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Nov. 4, 2023 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec

01:08:50

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 20 — Bootgate? Is Halloween Dead? Which Islam is Correct?

In this latest THOUGHTCRIME featuring Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Andrew Kolvet, and Blake Neff, the team explores pressing questions like:-Are Ron DeSantis's boots the worst scandal in American history? World history?-Is Halloween dying because of declining American social trust?-Are radical Muslims the "good Muslims"?THOUGHTCRIME streams LIVE exclusively on Rumble, every Thursday night at 8pm ET.Support the Show.

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	from the age of Big Brother.
	If they want to get you, they'll get you.
	The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone.
	They're collecting your communications.
	All right, everybody.
	Welcome to Thought Crimes.
	What episode is this, Blake?
	20.
	Is it really 20?
	Around 20?
	21 if you count the debate special we did.
	Ah!
	Can you believe we've done 20 of these?
	Blake?
	Great, you're here.
	Andrew, hello?
	Hello, hello.
	And Jack, let's just get right into it.
	No use in suspense.
	The greatest political scandal ever, bigger than Watergate and Teapot Dome, which is otherwise known as Bootgate.
	I want to play the tape, Jack, and we'll just set it up.
	OK, Patrick Bet-David, who is an American legend, one of my favorite guys in the media space.
	He had a very good interview with Ron DeSantis.
	Actually, DeSantis was doing, I think, very well.
	And he was.
	He totally was, Charlie.
	That's the sad part about all this.
	And then it didn't go too well.
	Play cut 46.
	I'm sure your marketing team points out how they're trying to troll you in the marketplace.
	Okay.
	I'm sure they're doing that.
	Can you bring this one clip?
	I know you were on, uh, what do you call it?
	On, uh, uh, what was it?
	Bill Maher and Bill Maher talked about the boots.
	I've seen you walk with these boots.
	Go ahead and play this clip.
	This on TikTok went viral.
	It doesn't have a million views.
	It doesn't have, you know, 10 million views.
	This thing's got 1.2 million likes.
	And, and some people are wondering.
	What are they?
	I don't even know.
	I haven't seen that.
	They've not shown this to you.
	Okay, what they're trying to say with this is that in your boots, you have heels.
	No, no, no.
	Those are just standard, off-the-rack, Lucchese.
	How tall are you, Governor?
	5'11".
	5'11"?
	Okay.
	Why don't you wear tennis shoes and dress shoes?
	Oh, you guys don't have the best part!
	Wait, where's the end?
	I know!
	Oh, we got to get it.
	We'll get it.
	Fugazi, Fugazi, Jack, what's going on here?
	All right.
	So the the greatest and most important political scandal of this really of this or any any historical epoch, of course, is Bootgate.
	You know, you thought Epstein Island was bad.
	You thought Hillary's emails were bad.
	You thought all that Uranium One, you know, all of it, Benghazi.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	It brings us now to Bootgate.
	So, this actually started, but, oh, of course, you know, I see some folks in the chat are already saying 9-11, which Bush did, is even worse.
	You know, I see people in the chat saying that.
	I, you know, I don't know if I'm prepared to go there, but, but I am saying this is rough.
	You know, it really started, hard to say exactly when Bootgate started, But, uh, certainly there was, you know, there was a, um, you know, a precursor to BootGate of BootGate 1.0.
	So there's actually a two-part, um, section to BootGate because BootGate began with the original white boots that, I think it was Hurricane Ian, um, that he was wearing that kind of looked like the boots that the green M&M wears, um, when they do the M&M's commercials on the, like the cartoon M&M's or whatever.
	That was the original boot gate.
	This is his origin story, almost like a Marvel hero, if you will, where then he said, OK, I'll never wear those again, but I'm going to wear cowboy boots.
	And the cowboy boots led people to start questioning things about the height of Governor DeSantis, as well as people who have conducted events with Governor DeSantis.
	People have met him.
	I've met him.
	I'm sure most of the people on this on the show have met Governor DeSantis at one point or another in person.
	We've noticed that his height seems to kind of fluctuate in a way that, you know, a normal person's height just doesn't.
	And then there was the way he was sitting with these boots on the Bill Maher Show.
	You can see his height here in tennis shoes with Bill Malugan from Fox.
	We're actually, he's, excuse me, Bill is wearing tennis shoes in this picture, whereas DeSantis, even, and I don't know if we can zoom and enhance folks back in the, The CSI thought crime lab there, but actually those boots as well that he's wearing do contain fake heels.
	Bill Malugan, by the way, who through a thought crime investigation, our investigatory team found is actually about 6'4".
	So he's actually about 6'4".
	That's why he's easily able to wear tennis shoes like that and tower over just about anybody.
	The problem is If someone were actually 5'11", that's not what they would look like if they were standing next to someone who is 6'4".
	Hold on.
	Jack, can we just take a second, go back to that image?
	You could put it in the center.
	Yes.
	Why is he standing that way?
	Like, that's not the heels.
	That's just him standing.
	You're talking about the pigeon toes.
	Pigeon toes.
	Yeah, like, the whole thing is very awkward.
	I think that contributes to this.
	The pigeon-toed stance is something that we've identified through mnemology of Governor DeSantis that goes really back all the way until when he was a congressman.
	It goes back to the time where he first ran for office.
	This stance you will find in numerous instances.
	So anyway, the video went viral.
	So there was an issue, by the way, as well, where Ashley St.
	Clair, who is at Babylon Bee, did a TikTok video making fun of the boots and just kind of like a silly boot Video of herself putting on, you know, boots, thigh highs.
	And the DeSantis campaign responded to her.
	Again, this is the Babylon Bee.
	They make jokes for a living over there in case anyone doesn't know that by now.
	And satire of all political candidates.
	It's literally what they're paid to do.
	But the DeSantis campaign launched a very strong attack on the Babylon Bee and Ashley Sinclair for making this, again, satirical video.
	This all leads to Patrick Bedavid asking this question.
	These are some memes.
	That's one of Johnny Maga's memes.
	Haha, Trump is going to die in prison.
	No, the boots are off-limits!
	We have to talk policy!
	I have about 500 of these memes at this point in my phone, and I was texting them to Don Jr.
	when he was in court this week.
	Then it just got to the point where it started blowing up, and I launched the hashtag BootGate.
	uh many people then guided on this and hashtag boot gate believe it or not became the number two trend on all of x on halloween this week so we couldn't be couldn't unseat happy halloween on halloween day itself but number two i'm going to say that's basically number one because you know you're never going to beat a holiday hashtag on a holiday but we were we were basically number one the memes were flying people were screaming and
	And Andrew, I want to throw something else out there as well, because this is something that really speaks to the heart of it.
	Because there were people who were claiming that I was making fun of his height, or that any of us were making fun of his height.
	And I wanted to point this out to just be very clear for people.
	We're not making fun of his height.
	We're making fun of the fact that he's obviously lying about it.
	And he's lying to everyone about it.
	By the way, guys, have you ever met someone who says they're 5'11"?
	Just in all seriousness, have you ever met someone who says that?
	They'll usually round up.
	Yeah.
	If you're 5'11", you say 6'9".
	Yeah, that's right.
	Yeah, you say 6'0".
	So who says 5'11"?
	When people ask me how tall I am, I kind of say, I don't know.
	I mean, once you kind of hit 6'2", like an actual 6'2", 6'3", 6'4", you don't have to... It doesn't matter anymore.
	It really doesn't matter.
	It's like height is not part of your identity, right?
