Michael Malice is back at The Babylon Bee to talk about his new book The White Pill and why you should never let yourself give in to despair. Evil wants to stamp out the family, religion, and the individual, but can it? The discussion is relentless and harrowing in showing how evil evil can be, but it also shows how we can take the white pill knowing that evil is not invincible. Sam basically read every book Michael's ever written to prepare for this episode so this interview is a deep dive on everything Michael Malice has ever written. Michael talks about whether McCarthyism was as bad as we were taught in public school, how the New York Times covered up mass murder, and how the Bolsheviks were trying to create a New Man. Michael also passionately discusses the fall of the Soviet Union being conservatism's great victory and how the communists need to read more G.K. Chesterton! Keep hope alive and take your dose of The White Pill: https://www.amazon.com/White-Pill-Tale-Good-Evil/dp/B0BNZ7XZ5T
Americans, and maybe less so Christians, I would say, are naive about the nature of evil.
They think, okay, you live in these countries, you've got this crazy dictator, and he's banging the table, and you have to have his picture on his wall, and maybe you're waiting in line for food, and sometimes people get arrested needlessly.
But if you kind of keep your mouth shut and do your job, you're going to be poor and it's going to suck.
But that's that.
It's like that is utopia compared to the reality in these countries.
And now it's time for another interview on the Babylon B podcast.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee interview show.
I'm Sam, a staff writer, a lowly staff writer, an occasional podcast host.
I have here with me Travis.
Travis has been a staff writer forever.
He's done a lot of copy.
He's also creative designer and host of one of our most famous and well-loved segments, Travis's Game Corner.
That's it.
That's me.
And we have here with us a guest who we are very excited about.
Michael Malis is the author of multiple books, and he's been very generous to us at the Bee with his time over the years.
This is probably appearance number four or five.
I think so, yeah.
He's written The New Right.
He's written Dear Reader, which we'll get into later, an unauthorized autobiography of Kim Jong-il, and the book we'll be camping out on today, The White Pill, among others.
Anarchist handbook.
Michael Malice, thank you for joining us.
I'm delighted to be here.
The new studio is really cool.
That was really professional.
Good job.
Well, now you ruined it by calling it out.
He's always undermining you.
That's true.
We got your number.
Yep.
It's two.
That's my number.
It's nowhere close to the number of the beast.
It's just two.
Two?
We got a ways to go.
So subversive.
It's like you're a satirist.
Almost.
Almost.
So we're going to get in deep on the book.
I thought we're the ones who are subversive.
Right?
The book, The White Pill.
Yes.
The first question people always ask is, what's the white pill?
Now, I cranked through the book and then I like rewound for the last chapter and just re-listened again because it nearly brought me to tears.
In your own words, go ahead and spoil it.
What's the white pill?
Yeah, well, you are spoiling the whole book because the order important?
Well, it's what.
That's why he put it at the end.
Hey, hey, don't speak for me.
Sorry.
What did I just say?
Yes, orders.
I don't understand.
Of course, the order is important.
I don't understand what you mean by that question.
You can't read the book at random.
It's not like the anarchist handbook, which is just a collection of essays.
The book builds to a point, but one of the reasons I wrote the white pill, and for people who don't understand internet lingo, unlike us hip boomers, the concept of the white pill is oppositional to the concept of the black pill.
The black pill, which is, I think, very pervasive, needlessly so, especially in internet circles and right-of-sender circles, is the idea that the West and or America is done for.
No matter what trends are in place, they are irrevocable.
Or the enemy class, however you choose to define it, is too powerful, too ingrained, too in control to ever.
Sure, maybe you could eke out little victories here and there, but it's a lost cause.
I think, especially as Christians, I think that mentality is downright almost blasphemous.
The idea that there's no hope on this earth, that evil shall prevail inevitably.
And it's certainly anathema to my mindset.
But why I wrote this book is I don't believe in this kind of Pollyanna, everything's going to be great, sense of optimism.
That's absurd.
Bad things happen all the time en masse, just atrocities in our lifetimes.
You know, even right now on this earth, there's true evil being done to innocent people.
But the idea that hope is a delusion or is just a mentality, as opposed to there are concrete historical relevant reasons that occurred in our lifetime that demonstrate the almost what in retrospect seemed effortless victory peacefully,
relatively very little loss of blood over what Reagan correctly called an evil empire, a nation just demonic in its ideology.
Whether you want to call it literally or figuratively, that is an academic debate, the Soviet Union, I'm speaking specifically.
And the fact that this is something both the victory is not talked about, even though this is 89 through 91, this isn't that long ago.
This is, you know, everyone had people on cable already.
This is, you know, this isn't like World War I and World War II.
But the fact that people also don't discuss just how evil it was.
So, you know, one of the points I always make on different shows is Americans, and maybe less so Christians, I would say, are naive about the nature of evil.
They think, okay, you live in these countries, you've got this crazy dictator and he's banging the table and you have to have his picture on his wall and maybe you're waiting in line for food and sometimes people get arrested needlessly.
But if you kind of keep your mouth shut and do your job, you're going to be poor and it's going to suck.
But that's that.
It's like, that is utopia compared to the reality in these countries where by design, everything is meant to turn parents against their children, to turn husbands against wives, to live in a nation where you have to be suspicious of every single one of your neighbors because they will be spying on you.
And you know that, and you're not, this isn't like some rumor.
This is known that this is the situation.
And you were told since birth that you're never getting out of here.
And this is as good as it's going to get.
And, you know, you have to wonder who you're going to contradict or criticize because if that person has a modicum of power over you, which they almost certainly will, how will they affect retribution?
And if they can't get retribution on you, well, you've got kids, you've got relatives, you've got friends.
They're just as much targets as you in a nation where individual liberty means absolutely nothing.
So I think it behooves people to A, appreciate what form evil takes on this earth and the fact that not only is it defeatable, it is so defeatable that it's now become largely forgotten.
And that is crazy to me as someone who's born in the Soviet Union.
The fact that the story of the Soviet Union is almost like a joke.
And we're talking about millions of people killed, millions of people uprooted from the ancestral lands to kind of break any sense of continuity or tradition.
You know, nation upon nation where any modicum of faith is grounds for felony and grounds to fire you from your job and take your children away from you.
So I got all the receipts.
And let me assure you both, as I'm sure you realize, this was not an easy row to hoe.
So the book is relentless.
Yes, that's the perfect word for it.
It's harrowing.
And I guess I did spoil it by saying the end, when I showed it to my dad, who's been a history professor for 35 years, he was floored by the presentation.
Oh, what do you mean by the presentation?
As in the sheer restraint of just one thing after another.
Oh, yeah.
Like, you don't indulge in diatribes.
