The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 135 - A Nation Of Drug Addicts

00:00:00.320 Politicians from both parties are sounding the alarm bell on the opioid epidemic.

00:00:05.020 But America's drug problem goes far deeper than prescription painkillers.

00:00:09.440 We will analyze how and why the U.S. became a nation of drug addicts.

00:00:13.320 Then, Frank J. Fleming joins to talk about his new novel,

00:00:16.600 SideQuest in Realms Ungogled and conservative satire writ large.

00:00:21.160 I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 We're a nation of drug addicts.

00:00:32.040 But before we talk about all the bad things that you can put into your bodies,

00:00:35.180 we have to keep the lights on and talk about a good thing that you can put into your bodies.

00:00:39.060 Because not everything that you put in your body is bad.

00:00:40.980 You drink water and you eat food and you can take some supplements which are nutritional.

00:00:45.060 They're not pharmaceutical. They're not, you know, drugs or something like that.

00:00:50.140 They are just nutritional supplements.

00:00:52.300 And one of the best ones and a great sponsor of the program is Omax 3 Ultra Pure Supplements.

00:00:58.280 The fact is, taking care of your health is a commitment and it can feel overwhelming.

00:01:02.600 Now, you know, for me, I don't really like to exercise or eat right or do anything like that.

00:01:06.300 But you can take a supplement. That'll help you out a little bit.

00:01:08.680 That would be Omax 3.

00:01:10.080 There are big health benefits that come with that and you don't even have to think about it.

00:01:14.520 It is the purest way to get all of these daily Omega 3s Omax 3 Ultra Pure.

00:01:21.500 Because you're going to do something, if you're going to do it, why not do it right?

00:01:24.460 So it's the purest option.

00:01:26.100 You know, sometimes with these supplements, you get the fish burps.

00:01:30.000 Because it's fish oil, so you get that it doesn't taste very good.

00:01:32.580 It's not good. You don't want that.

00:01:34.040 There are many Omega 3s on the market.

00:01:35.720 This is the purest, most concentrated one.

00:01:37.840 You will not get fish burps.

00:01:40.040 Omega 3s are great at alleviating joint pain, muscle soreness.

00:01:43.720 They can improve focus and memory, boost cardiovascular health, and more.

00:01:48.320 It just makes sense to take it.

00:01:49.460 But Omax Ultra Pure is 93% pure Omega 3 fatty acids.

00:01:55.940 So there's this test you can do.

00:01:57.160 It's the freezer test.

00:01:58.000 You put Omega 3s, these are little capsules in the freezer.

00:02:01.480 And most of the store brands, you know, they'll all get cloudy and gross when you take them out.

00:02:05.140 But Omax 3 is so pure that you don't need to worry about that.

00:02:10.660 It'll still be basically clear.

00:02:12.680 Omax 3 comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you will have plenty of time to try it and really feel the Omax difference.

00:02:17.560 Right now, go to tryomax.com slash covfefe, C-O-V-F-E-F-E, and get a box of Omax 3 Ultra Pure for free.

00:02:27.860 That is tryomax.com slash covfefe, C-O-V-F-E-F-E, to get your free box of Omax 3.

00:02:35.560 That is tryomax.com slash covfefe.

00:02:39.640 Terms and conditions apply.

00:02:40.980 They always do in this life, but they're really good.

00:02:43.660 Okay.

00:02:44.480 Now to the bad things that you can put in your bodies.

00:02:46.740 We're a nation of drug addicts.

00:02:48.460 We are a nation of drug addicts.

00:02:50.040 Politicians talk about this all the time.

00:02:51.680 Here's just a quick little montage.

00:02:53.420 But if we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time.

00:02:58.880 Just remember that.

00:02:59.740 We're wasting our time.

00:03:01.280 As you all know from personal experience, families, communities, and citizens across our country are currently dealing with the worst drug crisis in American history.

00:03:11.800 I now have five family friends who have lost their adult children to opioid overdose.

00:03:22.620 And so in some of these states that have been hit hard with the opioid and fentanyl epidemic.

00:03:29.280 Again, we need funding for opioid epidemic.

00:03:31.540 The president talked about that.

00:03:33.480 Show us the money.

00:03:34.280 They're actually all right.

00:03:36.000 Even Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, like, chokes me to get that out of my throat. 1.00

00:03:40.400 But they are all right.

00:03:41.080 There's this awful opioid epidemic that's going on.

00:03:44.280 Nancy, though, she says, show us the money.

00:03:45.920 Show us the money.

00:03:46.460 Nancy, you are a member of Congress.

00:03:48.340 That is where legislation begins.

00:03:50.500 That's where funding bills are supposed to originate.

00:03:53.360 So I don't know.

00:03:54.020 You do the money, Nancy.

00:03:56.000 A little frustrating with her.

00:03:57.380 But they're absolutely right.

00:03:58.860 Now, you know, now we say that the White House does everything.

00:04:01.660 Congress used to have some power.

00:04:02.820 But now it's, oh, it's the White House does everything.

00:04:04.640 But at least, at the very least, everybody is concerned about this because it's a huge issue.

00:04:09.340 Now, opioids, we use that term.

00:04:11.200 That includes opiates.

00:04:12.600 That's the older term, morphine.

00:04:14.400 Now it also includes synthetics like hydrocodone, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine, painkillers.

00:04:20.900 We just used to call them painkillers.

00:04:23.260 And they're right about this.

00:04:24.860 Every single day, 115 Americans die from overdosing on opioids, on all of these things.

00:04:32.420 The statistics are staggering here.

