Andrew Clavin dismantles AOC’s Nazi concentration camp comparison to U.S. detention centers, citing Esquire’s expert rebuttal and mocking her "never again" hypocrisy while framing Trump’s policies as a bulwark against leftist authoritarianism. He contrasts Trump’s economic gains and Iran sanctions with the media’s fearmongering, arguing supporters see him as a defender against global elites, not Hitler—unlike Obama’s press crackdowns. The episode blends political rants with mailbag advice: counseling for trauma-sensitive intimacy, faith recovery after military trauma, and literary critiques of The Scarlet Letter, all tied to Clavin’s shift from anti-Trump skepticism to staunch defender. [Automatically generated summary]
Shapely Dimwit Alexandria Occasional Cortex is very upset that the Holocaust has come to America in the form of arresting people for breaking the law.
The adorable and did I mention shapely little nincompoop took to one of those social media thingambobs to decry the fact that illegal aliens were being held in detention camps instead of being released so they could illegally vote for Democrats.
Speaking of the detention camp system set up under President Clinton and expanded under President Obama, the crevaceous Dunderhead declared, quote, and this is a real quote, the United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.
And if that doesn't bother you, I don't, I like, we can have okay, whatever.
I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not, that never again means something unincomprehensible, quote.
The video received hundreds and hundreds of heart symbols from admirers who were either listening very carefully to what the congresswoman was saying or perhaps thinking of something else entirely.
Now, some people might say that arresting and detaining illegal aliens for breaking the law is not really exactly the same as slaughtering millions of innocent citizens because of their race, but that would be telling the truth.
And none of the people who would do that work for the magazine Esquire, which combed the alleys and byways of the underbelly of America and discovered someone who calls himself a concentration camp expert.
The expert confirmed to Esquire that yes, the Clinton-Obama camps are indeed concentration camps, and therefore AOC's comment comparing the arrest of lawbreakers with the slaughter of Jews was not as degrading, disgusting, ignorant, and putrid as it might sound to someone with actual knowledge.
In her video, Occasional Cortex went on to say Trump was conducting, quote, an authoritarian and fascist presidency.
And she added, I don't use those words lightly.
I use them because I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
You know, if you watch cable news, stop, stop doing that.
But if you do, you may have seen a lot of stories about polls lately, polls about the 2020 presidential election.
These poll stories usually contain a sentence that begins something like this.
At this point, polls are meaningless, but.
And then they go on to talk about what the meaningless polls may mean.
But the truth is, there is no but after meaningless, polls at this point are meaningless, period.
Now, these polls are making non-news because they show Donald Trump losing to everyone from Joe Biden to the guy who used to be on the Verizon commercial saying, Can you hear me now?
Then went over to Sprint, then disappeared, but is still beating Trump in the polls.
But here's a question I'd like to ask the pollsters.
Does any Democrat supporter love his candidate the way all of Trump's supporters love Trump?
Yesterday, President the Donald launched his 2020 campaign with a massive rally in Florida.
People lined up for days to get in, for days they were waiting outside.
The immense stadium was completely packed and rocking, sort of like a Joe Biden rally, only completely the opposite.
The passion for Trump doesn't mean his supporters don't see his flaws.
Why We Left Google00:02:48
I've talked to them.
They know who Trump is, warts and all, and they still love him.
And what's fascinating to me is that after more than two years, two years of a largely successful presidency with a good economy and a nation at peace, virtually no one on the left or in the media, but I repeat myself, and none of the right-wing never-Trumpers has ever paused to consider whether all these Trump lovers might have gotten it right and whether it's they who got it wrong.
I did.
I hated Trump.
He still does stuff I think is rude and wrong.
Overall, I changed my mind because of the things that happened and things I saw.
My fears about Trump never materialized, and many of my hopes for him did.
It turned out he wasn't Hitler, although it also turned out that there were people partying like it was 1938, and it wasn't Trump.
I asked myself a simple question about Trump's supporters.
What did these good Americans see that I missed?
What did my ideas fail to supply that the people needed and that Trump did supply?
And the truth is, all you have to do is look honestly, and the answers are easy to find.
And we're going to do that in just a second.
But first, I got to tell you about these great new headsets I got.
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The most famous ones, I won't mention them, they don't fit in my ear and they look stupid.
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Mailbag is today, so hang around for that.
We will solve all your problems.
And let me remind you, it starts to stutter and twitch.
