Ep. 1142 - Biden Trades "The Merchant Of Death" For A Woke Lesbian Pothead
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Biden trades the world’s most notorious arms dealer for an America-hating, pot-smoking lady basketball player; Bari Weiss proves Twitter lied about shadow-banning conservatives, and Iran’s Supreme Leader provides some unexpected encouragement to the American Right.
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Until yesterday, there were at least three Americans unlawfully detained in Russia.
Paul Wellen, a former Marine, arrested on espionage charges.
Mark Fogle, a 61-year-old history teacher, arrested for possessing a small amount of medical marijuana.
And Brittany Greiner, a young anti-American lady basketball player, arrested for the same crime, for the marijuana.
Two of those people are still stuck doing hard labor in Russia.
One gets to go home.
Can you guess which one?
Brittany is an incomparable athlete, a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA. She endured mistreatment in a show trial in Russia with characteristic grit and incredible dignity.
She represents the best America, best about America, just across the board, everything about her.
The best about America, just across the board.
Brittany Griner, the lady basketball player whose only noteworthy activities to date have been playing a sport that no one watches, protesting the star-spangled banner at that sport, refusing to show up on the court for the national anthem, and trying to sneak pot into Russia.
Brittany Griner represents the best, the very best, of America, apparently.
Not the history teacher, not the Marine, the dope-smoking, America-hating WNBA person whose release the U.S. was so desperate to secure that it agreed to release the world's most notorious arms dealer back to Russia in exchange.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, Michael.
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Too bad for the Marine.
Too bad for the history teacher.
But the pot-smoking basketball lady who hates the Star Spangled Banner, she gets to go home.
Who are those people?
The one who's getting the most play right now is Paul Wellen.
He is this Marine who actually spoke with CNN by phone around this release of Brittany Griner, basically saying, hey, guys, hey, Biden, you mind?
What?
What gives, man?
They've always considered me to be at a higher level than other criminals of my sort.
And for whatever reason, I'm treated differently than another individual here from a Western country that's also on a charge of espionage.
So even though we're both here for espionage, I'm treated much differently than he is.
And my treatment is also much different than others held for espionage at other prisons.
I would say that if a message could go to President Biden that this is a precarious situation that needs to be resolved quickly, and I would hope that he and his administration would do everything they could So the guy's desperate.
He's been in a Russian prison now for four years, I think it is.
Unlike Brittany Griner, who was there for about nine, ten months.
And he's saying, guys, you really got to get me out of here.
And he says, I'm being treated differently than the other prisoners.
He's here in a charge of espionage.
The reaction from everybody demanding his release has been to laugh at this charge of espionage and say, this is This is totally trumped up nonsense from Vladimir Putin to use a political pawn.
But I actually don't know.
I mean, maybe the guy's a spy.
I think to make a stronger argument for his release, we should take seriously the possibility that he's a spy.
He's got a military background.
He went in and out of Russia a whole lot of times in the last few years.
He apparently had contacts at the FSB, which is the Russian Security Service.
So let's just say for a second that he's a spy.
And I'm not declaring that he is.
I don't know.
There's also a lot of evidence that he was not a spy.
The CIA denies that Paul Welland was a spy because his military record was pretty spotty.
And the agency is saying nobody who had all this kind of terrible conduct in the military and who was demoted and had all these issues, nobody with that kind of a background would be hired as a spy by the CIA.
I don't know.
I mean, I can see why Russians might be under the impression that the guy is a spy.
But my point is, I don't know.
Let's say that he is a spy.
Let's say that this guy is James freaking Bond, and he's very, very high value.
We just gave up a guy who's also extremely high value.
The guy that we just gave up is known as the merchant of death.
The guy that we just gave up, Victor Boot, is the most notorious arms dealer in the world.
Russia really, really, really wanted to secure this guy's release.
And so, let's say Paul Wellen is the biggest super spy in the history of the world.
Joe Biden still should have secured his release.
We gave up a really, really big Russian asset in exchange for what?
