All Episodes
Sept. 13, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:39
GHOSTS OF 9/11 Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep412
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com.
Coming up, since we're at the anniversary of 9-11, I'm asking the question, why is it that the January 6th defendants are being prosecuted with such ruthless rapidity, while the 9-11 organizers...
Haven't been tried, with no trial coming up in sight.
A progressive writer at Slate accuses conservatives of being unprincipled, particularly with regard to the law, and I'm going to show why this is a very good thing.
I'll explore whether the Scandinavians are truly the happiest people on earth, really, and also reveal why Odysseus rejects Calypso's offer of Immortality.
This is the Dinesh Jhansuza Show.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
We are now more than 20 years away from 9-11, and we just had an anniversary of 9-11, and And, you know, I've always been struck by the fact that 9-11 is defined by a number.
Just 9-11, and everybody knows, yeah, that's September 11, 2001.
There's another event that's defined by a number, and it's sort of January 6th, or 1-6th.
And what's interesting for me, as I contemplate 9-11, as I think about January 6th, is the real contrast.
Now, some of the January 6th trials have dragged out a little bit, but the key word is a little bit.
We are not very far away from January 6th of 2021.
And yet you've got cases going to trial.
You've got people who have been bludgeoned into plea bargains.
I mean, the whole process is disgusting.
Solitary confinement.
The process is really offensive and I think a real black stain, a black mark on American society.
I wonder how history will view 1-6, January 6th, with the perspective of hindsight.
And then I look at 9-11, and I say to myself, why is it taking so long to try some of these guys?
And I'm thinking here specifically of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the primary sort of organizer of 9-11.
Now, Bin Laden was the sort of initiating force, probably the guy who put up the money, and certainly the head of the operation.
And then Ayman al-Zawwari, his number two.
But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the guy who sort of pulled it off.
And yet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is awaiting trial.
And it's, you know, nine years since charges were filed.
First of all, it took almost a decade to file the charges.
And now it's taken another decade.
And we're not even close to having a trial.
No date has been set. They keep having occasional hearings.
They keep arguing about evidence.
The defense keeps saying that you need to give us more information.
The prosecutors appear to be in absolutely no hurry.
Of course, there is the fact that some of these prisoners are still in Guantanamo.
By the way, the Guantanamo population has really been thinned out.
At one point, there were hundreds, I mean, almost 700 prisoners Islamic terrorists, sometimes all the way from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to the ordinary fighters on the ground.
Many of those people have been released.
There are actually only 39 now left in Guantanamo.
And that itself has been a disgrace of its own.
I mean, think for example about Obama and the Bergdahl deal.
Where he gets one lousy deserter, by the way, one basic Democrat back, this guy Bergdahl, complete loser, and exchanges Bergdahl for five seasoned Taliban commanders, at least one of which is now sitting in the Taliban government in Afghanistan and really laughing his head off at the stupidity of the United States.
Now, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted his guilt.
I did it. I'm the guy.
And you would think that there would be a prompt military trial, and the guy would be, like, executed.
But no, I think it is really a sign here of how peculiar our system is.
Not just that our justice system moves slowly, because our justice system can move very fast when it wants to.
In fact, Debbie makes the point to me that, who was the guy who blew up the...
Timothy McVeigh, the guy who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, and somehow he got the death penalty, but you know what?
In a relatively short time, just a few years after he's convicted, boom, he's executed.
He's gone. Meanwhile, all kinds of people are sitting on death row, 5, 10, 15, 20...
25 years later, some of them are going to die in prison.
So in effect, their death sentence is converted into a life in prison sentence.
And so it's interesting to me when our justice system slackens up and when it moves into high gear.
It seems clear to me right now that the Biden administration is far more interested in going after its domestic opponents.
Whom it's trying to classify as domestic terrorists while ignoring or downplaying the real terrorists who are basically, you know, enjoying their meals, having relative freedom to move around.
I mean, I read in an article, NBC News, it costs about $13 million a year.
A year! To have one of these Islamic terrorists roaming around in Guantanamo.
Think of the expense and the pointlessness of all this.
And those guys probably have a better life, quite honestly, in Guantanamo than they do in the wilds of Afghanistan.
So... Now, Debbie brought to my attention yesterday something I didn't know about.
This woman who's been on Fox and other places are talking about the Saudi involvement.
Now, we're talking about the Saudi government's involvement in 9-11.
Now, this struck me as a little peculiar because, of course, Osama bin Laden was an enemy of the Saudi regime.
He's been fighting to bring the regime down.
