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Aug. 7, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show

52:55

Ep. 312 - Headlong Over The Cliff

As we rush headlong into social unrest and worse, there are people who seem to be trying to speed up the process. Also, a white supremacist attacked me for opposing white supremacy. I will respond to the cowardly bigot today. And feminists are concerned that women don’t talk enough. Is that really a problem in our country? We'll discuss. Date: 08-07-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Today on The Matt Walsh Show, as we rush headlong into social unrest and worse, there are people who seem to be trying to speed up the process, and we're going to talk about that today.
	Also, a white supremacist attacked me for opposing white supremacy, so I'll respond to that stupid bigot today.
	And feminists are concerned that women don't talk enough.
	Is that really a problem in this country?
	I don't think so, but we'll talk about that today on The Matt Walsh Show.
	So we seem to be charging headfirst into something here, and there aren't very many people interested
	in slowing down the process, unfortunately.
	I think a lot of people are interested more in speeding it up.
	Joaquin Castro, a Democrat congressman, brother of Julian Castro, who's one of the guy, one of the 1%ers running for, 1%er in the poll, that is.
	Might be 1%er financially too, I'm not sure.
	Julian Castro running for president.
	Well, this is his brother.
	Who decided to find and post the names and employers of Trump's biggest donors in San Antonio.
	Castro represents San Antonio, so he was doing this to his own constituents.
	You know, you send someone to Congress to represent your interests, but instead he's doxing his own constituents.
	Now, you can argue, as some leftists have argued, that, well, this is publicly available information, so it's not like he was rooting through their junk mail or something in there.
	It's publicly available.
	And, okay, fine it is.
	But what's the point of putting those names out there?
	What's the point of doing it?
	The fact that it's public, okay.
	A lot of things are public.
	But why are you putting it out there for people?
	The names, the contact information, telling people, okay, here's where you can find them.
	Here's where they work.
	In this environment, what's the point of doing that?
	With violence on both sides becoming more and more common, what could possibly be the point other than to stoke violence against Trump's donors?
	I mean, look what happened to Mitch McConnell.
	He injured himself.
	He broke his shoulder, I think.
	And while he was recovering at his house, far-left activists showed up at his house in the middle of the night.
	to protest quote-unquote protest him one of them is it says on camera that she hopes someone will come and uh here's a quote from her just stab the mother effer in the heart And of course, Democrats, they've done nothing to discourage this.
	In fact, I think it was Barbara Boxer who made a funny, witty little quip about how Mitch McConnell must have broke his shoulder tripping over a copy of the Constitution that he left laying around.
	Something like that.
	Now, it goes without saying, okay, it goes without saying that if Donald Trump had made a joke like that about an injured Democrat.
	Imagine, I mean, just imagine that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez broke her shoulder in some sort of accident, and then Donald Trump on Twitter made a joke about it.
	Not just a joke, but a taunting joke.
	That's a five-day news cycle, easily.
	But of course, with Republicans, it's just Hey, it's just the way it goes, I suppose.
	Same thing with Rand Paul.
	You know, he was assaulted by his neighbor a couple of years ago.
	He announced over the weekend that he had to have part of his lung removed from the injuries he sustained in that assault.
	And if you go on Twitter and you look at that tweet that Rand Paul sent out just saying, hey, I had that part of my lung removed, so I'm going to be kind of out of commission for the next few weeks.
	Almost every comment, thousands of comments in a row taunting him for it.
	Ilhan Omar retweeted a tweet.
	Now, this was before we knew he was removing part of his lung, but last week she retweeted a tweet mocking Rand Paul for being assaulted.
	This is where we are now.
	A lot of what we're seeing now, a lot of the rhetoric being used, Would have been unthinkable five years ago.
	Even just five years, forget about 10 or 20 years, just five years ago this would have been unthinkable.
	And now it's all part and parcel.
	And here's what makes it even worse in my view.
	As some prominent voices on the left and on the right seem to encourage violence, encourage more chaos, You know, they aren't doing it really because they specifically want violence.
	And that's... I'm not making an excuse for them, okay?
	It's actually worse than that.
	To intentionally foment violence because you want violence, to try to whip up a mob against someone just simply because you hate them, that's bad enough.
	I mean, that's bad.
	That's really bad.
	I think this is even worse.
	This goes back to what I've been talking about over the past few days.
	This just disregard for human life.
	It's not even hatred.
	It's actually lower than hatred.
	Hatred is better.
	It's bad, but it's better than what we're seeing in our culture now, which is people who have disregard for each other.
	It just doesn't matter.
	And those who are throwing red meat into this mob, they're doing it Just to get in the headlines.
	To get attention.
	They're doing it because it's politically expedient.
	They're doing it to please their base.
	And that, to me, is even worse than doing it simply because you hate someone and you're angry at them.
	As bad as that is, this somehow, to me, seems even worse.
	Our country is teetering on the edge of something potentially cataclysmic, I believe.
	And these people are making a game out of it.
	Making a game out of it.
	It's sickening.
	And the thing is, in this environment, here's what happens.
	If you try to cut a course through all of this, if you try to be consistent in your assessments of things, if you're not interested in the basic throwing red meat thing, if you try to maintain a certain standard that you apply consistently so that you don't end up As a member of a mindless mob or as one of the people whipping up a mindless mob.