A lady basketball player who was opportunistically taken hostage by the Russians as a pawn because of this issue right now over the war in Ukraine and because the United States was putting all of these sanctions on Russia and because Russia wanted some leverage.
Okay, I don't even like Brittany Griner.
Okay.
OK, but it's clear that her detainment had a political aspect, too.
Yes, she violated the laws of Russia.
Yes, Russia has the right to its own drug laws.
No, I don't really have all that much sympathy with Brittany Griner trying to sneak drugs into Russia.
But obviously, this detainment was political.
Obviously, it was pretty flimsy.
And so what kind of deal does Joe Biden make?
The deal he makes is we'll give you a very, very, very high-value asset that has done very, very, very bad things and can be very valuable to Russia in exchange for this lady basketball player.
But you can keep our Marine.
You can keep our history teacher.
It's just on its face.
Even if you believe all of the Russian charges against these two Americans who remain detained, it's just a terrible, terrible deal.
The guy they got is...
Cartoonishly villainous.
Take a listen.
This was from a 60 Minutes interview over who Victor Boot is.
Victor Boot, in my eyes, is one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth.
On the face of the earth?
Without a doubt.
Mike Braun, the former chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told us Boot first exploded on the scene in war-torn West Africa in the late 1980s.
Elevating bloody conflicts from machetes and single-shot rifles to...
AK-47s.
Not by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands.
So he weaponizes civil war in Africa.
He transformed these young adolescent warriors into insidious, mindless, maniacally driven killing machines that operated with assembly line efficiencies.
Now 43, boot from the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan, is a mystery man who reportedly served in the Soviet Air Force and Intelligence Service.
The U.S. has indicted him on four terror-related charges, including conspiracy to kill Americans.
So not a great guy.
You know, kind of a bad hombre.
And they make this trade.
Why did the White House make this trade?
We all know why.
The White House made this trade because Brittany Griner is a liberal black lesbian.
That's why.
And in fact, the White House basically admitted as much.
In the big announcement, you had Corrine Jean-Pierre talking about how important this is, not only for all Americans, but especially for the LGBT LMNOP community.
And it's so, so important that we get this lady back.
And Biden's always going to cut any deal that he could to get her back.
Not because of any particular national interest in bringing this lady back over other detained Americans, but because it looks really good to the Democrat base and because it's very, very politically correct.
And the important part here is that Vladimir Putin knew that.
The Russians knew that, too.
You would not have seen this kind of a deal, this kind of a weak, weak deal under Donald Trump.
But Putin knew that they would get it under Joe Biden because the Russians have always been very good at understanding the fault lines in American politics on race, on sex, on everything.
And so they knew that they would get it, and they just ripped us off, okay?
If it had been...
Okay, we release the arms dealer, and they release Brittany Griner and Paul Wellen, or and Paul Wellen and Mark Fogel, or something like that.
That would have been one thing, but that's not what we got.
Not what we got at all, and so we had the handoff here, and the funniest part about the handoff is, you get the two planes landing in Abu Dhabi, and you get the guys walking up with Victor Boot, And you get the...
Actually, just one guy walking up with Victor Boot.
I mean, he's a pretty tough hombre.
He can handle himself.
Then you get multiple guys walking up with Brittany Griner.
And then there's sort of shaking hands there on the tarmac.
And then there's a film cut.
So you see Victor Boot.
He shakes hands with one of his handlers.
He shakes hands with another handler.
And then he kind of leans.
And then there's this cut.
And it occurred to me...
They cut the footage of when Brittany Griner shakes hands with the notorious Russian arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death.
They said, you know, that really messes up our image here.
That's really going to play into conservatives' hands.
If they already don't have a particularly high opinion of this lady, because the only thing she's known for is getting detained by the Russians and disrespecting America.
And then you lean in and you see her shaking hands with a guy known as the Merchant of Death.
So even that, they bungle it.
It's just an absolute embarrassment.
Another embarrassment...
For Joe Biden and for the United States.
Very, very frustrating.
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Then talk to one of their precious metals specialists with Even a Democrat senator, by the way, is admitting that this is a disaster.
