Cadets at the Army-Navy game played the Circle Game and now everyone is owed a punch. But the media, upset that it lost the Circle Game, is retaliating by pretending that the cadets are white supremacists. Also, Bernie Sanders says that teachers should be paid more because baseball players make a lot of money. We'll do our best to analyze that non-sequitur. And I give tips for cooking the perfect bacon.
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I'm just going to say this once up front to get it out of the way.
Please try not to be jealous of my Christmas sweater.
Yes, it does have Spider-Man on it.
And the fact that I have a Spider-Man Christmas sweater and you don't is not my fault.
Okay?
The fact that your family didn't get you one for Christmas just means that they don't love you.
That's not my thing.
It's not my fault.
Let's just move on from it.
I do hope you had a wonderful weekend.
My weekend involved our kids coming down with a stomach bug, and if you've never had to deal with a three-year-old puking, Well, it's not an experience that I would especially recommend because they're not very directional with the... I'm not going to get into details.
All I'm going to say is that if, you know, like if you were selecting life experiences from a catalog, I would say definitely skip the puking toddler package.
That's just not one... it's not worth... it's not really not... there's not much to enjoy.
I could go into great depth and detail, but I won't.
Instead of starting with vomit today, I think I'll start with a story that kind of makes you want to vomit.
The media busied itself this weekend with slandering some Army and Navy students, claiming that they were flashing a white power sign on national television.
I don't know if you saw these headlines or not.
Army and Navy students flashing white power.
This has been the story of the weekend.
White power signs from West Point cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen.
Supposedly, this happened during the broadcast of the Army-Navy game.
Navy won 31-7, by the way.
Let me show you the footage of this dark and disturbing incident.
Parental advisory warning.
Very disturbing stuff you're about to see, but watch this.
Anybody that's ever had to deal with a cadet to the midship and on the football field and they will tell you up four or down 40.
They play their guts out every single play until the clock strikes zero.
Notre Dame, Michigan, Oklahoma, believe me.
So you saw a couple of kids there making the okay gesture.
The okay gesture is supposedly, this comes to us from the media, but it's supposedly now a white power sign.
It's something that the white supremacists do.
And so these, and we'll talk in a little bit about where this actually comes from, this idea that it's white power to make that symbol.
And so these cadets were trying to, but they were trying to promote white power on TV.
That's what the media says.
Now, just off the bat, okay, before we get into anything else, there should already be some red flags with this version of the story.
And this is what I always do with these media, with a media hysteria, a media-led hysteria.
My first thing is, you know, putting that aside, when you hear this story, there should be, like, what should your immediate reaction be?
You should be immediately skeptical.
And in this case, you should be very suspicious of the media's claims because, for one thing, even if there were some racist students at these schools, why would they throw their education, careers, and reputations away, forever, just for the sake of making a hand gesture on TV?
I mean, think about that.
Let's go with the media's version of the story for a moment.
These students are racist, white power sympathizers, skinheads, clan members, whatever.
And now they've decided to basically go on a suicide mission, destroying their lives, in effect, in order to make a hand gesture?
That's what we think is happening here?
And there are multiple of them doing it.
So is this some sort of coordinated They all got together and said, hey, let's destroy our lives by making a white power symbol.
It's not like you caught them in the act.
It's not like this is secret footage that was released of these students flashing the forbidden sign, you know, behind closed doors somewhere.
And someone got in there and took a, you know, had a hidden camera.
No, it's not that.
They did it themselves on TV because they knew they were on TV.
So this was a collective and purposeful act of career and educational suicide?
That's the theory?
But we don't even need to get into that because of, we don't need to get into the theoretical analysis of this because we know the media's claims here are BS.
Because we know, or most of us know, the real reason why kids make that symbol.
And if you don't know, then I honestly don't know what sort of childhood... I feel sorry for you.
If you don't know, when you see someone doing that, if you don't immediately know what they're doing, then I don't know what kind of childhood you lived.
I really... I feel bad for you.
Those of us who had healthy and normal childhoods are very familiar with something called the circle game.
If you're not familiar, then I'll let Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle explain it to you.
Oops.
Jerk.
You looked.
Ow!
We're doing this new thing called the circle game.
