Ep. 302 - The Media Wants Us To Forget About The Discredited Erica Thomas Race Hoax
Today on the show, as we all suffer through another Robert Mueller news cycle, I’d like to turn our attention back to the story of Erica Thomas. She claimed she was verbally assaulted by a racist white man, but now the police report is out, and it’s very bad for her. When a race hoax is exposed, I think we should talk about it, rather than simply move on. Also, an actress comes out as pansexual, even though the term pansexual has no meaning. And finally, Forever 21 comes up with the most unintentionally hilarious marketing gimmick of all time. Date: 07-24-2019
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today on the Matt Wall Show, as we all suffer through another Robert Mueller news cycle, I'd like to turn our attention back to the story of Erica Thomas.
She claimed that she was verbally assaulted by a racist white man at a grocery store.
Now the police report is out, and it's very bad for her.
And when a race hoax is exposed, I think we should talk about it, rather than simply move on as the media wants us to do.
Also, an actress comes out as pansexual, even though the term pansexual has no meaning.
And finally, Forever 21 comes up with The most unintentionally hilarious marketing gimmick of all time.
talk about all that today on the Matt Wall show.
All right another day of Mueller mania.
Another day to talk about Mueller and his report.
I am so excited.
I'm so excited to talk about this.
This issue is so interesting.
I could just talk about it all day.
It's the only thing I want to talk about.
I have so much fascinating analysis to offer.
Look, honestly, part of me would rather jump in front of a 16-wheeler than talk about this damned issue for one more second.
I, in fact, I went outside looking for a 16-wheeler, but I couldn't find one.
So, unfortunately for you.
So, we will talk about Mueller and the hearing and everything a little bit today, because news cycle is king.
You've got to follow the news cycles.
We'll talk about that.
Then we're going to move on to more interesting things, in my opinion.
You know, here's an important thing.
Your confidence is crucial.
And sometimes one change can make all the difference.
HairClub knows that.
That's why they're inviting you to become part of the HairClub family to see how getting the most out of your hair can really change your life, honestly.
It can make everything different.
They understand the emotions you're feeling when you start to lose your hair and your whole look is changing.
They know the questions you have.
That's because HairClub is the leader in total hair solutions with a legacy of success for over 40 years.
Whether you're looking to revitalize the growth of your own hair or learn more about the latest methods of hair replacement or restoration, HairClub's experts, professionally trained stylists, hair health experts, consultants, they will craft a personalized solution.
It's no cookie cutter thing.
It's going to be personalized for you.
You know, here's what you could do.
Here's what I would recommend.
Go to HairClub.com slash Walsh today, and if you do that, you're going to get a free hair analysis and a free take-home hair kit, all valued at over 300 bucks, but you're getting it for free.
Okay?
So again, I emphasize, that is a $300 value that you're getting for free if you go to HairClub.com slash Walsh.
HairClub.com slash Walsh.
Experience your hair and your life at its best, only with HairClub.
I'm certain you'll love the club.
All right, Mueller.
Robert Mueller was dragged, and I do think literally dragged from the looks of it, up to Capitol Hill for hearings today.
It really seemed like he didn't want to be there.
And I can see why.
Democrats, of course, were expecting fireworks.
I mean, they're always expecting fireworks, especially where Mueller is concerned.
And he has let them down so many times.
In the fireworks department.
But yet they keep expecting it.
They just keep coming back.
All of his fireworks end up just being the little sparklers that burn for a second and then end up burning your hand and you throw them out.
And that's what it was again today.
Shockingly.
In fact, as the hearing was beginning and Mueller gave his opening statement, he made it very clear that he isn't going to say anything that wasn't already in the report.
Everything that he says, it's going to be in the report.
If you ask him a question that has to do with something outside of the report, he's not going to answer it.
Everything's going to go back to the report, which raises the question, What's the point of the hearing?
It's already in it.
He wrote 400 pages.
Well, somebody wrote 400 pages.
We don't know if it's him.
We'll go back to that in a second.
But it's this 400 pages.
That's all he's got to say.
And it's right there.
You can read it for yourself.
Yet we had the hearing.
And why is that?
Well, because, of course, the real point is for grandstanding.