Let me remind you that after tomorrow, I go on vacation.
So an entire Clavinless week spreads before you like a burning desert full of acid and acid rain and dragons.
So that's something you have to look forward to.
Passion For Trump00:06:01
So, you know, Trump's rally really, really did get me.
It got me the passion that people still have for the guy and the way he talks and what they hear.
And when I think back on how much I hated him, I mean, one of the most popular videos I ever did was attacking the people for supporting Trump in anger.
And I changed my mind because of the way Trump behaved and because of listening to the people who were talking about him and because Trump has done a good job.
So I changed my mind.
But while I was watching him, it just becomes very obvious what he is offering and what the left is doing.
And the left now is calling Trump Hitler again.
They're back to that, that original guy.
How do they think of these original ideas comparing Trump to Hitler?
But it's they who are acting like the people who let Hitler come to power.
Let me show you just a little bit of what I'm talking about.
Let's just have a cut, a quick clip of the end of Trump's rally as cut number four.
With your help, with your love and your devotion, and with your drive, we are going to keep on working.
We are going to keep on fighting.
And we are going to keep on winning, winning, winning.
We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God.
And together, we will make America wealthy again.
We will make America strong again.
We will make America safe again.
And we will make America great again.
Pride, not shame.
Hope, not fear.
Remember, Obama had that hope sign, but all we got from him was criticism, and we're just not as good as he was, and we have to aspire to being as good as Barack Obama.
He's talking to the people.
We are one family.
We're one people.
We're one nation under God.
And patriotism instead of self-hatred.
Now, the important thing about these things that he's doing is not that politicians don't all have a line, but he's talking to the people and around the media, and he's roundly criticizing this vast elite structure of information.
This is what always has gotten me about Trump and has gotten me about the people who love him and support him, that there is this vast, vast, elite structure of information saying all the opposite things of what he's saying.
This country stinks.
We should be afraid.
Oh, the climate, the climate, we're all going to die.
We shouldn't be proud.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
We should go around the world apologizing to tyrants like Obama did.
They don't understand.
They don't understand that we hear them.
We hear them.
They're not hidden from us.
We see them.
We know them.
We know who they are.
So yesterday, the hilarious moment was when Trump started talking about the press, and he started calling out the press.
And I'll be honest with you, I get nervous.
I know that tyrants go against the press, but Trump hasn't done anything to silence the press like Obama did.
All he has done is call them out for their ceaseless anti-Americanism, their ceaseless anti-capitalism, their ceaseless anti-freedom, and their shame, their non-patriotism.
And he calls them out and the crowd starts.
This is on CNN and the crowd starts chanting, CNN sucks.
And watch this.
That is a lot of fake news back there.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
You know what I say?
The amount of press we have tonight reminds me of the Academy Awards before it went political and their ratings went down the tubes.
This was our chance to reclaim our government.
All right, we've been watching the president kick off his reelection bid.
He's been on stage for about six minutes.
Within two minutes, he did talk about the economy, but within four minutes, it was attacks on the media.
So he was talking about a bright, rosy future, but then quickly reverted to some of the same themes he's been talking about since he began running four years ago today.
So not only, we cut out the people shouting CNN sucks, but you could hear him dissing the press.
So CNN cuts away from CNN sucks.
So not only do they want to dominate your information systems, but when he criticizes them, they're actually going to cut him off as if we can't find him somewhere else.
And that's the whole point of knocking guys like Stephen Crowder off YouTube and off Twitter and knocking those voices off Twitter.
They are hoping they can take back, win back that monopoly over communication that Trump has broken through.
And that's one of the reasons the people love him so much is that he speaks the hope in their hearts.
He speaks the patriotism in their hearts.
He speaks the pride in their hearts while they are surrounded, surrounded by this vast information machine that speaks shame and anti-patriotism and fear, you know, climate fear and war fear.
And everything is always fear in the news.
That's how they sell papers, but it's also what they believe.
It's also how they live.
So in the New York Times, a former newspaper, Matthew Continetti from the Free Beacon, which is a good conservative outlet, and Continenti has become a really good observer of the larger political scene.
He writes some very interesting articles, usually at the Free Beacon, but this is in the Times.
And he says, one of the oddities of this presidency is that a uniquely American figure such as Mr. Trump is part of a worldwide phenomenon.