Basically, you can make the other guy look at your hand when you're doing this.
Below your waist, you get to hit them in the arm.
It's stupid, but hey, you get to hit people.
Barn door's open.
Ah!
Wife!
Brief cameo there from Walter White.
I don't know what he was doing at the dinner table, but... In any case, that's the circle game.
And that's it.
You trick someone into looking at the circle that you make with your hand.
And if they look, then you get to punch them.
Now, part of the game, as I learned it, is that you have to do the circle... It has to be, like, below the waist.
So, you know, if I do it right now, then that doesn't count because it's not, you know, because then it's too easy.
If you could just go right in someone's face so they can't look away, then then that's too easy.
So those kids, the cadets, You saw the one guy, he had it above the waist, so he was
breaking the rules of the game.
The other guy, though, he had it below the waist, and so that's part of the rule.
Now, when I was a kid, we played this game religiously.
It was, everyone knew the game, everybody knew the rules of the game, everybody knew
that if you saw the circle, you have to submit to being punched.
No running, no pleading, no trying to get out of it, no bargaining.
Present your arm for the punch.
And it's going to be a hard punch too.
They're going to wind up and they're going to try to hurt you.
And that's just the way it goes.
I remember, I still remember when I first learned about this game.
I was in sixth grade and it was a baptism by fire.
I had never heard of it before, but you get to middle school and that's when you first start learning about a lot of these kinds of things.
Somebody made that symbol and I looked at it.
I didn't know what they were doing.
And then they explained to me very earnestly that I had looked at the circle and so now I have to be punched.
And so I said, okay, well, if those are the rules, then fine.
And I got punched.
And, but I was a rookie.
So there are a lot of different tricks that people will pull to get you to look at the circle.
And so for that rest of that day, I was looking at the circle left and right.
And I left bruised and bloodied, could barely lift my arm.
I got punched probably 50 times that day.
I wasn't the brightest kid, as my report cards attested.
So I did come home rather injured, but I learned.
And I never looked at the circle again, to this day.
I didn't even look at that clip I just played for you.
Which, by the way, if you did look at that clip that I played for you, then you're owed a punch.
And that's the rule.
And that's really what's lost in this whole thing.
That those cadets achieved the ultimate circle game victory.
They got millions of people to look at the circle.
And so now you all have to be punched.
You have to go out and ask the first person you see to punch you.
Live by the circle game code.
We, you know, this is, we, when I was a kid, we took it very seriously.
I'm stunned to learn that some, based on the reaction to this, so many people either didn't play that game or are pretending they didn't play it.
I thought it was ubiquitous.
You know, you didn't break the circle game code, just like you didn't break the code of shotgun or the code of called it.
You know, when someone says they call something, oh, I call it.
No matter what it is, if they called it, then they get it.
That's it.
If somebody walks by you in the cafeteria and says, I call your sandwich, and you didn't call it yourself, if you didn't, when you open up your lunch, if you didn't immediately say, I call this, that, and that, and somebody walks by and says, I call it, then you have to give them your sandwich.
They could call the shirt right off your back.
That's just, that's the game.
The call, the circle, the shotgun, those were the rules you lived by as a kid.
At least I did.
More to say about this in a moment, but first, a word from Rock Otto.
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You know, there's a whole separate and fascinating conversation I think that could be had here about why kids make up all these rules and codes and traditions and then follow them so strictly, even at pain of physical injury.
I mean, and you consider how kids have a difficult time following other rules and codes.
So when I was a kid, something as simple as, like my parents' instruction, pick up your plate from the table and bring it to the kitchen when you're done.
That was very difficult for me to do, and to remember to do, and it felt very onerous.
So I had trouble with that, but the rule of, if you look at a circle, I get to beat the hell out of you, now, that I followed.
So, it's interesting that kids do that, but that's a discussion for a different day.
The real issue here is that the media is trying to pull a Covington on these kids, and slandering them as racist, even though there's no proof that they're racist.
And the one thing they call proof of racism can easily be explained in an innocuous way.
And to anyone who says, well, maybe they didn't mean it as a white power thing, but they had to know that it is a white power thing, and so they shouldn't have done it for that reason, so at a minimum it's very bad judgment, and so on.
No, that's actually not the case.