And I'm not even talking about Joe Manchin, who's a moderate Democrat, or Kyrsten Sinema, who sometimes helps out the Republicans.
Bob Menendez.
Who is a real dem.
You know, he's a real big lib.
Bob Menendez, Democrat senator from New Jersey.
He said, this should be a moment of deep reflection for the United States government to recognize we have a serious problem with hostage-taking of Americans.
The Russians and other regimes that take American citizens hostage cannot pretend that there is an equivalence between the Brittany Griners of the world and people like Victor Boot, the so-called merchant of death.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We cannot ignore that releasing Boot back into the world is a deeply disturbing decision.
Why is it disturbing?
Well, Bob Menendez explains.
We must stop inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips.
And we must try to do better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia, where they are primary targets for this type of unlawful detention.
Yeah, of course.
That's true.
American citizens do need to exercise a little bit of caution and prudence.
I remember in my early 20s, I was going to take a trip with a couple friends of mine.
Well, we did end up taking a trip around the Middle East and going to different places.
But one of the places we wanted to go to was the island of Socotra, which is between Yemen and Somalia.
And we wanted to go because it's a really cool-looking place.
And apparently St.
Thomas shipwrecked there.
And it just seemed like it would be fun to go travel there.
And a friend of mine, who's a military guy, he said, This big, hulking dude.
He goes, Michael, do not go to Socotra.
And I said, why not?
I can handle myself.
Why can't I go to Socotra?
And he says, because you will just be a walking bag of money.
Every person there, every Somali pirate, every bad, desperate hombre is going to look at you and recognize you are valuable because if they take you hostage, then they can get a lot of money out of the United States.
So do not go there.
Okay, that's fair.
And this is true in a lot of places around the world.
And one thing that the United States historically has tried to do to reduce that risk for Americans traveling abroad is that we have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists and not encouraging and incentivizing rogue regimes to take Americans hostage.
It's not that I really don't like Brittany Griner and that's why we shouldn't have made this deal.
It's that this deal, one, is deeply unfair to the other Americans who have done a lot more to serve their country than Brittany Reiner ever has, who are still being detained.
But also, this endangers all Americans abroad.
If...
If all of these regimes now around the world see that we've got weakness in the White House and that they can get their most prized assets freed from the United States if they just take an American hostage and ransom that American, then you're going to see more of that behavior.
This is what happens.
Weakness on the world stage invites aggression from our enemies.
It's just really, really pathetic.
If we'd gotten a better deal, it would be one thing.
But it's just such absolute capitulation.
Awful, awful stuff.
Capitulating to such bad people around the world.
Speaking of bad people...
The people who used to run Twitter are in some hot water because Twitter Files Part 2 was just published.
Barry Weiss is the person who published it.
You saw the first part come out from the journalist Matt Taibbi, a new one from Barry Weiss.
The type of journalist that Elon Musk is hiring to go through this is an interesting choice.
They are liberal journalists who have some problems with the liberal left.
They're not conservative journalists that he's giving it to.
But he's giving it to the liberal, what used to be called the intellectual dark web type kind of people.
I'm a liberal, but I'm not a leftist.
That sort of thing.
But they are still libs.
I mean, they are still on the left.
They just are sick of this corrupt establishment and all the extreme radicalism that we've seen in recent years.
So, Barry Weiss goes through it.
She does a bang-up job.
She says, the new Twitter Files investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts and even trending topics, which is bad enough.
But then they also do this all in secret without informing any users.
This is an important release, not because it tells us that Twitter was shadow banning and blacklisting people.
We already knew that.
But it's proving it.
Just like with the first Twitter files release, the main takeaway here is not some big news item that we didn't know about before.
The main takeaway here is we're not crazy.
We are not crazy, and the things that we suspected were happening for years actually were happening.
And the people who were running Twitter and their propagandists in the mainstream media were lying to us.
The people who run Twitter, who told us this wasn't happening, they weren't just getting it wrong, they weren't just incompetent, it wasn't just a mistake.
They were actively lying to us.
They were deceiving us.
