Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Sad Reality Of Modernity
Aired: 2023-09-07
Duration: 01:11:27


=== America's Deepening Divide (11:58) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:09]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:11]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:13]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:17]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:22]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:27]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:31]  Steer your host.
[00:00:34]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I'm Dave Smith.
[00:00:38]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:40]  What's up, brother?
[00:00:41]  How you feeling this morning?
[00:00:43]  I'm doing great.
[00:00:43]  Hell of a weekend doing shows, and we're closing out Porch Tour.
[00:00:46]  Got California coming up, Tucson, Arizona, then Las Vegas.
[00:00:50]  And that's the end of Porch Tour.
[00:00:52]  Ooh, going to Vegas ahead of Skank Fest.
[00:00:54]  I think it's actually after Skank Fest.
[00:00:56]  Maybe I don't need to promote that one.
[00:00:57]  Right after.
[00:00:58]  Yeah, whatever.
[00:00:59]  No, no, no.
[00:00:59]  It's fine.
[00:01:00]  Start selling some tickets now.
[00:01:01]  Start buying your tickets now, people.
[00:01:03]  Yeah, looking forward to Skankfest.
[00:01:05]  I just kind of realized like that's the new thing.
[00:01:10]  That's like the big thing that's coming up.
[00:01:12]  You know what hit me was that yesterday, Christine and Rebecca were like, oh, who do you want on the live part of the problem?
[00:01:19]  And I was like, oh, shit.
[00:01:20]  Yeah, it's like getting time to do that.
[00:01:23]  So it's, by the way, it's going to be Sam Tripoli and Kurt Metzger along with us too.
[00:01:29]  So that should be a fun time this year.
[00:01:32]  That was a great, that was one of my favorite parts of SkankFest last year.
[00:01:36]  And this is, it's going to be another one of these pay-per-view shows.
[00:01:38]  It'll be a big show.
[00:01:39]  We're quite possibly having some other pop-ins come on to it.
[00:01:42]  It's going to be a big show.
[00:01:45]  One of the cool things about these pay-per-view shows is we don't got to worry about getting demonetized or canceled or any of that shit.
[00:01:51]  So we go pretty hard on these ones.
[00:01:53]  And if you want to support it, it would be very much appreciated.
[00:01:58]  The other thing, of course, is that my half hour special is still up on YouTube for free.
[00:02:02]  Please go check that out.
[00:02:03]  Please, I really appreciate all the people who have watched and shared it and commented on it.
[00:02:08]  It's very, I'm very grateful to all of you guys, not just for listening to this show, but for buying tickets to see me and Rob on the road and for watching the special and all this stuff.
[00:02:18]  It's really, look, the state of the world today is that what me and Rob do, the truth is that our style of stand-up comedy and our style of political commentary is will never get a corporation behind it.
[00:02:38]  There'll never be a big corporation who gets behind what we do.
[00:02:40]  That's fine.
[00:02:41]  I could care less, to be honest.
[00:02:43]  I like this much better, but that's just the reality of the world.
[00:02:46]  They've all gone in bed with the woke progressives.
[00:02:50]  And certainly, even if they're not all in with the woke progressives, they're intimidated by them enough that they just wouldn't push content like ours.
[00:02:58]  There would never be a TV show with what we do.
[00:03:01]  Me and Rob will not be doing stand-up on television.
[00:03:04]  Like that just won't.
[00:03:05]  That's the game today.
[00:03:08]  And of course, there will also not be any big social media platform that gets behind us.
[00:03:16]  We're not going to have the YouTube algorithm is not going to make sure that eyeballs get onto our show.
[00:03:22]  We're not going to be promoted in that way.
[00:03:23]  In fact, in many cases, we're going to be thwarted and then have to worry about being demonetized.
[00:03:29]  I mean, half my episodes, half of our episodes get demonetized.
[00:03:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:33]  Like it's just, and again, I'm fine with all this.
[00:03:37]  I really care less.
[00:03:39]  But the truth is like we're able to do what we do because of you guys listening.
[00:03:43]  That's it.
[00:03:44]  Because people like it and they keep viewing it and sharing it with their friends and stuff like that.
[00:03:48]  That's how our content has grown and thrived.
[00:03:51]  And so if you enjoy it and you think there's value in it, then please, you know, the support is much appreciated because that's really, that's the only way for shows like us to survive.
[00:04:03]  The best thing you can do is go over to gasdigital.com and use the promo code P-O-T-P for a seven-day free trial.
[00:04:10]  And if you, that's, that's the best way to support us.
[00:04:13]  Make sure you use the promo code P-O-T-P, gasdigital.com.
[00:04:17]  And then you get all the back episodes.
[00:04:19]  You get them ad-free, uncensored, and you get, you know, on-demand every episode of Part of the Problem ever.
[00:04:24]  Okay.
[00:04:25]  Anyway, moving on.
[00:04:28]  Oh, and then I got governors coming up in a couple of weeks.
[00:04:30]  Come check me out there if you're in Long Island, comicdabesmith.com.
[00:04:34]  So there was a Wall Street Journal article that I thought was very interesting.
[00:04:42]  You know what?
[00:04:43]  Let me rephrase that.
[00:04:44]  It wasn't a very interesting article.
[00:04:46]  The topic was very interesting.
[00:04:48]  The article itself was actually pretty shallow, but the topic was interesting to me.
[00:04:53]  I thought we'd talk a little bit about this to start off.
[00:04:56]  So the title of the article is, excuse me, why tribalism took over our politics.
[00:05:05]  Social science gives us an uncomfortable explanation.
[00:05:08]  Our brains were made for conflict.
[00:05:12]  The piece basically is citing some Pew research numbers that just came out that I would say confirm what we all already knew to be the case, but it is confirmed in this Pew research information, which is that Americans are more divided and polarized than basically any time that they've been keeping track of this.
[00:05:35]  I mean, I'd imagine, you know, around 1861, 1862, the country might have been slightly more divided than they are today.
[00:05:44]  But, you know, certainly in my lifetime, I'm 40.
[00:05:48]  Certainly in my life, there's never been anything close to it, what it is right now.
[00:05:53]  And it does seem, and the data backs this up, that basically this has been a trend that's just been getting worse and worse and worse.
[00:06:04]  You know, so in 2009, the country was the most divided it's ever been.
[00:06:08]  It was more so in 2010, more so in 2011, more so, and all the way through, it just keeps getting more and more divided.
[00:06:14]  It is now the highest number, the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans now both view the other side as their enemy, which is different.
[00:06:27]  And however you feel about it, whether this is good or bad, most people tend to think this is not a good thing.
[00:06:35]  There is, it's important to recognize it and try to dissect it.
[00:06:41]  And this stuff, like in this piece and in what a lot of other people are talking about it, I just, to me, I feel like they're all kind of missing the mark.
[00:06:48]  You know, talking about how, well, our brains are wired this way.
[00:06:52]  That's, that's the takeaway from the piece.
[00:06:54]  It's like, and of course they go through some like social science, which is, you know, I believe it is accurate, like, but it's just almost like, well, obviously.
[00:07:04]  I mean, yeah, no kidding.
[00:07:05]  Human beings are tribal creatures.
[00:07:07]  That doesn't really give us any explanation for why it's gotten so much worse over the last 20 years, right?
[00:07:13]  It's like, yeah, obviously, look around the world.
[00:07:15]  Sectarian violence is the norm, not like advanced civilized, you know, Jeffersonian republics.
[00:07:22]  Like the norm is sectarian violence.
[00:07:24]  Okay, fine.
[00:07:26]  But why are we like descending into that again?
[00:07:31]  That's the more interesting question, which I think this article doesn't really get at.
[00:07:34]  And a lot of the coverage of it, I feel like, hasn't really given the full picture.
[00:07:38]  So that I kind of wanted to talk about that.
[00:07:40]  Do you have any like thoughts about it before we jump into a few different avenues we could go down?
[00:07:46]  Well, I can give a simple explanation, which I'm sure you'll agree with.
[00:07:50]  And I think you've even said it on the show.
[00:07:52]  It might be where you're going with this, but it's very simple.
[00:07:55]  Government wields and enforces more power than at any other point in time.
[00:07:59]  And so there's more reason to hate and fear the other side because they might impose COVID on you, or they might tell you that you're not allowed to have your mask, or they might tell you that we're spending all the resources on this or we're spending all the resources on that.
[00:08:12]  Or, hey, we're going full.
[00:08:14]  You have to have an electric vehicle.
[00:08:16]  You can't have a gas stove or we're going the other way and we're closing down all the woke literature.
[00:08:22]  No, we're investing all the money into woke literature.
[00:08:25]  So now more than any other point in time, there's actually a reason to hate the other side and a reason to actually vote against things.
[00:08:33]  It's not a good thing, but it makes a lot of sense.
[00:08:38]  Well, yeah.
[00:08:38]  And look, this is a thing I've talked about a lot in the past.
[00:08:41]  And I would always, what I would use the example of is like, because you think about how many like differences that people have that are non-political are just completely removed from the political realm.
[00:08:53]  And the example I always give was religion, how you can have somebody who's like a devout Christian and somebody who's an atheist.
[00:09:01]  And they just interact and I don't know, they go to work together.
[00:09:07]  They go, they're friends, they hang out, they go, you know, they just live life and there's like no issue between them.
[00:09:15]  They don't demonize each other.
[00:09:17]  But if you really think about the views and how diametrically opposed they are, it's pretty unbelievable.
[00:09:24]  Like if you just on paper, you might even look at that and be like, well, there's no way these two people could ever like you couldn't just like a Christian couldn't just walk into a store run by an atheist and purchase something from him.
[00:09:34]  They certainly couldn't have a beer and go watch a football game together.
[00:09:38]  You know what I mean?
[00:09:38]  Like one of them believes that his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, he has like a personal relationship with him.
[00:09:46]  And he believes that because you haven't accepted him into your heart, that you are going to burn in a pit of misery for eternity.
[00:09:57]  And then that atheist believes that the Christian is delusional and that your most important, most cherished view is all nonsense.
[00:10:08]  And you're like, how is it that this just, it's just not a problem?
[00:10:11]  They just, they can get along together and totally compartmentalize that over here.
[00:10:15]  And the, the answer is because it's not political.
[00:10:18]  There's no, there's no competition over who is going to be enforcing their will on the other one.
[00:10:26]  And if there was, believe me, those differences would become very hostile very quickly.
[00:10:31]  If tomorrow it was up for a vote and either that atheist was going to be forced to, you know what I mean, like become a Christian, or that Christian was going to be forced to denounce Christianity and abandon the church.
[00:10:43]  They, all of a sudden, those two people have to go to war now.
[00:10:46]  And it's like they have to.
[00:10:47]  It's not just that they might.
[00:10:49]  Like there's no other option.
[00:10:51]  And of course, government is force and the federal government is the of the United States of America is the biggest organization in the history of the world.
[00:10:58]  It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
[00:11:01]  And so it's not a surprise that as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, people are more pitted against each other because one side's going to get control of this thing and the other one's not.
[00:11:12]  And so just like the Christian and atheist, once it becomes like a political thing, once there's force involved, then you have to go to war with each other.
[00:11:19]  So I think that is kind of like, like, if you don't get that, then I think you're going to miss the entire picture of what's going on here.
[00:11:28]  And that's not all that there is to it.
[00:11:30]  There's more like nuanced details, but that's kind of the basic starting point.
[00:11:36]  And I think I would say I think libertarians are kind of like uniquely in a position to understand and kind of prescribe the solution to this, which is obviously a drastic reduction in the size of government.
[00:11:52]  I'd love an elimination of the whole thing, but I'd settle for a drastic reduction.
[00:11:57]  And that's really the only way to get past this.