	If you say, I don't want to do that.
	I don't want to be in the mob.
	I don't want to be leading the mob.
	I don't want anything to do with that.
	Well, if you do that, you're going to be attacked by the sociopaths and whack jobs on both sides.
	Then what's going to end up happening is that you end up getting both mobs coming at you, which is why most people end up retreating into one of the mobs, because they figure, well, then at least I have some cover from one of the mobs, even if I'm in another one.
	If you try anything, the only thing you're allowed to do now in this environment is throw red meat.
	That's all you're allowed to do.
	Anything more nuanced than that will leave you stranded, will leave you alienated.
	And that's been my experience, especially this week.
	And my experience is typical.
	There's nothing unique about my experience at all, just to be clear.
	And there are a lot of people who get the backlash a whole hell of a lot worse than I do.
	But I thought I could just use myself as an example, because talk about what you know, I guess, because I think it's instructive, or at least indicative.
	So over this past week, and before this week, but especially this past week, in the wake of the two shootings, and if you've watched the show, if you've read my pieces, you know that I've made a number of points, not all of them directly connected, But I think there are a lot of different issues at play here with what leads to the shootings and what we should do in response to them.
	There are a lot of takeaways that one could, well, take away from all of this.
	One of the points that I made in response to the El Paso shooting, and I was saying this on Twitter and, you know, after the shooting, and this is not revolutionary, but given that this was a white supremacist, Who committed a mass shooting, one of the worst mass shootings in American history, targeting Hispanics.
	You know, I said that white supremacism is stupid, evil and dangerous.
	And obviously, and there does exist a certain collection, a certain group of white supremacist extremists in this country and outside of this country.
	And members of that group have perpetrated in the last few months, three of the worst mass shootings in history.
	Christchurch, Pittsburgh, and El Paso.
	That's not even within a year.
	That's within, what, six, you know, six, eight months or something?
	We've had three of them.
	With people with identical ideologies, basically.
	These are white supremacists, driven by that ideology to commit mass murder.
	Three in only a few months.
	That's a fact.
	And it's a problem.
	It's not something we can just overlook.
	We can't pretend it isn't happening because we're afraid that if we acknowledge it, the left might somehow use it against us.
	That's cowardly.
	I mean, that's not just cowardly, that's several light years beyond mere cowardice.
	To be shy about denouncing white supremacy and to deny the fact that white supremacists have murdered mass amounts of people over the last few months, to be reluctant about bringing that point up, that just makes you a gutless little snake.
	Coward doesn't even come close to describing it.
	And I had, as I was talking about this over the weekend, Again, points being, number one, obviously white supremacy is disgusting, evil, dangerous, stupid.
	Number two, this group of people does exist in the world.
	They're not in a majority, thank God.
	They're not anywhere close to majority.
	They're in a small minority.
	They are fringe, but they're there.
	And they're dangerous.
	I mean, how many mass shootings do we need?
	Is three not enough for us to say, well, there's definitely a problem here that we need to look at and talk about?
	Do we need five?
	Ten?
	I mean, how many?
	Is three not enough for us to say, yes?
	But as I was talking about this, there were several, many, numerous conservatives on Twitter who told me, oh, you're just sucking up to the left saying this.
	Look at you, sucking up.
	What?
	You think that's what?
	Sucking up to the left by pointing out that we've got this group of people murdering people and that's a bad thing?
	That's sucking up to the left?
	No, that's just being a normal person.
	That's acknowledging a very real problem.
	That's just being a human being.
	That's all that is.
	But at the head of the gutless snakes, speaking of gutless snakes, enter Nicholas J. Fuentes.
	Nick Fuentes is a white supremacist, an actual white supremacist, with somehow a following online.
	Which proves that, again, these people exist.
	They're fringe, they're a minority for sure, they are not at all representative of conservatives.
	I don't even think they are conservatives.
	And probably they would also tell you they're not conservatives.
	But they're there.
	They're certainly there.
	Fuentes is one of those guys who went to that Nazi tiki torch rally, the one where a woman was murdered by a neo-Nazi.
	He's one of those guys that went to that thing.
	And that's basically where he stands.
	Well Fuentes, here is now, I'll show you in case you're not familiar with him.
	Here's what Fuentes looks like.
	Here's Fuentes.
	You know, and I could only show you a still image because he deleted the video that I'm about to address.
	Or at least he deleted the part of the video that I'm going to address.
	So I can't, unfortunately I can't play it for you because he deleted it like a coward.
	But on his little white supremacist talk show on YouTube, he launched into a temper tantrum because I said that white supremacy is bad.
	Because I said, on Saturday, I said, I already told you what I said.
	And I said that this guy, this white supremacist should be executed.
	So should the one in Dayton.
	I've already, I've discussed numerous times over the last few months my evolution on the death penalty.
	And yeah, if you're a mass murderer, you should be executed.
	Uh, Fuentes didn't like that.
	So he had a temper tantrum, uh, reduced nearly to tears, um, uh, and, uh, again, because he's a gutless punk, he deleted this tantrum.
	He took it out of his show.
	But here's what he said.
