Today on the Matt Walsh Show, now that the Cancel Mob has started canceling dead children’s authors, it is clear that eventually everyone will be canceled unless the madness stops. We’ll discuss that today. Plus, Five Headlines, including the FBI Director suspiciously refusing to provide any information about the death of Officer Sicknick, Texas lifts all COVID restrictions, and Joe Biden says that maybe, if we’re lucky, we can get back to normal next year.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, now that the cancel mob has started canceling dead children's authors, it's clear that eventually everybody will be canceled unless the madness stops.
We'll talk about that today.
Plus five headlines, including the FBI director suspiciously refusing to provide any information about the death of Officer Sicknick.
Plus Texas lifts all COVID restrictions.
And Joe Biden says that maybe if we're lucky, we can get back to normal next year.
All of that and much more today on the Matt Wall Show.
[MUSIC]
It's bad enough when the cancel vultures descend on some living person and
start ripping the flesh off their bones for some perceived offense,
whether recent or in the distant past.
I hate that kind of cancellation about as much as a person could possibly hate anything, but still not as much as I hate the cancellation of the dead.
Though you may say it isn't as bad because at least the person's no longer around to suffer the mob's wrath, there's still something so just supremely arrogant and gratuitous about staging a public show trial of a guy who's not here to defend himself and whose sins are being judged through a modern lens by people who don't understand and have no interest in trying to understand the historical context in which the dead man lived.
But such is the fate of Dr. Seuss.
As we discussed briefly yesterday, it began with some schools deciding to de-emphasize, not ban, they say, just de-emphasize Dr. Seuss books on the grounds that Seuss had racist views and some of his books contained images with racial undertones.
Then the National Education Association, according to USA Today, quote, pivoted from Dr. Seuss to a focus on diverse children's books.
Next, Joe Biden broke from Presidents Trump and Obama by leaving Seuss's name out of the National Read Across America Day proclamation.
And finally, Dr. Seuss Enterprises itself announced that it would stop publishing six Dr. Seuss titles, saying that the books contain images and messages that are, quote, hurtful and wrong.
Now, all of this happened In the span of a few days, Dr. Seuss went from a beloved children's author to problematic to pariah in about 48 hours.
Now, if you have a problem with any of this, the media is here to inform you that you're wrong.
And probably stupid.
An NBC article published this morning says, Well, that settles it.
Critics are condemning a decision to no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books, but experts say
a reckoning with his racist works is long overdue.
Well that settles it.
Experts said so.
Experts on what, though?
Who are the experts that we can call in to settle the question of whether the cat in the hat is turning our kids into white supremacists?
Well, NBC explains.
Here are the experts.
They say, quote, in Dr. Seuss's books, we have a kind of sensibility which is oriented toward centering the white child and de-centering everyone else, said Ebony Thompson, or rather Ebony Thomas, a professor of children's and young adult literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
She is the author of The Dark Fantastic Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games.
She continues, Dr. Seuss was shaped by a completely immersive white supremacist culture.
Even during that time, our ancestors and elders were protesting racist works and producing alternative stories for our children.
How do we decide what endures and what doesn't endure?
It's our responsibility to decide what kind of books to put in front of our kids.
The debate is a complicated one because it must tackle the fortitude of classic books while reckoning with the place of such stories in a world of diverse readers.
And then it says, a 2019 survey of Seuss's works found that just 2% of the human characters were people of color.
98% were white.
Okay, well, the last statistic there seems a little bit odd.
98% of Seuss's human characters are white and 2% are people of color.
Is it even obvious who the humans are supposed to be in a Dr. Seuss book?
I mean, it's clear where maybe the human, non-human line is drawn in a story like Cat in the Hat.
Okay, I get, like, you got the cat, then you got the kids.
But what about Green Eggs and Ham?
I mean, you tell me.
Like many Seuss characters, he appears to be, the main characters here appear to be some sort of monstrous human-dog-cat-alien hybrid in top hats.
Do the experts put him under the white umbrella or the person of color umbrella?
Is it racist to call?
The green eggs and ham thing white?
Or is it racist to call it a person of color?
These are all questions we must ask now, in a country that has completely lost its mind.
Now, in a sane country, we could just say, who cares?