Because they probably have no idea that it's supposedly a white power symbol.
I would have no idea that it's supposedly a white power symbol.
The only reason that I know that the OK sign is supposedly associated with white power, white supremacism, is because I'm on Twitter.
And so I see the media talking about it on Twitter.
The only place I've ever seen the OK sign characterized as white power, the only place I've ever seen it mentioned Or heard of it in that context is on Twitter.
Nowhere else.
Not in the real world.
Not even on other websites.
It is specifically a Twitter thing.
So the only thing we can take from this is that these students probably aren't on Twitter.
And, well, it's not just a Twitter thing.
It's actually originally a 4chan thing.
So this is all, this association that is supposedly drawn now between the OK sign or the circle game sign And white supremacism is a 4chan hoax.
And the crazy thing is that we know it's a 4chan hoax, the media knows it, yet they keep running with it anyway.
People on 4chan decided that they wanted to trick the media into thinking that the OK sign is a white power symbol.
And why did they choose the OK sign randomly as the thing that we're gonna... Because it's such an innocuous, normal thing that people do.
This symbol has, for hundreds of years, has meant... Maybe the circle game doesn't go back hundreds of years.
Maybe it does.
I don't know.
But it has, for hundreds of years, meant, that's OK.
It's meant OK for a very long time.
And so the people at 4chan, just to be trolls, just to mess with us, they were going to take this innocuous thing that people do and turn it into a white power.
They could have done it with thumbs up.
And maybe that'll be next.
Next, the people on 4chan are going to trick the media into thinking that if you do this, you're expressing your loyalty to the Nazi party or something.
But we know that it's a 4chan hoax.
The media knows that.
Yet they run with it anyway.
And if they see someone doing it, well, not someone, if they see a white person doing it on camera, they're going to accuse that person of being a white supremacist.
Even though they know that 4chan invented this.
It's... It is the dumb... This thing with the OK sign, it's the dumbest moral panic in history.
Claiming that anyone who makes that symbol is a Nazi.
I hesitate to say that because there have been a lot of dumb moral panics.
Can you think of a dumber one off the top of your head?
That now we're hunting down anyone who makes the OK sign with their fingers?
And calling them suspected white supremacists?
Well, I think to call it dumb would be to do the media a favor.
No, it's not dumb.
It's insidious.
It's evil.
I mean, they know what they're doing.
They're going to try to destroy these kids' lives just for the sake of it.
Just for a headline.
Just for politics.
Really is terrible.
Okay, now let's check in with Bernie Sanders.
Speaking of dumb, last week it was announced that Garrett Cole, who's a baseball star, signed a contract with the Yankees worth $324 million, which, in case you didn't know, is a lot of money.
Bernie Sanders never misses an opportunity to shame rich people.
You know, anytime there's a headline of somebody making a lot of money, you can guarantee that Bernie Sanders is going to rush in and have something to say about it, even though he's rich himself.
So Bernie Sanders sat in one of his three houses, I don't know which one, and he responded to this news about the $324 million, responded to it with a tweet saying, if pitchers can make $324 million, we can pay every teacher in this country at least $60,000.
Now, this is a bit like saying, if oranges are fruits, then chihuahuas can play checkers.
It's a non sequitur.
It's taking two completely separated and unconnected things and trying to draw a connection where none exists.
If it rains today, then George Clooney's favorite color is red.
It's just total nonsense.
But Bernie Sanders does this a lot when it comes to rich people.
He's the king of the non sequitur.
If rich people can buy yachts, Then why is cereal so expensive?
But I do want to focus on this argument from Bernie, if you can call it an argument, because it's exactly the kind of nonsense that, even though it is nonsense, people find very appealing.
And it's why he's so popular.
Because people hear this stupidity and they think it's very compelling and very convincing.
So for that reason, I think it's worth responding to.
Now, obviously the salary of a baseball player has no connection to the salary of a teacher because teachers are paid by the state.
They're government employees.
Public school teachers, anyway.
The taxpayers pay them.
Athletes are not paid by the taxpayers.
They're not public employees.
So the reason that teachers aren't paid millions, one of the reasons, is that we couldn't possibly afford to.
We would be bankrupted, or at least more bankrupted than we already are.
