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Dec. 20, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:08
THE GREATEST GIFT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep985
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Thank you.
We'll talk about the latest school shooting and the disturbing implications, also the NCAA. And it's Trans Locker Room Policy and two of the best Christmas movies ever.
I'll let you guess what those are.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
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Debbie and I are here for our Friday roundup.
And honey, it's a little hard to believe that Christmas is like upon us.
Right around the corner.
This week.
Yeah.
This coming week.
Yeah.
So, this means that 2024 goes down.
Well, isn't it next week?
If you think about it, today's Friday.
Isn't it next week?
Because Sunday begins the new week.
Technically speaking, I believe you are right.
I don't know.
I'm just weird with calendars.
You know that.
Yeah, Debbie has an uncanny ability to memorize not only future calendars, but past calendars.
Sometimes you'll talk about a speech I did like four months ago, and you'll remember the date, the location, and the day of the week.
So you have a kind of an eerie photographic memory about dates.
We all have our eerie, you know...
Well, you say the same of me.
In other words, there are certain things that I can...
I have enormous recall and I can absorb a lot of information.
And then there are other, some quite ordinary things that go right by me, kind of like the scene in the window of a train.
It's here, it's gone.
Yeah, or like the funniest thing is your inability to know where you're going.
Yeah.
Oh, directions.
Directions.
Yeah, you really have no idea which way you're going.
I am quite capable of walking into a building, making a sharp right and going inside.
Do you remember when we...
Coming out of the building and going in the exact opposite direction.
So we went to South Carolina a month ago, a little over a month ago.
And we went to a restaurant and Dinesh had to go park the car kind of far from the restaurant.
He goes, you don't need to walk.
I'm going to go park it.
I was like, okay.
So I wait inside the restaurant and we're fine.
We eat.
We eat everything.
We come back out.
He goes, oh yeah, no, I'll go get the car.
You don't have to come with me because you've got high heels on.
Wait right here and I'll be right back.
And I was like, okay, now first of all, I should have known better because he didn't have his phone with him.
And I had my phone, but he didn't have his phone.
I was like, okay, I'll see you in a little bit.
Really five minutes tops because you were parked down the street.
So five minutes go by, 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by.
20 minutes go by and I'm like, oh my gosh, somebody assaulted you.
It is worth noting that that particular area of South Carolina, of Charleston, has a lot of one-way streets.
And I think that's what really got me is I couldn't make my way back the way I got there.
And so I was taking some one-ways and then I ended up on a...
A big, wide, semi-highway.
So things did not go well.
However, I did find my way back.
You finally did, and I was like, whoa.
Even without my phone, I did.
But I waited out there 25 minutes.
I should have just walked back with you.
Yeah, probably.
But anyway, that's...
Well, let's talk about, I mean, I suppose a rather grim topic to begin on, but it is something that's been going on In a number of ways in our society, different types of gun violence.
And I mean, just to pull some examples right off the top of my head, number one, you've got the Luigi Mangione shooting of the healthcare executive, right in daylight on the street.
Then you have the school shooting that happened earlier this week, Madison, Wisconsin.
You told me of an amazing, I mean, disturbing case of a, was it a 16-year-old who killed his family, including his siblings?
In New Mexico, gunned down his family.
He was drunk.
Yeah, and so now, you know, in a big country, it can be sometimes that we think of these things as normal, but they're not normal.
But then you said something about the statistics, the aggregate number of Americans who die from Shootings from violence.
And you compared it to, let's say, the number of car casualties in the country.
So talk about that.
Well, it's worth noting, this is probably a very liberal website.
I don't know.
Everytownresearch.org.
But they have gun deaths versus motor vehicle accident deaths since 1999. And they are very, very close to Now.
They used to separate by about 10,000.
Meaning the motor vehicle deaths were more.
The motor vehicle deaths were about 40,000 in 1999 versus 30,000 for the gun.
Still a big number, by the way.
Still a big number, but then somewhere around, I want to say 20...
2015, 2016, they started narrowing the gap.
And it started really going up, really for the gun, the firearm.
The motor vehicle actually went down, but the firearm went up.
So now they teeter around $40,000 for both.
