Ep. 1244 - The Entertainment Industry Has Been Brainwashing Children For Years. It's Finally Time To Fight Back.
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the entertainment industry has been brainwashing millions of children for years without any real resistance from conservatives. Disney has been at the forefront of this indoctrination, and the Right hasn't done anything about it but complain. But this week that finally changed. Also, Nikki Haley defends Palestinian refugees. Only half of them are terrorist sympathizers, she says. A gun store employee is charged with murder after shooting a man who stole from the cash register. And Gen Z thinks it invented the concept of going for a walk.
Ep.1244
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the entertainment industry has been brainwashing millions of children for years without any real resistance from conservatives.
Disney has been at the forefront of this indoctrination, of course, and the right hasn't done anything about it but complain.
But this week, that finally changed.
We'll talk about it also.
Nikki Haley defends Palestinian refugees.
Only half of them are terrorist sympathizers, she says.
A gun store employee is charged with murder after shooting a man who stole from the cash register.
And Gen Z thinks that it invented the concept of going for a walk.
We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
Welcome back.
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The single most common refrain you've heard from conservative politicians for generations since Eisenhower is that the news media has a left-wing bias.
Long before Donald Trump went after fake news, Richard Nixon was telling his aides not to talk to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Newt Gingrich insisted that he didn't read letters to the editor in newspapers because the editors were all leftists.
Bob Dole ignored questions about his views on tobacco because he didn't care what the, quote, liberal media thought.
Republicans have disparaged the media for so long because the media deserves it.
The vast majority of news outlets in this country are corrupt and partisan, and everybody
knows it on both ends of the political spectrum.
So it's an easy target to hit over and over and over and over again.
The problem with this approach isn't that it's wrong.
I mean, it's correct.
They're right about what they're saying about the news media.
The problem is that it doesn't go nearly far enough.
It doesn't come close to addressing the extent of the bias, the ideological capture in American media.
Yes, corporate news media is propaganda from the New York Times to NBC to CNN and the Washington Post and so on.
We know that.
But the news media is just part of a much, much larger issue.
What conservatives almost never talked about for decades is that this bias also exists in other forms of media, where it is in fact much more insidious and harmful.
And most notably in children's programming.
That's a much bigger deal than bias in mainstream news coverage for reasons that should be obvious.
Adults who are the primary audience for news coverage have more mature brains than children, at least some of us do.
They're generally capable of recognizing propaganda when they see it, or they should be capable of it anyway.
But children for the most part don't have that ability.
If Nickelodeon bombards them with non-binary characters, and if Disney hits them with a not-so-secret gay agenda,
which they've admitted is their goal, then kids are totally vulnerable to it. They're helpless.
And also on top of that, entertainment, as opposed to news media, burrows deeper into the human soul and psyche.
It can shape you in ways that a CNN news segment simply cannot.
Much to CNN's chagrin.
Conservative politicians and other thought leaders somehow rarely seem to notice this problem for a long time.
With very few exceptions, they didn't say much about it.
But parents all over the country have been aware of what's going on for a while.
And that became especially clear to me a couple of weeks ago when I decided to do a monologue opening the show
About LGBT propaganda in the show Paw Patrol Which is one of the most popular television shows for
children and I went into some detail about Paw Patrol's newest writer
Who's this creepy activist who makes?
sing-songy videos for kids about abortion and transgenderism You know often in the past when I have led the show with a
topic like that instead of say the war in Ukraine or now The war in Israel or the 50th Trump indictment or whatever
Typically, there's there's been some backlash you can You can usually count on a few people, or more than a few, to say that it's a silly topic, and that grown men shouldn't pay attention to children's shows anyway.
And of course, the left always says that, because they don't want you talking about what they're doing to children.
They recognize how important it is.
They pretend that they don't, because they don't want you to notice.
But historically, this has been the response from the right as well.
There have always been, you know, a decent number of conservatives who just don't want to hear about any topic that isn't a headline on cable news.
And meanwhile, their children, their own children, are being shaped and changed and transformed in front of them, under their nose, while they're only paying attention to whatever Fox News is talking about.
Now, this time, though, the reaction was very different from the norm.
I'm not going to go through all the comments that listeners and readers left about that monologue.
You can read them yourself, if you like, on the Daily Wire website.
But the consensus was pretty much unanimous.
People are completely fed up with the endless stream of propaganda that corporate media is directing at their children in the form of these kids shows.
It's not just Paw Patrol.
I mean, it's everywhere.
It's everything.
There were hundreds of comments along these lines, and many of them specified specific shows that have begun shoehorning left-wing agenda items into their A lot of shows that I've never heard of, because as I've said before, the vast majority of children's programming has just been ruled out completely in my house, either because it is left-wing garbage, or because it's just garbage, period.
It's terrible quality, and it'll make my kids dumber, and I don't want them watching it.
Or, oftentimes, it's a combination of the two.
And this is a problem that affects all children's programming these days, or almost all of it.
But no titan of children's entertainment has fallen in the public eye quite like the Walt Disney Company.
For generations, Disney made creative content for children that mirrored the values of their parents and their country.
They weren't making these tepid, lifeless, politically correct live-action remakes.
They were coming out with Beautifully animated films, timeless stories like Snow White, The Lion King, Peter Pan.
But in recent years, Disney's objectives have changed, and this is just not the same company that existed in the 20th century, not even close.
Things are now so bad that Disney recently signed an agreement to create propaganda films for China's Ministry of Culture, which is a good fit, we have to admit.
A radically left-wing company making propaganda for a communist government, it is a match made in hell.
Meanwhile in this country, without even attempting to hide what they're doing, Disney has begun, and long ago began, a top-down effort to indoctrinate children into left-wing ideologies, especially gender ideology.
Which invariably involves the sexualization of children.
This is now what Disney stands for at every level.
