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March 8, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:14
130 Betraying Children
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Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph.
I hope you're doing well.
It is 5 o'clock on Thursday, March the 8th, 2006, and I'm heading home.
Christina's working late tonight, so I get to be Joe Bachelor for a couple of hours, which means all of the exciting tasks around groceries, cleaning, and dinner preparation.
I can't wait.
So, I hope you're doing well.
I'm going to talk about a topic that I've talked about before.
It's my first repetition ever!
No, I'm kidding.
I'm going to talk about a topic that I've talked about before, which I was not planning on talking about for a while, but then Dr. Phil, that Texas, twangy, bald guy, sucked me back in just when I tried to get out.
They pulled me back in.
And what happened was I took Tuesday off to work from home and Christina and I sat down to watch the old Dr. Phil show.
And I think that he can be good at times, as I mentioned before, and I don't want this to be like bald guy versus bald guy or anything like that.
But he just missed the ball so badly and he just He covered up a kind of brutality that I've been talking about, the sort of female violence situation.
He covered up a kind of brutality that is really common, and I think so common that it's worth having a talk about, just so people understand where it is that I'm coming from when I talk about the problems of female violence.
What happened?
Well, there was a woman on the show.
This show was about bipolar and bipolar disorders.
And for those who don't know, this used to be called manic depression.
And it is characterized by extreme mood swings.
So, elation to catastrophic depression, to rage, to, you know, mind-bending affection, all within the span, sometimes, of hours or even minutes.
But definitely these are people who have a great deal of difficulty regulating their emotions, let's just say.
And the question is, of course, as it always is in these kinds of issues, is it biology or is it free will?
And I think that's a very interesting question and it's kind of central, I think, to what we think of when we think of things like morality.
So there is a There's an old saying in the law, which is something like this, which says that we do not put horse thieves in jail because horse thieving is wrong.
We put horse thieves in jail so that horses will not be stolen.
And, I mean, again, you could do a couple of podcasts on this, but I won't.
Don't worry.
Don't worry.
But it's a very complicated and interesting topic, and it has a lot to do with, for instance, do we condemn violent parents because they are wrong, or do we condemn violent parents in order to shame them into behaving better, or in order to alter the effects of their behavior, and so on.
And I, of course, I'm sure you know where I sit, that you don't use the argument from a fact and you condemn moral behavior based on Evidence and examples.
Now, the question of something like bipolar disorder is complicated and interesting, and I'm certainly, of course, no neuropsychological expert, but this is sort of what I've picked up both from my own sort of understanding in conversations with Christina and so on.
That there are people who've suffered brain injuries, and they had one guy on this later in the show who was talking about how Al Pacino talks to him through movies, which is, of course, impossible, because Al Pacino was talking to me through movies.
And so he's saying, of course, what Al Pacino is mostly saying to me is, more accents, more tangents!
I don't even know if that's an Al Pacino impersonation.
I'm fairly sure that it's not.
But this guy believes that movie stars are talking to him and he has psychotic breaks and he drives his car to a Starbucks and so on.
And when they did a scan, a brain scan on this guy, they found holes in processing, lack of blood flow, all of the stuff that you would expect with the effect of a brain injury or a whiplash injury of some kind which has directly affected in a measurable psychological way or physiological way
The flow of blood and the activity within his brain dealing with impulse control and higher cognitive reasoning, and in particular, of course, it's the ability to figure out the effects of one's actions, right?
So if I see a Danish in a store and I just grab it because I'm hungry, Without sort of saying, well there are 12 security guards around me who look kind of twitchy so perhaps I don't want to do that.
We just grab it and start eating because you don't really work at reasoning out the consequences.
Well there's a specific brain injury which can definitely result in that kind of thing and so I can understand how bipolar could be considered to be a result of a physiological injury if such a physiological injury can show up in a test somewhere.
The average diagnosis For something called Bipolar Disorder.
Used to be called Manic Depressive.
I think DSM-IV has changed the designation.
The diagnosis is about 10 years.
It takes about 10 years to diagnose someone as Manic Depressive.
And that is, to me, sort of suspicious, right?
And that always submits itself to the billion-dollar question, which is something I was thinking about, which I've talked about last year in a podcast.
