Andrew Clavin’s Ep. 1046 mocks Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal as a "victory" while dissecting America’s ideological collapse—leftists dismissing systemic failures (e.g., $3.5T spending fantasies) and ignoring unborn voices, calling Roe v. Wade a "lie" that centralized power. He contrasts China’s efficiency with Western decline, praises Brigadoon’s depth over Schmigadoon!’s woke misrepresentation, and exposes Antifa’s violence (Portland riots, Portland murder) as far-left extremism. The episode ends by defending art’s truth-telling—even in taboo subjects—while dismissing Fifty Shades as pornographic and Suicide Squad as nihilistic fluff, warning that cultural decay stems from rejecting reality itself. [Automatically generated summary]
In this season's surprise twist ending to the American Republic, the blithering old man shouting non-sequiturs at passersby turned out to be the president of the United States.
I know, I didn't see that coming either.
I thought he was just some homeless guy and gave him a couple of bucks so he could buy himself a sandwich.
But no, it turned out to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces explaining in a loud, angry voice how his retreat from Afghanistan was one of the most extraordinary successes of any complete failure in history.
Yelling crankily at anyone who would listen, the president said, quote, I take full credit for the stunning victory of our humiliating defeat.
It went off without a hitch, and it was Donald Trump's fault.
It was such a debacle.
We planned for every contingency, including the fact that we were taken completely by surprise, and were ready on the instant to implement our backup plan of panic and chaos.
That's why we were able to get every single American out except for the hundreds we left behind and could pay back our loyal local interpreters with a copy of the Jeopardy home game and a certain future of torture and death.
Sure, some people have criticized our careful strategy of screwing up every aspect of this mission in the worst possible way, and some have simply screamed wordlessly in terror and despair.
But surrendering to the Taliban has freed us to turn our attention to China so we can surrender to them.
After all, as Americans look to the future, we have many questions to answer, like, where am I?
And why are all these people standing on my lawn?
And where am I?
Unquote.
Biden then ran offstage shouting, help, help, they're trying to ask me questions.
Some journalists tried to follow him, but were distracted when presidential aides tied up White House spokeswoman Jen Pesaki hurled her into the press room and pa slammed the door behind her.
Ms. Pesaki was last heard screaming, help someone.
Save me.
She hasn't been Pesen since.
Journalists and other corporate spokesmen gave Biden's speech a mixed reception.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, ran a story about the speech under the headline, Republicans are killing everyone with COVID and look, there's a squirrel.
The story began, quote, Joe Biden made a speech yesterday while Republicans were killing everyone with COVID and look, there's a squirrel.
Unquote.
The article went on to explain that the Afghanistan catastrophe was Ron DeSantis' fault for killing everyone with COVID.
But don't ask why, because then you might miss seeing the squirrel.
CBS newswoman Nora O'Donnell said the speech was Biden's finest hour, except for that time he accidentally set the office trash can on fire.
That was pretty funny too.
And Stephen Colbert was unavailable for comment because he was watching the Greg Gutfeld Show like everybody else.
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-dee-doo.
Ship-shaped hip-sy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Ho, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
I don't want to blame my staff for that.
I don't know why, but I'll think of a reason eventually.
You know, despair does funny things to a man.
Protect Your Home with Ring Alarm00:02:19
What can I tell you?
We're back laughing our way through the fall of the Republic.
You may not be able to hear us laughing because of the fall of the Republic.
It's getting kind of noisy.
Please go on Apple Podcasts in spite of what you've just seen.
Subscribe and leave a five-star review.
I know you're lying, but please.
It really does help us out a lot.
We also, you also want to be in the mailbag.
It's stuffy, but you do get your questions answered.
Just subscribe to Real Daily Wire.
Go to that thing that says watch.
You'll find my show.
There's a little paper.
I don't know why there's a paper airplane there, but hit that paper airplane.
If it's still there, if it's not there, just hit something else and ask any question you want.
You can ask about religion.
You can ask about your personal life.
You can ask about politics.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life.
And you may say, will they change my life for the better?
All right.
Also, YouTube, subscribe to the Andrew Clavin YouTube channel, my personal channel.
Lots of stuff that's not in the show, fresh content.
And if you leave a comment and that comment offends enough people, we will include it on the show as value added.
Rachel M. says, my husband ordered filters from Rock Auto, and now I'm eight months pregnant.
We should have warned you about that.
It happens.
What can I tell you?
The great thing about a ring alarm security system is that it will make you feel secure, not just when you're away.
When you're away, if somebody comes to your door, you can see them on the Ring app on your phone.
You can talk to them.
You can say, what's going on?
What do you need?
But if you're actually in your home, you can see outside your home and know that you're protected.
It gives you peace of mind.
You can protect your home with the Ring Alarm.
Ring Alarm is a powerful, affordable home security system.
You can install it easily yourself.
It works seamlessly with other Ring products in that one simple app.
Keep an eye on every corner of your house with indoor and outdoor cams.
See what's happening right from your phone.
Whatever you call home, Ring has everything you need to protect it.
Protect your home anytime from anywhere with Ring Alarm.
Go to ring.com slash Clavin for a special offer on a Ring Alarm security kit today.
You can build a system that's right for your home and have it up and running in minutes.
So when I watch, now I'm going to try and get serious and just make a total fool of myself because I've cracked myself up with my opening.
But when I watch an important baseball game, I've noticed something I call the one run rule.
A team that is one run up.
This is true, especially in a big, important game.
If you watch the dugout, if a team is one run up, they're happy, they're loose, they're kidding around, they're playing pranks on each other.
If they're one run down, they're grim, they're intense, they're focused on the game, which demonstrates a basic fact of human beings, which is that when they're ahead in life, it's incredibly easy for them.
They're incredibly quick to forget the nature of reality, to forget that they could lose the game in one swing of the bat.
The game is tied.
Two swing of the bats and you're gone.
The guys who are one run behind, they're focused.
They're the ones who remember, you've got to play the basics.
It's the basics that help you win.
So I'm thinking about this because America is so obviously in serious trouble right now.
And I'm hearing a lot of people, a lot of people saying, oh, you know, they're destroying America on purpose, which I actually don't believe is true.
I just think that they are suffering from the one-run rule.
I think they're suffering from the fact that we have been, America has been one run ahead for many, many years, at least 30 years, maybe more.
I was talking last week about the end of the American century, you know, which was basically where the British handed off the defense of Western civilization to us, and we did really well.
We helped, we're key players in defeating the Nazis, key players in defeating the Soviet Union communism.
And it really made America the sort of leading edge of the Western idea.
I mean, in 1776, when the American Republic began, there were no republics.
In 1976, the Soviet Union, which was a slave state, had to call its slave countries republics.
It was supposed to be the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
That's what USSR stood for, because they had to pretend that they were us.
Europe, which historically has always defined their countries according to race, suddenly we're talking about, oh, you know, we're multicultural.
You know, I was in England, I was like, you know, a gazillion white guys who all look exactly the same.
Yeah, we're a multicultural country because they wanted to be more like us.
We set the standard.
And everybody realized that what we had were selling, that worked so well that everybody wanted was the dignity and self-determination of the individual.
That became the center of the Western idea.
It was an idea thousands of years, at least 1,500 years in the making.
The idea of the individual was really a product of Catholic theology, Catholic thinking about the fact that Jesus had incarnated himself as an individual, the fact that individuals were the people who were being saved into heaven, into eternity, and it ultimately developed into this idea that the human person was something deserving of dignity.
You know, it's kind of an irony that Catholic theology created the individual and the individual created the Protestant Reformation.
That's the way it goes sometimes.
This unique concept of the individual is expressed once by Thomas Jefferson famously, but he was really quoting the English levelers of the 17th century.
These were the people who were kind of radical human rights people.
And Jefferson wrote in a letter, he said, the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.
This is what I called in an earlier show a couple of weeks ago, I called it the great speculation, the speculation that other people's inner lives are just as important, just as necessary to God, equally dignified as your inner life, even if you're Jeff Bezos and they're the guy packing your boxes.
Their inner life is just as important as yours, which means that it shouldn't be restrained by the powerful, right?
The ordinary guy has a right not to be defined by the state, not to be defined by his church, not to be defined by his class or his race, and some would say even his gender, which I think is a little defining, but still, obviously, people are saying that, that none of that should define what he does.
He should be able to do what he wants to do.
And what we are disagreeing about, what the right and the left in this country are now disagreeing about, the thing we hate each other about, is what does that mean?
What does the right of the individual mean?
Where does it come from?
If you look at the right, in general, the right believes that your dreams have to be earned.
You have to earn your right to have the things that you want.
You know, life is unfair.
No one owes you anything.
You have to work for money.
You have to strive for success.
You have to take responsibility for your choices.
And you can't go crying to mommy when things don't go right.
You can say and do whatever you want.
You should be free, but that doesn't mean people are going to like you for it.
It doesn't mean people are going to buy your product.
And basically, you are hemmed in by the facts of life, by reality.
You have a certain number of talents.
Other people may have more luck than you.
They may be born with more money.
Things are unfair.
That's what we think.
You have to make your way in the world.
It's up to you.
Nobody owes you anything.
The left believes that what we call, what we conservatives call reality, is really just a series of social constructs designed by the powerful to keep the lowly in their place, right?
So whites rig the world against blacks and men rig the world against women, straits against gays.
Wherever a dream goes unfulfilled, injustice is to blame, right?
This is what that guy, Abram Kendi, says.
Anytime blacks are less represented in somewhere, it's because of racism.
It has to be.
What other reason could there be?
So to make it fair, the left has to take things away from the powerful and give them to the unpowerful.
The money, speech rights, jobs, you have to give these things to the unpowerful because the powerful have hogged them.
