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Oct. 29, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show

48:59

Ep. 359 - The Commie Generation

An increasing number of millennials view communism favorably. How did this happen and how do we fix it? Also, two Indian Americans attack a group of black girls and the NY Times blames white people. Finally, the worst pieces of marriage advice. Date: 10-29-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	Welcome to the show, everybody.
	Glad to have you here, especially on this day, which is a special day around here in my house.
	It's my eighth wedding anniversary.
	Eight years of marriage may not be that much, you know, objectively in the grand scheme of things, but by modern standards anyway, we've officially entered old married couple status, which I'm very excited about.
	And thinking back to that day eight years ago, you know, a lot of joy and hope and promise, um, except the only problem is that there was a torrential downpour on the day of our wedding.
	You know, we were getting married on the beach, not on the beach physically.
	We're not hippies.
	We were in a church for God's sake, like, like civilized people, but a church at the beach.
	And, uh, so the downpour was flooding roads and everything.
	And, and, um, you know, it was messing up my wife's hair and her makeup and my hair and makeup because we're a progressive couple.
	But the real problem, And anyone who's gotten married in the last 25 years on a rainy day knows what I'm about to say.
	The real problem is the non-stop Alanis Morissette jokes that just went on for the entire day.
	And every person who walked into the church, of course, they're coming out, they're shaking off their, you know, jacket and they've got the umbrella.
	And then they walk into the church and every single person goes, Well, this is ironic.
	And then they look around.
	Ironic.
	It's like the Alanis Morissette joke.
	Pop culture reference.
	And it's like as if they're the first person to make the joke, which is even more annoying because no rain on a wedding day, of course, as many people have corrected this.
	That is not ironic.
	It's inconvenient.
	It's a hassle.
	It's not ironic.
	Neither is finding 10,000 spoons when you're looking for a knife in your kitchen.
	That's just a sign that somebody in your house is a degenerate spoon hoarder.
	It doesn't mean that it's ironic in any way.
	In any case, happy anniversary to my wife.
	And to myself, I suppose.
	What I want to begin with today is a new survey showing that one in three millennials have a favorable view of communism.
	And this is not the only survey of this type that's been done and found results like this.
	And it's very, I think, legitimately terrifying to think that communism is becoming so Popular.
	I want to talk about that and why it is that my generation finds communism appealing.
	Also, two Indian American kids attacked and assaulted a group of black girls in New Jersey, but the New York Times knows what is really to blame for this assault.
	White supremacy.
	I'm not kidding.
	And also today, speaking on my wedding anniversary, in honor of that occasion, I wanted to talk about the pieces of marriage advice, the common clichéd pieces of marriage advice, supposed marriage wisdom, that I have found, in my experience so far, to be completely and totally off-base.
	So we'll talk about that as well today.
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	I think in times past, they wouldn't have had ancestry.
	They wouldn't have had the service of ancestry, doing DNA tests and everything.
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	I have sent in my packet from Ancestry.
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	Who is to blame for this is what I really want to find out, and that's what I'm going to find out from Ancestry.
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	Before we get to the communism thing, I also, I forgot about this, a priest in South Carolina, I would be, I couldn't do the show without mentioning, a priest in South Carolina reportedly refused communion to quote-unquote Catholic Joe Biden.
	Father Robert Morey says that he didn't give Biden communion because Biden, among other things, openly advocates for abortion, for the grave sin known as abortion.
	Now, I just want to say congratulations to this brave priest for being one of the few with the guts to actually enforce the rule and uphold the teaching as it pertains to this, and protecting the dignity of the sacrament and the church, and not to mention Joe Biden's own soul.
	He needs this kind of correction for the sake of his own soul.
	So this was an act of courage and also mercy, I think, for Joe Biden.
	Now, for those who aren't familiar, Catholics have the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, which is the belief that Christ is really present, as it would seem to indicate, really present in the Eucharist.
	As he said at the Last Supper, this is my body, do this in remembrance of me.
	Not this symbolizes my body, but this is my body, do this in remembrance of me.
	That's where the teaching comes from.
	So, people who are in grave sin, or in a state of sin in that way, are not supposed to receive communion until they have repented of that sin.
	The Catholic Church has always taught that abortion is a grave sin, and those who openly advocate for it, promote it, fund it, facilitate in it, facilitate it, they are guilty of not only participating in this sin, but also they're guilty of the sin of scandal.