You don't indulge.
It's just, it's one brutal fact after another.
And again, for the whole, most of the book, and again, spoiler alert, the Soviet Union does collapse by the end.
But for most of the book, you just, you can't pull your eyes away, but you're carried along by the momentum.
And then at the end, the white pill does hit you in the gut.
Seems like it's a pretty hard pill to swallow.
Yeah, it was funny because Viva Fry, I don't know if you know him, maybe he's been a guest.
He's a podcaster.
He had just tweeted out not that long ago, and I'm going to, he said, I'm two-thirds of the way through.
Where's this white pill?
So far, it's just this jagged jet black suppository that's tearing me up.
And I'm like, well, yeah.
And part of the point is, and again, this is this happened.
This isn't some Game of Thrones scenario.
The fact is, victory happened over decades of pure, relentless evil.
Yeah.
That's something I really like about the book is that it's really showing you why you need that pill, essentially.
And do you have to get a prescription from a doctor to get the white pill?
I got a guy.
Okay.
So.
Let me camp out on the tone for a second because, again, the book is incredible.
It should be required reading nationwide, worldwide.
It's so different from someone who knows you from your Twitter persona.
Oh, for sure.
Where restraint is not the first word that comes to mind.
I mean, the book, you could literally assign at any school your Twitter persona.
There were at least two profanities on it that I could find.
Yes.
What's the divergence there?
What's your authorial persona and then what's your trolling persona?
I don't like that word persona, but I get what you're getting at.
I saw there are things that it's not good for humans to know.
And I remember I was watching a video on YouTube of North Korean refugees and they were in having American barbecue.
And to me, like beauty on this earth is someone who comes from a country where they had been starving and now they're gorging themselves.
And you want to be like, just please, just, I want you throwing up and eating more.
Just like, I want you to not ever have to experience hunger again.
Right.
And the thing when you talk to these refugees, and a lot of times when you talk to people who survived atrocities, they're not histrionic about it.
It's the matter-of-factness.
And that makes it to me much more disturbing.
If someone, like, if I have friends who are in like recovery and AA, and they'll tell you these anecdotes of things they've experienced, and you just want to, you don't know how to react because it's so emotional, but the content is what's emotional, not their response.
So the North Korean refugee was talking about how when someone is about to starve to death, the flies are the first to know.
And you can look at someone, the flies land near their mouth.
And he's just saying this kind of like, oh, can you get me a Coke?
And you watch this and you're like, I want to kill myself.
And it's, again, like demonic that you have this information.
Like, you're not a scientist.
You're someone who watched this happen more than once because you established a pattern.
So it was important for me to not be like, when you're talking about children being assaulted in the different types of assault, when you're talking about there's this one part which, first of all, I was crying writing a lot of this book because my career in the past was being a co-author.
And when I did that, it's kind of like what I tried to do as best I could is step into the protagonist's shoes and try to experience what it's like to be that person and then convey that in text.
So it's kind of like a method actor, right?
So I'm like, all right, I try to empathize and sympathize with these regular, even mediocre people, in many cases, just nobodies, and what that was like for them.
And also knowing this is what my family experienced really doesn't number on you because it's not like they're sitting down and talking about this.
We argue, they'll talk about some movie.
You know, it's so removed.
And obviously they're a lot older.
Things are much worse than the 30s before my parents were born.
But I thought it was important how when you're thinking about things that in Western culture are unspeakable, you don't need me as the author to be like, man, these guys are crazy, huh?
And just one specific example, which every time I think about it doesn't number me.
So in the USSR, being married to an enemy of the people was a felony, right?
So you get arrested.
Now your wife's going to get arrested.
What's she going to plead not guilty?
She was married.
So either I think the logic is she should have been onto you and she should have reported you because everyone has to be vigilant for enemies of the people, whatever it is.
And obviously, just in terms of strategy, it's a bad idea to leave someone out of jail if they're arresting the husband because that person might be counterproductive, right?
So you want to, so overnight, the kid's an orphan overnight.
Now, what's the kid going to do?
Well, you don't want to take in this kid whose parents are enemies of the people because why are you so interested in what this kid's doing?
You know, we have the government take care of that kid.
This isn't your business.
Now you're up for suspicion.
And there was a specific story when someone in Moscow tried to take in one of these kids and they went to ask for advice for some prominent government official.
And they're like, what do I do?
They're like, look, it sucks, but you got to put her out on the street.
And there was handwringing in the Kremlin about what are we going to do about all these kids who are killing themselves now?
And it wasn't like we're going to stop.
It's like this makes us look really bad.
So again, when I talk about how the Westerners are naive about the nature of evil, things like this, if we sat down and we thought about ways to be cruel to people, we could think of stuff like in movies, like sleep deprivation, splashing water in his face, fingernails.
But stuff like this, where like the consequence is the kids are logically committing suicide because they have no hope and no future.
And it's not like at that point we were like, okay, let's regroup.
We took a wrong term.
It's just like, well, now we got to put a band-aid on this problem.
This is something that, you know, the opening chapter is Ayn Rand, who had fled what became the Soviet Union, testifying in front of Congress being like, it's impossible to explain to a free people what it's like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship.
You will never be able to wrap your head around it.
I can't wrap my head around it.
I mean, the book is the best I can to explain, but I think it's very important for those of us, which I think is probably everyone listening to this, who are concerned about the dangers of totalitarianism run amok, or by definition, it's going to run amok, to know what that actually looks like in practice.
Because it's so much worse than whatever dopey movie you think, you know, or Sasha Baron Cohen, you know, dressing as the dictator and he's got a limousine and he's got, you know, whatever.
And you brought up Anne Rand, and that brings to mind when she testified before Congress and the Congressman said, doesn't anyone smile in Russia anymore?
Kind of dismissive of the whole idea.
So even back then, we were kind of covering up for things.
But it's like, why are we doing PR for Russia at that time?
I don't even know what that is.
I don't think it was even PR.
I think, and it was this as a Republican, by the way.
He's like, doesn't anyone smile in Russia anymore?
That's the name of the first chapter.
It's just people, there's this belief that everything's the same.
That like they have our ways, they have their ways.
And when push comes to shove, we're all human beings.
And every sentence I just said is true, and we are all human beings.
But to say that every system is roughly analogous or, you know, they have their difficulties, we have ours.
It's just like, that's so reductionist, it completely misses the forest for the trees because it's so antithetical to human life and to human thriving.
And again, because we live in America, God, you know, and I'll say, you know, Rand said this many times, God bless America.
And she said, I don't mean it literally, but I mean the highest possible.
It's, I think the media also does a great job of hiding how evil evil could be for several reasons.
One is Karen doesn't like to get upset.
And Karen is a big drives politics in America to a large extent.