Now, the gun violence aspect is, you know, people that commit suicide, accidental shooting, not necessarily, you know, like a school shooting or a mass shooting, but it's just, you know, an accident or deliberate with a firearm.
Yeah.
I mean, I have to say this is a very alarming number because in the aggregate, it is a lot.
And I think, well, I mean, mass shootings obviously are going to be a tiny portion of that, right?
Even if we think about mass shootings over the past 30 years, there are quite a few, but not enough to create those kinds of numbers.
upward trend of suicide in our society, including, by the way, some young people committing suicide, which is a very bad sign.
It's a bad cultural sign, I think, for the country.
Number two, we have certain parts of our society, sometimes inner cities and some barrios where there is a lot of gang violence and a lot of gun violence.
That's all included, right?
That's all part of this number.
And then you have these really twisted, bizarre cases of people who massacre their families.
And a lot of times also it's an abuser, you know, or an in a relationship.
That's his weapon of choice to kill their significant other, whether it's men or women.
Mostly it's men that do it.
Women too, though.
But also worth noting is that we don't have a call to ban motor vehicles.
Oh, right.
Good point.
They're very dangerous.
They cause a lot of deaths.
They cause a lot of deaths.
We're not wanting to go back to horse and buggy, right?
Now, it's also worth noting that just like a motor vehicle, it's the person driving that is at fault, right?
Or obviously, you know, if it's a drunk driver, it's definitely their fault.
If it's not, they're the recipient of that catastrophe.
We always seem to blame the firearm.
Except in the Luigi case, I noticed.
The firearm didn't even...
That was so interesting, right?
Not a word about that.
Not a word.
It didn't even come into play.
But it's, you know, most of the time, it's the person...
Not the person behind the wheel.
Well, you know, I saw this thing where someone had made this observation that, you know, they were like, this is the first time the Luigi man, the only case where no mention, not a word from the left about guns.
And then someone said the other time that that happened...
The Trump assassination attempt.
Oh, that's true.
There was not a word about guns.
Not a word.
And also a peculiar incuriosity about the guy who attempted it.
Right.
Yeah, we don't know anything.
To this day, we know very little about that guy, about his family, about his background.
Yeah.
It's always quite interesting, though, when you think about it, what liberals really attach themselves to.
And for some reason...
Guns are what they want.
Really, they would love nothing more than to take away all guns.
Now, why is that?
In other words, we can say at a certain level that a state can't become tyrannical unless it confiscates guns.
And you know the example of Venezuela, and there are other examples as well.
But...
The ordinary liberal can't be thinking that way, right?
He can't be thinking...
No, but they fall victim to the demonization of it and to the propaganda that their own side dishes out.
They believe it.
They believe it, just like they believe that Trump is a fascist and a dictator and this and that.
I don't think they really think that, but they repeat what they hear in the media and what they hear from other candidates.
Right.
And so the same thing with guns.
You know, the first thing, oh my gosh, I'm sending my child to school and I'm afraid that I'm going to be called in the middle of the day because there's going to be a school shooting.
Well, that's a really horrible thing to, you know, to have to live through.
But it's not the gun.
It's the psychotic kid and it's the parents that have stopped parenting and I think we've talked about this a little bit, and I agree with you.
There are cases where someone has demonstrated themselves to be a lunatic.
They've made threats, or they can't pass a psychiatric exam.
They're obviously unhinged in some way.
And we were saying it is not a deprivation to deprive people Right.
Right.
these people would have passed that test or they would have gotten it somehow they got it from their parents they stole it from their parents locker room or locker room locker or vault We know in the school shooting case, the 15-year-old said, I got it from my dad.
He's a dummy and I took his gun.
Exactly.
With Luigi, I have no idea how he got it, but he was not a criminal beforehand.
And not to mention the fact that he was extremely clever.
I believe he essentially...
Built his own gun?
I think so.
Yeah.
Or at least he modified it in certain ways to make it effective.
Right.
So all of these laws would not prevent any of these school shootings or Luigi from getting a gun.
Right.
So again, it's like, how do we get to the bottom of it?
Because it is a problem.
We cannot just say, you know what, it's not a problem.
Let's just keep going.
It's a problem.
But the solution is what everybody has wrong.
Yeah, I mean, I agree it's a problem.