Last year, as you may remember, the journalist Chris Ruffo published footage of Disney meetings and what they were talking about behind the scenes.
And they were very open about this agenda.
Here's one clip, if you didn't see it, of Disney corporate president Carrie Burke speaking in this virtual meeting with her colleagues.
And it's disturbing, but it shows just how ingrained this ideology is at Disney.
Watch.
I'm here as a mother of two queer children, actually, one transgender child and one pansexual child, and also as a leader.
And that was the thing that really got me because I have heard so much from so many of my colleagues over the course of the last couple of weeks in open forums and through emails and phone conversations and Um, I feel a responsibility to speak, um, not just for myself, but for them, um, to all of us.
We, we had a, we had an open forum last week at 20th where, um, again, the home of, of really incredible groundbreaking LGBTQIA stories over the years, where, um, one of our execs stood up and said, you know, we only have a handful of queer leads in our content.
And I went, what?
That can't be true.
And I realized, oh, it actually is true.
We have many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories, and yet we don't have enough leads.
We don't have enough.
It's never enough.
Nothing is ever gay enough for these people.
Especially this woman who claimed to have one child who is, quote, pansexual, and another who identifies as, quote, unquote, transgender.
If you have any basic understanding of statistics, you know exactly what that means.
I mean, there's just no way that one parent ends up with two kids who both just happen to identify this way.
What it means is this woman is foisting gender ideology on her own children, and she's proud of it.
She's happy that she programmed her kids this way, and now she wants to program yours as well.
That woman is not alone at Disney, as you might imagine.
In another video obtained by Rufo, a Disney executive producer explained that she has a not-at-all-secret gay agenda and regularly works on adding queerness to children's programming.
And that's an infamous enough clip that we don't need to play it.
You've probably seen it by now.
But it is, uh, it's infamous for a reason.
And there are many more like it.
Though in truth, you don't need to listen in on Disney staff meetings to see what the company is doing.
You just watch their content.
The left-wing activists at GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, have been doing that and they've taken notice of Disney's activism.
They just praised Disney for adding, quote, LGBTQ content into more than 40% of their productions last year.
So this is overt LGBT indoctrination, even according to GLAAD, in 40% of the children's shows.
Just in one year.
And that beat out every other company except Netflix.
Netflix is still gayer than Disney.
Just by a hair, though.
It's important to note here that Disney, they're not simply trying to sexualize kids and hit them with LGBT propaganda, which is bad enough on its own, obviously.
They're also trying to instill in them all of the values of the modern left to make them as insufferable and entitled as possible.
To that end, Disney hired a truly obnoxious woman to play Snow White in this upcoming feminist adaptation of the classic film.
I showed you some of her footage before.
It's hard to watch, so I'll spare you that as well.
Parents in this country see all this happening.
They don't need it explained to them anymore.
As Disney's perverse agenda has taken hold, a lot of these parents have been giving up on the whole brand.
Last year, Disney posted its worst stock return in 48 years, losing nearly half its value.
According to some analysts, Disney's attacks on conservative values have cost them roughly a billion dollars when you consider some of their recent box office returns when they've just been putting out flop after flop after flop.
Flop.
Now to be clear, these numbers aren't simply a reflection of the poor quality of Disney's latest productions, although it's certainly that as well.
Parents understand what Disney stands for.
And it's an ideology that parents don't want anywhere near their children.
There was a brand new survey from Rasmussen Reports recently, which the Daily Wire reported on, which shows that as of late September, more than 60% of GOP voters view Disney unfavorably.
More than a third say they view Disney very unfavorably.
Now these are Staggering numbers, especially when you consider that the numbers are somehow even lower than the favorability ratings of Bud Light, which has suffered maybe the single greatest collapse of any brand in modern history.
But there is one unique advantage that Disney has enjoyed despite its free fall in popularity, and that's the fact that their brand of indoctrination is everywhere in children's media.
I mean, it's just totally ubiquitous.
With Bud Light, people could buy a different brand of beer.
With kids content, that has been virtually impossible.
Whether you stick with Disney or you go to Nickelodeon or wherever else you go, you're going to encounter the same garbage.
And so parents said, well, there's nowhere else.
Where else am I?
There are no other options.
And that is all why, a little over a year ago, The Daily Wire announced our plans to invest a minimum of $100 million over the next three years into a line of live-action and animated children's entertainment.
And with that decision, The Daily Wire became the only major media company that has ever decided to do anything about the wholesale, all-encompassing, left-wing bias that has now infected every aspect of children's media.
Yesterday, we delivered on that promise.
On the 100th anniversary of the day Walt Disney founded his company, The Daily Wire launched Benkey, which is a brand new company with its own app.
You can go on your Apple TV, Google Play, Roku, Fire Stick, and download it right now.
There's 150 episodes available at the moment, new ones coming out every Saturday morning as we resurrect the Saturday morning cartoon that many of us grew up with.
There's even a new live-action Snow White movie coming from Benkey, featuring our very own Brett Cooper, which will actually respect and stay faithful to the original fairy tale.
And of course, with all due respect to Brett Cooper, the biggest news, I think, is that I make a key cameo appearance in one of our new animated children's shows called Chip-Chilla.
I play a talking dinosaur toy.
And this is incredible footage as well.
Watch this.
You got that right, Brontor.
No way I will find anything valuable around here.
I shall defeat Captain Brontor, for he is weak, and I am less weak.
Crutch, crutch.
What?
Oh no!
Wow, what a staggering and beautiful performance by me.
I only have one line, but I deliver it with such skill and force and artistry that it practically brings you to tears.
This is what many people are saying anyway.
At least it's what I said when I watched that episode with my kids last night.
And I'll be honest that my daughter talked over my line, so I had to rewind it and play it again and say, everyone be quiet for a second, listen to this.
Make sure everyone heard it.
Nobody in my living room reacted very much or seemed overly impressed with my performance, but that's because they were stunned into silence.
