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It’s Time To Mansplain Parenting To TikTok Moms Who Resent Their Own Kids · The Matt Walsh Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Lindsay Clancy case has brought the dark side of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: TikTok to the forefront. As it turns out, the dark
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: side of TikTok is just TikTok. There is no light side,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: no good side, at least not one significant or counterbalancing
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: enough that it should dissuade us from launching the entire
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: platform and most of the people who use it directly
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: into the sun. And it isn't just that platform. The
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: case has shown the dark side of the culture more broadly.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: And there are.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Those who would argue that the culture too, and many
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of the people in it, belong on the same one-way
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: flight into the sun. Over the last few weeks, we've
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: said a lot about Clancy's fan club, a group of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: women all as repulsive on the inside as they are
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: on the outside and unanimously deserving of having their custody
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: rights and their voting rights rescinded. These goblins have come
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: forward loudly and proudly to outright defend a murderer who
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: brutally slaughtered all three of her children. In the process,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: they have unmistakably demonstrated that they, like their hero, have
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: roughly the intelligence and moral reasoning of Komodo dragons. And
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I choose that comparison intentionally, by the way. Young Komodo
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: dragons have to spend the first few years of their
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: lives hiding high up in the trees so they aren't
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: killed and eaten by older Komodo dragons, to include especially
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: their own mothers. Now, I've found that it's a very
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: bad idea to use any species of lizard, least of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: all this species, as a parenting model, and yet that's
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: exactly what feminists are doing now and have been doing,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: in fact, for many decades. We've directed plenty of richly
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: deserved scorn at the women who've invented outlandish conspiracy theories
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: around the case, often pinning the blame on the husband,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: who is in reality the primary living victim of this crime.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Far more troubling are the women who defend Clancy not
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: because they think she didn't do it, but because they
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: know she did. They understand her, they say. They relate
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to her. By their own admission, that means they loathe
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and resent their own children and have considered or would
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: consider murder as a potential remedy. That's the only thing
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: a mother can mean when she says that she sees
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: herself in a woman who systematically executed her family.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: There have been at least a few.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Moments that almost rise to unintentional humor in the middle
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of this profoundly unsettling saga. This GB News clip went
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: viral yesterday. The female commentator is thrown into paroxysms of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: rage at her male colleague for daring to criticize a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: child killer.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: God forbid. Watch. They should be quiet because they did.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I've had it with you.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: They're going to kill their children.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: She's a murderer.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Now, the star of that clip is obviously the woman
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: on camera, boiling, seething, nearly volcanic woman. But don't forget
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the assist from the female anchor off camera who we
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: don't see, who insists that we should have empathy for
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: what she went through. Talking about Lindsay Clancy. Well, the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: thing that Clancy went through, just to be clear, is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the slaughter of her children carried.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Out by her own hands.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know if the women in that clip have kids,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: but if they do, I grieve for those children and
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: worry for them. But beyond this especially loathsome group of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy groupies, there has been a deluge of videos,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: some recent, some not, from female influencers of every size
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: in both BMI and follower count who spend their ample
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: free time bitterly complaining about their children online. And this
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: is a thriving genre. And the overlap between Clancy's defenders
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and the fans of this content is, we can assume,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: roughly 100%. And it works like this. The influencer posts
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: her complaints on TikTok so that other women, also bitter,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: also with too much free time, can watch and validate her.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Except they're not really validating her, they're validating themselves through her.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: The whole thing is a kind of orgy of self-pity.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: The comments say stuff like, you're so brave and thank
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: you for your honesty. But those are affirmations that the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: commenters mean more for themselves. The influencer takes it as
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: encouragement and posts more, the echo chamber grows ever louder,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the whimpering and whining rises and swells, and the pity
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: party runs on forever, a perpetual motion machine fueled by bitching.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of this content, and in a moment