I also don't think you can say, you know, hey, it's just like car violence and we live with car violence.
Because see, most people would say, you need your car to get to work.
Right?
But you don't need to own an AR-15 in general for general normal functioning of life.
So there's a higher burden on the guy who says we need to allow these guns and in fact a lot of guns to be legal versus the guy who says we need cars to be legal because otherwise nobody can get from here to there.
So this is an issue we talk about.
Yeah, I mean, I think we at some point...
On a regular basis.
At some point we should have an expert come on the show to tell us why these semi-automatic and automatic weapons are a must-have for most people.
And also what can be done to identify these...
Absolutely psychotic people in our society, whether this is due to a cultural breakdown or family breakdown or religious breakdown or moral breakdown, we're clearly seeing the consequences of all those things.
And probably addressing those problems as our society in terms of policy is not a bad idea.
Yeah, I agree.
Look, I gotta be somewhat realistic about my diet in December.
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Well, this won't be totally easy because Debbie will be on my case, but I have my ways.
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This week we saw a quite remarkable scene, which is the head of the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, appear before Congress, and he was cross-examined by Senator Josh Hawley and also by Senator Johnson and others.
And apparently the NCAA has a clearly articulated policy That says that trans athletes, biological males who want to use the women's restroom can do it.
And very bizarre...
A locker room.
A locker room.
Right, that's a restroom and locker room.
This, by the way, was really what politicized Riley Gaines, whom I've invited to come on the podcast.
We'll try to see if we can get her on next week.
But Riley Gaines was like, you know, I'm stark naked in the locker room changing, and there's a six-foot man standing right next to me.
I mean, what a sight, right?
Just to try to think about it.
But the NCAA is taking the side of the trans community.
And this guy was, you know, very sanctimonious.
But I gotta say that both Senator Johnson and Josh Hawley really got him.
And they got him time and time again because he kept trying to make it sound like this was a reasonable accommodation.
And their point was, no, you're not accommodating anyone.
You are siding with the biological male and you are siding against.
And this guy kept saying, well, there are five court rulings that allow for trans people And so, Senator Johnson, I believe it was, who says to this guy, he says, look, no court is forcing you to do this.
Has any court instructed you that you must allow female locker rooms to be open to trans biological males?
And this guy recognizes that that's not the case.
So this is a conscious decision being made by the NCAA. It really shows you the power of the left and of the trans movement To be able to control sports in this way.
They don't control it across the board.
There are some other athletic associations that don't go along with this, but for the NCAA, this is a very big, this is a national organization that basically dominates sports at the collegiate level.
I agree.
Well, and it's also, I mean, it's just on a, like, human level, it's so unfair to women for them to have to accommodate for the very few trans athletes.
I mean, there are thousands and thousands more women athletes than trans athletes, but yet they're having to cave for the very few, right?
They're the ones that have to go...
If they're uncomfortable having a trans athlete change in front of them or go to the bathroom in front of them or whatever, then they have the burden to have to go look for another locker room or another bathroom.
Right?
And it is so unfair to women.
I mean, do you think, I'm trying to think of how we got into this kind of madness, right?
And here is a possible theory.
I mean, the theory has to explain not just why the trans fanatics are pushing for this week, we kind of know that, but rather why normal people are going along with it.
If you looked at the guy who was the head of the NCAA, he doesn't look like a freak.
He seems like a pretty normal guy, right?
So he is being lured into this, and there's got to be a certain part of him that sees it as believable.
So here's my theory about why that is.
All of this identity politics began with race.
And the general theme of the entire civil rights movement based upon blacks and whites was that skin color is pretty arbitrary.
One civil rights leader, Morris Dee, said it is the painted face, right?
So it doesn't matter if your face is painted light or brown or black.
It's a painted face.
It doesn't tell you anything about what's inside.
It makes no difference other than cosmetically in the sense of appearance.
And then the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the trans movement have all piggybacked on the civil rights movement and all given the idea.
Remember for how, for decades, feminism gave the idea that there was no difference between men and women.
Now, that was unbelievable.
In fact, if that were really true, you wouldn't have women's sports at all, right?
Men and women would always compete in all domains.
And women would most of the time, 99.999% of the time lose.
Lose, exactly.