I asked if they wanted to go back and watch the scene again.
They said no, they wanted to watch another episode.
Probably because the performance was so powerful that they couldn't emotionally cope with witnessing it again.
Anyway, aside from the one single line I contributed, I can report that the rest of the children's content is truly terrific.
It's exactly what so many parents have been waiting for.
I'm not just saying that because I work here.
I'm saying that because I'm a father of six, and I'm one of those parents.
We spent a couple of hours last night as a family going through the app and watching different shows.
The kids loved all of it.
I was personally very impressed.
Beautiful animation, good stories, conservative values, all the things That most modern children's entertainment lacks.
And when I say conservative values, I don't mean that the shows are political or that they hit you over the head with right-wing ideology, which is usually, again, historically, when conservatives get into entertainment, that's what it means.
It means that, uh, listen, everyone, this is conservative.
Here's the conservative lesson.
Check it out, guys.
Just battering you over the head with a sledgehammer.
That's not the case here.
I mean that they are stories centered around timeless truths and virtues.
Courage, patience, faithfulness, love of family, and so on.
These are conservative values.
They are the values that we're trying to conserve and that the modern entertainment industry has been waging a war against for many years.
Now this may seem like one long commercial for our kids' content, and I suppose it is, but nobody told me I had to talk about this, and I don't personally get paid when you subscribe to our children's platform.
I'm talking about it because I truly believe in it, and I think it's extremely important.
The fact that children's entertainment is entirely captured by the left is a major problem, and nobody has made any serious effort to do anything about it until now.
And I'm proud we're in that fight, one of many that we have picked as a company.
You know, we take a lot of flack here at The Daily Wire.
We get it from the left, as you would expect.
We're also attacked very frequently from the right.
Everybody has a gripe, a complaint, a nit to pick.
One minute we're far-right, fascist, bigot, extremist.
The next minute we're milquetoast establishment, leftist in disguise, depending on who you're listening to.
Because people love to sit up in the bleachers at a distance and criticize.
Everyone has a criticism.
But we're down here in the arena taking the risks, trying to actually make a difference.
Don't always get it right.
Make mistakes sometimes.
Don't win every battle.
Okay, with the kids' content, it's fantastic.
It's amazing, I think.
Is it success guaranteed?
Not at all.
People need to support it.
If they don't, it could be a disastrous failure.
It could take the whole company down, given the amount of financial investment we've put into it.
But it's worth the risk.
Because we're down here on the ground in the fight.
Which is the only place that I personally want to be.
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We began the five headlines yesterday with Ron DeSantis making the case against bringing Palestinian refugees into this country.
And now Nikki Haley has chimed in with her take.
And her take, as expected, is completely wrong.
But here's what she told CNN.
Watch.
I want you to take a listen to this statement that Governor Ron DeSantis made about All, I guess he's talking about all of the 2.3 million Palestinians.
He said this on the campaign trail in Iowa yesterday.
If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic.
None of them believe in Israel's right to exist.
Now, just for our viewers' edification, according to recent polling earlier this year from the Washington Institute, which is a pro-Israel group, using the polling of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, 62% of Gazans wanted the ceasefire with Israel to stay in place.
50% of Gazans want Hamas to stop calling for Israel's destruction, want Hamas to accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
70% of Gazans wanted the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank to take over Gaza.
So I'm not really certain that Governor DeSantis has a real read on the difference between Hamas and the people of Gaza.
What was your response when you heard what Governor DeSantis said?
You know, I dealt with this every day for two years and, you know, what I can tell you is you have to realize that whether we're talking about Gazans and Palestinians, you know, all of them don't, you've got half of them at the time that I was there didn't want to be under Hamas's rule.
They didn't want to have terrorists overseeing them.
They knew that they were living a terrible life because of Hamas.
You had the other half that supported Hamas and wanted to be a part of that.
We see that with Iran.
Okay, so half of them wanted to be ruled by terrorists, according to Nikki Haley, half.
And to me, the headline is not that half don't want to be, okay?
This classic glass half-full or half-empty.
And I think in this case, it's really the half-empty approach is, the half-empty perspective is the one that we should be taking here.
Because the headline is not that half don't want to be ruled by terrorists, it's that half do want to be.
And that's a large number.
Okay, 50% is a big number, which proves DeSantis' point.
And how exactly do you separate the two?
I mean, if you're opening up the gates and you're letting in a flood of refugees from a place where half, at least, support a terrorist group, then how do you know who belongs to which half?
Do you take their word for it?
It's like going to eat at a burger joint where half of the hamburgers have mad cow disease.
How do you discern the diseased burgers from the safe ones?
Well, what if the only way to do it is if the employee says, I know that one's safe, you're fine.
Even if there is a way to discern it, is it worth the risk?
The answer is no.
And also, there's another point here as well, which is that We're supposed to feel sorry for the half of people in Gaza who don't support Hamas.
And you also hear the claim that it's more than half.
It's pointed out that, in the clip we played of DeSantis yesterday, he pointed out that Hamas was elected.
And then the news anchor in that clip said, well, yes, but that election was, what was it, 2006.
It was many years ago.
They haven't had an election since then.
And so they're under this oppressive rule.
And maybe that's true.
Maybe there's an even larger number who don't want Hamas ruling over them, and they haven't had a chance to have any kind of legitimate election in a long time.
But if that's the case, then it is your responsibility to throw off the tyranny.
Like, one way or another, the truth is that people get the rulers they consent to.
It's as simple as that.
If you don't consent to being ruled by them, then it's up to you to rise up and take them down.
Which isn't to say that someone can't really be a victim of tyranny.
I mean, they can be.
But also, it falls only to you to band together, and if it's 50% of you, that's still big numbers, to band together and free yourself.
You have to do that, and if you don't, then you've consented.
You've consented to be governed this way.
But it doesn't, again, it's all academic.
