Andrew Clavin critiques the media’s holiday-season political coverage as repetitive and inflated, mocking Trump’s viral British-accent redub while dissecting his strategic shift from attacking GOP rivals to targeting Clinton’s age and scandals. He contrasts Trump’s working-class supporters—distrustful of elites and immigration—with establishment Republicans like Cruz and Rubio, whose policies fail to address their economic anxieties. Clavin argues conservatives must embrace pro-capitalist narratives like Joy’s entrepreneurial spirit to win over these voters, ending with Tennyson’s call for societal renewal as a timeless rallying cry. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, I don't know about you, but I think it's terrible that politicians and the media are spending the Christmas season fighting and backbiting and sniping at one another.
After all, that's what family is for.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
All right, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and our 50th show.
And we're going to do a special Christmas Eve show.
We're going to talk about some of your favorite Christmas stories and hopefully in a way that tells you why they're important and why they matter to your life and why they're relevant to your life.
I actually think it's going to be really fun.
I hope you'll show up and I hope you'll subscribe so you can watch it because we'll be playing movie clips and things like that.
And also your subscription money goes to help the little elves who run our studio.
Most of them have entered America illegally from the North Pole with the coyotes bringing them down on sleds.
You know, it's a terrible, terrible situation.
We give them money to run our office and they send it home to the workshop and it's very touching.
So subscribe to the podcast right away.
But today, we're going to talk for one more time.
This is the end of the Clavin year.
This is the end, right?
Because after the Christmas Eve show, we're done.
We're going away for between Christmas and New Year's.
So this is it.
So one more time, we're going to talk about political nonsense because, and this really is nonsense.
This is one of the stupidest political stories of the year because the news cycle has basically stopped.
I mean, it's like Christmas.
Everybody's at home.
The guys are sitting around going, yeah, we the people.
I don't know what that means.
You know, they're drinking.
So like, there's absolutely nothing going on.
And yet the headlines remain exactly the same size.
So you think something important is happening.
You pick up your New York Post or your Washington Post and they've got these big headlines and you think it must be important, but it's just because they have nothing else to report.
But this story, even though it's nonsense, spoke so directly into something I've been thinking about all week and sort of talking about in the background all week.
All week long, I've been playing this hilarious YouTube video of Donald Trump redubbed by a guy, what's his name?
Peter Serafinowitz, I think his name is.
Divide And Conquer00:15:12
And he has redubbed this sophisticated British voice, his voice, onto Donald Trump using Donald Trump's words.
And it changes everything.
It changes Trump's entire persona.
So just in case you missed the other shows or you don't remember, I'm just going to play a quick clip of what he did.
It's really brilliant.
I think I'll win the Hispanics.
I employ thousands of Hispanics.
They love me, I love them.
And I think I'm going to do great with women.
One of the reasons I'm going to do great with women is that I'm a leader.
I'm not like Hillary Clinton.
She's got no strength.
She's got no stamina.
Everything she does is like theatrical.
Donald Trump said this.
He actually, it's sort of interesting.
She said, I watched her last night.
Donald Trump.
Looks like she practices in front of a mirror for two hours.
Donald Trump said, I think he's dangerous.
I'm dangerous.
She's the one that caused all this problem.
So it's just brilliant.
And it really does transform him, doesn't it?
I mean, you think like he starts to make sense.
So now Donald Trump has turned his attention to Hillary Clinton.
He must feel that his nomination is secure.
I still feel he's going to lose.
I don't think he's going to win a single primary.
I think that probably Rubio is going to get it.
And people write to me and say, well, you shouldn't support Rubio.
I didn't say I was supporting Rubio.
I said I think Rubio is going to win.
But I could be wrong.
And Trump is very far ahead in the polls.
Still, it looks like his polls are weakening.
But he thinks he's got it.
And now he's stopped going after the other Republicans.
And he's going after Hillary Clinton.
He's been going after her in his own inimitable fashion.
He's a roughneck.
He goes after people personally.
Even when he praises people, he says, you know, he's a good guy.
Like, who cares?
I don't care if my politicians are good guys.
Just want them to do the right stuff.
But he makes everything personal.
So he went after Hillary Clinton.
She took a bathroom break.
She came back late to the debate on Saturday from her bathroom break.
Called that disgusting, you know, and everybody was very upset about that.