00:04:35.040 In 2015, and the situation has gotten worse since 2015, but just in 2015, 2 million people

00:04:41.160 in the U.S. suffered from substance abuse disorders from opioid painkillers.

00:04:45.440 Another nearly 600,000 suffered from heroin addiction.

00:04:49.560 There was a little overlap there because they're so similar.

00:04:51.520 Between 21% and 30% of people who are prescribed opioids misuse them.

00:04:57.280 So there's this problem of prescription.

00:04:59.400 You go in, and these things are prescribed very loosely.

00:05:02.240 They're obviously overprescribed.

00:05:04.000 But then 21% to 30% of people who get the prescription, just of the people who get the

00:05:08.160 prescription, misuse it.

00:05:10.160 Of those people, 8% to 12% develop a disorder.

00:05:13.500 Of all the people who are prescribed opioids, 4% to 6% of people who misuse the prescription

00:05:19.320 painkillers, then start using heroin.

00:05:22.460 These are huge numbers.

00:05:24.060 80% of heroin users actually began from opioids.

00:05:28.100 They were first used, they first used prescription opioids, and then they moved on to heroin.

00:05:32.900 Opioid overdoses increased a full 30% between July 2016 and September 2017 in 45 states.

00:05:41.540 In basically a year, you're looking at a 30% increase.

00:05:45.660 This is massive.

00:05:46.520 One year.

00:05:47.500 Midwestern states, the rest of the country is a walk in the park compared to the Midwest.

00:05:51.460 Midwest saw an increase of 70% over that time.

00:05:55.340 Large cities saw an increase of 54% in 16 states.

00:05:59.520 Same exact period of time.

00:06:01.280 Those are huge numbers.

00:06:02.880 You can't ignore them.

00:06:04.080 But the drug problem in America isn't just opioids.

00:06:07.100 We're focusing on that.

00:06:07.980 It is the most bizarre spike just within a year or so.

00:06:12.180 But there's a lot that's going on.

00:06:13.540 Even use marijuana, the old Haitian oregano. 0.89

00:06:16.460 Marijuana use has sharply increased in the United States in the last few years.

00:06:20.380 Now, you might think, well, Michael, there's a time and a place for everything, and that's college.

00:06:25.200 Sure.

00:06:25.740 And you might say, well, you know, we're legalizing it everywhere.

00:06:28.700 It's being destigmatized.

00:06:29.920 It's probably because of all this legislation.

00:06:31.860 That would be common sense, but it would be wrong.

00:06:33.880 There's a new study in addiction, in the journal Addiction, that shows that this isn't because of legalization.

00:06:40.680 The spike in pot use has nothing to do with these laws.

00:06:44.560 That study finds, quote, medical and recreational marijuana policies did not have any significant association with increased marijuana use.

00:06:54.220 And yet there is a steep rise in pot-smoking hippies since 2005.

00:06:58.680 There is a steep rise.

00:06:59.560 And, look, I'm not, like, some old fogey on this and, like, scolding the kids and everything.

00:07:05.780 Sometimes libertarians and conservatives are asked, what do you think about marijuana legalization?

00:07:10.820 And my answer is always the same.

00:07:12.440 I oppose it.

00:07:13.340 Not because of the legislation itself.

00:07:15.500 I don't really care.

00:07:16.420 But because of the people who really want it legalized.

00:07:19.140 I just want to make them sad.

00:07:21.440 That is my argument for it.

00:07:23.340 These people, you know, they're, like, sort of libertarians.

00:07:26.000 They come out and all they care about is legalizing dope.

00:07:29.280 What a dope.

00:07:30.040 Absolutely not.

00:07:30.900 I'm going to make it doubly illegal.

00:07:32.820 I'm going to mandatory 45-year minimum sentences only for that political activism.

00:07:38.640 That's a sidebar.

00:07:40.200 Still on pot, though, according to a Yahoo News Marist survey, 35 million Americans use pot on a monthly basis.

00:07:48.080 So that's over a tenth of the country.

00:07:51.300 Over one in ten people smoke pot or eat a brownie or tea or something on a monthly basis.

00:07:56.840 And 55 million Americans have used pot in the last year.

00:08:00.980 Huge numbers.

00:08:02.200 More people smoke pot than tobacco in the United States.

00:08:04.820 This is very depressing to me because I don't like cigarettes.

00:08:07.280 Cigarettes are kind of gross and they're not very high-quality tobacco.

00:08:11.560 But I love cigars.

00:08:12.480 Now, if I go into a concert or something and I light up a little cigar or a cigarette or something, it is, I will be arrested.

00:08:19.560 I'll probably be brought to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation.

00:08:23.120 But if I smoke pot, it's fine.

00:08:24.920 There are people, you know, especially in California now, if you're smoking pot down the street, nobody will bother you.

00:08:30.560 If you smoke a cigarette, people will scowl at you.

00:08:33.700 They will look at you like you are the devil or something.

00:08:36.680 Very bizarre.

00:08:38.320 That's just the pot.

00:08:39.580 Drinking is also on the rise.

00:08:40.900 Drinking rose substantially between 2002 and 2013, according to a new study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

00:08:50.000 And I'm pretty sure they didn't, the authors of this study didn't consult me.

00:08:54.740 But I think it's because I went to college during that time period.

00:08:57.520 So I suspect single-handedly I caused this rise in drinking.

00:09:02.300 The social science does show some other explanations as well.

00:09:05.600 Drinking rose 11% just during that time frame.

00:09:09.340 11 years, I guess.

00:09:10.900 Among women, drinking rose 58%.

00:09:15.000 Among older people, it rose 65%.

