Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Jetty and Hey.
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Yetty, everything from the war in Iran to
Speaker 3: the Michael Jackson movie that made so much Moon money
Speaker 3: over the weekend, to the shooting over the weekend and
Speaker 3: everything else our own lives.
Speaker 2: Had another run in with a doctor over the weekend.
Speaker 2: That weird. Is it a California thing or a modern
Speaker 2: thing or whatever? Anyway, talk about that later. But we're
Speaker 2: big Ben SaaS fans around here. We have mentioned that
Speaker 2: many times over the years. I think we interviewed I
Speaker 2: know we interviewed him at least once.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And before we get to the incredible wisdom and
Speaker 4: positive vibes of Ben Sass later on the hour, there's
Speaker 4: going to be something to contrast with, which is the
Speaker 4: casual embrace of hate and violence in the mainstream left.
Speaker 2: So stay tuned, won't you. Oh boy, we got to
Speaker 2: get Noah Rothman on because he's got a book about
Speaker 2: that and he's making the rounds right now from National Review.
Speaker 2: Ben Sass, I wish I'd known the guy. He's still alive,
Speaker 2: but he is dying of cancer, and he's a small
Speaker 2: town Nebraska guy. I'm a small town Kansas guy, and
Speaker 2: I just I wish I had known him because he's
Speaker 2: absolutely amazing. He is. He is like what I picture
Speaker 2: the founding fathers were probably like, if you listened to
Speaker 2: them talk, Yeah, he'd have made a good founding father.
Speaker 2: I think yeah, well said yeah, and super smart guy,
Speaker 2: too good for politics. I was just I was watching
Speaker 2: the interview last night, and I've thought this many times.
Speaker 2: I've listened to interviews with him, I've read stuff and
Speaker 2: we talked to him, and just like, why can't we
Speaker 2: have more people like this in our politics because they
Speaker 2: won't take the job I guess most of the time,
Speaker 2: where they won't say the things you need to say
Speaker 2: to get elected.
Speaker 4: I think it comes down to what does getting into
Speaker 4: politics reward and what does it punish? And we get
Speaker 4: the leader's public servants we deserve because our politics are perverse.
Speaker 2: I retweeted the Ben Sas interview from sixty minutes last night,
Speaker 2: saying everybody should watch it. Sarah Isger, who I really like, said,
Speaker 2: haven't seen a conversation like this intellectual, philosophical big picture
Speaker 2: on TV? In decades. It's incredible. I would agree it
Speaker 2: was incredible. Let's listen to some of it. Here's Ben SaaS,
Speaker 2: who's dying of pancreatic cancer, on sixty minutes last night.
Speaker 1: I love America, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: big and meaty things that we should have been talking
Speaker 1: about and we still can talk about. And having a
Speaker 1: terminal diagnosis, is it really that unique.
Speaker 5: We're all always on the clock.
Speaker 1: Some of us have the benefit maybe it's a weird word,
Speaker 1: but the benefit of knowing our time is finite and defined.
Speaker 1: Then it becomes an opportunity to talk about bigger stuff.
Speaker 5: And you have focus from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's weird to be in your early fifties
Speaker 1: and get a terminal diagnosis and people all of a
Speaker 1: sudden act like you're ninety three or ninety four and
Speaker 1: you have a lot of wisdom. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I have a lot of wisdom, but I have a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I think we should be reflecting
Speaker 1: on together.
Speaker 2: Oh, and he lays out some of them right here.
Speaker 1: Neither of these parties really have very big or good
Speaker 1: ideas about twenty thirty or twenty fifty at a national
Speaker 1: security level, at a future of work level, at an
Speaker 1: institution building level.
Speaker 5: The Congress is not wrestling with bigger important questions right now.
Speaker 6: If Congress is looking at the wrong things, what is
Speaker 6: it missing.
Speaker 1: We are living through a digital revolution, which is both
Speaker 1: glorious and horrific at the same time, because what the
Speaker 1: digital revolution does is it accelerates almost everything about the
Speaker 1: human experience. Anything that can be reduced to a series
Speaker 1: of steps, which is most economic activity, is going to
Speaker 1: be routinized and become really really cheap, really fast, and
Speaker 1: really ubiquitous. We've never lived in a world where twenty
Speaker 1: two year olds couldn't assume that the work they did
Speaker 1: they would be able to do until death of retirement.
Speaker 1: And we're never going to have that world again. And
Speaker 1: Congress doesn't talk about any of those kind of most
Speaker 1: fundamental issues. The disruption of work for good and for
Speaker 1: ill should be front and central.
Speaker 5: Congress doesn't even not to have that conversation.
Speaker 4: It's an enormous conversation. And the small libertarian in me
Speaker 4: is concerned that Congress will respond by passing gigantic, expensive
Speaker 4: government programs that will be rife with bloat and fraud.