	He said, Matt Walsh, shabbos, goy race trader, that's anti-Semitic if you're not familiar with the link, anti-Semitic lingo there.
	Matt Walsh, goy race trader, that's what, and you have to imagine that I'm foaming at the mouth and nearly tearing up as I'm saying this because this is, this is, that's, you know, this is Fuentes screaming it like a, like a lunatic.
	So, Matt Walsh, Shabbos Goy, Race Trader.
	That's what it is, folks.
	I know some people don't like us to use that expression, but it's totally true.
	Throwing his own people under the bus.
	He hates white people.
	Nobody else talks like that about their own people, except for white people, and it's gross.
	Yeah, okay, keep typing on Twitter.com, and then, keep typing on Twitter.com, and then he called me a gay slur, starting with F twice, and then another word starting with P, and then he says again, Race Trader, you work for Jews.
	Okay, so I work for Jews.
	I'm a race traitor.
	He says that a couple times gay slurs blah blah blah I hate white people and This all because I said that white supremacism is a problem.
	It's bad when white supremacists kill people And white and anyone who kills, you know, 20 people should be executed Now we're just gonna skip past The fact that a guy named Fuentes is a white nationalist?
	Well, skip past that part.
	The idea that I hate white people or that I'm attacking my own... No, here's the thing, Nick.
	I'm not attacking my own people.
	These aren't my people.
	If you're claiming the El Paso guy is your people, then go ahead and do that.
	He's not my people.
	He's not my people just because of the color of his skin.
	That's not the way it works for me.
	It may be the way it works for you, but not for me.
	The idea that I hate white people because I specifically denounce racists who walk into Walmart and mosques and synagogues and slaughter women and children, the idea that I hate white people for being opposed to that, it's so delusional, so insane, so utterly psychotic that I feel like I'm wasting my time responding to it, and I suppose I am.
	But I also don't think we can ignore this.
	Because there are people out there who this is how they see the world.
	And these people are dangerous.
	I'll just say this, and unlike Nick the Brave, Fuentes the Freedom Fighter, I'm not going to delete this or take it down.
	It's going to stay on YouTube.
	And so anyone can see it.
	Let me say this to Fuentes.
	You are a spoiled brat.
	You are a spoiled stupid brat who became a neo-nazi troll for attention.
	You got into college and realized that you could spit these neo-nazi talking points and it would get you attention and that's why you're doing it.
	And I know that you know that about yourself.
	You and I both know that.
	See, man-to-man, looking each other in the eyes through cameras, you know that about yourself.
	You know you don't believe half of the crap you say.
	I'm a race traitor because I said that, you know, a white guy who kills people should be executed.
	You don't believe that.
	Because in order to believe that, you would have to be a psycho.
	You would have to be literally psychotic, which I don't think you are.
	I'm not going to give you that excuse.
	I think you know better.
	But the ideology that you promote, that you advocate, is the exact ideology of three mass shooters who have killed dozens of people.
	Now, it's true that people on the left, you know, they're gonna try to take these mass shooters and compare all conservatives to them and say that they share an ideology with all of us.
	They don't.
	They don't share an ideology with me.
	They share it with you.
	These are the kinds of people who would call other whites race traitors.
	That kind of thing.
	Who are worried about the Jews.
	Who are prone to accuse someone of working for the Jews.
	No, that's your crew.
	It's not mine.
	The El Paso Shooter's Manifesto is indistinguishable from your ramblings.
	I can't tell the difference.
	Sounds exactly the same to me.
	Now here's the thing, little Nicky.
	One of these days, because you're a young guy, what are you, 17, 18?
	I don't know.
	I mean, 15, I don't know.
	With the mustache, it looks like it's your first mustache.
	I mean, it's looking good.
	I'm not going to hate on the mustache.
	And it's, you know, it's a cute little, it's your first attempt.
	I get it.
	But one of these days, Nick, you're going to grow up and become a man, which you aren't right now.
	One of these days you're going to grow up and become a man.
	And when you do, you're going to look back with remorse and embarrassment on the time you spent advocating white supremacy and crying on the internet when someone criticizes bigotry and mass murder.
	That's going to happen in the future.
	You're going to look back on yourself using phrases like race traitor, and you're going to be so embarrassed.
	And you're going to go out begging for forgiveness.
	You know, like many of the prominent white nationalists who have, in just the last few years, renounced it and tried to pick up their lives and salvage some credibility and establish some distance from the alt-right because they woke up from their stupor and they realized, wow, this is so freaking stupid.
	I look like an idiot.
	And at the same time, I have associated myself with some of the worst people on earth.
	And so a lot of those former alt-right white nationalists, they're trying to distance themselves and pick up their lives and salvage some credibility.
	And when you begin that process, which you will, good luck.
	And I mean that.
	But in the meantime, though, I just want to emphasize that your worldview is extremely, extremely, extremely stupid.
	And you have aligned yourself with the worst people on earth.
	Race traitor?
	What the hell is a race traitor?
	My ancestors were Irish, okay?
	Yours were, well, I mean, your name is Fuentes, okay?
	And, uh, I don't see how I betray you by thinking for myself.
	The fact that we have similar skin pigmentations does not automatically put us on some kind of team together.
