Ep. 697 - The “Influencers” Who Prey On Your Children
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, one of the most famous and influential YouTube stars on the planet is, allegedly, a sex predator who preys on young boys. This is not a huge surprise but it does raise a question: Do you know what your kids are doing online, and who they are being influenced by? Also Five Headlines including Joe Biden’s gun control push, another SHOCKING twist in an alleged hate crime case, and a Republican legislator sparks controversy by comparing abortion to slavery. But is he right? Yes, he is. I’ll explain why.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, one of the most famous and influential YouTube stars on the planet is allegedly a sex predator who preys on young boys.
Not a huge surprise, but it does raise a question.
Do you know what your kids are doing online and who they're being influenced by?
Also, five headlines including Joe Biden's gun control push, another shocking twist in an alleged hate crime case, and a Republican legislator sparks controversy by comparing abortion to slavery.
But is he right?
Well, yes he is.
I'll explain why.
plus our daily cancellation, reading the comments, and much more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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Since the advent of modern media, it's been a challenge for parents to keep track of the celebrities and public figures who are influencing their children.
I was a kid in the 90s, and it wasn't easy for our parents.
But at least back then, an adult who wanted to know what the kids are into these days always knew basically where to look.
All they had to do was turn on MTV.
Or a handful of other cable channels, and they could get a view of pop culture basically in its entirety.
They may not have liked what they found, but I know that my dad certainly didn't, but what they found on TV was pretty much all there was, right?
As far as pop culture goes.
For the most part.
They didn't have to worry that there was more weirder and darker stuff lurking out there somewhere in the shadows.
The situation is very different now.
Pop culture is more ubiquitous, but also more spread out, more obscure, harder for a parent to get a handle on.
And kids spend much more of their time, much more of their time absorbed in it.
Like, pretty much every second of their day, in many cases, absorbed in it.
They may still watch a little bit of traditional TV, or maybe not, probably not, but most of their time certainly is spent online.
And in every sphere where they go, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc, etc, etc, including websites that I probably don't even know about, there are these celebrity-like figures who now just go by the title influencer because literally their only job is to influence the audience.
That's kids today, they live in a world run by content creators and influencers.
And think about those titles, the ambiguity of those titles is the point.
Because it doesn't matter what the content is, the point simply is to make content, any content, and influence.
It's not like the influence is a byproduct of the music they're making or the art they're producing.
Now, there still are singers and other artists who are also influencing, but for people who are just influenced, that's all they do.
Nothing else.
They don't create anything, they don't do anything, they simply, their only job is to influence, and a lot of times they're influencing your kid.
Now, influence to what end?
In what direction?
Well, that often depends on the corporate sponsors backing these people.
The challenge for parents is that these influencers rise to prominence quickly, seemingly out of nowhere, sometimes falling out of favor as rapidly as they rose into it, like quarks popping in and out of existence.
For parents, it's like an infinite game of whack-a-mole.
The result is that if your child spends a lot of time online, there are going to be influencers influencing them that you haven't even heard of, despite the fact that they are massively popular, wealthy, and backed by the biggest brands in the world.
A kid in the 60s had, you know, the Beatles.
A kid today has a million different versions of the Beatles in a million different places, and all of them have direct, sustained, and sometimes personal access to him.
So that's all a long preamble to bring up the name James Charles.
I've mentioned him on the show before.
I mentioned him again yesterday on Twitter for a reason that I'll explain in just a moment.
But to prove my point, a large number of my followers, many of whom are older, and when I say older, I mean like my age, told me that they had never heard of the guy and had no idea why I would bring up such an obscure, irrelevant figure.
Well, James Charles is a YouTube and Instagram influencer.
He has 25 million subscribers on YouTube.
25 million.
Think about that.
27 million Instagram followers.
He's also been sponsored by or worked with a number of major multi-million dollar brands, starting with CoverGirl back in 2016.
Charles is specifically a beauty influencer.
He models makeup.
And as we're told, or we were told with great fanfare a few years ago, he was the first male cover girl in history.
Which was supposed to be a big deal.
He's also allegedly a sex predator.
Charles, who's a 21-year-old man, has been repeatedly accused of sexting, sending nude pictures to, and trying to solicit sex from a series of underage boys.
The accusations have come from boys as young as 14.
Now, Charles, in an apology video posted to YouTube a few days ago, confessed, actually, to messaging a couple of these alleged victims, in this case, a couple 16-year-old boys.
By far, not the only boys to have accused him.
But he confessed to having messaged them, but he also said that he didn't know their age, and after some self-reflection and quote, research, he decided that he shouldn't be involved with them.
Let's listen to that.
Within the past couple of weeks, two different people, both under the age of 18, have recently come forward saying that they had inappropriate messages with me on social media.
One of them being from last year, and one of them being from more recent.
