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Sept. 16, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
50:12
Ep. 332 - The Kavanaugh Bombshell That Wasn't

The media has resurrected its failed smear campaign against Kavanaugh. The latest smear is the most absurd and baseless yet. Also, a pop singer has announced that his pronouns are "they/them." We'll talk about why this whole pronoun thing is utter nonsense. Date: 09-16-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So did you hear about this bombshell?
Bombshell.
It's a bombshell.
There was a huge bombshell this past weekend.
New allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
New allegations!
Hooray!
That's very exciting.
They got him now.
New allegations.
The left was very excited about this.
They can't even, you know, that's one thing before we get into these allegations such as they are.
One thing you notice about the left is that they can't When someone they dislike has been accused of sexual assault or whatever, they can't contain their glee about it.
They're extremely happy.
They don't even pretend to really be concerned about the alleged victim.
They're just so happy that this person has supposedly done this thing.
Well, so Impeach Kavanaugh was trending.
Democrat presidential candidates got in on the act calling for his impeachment.
The media was having a field day.
It was all over the place.
This new allegation of sexual assault.
And that was all the story they were telling anyway.
But of course, it all comes crashing down.
Now, we're going to go through this.
We're going to talk about the allegation and everything else.
We'll follow the trajectory of this.
alleged bombshell. And it began on Saturday with the New York Times publishing an article by Robin
Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, who are writing a book about Brett Kavanaugh. And during their investigation
for the book, they uncovered, by the way, there are air quotes around a lot of the things I'm
Investigation air quotes, uncovered air quotes, fresh allegations air quotes.
So just everything I'm saying, just do your own air quotes.
These are fresh allegations, which actually aren't fresh at all.
They go back 30 years to Kavanaugh's college days, and they are accusations that First, it's kind of weird.
to reporters who were covering the Kavanaugh case, the Kavanaugh hearings, but they weren't published before.
And why weren't they published?
Well, I think we'll see in a minute.
First, it's kind of weird.
The New York Times had this alleged bombshell, but they didn't make that the headline.
And I was confused at first.
When I first started seeing this, people freaking out online about these allegations,
and then they were linking to this New York Times article.
Click on the New York Times article, and the headline has nothing to do with any new allegations.
The headline is, Brett Kavanaugh fit in with the privileged kids.
She did not.
Deborah Ramirez's Yale experience says much about the college's efforts to diversify its student body in the 1980s.
And so you read that and you say, what?
Deborah Ramirez diversifying the student body?
Deborah Ramirez is that woman who claimed that Kavanaugh shoved his privates into her face at a party, at a college party, and we knew about her.
Why is she the headline?
Well, maybe because the bombshell allegation isn't much of a bombshell at all.
But you could judge for yourself.
According to a guy named Max Steyer, who, by the way, is a Clinton associate, and that's quite a hell of a by the way.
It's not even really a by the way.
That's a very important part of this story.
This is a Clinton associate.
He says that he saw Brett Kavanaugh's friends force Brett Kavanaugh's penis Into a girl's hand at a college party 30 years ago.
Now, let's stop there for just a moment.
Even if this event really happened, which it didn't, and we'll get to that in a second, but even if it did, I'm trying to understand the logistics of this.
I don't really want to picture it, but if I tried to picture it, how does a third-party individual force someone else's penis into someone else's hands?
What does that even look like?
I don't even understand what the allegation is supposed to be.
What exactly are you claiming happened?
And how is there no follow-up?
Okay, if you hear, if someone says, yeah, yeah, I saw Brett Kavanaugh, someone forced Brett Kavanaugh's penis in a... How do you not follow up and say, wait a second, what?
Describe for me exactly what happened.
Point A, point B, point C. Just take me through the... How do you not do that?
How do you just say, oh, okay, moving on.
The claim, I guess, is that Kavanaugh had his pants down.
I don't know.
at a party and well that's all it was.
The pants were down and then somehow he was forced, his body or his penis, I don't know,
but he was forced to make contact with a girl.
What?
So it seems to me that there are two possibilities here for this made up story.
One is that Brett Kavanaugh had his pants down and his situation was on full display.
And a girl just so happened to innocently, accidentally have her hand in the vicinity of Brett Kavanaugh's penis.
And then he was pushed and then the contact was made.