But really, what he's trying to get to is that she's old.
That's what he's saying.
When he uses the word stamina and he points out that she disappears from the campaign trail, which she does, she vanishes from the campaign trail, and he keeps saying we need a president with stamina.
He's saying that she's old.
Okay, so yesterday, or was it yesterday or the day before, he made a statement where he said that basically she's a bad candidate.
So here was the way he said it without his being dubbed.
Let me just tell you, I may win, I may not win.
Hillary, that's not a president.
That's not, she's not taking us to the everything that's been involved in Hillary has been lost.
As you take a look, even a race to Obama, she was going to beat Obama.
I don't know who would be worse.
I don't know.
How does it get worse?
But she was going to beat, she was favored to win, and she got schlanged.
She lost.
I mean, she lost.
So she got schlanged.
All right.
Now, schlanged.
Schlang, of course, is we all know the word schlang.
It's a Yiddish-based word meaning penis.
And schlanged means, is used to mean you got beat.
It's just like saying basically you got screwed, because in our monkey mind, sex is still connected to conquest.
And so when somebody gets screwed, we say they were being cheated.
Nobody ever says, well, you got screwed.
That was great.
You know, it felt terrific.
That's only in real life.
In our metaphorical monkey mind, screwed is still a bad thing.
And by the way, if you haven't read it, it's a Yiddish word.
And our Yiddish friend Ben Shapiro wrote an absolutely hilarious brief take about it on the Daily Wire, which you should check out.
It really was funny, just throwing Yiddish words at the entire situation.
Okay, so of course, the media goes nuts.
How could he use these terrible words?
And we know, you know, all the media want for Christmas is Hillary Clinton to be elected president.
And so all they're going to do is whatever he says, it's going to be about her being female and he's sexist.
But all this rolls off Trump, so it's not working.
And the best exchange was between Don Lemon on CNN, who I just think the guy is a clown.
I mean, I think he's a terrible, terrible journalist, if you can call him a journalist.
But he was talking to my buddy Kurt Schlichter.
And I love Kurt, and Kurt is hilariously funny.
He's a lawyer, commentator, very eloquent, really aggressive.
So Lemon is going on and on about what a terrible thing it was that he uses, that Trump uses all this gruff things.
And is this the leader?
Should the leader of the free world be saying somebody got schlonged and talking about bathroom breaks?
And this is Kurt's response.
I think we're discussing the comment and whether it's appropriate for someone who is running as a leader of the free world to make comments about a woman going to the restroom or whether someone was, as he says, schlonged or not.
Mr. Schlichter, what do you think of that, Kurt?
Don, it's going to take a lot more for me to get upset at a woman who enabled a guy who turned the Oval Office into a Prat House and is interned into a human to work.
You know, I just don't care.
I so don't care.
I would need Stephen Hawking to find the theoretical limit of how little I care about Donald Trump's silly jokes.
Absolutely, Kurt.
This hypocritical, you know, pearl-clutching nonsense that Donald Trump's vulgar and mean and out there.
And I can't stand Donald Trump.
The funny thing about this is this is what Kurt is like.
You know, if you go to dinner with him, this is what he's like.
He's very eloquent, really on point.
And what he's saying is absolutely valid.
There is nothing Donald Trump can say that is lower than Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton is a low person.
She lies continually.
She did protect a serial abuser of women.
She protected him from allegations of rape.
Remember, the vast right-wing conspiracy was a construct of Hillary Clinton's mind to explain away why Bill Clinton was being accused of having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, as opposed to the fact that he was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky in our Oval Office.
You know, if any other CEO of any company did that in his office, in the company's office, he would be fired.
Bill Clinton was doing it in our Oval Office.
I don't think Bill Clinton was the worst president we've ever had by a long chalk.
I think as a domestic president, he was pretty good, but he was a dirty guy, and she enabled him.
There's just no question about it.
So, Kurt will not get off this point.
And Lemon starts to defend Hillary Clinton because that's his job.
He works for CNN.
His CNN journalist is there to defend the powerful from the people.
That's why a CNN journalist is there.
So Lemon says, it's not fair.
You know, this is things that Bill did, not that Hillary did.
And you're accusing, you know, her because of guilt by association.
And Kurt responds, and watch what Lemon does.
If you're going to talk about Hillary Clinton, then bring Hillary Clinton's actions into it.