In both of these cases, I added these people on Snapchat, asked how old they were right away, was told that they were 18, believed them, engaged in a flirty conversation, and then later on, found out that they were actually 16.
Upon finding out, I was immediately embarrassed and blocked both people.
Later on, when I saw them making videos about it and those videos going viral, my immediate reaction, completely honestly, was to be really, really upset.
I wanted to get on camera and film another No More Lies video where I gather all my receipts and all my screenshots and try to tell my side of the story and then just move on from the situation.
And now, looking back, that was so stupid because as I did more research on these topics and self-reflected, I realized that the receipts and the screenshots and the specific details of the interaction really don't matter because I f***ed up.
He did some research.
He had to do some research to find out about, you know, whether he should be messaging underage boys, I guess.
I don't know.
Now, as I said, those are only two of the accusations, and not even the most serious ones.
In that same video, he also justified his actions on the basis that he's lonely and desperate.
In the past, he's admitted publicly that he's not attracted to older guys, although he did say, you know, he likes some younger, but he said only down to 18, he said.
During an appearance on the Impulsive podcast, another really popular thing that your kid probably listens to and you may not have heard of, he seemingly admitted that he has on multiple occasions at least attempted to fly high school boys out to meet him.
Let's listen to that.
Talk to guys that live in different states and stuff.
And I'm like, Hey, like, why don't you come visit?
Like, well, I can't afford a plane ticket.
And it's like, okay, well I can.
So like get on the plane and like, well, I just don't really feel comfortable with that.
But like, I love you and I really want to be together.
And I'm like, well, we can't be together because you can't afford a plane ticket.
You're probably still in either high school or college, like a senior in high school or in college.
Right.
So either you accept the flight and realize that like, this is what I am bringing to the relationship so we can spend time together if you actually care about me or we literally never meet because you can't afford it.
That's the closest thing to an admission of a felony sex crime that you're likely to ever hear on a podcast.
At least, I hope.
So, this is a man, multiply accused of soliciting sex from children, who has come very close to confessing to the charge on multiple occasions, publicly, in front of an audience of millions.
And yet, he remains on YouTube.
His videos are still monetized.
As far as I know, he hasn't even been suspended.
His corporate backers, sponsors, affiliates have almost all remained silent, and he's got a lot of them.
There's little media coverage of the scandal, little public outrage.
It's not hard to see why.
Charles was hailed by the left and the media five years ago when he became the historic world's first cover boy, right?
And he's a homosexual man celebrated for breaking gender barriers and so on.
Now, for this man to also be a sex predator and for the left and the media to be responsible for putting him in a position to prey on boys, well, that's just untenable.
They can never accept that or admit to it.
Ever.
Especially because people like me, you know, the backwards, old-fashioned types, we took one look at this guy and immediately said that he clearly has serious issues.
We were labeled bigots for that.
I mean, the left can never admit that we were right, because then they'd have to ask why we were right.
How could we have been right?
I mean, why is it that some of us would look at James Charles Listen to him for five seconds and come to the conclusion that he has, to put it mildly, issues.
Why is it that those of us who knew about this guy and then heard that he's trying to pick up young boys, why is it that we would respond by saying, well, yeah, no surprise there?
How did we come to that conclusion?
This is a dangerous conversation for the left and one they don't want to have.
They want us to believe it's entirely healthy and a laudable thing for a man to reject his masculinity to this extent.
Those of us who say that it is perhaps a troubling sign, a sign of something unhealthy psychologically, are labeled bigots and phobes of various sorts.
We can't be allowed to have been right.
That can't be permitted.
So they'll just ignore it.
James Charles will continue preying on children, allegedly.
He'll continue being an enormously influential figure, maybe even influential to your own children, unless you step in between to protect your kids from these predators and degenerates, which you should, and I hope you do.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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All right.
So Joe Biden announced yesterday some measures that he would be taking for gun control.
And, you know, actually a little bit of a little bit of a personal tie in here.
I should I should mention that I did go out yesterday and buy a gun myself.
Figured, you know, Good time to do that, especially with Joe Biden in office.
And I have to say, aside from the fact that I had to show an ID, And give lots of personal information, and fill out a questionnaire about my mental health and criminal history, and wait for the background check to clear, and pay hundreds of dollars?
It was so much easier than voting.
Except for all of those things, it was so much easier than voting.
Except for all of the things that made it way more difficult than voting, it was a lot easier.
That was just my experience, though.
And that, of course, is I'm in Tennessee, In many other states, getting a gun is far more difficult than that.
And you're going to have to wait a lot more than a few minutes for the background check to clear.
Anyway, Joe Biden announced executive orders to enact gun control.
Fox has some details about that.
It says, an administration official detailed the actions to reporters on Wednesday.
Among them, Biden is asking the Justice Department to propose within a month a rule to stop quote-unquote ghost guns.