	And by that we mean, we don't mean scandal in the political sense, we mean scandal in the sense that they are You know, encouraging others to fall into sin.
	In this case, explicitly, openly encouraging others.
	So, pro-abortion politicians, for that reason, are supposed to be refused communion.
	It's just that it rarely happens because priests rarely have the guts to stand up to them.
	Also because pro-abortion politicians rarely go to church in the first place to have the opportunity to have communion refused of them.
	But when they do go, usually, It is disgraceful to note, but usually they'll get communion and no one withholds it.
	In this case, it was withheld, and so I say good for this priest.
	Okay, so that's the good news for today.
	On to some of the bad news.
	The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation conducts these yearly studies to see how people's attitudes towards communism are changing over time.
	And the results of this year's study are truly horrifying, I think.
	Reading now from the organization's report, here are what they call the key takeaways.
	Some of the key takeaways, anyway.
	I'm cherry-picking a few of these here.
	that are of special interest.
	It says capitalism is still viewed more favorably than other economic systems, holding relatively steady at 61% favorability from 2018.
	Now that's 61% overall.
	To me, that's pretty low.
	Only 61% of Americans, according to this study, are really in favor of capitalism.
	However, favorability of capitalism is lower among Generation Z and millennials, at only around 50%, down 6 points and 8 points from 2018, respectively.
	Communism is viewed favorably by more than 1 in 3 Millennials, 36%, up 8 points from 2018.
	Communism.
	By 36% of Millennials.
	This, I hate to remind you, this is the generation that's taking over the country.
	They are inheriting the reins of power.
	When I say they, I mean we.
	And 36% of us are in favor of communism.
	15% of millennials think the world would be better off if the Soviet Union still existed.
	A majority of Americans aged 35 and under trust themselves more than the community.
	But that's... Okay, so 35 and under majority trust themselves.
	66% trust themselves more than the community or the government.
	But that means that 34% trust the community or the government more than they trust themselves.
	Think about that.
	While 50% of Millennials say they are somewhat likely, and 20% of Millennials say they are extremely likely to vote for a Socialist candidate, doubling from 10% in 2018, Americans overall are more hesitant about voting for a Democrat Socialist than they were last year.
	45% of Generation Z and Millennials believe that, okay, well, obviously, naturally, 45% believe that all higher education should be free.
	On that one, I'm actually surprised it's not higher.
	45%.
	Although I think the number is trending in the upward direction.
	Now, this is all quite wrong, of course.
	I don't mean that the findings of the study are wrong.
	I think the findings line up with what you would expect. They ring true to me even though
	they're horrifying. I mean they're wrong in that the opinions held by many millennials with respect
	to this issue and with respect to almost every other issue you can think of are wrong. It
	might be too much to ask given that people don't like to read anymore especially read long
	books but if everyone would just read the first volume I've recommended this book a million
	million times. If you would just read the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag
	Archipelago, he wrote a three-volume work talking about his own experience in the
	Gulag, the Soviet Gulag, but also he kind of weaves that in to the overall history
	of the Gulag system in the Soviet Union.
	It's a fascinating book.
	I've read the first two volumes.
	I haven't read the third volume yet.
	But it'd be great to read all of them.
	If you could only read one, just read the first volume.
	And there's no way that you could read that book and come away from it Still thinking that a socialist or communist system is a good idea.
	There's no way you could do it.
	These are systems where freedom, liberty, self-expression, self-determination, human flourishing, human well-being are not relevant.
	They simply don't factor in.
	Now, the fact that communist governments promise to take care of everybody and make sure that everyone's needs are provided for, and then fail, always, every single time, to follow through on that promise, is almost beside the point.
	Because what happens when we have this conversation is people say, well, look at the bread lines in Venezuela, or the empty grocery shelves.
	And this is supposed to prove the faults of this kind of system.
	But even though it's true that that does indicate serious problems with the social system, I think that's the wrong approach.
	Just observing all the bad things that have happened under communist and socialist governments is not enough, clearly.
	Now, when I recommended The Gulag Archipelago, it's not because it chronicles all the bad stuff, which it does, and does so powerfully and poignantly.
	The real powerful thing about the book, I think, is how it exposes the philosophical flaws With this system.
	And that's what we need to focus on communicating, is the philosophical problem with it.
	We need to focus on why it's a bad idea.
	Not just why it's bad in practice, not just the practical problems, even if they are significant practical problems, such as mass starvation is a practical problem, pretty significant one I would think.