They didn't earn them.
They hog them.
And this requires more government power, not less, and less freedom for the strong.
You're not allowed to say what you think if you're a white guy or if you're a rich guy, your money is sacrificed.
Now, obviously, I'm with conservatives on this, on this matter.
I do think conservatives can be incredibly insensitive to inequality and human suffering.
Jeff Bezos, whether you like him or not, he's earned the gazillion dollars that he has.
But when the people who work for him have to urinate in bottles because they don't get enough time off to go to the bathroom during their 10-hour shift, I think we can start to think, wait, this is really untoward.
And I don't think George Washington rolls over in his grave if we pass a law saying you have to treat your workers like human beings.
I mean, I think that we can use the government to do certain things and to modify or at least mitigate the kind of cruelty that people can exercise when they're too powerful.
However, that's one thing.
Definitely you can modify, we can modify our principles in order to get things right on the right.
It is obvious that the left has lost its mind.
They have lost their mind.
They have no responsibility to reality.
And in fact, they are antithetical to reality.
Whenever reality turns up, they want to shout it down.
They wanted to get rid of the Electoral College because they lost an election.
They want to get rid of the Supreme Court, pack the Supreme Court because they lost the majority.
They want to get rid of free speech because they've obviously lost the argument.
So they just don't want reality intruding on anything that they do.
Reality is not a social construct.
Reality is reality.
It hems us in.
If you take money away from the rich, you kill jobs, you decrease the nation's wealth.
You destroy enterprises that we don't even know what they are.
If you don't let big pharma make money, you're not going to get medicines.
You won't even know the medicines that you didn't get because no one will be inspired to go after them.
Men and women are different.
A man can't become a woman.
You know, the fact people have different talents, abilities, different luck.
You cannot make the world fair without oppressing superior people to bring them down to the level of inferior people because you can't bring inferior people up to the level of superior people.
And obviously, since there's always going to be somebody beneath the other person, you've got to ultimately crush everybody and everything becomes.
That's what happened in the Soviet Union.
We saw this.
We saw it fail.
We saw it fail.
So the question is, why are we wrestling with these same ideas?
Why are people cheering for millionaire communist Bernie Sanders?
It's like the blind leading the blind.
It's like people who don't know anything applauding for a guy who knows but hasn't given up, won't tell them what he knows.
He won't tell them what he knows, that this idea does not work.
And the reason is the one-run rule.
They're still pushing these bad ideas, these failed ideas, these ideas that have failed everywhere that continue to fail, because for so long, there have been no consequences to pushing them.
Since the Soviet Union fell, we haven't had a rival overseas.
We've created so much wealth that it seems that it'll never run out, that we can pay for everything.
We've been so free that it never occurred to anybody that they start silencing our speech again, that they try and tell us what to do.
You know, all of this stuff was protected by our success.
People think that they're not even going to die.
I mean, you see them wearing these masks, you know, like they're going to hide from death, that they've forgotten that we all have an appointment in Samara.
You're not going to hide from death.
He is going to find you.
So the American century is ending because our success obscured the iron contours of reality.
But reality never went away, and the gods of the copybook heading are now coming back.
This is the way.
So that means, in some ways, a positive thing.
This is the way the world works.
New things begin because necessity decrees they will begin.
If you were one run up and suddenly find you've got a, you know, you're one run down, suddenly you remember, oh, we've got to get back to the basics.
So the American century is ending.
Like I said last week, it means a new century is beginning.
It's not going to be given to us.
China has actually, you know, you've got to give them credit.
China has come up with a new way of doing tyranny.
They have actually invented a new idea, a new way to do tyranny, where people can still get rich.
They just can't say anything you don't want them to say.
They can't do anything you don't want them to do.
They just have to live the way you want them to live, but they still can make a good living.
That's a new way of doing tyranny.
It's a new idea.
We need to get new ideas.
We need to get down to basics because now we're one run behind.
We need ideas.
We also need money.
And we need guns, lots of guns, in order to win this century for the Western idea of individual liberty.
You know why I love moink?
Because it's called moink.
What a great name for a company, moink.
But also, I love meat.
I love quality meat.
And with moink, you get the highest quality meat you have ever tasted.
And you'll be supporting a real family farm, not just one, real family farms.
Moink delivers grass-fed and grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured pork, and chicken, and wild-caught Alaskan salmon direct to your door, helping family farms become financially independent outside of big agriculture.
Sign up at moinkbox.com slash clavin to get a year of bacon for free.
A year of bacon for free.
I can't say that without bursting into tears.
That's so beautiful.
Change what you get each month and you can cancel any time.
Join the moink movement today.
Go to moinkbox.com slash clavin right now and listeners of this show get free bacon for a year.
Who could resist this?
This is one year of the best bacon you will ever taste, but for a limited time.
How do you spell moink?
That's actually a good question.
It's M-O-I-N-K box.com slash clavin.
That's moinkbox.com slash clavin.
How do you spell clavin?
That's a stupid question.
There are no E's in Clavin.
just make it this easy.
So the whole reason there is a one run rule, the whole reason people forget the consequences, how fragile everything is, how easily things can go away is because they don't look into the future.
They don't know what they can't see.
And so much, you know, so much of life is about what you can see, what's right in front of your face.
And this is the thing about abortion, and this is what I keep preaching about abortion, because I never wanted to oppose abortion.
I was convinced that my arguments were wrong and the anti-abortion arguments were right.
It was very hard for me to let go because I am a natural libertarian.
I want to leave everybody alone.
I want to leave everybody alone.
But there's one person who's not being left alone in an abortion.
And of course, that's the baby.
And the left has done everything to convince themselves that that baby is not there.
They never talk about it.
It's all women's rights and women's rights and reproductive rights and rights of rights and rights.
But the right to life has vanished.
The right to life has vanished because they can't see that baby so they can imagine it away.
And you have people saying things like, you know, the guy, Peter Singer, he is an actual bioethicist.
I think he works at Princeton.
He's the guy who says, well, a child, he's in favor of infanticide, not just abortion.
And he says, a child can't make decisions.
So it's not really fully human.
And I think like, yeah, when you're asleep, you can't make decisions.
Do you mind if I smother you to death?
But he's like, oh, but eventually you wake up.
Bingo.
We live in time.
We live in time.
And a thetis, a child in the womb, is a child coming to be.
We are all helpless at different times in our lives.
This is the time when the child is helpless.
So Texas has pulled what is a little bit of a legal trick.
As I'm speaking, I'm sure this is going to develop more, but as I'm speaking, they basically outlawed abortion.
They said once you hear a, once there's a heartbeat, which I think is about six weeks, you can't have an abortion.
A lot of women don't even know they're pregnant within six weeks.
So it's basically outlawing abortion.
But they put in this little trick in the law where the state doesn't enforce this law.
What it does is it confers upon individuals the right to sue abortionists and basically really break their, ruin their lives.
So there is no case to take to the Supreme Court.
So they brought it to the Supreme Court.
They wanted to block it as being unconstitutional until they could bring the case fully to the court.
In other words, to stop the law from going into effect.
And by a 5-4 margin, the court said, no, we're not going to stop it because there's no case to rule on.
I can get into the complexities of this.
Basically, I felt that the conservative justices were going after John Roberts, who actually sided with the liberals in this, because in a different case, John Roberts made the same argument, and they were against that argument.
So now they're using his argument against them.
But all of that is just clever technicalities.
The fact is, the Supreme Court said in their decision not to block the case, they did say we are not ruling on the constitutionality of this, which has the left in a panic.
The left loves this stuff because they feel that this is, they really can win this.
This is going to make women crazy.
They're going to be living in the, what's that story with the handmaid's tail.
They're going to all be wearing those flying nun hats.
And I always thought they were kind of comely.
I wasn't so sure that was a bad thing.
But here's Elizabeth Warren and Joy Reed living in that particular fantasy.
People think it's hyperbolic when I tweet about the handmaid's tail coming to America.
But I don't think it seems hyperbolic now.
Does it to you?
No.
Roe v. Wade's Legacy00:13:46
You know, I lived in an America in which abortion was illegal when I was young, before Roe versus Wade.
And when abortion is illegal, rich women still get abortions.
Women with resources still get abortions.
Women who have time and who have friends in other places will still get abortions.
So what this law is really about is not stopping abortions across the board.
This is about bearing down on the most vulnerable among us.
Ah, wait, wait, wait.
What?
Who's the most vulnerable among us?
Certainly not, not the women.
The women have a vote.
The women have a voice.
You can see the women.
The women can talk to you.
They can plead for their lives.
It's the baby who can't.
See, I lived in that world too before Roe v. Wade.
There were children running all over the place.
You know, they were messy.
They kept breaking things.
Oh, my God.
It was awful.
You know, this is this fantasy world they live in where their rights are.
First of all, if Roe v. Wade were struck down, the right to pass laws would just go back to the people.
It would go back to the states.
But Joe Biden, Mr. Catholic, Mr. Church, every Sunday, he wants the government, he called on the government to punish Texas.
He says, I'm directing this women's council and the office of the White House Council to launch a whole of government effort to respond to this decision, looking specifically to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to see what steps the federal government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions.
George W. Bush had that law, no child left behind.
This is Joe Biden's law, no child left alive.
You know, that this, that this is the thing that drives them crazy, it partly just means that they think their base is going to love it.
They think this is what their base wants them to do.
And then, of course, there's the other thing they all have to do.
They want to scare John Roberts because John Roberts is like this old lady who's so afraid that the Democrats will destroy the court.
He won't make a move to offend them.
It's like, hey, I've got to protect the court's reputation or they're going to take the court away.
So, Jeffrey Toobin, I love this.
