Ep. 1486 - Here's The Real Reason Why Our Birth Rate Is Plummeting
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November 14, 2024
TLDR: Discussion on the growing number of older people grieving not becoming grandparents due to fewer young people having children (New York Times article), Trump's cabinet picks causing media panic, and Rachel Zegler criticizing Trump voters. Matt Walsh is promoting his documentary, flannel, and promoting sponsors Birch Gold, Paint Your Life, and The Wellness Company.
In episode 1486 of The Matt Walsh Show, host Matt Walsh delves into a critical topic: the decline of birth rates and its implications, particularly focusing on the emotional toll it takes on prospective grandparents. The episode reflects on a New York Times article addressing the heartbreak experienced by older generations who mourn the loss of the opportunity to become grandparents as younger adults increasingly opt not to have children.
Key Discussion Points
The Heartbreak of Never Becoming a Grandparent
- The New York Times article discusses the growing phenomenon of older individuals grieving the loss of expected grandchildren.
- Many people express sadness as their children choose not to start families, noting how this impacts family dynamics and personal fulfillment.
- Anecdotes shared in the podcast highlight real experiences, such as a woman recalling her dreams of being a grandmother dashed by her children's choices.
Factors Fuelling the Birth Rate Decline
- Walsh emphasizes that the plummeting birth rates are not just about individual choices but represent a broader crisis for society. When a generation stops having children, it affects the nation’s future.
- Various factors contributing to the decline include economic hurdles, personal comfort prioritization, and cultural shifts towards individualism over familial responsibilities.
- Walsh challenges the common belief that economic factors alone are to blame, arguing that people are often prioritizing personal comfort over the traditional family structure.
Economic Misconceptions
- The episode stresses that the economy does not inherently prevent family creation. Walsh shares personal anecdotes about starting a family despite financial struggles, asserting that many throughout history have raised families without substantial resources.
- He disputes the narrative that one must possess generational wealth to have children, framing this mindset as a failure to prioritize what truly matters.
- Walsh notes that the notion of not having the means to afford children is often a reflection of an unwillingness to make sacrifices rather than an actual inability.
The Cultural Obligation to Continue Family Lineage
- One profound point raised during the episode is the alleged obligation to continue one’s lineage. Walsh argues we owe it to past generations, who endured hardships to pave the way for our existence, to continue building families.
- This sense of duty contrasts sharply with a modern mentality that often views family creation as optional or unimportant.
- He expresses concern over society’s lack of connection to its history, suggesting that the challenges faced today, while daunting, are not unprecedented when viewed through the lens of historical human struggle.
Concluding Thoughts
- Walsh wraps up the episode by reiterating the societal need for families and the risks associated with abandoning this fundamental aspect of human existence. He challenges listeners to reconsider their views on parenting and the legacy of family.
- The podcast serves as a call to action for listeners to reflect on their personal choices regarding family and their broader implications for future generations.
Additional Insights
- Other topics briefly touched upon in this episode include:
- Donald Trump’s recent cabinet picks and the media's reaction.
- Controversial comments and actions of celebrities that alienate portions of society.
Listeners are encouraged to explore their feelings about family, legacy, and societal responsibilities as a result of this empowering and thought-provoking episode.
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Today, Matt Wall showed the New York Times published an article this week about the growing number of older people who are grieving the fact that they will never become grandparents as more and more young people refuse to start families and have children. This is an aspect of the birth rate decline that isn't discussed enough. We'll talk about it today. Also, Trump's latest cabin picks have the media in a state of full on panic.