But there really can be no doubt that Mr. Trump was among the first heralds of an anti-elitist turn that has disrupted politics from London to Melbourne.
The issues animated in this upheaval have not disappeared, nor is Trump likely to, nor is Mr. Trump likely to.
He's saying he's going to win the next election.
Brexit, Election Day 2016, the collapse of the center left in France, Germany, and Italy, the so-called yellow vest protests, the losses by centrist parties in the recent European elections, and a political upset in Australia have been categorized as examples of quote populism or quote nationalism.
ExpressVPN: Protect Your Online Privacy00:02:03
They are labeled a reaction against globalization.
But these grand terms mask as much as they reveal, and they sometimes are used to play down or dismiss political activity that an analyst finds uncouth, retrograde, or offensive.
They don't want to listen to the people.
And Continenti goes on to list some of the issues he thinks are behind it.
Unchecked immigration, terrorism, the imposition of carbon taxes and other measures to mitigate climate change, elites' inability or lack of interest to tackle these problems, the people sitting on their hands.
These are all important issues, but I think it's the bigger ideas that they represent.
For instance, for instance, talking about immigration.
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It's k-l-a-v-a-n.
Iranians and Chamberlain's Mistake00:14:46
So the patriotism.
You know, we talk about immigration and everybody says, oh, it's unkind, it's un, you know, it's racist, it's all these things.
It's just offensive to have people break your laws at will.
And it is offensive that Congress will not change the laws to make them easier to enforce.
It's offensive to have people telling you that because people are disobeying your law, you're the bad guy.
That is offensive.
It is not actually about the people coming in.
You know, we can live with some immigration.
We can even live with some illegal immigration.
It is offensive to have these people not care about the country.
You know, Trump had one thing where he went after the Democrats.
This is cut number five yesterday in his rally.
Play this.
Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage.
They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.
Not acceptable.
It's not going to happen.
Very tough rhetoric.
That's very tough rhetoric, calling the opposition full of hatred and rage.
But how can they say it's not true?
Alexandria, Occasional Cortex, this thing she said yesterday was, I mean, you know, I don't get offended by the things these people say.
I'm not going to say it was offensive, but it was.
It was ignorant.
It was stupid.
It was, you know, ill-judged.
And it was, it dishonored so many innocent dead.
It dishonored so many innocent dead by comparing the detention of illegals, which has to be done with, and according to our laws, by comparing, enforcing the proper laws of America or trying to, comparing that to slaughtering Jewish citizens of your country because they're Jews.
That's the comparison she makes.
And she said she didn't, but yes, she did.
Here it is.
The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.
And that is exactly what they are.
They are concentration camps.
And if that doesn't bother you, I don't.
I like, we can have, okay, whatever.
I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not, that never again knew something.
And that the fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.
And we need to do something about it.
So it was amazing to watch the press rush to her defense saying, well, a concentration camp, the definition of a concentration camp, when she says never again, that is, she says it means something, what does it mean?
It means never again will we allow the slaughter of six million Jews.
That's what it means.
That's what never again meant.
It was putting people in camps and then exterminating them.
And when Liz Cheney, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, went after her for this, she went and sent out a tweet that said, please, AOC, do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history.
Six million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust.
You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.
This is AOC's response.
Liz Cheney, the fact that you employed the horrifying word exterminated here, co-opting the language of the oppressor, tells us that it's you who need to brush up on your reading.
The left does this all the time, using the wrong word.
She's talking about the extermination of six million people.
They almost wiped the European Jewry off the face of the earth for nothing, for no reason whatsoever, for that crazy paranoia that people come up with about Jews.
They wipe these people out, men, women, and children, gassed them.
I mean, it was like a crucifixion, a minute, you know.
I mean, that's what it was.
And she is comparing that to our police officers and our law officers arresting people.
And then when Liz Cheney calls her out on it, it's like, you used the word exterminating.
Do they think we don't see them?
Do they think we don't know?
And if you, and if there's any question that this is what they were making, that this is the comparison they were making.
Angela Rai on CNN, a commentator on CNN, somebody at Newsbuster said they put her on so that Jim Acosta looks sane because she just pushed it all the way.
This is the America they see.
She's not lying.
She's not selling anything.
This is the America that CNN and the news media and the Hollywood see.
There is an inhumane crisis happening at the southern border.
And it is because of how these people look.
It is because of differences.
It is because there is a fear that white people are losing their power in this country.
That is the bottom line.
