conservatives and continue to incentivize even the people who become famous as conservatives

00:31:03.340 to disavow all of us and everything we believe. Maybe that'll happen. Maybe the liberals just have

00:31:07.960 too much power. But the wind is blowing in our direction. No question about it. Now, speaking of the

00:31:14.320 culture, that Russian paramilitary leader, Krogosian, who led the aborted coup on Vladimir Putin and then was

00:31:26.500 given safe passage to Belarus and then accidentally his plane was shot out of the sky, it was unclear

00:31:30.540 if he was dead or not. Did he fake his own death? Did he sneak out on another plane? Well, Russian 0.95

00:31:35.220 authorities have confirmed through DNA analysis he was on the plane. They got him. They got him. And so

00:31:42.440 the Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal was on the godfather in the Kremlin. It was a picture of

00:31:49.620 Putin dressed like Don Corleone. It says, the very public death of Putin henchman Yevgeny Prigozhin

00:31:58.060 highlights the evolution of Russia into a mafia state held together by violence and incapable of 0.54

00:32:06.220 global leadership. It's a long essay. I'm not going to read any of it. The headline and the subheadlines

00:32:11.960 suffice. Does that sound familiar to you? Does that sound familiar? A country being transformed

00:32:23.580 into a mafia state held together by violence and incapable of global leadership. I know it's been

00:32:29.460 a little while since our political elites encouraged street thugs to burn the country down coast to coast

00:32:34.380 for eight months. That was what? That was about three years ago? Wasn't that long ago. And our ruling

00:32:41.780 class is currently jailing political dissidents for nothing other than simply opposing the regime.

00:32:50.220 I'm not even talking. Forget about the January 6th people. Let's pretend for a moment that cracking

00:32:55.100 a Coors Light in the Capitol Rotunda were a capital offense. Forget about them for a second.

00:32:59.800 What about Douglas Mackey? Douglas Mackey is a guy who didn't even have that many followers on

00:33:04.280 Twitter who posted some funny memes about the 2016 election. He faces 10 years in prison

00:33:08.900 because the memes were pro-Trump and anti-Hillary. What about Donald Trump himself who faces 750 years

00:33:18.140 in prison for questioning the rigged election? That's it. That's all he did. He just said,

00:33:23.440 hey, I think this election that you all rigged, I think it might've been a little rigged.

00:33:26.820 How about Trump's lawyers and supporters who did nothing but provide the man legal counsel,

00:33:32.700 who did nothing but fulfill their most basic duty as lawyers, being thrown in prison?

00:33:39.880 Does that sound like a little bit, I hate, look, I hate to say it about my own country.

00:33:44.560 Does that sound a little bit like a mafia state? Like a little bit like a banana republic where we're

00:33:50.100 now jailing the political opposite, leader of the opposition and the former president,

00:33:53.240 incapable of global leadership? A country that under Joe Biden, will he, will they, won't they pull out

00:34:00.420 of Afghanistan? Complete collapse. Will they, won't they invite Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine?

00:34:05.860 Happened. Now we're on the precipice of this drawn out introduction, potentially to World War

00:34:10.000 Three. Will they, won't they allow Xi Jinping to invade Taiwan? Will they, won't they incapable of

00:34:16.680 global leadership? Is that Drew makes this point all the time. And it's important. I mean, this is

00:34:22.600 the big debate between, on that stage, between the primary candidates, you had Mike Pence, who was

00:34:28.860 giving his morning in America routine. Everything's great. We just need to feel good about ourselves

00:34:33.300 again. And Vivek Ramaswamy saying, no, everything's not great. This is a dark moment in the country.

00:34:37.660 And if we want to fix it, I think we can fix it, but we got to acknowledge it.

00:34:40.460 At least on that question, I think Vivek has got it right.