In which case, it would seem like that really wasn't much of an accident because I don't know... I mean, in what scenario would you ever accidentally have your hand in the vicinity of that?
Or we would have to imagine that the girl was somewhere across the room, she was dragged by the hand, and then Brett Kavanaugh was dragged by the... Well, we won't go into that.
And then contact was made from there.
Either way, it doesn't make any sense.
And so before we even get to the fact that this didn't really happen...
It's like, even if it did, what?
Okay.
All we can say about that is, okay, that's weird.
That's a weird thing.
Okay.
Happened 30 years ago.
Obviously, we're missing some pieces of this story.
Anyway, moving on.
And besides which, even if we overlook all of that, wouldn't the culprit in this case be the person who forced Brett Kavanaugh's You know, force this contact to take.
But the accusation is that he was somehow propelled forward against his will.
So isn't he also a victim of sexual assault in that case?
It's just a very weird claim that makes no sense at all.
Something that, again, even if it did happen, however it could have happened logistically, it wouldn't matter.
It wouldn't make Kavanaugh a rapist or anything close to that.
So we could just say, okay, that happened, who cares, moving on.
But of course, it didn't happen.
The New York Times, two days after publishing the original piece, issued a correction this morning.
And the correction, this is a hell of a correction.
This isn't really a correction so much as a, I mean, really, this should be, in effect, what it is, is a retraction of the story, but they call it a correction.
And the correction says, an earlier version of this article, which was adapted from the forthcoming book, from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book's account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party.
It didn't include one element.
You ready for the element it didn't include?
The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed, and friends say she doesn't recall the incident.
That information has been added to the article.
Okay, so, the alleged victim says she doesn't remember anything like that happening.
This is a story from a politically partisan man about what happened to a woman, but the woman has no recollection of it.
So if we're believing women, then wouldn't we have to just discard this?
Believe women?
Okay, well the woman says, I don't know, I don't remember.
All you can do then is nothing.
Just move on.
Or if it did happen, or if something like it happened, it was such a non-event, such a minor thing, that she retained no memory of it.
So believe-women has become believe-men-who-tell-stories-about-what-happened-to-women-30-years-ago-at-college-parties.
And that just does not have the same ring to it.
And I guarantee you, here's what's going to happen next.
Next they're going to start telling us that the reason the woman doesn't remember it is because she's so traumatized that it's a repressed memory.
You know what they'll tell us?
They'll tell us that the fact she doesn't remember it is even more proof that it did happen because it was so traumatic for her to make that contact with Brett Kavanaugh's But where are we left?
We are left again with the fact that the truth doesn't matter anymore.
The truth has been slaughtered on the altar of partisanship, and from the left's point of view, all that matters is to destroy Kavanaugh.
Um, and that's all that anyone cares about.
And this is, you know, I believe this is not just the attitude among Democrat politicians, though it is their attitude for sure, and among media elites and so on.
I think this is sort of the average leftist Democrat.
This is how they feel as well.
I think most of the average leftists out there, um, They realize that a lot, they must realize that a lot of this stuff is at least probably bogus.
But they don't care because they say, well, we got to take Kavanaugh down.
He's a threat to women's rights or whatever nonsense.
This latest allegation, even before we get to the correction, quote unquote, saying that the woman doesn't remember it, even before you get to that, That's why I've been harping on, we don't even, that almost is irrelevant, because the actual story itself is irrelevant.
And so if you actually read the story, there's no way, all these people, impeach Kavanaugh, he's a rapist.
There is no way, there is no way that a sincere person, that a person, that an intelligent person could sincerely read that story and come away thinking, well that's rape.
He's a rapist.
No one could think that.
There's no way, it's not possible.
Even if you take it seriously, the most you can think is, wow, that's weird.
So if you're going all the way, oh, he's a rapist, there's no way you actually think that.
They're only saying that because they want to get rid of Kavanaugh, and for them, the ends justify the means.
And this is where ends justify the means, that mentality, that philosophy, this is where that really rears its ugly head.
I think there are a lot of people in this country, that's the way they look at it.
That truth doesn't matter, honesty really doesn't matter, all that matters is we have this end in mind, we have this goal in mind, and we're gonna do whatever needs to be done to get there.
And it just, it doesn't, if we gotta destroy an innocent man, we're gonna do it.
If we have to, if we have to smear someone, if we have to amplify and elevate lies and everything, then we'll do it.