But here's the larger point.
And that's why these two things are just completely disconnected.
They have nothing to do with each other.
But here's the larger point.
Bernie's whole shtick is to take an example like this, an example of extreme wealth, and make it seem like an injustice.
But it's not.
It's really the exact opposite of injustice.
I would say that Garrett Cole making $324 million is the opposite of injustice.
It's the opposite of unfairness.
And I'll tell you why.
Because baseball players who make hundreds of millions of dollars make that much.
Because they have a highly marketable skill, and they are the best in the world at performing that skill.
The best in the world.
Meaning, of all the people who have tried to develop that same skill, and a lot of people have, these guys, these MLB stars, they are at the top of the top of the top of the top of the very tippy tippy top of all those people.
We're not talking top 1% in skill.
Now, if you're a top 1%, you know, if you're, if you're among the top 1% of all baseball players in the world, you're not going to be in the MLB.
You're not going to be good enough.
You're talking, and you're certainly not going to be a star making $324 million.
Maybe you'll be on a farm team or something like that.
We're talking Garrett Cole, you know, these guys, we're talking points, the top 0.0000001%.
Of everybody in the world who plays baseball.
That's how good they are.
Okay?
And we have to keep that in mind.
That is how good they are.
Whenever someone complains about the money that athletes make, you have to remember how insanely good these people are at what they do.
We take it for granted because we see it on TV, we see it so often that it seems normal, but it's not.
These people are, again, the very best in the entire world at performing this skill.
They are so ridiculously good that it's hard to wrap your head around.
Is it an injustice that somebody who is the best in the world at a marketable skill can become rich doing it?
No.
I'd say, again, it's the opposite of injustice.
That is the epitome of justice.
And it's not just athletes.
Anyone who is the best in the world at something, if it's a marketable skill, and not all skills are, but if it's a marketable skill, um, I mean, most skills are these days, especially.
I don't know.
Maybe if you're, I mean, remember that trend on the internet, which unfortunately went away because I was a fan of it, but the trend of the, uh, the bottle flip game that was popular back in 2017 or whatever.
If you were the best in the world at the bottle flip game, where you just flip a bottle and it lands back up
on the right side, if you're the best in the world at that,
probably you couldn't find a sustained long-term source of income from being the best.
Although even that, you could do some YouTube videos, it goes viral, you make some money on that.
So even that is marketable in some way.
But if it is a marketable skill and you're the best at it, You're going to be, you know, you're barring some, some other thing, interfering some tragedy.
Uh, you know, you get sabotaged in some way in your career by somebody else who's jealous.
I mean, these kinds of things can happen, but, um, you're going to make money, maybe not 300 million, maybe more than 300 million.
I mean, if you're one of the best in the world at running a business and that's a skill, And if you're one of the best in the world at it, or if you're one of the best innovators in the world, if you're one of the best inventors in the world, you'll probably be a billionaire.
Forget about being a multi-millionaire.
So, you know, that makes you a billionaire.
If you're one of the best baseball players in the world, you'll be a millionaire.
If you're one of the best car mechanics in the world, one of the very, very best, Okay, if there's like a few dozen other people that are as good as you and everyone else is worse at being a car mechanic, you might not be a millionaire.
Maybe you will be, but you're certainly going to be very successful at what you do and you're going to make a very nice living.
And if you're one of the best teachers in the world, again, you will make a nice living.
Let's think about this.
Let's say that you're a math teacher.
Okay.
Well, if you're the Garrett Cole of math teachers, what would that be?
That means that you're one of the very best math teachers in the entire world.
Of all the people who do math, you know, professionally or teach math, of all the mathematicians in the world, you're one of the very, very best.
Which means you're both a mathematical genius and an educational genius.
Which means you're not teaching algebra to 10th graders.
Unless you want to.
Maybe that's just what you want to do.
That's a very noble calling and certainly an important thing to do.
Maybe you are absolutely brilliant as a teacher and a mathematician, but as far as you want to go is teaching high school math at a public school.
Fine.
Great.
But then that's your choice.
If you're really that good though and you want to climb the ladder, then you're going to be,
what, teaching math at Princeton, making $190,000, $200,000 a year, around that range,
or you're going to be at some other very high-level elite cream of the crop institution.
