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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
46:21
Getting Excited
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show, coming to you today from Florida.
It's been a busy travel week.
I was in Alaska on Monday, back in L.A., and now here I am, headed to Boston from here.
Thank God, flying means nothing to me.
I just sit, either work or sleep, and show up where I need to go.
It's a beautiful...
Blessing to be able to travel that way.
Listen to this from National Review.
Apparently, almost everything authorities told the public in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde Elementary School shooting was wrong.
And perhaps a reason this atrocity carried such an unbearably high cost in innocent lives was that the police delayed confronting the gunmen.
Which contradicts the hard-learned lessons of Columbine and other mass shootings.
Hmm.
That's a, uh...
That's a very bad thing.
One of the last remaining institutions that we have had trust in, most Americans, let's put it this way, that's important to say, are the police forces.
Children are being shot and the police do nothing is very distressing.
More distressing is that there was lying, apparently, like the gunman being confronted in the front of the school by a security guard.
Apparently that was entirely made up.
So, you know, you have a choice with all the bad news that keeps coming.
You have a choice.
Like a caller yesterday.
I can't remember most calls for obvious reasons.
I'm so intensely listening and talking to each caller that I sort of have to wipe the slate clean in order to devote such attention to that particular caller.
But I remember this from yesterday.
A man who said he actually stopped listening to the show, which he had been listening to.
Really all of his life because he grew up in Los Angeles where I started radio.
And he gave up because he just couldn't handle it anymore.
He wants to tune out.
And I fully understand the desire to tune out.
That is a perspective that a lot of us who are a bit healthier have in life.
We don't live for politics.
We live to live life.
We have our loved ones, we have our hobbies, passions, in many cases religion, and that is very fulfilling.
I will talk about that during the Happiness Hour.
I have a very interesting subject for the Happiness Hour today.
So, I asked this man, when he said he was tuning out and had decided to do so for the last year or so, If he had any children.
And he said no.
And I asked him because I suspected he didn't.
It's easier to tune out from helping save this country when you don't have children.
That's my suspicion.
Although a number of the people who are particularly devoted to saving America and the West don't have children.
Douglas Murray is an example, to the best of my knowledge.
Others that I know.
But generally speaking, you can't tune out if you have children.
It's really selfish.
And if you don't have children, it's still really selfish.
Because there are other children around.
Correct?
Correct.
But I will acknowledge that when you read something like this that apparently...
Not only was there extraordinary incompetence, laziness, or I'll leave it at incompetence, while children are being slaughtered at a school, the most vulnerable human beings we have are children.
And then to lie about it, well, this needs to be looked into and is, to say the least, disconcerting.
In the meantime, the same article by Jim Garotti in the National Review, he writes, Meanwhile, here in Houston, a rally to urge the mayor to cancel the NRA convention is quieter than expected, and the mayor offered a spectacularly unrealistic proposal to delay the convention a few weeks.
Hmm.
And finally, for the slow learners out there, a lesson on who actually sets the policies on guns when a president or former president is in a building.
So they don't want the NRA convention in Houston.
The notion that the...
I've discussed this all of my life.
The notion that guns are the issue and not a social and moral collapse among many is not even worthy of attention, but for the fact that so many people believe it.
It's guns.
Okay?
There are a lot of things involved.
Did you know this is an issue that I think needs to be explored?
The New York Times seemingly reported that the child monster who committed the murders was a big user of cannabis.
And Alex Berenson, like me, hates cannabis.
Thinks that it does real damage.
To young people's brains.
And he documents that there is a serious uptick in violent crime after the legalization of marijuana in various cities.
As I said yesterday, I don't recall any subject I have ever raised to which more of you objected to my opinion than this one.
I said it 25 years ago.
I would much prefer my kids smoke tobacco than smoke weed.
And I would say half the conservatives disagree with me.
Health uber alas has even affected conservatives.
Sure, it generally represents a trouble in life, a tuning out.
Sure, it can affect a kid's brain, but hey, you can get lung cancer from cigarettes.
But ironically, these people would have the same view of cigars, that they'd rather their kids smoke weed than smoke a cigar, which is really mind-boggling.