And you know what?
Here's what else they think.
The person, Kavanaugh in this case, even if he didn't do these things, he still deserves it because he disagrees with us.
Psychologically, that's an important part of the story here, I think.
Is that the people who are amplifying and running with these very obvious smears and lies.
Remember, when, what's her name?
What was the crazy woman?
Swetnick.
When Swetnick and Avenatti came out with their story, claiming that Kavanaugh was part of a roving gang of serial rapists who were terrorizing the D.C.
area for much of the 80s, just going around and they would have these essentially rape parties where women would be raped one at a time and somehow women would still show up to these parties.
Remember, when that story, when that claim was made, clearly ridiculous.
Even if you think that, Kavanaugh, even if you think that the Ford allegations are true, there's no way, the Swetnick thing would still be too crazy to accept.
But remember that when that allegation was made, most leftists, including media members, Democrats, they went with it.
They went with that story for as long as they possibly could.
Did they really believe it?
No.
But their attitude is, number one, ends justify the means.
Number two, Brett Kavanaugh deserves it because he disagrees with us.
He's a bigot by default.
He's a bigot.
He's a sexist.
He's all, he's all the worst things in the world because he disagrees with us.
And so even if he didn't really commit rape, he has in effect, ideologically done that.
And so we can still pin this on him and he deserves it.
That's the way it is.
You know what it is with the left?
I think it's very similar.
It's kind of like what happened to OJ.
Where I think prosecutors, with the weird thing where he stole back his own merchandise and he got this absurd sentence for it, the kind of thing that most people, if you did that, whatever that whole situation was, you might not even go to jail for.
I think everyone understood that what prosecutors were doing is they realized that OJ had committed murder and gotten away with it.
They got their second crack at him.
And even though the second crime wasn't nearly as serious, they still said, well, we, yeah, but we know that he committed murder.
So we're just gonna, that's the main thing we're trying to punish here.
And so they sent him to jail.
And with the left's attitudes are kind of the same thing.
Where they think with Kavanaugh, yeah, he didn't really do this stuff, but he has committed an underlying crime.
Only the underlying crime in this case is not murder, it's just that he has the wrong ideology, they think.
That's the underlying crime, and so whatever we can stick on him in order to punish him for that, we'll do it, and it's justified.
All right.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention this.
It's huge news.
Sam Smith.
You know, Sam Smith, the pop singer, the guy that sang, what did he sing?
He sang Stay With Me and maybe some other song.
Anyway, Sam Smith has come out as multiple.
He's come out as plural.
He is two, apparently, or maybe three.
He's multiple people.
Sam Smith.
Says that his pronouns now are they, them.
Those are his pronouns, or those are their pronouns, I should say.
Now, I have to read for you the BuzzFeed article about this breaking news.
And as I read, please keep in mind that I'm not making this up.
This is all real.
This is a real article.
This is a real story.
Here's what BuzzFeed says.
Singer Sam Smith, who came out as non-binary earlier this year, announced on Friday that their gender pronouns are they slash them.
After a lifetime of being at war with my gender, I've decided to embrace myself for who I am inside and out, they said in a Twitter thread.
I'm so excited and privileged to be surrounded by people that support me in this decision, Smith continued.
But I've been very nervous about announcing this because I care too much about what people think.
But F it.
When they previously came out as non-binary, Smith said they would keep he-him pronouns.
Their thoughts and feelings on the matter have since evolved.
Smith has publicly talked about their curiosity with sexuality and gender, and has typically expressed ambiguous feelings about the latter.
Smith's decision to use they-them pronouns makes them the latest celebrity in a long line of mainstream actors and writers who have done the same thing, including younger actor Nico Tortorella and Pose star India Moore.
It should be noted that someone's name or pronoun do not necessarily tell you anything about their gender or other identities, according to My Pronouns, a resource for educating people about inclusive pronoun language.
In their thread about the news, Smith acknowledged that there might be mistakes and misgendering by people whose intentions may not necessarily mean to harm or hurt.
But all I ask you, please, is to try, they said.
Smith also told fans that this was a very fresh change and they were not at a place to eloquently speak at length about what it means to be non-binary, but I can't wait for the day that I am, they added.
Okay.
Love you all, Smith said in their final tweet in the thread.
Well, this is just utter... I wanted to read all that to you because this is BuzzFeed.