00:34:45.440 I hate to say it about my own country, but, but Drew Klavan points this out a lot. He says,

00:34:50.460 the problem with bigots is not that they're wrong about the other guy. Bigots, you know,

00:34:56.820 people are really, you hate people on the basis of their race or their this or their that. It's not

00:35:00.480 that they're wrong about the other guy because there are flaws with all sorts of people.

00:35:04.420 The issue with bigots is that they're wrong about themselves. It's not that their opinion is too low

00:35:09.240 of the other guy. It's that their opinion is too high of themselves. And I think that's our issue

00:35:12.700 here. I'm not saying that Putin's not a mob boss. Sure, Putin's a mob boss, but we don't have a lot

00:35:18.540 of credibility to call him out for that or any of our other geopolitical adversaries if we ourselves

00:35:25.080 are behaving like the mob, which is what's happening. My favorite comment yesterday is from

00:35:31.220 John Apple, 3471, who says, the real question is, how would people react if Trump does formally

00:35:39.220 prove that the 2020 election was stolen? They would react exactly as they're reacting now,

00:35:47.080 which is that his supporters would be irate and upset and offended, and the liberals would shrug

00:35:55.900 their shoulders. You know how I know this? Forget about the election fraud claims.

00:36:00.400 We have pretty much as much evidence as we could have that Joe Biden peddled American influence

00:36:10.660 for multi-million dollar bribes from every crooked leader on planet Earth. Okay? We have text messages.

00:36:18.860 We have emails. We have handwritten notes. We have investigations. We have—we can track the money.

00:36:26.080 We got it all. We've got the prosecutors in the countries that bribe Joe Biden saying, yes,

00:36:35.140 they were bribing the Bidens. We've got it all, and people don't care. It doesn't matter. The Biden

00:36:40.280 people support Biden. The libs support Joe Biden, and many of the conservatives support Trump. Some of

00:36:46.740 the conservatives hate Trump, and they're either going to try to find another guy, or they're going

00:36:50.420 to be the never-Trump people and go over to Biden. They're going to say, well, I endorse the liberal

00:36:54.720 establishment, even against Donald Trump, because I hate him so much or something. That's what's

00:37:00.280 going to happen. That is happening right now. Doesn't matter. You could put—you could have

00:37:06.860 the smoking guns smoking right up their nostrils would not change a thing. Speaking of foreigners, 1.00

00:37:16.080 Karen Bass is the mayor of Los Angeles now. Karen Bass is a former member of Congress.

00:37:22.580 She is a communist. She actually worked for many years with communist organizations. I don't call

00:37:29.260 liberals communists a lot. I know some people on the right do that. This woman actually is a

00:37:33.180 communist. She is about as bad a mayor as you could possibly imagine in City of Angels, and she is now 1.00

00:37:39.220 complaining, because Texas has sent some buses of illegal aliens up to California, up to Los Angeles,

00:37:47.620 and Karen Bass has said, LA has not extended an invitation asking for people to come. This is a

00:37:56.320 political act. LA, which for many years now has billed itself as a sanctuary state, has, according to

00:38:04.160 the mayor of LA, not invited the immigrants to come? Of course it has. I don't want to ascribe to

00:38:13.220 malice that which is explained by ignorance. Maybe Karen Bass doesn't understand the basic meaning of

00:38:17.340 words, but when you say we're a state that offers sanctuary to you people, that is an invitation to

00:38:24.560 the people to come. Los Angeles just didn't expect that to happen. It's very easy for these blue states

00:38:31.340 to, and blue cities to say that they're totally open to illegal aliens when it's the red states and

00:38:39.620 the red places that have to deal with the brunt of the illegal immigration. So, okay, total hypocrisy. 0.87

00:38:47.540 Fine. Here too, though, forget about the immigration issue. The fact that our political leaders will look

00:38:56.080 us in the face and say, hey, that word, that word doesn't mean what that word means. That's much

00:39:01.840 more distressing. That's more distressing than 10 million illegal aliens coming into the country. 0.97

00:39:06.460 The fact that they will look us in the face, and they do it with a whole lot of words.

