Look at how China is reacting to one tweet sent by one guy who works for the NBA. Now imagine what it's like to be an actual citizen of that country, entirely subject to its government's whims. We'll talk more about that today. Also, Elizabeth Warren is telling fanciful stories again. And some parents are suing a video game company for causing their children to be "addicted" to video games. Date: 10-09-2019
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All right, we have several things to talk about today.
Elizabeth Warren is telling stories again.
She's making up fables.
It's become its own genre now of Warren fables.
She loves to tell them.
And so we're going to talk about that.
Also, a group of parents are suing a video game developer because they say that their kids are addicted to video games.
We're going to discuss this.
And what we'll try to get to the bottom of is this question.
If you're a parent and your kids are playing too many video games, what's the best way to handle that?
Yeah, you could sue the video game company, but is there a more direct and possibly less expensive path you could take to control how much time your kids spend playing video games?
We'll talk about that.
Also, Justin Trudeau.
You know that I love Justin Trudeau videos on this show.
He is a source of never-ending hilarity, and I have now What I think is not just the most hilarious Trudeau video yet, but I think that maybe the most hilarious video to ever be posted on the internet.
And I don't think I'm hyping that up too much.
Maybe a little bit too much, but not by much.
So we're going to talk about all that today and more.
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OK, so before we get to the Warren thing, just another thought on this issue with the NBA and China.
At this point, all of the NBA's Chinese partners, according to CNN, all of them have now cut ties with the NBA because of one tweet sent by one guy that works for one team.
One tweet saying fight for freedom sent by one employee on one basketball team has led to all this.
I read somewhere that the NBA stands to lose like a billion dollars.
A billion dollars they stand to lose because of this one tweet.
Now, I want you to think about that for a second.
Think about how China is reacting to one tweet sent by one guy in Texas They're just coming down like an avalanche of bricks.
They're coming down on the NBA for this.
And even though the NBA is groveling and apologizing and licking their boots, still, they're being punished.
Now, you think about that.
Now consider what it must be like to actually live as a citizen in this country, entirely subject to the whims of the communist government.
Imagine if you were a citizen who sent out that tweet.
China has brought all of its forces to bear to punish the NBA, multi-billion dollar American company.
Now think about if you're just a lowly Chinese citizen expressing your free speech rights, which of course you don't actually have free speech rights in China, and that's exactly the point.
So, in conclusion, Communism is bad, folks.
Communism is very, very, very bad.
Not just bad in practice.
Not just bad when instituted incorrectly, which just so happens to be every single time it's been instituted.
According to some people, it's always incorrect.
It's never the real communism.
But no, that's not... See, communism is bad to its core.
It is bad in theory.
It is bad in practice.
It is bad as an idea.
It is bad as a policy.
It is bad all around because there is no room for freedom in communism.
And that's the point, as we are clearly seeing.
Freedom and communism are in two different directions.
Freedom is that way and communism is that way.
Going in two different directions.
Now, I know that this should all be obvious.
I'm not the first person to point out that communism is bad.
But it does, unfortunately, need to be pointed out.
Because it seems that it's not obvious to a lot of people in this country.
According to any survey that's been done recently on the subject, a large percentage of millennials, I read one survey that claimed it was like half of millennials, 50% around there, have a positive view of communism.
So that's why we have to point to this and state the obvious, that here's what communism is.
This is why it's a terrible thing.
That doesn't mean that capitalism is flawless, that there are no problems with it that you could point out.
Of course there are.
It is a human system.
It's a human economic system, and so it's going to be flawed.
And there are going to be downsides to it.
That's the way it is with any human institution or human system.
But communism is evil to its core.
Yet people, a lot of people in my generation, they have faith that communism is a beautiful and wonderful thing and that faith endures despite all evidence.
Every example we have of communism throughout history and in the world currently, it's all terrible.
But there's this faith that people have that they say, well, no, it's still, you know, it's still this great idea we're just waiting for its full and correct manifestation.
No, this is, Chinese communism is communism.
This is the correct version.
This is real communism, and this is what communism is in all of its glory, or lack thereof.
I think it's important for us to realize that.
All right, so, Elizabeth Warren is up to her old tricks again, it seems.
Possibly telling stories that are possibly not altogether true.
Lies would be another way of putting it, a less polite way.