	It is your identity.
	It's your identity, but it's not something you consciously think about all the time, right?
	So let me ask you, uh, so Jack, we gotta play the other tape here.
	Okay, we have to play it.
	So, it's just too good.
	And, and by the way, so Ron DeSantis is offered a gift.
	And instead of like playing along, this is, of the whole- We gotta play, we gotta play, we gotta play, we gotta play.
	Alright, I have to say, the whole part of the tape, this is what bothered me the most- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Why don't you wear tennis shoes and dress shoes?
	I do wear tennis shoes when I work out.
	You do?
	OK.
	I got a gift for you.
	I'd love for you to wear... I shop at Ferragamo.
	I don't accept gifts.
	I can't accept it.
	I'm sorry.
	Oh my goodness.
	I'm sorry.
	It's so bad.
	What do you think?
	It's a bunch of gold bars, man.
	The energy is so bad.
	He was setting him up.
	He was setting him up.
	No, I mean, but you know, it would have been funny if DeSantis was like, what, he got a bunch of gold bars there?
	You're trying to bribe me?
	Like, I don't accept.
	It's just, it's bad.
	You just, you're like.
	Derek it.
	It's really.
	It was a tell.
	Bob Menendez.
	I'm not going down like Menendez.
	Like the Egyptians.
	It was such a tell.
	It was such a tell.
	I think that was the hard part to watch about it.
	Because I think of us four on this show right now, I might have been the most enthusiastic about DeSantis.
	I was always Trump, but my heart went out to him, especially at the beginning.
	I wanted to protect him for 2028, really.
	I think that is where it came down to.
	But it's so hard to watch this because you know that that's essentially an admission that he is putting heels in his boots.
	Because you could see the sweat beads forming on his forehead going, if I take these off he'll know that I actually do have heels and I just denied it.
	And so he instantly went into this artistic response.
	Even just the bad energy in his voice as he interrupts, I can't accept it, I can't take it.
	One, if Donald Trump was presented, let's just imagine an alternate universe where Trump is getting offered the same thing.
	If he would say something different, one, but two, even if you were, he was for whatever reason constrained to say the same thing, he would actually manage to say it better.
	He would say it like, ah, you know, you know, Patrick, you know, you said it, like you said, you got the gold bars there?
	You got the gold bars?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Tell me back where you got the gold bars.
	Ferragamo?
	Is that the best you could do, Patrick?
	You're not a billionaire like me.
	I have a shoe store that is worth more than Ron DeSantis's.
	Yeah, but I mean, so there's many layers here, right?
	So Jack, I know you want to continue to emphasize the cover-up of the height.
	Go ahead, Jack.
	You can't help yourself.
	Go ahead.
	No, and it's not just the cover-up of the height, but to your point about the, you know, the rudeness here, that when you come from Eastern cultures, to offer someone a gift is one of the, it's one of the highest signs of generosity, it's one of the highest signs of charity, and quite possibly the rudest thing that you could do is to
	Uh, publicly reject a gift from somebody and even if, which by the way, I'm pretty sure I've seen Ron DeSantis accept gifts before and in public and people have found, uh, you know, pictures of him doing so, but it's also like millions of people are watching.
	No one thinks you're getting paid off, man.
	Right.
	I mean, like you, you could have like, thanks Patrick.
	Really appreciate it.
	Right.
	I mean, it's like, okay, thanks man.
	You know, code and it says, you know, it accepting gifts.
	In understanding of it influencing government policy.
	Right, that's exactly what he can't have Christmas.
	We really think that there's going to be an ethics investigation launched into Ron DeSantis over Ferragamo's giving on a live stream.
	We shouldn't put anything beyond Democrats here.
	He just flies onto the spectrum.
	No, but you don't even have to take him.
	You could have just, you could have just like, you just could have just like, yeah, thanks, Patrick, and leave it there.
	And then afterwards be like, Patrick, I appreciate the gesture.
	I can't do GIFs.
	You know, it's great.
	Exactly.
	You could do it after the live stream, right?
	Or your staff handles it.
	Not like, I don't do GIFs.
	It's like, have you never been on, like, have you never seen a podcast, bro?
	Like, he's obviously trying to do a bit on a podcast where it's Ron DeSantis wearing Ferragamos and then, like, that's, like, he's trying to, it was, here's the real thing.
	He's trying to help you out.
	Well, it's also that if DeSantis took off his shoes and showed he wasn't wearing, you know, lifts and put on the Ferragamos, he could have just ended the whole thing.
	What if, what if it's deeper than that?
	He took off the shoes and reveals he's also standing on stilts.
	Reveals he's just three he's just three children in a three eight year olds all stacked on top of each other like each other, you know, like Donald.
	So I had an opportunity.
	I had an opportunity to sit down with someone close to the DeSantis campaign recently.
	And it was a very candid conversation.
	It went fine.
	It could have went better.
	And I said, you guys do realize you are sort of a running joke right now in conservative meme culture.
	They're like, no, no, no, people love us online.
	They said we have a whole, you know, we spend a lot of money.
	I'm not kidding you, Blake.
	They said we spend a lot of money every month.
	I kid you not.
	They're like, we spend a lot of money and people love us and the influencer.
	I was like, look guys, I don't, I'm actually trying to help you here to like you.
	I know, but like meaning that they're like, but what they were referencing is, you know, that piece that showed that, you know, DeSantis waged war online and lost.
	They thought it was like a great piece that like, you know, they're fighting the meme war and that there's gonna be, Blake, just as objectively as you could take, is DeSantis winning the online war?
	He is not winning the online war.
	It's like the Ukrainians, man.
	It's sad for me to see.
	I'm like Andrew, broadly speaking.
	I like you.
	I think he's a good governor.
	I've always said kind things about him.
	I like Jack.
	I like a lot of aspects of his governing styles.
	You know, politics is as much about narrative and vibe.
	I was very nice at the start.
	I was very nice.
	Fine, Jack.
	We all know.
	You've been great.
	Politics is about, you know, vibe.
	It's about narrative.
	And there's this, just, there's a very doomed vibe over the entire DeSantis operation.
	And is that fair?
	Probably not.
	But, you know, it doesn't matter.
	If you, you know, people want to follow people who have the right energy, who have that leadership, who have charisma.
	And what we've seen over the last Uh, over the last six, eight, ten months, is the DeSantis campaign doesn't have that energy, it doesn't have that sense of charisma.
	It would be very difficult to turn it around right now.
	And, you know, I hear a lot of people say like, oh, he needs to get out and save himself for 2028.
	At this point, it's like, he has to get out so that we can make sure that Florida still has a Republican governor in two more years.
	Yeah, well now this has launched a big investigation.
	Let's play Cut 113.
	Starting fourth tonight for the Republicans, Ron DeSantis.
	He went to Yale.
	As a swing, line drive, base hit to right field.
	He went to Yale and he played baseball there.
	He was captain of the varsity baseball team in his senior year.
	Have we ever seen Ron DeSantis and Jose Altuve in a room together?
	No Riz Ron, no Riz Ron DeSantis.
	Did you guys see there were people actually counting the steps because they were saying, OK, it's 90 feet from home plate to first base.
	And so if Ron DeSantis is stride is usually about three feet.
	How many steps does it take to get, you know, from one of them?
	People were counting.
	It was about 24, by the way.
	Most people are saying 24.
	But I actually know a guy who is a fan of the show, fan of thought, crime and human events.
	And I said, Who is a former MLB scout, is one of these guys who would go all around the world, you know, scouting, high schools, et cetera, for players.