Which are kits people can buy legally to assemble a functioning firearm that does not have a serial number.
Biden is also asking the DOJ to propose within 60 days... Yeah, by the way, I'm sure that your average criminal looking to commit a crime is taking the time to assemble their own gun, right?
I'm sure that's what's happening in most cases.
Biden is also asking the DHA to propose within 60 days a rule on braces used for handguns, which make them more accurate, to propose action on community violence intervention, to publish suggestions for red flag legislation, and is asking his administration to issue a report on gun trafficking.
So those are all the things that he's thinking of doing.
And a lot of it is...
Purposefully vague, like there's more to come.
So we're not told everything that's going to happen here, and that's part of the point.
Here is Joe Biden announcing this and talking specifically about the constitutional concerns and then promptly dismissing all of those concerns.
Let's listen.
Today, we're taking steps to confront not just the gun crisis, but what is actually a public health crisis.
Nothing, nothing I'm about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment.
They're phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake from what we're talking about.
But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.
You can't yell crowd, you can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater.
We call it freedom of speech.
In the very beginning, you couldn't own any weapon you wanted to own.
You can't yell crowd in a fired movie theater?
the Second Amendment existed.
Certain people weren't allowed to have weapons.
So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we're recommending
are contrary to the Constitution.
Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.
Let me say it again.
Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it's an international embarrassment.
-You can't yell "crowd" in a fired movie theater.
He actually trotted out that old thing.
-You have to remember, when you're hearing a Democrat talk about the Constitution,
they are very, very selective in the way that they choose to interpret it
and which amendments are absolute and which aren't.
These are simply not serious people when it comes to constitutional interpretation or anything else.
Keep in mind that these are the same people, Joe Biden among them, Who would tell you, and have told you, and insisted upon this for the last four decades, that the Constitution guarantees the right to abortion, even though abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, or hinted at, or referenced, or there is no language at all in the Constitution that comes anywhere close to abortion, and yet they'll say the Constitution
Absolutely guarantees a right to abortion.
And they hinge that right on the constitutional right to privacy, even though that's also not in the Constitution.
The word privacy doesn't appear.
So they have located the right to abortion, which does not exist in the Constitution, in the right to privacy, which also does not exist.
And yet they can do all of that fancy footwork and all those maneuvers, and they can pull out their decoder pen, and you know, they're looking at the invisible ink, and they're putting things together, and they're approaching it like a word search.
They're circling.
Oh, there's an A here.
Look, a B, O, R. You see?
It's all coming together.
They can do that for abortion, and yet somehow the Second Amendment Which is perhaps the clearest amendment in the entire document.
That doesn't guarantee the right to bear arms.
With that, all of a sudden, now they're saying, well, what's the original intent?
Now you care about original intent?
Do you think the founding fathers originally intended to codify the right to kill your baby in the womb?
Was that their original intent?
Joe Biden also makes a series of just straight up false claims, like we always get.
One of them, of course, being this claim.
I don't think he says it here.
He probably, he might have, but one of them, of course, the claim about it's harder to get a gun than vote.
Totally false.
Here's a false claim that he said this time about how easy it is allegedly to get a gun at a gun show.
Let's listen.
These bills, one, require background checks for anyone purchasing a gun at a gun show.
Or an online sale.
Most people don't know when you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check.
But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check.
Most people don't know that because it's not true.
You know?
There's a lot of things that most people don't know.
Most people don't know that cows can fly to the moon.
A cow can fly to the moon.
Most people don't know that.
When you make up facts, you can always make up facts that people don't know.
It's a lot of fun, actually.
No, that's not true at all.
I wish it were.
That'd be a lot of fun.
I wish I could just walk into a gun show, get any gun I want.
Maybe they hand you an AR-15 walking in the door for free.
You know?
Or it's like a... When I used to go to birthday parties as a kid, they would give you these party bags on the way out the door.
You know?
Because all the kids had to get...
We were the participation trophy generation, so all the kids had to get gifts at a birthday party.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair.
Anyway, I wish there was a gift bag when you leave the gun show.
Got an AR-15 in there.
That would be fun.
But that's not how it works.
It's not true at all.
And Jen Psaki was asked about this like 30 minutes later.
You just heard Joe Biden say that, right?
And here's Jen Psaki denying that Joe Biden said the thing that we all just heard him say.
The president said a moment ago, quote, you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want, no background check.
Is there a special exemption in federal law that he was referring to or just do FLA dealers not have to do background checks when they're at a gun show?
Are you asking me if he was referring to like a specific circumstance?
I'm sorry, just tell me a little bit more about your question.
I mean, is it the president's belief that you do not have to undergo a background check when you are at a gun show?
No, it's not his belief.
He believes that background checks should be universal.
Right.
He says no background check.
