Ep. 1364 - White Men Deserve Gratitude, Not Demonization
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the governor of Maine has announced a plan to get more women involved in the construction industry. This is, of course, part of a nationwide plan to chase men -- especially white men -- out of every occupation and field. This is the thanks white men get for building civilization. Also, the governor of New York claims that many black kids have never heard of computers. Protesters at Princeton attack the university for not providing medical aid to them as they choose to starve themselves. And an influencer on TikTok is here to inform us that it is our moral obligation to date fat people.
Ep.1364
- - -
DailyWire+:
Watch the premiere of our new animated sitcom Mr. Birchum this Sunday, May 12th at 9 PM ET on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/4akO7wC
Introducing Emerson - A Premium Multivitamin for Men: https://bit.ly/3WlNWgs
Get 25% off your DailyWire+ Membership here: https://bit.ly/4akO7wC
Shop my merch collection here: https://bit.ly/3EbNwyj
- - -
Today’s Sponsors:
ExpressVPN - Get 3 Months FREE of ExpressVPN at http://www.ExpressVPN.com/Walsh
Tax Network USA - Seize control of your financial future! Call 1(800)245-6000 or visit http://www.TNUSA.com/Walsh
- - -
Socials:
Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Rv1VeF
Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3KZC3oA
Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eBKjiA
Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RQp4rs
Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the governor of Maine has announced a plan to get more women involved in the construction industry.
This is, of course, part of a nationwide plan to chase men, especially white men, out of every occupation and field.
And this is the thanks that white men get for building civilization.
Also, the governor of New York claims that many black kids have never heard of computers.
Protesters at Princeton attacked the university for not providing medical aid to them as they choose to starve themselves.
An influencer on TikTok is here to inform us that it is our moral obligation to date fat people.
All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
Using the Internet without ExpressVPN, it's like forgetting to mute yourself during a Zoom meeting
and having everyone hear your side conversations with your coworkers.
Now, it may just be a bit of harmless banter, but what happens if you say something you don't want everyone else to hear?
Internet service providers track every single website you visit.
They can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who then use it to target you with their ad programs.
ExpressVPN reroutes your network data through a secure, encrypted tunnel so your internet provider can see or sell your online activity.
Sounds complicated, but ExpressVPN is so simple to use.
Just fire up the app and click one button.
One subscription works on all your devices, such as phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can be protected, too.
Here at The Daily Wire, we are proud to have ExpressVPN as our top privacy partner because we believe everyone should be able to protect themselves from big tech's prying eyes.
Protect your online privacy by visiting ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh today.
E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Walsh for an extra three months free.
That's ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh.
If you've ever worked in some capacity on procuring a federal government contract, then you're familiar with maybe the single most obvious and grotesque form of affirmative action that exists in this country.
It's been around for a long time.
As far back as Nixon's administration, gender and racial affirmative action became mandatory for federal construction projects in the city of Philadelphia.
And any federal contractor that hired fewer than 80% of the local share of, quote, any race, sex, or ethnic group, risked losing their contract and being barred from working with the federal government entirely.
Within a year, those requirements applied to contracts with all federal agencies nationwide.
As attorney named Michael Toth pointed out recently in the Wall Street Journal, those rules are still in place today, half a century later.
In fact, they've only been expanded in scope.
Now the federal government can award no-bid contracts to so-called minority-owned businesses in many cases.
The end result of this policy has been exactly what you'd expect.
For one thing, contractors know that they need to employ a token number of women and minorities in order to get any kind of government grants.
And additionally, so-called minority-owned contractors often get government contracts and then subcontract them out to contractors who didn't meet the diversity quota.
Now, this is all highly inefficient.
It's fraud, basically, and it's resulted in taxpayers being forced to waste a lot of money.
As City Journal reported recently, some government contracts cost nearly 20% more than they would have without these affirmative action programs.
Multiply that by hundreds of billions of dollars worth of federal government contracts every year, and you begin to see the problem.
Instead of ending this social engineering and simply allowing markets to work without crude demographic manipulation, the Biden administration's allies in state and local governments are doubling down.
They've decided that they know exactly what the demographic makeup of each industry should be, and it just so happens that white men aren't wanted in any industry.
So I'll start with Maine, where this week, Democrats have determined that the field of construction Where blacks and Hispanics make up nearly 40% of the workforce simply isn't diverse enough, somehow.
Specifically, the governor, Janet Mills, has determined that more women need to be construction workers, and therefore Mills has signed an executive order that, among other things, will use state and federal funding to prioritize construction projects that involve women.
Watch.
Janet Mills laying out the blueprint today to get more women working in Maine's construction industry.
We need construction workers, especially women now.
Governor Mills signing an executive order at Maine DOT in Augusta alongside female leaders in Maine's construction industry.
The executive order will kickstart data collection in collaboration with partners in the construction industry and implement grant programs to incentivize the hiring of women while providing supportive services that recruit and retain women in the construction industry.
There are qualified women across Maine who belong in fields dominated by men, and I want to knock down the barriers that are keeping them from pursuing these good paying jobs in construction with good Maine employers.
We need construction workers, especially women, now.
Why?
Why especially women?
And this is odd coming from Janet Mills, who spent her college years traveling through Europe and learning French before going into law school and spending the rest of her life in government.
