Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein critique the EPA's dismissal of East Palestine's chemical spill, arguing it reveals corporate negligence masked by climate change distractions. They condemn Nikki Haley's identity politics and Chelsea Handler's dishonest promotion of childlessness as narcissistic projections that ignore biological imperatives. Ultimately, they assert that celebrating a lifestyle denying parenthood signals societal collapse, urging listeners to reject such messages while accepting personal freedom without promoting inferior choices. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Dallas vs Fort Worth Confusion00:02:51
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Rob Bernstein, the fire, king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
What's up, brother?
Haven't seen you since we were in Dallas over the weekend two days ago.
How you been doing since then?
We had a good old time, man, doing some shows.
Yeah, shows were great in Dallas and Fort Worth.
As me and Rob learned, those are two different places.
But the shows there were really phenomenal, man.
Thank you to everybody who came out.
Had such a great time there.
Off to Detroit this weekend.
Still some tickets available for that.
So come on out, me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein at the House of Comedy in Detroit.
Looking forward to this one.
I haven't been to Detroit in years, at least five or six years since I've been out to Detroit.
So looking forward to going back to you.
Fine people.
A little, yeah, I guess we're not any closer to the train wreckage than we are here, right?
I don't know.
We're upwind.
Are we in Detroit or are we upwind here?
I don't know.
Does wind just go north?
I don't really know where wind goes.
I don't know how any of this works.
I'm so dumb that in my head, I saw things going up in Detroit's north of there.
So I just assumed that that was more of an issue, but that's not scientific in any capacity.
Probably not.
Anyway, let's break this shit down and get it more correct than anyone in the corporate press does, regardless.
You know, I was thinking, oh, by the way, we recorded two live episodes while we were out in Fort Worth and in Dallas.
And the one in Dallas was just released before you hear this one.
The one in Fort Worth will never be released on any platform that I can be kicked off of because we got into some wild stuff on that one.
So if you want to hear that episode, you got to subscribe over at gasdigitalnetwork.com.
Use the promo code POTP, get you a monthly discount, and you get access to our entire archive of episodes on demand.
Watch us in real time, get everything right about everything going on in the world and kind of formulate our own personal philosophies over the years.
And yeah, you also get access to all the other shows on the network.
So go check that out if you want to see the podcast that shall never be released.
It got pretty wild.
Anyway.
Yeah, said crazy shit.
Also, Cafe Bohemia, this Wednesday and every Wednesday, I'm doing shows, 8 p.m.
The Disaster Scale of Lies00:12:31
Oh, yes.
Rob's show is that's right here in New York City.
And when I say right here, neither of us is in the venue.
Neither of us are in.
Okay, very cool.
Very cool.
I'll definitely be making some appearances there at some point, popping in.
But yeah, come check out that show.
So, yeah, you know, because I was thinking about this, I think we touched on this a little bit on the last episode, but sometimes with these stories, like people really do get hyped up in the moment, like in the moment when a new crises arrives.
That's when everyone's really like, you know, loses their mind.
And then as time goes on, people settle down.
They look at it with clearer heads.
And I think one of the reasons why we have a pretty good track record is that because we are libertarian autists and we in like those moments, you so live in the like theory.
Now, there's, there's weaknesses to living in theory too much.
But one of the benefits is that in the middle of a crisis, you're able to still kind of like apply sound theory to what's going on here and kind of see through it.
So this is why when everyone's screaming about how there's aliens, you know, oh my God, the government has told us we've shot down, you know, four unidentified flying objects and this is the alien invasion and all of this shit.
And you see like so many regular people are asking about this.
People are convinced that this is like a real possibility.
And you're like, okay, just first off, let's just think about this logically.
So you're telling me that, I mean, how far away can we see with like our best telescopes?
Pretty goddamn far.
And so whatever alien life form has come to Earth, like we can't send a man to Mars.
We can pretend to send him to the moon, but we can't, you know, we certainly can't do any better than that.
You're telling me that this life form is what traveled millions of light years to get here.
So certainly have technology that it's not that they have technology that's superior to us.
They would have to have technology that is unfathomable to us, just light years ahead of us in technology.
Yet we're able to shoot down their craft.
Like, okay.
I mean, what are the odds of that?
Seem pretty low.
And then you go, what are the odds that these were just Chinese craft?
Or these were secret military crafts that the other like aviation people didn't know about or that the government's just straight up lying and this didn't happen at all.
Well, the odds of any of those three things are quite literally millions and millions of times more likely than the first scenario.
Right?
So let's just err on the side of what is millions of times more likely than the other one.
Like it's just people just like kind of don't think about things like this in these situations.
And anyway, the thing to also really keep in mind, and we'll get into this as we discuss this train, is that like, I don't know.
It seems to me like no matter how many times the case is just proven that your government will lie to you about the most important things, people still tend to forget that when the new crisis hits.
Like they still just kind of take for granted that like the who, what, why, when, and where given to me by the official government spokesman are probably about right.
And then we could argue within those parameters about what is really going on.
And you're like, look, just consider the possibility that they're lying through their fucking teeth about all of this.
I mean, they lie about the wars and they lied about the pandemic.