Well, we know what his position is, right?
So let me reiterate that, which is that background checks are something that should be universal.
They're supported by more than 80 percent of the public.
He's supported legislation, advocated for that and advocated against loopholes as well.
So that's his position.
And I appreciate you asking for the clarification.
You can always tell when Jen Psaki is about to lie because her tell is that she acts Confused by a really basic, straightforward question.
She's trying to think of what the lie is going to be, and she's buying a little bit of time.
I don't blame her.
It is a tough job, I would think.
And why a person with a soul and integrity probably shouldn't accept it.
To be a White House spokesperson, and you know you're going to have to get up there and lie every single day.
So this is her tell.
She acts like she's confused.
So she's asked, well, President Biden just said that you don't need a background check at a gun show.
Is that true?
What do you mean?
I don't understand your question.
Could you rephrase it?
I'm trying to understand.
I really want to understand.
I just don't understand that question you just asked.
And then she says that, no, he doesn't believe that.
So he lied then.
She bought herself time to tell her lie, and it wasn't even a very good one, because what she said is, no, the president doesn't believe that.
He doesn't believe what he said.
What do we call that where you say something that you don't believe?
It's a lie.
Right.
OK, well, thanks for clarifying that, Jen.
All right.
Number two, there were reports, speaking of lies, reports last week about racist graffiti, the good old racist graffiti gambit.
Racist graffiti found around campus at a college called Albion College in Michigan.
The graffiti said, here's what the graffiti said, KKK white power, die n-words please, and we do exist, KKK.
And then there was a Star of David with the number 666 written across it, I guess it's supposed to be an anti-semitic thing.
Now, this was a big deal locally.
Got a lot of attention.
The students protested.
We got some footage of that there.
Pretty long line of them.
This is a small college, but it looks like they all came out.
Look at them all marching.
They all came out to march against racism on campus.
And then, what is it?
I don't have to tell you what happens next, do I?
You already know.
You heard racist graffiti, and if you've been paying attention at all over the last 10 years, you know exactly where this is headed.
It was a hoax.
It was a black student that wrote the graffiti.
You know, even without the history, even without knowing the history, you probably would have already guessed that this is a hoax.
Because this just isn't KKK white power.
Who do you think is going to sincerely write that?
Even if it was an actual white racist, why would they write that?
But as we've covered many times, people who want to invent hate crimes and turn themselves into a victim, they have a lot of trouble doing it persuasively and convincingly Because they really have not encountered a lot of racism from white people.
So they don't even know what that would be like.
If racism from white people was common in this country, number one, you wouldn't have to invent it.
You wouldn't have to make it up.
And number two, if you did make it up, you would have encountered it so often that you should be able to make it up and impersonate it convincingly.
But this is obviously someone who has never encountered a white racist in his entire life.
He has no idea what a white racist would say, which is good, by the way.
He's never encountered one.
That's a great thing.
We should celebrate that.
So instead he bases it off of, like, movies that he saw and TV shows and stuff.
That's one way that you know that it's a hoax.
And the other way you know it's a hoax is that, as far as I can remember, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'll at least say this, I cannot think, in the last 20 years, I cannot think of a single case where so-called racist graffiti or a racist note left on a receipt or left on someone's car windshield or slipped under their door turned out to be sincere.
Every single case that I can think of, they were all hoaxes.
Has there been even one real case?
I'm assuming, just law of averages, there have to have been, right?
The last 20 years, there have to have been at least a couple of these racist graffiti cases that was actually done by a white person.
Maybe?
Anyway, MLive has the report, says, Albion College and the Albion Department of Public Safety says that a student is responsible for racist graffiti found in a dorm last weekend.
Albion Police brought the 21-year-old black male in for questioning on April 6th.
The student admitted to creating most of the graffiti and video evidence from Albion's campus safety department confirms the statements made by the student.
So I take it from that that he was on security camera footage.
They said video evidence confirms it, so... I'm assuming that probably he was right in front of a security camera, scrolling this thing.
When it comes to hate crime hoaxes, they're really not sending their best.
But here's the response to this from Albion College.
And I could be pronouncing the name of the college wrong.
Never heard of them before, now.
But here's what they tweeted.
They put this out, I think it was yesterday.
This is after it was already known who was responsible for this.
And this is their tweet, okay?
They said, earlier today, we identified the individual responsible for the racist and anti-Semitic graffiti in Mitchell Towers.
The student who is acting alone acknowledged our responsibility for these incidents.
They have been immediately removed from campus and placed on temporary suspension while we conduct a full investigation as part of our student judicial process.
But we know the acts of racism that have occurred this week are not about one particular person or one particular incident.
We know that there is a significant history of racial pain and trauma on campus and we are taking action to repair our community.
We will change and heal together as a community because we are committed to doing the work.