It's a children's book.
Children have been reading this book for decades without a problem.
There is no problem here.
We don't need to make a problem where it doesn't exist.
Yes, Dr. Seuss had some objectionable views.
Yes, he drew some offensive pictures at certain points in his life.
Who cares?
None of that interferes with a child's ability to enjoy a story about the Sneetches or the Whos in Whoville.
Unless you make it interfere.
And we shouldn't.
Now, that is what a sane country would say.
But again, we don't live in that sort of country anymore.
Now, two additional points here.
We should always keep in mind, amid the current rush to posthumously cancel historical figures, from presidents all the way down to children's authors, that none of the hysteria hinges on new information.
It's not as though some series of breathtaking revelations has come to light.
Indiana Jones didn't open up a secret vault in some old temple somewhere, uncovering dark truths about the past of Dr. Seuss.
The Cancel Mob justifies tearing down the Thomas Jefferson statue, or taking Abraham Lincoln's name off of school, or banning the books of a suddenly problematic author, and demands that we do it all right now, right this instant, all of a sudden, based on things we've always known.
Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
We knew that.
Thomas Jefferson had slaves.
We knew that, too.
Dr. Seuss was himself not very racially enlightened by our standards today.
Most adults also knew that.
So why now, suddenly, is there this frantic rush to cancel all of these long-dead people?
Well, these efforts are often tied to George Floyd, right?
That's what we're told.
We're told that Floyd's death was some sort of awakening for the country, and it led us to re-examine these things that we already knew.
But why should it have been an awakening?
I mean, George Floyd was a career criminal, violent felon, who died in an altercation with police while high on lethal doses of fentanyl.
The question of whether Officer Chauvin is legally culpable in his death will be settled in the courts, but why should this unfortunate case have any larger ramifications in society?
Why should it prompt us to reconsider Thomas Jefferson?
Or think differently about Dr. Seuss?
George Floyd died and now we gotta talk about Dr. Seuss?
What?
There is no logical connection at all, especially because Floyd's case, whatever else you might say about it, had nothing to do with race.
There is zero evidence and zero reason to assume that Chauvin was motivated to any extent or in any way by racial animosity towards George Floyd.
Quite literally, zero evidence of that.
None.
The point is that there is no rational, logical, coherent reason why now, suddenly, in one big insane rush, we should be tearing down the statues, taking the names off buildings, banning these books, and so on.
And when everyone starts all at once taking drastic and destructive actions based more on emotion than reason, we have a term for that.
The term is mass hysteria.
This is mass hysteria, prompted and cultivated by powerful cultural forces, and fueled on an individual level by anger, rage, and fear.
And that's reason enough to oppose it.
It is never a good idea to go along with mass hysteria.
It is never right to give the hysterical mob what it wants.
Reasonable, moral, and intelligent people should resist the mob if for no other reason than it is a mob.
Like I always say with these things, even if for some reason you don't like Dr. Seuss, even if you yourself have been ahead of this particular curve and you've been saying for years that we should cancel Dr. Seuss, You should still stand in disagreement and opposition to the mob.
Even though they're saying what you agree with and have always said.
You should oppose them because they are a mob.
And they're not doing any of this for any good reason at all.
It is all anger, hate, fear, cowardice.
That is it.
Second point.
Dr. Seuss lived a hundred years ago.
He was born at the start of the 20th century, so he lived over a hundred years ago.
Did he have problematic views?
Well, I don't even have to look it up on Wikipedia to answer that question.
Yeah, of course he did.
He lived a hundred years ago.
Every single human on earth a hundred years ago had views that would be considered problematic by our standards today.
Every single one, with no exception.
The vast majority of people who have lived on the planet for the vast majority of human history believed things that supposedly enlightened people in modern Western culture would find abhorrent today.
In fact, most of the people currently living on Earth hold such views.
And most of the rest of the people will be considered backwards bigots by the standards of the people living on Earth 50 years from now.
So it's perfectly valid and worthwhile to examine what our ancestors got wrong and what they got right.
And really we might want to spend more time on the what they got right part of that equation because they got a lot right.
But it's totally absurd to broadly condemn everyone in history for committing the crime of being born before us.