And they, you know what I mean?
Like they lied about like the most important things.
Why do you think they wouldn't just lie to you about this?
Like consider the possibility that it was a secret military operation to float balloons up and then shoot them down and then claim it was the Chinese.
It's a hell of a lot more likely than there's aliens here.
The alien invasion is coming.
But the only people who ever get pictures of them are the Pentagon and they only get real fuzzy pictures from a, you know, like really?
That doesn't seem anyway.
Just let's let's think logically about this.
All right.
So let's kind of keeping that in mind.
Let's talk about what's going on here in what is it?
East Palestine?
East Palestine.
The Palestinians have been through a lot, Rob.
And just to end.
They should know not to throw rocks at trains.
That's kind of on those.
But they just can't.
They're addicted.
So right on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania, there was a train derailment.
I think five cars that were containing highly unstable chemicals were leaking.
There was a controlled explosion of them.
And I mean, Jesus Christ, the videos, as I'm sure most people watching now are insane.
It's like a mushroom cloud of chemicals just shooting into the air.
Thousands of people have been dislocated from this.
There's been stories of fish floating up to the top of the water, dead.
And yeah, I don't know.
Any more about just the details of the situation that you want to add in there, Rob, or your thoughts?
And of course, the EPA going, nope, you guys, don't worry about it.
This isn't like Flint, Michigan water or asbestos after 9-11.
Nothing to be concerned about.
Isn't it so?
Okay, that's like such an interesting detail of all this too and very revealing.
Isn't it something?
So the EPA immediately comes in and starts telling you about how this is no big deal.
And that's more or less the that that's the tone that everyone right now is taking.
There's really, it's not like a big deal.
The drinking water's fine, says the EPA.
Don't mind all the dead animals in the water.
Your water's fine.
This isn't going to be that bad.
It's fine.
This was a success, is what they kept saying.
The controlled explosion was a success.
Yeah, there was a malfunction of some sort that led to this train derailment, but don't worry about the details.
We're not going to get down to the bottom of that.
That's, you know, we're not really getting into that at all.
No journalists seem to be really that interested in even asking what's going on there to get an official statement.
But it's just very interesting to see.
So the EPA and the Biden administration and all of these people who are at every turn the most sycophantic climate alarmists, right?
At every turn, they're just telling you what a disaster everything is.
Like, oh my God, are you using a plastic straw?
This is going to end our species.
This is every day, all we hear about is how, what a disaster the situation in the climate is.
And here you have a mushroom cloud of like the most toxic chemicals just pouring into the air.
And they're like, it's totally cool.
It's totally like if that doesn't just show you how much the whole climate change environmentalist thing is just an agenda and not a genuine concern about damaging our environment, I don't know what would.
You're just like, oh, there's nothing to sell here.
So yeah, no big deal.
I think you got it wrong.
It's because of all the advancements we've made in controlling for pollution in the environment when there's accidents like this where it's okay.
We can have shit like this going into the atmosphere because we have taken Taking climate change so seriously.
Oh, right, right, right.
If the climate was hotter, this would have been a problem.
Yeah, there you go.
It's all Pete Buttigieg and all the, they were all proven right.
So it's just that, so that aspect of it is, is pretty incredible.
And it's really, you know, again, just like I was saying before about like all the important shit that the government has lied to you about, like the most important things.
And you see this and you're like, and now you see them telling all these people you're, drinking water is fine, when you know goddamn well that they don't know that, they don't know that and they're just trying to say, because they don't want to see, they don't want to have a disaster on their watch, so that they, they have no problem pretending that climate change is a disaster because they can put that on you, that's your fault.
Uh mr, I drive an suv and like to drink a coke out of a straw, like that's on you, but that this would kind of be on like the whole regulatory apparatus, like wow, how did you allow this to happen?
And that they don't feel like you know what I mean, so that then it's no big deal, even when something is clearly a much bigger problem for the environment than all of the shit that they go off on all the time.
Um, and you also had with the Keystone pipelines.
Their big argument was that trains were safer.
So I know that that's a different industry but uh, you know Biden's been back and rail as being the safer way of getting things around in the country.
Yeah, that is true.
That is true for environmental reasons.
Nonetheless yeah, it's unbelievable, though.
The people who are the most uh like insane climate alarmists are the people who care about the environment, the environment the least.
They're the people like the most basic things.
You know.
It's like okay well like, the air and water are contaminated, no big deal, that's fine.
Maybe toxic mushroom clouds don't uh, heat the planet, so these are okay, we can, we can have more toxic mushroom clouds.
They just don't harm people.
We're not that concerned about people, we're concerned about the planet.
So this might actually be a net positive for the planet.
Oh yeah, there you go.
Yeah look, I don't know.
I mean it's I I, I don't know exactly how bad this is going to be um, and exactly what, like how much of a disaster this is.
It's, it's on a scale of a disaster.
The question is like, how bad um?
But the one thing that is just very obvious, I think that we can all know, is that that like, everybody is lying and you just can't there's, there's no like official um institution or um or government officials who you can it's, it's not even like oh, I don't completely trust what they're saying.
It's like you are just coming and reading a script like, for the most insincere reasons, just like it's completely driven by politics, it's completely driven by the bottom line.