Jeffrey Toobin, we all remember Jeffrey Toobin, who was Toobin on the Zoom call.
Remember, every time I see him on CNN and both his hands aren't visible, I'm thinking, like, what are you doing while you're talking, Jeffrey Toobin?
But he goes after John Roberts.
This is going to hurt.
This is going to hurt the court's reputation.
It's entirely designed to get around the battle.
The courts will not be able to challenge it.
And it has worked to perfection so far because there has not been what's called a ripe case, a case that is able to be addressed by the courts before the law went into effect.
So here we are on September 1st, the first day since 1973 when a state has been able to ban abortion.
1973 is the year of Roe v. Wade.
And the Supreme Court has said nothing.
They have allowed the second most famous opinion of the last hundred years after Brownby Board of Education to essentially be violated, be overrun, but they haven't even said a word about it, which strikes me as a real blow against the Supreme Court's institutional reputation, aside from the issue of whether this law is right or wrong.
That's aimed at John Roberts.
At my institutional reputation, they're going to count.
Oh, my goodness.
That is perfect news commentary.
That is the state of American media today, because Jeffrey Toobin knocked up one of his mistresses, who happened to be the daughter of an old tennis partner of mine, knocked up one of his mistresses and then offered to give her money if she would have an abortion.
And also, allegedly, this is what she says, allegedly offered to pay her to have another child via a sperm donor, but she wouldn't do it because she thought he had a lot of mistresses.
He was already married, but she thought he had other mistresses.
So it's going to really hurt.
This is going to hurt Jeffrey Toobin, basically.
I can't kill my mistress's child anymore.
What the hell, John Roberts?
That's really bad for the court's institution.
It's going to harsh my buzz.
It's going to harsh my buzz if I can't get rid of my mistress's baby.
Oh my goodness.
And then, of course, somebody actually had the temerity, a reporter had the temerity to question Jen Pesaki on this Catholic Joe Biden.
See, the left has an idea about, we were talking before about their idea of identity, that nothing, no society, nothing should be able to challenge their dreams.
So you're allowed to be a Catholic without believing in Catholicism.
You don't have to believe in Catholicism.
You just say, I'm a Catholic.
You show up at church, you take communion, and if you haven't confessed your sins and if you're going around supporting abortion, that's fine.
It's up to you.
It's up to you whether you're a Catholic or not, which is really not how that works.
It only works in the Episcopal Church.
It doesn't work in the Catholic Church.
So they ask her about it, and here's her response.
Why does the president support abortion when his own Catholic faith teaches abortion is morally wrong?
No.
He believes that it's a woman's right.
It's a woman's body, and it's her choice.
Why does the president, who does he believe then, should look out for the unborn child?
He believes that it's up to a woman to make those decisions and up to a woman to make those decisions with her doctor.
I know you've never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant, but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing.
The president believes their rights should be respected.
Go ahead.
I think we've got to move on.
Was it me, did Jen Pesaki, just say that only a man, only a woman, could have a baby?
I'm sorry, but I'm deeply offended.
I am as a birthing person.
It's a birthing person who can have a baby.
I mean, come on.
Listen, the question here is not this, because what's happened today, this minor thing, is just a pause on this law's way to court.
It's obviously going to go to court, and somebody will sue, and that'll give the Supreme Court reason to take it.
But the target is Roe v. Wade, and that's really the issue.
And I have to say, Roe v. Wade, there are two important things about Roe v. Wade.
Roe v. Wade is the source.
It is at the core, at the heart of our divisions today.
It is why we hate one another so much.
It's why we can't have a debate.
It's why we can't, you know, people drop their friends for disagreeing with them.
The court basically, you know, Charlie Cook wrote a really good piece about this in National Review.
He says, he just says, he says, Roe is the problem.
He says, no matter what side you're on, whether you believe in abortion or not, he says, legally, Roe has always been utter nonsense.
And because deep down, we all know it, in this country, there exists profound and sincerely held differences of opinion on the question of abortion, views that run from the insistence that all abortion ought to be banned without exception to the claim that abortion is a positive good that ought to be celebrated.
But there does not exist a set of rival cases for Roe.
Roe is a lie, a contrivance, a calculation.
It's a 50-year-old imposter that has distorted our fundamental law, corrupted our politics, and damaged our Constitution.
It's a gremlin.
And that's exactly right.
It is a badly decided case that took away people's right to make their own laws in their own localities.
There is no right to an abortion in the Constitution.
There is no right that can be inferred from the Constitution.
There is no way you can take the attitudes of the founding fathers and say this is what they meant, this is what they wanted.
It's a complete lie.
The court acted as a super legislature and took away our rights to make our own laws.
When two people stand up and argue in a town hall, when two people have the right to vote and they vote for different people, when they debate, when they listen to debate, when they hear debate, they can live with one another.
Even if you lose, even if you only get a compromise of what you want, even if there's some abortion in your state and you believe it's a sin, you still can say the system is working.
The system where I got my voice, I got my vote, I lost or I had to compromise, that system is working.
Once five people or nine people, it doesn't matter, make the decision, take that decision away from you, you have no recourse but to hate your neighbor.
You know, that is the thing.
That is the hidden reality of Roe v. Wade.
So that's the first thing.
And the second thing is, of course, it's an atrocity.
You know, it's a very difficult thing to talk about abortion in some ways because abortion is an atrocity, but the person doing the abortion, the woman who decides to have an abortion, may not be atrocious herself because she's living in a world that has told her, and this is true of all of us, we live in this narrative and the narrative kind of defines and restricts our reality.
I've often talked about how George Washington held slaves because even though he believed so much in liberty that he gave away a kingdom, he gave away a kingdom because he believed in liberty, but he couldn't understand why his slaves didn't work on his land as hard as he did.
That's because a narrative is a very powerful thing.
It took George Washington, one of the greatest, most virtuous men who ever lived, took him his whole life to get it, to figure it out, that this was not something he could support.
It took him his whole life long, and a lot of the founders never figured it out.
These narratives affect people, so people can do this terrible thing without knowing what they're doing.
But this is the one-run rule in operation.
What you can't see, what you can't hear, you don't see coming.
And there are so many sad stories about women with unwanted pregnancies.
There are stories that they, you know, the left always loves to say incest and rape, which I think makes up like 0.1% of abortions.
But still, there's people who can't afford their children, who don't want their children, who aren't with the man that they were with when they got pregnant.
There's a million sad stories.
But the people who can tell those stories are alive.
They're alive.
They're old enough to speak.
They can tell you, look you in the eye, and tell you what their sad story is.
The person who can't tell you their story is the baby.
The baby cannot tell you that he would have grown up to fall in love, that he would have played with toys, that he would have become an opera singer or a drugstore guy.
You know, he would have done something with his life, that he would have experienced things, that he would have seen the sunrise.
He would have seen, you know, heard music.
He would have done all the things that make a life worthwhile.
And that right was taken away from him.
And if all he had to be was left alone, see, that's the essential right that we all have.
We have the essential right to be left alone.
But because we cannot hear that story, because we cannot hear that narrative, the narrative of the left has triumphed all this time.
And slowly, slowly, the fact that we have ultrasounds, the fact that we can take pictures of babies in the womb slowly, that is turning people's minds away, and it is cutting out the ground out from under Roe v. Wade.
Reality always comes back.
And this is the left's problem.
It's the problem for America now because they're governing and they have governed our culture for so long.
But reality comes back.
And I think it's going to come back for Roe v. Wade.
Let's hope so.
Let us hope so for the lives of these kids.
Now, we opened the show today with a comment from a lady who said her husband ordered a part from rockauto.com, or as we say it here, rockauto.com, and now she's eight months pregnant.
I can't promise you the same results, okay?
I can't promise you that you will get pregnant, but I can promise you when you say rockauto.com, you will show your wife or any other woman you want to impress that you know where to go to get auto and body parts right from your computer.
Women are not going to go for you if you sit in a car which doesn't work pretending to drive to a store where you can buy them from someone who doesn't know anything more about cars than you do.
If you say rockauto.com, she will swoon because she knows you're going to use a unique catalog that's remarkably easy to navigate and offers all the parts you need at great prices.
Go to rockauto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Clavin in their how did you hear about us box so they know we sent you.
And, of course, if you do get pregnant, be sure to name the child after me or just name the child rockauto.com.
This thing I was talking about, about identity, the identity of the individual and how conservatives look at this as something that has to be earned in this kind of tumultuous, difficult, unfair reality.
And the left thinks that it's just something that is there and it's only the unfairness of the world that takes it away.
That's true of nations too, that the identity of a nation is defined by reality.
It's defined by the challenges that it faces.
You can't just say we're going to have a nation that does this in a world where other people want to kill you, in a world where other people want to oppress you.
I don't know.
I don't know why it is, what it is in the human spirit that looks at people who are free and says, we've got to make that stop.
I don't know because I'm so into it.
I love it.
I love the fact that people are free.
I don't care if they disagree with me.
I don't care if they live differently than I do.
I don't care if they offend my moral sense as long as they're not actually hurting other people.
I don't care if the way they live seems to me immoral.
I love other people being free because I love being free.
And I make that great speculation where I say, gee, if I love being free, maybe they love being free as well.
Manchin's Military Concerns00:12:54
But the thing is, the thing is, people do want to dominate.
They want to win and they want to beat you.
And we are in a world, in a dangerous world.
And people know this.
People know this, right?
So the left is now facing that reality as well.
There was a hilarious tweet from Iowa Hawk yesterday.
He is a really funny David Burge.
And he has always been one of the funniest guys with the shortest amount of fewest number of words.
So ABBA is coming back, and there's this picture of them in those motion capture suits for a show they're doing.
