Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Left celebrates the death of Rush Limbaugh, proving again that they really do hate you and want you dead. Also Five Headlines including the disastrous winter weather across the south. If you think that a deep freeze in Texas is evidence against global warming, think again. The media tells us that this is even more proof of their theories. And in our Daily Cancellation, we’ll discuss the mysterious spike in ADHD cases during the lockdowns.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the left celebrates the death of Rush Limbaugh, proving again that they really do hate you and want you dead.
Also, five headlines, including the disastrous winter weather across the South.
You know, if you think that the deep freeze in Texas is evidence against global warming, think again.
The media tells us that it's even more proof of their climate change theories.
And in our Daily Cancellation, we'll discuss the mysterious spike in ADHD cases that we've seen during the lockdowns.
What could be the cause of that?
It's a big mystery.
We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N-DOT-COM-SLASH-WALSH-EXPRESS-V-P-N-DOT-COM-SLASH-WALSH-TO-PROTECT-YOUR-DATA-TODAY Rush Limbaugh died on Wednesday at the age of 70.
Though his lung cancer diagnosis has been publicly known for months, of course, still his death has managed to feel somehow shocking.
That's how it always feels when a man of great consequence and importance reaches the end
of his time here on Earth.
And that's one thing that nobody can deny about Rush Limbaugh, Rush's life.
It was important.
It was an important, consequential life.
He was a pioneer, a legend.
He changed the country in ways that few media figures ever have, ever could, ever will.
Anyone who doubts Rush's profound importance need only take a glance at social media.
And there they'll find, of course, many people paying grateful tribute to the radio icon and talking about him and all the ways that they were personally motivated by him and influenced by him and shaped by him.
But another and perhaps more profound indication of Russia's importance Is that all of the worst people in the country, many of the most vile and disgusting ghouls that our culture has produced, have come out to celebrate his death openly and to dance on his grave without shame.
I'm not going to amplify any of these people individually by going through a list of all of the filthy, disgusting things they're spewing.
Suffice it to say that the phrase rotten hell and rest in piss We're trending minutes after news broke.
I mean, minutes after news broke of Russia's death.
Right away.
These are not just random anonymous internet trolls, either.
I mean, there are a lot of those, but also some of the most prominent left-wing voices who, when they're not laughing at a man for dying of cancer, are busy lecturing us about the need for civil political discourse.
Media outlets showed similar lack of restraint.
Rolling Stone's headline read, quote, Rush Limbaugh, right-wing radio host who trafficked in bigotry and cruelty, dead at 70.
The Daily Beast was only slightly more subtle, saying Rush Limbaugh, the human megaphone who hijacked the GOP, dead at 70.
And of course, the fever swamps of the left-wing blogosphere were not subtle at all.
Jezebel's top headline was simply, good riddance.
In other words, the media and the left have showed the grace, dignity, poise, compassion that you'd expect, which is none at all.
Rush, I think, deserved better than to have the story of his death become a story about the jerks who are rejoicing over it.
But it is worth thinking about this now familiar routine.
We live in a country where this sort of thing happens so automatically that we aren't shocked by it anymore.
When a famous person of a certain political persuasion, certain ideological persuasion, dies, We expect that Satan and Hell will be trending on Twitter because of all the users openly fantasizing about their political enemy roasting eternally in a place that, by the way, they don't even think exists.
And that's exactly what happened in Russia's case, right on cue.
But why does it happen?
It seems insufficient to chalk it up to mere partisanship, mere divisiveness.
What's really fueling it?
To answer that question, the first thing we have to establish is that this is truly a left-wing phenomenon.
I'm not claiming that nobody on the right did any football spiking or made any jokes about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or some other recently deceased liberal, okay?
What I'm claiming is that those reactions were representative of a definite minority on the right.
There has not been a time in my memory, correct me if I'm wrong, when rest in piss, or anything like it, was trending in reaction to the death of a famous, prominent left-winger.
I mean, when has that ever happened?
For the most part, RBG was eulogized respectfully, both by the left and the right.
There are notable exceptions, but those exceptions are just that, exceptions.
On the left, the respectful eulogy of political opponents has become itself the exception.
In an exceedingly rare exception.
Shameless celebration is the norm now.
It's what you expect to see.
And it's what you do see.
What drives this, I think, is the same thing that drives cancel culture to a great extent.
It's the belief, again, not totally unique to the left, but more prevalent by a wide margin on the left, that people with differing views are bad people.