I never smoked weed, and my dad gave me cigars when I first said I liked his at the age of 16. He couldn't care less.
I loved his attitude.
You want a cigar?
Take one.
It's in this drawer.
And I took one.
I loved it.
You want to taste the scotch I have?
Here, have some scotch.
I hated it.
Never drank it again.
1-8 Prager 776. Quite suddenly, the horrific story of the Uvalde Elementary School shooting has shifted from questions about the gunman...
Why no one thought to report his strange and menacing behavior to police and how he managed to obtain several thousand dollars worth of weaponry and ammunition to just what happened when he entered the school.
The official accounts from authorities have changed quickly.
Apparently, almost everything we were told by law enforcement authorities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was inaccurate.
And this is now a story about police showing up to an ongoing school shooting Taking fire, retreating, and then waiting an hour for backup.
The revised account of events is shocking.
A gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a South Texas elementary school walked unopposed onto school grounds, state law enforcement officials said Thursday.
That's yesterday.
And once he was inside, it took police an hour to stop him.
He was not confronted by anybody, Victor Escalon, a DPS official.
Let's see, what would DPS be?
Something police service?
I don't know.
They don't tell you they should.
Said during a press conference Thursday, the agency is leading the investigation into the shooting along with Uvalde police.
He offered new details about the timeline of the law enforcement response Thursday, saying local police officers were the first to arrive at the school about four minutes after the gunman entered, but had to fall back after taking gunfire.
Officers tried to negotiate with the shooter, but the man, quote, did not respond.
Escalon said most of the gunfighter from the shooter occurred when he first entered the school.
I'll give you more.
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Music That's our story, Sean.
We good?
I'm here in Florida, folks, checking in with Sean.
All right, let me take some calls, especially those who disagree, like Peter in Philadelphia.
Welcome to the show.
All you're doing is capitalizing on the confusion that accompanies these events to distract everybody from what happened.
There are mentally ill people in Canada.
There are bad police in Australia.
But they don't have mass shootings.
According to CNN, an 18-year-old legally bought two assault rifles.
They can't do that in Canada.
They can't do that in Australia.
That's why they don't have mass shootings.
Okay, so it's a very fair argument.
I dealt with it the other day.
There actually are mass shootings.
If you compare comparing the U.S. to Canada when we have seven times as many people, it is not entirely fair.
and Canada is, anyway, obviously much smaller.
If you take all of Europe, which is the same population, essentially, as the United States, you do have a fair number of mass shootings compared to the United States.
But even that aside, you're right.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, you're right.
I'm not, no, no, let me argue.
Okay, all right.
And they don't go to church.
These people don't go to church.
So what would you, okay, okay, okay, let's say you're right.
What would you like to do?
I think reasonable people, and that includes you, could come up with common sense solutions.
So mentally open people.
Give me one.
This guy was not reported as mentally ill.
They did a background check.
He was clearly mentally ill.
I agree with you, but your argument, ironically, because I don't think the mentally ill can in fact legally buy a gun, so it shows you that even background checks Don't seem to work that well.
I agree with you entirely.
I don't know how a guy...
This guy put up pictures of himself.
He walked around with his own face slashed by himself.
I'm agreeing with you.
An 18-year-old can't drink legally.
Why can't he buy an assault rifle in a store?
Because the Constitution does not...
The Constitution does not specify age.
You're putting the cart before the horse.
No, no, I'm answering you honestly.
No, no, I know.
If courts determine what's constitutional, first you have to pass a law.
Then the courts can tell you if it's constitutional or not.
Right.
Yes, it's already been declared.
You're right.
The court already declared 18 unconstitutional.
It is being appealed.
The Department of Justice is appealing.
The court said it was constitutional.
Okay.
The court said what was constitutional.
All right.
Why'd you say thanks, Dennis?
Were you going to hang up?
No, I said...
What I said is if it's constitutional to design an 18-year-old to drink...
No, that's not true, because there's no constitutional right to drink.
There's a constitutional right to bear arms.
That's the reason.
That's the reason it's a constitutional question.
A court has to decide that.
A court did decide it.
All right, we're going in circles.
I'm telling you a fact, and for whatever reason...