And Iowa Hawk tweeted, look, I stood here and took all the retro 70s unemployment and inflation and the lost wars, but this is where I draw the line, the ABBA reinvention, because the 70s were just like this.
The 70s were so much like this.
The high crime, this is the last time we let the left drive the bus, basically.
You know, they said Western Civ has got to go, and they almost had it.
They waved communist flags in support of the Vietnamese and told us how great Vietnam would be once we left.
And we let them hamper the police with Supreme Court decisions and with laws that hampered the police.
And our cities were hellholes, or Chicago, which is the same thing.
Incredible inflation because of the spending, lines at the gas tank, because we didn't have enough oil and we were dependent on OPEC.
The communists were on the march.
People forget this.
The Soviet Union was winning the Cold War.
They were taking over countries in Africa and South America.
But we still had enough money to spend our way out of the Cold War.
That's how Reagan won the Cold War.
He spent the money that was needed.
We still had enough money that we could go into debt, keeping our ever-burgeoning welfare state alive.
We rebuilt our military.
Reagan could still rebuild our military.
But now we're in a lot of trouble.
Right.
And the Democrats are trying to push this three point five trillion dollar budget through with massively.
It's you know, this is the thing.
Trump's cutting of corporate taxes worked.
All those corporations that stayed offshore during the Obama years came back.
They came back.
That's why the economy was booming before COVID.
I mean, the economy before COVID was one of the best American economies, certainly of my lifetime and probably ever.
And that was the Trump economy.
While all that screaming was going on and Trump was starting fights with every dog that barked at him and the press was calling everything a crisis, the color of his tie was a crisis.
His economy really worked because he let the corporations grow.
He let them grow.
So now what Biden thinks he's done is he's got the world to agree, the G7 basically, to agree that they're going to oppose a 15% tax on foreign profits for all companies.
And they think that's going to be like the Berlin Wall.
They think that's going to keep the companies from leaving.
Because this is the problem with socialism is people leave because they want to make more money.
They want to do better in life.
They want to realize their dreams.
So they leave.
So you've got to build a wall and keep them in.
He thinks this tax thing is going to be that wall, but it's not because this $3.5 trillion thing raises taxes a lot, like something like five times higher than that.
So it's not going to work.
So that's going through.
So suddenly, Joe Manchin, right, King Joe Manchin, we should call him, because the other thing it's going to do, by the way, the other thing they're doing is killing our oil independence, which is a huge deal, which just means we're going to be giving money to Russia and giving money to Iran and Venezuela.
So all of this stuff is just a disaster.
But they think it's going to be okay because you're going to get so much free stuff that you won't care about the reality, right?
They think we're still living in this world where we're one run ahead.
We've got enough money to spend our way into anything.
So Joe Manchin, right, King Joe Manchin, because he's the vote, the deciding vote.
He lives in a red state, West Virginia, but he is in a red state, but he's a Democrat.
So he's got to toe the line a little bit.
And suddenly he gets this column.
I opened my Wall Street Journal this morning.
I'm looking at this column from Joe Manchin.
Let's put a pause on the old $3.5 trillion.
And he says the nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future.
Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future.
I disagree.
An overheating economy has imposed a costly inflation tax on every middle and working class American at $28.7 trillion and growing the nation's debt has reached record levels.
Guy sounds like me.
He sounds like my show.
Over the past 18 months, we spent more than $5 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic and now Democratic congressional leaders propose to pass the largest single spending bill in history with no regard to rising inflation, crippling debt, or the inevitability of future crises.
Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans.
Those who believe such concerns are overstated should ask themselves, what do we do if the pandemic gets worse under the next viral mutation?
What do we do if there is a financial crisis like the one that led to the Great Recession?
What if we face a terrorist attack or major international conflict?
How will America respond to such crises if we needlessly spend trillions of dollars today?
In other words, what happens if the next guy swings the bat and suddenly, instead of one run ahead, we're one run behind, we're already one run behind.
He's just letting them know.
This is an incredible thing for a Democrat to say.
He's basically saying reality, remember reality?
It's like the Democrats are saying, no, Joe, not reality.
Yes, reality.
No, not reality.
Why?
Why is he suddenly doing it?
Because of another reality.
Because Joe Biden's poll numbers are going down the drain because of Afghanistan, right?
They just had him, the newest poll has him at 43%.
That's probably closer to 35.
They always inflate the numbers for Democrats.
So Joe Manchin is looking at this and thinking, I would like to keep my job, please.
And he's suddenly not so big a Democrat as he was a moment ago.
And so, you know, the fact that this is happening shows another reality, that one of the reasons that the left has been able to dodge reality is so long is because of this beautiful fantasy world created by the news media.
In the news media fantasy world, you know, anytime you cut back, anytime you even increase spending less, that's a spending cut, right?
They'll do this all the time.
You'll say, let's dial back a little Social Security instead of increasing it, you know, 112%, let's increase it 110%.
He's cutting Social Security.
In the media fantasy world, Donald Trump is Hitler.
Donald Trump hates black people.
Donald Trump has been a friend to black people all his life.
Suddenly he's won NAACP wars.
Suddenly, he's the worst bigot on earth.
They live in this complete fantasy world.
Well, meanwhile, Joe Biden hiding in the basement, right?
He's so afraid of COVID.
He's hiding in the basement.
So we can't see that he's got dementia and that his faculties are crumbling.
He's a brilliant man.
So what a brilliant campaign he ran because it's all happening in this media fantasy world that protects them from reality.
But we see them.
I mean, this is the thing.
We see them.
I've always compared this to the last scene of Singing in the Rain, the old musical, where the evil woman is pretending to sing with the nice girl is behind the curtain singing for her, and they open the curtain and suddenly the audience sees that the evil woman is a fake, right?
But she doesn't know they see.
She doesn't know why they're laughing at her.
That's the Democrats.
We see them.
Even the press knows we see them.
So the press has been asking tough questions about this Afghanistan thing.
And Joe Biden made a speech this week.
I got to tell you, I was ashamed.
You know, I try not to take politics too seriously, but it was a disgrace.
The guy's a disgrace.
I mean, this was, you know, I'm not going to go into it forever because we've talked and talked about Afghanistan and we all see what it is.
But the fact that he promised, let's just play that one clip where he says we're not going to leave anyone behind.
This is back in August talking to Stephanopoulos.
Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to be out is out?
Yes.
How about our Afghan allies?
Does the commitment hold for them as well?
The commitment holds to get everyone out that, in fact, we can get out and everyone should come out.
And that's the objective.
That's what we're doing now.
That's the path we're on.
And I think we'll get to it.
So Americans should understand the troops might have to be there beyond August 31st.
No, Americans should understand that we're going to try to get it done before August 31st.
But if we don't, the troops will be done.
If we don't, we'll determine at the time who's left.
And if there are American forces, if there's American citizens left, we're going to stay till we get them all out.
Bank, Knapp lied, lied.
He left.
They left.
There's hundreds of Americans still left behind.
We're not sure how many thousands of TERPs, the interpreters, and the loyal Afghans who kind of stuck with us.
You know, and whose fault?
See, this is what was so disgraceful about this speech.
Whose fault was it?
Oh, it's the Americans' fault we left them behind.
It was cut 11.
Since March, we reached out 19 times to Americans in Afghanistan with multiple warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan, all the way back as far as March.
After we started the evacuation 17 days ago, we did initial outreach and analysis and identified around 5,000 Americans who had decided earlier to stay in Afghanistan, but now wanted to leave.
Our Operation Allied Rescue ended up getting more than 5,500 Americans out.
It's like it's their fault.
It's their fault.
He said, we're not going to leave until we get him out.
He left, and it's their fault.
It's amazing.
He blames the military for his garbage decisions.
He blamed the military for the decision to shut down Bagram, which was, of course, a major, major mistake.
He said, oh, they all agree.
This is cut 12.
The decision to end the military lift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all the service chiefs and the commanders in the field.
He told them what the mission was.
He told them that they were leaving, that he was cutting the number of troops.
He said, what do you want to do?
Basically, he said to them, what do you want to do?
Defend the embassy or defend Bagram.
And they said, well, if we have to choose, I guess we'll defend, try to defend the embassy and the Kabul airport.
He's the commander-in-chief.
He designed the mission.
It's on him.
And I'm sure that not all the military agreed with him.
It's just awful.
And now there's this story from the New York Post.
There was another one of these phone calls leaked like they used to do to Trump.
Joe Biden pressured Afghanistan President Ashraf Grani that I'm reading from the New York Post to create the perception the Taliban were winning, weren't winning, whether it was true or not.
In a phone call just three weeks before insurgents seized control of the country, a bombshell leaked Transett transcript shows they asked Jen Pasaki about this and here's what she said.
There's a reporting that we'd like to confirm regarding a call in June in July, rather, between President Biden and former Afghanistan President Ghani.
One, that both leaders appeared completely unaware that the Taliban would take over.
And secondly, that they discussed plans to project that Afghan forces were still in control.
Is that accurate?
Can you tell us a little bit more about that call?
Well, I'm not going to get into private diplomatic conversations or leaked transcripts of phone calls.
I'll also note something that the president said in his press conference around the same time of this reported phone call.
The Afghan government and leadership has to come together.
They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in the place.
The question is, will they generate the kind of cohesion to do it?
And what the president conveyed publicly and certainly privately as well, repeatedly to Afghan leaders, as did our national security officials, is that it's important that the leaders in Afghanistan do exactly that, lead.
So that's a PS.
That was like Eli.
That was what she was saying.
What did you get down?
There was just one word, PS.
Here's the thing.
You know, reality is coming, I think, for the Democrats in the fact that people can see what they're doing.
They can see what they are.
