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Feb. 23, 2021 - The Matt Walsh Show
52:38
Ep. 664 - The Hollow People

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Joe Biden’s Attorney General nominee claims that domestic terrorism doesn’t count when it happens at night. We’ll talk about that and some of his other bizarre statements during his confirmation hearing. Plus Five Headlines including the head of the American Federation of Teachers arrogantly waving away concerns about the well-being of children. Also, Coca-Cola continues its damage control efforts after its racist anti-white indoctrination of employees was revealed. And in our Daily Cancellation, we’ll discuss a recent study which claims that left wing female politicians are the primary targets of abuse and harassment online. Is there any truth to that? No, there isn’t, but we’ll discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Joe Biden's Attorney General nominee claims that domestic terrorism doesn't count when it happens at night.
We'll talk about that and some of his other bizarre statements during his confirmation hearings.
Plus, five headlines, including the head of the American Federation of Teachers arrogantly waving away concerns about the well-being of children.
Also, Coca-Cola Continues its damage control efforts after its racist anti-white indoctrination of employees was revealed.
And in our daily cancellation, we'll discuss a recent study which claims that left-wing female politicians are the primary targets of abuse and harassment online.
Is there any truth to that?
No, there isn't.
But we'll discuss all of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
[MUSIC]
Yesterday, Joe Biden's Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland began his
confirmation hearings.
Biden aims to give Garland the Attorney General position as kind of a runner-up prize after the Senate Republicans famously and correctly chose not to give him a hearing as a SCOTUS nominee in 2016, a decision that remains one of the Republican Party's greatest achievements of the 21st century, which probably tells you what you need to know about the Republican Party in the 21st century.
In any case, Garland did get a hearing this time.
Now, normally, a confirmation hearing for a cabinet official is the last thing that I would waste time talking about on this show.
Not because it doesn't matter, but because, frankly, I find it incredibly boring.
This hearing has been no exception to the incredibly boring rule, though there have been a couple of clarifying and perhaps instructive moments to come out of the otherwise painfully dull spectacle.
Moments that clarify and instruct because they reveal just what sorts of people we have ruling over us.
And that is hollow people, empty people, the sorts of people who C.S.
Lewis described as men without chests.
Now, before we get to the two exchanges that capture this so clearly, I want to play one other brief clip that was interesting for a different reason.
Here, Garland is talking to Cory Booker about the incident at the Capitol on January 6th.
And I want you to pay attention to what Garland says.
Listen.
Is this something that you will look at in terms of the degree of the resources of the agency?
Yeah, as I said, I think the first thing I should do as part of my briefings on the Capitol bombing are briefings with Director Wray as to where he sees the biggest threat and whether the resources of the Bureau and of the Department are allocated towards the biggest threat and the most dangerous and direct threat.
We do have to be careful across the board.
We can never, you know, Wait, the what now?
somebody sneak around the end because we're not focusing but we also have to
allocate our resources towards the biggest threat.
Wait, the what now? The Capitol bombing?
You might say this was a slip of the tongue and maybe so but it does raise an
The Capitol was not bombed on January 6th.
Nothing was bombed.
However, there were two bombs placed outside of both the RNC and DNC headquarters.
Originally, we were told that these bombs were put there during the chaos, during the riots, by a rioter.
Now we know that it happened the night before.
The bombs have always been tied, and by the media are still tied, to the riot as part of the media's effort to make the riot sound as insurrection-y as possible.
And yes, that's a real word.
I just decided.
But it doesn't seem like they had anything to do with each other, given that the bombs were put there the night before.
So, who did put the bombs there?
I mean, now that you bring up the bombs, who put them there?
What was that all about?
It's a month and a half later.
We still don't know?
How can that be?
Someone put bombs outside RNC and DNC headquarters in the middle of Washington, D.C.
There's been an army of federal agents working this case, and they still don't know who did it?
Cameras, DNA, fingerprints, witnesses?
These lines of evidence have produced no results?
How could that be?
Of course, the other possibility is that they do know who did it, but they aren't publicizing that fact for whatever reason.
Anyway, that's a bit of a sidetrack.
Let's go to a different clip now that gets closer to the point for our purposes today.
Here is Senator Hawley questioning Garland about the Antifa-slash-BLM rioting and asking whether those riots qualify as domestic terror attacks.
And here's Garland's answer to that.
Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington DC, Portland for instance, Seattle.
Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal property as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism?
Senator, my own definition, which is about the same as the statutory definition, is the use of violence or threats of violence in an attempt to disrupt democratic processes.
So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is Domestic extremism, domestic terrorism, an attack simply on a government property at night or any other kind of circumstances is a clear crime and a serious one and should be punished.
I don't know enough about the facts of the example you're talking about, but that's where I draw the line.
One is, both are criminal, but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions.
Wait a second, I'm sorry, what?
If I'm hearing this correctly, it sounded like he just claimed that the definition of domestic terrorism depends on the time of day?
Yes, that is what he said, isn't it?
Am I hallucinating?
Or did the guy who's going to be Attorney General just say that it doesn't count as domestic terrorism if you do it at night?
