Ep. 1099 - Russia Unleashes Its New Transgender Super Spy
Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl
The first-ever “transgender” Army officer gets indicted for trying to pass confidential info to the Russians, the economy turns out to be even worse than we thought, and Republicans are “pouncing” again!
- - -
DailyWire+:
Join the Jeremy’s Razors Contest For The Car at https://www.jeremysrazors.com/play. See terms and conditions for complete details at https://www.jeremysrazors.com/referralterms
Become a DailyWire+ member today to movies, shows, documentaries, and more: https://bit.ly/3SsC5se
- - -
Today’s Sponsors:
PureTalk - Get 50% off your first month with promo code ‘KNOWLES’’ https://www.puretalkusa.com/landing/KNOWLES
- - -
Socials:
Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6
Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA
Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg
Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Department of Justice announced yesterday that the US Army's first ever transgender officer has been indicted for trying to provide confidential health records to someone he believed to be a Russian agent.
And today, we're just trying to make sense of the shocking news.
Who could have possibly foreseen that a severely mentally ill man might do something unusual and disordered?
It just doesn't add up.
A man who thinks that he is a lady got confused about which country he is supposed to be serving.
It's a regular man bites dog kind of story.
That word service keeps coming back to me because while now, ever since the Obama administration, the US military has become a place of entitlement for people with all sorts of circumstances that make them less than fit for the battlefield, it was not always that way.
In the way back olden days of about a decade ago, the US military was an institution dedicated to service.
Not to affirmative action.
Not to the affirmation of delusion.
Service.
Tough guys signing up to sacrifice to protect the rest of us.
Now that dynamic has flipped.
Not just in the military, but throughout virtually all of our institutions.
An inversion that has already led to far greater disorder than a man in a dress.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm just trying to make sense of it.
It just doesn't make sense.
My favorite comment yesterday from Snooki G, who says, Frankly, I am less surprised that Lizzo was given this priceless and irreplaceable item to desecrate than I am that she didn't purposefully break it as a protest against slavery and oppression.
I suppose, you know, Lizzo, though, actually is a flautist.
So I suspect she actually really enjoyed playing the flute.
But for the Libs who set this whole thing up, yeah, it's true.
They hate James Madison.
It's all a big political stunt.
Founding Fathers bad, racist, terrible, evil, America bad.
This is just making a mockery of all of that, which is why you have this lady jiggling around with barely any clothes on, making a mockery of James Madison's flute.
But they wouldn't destroy it, necessarily, at least not at first, because In many ways, these national symbols that they desecrate, actually, those symbols and institutions have more value to the libs if they are kept around in some way.
So the institutions and the symbols have more value to the libs if the libs can just...
Destroy them, rip out their guts, invade them like invasion of the body snatchers, and then kind of prance around in them.
And this is true of virtually all of the institutions, the church.
The libs go into the churches, they gut the churches, they pull out all the stuff that make the churches the churches, and then they go in and turn them into some kind of woke machine with the facade of a church that's more useful to the libs.
It's true of our executive agencies, it's true of the universities, it's true of the media, it's true of everything.
And so I don't think that the libs will destroy it yet.
They're going to exploit these symbols and use them for a little bit longer to communicate their messages.
When you want to communicate your message, where are you going to go?
You got to check out Pure Talk.
Right now, head on over to puretalk.com, enter code Knowles.
The government is addicted to spending.
That reckless spending is driving up the costs of everything.
It's not fair, but you don't have to be a victim.
There are things that you can do right now to lower your monthly expenses and mitigate the impact of inflation.
Step one, switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk.
Take a look at your cell phone bill.
If you are with Verizon, ATT, or T-Mobile, I know how much you're paying.
You're paying way too much.
Pure Talk will give you unlimited talk, text, and six gigs of data for just $30 a month.
That could be a huge savings for you and your family.
That's grocery money, gas money, whatever.
Pure Talk never raises their rates.
By switching to Pure Talk, the average family of four is saving over $75 every month.
Customers are realizing that they simply do not need as much data as they thought.
Join the hundreds of thousands who are making the switch to Pure Talk today.
When you switch to Pure Talk, with my special discount, you will get 50% off your first month.
Go to puretalk.com, choose your plan, and enter code Knowles for this special offer.
That's puretalk.com, enter code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, for 50% off your first month.
On the civilian side of things, putting the military aside for a second, on the civilian side of things, Virgin Airlines has just made a big announcement.
They've got a big dress code change for their stewardesses, and now stewards, I guess, also in the airline, because, well, it's a little confusing, I guess, because now the stewards can dress like the stewardesses, and the stewardesses can dress like the stewards.
Virgin announces, we've changed our uniform code to give our crew, pilot, and ground teams the option to choose the Which of our iconic uniforms designed by Vivienne Westwood best represents them?
