Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, I'm strong and get kid
Speaker 2: and he armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 3: With regards to the situation in Gaza, the President, echoing
Speaker 3: what US officials have been saying, both in private and
Speaker 3: in public over the last twenty four hours, suggesting that
Speaker 3: a deal could be reached sometime soon, that it could
Speaker 3: be on the cusp of being announced. You know, it's
Speaker 3: been a really long time since we have heard this
Speaker 3: kind of optimism, at least coming from inside the Biden administration.
Speaker 3: But sources have been telling us over the last day
Speaker 3: or so that they do believe a deal could be
Speaker 3: announced for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of
Speaker 3: hostages from Gaza in the next coming days, in.
Speaker 1: The next couple of days. Yeah, and those two things
Speaker 1: go together. They're going to give back the hostages and
Speaker 1: Israel is going to agree to pull their troops out
Speaker 1: of Gaza. And even the New York Times says this
Speaker 1: is all being instigated, pushed by the looming deadline of
Speaker 1: Biden not being president and Trump being president, And even
Speaker 1: the New York Times includes Trump warning quote, all hell
Speaker 1: to pay unless the hostages are freed by the day
Speaker 1: he becomes president. And apparently Hamas believes that's true.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, I would suggest a huge dose of trust,
Speaker 4: yet verify even in thinking about this alleged agreement. First
Speaker 4: of all, it has to actually be agreed to. Frameworks
Speaker 4: have a history of falling apart in this region. But secondly,
Speaker 4: because I do believe Trump's threats are a legitimate and
Speaker 4: be motivating the hell out of the scumbags and a
Speaker 4: mass to make a deal. But then there's the question
Speaker 4: of implementing it and having everybody live up to their
Speaker 4: side of the agreement.
Speaker 2: I'm sure extremely skeptical.
Speaker 1: Being mediated by Katar, Egypt and the United States, and
Speaker 1: obviously Israel and Hamas are involved with their own particular
Speaker 1: needs and everything like that. I gotta believe Katar and
Speaker 1: Egypt are saying to Hamas, look, the jig is up, right,
Speaker 1: do you want to be pumpled into dust? Or?
Speaker 2: I mean, what are you going to gain out of that? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would certainly hope.
Speaker 1: So I'm more optimistic than you for no reason other
Speaker 1: than it just has echoes of nineteen seventy nine nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty when Reagan came in and the hostages came back
Speaker 1: from Iran and a brand new administration that looks like
Speaker 1: a hard ass. Everybody thinks, Okay, there's a new sheriff
Speaker 1: in down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm I am really interested to hear what the
Speaker 4: provisions are for a ceasefire from Israel's point of view,
Speaker 4: because they still and they no longer suffer under any
Speaker 4: delusions about this, they are still facing an enemy that
Speaker 4: has sworn to wipe them off the face of the
Speaker 4: earth in their founding charter.
Speaker 2: So it's difficult to strike up a.
Speaker 1: Deal for long term harmony with somebody who answers that description.
Speaker 1: They are not near as tough as they were before,
Speaker 1: and they don't have the backing of their really only supporter,
Speaker 1: Iran anymore because Iran is barely functioning themselves as a military.
Speaker 1: And to me, the big story is do Israel and
Speaker 1: the United States together either take out that nuclear program
Speaker 1: in Iran or go full regime change. I think both
Speaker 1: of them are on the table, and who knows what Trump.
Speaker 4: I would agree, I would agree, And this is the
Speaker 4: contrast between Trump, for better or worse and Biden is
Speaker 4: I think Trump and his people get that doing nothing
Speaker 4: is to do something absolutely.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama did not understand that at all. Don't do
Speaker 1: stupid s was his motto. Well, not reacting to Bushar
Speaker 1: al Asad's chemical weapons is stupid s. It led to
Speaker 1: more bad things things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, constant passivity is some of the stupidest ask you
Speaker 4: can do. So a completely different topic, well, it's tangisially related.
Speaker 4: I guess there are a handful of things that have
Speaker 4: come together in my head. Pete Haggs, that's hearing is
Speaker 4: going on right now in front of the Senate between
Speaker 4: the idiot protesters and the tough questioning of him and
Speaker 4: his force full advocacy of a more fighting, man oriented
Speaker 4: military as opposed to a giant, bloated bureaucracy. That's a
Speaker 4: jobs program. I'm loving that discussion. You have the LA
Speaker 4: fire situation where Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom are trying
Speaker 4: to blame it on climate change when their preparedness was
Speaker 4: terrible over the years and over the previous months, and
Speaker 4: Karen Bass going to Ghana for no good reason just
Speaker 4: because she likes expensive junkets with the forecast being horrible
Speaker 4: in LA. I didn't make any the firefighting program, a
Speaker 4: jobs program for women because not enough women want to
Speaker 4: be fire It's just ridiculous. I didn't realize till yesterday.