And it's hilarious to behold, Trump and Biden meet for the first time since Trump's historic election victory. And the new Snow White, Rachel Zegler, has ramped up her campaign to alienate as much of the potential audience as possible. This time she's viciously attacking the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump. Talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
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You know, we've talked a lot over the years about the decline in the birth rate and the rapidly increasing number of young adults who are refusing to get married and have children. As much as we've discussed the subject, we still have not discussed it enough. It is one of the great crises facing our civilization at the present moment. When a society gives up on having children, it has given up on its future, it has given up on itself and
Well, that matters. That matters a lot. Now, of course, plenty of people are still having children. We haven't entered full-on children of men territory quite yet. Our population is still growing, just as the population of the world is still growing. But the growth is slowing, and we have long since crossed the crucial threshold in this country where our fertility rate is now below replacement level. We are no longer having enough babies to replace older people
as they die off. And as a consequence, our population itself grows older and more top-heavy, and all kinds of complications follow from that. And those complications quickly turn into catastrophes. We've discussed many aspects of this problem, but
It's a problem so deep and all-encompassing that there are always gonna be new dimensions to explore. And a few days ago, The New York Times, engaging in another random act of journalism, as Rush Limbaugh used to call it, published a piece homing in on a facet of the birth rate decline that until now hadn't gotten much press, if any at all. The article is titled, quote, the unspoken grief of never becoming a grandparent. And the piece by Catherine Pearson,
has gotten a decidedly mixed reaction. Some people, myself included, found it to be a profoundly sad, yet very empathetic and very interesting look at a group of people who are suffering in a unique way from our society's plummeting birth rate. But other people were angry and offended for reasons we'll talk about in a moment. But first, let's read a little bit of this article.
It says, quote, Lydia Burke, 56, has held on to her favorite copy of the Velveteen Rabbit since her three children now in their 20s and 30s were young. She loved being a stayed-home mother and filled her family's home with books. All of her children could read before they started school at Miss Burke recalled with pride. She helped one day to be a cool grandma who would share her favorite stories with a new generation. But none of her children want to have kids. And though that decision is right for them, Miss Burke said, it still breaks her heart.
I don't have young children anymore and now I'm not going to have grandchildren," she said. So that part of my life is just over. Like Ms. Burke, a growing number of Gen Xers and baby boomers are facing me sometimes painful fact that they are never going to become grandparents. A little more than half of adults, 50 and older, had at least one grandchild in 2021 down from nearly 60% in 2014. Amid falling birth rates, more U.S. adults say they're unlikely to ever have children. For a variety of reasons, chief among them, they just don't want to.
Now the article continues along with more anecdotes along these lines. I'm not gonna read them all here, but you should go find the article and read for yourself. They're quite sad, quite illuminating though. And there are many older people these days with children who swear they will never have children of their own. And the reasons they give for remaining childless in the article are all very similar. They point to the economy, the state of the world, climate change, of course, and so on.
None of them feel they have any obligation to have kids and carry on the family name and the bloodline. They're thinking only about themselves and what would make them most comfortable. And they've decided that they're most comfortable being childless and alone. So their parents will just have to deal with the loneliness and grief that comes from that. That's the general attitude. It's also the attitude of many commenters on this article. There's plenty of sympathy for the would be or want to be grandparents, but
There's also a lot of this sort of thing, quote, boo hoo, get over yourself. I chose not to have children. That is was my choice, which was clear from day one with my spells. He married me on those terms. I'm not responsible for my parents' happiness. They are. They tried to guilt me into it during the first few years I was married, but eventually gave up. It was never their choice to make.
lot of empathy there. A similar message in this comment says, quote, I feel it's extremely self-centered of any person who expects others to make decisions that will make them happy. Too many parents try to live their lives vicariously through their children. Children do not owe their parents everything. Besides, many of us were forced to babysit our younger children. I had 18 years of watching my three younger siblings and having to work in my mother's daycare center.
My God, if I had my own children, I would have ended up spending my entire life raising children. My purpose in life is not to watch slash raised children with the recent parental theory practice of making the oldest child the third parent, making them help raise the younger siblings. You can expect that more people will reject parenthood when they become adults.
I have to clarify one thing here, and this is a theme that we're going to see emerge in these people that reject having kids, is that they just have no understanding of history at all. They have no clue. They just have no idea what human history consists of, not even like the foggiest general idea, because it is not a recent theory.
that older children should help care for their younger siblings. This is not like a recent phenomenon. This is how all human societies have worked since the dawn of our species. This comment are suggesting that more people are rejecting parenthood because they were raised in the same way that billions of humans have been raised since time immemorial.