Warren, on the campaign trail, likes to claim that she was fired from a teaching job in 1971 for being visibly pregnant.
And she's told this story countless times.
Turns out, shock of the century, maybe not exactly true.
There are two things that contradict her story.
The first thing is herself.
She herself has contradicted the story because she has told this story of leaving the teaching job very differently in the past.
There are kind of two different versions of it.
So let's look at this.
Students for Trump put out, they put together a comparison of how Warren tells the story now in 2019 versus how she told it 10 years ago.
And there's a not-so-subtle difference.
Watch this.
So my first teaching position was as a special needs teacher.
There we go!
I worked, it was in a public school system, but I worked with the children with disabilities.
I loved that job.
But by the end of the first school year, I was quite visibly pregnant.
And I was pregnant with my first baby.
So I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years.
And I was really casting about, thinking, what am I going to do?
And my husband's view of it was, stay home.
And the principal didn't invite me back for the next school year.
And I did that for a year.
And then that summer, I actually didn't have the education courses, so I was on an emergency certificate, it was called.
And I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, I don't think this is going to work out for me.
Okay, two versions here.
In both versions, she ends up not having the job, so that's the conclusion, and that's the same in both cases.
But in one case, she's fired, or at least not invited back because she's pregnant, and in the other case, she leaves on her own accord.
There's a principle here that's very helpful, I think, which says that if a story changes over time, you can generally be confident that the earlier version of the story is going to be correct.
Because that's how stories, stories usually grow in the telling and they become more dramatic and more elaborate, not the other way around.
And so if we have to choose between the two versions of the story, it seems like probably the one she told 10 years ago is the correct one.
But we don't even need to guess.
There's no guesswork here because the Washington Free Beacon has come with receipts.
They have, let me read a little bit of their report.
The Washington Free Beacon says, minutes of an April 21st, 1971 Riverdale Board of Education meeting obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that the board voted unanimously on a motion to extend Warren a second year contract for a two days per week teaching job.
That job is similar to the one she held the previous year, her first year of teaching.
Minutes from a board meeting held two months later, on June 16th, 1971, indicate that Warren's resignation was quote, accepted with regret.
So that would seem to be pretty conclusive.
The story she told 10 years ago matches the documentation.
The latest story does not.
Um, I'm not going to say she's lying though.
Let's just say that it is a loose interpretation of an event or an L I E for short.
Let's just say that now.
Um, Here's really what I want to talk about.
Let's put Warren's fibs to the side here for a moment.
Because the issue we're talking about here is how pregnant women are treated in the workforce and how much they are accepted in society and how much we accommodate and all of that.
I totally agree that pregnant women should be accepted and accommodated as much as feasible.
We should make it, as a society, easier, not harder, for people to have kids and to grow their families and so on.
You know, we pro-lifers, we on the right, who are pro-life, we're the ones who are all about welcoming and accepting pregnancy, new life, mothers, families, you know, that's our thing.
We're all about that.
We can't let the left claim that as their own.
Like, this is their hobby horse.
It isn't.
You see, the left pretends to care about pregnant women, but really what they're doing is they're using pregnant women, much like Elizabeth Warren uses this story that she, it would seem, made up.
They use it as a means to an end.
And on the left, everything is a means to an end.
Especially women.
And especially pregnant women, most of all.
Of all the people they enjoy using politically, probably there's no group that they enjoy using more than pregnant women.
Because for the left it's all about Control for the state and everything comes back to that and that's the end That everything for which everything is being used so whereas I would say I think it's very good for companies if they can to offer maternity leave and The more generous to leave the better.
I think that's a great thing That's what I would say and and that's what most people on the right would say But then the left comes in like Kamala Harris a few days ago She said, this is literally her plan, she said that there should be six months of paid family leave that all companies should be required to offer.
She wants the state to impose as mandatory six months of paid family leave.
Now, that obviously is absurd.
And when we say that that's absurd, we're going to be accused by the left of, oh, you don't care about families and pregnancy, you say you're pro-life, but No, because many companies simply cannot afford that.
They simply cannot afford to pay someone to not work for half a year.
There are basic financial realities here.
And they can't afford to hire someone.
If you're going to leave for six months and come back, that means they need to hire someone for six months to do your job that they're going to pay.