It is white fear.
That is what is driving this.
It is racism at its core.
It is what the foundation of this country is built upon.
We want to shift the attention as we should off of mass incarceration of black and brown people in this country.
But now those monies are being transferred into detaining migrants at the border.
It is a crisis, Steve.
It is not okay just because they don't have their papers.
I hope you wrestle with your conscience and get to the right side of this because, sir, you are on the wrong side of history.
In 1930, they were concentration camps.
In 1941, they were death camps.
And that is where we are going if our consciences are not quickly pierced.
It is a problem.
Let me tell you.
Do you not laugh it off?
Let me tell you.
Do not laugh at all.
That's mainstream leftist commentary.
That's not, you know, that woman should be pushing a shopping cart down the street screaming at clouds.
She's on TV because that's the mainstream, that is at the heart of the mainstream depiction of this country.
That's the reason Joe Biden is ahead, not just partly because they know his name, but partly because at least he sounds like occasionally he likes the country.
I mean, he still accuses Republicans of wanting to put black people back in chains.
It was Democrats who did that, Joe.
But still, you know, I mean, at least he has some sense that America is a good place.
This is, this is the Democrat Party.
And Trump is right.
I'm going to talk about Hitler.
You know, when people talk about Hitler, they throw this stuff around because it's the only history they know.
They know Hitler bad.
You know, he did some bad things.
So Donald Trump looks like Hitler.
That's basically what they know.
Hitler didn't take control of Europe.
And World War II didn't happen because of Hitler.
It happened because of the people who didn't stop Hitler.
It happened because of a spineless, unpatriotic breed of Western leader, exhausted by World War I, so terrified of a fight that they let Hitler walk all over them.
That's what happened.
Hitler went into Austria.
You know, when Hitler started moving, he wrote a book.
He said, I'm going to take over these countries so that our people, the great German people, the Aryan race, the master race, can have a living room, it was called, living space, Liebensroom, I think.
Lebensroom.
And he said he was going to do it.
He told people he was going to do it.
When he did it, when he started to march into Austria, for instance, the generals were terrified that France or England would stand up to them.
They were terrified.
And all Hitler knew was that they were spineless, that they didn't want to fight, that they just wanted to protect their little world.
They did not have the guts to stand up to the guy.
In 1938, Hitler started to, he had already taken over Austria, and he started to say, well, you know what?
These people living in the Sudetenland, which is a little strip on the edge of Czechoslovakia, there were 3 million people living there, most of them German-speaking.
He said, they belong to Germany, so we want to come in there.
And he would tell the leaders in the Sudetenland to make trouble so that Hitler would have a chance to go in there and take the place over.
And of course, part of the problem was not only was he taking away land from Czechoslovakia, there were also mountains there in the Sudetenland that protected Czechoslovakia.
So once Hitler went in there, Czechoslovakia was undefended.
France and Britain had treaties with the Czechs saying, we will protect you if the Germans invade.
When Hitler said, I'm going to do this, Chamberlain flew over.
This is the famous, I'm sure you've all heard of the Munich Pact.
He went over to Munich and met with Hitler and gave him everything he wanted.
Everything.
Hitler, even Hitler could not believe what Chamberlain was saying to him.
And Hitler said, no, that's not enough.
You know, just like he was a blackmailer.
You know, he said, no, that's not enough.
I want everything.
They didn't stop him.
Now, I'm not comparing what's happening today to that, but I just want to show you some of the attitudes, some of the attitudes that are happening now in the Persian Gulf.
The Iranians, Donald Trump has got the Iranians by the shorthairs.
I mean, he has got them by the throat.
He got rid of that stupid Obama deal, which was going to allow them to build a, was paying them off, basically, to build a nuclear weapon in secret.
He said, this is ridiculous.
We're going to put these sanctions back on.
And he has kept that, and he has forced the Europeans to toe the line.
So they are really suffering, the Iranians, from the sanctions that Trump has imposed on them.
What they're trying to do now is they're sinking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which is part of the Persian Gulf.
It's a very narrow strait, so you have to go through there.
This is where all the oil is coming through, and they're shipping, they're sinking these tankers and attacking these tankers.
The Iranians are doing that.
The reason they're doing it is because Japan and China need that oil.
And so what the Iranians are doing essentially is saying, we're going to mess up your oil supplies if you don't break through and start giving us the money that Trump is cutting off.
