The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 409 - Democrats And Media Devastated By Peaceful Gun Rights Rally
Episode Date: January 21, 2020Democrats and the media were pushing for violence at the gun rights rally but it didn't happen. Now Governor Ralph Northam owes an explanation as to why he declared a state of emergency. Also, AOC mak...es the most horrifyingly honest statement we've heard from a politician in quite some time. And why are we all addicted to social media? I have a theory. If you like The Matt Walsh Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: WALSH and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at dailywire.com/Walsh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You know, I got to say I'm a big supporter of gun rights, but frankly, I am ashamed of the gun rights advocates who were protesting in Richmond yesterday.
I am just embarrassed by them.
I mean, think about it.
The media had been rooting so hard for there to be violence during this rally.
Democrats were pushing for it.
The governor of Virginia was really pushing for it.
declared a state of emergency ahead of time.
And then the rally happens.
And there's no violence at all.
No violence?
You people at the rally, if you went to the rally,
you really thought it was polite
to embarrass the media and Democrats
by being peaceful and just having a normal rally
and then going home?
I think it's pretty tacky, I have to say.
It's almost as tacky as the time
when nobody shot up a screening of the Joker
as the media had obviously been hoping for.
I mean, you couldn't have at least burned a car or, you know, shot out a window or something,
maybe attacked somebody with a crowbar, the kind of stuff that Antifa does.
Of course, when Antiva does it, the media never notices.
But if you had done it, the media would have loved that.
It would be the only thing they talked about for the next three weeks.
And you took that opportunity away from them.
They banked so much on it.
And then you just, you, I don't know, I found it rude.
I just find it rude.
Maybe I was raised differently.
was raised, what my parents always told me is, if somebody has a negative opinion of you,
don't embarrass them by refusing to live down to it. And, you know, but that's an old-fashioned way
of being raised. I guess it's just kids aren't raised that way anymore. And it's really sad.
Just had to get that off my chest. Anyway, yes, the gun rights rally did happen in Richmond
yesterday in response to the gun control measures by Democrats in the state. And it was a peaceful
event, one where not only was it peaceful, actually, but they, but they, but they,
They cleaned up after themselves, which is another thing that oftentimes at left-wing protests,
little things like cleaning up after yourself doesn't, maybe they don't focus quite as much on that.
But cleaned up after themselves and went home and that was it.
And it was indeed very frustrating for the media.
And I want to talk about that and about what, also what I think is an extremely significant political scandal attached to this or related to it.
And we're going to get to all that.
But first, a word from Tommy Johns.
You know, for me, the most important thing when it comes to clothing, really when it comes to any kind of clothing, is comfort.
Okay, because I'm the one that's got to be wearing the clothes all day.
I'm not going to be looking at the clothes most of the day.
I'm going to be wearing it.
And so for me, I want to make sure, first and foremost, that it's comfortable.
And this is doubly true when it comes to what you wear or what you wear over or under the outer layer.
Your underwear.
That's, I think comfort's even more important there.
When it comes to comfort down below, there's underwear, and then there's Tommy John, the revolutionary clothing brand that's redefined comfort for Americans everywhere, including me.
The people at Tommy John were nice enough to, you know, they were saying sent me a few samples of their products, and I especially appreciate the undershirt, which I happen to be wearing right now.
It's breathable.
It's a great fit.
And here's what I like is that it doesn't get all stretched out in the wash and out of shape and mangled.
Unlike every other undershirt I've ever owned,
this one maintains that shape and that great fit,
no matter how many times you wash it.
And you should wash it, by the way, as often as you wear it,
just so you know.
Tommy John focuses on the 3F's fabric fit and function.
Tommy John obsesses over every little detail and stitch
by using proprietary fabrics that perform like nothing you've ever worn before.
And when you wear it, you could tell that they obsess over all those details
because you could tell that this is a lot of effort and time
has been put into creating what you're wearing.
As a result, Tommy John's men's and women's underwear sports,
a no-wegey guarantee, comfortable.
There's a stay-put waistbands and a range of fabrics
that are luxuriously soft, feather-light,
moisture-wicking, breathable,
and designed to move with you, not against you.
So you want your underwear to work with you.
In other words, Tommy John is so confident in their underwear
that if you don't love your first pair,
you can get a full refund with their best pair you'll ever wear,
or it's free.