	And by the way, if your ancestors had the same ideas about racial purity that you do, you wouldn't exist!
	So maybe cool it with the race trader stuff, big guy.
	Let me cool it with that.
	It's not divided by skin pigmentation.
	It's not divided by, you know, what color your skin is.
	That's not how we divide the teams anymore.
	At least it's not how I divide them.
	Now, that is how you divide them.
	So you are, along with being indistinguishable from radical white supremacists who kill mass amounts of people, you're also indistinguishable from the race baiters and the identity politics People on the left.
	You're doing your own version of that.
	And when I see that on the left, I say it's very, very stupid.
	And when I see it with you, I say it's very, very stupid as well.
	Because those aren't the teams.
	If you're an American citizen, and you're a decent human being, If you're a legal American citizen, you're a decent human being, you value freedom and objective morality and truth and those things, we have the same belief, we have the same fundamental priorities in life, then as far as I'm concerned we're on the same team.
	Why would I care what color the person's skin is?
	This isn't some after-school special sermon about racial unity.
	This is just, I literally don't understand why you would care.
	What difference does it make?
	All right.
	Meanwhile, and I've already spent more time on that than I need to.
	Fuentes and his people, they represent a dying, thank God, a dying ideology.
	But the problem is, as that ideology dies, as that worldview dies, it apparently is determined to take out as many innocent people with it as it can.
	And so that's my concern.
	Meanwhile, checking in with the other side of the coin here, Media Matters got a hold of a clip of me from the show yesterday.
	They posted it online with the caption, The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh points to an overly feminine influence on boys as a potential cause for mass shooters.
	Now let me play, in case you missed the show yesterday, here's the clip that was on Jason Campbell's, Jason Campbell works for Media Matters, he's the one who posted it, to try to generate some outrage against me, and here's the clip.
	When all boys have is a sort of feminine influence.
	Now, not all women are like this, but a mom is more likely to say, oh, you still don't hit back.
	The mom is more likely to, because she's the feminine influence, she's more focused on the fact that her son is hurting, he's got the black eye.
	That's what she's focused on.
	As a father, you're worried about his physical pain, but that's not the main thing you're focused on.
	You want to know, did he swing first?
	Did you win?
	That's going to be one of your questions.
	Boy needs that also.
	He can't just have the feminine influence.
	It's not healthy.
	All right.
	Now, so I think that's part of it.
	And I have to stipulate this.
	I shouldn't have to stipulate it.
	But I'm not, look, you could have a boy who grows up with, there are many boys, many,
	millions who grow up with no father in the house.
	They play a lot of video games.
	They watch a lot of TV.
	They're on the drugs.
	And they don't grow up to become mass shooters.
	The vast majority of boys in that category are not going to grow up to become mass shooters, of course, because for that extra dramatic step of becoming a killer, there's going to be a lot more needed.
	But boys are still being put at a disadvantage, even if they don't end up as mass killers.
	They are still going to end up taking unhealthy risks in some form.
	They're still going to end up finding unhealthy outlets for their aggression in some form.
	They're still going to end up confused about who they are, and that is in some way going to come out.
	Now, I've gotten a lot of backlash for this, of course, so it's been coming from both sides, is what I'm saying.
	White supremacists on one, leftists on the other.
	I'm a race traitor and a secret liberal on one hand, but I'm also a sexist far-right extremist on the other.
	It must be a split-brain thing.
	Have you heard of those cases where someone has split brain, the two hemispheres of the brain, so they're two different people?
	I must be that, I don't know.
	I should go see a neurologist, because otherwise I'm not sure how I could be all of those things at once, but apparently I am.
	Now, normally what happens is Media Matters takes an out-of-context clip from a conservative commentator, they stir up the outrage brigade, and then the commentator apologizes or clarifies or whatever.
	I will do neither of those things.
	Anyone who wants to see the whole point that I made in that, which was the show yesterday, if you want to see it, and that clip is part of a probably 20-minute monologue where I'm talking about the problem of fatherlessness and how fatherlessness might contribute to Certainly violence, generally, but also mass shootings.
	If you want to see the whole point I'm making, which is a longer point than that one and a half minute clip would indicate, you can go to YouTube and look at it.
	You can see it on iTunes or SoundCloud or whatever.
	For now, though, I'm comfortable letting it stand.
	And I do, in fact, believe that the feminization of boys is part of the problem.
	Not the whole problem.
	Not even the main problem, but it is a problem and it's part of the larger problem we've been talking about this week.
	I'm crazy enough to think that, you know, we should raise our boys to embrace their masculinity, to embrace themselves, to grow into that identity.
	Rather than, the other idea is having them choose their own identity randomly when they're three years old.
	Rather than that, because we know what their basic identity is.
	Right?
	We know that, okay, this is a boy.
	We have an understanding of that.
	They don't, as very young children.
	And so our job is to help them embrace and grow into that and figure out what that means.
	In the extreme cases, when you have a boy going around saying he's a girl, what he's really expressing is that he doesn't understand who he is.
	He's expressing confusion.
	And so our job must be to cut through that confusion and to lend some clarity to the situation.
	So yeah, that's what I believe.
	I'm not going to apologize for that.
	And I think this is one of those things that most normal people intuitively see as true.
