Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 22, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza

48:41

BLAME THE VICTIM Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep838

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Coming up, I'll contrast the solemn bravery of Israel's young people in contrast with the spoiled brat theatrics of America's anti-Israel protesters.
	An FBI instruction to use lethal force if necessary in the Mar-a-Lago raid?
	I'll give you my reaction to that.
	And influencer Hannah Cox joins me.
	We're going to talk about the legacy of feminism and fractured relationships among young people.
	Hey, if you're watching on Rumble, listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
	The times are crazy.
	In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
	I'd like to talk about some of these...
	Students who have inhabited encampments in places like Columbia and Harvard.
	Students that faced or seemed to face fairly severe administrative penalties.
	In other words, suspension.
	You can't graduate.
	In the case of a couple of Harvard students, you are going to lose your Rhodes Scholarship.
	Now, these would be genuine penalties.
	Now, they would be fairly modest as penalties go because, after all, if you're It's not the end of the world.
	I think I'm going to go.
	We're dealing with not genuine sacrifice.
	The students, whenever they go, I'm going on a hunger strike.
	It sounds serious.
	It sounds like the student is an idealist.
	Okay, listen, you know what?
	I'm going to put my health, indeed my life, on the line because I believe so passionately in Gaza.
	Alright, the hunger strike begins.
	Two days later, we're calling off the hunger strike.
	We're experiencing severe stomach pains.
	We know the dining hall is open, so we're going to be heading over there after this press conference.
	Hunger strike over.
	Gandhi unimpressed.
	And so... The point is that unlike even the 1960s, when some of the protesters against the Vietnam War did show a certain degree of moral seriousness and did in fact get penalties and did in fact endure them.
	And in that sense, they could say that they're in a certain type of civil liberties or civil protest or even civil rights tradition because, hey, if you want to break the laws with segregation, you should be willing to go as Martin Luther King was to the Birmingham jail.
	Now, Debbie showed me an interesting article.
	It was published in the New York Post by Reuven Fenton.
	And he's contrasting the kind of unseriousness of the American protesters, faculty and students, with the seriousness of people in Israel.
	And the point he's trying to make is that the Israelis, you know, are going to be okay.
	Whether or not they get the Biden administration support, they're going to be okay because their society is fundamentally healthy.
	And not only healthy, it's fundamentally united.
	So the Israelis recognize what they're dealing with.
	They're living in a very hostile environment with people who, to say they don't wish them well is an understatement, really want to kill them.
	And so this creates a certain...
	Well, it's like Samuel Johnson said, the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind.
	Israelis know that there are guys out here who will bomb our cafes.
	They would launch rockets at us if they could.
	So we have to be, you may say, live on high alert.
	And Debbie and I were like, it must be strange to live that way.
	And it's something that Americans have absolutely no experience of.
	But the net effect of the Israelis is that they have to deal with serious matters.
	The writer describes an incident, for example, where the terrorists came upon this young woman and she knew what was going to happen.
	She knew what had happened to others.
	And so what did she do?
	She played dead. She just acted like she had already been shot.
	She was already dead.
	And they walked past her and she...
	Survived. She got away.
	But she had to have the presence of mind to do that.
	And then the writer talks about the Americans who are living in a make-believe world.
	You know, the students who are occupying a building act like they are in Gaza.
	They act like the reason they're hungry, please bring us food and water.
	We're starving. You're not starving.
	You chose to go in the building.
	You barricaded yourself inside.
	You can leave at any time.
	And so this is not imposed hardship.
	This is self-imposed artificial hardship that is being done for, well, it's a form of performance art.
	You're doing it for the cameras.
	The moment the cameras turn away, you pull out a sandwich out of your backpack.
	So that's the point here, that Israelis can actually count on the younger generation, and the question is, can we?
	What kind of leadership do Debbie's...
	Debbie's still smarting over the fact that we picked up a Starbucks on our way to the podcast.
	Very simple order.
	Basically, it's straightforward Americano coffee with a splash of heavy cream and a couple of sweeteners.
	She opens up the coffee.
	Yes, there's coffee in there.
	No heavy cream. It's black.
	And so Debbie's like, well, it's this generation.
	She goes, I even thought that the kids in there looked really competent and so on, but evidently looks can be deceiving.
	So... So the theme of this article is that it's more important for a society to teach its highest values to its young people.
	America today may be a society on which Israel is still dependent, but in the long term, this is the author's conclusion, the Israelis are going to be okay.
	But the Americans, who knows?
	Are you ready to lose weight but not sure where to start?
