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Nov. 26, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
37:27
Ep. 379 - The War On Facts

Pete Buttigieg is taking fire from the Left for suggesting that kids in the inner city don't have good role models. Also, a journalist was suspended from Twitter for sharing verifiable facts about the alleged anti-trans "hate crime epidemic." And what is the all time worst Christmas present? Date: 11-26-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Okay, welcome to the show, everybody.
Feeling pretty good today, personally.
My Baltimore Ravens demolished the Rams last night on Monday Night Football.
I don't know if you watched that.
And, you know, I was thinking last night as I was watching it all unfold, on top of everything else, I love how the Ravens are named after an Edgar Allan Poe poem, because Poe lived in Baltimore, died in Baltimore.
He also married his 13-year-old cousin in Baltimore, which we don't really talk about that part of it.
That part we leave to the side.
But the point is that Baltimore Raven refers, obviously, to the poem, The Raven, which is why their mascots, the Raven mascots, are named Edgar, Allen, and Poe, so it's very subtle.
And I remember when the Ravens came to Baltimore in 1995, when we stole the team from Cleveland, which was fine because our team had been stolen by Indianapolis in the 80s, and so we turned around and stole our team from Cleveland.
Fair is fair.
If you get something stolen, you can steal from the next person.
That's the way it goes in America.
Anyway, there was a poll, a vote.
To see, you know, what we would name the new team and everybody in the city was voting.
And as a kid at the time, I wanted something like the Dragons, you know, something fierce like the Dragons or the Butchers, the Baltimore Butchers.
That would've been good.
But the nerds wanted a 19th century literary reference and they won.
And I was mad at the time, but I appreciate it now, because now that I'm older and I'm a nerd myself, I really appreciate the literary reference every time I watch football.
Great stuff.
Okay, speaking of nerds, Pete Buttigieg, he's a nerd, which I mean as a compliment.
Smart guy, obviously.
Road Scholar.
I don't know if you heard about the fact that he's a Road Scholar.
We're only reminded of that every time he does a debate, but probably the most talented politician the Democrats have right now.
And that, I don't, that's not, that's half a compliment and half an insult.
I think he's wrong about everything.
I also think that he's cynical and manipulative, especially in how he slanders Christians while pretending to be one.
So I'm not a fan of his by any stretch of the imagination.
But he is smart and he's good at what he does as a political candidate.
But he was trending on Twitter this morning in a not-so-positive way.
In fact, the phrase, Pete Buttigieg is a lying MF, was trending.
And that's about as bad of a trend as you can get, I think, as a political candidate.
That's the title of an article in The Root.
And it's an article that just blasts away at Buttigieg, calling him a lying mother blank, basically painting him as nothing more than a lucky, privileged, spoiled, lying brat, essentially, and taking issue.
And this, of course, is from the left.
This is an attack on him from the left.
Taking issue mainly with something that he said about eight years ago while he was running for mayor of South Bend.
And he was talking about disadvantaged kids and the education system.
Anyway, taking issue with what he said, and take a listen to it right here.
You know, the kids need to see evidence that education's gonna work for them, right?
So you see a lot of parts of town... That's part of the motivation.
Yeah, because you're motivated because you believe that at the end of your educational process there's a reward, there's a stable life, there's a job, and there are a lot of kids, especially the lower-income minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven't seen it work.
There isn't somebody they know personally who testifies to this value of education.
So yeah, you bet.
That's what this writer at The Root is mad about.
And that's what makes him a lying MF.
A bunch of leftists are also mad, it seems.
Now, the question is, what was wrong with what he said?
You know, far be it for me to defend Buttigieg, but what did he say that was wrong there?
What's the wrong part of that?
Well, this guy at the root says that The problem is not about bad role models, despite what Buttigieg claims.
It's not a lack of role models.
It's about minority neighborhoods being neglected, underfunded, schools in the inner city being underfunded, and racism, and all of these external circumstances you see.
And the thing with Buttigieg is he just got lucky.
And that's why he's been successful.
And so for him to sit there in judgment is racist and wrong and it's deceptive.
But of course, that's all nonsense.
The big advantage that Buttigieg had is that he had a mother and father growing up.
Okay, that is a big advantage.
That's not luck, though.
That's not a roll of the dice.
The mother and father chose, decided to be present.
That's a choice they made.
It's not luck.
The point is that in the inner city, you're talking about 70 or 80 percent of the kids Don't have a dad in the picture.
70 or 80 percent.
Now, of course that's going to have an enormous impact.