Don't bring her husband's actions into it.
I'd like to bring Hillary Clinton's actions into it.
Absolutely.
Give him the choice between standing with a serial sexual abuser.
All right, Kurt.
Stop, That's not fair.
That's not fair.
That's not fair.
Can we stop that, please?
It is not fair.
It is not fair.
It is a low blow, it is the, yes, I want to end it.
This is the lowest of the low.
and it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton it is just a cheap shot that can you please stop Can we stop?
Can we cut him off?
Thank you.
We're done.
Yeah, the ultimate left-wing, the ultimate left-wing argument.
Shut up, don't interrupt me while I'm being wrong.
It's like Lemon all the way because Kurt is right.
He is right every step of the way.
And what is Lemon really talking about?
If it's true that Hillary Clinton, I mean, Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi.
She's lied about any number of things.
She helped put that poor guy, that poor clown video maker in jail for complete to back up her dishonest story.
She has lied about Bill Clinton.
She protected Bill Clinton.
All she has ever done is lie to protect powerful men.
She's like an abused wife who, when the police show up, says, oh no, I called the police by accident.
My fingers accidentally touched 911, because he really loves me.
That's what she's like.
And she's a feminist icon.
She's a low person.
And so what are they complaining about?
First, let's just take a look at, here is a clip from NPR, okay, from 2011, an NPR broadcaster who is announcing the death of Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice presidential candidate.
Sad news to report from this past weekend.
Geraldine Ferraro died of blood cancer at the age of 75, the three-term congresswoman from Queens, the first woman to run for vice president of the United States in 1984, the first woman on a major party ticket to do so.
And Chris Saliza, that ticket went on to get schlanged at the polls, but that's a historic moment.
Okay.
What's the difference?
It's the difference between Donald Trump and sophisticated Donald Trump.
That is what they're going after.
This is a class difference.
It's the way Trump talks.
If he were talking in a sophisticated British voice, they would not be doing this.
And the reason I came back to this and the reason I even talked about this completely idiotic story, I know it's an idiotic story, but the reason I talked about it is because it indicates something that I've said before and now I feel that the press is catching on to, that Donald Trump is not a political phenomenon.
He's a class phenomenon.
And that's what is driving everybody crazy.
And the divide, you know, we keep talking about the divide in the Republican Party between the establishment and the rebel conservatives.
And I would probably fall into the camp of the rebel conservatives.
My point of view is a very right-wing, conservative point of view, and I think the establishment is simply wrong on any number of issues.
And I get annoyed with them for the things they do.
But this divide is not that divide.
This divide is a class divide.
And yesterday, I think, there was a tremendous article in the Atlantic Monthly.
Let me pause for just a moment to say the Atlantic Monthly seems to have staked out a position in defense of truth.
I don't know how else to put that.
They're slightly left-wing.
If I had to guess, I would say they're kind of lean to the left.
But they have decided that they are going to get the story in the old-fashioned way.
And they have done some incredible journalism this year.
They did that wonderful piece, What ISIS Wants, that completely destroyed the narrative that Obama was selling, just pointed out that ISIS wants, has a religious purpose, has a religious purpose in killing people that is based on the Quran.
And he went and interviewed people, and now they've done another spectacular piece called The Great Republican Revolt.
And it talks about the fact that after Mitt Romney lost the election, the Republican establishment or the Republican powers that be immediately rewrote the scenario.
They said, you know, the only thing he really did wrong was he tried to, he came down too hard on immigration.
He came down too hard on immigration.
Now, a lot of people on the right, like me, are saying, no, immigration is really important.
You hear Ann Coulter saying this, immigration is really important because immigration is going to change the electorate, so it's all Democrat.
And the people coming over commit crimes and they're going to drag us down, Ann says, into a third world hellhole or whatever, whatever she says.
That's not the problem that Donald Trump's followers have with immigrations, who we have different ideas than they do.
Let me just read to you, the piece in the Atlantic goes on and on forever, so I can only read a little piece of it.
But let me just begin.
The angriest and most pessimistic people in America aren't the hipster protesters who flitted in and out of Occupy Wall Street.
They aren't the hashtagists of Black Lives Matter.
They aren't the remnants of the American labor movement or the savvy young dreamers who confront politicians with their American accents and un-American legal status.
The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call middle Americans, middle class and middle-aged, not rich and not poor.