=== The Libertarian Solution (10:59) ===

[00:11:59]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is YoKratom, yokratom.com, a huge sponsor of this show, this network, SkankFest, everything we do.
[00:12:10]  YoKratom.com has always been supporting us.
[00:12:13]  So if you're over the age of 21 and you're already in the market for Kratom, go get your Kratom at yokratom.com.
[00:12:19]  They've got lab-tested quality stuff.
[00:12:21]  It's delivered right to your door and it is the best price you're going to find anywhere.
[00:12:26]  $60 for a kilo throughout all the inflation of the last few years, their prices haven't risen at all.
[00:12:32]  It's still a kilo for $60.
[00:12:34]  You won't find this anywhere else.
[00:12:36]  YoKratom.com.
[00:12:38]  I will say that this is something that I personally struggle with over the last few years.
[00:12:46]  I never had this issue before.
[00:12:49]  I've always kind of, I've always kind of been, and I still am to a large degree, but I've always kind of been like, I'm against the political class and I'm for the American people.
[00:13:00]  You know, like I'm on their side and I'm against the political class and the media class and stuff like that.
[00:13:06]  Like I'm against the ruling elite.
[00:13:07]  I'm for the American people.
[00:13:11]  And I've largely just felt like, well, the American people are largely propagandized and they've kind of bought into this corrupt system that we are that we exist under.
[00:13:23]  And I kind of look at them as the victims.
[00:13:25]  You know, I blame the people in power, not the people who are like propagandized by those people.
[00:13:32]  That has been a little bit more challenging for me over the last few years.
[00:13:37]  And so if you're talking about how polarized the country is and how these sides view the other side as their enemy, I'd have to kind of be honest and be like, I can't, I can't unsee what I saw during COVID.
[00:13:51]  Like I just can't unsee that.
[00:13:53]  And the truth is that like I was in a situation, you were too, Rob, where like for me, like in my city of New York City, where I, for the first 37 years of my life lived, my city, I was not allowed to enter a restaurant.
[00:14:13]  I was not allowed to go to a Knicks game.
[00:14:16]  The team I grew up just worshiping.
[00:14:19]  I couldn't go see a game if I wanted to anymore because I correctly chose to not get this goddamn jab.
[00:14:29]  And it's not like that's not the issue so much, right?
[00:14:33]  Because okay, I'm mad at the policy.
[00:14:35]  I'm mad at the politicians and all those people.
[00:14:37]  It's the fact that so many people, I would say the overwhelming majority of say Democratic voters supported that.
[00:14:49]  And not just supported it, but like it like, you know, you just wondered like how far they would take it.
[00:14:58]  You remember we used to talk about this on the show a lot?
[00:15:00]  Like, like, what percentage of you guys would support?
[00:15:02]  What if I was put on house arrest?
[00:15:04]  What percentage of you guys would support this?
[00:15:06]  And it did seem like it just, it gave you like, obviously, I'm not equating these things, but it gave you like a little bit of a window into the soul of what it was like to be like a real persecuted minority.
[00:15:19]  You know what I mean?
[00:15:20]  And like one of these, in like one of these terrible times in history, where you just like, I really never looked at my fellow Americans that way before, where I was kind of like, oh, shoot, I think they'd like, I think they'd support me being like totally ruined, like totally ruined by, by this stuff.
[00:15:37]  And that's like, it's just a very bizarre feeling.
[00:15:41]  I'm sure you felt some of that too, Rob.
[00:15:43]  Yeah, I mean, over COVID, people really bought into the nonsense and were very upset with you if you weren't following it because that showed that you lacked compassion and you were getting in the way of their freedom being restored.
[00:15:56]  Fully indoctrinated to believe that you pursuing your own freedom and doing your own research and making your own decisions about how you want to live your life was actually imposing on them and was creating a danger to them.
[00:16:09]  In a way that then is everything that you said that, you know, if government said, hey, we're padding up your doors, some percentage of your neighbors would have cheered and gone, ah, we got that guy who didn't care about grandma.
[00:16:21]  Yeah.
[00:16:21]  Yeah.
[00:16:22]  No, I mean, and there were situations like this.
[00:16:24]  I mean, there was a whole bunch of like viral videos and stuff where there was the one in Australia, remember where the woman was getting like choked by the cop for not wearing a mask.
[00:16:33]  And people, there were people supporting it.
[00:16:35]  Like, what are you watching in front of you?
[00:16:36]  And it does.
[00:16:37]  It gives you like a little glimpse into like, you're like, well, how did the Nazis get away with what they got away with?
[00:16:42]  How did the commies get away with what they got away with?
[00:16:44]  You're like, oh, yeah.
[00:16:45]  Okay.
[00:16:45]  I kind of get it.
[00:16:46]  Now, again, I'm not saying that like it's the equivalent to genocide, but like you're watching a grown man just fucking like Undertaker choke this little woman.
[00:16:56]  Like you're, and you're on that side?
[00:16:59]  I mean, it does, it just, it, it gives you a glimpse into how like people can completely lose their sense of morality during like these crazy societal panics.
[00:17:08]  And it's hard to come back from that and not be left with some type of feeling about that side.
[00:17:14]  Like I, you know, I remember like at the very beginning, I remember the first time during COVID.
[00:17:20]  So this might have been like the first week in April, I want to say in 2020.
[00:17:26]  And I, me and my wife went to visit my, my mother with the kids, or kid.
[00:17:33]  We only had one at the time.
[00:17:36]  And this was like early enough that it was kind of like unclear what they were going to do to enforce things.
[00:17:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:17:45]  Like this was still when they were like, it was like shelter in place order and like you weren't supposed to leave for anything.
[00:17:50]  And you're kind of like, we were driving and we're like the only car on the road type deal, you know?
[00:17:55]  And it's like a very weird situation.
[00:17:56]  I remember it was so eerie.
[00:17:58]  This was the first time I was back in New York City after I had left.
[00:18:01]  I left just before the lockdowns, like days before, it kind of seemed like it was going in that direction.
[00:18:08]  And then, so I came back and I've grown up in New York City my entire life.
[00:18:12]  I've lived there.
[00:18:14]  And I cannot explain to you standing on the middle of a Broadway and hearing birds chirp was the weirdest goddamn thing.
[00:18:26]  You know, you're like, this doesn't happen here.
[00:18:30]  There aren't birds chirping here.
[00:18:32]  And then you kind of realize like in this weird way, you go, oh, all the sounds of nature are happening here.
[00:18:37]  There's just so much other noise that you've never heard them.
[00:18:39]  But so going, I go up to my mother's apartment building and I remember coming, walking into it and this woman in the hallway in a mask, she comes over to us, which is hilarious already, that she comes close to us and she goes, visiting are we?
[00:18:56]  And with no masks.
[00:18:58]  And it was just like, it was kind of like unclear.
[00:19:00]  Like, yo, is this lady about to call the cops on us?
[00:19:02]  Like, what is she like?
[00:19:04]  I don't know exactly what she meant.
[00:19:05]  You know, and I was just like, I was like, I think I said, because it was like the only way I thought to handle it was I was like, oops, social distance, social distance.
[00:19:13]  Better stay over there.
[00:19:14]  You know what I mean?
[00:19:14]  And just be like, hey, get away from me.
[00:19:16]  But you're like, yo, lady, I'm bringing my one and a half year old to see her grandmother.
[00:19:24]  Back the fuck off.
[00:19:26]  Like, I'm doing nothing to no one, but like, you're telling, like, somehow you're viewing me as the enemy now.
[00:19:34]  Like, I can't do it.
[00:19:35]  And so there's just a lot of that.
[00:19:36]  And I've told these stories before, but going to the playgrounds and people when I was by my mother in New York City and people giving you weird looks because you're not masking up your two and a half year old and stuff, you know, cutting to a year later and you're like, yeah, not doing that.
[00:19:49]  I don't know.
[00:19:50]  So anyway, I will say, I understand on some level that it's very hard when you feel like the other side is cheering on you being like, you know, like oppressed, you know, like it's like real like violations of your basic liberties.
[00:20:10]  And the other side is like cheering that on.
[00:20:12]  It's very hard.
[00:20:12]  It's very hard to get past that.
[00:20:14]  And it is amazing how little it took for people to lose their humanity in that regard.
[00:20:19]  It just took one, the government, I guess as social creatures, we all need to be able to show up to work and then go home so that in either location, you can complain about the people in the other spot.
[00:20:29]  So you go to work, complain about your home life, then you go home, you complain about the people that work.
[00:20:33]  And you kind of need that.
[00:20:34]  You need your different groups so that you can complain about the other groups.
[00:20:37]  We all understand that.
[00:20:38]  They strip that from people and they go, the only way that you can get back to your normalcy is if we all do our part.
[00:20:44]  And then people, they start feeling, well, I'm being cheated because that guy's not doing his part.
[00:20:48]  And if not everyone contributes, then we're all doomed.
[00:20:52]  And so they think that they're on the side of righteousness of, hey, I'm doing my part.
[00:20:56]  You have to do your part.
[00:20:57]  And then we're over here going, no, no, this is stupid.
[00:20:59]  They are lying to you.
[00:21:00]  You're being a sheep.
[00:21:02]  You don't need to do your part.
[00:21:03]  You're agreeing to something for absolutely no value whatsoever other than pharmaceutical profits and government's control.
[00:21:11]  Wake up.
[00:21:12]  And that's where we directly butt heads.
[00:21:14]  And it goes back to what we were saying at first.
[00:21:16]  It's government wielding more power to be able to enforce the views of one side on the other, that this is now a game for keeps.
[00:21:23]  This is now a game of, am I going to have to live a life where I got to pay carbon credits to some wealthier person for no reason?
[00:21:31]  We could just use the carbon.
[00:21:32]  We could just enjoy our lives.
[00:21:34]  There could be more trees to offset it.
[00:21:36]  We'd be fine.
[00:21:37]  But instead, because other people bought into some stupid global warming thing, I have to be poorer.
[00:21:42]  I have to now rent from someone, live in smaller quarters, eat a ration of meat and pay for permission to use the carbon that I otherwise just could have used because you're imposing your worldview on me.
[00:21:54]  It's basically like, oh, we're really, you know, we're playing a game here of whether or not we want to volunteer to live our lives in prison.
[00:22:00]  Yeah.
[00:22:01]  Yeah.
[00:22:01]  And I'm sorry, but some of us do not want to.
[00:22:04]  Some of us are like, yo, I don't want that to be the future.
[00:22:07]  And after the last few years, when these people are telling you that's going to be the future, it's like, I'm listening.
[00:22:13]  I'm taking you at your word here.
[00:22:15]  So like, okay.
[00:22:17]  You know, it's so there's anyway, there's, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot to what I think the last few years has done and exposed to some degree.
[00:22:29]  I also think that, you know, when the broader topic of how polarized we are as a country, how, you know, the divisions in this country, how extreme they are, and there is this sense from like people in the corporate press when they talk about it that this is really bad, you know, like this is really not healthy.
[00:22:51]  And one of the things that they like to talk about and one of the things that was mentioned in this article was that, you know, that this.