Right now, we encourage all members of our community to listen, respond, and care for one another, and lean on the faculty, staff, and community members who have been gathering today to make sure we're supporting you.
We have your back.
Okay.
Aside from the normal tripe about, we'll do the work, we're committed, the phrase, do the work, has become to me as grating and annoying as the phrase, lived experience.
And they're always said by, usually in the same sentence, by the same sorts of people.
I'm surprised lived experience didn't appear in this statement here.
We'll do the work to understand your lived experience.
But do you notice?
So we got to do the work.
We got the buzzwords and everything.
You notice what's missing from this statement?
They never say it was a hoax.
They never say that it was a black student who did it.
In fact, they intentionally give the impression that it was a white student.
They don't say that.
But they tie all this into historic racism, racial trauma, so on and so forth.
They're clearly trying to give the impression, without saying it, that the graffiti really was done by a white racist.
That's the way the school has decided to handle it.
And if that doesn't work, then they will at least try to disperse the blame We're not going to blame this one individual.
We're going to blame the institutions.
This is not about one particular person.
It's about a history of racial pain.
No, it is definitely about one particular person.
It's about the guy who did it.
A guy who, they say, is kicked off a campus.
That's good.
He should also be charged with a crime.
A hate crime hoax is a hate crime.
I'm not a fan of the hate crime designation at all.
I don't think it should exist, but as long as it does, it should be used equally and in a way that's at least sort of coherent.
And what that means is that a hate crime hoax should be considered a hate crime.
It is a hate crime against the group of people that you're trying to frame.
That's what it's a hate crime against.
So a black student putting that graffiti up, pretending that a white racist did it, that is a hate crime against white students.
He is trying to inflame hatred towards the white students.
And guilt by association, he's trying to, you know, defame them as racist.
That's the way we should.
That's the way these things should be handled.
All right.
Next year, we have a report here from KFOR in Oklahoma, a local news affiliate there, over the controversy surrounding a Republican legislator who, while arguing in favor of pro-life legislation, compared abortion to slavery.
And this is a big controversy.
We're supposed to be upset about this.
Let's listen to the news report.
Representative Jim Olson was introducing his bill to the House Public Health Committee when he made these comments that immediately sparked outrage from some of his fellow House members.
What was going through my head was shock and appall.
A controversial comparison made in a debate over an abortion bill.
Republican Representative Jim Olson introducing his bill that would make performing an abortion a felony.
In his argument, comparing the fight to abolish abortion to a long push to abolish slavery.
This is absolutely worth doing, even if it takes a long time.
But that message was amiss for some in the room.
Saving the lives of an unborn child is more important than saving the lives of slaves.
None of us would like to be a slave.
If I had my choice, I guess I'd be a slave.
At least the slave has his life.
Later, Representative Olson doubling down, saying it's in no way an endorsement of slavery.
In the context of history in general, I did compare one evil to another.
And, very frankly, I make no apology for it.
That's triggering.
That's traumatizing.
That's hurtful.
Oh, shut up.
You were traumatized, were you?
By someone making a point rhetorically?
You were traumatized by that.
You're suffering trauma.
You have to go to therapy now.
That's trauma.
Okay, trauma is like someone survives a plane crash, okay?
Trauma is someone who was sexually abused as a child.
That's trauma.
Trauma is not a guy made a point you disagreed with.
This Jim Olsen guy, I don't know anything about him, but based on that alone, I like him.
And the suggestion that he was defending slavery?
What?
That was exactly the opposite point he was trying to make.
He's trying to make a point about how evil abortion is by comparing it to slavery.
Now, you could disagree, but to suggest that he was, what?
What was the phrase he used?
Defending slavery or justifying it?
What?
That's exactly the opposite of what he was saying.
And in fact, as it happens, and I've made this point myself many times, there is a similarity here.
There's a similarity because what you find throughout history is that, and this is true today, and it goes going all the way back, and this has always been the case in human society, unfortunately, that there are always groups of people who are pointing to other groups of people and saying that those people aren't people.
Okay?
Throughout history, you always have that.
You have some people trying to de-person other people.
And this comes in various different forms.
And always leads to atrocity and death and oppression and horrible, horrible things.
And what you find is that, and this is a really important point, that the people who are doing this, who are doing the depersoning, they always make the same kinds of arguments.
Always.
It never changes.
For thousands of years, it has hardly changed.
No, this is something I go through in a lot of my speeches, but I'll go through it here, just to make that point, as the point's been raised.
In fact, I was giving a speech, Right to Life, here in Nashville, in Tennessee, a couple days ago, and I went through this same thing.
So, let's go through it, okay?
Just to make the point.
Every pro-abortion argument mirrors arguments, pro-slavery arguments from the 19th century.
And let's go through them.
There's the argument from ownership.
This slave-slash-baby is my property-slash-body.