	But that clearly has not been, even if it should be enough for people to be convinced, it's not enough.
	And the reason is there's always a defense mechanism that this defense mechanism has been built up.
	And it's a pretty effective mechanism.
	And that mechanism, that strategy is the classic move of saying, well, hey, communism is a great idea, but it's just that it's usually not done right.
	And when you point to an example of a communist or socialist regime, Venezuela, China, Soviet Union, wherever, where there's been horrific results, you could always say, well, that's not real communism, or that's not real socialism.
	Or there's the more skeptical-sounding version of this, where somebody says, communism is great in theory, just bad in practice.
	No, it's bad in theory.
	And the reason why it's always bad in practice is because it's bad in theory.
	And so we need to talk about that theory.
	Here's the other thing that people need to understand about millennials and I guess Generation Z. I don't know anything about those people.
	But even though I guess my kids are in that group, I don't know.
	But here's what I think some people miss about millennials.
	The arguments, and not just with this issue, with economics, but with any issue.
	The arguments that really speak to millennials are going to be philosophical, moral arguments.
	Which in some ways, I would say, is a credit to my generation.
	That we're a little bit less focused on the practical implications of things.
	Which, there's a downside to that, which we're seeing, but they're a little less focused on that and a little more focused on the moral argument.
	Like, what's the right thing to do?
	Okay?
	And this is a fact about Millennials that everyone seems to miss.
	How can you miss it?
	And so this is why the messaging by conservatives to Millennials so often fails.
	Because when you start talking about the practical stuff of, oh, you know, you want a job, you want this, that's, no, that's not, that's not how you're going to speak to them.
	Notice, notice what Bernie Sanders does, what Elizabeth Warren does, what all the Democrats do, especially when it comes to economic stuff.
	Much to the frustration of conservatives, they're not Making practical arguments.
	They're not explaining how their plans are actually going to work, because the plans aren't going to work.
	But from a messaging standpoint, it doesn't matter, because instead what they're doing is they're saying, this is just the right thing.
	It's the right thing to do.
	And they're making that moral argument.
	It's a bad moral argument, but it is a moral argument.
	And a philosophical argument.
	So, I think, here's what it comes down to.
	The fundamental questions that pertain to this.
	What is the point of living?
	What are we supposed to get out of life?
	What's the function of a person?
	What are people for?
	To quote a Wendell Berry essay.
	Yes, the theory of communism is to care for and provide for everyone equally.
	It never works out that way, but never mind that for a minute.
	Let's just talk about the theory.
	The problem is that's not what people are for.
	That is not the most moral system.
	Even if it worked, which it doesn't.
	Because we are not as people just like pigs in a pen, where you give us food and maybe you clean out the pen every once in a while and then you leave us to muck around in the mud in our little safe confines.
	That's not how people work.
	We are human beings.
	Thinking, striving, dreaming, rational creatures, which means in order for us to actually be happy, in order for us to really be fulfilled, in order for us to flourish, We need the liberty to act on our own, make our own decisions, express our own views, work towards our own goals, care for ourselves.
	This isn't to say that community is unimportant.
	It just means that we are communities of humans, not of ants or bees.
	And communism is great for ants and bees because it emphasizes the community, Completely at the expense of the individual.
	Where the individual basically doesn't exist and doesn't matter.
	That doesn't work.
	For creatures that literally have hive minds, that's great.
	For human beings, it's not so great.
	And I think that has to be our message.
	The reason why communism is so appealing to younger people is that, as I've argued, there's way too much focus on the practical pitfalls of communism, which leaves open this idea that, in theory, it's great, and someone just has to figure out how to make it work, because it's the most moral system, and it's a system that's going to make people the happiest, and so we should do it.
	If we could.
	And also because, before even making the point, That communism destroys liberty, which is the main point, the real reason to oppose it.
	But before even getting there, people need first to actually desire liberty and freedom.
	And herein lies, I think, the real problem.
	A lot of younger people today just don't have that desire for liberty, for freedom, for independence, because it hasn't been instilled in them.
	And that's what we need to work on, getting people to understand, especially young people, why freedom is a beautiful and necessary thing and something that will ultimately make them happy and fulfilled.
	And why it is the most moral thing.
	You know, why it is better to have a system where people are free and they have self-determination, even if you have things like poverty and so on.