Every civilization has its moral blind spots.
Every single one.
Now, you may think that we have none of our own, or that our blind spots aren't as bad, but you see, that's why we call them blind spots, because you don't see them or understand them fully.
They're blind spots.
Chronological snobbery, as C.S.
Lewis described it, means that the present generation always thinks that it is the only enlightened generation to have ever lived.
Now Lewis made that observation about his own generation and now, sort of proving his point, we condemn him and his generational peers as bigots barely more ethically advanced than cavemen.
This is all driven by stupidity and arrogance.
And so, we have two choices.
We can see it for what it is and try to stop the madness.
Or, we can cancel everybody, and then ourselves.
Because, if we don't stop the madness, that's where this is headed.
Now let's get to five headlines.
[MUSIC]
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Well, on the subject of madness, I did want to mention this, just right off the top, a tweet from the account Breaking911.
It says, just in, 2021 CPAC's, quote, Nazi stage was designed by Design Foundry, which is a company that has worked for Biden and MSNBC.
98% of the company's political donations have gone to Democrat candidates.
So, I don't know, if this is a Nazi company making Nazi stages, These are new questions that now need to be answered.
Why was Joe Biden, why are the Democrats working with a Nazi company?
Why are they accepting donations from a Nazi?
Oh, well, because they're not a Nazi company.
It was simply a stage that looked like any other stage.
Nothing suspicious or weird about it.
And if you fell for the Nazi stage hoax, then you are, I cannot emphasize enough, extremely, extremely stupid.
All right, number one, FBI Director Chris Wray, who is really terrible and bad at his job, was testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
When he was asked about the cause of death for Officer Brian Sicknick, now we've talked about this issue on the show several times, that we know that Officer Sicknick was at the riots on January 6th, and then he died, not at the riots, but later on, hours, many hours, several hours later.
And the death has always been tied to the riots.
We've always been told by the media, and originally even by the police, they said that, oh, he died from injuries.
But we've never been told anything else about it.
Like, what exactly were the injuries?
What happened?
How did he actually die?
We've never officially been told that.
But now the FBI director was testifying, was asked this question, and here's what he said.
There's been conflicting reports about his cause of death.
Have you determined the exact cause of death?
And is there a homicide investigation?
So, I'll take the last part of your question first.
There is an ongoing investigation into his death.
I have to be careful at this age, because it's ongoing, not to get out in front of it.
But I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him.
After all, he was here protecting all of you.
And as soon as there's information that we can appropriately share, we want to be able to do that.
But at the moment, the investigation is still ongoing.
So does that mean since the investigation is going on, you have not determined the exact cause of the death?
That means we can't yet disclose a cause of death at this stage.
But you have determined the cause of death?
I didn't say that.
We're not at a point where we can disclose or confirm a cause of death.
This guy is such a snake.
I mean, all of these... There is no good reason.
You could tell from that answer that, yes, they know the cause of death.
If they didn't know the cause of death, he would have said, well, we haven't determined it.
Which would be really strange, that they haven't determined it.
As far as I know, Officer Sicknick was, I believe, he was cremated, wasn't he?
So if they still hadn't figured out cause of death or anything, it'd be strange that that happened so quickly.
But...
Regardless, no, he was asked, do you know the cause of death?
Or he says, oh, we can't disclose it right now.
OK, so you know, you know.
We've already we've already heard unofficial reports that he died of a stroke.
That's from anonymous law enforcement sources.
And that's certainly based on based on what little we know, that seems like that's probably something like that is what happened.
But he won't tell us.
Could there be any good reason not to tell us?
Could there be any really valid, honest reason to not tell us?
What is this, a national security situation?
How could it possibly be?
No, they're not telling us.
Because we're not being given this really basic information, But there's no conceivable reason not to give it to us.
We can only speculate.
And part of my speculation here is that it would seem like Officer Sicknick was not at all killed by a rioter.
There's just no connection between any rioter and Officer Sicknick's death, and they don't want to tell us that.
Because it's embarrassing to the media, who for weeks and months now has been claiming, with no evidence, that there is a connection.
And the Democrats, during the impeachment proceedings, they're up there talking about Brian Sicknick's death as if they knew that he was killed by a rioter.