	I understand. Debbie and I were right where you are a year and a half ago.
	Let me tell you why we chose PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition and why I so highly recommend their program.
	First, Dr. Ashley Lucas has her PhD in Chronic Disease and Sports Nutrition.
	Her program is based on years of research and it's science-based.
	Second, the PhD program starts with nutrition, but it's so much more.
	They know that 90% of permanent change comes from the mind, and they work on eliminating the reason you gain this weight in the first place.
	There are no shortcuts, no pills, no injections, just solid science-based nutrition and behavior change.
	And finally, most important, the result.
	I lost 27 pounds.
	Debbie lost 25. We're happy about it.
	We haven't gained the weight back.
	So the best thing about this program is They have an 85% success rate of their clients maintaining their weight loss for life.
	They provide elevated maintenance support for you through the PhD alumni community, which will provide you the support you need to keep this weight loss off forever.
	So if you're ready to lose weight for the last time, call 864-644-1900 to get started.
	Or you can go online at myphdweightloss.com.
	Do what we did, what hundreds of my listeners and viewers have done.
	call today it's 864-644-1900.
	Despite everything the Fed has been trying, we're still feeling the effects of inflation.
	Filling up your car, grocery shopping, home repairs, everything's more expensive.
	And many of you are paying these bills with a credit card.
	Now credit card debt is at an all-time high with ridiculously high interest rates.
	So if you're a homeowner, there is a way out.
	You need to call my friends at American Financing.
	They can put together a plan to pay off that high interest credit card debt and create meaningful savings for you every month.
	They're saving people just like you an average of $854 a month and closing in as fast as 10 days.
	Don't wait.
	Get yourself into a better position.
	Call their salary-based mortgage consultants today.
	It costs nothing to get started, and if you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments, giving you greater savings up front.
	American Financing can help get that monkey off your back.
	Call 888-528-1219.
	The number again, 888-528-1219, or you can visit AmericanFinancing.net.
	What is the signature move of autocrats in the world and over the centuries?
	Well, their signature move is to eliminate their opposition, to get rid of it, to lock up their opponents, but perhaps more often to kill them, to assassinate them.
	And this we know has happened historically.
	I've been talking in the last segment of my podcast about sometimes the English Civil War, what happened to Charles I.
	Well, the moment that the Roundheads came to power, they chopped off his head.
	What happened to the Romanov Tsars once they were overthrown?
	Answer? They were brought to the chopping block.
	The whole family eliminated.
	So this is what happens historically and this is also what happens in other parts of the world.
	But does it happen in the United States?
	We're given a glimpse into this question by something I'm still trying to process and kind of get my head around.
	And that is the revelation in new documents and reported by Julie Kelly that in the Mar-a-Lago raid on President Trump, there was a clause in the FBI documents that said, basically, the agents are authorized to use lethal force.
	I don't remember the exact phrase.
	Maybe use lethal force as needed or as appropriate.
	But lethal force, of course, means deadly force, which, of course, means you have the right to kill.
	To kill. To kill who?
	Well, who is the suspect in this case?
	Well, Donald Trump.
	You have the right to kill, if necessary, the former president of the United States.
	So, let's regroup.
	The Biden DOJ is sending out a group of police, heavily armed agents, to go to a heavily armed compound, Mar-a-Lago, protected by the Secret Service, with instructions to kill if necessary.
	Now, what can we make of this?
	Now, I'm not even sure I have fully digested this because in the past when I've heard people say, well, you know, Dinesh, the goal here is in the end...
	They would be even willing to assassinate President Trump.
	And I've often thought that, to the degree that's true, it refers to inflammatory rhetoric on the part of Democrats that might inspire some kook to try to take action John Hinckley-style against Trump.
	But I did not think that it would apply to an organized expedition by heavily armed FBI agents and other agents all descending on the former president's home with essentially a kill order.
	Not to go out and kill Trump, but use deadly force if needed.
	Now, when Julie reported this, and she reported it with shock and horror, and I think rightly so, and attached the document.
	So there's no question about it.
	This is not a matter of, you know, did they really?
	No, they did. And there were some other supporting documents that laid out various kind of scenarios to deal with if the former president is there, if he shows up.
	And so, this is a very troubling development.
	And as I mentioned to Debbie, her first question was, hey, was there a similar instruction in the FBI documents when they dealt with Biden?
	Now, the FBI didn't do a quote, raid on Biden, but they had to deal with Biden.
	They went over to the Biden properties, multiple properties, they had to box up or they had to carry away and have marked all the classified documents.