So, who did they get?
Dr.
Jay Bhattacharya.
Dr.
Jay Bhattacharya, very serious Stanford scientist who from the early days of COVID argued that the lockdowns were harmful.
And that they would ultimately harm children.
Twitter put him on a trends blacklist.
So at the outbreak of COVID, when it was really important to get as much information out there as we could to try to take on the virus, one of the credential lab coat wearing experts who was much more correct about COVID than Dr.
Fauci or anybody else, he was blacklisted.
That information was suppressed.
It is not going too far to say that People's lives were upended and ruined, and people died because of this, because this information was not allowed to be put out there because it was suppressed by political actors.
Then, of course, a lot of conservatives were blackballed.
Charlie Kirk was put on a do-not-amplify list.
Dan Bongino was put on a search blacklist.
So with Charlie, Charlie is absolutely great at Twitter, and his tweets would have a huge amount of reach.
Just the way he writes them, his personality, he's just great at it.
And so eventually they said, okay, we're just going to suppress his tweets.
Dan Bongino, who's got a huge reach, you couldn't even look him up.
You search for Dan Bongino, he wouldn't even pop up.
And then here's the key.
In 2018, Vijaya Gaddy, who was the head of legal policy and trust at Twitter, she's the one who made the call to ban Donald Trump when Jack Dorsey was out of the office.
She said that the duly elected sitting president of the United States can't have a voice in the public square.
Vijaya Gaddy said, we do not shadow ban.
And we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
That was co-signed by Kayvon Bakepour, who is the head of Twitter product.
So these are two people at the very highest level of Twitter who said, in writing, we do not shadow ban, and we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
We should have known then, those of us who didn't know.
I suppose most of us did know.
But everyone should have known then, oh, they do shadow ban.
When you say, we don't do this, and we definitely don't do it in this specific way, then you are acknowledging, well, maybe we kind of do that first part a little bit.
No, we don't shadow ban, and we definitely don't do it on political viewpoints.
Well, it turns out, they did.
They shadow banned, they specifically shadow banned, based on political viewpoints.
And at the very highest level, there was a team to shadow ban, but then there was a team above the team to shadow ban.
And who was on the team above the team to shadow ban?
Vijaya Gaddy and Jack Dorsey.
They were the ones making the highest level decisions on who to shadow ban, a practice that they lied about and said did not occur.
They called it visibility filtering.
Visibility filtering is just a euphemism, obviously, for shadow banning.
And apparently Twitter uses this quite a lot.
According to one of the Twitter engineers that Barry Weiss spoke with, quote, So next level stuff.
An outright lie from Twitter.
And the thing is, to quote George W. Bush, fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, heh heh, the point is you're not going to fool me again, heh heh heh.
Words of wisdom, words to live by.
When the liberals clutch their pearls and they say, oh, it's so terrible.
These right-wingers, they're taking trust away from our institutions and our democracy.
They don't trust the big tech oligarchs.
They don't trust the...
Bureaucrats in Washington, they don't trust our elections.
They don't trust our scientists in the lab coats.
It's so terrible.
Well, why don't we trust them?
It's not our fault that we don't trust those people.
It's your fault.
It's their fault.
We don't trust the medical establishment because of Dr.
Fauci, because he lied to us.
We don't trust the big tech oligarchs who control the public square, because they lied to us.
We don't trust the people who are running the elections in 2020 and 2022, for that matter, in certain places, because they lie to us, and they upend all the rules, and then they gaslight us, and then they relieve themselves on our legs, and they tell us that it's raining.
They're the ones who did it.
Okay?
You libs.
You libs are the ones who did it.
So I'm not going to shed one tear.
I'm not going to make one single apology for not having faith in the institutions that you control.
We're not the ones who destroyed our sacred democracy.
You are.
Okay?
You're the ones.
We are responding in the only rational and prudent way that we possibly can.
Do not believe these people.
Oh, the media.
Oh, my goodness.
How did I forget the media?
Okay?
They don't trust the real news, the real journalists, and the neckties, and the New York Times, and I know I sound like I'm doing an Arlo Guthrie song, and the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the CNN. Right, we don't trust any of them.