Right.
So you can be disturbing in the news, but if it's too much, people tune away.
So you lose your viewers.
But also, one of the things that was very disturbing for me to discuss, and I'm sure you saw the receipts, is for decades how many Western apologists there were making excuses for genocide, concentration camps, trials where people were admitting to things that were literally impossible.
I went to this hotel, even though the hotel hadn't existed at the time, things like that.
And under their breath, saying, you know, what good would freeing all these people do?
That was Theodore Dreiser, American novelist.
He's like, yeah, how would that help us?
So as bad as people tend to think things are now with discourse in America, there's this kind of boomer-conservative idea that things got bad 20 years ago.
It's like, you are so, as a conservative, it is your job to study history and apply the lessons of history today.
That is conservatism at its best.
So it is your job to know, if you think like 20 years ago was fine, look at the 30s.
Look at the 20s.
Look at, you know, when people are being starved for political reasons and Upton Sinclair, who's still read in high school today, says, oh, I don't think it was 5 million.
It's probably one.
But look at it this way.
They solved the problem of famine forever, which they didn't.
It's like, you're just hand-waving away, starving a million people.
You know, we're doing that.
we're even doing that today with like the Uyghur Muslims in China and it's, but it's, but hold on, I'm going to interrupt you just because it's key here.
You're allowed to interrupt.
There are very few people who are saying we should be more like China.
The New York Times isn't saying, but they were saying we need to be more like the Soviet Union and we need to work closer with Stalin.
That is the big head, like, I can't say the word, mind that I learned.
So there's an urgency to your endeavor.
And of course, again, your tools in terms of tearing down the corporate press, your tools may make waspish suburbanites uncomfortable, but the urgency comes from, we were just talking with our producer, Dan, and he was saying, if there's one thing you need to know about Michael Malis is that he's authentic and he really wants to help people, that's a commendation to you.
Well, that's really nice of Dan to say.
Would Keith Olbermann agree with that assessment?
I don't think Keith Olbermann knows who I am, though.
I ratio him pretty regularly.
Keith, I mean, I think I can't speak too much.
Keith Alberman quite literally had a traumatic head injury.
He was like hit by a train design of Wikipedia.
Oh, sad.
Yeah, and he's not well.
So.
So he wouldn't agree.
I don't know.
I don't think he can agree.
He doesn't have the capacity to.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on in his head, although I think it's kind of like scrambled eggs.
Did it make you, as someone who's a sworn enemy of the corporate press, did it bless your soul when you saw the New York Times got their little verified Twitter thing taken away?
I know I'm not allowed to say this here, but that is my pornography.
Like when you have these organizations have their status revoked, that is something that appeals to my Puritan interests.
And I am reminded of the words of St. Augustine, where he said, God saved me from temptation, just not yet.
Gross but relevant.
Yes.
I'll tell you one scene.
There was one line in the book, I'll reveal it here, where I was on the fence about including it.
And I'm glad I did.
And it's one of my favorite scenes, not because I enjoy it, because every time I think about it, I've lost a lot of tears over this scene.
It's the scene about Stanislav Kosiar.
Stanislav Kosior was a big shot in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time.
He was instrumental in covering up the starvation of the kulaks in the Haldimour, millions of people, but he knew too much.
So in January, I believe, or early in, I think, 38, he becomes like number two in the Soviet Union or just very high up position.
They bring it to Moscow.
In May, he's arrested and they start torturing him to break him, right?
Now, we don't know what they tortured him specifically, but we know some of the torture.
The most common one is something called the conveyor belt because they kept you up for a whole week and someone would interview you, yell at you for four hours.
When he's tired, the next guy comes in.
And at a certain point, you're just, you have to keep your story straight.
If there's any contradiction, they're going to yell you that you're a liar.
He didn't break.
They didn't know.
They would stand people in a like a basement full of cold water for hours.
They didn't break.
They would yank, they would hang you with your elbows tied up behind you to kind of dislocate your shoulders.
We didn't know if they did that, but whatever they did to him, he didn't break.
So he's a good Soviet, strong Soviet.
And the question in these, you know, that I had is they had a Trump card.
Now, did they not want to play it?
Or they were just out of desperation.
And the thing in these scenarios, which Americans don't appreciate, is a lot of times these interrogators, they knew the guy was innocent.
They just needed him to sign the confession.
It's like, dude, you're wasting your time.
Like, you can't win.
And it's frustrating for me as the interrogator because I got a job to do here, buddy.
You're going to sign this paper whether you like it or not.
So no matter what they did, he didn't break.
And they're like, all right.
So they bring in his teenage daughter and they raped her in front of him and he broke.
And he outlived her because she killed herself shortly thereafter.
And then they killed him.
And then I had the line.
I said, I don't think this is who the New York Times was thinking of when they ran that op-ed about how women had better sex under socialism.
But when you are an organization that has your hands dirty in telling your readers explicitly that millions of people aren't being starved to death in Ukraine as they did in the early 30s,
I would think if you had a modicum, just a tiny, tiny bit of humanity, you would be more careful about running pieces like this given your history and given what was done to people in these nations.
So the fact that I left that line in and I'm glad I did because I think no matter how evil people think the corporate press is, they are still, you've got, like Dante, there's several more layers of hell.
So you're making a compelling case, obviously, for socialism, communism.
We just got to do it right.
Yeah.
If we get it right this time.
See, their R's are backward.
That's the problem.
That's illiterate comments.
But obviously, so we didn't want that to come over here.
But in public school, we were talking about how McCarthyism was bad.
Right.
The one time leftists were canceled, it's regarded as the second worst thing that happened in America since other than slavery.
So what's your opinion on McCarthyism?
Is it like an extreme that went too far or was it all bad?
So I addressed that a bit in the book.
First of all, the terms of misnomer because the House on American Activities Committee was in the House.
McCarthy was the senator.
He preceded McCarthy.
And what you had in this country was a large organization of people who weren't merely ideological communists.
They weren't like, you know, I think communism is good.
They were secretly getting money and kissing the ring of Stalin.
Look, this isn't, you know, Trudeau.
This was Stalin, who, again, millions of deaths on his hands, children being driven to suicide, torture, no semblance of any kind of human rights whatsoever.
And their goal explicitly was the violent overthrow of the United States government.
Inevitably, millions of people would have been killed as a consequence and delivering us over to a foreign nation, specifically the USSR.
So there are certain things within McCarthyism that were insane.
I just read Jack Welsh's or John Welsh, whatever his name is, the guy who started the John Barsh Society.
He had a book basically saying that called The Politician or Manuscript that they were forced into publish, saying that Eisenhower was a communist agent.
I don't think that's true at all.