	You know, I knew we had a problem when I started seeing, when it comes to this, you know, you started seeing these reports in the last few years about how kids are driving at later and later ages.
	They're putting off getting their licenses because they're content to be chauffeured around by their parents.
	And it's a small thing, but it's illustrative because it used to be that kids couldn't wait to get their licenses, right?
	Because they wanted to be able to get out on their own, hit the open road, have some independence, have some autonomy.
	I remember I was so excited to get my license and the idea of being able to get in my car and go run an errand or something.
	Even something as simple as that, but just if I needed something from the store, if I needed to go, that I could just get in the car and go do it myself without having to depend on anybody.
	That to me, I couldn't wait to do that.
	I was so excited to run my first errand as an adult.
	But that's something that kids today, it's a desire they don't seem to have quite as much.
	And in a similar way, it used to be that you'd be excited to leave your home once you were old enough and live on your own, get out on your own.
	Even if you end up living in some dingy apartment or whatever, even if your living conditions are downgraded in some respects from what you had at your parents' place, you loved it because it was yours.
	It was your space.
	You could do what you wanted.
	It was your thing.
	You were basically free to live as you wanted.
	But younger people don't desire that anymore either.
	Which continues to be shocking to me.
	I can't wrap my head around that mentality because I wanted to move out when I was 16, not because I had a miserable home life, but just because I wanted to be on my own.
	I was just tired of, I wanted to do my own thing.
	But now you've got 26 year olds who don't really have that desire.
	They don't really want to do their own thing.
	So it's, and again, with something like that, if you want to make an argument to people
	that hey, you know, you should get your license and you should move out of the house and live
	on your own, I think it's important to have the younger generation doing that and learning
	how to live independently and learning that independence is a good thing.
	Thank you.
	But if you're going to make that argument, once again, you can't really make it on practical grounds.
	Because in a way, as opposed to with something like communism, the very sort of localized communism Of an adult that still lives at home with his parents and is taken care of by the government of the house, which would be their parents.
	That does make, in a practical way, I mean, that does make some practical sense because you're saving money and all of that.
	So in a way, practically speaking, yeah, I can see why you would do it.
	But there's more of a philosophical argument.
	It's a philosophical argument for why, even though it makes practical sense, you still shouldn't do it because that's not how you are going to flourish as a human being.
	You'll be more comfortable that way, but you're not going to be happiest.
	You're not going to flourish.
	You're not going to become yourself, figure out who you are, come of age, mature.
	None of that's going to happen if you're still depending on your parents.
	So I think these are the kinds of arguments we make.
	And if we start doing this, then I think that's how we get people to abandon this idea that communism is the way to go.
	All right.
	Well, we've been dumping on the Washington Post for mourning the death of the great mass-murdering serial rapist scholar Al-Baghdadi.
	But I think the New York Times deserves, as always, a share of the ridicule this week.
	If we're making fun of the media, we should always include the New York Times, because they're always giving us more and more reasons to make fun of them.
	I point now to an article, an op-ed, published a couple days ago, which, no matter how cynical you are about the media, you might not even believe this is real.
	You're probably going to look this up.
	And Google it to see if it actually exists, which I encourage you to do.
	But it is real.
	It does exist.
	It's by Nell Irvin Painter.
	And it's an op-ed about an assault on a group of black girls by two Indian boys.
	Indian American boys.
	But Painter knows who is really to blame for this.
	White people.
	So, listen to this.
	She says in the pages of the New York Times, two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American
	middle school girls using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims are
	facing charges, including bias, intimidation, and lewdness.
	The incident, which took place during an October 18th high school football game in the New Jersey
	suburb of Lawrence Township and was partly captured on video that circulated on social media,
	involves a cast of characters that have given some observers pause.
	Police say the boys are of Indian descent.
	While it's tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens.
	Instead of asking what... Let me just stop here, actually, for one second.
	It actually doesn't complicate the story at all, and it doesn't raise questions about whether or not it's racist.
	There's nothing... For rational people to see a non-white person acting in a bigoted way to another non-white person, that's not complicated.
	That doesn't raise questions of whether it's racist.
	It's very uncomplicated.
	That's racist.
	Because as rational people, we understand that racism obviously exists among all people, not just white people.
	But the author here doesn't seem to agree.
	So she says, instead of asking what the boys' reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enact... Listen.
	Listen carefully to this.
	We should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-Black assault in a very traditional way.
	In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions.
	They show race in the making and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.