=== Social Media Polarization (02:41) ===

[00:22:59]  This time, if you look at say, like from 2008 to 2023, where you really see that, according to the PEW research, you really see this drastic rise in in division in the country.
[00:23:12]  Um, they go well.
[00:23:13]  This also happens to correlate with, you know uh, the time where social media really takes off and everybody starts having a smartphone in their hand, and I I will certainly concede that that is an element to all of this.
[00:23:28]  There is something to be said for the fact that um, you know uh, there's you have social media um, where people fight with each other all the time on these sites.
[00:23:38]  Uh, there is something.
[00:23:40]  There's no question that there's something and we all know this and see it all the time that there is something about the.
[00:23:47]  You know, having a conversation with someone face to face and verse um, tweeting at them is a very different thing, and people talk in a way that they would never talk to you face to face.
[00:24:03]  You know, it's amazing how many times on twitter you see people calling each other a bitch or a retard, or you know what I mean, like all these things, but you don't really see that in real life that much.
[00:24:16]  Not saying it never happens, but if like, if someone's like if you are anywhere and someone's like aggressively calling someone else a bitch, like two men are talking and that like you're definitely turning your head and being like whoa, something's going down over here.
[00:24:32]  It's not just like a normal thing that happens um, so there is excuse me, there is some type of like contributing factor there.
[00:24:41]  You got a sippy cup.
[00:24:42]  Yeah, I got a nice little sippy cup.
[00:24:44]  You know I like these things.
[00:24:45]  They're uh, they're much easier to drink a lot of water in robot.
[00:24:49]  I'm brand bad trying to stay hydrated while you're podcasting.
[00:24:52]  Gotta stay hydrated.
[00:24:53]  It's rule number one rob, rule number one.
[00:24:56]  Okay, so i'm not denying that there's no factor there, but I just it's unbelievable to listen to people in the corporate press talk about this, how the role of social media has been to pity people against each other and not to go like, okay yes, but at the time that social media was exploding, what were you guys doing?
[00:25:22]  You guys were just pumping constantly the narrative down everybody's throats that were the most divisive, the most guaranteed to pit Americans against each other, and to this day, they still are like.
[00:25:36]  I'm old enough to remember that it wasn't always this way.

=== Wealth Transfer and Division (03:11) ===

[00:25:40]  It wasn't always like this.
[00:25:42]  But if you turn on, and we've covered this extensively over the last few years, but if you go right now, turn on CNN or MSNBC, which I don't mean to punish you.
[00:25:52]  You don't have to do this.
[00:25:53]  But if you do, I guarantee you, what they're doing right now is demonizing half the country.
[00:26:01]  They're out there telling you that your enemy is right-wingers.
[00:26:06]  And Fox News is guilty of the same thing.
[00:26:08]  They're out there telling you that your enemy is left-wingers.
[00:26:11]  that they infused this.
[00:26:13]  And the truth is that, as we've talked about many times before, but this never gets covered when it comes up to what's dividing everybody.
[00:26:23]  But even in the article, they kind of admit that it's around this time in 2008, people start getting really divided.
[00:26:30]  And so you might go like, well, hmm, what was going on in 2008?
[00:26:35]  Was there some type of big event that happened?
[00:26:38]  Perhaps a financial crisis.
[00:26:40]  Perhaps the worst one in modern American history.
[00:26:43]  Oh yeah, that was happening.
[00:26:45]  You know, like according to the Federal Reserve, which actually the Federal Reserve does a very good job at collecting information.
[00:26:54]  It's the only thing they do a good job at.
[00:26:56]  Everything else is just destroying nations, but they do a very good job at collecting some of this data.
[00:27:03]  And according to the Federal Reserve, from 2007 to 2010, the median American net worth dropped by 40%.
[00:27:18]  The average Americans lost 40% of what they had.
[00:27:24]  Okay?
[00:27:27]  If you try to put yourself in the position of someone, you know, imagine you're whatever.
[00:27:32]  Imagine you're the average American.
[00:27:34]  I don't know what the average median household income today, I think, is around 70 grand.
[00:27:39]  I think it was probably would have been closer to 60 grand in 2008.
[00:27:45]  So you're, if you're, let's say you got two kids and you, you know, I don't know, you're, you're making 65, 70 grand a year.
[00:27:54]  And you lose 40% of your net worth in a short period of time.
[00:28:00]  That is, that is terrifying.
[00:28:02]  You know what I mean?
[00:28:03]  And this happened.
[00:28:04]  And of course, this was at the time the biggest transfer of wealth from the American people to the top of the 1% in human history.
[00:28:13]  Biggest transfer of wealth in human history.
[00:28:15]  It got beat by COVID, which is another gigantic transfer of wealth from the American people to the elite.
[00:28:23]  But so, yeah, okay, so that happens.
[00:28:25]  And then out of that, you have these kind of somewhat organic movements, both on the left and the right.
[00:28:30]  You had Occupy Wall Street on the left and you had the Tea Party on the right.
[00:28:34]  They were both these kind of populist, anti-elite movements.
[00:28:39]  And they weren't really pitted against each other.
[00:28:41]  They were both, they both started as responses to the bailouts of the big banks.
[00:28:46]  And the Tea Party really started with the Ron Paul movement too, then it got kind of co-opted after that.