And they don't want to tell us that, for political reasons.
Now, meanwhile, Senator Dick Durbin during this hearing decided to try to explain why Antifa is not nearly as big a threat as the people who rioted one time in D.C.
two months ago.
I appreciate at least that he's attempting, because usually the left and the Democrats, they simply ignore this point about Antifa and BLM and all the rioting that they do and have done, continue to do, in fact.
But here at least he's trying to offer some sort of justification, and here's what he comes up with.
I join my Republican colleagues unequivocally in condemning left-wing violence, but let's stop pretending that the threat of Antifa is equivalent to the white supremacist threat.
Vandalizing a federal courthouse in Portland is a crime.
It should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
But it is not equivalent to a violent attempt to overturn the results of elections Nor is it equivalent to mass shootings targeting minority communities.
This false equivalency is an insult to the brave police officers who were injured or lost their lives on January 6th, as well as dozens of others who've been murdered in white supremacist attacks.
We need to be abundantly clear that the white supremacists and other extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States today.
I hope everyone in this room can look at the facts and acknowledge this We're going to move past the fact that it sounded like he said abundantly queer there, and we're going to move past it.
We're not going to focus on that part of it, coming from a Democratic senator.
But what's an insult?
He says it's an insult to the police officers.
Well, what's an insult is that you're using You and the other Democrats are callously using Officer Sicknick's death as a pawn, as a political chip that you're throwing down on the table.
You know, you're using it as a prop.
That's what's insulting.
It's also insulting to all of the many thousands of victims of Antifa and BLM rioting across the country over the summer.
People who had their businesses burned down, their houses burned down, people who were killed, assaulted, terrorized in their neighborhoods, cancer-stricken children at cancer centers.
No, it's insulting that you're ignoring them and you're boiling all of that down to vandalism of a courthouse.
All of that.
Everything that you watched happen over the summer, you didn't really see anything.
None of that actually happened.
You're imagining things.
All of that was really vandalism of one single courthouse.
I mean, forget about the police station that was invaded and burned to the ground, sending police officers fleeing for their lives.
Forget about that.
That didn't happen either.
None of these things happened.
It was all simply vandalism of a courthouse.
And yeah, you're right.
If you're comparing Um, the simple vandalism of a courthouse by some, some crazy kids.
You're comparing that to what happened on January 6th, and the thing that happened on January 6th is a lot worse.
Unfortunately, uh, Dick Durbin is inventing that.
He's, he's, he's, he has created his own version of the Antifa riots.
That's not the reality.
Even the so-called vandalism, no, they were trying to burn it down.
They were shooting, like, fireworks at it.
This was a siege that lasted for weeks on end.
It was a lot more than graffiti, even to that courthouse.
But of course, the issue is not just the courthouse.
And if you were to... I say that at least Dick Durbin made some attempt to explain why January 6th was worse than the BLM rioting, whereas most Democrats will ignore the question.
But he didn't really make any attempt at all, when you listen to it.
Because he's not acknowledging what actually happened.
And by the way, trying to overturn the results of the election, was there ever any chance of that happening?
Was there ever any, even the slightest threat of that happening?
Alright, let's...
Move on to number two here.
Kamala Harris still has not commented on the Andrew Cuomo scandal, and that's an issue because she had plenty to say, of course, about Brett Kavanaugh, about Donald Trump's sexual harassment accusers, and so on.
She's one of the big believe-all women people, and she hasn't said anything about the sexual harassment claims against Andrew Cuomo.
Jen Psaki was asked about that, and here's what she said.
Vice President Kamala Harris was one of the most vocal critics of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, of Senator Al Franken, when they faced similar allegations.
She said repeatedly, I believe them, the women.
But she hasn't said anything about the three women who are accusing Governor Andrew Cuomo.
And now this third accuser, Anna Roosh, she actually worked for the Biden-Harris campaign.
So at what point is the first female vice president going to say something about this?
Well, I know that's how the vice president continues to feel.
And the benefit of doing a briefing every day is that I can certainly speak on behalf of the president and the vice president.
And so let me reiterate that they both believe that every woman coming forward should be heard, should be treated with dignity and treated with respect.