That's the guarantee.
If you prefer to shop in stores,
you can find them in over 1,200 retail locations across the country,
including Nordstrom stores nationwide.
Once you go Tommy John, you won't go back.
Try it, and you'll see that I'm right.
Hurry to Tommyjohn.com slash Walsh for 20% off your first order.
That's Tommyjohn.com slash Walsh for 20% off Tommyjohn.com.
All right, so the gun rights rally happened yesterday, huge turnout.
But not much to say about the rally itself.
It went off without a hitch.
You know, there was a bunch of people there.
Yes, they were carrying weapons.
No, it didn't devolve into violence.
These were lawful gun owners, responsible gun owners,
and they're perfectly capable, it turns out, of coming together and assembling
without randomly shooting people.
If you didn't know, they are capable of that.
So they made their point, they made their voice heard,
and then they went home.
I think the notable stuff, the stuff worth talking about
is everything surrounding it,
namely the governor of Virginia,
who tried to gin up fear and paranoia about this rally,
and when the fear-mongering was proven to be baseless,
he tried to take credit for the fact that it was peaceful.
So yesterday after the rally, Northam put out a statement saying, quote,
we are all thankful that today passed without incident.
The team successfully de-escalated what could have been a volatile situation.
I will continue to listen to the voices of Virginians and will do everything in my power to keep our Commonwealth safe.
Yeah, I really love that. This is great.
This is, I'm going to do this from now on.
Whenever I go somewhere and there's no violence, I'm going to take credit.
for de-escalating. So, you know, I just got back from Kroger, got the toilet paper we needed.
Don't worry. Everything stayed calm. Nobody was hurt. I was able to successfully de-escalate the
situation. Don't worry. No, that's, he says it was a potentially volatile situation. Now,
I wasn't there, but I did follow it pretty closely on social media. I saw plenty of footage of the event.
anything that looked even remotely volatile. I didn't, it just, what I saw were people,
uh, mostly cheerfully making their voice heard, getting their point across about gun rights.
Uh, there was chanting and singing. They said the Pledge of Allegiance, which was very upsetting for
some leftists on Twitter, it turns out. But I didn't see anything volatile. I didn't see anything.
I didn't even see anything that looked like it almost could have turned violent.
But all of this would be more funny, I suppose, if it weren't for the corruption involved here.
The governor of Virginia, Northam, he of blackface and infanticide fame, as I said, declared a state of emergency leading up to the rally, even though there's no apparent reason for it.
Here's what he said in part when he declared the state of emergency last week.
he said
the anticipated effects of the potential convergence
of tens of thousands of demonstrators
on Capitol Square, some of whom may not come
to assemble peacefully, constitutes an emergency
as described in the code of Virginia.
Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me
by the Constitution of Virginia, so on and so forth,
I proclaim that a state of emergency will exist
starting on January 17th through January 21st.
Okay.
some of whom may not have come to assemble peacefully.
Did he have any credible intelligence
that there were people coming
who weren't going to be peaceful?
Did he have anything other than a prejudice
against gun owners?
If he had no such intelligence,
then he just declared a state of emergency
as a political tool to gin up fear
towards a group of citizens
who were exercising the First Amendment right.
Unless you're going to tell me
that every time there's a protest,
he declared,
is a state of emergency because, who knows, maybe some of them won't be peaceful, which is true
in general. I mean, every single day, you know, people come to the capital of Virginia and
for all you know, some of them might not be peaceful. So why not declare a state of emergency
every single day? If you're declaring a state of emergency, it should be for a specific reason,
like a specific threat, a credible threat that you received. If there was, again, if there was no
such threats, if there's no credible specific reason for declaring a state of emergency,
then this is a scandal. This is an abuse of power far worse than anything Trump has done in
office. Now, of course, we know that Northam is never held accountable for anything he says
or does. This guy is like, we talk about Teflon Don, Teflon Donald Trump, but this guy's Teflon
too. You got blackface infanticide, gets reelected, and now we know that this isn't going to hurt
me either. But if we had a real media, if we had a real news media, they would demand that the
governor of Virginia release whatever intelligence, whatever threats he supposedly had.
Whatever, whatever justifies the state of emergency that he declared, he should release.