	Enacting whiteness By assaulting someone, no matter what race you are, you are enacting whiteness.
	Why?
	Well, because white people are the only ones who are racist.
	But you see the circular logic here.
	When a non-white person assaults another non-white person, that has to be racist.
	Why?
	Because white people are the only ones who are racist.
	So you see how the circle goes.
	Every racist incident is by a white person or white people are to blame for it.
	And so when you have a racist incident that doesn't involve white people, well, no, but still involve white people because white people are the only ones who can be racist.
	And we just go around and around in that circle of logic.
	Or anti-logic, I guess we should call it.
	Let's see, should we read any more of this?
	At first blush, the reported assault sounds nauseatingly familiar, like the run-of-the-mill American racial harassment that has always been in common, but has become increasingly revealed thanks to videos shared on social media.
	The boys' actions resemble those of people who feel empowered to act out their resentment against non-white people who are deemed out of place, confronting them with hostility or slurs, or calling the police.
	The people patrolling what they see as their spaces are often, but not always, white.
	The Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson calls areas that are policed in this way the white space, even though the spaces in question are officially public.
	Just to understand what's happening here.
	When someone assaults or abuses another person in a space, the person who is doing the assaulting and abusing is defending the white space, even if they're not white.
	They have now become, I don't know if it's a Manchurian candidate kind of thing, where we as white people have brainwashed them to enforce our space, whatever that is.
	There's someone in the white space, get them.
	I don't know if they imagine that we're, you know, we're whispering that into a microphone or something, you know, a chip implanted in their ear and they're following our orders, hypnotized.
	I don't know what they imagine how this works, but that's basically the result.
	And then it goes on.
	From there, anyway, I think you've probably heard enough.
	You get the idea.
	This is, I think it should be noted that I looked up this author's biography and seeing what it says here, it won't surprise you that this is someone from academia.
	I don't know if they're still in academia, but someone who was in academia.
	This is what, you send your kids to a mainstream college, to a major, you know, secular kind of college, what I mean, this is the kind of thing they're being taught as fact.
	So this is not hyperbole or me being satirical or anything.
	They, the left really believes That only white people can be racist by definition.
	And so any racist thing that happens has to be the fault of white people.
	That is actually what they believe.
	That is actually what they teach to kids as a fact in school.
	And it, of course, is completely insane and has no basis in reality.
	And it entirely ignores the fact, and in fact is meant to obfuscate the fact that bigotry and so-called intolerance and racial hatred is extremely pervasive and common all across the world and
	very often is much more common and much more pervasive and much more violent and
	aggressive and dangerous in non-white parts of the world. But that's the fact that we're not supposed
	to notice that.
	that.
	All right.
	Okay.
	As I mentioned, today is my wedding anniversary, eight years, and I thought it could be fun, possibly instructive, to go over some of the very common and cliched bits of marriage wisdom that everyone hears before marriage, but I have found to be completely off-base and wrong, in my experience.
	And anyone who's contemplating marriage, if you're younger and you're thinking about getting married or you just got married, Hopefully this will be instructive for you.
	Now, I don't know what your particular experience is going to be, but I think probably these are bits of advice that you've already heard a bunch of times and, in my opinion, you should just discard and forget about.
	Okay, so we'll go through some of these.
	Number one, never go to bed angry.
	This is terrible advice.
	It's very common.
	You hear it all the time.
	And I really believed it before I got married.
	And I heard, never go to bed angry.
	So I thought, okay, well, guess you can't go to bed angry.
	What I've discovered though, and you discover this pretty quickly, is that if you're ticked off at each other around bedtime, which does happen, hopefully it doesn't happen that often, but it does happen, especially if you've had a long day and you've got kids and all that, and the kids are being kids, and just at the end of the day, you're exhausted and everything.
	And you're getting on each other's nerves.
	You get into a fight.
	Well, Okay, you have two options at that point.
	It's around bedtime.
	You're angry.
	Two options.
	You can fight it out into the wee hours of the morning and then probably still in the end go to bed angry or just get some sleep and sleep it off.
	Wake up in the morning and 90% of the time discover that you don't even care anymore.
	You're not angry anymore.
	The latter option is better almost all the time.
	So this is almost completely the opposite of the case.
	Also, you know, I have personally found that screaming at your spouse, no, don't fall asleep!
	We can't go to bed angry!
	That doesn't really work to calm things down, I've discovered.
	Anger subsides on its own.