Now, this is not, you know, this is not an insult to public school teachers.
I'm not saying that they're bad at what they do.
I'm just saying that in any of these realms, whether it's teaching math or science, if you're the very, very best, if you are the Garrett Cole of that, you're probably not out of high school doing it.
So this thing that we do, um, where we compare the salaries of the very best athletes in the world to the salaries of, of, of sort of, you know, average people in other professions is it's just, it's silly.
It's blatant emotional manipulation.
There's absolutely nothing we can learn, really, about society from the fact that a high school math teacher makes $60,000 or $70,000 while one of the very best baseball players in the world makes $300 million.
That doesn't tell us anything about society.
Other than, I think it arguably tells us something good, which is that if you're really, really, really, really, really ridiculously, insanely good at something, you'll make a lot of money on it.
Now, when you talk about this, people will say things like, well, one thing I never understand is when someone says, Well, athletes shouldn't be making all that money.
They just shouldn't make it.
$300 million, that's wrong.
Okay, well, who do you want... The reason why Garrett Cole can make $300 million is because we, the public, spend a lot of money on merchandise, baseball merchandise.
I don't.
I'm not a big baseball fan myself, but a lot of people do.
We watch it on TV.
Again, I don't know why you would watch baseball on TV.
I think watching fishing on TV is more entertaining, which I actually will do.
Which is a sign that I'm officially entering middle age.
Millions of people buy the merchandise.
They watch it on TV.
They go to the stadiums and pay for the tickets.
And that's where all this money comes from.
So there's billions of dollars floating around because of people's interest in baseball.
Now the only question is, the money's there because we're spending it.
The only question now is, who should get the money?
Should it all go to the owners?
When you complain that Gary Cole makes $300 million, who do you want to keep all of it?
So what, the owners should keep all of it?
Or what, the government?
You think the government should take it?
Why?
The government should just come in and why should they get it?
They didn't do anything.
What, you think you should get it?
No, Garrett Cole should make the $300 million.
I should get that.
I mean, yeah, he's dedicated his whole life to perfecting this craft.
He's one of the best in the world.
But no, that should come to me, though.
No, that's mine.
Someone has to get that money because it's there for taking.
Because we're spending it, and so it makes sense for him to get a big chunk of it.
I don't see the problem here.
Again, I don't see the injustice.
And the other thing that annoys me is when people, when we talk about this and people say, well, it's just sports.
It's so stupid.
You make all that money throwing a ball.
How dumb.
How stupid.
Well, first of all, even if it is dumb and stupid, that's a reflection of us because, again, we are spending that money.
That's how he's making it.
But I don't think it is dumb.
I think with most jobs, you could do that, where you could describe it in a way that makes it sound stupid and pointless.
You could do that with most, not every job.
You couldn't do that with a heart surgeon.
It'd be very difficult to describe the job of a heart surgeon in a way that makes being a heart surgeon sound stupid and pointless.
So with some jobs you can't do that, but with most jobs I think you probably can.
If you really wanted to, you could describe it in a way that makes it sound utterly superfluous and stupid, especially if you work in the business realm, if you work in an office building of any kind.
Whatever you do, I could easily describe that in a way that makes it sound worthless.
Even if it isn't.
I can make it sound that way.
So, yeah, we can do that with sports.
You can say, oh, they just throw a ball.
But the only way, you know, if you're going to say that being an athlete, that sports are stupid and pointless, the only way you could consistently do that is if you're also going to say the same thing about About film?
About music?
Okay, and film and television, these are people just pretending to be other people.
What does a musician do?
You just make sounds come out of an instrument.
What is that?
Who cares about that?
So you could definitely do the same thing.
What you do with athletics, that reductive kind of view of it, you could do the same thing with the arts.
And I think they're very much related.
And I think sports kind of, it is an art in a certain kind of way.
But, if you really look at it that way, and if you really look at sports as being worthless and stupid and pointless, and you think the same thing about film, and you think the same thing about music, and you think the same thing about literature, even though all these things can be described that way, then you're not even a human.
You're like a robot.
I mean, there's no way that you actually think that.
Every human I've ever met finds value in at least some of those things.
And not just some value, but a lot of value.
That's part of being a human being.