	The fact that, yeah, it's better to have a dad in the picture.
	The fact that we are feminizing our boys to a large extent.
	Sometimes literally.
	Sometimes in the most literal sense.
	We're literally trying to turn them into girls sometimes.
	I think that's just obvious to a lot of people.
	And intuitively, most people can see that it's a problem.
	But on the left, they are often scandalized by these self-evident intuitive truths.
	All right, let's take it down a notch before we get to emails.
	I wanted to mention one other thing because I thought it was funny.
	It's been so much heavy stuff this week.
	Time Magazine has an article with... This is the headline in Time Magazine.
	I haven't read the article, I admit.
	Usually I'm the first to complain about judging articles based on the headline, but I think here you can safely do that.
	The headline is, We counted every line in every Quentin Tarantino film
	to see how often women talk.
	That's the headline.
	Bye.
	And in the article, I assume they give us the results.
	Apparently they watched every Quentin Tarantino movie with a notepad and paper and a pen and just tabulated the cumulative amount of minutes that women characters spent talking in every Quentin Tarantino movie.
	And he's had nine movies now?
	And his movies are long, too.
	It was probably almost like 30 hours of movies they watched so they could tabulate.
	I don't know what the results are.
	Like I said, I didn't read the article.
	I don't think it really matters.
	I mean, maybe it could be fun to watch a bunch of movies and arbitrarily quantify certain things.
	Like, maybe watch every Christopher Nolan movie and tabulate how many times people in green shirts say the word, the.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Maybe we could do that.
	If we're arbitrarily quantifying things in movies, then why not that?
	But this, of course, is part of the... Why did they do this?
	Well, they did it because feminism has run out of things to do, and they had a lot of time on their hands.
	That's the first reason.
	But, ostensibly, they were trying to... This is all part of this whole idea that women are not represented as much in movies, and they're not given a chance to talk.
	This stretches beyond Quentin Tarantino and beyond movies generally.
	This is something you hear from feminists a lot.
	That women are reluctant to talk, they're always being interrupted.
	By men and feminists paint women as generally these sort of wilting wallflowers who hang out in the corner and are meek and mild and afraid to chime in and say anything whether in the real world or in movies.
	And this again is just reveals that feminists are living in a universe that I don't know what universe they're living in.
	It's not this one because I'm pretty sure I'm in this universe and I don't recognize This is maybe the weirdest invention of modern feminists is this concept that women don't talk enough and are afraid to talk and are constantly being talked over by men.
	Of all the problems in the world, I'm pretty sure that's not on the list.
	I think women generally do, and this is not a criticism, okay?
	Women do a fair amount of talking, in movies and in real life.
	They do a fair amount of it.
	I'm pretty sure that if we were to tabulate all of the time that women in this country, let's say in a given day, let's take all of the talking that is done in real life, on TV, anywhere, in this country, in a given day, I don't know this because I haven't counted it, but I'm pretty sure that we would find that probably like 80% of the talking or more is done by women.
	I mean, it's at least equal, but it's probably quite a bit unbalanced in favor of women.
	We're expected to believe.
	Feminists are so desperate to find persecution that now they're finding it here and telling us, well, women don't
	talk enough.
	I mean, certainly, you know, I have a wife.
	I've got four sisters.
	I've got one daughter and another on the way.
	I've got like, I don't know, nine or ten nieces.
	I've lost count.
	I've spent a fair amount of time around women, like anyone has.
	And yeah, I feel like they hold their own in the talking department.
	In fact, one of the main complaints that you hear from wives everywhere in the world is that their husbands don't talk enough.
	Let me ask you, when was the last time you heard that complaint from a man?
	When was the last time you heard a man complain that the women in his life don't do enough talking?
	When was the last time a man said to his wife, you know, we don't talk enough, we need to talk more.
	Why don't you talk?
	In the whole history of human civilization, has any man ever uttered those words?
	Maybe a couple, but I have to think it's a rarity.
	So this, I just, look, if women are being oppressed in this country, personally, I don't see it.
	But if they are being oppressed, it's not here.
	It's not in the talking disparity, because that's in their favor.
	So we're good there.
	We really are.
	All right, let's go to emails.
	MattWalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
	Uh, let's see.
	A bunch of emails chiming in on the video game discussion from yesterday.
	I'll read a couple.
	And this is from Joseph, says, Matt, I very much enjoy your podcast.
	So even with the email being critical, please keep that in mind.
	Doesn't matter, Joseph.
	If you're criticizing me, it will hurt my feelings.
	So it doesn't matter.
	You can try to stipulate it all you want.
	It's not going to save my feelings.
	How dare you?
	He says, let's be extremely generous to you here and assume that video games cause 100% of mass shootings outside of Muslim extremism.
	All the rest of them, it's the one and only cause.
	Tally up the number, and there's been a couple hundred deaths because of it.
	Sure, any death is too much, I suppose, but let's compare to alcohol.
	Well, okay, before we, I'll continue reading, but you say, let's be generous to me and assume that video games cause 100% of mass shootings.
	I never said, my whole point, I never said that video games cause any percent of mass shootings.
	I think if we're talking about direct causes, video games cause 0% of them.