But here's the great thing, and this is what I appreciate, this is the one thing I enjoyed as I was suffering through watching these hearings.
One thing I enjoyed is that these politicians were there hoping to grandstand, but their grandstanding was undermined at every turn by the fact that Mueller apparently didn't bring his hearing aid, or he forgot to turn it on, so we didn't hear anything that they said.
So they were trying to just go over Everything that was already in there.
In fact, Nadler, Jerry Nadler, was the first person to ask questions.
And his whole line of questioning was just going over what was already in the report.
But Mueller couldn't hear what he was saying.
So it was like Jerry Nadler was like, Mr. Mueller, the report states X, does it not?
I'm sorry, what was that?
Well, it's in my reading of the report, it states X.
Can you repeat that one last time?
X is in the report.
Does it not say X?
And so it was just like that, back and forth, back and forth, which was pretty funny.
But at the same time, it was kind of concerning because Robert Mueller really came across like, frankly, a befuddled and confused old man, which I'm not going to make fun of him for that.
He's 74, 75 years old, something like that.
And he looked every bit his age and was acting it too.
And that is no surprise.
I mean, you're 74, 75.
You've been given this high-pressure job.
It seemed like it really wore him down.
I imagine that's part of the reason why he didn't want to do this hearing, because he knew he wouldn't perform well.
And he didn't perform well.
But it is, as I said, concerning, because it makes you think, well, this was the guy that was doing this whole investigation for two years?
Is this person even capable of doing an investigation like this?
Was he the one actually running the investigation?
Is this his report and not somebody else?
What we end up with then in the end is a report that was already written and published a long time ago.
We have a hearing about a report with the guy who ostensibly wrote it but has already said he won't provide extra details about it.
And we have a guy who wrote the report ostensibly who can't hear and doesn't understand what's going on apparently and doesn't even know what's in his own report.
And that all adds up to It did add up to maybe a few humorous moments, but other than that, as far as I can tell, nothing of consequence.
You know, the talking heads and the pundits are going to parse it and come up with things that are significant on both sides of it, but really when it comes down to it, this Mueller thing, it's all baked in as far as the voters are concerned.
If you hate Trump, then you believe that he's a Russian spy and a traitor and nothing Mueller says is going to change your mind.
It doesn't matter.
And if you support Trump, again, it doesn't matter what Mueller says.
You support him.
And I think if you're in the middle, you probably are bored with this by now and are sick of it.
And you're going to make your decision about who you vote for based on something other than Robert Mueller.
That's my feeling anyway.
So, none of this matters.
That's my analysis.
And I will move on.
Let's move to something that I think does matter this week.
And I want to go check in with this story again because the media wants to move on.
The media has moved on.
The left has moved on.
But I don't think we should move on just yet.
Erika Thomas, you may remember her.
If you can think back all the way back to the distant past of this past weekend, you'll remember that Erika Thomas is the Georgia Democrat who claimed that she was verbally assaulted by a racist white man at the grocery store.
She claimed that she was In the express lane with too many items, which in my view already puts her in the wrong no matter what happens next.
She's in the wrong because she's abusing the express lane, which is one of the worst things a human being can do.
But she claims she was in the express lane, racist white guy comes in, raving lunatic apparently, starts screaming at her, go back where you came from, even though that doesn't make sense in the context of this dispute.
She records the tearful Facebook video and is so upset about it, traumatized.
Well, the story begins to fall apart immediately.
We talked about it on Monday because, first of all, it was just patently unbelievable from the very start.
Second, when the supposed racist Who it turns out is a Cuban Democrat, shows up on camera to confront her and dispute her version of events.
She starts backtracking and hedging immediately and says, ah, well, maybe he didn't say go back where you came from, but he said something that's in that general vicinity of statements.
Now, though, it's gotten worse because witnesses are coming forward.
And there's security camera footage, which police have looked at.
Because, oh yeah, the police got involved.
The police actually did an investigation for some reason.
I mean, even if Erica Thomas was not a godforsaken liar, which she is, but even if she was telling the truth, and this really did happen, exactly as she says, why would the police be involved?
What's the crime?
You know, to say, go back where you came from, it may be a jerky thing to say, but it's not illegal.