You can't tell me what to do with it.
There's the argument from privacy.
No one is forcing you to have slaves-slash-abortions.
Mind your own business.
There's the argument from superseding rights.
My property-slash-body autonomy rights come before the rights of a slave-slash-fetus.
There's the argument from inevitability.
Slavery-slash-abortion has been around for thousands of years.
It's never going away.
We might as well have a safe and legal system in place for it.
There's the argument from pseudoscience.
Slaves-slash-fetuses aren't really people.
They aren't like us.
Look at them.
They're physically different.
Therefore, we are human and they are not.
There's the argument from socioeconomics.
If slavery-slash-abortion ends, most of these slaves-slash-babies will end up on the street without a job.
There's the argument from the courts.
This is a big one.
Slavery-slash-abortion has been vindicated by the Supreme Court.
It's settled law.
There's the argument from faux compassion.
Slavery-slash-abortion is in the best interest of the Africans-slash-babies.
The world can be a cruel place.
It's best to protect them by keeping them enslaved-slash-killing them.
Then there's the argument from the assumed hypocrisy of the other side.
You say you want to end slavery-slash-abortion, but you don't want to live with free blacks-slash-adopt unwanted babies yourself.
And that's only a partial list.
Every single one directly correlates.
With arguments made today for abortion.
And finally, we have time for this.
Yeah, we'll make time because we got to make time for this.
You know, I love playing the TikTok videos for you.
And here's here's a good one.
No introduction needed.
Here's another TikTok woman screaming in her car.
Always fun.
Let's watch.
I'm done with this world!
I'm so tired of it!
I'm so f***ing tired of this selfish, idiotic behavior!
I have one, two, I have three f***ing inhalers!
Three!
And I'm not allowed to carry this f***ing iron lung with me anywhere I f***ing go!
Just in case if these don't work and you have the nerve to tell me that you have a doctor's note not to wear this!
If any doctor gave you that, it's because you're not f***ing weak!
You can't wear a piece of cloth!
You're a f****** selfish b****!
And if your husband does that too in public, I hope you both catch COVID!
I hope you both understand how serious this is!
My 4-year-old needs me!
My disabled husband who broke his spine in 2016 f****** needs me!
I'm the only one doing anything at my house because they need me!
And you're selfish trying to take me away from them!
Okay, darling.
First of all, if you have trouble breathing, calm down.
Stop screaming.
This is not helping your asthma, I'll tell you that much.
Second of all, mind your own business.
My body, my choice, right?
Remember?
One of the pro-abortion arguments.
Except it actually, like, really applies here, whereas it doesn't apply for abortion, because, again, as we've talked about, we've talked about many times, abortion is the direct killing of another person, is the direct destruction of another person's body.
Not wearing a mask is not the direct destruction of another person's body.
By not wearing a mask, you are not intentionally and directly killing another person.
You're not.
Anyone who says you are is insane, a lunatic, and should be disregarded.
So in this case, I'll say, yeah, my body, my choice.
Simple as that.
I don't want to wear it, so I'm not going to.
But I do also have to say, you know, with all due respect, she says that she's the only one doing anything for her health and she's trying to look out for, well, the number one risk factor for COVID, yeah, asthma is not good, but really the number one risk factor is obesity.
And we're a year into this thing, and you say that you care, you're taking this so seriously, right?
You're taking it so seriously, and your health is so important to you, but you haven't, you're still very overweight, and so you're in a high-risk category.
If you were taking your health that seriously, you'd be taking care of that, because that's something that you can do yourself.
Can't blame anyone else for that.
That is something you can do, And if you did, it would lower your COVID risk substantially.
So if you're not even doing that, then I guess I question how seriously you're really taking it.
All right.
Let's move on to quickly reading a few of these comments here.
Anna says, thanks for talking about aging.
I'm tired of this youth-obsessed society, how society pretends no one ages, and if they do, there's something wrong with them.
Yeah, well, and that, as we talked about yesterday, it's partially a symptom of our fear of death.
We probably live in one of the most death-phobic societies in human history.
Human beings have always been afraid of death, but we are so, pardon the phrase, dead set on denying it, not thinking about it, avoiding it, to an extent that I think sets us apart from many other human societies in history.
And that's, it's a symptom of that.
It's also one of the reasons why, and I've never understood this, why asking somebody their age is like embarrassing.
You're not supposed to ask that question.
That is, that is a social convention that I think is so ridiculous and I reject it.
And I don't, I ask people their age all the time.
I don't care how old or young they seem to be.
Because sometimes it can be something you're curious about.
It relates to the conversation you're having.
I have no problem saying, how old are you?
And yeah, oftentimes people will look at you like you just asked them how much money they have in their bank account.
Or, you know, if they have herpes or something.
They look at you like you've just asked this incredibly personal... It's not!