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: we'll play a mercifully brief sample and then discuss it,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: but the first thing to say before we watch any
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: of it is the thing that shouldn't need to be
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: said at all, which is that even if you hate
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: motherhood and hate your children and hate the world and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: everybody in it, that still does not excuse murdering your.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Family, just for the record.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Now, until the last couple of weeks, even in my
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: most cynical moments, I would not have thought it necessary
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to clarify that there is no valid excuse for methodically
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: strangling your children to death. Apparently, I was not nearly
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: cynical enough, which is a depressing fact all on its own.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And with that said, here it is, watch.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Lindsay Clancy is all of us somehow. Just one slip
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: on the banana peel And it could have been any
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: of us. Being a stay-at-home mom is doing a million
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: things before 10 o'clock in the morning and looking around
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: and feeling like you've done nothing. It's picking up the
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: same things over and over again. It's having the same conversations.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: I am stuck in St. Paul walls 24-7.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: It's exhausting. I genuinely feel like I have no purpose
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: in life. I'm just so tired of the need and
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: the want and the questions and the snacks and wiping asses. Like,
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: honest to God, them needing to eat every single.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Day is really f * * * ing killing me.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: I'm completely overwhelmed trying to take care of the kids.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I'm drowning every day.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: I feel guilty that I'm spending my family's money and
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: not making any.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I feel like I spend way too much.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: She wrote that, right? Today has been literally so hard.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I'm so touched out.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: And I know he just had surgery, but like, I just.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Want my own space.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Now, keep in mind, this is not a phenomenon confined
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to TikTok or only to women. Parents openly hating their
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: children is something of a trend and being more and
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: more normalized.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Although it's not an entirely recent trend.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Plenty of adults today know the concept very well from
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: their own childhoods. Time Magazine recently published a lengthy essay
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: about the, quote, parents who regret having children. And then
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Canada's state media org in the CBC followed with its
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: own report.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: A few months later, as did BuzzFeed.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: A Facebook group for parents who regret having children has
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of members. The Regretful Parents subreddit has
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of active users and 70,000 weekly visitors.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: We've covered this forum before a couple of years ago.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: It is perhaps, as a piece last week in Futurism
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: dubbed it, the darkest place on the internet. And here's
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: a representative sample picked basically at random. Somebody posted this
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: yesterday or two days ago. Title, I hate being a mother.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm not going to read the entire thing, but
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: this woman echoes many of the sentiments of those moms
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: on TikTok and all the Lindsay Clancy fans. She hates
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: being a mother. She hates being home with her kids.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: She hates, quote, everyone. She especially hates her husband now,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: she says, and wants to leave. Therapy, she reports, has
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: been no help. These are two persistent themes on this forum,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: hating the husband and therapy not working.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Other posts are even more depressing.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: One woman brags that she just gave up custody of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: her five-year-old, her five-year-old son, and is so relieved that
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: she's finally, quote, free. Another describes her life with a
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: seven-year-old son and the fairly run-of-the-mill challenges she's faced with him.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: He's impatient.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: He asks for snacks. He yells when he doesn't get
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: his way sometimes. And she says that it's hell on earth.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and that she hates her life and resents her son.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And she hates parenting this boy, quote, more than anything.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: These are just a few posts from this week, and I.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Chose the more cheerful varieties. It gets a lot worse.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: The point is that this kind of noxious.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Material is all over the place these days, which means
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: that parents who harbor these dark feelings have no shortage
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: of outlets. They have no scarcity of pots to stew
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in where they can join together. each other in their
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: shared hatreds and resentments and persecution complexes. They marinate like
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: chicken breasts in Ziploc bags in the fridge, soaking in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the spite and venom, which they then direct toward their families.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: The cultural effect of all this stuff is horrendous. Young