It's not an illegal statement.
Yet, the police did get involved, and, um, They announced yesterday that no charges are going to be filed, unsurprisingly.
But they also have now a police report, which includes their interviews of witnesses.
And those interviews do not at all back up what Erica Thomas said.
Which shows again just how stupid these race hoaxers tend to be.
I mean, Jussie Smollett.
So many things about that story.
He was bound to be exposed as a hoaxer.
He went about it in the dumbest possible way.
And what I said about that is, look, if you're Jussie Smollett and you want to do a race hoax, And you want to pretend that you were beat up by a white guy shouting, this is MAGA country, then your best bet.
Now, I would recommend not making up the story to begin with, but if you're going to make up the story, then just make up the story.
Don't get into, don't be too specific.
Don't hire two of your friends to pretend to be white guys.
Don't involve other people, potential witnesses.
Just say, Hey, this happened.
And if you're not specific about it and you don't involve the police, Then nobody's ever going to be able to prove it didn't happen.
It's the same thing here.
You're basing your lie on an incident that actually did happen, which means there are witnesses, and then you get the police involved, and you're bound to be exposed as a liar.
So, Erica Thomas, what she could have done is just, she could have done her tearful video, and completely invented the story.
You know, don't specify what grocery store it occurred in, don't involve the police, and nobody will ever be able to prove it didn't happen.
Because there are no witnesses to interview, there's no security camera footage to look at, and at least you could always pretend that it really did happen and no one can prove otherwise.
But she is, on top of a liar, apparently a very stupid person.
So, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a report based on the police report And listen, I'll read the first two paragraphs from that article.
This is interesting.
It says, a witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state representative Erica
Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn't hear him
make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report. A Publix employee told a Cobb
County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas continuously
tell Eric Sparks to go back where you came from, but did not hear Sparks utter those words to Thomas.
So not only did she make that, she was, according to this witness, she was the one who said, go back where you came from.
That is, that is incredible.
Now that's a twist I didn't expect.
I knew she made up that, you know, the fact that he said it was made up.
I could tell that immediately.
But I didn't expect that she was actually the one who said it.
The police report says that the police looked at the security camera footage.
There's no audio to it, but in the footage, it's Thomas, who's the aggressor.
She's going up to Sparks, wagging her finger in his face.
He's backing away, and then another witness said that he started leaving, and she kept coming at him and was yelling at him.
There you go.
No witnesses back up Thomas' account.
One witness says that Thomas is the one who said the racist stuff.
So then it appears that Thomas was the aggressor.
Thomas then allegedly would be the racist.
Thomas is a lying fraud.
Shocker of shockers.
But what's happened to the story, then?
Over the weekend, when she first recorded her tearful video, With some very bad acting, I might add.
It was all over the place.
Media was on top of it.
Democrats were talking about it.
It's Trump's fault.
Trump's America.
It's an epidemic.
It's terrible.
Hashtag, I stand with Erica Thomas, trending on Twitter.
And then it starts to fall apart and the story just disappears.
Even though, because you could try to say, well, okay, well, it didn't happen, so it's not a story then.
It didn't happen, so what are we talking about?
Well, no, actually, It's a bigger story now that it didn't happen.
If it did happen, as Erica Thomas said, then it's not a story.
The fact that it didn't happen is a story.
That is the story.
Because think about it.
If it actually happened, as Erica Thomas said, well then what's the story?
The story is some nobody, some stranger, some jerk yelled at somebody in line at a grocery store.
That happens every day.
It's not a story.
It doesn't matter.
But an elected official making up a story, slandering a constituent, trying to stoke racial tensions for her own gain, that's a story, okay?
That's important, that's relevant, that's something that is of public interest.
Yet the media only cares about the irrelevant version of the story, the false version.
Now that the truth has come out, they flee.
And that's what happens, you know, with reporters, is that the minute the truth is there, they're like, ah, the truth is here, let's get out of here, and they run away.
And you know what the really sad thing is?
Here's the really sad thing, is that Thomas is going to suffer no consequences for this.
There will be no consequences for her.
Because I think a lot of people on the left, they're going to continue believing her version, even though it's been pretty much conclusively debunked now.