And then they're also paying you to not do the job.
And so they're paying for the job twice.
It's double the pay for six months.
They can't afford it.
But the left likes plans like that because it represents an enormous amount of control by the state over private enterprise.
And because, of course, companies can't afford this, that means that they're going to need to rely on the state.
There's going to need to be a subsidy kind of situation where the state is subsidizing this.
And that's even more control for the state.
And that's what it always comes back to.
Pregnant women are a means to an end.
And the end is state control.
That's it.
That's always it.
That's what it always comes back to.
Because on the basic point, That, again, we should be accommodating and accepting as much as possible of pregnant women.
We should be welcoming of that and celebrate that.
There's no disagreement.
In fact, again, we are the ones, as pro-lifers, that's how we really feel about it.
We really do see pregnancy as a beautiful and miraculous thing.
It's the left that says that a pregnant woman is basically, a pregnant woman is, she basically has a tapeworm infestation because what she has is a parasite in her body that she could expel or destroy at any time and it wouldn't matter.
It's what the left says, that's not us.
Yet, we also recognize certain realities.
And although it would be nice, I mean, look, it would be nice if when a woman gets pregnant, has a kid, It'd be nice if she could take off for five years and get paid, and take off until the kid goes into kindergarten.
Spend those five years with her family and get paid the whole time.
That would be fantastic, right?
That would be amazing.
Who wouldn't like a deal like that?
Be really great.
But it's not possible because there is this thing called reality and it just wouldn't work because that money has to come from somewhere.
Someone has to pay it.
As my dad always told me, money doesn't grow on trees.
And so there's no magical money tree.
That money's got to come from somewhere.
Either you're going to be bankrupting a company by forcing them to pay it for someone who's not working, or the state's going to come in and basically take over.
OK.
Couple of funny videos to play for you real quick before we get to this video game topic.
First, well, I'm not really sure what this is.
I think it's another environmentalist protest, a climate protest in London, I believe.
But the video, I guess, speaks for itself.
Watch this. I watch that and I'm really concerned because those people
people.
Bye.
are clearly having seizures and everyone else is just standing around rather than calling an ambulance.
But I guess they can't get the ambulance there because they're also blocking the road when they're having their seizures.
So that's sort of disturbing to watch.
But if you keep playing the video, you saw their dance moves, but you keep playing the video for a few more seconds.
and I was really surprised when this happened.
♪♪ ♪♪
♪♪ So there you go.
Great, great dancing all around.
Who do you think is a better dancer?
Spicer or the hippies?
That's a tough call.
I guess if I had to choose, maybe technically Spicer's a little bit of a better dancer.
He is choreographed at least.
I wouldn't go anywhere near close to saying that he's a technically good dancer because he's not, but I think technically he's got it over the hippies.
But the hippies are also, there's more life to what they're doing.
Uh, mostly because of all the drugs they're on, but you know, I, to me, it feels freer, more in the moment.
Um, so I don't know.
It's, it's a tough call between those two.
All right.
Forget about all that actually, because without further ado, I want to, I want to finally play what I think is maybe the funniest video ever recorded.
And I, I, I hope I'm not overselling it too much, but this is brilliant.
Watch.
Do you want to stand up and ask a question?
Why did you paint your face brown?
It was something I shouldn't have done, because it hurt people.
It's not something that you should do.
And that is something that I learned.
I didn't know it back then, but I know it now.
And I'm sorry I hurt people.
But did you paint your nose and your hands brown?
And it was the wrong thing to do.
I just...
I love everything about that video.
I love the awkward pause at the end.
It's like something out of The Office, but in real life.
It's great.
And you know what I think happened here?
Because a lot of people, I posted this video last night on Twitter, and a lot of people were saying, oh, this is staged.
It's clearly he staged it.
He had these two young girls ask this question so he could give his canned response.
And I think probably that is what happened.
I think the first part was staged.
But it's still hilarious.
It actually makes it funnier because he comes off like a clown.
He staged this thing where somebody would ask him an embarrassing question and it still came off really awkward and funny.
But then it seems to me, I don't want to speculate too much, but it seems like the follow-up question from the girls was off-script.
So that's my guess, is that they were coached, okay, stand up, ask this question of the nice Prime Minister, and then sit down.