They can see that they're not telling the truth.
It's coming in this debt that we can no longer support.
Reality Is Coming00:11:17
It is coming in the form of China.
It is coming in the form of Russia and Iran.
And that's going to define, you know, the, listen, like I said, I think that conservatives could be more sensitive to the inequalities of life and let a little bit of their principles go to make sure those inequalities are not crushing for people.
However, however, conservatives are right.
Reality is where identity has to be formed.
It has to be formed in reality.
We have been so successful so long.
We have been living under the one-run rule where we were ahead and we thought it could never change.
It's changing as we speak.
China is on the march.
They are moving and they've got a good idea.
It's a tyrannical, evil idea, but it's a good tyrannical evil idea, a workable tyrannical evil idea.
And if we want the idea of freedom to continue and to spread, we're going to have to start defending it.
We're going to have to start speaking it.
We're going to have to start defending it at home and abroad.
That means money.
That means guns.
That means ferocity and keeping our businesses, even if we don't like billionaires, we've got to keep them.
We've got to keep them happy because they create things and make things.
We have got to figure this out for the new century, or it's going to be a Chinese century and you will not like it.
So I am a wine lover, but I'm far from a wine connoisseur.
And that's why I really like Wine Access.
Wine Access makes it easy to discover and enjoy wines from under the radar winemakers, iconic producers, and even Michelin-starred favorites.
Here's the thing.
They are the official wine provider of the Michelin Guide.
Wine Access's exclusive Michelin Guide subscription is designed to impress you with good wine, but you'll also receive five seasonal shipments throughout the year with wines curated in partnership with sommeliers from Michelin-starred restaurants.
So you get to learn about the wine you're drinking and why it's so good.
I'm sure you're going to enjoy Wine Access just as much as I do.
I've worked on this exclusive offer for you guys.
So you get $25 off your first two Michelin Guide subscription shipments.
This is only available by going to my special URL, wineaccess.com slash Clavin.
The discount will be applied at checkout.
Don't miss out on this great deal.
Get 50 bucks off at wineaccess.com slash Clavin.
You can lift a glass and think to yourself, how do you spell Clavin?
It's Kavanaugh.
Exactly.
So normally when I talk about cultural stuff, movies, books, I try to hit something that's important.
But today I actually want to talk about a minor piece that nobody is talking about because I think it says something important.
It tells us something important about why we're in such a cultural trough right now.
I think we're not getting a lot of good movies.
We're not getting a lot of good novels.
We're not getting a lot of good anything.
And that golden age of television has kind of melted away.
And I think that there is a reason for this, and part of it is wokeness, is the limitations on what people can say, the limitations on their ideas, the very pinched ideas of the left.
The thing I want to talk about is a show called Schmiggadoon, which was on Apple TV.
It was a mock musical, obviously sort of based on the musical Brigadoon, which I'll talk about in a minute.
And it was produced by Lauren Michaels and had Cicely Strong and Kegel Mike and Key, the guy from Key and Peel, very talented cast.
It was mediocre, and it was a kind of, it's a satire of American musicals from the golden age of American musicals, but it's also kind of a loving tribute to them in a way.
And the reason it matters, the American musical, which includes most of what's called the American Songbook, which I believe is the best American music ever made, you know, America doesn't really do high culture.
It does pop culture really well.
It always has.
And that's why our greatest productions have been things like jazz, Western movies, gangster movies, tough guy crime fiction, which has always been my field.
These are the kind of great achievements of American culture.
And the musical is very, very special and specific.
And the reason it had such a wonderful moment at the peak of the American century is because it reflects something unique about America, namely joy.
It is one of the only art forms that can record joy.
Some of the novels of Dickens can occasionally capture joy, but joy is one of the hardest things to produce in a work of art.
It's easy to produce pathos, tragedy, even comedy, hilarity, satire, all these things.
But just pure joy, the joy of being alive, is something that the musical gives.
And in the 60s, which is when the musical started to die, when the great age of the musical started to die, the revolt happened, the culture changed, people lost their faith, and the joy went out of the country.
They started making terrible musicals for the movies like Don Quixote, The Men of La Mantra, Camelot.
They were just really badly done because they were embarrassed that people should be bursting into song.
It didn't make any sense anymore.
But even then, when guys like Stephen Sondym were reinventing the musical and making it very dark, like in Sweeney Todd, they can't help but give you joy.
When you watch Sweeney Todd, it's full of murder and injustice and ugliness, but the brilliant rhymes and the beautiful music make you joyful.
You can't help it.
This particular kind of joy comes out of something in America that I've been talking about for weeks, which is that individuality that comes from the great stipulation that everybody's inner life is worthwhile.
You know, one of the greatest poems by one of the greatest American poets is called I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman.
I'll read you the whole thing.
It's very short.
Whitman is a terrific American poet.
And here's the poem.
He says, I hear America singing the varied carols I hear, those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be, blithe and strong.
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, the mason singing his as he makes ready for work or leaves off work, the boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, the shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands the woodcutter's song, the plowboys on his way in the morning or at noon intermission or at sundown, the delicious singing of the mother or of the young wife at work or of the girl sewing or washing,
each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.
The day what belongs to the day, at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, singing with open mouths their strong, melodious songs.
You can hear just about everything I talk about in that song.
Ordinary people singing what belongs to them, the work that belongs to them, the pleasure that belongs to them, the life that belongs to them.
That sense that each of us has that life within us, and it is, we speculate that the other guy's life is just as important.
Really, we're speculating, it's just as important to God as my life is to me.
And that's the thing that the left has lost right now.
Our elites have lost it.
I won't just say the left.
It's why they call this that poem is a celebration of deplorables.
It's the celebration of the deplorables, exactly the people that our elites hate.
It is the great speculation that the deplorables are just as good as everybody else.
So the musical kind of brings that song to life.
You know, Whitman says, I hear America singing, and the musical is America singing.
So at its peak, what was happening, one of the things that was happening, is that guys like Rogers and Hammerstein were making musicals that actually had substance and depth.
Until really Oklahoma, the musical was just a review.
It was silly.
It was funny.
It was people dancing and singing, and it was delightful.
But Rogers and Hammerstein brought out plays like Oklahoma, which is about Oklahoma trying to become a state and has a very dark character in it and has murder in it and death.
And Carousel, which is really about a wife beater.
It's a very serious story, but they're filled with, even those are filled with joy.
They're filled with wonderful songs.
Spring is busting out all over Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.
They're full of that joy.
And Alan Jane Lerner and Frederick Lowe were another team and they were not doing so well.
They were bringing out these kind of reviews and they wanted to be like Rogers and Hammerstein.
So they created their first work.
They became one of the most famous, one of the most famous writers of musicals.
They wrote My Fair Lady and Camelot.
But their first really serious work was called Brigadoon.
And if you ever watch Outlander, Outlander Stolen from Brigadoon, it's a story of two New Yorkers hunting in Scotland before one of them, a guy named Tommy, is going to go home and marry a socialite.
And they see an ancient Scottish village come up out of the mist and just suddenly appear there.
And Tommy goes in and he's engaged to this kind of socialite.
We don't really know.
He's kind of unhappy about it, but he doesn't really know why.
And he walks in and he finds true love with this simple Scottish lass.
And that's where you get the joy.
You get this song of joy.
Gene Kelly was in the movie.
The movie isn't as great as the play, but Gene Kelly's in the movie.
And he sings the song.
Let me just get the, that's the one.
Let's play this.
It's almost like being in love.
Here's a little cut of it.
What a day this has been.
What a rare mood I'm in.
Why it's almost like being in love.
There's a smile on my face for the whole human race.
Why it's almost like being in love.
All the music of life seems to be like a bell that is ringing for me.
So what Brigadoon is, is it's a town that has prayed to be taken out of time.
And so it disappears for 100 years at a time.
The world goes by crying and screaming, but it remains.
And every hundred years it appears for a single day.
And they live their life in 100-year increments, one day at a time.
And what Gene Kelly Tommy finds in this town, it's all about marriage.
The whole play is really about marriage.
The man who is about to be married, it all is keyed around a wedding ceremony.
The man who's about to be married sings a song called I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean.
I used to be a wandering guy who would flirt with all kinds of different girls, but now I'll go home with Bonnie Jean.
The lead woman sings this beautiful, beautiful song called Waiting for My Deary.
And she says, I'll hold my heart till he comes strolling by.
It's about commitment.
It's about chastity.
It is about love.
And he goes back.
Tommy goes back to New York.
He can't stay.
He falls in love with his girl.
But if he stays, he can never leave Brigadoon.
So he'll disappear into this hundred-year cycle, and he just hasn't got the will to do it.
And he goes home and he sees his fiancé and he finds that he can't get this girl from Brigadoon out of his mind.
And here's that scene where she's talking and kind of bossing him around.
She wants him to get rid of his friend who's an alcoholic.
She doesn't want him to be best man.
And he's just hearing this girl's voice in his head.
It's so hard to arrange everything.
By the way, do you still want Jeff to stand up for you?
Magnesium For Better Sleep00:03:14
Yes, if he can.
Why?
Nothing.
It's just he's so impossible these days.
Everybody's bored to death with him.
Maybe I'm not interested in everybody, Jay.
But you certainly have been antisocial since you got back to Scotland.
I thought for a while there was something really bothering you.
You certainly wouldn't keep me waiting at me for a dear and happy am I to which room to hear Mr. Fire.
It's a very powerful scene, and he goes back to Scotland.
Spoiler alert, I'm going to give it away because it's worth talking about.
He goes back to Scotland and of course the village is gone.
It only comes up every hundred years and it suddenly appears.
Only Tommy can see it.