And he hated the royal family.
And so I'm looking at the statement that's been put out by one of the groups.
This is a kind of a group of 9-11 widows.
And a surviving family.
And they talk about the Saudi royal family and Saudi Arabian government.
And they say that they were involved with the funding and creation of a multitude of Islamic organizations, offices, imams, and other religious figures, many of them involved in militant ideology.
And then they go on to say, as the propagation of militant ideology would naturally provide justification for those who were in the hijacker's support network.
Now, I want to emphasize here that there are two kind of things going on.
The one is that, yes, the Saudi government does in fact support madrasas, religious education that's pretty radical.
They put a lot of money into these imams.
I'm sure some of them are very radical.
And in terms of them providing a kind of theological justification for 9-11, I don't doubt that in the slightest.
The Saudis are probably doing it not because they want terrorism, but because they want to kind of keep the imams quiet.
Remember, when the imams got really restless in Iran, they overthrew the Shah of Iran.
So the Saudi government wants to keep these people kind of appeased.
But that is a little different than talking about the Saudi government itself being a co-conspirator and actually being one of the architects of 9-11, which would be a very serious matter.
The United States has had a relative alliance with the Saudis going back Now, almost, I would say, well, not quite a century, but 80 years or so.
And the idea that one of our own allies being actively involved in a terrorist plot, this would be a huge, huge scandal.
So, reading through this literature, it's difficult for me to see.
It looks to me like all they're saying is that there are troubling ties between the Saudi government and radical Islamic organizations that receive Saudi government funding.
And that, in a way, is bad enough.
My friend Mike Lindell, inventor and CEO of MyPillow, is always coming up with amazing savings on his products.
He's having a MyPillow mattress sale.
Save 50% on any mattress.
They're all made in the USA. 10-year warranty.
6-month money-back guarantee.
Be sure to order your mattress now.
But to get the great sale, you need to use promo code Dinesh.
Call 800-876-0227.
That number 800-876-0227.
Or go to MyPillow.com.
Make sure you use promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
It's not very often that I agree with the New Republic, which, by the way, used to be a good magazine in the 1980s and even 90s.
It's now become a kind of a rag.
And when I say I agree with it, what I actually mean is I'm agreeing with it, but from a completely different perspective.
So there's an interesting article.
It's actually called The Rise of Right-Wing Hacks in Federal Courts.
It's written by a guy named Jason Lincolns.
And Jason Lincolns is talking about the conservative court.
And he says that every time the court makes a kind of a conservative decision, ranging from the Dobbs decision to Judge Eileen Cannon, who, by the way, is a Trump appointee on the Mar-a-Lago raid requiring a special master, the article says,
you know, all these leftists come out and talk about how the legal reasoning is horrible and how the judge doesn't seem to have a good grasp of the salient issues or how the conservative court is misreading the Constitution and And the article goes on to say, you know, all this analysis is beside the point, because the conservatives don't really care whether their decisions are anchored in the law or not.
They don't really care if their decisions are fully anchored in the Constitution or not.
They basically are right-wingers, and they're doing the right-wing thing.
They're coming up with a right-wing outcome, and then they're finding some justification for it.
Now, first of all, I do want to point out, this is exactly what the liberals do.
The liberals say that we have a living constitution, its meaning is fluid, and so progressives and liberals go, we'll come up with a liberal result that we like, a more equitable result, a more diverse result, we'll find abortion rights, homosexual rights, things that really aren't in the constitution that But we will kind of conjure them into the Constitution through a kind of crafty legal reasoning.
So it's kind of amazingly hypocritical for them to be faulting conservatives for doing this.
And there'll be many conservatives who take offense and go, no, no, no, you know, our decisions are principled.
We are anchoring them in the Constitution.
But I want to say, what if the guy is right?
What if this liberal writer is right?
That conservatives are doing exactly what the liberals do.
They are coming up with conservative outcomes, and then they're finding some justification for it that can be linked to the Constitution.
Let's remember, the Constitution doesn't address every specific.
So if Judge Eileen Cannon is trying to figure out what do we do in the case of these classified documents, there's going to be arguments on both sides.
The Trump people are going to say, hey, listen, you know, he's the president.
He has the right to classify or declassify.
Let's say some classified documents ended up in his possession.
At least they were under a padlock.
They weren't really being Xeroxed and handed out to people.
So there was a more civilized way to get them back.
And then the liberals are going to say, well, no, this endangers national security.
The point is there's not always a single rule that you can point to that settles the issue.