It doesn't matter how much blame you put on the citizens of Gaza, it doesn't make a difference.
The precise percentage who support Hamas versus don't support Hamas, that's not the point.
At least it shouldn't.
That's not the point when it comes to American policy on this issue.
The point is that our responsibility is to protect our own people.
And look, no one can make the argument that it makes us safer as a country to bring in millions of refugees from a place where a large percentage of them, whatever the percentage is, at least support terrorism.
Can anyone argue that it makes us safer?
If we fast forward the clock six months and we have 200,000 Gazan refugees in this country, can anyone argue that we are now a safer country because of it?
Of course you can't make that argument, which is reason enough not to do it.
Daily Wire has this report.
The judge presiding over special counsel Jack Smith's 2020 election case granted a gag order against former President Donald Trump on Monday.
U.S.
District Judge Tanya Chutkin, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, made the decision after hearing arguments at a federal courthouse in Washington, telling Trump not to engage in a pre-trial smear campaign against government staff, their families, and witnesses.
First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and the protection of witnesses, Chutkan said, according to Politico.
His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify public servants who are simply doing their jobs.
Chutkan warned Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House, that he could face sanctions for violations that would include attacking court staff Well, wasn't that very nice of her?
He can still criticize the Biden administration, at least broadly speaking, as he's running against the Biden administration.
He's running against Biden.
of Justice amid his claims that the prosecution is politically motivated.
Well, wasn't that very nice of her?
He can still criticize the Biden administration, at least broadly speaking, as he's running
against the Biden administration.
He's running against Biden.
He's in a presidential race right now.
And yeah, you can still criticize your opponent, at least.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
I guess he's supposed to be grateful for that.
I mean, the fact that that even has to be said, the fact that that was even up for consideration.
Is crazy enough as it is.
Chuck also reportedly refrained on Monday from issuing limits on what Trump could say about D.C., expressing confidence that the jury selection process will address any concerns.
During a speech in Iowa, Trump vowed to appeal the gag order, and a spokesperson for the former president issued a statement calling the decision on Monday an absolute abomination and another partisan knife stuck in the heart of our democracy by crooked Joe Biden, who was granted the right to muzzle his political opponent.
And that pretty much sums it up.
I think that's exactly right.
That's exactly what's happening here.
This is obviously insane and unjust, you know, issuing a gag order to a former president and a current presidential candidate.
And look, I don't care what the arguments even are.
If you could justify it on some theoretical level, which I don't think you can, But that still would not be good enough, because the fact is that our whole system of government, as much as we hear about our sacred system of government and how we have to protect our democratic system, and it's constantly under attack and under assault where it's claimed, well, that system of government, it rests on the faith the people have in it.
None of this works if people don't have faith in the system.
If people don't believe in the system, if they don't believe in the validity and legitimacy of the system, then it all falls apart.
And when you do things like put a gag order on a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign, I don't care how limited supposedly the gag order is, it doesn't matter.
When you do that, it is another, what was the phrase?
A knife in the heart of our democracy?
Yeah, that's basically what it is.
And that's the case because the reasoning for the gag order, to my mind, is illegitimate, but also because of what it does to the trust and faith that people have in the system.
And that, again, that really does matter.
Because our whole system, if you don't have that, If people don't buy into it anymore, then you just have the total collapse of our system.
Once it is perceived as illegitimate, then you have complete collapse.
And then what happens from there?
I mean, what happened on January 6th is like a walk in the park compared to what happens from there.
When you have a total and complete collapse in the faith that people have in the system.
It's almost as if this is all, you know, that's a feature rather than a bug.
All right, ABC in Houston has a report about an interesting case in their city.
Let's watch the report.
Harry Evans walks into the Carter's Country Gun Store on June 21, 2022 during the day, goes straight for the cash register, opens the drawer, and appears to be taking something out of it when a male and female employee appear.
The man, Winger, starts firing at Evans as he runs into the parking lot.
An autopsy showed he was hit twice and died.
Prior to entering Carter's country, Houston police say Evans had gone into a neighboring clothing store, attempted to steal, and got into a fight with employees.
Within the last week, Winger was indicted by a grand jury on a murder charge.
Attorney Steve Schellest is not related to the case, but he says he does not see that the shooter has much of a defense.
I don't pretend to know what was going on in the shooter's mind at the time.
I'm sure he thought He was doing the right thing by protecting the store and protecting the property, but unfortunately, it was outside the bounds of the law.
So this to me is a total miscarriage of justice.
And I say that while acknowledging that by the letter of the law, technically, the guy's probably guilty.
What you just heard there about the letter of the law is true, but the law is wrong.
And anyway, we also know that You know, people who are definitely guilty of all kinds of crimes are let off the hook all the time.
Prosecutors say either slap on the wrist or they just don't prosecute or whatever.
So we know that happens all the time.
Prosecutors should do the same thing here.
They're not doing it because they're more interested in going after guys like this than going after actual perpetual criminals like the guy that was killed here because the fact is that A person, and I'm not talking about the letter of the law, I'm talking about just what is actually right and what is morally right.
A person should have the right to defend their property and their business with whatever means they deem necessary.
It would be very good to live in a society where criminals are afraid to steal because they know they might be killed.
That would be a good thing.
If you have criminals who are on the verge of potentially committing a crime like this, then they stop themselves because they say, I don't know, I don't want to get shot and killed.
That's a good thing.
That is a sign of a healthy and well-ordered society.
It's how it should be.
Don't want to get shot?
Don't steal.
That's all.
It's not complicated.
It's not a complicated thing.
That's why there's no injustice to my mind.
There's injustice in how this employee is being treated, but in his response, shooting the other guy, that's not unjust.
He didn't go find this guy while he was sitting down for lunch somewhere and kill him.
The guy came in, decided to steal.
If you didn't do that, you wouldn't get shot.
Simple equation.