00:09:18.880 Staggering numbers in just around a decade.

00:09:22.060 Alcoholism, so not just people drinking, you know.

00:09:24.820 Look, I'll have a casual 17 to 25 drinks per day when I'm hanging around the Daily Wire.

00:09:29.740 That's just casual.

00:09:30.680 That's just to get through the day.

00:09:31.560 But alcoholism, alcohol abuse, rose 50% during that time period among Americans.

00:09:38.200 Among women, alcoholism rose 83.7%.

00:09:43.320 Staggering numbers.

00:09:45.240 But it isn't just that.

00:09:46.920 It isn't just the pot.

00:09:48.040 It isn't just the opioids.

00:09:49.220 It isn't just the booze.

00:09:51.020 The big issue, and the New York Times did a good story on this over the weekend.

00:09:54.840 I know you'll probably think you're on drugs when you heard me say that.

00:09:57.420 The New York Times did do a good story.

00:09:59.780 Every once in a while they do this.

00:10:01.600 And it was on antidepressants.

00:10:04.240 And this is, I think, the heart of the matter today.

00:10:06.680 I think the antidepressants tell us a lot about the state of the country.

00:10:10.280 And they tell us a lot about maybe what's missing.

00:10:13.540 Antidepressants have been around in various forms since the 1950s.

00:10:18.220 But modern antidepressants, the SSRIs that you maybe have heard of,

00:10:22.840 statistically speaking you're probably on them,

00:10:24.960 selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,

00:10:27.340 they've only been around since the late 80s in any popular way.

00:10:32.020 And the use of them has skyrocketed.

00:10:34.560 Just in recent years, very recent years, two or three years,

00:10:37.380 25 million Americans have been on antidepressants for at least two years.

00:10:42.160 There's a lot more to talk about with this.

00:10:44.420 But before we get to that, you know, I guess it's really divine intervention.

00:10:48.680 Before we talk about the real crux of this matter, the antidepressants,

00:10:52.020 we have to go back in time and talk about my favorite one, which is wine.

00:10:57.500 Very providential ad today.

00:10:59.760 I love wine.

00:11:00.700 You love wine.

00:11:01.740 You don't want to drink wine to excess.

00:11:03.860 You don't want to end up in the gutter.

00:11:05.340 You don't want to say like, you know, fella, I was like you once.

00:11:09.080 You don't want to end up like me on the 200th episode.

00:11:10.980 And you don't want to have little pink elephants chasing you around. 0.91

00:11:13.300 But everything in moderation.

00:11:15.400 Wine has been around for a long time.

00:11:16.600 The first miracle performed by our risen Lord was to turn water into wine,

00:11:21.280 the water of ritual into the wine of celebration.

00:11:23.160 And Wink has a wonderful product.

00:11:25.180 I really, really like them.

00:11:27.400 And so the trouble with wine, as you might know, especially for me, is I don't really

00:11:34.640 know that much about it.

00:11:35.540 I know a lot about cigars.

00:11:36.340 I don't know anything about wine.

00:11:37.500 So you go to the wine store and you just think like, okay, how are these people going to rip

00:11:41.600 me off now?

00:11:42.500 What is going to be?

00:11:43.520 It all sort of tastes wet.

00:11:45.580 So I guess that's it.

00:11:47.340 Wink makes this much easier for you.

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00:12:01.460 There's nothing like coming home to a crate of delicious Wink wine selected just for you.

00:12:07.160 It is the best day of your month.

00:12:08.640 So what you do is you fill out their palate quiz.

00:12:10.960 I took it.

00:12:11.420 And it's not questions like, hey, do you like to get drunk?

00:12:13.640 Yeah, I do.

00:12:14.180 No, that's not.

00:12:15.860 That's not.

00:12:16.720 We're a little more sophisticated here.

00:12:18.680 It's questions like, you know, how do you like salt?

00:12:21.060 How do you take your coffee?

00:12:22.420 It's much more of a connoisseurship.

00:12:24.420 And so you answer that and they will send you wines curated to your taste.

00:12:28.800 The more wines you rate, the more personalized your monthly selections.

00:12:32.100 Each month there are new delicious wines like the very popular summer water rosé, which

00:12:36.460 is the most masculine drink many people tell me, the rosé.

00:12:39.500 It's, you know, it kind of like hides the masculinity behind a beautiful, delicious pink patina.

00:12:45.280 There are no membership fees.

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00:12:56.640 I usually send back all the empty bottles.

00:12:58.200 I say, yeah, I didn't really like them.

00:12:59.320 Could you replace them with the same ones are fine.

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00:13:25.180 That's, that's how you should do it.

00:13:28.140 That's if you, you know, everything in moderation, I'm not saying we should be like abstinent

00:13:31.700 from, uh, all of the kind of fun little chemicals in this world, you know, all of the, especially

00:13:37.460 the ones that have been around for all of human civilization, but you should do it in,

00:13:41.160 in connoisseurship and you should do it not to excess.

00:13:44.620 So life is too short to drink bad wine.

00:13:47.420 Make sure you drink good wine.

00:13:49.380 Back to the antidepressants.

00:13:50.700 25 million Americans have been on antidepressants for at least two years.

00:13:55.440 That is a 60% increase in the last eight years.

00:13:59.460 60, six, zero.

00:14:01.240 15.5 million Americans have been on them for at least five years.

00:14:06.860 That is a huge, that is what, 5% of the country have been on these drugs for at least five years,

00:14:12.540 in some cases much longer.

00:14:13.920 That number has doubled since 2010 and that number has tripled since 2000.