So what's the judge going to do?
I guess what I'm saying is that we, our side, should feel confident that if the other side is being unprincipled in the way I just described, and by unprincipled here I simply mean that they are not looking to some legal or constitutional principle and then using the principle to dictate the outcome.
Rather, they're coming up with the outcome and then finding the reason to anchor the outcome in.
And I'm saying, since the other side is doing it, So what if we're doing it too?
So in other words, to Jason Lincoln's accusation, conservatives are being unprincipled, I go, so?
We're doing what you've been doing.
So to the degree that you treat the Constitution as a kind of malleable piece of clay that you can twist any which way you want, we're going to do the same thing.
Because quite honestly, we're not going to accept a regime in which you twist the Constitution when you can, and then we are bound by it.
So it's kind of like saying, if we're going to play tennis, and you're going to say, hey, listen, I don't care if there's a net.
I'm going to lower the net when I hit the ball.
I'm going to move it up when you hit the ball.
That's because I control the net.
Well, we're going to say when we control the net, we're going to do the same thing.
We're going to lower the net when we hit the ball, and we're going to raise the net when you hit the ball.
And if you are offended by that kind of a game, you might want to stop playing it on your side.
So when you start showing us some principle on your side, which is to say, in this case, fidelity to the law, Fidelity of the Constitution and looking to the actual animating spirit and the words of the Constitution to make your decisions.
Once you're doing that, then you can expect us also to do the same.
Have you seen the film Uncle Tom 2?
It's the eye-opening documentary everyone in America should see.
It offers a compelling and brave analysis of the true history of black America, the cultural shift from prosperity, integrity and faith to the current perceived state of anger, discontent and victimhood.
Uncle Tom 2 offers historical footage, photos, correspondence, and data to reveal the genuine strides of Black America in the 20th century, the deliberate Marxist strategy to create racial tension and replace God with government, the NAACP's sinister agenda, the fall of Black Harlem, the truth behind Black Lives Matter, and the demoralization of America for political power.
Don't miss Uncle Tom 2.
It's from executive producer Larry Elder and director Justin Malone.
With Brandon Tatum, Votie Bauckham, and Chad O. Jackson.
Watch the movie on demand or buy the DVD now at SalemNow.com.
That's S-A-L-E-M. That's SalemNow.com.
The deaths at the southern border continue to pile up, and I want to analyze an article by CNN on the topic because it's interesting on two counts.
It's interesting for the information it conveys, but it's also interesting for the way that CNN spins it to assign blame very differently than where it belongs.
So... CNN, this is an article, a record number of migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
That's a fact, and it's, of course, a legitimate article.
But notice how CNN spins the article to try to make it look like none of this is Biden's fault.
Biden is barely mentioned in the entire article.
So here we go. Nearly 750 migrants have died at the southern border this fiscal year, a record that surpasses last year's total by more than 200 people.
So we're looking at a lot of deaths.
In fact, I just saw on social media, border control chief, he's talking about the number of drownings in the river.
And he says that this is like one a day now, whereas it used to be a few a year.
Now, CNN goes on to say, quote, So, what I'm getting at here is, here's CNN trying to explain why we have these high numbers.
But, They don't actually explain it for the simple reason that, yeah, it's very hot at the southern border, but wasn't it hot last year?
Wasn't it hot the year before?
Didn't you deal with dangerous water and oppressive heat?
So that's clearly not the reason for the increase in deaths.
Then they go on to say that the figures don't capture all deaths.
These are only bodies recovered by border patrol, but there are other government agencies, state and local agencies that find bodies, so the actual numbers are higher.
They point out that just last week, eight migrants were found, their bodies were found in the Rio Grande.
And now they're trying to explain why this is, and this is where the article gets kind of interesting.
Number one, an increasing number of migrants continue to appear at the border as conditions deteriorate in Latin America.
First of all, conditions in Latin America have been in a bad way for a long time.
So there's no grit.
Oh, there was a famine in Latin America.
Wasn't there a famine? Haven't there been famines before in Latin America?
Oh, life is very difficult for ordinary citizens.
Very dangerous. There's a lot of crime.
Hasn't there been a lot of crime for a long time?
Yes, there is. So this is, to me, a questionable and a dubious explanation.
Advocates for migrants say they may be forced to take increasingly risky paths to reach the U.S. And for this, CNN tries to blame Trump.
The fact that Trump told them not to come, so now they have to find very risky paths to make their way.
All of this is ignoring the fact that ever since we've had a Biden administration, it's been kind of an open invitation.