As you all know, the New York attorney general will oversee an independent investigation with subpoena power.
And the governor's office said he will fully cooperate.
And we certainly support that moving forward.
But as you know, it's one thing to hear it from you, and it's appreciated, but it's another thing to hear it from the Vice President or the President himself.
Can we expect to hear from either of them on this topic anytime soon?
Well, again, I'm speaking on their behalf.
That's how they feel.
They personally both view this as a situation where all of the women coming forward should be treated with dignity and respect and should have their voices heard.
And that's the representation of their points of view.
Okay, sure.
Now we have to clarify, we have to stipulate that, of course, every time this comes up, we have to say that this is not the real Andrew Cuomo scandal.
This is not even the real Andrew Cuomo scandal that we primarily need to hear Kamala Harris talking about.
Um, or condemning.
The real scandal is, are the policies that he put in place that led to the deaths of thousands of elderly people in his state.
That's the real scandal.
Not the fact that he, you know, touched a woman's cheek and flirted with some women on the job.
That's inappropriate behavior as opposed to killing lots of people.
So not the real scandal.
But as far as that goes, you notice this shift.
Pretty obvious.
It's not a very nuanced shift, so I'm sure anyone can notice it.
But you notice this shift that the Democrats do now, because originally, you hear what she said.
She said, well, we believe that all women should be treated with dignity and respect and they should be heard.
So any woman who has an accusation, we should treat them with respect and they should be heard.
That's what she says now.
Which obviously, yeah, we all agree.
We can all agree in principle, in theory, treat people with respect.
If someone has a claim, an accusation, we'll hear it.
Let's listen.
But that's not what they said in the past.
What they said in the past was, believe all women.
There is a big difference, I'm sure you could probably spot, between hear all women and believe all women.
Pretty big difference.
And so they're making that little subtle adjustment and hoping we don't notice.
Well, it's basically the same thing.
No, it's not at all.
Because our point all along, and when I say our, I mean the rational people, and increasingly that is really the real dividing line in American culture now.
It's rational people versus irrational people.
But our point all along was, yeah, we'll hear everybody.
We'll hear her.
You know, if someone has a claim, we'll listen to you.
What is it?
But we're not going to believe it simply because we heard it.
The believing part requires reasons, evidence.
That's where that comes in.
All right, number three, Governor Abbott of Texas had a big announcement yesterday, and first we'll play the announcement, then we'll talk about the reaction to it.
Here he is.
I'm issuing a new executive order that rescinds most of the earlier executive orders.
Effective next Wednesday, all businesses of any type are allowed to open 100%.
That includes any type of entity in Texas.
(applause)
That includes any type of entity in Texas.
Also, I am ending the statewide mask mandate.
Yeah, that's and of course the left is reacting as you would expect them to with that accusing Governor Abbott of being the one who's going to be responsible for thousands of deaths and this is an act of mass murder and so on and so forth.
And so we knew we would get that reaction.
That's one thing.
Me, I'm a little bit more annoyed and disturbed by many conservatives and, you know, residents of Texas who, you heard even there in the reaction, they're applauding.
Yeah, go Texas!
Go Governor Abbott!
Thank you so much!
Doing it the right way, Governor!
Yeah, it's cool that the restrictions are being lifted, don't get me wrong.
That's great.
But let's not make the mistake of when a public official, when a politician lifts these restrictions, let's not make the mistake of greeting them as liberators, our liberators, when they are lifting restrictions that they put in place and should not have been there to begin with.
So now they are reversing a bad thing that they did.
So we can be happy about that, obviously, but let's not applaud them.
You don't deserve applause for that at all.
You should apologize, actually.
Because the businesses that were destroyed in the meantime, they're still destroyed.
Even if you give them $2,000, they're still going to be destroyed.
So it's not really an applause situation.
This is, it's about time.
And now there needs to be more accountability.
So let's not applaud that.
Let's certainly not give Governor Abbott any credit.
It's a similar kind of attitude that I talk about during tax season, when people start getting their refunds and they're so grateful to the government for giving them a refund.
It's like, no, that's your own money that the government took And took too much of your money.
They shouldn't have taken that much, and they did.
And now they're just giving back to you what is yours.