00:14:19.120 The growth rate is shockingly high.

00:14:21.920 In Britain, antidepressant prescription rates have also doubled in the past decade and something

00:14:28.180 that no one really seemed to give much care about when they were prescribing all of these

00:14:32.280 drugs to all of America is withdrawal.

00:14:35.080 It just hasn't really been studied.

00:14:37.180 It hasn't been sufficiently studied.

00:14:38.940 You think if you give people a ton of happy pills that if they go off them, you might have

00:14:42.940 some adverse side effects.

00:14:44.180 Now we're just beginning to see that.

00:14:45.740 In New Zealand, three quarters of long-term users of these antidepressant drugs reported

00:14:51.120 difficult withdrawal symptoms.

00:14:53.660 Half of long-term users of psychiatric drugs in the U.S. who were able to quit said that

00:14:59.120 the withdrawal was severe.

00:15:00.620 Those are just the people who were able to quit and that's half of them.

00:15:04.440 Half of the people who tried to quit could not quit because the withdrawal was so severe.

00:15:09.220 We have this image in our head of the heroin addict, you know, shaking from withdrawal symptoms.

00:15:13.480 But withdrawal has been very severe, even on what we think or just, oh, my doctor gave

00:15:17.160 it to me.

00:15:17.780 My doctor wrote me a prescription for this.

00:15:19.880 Severe, so severe that half of the people couldn't quit.

00:15:23.160 Antidepressants originally were a short-term treatment for mood swings.

00:15:27.380 They would be prescribed for six to nine months.

00:15:29.500 Or if there were some traumatic event, they'd be prescribed and they'd kind of get you through

00:15:33.740 the event.

00:15:34.780 Who knows about the wisdom of that?

00:15:36.980 But they were not broadly considered to be these permanent solutions.

00:15:41.300 Consider some of these other numbers.

00:15:44.140 White women over 45, those people account for just 20% of the U.S. population.

00:15:50.100 They account for 40% of users of antidepressant pills.

00:15:54.100 Those same white women account for 58% of long-term antidepressant users. 0.99

00:15:59.640 Not just six to nine months, but longer term.

00:16:02.480 We have to ask ourselves, what's wrong with middle-aged white women? 1.00

00:16:05.560 Why are their lives so hard and terrible that they're taking all these pills?

00:16:08.420 Now, there is an objection here.

00:16:11.760 I should be clear.

00:16:12.460 I'm not telling anybody to stop their medication.

00:16:14.380 Talk to your doctors.

00:16:15.120 Talk to your psychiatrists.

00:16:16.280 There is such a thing as clinical depression.

00:16:18.700 There is such a thing as serious physical problems.

00:16:22.040 I'm not saying get off your happy pills.

00:16:25.740 But it seems quite clear from the numbers that these are being vastly over-prescribed.

00:16:30.920 And there might be other explanations for this.

00:16:32.760 The one objection, you say, okay, well, everybody's on these happy pills now, but maybe that's a good thing.

00:16:38.780 Maybe that's a good thing.

00:16:40.140 Maybe it's helping people not be depressed or help them live better lives or whatever.

00:16:44.580 Except that doesn't hold up because there isn't just a drug epidemic.

00:16:48.300 It's not just antidepressants or pot or booze or opioids or whatever.

00:16:52.800 It's not just that.

00:16:53.900 There's an epidemic of suicide as well.

00:16:56.560 Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.

00:16:59.200 Deaths from suicide are up almost a full quarter.

00:17:03.340 They're up 24% between 1999 and 2014.

00:17:07.780 That's just suicide writ large.

00:17:10.120 The biggest uptick, as always, is among middle-aged men because suicide is mostly a problem for white males.

00:17:17.520 White middle-aged males constitute the lion's share of suicide victims.

00:17:21.880 But there's also now a major uptick in young women. 1.00

00:17:25.020 A major uptick for women who are between 10 and 14 years old.

00:17:29.200 From 1999 to 2014, there was a 200% increase in suicide.

00:17:35.100 200%.

00:17:35.660 White women had a 60% increase in suicide over that time period, over that 15-year period. 0.97

00:17:42.420 And the vast majority, 83% of women who commit suicide are white.

00:17:47.680 This is a problem of middle-aged white women, you could say. 1.00

00:17:51.360 So it looks like the antidepressants aren't working.

00:17:54.440 The demographics taking the antidepressants at the highly increased rates are the same ones that are killing themselves at very increased rates.

00:18:03.780 Obviously, something isn't working.

00:18:06.300 What's the problem?

00:18:07.260 What is wrong with all of these demographics? 1.00

00:18:11.300 But particularly, these women who are killing themselves at increased rates and taking antidepressant drugs at increased rates.

00:18:17.380 It seems to me the problem here is philosophical, not psychological.

00:18:23.160 Marx said, Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses or religion is the opium of the people.

00:18:29.200 The full quote is longer than that.

00:18:31.120 Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. 1.00

00:18:38.200 It is the opium of the people.

00:18:39.760 Religion might be the opium of the people, but when religion isn't the opium of the people, opium is the opium of the people.

00:18:47.080 That's what we're seeing.

00:18:47.940 That's what we're seeing around us right now.

00:18:49.460 We're seeing it with antidepressants.

00:18:50.940 We're seeing it with booze.

00:18:51.720 We're seeing it with pot.

00:18:52.460 And we're seeing it literally with opium and opiates again.

00:18:56.220 Why is that?

00:18:57.060 What Marx is mocking religion.

00:18:58.760 He's saying this is just a crutch for a heartless world, a soulless world.