The Biden people have been working...
Hand in hand with the cartels in the full knowledge of all the human trafficking, the human smuggling.
So here's a statement, really, by the Border Patrol.
Transnational criminal organizations continue to recklessly endanger the lives of individuals they smuggle for their own financial gain with no regard for human life.
Now, this is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough because it doesn't talk about the fact that the reason that these cartels are enabled is because of the U.S. government, because of this Biden regime that we're living under, or the junta, if you want to call it that, because these are the guys that are sort of wink-wink, telling the cartels, keep doing what you're doing.
In fact, they're counting on the cartels to do, in a sense, to produce an outcome that the Biden administration itself wants, It wants illegals at the U.S. border.
And so the cartels are the delivery mechanism for that.
In fact, it wouldn't be out of the question if the cartels even build the Biden administration and say, listen, we're going to charge you $300 for every dude that we bring over here.
The cartels don't have to do that because they're collecting money from the migrants themselves.
What is it? $6,000, $7,000 a person.
So they're making money hand over fist.
And they don't really need Biden.
But Biden needs them.
Biden probably needs them as much, if not more, as they need him.
And so, this is how our news operates today.
It gives you a fact.
It then does its best to bury the true and obvious explanation for the fact.
It comes up with contorted, fake explanations trying to distract your attention.
Maybe there are CNN readers that want to be lied to, want to be misled.
But the border crisis here, for anyone with eyes to see, is very clearly the fault of the Biden administration itself.
Some of us wish we could rewind the clock when it comes to our health.
Exercising, climbing stairs, all the things young people take for granted, these aren't things that have to stop just because you age.
Neither do you have to suffer the normal aging aches and pains.
Now there's a 100% drug-free solution.
It's called Relief Factor.
Relief Factor supports your body's fight against inflammation.
That's the source of aches and pains.
The vast majority of people who try Relief Factor Love it.
They order more because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer. She finally gets to do her bar exercise class now that she's alleviated her frozen shoulder thanks to Relief Factor.
Debbie can even do planks, push-ups.
She's like, wow, I never want to be without this again.
You too can benefit. Try it for yourself.
Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more.
That number again, 833-690-7246.
So go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. The Washington Post reports on a survey which asked college graduates, How they feel about their major.
And remarkably, it says that nearly two in five, so almost 40%, of American college graduates have major regrets.
That is, they regret their major.
Debbie goes, hello, I may be one of those.
Now, Debbie was a political science major.
And, you know, the funny thing here is that it says that almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice.
Enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly.
And the people who seem most satisfied with their majors are people who have majored in so-called STEM subjects.
So what's STEM? Well, science, technology, engineering, medicine.
So people who have gone into those kind of, let's call them professional or practical disciplines, and frankly disciplines that it's easier to get a job, you get much better paid.
I mean, think for example about on the one hand an English major, a sociology major, a political science major, versus let's say an engineering major, computer science major.
Or pre-med. So I think, and it's all been long known, that if you want to go into a field that makes money, you should go into those fields.
This is, by the way, quite frankly, why my own parents were like, Dinesh, we kind of expect you to major in economics.
We want you to go to business school.
They were thinking very much in these kind of practical utilitarian terms.
I mean, part of the irony, and honey, this is true for you as well, is that even though you didn't use your major for For 25 years, you're actually using it now.
And I am probably unusual in that I have used my major my whole life.
In other words, even though I wasn't a political science major, by the way, I was an English major, but I studied a very liberal arts curriculum, which is to say, and some of it, quite honestly, I studied after college.
I never took a single philosophy course at Dartmouth, but I'm very interested now both in political philosophy and philosophy generally.
In fact, once I finish the Odyssey, I might very well pivot to kind of a course, almost like a course, this could take me a year or more, on the great philosophers.
And not necessarily to try to cover them systematically, but to cover what was sort of the Maybe essence of their thought.
What is the big idea that this guy is known for?
What did he contribute to the corpus of human knowledge?
So to me, there actually is great value in a liberal arts major.
And it certainly is.
It's not necessarily utilitarian.
It's the value of widening and deepening you as a human being.
Now, quite honestly, I think that if someone's perspective is widened, they have a greater sense of their own position in space and time, they have an understanding of history, an understanding of different disciplines and how they interact together.
This is very useful, whatever you go into.
So you can be an English major, and many people are, and then they go on to law school, they go on to business school, so you end up in a practical career where But people will look back and go, I don't regret being an English major at all.
In fact, I'm much better off than if I huddled down and started studying law or business right from my freshman year in college.