And again, this is a common theme. People with absolutely no understanding of human history have decided that the challenges they face are utterly unprecedented. When in fact, they have not dealt with a single thing that billions of other people haven't also dealt with. And those billions of people still had families in spite of it. This article also went viral on X, as you would expect. And the commentary there,
Very similar, a couple of examples, quote, unspoken. My parents never shut the F up about wanting grandkids. Don't F up the economy for your children and then get surprised when they can't afford kids. Then another one says, these grandparents should have built enough generational wealth so their kids would feel financially secure enough to start a family. The unspoken grief of not being a trust fund nepo baby who can easily support a family.
Now, obviously, we hear this excuse constantly. We're told that people aren't having kids today because of the economy and, you know, the economy makes it impossible, I've been told. This person blames the birth rate decline on a lack of generational wealth. And let me reiterate a point that I made on Twitter, which seems to have upset a lot of people. And now I'm going to upset them again because I'll say it again.
The economy is not preventing anyone from starting a family or having children, okay? It's not preventing anyone. Now, I'm not denying that the economy is in poor shape at the moment, but that is not a good reason or a valid reason for a society to give up on the family. If anything, it's all the more reason not to give up.
on the family. What do you think happens to the economy? Would everybody get older and you don't have enough younger people coming up the ranks? You think that makes the economy better? Is that going to solve the problem?
And also, you don't need generational wealth to start a family, okay? You don't need to be a trust, this is what we're hearing. You have to be a trust fund depot baby to simply have a kid. You have to be a multi-millionaire living in extreme luxury to afford even a single child. I mean, this is the kind of mentality that many people have now. It's totally delusional. I did not have any generational wealth when I started my family.
And those of you who've listened to this show for a long time are familiar with my story. I was broke when I got married. The economy wasn't exactly humming at the time either. There's other thing I'm told all the time, but younger people, especially when they're trying to justify that they don't want to have kids. I say, well, you don't know what it's like. You don't know what the economy, you don't know what it's like. Do you think this is the only time there's been a bad economy? Do you really think that? The economy crashed when I was in my early 20s. It's called the Great Recession. Big crash wasn't all that long ago.
So that's the situation I was in when I was just entering young adulthood, okay? Couldn't afford a house. I was living in an apartment on a meager salary. So broke, I frequently had to pay for gas with the spare change and the cup holder in my car. And we weren't in much better shape when we had our first two kids. We didn't buy our first house until we already had three kids. You don't need to be rich to start a family. You do not need to come from a rich family to start a family.
You don't need a strong economy. Economies ebb and flow, okay? They go up and they go down. If you ever have kids, okay, here's the thing. If you ever have kids, if you ever have them, it is guaranteed that you will have kids during a weak economy. And the reason is that it may be strong when you have them, but you'll still be a parent 10 years from then when the economy dips again.
The economy may be weak now when you have kids, but you'll be a parent 10 years from now when it's stronger. This is how economies work. And that's why you can't wait around for the economy to permit you to move on with your life and do the things that you're meant to do as a human being. Now, I use my own story as an example because it's my own story, also because it's important that when I talk about this, that you know that I've actually done the thing that I'm advocating for,
which makes me more credible with discussing this, not less. But of course, even at my broker's point, I was still then rich compared to the vast majority of humans who've ever lived on Earth. And you right now listening to this, no matter what your financial situation is, you are richer than almost everyone who has ever lived.
Okay, people with fewer resources than you have been reproducing since the beginning of human existence. Literally billions of people have done the thing that we are now told you can't do unless you have $100,000 in savings. If people had this attitude in the past, the human species would not exist. So if this is your attitude, you have an attitude that if this was prevalent,
200 years ago, it would be the extinction of mankind. That's not an exaggeration. So you say that you can't afford to start a family. Well, how can that be? How could it be that you can't afford it and yet billions of people have afforded it with less? How is it that you can't do something that has been done under more difficult circumstances billions of times?