Of course that's going to mean a dearth of male role models, especially for boys who have a special need for male role models in their lives.
They need a man to show them how to be a man.
And it's much easier and better and more effective if you have that example in your life that you can look to.
Okay, it's kind of the show-don't-tell thing.
As you could tell kids all day long, this is how you're supposed to act, but you need someone there to show you how to act.
Someone that they can emulate.
Now, so, this is all really obvious, and to deny it is madness.
It's not bad luck.
Fathers abandoning their families are not unlucky.
Okay, unless they died.
But if they're still alive and they've abandoned their families, they chose to do that.
They chose not to be there for their kids.
Or if they're in prison or something, they chose to commit a crime.
It's not luck.
It's a choice made by those fathers.
So, you've got a huge amount of men in the inner city who conceive children And then don't stick around to raise them.
That is a statistical reality.
The article says, just reading a little bit from this article in The Root, it says, it proves men like him, Buttigieg, are more willing to perpetuate the fantastic narrative of Negro neighborhoods needing more role models and briefcase carriers than make the people in power stare into the sun and see the blinding light of racism.
Get-along moderates would rather make crap up out of whole cloth than wade into the waters of reality.
Pete Buttigieg doesn't want to change anything.
He just wants to be something.
This is not just a lie of omission.
It is a dangerous precedent.
This is why institutional inequality persists, not because of white hoods and racial slurs.
It is because this insidious double-talk erases the problem by camouflaging it, because it is painted as a problem of black lethargy and not white apathy.
He's saying that he's making stuff up.
He's making crap up.
Actually, he said he's making S up.
What is he making up?
What?
Okay, here's the question.
Is the fatherless rate very high in the inner city or not?
Yes or no?
Answer's yes.
Unless we're going to say 70% isn't very high.
Another question.
Are kids without fathers at a huge disadvantage?
And do they lack essential male leadership and an essential male role model in their life?
Answer's yes.
Question.
Do men who conceive children and then not stick around to raise them make that choice because of racism?
Is it racism that prevents them from raising their own kids?
Answer is no.
So, where is Buttigieg wrong?
You know, I don't have a dog in this fight.
I'm not a fan, like I said, of Buttigieg.
But the truth is the truth.
And this is a truth that we need to be able to talk about.
And when it comes to the fatherless problem, by the way, um, it's not just a problem in the black community.
It is, it is a, it's, it's a problem.
And I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but, uh, if you were talking about, especially in the inner city, like I said, 70 or 80%, even in, in, in white neighborhoods, in the suburbs, it's not that high, but it's a lot higher than it should be.
So this is a problem across the board in America.
I would say this is a cultural problem shared across the board, to one degree or another, is a lack of male leadership in the home and a lack of the influence of fathers.
Listen, most of the times when we've had a school shooting, a mass shooting, this is one of the things that some of us talk about, that I talk about.
And very often the kids who do that are white.
But you know what else you find very often?
Is that those kids didn't have dads in the home.
Not in every case, but in many of them.
In most of them.
So, obviously we need to talk about that.
And to insist that we focus the conversation entirely around these sort of external, environmental things, racism, and all of that.
And we make people the victim of their own choices.
And when I say that, I'm not referring to the kids in the inner city who grow up without a dad.
They're not a victim of their own choice.
They're a victim of the choice their father made.
And when you read articles like this, it sounds like we're trying to take those fathers who abandon their children and make those fathers victims of their own choice, of abandoning their families.
And that's just wrong.
Now, politically, this shows why the Democrats, I think, might be doomed.
They're tearing their most talented candidates apart.
Nobody's allowed to rise to the top of the pack without being ripped to shreds.
The SJWs have this purity test that nobody can pass.
Even a young gay man like Buttigieg can't pass it.
Kamala Harris, a black woman, can't pass it.
Elizabeth Warren, a female socialist, can't pass it.
Who can pass it?
Nobody can pass it.
So they all get eaten alive by their own people and Trump just hits back and enjoys the show.
So it's working out really well for Trump.
I agree with what Tucker Carlson said, I think last night, where he said that he still wouldn't count Michelle Obama out.
And I think that that is their only hope, and I wouldn't count her out either.
I think Michelle Obama on the left is basically untouchable, or the closest thing to untouchable among leftists that you can get.
Probably the one person in the whole country who could unite all of these disparate warring factions on the left.
You're not going to see any Michelle Obama is a lying MF articles about her.
That level of disrespect and that kind of attack is reserved for people like Buttigieg.