I'm really glad I read books that I may not get to read later in life.
I think really the problem in the universities today is not the fact that they're offering English majors and political science majors, but the mind-numbing leftist indoctrination that substitutes for true learning and true knowledge.
Because education is really about wonder, about a sense of, wow, about puzzles, about how do we think about this and what are different ways to understand that.
And I hope even in my own Introduction to Dante and then now to Homer I give you a sense of the kind of the fact that we are dealing with other cultures and other people who see the world differently than we do and we can always benefit from a kind of comparison to the way our own society looks at things so this is really what the liberal arts is supposed to do but it's not what it does today on the campus so I think it's a very good thing We're good to go.
The fanaticism is pointed in a different direction.
There it's pointed in terms of radical Islamic ideology.
Here it's pointed in the direction of, you know, the trans issue or whatever.
But in both cases, you're dealing with the fanaticism that if you really believe in knowledge, you want to stay far away from.
It's pretty colorful, you've noticed at the grocery store and the produce section all the vibrant colors of fruits and veggies.
A friend Dr. Douglas Howard at Balance of Nature explains that all the colors you see represent nutritional variety.
Now, I don't eat anywhere near the 10 daily servings of fruits and veggies that I need, so Balance of Nature is the way I give my body what it needs to stay healthy.
Debbie and I take these six little fruits and veggie capsules each day.
Every daily dose is made up of a blend of 31 different fruits and veggies.
31. So variety equals vitality.
Give your body everything it needs with Balance of Nature.
Invest in your health. Join me and experience the Balance of Nature difference for years to come.
For a limited time, All new preferred customers get an additional 35% discount and free shipping on your first Balance of Nature order.
Use discount code America.
Call 800-246-8751.
That's 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code America.
Hey guys, I'm really pleased to welcome to the podcast David Scarpelli, writer and producer of the film American Woman.
By the way, the website is AmericanWomanTheMovie.com.
AmericanWomanTheMovie.com.
David is an Army National Guard combat vet, former political grassroots organizer working on college campuses.
He has a BA in sociology.
and met his co-producer, Dr. Kim Johnson, who we had on this podcast while working on his degree.
David, let me start by just asking you, I mean, you know, if you are a conservative on a college campus, it must be kind of a huge relief to have a professor that can be sort of an ally and a mentor of yours. Was that the case with you and Kim Johnson?
And is that kind of how the two of you hatched this idea of making a film together? Oh, absolutely. You're 100% correct.
And in fact, going into a sociology program, I actually was very familiar that a lot of people within that discipline tend to be Marxists or affiliate with communism and socialism.
So I anticipated the worst.
And so with Kim, I actually kind of had to feel her out a little bit.
And she started to say some things that I'm like, I don't know if she's one of those people.
So we ended up becoming friends and she really challenged the way that I thought about politics.
And really got me to think more deeply about it.
And so we ended up becoming friends and we stayed in touch after I graduated college.
And so one day she approached me and said, hey, I'm thinking about starting a documentary about American conservative women.
What do you think? And I was like, you know what?
That sounds like a great idea. So that's how we got started.
I mean, it's an interesting way to go because customarily, and I've been part of this for much of my career, you have organizations that import speakers to campus.
In fact, I came to Lock Haven University a few years ago.
That's how I met Kim Johnson.
But the idea of making a documentary film is a little bit of a...
A different approach.
So talk about why the documentary, why this particular topic, and who is your intended audience?
Sure. So the idea initially for the film was we kind of wanted it to be a political and cultural commentary, and especially like what it's like to be a conservative woman in the movement, especially with the left trying to dominate the narrative of defining what a woman is.
And especially for myself, working so closely with students across the country, I would see a lot of the conflict and the ways women would be treated on college campuses.
So we wanted to make sure we also included somebody in the film, my good friend Emily Burning, who I actually worked with while she was a student.
And we wanted to make sure we included that perspective.
But what really shifted was for what the documentary was going to be about, still includes all of that, but was just how crazy things were starting to get with COVID. And there's the question of election fraud.
And there's just so many things going on in our country.
And The left is like really pushing really hard.
They're taking over all of our institutions.
There's all kinds of censorship.
And so we're like, you know, our country's in a lot worse shape than people think.
And so we wanted to remind people.
That's one of the main things of the film is remind people, hey, this is what we've been through.
These are the kinds of things that the left has done because they do so many things that sometimes we forget the kinds of things they've done to us and to this country.
So we wanted to really show that.