BuzzFeed being very woke, of course, as we know.
And so they're using—they—okay, they, BuzzFeed, are using the, quote, quote, correct pronouns for they, Sam Smith.
And as I read it to you, you have no idea what the hell I'm saying.
Because—or you have no idea who the they refers to in any given sentence.
It's just total nonsense.
Just take that last paragraph, for example.
Smith also told fans that this was still a very fresh change, and they were not at a place to speak at length about it.
Well, okay, in normal English, if you read that sentence, Smith also told fans that this was still a fresh, very fresh change, and they were not at a place, you would think the they refers to the fans, because the fans are the plural entity in that sentence.
But in this case, it refers back to Smith.
But it doesn't make any sense.
This is, again, just total nonsense.
We call this enlightened and tolerant and diverse and everything, but there's another term for it.
Bad grammar.
This is just bad grammar.
That's all this is.
This is very bad grammar.
This is bad writing.
So, look, here's the thing.
First of all, This is, along with being bad grammar, this is pure, unadulterated narcissism.
This is just grade A pure narcissism injected straight into the veins.
This is someone, Sam Smith, or the Sam Smiths, I suppose.
And by the way, he keeps referring to himself as I and me.
Shouldn't he be saying, you know, I don't know how, so he should be saying we, I guess.
Shouldn't he be saying us and we?
If he's a they, then he can't also be an I.
Oh, but of course it doesn't matter because he gets to make up the rules as he goes along.
He can just twist the English language, tear apart rules of grammar, cut it all down, because that's what he wants to do.
That's what they want to do.
And why?
Because the Sam Smiths consider themselves to be so interesting, so deep, so mysterious, Right?
So profound that normal grammar can't apply to him or them.
So he identifies as they.
What the hell does that mean?
Can anyone explain it to me?
Let's just talk at a very elementary level here.
Explain to me what a they feels.
You say, I identify as a they.
I feel like a they.
Well, what does that mean?
Explain to me the psychological experience, the inner life of a they.
Because I'm thinking, now, what comes to mind is a schizophrenic.
But if you're telling me you're not a schizophrenic, and you feel as though you are just one person and not two or three or four, Then what does it mean for a single individual to feel like a they?
Just give me like five sentences explaining that.
I guarantee you can't.
You can't even explain what you mean because it doesn't mean anything.
It's the same thing.
I always say, I go back to when men say, I feel like a woman.
Okay, really?
Give me five sentences about that.
Give me five sentences explaining what that means.
That's all.
Just tell me what it means.
You can't, because it doesn't mean anything.
It has no meaning.
It's a statement devoid of meaning.
The phrase, my pronouns.
Here are my pronouns.
These are my pronouns.
That makes as much sense as saying my verbs, or my prepositions, or my adjectives.
These are grammatical constructs, okay?
You don't get to take ownership of them.
Language isn't your toy.
It isn't something that you grab and own and say, this is mine!
Its rules exist and operate apart from your desires and your narcissism.
You might as well say that your verb is run.
And so therefore, whatever you happen to be doing, whether you're walking, jogging, sitting, standing, lying down, rolling around in the grass, whatever you're doing, people must describe you as running because your verb is running.
Now, don't you dare, if you're listening to this, say, oh no, that's a straw man.
It's not a straw man.
This is exactly the same kind of thing.
To say, again, pronoun is a grammatical thing.
It's a grammatical construct.
To say that it's yours, here's mine, it is exactly the same thing as saying my verb, my noun, my adjective.
It makes no sense.
It's not yours.
You can't have your own.
The rules of grammar and language.
Okay, now, whenever I talk about this, someone's quick to point out that, oh, language changes over time and it evolves.
Yeah, it does.
And I'll even say this.
Language is, in a way, arbitrary.
Just in the sense that we call a horse a horse, but we don't have to.
We could call it anything.
And countries all, languages all across the globe and throughout history have had different words to describe the large hooved creature that we ride, right?
And depending on what country you're in, they're going to call it different things.
But, We can't all just come up with our own individual words for horse.
You see?
We have agreed upon what—that's language.
And it is objective, in the sense that it's objective that, in English, we call a horse a horse.
Now, it could change over time, yes, and it's different in different countries.
But that is what we call it in our language.
And so, if you start calling a horse cow, Or chair, or cloud, or fifferdoodle.
If you start using that word for horse, I can say, you're wrong.
