#140 - Prayers For Hitler

Music. Music.

Oh, my God. I need to get out there and do it now. After Trump got his ear nicked by a bullet, Butler, Pennsylvania. And I just kept waiting. I think I was trying not to jump the gun. Trying not to get too far ahead of anything. To say something that might be proven wrong. You know, I didn't want to jump to conclusions that this was a left-wing nut job like everybody thought. The media sure as hell thought it was, right?

Definitely. Oh, we've got to tone it down. We've got to take the temperature down in the country. It was all over CNN. That was, oh boy. But they definitely thought that the rhetoric, the trial by rhetorical combat, that we've been engaging in for so long, especially over there, the anti-Trump stuff, Trump media, Trump, Trump TV, CNN and MSNBC. Well, they definitely assumed after Trump was shot that what happened there in Pennsylvania had something to do with them.

If they didn't believe it, they were afraid that the country would believe it. And so they immediately started to kind of walk everything back. I need to take the tone down. I didn't want to come out and say that. I'm a student of history. I like to fancy myself as one. And one of the first things that popped into my mind after that was that everybody was going to assume that this was a left-wing nut job. Understandably. But I also remember World War II and Hitler. And now his own people.

People, they preferred to be without his services after a certain point, after the war had gotten to a certain point. Like, this guy is just, he isn't helping anything. We would be better off if we eliminated him and sued for peace because he is going to drive us. Well, I could understand, not saying this is, I'm not advocating this. I'm just saying in the context and the aftermath of the shooting, this was my thinking.

I could understand how someone, a conservative-minded person, would look at Joe Biden, understand that without Trump, this would be a landslide if they would just find somebody, anybody less divisive than him. With Joe Biden on the ticket, I could see that. I could understand. So I didn't leap to the conclusion that it was a left-wing nut job. Also, I didn't assume that it was. I didn't know. So in the aftermath, the emotional aftermath, maybe

it was just the dopamine high of the news cycle. I don't know what it was. I didn't want to come out and put myself too far on a limb with too little information. And I figured, naturally, and over the course of the next few days, we'd be hearing something about this. We'd get answers because every shooter in this country seems like has some sort of an online presence. They've got their brand out there. And their thoughts, their manifestos, maybe. Social media posts.

Right? There would be some clue as to what happened, why this guy shot Trump. So I waited and I waited and I waited. We all waited. Isn't it interesting? Here it is. It's nine days later now. As I record this on a Monday, he was shot a week ago, Saturday. Nine days have passed. We still don't really know anything about this guy. But usually after a high-profile shooting like this, we're given what I called a sloppy biographical orgy on the shooter.

The media finds everything they can on this guy, and they keep shoving it at us because that drives ratings. Like me, everybody else was curious as to who this guy was and why he did this. And there's been nothing. Virtually nothing. Now, I also didn't jump to the conclusion or the assumption that this was a politically motivated shooting. Because I lived through the 80s.

John Lennon was shot because some dude who had read Catcher in the Rye fancied himself as a modern-day Colton Caulfield and decided he would assassinate John Lennon for being a sellout. Wasn't politically motivated. Ronald Reagan, they were, the media was propping up and using as an example of political violence the shooting of Ronald Reagan back in 1980 or 81. Was it Mark David Chapman? No, John Hinckley. Mark David Chapman was the Lenin shooter.

John Hinckley Jr. wasn't politically motivated. That was not political violence. That was a guy who was, by his own account, I was trying to impress Jodie Foster because he saw her in Taxi Driver. It wasn't a politically motivated shooting. So, knowing that, I just wanted to kind of wait. Let's get the facts as best we can in this media environment, right? Let's see if we can get some objectivity, some just natural, objective, unaffiliated, agenda-free information first, and then we'll figure

out, and then we'll see where we go from there. And it hasn't come forth. There's nothing. We know the guy's name. We know that he was bullied. He was a loner. Of course, he's a loner. The lone nut theory, I guess. But other than that, there's been nothing about any sort of political leaning. People have tried to, both sides have kind of tried to blame it on the other side. Guy donated like 15 bucks to some liberal organization. And then he registered as a Republican.