	So, you say, be generous to me by assuming—that makes it sound like you're saying that I was arguing that video games cause a certain percentage of mass shootings.
	I wasn't saying that.
	In fact, I tried to be clear about that by stipulating it over and over again that video games do not cause mass shootings.
	I think that like any form of media, they are an influence.
	They influence people.
	And so if somebody spends hours a day, years of their life playing video games, and then they turn into a mass shooter, and we're looking at all of the different influences that may have contributed to it, that's probably going to be one of them.
	But as I said, it's not even because of the violence in the game.
	because of the isolation. It's because it breeds isolation and addiction. That's the
	danger of it, which is also the danger of TV and internet and any form of media.
	Okay. So he's going, he says, let's compare to alcohol.
	Alcohol is a substance you drink.
	It's a substance that you believe the legal drinking age should be lowered.
	Unlike video games, there's actual conclusive research confirming the damages it causes.
	It stunts brain development in youth.
	It is the cause of about half the fatalities on the road.
	Latest research shows alcohol causing about 88,000 deaths a year.
	On top of that, my father worked in law enforcement at a county jail for 33 years.
	Do you know what type of people were committing crimes?
	Abusing their spouse and kids?
	Let me give you a hint.
	It wasn't gamers.
	It was people under the influence of alcohol.
	Alcohol causes broken homes, not video games.
	On top of that, I'm sure you know the substance is used as a social lubricant, almost always accompanied by people having premarital sex.
	By its very nature, alcohol lowers your inhibitions and judgment.
	So you have one substance that you like, that you will defend to the core, which has proven to cause children out of wedlock, addiction, stunted brain development, lower inhibition, fatal car accidents, broken homes, poor physical health, thousands of deaths per year.
	Yet on the other hand, you have video games, which have no conclusive evidence whatsoever to be an influencing factor in some mass murders, and this is what you rail against continually.
	Why is it they rail against video games and not alcohol, when one is clearly a more destructive force in the world than the other?
	I don't know, but I can only assume it's because you personally like alcohol, you personally do not like video games.
	With the extensive data available on the destructive nature of alcohol, if you were so inclined, you could write a piece a hundred times more convincing of its toxic nature than you can of video games, but you're not so inclined, so you don't.
	I don't want this email to be mistaken for me being upset or mad at you like a lot of people are.
	I hardly play games.
	I realize people aren't perfectly consistent with all their stances and actions.
	I would just be interested to know how you rationalize such a harsh stance against video games while defending and almost promoting the use of a substance proven much more destructive.
	Okay.
	Alright, there's a lot here.
	So I feel like I have to go through this one by one.
	So I'm sure I'm going to miss a couple of the points you raised.
	First of all, a small thing, you say video games don't cause broken homes.
	I would argue that they almost certainly do, actually.
	Probably not as many as alcohol does.
	All you have to do is read some of my emails anytime I talk about this, which is rare.
	I'll get to that in a second.
	Anytime I talk about this, I hear from women, wives, who say that their marriages have been destroyed because their husbands just won't stop playing video games.
	All they do is play video games.
	They come home from work, they go and play video games for five hours.
	They don't even see the kids.
	This is a really common thing.
	This goes to the addictive nature of video games.
	And I think it's one of the reasons why some guys are so defensive of it, because they recognize that they're doing this.
	There are, I don't know what the number is, okay, Joseph, but there are certainly men out there, husbands, who they neglect their wives and their kids to play video games.
	That's a real thing.
	Just talk to women, they'll tell you.
	Unless they're all lying, it's a thing.
	And yeah, it does contribute to broken homes.
	I mean, it's crazy to think that it would.
	That any guy would choose video games over his family, but some do.
	That's a thing.
	It happens.
	Just like there are guys who choose internet porn over their families, there are guys and women who essentially choose social media and internet over their families because they prioritize those things over their families.
	So I would quibble with that.
	You go on to talk about the dangers of alcohol.
	I agree.
	Alcohol is dangerous.
	Well, you all say I rail against video games constantly.
	I think I've done two shows about video games.
	I've written two articles about video games, maybe three.
	Since I start, in the last five years, I've written, I don't know, 500 articles.
	Three of them have been about video games.
	Three and five, probably more than 500 articles, I don't even know how many.
	I write every day, so, you know, and I've been doing this for five or six years, so you do the math.
	Hundreds of articles, three of them have been about video games.
	And Joseph's not the only email I got saying, why do you always talk about this?
	I always talk about it.
	I've talked about it a couple of times in years.
	And I've done, I think, what am I on?
	I'm on my 300th show, I think?
	And two of them have touched on video games?
	Two?
	Out of like 300?
	Okay, so to say I constantly talk about it is just not true.
	Now, it's true though that I have not written any articles detailing the dangers of alcohol.
	I haven't done any show about the dangers of alcohol.
	I also have never denied those dangers.
	I've certainly acknowledged them in many contexts many times.
	Why haven't I done a show on it?
	Well, because it's not controversial.
	At all.
	At all.
	Everybody agrees that alcohol can be dangerous, that alcoholism is bad, that drunk driving is bad, that people die from alcoholism.
	I've never heard anyone disagree.
	I've never heard a single person ever deny that.