	You can't demand that someone stop being angry.
	It just, on its own, it goes away.
	And most of the time in a marriage, depending on how serious the fight is, I mean, you know, if it's something very serious, this isn't true, but the vast majority of the arguments that you have in a marriage are not serious.
	And it's about something that doesn't really matter that much.
	And you're both kind of wrong, but you're also both kind of right.
	You have your good points and your bad points.
	That's the majority of arguments.
	But when you're in the midst of it and you're angry, you can't see that.
	You go to bed, you wake up, and you'll see that, oh man.
	Now, if you cut it off at the pass and decide not to have the argument and you just go to bed, you'll wake up And think about all the things, because yeah, you went to bed angry.
	So as you're falling asleep, you're stewing over it, and you're thinking about all the things you wish you could be saying right now, and you're thinking about waking up your spouse to say these great points that you think you want to make.
	But when eventually you do fall asleep, you wake up in the morning, you think to yourself, thank God I didn't say any of that.
	That's a very good thing.
	So, definitely go to bed angry sometimes.
	That's my first, so that's how I would respond to that.
	Number two, people say the first year is the hardest.
	I don't know who came up with this.
	I have to assume that the person who came up with it is someone who got divorced after the first year.
	So this is someone who couldn't hack it at all and got divorced and then figured that, well, first year must be the hardest because it was my only year, so what do I know?
	The first year is actually a piece of cake.
	Barring some kind of extenuating circumstance that makes your particular situation very difficult, in most cases on the sort of standard first year model of marriage, it is a piece of cake.
	You don't have kids, probably, it's just the two of you, and you just got married, you're doing your thing, it's no problem.
	It's not until later when the kids come and you got the bills and you've got just all the challenges and the vicissitudes of fortune, to use a phrase that I use quite commonly in my household.
	It's with all that that you start having the challenges and that's when you have the more difficult moments.
	I think telling people that the first year is the hardest just sets them up for failure by giving them a false confidence Where they get through the first year, they look back at it and they say, really?
	That's the hardest it's going to get?
	You kidding me?
	This is a piece of cake.
	And then and then the first time they hit a real speed bump, everything falls apart because they weren't they weren't expecting that.
	Number three, people say, you know, never keep anything from your partner.
	Don't keep anything yourself.
	Now, this is true if the point is that you shouldn't like hide money or have affairs or something like that.
	Then and with the money thing now that that is a cliched common piece of advice about don't have separate accounts and don't do that.
	That I think is 100% correct.
	That's absolutely true.
	You get you letting money come in between you in a marriage and you both have your own money.
	That's that you're just asking for you.
	You're at you a base.
	You might as well be literally asking for a divorce at that point.
	You might as well cut to the chase and just just ask for the divorce because that's where you're headed.
	If you if you're letting money come between you in a marriage like that, but With the exception of those kinds of things.
	The way this is often translated, when people say, don't keep anything from your spouse, the way it's translated in a marriage a lot of the time is that you should always share your feelings and your concerns with your spouse all the time.
	Never hold anything back or keep anything to yourself.
	And that, that is definitely wrong.
	It couldn't be more wrong.
	Now, someone on Twitter very... I was talking about this on Twitter last night.
	Someone on Twitter very wisely described this as... I wish I could steal this and pretend that I came up with this, but I didn't.
	Someone said that this is like using your spouse as an emotional toilet.
	It is the emotional toilet approach to marriage.
	And that is, you're dumping all of your emotional baggage on your spouse, vomiting out all the complaints and miseries of the day, not because you want to bond with them or share with them, but just because you're trying to unload and you don't want to have it and it just makes you feel better to get it all out there.
	You're trying to vent.
	A good rule of thumb, I think, is this.
	If you have to justify what you're saying, By qualifying it with, I'm just venting, you probably should have kept it to yourself.
	I think 90% of the time, what you feel the need to excuse by calling it venting is something that you were selfish for saying in the first place.
	Because you're taking your own miseries and you're dumping them on your spouse.
	Just backing up the dump truck and unloading it, here you go.
	Go scream into a pillow if you need to, but your spouse is not a pillow to be screamed into.
	Number four, marriage is 50-50.
	This is, I think, obviously... Now, before going into marriage, I knew that this was BS.
	Marriage is not 50-50.
	You can't split everything down the line 50-50.
	If you try to do that, it's kind of like the money thing.
	You are marching right to the divorce attorney if you're trying to have a marriage like that.