It's like okay, what do we need to say to these people?
To shut everybody up and get uh, you know, moving with business as usual.
So really quite a, quite a remarkable event.
Um, and the lack of I mean just the the story here once again is in the lack of coverage that for all of last week we're hearing about balloons and if you weren't a person that kind of paid attention To Twitter, this wouldn't even been much of a storyline, let alone not a lot of coverage.
I mean, I send you a video of some random guy.
I don't know how much of an expert it is.
It sounds like he's an expert when it comes to the chemistry stuff of explaining just how harmful these chemicals are.
But I mean, the fact that that's not a segment on Fox News, or as you're saying, you know, if all these, like, usually the news is obsessed with the climate and they're obsessed with big business.
So why aren't we talking about whatever this $23 billion train rail line company is that only spent $25,000 so far trying to help out the town?
And how come there's no conversation about, oh, what is big industry doing to our environment?
And how come Biden's not doing more?
And where's Pete Budige with his bicycle?
How come he's not on the scene?
Oh, Pete Butige, the other day, after this train had derailed, he's giving a talk and he's going off about how the problem with these infrastructure jobs is that far too often in minority neighborhoods, the people working on the infrastructure jobs don't look like the people from the neighborhoods.
It's like, this is what he's talking about.
He's talking about like, you know, transportation systemic racism or something like this.
Government Spending and Market Failure00:06:47
The problem is just that we have too many white people working on these jobs rather than, you know, it like being in perfect proportion to the percentage of people in society.
And you're like, how about just, you know, train tracks that work?
How about that?
How about that as a starting point?
And then after we've got that settled, we can worry about all these other things.
There is something that I find to be a really fascinating dynamic, which we've spoken about many times before on the show, but there is something about like as government gets bigger and bigger.
And I mean, really, you know, it's hard to overstate how much our government, the size of government has grown just in our lifetimes.
Like, you know, if you if you go back and look in the year 2000, this is I'm ballpark correct here.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but the total federal budget in the year 2000 was something like $1.5 trillion.
And the total budget of the total spending of the federal government in the year 2020, like topped $7 trillion.
So it went from like around 1.5 to around 7 trillion in 20 years.
It's like an extreme growth in the size of government.
What is that?
That's one and a half times three would be twice as much.
4.5 would be three times as much.
Six would be five.
You know, it's like almost five times bigger than it was in the last 20 years.
And that, by the way, is starting from the biggest government in the history of the world.
Like there's no other, you know, the 1.5 trillion is like the entire GDP of Russia.
It was what we were spending, just in government spending.
And, you know, of course, you could think about like the expansions of government under George W. Bush and, you know, the wars and the Department of Homeland Security and the whatever it was, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D. You can think about Obama coming in, Obamacare, you know, Trump coming in, ramping up spending originally, then in COVID times, just ramping it up like through the roof with all these crazy spending packages.
But it's like as government does more and more and more and more and is tackling things like, you know, deciding who wins a war on the easternmost part of Europe or what the temperature is going to be in 100 years or what, you know, remaking every inch of human society.
While this is all happening and they're attempting to achieve these like crazy lofty goals, It's they're failing at the most basic like functions of government.
Like the things that you would think that anybody, I mean, okay, leave the anarchist conversation aside for a second.
When most people think of like what a government's supposed to do, just in the most basic things, it does seem like the more that they shoot for all these lofty goals, the more they fail miserably at the most basic things.
So the most basic things just being like, whatever.
Like we're now, we're, we're, you know, we tip it out at $7 trillion in a year or whatever.
And there's, but at the same time, this government can't, we can't win our wars or protect our borders or balance our budgets.
You know, the roads are falling apart.
The trains are being derailed.
There's, you know, if someone shoplifts from your store and you call the cops, good luck.
The government's not handling that.
But we are really spending like a ton of money over what the temperature will be in 100 years.
It's like so bananas to watch this happen.
And so it just seems like this is like another example of something where, and I know people can say, look, trains get derailed.
It happens.
I understand that.
But we're moving chemicals around like this all the time.
And I don't recall the last time they had to mushroom cloud blow one up.
You know what I mean?
Like this, don't tell me this is just like an everyday thing that just happens all the time.
No, it actually doesn't.
And it's really something that you can't even count on like the government to just have like functioning train tracks and not lie through their teeth to you about the situation.
The most basic things that you would think of are like they completely fail at.
And you would think like if it wasn't, you know, the beauty of kind of like the free market as opposed to the state is that the free market, which is not perfect, but it at least has a cleansing mechanism of the profit and loss system.
Or like if you're not serving customers well, you tend to not really make a lot of profits.
And then you kind of have to pull back and readjust and do some things.
Within the market, it's usually only when people are really nailing the most important services that they start moving up to like these more, you know, extravagant services.
But with the government, it's like the exact opposite.
They just fail and fail and fail at the most basic shit that everybody wants.
And then they go, okay, well, we'll just get a raise for that and try for much bigger, grander visions.
But anyway, so that is just something I was thinking about a lot as I as I was watching some of the news on this stuff.
Yeah, I don't know.