What does Janet Mills know about construction exactly?
How is she qualified to say anything about what the construction industry needs or who's most qualified to fill those needs?
Now, as always, this DEI initiative is a solution in search of a problem.
There is absolutely no reason to believe and not a single shred of evidence to suggest that the construction industry was in any way suffering due to a lack of female representation.
There is not one problem in the construction industry that you can point to and say, you know what'll solve that?
More women.
That's because no problems at all can be solved by involving more females in construction.
On top of that, there's no evidence at all that any qualified female has ever been denied a job in construction due to her sex.
By all accounts, fewer women are in construction for two simple reasons.
First, because most women don't want to do construction.
And second, because men are generally much better at it.
And of course, it's completely rational for women to dislike the idea of working in construction.
It's one of the most dangerous jobs you can have.
As you can see from this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's among the top 20 most dangerous jobs, along with roofers, police officers, truck drivers, miners, farmers, and ranchers.
And you'll never guess what all of these top 20 most dangerous jobs in America have in common.
They are all overwhelmingly done by men.
Construction is more than 97% male-dominated.
It has a fatal injury rate of 15 per 100,000 workers.
That's on par with cement and concrete manufacturing, which is also more than 97% male-dominated.
These jobs, again, can be very dangerous and, in fact, would be even more dangerous for women.
And that's not just because women are weaker and more injury-prone, though they are.
It's also because a large percentage of deaths on construction sites are caused at least in part By heat exhaustion.
And it just so happens that women are more sensitive to temperatures both hot and cold.
Any married man is very familiar with this phenomenon.
Like, one minute your wife is complaining that she's freezing to death, you adjust the thermostat by one degree and now she insists that the house is a sweltering desert.
That's not just anecdote, there's science behind that.
So, that's just one of the reasons why men tend to do most of the physically demanding jobs outside.
Men tend to do most of the physically demanding and dangerous jobs everywhere.
This is not a privilege that men have, but rather a responsibility that they have carried.
The takeaway from this shouldn't be that we need more women doing these jobs.
It's that men, and white men in particular historically, have had a unique and essential role in building and maintaining our civilization.
We would not have this civilization without them.
So rather than this constant drumbeat of scolding and lecturing and guilt and resentment, treating the presence of this group as a problem that must be solved or a cancer that must be treated, the appropriate attitude is one of appreciation and gratitude.
Men built every building you've ever been in, every bridge you've ever crossed, every road you've ever driven on.
Now, sure, if you're a little bitter, resentful brat, maybe that fact will make you feel somehow diminished.
But if you're a smart, mature, decent person, instead of demanding that we kick men out of these industries, you will instead have some gratitude.
You will say, thank you, men.
Thank you for everything you've done for civilization, and for me personally.
That should be our answer to the Janet Mills of the world.
Rather than going on the defensive and justifying ourselves, men as a group should say to her, hey you ungrateful child, the correct response is thank you.
Didn't your parents teach you manners?
And the same logic applies to race as well.
I mean, these days, of course, as noted, it's not just white men in the construction industry, but historically speaking, white men have been uniquely indispensable contributors to Western civilization.
Most modern technology was invented by white men.
Most of the great discoveries were made by white men.
Most of our wars were fought and won predominantly by white men.
Most of the advances in medicine and science have been achieved by white men.
Most of the great leaders, artists, thinkers, philosophers in Western history have been white men.
And yet, this is the one group most demonized, most hated for the sin of, what, providing us with so much of what we value?
A sane society would be finding ways to get this group more involved in things.
Given its incredible track record of success, Instead, we go the other way.
Outside of communist countries, modern Western societies are the only ones in the history of the world that go out of their way to identify the people most responsible for building and maintaining their societies, only to villainize and alienate those same people.
And we're doing it more and more.
This isn't just happening in the federal government or in Maine.
It's also happening in the most populated city in the United States.
Officials in New York have just proudly announced that they've awarded more than $2 billion in contracts for the purpose of renovating JFK Airport.
And all of that money has gone to so-called MWBEs, which is short for Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises.
Quoting from the governor's press release, quote, this is the largest participation of MWBE firms on any public-private partnership project in New York State history.
With today's announcement, JFK surpasses the LaGuardia Airport redevelopment, which set the previous New York State record for MWBE participation.
In other words, you know, nobody wants reparations.
Even in New York, it was not a popular idea.
So the state government just decided to do it anyway by handing out money on the basis of race and gender.
And they've chosen airports as their preferred vehicle to launder this money, evidently.
Now, if you watch the New York Port Authority's press conference announcing this funding for the JFK renovation, you'll see exactly what's motivating these officials.
It's basically an hour of various New York officials, including a sitting member of Congress, celebrating the fact that they excluded white-owned businesses from receiving taxpayer funding.
Here's how it began.
Watch.
We're here for another reason, because this building, the renovation of it, was for us a poster child for what we wanted to achieve across the airport.
It was built almost entirely by minority and women-owned business enterprises, and we in fact ran what we called internally project readiness programs, but they really were boot camps They were really tough training sessions to equip MWBEs and local businesses with the skills and training to both bid and succeed in the competition for contracts.