But they're kids, so they stood up, they asked the question they were told to ask, and then they started ad-libbing a little bit, and that's where Trudeau got flustered.
That's where the awkward pause came in, because when they said, but did you paint your nose and hands brown too?
And that's where you get the pause, where he's going, Mm-hmm.
Well, sit down, sit down.
It's just, uh, it's amazing.
I love that.
So that's great.
That brings a smile to my face and not many things do these days.
All right.
Um, I almost, I gotta say, because I'm, I don't live in Canada and it's no skin off my nose.
Uh, so no offense to Canadians, but I really hope that Justin Trudeau stays in office.
Um, For as long as possible.
I hope that he's in office for the next 50 years because he's such a source of joy for me personally.
I want to read now a little bit from USAToday.com, an article about a About a certain lawsuit that brings up an interesting question.
The article says, roughly a quarter of a billion mostly obsessed gamers are battling it out on Fortnite.
There's a darn decent chance kids you know are among them.
This again is a USA Today article and it says there's a...
it uses the word darn.
Darn decent chance in a USA Today.
Anyway, this is journalism for you.
A Montreal-based law firm launched a proposed class action lawsuit in Canada on behalf of two Quebec parents who claim that Fortnite publisher Epic Games needs to pay the price for a third-person shooter they allege is as addictive and potentially harmful as cocaine.
The firm, Kalex Legal, represents plaintiffs who are identified only by their initials FN and JZ.
Not that JZ, a different JZ.
They're the parents of a 10 and 15-year-old, respectively.
Written in French, the legal action alleges that when a person is engaged in Fortnite for a long period, the player's brain releases the pleasure hormone, dopamine, and that Fortnite was developed by psychologists, statisticians, and others over four years to develop the most addictive game possible, all so Epic could reap lucrative profits.
So the accusation here, very startling accusation, what they are alleging, get this, is that the developers of Fortnite tried to make a game that people would really want to play, if you can believe it.
Now, I've heard stories, I can't confirm this, but I've heard stories that, you know, Clothing companies will oftentimes get together and come up with schemes of, you know, how can they make clothing that people are really going to want to wear.
I've even heard fast food companies that they'll sit around, I imagine, in darkened rooms with smoke billowing from their cigars, and they're sitting there and then they're saying, they're concocting these plans to come up with food that people will really want to keep eating.
So that's, anyway, that's the allegation.
I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it does raise this question of, okay, you're a parent and your kid plays video games way too much.
He's 10 years old, as one of these kids is.
What can you do about it?
And this is a relevant question because although there's only two parents right now involved in this proposed class action lawsuit, there are lots of other parents out there who complain about this.
In fact, I get emails sometimes.
I talk about video games sometimes and, you know, the pros and cons of video games.
Mostly I talk about the cons, really.
And I'll sometimes get emails from parents talking about how their kids play video games way too much and they don't know what to do about it.
So this is a problem that a lot of parents have.
So what do you do if your kid is playing video games all day?
Here's my idea.
I mean, yeah, you could file a lawsuit.
You could complain.
You know, to somebody like me.
You could shake your fist at the heavens.
You could cry yourself to sleep.
All of these strategies could work, maybe.
But here's a different idea.
Maybe your kid's playing video games all day.
Maybe what you could do is stop allowing him to play video games all day.
There's an idea.
So all these parents are like, I don't know what to do.
My kids, they play video games.
They're on their phone all the time.
What do I do about this?
Maybe be a parent?
Possibly?
Just do a little parenting?
Have you considered that?
Have you sat down maybe with your spouse and talked about this?
Have you said, hey, do you think we should do some parenting actually for a change here?
I mean, we've had this kid for 10 years.
We haven't parented him yet.
Do you think maybe it's time?
Okay, all sarcasm aside, as difficult as that is for me to do, I really don't understand.
I don't get parents who act like these neutered puppy dogs.
Ineffectual, impotent, they have no ability to... You are the parent!
You control everything in your house!
Everything that's in your house, you bought with your money.
Your kid doesn't have anything, unless they're much older, they have a job or whatever.
But that's mostly not what we're talking about here.
Taking the example of the 10-year-old kid.
Everything that 10-year-old child has, it's because you bought it for him.
Or for a few of those things, maybe someone bought it as a gift or whatever.