Okay, I don't remember the name of the court, but it just was.
I know that to be true, but it's being appealed by the Department of Justice.
So let us say that...
Okay, alright, so that's it.
Do you have anything else to say?
No, I think if it's being appealed, we'll wait for the appeal.
Alright, so now I'll ask you a question.
Alright, let me ask you a question.
We had far fewer gun laws before the 70s, and far fewer shootings.
I believe the issue is a social and moral and religious breakdown.
You believe it's accessibility of guns.
So is that fair, since I believe in clarity over agreement, that that is a fair distinction between us?
Yes.
Okay.
All right, listen, thank you for calling, and I mean that very sincerely.
This is very helpful.
This is what I think is the best thing people who differ can do, is civilly reach a point where the clarity of their disagreement is made obvious and, to be redundant, clear.
I think it's a social, moral, familial breakdown.
As I have said, I think that we need far more fathers than more gun laws.
That's how I look at it.
I would like to know how many kids in Canada grow up without a father compared since Canada was raised.
What percentage of kids grow up without fathers in Canada compared to the United States?
That would be an interesting question, too.
In the Poconos in Pennsylvania, which is an area I know well.
I went to camp there.
Hello, Matt.
Hi, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
I agree with you 100%.
It's absolutely a moral, social breakdown.
The reason why I was calling was the remark that you made about the cannabis issue.
You know, the legalizing of that is absolutely horrible.
And I'll tell you from experience, you know, I've had a lot of medical problems in my life.
I'll try to keep it really quick.
But the doctor wanted to put me on cannabis, and other people had said it was helpful, and I tried it.
And honestly, it did absolutely nothing but make me dumb, tired, and sleepy.
Did not help in any shape or form.
And I think it's an awful thing to, but not just that as a kid, you know, it leads to, you know, it leads to other things because just like any other drug, it, you know, it's Yeah, I hear you.
I thank you.
And as regards the medical benefits, I'm told that people with certain cancers, it helps.
I want to help them.
It is obvious to me that for such people it should be legal.
What I am referring to is the general view of the parents of this country that it's not a big deal if their kids smoke marijuana.
They'd go ballistic if their kids smoked tobacco, but it's no big deal if they smoke marijuana.
I consider that sick.
I consider it a function of the health uber alis idiocy, health above all, safety, whereas the effects...
On the brain with regards to marijuana can be, let's put it this way, a kid who uses, who smokes a lot of marijuana, and I'll just leave the word a lot as it is, a kid who smokes a lot of marijuana is far more likely to damage his brain than a kid who smokes cigarettes, forget cigars, which are essentially harmless.
But a kid who smokes cigarettes is going to die of cancer of the lung or whatever else.
Cigarettes are alleged to do.
According to the Cancer Society or the Lung Society, one out of three smokers will die prematurely because of cigarettes.
I think more than one out of three kids will damage his brain if he smokes the equivalent amount.
Of marijuana.
Okay?
You make your choice.
It's your kid.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hi there, everybody. - Bye.
Bye.
Dennis Prager here.
And there's so much to report to you because we have the Happiness Hour next.
I was reading to you from the National Review and the incredible reporting about what the police didn't do there.
I'll tell you, I don't want to overstate the issue.
I'm in general such a supporter of police.
But I will, I just have to say as a parent that if this were my kid and I thought that the police did nothing for that long, it would double my pain.
That something might have been stopped and wasn't.
It is very difficult for a person to live with.
Alright.
It's the world in which we live.
That is why I have always been of the opinion that you have to be so appreciative when things are good because Troubles are the norm in human history.
And we've had it so good.
So I have, you know, what is it?
If nothing's horrific, life is terrific.
That's one of my mottos in life that we play here a fair number of times.
If nothing's horrific, then life is terrific.
Exactly correct.
That's part of the reason, incidentally, that I don't tune out.
As desirable as it might be, A, I don't believe I am morally permitted not to try to fix what so many people sacrifice their lives for, the United States of America, and its freedom, and its being the bulwark of freedom on Earth.
I don't think I have a moral right to tune out when I look at the graves at Normandy of the 22-year-olds, the 20-year-olds.