Don't be grateful to them for that.
Don't be grateful to the governor for taking off chains that never should have been on you to begin with.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden was talking about what it'll take to get back to normal.
This is the big $6 million question.
And when will we get back to normal?
And every time he's asked that question, the answer goes back a little bit.
So at first it was 100 days and we moved it back.
And here's what he's saying now.
I've been cautioned not to give an answer to that because we don't know for sure.
But my hope is by this time next year, we're going to be back to normal.
And before that, my hope.
But again, it depends upon if people continue, continue to be Smart and understand that we still can have significant losses.
There's a lot we have to do yet.
So thank you.
Did you receive a briefing about the border today?
Yes, I did.
What did you learn?
A lot.
That was very specific.
What I learned a lot.
It's this time next year.
I think it's the first time we've heard at least that from Joe Biden, personally.
Originally, it was 100 days.
Any intelligent person knew that it was not really going to be 100 days, and now he's saying this time next year.
All right, number four from the Daily Wire.
It says, California's assembly is slated to consider a new bill requiring department store children's sections to be largely gender neutral in order to combat prejudice and judgment Against gender non-conforming children.
A political reporter earlier this week, large retailers that sell toys, clothes, and other children's items in California would have to devote floor space to merchandise marketed to both boys and girls under a new bill.
Stores would be able to sell the same products they do now, as long as they maintain some areas where shoppers can find all toys or clothes, regardless of gender-based marketing under the new bill.
Now, all this does, all this accomplishes, obviously, is making it harder and more annoying for parents to shop for toys, which is already an annoying thing to do, especially if you make the mistake of buying toys when you have kids with you.
And I've been dumb enough to do that on more than one occasion.
All you're doing is making it more difficult for a parent to find the toy that the kid actually wants.
Because no matter what else we're told, the reality is The majority of kids, the majority of boys prefer toys that are associated with boys, and the majority of girls prefer the more girlish toys.
You know, most of the time.
Girls are going for the dolls and the pink stuff and everything.
Boys are going for the trucks and the superheroes.
Yeah, there's crossover.
Of course there is.
But that's the exception to the rule.
The vast majority of boys and girls, they want the toy.
That's what they want.
They're not conditioned that way.
That's just what they want.
Because those toys, it's not arbitrary.
Those toys speak to something innate, inherent within them.
Why do little girls like dolls?
Well, because even little girls have that kind of burgeoning maternal instinct that boys, by and large, don't have.
Most boys, if you tried with all your might to condition them to like dolls, they still wouldn't.
Now, my sons, they'll play with dolls because they're going to have the dolls fighting each other.
They're going to rip a doll's head off.
They're going to do that kind of thing.
They're going to have Spider-Man.
They have the doll, then they have the small Spider-Man figure.
The doll is kind of like a baby Godzilla going through the city.
Spider-Man's battle.
That's how they play with dolls.
Whereas my daughter, she's going to pick up the doll, brush its hair, pretend to feed it, get all the nice outfits and dress the doll.
That's what she does.
It's not conditioning.
That's inherent.
That's innate.
And I've had a somewhat unique view of this as a parent of boy-girl twins.
So our first kids, boy and a girl, twins, They had access to all the same toys.
You know, we had a toy room in the house, the house that we lived in at the time when they were born.
And for the first few years of our life, we had a toy room.
We had all the toys.
And, you know, most of the time the toy room is an absolute disaster.
It's like a tornado was in there and the toys are strewn all over the place.
And it's not like when you bring your little two-year-old boy and girl into the playroom, you're not saying to them, no, those are your toys as a boy.
I better not catch you touching that doll over there, son.
Even I don't do that, surprisingly.
No, you bring the kids in the toy room, you say, have at it.
Go crazy.
And what do they do, even at the age of two?
They gravitate right towards their gender-specific toys, with no guidance or instruction from the parents.
Isn't that a coincidence?
Isn't it such a coincidence that almost every child on earth seems to do that?
Alright, finally, number five here.
Amazon has tweaked the logo for its smartphone app because people thought that the other logo looked like Hitler and so it's a This one's just hilarious, I have to say.
In the original smartphone app logo, you've got the arrow thing that looks like the smiley face, the mouth.