=== Organic Political Movements (04:00) ===

[00:28:51]  But, you know, they were both kind of pitted against the system on behalf of the American people.
[00:28:59]  And the response to that from the corporate press and the Obama administration, because a few things were going on here too, which was that Obama hadn't delivered on any of his promises, like ending the war and closing Gitmo and all of these things.
[00:29:16]  And so then they all decided that they were going to pivot to a culture war.
[00:29:21]  And they all decided in unison.
[00:29:23]  Every major publication, every single political leader, the entire corporate press, they all decided that we are going to talk all day long about gay marriage and transgenderism and social justice and racism and toxic masculinity.
[00:29:41]  This was all completely forced by all of the most powerful influential organizations.
[00:29:47]  And then at the end of all that, they turn around and they write these articles and they're like, hey, man, the American people are more divided than ever.
[00:29:55]  Must be our brains.
[00:29:57]  I think I got down to the bottom of it.
[00:29:59]  It's sociology.
[00:30:00]  Our brains like conflict, man.
[00:30:02]  That's what's going on here.
[00:30:04]  Like, yo, thanks.
[00:30:06]  Thanks for summing it up, Washington Post.
[00:30:09]  That really gets to the bottom of what just happened here, right?
[00:30:13]  It's just so goofy.
[00:30:15]  That's why you need more government to step in and control for the tribalism.
[00:30:18]  Yep.
[00:30:19]  Sorry.
[00:30:19]  Sorry, American people.
[00:30:20]  Your brains are all cuckoo.
[00:30:22]  Better turn over more power to DC.
[00:30:25]  And you're like, I'm sorry, but I just lived through this.
[00:30:27]  I watched it happen.
[00:30:29]  You're not going to like make me forget what I just saw.
[00:30:33]  So anyway, this is just, it's, I don't know, it's really something.
[00:30:36]  And I feel like every time I see this conversation or any time I see anyone talk about it, it's like they're missing all of the most key elements to this.
[00:30:45]  And they'll just talk about how like, you know, you know, oh, both politicians are just kind of running against the other one and everyone's just voting against the other guy.
[00:30:53]  You know, social media.
[00:30:55]  What are you going to do?
[00:30:56]  You know, and it's like, oh, okay.
[00:30:57]  I mean, like, there's truth to that, but don't you want to get at what's really going on here?
[00:31:01]  Isn't this other shit so much more interesting and so much more like, oh yeah, that's really like that really kind of explains much more of this.
[00:31:09]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Strong Cell.
[00:31:14]  Strong Cell is a scientific breakthrough in NADH supplementation.
[00:31:18]  You don't have to pay thousands of dollars to get NADH into your system anymore.
[00:31:23]  Strong Cell's proprietary delivery system combines NADH, COQ10, marine collagen, and many other essential vitamins to boost your body's cellular function.
[00:31:33]  There are cells in every area of your body.
[00:31:35]  So if your cells are healthier, you'll be healthier.
[00:31:38]  This is not a stimulant.
[00:31:39]  It does not contain any caffeine.
[00:31:41]  So you don't have to worry about jitters.
[00:31:43]  This is proven health at the cellular level.
[00:31:45]  This is not an overnight fix.
[00:31:46]  It takes your body a little time to utilize the NADH.
[00:31:49]  So give it a full month to see the results.
[00:31:52]  NADH is like the power source for every living cell in your body.
[00:31:55]  You already have it, but it declines drastically as early as your 20s.
[00:32:00]  Visit strongcell.com.
[00:32:02]  And if you use the promo code Dave20, you're going to save 20% on your entire order.
[00:32:07]  One more time, strongcell.com.
[00:32:09]  Dave20 is the promo code for 20% off your entire order.
[00:32:14]  Let's switch gears, Rob.
[00:32:15]  Let's talk about this ADL thing, which has been very interesting.
[00:32:21]  Seemed to kind of blow up out of nowhere.
[00:32:24]  Ban the ADL was the number one, trending number one on Twitter for at least a day, maybe more than that.
[00:32:33]  I haven't checked recently how it's still going.
[00:32:35]  Maybe I'll take a look at that.
[00:32:36]  I would say you're in the Jew Weasels.
[00:32:39]  They wouldn't allow that to trend.
[00:32:41]  So people had to settle for Ban the ADL.
[00:32:43]  But we all know what they're saying.
[00:32:45]  So I'm not that familiar with the ADL, but more often than not, and you and I have already spoken about this on the show.