Not just that they have bad opinions, Bad ideas, but they themselves are bad, deep down in their souls.
The consequence of casting every political disagreement, every alternate opinion, every opposing argument as racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia or whatever other ism or phobia, is that those who are conditioned into thinking this way will come to believe that their opponents are truly and irredeemably evil.
So it's easy to make jokes, as I have many times, about the fact that the left calls everything and everyone bigoted, right?
But the not-so-funny reality is that a great many Americans, especially younger Americans, really believe this framing.
They really believe it.
They've taken it to heart.
It is the lens through which they view reality.
They look out at the world and they see millions of wicked, worthless, racist, knuckle-dragging subhumans staring back at them.
That's the world they see.
They don't recognize the humanity of their opponents.
They certainly cannot see any goodness or virtue in them.
The reaction to Rush Limbaugh's death is not happening in a vacuum.
It's not a matter of random anonymous trolls simply trying to get a rise out of people.
It's a reflection of our culture, and of the ideological divide, and of how deep that divide is, and of the pure, unbridled hatred that has helped to carve it.
Rush was the relentless target of this equally relentless hatred for much of the past four decades.
As I'm sure he expected, that has not changed after his death.
If anything, it's just ramped up.
The man achieved many great things and made his mark in many countless and incalculable ways.
But one of the deepest testaments to his life is that these sorts of people are rejoicing over its end.
May we all have hope to have that kind of impact on the world.
Let's get now to Five Headlines.
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Well, if you think that the deep freeze across the South is evidence against global warming, then think again, suckers.
Here's the headline from The Guardian, and there's been many headlines like this.
I'm just kind of picking one here.
It says, "Heating Arctic may be to blame for snow storms in Texas, scientists argue."
Now the article says, "Associating climate change normally connected with roasting heat with an
unusual winter storm that has crippled swaths of Texas and brought freezing temperatures across
the southern U.S. can be a real challenge."
can seem counterintuitive, but scientists say there's evidence that the rapid heating of the Arctic can help push frigid air from the North Pole much further south, possibly to the U.S.-Mexico border.
This week, a blast of winter weather has reached deep into the heart of the U.S., causing several deaths and knocking out power for about 5 million.
Sleet and ice have battered Oklahoma and Arkansas, while many people in Texas have been left marooned amid unsafe travel conditions in homes with no electricity.
Judah Cohen, who's the Director of Seasonal Forecasting and Atmospheric and Environmental Research, said the current conditions in Texas are historical, certainly generational, but this can't be hand-waved away as if it's entirely natural.
Well, let me stop you right there.
I think we can, sir.
I don't know if that counts as hand-waving or not, but yes, it's natural.
This is the definition of a natural thing.
This is a natural event.
It's weather.
It's part of nature.
So yes, we can call it natural.
That doesn't mean we dismiss it as insignificant or that we don't care about the people that are affected by it, but yes, absolutely natural.
Hurricanes are natural.
Tornadoes are natural.
Drought is natural.
None of it is good, but it is natural.
But he says, this is happening not in spite of climate change, it's in part due to climate change.
Last year, Cohen co-authored a paper that found a strong uptick in winter storms in the U.S.
Northeast in the decade leading up to 2018.
This, Cohen, some other scientists argue, is a symptom of heating in the Arctic occurring at a rate more than twice the global average that is disrupting long-established climatic systems.
So, you know, this is the way it works, right?
Well, if you have the theory of global warming and then you notice that things are happening and winters are getting colder in some areas and so on, you could say, well, maybe this is evidence against our theory.
Or you could say, no, no, our theory is definitely right.
We've got to figure out a way to fit this into it.
We're starting from the supposition that our theory definitely must be right, and so anything that happens has to fit into it.
And that's why I think the left is very good at this, we know.
They're very good at rebranding.
They're very good at coming up with euphemisms for things.
They're very good at changing the narrative simply by changing the language.
They've got a real talent for this, and I think their Mona Lisa, their greatest achievement, when it comes to this, is climate change.
It seems pretty simple and kind of obvious, but they went from global warming to climate change.
And they say, well, global warming is still under that banner, but it's climate change.
That's the new thing.
And the great thing about, you know, climate change, if you're arguing for that, is that nothing can disprove it.
In fact, it's not just nothing disproves it.
Everything that happens proves it.
Everything that happens fits into it.