	And so someone who I knew could probably watch a piece of baseball footage and see somebody and look at the strike box and kind of know what... Strike zone?
	Strike box.
	Strike zone, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's great, yeah.
	I'm sorry, I'm a Phillies fan.
	That it was basically like not...
	You know, knees to shoulders, etc.
	Where we're gonna go from this.
	And that's why I showed it to him two seconds later, he goes, 5'9".
	5'9".
	That was what I said, remember, in the chat, when I saw that clip?
	Yeah, I said it to you and him at the same time.
	You know what's so funny?
	As someone who is on the verge of being freakishly tall, this actually doesn't bother me.
	You know who it bothers the most is short people.
	They're like, you're cheating!
	That's who I've actually seen the most outrage from, is they're like, no, you should suffer with the rest of us and not fake your way to it.
	Is this a question of morality, Blake?
	Is he lying?
	I mean, it is a question of morality, and we're getting into really lurid topics here, because what are the worst atrocities we've ever seen?
	Edward Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, he killed a girl.
	Chappaquiddick.
	Chappaquiddick.
	And that's a pretty bad scandal.
	You know, we had Watergate.
	We've had, you know, 9-11, which Bush did.
	Killed all those people.
	And I think if you took all of those scandals combined, you would maybe be at one-tenth of the moral atrocity that Ron DeSantis faking his height is.
	Maybe.
	It might be better to round to one one-hundredth.
	This is probably the worst scandal to ever happen in the history of the human species.
	But here's the question, though.
	I mean, none of those were disqualifying, Blake.
	But this actually could be the nail in the coffin for Ron DeSantis.
	But it's the lack of... Andrew, explain how his team doesn't get this.
	That's what's so frustrating.
	I mean, without getting... Yeah, I want to put all the, like, caveats that, like, kind of you did.
	We keep our conversations with the campaigns mostly private, unless we don't have to.
	The essence of it is that it was like, wait, what do you mean?
	The interview went great.
	And Jack actually knows this better than anybody.
	And Jack, I want to back you up actually.
	You were really reserved with Ron DeSantis at first.
	You were trying I remember because you and I were chatting a lot offline about it, you know, some of the stuff that was coming out and how we were going to approach it publicly, how we're going to deal with it.
	And you were really reserved.
	But then it just got to a point where I remember you and Cernovich were talking about this a lot.
	It was like the absolute insufferability of a DeSantis influencer online.
	They are aggressive.
	They're deranged.
	I don't, you know, it's so impossible to stay on the sidelines.
	And deal with these people in like a normal way.
	They just got so unhinged that it forced everybody into these corners.
	And what the DeSantis camp doesn't understand is that their influencers are not influencing anybody to do anything except run as far away from that guy as they can.
	And you got like this Bill Mitchell guy who literally doesn't let anybody reply in his comments except approved followers because he's gotten so badly trolled.
	These people do more harm to the DeSantis campaign than they have any idea, and we tried to tell them.
	We tried to tell them.
	You're getting cornered into this, you know, establishment box.
	You're getting cornered into this, like, nerd dork box.
	And when I saw this story break, Bootgate, I was like, there's nothing we can do for this guy anymore.
	I genuinely don't know that you can save him for 2028, let alone, to Blake's point, if, you know, if we got to start worrying about Florida now.
	Right, so there's there's a couple things going on with this, right?
	Number one, it's it's the reason why the meme works.
	And this is like, I'll, you know, kind of peel back the veil a little bit on why we're doing this.
	First is, as you guys have all said, that it's because they they can't allow this thing to exist.
	They try to fact check the memes, they try to put community notes on the memes, they kind of they attack the people for posting the memes, they become shrill, they become angry.
	And so then that That forces you to double down on it.
	That forces, that makes you want to continue it.
	And again, it's because they won't even lean into it and joke like other people that, you know, like Steve Bannon, for example, isn't like super tall or anything.
	Senator Rand Paul is, I would say he was, he's shorter than average.
	But nobody cares because he just sort of like wears it and owns it and does his thing and he does great work.
	And we all love Senator Paul and it's just a thing, right?
	Nobody, he doesn't make it a thing himself.
	With DeSantis, because he's so insecure about it, that's actually what we're playing on.
	And this is something that, Charlie, I'm sure you remember, that Patrick Bet-David had actually said a couple of months ago about Ron DeSantis.
	And it was interesting to me that Patrick Bet-David was the one who had identified this, because I wondered if that played into him then sort of having this, obviously making the decision, as anybody does as an interviewer, of what you're going to play, what topics you're going to bring up, Because Patrick Bet-David had said that Ron DeSantis seems like the kind of guy who structured his entire life about being terrified of being perceived as breaking a rule, right?
	Like the kind of guy who tries to get a perfect score on his SATs, who tries to do everything perfect.
	But who will say, Oh, well, I, and this is, you know, Patrick, but David, and I'm paraphrasing to, Oh, I can't kiss that.
	I can't kiss that girl.
	Cause then I get in trouble.
	This is what happened.
	Well, I can't punch that guy in the face because then this is, this would happen.
	I might run for office one day and that might come back at me.
	And it just becomes so insecure and so terrified of ever breaking a rule that it leads you down these paths where if you're confronted with something that isn't within those, you know, Those set lines, if you're not coloring within the lines, that they just completely fall apart.
	And that's exactly what he did when DeSantis was on.
	I'm not saying that he intended to do that, but I do find it interesting that that's how it played out.
	The other piece of this is why does Bootgate matter so much?
	Because when you play on this specific thing, something like a person's physical stature, it's not just about that.
	It's also about their social status.
	And in this case, what it really is, is a sexual humiliation.
	And when I say that, it's because we're showing that this is someone who's insecure, this is someone who feels like he can't defend himself, this is someone who doesn't have confidence, this is someone who's worried about being able to defend his family, defend his immediate vicinity, defend his property, whatever it is.
	And so when you sexually humiliate somebody, That is something that nobody can come back from in public.
	This is why the rise of the word cuck and the term cuckservative, which is the full term, all played out.
	Cuckservative became so prevalent online in 2015 and 2016.
	It's because we would be going around to these people like Paul Ryan, like Mitt Romney, and we called them cuckservatives.
	It wasn't that we were saying that you're not a conservative.
	We're saying that you are a wuss, that you're low-T, that you're low-energy, you don't have the ability to back up anything that it is that you're saying, and, interestingly enough, these are the same people who also seem to push for war, these are the same people who use appeals to authority, etc., etc.
	There's a whole litany of this.
	This gets into the, you know, the weak men, hard times, sort of fourth turning cycle.
	And so, when you're painting somebody with that brush, and then you have successfully painted them with that brush, Of a sexual humiliation, that's really something that becomes very, very hard to get past.
	Ever.
	Yeah, so I mean, I want to, he just comes across in that podcast as somebody insecure, right?
	And that's a hard thing to shake once that is the vibe that people receive, right?
	It's hard and it's just, it's totally incompatible with being a president of the United States of America.
	Running against alpha male Trump.
	And everyone just intuits that.
	I don't think, we've had a variety of personalities become president, but I don't know that we've ever had a profoundly insecure person become president, because it's just, how does that come to pass?
	At least not in the modern era.
	Well, it's also that it's just such a misunderstanding for their team to think they're doing well.
	I'm by no means an expert, but I'm enough where I can see who's winning and losing in meme culture, and who gets it and who doesn't.
	Jack, you're going to have to... Jack, you have to call for the tape.