Speaker 4: So hear, trip to Ghana. Okay, you're gonna go somewhere,
Speaker 4: find whatever. That doesn't bother me. Politicians bank all kinds
Speaker 4: of trips I hate and everything like that.
Speaker 1: She got there, the fire started, and she stayed. She
Speaker 1: didn't even leave early. Now that's.
Speaker 2: Criminal.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, that's not criminal, it's malpractice. Oh and
Speaker 1: again it was just a celebrity junket. There was no
Speaker 1: reason for her to be there whatsoever other than a vacation.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking about, you know, the LA firefighters, how
Speaker 1: they have done this big DEI thing to get more
Speaker 1: women firefighters can not that many women want to be firefighters?
Speaker 2: And who cares? If who cares?
Speaker 4: How many women? How many firefighters in LA County or
Speaker 4: LA are women?
Speaker 2: Who cares? Anybody? Only these activists do gooders.
Speaker 4: It's possible not many women want to be And has
Speaker 4: there been a fire victim in the history of fires,
Speaker 4: or a medical emergency for that matter, maybe excepting giving
Speaker 4: birth by the freeway? Has there ever been a person
Speaker 4: as the firefighters are fighting to put out the fire
Speaker 4: that's going to reduce your home Dash who said, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's cool that they're doing this, but man, I'd like
Speaker 4: to see some more diversity.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we've gone so far the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: We should flip it around. Is there do you know
Speaker 1: anybody that seems to be in favor of rejecting a
Speaker 1: woman who's otherwise qualified physically to do the job?
Speaker 2: I course not.
Speaker 1: I don't know a single human being that, just from
Speaker 1: a misogynistic sexist standpoint, wouldn't want a qualified woman to
Speaker 1: be a firefighter, right, nobody. I've never heard anybody even
Speaker 1: come close to that opinion. Yet we've gone so far
Speaker 1: the other direction, as if that's the norm to bring
Speaker 1: in people that aren't qualified in the military and firefighting
Speaker 1: cops and all kinds of different examples, you know.
Speaker 2: And this is such a good topic.
Speaker 4: I was actually heading towards going to a more thirty
Speaker 4: thousand foot view of it, but I liked it. I
Speaker 4: have heard people say the sexual dynamics in like combat, sure,
Speaker 4: a combat unit could could be difficult, or managing a
Speaker 4: submarine for instance. So and that's a legitimate discussion because
Speaker 4: as Pete Hegseath is forcibly trying to point out in
Speaker 4: front of the Senate, it's about preparedness for war and
Speaker 4: winning war. It's not a damn jobs program. What is
Speaker 4: your first purpose to winning conflict?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 4: Having said that, I've been reading there's a great piece
Speaker 4: by the editors of the National Review about the British
Speaker 4: rape gang's scandal and how horrific it is and one
Speaker 4: of the most horrific aspects, well, every aspect of it's horrific,
Speaker 4: come to think of it. But they go fairly into depth,
Speaker 4: and I wish we had time with how the local
Speaker 4: and national governments covered up for all of this, the
Speaker 4: rape of children, refrained from pursuing justice to avenge the
Speaker 4: rape of children, to avoid endangering quote. And this is
Speaker 4: one particular city, Rotherham's qualities of diversity and harmony, of
Speaker 4: commit unity relationships because the rapists were primarily Muslims of
Speaker 4: Pakistani heritage. Anyway, we'll go bigger on that at some point.
Speaker 4: But the thing I really wanted to get to is
Speaker 4: another great piece I read by a fellow by the
Speaker 4: name of tal Fortgang, who's a hey, he's a thinker
Speaker 4: and a writer, but he's talking about tan of Hissig
Speaker 4: or Tana Hashi. How are your supposed to pronounce his
Speaker 4: his adopted name, coats recent book The Message, and what
Speaker 4: a load of crap it is because any time it
Speaker 4: runs into a wait, what you just said is factually untrue,
Speaker 4: he just.
Speaker 2: Says, Look, don't get caught up in.
Speaker 5: Facts, don't let complexity get in the way of just this,
Speaker 5: And it lands him on network TV and gets some
Speaker 5: glowing profiles in elite media despite openly aiming to tackle
Speaker 5: questions way beyond his depth and and how he doesn't
Speaker 5: operate on a level of rationality.