For those who didn't hear it, unthinkable!
But just in case, it is the idea that If you pay someone a million dollars not to do something and they cannot do it, then, by golly, it's the province of free will.
So, if somebody says, I have bipolar disorder so I can't stop screaming at my kids, if you pay them a million dollars and they don't scream at their kids for a couple hours, then it's under their free will.
Whereas, if somebody has a terminal cancer and you pay them a million dollars not to have cancer, they really can't do it.
So, that's a pretty important differentiator for me in understanding what is in the realm of morality and what is in the realm of Biology.
So for this guy who was hearing voices and thought that the movie stars talked to him, he might be able to control his behavior, but he in no way would be able to control the belief or the voices.
Right?
He might tell you that he doesn't hear them, but he still does.
And you pay him a million dollars, he can't stop hearing the voices.
So the woman who was on the Dr. Phil show at the beginning was the one of particular interest to me.
I can't remember her name.
Let's just call her Joanne.
And to take a page from Death of a Salesman, I guess we'll have Biff as one of her sons and, I don't know, Todd as the other.
So this is Joanne, Biff, and Todd.
Now, Joanne had gone through two marriages.
Both her husbands had left her because of her chronic rage and verbal abuse and physical abuse.
And she had been left with, of course, very intelligently, given our modern court system, she'd been left with raising Biff and Todd, these two children, these two sons that she had.
And they, of course, had put videotapes into her home and caught her screeching at the top of her lungs, verbally abusing these children, saying she wishes they were dead, that they were mistakes, that she wishes they'd never been born.
That they were stupid, that they were dumb, that they were idiots, that they were useless.
All the stuff that, you know, when you get pounded into you over and over again, like nails into a piece of wood, when you're a teenager, do leave you with a little bit of aftereffects, in my humble opinion.
And so they caught this woman verbally abusing these children over the kind of grinding, mind-numbing, stupid nonsense that stupid families always seem to end up bickering over.
Like, uh, I told you not to touch the computer and now something has changed.
Or, you said you were going to take me to Grandma's and now you say you're not going to take me to Grandma's.
What the hell is the matter with you?
You know, all the stuff that grinds you down and humiliates you just by its very pettiness.
It's nothing like I think the Nazis were good and you think the Nazis are bad.
Where at least you could have a discussion, the disagreement of which would hinge upon the lives and deaths of tens of millions of people in history.
That at least would be something that you could understand a violent dispute over.
But one of the things about verbally abusive parents that they do is they absolutely pick on you for the most stupid and inconsequential stuff.
So that it's unbelievably humiliating to have to even waste time arguing over this kind of stuff.
And I remember when, just sort of as an example from my own life and nothing particularly bad, but when my mother was trying to sell some jewelry once, we went out to run some errands and she turned to me on the bus and she said, did you remember, I hope you remember to turn the answering machine on.
We had an ad in the buy and sell, I think it was, back when, before the web, right?
This is when I was a little kid.
And she said, did you remember?
And of course, you know, I run through the whole gamut.
Because I think that I didn't.
And I could run through the gamut of saying, oh, I didn't know that was my job, sorry.
Or I could say, yes, I did turn it on and then rush back in as soon as she got in the door and turn it on and say, oh, no messages or whatever.
But then I thought, oh, is there a beep when I turn it on?
Is there a noise?
Is there a, is she going to know I'm lying?
Is there, you know, all of this kind of stuff.
And I was fairly sure the answering machine, and if I said I didn't know, she'd get angry.
And if I said, no, I didn't turn it on, she'd get angry.
And if I said, oh, I thought it was your job, or I didn't know it was my job, she'd get angry.
And if I said, I said, I don't think it's on, but I don't think it really matters, because nobody's going to leave a message.
They're just going to call back if they were interested in buying something.
So there was sort of no way out and of course so I ended up saying no I didn't turn it on and just you know of course my mom got really bitchy and angry and and you know cutting and sort of stalked ahead of me for the rest of the day which actually wasn't too much the end of the world because it was more fun to walk behind her than it was to walk with her and have her interact with me.
So it's this kind of stupid stuff that it's doubly humiliating.
So you're ground down by somebody's irrational anger and hatred and at the same time it's so inconsequential.