They're going to believe her version.
Just like there are There are liberals who still go around talking about hands up, don't shoot.
Even though that narrative has been absolutely conclusively debunked, they still stick with it all these years later.
So I think that there are going to be some people on the left, some Democrat voters who just decide to believe it, even though it's obviously not true.
And then there are going to be even more who maybe know that it's not true and acknowledge it, but don't care.
Because on the left, what we have to understand is that the truth doesn't matter to these people.
They don't care about that.
They really don't.
What they care about is the narrative.
They care about, you know, winning politically and winning ideologically.
That's what they care about.
And they believe that the truth is sort of an irrelevant detail and that ends justify the means.
And so if you need to bend the truth or lie for the greater cause, then that's okay to
do.
They're perfectly fine with that.
Because what they believe is America is a racist country where these kinds of things
happen all the time.
So even if this specific thing didn't happen, these kinds of things happen, so it's still legitimate.
And she's calling attention to the sort of thing that happens, even if it's not this particular thing.
That's the way they're going to rationalize it, which means that, if anything, this probably helped her.
I think that it got her name out there, it increased her profile, and it increased her street cred among Democrat voters.
whether they believe it or not.
And so I say that Erika Thomas is very stupid.
Maybe she's not, you know, maybe she knew that.
Yeah, this is an unbelievable story, and the truth is going to come out,
and it will be debunked.
But it's still going to help me.
With the suckers who make up my voting base, it's going to help me.
All right, so, here's, this is fun.
Bella Thorne is, uh, I guess an actress or something.
Bella Thorne is a, she's a, I think an actress, singer, something, or I don't know.
Anyway, she's, she, I guess she's famous and she was interviewed by ABC news for reasons that after watching the interview still escaped me.
But during the course of the interview, she made a huge announcement, uh, that I think is, is you want to talk about newsworthy.
This is newsworthy stuff.
Watch this.
In the past, she's used Twitter to casually come out as bisexual.
But today, she's expanded her sexual orientation.
I'm actually a pansexual.
I didn't know that.
Somebody explained to me really thoroughly what that is.
Explain that to me.
You like beings.
You like what you like.
It doesn't have to be a girl or a guy or, you know, he or she or they or this or that.
It's literally, you like personality.
Like, you just like a being.
First of all, I have to say that I love that every other show...
of this type is going to be playing clips from the Mueller hearing today for their show, but I'm playing clips of Bella Thorne talking about her pansexuality.
You know, that's the difference between me and the rest of them.
Second, I love that she said this, and the woman interviewing her had to pretend to take it seriously.
It was so awkward where she said, actually, I'm pansexual.
Oh, OK.
Well, that's nice.
It reminds me of the time when I first told my parents I was going to become a professional blogger.
Oh, a blogger?
Like, for a job?
Okay, well, that'll be interesting.
So, Bella Thorne is pansexual, she says.
Which, she says, that means she's attracted to beings.
Beings.
She's attracted to beings.
Now, if pansexual means anything other than bisexual, which she says that it does.
She says, well, I thought it was bisexual, but I'm actually pansexual.
I'm attracted to beings in general.
But if that's the case, then it would have to mean, you know, you're attracted to beings.
Well, beings include literally any living entity at all.
A moose, a cricket, a lobster, three-toed sloth, a fox, an aardvark.
I mean, Noah's Ark, basically.
Noah's entire ark.
You'd be attracted to everything.
Bella Thorne would go crazy in Noah's Ark.
She'd be attracted to everything.
Man, woman, child, animal.
Because if you're telling me you're pansexual, your sexuality knows no boundaries whatsoever, any being is potentially an object of your sexual attraction, that's what you're saying.
I mean, that's the implication.
But if Bella is not in fact attracted to insects and reptiles and mammalian forest creatures, and her attraction is in fact limited to adult males and females, well then we're back to bisexual.
Pansexual then is a category that doesn't need to exist and doesn't exist.
And I'm just going to spoiler alert here.
Um, no Bella Thorne.
And I know this is going to sound very presumptuous.
I mean, Bella Thorne, you say you're pansexual.
You're not actually, you actually are not.
I know.
I know.