	Did they go in with a similar, Hey! Shoot to kill if needed!
	Bye.
	No, they didn't. I can positively assure you that that was not the case.
	And so you have right away what seems to be a pretty clear double standard is putting it too mildly.
	It's almost like an explicit instruction on the part of the ruling regime to target And I'm sure they were like, listen, if something goes wrong, this won't be entirely bad for us because we're merely carrying out our standard manual.
	And that's been the reaction of some Democrats and never-Trumpers in the media.
	Calm down, guys.
	There's nothing untoward going on here.
	This is standard practice.
	This is standard practice.
	Well... Julie Kelly has a pretty good response to that, which I'm going to just read, and then I'm going to pick this topic up tomorrow, discuss it in a little more detail.
	She says, well, is it standard practice to do this with a suspect who has been cooperating with the government for more than a year?
	So you're not approaching a stranger who's suspected of robbing a bank or committing a murder.
	So you're like, yeah, use deadly force if needed.
	We don't know what's behind those walls.
	Is it standard practice when you have a guy who has been turning over documents to the archives?
	Is it standard practice...
	To do this when you've already been to the facility, Mar-a-Lago, the FBI has, you were allowed involuntarily, you were allowed to search the whole property, you actually told the president to put a lock on this particular storage, and he did, and all of this was two months before the raid.
	And is it standard practice when the president is trying to comply with an existing subpoena when nearly all of the investigation was conducted, and Julie Kelly reminds us, outside the jurisdiction of the alleged crime?
	In other words, the whole investigation is conducted in D.C., not in Florida.
	It's not the Florida FBI that's doing this.
	It's D.C., Was the suspect accused of a violent crime?
	Obviously not.
	Was the suspect a former president?
	In other words, what is the meaning of the term standard practice?
	It's kind of like saying, you know, that in certain conditions, you strip search somebody who's going through the airport because they set off the alarm.
	But then the question becomes, you know, the guy coming through is like Al Gore, right?
	You're like, it's standard practice to strip-search you, Mr.
	Gore. You might be an Al-Qaeda terrorist.
	He's like, actually, I'm not. I'm Al Gore.
	They're like, no, no, no, it's standard practice.
	We don't know if you are or not.
	So this is what I'm getting at.
	The FBI is hiding behind, it seems, this kind of standard practice.
	And I understand it may be standard practice, but this is not a standard situation.
	You might have heard Mike Lindell and MyPillow no longer have the support of their box stores or shopping channels the way they used to.
	They've been part of this cancel culture and so they want to pass the savings directly on to you by having a $25 extravaganza.
	Now when Mike started MyPillow, it was just a one product company, just the pillow.
	But with the help of his dedicated employees, Mike now has hundreds of products, some of which you may not even know about.
	So check it out.
	To get the word out, I want to invite my viewers and listeners to check out the $25 extravaganza 2-pack multi-use MyPillows, $25.
	MyPillow Sandals, $25.
	Six-pack towel sets, $25.
	Brand new 4-pack dish towels, you guessed it, just $25.
	So for the first time ever, the premium MyPillows with the all-new Giza fabric, just $25.
	By the way, orders over $75 will get free shipping as well.
	The amazing offer won't last long, so take advantage.
	Go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh, or you can call 800-876-0227.
	The number again, 800-876-0227.
	Don't forget to use the promo code.
	It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
	Guys, with the election approaching and a new movie coming out in September, I'd like to invite you to check out my Locals channel and consider becoming an annual subscriber.
	I post a lot of exclusive content there, content that's censored on other social media platforms.
	On Locals you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored, and you can also interact with me directly.
	I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday, 8pm Eastern. No topic is off limits.
	I also have a movie page up on Locals with some very cool films, documentaries, feature films.
	2000 Meals is up there and also the last film, Police State.
	If you're an annual subscriber, you get all this movie content.
	You can stream and watch it for free. It's included with your subscription.
	So check out the channel.
	It's dinesh.locals.com.
	I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
	Guys, I'm really pleased to welcome to the podcast Hannah Cox.
	She is co-founder and president of Based Politics.
	She's a political commentator, writer, and activist.
	She does a YouTube show.
	It's called Histrionics, which focuses on social and political issues relating to women, feminism, and related topics.
	You can follow her on x at Hannah D. Cox.
	Hannah, welcome. Thanks for joining me.
	I appreciate it.
	You and I have been seeing and sometimes sharing the same social media videos.
	And it seems to be a, I won't call it a confessional style, but it's people who talk about their own experience, very often women.