You're not going to see that Michelle Obama.
There's a reverence that all the leftists seem to have for her.
She also has some appeal in the middle as well, so I think she'd be a formidable general election candidate.
I think that's maybe their only hope right now.
Um, I just don't see anyone else, obviously someone's getting nominated among the Democrats, but they're all going to come into the general election extremely wounded after all of the slings and arrows they've taken from their own side.
And that works again to Trump's advantage.
Okay.
Speaking of people getting attacked for speaking basic facts, I have another example of that that I want to share.
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Okay, so as I said, speaking of the left's war on facts, journalist Andy Ngo.
He's best known for his run-ins with Antifa.
He's the guy that got assaulted, sent to the hospital with a brain injury by Antifa a few months ago.
Something that, by the way, Democrat candidates still have not condemned.
That's a real attack on the press, on a journalist.
Hasn't been condemned.
Media didn't condemn it.
Democrats didn't condemn it.
Well, he is now suspended by Twitter for relaying In objective fact, and relaying it in an objective and dispassionate way, he shared some verifiable statistical information, and for that he was banned.
Now, it started with a tweet from Chelsea Clinton.
Chelsea Clinton tweeted, Since 2013, more than 150 trans people have been murdered in the U.S., the majority black transgender women.
T-D-O-R 2019.
Oh, I guess that's trans.
This is the Trans Day of Remembrance, they call it.
We remember and honor the lives lost, hold their loved ones in our hearts, and must commit to doing all we can to end this epidemic of violence and hate.
Now, Clinton is connecting this with hate.
Obviously insinuating, claiming that these are all or mostly hate crimes.
Throwing in the black transgender woman detail, mentioning the race, also tries to turn it racial.
So, the idea is to make it seem like there are a bunch of racist transphobes out there murdering black, quote, trans women left and right.
Now, Andy Ngo responded saying, and this is what got him banned, or at least suspended, The U.S.
is one of the safest countries for trans people.
The murder rate of trans victims is actually lower than that for the cis population.
Also, who is behind the murders?
Mostly black men.
That's it.
That's what he said.
Got suspended for that.
Suspended for responding to an inaccurate claim with some verifiable empirical facts.
So what Twitter is saying is, we support this false narrative.
And if you try to debunk it, we're gonna punish you.
You're not allowed to debunk it.
It doesn't matter if it's not true.
This is what we're going with.
But the fact remains.
They could suspend you for saying it, but the fact is a fact.
As I talked about a few weeks ago, sharing a piece from Chad Felix Green over at The Federalist, the anti-trans hate crime epidemic is a fiction.
It is a myth.
It's been made up.
It's invented.
It's not real.
The vast majority of trans murder victims are not the victims of a hate crime.
The vast majority of trans murders have nothing at all to do with bigotry or anything like that.
They've mostly been the kinds of murders that you find in the non-trans population.
Murdered in the same kinds of circumstances for the same reasons.
It's sad, it's terrible, but it's not a hate crime.
Also, a sizable number of murder victims among trans people are people who live a high-risk lifestyle.
So, prostitutes and that sort of thing.
The murder rate among prostitutes generally, trans or not, is higher than the average population.
But that's not because of anti-prostitute hate crimes.
That's because you're living a high-risk lifestyle.
You're living in a world where, in a dangerous world, you're dealing with dangerous people.
You're doing a dangerous thing.
That's not victim blaming.
That's not saying they deserve it, obviously, because nobody does.
It's just pointing out that there's no connection here with racism and hatred.
What's driving this is something completely separate from that.
Now, it may be hate anyway, but it's not...
Maybe you could make the argument that any time somebody is killed, there's hatred behind it, which I think is actually probably not true.
Very often, I think what lies behind murders and other crimes is a sort of indifference to human life, less than a hatred for human life.
But either way.
And that's just a fact.
That's all.
None of this is to say that the murder rate among trans people or black people or any group doesn't matter.
Actually, I'm saying the opposite.
I'm saying, let's deal with what's actually happening.
Let's deal with the reality.
Because only if we deal with the reality is there a chance of making a difference.
It's the people who use murder victims like political props who obviously lack empathy and lack compassion.
When you're doing that, when you're taking trans people who have been murdered, and you're turning them into a political weapon to bludgeon your opponents with, then you're the one who lacks compassion for them.
And we're not going to be able to solve the problem, call it an epidemic if you want, it's not really, but whatever you want to call it, we're not going to be able to solve the problem if we insist on diagnosing it incorrectly.