Who were a machine gun to death by Nazi machine guns?
So they could sacrifice their lives, but I'll tune out?
I don't think I have the right to do that.
B, if I do tune out and I don't try to save this country from the left, then what do I pass on to next generations and what happens to the world?
When America gets weak, cruelty abounds.
Just look at China and Russia.
They know that Biden is a weakling.
I asked Neil Ferguson.
It made a big impact on me.
Neil Ferguson is a Harvard historian.
I'm sorry, Sean.
Neil Ferguson was a Harvard historian, one of the leading historians of the world.
And he was on my show a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him, do you think that Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president?
I give you my word.
I had no idea what he would say.
And I would say, without almost inhaling, he said no.
And I agree fully.
That's why he didn't invade during the Trump era.
When America gets weak, when the woke take over, when the destructive, nihilistic, Democratic Party takes over, cruelty increases exponentially in the world.
The only thing that has stopped more cruelty on Earth has been fear of the United States of America.
So I don't have the moral right to tune out.
So now there are demands, apropos of all of this, at George Washington University.
Remember, I read to you a piece by a black student at George Washington University, whereby...
Oh no, this is the University of Washington, sorry.
I thought it was George Washington University.
I think the piece that I read, yes, was George Washington, this story.
The Black Student Union at the University of Washington wants the statue of President George Washington removed from campus.
The truth-teller called Donald Trump.
There is no irony in what I'm saying.
I believe that he told more truth than his predecessor or his successor.
He said statues of Washington would be removed.
The Dennis Prager Show.
When you're smiling.
And the whole world smiles at you.
Smiles at you.
And when you're laughing.
When you're laughing.
My subject on the happiness hour.
When the sun comes shining.
Is excitement.
The human species yearns for excitement.
The trouble is that...
A. Often excitement is found in bad areas.
The most obvious would be crime.
Crime is very exciting.
When I was a kid, the only crime book is very odd.
Most kids who read about crime usually read about murders.
And I didn't.
I read about counterfeiters.
I have no idea why, but I just read every book I could find on counterfeiters.
And I realized at some point...
Early in high school, if these guys devoted as much work, attention to detail, to honorable work as they did to counterfeiting money, they could have done really well in life.
But the crime was exciting.
Do not ever underestimate the power of excitement.
The trick is to find things that are exciting and that are good or at least innocuous.
And the other is to find excitement in the ordinary.
It's one of the many reasons that I am a big fan of hobbies.
They are a really wonderful way of having either productive or at least innocuous excitement.
We have upped the ante here.
It's no longer exciting.
What I found exciting as a kid, family going to a restaurant on Sundays.
I don't think it quite does it for a lot of kids today.
By the way, I never lost the excitement of going to a restaurant.
It's one of my idiosyncrasies.
I don't love eating home as much as I love eating out.
And I don't mean at a fancy place.
Okay, let's see here.
Yes, this is good.
Dana Point, California.
Chris.
Hello, Chris.
Hey, Dennis.
Hi.
Can you hear me?
I do.
I hear you well.
Yeah, I'm glad you're talking about this.
I've been in AA for about a little over a year and a half.
There's so many similarities with stuff you talk about all the time that we talk about in AA. Oh, I know.
Yep.
Yeah, this is just one of them.
But I kind of found that my whole life, that was exactly what it was for me.
I just wanted more excitement.
And I would just chase that through pretty destructive things.
It didn't mean for them to be destructive, but they would turn out that way.
When you get in a part of a group like this, you have, you know, similar guys in your group that are good people that I look forward to going and hanging out with.
We also talk about things like, you know, getting out of yourself, which is a big one for me.
It's not just what I want, right?
Like, help someone else, think about what someone else wants.
And I actually get a lot of satisfaction out of that.
Not thinking about me all day is a pretty big one for me.
Oh, I can't thank you enough for calling.
Did you hit bottom a year and a half ago?
Is that what happened?
I had hit bottoms several times in the last, like, eight to ten years.
And never tried AA, would get sober on my own.
And then once I started doing well in life again, I would just go back to the same old behavior.
And recently, actually, I had a...
I had my first kid three years ago, and I started listening to you about, you know, four years ago.