And they want the Europeans to do that too.
So again, they're threatening the world to try and get them to break with America and give them money.
That's the strategy.
That's what they're doing.
Trump and Pompeo are putting out pictures of Iranians attacking these ships.
It's obvious that it's happening.
Now, look, nobody wants war.
I mean, Mike Pompeo was talking about this.
He says the president doesn't want war, but there are lots and lots of things you can do.
We've just moved 1,000 troops over there to protect them.
We can start to escort them.
Trump wants not just for Americans to escort them.
He wants for allies to escort them so that we're all in it together.
There's a lot of stuff that we can do, but surely, surely the good guys are us, right?
The good guys are us, and Iran is the bad guy.
That's the only real point here.
Iran is a sponsor of terrorism around the world.
Iran has been threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map, talking about Hitler.
That was another thing Hitler was good at threatening to do, and he almost did it.
They're threatening to kill the 6 million Jews who are in Israel.
These are bad people doing bad stuff and trying to build a nuclear weapon and announcing that they will soon have more uranium stockpiled than they were allowed to have under the Obama deal.
They're trying to make Trump look bad.
They're trying to make America look bad.
I just want you to listen to Nancy Pelosi.
Let's pick Nancy Pelosi talking about this situation.
What is their motivation to be provocative with the Iranians?
Why did the president turn his back on the Iranian nuclear agreement?
What's the logic except some other issue that it was negotiated by President Obama?
We had so many national security experts, whether they were ambassadors, generals, admirals, and all the rest, supporting the agreement as well.
So it had official, diplomatic, national security, technical nuclear, et cetera, support along the way.
So why?
So then he comes in and undoes that and inflames the U.S.-Iran issue.
Why?
What is the purpose?
I'm not going to accuse anybody of instigating anything, but for not having a policy that would smooth the waters, so to speak.
So again, I don't, I think he probably knows there's no appetite for war among the American people.
The daughter of Chamberlain.
That's the daughter of Chamberlain.
You know, all she has to say is, you know, I support the U.S. and what we're trying to do, trying to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.
That's what they're trying to do, trying to maybe loosen them up a little bit, get some freedom for those poor people over there, because obviously it's not the people, it's the government.
She can't, she's accusing Trump of some kind of masterminding, some kind of excuse for an invasion.
Trump is virtually an isolationist.
I mean, he's mercurial enough where he will strike back if attacked.
But, you know, he's not looking for war.
That's absurd.
That's the voice of appeasement, though.
And why not?
How can you not appease the Iranians when Trump is Hitler?
If Trump is building concentration camps that are soon going to be death camps, that's what the left is telling us.
He's building, those are Obama and Clinton's camps, but Trump is using them, turning them into death camps.
That's what they're telling us on CNN.
How can we support him?
I mean, even Iran would be better than Trump.
These people are the same as they were then.
You know, there's nothing Hitlerian about Trump.
This is a great point that Scott Adams made.
When I voted for Trump, I said, well, there's a 5% chance he's Hitler, but like, you know, 95% is pretty good.
But Scott Adams said, you know, people don't become Hitler overnight.
You know, they don't suddenly become Hitler.
Trump's a businessman.
He's always been a businessman.
That's what he is.
You know, Hitler told people he was Hitler and then did the things he said he was going to do while the West stood by and watched.
If these guys hate Trump so much, if they think that we are just a racist country founded in racism, acting on racism, if we're building concentration camps in order to make them death camps, how can they support us?
How can they support us?
They will support any tyrant.
Because believe me, when they start to play with Russia, China, Iran, they're playing with real tyrants, not the make-believe tyrants who they think are oppressing them.
But if they were really oppressed, they wouldn't be on TV talking about it in the first place.
That is why people like Trump so much.
They love him so much because he speaks what they know to be true in their hearts, that we are the last best hope on earth.
We still are.
We always were.
And we're all the world has of freedom right now.
We really are.
I mean, freedom is falling everywhere except here.
And Trump is a lot of the reason.
And some of these elites on the left and the right should start listening to the people and stop listening to themselves because they're the ones who got it wrong.
Angry Vision of Freedom00:15:47
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We're going to take a break, and then we have the mailbag.
Mailbag!
Yeah.
All right.
From Jacob, I believe.
Dear Supreme Leader of the Multiverse, I am getting, well, at least they got the right address.
I am getting married in a month and there's only one thing that worries me about it.