	I refuse.
	Or Andrew, if you really want to play this.
	But this is just one of hundreds of these that exist.
	There's an AI that went up.
	It's 114 and, you know, let's just go for it.
	I feel a lot more freedom, a lot more empowered when I don't let my clothes show my gender that day.
	I love my high heel boots.
	They make me feel like I'm riding hard and nobody knows just how tiny I am.
	Instead, I feel tall and important.
	Please clap.
	It's from the great C3B meme from the great C3B meme, and again, it's it's It speaks to sexual insecurity.
	It really does.
	And there's something about Ron DeSantis that's always given off an air of insecurity.
	It's something that if you're, you know, conducting a meme campaign, or if you're just involved in politics, marketing, you identify these things.
	You size them up.
	And so, you know, looking at a guy that that's clearly that uptight, that insecure, you would obviously want to, you know, go through all of these things.
	And by the way, like, I want to explain to people that this isn't something that just like randomly occurred.
	Okay, this is something that the meme warriors have been focused on and have been researching for really months when it comes to Ron DeSantis.
	This is something where people have in, in, and I'm, I'm in hundreds of chat rooms where people are talking about these chat groups, just all, all areas of the night.
	Yeah, this is the one Donald Trump Jr.
	posted this one from the courtroom of, that's Ron DeSantis and his, the state of Italy.
	The country of Italy has become his, um, his boots, his, his, his high top boots.
	That's actually one where, uh, Brent, the guy who made it, actually that's his body.
	He went and took a picture of himself standing at that angle.
	So that's not even Ron DeSantis.
	He just did that himself.
	So it would perfectly fit with the boot of Italy.
	That's the level that our guys will go on.
	And, and again, this is something where, and Andrew and to the rest, like, you know, we explained to them what would happen a year ago.
	That all of this would come to pass if they decided to take a run at Trump and that this was always in the cards.
	It was always going to end up like this.
	I don't want to be clear.
	This is not just like a thought crime thing.
	Number two trending on X was covered on all of the mainstream media networks.
	Of course it was.
	The liberals were covering it.
	It's irresistible.
	The conservatives were covering it.
	Every article.
	It's all over TikTok, by the way.
	So then it started trending on TikTok.
	We were playing that video earlier where he's just walking very awkwardly in his boots.
	And, um, I think this is just something where it's become sort of a forever label that he's gonna be known as the Boots Guy.
	So just lean into it, Bootsy.
	The AI!
	That AI clip, I'm just thinking how that's going to totally revolutionize politics.
	Like, how much stronger is it going to be in a year where it's going to totally fool people?
	Now imagine, no offense, like there's a lot of old voters who they already struggle with text articles.
	Like, you've seen the emails we get where it's like, why did...
	People say, Charlie, did you hear Katie Hobbs got executed this morning?
	Got executed, arrested and executed.
	Now imagine we have video clips where it's, you know, we have the scene and Donald Trump is overseeing the executions and it also makes me wonder, will Donald Trump be the GOP nominee forever because even after he's sadly departed this world people won't accept that he's dead?
	I have a theory on why this is so devastating.
	reports it after the media reports they'll just run him as ai just run ai trump there's enough footage he's probably the most aiable person in the world no one has no i have a i have a theory on why this is so devastating it's because it plays into all of the little whisper rumor mill stuff that was already circulating about ron de santis that he was awkward with people that he wasn't that warm that all the local politicians
	i mean when you have all all of florida basically and and just breaking this week is rick scott has now endorsed uh president trump for uh 2024 when you have all of florida that's supposed to know you best say and i think stube congressman stube said that uh you know he never heard from ron de santis before he was trying to endorse somebody and you know so he just said hey if you're not gonna call me i'm going with yeah he's Yeah, yeah, when he had that big accident.
	So you have all of these things that we hear about, and everybody's kind of whispering about, is Ron a little, like, a genuine question, is Ron a little bit autistic?
	A little?
	I mean, maybe he is, maybe, maybe he's not, all right?
	A little?
	I'm just saying, people, people, this is what everybody just says about him.
	So, by the way, by the way, I can, I can...
	I, Andrew, and I'll just say this because you and I had this conversation.
	Was it October?
	No, it's November already.
	It was, it was over a year ago.
	You and I had this conversation about the Santas.
	And I said at the time, what he needs to do is very clear is you need to lean into it.
	Drop the Florida guy act because it's clearly not working.
	It's not getting over.
	Um, go, go change your uniform, change your stripes.
	What you do is you rebrand.
	And do you remember when Bill Maher gave him this shoutout the one time and said, you know, something that's interesting about Ron DeSantis is that he actually reads, he understands the data, he understands COVID, he understands vaccines, and And people were really talking about that.
	You lean in on the Ron DeSantis is a wonky, you know, maybe a little bit awkward, but nerdy kind of smart guy.
	And so I would have, I said, drop the boots, uh, drop the vest.
	Leather jackets.
	He's got to keep the boots.
	Stop trying to be all this stuff.
	He's already leaning forward because, you know, he's raised his... But, um, you, you, and honestly, what I said, the best thing that he could do is just put a pair of glasses on him.
	Literally just put a pair of glasses on him.
	They could just be the blue blockers or something.
	And he will come across as, you know, kind of like more of a Blake.
	And it's just more accurate to what he actually is.
	Just embrace who you are.
	Is this a flaw of our modern political system though?
	Because genuinely DeSantis is a good operator.
	He's a good manager of the state of Florida.
	Boy, yeah.
	I mean, it makes me think back to when they first televised the presidential debate, right?
	And Richard Nixon looked all sweaty and gross, and JFK came off well, right?
	I mean, it's sort of the modern iteration of that.
	And you have a situation here where you've got a guy that, yeah, he's pretty nerdy.
	He reads stuff.
	I think of those as genuinely positive traits.
	He actually read the research on COVID.
	Good operator, right?
	But in our modern system, that is...
	De-emphasized, as opposed to the fact that he's just a dork now, right?
	I mean, and I'm not saying I believe that, I mean, I'm saying the world believes that.
	Blake, to his credit, we gotta move on.
	Blake, to his credit, was the only one in The Voice, he said, by the fall, post-Labor Day, everyone in the MAGA movement will hate and make fun of DeSantis.
	Like, no, he's great!
	And Blake saw forth a prophecy of the collapse of Ronnie D. Okay, next topic.
	Jack, is Halloween over because of immigrants?
	We have to start with the clip.
	We have to start with the clip.
	By the way, this clip is really driving people insane.
	And whenever there is a micro video that sometimes confirms a macro suspicion, people lose their mind.
	What is the cut here?
	Do we have it?
	We definitely have it.
	Let me... Well, as we search for it, you know, Jack... 99, 99.
	Play cut 99.
	Play cut 99.
	Got it.
	Here is Joseph.
	Here we are.
	Here we are.
	Moment.
	OK, so Jack, on podcasting, describe what we just saw.
	So what you're seeing is a, it starts out as a sort of typical Halloween night.
	Kids are going, and by the way, this is, we have now video of trick-or-treating because of the prevalence of, you know, ring cameras and home surveillance systems that are just everywhere because we live in this, we live in a high-tech, low-trust society now, as opposed to a low-tech, high-trust society, which is a much larger conversation, and I hope we can get into.
	But what you see in this video is a couple of kids out trick-or-treating having a good time and then you have what appears to be some sort of third world migrant just running up and essentially stealing all of the candy.
