Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 14, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:03:54

Record Numbers Of Teen Girls Are Suicidal. Thanks, Social Justice Warriors! | Ep. 1668

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	New data from the CDC shows record levels of depression and suicidal ideation among teenage girls, and it's no mystery why.
	The CDC adds the COVID vax to its childhood vaccine recommendation list, and Pete Buttigieg's latest transportation disaster is derailing his political future.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Bench Bureau Show.
	Well, we were told that an entire society dedicated to authenticity and subjective feelings of well-being, this was going to create record levels of happiness, mental health.
	Everything was going to be fantastic.
	It turns out that just the opposite has happened.
	According to brand new data from the CDC, teen girls are now experiencing a record high level of sadness and suicide risk.
	This, of course, accompanies new data showing that young boys are doing really poorly as well, dropping behind girls by nearly every measurable aspect of American life.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly three out of five high school girls in the United States surveyed reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, a roughly 60% increase over the past decade, according to new research from the CDC.
	Though both high school girls and boys reported experiencing mental health challenges, girls reported record high levels of sexual violence, sadness, and suicide risk, according to the CDC.
	In 2021, 57% of high school girls reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared with 36% in 2011.
	30% reported they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, up from 19% in 2011.
	3 out of 10 high school girls reported, again, seriously considering suicide.
	in 2021 up from 19% in 2011.
	Three out of 10 high school girls reported, again, seriously considering suicide, three out of 10.
	And almost 60% say that they have experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the last year alone.
	The CDC found that 29% of high school boys reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021 compared with 21% in 2011.
	Meanwhile, 14% of high school boys reported to have seriously considered attempting suicide up from 13% in 2011.
	So this means that 3 out of every 10 girls has considered suicide and 15 out of every 100 boys, 14 out of every 100 boys, Federal officials highlighted the problem of mental health among young people, especially girls, in the new data released on Monday.
	The data is gathered from a biennial survey from 2011 to 2021 of 9th through 12th graders across the country, and adds to the evidence suggesting the stresses, isolation, and loss of the COVID-19 pandemic worsen mental health issues among young people, many of whom were already struggling.
	So yes, isolation is a factor here.
	Yes, obviously increased social media usage is a factor here, but there is a set of values that undergirds both of those things.
	And that set of values is atomistic individualism that suggests that there are no rules.
	There are no social stringencies.
	There is no community to which you belong.
	There is no role for you to play in American society.
	You are simply supposed to find your true happiness within.
	And as it turns out, no one can find their true happiness within.
	That is not where happiness lies.
	Happiness lies in obligations to others.
	Happiness lies in obligations to God.
	Happiness lies in obligations to communities.
	It lies in the ties that bind you to everyone around you.
	And when you sever all of those connections, and when you say to people that the truest sense of joy lies in your sense of sexual self-satisfaction, and you are talking particularly to teenage people, Who are hormonally chaotic, and what you end up with is widespread dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and suicidal ideation.
	None of this is a giant mystery.
	All of civilization was built to prevent this sort of thing.
	So it turns out that when you destroy civilization, when you destroy all of the ties that bind us together, it should not be a shock that what you end up with is a chaotic wasteland.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, girls are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression, according to mental health experts, given the high rates of harassment and discrimination they face compared with boys.
	Again, now what we're going to do is we're going to claim that somehow over the course of the last 10 years, there has been widespread mistreatment of girls wider than there was in 2011, which cuts against pretty much everything we know about the levels of actual mistreatment in society of girls by boys in American society.
	So this is a self-reported survey.
	And there are certain things when it comes to self-reporting data that people tend to be reliable on, stuff that people tend not to be quite as reliable about.
	First of all, self-reporting surveys are always more unreliable than objectively reported surveys of outsiders, right?
	So if you survey me about what my child does, that's going to be significantly more accurate than if you survey me about what I feel about myself.
	Because people do a really bad job of assessing how they feel or what's happened to them.
	Very often they are just wrong.
	And when you've also incentivized a system of victimization, a sense that your victimization grants you heroism in American society, which is certainly true.
	You get more attention by claiming that you've been victimized by others.
	You've been victimized by society.
	You're going to get a lot more of that.
	Always, subsidization of human behavior increases that behavior.
	It's something Jonathan Haidt has written about in The Coddling of the American Mind.
	The idea is when you create safe spaces, when you create this idea that no one should ever be offended, people look for a rationale to be offended because it grants them some sort of credibility and leverage in the social circles in which they move.
	So what we are seeing is an uptick in the number of girls who are reporting being mistreated by boys.
	There's no uptick, by the way, in the number of rapes that are being reported widespread across the United States or sexual assaults or criminal sexual harassment that's being reported across the United States.
	Remember, this is all in the aftermath of the Me Too movement, which is supposed to eradicate that from American life.
	But we are seeing increased reports of young women claiming that this sort of stuff is happening to them.
	Now, I'm sure for a lot of these young women, that's true, that there are boys who are mistreating them.
	It's also quite possible that what we are seeing is, again, just societally speaking, this is true of every self-reported survey, in uptick in the people who are self-reporting particular aspects of their own lives, and that is how they're perceiving things, but that isn't necessarily what's exactly happening.
	There are a bunch of stories out today specifically on that.
	For example, the New York Times has a piece today titled, How Teens Recovered from the TikTok Tics.
	What exactly is that?
	A wave of teenagers who developed tics during the pandemic by watching TikTok.
	Now are those biological activities that are being driven simply by evolutionary bottlenecks, or is it that social contagion and incentivization of particular behavior leads to more of that behavior?
	We have a society that has decided to create a particular witch's brew of terribleness for young people, and then when that manifests in bad feelings in young people, we're like, where'd that come from?
	It's a mystery.
	Who knows?
	It must be societal intolerance or some such.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that the inflation report is due out today.
	It's not going to be amazing because the simple fact is that our federal government has no idea how to actually keep within its boundaries.
	Our federal government continues to spend trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars.
	We can tamp down inflation for the moment.
	That just means it's going to explode later on or we're going to have to increase taxes, economic stagnation.
	There are only a few choices when it comes to the national economy, and this is why you should at least diversify some of your assets into something that has lasted the test of time, like precious metals.
	Gold withstands inflation, geopolitical turmoil, and stock market crashes.
	You should talk to my friends over at Birch Gold to make this happen for you.
	Consider converting your IRA or 401k into an IRA in precious metals.
	You can own gold in a tax shelter retirement account.
	Talk to the experts at Birch Gold.
	They've got an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, and countless five-star reviews.
	Some of my money is in precious metals.
	Some of yours should probably be as well.
	Text Ben to 989898.
	Claim your free info kit on GoldenEye and talk to one of their precious metals specialists.
	Text Ben to 989898 today to get started.
	So, the social contagions that we are seeing, particularly among young girls, very obvious.
	New York Times today, quote, Aiden's ticks erupted one day after school in early 2021, about a month after the long pandemic lockdown had ended.
	The 16 year old convulsed while walking into the house, head snapping and arms swinging, sometimes letting out high pitched whistles and whoops.
	Aiden's parents looked up from the living room couch with alarm.
	They had been worried about the teenager's ratcheting anxiety related to COVID, gender dysphoria, there it is, gender dysphoria, college applications, even his hanging out with his friends.
	But they were not prepared for this dramatic display.
	We watched this happen in front of our eyes, Aiden's mother Rhonda recently recalled.
	It looked like Aiden was going crazy.
	They rushed Aiden to the emergency room, but doctors found nothing wrong.
	After calling a neurologist, the family learned that more than a dozen adolescents in Calgary had recently come down with similar spasms.