Now this is the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announcing to applause that JFK's renovation involved as few white men as possible.
He's not proud of the quality of the renovation.
He doesn't talk about how the airport is going to be better as a result of this work.
Instead, he's just happy that white people didn't have a role in it.
Never mind the fact that white people, white men specifically, have pretty much single-handedly built the entire aviation industry, beginning with inventing the airplane, and now we need to get them all out for some reason.
And then he goes on to explain that the government did everything it could to ensure that non-white people secured the government contracts for JFK by preparing specialized segregated boot camps to help them along in the application process.
So he's acknowledging that this was not a remotely fair or merit-driven process at any point.
It was the purest form of affirmative action.
He's not celebrating that these minority businesses earned the job.
He's celebrating that the government rigged the process.
And this is illegal, obviously, and it gets worse.
Here's Congressman Gregory Meeks explaining why it was so important to discriminate against white male contractors.
Watch.
We gotta have equity in these projects.
Now, it's never a giveaway.
Because, you know, as we're talking and fighting now about DE&I, diversity, equity, and inclusion, Some think that's a giveaway.
Some think that's just, you know, a charity.
No it's not!
It's good business!
Now, the Congressman says it's important for racial and gender discrimination in the form of DEI to be a part of everything New York does, but he doesn't really say why.
He gets some applause when he says it's good for business, but he doesn't elaborate on that point.
That's probably because, as I've outlined before, it's demonstrably false that DEI is good for business.
The only time DEI is good for business is if you're a non-white business and you're looking to get a government payout.
In that case, DEI is good for business, sure.
For everybody else, it's a massive economic drain, at a minimum.
And almost certainly also a safety risk.
But even if racial discrimination were somehow profitable, that still wouldn't justify it.
And it's pretty remarkable that a sitting member of Congress would imply otherwise.
Only a deep-seated hatred of white men would explain what we're seeing here.
And as if there was any doubt about that, the next speaker at this press conference, a New York Assembly member named Alicia Hindman, came right out and admitted that, yes, that's what's going on.
She just hates white men.
Watch.
All of the Zoom meetings that we did during the pandemic, led by Dr. Stacey N.C.
Grant.
Your participation means everything.
What we didn't want to happen is to go back to the community, and Jim, you know this, and people look at us and say, well, what did you do?
No one on that project looks like us.
No one in that project represents us.
We did not want to have those conversations, and that's why those tireless meetings that took place on Zoom, it was, what was it, Microsoft?
Webex or whatever it was and it wasn't working and your bandwidth and you had to turn off the camera or turn off the mic.
As annoying as it was, we knew it was for us.
For us, by us, to make sure that this community that we represent looks like us.
So the woman can't figure out how Zoom works, apparently, but she's in charge of renovating the airport because, with apologies to white people, the airport isn't for them anymore.
It's for people who look like Alicia Hinman now.
Quote, we knew it was for us, for us, by us, to make sure this community that we represent looks like us.
Now to be clear, again, she's talking about an airport.
This is a public facility that isn't for or by any racial group.
And Alicia Hinman is a public official.
She supposedly represents a community that includes white people.
But here she is proudly declaring that the airport is for black people.
And her community doesn't include people who don't look like her.
So, white men don't get to build airports anymore.
The airports aren't for them.
Neither are construction jobs.
You have to wonder what, if anything, these politicians want white men to do.
Like, what do you want them to do?
What are white men supposed to be doing now?
Should they ever receive any funding from the government?
Should they be allowed to compete for government contracts on a fair and equal playing field?
Apparently not.
Should white men just build, maintain, and run their own airport?
I'd be quite happy to use that airport personally.
Her goal and the goal of her party isn't simply to erase white men from history.
Their goal is to erase white men from the workforce as punishment for doing everything so well for so long.
It's not a secret at this point.
And as conservatives spend all their time talking about, you know, college campuses and so on, their enemies are being very methodical and explicit about what they're doing.
One airport renovation and construction job at a time.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
If you owe back taxes or still have unfiled returns, it can really weigh on your mind, especially when the IRS has become more determined than ever.
Their chief data analytics officer revealed that the IRS is focused on an enforcement project with an average return on investment of about $6 for every $1 spent.
They're targeting individuals and businesses that currently owe back taxes or haven't yet filed their returns.
Tax Network USA, the nation's leading tax relief firm, knows the tax code and will fight for you.
With a record of negotiating over a billion dollars in tax relief for their clients, their team is knowledgeable in handling any type of tax issue.
Whether you owe $10,000 or $10 million, they can help.
Even if you don't have all your personal or business records from over the years,
they can get you filed up to date.
Facing the IRS without a professional is not a smart move.
Contact Tax Network USA for the best strategic advice to help reduce or even eliminate your tax debt.
Call today at 1-800-245-6000 or visit their website at tnusa.com/walsh.
They'll give you a free private consultation on how you can settle your tax debt today.
That's tnusa.com/walsh.
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, had some thoughts this week about the struggles
faced by young black kids.
Let's listen to that.
Young black kids growing up in the Bronx who don't even know what the word computer is.
They don't know.
They don't know these things.
And I want the world to open up to all of them because when you have their diverse voices innovating solutions through technology, then you're really addressing society's broader challenges.
They don't even know what a computer is.