That was a Freudian slip because now the uniforms are going to be ironic rather than iconic because the men are going to dress like ladies and vice versa.
My first reaction when hearing this announcement, do you remember when the service industry was about serving customers?
No.
Do you remember that?
That was a long time ago.
I've worked in the service industry before.
I've worked in restaurants.
I've worked catering.
I've worked in fast food.
And call me old-fashioned.
When I was coming up in those jobs, the point was to give the customer what the customer wanted.
The customer was always right.
Your job in the service industry is to make the customer feel more comfortable, feel better.
I do not want to see some husky, deluded man wearing a skirt on my flight.
I never fly Virgin anyway, but if I were to fly Virgin, I mean, it's a completely failing airline.
This is probably some last gasp, desperate effort to save their stock.
But if I did ever find myself on one of those airplanes, I would not wanna see some husky confused dude prancing around pretending to be a chick.
I don't like that as the customer.
Now, you might say, well, what about the stewardess or steward?
I don't care.
My job is not to accommodate them.
Their job is to accommodate me as the customer.
And then when I'm working in the service industry, my job is to accommodate my customers.
Okay?
I remember I was working a catering job many years ago.
And the manager who was running the shop, he said, okay, I remember, guys, what is this all about?
What are we all doing here?
What's the purpose of this job?
And in my mind, I thought, I don't know, to make a little bit of money and then go home.
But no, that's the consequence of it.
Sure, I guess that's why we wake up and go to work to some degree.
We've got to feed ourselves, put a roof over our head.
But what is the purpose of that industry?
The purpose of that industry is to serve the customer.
And we've totally inverted that now.
Now it's all about making the service people feel good about themselves.
And it's true in the military, too.
The military, which was all about sacrifice.
And you sign up, and you put yourself in danger, and you don't get paid very much, and you don't get good food, and you don't get to sleep very well.
And it's just hard.
It's a really hard job.
But you do that because you are serving the public.
And now, what do we hear from the military?
Well, it's my right!
As a transsexual, gay, lesbian, this, that, the other thing.
It's my right to serve in combat.
No, it's not your right.
The military is not about your rights at all.
You sign your rights away when you join the military.
At least you're supposed to.
It's supposed to be about sacrificing other people.
But we can't think that way anymore.
Our cult of selfishness, which you saw led by the left...
But it has not exactly been resisted by the right either.
The right has embraced its own version of the cult of selfishness.
Greed is good.
Money at all costs.
You know, Wolf of Wall Street kind of Ayn Rand style right-wingedness in America.
It's just the flip side of that kind of selfishness.
The individualism, the incessant focus on my rights and entitlements.
Everyone in America has kind of bought into this, but no one's benefiting from it.
It hasn't led to a flourishing country.
It's just led to a selfish country where no one's serving anybody else, and then everybody's miserable.
Speaking of refusing to serve, an amazing story in the Washington Post about someone who works for the Department of Child Services.
I guess it's a she, but she now identifies as a he.
And so the Washington Post calls her he, and the WAPO says, he came out as trans.
Then Texas had him investigate the parents of trans kids.
And this confused lady who dresses like a man was very upset by this because the Texas governor came out and said, look, it is child abuse when parents try to convince their little sons that they're daughters and daughters that they're sons, and especially when they take them to doctors to pump them full of hormones and chop off their body parts.
It's a child abuse, and it might not even be an intentional child abuse, but it is.
Parents can abuse their kids without knowing it or without necessarily desiring to, but it can happen, and so we're not going to let that happen in Texas anymore.
The voters of Texas support this initiative, but what about this lady?
This very confused lady, this mentally ill lady who thinks that she's a man, says, well, I don't want to execute on that order.
So she goes on a couple of these calls and she's crying and she's saying, this is wrong, this is terrible, but I have to do it, but I'm sorry.
You're a wonderful family that's trying to trans all your kids, but I know, I'm so sorry.
And then finally she quits.
Finally she quits.
That's the happy ending to the story.
She should quit.
She shouldn't be in this job in the first place.
She has no right to this job.
She has no right to deny the orders of her boss, ultimately her boss, the governor.
She has no right to deny the desires of the people of Texas who still, to some degree at least, have the right to self-government.
So she resigned as well she should.
That is good.
This is political power.
We should pressure to resign or fire outright all of the bureaucrats in the public sector and in the private sector who don't want to carry out, who don't want to abide by the laws that we pass as That's a great thing.
That is political power.
Now, you might be a little cautious about this and say, well, gosh, that sounds an awful lot like cancel culture.
It does.
Yes.
Yes.
All cultures cancel, as I've said for a long time.
All cultures have standards.
And so the question is, are we going to wield political power for bad ends, like transing kids and abusing people and denying the will of voters in our sacred democracy?
Are we going to do that?
Or are we going to wield political power to good ends, like protecting kids and saving little babies and having a good country and protecting our country and living in a flourishing society?
What is it?
Which are we going to do?
I'm for the latter.
Call me crazy.
Call me a far-right radical extremist.
I think that we should wield just political power to improve things and protect good things rather than to do the opposite.
Now, you might think we're winning here.
You might say, this is good stuff.
You get the strange people in the child services department in Texas to resign if they don't want to stop transing the kids.
Okay, that's good.
But don't delude yourself.
We are losing on the issue of transgenderism.
Okay?
Transgenderism is progressing apace.
We're getting lots of good clips out of it.
Who can forget?
There was that wonderful clip of Marsha Blackburn asking Ketanji...
This is the problem with women who use three names.
I don't know if it's Ketanji Jackson Brown or Ketanji Brown Jackson.
I think it's Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Anyway, side point.
When Marsha Blackburn is grilling her and says, what is a woman?
And she says, what is a woman?
I don't know what a woman is.
I'm not a biologist.
That's preposterous.
Obviously, Matt's movie, a hilarious expose of this insanity.
And it shows, I think those clips and those movies and those arguments are really effective at showing people how crazy the transgender argument is.
But if you just look at where the state of the country is on the protection of sexual identity and gender expression, on the protection in the civil rights laws, by the way, on the protection of transgender bathrooms, on the protection of transgender sports, we're still losing on that issue.
Dr.
Bhavik Kumar.
Who is a Planned Parenthood-affiliated doctor, shows up to the Capitol to be grilled by members of Congress.
He is grilled by Representative Andrew Clyde, who is a Republican from Georgia.
Representative Clyde asks a really basic question.
Dr.
Kumar gives a preposterous answer.
Let's just keep it real simple.
Just two yes or no questions.
And this is for Dr.
Kumar.
Dr.
Kumar, can biological men become pregnant and give birth?
So men can have pregnancies, especially trans men.
I love how he says men can have pregnancies, especially trans men.
Even if you're willing to go with the libs on the whole, there is such a thing as trans men and trans women, and that's a real ontological category, what other group of men can get pregnant and give birth?
It's silly to say it, but I get that the libs at least would argue women and trans men can get pregnant and give birth.
But what's with the especially?
What is this third group?
Is there a third one or a fourth one?
Who knows?
It's yes, it's absurd.
That Planned Parenthood guy looks like a total weirdo and a dope and we're all laughing at him and we're all mocking him.
But then you've got to ask yourself, okay, if we're all having such fun on this issue and it's such a winner with the public and everyone knows that men aren't really women deep down, then why are we still losing legally and politically?
Why is transgenderism exploding, especially among young people, transgender and gender non-conforming identity?
Why is this ideology exploding throughout the universities, throughout the workplace?
Virtually every company in America has some DEI division that is protecting the rights of transgender individuals.
We're totally losing on the issue.
Why is that?
Well, I think in part it's because the conservatives are not putting up a tough enough fight.
Yes, we get our clips and we laugh and we giggle and they can't tell us that men can't give birth.
But just ask yourself this.
And you, if you're listening to this show, you probably look pretty clear-eyed at this issue, okay?
You are not a squish.
You are probably not a lib.
You're probably looking pretty...
Do you ever call Bruce Jenner Caitlyn Jenner?
Do you ever refer to a man who identifies as a woman as she, publicly or privately?
Do you ever...
Do you say, hey, look, we shouldn't trans the kids, but adults, you know, if an adult wants to cut off his body part, that's no business of mine.
And if an adult wants to put on a dress and call himself Sally, why?
That's his right.
That's no business of mine.
Because if you say that, I'm not attacking you, I'm not criticizing you, I'm just pointing out, if you say that, Then you are accepting transgenderism.
If you say that, then you are implicitly agreeing with the Planned Parenthood doctor that some men can get pregnant and have children.
Because you're saying that Bruce Jenner really is a woman.
If you call him Caitlin, Caitlin's a girl's name, it's not a boy's name.
Well, you can legally change your name to whatever you want.
Yeah, you can, but it doesn't change the fact that Caitlyn is a girl's name.
And so if you're calling the guy by a girl's name, and especially if you're calling him her...
You are accepting the premise that some men can get pregnant and give birth, and some women can really be men.
You're accepting it.
If you say that adults can get the gender-affirming surgery, then you are accepting the premise that some men can get pregnant.
You're not saying it in exactly the same crazy kind of terms as that weirdo from Planned Parenthood, but you're saying the same thing.
And I fear that In this effort to just have a conciliatory middle ground, okay, well, just don't do it to the kids.
Okay, just don't do it to the eight-year-olds.
Okay, just don't do it to the five-year-olds.
Okay, we keep losing, losing more and more ground.
If we're not willing to be hardcore on this issue and just say, no, it's all insane.
Transgender surgery obviously should be banned for everybody.
No man has the right to call himself Caitlyn.
We will never refer to him as her.
And bathrooms are going to remain single sex in virtually every case, unless it's a small shop and there's only one bathroom to begin with.
Unless we're willing to go all the way on it, we're going to lose the issue.
And we'll get fun clips along the way, and we'll giggle, and we'll say, look at these crazy leftist snowflakes.
And then they're going to keep winning politically.
Do you remember five or six years ago, we used to say, all these crazy snowflakes on the campuses, just wait until they get to the real world.
Then those crazy, silly, triggered snowflakes, then they'll learn.
And then what happened?
The silly, crazy snowflakes got to the real world and just completely changed the world.
And now we're living in their world.
I'm only laughing because I either laugh or cry.
So yeah, we should laugh at it, we should make fun of it, we should point out the absurdities, but we've got to stand firm politically.
If we're not willing to exercise the political power, we're going to be laughing all the way to the gulags.
Speaking of Republicans losing, gosh, we could do a week of shows on that.
Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney, former GOP presidential nominee, unbelievably.
Mitt Romney is refusing to support a Republican.
That's not a big story.
There have been plenty of times when Romney refuses to support Republicans.
But in this case, Romney is refusing to support his fellow Utah senator, his fellow Republican Utah senator, Mike Lee.
Mike Lee, a conservative, conservative, As mainstream a guy as there is, as good, upstanding a sort of guy as there is.
I don't know Mike Lee very well, but I've met him on a number of occasions and chatted with him, and he's a great guy.
Nothing really to object to in Mike Lee.
Mitt Romney and Mike Lee both have the same religion, even.
Same place, same religion.
He refuses to support him.
Why?
Why?
Because Mike Lee is getting a challenge from that silly, never-Trump CIA operative who tried to run against Donald Trump in 2016, Evan McMullin.
Evan McMullin has no shot whatsoever, but he could be a sort of spoiler.
He could take away support from Mike Lee.
He could throw a clear Republican seat into question.
He could deny Republicans the Senate majority.
This is going to be a razor-thin election in the Senate, probably.
So Romney is willing to give up Republican control of the Senate.
For what?
I don't know, because he says that he's friends with both guys.
He says, I'm friends with Lee, I'm friends with McMullen, so I'm not going to endorse either, according to people close to Mitt Romney, according to the Washington Post.
Why would he do this?
Because Mitt Romney doesn't care about who has control of the Senate, because Mitt Romney probably wants to lose.
He probably sort of wants to lose.
I think a lot of these guys, a lot of these loser Republicans, I think they often want to lose because it's a lot easier to be in the loser position because then you don't have any accountability, you don't have any moral risk.
I remember this during the Trump fights of 2016.
There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Trump in 2016.
I'm not downplaying that.
But when he became the nominee, a lot of people didn't want to vote for him because they didn't want to bear responsibility for him because there was risk.
We don't know.
We've never seen this guy hold office before.
And so I don't want to put my name on this because if we win and then he does stuff, I might feel responsible for that.
But if I sit it out and allow Hillary Clinton to win, I will also be responsible for that.
But I can at least have some deniability that I'm responsible for Hillary.
And then she's going to do all sorts of terrible stuff.
And she's going to kill the babies and trans the kids and destroy the country and open the borders.
But at least I won't have any moral responsibility.
I think a lot of these guys...
Kind of like losing.
They kind of like losing because it's just easier.
And they can keep raising money and they can keep going on TV and they can keep pretending to fight and they can keep pretending that they're morally pristine, but they're not.
They're not getting anything done.
They're just cowards with a lack of vision.
Speaking of Republicans, by the way, huge, really, really big news report out on Republicans.
This is from The Hill.
Republicans are pouncing again.
This happens every so often.
The Republicans, I don't know, they get, it's like maybe they have restless leg syndrome or something, but they just, their muscles stiffen up and they just, they pounce.
They pounce all the time.
Well now, the Republicans are pouncing on ailing markets to criticize Joe Biden.
That's the news story from The Hill.
You see, the news story is not that the markets are collapsing.
The story is not that the Biden economy is a disaster.
No, no, no.
The story is that Seeing all of those things, the Republicans, they sort of crouch down, and they get really loaded, and then they just...
They pounce.
That's the story.
Republicans' pounce is...
I don't need to tell you this.
You've seen it for years.
Republicans' pounce is a leftist tactic.
To turn attention away from the actual news story, which is a liberal scandal or failure, to Republicans pointing it out, to the conservative coverage of that story.
Whenever Republicans are pouncing, you can note, man, the Democrats are in trouble.
Later today, you've got to come hang out with me at 11 a.m. Central.
For all access live, I will be answering all of your questions.
Tune in, dailywire.com slash discuss.
Bring your questions.
We'll see you there.
I'm going to be speaking to a segment of my audience I've never directly addressed before.
That would be the frat guys.
Sup, bros?
What's going on?
What's going on, fellas?
We are both, unfortunately, and unfairly portrayed by the media.
We're We're both among the men most hated by woke razor companies and leftist ideology, which is very, very sad.
When you consider that fraternities raise millions of dollars every year for charity, one Virginia Tech fraternity alone raised $255,000 for St.
Jude's Children's Hospital last year.
So with that influence and moxie in mind, I thought that I would share an idea.
You know Jeremy's razor's contest to win the car, the one where you can win Jeremy's McLaren.
Well...
We get that you don't want to shuffle everyone around in a two-seater sports car, which is why if you win, you can take the quarter million dollar cash prize instead.
I am sure that your imagination will suffice to paint a picture of all the fun and goodwill that a quarter million dollars will enable for you and your friends.
Listen, most of the top players in the contest still have not hit the 210 referral mark, so...
There is plenty of opportunity for you to jump into the race and take it all.
Just go to jeremysrazors.com slash play to get your referral link.
Come November 1st, 2022, we will see which of you is the most woke free fraternity in America.
Peace out, fellas.
Terms and conditions apply.
Those Republicans are totally, totally pouncing.
That's what they do.
They pounce.
What are we pouncing on?
Well, we're pouncing on the fact that the economy is even worse than you thought it was.
The US economy was weaker in the first half of the year than previously thought, according to the Commerce Department.
Well, how's that?
We know that in the first half of the year, the economy had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
That is a recession.
But the Biden administration didn't want to admit that that's a recession.
So what did they do?
The Biden administration said, no, no, this is a unique case.
We're changing the definition of a recession because actually you see the other economic indicators were such that they actually override the two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
And what were those economic indicators?
Those economic indicators were the gross domestic income, which had been reported as growing at 1.8% in the first quarter.
And it was the low unemployment rate.
And it was all these other things.
So it actually overrides the negative economic indicators.
Well, yesterday, the Commerce Department revised those estimates of GDP and GDI.
Turns out gross domestic income did not grow at 1.8%.
It grew at just 0.8% as an annual rate.
Second quarter GDI growth was just 0.1%.
So it was a total collapse.
There's no way to argue at this point that we are not in a recession.
There is no way to argue it.
Are you going to hear this from the establishment media?
No, of course not.
All you are going to hear from the establishment media is that the Republicans are pouncing.
So it makes...
I guess it just keeps coming back to this point that I hope everyone has learned during COVID. I certainly did.
Whatever you are seeing from the Libs, You have to assume that what they're promising you about their successes is not true.
I think you have to assume not only is it the worst possible option that they're presenting, but the things that actually are much worse even than they are presenting.
So I think about this with COVID, where they say, oh, the COVID vaccine, it's totally safe, it's totally effective, you can't question that at all.
And so...
In the olden days, I'd say maybe they're exaggerating.
Okay, maybe it's not totally safe.
Maybe it's not totally effective.
Now, though, I just have to assume the thing is not effective at all at doing what they say it will do, which is, in the case of COVID vaccines, preventing infection and transmission.
And it's really not all that safe, at least by the perfect standard that they were suggesting.
Remember, they said it doesn't cause heart problems.
It doesn't cause blood clots.
It doesn't cause menstrual changes in women.
That's completely insane.
And it causes all those things.
In more cases than they would have let on.
Much, much worse than is being admitted.
Speaking of damaging things.
Speaking of damaging things.
Did you hear this story about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline?
And the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, actually.
So, this is the secret story of the Ukraine-Russia war.
Russia has a pipeline to Europe.
Two pipelines.
Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2.
Those pipelines allow Russia to send gas directly to Europe, bypassing all sorts of problems that they have, allowing them, giving them the opportunity to go into Ukraine.
And it's really a war that's largely about energy leverage.
So, a couple of days ago, we found out that the Nord Stream pipelines become damaged.
Who damaged the pipelines?
Was it Russia?
That seems unlikely.
Was it Ukraine?
That seems unlikely.
Why was it not Russia?
Because Russia has no reason to do it, really.
Why would it not be Ukraine?
Ukraine does have reason to do it, but they probably don't have the means to do it.
Was it Germany?
Germany definitely.
Europe doesn't want to damage those pipelines.
Europe's going to freeze to death over the winter if they don't get the energy back online.
So who was it?
The only actor in the world that I can see that has means and motivation would seem to be the power that is funding the Ukrainian resistance in the world would seem to be the United States.
Okay, now you might say, well, that's good.
That's good.
Blow up that pipeline, as the State Department and the President both said they would do for the months leading up to this moment.
Okay, you might say, good, blow up that pipeline.
Whether the United States did it directly or indirectly or didn't do it at all, it is hard to deny right now that the United States is in a proxy war with Russia.
A war that we never declared.
A war that we don't even really want to admit to.
And a war that seems to be escalating.
Now you've got Vladimir Putin annexing whole parts of Ukraine with all these sorts of referenda elections.
Okay.
This war, we were told, was going to be over within two weeks.
Now it's escalating, escalating, escalating.
World wars have started for less.
World wars have started for a lot less.
And especially when you think of the Western view of this war.
The Western view of this war has been really straightforward.
Russia has no right to invade a sovereign country.
Okay, easy enough.
Putin's a bad man.
Okay, sure, Putin's a bad man.
But if you just write off your opponent as a madman, as a crazy person, it's not going to help you fix any sort of problems.
Putin's argument was that the West had been expanding NATO to Far East, and the West had been meddling in Ukraine, and the West had supported a coup d'etat to get rid of the formerly pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, and they were threatening to have Ukraine join NATO and threatening to have Ukraine join the EU, and that this was an unacceptable security risk for Russia.
Whether that's true or not, I'm not saying you've got to agree with Putin's argument or even think it's a sincere argument.
That's what Russia was saying about the situation.
And America then wielding its power to move its sphere of influence further east.
What do we do right now?
Both sides seem to be very, very dug in.
Both sides are now openly talking about a nuclear war.
There was a great article By Christopher Caldwell in the Claremont Review of Books.
He said, why are we in Ukraine?
What do we want to get out of Ukraine?
What are the stakes here?
What are we willing to pay for it?
World wars have started for a lot less than this.
World wars have started because Serbian nationalists shoot random archdukes on the streets, okay?
Yes, the U.S. is wielding power.
We like it when the U.S. wields power.
But think about the way that we've wielded power here.
We've wielded the financial system of the world against Russia to try to destroy Russia's economy, to try to destroy the ruble.
It hasn't had that effect.
If anything, all it's done is push Russia closer to China and India.
Because they sort of have to, because they can't really do business in dollars anymore.
Our policies, which we might say, yeah, America's strong, we're punishing Putin.
Well, what has the effect of that policy been?
It's been to weaken the United States' credibility as the holder of the global reserve currency, which is what gives us our imperial power around the world.
So I'm not even saying the motivations here could be wrong with the war.
But the war and America's role in the war has not had the effect that we thought that it would in many of the most important cases.
The people carrying this out are some of the least competent people on planet Earth.
Okay, do we really trust these guys to continue to manage the situation that they've bungled from the beginning as we get closer and closer and closer to a seriously hot escalated war with a nuclear former superpower?
I don't think I trust these guys.
I don't think I trust the guys who think that men are secretly women and who bungled our economy and bungled our immigration, bungled everything.
I don't know.
I would urge a lot more caution.
Okay, our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.
Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, and enter promo code NOLS to get 50% off your first month.
Let's take it away with the voice mailbag.
Hey Michael, I've been a long time listener, first time asking a question.
Just like so many other families and friends, after Trump got elected, I had a falling out with my sister-in-law.
She is on the left and a third-wave feminist type.
After a few years of barely talking, we had a big fight on Thanksgiving last year.
We have since had a long conversation with my brother and her and we are at least talking again.
I know she is against all my politics but my eldest nephew has flat out said he doesn't agree with her politically.
I understand these are not my kids but I feel obligated It's a tough line to tread because it's not your kids that we're talking about over here.
I am always of the opinion that we should Preserve our families at almost all costs.
And yes, it's very frustrating when you see your siblings and your cousins and whoever who are raising their kids in all these crazy sorts of ways and raising them to be big libs and it'll probably hurt their lives in the long run.
Yes, that's very, very frustrating.
But...
They're not your kids.
I think you just gotta say, look, different strokes for different folks.
And you can even joke about it.
Oh, you crazy libs.
Oh, you, ah, there you go.
Okay, well, whatever.
Pass the turkey, please.
Yes, I know.
It's frustrating.
It's sad to see.
But I think we have to cultivate a spirit of resignation here.
Next question.
Hi Michael, my name is Isaac.
My question to you is another dating life question.
I'm 21 in college and I met a young woman at the beginning of the school year and we slowly grew into friends.
She's a Christian too, so I thought she was a good fit if I got to know her.
Two weeks into the school year, I told her that I liked her and asked her out.
Unfortunately, she told me she wasn't ready for a relationship at the moment, but would still like to get to know me as a friend.
I was devastated, and it really hurt a lot when I heard that.
I'm still trying to figure out what to make of what she said.
Or is the door still open?
If it is open, what would you suggest I do next?
Should I wait and work to improve on myself, either physically or spiritually?
Or should I continue to try to warm up to her?
Love the show.
Great question.
I'll give you some hard answers.
She does not want to date you, and she was just being nice when she said, oh, I don't know if I'm ready for a relationship, but let's be friends.
She was just being nice.
That doesn't mean that you will never end up dating her.
You very well might end up dating her.
But I don't think you're going to succeed in that by continuing to push and show interest and say, hey, you know, you sure you don't want to get a cup of coffee now?
Hey, I don't think that's going to work.
I think you should try dating other people first and then get her jealous and then maybe you can date her a little bit later.
Or maybe the person that you start dating, you actually find you really like that person, and you end up dating her because there's lots of fish in the sea.
That's what I would do.
There is something to the social proof of...
If you're going out on dates...
I'm not saying use other people just to get this girl, but I'm saying just accept the reality that she doesn't want to date you right now.
Okay, got to move on.
Other fish in the sea.
Oh, I start dating this girl.
An effect of that will be that all of the other girls will start looking at you with greater interest.
Why is that?
It's probably because this is a fallen world and the imagination of man's heart is evil from the very beginning, but that's just how it happens.
When people are dating other people...
It sends a sort of social message that, oh, this person must be desirable.
Maybe I should desire that person more.
So that's what I would do.
I would not hang on in the vain hope that just asking her out in a different way will convince her.
I don't think it will.
I think you've got to date somebody else.
Next question.
Hey Michael.
Long time listener.
Been listening for years.
Love your show.
So my question for you is regarding the national divorce.
I don't understand how you think that the United States with its myriad of...
Different culture groups can coexist under one state.
I just don't see it with the differences between the various nations that are in this state.
And I don't see that it would be at all beneficial to try and continue to force any of these groups to live together.
It may be messy, it may not, the resulting separation, but I think that's the only way for long-term peace and prosperity.
So how do you see these groups coming together and living under a single political entity?
Good question.
I guess I'd flip the question back on you.
You're saying there are different nations within the putative nation of the United States.
And so it's crazy to suggest we all live under one roof, so we've got to split up.
What do you mean by nations?
Do you mean all the different races and ethnicities?
That's true.
That's true.
It's pretty weird how many we've got under one roof in a nation rather than...
We don't call ourselves an empire.
There have been empires in history that have lots of different ethnic groups and racial groups.
But very few nations, nation states that would say that.
Okay, so how are we all supposed to live together?
How are we supposed to split up?
How many races and ethnicities do you have in America?
All of them?
Like all of them on earth?
All living in all different cities and states together.
So you're not going to split people up based on race or ethnicity, even if you wanted to.
Religion?
Okay, religion is a little bit more of a set enclave, but not really.
Okay, sure, the Mormons can break off in Utah.
How about the rest of us?
How are you going to divide the country that way?
The libs and the conservatives?
Again, we've got a ton of purple states.
We've got a ton of conservatives in the blue states, a lot of libs in the red states.
How are you going to divide that up?
I oppose the national divorce because I oppose divorce entirely.
Because I just think it's bad and disordered.
There's no end to it.
There is no end when you start talking about the national divorce.
We're going to have 330 million different nations on one slab of a continent.
I just don't see...
You're asking me how I think we can continue to live together.
We'll just keep on keeping on.
But we're all so different, right?
I guess we should use the force of culture and politics to make us all a little bit more united and united in a good way with our eyes toward good, true, and beautiful things.
That's what I would do.
And I want to use culture and politics to do that.
Simple enough answer.
Will it happen?
I don't know, but it's simple enough.
What about, what's your answer for the national divorce?
How are we supposed to do that?
I've never heard in any way a compelling argument for how the United States is supposed to break up.
At all.
Forget about peacefully.
I've certainly never heard any argument for how we break up peacefully.
But how do you break up at all?
I just don't see it.
Next question.
Hello, love guru and austere religious scholar Michael Knowles.
My name is Vincent.
Love the show.
Anyways, I have a hypothetical proposal that I think should go into law.
Abandoned adultery.
Now, there are some biblical passages that could be argued about for what constitutes adultery, but But if we were at the very least in law to define adultery as a currently married person having sexual intercourse with someone other than their current spouse, how well do you think something like this could look in Congress?
I think even the perverted left is depraved to the point of supporting adultery as well.
But how willing do you think those in Congress would be able to accept a proposal like a ban of adultery?