	Over the next year, doctors across the world treated thousands of young people for sudden explosive tics.
	Many of the patients had watched popular TikTok videos of teenagers claiming to have Tourette's.
	A spate of alarming headlines about TikTok tics followed.
	Why, almost as though there is a social contagion that is facilitated by social media, in this case propagated by a Chinese propaganda outfit called TikTok.
	According to the New York Times, similar outbreaks have happened for centuries.
	Mysterious symptoms can spread rapidly in a close-knit community, especially one that has endured a shared stress.
	The TikTok tics are one of the largest modern examples of this phenomenon.
	They arrived at a unique moment in history, when a once-in-a-century pandemic spurred pervasive anxiety and isolation, and social media was at times the only way to connect and commiserate.
	Now experts are trying to tease apart the many possible factors, internal and external, that made these teenagers so sensitive to what they watched online.
	Well, maybe the reality is that, again, social isolation, lack of connection with others, lack of a value system in which people are embedded, leads people to imitate behavior that is attention-getting.
	This is not a mystery, folks.
	Anyone who's pretending that this is a mystery is ignoring the evidence with their own eyes.
	Four out of five of the adolescents were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder.
	One-third reported past traumatic experiences, according to the University of Calgary that analyzed nearly 300 cases from eight countries.
	In new research that has not yet been published, the Canadian team has also found a link to gender.
	The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls or were transgender or non-binary, though no one knows why. Oh, no one knows why, do they? I have some ideas.
	Could it be that we have a society that incentivizes behavioral traits that identify with mental illness?
	Could it be that?
	Could it be that our society has decided to glorify people who claim to be gender non-conforming?
	People who enact tic-tac-tacs.
	People who say they have Tourette syndrome.
	That a society that incentivizes victimhood creates feelings of victimhood in people and then it turns out victimhood is miserable.
	It's miserable.
	See, the great theory underlying all of this is that if we can just uncover all the victimhood that's in our society, then people will feel empowered because they'll realize that their failures have not been their own fault, and now they can move forward.
	But that's not really what it's about.
	What it's really about is the idea that society inherently victimizes entire classes of people, and that because society entirely victimizes these classes of people, we have to restructure society completely and utterly.
	We have to destroy all of those ties that actually used to keep people feeling embedded in society.
	Destroy all of that, because all of that is making people feel bad.
	And then, this is a non-falsifiable thesis, because then when people feel worse, when it turns out that they are navel-gazing all the time, when that happens, and people feel worse, we say, well, it's still society.
	It's still society's fault.
	Now, the actual solution to a lot of this problem is not to think less of yourself, it's to think of yourself less.
	Not my own saying, obviously.
	You know, a well-known tautology that the real solution to being self-obsessed and depressive in many cases, when we're not talking about biological clinical depression or something, the solution in many cases is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.
	But we spend all day thinking about ourselves and thinking about how society has harmed us and about how society has made us feel bad about ourselves.
	And maybe if we just show that we are not, you can't box us in, man.
	You can't have these rules and restrictions.
	We can't have societal standards.
	We don't even have to have things like biological sex thrust upon us.
	Instead, we are what we feel.
	What we feel is horrible.
	And our horribleness, our feeling horrible, is a symptom of courage.
	Because if you can show how horrible you feel, how confused and chaotic you are, this demonstrates that you are free of a society that is trying to box you in, man.
	Misery is actually incentivized in our society.
	According to the New York Times, perhaps as striking as the wave of TikTok tics is how quickly it has receded.
	As teenagers have resumed their pre-pandemic social lives, new cases of tics have petered out.
	Doctors said that most of the tic patients had now recovered, illustrating the expansive potential for adolescent resilience.
	That's not adolescent resilience, guys.
	That's they went back to school and they found friends and they didn't hang out on TikTok all day with other... nuts.
	This is insane.
	But again, the insanity is the point.
	There are forces in our society that wish for the insanity to be propagated, that forward the insanity.
	Because there's one way to cure all of this.
	We don't see this, by the way, in a lot of other countries outside the West.
	You just don't see this sort of stuff.
	And the reason you don't see this sort of stuff is because there are expectations of teenagers.
	There are expectations of men and women.
	There are roles that they are supposed to play across the course of their lives and that they are expected to perform, whether they like every aspect of it or not.
	And so you don't get this kind of stuff.
	So here are your choices.
	Atomistic individualism with widespread mental illness and suicidal ideation.
	Or individual freedom within the boundaries of the roles and rules that society has established for thousands of years.
	Which allows you the freedom within those rules and rules to live your life the way you want, but it does not destroy the roles and rules that actually allow for human happiness to flourish.
	It's unbelievable.
	We destroy all the walls of the building, all the foundations of the building, and then when the second story comes collapsing down on our heads, we're like, hey, what happened?
	Why did that happen?
	It's a mystery.
	We have to figure this out.
	Probably the big problem is that the structural foundations, if we were to remove those a little more, then maybe this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
	Get to more on this in just one moment.
	First, let's talk about corporate America.
	Corporate America is one of the forces pushing cultural wokeness across the country.
	There's no reason for you to sponsor the companies that happen to have a death wish for American society, many of them.
	So why not instead spend your money on corporations that don't actually hate your bellies or hate your guts?
	You should check out Pure Talk.
	Pure Talk is a no-contract wireless company, the only wireless company to offer 100% money-back guarantee.
	They're so sure that you're going to love their service.
	If you don't, they'll give you your money back.
	Stop paying a fortune to Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile and cut your bill in half with Pure Talk.
	The other wireless companies, many of them are actually pretty woke.
	They spend a lot of their money on things you don't like, and they're going to try to lock you into those multi-year contracts with huge penalties.
	Not so with Pure Talk.
	Their US-based customer service team makes the switch really simple.
	Switch over to Pure Talk in as little as 10 minutes while keeping your phone and your phone number.
	Your first month is guaranteed risk-free.
	Go to puretalk.com, enter promo code SHAPIRO, save 50% off your very first month.
	That's puretalk.com, promo code SHAPIRO.
	Pure Talk is simply smarter wireless.
	Restrictions apply.
	See site for details.
	So, as the New York Times reports, scientists have gained a greater understanding of how anxiety, trauma, and social stress can spur the brain to produce very real physical symptoms, even if body scans or blood tests show no trace of them.
	When these illnesses interfere with day-to-day life, they are now called functional disorders.
	So, we have now created clusters of functional disorders, and we pretend that we haven't created it.
	It is sort of a natural phenomenon.
	But how exactly were these kids rehabilitated?
	According to the New York Times, the patients needed to accept two things.
	They did not have Tourette's, and their twitches were partly under their control.
	They had to want to get better.
	Oh, you mean we had to explode their delusions?
	People were claiming they had Tourette's.
	They did not have Tourette's.
	People were claiming that their twitches were out of their control.
	They were not out of their control.
	And yet when it comes to nearly every other aspect of American life, we tell teens that your delusion is not a delusion.
	And in fact, your behavior is not under your own control.
	And then we are shocked when the mental illness is propagated.
	Back to that CDC study, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	This is hilarious.
	Deborah Howery is the CDC chief medical officer and deputy director program for program and science.
	Oh, she's one of the scientists.
	She's big on to science.
	She loves to science.
	So what exactly are the solutions?
	She says the U.S.
	needs to focus on programs that will prevent sexual violence.
	Nailed it.
	Nailed it.
	You have an increase of 60% suicidal ideation since 2011 among teen girls.
	And this is after the Me Too movement, with more educational material available for young men not to touch or get near a young woman than ever before in American life.
	And the answer is that probably it's about sexual abuse in chief.
	That's really what it's about.