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: people encounter this content and become as demoralized and hopeless
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: as the people posting it want them to be. Marriage
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: rates continue to plummet as a result. And on a
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: personal level, the effect is cataclysmic, even potentially fatal. I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: would bet every dollar in my possession that Lindsay Clancy
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: spent plenty of time on these Reddit forums or forums
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: like them and watched countless I hate motherhood type videos
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: This spectacle does not merely describe the misery these people
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: are feeling. It encourages it and spreads it like a virus. Now,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: if I were inclined to be sympathetic to some of
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: these people, and I'm not really, but if I were,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: they would forfeit that sympathy the moment they publish their
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: complaints online. Now, we'll get to what to do with
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: your resentment toward your children in a moment. But the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: first thing you should know is this. Don't talk about
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: it in public. The first thing you should do with
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: your resentment is not talk about it in public, especially
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: not in a forum that puts your feelings on the
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: permanent record, immortalized, so that anyone, including your children, sooner
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: than you might think, can read them. If you're struggling,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you need to understand this fact. No stranger on the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: internet can help you. Even if your struggle is real,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: which it often isn't, even if your feelings are justified,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: which they often aren't, A stranger watching your video can
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: do nothing for you. They can leave supportive comments, I guess,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: but supportive comments on the internet are an emotional.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Band-aid at best. Worse, actually.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: They're more like a prescription painkiller whose effect fades as
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: fast as it becomes addictive. You'll need ever more comments
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and encouraging emojis, and none of it will ever be enough.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, by offering your psychological state for public discussion,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you've invited the mean and rude comments, too. And an
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: infamous quirk of human nature is that the rude ones
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: land about 100 times harder than the supportive ones.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: And that leaves you more desperate for reassurance, which invites
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: even ruder feedback.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: And before you know it, you're being clipped and featured
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: on podcasts by notorious right-wing bullies like me. Now, this
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, the public vomiting of your personal anxieties
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and grievances, is in effect a sort of emotional exhibitionism.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not so different from some weird nudist
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: traipsing around in public with his grotesque and malformed body
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: on full display, various parts of himself dangling and flopping
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in the breeze. So I will say to you what
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I would say to him, which is keep it to yourself.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Have some dignity.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Practice some basic level of decorum. In other words, whether
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: literally or metaphorically, put your damned clothes on. But at
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: least the women simply complaining about their kids aren't quite
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: as bad as the women who stage emotional meltdowns for
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the camera and use their children as props in the performance.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: This is another very popular genre. Here's one example.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Just have a look close.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: This, as we said, is all staged for the camera.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Of course, the child doesn't understand that it's fake, though,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: or why mommy is pretending to have a nervous breakdown
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: over a little liquid spilled on an uncarpeted floor. And
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the point of the charade is for the woman to
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: brag that she didn't hit her daughter or scream at
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: her over a minor accident, though she did growl like
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a werewolf and clutch her head in agony over liquid
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: spilling on the ground. This is what's supposed to be
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: good mothering on TikTok. This is the good advice. If
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: these are the good mothers, you hate to see the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: bad ones. In fact, we have seen them. One is
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: on trial right now in Massachusetts. So the bar gets very,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: very low. Now let's get to the part of this
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: mansplaining lecture that might, just might, however slim the chance,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: be helpful to these women or any other parent who
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: relates to them. If you genuinely hate being a parent,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: here's what you need to know. And I say this
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: with all sincerity, okay? There is something wrong with you.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Nobody will tell you that. Probably nobody ever has. In
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: our culture, you're never supposed to inform anyone that there's
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: something wrong with them, even especially, in fact, if there
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: obviously is. Well, I'm breaking that rule to tell you
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that there is something wrong with you. You should enjoy
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: being a parent, okay?