People who are irked when asked to press one for English and who wonder how white male became an accusation rather than a description.
You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives and for those of their children on both counts.
Whites without a college degree express the bleakest view.
You can see the effects of their despair and the new statistics describing horrifying rates of suicide and substance abuse fatality among the same group in middle age.
White middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society, not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party.
They typically vote for the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts.
They are pissed off.
And when Donald Trump came along, they were the people who told the pollsters, that's my guy.
So some of you may be thinking, wait, I've heard that before, and you have.
You heard it here.
I mean, this is what I've been talking about.
That they are not, when I say Donald Trump is not a conservative, I don't support Donald Trump because he's not a conservative.
They don't care.
That's not why they're there.
At first, I thought, you know, I thought, why are Republicans supporting this guy?
He's not a conservative.
But these are, first of all, some of them are Democrats, and they are from the middle of the Republican Party, not the right wing, where I am.
And these guys are angry about immigration, but they're not for the same reasons as us.
They're angry because their schools are being invaded by these people.
Their neighborhoods are being invaded by them.
Their jobs are being taken by them because the Mexicans will work cheaper than they do and aren't always bound by union rules.
And they're coming into their ERs and all this stuff.
Hillary Clinton doesn't know this.
When Hillary Clinton talks about the DREAMers, that smarmy, dishonest phrase, the dreamers, she's talking about the guy who mows the lawn on one of her five mansions.
That's what she's talking about.
She doesn't have to live with this stuff.
And neither does Mitt Romney.
You know, God love him, but neither does he, and they don't get it.
They're not listening to these people.
These people are less educated, middle Americans, and they don't necessarily share our concerns about strict constitutionality, about smaller government.
When Paul Ryan wants to reform Medicare and Social Security, they're terrified.
They're terrified.
That's their safety net.
They're afraid of losing their jobs, and they're not that religious either.
And so when we're sitting around, if you're talking about gay marriage and abortion, I'm not for one second saying that anybody should abandon his principled opposition to abortion, which I share, but it's very hard to talk about abortion to someone who's worried about feeding the kids that he has.
And we are not talking to these people.
Afraid Of Losing Their Jobs00:09:25
Trump hears them, okay?
He speaks for them.
Listen to a little bit more of this article.
Trump Republicans were not ideologically militant.
Just 13% said they were very conservative.
19% described themselves as moderate, nor were they highly religious by Republican standards.
What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and the intensity of their economic nationalism.
63% of Trump supporters wished to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born on the U.S. soil.
That's something Trump has talked about.
A dozen points higher than the norm for all Republicans.
More than other Republicans, Trump supporters distrusted Barack Obama as alien and dangerous.
Only 21% acknowledged that the president was born in the United States.
According to an August survey by the Democratic-oriented polling firm PPP, 66% believed the president was Muslim.
Trump promised to protect these voters, pensions from their own party's austerity.
This is Trump talking about social security.
We've got social security that's going to be destroyed if someone like me doesn't bring money into the country.
All these other people want to cut the hell out of it.
I'm not going to cut it at all.
I'm going to bring money in and we're going to save it.
Listen, if I had my drothers, if I could pick the president, I'd probably pick Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz doesn't hear these people at all.
He doesn't speak to these people at all.
It drives me crazy because I'd like to see him succeed, but no Republican is going to succeed unless he reaches these people.
And Cruz talks about, you know, oh, I want everybody to get an education so they won't have to take a job at Starbucks.
Listen, Starbucks is a good job, man.
You know, I love my Starbucks guy who gives me my coffee.
That's an honest job, and it, you know, comes with benefits.
You know, you can't run down people like that.
And you can't talk about small government when they're afraid the safety net is going to be pulled out from underneath them.
Go back and read Ronald Reagan's speeches, folks.
He did not do this.
He constantly, go back and read, I think his famous speech, A Time for Choosing, he talks about, we will train you, we will get you new jobs.
He talked about the evils of government and the evils of big government, but he said, we will not let you fall off the ladder.
And our guys don't do that.
They're always talking about the entrepreneur.
For every entrepreneur who employs 100 people, if, just say, Ted Cruz says, oh, I'm going to support that entrepreneur so he can employ 100 people, that entrepreneur will vote for Ted Cruz.
The hundred people are going to vote for the Democrat, who they think is going to take care of his big programs.