What does that mean? Well, he's a registered, well, do you suppose he could have registered as a Republican to vote against Trump? I mean, a lot of liberals were advocating that once upon a time. Not too long ago. Is it possible? No, he's a registered Republican. Okay. The other side. No, he donated to this liberal cause. Okay. You don't know. None of us know. It's as simple as that. So. But I find that supremely interesting. No information out there.

No information. No biographical orgy has come forth to soil our sheets. Nothing. It's interesting. I know the FBI, whoever, Homeland Security, I don't know whose hands, I guess it was the FBI handling the investigation. They were having trouble getting into his iPhone. They did. What'd they find? Are you telling me they didn't find anything? This guy did not leave a trail at all. He wants to go out in some violent blaze of glory, and he didn't leave a trace? Nothing? It's weird.

And there was a convention last week. Let's rewind a little bit. You can say what you want about Trump. I've said plenty. You can like him, you can hate him, you can anything. It's all right. We're entitled to your opinion. So am I. So is everybody else. But there was something very special about that moment after he was shot. When he stood up, blood running down his face, and thrust his fist in the air. I am not a Trump supporter. I'm not a Trump fan. I never have been a Trump guy.

I have plenty of podcasts back there that go back a number of years, both on this show and on another, that will attest to this. And I was still... I don't know if moved is the right word, but there was something very, very, very American about that. The defiance. I just got shot. Fuck you. Fight, fight, fight. If you didn't feel any sort of pride in that moment, admiration, Commemoration. Pick an adjective. If you didn't feel something stir, something positive stir within you in that moment.

If you were rooting. And I know a lot of you were. If you were like, is it over finally? Quietly to yourself, maybe. And you saw that and you felt dread. you felt disappointments. What am I saying? If. I'm saying if you were. I know a lot of you were, in fact. Again, I always ask this when I address liberals or Democrats on this show. What are you doing here? I don't think I have any left at this point, but let's pretend I do.

I know for a fact, I can't prove it, I just know it's true, that a huge percentage percentage, I dare say a large majority of Democrats were rooting for that bullet, that Saturday in Pennsylvania. Now, you couldn't be seen publicly coming out and saying, oh, well, a couple of you, I'm not going to name you. I'm not going to put anybody on Amplify here, but some people did say exactly that to me. God damn it, he missed. Why couldn't he be a better.

You couldn't be seen saying it publicly. The few who were, boy, cancel culture came roaring back at you, didn't it? You talk about a backlash. A lot of people were fired. A lot of people were. Yeah, I'm sure you saw this. But a lot of Democrats were rooting for the bullet, rooting for the shooter, and they were crestfallen when he stood up and did that. That's where we are now. And the chorus of violence has no place in American politics. Oh, please, please.

Who are you kidding? Who are you kidding? And how can you not expect this to happen? How can you pretend to be shocked and horrified by this? Another reason that I haven't really put anything out in the last week is I'm trying to figure out, in my head, the best way to go about this. The best angle to take it. Because I've talked about agitation propaganda. I've talked about tribalism.

Hatred, innate human hatred, the need and the urge human beings have to hate the outsider, to hate the other, and how agitation propaganda feeds that, provokes it, manipulates it. A number of years ago, I was talking about this is going, I didn't know what, but it's going to happen. It's going to come home at some point. I didn't know if it was assassination. I've talked privately with other people about this. Somebody's going to, yeah, it's going to happen eventually.

Civil War? Are there two? Maybe the two are hand in hand. I don't know. Not Todd Stradamus. I just play one on a podcast. You don't have to be a soothsayer to see where all of this has been going and coming from. On both sides. Again, this is six of one, half dozen of the other. I've been talking about it for a number of years. So how do I approach it? Do I talk about agitation propaganda, trying to give a clinical, studious analysis of this again?

Or do I just come from it from the resignation angle? Yeah, well, duh. Of course this has happened. Of course it's happening. Of course it happened. When Joe Biden was out there, violence has no place in America. But you know what I thought about? I thought about like some punk walking up to Mike Tyson, smacking him in the face, having Tyson turn around and say, oh, I'm so, no, don't hit me now. Don't hit me now.

Like Biden and the Democrats, all of these liberals who were saying violence has no place are afraid of what was going to happen in retaliation. They all probably started to see this big target on their chest. Oh, don't hurt us. After years and years of calling Trump a Nazi, a danger to democracy, an existential threat to the very American way of life, you're shocked? You're surprised by this? You're surprised that if it was? Politically motivated that this happened?