00:19:02.920 But what if the world isn't heartless?

00:19:05.300 And what if it isn't soulless?

00:19:06.760 What if the world does have heart?

00:19:07.840 What if you can take heart?

00:19:08.680 What if the world does have a soul?

00:19:10.140 What if you have a soul?

00:19:11.540 The issue here is the problem of suffering.

00:19:14.580 Suffering isn't going to go away.

00:19:16.400 Communism tried to fix suffering.

00:19:19.380 It tried to perfect human nature.

00:19:20.800 It tried to eliminate this problem of evil and this problem of suffering from reality.

00:19:24.920 And what did it do?

00:19:25.780 It increased the suffering and it multiplied the evil, God knows how many fold.

00:19:31.460 It increased it incredibly.

00:19:32.920 It was the bloodiest century in history.

00:19:35.040 Until the modern era, people understood this.

00:19:37.260 They accepted suffering.

00:19:38.680 That there is a purpose to life and there is such a thing as virtue and suffering in here is in life.

00:19:44.320 You see this in all of the ancients.

00:19:46.260 You see this in the medievals.

00:19:47.660 You see this all the way up to the modern era.

00:19:49.680 And then now we have to wonder, well, how do we get rid of suffering?

00:19:52.260 I don't want suffering.

00:19:53.160 That doesn't make sense.

00:19:53.840 There's no purpose to life.

00:19:55.220 It's just, you know, we're all just molecules floating around and consciousness is an illusion and free will is an illusion and my soul is an illusion and virtue is an illusion.

00:20:04.980 There's no such thing as morality.

00:20:06.660 It's just kind of been constructed over time by our random genetic forces.

00:20:11.120 And virtue, that is certainly an illusion.

00:20:13.840 If you think that you're meat, you're going to treat yourself like meat.

00:20:16.640 If you think you're just a physical object, you're just going to treat yourself like a physical object.

00:20:20.720 And so we have this trouble because people realize they can pretend that they're meat.

00:20:26.020 They can pretend that there's no soul and there's no spiritual aspect of life, but they still suffer.

00:20:31.760 But suffering isn't physical.

00:20:33.140 We know suffering is not physical.

00:20:35.040 Other than in very, very rare cases and for periods of time, suffering is also a spiritual condition.

00:20:42.620 We feel that.

00:20:43.700 And so our first reaction is to just pop some pills.

00:20:46.880 If I'm physical and there's something wrong with the physical, the solution has to be physical.

00:20:51.980 It can't be philosophical.

00:20:53.260 It has to be psychological.

00:20:54.520 If you know that you're spirit, you'll treat yourself like spirit.

00:20:57.760 If you know that there's a purpose to life and you know that there are virtues and you know that there are external virtues and internal virtues and that there are goods to be acquired in the outside world and there are goods in yourself, integrity in yourself, goods in the doing of the thing,

00:21:12.700 then you will treat yourself that way and you will have a better life and life will be much better and it will seem rosier and it won't seem like a heartless world and it won't seem like a soulless world.

00:21:21.420 You'll realize that there is heart and soul and purpose.

00:21:24.140 It would dramatically reduce this problem.

00:21:27.440 We have a lot more people taking antidepressants.

00:21:29.940 We have a lot more people killing themselves anyway.

00:21:32.260 That is a philosophical problem.

00:21:33.880 There isn't something physical that's just changed in the last 15 years.

00:21:37.780 What has changed is our view of the world and our view of ourselves and we've been deluded by a bunch of half-wits and middle-brow pseudo-intellectuals who tell us there's no such thing as God.

00:21:48.700 There is such a thing as God and I want to be the middle-brow intellectual to tell you that.

00:21:53.840 I want to be the middle-brow pseudo-intellectual to let you know that because it's ridiculous.

00:21:58.380 That fad is finally passing among literary and intellectual and publishing circles and I hope it passes in the popular culture as well because we're seeing the wake of that awful spiritual and literary and philosophical phenomenon.

00:22:14.580 Winston Churchill had a great line on this question.

00:22:17.840 He said,

00:22:47.840 It spells duty.

00:22:49.680 It spells duty, purpose, a reason to be here, something that you have to do.

00:22:55.420 There's a question of why the lion's share of these antidepressant takers are middle-aged white women and I suspect that it might have something to do with the leisure afforded to that demographic among other demographics.

00:23:10.680 There is a sense of hopelessness if one doesn't realize that there's a purpose to life.

00:23:15.120 If one doesn't realize that there is a hope and that you're here for a reason and it isn't just about making money, it isn't just about having a lot of people who stay home and raise their kids.

00:23:23.200 They can't really go back to the workforce and make a lot of money so they might feel hopeless there.

00:23:27.480 Women of a certain age sometimes aren't the most sensual as they once were and so you might say, oh, what purpose is that there? 1.00

00:23:37.580 They're not raising kids anymore.

00:23:40.580 A lot of the kids are out of the house at that point.

00:23:41.980 They say, what is my purpose?

00:23:43.040 What am I here for?

00:23:43.700 I've checked all of the boxes that I was supposed to do and there's no God and there's no soul and there's no purpose so I'm just, I'm just, I'm just here.

00:23:53.580 But that isn't the case.

00:23:55.360 That's a delusion and until people write that philosophical problem, they're not going to be able to write the psychological problem.

00:24:02.540 I'll tie this back to Teddy Kennedy because I don't want the, I don't want to let this whole show go by without insulting Teddy Kennedy.

00:24:08.900 But it does tie in a little bit, which is that the, I saw the movie Chappaquiddick over the weekend.