I guess this means the 9-11 attacks wouldn't have been terrorism had they occurred a few hours earlier.
Now, one might argue that attempting to, for example, burn down a courthouse at night is also an attempt to interfere with its normal operations during the day.
I don't think the BLM terrorists had in mind that the courthouse or any other building that they attempted to torch or succeeded in torching would be rebuilt in six hours.
What about the police station in Minneapolis that was invaded and then set on fire and incinerated?
Yeah, that happened at night, but there were police occupying it and working inside it until they fled for their lives.
Does that count as interrupting the democratic process?
I'd say that setting a police station on fire is a bit of an interruption.
Call me crazy.
But this is what we get from guys like Garland.
Bureaucrats.
You know, empty suits, empty heads.
They don't even bother to be convincing.
He offered the lamest possible rationalization for exempting Antifa and BLM from the domestic terrorist label.
He wasn't even putting effort into it.
Well, no, see, they're at night, so it's different.
And it doesn't matter, because when you have the institutions on your side, you don't have to lie convincingly.
Speaking of lame responses, nothing can beat this.
Here's Garland when asked whether males should be allowed to take part in female sports.
Here's what he said.
I just want to know what you believe.
Allowing biological males to compete in an all-female sport deprives women of the opportunity to participate fully and fairly in sports and is fundamentally unfair to female athletes.
This is a very difficult societal question that you're asking here.
I know what underlies it.
I know, but you're going to be Attorney General.
I may not be the one who has to make policy decisions like that, but it's not that I'm adverse to it.
Look, I think every human being should be treated with dignity and respect.
That's an overriding sense of my own character, but an overriding sense of what the law requires.
The particular question of how Title IX applies in schools is one, and in light of the Bostick
case, which I know you're very familiar with, is something that I would have to look at
when I have a chance to do that.
I've not had the chance to consider these kinds of issues in my career so far.
But I agree that this is a difficult question.
Thank you, Judge.
No.
No, it's not.
It's not a difficult question at all.
It is, in fact, the easiest question society has ever faced.
I can't think of an easier one.
There are some issues that are difficult because good arguments can be made on either side of them.
Even if you fall firmly on one side of an issue of that sort, the difficult sort of issue, you still have to admit that the people on the other side are making respectable, intelligent, even compelling arguments.
The death penalty, for example, is an issue that you might call difficult because there are respectable, intelligent, coherent arguments you can make on either side of it.
Those are truly difficult societal questions.
This question, though, is not difficult.
It's not difficult because all of the coherent arguments are on one side.
The people in favor of putting males in female sports, or female locker rooms for that matter, have never made a single good argument.
That's not an exaggeration.
It's not hyperbole.
They've just never made a good argument.
There is no good argument.
It's never been offered.
It's never been discovered.
They have not offered one compelling reason to convince us to go along with their plan.
Their argument is simply to shout the word bigot and then rattle off a series of bumper sticker slogans.
Like you just heard him there do there.
Well, I think all people should be treated with dignity and respect.
What the hell does that have to do with this?
Yes, of course, everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.
Obviously.
That has nothing to do with this question.
And if it does have anything to do with the question, then it relates to the fact that we should treat these girls with dignity and respect by not letting men, boys, into their locker rooms.
See, the people on that side of it, they have never made an argument that can be stated in the form of, I believe that X is the proper course of action for the following reasons.
That's basically the form that a real argument should take.
Here's what I believe, here are my reasons for believing it.
It's never been done.
Because they're wrong on every level.
Morally, ethically, scientifically, logically.
This is not difficult.
Garland may as well say it's difficult when I ask him whether flying, fire-breathing dragons exist.
Well, the issue of whether these creatures from fantasy novels exist in real life is deeply controversial and far too difficult to determine one way or another.
I'd really have to research it further before I can speak on any length on this issue.
But Garland perfectly represents many of our bureaucrats, politicians, members of the ruling class.
It's not that they're radical ideologues, okay?
This is something that I think sometimes people on the right don't fully understand or miss the real point.
Now, some of them are radical ideologues, sure, but not all, or even most.
They are merely empty, hollow, spineless nothings.
They have attached themselves like barnacles onto the system.
They care only for power, power for its own sake.
This gender stuff is the perfect illustration.
How many Democratic officials, I ask you, how many Democratic officials and politicians actually believe in left-wing gender theory?
How many guys like Garland?
Garland is whatever, 97 years old, he's been doing this forever.
Do you think he really believes this?
Do you think he actually, in his heart and mind, thinks that a 17-year-old boy who says he's a girl should be treated like one?
How many guys like Garland?
I'd wager the answer to that question is close to zero.
But they're happy to go along with the insanity and facilitate it and impose it on the rest of us if it means that they can cling to their positions of power.
The best example of this is the guy at the top, Joe Biden himself.
He's not a radical.
He's not an ideologue.
He's not an antifa sympathizer deep in his soul.
But he's happy to play that role.
Happy to let the radicals run roughshod over our culture, inflicting whatever damage they're going to inflict.
It's okay with him.
Because he has the power.
Power for its own sake.