=== Anti-Semitism and ADL (14:51) ===

[00:32:52]  I see their actions and behaviors and I'm like, this is what causes anti-Semitism.
[00:32:57]  It's the wielding of power in the way that you guys are doing it that lets people know, oh, the Jews actually do have power.
[00:33:05]  And the fact that you're acquiring resources by nothing other than complaining and saying that there's some overwhelming threat to the Jewish people that doesn't exist as a way to, you know, force people to behave in a certain way and for you to have more resources, that's what causes anti-Semitism.
[00:33:23]  And then when you see someone like Elon Musk actually putting out staggering figures of what this organization is able to cost Twitter just by, I guess, complaining to corporations of, hey, you can't go support this or we're going to scream that you're anti-Semites.
[00:33:38]  like screaming anti-Semite industries.
[00:33:41]  I don't understand.
[00:33:42]  Like, this is how you harbor resentments.
[00:33:45]  Dude, you know, it's so weird because when we talk about stuff like this, it's just so obvious to me.
[00:33:50]  And I don't know why that, you know, I don't understand how anyone can't see some of this stuff.
[00:33:56]  And by, you know, when, so, so as people know, as I've told the story a million times, but I got into, I got into politics, which was something I never really cared about before in 2007.
[00:34:10]  I was, what, I was like 23, something like that.
[00:34:13]  I was born in 83.
[00:34:14]  So 2007, 23, 24.
[00:34:17]  So I never really cared about politics that much.
[00:34:20]  And I saw Ron Paul in what's dubbed the Giuliani moment.
[00:34:24]  I was just watching the presidential debates just because like, whatever.
[00:34:27]  I think I was over at my mother's apartment.
[00:34:29]  We had dinner and then we were just like, oh, the presidential debates are on.
[00:34:32]  And I was watching it and I was blown away by the guy.
[00:34:37]  And the point he was making, which was very, it's hard to understand in today's context, but this was very controversial in 2007 to say.
[00:34:45]  But he was saying that his whole thing was that he was like, look, this whole thing about how they hate us because we're free, this is ridiculous.
[00:34:52]  They don't hate us because we're free.
[00:34:54]  They hate us because we're over there.
[00:34:56]  And he was like, they hate us because this is why they hate us.
[00:34:59]  They hate us because we kill their people.
[00:35:02]  We prop up brutal dictators who oppress their people.
[00:35:05]  We prop up Israel who oppresses the Palestinians.
[00:35:08]  But then he goes at one point, he goes, we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years, which at the time was 10 years.
[00:35:13]  It's been, it went on for much longer.
[00:35:17]  And he, I don't, so anyway, he argues back and forth with Giuliani and just takes him to school because Juliani is an idiot and Ron Paul knows everything.
[00:35:25]  But this was always, it was like the second I heard it, it was just so easy for me to understand that.
[00:35:30]  And I think I've always just been very easy.
[00:35:32]  It's very easy for me to understand reactionary like movements.
[00:35:37]  And that doesn't mean that like you're saying the reaction is right.
[00:35:41]  Like obviously 9-11 was horrifically immoral.
[00:35:44]  It was horrible.
[00:35:46]  But it's just so easy to understand.
[00:35:47]  It's like, oh yeah, right.
[00:35:50]  If you do that, you're going to provoke this.
[00:35:53]  It's just so, it's such common sense.
[00:35:55]  It's such like you're a human being.
[00:35:58]  All it takes is a little bit of effort for you to put yourself in their position and be like, oh yeah, if I were that, if I was on the other side of this, I might be ready to kill someone too.
[00:36:09]  So maybe stop doing the thing that's going to lead to this bad thing that you don't want.
[00:36:14]  And this, this has just always been easy for me to say in lots of different ways, like in lots of different examples.
[00:36:20]  Same thing with Putin and Russia.
[00:36:22]  It's like, oh yeah, okay, I get it.
[00:36:24]  We did all of this and then this provoked that.
[00:36:28]  That's really bad, but we also shouldn't have done this to provoke that.
[00:36:32]  You know, like it's just, this isn't rocket science.
[00:36:34]  It's fairly common sense.
[00:36:37]  And I see that with like the reactionary right wing in America, too.
[00:36:41]  It's like, I just, I totally get it.
[00:36:43]  And it's not saying that like, yes, it has, there has been a bunch of like fucking, you know, Jew hating tweets and stuff like that that have been sent as a response to this.
[00:36:53]  Not saying that's good.
[00:36:54]  I find, honestly, I find all of that stuff to be stupid and wrong.
[00:36:59]  It always just kind of misses the mark.
[00:37:03]  I mean, we could get into that a little bit more, but it's just like, it's like, oh, okay.
[00:37:07]  So you have this, this organization, the ADL, that's largely run by Jews that takes government money and is then going to try their best to get advertisers to drop Twitter because they don't want the people on Twitter to be able to speak freely.
[00:37:29]  While playing the dumb anti-Semitic card, it's the most annoying thing in the world, Shutting down reasonable conversation just by going, well, that's it.
[00:37:38]  It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, but they just like to play it because it's a powerful card.
[00:37:42]  The same way as declaring things racist.
[00:37:44]  It's just a powerful way of censoring people.
[00:37:46]  And it's a really dumb way of shutting down conversations around ideas.
[00:37:52]  Yeah.
[00:37:52]  No, that's right.
[00:37:54]  That's it.
[00:37:55]  And like the anti-defamation league, they were always like, they were very involved in like the civil rights movement and stuff like that.
[00:38:01]  And they've always been kind of like...
[00:38:02]  Responsible for the blacks having equal rights too.
[00:38:05]  Yeah.
[00:38:05]  No, they've I didn't realize they were this bad.
[00:38:07]  They've been doing bad stuff for a long time.
[00:38:09]  I'm saying, Rob.
[00:38:10]  But like, but like, you know, it's like, look, this is a major, this tech censorship is a major threat to freedom, to being in a free society.
[00:38:21]  And here you guys are, we get one platform that at least seems to be moving in the right direction in this and at least seems to be at least making an attempt to claim that they recognize this is a problem and don't want to censor you just for your views.
[00:38:34]  And they did like reinstate a lot of accounts that had been censored in the, that have been, you know, kicked off in the past.
[00:38:42]  And now you're like going after that.
[00:38:44]  And it's like, do you not even like look at this and go like, how's that going to look?
[00:38:48]  How's that going to come off?
[00:38:49]  You can't like, first off, what you're doing is horribly wrong.
[00:38:53]  And then you're like, you don't even see that like the obvious response that this is going to elicit is going to be hostility toward Jews.
[00:39:02]  It's just, it's, it's crazy.
[00:39:04]  It's insane.
[00:39:06]  It's literally on the level of just bombing the shit out of the Middle East and thinking you're not going to have some pissed off Muslims on your hands.
[00:39:13]  Right?
[00:39:14]  Like it's it's really a truly like reckless and insane thing to do and just wrong.
[00:39:23]  It's kind of like the Yee thing showcase how much I guess power Jews really do have that they're able to, what did they cost them?
[00:39:30]  $2 billion, whatever the amount of money was.
[00:39:32]  It was pretty staggering.
[00:39:33]  Yeah, it was billions.
[00:39:34]  He lost over a billion in net worth.
[00:39:36]  Maybe not billions plural, but he lost over a billion dollars in net worth.
[00:39:39]  For criticizing Jewish people.
[00:39:41]  And then now you've got, what, through the complaints of a bunch of lawyerly Jews, they've got enough pull with corporations that they can cost an entire platform multiple billions of dollars.
[00:39:54]  At what point are you not able to claim, oh, Jews don't aren't behind the scenes with some sort of incredible power?
[00:40:01]  Dude, do you remember the Norm McDonald joke about, dude, it's unbelievable that at a time you could make this joke on Saturday Night Live, but he had a bit, it was about Marlon Brando said something about how the Jews run Hollywood.
[00:40:16]  And Norm McDonald is like, this week, Marlon Brando met with Jewish leaders in Hollywood to apologize for his comments saying that Jews run Hollywood.
[00:40:26]  In response, the Jews said, all right, Marlon, you can work again.
[00:40:32]  This is such a great.
[00:40:36]  That bit sums it all up right now.
[00:40:38]  Like, what are you, are you trying to prove him right?
[00:40:40]  You know what I mean?
[00:40:42]  And then, of course, like the, you know, look, the, the truth is that these things are, there are, and as we've talked about before, I mean, look, like, there are a lot of Jewish people and they are disproportionately involved in a lot of things that we oppose.
[00:41:06]  That's just a fact.
[00:41:07]  I mean, there's no, you know, if that's offensive, then, you know, there's a Ben Shapiro line for you, you know?
[00:41:14]  But that, that's just the truth.
[00:41:18]  And it's a little bit more than just that.
[00:41:21]  It's not just that there are a lot of, let's say, let's say there are a wildly high number of like Jewish neoconservatives who have supported all of these foreign wars.
[00:41:36]  But the truth is that it's not just a coincidence, like they just happen to be Jewish and they just happen to also support the, you know, the, say, like all the wars in the Middle East.
[00:41:45]  It's that their Jewish identity plays a large role in why they support that policy, if that makes sense.
[00:41:53]  Like it's because they think this is in Israel's interest and they may do some mental gymnastics in their head to argue why that's really in our interest also or whatever, but it's like it's very wrapped up in their Jewish identity.
[00:42:05]  And the same thing with like the ADL thing here, where it's not just like, oh, they're doing this and they happen to be Jewish.
[00:42:12]  They're doing this and claiming it's because of anti-Semitism.
[00:42:15]  Like they're kind of weaponizing their Jewish identity to do this.
[00:42:19]  So there's, it's more than just it happens to be this group of people.
[00:42:23]  But look, the problem is that the reaction in the same way that I go, I can still understand why Putin invaded Ukraine.
[00:42:31]  I can understand why he was provoked into doing that.
[00:42:33]  I can understand why terrorists were provoked into joining up with al-Qaeda.
[00:42:38]  But you can also go, it's really wrong that this is your response.
[00:42:41]  This shouldn't be your response.
[00:42:43]  It's fucked up because doing 9-11, you're just killing innocent people.
[00:42:46]  And by the way, you didn't stop U.S. intervention in the Middle East, did you?
[00:42:50]  No, you gave them the biggest excuse to ramp it up.
[00:42:53]  So all that happened is that you killed innocent people and then more of your people got slaughtered as a result from it.
[00:43:00]  So you can kind of criticize them for provoking the thing, but then you can also like, you can also at the same time go, try to not get baited into the reaction.
[00:43:10]  That just gives them more of it.
[00:43:12]  The truth is that then all of the people, and I think many of them are just kind of trolling.
[00:43:17]  I don't know.
[00:43:17]  It's kind of impossible to tell online, but all of the people whose response to this is to say all the like, you know, anti-Jewish shit is goes, you're really just running cover for the ADL at this point.
[00:43:29]  Now you're just like helping them because they can look at that and go, yes, see, anti-Semitism, which is exactly what they did.
[00:43:34]  There's this huge backlash over them trying to trying to get Elon Musk, you know, like to whatever it is to censor more accounts or we're going to hurt your advertising dollars.
[00:43:46]  There's this huge backlash.
[00:43:47]  And then what they can do is instead of pointing to all of the people who have really sound arguments on this, they can just say, well, listen, we've been inundated with anti-Semitic rhetoric and we'll continue to fight anti-Semitism.
[00:43:58]  So you actually, you play right into their hands.
[00:44:01]  You actually help them when you do this.
[00:44:03]  And it's also just not accurate.
[00:44:06]  I can't tell you how many times I've just like seen the people who are the kind of the, I guess just call them anti-Semites or whatever, but the people who are all like into like bringing up the JQ and all this stuff.
[00:44:19]  And just the arguments are so sloppy.
[00:44:22]  They're just always so sloppy.
[00:44:23]  It's like, look, like I tweeted the other day, I think Jake Shields, who's great, great MMA fighter and has some great takes on Twitter.
[00:44:35]  He said something like to Jewish people out there, does the ADL represent Jews?
[00:44:39]  And I was like, no.
[00:44:41]  Like the ADL represents Jews in the same way that Fortune 500 CEOs represent men.
[00:44:49]  The fact that there are that they are Jews, even if their Jewish identity plays into their role, it doesn't, it's like saying like some billionaire man, his masculine identity plays into why he made so many billions of dollars, but that doesn't in any way represent like a trucker.
[00:45:05]  Like they're not living the same life.
[00:45:07]  They're not like represented by this guy.
[00:45:10]  And the truth is that while it is true that you can say Jews are disproportionately involved in many of say, like, let's just, just to take, I don't know, take an example, say like, okay, like the Federal Reserve.
[00:45:26]  And Jews have been, you know, Jews are only like 2% of the population, but they've been much more percentage than that of people in the Federal Reserve.
[00:45:35]  But Jews are also disproportionately involved in the people who are blowing the whistle on the Federal Reserve, the people who oppose the Federal Reserve the strongest.
[00:45:43]  And so this is like when you get more of a full picture of this stuff, you realize it's not just that.
[00:45:49]  Then what a lot of these people do is they do fall into conspiracy shit in the worst sense of it, which is then it's like you start from your conclusion and work your way back.
[00:45:59]  And then you're like, well, those Jews who are blowing the whistle on it were also in on it.
[00:46:02]  And they were also that, and then now you're just in goofy territory.
[00:46:05]  The truth is that this is a kind of me and Rob are both Jewish.
[00:46:10]  And it becomes kind of impossible to even like combat people like that.
[00:46:16]  Because once you start going like, no, no, no, this whole like Jewish question stuff is stupid.
[00:46:21]  They're like, of course that would be your take.
[00:46:24]  Of course you would.
[00:46:25]  So you just wouldn't advocate for your own murder.
[00:46:27]  Right, right.
[00:46:28]  Of course you're not advocating that you should be murdered.
[00:46:31]  But it's just, it's one of these things.
[00:46:32]  It's, it's, unfortunately, it becomes just like some of these awful left-wing arguments where you're just like, oh, you're starting from your conclusion and then accepting that as a given.
[00:46:44]  And then everything, every evidence has to fall as to prove that.
[00:46:48]  Like it was when I was debating that guy, the that lefty guy on the transgender rights thing.
[00:46:54]  And like during the debate, so his position is like, it's just like, well, those kids are trans.
[00:47:03]  No one's indoctrinating them into being transgender.
[00:47:05]  They are transgender.
[00:47:07]  And so that's what they are.
[00:47:08]  And like, yeah, you know what I mean?
[00:47:10]  Like, why should they have to hide that?
[00:47:12]  Why should, you know what I mean?
[00:47:13]  It's like the starting point is that we're, you know, so that's like, yeah, it's totally cool if a public school teacher wants to not tell the parents the kid's trans because that's just what they are.
[00:47:22]  You know what I mean?
[00:47:23]  And you're like, no, but you're just like assuming that conclusion that they are this.
[00:47:27]  Perhaps they're not.
[00:47:28]  Perhaps they're confused.
[00:47:29]  Perhaps they're following a trend.
[00:47:30]  Like there's all, so anyway, it's just like a similar type thing to that.
[00:47:34]  Anyway, moral of the story is, I don't even know exactly what ban the ADL would mean in terms of like a policy.