Almost everything, you bought it.
Probably the TV you bought, the video game system you bought, the video game you bought, the clothes on his back you bought, the couch that he's sitting in when he plays the games you bought, the electricity that feeds the TV that allows him to play the videos, you bought all of that!
You control all of it!
Just exercise your control as a parent!
It's not hard!
What is this, oh I told him not to and he still does it?
How is that an option?
He's 10!
How is it even an option for him to do it if you told him not to?
Take the, you know what?
Take the video game, remove it from the system, throw it in the garbage can.
Or break it first so he can't, so just take it and smash it if you have to.
Take the TV outside and if there's really, if there's no other way, if he really is addicted and you can't stop him, take the freaking TV and smash it in the driveway.
That's, I mean, that's, you could do that.
It's legal.
It's yours.
You can do whatever you want with it.
And it's fun too to smash a TV.
Have you ever tried it?
It's a lot of fun.
I just don't get this.
I, I, I, I really don't.
I mean, I understand that kids...
Don't always listen to us as parents.
And we can't control everything they do, especially when they're not around us.
They go to school or whatever.
They're with their friends.
They're not our puppets on a string, right?
They have free will.
They make choices and decisions and all of that.
So I understand all of that.
But when it comes to the things that they spend all day doing in your home, and when it comes to the products that they use, you have so much control over that.
I mean, forget about smashing the TV or taking the video game away.
You could just not buy it in the first place.
That is also an option.
And I know that the kid will say, oh, but all my friends are playing it.
Who cares?
Why is that a convincing argument for my kid?
I hear this from parents.
Parents who are really concerned that they have to buy their kid the latest gadget or phone or video game because all their friends have it.
How are you as a parent concerned about that?
Why do you care?
You're telling me that your child goes to you and says, oh, I want this.
And you say, no, I don't know.
And your child goes, well, all my friends have it.
And that convinces you?
You're convinced by that.
You say, oh, well, all your friends have it?
Well, OK.
Well, in that case, go ahead and go.
Well, let me go right now.
Let me drop everything I'm doing right now.
And why didn't you say earlier your friends do it, too?
Well, jeez.
Hey, Dad, I want to go shoot up heroin in a back alley.
Well, no, you can't do that.
Shoot up heroin?
Well, my friends are doing it, though.
Oh, well, oh, they are?
Okay, well, then go ahead.
I'll drive.
Which back alley?
I'll drive you.
Oh, you want to hitch a ride with someone first?
Let's go ahead.
Are your friends doing it, too?
Oh, well, then go ahead.
What is this?
I just, I don't understand it.
Just have some control over your freaking kids, okay?
Do society a favor.
Just say no every once in a while.
Every once in a while, at least.
Just start with that.
Every once in a while, when they want to do something, tell them no.
Just for the sake of it, sometimes.
I think sometimes it's good to say no to a kid just because.
You don't even have a good reason, maybe.
Sometimes my kids will come to me and say, hey, can I have a snack?
And I'll say, no, not right now.
And they'll say, oh, why can't I have a snack?
Well, just because.
Just because you can't.
I don't know.
You just can't.
Because I'm the father and I decided that right now you're not having a snack.
Because this is my house and my kitchen and my food.
And I've decided that right now you're not eating it.
You can eat it later, but right now you're not.
That's my entire reason.
I have no other reason.
And you're going to respect that because you're my child.
And that's the way this relationship works.
I don't have to explain myself to you.
I don't have to justify myself.
I am the adult.
You are the child.
That's the relationship.
All right, let's go to emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Travis, says, Dear fearless bearded dictator, congratulations on the birth of your fourth child.
I, too, am in the four kid club.
Here's my advice.
When things get crazy, fall on the floor and play dead.
The kids will then start to crawl all over you.
Other option is to run out of the house and start screaming.
You may want to put tape over your mouth if you live in town.
Otherwise, the neighbors will think you're nuts.
The best part of having four kids is each child has a playmate.
Congratulations again.
Yeah, all of those strategies I have already tried, and to varying effect.
This is from Allison, says, Hi Matt, congrats on the new baby.
My family's very excited for your family.
Actually, my family also consists of two girls and two boys, plus me and my husband.
Have you started to get the comments yet?
I never got comments or looks until we had our fourth, and some people react almost disgusted that we have so many kids.