And if he can't, or he doesn't, then we're going to know that this was.
there was either no reason for it or there was very flimsy reason. And the real reason underlying all of that is just that it's just, it's very obvious. He's trying to make people afraid. He wants you to think that when a bunch of gun owners get together, well, it's an emergency. It's a powder keg and we're just on the verge of chaos every moment. But to be declaring a state of emergency officially for that reason is, again,
an enormous abuse of power.
Speaking of power,
switching gears here.
Here's Alexandria Keza-Cortez
speaking recently at some kind of event.
And she made an interesting, I think,
admission. Listen to this.
To be ethical, if you're a billionaire today,
the thing that you need to do
is give up control and power.
So I don't want your money
as much as we want your power.
The people, not me,
that's going to get cut and clip.
Yes, yes, it will, AOC.
Yes, yes, it will.
It will get cut and clipped.
We want your power, she says,
which is one of the most horrifically honest things
we've heard from a politician in quite some time.
It's always, we say we want politicians to be honest.
And I want them to be honest,
but it's always horrifying when they are.
Because then you hear stuff like that.
And yeah, fine, she corrects herself and says,
no, no, not me. I don't want your power. Fine, all right. I'll let her correct herself. We don't want
to jump on someone's case for a slip of the tongue. But what actually does she mean when she says
we? Who is we? You know, she says, well, she says the people. She's referring to the people.
All right. Well, what do you mean by the people? Are the people a monolith that can be given power,
whatever that means? Can you take power from one individual person and then give it to the people?
Well, we know from past experience that generally when Democrats, especially socialist,
talk about, not that there's much difference between the two anymore, when they talk about the
people, what they mean is the government, the state. So she's saying that she wants the power of
billionaires, not just the money, but the power to go to the people, but what they're
that means, what we know that means, is the government. So when she said we, she really did mean
herself because she's a part of the government. She's an agent of the state. And I think this
brings up an important point, which is this, all of this demonizing of the wealthy, all this
stuff about taking money from the wealthy, taking power from them. Well, okay, but when you
advocate for that, you're advocating that the government,
get bigger and stronger and more powerful.
And this is something I wish especially Democrat voters
would be able to understand that you as a peon,
me as a peon,
we remain peons in both scenarios.
So whether billionaires have all that money in power
or the government takes it,
either way, you know, we're still the peasants in the situation,
unfortunately.
I don't like it, but that's the reality.
AOC and Bernie and her ilk, they aren't going to make,
they're not going to make us any richer or us any more powerful than we already are or aren't.
They're talking about this for themselves.
This is something they benefit from.
It's like we talked about last week with a student loan and this week too, I think,
the so-called student loan forgiveness.
And we talked about how it's not really forgiven.
it's transfer. You're taking the debt, student loan debt, and you're transferring it from
the people who took out the loan, and it would seem, by all rights, should be the ones to pay back,
and you're transferring that debt to somebody else. And by Elizabeth Warren's plan and Bernie
Sanders plan, it's going to be those dreaded billionaires and millionaires again. So it's
really a transfer. And with this, with what Alexandria Caesa Quartet is talking about, again,
it's a transfer. It's not taking away the way.
wealth and the power from billionaires, it's transferring it from billionaires to herself and the
government. And if you think you're going to be any better off with the government being more
powerful than it is, then I think you just haven't been paying very close attention. Before we
move on, I want to tell you about something that we're doing over here at the Daily Wire that's
really important. If you're a regular listener, you have, of course, heard me talk about pro-life
issues and my unwavering position on pro-life issues. And the reason why I focus on it so much is that
since Roe v. Wade passed, over 60 million unborn children have been killed in the womb.
60 million. That's a number so large that it's hard for us to conceptualize, but 60 million people
were talking about. And last year, the left went even further off the cliff, passing the New York
state law that allows abortion up to birth. There was a law in Illinois that would allow partial
birth abortion, which is an utterly barbaric procedure. And to make matters more intense,
pro-life advocates are actively being targeted by the pro-abortion left. When Ben Shapiro spoke of
the March for Life last year, our advertisers were targeted by the left, and several of them
pulled their ads from the program because of it. This was not the first time. It's not going to be the
last time that we are attacked in an attempt to shut down pro-life voices. We're also not the only
targets, of course. Live action is one of the biggest voices in the pro-life movement.