Who cares?
It's your age.
It's simply how long you've been on earth.
Why is that a really personal, embarrassing detail?
I don't get it.
If you've been around a long time, that's good.
You should be proud of that.
It's not embarrassing.
So what, if you're 52, you're embarrassed that you've been... It's embarrassing that you've been on Earth for 52 years?
You would rather that you've only been on Earth for 22?
Why?
If anything, it's embarrassing to be younger because it means you have less experience, less wisdom, less credibility in a lot of areas.
I like getting old.
I can't wait to be older.
Once I get to like 70, you know, that's gonna be, that's really, I've been 70 years old, really, spiritually, my whole life.
And so when I get to 70, that's when I will know that I'm home.
Let's see.
T Smith says, hey Matt, just listen to your rumination on the meaning of life for non-religious people.
I was reminded of a segment a while back when you critiqued Sam Harris's position on free will.
Are you up on Sam's philosophy relating to the meaning of life from his Waking Up podcast?
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to.
I did hear a clip of his a while ago that someone sent me that I thought was interesting where he talks about the reality of death and how to live in spite of the fact that we're going to die.
He's approaching this as an atheist.
I think he does as good a job as an atheist can do in dealing with that subject and basically explaining how You can live with joy and purpose, even knowing, from the atheist perspective, that you're soon going to be dead and erased from existence, and everyone's going to forget about you, and you will just evaporate into the ether, and nothing you ever did will matter.
Even knowing that, how do you live with joy and purpose?
Sam Harris, I've heard him address that a few times.
He does as good a job as you could possibly do with that, but that's still not very good, because you can't get around, on the atheist worldview, the inherent meaninglessness of life.
You can't get around it.
And finally, Tristan says, would I be wrong in thinking that as a species we are sick and insane?
No, you would not.
In fact, that's a go from the atheist worldview to the Christian worldview.
That is one of the fundamental facets of the Christian worldview, that we are a sick people in need of healing.
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And, you know, it's an exciting time of the week again.
Our own Candice Owens will be live-streaming her new talk show, Candice, at 9 p.m.
Eastern, 8 p.m.
Central.
In tonight's episode, Candice's Cancel Corner will feature Clay Travis, sports commentator and founder of Outkick Sports.
He's the host of Outkick, the coverage on Fox Sports Radio, Outkick, the show live-streaming wins and losses podcast on iHeart.
Clay has been canceled from CNN and ESPN for his upfront and sometimes in-your-face commentary, so he's going to have A lot to say with Candace.
You can tune in to watch their hilarious discussion tonight at 9 p.m.
Eastern, 8 p.m.
Central, only on DailyWire.com and get 25% off with a new membership with code Candace.
Now let's get to our Daily Cancellation.
Today for our Daily Cancellation, we turn to a website called Openly.
They bill themselves as an impartial, quote, impartial LGBT plus news organization.
Now, my first issue here off the bat is that they've left off the Q I'm not sure why that is.
This has been a really bad year for the letter Q, I think.
But in any case, openly published a lengthy thread, which went viral, and is supposed to demonstrate the validity of, quote, non-binary identities by showing that cultures across the world have their own versions of non-binary or trans people.
Now, many on the left think they succeeded.
Now, I think they succeeded, too.
It's just that they succeeded in proving my point, not their own point.
So let's take a look at the thread.
This is what they said, quote, The gender binaries of male and female aren't as universal as you think.
From Samoa to Albania, here are eight cultures throughout history showing that the concept of non-binary gender is far from new.
Now, we'll stop right there for a second.
This is a tactic that the left likes to trot out from time to time, usually in an effort to normalize one of their preferred lifestyles.
But this strategy creates some problems for the people who use it.
The problem is that the, look, other cultures in the world agree with me, knife, cuts both ways.
There are many societies across the globe still today, and certainly throughout history, that, for example, considered homosexuality to be sinful.
In many cultures, there are still very traditional ideas about the role of women.
There are plenty of cultures where fathers decide who their daughters marry and so on.
If we're meant to embrace gender fluidity because other cultures allegedly practice it, then should we also revert back to traditional marriage and patriarchal family structures on the same basis?
Oh no, of course not.
No.
We're supposed to celebrate and embrace other cultures based entirely on how those cultures conform to Western liberal ideas.
That's what the left thinks.
I don't know about you, but that sounds a little... What's the word they like to use?
Colonialist?
To me?
Now let's look at the examples they provide.
We'll go through some of these.
Two-spirit North America.
Identifying with masculinity and femininity, indigenous North American two-spirit people are often said to contain both male and female spirits.
They're often revealed in their communities, seen as a channel between the physical and the spiritual.
Then we go to Samoa.
Identifying as a separate gender, Fafin's I'm going to mispronounce a lot of stuff when I read this, but just go with me.