	By the way, what's amazing is that you have this skyrocketing increase in suicidal ideation and oppression among girls.
	The statistic that the CDC is choosing to focus on is that 18% of girls in high school said they experienced sexual violence in the past year compared with 15% in 2017.
	And 14% of teenage girls reported being forced to have sex when they didn't want to, which is up from 12% in 2011.
	Even if all of that increase is self-reported and absolutely 100% true, that does not explain a 60% increase in suicidal ideation.
	A 4-5% difference in one stat does not explain a 60% increase in the other.
	So something else is happening here.
	What exactly is happening here?
	I love this.
	It's so amazing.
	You have, by every polling data Imaginable.
	Every statistic imaginable shows one of the major changes in social life for young girls particularly is LGBTQ plus identification.
	LGBTQ plus minus divided by a sign, happy face emoji, sad face emoji, crying laughing emoji, tilde, all of that.
	That identification has skyrocketed in America and in Britain, by the way.
	Among members of the youngest generation, there are some polls showing up to 40% of young people are now identifying as LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign.
	That is highly associated by all available data with depression and anxiety.
	And yet we're like, oh, wait, we don't know what's happening.
	Well, the answer obviously is that society's intolerant.
	So we ripped away all of the standards of society and all the expectations of behavior in society and all the preparation for your future role because a lot of what your role is today is wrapped up in what our expectations are for you tomorrow.
	If we expect young men to be good young teenagers, what we should be doing is teaching them what they are going to need to do when they become men.
	Namely, defend women, defend children.
	We need to teach them what it means to provide.
	We need to teach them what it means to treat women with respect and honor the way they would when they get married.
	Instead, we have decided that because we're blowing up marriage, all the rest of that is complete waste of time.
	Same thing with young women.
	We've decided that instead of teaching young women that their future will likely include getting married, And having a husband?
	Yes, a husband, I know, shocking.
	And having a husband?
	And having, wait for it, children?
	You know, the propagation of Western society, and all society actually, being kind of an important part of human life.
	And so, this might mean cultivating a set of skills A level of emotional durability that is necessary in order to raise children and to have a husband and to have a functional household.
	Instead of doing all of those things that actually give you something to shoot for in the future, we just set kids free.
	And now they're free.
	They're like free-range chickens until we chop their heads off.
	Because that's essentially what we have done with our call to explode all of the boundaries of civilization.
	So what is the CDC focused on like a laser beam?
	Quote, schools should prioritizing teaching kids about sexual consent, managing emotions and asking for what they need, said the CDC.
	Ah, that's really what's really happening here is that people don't know what to ask for.
	That's really the issue.
	In addition, school environments need to be safer and more inclusive for LGBTQ plus minus students.
	Ah, the Equality Act needs to be pressed.
	What we need is is for every child to be taught that their gender non-binary, that gender is indeed a social construct.
	That's what we need.
	This won't confuse the kids at all.
	This will make them better.
	Sure, we've been doing nothing but this for the past 10 years, but...
	And the associated mental illness and suicidal ideation have skyrocketed.
	But more of that will probably be the solution.
	Schools should encourage gender and sexuality alliances, provide safe spaces and people for LGBTQ plus minus divided by students to go to for support, and ensure enforcement of anti-harassment policies, according to the CDC.
	This is what the science says.
	The science says that we drank societal bleach, and now it turns out it was really bad for us.
	The solution is we need more societal bleach.
	That is the only thing.
	Just down that bleach, man.
	Just guzzle that societal bleach.
	It'll be amazing.
	This feels uniquely validating.
	The CDC has caught up to what we're dealing with, said Shopa Taufik, a clinical psychologist and director of the Comprehensive Adolescent Rehabilitation and Education Service at Mount Sinai Morningside, a program that works with the New York City's Department of Education.
	She called on federal agencies to funnel more resources into schools.
	Ah, yes, that's it too.
	More for public schools.
	Now, none of this could have to do, obviously, with the complete destruction of all societal expectations and standards.
	We're not a society that cares about our kids.
	We're not.
	We're a society that has decided to validate the adult by perverting the kids.
	That's what we've decided to do.
	We have a bunch of adults who have decided they want to act in a particular way because it makes them feel more free and more authentic, and we're going to generate an entire generation of younger people who are confused, chaotic, depressed, and suicidal in order to make the adults feel better.
	It is the most selfish society in human history, what we are experiencing right now.
	A society that says all the older people, probably they should just die because they're a drain on our resources and all the younger people are basically tools for our experimentation.
	But we feel real good about ourselves.
	It's, it's, but why are the kids, why are the kids, what's wrong with the kids?
	Why aren't they fine?
	Maybe because all the adults disappeared and abdicated their duty.
	Well, speaking of people who have abdicated their duty, the simple fact of the matter is the government really screwed a ton of people during the COVID lockdowns.
	The government has screwed a lot of people with its inflationary policies.
	If you're a business that has survived the past few years, you could probably use a break and innovation refunds can help.
	If your business has five or more employees and managed to survive COVID, You could be eligible to receive a payroll tax rebate of up to $26,000 per employee.
	It's not a loan.
	There's no payback.
	It is a refund on your taxes.
	The challenge is how to get your hands on it.
	Go to GetRefunds.com.
	Our team of tax attorneys are highly trained in this little-known payroll tax refund program.
	They've already returned $1 billion to businesses, and they can help you, too.
	They do all the work, no charge up front.
	Simply share a percentage of the cash they get for you.
	Businesses of all types can qualify, including those who took PPP, nonprofits, even those who had increases in sales.
	Just go to GetRefunds.com, click on Qualify Me, answer a few quick questions.
	The payroll tax refund is only available for a limited amount of time, so don't miss out.
	Go to GetRefunds.com.
	Again, that's GetRefunds.com.
	If you overpaid your taxes a couple of years ago, why exactly would you leave that money in the hands of the government if you could get it back?
	Go to GetRefunds.com again.
	That is GetRefunds.com.
	The abdication of parental duty and adult duty is overwhelming.
	It is clear.
	So the lie that people on the social left like to tell is that the easiest form of parenting is authoritative parenting.
	That's easy.
	That's where you actually set standards for your kids.
	But that's you imposing on your kids, and so it's easy for you.
	The best form of parenting is where you treat your kids as a purse.
	They're really cute, and you carry them around a lot.
	And really, you don't care what happens to them, but you get to show everybody your purse.
	It's really exciting.
	And this means that you get to brag about how tolerant and diverse you are as you wreck your own children.
	Perfect example today.
	This is, I'm not sure I've ever seen, this may be a platonic example of the kind of parenting that generates screwed up kids.
	There's a piece by a person named Noah Berlatsky.
	Berlatsky is, he writes for MSNBC a lot, he writes for The Atlantic as well, and he has a piece today, and the title of this piece is, I kid you not, he writes for Slade, he writes for a bunch of other places.
	The title of the piece is, quote, My wife is bisexual and non-binary, and my daughter is transgender.
	My queer family helped me better understand myself and my masculinity.
	Western civilization, in a nutshell, these days, folks.
	There it is.
	My wife is bisexual and non-binary.
	And my daughter is transgender.
	Probably this is all just perfectly natural, biological, Darwinian bottlenecking.
	That's all that happened here.
	It just happened to be that the daughter is transgender and it just happened to be that your wife is bisexual.
	But the important thing is you feel so good about your new version of masculinity.
	I'm sure things are going to end up, this is going to be like the happiest family in the entire world.
	I'm sure things are going to end up amazing here.
	Amazing.
	According to this person.
	Again, this person made himself the issue by writing APs.
	Saying this, quote, My 19-year-old daughter last month invited her mother to see the queer comedian Chris Fleming.