Speaker 2: I had another point I was going to make. It
Speaker 2: was actually more positive than that.
Speaker 4: Oh, but there should be thinking before the storm hits,
Speaker 4: in the same way that a lot of the world
Speaker 4: health organizations and our health organizations thought a lot about
Speaker 4: what if there was a giant pandemic, how should we
Speaker 4: handle it? Then when it hit, they panicked and didn't
Speaker 4: do any of the things they said they were going
Speaker 4: to do, which.
Speaker 2: They should have stuck with.
Speaker 4: But a little planning, a little if this then that
Speaker 4: I think would be really helpful before the AI ending
Speaker 4: work as we know it thing really manifests.
Speaker 2: Let's start down the road of Ben Saz talking about
Speaker 2: the role politics should play in our lives.
Speaker 5: What makes you a Republican.
Speaker 1: I'm a Republican because I think the Lincoln Reagan continuum
Speaker 1: does the best job of building constraint on thinking. Washington
Speaker 1: is our fundamental political community. I think your fundamental political
Speaker 1: community is your neighborhood, in your city hall, and maybe
Speaker 1: even your state legislature. And right now we are sacrificing
Speaker 1: a lot of our national politics to weird folks who
Speaker 1: want their main community to be their political tribe at
Speaker 1: a federal level, and that should be like the ninth thing,
Speaker 1: or the fifteenth thing you care about, not the first
Speaker 1: or secon.
Speaker 2: I would agree, weird folks.
Speaker 1: He goes on, It's no secret that the current president
Speaker 1: and I wrestled on lots and lots of issues. But
Speaker 1: I don't spend much time commenting on our current politics
Speaker 1: because I don't really think our current politics are driving
Speaker 1: what's happening. I think it's mostly an echo of what's happening.
Speaker 1: I think we have really thin, shallow community right now,
Speaker 1: and unless people know the thickness of their local community,
Speaker 1: it's hard to make sense of what national politics are.
Speaker 1: For I think our national political dysfunction is an echo
Speaker 1: of larger.
Speaker 2: Problems that's troubling and correct, I believe, and correct and
Speaker 2: going to be hard to fix in the Internet era.
Speaker 4: Sin shallow connections to our communities that sounds about right.
Speaker 2: And feeling like really really strong connection to whoever is
Speaker 2: president at the.
Speaker 4: Moment right, and the two camps becoming more and more
Speaker 4: quasi religious too. In various ways, he got asked about
Speaker 4: what's conservative or not. Oh, actually, this is a clip
Speaker 4: they played from so Ben Sass was one of the
Speaker 4: yes votes to remove Trump from office after January sixth,
Speaker 4: He was one of the Republicans that voted yes.
Speaker 2: Was there a total of six or seven? Seven? I
Speaker 2: believe he voted yes to remove him, and he had
Speaker 2: to explain to his Nebraska voters why he didn't think
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff Trump did was conservative.
Speaker 1: Here's some of that personality. Cults aren't conservative. Conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: aren't conservative. Lying that an election has been stolen. It's
Speaker 1: not conservative. Acting like politics as a religion, it isn't conservative.
Speaker 2: So I turned some of you off, I'm sure. And then,
Speaker 2: more importantly to me, his conversation about again people the
Speaker 2: weird people that want to be in national office.
Speaker 6: Many senators I know would not be able to breathe
Speaker 6: without that job.
Speaker 5: It would kill them to leave.
Speaker 1: I don't want what you said to be true, but
Speaker 1: I fear that that is true, and that is a
Speaker 1: sign of a much, much deeper problem. We got a
Speaker 1: lot of people who serve in government who really do
Speaker 1: think the highest and greatest thing you can ever do
Speaker 1: is have the title senator or congressman. The best thing
Speaker 1: you can do is be called dad or mom, lover, neighbor, friend, governor, senator.
Speaker 5: House member. It's a great way to serve.
Speaker 1: It should be your eleventh calling or maybe sixth, but
Speaker 1: never top.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you do when your national sport is
Speaker 4: federal politics and your quasi religion.
Speaker 2: Is federal politics?
Speaker 4: And I can probably come up with a couple of
Speaker 4: more metaphors because it's morphed into this weird way beyond
Speaker 4: what politics were ever has been the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what what did you you said? Our national
Speaker 2: religion and uh.
Speaker 4: And uh sports pastime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our national pastime. It's our number one TV show.
Speaker 2: The number one TV show in America isn't entertainment Cosby
Speaker 2: or Seinfeld. It's what did Trump do today? And how
Speaker 2: we're the good mean things said about him? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's a it is our pastime, our entertainment. We
Speaker 2: think the answer to all our problems comes out of Washington,
Speaker 2: d c. And specifically the president. Yeah, it's it's terrible.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely trouble and not the way it was designed.