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: You should enjoy it. Not all the time, not every
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: second of every day.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying you should live in a state of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: constant maternal euphoria or that you should never be frustrated
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: or angry or sad or irritated. But generally, as a rule,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: You should enjoy being a parent. It's not hard to enjoy.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Opportunities for enjoyment present themselves every day. A couple of
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: nights ago, to give one random example, I took my
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: kids out to dinner and then to a bookstore. That's
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: our idea of a night out on the town, okay?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And it was fun, not just for them, but for me.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: The time I spent with my kids, it was not
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: some great sacrifice. It was not a burden that I
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: heroically shouldered for their sake. I actually just like hanging
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: out with them. They're smart, they're funny, they're fun to
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: be around. Now, yeah, they can annoy me sometimes, but
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: anybody can annoy me. I mean, I've never spent considerable
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: time around another human without being annoyed by them on occasion.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And I've never spent considerable time around another human without
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: causing them annoyance in return, I'm sure.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: That's life.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Generally, though, and I definitely cannot say this about everyone
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I've known, or even probably most people, I like spending
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: time with my kids. And this is how you should
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: feel about your kids. It doesn't take a great saint
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: or a person of exceptional virtue to feel this way.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: If it did, I wouldn't, but I do. If I
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: can enjoy being a parent, so can you.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: If you find that you hate parenthood and resent your
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: kids and wish for nothing more than to be free
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of the responsibilities of caring for the children that you
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: brought into the world, there are two potential causes of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: this dysfunction. You're not going to like hearing about either
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: of them. I'm just warning you. Both are unflattering. But
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: someone in your life needs to tell you the unflattering thing.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And I suspect that nobody ever has.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: So here it is.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: One potential reason that you hate being a parent is
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that you are so stuck in your own head, so
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: consumed by your own ego, that you have never put
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: in the minimal effort required to develop a real relationship
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: with your children. You despise being around your kids because
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you despise being around anyone who makes any demands on
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: your attention or your time.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: This is called narcissism.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And narcissists can't enjoy the company of any other human
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: for very long because other humans are other.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: They are outside of you. They are different from you.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And they are useful to you or sources of delight
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: or satisfaction for you only as long as they serve
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: your own needs. The moment they commit the sin of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: having needs that differ from yours, they have overstayed their welcome.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: And I would surmise that the vast majority of parents
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: who hate their kids or at least hate being around
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: their kids And the distinction, by the way, is quite
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: fragile between those two things.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Hate it for this reason. The Lindsay Clancy Moms.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Of America, LCMA, we'll call their unofficial organization, certainly fall
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: into this category. They feel about their kids the way
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Clancy felt about hers because they, like her, place themselves
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: at the center of the universe and automatically despise anyone
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: or anything that would try to jostle them from that
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: central position. Now, the other possible reason that you find
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: your children tough to be around, related to the first
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily mutually exclusive, is that your kids actually
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: are tough.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: To be around.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: They really are needy, miserable, obnoxious, grating to a degree
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: that even the most patient person would struggle to endure.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible that your kids would have Mother
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Teresa silently rolling her eyes and plotting the politest possible exit.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: If that's the case, and maybe it is, The reason
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: they've turned out that way so far is that you
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: have done an extremely poor job of raising them.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: It's your fault.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It would not be an oversimplification, or at least only
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a very slight one, to say that your whole job
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: as a parent is to help your kids become the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: kinds of people other people like to be around. Jordan
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Peterson has often made this point. If you don't even
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: like being around them, imagine how other people, potential friends,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: potential employers, potential spouses, will feel about them in the future.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: You have failed.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And that's something that I'm guessing you already know, at
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: least at some level, and it makes you hate parenthood
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and hate your children even more. They are a reflection
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: of your failures and you know it, so you hate them.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: These are the two options. You hate being around your kids,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: either because you are a raging narcissist or because you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: have failed as a parent, or both. Either way, this
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: is what we call a you problem. It is your fault,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: not theirs. This falls on you. And squarely on you,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: by the way. Also not on.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: The system or the community or anyone. It falls on you.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: This is your failure.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And it's important that you face that reality and accept it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: After all, acceptance is, as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous,
• 20:06
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• 20:10
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• 20:13
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• 20:16
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• 20:20
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• 20:21
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• 20:25
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• 20:28
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• 20:30
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• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Balance of nature takes.
• 20:34
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• 20:42
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  Speaker 1: pack eventually contains the one flavor nobody in the family
• 20:53
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• 20:54
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• 21:24
  Speaker 2: To insure it. Your phone, your flight, your concert tickets, apparently.
• 21:28
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• 21:31
  Speaker 1: household electronics, but when it comes to protecting the income
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that pays for all those things, people tend to put
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: it off for a long time. Life insurance sounds complicated,
• 21:41
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• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Eventually has a habit of never arriving.
