Andrew Clavin’s Government Becomes Reality TV skewers modern politics as a spectacle, mocking absurd VP transition candidates like Mick Mulvaney (fake Chinese accent) and Jason Statham’s hitman while critiquing media’s shift from policy to performative outrage. He dissects Pelosi’s "manhood" jab as empty theater and leftist comedy as aggressive, then pivots to a listener’s abusive marriage—arguing Christian values demand divorce for violence, adultery, or addiction—before defending conservative artists to reject left-wing cultural monopolies. The episode closes by framing conservative spaces as more inclusive than the intolerant left, urging marginalized groups to join despite ideological clashes. [Automatically generated summary]
John Kelly will be leaving his post as White House Chief of Staff come the end of the year.
The Combat Veteran Marine will reportedly step down to undergo treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and will announce his departure as soon as he can stop stuttering uncontrollably.
Vice Presidential aide Nick Ayers was offered the job of replacing Kelly.
Ayers said he was honored by the offer, but unfortunately couldn't accept it because he'll be busy washing his hair for the next two years.
Other possible replacements include Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who could not be dragged out from under his living room sofa for comment, but instead shouted at reporters from under the sofa in a fake Chinese accent, saying, quote, Mick Mulvaney, he know here.
He go far, far away.
I know nowhere to find him.
No one know he far away, unquote.
GOP operative Wayne Berman was also asked if he would be willing to take the job.
Berman responded, quote, it would be a great honor to step in and bring a measure of order and discipline to the Trump White House.
No, I'm kidding.
I'd rather be impaled on a flaming pole and left to die in the hot sun, unquote.
Another candidate for the post is David Bossi.
As head of Citizens United, Bossi was responsible for the anti-Hillary Clinton documentary that drove Hillary so crazy, she swore to erase every word of the First Amendment one by one before she ever allowed such a film to be made again.
Bossi could not be reached for comment and was last seen in Chappaqua, New York, pounding on Hillary's front door, begging to be let in because it was the last place anyone would think to look for him.
Other names on the chief of staff shortlist include the gigantic white gorilla from that Dwayne Johnson movie and the hitman played by Jason Statham in Mechanic Resurrection.
Both declined the job, saying they wouldn't be able to stand the stress.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boom.
Also singing, hunky-dunky-dee-dee Ship-shaped, ipsy-topsy The world is a bitty-zing It's a wonderful day, hooray, hooray It makes me want to sing Oh, hooray, hooray Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it is mailbag day.
So all your problems, you're like 25 minutes away from your problems being utterly solved.
And all my answers, you know, you know, you can ask anything you want, and all my answers will be correct.
I'm going to try and get to the mailbox.
Oh, my God.
Another trucker just ran off the road.
That's on you, Austin.
Like that pile up, that pile up on the 101 that just took place.
Thank you to the Silicon Valley Liberty Forum.
They had me out there yesterday up near San Francisco.
Great reception.
I gave a speech.
They were so nice.
It was the second time, second Christmas in a row, they had me there.
And I got to tell you, I got back really late.
I'm just a little bit exhausted.
But we will try and get, I want to get to the mailbag early today if I can.
A lot of really morally complex questions, and I want to actually give them some time.
Also, we have the lefty's dictionary.
We have the new, it finally, we got a little held up.
Guys got so busy they weren't able to put out the new one, but we've got Ella's for Lady Parts, which is one of my favorites.
And of course, we have to talk about stamps.com because Christmas is a coming, as the old song says, and that means there's a lot of stuff you need the post office for, but you don't want to go to the post office.
The post office has all those great services, but you want to get them right out of your computer.
You know, you can send email, do a lot with email, but you can't send packages.
It's very hard to stuff those packages into the computer.
You've got to get some stamps.
Stamps.com helps you save time in the holiday season.
It brings all the services of U.S. post office right to your desktop.
You can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail using your own computer and printer.
Then the mail carrier picks it up.
No trips to the post office required.
It couldn't be easier.
It really is a joy.
It's a joy to have it because I love the post office.
I love what they do.
But like everybody else, I don't have time to go anywhere, so I just do it out of my computer.
And right now, you too can enjoy the stamps.com service with a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale without long-term commitment.
Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in Clavin, that's stamps.com, enter Clavin, and you can send off your first letter saying, How do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
Television's Emotional Appeal00:06:38
Somebody screamed that to me as I was giving my speech.
How do you spell your name?
We had him escorted out, and then he hasn't been seen since.
I don't know.
So we're going to talk a little bit about that dust up with Trump and Nancy and Chuck, as we call them, Chuck and Nancy.
Sounds like an old rock and roll song, Chuck and Nancy, they loved each other.
But they had that dust up over the wall.
But first, before we talk about that, I want to talk in a more general sense about what the media has done to politics in this country.
You know, as I told you recently, I was rereading the Federalist Papers.
And one of the things that I was really struck by is the founders, these are the papers, obviously, that were written to sell the Constitution to the public.