They don't have electricity.
They've never heard of cars or indoor plumbing.
If you use a lighter around them, they'll think that you're conjuring fire from the heavens and they'll worship you as a god.
This is what she thinks of black people because she's so incredibly anti-racist.
That's basically her position.
Now, as many have pointed out, by the way, Joe Biden infamously said almost exactly the
same thing back when he was running for president in 2016.
So it's a very similar idea.
Now there was a fair amount of backlash against this from both sides, and Cathy Hockiel has
backtracked now, predictably.
The AP reports, New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she regrets making an offhand remark that suggested black children in the Bronx do not know what the word computer means.
Let's see, in a statement later Monday, Hochul said, I misspoke and I regret it.
Of course black children in the Bronx know what computers are.
The problem is that they too often lack access to technology needed to get on track to high-paying jobs in emerging industries like AI.
That's why I've been focused on increasing economic opportunity since day one of my administration and will continue to fight to ensure every New Yorker has a shot at a good paying job.
Okay, so now to be clear, saying that black kids have never heard of computers is not misspeaking.
Like you misspeak when you stutter over your words or you flub something or something like that.
But this was just a false claim that she made.
Now, did she say it because she really believes that black kids haven't heard of computers?
Or was she saying this because it was her patronizing, condescending way of trying to seem compassionate to minorities?
I'm guessing the latter, but it could go either way.
And you know, a lot of conservatives are reacting to this by saying, By saying that Kathy Hochul is racist.
You know, Dems are the real racists, you see, that whole bit.
And I think that kind of misses the point.
She's not racist.
Like, she doesn't hate black people.
She probably doesn't like them very much either, but she doesn't like anyone.
I think she probably feels about black people the way she feels about everybody, all of her constituents.
She just doesn't care.
She's a mediocre Democrat politician who happens to be the governor, although she's never been elected to anything in her life.
Just an empty vessel, soulless, basically indifferent to everything and everybody.
I don't think she has any special hatred for black people, though.
No, this is just left-wing victimology.
She subscribes totally to left-wing victimology.
That's all she was trying to do with this claim.
And she knows that black people are always supposed to be the victims in every situation.
So she just took it a little too far.
And almost in her defense, I would say that it's hard to know exactly where the line is supposed to be because she's probably thinking to herself, well, hang on a second.
We go around all the time claiming that black people don't know how to get driver's licenses.
That's a standard claim.
So is it really that much more outlandish to say that they haven't heard of computers?
Isn't that, like, that's just maybe one step beyond what we already say all the time.
And so she just didn't, you know, she went a step farther than they're willing to go, because she doesn't know exactly where the lines are, and that's what happened.
Like, precisely how far are you supposed to go in infantilizing black people in order to paint them as the victims?
Because this is what all of the left does.
And you know, she doesn't know.
She wasn't sure where the line is.
And now she knows.
Trial and error.
That's the way it goes.
I will mention one other thing.
In her follow-up statement, she says that She didn't mean to say that black people haven't heard of computers.
She meant that they don't have access to technology, and that's why there aren't more black kids becoming scientists and engineers and astronauts and all the rest of it.
Now, that obviously is not true.
First of all, in modern America, pretty much everyone has access to technology.
Like, 92% of Americans have smartphones.
As for computers, desktops, laptops, what have you, almost everybody either has one, or could get one, or could at least access one, whether at school, or at the library, or at a family member's house, or a friend's house.
You know, the number of people who simply cannot access computers at all is very, very small.
And in that very small group, I imagine there are at least as many poor white people, you know, in trailer parks in Appalachia or whatever, who legitimately have no access to a computer, but it's still a small group.
The point is that's not what's preventing A lot of these black kids from becoming successful scientists and engineers and building robots and working on AI and all the rest of it.
It's not that.
It's not that they lack access to computers.
It's that they lack access to their fathers.
Many of them.
To a stable family structure.
To an intact nuclear family.
That is the issue that is holding back a lot of these kids.
And That's an important point, obviously, because if you have a kid growing up in a dysfunctional environment, in a dysfunctional community, with no father figure, with a mother who's not paying attention, not equipped, not doing much to raise the child, you grow up in that kind of environment, you can be given a phone, you can be given a free computer, they can give you everything that you want, and it's not going to make a damn bit of difference.
So, that's really the issue.
The Independent reports, more than a dozen Princeton University students began a hunger strike on Friday in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, as university campuses in the U.S.
continue along.
Our hunger strike is a response to the administration's refusal to engage with our demands for dissociation and divestment from Israel.
We refuse to be silenced by the university administration's intimidation and repression tactics.
We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
We commit our bodies to their liberation.
So we're back to the hunger strike.
But the activists are, so they've been on this hunger strike since Friday, supposedly.
And you know, I'm never very impressed with the hunger strike, because how do we know?
How do we know you're not sneaking snacks?
You probably are.
And until we actually see you becoming emaciated and gaunt and skeletal, until we see that, I'm not impressed.
And I'm not saying I want you to do that, because you're going to kill yourself, and I don't want you to do that.
But if we don't see that, then there's no way for us to even know that you're actually doing the hunger strike.
But anyway, the activists are upset because they are not being medically monitored by the university while they carry on their hunger strike.