	Now, there are still alcoholics who behave dangerously, so we all acknowledge it, yet it's still a problem.
	So we need to address the problem.
	But what I do on this show is I try to analyze and offer commentary on issues.
	And I like to focus on issues where there's going to be substantial disagreement, because if everyone agrees, I don't even see the point of saying it.
	What would be the point of me doing a 45-minute show where my entire point is, it's bad to be an alcoholic, you shouldn't be an alcoholic, don't drink and drive?
	Every single person who hears it is going to say, yep, I totally agree.
	Uh-huh.
	There's nothing to be said.
	The fact that video games, that there are, that, you know, to me it is self-evident, that there's danger to overconsumption of video games.
	The fact that so many people disagree, to me, means that we need to talk about it.
	There's a reason to discuss it, because there is disagreement on the issue.
	As far as not wanting to criticize alcohol because I like alcohol, well, that's just not true.
	Again, I fully acknowledge the dangers of alcohol.
	I don't deny it.
	And this idea that I'm reluctant to criticize things that are close to home for me is just not true.
	My first show of the week that everyone seems to have forgotten about, at least the people upset about video games have forgotten, my first show of the week, I was talking about what are some of the contributing factors to this.
	It was my first show.
	I didn't mention video games.
	I talked about the Internet.
	I am on the Internet.
	Right now, I'm on the Internet.
	As I'm talking to you, I'm on the Internet.
	I make my living on the Internet.
	I spend a lot of time on the Internet.
	I need people to be on the Internet to make a living, to feed my family.
	It is as close to home as it could possibly be.
	Yet, I have no problem criticizing it.
	I have no problem saying that the Internet has many dangers.
	And even that... Look, I've written articles encouraging people to stop using the Internet.
	Even if that means they're not reading me anymore.
	It's good.
	It's good for you.
	I mean, if you were to never sign on the internet again, it would hurt me because I would lose a listener and a viewer, but it would be good for you.
	I encourage you to do it.
	So I have no compunctions about criticizing things that are close to home for me.
	So I just, I think that that's just, it's, it's an, it's an invalid criticism.
	It's not true.
	I do it all the time.
	But I do think, on the other hand, it seems to me that there are a lot of gamers out there who, when it comes to games, they will not acknowledge any problem with it because they like it.
	That's how it seems to me.
	So I agree that that attitude of not wanting to acknowledge the problems with the things that you enjoy, I agree that that is a problematic, to borrow a word from our friends on the left, it's a problematic attitude.
	But I think that attitude with this discussion is much more prevalent and obvious on the pro gaming side.
	From Gabe.
	Let's hear from the other side of this argument.
	Says, on the topic of video games and their potential effect on real-life violence, I'd like to add my perspective as both a lifelong passionate gamer and as a veteran.
	People are demanding scientific evidence from you, and there's nothing more scientific in my experience than Marine Corps training.
	It's no coincidence that recruits are immersed for three straight months in violent speech and violent thought patterns, even outside of the actual combat training.
	Example, whenever we practiced the drill movement, inspection arms, my platoon would scream a Boondock Saints quote, which is, each day we will spill their blood till it rains down from the skies.
	That's a pretty badass quote though, I have to admit.
	Um, desensitization is the clear purpose of such training, but it's a necessary good thing in the context of military
	service.
	Since I was old enough to play them, I've also loved violent video games.
	In a word, they're awesome, and they're part of what inspired me to join the Marines in the first place.
	But if the Marine Corps uses direct exposure to violent language and thought patterns to train more efficient killers—good, just, loving, amazing patriots, but killers nonetheless—it would be insane to assume that violent video games don't make it easier to countenance and perhaps even to commit violence in the same way.
	Crazy thought.
	Maybe parents should keep their violent games away from the kids until their brains and social awareness have developed to the point that they can more easily guard their own psychology against dangerous stimuli.
	At any rate, when you come into your rightful place as Supreme Overlord, the Splendid and Righteous One, would you allow me to keep my violent games at least until my swift and deserved execution for keeping my apartment at 78 degrees?
	Gabe, you just ruined it at the end there.
	68 degrees, Gabe.
	68 degrees is the law.
	Every building in the country will be kept at 68 degrees year-round.
	Oh, Gabe.
	Oh, man.
	You were doing so well.
	And then you just signed your arrest warrant right there.
	But in actuality, I think you can't expect clemency because you agreed with me, which, you know, in my tyrannical dictatorship, that is really the only law, is you must agree with me.
	But, so, yeah, I think the point Gabe makes, now, see, I know you're gonna say this is because I'm biased, and I am, and maybe it is because I'm biased, but to me, this perspective from Gabe He's more credible and more valuable because he is going against, in a way, his own interests.
	So he loves playing games, yet he's offering a criticism of games.
	So you can't dismiss it as, well, he's just trying to justify what he does.
	He's doing the opposite.
	So to me, that's always interesting when people are willing to do that.
	But when all you're doing is closing your ears and defending a thing you like to do without even engaging with the opposing arguments, that, it's just, it's not credible.
	It's not, and I'm not saying that's what Joseph was doing, but there are people who have been doing that, and to me, it's just not credible.
	This is interesting, though, that Gabe would make these points, and I think, yeah, to me, it's just obvious.