Speaker 4: And I agree with Ben Sass that a lot of
Speaker 4: the current weirdness we have in politics are a reflection
Speaker 4: of that. Because again, later in the hour, we're going
Speaker 4: to get to the casual embrace of like murderous violence
Speaker 4: on the left and some of the things that have
Speaker 4: been said recently, and you don't get there.
Speaker 2: That's not one step to get there.
Speaker 4: That's being way down a path that you suddenly embrace
Speaker 4: somebody who says, we need to have these people's blood,
Speaker 4: blood running through the streets. We need to slaughter these
Speaker 4: people people nodding their head. Yeah right, the whole radical
Speaker 4: chic thing.
Speaker 3: Eh.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where we go from here. We're not
Speaker 2: going to play it here. But if you watch the interview,
Speaker 2: the last part of it is about him being a
Speaker 2: very bensas, being a very devout Calvinist Reformed Church Calvinist guy,
Speaker 2: and him talking about what that means to him and
Speaker 2: how he looks at death and dying through that lens
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff. And then oh my god,
Speaker 2: the stuff about not getting to walk his daughters down
Speaker 2: the aisle or being there for his son when he's sixteen,
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty oof ooh.
Speaker 4: Trying to stay optimistic about that. Yeah, that was very, very,
Speaker 4: very heavy and emotional.
Speaker 2: At least that was something. But is there is there
Speaker 2: any way we can break out of this? In the
Speaker 2: Internet era, you don't raise money with interviews like that
Speaker 2: as a politician. No, And I've got an extremely provocative
Speaker 2: philosophical question for you. Do we have time, Yes, we do, ah.
Speaker 4: In a time where mobs are running wild in the streets,
Speaker 4: will a Ben Sass be heard?
Speaker 2: Can he be heard?
Speaker 3: Or?
Speaker 4: And I know a lot of my younger friends on
Speaker 4: the right would say, look, I agree with him, But
Speaker 4: if the Ben Sasses of the world, the political pacifists,
Speaker 4: will get absolutely bowled over, bowled over, bulldozed by the
Speaker 4: howling mob. We've got to neutralize their howling mob with
Speaker 4: ours before we can even hope to have a sane conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, and he and and and a Ben Sass in
Speaker 2: most districts is not going to lose to a Democrat.
Speaker 2: You're gonna get primaried on the right right and get
Speaker 2: and lose. Same with anybody who tries to be anything
Speaker 2: like Ben SaaS as a Democrat, you're gonna get primary
Speaker 2: on the left by an AOC or somebody. Yeah, talking
Speaker 2: about public if you can keep it talking about how
Speaker 2: evil capitalism and how trumps Hitler. So yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know how we break out of that. Couldn't recommend that
Speaker 2: interview with Ben SaaS, even if you ignore the government
Speaker 2: stuff and just do the child rearing, how you face
Speaker 2: death stuff, because it's really good.
Speaker 4: If anybody knows how to fix this, call me at
Speaker 4: home anytime, night or day, let me know, or drop
Speaker 4: us a note mail bag at Armstrong and Giddy dot Connau.
Speaker 2: Fax it to the president quickly. I said one to
Speaker 2: the Michael Jackson movie. I do want to talk about that.
Speaker 2: We've got lots of stuff to get to. I hope
Speaker 2: you can stick.
Speaker 5: Around these ideas in my head. Just got to get
Speaker 5: him out and do it.
Speaker 2: Michael not a little boy anymore. You've also began what's
Speaker 2: doing with Michael. I knew you were different the moment
Speaker 2: you were born.
Speaker 5: You have a very special mind. And aso again, I
Speaker 5: believe the music you could chase the world.
Speaker 2: So that's from the new Michael Jackson movie, which came
Speaker 2: out Friday, and it's the number one movie at the
Speaker 2: box office. Made a ton of movie. My son and
Speaker 2: a couple of his friends went and really really liked it.
Speaker 2: I had just coincidentally Friday morning, read the review by
Speaker 2: armand White in the National Review. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know Armand's work, I am usually highly annoyed
Speaker 2: by it. He gets such a kick out of being
Speaker 2: the contrary opinion on everything all the time that I
Speaker 2: often think it's just working way too hard.