	Someone who's obviously far older than the other kids were there or anyone who should be trick-or-treating at any serious age and is obviously just out to steal candy and throw into a pillowcase.
	So, Andrew, you did a fair amount of trick-or-treating.
	Is this a foreigner thing, or is this a built-in, is this just a human nature thing?
	Why did this video trigger so many people?
	Well, I mean, I have a couple things to say here.
	First, I want to acknowledge that I, myself, was guilty of doing similar things when I was a kid, when they would put the sign out and say, just one.
	I said that in the chat, and everybody was like, oh, Andrew, you gotta share that.
	Alright, so okay, I'm sharing that I But I never rated the whole bull.
	That is out of line.
	I maybe took, like, a handful.
	But it's the parent involved that triggered people.
	That's the point.
	Yeah, but this clip triggers me, actually, to use the expression, the favorite leftist expression, in so many ways.
	You've got the fact that they're speaking Spanish.
	That is infuriating to the normal public, I'm sorry.
	But, you know, it's funny, Charlie, you tweeted about it, and then we got a bunch of media inquiries like, how do you know that these are illegals?
	And I was like, Uh, you know, just based on odds, you know, we just have, you know, 10 million are going to come across with Biden.
	There was always, there was perpetually 11 million in the country to begin with.
	Uh, but besides that, it doesn't matter if they're legal or illegal, they're speaking Spanish.
	And it's that, that part is infuriating.
	It really is because you probably got some normal American home saying, Hey, take one.
	And they rate it.
	They don't leave a single piece of candy.
	So you got parents teaching their kids, speaking Spanish, rating a whole, I mean, there's a lot of candy in there.
	And then some of them drop to the floor, Charlie, and they have to get those too.
	So, so not only like they are making sure they don't leave any scrap behind and then, and then this poor guy comes up behind him and looks in and is like, Oh, there's none left.
	Like, I don't think that guy was with them.
	I I'm pretty sure the second guy wasn't with them.
	It was another trick-or-treater coming behind them saying, you know, looking for candy and it was all gone because of this awful family.
	So anyways, I think it's absolutely obnoxious.
	This clip, by the way, went so viral, like everybody posted it.
	Uh, and everybody, it just, it inflamed the public.
	Well, it went viral for similar reasons why the Floyd thing went viral, because people have a belief in their head of something they see that's happening macro, and then a micro confirms it.
	So what is it?
	Well, they see foreigners coming in and leeching off our social services and taking what is ours, and it's being sponsored by the adults in the room, not the kids.
	I think it's less the symbol and it's actually more the direct thing.
	It's that there are... For me it was the symbol.
	When you have high amounts of social trust and like kind of a guilt-shame driven culture where you I should say guilt versus shame.
	Honor, shame, culture?
	Guilt, honor, that sort of thing.
	Where you have an internal locus of morality.
	You won't do a bad thing because you will feel terrible.
	And then shame is the outward version of this.
	That if you are caught doing something bad, you will feel terrible.
	But if you can get away with it in secret, it essentially doesn't matter.
	So, when you have guilt-driven, you can do things like just, you leave out a box and you say, take one, and they will only take one.
	And if you have the right group of people, that can sustain itself.
	And there's huge surpluses that come from that.
	That is how you get the nicest countries.
	It is countries where people follow the law, even if you don't have a policeman there who will catch you if you break the law.
	Even if no one is going to actually punish you, when you do it anyway, that is what creates the nicest societies, and they see people who have come into here, and they see that society going away, and we know America had it.
	So there's a great story in one of my favorite books, the book is called The Book That Built Your World, it's about the Bible, it's written, he's been on our show, Vishal Mangalwalde, and he's an Indian guy, grew up in India, and he went to a conference in the Netherlands, And it was a Christian pastor's conference, and a friend of his said, hey, let's go to the countryside.
	So they go to the Dutch countryside.
	And they're rolling through the hills, they pull over to the side of the street, and there's a dairy country there, right?
	So they have an opportunity to go get some milk.
	And so there's a milk stand there, completely unattended.
	And it says, please take whatever milk you get and pay for it.
	And Vishal, being from India, first time really coming to the West, was fascinated by this.
	And he asked the guy with him, and he said, how does this work?
	He said, oh, well, you know, we all trust each other.
	We're all, you know, homogenous, you know, homogenous and Christians, and we're all of the same place.
	And so you just take the milk you like and you leave some money.
	And he says, is this not how it would work in India?
	And Vishal says, work in India?
	He's like, not only we would steal the milk, steal the money and the cows.
	He's like, this would never happen.
	Because India's a very low-trust society, right?
	A lot of caste system, sectarianism, tribalism.
	And to him, in the Netherlands at the time, it's probably changed a lot because of Arab Muslims, it was this ideal, high-trust society.
	That's the equivalent, right?
	Dairy milk stands on the side of the street in the rolling hills of Holland.
	Could you have that today?
	Well, you can't have Halloween candy out anymore without it getting pillaged or plundered.
	Yeah.
	Oh, no, I was just gonna say, kind of just double tap what you were saying, Blake, earlier that, you know, trick-or-treating is something that could only arise in a high-trust society with bonds of community, with a locus of morality, and obviously internal locus of morality, not one where you've got like the, you know, the moral police running around all the time.
	You know, that's trick-or-treating.
	You know, it's funny, I was talking to my mom about this, because I said I wanted to bring it up as a topic.
	I'm glad that we did.
	And she was talking about growing up in the 60s.
	And she was saying, in the King of Prussia or Pennsylvania area, she was saying, when I was a kid, I don't even remember my parents ever going with us when we trick-or-treated.
	We all just went out.
	She's one of five.
	And she said, when we were little, we would just go out.
	We'd be out there as kids.
	We'd run around.
	We'd come back.
	There was no question of it being an issue whatsoever.
	Whereas these days, you know, maybe you could say it's a little more awareness, but I think it's also this level of, you know, lack of trust in our societies.
	That's why you're seeing trunk retreats are kind of the new big thing.
	A lot of churches do this.
	Other churches do like the Harvest Festival, which is really just like a Halloween without, without the name.
	Then you, you know, you find these areas where they'll do that.
	And then you can find certain neighborhoods that will still do this.
	And I, but I would also point out in the clip, That's a pretty big porch that you're looking at with a pretty long driveway.
	It looks pretty nice.
	I'm guessing that's on a four or five bedroom house.
	You know, that's not some small house.
	That's an affluent neighborhood.
	So we're talking ballpark of, you know, they've got a column, right?
	Look at the column there on the porch.
	So you know this is a very well-to-do neighborhood, which is also why it's being targeted.
	Yeah, the foreigners in their head were rationalizing, they're rich, we're not, we're taking your candy.
	It's probably, like, literally there was the lore, like, go here, you'll get more candy.
	Yes, of course.
	Obviously, everyone's done it.
	Big home, we're getting, we're getting our peace.
	They rationalized the, I don't want to say it's evil, but the immor, that's an immoral act, right?
	That is, that is not glorifying to goodness.
	I wouldn't use the word evil for that.
	I think that's evil.
	I think it's evil to do that in front of your kids.
	Okay, fine.
	I mean, honestly.
	Fair enough.
	I don't want to do a Prager here, but I'm going to be careful not throwing out evil like frisbees.
	No, I do.
	I want to, you know, un-thing about the parents out with them, and I want to even double back to, obviously, I don't know the specifics here.
	There's a million reasons it could be fine, but I think if we imagine an idealized Halloween, this wouldn't happen not just because people wouldn't steal, but I think we are losing the social element that You know, you ring the doorbell, you come to the door, you see the costume, you say hello to the children, you give them the candy.