Why are you wishing him well? That was another thing. A lot of people have said this. Why are you wishing Hitler well? Why are you required to come out and say that you wish this hadn't happened if it was Hitler? We've had these conversations. People have had these conversations before. If you could go back time and kill baby Hitler, would you do it? Well, if it's Hitler, and if you wish him well well we have to decide this at the battle box.

Moron dementia Joe coming and really we have to you know if that's how Americans do it but yet this is Hitler, it doesn't that circle can't be squared you can't call the guy Hitler and then wish him well, one of two things. Either you're full of shit and he's not really Hitler and he's not really an existential threat. You're more concerned about a coming home to roost and you're worried about your rhetoric. The backdraft, the retaliation coming back on you and your kind.

Or you're just dishing out platitudes. If he's Hitler, why are you wishing him well? why are you wishing him a speedy recovery why are you praying that the existential evil nazi. It gets well. It doesn't make any sense. The pre-shooting and the post-shooting rhetoric can't be reconciled. The only way that can be reconciled is that you're afraid that the retaliation, the counter-strike is coming. And that's the exact impression that I got.

Then there was the convention this week. Donald Trump had everything lined up perfectly for him. He's got this shell of an old man. He can't form a sentence. He can't keep a thought straight every time he tries to dig himself out. He just digs a deeper hole. All Trump had to do. After that, you know, I described the convention as cringeworthy.

Every convention is cringeworthy. Every convention reminds me, personally, just my opinion, but it reminds me of a religious revival, almost like a tent revival you would find down south. A religious ceremony, a religious proceeding. Republican convention was no different last week, but it was well done. It was effective, even with Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. All Trump had to do was come out, give a short conciliatory speech as best he could.

He couldn't even do that. He did it for about a half hour. I managed to half watch the entire thing, all, what, 93 minutes of it. You can't do it. He is who he is. He tried. He tried to play the reflective victim of violence thing, of political violence. But he's Donald Trump. Like him, hate him, whatever, to his credit, he is who he is. He is not a polished politician. Who's just going to give you what you want or say what he needs to say to try to appear one way.

He is who he is, and I think that's part of the draw, part of the attraction to him for a lot of people, is that you may hate him, you may not like him, but he is not inauthentic. He says what's on his mind. Lies through his teeth, but, you know, I think that's just a lot of people who look at that as part of the performance. Yeah, he's full of shit, whatever. He's basically being a stand-up. He's putting on a performance for us. It's performance art.

Not really going to worry too much about the factuality, the veracity of this political speech. How many politicians? We're used to politicians lying to us. Political promises. Well, if you can't keep your political promises, people have been bitching about this my entire life and longer. People, these politicians, I always make these political promises and they They never go, what's the difference? You're going to make a political promise. You're going to lie about what it is you plan to do.

You're going to lie and, you know, fudge the details. What's the difference here? Is there a big difference? Really? I promised to do this. I'm lying to you. I'm not ever going to be able to do any of this. Whatever. You're just putting on a show. You're a showman. You're P.T. fucking Barnum. And I think that's part of the Part of the performance I think I guarantee you. People who like Donald Trump, people who have liked Donald Trump from the beginning understood that.

They understand that perfectly well. And people on the other side, people who can't stand him, think he's an embarrassment. They don't get that. They don't understand that, even though you've got people like Bernie, who are just as full of shit as Trump. But I think that's part of the allure, that he is at least who he is. That acceptance speech went entirely too long. It went completely off the rails.

It was half, not even half, it was partially scripted from the teleprompter, and the rest of it was sort of like a tangent-filled improv session, where he's just riffing. He's like a comedian at an open mic, trying out material. Maybe he's a, I don't know. No, just he's stream-of-conscious performing. It went 93 fucking minutes. It was the longest one ever. I think he broke his own record for that. But here, the thing that struck me, and again, this is just a few days ago, less than a week ago.

The entire world has changed since then. But my initial thinking was, you know what? But that wasn't such a bad idea because his contrast, he tried to draw a contrast between him and the feeble old man who can't complete a sentence. He stood there for 93 minutes on his feet talking, relatively coherently, but he didn't sound any different to me than he ever has.