They're complete liars.
They have no credibility whatsoever.
If I see a headline in the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post, and I see a headline on frogsturninggaynews.biz.co.uk, I am going to believe the latter.
The latter has more credibility.
If I see Dr.
Fauci telling me something about medical science, and I see an African witch doctor wearing a big headdress doing a rain dance telling me something about medical science, I'm going to trust the latter.
He has much more credibility, okay?
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Barry Weiss doing great work on covering that story.
Speaking of courageous women, the sister of the supreme leader of Iran.
I did it again.
I'm an American.
I should I'll try it again.
The sister of the Supreme Leader of Iran, of the Ayatollah, has come out against her brother and against the regime.
She said, I think it is appropriate now to declare that I oppose my brother's actions and I express my sympathy with all mothers in mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic regime from the time of Khomeini, the first guy after the Iranian revolution, to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khomeini.
She writes this in the letter.
I don't bring up the story to say anything about Iranian politics.
I don't really care that much.
I mean, I care in that I care.
I hope that people live good, flourishing lives, but I don't have any particular interest in Iran.
And I'm going to get in trouble for this take, and Media Matters is probably already clipping it out as we speak.
I bring it up because the success of the mullahs in Iran actually should give some Some encouragement to U.S. conservatives.
The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan should give some encouragement to American conservatives.
And I don't mean...
Hear me clearly.
I am not saying we want Sharia law in the United States.
I am not condoning the actions and the laws of the malas or of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I am simply pointing out that...
Liberal modernity, taken to its extremes, transing kids, redefining marriage, killing the babies, destroying our culture, the consequences of liberal modernity are not inevitable.
And those two countries, for all of their sins, for all of their many problems, have proven that, okay?
Just take it in that very narrow sense.
Before the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, the nation looked like a Western country.
Women were wearing miniskirts walking down the street.
It looked like liberalism and secularism and modernity were inevitable there.
Before the Iranian Revolution, Iran looked like it was on the same path as all the other modern Western countries.
I'll say it for the thousandth time.
I don't want the mullahs to come in in America or the Taliban or anything like that.
But that wouldn't happen because the reason that a conservative backlash in Iran and Afghanistan looked like a Muslim caliphate is because those are Muslim countries with a long Muslim tradition.
A conservative backlash in America would look very, very different because America is a Christian country.
Okay?
but there could be a conservative revival.
That's all I'm saying.
All I'm saying is liberal modernity, which we are told by the crooked establishment that wants to kill your babies and trans your kids and ruin your marriage and stop you from reproducing and hook you on drugs and outsource your jobs and open your borders and destroy your whole country.
Those people have put us into a trance and made us believe liberal modernity is inevitable.
We're just all zombie walking.
There's no way to preserve any of your traditions or anything like that.
That's not true.
Those regimes that threw out liberal modernity and other parts of the world, despite all of the pressure, including from the global superpower, have remained basically in place for many decades now.
Half a century now.
And maybe America could do it too.
Maybe we could do it the right way.
I'm not saying we start implementing Burka laws.
But we could enforce traditional American laws against obscenity.
We could stop killing all the babies.
We could stop chopping off kids' genitals.
We could get back to normal.
It is possible.
Don't believe the liberal elites who want to discourage you and who want to pretend that they are inevitable.
They are not inevitable.
They try to make their numbers and their power seem much larger than they actually are.
Speaking of foreign relations, there's a story that very few conservative commentators have reported on, but it matters because it tells you a lot about our foreign policy right now.
The UK has now decided to import American gas, and that's good news, right?
We're happy when American energy does well.
But the story is a little quirky because the UK also decided to ban its own gas.
So the UK will not produce its own natural gas.
It won't frack itself.
But it still wants natural gas, so it will import it from the United States.
And people are calling this very expensive hypocrisy.
But that's what's happening.
And you're seeing a broader move throughout Europe to turn back toward American energy.
Well, what had been supplying their energy before?