Fa'afanin's roles in society moves fluidly between the traditional male and female.
While they're assigned male at birth, Samoa also recognizes Fa'afatama, an equally fluid gender, for those assigned female at birth.
And we go to South Asia, the Hidras.
They say the centuries-old third gender associated with sacred powers usually refers to those assigned male at birth but don't identify as such.
In 2014, India legally recognized Hedras as a third gender after they were criminalized by the British in 1871.
Then we have the sworn virgins in Albania.
In this dying practice, women take on the social identity of a man for life while taking a vow of chastity.
By taking on this identity, they're elevated to the status of a man entitled to the rights and privileges of the patriarchy.
Then we go to the Metis in Nepal.
Officially recognized as a third gender in Nepal in 2017, or rather 2007, Metis have a long history in the Himalayan region.
Assigned male at birth, they assume a traditional feminine appearance.
Nepal set a global precedent with a third gender category on official documents.
And finally, the Toms in Thailand.
One of the dozens or more common gender identities in Thailand, Toms are women who adopt masculine mannerisms and style while using male speech patterns.
Toms are often attracted to Ds, Women who follow traditional Thai gender norms.
Okay.
Let's run through a few issues here.
First of all, we're just assuming for the sake of argument that all of the information provided here is actually correct.
And that is a wild assumption and probably a bad one.
But that has to be our starting point for the sake of argument.
Just remember to apply a healthy portion of salt to everything that you just heard.
I don't even know if all that is true.
For all I know, it's all false.
For example, I do know that the two-spirit term, the first thing they mentioned for Native Americans, that term dates back to 1990.
LGBT activists came up with it about 30 years ago.
It's not some ancient idea stretching back into the distant past.
They just came up with this.
I suspect if I researched all of these other examples, I would find similar caveats.
But again, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that all of the information in the thread is correct and not at all misleading.
On that assumption, it actually defeats the very point that it's supposed to make.
Why?
Well, first of all, in some of these cases, the supposedly non-binary identification is religious in nature.
We're told about the third gender people in South Asia who are believed to have sacred powers.
But they don't really have sacred powers, of course.
This is obviously an incorrect belief about the way the world works.
It's a doctrinal, religiously-based belief.
Some might call it superstitious.
Now, there's nothing wrong with religious beliefs, in principle.
I have my own religious beliefs.
Though it is interesting that leftists will laugh at Christian doctrine while asking us to take seriously the belief in mystical third-gendered people with sacred powers.
This is not a comparison that works in the left's favor.
Though, ironically, I think it's a pretty good comparison, you know, works in my favor.
I think it actually is a pretty good comparison, but not for the reasons that they think.
Yes, it's true that the left's theories on gender are really religious, more than anything.
They, the left, I mean.
They see gender as this mystical, supernatural thing, and that's how they come up with the concept of women being trapped in male bodies and so forth.
If they would just come out and admit this, you know, if they would admit it and say that this is their religion, then I would say, fine, you're entitled to your religious beliefs, but don't try to force it on me and keep it out of the schools.
But they won't admit that it's a religious belief, even as, in this case, they themselves compare it to the religious beliefs of other cultures.
So that's one problem.
Second, finally, notice something else about all these examples.
In these other cultures, they may have men who take on a feminine appearance or women who take on a masculine appearance, but they don't think that the men actually are women, or that the women actually are men.
The Toms in Thailand are women with a masculine style.
We used to have that here, too.
They were called Tomboys.
But in order to be a Tom or Tomboy, you have to be a woman with a masculine style.
The fact that you are a woman is an essential ingredient.
It's what makes you that.
In our culture, we're now supposed to believe that the women with masculine styles are actually, in reality, literally men.
Which means that they aren't women with masculine styles at all, but just men with regular style.
The very thing that makes them different and supposedly special is removed by saying that they are the thing that they're dressing up as.
This is the difference between our culture and every other one on the list.
In every case, there are people of one sex in these other cultures.
There are people of one sex who, for one reason or another, dress up as or act as members of the opposite sex.
But nobody thinks that they actually are members of the opposite sex.
The whole point is that they aren't, but are acting like it.
That is completely different from what we do here now.
All of this highlights, all it really highlights, is that, in fact, the modern Western idea of gender is entirely unprecedented.
It is a completely new, unheard-of thing in the world.
The idea that a man can actually become a woman, not simply act like one or play the role of one, but become one, be one, is new.
And false.
And this line of argument, presented by our friends at Openly, only underscores that very fact.
It makes precisely the opposite point that it was trying to make.
It proves the argument it was meant to debunk.
So it is a very bad, stupid argument for them to present, but I appreciate it.
And today, it gets them cancelled.
And that'll do it for us today and this week.
Hope you have a great weekend.
I'll talk to you on Monday.
Godspeed.
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Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