I'm a conservative.
I want government to be small.
I'm a conservative.
I want the welfare state to be thoroughly reformed.
I think we can explain some of those reforms to people, but before you explain them, you've got to assure them you're not going to let them fall into the abyss, you know?
It's interesting.
Over the weekend, I saw this movie Joy, which opens Christmas Day.
And I've explained that I get these screeners, you know, if you're in any of the Hollywood guilds, you know, I'm in the Writers Guild, you get these free movies because they want you to vote for the film for awards so I can vote for the best screenplay and stuff like this.
So I watched Joy, which is the new David O. Russell film.
And a really interesting picture.
David O. Russell, he's the guy who did The Fighter and he did the famous one, Silverlining's playbook.
He has kind of developed a formula for his hit films.
What he does in the first half hour to 45 minutes is he shows you a family, a dysfunctional family, so honestly.
He shows it so honestly that you want to turn it off.
When I was watching The Fighter, I thought, I can't watch this.
This family is just too awful.
And I know families like that, and I don't need to go to the movies to see it, okay?
And he does it again in Silver Lining's Playbook, where, you know, the guy has mental illness, and he just shows it so honestly that you think it's almost like a documentary of what families are like.
And then at a turning point in the film, he transforms that dysfunctional family into a 1940s uplifting movie.
And he did it in both The Fighter and in Silver Lining's Playbook.
When he did it in The Fighter, my jaw dropped because I was totally not expecting it.
Great film, The Fighter.
I loved Silver Lining's playbook.
This film, from the minute it starts, you see he's going to do it again.
And I was a little bit like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen this already, okay?
And I thought the writing was a little bit overdone.
I can't really sell the film.
I thought it was good, but not great, and a little slow.
It has Jennifer Lawrence in it, who is truly, though, an annoying personality on talk shows.
She is really one of the great actresses of the day.
She is just a spectacular actress.
Both beautiful, but can also play this whole range of people.
So this is the story, the true story of Joy Mangano, who invented the miracle mop and went on to selling this on the QVC channel, which was before one of the shopping networks.
She went on selling this mop until she built a tremendous business of her own and other people's inventions.
And there were inventions that are kind of, I don't know what to call them, low rent.
They're for people who actually mop their own floors.
They're not for people who have someone to mop their floors.
They're for you if you mop their floor.
So she invented kinds of hangers that let you put more clothes in a closet and all this stuff.
And she went on this station, which is the opposite of the elite.
It's QVC, these shopping channels.
I know, you know, elite people.
I am an elite person.
The elite people look at these things and they say, oh my God, this is disgusting.
That's horrible, horrifying.
They're selling mops on television.
And see, I'm an elite, but I'm not an elitist, which is a big difference.
Okay, so this, but this picture, it's the most patriotic pro-capitalist film I have seen in a long time.
And it shows the guy who runs QVC.
What's the actor's name?
I forgot his name.
Well, it'll come.
Bradley Cooper, thank you.
Bradley Cooper, also terrific actor and American sniper.
He plays the head of QVC, and he says to Jennifer Lawrence that in America, anybody can do anything, and his job is to protect the quality of what, you know, that's what Q and QVC stands for.
Quality and value.
I can't remember the other one.
Convenience, maybe.
That's what it stands for.
He's there to protect it.
And they make this woman into a hero, into a heroine, and this guy into her sporter.
And here's the scene where Jennifer Lawrence goes back and she says, you know, you have to let me sell this mop because you told me these things.
You said to me that David Selznick, the son of immigrants, married Jennifer Jones, an all-American girl from Oklahoma.
Because in America, all races and all classes can meet and make whatever opportunities they can.
And that is what you feel when you reach into people's homes with what you sell.
You said that.
And I love the look on Cooper's face with like, oh, I did say that.
Rats, you know.
That's the picture.
It's remarkable.
I mean, I can't think of another modern movie that honors these people.
One of the problems I have with the movie is a little heavy-handedly feminist.
And I think at this moment in time, I think it's white men who really need a little encouragement, white men who need to be elevated.
And at this kind of level, David O'Russell makes you love this person.
Both the character Bradley Cooper plays and the character Jennifer Lawrence plays makes you just completely root for them and understand that this matters.
It matters.
This is the way people realize their dreams, you know?
I mean, not everybody is a rock star, which is what Hollywood usually sells.