	And they're often describing a situation in which they are searching for a relationship, searching for a guy, and it's like a desert out there, or they are extremely depressed about their prospects.
	Number one, the first question we have to ask is, we're obviously seeing videos that are Sometimes plucked off of TikTok.
	Is this actually a representation of a wider phenomenon, or is it just an artifact of social media?
	Well, first and foremost, it's good to be with you, Dinesh.
	I love your work. I've loved following you for many years, so I'm going to be here with you today.
	And yeah, I think that it can be both.
	I think that some of it is somewhat performative at times for platforms like TikTok.
	I mean, let's be honest, these videos get a lot of engagement.
	They evoke a lot of emotion in people.
	They generate a lot of comments and conversation.
	And so, you know, I personally would not Choose to go on the internet and put myself in a video crying about my love life, but I think there is an incentive there for some people to do it.
	But the reason I think that it strikes a chord, the reason that it is such an incentive algorithmically is because people feel very passionately about this.
	And I think there's a lot of projection that you see occurring where people are living these experiences in the real world and they feel strongly about that.
	Oftentimes because they themselves are having a very hard time finding a partner successfully.
	And there's a lot of, I think, bitterness around that.
	There is a lot of frustration.
	There's a lot of sort of self-hatred because our society still does this thing where we tell people when you're single that there's something wrong with you, that there's some kind of defect, that you're worthless.
	Those messages get compounded over time and they're very powerful.
	I think they lead to a lot of anger.
	That's one reason I launched my show, Histrionics.
	You know, what we're seeing right now I mostly have focused on politics for the majority of my career.
	I've been very laser focused on public policy.
	I hate the culture war stuff.
	I often think it's a distraction.
	But at some point I had to step back and say, this is very bad.
	these gender relations that we're seeing, where we consistently see this escalation of men and women not liking each other, of women going further to the left and men going further to the right, it's causing a lot of divisiveness.
	It drastically impacts our relationships, our society, our social fabric, and ultimately, our political system.
	So I think it's very important.
	And I think, like you, I'm just seeing a lot of hostility and sort of endless conversations that just go in circles without actually getting to the root cause of the problem, which, in my opinion, and I'm curious for your thoughts on this, is that we have not figured out how to coexist in a truly equal society as men and women.
	I think that a lot of the things we were taught to look for in romantic partners, a lot of the things we're taught to expect out of those partnerships are really not lining up with where the economy's at, where most people's desires are at.
	And so we have very unhappy people who aren't able to figure out, how do I actually present characteristics and values that are attractive to the opposite gender and a partnership when all things are equal, right?
	Where you mostly are not going to have a situation where men are the total breadwinners and women don't work outside the home and women stay home and cook and clean.
	That's just not where the economic reality is.
	And it's also not where a lot of people, especially women, want to cast themselves.
	That's not the lives they envision for themselves.
	So I wish we could get to that conversation.
	I think it's vitally important.
	Yeah, I think you're now, I mean, I agree.
	I think this is touching kind of on the heart of the matter.
	It appears to be that, you know, there was an old, let's call it a soft patriarchy, right?
	In which, by and large, the man would be the primary, if not the sole provider.
	And if I think back, for example, Hannah, to my parents, and this is admittedly in India, different culture, but nevertheless, very much influenced by Western culture.
	My dad was obviously the person who was the kind of economic anchor of the household.
	And my mom took primary charge of the children and the household.
	It seemed to be, growing up to me, a reasonably contented arrangement on both parts.
	At times my mom wanted to get out and work, and she did.
	Generally, when the kids were a little bit older, she would go do that.
	And then she would feel like quitting, and so she would quit.
	But she had the option to quit, in a way that my dad didn't.
	So there was this sort of idea that men and women are bringing a complementarity, if you will, in terms of roles.
	Is it?
	It was based on the idea that really both people should be kind of doing both.
	In other words, there's no reason the man can't work.
	Hey, there's no reason the woman can't work.
	Why educate her for work if she doesn't actually go out and work?
	And number two, the woman might actually take charge of the household, but hey, there's no reason the man can't do a lot of chores, just like women have to do chores.
	And so that was the more egalitarian substitute Do you think that there's been some kind of a breakdown there?
	In other words, that this egalitarian arrangement does not appeal, for example, to men, and men are like, hey, listen, I'm not...
	Or that women say that, you know, number one, I have to now have a career, and I also have to do 95% of all the chores at home, so this is now becoming a crushing weight that is...