Also, there should be more of a conversation about trusting the EPA and what kind of responsibility they have if they're telling citizens that things are okay and they don't have very good evidence of that.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
Right.
After all this talk of like misinformation and the consequences of it.
Well, how about telling like a community that their children's drinking water is okay?
And by the way, we actually as libertarians have a pretty good way of dealing with this, which is respecting people's personal property.
So if there's very clear evidence of a chemical spill that just ruined a town, that company's got $25 billion.
They're going to have to relocate all these people.
Like let's start tracking the actual damages.
And then also that's what's going to change the dynamics of this in the future, where it won't be worth companies taking the shortcuts if they know that they're actually going to be held responsible.
This is yeah, but and the way that that actually plays out in the market typically is through insurance.
Yeah.
It's through insurance is that you would have to like the biggest thing, like the biggest risk, if you were someone who's transporting these chemicals around would be like, oh, I got to be insured that if anything happens, I'm covered.
And then the insurance companies come in and go, okay, now that they have a direct financial incentive, they're not just like spending somebody's tax money, which is like, whatever, I could just tax them more and spend their money or we could print the money and spend more of it.
They actually have to spend their own money.
They go, we're going to need to see those train tracks.
We're going to need to see what's going on here.
This happens all the time.
I mean, like, there's, um, there's examples of this, like, all around us in like actual private industry.
How Bambi Cuts Compliance Costs00:02:29
Like, just, for example, like, like you get a discount.
I didn't know this.
I'm just a fairly new homeowner, but like, you get a discount on your home insurance if you set up like a good security system.
So, if you set up like a really good security system, you get a discount on there.
It's like you put in all the like fucking smoke detectors and, you know, like carbon monoxide detectors and all that shit.
You have a good security system.
They cut your rate down because it's like just that is just a good business.
And so in the same sense, like kind of the inverse of that is like, you know, if you're like, someone wants to insure your house and you're like, well, I don't have doors and I have a fire pit in my living room.
They're going to be like, well, okay, we're not going to insure you then, you know?
And like then, so, and then if you can't operate, if you can't get insurance, you have to operate assuming total risk.
And then it makes it not profitable.
It makes it not worthwhile for you to do it.
So yeah, there's a million different ways that incentives could be used to like actually deal with problems like this.
But instead, we just have the government run all of it.
And look, it's going great.
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Playing on the Left's Ground00:14:33
All right, let's get back into the show.
You know, as you mentioned, it really is, you just see how, and this is really kind of exposes like the true evil nature of the corporate press, just in how little coverage this gets and how little they care.
Like, you know, January 6th or something like that is like the biggest thing that's ever happened.
Like, my God, some politicians were scared.
You know, that's a huge deal.
But like, oh, you have to relocate from your home and your drinking water is contaminated.
You may have been exposed to deadly chemicals.
Like, where's the like wall-to-wall coverage and demand for investigations?
Like, we, we are absolutely going to figure.
Like, you cannot convince me that these huge like corporate press entities with their billions of dollars in their budgets that they have could not, if they wanted to, say, we are going to get to the bottom of what happened here and who's responsible for it.
There's just no will to do that.
They don't care.
It's like, how does that serve the agenda?
They'd much rather, you know, host a, you know, a conference in Davos about climate change.
Because then we're selling wind panels or whatever the fuck the game is.
You know, it's just, it's, it's disgusting.
I wonder if there was even a train crash.
I bet they just blew up a balloon right in that town.
There was the most dangerous balloon, like the one over Wyoming.
They had to be careful of the people on the ground, but this balloon in Palestine was so dangerous, it had to be taken out right away.
It's more likely than the aliens are coming, which the Pentagon seems to want you to believe.
Like, I don't even know what's going on with all this stuff, but it is, there is some attempt for sure at like a huge reset of the conversation and to focus it on something else.
They're like, okay, this is this thing's getting away from us.
It's not going good.
And they're very good at this.
Very good to go.
Everybody, we're not looking over here now.
We're looking over here now.
This is what we're talking about.
And I don't know if this is to like ramp up, you know, military aggression against China or it's to just distract people or just try to make Joe Biden look good because he looked bad for not shooting that balloon down for so long.
I don't know exactly.
But it's, I know when I smell bullshit.
That's for sure.
Okay.
So speaking of that, speaking of politics and bullshit, we have one more candidate in the Republican field.
I believe officially, I think we only have Donald Trump or we only had Donald Trump who's thrown his hat in the ring and announced that he's running for the presidency once again for a third time.
But he's not alone.
Someone else is joining the race.
Nikki Haley, here was her announcement video.
Let's play it and discuss a little bit.
The railroad tracks divided the town by race.
I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.
Not black, not white.
I was different.
But my mom would always say, your job is not to focus on the differences, but the similarities.
And my parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.
Some look at our past as evidence that America's founding principles are bad.
They say the promise of freedom is just made up.
Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have seen evil.
In China, they commit genocide.
In Iran, they murder their own people for challenging the government.
And when a woman tells you about watching soldiers throw her baby into a fire, it puts things in perspective.
Okay, let's just pause this already.
It's hard for me to explain how much I hate Nikki Haley.
She's just the worst.