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• 22:13
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• 22:16
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• 22:18
  Speaker 2: That's policygenius.com slash Walsh. So what should you do next?
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Well, now that we've established why precisely you abhor parenthood
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: so much, what can you do about it?
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the good news. All is not lost.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: There is one very simple and very effective thing you
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: can do to fix everything. And if not everything, then
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. It's the method that will solve
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a surprisingly large number of your personal problems. And I'll
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: tell you what it is.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Pretend.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: If you hate being a parent and it's all your fault,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: which it is, then what you need to do is
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: pretend that you don't hate it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, pretend. Yes, suppress your true feelings.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, put on an act. Don't be genuine. Don't be authentic.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Don't be honest about how you feel.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Pretend. Fake it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Put on a facade and maintain that facade at all
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: times and at all costs. Do this for the sake
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: of your kids, because it's deeply scarring and unfair to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: saddle them with your issues.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And this is, as we've established, your issue.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Your kids should not have to cope with the reality
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that their mother or their father is a miserable, narcissistic
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: jerk who resents them for existing. There's nothing a child
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: can do with that information. He can't fix it or you.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: That's not his job. Your child is not your parent
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: or your therapist or your priest. He's not here to
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: be the lighthouse in your emotional storm guiding you to.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: A safe harbor. You're supposed to be his lighthouse.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: So even if you don't feel like it, even if
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you aren't into it, even if it's really hard and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it really sucks and you're really sad and you're really
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: depressed or whatever, you need to turn that light on
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: for his sake. You should also maintain the facade for
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the public, frankly. Your kids shouldn't have to deal with
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: your emotional fragility and vanity and egotism, and neither should
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: any of.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: The rest of us.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: We don't want to see your true self either because
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: it's unsightly and off-putting. Nobody should be forced to bear
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: witness to it. I refer back to the nudist analogy. Like,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: I don't want to see your exposed ass or your
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: exposed emotions. I don't want to see any of that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: for the same reason that I don't want to smell
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: your body odor. Now, sure, your stench after failing to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: bathe for a week might be more authentic. It might
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: give me a more accurate whiff of your true self,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: but if your true authentic self is repulsive, then why
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: should anyone be forced to be in close proximity to it?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Why should there be any virtue in inflicting a repugnant
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: personality onto the public, much less onto your family, just
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: because it happens to be true?
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: There are two very popular.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And modern and bad ideas at work here, both of
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: them originating from or heavily pushed by therapists and psychologists
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: as as very popular and modern and bad ideas so
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: often are. One is the notion that your most self-serving
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and antisocial impulses are somehow your true self and that
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: the height of authenticity is to act according to those impulses,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: as though authenticity means nothing more than enslaving yourself to
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: your own emotions. And the other is what has been
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: dubbed the hydraulic psychological model pioneered by guys like Freud,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: which teaches that your inner emotions and desires are like
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: steam building up inside the pressure cooker of your mind.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And you have to let them out.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: You have to vent them so that you don't somehow
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: mysteriously combust. And both of these have led in their
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: most absurd and cartoonish manifestations to things like rage rituals,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: where women get together and scream and beat sticks on
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the ground as a form of some kind of bizarre catharsis.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Watch.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Right now, I feel, what do you feel?