93 minutes stream of consciousness full of energy especially in comparison with his opponent at the time, he drew a hell of a distinction between him and Biden can you see Biden doing that? Can you see Biden up there on stage for 93 minutes trying to improvise? Can you imagine that? Trying to do a stream-of-conscious improvisation show, political show, for his people. Can you imagine what that would sound like?

I didn't think it was a terrible move at all. I don't know that it was planned, but if it was, I thought it was effective, at least as far as that contrast goes. So the Republicans had a successful convention last week. And then Dementia Joe comes down with COVID air quotes. That's convenient. He had also released a statement. I don't know if it was on Twitter. I don't remember exactly. I saw it on Twitter. I don't know who he told this to or where the report came from.

But he had said that, well, I would consider leaving the race if something happens, and something health-related, if there was a health issue. And then shortly thereafter. Dementia Joe gets COVID, which is basically, now to most of us is a cold. You get COVID, eh, whatever, you got COVID. It's not like it was four years ago. Unless you're elderly and infirm. So he has to go off and he has to say it's a big deal. Jolton Joe, Dementia Joe, has to go off and he has to self-quarantine.

He's got to keep away from everybody. He's got to get better. He needs help getting better. He needs to relax and conserve his energy to get better. You know what Van Jones said last week? He was almost beside. He was for Clint. Van Jones was. Van Jones was not having a good year. I still don't think he is.

But Van Jones says that Trump survived a bullet And a virus takes down Joe Biden The comparison, Between Trump with that fist in the air Bleeding out of a shot ear A bullet injured ear And Joe Biden getting taken down by a weakened virus, no he can't do anything he has to recuperate oh my god he's got a cold a covid cold but a cold nonetheless wow donald trump two days after getting shot is on stage. Inspiring, huh? Not so much. I told my wife last week. I think it might have been Thursday.

He's going to drop out this weekend, probably Sunday. I told her exactly that. Maybe I am Todd Stradamus. But it makes sense because they always do this shit on the weekends. And he did. I didn't hear about it for, I guess, three hours. I was watching the Hall of Fame induction. I wanted to talk about Todd Helton today, but I was watching the Hall of Fame induction and then the Tiger game. Tiger game gets over with. I flip it over and there's the big headline on CNN.

Biden drops out. Kamala endorses Kamala. Kamala of color. It's like, holy shit. Well, there it is. But nobody, nobody didn't expect this. Everybody knew this was coming at some point. And the ones who didn't, the ones who claimed they didn't understand or didn't know. That Biden was toast eventually, they should never, ever be listened to again. As recently as Friday, Buttigieg was on Mars show, doing the pre-show interview.

Oh, Biden's in it to win it. I'm behind Joe Biden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody else, everybody else in the country with a functioning brain knew this was inevitable. And if it wasn't, he should have had the 25th Amendment, whichever one it was, saying that he's unfit and needs to be removed from office. It should have been invoked because anybody with any sort of rationally functioning brain could see that that campaign was done.

And the flood of Democrats pleading with him, people like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, pleading with him to drop out. Please drop out. You can't win. It was inevitable. It was always coming. He should not have even considered a second term. Didn't he say in the campaign in 2020 that he was going to be a one-term president? Didn't he make that statement? He should have kept his word, at least as far as that goes. They should have had a primary. They should have battled this out in the springtime.

They wouldn't be here right now. Because now, the entire Democratic establishment, most of it anyway, I shouldn't say entire. That's not accurate. But most of the Democratic establishment now is trying to unite behind their DEI-appointed vice president.

We have to have unity in the party. And after, I don't know, months of seeing Republican unity, having the Democrats in disarray because they've got a guy on their ticket that just won't quit, won't see the writing on the wall, can't see the writing on the wall. Maybe that's it. Maybe he just couldn't. Maybe he was divorced from reality enough that happens with dementia. And he couldn't see it. Whatever. Grounds for 25th. Whatever. whatever.

But they were terrified. Democrats were terrified that he was going to sink the party in the election, and he would have. So now they're scrambling to show unity. Oh, we're so strong behind Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was appointed to the vice presidency after Joe Biden made a a diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge to appoint a woman of color. Thereby excluding anybody else who may have been more qualified than her vagina.