That's, no, that's not, it's not a fifferdoodle, that's a horse.
Okay, because, and here's why.
Because if we all just came up with our own individual words for horses, And cows, and houses, and if we all came up with our own individual words for all these things, we would have no way of communicating about anything anymore.
We wouldn't be able to communicate.
If we all have our own word for horse, now we can't communicate about horses anymore, because I have no idea what your word is, and you don't know what my word is.
Then what happens is language breaks down, and you are left with nonsense.
It's the same with pronouns.
Yes, we don't have to use the words he and him in reference to males.
Other languages use other words.
But these are our words.
And if we all just get to make up our own pronouns arbitrarily, based on whatever the hell standard, then language breaks down and our ability to communicate is greatly hindered.
Referring to a single individual as they is ridiculous and confusing and it makes no sense.
And I'm convinced that that's the point.
The people who make these demands are so crushingly narcissistic, so incredibly egotistical, that they want to control the language used about them when they aren't even in the room.
And they want it to be difficult.
They want you to jump through linguistic hoops.
They want it to make no sense.
Because they enjoy the power trip of making you dance to their tune.
That's really what this is.
And so I don't want to hear any well-intentioned but wrong people say, well, yeah, Sam Smith is, you know, it doesn't really make any sense, this they-them thing and everything, but, you know, we should go along with it because he's confused.
No, he's not.
This is just an absolute egomaniac who wants his own rules for language.
Because that's how interesting of a person he is.
I mean, listen to people, non-binary, listen to them explain, you know, how they discover.
It's just, it's so, it's always so arrogant.
You know, I look deep within myself and I discover that I just, I don't fit in with the normal things.
I just, I'm saying, oh, shut up already.
And however you feel about yourself, language does not work that way.
You don't get to make up your own rules for language that other people have to follow when they're addressing you or discussing you.
And by the way, if pronouns are meaningless, basically, because if you're saying that a pronoun doesn't really mean anything, so you could just change it on a whim, Then why change it to begin with, if you're saying it doesn't mean anything?
So if it all doesn't mean anything, then what is it to say, oh, I don't identify as he or him?
Well, it doesn't, that doesn't mean anything, apparently.
So what do you mean you don't identify it as, and you identify as she?
Well, apparently she doesn't mean anything either.
So what do you mean you identify as that?
And if a woman does not have to be she, then why is it that when a man identifies as a woman, he insists on being called she?
But what's even the point of pointing out?
We could sit here all day and point out the contradictions in the left's gender identity, everything.
We could point out the contradictions all day because none of it makes any sense and they can't explain it.
Because it's not about making sense.
It's just about control.
And this is the main thing I want you to take away from this.
Yeah, we know this is nonsense.
We know it's crazy.
We know all that.
I mean, if you're a rational person, you know that.
But the next step is for us all to understand why they're really doing this.
It's not because... Sam Smith is not confused.
He doesn't think he's two people.
He is not actually schizophrenic.
He knows that he is a single male individual.
He knows that.
It's about control.
That's what this is about.
And you know what?
Even if...
You're uncomfortable with people using the correct pronouns when addressing you.
You know what?
That's your problem.
Okay?
Because it makes everyone else uncomfortable when we are given these arbitrary rules that we have to follow and that we couldn't possibly know ahead of time.
And when we are forced to engage in nonsense speech, that makes us uncomfortable.
So, we have a choice here.
Either you are uncomfortable, or everybody else is.
Guess what?
In a civilized society, you, as the person with the unreasonable expectations, and as the person who is uncomfortable with a reasonable thing, and the reasonable thing in this case is using grammatically correct terms, you as the person who's uncomfortable with that, you just have to deal with it.
That's it.
It's kind of like I tell people with pet peeves, right?
When you have... And we all have this, right?
We all have things... This is what a pet peeve is.
A thing that... A normal thing, a normal and innocent thing that people do that annoys the hell out of you.
Right?
Because if it's a rude thing that people do and that annoys you, that's not a pet peeve.
That's just, that's a normal peeve.
A pet peeve is, it's a normal thing, a totally normal, standard thing that people do, and for whatever reason it annoys you.
Well, in that case, that's your problem.
You just have to deal with it.
That's your issue.
You can't expect to control everybody else.
Everyone else doesn't have to operate around your hang-ups and your weird things that you got going on.