That's all that these people care about.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
[MUSIC]
Speaking of empty, pathetic, soulless people, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten,
was asked if shutting schools for a year or more will do permanent damage to our children.
It's clear that Randy Weingarten isn't too concerned about that.
It's already been clear that the teachers' union doesn't care about the damage that they're doing to kids.
But to hear it so explicitly acknowledged can be maybe even a little shocking.
So let's listen to this.
Is there a point, and maybe you think we've already passed it, is there a point in which kids have been out of physical in-person school for so long that the education that they've lost isn't really recoverable?
That the third grade, the fourth grade, the kindergarten they lost, they can take extra semesters in the summer, they can do, but it can't really be fixed.
No, I don't believe that.
I believe that kids are resilient and kids will recover, but we as adults have to meet their needs, their emotional needs, their social needs, their learning needs.
And that's who America's educators are.
That's who America's bus drivers are.
That's who America's paraprofessionals are.
That's who America's food service workers are.
And we are pained about what has happened in this pandemic, the crises that have enveloped our kids, our communities, ourselves.
But at the end of the day, we have to believe that this is recoverable.
And we have to believe that virtually all our kids will thrive with the opportunities that we put before them.
We have to believe.
We have to believe it.
Is it true?
Well, it's a different question entirely, but we have to believe it.
What an absolute nothing of a person you just saw there.
She was giving a stump speech.
This is, she's a teacher's union.
This is the issue that she's been, has been knee deep in now for a year.
And she's asked to talk about the kids and the effect this is having on kids.
And that's all she's got.
She's got a stump speech.
She has nothing to say.
It's like she hasn't thought about it at all, because she hasn't, because she doesn't care.
She's not thinking about what this is doing to kids.
She couldn't give less of a damn.
So she gives a stump speech, like a politician giving a campaign speech.
That's what our food service professionals are all about.
What?
What does that have to do with anything?
That's who our food service prof- Who asked about food service professionals?
What are you talking about?
I wish just once I'd watch an interview like this and the person giving the interview would react like that.
This is why I don't get the interviews.
Just interrupt her and say, hey, listen, you're babbling right now.
Can you speak to me like a human being?
Are you capable of that?
Now, she says that kids are resilient.
Well, kids are resilient.
They'll be fine.
Would it be OK?
I couldn't give that response about teachers?
We can't put teachers back in the class and say, teachers are resilient.
They'll figure it out.
Of course, we know that a lot of teachers are not resilient.
That much is clear.
But this idea that kids are resilient, and so they'll be okay, and we can take away a year of education or two years, and we can psychologically traumatize them and tell them that there's a disease out there that's going to kill them, and we have to muzzle them when they're out in public, and we can do all that.
We can deprive them of not just physical contact with other people, but even the opportunity to see the faces of strangers out in public.
A lot of kids, they have not seen a stranger's face in public in a year.
But we can do that because they're resilient, we're told by this person.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
We say kids are resilient.
They're not resilient so much as adaptive.
Okay, I don't think resilient is exactly the right word because resilient makes it sound like you could do whatever you want to a child and they'll bounce back and be fine.
That is not true.
They are adaptive though.
They adapt very quickly to almost any situation.
And that could be a great advantage with kids.
We're all like that as kids.
We kind of need to be like that.
Especially as children, we're going out into the big wide world.
We don't really... As a young child, you don't really know anything about the world.
And so you have to kind of go with the flow.
And so kids can do that.
But there's also a dark side to that.
To that adaptability of children.
Is that...
Whatever's happening to them, they'll accept it as normal.
They're not going to question it because they're kids.
And they're going to say, well, this is just what it's supposed to be.
That's why a lot of kids who are being horribly abused don't tell anybody.
Because they don't understand that this isn't supposed to happen to them.
They figure, oh, mommy and daddy treat me like this.
This is just what mommy and daddies do.
This is what it means to be a person.
This is what it means to be a kid.
I deserve this.
This is what kids are saying to themselves.
And this is why they don't come forward.
It's why they endure the abuse for so long and don't tell anybody.
They'll just bounce back?
It's not affecting them?
Not at all.
All it means is that the real effect is something that they're not able to deal with right now, but they're going to be in therapy for the rest of their lives dealing with it as adults.
I worry about that a lot with what's happening right now with all the lockdowns and everything and schools being shut down.
I worry about how adapted our kids are to it.
They simply accept it as normal.
This is the world now.
Education is something that we can take away for a year.
It's no big deal.
We wear masks when we go out in public.
We're afraid to talk to strangers.
We're afraid to be around other people.
It's dangerous to be on a playground.
That's why they got them covered in caution tape.
Kids adapt to that and they say, well, that's just how it is.
That's normal.
It's not normal.
It's not how it's supposed to be.
But they're being conditioned to see it that way.
And that is doing enormous damage to them, and it's damage that they won't fully understand themselves until they're adults.
It's damaging them in ways that they certainly don't understand and we don't understand.
And we won't even begin to understand until years down the line.
That's the reality.
But I'm saying this as someone who actually gives a damn about what happens to our kids.
The people that are running teachers' unions, they don't care at all about our kids.
They're sociopaths.
All right, this is from Newsweek.