	If you're trying to be like my kids, the twins, Because they're six years old.
	So they insist that everything is exactly equal.
	They start measuring, oh, you gave him a little bit more cereal than me, that kind of thing.
	You give them both a cookie and they hold the cookies up to see who has a little bit more cookie than the other.
	The one with less cookie demands to be compensated for the cookie they're missing out on.
	Okay, it's one thing if you're a six-year-old child operating that way, but if you're trying to have a marriage that way, It's just not going to work.
	What I would also say, though, because it's common for people to say, oh no, marriages aren't 50-50, they're 100-100, in that you're both giving 100% all the time.
	I think that's also wrong.
	That is also bad advice.
	Or maybe it's not so much bad advice as it is an unrealistic expectation.
	that you are giving to a married couple when you say that.
	Because even if it's true that in an ideal world, both spouses should be giving 100% all the time, that's not how it's ever going to work.
	And so in certain areas of your marriage and in the family and in the household, the husband is going to be doing 85%.
	And the wife is doing 15.
	And there are other areas where the wife is doing 92 and the husband is doing 8.
	And there are even going to be times when one spouse is doing 100 and the other one is doing 0.
	That's just how it works.
	And I think the point is, you can't measure it.
	When you're sitting there trying to measure, whether you're trying to measure 50 or you're trying to measure 100, if you're measuring at all and you're comparing like that, you're setting yourself up once again for failure.
	It's just that a marriage can't work that way.
	And I also think, actually, that Um, I think it's really important in a marriage, especially when their kids are involved.
	It's important that both spouses get chances sometimes to do zero.
	So I think as a spouse, you should be volunteering to do a hundred sometimes so your spouse can go do zero for a little bit.
	Have some me time.
	Have some time to themselves.
	Away from the kids.
	Away from you.
	Away from the house.
	Just being their own human for a few hours.
	I think that's extremely important.
	And talking to a lot of married couples, it seems like there are a lot of people in marriages where they never get that.
	Never.
	They're never given a chance to go and just do zero.
	Um, because they always, because their spouse's attitude is always, Hey, if I'm in the midst of it, then you got to be here too.
	You're not, if you're not getting a break, if I don't get one at the same time, that is a lethal attitude, I think.
	And then number five, uh, the fifth piece of bad advice is, um, people say, and this comes in different forms, but people say, happy wife, happy life.
	You know, this is another one that could be interpreted in a positive, good, healthy way.
	If what you mean is that you should try to look out for your spouse's happiness, generally, then sure.
	Although, wives should be doing that for their husbands, too.
	Now, it doesn't rhyme as well.
	Happy wife, happy life.
	It's a nice little rhyme there.
	Happy husband, happy... I don't know what would rhyme with husband that means life.
	I'm not sure anything does.
	But, both spouses should be looking out for the other person's happiness, which isn't to say That spouses should be dependent on the other for their happiness, but voluntarily we in a marriage should be wanting to do what we can to help our spouse be happy.
	The problem is that the way this often gets translated is that the husband should just give the wife what she wants, always agree, never argue with her, etc, etc, yada, yada.
	And this idea is communicated in a variety of half-joking-but-not-really-joking-at-all ways.
	Like, happy life, happy wife.
	Or happy wife, happy life.
	Or someone says something like, you know, the most important words for a husband to learn in a marriage are, yes, dear.
	Anything in that vein.
	All the stuff about how the wife is always right.
	And this is something I heard before my marriage, constantly.
	Yeah, guys would come up to me and they would say, well, the best advice I can give is, she's always right.
	And then they kind of do that thing where they're half whispering, but not really.
	The best advice I can give is, she's always right.
	Now, first of all, this strikes me as enormously patronizing to women, where you're just patting your wife on the head and saying, there, there, yeah, you're right, honey, okay.
	But more to the point, it's an absolutely pathetic way for a man to approach marriage.
	And it's hard for me to believe that any woman actually respects a pushover like that.
	There might be a part of them that likes it because they get their way, but they don't respect you.
	If they can walk all over you, they're not going to respect you.
	Women don't want yes men, they just want men.
	Here's the fact of the matter.
	Wives, and this is a news flash, breaking news here.
	Wives are not always right.
	Sometimes they're wrong.
	In fact, a wife is just as likely to be wrong as a husband.
	Because you're both fallible human beings.
	You're not perfect, she's not perfect, nobody's perfect.
	So she can be wrong.