And thank you and having my kid.
And, you know, a lot of things culminated at the same time to kind of point me in a good direction.
Keep going to the meetings, okay?
I will do.
Thanks, Dennis.
Thank you.
31 as a kid.
I assume a wife.
I hope so.
I didn't ask him.
So, another aspect of addiction is the addict thinks that there is no joy in sobriety.
The first word that comes to the mind of the gambling addict or sex addict, although I've never gotten a good definition of that, But I assume they exist.
And the alcohol addict and drug addict, the thing they fear is the boredom of sobriety.
That's right.
It's a big fear.
I'll be bored out of my mind as opposed to this constant high.
The pursuit of highs is a...
A self-continuing pursuit.
And as I said, the ante is always up.
This amount of alcohol may have worked at this point, but I'll need more.
I'll need more, whatever it is.
Finding life itself exciting.
Finding the...
As the phrase given to me just this past week, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Knowing that in the final analysis, there is so much more inner peace available to you.
You establish a family.
You have people in your life you love and who love you.
It doesn't sound like a high, and it may not be a high.
Like drugs are a high.
So there is...
I'm just thinking about this spontaneously right now.
Maybe there's this big conflict.
Do you want excitement?
Or do you want inner peace?
That's the question.
Which do you prefer?
To be really blunt, which do you think will bring you more happiness?
The constant pursuit of excitement?
Or inner peace.
There's no question.
We've addressed this topic many more times.
I haven't addressed it today.
I've talked around it.
And the only reason I haven't addressed it is I haven't thought of it quite as directly.
This happiness hour is devoted to the subject of the pursuit of excitement, and the addict is the perfect example of pursuing excitement at the price of one's life.
The trick is to have an exciting life in the mundane, and that's something you can train yourself to do.
Remember, the fear of the addict is the boredom of sobriety.
That's the nightmare that anyone addicted to the adrenaline of any of the things people get addicted to, or most of the...
There are other things I guess you can get addicted to, but the most obvious, their highs.
Then you get sober.
What's going to get you excited?
I am lucky to be personal, and I am personal on the Happiness Hour because I'm the person I know best, which is not always true for people.
It's very important to know yourself.
But I have always aimed for peace of mind as number one.
I have an exciting life, so I challenge myself.
In speaking about excitement, because I do have an exciting life.
I have an extraordinarily exciting life.
I was in Alaska last week.
I'm in Florida today.
Now, a lot of people would find this horrific.
They would just fall down from fatigue, but I'm blessed that it has no effect on me that way.
So I have a very exciting life, but my pursuit is not excitement.
My pursuit is...
is peace of mind.
I want to sleep well.
I want to walk around with a calm that is available not to the excitement pursuer but to the peace of mind pursuer.
And I assure you that peace of mind and boredom are not in any way synonymous.
For those of you for whom peace of mind sounds boring, when I look at the rioters of 2020, these are people Who overwhelmingly were in the pursuit of excitement.
I assume that participating in a riot or even in a very, very intense protest is exciting.
Now, some protests are...
I went to protests during 2020 and 2021. I protested the lockdowns.
I protested...
The war on small business.
I went to restaurants that opened up and spoke.
But I can't say that it was the excitement that was the driver.
It was the cause.
I think, though, for a lot of people, it is the excitement rather than anything else that draws them.
It's an adrenaline rush.
I never understood the Women's March, that gigantic Million Women's March.
The most well-to-do, comfortable women in the history of Earth, American middle-class women, were all protesting.
Against what?
For what?
All right, you've got a lot of good stuff here.
Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Bernie.
I haven't talked to a Bernie in a while.
Hello.
Thanks, Dennis.
I appreciate all you do.
And one thing that I think a lot of people tend not to focus on is the aspect of helping others, which is something you do through your program.
That's all I want to do.
Thank you.
You're doing well with that.
But as a therapist in my mental health career, I've kind of termed the phrase stimulitis as a...
A particular aspect of personality.
That's good.
I like that a lot.
Yeah, stimulitis.
That's good.
A stimulus-seeking personality.
Right, that's right.
Whether they're getting that adrenaline buzz through ambulance chasing or fire setting or more healthy stuff, getting the endorphins going through healthy activities, music.