I am now mansplaining your own sexuality to you.
I am doing that.
You are not pansexual because I, I'm pretty sure you are not potentially attracted to any being in existence.
Like I'm pretty sure there are limits.
Okay.
If you go to the zoo, Okay, I'm pretty sure that for you is not a sexual expedition.
I mean, you're looking at the polar bear cage.
Right?
You're going to rule out polar bears as objects?
Then you're not pansexual.
That's bisexual.
That's already a thing.
We don't need a term.
This term over here doesn't mean anything.
You're not that.
Nobody is that.
That doesn't exist.
Which is good.
You know, that's good.
It would be impossible to function as a human if you could potentially be sexually attracted to any being.
The only way to make it broader, and I mean if you really want to be progressive, then rather than being attracted to beings, because here's the thing, when you're attracted to beings, you are still discriminating, Because then you're saying that, well, you are limiting it at least to living creatures.
Now, if you really want to be progressive, you'll say that I'm attracted to any entity of any kind.
Could be a dog, could be a woman, could be a man, could be a door, you know?
Could be a lamp.
This desk right here?
Who knows?
That's progressive.
You want to be really uber pansexual?
You should be attracted to anything.
Anything.
Literally anything.
The color blue.
I mean, anything.
I guess the color blue isn't an entity though.
Alright, I have to talk about this for a minute also before we get to emails.
Because this is hilarious.
This got a literal LOL out of me last night when I read it.
This story...
Well, as the story went last night, before the full story came out, as it tends to do,
the story was that Forever 21, the women's clothing store, was sending Atkins diet bars
with all of its plus-sized clothing orders.
If you ordered a plus-size, if you order plus-size clothes online, as the story went,
Forever 21 would send you a diet bar with the package, which is great.
I mean, that is just hysterical.
That's even funnier than Bella Thorne being attracted to grasshoppers.
We are doomed as a society, if we cannot all agree, that that is hilarious.
I don't care if you're overweight yourself, you have to admit.
If I ordered size 52 jeans from somewhere and there was a diet bar, I would crack up laughing.
It would be great.
But of course, in our humorless society, this is a source of outrage, hurt feelings, trauma, oh my gosh.
It's fat-shaming.
It's the Macy's plates all over again.
I'm having nightmares.
I'm having flashbacks.
Which, even if it is fat-shaming, first of all, it's free food.
Which, why would anyone complain about that?
Especially someone who's plus size.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm sorry.
That was a joke.
I didn't mean it.
It was not a fat joke.
It wasn't.
My point is simply that if you're... Why would you complain about free food, right?
I mean, we all like food.
Especially you.
No, I'm kidding.
That's not what I meant.
I don't mean that.
I'm not trying to make light of this.
I mean, I couldn't make light of that.
Anyway, no, that's not...
Second, here's the point.
Just scratch all that.
It's just, it's funny.
It's the only point I'm making, okay?
I'm not making... As it turns out, though, of course, this is all taken out of context.
It turns out that Forever 21 was sending Atkins bars with every order of any size, any product.
And so this is just now as a marketing strategy that is pretty stupid because you have to figure you're putting diet bars in with like people are going to order plus size clothing and you're putting diet bars in there and you must know how our society is like how did you not know and this is what doesn't offend me in the least like I said I think it's hilarious but probably forever 21 they weren't going for hilarious And it always shocks me when you discover that people who work in marketing departments for these big companies, nationwide successful companies, it shocks me when they have no understanding of how our culture works.
How did you get that job in a marketing department?
Your whole job is to know how our culture works and how to appeal to people.
They had to sit down and have this conversation and say, hey, we should send something free with all the orders.
What should we send?
And someone had to suggest, hey, we could send the diet bars.
Yeah, that'd be a good idea.
How did no one else in the room say, hey, hold on a second, uh, you know, overweight people are going to be ordering clothes.
They're going to get the diet bar.
They're going to take it the wrong way.
It's going to end up on Twitter.
I'm telling you guys, how did nobody say that?
All right.
Um, anyway, funny stuff, good stuff there.
Let's, uh, let's go to emails.
Couple of interesting emails.
Um, This is from Kristen, matwalshowatgmail.com.
matwalshowatgmail.com is the email address.