Here's one activist expressing outrage over this point.
Listen.
As strikers, we will continue to starve until they meet our demands.
In addition, I would like to note that the administration is also lying to the media.
To the media, they have announced that they have been consistently sending their own doctors to come to our area and monitor us hunger strikers and monitor our health.
This is a lie!
They are not monitoring our health.
They are not keeping track of our vitals.
They are not at all taking care of us in any regard.
They have only sent a spokesperson from UHS twice to give us informational pamphlets, but they are not at all at They were given informational pamphlets, which is very funny to me.
I'd like to see those pamphlets.
What did the pamphlets say?
Like, it... If you don't eat, you'll die?
Is that the... You just open the pamphlet, it just says that?
Why eating is important.
Number one, it stops you from dying.
Number two, see reason number one.
I have to say, I've really had enough of this.
I can't even talk about it anymore.
It's so depressing.
I just want it to stop.
I want all this stuff to stop, mainly so that it stops taking up so much of the news cycle and forcing me to talk about it, because I find it so depressing.
I mean, yes, it's hilarious.
It's very funny.
The fact that they're starving themselves and then demanding that the institution they're protesting provide them with medical care is funny.
And we've got some protesters demanding free food on one hand, and then others demanding medical care because they refuse to eat.
And that's, yeah, it's funny.
We can laugh at them.
We should.
We have.
That's the appropriate response.
But it's also so depressing.
Going on a hunger strike is very stupid.
Going on a hunger strike for this reason is even stupider.
But as I've said many times now, it should at least be a radical act.
Hunger strikes have always been dumb.
Especially when again you're you're protesting someone and especially when you claim that like These people are supporters of genocide.
They don't care about us.
Well Then what's the hunger strike gonna do?
When they just why so you're saying to them if you don't do what I want.
I am going to continue to be very uncomfortable But why should they care about that?
That's you that doesn't why does that make them uncomfortable?
So It's like the opposite of a boycott.
It's like, rather than boycotting a company to take away their profit, you just set your own money on fire.
You said to a company, if you don't do what I want, I'm gonna, you see this?
This pile of my own money, I'm gonna burn it.
Yeah, how does that make you feel?
Doesn't make a lot of sense.
But, at least, A hunger strike should be a radical act, and yet this isn't even radical.
When you do the hunger strike in protest, and you also expect the institution you're protesting to be there to provide medical aid, there's nothing radical about it.
You found a way to turn a hunger strike into something neutered and limp and non-committal We are, I'm telling you right now, we are days away from one of these people setting themselves on fire and then in their dying breaths, screaming at the university for not being there with a fire extinguisher.
They will set themselves on fire and scream, why isn't anyone here to put this out?
Like, that is, I'm telling you right now, it's gonna happen.
All right.
Daily Wire has this report.
Reading for fun sharply declines around age nine, an alarming trend that coincides with years of learning loss since the pandemic.
Data shows only 35% of 9-year-olds are reading at least 5 days a week, compared to 57% of 8-year-olds, according to the latest Scholastic survey on the issue.
The number of kids who say they love reading dropped significantly from 40% among 8-year-olds to 28% among 9-year-olds.
The trend dubbed the decline by nine has concerned researchers who note that reaching reading proficiency by third grade is a good predictor of academic success.
Sales of books aimed at children eight through 12 were down 10% in the first three quarters of last year, after dropping 16% in 2022.
Meanwhile, books aimed at other age groups are not underperforming compared to 2019.
Smartphones and more screen time could also be part of the problem, experts say.
But the issue seems to go deeper than just screens.
One of the main drivers of the decline by nine appears to be the pandemic school disruptions.
Well, maybe that plays a part, but really it's all smartphones.
I mean, that is actually what it is.
It's all smartphones.
It's all screens.
That's what this is about.
That's the cause of it.
The reason I harp on it so much is that it's clearly one of the primary causes Of almost every problem that kids are collectively suffering from right now.
It is either the main driver of every problem, or it's a major driver.
In this case, it's the reason.
It is the number one, and it might as well be the only reason why young people today aren't reading.
And look, 40% of kids get their first smartphone around the ages of 9 and 10.
That's also when they stop reading.
So, it's not hard to do the math here.
It's very clear.
And kids who are staring at screens all the time, they aren't going to have the attention span necessary to read books.
They aren't going to be interested.
They're conditioned to need much more stimulation, immediate sort of surface-level stimulation with lots of movement and bright lights and sounds and stuff like that.
That's what they need.
Or not what they need, rather, but what they have been conditioned to want.
And a book doesn't provide that.
Books require quiet, thoughtful attention.
Kids with smartphones are just not capable of that.
Most adults with smartphones are not capable of that.
Which is why, although maybe according to the study here, reading books among adults hasn't declined that much since 2019, it certainly has declined a whole lot since, like, 1990 or, you know, any time prior to that.
And, um, This is why it's important to teach your kids about the thrill of pursuing knowledge.
Really, a lot of this is not just gaining it, but pursuing it.
The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
And with a book, you are pursuing knowledge.
It's fiction or nonfiction.
You're still gaining knowledge and insight and wisdom.
That's what makes books great.
That's what makes books cool, kids.
Okay, that's why you should read them.