Speaker 4: It takes longer to read these damn reviews than it
Speaker 4: does to watch the movie. But I really liked this
Speaker 4: one because he uh the the reviewer arm and White
Speaker 4: laid out how this movie separates the scandal Michael Jackson,
Speaker 4: the media takedown Michael Jackson, where we all did the
Speaker 4: thing that we seem to like to do for whatever
Speaker 4: is like somebody who gets really big, then we all
Speaker 4: like to turn them down and destroy them. It leaves
Speaker 4: out to tear them down and destroy them stuff, to
Speaker 4: just concentrate on the thing that still exists, the rise
Speaker 4: of a young kid into being the biggest pop superstar
Speaker 4: of all time and the art around it. And that's
Speaker 4: what the movie is all about, without the mccaullay culkin
Speaker 4: sleeping with boys stuff.
Speaker 2: Did you hear the story of how that came to be?
Speaker 4: Though in the movie they it included it, like a
Speaker 4: third of the movie was the scandal stuff. But then
Speaker 4: they realized the estate realized that they were bound by
Speaker 4: confidentiality agreements to never make any money based on earth
Speaker 4: some settlements. I guess never to make any money on
Speaker 4: those stories, so they had to reshoot like a third
Speaker 4: of the movie and it ended up being like a
Speaker 4: happy act that ended up great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I think I'm perfectly fine with it
Speaker 2: leaving out the scandal stuff. As Armand writes, he says,
Speaker 2: anyone who's conflicted about separating the art from the artist
Speaker 2: is ignorant of art and has never had a significant
Speaker 2: art experience, certainly nothing comparable to the delight MJ brought
Speaker 2: to the world. Then lists all these songs that he's saying,
Speaker 2: those unfortunates who pretend moral or political supremacy over human
Speaker 2: nature should simply stop pretending to engage with any form
Speaker 2: of art, which I think is pretty good, because if
Speaker 2: you're going to get into the hole, if you're going
Speaker 2: to spend all your time on how crazy Van Goh was,
Speaker 2: or you know, how this person was a this or
Speaker 2: this person was a that, with all your greatest then
Speaker 2: you just got to step away from the world of
Speaker 2: enjoying art.
Speaker 4: I guess for the bombo who ate it in embedded
Speaker 4: sex trafficking exactly exactly. Yeah, you know, maybe it's because
Speaker 4: I've been involved in the art since I was a
Speaker 4: little kid. But for the longest time, I just I figured, Yeah,
Speaker 4: artists are wacky, and that's that's all I need. Really,
Speaker 4: It's fine that are they're wacky. They're frequently one sort
Speaker 4: of wacky or another, but they produce wonderful art.
Speaker 2: So I appreciate the art. Yeah, So it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 2: He was all the stuff that the movie portrays, absolutely
Speaker 2: all that, you know, the rise from this and that
Speaker 2: and the biggest this or that, Absolutely true. Anyways, talented. Sure,
Speaker 2: it was fun picking. I took my son and we
Speaker 2: picked up his friends on the other side of town
Speaker 2: and listened to Michael Jackson songs in the car on
Speaker 2: the way there, and they were so thrilled and enjoyed
Speaker 2: the movie and got back in the car when I
Speaker 2: picked them up, just raving about it. That's good, there's
Speaker 2: no need. There's nothing wrong with making a movie about
Speaker 2: the scandal stuff too. But god, we've seen a lot
Speaker 2: of that is they made it up, you know, as
Speaker 2: a dad.
Speaker 4: The whole emotional abuse by his dad and how that
Speaker 4: and his various self image problems kind of ate him up.
Speaker 4: That's a dark story worth telling too, Just it doesn't
Speaker 4: need to be in the same movie.
Speaker 2: Though, right, So anyway, Arman says, you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: engage with in art if you're one of those people.
Speaker 2: Just kind of a funny thing to say. Lighten up,
Speaker 2: Francis speaking.
Speaker 5: Of great art, Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 7: I'm pro stealing from big corporations, you know, I'm pro
Speaker 7: piracy all the way, like across the board.
Speaker 2: We gotta we gotta get back to.
Speaker 7: Cool crimes like that, like you know, bank robberies, chaos,
Speaker 7: full chaos, let's go.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, so I don't know this guy. You're
Speaker 2: gonna you're gonna have to fully explain this to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That was the voice of Hassan Piker, who was
Speaker 4: part of the Young Turk's Family that podcast, and he
Speaker 4: started out on his own Turkish American. He is a Maoist,
Speaker 4: communist and an Islamist too, and he has become for
Speaker 4: all of his bizarre extremism, which we will touch on
Speaker 4: the toast of the quote unquote mainstream. That clip that
Speaker 4: you heard was from the New York Times podcast where
Speaker 4: a couple of staff writers were laughing and flirting with
Speaker 4: the very handsome mister Piker, and he was explaining his ideas,
Speaker 4: which we touched on last week about how it's perfectly
Speaker 4: okay to steal from big corporations. We read Nelly Bowles
Speaker 4: great analysis of how that all ends, and then he
Speaker 4: gets into the concept of social murder and how corporations, governments, whomever,
Speaker 4: who have policies that lead to people suffering or maybe
Speaker 4: even dying, murdering them is absolutely justified. And I quote
Speaker 4: Ryan Thompson as the United Healthcare CEO was engaging in
Speaker 4: a tremendous amount of social murder, the systemaized form of violence,
Speaker 4: the structural violence of property, the for profit paywall system
Speaker 4: of healthcare in this country, and the consequences that are
Speaker 4: tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of death, and essentially, so, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's absolutely justified to kill. I do not think it
Speaker 4: was an effective political action. I do think it was
Speaker 4: an effective act of political consciousness raising the murder of
Speaker 4: the guy.