And if you steal, you deserve whatever happens as a result.
You know, there are people who say, well, he stole, he doesn't deserve to die over that.
Yeah, he does.
He actually does.
You made that decision.
You have no right to do that.
You have no right to do that.
You have no right to just walk into a store and take from the cash register.
You don't have any right to do that.
And you're doing something you have no right to do, and so your own rights have been suspended in that moment.
I mean, you have forfeited your own rights by doing something you have no right to do.
And whatever happens as a result, you deserve.
You do deserve it.
And this should be the logic of the justice system.
The justice system should say, oh, you got shot?
What were you doing when you got shot?
Were you sitting at your house?
Were you taking a nap?
Were you just walking down the street innocently?
Were you volunteering at a soup kitchen?
Were you visiting an elderly woman at a nursing home?
Oh, no, you weren't?
Oh, you were stealing?
You were stealing from a gun store, you moron?
Okay, well, that's your problem.
We don't care.
Your fault.
Oh, you're dead?
Well, sorry.
Sorry about your luck.
Sorry you decided to throw your life away like that, you idiot.
I mean, this is what the system should say.
That would be justice.
And it's not just because a person who steals deserves whatever happens as a result.
They do.
But that's not just the point.
It's also that citizens should be able to protect their livelihood.
Defending your property, your livelihood, that is defending your life.
It is self-defense.
Because our lives depend on our jobs.
They depend on what we own.
So when people say, oh, it's just property, it's just money.
What do you mean, just property, just money?
What are you talking about?
Your life depends on that.
Your life depends on your property.
It depends on your money.
If you don't have any property or any money, then you are very vulnerable to all kinds of things.
So your life depends on it.
And you should have the right to defend your property, and the person stealing it, as far as I'm concerned, has no rights.
That's the way it should work.
And you shouldn't have to justify it.
It shouldn't be up to anyone else to come in Monday morning quarterbacking after the fact and say, well, you didn't technically need that property.
You could have been fine without it.
Who are you to say I could have been fine without it?
It's not your property.
It's not your decision to make.
I don't care what your opinion is.
This is mine.
It's mine.
It's not yours.
Don't take it.
Don't want to get shot?
Don't take it.
What I always ask in these situations is, what is the slippery slope in either direction?
Okay?
I mean, if you think about it, what if, let's just say, in my fantasy scenario, which I know is not the country we live in, but I think it is, it should be.
So what if we were to grant basically total leeway to the victims of robberies and thefts?
And what if we were to say, hey, If someone steals from you, then through the whole act of stealing, even while they're running away, you have the right to do whatever you need to do to recover your property.
Okay?
Now, I'm not saying that if someone tries to steal from you and you recover your property and then they run away that, you know, you can hunt them down the next day in an act of vengeance and just kill them while they're sitting on their front porch.
That obviously would not be okay.
But through the whole act of stealing, the whole act, whether they're coming after you or they're not, whether they have a gun or they don't, through the whole act of stealing, you have the right to do whatever you need to do to get your property back.
That person is doing something they have no right to do.
They forfeited their own rights in the process.
They've made that decision.
It's completely on them.
It's not anyone else's fault but theirs.
And so do what you need to do to get your property back.
And if you do that, we're going to look the other way.
We're going to do everything in our power to be as lenient on you as possible.
What if we were to say that as a society?
What's the slippery slope?
What ends up happening?
How does that harm us?
Worst case, we end up with a lot of dead thieves.
And there are many people who would say, I don't know if that's really a worst case, but that is the worst.
However you look at it, that's the worst case.
You end up with a lot of dead thieves.
Really, best case scenario is you don't end up with a lot of dead thieves.
I mean, I don't want to see people dead no matter one way or another.
I'd prefer if nobody was shot.
I'd love to live in a world where it's never necessary to shoot anybody.
That's what I would prefer, to live in a utopia.
We don't.
But best case to me, so worst case, a lot of dead thieves.
Best case is that you don't end up with a lot of dead thieves and robbers because people decide not to do that in the first place, knowing that their own life is at risk and knowing that if they do this, the justice system will be entirely on the victim's side.
And so they're going to be screwed.
Because either they're going to get shot and killed in the process, or they're going to survive and they're going to get the book thrown at them by the justice system when they're prosecuted for being a thief.
So that's the slippery slope.
Oh no, how terrible.
On the other hand, if you grant more rights to the thieves than to the victims, If you make people too afraid to defend themselves and their property, then we don't need to speculate about the consequences, because we're living those consequences right now.
We all know what happens.
Right?
We know what the slippery slope scenario is in that case.
We're living it.
Then you have just the breakdown of public order, you have the breakdown of law and order, you have the breakdown of society.
You have cities that are unlivable.
You have one community after another that becomes unlivable.
And we're law-abiding people who just, all they want to do is they want to open up a business, they want to get a job, they want to open a business, they want to be contributing members of society.
You end up in a situation where those people are Made to live in fear or you're chasing them out of the community to begin with.
You end up in a world where the leeches, the parasites, the people have no interest in being contributing members of society at all.
Where those people are more empowered than the people who are trying to follow the law and trying to contribute to society and take care of themselves and their families.
So that's the slippery slope in the other direction.
And we're living it.
We know how it goes.
And it's not good, to say the least.
Let's get to Was Walsh Wrong?
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Butch Shorewood says, I agree with your thoughts on voter ID almost completely, except for the fact that the law doesn't support it.
The U.S.
Constitution bestows the right to vote on its citizens, but there is no legal requirement to obtain any form of ID whatsoever.
It's not a question of whether a person can obtain an ID, but whether they must obtain one.
Since they don't have to, then they shouldn't need one to vote, since their constitutional right is nearly unconditional.
However, what we should do is pass a constitutional amendment to require such ID.
For future voting.
I just think you're misreading the law here completely and the Constitution.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says that your right to vote is unconditional.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says that any of your rights are literally unconditional.