You just need to control that.
That's your problem.
For instance, my pet peeve, one of them, I have many, I don't like when people eat bagels around me.
I don't like the sound, even when someone's chewing with their mouth closed.
I don't like the sound of people eating bagels.
For some reason.
And maybe I have some kind of bagel-related trauma as a child.
I don't know.
But it's a thing, and I hate it.
But can I demand that people just cease eating bagels?
If I walk into Panera Bread, can I say, Hey everybody!
Stop!
Put your bagels down!
Right now.
Until I leave.
Can I do that?
No.
Because that's my problem.
Because they're not doing anything wrong by eating bagels.
I'm the one with the weird hang-up.
Not them.
And so if you have some weird thing about how you don't like the proper grammatical term for you that refers to you as a male, that's your issue.
You just gotta deal with that one.
Alright.
Now, before we get to emails... Before we get to emails, I have to tell a quick story.
I gotta tell it today, because I'll... As it's fresh in my mind.
Because there's a lesson in it, in this story, a moral to it.
And the moral is that, as a parent, you know, disaster lurks around every corner, even in mundane situations, when you least expect it.
So, I took my son to his first NFL game yesterday.
We went to the Ravens.
Great game.
Ravens won.
Had a blast.
There was one hiccup, though.
In the middle of the game, he had to go to the bathroom.
Unfortunately.
And so I took him into the gross stadium bathroom.
And you know, if you've been to a stadium, you know that every stadium bathroom, at least every football stadium bathroom is disgusting.
And it's just a law of physics.
I don't know.
They're all disgusting all the time.
And so my son, he goes into the stall and I'm waiting right outside the stall.
And unbeknownst to me, he locks the door in the stall.
And I know he did that, but he did.
And then a line of impatient drunks forms, right, waiting to get in, so they can make their own deposit.
And finally, he finishes up, and he tries to leave the stall, but he can't figure out how to unlock the door.
He's a young kid, he's six years old.
He couldn't figure out how to unlock it.
And he was jiggling it, and he couldn't get it unlocked, and he was getting flustered.
And so I'm talking to him through the crack in the door, and I'm saying, buddy, buddy, just turn the lock, just turn it.
I can't, I can't.
No, just, just, just turn it.
Just, just, just turn the lock.
Just, just turn it.
This, you see this with my hand?
Do this, do this.
And, um, and then, and then, and then, you know, and I'm turning to the people in the line.
I was like, sorry, but it was just, buddy, turn the lock, just turn the lock.
And then I started doing the thing where, you know, where, where you're screaming at your kid, but you're also whispering.
It's like, turn the lock.
There's people.
And, um, and, but he can't do it.
And so now I'm starting to panic.
My son's panicking.
I'm panicking now in my head because I start to realize that I have three options here, and all of them are horrific.
One, I can tell him to crawl under the door on the urine-soaked floor, and then we'll just hightail out of the bathroom and leave this line of drunk people to deal with the stall that is now locked from the inside.
Or I can crawl under the door on the urine-soaked floor and unlock it for him, Or option three, I can leave him in the stall, go back to the game, let him figure it out, let nature take its course.
Now, so I'm going through this list in my head, and I'm giving very strong consideration to option number three, I have to be honest with you.
But then I realized that for many different legal reasons, probably number two is what it's gonna have to be.
And now I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that I am going to have to army crawl on a stadium bathroom floor through the collective urine of about 9,000 drunk people And I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm going to leave this game with hepatitis at a minimum.
In full freak-out mode, inside my head, and then just then, in that moment, my son is able to free himself.
He finally figured out how to turn it in the right direction, and he came out, and so it was a very close call.
Very close call.
Because I had this line, remember, and it was like in the break between first and second quarter, people wanted to get back out before the game started.
People were impatient, so I was about 20 seconds away from crawling on that freaking floor.
Oh my gosh.
And now, as a dyed-in-the-wool germaphobe, I am traumatized just by the thought of what I might have had to do.
Just the thought of it has traumatized me.
All right.
Let's see here.
We'll go to emails.
We'll do a couple of emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
From Jay, he says, hello there, just wanted to throw an opinion about the problem of pain
Yeah, I'm still getting pretty much all my emails about the problem of suffering, which we talked about last week, which is great.
Again, I think it's an interesting topic.
All right, I'll read a couple of them and then I think we'll have to move on from this topic eventually.