Speaker 1: Zooming through the description of the preliminary part.
Speaker 2: Of this, he says, I've heard that side of the.
Speaker 4: Story, but he's not obligating to exp explain why the
Speaker 4: other side of the story is wrong, because right and wrong,
Speaker 4: true and untrue do not move him. This is what
Speaker 4: I wanted to get to, because this is the umbrella
Speaker 4: over every topic we've talked about this segment, from the
Speaker 4: LA firefighters to soldiers, to illegal immigrants we were talking
Speaker 4: about earlier, the sanctuary cities. You've got literal child rapists
Speaker 4: and they won't tell the feds. Hey, we've got to
Speaker 4: let this child rapist out. He's an illegal immigrant. Let's
Speaker 4: get him out of the country to protect all Americans
Speaker 4: or other immigrants. But they don't want to talk about
Speaker 4: those facts. And here's where fort Gang gets to his
Speaker 4: main point about Coats. And you're going to recognize this
Speaker 4: among so many progressives. And this is the reason we
Speaker 4: call California cal un cornea where realism.
Speaker 2: Goes to die.
Speaker 4: Fort Gang REGs his writings are romantic works. They fit
Speaker 4: perfectly the Encyclopedia Britannica explanation of the late eighteenth century
Speaker 4: rejection of Enlightenment rationalism. Romanticism quote emphasized the individual, the subjective,
Speaker 4: the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional,
Speaker 4: the visionary, and the transcendental. Coat's idea is to stir
Speaker 4: feelings such that you could say, I don't care what
Speaker 4: arguments you give, I feel the conclusions in my bones,
Speaker 4: and nothing will move.
Speaker 2: Me from it. Clearly true. How many times have you
Speaker 2: run into people like that?
Speaker 1: The very idea that the conflict he's talking about Israel
Speaker 1: Hamas could be complicated, says Coates, is horse ass. He
Speaker 1: repeatedly writes that nothing could justify the status quo in Israel.
Speaker 1: Really nothing, not even wars of annihilation, genocidal terror groups.
Speaker 1: You could that babies and murder entire families in their beds.
Speaker 2: That doesn't justify the status quo.
Speaker 4: A rationalist sees both sides and tries to propose a
Speaker 4: proper balance between Israel's security concerns and Palestinian's dignity interests.
Speaker 2: Right, that's reasonable.
Speaker 4: A romantic feels the whole situation is wrong and refuses
Speaker 4: to entertain evidence that his feelings might not tell the
Speaker 4: whole story, and proposes overhauling all of it. Categorical refusal
Speaker 4: to even acknowledge facts or arguments that contradict ones intuitions
Speaker 4: animates so much of our public discourse on race, gender, crime,
Speaker 4: about just about anything that can arouse human passions, and it.
Speaker 2: Marks our cultural trends.
Speaker 4: The subjective has pride of place over empirical, the feelings
Speaker 4: and the unverifiable over the logical.
Speaker 2: He is the leader of It. Doesn't matter what your
Speaker 2: facts are.
Speaker 4: This is what I feel, which is no way to
Speaker 4: run a society, man.
Speaker 1: Right, My lived experience is more important than the fact. Right, Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: you cannot govern with that. You really can't. No, it
Speaker 1: was taken hold of a lot of places. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has because.
Speaker 2: It feels good.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it makes people feel really self righteous,
Speaker 1: and if their peer group are also romantics, they get
Speaker 1: loads and loads of ego gratification by spouting the nonsense
Speaker 1: you're right, way to go, man, way to go. We
Speaker 1: got to take a break. But I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: TV and Richard Blumenthal, Senator, Democratic Senator, is questioning Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 1: The fact that he everybody just ignores the fact that
Speaker 1: he pretended he was some sort of Vietnam hero and
Speaker 1: it was a complete lie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now Dolan valor and now he gets to question incomings
Speaker 1: deaths with some authority is just amazing, including one guy
Speaker 1: who actually served and served honorably. Wow, that's some story anyway,
Speaker 1: Any highlights from that, we'll have for you. Another stuff
Speaker 1: come on up. This whole TikTok train and keeps getting
Speaker 1: more complicated, and yet another app from the same company
Speaker 1: doesn't doing a similar thing. Would it get around the
Speaker 1: law anyway? Maybe we'll have to talk about that later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, there's a lot to be said, but we
Speaker 4: will hang in there and get to it when we
Speaker 4: can Pete Hegseeth is testifying in from the Senate right
Speaker 4: now about his nomination to be Secretary of Defense, and
Speaker 4: he said some really great things so far, and man,
Speaker 4: he unleashed on the news media, let's hear it.