Newsweek, Coca-Cola facing mounting backlash from conservatives online has responded to
allegations of anti-white rhetoric after an internal whistleblower leaked screenshots
of diversity training materials that encourages staff to try to be less white.
By the way, starting here in the very first sentence, you notice how Newsweek says that
it's conservatives who are the ones who are causing this backlash over the anti-white
racism for Coca-Cola.
Now, that's correct.
It is mostly conservatives.
But you see how readily the media admits that conservatives are the only ones who care about racism against white people.
The media will readily accept, in fact is happy to give that issue to conservatives.
On Friday, it's back to the articles, it says, on Friday, Carolyn Burinsenko, an activist who supports banning critical race theory, shared images from an internal whistleblower of the company's online racism training.
The slides included tips to learners on how to be less white, less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, less ignorant, and more humble.
Because, of course, we know that, you know, that's synonymous with white, is being arrogant, And all those other things.
Now, so this is the part you probably heard about all this.
A Coca-Cola spokesperson confirmed that the course is part of a learning plan to help build an inclusive workforce, but also noted that, quote, the video circulating on social media is from a publicly available LinkedIn learning series and is not a focus of our company's curriculum.
They said, our Better Together global learning curriculum is part of a learning plan to help build an inclusive workforce.
It is comprised of a number of short vignettes, each a few minutes long.
The training includes access to LinkedIn learning on a variety of topics, including on diversity, equity and inclusion.
OK, so that's that's your classic non denial denial.
Because they're saying, they're not coming out and saying, this is totally made up and photoshopped.
It's not real.
They're saying, yeah, this is part of the curriculum.
It's just, that's not our focus.
We're not focused on that part of it.
Well, if we want to know whether that excuse should wash, then all we have to do is like, I always say with something like this, if you want to know whether it's racist and if it's not immediately clear to you, like something like this should be, all you have to do is take white out and put another race in.
So if Coca-Cola was putting their employees through a training course that at any point included the instruction to be less black, there would be no controversy at all.
We wouldn't be calling this a controversy.
There'd be nothing like that.
Around, just everybody would agree, across all aisles would agree that it's inexcusable racism.
And it's racism, by the way.
Just straightforward racism.
Because the other thing that I've seen in response to this Coca-Cola story is the claim that this is reverse racism.
In fact, there are still some... I think most conservatives have wised up on this issue, but there are still some conservatives that I've seen saying, this is reverse racism.
Coca-Cola is committing reverse racism.
No, this is not reverse racism.
Let's be clear about that.
Coca-Cola is not guilty of reverse racism.
They are guilty of racism.
Straightforward, regular old racism.
There's no such thing as reverse racism.
There's just racism.
That's it.
Reverse racism implies, when you say reverse racism, you're surrendering the point.
You're ceding ground.
You're agreeing with the left's premise that racism itself is a white thing.
And that white people own racism.
And so if a black person or if a non-white person is racist, all they're doing is reversing the racism.
Which has a hint, the phrase itself has a hint of kind of giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Right?
Or just, we're reversing the racism back on you.
There's no race that owns racism.
Racism is racism.
Reverse racism is not a thing.
This is simply racism.
All right, this is from The Independent.
It says, a South African farm owner has been strongly criticized after posing with the heart of a giraffe that she shot and killed during a trophy hunting trip earlier this month.
In a series of photos posted on her Facebook page, the 32-year-old was shown clutching the bloodied organ.
She wrote in the caption, ever wondered how big a giraffe's heart is?
I'm absolutely over the moon with my big Valentine's present.
So she was brought by her, I don't know if it's her husband or her boyfriend, as a Valentine's gift to go shoot a giraffe and cut its heart out.
Everyone has their own ideas of romance.
That's not my wife's idea of romance.
If I told her her Valentine's gift, she'd get to cut an animal's heart out.
Would be very concerned but let's see it says in a separate Facebook post she said she has been waiting to hunt a big black giraffe bull since 2016 and was pictured holding a gun next to the lifeless body of a large giraffe and then etc and so forth and of course there's been a huge backlash this was trending online and she's getting I think probably all of the the reaction that she expected And I guess partly wanted, that's why she posted the pictures in the first place.
I'm realizing as I read this story that there's nothing I can say about it that won't get me in trouble.
I'm not the guy to comment on any animal rights type issues because I care so little about those issues.
Now, with trophy hunting, for one, I don't know a lot about trophy hunting, so I'll admit that from the start.
One thing I will say is that if you're going out and killing an animal, As a trophy and whatever, whatever, cutting its head off and mounting it on the wall.
And then all of the meat and everything goes to waste.
I don't think hunters are doing that, but if that's what's happening, I'd be totally against that.
My understanding with trophy hunting is that these animals are, the meat is then given to the villagers and so there's food provided.
And if that's what happens in the case of trophy hunting, if there's food being provided to people who need it, I got no problem with it.
As long as it's not a waste.
As long as you're not wasting an animal's life for no reason other than taking a picture.
I think we all should be against that.
But you're harvesting the meat, you're feeding hungry people, human beings who need the food, I got no problem with that.