It's a very basic thing.
If you want to solve a problem, whether we're talking a societal problem, or a medical problem, or any kind of problem, you have to diagnose it correctly to begin with.
And so I think what Andy Ngo was trying to say, what I'm saying, what a lot of us have been saying is, let's diagnose this problem correctly, and then we can talk about solving it.
But Twitter says, no, it's better to diagnose it incorrectly.
In fact, we insist that you do.
All right, let's move on to emails because there's a few topics brought up in the emails that I wanted to spend a little bit of time on.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
This is from Jake says, Hey Matt, quick talking point for tomorrow's show.
As I am sure you saw, Bezos donated $98.5 million.
To charity, Jeff Bezos.
And that still was not enough.
I saw some comments going around that if you make $50,000, that would be the equivalent of donating $45.
My point is, I doubt all the people complaining have ever donated that $45 to any cause.
It is easy to virtue signal and demand more social programs when it is someone else's hard-earned money.
Big fan of the show.
Keep up the good work, and God bless.
Yeah, Jake, I saw that.
Bezos donated, as you said, $98 million.
And people were attacking him for it, which is amazing.
And if you want to diagnose this problem, I really think a lot of it is garden variety jealousy.
That's what a lot of it is.
People clinging desperately to their narrative of the greedy rich person.
To have a rich person who also acts generously interferes with the narrative, and so they find a way to dismiss it.
And it's also, I think, That people are upset that they themselves are not billionaires and they look at Jeff Bezos and their main problem with Jeff Bezos is that they are not Jeff Bezos.
They want to be him.
That's what you have to understand.
All this attacking of billionaires.
Most of the people doing the attacking, their main issue with billionaires is that they themselves are not billionaires.
That's what they don't like about billionaires, is that they're not in that population.
So, I think, and this is unfortunately human nature, a lot of people do that, we all do this in some way or another, to some degree or another, where, you know, you see someone who's got something you want, and their life seems to be working for them well, and you feel jealous, you're envious, and so you want to tell yourself that there's something wrong with them.
And that's what people do.
I think a lot of these socialists and everything, these would-be faux socialists, they look at rich people and really in their heart, they want to be rich, but they're not.
And so instead they tell themselves, Oh, well, you know, these are all a bunch of greedy.
These are all a bunch of greedy bastards.
And, uh, you know, at least I'm not like that.
At least I'm a better person.
They might have more money than me, but I'm a better, more virtuous person.
And then when you see that the billionaire isn't greedy and they're donating a lot of money and doing a lot of good in the community, now they're thinking, wait a second, is this person richer than me and better?
That can't be.
They can't be richer and more generous.
I can't allow that to be the case.
And I agree with you.
All these people saying, oh, Bezos giving $98 million is like me giving 50.
Well, first of all, no, it isn't.
Because I'm pretty sure the charity would prefer the 98 million to the 50.
Okay, it makes a difference to them.
There are practical things that $98 million can do that $50 cannot.
Now, if all you have to give is $50 and you give the $50, it's like the parable that Jesus told the woman that just put two coins at the synagogue rather than the rich people that made a show of giving more.
So, yes, in terms of the moral act itself, the moral significance, If you give less and that's all you can give, that's a great thing.
And it does make a difference.
But obviously, practically speaking, $98 million, that's going to help a lot of hungry and homeless people.
Whereas $50 will help a lot less.
So in a practical sense, it's not as good.
But also, I agree with you in that all these people saying, well, it's like if I gave 50.
Are you giving 50 though?
If you are, great, but I kind of doubt that you are.
These people complaining about rich people all the time and greedy and everything.
Every time they see philanthropy among rich people, they find a way of dismissing it.
All these people that say, oh, you know, that's not as generous as I can be.
Well, are you generous?
Are you actually giving your money to charity?
I tend to doubt it.
I think a lot of these people are hoarding their own money.
And that's what really gets them, is that they know in their hearts that even though they're a lot poorer than someone like Jeff Bezos, than a billionaire, they have a lot less money, they're actually more greedy.
Because that's the thing.
If you're making, you know, $70,000 a year or something, and you give none of it to charity, and you don't help anybody with it, And meanwhile, you've got a billionaire giving millions.
The billionaire's more generous than you.
And yeah, you could say he's got more money to spend, but you're giving nothing.
You're not doing anything.
I mean, you could spare some of that.
70,000 is not 70 billion, but you still have some room.
Like, maybe a few of the coffees you buy at Starbucks.
Maybe don't get that iPhone upgrade.