=== Let Us Live Our Lives (02:33) ===

[00:47:43]  But yeah, defund the ADL.
[00:47:47]  At least get all of the government money.
[00:47:49]  They should get absolutely no government support.
[00:47:52]  Why on earth should taxpayers be forced to support an organization that wants to attack their freedom of speech?
[00:48:01]  It's just appalling.
[00:48:05]  And evidently, I don't know, Rob, if you're up on the latest of it, but I guess Elon Musk is threatening to sue them.
[00:48:11]  Yeah, very funny for defamation.
[00:48:13]  Which Elon Musk acknowledges that it's funny to see the Anti-Defamation League for defamation.
[00:48:19]  Because he's claiming tremendous lost revenue as reported to him from advertisers saying that they've left the platform because of the ADL.
[00:48:28]  And so basically suing the ADL for defaming the Twitter as being anti-Semitic.
[00:48:35]  Right.
[00:48:36]  Right.
[00:48:37]  No, that makes sense.
[00:48:38]  Yeah.
[00:48:39]  Well, I mean, we'll see what happens with that.
[00:48:40]  But like, it's, it's, again, it kind of goes back to like this thing with COVID where it does seem like the real divide here is like, it's, as, as Jeff Dice would put it, it's the imposers and the imposed upon.
[00:48:54]  And it's like, you just have these people who it's like, just let us do what we're doing.
[00:49:00]  Like, leave us the fuck alone.
[00:49:02]  You know what I mean?
[00:49:03]  And like, these people are like, it's let, let me just live my life.
[00:49:06]  Let me just say what I want to say and be listened to by people who want to listen to me.
[00:49:11]  That's what I want to do.
[00:49:13]  Go away.
[00:49:14]  And then you have these organizations like these hectoring organizations who are like, no, we're going to, we're going to find a way to like bring this down.
[00:49:22]  And one of the things that's been really interesting about Elon Musk, you know, buying Twitter is that you're just kind of like, there's all these moving parts and you're like, well, can he get away with it?
[00:49:31]  You know, can he pull this off?
[00:49:33]  Even somebody with this much, you know, the richest man in the world, even with the amount of resources that he has, you're like, okay, but now you got to worry about this type of thing, the ADL going after your advertisers.
[00:49:44]  Now you got to worry about the federal government going after your other businesses or anything, any other weakness you have.
[00:49:50]  There's like all these levels to it.
[00:49:51]  And you're like, can he actually navigate this?
[00:49:54]  Because he's going up against like incredibly powerful interests.
[00:50:00]  So this is like kind of the latest, you know, chapter in that saga.
[00:50:05]  We'll be interesting to see how it how it goes down.
[00:50:09]  And the Jew weasels.
[00:50:12]  Yeah.
[00:50:12]  Got it.
[00:50:13]  Ban them.
[00:50:13]  It's the only way.
[00:50:14]  Only way to get rid of Jewasels.
[00:50:16]  Got to ban them.