I'm going to realize my dreams by becoming a rock star.
That's what a dream looks like in Hollywood.
But David O'Russell realized that dreams are also made out of clay.
They're made out of the dirt.
You drag them out of the dirt and you build something and you sell it and you can't do that anywhere like you can do it here or at least like you could do it here before we got over-regulated and over-governmentized.
If we Republicans and conservatives could bring that message to the people who are following Trump, they would listen.
Trump has a trick that he uses.
The fact that he hasn't got a British accent is what works for him.
The fact that he's not sophisticated Trump is what works for him.
The fact that he curses, the fact that he says nasty things, that's the way people talk when they don't have a college education and he just talks that way to them.
I'm not suggesting that anybody pretend, any of the other candidates pretend to do that.
They don't have to.
But at least talk to the people.
Tell them we're not going to let them go.
Tell them why small government can help them, why we might need reform so that these programs are still there for their kids.
But also tell them we're not going to let them fall off the ladder.
The one who comes closest, Rubio.
I mean, I think he has it because he has a good story, because he came from that level.
But he's not talking about this stuff.
And the other thing about Rubio and immigration, just to make this clear, is he's telling the truth.
Trump is telling you these people are going to be deported.
They're not going to be deported.
And I'm a rule of law guy.
Ring Out Grief and Feud00:05:15
I could totally understand.
I'd sit back if they were deported.
I'm not going to cry tears over illegals who have to go back because there are plenty of legal people who want to come over who are being schlanged by these people.
Okay?
But I'm just telling you it's not going to happen.
So Rubio is telling the truth and Trump isn't, and I don't like being lied to.
So I think Rubio is doing an okay job, but I think he has to do better.
I think we conservatives have to understand that this is not an establishment conservative divide.
It's a class divide.
It's an economic divide.
And we need to start talking to these people like Reagan did, or we're going to lose them and we're going to lose everything with them.
All right.
That's the last show before Christmas.
Come back tomorrow and we will talk about Christmas and Christmas Eve and Christmas stories.
Before we do, Christmas stuff I like, here is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
And it's called Immemorium AAH, and AHH.
A-H-H was Arthur Hallam, who was Tennyson's college buddy and fell in love with Tennyson's sister.
Tennyson was one of the great, greatest of great Victorian poets, probably the greatest Victorian writer besides Dickens.
And he's kind of been ignored a little bit because of his Victorian values.
He is just a terrific poet.
I mean, really a wonderful, wonderful poet.
And he befriended this guy, Arthur Hallam.
They became very close.
And Hallam was engaged to Tennyson's sister, and Hallam got sick at like 22 of a flu and just died just really suddenly.
And Tennyson was plunged into grief.
And the longest poem, I think it's his longest poem, certainly among his greatest, is his poem Immemorium, which just, it's like a book-length poem.
And it just traces his grief and coming out of his grief, and just traces his mental journey through this sorrow.
And you know the poem because it includes the line, everybody knows one line from this poem, which is, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
It also has the line, nature red in tooth and claw, which was used to describe Darwin, you know, Darwin's nature as opposed to God's nature.
The poem takes place over several years, and each year is marked by a section about Christmas.
And this is the most famous section about Christmas, and Christmas being the end of the year.
As he was writing this, apparently he heard bells, and it's the big debate in literature whether the bells were being blown by the wind or whether they were being rung, in fact.
And he wrote this famous passage in Immemorium called Ring Out Wild Bells.
And the reason I want to read it, I'll play, it's been set to music a number of times, and I'll play a version of it being sung as we leave.
But I wanted you to listen to it because the things that he is talking about are all the things that are happening today.
So on the one hand, it's a little discouraging that nothing changes.
On the other hand, it's a little encouraging that nothing really is any worse than it was.
Okay, so this is a poem written in 1849.
And if you listen closely, you'll hear that things have not changed very much at all.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light.
The year is dying in the night.
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, ring happy bells across the snow.
The year is going.
Let him go.
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind for those that hear we see no more.
Ring out the feud of rich and poor.
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause and ancient forms of party strife.
Ring in the nobler modes of life with sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin, the faithless coldness of the times.
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood, the civic slander and the spite.
Ring in the love of truth and right.
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease.
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold.
Ring out the thousand wars of old.
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free, the larger heart, the kindlier hand.