So the very fact that we have segregated, we shouldn't be afraid of the term, sports, tells you that there are important group differences on average between men and women so that even the very best of the women can compete against the second or third best of the men.
That's why we do it.
Now, somehow it seems that the trans illusion is that, no, biological identity and gender identity, this is this new term, gender, is optional.
Isn't that the heart of the matter?
Do you think that this guy at some level believes that?
Doesn't he know better?
I mean, he must have a wife.
He probably has daughters.
No, you know, I think it's the fear of being sued.
The fear of having a civil rights lawsuit trumps everything else because why else would they do that?
Well, the other possibility is running right alongside that fear is the fear of being demonized in the media.
Well, that too.
But I think even more than that, it's the other.
It's the, you know, I don't want to be accused of a hate crime.
I don't want to be accused of a civil rights violation.
And so these people have civil rights.
I mean, let's remember the left has brought down organizations...
From the Boy Scouts to others.
Yes, for that very reason.
I mean, think of all the men's clubs that got sued and that were either forced to change their practices, in some cases pay confiscatory damages.
I mean, look, I think the only way to resolve this is to put it on the table what exactly constitutes a civil rights violation in the Supreme Court.
Right.
Because I think right now, we don't really know what constitutes civil rights violations.
Well, but, you know, the court can weigh in on this.
But interestingly, I think also there's a political fight about it because the Democratic Party, by and large, has gone all in with the trans agenda.
The Democratic Party, I don't think the Democrats are so much pro-trans per se, but they've embraced the LGBTQ movement.
And the LGBTQ movement has put the trans agenda at the front, right?
I mean, I remember this, I think Dave Chappelle was saying, he's like, listen, it's not the T's who are driving the train, it's the G's, meaning it's the gays.
It's the male gays who are pushing this agenda.
But not all...
No, not all.
But I mean, if you're looking to see who in the LGBTQ phalanx is driving, who has the power to do this?
The squeaky wheel.
It's clearly not the trans by themselves.
So what's happening here is the Democrats have gone in with it.
So it's now a political divide between the two camps.
I think this has to be defeated at all levels.
Intellectually, yes.
Intellectually.
Scientifically, yes.
Politically, yes.
And then judicially, yes.
And when all of those come together, this nonsense will start to subside.
Well, the other way that I think can help a great deal is, you know, I just, I watched this morning, this woman who was an ex-volleyball player, NAAA or whatever, D1 classification, division one.
Anyway, you know, she was talking about a girl that was hit in the head so hard by a volleyball that she had brain damage by a trans, okay?
So, she's like, I think, I'm not really sure what her organization is called, but it's like an Independent Women for Fairness or something like that.
And she's just saying, listen, it's just not fair.
It's just not fair.
And this is not about the locker room or the bathroom.
This is about playing in the sport.
Yeah.
Right?
So, I have always said this.
Why don't women just get together and refuse to play?
Right?
Refuse to swim.
This has been happening in swim contests.
I think this is the influence of Riley Gaines and also others.
There are a couple of other prominent athletes who have joined with Riley on this.
That is happening.
But I think it's also worth noting that there are some sports where you can do real physical harm to women.
Oh.
For example, let's just say you tell a biological male, you can play against women in the ping pong contest.
That's not the same as saying you can enter the boxing ring.
You can box with them and just knock them out, you know?
Or wrestle.
Or MMA or any of these things.
I think one of them was wrestling, remember?
And oh my goodness.
I mean, look.
Or look at the Olympics where that guy, he's not really a trans, but he's a certain type of a biological freak.
Because he is a man...
But apparently he doesn't quite have a penis.
This is the Algerian guy, right?
Now, what made all of this so comical is that the Algerians are not on board with the trans.
No, I know.
But they saw a chance to get like a gold medal.
They're like, let's do it.
They're probably like, listen, these Westerners are out of their minds.
They will allow this biological male to get in the ring.
Yeah.
Guess what?
Pow, pow, pow, and it's going to be go Algeria.
Yeah, but to be honest, I mean, that is dangerous.
It really is.
Because I'm not a fool.
I know that a woman can't possibly wrestle a man or box a man.
It's just impossible.
You don't have the strength.
And so, I mean, unless the woman is like 6'2", and the man is like 5'2".
No, I mean, exactly.