People always say, well why do couples fight over such inconsequential things?
It's the very inconsequentiality that adds to the sadistic humiliation of the person being ground down about these kinds of things.
And this is why you get things like, you know, a guy goes grocery shopping and he forgets to pick up the shampoo for his wife or girlfriend and suddenly she's like, you don't care about me, you always forget things, you're not considerate, I do far more than you do.
You start to get all of this nonsense going on where it's unbelievably humiliating because it's just a stupid little bit of shampoo that you can run right out and pick up again.
And it doesn't mean anything, right?
I mean, as certain philosophers have said, we are meaning-making machines.
All we do is we look at inconsequential little crap and we have it mean all these things.
So, this girl won't go out with me.
That means that I am this, that, or the other.
Oh, my parents were bad to me.
That means this, that, or the other.
You didn't pick up the shampoo.
That means this, that, and none of it means anything.
It means absolutely nothing.
There is no There is no augury in little events.
The only destinations, the only destiny, the only meanings are in our own minds.
They do not exist in reality at all.
So if Christina forgets to pick me up my, let's not say shampoo, but let's say facial moisturizer, it doesn't mean anything.
What does it mean?
It means she forgot to pick it up.
It doesn't mean that she doesn't care.
It doesn't mean that I do more than she does.
But this is the kind of nonsense that people just waste their lives on.
And it's incredibly humiliating when you are ground down on these inconsequentialities.
So if you have anyone like that in your life, get them out!
So, to return to Dr. Phil, and, you know, from not too far a tangent, I think it's somewhat related.
Not too bad.
On the tangiometer, I guess we'll only give it a four out of three.
My tangiometer always goes over.
But, you know, not over by two.
It's not double.
So that's better.
And this woman is verbally abusive, and then during the conversation in the show, it turns out that she has grabbed one of the boys by the neck.
and choked him, sort of thrusting him up against the garage.
She has said to another one of her sons, if you don't shut up this instant, I'm gonna clock you one in the mouth.
And then she did punch him full in the mouth when he didn't.
One of her sons is taking his ear-piercing, I am retro enough or conservative enough to think that that's rather silly in men, but hey, that's just me, So he's taking his ear-piercing and purposefully widening it so that he can manage his emotional pain with reference to enhancing or extending his physical pain.
It's not uncommon for people who are suffering a lot of emotional abuse to self-mutilate in one form or another, to manage the pain that they're experiencing emotionally by sharpening it and relieving it through access to physical pain.
Physical pain also releases endorphins, so it's also a kind of self-medication.
And there's a release in it for a lot of people.
And so this kid is self-mutilating and is on his way to becoming a masochist.
The other kid is completely what they call affectless.
In other words, he doesn't have any energy or a zip or a verve in his emotional presentation or his personality presentation.
He's really flat.
He just talks kind of slow.
And he's just kind of depressed.
He just sort of sucks the life right out of you as you're talking to him.
Just as you would expect, these boys grew up with this complete monster.
And this woman says, oh, I'm afraid that I'm losing my mind.
I'm afraid that I'm going crazy.
I can't stand this bipolar thing anymore.
I know I'm going to end up alone and institutionalized.
And whoa, whoa, whoa is me.
The minister of doom and gloom from the kingdom of woe is me.
Thus is our emissary.
And Dr. Phil is listening to her, and he's listening to her, and he starts to pull out his bag of tricks.
I mean, I think I've watched about eight Dr. Phil's now, and so you know the bag of tricks.
So, of course, one of the things that he starts to get her to try and do is he says, do you really think that your kids are bad kids?
And she's like, what's she gonna say?
Yeah, they're Satan spawn.
They're evil.
I had sex with Beelzebub himself.
And so she replied, of course, no, they're the most wonderful, they're the only things I think I ever did right.
They're the most wonderful kids in the world.
So this is exactly what you would expect, a manipulative witch.
to say in front of a, quote, sympathetic Dr. Phil audience of, you know, dewy-eyed women all wanting nothing but the best in the face of outright and blatant evil.
And so this woman says this, and then when she's had a look at the tape of her sort of screeching and screaming at her sons, He turns to her and says, you know, is that a surprise to you?
When you see that tape?
What's she gonna say?