But the point is, Stalin got the nukes because of infiltration.
So there was this, I have this line in the book.
I forget the playwright.
Her name was.
She goes, they called it a witch hunt.
There weren't witches at Salem.
These communists were real.
You know, they were high up.
They had massive consequences.
So this is completely disingenuous to kind of equivocate between those two concepts.
Right.
And you, did you see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?
I've never seen an Indiana Jones movie.
Is that sad?
Or A Godfather.
So in that movie, he fights communists.
Your thoughts?
Endorsed.
So the book, just rewinding a hair and zooming out, it starts before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and it goes all the way through the Soviet Union's collapse in 89.
Early in the book, a figure who's popular around here, G.K. Chesterton.
G.K. Chesterton.
Gets a shout out.
You mentioned the Chesterton's fence, with the idea being, if you're walking through a field and there's a fence there, you should understand why the fence was there.
Even if the reasons for it being there are not currently apparent, you should be very, you should move genderly when removing it.
Go ahead with how that applies to, especially in the heady early days of communism.
They were tearing everything down and removing everything.
Should they have taken Chesterton's fence more seriously?
Yes.
So I think Chesterton's fence is, without exaggeration, the best defense of conservatism there is.
Because his point is there's an enormous asymmetry that if something was built, people don't build things for no reason.
And that also speaks to epistemological humility being you're not as smart as you think you are.
And just because you see this fence, you think, oh, this is stupid.
Some idiots must have put it here for no reason.
No, no, no, no.
Someone put it there for some reason.
That person was probably not an idiot because this is their land and they have local knowledge, even though they might not be some great genius of the ages.
And really, you make sure why it's here because, and if you have to don't flip a coin, if it's up, leave it up.
Because it certainly had a reason at one point, right?
So that kind of idea of conservatism that if push comes to shove, stick with what's worked in the past, that is a great strategy just in general, because this kind of progressive idea that everyone in the past was morons is completely ahistorical.
And it's a really convenient way to make yourself look smart.
Like, oh, everyone's dumb.
Everyone's smart, especially.
It's absurd and almost downright obscene.
Because we're here because of our ancestors.
And they did some things right because we're here, right?
So what you're speaking to is, you know, when 1917 happened, the Bolshevik Revolution, even though in contemporary times, the USSR is regarded as backward, drab, you know, people are waiting online for bread, just almost barbaric system.
It was in 1917 regarded as sci-fi because it's the future.
Like you're going to scientifically manage society.
It was called scientific socialism.
And, you know, we have this kind of Western bourgeois, you know, shopkeep with the butcher and the little town.
You know, they had such disdain for that, these little communities.
But we're going to build this steel and electricity factories vision of the future.
And their worldview was the opposite of Chesterton, which was since the bourgeoisie were the enemy.
So if they did it, whatever they did was probably wrong.
So free love, marriage, got to throw that out the window.
Let's have kids raised communally.
Because that's not equal.
Someone's going to have good moms.
Someone's going to have bad moms.
Let's have professionals raise everyone's kids together.
They're like, who knows?
Maybe at some point human beings will be just brains and globes, right?
And they were explicitly trying to create a new type of man.
This was their vision.
We're going to remake the nature of human beings themselves.
Now, as religious people, this is more than a little demonic, obviously.
And it's just very disturbing to read what happens because what happens is when you have people who are made of flesh and blood and bones go up against the meat grinder, the meat grinder is going to win.
And it's not like you're going to, we're not Gumby, right?
They had this plasticine vision of what human nature is.
And if you just teach people the right thing, and if you just structure society the right way, everyone's going to be equal.
Everyone's going to be the same.
And it's going to be this kind of utopian.
It was very revelation because the idea is, you know, the state's going to wither away and we're going to have heaven on earth.
It was very inspired in many ways by the Christian vision of the end times and this kind of eschatology kind of situation.
But when you look at that applied, the idea that just because something's been done for thousands of years, that should be a reason to stop doing it is saying crazy is just being mild about it.
Sure.
Now, do you think that there are like, I don't know, top thinkers or elitists or scientists still trying to create the perfect Gumby man?
Don't you think?
I mean, I think an enormous part of American educational system, which was inspired by Prussia and Bismarck, is the idea of if we teach men not to rape, that's one right there.
Like if you just sit down and like, oh, I didn't, I.
But I mean, you laugh, but I mean, that is the basis of saying something like that.
Whereas everyone in this building obviously find a violation like that to be beyond obscene and are extremely opposed to it.
But we also regard as absurd that someone who would be comfortable doing this, if you just sit down and have the right professor, like he's going to be like, oh, this was bad.
Well, I would confess that's something that Christians struggle with, where they go, well, if this person just heard the message in this way, they'll be saved.
But that's not going to work though.
I thought the whole point was the Holy Spirit has to do it.
Complete the work.
So it's not the message.
You need to have that moment with the Holy Spirit.
You know, defaming the Holy Spirit's one of the few things that Christ won't forgive.
So you're in really trouble.
We've gone all.
Okay, so you're right.
I mean the five-day work week failed experiment and then – Well, it wasn't the five-day work week.
So they had a five-day calendar.
Five-day calendar.
Yeah.
And then the other ways in which they were trying to, you know, mold an elastic man.
The main one that we wanted to continue hearing your thoughts about was the family.
So what is it about Christianity?
What is it about the family that was backwards that had to be raised to the ground and then rebuilt?
Right, because the family is, for everyone, including myself, the basis for a healthy society.
What I disagree with with conservatives is this view of the nuclear family, which is mom, dad, and the kids.
I think a much more time-tested way, and I know it's not a contradiction, but nuclear implies the former, is the extended family.
Because a lot of times, what if dad's a drunk?
What if mom's know self-absorbed when you have aunts and uncles and grandparents around?
That's, that's a form of insurance that, and the more love and support children have to be yeah, cousins and nephews to play with, I think the healthier societies become.
So this kind of suburban nuclear family I think is overrated in many ways as compared to the extended family especially.
Uh, I come from Europe.
It's much more of a thing there.
Like my parents worked, my grandma was at home.
I think that's a lot healthier than daycare.
More the like the, the idea of uh, it takes a village to raise I wouldn't say village but, but certainly an extended family, because village is where things get.
I don't like that.
Sure yeah, that's always yeah um, but for them that's very bourgeois, that's old school, right.
And then anytime you have anything private as opposed to the public good, anytime you have preferences for these people as opposed to them.
We want equality and it's not fair if you have two parents and are raised well we see this now with educationalism.
Here it's like oh, you have a some.
It's not fair that you're getting out of college because you have two parents and you had food on your table and someone has to compete with you with a single mom and you're struggling for food, how are you expected to compete?
So, and I agree that that's unfair and I want those kids to have opportunities.