There are exceptional cases where you can do this, but when you're looking at the best of on this side and the best of over here, there's no competition at all.
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We are on the cusp of a new year, a new political season, Trump and a new administration, but also a new Congress.
Now, the Republicans will maintain the narrow lead that they had before in the House.
In the Senate, it's a happier picture.
Republicans take the Senate.
If you remember, the Democrats had a narrow majority last time with Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.
Now, Republicans have a fairly decent 53 to 47 majority, although there are some Republican holdouts, as we know, so they might be yanking in J.D. Vance.
Our son-in-law, Mr. Brandon Gill, is marching into this environment, and it looks like he's coming out the gate pretty strong.
He's the president of the freshman class.
There's been a bunch of articles about Brandon out there.
I chuckled when I saw that he spoke at the New York Young Republicans and he said this, he said, "We need more Daniel Pennys because there are too many Jordan Neelys out there." And of course, the left jumped on that.
I think they were trying to make it seem...
I think they thought that by quoting this line, they would make Brandon appear to be an advocate of vigilantism.
But I think all Brandon was saying, and he made it very clear in the speech, is listen, if you're on the subway, you're being terrorized by some guy.
The cops are nowhere to be seen.
It's kind of nice to have some good Samaritans out there who will look out for you.
Otherwise, you are at the mercy of, defenseless against these guys.
And I've seen so many videos.
Most of these, frankly, from New York, but they probably occur elsewhere.
Yeah.
These guys just go berserk on the subway.
They spit on people.
They push them around.
They start singing, standing on their head, doing all kinds of antics.
And the whole point is to control The whole atmosphere in the cabin make everybody else not only uncomfortable but intimidated.
Yeah, scared.
And nothing is done about this.
Yeah, no.
I mean, it's like the criminals...
It's like the...
What do they say?
The asylum is running the...
The lunatics are running the asylum.
The lunatics are running the asylum.
The other day some guy just put a video and he goes, this is the subway in Japan.
And I looked at it and I was almost like I'm in a time capsule.
Yeah.
This is sort of like America circa 1952. Everybody is well-behaved.
People are reading the newspaper.
People are working.
Everything is polite, civilized.
People are offering their seat.
And I was like, wow, this is just not the atmosphere we've become accustomed to.
And only because we have allowed...
These criminals are like spoiled children, right?
We have allowed this to happen because these DAs...
And for the same reason.
For the same reason, these DAs, these prosecutors, make them the victim.
Look at Daniel Penny.
Exactly.
I mean, look what happened to him.
And so they know that they can do whatever they want, they can intimidate whoever they want, and nothing is going to happen to them.
In fact, if you try to stop them, you're the one that's going to jail.
Right.
So, in other words, in the progressive scheme of things, the criminal is the victim, and the guy who steps into the breach, the Daniel Penny, becomes the criminal in their eyes.
That's how Alvin Bragg saw it.
Exactly right.
That's why he prosecuted Penny.
Exactly right.
Or at least attempted to get him locked up.
Let's talk about the Congress, because one of the things we saw with the collapse of this continuing resolution, the CR, this week...
Is how dug in these entrenched interests are, how much headway they've made, even with the Republican leadership.
Because, look, you've got the House, however narrowly, is controlled by Republicans.
The Appropriations Committee, all the committees that sign off on the CR are on our side.
But they nevertheless were willing to go along with this absolute disaster of a bill.
And they were trying to do it in a very underhanded way.
In other words, let's slip it right past everybody without anyone really noticing except...
We are no longer in the era where people don't notice.
And not only that, we are in the era where...
I think the way I put it to you is I said, Mike Johnson may be a nice guy, but he's a nice guy in an environment where our side, the rank and file, our philosophy is no more Mr. Nice Guy.
No more.
Yeah, no.
Well, it's interesting though because also, you know, he's a very kind-hearted man.
Yeah.
I mean, he really is.
He's a Christian, very kind-hearted, very, you know, he thinks he's doing it for the right reasons.
Right.
But as you know, he's actually so intimidated by the media, decently, Demonizing him saying, you know what?
Right before Christmas, the government is going to shut down and it's all Mike Johnson's fault.
He doesn't want that.
He doesn't want kids to not have their parents employed because they're government employees and right before Christmas.