And it makes sense when you think about it, because climate change, yeah, well, the climate changes.
Climates have always done that.
Earth's climate has been in a constant state of change ever since the Earth existed, ever since the Earth had a climate.
That's what climates do.
Speaking of nature, by their nature, climates change.
You're not going to have an absolutely stable climate that is always exactly the same anywhere.
So, you change it to climate change, and yeah, you still get global warming, but if you've got freezing, then you can add that in.
Drought, rain, tornado, hurricane, whatever, put it all in.
Earthquakes, I don't know if they throw that in too now.
Maybe they will eventually, maybe we'll get around that.
But it's all part.
It all proves it.
Number two, I want to play this for you.
I missed it yesterday, but Biden did a town hall on Tuesday night.
I didn't watch, I don't care.
The media fawned all over it, as always, and I don't care much about that either, but this one segment on CNN did stand out a little bit.
I want you to listen to this.
Can you just weigh in finally, Jim, on the humility?
I mean, what he talked at the end of the town hall about, like, I wake up in the White House and I ask Jill, where are we?
And I'm uncomfortable with them putting my suit jacket on and having all this help.
I mean, what a, what a breath of fresh air.
Boy, it's true, Bobby.
I teared up at that.
That's Scranton Joe.
That's the kid who watched his dad go to work every day and struggle, and then one day he got to grow up and be the President of the United States of America.
And it really is an amazing moment.
I remember the first days of the Obama administration, the president coming down to me and saying, we want the girls to do the dishes, and the White House staff seemed to be a little concerned about that.
You know, each president figures out how to live in that place.
But it was amazing to see Scranton Joe kind of be honest about saying, wow, this is my life.
Yeah.
I'm taking a page from the first lady, Michelle Obama, when she said, don't clean the girls' room.
They're cleaning their own room.
That's how it goes in my house, too.
Exactly.
Yeah, he teared up.
I'm sure he did.
For his own sake, for his own sake, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't really tear up and he was just making it up because he thought it would sound good on camera, which it never does.
A man saying that he cried about something never makes you sound better.
But, well, we have talked about there.
I think we've decided there are five acceptable circumstances for a man to cry.
And the five acceptable circumstances change depending on what I think they must be.
Because, you know, of course, I'm the one who gets to decide this.
But crying at a politician's town hall, definitely never on the list.
Never on the ever-changing list.
So, there's that.
But also this trying to frame Biden as this kind of You know, regular, as I said, Scranton Joe.
He lived in Scranton for about 15 seconds.
And then he was in Delaware.
But for the last 40 years, he's been in Washington.
40 or 50 years.
He's been in Washington.
So trying to turn him into this regular guy, this aw shucks guy who's now in the White House.
You know, he's not comfortable there.
He's not comfortable with people tending to him and putting his jacket on.
He was the Vice President!
I'm sure he had people putting his jacket on for him when he was vice president.
He lived in the White House.
This is the most familiar thing in the world to him.
He's been in this environment, running in these circles, for decades.
He is very far from a regular guy.
He has been in a position of political power, significant political power, for almost twice as long as I've been alive.
Not quite that long, so I'm 35, but a lot longer than I've been alive.
He's been in positions of significant political power, including being in the White House before for eight years as Vice President.
I get that you probably don't get all the same perks as Vice President that you do as President, but I'm sure people tending to you and putting coats on and stuff, that's probably part of the bargain, I imagine, as Vice President.
Okay, this is from Fox News.
We've talked about the controversy, the quote-unquote controversy around The Bachelor.
And the host of The Bachelor, who's now stepped down from his position.
And what did he do wrong?
Because he was advocating for forgiveness and grace.
That's what he did wrong.
He was advocating for the forgiveness and grace towards another Bachelor contestant who was photographed three years ago at an Old South-themed frat party.
Which means, apparently, that she's racist.
So, Fox News has the latest on this.
Rachel Lindsay is speaking out after her interview with Bachelor host Chris Harrison that led him to stepping away from the franchise.
Lindsay, who made history as the first black bachelorette, interviewed Harrison and asked about contestant Rachel Kirkconnell's past racist behavior that included attending an Old South-themed party at a plantation in 2018.
Harrison ended up defending Kirkconnell in the interview, which prompted backlash and ultimately led to his decision to step aside for a time of personal reflection.
Now, yeah, so this all stemmed from this interview.
Rachel Lindsay was the interviewer, and she's a black woman.