Oh, God.
It's so, you know, it does bring me some pleasure in knowing that her campaign is going to crash and burn and do absolutely nothing.
And I really do hope that like she, Donald Trump is going to handle her so easily because she like, you know how Donald Trump is when he runs against people who used to work for him.
Like he's always, she did a terrible job.
She was always sleeping.
She never got anything done.
They just, I just, I don't know.
Everything about this political ad, I just hate so much.
First off, it just, just starting off with your like racial identitarianism, when you're just like, I don't know, there's me.
Am I just being a dick here?
It's like, you're white.
You completely present as white.
Stop telling me about like this epic struggle.
And even if it was like a little bit of a challenge, why is it that it's so frustrating when Republicans try to like out identity politics the left?
Like that's their, that's their response is like, we're not rejecting your whole game.
We're going to play right into your game.
The first thing I have to say is what my race is.
That's the first thing I have to say.
I wasn't white or black.
I was different.
Blah, blah, blah.
But I'm not taking this in a social justice way.
I'm taking this in a rah-rah-rah American way.
And I've seen evil.
And you know where evil is in China, in Iran.
That's the real evil.
Like, really?
I don't know.
I just have no interest in that.
First off, yeah, you claim China is committing a genocide.
I'm going to need some, I'm going to need some evidence on that.
Don't give me Adrian Zen's bullshit numbers.
Show me actually where China's committing a genocide.
Just please.
Let me educate me since I don't know.
Show me the evidence.
That's a pretty serious accusation.
I'm like, oh my God, in Iran, they're so horrible.
Just imagine.
Like, yeah, in Iran, they're so horrible.
Okay, fine.
Like, the Iranian government's a messed up government.
Sure.
Fine.
It's like, look at just a pick out of all the countries in the Middle East.
Like, picture Iran on a map and just picture all of the neighboring countries.
It's like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and like fucking all these countries like right around them.
And you're like, oh, what's going on in those countries?
Oh, yeah, they've been fucking decimated by people like you, people with your foreign policy views in positions of power like you were.
That's, that's what's happened to them.
Like, I'm supposed to go like after the last three years and everything that's been done to this country, the last 20 years of war, and then the last three years of like domestic tyranny.
And you're going to go, I've seen evil.
It's like, oh, good.
What are we talking about?
Prosecuting Fauci?
Oh, Iran.
Oh, yes, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
And some BS accusations of a Chinese genocide.
Okay.
Like, Jesus Christ.
It's just fucking ridiculous.
Okay.
All right.
Let's see.
Even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America.
I was born and raised in South Carolina.
So I have seen the very best of our country.
People here threw out the old, tired political establishment and demanded accountability for their tax dollars.
Industry reports called us the beast of the Southeast, which I love.
People came by the thousands for fresh starts.
Moms and dads held their heads up high.
Children learned that it was always...
It's a great day in South Carolina.
It's a great day.
It's a great day.
A great day.
A great day in South Carolina.
We were strong.
We were proud.
And when evil did come.
Police in South Carolina are looking for a gunman following a shooting at a church.
Several victims we don't know.
So all right, let's pause it again.
Do you, Rob, do you get my point about how it's almost like completely playing on the left's ground and then trying to like spin a right-wing message out of it?
Like, look, that shooting in Charleston, South Carolina was like, there's horror, obviously, right?
Like, it was a mass shooting.
It was horrible.
And it was a racially motivated mass shooting.
But like, I don't know.
I'm just one of these people.
I think it's because I'm really not a racialist that I just don't see like a racially motivated mass shooting as some type of different category of evil than any mass shooting.
Like, yeah, I mean, it's horrible.
It's like a school shooting is horrible.
Like, but if someone went and shot up a room because they hated black people, or if someone went and shot up a room because they wanted to shoot up a high school, or if someone went and shot up a room, it's like, I don't know.
They're all the same level of evil to me.
And just to like pick this out, it reminds me of Joe Biden's first presidential campaign video.
If you remember, it was all about Charlottesville.
Do you remember we played that back in the day?
And you're like, what?
Seriously?
You're trying, like, what?
That's the thing that you want to talk about?
Okay, a horrible thing happened that 100% of us agree was horrible.
Like, that's what you're talking about?
What does that have to do with like all of the issues to run on as president?
You're like, oh, there was this one crazy person who did a horrifically evil thing.
Okay.
When that day came, we all did the right thing.
Like, okay.
It's from a persuasive persuasion outlook, it's all very negative.
She's pointing like a very grim picture, and she's not really offering like a very, even a very hopeful solution.
So one, she's playing into like all the negative stereotypes of the left, right?
So she goes, oh, yeah, I guess there is a problem with just going with the white person, but hey, I'm Indian and hey, there are all these problems in this country, but look, other countries are way worse.
So why don't we, she's almost shaming you into, why don't you appreciate what you have?
As opposed to coming to from, hey, America is really great.
And here's, I mean, make America great again.
That's what made it such a good slogan.
But like, at least that's coming at it with some sort of a vision of hope.
There's some, there's a fun element.
This is kind of stepping into the ring and going, yep, we're terrible, but I'm going to shame you into kind of liking it.
Well, right.