Speaker 6: And time and time again, stories would come out and
Speaker 6: people would reach out to me and say, you know, I've.
Speaker 2: Spoken to this reporter about who you really.
Speaker 6: Are, and I was willing to go on the record,
Speaker 6: but they didn't print my quote, print any of my quotes.
Speaker 6: Or I've worked with you for ten years, or I
Speaker 6: was your accountant, or I was your chief operating officer,
Speaker 6: or I was your board member, or I was with
Speaker 6: you on one hundred different tour stops for Concerned Veterans
Speaker 6: for America. No one called me, no one asked about
Speaker 6: your conduct on the record or off the record. Instead,
Speaker 6: a small handful of anonymous sources were allowed to drive
Speaker 6: a smear campaign an agenda about me because our left
Speaker 6: wing media in America today sadly doesn't care about the truth.
Speaker 6: All they were out to do, mister Chairman, was to
Speaker 6: destroy me. And why do they want to destroy me?
Speaker 6: Because I'm a change agent and a threat to them?
Speaker 6: Because Donald Trump was willing to choose me, to empower
Speaker 6: me to bring the Defense Department back to what it
Speaker 6: really should be.
Speaker 2: Which is war fighting.
Speaker 1: That's some of it. Trump could have named anybody and
Speaker 1: they would have made up all kinds of crap to
Speaker 1: try to bring him down just because it's Trump. That
Speaker 1: includes today, By the way, New York Times, they're big,
Speaker 1: splashy front page story today was how the FBI didn't
Speaker 1: do a real background check. And MSNBC is walled wall
Speaker 1: on this story and then interviewing every Democrat. Can you
Speaker 1: believe the FBI didn't do a full background check? I
Speaker 1: know it's outrageous. Since when does the FBI not do
Speaker 1: full But it's all based on some unnamed sources who
Speaker 1: claim the FBI didn't do a full background check. So
Speaker 1: once again it's that same story. Yeah, I'm not sure what.
Speaker 2: To think about.
Speaker 4: Pete Heigsath is sect def I love your ideas, but
Speaker 4: this is I think this is a bigger issue we've had.
Speaker 4: This soco media change from an anonymous source, especially if
Speaker 4: it's just like one or two, is very very thin
Speaker 4: gruel to base a story on, particularly a story of
Speaker 4: any importance, and it probably shouldn't be done, and somebody's
Speaker 4: got to have a great reason to remain anonymous, and
Speaker 4: I still publish the story.
Speaker 2: We've gone from that too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely any half wit, crack pot or mental illness case.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Judge Kavanaugh's hearings.
Speaker 4: Who is willing to trot anything out even if there's
Speaker 4: contradictory evidence. That's more than good enough because it's exciting.
Speaker 4: So it is a media failing, as Hegzeth was saying,
Speaker 4: But we as a society have to understand that it's
Speaker 4: not the way it used to be.
Speaker 2: Now they'll trot out.
Speaker 4: Absolute crap and we just have to say, no, you
Speaker 4: name your sources, let's hear him talk on the record,
Speaker 4: or I don't care what you just wrote.
Speaker 1: New York Times article centers around one of the stories
Speaker 1: floating around about Pete that he is accused of committing
Speaker 1: some sort of sexual crime in which at the time
Speaker 1: no charges were filed when the police were looking at it,
Speaker 1: and Pete Heggsath wasn't sec def nominee. And this woman
Speaker 1: claims that the FBI did not interview her. It's possible
Speaker 1: they got all the information they needed without interviewing, or
Speaker 1: and thought she's a nut.
Speaker 2: I have no idea. Right could be the eye of
Speaker 2: the beholder. No, I have no idea.
Speaker 4: I don't think he can be cynical enough about a
Speaker 4: couple anonymous sources.
Speaker 1: Please, This thing about bringing back duels, the idea of
Speaker 1: dueling is really interesting. Among other things we got on
Speaker 1: the way, so stay tuned, Armstrong.
Speaker 7: And Getty, And finally, Duncan has partnered with a personal
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Speaker 7: and body wash in a Boston cream scent. And in
Speaker 7: a related story, ben Affleck has.
Speaker 2: Been eaten by ants. Wow.
Speaker 1: So Pete Hegxath is on the hill being grilled should
Speaker 1: he be second deaf or not? The senators are trying
Speaker 1: to advise and confirm or not. And we'll have a
Speaker 1: clip of that coming up in a little bit where
Speaker 1: they get into women in combat, which is clearly one
Speaker 1: of the knocks the Democrats are going with this segment,
Speaker 1: Joe is going to talk about young people not drinking
Speaker 1: as much and whether that's good, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about bringing back duels.