Speaker 2: So murders obviously worse than stealing. But he was the
Speaker 2: is he behind the whole micro looting grab steel lemons
Speaker 2: from Whole Foods thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was part of that conversation. Yeah, exactly, He's
Speaker 4: one hundred percent in favor of that. And then the
Speaker 4: fabulous Nelly Bowls of the Free Press is writing about
Speaker 4: it and talks about how she wishes the days of
Speaker 4: leftists wanting like your Nordic country socialism would come back,
Speaker 4: because now the modern left would reject that completely as
Speaker 4: something close to fascism. And she writes, I swear to
Speaker 4: God that wanting the Norway sort of progressivism now is
Speaker 4: considered irredeemably right wing by your average hipster New York
Speaker 4: Times employee.
Speaker 2: I know these people I work there.
Speaker 4: They genuinely think that having cops arrest a guy waving
Speaker 4: a knife on the subway is evil. You should stay
Speaker 4: seated and accept your knife death with dignity, even gratitude.
Speaker 4: The modern left says that wanting let's say, excellent public
Speaker 4: schools are cleaned public parks is racism, ableism, sexism, and transphobism.
Speaker 4: You want a Norwegian style public safety, too bad, you're
Speaker 4: getting street code.
Speaker 2: Our new laws are just snitches, get stitches.
Speaker 4: And then she gets into and boy, we're gonna quote
Speaker 4: a number of great thinkers in this segment. She gets
Speaker 4: into where he says he's fine with setting fire to
Speaker 4: buildings and collective action blah blah blah. I think people
Speaker 4: assume Hassan Piker speaking about property owners is joking when
Speaker 4: he says, kill them, kill those mfors, Murder those mfors
Speaker 4: in the street, Let the streets, Let the streets soak
Speaker 4: in their effing red capitalist blood. I think they think
Speaker 4: it's like goofy kid talk. But a lot of times historically,
Speaker 4: groups of people have done just that. You think you're
Speaker 4: exempt from history. You think the Hassan we face this
Speaker 4: cycle is any different from the Hassans of yesterday, just
Speaker 4: because he's wearing a button down and this time he's handsome.
Speaker 2: So does he present this in like a comedic way?
Speaker 2: Because I heard there was laughing there.
Speaker 4: There's laughing during that part, because yeah, he's got a
Speaker 4: good enough sense of humor. But no, he's absolutely serious
Speaker 4: about the anarchy stuff and the maoist stuff, because that's crazy.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, dog, Yeah, it absolutely is. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But Nellie, who is very very seen, takes them perfectly seriously,
Speaker 4: as does Rich Lowry or Jim Garritty rather of the
Speaker 4: National Review. He's writing about the history of the guy.
Speaker 4: And you'll have to take my word for it, because
Speaker 4: this we get a little long. The number of times
Speaker 4: he has been feted and celebrated and written about and
Speaker 4: interviewed and cited as a real influential guy by the
Speaker 4: mainstream Left, The New Yorker, the New York Times. By
Speaker 4: April of this year, Piker was the subject of his
Speaker 4: third overwhelmingly positive New York Times profile in six years
Speaker 4: every other year. So this guy is he's on stage
Speaker 4: with Bernie Sanders and aoc et cetera, et cetera. This
Speaker 4: guy is mainstream left. What's that capitalists quote again? Can
Speaker 4: you hit me with that again about people dying? Yeah,
Speaker 4: they's something. Uh kill them, Kill those mfors, Murder those
Speaker 4: mfors in the streets, Let the streets, Let the streets
Speaker 4: soak in their effing red capitalist blood. That's yeah, that's
Speaker 4: that's not a joke. And then one more note from
Speaker 4: the Great Charles C. W. Cook, and he says his
Speaker 4: lead is clearly that uh Hassan Piker is indeed the enemy.