She was appointed as the VP candidate, despite not even making it to 2020. She did not get to 2020. I don't think she got a delegate. Marianne Williamson, I think she did, right? Did Kamala even get one? She was out. She was done. I remember watching some of the debates when she was still in, and I couldn't stand her. I got so sick and tired. That's why I call her Kamala of color, because she was always propping herself up as, you have to vote for me. I'm the only woman of color. I don't care.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, it's my turn, it's my turn, it's our turn. To be president of the United States. It's my affirmative action turn. It's I'm entitled to take my turn.

I couldn't stand it. And then, despite not getting anything, not doing anything in the primaries, literally the proper use, not doing anything in the primaries, this idiot, this moron, at the height of DEI hysteria, decides he's going to make a DEI pledge as an old man, to appoint a woman of color, and lo and behold, it's that.

He's an old man at that point. Even in 2020, he was coherent, largely coherent, but he was already on his decline in 2020, and he appoints a DEI pledge as his second in charge. As the person who's going to take over if he can't finish his term.

Yeah, he started losing me there. I'm sure you can hear it in the 2020 podcast. And then he doubles down on it. Yeah, I'm going to run for a second term. Look, you've got to be a fool not to consider or conclude Include that this was a DEI Trojan horse the entire time. That the entire point was to have this woman, this minority, this woman of color appointed one way or another to the Oval Office. If something happened to Biden in the first term, she was right there.

And let's be honest, it wasn't a small likelihood that that would happen as his age. And then he doesn't drop out. My biggest concern and my biggest bitch about Joe Biden was I don't care about his record. I don't care about the last four years. I didn't care about the last four years because, to me, the question was the next four. This is the baseline for this guy. We're using that right now, what we saw in that debate last month. That's the baseline.

He's running for a four-year term. Could you imagine Joe Biden in four more years, three more years, even two? So there was no way, no conceivable way, propaganda and spin aside that Joe Biden was going to finish this next term. She remained as his running mate, a DEI Trojan horse to have a woman of color appointed, appointed after winning nothing, just like Gerald Ford, President. I will not abide that. He sabotaged her, not only in my eyes, I think in millions of people's eyes.

He ruined her credibility when he made that pledge in 2020. If he had just kept his mouth shut and appointed her anyway without saying it was because of her DEI bona fides, it might be easier to swallow. Well, Kamala Harris, there is a twist, huh? But no, knowing, based on his own words, why she was appointed, why she's in the position she's in now. No. I won't accept it. I will not accept it. I sure as hell won't vote for it.

And this is the thing, too. You know, Microsoft got rid of their DEI program. A lot of universities are firing their DEI or eliminating their DEI programs now. Democrats, they're so bad at reading the room sometimes. There's a DEI backlash, finally. And they're going to rally behind their DEI-appointed VP. GDP, they're going to give the DEI enema to their voters, the people who cast their vote for Joe Biden. In the springtime, during the primary, whatever the hell that was,

it wasn't a real primary. If it was a real primary, RFK Jr. would have been in it. Brownlee would have seen Bernie try again. It wasn't a real primary. It was a sham primary. We get that every year. The incumbent is the presumptive. Why? Why is it that we don't have an open primary every single election cycle for both parties? Why is it that we can't have somebody come up and challenge the incumbent even if they're eligible for another term?

Why is it that there's this automatic renomination process unless something terrible happens? That might be the one thing out of this, maybe, that changes. Because had they had that open primary, had people been able to come in and challenge Biden, maybe have debates? I don't know. It probably wouldn't be in the situation right now. It might be RFK Jr.

He's doing exceedingly well for an independent. independent, but now everybody who voted for Biden cast a vote in that quote-unquote primary, well, they lost their voice. You voted for Biden, well, here's your Kamala enema. I can't do it. I won't do it. I flat out refuse to support that. And they're the ones talking about the threat to democracy. They've been calling Trump a threat rented democracy for eight years. We're still here.

Still kicking. And one guy belching to me about wanting to get Trump defeated, beating Trump. So before he could do anything to the Constitution, like this guy's a smart guy. He's not stupid. Presumably, he understands how the Constitution works and how it can be changed. So what's he saying? Is he going to get and put Put forth these executive orders, these authoritarian executive orders that are going to be, what, going to be challenged and then go to the Supreme Court.