Previously, their energy was coming from themselves in the relatively distant past now, or from Russia.
Russia was supplying a lot of Europe's energy.
And as a result of the Ukraine war This is why the United States has a stake in prolonging the Ukraine war.
It serves the US national interest to turn Europe away from Russia and And Europe turns to Russia because Russia's very, very close, and Russia funded a lot of environmentalist groups to go in and convince Europe to stop producing its own energy, so they go to Russia.
But then Russia invades Ukraine.
The United States decides this is a good opportunity to put a bunch of sanctions on Russia and turn Europe back to the United States.
All of this to say, what you are seeing in politics, and especially in international politics, I think that Ukraine was the most important country in the world and the greatest democracy ever in history.
How did that happen?
Just a few years ago, the Democrats were impeaching Donald Trump for colluding with the Ukrainians.
Just a few years ago, we were told that Ukraine was this horribly corrupt country, and it was all terrible.
And so how did that change overnight, such that everybody posted the Ukraine flag immediately?
Because it serves the U.S. interest, and it serves not just the woke people, it serves deep, much more entrenched interests.
And it brings me around to this final point here, which is, We have been told for months now that Russia is a genocidal, awful, evil terrorist regime, and we have to do everything we can to stop Russia from getting weapons, from using those weapons on the poor Ukrainian people.
We just released the biggest Russian arms dealer in the world while Russia is occupying Ukraine.
Doesn't that seem like...
Wait, hold on.
You were just telling me, Democrats, that we've got to cut off Russia's supply of arms.
We've got to harm...
We can't allow any military Russian assets to be anywhere around the world.
And also, okay, we're going to trade the worst arms dealer on earth for this basketball player because it'll give Joe Biden a nice little headline.
It's amazing how quickly people's opinions can turn.
The Daily Wire's post-production team, by the way, is expanding and is in need of new, talented video editors to help with the ever-increasing volume of Daily Wire Plus content.
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Now, finally, we get to my favorite time of the week, the mailbag, sponsored by PureTalk.
Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, and enter code NOLS to get 50% off your first month.
Before we get to the mailbag, there is one clip I really wanted to get to in the show.
This just popped up last night, and I don't even want to introduce it.
It is Al Pacino from the Video Game Awards.
Please join me in welcoming to the Game Awards, Al Pacino.
So cool.
Thank you!
Oh, thank you!
Thank you!
Hello everyone!
It's really good to see you here!
This is an experience for me.
What I didn't expect, but here I am, as usual, doing my surprising thing to myself.
But anyway, it may come as a shock to you, but it's hard for me to see the teleprompter.
It goes on.
We don't have time to play the whole thing.
The whole appearance by Al Pacino at the Video Game Awards, for some reason, is just a true delight.
I bring it up for no reason in particular other than it delighted and amused me.
And sometimes people say that I bear a passing resemblance to Al Pacino in The Godfather.
So I am just pleased that Pacino and I share another thing in common, which is that we often have trouble reading the teleprompter.
I, I, okay, I think, I think it's time to get to the mailbag.
Let's go.
First question.
Mr.
Knowles, it's your favorite resident bass player and hopefully a candidate for your show's stinger.
Coming at you again with another question.
As a metal musician, I wanted to get your perspective on your thoughts of satanic imagery in music.
Now, as a heavy metal musician, it is a huge proponent in a lot of it, but looking behind the scenes at the artists and the bands themselves, they do not advocate for satanic imagery.
Most of them are actually Catholic.
The only genre of metal that actually is a proponent to practicing Satanism is black metal, but others like thrash metal or death metal, they don't actually believe in practices of Satan or anything of that matter.
Any insight would be fantastic.
Shout out to Ben Davies.
Coincidentally, a Catholic buddy of mine is a metal musician.
So I believe you.
I believe you in that I'm sure that Most metal musicians don't worship the devil and many of them are probably perfectly sincere Christians.
There is a problem with metal, though, as a genre.
And it's really a problem of rock and roll and hip-hop and metal would be an extreme version of this.
Which is that the music itself, forget about the lyrics, forget about the symbolism, just the music itself is problematic.
Because, as Plato tells us, music, more than any other art form, is able to stir and shape the soul.
It's able to bypass the rational faculties.
When we're listening to music, we are just sort of swept away.
It can totally change our moods and we will not really be all that conscious of it.
And this is why, back when our civilization was more serious, we took music much more seriously.
We make fun of Footloose now and, you know, these puritanical people who are getting upset about kids dancing around to some rock and roll or something.
But it is a serious question if you acknowledge that music can shape the soul, which musicians more than anybody would acknowledge.
So, this is why, traditionally...
The music that was encouraged in our civilization was music that was melodic and eventually harmonic.
But percussion is something that people have always been a little more wary of because percussion just cuts right to the core.
It moves your body.
When you're at the club and you're having your vodka soda or whatever and then you're listening to dubstep and then that beat finally drops.
And your body starts convulsing and you're not intending to do that.
That's just sort of what happens.
So, in metal, it's a very percussive genre of music.
You get those drums, you're just going constantly, you get that bass, even keeping that beat going in you.
And so that can shape your soul, and that can take you away from your rational faculties.
And so you've just, I'm just saying, bro, you've got to be a little bit careful.
Next question.
Hi, Michael.
Arun here with another question about scientific philosophy.
I just got done listening to your speech, Science is Fake, and as both a scientist and a loyal Michael Knowles fan, I endorse it completely.
Now, my understanding is that you claim science is a set of physical models which are meant to offer us predictive power over nature and which may help us predict the motion of the planets, GPS clocks, and whatnot.
But it does not necessarily represent the underlying nature of reality.
But you also alluded, I think correctly, to the scientific process whereby new models will offer iterative improvements over old models.
Example, Einsteinian relativity versus Newtonian mechanics.
Does this entire process not rely on a fundamental assumption that there is an objective reality which exists apart from our subjective interpretations of reality and that these new models are meant to converge on the truth, thereby prohibiting us from abandoning the idea of objective reality altogether?
Yes.
Excellent, excellent question.
An observation, Arun.
That is the idea.
And that's why people like Bacon, people like Newton especially, people like those early scientists tended to be deeply, deeply Christian.
I mean, you think of Isaac Newton.
He spent the last decades of his life more or less ignoring science and interpreting scripture.
So, yes, I'm not saying that the scientific endeavor and scientific worldview from the beginning are hostile to fundamental metaphysical truths or religion or anything like that.
The problem with the scientific worldview, though, is in focusing exclusively on the physical, it inevitably makes an idol out of the physical world.
In focusing on phenomena and matter, it makes an idol out of that.
And it is very easy to believe, as a result of the scientific representations that we're all so dazzled with these days, that the fundamental part of reality is physical.
This is why you hear people say, well, yes, Michael, man has a special relationship in the cosmos, but literally, the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Or, look, the basic objective facts are, or you'll even, you often hear this on the debate over transgenderism.
What is a woman?
What is a man?
Look, a woman is her chromosomes, okay?
That is what is objectively true.
That's a fact.
That's why we're all talking about facts, right?
But Yeah, it's true that a woman has X chromosomes, generally speaking, but that's not all a woman is.
The physical is not the fundamental fact.
Matter is not the fundamental fact of reality.
Form is much more fundamental than matter is.
The metaphysical, my soul, is much more fundamental than my body is, and the two are intertwined.
So you're right about...
The process of science in principle and in theory.
But the problem is this is a fallen world.
And so we naturally fall prey to the idols that we make.
And the scientific idols ultimately do tend toward a materialist worldview.
Even if the earliest scientists, the guys who kicked off the scientific revolution, would have found that bizarre.
Next question.
Hey Michael, this is Marissa.
I've got a question about reading people and reading their intentions.
I'm not the greatest with this.
I feel like I've trusted the wrong people or befriended the wrong people because I couldn't initially tell that they had bad intentions or were just trying to kind of use me for things like that.
And you strike me as the kind of guy who's very perceptive.
So I would love to hear any tips or advice you might have to better read people and better understand them.