And now, somehow, and I say somehow, like rhetorically, but she has become the victim of this, or one of the primary victims of Chris Harrison's opinion that he expressed.
And here's what she says, because she said, she was asked herself, like, can you forgive Chris Harrison?
Will you ever be able to forgive him?
Forgive him for what?
You interviewed him and asked him about something and he gave his opinion about it.
In the interview.
Your interview.
You were the host.
You brought it up and he gave his opinion.
Now he has to apologize to you for answering your question?
Well, she says she really hasn't been able to forgive him yet.
Here's what she said, "It's a little hard for me because I lived the experience.
There was no apology. The apology came after the fact. So it's hard for me to fully accept it."
I'm going to need that time and space and compassion that he referenced to really accept the apology.
Because Chris wasn't apologetic at first.
I'm not saying I can't get there.
It's just, initially, it's a little tough for me.
Oh, is it a little tough for you, Rachel?
It's a little tough for you?
It's a little tough for you that you're giving an interview and you ask the guy a question and he answered it?
Is that tough for you?
Did that make your tummy hurt?
Sorry to hear that, Rachel.
First of all, the apology came after the fact.
Yeah, that's how apologies work.
They can't come before the fact.
If someone's apologizing for something before they do it, there's an apology I certainly wouldn't accept.
I can't accept the apology because it came after the fact?
When else would an apology come?
Except in this case, there never should have been an apology because there was nothing to apologize for.
Literally all the guy did was advocate grace and forgiveness.
That was it.
That was his whole stance.
But that, not allowed to do that now.
Because grace and forgiveness, that's off the table.
You're not simply wrong for advocating grace and forgiveness.
You are now racist yourself.
And whoever you do this advocacy in front of, they are now a victim of having to listen to you.
So this is an interview host victimized by the answers to the questions that she asked.
Here's the headline from BuzzFeed.
I feel like I'm sort of victimized by this.
Emma Stone looks completely unrecognizable as a punk rock version of Cruella DeVille in the first movie poster.
So this is something you didn't know you needed, and you still don't need in fact.
But Emma Stone is going to be... There's an origin story for Cruella de Vil, the villain from 101 Dalmatians.
So they've given her an origin story, and a lot of people seem to be excited about this.
They came out with the trailer yesterday, and let's take a look at that.
Here's the trailer.
From the very beginning, I realized I saw the world differently than everyone else.
That didn't sit well with some people.
But I wasn't for everyone.
I guess they were always scared that I'd be a psycho.
But a new day brings new opportunities.
And I was ready to make a statement.
[music playing]
Not as the same girl.
[music playing]
I am woman.
Hear me roar.
I'm just getting started, darling.
The thing is... I was born brilliant.
Born fast.
I'm a little bit mad.
♪ I'm glad that you're sorry ♪ - I'm cruel.
How completely, absolutely stupid is that?
I hope you really did cancel your Disney.
There's all the more reason to cancel your Disney Plus.
If you didn't already do it, I mean, the cancel Disney Plus thing was happening last week because of them canceling Gina Carano, who now, as you've heard, is part of the Daily Wire team and she's making a movie for us.
But if that wasn't enough reason to cancel Disney Plus, here's another reason, because this is what they're putting out now.
The origin story of Cruella de Vil.
Which, number one question, why?
Once again, I have this same question.
But all these different remakes and sequels and origin stories and prequels and everything.
Why do we need more of this story?
There's not enough there.
Cruella de Vil, she's a cartoon character.
Her entire role, right, is to be a woman who for some reason has a horrible grudge against dogs.
Actually, I kind of can relate to her on that level at least.
So if anyone would be on board, given my feelings about dogs, if anybody would be interested, if there's any target audience for the Cruella de Vil origin story, it would be me.
And I'm not interested.
But her whole role is to be some evil woman who, for some reason, hates dogs.
I mean, there are plenty of reasons to hate them, but she has a real murderous passion.
She hates dogs especially.
And what, she wanted to, what was the plot?
She wanted to make a coat out of the dogs?
And then they had to escape her?
Is there enough there for an hour and a half origin story?
Who wants to see it?
And I guess they're going to turn her into like a cool, kind of like sexy, sympathetic character, but she's a serial killer of animals.
That's where this story is heading.
Are we going to see that in this movie?
Are we going to see when she first starts murdering animals?
Is that where this is going?
Because, I mean, if they're going for like a joker, rated R, really disturbing thing, then okay.