And you are pursuing these things sort of the long way.
You're taking the scenic route, right?
The only real hope for your kid is to instill in them a love of the chase, of the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.
So that maybe when they do have smartphones later on, they'll still like to read books rather than just Googling everything to find out what they need to know.
I was thinking about this yesterday, because, you know, I'm a dork, so I like to tie everything back to these books that I'm reading, and I just started reading Candace Millard's book, River of Gods, and I really enjoyed her book about Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon expedition, which I've talked about before on the show.
It's a great book.
River of Doubt, that one's called, that one's River of Doubt, this one's River of Gods.
And this one is just as compelling so far.
It's a book about explorer Richard Burton and his search for the source of the Nile in the 19th century.
Last week I finished Into Africa, which is about David Livingston's search for the same thing, which actually, he took up where Burton and Speak left off, so I'm kind of, I'm sort of reading this a bit out of order.
But anyway, there are many parallels That you notice between the quest in the 19th century to find the Nile source.
In Africa, and then the search for the Northwest Passage.
And British explorers, in particular in the 19th century, and for centuries before that, were preoccupied with both goals on two very different parts of the globe, obviously.
Many people died horrible deaths on these quests.
Many hundreds of people over the years and over the centuries starved.
You know, they died of scurvy and dysentery and hypothermia, and they were attacked and murdered, sometimes eaten by natives, and all of this.
Incredible suffering was all in pursuit of knowledge.
Mainly, there were other things too, you know, there were other motivations for these sorts of expeditions, but the main motivation was really just to know.
Like, you know, they wanted to know what the world looked like.
And there was only one way to find out.
You had to send people to go look and come back and tell you.
And then they would die, and so you had to send more people, and keep sending people until someone finds out, and they come back and they tell you.
And now it's like, hey, well now we know.
And that's the thing, the great men of history would risk their lives and endure unthinkable suffering in order to gain the sort of knowledge that we can all now access instantly with the machines that we carry around in our pockets.
And this is a fact that I think about all the time.
Because knowledge comes so cheap now, and we do nothing to earn it.
Like the fact that you can pull out your phone and you can just pull up your GPS and you can like plug in the Nile and there it is, you can look at it and you can see the whole thing in five seconds.
It used to take like a three-year expedition through the jungle or two years drifting through pack ice in the Arctic to find out information that you can now discover in two seconds on Wikipedia.
And we don't appreciate this fact.
Our lives are so incredibly easy in a million ways that we never even think about.
And I don't think we're necessarily better for it.
We don't value knowledge because it comes so cheap.
And because we don't value it, we also don't really possess it in any kind of meaningful way.
So we know lots of things.
We probably have a wider breadth of information that we are aware of.
Than anyone else, any other group of people that's ever existed on the planet.
But we don't know these things deeply.
Like, we have a wide sort of superficial awareness of many things because of our phones.
We can pull out our phone and you have a question about anything in the world, you can just Google it.
There it is.
Okay, now you have that information.
Of course, you're going to forget it five seconds later because there's all this other information you're bombarded with all the time.
But if you forget it, you can pull out your phone and find it again.
So we have that information, but we don't really know things.
We don't really know them.
There's a difference between having information in your head or accessible to you on a phone and actually knowing and understanding.
Because true knowledge has to be pursued.
And you have to enjoy the pursuit.
And we have to raise our kids to enjoy that.
And if we don't, you know, we're It's worse than living in a country full of morons.
We're going to live in a country full of people who just are indifferent to knowledge, who have no desire to know anything.
All right, finally, The Daily Wire has this, speaking of important knowledge and information, I think this is a very important story.
Zoo-goers in China became upset after discovering that an advertised panda exhibit actually just contained dogs that were painted white and black.
It happened at the Taizu Zoo in Jiangsu province on May 1st, when people went to see what was advertised as a new exhibit of pandas and instead saw painted Chow Chow dogs.
Photos and videos of the fake pandas have since gone viral.
We of course have some video of these alleged pandas.
Let's watch.
I mean, close enough.
Like, close enough.
[NOISE]
I mean, close enough.
Like close enough.
I don't really see the problem here.
I guess the zoo patrons were complaining about it, because they saw this, they're like, those are clearly dogs.
Those are obviously not pandas.
But I don't know what the issue is.
Like, the two most useless kinds of animals are small dogs and pandas.
There's no reason why either type of animal should exist.
Every time I see someone walking a tiny dog like that, I think, why does that exist?
I want to stop them and ask them, why does that thing exist?
Oh, it's a cute dog.
What's its name?
What type of dog is it?
Okay, why does it exist?
Why do you own it?
And why is it here on the planet, is my question.
Without that kind of dog there, without people keeping it as a pet, There is no way that it would exist.
What would it do in the wild?
It would be screwed.
And we obviously know that pandas wouldn't exist without human intervention, so I don't know, what's the difference between the two?
I think they're kind of interchangeable.
At worst, this is like, at worst, this is a Coke-Pepsi kind of thing.
And it's like when you go to a restaurant and you say, can I get a Diet Coke?
And they bring you out a Diet Pepsi.
And, you know, it may be a little disappointing, but it's basically the same thing.
There are some people who make a big show of, I don't drink Pepsi, I only drink Coke.