Who had one single mom and it's had it rough uh and, and that's something that we should be concerned about, no question.
But the idea that well, let's bring everyone to that level of the single mom is, or to have no mom, to have communal, you know uh, raising of children, that is not only um crazy, it just, to me, defies basic biology and psychology.
And the most disturbing case where this was put into place was Romania.
And there's a chapter and I haven't revealed this, i'll reveal it for the first time here.
The second to last chapter is called Diehard, because it is a Christmas story um, the Ceaucescus, who took over Romania when they at first they were liberal and they criticized the Soviets invading Czechoslovak in 68, but they wanted to raise the population of Romania as much as possible.
So uh, contraception was illegal, abortion was illegal uh, they lowered the marriage range, I think, they made divorce illegal and every month, every woman had to go to the gynecological police to make sure that, whether she was pregnant or not, and so on and so forth.
If you, god forbid, uh and this is the worst thing can happen to anyone you have a miscarriage or a stillbirth, you were arrested, the cops came to your door to make sure this wasn't an abortion and this woman who suffered this trauma and food and electricity were a problem, by the way.
So the Romanian winters and carrying a kid to term, you know, is not always going to be as easy as it is here not that it's always easy here uh, to pun mode and you had to answer the authorities.
Uh, what was going on there?
A lot of times women just kept having kids and they were encouraged to.
They didn't have food.
So they told them, we're the government, we'll raise your kids.
They handed these kids over to orphanages.
They weren't orphans, but the parents couldn't raise them and they were just chained to their cribs lying in their own urine.
There was a British journalist who came and he goes.
The thing that most disturbed me were two things, the smell, the smell of urine, but also the fact that they were so silent because these kids stopped Crying for someone to pick them up, because no one would pick them up.
And they grew up malnourished, mentally handicapped, so on and so forth.
So, again, when we speak of the nature of evil, this is something that if we sat down, first of all, I don't think we'd be able to think of ways to torture kids because it would just be like, all right, I can't get, this is too much even for me.
But then, not only was this thought of, but implemented and practiced for decades in a country not that far away, not that long ago.
But I'm going to spoil this one.
They put them up against the wall and shot them on Christmas.
And it was, I just love that story.
So I've got a friend at church.
Charming story, yes.
Charming ending.
Yeah.
And that's the Tchaijescus, not the kids.
Yes, not the kids.
But those kids, you know, that's the other thing with, you know, if you think people are plastic, they're Gumby.
There's a window for kids to bond with their parents and develop language and develop these skills.
If you don't develop that as a kid, you're screwed for life.
It's like these kids, you can't be raised by wolves.
There were kids who actually were raised by wolves and then have a job later.
You don't develop language.
You don't develop, you know, you're just lost.
So, wow.
I mean, so first off, I think we've established the state is not a good mom and dad.
The state is not a good God.
No, sir.
And I mean, a moment ago, we were getting into like the New Testament.
Jesus says the one unforgivable sin, and in his context, it was the Pharisees attributing the works of him to Satan.
But other than that, Jesus forgives, you know, everything.
What is it about adherence to the family and adherence to God for Christians that made them such a ripe target for persecution?
Well, there's two things.
First of all, there were a lot of priests who were encouraged to denounce Christ or God, not necessarily Christian, from the pulpit in front of the congregation, because this was a good sign to the congregation that there's no hope for religion in this country, so you might as well play ball.
So this was a thing they did a lot.
They had priests who were writing letters to the editor, whatever it was, to the newspapers to being like, I was such a fool to be religious.
Now I realize this is so much better, you know, because Marx very famously said that religion is the opiate of the people.
So they're virulently atheist because part of their reasoning is religion teaches you to be oppressed, but be comfortable with your oppression.
That's not my perception of religion at all, but whatever.
But the thing with Christianity is I think a large focus of Christianity is on the afterlife.
And there is that Augustine wing where like, sure, we might suffer here on this earth, but if you stick to your faith and have faith in literal sense, it is going to work out in the end.
And, you know, that kind of cheesy footprints poem.
But there's a truth to it in the Christian mindset.
But this is a problem for them because it's like, no, We need you looking up to us.
We need you looking up to the state.
We need you working for the community.
So all these Bibles and whatever, that's got to go in the trash.
And you're a threat because you're this kind of power center that's counter to what we're trying to do.
And one of the great moments in the White Pill and in history was in 1979 when Pope John Paul II wanted to go back to Poland as pope.
And he was the first pope from out of Italy in like centuries, you know, to pick, and to pick a pope from the far side of the Iron Curtain was like a huge deal.
And his predecessor had wanted to come to Poland to celebrate, I think, Poland's 500th anniversary of being Christian or something like that.
And he was told not to come.
And Brezhnev told Pope John Paul, he's a smart man.
Tell him to pretend he's sick.
And Pope John Paul goes, Yeah, I'm fine.
And I'm reminded of that little Trump quote where he's just like, Yeah, I'm going to come.
So he gets his pope butt to Poland and he's giving these sermons praying for this land, you know, for Poland.
And the people turned out, they were allowed to turn out in hundreds of thousands.
And that was such a great moment that was kind of a catalyst for everything falling apart because they were looking around and they must, because they had to be kind of secretive about their faith.
They had to be like, wait a minute, we have the numbers.
I thought it was just me and like my friends and blah, blah, blah.
There's a lot of us here.
And that really gave them a lot of hope to form Solidarity, which is a labor movement, which was key to bringing down the regime in Poland.
And then after Poland, it was a series of dominoes.
So Pope John Paul II really was the Trump of his time.
Well, they didn't lock him up.
That's true.
So obviously the book has its valleys and then its peaks.
And of course, it is in some ways just a march through hell, it feels like.
Yes.
But then it's got hope, especially at the end as one of the Soviet blocs after another starts to fall.
I've got a friend at church and he's Romanian.
His parents got out right after 89.
That's wonderful.
And he said that the way they talk about it is, they say it's like the end of a James Bond movie when the Tchaitescus got taken out.
And he also says that his parents have a lot of that Soviet dark humor where, you know, well, he said that his parents say government officials were all D students, not F, but also not C, B, or A. About the dark humor, what are some like Soviet ways that they would cope?
I'll give you an example exactly with that.
There's this one Czech joke from Czechoslovakia where the president of the country is having problems with his lock and the locksmith keeps coming back trying to fix it.
And he goes, I can't believe you can't fix this.
What's wrong with you?
He goes, yeah, you're the locksmith.
I'm a college professor.
So a lot of times people who were in powerful positions were intelligent.
Intelligence is a problem because you're a critical thinker.
You know too much.
So we're going to make you a gender.
We're going to humiliate you.