00:24:14.020 It's excellent.

00:24:14.900 Go see it.

00:24:15.420 It's absolutely honest in its portrayal.

00:24:17.840 It's made by lefty filmmakers.

00:24:19.620 It's not made by conservatives.

00:24:21.440 Nevertheless, it's pretty brutal.

00:24:23.240 I explained why I think it was able to be made at this point.

00:24:27.400 I explained that on Drew's show today so you can go over there.

00:24:29.400 I also wrote a review about it on the Daily Wire.

00:24:32.360 What I want to focus on is the person of Teddy Kennedy himself because this movie is really the first time that the popular culture has admitted that Teddy Kennedy was just an absolute degenerate.

00:24:41.540 He was a womanizing, cheating, lying, dishonest, manslaughtering drunk who didn't really take any responsibility for his life and just grifted on the public, the public dime and the public attention for his entire life and just an absolute derelict. 0.88

00:24:57.220 And when he retired from the Senate, or I'm sorry, when he died, they called him the Lion of the Senate.

00:25:03.040 That's what the Democrats said.

00:25:03.940 He's the Lion of the Senate.

00:25:05.120 He's this great man.

00:25:06.060 They wouldn't talk about it.

00:25:07.920 Andrea Mitchell said that the heavens were weeping for Teddy Kennedy.

00:25:12.380 Now we're getting the real story.

00:25:13.880 And it's interesting to look at him because the Kennedys so debased American politics.

00:25:18.480 They stole the 1960 election.

00:25:20.460 They were just the things that JFK did with his interns all around the White House and appointing, you know, all of these questionable people to positions.

00:25:30.260 And Ted Kennedy, obviously, he didn't have the integrity to resign after he killed that poor girl.

00:25:35.480 He kept going.

00:25:36.460 He played the victim.

00:25:37.240 He wore a bogus neck brace.

00:25:38.620 And yet people saw him turning his neck.

00:25:40.580 So it was all just about him.

00:25:42.820 Me, me, me.

00:25:43.480 How do I rise to power?

00:25:45.060 Teddy Kennedy, as a public figure, was a man without virtue.

00:25:48.660 He didn't practice the virtues.

00:25:50.740 He wasn't temperate.

00:25:52.200 He wasn't just.

00:25:53.520 He just didn't have them.

00:25:55.100 He was cowardly.

00:25:56.560 He just did not exhibit any integrity.

00:25:59.040 And that has fed through all the way up through Clinton and into the present political situation where you see politicians on both sides of the aisle being a little bit more open and a little bit more craven about that.

00:26:12.600 That's the world without virtue.

00:26:14.560 That's the world where we're just all meat and we're all just in it to win for ourselves.

00:26:18.900 And I don't know.

00:26:20.280 Maybe it's providential timing.

00:26:21.720 Hopefully, this can be a turning point.

00:26:23.480 We say, oh, I don't really like that.

00:26:24.680 But we carried water for that big, fat, drunken, lecherous lout for 50 years. 1.00

00:26:31.360 And maybe we should stop that.

00:26:33.620 What would happen if we don't do that?

00:26:35.060 What if we don't pretend that Teddy Kennedy is anything better than a degenerate?

00:26:38.600 Maybe we could get people who are generates. 0.98

00:26:41.200 Get people who are actually decent people with integrity or more integrity.

00:26:46.780 That's some hope to leave it on.

00:26:48.340 But the question is virtue.

00:26:50.580 And that's, I think, at the heart of all of this.

00:26:52.140 All right, we've got to talk a little bit about comedy.

00:26:54.920 But I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, don't I?

00:26:58.080 Terrible.

00:26:58.780 Terrible.

00:26:59.060 Because we've got to talk to an excellent guest coming up, Frank.

00:27:02.760 And before we do that, it is here, our next episode of The Conversation.

00:27:07.780 That episode will be tomorrow, April 10th at 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific.

00:27:12.360 If you haven't already joined The Conversation series, it is our monthly Q&A hosted by Alicia Krauss

00:27:17.240 where we answer any and all questions from politics to the personal.

00:27:21.620 And, you know, I'm a feminist man, so the politics is the personal. 0.96

00:27:24.980 This month's episode features our very own Andrew Klavan.

00:27:27.520 It will stream live on The Daily Wire's Facebook and YouTube pages.

00:27:30.800 The episode will be free for everyone to watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions.

00:27:34.920 To ask questions as a subscriber, log into our website, dailywire.com.

00:27:38.860 Head over to The Conversation page to watch the live stream.

00:27:41.960 After that, just start typing into The Daily Wire chat box where Drew will answer questions

00:27:46.080 as they come in for an entire hour.

00:27:47.780 Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Andrew Klavan on Tuesday, April 10th

00:27:53.480 at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific, and join The Conversation.

00:27:58.780 You have to be a member to do that.

00:28:00.200 That's why you've got to join.

00:28:01.160 If you're not, look, if you're at thedailywire.com right now, thank you very much.

00:28:04.040 You keep the lights on.

00:28:05.160 You know, many are cold, but few are chosen.

00:28:06.980 Many, everybody gets to listen, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.

00:28:11.300 You get your mailbag questions in.

00:28:13.020 You get me, you get the Andrew Klavan show, you get the Ben Shapiro show, blah, blah, blah.

00:28:15.380 Uh, here it is.

00:28:17.900 I got to tell you, I barely got out of that movie theater alive when I saw Chappaquiddick.

00:28:22.040 I went in there, I thought, oh, this will just be some lefty film, and they'll make them look nice.