It's an odd choice, but alright, I can see that.
But if they're going for PG, PG-13, cool, fun, for kids, I don't see it.
How's PETA gonna react to this?
They are normalizing a woman who abuses animals.
I'm offended, personally.
Five.
Finally, I may be stretching a little bit by putting this in the headline section, but I think it's a headline.
It's a headline in my heart, anyway.
In my mind, it's a headline.
I participated, along with the other DW guys, in a version of the Newlyweds game, even though none of us are Newlyweds.
So our wives were asked questions about us, and then we had to guess the answers that they gave about us.
You can go to the Daily Wire YouTube and watch that video if you want.
I allegedly lost the game.
I think I came in third.
Allegedly.
I wanted to play this for you.
This is one section in particular that has sparked controversy, global controversy.
Everyone is talking about this.
The question was, that was asked to our wives, what superpower would your husband want to have?
Now, I said that.
I said, number one, I haven't thought about this question because I'm not a child, but if I had to answer it, I would probably want Aquaman's powers.
That's what I said.
My wife responded, super strength is what she thought my answer would be.
Now, I said that counts, because Aquaman has super strength.
But Ben, Ben Shapiro, disagreed.
And a vicious, intense debate ensued.
Let's listen to that now.
Matt, you answered Aquaman.
Your wife, she said super strength.
I think Aquaman has super strength.
That counts, because he's got super strength, doesn't he?
I'm getting in my head that that does not count.
No.
Aquaman is not, as a DC guy, no.
Aquaman does not have super strength.
He happens to be a strong person, but his power is to talk to fish.
Come on.
His power is magnified underwater also because things are less heavy.
So when he's fighting the giant squid or shark or whatever he does, that doesn't take super strength?
He's got the trident.
The trident really helps him a lot in that.
It's not like a physical one-on-one brute force.
I could pull up a picture of Aquaman right now.
He looks like a strong guy to me.
Oh no, he's a very strong guy, dude.
I mean, Jason Momoa is a monster.
But that's just because he's a monster of a human.
In real life, he's a monster.
Okay, well, who's the judge here?
Who's deciding?
I'm going to decide, and we're going to give you 2.5 out of 5 points for that, because I do think Aquaman has super strength.
There's no other way for him to be fighting those creatures that he's fighting.
This is rigged!
So we're giving 2.5 points for that one.
You can see there, I destroyed Ben with facts and logic.
I destroyed him.
And I got robbed in the end.
This is a scam.
I want an audit on these results.
This was completely rigged.
Now, I went and looked this up, okay?
Because how about do your research?
Do your research if you want to talk about Aquaman and his powers.
I did my research.
I went to ScreenRant.com with an article, and they're the authorities on this, I guess.
I decided 15 powers you didn't know Aquaman had.
Well, you might not have known, but I did.
And here they go through the powers of Aquaman.
ScreenRant.com.
15.
Night vision.
Intense heat resistance.
Telepathy.
I mean, Aquaman... This is why I wanted to be Aquaman.
Everyone laughed at me when I said Aquaman.
Well, here you go.
He can summon undead sea life.
Alright, that's... I don't know how often that really comes in handy, but if you wanted to bring, like, a dead octopus back to life, you could do that.
Eleven, access to the clear.
I don't know what that means.
And then, number ten, superhuman strength.
They say Aquaman may be the strongest character in the sea, but he's certainly not the strongest on land.
In fact, most comic book readers consider him to be the weakest among the Justice League members, but that could not be further from the truth.
Aquaman has demonstrated a unique set of skills and superpowers when combating enemies and has even shown the ability to go toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel.
But how strong is he really?
The average Atlantean is able to lift up to two tons, significantly more than the average human.
More than the average human, two tons.
I don't know about you, but I think that makes superhuman strength.
So I should have been awarded five points, not two and a half.
I don't know if that's enough to lift me over the top to win the game, but, um...
When you account for pain and suffering as well that I endured, I think ultimately I did win that game.
So I just wanted to make that clear.
And that was your final big news headline.
Let's go now to read the comments.
Cade Burstra says, Hey Matt, can you tell us something that you actually enjoy when most people would assume that you hate that thing?
I would say ballet.
I'm a big ballet fan.
I like to perform in ballet and watch ballet, so nobody expected that.
That's probably my answer.
And yeah, I mentioned that yesterday about him.
Rest in peace, peace rush.
He had bravely faced death.