	My wife was thrilled.
	Our daughter still lives with us, but she often communicates in brief grunts as she scurries down to the basement lair, emerging only to let in friends and forage for chicken nuggets.
	She often doesn't include us in her social plans.
	You are hip and happening with the kids, I told my wife.
	She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was pleased.
	I was not invited on this excursion because I wasn't a fan of Fleming.
	My wife has tried to explain his appeal.
	He's so funny.
	My wife and daughter's love for Fleming is rooted in another commonality.
	They're both queer.
	My daughter is transgender, and my wife is bisexual and non-binary, says Noah Berlatsky.
	As the boring cisgender straight guy in my family, I just don't get some aspects of queer culture.
	I try to take an interest, but your demographic destiny sometimes rears up and says, pfft.
	I'm grateful to be outnumbered in my family by the other demographics.
	When you share a family with queer people, your understanding of love becomes more expansive, as does your understanding of yourself, and that's...
	You feel so amazing about yourself.
	You write full columns about your extremely confused daughter and your wife who claims that she is non-binary.
	And you get to pat yourself on the back because you're such an open-minded, broad-minded person who's expanded the boundaries of their heterosexual identification.
	Slow clap, slow clap.
	The future of Western civilization is in the best of hands.
	Quote, our daughter came out as bisexual in middle school.
	In high school, she reassessed and came out as trans and lesbian.
	Often when families, even supportive ones, discover their children are queer, they feel like it's a loss.
	There's a loss of the past because the child you thought you knew isn't who you thought they were.
	And there's a loss of the future because society is, in many ways, a homophobic garbage fire, and queer people face discrimination in many professions.
	Ah, yes, society is to blame for your child's confusion.
	Not you, not your wife.
	Society is to blame for your child's confusion and for the fact that you feel it.
	I love that we now live in a society where Parents, their child comes out as extremely confused, gender non-conforming, trans and lesbian.
	And your first thought is, I feel sad.
	And maybe the reason you feel sad is because the picture you had of your future was maybe your daughter getting married and having kids.
	You know, like virtually everyone in all societies for virtually all of human history.
	And now that got exploded.
	Now you're upset about that, but you can't admit that.
	Really what it's about is that you're really afraid that society is mean and cruel because you're great.
	You're awesome.
	You say everything is fine.
	We didn't view her coming out as a loss.
	Instead, we saw a lot of upsides.
	My wife was better positioned to appreciate those than some parents.
	My wife has known she's bisexual since she was in middle school in northwestern Indiana.
	My daughter is confident.
	She's happy.
	She has queer friends who sometimes pass through on their way to the basement lair and stop to talk about Fleming tattoos, the queer art they're making, or the queer anarchist collectives they're living in.
	Wow.
	Again, things are going to be amazing.
	The next generation of American leadership is going to be incredible.
	My wife was a queer young person, and now she's able to be a resource for other queer young people, especially our daughter.
	My daughter coming out as trans also prompted my wife to think about her own gender.
	She's since come out as non-binary, though she's retained her she-her pronouns.
	Wow, now this is some amazing parenting.
	So let's just try to get the actual biological sex here straight.
	Since this person is referring to his trans daughter, what he means is his son.
	So his son came out as bisexual, right?
	Then his son came out as trans and lesbian, which means a male who believes he is a female but also likes girls.
	So a straight male.
	Hey, that's what we would call that, unless, again, you may believe that you're a woman, but you're still a male, but you're a male who likes females, which doesn't make you a lesbian.
	That makes you a straight person.
	And your wife is a straight woman who has a child.
	But your son is now a trans-lesbian woman, and your wife is a non-binary bisexual.
	Why are the kids confused, guys?
	I don't understand.
	What's confusing about this?
	We're all on the right path.
	Now it's hilarious to watch the entire social left try to diagnose a problem that they themselves created.
	Marriage was not broken.
	They broke it.
	Society was not broken.
	They broke it.
	There are lots of problems with society.
	There are a lot of things that can be fixed.
	There are a lot of things that can be shaded.
	Many marriages were imperfect.
	That does not mean that you explode the institution of marriage.
	Many relationships between male and female aren't perfect.
	This does not mean that you explode the idea that the norm in sexual behavior is heterosexual.
	Because it was, is, and will remain so for the entire rest of the history of humanity, if there is to be a history of humanity at all.
	That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.
	There are exceptions.
	Of course.
	But you blow up at the norm because you don't like the norm, and then you are shocked when everything falls apart around you.
	And so now the New York Times has pieces like this.
	Have More Sex Please by Magdalene J. Taylor.
	And here's what she writes.
	Sex is good.
	Sex is healthy.
	Sex is an essential part of our social fabric.
	And you, specifically, should probably be having more of it.
	Americans in the midst of a loneliness epidemic are not having enough sex.
	Across almost every demographic group, American adults, old and young, single and coupled, rich and poor, are having less sex than they have had at any point in at least the past three decades.
	Why?
	Well, um, maybe it's because no one is married.
	That would be the reason, guys.
	It turns out sex is way more common inside marriage than it is outside of marriage.
	Contra the friends model of living in which a bunch of 30-something singles live in an apartment and pretend that they are 17.
	Estimates vary, says this New York Times columnist, but somewhere between a third and two-thirds of Americans report being lonely.
	Loneliness exists on a feedback loop.
	Fraying cultural bonds, damaged by physical health and reduced social contact both exacerbate loneliness and are exacerbated by it to the point that loneliness lowers life expectancy.
	They try to blame COVID-19, but this is not really the issue.
	Between 2014 and 2019, the decrease in time people spent with friends was greater than it was during the pandemic.
	So what exactly is happening?
	Well, they say that women are sexless, men are sexless, In 2021, roughly a quarter of women under 35 reported having had no sex in the past year.
	For men, that figure was 19%.
	And women who are having sex are less likely to be happy with the sex that they are having.
	Both men and women report feelings of regret and unhappiness following casual sex.
	Oh, what?
	No, no.
	You shock me, madam.
	You mean that women are not that into casual sex?
	No, no.
	You mean that women tend to put actual value on sex, which is a good thing.
	That is not a shortcoming.
	That's because women are better people generally than men.
	It's an amazing thing.
	Not only, says this columnist, are women and men marching together into sexlessness, they are also on the same road to loneliness.
	There is no one solution, says this person.
	Social media is a culprit.
	It might be a societal issue, but it can be solved at least partly on the level of individual bedrooms.
	We all ought to have more sex.
	Or maybe we should be aiming for something different.
	Namely, meaningful human connections within the boundaries of traditional marriage.
	I know this is all... They broke these institutions and then the consequences were perfectly obvious.
	And then they're like, well, maybe if we break the institution further, that'll be better.
	Meanwhile, you have the BBC pushing things like this, quote, the adults celebrating child-free lives.
	It turns out when you reorient an entire society around the selfishness of adults who pretend that casual sex is the apotheosis of living, that all of society falls apart.
	The sexual revolution is the worst thing that has ever happened to Western civilization, and it is not particularly close.
	It has destroyed entire civilizations.
	It is destroying ours.
	From consciously child-free influencers, says the BBC, to online communities for people who've decided against having kids, the No Kids movement is booming.
	But so is the backlash.
	Well, maybe the backlash is booming because it turns out that the entire propagation of the human species rests on people actually having kids and making sacrifices for people who are not them.
	It turns out having kids changes you.
	It makes you a better person because you have to start thinking about your kids.
	Unless you're one of these doofs who has kids just so that you can convince your kids that you're a great parent by allowing your kids to do whatever they quote-unquote want, not in pursuit of a higher happiness or a higher goal, but simply because it makes you feel good to be the cool parent in the room.