Unless you're a robot.
Unless you're the most boring person on the planet where you really just don't like any of it.
Can you imagine meeting someone who doesn't like film, doesn't like music, doesn't like books, doesn't like sports?
What do you do with your free time?
What do you like?
No, but as human beings, we do find value in these things.
Sometimes it can be a little bit difficult to describe the value because it's not as immediately
Obvious as being a heart surgeon where yeah, you're fixing someone's heart. So they live. Okay, that's pretty
straightforward But with something like art or athletics, it's a little bit
more You know, it's it's it's it's a little more abstract a
little bit difficult a little a little bit harder for us to understand as humans
Why do we like this? Why do we care about it?
But the fact is that we do and there is some deep meaning there
And I mean it's easy enough even with athletics it's easy enough to see
For one thing, you know, it's a it's it's it brings people joy
I mean, that's no small thing.
To watch sports, you sit down with your family, you watch sports.
You know, maybe you sat down at Thanksgiving, you watch football.
It brings joy to the family.
It's a wholesome joy.
And that's no small thing.
I don't see that as pointless or worthless.
It's a bonding opportunity.
It brings families together.
It brings communities together.
You go to a stadium.
You go to a football stadium, for example.
I like going to the Ravens game and 70,000 people in the stadium.
None of us really know each other.
Very few of us know each other.
But at least for those three and a half hours, we're all kind of a community.
Bonded over maybe something that isn't a big deal, but we're still bonded.
And there's value in that too.
So you can look at it as these athletes They're very good at what they do in terms of the actual athletic skill, but they're also very good at bringing joy to people and giving people opportunity for bonding.
Again, that's no small thing.
Am I going to say it's more important than being a teacher?
No.
I mean, I think it also kind of depends on the teacher and it sort of depends on what they're teaching.
I showed, you know, last week I showed you the flyer of the, what was the flyer for a class in, what do they call it, Queer Ecologies at some school in Portland State.
I mean, certainly being an athlete is more important than being a teacher of that class.
But generally speaking, what teachers do is very, very important, of course.
But the good thing is if they're the best at doing it, they're going to make a fine living.
All right, before we get to some emails, this is very important.
This is actually the most important thing we'll discuss today.
And that's because one of the biggest problems today, in my view, is that most people in the country don't know how to properly cook bacon.
And now everyone says they love bacon, right?
And this has been an internet meme for years, where people go on and on about how much they love bacon, yet most of the time, I know you've had this experience, you go to someone's house, you stay the night, you wake up the next morning, they make breakfast, they make bacon, and then you feel grateful for that, but then what they put in front of you is an abomination.
It's either burnt to a crisp, thereby robbing it of all its bacon-y flavor, or it's undercooked and flimsy and has the consistency of microwaved taffy.
Or it's both, it's kind of burnt in parts and then undercooked in other parts and it becomes this pockmarked leprous monstrosity.
So I'm going to do a PSA for you guys.
I want to show you an example of perfectly cooked bacon.
I'm going to show you a picture of what it looks like.
This actually is bacon that was cooked by one of the great chefs of our time.
Speaking of being one of the best in the world at something.
And one of the great chefs of our time, that is me.
And I want to show you this picture.
Here it is.
Now, you see there, and please leave this photo up for a minute.
First of all, you see only four pieces.
And now, that could remove all of my credibility as a chef if I only made four pieces of bacon, because who does that?
What sort of deranged lunatic only makes four pieces of bacon?
Well, I will inform you that I ate three of the pieces before I took that picture.
I ate three of the pieces, leaving four to split among my family, and that's four members
of the family, so they each got one, I got three.
Actually, after I took the picture, I had one more, so I got four, and then they split
the three between them, because that's what generosity is all about.
But anyway, what you see here is, I want you to notice, this bacon is firm.
It's got the nice singe, the nice blackened edge all around.
It's got the reddish-brown coloring all throughout each slice.
It's very consistent.
The perfect mix of tender and crispy, not overdone, not underdone.
The fatty parts are also cooked, not burned, but cooked.
Melt in your mouth.
A brilliant job by me, an amazing job by me.
Now, how did I do this?
Well, I put the bacon on a preheated skillet.
Heated to medium-high heat.
