Ep. 1294 - New Transgender Ban In Italy Outrages Lib
California finally admits it’s dying, conservative populists rise throughout Europe, and Italy bans dudes from beauty pageants.
Ep.1294
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When my friends and I left California three years ago, we told you the state was dying.
And now, even California officials are admitting we were right.
After more than a century of long-term population growth, the state of California is now officially predicted to stagnate.
California today has about 39.25 million people.
A decade ago, that number was predicted to grow to 53 million by 2060.
Just three years ago, that prediction was adjusted down significantly to 45 million.
And last week, the California Department of Finance adjusted the prediction down once more to 39.25 million.
The same number that we have today, which means that if the trend of prediction adjustments keeps up, it's likely that California will die not of mere stagnation, but of mass exodus.
And California is not the only liberal state losing people.
New York is facing the exact same problem as the state's comptroller grudgingly just admitted on TV.
In terms of our budget planning process in New York, we have the somewhat Strange calendar of the fiscal year starts on April 1st.
And of course, you don't have your heart attacks collection date until April 15th.
So the budget that was put in place, you know, frankly, was based on more optimistic numbers.
But you know, in the current financial plan, Uh, division of budget is taken down each year for the next, uh, for the next few years, $5 billion in revenue.
And, you know, we're now slightly ahead of current updated projections, which have been lowered.
But the weakness, Neil, has been in the personal income tax collections.
And some of that has to do with taxpayer migration that you alluded to.
But I think as much of it's just reflective of a slowing economy right now.
Did you catch that?
Did you catch that explanation?
Forget about tax revenue and New York or whatever.
Just as a matter of politics, just as a matter of rhetoric, that is what we observers of rhetoric call an excrement sandwich.
That is where you wedge the bad news in between perfectly fine and ordinary news.
Yes, tax receipts are down because of the bad economy and the mass exodus.
And the bad economy, of course, so that's no big deal.
What was that?
Oh, that was just the bad economy.
Now, what did you say before that?
Oh, I was talking about the bad economy.
No, what was the one after that, right there in the middle?
Oh, right, people are fleeing your state.
People are leaving the liberal states. - Yes.
Forget about the consequences of what that means for the red states.
Forget for a moment about what that means for national unity or whatever.
We can get to that later.
Just take a moment to savor at least one consolation of being a conservative, which is that eventually, after a long time perhaps, consequences catch up with bad government.
Eventually, after a long time, might take decades, reality reasserts itself in the end, as it is reasserting itself in New York and California today.
I'm Michael Knowles, this is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to The Michael Knowles Show.
Wonderful to be with you as always.
In just a moment, we have a middle-aged white guy from the Civil Air Patrol talking about how terrible middle-aged white guys are and sending a message to any white guy who might want to join the military or any form of national service.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, though, I want to zoom out internationally.
Because this collapse of liberal policies and this reflection in public opinion polls and people's behavior, it's not just happening in the States.
It's not just happening in New York and California.
This is a global issue.
You know, this week, I'm on the road.
I'm in Hungary.
Very, very excited.
I mean, I'm not literally in Hungary right now.
I'll be flying out to Hungary almost immediately after this show, and I'll be giving a speech outside of Budapest on Friday.
So if you're in town, happen to be in the neighborhood, go check that out at MCC Fest.
I've got my new book.
It's the Hungarian translation of my first blank book, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide that is now available in Hungary starting today.
But it's not just Hungary that's gone pretty conservative. - Yeah.
This is a global issue.
It's taking over the West.
Spain right now is looking at its first properly right-wing government since Francisco Franco in 1975.
I alluded to this last week.
Well, the numbers are becoming even clearer.
Polls are showing that the conservative Popular Party, which is the sort of center-right mainstream Regular old kind of squishy Republican Party equivalent in Spain, led by Alberto Núñez-Feijo.
I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that.
Has enough support to unseat the Socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, but doesn't have enough support to get an outright majority, which means that the kind of center-right, conservative-ish party is going to have to form a coalition government with a properly conservative party, which is the Vox party.
It means voice.
That is a nationalist party.
It's anti-immigration, it's anti-feminist, it's anti-liberal, it's an actual conservative party.