	We're supposed to pretend that child free is great and wonderful and just as societally valuable as anything else.
	Just as socially valuable, just as individually valuable as anything else.
	It's just, it's astonishing.
	Apparently, a 2021 Pew Research Center study showed 44% of non-parents aged 18 to 49 do not think they will have children, up from 37% in 2018.
	More than half listed their main reason as don't want to have children, rather than more circumstantial factors such as medical issues or not wanting to raise a child without having a partner.
	Now, let's be real about this.
	The reason that people actually have kids is because they believe that there is a moral necessity to have children.
	That is the reason to have kids.
	Kids art.
	Kids are hard.
	Kids are difficult.
	Kids are time-consuming.
	They are energy-consuming.
	They make mistakes.
	They annoy you.
	They're also the most wonderful thing that will ever happen to you, but the only real reason for you to be on the planet is for you to have kids, and those kids make the world better, and along the way make you a better person.
	Not make you feel better about yourself, because sometimes they make you feel way worse about yourself.
	They make you a better person because you are now obligated to something beyond you.
	You are now a link in the chain of generations, from the past to the future.
	You now are embedded in time.
	Parenting embeds you in time.
	You know why people feel isolated and adrift?
	It's because they're not embedded.
	They're not embedded in communities.
	Those communities have been destroyed.
	Religion's bad, guys.
	Church is bad.
	Therefore, you're adrift.
	And we're not embedded in time.
	We are perennial teenagers.
	We are perennially 18 for our entire lives.
	And it turns out, if you met an 18-year-old, they're pretty miserable.
	Many 18 year olds are pretty miserable because they are not embedded.
	And then you have kids and now you're embedded.
	You're embedded in a chain of generations that stretches back all the way to the monkeys and all the way forward into the explosion of the sun.
	You're now embedded in that.
	And that means something.
	But meaning has been lost, and our only solution to that is, well, maybe we should really inform people about more consent in high school.
	That's really what we need, are more gay-straight alliances in high school.
	That's the solution.
	Nailed it.
	Quick, one more piece of data on this.
	It should therefore come as no shock that according to polling from the Survey Center on American Life, 46% of Republican men report being completely satisfied in their relationships, compared to 29% of Democrat women.
	42% of Republican women say they are completely satisfied by their relationships.
	36% of Democrat men say they are satisfied by their relationships.
	In other words, people who tend to be more conservative, who buy into social values a little bit more, they tend to be more satisfied in their relationships.
	So this Valentine's Day, when you look at the misery around you, you should remember, maybe it has something to do with a society that has valued misery over happiness.
	And I don't mean just temporary feelings of joy.
	It's a society that has valued non-meaning over meaning.
	Self-constructed meaning over actual, real-world meaning.
	And then we're shocked when people feel adrift and unhappy on Valentine's Day.
	There is a shocker.
	Speaking of Valentine's Day, every Valentine's Day, some people are trying to find their special someone and they're looking for particular qualities.
	Well, if you're an employer, you're trying to find that special someone too, to fill that job role.
	And that is why you need ZipRecruiter.
	ZipRecruiter's matching technology allows you to find the right candidate for your job.
	If you see a candidate you like, you can easily send them a personal invite so they're more likely to apply.
	If you're really looking to catch somebody's eye, ZipRecruiter offers attention-grabbing labels that speak to job flexibility, like urgent or remote.
	You can find candidates you are crazy about with ZipRecruiter.
	Right now you can try for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire.
	Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one.
	See for yourself.
	Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire to try ZipRecruiter for free.
	Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
	ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
	Go check them out right now.
	ZipRecruiter.com.
	We here at Daily Wire have been using ZipRecruiter ourselves for years to make our employees better and it has worked.
	That's why we're a large company.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire to get started.
	ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire.
	Well dudes, it's Valentine's Day.
	Your lady loves you and she means well, but without the proper nudge, she might get you a terrible Valentine's Day gift.
	Like a bear or something.
	You don't want that.
	Then you'll have to pretend it's what you've always wanted as you subtly throw it in the garbage.
	How about you get something you actually want?
	Like a Jeremy's Razors Valentine's gift bundle for 30% off.
	She will love the price.
	You'll love that it's not pink or covered in cartoon hearts.
	Even on the sappiest of holidays, keep your masculinity intact with that new five-blade sharp as truth precision five razor.
	In fact, I have one right here.
	Behoard the glory.
	Behoard.
	Growing your whiskers instead of shaving them?
	Start dropping hints that you want this.
	It is the luxurious Jeremy's Beard Kit.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	There it is.
	Behold.
	Gaze upon it.
	Cast your eyes upon it.
	That's all you get until you get one yourself.
	Make sure you do it fast.
	Today is your last chance to get 30% off Jeremy's Razors Valentine's bundles.
	Send her to jeremysrazors.com today.
	You'll both be glad you did.
	Meanwhile, in a society that has facilitated mental illness and left mentally ill people on the streets, it should not be a particular shock that criminality by the seriously mentally ill is a major issue.
	The New York Post reports that yesterday, a U-Haul rampage took place as a driver plowed into New Yorkers and then told the cops, shoot me, I'm not stopping.
	Apparently, the violent saga, which left two victims critically wounded, began in Bay Ridge around 11 a.m., ended about 30 minutes later and three miles away in Red Hook following a high-speed chase.
	Apparently, senior law enforcement sources identified the suspect as a 62-year-old homeless man with no prior arrests in New York.
	But a history of mental illness.
	He also served prison time in Nevada for stabbing his brother in 2015 in Las Vegas.
	So once again, well done by our criminal justice and mental health systems letting people who are violently mentally ill wander the streets.
	Speaking of which, apparently a gunman opened fire Monday night at Michigan State University, killing three and wounding five more before fatally shooting himself miles away after an hours-long manhunt that forced frightened students to hide in the dark.
	Police announced the man's death early on Tuesday, four hours after shootings broke out at Berkey Hall, an academic building, and later nearby, the MSU Union, a popular hub to eat or study.
	Apparently, the 43-year-old man, who is unrelated to the campus, was confronted by police off campus before killing himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
	Not clear exactly who this person was or what his motivation was, but obviously had nothing to do with the campus at all.
	This means that because this does not fit into any of the other narratives that the left particularly likes, this will turn into a gun control narrative.
	But that's the way that we deal with our mental illness problem in the country as we find other sources.
	Meanwhile, the CDC focused laser-like on Tuscience.
	They have decided to include in the immunization schedule, the recommended immunization schedule, COVID vaxes and boosters for kids, adolescents, and adults.
	This is insane.
	There is no data whatsoever suggesting that children need to take the COVID vax.
	First of all, the data on the durability of the COVID vax itself has been rather scanty.
	It turns out that it is not great at preventing transmission at all.
	In the early days, you could have made the case, but they were doing it without any data at the beginning.
	We've talked about this on the show.
	They literally lied about this.
	They went out there and they said that it prevented transmission at like a 99% rate, and it was a total lie, and they predicated a lot of their attempted mandates on exactly that lie.
	Some of us opposed the mandates, even if we were pro-vax at the time, but the simple fact of the matter is that the CDC was fibbing for a very long time about this stuff, and they continue to fib about the necessity for small children to get the COVID vax, when the simple fact of the matter is that kids overwhelmingly do not die of COVID.
	According to the CDC's own stats.
	Well, now the CDC is updating its schedule of recommended immunizations to include these shots for children, adolescents, and adults.
	Forget about the fact that in certain countries in Europe, they've already said they don't want young people taking these shots because they don't like what they are seeing in terms of myocarditis or other side effects.