My fiancé is a rape victim.
Both of us believe in traditional Christian values.
I am a virgin.
My fiancé has never willingly had sex.
We both look forward to intimacy in our marriage, but I have concerns.
The biggest one is that I will accidentally step on an emotional landline and my actions will trigger painful memories.
I don't want to hurt her.
I'm sailing into unknown waters.
How should I navigate?
Well, first of all, that's a legitimate question.
I mean, it's a genuine concern that you should have.
It doesn't have to be a fear.
It doesn't have to be an obsessive anxiety, but it's something you should take care of.
It's very thoughtful of you to think about it.
And it's something that, you know, we know that there's such a thing as PTSD and flashbacks.
I'm very sorry this happened to your fiancé, but it is something you should talk about.
I think that having a little pre-marriage counseling, maybe with a pastor, maybe with a counselor, is not a bad idea.
Talk about it beforehand.
Find out if she has flashbacks.
Find out if she's ready to go forward because, you know, it's an important part of marriage.
You know, you don't want to sell it short.
Sex is an important part of marriage.
It's a wonderful experience, A, and it's a bonding experience, and it's something that makes your relationship unique and helps make you one flesh.
So you do want to find out where she is in her mind on that and help her find out where she is.
Like I said, you don't have to get obsessive about it.
You don't have to turn it into some big fear, but to talk about it beforehand with somebody who knows what he or she is doing is not a bad idea.
And it's good for you to think of it.
It really is.
It's good thinking.
It's good keeping your eye on the ball.
Hi, Andrew, big fan from Down Under.
Hashtag came for Clavin, stayed for Clavin, occasionally drop in on Shapiro and Knowles.
Love your political and social and spiritual commentary, but I wanted to ask about writing and the creative process.
I've written a few books, including two novels with several more, banging on the door, wanting to get in.
I loved Another Kingdom, and I've enjoyed lots of your other books as well.
You have said on a couple of occasions that Another Kingdom is probably your last novel.
So my question is, how come?
Do you feel you've said all you can say in the medium of fiction?
When Another Kingdom came to you as a revelation, was there a PS from the universe saying, by the way, this is it, buddy?
I'm interested to hear from the furthest reaches of the Clavin Kingdom, aka Sydney, Australia.
Basically, yes, that's right.
I mean, that I have had, that I have a sort of yin-yang approach to the world.
I experience more of the world than I can put into words.
And so I tell stories.
By telling stories, I can express my vision of what it's like to be a human being in ways that can't be expressed in other ways.
But I also have this yang mind that comes up with logical expressions of what I see and what I feel.
And I would like to write another nonfiction book, a kind of a sequel to my memoir, The Great Good Thing, some of the material that didn't make it into The Great Good Thing.
I would like to explore some more.
I've been working on this in my mind for a long time, and now I finally have it formulated to the point where I can write it.
So I'm going to be focusing on that.
I find it difficult to believe at this point that I will have another kind of vision that says more about what I see in the world than I've said in Another Kingdom.
I've just finished the third book of the trilogy.
It is a very complete, to my mind, vision of what I think of the world, what I see in the world at this point in my life.
Having traveled a long way, having thought many different things, having seen many different things, it is a very complete expression of that vision.
I don't think I'm done with fiction.
I didn't mean to say that I was done with fiction.
What I meant is I think that I'm done expressing my vision of the world through novels.
That's what I meant.
I might write a pseudonymous novel just for fun.
I might write a novel not under a pseudonym that's just a kind of fun thing.
Certainly want to write more scripts and maybe even some plays and things like that.
But I just think I may have said everything in the novel that I'm going to say.
I am other writers know this, but I am a very innovative writer.
I have invented a lot of techniques.
See them used by other writers after I've made them.
I've invented techniques for telling stories, and I feel like I've kind of pushed that just as far as I want to or can for now.
If something happens and my vision expands in some unexpected way, in some unexpected way that I can't explain in plain language, then I'll go back and try again if that's, you know, if that's the thing I want to do.
I'm not done with fiction, but I think the novel as a form, I think I've done everything I can do with it.
And if I'm wrong, I'll change my mind.
So, and you know, it's a big change for me.
I'm really dealing with it.
I mean, it's very joyful in a lot of ways because I think Another Kingdom came out great, and I'm really thrilled with it.
So, it's very joyful, but it does mean moving on to something I've never done before, and that's always a little anxiety-provoking.