	And, you know, I think that actually is the ideal way to do it, and it should be preferred.
	You want to create the sense of community.
	It comes from the communal act of doing this, which is the children go around, and one reason they can do this is because there are adults everywhere who look out for people in your neighborhood.
	What you're seeing here in Microcosm is the decline of neighborly communities, that they're not engaging in the Halloween thing except for leaving out a thing of candy.
	Neighbors, I mean, are less and less of a thing.
	At least in some... I don't know, Andrew, if you agree or not, but at least the type of neighborhood connectedness that I grew up with is largely a foreign concept than a lot of suburban areas.
	Well, you know, I remember I always go back to a conversation you had, I think it was with Chris Buskirk, And you guys were talking about something similar.
	And he said that the norms that he grew up with, just normal middle class American lifestyle is becoming more and more of a luxury.
	So in order to achieve what just was normal, you know, 30, 40 years ago, now you gotta be making like high six figures.
	If you want that house, I mean, to Jack's point, I think that looks pretty affluent.
	What I see happen a lot is that there's target neighborhoods that are known for having good Halloween.
	And, you know, I live in California and it's like, you know, one neighborhood is like the go-to spot.
	Maybe there's a couple spots and it's like, you know, it's not uncommon to hear a lot of Spanish, uh, going on.
	And I think Blake, you made the observation in the chat earlier.
	You were like, you know, honestly, Mexicans really love Halloween.
	Maybe it's the Dia de los Muertos thing or whatever, but it's one of those cultural things that translates very easily.
	It's a bit of that, but it's that really if you look at, honestly probably the best trait about Mexican Americans is they do love a lot of stuff people kind of liked about older, like 80s, 90s America.
	A lot of stuff that's kind of cheesy more, I don't want to say lower class, but very much Prole-coded, normie-coded, like, they love, you know, they love cartoons, they love anime, they love monster trucks, they love pro-wrestling, and they love a very classic celebration of classic American holidays.
	Like machismo.
	Let's go, let's go, yeah, and like, let's go do Halloween, let's do Christmas stuff, let's go to the park.
	And that's all great.
	And I think we do have to say, like, it's bad that we're losing that neighborhood character.
	I do worry it might just be inevitable.
	Why do people have this memory of stronger neighborhoods?
	Well, in the past we had a lot of ethnic neighborhoods.
	Even with Europeans, you'd have your Polish neighborhood, your Ukrainian neighborhood, your Jewish neighborhood.
	And those disappeared, and some of that's because of urban decay in the 60s.
	You know, they would do, you know, crime exploded, so people fled cities.
	But, you know, they could have fled and still tried to recreate those neighborhoods, but they didn't.
	We just sort of had suburbs, people mixed up more, and so you lose things that used to be common in neighborhoods.
	You used to have a neighborhood where everyone went to the same church.
	Now, you'll have a lot of churches, but people just go to different ones.
	So you don't have the assumption that you are at the same church as the people, if they even go at all.
	And you don't necessarily have the same overall background.
	Some of this is language, but it's a lot of additional things.
	And then just people are more mobile.
	People move all the time.
	Yep.
	And it's sad we lost that.
	I don't know if there's an easy way to recreate it without giving up a lot of things that we've also gotten used to and taken for granted.
	And then just everyone's online now.
	You build online communities and such instead of having to be engaged in your community to do anything.
	Tyler, who's not present here but in the chat, made one of the smartest points.
	Let's replay the tape.
	What's missing in this tape?
	Replay it.
	Don't say it out loud.
	Let's see if anybody watching.
	Replay the tape, guys.
	What's missing here?
	Such a smart point.
	I mean, it's the most obvious point.
	Jack, did you see the chat or not?
	I haven't seen anybody make it.
	Jack, don't look at the chat.
	Look at the video.
	What's missing?
	What's missing?
	I think a lot of things that are missing.
	Very obvious ones.
	It's so obvious, but it's like I missed it until someone noticed it.
	Is that none of the kids are dressed up for Halloween?
	There's one.
	One kid's wearing a Sheriff Woody costume.
	No, no, no.
	Look at that.
	That one with the hood is like a Spider-Man.
	That's a hoodie.
	No, that's a hoodie.
	That's not a... There's a kid.
	The kid in yellow is... No, no, no.
	Wait till he comes around again.
	The kid in yellow is in a Woody costume.
	Sheriff Woody.
	Yeah, that's Woody from Toy Story.
	There's some kids in sweats.
	Sheriff Woody would not do that.
	That is defamation of Sheriff Woody.
	Also, a father is missing is the other thing that's obviously missing.
	That guy... That's an Olaf from Frozen.
	No, I think it's not the kids, it's the adults.
	Like the adults should have costumes too.
	But I guess, you know, a lot of adults don't have costumes.
	Adults should not wear costumes.
	Yeah, they should.
	Come on, have fun with it.
	We usually do like a family theme.
	So we do like, you know, we did Scooby-Doo this year.
	We did Batman and like the Batman villains last year.
	We did, uh...
	So, we're losing Halloween, just like we're losing our country.
	But here's the good news, guys.
	I went trick-or-treating with my kids and it was like a flashback to childhood.
	It really was.
	So, I think we can make the mistake of saying that this stuff is everywhere and everything's going to hell.
	We had a good Halloween.
	I will say that.
	We had a great Halloween.
	Very safe.
	Lots of families.
	Great to see the young kids running around.
	So hopefully, to your point, Charlie or Blake, you know, we can sort of hold on to some of these things.
	And I also want to say Harvest Festivals have been going on for a long time because Christians are very skeptical about Halloween in general.
	So we did that actually on Sunday.
	So we did a big Harvest Festival at our church, and then we went trick-or-treating on Tuesday.
	Okay.
	Blake, set up this no kids thing, because I had a breakthrough that I didn't mention with Berenson, but set it all up.
	Awesome, awesome.
	So, we had Alex Berenson on the show the other day, but this is all because of a hugely viral thing on his sub-stack.
	You can bring it up, it's on my laptop here if you want to show it.
	He did a post on his unreported truths sub-stack, which is, why are so many adults in rich countries refusing to have kids?
	And as he points out, it's not just the United States, it's not just Europe, it's not just Japan.
	It's South Korea is down to like 0.78 children per women, so your population will fall by two-thirds every generation.
	It's China.
	China is not even a very rich country yet, already down, way down.
	Latin America, it's low.
	The Middle East, it's gotten really low.
	It's basically dropped essentially everywhere except large chunks of Africa still have pretty high fertility.
	Everywhere else, it's fallen.
	And Gaza.
	And Afghanistan.
	Afghanistan's very high.
	Your median Afghan was born after we invaded Afghanistan 22 years ago.
	And so it's just, it's falling everywhere.
	It's not just in rich countries.
	Even in relatively more religious countries, you still see it down.
	Like Iran.
	Iran has low fertility.
	It's just, it's falling all over the place, and kind of the question is, why?
	Because a lot of the things we have blamed are factors in some of these countries, but not all of them.
	And so it's a very big question.
	Why do people not have kids?
	Jack, I did a whole show on this.
	What is your theory, Jack?
	I think there's a correlation between, and I actually haven't read Alex Berenson's piece on this, not that I'm any against Alex Berenson, I think I'm the only guy who's read all of his fiction and non-fiction, but just having a chance to get to it, even though I was one of the guys who dropped it in the chat the first time, that I think there's a correlation between having more disposable income, more things to do in society, more choices, more opportunity, and
	Basically a falling out of so the first correlation is that if there's a falling out of religion and there's a falling out of That central focus that central focus of society central moral core of religion as societies become more affluent They tend to become more secular.