All of your rights are conditional.
Every single one.
And most people, I don't really know anyone who disagrees with that, because to really disagree with it, you would have to say that, like, we need to abolish all prisons, for example, because when you go to prison, you lose most of your rights, including your First Amendment rights.
Most of them are out the window, certainly your Second Amendment rights.
So, this unconditional idea is nonsense, to my mind.
And just because the Constitution doesn't specify that you need a photo ID, which we wouldn't expect it, we wouldn't expect people who had no concept of photo IDs to have mentioned anything about photo IDs, but just because it doesn't specify that doesn't mean that it's unconstitutional to require it.
Um, just like there are a lot of specifications that, certainly many that most people would agree with when it comes to the Second Amendment.
For example, I think most people agree that an eight-year-old shouldn't be able to walk into a store and buy a handgun.
I think most people would agree with that.
Even if you're, you know, firmly in favor of gun rights, which I am, you would still say that.
And yet, that's not specified in the Second Amendment.
But of course, we all agree that those kinds of conditions are warranted.
And I think it's the same thing with voting.
Yes, the right to vote exists, but I don't see any reason why we have to treat it like it is, as you say, unconditional.
And I think that if you listen to the show, you know that I think an ID should be one condition of voting.
I think that should just be the beginning.
Just because voting exists as a concept doesn't mean that anyone should be able to do it without any kinds of requirements whatsoever.
And that, in fact, is not how we treat many of our other rights.
There are certain requirements, certain conditions, and there should be in this case as well.
Let's see, Dave says, Matt, I think you're looking at this ultra-processed food bit all wrong.
We should be all for this.
Let's slap a warning on it.
Let's add on some extra taxes like they did with cigarettes.
Let's make this a shaming thing to buy.
Perhaps then it will go away and food will get healthier.
Win-win.
Angel of Death says, "Matt, I agree with you on 95% of everything, but lately you've been
missing the mark a bit.
I can't stand when people try to discredit addiction to sugar by implying we'd see homeless
sugar addicts.
We don't see that because these foods are cheap and easy to get, unlike hard drugs."
God Warrior says, "Listen, I'm conservative.
I'm a screw the snowflake crap, as any of us.
Food addiction is real, though.
It may not be a physical addiction like cigarettes or alcohol, but it is absolutely more complicated than have some willpower.
That being said, it truly does require putting your balls to the wall and not backing down to overcome it, just like any addiction.
Okay, so how is that more complicated than willpower?
How is it more common?
You say it's not about willpower, but it is about overcoming it and not backing down.
Oh, so you mean like willpower?
That's what willpower is?
What do you think willpower means?
What do you think addiction means?
See, I think a lot of people, anytime we talk about this addiction issue, a lot of people are terrified of putting the onus on the individual.
You're so afraid of personal responsibility as a concept that You want to find some way to make people the victims of their own choices.
And I think that, in large part, is born from the fact that a lot of people have been totally brainwashed by therapeutic language, by the psychological industry.
And you've accepted their medicalization of the human condition, and you don't even realize that you've accepted it.
You don't question it.
You know, you see human nature in a way that would have been completely foreign to your ancestors, to everyone who lived on Earth prior to the 20th century, and you don't realize it.
The psychological industry came in and just completely reshaped the way people view themselves and humanity.
And I think there are so many people that just because this is the world they've always lived in, they've never stopped to question it at all.
So, what is addiction?
You know, when we talk about someone being addicted, we could be talking about dependence, about someone whose body physiologically needs the substance so much that if they stop taking it all of a sudden, there will be severe physical side effects, possibly including death.
Like the kind of thing where if you stop doing it or stop taking the substance, you could end up in the hospital.
There's that.
And that's why it's got nothing to do with how much it costs.
People end up destroying their lives.
They end up on the street homeless over an addiction because they fall into this category.
And by the way, this is not a category where personal choice no longer applies either.
They also are in that spot because of their own choices, and they also Do have the power to overcome it.
They probably need some help and it'll be very difficult, but it can be done.
Just it's difficult.
And if you're using the word addiction to apply to those kinds of people, I have no issue with it.
But then there's this other category that that when people say addiction, what they really mean is that someone really, really wants something.
That's what they mean.
There's no real chemical dependence.
You're not going to go into some kind of severe withdrawal if you don't have it anymore.
Nothing like that.
It's just you really, really want it.
And it's because of this definition of addiction that everything is now an addiction.
We talked about food addiction, sugar addiction, porn addiction, everything.
Chocolate addiction.
Everything's an addiction now because the word has come to mean, I really, really want it.
And look, you can come up with whatever fancy medical-sounding terms you want, but still, when it comes to that category, all we're talking about is simply that somebody really, really wants something.
That's it.
And what I'm saying is that turning that into a medical issue, diagnosing somebody with an addiction, and we say an addiction's a disease, we're diagnosing them with a disease like they have cancer.
That's crazy, and it doesn't help anything.
Let me ask you this.
Is there any evidence that this propensity to call everything an addiction has actually helped people to avoid or overcome harmful behavior?
Increasingly, more and more harmful behavior is being labeled an addiction.
Is there any evidence that it's helping?
Do we see fewer and fewer people engaging in harmful behavior as we label it addictions?
No, it's going the other way.
The more that we call everything an addiction, the more that we medicalize everything, the more self-destructive people become.
And it's not hard to see why that's the case.
It's because you're removing their free will from the equation.
You're convincing them that they have no willpower, that they can't help it.
That it's not their fault.
And the more you tell people that it's not their fault while they are engaging in a behavior that they are choosing to engage in, the more of that behavior you will get.
It's not complicated.
The more you tell people that they're doing something, they're stuffing their face with a Cinnabon, and you tell them, it's not his fault, he's addicted.
He can't help it.
What's going to happen?
Most people will just keep stuffing their faces.
Because you let them off the hook.