	The CDC is going right ahead.
	Genius-level stuff from our CDC.
	For five-year-old children, the schedule recommends two shots of Moderna.
	Again, Moderna, I believe, has been prohibited for people under the age of 30 in particular countries in Europe.
	Followed by a bivalent mRNA booster or two shots of Pfizer-BioNTech, followed by the company's bivalent booster for kids aged 6 to 11, the CDC recommends two doses of the Moderna vaccine or two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech shot in both cases, followed by an mRNA booster.
	Now, this is COVID's recommended guidance.
	This is the CDC's recommended guidance.
	It is.
	I assume there are going to be school districts around the country that attempt to implement this now.
	It just goes to show you the CDC is a disaster area.
	It does not serve its primary function, which is supposedly to protect the health of the American people.
	That is simply not happening.
	They have other priorities and those priorities happen to be very political in nature.
	Speaking of people with political priorities.
	Pete Buttigieg.
	He's our Secretary of Transportation.
	And sure, he's absolute garbage at his job, but he is gay.
	And that's the important thing.
	Pete Buttigieg was once the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
	That is his great claim to fame.
	Where he did not properly fill the potholes.
	But then, he ran for president.
	And, lest you forget, he's gay.
	Which means that he was an amazing, amazing candidate.
	And sure, he dropped out after the first three races or so.
	And sure, he had no experience with transportation.
	But he does think that airports are romantic, which means that he is delusional because airports are maybe the least romantic place on planet Earth unless you really, really like the smell of feet.
	And he also loves choo-choo trains.
	This was, as you'll recall, his actual acceptance speech when he became Secretary of Transportation.
	He loves the choo-choo trains.
	He's been playing with them ever since he was a child.
	Well, he loves the choo-choo trains until he decides to ignore their derailments.
	For those who haven't been following, there's been a major story on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.
	A train carrying vinyl chloride derailed and exploded near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, according to the UK Guardian.
	And this caused crews to ignite a controlled burn of toxic chemicals to prevent a much more dangerous explosion.
	So the idea was that we are going to set this thing on fire so that it won't later be set on fire.
	This then sent a giant plume of black smoke hovering over East Palestine, a town of about 5,000 people who had to be evacuated.
	Officials warned the controlled burn would create a phosgene and hydrogen chloride plume across the entire region.
	Phosgene is a highly toxic gas that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble.
	It was used as a weapon in the First World War.
	So we are now setting off World War One weapons thanks to derailment of trains and people to judge is nowhere to be found, man.
	What does that guy do for a living?
	No one knows.
	Well, I mean, he takes paternity leave for a living, which I guess is not really a living, but okay.
	Though no one died in the accident, the catastrophe serves as a wake-up call to the potential for more deadly freight rail derailments, public health advocates warn.
	By one estimate, 25 million Americans live in an oil train blast zone.
	And apparently, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine were unavailable to help make sure that the train escaped the blast zone.
	So this is all going amazingly well.
	And again, Pete Buttigieg is completely missing on all of this.
	Now, there's some real questions to be asked about why exactly they are blowing up the trains.
	There's really no better way to do this at all.
	J.D.
	Vance, who's a senator from Ohio, he says, I'm kind of worried about the environmental harms, to be honest with you guys.
	Ohio Senator J.D.
	Vance issuing this statement today.
	He says he's horrified by the crash and has three big questions tonight.
	First, are the air and water really safe for residents?
	He says state and federal agencies' tests are encouraging, but he's heard alarming anecdotes about contaminated waterways and adverse effects on wildlife in the area.
	Second, what are the needs of the people on the ground?
	Vance says the local fire department in East Palestine has dealt with the worst of this disaster and the area needs FEMA's help to get what they need.
	And third, why did this happen?
	Senator Vance says his office is going to be investigating the train company's braking system and parts, plus how to prevent this from happening again in the future.
	Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar actually put out something sane for a change.
	I know it's shocking.
	Ilhan Omar tweeted out, East Palestine Railroad's railmen will have a significant negative impact on the health and well-being of the residents for decades.
	There's almost zero national media attention.
	We need congressional inquiry and direct action from Pete Buttigieg to address this tragedy.
	Wow.
	It's like she Google searched for Palestine or something so that she could get involved.
	But really, she is correct on that, Ilhan Omar.
	Good job right there.
	Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg, she was making the rounds.
	And he did not have a comment on the train derailment that necessitated the blowing up of World War I weaponry.
	But he did have some comments on there not being enough black people in construction crews.
	I am not kidding.
	This is what our transportation secretary does.
	We've heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them, but everyone in the hard hats on that project looking like, you know, doing the good paying jobs, don't look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood.
	Right.
	You can build community wealth that will help close wealth gaps in this country if we can tear down those barriers.
	Oh, well, I'm glad that he's focused like a laser beam on the plethora of white people in the construction industry.
	I feel like this is a very white person because I know a lot of people in the construction industry.
	There are a lot of black and Latino people in the construction industry, but apparently, according to Pete Buttigieg, it's all equity, man.
	It's equity up and down.
	I can't wait for his explanation as to what happened with train derailment, but he's worried about white supremacy, and that's really the key.
	Also, he's been talking about the challenges facing transportation.
	Trains apparently are not one of those.
	It's had its challenges.
	Right.
	I mean, if you look at what the American transportation systems have faced in the last two or three years, partly because of the pandemic, we've faced issues from container shipping to airline cancellations.
	Now we've got balloons.
	That's right.
	Um...
	But, also the best time ever to be working in transportation because of these resources.
	And we know ultimately it's in the hands of those who are on the ground that the biggest difference is going to be made.
	Amazing, amazing statements from Pete Buttigieg.
	I mean he's even got the purse lips to demonstrate to you just how serious he is.
	It's very, very important stuff there.
	Now mention of the train derailment where we're blowing up toxic materials and creating clouds of phosphine gas over towns.
	The level of incompetence, by the way, this is why I don't believe the UFO story.
	You know why I don't believe the UFO story?
	Because I actually don't believe that our government is competent to shoot down UFOs.
	The reason I say that, I don't think our government is good.
	You're telling me that there were aliens who crossed millions of light years to come here and Pete Buttigieg and team are shooting it down?
	Joe Biden and team are shooting this stuff down?
	I think not.
	I think not.
	And for people who say, well, it's a giant cover up.
	It's a cover up about the aliens.
	Do you think this this can't shoot straight gang is going to be able to cover up anything like truly cover it up?
	They're so uber competent.
	They're able to cover up people, aliens coming from millions of light years away and shooting it down when you just cover it up like that.
	No problem.
	These people can't even put on their shoes in the morning without getting the feet wrong.
	And yet we're supposed to believe that they're amazing at this.
	By the way, how bad are our people at this?
	This is an amazing scoop.
	You ready?
	So apparently, the U.S.
	Air Force F-16 that shot down an unknown object over Lake Huron a couple of days ago.
	It was an unknown object, and it was apparently relatively stationary.
	It was about 20,000 feet high.
	We shot a Sidewinder missile at it.
	Each Sidewinder cost about $400,000.
	The first shot missed.
	It was an unarmed Flying object of some sort.
	And we wasted a $400,000 sidewinder.
	No one knows where the missile went, by the way, so that's always great.
	Apparently, the objects shot down in Alaska and Canada are less advanced than the Chinese balloon, according to the Washington Post.
	The three flying objects shot down over US and Canadian airspace, or as Kareem Jean-Pierre might put it, the Canadiani-end in airspace, since Friday appear to be less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon found earlier this month, but that they were targeted when they were found in a widening detection effort and it was determined their altitude could pose a risk to air traffic.