=== Navigating Powerful Interests (15:54) ===

[00:50:17]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is the world leader in hair transplant services, Blue Magic Group International Clinics.
[00:50:26]  They have a team of world-class professionals who have turned hundreds of lives around with their hair restoration solutions.
[00:50:33]  Imagine regaining not just your hair, but your confidence too.
[00:50:36]  No more hats, no more self-consciousness, just you with a full head of hair feeling on top of the world.
[00:50:42]  If that sounds good, you got to go check these guys out.
[00:50:45]  They've given an exclusive offer to our podcast listeners.
[00:50:48]  If you register with the referral code Dave, you'll receive a 10% discount on your hair transplant services.
[00:50:55]  So why wait?
[00:50:55]  Stop hiding behind the caps, embrace the world with a newly gained confidence.
[00:51:00]  Contact Blue Magic Group Clinic today and embark on your journey to a happier, more confident you.
[00:51:06]  Remember, use the referral code Dave on the registration on the website, blueemagicclinic.com to get 10% off.
[00:51:13]  It's time to love your hair again.
[00:51:15]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:51:17]  Let's, before we, we wrap up, there was this one other topic I thought I might hit.
[00:51:21]  So a few people on Twitter were asked me to talk about this on the show because I did comment on it on Twitter.
[00:51:27]  But so I guess this was a TikTok video that Matt Walsh shared.
[00:51:34]  And he's got a big, you know, he's got like millions of followers on Twitter.
[00:51:37]  So this thing ended up blowing up.
[00:51:39]  There's been a few videos like this.
[00:51:41]  We talked about the Chelsea Handler one when she made it.
[00:51:44]  It's interesting to me.
[00:51:46]  In some ways, the real story isn't this video or just not in some ways.
[00:51:50]  The real story isn't this video.
[00:51:52]  The interesting story is just the reaction had on all sides from it.
[00:51:57]  But anyway, let's just let's play the video and then we could just, we could talk about this for a few minutes.
[00:52:01]  Saturday.
[00:52:02]  I'm 29 and single and I don't have kids yet.
[00:52:05]  Here's what your Saturday morning looks like when you're single at 29 and you don't have a kid running around the house.
[00:52:11]  I didn't rise from my bed until 1015.
[00:52:14]  Every time I thought, I should probably get up and do something.
[00:52:16]  I thought, why?
[00:52:17]  Nobody's making me.
[00:52:18]  I'm not missing out on anything.
[00:52:20]  I went to Beyoncé last night and I didn't get home until 1 a.m. and I danced and drank my little heart out.
[00:52:24]  And I didn't pay a babysitter to watch my kids as I did that.
[00:52:27]  And I woke up a tad hungover this morning, which is probably why I was in bed for so long.
[00:52:31]  And I was just scrolling on my phone and I saw a picture of Shakshuka and I thought, you know, it sounds really good.
[00:52:36]  Maybe I'm going to learn how to make Shakshuka today.
[00:52:39]  Because I have no plans and I don't have kids and I don't have a husband and I don't have errands to run.
[00:52:44]  I can go to the grocery store and learn how to make Shakshuka.
[00:52:47]  So that's on my agenda today.
[00:52:48]  Also on my agenda, probably a rewatch of some real houseides of New York.
[00:52:51]  I'm also doing a rewatch of Normal People on Hulu, which is really spicy and I highly recommend.
[00:52:56]  Weirdly, I'm into this documentary on Netflix about blue zone countries.
[00:52:59]  So I've got a pretty stacked day.
[00:53:01]  Anyway, I say all this to say whenever I'm hurt on myself about why I'm not married and I don't have kids and I should be further along at 29 almost 30.
[00:53:09]  All right.
[00:53:10]  So that's the video.
[00:53:11]  And it's eliciting quite a reaction out of people, which I just think is, there's something really interesting here.
[00:53:16]  And look, I'm not, there have been a lot of people.
[00:53:19]  Evidently, she made a follow-up video where she said she's getting like harassed by people on social media and they're like saying mean shit to her and stuff.
[00:53:25]  I'm like, don't do that.
[00:53:26]  Don't do that.
[00:53:27]  There's actually nothing.
[00:53:28]  She's not like, I don't know.
[00:53:29]  There's nothing like inherently wrong with this chick.
[00:53:32]  She's not necessarily a bad person or anything like that.
[00:53:35]  She's also 29.
[00:53:36]  She might, she said, I don't have kids yet.
[00:53:38]  Maybe she will have kids someday.
[00:53:39]  Maybe she won't have kids.
[00:53:41]  Whatever.
[00:53:42]  Okay.
[00:53:43]  The thing that I just find interesting is that it's just these, these type of videos are such an obvious cope on the person's part.
[00:53:53]  And it's like, you watch her go this thing where the thing I find interesting is she's like, whenever I'm hard on myself and I'm like beating myself up, I'm normally feeling bad about the fact that I'm not further along and I don't have kids and blah blah and all of this.
[00:54:07]  But then I just remind myself of that.
[00:54:09]  I tell myself this to make me feel better.
[00:54:11]  And I shouldn't be so hard on myself because I'm not where society tells me I should be.
[00:54:15]  And it's always interesting when people say these things like society tells me where to be.
[00:54:20]  And it becomes this kind of like, I don't know exactly how you would scientifically prove this.
[00:54:26]  Like, what is society saying?
[00:54:29]  Because like, isn't Chelsea Handler seems to be a pretty big figure in society?
[00:54:33]  And she's telling you it's awesome to not have kids.
[00:54:35]  You know what I mean?
[00:54:36]  It seems like actually, from my perspective, most of society is kind of anti-family.
[00:54:43]  That's what it seems like to me.
[00:54:45]  Most of kind of like the thought leaders.
[00:54:47]  And I don't think it's like the idea that like society is telling me to have kids is just such a bizarre claim in general.
[00:54:55]  It's like, I mean, that's, that's how we continue the species.
[00:55:00]  So it, it's a fair, like, I mean, I don't know.
[00:55:04]  It's a fairly like fundamental thing to having a society is to have people.
[00:55:13]  Seems like one of the starting points.
[00:55:14]  So I don't, I don't even know what this means.
[00:55:16]  But there is just something that's like, it speaks to this divide that we kind of spoke about at the beginning, where there really are these two sides.
[00:55:26]  And one of the sides kind of feels like, I think the reason why people got upset about this is because it just feels like, it feels like there's this kind of like, there's this attempt from one side of the culture to kind of like brag in some way about the advantages to not having kids and what you get to do and all of this type of stuff.
[00:55:51]  And to people who have kids, I'd say the vast majority of us, it's just like, look, man, you know, like when you're like, if you're like smoking a lot of weed and you're talking about being stoned all the time, you're like, dude, I got so baked last night and blah, blah, blah.
[00:56:10]  And then you get sober, you stop smoking weed.
[00:56:13]  And then you look back at it and you're like, oh, that was so lame.
[00:56:16]  You know what I mean?
[00:56:17]  Like, you're like, that is just so lame that I was doing that.
[00:56:20]  It's kind of something like that where you go, the idea of like bragging that you get to sleep till 10 because you're hungover and then you're just going to watch your shows.
[00:56:31]  You're like, I don't have kids, so I can do that.
[00:56:33]  You're like, this is embarrassing.
[00:56:35]  Like it hurts me on behalf of you.
[00:56:38]  You know what I mean?
[00:56:39]  It's like watching a bad singer sing and you're like, oh, no, stop.
[00:56:44]  Like, don't do this.
[00:56:46]  It's just, it's sad.
[00:56:48]  It's just kind of a sad thing.
[00:56:50]  And maybe this chick will get it together.
[00:56:52]  Maybe she'll have kids one day.
[00:56:53]  Maybe she won't have kids one day.
[00:56:55]  But as I've kind of talked about before on the show, the thing is just that like There might listen, someone said to me on Twitter the other day, I was talking about how much like joy having kids has brought me.
[00:57:08]  And someone said something, they go, they go, who do you think is happier, you or Ari Shafir?
[00:57:15]  And I don't think I responded to it, but I saw the tweet.
[00:57:19]  And it was kind of an interesting thing.
[00:57:21]  And I go, the truth is, I don't know.
[00:57:23]  I don't really know.
[00:57:24]  I mean, I know Ari very well, but I don't really know like what his level of happiness is.
[00:57:28]  I don't even know how you measure happiness.
[00:57:30]  Like, what does that even mean?
[00:57:31]  It's very bizarre.
[00:57:32]  Happiness is not like something that you just like, I don't know.
[00:57:37]  I don't think there's any scientific way to really know happiness.
[00:57:39]  When they do these studies on happiness, it basically comes down to like, we asked people, are you happy?
[00:57:45]  You know, rated on a scale of one to 10.
[00:57:47]  I don't even know what this means.
[00:57:48]  It's not scientific, but it's also like, yeah, but like Ari lives an awesome life.
[00:57:55]  Like Ari is the exception, not the rule.
[00:57:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:57:59]  I'm like, okay, he doesn't want to have kids.
[00:58:00]  He's not going to have kids.
[00:58:01]  He look, Ari goes and fucking backpacks all throughout the world and goes to fucking music festivals and fucking plays sold out theaters doing his fucking awesome standup and fucking makes tons of money and is just like Ari's fucking, I don't know.
[00:58:16]  He's the exception, not the rule.
[00:58:19]  He's also a dude.
[00:58:21]  You know, there's a lot of differences here.
[00:58:23]  And it's just like, look, that's fine if you don't, if you don't want to have kids, I don't think everyone should have kids.
[00:58:30]  I think some people would be happier without having kids.
[00:58:34]  I think some people would not be good parents, you know?
[00:58:38]  The thing is, and this is unfortunate, but this is just, this is objective reality.
[00:58:45]  The thing is that you, you got to make the decision and then you're sentenced to it for the rest of your life.
[00:58:53]  You know, if the average age is around 80, you got to make the decision, you know, before the halfway point and then you're sentenced to it for the, for the second half of your life.
[00:59:06]  And that's just the deal.
[00:59:08]  And that is what it is.
[00:59:10]  And so look, even this chick, she goes, she's 29.
[00:59:14]  And she's like, she's like, I don't have kids yet.
[00:59:16]  And you're like, 29 sounds so young, like in our society today.
[00:59:19]  Historically, it doesn't sound that young.
[00:59:21]  Historically, 29, you were already in the thick of it.
[00:59:24]  You probably had your fourth kid or something like that at 29, but not today.
[00:59:29]  But you kind of feel like, oh, I have all the time in the world.
[00:59:32]  But the truth is you don't.
[00:59:33]  You don't.
[00:59:34]  You know, 35, 35 and older, if you get pregnant at 35, it's a high risk pregnancy.
[00:59:41]  They categorize every pregnancy at 35 and over a high risk pregnancy, meaning there is higher risk to your baby and yourself.
[00:59:48]  There's all types of, you know, I'm sure everybody here knows somebody who is, you know, trying to have a baby after 35.
[00:59:56]  And they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases for the in vitro stuff.
[01:00:02]  Does not always work, is incredibly expensive, incredibly stressful.
[01:00:06]  And it's very difficult for women to have babies as they get past 35.
[01:00:11]  Not impossible, but it's a lot more challenging.
[01:00:14]  And they're all high-risk pregnancies.
[01:00:16]  So you're 29 and you're looking at like, you want to have kids.
[01:00:19]  If you want to have them before 35, it's like, okay, you got some time, but you don't have a lot of time to fuck around.
[01:00:24]  Because you want to find the guy who you want to have kids with.
[01:00:27]  How long is that going to take you?
[01:00:29]  Say, reasonably say maybe a year it takes you to like find the guy.
[01:00:33]  You probably want to be with him for a year before you start having kids.
[01:00:36]  So you guys have at least a little time of like before having kids together.
[01:00:41]  So now you're 31.
[01:00:43]  You know, we're down to four years.
[01:00:44]  You got four years to do it.
[01:00:46]  So I'm just saying, if you want to have kids, you got to do it then.
[01:00:49]  Sounds like the bitch is learning how to cook.
[01:00:51]  So she's doing her part.
[01:00:52]  I mean, she is starting.
[01:00:53]  Listen, she's doing something.
[01:00:54]  Okay.
[01:00:54]  But I'll just say this.
[01:00:55]  Look, if you don't like, Rob, you don't, you don't have kids.
[01:00:59]  And I don't know if you ever will, but I do know that you're pursuing something great with your career.
[01:01:06]  Oh, that's sweet.
[01:01:07]  Well, you are.
[01:01:08]  You're pursuing like a fucking something really like different.
[01:01:12]  You're not just clocking into work and clocking out.
[01:01:15]  You're like touring the country, doing your stand-up.
[01:01:17]  You're on successful podcasts.
[01:01:18]  You're building something that's a cool life for yourself.
[01:01:22]  And I just think that there's the truth is, if we're just being brutally honest here, that is a tiny minority of people.
[01:01:30]  That is not the case for most people.
[01:01:33]  Most people aren't building that.
[01:01:35]  Most people are clocking into a job and clocking out.
[01:01:39]  Most people do not have like dynamic, rewarding, exciting careers.
[01:01:45]  Most people have jobs.
[01:01:48]  And for those people, you have a job.
[01:01:51]  At 29, catching up on a documentary and doing this, it's like, okay, fine, whatever.
[01:01:56]  But as I've said before, and I remember being young like this, I remember having this feeling.
[01:02:01]  It feels like 40 is the end.
[01:02:03]  If you remember how old 40 sounded when you were 18, like 40 is an old man.
[01:02:11]  And I'll say, as someone who's 40, it feels a little different once you get here.
[01:02:15]  Just feels different.
[01:02:16]  And you realize that 40 isn't the end.
[01:02:18]  40 is really, if you're lucky, the halfway point.
[01:02:22]  Or if you're average, you know what I mean?
[01:02:25]  The halfway point.
[01:02:26]  And you still got another half now.
[01:02:29]  And now in this second half, you're sentenced to the results of what you did in the first half.
[01:02:34]  You know, like not for men.
[01:02:35]  Men have more time.
[01:02:36]  Men can find someone younger and stuff.
[01:02:38]  But for women, you're basically sentenced.
[01:02:40]  When you're 40, it's over.
[01:02:42]  You know, very, very rare exceptions to that.
[01:02:44]  But when you're 40, it's like, that's it.
[01:02:46]  And so, okay, now you're 40.
[01:02:49]  Now, how is your, how, how is the fact that your life is, you know, oh, I get to be hungover and sleep till 10.
[01:02:56]  That's not so great anymore.
[01:02:59]  As somebody who was hungover and slept till 10 many times in his 20s, let me tell you, if I do that now, which I never do now because I have little kids, but if I were to do that now, I feel like shit about myself.
[01:03:12]  I'm not happy.
[01:03:13]  It's like it doesn't work anymore.
[01:03:15]  Things change with age.
[01:03:17]  And so not ever having kids is going to feel a lot different at 40.
[01:03:22]  It's going to feel a lot different at 50.
[01:03:23]  It's going to feel a lot different at 60.
[01:03:25]  It's going to feel a lot different at 70, at 80.
[01:03:28]  When you're going to look back on this thing, it's like, what?
[01:03:31]  You just did your job your whole life and then made Shadzuka?
[01:03:37]  What is it?
[01:03:37]  What was it called that she made?
[01:03:38]  I don't know, Shashuka.
[01:03:40]  Shashuka.
[01:03:40]  I don't know what the hell it is.
[01:03:41]  And I'm not going to learn.
[01:03:44]  No, I was going to say, I like, I'm not here to pass any judgments whatsoever.
[01:03:48]  I'm 35.
[01:03:49]  She's 29.
[01:03:49]  She's learning how to cook.
[01:03:50]  She's on the right path.
[01:03:51]  But her little rant feels like in the 40-year-old version when they're showing his sad Sunday of making an egg salad sandwich that he doesn't even want to eat.
[01:03:59]  That's what this feels like.
[01:04:01]  And yeah, and just saying like, and admitting that she feels bad that she's not where she's at, because society, she's not where society tells her she's supposed to be at.
[01:04:10]  She goes, yes, it's not society.
[01:04:13]  It's you.
[01:04:14]  Listen, this is what it's all about.
[01:04:16]  Okay.
[01:04:16]  And this is what's kind of strange.
[01:04:18]  It's not, I'm not saying that you can't have a joyful, meaningful life if you don't have kids.
[01:04:23]  That's not my claim.
[01:04:25]  It's, I would say something like this.
[01:04:29]  We never see any of these videos that's like, hey, I don't have kids, but listen, I, I love my career so much.
[01:04:38]  And I think it's really important and really meaningful work that I do.
[01:04:41]  I'm a pillar of my community.
[01:04:43]  I'm really close with my niece and nephew and I've always been like very involved in their life.
[01:04:47]  I do a lot of like help.
[01:04:49]  I volunteer and like we have these like old people in our community and I bring them meals because someone's got to do that and they can't get out and get it themselves.
[01:04:56]  It's never like they're telling you like, oh, I don't have kids, but I do have these things that would like kind of engender like deep meaning.
[01:05:04]  You know what I mean?
[01:05:05]  In your life.
[01:05:05]  It's always this.
[01:05:07]  This, it's not society, okay?
[01:05:10]  It's you.
[01:05:11]  It's that if you live a life where you're not living for anything greater than yourself, you are not going to be fulfilled.
[01:05:19]  That's how human beings work.
[01:05:22]  It's like it's just like a scientific fact.
[01:05:25]  It's like we are social creatures and we are made to work towards something bigger.
[01:05:31]  And I do think that like there's no like, you know, and some libertarians kind of struggle with this, but you're free to do what you want to do.
[01:05:43]  Okay.
[01:05:44]  But people are going to view those choices as better or worse.
[01:05:50]  Some people will, people do not just respect your choices just because you made a choice.
[01:05:55]  People will respect different choices.
[01:05:58]  If somebody goes to school and becomes a fucking surgeon and then goes and saves people's lives by performing heart surgery on them, people are going to have enormous respect for that person.