00:28:26.640 I, thankfully, I carried a life raft with me so I could sail out on the salty and delicious

00:28:32.680 leftist tears that filled the entire theater.

00:28:35.400 I should have just brought my leftist tears tumbler.

00:28:36.960 This is the only FDA-approved device and vessel for those salty, delicious leftist tears.

00:28:42.040 Go to dailywire.com right now.

00:28:43.640 We'll be right back.

00:28:45.380 All right.

00:28:55.280 I want to bring on Frank J. Fleming now, finally, author of SideQuest, In Realms Ungoogled.

00:29:02.880 Frank, thank you for being here.

00:29:04.460 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:29:05.780 So, Frank, this book, it's a comic fantasy.

00:29:09.500 It's a fantasy that's very funny, and I really haven't read anything like it before, but I really enjoyed it.

00:29:16.440 How would you describe it?

00:29:18.060 Well, it's about a mild-mannered computer programmer who, one day on his way to work, goes on a trail.

00:29:26.600 He's always seen before, but never really bothered to go down just a road off his usual way to work, and he's given a sword by fairies, which seems kind of unusual. 0.97

00:29:35.900 And then he starts to notice things like his boss is a demon, they sacrifice people beneath his office building, and his girlfriend works for an evil entity and raids villages at night.

00:29:50.340 And he thinks all this is kind of odd, but he's the only one.

00:29:53.680 Yeah, it's just, you know, it's just business as usual.

00:29:56.860 One thing that really drew my attention to it is I did this show with Andrew Klavan called Another Kingdom, where it's another conservative satirist who's writing about fairies and this magical land.

00:30:08.540 And I don't know what it is about us conservatives writing about fairies, but there's something, there's something deeply Freudian probably back there.

00:30:14.880 You write a lot of conservative satire.

00:30:17.540 I love conservative satire.

00:30:19.140 I'm a longtime fan of P.J. O'Rourke.

00:30:22.440 I remember in college I would read, he wrote an excellent essay called Republican Party Reptile, How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.

00:30:33.840 That was the name of an important political essay in my upbringing.

00:30:36.360 You do it yourself. You're a practitioner.

00:30:38.960 What do you think about the state of political satire in the age of Trump?

00:30:43.640 It's absolutely dead.

00:30:45.420 It's dead because we're beyond satire, aren't we?

00:30:47.700 Well, I mean, I try to come up with something like, hey, what's something ridiculous?

00:30:52.320 And then Trump tops me.

00:30:54.680 And then like, oh, what's like the most ridiculous response to that?

00:30:57.340 And then the left tops me.

00:30:58.780 And it's just I don't have the imagination for it anymore.

00:31:01.400 It just seems like, you know, I just can't beat reality.

00:31:04.300 This is how I feel about the conservative or what I think is probably a secret crypto conservative website.

00:31:11.260 But it's my favorite website on the Internet, Everyday Feminism. 1.00

00:31:14.220 It is so good.

00:31:15.460 It has reached the point where you cannot tell if it is satire or earnest.

00:31:20.140 And at that point, one has to sort of throw up one's hands and say, oh, well, that's too much.

00:31:24.660 The thing about Trump that I love, though, is in the age of Bush, when George W. Bush wouldn't strike back, he was very dignified.

00:31:32.620 Jon Stewart had a ball.

00:31:35.120 Stephen Colbert, the same thing.

00:31:37.080 They were able to be very satirical because they were playing off a straight man.

00:31:41.460 Now Donald Trump is funnier than any of them.

00:31:43.900 He is a better stage comedian than any of those satirists.

00:31:47.400 So you just have Jimmy Kimmel crying instead.

00:31:49.960 Conservatives right now, they seem to be the funny ones.

00:31:52.100 We're the ones laughing.

00:31:53.000 We're on the Internet, you know, with the memes and everything.

00:31:55.280 The left is so unfunny.

00:31:57.020 They're like Sandra Fluke, that meme, you know, of the abortion or the contraception activist.

00:32:02.320 She's like arms folded and that's not funny.

00:32:04.640 Why is that?

00:32:06.820 Why are conservatives the funny ones right now?

00:32:08.740 Why is the left so unfunny?

00:32:10.820 Well, I think a few like me, I'm one of those who just like completely detached after 2016.

00:32:16.880 I mean, that was a that was an interesting election.

00:32:19.980 It was a tough one because you had, you know, it was like choosing between prime rib and lobster.

00:32:25.740 I mean, it's just like, how can I pick just one?

00:32:28.360 And, you know, please give me both.

00:32:30.680 Yeah.

00:32:30.980 Yeah.

00:32:31.320 And there was it was like you just froze there looking for the both option.

00:32:33.960 And, you know, I don't know if I combine them like Hillary and Trump, like a Hillerum for a Trump lead.

00:32:40.720 But, you know, yeah, yeah.

00:32:42.700 And it's you know, and it's like, oh, I guess, you know, things are great now.

00:32:46.400 We're not needed anymore.

00:32:47.260 And so I just kind of detached a bit.

00:32:48.880 And when you detach and you don't take it so seriously, I mean, this has been like the most entertaining presidency ever.

00:32:55.180 It's just it's yeah, it's constant amusement.

00:32:58.080 I mean, you're on Twitter.

00:32:59.580 He's always on there keeping things interesting.

00:33:02.420 And it's, you know, it's pretty nice.

00:33:05.060 It's a lot of fun.

00:33:06.060 And then but everybody's just getting so worked up about it.

00:33:09.520 I guess it's like, you know, it's like that Andy Kaufman thing.

00:33:12.520 They're just but they're not in on the joke.