And it's like, it's accepting all of the premises of the modern left and then going, no, no, no, but we can draw a right-wing conclusion from that or we can draw a conservative conclusion from that or something.
But it's like you're giving away all the premises and you're probably not going to draw, like, it would just me, it would be much more likely that someone, if they accept those premises, would then draw the conclusion of the people who set them.
And like, again, I'm not even saying it's not true at all, but it's just like, it's such, you know, you're starting with like, well, here's my racial identity.
And growing up that way, I was always different.
But that made me realize that I'm really a Republican.
And then you're like, oh, and there also are like horrific racist mass shooters.
That was the worst thing ever.
But what happened after that is we all blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's just, I just hate it.
I hate it.
Like, and again, it's just so like, of course, not even like one, not even one policy that you actually want to stand on, except what?
Get tough on Iran and China, I guess.
I guess that's what she's running on.
Anyway, let's keep going.
Turned away from fear toward God and the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world.
We must turn in that direction again.
Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections.
That has to change.
Joe Biden's record is abysmal, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.
The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again.
It's time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border, and strengthen our country, our pride, and our purpose.
Some people look at America and see vulnerability.
The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history.
China and Russia are on the march.
They all think we can be bullied, kicked around.
You should know this about me.
I don't put up with bullies.
And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you're wearing heels.
I'm Nikki Haley, and I'm running for president.
All right.
Well, luckily for us, you're Nikki Haley, and you are losing.
So that's the one thing we can take solace in.
And then, of course, again, the dumb heels line, just more identitarian like crap.
I just can't stand it.
I get one, one nod to fiscal responsibility.
That's what she gave us, which is literally no different from every single Republican who's ever run for anything.
And just, I don't know what to say.
Just awful.
Yeah, China.
I like her move.
Russia is on the move and I will not let them bully us.
Yeah, they really said they're really bullying us in the Donbass region.
Right on our doorstep, Rob.
They're within 5,000 miles.
Sorry, what were you saying?
No, I do have to ask.
So I watched this and instantly I was like, oh, if this is her opening thing at a minimum, because she's actually, she's coherent.
She's establishment.
She's pretty.
I could see her also like just coming off a little bit better than Trump at a debate.
But then right away, she put out this video as her first thing.
And I was just like, ah, this is a loss.
And she doesn't get it.
I don't know her that well other than I know she was at the UN for the for a little bit under Trump and basically left and it was rumored she was leaving to distance herself from Trump and then possibly run for for office as president.
What are your sticking points with Nikki Haley?
Like, why don't you like her?
Oh, she's like a total neocon, like just establishment, Republican, like awful on foreign policy, been wrong about everything.
You know, she's just, and that's like really what she's there for.
You know, that's basically it.
She's just the worst.
She's the worst.
Yeah, she was, she was very, very anti-Trump in the very beginning, then ended up sucking up to him, got a job for him, some ambassador job, then, yeah, then left to distance herself from him, as you said.
So, you know, it's going to be, I'll say, if nothing else, we could say we might get some fun out of Trump running against her.
So that would be, that'll be entertaining.
Rationalizing a Sad Reality00:15:50
Okay.
So I also wanted to play this video that I did catch of that Chelsea Handler made, stepping aside from politics a little bit into more of a cultural area.
Although, you know, I've been saying for the last for the last five years or so on this show that really you recognize that there's I think for far too long, many libertarians saw politics and culture as separate things and kind of basically being like, look, we stand for freedom and whatever happens culturally, that's however it pans out, that's fine.
But we believe in freedom.
People are free to kind of develop their own culture.
I think after a while, particularly in the last decade or so, really particularly in the last five years or so, you realize that there's a reason why the people who support big government the most are constantly have their eyes on the culture.
And they're constantly really trying to affect change in the culture.
And they realize because these things, they have tremendous influence over each other, both the culture over politics and politics over the culture.
And that you kind of have to recognize this stuff.
If you're serious about wanting to see a free society or at least a freer society, you can't just have blinders on to some of this stuff because it really is relevant and it really is important.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, someone who's not very relevant or important, I would argue, is Chelsea Handler.
It is a weird thing how, like, we were talking about this right before the show started.
And I was like, wait a minute, is Chelsea Handler hosting the daily show?
Is that a thing now?
And I guess she's just guest hosting it, but it's pretty funny just how I just had no idea of this.
And like, I mean, the world of comedy and politics are like, this is the world I live in.
And I was completely unaware.
This is how much Trevor Noah just destroyed the daily show went from being the gold standard in political comedy to being a completely irrelevant to the fact that professional political comics have no idea what's even going on with it.
But anyway, this was a video she put out.
So bizarre that this is going viral on Valentine's Day.
But here is Chelsea Handler on not having kids.
A life of a childless woman.
I wake up at 6 a.m.
I remember that I have no kids to take to school.
So I take an edible, masturbate, and go back to sleep.
I wake up at 12.30 p.m. and get ready for a busy day of doing whatever the f I feel like.
I put on my most impractical and stylish shoes since I won't be chasing a child around the grocery store.
I go to my fave spot in Paris to grab a croissant.