And I'm always going to go back to the fact, anytime there's outrage over an animal being killed, you know, I can't help but think that we are a country where a million human babies are murdered every single year.
And I don't see how we have the time to talk about animals being killed given that.
I think whatever effort or energy anyone is putting into animal rights, all of that should be directed towards unborn children who are being slaughtered.
60 million since Roe v. Wade.
Until we stop that from happening, I don't think we have the time to worry about animals who are being killed.
That's my perspective.
I know you could say we could do both.
Yeah, but the issue of 60 million babies being slaughtered, 60 million, so vastly outweighs the concerns of animal rights that I don't see how we can do both, frankly.
All right, let's see.
NBC News reports an explosive prop being built for a gender-reveal party accidentally detonated and killed a father-to-be in New York State.
The tragic mishap occurred in Sullivan County Village of Liberty.
And this was, let's see, Christopher Peckney, 28.
He died in the blast.
His brother was injured.
And this was not actually at the gender-reveal party.
They were building the prop and testing it so that they could then bring it to the gender-reveal party, and this tragic accident occurred.
This, I think, is the second gender-reveal death in the last couple of weeks.
And those two are not the only.
I mean, this is something that we see every spring, basically.
It seems to be a seasonal thing.
Every spring and summer.
We see these stories.
Gender reveal, cannons, gender reveal, pyrotechnics and everything, fireworks going off, people dying, forest fires being set.
When are we going to get to a point where we're done with this?
I'm not necessarily asking for the government to step in and ban gender reveal parties.
I don't think we're quite at that point, but as a society, I think we should Be ready to move on from gender-reveal parties.
Really, one person dying because of a gender-reveal party is way too much.
That is a cost not worth paying.
But when you've got multiple deaths and forest fires starting every year because of gender-reveal parties, come on.
And what it comes down to is, you have to keep in mind, if you're thinking of staging a gender-reveal party, and even if you're not involving any pyrotechnics, which hopefully you aren't, Nobody really cares about the gender of your child.
Your friends and family, they care about the fact that you're having a baby.
That's a wonderful thing.
But they don't have a preference for what gender it is.
They don't really care that much.
So this idea of dramatically revealing the gender, and then everyone has to be excited either way.
It seems like the most useless sort of pageantry.
Save all the celebration for the birth and all that kind of stuff.
It's exciting to have a baby.
Congratulations, but I don't think the gender reveal parties are.
Have much point to them.
Five, finally, Cancungate, the lamest political scandal of the modern era, has not gone away just yet.
Some activists showed up outside of Ted Cruz's house to play mariachi music as a way of trolling him for going to Cancun for less than 24 hours.
Let's listen to a little bit of that.
But here it is.
So they're standing around playing mariachi music outside of Ted Cruz's house.
Just two quick points.
Number one, mariachi music, every time I hear it, I am shocked anew by how terrible it is.
It is the worst genre of music.
I'm sorry, but it simply is.
I can't tell you how many nice dinners at Mexican restaurants have been ruined because of mariachi music.
It is really, really bad music.
It's like polka music level.
It's that tier of the dregs of music genres.
That's the first thing, which actually makes it, I guess, effective trolling because it's so terrible.
And the second thing is, if you're worried that Ted Cruz is not contributing enough, not helping out enough with getting Texas back and running after the disaster last week, if you're worried about that, then maybe you should be chipping in and going to volunteer somewhere instead of standing around Ted Cruz's house playing mariachi music.
See, you're worried Ted Cruz isn't doing anything.
You're standing outside of his house either holding a sign or playing terrible music.
So get your own house in order.
Stop throwing stones when you're living in that glass house with the terrible music.
All right, let's go to our comments.
Now we go to our most recent beloved segment, reading the YouTube comments.
This is from username The Q&A.
He says, a better name for these new Puritans would be Impuritans.
We discussed yesterday, the left is, they're the new Puritans.
Impuritans, I like that.
And I will steal it.
And I'll tell you right now, I'm not gonna give you credit.
This is from username, I look like the word lacrosse.
That's the username.
Walsh, I have to admit, I tried out your burrito recipe and it was actually pretty good.
Well, thanks for trying it out and I guess really you should be thanking me because I'm the one who gave you that delicious recipe.
If you haven't seen my burrito recipe yet, you can go to Instagram or on YouTube, my YouTube channel and find, I did kind of a, there was a viral burrito recipe.
And I did my own version of it and I think rave reviews from everyone who's tried it, so you should go check that out.
John Kirkwood writes, the original Puritans wouldn't celebrate Christmas either.
The Puritans feared that somewhere someone was having fun.
You nailed it, Matt.
Well, I think that's probably a gross simplification of the Puritans and what they believed.
I believe it's true that they didn't celebrate Christmas, but actually the word Puritan It comes from purified.
They were trying to purify.
What were they trying to purify?
What they were primarily wanting to purify is Christianity of Catholicism.
They were very anti-Catholic and they wanted to purify Catholic influence in Christianity.
That's where the name comes from.
And being anti-Catholic, I guess that's another thing they have in common with the modern left, in fact.
This is from Gullwings.
He writes, Our whole lives we have appropriated literally everything that's ever existed.