This is from Kristen.
It says, Hi Matt, I recently have been going through a mini-crisis of faith.
I won't call it a full-blown crisis, as I'm not questioning, say, the infallibility of the Bible or the basic tenets of the Christian faith.
But I've started to question certain doctrines I grew up with that I always accepted as biblical, but now I'm not so sure.
For instance, when I was a child, I've been taught that once saved, always saved, or that you can't lose your salvation.
But now I'm coming across passages that seem to contradict that idea, such as Hebrews 4-6 and 1 Timothy 4-1.
More recently, my husband and I attended a so-called Reformed Church that basically held a Calvinist doctrine.
The ideas of limited atonement and unconditional election sounded consistent on their face, but when taken to their logical conclusions, I found them abhorrent.
I would ask seemingly reasonable questions like, why would a loving God predestine some people for eternal salvation and others for eternal damnation before the dawn of time, only to be directed to Romans 9 and to be told that I couldn't ask those questions?
I'll stop you right there.
Anyone who tells you that you shouldn't or you can't ask theological questions, that's someone that you should just disregard.
Just utterly disregard them.
People who say that are... I really detest that, actually.
You absolutely should be asking questions.
We're not a cult, for goodness sakes, right?
We're not a cult.
That's what cults do.
Cults don't say, don't ask questions, just accept it.
We're not that.
And if you go to a church where that's the attitude, then that is a cult church.
And you should find another one.
That's my opinion.
She continues, In my soul, I felt Calvinism was inconsistent with what I knew to be true about the loving nature of God and the Bible, only to be shamed for feeling that way in the first place.
In the past few weeks, I've found some non-Calvinist interpretations of Scripture, which have only brought up more questions.
So I will continue to seek answers, potentially for the rest of my life, But my question to you is, you obviously reject Calvinism, and I would assume the entire TULIP system.
How did you come to that conclusion, not only philosophically, but according to Scripture?
How do you, or rather, how does the Catholic Church contend with seemingly Calvinistic passages such as Roman 9?
All right, well, you know, Kirsten, I think I called you Kristen before, sorry.
For me, it's not about one passage or another.
You can always quote mine.
You can always cherry-pick.
You can always proof-text.
Meaning, you can go into scripture with a conclusion already in mind and find passages that will support that conclusion.
You can always do that.
And you can do that with anything.
I mean, you can prove, quote-unquote prove, any conclusion you want about anything.
If that's how you're approaching the Bible.
Because the Bible is a very big book, with a lot of books inside it, and a lot of words, a lot of sentences, a lot of verses, a lot of chapters.
And if you don't care about context and you're just looking to support the doctrine you already had in mind before you approach Scripture, then you'll be able to do it.
If you want to prove that Jesus was a created being and not God, you can do that by proof texting.
And in fact, heretical sects have done that since the very early days of Christianity.
And I think, in fact, they have more out-of-context verses that they can quote to support their Conclusions than do a lot of other Christians with their own erroneous conclusions.
So, I mean, like, for instance, I mean, there's so many, but Jesus says, talks frequently about, at various points, about how God is greater than he says.
He says, when he is called good, he says, why do you call me good?
There's only, you know, there's only God the Father is good.
Paraphrasing a little bit.
That verse, among several others, was one that the Arians and others pointed to, to say that, well, clearly, God is not equal to the Father.
Clearly, Jesus is not equal to the Father.
Which, if you're just looking at that passage alone, by itself, with nothing else, then, sure, maybe it does indicate that.
But once you take a total view of Scripture, you start to see how erroneous that conclusion would be.
Here's what I'll say then.
Taking a total view of scripture, if everything is predetermined, if we are consigned to hell or granted heaven regardless of our choices, if some of us are literally created to be damned and we have no choice, we have no will, we have no say in it, Then that would render the entire Bible moot.
The entire Bible is pointless.
I don't even need to point to one verse.
The entire thing serves no purpose in that case.
If God is just pulling the strings, and we have no say, it doesn't matter what we do, what we believe, it's all determined from birth.
There are those of us who are created from the very moment of conception, and we are on the path to hell.
There's nothing we can do to change it.