But the other important element of the film is Is that we wanted to show these women for who they are.
The raw behind the scenes.
Not just simply a public figure.
Somebody all smiling and always has good things to say.
Behind the scenes in politics, it's very nitty.
It's rough. It's nitty and gritty.
It's dirty. And there's a lot of conflict that the women in our film face.
There's a lot of adversity. And we wanted to highlight that.
And the other thing is showing the human side.
We want the public to look at that and be able to relate to that.
And because a lot of times, you know, in my encounters, especially traveling college campuses, a lot of students would get this idea that if I'm going to work in politics, I have to like run for office or something.
And it's like, there's so many different things that you can do behind the scenes to support the people.
You know, you have the people who are the public figures.
But there's so much work to be done behind the scenes.
So we wanted to show people like, hey, this is what it's like behind the scenes.
This is what it's like, the kinds of things that you can get involved in, the kinds of things you can do.
And we also wanted to emphasize that film is something that we need more of.
Whether it's documentaries like yourself or even regular productions like you've also done, we need more of that.
And there's, you know, I love the fact that there's like a parallel economy now, and we're seeing more production companies, more streaming services, a lot more people getting involved, and we're like, let's keep moving forward.
Let's keep doing this, so.
David, as someone, you know, venturing into this new field, you've got three key aspects, I think, to making a documentary.
There's the not easy job of raising money, particularly hard if it's the first time around the block.
Number two, the actual mechanics of conceiving, organizing, and editing the film.
And the third is the challenge of marketing and getting the word out.
And hopefully this podcast will help.
By the way, AmericanWomenTheMovie.com is the website to check it out and to watch the film, watch a trailer as well.
What was your...
You know, if you got people listening to the podcast who go, Hey, I'd like to make a short documentary.
What... What was the biggest obstacle you faced and how did you overcome it?
I think the biggest obstacle, you know, it's a little hard to answer because we face so many obstacles.
I know Kim's going to laugh when she sees this.
I would say getting people motivated to, whether it was to, yeah, I'd say getting people motivated because whether it's to get donations or it's to share our content, you know, it's, I'd say that's probably been one of the most difficult things is you don't necessarily feel like you're supported.
Like you do have people that do support you.
So don't get me wrong. We've actually had some fantastic people that have consulted for us pro bono.
And they've been very encouraging, so it's very good to have those kinds of people.
But going into this, I think we were a little starry-eyed, like, oh, all these people are going to love this, and we're going to have all this support, and people are going to be sharing it like crazy, which that actually brings up another point with social media.
We've definitely been censored and we were really surprised because we're a small production company.
We're like, they're not going to pay attention to us unless we go viral.
But lo and behold, I don't know if this is like a new form of shadow banning, but what would happen is people would come to our Facebook page.
They would like our page.
They can see what we post and they can share it.
But once they share it, nobody can see what they share it.
So it's not as a direct approach.
And we're like, at first I was like, maybe I'm just, there's something wrong with the computer.
And it was consistent. It kept happening.
We lost a bunch of Twitter followers in a fell swoop.
We would run ads on Facebook.
And it would show the metrics of this is how far the reach was, but it translated into like zero page likes.
So, you know, we were really honestly surprised.
So, you know, we have an alternative account now.
We still have our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but we also have a Getter account.
And you can find all that from the website.
But yeah, so there's been many obstacles, but Kim and I had to keep telling ourselves, you know, because there were days we felt defeated.
That's the other thing. Like, I'll be completely honest.
There were days where we're like, there's so many things that are not panning out.
Almost everything we do, it's like we got to put 10 times more effort into it than we thought we had to, but we kept moving forward.
We had to keep telling ourselves we got to keep moving forward.
We got to keep doing this.
We can't let this adversity, we can't let these obstacles stop us because we really believe in what we're doing and we really believe we have a good and a timely message that we want to get out to the public.
Well, David, that's very well said, and I think that is the exact spirit, because it's one thing to be a consumer of movies and books, but going on to the creative side, actually producing this content, getting it out, not easy.
I want to congratulate you and Dr.
Kim Johnson for the work you've done.
The movie is American Woman, AmericanWomenTheMovie.com.
David Scarpelli, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you so much, Dinesh.
Well, the Democrats just went on a spending spree, about $500 billion to fund their student loan forgiveness bailout.
And how are they going to pay for it?
Oh yeah, they're hiring 87,000 new IRS agents, whose goal is to do an additional 1.2 million audits a year, aka Squeeze the taxpayers.
The Fed chair is freaked out about inflation.