	It does happen.
	And when she is wrong, as a husband, you should tell her.
	That doesn't mean you should scream at her or be condescending about it, but if she's wrong about something, you should say so.
	And if it starts an argument and you're in the right, then hold your ground.
	You don't have to give up just to try to keep the peace or whatever.
	If your wife's happiness hinges on always being agreed with and getting everything she wants all the time, Then she needs to grow up.
	Okay, your wife is an emotional child in that case, and you can help that process by being a grown man yourself.
	Because you are also an emotional child in that you have allowed your marriage to become this.
	But hopefully your wife is like mine.
	My wife is a grown woman.
	She's an adult.
	She can not only handle being disagreed with, but she very much prefers it over being placated with a head nod.
	Now, I generally have no reservations, maybe it doesn't surprise you, but I have no reservations generally with disagreeing.
	And this, look, this can go, you can go overboard with disagreeing.
	I'll be the first to admit that.
	And there are times when, you know, pick your battles, that old, there's a cliche that does come into play, I think, in marriage and parenting.
	You do have to pick your battles sometimes.
	You can't fight everything to the death all the time.
	And so there are gonna be times when, yeah, you think you're kinda right, but it doesn't matter that much, and so, okay, you're not gonna have it out over this.
	So there are gonna be times like that.
	But even in those times, and my point is, your whole marriage can't be that way.
	Every once in a while, okay.
	But even in those times, when I have a disagreement with my wife, but I think it's not a big deal, so I'll just say, okay, whatever.
	Usually what my wife will say is something like, okay, do you actually agree with me or are you just saying that because you don't want to fight?
	She's not going to accept that.
	She wants to hear what I actually think, even if it's not a big deal.
	She really wants to know what I think about it.
	I would say if you're a man getting married, I hope that you end up with a wife like that, who's a grown woman, as so many are.
	But if she isn't, if she's emotionally immature and she breaks down into tears when you stand up to her, and that exists too.
	There are men in situations like that, I have heard.
	Well, if that's the case, I'm sorry for your misfortune on that score.
	I do not envy your position, but you aren't gonna make the situation better
	by letting her herd you along like cattle and just giving her everything you want.
	It's only gonna get worse.
	It's gonna get worse, and she is gonna become more and more miserable.
	So while you're trying to make her happy, she's not gonna be happy,
	and you're gonna be miserable, and everyone's miserable,
	and then eventually you get divorced.
	That's the way it's gonna work.
	Better to, you know, nip that in the bud right away
	and actually just be an adult, and if you, you know, stand up and voice your opinion
	and all of that.
	And there are so many things.
	Also related to this is the whole meme about husbands going off to sleep on the couch when their wife is mad at them.
	I don't even know if that's real.
	I'm not sure if that's something from a sitcom or if people actually do that.
	It doesn't happen in my house, and it didn't happen with my parents, so I've never seen it, but you hear about it.
	And this is kind of related to the, hey, she's always right, just say yes, dear.
	That's another one, where if that actually is happening, I mean, if you're a man, and you're letting your wife put you in timeout, like a schoolboy on the couch, I can't even imagine how that conversation works.
	Like, okay, so she's mad at you for whatever reason.
	You're going to sleep.
	And what does she say?
	Nuh-uh, mister.
	You're not getting in this bed.
	Downstairs you go.
	And you actually listen?
	And you say, okay, may I bring a sheet and a blanket with me?
	Will that be okay, ma'am?
	Can I?
	No, you get in the bed and you say, listen, this, this is my bed too.
	I'm sleeping here.
	If you don't like it, you can go sleep on the couch.
	I'm not going to sleep on the couch.
	If you're the one with the problem, doesn't want to be near me, go sleep on the couch yourself.
	I'm not.
	Um, so that's how I would, uh, those are, but I, I would be interested.
	I really want to know.
	Is that really a thing?
	Are there guys who actually do that?
	Allow yourself to be kicked out of your own bed?
	Or is that just something from Kevin James sitcoms?
	I'd really like to know that.
	And I'd also like to know, if you're a married couple, what are the pieces of advice that you have found to be very incorrect and off-base in your own experience?
	mattwalshow at gmail.com is the email address.
	And we will cut it off there.
	Thanks everybody for watching.
	Thanks for listening.
	Godspeed.
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	The Matt Wall Show is produced by Robert Sterling, associate producer Alexia Garcia del Rio, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
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	The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production.
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