That's how we survived.
This generation didn't discover fire, farming, cars.
You can name anything, really.
We've been creating and improving on past creations and inventions.
If you have a better tequila recipe, then by all means, appropriate it and improve it and sell it.
We all win when there are more choices in the market.
This is all absolutely absurd.
It is.
That's very well stated.
These are all things, this is how society, this is how cultures develop, society evolves through influencing each other.
You know, there was a time, long ago it seems now, When the claim was that we wanted America to be a melting pot, and so all different cultures would come here and we would assimilate and influence each other and it would be one big happy family.
That was the claim.
And in fact, people that were advocates for immigration, so like the left-wingers of 30 years ago, that's what they said.
You'll notice though, they don't talk about the melting pot anymore.
They don't want a melting pot.
No, they want people to come here and then set up their own segregated communities with no influence from the outside world.
So that there is no one, unified, coherent America.
That's their goal.
And they're succeeding.
Finally, Dave says, come on, Matt, you can't hide from me forever.
As a fellow banjo player, I have to hear you play the banjo just so I can find out how pathetically inferior your banjo skills are to mine.
If you continue to ignore me, you will be canceled.
Well, first of all, I've played the banjo before on the air.
I'm not going to be goaded to playing it again.
First of all, I'm not a trained monkey here to amuse you.
I mean, I am here to amuse you, and some would say that I'm basically a trained monkey, but still, that's not the point.
Second of all, I play the banjo every day, alright?
All day.
In my heart.
The banjo music of my heart.
That's what matters.
The most.
Third of all, you are a disgrace.
And a scoundrel.
And you're banned from the show.
You know, one thing we desperately need in our country, in our culture today, are companies out there that are working for us in the culture, not against us.
And that's why I'm so grateful for 40 Days for Life.
The state of our culture frustrates all of us.
We have politicians lobbying for infanticide, and we have, you know, Far left, we know all of that going on.
But you know where I see real progress is at the grassroots level in 40 Days for Life.
And I've talked about this many times.
This is the fact that we have to focus on the most localized level possible, work in our own communities, try to get a handle on that.
We have no hope of making any changes on a national scale if we can't make changes on a local scale.
First, 40 Days for Life, that's what they're all about.
40 Days for Life went from one peaceful prayer vigil in the front of a Planned Parenthood in Texas to now 1,000 cities in 66 countries.
40 days of prayer, fasting, and law-abiding vigils have saved 18,000 babies from abortion.
They're saving lives.
They're making a real difference.
They've helped 211 abortion workers leave their jobs.
They've closed 107 abortion facilities, including The Texas location that now serves as the headquarters for 40 Days for Life.
So they shut down an abortion facility and they took it over and they turned it into the headquarters to fight for life, which is just awesome.
You can be a part of the beginning of the end of abortion by joining one million volunteers and sign up for your location at 40daysforlife.com.
You can also stay updated on the number one pro-life podcast, 40 Days for Life.
The largest spring campaign ever is happening from February 17th through March 28th.
So it's going on right now.
You got to get involved.
I have, you know, been a big supporter and fan of 40 Days for Life for a long time.
I can vouch for this organization and you want to be a part too.
So don't wait for Washington to heal our culture.
Go to work in our neighborhood at 40daysforlife.com.
Also, join us tomorrow, February 24th, for this month's Backstage.
You know, we enter 2021 with our debut into the world of entertainment and we've kept the big news coming.
It's pretty busy already.
It's only the year is less than two months old.
Most recently, we announced our movie deal with Gina Carano.
We'll be talking about current events and all of our Daily Wire highlights of the month.
And as always, we'll be taking questions from our members at this week's Backstage.
So make sure you go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join us before Backstage starts so you can ask questions And maybe get on air with your question.
We'll also be talking about Ben Shapiro's new series, Debunked.
There are so many narratives around hot topic issues, it's hard to keep track of all the newest controversies that the left decides to get offended by, which is why you're going to want to tune into Debunked to see Ben expose leftist fallacies in 15 minutes or less, climate change, universal health care, COVID policies, all of that.
Versus facts and logic.
Ben's new show will be available exclusively to Daily Wire members.
So if you aren't already a member, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code debunked to get 25% off.
The reasons to join Daily Wire keep piling up.
So use code debunked for 25% off today.
Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
So today we're going to cancel the LA Times for this article from Noah Bierman titled, Black, female, and high-profile, Kamala Harris is a top target in online fever swamps.
The article is meant to perpetuate the myth that left-wing women, especially left-wing non-white women, are special victims of abuse and harassment online.
Of course, there's no doubt that they are targeted for abuse and harassment online.
Everyone is.
The more high-profile you are, the more of a target you become.
Nobody doubts this.
But the claim is that women of color, to use the momentarily preferred PC moniker, are more often victims of this kind of treatment than anyone else.
The reasons that the media is so determined to push this narrative, I think, are pretty obvious.
For one thing, if left-wing minority women are most often victimized by online harassment, that would mean that white right-wing males, presumably, are most often the ones committing online harassment.
Of course, in reality, women harass each other way more often than men harass women, but we're talking about the media narrative here and what they want us to believe.