Then you've got something there that looks kind of like, I guess, the Hitler mustache.
And they had to go back and change it.
And on this one, I have to say, yeah, I can kind of see it.
Obviously we know the left, they're finding Hitler everywhere they look, they're finding Nazis everywhere they look.
On that one, yeah, I can kind of see, I can see Hitler there.
I'm not offended by it, it's hilarious.
But I guess I won't blame Amazon for making the changes there.
All right, let's move now to reading the comments.
This is from Mr. S. Says, remember kids, the slippery slope fallacy isn't a fallacy whatsoever.
That's exactly right.
I keep saying this till I'm blue in the face.
There is no such thing as the Slippery Slope fallacy.
There are Slippery Slope arguments that are made fallaciously.
There are bad versions of the Slippery Slope argument.
There are people arguing that something is a Slippery Slope and it really isn't, so that would be a fallacious Slippery Slope argument.
But the Slippery Slope argument in and of itself is not a fallacy at all.
All it is meant to do is to demonstrate how this thing will lead to another thing and then lead to another thing.
And the reason that you're doing that is to try to point out the logical flaws in this course of action.
So yes, thank you for that.
Vladimir Putin, username, apparently a big fan of the show, says, I guess it wouldn't be a big surprise to the left.
Says, Mr. Walsh, what is the best board game, and why is it Battleship?
Battleship is the best board game?
What are you, eight years old?
No, the best board game is Settlers of Catan.
If you haven't played that game.
That's also probably the nerdiest board game, which maybe is why I like it.
But that's the best one, without a question.
Jacob Bower says, Matt, who would win in a fight, a gorilla or a grizzly bear?
Obviously a gorilla.
We've got a lot more dexterity.
They're much more made for fighting than our grizzly bears.
And finally, what else do we have here?
Benjamin says, Matt, if you can't wrap your head around watching people play video games, what's the difference between Twitch and sports?
We've got a lot of comments and messages and even some emails about this.
Um, because I said that I think this is widely known by now.
I'm not a video game fan personally, but also this, this whole idea of people sitting down, I guess, on Twitch and watching other people play video games is really hard for me to wrap my head around.
I have to say, and this is a common response is, well, it's no different than watching different than watching sports.
Here's the key difference to me, Benjamin, when you're watching sports, those are people actually doing that.
You see what I'm saying?
So you're, you're, you're seeing athleticism, feats of, of strength and agility and all of that on display from, from real humans, not avatars on a screen.
So that, I guess I can't do any more to explain the difference.
Um, that's all I got.
If that's not enough to convince you, then I got nothing.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
Today we're going to cancel another cable news doctor.
These people have, of course, been a scourge over the past year, as thousands of them, feels like thousands anyway, have been hired to sit in front of cameras and offer sweeping public policy recommendations, as if their medical degree has made them not only experts in medicine, but in literally all other facets of human existence.
And this trend is not likely to go away just because COVID is receding.
And that brings us to Dr. Paul Offit.
He's a member of the FDA Advisory Committee and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
And he's been on cable news quite often, offering his prognostications and instructions.
Most recently, he went on CNN and discussed the question of whether masking and social distancing should now become a permanent part of our lives.
You'll never believe what he said.
Actually, you'll totally believe it.
You probably already know what it is, but here's the clip anyway.
As we figure out what flu strains have been circulating in places like Australia or South America, which sort of predicts what strains are likely to come into our country.
There's been so little flu in those two areas, I think it's going to be hard for us to try and figure out what flu strains to pick.
But you're right.
If we mask and social distance every winter, we will see a dramatic reduction in flu, which usually causes hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths.
I wonder whether that will be the lesson from this.
Wear masks every winter.
Yeah.
Sadly, this idea is not nearly as unpopular as you want it to be.
A significant number of people on social media, from what I've seen, have already made plans to wear their masks every winter, or even just every season, every year, forever.
Pulling one at random here, this is Michael David Smith, who works in sports media, and he made this announcement.
He said, I expect to wear a mask every winter for the rest of my life.
The flu is nowhere near as bad as COVID-19, but it still kills thousands of Americans every year, and wearing masks dramatically reduces the spread.