You know, maybe you already have Netflix.
You don't need Amazon, too.
You could sacrifice some of that and give to the less fortunate.
But you don't, because you're actually more materialistic and greedier than some of those rich people.
And I think that's what really gets them.
They hate to think that.
Oh my gosh.
Am I not only broke, but greedy, too?
No, nobody wants to think that about themselves.
All right.
That's one thing I've talked about before.
You see, in our culture, in our consumeristic culture, consumeristic isn't really a word, but let's go with it.
What you find is that even people who are not rich, like me and you, assuming you're not rich, who's ever watching this, a lot of us have sort of inherited the vices of the rich.
Because living in this consumerist culture, Even people who aren't rich can tend to be materialistic, greedy, just hoarding goods and things for themselves.
And so a lot of us, we have the vices of the rich, we have the greed and the materialism, but we don't actually have the riches of the rich.
And so we've got the worst of all the worlds.
Okay, this is from Marie, says, I'm a young mom of two little toddlers, and my two-and-a-half-year-old is really pumped for Santa to come this year.
I've told her the true meaning of Christmas, and I basically made Santa a helper for Jesus.
Emphasis on helper, so she'll still get the point.
I've never thought of not giving her the fantasy of Santa until talking with a friend recently.
The friend said that her parents made Santa very real with noises on the roof, jingle bells, and everything.
So, when she found out that all that hope and joyful anticipation was complete nonsense, she was devastated.
She still is devastated and refuses to tell her kids about Santa.
I've had a few friends experience something similar.
It makes me sad.
What have you done for your kids?
Are you ever worried about the day that they inevitably discover the fantasy of Santa Claus?
I'm at a crossroads of what to do because both pose their pros and cons.
I'd love your opinion.
You're a great dad.
Thank you for all your talk, for all you talk about.
I'm so disappointed in the sexualized obsession of the young in our culture.
Never stop speaking.
You make such a difference.
God bless you and your family.
Yeah, Marie, first of all, I would say about your friend, it seems like their parents went way overboard, but if she's still devastated that Santa Claus isn't real, might be time for her to get over that one.
You know, we all went through that as kids and it was a little difficult at first, but probably by the time you're an adult, you should be over it.
I don't know.
I know maybe you can't say that to her.
Maybe you should just say it to her.
Just put it flat out.
Next time she's complaining about the fact that Santa Claus doesn't exist, maybe say to her, listen, you know that you're like 30, right?
But in terms of what to tell your kids, here's the way that I look at it.
And I've brought this point up many times before when talking about gender issues and kids choosing their own gender and everything.
My point is that very young kids, you say you're toddlers, okay, two and a half years old.
Well, a two and a half year old has no idea what reality is, has no concept of reality, doesn't know the difference between fiction and truth and fiction.
So if you were to say to your two and a half year old, Santa Claus is not real, that wouldn't mean anything anyway.
So my point is, you couldn't convince a two-and-a-half-year-old that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, because a phrase like, there's no such thing as, just doesn't mean anything for them.
They don't have the cognitive ability to understand that.
And so that's why children naturally live in a fantasy world.
Your two-and-a-half-year-old, if you have a three-year-old, a four-year-old, they also probably think that Spider-Man exists, and Superman exists, and they watch Bugs Bunny, you know, they think that that's real.
They watch cartoons, they think it's real.
It's not because you've told them that.
You haven't gone out of your way to convince—nobody goes out of their way, really, to convince a four-year-old that Spider-Man exists.
But if they see Spider-Man on TV, if they watch a movie, they're gonna think that's real.
Because the whole idea that you could be watching something, an image, but it's not real, there's a disconnect there.
Because they think, well, what do you mean it's not real?
I can see it.
Of course it's real.
So, I wouldn't worry about it.
I guess that's what I'm saying.
If your kids are young enough where believing in Santa is appropriate, then they're also so young that you couldn't convince them anyway that Santa Claus isn't real, so you might as well just go with it.
And as they get older and they're capable of understanding that there is this thing, that there is reality, which is set apart in some way from fantasy.
As they get older, when they get to be, you know, five, six, seven, they start to understand that.
Then they're getting to the age maybe where I think you break the news.
But also, they're also getting to the age where they're going to start figuring that out anyway.
In fact, for me with Santa Claus, I actually did not have the devastating moment where my parents sat me down and gave me the bad news.
I kind of just figured it out on my own because I had older siblings and they had stopped believing.
And so just over time, you're just kind of like, oh, okay, hold on a second.