I'm a big fan of live actions work. I have been for a long time. They do some of the most
important work in the pro-life movement, whether it's raising awareness and education on the
abortion issue, undercover videos that exposed Planned Parenthood. That was my first, I think a lot
of people that was their first introduction to live actions work several years ago when they were
doing these undercover videos. And they were one of the first groups to go in and do these undercover videos
of Planned Parenthood.
So, and they're paying the price for it.
They've been banned from advertising on Twitter.
They have seen their advertising efforts
and their online distribution restricted
on several platforms across the Internet
because of the work they do.
That is why our DailyWire.com members
are really important.
Your membership helps us say no to advertisers
who cave to left-wing ideologies
if they're advertisers that are going to cave,
are going to try to control what we talk about, whether it's on this show or any other show,
with your support, you know, it's easy for us to say, we don't need them.
We keep our pro-life message from being, you keep our pro-life message, I should say,
from being canceled, and instead it grows even louder.
That's why from now until January 31st, a portion of any dailywire.com membership
will be donated to live action with promo code live action.
that's of course
L-I-V-E-A-C-T-I-O-N live action
to support awareness and education
around the world on this issue.
So join DailyWire.com
and make your pro-life voice heard.
Okay, one other thing,
one other thing to mention
before we read some emails,
I happen across this on Twitter,
someone posted a screenshot of a tweet.
Don't know who,
who posted this originally doesn't really matter. It's more the sentiment that I want to address,
a common sentiment. And so this tweet says, male privilege is wearing the same outfit multiple
times to events while girls can't wear the same dress twice no matter how cute it is.
Okay, so that was the tweet talking about male privilege and the, you know, you hear this
kind of thing a lot. It's related to the unrealistic beauty standards.
that women deal with, all the supposed pressure on them to be stylish and trendy and all that,
et cetera, and so forth. Here's my point. I want to say this, maybe for the benefit of some female
listeners, if they weren't aware. And my message is this. As men, you know, we don't care one bit
at all, really, how stylish your clothes are.
We don't care about you being trendy and stylish.
We don't need you to wear a bunch of makeup, right?
I mean, the makeup industry is a multi-billion dollar industry,
so women are spending lots of money on makeup.
And I guess a lot of women feel like they, you know, feel pressure,
like they have to put a lot of makeup on before they leave the house.
You're not doing that for us because we really, we don't need that.
We don't care.
And I really am speaking for all men when I say, I think I can speak for, you know, maybe there are a few outliers, but I can speak for almost all men.
In fact, we would actually prefer it if you cared less than you do about, about what you wear.
So my point is, but you can care however much you want to care. It's up to you.
I'm just, my point is the pressure that you feel, it's not from us.
You know, it's from you guys. That's pressure you're putting on each other.
so there's this this thing that i've noticed of uh in this culture of women putting pressure on each other
to act a certain way or do a certain thing or buy a certain product or dress a certain way
putting pressure on each other and then blaming men for the stress that their own self-imposed
rule causes them meanwhile we're over here like we don't care if you do that or not
Don't look at us.
I mean, this is women who are very focused on how they look when they go out in public.
Maybe for the men end up getting blamed for it.
So I guess at some level, women feel like they're doing it for men.
But I also feel like they must know that really they're doing it for each other.
They're not really doing it for us.
Because, as I said, we don't notice and we don't care.
And the reason why, so it's not male privilege.
Yeah, a man, I guess, now, I mean, a woman who feels like, what, she can't wear the same outfit twice ever, that seems pretty extreme.
That's going to get very expensive.
But it is true that men, you know, as men, like, you know, we don't have much compunction about wearing the same outfit multiple times and things.
We're not worried about it.
We don't have that stress.
But if that's a privilege that we have, it's a privilege that we have, it's a privilege.
that is available to you as well.
It's just we've taken advantage of that privilege
because we just don't care about it.
And we're not looking at each other
and judging each other for that.
Now, you know, I mean,
I could be around a guy every day for two weeks
and he could wear the same outfit every single day.
And it would probably take me about seven or eight days
before I noticed.