	I mean, where is the detente or where is the arrangement breaking down, do you think?
	Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head and I'll say, you know, I'm from the Deep South, so our culture is probably very similar.
	I grew up with a working father, a stay-at-home mom.
	I was homeschooled. My dad's a pastor.
	Both of my grandmothers were stay-at-home, traditional moms and housewives.
	And, you know, I am very fortunate and they were very fortunate that my household is a Christian family, that those marriages were based on God and on an idea of self-sacrifice to one another, and there was no abuse, there was no oppression, there was no manipulation.
	But as I saw pointed out on Twitter a few weeks ago by somebody, I thought this was a great point.
	Second wave feminism, which was a push for women to have the right to work, the right to open businesses, the right to access bank accounts, that didn't come from a time period where things were just so rosy and women just got fed up with everything being so great in the structure that they chose to fight and go to work.
	There was often a lot of abuse, there often was a lot of control. It was not a healthy system.
	I think that what is happening now, you're exactly correct, is that we've gotten to this point of saying that egalitarian relationships are possible.
	And a lot of men simply are not satisfied with that.
	They don't feel like that is something that's attractive to them.
	At the same time, you have a lot of women saying, if that's not the situation I'm getting, I'm not interested in it either.
	And so we see them sort of diverging and not being able to meet in the middle.
	And that's kind of the conversation I think we should have is of why men are so dissatisfied with that option.
	For me personally, as a limited government capitalist viewpoint, I I think the problem that we've had historically is that we tried to mandate, via government laws, a one-size-fits-all approach and say society has to structure itself this way, the family must be structured in this orientation.
	That's wrong. We have removed those laws.
	We now do have a truly equal playing field.
	People are still perfectly capable within that of negotiating with What their personal relationships look like.
	If you want to be a stay-at-home traditional mom, you want to stay home with your kids, which by the way, there are a significant number of women who do still want that, you are perfectly able to seek out others who are interested in that kind of dynamic and negotiate that together.
	Me and my husband, I want a more egalitarian relationship.
	He works, I work, we both pull our weight around the house.
	That works very well for us.
	It really should be about choice.
	But I think within that, when we talk about this issue, what we're having now is not a political issue.
	It's a social issue of figuring out if men really want this traditional stay-at-home wife, well, then they need to be the provider, right?
	They've got to be sole income earners.
	They've got to pull their weight. A lot of them are not capable of doing that, and we can blame the government for that economic situation.
	But also, you have to look back historically and recognize that a lot of the times when you had that structure of a man working...
	And the wife staying home, those families went with a lot less.
	And many people are not willing to do that today.
	I know even in my family in the 90s, we lived very, very cheaply, very frugally.
	You know, we didn't have a lot of the same niceties other families had.
	We didn't go to Disney World every year.
	My mom made a sacrifice to stay home.
	And we as a family made a sacrifice financially for that to be a possibility for us.
	That's not something I feel like a lot of people are currently willing to do.
	They kind of want to have their cake and eat it too.
	And so they often you see men saying they want a wife who's cooking for them and cleaning for them, but they also expect her to work and bring in extra money so that they can have all these additional luxuries.
	And that's just a bad bargain.
	So I really do feel like with men, the thing that troubles me, and we've seen this in many psychological studies, is the fact that they are...
	turned off to women who are successful and who they perceive as out-competing them.
	We see that if in studies they test women and they ask them before the test, do you like intelligent women?
	They'll say yes, and then they'll do this experiment where they have them take tests next to one another and they'll say, well, this woman scored higher than you.
	And they actually will demote her in attractiveness after that fact, because they like women who are intelligent but not more smart than they are.
	They like women who are capable but not more capable than they are.
	And so as we see in the economy right now, women getting more college degrees, women beginning to buy more homes than men.
	I think this is an issue where men have to look at this and say like, this does not emasculate me for a woman to be successful.
	This doesn't make me less of a person if she's succeeding and actually be happy for their partner and be able to encourage them and see it as our gains, right?
	As if my husband makes more money and gets promoted, I see that as a plus for me.
	I think we need to work on men seeing that as a net positive as well, versus it being something that they seem to think undermines them or undercuts their value or what they can bring to the table.
	But I mean, could it be that this kind of mismatch is occurring of expectations on both sides?
	And here's what I mean. I mean, by and large, if you ask a young woman, and I'm thinking here of a post that I just saw recently in the last couple of days, where someone whom I know posted and said something like, I got this nephew, and he's a really nice guy, and he's 5'9", he's got a decent job, he's a law-abiding fellow, he's an affable character, But whenever he tries to search and find potential dates, they always specify that criteria.