It's a tiny individual sacrifice for such a major benefit to society.
And he's far from alone.
And it was always going to be this way.
Some of us, such as yours truly, argued from the beginning that all of the reasons given for wearing the mask during COVID would apply just as much to flu season or to the prevention of many other communicable diseases.
If it's such a small sacrifice, if it's the safest thing to do, if we're doing it for others and not for ourselves, if it prevents viruses and germs, etc., etc., etc., then all of those reasons still apply whether COVID is an issue or not.
If you say that masks save whatever arbitrary number of lives from COVID, then they would also save whatever arbitrary number of lives from the flu and other illnesses.
Even if the second arbitrary number is smaller, those are still human lives that have been saved, supposedly, hypothetically.
But of course, those of us who made this point, who observed how the masking mandates set a precedent, which is never going to go away, we were called crazy.
In fact, we were accused of making a slippery slope argument, which we were, and we were right.
Somehow we were labeled the paranoid lunatics for saying this, us.
You know, not the people wearing two masks and a visor to walk out of their houses and check the mailbox.
But now the same people who called us crazy For making that argument, are advocating the very thing that we predicted they would advocate.
So it goes.
So it always goes.
But here's the thing.
Yes, obviously, if you stay away from other human beings, if you ban large gatherings, if you muzzle yourself when you leave your house, it's going to decrease the chances that you contract any number of viruses.
It also seems like it might weaken your immune system to a catastrophic extent, but putting that aside, yes, of course, staying away from people, covering your face like a leper, all of that will have the effect of potentially warding off certain illnesses.
But that's another thing that we already knew, going back to the point we made in the opening monologue.
We knew that already.
That isn't news.
That isn't a recent discovery.
We always knew that if we wanted to, during flu season, we could reduce cases by shutting everything down, wearing the masks, and all of that.
Who didn't know that?
Who exactly is just learning this now?
Nobody.
We all knew it.
Yet we didn't do it.
Or even seriously consider doing it.
And nobody advocated for it.
Not because we didn't understand the science, but because we judged it as not worth the trade-off.
We, until this past year, We all believe that living a normal human life was worth the risk.
Now, many of us don't think that anymore.
But those who have changed their minds cannot say they're doing it based on the science.
Because again, this is not new data.
There's no new scientific data.
They're doing it because their priorities changed.
So the question is whether their priorities changed for the better or the worse.
And I say, for the worse.
I think we were right before.
We were right a year ago, two years ago, all of the years until this past one.
Because back then, if I had gone out and said, if I had said to you back then, Listen, let's shut society down at least four months out of every year, wear masks, avoid strangers, don't see your friends, don't see your family, treat everybody like they're radioactive, and let's do this so that we don't get the flu.
Let's do this every single year so that we don't get the flu.
If I had said that at any point prior to the past 12 months, everybody would have laughed at me.
Not because I would have been wrong about the science, but because my priorities would have been seen as wildly out of whack.
Yes, there's obviously a risk in going out into society and interacting with people.
There's a risk in going to a party with your friends and family.
There's a risk in going to a crowded bar to watch the game with other people in your community.
There's a risk in speaking to another person face-to-face with no mask, so you can see each other and hear each other.
There's a risk in breathing fresh air.
But it's worth the risk.
It's worth the risk because this is life.
This is what living means.
If you give up all of the things that make life worthwhile, enjoyable, meaningful, just to extend your life, what's the point?
What's the point of making life miserable just so that you can live your miserable life for longer?
Is it crazy to say that speaking to another person face-to-face, that breathing fresh air when you walk down the street, is so important that we should be willing to risk death to do it?
Nobody thought it was crazy until now.
Everybody thought the opposite claim was crazy.
See, I think we had it right before.
We were right the first time.
Yes, it is worth it.
It is worth it to risk death just to breathe fresh air.
It is worth risking illness and death just so that we can go out into society and see other people's faces.
Yeah, I believe that.
Because that's human life.
These are the things that make it human life and make it worth living.
And that's why Dr. Offit and everybody advocating for permanent masking is, of course, cancelled.
And we'll leave it there today.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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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.
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Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, six Dr. Seuss books are removed from circulation, and liberals make excuses for the newfangled book burning.