Don't want it too hot, don't want it too cool.
I put it on, let it sit for about three minutes.
And then I flip it, give it another couple minutes.
And now, now that I've done a couple minutes on each side, now I'm really just flipping it back and forth several more times.
And I'm trying to get that perfect color and texture.
It's more of an art than a science.
Cooking bacon, though, is all about vigilance.
It's all about loyalty, heroism.
You can't leave the stove for any reason.
Eyes on the bacon the whole time.
All of your senses dialed in.
Sight, hearing, smell.
Become one with the bacon.
Tap into its essence.
You're not just doing this visually.
You're listening.
You're smelling.
You're feeling.
You're sensing it.
Now, what my wife will do, she'll throw bacon on the stove, and then she'll leave.
Because, you know, one of the kids fell down the steps or something, and she has to go check to make sure they don't have to go to the hospital.
Wrong.
The kid will be fine.
He'll figure it out.
It's his fault for falling down the steps in the first place.
Should have paid attention.
Stay with the bacon.
Baby's crying.
Kids are screaming.
Doesn't matter.
Stay focused.
Remember your priorities.
Remember the great responsibility that you assumed on yourself when you opened that package of bacon.
Now, you're the one who opened it.
And now you're committed.
You have to see it all the way through.
And then here's the trick, of course.
Make sure to take the bacon off of the stove 90 seconds before it's done.
So you want to take it off when it's a little bit underdone.
The grease is going to continue to cook the bacon, so you let the grease finish the job.
If you take the bacon off—this is a big mistake people make—take the bacon off when it looks perfect, and you say, oh, I've got perfect bacon.
You want to call all your friends and family, take a picture like I did.
By the time everyone gets into the room and you're taking the picture, it's ruined.
It's done.
It's burned.
Why did that happen?
Because it kept cooking for 90 seconds afterwards.
So you want to time it perfectly.
Take it off 90 seconds before it's done.
And then you will have perfectly cooked bacon.
There's your bacon lesson for the day.
Let's go to emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
This is from... Let's see here.
This is from Adam, says, thanks for pointing out the necessity for conservatives to make moral arguments, but now that you've said that, I'm really eager to hear convincing moral arguments for conservative stances.
The two big ones for me are health care and immigration.
Why is socialized health care morally wrong?
What's so wrong with people losing private plans and paying for health care and taxes if it enables everyone in the country to be taken care of?
As for immigration, many conservatives really do come off as xenophobes when talking about the issue.
It drives me crazy to hear people saying things like, take better care of our veterans before taking care of refugees.
The phrase America first makes it sound like we elevate ourselves above the rest of the human family.
As a Christian, I believe that all people are God's children.
As a Christian yourself and a decent human being, how do you morally argument for the conservative views on these issues?
Well, when it comes to socialized medicine, I think you sort of skimmed right over the part of people losing their private plans, but that to me is a moral problem.
People have a private insurance plan if it's working for them, if they need it.
It's something they chose, and for the government to come in and say, you can't have that anymore.
We have a plan, and you have to go on it.
That, to me, aside from all the practical problems, and I agree with you.
I mean, this is what you're responding to.
This is the point that I made last week, that when we're talking about something like healthcare, or immigration, or any issue, we have to make the moral argument.
And I'm not saying we neglect entirely the practical argument about things like the cost, how much it's going to cost.
But we have to also make the moral argument, and I think that should be the primary argument we make, because the primary argument that the left makes is moral.
And so we have to meet them on that battlefield and respond on that level.
It's very important that we do that.
And we cannot sound as though we're admitting that their policy ideas are more moral, but we care more about saving money because we're a bunch of sociopaths and scrooges.
But on this, I think that it's pretty straightforward that there's a big moral problem there with taking something from someone that's theirs, that they agreed to, that they need, that's working for them, and for the government to say, no, you have to do this instead.
So I see that as straightforwardly immoral.
But then the larger thing with socialized medicine, the moral problem, is also the practical problem, is that it just doesn't work.
It doesn't do what it says it's going to do, which is to do better at taking care of sick people than the free market does with healthcare.
And we know it's not perfect on either end.
And we could talk all day about people who get screwed by their private plans, people who don't get taken care of and all that kind of stuff.