	And their criteria is, you have to be six feet, you've got to be a Taylor Swift fan, you've got to make six figures.
	And this guy's like, I'm just a normal guy, and I'm just looking for a normal girl, but the normal girl isn't looking for me.
	She's looking for some sort of superstar guy who...
	So in other words, what I'm getting at is, you know, I think what you're saying is a man may...
	should be okay with the woman who makes more, but that woman who makes more may be looking for a totally different kind of man than this dude.
	So doesn't this create a kind of a jigsaw that doesn't fit together?
	I think that's a great point.
	I mean, evolutionary wise, women have been programmed to seek men who are a little bit above them, right?
	Stronger than them, better providers than them, make more money than them.
	So I think that can be a percentage of the problem that we're dealing with.
	I think certainly there's some women who are, on TikTok, they call it being the Lulu, who are delusional about their prospects, who are delusional about what's out there, and who honestly have very bad value systems, right?
	They don't value the things in a person that would actually make them a good mate.
	And instead, they look at these superficial sort of other criteria.
	I think for most people, they would be well served to get off the dating apps, right?
	The dating apps are not attracting a lot of people who seem to be very involved themselves.
	They're often, I mean, people who go through a breakup or divorce, what's the first thing they do?
	They download these apps, right?
	So you've got a lot of people that are kind of broken going to these platforms, looking to fill a void.
	And it's very difficult to sort through them.
	I actually met my husband on Hinge.
	So I've been there, I've done that.
	It's very difficult to figure out when you're looking at people's profiles, well, like who would I actually be attracted to in person?
	How would we connect?
	Would that chemistry be there?
	When you're meeting people in person, I think a lot of the initial hurdle of getting women to pay attention to you is overcome.
	What I've experienced in my own life, and I am 36 and I didn't get married till this year.
	So I've been on the dating market and single for a long time and I've lived in multiple cities during that time period.
	And across the board, what I find is that there are a lot of women who are really working hard on themselves to be ready to meet the right person.
	They're trying to put themselves out there.
	They're getting involved in churches.
	They're getting involved volunteering.
	They're joining sports leagues.
	And what I've observed is that the men aren't there.
	Especially when you talk about the churches, especially when you talk about some of these social organizations, the men are not involved.
	And so if they would just show up, she would have like 15 women per every man.
	And a lot of those women really are looking for the right values.
	They really are looking to settle down.
	Many of them do want to be mothers.
	And so it's kind of a sad thing where I think both people, both groups to some extent, We're good to go.
	I think all of that is just exaggerated online.
	In the real world, I actually find the opposite.
	I find women often lowering their standards.
	If you go to TikTok and watch the videos, you'll hear no shortage of women who are paying their boyfriend or their husband's bills, who are letting them live in their homes.
	I mean, it's really kind of actually pretty bleak out there.
	So yes, I think there's a percentage of women who have these crazy high standards.
	I think the vast majority of women need to have higher standards, if anything, though.
	I saw something a few days ago that kind of slightly horrified me, and I'm not even sure if it's true, but it was someone who was reporting that they had gone to a homeless shelter and interviewed a bunch of people there, men.
	And made the observation that a sizable number of those guys, maybe half, were there because they were unable to make spousal and child support payments.
	And they were facing vindictive ex-spouses who had basically criminalized what had happened.
	So the guy doesn't have a job, he can't make his child support, he can't make his spousal support.
	You go to court. The guy gets locked up.
	He then gets a criminal, you know, ding on his record.
	Now it's hard for him to get the construction job that he previously would get.
	He becomes homeless.
	So I'm wondering if part of what's going on here is that young men today are either raised in this environment or have this kind of sense that This is what awaits me.
	I mean, another factor of divorce which I think is very depressing today is the commonality of mutual accusations of spousal abuse.
	So in other words, dad and mom don't get along.
	Oh no, he's been beating me.
	He's been beating the kids.
	And all of this is then played out in court.
	There's a public record made of it sometimes.
	And so people are like, I don't want any part of this because this is like Nightmare City and why would I sign up for that?
	I mean, is part of it just that the combination of our culture and our laws are striking a kind of terror in young men?
	I'm sure. I think they're striking a tear in men and women, actually.
	This is a very big conversation that's occurring where marriage is risk.
	You are entering a business partnership with people, and I think we need to start seeing it in that lens and talking more seriously about how to protect yourself legally when going into it.