He could get away with seven or eight days
of wearing the exact same outfit
and I probably wouldn't notice.
after a while I might
and then when I do I might start putting it together
and say wait a second
I don't think I've seen him wear anything but that
now that you mention it
and then once I notice it yeah I'm gonna make fun of him
because it's my duty as a man to make fun of him for that
but it's not a big deal
and we just laugh about it and I don't think he goes home
and cries in his bathroom that he got made fun of
I think it's just he understands that
he's been wearing the same outfit and so he's going to get made fun up for it
it's fine it's just what men do
my point is that as women
I mean you could have the same approach
if you wanted to.
So I just, I wouldn't, I think there are a lot of things, and it's not just this.
There's a lot of pressure that women feel in society, a lot of oppression that they might feel,
that again gets blamed on men, but I think really comes mostly from themselves, from other women.
Another example would be in the workplace.
I always
This is one of the
Common tropes that you hear from feminists
Is on top of the unrealistic
Unrealistic beauty standards
Which again are almost entirely
Made by women for women
Those beauty standards
But another common trope is
This thing you hear about in the workplace
Where women feel
You know
Hostility if they speak too much
And they get talked over a lot
that's a big thing that you hear. It's a trope that women are getting talked over in the workplace.
And every time I hear that I think, I mean, I don't doubt that you get talked over, but is it really by men doing that?
Women, they've done studies on this, and women, on average, they say like 20,000 more words a day than men.
They do a lot. Or no, maybe it's 20,000 words total. That'd be a lot of words.
But women use, speak a lot more than men. They're much more verbal than men are.
So most of the time, what I notice, you know, whether it's in a work environment or socially, yeah, people get talked over.
But it seems to me that the people who do the talking over more often are women just because they have more to say.
So they've just got more words they have to get out in a day.
And so they're going to end up trampling over each other in the talking.
Whereas men, I mean, me, I could go six days and say nothing.
If it were up to me, now doing this job, it's kind of hard.
But if I didn't, you know, if I was living in a cave or something by myself and I had no one to talk to, I'd be fine.
I could go indefinite amount of time and say nothing, honestly.
I think a lot of men are like that.
Now, there are talkative men.
But a really talkative man, you notice.
Like if you, if you encounter a really talkative man, you think, wow, this guy doesn't shut up.
You really notice it because it's not usually, it's not common for men.
Whereas women are more talking of, which is fine.
But again, that's, so if you're getting talked over, you feel like you can't get a word in edgewise,
probably it's because of other women that are doing that to you.
It's probably not men.
So I'm not saying that men can be jerks and they can be judgmental and all those things as well.
But I think we need to stop and reassess the obstacles that women face, especially socially.
We need to stop and reassess and see how much of that actually is coming from the patriarchy from men and how much of it is actually is coming from inside the house, as it were, inside the female house.
I think a lot of it is imposed on women by women.
All right.
Let's move on to emails.
Matt Wall Show at gmail.com is an email address.
From Andrew.
I had some questions yesterday about Star Wars, and so I got a lot of email.
which I appreciate from Star Wars fans answering my questions. This is one from Andrews,
says, let's start with the helmet thing. First, I'd like to point out that I made the point
that only in Star Wars, I couldn't figure out why only the bad guys wear cool helmets and masks.
And I said maybe that's why people go to the dark side of it because they want to wear the cool
costumes and all the cool costumes are with the bad guys for some reason.
Andrew says, let's start with the helmet thing.
First, I'd like to point out that good guy characters have cool helmets.
In episode six, Leia gets a sweet bounty hunter helmet.
In episode two and three, the clone trooper follow the same customs as the stormtroopers
and wear their sweet helmets all the time.
Now, the reason Darth Vader wears a helmet is because he has to.
His head is permanently disfigured and isn't even functioning properly anymore.
Well, he doesn't have to, right?
That's more of a vanity thing.
He just doesn't want people to see a disfigured head,
which I don't get that either
because if you're a bad guy,
you're a super arch villain.
If there's any time
you can get away with
having a disfigured,
disgusting, scarred face,
it's when you're a supervillain.
So if you're a supervillain,
just embrace it.
Kylo Ren has a cool helmet
in canon because he idolizes Vader
and wants to be like him.
In the real world,
J.J. Abrams wanted to mirror
Star Wars 4 with Star Wars 7,
so he created a character
with a cool helmet to be the antagonist.
Well, he certainly succeeded in that,
because Star Wars 7 is just basically a shot-for-shot remake of other Star Wars films.
Next, I need to touch on this.
It is such a common mistake.