And it makes no sense.
You can't help it.
You can stop.
You can.
Whether you're watching porn, whatever it is, you're calling it an addiction, you can absolutely stop.
Stop saying you can't.
You can.
It is weakness.
It is a character flaw.
It is a moral defect.
But it's all under your control.
And no one else will tell you this, because everyone else is just... Even the people that claim to be all about... I'm a conservative.
I'm all about personal responsibility.
And people that claim that, and the next thing you know, they go down the list, and every damn vice is now... Well, it's those people.
They can't help it.
Let's be nice to them.
So, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in America who'll just be honest about this.
Like, no, it's your fault.
Yep, it's your fault.
You're watching porn?
Your fault.
You can stop.
You should stop.
You know you can stop.
You don't stop because you don't want to.
Okay?
But you can.
And you should.
You're 400 pounds overweight?
Because you're eating too much.
And you can stop eating so much.
Stop being weak.
Okay?
It makes you feel ashamed when people talk this way?
Well, you should be ashamed!
You should be ashamed!
It's shameful behavior!
Stop!
You can!
Stop saying you can't!
This is, uh... This is why I should really be in the thera... This is... I should be a therapist.
This is the kind of therapy that I would offer.
Well, you all have referred to me as many things because I am a multi-talented, best-selling, LGBTQI children's book author, world-renowned chef.
Well, now... Am I a world-renowned chef?
Okay, we'll go with that, too.
I'm a lot of things.
Well, now you can also refer to me as a voice actor because, as you saw earlier, I am in one of the episodes of Chip Chilla, which made my kids very excited because they've been watching the show and they love it.
We already said that they weren't excited.
They were kind of excited.
They were excited about the show, but I wanted them to be more impressed with my line.
Unfortunately, they were...
They should have been more impressed.
And Bentke sent over a gift box filled with the merchandise from the show.
They had plushies from Chip Chilla, Mabel, and also books.
And I mean, the honest truth is, I'm not even, not just saying this for the sake of the ad, but this one in particular is my four-year-old daughter's favorite toy right now.
We got this toy before she'd even seen the show, and so she had no context for it whatsoever.
And she will not, she won't, she will not, she literally will not leave home without it.
Which is great, because she loves it.
It also is, like, you know, now every time we go somewhere, she's got to have the toy, and then if she loses it, it's going to be a crisis.
But she loves the toy.
All her kids do.
Your kids will love it as well.
They don't have my character yet, but they have the other ones, and I will say that they're all really cool.
They're worth checking out.
You can get yours at bentkeyshop.com.
There are plushies, books, and puzzles, all from your favorite BentKey original shows.
Oh, and just in, BentKey is now the number one kids app in the Apple Store and climbing the charts in entertainment.
So head over to the App Store and download the BentKey app today.
Now, let's get to our Daily Cancellation.
We've discussed this in the past.
Gen Z in particular is obsessed with taking the most banal and commonplace activities, repackaging them with a new name and hashtag, and acting like they invented the idea.
And it seems like they're finally getting to the end of the list of routine human behaviors to trendify, because the latest trend, which is not a trend, is the activity that up until now has been known as going for a walk.
CBS News has the breaking news report.
A new trend on TikTok may actually have some health benefits.
Something called silent walking is trending on the social media app, where TikTok users are encouraging people to walk without AirPods or headphones, podcasts or music, and without walking companions.
Simply walk in silence without stimulation, distraction-free.
Proponents say it allows people to be alone with their thoughts, to feel more relaxed, to enjoy nature, to be more mindful, and to think more clearly.
Therapists agree.
We're bombarded with so much noise all day long that silent walking can allow us to escape, even if for just a short period of time, so you're not only getting the physical benefits, but the mental health benefits as well.
Now, needless to say, this is incredible, incredible news.
Some local news stations around the country have been covering the trend as well, because it's such big news.
To be clear, again, they have done actual news reports about walking.
Here's one.
And a new trend on TikTok may actually have some health benefits.
What's this all about?
Okay, so it's something called silent walking.
Have you heard of it?
No?
It's trending on the social media app where TikTokers are actually encouraging people to go out and walk without AirPods or headphones, without podcasts and music playing, and without walking companions.
Simply walk in silence without stimulation, distraction free.
Proponents say it allows people to be alone with their thoughts, they feel more relaxed,
they can enjoy nature, they can feel more mindful and think more clearly and therapists
are in agreement.
We're bombarded with so much noise all day long that silent walking can allow us to escape
even if for just a short period of time.
So you're not only getting the physical benefits of the actual walking, but you're getting
some mental health benefits as well.
Now this amazing idea, the idea called walking, is so radical and revolutionary that you're
probably wondering who invented it.
Well, I can't tell you who invented walking.
I don't think any one particular person did, but I can tell you who has given herself credit for inventing it.
That is a TikTok influencer named Maddie, who made this video about the silent walking movement that she believes she pioneered.
Watch.
I'm committing to one silent walk a day.
Not me unintentionally starting a movement.
It's called silent walking and it's about to change your life.
So this all started when my nutritionist recommended that I start walking 30 minutes a day instead of doing like insane cardio like I used to.
Those workouts were making my body inflamed.
That's a story for another time.
And as I was about to go out on my first 30-minute walk, my sweet boyfriend challenged me to walk without distractions.
No AirPods, no podcast, no music, just me, myself, and I. And at first I was like, no, my anxiety could never.
Which is probably what you're thinking.
But something within me was like, let me just try it.
And look, the first two minutes are mayhem.
Your mind is racing, you're gonna have anxiety.
Something happens after two minutes where your brain just gets into this flow state and everything is quiet.
Suddenly, you can hear yourself.
Look, the universe in your intuition comes to you through whispers.
So if you're never alone with your thoughts and you never get quiet, you're gonna miss the whispers.
And those whispers are the most important to be paying attention to.