So, with the properly conservative party as the kingmaker for the first time in now 50 years or so, you're going to see, potentially, And we'll get to why I say potentially in a second, a properly right-wing government in Spain.
What is the leader of that party saying?
Saying neither globalist agendas nor separatist concessions can prevent access to water for all.
This issue of water, this issue of environmentalist policy, this has become a major, major issue in Spain, where conservatives, where ordinary people are seeing the liberals and the squishes and the globalists Prioritizing abstract humanity, or even worse, prioritizing regular old wildlife, or the trees, or the grass, or whatever, over actual people in the here and now.
And the conservative party comes in.
This is not rocket science.
They come in and they say, hey, the Spanish people should have access to water.
This is not to take a PhD in political science to see what the conservatives are doing to win in Spain and in Italy and elsewhere throughout Europe and in the United States as well.
The conservatives are coming in and they're saying, hey, you crazy pie-in-the-sky liberals are prioritizing all your insane ideologies over the basic needs and the basic traditional desires of ordinary people.
After the people have had their desires and their wishes and their use of right reason neglected for long enough, they're going to swing back and they're going to vote for the conservatives.
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They say that we are potentially seeing a right-wing response in Europe because the liberals still have a lot of power.
So you got the Spanish political party, the Vox party, calling for a Reconquista of Spain.
This is the same kind of language that was used when the Spaniards took back Spain from Muslim invaders back over 500 years ago.
They're saying we need a Reconquista now to take back Spain from the liberal globalists who Don't care about Spain's traditions, don't care about Spain's people, and are flooding Spain, actually, with a lot of Muslims, like you saw in the initial Muslim invasion of Spain.
So they're saying, we need a Reconquista to reclaim Spain.
For what?
For what?
For the traditional Spanish people?
Okay, good.
For our cultural practices?
Okay, good.
For our basic needs and desires of state, correct?
Okay, good.
For Christianity, because when you talk in these abstractions, the traditional culture, the traditional people, the traditional practices and rituals, eventually you're going to have to get a little specific.
And the specific answer on all of those things, the thing that has animated Europe and the individual European nations in different ways, but all at the same time, Is Christianity.
And so the properly conservative parties are not going to be speaking in the mealy-mouthed language of the Enlightenment or rationalism or human rights or whatever.
It's going to be particular.
It's going to be talking in terms of Christianity.
There's a great line from the Christian writer Hilaire Belloc, a Catholic writer, who once provocatively said, the faith is Europe, Europe is the faith.
Which does not mean that the Christian faith is reducible to Europe, or really reducible to anything.
But it is to say, the thing that defines Europe, what we consider to be Europe, what we consider to be the West, it is Christianity.
Not just in Spain, you're seeing this in Germany as well right now.
The right-wing party alternative for Germany, alternative for Deutschland, is climbing to record support, widening its lead over all three parties in the ruling coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The AFD has increased its support to 22%.
So much like in Spain, the only party that the seriously right-wing party alternative for Deutschland is trailing is the Christian Democrat Party, which has 26%.
So, you could be looking at a pretty serious right-wing ruling coalition there.
You already saw a conservative populist uprising in the election in Italy.
And this is why I say you could have potentially right-wing governments in these places, because Georgia Maloney was elected in Italy to be a properly right-wing, much more right-wing than we've seen in the past, government, and she hasn't really done that.
And this is sometimes what happens.
In Europe, as in the West broadly, you get popular support to elect a right-wing conservative party.
Here we go, baby!
And the CNN and the media and all these people, they always say, it's the far-right, extremist, fascist, Nazi, ultra, right-wing, whatever.
And then what happens?
The parties get in there and they moderate and they run as basically just a slightly more conservative version of regular old EU, Brussels, global liberalism that we've seen for a long time.
I'm sorry to say that's basically what we've seen out of the Maloney government.
So the same thing could happen in Germany.
Same thing could happen in Spain.
Or maybe not.
Maybe we're seeing an actual backlash.
In Italy, some good news.
Italy has come out and banned transvestites from the Miss Italy beauty pageant.
Amazing how low our expectations are now that this is great news.
This is a great conservative victory that dudes, Tony Soprano doesn't get to compete in the Miss Italy beauty pageant.