Just wanted to throw an opinion about the problem of pain that you've been discussing lately.
First, I am fully aware that I nor anyone else can claim to know the depth of complexity of God
and his reasons for everything. For what it's worth though, I've tended to view pain and
suffering through the idea of growth. Often when we suffer as rat as a rationing or because he
means rational adults, we can later see how that event has provided opportunity to grow and develop
spiritually, emotionally, and or physically.
When the innocent suffer, like your example of children suffering, I often wonder if that is for the growth of those around them.
Scripture has many references of God teaching and affecting people, not directly, but through those around him.
Uh, them, that is.
While I'd also take away the pain from children who suffer it, it may be an effective way for growing the compassion and empathy of others.
I don't think this covers the entirety of the issue, but maybe a component worth inclusion.
Yeah, I think it is, I think you're right in your final sentence there, that it is, it is, it doesn't cover the entirety of the issue, as you admit.
It is a component worth inclusion, worth discussion.
And I do think that pain and suffering, in, in, in many circumstances, Does provide an opportunity for growth and maturity.
Absolutely.
And that's why when I talked about last week about how if I had a button I could push that would take pain and suffering away from my children, I would push it.
I was talking about the severe, sort of debilitating, horrifying kinds of pain and suffering.
But the average, everyday suffering that a kid goes through, like, I gotta clean my room and I don't want to, which is a source of immense suffering for my kids.
Would I take that away?
No, I don't.
Because I do think that's growth opportunity.
And as we get older as adults, then even more severe forms of suffering can be for growth.
No pain, no gain, as the cliche goes.
And like many cliches, there's a lot of truth in it.
But, as you mentioned, I don't think that applies to all pain and suffering.
I think there is, and it's important for us to note that, and that's why I keep going back to this and I'm harping on this fact that we have to, as human beings, as Christians and as human beings, we have to show That we understand, that we have a real understanding of pain and suffering, and real pain, even if we've never experienced it.
I think we don't want to make the mistake of coming across like we have learned about pain and suffering from Christian movies.
And one of my problems with Christian movies, as I've talked about in the past, is that everything is way too neat.
And tidy, and there's a happy ending, and everything works out, and everyone in the end is smiling, and attractive, and everything.
And it's all just way too perfect.
Even if someone goes through something really difficult, in the end they learn from it, and they're stronger, and blah, blah, blah.
That's not the way it works in the real world.
It's just not.
So, even leaving, the idea that God would give cancer to a three-year-old, As a learning opportunity for his parents, that I just find... I just reject that.
I absolutely reject it.
That's... no.
I think, again, there's pain and suffering that we are given as a learning opportunity, yes, but not that.
No, I don't think that when those parents get to the afterlife, I don't think they're going to be told by God, well, I hope you learned something from that cancer to your child.
No, I don't.
I think that looking at it like that is to really, really severely diminish the severity of what it means for a child to be going through something like that.
And the idea that it's just a learning opportunity, no, no, no, no.
And I reject that for two reasons.
Number one, that's just completely unfair to the child.
That makes God come off as totally capricious and malevolent, even.
That he would give cancer to a child just to teach a lesson to the parents?
No.
Again, I keep saying no, but I don't accept that particular explanation because of how it makes God seem.
In a way, also, you're putting guilt on the parents.
Now the parents have to think, well, I must have to learn something.
It's my fault that my kid has cancer, because apparently God needs to teach me something I didn't know before.
So I reject it for those reasons, and also a third reason, and this is the part that I think a lot of the Christian movies and everything miss, that pain and suffering, we say no pain, no gain, but that's not always true.
And I think with the worst kinds of suffering, people can come out of those experiences and just be total shells of themselves.
It's not true that every time someone goes through something difficult, they come out and they're stronger and they're better.
I think there are some forms of pain and suffering where you're just ruined by it.
You come out and you are ruined.
And you are a shell of yourself.
I've seen this.
Now, I myself am blessed enough that so far in my life, when it comes to my closest family members and friends, I have not gone through the worst forms of suffering yet at this point in my life.
Thank God.
But I have, like many of us, I've seen it.
So I've been one step removed from it, which has given me a vantage point that a lot of us have.
Where I know people, And I've been close to people who have gone through pretty much the worst things you can possibly imagine.
And I've seen what it's done to them.