	It's not romantic, of course, and if you're religious, you tend to see it more in terms of that relationship.
	because the government is involved in it, it is a legal contractual relationship and you need to be smart as you would be smart in setting up a business with somebody.
	And also, you know, within that, you need to be very careful about the character of the person you marry.
	Now in my family, there's no divorce, Dinesh.
	I'm talking out to aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, There's not divorce in my family.
	We are a very religious family.
	And I think that because of that, we take it very seriously.
	We take who we marry very seriously.
	And I think I was taught the right kind of values to look for.
	especially in these more online kind of red pill trad communities like, oh, we don't care about your degree.
	We don't care about your job.
	We don't we just want you to be young.
	We just want you to be pleasant and sweet.
	That's a bad value system.
	If you don't want to end up in these situations, you really should care about the woman's work ethic.
	You really should care about her intellect.
	You should care about the intelligence of the person who will be birthing and raising your kids.
	These are things you should care about.
	And when you diminish them and say, I'm not interested in these women because they work hard and maybe they earn more than me and maybe like I'm I feel inferior to them.
	You're actually passing up women, I think, who are more likely to work hard at the marriage, who are more likely to invest.
	We're more likely to pull their weight.
	And if and when there is a divorce, cannot take you for a ride because divorce courts look at who earns what and they evaluate based on that for the most part.
	So if she's a stay-at-home mom or she makes a lot less than you, then the likelihood you're going to have to pay a lot more in child support and alimony increases.
	If she's working right alongside you, that's not really the case.
	Now, I think there are...
	Absolutely reforms that could be suggested when it comes to family court systems.
	I do think that many of the talking points I see online are not correct.
	A lot of women actually fare far worse after divorce.
	It's not really the case that they're just getting rich and kicking back.
	I've done a whole episode of my show on this because I wanted to dig into it.
	But I think there could be more fair evaluations.
	Like, one thing that's really sort of messed up is that when a couple gets divorced, there's a judgment based on the income they make as of that day, and then that follows them until the kid's 18, whereas somebody could start making less, somebody could start making more.
	Like, there should be periodic, I think, reviews of that, and it should be...
	I expected that over a period of five or so years, if somebody was a stay-at-home parent, that they began working and earning money.
	I don't think that's an unrealistic ask.
	So there are certainly things we could do where I think we could make the court system be a bit more fair and equal and gender neutral.
	But right now, most of the things that make it not gender neutral are not because it's biased against men.
	It's biased against the higher income earner.
	And that's really the reality of it.
	I mean, it seems like another thing, Hannah, that we could use a little more of is, well, it's almost you could call it a little more Jane Austen.
	And what I mean is that when you look back at those 19th century novels, what's really going on?
	and behind all the balls and the dresses and the kind of mannered interactions, it's an attempt to discover the character of the other person, which is often concealed, because obviously people are trying to put their best face forward, they're trying to camouflage in some cases who they really are, and so the job of, you know, an Elizabeth in Jane Austen is to sort of discern in this really complicated, concealed world,
	how do I find somebody who's actually a good match for me, intellectually and in every other way.
	Hey Hannah, this has been great stuff and thank you for joining me.
	Guys, I've been talking to Hannah Cox, co-founder and president of Based Politics.
	Follow her on X at Hannah D. Cox.
	Check out her YouTube show.
	It's called Histrionics.
	Hannah, thanks very much for joining me.
	Thanks so much for having me. Great conversation.
	I'm talking about group number three, the Quakers, who moved from the northern Midlands of England to the Delaware Valley, to Jersey, South Jersey, to Pennsylvania, and then over time established the culture of the American Midwest.
	And when we talk about their folk ways, their traditions, their mannerisms, we're going to talk about the way that they talk, let's call those speech ways, the way that they build their homes, architectural ways, the way that they practice their religion, their religious ways, their family structure, and the norms governing family life and the raising of children.
	So... We'll start with speechways.
	The speechways of the Midwest, we already know.
	They're straightforward, simple, forceful, direct.
	You'll notice that some of America's great writers who have that style come out of the Midwest.
	Hemingway. Hemingway is almost famous for the forceful simplicity of his style, the attempt not to have the kind of winding, labyrinthine vocabulary that you find, for example, in Faulkner, who of course is a representative of the American South.
	And this comes from the way that the Quakers talk.
	The Quakers have their own sort of way of speaking and in fact have contributed certain words to the English language, some of which everybody uses now, but some of which still are more identified with the Midwest.
	Let me give you a couple of examples.
	So, one of the things that Quakers did is they didn't like to swear.