Well, then what's...
The Bible serves no function.
There's no reason for it to exist.
What does the Bible contain, after all?
Well, it contains the story of God's relationship to man, the story of salvation.
Yes, but it's not just that.
It's not just a storybook.
It's not just a kind of, hey, check out what happened.
Isn't this interesting kind of thing?
There are also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages worth of instruction.
Old and New Testament.
Do this.
Don't do this.
Live this way.
Don't live that way.
I don't need to quote one particular verse.
If I need to get into specifics, let's start with the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments.
Start with just those two for a minute.
All of that stuff.
It only has meaning.
It only has a point.
There's only a reason to read it if we can actually choose to follow it.
And if our choosing to follow it will potentially have some positive impact on our own lives and on the world.
If we can't choose to follow it, or if choosing to follow it won't matter in the end and won't amount to anything, because it's all predestined anyway, Then there's no point.
I mean, why read it?
Why encourage anyone else to read it?
Why would you go to someone and say, yeah, you should really read the Bible, when their ultimate destination has already been determined, whether they read it or not?
Doesn't matter.
So, that's what I would say.
I would say that it's not just that these doctrines of predetermination, predestination, it's not just that they undermine one verse or another, it's that they undermine the entire thing.
And that's the problem.
All right, this is from Mark.
Dear Matt, I am a self.
How do I know that other people are selves?
How do I know that I'm not the only person on earth and everyone else is a robot or a hologram?
Thank you.
This is actually a really interesting question.
I love this question.
I wish I had left more time for it.
And you could kind of tell if you're someone who's interested in philosophy, depending on your reaction to a question like that.
If you hear that question, you just roll your eyes and are bored already just by the question itself, then philosophy isn't for you.
Me, I find that question to be fascinating.
Because it touches on an elemental truth of human experience, of human existence, and that is this, that we can only experience our own lives.
We only know what it's like to be ourselves.
We cannot be anyone else.
Yet every other person is a person.
Every other person is a self, their own self.
And this fact is actually fascinating when you think about it.
Now to answer your question briefly from a rigorous and technical philosophical perspective, I guess we have to say that you don't technically know That anyone else exists, you know, I mean, it's from a philosophically, you, I guess, would have to leave open the possibility that everyone else is a robot or a mirage or something.
But for all intents and purposes, measuring plausibilities here, you can operate with very strong confidence that other people exist.
The chance that other people exist is far greater than the chance that you're the only person and we are all figments.
So that's, I think, how you answer that question.
But I think there's more to be said.
Because the fact that we are all people, that we are all selves, is still mysterious, right?
It's still a truth that you can only acknowledge, but you don't really tap into or experience for yourself.
I mean, I'm talking to you right now, and I am a person.
I have my own internal life, my own perspective, and I don't even know who you are.
You aren't even a part of it, aside from the fact that you wrote this email.
Isn't that interesting?
I assume that this happens to other people, but have you ever been driving down the road And you've got cars passing you by on the other side of the road.
And suddenly this thought occurs to you.
It occurs to you that each of those cars contains people.
And those people, each of them, are just as unique and complex and interesting as you.
That they have an internal life that's as real and as vivid and as deep and as complicated as your own.
Each person in each of those cars.
They have their own story, their own saga, their own history, their own secrets, their own memories, their own desires, their own goals, their own flaws and virtues.
They're all stars of their own story, and you are irrelevant to their story.
You know, they are all the most interesting people in their own plotlines, and you play no role at all.
They don't even know you exist.
You are nothing to them.
I mean, you could die tomorrow, and they would never know or care or realize.
To them, you're just a car passing on the highway, just like they are to you.
Isn't it crazy to think that?
To so many other people on earth, that is all you've ever been to them.
You're just the guy in the car.
And you're gone.
And that's it.
Now, I think this thought, when it occurs to you, This realization about the complexity of other human beings, especially about the existence of their own internal life, their own internal monologue, their own consciousness, this realization, I think, can be disturbing.
Disturbing because when you think about it, you kind of feel your own existence start to sort of dissolve into irrelevance.
When you realize that almost everyone on earth, almost everyone who's ever existed on earth, has never heard of you, will never meet you, never care about you, almost everything you've ever thought or felt or experienced will die with you.