It's sad to see him go.
And yeah, I mentioned that yesterday about him.
I think of, you know, another great testament to him, his final months on earth, I think
he faced his own mortality, his own death with a lot of dignity, a lot of courage.
Which, that time has not come for me yet, but it could come any time, it could come for anyone else.
I imagine that that's not easy to do.
We all spend, I think, most of our lives trying to push those thoughts of death and mortality out of our minds.
We don't like to think about it.
We try to distract ourselves from it.
And then you get that call from the doctor, you get that diagnosis, whatever it is, and now you're staring it right in the face.
You can't avoid it anymore.
It's right there.
I think the reaction of a lot of people probably is to still try to find a way to deny it and try to find sort of a way around it and distract themselves.
It seemed like Rush was really looking it in the eyes and confronting it for what it was and that immense amount of respect and admiration for that.
Corey Halata says, who needs a Daily Wire membership when the Matt Walsh show is free?
Yeah, but stop being a freeloader and get the membership anyway.
Chloe says, Matt Walsh, can you please explain in detail what your burrito tasted like?
Yeah, we posted this.
If you haven't watched this after this show's over, go to my video.
We posted a video of me giving my own burrito recipe.
My dream of becoming a TV chef has been fulfilled.
Very excited about that.
What did it taste like?
I almost don't want to give it away because if anyone hasn't seen the video yet, I want them to see it.
The only thing I'll say is that it was reminiscent of sort of like cold vomit.
And I mean that in the best possible way.
And Kaylee finally says, if I may ask, what the heck is on your wall?
Like, is it supposed to be art or... I don't know what that is.
I've been... I want to make clear, I've been broadcasting from a hotel during the winter disaster.
I've been at a hotel because our studios are shut down.
And I can't really broadcast in the house with four kids there, so this is where I've been in a hotel broadcasting.
And so don't blame, you know, the little bit of decorating and decor you see around, don't blame me for that.
Or more precisely, don't blame my wife for that.
This is not her doing, this is my hotel's doing.
So give them credit or the blame, whatever you want to do.
Well, we just celebrated Valentine's Day.
Who cares about that?
But then we went and celebrated President's Day.
And, you know, I'll tell you the reason why I don't celebrate President's Day, I'm protesting President's Day, and the presidency in general, is that it has been... This is a problem I've talked about before.
It's been over a century since we've had a president with any kind of facial hair.
And longer than that, since we had a bearded president.
This is a real problem.
And that's why I was thinking about that and it made me think even more about our very good friends over at Beard
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That's Beardsupply.com.
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You guys are the ones that keep us in business.
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More than once over the past several months, I have predicted that we would see a reported skyrocket.
We would see a skyrocketing rise of ADHD diagnoses as millions of children are forced to sit and stare at screens all day in lieu of receiving a real education.
That's what I predicted.
I think I said it on the show multiple times.
I tweeted it.
Now, usually, I enjoy saying, I told you so.
I don't hate saying, I told you so.
I love saying it.
This is not one of the times where I enjoy saying it.
This is one of the times where I really do hate saying it.
But I told you so.
This week, NBC News reported, right on schedule, that ADHD diagnoses have skyrocketed during the pandemic.
The article by Olivia Solon offers more details, starting with an anecdote.
This is what she reports.
It says, Susan McLaughlin's 12-year-old daughter, Isabella, was a straight-A student before the pandemic.
Isabella, who lives in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, excelled at science and math and was already getting high school credit for algebra.
But when her school shut down in March and classes shifted to Zoom, Isabella's grades took a nosedive.
She signed on for her virtual class from a desk piled high with books, papers, and stuffed animals, and then spent hours trying to clean her room instead of focusing on schoolwork.
She found herself paralyzed by assignments, McLaughlin said.
But she wouldn't tell her teacher over email that she was struggling, as she would have done in person.
McLaughlin, 53, a mother of three from Delaware, Ohio, says it was a meltdown after meltdown after meltdown.
McLaughlin spent months trying to bring more structure to Isabella's day by writing lists, schedules, timelines, checkboxes.
But as someone who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder herself a decade ago, McLaughlin realized that she was seeing the same behaviors in Isabella.
She thought, quote, I've got to nip this in the bud.
Isabella is being evaluated by a psychiatrist, a process that takes several hours and requires her teachers to fill out questionnaires about her behavior.