So, it's an interesting moment.
From Garrett, hey, Andrew, my name is Garrett, huge fan of yours, and really look forward to hearing your podcast every day.
I was raised as a Christian, but when I joined the army, I saw some truly awful things, including a dying friend crying out for his mother only to slip away.
These things really pushed me away from God and religion in general.
Not atheism, but just more agnostic.
I didn't know how to cope with the things I saw.
I started self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana.
Luckily, I've overcome my addictions and have been sober for over 11 months and coming up on a year.
Good on you, buddy.
That's great.
After listening to you and the rest of the Daily Wire crew, I've been wondering about getting back into religion, specifically Christianity.
What would be some baby steps to getting back into my faith?
Well, I think the two things I would recommend.
First of all, thank you for your service and good on you, pal, for beating addiction.
It is a soul-destroying thing.
I always think that it is God who has an interest in helping you with addiction because he has an interest in keeping your soul alive.
And I think that's a great thing.
You know, you do have to believe in a God of the tragic world.
This is a tragic world where terrible, terrible things happen.
And just because they're not happening to you in this moment or ever, doesn't mean they're not there and doesn't mean that you don't have to have a God, an idea of God, that takes that into account.
You cannot have this happy, happy, smiley face idea of God because it will not stand up.
That image will not stand up when you see the kinds of terrible things that you've seen.
And so, you need a serious idea of God, not a silly one, not the one that they sometimes show you in Christian films and things like that.
You need a genuine idea of a God of the tragic world.
The way to get that, I think the two things that I would recommend is obviously reading, reading in scripture, but also reading about scripture by wise people writing things.
I mean, I love C.S. Lewis's books.
Mere Christianity is a wonderful book, and he's written some wonderful things on suffering.
One is called The Four Loves.
There are a couple of books that C.S. Lewis has written on suffering.
Other people have written about that, why bad things happen on the subject of why bad things happen and why they happen to good people and bad people alike, as Jesus himself pointed out.
So, you want to get an idea of God that really suits the world as it is.
I think you have to find a church, and I think the way to find a church is find a church where you're comfortable with the people there, where you're comfortable with the things that the pastor is saying, where he's not preaching stuff that you think is nonsense.
And then, almost every church has a class for beginners, which teaches you the basics of Christianity and the basics of the church that you're joining.
And those are great ways to meet people, to meet people who are in a similar situation to you, and also to get the kind of rudimentary understanding of Christianity, the religion, not just the theology, but of the religion, why you do certain things, why you say certain prayers, why your religion, that sect of the religion exists, and so on.
It is really, really helpful to have other people along in the journey and to journey with other people and to have people who know what they're talking about.
So go to a church where you find the people there are smart and honest and straightforward and not crazy radical people and then find out how to join and get involved in the church.
Christianity in a lot of ways is something that you act out.
It is not just something you feel or believe.
It is also something you live.
And the more you live it, the deeper it gets and the more you live it, the better it gets and the better your life gets, I think.
So I think it's a good thing to take action.
Even in baby steps, it's a good thing to take baby steps in action, not just sitting and thinking about it.
From Joe, my wife has anger issues.
She isn't angry all the time, but her fuse is short.
When she is irritated, bothered, or frustrated with what my son is doing, she yells at him.
She isn't a spanker anymore, but at one point she was.
I talked her out of it.
How do I help her with her anger issues and have her treat our son better?
Really good question.
And two answers.
One is it helps to get to the bottom of what makes her angry.
Like she may just be a hot-tempered person, but she may also have something stuck in her mind that she needs to deal with and face that maybe she would feel less angry if she faced it and looked at it more honestly.
That can sometimes take counseling.
It's a helpful thing.
Sometimes just talking it through in a non-angry way.
I mean, I think that counseling is helpful because then you have somebody without a dog in the fight, you know, somebody who's more objective and isn't going to, it's not going to be you, someone who's so involved with it.
The thing about her son, your son, is that a lot of times when you get to the point where you're angry at a child, it's because you haven't set the limits properly beforehand.
This is really important and it's hard to do.
And I see parents all the time in public not doing it.
When you say, don't do this, that has to mean something, okay?
You have to stick to it.
And the way to do that is to put forward real life, non-catastrophic consequences, okay?
Don't say, if you do that, I'm going to kill you, because then you're not going to do it.
It also means you immediately have to go atom-bomb.