Has that been your experience?
Yeah, I was just talking about this last night.
And I was talking about this with my wife, too, and she was saying she already is getting looks and comments.
And she actually did use the word disgusted.
I think that this just shows you why the West is dying, honestly.
Because four kids is not a lot.
And I do believe this is somewhat geographically based.
It kind of depends on where you live.
There are some places in the country you could live and have four kids, and if anything people are going to look weird at you because you don't have enough kids.
Like in Utah, for example.
Depending on where you live, it can change.
And I think in a lot of places, certainly more liberal kinds of places, yeah, having four kids, people look at you like you're a Ripley's Believe It or Not exhibit, but four kids, that's not a big family.
Really, I don't think you count as a big, and I have, so I don't think, I wouldn't, I would say that I have a moderately sized family at this point with four kids.
I think a big family, you reach big family My sister has nine kids.
can no longer fit inside a standard minivan.
Once you have to go buy a special van to fit all your kids, that is a big family.
I think that's the cutoff.
So that's not, you know, my sister has nine kids.
My brother's wife, my sister-in-law comes from a family, I think of 12 kids, I believe.
And there are much bigger families out there than that even.
A family of six is not that big, but we've gotten so used to families that are below replacement rate, the families with their 1.7 kids or whatever it is now, that we see a just normal-sized family as somehow bizarre.
And that is not a good sign for the future of our civilization.
Actually, it's been kind of interesting because everyone told me That this is what I heard from many people that when you hit four kids, that's when you start hearing the classic comments like, oh, it looks like you got your hands full or, well, you need to get a TV.
Um, or do you know what causes that?
Or, you know, all of those, any, any family with a lot of kids, you, you know, you know, all the comments you get from people.
And I always heard that once you hit four, that's when the comments start coming in.
And that has been exactly my experience.
It's actually been pretty amazing.
I've had four kids for a week and I've already heard all of those comments.
In fact, I, the, um, the, you look like you have your hands full one.
I got that eight hours after the fourth kid was born in the food court of the hospital.
I got the, it looks like you got your hands full.
And I never got that one time with three kids, not once.
All of those comments, I never heard once directed at me.
Fourth kid comes and immediately, it's like the, you know,
turning on a tap or something and they all come.
Doesn't offend me or anything.
I actually, I'm impressed by how on the money those predictions were.
So also coming, I come from a family of eight.
I have five siblings, four sisters, one brother.
And so we grew up in a pretty liberal area.
So the comments and the looks and everything, I got used to that as a kid.
So I'm kind of impervious to it now.
It doesn't bother me that much.
And of course, also we should remember that not every comment that a person, people can make comments.
that are kind of awkward and might be annoying because you've heard them a million times, doesn't mean they're malicious.
So when someone says, looks like you got your hands full, I don't, that's not an insult necessarily.
It could be, it could be a passive aggressive way of telling you, hey, control your kids, but maybe not necessarily.
So not all those comments are in any sense malicious, but the fact is, and people who don't have a lot of kids or don't come from large families, when they hear this, sometimes they don't believe it.
But it is true that big families, again, depending on where they live, you do get actual dirty looks and malicious mean comments from people.
It's kind of amazing.
If you've never experienced it, you think, would someone really come up to you, some stranger come up to you and make a malicious comment about how many kids you have?
Yeah, people do that.
They actually do it, believe it or not.
But who cares?
All right, from Nate says, I like your show when you stick to the issues, but when you go on and on about some story related to your kids or wife, I tune out.
I don't care enough about your personal life to listen to that.
Stick to the topics people care about.
Well, Nate, thank you so much for that email and that feedback.
I want to assure you that your feedback means a lot to me.
I'm going to take it into account.
And make sure to do the exact opposite of what you have suggested.
I have to assume, Nate, that this is reverse psychology.
I have to assume that you actually want me, you can't get enough of me rambling about my kids and wife, and you want me to do it more.
Because you must know that the number one way to ensure that I talk more about something is to send me a snide email demanding that I talk less about it.
The moment someone says to me, don't talk about this, I'm going to talk about it even more.
Is that a mature way to respond on my part?
No, but I'm not a mature person.
You should know that by now.
So yes, now I'm going to tell more stories about my family out of spite.
Out of spite against you personally.
That's the way this goes.
Or you could just stop listening entirely.
That also is an option.
I welcome you to explore that option.
It always amazes me when I get emails from people saying, I don't like it when you spend too much time talking about this or that.
Well, then don't listen.
It's never occurred to me.
Look, there are so many podcasts out there.
It's a wonderful thing.
There's so many podcasts, so many options.
There's a podcast on any topic imaginable.
It's never occurred to me to listen to a podcast with content that I don't find interesting and then write an email to the host of that podcast telling them to change the content because I personally don't like it.
I would never do that.
It's such a weird thing to do.
You know, there are home-improvement podcasts out there.
I don't personally care to listen to a home-improvement podcast.
I would never write an email to somebody with a home-improvement podcast saying, stop talking about this, I personally find it uninteresting.
I just wouldn't do that.
Okay.
From Lewis says, hi Matt, honest question, how do you justify going to see a movie like Joker when you're a Christian?
Why expose yourself to that debauchery and violence?
I don't get it.
That movie, like most Hollywood movies, exists only to glorify sin, and yet you encourage people to go see it.
You are not being a good shepherd of souls.
Just being honest.
Well, Lewis, you say that, and I got a few emails like this after talking about The Joker yesterday, you say that the movie exists to glorify sin.
Did you come to that conclusion from seeing it?
Did you actually watch it before deciding that it only exists to glorify sin?
That's quite an indictment of the movie.
It could be true.
I'm not saying that there are movies like that out there, but I agree with you on that score.
But how do you know that this movie is one of them?
I assume that you haven't seen it since you're taking issue with the fact that I saw it at all.
So the very fact that I watched it, you're saying that can't be justified as a Christian.
Which tells me you haven't watched it, which tells me that you have come to the conclusion about the main purpose of this movie based on what?
The name?
A preview?
Did you watch it?
You saw a two minute preview?
What are you basing this on?
I'm perplexed.
And it sounds like you're taking the position based on your email.
That Christians should just never expose themselves to violence and debauchery in any context.
That seems to be your point.
I'm not trying to make a straw man here, but if you thought that there could be a context where it's okay for Christians to expose themselves to this kind of content, then you wouldn't be making these judgments about a movie you haven't seen.
So I can only assume that what you know about this movie is that there's violence in it, And debauchery, as you say, although I don't know if debauchery is really... Well, I guess there is debauchery.
Yeah, there is.
So, you know that about this movie, and you're saying, based on that alone, don't watch it, which seems to mean what you're arguing is that we should just not expose ourselves to that stuff at all.
And you're not alone in that view, by the way.
A lot of Christians feel that way.
But I disagree with it.
First of all, I'll tell you why I disagree.
First of all, I know it's not exactly the same, but it should be mentioned that the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, contains a lot of very bloody and gory violence, and sex, and debauchery, and rape, and incest, and so on.
I mean, if you were to make the Bible into a movie, it would be a very long movie, but if you were to make it into an accurate movie, it would be NC-17.
At a minimum.
Because of the content in it.
And that's the truth.
Yet you would say, and I agree, okay?
You would say, well, that's different.
Because, you know, it's okay to expose yourself to the violence and debauchery and gore and death and blood and incest and rape and everything in the Bible.
It's different.
To expose yourself to that is okay because of the context.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the Joker is like the Bible or something.
I'm not saying that.
I'm simply establishing that context matters.
And so it would seem like you actually would agree with that, because, you know, it's okay in the Bible.
Context.
It's all about the context.
And that would mean that a statement like, Christians shouldn't expose themselves to violence, is actually a meaningless statement.
It's a silly statement.
Because of course there are some contexts where it's okay to do.
So I think you have to abandon that general position that you seem to be taking and find a more nuanced one.
And here's the more nuanced one, which you did touch on.
Christians should not engage in the glorification of violence and sin.
And that's true.
You know, they shouldn't.
I agree with that.
But not every movie that depicts violence glorifies it.
And I think there is a place for art that deals with and depicts and discusses and wrestles with very serious adult things like violence and sex and all of that.
Kids should not be watching that, but as adults, as mature adults, if we can handle it, there can be a value in it.
As long as it is not the glorification.
But you seem to be conflating, as again a lot of Christians do, I've found, you're conflating the depiction of violence with the glorification of it, and those are not the same things.
