0:00

Late

0:00

last week, way out in the Nevada

0:02

Black Rock Desert, the high priests of

0:04

Burning Man ignited a 26-foot

0:07

tall, 13-foot wide altar,

0:10

which burned for 20 minutes before

0:12

collapsing to reveal a giant

0:14

steel idol of a phoenix, which,

0:17

according to aforementioned high priests,

0:20

supposedly had something to do with Ukraine.

0:23

Then, the entire place got

0:25

flooded.

0:26

An unexpected and highly unusual

0:29

storm appeared right over

0:31

the festival, dumping three

0:34

to four months worth of rain,

0:36

at least, on the desert. The

0:39

total rainfall is estimated

0:41

as having been between half an inch and

0:43

a full inch.

0:44

Doesn't necessarily sound like a lot, but we're talking

0:46

about the desert, so to put that in perspective,

0:49

just a fifth of an inch was

0:51

expected for the entire month

0:54

of September. As a result, 70,000

0:58

people

0:58

have been trapped in the mud for days,

1:01

with attendees being told to conserve food

1:03

and water, which are apparently in short

1:05

supply.

1:07

Now, I don't

1:09

want to read too much into it, but as

1:12

a general rule, it seems to

1:14

me that one should avoid traveling

1:17

to the desert for week-long bacchanalian

1:20

orgies that culminate in the worship of giant

1:22

burning idols.

1:25

It never turns out well.

1:27

Whatever the burning man people are seeking,

1:30

whether it be banal thrills like drugs

1:32

and weird sex, or the more esoteric

1:35

spiritual stuff to which those

1:38

sensual pleasures point,

1:40

is not going to make them happy.

1:42

They are not going to find what they

1:44

are looking for,

1:46

because eventually, the

1:47

music is going to end,

1:49

and the drugs are going to wear off, and

1:51

the sex is going to reach its climax, and

1:54

the people who place their hope in dead idols

1:57

are going to find themselves still unsatisfied.

2:00

Hungry, thirsty, and covered in filth.

2:04

I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show.

2:21

Welcome

2:26

back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Good

2:28

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2:42

The libs are gonna do COVID again. They're

2:45

already in the process of doing COVID

2:47

again. The last COVID was begun

2:50

in the year before the 2020 presidential election.

2:53

Now we're the year before the 2024 presidential election

2:55

and they are doing COVID. But

2:58

it's a little different this time and

3:00

Dr. Fauci is facing some heat. We'll get to it in a second. First though,

3:02

speaking of looking for happiness in all the wrong places,

3:04

there's a woman who's gone totally viral and

3:07

she's just a random woman. No one's ever heard

3:09

of her before. She posts a lot

3:11

of content on social media so she clearly wants

3:14

to be a public person. But until this weekend,

3:16

she had been a private person. And I think it was Walsh

3:18

actually. I think it was Matt who

3:20

discovered this woman's TikTok and made

3:22

her go viral. She's gone

3:24

viral for explaining how

3:27

happy she is not to be married

3:29

and not to have children

3:31

because she gets to sleep in late and drink

3:33

too much and go to concerts and things like that. And

3:35

she's gone viral because while her words

3:38

say that she's very happy, her eyes

3:41

and her demeanor and the tone of her voice tell

3:43

a different story.

3:45

It's 10.45 a.m. on a Saturday.

3:48

I'm 29 and single and I don't have kids yet. Here's

3:50

what your Saturday morning looks like when you're

3:52

single at 29 and you don't have a kid

3:55

running around the house. I didn't rise

3:57

from my bed until 10.15. Every time

3:59

I thought.

3:59

I should probably get up and do something. I thought, why?

4:02

Nobody's making me. I'm not missing out on anything.

4:05

I went to Beyonce last night and I didn't get home

4:07

until 1 a.m. and I danced and drank my

4:09

little heart out and I didn't pay a babysitter to

4:11

watch my kids as I did that. And I woke up a tad

4:13

hungover this morning, which is probably why I was in

4:15

bed for so long. And I was just scrolling on my

4:17

phone and I saw a picture of Shakshuka and I

4:19

thought, you know what sounds really good?

4:21

Maybe I'm gonna learn how to make Shakshuka today.

4:24

Cause I have no plan. Can

4:26

I put a pause here? This woman had my total

4:28

sympathy. A lot of conservatives watched

4:31

this and reacted with scorn and derision. She

4:33

had my total sympathy until she mentioned

4:35

Shakshuka,

4:37

which is disgusting. Shakshuka is

4:39

this breakfast dish where

4:41

you poach eggs in

4:43

a spaghetti sauce and it's just gross.

4:46

And poached eggs are fine. I like poached eggs

4:48

and spaghetti sauce I like very much, of course,

4:50

and all sorts of

4:52

different dishes. But you put those two things together,

4:55

it's gross. I like veal salt in boca. I

4:57

like green jolly ranchers. I don't wanna put them together.

4:59

So anyway, that's where she really started to lose

5:01

me and her monologue

5:03

went downhill from there.

5:05

Cause I have no plans and I don't have kids and

5:07

I don't have a husband and I don't have errands

5:09

to run. I can go to the grocery store and

5:12

learn how to make Shakshuka. So that's on my agenda

5:14

today. Also on my agenda, probably a rewatch

5:16

of some Real Housewives of New York. I'm also doing

5:18

a rewatch of normal people on Hulu, which is really

5:21

spicy and I highly recommend. Weirdly I'm

5:23

into this documentary on Netflix about Blue Zone

5:25

countries. So I've got a pretty stacked day.

5:27

Anyway, I say all this to say,

5:30

never I'm hard on myself about why I'm not

5:32

married and I don't have kids and I should be further

5:34

along at 29, almost 30. I

5:36

wouldn't wanna do anything else this Saturday.

5:39

I know that you can do all these things when

5:41

you have kids and you're married and I

5:43

understand, but the effortlessness

5:46

and ease of my life, just kind

5:48

of focusing on myself and the Shakshuka

5:50

I wanna make or the Beyonce concert

5:52

I wanna go to really pays off

5:55

when I'm hard on myself for not being

5:57

where society tells me I should be in life.

5:59

Okay, I had even

6:02

putting the shakshuka aside, I have basically nothing

6:04

but sympathy for this woman because we

6:07

all have friends who are like this woman.

6:09

Some among us listening

6:11

right now might be in the same spot,

6:14

which is,

6:15

you got duped by society, our entire

6:17

culture told you to put off getting married,

6:20

don't have kids, just focus on your

6:22

career, get an endless series of degrees,

6:25

don't go to church, don't believe in anything

6:27

above yourself, life is about nothing more than

6:29

binging Netflix and traveling around the

6:31

world and having fun experiences and going to brunch.

6:33

That's what our culture tells people from

6:36

the age of,

6:38

I don't know, I guess from in the womb, all

6:41

the way up until the music

6:43

stops, all the way up until the

6:45

brunches stop being quite so tasty and

6:48

the

6:49

Real Housewives reruns stop being

6:51

so interesting, and the shakshuka stops

6:54

being so satisfying to make.

6:57

So I have total sympathy for her. And

6:59

if she were merely trying to say that

7:04

while

7:04

her eyes and the tone of her voice and

7:07

the very fact that she's pleading for attention on social

7:09

media shows that she's obviously

7:11

not totally happy and she does

7:13

wish that she were married and she does wish she

7:15

had kids, but it hasn't happened yet. And so she's

7:17

gonna bear her difficulties with resignation

7:20

until

7:21

things turn around, I wouldn't

7:24

even bring it up.

7:25

The problem here is that she

7:28

is exalting the very things that

7:30

make people miserable. And it's because of

7:32

a misunderstanding of joy and

7:35

a misunderstanding of earthly

7:37

happiness, which we'll get to in one

7:39

second. They say that money can't

7:41

buy happiness, but it can make

7:44

you secure to have the material things so that you

7:46

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8:58

George Bernard Shaw had a very

9:00

good line, which is that

9:03

hell is the

9:05

place where you have nothing to do but amuse

9:07

yourself.

9:09

George Bernard Shaw was a socialist, atheist

9:11

playwright and he was wrong about a great many things. But

9:13

even when he was wrong, he would have these piercing

9:16

moments of insight in a lot of his plays. G.K.

9:18

Chesterton, the great conservative Catholic

9:20

author, he was friends with Shaw. And

9:23

this is one of my favorite lines from Shaw. And

9:26

even the whole context of this line is

9:28

even better than

9:30

the single phrase itself. It comes from

9:33

an act of a play called Don Juan in

9:35

Hell.

9:39

And the play is Man and Superman. And

9:41

a

9:42

woman, Anna says, "'These devils

9:44

are mocking me, I had better pray.' And

9:46

the statue consoling her says, "'No, no, no,

9:48

my child, do not pray. If you do, you

9:51

will throw away the main advantage of this place,

9:53

they're in hell.' Written over the

9:55

gate here are the words, leave every hope

9:57

behind ye who enter, which is a line to me."

10:00

and Shaw borrowed from Dante. Only

10:02

think what a relief that is for what

10:04

is hope, a form of moral responsibility.

10:07

Here in hell, there is no hope and

10:09

consequently no duty, no work,

10:11

nothing to be gained by praying, nothing

10:14

to be lost by doing what you like. Hell

10:16

in short is a place where you have

10:18

nothing to do but amuse yourself.

10:21

At this moment, Don Juan sighs deeply.

10:26

This is why

10:27

people who retire

10:30

often don't live very long.

10:32

Some people have a great retirement but the

10:34

people I've noticed who have a great

10:36

retirement are the people who

10:39

find a purpose in retirement. Maybe

10:41

the purpose is to manage their

10:43

family. Maybe the purpose is to

10:45

get involved politically. Maybe the purpose is to take

10:48

up a new hobby or

10:50

to join a group or to

10:52

write your memoir or to investigate

10:55

genealogy or to plan the family reunion.

10:57

But the people who just in retirement

11:00

go out and decide they're gonna

11:02

hang out,

11:03

they often don't make it very long. They drink too much,

11:06

they get depressed. We all get depressed, why?

11:08

Because happiness is not

11:11

just receiving passive pleasures. Happiness,

11:14

our good buddy, Uncle Aristotle noted about 2400

11:16

years ago, is excellent rational

11:18

activity in accordance with virtue.

11:21

So happiness involves activity and

11:24

it's activity done very well and it's

11:26

that activity that is rational. It's

11:28

not totally irrational activity like going out and I don't know, doing

11:31

a bunch of drugs and making

11:33

a nuisance of yourself and worshiping idols in the desert is

11:35

rational activity that is in accordance

11:38

with

11:38

virtue.

11:40

That's what's going to make us happy. What that

11:42

woman is describing is broadly

11:44

true. When you don't have kids, you get to wake up late,

11:47

you get to watch whatever TV shows you want, you

11:49

get to

11:50

make shakshuka

11:52

if that is something that one would want to

11:54

do. You get to go out and drink too much, you

11:57

get to go to whatever concert you want to

11:59

go to.

11:59

that will make you

12:02

depressed. And this is why there are skyrocketing

12:04

rates of depression and anxiety. It's no coincidence

12:06

that as marriage rates plummet, as childbirth

12:09

rates plummet, the rates of anxiety

12:11

and depression are increasing because brunch

12:13

is not actually that fun.

12:16

It's not fun for a long time. So I don't mean

12:18

to just scold this woman. I don't mean to mock her

12:20

in any way, but it

12:24

is very dangerous for

12:26

people who as a self-defense

12:28

mechanism or a coping mechanism, decide

12:30

that they're going to exalt the behaviors that

12:32

make everybody miserable. That's a dangerous

12:35

thing. The first step to fixing

12:37

the problem and individuals and society broadly

12:39

have a lot of problems right now. The first step is

12:41

admitting that you have a problem. And

12:44

in this case, the problem is that

12:46

the Beyonce concert and

12:49

staying out too late and drinking and staying in your bed all

12:51

day and even eating shakshuka

12:54

as your raison d'etre, those are not the

12:56

activities of happy, joyful people. Those

12:59

are the kinds of things that depressives do. Depressives

13:01

drink too much and they stay in bed all day and

13:03

they're listless and they kind of wander around and

13:06

they're

13:07

just not full of joy. So

13:10

if we want to turn that around, you've got

13:12

to

13:13

put that bad advice aside, stop coping,

13:15

recognize there's a problem and then fix it. You can fix

13:18

it, man. Or you don't need to stay

13:20

in bed all day and listen to Beyonce and eat shakshuka. Speaking

13:22

of social bonds, Truth

13:25

Social might be going the way of

13:27

the dodo. Truth Social is Trump's alternative

13:29

to Twitter and Truth Social

13:33

was begun back in October of 2021 and

13:36

now it might collapse within

13:38

days. And it might collapse because Trump

13:41

Media and Technology Group,

13:44

which is the parent company for Truth Social

13:46

was going to merge with Digital World Acquisition

13:49

Corporation, which is a Miami-based company. And

13:52

they were then going to go public via a SPAC.

13:55

A SPAC is a special purpose acquisition

13:58

company. And anyway, this is all sort of.

14:00

sort of bunch of background business, blah, blah, blah.

14:02

But the upshot is the two companies had between 12 and 18

14:05

months to complete the merger. The deadline

14:07

has been extended at least five times. It's now scheduled

14:09

for September 5th. Shareholder

14:11

meeting is scheduled. I suspect Trump doesn't

14:14

want to keep True Social around anymore because

14:16

I think Trump wants to go back to Twitter, now known

14:18

as X, because that's

14:20

the way that he's gonna reach the most people. But

14:23

what happens then? What happens if True Social

14:25

collapses? Is this good for Trump? Is

14:27

this bad for Trump? I

14:29

think basically it would be good for Trump. And I think

14:31

it would be good for Trump because one, he

14:34

can now save face

14:36

since Elon bought Twitter.

14:38

The point of True Social was to give

14:40

conservatives an alternative in social media. The

14:42

libs controlled all of social media. So here's an alternative.

14:45

Well, then Elon Musk spent 44 billion bucks and

14:47

bought Twitter and has made Twitter much

14:49

more amenable to conservatives and

14:52

has defended the right of conservatives to speak on Twitter

14:54

and is now potentially even suing left-wing

14:57

activist groups that are trying to pressure

14:59

advertisers to defund Twitter. He's

15:02

really put his money where our mouths are.

15:04

So Trump can save face and say, look, the thing that I

15:06

wanted to accomplish with True Social

15:08

has now been accomplished through Elon Musk.

15:10

So I'm going back

15:12

to Twitter. I mean, the basic reason

15:14

that Trump started True Social was that he was deplatformed.

15:17

He was kicked off of all these services, even

15:19

when he was the sitting president of the United States. Well, now he's

15:21

been invited back on and that is largely thanks

15:23

to Elon Musk. So he can say, look, mission accomplished,

15:25

right? But

15:27

what about the black

15:30

mark on his record here? Trump

15:32

is going to be called a failure because

15:35

True Social was a failure. I

15:38

don't think that matters. And I especially don't think that

15:40

matters to Trump. Trump has

15:43

failed at many, many things.

15:45

And I say this with love and admiration. He

15:47

failed at the vodka, he failed at the stakes,

15:50

he failed at the airplanes. He

15:52

failed at a lot, man. I'm not even getting

15:54

into what happened when he was president.

15:57

Trump is also one of the most successful people

16:00

on planet earth.

16:02

That's undeniable. I know the Trump haters want to deny

16:04

that. This man is extremely successful. If

16:06

you fly around in a gigantic

16:08

jumbo jet for your entire adult life, you're

16:10

a success. If you get yourself elected

16:13

president the first time that you really officially

16:15

try it, you're a big success. If

16:17

you manage to arouse the ire

16:19

of America's enemies abroad and

16:22

the enemies within the deep

16:24

state apparatchiks who consistently tried to undermine

16:26

his campaign and his presidency, you're a success

16:28

man. You've actually done something.

16:30

Are these in opposition? No, not at all.

16:34

The most successful people I know

16:37

have also failed more

16:40

than just about anybody I know. And

16:43

this is a really important lesson. If you ever want

16:45

to succeed in life,

16:47

successful people tend

16:49

to fail at more things than

16:52

their critics ever even try.

16:55

And pride, which is

16:57

the queen of vice and the deadliest of the

16:59

seven deadly sins. Pride talks

17:02

in our ear and says, hey, don't

17:04

do this thing, you might fail at it. So

17:06

don't even try. Just, it'll be so humiliating.

17:09

If you, it'll be such a wound to your pride

17:12

if you

17:13

try and fail at something. Successful

17:15

people just ignore that voice and just

17:18

try things. And they often will throw spaghetti

17:20

at the wall. Think about

17:22

how many companies Trump has failed

17:25

at or Elon Musk has failed at, or

17:28

I don't know any of the successful people on planet

17:30

earth, if you go military

17:33

leaders, the failed military campaigns,

17:35

for goodness sakes, Winston Churchill, had he died before

17:37

the second world war, would have died a colossal failure,

17:40

but he just kept going. This is true

17:42

of every great statesman throughout history and

17:44

business leader and just anybody who's ever

17:46

done anything.

17:49

Really important lesson to take away. It's one of the

17:51

best lessons from Trump's public life.

17:53

And look, maybe he's gonna fail in the 2024 race. I

17:56

don't know.

17:57

But the one thing I'm damn sure of going

18:00

to try. And the only way that

18:02

he's possibly going to be successful, the only way that you

18:04

or any of us is possibly going to be successful at anything

18:07

is if we risk

18:08

failure. Don't worry about failure.

18:11

Successful people are going to fail more than

18:14

the losers ever even try. Speaking

18:16

of not trying,

18:17

Joe Biden is not even trying to

18:20

go visit East Palestine, Ohio. Do you

18:22

remember, this was some months ago now, our new cycles

18:24

fast, our memories, our attention

18:27

spans are that of a fruit fly. There was that

18:29

major train derailment and chemical

18:32

spill that poisoned this town in Ohio.

18:34

And Biden barely even wanted to mention

18:37

it. Trump shows up there, JD

18:39

Vance, the senator from Ohio, conservative

18:41

shows up there. Demands says, why

18:43

won't Joe Biden show up here?

18:45

And Joe Biden finally came out and promised, he said, okay, I'm

18:47

going to go to East Palestine, Ohio.

18:50

Well, now here we are months and months later. Joe still

18:53

hasn't shown up. Here's his excuse. I

18:56

said in March that you would go to East Palestine,

18:59

Ohio, you can hear how come you haven't gone

19:01

to East Palestine yet? Well, I haven't

19:03

had the occasion to go to East Palestine.

19:05

There's a lot going on here and

19:07

I just haven't been able to break. I was thinking

19:09

whether I'd go to East Palestine this

19:12

week, but I then was reminded I've got to

19:14

go literally around the world. I'm

19:16

going from from Washington

19:19

to India to Vietnam to

19:21

and so on. It's going to

19:23

be wild, but we're

19:26

making sure that East Palestine has

19:28

what they need materially in order

19:31

to deal with their problems.

19:33

His excuse as to why he hasn't visited

19:36

this troubled American town

19:38

that was the site of a major

19:42

corporate and government crime, let's

19:44

call it what it is, just an absolute

19:47

negligence and incompetence, at least so egregious

19:50

that it poison this whole town and his excuses.

19:52

Well, I can't go there because

19:54

I got to go literally everywhere else

19:56

on earth before I go there. I've

19:58

got to go.

19:59

anywhere else, anywhere and everywhere

20:02

else than this town in America. Joe

20:05

Biden cares so little about East Palestine, Ohio,

20:08

that in the months since that spill, he

20:11

hasn't even learned how to pronounce the name of the

20:13

town. He's

20:15

made plenty of time to go visit Kiev. He

20:18

can go visit Kiev just fine, and Vietnam,

20:21

and this place, and that place. He

20:25

just can't visit this troubled American town. Joe

20:28

Biden can spend 382 days on vacation.

20:30

Joe Biden has spent 40%, 40% of

20:34

his presidency on vacation, just doesn't have

20:36

that time to

20:37

visit East Palestine.

20:40

A more perfect example

20:42

of how little our ruling class cares

20:45

about America, I

20:47

have not seen. A widening

20:50

of the gulf between the elites and the

20:52

actual American people,

20:55

and a promise that populism

20:58

will continue. From the ruling class,

21:01

the beatings will continue until morale improves.

21:03

And from the now mostly the Republican

21:06

Party, but a little bit on the left too, the

21:09

populism is going to continue as our

21:11

political order becomes so decadent, decays

21:13

so much. And the

21:15

social bonds just collapse between

21:17

the rulers and the ruled. Now, one little

21:20

luxury here that all

21:21

of us, no matter how put upon we

21:24

are by our liberal elites, can enjoy

21:26

is delicious Good Ranchers. Right

21:28

now go to goodranchers.com, use code Knowles.

21:31

I don't know about you, but this summer

21:33

heat in Nashville felt hotter than

21:35

a $2 pistol, and that's because of the

21:37

inflation. We're feeling that heat in more ways than

21:39

one these days. The thing that I'm not sweating

21:42

though, is my meat price. Thanks to Good Ranchers,

21:44

my price is locked in for two years. And you might

21:46

be thinking a price lock guarantee

21:49

on meat. Yeah, it's amazing.

21:49

I don't know how they do it. It doesn't make any sense

21:52

with inflation and everything, and especially

21:54

that their price is already quite low for meat that

21:57

is much higher quality than anything you're getting

21:59

at the grocery store. or any other service right now. It's

22:01

just the greatest. Their hamburgers

22:03

are the best I've ever had. The steaks are

22:06

absolutely out of this world. The

22:08

New York strip in particular, I love. The ribeye

22:10

is excellent, I just had the other day. They've

22:12

got pork now, they got chicken, they've got

22:14

everything. I couldn't possibly recommend this

22:16

company enough. Their

22:19

meat is all 100% American. Steakhouse

22:21

quality, just amazing. GoodRanchers.com

22:24

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22:26

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22:28

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22:31

American meat

22:32

delivered.

22:33

Speaking of foreign places, France

22:35

has just prepared to enforce a ban on

22:38

Muslim dress in schools. So

22:41

this would be the abaya on women, you know, where

22:43

you can barely see any of the women. And

22:46

this would be the,

22:47

I forget the name of the dress for the Muslim men, but

22:49

that too, kaput, not allowed

22:51

to wear that in French schools anymore.

22:54

And this is a really good idea. Not because

22:56

I don't like the Muslims. I like the Muslims

22:59

very much. I have a great deal of respect for

23:01

the Muslims, but because France is France and France

23:03

should be allowed to be France. France doesn't need

23:05

to be

23:06

Saudi Arabia and Italy

23:08

doesn't need to be Eritrea

23:10

and America doesn't

23:13

need to be Guatemala.

23:14

Countries should be allowed to have their own

23:16

national identity and culture. And

23:18

people ought to be able to define

23:21

what that is and engage in their own

23:23

traditional practices. I read this book

23:26

over the weekend,

23:27

made a little bit of a splash. And

23:30

it was a book in Italian. It hasn't been translated yet

23:32

into English. And I thought, you know, there are

23:34

so few books in Italian that ever really seemed to

23:36

make the news. Dante,

23:38

Petrarch, Boccaccio,

23:41

is pretty much it, you know, there's

23:43

not a ton of Italian

23:46

literature that tends to make it up. One of these books

23:48

that did is by this Italian general, Roberto

23:51

Vannacci.

23:52

And it's called Il Mondo al Contrario,

23:54

the World Upside Down. The

23:57

point of this book is

23:59

that.

23:59

that we're living in, obviously in an upside down world

24:03

where people are losing their sovereignty

24:06

and traditional practices are being called hateful

24:08

and evil and being kicked out of society. And bizarre

24:10

eccentricities are being placed at the center of society.

24:13

And the tiny little minorities of

24:15

people, not even just racial minorities, but like

24:17

the minority of this imagined

24:20

identity group or that bizarrely

24:23

inclined psychosexual identity

24:25

group, they

24:28

get to dominate and they get to set all of

24:30

the rules for all of society. And that this is completely upside

24:32

down. This is

24:33

a book that became one of the best selling books

24:35

in Italy over the last year, and

24:38

it had to be self published.

24:40

And that tells you so much.

24:44

It's a very good thing that self publishing is now

24:46

advanced enough that anybody with a manuscript can

24:49

upload it to Amazon and have it mailed

24:51

out in physical form and it can become a best

24:53

seller. That's great. But

24:55

it's a very bad thing that many

24:57

books that are common sensical, that would

24:59

become best sellers have to be

25:01

self published because no publisher would ever

25:03

take it on. Because this book

25:06

by General Venace, sorry, former General

25:08

Venace, he just got fired for publishing the book. This

25:11

book by former General Venace was called racist,

25:14

sexist, homophobic, this is thatist.

25:16

That's how you know it's gonna be a good book. These days

25:19

when the liberal media says racist, sexist, phobic,

25:22

this kind of hateful, that kind of hateful, you

25:24

know it's probably gonna be a pretty interesting book.

25:27

And his firing for alleged

25:29

homophobia proves his point. We're now

25:31

in the world upside down.

25:33

That you can't extol a traditional

25:36

normal Christian,

25:38

just classical conception of family

25:40

life

25:41

without being called a hateful bigot and losing your

25:43

job for it. Even if your job is to go

25:45

kill your enemies, even if your job is a really

25:48

old school manly kind of job, you're

25:50

gonna lose it for that. The point

25:52

of the book that I found the most interesting is

25:55

when he focuses on what he calls the dictatorship

25:57

of minorities.

25:59

Maybe minorities of immigrant groups, maybe

26:02

sexual minorities of groups who identify

26:05

as whatever sort of

26:07

identities I'm not allowed to talk about on YouTube. I think you

26:09

catch the drift.

26:11

Maybe it's a religious minority,

26:14

maybe it's a cultural minority, but the

26:16

notion that even

26:18

a group that comprises three people can

26:23

upend the standards for everybody. Italy

26:27

is a Catholic country. It's about as

26:29

Catholic a country as you could possibly get. And

26:31

yet increasingly, Italy is told

26:33

from the secular authorities, from the

26:36

European Union, that they can't have

26:39

Christmas displays and celebrations

26:42

in public because some

26:45

people don't celebrate Christmas. The

26:49

vast majority of people in Italy celebrate Christmas,

26:51

the vast, vast overwhelming majority celebrate

26:53

Christmas.

26:54

So why can't they have their Christmas celebrations?

26:57

Well, because

26:59

of the rights of the minorities. And

27:02

so you see, and Vanachi never refers

27:04

to this in the book, but what you're seeing is

27:06

an increasing

27:09

tension between democracy

27:12

and liberalism, which

27:15

we use interchangeably today, but

27:17

they're actually opposed to one another.

27:20

The liberals actually changed the Wikipedia page for

27:23

democracy to say that democracy is a form

27:25

of liberalism.

27:26

Liberalism came about a few hundred years ago. Democracy

27:28

has been around for millennia, okay? But liberalism

27:31

is so totalitarian, it just consumes

27:33

everything and brings it into itself. And

27:36

if you oppose it, then you have to be anti-democratic,

27:39

but that doesn't make any sense. Democracy

27:41

is ruled by the majority. Liberalism,

27:44

at its very best, is supposed

27:46

to be the protection of rights of minorities,

27:50

which is a fine thing. You do wanna protect the

27:53

legitimate rights of minorities, but as liberalism

27:56

has advanced, everything has been called

27:58

a right.

27:59

Things that are not right. rights at all have been called rights.

28:01

Things that we're not allowed to talk about on YouTube, you know,

28:03

like

28:05

men wearing dresses in public or

28:08

pride parades or all the other

28:11

sorts of things that are definitely gonna get bleeped out on YouTube. Those

28:13

are not rights, those are wrongs. Wrong things

28:15

cannot be rights. And how do we understand rights? We

28:17

understand rights by examining abstract

28:21

principles of justice, by examining the natural

28:23

law, by using our faculties of

28:25

reason and our moral conscience to deduce

28:28

conclusions about the good,

28:31

the true, and the beautiful. We

28:33

can't do that anymore because we live in a radical skepticism.

28:36

So the radical skepticism

28:38

is impelled by liberalism,

28:41

which says everybody has the right to do whatever the hell they want at

28:43

any given time. And so it becomes this tyranny

28:45

of subjectivism, this tyranny

28:47

of relativism

28:50

that now is overwhelming the right

28:52

of sovereign states to be their own people,

28:54

to determine who comes in, who

28:57

gets the rights of citizens and how

28:59

people live.

29:01

Very, very troubling

29:03

because left

29:05

to its own devices, liberalism will

29:07

just erase these cultures. They'll erase

29:09

the people, they'll erase the customs, they'll

29:11

erase the religions, it'll erase everything.

29:16

And because nature abhors a vacuum, something else is

29:18

going to come in, in

29:19

its place, because everybody's got to serve somebody.

29:22

So this is also why you're seeing increasing

29:25

populism. This is why fashionable,

29:27

squishy Republican types used to make fun of the

29:29

notion of the war on Christmas. Oh, those

29:32

bitter-clinging deplorable idiots, they

29:34

care about Christmas. Who cares? It's

29:36

no big deal. Just say happy holidays or whatever. No.

29:42

If we give up Christmas, what

29:46

are we as a country? Oh,

29:48

those deplorable idiots, they care about immigration.

29:50

No, stop it. Just stop being so racist

29:53

and xenophobic. If we give up

29:55

borders, what is our country?

29:58

If we give up...

30:00

If we give up our practices, the people

30:02

who make up the nation, what we

30:05

believe in, now

30:07

increasingly our right to self-government,

30:10

what are we? We're nothing.

30:13

We just become individual consumers.

30:17

We're just here. We end up exactly

30:19

where that poor woman who was pretending

30:22

that she's really happy, childless and husbandless

30:24

at 29, we end up right where she is, which

30:26

is, yeah, okay, we don't have any social

30:28

bonds. We don't have any purpose in life.

30:31

We don't have anything that we're aiming at. We don't

30:33

have anything that really gets us out of the bed in the morning,

30:35

but we do have a bunch of cheap crap. But

30:39

GDP went up a little bit.

30:41

We are an economic

30:44

zone. Well, who cares?

30:46

How stupid do we have to be to find out

30:49

that money doesn't actually buy you happiness and

30:51

that we shouldn't worship

30:53

mammon?

30:55

People are so desperate for meaning that

30:57

they're going to the desert right now to

30:59

take a bunch of drugs and have a bunch of orgies and worship

31:02

actual fire idols

31:04

and then be washed out in a flood because of that. But again,

31:08

I don't want to read too deeply into it, but that's how desperate

31:10

people are for meaning. Okay, so that's

31:14

the word that is the world upside down.

31:16

And you can expect rates of anxiety

31:18

to go up, prescription drugs

31:21

for depression pills to go up. You expect

31:23

the life expectancy to continue to decline

31:25

because of deaths of despair. You can expect marriage

31:27

rates to continue to plummet. You can expect birth rates to continue

31:29

to plummet until we flip that world back

31:32

right side up.

31:33

Now, speaking of confused people and

31:36

things I can't talk about on YouTube, another

31:40

young lady went viral sobbing

31:42

crying because she was called

31:45

a lady. Honestly,

31:47

I don't know what to do, but like there

31:51

was like a

31:53

really bad experience.

31:55

Basically, I was just getting a drink

31:57

at the bar and they called both.

31:59

and I ladies. After

32:02

they were done drinking the drink, I went

32:05

up and I was like, some people don't

32:07

refer to themselves as ladies, but it's okay

32:09

that you didn't know. And the gay bar,

32:12

so I should be safe. So

32:14

then turned it around. They

32:16

got so mad at me, and

32:19

they took the drink away from

32:21

my wife and I. He hit the

32:23

bar, like, because he was like,

32:26

are you serious? You're doing the same thing to

32:28

me. How?

32:29

And then they kicked us out.

32:32

I didn't think that was gonna happen.

32:34

Like, how am I supposed to feel? This is the first time

32:37

that I'd like to hold somebody I felt brave enough

32:39

to tell somebody my identity.

32:42

I just wanted to let him know, and I told him

32:44

it's okay that you didn't know. He

32:46

was still mad at me

32:48

for being myself, and

32:51

for my wife being themself.

32:53

Just her. And

32:56

for my wife being themself. That's

32:59

a, I don't know if I believe this video.

33:02

The performance doesn't seem very persuasive

33:04

to me.

33:06

So it's probably just a ploy for attention

33:09

and kind of some kind of troll on social media, but let's

33:11

say it's not. Let's be really charitable about it and

33:13

say that this woman's really upset because

33:16

she went to a bar with her wife,

33:20

as though that were possible. And

33:22

they went up into this bar and the

33:24

bartender said, hey ladies, what can I get you?

33:27

And they broke down sobbing because

33:30

this was such an attack on their identities.

33:34

One, it shows you that they

33:37

know that they're not really men. It

33:40

shows you that

33:42

their confidence and their true identity

33:44

is a little bit weak. If someone called me a woman,

33:47

I'd probably just laugh or say,

33:49

hey, who are you calling a woman? And move

33:51

on with my life, and I wouldn't sob into a camera. But

33:54

even beyond that,

33:58

she says, well, it was a gay bar. but it was just

34:00

these gay men. And they

34:02

should accept me because we're queer too, or whatever, you

34:04

think, listen, if you are, it's hard

34:06

to tell these days, but let's say you are two women,

34:09

but you say you're men or whatever, you're two women,

34:12

and you think it's really smart for us two women

34:14

to go to a gay men's bar. They'll

34:17

accept us there. There is no

34:20

group of people that the gay men

34:22

bar attendees are less interested

34:24

in seeing than two women. And you can dress

34:27

up and you can pretend to be something other

34:29

than you are, but

34:30

the gay guys aren't interested in you.

34:33

And you shouldn't be interested in them. And

34:35

you shouldn't whine and cry when places that

34:37

are not for you are not, they

34:40

actually are fairly welcoming to you, but

34:42

are still like somehow almost a

34:44

little bit tethered to reality. But

34:46

then

34:47

this raises a question.

34:49

How are we supposed to think about the weird sex stuff?

34:52

Because we live in the world upside

34:54

down now, and the weird sex stuff dominates the headlines

34:56

all the time, and we can't avoid it. You can't just

34:59

say, well, just put it out of your

35:01

mind, stop thinking about it so much. It's everywhere. It's

35:03

in our schools, it's in our businesses, it's in the streets,

35:05

it's in the seven pride months that

35:08

we celebrate now, the pride year, and that's

35:10

just a full pride year, and it's

35:12

everywhere. So what are we supposed to do

35:14

about it? And Vanachi, the guy who wrote

35:17

The World Upside Down,

35:18

he makes a good point. He says, look, now the

35:21

gay stuff is everywhere.

35:23

In the middle ages, it was suppressed because

35:25

that was when the church was at the height of its power, and

35:28

all the weird sex stuff is contrary to church

35:30

teaching, and

35:32

scripture and sacred tradition, and so they kind

35:34

of tamped that stuff down. But way

35:37

back in antiquity, there were

35:39

prevalent homosexual acts. You read about

35:42

it in Plato, and the symposium is a

35:44

book about a big gay dinner party, kind of.

35:47

We know there's that old line about the difference

35:49

between the Greeks and the Romans.

35:51

They were arguing over who had

35:53

the better civilization. The Greeks say, we invented

35:56

Suflaki, the Romans say, we invented pizza.

35:59

The Greeks say, we have the...

35:59

the Parthenon,

36:01

the Romans say, we built the Colosseum.

36:03

Greeks say, okay, well, we've got you here because

36:05

we invented sex. And the Romans

36:08

say, yes, but we introduced it to women. So

36:10

we know that for a long time, there's been kind

36:12

of weird sort of gay stuff in

36:14

antiquity, and they looked on it

36:17

without total moral pro-room. Well, Venocchi

36:19

makes this good point. He says, they're

36:22

not the same thing.

36:23

The way the ancient Greeks looked at weird sex stuff and

36:26

the way that modern gay rights people do, totally

36:28

different things. Because for the ancients,

36:32

the weird sex stuff was simply a matter of sensual

36:35

pleasure,

36:37

a way for these

36:39

guys who had these inclinations to

36:41

just

36:43

have a bit of fun and amuse themselves.

36:45

It never

36:47

infringed upon the family.

36:50

Men didn't get gay married

36:52

in ancient Athens. Men

36:54

didn't

36:55

try to adopt children

36:57

in ancient Athens together or to have surrogates

37:00

pay some woman to rent her womb and

37:02

then implant a zygote

37:04

or an embryo

37:06

into, they

37:09

didn't do any of that weird stuff. They just, they

37:11

did their weird sex stuff and then they were normal

37:13

in public. And

37:15

that's what's going on now. And so Venocchi says,

37:18

if we just

37:20

went back to that understanding of things,

37:24

if the LGBT people would just,

37:26

they could go have their fun in the

37:29

privacy of their own homes, we're not gonna be sending the

37:31

purity police around. But

37:34

when you insist on upending the most

37:36

basic political institutions, when you insist

37:38

on upending the family, that's the fundamental unit

37:41

of society, then that's a problem. And

37:43

then we've got to talk about it and we've got to have an opinion.

37:45

And we can either allow that to happen and allow the complete

37:48

destruction of our politics and our entire sense of

37:50

reality. Or we

37:52

can come in and say, no, guys,

37:55

sorry. Sorry lady, you're

37:57

actually a lady, you're not a man. Sorry.

38:00

same-sex couple, you might be very close

38:02

to one another and you might have a lovely relationship,

38:04

but you're not the same thing as marriage. Sorry,

38:08

people in all sorts of disordered backgrounds, you

38:11

don't get to just buy a child and you don't get

38:13

to just make one in a laboratory and commoditize

38:15

human beings. No, the answer is no.

38:18

Because if we don't say no, we're gonna be living completely upside

38:20

down with our feet in the air and our heads on the ground. You

38:23

know, we have a very exciting offer coming

38:26

up for all of our Daily Wire members. Early

38:28

access to a first look at the highly anticipated

38:31

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38:33

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38:36

to view this series is September 7th,

38:38

only on Daily Wire Plus. Take a look

38:40

at this teaser. Coming

38:42

up on convicting a murderer. Part of me don't

38:44

wanna believe that he did this. The blood that

38:46

was on that back area was indicative

38:49

of the head wound.

38:50

My brother likes to push a lot of people

38:52

around. I don't give a f*** about anything.

38:54

I ain't gotta listen to nobody. How were these

38:56

filmmakers able to convince so many

38:59

people that a man like Stephen Avery

39:01

is innocent? How many times did he stab her? Once.

39:06

And show me where? Right here. They

39:09

gave him power. They're trying to get everything on

39:11

here that they can. It's not good for an Avery

39:13

to have power. I told you all along,

39:15

keep your f*** about, Chef.

39:17

That can hurt Stephen. I'm not

39:19

gonna lie for him no more, I can't do it. Watch

39:21

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39:24

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39:26

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look. Look, it's everywhere, okay? Candace

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is...

39:59

take on this series is really interesting

40:02

so do not

40:03

miss out and subscribe today. My

40:05

favorite comment on Friday

40:07

is from Junior3170 who says, My

40:10

late father told me about the 70s. He

40:13

said it was hell. Everything was garbage

40:15

from the cars to the music. I couldn't even get

40:18

normal genes by the end. Fair enough.

40:21

And this will impact the presidential race

40:23

of course because we are living

40:25

in the 1970s. The same

40:28

sort of economic problems, energy

40:30

crises, massive inflation,

40:33

social breakdown. A

40:36

DC grocery store, giant

40:39

grocery store, is a Southeast

40:41

DC has removed name brands from

40:45

the store. It's got generic brands but no more name

40:47

brands. Advil, Colgate, Tide, it's gone.

40:50

It's gone because people keep stealing.

40:53

And the shop owner, he says, I don't want

40:55

to do this. I'd like to sell the name brand products. But

40:57

the reality is that Tide is not a profitable

41:00

item in this store because

41:01

it keeps getting stolen. In many instances,

41:03

people stock the product and within two hours it's gone.

41:06

So it's not on the shelf anyway. He's

41:08

seen theft rise tenfold

41:10

in the last five years.

41:14

This is

41:16

literally why we can't have nice things.

41:21

Just even material things we can't have.

41:23

We sell out all of the social capital

41:26

so that we can have cheap consumer

41:28

goods. And the irony of it is we end up

41:30

without even the nice consumer goods because

41:32

people

41:33

are stealing so much that they can't even put them on the shelves.

41:37

If we cease to be a coherent society,

41:40

as increasingly is happening, and we simply become

41:43

individual economic units just

41:46

sharing the same space, which is the

41:48

vision the left has for us, and frankly

41:50

it's the vision that a lot of the right has for us too.

41:53

We're just out there, we just care about cutting our taxes

41:55

and just making our money and leave me alone and

41:57

forget about those social questions. Well, okay, if

41:59

we're all just...

41:59

individuals living in the same space, then

42:02

you know what's gonna happen? All

42:04

the things that keep us behaving, community,

42:08

shame, a sense of

42:11

a fear of divine retribution, concern

42:13

for our souls and our reputation in the

42:15

community, even the law, that's all gonna

42:17

go away. And so what's gonna happen is first,

42:20

there's gonna be disorder as we're seeing now.

42:23

And then almost maybe even worse than

42:25

the disorder, there's going to be

42:27

a miserable kind of order imposed on

42:29

us.

42:30

Because this is a point I've made a

42:32

number of times before, there will be

42:34

order. There will

42:36

be order. The

42:38

state will

42:41

protect itself. So either

42:43

we can behave ourselves and

42:46

act in accordance with virtue and religion

42:48

and morality, or the state is gonna

42:50

come in and impose that. But there

42:53

will be order eventually. And

42:55

the kind of order that's gonna be imposed

42:58

on us is gonna be a miserable

43:00

one. Because it's gonna be an order

43:03

without

43:04

the uplift and the inspiration of religion,

43:07

without the natural bonds of family, which

43:10

disappear. I mean, they disappear in the sense that people

43:12

just stop having family. They stop getting married, they

43:14

stop having kids. It's gonna be one without tradition.

43:17

We'll have gotten rid of those traditions. It's going to be

43:19

one without a sense of loyalty to the nation

43:21

and a bond of kinship to the people. It's just gonna

43:24

be

43:25

a heavy-handed order of

43:30

sticks and carrots. The stick is going

43:32

to be increasing punishments

43:34

from the government, like locking people up for ordinary

43:37

basic political dissent,

43:39

as we're seeing all around us. And the carrot is

43:41

gonna be drugs and promiscuous sex

43:43

and

43:45

Netflix and staying

43:47

out late and drinking and going to Beyonce concerts

43:50

and not getting out of your bed until 10 in the morning. One

43:54

of them is George Orwell. One of them is Aldous Huxley.

43:56

One of them is 1984. One of them is Brave New World.

43:59

And it's not gonna be one of the-

43:59

you're gonna get them both at the same

44:02

time. Do you want that to be your society?

44:04

No, well then we've

44:08

gotta have the other stuff, the tradition

44:11

and the coherence among the people and

44:14

the religion and the being

44:16

normal. That's

44:21

what we're going to have to have. Now I teased

44:23

you, I teased you earlier. I

44:25

said that we were going to get to

44:27

COVID and Fauci. I'm

44:30

gonna leave this as a little bit of a tease for tomorrow. But

44:33

all I'll say for now is you've seen

44:35

the masks start to come back in Hollywood. Lionsgate

44:37

instituted a mask mandate. Morris

44:40

Brown College in Atlanta, Rutgers

44:42

University, bringing the masks back. Oh, just

44:44

a couple of weeks to slow the spread. You're seeing

44:47

New York saying if you're in public, maybe now start to

44:49

wear the masks. Jill Biden's apparently come

44:51

down with COVID. How she knows, I don't know, why people still

44:53

test for this ridiculous

44:55

ailment, I don't

44:58

know. Well, I do know it's because of the 2024

45:00

election. But Fauci

45:03

is starting to come back on TV, but the twist here

45:05

is CNN is

45:08

taking Dr. Fauci to

45:10

task for being wrong. Why

45:13

is that? What's going on? What

45:16

do the libs have up their sleeves? We'll

45:18

get to that tomorrow because right now we've got to get to the member block.

45:21

The rest of the show continues now. I know it's Tuesday,

45:24

but we didn't have Music Monday

45:27

because that was Labor Day. So what

45:30

Professor Jacob has said in his dubious

45:33

wisdom is that today

45:35

we're not going to have Tranny

45:37

Tuesday. We're going to have

45:40

Music Monday on Tuesday.

45:43

And then tomorrow for Woke Wednesday, we're gonna

45:45

lump in Trans Tuesday and Woke Wednesday

45:48

together in one day and

45:50

then Theology Thursday and then Fake

45:52

Headline Friday. My head is spinning

45:54

just thinking about it. The rest of the show continues

45:56

now. You do not wanna miss it. Become a member, use code

45:58

NOLS, canadwlas at check.

45:59

for two months free

46:01

on all annual plans.