00:39:12.120 You know, I'm not allowed to say how they do this with regard to bathrooms and things like that on 0.95

00:39:17.180 YouTube, but they'll do that. I'll just say it. They'll look us in the face and say that men are

00:39:21.980 women and women are men. They'll look us in the face and say that foreigners are American citizens.

00:39:26.300 They'll look us in the face and say, sanctuary doesn't mean sanctuary. It means stay away, you airy.

00:39:32.280 What do you, well, at that point, the political order breaks down. If you can't, if you can't even

00:39:40.700 agree on the basic meaning of words, then the political order breaks down and politics ceases to

00:39:44.640 be a matter of rational debate and deliberation and becomes a matter of brute grunting force like we're a

00:39:50.860 bunch of apes running around purple mountain majesties from sea to shiny sea. Now, speaking 0.97

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00:40:36.020 delivered. That no one invited. There's this group called No Labels. They've, they started about 10 years

00:40:44.280 ago. And it's a group of fashionable centrist liberals who say, we need, we don't need these

00:40:53.520 crazies on the right. And we don't need these crazies on the left. We just need sensible tax 1.00

00:41:00.480 cutting socially liberal establishment types. And then if we only run candidates who are exactly

00:41:08.140 like Bill Clinton, then we'll have a flourishing country and we'll, we'll all of the rancor and

00:41:15.280 division will go away. So Joe Lieberman, who is one of these figures, he was considered a potential

00:41:20.760 running mate to John McCain, even though he was a Democrat Senator, he was considered a potentially

00:41:25.140 the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008. He is the chairman of No Labels. And he says

00:41:30.580 No Labels is going to hold a nominating convention for 2024. No Labels is, is challenging the political

00:41:37.560 status quo and, and in a way, the control that the two parties have over our political system. We think

00:41:45.900 there's a real opportunity for a third choice and that it's, the American people are telling us on

00:41:53.100 polling we're doing and discussions we're having that they just, they've lost confidence in the two

00:41:59.440 major parties and by large numbers, they don't want to have to choose again between President Trump

00:42:06.840 and President Biden. We already have scheduled a bipartisan convention. Think about it. We haven't

00:42:14.840 seen that ever in recent history. A bipartisan nominating convention for Dallas, Texas in April

00:42:23.760 of next year. This is not going to work. This is not going to work. I mean, it could be funny. I'm all

00:42:31.340 for more madness and chaos in this presidential race. I'm more, I'm all for throwing wrenches into the

00:42:38.640 system. So it could be fun if they nominated Joe Manchin or something. That guy's not going to become

00:42:42.460 president. The reason it's not going to work is because Joe Lieberman is right that the two

00:42:47.660 candidates who are the presumptive nominees of their parties are historically unpopular. And it

00:42:53.340 is true that many people indicate that they don't want to vote for those nominees. The reason for that

00:42:59.960 though is not so much the particular candidates. Yes, Joe Biden looks kind of sleepy. Yes, Donald Trump is

00:43:05.980 off putting to certain people. But the reason for that is because of polarization. You're seeing that

00:43:12.260 unpopularity among the candidates because of people in the opposite parties. That's really what's

00:43:17.280 driving it. Because the libs are becoming more lib and the conservatives are becoming more conservative.

00:43:24.260 And so as they become, as the conservatives become more conservative, the liberals are going to hate

00:43:27.360 them even more and vice versa. So you're not going to solve that problem by nominating a supposed 0.82

00:43:34.240 centrist. Because that's the constituency that is most getting squeezed. As the groups are becoming

00:43:42.060 more coherently and clearly what they are, they're following their ideas to their logical conclusions,

00:43:47.060 then the group that's disappearing are these centrist liberals. To say no labels is a misnomer. It's a

00:43:52.500 false label too. It's the central lie of liberalism, which is that you can have political neutrality.