Oh, no, I know I'm a total bitch.
I know exactly why.
I screech all the time.
I scream at them all the time.
I humiliate them all the time.
Are you kidding me?
That's like me saying, when you look at a picture of yourself, do you notice that you're bald?
Does it shock you that you're bald?
It's like, oh, of course not.
So she's not going to say that, because then she's got some responsibility.
She's going to say, Wow, you know, I never knew that.
This is shocking.
I know I didn't know I sounded like... Of course she's going to say that kind of nonsense, right?
I mean, so he's just sort of leading her along.
And so he sort of probes into a little bit about her, you know, when the mood strikes and how black her thoughts are and, you know, does she want to kill her children, to which she says no, although choking a child while having them up against the garage wall might be considered a little bit on the murderous side.
And so he asked her a number of questions.
And then he's like, you know, get up and come over here.
And he sits her down opposite her children.
And so she's sitting with two children in the front row of the audience.
And he says, you know, tell them how much you love them.
I mean, it's just disgusting.
And I'll tell you why I think it's so vile.
And I will in fact write a letter to Dr. Phil, though I doubt I will appear on the show.
And it's completely vile the way he handles it.
You know, you're crying out for these kids to get some validation for this satanic evil of a mother that they've got.
Verbally abusive, destructive, she throws things, she openly admits there's almost nothing left in the house that she can't break, that she can't smash.
So these boys, these tender little boys, have grown up in this situation of unbelievable violence that you and I can't even really comprehend as adults.
I found it quite emotional to watch this, of course, because it reminded me quite a bit of my own childhood.
But even now it's hard to remember just how awful it was because I've been out of it for 25 years and I have a very free life and a very wonderful life now.
So it's hard to remember what it was like in that black dank airless little prison for years and years and years with this raging violent sadist in complete control of your every movement but I did get an echo of it when I was watching this show and it made me quite emotional I was watching it with Christina so we talked about it quite a bit because it's just you know it's painful and so these boys Dr. Phil says you tell these boys how much you love them and
And so she starts saying, you know, oh, I love them.
It's like, don't tell me.
You tell them.
Look them straight in the eye.
You tell them that you love them.
And what a load of nonsense.
What a complete load of nonsense.
This woman doesn't love her children.
Do you think anybody who physically abuses, emotionally abuses her own tender, helpless, completely dependent children is going to be capable of love?
Oh my God!
It's this sick Christian fantasy of the worst kind.
I don't know what kind of fantasy it is.
If you have any additional insight, please let me know because I just can't figure it out for the life of me.
But you say this woman who's choked her children is capable of loving them?
Is that not the worst moral insanity and psychological insanity that you can imagine?
So she ends up, and you know it's really, she's sniffling a little bit, but it's all self-pity, you can tell, right?
And so he says, so she sort of fake apologizes to the children, it was never about you, it was always about me!
It's like, yeah, well, hey man, that's true.
And then Dr. Phil says to these kids, do you think that there's any hope for any kind of normalized relationships, normalized relationship with your mother?
And they just sort of stare at him, right?
And he says, like, you could come home and she could be cooking a nice little snack or a meal and you could chat pleasantly and you could have a positive and enjoyable family interaction.
And so, of course, the one kid says no.
And the other kid says no.
And, of course, Dr. Phil's a little taken aback.
Now, any Competent psychologists or psychiatrists at this point would say, well tell me more, tell me why, tell me how you're feeling.
But he doesn't like the fact that he can't snap his fingers and have some sort of magical tearful reunion on his show.
Maybe he's going for drama, maybe he's going to please the female audience with the fantasy that their children are going to love them.
No matter what tortures they inflict upon them.
But these kids, and God bless them, I mean, God bless them for being heroes on TV, they say, no, there is no possibility of having a normal, loving, normalized relationship with this evil bitch.
And Dr. Phil doesn't like that.
You can see that.
So he says, so you're telling me, you're really sure about this?
You're telling me that there's absolutely no way that you could ever have a normal and positive interaction with this woman?
And again, God bless him, they say no and no.
And Dr. Phil doesn't like that, so he tries again.
Is there any conceivable situation under which you might?
Right?
He's just picking away at whatever he can get here.
Is there any conceivable situation under which you might have some kind of interaction?