I'll take what I can get.
Italy comes out after some fella won the Miss Netherlands beauty contest.
Patrizia Mirigliani, the official patron of Miss Italy, stated in an interview with Radio Cusano that contestants must be women from birth.
She says, lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news by also using strategies that I think are a bit absurd.
And it is absurd.
Totally out of whack, it's totally out of tune.
In the Netherlands beauty pageant, you saw the fellow who won, who dresses up like a woman, even if he were a woman, he Would not be anywhere near as attractive as the woman who came in number two.
So not only was it absurd to have a man compete against a woman, but the man, just physically, I mean, we're talking about a beauty contest, we're judging people's attractiveness, the man was much, much, much uglier than the actual woman who came in number two.
So you're at a place now where if transgender people are allowed to compete in the beauty contests, they're gonna win, almost certainly, just so that the judges can make a political point about how much they love transgenderism.
And in our woke culture, no one's allowed to say otherwise, or you'll be considered a far-right winger.
So Italy comes in.
Why do I mention this?
I mention it just to underscore this trend that we're seeing.
When Trump won in 2016, oh, it was a fluke.
It was a fluke.
Hillary was unpopular.
It was a total fluke.
It was wrong to pick him as a nominee, but just whatever.
Okay, I guess he won.
And then what?
Well, what about the Brexit?
Remember when Brexit happened?
Oh, that was a total fluke!
It was just because of some really savvy marketing campaigns by the conservatives.
Total fluke, though!
Not indicative of a global trend.
Okay, what happens when Sweden gets a right-wing government?
Okay, what happens when Italy gets a right-wing government?
Okay, what happens when the right-wing party, for the first time since Francisco Franco, looks like it's going to win in Spain?
Oh, what happens when the right-wing party in Germany looks like it's going to win?
How many wins do you need?
Before you see that the reaction to global liberalism is not just some fluke because Donald Trump is a clever guy on a debate stage.
It's a global trend.
How long before the liberals have to look themselves in the mirror and say, hey, did we screw up?
Hey, do people not really like us anymore?
The smart ones have done that, and they're clamping down on their power right now.
But this is a pattern.
And it's nice to see with the Italians, because I do hail from the Italian people on my mother's side.
And the Italians, despite their dalliances with socialism and liberalism, the Italians basically are a right-wing people.
The Italians are a little bit, it's a mixed bag, but they're basically Conservative.
They haven't had a functioning government since Octavian, but they are basically conservative people.
Now, will that be able to win out?
I think the conservatives have the numbers in America and all over Europe.
Can that win out over the way that the political institutions have been rigged against conservatives in Brussels, in Washington, D.C., all over?
That remains to be seen.
Clearly, the conservatives have taken a shellacking.
They undermined Trump's administration and routed him out of office after trying all sorts of failed, kooky attempts to get him out from the time he was on the campaign trail.
Maloney, they seem to have neutered her government.
The Brexit, they weakened the Brexit.
So, we can say, oh, I'm so happy that the The people are rising up for conservatism, but it doesn't matter.
You can have 90% of the people rising up for conservatism if they can't grab hold of the political institutions and wield that power.
That and a Euro 50 will get you a cup of coffee.
The liberals are taking this populist threat very seriously, including here, including in the Democrat Party.
Prominent Democrats now are coming out against RFK Jr.
Representative Susan Del Bene, a Democrat from Washington, who, yeah, she's just some random Congress lady, but she's also the head of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee.
So this is a major leadership arm of the Democrat Party.
She just came out, she called Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s, 's COVID-19 comments, quote, reprehensible.
She said they're disqualifying.
She said, such dangerous racism and hate have no place in America.
Demonstrate him to be unfit for public office and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
Good grief, lady.
What did Bobby Kennedy do?
He quoted one scientific study that was published in a real medical journal saying that COVID might be harsher on some ethnicities than others.
He quoted scientific literature, or referred to scientific literature, which cited the threat that bioweapons could be ethnically targeted.
That's all he did in a dinner that was recorded and released.
He didn't say anything that was wrong or even all that controversial.
So, it's not that the Democrats now are seeing that Bobby Kennedy made some comment and they're attacking him for it.