And he goes in and really the old man who sort of guards the bridge where people can leave Brigadoon and come into Brigadoon delivers what I think is the single most romantic line in all of fiction.
I think it's the single most good romantic line in all of fiction.
He says, you must really love her, lad.
You woke me up.
And it's a great stuff.
So if you're having trouble falling asleep, I have no sympathy for you because I never go to sleep.
So I don't get to have trouble falling asleep.
I just have trouble lying there awake.
But one thing you might want to try is magnesium.
You might not be getting enough.
Do not run to the store to buy the first magnesium supplement you find.
Most magnesium supplements use only the two cheapest synthetic forms.
And since they're not full spectrum, they won't fix your magnesium deficiency or help you sleep better.
Magnesium Breakthrough by Buy Optimizers.
Take two of these capsules before you go to bed and you will be amazed by how much better you sleep and how much more rested you feel when you wake up.
And as you're sleeping, you'll be able to think of me lying awake, never sleeping.
For an exclusive offer for my listeners, go to www.magbreakthrough.com/slash Clavin.
Use code Clavin10 to save 10% when you try magnesium breakthrough.
And one more thing, for a limited time, Bio Optimizers is also giving away free bottles of their best-selling products, P30M and Mazymes, with select purchases.
So go to www.magbreakthrough.com/slash Clavin to get your exclusive 10% discount, plus the chance to get more than 50 bucks worth of supplements for free.
And you're saying, well, great, now I can sleep, but I don't know how to spell Clavin.
It's exactly.
So Schmigadoon, this SNL Saturday Night Live kind of takeoff of it, is about Key and the, I forgot the lady's name, but Cicely Strong.
She's an SNL veteran.
They are two doctors.
They are playing doctors.
You do not believe them for a moment.
But they're in this relationship and she wants commitment and romance.
And he's kind of just a guy.
He's got his girl.
Love Affair Under Pressure00:08:02
He's fine.
He's kind of tired.
And so their love affair is going stale and she wants them, she's reading all these books, how to get a relationship back online and all this stuff.
And she takes them away on this relationship, you know, kind of outward bound type thing.
And they're walking in the woods in the rain.
And suddenly, Schmigadoon, this town, comes up out of the mist.
And they walk across this bridge and they enter Schmigadoon.
Now, here's the thing.
The songs are kind of based on Rogers and Hammersey more than, really more than Lerner and Lowe.
So Schmigadoon sounds like Oklahoma.
But the town is absolutely perfect.
And here's the song, Schmigadoon, as they walk in.
The most beautiful, wonderful, magical, green song.
What is happening?
It must be something they do for tourists, like Colonial Williamsburg.
Sun shines bright, it's as sweet!
So what's wrong with this picture?
Okay.
The thing is, Schmigadoon is perfect.
The air is as sweet as a macaroon, and everything is perfect.
Nobody is unhappy.
Everybody is happy.
Everything is happy all the time.
And the reason this is bad satire, the reason it is bad, that the show didn't go anywhere and even the reviewers didn't like it, is because that's a complete misrepresentation of what the musical was.
The musical was full.
There's even a line in the show about this.
The musical was full of social awareness.
You know, songs like Old Man River that were about bigotry in Showboat.
As I said, Carousel is about a wife beater.
There is lots of death westside story about juvenile delinquency and crime and also about bigotry.
The musicals dealt with serious things and the joy that arose out of these musicals didn't arise from the fact that America thought it was perfect.
It arose from the fact what Walt Whitman said was that each person in America thought he mattered.
That's where the musical comes from.
That's where the joy comes from.
And so they misidentify what the musical was.
The musical was not a statement that life is perfect and everything goes all right.
Yes, musicals were mostly comedy.
They call musical comedy.
They had happy endings.
But that joy that people started to find corny in the late 1960s, that joy did not arrive from it derived from a sense of perfection.
And America's pride didn't derive from a sense of perfection.
It derived, you know, when Walt Whitman wrote that poem, it was on the eve of Civil War, and he was a nurse in the Civil War.
He saw the killing.
He saw the tragedy of it, and he knew it was going to be a tragedy.
He wasn't writing about a perfect world.
He was writing about a country in which each voice mattered, and that's why they were singing.
So because they set up this false dichotomy, because these two unhappy modern lovers walk into a Schmigadoon that thinks it's perfect, they have nothing to learn from this because nothing's perfect.
There's nothing for them to learn.
They find that they can't get out of the town until they are truly in love.
You cannot leave the town until you are, only true love can pass out of the town.
So they stay, and what do they do?
Do they learn about themselves?
Do they learn what's wrong with their relationship?
Do they learn about chastity and commitment and the romance of marriage?
No.
They teach Schmigadun that they're not really happy because gay people are not being allowed to love each other.
That's really what it's about.
And gay people aren't, and people are being demonized for having children out of wedlock.
And the best song in it is a song that this woman who's married to the mayor is Alan Cumming, terrific actor.
She's married to the mayor, and he's obviously gay.
And she doesn't see that he's gay.
And the wife sings this song called, He's a Queer One, That Man O'Mine.
Here's a brief part of it.
Some men stumble home at dark, want dinner and dessert.
Other men have eyes that spark at every passing skirt.
But my man loves cooking.
I've never caught him looking at other gals more young, petite, or fine.
He's a queer one.
Bad man all mine.
It's a very funny song.
There are some funny songs in it.
It's not, you know, the whole thing about this trough we're in of American culture where nothing good is being made is it's not for lack of talent.
We have plenty of talent.
The show is packed with talent.
Key is incredibly talented.
Key and Peel were fantastic.
But when you can, your ideas are no good.
You can't describe reality.
And the thing about the musical is it did describe something real.
It's not, we don't walk around all joyful and singing every day.
We don't break into sound and we don't dance.
But it was saying something about America.
It was saying that it heard America singing.
So what happens?
Because this false perfection, because what they're saying is, oh, in the past, America thought it was just so great, but it wasn't nice to gaze and it wasn't nice to unwed mothers.
They go around the race question because, as they make a joke about it, there's cross-casting in Shmigadun.
So there are people who have, there are people of color.
So they don't even address that.
But they do address this sense that until the past learns that we need to have more sexual variety and less Puritanism, the past can't be happy.
That's what happens.
And what happens meanwhile to these two lovers is they cheat on one another, they screw around, and they decide to leave with their own new lovers and then think, nah, it's not, well, the other one was fine.
They'll go back.
And really what they learn is they have to accept this crappy modern relationship that they have where they're sleeping together but not married.
They have to accept that because that's kind of what true love is.
The values are just really screwed up.
And what they are, what they're saying is that we, in our wisdom, have to go back into America's past and teach America's past our wisdom because we are so much wiser.
It's a complete misunderstanding of where any wisdom we may have comes from.
It comes from them.
It's a gift from them.
You know, this is another thing about the absence of reality.
Just in the same way that they don't see a baby in the womb will grow in time, right?
Is living in time and has a validity in time.
And just in the same way that they don't see that pressures from without cause different values.
And when those pressures are relieved, you have more freedom to have values.
They do not understand that they stand on the shoulders of giants.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, but the left thinks they're flying.
They think that, oh, we're just here, we're just up here.
And that's why they tear down statues.
That's why they make fun of the past.
That's why they can't respect the past.
Because everything that happened in the past is so evil because they just didn't have our fantastic wisdom.
Shmegadun is a false satire.
It is a false play because it basically says, we know better than the people who made us who we are.
We know better than our ancestors.
We know better than the traditions.
But if we do, if we do know better than the traditions, it's because our traditions taught us better over time.
They got it exactly backward.
The whole purpose, you know, the whole purpose of us is to continue what we were given into the future.
And as I said last week, that's going to require change.
That's going to require accepting things we haven't seen before.
But that's different than saying we are going to break with the past because we're so much wiser.
Schmigadun is a failure as a piece of art because it doesn't do what it sets out to do.
Media Coverage Spreads00:16:07
If you want to go back and see Brigadoon, if you can ever see it on stage with a good cast, it's absolutely fantastic.
It is a beautiful romantic movie, even as it stands, even with its flaws.
It's a beautiful romantic movie full of the joy of the American musical, which was one of the finest creations of America at its height.
So here's a good podcast I've discovered.
Jordan Harbinger, Apple named him one of the best podcasters of 2018.
It's aimed at making you better informed, more critical thinkers, so you can get a sense of how the world actually works and come to your own conclusions about what's happening, even inside your own brain.
Each episode features a fascinating guest.
And when I say there's something for everyone, I mean it because he talks about all kinds of people.
In one episode, Jordan talks to a hostage negotiator from the FBI who offers techniques on how to get people to like you and trust you.
I've never been able to do that, so you might want to check that out.
Another episode tells the story of a cinematographer who discovered a lost city in the jungle and made one of the most important archaeological finds of the century.
I listened to one about psychotics that was really interesting.
Jordan's always focused on pulling useful practical insights out of his guests.
If that's not worth checking out, what is?
We really enjoy this show, and we think you will as well.
There's just so much here.
Check out jordanharbinger.com slash start for some episode recommendations or search for the Jordan Harbinger Show.
That's H-A-R-B-A-S-N-Boy-I-N-A-N-Nancy G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
All right, we've got Andy No coming up to tell us about Antifa and what they're doing.
But first, once a month, the hosts of Daily Wire come together backstage for some lighthearted debate and to dissect the trending political and cultural topics of the moment.
And sometimes it just breaks up into a fistfight.
I'm very excited to tell you that our backstage in October is going to be staged a little differently.
Instead of just tuning in from your home, you'll be able to see us live and on stage at the famous Ryman Auditorium right here in Nashville, doing what we do best, making sense, and trying to destroy one another's reputations.