We're going to send you to some Siberia to be a minor because we want to make an example of you.
Because now all the other professors are going to be like, oh, okay, I saw what happened to my colleague.
So that is one very classic example.
I don't have the verbiage of the joke exactly right, but the point, it's in the book.
The point stands.
So that is, yeah, the people in these systems at the top, this is another reason why I'm hopeful.
You can't look at John Fetterman and be like, I can't win against this guy.
It's a rap.
It's a row.
You can't look at Joe Biden or Trump and be like, this guy's unstoppable.
Like no one can win against him.
That's not the case at all.
And very often, and especially as the decades went on, the people at the top in these countries were the filter wasn't accomplishment, intelligence, creativity.
The filter was orthodoxy and the worst kind of orthodoxy.
Someone who will repeat the things.
There's that Ned Flanders joke.
There was a Simpsons episode where Flanders is basically Job and he's praying to God.
Like his house is destroyed.
It's the only house destroyed by the tornado.
Everyone else's house is fine.
He's like, God, like, I don't know.
I tried to do all this stuff, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff.
But in these countries, they would say with a straight face, this guy's the enemy of the people.
Then the next year he's a hero.
Then the next year he's the end of the people.
And again, if you have any kind of critical thought, you realize this is nonsense.
But it's useful if you have no critical thought, if you could say these things with a straight face.
And those are the people who get the promotions.
I think it's called the Peter Principle here, the equivalent.
You're promoted to the level of your incompetence in a corporation.
This is kind of a thing.
Because if you suck and you're in my team and I can't fire you, let me get you a promotion so I don't have to deal with you.
Well, yeah, there's that concept.
And there's, hey, you're a great employee.
Let's promote you enough until you're adequate.
Yes, yeah, right.
To the level of your own.
Yeah.
So that's the thing.
These countries are not run by brilliant strategists.
They're run by people who, in a free, rational country, would be working in the mailroom and would void their bowels because it says 457 Eastland Street, but the address is 457 Eastland Avenue.
It's the same person.
Is this the same?
What do I do?
But we laugh.
Imagine that person has the power of your children.
And imagine trying to argue with him that it's not reasonable that your children be taken away.
There's no one home.
And that's what's terrifying in these countries.
It's not that if someone's C.S. Lewis, who I'm sure you admire, you know, has that quote.
He's like, I don't have the exact verbiage.
I'd rather be run over by someone who's corrupt than a moral busybody.
Because the moral busy body, like, he'll sleep with the aid of his conscience because he's thinking he's doing the right thing.
The corrupt guy, just give him some cash.
You look the other way.
It's fine.
And, you know, ideological evil is many ways worse than simple corruption.
If these countries, the worst thing is like guy in charge hires his cousin to run the cement factory and the, you know, it's 50% over and the building's kind of shabby.
Who cares?
You're right.
Like, if that's the worst, no, no, we're talking about things that are done for ideological reasons where, you know, if you are someone who runs your mouth, you're in East Germany especially, your kids are going to be sent to a good, reliable political family and you'll never be able to contact them again.
That is so much worse than, you know, oh, my uncle, you know, is the one who's in charge of this company.
And that's one of the sweet moments of hope at the end of the book when you say it's one of the lies of the evil that they are omniscient and omnipotent.
Evil is not particularly intelligent.
It can be intimidating, but it's not unbeatable.
That's one of those moments in that last chapter of release that gives the last chapter so much emotion.
Well, thank you.
That was good.
I'm glad it had that effect.
I try to let it's important for me, at least as an author.
There's something I hate where you're very encouraged in publishing to have the last chapter be like your final thoughts.
But it's kind of like, if my final thoughts are wrong and they're going to be much more nuanced than I might have had the wrong take, that undermines the entire history.
And it's like, example is if someone is like the best diagnostician on earth of cancer, like you could just spot cancer a mile away and it's like, well, what should I do?
We'll eat peanut butter.
It's like, but it under, so his diagnosis is completely wrong.
His prescription is completely wrong.
That doesn't mean his diagnosis was incorrect, but that's what happens when you have these last chapters and the person, like, I read books.
I'm like, this is really good.
And then the person's advice is just completely like basic, mediocre, like thinking.
I'm like, I was with you and now I'm questioning whether the narrative's correct.
Yeah.
Just pour some lavender oil on us.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, that is, again, the word that keeps coming to mind is restrained.
That's one of the things that's so restrained about the book.
You don't, at the end, pour in your personal philosophy, which is anarchism.
You let the reader leave with their own take on how bad totalitarianism and communism was.
I don't think you need to be an anarchist to look at children being abused and be like, this is obscene and unspeakable.
So that's why it's important.
I think this is something that is essential.
Rand, you know, the first chapter said you have to understand it is totally inhuman.
So I think any human being who has any semblance of a soul or ethics, who reads what was done to people in these countries, will walk away with being like, this is something that needs to be fought against with every fire of our being.
Well, this is a good opportunity to broaden the conversation now and dip a little bit into your earlier bookography.
Okay.
Dear reader, I'd like to compare and contrast Dear Reader and the White Pill for a moment.
C.S. Lewis had this famous observation about 1984 on Animal Farm.
He said, animal farms, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
He said that potent phrase is more of a gut punch than the whole of 1984.
So he basically was saying Animal Farm has transcended realism as a genre and it's pure myth, and that's why it's a gut punch.
1984 is bogged down in Winston Smith and his varicose veins.
So he just said it's not as gut punchy.
I wanted to ask you, Dear Reader and the white pill, what was the approach with creating each of them?
So on the back cover of the white pill, it says once upon a time.
So I very much wrote it as a myth in the sense of this is, I mean, it's historical and it's true, but it does have that structure of good versus evil.
And I do think that, you know, a lot of times in America, people use the word evil loosely or not that doesn't exist, but it's just like, all right, some things are bad, but like this is so, things could get so much worse, is my point.
To me, this was evil.
Like this is just evil.
Like it is an evil empire.
When you're talking about the things you and I we all discussed during this episode, there's no much ambiguity in my mind.
You can argue even for, you know, forcing people to work in factories.
I don't know if we could argue whether that's evil, but that's so much less bad than what we've been discussing that it's just like, all right.
It's like a lukewarm evil.
It's maybe like 80 degrees, right?
But not like boiling skin kind of situation.
Dear Reader is almost quite literally a myth because Kim Jong-il, who is their Jesus in their mythology, he's the son.
There's a father and a mother.
He, you know, when he's born, there's a new star in the sky and he has these kind of magical powers.
And it is kind of adjacent to reality, but not exactly reality.
And that's, I mean, it's the history of North Korea from their perspective.
And it is kind of given this ahistorical, but it's kind of like a shadow of reality.