And they are not stronger because of it.
I wouldn't say that to them, but they are traumatized.
They are ruined.
Ruined may be the wrong word.
I don't want to say ruined.
They are in some ways weakened by it.
So, that's the issue.
And that adds another layer to the problem of suffering that, you know, on top of that, there are many people who have lost their faith in God because of things like children getting cancer, whether it's their own or just the fact that children do.
So, maybe some people come out and they have a stronger faith at the end of it, but I think a lot of people don't.
And the thing is, it's hard to blame them for not having a stronger faith at the end of it, and not being strong.
I can tell you this, if something like that happened to me, I talked last week about Joe Biden and, you know, even though I don't like him as a politician, the things that he's been through.
He lost his wife and child in a car accident, lost his son years later to cancer.
I mean, if I lost my wife and child in a car accident, I would not be stronger because of it.
I know that right now about myself.
I would be ruined.
I would be a shell of myself.
And could you really blame me?
Right?
What does that come from?
Because I love my family and they're gone and so I'm just utterly devastated by it.
So what do we say about those people?
What, they failed the test?
God gave them a test and they failed it?
Are they going to be punished for that?
What happens then?
So I just, I don't look at it that way, I guess.
I guess, so when we talk about the, and this is my point I keep going back to, when we talk about the problem of suffering, I don't think we can talk about it in blanket terms.
There's some kinds of suffering that can be explained a certain kind of way, and the explanation you give, I think that applies to probably, you know, 70% of the suffering that happens in the world.
I don't know, it's a totally made-up percentage, but that's an explanation that works very well for a lot of the kinds of suffering that people go through.
It works very well for almost all of the suffering that I've been through in my life, because I haven't been to that really severe level.
But it does, but for that other, for that next level of suffering, I think we need a different explanation.
And that's where, for the third time, I have to conclude that I think we just don't have the explanation.
And every explanation offered, and I've read a lot of explanations in my emails, I appreciate all the emails, but I think all the explanations I've read, they just don't cut it.
They don't get to it.
There's a disconnect.
And so I think we have to, in the end, I think we still have to just be okay with that.
With the not knowing.
All right, we'll do one more.
This is from Marie, says, Hello Supreme Bearded Being, dictator with the gimpy leg.
Well, it's not so gimpy anymore.
Thank you very much.
You've always struck me as a good and involved dad, so I have to ask if you have any funny stories slash suggestions for me when I first begin potty training my two-year-old daughter.
I'm a little intimidated by this monster of a project I'm about to take on, yet this thing needs to be done.
I'd like a tip or two.
Your show is great.
Your insights bring a lot of value.
Considered abandoning my child in a restroom because I didn't want to have to crawl through pee.
So I don't know how good, so maybe I'm not the right person to be giving advice.
No, I would, the only advice I would give on potty training, Marie, is to work it out.
You know, this is something that you have to work out yourself.
Prayer, I guess, is what I would say.
Lots of prayer.
And lots of hand sanitizer.
What I'm trying to say is that potty training, in my experience, potty training is awful.
I don't mean to scare you, but it really is disgusting.
You think changing a poopy diaper is bad?
I think that dealing with a potty training child is five times worse.
It's five times more gross.
And especially if you're using, okay, here's one solid piece of advice.
I'll give you one.
Don't use, you know those, the little child potty things that they, you know, which are basically just like the chamber, they're basically chamber pots.
They're glorified chamber pots that people will use.
Don't use that.
Because I'm telling you something, if you're training your kid on that,
and he does his business and that, then you have to take that disgusting pot of poop
and transfer it into the toilet, and then you have to wipe him, and it's just ugh.
So definitely train them right away on the big boy toilet.
And then all you have to do when they're finished is, ah, mommy, I'm done.
Then you gotta go in and hold your nose, flush the toilet, do the wipe, flush again.
That's what I would say.
It is definitely disgusting and horrific.
And I'm sorry that you're about to experience this.
But we have a, we're about, we're there as well.
Our kid, our son is two and a half, and so we're gonna have to go through this again.
I'm thinking maybe just keep him in diapers until he's, you know, just keep him in diapers indefinitely until he just figures it out on his own.
What I would say is maybe the system should be they don't get out of diapers until they're old enough to wipe themselves.
I think that should be the system.
That's my thought, but my wife never.
Never went for that.
Alright, we're going to leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
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