Thanks.
Really good question.
Working in politics, and show business actually, acting too, would be another thing that gives some insight into this.
They impart very few hard skills.
Working in politics doesn't teach you how to do all that much, doesn't teach you how to be an engineer, doesn't teach you how to bake a cake, doesn't teach you how to build a house, but it does teach you how to read people.
Actually, if you've ever taken an acting class or worked in acting or theater or anything like that, that imparts virtually no hard skills.
It does impart the skill, though, of reading people.
You have to.
I mean, politics is about bringing people together.
Politics is about figuring out how people tick, what motivates them, and how we can all live together.
And then acting is about figuring out characters and building characters.
And so if you do either or both of those things well, you have to be able to read people and know a little something about people.
But it's not a science, right?
Here are three tips.
Here's how to read people.
And this is what you should do in your life.
It is much more an art than a science.
Because people are not just little mechanistic computers that can be hacked.
That's what the Libs believe.
That's what the Great Reset people believe.
That's what our ruling class believes.
But that's not actually how people work.
People are a mysterious thing.
And so my advice to you, if you want to get better at reading people, you have to spend more time around people.
You have to look deeply into people.
And you can do this with technical learning, and you can do this with practical learning.
So the technical learning, how do you get to know people and what motivates them?
You should read the Russian novelists.
You should read Shakespeare.
You should read Victorian novels.
You should...
You can read and engage in the sort of art that is focused on the inner life of people.
And then in a practical matter, you need to be around a lot of people and you need to go to social events and all different sorts of social events.
You should go to the bar.
You should go to the book club.
You should go to church.
You should spend time in real community.
Not in virtual community.
Not just online.
Not just texting people.
But in real life.
Because the way to read people It's not just, he said this, or he believes this.
He's a liberal, so he's going to do this.
Or he says that he works this job.
No, it's so much more subtle.
It's little tells.
It's how they move their faces, where they look when they're talking to you.
It's when you're at a cocktail party with somebody, and you're having a conversation, and he's looking over your shoulder to see if someone more important walked into the room.
It's all these very, very subtle things that you're going to pick up.
And then, like a soldier clearing a room, like a cop going in and apprehending a bad guy, like anyone who needs to perform in a split second, You're just going to read things in a way that is subconscious.
You're just going to go in and you're going to have a gut feeling.
And that's why people, especially in politics, will say, oh, I just got my gut.
You know, I just go on my gut.
Well, that's why.
Because you've trained your gut over a long period of time.
Next question.
Hi, Michael.
My question is regarding your Italian heritage.
Would you ever consider living in or spending time raising your kids in Italy?
Or do you love America too much to leave?
Also, what is your favorite Italian dish to eat?
Do you have any recipes that were passed down in your family?
Anyways, love the show.
Thanks.
Love, Ashley.
Thank you, Ashley.
Very good questions.
Very important questions.
I would live in Italy for some short period of time.
I would not move to Italy.
I would never leave my country.
I would not be an expat.
One, I really love my country.
But two, it's right to love one's country.
You know, I actually think it's proper to love one's country and to be a part of one's country.
And I think one's identity comes not just from one's individual desires and inclinations, but from one's place in community.
Because man is fundamentally a political animal.
Man is a social animal.
We are not fundamentally individuals.
I take the Aristotelian view of what man is and what defines man, not the liberal view, for instance.
In terms of my favorite pasta dish, I don't know.
My favorite Italian dish, probably veal saltimboca, or my real favorite dish is Sweet Little Elise's homemade lasagna with the fresh pasta with the bechamel meat sauce.
It's just absolutely magnificent.
There are many recipes passed down in my family.
Last night, by the way, we just had fresh gnocchi.
Fresh, delicious ricotta gnocchi was just absolutely delightful with meatballs.
So that would be my favorite.
Sweet little Elise's lasagna.
We have many more mailbag questions to get to, but you're going to have to do it on the member block, okay?
And this is Friday.
This is Fake Headline Friday.
I need your help.
To help me beat Ben Davies, he has given me four real headlines, one fake headline.