00:43:59.800 There's no such thing as neutrality in politics. You're going to think something is good. You're

00:44:04.580 going to think something is bad. You're going to say some things are true and some things are false.

00:44:07.480 So there is no neutrality. What no labels is proposing is just going back to the 1990s.

00:44:13.300 What no labels is proposing is that we all vote for candidates like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

00:44:20.020 Because they say that those candidates, they're above politics. They're reasonable.

00:44:26.380 They're in the middle. No, they're not. They're just another kind of label.

00:44:28.800 They're Clintonites. Call them Clintonites. Call them new Democrats, new labor, whatever.

00:44:33.720 That's what it is. 1990s. Call it a time machine. There's no way to escape a label.

00:44:38.960 This is even, I think about it even with our side. You know, a lot of conservatives,

00:44:42.540 a lot of my friends, a lot of my Protestant friends will say that they're non-denominational

00:44:46.340 Protestants. And I find this to be a funny label because as so many of them repeat this,

00:44:55.260 they say, I am a non-denominational Protestant. I think that the word starts with a capital N,

00:45:01.240 probably as a capital D. I think there's a trademark sign over the end of that phrase because

00:45:06.240 if you identify as non-denominational and if you group yourself with other people who call

00:45:13.740 themselves non-denominational, then you have become a denomination. Not knocking it one way or the other.

00:45:19.460 I'm just saying it obviously is. Some people are Methodist. Some people are Episcopalian.

00:45:23.640 Some people are non-denominational. But those are all denominations. Some people are Republican.

00:45:29.220 Some people are Democrats. Some people say there are no labels. Well, you can call yourself,

00:45:33.640 it's capital N, capital L. It's no labels. And it means a 90s style, fiscally somewhat responsible,

00:45:41.560 socially decadent or permissive kind of Clinton type. That's what it is. And the one thing I can

00:45:51.520 promise you politically, who knows what's going to happen in this election? We don't know. You can't

00:45:55.920 predict the future. But it ain't the 90s anymore, man. And people have a sort of nostalgia, just like

00:46:03.220 people in the 1970s. Conservatives in the 70s had a nostalgia for the 50s. Well, similarly,

00:46:10.100 that's why you had happy days and sitcoms like that. Similarly, now, people have a nostalgia for

00:46:14.980 the 90s. We say things were so good in the 90s. Now, the seeds of the madness that we've got going

00:46:20.080 on today, economic, political, sexual, artistic, all of it, it was there in the 90s. And those ideas

00:46:28.400 followed to their logical conclusion. And if we rewound the clock, we would almost certainly end up in the

00:46:32.680 same place we are again today. People are realizing through history that there are some problems

00:46:39.920 with the things that we thought then. And so, whoever wins in 2024, whatever the political

00:46:45.720 landscape looks like moving forward, it's not going to be a carbon copy of how things were 25 years ago.

00:46:53.100 We are in uncharted waters. They have arrested the leader of the political opposition.

00:46:58.400 Whatever prediction you think that you've got about 2024, I would take a step back and a little

00:47:05.140 dose of humility and encourage yourself for the unexpected things that could come.

00:47:10.960 Now, today is a very special day. And I've promised producer Danny that I'm going to try to make his

00:47:18.840 life easier by not requiring him to deal with the crazy edit where they've got to accommodate the

00:47:24.700 YouTube censors on, because I can't say, it's Tuesday. It's a word that's alliterative with Tuesday.

00:47:29.620 Tuesday. It's something I can't talk about on YouTube, because I can talk about in the member

00:47:33.380 block with the chem de la chem and the inner circle. So, it's like when a certain sex thinks 0.96

00:47:40.260 they're... It's the transvestites. It's Trans Tuesday. The show continues now. You don't want to miss 1.00

00:47:47.300 it. Become a member. Use code Knowles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. See you over

00:47:52.520 there.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 29, 2023

Ep. 1319 - Why I'm Actually Siding With Radical Environmentalists

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