And he's got this cabal of justices who are going to let him do anything he wants. Is that really what's going to happen? Do you really think so? Or are you just drinking the fucking Kool-Aid? They were saying the same thing during his first term. We're still here. It was January 6th. Sure. I'll offer that. We survived it. We're still here. Oh, but Mike Pence, well, yeah, what if he didn't?

Do you really think that Trump would still be in office had Mike Pence decided to play along with that charade? He would have just disgraced himself as well. Well, so no, I'm not buying into this, the sky is falling, the sky is falling shit twice. I did the first time for a little while. And I was very happy in 2020 when he was defeated. And right after the election, Brian and I did an episode. It was like, oh, we can breathe again.

Thank God some normalcy is returning. Well, here we are again, right? How's that normalcy thing working out? Now, one of my favorite things yesterday was after Kamala got her big endorsement. All these endorsements started flooding in, like Gavin Newsom. I think Gretchen Whitmer endorsed her. Just, oh, we're all behind Kamala. There was some dude, some nut job on X, Twitter, whatever.

It was like, oh, the Democratic Party is uniting behind Kamala Harris just the same way she's going to unite America. Really? Yes, the DEI candidate who didn't get elected, who didn't win anything, was not chosen by anybody but Joe Biden. The candidate who exemplifies unity via division identity politics. She's going to be the one to unite the country. I bookmarked that tweet. Humpty Dumpty is busted into 330 million pieces. Did I say that on the last episode? I might have.

Humpty Dumpty is not being put back together. I wanted to believe it at one point in time. I really did. I wanted to believe this. I did. I still do. I want someone to prove me wrong. I keep asking people, show me your work. And America's going to come together and we're going to sing Kumbaya together and we're going to hug it out. Oh, I love you still. I'm sorry we fought. I want to believe that. There is no indication that anybody wants that.

You would think that an attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, if anything was going to do it, it would be that. It didn't. They gave the lip service for a few days, but today, Democrats are right back to calling him a threat to democracy, calling him Hitler, whatever. Eight days, nine days after the assassination attempt, the rhetoric's back. Do you think it's going to get any better? Do you think Kamala is going to tone it down? She's underwater with Trump, too.

People don't want it. People do not want that. Whatever held us together once upon a time is rapidly fraying a little bit more each and every year. Each side wants to blame the other. Maybe they're both right. I don't know. On one side, you've got the identity politics unity via division crowd, exemplified, personified by Kamala Harris. I pledge to nominate a woman of color for vice president. Thanks, Joe. And on the other side, Trump, who's using nationalism, populism.

Nationalism. Do you remember the episode I did last year? Go back and find this one that talked about the power of patriotism in comparison with global socialism, international socialism. Patriotism is incredibly powerful, much more powerful. Liberals and Democrats, they just can't get their head around that. But we want utopia. We want to be unburdened by what was. You're basically saying, join me on a trip to Jonestown. Utopia, utopia, utopia.

They don't understand that this, you know, talk of this heaven to come pales in comparison to the power of patriotism, national pride, unity under a flag as a group. That's a distinction to be made. Fragmenting and cleaving people off into these identity-based groups, fragmenting them, and then they say come together, unity via division. I've talked about this ad nauseum. Unity via division versus patriotism, an actual uniting force.

And they wonder why they can't quite get there, because it's powerless. That utopian religion is powerless against national pride, group pride. So, I'm sure there was a lot more that I wanted to say on this. And I'll probably think of it as soon as I shut the mic off. But I'm here to tell you, you can argue with me if you want to. That's fine. You can think I'm full of shit. You can think I'm just being a Debbie Downer. I've been called that before.

But if you do show me your work, I want you to show me the indications, the proof, anything. Give me a hint. Give me a step of unity, of pending unity, any motion towards unity. Show me how the left and the right, the far left and the far right are coming together. Or show me how the moderates are ostracizing their lunatic fringe on either side. Show it to me. Show it to me. I see it nowhere. We're just moving further and further apart. And people are tribal. It's not hard to understand this.