But if you say, pardon me, if you say, you know, stop doing that, or I'm going to take away this toy for an hour, stop doing that, or there's not going to be dessert after dinner, you know, realistic, non-catastraphs, catastrophic consequences.
And then you stick to them.
You can't keep making threats and not carry out the consequences.
You will find, I believe, that your son will not push the limits so much and not move you to the place where you feel you have to get angry.
It's possible that your wife is not just an angry person.
I don't know her.
It's possible that she's not quite managing your son, and maybe you're not quite managing your son so that he knows that your word is law and has to be obeyed.
Once he learns that, without hitting him, without screaming at him, without catastrophic consequences, once he learns that, oh, if I do this, there will be a consequence.
And when mom and dad says this will happen, it will happen.
He may stop pushing the limits so much and you might stop having more anger there.
So that's one way of approaching it.
And the other way is if, in fact, there is some anger inside her, getting to the bottom of that, because it's worth doing.
From Emma, dear Supreme Lord of the Multiverse Clavin, what is your opinion of the book, The Scarlet Letter?
That's an interesting question.
I read it for a high school English class a couple of years ago and found it extraordinarily difficult to get through.
I didn't identify with any of the characters.
In fact, I thought all of them to be ridiculous and overdramatic, and the plot seemed to be convoluted and largely irrelevant.
I typically enjoy great American novels, but this was not one of them.
What am I missing?
Well, I really did like this novel.
I don't like Moby Dick, for instance, which I acknowledge has stuff of genius in it, but I just think it's way too long.
But I did like the Scarlet Letter.
The Scarlet Letter is an interesting piece of American fiction because it does something that it changes the way fiction is told in a very American way.
The typical European novel was a social novel.
It was a novel of observation.
Here are what people are like.
Here's what they do.
Here's a story about them doing what they do and being the way that they're like.
I mean, you think about Dickens or Trollope or Jane Austen.
You know, it's very, very observed social settings, very observed, you know, social practices.
And you really get into the society.
And then you find, you know, there's symbolism and things like that in them.
But the American novel, very weirdly, is about the symbols.
It takes a symbol and then delves into it to get back to life.
So it starts with the symbols and then gets back to life.
So the Scarlet Letter is about an A.
It is about a symbol.
And the whole book is what that symbol means.
And the characters and the society come out of the symbol.
The meaning that has been poured into that A comes out the other end and opens up into a vision of the society.
And that's true of Moby Dick, too.
The whale is the symbol.
And through getting into the symbol of the whale, there are whole chapters in Moby Dick on the whiteness of the whale.
And this is something that these guys were part of a movement, Transcendentalism, that kind of looked at the world that way.
But it goes on.
It's true of Henry James' novel, even though he became an Englishman.
It's true of his novels that they work that way in a lot of ways.
And many American novels look at the world through in a very symbolic way.
I like The Scarlet Letter because I loved Hester Prynn.
I loved her character.
Symbols and Meanings00:02:10
I liked the story.
But it's not like a highly plotted, fast-moving story.
And it has a lot of thick, convoluted language in it.
And that just may not be your cup of tea.
I mean, I think it's quite good.
If you didn't like the Scarlet Letter, you might try Jane Austen.
I think she writes, well, about some similar things.
And she's a wonderful, wonderful writer.
And she's somebody you just might like better.
Not every book, even a great book, is for everybody.
When I say I don't like Moby Dick, I don't like Moby Dick.
I'm willing to concede it's a work of genius, but it's just not something suitable for me.
But I really did like The Scarlet Letter, and I was kind of crazy about Hester Prynn for a long time.
And I thought the picture of her and her child, Pearl, is really original and different.
But he's a tough writer.
You know, if you want to get into Nathaniel Hawthorne, try his short stories.
He has a story called Young Goodman Brown that I think you'll love.
Try that one.
You may like his work better in short form because he is a little wordy.
He does like to talk.
And so like his short stories kind of control that in him.
You might enjoy that more.
All right, I'm done.
I'll be back tomorrow.
And then the Clavenless Week begins.
So you want to be here to suck up as much Clavin-y goodness as you can.
You've got to be like a camel because you're going to have to carry it across that long, long desert.
You're probably not going to make it, but we'll see.
I'll be here tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sayovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production, Copyright Daily Wire, 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump launches his re-election campaign and AOC says another dumb thing and the media defend her.