And, you know, why would you depict violence in art?
Well, because it's part of life, right?
And art at its best helps you to understand life more, Art, if it is art, has to reflect life in some way.
And hopefully, if it's really good art, after being exposed to it, whatever kind of art
it is, you leave with a somewhat greater insight into certain facets of life.
Now I'm not going to try to flip this around and say that, you know, no, actually Christians
have an obligation to go see Joker.
That's how good it is.
No, I'm not.
I wouldn't go quite that far.
In fact, I would put this movie aside for a minute because there's a discussion that can be had about whether or not this movie does engage in glorification or violence.
I don't think it does, but it is at least complex enough that you would have to watch it before arriving at any sort of informed conclusion.
But putting this aside for a minute, I think it's a mistake for Christians to retreat entirely from forms of art that deal with difficult things.
I think this is a trend in Christianity that's been going on for decades now.
I think it's a very bad trend.
The attitude that, you know, you should only watch Kirk Cameron movies or wait for the next God Is Not Dead installment and watch that sort of thing.
You should only listen to the sorts of music that you would hear at a megachurch.
That attitude is, I think, very damaging to the faith because it makes Christians, frankly, more shallow and more bland.
Not to mention less engaged in the culture.
As it turns out, there are actually non-Christian artists out there who have insights to offer, who actually have wisdom and artistic brilliance even.
It's no secret that I think Breaking Bad is the best television show ever produced in history.
Vince Gilligan, the creator of that show, is not a Christian.
I think he might be an atheist, actually, or agnostic.
I'm not sure exactly, but he's certainly not a Christian.
And yet, he brings more moral insight into that show, and he says more about human nature than any Christian movie ever has.
And it's not close.
I mean, there simply is no Christian movie or show that comes anywhere even close to the depth of moral insight offered by a show like Breaking Bad.
Now, it doesn't have to be this way.
Christian artists used to have more depth.
And that was because they didn't always try to keep everything PG.
And they understood that not all art has to be appropriate for everyone between the ages of 8 and 80.
It doesn't have to be that way.
There can be adult-oriented art that is meaningful and good but deals with difficult things.
Dostoevsky.
Greatest novelist of all time, in my opinion.
His books are not for kids.
They deal with death and murder and betrayal and adultery and sex, crime and punishment.
One of the best novels ever written.
Period.
A great Christian novel as well.
But it starts, the very first chapter, it starts with the protagonist on his way to go murder an elderly woman.
And the book Describes that murder in gory detail and it's very upsetting and disturbing and it's supposed to be But the whole point is you're not gonna read that book and come away from it thinking.
Oh, I'd like to be Yeah, I'd like to be more like him.
I'd like to do what he did at the beginning No, that's not that's you're gonna come to the exact opposite conclusion And so that's I think that's the important thing it's after you are Read the book or watch the movie or watch the show.
If it depicted and dealt with evil things, does it make those evil things seem appealing?
Does it make you feel like you want to try that stuff yourself because it looks so cool and sexy and everything based on the way that it was portrayed?
There are a lot of movies that do have that effect.
Which isn't to say that watching a movie that glorifies violence will cause someone to go and commit violence.
As I said yesterday, the causal relationship is not nearly that clear.
If there even is any kind of causal relationship.
But still, it will have a negative influence on us psychologically and spiritually to watch things that glorify violence and sin and everything.
But, if at the end of it, you have the opposite feeling, where you feel repulsed, and you feel even more determined to avoid making the mistakes and doing the things that you saw the people in the show or the movie doing, then that means that it was not glorified.
I don't think that anyone could get to the end of Godfather Part 2 when Michael Corleone is standing there looking out the window as his brother is being taken out into the lake to be murdered.
You know, and he's looking over his empire that is of just death and destruction, where his family's gone, his wife hates him, his kids hate him, his brother's dead, he killed his brother, the other brother's dead, I mean, everyone's dead.
I don't think anyone watches that and says to themselves, oh, I would really like to join the mafia.
So, not glorification.
All right, we will, but thank you for that email.
It's definitely, it's an interesting discussion.
But again, you can't really meaningfully participate in this discussion if you've never watched any of these things.
You just don't know what you're talking about.
And that's part of the problem.
All right.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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