He doesn't want that.
And so he is wanting to do something, like you say, from another era.
But it no longer applies today.
You gave the example yourself of Mike Pence.
Yeah.
And basically Mike Johnson, well, he's a Midwesterner.
Yeah.
Is he?
I don't know where he's from.
No, he's from Louisiana.
He's from Louisiana.
That's right.
He's from Louisiana.
And Pence is Indiana.
But their temperament is very similar.
They both end in Anna.
Yeah.
Well, there's that.
I didn't mean that.
But if you look at it, they're both, first of all, they're both extremely straight-laced.
They both are quite devout religiously.
I think Mike Johnson has even said, he's like, you know, I go down on my knees.
He plays.
But I mean, think about it, because this encapsulates the whole deal.
He goes, when I meet with Hakeem Jeffries, think of it, this is the piranha who's on the other side.
He goes, I go down on my knees.
I'm sure Hakeem Jeffries is doing something very different in preparing for this meeting.
He's probably meeting with a gang of strategists saying, how can we apply a truncheon on this guy?
How can we tie him up in knots politically?
How can we get all this stuff through while he's looking the other way?
I mean, really, it's like holy water to Satan, really.
I mean, it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is our side needs to be wise as serpents and Mike Johnson is not.
I think that's part of what we're trying to say.
Mike Pence is not.
There's a certain well-meaning buffoonery about these guys and you can't help but like them.
Yeah.
But...
I rebel a little bit also against the idea of being a nice guy because it seems to me that when you are a nice guy, you are often a nice guy to somebody's benefit and to some guy's detriment, right?
The American people's detriment.
Exactly.
Mike Johnson, in being a nice guy, is being nice to the lobbyists who are funneling money into the Congress.
He's being nice to the Democrats who don't wish him well at all and would topple him if they could get one of their guys in place.
He's not being nice to the MAGA movement.
He's not being nice to Trump.
He's not being nice to the ordinary American citizen or taxpayer who's being looted by this bill.
So how do you think this is gonna end up?
I mean, are they gonna start taking all the pork out, all the crazy stuff out?
I think what they will do is they will have a disaster relief bill and a farmer's bill that will be tailored, will probably pass fairly easily.
Those are a lot less costly than this massive boondoggle.
But no big boondoggle is going through right now.
And I don't think that will happen until Trump takes office.
Well, I'm glad Vivek and Elon stepped in and said something.
And people are saying, who elected Vivek?
Who elected Elon?
Well, the good news is, first of all, these are two dudes.
They're constituents.
Well, not only that, but they are people who actually read the bill.
Yeah.
I bet you that Vivek said, I'm sitting down and reading this 1,500-page document, which probably, think about it.
I mean, I'm a fast reader, but it'll still take me a day to read a 1,500-page document and absorb it.
I don't think probably anyone except maybe one or two congressmen did that.
You know, I was thinking about Obamacare because I was very interested in reading bills back then, you know, in 2009 or whatever.
I read Obamacare.
It took me like three days to read it, but I read it.
And now what's really funny in this bill is that there's an option...
For the Congress not to do Obamacare.
Well, not only that, but think of the, in a way Nancy Pelosi articulated the doctrine that Mike Johnson was trying to apply, right?
Let's pass it first.
And then we'll read it.
And then we'll find out what's in it.
Then we'll find out what's in it.
And I think that Johnson would have been very happy if most Republicans had adopted that philosophy.
But I think the days of that philosophy, just like the days of Obama, are over.
I'm really glad that we are in a new environment where our level of intolerance, indignation, and sheer fury, we just don't put up with this stuff anymore.
And that's a really good thing.
Next week is Christmas and so in preparation for this, Debbie and I said we need to start watching some really good Christmas movies.
and so we started with one that is I would say almost indisputably the best Christmas movie ever made and that is It's a Wonderful Life and so we watched it together and then we watched our second Christmas movie which is a little more controversial because there is an ongoing debate about whether this is a Christmas movie at all namely the Bruce Willis movie called Die Hard not Die Hard 2 which frankly I think is a good movie
but Die Hard 1 the original which is actually It takes place Christmas Eve.
It does take place Christmas Eve but I suppose the debate is about just because something takes place during Christmas doesn't make it a Christmas movie.