After 30 minutes of silent walking, I suddenly had the clarity that I had been always looking for.
The brain fog lifted.
Suddenly, all these ideas are flowing into me because I'm giving them space to enter.
When you're listening to a podcast or music, you're distracting yourself.
You're not letting the signs and the ideas Have space to come to you.
Every time I finish a silent walk, I have a new idea for my business, I've untangled a weird situation in my head that I've been ruminating over, and I feel like a lot of my current question marks get answered.
Okay, now I know you're thinking a few things.
You're thinking, first of all, that she apparently has a whole other fascinating story about how cardio makes her body inflamed.
Unfortunately, she is saving that epic saga for another time, so we'll have to stay tuned.
You're also thinking that she seems to struggle with the concept of silent.
It's supposed to be a silent walk, and yet she didn't shut up the entire time.
So, leave it to a woman to talk for 25 minutes about the concept of being silent.
Of course, the activity that she's suggesting, even if she doesn't seem to have mastered it herself, is indeed very healthy and worthwhile.
Walking in general is an advisable activity, something that every able-bodied person should try to fit into their day, every day, really.
And walking in silence, allowing yourself to think, to contemplate, to experience your immediate surroundings, is the best form of walking.
You cannot have a healthy inner life, or any inner life at all, really, if you don't have silence.
To avoid silence is to avoid yourself, your own mind, your consciousness.
So I have no problem with silent walking.
I think it's a very good practice.
The problem is the ignorance that leads these TikTok influencers to believe that they came up with the idea themselves.
She started a movement, she brags.
I mean, you might as well claim that you're the first person to mow your lawn, or take a shower, or microwave a bag of popcorn.
Hey, I started a movement, everybody.
First I tied my shoes, and now everyone else is tying theirs, too.
This'll change your life.
Now, perhaps this is less ignorance than it is arrogance.
Maybe it's a healthy mix of both.
And this is the consequence of having younger generations that live in their own bubble, severed from or willfully ignoring the wisdom and guidance of their ancestors.
Because what Maddie says about the value of cutting out all the noise is mostly true, of course, but if she'd been paying attention to anything but TikTok and Instagram, she would know that a great many wise and intelligent people through history have already said quite a lot about contemplative silence and its spiritual and psychological benefits.
But like so many in her generation, she hasn't paid attention to what anyone has said about anything, So she believes she's stumbled upon some hidden truth that 10 billion people before her managed to figure out without any of the fanfare or hashtags.
I say that she's mostly right because she can't help but veer off into the self-help, change-your-life-in-three-easy-steps nonsense at the end.
She says that every time she walks down the street in silence she comes up with some great idea for her business or she solves some riddle that she's been stumped by and she's left with a feeling of clarity.
But the truth is that Walking in silence is not a magic trick.
It's not going to deliver the secrets of the universe to you.
Most of the time, you won't think of anything profound or life-changing.
And if you decide to contemplate in silence with the expectation that brilliant insights and profitable business ideas will pop into your head automatically as a reward, then you're certain to get nothing out of it.
That's because the main benefit of having moments of silence is simply that it gives you an opportunity to be human.
To exist in the current moment.
To think about anything at all.
To be something other than an overstimulated automaton constantly consuming content just for the sake of it.
Okay, that's why you should have silence in your life.
For its own sake.
Just because.
Just because you're a person.
And people are supposed to have that.
And that's why the video I just played of this woman is actually quite disturbing.
Because Maddie says that she was initially terrified of walking down the street in sounds.
The first two minutes were mayhem, she claims.
Now think about that for a moment.
Two minutes.
Two minutes without listening to something or looking at her phone caused internal chaos, a mental crisis.
Two minutes.
It was a great challenge to simply exist for two minutes without any form of electronic engagement.
This was a harrowing ordeal for her.
She's walking the whole time.
I mean, imagine if she tried actually, here's a, this is like the, you know the next level, okay, from silent walking?
Try this, try this.
Try silent sitting.
Try sitting somewhere without any engagement, without looking at your phone for five minutes.
And just sitting there.
And I'm not saying you're meditating or doing yoga.
You're just sitting somewhere and you're existing and you're thinking.
Imagine doing that, because at least when you're walking, you have the stimulation of walking, you're seeing things.
Did you know that, like, that's something people used to do all the time?
You would just, you would have times during your day where you're just kind of like sitting there, and you're just sitting, that's all you're doing, and you're thinking, and that's it.
That's a thing people used to do, a lot.
Well, Maddie's not even close to that.
That's 10 years down the line.
She's not even JV.
That's varsity.
That's D1 college level.
Anyway, she's sure that most in her audience will have the same experience as her.
That it will be just as challenging for them, and she's probably right.
Because this generation is so overstimulated, so attached to their phones, so digitally dependent, that walking down the street For two minutes in silence, two minutes, it's like climbing some great summit.
This is their Mount Everest.
That's why they consider walking in silence to be revolutionary.
It is so far outside of their normal experience, and requires so much effort on their part, that they assume they've discovered something new.
They don't realize that it is in fact the most accessible and normal human experience made inaccessible and abnormal for them because they have been raised like robots rather than people, which isn't their fault to be fair.
We have now a generation of human beings, multiple generations and counting, who don't know how to simply exist.
They don't know how to be in the world, how to be human.
They don't know how to do it.
They only know how to be consumers.
Consumers of products, of content, of light, of noise, of sounds, of images.
And they have to have that bombarding them all the time or they just, they can't, they don't know what to do.
Many of them have spent, have never in their lives spent even two minutes at a time not consuming.
Think about that.
There are probably millions of people walking around who have never spent two minutes not consuming something.
It is terrifying to think that we will soon live in a world exclusively populated by people like this.
People who don't know how to be people.
That's what we really learned from the silent walking trend.
And that is why we are not cancelling Gen Z for this.
Rather, I think it is the parents who raised them this way who are today cancelled.