=== Life Choices and Respect (02:54) ===

[01:06:12]  If somebody else chooses to sit on their couch and take bong rips, nobody's going to respect that person.
[01:06:18]  You should be free to do both, but we're also free to not respect your decisions.
[01:06:23]  And having children and not just having children, obviously, but having children and raising them well, like trying to create good people is something that's very, it's not easy.
[01:06:38]  It's incredibly rewarding, but it's very difficult, but it's important.
[01:06:42]  It's like, I think one of the best things you can do.
[01:06:45]  And people are going to respect that.
[01:06:48]  And they're not going to respect you for sleeping in after being hung over at a Beyonce concert.
[01:06:54]  That's life.
[01:06:55]  And so there's this thing where it's not just like, I don't care what this chick does.
[01:07:00]  And maybe she'll, she's 29.
[01:07:02]  She could still have kids and have a family and all that stuff.
[01:07:04]  I hope she does.
[01:07:07]  But there's something that's really devastating.
[01:07:09]  Like there's something that I find wrong about like promoting this message to other people, because I think for the vast majority of young women and people will, if you talk to women in their late 30s, they'll tell you about this, that for the vast majority of them, they kind of don't realize how quickly you go from 29 to 39.
[01:07:32]  And then it's a whole different ballgame.
[01:07:34]  And it's a whole different ballgame on a lot of levels.
[01:07:37]  Like if you're looking, even not kids, if you're trying to get a husband, if you're trying to have someone who you're going to be with for the rest of your life, it is a whole different game to be trying at 29 than 39.
[01:07:48]  Like drastically different.
[01:07:50]  At 29, you're like young, you have your looks, you're, you're like out in the game.
[01:07:54]  It's the normal time when people, like, especially the people you kind of want to marry are kind of like pairing up.
[01:08:00]  And then by 39, it's like, first off, in most cases, you don't have your like looks the same anymore.
[01:08:09]  In many cases, let's say, I'd say the vast majority.
[01:08:12]  You're not as attractive.
[01:08:13]  You're not as young.
[01:08:14]  It's not as much fun to like go out and party or go out and date and do the things that you would do to go meet somebody.
[01:08:21]  You're dealing with a drastically lower group, right?
[01:08:27]  Like of all the guys who like would make really great husbands and fathers, there's a huge percentage of them have become husbands and fathers at this point.
[01:08:36]  Now you're kind of dealing with the scraps that are left over and you're in a drastically different place where you're really, you really can't have kids anymore.
[01:08:43]  Then it comes on very quickly.
[01:08:45]  And I just think that like whatever decision young women want to make, they should go in with their eyes open.
[01:08:52]  They should kind of like know, you know what I mean?
[01:08:55]  The truth, and like more people should be telling them like look, this is the time.
[01:08:58]  If you want to do it, it's got to happen now.
[01:09:01]  And you're making a decision for the rest of your life.
[01:09:03]  You're making a decision that you're going to have to live with.

=== Living in Poisonous Times (02:21) ===

[01:09:06]  And I will just say, as i've said many times before, as I get older, it just becomes so obvious and this is for someone who has a very rewarding career, I do what I truly love to do.
[01:09:20]  I get a lot of um um, what's what's the word?
[01:09:24]  I'm looking for, I?
[01:09:25]  I get a lot of um, like I, I.
[01:09:29]  It's a very rewarding, uh career that I have on kind of like a deep level, because I love doing stand-up comedy and I love talking about these ideas on podcasts.
[01:09:38]  It's also um rewarding in the shallow sense that, like I get people who like clap for me and laugh for me and like come up and want a picture with me, and there's all types of like nice things.
[01:09:47]  I get to travel there's.
[01:09:49]  I really love my career um we, and it's rare.
[01:09:52]  It's rare that people have a career like that.
[01:09:54]  I'm very grateful to it.
[01:09:55]  As I said at the beginning of the show.
[01:09:56]  I'm very grateful to all of you guys who listen for that um, but the older I get, the more I realize how just meaningless it is.
[01:10:05]  It's like it's just like it's all so meaningless compared to my family and that like that's all that really matters.
[01:10:12]  And I know that, like when i'm like older and i'm like on my deathbed, I know that I am not going to be thinking about like how I fucking you know we I sold out the show in Cleveland and I crushed that night.
[01:10:26]  It was great.
[01:10:27]  It's like i'm going to be thinking about, like my kids and their kids.
[01:10:30]  I'm going to be remembering the time that i'm living in right now.
[01:10:32]  I'm going to be remembering the time when my kids were little and I was on the floor playing with them, you know, and so like.
[01:10:37]  For people who have been through that, it's like I just it's, it's a really, it's a really poisonous message to tell other young people to sacrifice that so that you can like like get hung over and sleep in and watch Netflix.
[01:10:54]  It's like man, I just i'd say if I had done that, i'd say that that'd be the biggest tragedy in the world if I had like sacrificed having this for that, and I think that's just a more healthy message for society to hear in general.
[01:11:06]  All right anyway, we're over time here uh.
[01:11:08]  Robbythefire.com, Comicdave Smith.com, come see us when we're in your neck of the woods.
[01:11:13]  Me and Rob are going.
[01:11:14]  We got a lot of stuff coming up, the tour in Europe coming up.
[01:11:17]  Um, we're going all over the place and we're going to be touring a lot through the rest of the year and Next year, all over the place.
[01:11:24]  So come check us out.
[01:11:26]  Catch you guys next time.
[01:11:27]  Peace.