Come on, you can't.
It's the same thing.
You really can't.
You can't really tell the difference.
You claim that you can, but you actually can't.
Nobody can.
No one can.
Sorry, you can't.
It's been proven by science.
And so, same deal here.
In fact, if I went to that zoo, I would probably prefer that exhibit.
At least there was some effort put into it.
Some thought put into it.
You get to see creatively spray-painted dogs.
That's a whole other thing.
That could be a whole other exhibit all to its own, really.
And, of course, why do you want to see pandas in the first place?
I'm not going to get into my whole panda rant.
You know how I feel about pandas.
I will say that a panda exhibit is pointless.
They don't do anything.
They just sit there.
They're completely useless.
They're incompetent, useless animals.
So you go and you sit there, see them sitting there eating bamboo or whatever.
Why?
But I really wanted to read this part.
This is the only thing about the story that is arguably important, is this part.
It says, zoo officials reportedly dyed the faces of the dogs black and trimmed their hair to make them look like the popular bamboo-eating bears.
They then put the fake pandas in the exhibit every day from 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m., drawing in people to come and see these little bears per the sanctuary staffers.
When zoo officials were asked why they had tricked people into thinking the dogs were pandas, one zoo rep replied, quote, there are no panda bears at the zoo, and we wanted to do this as a result.
So you can't argue with that logic.
Like, hey, why did you trick people into thinking these are pandas?
Well, because we didn't have pandas?
And we wanted to make money off of a panda exhibit?
What are you confused about?
You have money.
We want your money.
We know you're dumb enough to spend your money on a panda.
We don't have a panda.
And so we spray-painted a dog.
Like, that's why.
That's the whole reason.
What's the problem?
You can appreciate a straightforward answer.
It's like, why did you steal money out of my wallet?
Well, because I didn't have money, and you did.
And I wanted the money that is in your pocket to be in mine, and so I stole it.
That's why.
It is why.
Can't argue with the logic.
Catch the series premiere of Mr. Bircham this Sunday, nine o'clock, eight central, exclusively on Daily Wire Plus.
Episode one is streaming for free, so no excuses, people.
Mr. Bircham is decades in the making, and now it's showtime.
Check out the Mr. Bircham trailer and see what the fuss is all about.
I found some really great school uniform options to avoid misgendering.
What about their allergies?
Maybe those they's could be lactose intolerant.
No, we can't say intolerance.
We have a zero tolerance policy for mentioning intolerance.
When I was a kid, men were men.
Now everyone's wrapped up in feelings.
Real men stuff feelings down with red meat, cigarettes, and violence.
My name is Mr. Wolf.
I solve problems.
You know what it takes?
Balls!
Eyeballs!
Who's gonna say that?
We're too young.
Well, actually, I was gonna say you're too fat.
[ Laughs ]
[ Glass shatters ]
♪♪ You and the geriatric Girl Scouts
will be passed out in an hour!
Pass Mommy the wine.
The bottle.
Don't make this a prison, honey.
Richard... Bircham.
Bircham?
Bircham.
Mr. Bircham.
Bircham.
Bircham!
Let the record show I'm a dick.
Mr. Bircham, an all-new animated series from Daily Wire Plus.
Premieres May 12th.
Remember Mr. Bircham's series premiere this Sunday, 9 o'clock, 8 central.
stream it free only on Daily Wire+.
We live in a confusing world.
We all are walking around every day, lost, bewildered, trying to feel our way through in the dark, alone and scared.
We need guidance.
We need wisdom.
We need someone to light the path for us.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people on social media ready to perform that service for us.
If you want advice, there's plenty of that available.
If you want moral guidance, you can have it.
Lots and lots of it.
Every day.
Now, is there any reason to trust the people dispensing that moral guidance?
Do they have any actual insight?
Do they have wisdom?
Have they even demonstrated a capacity to exercise basic common sense?
On all counts, no.
But they're out there anyway.
And they are legion.
And they are ready to tell you how to live and how to think and how to feel.
TikTok influencers are particularly big on this, as you know, and here's one TikTok influencer who went viral this week as she delivered lectures and admonitions to people in the dating scene.
Listen.
If you do not date fat people because you just happen to view fatness as neutral but not be particularly attracted to it, fine.
That's a preference.
If you don't date fat people because you think being fat means that they are gross, lazy, live an unhealthy lifestyle, or are embarrassing to be seen with in public, that's fatphobic.
But to insist your preference is for people who aren't lazy, sloppy, and disgusting and unhealthy?
Meaning that means you prefer skinny people because all fat people are those other things.
That's actually bigoted.
That's actually deciding that one group is all the same because of how they look.
Hope that makes sense!
Have a good day.
So this is all that TikTok is now, by the way.
It's just nothing but snide women speaking in the most condescending tones possible as they inform us that some normal thing is actually bigoted, actually.
That's not just TikTok, of course, that's our entire society.
The good news is that this woman, whose name is Tracy, I think, will permit you, she will permit you to refrain from dating fat people.
She will, in her generosity, allow you to not have sex with the morbidly obese.
She will grant you an exemption from the fat sex quota, but only if your reasons for not having sex with fat people are judged acceptable by her.
So, what are the reasons that are acceptable?