So join me, Candace Owens, Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, and Matt Walsh for a backstage like never before.
Pre-sale tickets sold out within hours yesterday, and general admission tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. today.
We're offering three different kinds of tickets, VIP tickets that come with an exclusive gift and a meet and greet with Daily Wire talent, followed by a ticket that comes with upgraded seating and a show poster, and finally tickets for general seating, whichever ticket you choose, I guarantee it's going to be a good time.
We did it once before and it was just a blast.
Hurry.
Head to dailywire.com slash Ryman to purchase your tickets before they sell out.
And it has never been more important to understand what's going on in the political sphere.
And that's why we started our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
I listen to this every day.
It's terrific.
The Daily Morning Show is dedicated to bringing you all the news you need to know without any spin or hidden agenda.
It's the only daily podcast that values your time and the truth.
And while we're working overtime to make sure fact-based news still has a platform, we need your help to keep it trending towards number one.
So subscribe, start listening now to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review if you like what you hear.
All right, my guest today is Andy Ngo.
He has brought a new thing to American journalism, namely journalism.
You can tell because the other journalists are so envious of him, they hate him.
He's been out there covering Antifa, which has been causing some of the worst civil strife this country has ever seen.
He drew national attention when they beat the living daylights out of him, I think in 2019 in Portland.
He has a book, Unmasked, Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.
It was a New York Times bestseller.
Andy, thank you for coming on.
I appreciate it.
I'm so glad to be here.
Thank you.
So I saw pictures of Portland a couple of days ago.
I don't know.
You may have taken them actually.
It looked like the Weimar Republic.
I mean, it was the Proud Boys and Antifa shooting at each other and throwing gas and fireworks and all this stuff.
Have you been up there recently?
The last time I did field reporting undercover was in May of this year, and I was assaulted very badly by them again.
And what is going on in Portland?
I mean, is it still this violent?
Well, I've been writing and recording and speaking out about Antifa for five years now.
They became a mainstream phenomenon in Portland and other American cities after the election win of Trump in 2016.
And that's because they had now a propaganda machine in the press who were pumping out day in and day out this claim that America had experienced a fascist takeover under Trump, that this is an existential threat for immigrants, people of color, sexual minorities.
These are all lies, but it radicalized the public and it radicalized the mainstream left to be much, much more tolerant of political violence, if not advocate and participants of it themselves.
So yes, the images and videos out of Portland from you're talking about the end of August, there was a really bad riot there.
But these are clashes that happen really routinely in the city.
And it's not just Antifa versus right-wing violence.
It's about actually freedom of expression itself being under threat through violence.
It's been under threat actually for a number of years.
You cannot have, for example, a Christian worship event in public in Portland or a conservative rally or a flag waving rally.
You cannot have that there unless you have your own private security, private militia.
And so these groups and individuals who want to engage in their First Amendment protected activities will do it and they'll come with their security.
Antifa will announce publicly their intentions to shut it down through the use of violence and they do.
They come and then people brawl on the street.
The violence goes onto the streets.
People bring their weapons.
People nearly get killed.
Last year, somebody did get killed in a politically motivated murder with just almost a one-year anniversary just over it.
And that was when a self-described Antifa member stopped a Trump supporter in downtown Portland and shot him dead and then became a fugitive before being killed by federal authorities.
Where are the police doing these things?
That's a great question.
People are angry at police, but it's not really their fault.
And I'm speaking as somebody who's been assaulted several times right by the central police station and there's never, I never get help and there's been no arrests.
So, you know, I'm a big critic of the Portland Police Department.
But the reason why law enforcement don't respond, and they actually announced ahead of this last riot that they weren't going to be intervening and a number of variables.
One, in response to George Floyd's death last year, Portland, like many cities, defunded police.
And then on top of that, the politicians and the public demoralized officers so severely that dozens and dozens of them resigned or took early retirement.
And the Portland Police Department, like departments in urban areas across the U.S., is really struggling to hire.
So on one level, you have an issue of actually there just not being the actual resources to respond.
Two, and some of the other consequences of that law enforcement pullback because of the demands of BLM and Antifa is that Portland is experiencing now its record number of homicide and violent crimes.
Another thing you have is that whenever police do respond, the officers get injured when they try to make arrests of the Antifa rioters.
This whole media apparatus works to release these videos that are selectively edited to make it look like the police are using excessive force.
And then that launches lawfare.
All these antifa rioters and rioting suspects have so much support from these far-left legal groups and who have untold sums of money that they're able to crowdfund to pay for bail, to pay for legal aid, and to launch lawsuits.
So Portland police have just decided they're not going to respond anymore, really.
And so that's why you see what happened recently and what's been going on now for actually a number of years.
It's absolutely amazing that you are virtually the only reporter covering the story.
I mean, this is not a mainstream story at all.
And you've been attacked in the press for being you're not a journalist because you're actually telling the truth about this.
You broke a story a couple of days ago.
This is an LA story, but also an Antifa story about this we spa, is that how they pronounce it?
First, before you tell the new development, remind people what this story is.
Yeah, so back on the 24th of June, you and your viewers and listeners may remember there's this viral video of a black woman at a spa in LA.
She was confronting the staff.
She alleged that a person exposed their male genitalia to women and girls in the women's section of the spa.
That video went viral.
There was a lot of media coverage about it.
And it led to two protests, which Antifa showed up to both of them and it became riots.
Antifa had attacked the women and the protesters who were against what allegedly happened at the spa, which is that victims came forward to allege that there was indecent exposure.
The story by the establishment liberal press was they sought to cast doubt on if it happened at all.
Slate infamously published a story describing the whole incident as a transphobic hoax without evidence, by the way, they stated that.
And then that was repeated by other journalists.
Two months, fast forward two months, I reported out yesterday in the New York Post that there were discrete charges from the LA County District Attorney on Monday of this week against a suspect in connection with the case.
This individual has been charged with five felony counts of indecent exposure.
I looked further into the suspect's background.
Her name, she identifies as a trans woman, is Darren Marager.
She is a registered sex offender in California.
She has two prior convictions of indecent exposure.
In 2008, she had a conviction for failing to register as a sex offender.
And in addition to the we spa charges, has six felony charges in a separate indecent exposure case in a different locker room.
So this is the person's background that all these trans activists and people on the left were defending.
And it, again, shows the hypocrisy of the people who say believe women, believe victims, when you had four women and a minor girl, all people of color come forward to law enforcement to identify themselves as victims of alleged indecent exposure.
And they were accused in the public press of being transphobic, of being far-right, of being QAnon, of being somehow connected to far-right extremists.
So where was your story?
Where did you break the story?
In the New York Post.
In the New York Post, the America's Paper of Record.
Has anybody picked it up?
Yeah, so after, I think, 10 hours or so, the LA Times did a story about it, failed to mention, by the way, that suspect's a registered sex offender.
It's been picked up by other press places now.
LAPD overnight did release a statement confirming everything that had reported, by the way.
I think another layer of analysis you have to bring into here is that there hasn't been a reconciliation between how best to protect women's faces and also to respect the protect the rights of people who are transsexual.
The militant trans activists for years now have sought to strong arm their way through this either through intimidation or violence, literally at times, forcing through these laws about that anybody who identifies however they want through their gender expression can enter any space.
And then you have cases like this who are squashed in the press.
And I don't, you know, the LA Times and the other papers of records would not have investigated this if I wasn't, if I didn't break the story and forced them to.
By the way, I should mention that I did interview the suspect who's been charged and she does deny the allegations.
However, it's just, we have such a militant radical extreme trans lobby in the United States and also in the United Kingdom who are anytime you bring up the nuances in these issues, whether if you are a woman feminist activist or if you're a journalist, you're just accused of being a bigot and trans folk.
And again, it's meant to delegitimize any countering voices on what is a pretty complicated subject.
So Joe Biden famously said that Antifa is just an idea.
Several people in the news media have compared them to the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy because they were fighting fascists.
And after all, it's right there in the name, Antifa.
Who are these guys?
I mean, obviously, you don't get beaten up by an idea.
Is this one big organization?
Is it a coalition of organizations?
What is it?
Well, the name is a misnomer, and that's intentional.
It's meant to fool low-information people into thinking that these are anti-fascists who are protecting civil rights, protecting people of color, protecting sexual minorities, when in reality, they exist as a coalition of extremist far-less groups who advocate for terrorist attacks against the state, against citizens, against overthrowing the Constitution.
I write about all that in my book, and I think I don't, you know, every day that their violence is documented and their murders, in their attempted murders, I'm always, I just, you know, I ask how much more do they need to show who they really are on camera for the public to believe it.
Like they can, they've tried so hard to assault all the journalists and reporters and independent journalists who have cameras that to date we're not getting a lot of video.
But fortunately, some of the assaults were captured on camera recently at the end of August in Portland.
And anti-fascist, anti-fascism, antifuns, it's just a branding thing.
It's similar to the misnomer of Black Lives Matter.
Like, how could you take, how could you be opposed to a movement or group that says it is to protect the lives of black people?
Well, again, just hold back, look at their ideology, look at look at the statements made by those who are involved in the organizations, and you see what they actually are, which they're militant far-left extremists with a revolutionary agenda, and they advocate for the use of violence at times.
Art Reflecting Reality00:13:28
And, you know, I think like I'm ready to move beyond the debates about theory and ideology of Antifa.
This is a group that actually kills.
And just this week, the LAPD made an arrest of an alleged Antifa member who was involved in an attempted murder.
There was a number of weeks ago in August, there was an anti-masking protest outside LA City Hall, and Antifa showed up.
There was brawling in the streets and somebody got stabbed in the chest.
This victim, who's a Hispanic man, by the way, suffered a lacerated heart and a punctured lung.