And you start piecing it together.
So if you told your kid nothing at all about Santa Claus, You didn't say he's real or fake or anything.
You just didn't say anything about it.
I think your child at a young age would naturally believe in Santa Claus because he would pick it up from his friends and from the culture and from TV and everything.
And then, you know, around six, seven, eight would stop believing.
And that would happen apart from you completely.
So all you're doing as a parent is maybe herring it along a little bit or, you know, kind of guiding them one way or another a little bit, but Kids are going to live in that fantasy world, and there's also nothing wrong with that.
I say we don't go out of our way to convince our kids that Spider-Man is real, yet they do believe that Spider-Man is real.
Would you sit them down and go out of your way to convince them that Spider-Man isn't real?
Would any parent do that?
Why?
Your daughter believes that there are fairies in the garden?
Are you going to sit her down and say, listen, there are no fairies.
Stop believing in fairies.
What kind of crazy parent would do that?
No, she believes it.
Just let her believe it.
Now.
Yeah.
You play along a little bit and cause it's fun and she's a kid.
She's just, who cares?
All right.
We'll do one more.
This is from Zach says, dear Matt, since the Christmas season essentially starts on Friday, please rate the following five gifts from one to five, five being the worst.
Socks.
A worn-slash-used item that's clearly been re-gifted, scratch-off lottery tickets, a Christmas ornament, or a clothing item that is clearly two sizes too small and comes with a gift receipt.
Thanks for all you do and watch the show religiously.
Well, I need more information, Zach, because you talk about socks.
Are the socks the fancy high-end socks that you buy?
You get a pair of them for $14 at Target.
That, for me, is fancy and high-end.
That's not a bad gift.
I have no problem with re-gifted items in principle.
Now, if you're saying they've been worn or obviously used... Okay, if someone's giving me a blender that still has chunks of smoothie in it, I'm gonna have an issue with that.
But re-gifted in general, I have no problem with.
Now, you talk about ornaments.
Okay, that's definitely a 5.
That's a 20, really.
If 5 is the worst, then 20... It's a 20.
It's off the scales bad.
Ornaments are the worst gifts.
We've all been guilty of giving Christmas ornaments as gifts to other people, yet we all know that none of us want Christmas ornaments as gifts.
So we all participate in this thing where we give a gift that we know we wouldn't want.
You know, Jesus says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Well, give gifts that you would want also in some world.
Nobody wants a Christmas ornament.
You get this, you get a little thing, a little ball or whatever that you hang on a tree for a few weeks along with all the other ornaments.
It just gets lost in the shuffle.
Who's going to be excited about that?
And the worst thing is, and this is why gift giving stresses me out.
And I would be in favor of just abolishing all gift giving occasions and just never giving, never giving or receiving any gifts.
I'd be fine with that.
What stresses me out is you're sitting there on Christmas morning and you're doing your family gift unwrapping thing and you get a gift like an ornament.
And it's obviously super lame and you don't care about it, but you have to act excited because the person who gave it to you is sitting right there.
Even though they know, unless it's a child, okay?
That's an exception here.
But if it's an adult, they know that you're not going to be super psyched about the ornament.
But they still expect you to act like you are.
And they know you're faking it.
And so there's this psychological back and forth, the mind games that are being played.
I don't like it.
And I'm very bad at faking enthusiasm.
So, I open up the ornament and I have to go, oh, cool!
That's the best I can do.
Oh, cool.
Is that an ornament?
You got an ornament?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
This'll look great on the tree.
This'll look great with the 300 other ornaments.
I'll just put that in there and I'll forget about it.
It's great.
No, thank you so much.
Wow.
Wow.
Where'd you get this?
You have to ask a few questions, right?
That's the one way I sell it.
To try to distract from the fact that I'm not excited, I'll start asking questions.
Where'd you get this from?
Oh, you got it from the mall.
Wow.
What mall?
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Look at this ornament.
Oh, my gosh.
I woke up this morning just hoping I'd get an ornament.
I got 600 ornaments.
I was thinking, I need another one.
I mean, I need a 601 ornament.
So thank you so much for this ornament.
Thank you so much for it.
You obviously hate me.
Couldn't get me a gift that I want.
How about just a gift card?
You wanted to spend seven bucks on a gift.
So just get a $7 gift card to Starbucks.
Okay, that'd be much better.
I gotta actually use that.
That's my reaction.
Christmas morning gets awkward at my house.
Anyway, that's my feeling about that.
Thanks for the question.
I think we'll wrap it up there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
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