	Now what's amazing is them trying to make excuses for why they're doing this now.
	So recall, this started a couple weeks ago when the Chinese decided to hover a giant balloon, like the size of three school buses, over the United States within the ability of normal humans on the ground to see with the naked eye.
	And then Joe Biden allowed that thing to wander all over the United States before settling off the coast of South Carolina where we shot it down.
	And according to Chuck Schumer, this is a massive victory.
	This is the Senate Majority Leader.
	He says that Joe Biden actually has humiliated the Chinese, which comes as a shock to the Chinese who don't feel particularly humiliated, I think.
	We're going to probably be able to piece together this whole, whole surveillance balloon and know exactly what's going on.
	So that's a huge coup for the United States.
	This program is going to have to be shut down now, isn't it?
	The Chinese aren't going to be able to send balloons.
	Look, I think the Chinese were humiliated.
	I think the Chinese were caught lying.
	And I think it's a real, it's a real step back for them.
	Yes, I think they're going to have to, I think they're probably going to have to get rid of it or do something because they look really bad.
	Oh, they do.
	They look so bad.
	I'll tell you what kind of looks weird is the fact that we waited a week to shoot down an obvious Chinese spy balloon.
	And then we shot it down over water, and apparently we are still searching for the parts.
	And now we're just shooting down everything in sight.
	We're just shooting down a bunch of stuff that's kind of hovering around, and we're not even bothering to find out exactly what it is before we shoot it down.
	So remember, We didn't shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.
	First, because we didn't know what it was.
	We had to make sure.
	Second, because it might hit a school or something, according to Joe Biden.
	Now we're just shooting down random stuff for no reason anyone can discern.
	We don't know what they are.
	We haven't checked it out.
	According to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, we have no clue if the objects that we are shooting down are collecting intelligence.
	We actually don't know what they were.
	We're just shooting them down now.
	OK, fine.
	But it seems more like Joe Biden is trying to demonstrate that he's not a weakling and that he has any clues to what he's doing.
	Has there been a delegation of authority from President Biden to yourself on making decisions on when to take down these these objects?
	Our policy hasn't changed.
	We will evaluate each and every event on its own merits and we'll make decisions based upon the recommendations of the NORCOM NORAD commander.
	The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and they'll make recommendations to me, and I'll evaluate and make recommendations to the President.
	Again, these three events, each of them presented a risk to safety of flight.
	And we don't know if they were actually collecting intelligence, but because of the route that they took, out of an abundance of caution, we want to make sure that we have the ability to examine what these things are, and potentially what they were doing.
	I love this.
	We want to have the ability to examine what they are and what they were doing.
	Also, we haven't recovered any of the debris, apparently.
	So we blew them up and oops.
	Mr. Secretary, have you been able to recover any part of the most recent three objects?
	And why continue to call them objects?
	Are these not balloons?
	Well, we're going to confirm what they are once we have collected the debris.
	But to answer your question, we've not recovered any debris from the three most recent shoot down.
	When we've collected the debris, then we'll have an idea of what they were.
	Also, we've collected no debris.
	This is going amazing.
	My favorite is the Biden administration trying to blame Trump for this.
	They're trying to blame Trump for everything.
	It's so funny.
	So you remember that when that giant Chinese spy balloon went all the way across the United States and Joe Biden just let it float there for a week, going over like all of our military installations?
	People were like, wow, that's unprecedented.
	No one would do that.
	And then the administration leaked falsely that this has happened a bunch of times under Trump and it just wasn't true.
	Then they had to admit, oh yeah, by the way, these Chinese spy balloons, they like briefly went into American airspace, but the Defense Department was only informed of that after they had exited American airspace, so it wasn't the same at all.
	They're trying the same thing now.
	Now they're like, we're so good at this, we're detecting, you know, these weren't even detected under Trump, but we're so good at this, we're detecting them now.
	Yes, because apparently, according to you, you turned up the radar specificity, which raises the question, why hadn't you done so before?
	You are, in fact, the people in the White House.
	Here is John Kirby, the incompetent National Security Council strategic comms coordinator.
	We were able to determine that China has a high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that's connected to the People's Liberation Army.
	It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it.
	We detected it.
	We tracked it.
	And we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can.
	Well, the Trump administration didn't do it.
	And that's really important.
	It's not about Trump, guys.
	You're the people in charge.
	Why are you so bad at this?
	Now, as I've said, I don't actually believe this is aliens.
	I think it probably is the Chinese who are just floating a bunch of crap around the United States and Canada.
	But the only thing that might make me believe that it's aliens is the fact that the White House is denying it.
	So here's Corinne Jean-Pierre, world's least talented press secretary, explaining there is no evidence of aliens.
	And one last thing before I turn it over to the Admiral, I just wanted to make sure we address this from the White House.
	I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no, again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.
	Again, there is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.
	Wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it was important for us to say that from here because we've been hearing a lot about it.
	Are you going to take questions, though, Corrine?
	Nah.
	She finishes the little presser and right out of there, because that's the last thing she needs is to take questions about what the Biden administration is doing.
	I got to go into the oval, but I will see you tomorrow.
	And thank you for the compliment on the smile.
	I appreciate that.
	But I'll be I'll be back tomorrow.
	Thanks, everybody.
	Have a great day.
	Bye.
	Catch you.
	Catch you later.
	Alrighty, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	The AP courses, the college board, the people who do the advanced placement courses, they've now caved to Ron DeSantis and they're whining about it.
	They're very upset because Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida, they did what a lot of states do.
	They went to the AP courses and they said, we want specific changes to your program if you wish to propagate it in our state.
	This is not uncommon.
	Social studies books all across the nation are actually changed state by state.
	So you have a different edition of certain social studies books in Texas than you do in California.
	In Florida, they said you're not going to do critical race theory, you're not going to do BLM, you're not going to do transgender queer black theory in an AP course for high school students about African American history because it's silly and irrelevant.
	And the college board had to go back to the drawing board.
	This, of course, has a maddened Randy Weingarten.
	The head of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the worst people in American public life, which I'm here for.
	I'm here for Randi Weingarten being angry, because whenever she's angry, an angel gets its wings.
	Here's Randi Weingarten, who's very, very upset that the College Board dropped Black Lives Matter from the AP African American History Awards.
	The idea that erasing what actually happened is somehow beneficial to the mission of educating anybody.
	Anybody, anywhere is insane.
	How did it come to this?
	I completely agree with you.
	And I, you know, when I first saw what the College Board did, and let me just confess, I am an APGov teacher.
	I have taught, not African American studies, but I've taught APGov.
	And so I was disappointed, as I said that day, with what the College Board had taken out.
	Well, I mean, if she's disappointed, then, as we say, an angel gains its wings.
	Rhonda Santos pushed back on the college board being upset.
	Here's the governor of Florida, who, again, is just winning victories.
	The College Board was the one that, in a black studies course, put queer theory in.
	Not us.
	They did that.
	They were the ones that put in intersectionality.
	They put in other types of neo-Marxism into the proposed syllabus.
	And, man, this is the proposed course.
	So our Department of Education looked at that and said, in Florida, we do education, not indoctrination.
	And so that runs afoul of our standards.
	And, you know, many people agree with that.
	In other states, we were just the only ones that had Well, good for Ron DeSantis.
	And again, that is a victory achieved in my great state of Florida.
	they demagogue you when you do it. But look, I'm so sick of people not doing what's right because they're worried that people are going to call them names. We're doing what's right here.
	Well, good for Ron DeSantis. And again, that is a victory achieved in my great state of Florida. OK, time for a thing that I hate.