Well, this individual, Eric Cohen, a suspect, has been arrested by the LAPD.
And in Portland, they're pending charges against somebody who is accused of throwing a firebomb at a group of law enforcement who has attempted murder charges.
So, like, this is a serious thing.
And it's not new in Latin America, going back decades, has dealt with far-left terrorists in this country.
And people forget that.
And that's intentional, by the way, about the press and those who hold the reins of cultural power and academe and information control.
Like, people don't know, people my age and younger don't know about the Black Liberation Army or the Weather Underground, you know, like, because all these members of these former groups, these convicted terrorists, they've been rehabilitated until respectable professions such as academe.
The district attorney of San Francisco, his father and mother were involved in the Weather Underground terrorist group and were jailed for it.
And the former New York governor, Cuomo, just let in his final days before leaving office release Chester Borden's father.
And he was involved in a conspiracy crime where three people were murdered.
So, yeah, there are so many layers of issues here.
Yeah, we're talking to Andy No, it's spelled NGO.
His book is called Unmasked, Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.
Andy, thank you very much for coming on.
I hope you come back.
I'd like to talk about this more.
I would love to.
Thank you so much.
It's great to meet you.
Now, some of you I can see out there, you look a little sad.
And I know it's because you have to say goodbye to your problems.
You've held on to them this long, but they have to go because it's time for the mailbag.
What's the song that is played where everybody is on the chair?
I don't know what the hell is going on here.
Yeah!
You should just take the screaming out, just leave Joe in there.
All right, from Matthias, Hey, Drew, something I've noticed about the modern entertainment industry that is much different from the entertainment of old is the lack of tragedies.
Shakespeare wrote tragedies.
The story of King Arthur is a tragedy.
And the ancient Greeks also seem to have been fond of the genre.
The closest things we have to tragedies are Joker and Breaking Bad, which aren't really tragedies because the protagonist effectively wins in the end.
Actually, Breaking Bad is a tragedy.
What do you think this says about our society and how we view our own mortality?
I hope this question was sufficiently bigoted and hateful.
It's a really good question.
I got it a couple of weeks ago and I've been trying to get it in.
You know, the problem with tragedy is that it's inherently about great men.
That's what makes tragedy tragedy, is that it's a great man whose personal flaw brings about the tragic end.
That is not a Republican idea.
Republican small are.
In Death of a Salesman, which was a great American tragedy by Arthur Miller, the wife, it's just about a salesman, it's about a traveling salesman, and the wife says attention must be paid to such a man.
And the argument of the play of Arthur Miller is that in America, tragedy happens to the little guy.
The little guy's tragedy is just as important.
Talking about the great speculation again, the little guy's tragedy is just as important as Macbeth's.
And that's why, and it doesn't quite work dramatically for some reason.
And that's why our tragedies tend to be gangster movies because gangster, and crime movies like Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, gangster movies preserve the ancient structures of kingship.
I mean, gangster movies, if you took them out of the gangster milieu and made them kings and knights, it would make more sense.
You would see what it is.
But furthermore, beyond that, we don't even want to get, the elites despise the little guy so much, so they can't even write the Arthur Miller type tragedy.
They can't even write the Republican tragedy.
And because they believe that all broken dreams come from injustice, they can't even write a character who destroys himself.
Now, they used to be able to do this, and it's really the woke philosophy that is keeping them from seeing the world because woke is stupid.
Woke is not realistic.
Woke has nothing to do with reality.
And you cannot write art, good art.
You cannot make good art without some kind of acknowledgement of reality.
And so I think that that's why we are low on tragedies now.
I think we have had some great tragedies, but they do tend to be gangster movies, you know, and people like Arthur Miller really thinking about the form of the tragedy and how to apply that to a Republican setting.
Really, I think that the Republican, when I say Republican, I mean like being in a republic, Republican art is going to tend to be more on the order of musicals and genre stories.
And I think there's a reason that America produces those so well, and jazz and things that arise out of the common man.
I think that there's a reason America does those so well and hasn't produced really any high art worth retaining.
From Patrick, thanks for all you do.
We love your show and watch it every week.
I have a question.
You say more about culture, a lot of cultural questions today.
You say that art is always good when it reflects life.
That's not what I said, but let's hear the rest.
And people should not get in the way of art reflecting reality.
I agree with this to an extent.
However, I think a good argument could be made that 50 shades of gray is representative of a decent amount of people's sex life and therefore of reality.
Is that a good piece of art?
Is there a point where art is pornographic?
In your last episode, you talked about the pornographic view of life that a large amount of people have.
Should we be making art about that?
Shouldn't art reflect the beautiful?
Thanks a lot.
We appreciate your work and insight.
Well, I have to start with the fact that what I didn't say that art is always good when it reflects life.
I said that all good art reflects life.
That's a totally different thing, right?
You can write something that does reflect life and that is realistic, and that's garbage.
And 50 shades of gray, I would say, is pornographic garbage.
And it does tell us something.
It really tells us something about women's fantasies.
It doesn't really tell us about the way people live.
A guy who hits you like that is probably not as beautiful and handsome and salvageable.
Really, it's a beauty in the beast story, as I understand it.
She saves him from this screwed-up sexuality that he has by taking the beatings, you know, but it's really just a way to live out that fantasy.
So art is never pornographic.
Pornography is never art.
But art can deal frankly and graphically with sex.
And what makes it not, you know, that famous thing where the Supreme Court justice said, I can't define pornography, but I know what it is when I see it.
I disagree.
I think you can define pornography.
I think pornography reduces people to outlines.
And when you deliver real, full, honest, compassionate, artistic characters, you can show them having sex.
And it's not pornographic.
It may not even be titillating.
I mean, the guy who does that, you know, in movies is Martin Scorsese, who can do these incredible sex scenes.
And because he's a Catholic and full of guilt, you think like, I don't want to live that life.
I don't want to, you know, live like the Wolf of Wall Street is just full of sex.
And you just think, oh, my goodness, I don't want to live like that.
So in other words, I'm not saying that anything in art that reflects life is good.
What I'm saying is if it is a work of art, which is another question altogether, if it is a true, fine, excellent work of art, don't be so fast to dismiss its frankness about sex or language because if it's truly a terrific work of art, like some of Scorsese's movies, he did it for a reason.
He put that language in, you know, Goodfellows, which I think is a work of art.
He put that language in Goodfellows for a reason.
And so you don't have to watch it if you don't like it.
If that offends you, you know, you don't have to say, you can say it's a work of art, but it's not my cup of tea.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But there is something wrong with curtailing the way an artist works because he's violated some precept that would be true in life, right?
You don't want people walking around in life talking like that.
You don't want people walking around being promiscuous.
But in art, it may show you something that is important to know.
And so that's the difference.
It's not that anything that shows reality is art.
It's that any great work of art is going to have something to say about reality.
More cultural things from Joseph.
Do you think it's possible you misunderstood the point of the suicide squad in your review?
This was an extra thing that you got if you subscribe to the YouTube channel.
I did a review of Suicide Squad talking about the fact that I thought it was nihilistic because it tears people to pieces and makes it funny because we don't really care about the people.
But Joseph says the movie seems to be establishing flippant disregard for human life, not to endorse it, but to subvert it.
James Gunn establishes a world where human life is cynically unvalued by everyone, and it puts you in that headspace where we participate in the disregard while laughing at it.
This puts us in the heads of these hardened supervillains who treat human life as disposable, but that makes way for the character's slowly growing consciousness as they grow to care.
All right.
A good reading of the piece.
I think that there is something of that.
I think it's a legitimate reading of the piece.
But I still think, I didn't really think it was that good.
I thought it was funny.
But the problem with the reading is that it doesn't work emotionally.
It's emotionally inchoate.
It's like my saying Friday the 13th is a wonderful work of art because the killer gets caught at the end.
I know he doesn't get caught at the end.
He always comes back, but let's say he gets caught at the end.
Friday the 13th works by having women take off their shirts so that you see they're absolutely beautiful women exposing themselves who are turned on and then they get killed.
They get stabbed to death, chased around, and then they get slaughtered.
And that's where the excitement and the emotional core of those stories are, and that's why they're trash.
It doesn't mean you can't make a good slasher movie.
You can, but those stories are trash because all they're doing is titillating you with sex and then linking the sex to violence.
And that is a pornographic thing to do because it eliminates the life of the woman who's being killed.
She is being killed for your enjoyment only, and she's taking off her shirt for your enjoyment only.
The core, the emotional core of Suicide Squad is the comedy of people being taken to pieces and the little sentimental, and it is sentimental, touch you get from Idris Elba liking a rat because he was afraid of rats.
That does not make up for that emotional core of nihilistic destruction.
And so if he were an artist, he could have done that.
And like Scorsese shows you sex in a way that you think like, I really don't, that woman is gorgeous with her clothes off, but I don't want to live that life because it's wrong.
He's an artist.
I don't think this guy is an artist, or at least he's not yet.
He's certainly a talented director, but he's not an artist yet.
With that, I must plunge you into the empty, vast darkness of despair called the Clavenless Week.
If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you might have just enough, just enough new material to crawl and creep your way through it.
I doubt it, though.
But if you do, I'll be here next Friday with The Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm Andrew Clayton.
Hey, if you enjoyed this episode and want to spread the word, give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe to.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, basically wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, remember to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, the Matt Walsh Show, and the Michael Knoll Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Production manager, Pavel Vidowski.
Edited by Danny D'Amico.
Lead audio mixer, Mike Cormina.
Animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production coordinator, McKenna Waters.
And our production assistant is Jacob Falash.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production, Copyright Daily Wire, 2021.
Joe Biden promises to wield the full force of the federal government to stop Texas from saving babies.