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: I don't feel bad.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I don't feel bad. I don't feel bad.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: I don't feel bad. I don't feel bad.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Now, you might think that impotent rage can't get any
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: more preposterous and embarrassing than that. But a popular and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: recent version of this ritual somehow is even more inane.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And it involves women, usually mothers, gathering ice cubes from
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the freezer and then locking themselves in the bathroom and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: throwing the.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Ice cubes at the bathtub.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Often while their kids are crying on the other side
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of the door, understandably confused and alarmed. Now, the problem
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: with this approach, aside from the fact that it makes
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: you look retarded, is that it does not actually release
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the steam or relieve the tension. All you have done
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: by indulging the most ridiculous parts of yourself in the
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: most obnoxious way imaginable is work yourself up even more,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: make yourself even more upset, and you have conditioned yourself
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: to behave even worse in the future.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, these are temper tantrums.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: A temper tantrum is an unacceptable and unhealthy coping mechanism
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: for a nine-year-old. If your nine-year-old is still having temper tantrums,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: that's an issue. For a 35-year-old, it's genuinely insane. Despite
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: what Freud and his disciples have said for the past century,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and these people made up a lot of stuff, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: this is one of them, suppression and repression are actually
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: generally good things. Being a civilized adult, somebody who observes
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the most basic codes of etiquette and decorum, and who
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: is not an antisocial freak or a raging selfish brat,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: means spending a huge chunk of every day presenting a
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: version of yourself that is more tolerable, more appealing, more composed,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and more attractive than the self that is buried in
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the most indulgent, negatistical parts of your mind. That is
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the only way to be a functional person, and bringing
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it back to the matter at hand, the only way
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: to be a functional parent.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Fake it till you make it.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe the wisest and most useful cliche in the whole
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: history of cliches. It's the best parenting advice you'll ever get.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Act like the kind of parent you should be. Identify
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: all the parenting traits you wish you had and pretend
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that you have them. Put on a performance. It doesn't
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: have to be an Oscar-winning production. You don't need to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: be a Philip Seymour Hoffman-level thespian to pull it off.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Your kids won't really notice. Pretend to be the sort
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: of parent you ought to be. shoulder the burden of
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: your own narcissism silently.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: And with dignity. Wear a mask, yes, and keep it on.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Until your true face takes the shape of the mask,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: conforms to it like a mold, until the mask and
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you are the same. You can, in fact, become something
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: by pretending you are that thing. Now, it may not
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: work that way in all areas of life. It doesn't
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: work that way, for example, with biological sex. But in
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: this specific area, it does. Because if you suppress your
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: narcissistic feelings and tendencies and pretend to be something other
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: than the self-involved, whiny, emotional toddler that you are deep inside,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: after a while, by definition, you will no longer be
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that self-involved, whiny emotional toddler. The very act of assuming
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the burden of your own weaknesses and failures and choosing
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: not to inflict them on those around you turns you,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: by force of will, into precisely the unselfish, mature person
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: you're pretending to be. There is no such thing as
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a selfish, immature person who typically acts unselfish and mature
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: around other people. That's a contradiction in terms, like a
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: married bachelor. Unselfish, mature people are people who act unselfish
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and mature. Feeling otherwise and still acting that way only
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: makes you all the more unselfish and mature. That's the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: funny thing about virtue. To act as though you have
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it is to have it. A person who feels like
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a great coward but pretends to be courageous by rushing
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: into a burning building to save a child trapped inside
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: is exactly.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: What he pretends to be.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: A courageous man, by definition, is a man who is
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: scared to do something but does it anyway. Courage is
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: a thing you do. Good parenting is a thing you do.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: You yourself are what you do. Your feelings and insecurities
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and selfish instincts may also be a part of who
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: you are, but they are the least important, most fleeting,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: most tangential certainly least interesting part. They can change on
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: a minute-to-minute basis. They don't exist in any kind of
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: real physical sense. Nobody even knows about them unless you
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: make a public announcement. When you die, the whole hazy
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: cloud of emotions and sentiments in your head dies with you.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: But what you did, what you said, the person you
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: presented yourself to be through your actions and words will
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: be remembered. That's your legacy. That will be the thing
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: that outlives you. It will be who you were. So
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: it is now who you are. The other thing about
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: feelings is that they are easily influenced.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: They're stupid.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: They can be fooled. They can be duped, manipulated, not
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: just by other people, but by you. You can condition
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: your feelings through your actions. So if you pretend to
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: be a good and loving parent and you act as
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: though you love your children and your spouse and enjoy
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: being around them, the chances are very good that one
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: day you'll look up and realize that you're actually not
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: faking it anymore. You genuinely do enjoy giving your time
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and yourself to those you love. This is a process,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: by the way, that plays out in small ways again
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and again. Fake it till you make it is not
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: just a one-time fix. You'll have to continually act in
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: ways other than how you feel, as we established. That's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: part of life. And you'll find that often your feelings
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: follow after. Your feelings are the freight car, not the locomotive.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: They will go where you take them. I mentioned earlier
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the wild night out on the town with my kids
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: a few days ago, eating hamburgers and visiting a bookstore. Well,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the dark and terrible secret is that at first I
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: really didn't feel like doing any of that. I was
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: in kind of a bad mood for no particular reason
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: because that's how moods tend to work.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Moods, especially bad ones, don't need a reason to be
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: what they are. They just are.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And so what I wanted that night was for my
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: kids to go to bed so I could have a break.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Nevermind that my day really had not been difficult. Nothing
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: especially stressful had occurred.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: It was a fine day. It was a normal day.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yet here I was after a fine, normal day needing
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a break. A break from what?