	We've seen that around the world.
	Certainly we've seen that in Europe.
	We're facing that in the United States In Asia, you know, it's kind of a jump ball because they're some of their religions aren't like religion religions the way we would kind of classify them But that's a much longer story.
	Um, and because of that, the sort of moral imperative to have children is sort of diminished or it's, or it's lost.
	And so therefore you end up getting this situation where people think of kids as, you know, the more money you have, you start to think of, do I want kids?
	Should I have kids?
	How many kids do I have?
	Whereas in, you know, previous times it might just be, Oh, well, you know, we got married, let's have kids or, Oh, we, You know, we're not married.
	We'll have kids anyway.
	You still do see these things going on, but the trend lines are there.
	But I would just I guess I would say that within a country at the different social levels, this is something that also plays a role as well.
	But, you know, I really do think that on, you know, on on whole, we're talking about those big Halloween neighborhoods, you know, those big neighborhoods where people want to go, you know, the the the full bar neighborhoods.
	Right.
	Everybody knows where the full bar neighborhoods are.
	Um, that, yeah, they tend to have more dogs these days than they do kids.
	Yeah, so I think part of it is it's just harder to have kids because there's something in our food that is actively poisoning people's fertility.
	Uh, that's 100% happening.
	It's the food or the toxins or the air.
	That's not the only thing.
	You know, going off that.
	That wouldn't really count for Europe, though.
	Well, I would say what stands out to me, like with Catholics, so there are Catholics who basically say, don't use birth control, and as the Pope says, and so people who are Catholic know families that have quite a few kids.
	But even there, you know, I think my great-grandparents had, I can't remember off the top of my head, I think they had 10 plus kids.
	Even if you know traditional Catholic families who have a lot of kids, they'll have seven kids or eight kids.
	I don't know... I've never seen a family that had ten, eleven, twelve.
	Very few.
	Very, very few.
	And I'm not saying... That used to be commonplace.
	That used to be common, and I guess I'm not... What I'm saying is... That means it's a cultural, psychological difference.
	I think it's a bit cultural, psychological, but it might go towards the biological thing, that even people who are essentially saying, we'll have as many kids as God decides to have us have, They end up having 7 or 8 instead of 12 or 13.
	There is something that is suppressing testosterone rates.
	I mean, it just is.
	It's true.
	I don't know what it is.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, Blake, just to throw on that, so, you know, going to, you know, we have our kids in a Catholic school, and, you know, I'll see as the, you know, as the kids, you know, as the families, we drop our kids off in the morning, and yeah, you see the minivans that, you know, that you're used to seeing.
	Yeah, I haven't seen anyone with, like, the huge brood of kids that I... Even I remember in the 80s, 90s, you know, there would always be a couple of families that were, like, 6+, 7+.
	As you say, I'm not seeing that as much anymore.
	Yeah, and so definitely one of the roles is women are getting married later and later.
	I think in the West, I didn't talk about this, Berenson, the amount of young gay people plays a role.
	We didn't mention that with Berenson, but if you've got 20% of people that are gay, you're not going to procreate, right?
	But that doesn't explain why even the monogamous couples are having less.
	Kids, right?
	That explains the macro population collapse.
	It doesn't explain why the actual family units are there.
	And then, again, there's evidence that corn or other things are really having a lot of negative impacts on testosterone rates and can block-- can actually be-- what do they call it?
	Andocrine-- Andocrine disruptors.
	Yeah, endocrine disruptors.
	Thank you.
	There's a lot of evidence to support that.
	But it's deeper than that because countries that are largely-- that have insulated food supplies that are not as, let's just say, into corporate farming as we are here, where food is trash in the West.
	They seem to also have, I don't know if their testosterone rates are low, but their fertility rates are low.
	So Andrew, what is it?
	I mean, this is a global phenomenon outside of, I think, Nigeria, Somalia.
	And Andrew has a theory, and Blake, I know, certainly does.
	We'll get there second, but Andrew.
	Yeah, I mean, I've got three kids.
	I can tell you that the fact that we even got to three was like, A, it had to do with spiritual or faith, but B, it had to do with values.
	But C, I really relate to people that are struggling with whether or not they want to have kids.
	Now, I am like a big champion of kids.
	I'm trying to get everybody knocked up and pregnant.
	All my married friends, I'm always like, go for the third, go for the fourth.
	But I think what's interesting, and I forget who hit on this, As a country gets a little bit more affluent, it's that kind of lower middle class to middle class realm that I think this is really affecting.
	Because once you get to the upper, upper class, they have enough money to afford babysitting.
	They have enough money to, and then it becomes like a status symbol, right?
	Where you want to have a lot of kids to, because it's some sort of status thing.
	But the, the, what happens is I think we're more online, we're more distracted.
	The incentive structure's all off and we're more secular.
	So it's the short term payoff is you get to, you know, travel.
	I mean, our generation's obsessed with experiences and traveling, all these very selfish things that our parents were like, hey, we thought of a vacation is like loading up the family wagon and going to Yosemite.
	Now it's like, no, we're going to go to the south of France for three weeks and we're going to work remote.
	And yeah, the kids just don't really fit into that.
	And they're more online, more social media, more distracted.
	And I think it's actually modernity as a whole has flipped the incentive structure on its head so that a lot of people just aren't incentivized.
	I think it's for different people, different things though.
	I don't think you could name one or even two reasons why it's lower.
	I think it's like five or six or seven issues.
	Blake has a theory because that doesn't usually, If there's not a one or two input explanation, you usually don't see a global phenomenon.
	Is that right, Blake?
	is that to see a global phenomenon that's this transcultural, this transcontinental, that transcends socioeconomic lines, usually it takes, I don't know, a virus like COVID to have data like that.
	But what's going on here in your opinion?
	I definitely agree that it's a lot of things.
	I want to say when I've looked into it and researched it, the single most decisive one tends to be women's education, women's education, When women get educated, essentially on the level of men, that is when you start seeing fertility decline.
	And I think that happens for a few reasons.
	It gives young women something to do besides get married.
	They have greater economic independence if they can work in the economy equally, which means there's less economic reason to get married, even if you're otherwise not as inclined to do it.
	Um, it means, this is just blunt, it means they have more knowledge about how to prevent pregnancy, uh, in various ways.
	And all of these factors combined drives down fertility.
	And you see accounts of this even in relatively traditional cultures like, um, like India, for example.
	You'll have mothers in India who will still encourage their daughters, even if they promote, you know, arranged marriages, even if they promote having kids, they still encourage them, complete your education.
	And so that's pushing the date back.
	And if you delay marriage by five years, that's five years where you might have in the past had two kids, three kids.
	Those are wiped out.
	You're starting later.
	And you're giving people reasons they can essentially be more selective in a spouse.
	In the past, women had very little economic independence, very little economic stability, and they got that by getting married.
	And this created upsides in society, but it did create a lot of downsides.
	This did cause women to get married to people they probably wouldn't have gotten married to otherwise, to have kids they probably wouldn't have had otherwise.
	And there's upsides to them not having to do this, but it is a big feeder in people overall getting married less.
	Another thing I would note is it was actually somewhat historically unusual in Western society for everyone to get married.
	In the past, we were very dependent on people who didn't get married having a ton of kids, and you saw it a lot who would opt out.