Speaker 2: How did I get it here?
Speaker 1: So I've been mentioning that I'm reading this book called
Speaker 1: Paris and Ruins, about the year eighteen seventy to eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one in Paris. I got started on that by
Speaker 1: when I was in Washington, d C. I went to
Speaker 1: the National Art Museum, one of the great museum's art
Speaker 1: museums in the world. It's among the Big Seven or
Speaker 1: whatever they call them, and they had a display just
Speaker 1: coincidentally of Paris eighteen seventy there going on, and because
Speaker 1: it was December, instead of standing in a long line,
Speaker 1: I just walked up and looked at everything, and it
Speaker 1: was all about the Impressionists in eighteen seventy and the
Speaker 1: role they played in politics in that what they call
Speaker 1: that horrible year in France where they went to war
Speaker 1: with Russia and then had violence in the streets and
Speaker 1: Napoleon the Third was driven from the country and they
Speaker 1: had a revolution and it was really really rough time,
Speaker 1: lots of.
Speaker 2: Deaths, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But at one point in the book it mentions, I believe,
Speaker 1: not Monette but Manet, the father Impressionism, having a duel
Speaker 1: with some other dude, and the way they described the
Speaker 1: duel and how they all ended up laughing about it
Speaker 1: and drinking afterwards and everything like that. And I thought,
Speaker 1: how weird that dueling ever was a thing ever? And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it killed Alexander Hamilton. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so crazy that dueling ever became a thing.
Speaker 1: Then I come across this in the New York Times
Speaker 1: the other day. I've never read a book by Randall Collins.
Speaker 1: He is a sociologist who, according to this New York
Speaker 1: Times review, is brilliant and has written many, many fantastic
Speaker 1: books that I have got to get into. And his
Speaker 1: latest book is called Violence, among his master works of sociology,
Speaker 1: Listen to this. It is a work of lucid and
Speaker 1: compelling theory that attempts to clarify when and why moments
Speaker 1: of tension erupt into actual violence, as in, what are
Speaker 1: the conditions that caused the first punch to be thrown
Speaker 1: at a bar fight instead of the conflict dissolving into
Speaker 1: slurred threats? Or what causes two children to come to
Speaker 1: blows in the playground instead of shuffling to opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the sandbox. He covers domestic abuse, boxing matches, pillow fights,
Speaker 1: prison violence, excessive police force, soccer, hooligan's crowd violence, mosh pits,
Speaker 1: the Nine to eleven cockpit fight and more, which sounds
Speaker 1: just fascinating.
Speaker 2: That's wide ranging.
Speaker 1: And then this which I want to at least read
Speaker 1: this portion of the book, Collins, the author sincerely unconvincingly
Speaker 1: suggests that drug gangs organize pistol duels instead of resorting
Speaker 1: to chaotic drive by shootings and street fights. And I
Speaker 1: read a little more about that, and yes, it was
Speaker 1: a way that developed over time to deal with the whole.
Speaker 1: You've insulted my manhood. I can't put up with this,
Speaker 1: and found a way to like really narrow it down
Speaker 1: to very little violence or no violence at all, as
Speaker 1: opposed to you got to drive by some houts and
Speaker 1: spray off a bunch of shots or set it on
Speaker 1: fire back in the day or whatever you would do,
Speaker 1: and every things get completely out of hand. It was
Speaker 1: a way to manage the whole.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He gave me a hard lick look in this kind
Speaker 1: stand situation.
Speaker 4: So you had one hat Field and one McCoy square
Speaker 4: of bite, and everybody considers it.
Speaker 1: Done right, considers it over. It has been dealt with,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't have to go on for weeks or
Speaker 1: months or years. Now another it's another Chesterton's fence. To me,
Speaker 1: we didn't understand how this arose in society. It clearly
Speaker 1: serves a purpose. I don't think there's any bringing it back.
Speaker 1: But how much better would that be if the bloods
Speaker 1: and the crips are the the whatever Ms thirteen or
Speaker 1: whoever the heck had some sort of system of dueling
Speaker 1: where you settled these sorts of beefs one on one.
Speaker 1: Maybe you shoot over their head, maybe a guy dies,
Speaker 1: but it's, like you said, over and done with.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, go back to selling drugs to school children.
Speaker 1: Fascinating culturally though that Yes, somehow a rose a pressure
Speaker 1: valve release that was less damaging to society.
Speaker 4: Well, right, if we let this go, it's going to
Speaker 4: get completely out of control to an unjustified scale.