No.
And no.
And God bless these two little kids.
They were, I guess, 14 or 15 or 16.
My God, how beautiful can you get?
How strong can you get?
To say that on TV about your own mother in the face of an unsympathetic host and a host who would love for you to say something different.
And in front of all these women who are going to wonderfully applaud you if you say, yeah, maybe there's a chance for me and mommy.
You know, I mean, if you have the staunch character to stand up and just say, no, a bitch is a bitch, evil is evil.
This woman had me under her despotic and demonic thumb for 15 years and I got another year or two to go before I can get the hell out Never go back and just get on with what's left of my life and rebuild whatever I can from the identity that this witch just shattered.
And the interesting thing about this woman, for me, and of course Dr. Phil, is a complete, craven, sickening cop-out in this area.
And I'll sort of talk about why I think it's a cop-out in more direct terms.
In clearer terms, I hope, in a minute or two.
But one thing that was interesting about this woman was that of course she says she's bipolar and therefore she has no control over her mood.
She has no control over her anger.
It just comes over, it takes over, blah blah blah.
And this is Dr. Phil's blindness, right?
Dr. Phil grew up with an alcoholic father and he grew up with a lot of sisters and I bet you they were all enablers.
So he has a tough time seeing female evil.
He'll take on the guys, but he just won't take on the women at all.
And this is really sad.
And I think in that sense he's doing far more harm than good.
Dr. Phil did not get this woman tested, because I think that would have been fascinating.
Get her brain tested?
Oh yeah!
No, everything's lighting up, but what little parts aren't lighting up is pretty much because you've got a bad habit, right?
So if you've never controlled your temper, that part of your brain is not going to develop, and you know, maturity and all that.
So he didn't have this woman tested, although he did have the guy who heard voices tested, and that, you know, so I think that was kind of interesting.
Maybe he did have her tested and didn't come up with anything in there, but didn't want to confront her on that.
So I thought that was interesting.
The second part that I thought was interesting was that Dr. Phil, this woman is saying on the Dr. Phil show, I just can't control my temper.
It just rises up.
It takes me over.
I have no control over it.
I hate myself for doing it, but I can't stop myself.
Well, that's fine.
So she's on the Dr. Phil show for like half an hour and she doesn't lose her temper once.
Does not lose her temper even a little bit.
Doesn't even give him a glare.
And that's something that Dr. Phil can't see, right?
He's a big guy and he's been in authority in the field for quite a long time.
He's been practicing for over 20 years.
And a psychiatrist is in a very strong position of authority, right?
They can lock you up, they can give you meds, they can force you to take meds, they can have you institutionalized, they can do whatever they want.
And even if they're not in that situation with you, there are definitely people coming to them as an authority.
So what Dr. Phil doesn't understand is that if this woman can keep her temper during half an hour of very difficult and intense and probing questions, then she can keep her temper.
It's not biological.
It's not fated.
It's not an emotionally crippled physiological injury.
And Dr. Phil doesn't see that, right?
There are all these tough guys out there who are these tough, these tough people.
Boy, they're so brave, they're so tough because they pick on little children that can't fight back and can't get away and that they can physically overpower and who are completely dependent on them and have got nowhere to go and no recourse and no court system and these, oh, these brave, brave souls who love to pick on little children and we worry about bullies in the schoolyard.
My God!
So these people who pick on children, they're so brave, they're so brave that when their interests are being threatened or their sense of security or identity is being threatened, they'll just get angry at whoever.
They don't care, they're brave!
They're brave and they're entitled and they're just dominant and they're bullying and they have no control over their behavior, so of course they're going to get mad at Dr. Phil.
But that never happens.
Never happens.
Never seen anybody get even remotely snippy with Dr. Phil.
And Dr. Phil, God bless him, I don't want to get inside that big shiny cranium and try and figure out what the hell he's thinking, because I just don't know.
But it looks a hell of a lot like he just doesn't have a clue that these people are deferring to him and can control their temper and can be ha-ha, giddy-giddy-hee-hee about their parenting, the women.
And yet, when they get home, they beat the crap out of their children.
Or verbally abuse them.