So there is a kind of a mythological element to it most explicitly.
But I don't know if that answers your question.
That does.
And here's just another commendation and compliment.
If someone's teaching a U.S. history class, I believe the white pill should be adjacent to the class.
If someone's teaching a like world lit class, I believe 1984 should be supplemented with the white pill.
It's just you do a good job of running concurrently with what's going on in the USSR to what's going on in the U.S.
And that balance, it's just elegant and it does read like myth, but it's not.
Well, I'm extremely flattered to hear you say that.
That was one of my goals was I was at the Blaze and they were talking about how Biden is a Marxist.
And I'm like, do you guys have any idea of just like how bad it would be if Biden, I don't think Biden's like a corporate hack, right?
Like this guy's, I mean, we laugh, but he's not this ideologically driven.
Now, maybe he's in the service of agencies like that, and that's a different argument.
But you can't look at the guy and be like, he really wants, you know, the state to run every industry.
He's in the pocket of every Wall Street.
You know, like there's a big distinction between someone who's a corporate hack who's on the take and someone who really is like, I don't care if we starve millions of people, we're going to have this kind of agenda.
And this was conservatism's great victory.
This was Reagan and Thatcher who were like portrayed as foaming at the mouth dogs who were going to get us into World War III, sitting down and giving space for Gorbachev to peacefully liberate half the world.
And I'm sitting there, I'm like, you can't expect the New York Times to tell that story.
And I'm like, this is your moment.
Like you should know this.
This is your history.
And why aren't you guys singing these praises?
So it really gave me some the sadistic side of me.
It gave me a lot of pleasure to know that for a lot of hardcore lefties who despise Margaret Thatcher, and there's lots of reasons to hate her and that's fine, but that a lot of people are going to read her, read this, and be like, oh, she did some really great things.
And to have them realize, to kind of resurrect her a little bit from the dustbin of history, which she's kind of receding to, that to me is such a great finger in their face.
Because I think when someone is integral to doing so good, you kind of, in some contexts, have to ignore the bad things that they did and give credit where it's due.
Well put.
On the topic of Dear Reader, I think a difference is the white pill is pretty direct.
It's pretty in your face.
Dear reader is a bit more oblique.
It's a bit more subversive because you're relying on, I mean, it's like dramatic irony.
The reader knows something that neither the author nor the author's purported readership knows.
Like it's written as if it's Kim Jong-il to his beloved people.
And he's talking about how he was there at all these pivot points in North Korean or Korean history, he would say.
But the reader, if you're a regular U.S. person, you know that, I mean, he's just, he's an unreliable narrator, and that's where all the humor and the bite comes from.
And the white pill is just more direct.
That's one difference I would share.
Yeah, the last chapter of Dear Reader, I can't get through without crying still because that's when the mass drops and when they start defending the concentration camps and things like this.
And it's just very hard having been there.
And the fact that every single person who I saw is still there.
I mean, like, you can't leave the country.
So like wherever I walk on the street, they're still there.
My guide is still there.
No one can leave.
I just was talking to Young Mee Park, who's a refugee from North Korea.
And she said, even though they have electricity, now they put up electrode fencing.
So even those few refugees can't get out.
So it's completely been locked down.
If I didn't have that last chapter, because it's very hard for any author, and insofar as it's succeeded, I'll pat myself on the back, to write about atrocities and things that are obscene in the nature of the face of morality and have it be readable.
Because our minds, like that Kosier scene that I just talked about with the daughter getting assaulted, our minds want to be like, I can't deal with this.
Because you want to shut down because it's like, if I don't have to deal with this emotion, this happened in the 30s, why should I?
And at a certain point, it's like, well, you have to because even though Costiar is long gone and the daughter's long gone and the Soviet Union's gone, evil has not vanished from the face of this earth.
And there are plenty of people who, if they had their drothers, would have this back overnight.
But the point being, they're not always going to get their way.
And why don't I get my way sometimes?
And that to me is what hope is all about.
The idea that if evil people have their a very easy way for people to, because when you're blackpilled, you have to spread it.
Because as soon as there's some hope, then your whole narrative is defeated, right?
Your whole hypothesis.
So a very easy example I tell people, I go, if they had their way, you'd be disarmed.
Like that's what they want, that you're not.
So that's one example of this idea that like, oh, whatever they want, they're going to get.
No, that's not true.
Your thesis has been disproven.
Now, you've written these two books about, you know, North Korea and the Soviet Union.
Which place would you rather live?
When?
Well, let's just go with right now.
I know the Soviet Union has fallen, but it's still Russia.
I would much rather, are you kidding?
Yeah, that's a good idea.
I'm not.
What about at their way?
Which, when both of them were at their own.
Russia versus North Korea right now.
Right now is Russia.
I mean, that's obvious.
Because you'd be roommates with Edward Snowden.
I mean, would that be such a bad thing?
I don't know.
I don't know what his habits are.
Well, I mean, I'd rather be roommates with literally anyone than in North Korea.
Sure.
But yeah, the correction is like during their worst period.
So North Korea now, but Soviet Union post-Stalin.
I think, oh, post-Stalin?
Yeah, post-Stalin.
Oh, Gorbachev is, you know, doing things.
Wait.
After Stalin.
But I don't, I'm confused by the question because I think literally everyone, including the Russians of North Korea, literally everyone have the same answer because it's not comparable.
Because they, after Stalin, the authoritarianism receded heavily.
They closed down the gulags.
There was more food.
There was more access to information through Samizdada.
In North Korea today, if something happens to you, three generations of your family are punished.
The line is class enemies have to be exterminated three generations.
So the whole family's rounded up and you don't know which one of you was the transgressor.
It's not like you're not told, well, you did this.
So you don't have that in a Khrushchev.
I mean, you don't have that now, certainly in Russia, no matter how bad Putin is.
It's not even remotely close to this.
And the other thing is, in North Korea, to this day, if I escape, my family will be executed in front of my whole town, to give an example.
That's not a thing.
What analogy do I have to bring up to get you to choose North Korea?
Nazi Germany as a Jew.
That's probably the one.
Yeah, okay.
But again, I'm not allowed to live in North Korea because I'm a Yank devil.
So it's the most racist country on earth.
They're very dedicated to racial purity explicitly.
Not one drop of ink shall be spilled in the Han River, as the great leader Kim Il-sung said, to the point where if women escape to China and they're often bought or forced into sexual slavery, if they're repatriated, they're beaten or forced to miscarry because they're not going to mix Korean blood with Chinese blood.
I was aware of that.
That's horrifying.
Yes.
So again, to compare that to Khrushchev is incomparable.
I apologize to Khrushchev.
He did some good things.