Speaker 2: Let's settle this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, how interesting. Our time is the opposite of that,
Speaker 4: just to any and it's it's interesting how hypocritical all
Speaker 4: of this is because a lot of the very you know,
Speaker 4: political forces that decry violence are more than willing to
Speaker 4: participate in it given half an excuse.
Speaker 2: I think the example with the two painters.
Speaker 1: I mean I can wreck a city, I can burn
Speaker 1: down stores, I can assault cops. I can beat down
Speaker 1: anybody who gets in my way, but if a cop
Speaker 1: raises a billy club, that's a horror that cannot be tolerated, right.
Speaker 1: I think the example of the duel with the painter
Speaker 1: and somebody else was he had slept with his other
Speaker 1: guy had slept with his girlfriend or something like that,
Speaker 1: which could have, you know, and like in a couple
Speaker 1: of gangs, could erupt into maybe years long battles with
Speaker 1: hundreds dead and more injured. Or you deal with it
Speaker 1: just two people that you to each other. It's over.
Speaker 1: My honor has been saved. We're done with it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I let you save your honor, so I'm off
Speaker 1: the hook too. My main point with this is not
Speaker 1: just duels, it's just culture and the way human beings
Speaker 1: and societies come to remedies and then we forget them
Speaker 1: somehow and have to start over once again. And this
Speaker 1: is you know, a wiser man than me ought to
Speaker 1: take on this topic. But it's better to have the
Speaker 1: passive acceptance of fifty times more violence than to actively
Speaker 1: participate in a very small amount of violence to protect
Speaker 1: to prevent, rather that fifty times as much violence. Right,
Speaker 1: So you sins of omission are like okay to the
Speaker 1: nth degree, but a single sin of co mission is
Speaker 1: completely verboten. That's interesting, I thought. So that's some thought
Speaker 1: provoking sis nizzle right there, folks. Okay, those of you
Speaker 1: come for the jokes about people's you know, private parts
Speaker 1: are probably a little confused.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I.
Speaker 1: Thought for voking drinking less, you say yes they No,
Speaker 1: I didn't, but yes they are, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: and I think after a break we can talk about that.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 4: Weirdly connected to the previous discussion, but they're drinking way
Speaker 4: less and it's probably a bad thing, right.
Speaker 2: I think, I know where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: But as a guy who's got a couple of teenagers
Speaker 1: who I don't particularly want drinking a lot's an interesting topic.
Speaker 1: And we got some highlights from the pig pete hegzef
Speaker 1: hearing as they're getting into women in combat and all
Speaker 1: kinds of different subjects today.
Speaker 2: Stick around, I hope you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's TikTok video the other day with a mom
Speaker 1: and a van with their kids driving into school, jam
Speaker 1: in this tune and they're all singing along, and I thought,
Speaker 1: that's kind of funny A bunch of little kids singing
Speaker 1: about getting drunk in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: That's funny, Jack, Because gen Z is ditching the Booze Mordicum. Right.
Speaker 1: So, Pete Hegzith, Trump's nominee to be Secretary of Defense
Speaker 1: is being grilled right now by Tim Kain. Maybe remember him,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's running mate, wanted to be vice president. And
Speaker 1: all I do, I'm just reading the words up on
Speaker 1: the screen. I haven't heard it. Yeah, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: big on this. An Hour four had some stuff on there.
Speaker 1: He's saying to Pete, you cheated on your wife, you
Speaker 1: had an affair, you claim Jesus as your Lord and savior.
Speaker 2: That's just all the stuff I read. So that's getting
Speaker 2: some pretty personal stuff right there.
Speaker 4: Wow, Wow, Wow, fireworks and substantive and important discussion of
Speaker 4: what the nature of our fighting forces ought to be
Speaker 4: in the way the Pentagon ought to be run.
Speaker 1: So something for everyone will go big next hour.
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Speaker 4: on demand. So gen Z is ditching Booze. Now, this
Speaker 4: piece is kind of new York centric. They're talking about
Speaker 4: how zoomers want a wild night on the town, they
Speaker 4: won't wake up regretting. Instead, young adults are getting the
Speaker 4: social fixes. It's sober friendly gathering hubs and alcohol free
Speaker 4: bars that have been sprouting up in which some say
Speaker 4: is a sign of changing times.
Speaker 1: Well, clearly, the times are always changing. That's what happens
Speaker 1: with times, says. Oh, they quote a bunch of we're
Speaker 1: supposed to call them zoomers.
Speaker 2: Do I have to what does that mean? Generation? Z Okay?