And to get that little ugly flash of power that comes from grinding somebody else's self-esteem down into dust, that sad sick little ape-like primal thrill of power that people get out of abusing and destroying others, that sick sadistic personalities get, Well, if they're so tough, and they're so big on protecting themselves, and it's all so involuntary, and they're all so, if you cross me, I'll tell you, mister, then why don't they do any of that with Dr. Phil?
So Dr. Phil sees this sugary side, this like, oh, Dr. Phil, you're so wise, you're so right, I understand it all, oh, that's so brilliant, I get it, I understand.
And he doesn't sort of see the rage.
Now, he could easily get the rage simply by pointing out.
I mean, if he had the guts to do it, in my humble opinion, he could get the rage pretty easily.
He could just say, so you say that you simply can't control your temper, right?
Yes, I can't control my temper.
Well, how the hell are you able to do it now?
See, I think that you can control your temper.
I think that you choose not to control your temper because you can abuse these little children because they're helpless.
But when it comes to me, when it comes to standing here where there are videotapes in the eyes of other people on you, and you're not hidden, and you're not out of sight, and we've got cameras, and we've got millions of people watching, you're sweet as butter.
You're sweet as sugar.
So tell me that you can't control your temper.
You've just been doing it for the last half hour.
How the hell do you answer that?
You could easily get these people to blow up and for everyone to see what the children see.
You've got to show people what the children see!
Live!
Not taped, not there screeching at them in a grainy video.
But live!
You've got to provoke these people.
You've got to provoke these panthers into striking so that you can understand what the children have been going through and for God's sake have some sympathy towards them.
But he won't do it.
He just won't do it.
He's got some con man on the show, and he's all over this guy.
And, you know, you're a bad guy.
You're abusive.
You're destructive.
He doesn't say, oh, I've got bipolar.
That's why I'm a con man.
Dr. Phil would say, oh, come on.
Don't be such a... That's nonsense.
Stop making excuses for yourself.
But with these women, he's all like, oh, yes, well, bipolar is very complicated.
It's very difficult.
It's very hard to diagnose.
The only time he came close to confronting her was she said, I don't take meds.
I was diagnosed 10 years ago.
I don't take meds.
And he was like, well, don't you sort of, you know, have a vaguely higher obligation to take the meds because you're a mom?
And then she's like, I just, I had exhausted all opportunities, all possibilities.
And I just gave up.
And he just, he just moved on.
He just let that one go.
And you see this continually over and over.
And the children, the children, these 15 year old Men!
These 15-year-old demigods of integrity are saying to Dr. Phil, no, I have no interest in a relationship with my mother.
He's not probing that.
He's not like, tell me more, tell me why, tell me, help me to understand.
He's not validating.
He's not like, no kidding, get the hell out!
And the last thing that I'll say about this topic and why I think it's so important that we just understand how far we are from a society that is interested in protecting the rights of children.
Just to point out this, I want to take another look at the same issue and just tell me what you think of it.
So, instead of it being a mother and her children, let's talk about a wrestler who is 250 pounds of pure muscle and his 90 pound tiny little weak wife.
They've been married for fourteen years and during that fourteen-year period he has punched her, he has choked her, he has slammed her up against walls, he has thrown things at her, he has beaten her, he has verbally abused her, he has screamed at her, he has destroyed her self-esteem.
Right?
What is Dr. Phil's or any sane human being's response, anyone's response, going to be to that situation?
Right?
Is someone going to say to this evil, brutish, hulking, muscle-bound wrestler, you know, you need to sit down and you need to tell your wife how much you love her.
Come on!
It's never gonna happen!
No, I mean, can you imagine how sick a show that would be?
You need to sit down, you big, lanky brute you, and you need to tell your delicate little bruised and beaten up wife just how much you love her.
And then would Dr. Phil say to this beaten up, Fat-lipped, black-eyed, little waif who had been kicked around the house for a goddamn 14 years.
Would he tell her, you know, do you see any kind of future with this guy?
Do you think that you guys can have a great marriage going forward?
And she says, no.
And he says, are you sure?
Are you sure you can't see any kind of way to go forward with this marriage so that you can have a great marriage with this guy?
And she says, no.
And he says, no really, is there any way, any way that you could even remotely conceive of... Can you imagine just how sick that would be?