	Like, I gave you the studies.
	I said, we can play dueling studies, and there are studies on both sides of this.
	I also pointed out, from the methodology, That there are only a few ways, methodologically, to do these studies.
	And I think no matter how you do them, the conclusions aren't going to be very useful.
	Because it's going to rely, most of the time, on self-reported data from people who are obviously biased.
	So we could do studies on both sides.
	But as I said, I think it's a pointless exercise.
	Instead, we could just use common sense.
	I mean, obviously, as Gabe points out, if a kid is wallowing in this kind of content for years and years, clearly it's going to desensitize him.
	It's the same thing with pornography.
	Now, if someone has a steady diet of pornography from the age of 10 to 25, and then at 25 they become a rapist, are we going to argue that the porn habit was irrelevant?
	Completely irrelevant?
	Had nothing to do with it?
	It was just a coincidence?
	I mean, obviously it's not irrelevant.
	But of course we're also not going to argue that the porn caused the rape.
	Because there are millions of porn viewers out there who never rape anybody.
	And we all know that.
	However, probably it's not irrelevant.
	That's all.
	It probably was an influencing factor among many others.
	That led eventually to this.
	So if you're stewing in this kind of content it is going to desensitize you.
	That's human nature.
	It's a psychological reality that we get used to things.
	We grow accustomed to things.
	We're very good at that.
	Which can be good depending on what the thing is.
	It's good that we're able to adapt to our circumstances.
	When the thing we're growing accustomed to is violence and brutality, even if it's fictional violence.
	That's probably not good.
	All right.
	Let's see.
	Let's see if we have one more here.
	We had a question, I can't find it, maybe I accidentally deleted it before I got to it.
	There was a question about, oh here it is.
	This is from Chilean Chris, says, if you claim that physical violence is not okay against speech, how can you justify punching someone that calls your girlfriend or wife a B word?
	I clearly would punch the heck out of a guy that calls my girlfriend any word like that.
	However, I do understand, too, that words should be dealt with words, and if someone calls me a stupid racist moron, I shouldn't be out there punching them.
	How do you do it to reconcile both ideologies you support, since I'm sure you would also physically defend your wife if insulted by another man?
	Yeah, well, that's a good question.
	And this is why, Chris, if I could call you Chris.
	I don't know if you need the whole name Chelan, Chris.
	This is why, Chris.
	I don't say that violence is never the answer.
	I don't think that's true.
	I think that's a blanket statement that's sort of silly and childish.
	Obviously, sometimes violence is part of the answer.
	I mean, if you think that there's ever in life, ever in the history of the world, been a justified war, then you believe that violence sometimes can be part of the answer.
	So I would never say that.
	Sometimes violence is appropriate.
	Now, there are stipulations.
	If you are killing someone, an innocent person, unprovoked, not in an act of self-defense but as an act of murder, that obviously is wrong, despicable, horrible, evil violence.
	We should be able to stipulate that.
	And identify that nuance and that distinction without having to make some blanket statement that it's never okay to use force under any circumstance.
	To me, it seems easy to say, yeah, you can use force sometimes, but not if you're killing an innocent person.
	That's obviously wrong.
	And even, you know, most of the time, if someone insults you, if you hear an insult, it would be inappropriate to respond physically.
	But I'm not going to sit here and say that it's never appropriate to respond physically to words.
	I don't think that's true.
	And I think that if you're out with your wife and someone runs up and verbally harasses her, sexually harasses her, I think that you'd be perfectly justified punching that person in the face.
	Now, this is where prudence comes in, because you might say to yourself, depending on the situation, well, if I do this, I'm going to go to jail, and so that's not a smart choice.
	You know, sometimes you exercise prudence, you have to measure it and everything, but in principle, I think for a man to respond with force to words can sometimes be appropriate, given the situation.
	Jesus says, turn the other cheek.
	I think it's very important to note.
	That Jesus says, turn the other cheek when someone slaps you.
	He's saying, when someone slaps you, turn the other cheek.
	He never says, if someone slaps your wife, or your mother, or your child, turn the other cheek.
	Okay?
	Because then it's not your cheek.
	Then turning the other cheek is just, there's another word for that, it's looking the other way, while your family member is being harassed or assaulted.
	Jesus didn't advocate that.
	He didn't say that.
	I think that's an important distinction, crucial distinction.
	Turn the other cheek when you are the one being insulted.
	When your family's being insulted, when your wife, your mother, your children.
	No, I don't think you do turn the other cheek.
	You certainly don't, I mean, you certainly respond in some way, even if not physically.
	So it may, if someone runs up to you and calls you a bad name and you just ignore them or turn the other cheek, that could be a sign of strength.
	It could also be a sign of cowardice, depending on the situation.
	But if someone runs up to your wife or a family member and harasses them and you say nothing, that's not strength.
	That's not you being the bigger man.
	That is you being scared.
	That's you being a coward.
	And so, yeah, that's how I would distinguish that.
	All right, we'll go ahead and leave it there.
	Thanks, everybody, for watching.
	Have a great day.
	Godspeed.
	America has a problem with extremism.
	People with rigid ideas, secluded with their own, becoming radicalized and increasingly hateful.
	And that's just the media.
	We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.

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