Speaker 4: Anyway, they quote a bunch of twenty somethings, including aid
Speaker 4: In spelled really weirdly, age twenty two. I think our
Speaker 4: generation is very aware, like a lot of us are activists,
Speaker 4: and I think that awareness influences our junkie habits.
Speaker 2: You're right, they drink more.
Speaker 4: With all the stuff we're hearing about the world constantly,
Speaker 4: you'd think we'd want a distraction, But I think our
Speaker 4: phones are distraction enough, so we don't need as much alcohol.
Speaker 2: All right, Aiden, here's some absence. I have a good time.
Speaker 4: And they go into describing these various game clubs and
Speaker 4: alcohol free bars and stuff. Here's another youngster, you're real
Speaker 4: age twenty six, they may with a normal name. No,
Speaker 4: When people of the previous generation think of drinking, they
Speaker 4: think of binge drinking. They think of going to a bar,
Speaker 4: slamming back twelve drinks and being hammered the next night.
Speaker 2: You know, why are you speaking for me, sweetheart?
Speaker 4: They think of the idea of cracking up in a
Speaker 4: six pack before they go to bed.
Speaker 1: You know what, this is the mirror image of something
Speaker 1: else that's unpalatable. So as you get older, everybody has
Speaker 1: a tendency to think the current young crop of kids
Speaker 1: are just going to ruin the America.
Speaker 2: They're just degenerates.
Speaker 1: And then the flip side of that is every new
Speaker 1: young group of people think the superior to.
Speaker 2: All the people older than them. Both of those things
Speaker 2: are hard to take.
Speaker 1: It's a thousands year old tradition as a matter of fact, right,
Speaker 1: says twenty three year old Lee spelled weird too.
Speaker 2: I do drink.
Speaker 1: When I do, I'll probably have like one drunk. Says Kathleen, Oh,
Speaker 1: a normal name quote. I think people in my generation
Speaker 1: are more conscious of their health and don't say drinking
Speaker 1: as a social obligation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: In defense of these youngsters, some reporter ask them, why
Speaker 1: do you even ask them? They don't know anything. They're young,
Speaker 1: they're dumb. But there are statistics to back up. The
Speaker 1: bellies are flat and they're good looking, so there are
Speaker 1: statistics to back this up, though, right the young people
Speaker 1: would one hundred percent. Oh yeah, it's it's been a
Speaker 1: cataclysmic for the hard liquor industry. Beer has plummeted, even
Speaker 1: the you're like white claw type hard ciders and seltzers
Speaker 1: and stuff that were.
Speaker 2: So hot what ten years ago.
Speaker 1: If you listen to if you listen to country music,
Speaker 1: every young person in America is drinking whiskey and white
Speaker 1: claw all day long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well not so much apparently.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I thought that was interesting, and you know, everybody
Speaker 4: colding in the article pitches it as laimar hathe and al,
Speaker 4: and I was reminded of an absolutely brilliant piece I
Speaker 4: read by kat Rosenfield, who was writing for The Free Press,
Speaker 4: and she opens it. I can't resist because it's one
Speaker 4: of my favorite scenes too, and it's not just because
Speaker 4: I'm a drinking man. She talks about towards the end
Speaker 4: of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, after all, the
Speaker 4: adventuring is done, and they're back at the Shire, and
Speaker 4: Frodo and Sam and Pippen and Marry are drinking at
Speaker 4: the local pub. Anybody who's seen the movies remembers the scene,
Speaker 4: and Sam, who has courted death and adventured over the world,
Speaker 4: sees the girl he's always had a crush on, and
Speaker 4: you can see in his eyes I've had these adventures.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go ask her out. But first he takes
Speaker 4: a big swig of his ale or whatever they're.
Speaker 2: Drinking, whatever Hobbit's drink.
Speaker 4: Right, he throws back his pint and she in Cat writes,
Speaker 4: this moment is good because so many of us recognize it.
Speaker 4: Many of our best and bravest moments started with a
Speaker 4: shot or two of liquid courage. And yet contemporary narratives
Speaker 4: about young people in drinking are all markedly and overwhelmingly
Speaker 4: negative optimizers.
Speaker 2: That's the term I never use.
Speaker 4: Warned that alcohol is an addictive poison, activists cite the
Speaker 4: link between drinking and sexual assault, and young celebrities who
Speaker 4: might have once made headlines for partying can instead be
Speaker 4: touting the benefits of sobriety.
Speaker 2: And she has links to the various.
Speaker 1: Art Why did you quote some things that are true
Speaker 1: for a tiny percentage of people, as if that's everyone.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's the point of.
Speaker 1: That tiny percentages of what tiny percentage of drinkers become alcoholics?