Fueled by agenda-driven, profit-driven, agitation propaganda. Delivered at the speed of light into your pocket. I have a book in the other room. Oh, I can't remember what it's called right off the top of my head, but it's talking about the Alien and Sedition Act, suppression of free speech back in the late 1700s, John Adams and all of that. The agitation isn't new. I'm not going to bore you with the whole harangue again, but the difference is the technology.

And the delivery system, the volume of delivery, the rapid speed of delivery. And I think there is, I kind of made a smart-ass comment about this, but the dopamine high of chaos. I think there's something to that, too. I think a lot of us really like the chaos. I think there's something about it like the Walter White thing, feeling alive. I felt alive for the first time in years.

That's what he told Skyler in the last episode, right? I think a lot of people, I think this chaos, this political chaos, being at each other's throats, I think it goes back to that thing that I was talking about with Dostoevsky. Things are too good here in this country. We're bored. There's no, very, very little struggle. We're looking for that struggle. We're looking for that thing to fight for, to fight against, to give us a sense of being alive, to give us a sense of purpose.

I think that's a lot of it. People get a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of identity, not from happiness, but from struggle. From trying to achieve something, fighting for something maybe they perceive as being bigger than themselves. Even if utopia could be created, stop me if you've heard it before, but even if utopia could be created, people would sabotage it almost immediately because they'd be bored.

They would be fat, lazy, and bored, and they would look for anything, anything to give them some sense of struggle, some sense of purpose, something to fight for or against, to give them just a sense of purpose. People need that. It's a simple thing. It's a survival instinct. It's dormant, has nothing to do, and it doesn't have anything to do. It creates problems psychologically. Anyway, to wrap this up, I was not surprised by either event.

I expected the Biden thing. He should have had it, and it should have done it a long time ago. Again, I think you've got to be in a coma. A sugar-induced coma, perhaps, but a coma nonetheless to think that Biden was not going to be dropping out of that race. And the Trump assassination attempt. Yeah. I don't know how anybody can really be shocked by this.

And the proclamations that violence doesn't belong in America after years and years and years and years of violence-inducing rhetoric, demonization on both sides. How can you say that? How can you say that with a straight face? How can you say that genuinely and mean it. We've been engaged in trial by rhetorical combat for years. We're not brothers anymore. We're not a family. We've already cleaved ourselves off into camps, into tribes. So now you expect people to treat each other humanely?

It's lip service. Music. That triggers, as I said, this primal human nature, primal tribal human nature, this urge to fight. I've said this a hundred times to various people over the years, but the one group of people that I laugh the hardest at are the ones who say, end war. As long as there's been human beings, there's been warfare. You're not going to end war. We have been fighting each other since the very beginning.

I said once upon a time that the solution to all this, if there is one, and I'm not sure there is, is self-awareness. Understanding who and what we are. Clearly understanding it without what should be or what we ought to be. Without some delusional self-perception. Understanding who and what we really are as a species, what really drives us, human nature. In my not-so-humble opinion, I think Republicans, religious people, Christian people have a better understanding of this than liberals do.

Liberals have this concept of the noble savage, this Rousseau thing that I've talked about, that people are divine. fine. We're really great inside if we can just get... No, we're not. We're savages. We have not evolved enough. We haven't had enough time to evolve out of the jungle, out of the caveman mentality, out of this urge to just kill and suppress. Dominate our perceived enemies. And if we don't have a perceived enemy, we will create one. It's who and what we are.

And denying that, avoiding that realization, avoiding that uncomfortable look in the mirror only makes it worse because it's almost like a medical condition. You refuse to go to the doctor to have evaluated, to have looked at because it keeps growing anyway. It keeps eating away. It keeps creating symptoms. It makes things worse until it finally gets to the point and ties into the rock bottom thing I was talking about last year until you get to the point where you have to.

You're forced, and sometimes, with some conditions, it's too late at that point to do anything about it. If you have a cough and you smoked for 40 years and you ignore it and say, oh, it's just a little cold, by the time that you're forced to go to the doctor, you can't do anything about it. I think there's a really good parallel, a great analogy to be drawn with this. Because the longer we go. Without looking at who and what we really are. The worse it gets and the greater the chance.

We're not going to be able to treat it where it becomes a terminal disease. We can't walk it back anymore. And you add technology to this. Music. Music.