And the founders just foresaw everything because they knew so much about human nature.
They knew where the corruption would come in.
They knew where the arguments would be.
They were just amazing.
But one thing they did not foresee is they did not foresee the invention of television.
I was thinking this as I was watching it.
Television, and now, of course, social media and media and the internet and all those things because they assumed that our loyalties would remain close to our localities, close to the state.
They didn't count on the effect on the imagination that television was going to have in bringing us all together and making the president the center of our national idea instead of our state, instead of the governor, instead of worried what's happening in our schools and in our towns and in our states and defending our state's right to make decisions.
We're now so focused.
I mean, we wake up and go to sleep when we're thinking about politics, thinking about the president of the United States.
And that's only one thing that happened.
You know, one of the great turning points in American politics was when in 1960, Richard Nixon debated John F. Kennedy, and it was a turning point toward the left.
It was a turning point away from reason and toward emotion.
I just want to play just a little part of this.
And there is such a huge difference.
Here's what you have to know.
The people who listened to this debate on the radio were absolutely certain that Richard Nixon had won the debate.
The people who watched on TV were absolutely certain that Kennedy won the debate.
So if you're watching, watch.
If you're listening, listen, and you'll see exactly why.
In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half slave or half free.
In the election of 1960 and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half slave.
Now, this is not standing still.
But good as this record is, may I emphasize, it isn't enough.
A record is never something to stand on.
It's something to build on.
And in building on this record, I believe that we have the secret for progress.
We know the way to progress.
And I think, first of all, our own record proves that we know the way.
Senator Kennedy has suggested that he believes he knows the way.
I respect the sincerity with which he makes that suggestion.
But on the other hand, when we look at the various programs that he offers, they do not seem to be new.
They seem to be simply retreads of the programs of the Truman administration, which preceded it.
So if you close your eyes and you eliminate the fact that Kennedy's voice is now iconic, people have imitated it so much that it sort of has a kind of authority it wouldn't otherwise have, they both sound perfectly rational, perfectly political, perfectly stately and statesmanlike.
But when you're watching it, you see that one of them is a very handsome guy.
John JFK was a handsome, younger guy.
He had a wonderful presence.
He had a wonderful way of standing.
Nixon has sweat under his lip.
He's a dark figure with the dark eyebrows and all this.
And so if you're judging by images, it's clear that Kennedy wins.
If you're just listening to their voices, they're two people who are on equal footing and all you would be measuring them by was their ideas.
A society that lives by images is a stupid society, a shallow society.
In the Middle Ages, the world was divided between people who were literate, the elites, and most of the people who were illiterate.
And that's why there were such beautiful pictures and so many pictures in churches.
It was the gospel of the illiterate.
It was things that people could look at to get the stories.
People who live by images live a shallow and emotional life.
People who live by words live a life that could be, at least, governed by thought and reason.
So obviously we know that I think this is a cliché, but I think it's also true that leftism is an emotional appeal.
It's an appeal to the emotions.
Whereas the right-wingers sometimes are too reasonable and too logic-based, but they are more reasonable and logic-based.
So they're going to be more involved with words.
The minute things became televised, the left took a distinct advantage.
The minute things became about images.
But television and the media has also done something else.
It's also emphasized extreme ideas.
Why?
Because it is much more fun to turn on TV and hear one guy yelling that MS-13 is invading your country to rape your children and the other guy yelling racist, racist, racist, than it is to hear two people saying, well, look, obviously we've got to restore the borders.
We've got to secure the borders.
How do we go about doing that?
What's your policy and why?
And here's mine, okay?
It is simply better clickbait to have people talking about extremes.
When you have somebody come on and say, men and women are the same, there's no difference between men and women, and you think there is, you're sexist.
That makes you outraged.
You're going to watch something that makes you outraged.
You're not going to watch if people start to talk about in rational terms the scientific information which increasingly shows that there are deep and abiding differences between men and women.
And here is what they are.
But of course, even though there are deep abiding differences between two classes of people, they may not affect you as an individual.
All that stuff is nuanced and shaded, and it just doesn't work on television.
Television imagery is stupid.
It is shallow.
It's affecting and it is moving, but it gets to your heart very easily.
Images go right to your heart.
Words have to work their way there through your mind.
And that is the change that the media has wrought.
We are living in a society where we are being taught to be illiterate and to judge things on the way they look.
Words Over Images00:15:04
But one thing that you can't judge on the way it looks is Robinhood, because Robinhood is actually good stuff.
It's an investing app.
Lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos, all commission-free.
Other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, but Robinhood doesn't charge commission fees.
Trade stocks, and you can keep all of your profits.
But the best thing, the thing I really like about Robinhood is that it teaches you how to do this.
I'm not very good at this stuff.
I've never been able to read the papers.
But when you use Robinhood, they have easy to understand charts and market data.
You can place a trade in just four taps on your smartphone.
And Robinhood web platform also lets you view stock collections like the 100 most popular or ones with female CEOs, so you know to stay away from those.
Just joking, just joking.
But Robinhood will teach you how to invest.
Robinhood is giving listeners a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build your portfolio.
You can sign up at clavin.robinhood.com.
That's clavin.robinhood.com.
And I know what you're thinking.
How do you spell Robinhood?
You can spell Robinhood, but how do you spell Clavin?
How do you spell it?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N, no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look easy.
That's it.
Let's take a look.
Let's take a look.
Trump has Pelosi and Schumer, Chuck and Nancy, in his office to talk about the wall.
And it starts off with Trump just talking about how there's already been progress on the wall.
And this is pretty funny because it drove the left insane.
They started doing their fact-checking thing.
As we all know, fact-checking is lefties for lying.
So they basically said, well, let's hear what Donald Trump said.
Let's play the first cut.
A lot of the wall is built.
It's been very effective.
I asked for a couple of notes on that.
If you look at San Diego, illegal traffic dropped 92% once the wall was up.
El Paso, illegal traffic dropped 72%, then ultimately 95% once the wall was up.
In Tucson, Arizona, illegal traffic dropped 92%.
Yuma, it dropped illegal traffic 95 to 96%.
I mean, and when I say dropped, the only reason we even have any percentage where people got through is because they walk and go around areas that aren't built.
It dropped virtually 100% in the areas where the wall is.
So, I mean, it's very effective.
So that's really convincing.
And of course, he mentions Israel, where they built a wall and it really did cut down on terrorist activity.
So, of course, the press, the left, went out and said, oh, fact-check, there's no wall.
He's never built anything.
It's a half-truth.
What is true is that there's always been funding for restoring fences and restoring the fencing that's already been there.
And so he is counting restored fences as part of the wall.
Some of the restore fences actually have.
This was put up as part of Donald Trump's wall on them, signs on them.
So he's actually making a good point.
Trump and Pelosi, realizing that they look bad.
I mean, here's the thing about this: most people want the border to be secure.
It is only the government that can't get its act in order, right?
I think a lot of people, you know, again, one of the things that the media does to us is it convinces us that absolutism is a political strategy.
It's not.
In politics, you always have to compromise.
There are going to be compromises in any kind of border package.
And so the far right or even the right is going to be angry.
The left is going to be angry.
People are going to pound their fists on their palm and say, oh, they've sold us out.
That's how politics works.
There's got to be compromise.
So Trump actually sounded a bipartisan note talking about the criminal reform bill that's been going forward in a bipartisan way.
But it quickly devolves into a fight, a positioning fight.
And Pelosi is no slouch at this.
She knows what she's doing, even though she's kind of a goofball at this point.
She's gotten kind of old and flippy, but she still knows what she's doing.
Listen to what she does here in Cut II.
I think American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that you should not have a Trump shutdown.
You have the material.
Did you see Trump?
You have the White House.
You have the Senate.
You have the House of Representatives.
You have the vote.
You should pass the Springfield.
No, we don't have to vote, thanks, because in the Senate we need 60 votes.
You could bring it up right now.
Yeah, but I can't, excuse me.
But I can't get it passed in the House if it's not going to pass in the Senate.
I don't want to waste time.
Well, the fact is you can get it started that way.
The House we could get past very easily.
And we do.
But the problem is the Senate, because we need 10 Democrats to vote.
And that's the point.
There are no votes in the House, a majority of votes for a wall, no matter where you stand.
Exactly right.
You don't have to do it.
If I needed the votes for the wall in the House, I would have them in one session.
It would be done.
It doesn't help because we need 10 Democrats in the Senate.
Put it on a negotiation.
Okay, let me ask you this, and we're doing this in a very friendly manner.
It doesn't help for me to take a vote in the House where I will win easily with the Republicans.
It doesn't help to take that vote because I'm not going to get the vote of the Senate.
I need 10 senators.
That's the problem.
Are you not entertained?
I think they should flip that after all this debate.
So, you know, you had to admire, first of all, the guy who represented America, if you're watching the images, of course, is Mensch, Mike Pence, the vice president, who looks like, please get me out of here.
I'm dying.
He just has this look on his face, like, I'm now a dead person.
So please, God, take me away.
I thought the rapture was going to hit Pence because he was just the hollow-eyed boredom on his face.
But it actually is entertaining to watch them screaming at each other.
What are they screaming at each other?
Well, first, Pelosi, you know, I love this, the way Pelosi said it.
He's talking about shutting down the government if he doesn't get funding for the wall.
And Pelosi said, well, we don't want a Trump shutdown.
And so Trump immediately gets that.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi knows just what she's doing.
She's positioning Trump to be the guy who shuts down the government.
And Trump says, you know, oh, did you see a Trump shutdown?
He heard it right away.
They're both playing to the camera.
Are either of them looking to get it to enhance border security?
I mean, look, I think Trump would enhance border security, but they've had bills being debated in the House for a long time that would have given them a lot more money.
Now they're talking about $5 billion for the wall.
If there's a shutdown, they're going to compromise even on that.
It's not enough.
And before, there was more money in another package, but they can't settle.
They can't compromise.
They can't do anything.
And there's not a lot of motivation for them to do it because it's a good issue for them both.
They can both play to their base for this.
So what you are watching is pure TV.
You are not watching people trying to solve this.
It was entertaining.
The part with Schumer was even hilarious because Schumer is not very good at this.
I mean, Pelosi is a real snake, so she's pretty good at it, but Schumer's not so much.
Let's take a look at him.
The Washington Post today gave you a whole lot of Pinocchios because they say you constantly misstate how much of the wall is built and how much is there.
But that's not the point here.
We have a disagreement about the wall.
Whether it's effective or that.
Not on border security, but on the wall.
We do not want to shut down the government.
You have called 20 times to shut down the government.
You say, I want to shut down the government.
We don't.
We want to come to an agreement.
If we can't come to an agreement, we have solutions that will pass the House and Senate right now and will not shut down the government.
And that's what we're urging you to do.
Not threaten to shut down the government because you can't get your way.
Let me say something, Mr. President.
You just say, my way, or we'll shut down the government.
We have a proposal that Democrats and Republicans will support to do a CR that will not shut down the government.
We urge you to take it.
And if it's not good border security, I will take it.
It is very good border security.
If it's not good border security, I won't take it.
You're a mean, mad white man.
So Schumer is genuinely ticked off because Trump is saying it's the Senate that's holding things up.
But finally, finally, they just want to bail.
I mean, at this point, they just want to bail.
Let's play the last cut because that's where it all devolves into fun.
When you look at these numbers of the effectiveness of our border security, and when you look at the job that we're doing, you just said it is effective.
Can I tell you something?
Yeah, you just said.
Without a wall, these are only areas where you have the wall.
We want to do it.
Where you have walls, Chuck, it's effective.
Where you don't have walls, it is not effective.
Let's call a halt to this.
We've come in here as the first branch of government.
Article 1, the legislative branch.
We're coming in in good faith to negotiate with you about how we can keep the government open.
We're going to keep it open if we have border security.
If we don't have border security, Chuck, we're not going to keep it open.
Let me tell you, we are going to have border security.
And it's the same border.
You're bragging about what has been done.
We want to do the same thing we did last year, this year.
That's our proposal.
If it's good then, it's good now, and it won't shut down the government.
Chuck, we build up.
But that's bigger.
Let's debate in private.
He's bailing out.
He is bailing out.
Oh, you're not entertained.
He is bailing out because he knows that this was all about positioning for a shutdown, a possible shutdown of the government.
What kind of argument is our offer is to do what we did before?
Nobody's happy with what's happening now.
We've got a car of caravans invading the country, running over the border, children getting separated when people get arrested.
That's what Chuck Schumer is offering.
So who won?
You know, you walk out of this thing, and of course, the left, you know, dumb and dumber over in CNN, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo are saying, oh, Nancy Pelosi, she's so wonderful.
And, you know, that's what you expect from the left.
And on the right, everybody's saying, oh, Trump crushed them.
I think the giveaway was this.
I heard that Trump was angry.
I don't know how good the sources are on that.
But Pelosi said, according to the Daily News, Pelosi said of Trump, it's like a manhood thing for him, as if manhood could ever be associated with him.
I was trying to be the mom.
I can't explain it to you.
It was so wild.
It goes to show you you get into a tinkle contest with a skunk.
You get tinkle all over you.
That to me is a loser statement.
That to me, when you go for somebody's manhood, I mean, what if Trump had come out and said, oh, that screaming, hysterical woman, Pelosi, you know, it's a hysterical woman thing.
Not that I want to associate Pelosi with being a woman.
You know, what if he had said that?
You know, I mean, obviously, you would have thought Trump was being disgusting.
Pelosi was being disgusting.
That's a sign that she lost the argument.
The problem is, the problem is, though, it was all TV.
It was all TV.
Did that bring us any closer to getting this kind of security we need?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Trump, listen, Trump is good at this.
He's better at this than they are.
But what is it?
What is he better at?
Is he better at getting, moving Congress toward getting this deal, getting the kinds of things he wants?
And I don't know.
He's been telling us this for a long time that he's going to get a wall.
He promised the wall.
I don't see it happening.
It's going to be really interesting to see what happens here.
If the government becomes pure TV, nobody gets anything.
Hey, I want to get to the mailbag, but I've got to play the latest lefty's dictionary.
This is L is for lady parts.
L is for lady parts.
Lady parts are those parts of a woman that make her a lady.
Her grace, courtesy, tenderness, and compassion.
No, I'm joking.
It's her vagina.
In lefties, lady parts means vagina because left-wing feminists have courageously risen up as one to fight back against the male notion that a woman is nothing but her body by defining a woman as nothing but her body.
These feminists stage yearly readings of the play The Vagina Monologues.
They wear pink hats meant to represent their vaginas, and they stage protests where they demand that the government stay out of their vaginas, though there's no sign that the government or anyone else wants to go anywhere near them.
All this blunt talk about lady parts is designed to show arrogant, belligerent male louts who are obsessed with their own sexual equipment that women can be just as arrogant, belligerent, and loudish and sexually obsessed as they are.
So hooray.
This triumph of feminism over male supremacy in the field of loudishness can now be celebrated along with other feminist triumphs.
For instance, it is feminists who defy the stereotype of women as over-emotional by shrieking and carrying on about every little thing.
Likewise, it's feminists who defy the stereotype of women being weak by constantly claiming they're traumatized by male behavior.
And it's feminists who overturn the stereotype of women as dependent by demanding that the government pay for and take care of everything from their birth control to their children.
Finally, by endlessly nattering on about their lady parts, feminists have at last succeeded in striking a blow against male desire by rendering lady parts boring.
Although this only applies to feminist lady parts, lady parts that are attached to actual ladies remain deeply intriguing.
All of this illustrates an important general principle of understanding lefties.
Leftists fight back against those they deem oppressors by adopting the values of those oppressors.
If sexist men are nasty, feminists strike back by saying women should be nasty too.
If sexist men think women are irrational, feminists defend irrationality as a female trait.
If sexist men treat women like meat, leftists tell women to treat themselves like meat.
This technique works great if you want to be a nasty, irrational piece of meat.
Or you could redefine lady parts as the grace, courtesy, tenderness, and compassion that turn women into ladies.
But then you'd no longer be speaking lefties.
L is for lady parts.
I'm Andrew Clavin with the Lefties Dictionary.
That's one of my favorites.
You know, don't forget that the book of the Lefties Dictionary is available on Amazon.
You can buy it.
It makes a great Christmas present.
It has all the text of the videos and a lot more.
It has bonus, a lot of bonus content in there as well, and it's beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Shapiro.
Really great stuff.
Take a look on Amazon for the lefties dictionary.
Part Machine, Draw the Line00:16:21
I just want to compare this, by the way, to what's happening to comedy on the left.
There was a story, a wonderful story, that a comedian in England refused to perform at a charity event after he was sent a contract listing topics about which he could not joke.
This guy named Constantin Kaisen, the Jewish comedian of the year.
He was sent a form that said, by signing this contract, you are agreeing to our no tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, or anti-religion, or anti-atheism.
And the student leaders, this was at the London University, student leaders said the ban was necessary to preserve the event as a safe space and a place for joy, love, and acceptance.
I can just imagine the joy and hilarity that's going to come from leftist comedy.
In fact, before I break for the mailbag, I just have to play Hannah Gatsby.
Hannah Gatsby is the woman who declared that her comedy was no longer going to be funny, and she proved it.
This is a comedian at the Hollywood Reporters' annual Women in Entertainment event.
This is Hannah Gatsby's comedy routine.
My issue is that when good men talk about bad men, they always ignore the line in the sand.
The line in the sand that is inevitably drawn whenever a good man talks about bad men.
I am a good man.
Here is the line.
There are all the bad men.
The Jimmies and the good men won't talk about this line, but we really need to talk about this line.
Let's call it Kevin and let's never call it that again.
We need to talk about how men will draw a different line for every different occasion.
They have a line for the locker room, a line for when their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters are watching, another line for when they're drunk and fratting, another line for non-disclosure, a line for friends and a line for foes.
You know why we need to talk about this line between good men and bad men?
Because it's only good men who get to draw that line.
And guess what?
All men believe they are good.
Can't you save us, Brittany Spears?
Can we be saved?
That is a perfect description, a perfect depiction of comedy on the left.
An angry, nasty, weirdly gendered human spouting off hate.
And it's like, ha ha ha, good job.
Here's an Emmy, and everybody loves you, but nobody wants to see that ever, ever again.
That's what leftism does to you.
That's what it turns you into.
Hold on to your lady parts.
Here we go into the mailbag.
We got to say goodbye to Facebook.
Another car's gone into the wall.
We have to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come to the Daily Wire.
Come to dailywire.com.
There is no The.
It's DailyWire.com.
Subscribe.
You can watch the whole show right there.
You can ask questions in the mailbag.
You can get Another Kingdom.
The last episode is up for subscribers.
You got to wait till Friday if you're not a subscriber to find what happens to Austin Lively in Another Kingdom, the conclusion of that show.
You get so much for just a lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the year.
And for 100 bucks, you get this leftist tears tumbler, which is actually made of pure gold.
That's why it costs 100 bucks.
No, that's not true.
I'm lying.
But the point is, give us your money.
That's the point.
All right, the mailbag coming right up.
All right, mailbag.
Which is like mass murder, Austin.
We're just like picking people off the freeway.
Well, this one starts with a name, but I'm going to leave the name out of this one just for safety's sake.
There's a lady says, Dear Lord Claven, love your show.
I listen every day and especially enjoy laughing my bum off at your opening monologues.
Here's the situation.
My husband and I are both Christians and have been married for nearly 18 years.
He is charming, extremely bright, funny, loving, and abusive.
He attacked me several times when we were dating and first married, but then not again for about 15 years until a recent attack that left my face, neck, and arm bruised.
The verbal and emotional abuse has been throughout the marriage, but lessened in frequency and intensity again until this last year.
I have made it very clear that I think he has an abusive pattern he needs to address, and I will leave if he physically attacks me.
My husband feels terrible at anything he's done and has hurt me.
He promises he will do whatever he has to to be a better man for me.
I believe he's sincere in this, although he's been to a few sessions of therapy and he has told me he just doesn't see the need for it.
He understands what he needs to change and thinks he has a handle on it.
That being said, he continues to defend himself when I call attention to controlling, manipulative, or coercive behaviors.
As a matter of fact, he doesn't just defend himself.
He blames me, telling me that I am narrowing the field of acceptable behaviors from him.
He has to walk on eggshells.
I am no longer as accepting and available as I used to be.
And on and on it goes.
I've been praying incessantly, going to therapy and struggling immensely with what I need to do.
I feel hurt and betrayed by my husband.
I feel so sad and disappointed with myself for allowing the abuse to go on as long as it has.
I'm wondering if it's time to leave, but feel incredibly guilty as a Christian and that my husband is going to be so hurt if I do.
Any words of wisdom are much appreciated.
So I read a lot of this letter.
I sometimes just read a bit, but I wanted to read a lot of it because I want to address it at length.
I think it's an important letter, and I get a lot like it.
First, let me address the Christian part of this.
Your God, who is king of the universe, did not create you, his daughter, to be beaten.
That is not why he made you.
That is not his purpose for you.
He made you to be loved and to love and to create and to make homes and to make a world for yourself and for others.
He did not make you to be a punching bag.
That is not a Christian marriage.
The whole point of Christian marriage is it means a man and a woman become one flesh.
Your husband, when he hits you and even when he abuses you, is not treating you as his own flesh.
He is not treating you as if you're in a marriage, a Christian marriage.
And while I want to be clear that I am deeply, deeply opposed to divorce, especially where children are involved, I do believe that that opposition is trumped by what they call the three A's: abuse, adultery, and addiction.
And addiction takes people's souls away and ends the marriage in that way.
Adultery, of course, if you're obviously if you make a slip, that's something each couple has to deal with on their own.
But if adultery is a constant factor in a marriage, it's not a real marriage anyway.
And the same thing is true here.
If you're being beaten, you are not in a marriage.
Now, this is the thing.
And I have to try and say this as clearly as I can.
There are two aspects to this.
If you want to talk about the moral aspect, your husband is to blame.
He is at fault.
He is hitting somebody who's smaller than him.
He may think or feel that he can't control himself, but that's nonsense.
He's not hitting a cop.
He's not hitting his boss at work.
He's hitting you because he can.
And so he can control himself.
He does control himself when he's talking to a 6'4 cop.
He just doesn't control himself when he's talking to a 5'1 woman.
So he is completely in the wrong in terms of the morality of it.
But let's think past the morality for just a minute and just think about a practical, realistic description.
Abuse in a marriage is like an engine.
It's like a machine.
And the abused person is part of that machine.
That doesn't mean you're to blame.
I'm not blaming the victim.
But it's like a satanic engine.
Like the devil loves to build these machines where even the victim becomes part of that machine.
You see this in racism.
I've talked about this before.
White people are cruel and exclusionary to blacks.
Blacks get so angry that they begin talking about whites in racist terms.
You hear it on TV.
Oh, here's a white woman who's voted this way.
White men, the problem is white men.
The devil doesn't care.
The devil doesn't care who the racists are.
He doesn't care.
He's happy.
He's happy as long as we're hating each other on racial bounds.
The devil is drinking champagne, right?
It's an engine.
It's a machine.
And once you're caught up in the machine, once you accept the logic of the machine, you become part of the machine.
In the machine of marital abuse, it goes in this cycle.
Just like machines have gears, it goes in this cycle.
He's lovely, he's charming, he loses his temper, he hurts you, that he's so nice because he so feels so bad, and it'll never happen again.
And oh my God, he's crying, he feels so bad for him.
And then this cycle just starts up again.
And you become part of that machine by expecting it to change, by thinking this time he's going to be different.
And worst of all, and this is truly satanic, you start to feel that you deserve it, that you have some control over it.
Like, what am I doing?
That if I could just do this better, he wouldn't lose his temper.
If I could just be nicer to him, he wouldn't hurt me.
And that's all part of the machine.
The machine is taking over the machine.
The marriage is becoming the machine.
I think that you have got to get out.
I mean, I think if you are in a marriage where a guy has repeatedly hit you, you know, and not just some kind of accidental event, where he is completely, constantly wearing you down and tearing you down, that is not a marriage, and you have to go.
You can't, I don't know if you have, you don't mention whether you have children.
You cannot allow children to experience their mom getting beaten up and even to have them experience their mom being constantly abused and demeaned is not a good thing for the children.
It's a terrible, terrible thing for the children.
He is not capable.
You know, it is possible that he could go into a program and beat this thing.
But as long as he thinks, oh, I know what is needed, like the alcoholic who thinks, oh, I can handle this myself, as long as he thinks I know what is needed, he can't.
He can't.
And it's just part of the machine.
And what I worry about is that you will become part of that machine until it becomes genuinely dangerous.
I mean, you know, you can get killed.
You can get really badly hurt.
I think you've got to break this.
I think you've got to go.
I think you've got to go.
That's my personal opinion.
I think you've got to go because I don't think he's in any way breaking this machine and you have become part of the system.
I'm not blaming you.
You're not culpable.
It's not your fault.
But you have become part of this engine that is bigger than the both of you.
And you need to basically dislodge yourself.
You shouldn't be a piece of that equipment.
Sorry to say that.
I'm terribly, terribly sorry it's happening.
I think you can tell what my feelings are about this in my voice, but I think I can't reach out and solve the problem.
I wish I could.
From Nino, hey Andrew, I hope you're doing well.
As an aspiring writer, I found new hope to pursue writing as a conservative thanks to you suggesting that conservatives should write books, make movies.
My question is, do you mean conservative artists should address conservative issues in their work, be it directly or through symbolism?
Or should we write whatever, but then use our voices in public to promote conservative ideas?
Somebody asked me this in Silicon Valley yesterday, so I have to answer this because I said I'm not going to answer you now because there's a question in the mailbag about it.
As a writer, you should write what your muse tells you to write with no regard to politics or anything else.
That's important.
It really is.
You don't have to write political stuff.
I mean, a lot of the stuff I write, a lot of the stories I tell, aren't necessarily political at all.
And you're not even obligated to speak up as a conservative.
I mean, I think you can trust that whatever your values are, whatever your worldview is, it will shape the stories that you tell.
However, however, having said that, that's what I think.
I don't think it's necessary to speak up.
I really don't.
I think it's necessary that conservatives write the stories that come to them, that their muse sends to them.
You are inspired to write certain kinds of stories, write those stories.
They may be fantasy, mystery, love stories.
They may be any kind of stories.
Write that story and don't let politics get in the way.
What I do think is this, however.
I think that the culture is so filled with left-wing assumptions that you might want to question those assumptions from time to time.
You might want to ask yourself, is there a story you're not telling because you don't want to violate those assumptions?
Are you accepting assumptions about men and women, assumptions about good and bad that come from the culture, that come from the left?
Breaking out of that thought bubble, out of that river of thought that carries us all the way is very, very difficult.
And it's worth taking some time and energy outside of your writing life to do that.
I mean, I frequently talk about stories that never get told.
The story of the businessman who brings jobs to a community fighting off the evil environmentalists.
You know, they told that story.
I'll tell you where they told that story, in Ghostbusters, the original Ghostbusters.
But are you willing to tell that story now?
The story of the woman who finds that her life has been wasted working and what she wants is the fulfillment of a family and to build a home for people.
Would you tell that story?
The story of a government guy who comes and destroys your life with regulations.
All I'm saying, all I'm saying is you should only tell the stories that your muse sends to you, but are there stories, are there stories that your muse would send to you if you freed yourself from leftist assumptions.
So that's the only thing I would add to that.
I do not think that art is a political endeavor.
I think that art is a spiritual, basically.
I think that's a better description of it, spiritual endeavor.
Follow the spirit, follow your muse, follow the stories you want to tell.
You don't have to speak up politically.
You don't have to do anything about that.
All I think is that you should be who you are and write the stories you want to tell and face the music, which means facing the censorship and hostility that you're going to receive from Hollywood and the publishing world and maybe have to find other ways to get your work out there.
From Brandy.
Dear wise men of the Daily Wire, Clavin, what can I say?
I absolutely love you.
I've been listening to your podcast since early 2016.
I'm almost done with the great good thing.
It's properly marked up with lots of notes and insights.
That's for those of you who are just joining.
That's my memoir of my conversion to Christianity.
Just the other day, I realized that the article I've had my 12th grade students read that makes the Bush-Batman comparison and sparks a great conversation about tolerance was written by none other than you.
Anyway, today is my 40th birthday.
There is so much in my life I thought I'd have by this point that just hasn't worked out.
I've had a barrage of almost their relationships and my share of heartbreak and setbacks, but I try to stay positive and move forward with faith.
Any words you could give me on staying optimistic through the next 40, there's so much more I could say here, but if I don't send this in now, I'm afraid you won't answer.
Thank you for all the awesomeness you put into the world and for wielding your talents for the good.
Well, thank you for all the kind words.
Okay, what I'm going to say is going to sound a little bit hard, and it is hard.
I'm going to say something sad, but I've experienced it in my own life, and I'm not talking off, you know, I'm not talking glibly at all.
You're 40, you're obviously lamenting the fact that you don't have a relationship in your life, a study love relationship in your life.
And that's a real thing, a real thing to be sad about.
And I'm not saying it's never going to change.
But what I am saying is it is true right now, and you need to accept it and mourn it as being true right now.
Not as never, always being true, but you need to mourn the fact.
I can tell from reading this letter that you need to mourn the fact that up until now this hasn't happened.
This has happened in my life, things that I just, that didn't go the way I wanted.
My relationship with my father is one of them where I just had to stop and say, you know what, this is never going to be right.
And I'm not going to live my life seeking for it and trying to change it.
I'm simply going to mourn it and bury it.
And that's what I did.
And it was painful and it was sad, but then it was over.
Once you've mourned it, once you've mourned it, you go about building a life that is beautiful as it is.
Mourning Unchanged Truths00:04:36
That is how you, you know, we all lose things in life.
We all take hits in life.
What's that great line from Rocky?
It's not how hard you hit, it's how hard you can get hit and keep on moving forward.
That is actually good wisdom from Rocky, our friend Rocky Balboa.
And I think you have to take that on.
You've taken a hit.
You've taken a hit.
You've reached 40 without being in a relationship.
You're sad about it.
Be sad about it.
Mourn it.
Understand it.
Take it on board.
and then move forward and create a life from this starting point that is beautiful and fulfilled, that has church if you're a religious person, which I hope you are, that has work with people, other people doing work in your community, and maybe dating and finding other places to meet people.
Someone is more likely to come into your life if you let go of the past and let go of where you are now and are sad about that and move forward than if you keep eagerly hoping to change what your situation is right now.
Build a life that is as fulfilling as you can make it and as full as you can make it and as joyful as you can make it.
And that is more likely to add also unto that a love relationship.
But you've got to be sad about the thing that you haven't got.
You know, I know those were long answers.
There were complicated questions.
There's more.
Maybe we'll come back to some of those next week.
We'll save these for now.
But now we've got to move on to tickety-boo news.
It looked backwards to me.
Was that?
Maybe not.
I don't know.
There was an article in the Federalist by Chad Felix Green that said the stigma against my conservative politics is worse than the stigma of being gay.
And he talks about how people always told him not to be so gay and he felt he couldn't talk out loud and how now the left is censoring and censorious and he feels the same way.
And he says, just as I did not choose to be gay, I did not choose to be conservative.
My political evolution happened over time as I came to realize that I valued truth and reason over narrative and emotion.
I became an outspoken voice on the right because I felt I had no other choice than to speak up and shout the truth despite overwhelming pressure from the media.
The left has become empowered to actively stamp out our voices.
Not just that, but they feel fully justified in doing so.
But just as I realized at 16 with my sexuality, I embraced today with my political worldview.
I can no more deny what I know to be objective truth than I could deny my feelings about my own sexuality then.
I've been told this before.
I told you, I've said once about the story about the guy I met at a Hollywood meeting who said that he had two parties, one after another.
The first party, he told his conservative friends that he was gay, and they all said, yeah, we actually knew that.
And the second party, he told his gay friends that he was conservative and they never spoke to him again.
One of the things, I have to say this.
One of the things I love about conservatives, I love about being in a group of conservatives and being in a movement of conservatives, is the fact that you can get into a long, civil, passionate, and interesting and intelligent discussion on whether homosexuality is sinful or not, whether it is acceptable or not, whether it is helpful or harmful to society.
You can get into that conversation with them and then watch those same conservatives accept gay people in their lives with love and friendship and fellowship.
And that, to me, is so much more beautiful than having rules about what you can say and having rules about what you can think and having this limit on who you're supposed to be and who everybody is supposed to be.
I have seen more gay people accepted freely into a world in which their sexuality will be discussed in front of them in a range of ways than I have ever seen on the left.
All I see on the left is intolerance, censorship, silence.
If you are listening to the sound of my voice, if you are a gay person, if you're a black person, if you are sick and tired of a world in which everybody tips toes around you and your only power is the power of your victimhood, come on over.
Come on over to the conservative movement because I got to tell you, it is a beautiful, beautiful thing to hear people speak honestly and philosophize openly, but not forget to love one another and to accept one another as they come.
It is a really, really wonderful thing.
I'm so glad I'm a part of it.
And that is tickety-boo news because everything on that side is tickety-boo.
Come On Over To The Conservative Movement00:00:56
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Remember, this week we have a Friday show to make up for the Tuesday show that I didn't do.
So stay with us and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
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Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.
Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.
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