Thanks.
Congress, I don't know, but at the state and local level, that seems like a no-brainer to me.
I mean, adultery...
Is illegal.
At the very least, it's a breach of contract.
And we've had plenty of laws against adultery in American history.
So yeah, for sure.
For sure we should ban adultery.
If not at the federal level, at least at the state level.
Yeah.
I think conservatives might be open to that.
A lot of conservatives have fallen into the kind of libertarian squishy traps.
For many years.
But I think we've come out of that.
I mean, this is what I write about in my book, Speechless, which was trying to push the conservatives out of that.
And I think largely it worked.
And other people are advocating a more robust, courageous, morally clear form of politics.
Anyway, so yeah, totally.
That one looks like a no-brainer.
Okay, let's get to some regular mailbag questions from Elaine.
Okay.
No, I'm sorry, not Elaine.
Ephraim.
Very different names.
Ephraim says, Hey Michael, I want to get your take about a certain aspect of marriage.
Do you believe you should wait to marry someone you are absolutely infatuated with, like in the movies, or do you think that expectation is unrealistic and will keep you single?
I'm an Orthodox Jew, and my parents are trying to set me up via a shiduk, speed dating with arranged matches, so that I can start a family soon.
That's the way they met and married in under two months.
And they claim they grew to love each other over time.
I want to meet a girl I truly love before I marry, though.
So I'm torn.
Thanks.
Good question.
I married the love of my life.
I married a girl that I just fell head over heels in love with when I was like 11 or 12.
And that gives me great comfort.
And we split for college, and I dated other girls, and I wake up some nights in a cold sweat thinking about the horror of had I married someone other than my wife.
I mean that without a hint of hyperbole.
It is one of the great consolations of my life that I know.
I married this gal that I just absolutely adore.
And you won't have that sort of certainty if you do the kind of speed dating arranged marriage type thing.
Now, that said, There's a pitfall to the, you know, just marry for your own romantic desires and love and journey kind of thing, which is you could be 35 years old, 40 years old, or older, and not get married and say, oh, there's always someone better around the corner.
Oh, I just haven't met the person yet.
Oh, swipe right, swipe right.
And so...
Your family and your community, especially in your religious community, they will know, they will have a great deal of wisdom on how to get married and have a good family and what's best for you.
So you don't want to disregard that either.
I just think, as I often say, I don't think it's a cop-out.
I think it's actually the truest answer here.
You need to use your prudence, okay?
And so for me, I would actually try to seek a sort of middle ground here, which is instead of just walk outside, throw a stick, pick the closest person on the street and say, okay, you're my wife now, I would date yourself and kind of, you know, take a little bit of time, try to get to know people.
Maybe you meet some girl at wherever social situation you're in.
But also get the input of your family.
Also take their advice seriously.
I would try to do both of those things.
And I think that'll give you, that could give you the best of both worlds.
Next question.
Next question is from Pete.
Hey Michael, I've been a DW Plus member for almost a year now and never miss your show, even if I have to listen to two or three in a day.
I always catch up, my man.
I have a question for you.
Other than cigars and libations, great choices by the way, what do you do to relax and re-center?
I'm guessing Play With The Kids is at the top of that list, but that's a given.
What?
I was just wondering.
Keep doing what you do.
Let's hold all the squishers accountable.
Great point.
I don't play with my kids to relax.
I don't find that relaxing.
I find it very fun and sublime and wonderful, and I adore it.
But it's exhausting.
That doesn't relax me at all.
Yes, I smoke cigars.
I'll have a drink or two at night.
I'll read a book.
That does relax and re-center me, and it's very, very important.
Even if it means I get less sleep, I really try to do that.
But I play music.
I love that.
And this is not false modesty.
I'm not particularly good at musical instruments, but I play a lot of them in a very mediocre to poor way.
And I just love it.
I love strumming my ukulele or my guitar or my banjo or my sitar or my piano.
Pluck it around.
I just really love that.
I took up painting.
I'm a very bad painter.
But that especially can recenter you because it just uses different parts of your brain and...
It lets you see the world in a different way.
Winston Churchill wrote a whole essay about this, Painting as Pastime, where he said, look, if you're reading this essay to get into painting, you're already too old and you're never going to be a good painter.
So forget about that.
Just paint for sort of the joy of painting, not as your career or your profession, but just as a pastime and a hobby.
That I find to be really, really great.
You want to be able to use a different part of your brain to kind of turn off the other part.
You're never going to just turn your brain off entirely.
It's always moving.
So you've got to just use different parts of it.
You know, the rest of the show is continuing now.
You do not want to miss it because I'm about to be electrocuted by David Cohn.
If you're not a member, click the link in the description and join us.