They're seeing that Bobby Kennedy is gaining support among Republicans, some Republicans who like what he said about COVID, who like what he said about COVID for years now.
Some independents who are sick of Biden and Trump, and crucially some Democrats, because he's polling at about 19% of the Democrat Party.
So they're seeing that, and then they're jumping on whatever flimsy excuse they can to attack him, to attack him.
It's not just her.
The House Minority Leader, this is the top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, whose family has a long history with racially provocative statements, Hakeem Jeffries' uncle is one of the most infamous leftist academics in the country, who came up with a whole theory about people of the sun and people of the ice.
And Africans are the sun people, and they're vibrant, and they're wonderful, and they're lively.
And white people are the ice people.
And the ice people don't have souls, and they're basically animals.
Nick Cannon, the entertainer some years ago, came out and echoed these statements.
And Hakeem Jeffries has defended his uncle before.
And actually the only way that Professor Jeffries was finally run out of academia was one time he went really far in his attacks on the ICE people and he veered into what is called anti-Semitism such that he Could plausibly have been accused of attacking a racial minority.
Back when he was just attacking the racial majority, it was all well and good.
But finally, he veered to the point where they could say, okay, you're engaging in the same kind of racism that we say is verboten.
So they ran Jeffries out.
But no one's really ever apologized for him.
They kind of just brushed him under the rug.
Anyway, all of that is prelude to say, Hakeem Jeffries says, why would you give Bobby Kennedy Jr.
a congressional platform to spew his hatred?
Here's the answer.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is a living, breathing false flag operation by the right wing to undermine the Democrats.
Living, breathing false flag operation, like he was constructed in a lab with the conservatives.
This could be somewhat plausible if he came out of nowhere, like an Andrew Yang or like a Vivek Ramaswamy even, if they were running as Democrats.
But Bobby Kennedy Jr.
is a Kennedy.
His dad was the Attorney General of the United States.
His uncle was Jack Kennedy, okay?
This is the most prominent Democrat family in America.
I don't think it's an op by the conservatives.
This is a coordinated attack right now from Democrat Party leadership to kill not only populism that you see on the right, but populism even that's cropping up on the left.
And that's because populism breaks that traditional boundary, just the right versus the left, or the Republicans versus the Democrats.
That populism comes in.
As you saw with Trump in 2016, and you're going to have a huge number of Republicans, just like all of the Democrats, who are irritated at Trump.
And actually, you're going to have some Democrats who were formerly Democrats who come over and say, this Trump guy, I kind of like what he's saying.
It breaks up what is referred to as the uniparty.
It throws a wrench in the political establishment, which is why the established powers from both parties are going to attack the Trumps.
But the Trumps aren't going away, because there are Trumps, and there are Nigel Farage's, and there are Viktor Orban's, and there are Georgia Maloney's, and there are Vox Party's in Spain, and it's growing because of the dissatisfaction, not just with the ruling party, but with the whole regime throughout the West.
The health of our political structure, not so great.
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Environmentalists.
Not only hypocrites, totally insufferable, right?
They tell you They're riding a bicycle while they're flying in private jets.
They'll insist to you that you stop eating meat because of methane from sweet little cows, but then they'll happily chow down on tasty Wagyu at Davos.
I bet you do a better job of conserving the environment than the likes of John Kerry or St.
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Speaking of middle-aged white dudes, like Bobby Kennedy Jr., the Civil Air Patrol has a fella, I guess some kind of a spokesman, Mark Wutan, who's gone viral on TikTok, to insist That National Service stop hiring middle-aged white dudes.
The only really guidance I put out there for them to consider is stop hiring middle-aged white people.
Especially dudes that are pilots.
Because, honestly, we all think alike.
Too much.
And if we're going to be preaching diversity and being inclusive, then for crying out loud, let's back it up with a, you know, let's make the rhetoric meet the reality.
We just need to stop promoting these middle-aged white dudes.
Middle-aged white dudes are the worst.
I hate them.
I hate them and you should too.
Could you recommend To a young man in your life, in your family, a loved one, that they join the military right now.
I know this is the Civilian Air Patrol, so it's like a little bit different.