Speaker 4: In a rambling group chat that was filmed and transcribed
Speaker 4: by The New York Times this week, Piker repeatedly made
Speaker 4: it clear that he is disdainful towards the fundamental rules
Speaker 4: that keep our society together, Like when Piker defended the
Speaker 4: murder of the United Healthcare CEO mister Thompson, whom he
Speaker 4: deemed to have been guilty of quote a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of social murder, and suggested that he would happily steal
Speaker 4: a car if he could get away with it, and
Speaker 4: laid out a complex framework for when it is acceptable
Speaker 4: to shoplift when the victim is big corporations, and when
Speaker 4: it is not when the victim is taxpayer funded with
Speaker 4: union labor and adjusted prices. Also okay for piker is
Speaker 4: ip theft, stealing movies, and things like that, to which
Speaker 4: his interlocutors The Times Najia Spiegelman and New Yorker's Gia
Speaker 4: Tolentino responded, Wow, that all seems utterly psychotic. Have you
Speaker 4: considered getting professional health? Ha ha, I'm just kidding in reality.
Speaker 4: Tolanino responded by explaining that she is opposed to quote
Speaker 4: profoundly selfish and more collectively destructive actions such as getting
Speaker 4: iced coffee and plastic cups or flying on airplanes for pleasure,
Speaker 4: but she supports selfless, moral and collectively constructive actions such
Speaker 4: as blowing up a pipeline, and Spiegelman responded by saying,
Speaker 4: I can relate to what you're saying, Gia, it is
Speaker 4: so hard to live ethically in an unethical society. And
Speaker 4: then Charles response, is it I confess that I do
Speaker 4: not find it, so I do not spend my days
Speaker 4: sitting on sofas pondering aloud whether it be proper to
Speaker 4: rob the louver. No doubt this makes me some sort
Speaker 4: of plotting, unfashioned, reactionary. But I'm rather steadfast in the
Speaker 4: view that the norms that the Times Tree are hoping
Speaker 4: to dismantle are the core, non negotiable building blocks of
Speaker 4: our civilization. It's not in fact acceptable to murder people
Speaker 4: because you think they are social murderers. It's not in
Speaker 4: fact acceptable to steel cars if you can get away
Speaker 4: with it, and shoplift.
Speaker 2: And blowing up pipelines and the rest of it.
Speaker 4: This guy and his acolytes are rejecting the very basic
Speaker 4: building blocks of civilization, even in the name of He
Speaker 4: is a proud Maoist, by the way he says, so
Speaker 4: even without the politics of it, though, I just I
Speaker 4: don't I don't understand how they think it would work,
Speaker 4: because obviously, if we all stole from the grocery store
Speaker 4: the way he says, he and his friends do.
Speaker 2: The grocery store would go out of business or close
Speaker 2: the stores or whatever. Then there'd be no grocery store.
Speaker 4: He would say, no, I'll open a fair priced government
Speaker 4: grocery store where poor people could eat there for free
Speaker 4: and people.
Speaker 2: Would pay as they could. And the rest of it.
Speaker 2: The ability.
Speaker 4: I've been fascinated by this since I was a little kid,
Speaker 4: the ability of political ideology to turn off people's brains
Speaker 4: and once they get fired up and are screaming for
Speaker 4: revolution or change or blood in the streets. I mean,
Speaker 4: read everything you can about MAO Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Speaker 2: You just have to.
Speaker 4: Accept that people will commit acts of horrifying evil, including
Speaker 4: against their own loved ones, if they get fired up
Speaker 4: about radical politics.
Speaker 2: It's just the way we humans behave.
Speaker 4: But you've got to call guys like this out when
Speaker 4: they say what they say.
Speaker 2: And that guy over the weekend might be one of
Speaker 2: those kind of people that got all fired up by
Speaker 2: radical stuff online that ran into the press dinner.
Speaker 4: I'm almost certainly was yeah, one hundred percent. You know,
Speaker 4: there are a couple of different like subcategories of these guys.
Speaker 4: But I loved what Nelly bole said about the Hassan
Speaker 4: Piker's of the past, They actually did this. What makes
Speaker 4: you think we're immune from history? And so when you
Speaker 4: have Nelly Bowles, a woman of the center left San
Speaker 4: Francisco lesbian, and Charles C. W. Cook is singing from
Speaker 4: the same hymn book, I think the New York Times
Speaker 4: ought to wake the f up to what they're promoting.
Speaker 2: It's sick anyway. Yeah, it's pretty troubling that The New
Speaker 2: York Times is coddling that. I mean they are in
Speaker 2: they're an important news outlet. Uh yes, yeah, And I think.
Speaker 4: Notable that they had a couple of giggling females clearly
Speaker 4: enamored with mister Piker and not a real blanking journalist.
Speaker 2: Who said, wait, you're just calling.
Speaker 4: You're calling now for the mass murder of anybody who
Speaker 4: owns property. By the way, Piker's made a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of money preaching this crap. Just an awful human being.