When they say they're jumping to light speed, they're really entering another dimension
in which the space is compressed.
They calculate their route and exit elsewhere.
If they couldn't do this, it would still take decades to travel across the galaxy.
And lastly, the lightsaber thing.
First, let me start by saying that some of the characters thought of this too,
such as the leader of Death Watch
from Star Wars, the Clone Wars,
Ezra from Star Wars rebels.
I don't even know what these are.
And even Luke has a
blaster and a lightsaber
in episode 5. Finn in the Battle of the
forest planet, on the forest planet,
even wishes he had a blaster.
He fights with a lightsaber against the Stormtrooper
with the riot control axe because the stormtrooper
wanted to make it personal.
The reason that force users don't fight with blasters
is for two reasons. One, while the lasers
fly slowly in episode two, we see
Jedi reflecting lasers.
in a chaotic battle scene. They have a sense that allows them to block and deflect the lasers.
This gives them lasers whenever their opponent does. Additionally, they have better ranged
offensive abilities, that being forced telekinesis. They do not use it on each other because
they cancel each other out. And lastly, they use lightsabers because it is Jedi tradition and it's
been going on since early times. Okay, Andrew, your answer on the helmet was sufficient.
That's fine. I'll accept it. I still think the good guys could do more with the costumes.
they could do themselves some favor by adopting,
not just helmets, but even capes.
In Star Wars, a lot of the bad guys walk around in capes for some reason.
And, you know, so if you're going to do that,
I mean, if people can, in the Star Wars world,
if you can get away with wearing a cape
and people don't make fun of you for it,
it seems like in the real world,
if you saw a guy come out with a cape and say,
what are you wearing a cape for?
But if you can do that, then I don't see why the good guys don't do it too.
As far as the ships jumping into another dimension instead of going into light speed, okay, fine.
But again, that still requires advanced technology, obviously.
And this is a galaxy where such technology, you've got a ship that can jump into another dimension
and travel across the galaxy in an instant.
And this ship was sitting in a junkyard.
That's how common this technology is, which brings us to the lightsaber bit.
And I feel like you haven't answered my challenge, which is that in a world with this kind of
technology, it should be extremely easy to come up with a weapon, a personal weapon, like a type of gun
that could defeat a dude holding a lightsaber.
Like I said, the only reason the laser guns don't work is because the lasers move so slowly.
But if you just came up with a regular, with a gun that shoots lasers at a faster speed,
or even you just use a regular gun with lead bullets.
and that travel at a regular bullet speed,
and no Jedi in the galaxy would be able to move fast enough to deflect all those bullets.
So I could see using lightsabers in a ceremonial way,
if it's part of your tradition and your culture,
but to actually use it in battle,
given the kind of technology that exists in this world,
doesn't make any sense.
It's like if, it'd be like if Japanese soldiers still use,
samurai swords in battle.
Now, they might use them ceremonially,
but they're not going to actually go into battle
in modern times with a sword.
And by the way, going back to the technology bit,
here's another thing that bothers me.
C-3PO is apparently a conscious, sentient
robot. I mean, it's extremely advanced.
If C-3PO existed in this world,
he would be, I mean, easily far and away,
the most advanced piece of technology,
the most advanced piece of equipment in the world.
I mean, not even close.
The operating system that C-3PO is using
is just beyond anything we can imagine
because it is capable of human thought.
And yet, he's externally, he's like the tin man.
So he's got the external build of like a robot
that maybe Toyota would have come up with in 1992.
But then internally, his operating system is way, it's like thousands of years in the future.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
I mean, if you have the technology to make a robot like that, why wouldn't you make him, why make him useless physically?
It would be like if I had the most advanced engine anyone's ever made and I put it in Fred Flynnstone's car.
It doesn't make any sense.
So that's a problem.
This is from Seth, says Matt, you talk last week about social media and how much damage it does and the compulsion you feel towards it.
I have a very strong compulsion.
I'm embarrassed to admit, but I'm probably on social media six or seven hours a day.
I don't even like it that much.
I just feel drawn to pick up my phone and scroll mindlessly.
My question is, why do we do this?
Why are people so obsessed with social media?
Why are we on it all the time when it doesn't even make us happy?
What's the reason?
So I was thinking about this yesterday, Seth, after I read your email, and the easiest answer is to say that social media is an addiction.