The leftist government is clearly ignoring him.
Where does this leave us?
Where does it leave you?
It leaves me wanting gold from Birch Gold Group because I want to hedge against inflation.
I want to own physical gold.
And silver in a tax-sheltered account.
If you're skeptical about the trajectory of the economy and the U.S. dollar, then go ahead.
Text to Nesh to 989898.
Birch Gold will send you a free information kit on securing your savings with gold.
Debbie and I are customers, and we are grateful right now that we are.
Birch Gold is the real deal.
They've been around for 20 years.
Five-star reviews. Thousands of satisfied customers.
So check them out. Text to Nesh to 989898 and secure your future with gold.
Who are the happiest people on earth?
Now, I've actually read different types of reports in answer to this question.
Some years ago, I read that the happiest people on earth live in places like Tibet and Bhutan, which is a kind of tiny These are people who are removed from the stress of ordinary modern existence and evidently have a kind of a different perspective on life.
However, I see a recent report Based on a survey that is called the World Happiness Report.
I didn't even know there was such a thing, but evidently there is.
And the World Happiness Report asks you to imagine a ladder with steps that go from zero to ten.
And the top rung is your best life.
All you can expect out of life is being delivered.
Zero, of course, is your expectations are being delivered.
I'm completely disappointed.
And guess who comes out on top?
Well, it turns out it's the Scandinavians.
It's the Nordic people.
It's people in places like Finland and Denmark.
And Sweden. However, the reason for their happiness is not what you might think.
Now, progressives might jump and go, well, we know why the Nordic people are happy.
They've got guaranteed health care.
They've got guaranteed education.
All right. Well, let's grant that that may be part of it.
But let's remember the other side of it.
The Nordic people pay very high rates of taxation, often exceeding 50%.
So their actual disposable income is very low.
Second of all, things cost a lot in those countries.
If you go to have a nice meal, it's $75.
And if you look at the Nordic income, it seems like a stretch to be able to afford it.
Nordic people typically live in tiny apartments.
So When you're looking at purely in the material basis, it's a mixed bag.
They get certain benefits, but on the other hand, they also have to, they don't have things that ordinary Americans take for granted.
It turns out the key to understanding this happiness survey is the issue of expectations.
It turns out that the Scandinavian people are actually rather grumpy.
And they have very low expectations out of life.
In fact, they expect life to be rather disappointing.
And there's a guy, a Finnish guy, who's actually commenting on this world happiness report, and he goes, Finnish people never smile.
And he goes, they never smile because they don't know what there is to smile about.
And he goes, moreover, when Scandinavian people are told that they are the happiest people in the world, they vehemently object.
They go, that can't be true.
Because they're so grumpy that they don't even want to think of themselves as happy.
But the article goes on to say that, ironically, this is the key to their happiness.
In other words, they set very low expectations for themselves.
And since they set low expectations, it's kind of like saying, I set up a bar and it's only four inches off the ground.
Then I jump over the bar and I go, wow, I've actually jumped over the bar.
There is an element of wisdom here.
Many years ago, I heard George Will, that now, you know, his day has passed, but George Will, the pundit, once said that he was a pessimist.
And he said, the pessimist is the best way to be.
And he goes, because when you're a pessimist, and I think Debbie will actually chuckle about this because she's a little bit like this too.
George Will says, when you're a pessimist...
You're usually right.
You predict that things are going to go to doom, and they usually do.
And then George Will goes, but even if they don't, you're happy they don't.
You're pleasantly surprised that the house didn't fall down on top of you.
And so, apparently the Scandinavians are a little bit like that.
Now look, to me, this is actually not an accurate description of happiness.
I mean, think of it this way. You have two guys.
One guy who sets his happiness dial at 10.
I want to be very happy.
I expect all these things to occur for me to be happy.
And then he gets a 10.
So he achieves his level of expected happiness.
And then you have a Finnish guy or a Swedish guy or a Danish guy, and they set their dial at 3.
They expect very little out of life.
Who wants to have a happy marriage?
As long as my wife doesn't kill me, I'm okay.
Who wants to live in a big house?
As long as I have a roof over my head, I'm okay.
So he sets the dial at three, and then he scores a three.
Now, according to the World Happiness Report, these two people are equally happy.
Why? Because in both cases, their full expectation has been met.
But obviously, objectively, the guy who set his dial at 10 is happier.
Why? Because, just objectively measured, he's at a 10, and the other guy's only at a 3.
The other guy's only saved by the fact that he doesn't expect to be more than a 3.