00:33:14.280 They're all yelling at him.

00:33:15.440 I think this is actually the reason I think you've you've hit on exactly why conservatives are the funny ones right now.

00:33:21.220 And the left is so unfunny is that conservatives have other things, you know, conservatives have other things going on.

00:33:27.500 And so politics isn't the end of the world for us.

00:33:30.700 Tax rates go up.

00:33:31.540 Tax rates go down.

00:33:32.640 Sometimes it's better.

00:33:33.520 Sometimes it's worse.

00:33:34.460 Not in that order.

00:33:35.720 And, you know, it's the government is always a nuisance.

00:33:39.820 Politics is always going to try to encroach on us.

00:33:42.580 And but, you know, we have culture.

00:33:44.160 We have God above the culture.

00:33:45.420 And there are other things that we have our families and that sort of thing.

00:33:48.360 But for the left, the political is the personal.

00:33:51.600 And it's just they worship it like it's a religion.

00:33:53.460 And who cares, you know, if you give your put not your faith in princes, if you live your life just only caring about what's happening in politics, you're going to be very disappointed, I think.

00:34:05.860 Yeah, I mean, that's the problem with true conservatives.

00:34:07.960 They don't they have way more important things to worry about than politics.

00:34:11.360 And so it's just like, you know, they are so so it's like they're the ones who's going to check out, you know, when things like, you know, when everybody else is like putting all their energy into it, you know, they have other things to do.

00:34:22.820 I got kids to get to T-ball and stuff.

00:34:24.520 I can't be freaking out about this.

00:34:26.420 You know, I like to I like to read a good book in the morning and not get up worked up by the news.

00:34:31.100 So, I mean, it's now this actually does bring me this brings me to a serious question about you and your audience is conservatives, as you know, are Philistines.

00:34:39.140 Even I, I don't really read novels, hardly ever.

00:34:42.120 I don't read a ton of fiction.

00:34:43.780 How are you finding the book is being received?

00:34:45.900 It's really fun.

00:34:46.660 I really enjoyed when someone puts a book in front of me or they say, I think you'll like this, Michael.

00:34:50.440 It's kind of has similar themes that you like.

00:34:52.380 I read it.

00:34:53.020 I really is really fun to read.

00:34:55.860 How is the response?

00:34:57.900 Well, it's a little tougher marketing a novel than I thought.

00:35:00.540 This is only my second one.

00:35:02.220 And, you know, if you go to Amazon, there's got to be, I don't know, dozens of different novels to choose from.

00:35:06.980 And you got to convince people to buy yours.

00:35:08.600 I think they have almost 10 novels on Amazon now.

00:35:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:12.760 Seven of them are Harry Potter.

00:35:14.900 But, you know, and then, let's see, the average person reads maybe one book every decade.

00:35:20.400 And so I got to convince them to read mine over one of the Harry Potters, which, you know, it's tough.

00:35:26.560 I don't have, you know, Harry, Ron, Hermione in mind.

00:35:30.100 But it's still, I think it might be.

00:35:31.340 If you put that hot little English tomato in your series, then maybe you'll be able to do it.

00:35:34.560 But, yeah, so I just try to, you know, make it fun.

00:35:40.220 It's got some of the pop culture references, which are big and like that Ready Player One thing.

00:35:44.620 But it's got a few other things than just pop culture references.

00:35:47.240 So it's actually like a story.

00:35:48.800 Yeah, I really like it because I try to, I have to read a lot.

00:35:52.960 You know, that's basically the only requirement of this job is you have to read a lot.

00:35:56.140 And so I'll be, before bed, I'll be reading some moral philosophy or something.

00:36:00.620 And, you know, I'm reading Alistair McIntyre, whom I really like.

00:36:03.280 And you get four syllables in and then it's eight in the morning.

00:36:07.060 You know, then you get four syllables in and you're just dead to the world.

00:36:09.820 But this is really fun.

00:36:10.860 This kept me up.

00:36:11.960 And so I definitely recommend going out and getting it.

00:36:14.280 The book is SideQuest in Realms Ungoogled.

00:36:18.000 The author is Frank J. Fleming.

00:36:20.300 Frank, thank you for being here.

00:36:21.820 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:36:22.700 Try to say that five times fast.

00:36:24.180 Frank J. Fleming, Frank J. Fleming, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, go get it.

00:36:27.600 Good book, SideQuest in Realms Ungoogled.

00:36:30.380 Okay, that's our show for the day.

00:36:31.700 We have much more to talk about, but we're out of time.

00:36:34.160 Sorry, folks.

00:36:35.560 Go over to Daily Wire, get your mailbag questions in.

00:36:37.780 I'm going to start, they're going to be percolating.

00:36:39.700 And then I'm going to be on the road coming up soon, I think next week.

00:36:42.480 So I'll give some more details on that when they come out.

00:36:45.340 But I'm going to be in Mobile, Alabama.

00:36:47.640 I believe it's April 17th to visit the Alabama Policy Institute and give a talk there.

00:36:53.180 So if you are so inclined and you're in the area, you're hanging around Mobile, go over there.

00:36:58.180 And I think tickets are still available on the Alabama Policy Institute website.

00:37:01.600 Okay, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:37:02.980 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:37:04.220 I'll see you tomorrow.

00:37:04.680 The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:37:13.040 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:37:15.180 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:37:17.080 Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.

00:37:19.240 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:37:21.560 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:37:23.300 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:37:25.300 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:37:27.740 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

00:37:29.460 Thank you.

00:37:34.680 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 09, 2018

Ep. 135 - A Nation Of Drug Addicts

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