	I mean, if you think of, like, Catholic societies, the number of people who would become nuns, the number of people who'd become priests, the number of people who just wouldn't marry for one reason or another was actually pretty high.
	And this is just offset by the people who do marry will have five kids, sick kids, seven kids, more.
	Now you're going back to a reality where, you know, people don't become nuns and priests as much anymore, but they become, you know, whatever people identify as these days, and they don't get married.
	Well, it could it be, though, that modernity gives something else for men and women to aim for other than just child raising and child rearing?
	Does life expectancy, yes, does life expectancy getting longer actually make you less like because you almost have a new life after the kids become 20?
	Right?
	I know that might I'm just trying to understand what a global psychology would be.
	Well, we definitely have the idea of a career.
	I think I don't think that if you are a farmer in the 1800s, you think, like, I'm going to not have kids because I want to be really focused on my agriculture career.
	No, that's what I'm saying.
	That's why you would have eight or nine.
	That was your wealth.
	The eight or nine kids.
	It was your wealth.
	It was also just what was done.
	The idea was, I mean, people have a pretty natural drive.
	Let's be honest.
	Two out of eight would die, too, in the 1800s.
	Yeah, they would die.
	It's almost hard for us to get into the head of that, that it's so psychologically inculcated, that one, there wasn't a lot of easy ways to prevent pregnancy back then, or it wasn't easily known, and on top of that, just, it's so baked in, it's just, it is what one does, it is what happens, and it, we almost can't imagine that anymore, because now we are in a society where it is an option, it is something that you can choose, and we can't really rewind the clock to a time where it was otherwise.
	There's another, There's one other angle that I just want to mention.
	So we're on the conversation.
	I know, you know, we're getting kind of long on it, but, um, with, with a lot of like millennials, elder millennials, people I talked to, um, you know, we talk about the country becoming richer, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every.
	Every rung of that society has gotten richer.
	And with a lot of the millennials that are millennial situation, I've got people coming to me because, you know, most elder millennials are hitting, you know, starting to look at 40, right.
	They're starting to see it right around the corner.
	Um, and some people who have gone through the, you know, the economic, you know, economic turmoil, I guess, of, of that decade, that decade plus of graduating college, then hitting boom, uh, great recession, going through all of it, which parallels the, you know, at the same time as war paralleling, not, not, I'm saying not the same as, but it's, it's a parallel structure to, uh, almost the Great Depression, World War II in terms of time.
	We have this huge economic turmoil that people have been delaying family formation, which then ties into obviously what Blake is saying about that the fertility window is just closing.
	So you can't delay that because there is a biological clock on this.
	And so for a lot of people who are middle class, even upper middle class, they're realizing that they're not hitting that career goal where they wanted to.
	So they're trying to hit that first before they can go back to the family goal.
	But they're realizing they can't do that.
	People were told, a lot of girls were told back in college in the mid-2000s, oh, freeze your eggs, you know, you can go do that, you know, it'll be on the shelf when you need it, but then you find out there's more complications with that, there's IVF complications that people run into, turns out it's not that easy to have kids when you hit that age, and then also the fact that people aren't getting married as much anymore in general, which goes, you know, a whole other line about the relationship between the sexes, men and women in this country,
	Um, you know, has been pushed off so far that, but it basically put it to say, I know a lot of millennials.
	I know a lot of elder millennials who wish they had kids, who want to have kids, but for one reason or another that usually hearkens back to one of those, uh, one of those factors does not have kids.
	Okay.
	Uh, closing thought, Andrew.
	Andrew is muted right now.
	Okay, here we go.
	Steve Jobs said that before he died, he went all around the world after the iPhone and he realized something profound.
	I think this was in his biography just before he died.
	That there was something he called the globalization of youth, right?
	The globalization of youth, he was seeing that among older generations, they were very different from one another.
	The cultural norms still held between Germany and Turkey and China.
	But when you got to younger generations, they were all reading the same stuff, exposed to the same ideas.
	The iPhone revolutionized everything.
	So when you're talking about a global trend, Charlie, you're talking about something that is becoming more and more the norm, because those people in 2010 are now 13 years older, and they're a larger part of the working population.
	The globalization of youth is now the globalization, to Jack's point, of 40-year-olds.
	Okay, so when you've got, we're more distracted, we have more options, we, I think that that's so, so important when you're talking about global trends.
	I think we're gonna see more and more global trends that people are grasping at reasons for, but it's just because you're simply exposed to so much.
	I mean, TikTok's a global phenomenon.
	Twitter's a global phenomenon.
	So we're consuming so much of the same content.
	I wouldn't be surprised to see that again.
	The last takeaway, which is obvious, is that it's now more and more acceptable to have sex outside of marriage, a.k.a.
	use birth control outside of marriage, and that is a global toxin that is spreading.
	You factor that in with all the other stuff.
	Okay, you know that Gavin Newsom went to China, but did you know that Donald John Trump also speaks fluent Chinese?
	Placot 116.
	The media won't tell you this.
	Jack, what is he saying?
	It's accurately translated.
	What is he... I don't... I don't see it.
	Jack, what is he saying?
	It's accurately translated.
	What is he?
	I don't see it.
	What is he saying?
	He must cross the road.
	You must cross the mountains.
	Search a flower.
	This will be the new flower.
	Do not be scared.
	The fireflies will fly.
	Oh, he writes in Chinese, too.
	That pic of him on the Great Wall with the sword goes so hard.
	AI is really going to ruin us, Blake.
	We're done.
	Or it could liberate us.
	Is this elevating content?
	Yeah, I think it's pretty strong.
	I like it.
	Wait, tie this back though to the DeSantis memes versus the Trump meme.
	The Trump memes are absurdist and always make him look like some kind of otherworldly superhero type figure where he can you can throw him into.
	Because there's another one where he's doing like a Diwali dance at a Hindu wedding where it's it's it's incredible.
	It's just amazing.
	And then and then you throw him into traditional Chinese song.
	And it's also amazing.
	Right.
	There's there's a certain X factor to Trump that makes him one of the most memeable people on the face of the planet.
	And it is very hard to describe.
	But I would say probably the main reason that he's so memeable is because it's it's there's something just so wrong about it.
	It's so taboo to have Donald Trump, who's portrayed as a racist and a xenophobe and all of this, to be not only fully embracing Chinese culture, but also fluently speaking and singing in Mandarin.
	It's just deep down, Trump is basically the funniest person in the world.
	Yes.
	Not in like a stand-up comedian way necessarily, but in like a deep way.
	He is profoundly, incredibly funny.
	He's like that in person.
	Personally, and just the concept of Trump, everything about it.
	Well, that's the thing is that Trump is bigger than a person.
	He's an aura, a vibe, he's an archetype.
	I have seen videos... Trump is not an archetype of something, Trump is the archetype.
	There's a video from 2016 that portrays Donald Trump as a Nazi who will blow up planet Earth, and the video makes you like Trump more.
	That's the anime one, right?
	Yes, the anime one, yeah.
	Yeah, there's like, it's like this anime one where he's also, like, got, like, an army of Gundams and... Yeah, he's like a giant robot and he blasts off into space and he blows up planet Earth and you're like, yes!
	Trump 2016!
	People say that, you know, Trump is playing a part, or is the part playing Trump?
	That's the question.
	That's Chinese philosophy.
	That's, that's really deep.
	Alright everybody, keep committing thought crimes.
	Adi, the virtue, how do you say goodbye in Chinese?
	Zai jian.
	Yeah, that.

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