McLaughlin hopes that with an ADHD diagnosis, Isabella will be able to get a prescription for a stimulant medication such as Ritalin, Adderall, or something like that to alleviate her symptoms.
Okay.
Pausing here for a second.
Strange.
Strange, isn't it?
The child was a straight-A student.
Everything was fine.
Then she was confined to a house for a year, put in front of a screen, and suddenly she has trouble learning.
She must have a mental disorder!
Yes, that must be it.
No other explanation comes to mind.
More from NBC News.
It says two dozen parents, pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and researchers all described a crisis among children suffering from inattention and tanking school performance.
Data from specialists involved with diagnosing and treating ADHD show just how much parents are struggling to get help.
They're flooding an ADHD support line with questions, and ADHD diagnoses and prescriptions for related medications have soared.
The number of parents calling a helpline set up by Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, that's an organization, a non-profit that supports people with ADHD, rose by 62% since the pandemic started.
Traffic to its website last year grew by 77% compared to 2019.
Aetna Health, a technology company that creates practice management software for healthcare providers, published research in May drawing on data from its customers that showed an increase in patients aged 13 to 17 who received new diagnoses of ADHD.
From the week of March 9th to the week of March 30th, the proportion of visits by teenagers that involved first-time ADHD diagnoses rose by 67%.
That was a similar spike among teenagers, especially boys.
Okay.
It should be, I hope, clear to most people that it's not a coincidence to find so many children having trouble with inattention and hyperactivity when they're cooped up, deprived of their normal outlets like sports and other physical activities, and forced to learn through Zoom classes.
You know, I suffer quite a bit from inattention when I am forced to sit through even a 15-minute Zoom meeting.
I can't imagine doing it every day for hours and being 12 years old on top of it.
The trouble here is with the final D in ADHD.
That's where I've got an issue.
Or really, both Ds.
Deficit and disorder.
Okay, it's not only wrong, But arrogant and cruel to call a child disordered because he's struggling to learn in an environment like that.
The deficit, the disorder, is with the environment, not the child.
It is disordered to lock kids inside, to try to teach them through a screen.
That's disordered.
Kids who struggle with that are healthy.
It's natural, it's healthy to struggle under those circumstances.
Your kids should struggle, actually.
Yes, it may help them sit still to put them on drugs and tranquilize them, but if you're going to do that, and I don't think you should, but if you do it, don't pretend you're treating an illness or a disorder.
Don't fool yourself.
You know, you need your kid to sit still and look at Zoom for six hours.
And so you put them on drugs.
Alright, I really wish you wouldn't.
I think it's terrible to do it.
But if you do, at least be honest and do not claim that you're treating a disorder because you know you're not.
You know that's not what you're doing.
You're trying to get your kid a competitive advantage in this certain environment or context.
Okay, like a guy who isn't good at baseball is not disordered.
Not thriving in baseball is not a sign of a disorder.
So if he takes steroids, he's not treating an illness.
He can't say that he suffers from a baseball deficiency.
No, he's just, he wants to succeed in this specific specialized environment known as baseball, and so he's taking the drug to help him do that.
It's the same thing here.
A child who doesn't thrive while staring at a screen for five hours is also not disordered.
That is not a symptom of a disease.
So putting him on drugs, it's like doping.
It's just to give him that advantage.
Who is to say that children should thrive in that environment?
We've decided that we want them to, but that doesn't mean they should.
Giving him a drug to help is not a medical decision then, even if a doctor prescribes it.
You're also not doing it to help him, exactly.
The kids are being drugged while they're stuck at home in order to make things easier on the teachers and on the parents and on the system generally.
That's who this is for.
Now, I think this is probably clear to most people as it relates to the spike in ADHD during the pandemic.
I think most people can put two and two together here, right?
Here's the part where I might lose you.
If you've been with me so far, maybe you turn on me here.
I don't know.
This same logic applies outside of the pandemic.
ADHD diagnoses have been increasing for decades.
What we're seeing during the lockdowns is just a dramatic microcosm of our general societal situation.
Before the pandemic, and presumably once this is over, whenever that is, we're going to go back to where kids are expected to sit in a classroom with 30 other kids for six or seven hours a day, listening to lectures, filling out worksheets, taking tests based mostly on memorization, Now I think that's better than them staring at a screen for six hours, but it's still not good, at least not for a lot of kids.
Kids who don't thrive in that specific environment, kids who struggle to learn in that environment, kids who struggle to pay attention, are diagnosed as disordered and put on drugs.