So... So, I think that one has to consider the objective aspect, but there is also some truth in the idea that, look, if you don't try to...
If your expectations about life are moderate, moderate in the Aristotelian sense, and that is you expect that the...
Timber of humanity is warped.
You expect that people are selfishly motivated.
You expect that things often go wrong.
Even the best laid plans don't always succeed.
In other words, if your expectations are reasonable about life, then life can deliver on those expectations.
I think that that represents not so much happiness.
To me, the better word here is contentment.
Contentment is simply that recognition that life doesn't deliver, not in this life, paradise or the Garden of Eden.
Life delivers what it delivers, and if you come to terms with that, you can then have a reasonably happy and contented life.
Imagine the lifelong impact of a journey to the Holy Land.
Surrounded by like-minded travelers, picture yourself stepping foot in iconic locations right out of Scripture.
Join Dr. Sebastian Gorka and Dinesh D'Souza on this life-enriching Israel Tour, November 30th through December 9th, 2022.
For more information, call 855-565-5519 or visit StandWithIsraelTour.com.
We are now at a very interesting scene in Book 5 of the Odyssey where Calypso, the sea goddess, is having her final meal with Odysseus before she lets him go.
Now, she takes the last opportunity to kind of try to talk him out of it.
By the way, in the meal, it says the goddess gave him human food and drink Whereas she had nectar and ambrosia, which is of course the sustenance of the gods.
But Calypso says to Odysseus, She says, if you understood how glutted you will be with suffering before you reach your home, you would stay here.
She offers him immortality.
She says, if you stay here with me, you can stay here forever.
And you will actually be forever young.
You'll be forever the age that you are now.
And then she says something very interesting, which is she kind of insults Odysseus' wife.
She says, kind of, why are you going back home?
She says, as for your wife Penelope, she says, I know I am more attractive than she is.
She says, mortals can never rival the immortals in beauty.
This is a very delicate situation for Odysseus because how does he respond?
He doesn't want to say something that will offend her.
So we see Odysseus' masterful skill in rhetoric here.
What Odysseus says is, Now, notice the great subtlety of Odysseus here.
Notice what he doesn't say.
He doesn't let it all hang out.
He doesn't say to her something like, well, you know, I love Penelope and not you.
He doesn't say, well, you know, she's my wife and you're not.
He doesn't say, well, you know, I'm a human being and Penelope's a human being and, well, you're not a human being.
Because all of these things could rub Calypso the wrong way.
So notice how Odysseus merely says Calypso.
Look, all I want to do is get home.
So in this way, he has kind of sidestepped Calypso's taunt, and it's a mark of Odysseus's rhetorical skills that he can do this.
Now, the other thing that's important in this passage is Odysseus here is welcoming, not merely accepting, but kind of welcoming the human condition.
You Remember in the Iliad, there was the issue, Achilles faced it very directly.
Does he want to have immortality, kleos, by dying gloriously in battle, or does he want to go back and live, you may say, an anonymous life as an ordinary guy back in his home country?
Here, Odysseus recognizes that he has been away, think about it, he's been away for 20 years.
So let's say he was 20 years old when he went off to Troy.
He's now 40 years old.
In ancient society, he probably doesn't have that much longer to live.
Maybe 15, maybe 20 years at the outset, at the outside.
And yet, for Odysseus, that is better.
...than Calypso's offer of immortality.
Odysseus recognizes the human condition is defined by mortality.
Gods cannot die, but human beings must die.
And what we have here is Odysseus basically saying, so be it.
Not only am I willing to endure it, I want it.
I actually want the human condition.
And then Odysseus gets to work.
This is actually kind of normal Odysseus because, again, as I mentioned the last time, Odysseus on the island was a captive.
He was passive.
There's nothing he could do.
He can't outsmart Calypso.
She's not going to let him go until she decides to let him go.
Now that she's decided to let him go, she basically gives him some wood and she gives him an axe and And she's like, build your own boat.
So this is not a case where Calypso does it for him.
Odysseus has to get to work.
It takes him five days.
And Homer describes, he notched the side decks to the close set frame.
He fixed the long planks along the ribs to finish.
He set a mast inside, a rudder to steer it straight.
He heaped the boat with brush and caulked the sides with wicker work to keep the water out.
So Homer, who's obviously kind of familiar with the actual process of making a boat, describes Odysseus, in a sense, going full carpenter here and making his own boat to finally, seven years after captivity, to sail out of Calypso's island and towards what he hopes will be home.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
Export Selection