Well, you may refrain from such sexual encounters if you have a neutral feeling about fatness, but if you somehow, for some crazy reason, actually find fatness to be off-putting and even unattractive, then you are not exempt.
Tracy says.
Your parole is denied.
You must go out right this instant and find a fat person to sleep with.
It is your duty.
Now, how will this work exactly?
Does Tracy think that by commanding people to stop being turned off by obesity that they will comply and their preferences will just suddenly change?
Does she think that everyone will watch her TikTok video and say, oh, you mean I'm supposed to be attracted to the morbidly obese?
Well, okay then.
Thank you for telling me.
I'll get right on top of that.
Literally.
Is that how she thinks it will go?
The problem is that it can't go that way because that's not how the human mind works.
You cannot conjure desire simply out of a sense of obligation.
Now, the other way to comply, of course, would be to suppress your innate aversion and date fat people anyway because you've been guilted into it.
But is that really what she wants?
Even if she could berate someone into pretending to be attracted to her, would she want that?
How would you feel if, what if somebody wrote this on a Valentine's card?
Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm afraid of being fatphobic, so I'm dating you.
Like, it's not the most romantic sentiment, I would think.
Now, the truth is that people like Tracy, they really actually do want this kind of compliance.
They're not going to get it, but it's what they want.
It's no different from the very similar videos we've seen from trans influencers giving the same kind of speech to people who aren't attracted to trans people.
And in both cases, the people giving the speech would be perfectly happy if you dated them out of a sense of obligation and just pretended to find them attractive.
In fact, if anything, they might prefer that.
It's just like the LGBT activists who want to force you to bake the cake or respect the pronoun.
Now, most of us We would not want someone to bake us a cake to celebrate some occasion that they personally are deeply opposed to, even if we think they shouldn't be opposed to it.
If they are, we wouldn't want to force them to do it.
We'd prefer if they didn't.
And we wouldn't want someone to pretend to affirm some sort of perception that we have about ourselves if they actually think the perception is false.
And we certainly wouldn't want anyone to be romantically involved with us if, in truth, they find us deeply unattractive and viscerally unappealing.
We wouldn't want any of that.
The Tracys of the world do want that, and I'm not going to attempt to plunge too deeply into their psyche and analyze their motivations.
Maybe they've given up on being truly loved and respected, and so now they've convinced themselves to prefer the false performance of love and respect.
Who knows what's underlying it?
Whatever the reason, the point is that wielding this kind of moral blackmail against you, wielding it successfully and having you comply, makes them feel powerful.
And they like that feeling.
And that's what's going on here.
There is something else to be learned from this.
We used to hear the live and let live slogans all the time from the left, right?
They used to insist that we should let people love who they love.
We should let people do whatever they want in their own homes.
We should mind our own business.
We should, you know, what other people do, the lifestyles they live, the people they have relationships with, none of that affects us as the logic went.
We should butt out.
We really shouldn't have any opinions about it.
We certainly shouldn't express those opinions out loud.
Now, we've known for a while that this was all a lie.
The perceptive among us always knew it was a lie.
And we knew it because, for one thing, we know how the left operates.
They speak in euphemism.
They use misdirection and red herrings.
The argument they present is never the real argument.
But we knew something else, too.
Which is that nobody, nobody on earth, not one person, actually subscribes to the live and let live idea.
Nobody does.
Lots of people claim to, nobody actually does.
Lots of people will say that you shouldn't have opinions about the choices other people make in their private lives, but nobody really means that.
They make that argument solely to justify and defend the sorts of choices that they personally think are acceptable.
But it doesn't take too much prying to discover that there's a whole wide range of things that they don't think you should do, even in private.
Thoughts they don't think you should think.
Feelings they don't think you should indulge.
Beliefs they don't think you should have.
Now, they may not necessarily want the law to impose itself in these matters, though oftentimes they do, it turns out, but whatever they think about the government's role, they certainly do have all sorts of opinions about the morality and immorality and acceptability and unacceptability of private actions, thoughts, preferences, and beliefs.
Everyone does.
Live and let live is a sham.
It is a cover used by people who aren't brave enough to defend their actual position.
The left, as it turns out, has very strong beliefs about how you should conduct yourself, even in private.
What sorts of priorities you should have.
Even what your sexual preferences ought to be.
Now, especially when it comes to sex, everyone has a moral code.
Everybody judges other people for how they conduct themselves in that realm.
What sorts of sexual behaviors they engage in.
Everybody does.
The left has its own sexual moral code.
Part of the code is that you're supposed to be attracted to fat people and trans people.
That's their moral code.
Now, it's the wrong moral code, but that's their code.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying that everyone has these moral ideas and all of the ideas are equally valid.
Certainly not.
Not remotely.
My only point is that the whole, hey, don't judge people for what they do in private thing was always nonsense.
And it's been nonsense from literally everyone who has ever said it or anything like it.
We all judge people for what they do and say in private.
For their preferences, for their beliefs, and so on.
We all do.
So, rather than debating whether we should be making these sorts of judgments, it would be much more fruitful if we moved on and focused on determining what the right judgments actually are.
Because, contrary to popular belief, it is not wrong to judge.
It is wrong to judge wrongly, as our friend Tracy has done.