You've seen all the woke stuff out of the military too.
Could you?
This pains me to say, I come from a military family.
My grandfather was a captain in the United States Navy.
I've got Navy and Army all throughout my family line, family tree.
I've got US military veterans going back to the American Revolution, okay?
It pains me to say this.
I am as big a supporter of the military as there can possibly be.
Could you, knowing that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is more concerned with fighting white rage and indoctrinating the cadets and the troops into woke ideology, anti-white ideology, anti-male ideology, Could you seriously say, ah yes, the best path for you, son, is to join the military?
Probably not.
You might still say it's noble and right to serve your country, even if you've got a bunch of complete doofuses running the show.
But I don't know, it'd be much harder.
It would be much harder to recommend that right now.
And it's not just the Civil Air Patrol.
It is all over the military.
There was a National Guard recruiting video that seemed to be selling, more than recruitment, it seemed to be selling transgenderism.
I was an active duty army brat, and all I wanted to do growing up was be part of the military and serve my country and be part of something bigger.
I waited until Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed, so I actually joined when I was 32.
My MOS is 12 Alpha.
I'm an engineer officer, and that means both the construction type of engineering, building things and making bridges.
It also means combat engineering, which is building obstacles, destroying obstacles, demolitions, all of that fun stuff.
When I became an officer, infantry and armor weren't open to females, and the combat side of engineering wasn't open until about 2016 or so.
I was drawn to it just because I like the technical aspect and, again, like getting my hands dirty, and my teams have always been very welcoming.
It's about what you know, it's about teamwork, it's about taking care of your soldiers.
So really, as long as you show that you can build trust in your team and that you take care of your people, gender doesn't matter.
Gender doesn't matter.
If our army believes that gender doesn't matter, I guess we ought to just pack it in, right?
We better build some really big walls around our country because we're never going to win another war again.
Because it means that our fighting force, on whom we depend to protect us, doesn't know the most basic aspects of human nature.
Of course, The vast majority of people in the Army and the National Guard and throughout the military, they know that this is complete nonsense.
But the leadership, the people making the dazzling recruitment videos, the people calling the shots, even if they don't believe this, they're saying this.
Gender doesn't matter.
And it's considered a positive?
Doesn't matter.
Back when I was looking to join... Women, do you believe this?
Women weren't even allowed in combat.
Can you believe?
Back when I was going to join the military, we were such a backwards nation that we didn't even send our daughters to get blown up by jihadis.
But now, we're much more progressive.
We're a much more virtuous and progressive nation, and we're going to send our little girls out there to get hacked up and tortured and exploded by evil men all around the world.
Aren't we so much better now?
Women in combat, that's considered to be the height of progressivism in this commercial.
Women in combat is a national scandal.
It is a disgrace.
It is a deep, deep shame and stain on our country.
And I don't even hear the conservative politicians talking about this.
Women in combat is a very recent phenomenon, as the lady just said in that commercial.
And yet, we just totally gave up that fight.
Why?
Because we don't want to be seen as disrespecting women who serve in the military.
I have the utmost respect for women who serve in the military.
I'm deeply grateful for their inclination to serve and sacrifice.
But the military is not about individual desires.
It's not even about individual ability.
It's about cohesion and unity and national policy and who we want to be as a nation.
I have no doubt that there are a significant number of women who would valiantly go out and risk their lives and bodily integrity to go fight for America.
I don't want them to do that.
I think it's bad for America to send women into harm's way.
I think part of the reason that we have an army is so that we don't have to do that.
I think it's disordered.
I think that women are more nurturing, they're the weaker sex, they're the gentler sex, and a major reason to have a military is to protect them.
Because boys need their mommies, and husbands need their wives, and societies need a nurturing feminine element.
And when we're talking, especially when we're talking about fighting in lethal force, we need to not be sentimental and not be absurdly ideological.
We need to send out the toughest, strongest, brawniest fellas.
The reason to keep women out of combat is as much for the men as for the women.
It's as much for the civilians as for the fighting force.
And you need to say it.
Even moderate Democrats said this ten years ago.
And now the conservative right wing won't say it.
This is a little bit of a political warning, too.
Things are polarizing pretty quickly.