The media is eager for any opportunity to cast their most despised group in the villain role.
So that's one thing.
For another thing, this is all part of the ongoing effort by the media and the Democrat Party to push social media and the social media platforms to ramp up their censorship.
And that's made clear at the very start in the article.
It says, quote, Soon after Joe Biden announced last year that he would pick a woman as his running mate, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier began warning Facebook executives.
Female politicians received the most vile online attacks, and the company's filters were failing to stop them.
Speier said, we showed them 20 examples that were disgusting, and they were still up.
She was talking about a meeting with Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook.
Facebook's response gave her a little comfort.
Keep sending us these horrific examples, she said executives told her, and we'll take them down.
Spire's concerns that the first female vice president would attract outsized assaults and venomous lies from social media's ugliest players have now been validated.
Research shows that Kamala Harris may be the most targeted American politician on the internet, one who checks every box for the haters of the fever swamps.
She's a woman, she's a person of color, and she holds power.
Okay, now, already we know that this cannot be true.
The idea that Kamala Harris attracts more venom than Donald Trump is absurd on its face.
There cannot possibly be a more targeted American politician on the internet than Donald Trump.
The only way they could justify this claim is if they hinge it on the technicality that Donald Trump is out of office at the moment, so he isn't technically a politician.
But even putting Trump aside, is Kamala Harris more targeted than, say, Ted Cruz?
And what do we mean by targeted?
What counts as abuse and harassment?
What is meant by venomous lies?
Well, let's keep reading.
It says, quote, abuse directed at women is highly personalized, often attacking them based on their appearance and denigrating their intelligence, said Cecile Gorin, a researcher in London at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that seeks to counter extremism, disinformation, and polarization.
She said, it's also more likely to imply that they should quit politics and that they don't belong in the public space.
Oh, abuse directed at women is highly personalized, you say?
Yes, as opposed to abuse directed at men, which we all know is not personal at all.
It wasn't personal when Trump was called fat and ugly approximately 7 million times a day on the internet.
7 million by my count, anyway, and my counting method isn't any less scientific than whatever method they're using.
There are currently hundreds of memes comparing Mitch McConnell to a turtle.
That's an attack based on appearance.
It's also kind of true, but that's beside the point.
And the claim that women are uniquely insulted based on their intelligence is, well, the kind of claim that only a person of low intelligence could believe.
Woman or man.
More from the article, it says, Gorin led a recent study that did not include Harris, but showed that American female politicians were two to three times more likely to receive abusive Twitter comments than male counterparts.
Such findings elevate widespread concerns that women still significantly underrepresented in political and corporate offices will avoid or give up leadership jobs that leave them vulnerable to online abuse.
It certainly discourages women from getting engaged in politics, Spire said, given worries about family and personal safety.
Okay.
A study.
Well, here we go.
It should be clear to you by now that whenever a study is referenced in a mainstream media article, the person making the reference is counting on you not actually reading the study.
That's the great thing about studies.
Many people seem to think that a point can be proven simply by saying the word study.
The word study is enough.
This is what passes for an argument nowadays.
Oh yeah, you don't believe me?
Well, a study says I'm right.
Oh, a study?
Well, if the study says it, then never mind!
I happen to be one of those annoying people who actually wants to read the study.
See, when you tell me about a study, I'm going to say, I want to see it.
Show me the study.
I'm going to read it myself.
And in reading studies, I have found, and I have no studies to prove this, I admit, but I've found that most studies are, to put this scientifically, bullcrap.
Keep in mind that you can call anything a study.
There's no required standard methodology for a study.
That's why reading the study itself is so important.
So let me read a bit of this study to you.
The title of the study is Public Figures, Public Rage, Candidate Abuse on Social Media.
That's the title.
Skipping ahead to page 12, it says, We analyzed the language most often used to target candidates over the 11-day period of study and extracted a list of surprising keywords and phrases for each individual in a three-step process.
1.
We obtained 20 keywords by contrasting the data from tweets to a sample of standard English Wikipedia data, helping identify uncommon vocabulary.
Two, we extracted 20 keywords by contrasting the individual of interest's Twitter data with that of other candidates to identify language specifically targeting that person.
Three, we filtered these 40 keywords out through a blacklist likely to generate background noise.
For this research, we blacklisted the terms Trump, COVID, the individual's name and common aliases, political party names, and common state names.
We ordered keywords and phrases by their degree of unexpectedness and selected the top 20.
Now, what?
What does any of that mean?
Degree of unexpectedness?
How the hell do you measure that?
I mean, doesn't this whole process sound extremely arbitrary and subjective?
They're also only taking into account public comments made to these figures.
In my experience, by far the worst abuse comes through email and private message.
Any study of online abuse that doesn't factor private messages is pretty worthless, it would seem.
It's like measuring the amount of bullying in school but not counting gym class or the cafeteria.
Those are like the bullying factories.
You can't take that out of it.
At any rate, on the next page is a table listing keywords and phrases used to target candidates.
Here are some of the keywords and phrases for Ilhan Omar.
Shameful.
Defund the police.
And Somalia.
Wow, how abusive.