But that doesn't really clarify anything.
You just chalk something up to an addiction and say, oh, it's an addiction.
It doesn't clarify it.
And also, I think it's not really true.
I think we talk about a social media addiction.
I think we meet it in a sort of colloquial way, but I don't see how using social media could really be a clinical addiction.
Now, you might find in the medical community, psychiatrists, they maybe will pretend it's a real addiction, but I don't think.
I think you've got to draw a real distinction between, say, heroin addiction and the compulsion you feel to use heroin and the compulsion you feel to get on Twitter.
I just don't think they're in the same universe or same ballpark.
So I don't think that answers it.
I think part of what draws us to mindlessly scroll the internet, social media,
same thing that draws us to mindlessly binge Netflix and watch TV all the time and so on and so on.
Watch reality TV and all this stuff.
I think it's that we fear, we fear thought.
We don't want to think.
We don't want to contemplate things too seriously or too.
deeply. We don't want to dwell on anything very serious. We certainly don't want to think about
our mortality, about death, about our basic human condition. So I am becoming increasingly
convinced that so much of our culture, so much of what we do, is at some level driven by
our desire to prevent ourselves from thinking. We're trying to prevent ourselves from thinking.
and I think that's what explains so much of what we do in this culture.
It's a defense mechanism.
We do all of this, and we entertain ourselves relentlessly, almost obsessively,
because it stops us from thinking.
We are very troubled by thought,
and it seems that we'd rather not have very many of them,
very many thoughts, that is.
I think we in general are becoming very frivolous people,
that's what you find in the culture, but especially in the internet culture.
Frivolity and irony and cynicism, we obsess over dumb things, irrelevant things.
We're always ironic about everything and cynical about everything.
And I know it's kind of hypocritical for me to be complaining about that of all people.
But again, it's hard for me not to see that as, at least at some level, a defense mechanism,
a way to deny to turn our heads from the really serious business of,
living and thinking and being.
I mean, think about this.
Speaking of thinking,
prior to modern media,
so, you know,
I'm talking about prior to internet, TV,
radio even.
So for, I don't know, the first
10,000 years, give or take of human civilization,
there was none of that.
Nothing to listen to,
nothing to watch, or scroll through,
in terms of media, none of that existed.
So what did people do?
You ever thought about that?
What did they do?
Well, they worked.
Okay, they worked a lot.
They toiled and they worked, fine.
And that was a lot of their day.
And maybe they read, although if you go back far enough,
literacy was pretty uncommon,
and they didn't have the same access.
And you go all the way back to before the printing press.
People didn't have access to books
unless you were a monk or someone in the elite class.
So maybe you read, maybe you did some reading.
And, but what else, what else do they do with their free time at the end of the day?
You got your work done for the day.
It's not time for bed yet.
What are you doing?
I'm sure they talk to each other.
I'm sure they spent time as a family.
They played games and so on.
But the point I'm getting to here is that there was probably time.
There's probably lots of time cumulatively where, um,
they sat there and didn't do anything.
There was probably a fair amount of sitting silently and doing nothing.
That was probably a relatively normal part of human existence for thousands of years.
Where there would be times in the day when, you know, there was nothing really to do.
You sat there and, you know, maybe you just did nothing.
Maybe not for six hours, but there would be time in the day because you didn't have
a phone to pull out, distract yourself. You didn't have a TV to turn on. And you're sitting
on a piece of furniture in your living room and you're just sitting there. Thinking.
Now, when was the last time that you did that? When was the last time that you sat somewhere?
No phone, no TV, not talking to anybody, not doing anything, not flipping through a magazine,
nothing. You just sat there and you thought. When's the last time he did that? I bet for a lot of
us, it's been like years since we've done that. And in the times when we feel like we're forced
to do it, we panic. Like, have you ever been in a situation? Maybe you're in a waiting
room and there's no good magazines to read and your phone is dead and they don't have a TV
and you're sitting there waiting for the dentist to call you back and you've got nothing
to do and you know, you've got your phone in your hand and you feel this compulsion to look at it
but it's dead.
It creates a real sense of almost like panic,
like you've been disconnected from something.
And the idea that all you can do is simply sit there is overwhelming.
We're really uncomfortable with it,
and why are we uncomfortable with it?
The only explanation I can come up with is that it allows for a lot of unadulterated,
unfiltered thinking, and we don't like that.