Decay into the ground, nobody will ever know about it.
If you have something that you're really worried about, some anxiety that's eating you up, it's taking up all your mental energy, well, when you die, that anxiety just evaporates.
That thing that was so important to you, so central to the universe as you experience it, is nothing to everybody else.
Absolutely nothing.
I think that's the disturbing part of it.
But if you think about it a different way, it's also comforting because you realize that you're actually not alone in the world.
You aren't, in fact, the only vividly drawn portrait in a world full of stick figures.
You aren't the only person in a world full of robots or holograms.
You're not alone.
You've got 7 billion other people sharing the burden of existence with you.
And those anxieties that you care so much about, well, maybe the fact that to everybody else they're nothing or, you know, maybe that's a good thing.
To know that everything you're worried about really isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme.
A billion other people have worried about those same things probably.
It's old hat, it's routine, whatever it is.
Maybe that's comforting.
And I think the main thing is just to know that you're not alone.
I honestly think that every problem in our society could be solved.
Every single problem.
At least all of our interpersonal problems.
Conflicts and strife and all of that.
All of it could be solved.
If you could just, that moment, assuming you have those moments too, on the highway, If you could just capture that moment and live in that moment and live with that mindset, if we could all do that, all the time, all of our problems go away.
We really would live in a utopia in that case.
Because I think all of our conflict in the end stems from our inability or our unwillingness to recognize the selfhood of others.
I mean, it's easy to recognize that other people are people, although a lot of people in our society struggle even with that.
Especially as it pertains to the unborn.
But even if you recognize, intellectually, that people are people, that's not the same as recognizing that they are selves.
That they are a self, like you.
I think if you could keep that at the forefront of your mind, if we all could, all the time, we would live in peace and harmony.
But we can't and we can't live that way.
Nobody ever, no one lives that way all the time.
Certainly there's never going to be a time when everybody lives that way all the time.
So I think the best we could hope to do is just be intentional in our thinking and as much as possible Bring our minds back to that reality, that every other person is a self just like us.
They have their own existence, their own perspective, their own internal monologue, their own life, right?
It doesn't mean that, you know, everyone is... It doesn't mean that they're right about everything.
That's not the point.
It's just that they are far more complex than you probably think.
Especially, I think, if we could just bring this Thought to our minds in situations where, going back to the car, like you're in the car, you're sitting in traffic, you're angry, there's a thousand other cars on the road, they're all in your way, you're angry.
I mean, think about being angry in traffic.
We all have, but I know I am all the time.
Think about how absurdly selfish and stupid that is.
The reason why there's traffic is that there's a bunch of other people on the road trying to go the same direction as you.
And they have just as much a right to go that way as you do.
And if you could just stop for a minute, And look at your own thought, which is, okay, I am being angry about traffic.
And then if you could just try to put that thought to the side and then realize that all these other cars have people in them.
And to those people, you are just a car in their way.
And not only that, but as far as traffic goes, there's a good chance that the traffic jam is happening because somebody got into an accident.
And so for you, the worst that happens is you're 25 minutes late to dinner.
Meanwhile, somebody might have just died, or their whole life might have been turned upside down by a serious injury.
And here you are in your self-obsessed little tiny world and all you care about is that you're
going to be late to this thing that doesn't even matter. So if we could just, yeah,
that's my little self-help sermon for the day.
But I do think that, I don't know, there's something there.
I mean, the moment you can start thinking, even if it's just for a moment, but what I've found is that if I can force myself to think this way in moments, it immediately makes me less angry, less stressed out, and in that moment, at least, I'm just a happier person.
So if we could recall that more and more, I think that would be to our benefit.
All right.
We will leave it there.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Thank you for listening.
Godspeed.
Hey, everyone.
It's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Robert Mueller is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today, and earlier this morning, a Volkswagen pulled into the Capitol Rotunda, and onlookers watched with delight and wonder as all 235 congressional Democrats poured out of the car until Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler finally emerged, wearing a baggy polka dot outfit, gigantic shoes, white makeup, and a fright wig, and announced to reporters that he did not want the hearing to turn into some kind of circus.