But just as a child's failure to thrive on Zoom shouldn't be considered a symptom of illness, A child's failure to thrive in public school should also not be considered a symptom of illness.
See, the ADHD diagnosis is situational.
It is diagnosed largely based on how the child's disorder, quote-unquote, interferes with school and home life.
Other illnesses aren't diagnosed this way.
If you take your child to the doctor because you think he has diabetes, the doctor's not going to ask you, is his diabetes interfering with school and home life?
That'd be a non-sequitur.
Who cares what it's interfering with?
He's got diabetes.
Let's get him treated.
But ADHD is only ADHD if it causes problems in these environments.
Those are the symptoms.
That's how they determine it.
The Mayo Clinic's fact sheet on ADHD says this.
This is what they say.
Okay, reading now from Mayo Clinic.
Here's what they say about ADHD.
They say, a child who shows a pattern of inattention may often Fail to pay close attention to details or make careless mistakes in schoolwork.
Have trouble staying focused in tasks or play.
Appear not to listen, even when spoken to directly.
Have difficulty following through on instructions and fail to finish schoolwork or chores.
Have trouble organizing tasks and activities.
Avoid or dislike tasks that require focused mental effort, such as homework.
Lose items needed for tasks or activities, for example, toys, school assignments, pencils.
Be easily distracted.
And finally, forget to do some daily activities such as forgetting to do chores.
Okay.
Yeah, that's how you know that there's an ADHD.
Not only does this all sound exactly like every child I've ever met, but it also revolves suspiciously around schoolwork.
What I'm arguing is that our underlying assumption here is wrong.
We're assuming.
So this is really a philosophical thing, okay?
The ADHD discussion is a philosophical discussion more than anything else.
I know I'm going to get the emails and everything saying, well, you're not a doctor, how could you be saying this?
What I'm saying is that the doctors who are diagnosing this stuff, they are going outside of what their realm should be.
They're going way above and beyond.
They're going way above their own pay grade.
And I'll tell you why.
Because to diagnose ADHD, It is to assume that every child should be able to sit still and pay attention in a public school environment.
I'm suggesting that some children, many children, can't.
And that's not because there's something wrong with them.
It's because there's something wrong with us, and with the system, and with the mold that we are trying to put them in.
So I believe that children who exhibit ADHD behaviors exist, obviously.
Sure, my sons do, and they exist.
I do, and I exist, last I checked.
What I don't believe is that those behaviors are disordered.
See that?
That's, again, my issue is with the D here.
Disordered.
In order to call something disordered, you must first have an idea of what the proper order is.
So what's the proper order for a child?
How is a child supposed to be?
How is he supposed to act?
How is he supposed to think?
You say an ADHD child thinks the wrong way.
Well, what's the right way?
Who decided that?
An ADHD child has a lot of trouble focusing on schoolwork.
Okay?
Who's to say he's supposed to be able to do that?
Who's to say that he should be able to do that?
Someone, maybe if you could show me, what is the model brain that we're basing all this on?
If you're saying that a child has a deficiency of attention, well, how much attention is he supposed to have?
Show me the child who all the other kids are supposed to be like.
What are we judging this against?
And who decided that?
So don't tell me, oh, the doctor's decided it?
Who gave them that authority?
Yeah, a doctor can look and physically diagnose things, but who gives them the authority to decide how a child is supposed to think?
And how he's supposed to learn?
And why have we ceded those kinds of judgments over to medicine?
That's philosophical, is what that is.
It's a lot of other things, too, but it's also philosophical.
I suggest, again, that the real disorder is with the system.
I would argue that if there's an education system that cannot function unless millions of the kids in its care are drugged, then the education system is fatally flawed.
That, to me, is a symptom of the education system being disordered.
So I'm going to be the doctor now looking at the education system and diagnosing it And when I look and see that you can't function, this doesn't work, unless millions of kids are on psychotropic medication.
Yeah, that tells me there's something wrong here.
There's something very wrong, and it's not with our kids.
It's with the system.
And what they're doing now, during the lockdown, is just evidence of that.
They're locking these kids down, making them go to school on a computer, and if it doesn't work, they put them on drugs.
It is infuriating and disgusting.
And we should all be furious about it.
So, who's cancelled?
Everybody.
Everybody involved.
This is a very general one.
ADHD.
Maybe that's what's cancelled here.
And we'll leave it there for today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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