We're afraid of our own thoughts.
So I think that's part of it.
Maybe we've even forgotten how to think in some ways
because we've outsourced our thinking to the internet.
We let the internet think for us.
I mean, we let the internet literally complete our sentences for us.
This is Euphoria Calvin Klein,
the new elixir collection featuring three perfume intense scents,
inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla,
each with its own distinct attitude,
each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive.
magnetic elixir sweet and romantic like a lingering touch solar elixir a radiant expression of joy ultra concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power find your euphoria discover the euphoria elixir collection by calvin klein all right um from lee says hi matt love the show wanted to know how you feel about reincarnation if you believe in the afterlife why do you rule out the possibility of reincarnation billions of people believe that we will be reincarnated after death do you think this is possible or have you
ruled it out. If so, why? Well, first of all, it's not up to me to rule anything out, per se.
I mean, when we die, whatever happens happens. So I can't rule it out or rule it in. It is what it is.
Now, as far as what I think about it, well, in a certain sense, yeah, we are reincarnated.
In the sense that our bodies are made up of atoms, 7 billion billion billion atoms, to be
precise or sort of precise. And when we die, those atoms don't die with us. They
are recycled back into the world and they become other things.
Just like the atoms in our body right now were other things.
And if you trace it back far enough,
our, you know, as Carl Sagan talks about, we are the stuff of stars.
We are literally star dust.
We were made from stars.
And we are, in a sense, you might say, reincarnated stars.
So if you want to look at it physically at the atomic level,
then, okay, I guess, I think it's weird to call that reincarnation,
but you could make some sort of argument for that.
But that's not what you mean by reincarnation.
I assume reincarnation means when you bring talk about it,
it means some mysterious, mystical way that your actual essence,
your being, you as a person, continue to live on in another form after this form dies, right?
That's what you mean.
Now, to me, that's disqualified on a logical basis.
I don't even need to get anything else.
I think it doesn't make any logical sense, and I'll explain why.
Because if reincarnation is true, then I right now am just the latest version of myself.
I had other selves before this one.
And those other selves screwed up so badly that they got sent back to Earth in my body,
those poor bastards.
But what does that mean?
if I had other selves, yet those other selves had different physical forms, different personalities, different experiences, different beliefs and different everything, different family, different everything.
And I can't remember those past selves.
And thus, I don't have any of their memories.
Then in what sense exactly are we the same?
Exactly in what sense am I that past self?
It doesn't even mean anything.
I'm a completely different person with a whole new set of experiences and everything.
Where is the continuity?
And what exactly would be, I guess this is really the point.
What exactly would be the difference between me dying and being obliterated and me dying and coming back, quote unquote,
as an entirely new person with no memory of my past experiences?
Isn't it the same thing as obliteration?
I mean, think about even if you, let's even make it less extreme.
Let's say that there was some sort of technology where they're able to, you know,
obliterate your mind and implant a new mind into your body somehow.
Let's say that technology existed.
No memory anymore of your past self, completely new personality, completely new everything.
although you still have the same body.
Isn't that the same effect of it?
Like leading up to that as you're waiting for yourself to be obliterated
and have this new self implanted in with this crazy technology,
isn't that the same thing as death basically?
Now, if you were to consider that your body is obliterated too
and now you have a new mind and a new body,
then it's okay, that's just, I don't even see.
how we could call that reincarnation.
So that's my
issue with it. I just don't see
the difference.
I know there are people who claim, oh, I have memories
of my past selves. First of all, no, you don't.
But second of all,
not enough of a
memory for there to be any continuity
so that, again,
it just ends up being the same thing
effectively as there being no reincarnation
at all. All right.
That's how I feel about reincarnation.
It will leave on that note.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
Have a great day. Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word,
please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple, podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcast,
including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Nulls show, and the Andrew Claven show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton,
executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay,
supervising producer Mathis Glover,
supervising producer Robert Sterling,
technical producer Austin Stevens,
editor Donovan Fowler,
audio mixer, Robin Fenderson.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production,
copyright Daily Wire 2020.
If you prefer facts over feelings
aren't offended by the brutal truth
and you can still laugh at the insanity
filling our national news cycle,
well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro show.
We'll get a whole lot of that and much more.
See you there.