Now for Nancy Pelosi.
Hypocrites.
Unverified.
Antifa.
Yes, apparently to call out a woman's hypocrisy, or to say that her claims are unverified, is abusive now.
The study then gives real-world examples of abusive comments made to Nancy Pelosi.
So here's one.
This is an actual abusive comment that the study shows, and this shows us what they consider to be abusive.
So somebody, some abusive scoundrel, said to Nancy Pelosi, she's not doing a very good job.
Better get on that, Nan.
Here's one to Ilhan Omar.
She's an anti-American.
She's as anti-American and anti-constitutional as they come.
This is a Republican, a Republic, not a democracy.
If she doesn't understand that, she'll never understand the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
That's the abuse.
But no, this is not abuse.
This is not harassment.
This is called criticism.
She's not doing a good job is a very civilized, very understated, very polite way of criticizing a politician who, in fact, is not doing a good job.
The comment about Ilhan Omar is also a criticism, and also well-deserved.
But this is what the study, which spawned the LA Times article, categorizes as vile, anti-woman, misogynistic abuse.
Do you want to know what an actual abusive comment sounds like?
I'll give you one.
Here it is.
I know what city you in, white bitch.
You think you can keep talking behind your phone in tweets?
I'll smoke you, stupid ass.
Take care of your ugly ass white daughter.
That was a message sent to me recently, threatening to hunt me down and murder me along with my seven-year-old daughter.
That checks all the boxes, doesn't it?
Racist, insulting, explicitly threatening.
If you want a more recent example, here's one that came to my inbox just this morning.
I went online, first thing as I always do, have my cup of coffee, And, you know, starting today, I had the pleasure of reading this.
F you.
I hope you die like the rest of your pathetic ilk you support.
Now, pretty tame compared to a lot of the stuff I get, but even so, wishing death on me.
I've received literally thousands of messages, emails, and comments like this.
Thousands.
Threatening death.
Wishing death.
Threatening harm against my children.
Wishing harm against my children.
Comments merely mocking my appearance are so utterly banal at this point that I don't even notice them.
If I do notice them, I'm tempted to send a message back thanking the person because at least they didn't promise to burn down my house with my family trapped inside.
Compared to that kind of feedback, calling me ugly seems downright polite.
Now, do I receive more than my fair share of this kind of vitriol?
I don't know.
Probably not.
I have no way of knowing.
What I do know is that being a white male with a platform on the internet does not in any way protect you from, quote, abuse.
I can tell you that from experience.
Trust me.
Now the unfortunate thing is that the insistence on focusing on the gender and racial components of this issue, the effort to fit online harassment and abuse into the standard mainstream victimhood narrative, prevents us from having what could otherwise be a valuable and necessary conversation.
No, women are not specially targeted.
Black people are not specially targeted.
But they are targeted.
Everybody is.
And though many of the examples provided in the study are pretty trite, I have no doubt that, you know, the people that are mentioned in the study receive plenty of these sort of, I hope you die, go kill yourself type comments, just as I do.
We're used to people saying that kind of stuff on the internet.
I'm used to people telling me that they hope my family dies painfully because they disagree with my political opinions.
I'm used to it.
We're used to it.
But we shouldn't be.
I mean, it does say something quite disturbing about humanity that this is how we treat each other when we have the cloak of anonymity to protect us.
That's a conversation I would really like to have.
That's a conversation we should be having.
Because there are a lot of people who want to dismiss all of this and say, Oh, it's just the internet.
It doesn't count.
No, it's not just the internet.
These are people, the person who threatened to kill my seven-year-old daughter because he doesn't, he doesn't agree with my opinions.
That's an actual person.
Now he's not actually going to do it.
I'm not going to assume he's not going to do it.
I did, we did contact the police and we reported it because you make a threat against my family.
That's what's going to happen every time.
But, um, I'm not, I don't actually think he's going to do it.
Thousands of message of this sort.
Nobody, they don't really do it, but, but these are, these are people though behind these messages, actual people talking to other actual people.
The fact that they'll only speak this way on the internet, you know, that that doesn't make it better.
That only makes it worse.
Because what it tells you that is that on top of being vile scumbags, these are also cowards.
You know, you tell someone to kill themselves because you disagree with their opinion.
You would never say that to their face, but that's because you're a coward.
The fact that you would say it at all still makes you a vile, disgusting dirtbag.
And what we've discovered from the internet, which is maybe no big surprise, there are a lot, a lot of cowardly, vile, disgusting dirtbags out there.
They're not unique to one side or the other, but there are a lot of them.
That is a conversation I would like to have.
We should be having that conversation.
Not to push for censorship or anything like that, but just to say, what the hell is going on with humanity right now?
But we can't have it.
Because it always has to go down to race and gender and the standard victim of narratives.
And that's why the LA Times is cancelled.
And that'll do it for me today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review.
Also, tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show, The Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Walsh Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, our technical director is Austin Stevens, production manager Pavel Vodosky, the show is edited by Danny D'Amico, our audio is mixed by Mike Coromina, hair and makeup is done by Nika Geneva, and our production coordinator is McKenna Waters.
The Matt Walsh Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
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