Speaker 2: Boy.
Speaker 4: There seemed to be a lot of them around, and
Speaker 4: unfortunately you hear from them them. You hear from them
Speaker 4: courtesy of the internet.
Speaker 2: II karamba. You know Warren Buffett, one of the great
Speaker 2: investors of all time. One of the richest men in
Speaker 2: the world. He did an interesting interview over the weekend
Speaker 2: which he talked about why state lotteries are so unfair
Speaker 2: to the poor. I agree with him and don't agree
Speaker 2: with him at the same time. But it's pretty interesting
Speaker 2: some of the stats if you play scratchers and that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned, Michael, I think you just asked for You
Speaker 4: warned us about a different one earlier. But I'm happy.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to deliver whatever important helpful commercial messages on
Speaker 4: the schedule.
Speaker 2: This one's definitely helpful. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Get it off there. Yeah, we all know that our
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Speaker 4: slash armstrong. Warren Buffett says gam legalized gambling is a
Speaker 4: tax on poor people, and statistically it seems to be true.
Speaker 4: Whether or not that's something I should worry about it
Speaker 4: or not is a different topic.
Speaker 2: So we got that coming up.
Speaker 4: There also seems to be a movement toward recognizing Look,
Speaker 4: these so called prediction markets, scambling casinos, that's all they are.
Speaker 2: And we got to treat them the same. Interesting, Okay,
Speaker 2: all that on the ways to.
Speaker 1: Hear Birthday this week, but we found out we still
Speaker 1: use a lot of oil.
Speaker 5: Nobody can afford gas.
Speaker 2: This week Tiger Woods crashed his bicycle. A man. That
Speaker 2: is a Johnny Carson joke right there. That is what
Speaker 2: that is. So how do we feel about the woman
Speaker 2: that after the shooting happened and everybody ran out, she
Speaker 2: started gathering up wine bottles off the table staunchly pro
Speaker 2: speaking for myself. So he had two people. You had
Speaker 2: one guy who sat there and finished either his mashed
Speaker 2: potatoes or his salad. There's some discrepancy there. But while
Speaker 2: people were ducking under tables and running out of the room,
Speaker 2: he just sat there and thought, you know what I
Speaker 2: paid for this, I'm gonna finish my salad. And one
Speaker 2: woman that was going around to me and there's nobody here,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna grab bottles of wine. Go girl, Right, you
Speaker 2: paid a lot to be there.
Speaker 4: There was wine. Now you gotta leave. Wait a minute,
Speaker 4: I was counting on a wine buzz this evening. I'm
Speaker 4: just grabbing me. Somebody is Otherwise, what are they gonna
Speaker 4: do for it?
Speaker 2: Down the same? Almost certainly we're gonna well the people
Speaker 2: who work there. I sure I would imagine we're gonna
Speaker 2: split them up somehow, bus boys and what they won't
Speaker 2: miss them. Surely took a couple.
Speaker 4: Otherwise, the terrace of one exactly, Michael, get your wine, girl,
Speaker 4: Well that's what the mashed potato. Guy was thinking, they
Speaker 4: say they want to die doing something you love. Man,
Speaker 4: I love these mashed potatoes.
Speaker 2: Well, who knew how long he was sitting there before
Speaker 2: they got to eat, And now, right, dinner's chaos, so.
Speaker 4: Right, right, you know, right, And initially I guess the
Speaker 4: gal came out and said, all right, we're gonna resume
Speaker 4: in half an hour, then quickly said, whoops, no, we're
Speaker 4: not going to resume at all.
Speaker 2: So yeah, come on, things said, the all bets were off,
Speaker 2: we'll talk more about this to kick off Hour three.
Speaker 2: Turned out to be the shooter was a California teacher. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm shocked by that. You don't expect that out a
Speaker 2: teaching class in California. So Warren Buffett did a sit
Speaker 2: down interview first when he's done, since he left Berkshire
Speaker 2: Hathaway where he was the CEO and became one of
Speaker 2: the richest men in the world as an investor, anyway,
Speaker 2: I thought this was interesting what he talked about. He gave,
Speaker 2: according to Wherever, this interview was the cleanest indictment of
Speaker 2: legalized gambling in a decade. He called it a tax
Speaker 2: cut for the wealthy. The math proves him exactly right. Well,
Speaker 2: that's one way to look at it. It's a tax
Speaker 2: cut for the wealthy, it's a tax on the poor.