Now, it is true on the surface that Die Hard is a thriller.
It is about terrorism.
It has some language in it.
Yippee-ki-yay!
Yeah, exactly.
It's got some bad language in it.
But I think if we think about it, And we want to talk about It's a Wonderful Life also, but I'll make the case that the message of Die Hard is, in fact, a very pro-family message.
It is a message about coming together for the Christmas.
It has the same heartwarming elements...
At the end, I saw this thread which I brought to your attention about a guy who was actually commenting on this on social media and he goes, the key to understanding Die Hard is the Rolex watch.
And I hadn't seen the movie for over a decade and I was thinking, the Rolex watch?
What are you talking about?
But when we watch it again, he's right.
At the beginning of the movie, Bonnie Bedelia gets a Rolex watch and she's separated from her husband, Bruce Willis, who's a cop.
And she's clearly somewhat condescending toward him because she's at this high-powered firm.
She's the feminist embodiment of women's empowerment.
He's this lowly cop.
But as the movie goes on, it becomes clear that he's the true hero and He actually plays the masculine role of being the defender.
He saves the day.
He saves the day.
And in the closing scene, this is, I think, the giveaway when the villain, Alan Rickman, goes out of the window and down and falls to his death.
You're assuming everybody has seen this movie because you're giving away the ending.
Most people have.
What happens is he grabs toward Bonnie Bedelia and he pulls the Rolex off of her.
No, so Bruce Willis takes it off.
Oh, he takes it off.
He takes it off.
So that's even more telling.
And it's like the watch goes down with the bad guy.
And the provider and the strong guy is left with his wife.
him and recognizes that he has a lot of value.
So this is Die Hard in a nutshell.
But you said you had seen it in the theater.
Yeah, I saw it in the theater when it came out and I hadn't seen it since.
And so I really didn't, there were a lot of little surprises that I had forgotten.
But you said you enjoyed it even more.
I enjoyed it even more.
Maybe because I'm way, way older now.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, when I saw it, I think Justin was maybe a year old.
He's now going to be 30. So about 1995 thereabouts.
So, 96 I think is when I saw it.
So, oh yeah.
A lot of things.
But also, you know...
And I was like, oh, poor Bruce Willis.
He probably doesn't even, like, remember having done that.
I don't know how far he's off or, you know, or where he is now.
But I thought, and then remember I was telling you, I was like, okay, well, he's passed away.
And he's passed away.
All the main actors, like the terrorists, have died.
The guy that played Carl, the long-haired ballerina man from Russia, he was actually a Russian ballet dancer.
Right.
Now, our friend Robert Davi is alive.
And Robert Davi's in there.
And he plays the other.
Oh, yeah.
So that's the other thing.
The movie is so, like, it's so MAGA. You know what I mean?
Well, it's very prescient because it's long before anything that, you know, people would call MAGA. But think about it.
Who are the bad guys?
Yeah.
The FBI? The FBI is horrible.
And not only horrible, they're both malevolent and stupid.
They're both.
Right?
Which is what they are.
And the good guy are the working class guys.
The cops.
The guy on the street.
The black guy, too.
The black cop is a good guy.
And, of course, Bruce Willis is a good guy.
Now, let's turn to the other film.
And the media.
Bad.
And the media is blasted.
Because these guys are chasing a story.
That's all they care about.
And in the closing scene, Bonnie Bonilla punches the...
The reporter would basically get out of my face.
And then he goes, did you get that?
I mean, that was so silly.
Well, it was funny, too, because it's like all he cares about is getting the shot.
Now, it's a wonderful life, I have to say.
I believe I saw that movie...
As a child?
Many, many, many, many years ago.
But I had forgotten.
I mean, I remembered the main theme, which is that it was a chance for him to revisit his life.
But the way that this movie was structured, the ingenuity of it, Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart, of course, plays the lead role.
And it's based from the book The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Dorenstern.
Oh, interesting.
Right?
So that was...
It's a book available anywhere you buy books.
Probably a really great little Christmas gift for people.
I mean, it's like a great stocking stuffer.
Oh, yeah.
It's really great.
It's very short, too.
But the movie was not.
It was two hours long.
Yeah.