If you haven't learned that in the last seven years, you're probably not going to learn it.
The political winners, the politicians who win, the political movements that win, are going to be the ones that are bold.
They're not going to be the ones that pussyfoot around every single little issue.
And say, well, actually, you know, look, I'm all for certain radical sexual ideologies, but only starting at age 18, not at age 17.
Okay, maybe starting at age 8, but not at age 7.
Okay, listen, I'm for women getting blown up in combat, but I'm not for them joining the Navy SEALs or whatever.
You're not going to have a middle ground here on a lot of these issues.
The voices that are going to be rewarded are going to be the bold voices who are offering a genuine alternative.
This has always been the best insight of American conservatism, and it comes from people like Phyllis Schlafly, this woman who single-handedly killed the radical feminist Equal Rights Amendment in the late 20th century.
She called for a choice, not an echo.
If the Libs, if the Conservatives rather, are just going to be Lib-lite, if they're just going to be squishes, if they're just going to alter a slightly more efficient version of Democrat policies, but you know with lower taxes or something, not only is that not going to help the country and the society, They're not even going to win elections because people are just going to vote for the Democrats.
I've made this point with the problems of the DeSantis campaign right now.
If the DeSantis campaign is just running as the better version of Donald Trump, it's going to lose.
Because even if people in a blind taste test prefer New Coke, as the focus testers at the Coca-Cola Corporation discovered back when they reinvented the recipe, when people take that blindfold off and they hear that they're getting something new, they're not going to like it.
They're going to want the OG, okay?
So you have to offer people a choice, not an echo.
Now, speaking of women's issues, we've got to get to our Weird Sex Stuff segment.
It wouldn't be a Michael Knolls Show if we didn't get to at least one segment on weird sex stuff.
It pervades and defines our culture in many ways.
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As generative AI enters the mainstream, so too does AI-generated porn.
And like its more respectable sibling, it's improving.
What does this mean?
You don't need to go through the whole article.
It means that people are going to be able to make customized pornography.
They're going to be able to make pornography tailored not only to their own tastes, but even resembling perfectly ordinary people.
Movie stars, sure, and celebrities, sure.
But even just ordinary people, they're going to be able to say, hey, you know, Sally from Math Class, yeah, put her in like a porno, and here are the parameters.
And using relatively few inputs, very, very quickly, you're going to be able to get totally customized porn.
And it's a big worry, and ethicists are having a conversation about this.
But they're having the conversation, I think, in the wrong way.
They're saying, oh, goodness, can you imagine how awful it would be if you get deep faked?
If you get porn made about you without your consent, that's going to be so horrifying and shameful.
Yes, of course, you've got to protect people from having their likeness used in this way.
I'm sure that would be deeply distressing.
I'm sure that would be very terrible, especially for young women who are going to be the victims of this in 99.9% of cases.
Yeah, totally.
Absolutely.
You're not going to solve the problem just focusing on that.
You're not going to solve the problem parsing the fair uses of people's publicly posted images to be plugged into some artificial intelligence machine that in a matter of seconds, totally privately, is going to be able to create whatever people's fantasies are instantly.
You're never going to stop it that way.
You've got to focus on the other side.
Because the other victims here are the users.
We talk about we need pity for the drug addicts.
Well, you need far more pity for these people, because this problem of pornography and various kinds of sexual disorders and addictions, that's far more pervasive than addiction to fentanyl or coke or anything like that.
The more readily this becomes available, the more people are going to be attracted to it.
I said it last week, I said, Ethicists are warning about the future proliferation of sex robots.
I said, don't underestimate how sexy the sex robots are going to be.
Don't underestimate how tempting this kind of a sin is going to be when it can be done in the privacy of your own home.
You're going to see the kind of ubiquity for this kind of extremely creepy stuff that you're already seeing for internet porn.
So the only real solution here is not going to be some middle ground, well, you can look at this kind of porn, but not this kind.
You can look at this kind of a deepfake, but not this kind.
It's not going to be parsing these minute details.
The way to stop this is going to be a broad attack on porn generally.
You've got to attack the supply of all porn because you're not going to be able to litigate in all of these instances what kind of porn is acceptable and what kind of porn is not acceptable.