I know your love of...
Classical music is a great one.
That's right.
That's good.
I thank you.
That is excellent.
Stimulitis.
That's right.
What is a big mover of violent crime is stimulitis.
This is the happiness hour, my friend.
Okay.
This is really one that I should have done years ago.
The good news is that there never seems to be an absence of places, of subjects that are critical to...
Happiness.
You would have thought, I would have certainly have thought that after, what, now, 23 years of virtually every Friday, I would have run out of topics.
Now, obviously, I do some topics repeated a few times, and they should be.
And I have new insights often.
But this one, I have not addressed as directly, ever.
And I don't know why, but it doesn't matter.
I think it is because this phrase was said to me from a recovering addict.
These people have more wisdom.
I swear before God I believe what I'm about to say to be true.
There's more wisdom in the average AA attender than on the faculty of any campus, virtually any campus in this country.
Find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and that's what triggered all of this.
The pursuit of excitement is very deep because it releases hormones that people want to have a repeated experience with.
The excitement of getting high, of getting drunk, of the constant pursuit of sex, of food, of gambling.
They're all endorphin, I assume, endorphin creators.
Then I thought about this, and I'm repeating an insight I literally came to within the last 15 minutes.
Do you want peace of mind, or do you want excitement?
That's the pursuit.
You have your choice.
And by the way, excitement that is good is great.
I thank God for my...
The excitement I get from all my hobbies.
You know, it's a running joke when I say to you, the next hour, call in on anything, especially fountain pens, classical music, photography equipment, and the like, cigars.
These little things do bring me excitement.
I am excited.
I know it'll sound silly almost, or absurd even, to some of you, but I'm excited by...
Camera reviews on YouTube, or for that matter, cigar reviews, or fountain pen reviews.
There are so many things that bring me excitement, and they're all, as I say, innocuous.
Nobody's being hurt, including me.
But it does satisfy.
It's why I believe people love to buy things.
It's another addiction, right?
Buying things can be an addiction.
Because there's a high when you buy.
So one way, and this I know I have said in the past, is buy stuff because the excitement level of an inexpensive new item is virtually identical to the excitement level of an expensive new item.
So if it's the endorphin of spending that gets you, fine.
Just don't spend a lot.
You'll still get a big kick out of it.
All right, Chicago, Eric, hello.
Dennis, this is such a profound discussion, and I want to thank you for having it.
I'm just driving, and I thought to myself, this is my story in so many ways.
I was born and raised in Chicago with a good life.
But I felt like I needed to be an outlier all the time.
I didn't want to wear polo shirts.
I went to dance clubs instead of bars.
And then after college, I moved to California because where do people like me want to go?
They want to end up in Hollywood.
And I spent 20 years rising in that field and going to great parties and meeting fancy people.
But, you know, part of it is it's never enough when you're that type of person because, okay, now I'm in Hollywood.
Okay, I got a job in a studio.
Okay, but my title isn't right.
I need to be a senior vice president at this point.
Oh, I got an invitation to that party, but I didn't get the valet parking.
Oh, I'm going to smoke a cigar at Nazareth tonight.
That's great, but who's going to be there?
All of it kind of feeds into this.
And then I turned 40, and I was lonely, and things started to change.
This was a great call.
Your listing was perfect.
I love my favorite of the list was, will I get valet parking?
You're invited to the party, but how high is your status at the party?
Yeah, you know.
No, but by the way, if you got valet parking, the next time you would wonder, why didn't they send the chauffeur?
Why am I driving my own car?
Yeah.
Or in synagogue.
Why am I so far from the western wall or the eastern wall?
Oh, that's another story unto itself.
You are a joy.
You're so right.
It's never ending, my folks.
And it's just a spiral.
It's a death spiral.
That's what it is.
I've talked around this issue.
When telling you that I've always, always pursued a 7.5, not a 10 in my happiness level.
Because, again, I get a big rush out of peace of mind.
That's my endorphin supplier, peace of mind.
It's my nature.
I'm very lucky.
I don't take claim, take credit for it.
But it's worth pursuing peace of mind.
Dennis Prager here.
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