But what I thought about the film was that it's beautifully structured, and And there's not a wasted scene in it.
Not a wasted scene.
Everything that is in that movie, however trivial, plays some role in illuminating the central theme.
And the conclusion is quite, I think, emotionally and intellectually overwhelming.
Because it's an affirmation of life.
Now you could do this in a purely secular way, but the movie doesn't.
No, the movie's not secular.
The movie is an embrace of the Christmas understanding of life, that life is a gift, just like we give gifts at Christmas.
Our ultimate gift is the gift of life, but it doesn't shy away from where this gift is coming from.
That's right.
In fact, you'll even see at one point Jimmy Stewart prays, And it's very interesting because initially his prayer is not answered.
He is in despair, he prays, and then he gets out of the cafe and he drives his car into a tree.
So it looks like the prayer has been rejected.
But we know that the prayer has not been rejected because, in fact, a guardian angel has been dispatched from heaven to show this guy what's what.
And I also thought it's very ingenious that the guardian angel appears by himself, Yelling for help.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
Well, he did that on purpose.
He did that so that he would go down and help him.
So he wanted to get his mind off of his own misery.
And he knew that he was such a giving person that he would go save him.
Yeah, this is the key point.
See, if he were truly a really bad guy, he would not dream of saving that guy.
That's right.
But the point of it was that he was a good guy facing difficult circumstances.
And so the guardian angel was able to tap into the pre-existing goodness of Jimmy Stewart.
And bring that out.
It was kind of like when you are facing a crisis, the selflessness in you comes to the front.
And that's what happened.
And that then sets Jimmy Stewart on this journey where he then gets to revisit his life.
And what an ingenious...
Because you and I were chatting and kind of applying this to ourselves, right?
We were basically saying things like, hey, if my...
If my grandfather hadn't married my grandmother, which may have happened under very coincidental circumstances, I wouldn't be here.
Well, we looked at the circumstances where if this had happened or that had happened, you even made the comment, you're just like, if Obama had never existed, you're like, I don't believe that the two of us would have met, which is true.
Right?
Yeah, that's giving Obama a lot of...
A lot of credit.
Well, he has a lot of debits on his side.
Yeah, I know.
So one or two credits may not be entirely bad.
Yeah.
No, but little things that happen.
So with George...
Jimmy Stewart.
Jimmy Stewart.
George is the character.
Yeah.
He...
He basically told Clarence, like, you know, I'm miserable.
All I ever do is nothing but misery.
I mess everything up.
I just wish I'd never been born.
And then he got that clever idea.
You know what?
I'm going to show him what this town would look like if you had never been born.
And as you know, the town was a really cute little Americana town with churches and shopping.
It was America circa 1940. Yeah.
And then, so all of a sudden, boom...
He's like not George anymore.
Nobody knows who he is.
He goes to all these places, his favorite bar.
The guy doesn't know him.
And then he goes to his brothers.
So he has a brother who's a war hero who saved You know, lots of soldiers in the, what was it, World War?
Probably World War II. World War II. Yeah, yeah, 40-something, World War II. And so anyway, so he saved her.
He got the Medal of Honor.
And he goes, so Clarence takes him to the cemetery.
And he sees his tombstone.
And remember, he has to brush off the, because there's a lot of snow, he has to brush it off.
And notices his brother dies at age four.
Or age five, whatever.
Whatever how old he is.
And so he did not live long enough to go to war and save anybody.
And so then he's realizing...
Because he saved his brother.
He pulled him out of the ice.
Yeah, but if he wasn't there, he didn't do it.
And then I think very fascinatingly they show the impact on the whole community.
On the whole community, that's right.
They show that the community would have become a Moulin Rouge, basically progressive, perverted society with full of nothing more than dancing girls over here and freak show over there.
I don't think they had the foresight to envision the trans, you know, but it's all there, right?
All this twisted, all of this would have happened had he not existed.
You know, I was thinking a little bit about the film that we made This is actually I made right before we met, which was America Imagine a World Without Earth.
Yeah.
Because if you think about it...
It was a little bit like that.
It's the same theme, right?
Yeah.
If America didn't exist, what would the world be like?
That was the governing question.
And in a way, It's a Wonderful Life is that exact question applied to George's life.
Yeah.
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