You think that the judicial standard exalted by Justice Potter Stewart, that you can't define obscenity, you can't define pornography, but you know when you You think that's a hard legal principle to parse?
Well, think about when you're trying to distinguish in court between what kind of disgusting degenerate porn is technically kind of legal, and what kind of disgusting degenerate porn is technically not totally legal.
It's madness.
That way lies madness.
The way to stop this Is to attack porn generally, which will reduce the demand for porn, which will make it easier to reduce the profitability of the supply of porn, which will make it easier to come in with the cudgel of the state and attack porn even further.
We've been so brainwashed by this idea that politics is always downstream of culture, which has some truths to it.
Also, it's not much of a difference.
In many ways, the distinction between culture and politics is a distinction without a difference.
It forgets that laws exist for a reason.
If politics is just always downstream of culture, I guess we should get rid of murder laws, right?
Because really, you're not going to stop murder by passing laws against it.
You've just got to convince people in their hearts that it's not good to commit murder.
No, we have laws for a reason, and laws are instructive.
Laws are a teacher.
And in the case of porn, there's always been a popular consensus against pornography.
So it's Democrats, Republicans, all throughout the 90s and the 2000s, trying to pass laws against it.
Radical liberal judges shot it down.
Well, now, just as we're seeing with the populist growth in the United States and in Europe, you're going to see a big move against this, too.
Let's get it right this time.
Crack down on all the porn, or else you and your daughters and everyone around you is about to be the star of very naughty movies, because the technology is advancing very, very quickly.
You know, folks, people write in to me a lot.
They say, Michael, how do I write in to you?
And it's confusing, because you'd think in order to write in to me.
Well, there's a specific place to send your questions, that would be the mailbag.
How do you get to the mailbag?
Very simple.
You head on over to dailywire.com, you go to the Michael Knowles Show page, and you click on the mailbag link.
You then will have an email popped up for you, and you can attach a file.
Well, you can record that audio file on your phone.
You can record it on your laptop.
You can record it on your tablet.
You just attach that file into the mailbag email, and you click send right there through the website.
It's very, very simple.
Try to keep your mailbag questions to a minute or less so that I can use them on the show.
Sometimes people It's like you're recording your memoir audiobook and then sometimes they're interesting but I can't use it on the show.
So send that in.
We'll get to it on Friday.
Speaking of techno dystopia, I got the jitterbug.
Boom.
Boom.
I got the jitterbug.
Is that Wham?
I think that's George Michael.
Is that George Michael?
I don't really remember.
Anyway, I'll soon be able to remember because George Michael might go on tour again seven years after he died.
How is he going to do that, you ask?
Well, through holograms.
Already, the band members in Wham!, Shirley Kemp, George Michael's best friend in Wham!, suggested the idea, and this was backed by fellow backing singer Helen Pepsi DeMock Croquette, who is also up for this.
There's precedent for it.
It's not just a fantasy.
ABBA did this last year.
You know ABBA, like Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again.
ABBA did their first gig in 42 years.
How'd they do it?
In hologram form at London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
They referred to this group of performers not just as ABBA, but as ABBAtars.
Get it?
ABBAtars.
And it showed them as they looked in 1979.
On the one hand, I don't want to seem like a total doom and gloom Luddite, even though I am kind of a Luddite, and I don't love most forms of technology.
But I don't want to seem like all technological advancement is bad.
It's not.
In a way, this is just the latest advance of a multimedia landscape.
Okay, we used to be able to watch movies in the theater, then we could watch movies at home, then we could watch little glittering images in our pocket, and now we can see them in 3D, in space, and they can perform.
Okay, fine.
But I think there's something deeper here.
I think this speaks to our culture's unwillingness to accept death.
Everybody's got to be eternally young.
Nobody can ever die.
Kanye West had a hologram of Kim Kardashian's father recite some words that I guess he had written for it at Kim Kardashian's birthday party.
And I thought, man, this is really great.
I would not like this as a birthday present.
Because you miss your loved ones who have gone, and so it can be really sweet in a way, it can be really nice and satisfying to see them again, but it's not Real.
They're dead.
They're really dead.
We're all going to die.