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Who knows? Fine, normal stuff, I guess.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: But then I realized that I'd rather be the kind
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of dad in this moment who spends time with his
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: kids instead of the kind of dad who sulks off
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: in a huff because he's moody. So I pretended to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: be That better dad in that moment. I said that
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: this little trip was no great sacrifice, and it wasn't.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It was instead like the tiniest little microscopic sacrifice. And
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: many of the sacrifices you have to make as a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: parent or as a person in general are roughly this
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: size and scope. Sacrifices so small that it's embarrassing to
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: even describe them as such. And what do you know?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Within about 10 minutes, I was enjoying myself. I became
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the dad that I had so inauthentically portrayed myself to be.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: This is the magic of pretending. It works like a
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: charm most of the time. Joe Rigney on X reminds
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: me of one of the many great C.S. Lewis quotes
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: where he summarizes the point more insightfully and succinctly than
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I have managed to do, of course.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: And he wrote, C.S.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Lewis wrote, as practical imperatives for here and now, the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: two great commandments have to be translated, behave as if
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you loved God and man. Do not waste time bothering
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: whether you love your neighbor, act as if you did.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: As soon as we do this, we find one of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: loved someone, you will presently come to love him. Now,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the inverse is also true. The more you act in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: an unloving way towards someone, the less you will actually
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: love them. And that process plays out in families and
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: destroys them all the time. So act as if you
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: love your family and your children and your station in life.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Let the feelings follow, as they probably will.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Put on the act.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Never tell anyone that it is an act. Keep it
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: a secret, known only to you. Until maybe, maybe, one day,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: long in the future, when your child has a child
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: of their own and seems to be struggling as you
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: once did, you can sit them down and tell them,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: only then, about the war you waged successfully and quietly
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: against your own selfish, resentful nature. And when they hear
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: that after all those years, they won't think, wow, my
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: mom didn't really love me.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: It was all an act.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Rather, they will think, wow, my mom loved me even
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: more than I ever realized.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: And that will be the truth. That'll do it for
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: But in all of my years of public life, I
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: have never profited from public service. I welcome this kind
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: of examination because people have got to know whether or
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: not their president's a crook.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm not a crook.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: For more than five decades, from Iran-Contra to Monica Lewinsky
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to Russiagate, every political scandal has been measured against one,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the Watergate affair.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: But what if Richard Nixon was telling the truth? What
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: if Watergate isn't what it seems?
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: What if hundreds of thousands of pages of sworn testimony, memoirs,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: and newly released government documents tell a different story.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Than the one you learned in school?
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: In 1972, Nixon won the biggest electoral landslide in modern
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: American history with grand plans to remake the federal government.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Two years later, he was out of office. You were
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: taught that Nixon's.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to spy
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: on his political opponents. You were taught that when he
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: found out, Nixon covered it up. and the cover-up was
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: worse than the crime. You were taught that two heroic
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Washington Post reporters, guided by a righteous FBI whistleblower, brought
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the most powerful man in the world to justice.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: But you were never taught what really happened.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: The real history of the Watergate scandal is available now
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on Daily Wire +.