Speaker 2: If you play, nobody's making you play. The point is
Speaker 2: that it's mostly people with not money that play. State lotteries,
Speaker 2: for instance, generate over ninety billion dollars a year. The
Speaker 2: bottom half of income earners account for roughly seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the total spend of that gambling. The average lottery
Speaker 2: player makes thirty eight thousand dollars a year. A household
Speaker 2: earning twenty thousand dollars a year, which ain't much in
Speaker 2: the modern world, right, spends three times more on lottery
Speaker 2: tickets than the household earning thirty thousand dollars a year. Wow,
Speaker 2: So it's a pretty steady line of h lineup of
Speaker 2: exponentially the higher. Yes, right, I mean it's thirty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars year. Household income ain't much, but you're paying all
Speaker 2: You're spending your money on lottery tickets a lot less
Speaker 2: than the twenty thousand dollars a year crowd. And I
Speaker 2: talk about this all the time that when I go
Speaker 2: to the circle k, which is just happens to be
Speaker 2: on my commute home where I end up there a lot.
Speaker 2: I stand in line, and everybody in there who doesn't
Speaker 2: exactly look like they're well to do is buying cigarettes,
Speaker 2: energy drinks, and lottery tickets. You don't need any of those.
Speaker 2: Why are you spending your money on any of those things? Uh?
Speaker 5: Not?
Speaker 2: In none of my business in my world. And less
Speaker 2: you end up with no money at some point in
Speaker 2: your life, and you and your crowd demands more taxpayer money,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what goes on. So then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, it is my business and it's worth observing.
Speaker 2: I think that roughly half of our politics in this
Speaker 2: country view do you make good decisions? As a question,
Speaker 2: that's completely out of bounce. All right, get to finish
Speaker 2: this article right here, or this post. The implicit tax rate,
Speaker 2: meaning whatever the state keeps after prizes, runs thirty to
Speaker 2: fifty percent, depending on the game. No other revenue source
Speaker 2: in America has that base in that rate, and they
Speaker 2: call that a tax cut for the wealthy. The fact
Speaker 2: that the poorer you are, the more likely you are
Speaker 2: wasting your money because it is a waste of money
Speaker 2: on lottery tickets, something you could decide not to do.
Speaker 2: That's a tax cut for the wealthy because they're smart
Speaker 2: enough to not buy lottery tickets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't make the argument or don't need to. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're twisting themselves into a delicious rhetorical pretzel. No doubt it.
Speaker 4: Money is fungible.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But I mean, if you're going to talk about the
Speaker 4: poor people spending money on the lottery, it would be
Speaker 4: like the seventeenth line item that you know it kind
Speaker 4: of results in a tax cut for the rich indirectly,
Speaker 4: and I think I suppose in a way it does.
Speaker 2: But again that's not your lead. That's ridiculous when you
Speaker 2: have the option to not play the lottery.
Speaker 4: Come on, there are like four Maybe I'll put them
Speaker 4: together and write a quickie book. Four or five. Just
Speaker 4: very very simple principles that are undeniable. No philosopher, no
Speaker 4: great man or woman would ever deny them. But they've
Speaker 4: gone out of fashion. For instance, if you make good decisions,
Speaker 4: sound decisions, you will have a better life than if
Speaker 4: you make poor decisions. So let's talk about what are
Speaker 4: poor decisions and what are good decisions. A lot of
Speaker 4: our politics would reject that very framework, which is a
Speaker 4: recipe for disaster and or communism.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's again, it's none of my business how
Speaker 2: anybody else spends their money unless you're getting some of
Speaker 2: my tax money because of the you need housing, food, whatever,
Speaker 2: because you don't have any money. You could say to
Speaker 2: the twenty thousand dollars a year household that's probably buying
Speaker 2: energy drinks, cigarettes, and lottery tickets that you know, you
Speaker 2: can buy energy drinks over there by the case and
Speaker 2: they're like eighty cents a can instead of three dollars
Speaker 2: a can, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 2: if you wanted to, I don't feel like it's any
Speaker 2: of my business. But again, unless you're getting some of
Speaker 2: my money, which you are, right right, that's a tough
Speaker 2: one for a welfare states. That's where it gets very
Speaker 2: difficult on the you know, the libertarian view of people
Speaker 2: get to do whatever they want. If you're a welfare state,
Speaker 2: that falls apart pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of the claus b
Speaker 4: of every libertarian argument or really liberty loving argument, is
Speaker 4: that and since we're all responsibil for ourselves, that you
Speaker 4: will bear the brunt.
Speaker 2: Of your terrible decisions or waste or whatever.
Speaker 4: But now we've revoked that again because it buys votes,
Speaker 4: and votes by power, and power gets you money.
Speaker 2: So the want to Be Assassin said some interesting things
Speaker 2: about the security at the hotel on Saturday. We could discuss,
Speaker 2: among other things, around that whole incident in hour three plus.
Speaker 2: I think we're still at war, aren't we? We are?
Speaker 2: That was forgotten for forty eight hours. If you miss
Speaker 2: a segment, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty