Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Thirty Two: Are You Not Entertained

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Episode One Hundred Thirty Two: Are You Not Entertained · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode one hundred and thirty two of the Depth of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. This is
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our final free episode of the podcast. So we try to go out with
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a bang and we review the news of the day, and then I take
0:17
a deep dive into why I am so pessimistic about America, where we are
0:22
headed, and which presidential candidate would likely cause the least amount of long term
0:28
harm. I'm known as the Dutch Digital Marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising
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That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the
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show. As I have been telling you, warning you what have you for
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the last several weeks. This is our final free episode of the Death of
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Journalism Podcasts. Starting in March, we will become a paid subscription podcast.
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Now. You will still if you're subscribed, and I urge you to remain
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subscribed, even if you don't become part of the paid version of the podcast.
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You will get updates, You will get snippets if if something major happens,
1:38
like, for instance, the black Swan that I've often referred to,
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you will certainly be informed. But if you are somebody who is you know
1:49
what that's this is going to be a pay in the ass. All right,
1:55
let me start it all over again, had three two one. As
2:06
I've been telling you for weeks. Starting in March, this podcast will change
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dramatically. It will no longer be available for free. It will instead be
2:15
a paid subscription model. And if you have already emailed our executive producer,
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Mike at Gavino, you have really nothing to do because you'll be sent a
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link at the beginning of March and you'll be able to become a paid subscriber,
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And really nothing is going to change very much for you. If you've
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previously emailed us requesting subscription information, you will receive that link I referred to
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via email for Mike, and you can click on that to link and subscribe.
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If you have not yet emailed Mike, you can do so at ago
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TDJ. That's a go the Death of Journalism TDJ at gmail dot com.
2:59
And just to be clear, if you are subscribed currently to this podcast,
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but you don't intend to become a paid subscriber, you will still get snippets
3:10
and updates, and if something major happens, you'll hear about that via the
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traditional feed. But for all intents and purposes, in order to continue consuming
3:21
this podcast, you will have to become a subscriber in March. And this
3:25
is our last free full episode of the podcast. I don't like the fact
3:30
that we had to do this, but there really was no other choice.
3:34
Of explained many times why it was either this or end the podcast entirely,
3:39
and because there was such a positive reaction to our executive producer, Mike Agavino
3:45
putting out the idea of transitioning to a paid subscription podcast, this is the
3:50
direction we're going to at least try to go. Now, who knows how
3:53
this is going to work out. I'm always a little bit pessimistic, but
3:58
I'm hopeful, and that's what we're going to be doing starting in March.
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But because this is our last episode, I have planned something a bit special
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and unique because a little bit later on in this episode, I'm going to
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talk about where America really is and where I think it's going, because that's
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really the essence of why I do almost everything I do in broadcasting and have
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been doing for a very long time. It's because of my belief in America
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and my fear for where America is heading. And I really don't think that
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anybody in public life. Are very few people in public life are truly honest
4:36
about where we are, how we got here, and where we're going.
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So I'm going to try to do that a little bit later on in this
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episode of the podcast as a way for us to kind of go out in
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a unique fashion with regard to the free version of the podcast. Before that,
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though, there's several news items I want to talk about, and the
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first deals with the results from the Michigan primary, which about as expected,
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although once again Donald Trump, you can make a very strong argument, has
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underperformed the polls. The results in Michigan were as follows. He defeated Nicky
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Haley. Donald Trump did did sixty eight to twenty six thereabouts. That's a
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very convincing victory. He's obviously, as I have said many many times,
5:27
very much on his march to winning the nomination without even really coming that close
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to ever losing any primary or caucus. His voter turnout was very strong.
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In fact, Trump got one hundred and thirty thousand more votes than Joe Biden
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did on the same day in the very key state of Michigan, and Republicans
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got about three hundred thousand more votes than Democrats did. Now, obviously the
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Democratic side didn't have as much reason to turn out, because it's even less
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of a contest on the Democratic side than it is on the Republican side.
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However, there was an option on the Democratic side to vote uncommitted, which
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apparently was bolstered by Muslims who are very upset at Joe Biden over the war
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in Gaza and so uncommitted. The media probably won't tell you this, but
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uncommitted got over one hundred thousand votes on the Democratic side. Now, that
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wasn't as strong as Nikki Haley did against Donald Trump, but you know it
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was in the somewhat of the same ballpark. So the results in Michigan really,
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I think give you almost anything you want. I mean, you could
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look at the results in Michigan and come up with almost any conclusion that you
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feel like. If you want to make the argument that this was a very
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good night for Donald Trump, you can do that largely based upon the data
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I gave you. I mean, Trump got one hundred and thirty thousand more
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votes than Biden did. Republicans got three hundred thousand more votes than Democrats uncommitted
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got over one hundred thousand votes on the Democratic side. Trump won handily,
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sixty eight to twenty six. That's the good side for Trump. The bad
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side for Trump is that once again he has underperformed polling. Now, in
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this particular case, he actually underperformed the polling in Michigan rather dramatically, I
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mean. But on the other hand, there were only a couple of credible
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polls in Michigan among Republican voters within the last month or so, so there
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was very limited data. But the data indicated that Trump was gonna win by
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over fifty points, and he didn't come close to that. So that's concerning
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not because it shows that Trump isn't popular in the Republican Party. To me,
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it's important, and to other people who have said similar things, it's
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important because if you're trying to evaluate the significance of these national polls that were
8:09
bombarded with on a daily basis between Trump and Biden, how credible are they
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really? Is it possible that there's something in the methodology that is weirdly given
8:22
the fact that Trump fans think that the whole world's against him, and Trump
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believes the whole worlds against him are weirdly biased in Trump's favor, and we
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saw some evidence of that in New Hampshire. We saw some of that evidence
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of that in South Carolina. Not a ton, but it doesn't take a
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ton to impact a very close selection, which any rational person will tell you
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the best Donald Trump is going to do, barring massive health catastrophe on the
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part of Joe Biden, is going to win a very close election. He's
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going to his scenario is he has to repeat what essentially happened in twenty sixteen.
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And so you know, and by the way, if you compare this
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to twenty sixteen, Trump got a ton more votes in Michigan last night than
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he did in twenty sixteen when he won the Michigan GOP primary. There.
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So the reason why underperforming the polls matters is not about the Republican primary and
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how popular he is among Republican primary voters. It's about whether the polls were
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being shown and they're being made public, about what's going to happen in November,
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whether or not they are credible. And it's starting to take hold in
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a pretty significant way, this narrative that Trump is underperforming those polls. Now,
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you know, we're going to have a lot more data a week from
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now when Super Tuesday con and if that's still the case in a widespread way,
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then you know, maybe there's really something very significant to this. But
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we're starting to have enough data points to where this is something to at least
10:11
keep an eye on and not be very cognizant of that this. You know,
10:16
don't necessarily believe these national polls showing Donald Trump beating Biden by four,
10:22
five, six, seven, sometimes eight points, because there's something in the
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methodology that's off. And something that goes in my mind to that argument is
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not just that Trump is underperforming the polls. It's that when the vote counting
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starts, and the New York Times does probably the best job of this as
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anybody else does. The New York Times will immediately use a computer model based
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upon where the votes are coming in from and what the what the results are,
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to extrapolate from there and to predict what the final outcome is going to
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be. And that that is based that computer model is based on presumptions about
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demographics and voter turnout, and so if they get a you know, once
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they get actual real results, the computer can tell them, at least that's
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the theory. The computer can tell them, Okay, this is how it's
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all going to turn out at the end of the night. And there's a
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fairly wide range. You know, as the night goes on, the range
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gets smaller and smaller. There's a there's a fairly wide range of possibilities.
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But so far in every single one of these, both the in Iowa and
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New Hampshire, South Carolina, and in Michigan, based upon my perception,
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it seems like Trump never hits the originally projected number, whether you know,
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with regard to the percent that he's going to end up with at the end
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of the night. So even when the results start coming in, they'll say,
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you know, like they actually indicated yesterday. As an example with Michigan,
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the original projection once the vote started coming in was that Trump would hit
12:16
around seventy two percent of the vote. Well, he only ended up with
12:20
sixty eight percent, and not a huge difference, but in a close selection,
12:28
that's significant, potentially very significant. And so to me, when you
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combine the fact that he's underperforming these polls and that even the New York Times
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computer model seems to be overestimating how Trump is going to do, I think
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there's good reason to be skeptical of these national polls that are giving Trump very
12:52
very good news. And you know, I've been documenting this over the last
12:56
couple of weeks. It took a little longer than I anticipated that it will
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good. But there has absolutely been a Donald Trump, a pro Donald Trump's
13:05
surge in the national general election polling. And I have often mocked the Harvard
13:11
Harris poll. It's particularly bizarre because it's obviously associated with Harvard University, which
13:18
is about as woke as it gets. But for some bizarre reason, the
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Harvard Harris pole is incredibly pro Trump. I have said, many times,
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may you find somebody in your life who adores you as much as the Harvard
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Harris Poll seems to adore Donald Trump. But even I was rather shocked by
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the most recent Harvard Harris poll. And it wasn't just because Trump was beating
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Biden. Trump is always beating Biden in the Harvard Harris pole. It's what
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else the Harvard Harris Poll is pretending to have discovered about the nature of the
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electorate and what they think of Donald Trump, while also having a poll that
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indicates he's beating Joe Biden pretty handily. Here are some of the underlying results
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from the most recent Harvard Harris poll. And I gotta tell you this is
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about as stunning as anything I can possibly remember in polling. And that's really
14:26
saying something because I watch polling about as carefully as anybody does. All right,
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So hold on to your hat here. Remember this is a poll where
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Donald Trump is beating Joe Biden by about six points nationally. The same sample
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that has Trump up by six says the following fifty six percent of voters think
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Trump has committed crimes for which he should be convicted fifty six percent. Fifty
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six percent. Trump will act as a dictator if he is elected as president.
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Fifty percent think Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet Trump is
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getting fifty three percent of the vote when you include leaners in this Harvard Harris
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Pole fifty three forty seven percent Trump over Biden. But it doesn't end there.
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You know, there's an narrative out there that I have bought into that
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if Donald Trump is convicted of a cry between now in November, that he's
15:33
toast. He's done, there's no chance he can possibly beat Biden. Well
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not, according to the Harvard Harris Pole. Listen to this. They asked,
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if Trump is convicted for inciting the Capitol riots of January sixth, who
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would you vote for if he's convicted. If he's convicted, they have old
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if Trump fifty four, Biden forty six. That's better than if he's not
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convicted. I don't even understand how this is possible. They have Trump up
16:11
by eight. If Trump is convicted for RICO in trying to influence the twenty
16:17
twenty election results in Georgia, would you vote for him? Or who would
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you vote for? Trump wins by four. If Trump is convicted of crimes
16:26
related to his handling of classified presidential documents. Bizarrely, it ends up as
16:32
a fifty to fifty tie. Now there's a there's so many potential problems here,
16:37
one of which is that they're clearly eliminating all other third party options and
16:41
they're forcing people to make a choice because there's no one decided here. So
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they're you know, they're they're what's happening is that they're taking They're not allowing
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people to say I don't know that, They're asking people, are who do
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you lean towards? You know? And there's all sorts of ways that posters
16:57
can can convince respondents to do this. So I've never been a big fan
17:03
of polls that are like this. Ras Muscin does this, and I've never
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been a fan of ras muscin. But that's why ras Muscin poles generally end
17:11
up at one hundred percent. That's just not credible because there's gonna be people
17:15
who don't know and could easily change their mind. But the most important part
17:19
of this is this is making absolutely no sense unless unless a theory that I
17:26
have put out there about what is really motivating some Trump voters is not only
17:32
true, but that it may be far more prevalent than I'm even giving it
17:37
credit for and that is the only way I can make heads or tails of
17:41
this. Now, let me be clear, I don't believe the Harvard Harris
17:45
pole. I think the Harvard Harris pole has something wrong in it. That's
17:48
very pro Trump, but it's it can't be, It's not made up.
17:52
There has to be something to it, and there has to be some explanation
17:56
for how in the same sample that has Trump win, you have over fifty
18:02
percent believing all these horrible things about Trump, including the fact that he'll he'll
18:07
act as a dictator if elected president. The only explanation I can come up
18:12
with is there is at least five, maybe up to ten percent of voters
18:18
who like Trump simply because of the entertainment element of it. And I put
18:26
under the entertainment umbrella those people who just want to burn the whole fucking thing
18:30
down. They really don't care, and they're not Republicans, and they might
18:34
not even be Trump fans. They may actually be voting for him because they
18:40
don't like him, because he's so horrible in their eyes. But bizarrely,
18:47
that's entertainment, and that's the message that they want to send to the elites.
18:52
The establishment to the world as a whole. Who knows, but that
18:59
right there is Again, I don't think it's a reflection of reality with regard
19:03
to who would win a presidential election, but that is pretty strong evidence that
19:08
there's a segment of the population out there that's not insignificant that is going to
19:15
vote for Donald Trump, or at least is planning on voting for Donald Trump
19:18
simply to say fuck you to the rest of the world, and simply because
19:25
they want to see it burn and they think that would be entertaining, and
19:30
that's scary and depressing. That would be scary and depressing if that was the
19:36
motivation behind their votes in any direction. Republican Democrat, Biden, Trump,
19:41
RFK Junior, whoever. I mean, that's just that is a really really
19:47
bad sign, maybe more significantly a bad sign than you who would win the
19:52
election itself. But that might be right now. Donald Trump's special power,
20:00
his superpower right now with regard to potentially winning this election is not because people
20:07
like him support him, have many even care about whatever policies he's allegedly in
20:11
favor of, and aren't even you know, necessarily voting against Biden. They're
20:17
just voting because this is the result that will create the most turmoil, the
20:23
most destruction, and in many ways the most entertainment. So that's another thing
20:30
to keep an eye on. Now. You know, there's basically two types
20:33
of polls nationwide at this moment, and you know, one has Trump up
20:38
by five, six, seven points and the other basically always has it tied,
20:45
which is another indication to me that there's something going on with about half
20:51
the pollsters that is giving too much credit to Donald Trump. Who knows,
20:56
but who knows. Maybe they're the posters that are looking up on this this
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we want to see it all burn vote, and maybe other pollsters are not.
21:06
We're not going to know, maybe not until November, but at least
21:10
not until we get more data on the state wide polling, and the state
21:15
wide polling. Trump is doing exceedingly well on paper. He is winning every
21:21
single swing state, and he only needs to win at least four of the
21:25
six, which I continue to continue to tell you is Georgia, Arizona,
21:29
Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Those are the only six states
21:33
that really matter because if he loses North Carolina, Trump isn't winning anyway.
21:38
So those are the six states. If he wins four of those six,
21:41
any four he wins. If he wins the right three, he wins.
21:47
And right now, on paper, he's winning all six. Now a couple
21:52
of those he's only winning by a very small margin. I don't believe he's
21:56
really winning Wisconsin right now. I think that's the most difficult one of the
22:00
six, at least as of right now. But you can make a very
22:04
strong argument that Trump is the favorite as of this moment, and certainly in
22:10
perception he is. In the betting markets, he is actually the choice of
22:15
over fifty percent of the betters. As far as their predictions on who is
22:21
actually going to win, I don't know where I am. I'm still in
22:23
that fifty percent range of who's going to win. And as far as Michigan
22:29
is concerned, I also think Michigan is a long shot. I think I
22:33
saw a private poll done by a pro Trump group that indicated very very recently
22:40
that Biden was winning Michigan by a point. But the public polling is all
22:45
in Trump's favor, and I just don't see how that makes any sense.
22:49
And I don't see any results from last night, even though he did get
22:53
more votes than Biden, and Republicans got more votes than Democrats. I don't
22:57
see overwhelming evidence that's something dramatic has happened in Michigan, a state that just
23:03
re elected Governor Whitmer, who's you know, was terrible during COVID, is
23:07
extremely liberal. She's basically, you know, Gavin Newsome in a in a
23:15
female form, and you know, she won reelection easily and has very high
23:19
approval ratings. So it's it's very difficult for me to understand under those circumstances
23:25
how Trump wins Michigan. But maybe it's because of this this vote I'm referring
23:30
to as the burn it down vote, you know, the entertainment vote.
23:34
That would explain a lot. And I'm starting to become more and more wedded
23:41
to this entire theory and this whole idea now moving more towards media related issues,
23:47
although there's certainly a Trump and Biden element to the story. Over the
23:51
last couple of episodes of the podcast, I've referenced Catherine Herriage getting fired at
23:56
CBS despite the fact that she's a very good, order, very fair,
24:00
has been tough on Joe and Hunter Biden. She focuses on national security issues,
24:07
and she was not just fired from CBS, but she also had her
24:12
work materials, including her confidential source materials, essentially taken by CBS, and
24:21
this created a big controversy within the media. Her union SAG Afterra immediately put
24:29
out a very strong statement condemning CBS for this. Well, since we last
24:34
spoke about this, CBS has returned her stuff apparently now what they did with
24:40
the stuff before they returned at who the hell knows. This is creating all
24:44
sorts of conspiracy theories, and even as an anti conspiracy theorist, I can
24:48
understand why people are using this for conspiracy theories, because this stinks to high
24:55
heaven, especially in an election year, and especially given the fact that not
24:59
only was marriage good and she was very tough on the bidens, but she
25:03
was also embroiled in an important First Amendment case related to confidential sourcing. And
25:11
you know, it's so typical of the broken news media that as this is
25:14
happening to Harriage, the very woke woman at CBS who fired her is actually
25:19
getting a free speech award. After firing Catherine Herriage and then having CBS do
25:26
this unprecedented thing with regard to her work materials and confidential sources, and yet
25:32
the person who fired her is getting a free speech award. It's just so
25:36
typical of the upside down world in which the media currently exists. So this
25:41
isn't, you know, I guess, a good development. I don't know
25:45
what happened between the time that CBS fired her and the time that they gave
25:49
her back her stuff. Her firing still doesn't make any sense. It's not
25:53
as if there were massive layoffs at CBS. Paramount has gotten rid of a
25:57
lot of people because they've been trying to cut back costs in an effort to
26:03
merge with some other major company. There's news out now that that's not going
26:07
to happen with Warner and Discovery, which had been rumored, and so you
26:11
know, who knows what happens with CBS in Paramount. But there's really no
26:15
excuse, especially in an election year, to be getting rid of Catherine herriage,
26:19
And there's been no good explanation at least that I've seen as to why
26:22
that happened in CBS. Now, in the last episode, I predicted,
26:26
I think off handedly that she'll probably end up at Fox News Channel. Forgetting
26:30
that she has already been at Fox News Channel. I completely forgot that.
26:34
That doesn't mean she can't go back to Fox News Channel. But I think
26:37
that her reputation is good enough and this has got enough publicity that she will
26:41
have options going forward. But it's not the same thing as being at CBS.
26:47
There are so few mainstream reporters, and the mainstream has lost so much
26:52
power, but it still has some semblance of influence, especially in an election
26:56
year. There are so few that are not overtly liberally biased that I don't
27:03
even know who else I would put into the Catherine Herriage category. And so
27:08
if she goes someplace else and it's in the right wing media sphere, then
27:12
obviously it's not nearly as significant as when she was at CBS. Now,
27:18
as far as free speech itself is concerned, this is one of the major
27:23
issues of my life. I've written a book called the Death of Free Speech
27:26
back in two thousand and five. I've been exceedingly concerned about whether or not
27:32
America is still going to value probably our most important freedom, and that is
27:38
our freedom of speech given to us by the First Amendment. And of course
27:42
free speech is a complicated issue because there's really two different forms of it.
27:48
There's the First Amendment, and then there's whether or not we as a society
27:52
value freedom of expression, and then you get into corporate free speech. And
27:57
the Supreme Court just this week heard an very important case involving laws in Texas
28:04
and Florida and whether or not social media companies can be prevented from censoring content,
28:12
because both Texas and Florida believe that social media companies in general, especially
28:18
big tech, we're censoring conservative thought and whether or not the social media companies
28:23
have that authority to do so. And the perception seemed to be that the
28:29
Supreme Court was skeptical that it was okay for Texas and Florida to restrict the
28:34
ability of social media companies to censor content. I look, from a political
28:41
standpoint, I don't want there to be social media censorship. Now the social
28:48
media company argument as well, you know, we have to be able to
28:52
crack down on some content, and so you know, we shouldn't have to
28:59
be for to to publish or broadcast, you know, whatever the hell people
29:04
want to say, because obviously it's a certain point and you know, if
29:07
it gets to the point of of dangerous circumstances or you know, the problem
29:15
here, of course, is how they define any of this. I mean,
29:17
this is that's the loophole is hatred and you know threats and you know
29:22
bullying, and you know, this is why I've always felt like the entire
29:26
concept of hate crime, legislation and hate speech was the slipperiest of all slopes.
29:33
But the social media argument is, you can't make us post everything.
29:37
We have to have some ability to do so. And so therefore, you
29:41
know, we get to decide that because we're not government agencies, we're we
29:48
are corporations where we have the same free speech rights. Ironically, it's their
29:52
free speech rights that is the basis for why they're saying they're allowed to censor
29:59
the comments of users. And it really gets down to what you consider social
30:04
media companies to be. And you know, Judge Alito got mocked because he
30:11
asked what seemed like a strange question. He asked, if YouTube was a
30:15
newspaper, how heavy would it be? What would it weigh? I think
30:19
is what he said. And liberals on Twitter ironically social media ironically owned now
30:25
by a guy who's not a liberal. Elon Musk mocked Aledo mercilessly, and
30:30
I thought these morons don't even understand what this case is about. Because Alito,
30:36
I think, I think was hitting on the really key part of the
30:41
case and kind of making a joke as to this argument that the social media
30:48
companies are trying to make that they're just like a newspaper, and you would
30:52
never force a newspaper to publish a letter to the editor that they deemed to
30:56
be inappropriate. So that's there, that's the basis of their argument. Well,
31:00
I think Alito was trying to say, you're not a newspaper, and
31:06
to show you're not a newspaper. If YouTube, she probably shouldn't have chosen
31:11
YouTube, But for whatever reason he chose YouTube. If YouTube was a newspaper,
31:15
how heavy would it be. Well, it kind of shows the absurdity
31:21
of the tech company's argument. So, in my opinion, Alito was totally
31:26
misinterpreted, and I kind of agree with him that this is more like restricting
31:32
people on telephone conversations, Like it's these tech companies are more like telephone companies
31:38
used to be, or s still are in the cell phone era. But
31:41
you would never think to allow your telephone company or AT and T or Verizon
31:48
whatever to restrict the content of your communications while using their platform. So that
31:56
to me, I think is legally a strong argument, and more importantly,
32:00
in the broader picture, I don't think I think the bar for censorship among
32:06
social media companies ought to be exceedingly high. And going back, just to
32:10
clarify the Alito comment, part of why a newspaper would never be required to
32:19
publish all op eds or all letters to the editor is because there's a space
32:23
issue, there's a cost issue. How heavy would the paper be if they
32:30
were forced to do that. Well, in social media that's not a concern.
32:36
So anyway, that's a case that's going to be important. I don't
32:39
know at all which way the Supreme Court is going to come down on that.
32:45
The initial returns were not particularly good for the Texas and Florida laws being
32:51
upheld, but who knows. I'm continually unimpressed by this supposedly conservative Supreme Court.
32:58
I mean, they just rese and lean decided not to take a case
33:01
out of Virginia that essentially further evis rates their alleged anti affirmative action stance from
33:10
last year. I told you last year that that case was being way way
33:17
overvalued and overplayed. This was not a great victory because there were massive loopholes
33:23
within the decision and the fact that they did not take this charter school case
33:29
out of Virginia. Even Governor Youngkin from Virginia condemned the idea that they didn't
33:34
even take the case up because it essentially was a loophole for affirmative action.
33:39
That essentially what the court decided was, we're not even going to hear a
33:44
case where a charter school had decided that the way around affirmative action was essentially
33:52
this gets complicated, but essentially replacing economics with race and being able to take
33:59
the top percentage of each different community and therefore inherently increasing diversity. And I
34:06
mean this is this is not a simple issue. But in my view,
34:09
a Supreme Court that really was against affirmative action, that was really going to
34:14
stand behind the case that got so much publicity last year would have taken this
34:20
case and further clarified that you're not allowed to create loopholes around this to get
34:27
to the same end goal, which is equity or force diversity through essentially affirmative
34:32
action. So I think I've been vindicated one hundred percent on that. So
34:37
I have not much faith in this supposedly conservative Supreme Court, and that case
34:44
involving Thomas Jefferson Technology School in Northern Virginia is a classic example of that.
34:50
But back to free speech. You know, part of what's happened with free
34:53
speech over the last couple decades is that the value that Americans placed on it
35:00
as eroded fairly significantly. And I think this whole focus on hate speech has
35:07
been part of this. That liberals have been very effective at using the word
35:12
hate to essentially erode one of our most important, if not our most important
35:19
freedoms that they especially among younger generations, if only subconsciously, they have created
35:27
this idea that we're not allowed to express ideas or thoughts or speech that include
35:34
hate, that that's somehow at the very least wrong and might even be illegal
35:40
or should be illegal and should be censored. Well, there's further evidence that
35:46
there has been erosion of the value placed on the freedom of speech because of
35:52
study that has just been put out by the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression
35:57
in conjunction with the Polar Moorisation Research Lab at Dartmouth College. So, you
36:04
know, a conservative group and a liberal group, it seems like to me
36:07
combine to create this study. And here there's a couple of headlines of what
36:12
they found with regard to the public's view of free speech. Sixty nine percent
36:17
of Americans say things are headed in the wrong direction for free speech in America.
36:24
Now, this is one of those results that you can interpret either way.
36:30
I really don't know what to make of that. That was one of
36:32
the headline grabbing numbers, But that's in my view, I would say the
36:37
same thing. I would agree with that statement, things are headed in the
36:40
wrong direction for free speech in America. Frankly, that number ought to be
36:45
higher than sixty nine percent. Interestingly, and here's to me the most concerning
36:51
number. Thirty one percent of Americans think the First Amendment quote unquote goes too
36:58
far. So thirty one percent of Americans don't really believe in free speech.
37:04
Because if you believe that the First Amendment goes too far by being absolutist one,
37:10
you don't understand the concept of the slippery slope. I mean, in
37:14
free speech, more so than any other area, is incredibly vulnerable to the
37:20
slippery slope because of the nature of speech, and so as soon as you
37:24
start restricting it in any way, shape or form, you're done. And
37:30
that's what liberals have been doing with regard to hate crime legislation, turning into
37:36
hate speech. And you know, there are many people in this country who
37:38
believe that hate speech is illegal. There have been public officials who have made
37:45
statements that, you know, indicated that they thought mistakenly that hate speech is
37:51
illegal. Hate speech has been protected by the Supreme Court, but eventually,
37:55
it is my prediction that it will no longer be protected by the Supreme Court,
38:00
or liberals are just going to figure out that they don't have to care
38:04
about what the Supreme Court does anymore, like Joe Biden with his relief of
38:09
student loans in defiance of the Supreme Court. So, thirty one percent of
38:15
Americans don't believe in the First Amendment, and as a result of that,
38:20
an even more dramatic number emerges. Fifty two percent of Americans said their community
38:27
should not allow a public speech that espouses a belief that they personally find offensive.
38:37
Fifty two percent said their community should not allow a public speech that espouses
38:43
a belief that they personally find offensive. That's a shocking and depressing number.
38:49
I will say, however, that having looked a little bit more deeply into
38:52
this. The way they came up with that number is a little bit deceiving,
38:57
because what they did was they asked people on particular subjects whether or not
39:04
they fought a particular view was offensive. And then they asked people, all
39:10
right, I want you to think about the list of things that we just
39:15
gave you, the one that you find most offensive. Do you think your
39:20
community should be allowed for that view to be expressed in a public speech?
39:25
And fifty two percent said no. Well, in a weird way, that's
39:31
a good test, and also in another way, it's going to get an
39:36
inflated number because inherently people were thinking about this in terms of something that they
39:42
personally very much vehemently either disagree with or find offensive. And some of these
39:49
ideas were pretty offensive. They weren't criminal, but they were pretty offensive.
39:54
Things like America deserved nine to eleven. That kind of thing that was on
39:58
the list, I clearly though, would not have been in that fifty two
40:02
percent. And the fact that fifty that to me shows that fifty two percent
40:07
of America is extremely vulnerable to not really believing in free speech. And those
40:14
numbers seem to be increasing and eventually that's gonna matter. You know, it
40:17
shouldn't matter since we have the First Amendment, but because what we've seen happen
40:22
with the Supreme Court being defied, and in my view, the Supreme Court
40:27
is not nearly as liberal as it is perceived as being. And you know,
40:30
obviously over time, you know, once Clarence Thomas dies, I don't
40:36
see how the Court remains, even in perception wise being conservative. But there's
40:43
all sorts of other reasons to be pessimistic in this area, including what's going
40:45
on in Canada. Now you might think, well, what differences to make
40:50
Canada. Canada culturally obviously has some similarities with the United States, and Prime
40:54
Minister Justin Trudeau is basically Gavin Newsom two point zero, their buddy buddy,
41:00
and you know, he's just freer to be able to do some of this
41:05
crap in Canada than even Newsom is in California. Well, this story from
41:09
the Blaze just came out this week. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's deeply unpopular regime
41:15
rolled out new legislation that threatens to radically transform the Canadian legal landscape and equip
41:22
activists with new means of clamping down on speech they perceive to be hateful.
41:30
Folks. This is exactly what's going to happen and is already happening in some
41:34
ways here in the United States of America, so we should be paying attention.
41:38
On its face. The Blaze Rights Bill C. Sixty three, the
41:42
so called Online Harms Act, contains various uncontroversial elements, such as the promise
41:51
to tackle child pornography online, and now liberal officials have emphasized these elements of
42:00
the bill when promoting it. The child protections appear only to be the vehicle
42:07
for the transformative substance of C. Sixty three. C sixty three would enable
42:14
Trudeau's leftist government to define quote unquote hate speech online. This is what I've
42:20
always said is the greatest fear I have here. If you're handing a weapon
42:24
to the left, if they get to decide what hate speech is, it's
42:29
over because they think anything they disagree with, anything that makes them feel uncomfortable
42:35
or proves that they're wrong, that's hate speech. Going back to the Blaze
42:40
that this would allow the leftist government to define hate speech online, create a
42:45
standalone hate crime set quote strict penalties for perceived offenses, and allow concern bongers
42:54
to file complaints without even facing the accused. So basically, this is a
43:00
wet dream for liberals when it comes to restricting the speech of conservatives. And
43:06
it's a potential new law in Canada. And this is the type of this
43:10
is the way it happens. We become desensitized, and eventually it filters in
43:15
and it erodes at the foundation of our most important freedom, freedom of speech.
43:22
This is the way it's happening, and it'll happen incrementally and slowly,
43:27
and drip by drip and down the slippery slope we will go. And I've
43:30
been dead right about this from the beginning. It all started with hate crime
43:35
legislation morphing into the concept of hate speech. That one word. There are
43:40
just a few words that are going to destroy America. Hate connected the speech
43:45
equity is a big one. I mean, there's others that I've referenced on
43:50
a continual basis, but those are The left understands this. They're exceedingly good
43:55
at this kind of thing. I wish they were as good at governing and
44:00
creating stuff as they are at destroying things and eroding our rights and our liberties.
44:06
But that's what's happening when it comes to free speech, and that you
44:08
know, I'm going to get to later on in this episode, where I
44:12
think we are an American and where we're headed. And this is a large
44:15
reason why I'm exceedingly pessimistic. Now there are still some signs of optimism.
44:22
I'm trying to be as optimistic as possible as usual, and occasionally, even
44:29
in this atmosphere where you're not allowed to say certain things, the truth sneaks
44:34
out, even on ABC's The View. And that happened rather dramatically this week
44:40
in a way that made me cheer and probably made a lot of other people
44:45
who are similar mindsets cheer. And it came from a somewhat odd source.
44:51
It came from Doctor Phil. Now I've never been a huge fan of Doctor
44:54
Phil. I actually attended a Doctor Phil screeting many years ago with Lee a
45:00
brand In, my co host at KFI Radio in Los Angeles, because she
45:04
was a huge Doctor Phil fan. I also came within a whisker of signing
45:09
a deal with the Doctor Phil Show to put Jerry Sandusky's wife Dottie Sandusky on
45:15
that program along with me. And there was I mean, it was a
45:19
whole long negotiation, and I thought I had done an amazing job to get
45:23
Dottie Sandusky a great deal, gave her everything she wanted, and then Dottie
45:28
wimped out and then told her friends that I was doing it because I thought
45:32
I was gonna get money from doctor Phil, which is just a flat out
45:36
fucking lie. And the only person was going to make any money from that
45:38
was her, as I got her a five thousand dollars stipend for the use
45:43
of her home as a studio because she needed the money at the time,
45:46
so she stupidly decided to kill that whole deal. But that's the extent of
45:52
my connection to doctor Phil. But I've always thought that part of the reason
45:57
why I tried to sign the deal and literally had a contract in hand with
46:01
regard to doctor Phil. While I don't like him and I think he's wrong
46:06
about a lot of things, I think he has decent common sense. I
46:10
don't think he's a moron, and I think he at least somewhat cares about
46:15
the truth. He's willing to be contrariant at times sometimes when he's not right,
46:22
but by and large, I would say he's above average, very low
46:27
standards for what average is when it comes to people like him in the media,
46:30
And of course he comes from the Oprah Winfrey tree, which makes him
46:34
inherently suspicious. But by and large, I don't have a problem with doctor
46:38
Phil. I'm just not a fan. And he went on the View to
46:42
promote his new book, and this clip you're about to hear is kind of
46:46
extraordinary. Now, it shouldn't be extraordinary because what he's saying is clearly and
46:51
obviously true. But he starts off talking about the state of our children and
46:55
then brings up the topic of COVID, which is one of my great passions
47:01
because I have two young daughters who had basically two years, two very very
47:07
prime years of their life largely, if not totally destroyed because of the COVID
47:12
panic, and at least one daughter whose progress in school and in life is
47:16
probably going to be stunted forever because of what happened during COVID. And doctor
47:22
Phil really let the ladies of the View have it, and my god,
47:28
you could almost You don't even have to see the video to perceive that the
47:31
pearl clutching was at a very very high level as they were stunned stunned.
47:37
The year doctor Phil spit facts about the damage done to children with the closing
47:45
of schools, And to doctor Phil's credit, there was a moment here when
47:50
woop Goldberg tries to push back and play the virtue signaling card and oh my
47:55
gosh, we knew people who died of COVID. You can't say this,
47:59
and he pushes back, and when he pushes back, the crowd largely supports
48:06
him, and Whoopie Goldberg is forced to go quickly to a commercial. So
48:12
when it comes to COVID contrarianism on mainstream media, this is definitely in the
48:17
top ten, maybe the top five moments that have ever occurred in the post
48:22
COVID era. And here it was doctor Phil on the view. So you
48:27
say, you're not the only voice in your kid's ears, so you have
48:30
to be the best voice explain that. Well, think about it. In
48:34
like eight nine, smartphones came on and kids started they stopped living their lives
48:42
and started watching people live their lives, and so we saw the biggest spike
48:46
and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidality since records
48:52
have ever been kept, and it's just continued on and on and on,
48:58
and then COVID hits ten years later. And the same agencies that knew that
49:05
are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years. Who does that?
49:09
Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes them away
49:14
and shuts it down? And by the way, when they shut it down,
49:17
they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children that were being
49:22
abused and sexually molested and in fact sent them home and abandoned them to their
49:27
abusers with no way to watch, and referrals drop fifty to sixty percent.
49:30
So it's also, yeah, they were trying to say they were trying to
49:34
save kids' lives. Remember, we know a lot of folks who died during
49:37
this, so it wasn't people weren't laying around each opon. But well,
49:42
you know what, we're lucky. Maybe we're lucky they didn't because we kept
49:45
them out of the places that they could be sick. Because no one wants
49:51
to believed we had an issue. Are you saying no school children died of
49:53
COVID. I'm saying it was the safest group. They were the less bonu
50:00
group, and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than
50:06
they will from the exposure to COVID. And that's not an opinion, that's
50:09
a fact. Well, Phil, we don't even have time to talk it
50:15
out now, man, but thanks for coming. The new book is called
50:19
We've Got Issues, and it is out tomorrow now. The end of that
50:23
clip was particularly interesting to me as someone who has appeared many, many many
50:30
years ago. Back in two thousand and nine, I appeared in studio on
50:34
The View. This was back in the Barbara Walters days, and I'll never
50:38
forget Barbara Walters sticking her shaking finger in my chest across Elizabeth Hasselback. She
50:46
was terrified, Elizabeth was that her boss, the legendary Barbara Walters, was
50:52
so irritated by me that she was sticking her finger in my chest as we
50:57
argued over the media treatment of Sarah Palin. But the reason why that's somewhat
51:01
relevant is that having been on the View and understanding the culture of the crowd
51:07
there, to get any kind of positive response from that audience, no matter
51:14
how right you are, when it's clearly against the conventional wisdom and clearly against
51:20
the hosts, is exceedingly difficult because the people who are in that studio audience,
51:25
they're all super fans of Whoopy Goldberg or Joy Bahar or the others.
51:31
Now, I do think it's I think it was very good for doctor Phil
51:36
that Joy Behar was not there. Joy Bahar was there the day. I
51:40
was there along with Whoopy Goldberg and Barbara Walters, so I was really up
51:46
against it. It was just basically me and Elizabeth Hasselback against the rest of
51:51
the panel and the crowd itself. But I do think, well, it
51:57
wasn't arousing ovation I doing that. That crowd reaction is significant and it probably
52:02
took what be Goldberg off guard and that's why she immediately said, all right,
52:07
we got to go to commercial. But good for doctor Phil for speaking
52:12
the obvious truth and probably even understating it, because I think it is probably
52:17
the most underreported story of many, many out of COVID, the impact that
52:22
all of this is going to have on a generation of kids for no benefit
52:28
whatsoever, none, none, There was no benefit at all for keeping kids
52:36
out of school, and the obvious I mean, and for people who say
52:39
we didn't know, I'm sorry, you're basically telling me you're a moron.
52:44
I mean, anybody with any kind of common sense knew that taking kids out
52:49
of school for an extended period of time was going to have all sorts of
52:52
direct and indirect and never ending consequences for no benefit. I mean, I'm
53:00
sure there was college. Not college, but I'm sure there was. There
53:05
was school age kids, a handful of them who died with or of COVID,
53:09
who had many corporabidities. I haven't said that word in a long time,
53:15
comorbidities, So that's actually a good sign, I guess. But I'm
53:19
sure there were some some kids who died, not many, a handful.
53:23
Nobody. We don't know of anybody who died. Not one healthy kid ever
53:28
died because they were exposed to COVID due to school returning. That story never
53:35
got told when schools reopened, like for instance, in Georgia, when Governor
53:39
Kemp had the guts to go up against Donald Trump and reopen schools in Georgia
53:45
and nothing happened. Now, they tried hard to make it look like things
53:49
were happening for a long time, the media, they were coming down like
53:52
a ton of bricks on Georgia. And every time, you know, there
53:57
was any kind of a blip in the radar with their to the number of
54:00
cases. There were schools in Georgia that were forced to shut down for days
54:05
at a time, but nobody ever died, and it eventually all died down
54:10
once people realized, wait a minute, these kids, if they're healthy,
54:15
are not vulnerable to this. And you know, teachers always could have had
54:19
the option to take a sabbatical, but there was never any documented cases of
54:23
young, healthy teachers dying that I'm aware of, either, and I know
54:28
if it had happened, we clearly would have heard about it. So doctor
54:31
Phil is one hundred percent right, and kudos to him. And it was
54:36
a joy to see the girls on the View clutch their pearls and be stunned
54:43
by being forced to face the truth of what they and others liked them created
54:49
with regard to the COVID panic and went along with and nabled and are still
54:52
trying to defend yet today. Now, part of the dynamic that goes on
54:58
at a place like The View is that there's nobody. I talk about this
55:01
all the time, there's nobody in the room, whether it's among the hosts
55:07
or the producers at the view, Who is really a conservative who can say,
55:14
hey, wait a minute, you know what about this other side of
55:15
the story. I mean, it's that's the number one problem of many in
55:20
mainstream liberal media. There's nobody there with the inclination and the guts to say,
55:27
wait a minute, guys, what about the other side here? Wait
55:30
a minute, hold on, what are we doing here? I said that
55:31
that's probably what happened at Google with Gemini Ai, that there's literally nobody there
55:37
who has the inclination and the guts and the wherewithal and the worldview to be
55:43
able to provide the other side of the story, or to at least say,
55:46
wait a minute, maybe we want to rethink this. And there's another
55:52
fantastic example of this that just came out this week. Weirdly enough, it's
55:59
in an article written for The Atlantic, which is a very liberal outlet.
56:05
I'm associated with it forever because I was the subject of a twenty three page
56:09
cover story many years ago by the infamous or famous, much beloved David Foster
56:16
Wallace, who wrote many very famous books, had a movie made about him.
56:23
He tracked me for several months the KFI radio in Los Angeles and then
56:27
did this twenty three page cover story in The Atlantic monthly magazine back then,
56:32
and still this day, people referenced that piece. They republished it on the
56:38
I think it was the tenth anniversary of that piece, even though David Foster
56:44
Wallace has been long dead because he committed suicide. But anyway, that's my
56:47
interaction with the Atlantic. The Atlantic published a piece by the guy, by
56:52
a guy the name of Adam Rubinstein. Now Adam Rubinstein is a former editor
56:59
at the New York York Times. And I mean, you really couldn't make
57:02
this story up. If you did, people wouldn't believe it. In fact,
57:07
there are many people who did not believe what I'm about to tell you.
57:12
They thought this story was made up. Now, I did not think
57:15
this story was made up. And there's been substantiation that has come out since
57:19
that indicates that Rubinstein told people contemporaneously that this is exactly what did happen when
57:25
he was at the New York Times. But Rubinstein, you know, is
57:30
at best, at best a center right commentator, right, a former columnist
57:37
in you know, conservative light media. He goes to the New York Times.
57:43
I mean he even said that his proudest moment in media was essentially destroying
57:50
conservative Congressman from Iowa, Steve King over comments that were deemed to be racist
57:54
that frankly, I wasn't one hundred percent sure they were really racist. But
58:00
this is the crowning moment of this guy's career. So he's no hardcore conservative
58:04
at all, but he goes to work at the New York Times, and
58:08
now he's no longer at the New York Times because he was involved in the
58:12
infamous, at least in New York Times lore, the infamous op ed by
58:17
Senator Tom Cotton in the wake of the George Floyd riots. And it's just
58:23
unbelievable how much impact that one op ed had at the New York Times.
58:29
It was a non controversial op ed about how to deal with the riots and
58:35
from a conservative perspective, and my god, it created multiple earthquakes at the
58:42
New York Times, and numerous people are no longer there, for better or
58:45
worse, because of what happened in the aftermath of that that op ed.
58:51
Mean, you think doctor Phil caused a reaction on the view that was nothing
58:58
compared to what Tom Cotton did with regard to the New York Times and his
59:02
ophead about the riots involving the George Floyd situation, and Rubinstein was the editor
59:09
on that, and he got the blame for The Times actually having the gall
59:15
to publish something that was not part of left wing orthodoxy and religion when it
59:21
came to the BML riots and George Floyd, what have you. So the
59:25
Atlantic just published this piece called I was a heretic at the New York Times,
59:30
And heretic is an important word because there's a very clear religious component to
59:36
all this. So the title is I was a heretic at the New York
59:40
Times. Sub headline I did what I was hired to do, and I
59:45
paid for it. Now it's again. I want to emphasize it's kind of
59:50
weird that The Atlantic is publishing this, but okay, I mean, you
59:53
know, because I'm sure a right wing publication would have been thrilled to publish,
1:00:00
but it would not have gotten nearly the attention because it would have been
1:00:04
perceived through that lens of oh, here we go again. The right wing
1:00:08
media is complaining about the New York Times, but this is The Atlantic,
1:00:12
which is about almost as liberal and more liberal in some ways than the New
1:00:16
York Times is and this is a very long story, and if you're interested,
1:00:21
I urge you to check it out. But I'm just gonna share the
1:00:24
very beginning of this because this got a lot of attention. Again, some
1:00:29
people thought it wasn't true. And also it goes to this whole theory I
1:00:34
have about what really happened at Google Gemini AI and why when doctor Phil gets
1:00:39
on the view it says the obvious about COVID. The reaction is the ladies
1:00:45
are aghast and clutching their pearls. And this is consistent throughout liberal media because
1:00:52
there's no voice that is willing and able to stand up and tell them,
1:00:57
hey, there's another side to this, and it's very religious in nature.
1:01:01
So here's how Rubinstein began his piece. On one of my first days at
1:01:07
the New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen
1:01:14
other new Hires. We had to do an icebreaker, pick a starburst out
1:01:20
of a jar, and then answer a question. My starburst was pink,
1:01:27
I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had
1:01:31
me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ and Daughter's super Hebster came on came
1:01:40
to mind, but I figured mentioning a nineteen dollars sandwich wasn't a great way
1:01:47
to win new friends. So I blurted out, quote the spicy chicken sandwich
1:01:54
from Chick fil A unquote, and considered the ice broken. Okay. So
1:02:01
he's asked in this, you know, rapport building meeting for new hires,
1:02:07
you know, what is your favorite sandwich. He's thinking about a very expensive
1:02:13
sandwich and decides he doesn't want to come off that way, so he decides
1:02:16
to say the spicy chicken sandwich from Chick fil A, thinking, you know,
1:02:22
no big deal, I've answered the question. I'm a normal guy,
1:02:27
and you know all is good, right, No, no, believe it
1:02:31
or not. This apparently was a major problem. He writes the HR representative
1:02:38
and can you imagine how liberal that person is? The HR representative at the
1:02:44
New York Times, The HR representative leading the orientation chided me, quote,
1:02:51
we don't do that here. They hate there's that word again. They hate
1:02:59
gay people. People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. Snapping their fingers.
1:03:08
This is this is a cult meeting, this is a religion. People started
1:03:14
snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn't been thinking about the fact that Chick
1:03:19
fil A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman's opposition to gay marriage.
1:03:28
Quote not the politics the chicken, I quickly said, But it was too
1:03:35
late. I sat down ashamed. I sat down ashamed. And you know,
1:03:46
it's unclear as to how much impact that had over Rubinstein's career, but
1:03:50
it didn't last very long at The New York Times, and in his opinion,
1:03:54
that shaped how he was perceived throughout his tenure there, and probably had
1:04:00
an influence over how his role in the cottonop bed was perceived, all because
1:04:08
he committed the sin, making him a heretic that he liked Chick fil A
1:04:15
sandwiches, not the company. Didn't say that was his favorite. CEO,
1:04:21
didn't say anything about ey people. He said he likes Chick fil A sandwiches.
1:04:29
And this was a violation, a grave violation. It's told to him
1:04:34
by an HR representative at The New York Times. Right there. You cannot
1:04:41
possibly get a more obvious and dramatic example of this phenomenon that I've talked about
1:04:46
continually, where there's nobody in the room, and if they're in the room,
1:04:53
they're terrified to say anything. Because you can't even say you like Chick
1:04:57
fil a sandwiches without it hurting the perception of you and potentially your entire career.
1:05:05
Because that's how leftist they are. That's how much they believe they control
1:05:14
everything. I mean, they don't believe in freedom of thought. And when
1:05:17
ninety some percent of any group all agrees on something, and they are incredibly
1:05:24
arrogant, and they're highly educated, and they think because they're higher than the
1:05:28
New York Times, that they're special. They think anybody that disagrees is inherently
1:05:32
a bad person. How could you possibly disagree with us? Because ninety some
1:05:38
percent and by the way, it might even be one hundred percent because the
1:05:41
few percentage points that disagree are afraid to say anything. They think you're crazy.
1:05:48
And this is how we get absolute absurd narratives in the media. This
1:05:54
is how they buy in the stuff that makes no sense to the average peron
1:06:00
because there's nobody telling them, Hey, wait a minute, you could be
1:06:04
wrong here, we could be wrong here, there's another way to look at
1:06:06
this. There's nobody even remotely willing to say that they like Chick fil a
1:06:14
sandwiches. I mean again, this actually I believe this happened. There were
1:06:19
many people who believed that it did not happen, but I believe that it
1:06:23
did. And I urge you to check out the rest of Rubinstein's story in
1:06:28
the Atlantic if you find this particular topic to be of interest. A couple
1:06:32
other things before I get to the state of America where we're heading, and
1:06:35
I wrap up this version of the podcast before we head to the paid subscription
1:06:42
variety in March, I have to mention something that the FBI did with regard
1:06:48
to crime. Now, crime is a big issue in America. It probably
1:06:53
should be an even bigger issue in America. It's being driven in large part
1:06:57
by videos online of massive organized theft at shopping centers and all sorts of different
1:07:09
stores. Many stores are going out of business in big cities because of what
1:07:14
we've been seeing. And I'm always very hesitant to buy into what is essentially
1:07:19
anecdotal evidence. I mean, a video is very very powerful, but you
1:07:24
know, one video at one store in one city of you know, a
1:07:28
bunch of teenagers ransacking a retail store is not necessarily something on which you want
1:07:34
to build an entire policy, or you believe that an entire country is being
1:07:43
overrun by an increase in crime. I'm a much more of a data guy,
1:07:46
although it should be pointed out that, you know, in light of
1:07:50
what's happened with Lincoln Riley, the University of Georgia student who was murdered by
1:07:56
an illegal immigrant. Democratic congress and Katie Porter, who's running for Senate here
1:08:00
in California, went on CNN and she made the argument, well, you
1:08:04
can't change all of our policy over just one incident. Well, since I've
1:08:11
already mentioned George Floyd with regard to the New York Times, cop Cotton op
1:08:15
ed what happened there? I mean, we changed all of America based upon
1:08:18
one episode that may have been greatly misperceived and may have resulted in false convictions
1:08:25
when it came to the death of George Floyd. But somehow when it comes
1:08:29
to Lincoln Riley, you know, they don't want to do that because that
1:08:31
doesn't fit their particular agenda. But there's no question that, at least in
1:08:36
perception, there's something fundamentally different about what's going on with guard to crime that
1:08:43
we're seeing stores not even fight shoplifting because they realize it's not in their interest
1:08:49
to do so. And I think they're realizing it's not in their interest to
1:08:53
do so, in large part because of the race of the people who are
1:08:57
generally doing this. In other words, if you have a bunch of black
1:09:00
kids in a white area ransacking a retail store, you're gonna be less likely
1:09:06
to do anything about it. Not because they're black and you're somehow more afraid
1:09:10
of them or whatever. It's because it's gonna look bad, especially if you're
1:09:15
a white person. And some of this is conscious, some of this is
1:09:18
subconscious, that you're gonna be more hesitant to do anything because you don't want
1:09:24
to even bother with the possibility that you could be called a racist. I
1:09:29
go back to what happened with the BAFT Awards in the UK, with that
1:09:32
twenty one year old black kid being allowed to stand up on stage right behind
1:09:36
the winners of the award for Best Movie Oppenheimer, and no one said a
1:09:41
word. It was because he's black, and especially in that environment, no
1:09:45
one had the guts to say, hey, wait a minute, what the
1:09:47
hell are you doing, Because if you're wrong or if you're misperceived, it's
1:09:53
gonna be very, very bad for you. So there's no question that there's
1:09:57
a perception that something has broken with regard to crime, and I think it's
1:10:00
real. I don't think it's just perceived. I think it is real.
1:10:04
But I'm just mentioning that with regard to videos, I always get a little
1:10:08
hesitant about overreacting to a video, but there's been so many of these videos
1:10:13
that there's clearly something fundamentally going on. Well, the FBI is on this,
1:10:17
folks. The FBI is on this. They have their finger on what's
1:10:23
really going on. This is the FBI, the vaunted Federal Bureau of Investigation.
1:10:29
They tweeted out this week the following higher prices, dangerous products, and
1:10:35
closing businesses. These are just some of the impacts of organized retail theft has
1:10:44
on everyday. Americans learn what the FBI does to combat these crimes on the
1:10:49
federal level to protect shoppers across the country, and then they put out a
1:10:56
link to where you can find out about all the great things that the FBI
1:11:00
is doing to try to crack down on organized retail theft. Okay, not
1:11:04
a huge problem there until the photo that they used. They used a photo
1:11:13
to go along with the content that I just described for you. Now,
1:11:16
this is what they posted on x or Twitter, and the photo is frankly,
1:11:23
totally hilarious. Now it's a stock photo, which is important for reasons
1:11:28
I'll get to in a moment. But the photo is of two young,
1:11:34
very attractive, very well dressed women looking around suspiciously as one of them seems
1:11:43
to put a pocketbook in her overcoat, and that this is representative of what
1:11:49
is going on with regard to the phenomenon of organized retail theft that is sweeping
1:11:57
America and the cause for stores to be ransacked to the point where they cannot
1:12:01
even remain open and businesses have to close in our major cities. It's all
1:12:08
because of young, very attractive, well to do, well dressed women who
1:12:15
are engaged in this organized retail theft by stealing a handbag from time to time.
1:12:23
That's what's going on, at least according to the photograph. Of course,
1:12:27
that's ridiculous. That's not the cause of this, And there was an
1:12:31
obvious political reason for why the FBI chose the photograph. Of course, as
1:12:38
some conservative Twitter users proved quite decisively, if you were going to go with
1:12:45
stock photos of shoplifting, there was no other choice than to go with at
1:12:50
least a white male, if not a white female, because apparently it's impossible,
1:12:58
literally impossible, to find a stock photo of shoplifting that does not include
1:13:03
a white person, even though clearly the demographic responsible for this phenomenon is not
1:13:12
young, attractive, rich white girls. That's not it. But you know,
1:13:16
this is very, very close to the Gemini Ai situation that I discussed
1:13:21
in the last episode of the podcast, where we're living in this fantasy world
1:13:26
that we're living in, this pretend world. Will we're not even allowed to
1:13:29
discuss the nature of the problem. I mean, how could you possibly solve
1:13:32
it if you're not even allowed to describe it properly? And this is the
1:13:36
freaking FBI, the FBI, But this is this is the level of insanity
1:13:43
things have gotten to, and and and there's a there's a comical element of
1:13:46
it, but there's also a very serious part of it too, and that
1:13:51
is that we can't possibly deal with the problem if we're this afraid of addressing
1:13:57
what's really going on here. And speaking of Google and GEMINIAI in response to
1:14:03
this controversy on Twitter over the FBI's tweet and the stock photo that they used,
1:14:10
it wasn't just this realization that you can't find a stock photo of shoplifting
1:14:15
that doesn't include white people. Guess what happens when you ask GEMINIAI or Google
1:14:23
AI, what racial group is most likely to be arrested for shoplifting in the
1:14:29
United States of America. This is an actual response through Google. Their response
1:14:34
is it's important to understand that arrest data for shoplifting or any crime doesn't necessarily
1:14:44
reflect the actual rate of offending by different racial groups, So you can't rely
1:14:50
on the data, folks. They right, This is due to a number
1:14:57
of factors, including one racial profiling and two socioeconomic disparities. So they don't
1:15:06
give you the answer. They don't tell you which demographic group or racial group
1:15:13
is most likely to be arrested for shoplifting in the United States. So they
1:15:17
don't even tell you. I mean, it would be one thing if they
1:15:19
said, well, the data indicates that it's this particular racial group. They
1:15:24
don't do that because that would be politically incorrect. They say, you can't
1:15:28
rely on the data because we're presuming that there's only one explanation. There's only
1:15:32
one explanation or two, actually two possible explanations for why it is that a
1:15:39
certain racial group might show up in the data as being more likely to shoplift.
1:15:43
One is that they're being targeted by police because of their race, and
1:15:48
well because they're poor, because we live in a racist society, and therefore
1:15:53
because they're poor, they're more likely to have to shoplift. That's the response
1:15:58
from Google. So this is this is the control that things like AI and
1:16:02
algorithms is going to have over armed society going forward. And there's a humorous
1:16:09
element to it because it's so absurd, but there's also a very very serious
1:16:13
aspect as well. And on the serious side, I want to end this
1:16:17
portion of this episode of the podcast by playing a remarkable clip on this issue
1:16:23
of crime from the sheriff of Riverside County here in California. Now, Riverside
1:16:29
County is just outside of Los Angeles. This is not a quote unquote conservative
1:16:35
county at all. And this Sheriff, A gobinin of Chad Bianco, is
1:16:41
not doing what you're about to hear on his own. This is part of
1:16:46
what seems to be a large event where he is back literally back standing behind
1:16:51
him at the podium are a number of dignitaries including people of all races who
1:17:00
are supporting him in this message that something is fundamentally wrong and broken when it
1:17:05
comes to crime in his county and in our state of California, and that
1:17:13
it's not just coincidental. In fact, he says it's on purpose, and
1:17:16
that it's all because of the way that progressive politicians democrats in California have completely
1:17:25
changed the way we look at law enforcement, the way we look at crime,
1:17:29
and how we have changed the rules of law enforcement, which I believe
1:17:33
is based largely in reverse racism. I believe it's the ultimate soft bigotry of
1:17:40
low expectations, and that there's an absolute racial component to this. Now Bianco
1:17:45
does not say that, but what he said was so well stated, so
1:17:49
dramatic, and to me in many ways unique, especially coming from a major
1:17:56
official here in California, that I wanted to play it for you because this
1:18:00
would not be happening if something was not fundamentally broken, and his reasoning for
1:18:08
why it is fundamentally broken, I think was both fascinating and important and in
1:18:13
a weird way, this is a little bit like you know, doctor Phil
1:18:15
going on the view. This has not gotten as much local coverage as it
1:18:19
should have, but this video did go viral on Twitter, and for good
1:18:24
reasons. This is not the full statement, but this is a portion,
1:18:27
a key portion of this statement from the Riverside County Sheriff, Chad Bianco,
1:18:32
on what's going on in California with regard to crime and why it's happening and
1:18:38
how it's not by accident. Good morning, Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff.
1:18:45
We're here today because California public safety is in crisis. Crime is steadily
1:18:50
on the rise, and our public safety policy is one of the worst,
1:18:55
if not the worst, in the nation. I want to make this clear
1:18:59
and I want there to be no mistake in what I am saying. This
1:19:01
is not by accident. The driving force in our crisis is a radical progressive
1:19:08
agenda fraudulently called criminal justice reform. This is nothing short of a sick and
1:19:15
twisted social experiment where law enforcement is the bad guy and criminals are somehow victims
1:19:20
of society and not responsible for their actions, their crimes, or accountable to
1:19:27
their countless victims. This agenda began with a passage of AB one oh nine,
1:19:31
the so called Public Safety Realignment Act. State government failed to take responsibility
1:19:38
for prison overcrowding or their failure to build more prisons, and instead forced county
1:19:44
jails to house state inmates while simultaneously releasing thousands of felons early. This has
1:19:51
pushed our county jails to a near collapse and caused the early release of countless
1:19:56
criminals. Thousands upon thousands of criminals are being released from custody early. Crime
1:20:01
is increasing, and our governor is closing prisons instead of building new ones.
1:20:05
It defies common sense. In twenty fourteen, a complete fraud was perpetrated in
1:20:13
California. The so called Safe Streets and Safe Schools initiative Prop forty seven changed
1:20:18
many felonies to misdemeanors, basically legalized drug use, and increased the amount of
1:20:25
petty theft to nearly one thousand dollars. In twenty sixteen, another lie was
1:20:30
perpetrated on voters with the naming and wording of Prop. Fifty seven, tricking
1:20:34
voters into approving the release of thousands of violent criminals onto our streets and neighborhoods.
1:20:41
This is why we are here. Everyone knows Prop forty seven and fifty
1:20:44
seven are disasters, and yet Governor Newsom adamantly touts it as a success,
1:20:49
and lawmakers continue to refuse to fix their mistake and the problems that they have
1:20:55
created. When once crimes are no longer crimes, it allows Governor newsism An
1:21:00
Attorney General Bonta to cite completely flawed data points to support their failures. Californians
1:21:05
are now suffering the consequences of a failed social agenda. We are now at
1:21:12
our breaking point and Californians have had enough. The law of Prop. Forty
1:21:15
seven has been exposed, and the progressive love affair with criminals at the expensive
1:21:20
victims has infuriated law abiding Californians. While we suffer every day with rampant theft
1:21:27
causing our small businesses to close and our large box stores to move out of
1:21:31
state, our supermajority of lawmakers sit here in their guarded tower, oblivious to
1:21:38
what is going on in their communities, experiencing drastic increases in all crimes,
1:21:43
particularly violent crimes. Over the past five years, law enforcement has been unable
1:21:48
to get our progressive left majority to even consider any new law or modification to
1:21:54
an existing law that would increase punishment or send criminals to prison. Reality has
1:22:00
gone completely upside down to the point our governor, our lawmakers, and our
1:22:04
attorney general refuse to prosecute criminals, to include those criminals committing crimes with guns,
1:22:12
and instead have dedicated their efforts to disarm and remove constitutional protections of self
1:22:17
defense from law abiding Californians. I mean, wow, I mean kudos to
1:22:23
Sheriff Bianco of Riverside County. You're here in California. I think maybe the
1:22:28
most important part of that message is that it's consistent with the idea that something
1:22:34
is fundamentally wrong and broken in large parts of our country. Now it's more
1:22:43
exaggerated here in California. But as I always say, when it comes to
1:22:46
California, I think too many people and the rest of the nation have this
1:22:50
idea that this is just looney California and you know, it's something to be
1:22:55
laughed about, and it's unfortunate, but it's not really a serious threat to
1:22:59
the rest of the country. And I always say, bullshit. California is
1:23:02
where it begins. This is the cancer that eventually gets injected into the rest
1:23:09
of the country. It starts on the coasts and then it makes its way
1:23:13
into the heart of the country quite literally, almost from a geographic perspective,
1:23:17
and this crime issue, I think is a really really good example of that.
1:23:23
And it's in that context that I want to finish this last episode of
1:23:28
the Totally Free version of the Death of Journalism podcasts by doing something a bit
1:23:31
different, and frankly, I've never heard anyone else do it, at least
1:23:34
not in the way that I intend to do so. But I want to
1:23:39
talk about where we are in this country and where I think we are headed,
1:23:44
and why it is that I am so incredibly pessimistic about where things are
1:23:49
heading in the United States of America now. To begin this part of the
1:23:56
podcast, and this I think rather unique effort to try to do something that
1:24:00
I've never heard anyone else do in this way, I want to begin with
1:24:04
my own family history, because I do think that that we'll give you a
1:24:09
little bit more understanding of where I'm coming from here and my view of this
1:24:15
country and why I feel so strongly about it and the impact that it's had
1:24:20
on me, and why I believe some of the things that I do about
1:24:25
where we are and where we are headed. Now. My family history is
1:24:30
almost a comically classic American story, and it's almost almost unbelievably stereotypical, because
1:24:38
you know, I obviously have two different, you know, biological trees,
1:24:43
one from my father and one from my mother. My father is German,
1:24:46
thus Ziggler, and you know here I am a German who comes literally from
1:24:53
a rocket scientist who is my grandfather, a god name of Hans Ziggler,
1:24:59
who worked for the US Army before there was a NASA, and was actually
1:25:03
quite well known and ended up receiving the highest civilian honor that the US Army
1:25:09
provides because of his work with regard to satellites. He was actually the person
1:25:14
who came up with the idea of powering our initial satellites via solar panels.
1:25:20
This was thought to be a crazy idea at the time. The US Navy
1:25:24
laughed at him, almost literally, and being the stubborn bastard that he was,
1:25:30
he refused to go away and said, your regular batteries aren't going to
1:25:33
work. I came up with these solar panels. Let's put them on there
1:25:38
just to make sure we have a backup plan. And the regular batteries failed
1:25:43
immediately, the solar panels worked and the rest is history. And that's his
1:25:46
claim to fame. But you know, it certainly as stereotypical that you come
1:25:51
from a German background where you've got a rocket scientist, and then you have
1:25:57
on my mother's side, who's Irish, you have a family that came to
1:26:01
America and made a lot of money in the alcohol business. So I'm basically
1:26:08
a walking stereotype the German scientist heritage. And on my mother's side, my
1:26:13
great grandfather came over from the boat. My father literally came on a boat
1:26:18
from Germany after the end of World War Two when my grandfather was brought over
1:26:24
to America via Operation paper Clip, which famously included the German scientist Von Brown.
1:26:31
And my father ended up serving in the US military as a captain,
1:26:36
so you know, he was a US Army guy, and my German grandfather,
1:26:42
as I said, got this the highest civilian honor from the US Army
1:26:45
because NASA hadn't been created at that point yet. But on my mother's side,
1:26:50
they came over from the boat a generation earlier, and my great grandfather
1:26:56
got into the alcohol business very very successfully. I know, hard to believe
1:27:01
as an Irish guy who would settle in Philadelphia, but that portion of the
1:27:08
family made a ton of money I mean, my perception is that my great
1:27:12
grandfather was probably a billionaire by the standards of the time, and then in
1:27:18
the crash of nineteen twenty nine lost almost everything except for one company called the
1:27:24
Roller Bearing Company of America, which his sons ended up building back up into
1:27:29
a significant company. My great grandfather, while he lost everything, was still
1:27:34
a rather powerful political force in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. In fact, he was
1:27:40
the leader of the Republican Senate in the nineteen thirties for a couple of different
1:27:45
terms. And his name was Edward Traynor. And so I come from this
1:27:53
German science background and this Irish political background, and in all all of that
1:28:00
came a tremendous love for the country. I mean, my grandfather on my
1:28:04
mother's side was an officer in the Navy, and as I said, my
1:28:10
father was in the army, and my mother probably loved this country more than
1:28:15
anybody I've ever known, other than maybe her father, because my mother's father,
1:28:21
my grandfather and I were very very close, and I mean, boy
1:28:26
did he love America. And that obviously had a huge influence on me.
1:28:31
I mean, what an amazing country where you know, these two different families
1:28:35
could come over just a generation apart via a boat from a European country under
1:28:43
you know, very extraordinary circumstances, one as a World War was ending,
1:28:48
coming to America, offering you know, the almost stereotypical new life opportunity and
1:28:57
then making it and doing very very well, and you know, and so
1:29:01
I was brought up with a tremendous love for the United States of America.
1:29:08
I was never really a Pollyanna about it, you know, but obviously as
1:29:13
a kid, you know, you believe in in more of a fairy tale
1:29:17
narrative. And over time I've understood that a lot of America is based in
1:29:25
mythology. But that's just the nature of reality. I mean, you know,
1:29:30
those that win get to write the history, got to write the story,
1:29:33
and everyone's going to write their story and in the most beneficial or positive
1:29:40
way possible. And since America has been so incredibly successful, we've been able
1:29:45
to write a story that that, at least until recently, has always been
1:29:49
perceived has been almost magical and certainly unique. I mean, there's no question
1:29:56
in my view, even after having lost the pol Anish view of what America
1:30:01
was, that this was the greatest country that was ever created. I mean,
1:30:06
there's no question about that. I mean, any objective person would come
1:30:12
to the same conclusion that this American experiment has been an extraordinary success. It
1:30:20
had never been tried before in the history of humanity, and humans have never
1:30:26
created a country as good as America has been. It's not even close.
1:30:34
But because I'm a student of history and because I understand the nature of humanity,
1:30:43
I am definitely one of those people who for a very long period of
1:30:45
time, and I don't know when I came to this conclusion. It was
1:30:47
probably some time in college, when I went to Georgetown University and majored in
1:30:54
government, that it was pretty clear that while this America experiment was a resounding
1:31:01
success, not perfect, no, we're near perfect, but a resounding success
1:31:08
in the history of humanity, that it was always doomed to some semblance of
1:31:15
failure. That it always came with an end date. But when, right,
1:31:24
When is it going to end? I mean, all empires end?
1:31:28
And this was a unique experiment. And if you look at the history of
1:31:31
humanity, it's almost basically almost pretty well documented that from east to west,
1:31:38
depending on how you define east and west on the globe. But as we
1:31:42
think of east to west on the globe. I mean, there's been one
1:31:45
empire after another that has risen and fallen, and it keeps going further and
1:31:49
further to the west. And over the last several centuries, we have been,
1:31:56
as the United States of America, the empire that has risen, and
1:32:00
are we the empire that is eventually going to fall? And even if we
1:32:05
don't fall as an empire, are we going to fall in comparison to what
1:32:11
we once were or what we were intended to be? And it was always
1:32:15
my perception that this end date was way down the road, that this was
1:32:23
not something that I had to worry about, or that if I had kids,
1:32:27
although I didn't think I would have kids during most of my life,
1:32:30
that my kids would have to worry about. That this was more theoretical than
1:32:35
it was practical. If you'd ask me to put a timing on it,
1:32:40
I would have said, I don't know. We have at least one hundred
1:32:42
years, maybe longer than that before we really see massive disintegration in what the
1:32:49
United States was. And you know, through my life, I think I
1:32:56
have a pretty good understanding of America, not just because I'm a student of
1:33:00
history and because of my family background, but because I have lived in ten
1:33:05
different states and the and the District of Columbia. So ten states and went
1:33:11
to school at Georgetown in the District of Columbia. That's a pretty good number
1:33:15
with pretty good geographic diversity. And I have visited best I can tell,
1:33:21
forty three states, including Alaska and Hawaii. So they're not that many people
1:33:27
have been as exposed to more corners of the United States than I have been.
1:33:31
And so I'm I've always looked at America with clear eyes and objectivity,
1:33:38
great admiration, love and understanding, but also a little bit, not a
1:33:44
lot at first, a little bit of doom that because of the experimental nature
1:33:48
of a democratic republic, that over time we were going to create a situation
1:33:56
that was not tenable. Now, I don't want to go, you know,
1:33:59
get side tract into why that's the case. If you're interested, you
1:34:02
know, read the book Democracy in America by Alexis to talk Will from France,
1:34:09
who went into great detail as to how awesome America is hundreds of years
1:34:15
ago, but very accurately predicted a lot of what would happen in America as
1:34:20
well as in Russia and essentially, at least in my view, eventually would
1:34:27
disintegrate because effectively, democracy cannot stand over an extended period of time because of
1:34:35
the nature of humanity. Again, I don't want to get sidetracked into why
1:34:40
that is, but I bought into that idea that we were doomed, but
1:34:45
that it wasn't a situation that we were doomed in any of our lifetimes,
1:34:48
and that we would be able to sustain the essence of who we are for
1:34:54
an extended period of time, mainly because we were so strong that we could
1:34:59
over come all of our mistakes, all of our weaknesses, all of our
1:35:04
challenges, and that you know that even though we were we were allowing so
1:35:11
many things to happen that shouldn't happen. That effectively, you know, the
1:35:15
foundation couldn't be cracked, or it couldn't be destroyed. It might be cracked,
1:35:20
but it wouldn't be destroyed. That it would hold, that it would
1:35:25
hold for an extended period of time. But then as events started happening.
1:35:31
You know, there's all sorts of analogies you can use here, the sands
1:35:35
in the hour glass, or if you think of America as being a you
1:35:40
know, having an illness, a cancer, what have you? How much
1:35:44
time do you have to live? As events continued to happen, I started
1:35:48
to think, well, maybe we don't have as much time as I thought
1:35:50
we did. And so this doomsday clock kept shrinking, getting having a smaller
1:36:00
and smaller amount of time left on it. As major events opened my eyes
1:36:05
to how much trouble we are actually in and maybe you know how weak our
1:36:11
foundation actually is and how circumstances really are pitted against us. I mean,
1:36:17
I'll reference to me one of the first big moments that I thought, holy
1:36:21
crap, things are way worse than I realized was the entire OJ Simpson case,
1:36:29
which I was very deeply involved with in many different ways. And you
1:36:33
might think that that's a somewhat trivial situation, but to me, I was
1:36:38
like, wait a minute, how the hell did that happen in the country
1:36:42
that I thought we lived in. That's really problematic. And then after that,
1:36:47
you know, you had the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal and controversy, and
1:36:54
I thought that was a seminal moment I'll never forget, you know, watching
1:36:59
the Pachan trial of Bill Clinton, which I thought he should have easily been
1:37:02
removed for for perjury and obstruction of justice. But I watched a lot of
1:37:08
that with my grandfather on my mother's side, the guy I told you,
1:37:11
who loved this country so much and I'll never forget right to the end,
1:37:15
right to the end. My grandfather was very, very conservative, way more
1:37:19
conservative than me. My grandfather thought for sure that Clinton was going to be
1:37:26
removed from office, and I kept trying to tell him that was not going
1:37:30
to happen. But it was inconceivable to him that the country that he grew
1:37:33
up in was going to allow this to happen. That there weren't going to
1:37:36
be people who stood up to do the right thing in the US Senate and
1:37:42
against their own personal self political interest, weren't going to get rid of Bill
1:37:45
Clinton for having committed obviously impeachable offenses. And it was almost heartbreaking for me
1:37:53
to try to explain to him that this was not going to happen. And
1:37:57
of course it didn't happen to me. The long term, the long term
1:38:02
implication of Bill letting Bill Clinton off the hook had very little to do with
1:38:06
the politics. It had to do mostly with the acceptance of lying in our
1:38:13
culture. I mean, people forget even the mainstream news media thought Bill Clinton
1:38:18
was toast because they didn't understand that a president could get away in the nineteen
1:38:25
nineties with a massive lie, even though it was mostly about sex, it
1:38:29
wasn't totally about sex, a massive lie, both publicly and under oath,
1:38:34
and get away with it. But when Bill Clinton did that, I think
1:38:38
it fundamentally, if only subconsciously, changed the value of truth and the shame
1:38:44
and lying going forward, and that had a massive impact on the foundation of
1:38:49
this country in ways that the media has never even remotely accepted. I think
1:38:56
there were massive implications to what happened with their guard to Clinton being allowed to
1:39:01
get away with what he did in the whole Monica Lewinsky Paula Jones situation.
1:39:08
But then when nine to eleven happened, I have to tell you I was
1:39:12
pleasantly surprised by the reaction of the country. I really was. To this
1:39:17
day, I'm even more surprised because of how divided we are now. The
1:39:21
way we responded in a very united and patriotic fashion, almost entirely after nine
1:39:30
to eleven gave me hope that maybe there was more sand in the hour glass
1:39:35
than I feared, and you know, that maybe the cancer wasn't quite as
1:39:43
prevalent as I had been concerned that it was. That maybe we had longer
1:39:47
to live than the worst most pessimistic projections would indicate. Meaning the country as
1:39:54
a whole, I felt that nine to eleven. In fact, I even
1:39:57
wrote about this, I think in the Philadelphia Inquirer the time that this actually
1:40:00
gave me hope for the future of the country, that maybe this was a
1:40:05
situation, that it was a wake up call that we would snap out of
1:40:12
whatever was going on with regard to the whole for instance, Bill Clinton situation,
1:40:16
and that we could possibly maybe return to our roots and that we could
1:40:21
be a more unified and stronger country. And so I had some hope for
1:40:26
that, but it didn't last very long. And you know, to me,
1:40:30
I think the reaction to Hurricane Katrina, which people don't talk about very
1:40:34
much anymore, in two thousand and six, that was another seminal moment where
1:40:43
the media used that whole situation for political gain, and that became very,
1:40:46
very politicized and in many ways exaggerated and was communicated in a way that was
1:40:54
not consistent with what actually occurred. But that was nothing compared to the two
1:40:59
thousand and eight election, and how the media systematically elected Barack Obama, a
1:41:04
guy who had no qualifications or almost no qualifications for the job as president,
1:41:11
simply because they liked the color of his skin. That was a really shocking
1:41:17
moment. Not that I mean I was way ahead of the curb that it
1:41:20
would happen, because I was literally doing a documentary film during the entire two
1:41:25
thousand and eight election based upon the idea that I realized, Holy crap,
1:41:29
the Obama's gonna win, and he's gonna win because the media is electing him.
1:41:33
I realized that exceedingly early in the entire process, even before he won
1:41:36
the Democratic nomination. That's why I was able to get a documentary film out
1:41:42
almost immediately after the two thousand and eight presidential election. But the entire Obama
1:41:47
campaign really made me realize, oh my god, we've left the gravitational pull
1:41:53
of the rational earth. The media is completely and totally broken. You know,
1:41:58
nothing seems to matter. There is no cavalry, there's no silent majority.
1:42:03
The country is moving way further left, way faster than I even I
1:42:08
realized. And so that's when I started to really think holy crap, We're
1:42:14
in big trouble here. We're in really big, big trouble, and that
1:42:17
the there's not as much sand in the hourglass as as even I was hoping.
1:42:24
But I will say, and I'm very like I'm objective with Donald Trump,
1:42:29
even though I get accused of being someone who has Trump Arrangement syndrome,
1:42:33
which I vehemently denied. I am also objective about Barack Obama. Other than
1:42:40
Obamacare. I don't think Barack Obama was that bad. He was not as
1:42:44
bad as I feared. I thought he was actually pretty measured and somewhat moderate,
1:42:49
especially on cultural issues. I mean, because there were times in which,
1:42:55
you know, because he had the street cred to do so, he
1:42:58
actually pushed back against some of what you would now call woke insanity that Joe
1:43:02
Biden can't do because Joe Biden's a white guy. And so I don't have
1:43:08
any hatred towards Barack Obama. He turned out better than I would have feared
1:43:14
when he was first elected. But that doesn't mean that what got him elected
1:43:19
wasn't a sign of major major problems, and there weren't other issues. And
1:43:24
I do think Obamacare is an important part of the cancer that America is currently
1:43:29
facing. And then well, this obviously had a much more significant impact on
1:43:34
my life than it did on the average American. My deep, deep dive
1:43:40
into the whole Penn State Joe Paterno jerryson Dusky story really made me understand how
1:43:45
unbelievably broken all of our major institutions are, not just the media and not
1:43:53
just academia. But it really made me see that truth has no value anymore,
1:44:00
that you know, courage is dead, that no one is willing to
1:44:04
take any risk for what is right, and that all of these things that
1:44:10
I suspected were happening on our culture, that had ruined what was once a
1:44:15
great nation of America, were actually happening. I was seeing it firsthand,
1:44:20
you know, I felt very much, And I felt like this on numerous
1:44:25
occasions in my life where I'm kind of like on the front lines of a
1:44:29
war and I'm coming back to base and telling people, holy shit, we're
1:44:35
getting their asses kicked. This is gonna be terrible, and a lot of
1:44:39
times, almost always, people won't believe me. And that's what it felt
1:44:44
like very much in the Penn State. Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky case,
1:44:47
like, holy crap, we are in far worse shape than I even realized.
1:44:51
And here I am a cynic, a pessimist, a skeptic, and
1:44:57
even I was surprised in this disappointed by how few people were willing to actually
1:45:02
take a stand against evil and stand up for what was right, and that
1:45:09
it was my perception that in the America, I thought, I knew,
1:45:15
you know, even ten twenty years earlier, the result would have been very
1:45:18
different, that there would have been more people, especially those with something to
1:45:23
lose, who would have stood up and done the right thing. But it
1:45:26
didn't happen. It did not happen. Demonstratively, it did not happen.
1:45:31
And then, of course there's the whole Donald Trump phenomenon. And I've talked
1:45:35
about this extensively on this podcast. I still think my view on Trump is
1:45:41
largely misunderstood. But the fact that Donald Trump could end up being the Republican
1:45:46
nominee without even that much of a fight, and then get elected president,
1:45:53
and then now most recently get the nomination without any real fight at all all
1:45:59
well being indicted, although you know, largely erroneously but not entirely erroneously four
1:46:04
different times defeating a tremendous candidate like Ron De Santis. I mean that that
1:46:11
didn't surprise me at all, obviously, since I was predicting it all along.
1:46:15
I was predicting it all along because of these other circumstances that I have
1:46:18
experienced and perceived that this isn't the same country that we thought we grew up
1:46:24
in, that the rules have all changed. I think I've been very quick
1:46:29
to adapt to that reality, and that's why I've understood. I understood that
1:46:32
Trump was going to win the twenty sixteen nomination before most conservatives did, even
1:46:38
though I despised the guy, because I think I have a better understanding of
1:46:42
where things are headed and how we are not what we thought we were.
1:46:47
And of course, within the whole Trump phenomenon is the issue of COVID and
1:46:53
COVID my gosh, when you talk about sands in the hourglass, I mean
1:47:00
that that was when I started to realize, holy shit, we're no longer
1:47:04
talking about you know, my lives, the lives of my kids. You
1:47:10
know, whether or not that we're going to make it through their lives.
1:47:13
Are we going to even make it through my life? And you know,
1:47:15
in my view, I only have you know, fifteen twenty years left tops,
1:47:19
and so it's not even that much time. But you know, we're
1:47:25
now in my view post COVID, you know, that doomsday clock went down
1:47:30
significantly because that was when the left really exposed what their true agenda is,
1:47:40
what they're willing and able to do, and they learned how little pushback they
1:47:45
will get no matter what they do, even to our kids. That to
1:47:50
me, was the most ominous of all of these major news stories that I've
1:47:59
just referenced in the last ten minutes, that COVID was the real tell.
1:48:04
I mean, I just simply do not understand. People think that COVID was
1:48:08
a one off and oh yeah it was a pain the ass and maybe we
1:48:11
overreacted, but no big deal. Things are good now. Those people are
1:48:15
criminally naive, criminally naive, And I am the most anti conspiracy person on
1:48:21
the planet. And I'm not even suggesting a conspiracy. I'm just telling you
1:48:26
this is the way human beings work, and this is the way liberals operate.
1:48:30
They know what they can get away with now, and there's been no
1:48:34
accountability none. When it came to COVID, tyranny in a country allegedly based
1:48:42
on free speech. I mean, my God, talk about not being who
1:48:45
we thought we were. You know, I keep thinking I'm quoting Dennis Green,
1:48:49
the old NFL football coach who famously at a press conference said they are
1:48:54
who we thought they were. Well, COVID, to me, was the
1:48:58
ultimate proof that we are not who we thought we were. We're not.
1:49:01
Maybe we never were, maybe we changed. I don't know at what point
1:49:05
we were no longer what we thought we were, but we're not. And
1:49:10
so now post COVID, I am completely convinced that America is doomed. We're
1:49:16
doomed, and it's just a matter of time. Now. How much time
1:49:19
is a key question, And whatever analogy you want to use, whether it's
1:49:25
the cancer analogy of the doomsday clock, the hourglass, whatever it is,
1:49:30
we are doomed. We've always known we were doomed because of the nature of
1:49:33
a democratic republic, but that the time period we have left is remarkably short.
1:49:41
And that brings me to, Okay, what do we do in this
1:49:46
presidential election? Which option is going to be more likely to bring doomsday sooner
1:49:56
or later? And I have battled with this question quite a bit, and
1:50:00
it's possible it is possible that you have perceived in the last few episodes of
1:50:06
the podcast that I have I don't know, softened on Donald Trump. I've
1:50:13
wondered whether or not people have thought that because I have been couching a lot
1:50:18
of my analysis along the lines of, Okay, well, this is what
1:50:24
can happen, and Trump can win. As if I'm rooting for Trump,
1:50:27
and I'm not rooting for Trump, I am. I'd love to find a
1:50:31
rooting interest. I mean, I mean, I really do feel like a
1:50:35
little kid, you know. I remember when I was a kid watching the
1:50:41
Super Bowls of the of the nineteen seventies, and I was a you know,
1:50:45
a Philadelphia Eagle fan, and you know, watching the Cowboys, the
1:50:48
hated Cowboys, and the hated Pittsburgh Steelers play and not one but two Super
1:50:53
Bowls that sucked because I had no rooting interest at all. These are the
1:50:57
two teams I hate most, the Cowboys of the steel So I'm getting deja
1:51:01
vu from that particular standpoint. I've referenced that Trump versus Biden is very much
1:51:06
like choosing between a lobotomy and castration. There's no good option here, But
1:51:13
is there an option that is less bad? For the end of the Republic.
1:51:18
And I have thought a lot about this, and I don't know for
1:51:23
sure what the answer is. I am well aware that when it comes to
1:51:28
Trump that there's a bit of a Sirens Song phenomenon. What I mean by
1:51:33
that is that it's easy to forget what Trump is really all about and what
1:51:40
a second Trump term would likely be like, because I think it would be
1:51:45
far worse than the first term was. At least the first three years of
1:51:50
the first Trump term. You gotta remember, nobody is going to be willing
1:51:55
to work for him with any credibility. He's on a retribution tour. I
1:52:00
mean it's literally his campaign slogan, I am your retribution. That was even
1:52:05
before he's you know, had the Eging Carol judgment and the civil fraud trial
1:52:13
judgment, and he's being forced to pay all these these judgments and fines and
1:52:18
interests and going at what he values most, which is his money. I
1:52:21
mean, this is going to be one angry motherfucker if he is re elected
1:52:29
and gets back into the White House. And so that I think it's important
1:52:32
to point out comes with it, all sorts of potential dangers and problems.
1:52:40
I also think that you have to remember the reason why we got the COVID
1:52:45
panic was that Trump was in office, not just because he shipped the bed
1:52:47
in response to it, but because the reality is that he drives the left
1:52:55
so crazy. That's why they overreact to everything. And when they saw COVID
1:53:01
as an opportunity to take him out, they jumped all over it. Not
1:53:06
just from a political standpoint, but because he was in office. They had
1:53:12
no faith at all that any of this was going to be taken care of
1:53:15
properly, so they freaked out. They lost their goddamn minds, and our
1:53:18
children suffered for it, especially in the Blue States, for almost two years.
1:53:25
That was all in the reaction, at least indirectly to trump. Wokeness
1:53:30
is a reaction to Trump. They wouldn't be able to get away with it,
1:53:34
and they wouldn't have the same intensity if it didn't have Donald Trump to
1:53:41
react to. I mean, the twenty sixteen election is something that you know,
1:53:46
Republicans have paid deeply for, Conservatives have paid deeply for because liberals lost
1:53:54
their fucking minds. And one of the many misperceptions of my view of Trump
1:54:00
is has to do with how I view American politics. I'm a numbers guy.
1:54:06
Conservatives don't have the fucking numbers, and so I've always said the entire
1:54:13
job of the Republican Party is to keep Liberals as docile as possible and to
1:54:18
try to sustain this ship from sinking for as long as we can. That's
1:54:25
the view, that's my view of what Republicanism should be. It's it is
1:54:30
an effort to stymy liberal attempts to stick a stake through the heart of America.
1:54:38
Well, Trump did exactly the opposite. He accelerated the process by inciting
1:54:45
these people and giving them the weapons to do what they wanted to do.
1:54:48
And no one could ever possibly imagine that COVID would give them a weapon way
1:54:54
more powerful than they they could have possibly ever perceived, they could have forget,
1:55:00
and they used it again, not in a conspiratorial way, not even
1:55:05
necessarily in a conscious way. Some of it. I mean, there was
1:55:09
a whole series of circumstances that led to the COVID panic. But it doesn't
1:55:14
happen. I've said many times I will go to my death believing if Hillary
1:55:17
Clinton is running for reelection in twenty twenty, liberals do not lose their fucking
1:55:23
minds. Over COVID because they would have known it would have been bad for
1:55:27
her reelection efforts, especially by the way, since there's a very good chance
1:55:30
she would have been running against Donald Trump again. And so the last thing
1:55:34
liberals were going to do was create a situation where Donald Trump could beat Hillary
1:55:39
Clinton in twenty twenty. So, anyway, my preface, I'm prefacing my
1:55:45
remarks about which presidential candidate might allow the Republic to continue as we know it
1:55:54
for a longer period of time, with the idea that I fully understand that
1:55:59
there's a sign song involving Trump, it's easy to forget the bad things about
1:56:03
him. I viewed Trump in two different ways. From a metaphor perspective,
1:56:10
He's kind of like a bad family vacation. I don't know if you've had
1:56:15
bad family vacations, but I've had a lot, but a bad family vacation.
1:56:19
As it's happening, you realize how much this sucks. But there's something
1:56:25
about the human memory that makes you forget the bad things. And part of
1:56:29
it might be that you generally, even on the worst vacation, you're gonna
1:56:32
take a few photos. They're gonna make things look decent, and you know,
1:56:36
years later, that's all you're gonna have as a record of what happened,
1:56:41
and so you're gonna look back and go, I don't remember having a
1:56:43
great time, but that you know, that photo looks pretty good. So
1:56:45
that's kind of like the Trump presidency. You're forgetting the bad stuff. You're
1:56:50
and you're, by the way, you're not giving him any blame for what
1:56:54
happened with COVID. So I love these Trumpsters that say, oh, things
1:56:58
were awesome during the Trump presence, are you forgetting? Twenty twenty was the
1:57:01
worst year in America since World War Two by far. I mean, he
1:57:05
doesn't get any blame for that, But okay, even the first three years,
1:57:11
yeah, there were things that were good, but there were also things
1:57:13
that you're forgetting that were very bad, that might be exaggeratedly bad in a
1:57:18
second term. The other analogy I would use, or metaphor, is he's
1:57:23
kind of like a past romantic partner that you broke up with because it got
1:57:29
abusive and it was bad and wasn't healthy. But then you forget all the
1:57:33
bad stuff and you just remember there were some fun times too, and so
1:57:39
you end up getting back with that person. So that's all. With that
1:57:43
said, though, with that said, I look at the other side and
1:57:46
I go, well, my god, what we're dealing here with Joe Biden
1:57:50
and Kamala Harris isn't a potentially extinction level event. I mean, you've got
1:57:57
a guy who is eighty one, clearly on at least the beginning of dementia.
1:58:01
There's no chance, there's no chance zero, he can functionally get through
1:58:08
a second term, which causes all sorts of theoretical problems. I mean,
1:58:12
having a completely incapacitated president that they won't be willing they might not be willing
1:58:17
to get rid of. I mean it's because I just have to presume if
1:58:20
he's reelected, he's going to serve four more years. I mean, that's
1:58:25
dangerous in and of itself. There's all sorts of dangers that the news media
1:58:29
is not fully exploring about an eighty four or eighty five year old Joe Biden
1:58:32
still being president of the United States. That is a very very serious issue.
1:58:39
But it has been my perception that the way that issue is going to
1:58:43
be taken care of should Biden win, is that in January of twenty twenty
1:58:46
seven, and I you know, I try again to be as objective as
1:58:49
possible. Does Joe Biden have some semblance of dementia? I agree that he
1:58:55
does. Does he have the mental acuity to the point where he should be
1:58:59
President of the United State? It's currently no, he does not. But
1:59:01
he is still functional. He is still functional. There's still a long way
1:59:05
to go here, but I think that he's going to go down that path
1:59:10
a lot further in the next few years, especially under the pressures of the
1:59:14
presidency. But I think he can probably get to January of twenty twenty seven.
1:59:18
Now he might not be able to, but I think he probably will.
1:59:23
So if he gets to January twenty twenty seven, he can resign from
1:59:27
office to great acclaim. I mean, people are not understanding that the media
1:59:31
will praise the living hell out of Joe Biden for doing the right thing for
1:59:34
the country, selflessly leaving the most powerful position in the world to allow the
1:59:41
first female president to take office. So there is no downside once he's reelected
1:59:48
to Joe Biden in January of twenty twenty seven, stepping aside to allow Kamala
1:59:54
Harris to be President of the United States. None and I have said continually
1:59:59
that is the most likely scenario, Now, why January twenty twenty seven.
2:00:02
If they do it in January twenty twenty seven, depending on which date they
2:00:05
pick, and presumably they'd be smart enough to do this properly, then under
2:00:12
the constitution, Kamala Harris could serve out Biden's term and then run not once
2:00:18
but twice for reelection, So she could be in office for ten years.
2:00:26
And for those who say, oh, that's not possible, John, she's
2:00:29
in. You know, she's a moron, she's terrible, No one likes
2:00:31
her. I'm sorry, folks. Being the first female president is going to
2:00:38
change everything. It's going to change her perception, and who the hell knows
2:00:44
what it would mean politically down the road. We have no idea what's going
2:00:46
to happen and what might make her either potentially more popular or less popular.
2:00:51
I'm not saying she would be unbeable. I'm saying it is more than plausible
2:00:57
that she could serve ten years in office. And that's the end. That's
2:01:02
the end. I mean, there's no way under the current circumstances, after
2:01:06
what we just saw with COVID, there's no way we survive ten years of
2:01:12
Kamala Harris as president. I just don't believe that that's possible. Now,
2:01:16
again, that's not a certainty at all if Joe Biden wins, but that
2:01:20
is a real possibility and one that needs to be considered, and so that
2:01:28
weighs heavily on my view of Okay, which option here is worse when it
2:01:32
comes to Trump or Biden. There's one other element that I think goes maybe
2:01:39
in the favor of Trump and against the idea of Biden, Harris, and
2:01:44
that is, while I have lost a lot of confidence in this so called
2:01:47
conservative Supreme Court, it is still at least a significant obstacle to a lot
2:01:56
of what liberals would like to do to destroy what is left of America,
2:02:00
at least as the America that we knew it to be. And Trump,
2:02:05
to his credit, well not perfect and probably overrated by conservatives, did do
2:02:13
a good job when it came to Supreme Court justices, not great. I
2:02:17
will always give him credit for sticking by Justice Kavanaugh when no other president would
2:02:24
given the allegations against Kavanaugh which were clearly and obviously not credible. But every
2:02:31
other president other than Trump would have caved. Held Trump acknowledge as he almost
2:02:35
caved, so you know, I give Trump credit in the whole area of
2:02:41
Supreme Court justices. And I've already alluded to it in this episode of the
2:02:45
podcast. The death or retirement of Clarence Thomas is going to change the country.
2:02:54
I mean, it is a key component to how much time we have
2:02:57
left, how many sands are left in that eye. If I had to
2:03:00
say one thing for certain, all right, what happens to Clarence Thomas is
2:03:06
going to have a massive impact on how much time is left for America.
2:03:11
And you know, I have almost it's only half jokingly said, I cannot
2:03:15
believe that Clarence Thomas does not appear to have twenty four hours security with a
2:03:20
medic and a defibrillator there at all times. Because if Clarence Thomas dies tomorrow,
2:03:29
it's basically over. Because although they might, you know, I don't
2:03:33
know what would happen, whether they would be able to jam through. They
2:03:36
probably would be able to jam through a replacement for Clarence Thomas before the election,
2:03:43
and they'd be able to put in they would replace a conservative black man
2:03:45
with you know, a blackmail who was probably a member of BLM. And
2:03:51
that's not an exaggeration. So you would go from arguably the most conservative and
2:03:57
principled Supreme Court justice being turned into an extreme liberal, socialist Marxist. And
2:04:04
given the fact that Justice Roberts is not really a conservative, especially poast,
2:04:10
Trump, the Court would have effectively switch from allegedly six' three conservative to
2:04:15
five to four liberal, and Roberts would decide virtually everything. And you're done.
2:04:25
At that point, you're done. And so the replacement for Clarence Thomas,
2:04:31
in my view, is at least as important as whether or not Kamala
2:04:35
Harris takes over for Joe Biden in a second term. Those are similar situations,
2:04:42
but the Thomas issue and the Harris issue are paramount. If you are
2:04:47
in the category of where I am, where you're just trying to figure out,
2:04:51
how do we keep this ship afloat as long as we can, how
2:04:55
do we keep America as we know it alive for as long as possible?
2:05:00
And you know, I have to say that is as troubling and as problematic
2:05:08
and as dangerous as a Trump presidency could very well be gun. To my
2:05:15
head, I probably have to say, you know what, I can see
2:05:18
some theoretical advantages or fewer disadvantages to a Trump presidency than a Biden presidency.
2:05:27
Now that's hardly a ringing endorsement, and it's not going to be part of
2:05:30
any Trump commercials, and it time to for a million different reasons, but
2:05:34
gun to my head, I would probably have to say, you know what,
2:05:39
give me Trump. And it's not just because he would be more entertaining.
2:05:42
I think that there's a better chance under Trump of us surviving for a
2:05:47
longer period of time, even given the idea that this is going to provoke
2:05:50
another wave of wokeness if Trump does in fact win the presidency. So I
2:05:58
just since this is our last free episode of the podcast, and for a
2:06:00
lot of people this will be the last time they hear a full episode of
2:06:03
the podcast, I guess I just want to go on record as saying,
2:06:08
well, I have never voted for him and don't anticipate voting for him this
2:06:12
time. If you put a gun to my head, who would I choose?
2:06:15
For the reasons I've already stated, I guess I would go with Donald
2:06:18
Trump, and I would hope for the best. It would make me feel
2:06:21
a lot better if there were some people I trusted, like my friend Steve
2:06:24
Cortez, who was still close enough to Donald Trump to have some influence over
2:06:28
him. That's not currently the case, but that's that's where I currently am
2:06:32
when it comes to the presidential race. And I do believe that America is
2:06:40
in greater and real peril due to this unprecedentedly bad election choice of this rematch
2:06:48
that no one wants between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and it is a
2:06:51
damning indictment, this choice of where we are as a country and where we
2:06:58
are going. And so in that light, in that context, I just
2:07:02
want to go through a little bit of what made America great and discuss how
2:07:10
dramatically all of these different attributes have changed, some of which in fairly short
2:07:16
order. You know, President Biden is currently as we do this podcast,
2:07:20
is Walter read Hospital undergoing some sort of medical checkup that may or may not
2:07:26
have been planned. And so this is kind of like the John Zigler check
2:07:31
up on America. Where we were and where we are, and then eventually
2:07:35
I'm going to tell you where I think we're going. And I don't know
2:07:38
how long this is going to go, but I'm going to kind of speed
2:07:40
through this as much as possible, because I could probably talk about this for
2:07:44
hours. There's so many different aspects to it. But when you think about,
2:07:48
okay, so what made America great? I've already acknowledged that I'm in
2:07:54
the group of people who believes that America is the greatest country ever created.
2:07:58
We obviously were never perfect. I want to emphasize that we're made up of
2:08:03
human beings. Therefore we cannot be perfect. Human beings are inherently flawed.
2:08:07
But one of the great strengths of America, and one of the great attributes
2:08:11
of our founding fathers, was they understood the frailties of humanity and they created
2:08:18
the system to try to curtail those frailties. I would say it's one of
2:08:22
the things that liberals don't understand. They that's why they don't understand the slippery
2:08:26
slope. They don't understand what happens when you create perverse incentives because a lot
2:08:31
of them are naive, a lot of them are dumb, But they just
2:08:35
don't understand the nature of humanity. Our founding fathers did, and they weren't
2:08:41
perfect either, in a lot of different ways. And they actually made a
2:08:43
few mistakes in the system that they created, but by and large, they
2:08:48
created the best system that man has ever come up with, because they understood
2:08:54
that humans are inherently flawed. And so you know, what was it that
2:09:01
made America not perfect, but great and better than any other country. Well,
2:09:07
let me go through this list, and it's a long list, but
2:09:09
you know, you got to start with geography. I mean, we have
2:09:13
we had a unique and still do, although it's not nearly as important as
2:09:16
it used to be. We have a unique geography protected by you know,
2:09:22
massive bodies of water, and we have this very diverse both from a climate
2:09:28
perspective as well as from a terrain standpoint, and where we're able to grow
2:09:35
food, and how we have access to natural fresh water, and I mean
2:09:43
the weather here and this and this continent is generally very good in comparison to
2:09:48
the rest of the world. I mean, we have all sorts of geographic
2:09:52
advantages, most of which are still intact today. But obviously this is a
2:09:58
much smaller world than it used to be. You know, part of the
2:10:01
massive advantage that we had with regard to geography was it was almost impossible for
2:10:07
a foreign country to attack us. Well that's you know, not necessarily the
2:10:11
case today. Although we have a technological advantage that would seem to make that
2:10:16
nearly impossible. But we're being invaded in other ways, like for instance,
2:10:20
regarding illegal immigration coming in mostly from the South, and so you know,
2:10:26
while we're never going to be invaded via our seas, we are in the
2:10:30
midst of being invaded via our southern border. So our geographical advantage, while
2:10:35
still significant, is not as big a deal as it was during the first
2:10:41
couple of centuries of America. And then there's the rules and the laws,
2:10:48
and the constitution and the principles that were created by our founding fathers. Again,
2:10:54
founding fathers that were not perfect at all. Obviously much has been made
2:10:58
over the issue of slave I think it's been misunderstood to a certain degree based
2:11:03
upon the context of the time. But these were not perfect people, and
2:11:07
a lot of them are thought of even today far better than they deserve to
2:11:11
be because of the mythology surrounding a lot of the Founding fathers. I am
2:11:16
not a Pollyanna about America, and I'm not a Pollyanna about our founding fathers,
2:11:20
although I greatly respect a lot of them, a lot of their courage,
2:11:24
and a lot of the principles that they stood up for and a lot
2:11:28
of the foundation that they laid for how this country would be created and how
2:11:35
it would eventually prosper. So, you know, we absolutely benefit from an
2:11:41
amazing constitution, a constitution that in a lot of ways is in tatters that
2:11:46
it's now more of a suggestion than it is really a constitution that we've now
2:11:52
seen in numerous ways where the Constitution can just be ignored. It's no longer
2:12:00
nearly as sacred as it used to be. And this has been a phenomenon
2:12:03
that's been ongoing for a long time, but I think it's becoming more and
2:12:09
more dramatic. And I referenced earlier in this episode that Americans don't really have
2:12:13
much regard for the First Amendment anymore. The First freaking Amendment probably the most
2:12:20
important freedom we are given, the freedom of speech, the essence of what
2:12:24
America is supposed to be. We don't really seem to have very much regard
2:12:30
for anymore. And a lot of it's because the Constitution has been under attack,
2:12:35
mostly by liberals. And that's by the way, there's no question that
2:12:39
they have used the slavery issue as a way to erode the authority the moral
2:12:46
authority of the Founding Fathers. That's not been done by accident. That was
2:12:52
done because there are things in the Constitution that are problematic for the liberal agenda.
2:12:56
And they know that if they destroy the Founding that's another reason why they're
2:13:01
getting rid of statues and what have you. They know if they destroy the
2:13:03
Founding Fathers and the American consciousness, and they paint everything about American history as
2:13:09
being inherently racist and therefore not having credibility, that they can get away with
2:13:13
even if they don't have to. They don't necessarily have to change the Constitution.
2:13:18
They can just ignore it or reinterpret it. So the Constitution is nowhere
2:13:22
near as strong an entity when it comes to what made America great than it
2:13:28
once was. America was also based upon this inherent very strong suspicion and skepticism
2:13:37
with regard to the role of government. I mean, our Founding fathers would
2:13:41
be horrified by a lot of what America has become. But the mass of
2:13:46
gargantuan size of especially the federal government, would shock and horrify them. And
2:13:56
the fact that it would happen in a country that literally was created because we
2:13:58
had a revolution against great Britain. I mean, because we were so offended
2:14:05
by things like taxation without representation and the whole Boston Tea Party thing and what
2:14:11
have you, that we would end up becoming so reliant on a massive federal
2:14:16
government is completely antithetical to what America was created to be, and for a
2:14:22
large period of its history, was not. We It was part of our
2:14:28
identity that we were inherently suspicious of the role of a strong federal government.
2:14:35
And now we've just completely embraced it to absurd degrees to where we're getting free
2:14:39
checks from the government for doing nothing because they forced us to take the worst
2:14:43
vacation ever during the COVID panic. We were also based what made us great
2:14:50
in the freedoms that our constitution provided us, freedom of thought, freedom of
2:14:56
speech, a quality of opportunity. And as I've said many many times in
2:15:00
this podcast, in this episode and others, those are all very much under
2:15:03
attack in a variety of different ways. And you know, our early leadership
2:15:11
in this country, we got very lucky. I mean, luck plays a
2:15:16
large part of life, a large part of history. We were incredibly lucky
2:15:20
to have the type of people that we had in charge of the time and
2:15:24
they all happen to be white males. And because they all happen to be
2:15:28
white males, they are being discredited in history, discredited in the minds of
2:15:35
our younger generation, especially especially those that are exposed to woke academia, and
2:15:41
therefore the ideas that they espoused are no longer held in any kind of reverence,
2:15:46
and in fact, at times are being seen as illegitimate. And this
2:15:50
is a major major problem when it comes to the foundation of America and why
2:15:56
we are so vulnerable to what I think will happen in the not too distant
2:16:01
future. America was also built largely on the idea that we were a very
2:16:07
masculine nation. There is no question that for the first several couple centuries,
2:16:13
really this country was a masculine nation, that it was male dominated, but
2:16:22
that women had a very clear understanding of the role of femininity. And I
2:16:28
would argue that, while never perfect and sometimes way too much in the favor
2:16:33
of masculine as opposed to feminine, that we had for a long period of
2:16:39
time a pretty darn good combination of masculinity and femininity when it came to our
2:16:46
culture, again, never perfect. This is where liberals always do this.
2:16:52
They let you know the fact that something's not perfect. They decided to destroy
2:16:56
it even though it's good, it's not perfect, so we must change,
2:17:00
we must destroy it, and they end up making it way worse than it
2:17:03
was. And I would argue that when it comes to masculinity and femininity,
2:17:07
this is a classic example because we've gone from a masculine nation to not just
2:17:13
a feminine nation when it comes to our culture. But we don't even know
2:17:16
what the hell the definition of a man or a woman is anymore. We
2:17:20
literally do not know the definition of man and woman. We've gone from a
2:17:24
masculine dominated society to a feminine dominated society where we don't even know what gender
2:17:33
is, and that has massive implications. It's not just about whether or not
2:17:37
biological males can play female sports. It is so much bigger than just that.
2:17:43
And this relates to what's happened with the family unit. The family unit
2:17:48
played a huge role in why America has been great for as long as we
2:17:54
have. Gender roles and generational roles played a huge part in that. Well,
2:18:01
we've completely destroyed gender roles. The generational roles, in my view,
2:18:07
have been basically flipped upside down. Marriage is in total crisis, largely for
2:18:13
a lot of different reasons, but largely because we've changed the rules of marriage
2:18:18
from being way too much in the benefit of men to being way too much
2:18:24
in the benefit of women. Now men don't want to get married. Women
2:18:28
have expectations for men that are completely out of control. They've been told this
2:18:33
lie that they can have it all. Many women are late in life now
2:18:37
regretting that they bought into this lie that they can have it all. But
2:18:41
there's a massive crisis in this entire area of the family unit. Divorce is
2:18:48
still out of control. Kids are being born out of wedlock and record numbers,
2:18:54
especially in particular demographics. This is not healthy. This creates all sorts
2:19:01
of problems, and one of them is more reliance on the federal government,
2:19:05
because when you have kids out of wedlock, you tend to end up having
2:19:11
kids that turn to crime or are not economically viable, and they become embroiled
2:19:18
in situations where the state is required to keep them afloat. You need this
2:19:24
massive welfare state to be able to deal with all the carnage of the destruction
2:19:31
of the family unit, of marriage and having kids within wedlock. And I'm
2:19:37
somebody who, you know, most of my life didn't even believe I would
2:19:41
ever get married. I don't even really believe that government should be in the
2:19:45
business of marriage, but I fully recognize that marriage and the family unit played
2:19:52
an incredibly important role to what made America great, and that is now at
2:19:58
best in crisis and at worst been completely destroyed in a fairly short period of
2:20:05
time from a cultural perspective. Now, similar to the family unit and the
2:20:11
issue of marriage, divorce, and kids out of wedlock, there's another topic
2:20:15
that made America great. That again, I am not somebody who strongly believes
2:20:22
even in this concept, but I recognize its significance, and that's the issue
2:20:26
of religion. Religion played it in an enormous role in so many different ways,
2:20:35
going all the way back to our founding. I mean, our founders
2:20:39
were absolutely relying largely on their view of God and religion when they even came
2:20:45
up with where we're getting our inalienable rights from? It shaped every part of
2:20:52
what this country was. And I'm a big believer as someone who on a
2:20:56
good day is agnostic, in a bad day, as an agist, I'm
2:21:00
a big believer that for a society to run in any sort of efficient way,
2:21:05
people need to believe that they're going to be judged in an afterlife and
2:21:11
punished for bad behavior and rewarded for good behavior, because the government alone cannot
2:21:16
possibly especially a country this large, cannot possibly create a situation where people are
2:21:24
behaving well simply because they don't want to be punished by the government. You
2:21:28
can't do that in a free society. You can do that in a stalitarian
2:21:33
state, but you can't do that in a free society. In a free
2:21:37
society, this is one of our inherent problems. That's one of the reasons
2:21:41
why this was an experiment. So when people have freedom, that's great.
2:21:48
But if they don't believe that the good behavior, self regulated good behavior will
2:21:54
be rewarded or that bad behavior will be punished, then guess what they're gonna
2:21:58
do. Oo They're going to engage, oftentimes in bad behavior because that's the
2:22:05
nature of humanity. And religion was almost unique in America, not that we
2:22:11
invented religion, but because of the nature of our society, our culture,
2:22:16
our communities, and the importance that religion had to our founders. It was
2:22:22
passed down from generation to generation that has now stopped, and I would suggest
2:22:30
that it is one of the most underrated elements of our entire society. And
2:22:37
again I say this as a religious agnostic who grew up as a Catholic,
2:22:41
who refers to myself as someone recovering from being Catholic. So I'm not a
2:22:46
fan of organized religion, except in what it can do to keep a society
2:22:50
together. But it's one of the most underrated and underreported stories in America.
2:22:56
It's one of the reasons why the Republican Party is not doing as well as
2:22:58
it should. That church attendance has collapsed in an incredibly short period of time,
2:23:07
an incredibly short period of time, and this has had a massive impact
2:23:11
on all sorts of areas of life. I mean, the mind boggles as
2:23:18
to how much this influences American life generally for the negative. Now, does
2:23:22
religion have some negative aspects to it? Of course it does, because it's
2:23:28
a enterprise and institution, so it's inherently flawed. But religion keeps people in
2:23:35
line. It keeps the masses in line, often far more efficiently than government
2:23:41
can do. And that influence is quickly degrading and disintegrating in American life,
2:23:50
and that is a very troubling reality. Now. I've already referenced that a
2:23:54
lot of what made America great during its heyday was the fact that we were
2:23:58
a large, a masculine nation. And that's significant, not just when it
2:24:03
comes to gender roles, but we were absolutely a country that was built and
2:24:09
prospered in large part because we had balls and we were willing to take risk.
2:24:15
And by the way, that doesn't just mean men. We had women
2:24:18
who were also ballsy and willing to take risk, and support men who were
2:24:22
ballsy and willing to take risk. I mean so much of this country,
2:24:28
especially it's funny to me here in California that we've become the wokest state in
2:24:31
the country. When California was built by cowboys and frontiersmen and forty nine ers
2:24:39
and people who risked everything and who had balls and were willing to really put
2:24:43
it on the line. And then in just a few generations, you know,
2:24:48
we turned into this this woke mess. And part of there's a lot
2:24:52
of reasons for that. There's illegal immigration, there's immigration from other states.
2:24:56
There's the way that you know, these values we're not passed down from generation
2:25:01
to generation, but there's no question we have gone from a ballsy, risk
2:25:07
taking nation to a completely woosified country. I mean, we are as soft
2:25:13
as the metaphorical Pillsbury dough boy. I mean, even our football, which
2:25:16
I've talked about many, many times, has become woosified. And part of
2:25:20
the reason why I'm so passionate about that issue. It's not just because it's
2:25:24
destroying the sport that I love, but because I think it's an indication of
2:25:28
how the entire culture has become woosified. I mean, it is absolutely beyond
2:25:33
question that especially our younger generations, are a bunch of complete and total woosies,
2:25:39
and that this is antithetical to what made America great and a very bad
2:25:46
sign for the future of the country as far as trying to figure out how
2:25:50
long we can keep this going. Capitalism also played a very important role in
2:25:56
making America great, and the idea that private property was sacred. I think
2:26:01
both are very much under attack. Yes, we are still living in a
2:26:07
society where rich people are making tons of money from the stock market. The
2:26:11
stock markets throwing going gangbusters over the last several months, and the rich have
2:26:15
never been richer. But for the middle class I think capitalism is largely dead.
2:26:22
Small businesses are in big trouble, and there is no question that we
2:26:28
are living in this strange hybrid now of capitalism for the elite and socialism for
2:26:35
everybody else. And I don't think that's healthy. That's not what made America
2:26:41
America. But I'm even more concerned about the sacredness of private property, and
2:26:46
it's part of why I'm so outraged by what's happened with Donald Trump and that
2:26:50
civil fraud trial in New York City where he's basically having his property stolen from
2:26:54
him because he's politically unpopular there. I think one of the many lessons of
2:26:58
COVID was that private property rights are imperiled. I mean, the idea that
2:27:05
you know throughout the country and especially here in California, you know, landlords
2:27:11
were legally not allowed to get rent from their tenants for an extended period of
2:27:18
time, was a shot across the bow when it came to private property rights,
2:27:22
which I think are going to be further imperiled. And I'll have some
2:27:26
thoughts on that in just a little bit as far as where we're going,
2:27:30
But I think that is another element that made America great, that is very
2:27:35
much diminished from what it was in its heyday. Military might obviously plays a
2:27:41
huge role in what made America what it was what it is, how it's
2:27:46
seen across the world, winning not one, but two World Wars, no
2:27:52
question about that. Now, this is where the way the world has changed
2:27:56
may help us survive a bit longer than we would ordinarily. I mean,
2:28:01
if we were still back in the olden days, having a younger generation of
2:28:07
total wusses would be really problematic and make us very vulnerable from a military perspective.
2:28:13
But because technology has really overtaken the military, I mean, there's no
2:28:20
question that technology drives military might. These days. It's not really about men
2:28:24
anymore. It's mostly about technology. And you know, it seems as if
2:28:30
from a technological standpoint, we still have a massive advantage over an economic perspective,
2:28:35
a massive advantage over most of the rest of the world, and so
2:28:39
therefore we still maintain a significant military advantage. But if it ever does become
2:28:46
a situation where we have to rely on our actual men and or women,
2:28:52
I'm not real optimistic, because, as I've already said, I think our
2:28:56
younger generations are unbelievably soft and would never would never, ever be able to
2:29:01
duplicate things like you know, D Day and the Normandy invasion. I mean,
2:29:07
that just would be inconceivable today from all sorts of different reasons, politics,
2:29:11
media, political correctness, threshold for loss of life, but also the
2:29:18
inherent lack of courage and toughness among the young people that would be needed to
2:29:22
pull something like that off. America has also been a leader when it comes
2:29:26
to science and medicine, and in some ways we still are, but we're
2:29:31
also creating circumstances that are diminishing those advantages. I mean, in my view,
2:29:39
science has lost an enormous amount of credibility because of what happened with COVID
2:29:43
and what's happening with the climate change hysteria. Medicine, in my view,
2:29:48
is getting much much worse. Not from a technological standpoint. It's a little
2:29:52
bit like what's happening with the military. Technologically, we seem to be in
2:29:58
good position with regard to advancements and things seem to be getting better in a
2:30:03
lot of ways. But when it comes to actual medical care and its cost
2:30:09
and how easy it is to get a lot of that has been destroyed in
2:30:15
recent years because it's no longer a capitalist model. It's a socialist model that
2:30:20
was brought in from a law perspective with regard to Obamacare, and Obamacare has
2:30:26
absolutely injected our medical system with an awful lot of socialism. Its sustained itself,
2:30:33
at least to this point, marginally better than I have feared that it
2:30:37
would. But I still think it has many systemic problems. And I think
2:30:41
that our our medical system, in my perception, is surviving largely because it
2:30:46
was so awesome to begin with. That that's how much it would take to
2:30:52
destroy it and how long it would take for it to be destroyed. But
2:30:56
eventually I believe it will be destroyed. And by the way, speaking of
2:31:00
this issue of our medical system, you should check out a thread if you're
2:31:05
on Twitter, check out Ben Shapiro's account because he just needed a remarkable thread
2:31:09
which had an awful lot of reporting in it that seemed to be original reporting
2:31:13
regarding the issue of DEI diversity, equity and inclusion and its impact on our
2:31:20
medical system and how this is real world impact that people could end up dying
2:31:26
because of woke academia and its influence over our medical system, and how that
2:31:31
seeped into even medical care, and how DEI equity instead of equality is going
2:31:39
to dramatically impact medical care to the point where people could end up dying over
2:31:43
it. So check out Ben Shapiro's Twitter account on that particular issue. But
2:31:48
I am not optimistic about where our medical system is headed either. Similarly,
2:31:52
our public education system is in disarray. Covid absolutely exaggerated that I personally believe,
2:32:01
as the husband of a teacher and woman who's entire family is made up
2:32:07
of teachers, and someone who's dabbled in teaching myself, and obviously as two
2:32:11
kids, I think that two things fundamentally changed our public education system. Actually
2:32:16
three. I would say. It always goes back to getting rid of any
2:32:20
sort of corporal punishment, which was no longer viable from a political correctness standpoint.
2:32:26
But there's no fear. Students have no fear of teachers. But even
2:32:30
if you set aside corporal punishment, the two fundamental things that happened to our
2:32:35
public education system were that it used to be. And this is not hyperbole,
2:32:41
this is not rose colored glasses. When people of my age and older,
2:32:45
when we got in trouble and the teacher called the parent. The parent
2:32:48
backed the teacher, regardless of what the facts were. Now it's almost entirely
2:32:54
the opposite, where the parent backs the kid and the teacher has no power
2:32:58
and the kid the teacher has no power. And there's all series of reasons
2:33:03
for why that happened, but it did happen, and it cut the legs
2:33:07
out from underneath teachers. Also, similarly, it used to be that the
2:33:13
pace of the classroom was dictated by the highest achievers. We celebrated the high
2:33:20
achievers, and so in a classroom, everybody in the class had to keep
2:33:26
up with, by and large, the best kids in the class. We've
2:33:30
now fundamentally changed that. Now the pace of the classroom is set by the
2:33:35
lowest achievers, and they're the ones that had to be catered to, and
2:33:39
the high achievers, in many instances are just left to languish and be bored.
2:33:46
And our standards have fallen dramatically because of this. There's no question about
2:33:50
that. I mean, just you know, take this out of the theoretical
2:33:54
into the practical. My wife just found a whole bunch of stuff from her
2:33:56
childhood, including some old tests she took, and we compared what she was
2:34:01
doing in fifth grade as an admittedly not very good student to what our daughter
2:34:05
is doing in fifth grade. And it's not even close. It's not even
2:34:09
close. The standards have in the same basic area of the country have completely
2:34:13
fallen off a cliff and I think COVID exaggerated that because instead of trying to
2:34:18
catch up, everyone just said, well, well, we'll just lower the
2:34:22
standards, and you know who cares. Anyway, we skipped a year or
2:34:24
two of school, it's not that important. And of course this is not
2:34:28
just our public school system. Elite academia has completely collapsed. We've seen that
2:34:35
time and time again from a wokeness perspective. I mean, it's remarkable to
2:34:41
think that in about one hundred years elite academia, which used to be a
2:34:45
huge strength in this country. I mean, we had incredibly esteemed academic institutions
2:34:50
that were rightly respected around the world. They have gone from largely being conservative
2:34:56
institutions to now being ultra woke and frankly insane institutions. And it's not just
2:35:05
about the politics, it's about the value system and what they're actually teaching,
2:35:09
what they actually believe. It's not based in truth, and to me,
2:35:15
it's a lot like California the way this happened. I mean, California used
2:35:20
to be a very conservative state and now it's the wackiest, most woke state,
2:35:24
and it happened for very very similar reasons. But elite academia, which
2:35:30
helped make America great, is nowhere near what it used to be. And
2:35:33
affirmative action is embedded in elite academia, and even in our feckless Supreme Court
2:35:41
is as I already referenced earlier on in the podcast, even the Supreme Court
2:35:46
that claims to be against it has not been able to do anything that really
2:35:48
significantly is going to change it. And I believe affirmative action is more embedded
2:35:52
in elite academia today. You know, well after the much valuehood anti affirmative
2:36:00
action Supreme Court decision than it was then. I think my prediction there has
2:36:03
been one hundred percent validated that liberals when they reacted to that Supreme Court decision
2:36:09
thought oh my god, this is terrible. Now they're realizing, oh,
2:36:11
we just have to take a slight shift in our path. We go through
2:36:15
the loophole, and now we're actually free as a bird. We're going to
2:36:18
be able to do whatever hell we want. In fact, it might even
2:36:20
be easier now because there'll be less accountability and it'd be harder to actually prove
2:36:26
what we're doing. So you know, to me, that has been a
2:36:30
very very negative development when it comes to academia in generals and especially elite academia.
2:36:37
And you know, one of the other things that makes has made America
2:36:39
great is our unity. I mean, obviously the United States of America,
2:36:45
and we used to have communities that were very close knit, especially in small
2:36:50
town America, famously so. But unity is a huge obviously, it's literally
2:36:58
part of our name, is a huge part of what made America great.
2:37:03
But our national unity has never been lower than it is now. And you
2:37:07
know, a lot of it's because of our media. I talk about the
2:37:11
impact of fragmented media all the time, dividing us. I mean, it
2:37:16
used to unite us. The national media used to unite us, especially television.
2:37:20
Now it divides us for its own political and financial survival. We've been
2:37:26
splintered into tiny little pieces. And social media plays a huge role in that.
2:37:33
You can't even talk to anybody anymore because they got EarPods in and they're
2:37:37
looking at their phone now now some of that is looking at the past with
2:37:41
rose colored glasses. I'm not sure we ever were really that communicative to strangers.
2:37:46
But now you can't even talk to your kids, can't you can't talk
2:37:48
to almost anybody. The barriers to connection have never been greater, and the
2:37:54
disunity in the division has also never been greater, at least not in my
2:37:58
life time. And we are dangerously divided. And even one of the other
2:38:05
strengths that this country used to have diversity, And I get criticized all the
2:38:09
time for my I guess you would call it contrarian view on race related issues.
2:38:15
I mean, I consider myself to be the least racist person I know.
2:38:18
I want a quality of opportunity for everybody, and I actually think diversity
2:38:24
is one of the things that made America great. We have unique diversity in
2:38:28
our demographics. That means we have interesting and important strengths and weaknesses from different
2:38:37
cultures, different backgrounds. That makes us interesting and it makes us productive.
2:38:43
It makes us in many ways. You know, I said unique already when
2:38:48
I'm over using that word. But we were unique and still are in some
2:38:52
ways unique when it comes to that among major powers, most major powers in
2:38:58
the history of the world, their country was made up of one basic race
2:39:03
or demographic or ethnicity. The fact that America was not was a strength,
2:39:09
not that it cause problems, obviously, and obviously the original sin of slavery
2:39:15
is something we've had to overcome, and I thought we were on a pretty
2:39:18
darn good path to doing so until the last few years when liberals panicked and
2:39:24
abandon everything we've been doing and decided, screw equality, we got to go
2:39:28
with equity. So diversity turned into division. Diversity went from a strength to
2:39:35
now, I believe, a weakness because we've gone backwards and equality of opportunity
2:39:39
has been replaced by equity of outcome. We are divided on so many fronts
2:39:45
now, so many fronts. I mean, there's almost nothing that unites us
2:39:48
except maybe the super Bowl and you know, major holidays. That's about it.
2:39:56
I mean, even the way we vote now is divided. Liberals vote
2:39:58
via male Conservatives vote in person. I mean election they used to be a
2:40:03
uniting event where we all got together in our local school houses or firehouses or
2:40:09
wherever we voted, and we had that in common. We had that experience
2:40:13
in common. We don't even have that anymore. That's been divided between liberal
2:40:18
and conservative. We can't even look at the weather without being divided. The
2:40:22
weather used to be probably the most uniting force there is because everyone's experiencing the
2:40:26
same thing. Well, now if you get unusual weather, liberals think that
2:40:31
this is climate change, global warming and a reason to take away your your
2:40:35
gasoline powered car, while conservatives have a completely different view. So you can't
2:40:41
even be united over unusual weather. And of course, the biggest common factor
2:40:50
when it comes to a country, and this kind of goes back to the
2:40:52
diversity angle on what made America great. But while we have been diverse,
2:40:58
we have always had a common landguage. English has been a common language in
2:41:03
many parts of the country, especially here in California. That is no longer
2:41:07
the case. There are massive elements of this country that do not use English
2:41:13
as the prominent or prevalent language. They may know some English, but they
2:41:20
have been enabled by God. Here in Los Angeles, I haven't looked at
2:41:24
it recently, but about half about half of the public radio stations these are
2:41:33
stations that are regulated by the FCC, About half in Los Angeles are Spanish
2:41:41
speaking or other languages. Non English speaking stations and that enables people to never
2:41:50
fully learn English, to never fully integrate into society. That to me is
2:41:54
the worst part of the entire illegal immigration issue. It's not just the these
2:42:00
people don't belong here legally. It's not just that they may bring problems with
2:42:05
them that they for instance, obviously a lot of focus on what happened in
2:42:09
Georgia with the killing of the Georgia student, that they bring elements of crime
2:42:13
in some ways. To me, the biggest issue is the lack of assimilation
2:42:16
because it goes to the heart of what we are as a country, the
2:42:20
United States of America. We're being invaded by people who are not going to
2:42:24
assimilate into our culture, even if they have the best of intentions and a
2:42:30
common language which we have now deemed to be racist. I mean, it's
2:42:33
in the freaking constitution of the State of California that English is the language of
2:42:41
the state. And that doesn't matter because we have enabled all these people to
2:42:48
not have to integrate, and that to me is a deadly virus for a
2:42:52
country called the United States of America. In my view, one of the
2:42:56
most devastating things that happened is that our belief in truth our definitions of loyalty,
2:43:03
our view of justice have all changed somewhat radically in a fairly short period
2:43:11
of time. I mean, lying, as I mentioned with regard to the
2:43:13
Clinton impeachment and what happened there, is now just accepted. In fact,
2:43:20
it's often preferred and promoted. My god, Bill Clinton was not nearly the
2:43:28
liar that Donald Trump or Joe Biden is. They lie with impunity because we've
2:43:31
now proven that there's no real harm to lying. No one cares anymore.
2:43:39
That's what's so incredibly dangerous about the whole lying issue. We've completely left the
2:43:46
gravitational pull of the rational earth. There's no going back. You can't get
2:43:52
the value of truth back. That's why you had to have a hard line
2:43:56
stance against lying. That's why I was so incensed by what happened with Clinton
2:44:03
not being removed from office, because the floodgates were going to open, and
2:44:07
they absolutely have opened. And loyalty, the definition of loyalty changing has been
2:44:13
one of the most underappreciated cultural phenomenon that I've experienced in my life. This
2:44:18
is something that my grandfather on my mother's side and I talked a lot about.
2:44:22
He was a very loyal guy and believed in loyalty in both directions,
2:44:26
and I had to explain to him that the definition of loyalty had changed.
2:44:31
He lived in a world where loyalty was based upon for better or worse.
2:44:37
Okay, if I had done something for this person or they had done something
2:44:39
for me in the past, I owed them something, or they owed me
2:44:43
something, or I should be loyal to them if they've done something for me
2:44:46
in the past, and vice versa. And that was kind of a There
2:44:52
was a marketplace or an economics to that, and some of it was not
2:44:56
necessarily all that great, but you know, as it was, you know,
2:45:01
you rub my back, I'll rub your back, and you know that
2:45:03
kind of thing. But there it was an understanding of what the definition of
2:45:07
loyalty was. The definition of loyalty, in my view over my lifetime,
2:45:11
has changed to it's not what you have done for me in the past,
2:45:13
it's what I think you might be likely to do for me in the future,
2:45:18
which completely fundamentally changes the nature of human interaction because what you do for
2:45:24
somebody has no value anymore, doesn't put anything in the bank anymore. It's
2:45:28
all about what that person might be willing or able to do for me in
2:45:31
the future. And the best example I can come up with this is what
2:45:37
happened in the Penn State case with Joe Paterno. As soon as Joe Paterno
2:45:41
died, he can't do anything for anybody in the future. So no one
2:45:45
cared about the half century that he had put into Penn State, and all
2:45:50
the people that should have been loyal to him were not. Because he's dead,
2:45:52
he can't do anything for me in the future, So what do I
2:45:54
care about it? And that has had devastating impacts on the nature of culture.
2:46:00
I'm going a little bit longer than I anticipated, but since this is
2:46:03
our last free episode, I figured like I have a little bit more liberty
2:46:07
to do so, so I'm just going to kind of speed up these factors
2:46:11
that made America great that no longer are the way that they used to in
2:46:16
much shorter order. But there's no question that I've already implied that this country
2:46:22
used to value toughness over feelings, and now we value feelings over everything.
2:46:28
I mean, the reality is life is tough, and you know, we
2:46:31
used to have a male dominated view of the world that you dealt with that
2:46:35
in a way that was tough. Now it's all about catering to feelings,
2:46:39
which I think has is a classic example the pendulum moving too far from one
2:46:43
direction to the other and has devastating consequences. I believe that the belief in
2:46:50
the rule of law and the punishment for criminals has eroded to dangerous levels.
2:46:56
The support for law enforcement has eroded dangerous levels. I think that the clip
2:47:01
we played earlier in this episode from the Riverside County Sheriff is great evidence of
2:47:07
that. You know, there was a time not that long ago when it
2:47:11
was normal for kids, especially boys, to grow up wanting to be a
2:47:16
police officer, wanting to be a fireman, wanting to be a soldier,
2:47:20
wanting to be a doctor. Now, part of that was cliche, part
2:47:26
of that was facilitated by toy companies, and I mean there was almost a
2:47:30
conspiracy for people to have their kids believe in that, which I think was
2:47:37
at least in part facilitated by a culture that understood that that was necessary to
2:47:43
keep this thing going. Because in order to have good police, to have
2:47:48
good firemen, to have good soldiers, to have good doctors and what have
2:47:52
you, you've got to have kids that grow up dreaming of doing that,
2:47:58
and instead we've now disincentivized people, especially from being police, especially from being
2:48:05
soldiers, and in post Obamacare, being doctors. We've made you know,
2:48:11
DEI has destroyed being a fire person because we got to have people that can't
2:48:15
actually do the work because they are different gender groups. I mean, and
2:48:20
so you know, that used to be. It wasn't that long ago that
2:48:24
that was normal and that was important, and that's all gone now, and
2:48:28
I think we're going to see in the coming years devastating impacts of that.
2:48:33
I think that the entire generational issue has been flipped on its head. You
2:48:37
know, experience used to be valued, and I realized that the fact that
2:48:41
we have Biden and Trump being the presidential nominees kind of goes against this idea.
2:48:46
But I think that's much more about celebrity and inertia than it is about
2:48:50
valuing experience and age and wisdom. We don't value experience and age and wisdom
2:48:56
anymore. We're a youth dominated society. You know, the prime of life
2:49:01
used to be considered retirement. Now it's as a kid, and I've bought
2:49:05
into that as a as a parent. I've tried to protect my kid's youth
2:49:09
as much as I possibly can, because I realize how much it sucks as
2:49:13
an adult, even though when I was a kid, I was told it's
2:49:16
going to be great as an adult. So I kind of feel like I'm
2:49:18
in that generation that got sold to Bill of Goods when was my prime.
2:49:24
When I was a kid, I what I said didn't matter at all.
2:49:26
Well, and now all that matters is what the kids want, and so
2:49:31
that's that's upside down. But more importantly than that, you know, the
2:49:37
pride that people had in America was a huge component to what made this country
2:49:43
great, the belief that we were exceptional, and that has not been completely
2:49:48
eroded, but it has been diminished largely by this this idea that we are
2:49:54
an inherently racist country, that our history is racist, and that it should
2:49:58
be a or at least soiled, and that those that were considered heroes should
2:50:05
no longer be considered heroes because they are inherently stained with the sin of slavery
2:50:11
or racism or what have you. And pride in our country really goes to
2:50:16
the heart the heart of why I am so pessimistic about the future, because
2:50:22
if you don't really believe in America, then you're not going to be willing
2:50:28
to fight for it. And if you're not willing to fight for it,
2:50:31
it's eventually going to be lost, especially when trust in our institutions and our
2:50:37
leaders has never been lower. And look, I'm a cynic, I'm a
2:50:41
skeptic, I'm not blind. I realize that our institutions and our leaders are
2:50:48
extremely flawed, maybe more so than ever before, but it's gone too far,
2:50:56
especially on the right, there is zero trust, zero trust in any
2:51:01
of our institutions, whether especially in law enforcement and anything regarding Donald Trump.
2:51:07
They don't, you know, Republicans don't even believe in our election system anymore.
2:51:11
They think that elections are rigged. I mean everything is a conspiracy.
2:51:16
I mean, we don't believe in anything. It's one thing to be skeptical,
2:51:20
but to believe in nothing when there is no objective truth anymore, that
2:51:26
is incredibly dangerous. And of course, this podcast, The Death of Journalism,
2:51:31
is focused in large part on the entire idea that the death of journalism
2:51:35
is caused an enormous and significant collapse in trust in our institutions, that the
2:51:43
fourth of State is now lost, all of its credibility. Journalism is dead.
2:51:50
It's a huge part of the reason why people are distrustful of everything.
2:51:54
They don't even believe their eyes and ears anymore, because they've been lied to
2:52:00
far too long by institutions that used to be trusted, specifically the mainstream news
2:52:05
media, and what we have seen as a result is the death of truth
2:52:09
being replaced by desperate bids on the part of some media outlets to maintain some
2:52:15
semblance of popularity so that they don't also go the way of the Dodo bird,
2:52:22
as many media outlets are doing because their business model is totally and completely
2:52:26
broken. So journalism plays a huge part in this entire situation. The lack
2:52:35
of trust could have been avoided if the media had not blown all their credibility
2:52:41
in a desperate attempt to deal with their broken business model. That's probably at
2:52:46
the heart of why this podcast exists. And it's not just news media.
2:52:52
You know, Hollywood and television used to be part of what made America great.
2:52:56
And you know, Hollywood at one point was very, very concerned.
2:53:01
It was almost a propaganda arm of the US government's supposedly during World War Two.
2:53:05
But by and large, you know, Hollywood and television until recent decades
2:53:11
was a positive and net positive when it came they're not just making America fun
2:53:16
and making it the place where the whole world got its entertainment, but also
2:53:22
in building and maintaining so much of the foundation that made America great. But
2:53:28
because everything got splintered, and because Hollywood went woke and television did the same
2:53:35
and all the rules changed, a positive has become largely a negative. Even
2:53:41
though there's never been more entertainment options, more films being made, more TV
2:53:48
shows being made, you know, most of them are crap, and most
2:53:52
of them have negative implications on our culture, and none of them are bringing
2:53:58
people together. Because there's so many options, there's very little that we have
2:54:03
in common. And that's another problematic element of this whole situation. And I've
2:54:09
talked already in this very long dissertation about where America is and where it's going,
2:54:15
about this issue of humans being flawed and therefore self policing being so important.
2:54:20
I should have mentioned that an integral part of American culture was that we
2:54:26
had these things called shame and pride. That shame was an incredibly negative influencer
2:54:35
of behavior. In other words, you didn't want to be shamed, so
2:54:41
therefore you wouldn't do things that would get you shamed. And you had pride,
2:54:46
which made you do things that you didn't necessarily have to do, but
2:54:48
you did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. You wanted
2:54:50
to feel good about yourself, and pride mattered. We've talked a lot about
2:54:56
the death of all Star games sports, Well, that happens because there is
2:55:01
no pride, there is no shame, And it's just one small example of
2:55:05
thousands of other things where behavior has been completely changed in this country because shame
2:55:11
and pride are no longer dominant influences. And so all of this is all
2:55:18
coming together in a relatively short period of time. And I look at them
2:55:24
as weapons of destruction that America is facing. And you know, if I
2:55:30
had to put together a list of the specific weapons of destruction, I've talked
2:55:35
a lot about them before on the podcast, but I've never really listed them.
2:55:39
But here are the weapons of destruction as I see them, for what
2:55:43
has laughed of what was once this great United States of America. There's no
2:55:48
question that the race issue and DEI diversity, equity and inclusion, and the
2:55:54
changing of equality to equity is on this list, and it's probably right at
2:55:58
the very top of the list. The climate change hysteria and the lockdowns that
2:56:03
will inevitably come because of them is absolutely on this list. The feminization of
2:56:07
our culture. And I'm a married man with two daughters. I love feminization
2:56:13
is great, but we've gone too far when it comes to the feminization of
2:56:16
our culture. The death of truth, the prevalence now and the acceptance of
2:56:22
censorship even in the country that has the First Amendment, which we saw during
2:56:26
COVID in dramatic ways, is absolutely on this list. The dumbing down of
2:56:33
the electorate. I mean, the public education system has failed dramatically and our
2:56:39
electorate is frankly dumb on both sides, On both sides. Twitter has taught
2:56:45
me this in a very dramatic fashion, that both the far right and the
2:56:50
far left are made up mostly of very dumb, ignorant, and uneducated people,
2:56:58
the likes of which our founding fathers would never have even dreamed was possible,
2:57:01
and certainly they would never have agreed to give them the vote if they
2:57:05
had known it was going to get to this level of ignorance. This generation,
2:57:11
this generation z well, it has a lot of positives. There are
2:57:15
a lot of great kids that are going to come out of Generation Z,
2:57:18
some incredibly high achievers. I want to make that clear, but the disparity
2:57:24
between the high achievers and the low achievers has never been greater. And this
2:57:28
generation as a whole, this social media generation that has grown up with their
2:57:33
faces and their phones and all the negative elements that go along with social media,
2:57:39
they are going to be a major, major, major problem, especially
2:57:43
as time goes on and they go on from being students and not really having
2:57:48
a lot of power and bitching and moaning about how their life is tough to
2:57:52
actually being in positions of power, which is going to happen in fairly short
2:57:56
order from a cultural perspective, and aging demographics is a large part of this
2:58:03
weapon of destruction because we're gonna have a ton of people that are going to
2:58:07
become old and infirmed and need to be taken care of. And we're gonna
2:58:11
have this Generation Z all of a sudden in significant control of what's happening,
2:58:16
and that is going to be a big, big problem. And then of
2:58:20
course there's the economics, and I'll be the first acknowledge it is amazing that
2:58:24
our economy has been able to recover in many ways post COVID, the way
2:58:30
that it has. I mean, it's just it is an amazing thing,
2:58:33
how resilient our economy is now. Of course, it's it's living largely on
2:58:39
a facade, which is that we've built up this ridiculous, crushing debt that
2:58:43
eventually is going to have to be dealt with in some way, shape or
2:58:46
form. I mean, it's gotten to just ridiculous proportions, and so to
2:58:52
a large extent, this extremely good economy is a facade. But it is
2:58:58
amazing how resilient in many ways the American economy has been, which I think
2:59:03
is a testament to how great it used to be. So much of the
2:59:07
history of America is about, my God, we were so great. We
2:59:11
were willing and able to endure all sorts of stupidity because we knew it was
2:59:16
still going to be great. Now, eventually we're going to run out of
2:59:18
that capital. Eventually this is all going to come home to roost when I
2:59:22
don't know, but you know, the economy and life itself, you know,
2:59:28
as easy as it's ever been. Our poor people are richer than the
2:59:31
poor people ever have been, and probably the history of humanity, and while
2:59:37
hardly perfect, the economy is hanging in there in a way that looks at
2:59:43
least somewhat sustainable, depending on what we do about the debt situation in the
2:59:46
long run and as far as the data is concerned. One of my greatest
2:59:52
economic fears, which I've already alluded to, but I want to briefly get
2:59:56
into further, is this issue of property rights. I have thought a lot
3:00:01
about this, and I think that California is sending the signal that very few
3:00:07
people are fully understanding that the liberal agenda in the long run is to effectively
3:00:13
take away property rights. I really believe this. There's been a lot of
3:00:16
talk about taxing assets and unrealized gains, and I just think logistically that's going
3:00:24
to be difficult for a whole lot of reasons. But I think that in
3:00:28
not too distant future, both the states and the federal government are gonna make
3:00:35
the argument that you know, what, we own the land, that we
3:00:41
own the land that citizens and people who you know, actually buy the land,
3:00:48
you don't really own it. And I think this is going to open
3:00:52
up an entire area, and I don't know exactly how it's going to happen.
3:00:56
I think the Supreme Court is going to play a significant role on this.
3:01:00
It's never happened on the federal level before, but I've done some investigation
3:01:03
into it, and it seems kind of vague as to why the federal government
3:01:07
has never been thought to be able to institute some sort of property tax.
3:01:11
But the only way I see out of this debt crisis. The greatest asset
3:01:16
we have as a country is our land, and I think that we're going
3:01:22
to see a federal property tax. I think we're going to see essentially a
3:01:26
situation where people are taxed out of owning their property, that only the super
3:01:31
rich will still be able to maintain their property by paying these taxes, and
3:01:35
that when you can't pay these taxes, you will become a renter from the
3:01:41
government. Effectively, everything will This will eventually happen in probably Blue states first,
3:01:48
where you will essentially be renting your property not from an individual owner,
3:01:54
but from the government itself. I know this sounds preposterous to a lot of
3:01:58
people, but here in California during COVID, I actually sold a rental property
3:02:03
in Calabasas in La County because I was looking around looking at how these COVID
3:02:09
rules were being implemented and what it said about the lack of value of personal
3:02:15
private property, and I saw the future and I was like, you know
3:02:18
what, I'm out of this now. I probably sold too soon because prices
3:02:22
to continue to go up. But there have been all sorts of rules in
3:02:26
Beverly Hills and Santa Monica that have restricted what people are able to do with
3:02:31
their own property when it comes. And this was a rental property, so
3:02:35
I had to deal with, you know, being a landlord and having a
3:02:37
tenant that they're all sorts of restrictions, all of which are in the best
3:02:43
interest of the tenant, none of which are in the best interest of the
3:02:46
landlord. That showed me, holy shit, I don't really own this property.
3:02:50
The state thinks it owns this property. And that is a cancer that
3:02:56
I think is going to grow and grow, not just because of liberal but
3:03:00
because of this impetus of the debt. That this is going to be the
3:03:03
only way that the debt can ever be handled in any significant fashion because the
3:03:09
prop you know, this is where most of the value in the country is
3:03:15
the property, and they can actually make at least somewhat of a not sensible
3:03:18
but theoretical argument that the property belongs to the state or the federal government.
3:03:24
And so I think that's going to be the issue that ends up splitting America
3:03:28
apart. If I had to make one prediction about how we're going to split
3:03:31
apart or you know, how this is going to go down. I don't
3:03:35
think necessarily think it's going to be a civil war. I mean where there's
3:03:37
a movie coming out in the next month or so called civil war. I
3:03:41
don't necessarily think it's going to be a fight. I think it's going to
3:03:45
be succession, and I think it's and I think property rights could very well
3:03:48
be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. A lot of the Red
3:03:54
states break apart from the Blue States, and you end up with three basic
3:04:00
countries. That's my general prediction. I think the Midwest and the Northeast.
3:04:05
I think the southeast through the lower Midwest, the upper Midwest, kind of
3:04:09
the diagonal line from Florida up into the Dakotas. I think that'll be one
3:04:15
country, and then you're gonna have the West Coast be another country itself.
3:04:18
Because philosophically, those three areas of the country have very little in common,
3:04:24
and have very and have less and less in common on almost a daily basis.
3:04:28
Now, when it's gonna happen, I don't know what's gonna spark it.
3:04:31
I don't know. It's gonna take a while. I think it'll take
3:04:35
at least ten to fifteen years. I always say ten to fifteen years on
3:04:39
a lot of different things, whether it's what's gonna happen in the National Football
3:04:43
League or in other areas of life. And that's not an arbitrary figure because
3:04:48
in ten to fifteen years, all institutional memory of what America was will effectively
3:04:54
be lost for the majority of the population. We will have people who who
3:05:00
are now twenty five who will be forty who are going to be in charge,
3:05:05
and people who are currently sixty who are in charge will be seventy five,
3:05:11
and despite what Joe Biden and Donald Trump show, us will be you
3:05:15
know, either dead, retired, or not really all that powerful anymore.
3:05:20
And so in that fifth ten to fifteen year period, I think we're going
3:05:24
to see a major shift that this institutional memory is going to be lost.
3:05:28
And at that point, especially if the Supreme Court is in liberal hands and
3:05:33
Clarence Thomas has been replaced by a liberal. If that happens, then all
3:05:37
bets are off. Katie bar the door. It's going to be COVID all
3:05:41
over again, only permanently. That's my view of what's going to happen in
3:05:46
America now. There are a few things that could spark this even sooner than
3:05:52
ten to fifteen years. You know. One of the things that I've gone
3:05:54
through as far as the scenarios for this twenty twenty four election, and I
3:05:58
tweeted this the other day, and I did not do this haphazardly. This
3:06:03
was after a lot of research. There is a legitimate chance. There is
3:06:07
a legitimate chance that this election finishes in a two sixty nine two sixty nine
3:06:15
electoral College tie. And it wouldn't take all that much for this to happen.
3:06:20
All that would have to happen is Joe Biden win the northern toss up
3:06:24
states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which I think is very likely,
3:06:30
Trump wins the I guess you'd call them the southern toss up states Georgia,
3:06:33
Arizona, and Nevada, which I think is very plausible, and then Trump
3:06:39
wins that one electoral College seat in Maine where they divide it up by congressional
3:06:45
districts, the second congressional district in Maine, where he is winning by a
3:06:50
large margin right now, he's act in fact even winning the state of Maine.
3:06:52
But I think Biden would probably end up winning the state of Maine while
3:06:56
losing that second congressional district. And if Trump wins all the congressional districts in
3:07:01
Nebraska, which he did in twenty sixteen, he did not in twenty twenty,
3:07:05
but I think that's very plausible as well, if all that happens.
3:07:09
And there's some big ifs there, but all of that is perfectly logical,
3:07:13
and it makes sense not just individually but as a total narrative for an election
3:07:18
given the geography involved here. If that happens, we're in a two sixty
3:07:22
nine to sixty nine tie. And you know what that means. That means
3:07:26
the end of America. I don't believe there's any chance that America survives at
3:07:31
two sixty nine to sixty nine tie involving Donald Trump and Joe Biden for a
3:07:37
bunch of reasons. I mean, it would go the presidency would go to
3:07:41
the House of Representatives, the Senate would go I mean, the vice presidency
3:07:45
would go to the Senate, which, by the way, the Senate could
3:07:46
be fifty to fifties. I don't even know what the hell they would do.
3:07:48
Then I tried to research it. I couldn't figure it out for myself.
3:07:52
What would happen under a fifty to fifty Senate trying to figure out who
3:07:56
the vice president of the United States is? And you know, you would
3:07:58
think think Republicans would control enough state congressional houses, in other words, they
3:08:07
would have the majority in each state. Currently you know that would be the
3:08:11
case, but it's based upon the new Congress, and I think Republicans are
3:08:15
going to lose Congress and the House of Representatives. But in theory, you
3:08:18
would probably have Trump win. But that would be a brutal, brutal,
3:08:24
unbelievably divisive situation that I don't see how America could survive it. And so,
3:08:31
you know, that's not a fifty percent shot, it's not even a
3:08:33
thirty percent shot. But I think it's in the ten to twenty percent chance
3:08:37
right now. The election we're held right now, I think there's a ten
3:08:41
to twenty maybe twenty five percent chance we're looking at a two sixty nine two
3:08:46
sixty nine tie and that ten to fifteen year window is shut because there's no
3:08:52
way we survived that. There's just no way. Now I realize that all
3:08:56
of this is incredibly depressing and concerning. Part of why I'm doing this is
3:09:01
not just because this is the last episode of the free edition of the Death
3:09:05
of Journalism podcasts, and for a lot of people, this will be the
3:09:07
last chance I get to fully expound on my thoughts on this incredibly important topic.
3:09:13
But it's also because I want people to know what we're up against.
3:09:16
I think one of the many reasons why we are so vulnerable to what's going
3:09:20
to happen in the next ten to twenty years in this country is that there's
3:09:26
a huge portion of the population that has no idea this is where we're heading,
3:09:31
because the media has kept them in the dark, and they're busy with
3:09:33
their own lives and they're not paying attention, and they're a bit pollyannish and
3:09:37
they're naive, they're not understanding what's really happening. I mean that whole Google
3:09:45
Gemini AI situation should have been a wake up call, For instance, for
3:09:48
white people about how much the liberal establishment is really targeting them for extinction.
3:09:54
But that's just a part of this equation. This is not really even a
3:09:56
race thing at all. This is about who we are as an and if
3:10:01
I had one wish to be granted here, it's that everybody in America at
3:10:07
least know this is on the table, that this is where we're heading.
3:10:13
That's the most frustrating part of this, because I believe that if everybody in
3:10:18
America listen to what I just say and understood how serious this issue is and
3:10:24
how real the end of America could be in a very short period of time,
3:10:31
at least in America as we know it. If everyone knew that,
3:10:35
I think there would still be a chance to save this. That's why I
3:10:37
believed in the RHN de Santas campaign. I thought that was a path where
3:10:41
there was at least a theoretical chance we could save ourselves, not because DeSantis
3:10:46
is perfect or great or magical, just because I saw a path there,
3:10:50
because he got it and he gets things done, and there would be still
3:10:56
in twenty twenty four enough Americans who would so with that that the spirit of
3:11:01
America was still alive enough in them that if they understood what we were up
3:11:07
against, they would fight back against it, and they would do what was
3:11:11
necessary to preserve it for their children and their children's children. But there's not
3:11:16
enough of those people, because not enough people understand the reality of the situation.
3:11:22
And so that's a large part of what's motivating. Not that I can
3:11:24
make any goddamn difference in this, but I at least want to play my
3:11:28
very very small role, and people who have followed my career for a long
3:11:33
time, you need understand that this is what's happening. This is real.
3:11:39
And on the positive side, I do believe that the spirit of America still
3:11:43
exists in over fifty percent of the population. I just don't think they understand
3:11:50
the urgency and they don't understand the path for how the hell we get out
3:11:54
of this. And that's why I'm so pessimistic that we're not going to be
3:11:58
able to get out of this, that our doom is set when and how,
3:12:03
I don't know. It's not, you know, unless we get a
3:12:05
two sixty nine two sixty nine electoral college tie. I don't think it's going
3:12:09
to be this year. I don't think it will be next year. But
3:12:11
sometime in at least the next ten to twenty years, it's gonna happen,
3:12:16
and it's going to be dramatic, and we're never gonna be able to get
3:12:18
it back, and it may already be too late, the patient already may
3:12:22
be terminal. But I at least want people to understand this is what we're
3:12:28
facing. This is the situation, and that's why I was so adamant that
3:12:33
Donald Trump not be the Republican presidential nominee when there was the option of Rondo
3:12:37
Sanders. Now that that's passed, I have to accept, Okay, this
3:12:41
is the situation, and there may not be a path out of this,
3:12:46
even though I've already bizarrely said that if you if you want to keep a
3:12:50
few more sands in that hour glass, maybe you go with Donald Trump instead
3:12:54
of Joe Biden. So I hope that that very long diatribe, which you
3:13:01
probably never heard from anyone else before, was at least someone understandable and appreciated.
3:13:07
I don't know if it was or not, but it was at least
3:13:09
a little bit cathartic to me, and I wanted to make this last free
3:13:11
episode of the podcast at least a little bit special so that's what motivated me
3:13:16
to do this. Now with that said, I want to thank Peter,
3:13:22
the Dutch digital marketing man for sponsoring this version of the podcast. In the
3:13:28
new version, there will not be commercials, so we'll not be having a
3:13:31
sponsor of the new version of the Death of Journalism podcast. I want to
3:13:35
thank all those who have supported my work over the years. I realized that
3:13:41
many of you this is going to be the end because I totally understand that
3:13:43
you don't want to be part of a paid subscription model podcast. I understand
3:13:48
and respect that. I'm sorry that we have to go this route, but
3:13:54
I assure you there was no choice here. I do ask you to please
3:13:58
stay subscribed to this podcast, the free version for snippets, as well as
3:14:03
major updates that may or may not happen in the future regarding what's going on
3:14:09
with the podcast and my career, because there's still the possibility that there could
3:14:13
be some semblance of dramatic change. I don't anticipate that. I'm still being
3:14:18
told that that's still in the works, but I don't believe it. But
3:14:22
it's not beyond the realm of possibility. So stay tuned is basically what I'm
3:14:28
trying to say, and thanks so much for your support. Thanks for listening,
3:14:31
and I hope you'll stick with us as we head to the new version
3:14:35
of the podcast where you'll be able to subscribe, and that'll begin in March.
3:14:41
March fifth will be the first episode of the new edition of the Death
3:14:45
of Journalism Podcasts, So if you're sticking with us, stay tuned you'll be
3:14:50
hearing from me again soon. If not, thanks so much for listening and
3:14:54
for your support. This has been the Death of Journalism podcasts. I'm John
3:14:58
Zigler. You good luck, because we're all definitely gonna need it.