	One of their favorite terms was, by golly.
	Now, I don't say by golly.
	But people in the Midwest do.
	To me, it's a little bit of a goofball way to speak.
	But that's Mike Pence.
	That's the goofballism that comes out of the Quakers.
	They don't refer to a chest of drawers.
	It's a dresser.
	Why is it a dresser? Because, well, you presumably keep your dresses and other clothes in it.
	Another Quaker expression, which again, the kind of thing when you have to think about it, because these words by themselves don't really make any sense.
	Good grief. Good grief is something that, again, now a lot of people say, but my point is that's where they got it from.
	They got it from the Quakers.
	They got it from the Midwest.
	One of the words that first intrigued me when I came to America, the word mad.
	Americans today all over the country use mad to mean sort of angry.
	But mad doesn't actually mean angry.
	Mad actually means crazy.
	This is a madman.
	It doesn't mean he's angry.
	It means he's nuts. But mad is used as angry colloquially, and that came from the Quakers, and the Quakers themselves brought it from England.
	The Quakers were simple people and they used the phrase quality folks.
	Quality folks are like the high and mighty, the rich and famous, people who think that they're a cut above.
	They're quality folks.
	Thingamajig, Quaker expression.
	And so one of the Quaker sayings was, let your words be few.
	And that is very much a summary of who the Quakers are.
	And that is very much the spirit of the American Midwest.
	Go to the American Midwest and look at homes.
	By and large, they're pretty simple.
	By and large, they mirror the Quaker style.
	A cottage style. Three or four rooms on the first floor, maybe a corner stairway, and even larger homes are quite plain.
	They're large and so you think, oh my gosh, this is going to be extremely ornate and spectacular inside, but inside a lot of it just seems kind of empty.
	Large rooms with beams and kind of nothing in them.
	Quakers had...
	The focus was on domesticity, so not entertainment, not parlors and very large and ornate living rooms or dining rooms.
	Lots of bedrooms in the Quaker homes.
	Why? Lots of children. Sometimes you'd have a plain board table.
	That's the dining room. The kitchen, typically, no decoration.
	Only necessities. Pots, pans, and so on.
	But you don't find pretty much anything else.
	Now, interestingly though, the Quaker family was much more egalitarian than the Puritan family or the Anglican family in the American South.
	The Puritans were very patriarchal and the children were seen as little rebels, little devils that needed to be kept under control.
	In the American South, A modified version of the same thing.
	Not so much the children are little devils, but the children need to be, their wills need to be steered in such a way that they learn formality and ritual, they know when to bow, they know who to call sir, they learn deference, they become skilled in certain ways.
	The Quaker view is that the child is basically a young adult.
	The child does need education because the child isn't a fully formed adult, but children are perfectly able to participate, perhaps at times even to lecture the adults.
	There's a quite amusing anecdote given by the historian David Hackett Fisher where he says that at one point some of the adults were kind of talking in a kind of, not trashy, but maybe kind of a A circular way.
	And one of the children stood up and gave a stinging sermon about the necessity of focusing on Jesus and being saved.
	And then the old women of the house were all like, Oh Lordy Lord, it's up to a child to teach us basically to get back on the straight path.
	Now this would never happen in Puritan society.
	Neither would it happen in the hierarchical society of the South.
	The Quaker weddings, well, you can pretty much predict what they are.
	I'm going to describe them.
	It proceeded very much like a meeting for worship.
	People entered quietly and sat in silence, sometimes for very long periods.
	Those who wished to speak could rise and say what they want, and some were moved to speak at length.
	Then, almost as an anti-climax, the intended couple quietly declared their agreement to marry.
	After this exchange, everyone sat silently for a while.
	And quietly went home.
	This is the Quaker wedding ceremony.
	It's, as you can see, it is not flamboyant.
	It is not festive the way that southern weddings are, for example.
	It is pretty much, and it's not separated out from the rest of life.
	It's kind of like, it's another day after all.
	It just happens to be the day in which, you know, Elijah and so-and-so made their vows and Everyone is there to observe it, but it's pretty much like any other day and any other event.
	Let's identify its qualities.
	It's the low-key, it's the modest, it's the relatively frugal, it is the simple, it is the straightforward Quaker way.
	Imported from England that is now recognizable in the American Midwest, stretching across today.
	Originally, of course, it was just New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Delaware, but now it has projected much further west into places like Kansas and Nebraska and Ohio and Michigan.
	This culture of the Midwest is decisively shaped by these odd people who first came from England long ago.
	Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.

▲