I do a meditation sesh on the plane since I have no screaming kids, allowing me all the time in the world to become enlightened.
The weightlessness of my existence has granted me superhuman powers.
I teleport myself back home.
Then I get ready for a night out with whatever hot guy I met on Raya that morning.
I call up a babysitter and tell her that I don't need her since I still don't have kids.
Now it's time for a workout.
So I hit Mount Everest for a quick climb.
I invent a time machine, go back in time and kill Hitler.
Crazy bastard.
It's amazing what you can do when you have this much free time.
And that's a day in the life of a childless woman.
There's so many layers to this that are just so pathetic.
And like, I don't even know where to start.
It's so sad and it's so wrong to put this out and like push this on other.
First of all, it's retardedly stupid.
It's like, Chelsea, who are you kidding?
You're like 60.
If you had had five kids, they'd all be grown up and out of your house at this point.
You could be living the exact same life.
You could have just as much freedom.
You don't just have toddlers forever.
Like they grow up and they move out.
At what age do you think you had kids?
Five years ago?
You've been in menopause for two decades.
Like, what are we talking about here?
It's like, what are you like?
But look, it's a fucked up thing about human nature in a way.
It's really sad.
And it's one of the things that it's kind of like the, what is the thing?
Is it crabs or lobsters?
I think it's lobsters, where if someone's trying, if when they're boiling, if one of them tries to crawl out, the other ones will pull them back in.
Have you ever heard of this before?
Well, it's kind of like, it's like a metaphor in a way for, you know, I don't know why they do it.
It's just instinctual, I guess, or something.
But there's like a metaphor for like, if I'm going to suffer, I'm going to try to bring as many other people to suffer with me.
It's like misery loves company type thing.
But people, if people are miserable, as Chelsea Handler clearly is, if people are miserable, it's much easier for them as kind of like the like something about the social psychology of it is to tell everybody else like, oh, I'm so great.
I'm loving everything.
My life is wonderful.
And to like make a video like this.
It's like, like just saying, if I were to like make a video about how awesome it is having kids and man, I'm so happy.
And I know you guys think I'm not happy, but I'm really so happy.
You might kind of go, everything all right, Dave?
Like, what?
You just don't really feel the need to do that.
People who are genuinely happy don't tend to feel the need to make videos like this.
But there is something about like once you're that age and you have an audience to some degree, it just seems to me to be so wrong to like tell people like, look, like, I'm not saying you got to have kids.
I love having kids.
I love having a family.
If you don't want to have kids, don't have kids.
All right.
And if you really don't want to have kids, maybe you shouldn't.
Maybe you wouldn't be a good parent.
But to pretend like, like, what was it she was saying?
Getting stoned and masturbating is like, fucking awesome.
That's how awesome my life is.
Like, yeah, I'm sure that's really fulfilling and not like empty and sad and gross.
You're like an old woman.
What are you talking?
It's like, are you, are you projecting to me that you have like a 20-year-old dude's fantasy as your life as a 60-year-old woman?
That's supposed to like be cool or like alluring or something.
Like, wow, you really got it.
You really got it made.
Okay.
First off, this is disgusting.
And say, like, again, I'm not even saying, I understand where someone is like, getting stoned and masturbating.
I get where it's fun, but like, let's all be real here.
It's not, there's nothing noble about it or that you should be bragging to other people about.
Oh, that's so cool how you're texting some dude, want to fuck.
Yeah, I'm sure.
The reason I say it's almost like a young dude's fantasy is because like for the most part, I'm not saying there's not exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, that's not even a young chick's fantasy.
Like, yeah, I'm just texting dudes like, want to fuck.
I just want to get railed out constantly.
It's like, yeah, that's really not.
It's really not.
Like, women are the ones who are always trying to get the guys to like commit to them and feel bad about themselves if a guy just fucks them and like leaves the next day.
But by and large, you know, like it's just so, it's so, I don't know, I don't know, just cringy and dishonest and above all, just really, really pathetic.
I don't know, Rob.
I know, you know, I'm a married guy with kids and you're, you're not.
You're a single guy, but like, it's just, you get what I'm saying with this, right?
Well, the before I agree with you, the irony is not lost on me that I basically said the exact same thing at the live show that we did when it both came up.
How do I deal with depression and what time do you wake up in the morning?
But at the same time, while I might have given similar answers, I think it was funny when I said it.
And when I watch this, it just feels very empty and sad.
Yeah.
I mean, it's also like, because she's, you know, look, I will say it's like Chelsea Handler is like a millionaire and shit.
And she's.
I was saying it also is with an awareness of that it didn't bring fulfillment.
She's looking at this more as she's got a noble cause and that other people should stand with her and her lifestyle.
And it's just not funny.
Like that's the other thing.
It's got, it's got that it's not funny and it's cringy because she's clearly lying.
It feels like a call for help.
Yeah, right, exactly.
All of that.
It's, it's not funny.
It's insanely cringy.
And it's also like, you know, the other aspect of it, and this is stuff like that I've touched on in the past is that you go like, look, even if you want to say that for Chelsea Handler, look, she's obviously a miserable person, but whatever.
Let's pretend she's not and she's really loving this life.