And that's a problem.
But the socialized medicine just does not do what it says it's going to do.
And so, you know, there are people, this is why you have the long lines.
This is why people who are in countries with socialized medicine will come to America if they need something like a heart surgery.
So this, it just does a better job of taking care of people.
And I think that that's both its practical benefit and also its moral benefit.
As for immigration, well, again, you say take better care of our veterans before taking care of refugees.
That is, I don't think that's our primary argument on immigration, but that is a moral statement.
And it's true that our veterans are American citizens.
They've fought for the country and for them to come home and not be taken well care of that is a moral atrocity.
And so I think the point that conservatives are making on immigration is that the responsibility of the government is to take care of its own people first.
That's just that is your responsibility.
It's just like I hesitate to make this comparison because it doesn't hold true in a lot of ways, but as parents, our responsibility is to take care of our own children first.
That's a moral responsibility.
Now, the government is not our parents, that's why I say I hesitate to make that comparison, but the point is just, where do your responsibilities lie first?
And the government's first responsibilities are to, maybe I wouldn't say take care of, I don't really like that phrase when we're talking about the government, but their responsibility is to their own citizens first.
And there's also this, that if we want to be there for the rest of the world, if we want to be a shining light to the rest of the world, if we want to be able to accept refugees, which I think is a good thing for us to do, if we want to be a destination For the huddled masses, the poor, the downtrodden, and so on and so forth.
I think all that is great.
But we're not going to be that if we don't maintain our national identity first.
We have to be strong as a nation so that we can then accept these other people and have them come in and then they can benefit from it.
If we become just like, you know, if we tear down the borders, throw open the doors, No more borders.
And we become just like the country surrounding us, then we can't help those people anymore.
And so I think that's also a moral issue.
But I think it's good that you're thinking of it in those terms.
This is from Stacy, says, I want to be a subscriber.
Unfortunately, I have type one.
I have a type one diabetic, which make me get two jobs to pay for.
But I hope you personally still read this.
When Lizzo showed her butt, Whoopi from The View said, who cares about the kids?
Did she say that?
It doesn't surprise me, but I didn't see that.
When did this change?
Who cares about the kids, really?
This is why it is impossible as a parent to keep our kids safe.
I guess that's the main fight against kids.
Who cares?
Kill them or make money off of them by abusing them.
Our future means nothing to the elite.
Signed, mother of five kids from teen to toddler.
I didn't see Whoopi saying, who cares about the kids?
I'm not surprised that she said that.
Maybe I'm a little surprised she said that.
I'm not surprised that she has that attitude.
And that is the attitude that the left has.
That's the attitude the media has.
This is what we were talking about all last week.
Part of it.
Part of it anyway.
This is what we're up against as parents.
That the culture's attitude is, who cares about these kids?
We're going to exploit them.
Kill them in the womb if they escape the gauntlet of the modern womb, then we're going to exploit them, we're going to corrupt them.
And this is what we're up against.
And it's not very helpful when you have non-parents who just sit back and say, ah, it's all the parents' job.
Do a better job.
You know, kids get destroyed and corrupted by the culture, and people who aren't parents say, ah, it's all the parents' job.
Do a better job, you parents.
It's like you have no idea.
You really have no idea what it's like raising kids in this culture today.
Even older parents, even parents who, you know, are in their 60s now or 70s and had kids that grew up a long time ago and they had their own challenges, but you really have no idea what it's like having kids today with the media being as ubiquitous as it is with the internet and all these things.
This adds a, An enormous extra challenge that, yeah, we parents of young kids, we have not really figured out how to deal with perfectly.
I don't think there is any perfect way to deal with it.
If you've got the magic solution, then let us know.
I don't think you do.
You might think you do, but you don't.
Thanks for the email, Stacey.
I think we'll leave it there.
Somebody wrote an email asking about the issue of embryo adoption, which is very interesting.
And I think I'll save that for tomorrow, though, because that's a longer discussion.
But thanks, everyone, for the emails.
Again, the email address is mattwalshow at gmail.com.
And we'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe as well.
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Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Senior Producer Jonathan Hay, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Supervising Producer Robert Sterling, Technical Producer Austin Stevens, Editor Donovan Fowler, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
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