That this tiny little human punching bag of this brute wrestler should be at all made to think that she should look for any kind of future with this guy as a marital partner?
Astounding!
Now let me ask you this.
Can you imagine if on the Dr. Phil show This man, this brute, this hulking monstrosity of evil, this wrestler, were to say, yes, last week I punched her in the mouth.
Last week I grabbed my wife's neck, I choked the crap out of her, and I slammed her up and shook her against the wall.
I mean, I'll tell you what the hell I would do.
If I were Dr. Phil, I would say, Security!
Get this son of a bitch into a paddy wagon and haul his ass off to jail.
He has just confessed.
He has just confessed to spousal abuse.
You take this a-hole and you throw his ass in jail.
That would be, you know, a rational response.
And a moral response.
I mean, forget about the whole cop and police and jail thing.
I know that I'm an anarcho-capitalist, but let's just deal with one issue at a time.
That would be a sane and moral response to somebody saying, yes, I just beat up my tiny wife and I almost killed her.
That would be attempted murder.
Choking, shaking, throwing, punching.
When you're that big, when you're that big, When the science differential is that large, folks, it's attempted murder!
And Dr. Phil with this evil bitch is all, oh, we're going to get a team of experts and we're going to check you out medically and we're going to make sure there's nothing wrong and we're going to give you some behavior modification and we're going to give you some stress management tools so you can deal with your temper and otherwise you might lose these kids!
I mean, my God, he's sending the children back in!
Oh, I can't tell you!
It makes me so angry!
It's just so insane!
You throw people like this in jail!
When they confess to a crime like beating and choking their children, you throw them in jail!
That's what you would do with a wrestler who beat up his wife!
You wouldn't say to that wrestler who punched the crap out of his wife, we're going to get you checked out just to make sure you don't have any physiological problems and honey you go back with him and you try and work things out you try and have a good relationship and you don't say to this this uh... hulking brute you know you better be a nicer guy or you're going to lose this woman and you should because you know you're just not treating her right!
No!
You would throw this guy in jail for attempted murder.
But nobody does that.
And I know, I know, you gotta find a place for the kids, and it's tough, and maybe they're better off, and blah, blah, blah.
But forget that.
That's not important.
It's not important what happens to the children.
I mean, of course it is.
What is important is that Dr. Phil say something like this to the children.
You are entirely right.
Your mother is evil.
Your mother is incredibly awful and destructive.
And you have done an incredible job in this parental gulag that you were thrown into against your will.
And you can absolutely and have the right to have every single shred of hatred and rage against your mother that you can.
And you better get the hell out of there quickly.
And I fully support you.
And it's not bipolar.
She can absolutely control it because you've seen her do it for half an hour now and you are completely right and you are completely validated and any other mother who's out there you all should go to jail too.
That would be something that would actually help these kids, right?
These kids are in this social situation and nobody's condemning their mother.
And nobody's accepting the fact that it's perfectly just and valid for them to not want to have anything to do with this witch.
And nobody's throwing their mother in jail.
But if you try going on there as some brute wrestler with a tiny wife that you beat up regularly for 14 years, you're going to have charges thrown against you.
Dr. Phil is going to say, you, honey, get the hell away from this psycho!
That doesn't happen with children.
We don't see it with children.
We don't see it with mothers.
What if it was a daughter and a father?
What if it was tiny little daughter and a father beating up?
It would be totally different.
And if you understand that it would be a different reaction, a more protective reaction of the helpless to deal with this boxer or wrestler who's three times the size of his wife, if we have a natural desire to go in and protect that woman in that situation,
That's very important to understand that if we would want to protect that tiny little woman from that huge wrestler, we owe it to children a million fold to protect them.
Because they are far more vulnerable.
The woman who's tiny and married to the wrestler, she can get up and leave.
She can go to a woman's shelter.
She can go and stay with friends.
She can go and stay with family.
She can go and do whatever the hell she wants.
Children don't have that option.
There's nowhere they can go.
They're totally trapped.
The size differential, the power differential, the legal differential, the knowledge differential, the social reinforcement differential, the disparity in the capacity to defend yourself versus to attack.
And if we don't see this, if we can't get this through our heads, then the world is simply going to remain evil until the end of time.
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