It's like, okay, Chelsea Handler is like a millionaire, like who's a, you know, has a successful comic, had her own show for many years, has done a lot of things.
Like just statistically speaking, for other women out there, the odds that you will be a multi-millionaire are very, very low.
I mean, I don't know exactly what it is.
I think it's something like $400,000 a year puts you in the top 1%.
So multi-millionaire is like, you know, it's like, I don't know, maybe one out of 500 at best of you.
So like the overwhelming majority, like 499 out of 500 of you aren't going to have that life.
You're just going to have like, most of you aren't even going to have a career.
You'll have a job.
Okay.
So like now put that on it.
Now, you know, just saying, it's like, let's, let's just be honest about what we're saying.
And it's just like, there's just something.
I find something again, I'm not judging people who don't have kids, but I find something truly just like profoundly disgusting about people going out of their way to like denigrate what it is to have kids or like the joy and meaning that that gives parents or like what an unbelievable experience it is.
Like to go out of your way to be like, yeah, I don't even have to worry about, I can put on high heels.
I don't have to worry about chasing kids around.
Oh, I can go back.
I can sleep till noon or something like that.
Like what?
That's the how, on what level is that supposed to be higher in any type of like hierarchy of values than like trying your best to like produce like like help produce a good person for the next generation.
There's just something like, there's something profoundly selfish about it.
Okay.
And again, I'm saying, don't have kids if you don't want to have kids.
Fine.
But the fact of the matter is that you're here.
You owe if your existence is so great, as basically is the message of this video, right?
Like I have such a great life.
Okay, well, you have that because someone had you, right?
So like, okay, you're saying it stops with me.
I'm not going to pass that on and give that to someone else.
Like, okay, but you literally have that life because so many, because every single generation that preceded you had kids.
That's why you have this.
And so like, you're bragging that I have this great life because of all of the sacrifices that previous generations have made.
And yet, aren't I a great person?
Because I feel no sense of obligation to pass that along to the next generation.
Just like the level of narcissism here is like, it's hard to comprehend how you could put that out there and not feel like, man, I really look like the most self-absorbed, awful person right now.
It's just such a disconnect to me.
And I just don't like, again, I know, I've known a lot of people like this.
I know people like this.
I won't, I won't say their names, but I know the like the girls, some, some of them in the comedy scene, you know, and stuff like that, who are the ones who like are the loudest ones like on this train, you know, of the like, whatever, like, I just want to fuck and I don't care.
I'm just like a guy, all of that.
Like, and then I know the guys that they've like hooked up with.
And then they're the chick who's like, well, where is this going?
Oh, you're not going to spend the night or you're not going to do that because they're pretending.
It's all an act.
Like, this isn't real.
This doesn't actually make you happy.
Like, you're damaged.
And now like you're trying to rationalize that and make yourself feel better.
But in the process of trying to make yourself feel better, you're trying to convince other girls to follow you in this path.
Like, I don't know what to say.
I'm not saying that there's an objectively moral correct answer to whether you should have kids or not.
But I am saying that like we're biologically made to do it.
There's kind of a reason why doing what you're biologically made to do is probably going to lead to more happiness and meaning in most people's lives than doing the opposite, right?
Like everything, every like genetic, evolved impulse in you is to try to get you to reproduce.
That's like the point, the whole thing, we are not evolved to try to kill the species off with us.
So it's just so weird to see that celebrated.
It really shows something about like the like the collapse of our society, that you'd ever be at a place where you're celebrating not continuing the species.
Celebrating a Shitty Message00:02:20
You think about like every society in the history of the world, every functioning society to any level, it's always kind of celebrated the idea of like having kids.
Like it's, it's just, it's a very bizarre thing.
And look, if you're a person who's like, this is just, I like the lifestyle of just living for myself and not living for other people.
And then I enjoy the freedom that not having kids gives me, like, fine.
Okay.
Fine.
You, unfortunately for you, the way this, this, the biological realities of this work is you got to make that decision and then you're sentenced to the results of that decision.
So like you don't get to turn back.
Like Chelsea Handler can't change her mind now because she's way too old to have kids.
Like, okay, but you're, but that's, you can make that decision and then you have to deal with it.
But to like promote this as some like superior lifestyle.
I remember even like, even before I was married and had kids and when I was lived a much more degenerate lifestyle, I always remember like, I don't know, I wouldn't have been like promoting that to young people listening to me.
I would have been like, I don't know, I live an alternative lifestyle.
I don't know if that's right for everybody.
You know what I mean?
I'm also a stand-up comedian.
I do something different like with my life.
It's just, but the idea of just being like, oh, this is so superior is just, I don't know.
What a shitty message.
A shitty message to send.
It's funny because like people, people still try to like mock social conservatism.
And like, that's fine.
There's areas to mock them.
But like, it's unbelievable that this is the cultural message coming out of like the establishment.
Just so goddamn bizarre.
All right.
Any final thoughts, Rob?
Have more than that.
Did Chelsea Handler, Chelsea Handler convince you to go have kids?
No, I don't think.
Well, we'll see.
You know, I'm still a young man, Davey Smith.
Don't let my life care fool you.
That's true.
You are a young man and you can always get a young woman.