When I was in high school, we had a South Korean foreign exchange student that lived with us, and her family graciously invited us to come stay with them for like a little over a week after she had returned home.
And we got to visit the DMZ and we got to go down in the tunnel haunting.
How is it across the border in North Korea?
What's that experience like?
What's the air like?
What's the atmosphere like?
I'll tell you a funny story that happened to me at the north side of the DMZ.
So I'm from Brooklyn originally, and a friend of mine, Nichelle, had a good definition of hipster.
And she said, a hipster is someone who likes things that are cool just because they're old.
It's a good working definition.
So we're in the north side of the DMZ with my guide.
And there was a guy there who had like an accordion camera, you know, but it just looked like an accordion camera, it was just like a functional camera.
And I go to him, oh, you're such a hipster.
And my guide goes, what's a hipster?
And I'm trying to, how do I tell a North Korean what a hipster is?
So I gave her that definition.
And we took photos from that side.
It was really cool.
And actually, when I went to that room where they both share, it's north and south where they meet this meeting room.
So it's a kind of neutral territory.
I had a shirt that said Made in America and I carefully unbuttoned my outer shirt.
So I'm standing there with the American thing.
And I had Uncle Sam socks and I had shoes with blue soles to stamp out the red of it.
So I had all this stuff going on in the background that they weren't oblivious to because I like to work on several levels.
And then later, there's, I didn't realize at the time, there's, they were, they're slaves, but they're paid well.
They live at the hotel and they're tailors.
So, and they, in a sense, they're slaves, but they're rich and they're high status.
So, it's just this kind of weird situation.
Like, push comes to shove.
Like, anyone would want their position.
Like, yes, you have to live in the hotel and work long hours, but you have electricity, housing, food, you're safe.
It's this, it's this weird kind of dichotomy.
So, I went there with the intention of getting a custom, you know, North Korean suit made.
And they're showing me all these pictures with these Western suits.
And I go, no, no, no, no.
I want to suit like the great leader Kim Il-sung, like, you know, in these pictures with the collar.
And she's like, oh, hipster.
I'm like, she got it.
She got it.
Yeah.
That's great.
That's so awesome.
But the other thing is in the North side of the DMZ and everywhere in Korea, they always show their slogan is Korea is one.
So they always show Korea as one unified country because their perspective is that Korea is not two countries.
The South is under foreign occupation.
And the Southern South Korean government is illegitimate.
So they always very much make a point for the photos, the drawings to have as a one country of Korea.
We'll shift to current events.
Okay.
We mentioned Trump's indictment, or you mentioned Trump's indictment that's happening right now, I guess.
What are your thoughts on that in comparison with what happened in Soviet Russia or North Korea?
Obviously, we're not quite there yet, or are we?
I'm in favor of arresting all presidents and imprisoning.
That would be my compromise.
We probably shouldn't be asking an anarchist.
I am also a big proponent, as you guys know, of national divorce.
And I think this very much pushes us closer to that direction.
I think that from my understanding, and I have not been, I'm sure I can imagine the comments blowing up, but my understanding is what he's, let's assume for the sake of argument, let's steel man the argument, that he's guilty of everything he's been accused of.
My understanding is what he's been accused of are not only are normally not felonies, that they're misdemeanors.
And that also this happened a long time ago and the statute of limitation in many cases has run out.
So it's my understanding that this is very clearly being done.
Let me put this way.
It seems almost indisputable that if this wasn't Donald Trump, this wouldn't be felony charges.
And I think that is something that is both good and bad.
I think it's good that there's this brinksmanship.
And I think more politicians should feel unsafe.
But I think it also speaks to an enormous asymmetry in our culture war because when he was president, Donald Trump pardoned Democratic governor of Illinois, Rad Blogojevich, who was in jail for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat.
He pardoned Kwame Kilpatrick, Democrat, longtime Democrat, who would be mayor of Detroit.
And when George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, first thing he did was to make sure that any criminal charges against Bill Clinton that were pending were dropped.
And we're not going to pursue any felonies for him, even though he clearly committed perjury and many other things.
And people had gone to jail for perjury about sexual affairs under oath.
And the Senate didn't want to hear it when the House brought those charges during impeachment.
So as long as you have this, if you ask me, there's two teams.
One team is chanting Lock Corrupt and the other team is locking them up.
Which team do you want to be on?
Which team is going to win?
They think it's pretty obvious to me.
Well, I want to be on the right team, not the winning team.
Well, I don't know that you have a right team when it comes to politics.
That's right-leaning.
Okay.
No, I'm kidding.
I just realized that as I said, right team, I was probably confusing them.
This is intense stuff.
I feel like I'm like on a morning chat show.
That's intense stuff.
Yeah, I put on my over to Kyle with the weather.
Over to Kyle with the weather.
That's really funny.
I wish he was here to give us the weather.
You and Kyle are no longer speaking.
He knows that he did.
That's intense stuff.
So wild stuff.
Wild stuff indeed.
Wow.
Wow.
yikes so yeah I was going to shift to another current event um So obviously the Nashville, the shooting in Nashville was tragic beyond all recognition as these mass shootings are.
Without using any curse words, how would you characterize the corporate media response?
Honestly, it could have been a lot worse because I don't, there were some apologetics, but they were not as many as we'd seen in other situations, which is a very low bar.
But I think that's the case.
I think my concern would be the apologetics, and I think there's a lot of sweeping under the rug, which is the best you can hope from them, I think.
I think it's very interesting that as soon as there are all sorts of questions happening about the shooter and the dangerous implications of that, all of a sudden Trump gets indicted.
And it's like, look over here.
And, you know, you could be put on your Alex Jones-Tinfoil hat about that if you like.
I can't speak on that.
But I also am heartened by the fact that 10 years ago, there would be a lot of hand-wringing in Republican circles about you probably got to do something.
And there was zero movement among Republicans to tighten gun laws or think that this somehow reflects on average citizens and their ability to protect themselves and their families.
I think that that ship has sailed in right of center circles.
And that to me is wonderful.
I think there's a GIF on Wikipedia and people post it all the time, which shows how, state by state, it went from your inability to get a handgun to now it's a constitutional carry many states shall issue and gun proliferation is, to me, the best answer to gun control arguments that you can have, because at a certain point you and I can argue to a blue in the face.
But if there's too many guns out there, there's nothing that can be done about it, and God bless Cody Wilson and Ghost GUNS, who are now making 3d printing guns a situation to make gun control literally impossible.
Do you have a shall not be infringed tattoo?
I don't have any tattoos, only a tramp stamp.
Would you be willing to get one right now?
No no, I have.
I know what four tattoos I would get, but if I got four, then I'm gonna get 50 within a week.
That's a good good for another set of 10 questions.
What four?
That's really good.
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