Speaker 1: Tiny percentage of drinkers commit you know, crimes or die
Speaker 1: of some you know, alcohol related cancer, or get raped
Speaker 1: or whatever. But then cat gets on to the point
Speaker 1: that I think is really really good in spite of
Speaker 1: the narrative that be old the Zoomers in their glorious
Speaker 1: sobriety so much smarter, healthier, and more sensible than the
Speaker 1: sloppy barfing generations.
Speaker 2: That preceded them.
Speaker 1: Now that's good writing, because that's the only kind of
Speaker 1: drinking you can do, sloppy barfing drinking. But scratch the
Speaker 1: surface of gen Z's sobriety, and what you find isn't
Speaker 1: wisdom so much as fear. Fear of vulnerability, fear of failure,
Speaker 1: fear of being out of control.
Speaker 2: And we're not talking about completely out of control.
Speaker 4: But out of complete, total, every second control. This is
Speaker 4: a generation that is both highly conflict diverse and virtually
Speaker 4: allergic to risk, particularly when it comes to markers of
Speaker 4: autonomous adulthood, driving, working, sex, going out for a few drinks.
Speaker 2: They are terrified of all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Working is a problem because you kind of have to
Speaker 1: work to support yourself. But I was gonna ask, I said,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, is this tie in anything
Speaker 1: to lack of willingness to want to get a driver's license,
Speaker 1: your lack of willingness to want to drink?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent?
Speaker 4: The bosses of gen Z employees report that they can't
Speaker 4: make eye contact, they can't take criticism, and even ask
Speaker 4: questions when they don't know how to or they're even
Speaker 4: afraid to ask questions if they don't know how to
Speaker 4: do something.
Speaker 1: Using the word vey a lot. Always got to throw
Speaker 1: this in on the Armstrong and Getty show. They didn't
Speaker 1: raise themselves exactly exactly. And I'm you know, I'm always
Speaker 1: heading there with my free range parenting screed.
Speaker 4: Uh, but this generation after you know what? To that point,
Speaker 4: Cat Rosenfield writes this inability to tolerate the friction of
Speaker 4: ordinary interaction at worker elsewhere as an obstacle when it
Speaker 4: comes to connecting with others. But more, perhaps more importantly,
Speaker 4: it stands in the way of fun, a thing with
Speaker 4: which Zoomers are not well acquainted. After a highly regimented
Speaker 4: childhood and an overscheduled adolescence, not their faults.
Speaker 2: Packed with resume building activities.
Speaker 1: This generation isn't just more anxile and depressed them their predecessors.
Speaker 1: They're so tightly wound and mistrustful of others that they
Speaker 1: would rather die than let their guard down, which rules
Speaker 1: alcohol right out. I'm reminded of the famous move.
Speaker 4: I don't look as the Germans for much instruction on
Speaker 4: anything other than maybe building auto bonds and engineering.
Speaker 2: But the German insurance industry.
Speaker 1: Came out several years ago in a giant story in
Speaker 1: Europe that was ignored in the US because it was
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: The German insurance.
Speaker 4: Industry said, hey, make playgrounds fun again, and quote unquote dangerous.
Speaker 4: We have raised generations of kids who have no sense
Speaker 4: of their own their own abilities. They have no developed
Speaker 4: risk assessment skills. All of childhood to a large extent,
Speaker 4: And if you look at it as a strictly anthropological topic,
Speaker 4: childhood is about gaining skills and learning risk management. And
Speaker 4: if you don't let kids risk anything and fall down
Speaker 4: and skin their knees and get bloodied and make mistakes
Speaker 4: and get in trouble and get lost and find their
Speaker 4: way back, not just once, but over and over again.
Speaker 2: You're going to have adults who are terrified. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I'd like my kids to stay away from indebriants as
Speaker 1: long as possible, but I don't want them to be
Speaker 1: unable to have a job, or ask a girl out
Speaker 1: for a date, or call the place in order a
Speaker 1: pizza or any of those things.
Speaker 4: So right, would you send your kids off to college
Speaker 4: having not tried alcohol?
Speaker 1: I went off to college having not tried alcohol, and
Speaker 1: I don't get me any harm. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that bothers me. It depends on I guess it
Speaker 1: would be the reason. Are you afraid of it? Well?
Speaker 2: Right, right, I don't think I was afraid of it.
Speaker 1: I just didn't run with a crowd that did that,
Speaker 1: and everything went great.
Speaker 2: Or not depends on the individual.
Speaker 4: Of course, my daughters knew what alcohol does to them
Speaker 4: before they went to college.
Speaker 2: I thought that was important. Hum interesting.
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