	All righty, so it's Valentine's Day, which means it's time for all the sad single people to come out of the woodwork and cry.
	But pretend that they're super happy, because that is what we do on every national holiday now.
	We find the marginalized, and then we talk about how miserable they are because there's a day that other people are celebrating, and that's really, really bad.
	That annoys me in every guise.
	There used to be a time, I remember, when it would be Christmas time, and you'd have all these articles, what do Jews do on Christmas?
	You know what we do?
	We go about our daily business.
	That's what we do.
	And Christmas is great.
	I'm glad people are celebrating it.
	Enjoy.
	You don't have to celebrate a holiday in order for you to feel good that other people are celebrating a particular holiday.
	Who cares?
	It's fine.
	Unless you're talking about having national ramifications.
	Ramifications for you specifically, who cares?
	But what we get every Valentine's Day is a spate of very, very unhappy people talking about how happy they are.
	I'm really, really happy!
	They say as they cry.
	So Chelsea Handler is a perfect example of this.
	Chelsea Handler, who I don't know who decided she was funny and when and how hard they had hit their head on the toilet before inventing the flux capacitor.
	But who actually decided Chelsea Handler was funny?
	This is one of these unanswerable questions in life.
	It's like trying to find out what's on the interior of a black hole.
	Who was the person responsible for this decision?
	No one knows.
	No one knows.
	Again, one of the great mysteries of creation.
	Well, she has put out a video on Valentine's Day.
	It is titled Day in the Life of a Childless Woman for Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
	And it has some interesting things to say about society.
	Here's Chelsea Handler's Day in the Life of a Childless Woman.
	This is a day in the life of a childless woman.
	I wake up at 6am.
	I remember that I have no kids to take to school, so I take an edible, masturbate, and go back to sleep.
	I wake up at 12.30pm and get ready for a busy day of doing whatever the f*** I feel like.
	I put on my most impractical and stylish shoes since I won't be chasing a child around the grocery store.
	I go to my fave spot in Paris to grab a croissant.
	I do a meditation sesh on the plane since I have no screaming kids, allowing me all the time in the world to become enlightened.
	The weightlessness of my existence has granted me superhuman powers.
	I teleport myself back home Then I get ready for a night out with whatever hot guy I met on Raya that morning.
	I call up a babysitter and tell her that I don't need her since I still don't have kids.
	Now it's time for a workout so I hit Mount Everest for a quick climb.
	I invent a time machine.
	Go back in time and kill Hitler.
	Freeze you bastard!
	It's amazing what you can do when you have this much free time.
	And that's a day in the life of a childless woman.
	So first off, did you come anywhere within a few light years of the laugh in that particular video?
	Anyway, no?
	No?
	Nobody?
	No one's laughing?
	Okay, but there's something that's way more important about this video.
	And it really is kind of important.
	And that is, this lady is miserable.
	I mean, she is miserable and it's written all over her face how miserable she is because she doesn't have kids.
	It turns out having kids is really good for you.
	Now again, you shouldn't have kids because of your sense of subjective pleasure, but the reality is that being embedded in life, being embedded in time, being embedded in that chain of generations we talked about earlier, it's very good for you as a person.
	Otherwise, you end up as a dope on the Twitters, putting up videos about masturbating at 7am and eating edibles like Chelsea Handler.
	That's what you end up like.
	The telltale sign is this.
	She starts off her day and she talks about probably what she actually does, right?
	She does pot, which isn't edible, and then she masturbates, and then she goes back to bed, and then she wakes up late.
	And then she puts on her most stylish shoes.
	And then she does a series of things that she doesn't do during the day, right?
	She names a bunch of things that you can do if you're a single lady with no man and no kids.
	What you can do today?
	You can get on a plane.
	You can go to Paris.
	You can pick up a croissant.
	You can go see the Mona Lisa.
	You can invent a time machine and go back in time and kill Hitler.
	What did she actually do that day?
	She got a camera.
	She made a bad video.
	She drank a shitload of wine.
	And she went back to sleep.
	That's what she did that day.
	She didn't do any of those things.
	There is this weird idea on the left that you free people up of all of their normal obligations.
	You get them.
	They don't need a job.
	They don't need a job or obligations or kids, family.
	They don't need any of that stuff.
	They can be as free as they want to be.
	And when they do, you'll see human flourishing like you've never seen before.
	Remember, you saw Nancy Pelosi a few years back.
	She was talking about the fact that if we can just free people from their jobs, well, then they'll be artists.
	They'll go back to their government-supported housing, and they will create some of the world's great art.
	No, they won't.
	No, they won't.
	What they will do is lie around and be useless and make bad TikTok videos.
	That's what they will actually do.
	Because she's not doing any of those things.
	Turns out, that the way that we actually find fulfillment in life, and I say fulfillment as opposed to pleasure or happiness, because fulfillment is not the same thing.
	Very often, doing the fulfilling thing is the boring and annoying thing.
	But, being fulfilled in life requires you to have a higher goal and a higher meaning.
	And very often, that is located in children.
	Does this seem like, I know there have been these memes that have been going around for years, and they happen to be correct.
	Showing, here's what your mom looked like, and then here's what I look like, right?
	As a young woman.
	And when I say young, I mean like 35-ish.
	And the meme has been put out by the feminist left and then sort of hijacked by the right because it's so obviously hijackable.
	The feminist left put it out and it was a picture of mom and she has like five kids and a husband and she's smiling.
	She looks a little weary, but she's smiling.
	And then it's me at 35 and it's you in your apartment alone holding a glass of wine with a cat.
	And we're supposed to believe that picture number two is the is the apex of human fulfillment and happiness.
	So I just have one point to make here.
	Chelsea Handler is acting like a child, right?
	Chelsea Handler is how old?
	She is currently 47 years of age.
	She's 47 years of age.
	She is living alone.
	She does not have any children.
	She is not married, from what I understand.
	And she looks really, really unhappy.
	She has about the same level of emotional maturity as your normal 17-year-old.
	Which is to say, not much.
	And yet she's putting herself out there like, I don't have to call a babysitter.
	I can do whatever I want all day long.
	But are you doing whatever you want all day long?
	Or are you really doing nothing all day long and calling it whatever you want?
	Just to take by contrast, a day in the life of my wife, a non-single woman, a married woman, with three children and a fourth on the way.
	Her day consists of a lot of very burdensome things that actually grant for fulfillment.
	Like, yes, she wakes up Early in the morning, slightly after I do to take care of the kids, get them ready for school.
	Then she goes into her job where she is a doctor and she takes care of patients for several hours.
	Then she comes home and she usually has a couple of charity meetings because she's on the board of a couple of charities.
	Then after I pick up the kids from school, the kids come home and we all sit together and we do the homework with the kids.
	Then we usually go out and do something fun with the kids and we make dinner for the kids.
	Then we put the kids to bed and then finally we look at each other.
	Now it's a lot busier than Chelsea Handler's life.
	But I'm just telling you, my wife has a much more fulfilled life than Chelsea Handler.
	She does.
	You know why?
	Because she has embedded herself in time and space.
	She's bound herself to others.
	She's bound herself to a higher set of rules.
	She's bound herself to actual obligations.
	Because paradoxically, it's the obligations in life that tend to make us feel truly fulfilled and yes, free.
	Because when you're an atomistic individual living on a desert island or in a lonely Brooklyn apartment like Chelsea Handler, you don't feel very free.
	You feel like, you feel like drinking a lot of wine and going back to bed.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be talking with Spencer Clavin.
	He's the author of a brand new book about the collapse of the West and how we save it.
	If you're not a member, become a member right now.
	Use code Shapiro at checkout.
	Get two months free on all annual plans.

▲