Peter Cushing is dead.
I know he's in the fairly recent Star Wars, but he's dead, and it's weird to just not let people die.
Steve Jobs gave that famous speech at the Stanford commencement.
It was one of the best commencement addresses in recent memory on how death is one of the most important parts of life.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death.
Leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.
The whole speech is quite good.
That first part is the key.
Death is one of the most important things I've ever seen in life.
Death gives meaning to your life.
Death gives narrative structure to your life.
It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Death concentrates the mind.
There's a famous saying of Dr. Johnson, which I sometimes quote as proving the medicinal benefits of capital punishment, which is, depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he's to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Well, we're all going to be hanged in a fortnight in a certain way.
We're all going to die.
No one here gets out alive.
Even if we have holograms all around us, even if we keep putting Peter Cushing in movies, we are going to die.
And the sooner you recognize that, the better.
Because it's going to wake you up and get your life in order.
And force certain questions on you.
Is this it?
Do we just take a dirt nap and turn to worm food?
Or is there more to life?
Is there more in heaven and earth than is dreamt up in our philosophies?
Am I just my body?
Am I also my soul?
Well, if I am a soul, what happens to the soul after death?
Is there more to the story even for my body?
Is there a moral order?
Could I be punished?
Is there justice?
Eternally?
Is there such a thing as eternity?
You have to face these questions when you look at death, which is why our liberal culture, which is why the principalities and powers of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places, wants to distract you from death, and has broadly succeeded in modern life.
We don't see death a lot.
When our grandparents are going to die, they go away to little homes and we don't see, they go to hospice places.
We don't have to see it in our own homes.
When people die now, you don't really go to funerals as much.
You go to celebrations of life, so-called.
You don't even usually see a body or even a casket.
It's later, it's no big deal.
We just kind of shoo it away.
And because modernity has exceeded at greatly extending people's lives, then they usually just die when they're very, very old.
They're kind of out of the way.
We don't pay attention to that anymore.
That's in some ways more pleasant because death is deeply unpleasant.
When Christ himself, when his friend Lazarus died, he weeps.
Shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept.
Then we lose focus and then we forget what we're doing.
Before I go, I meant to get to this a few days ago.
Tony Bennett died.
Tony Bennett.
I love Tony Bennett, was listening to Tony Bennett the other day while I was making fresh pasta with my son.
He's great.
He's wonderful.
And the reason why it's so particularly sad that he died, I mean, look, he lived a good long life, 96 years old, cut down in his prime, flipped his Corvette.
No, that's not how he went.
He died after a battle with Alzheimer's disease.
And even for five years after his Alzheimer's diagnosis, he continued to tour.
The guy was just a total inspiration.
The reason it's so sad that he died is he's the last of his kind.
Because he's younger than the other guys.
You think of Sinatra, Dean Martin.
Sinatra was born in 1915.
Dean Martin was born in 1917.
Tony Bennett was born in 1926.
So Sinatra, for Bennett's whole career, referred to Tony Bennett as the kid.
Up until Sinatra's dying day, he called him the kid, even though Bennett was a pretty old man at that point.
And so that generation of music, that crooning, that dignified sensibility that was at least dignified in public, if not always in private comportment, for some people of that generation, that's gone now.
Now, public comportment for our popular musicians is absolutely disgusting, and the lyrics are disgusting, and the way they jiggle around.
But Tony Bennett and Sinatra and all those guys, they had class.
They'd put on a jacket and a tie and they would sing, and they would sing in a way that was really delightful and edifying.
So, anyway, R.I.P.
to Tony Bennett.
And a reminder, by the way, I know some people say they don't pray for the dead because it contradicts their religious views.
If you've ever said R.I.P.
You have prayed for the dead.
RIP means may he rest in peace.
Requiescat in pace.
So, requiescat in pace.
Tony Bennett, great guy, provided us a lot of great stuff over the years.
And I don't look forward to seeing his hologram, but I do look forward to playing more of his music.
No member block this week, folks, because I'm on the road in Hungary, and I don't know, I've got to go gallivant around Budapest, you know, and be part of the right-wing conspiracy out there.
So anyway, we'll look forward to a member block next week.