And I'm often told by younger people that the situation now is just too difficult. Everything's too expensive. And I don't understand, I can't relate. Again, it's like they think the history of the world started 45 minutes ago. If you think the challenges you face today are so unprecedented that they mean we should stop reproducing as a species, then you simply have no understanding of world history. You don't know what the world was like. You don't know what your ancestors had to deal with. You don't even know what people 10 years older than you had to deal with.
People have been through recessions, depressions, famines, wars, catastrophes of all kinds, and they continue to having children. They continue building families. Sure, fertility rates have gone up and down over the years and decades, but there's never been a time when mass amounts of young adults have simply sworn off parenthood altogether. That has never happened until now.
Do you really think you face greater hurdles than your great, great grandparents did during the Great Depression? Do you really think it's harder to have a family now than it was when the Black Death was wiping out a third of the population of Europe? Yes, these days, young families may struggle to buy a starter home, and that's a struggle. I'm not dismissing it. I struggled with that too in my early 20s.
Look, if there was ever a time when it was easy for someone in their 20s to afford a nice home, that time lasted for like 30 seconds, 40 years ago, okay? It was never like that before. It hasn't been like that since. It'll probably never be like that again. Like, so just get over it, okay? Just get over it. You have no choice. Most people in the history of the earth could never dream of living in any kind of home.
At all. In fact, for most people who've ever lived, the greatest challenge in starting a family was not a starter home. It was that half of their kids wouldn't live past infancy. And yet they still started families. They still forged on. The truth is that the economy is not stopping anyone from having kids. It's not that they can't afford it. It's that they don't want to make the sacrifices it requires. They'd have to give up a certain measure of comfort in order to start a family and they don't want to do that.
For most of the people who say they can't afford kids, that's what they mean. That's how we can end up in a situation where someone says they can't afford kids, even though they're wealthier and more comfortable than billions of people who somehow could afford it. It's because what they really mean to say is that they can't afford the same level of luxury and comfort while also having kids. It's not really a matter of affordability. It's a matter of priority. A lot of people today prioritize their own pleasure and enjoyment over anything and everything else.
And another one of the comments under the article that I read was from a woman who said that her household income between herself and her husband is $150,000 and they can't afford to have a kid. Household income of $150,000, they can't afford it. There are people out there making a tenth of that.
We have kids. Okay, they can't afford it 150k. And that's it right there. That is the attitude. It's that sort of thing that has led to the birth rate decline. The irony, of course, is that you so often end up with far less pleasure and enjoyment. When you prioritize that above all, you end up with less of it.
than people who don't prioritize it. The truth is that you can start a family and have kids and then down the line end up far richer than you were when you were a childless. I'm a testament to that. Millions of other examples are available to you. I mean, this is not an uncommon thing, especially these days. It's possible to do. But one of the most basic realities of life is that if you want more, you have to be willing to risk what you already have. You have to put your chips on the table. If you won't do that, you'll be stuck in exactly the spot you're in right now forever.
until eventually you lose that too. And that brings me to the final point that I want to make. We heard those responses to the New York Times article from people who insisted quite indignantly that they don't owe it to anyone to have kids. But actually you kind of do.
And nobody will tell you this. Okay, nobody will talk about the obligation to start a family. The idea that any of us have any obligations at all is of course anathema to the modern mind. We are deeply distressed by the thought that we owe anything to anyone ever, but you could be distressed about it all you want. I will say what no one else will say to you. You do actually owe it. You have a duty.
Now, there are exceptions. Some people are called to a life of service apart from biological parenthood. Some people simply can't have kids. I get that. There are other vocations that human beings can have, but most of us are called to start families. And for those of us who are called, we do owe it. We do have a debt. We're called. We are called to it.
Your ancestors suffered and bled and died to build the civilization you live in now and to give you all of the comforts and luxuries that you take for granted. They lived lives that were by our standards brutal and short and impoverished. They built their lives by hand from scratch. They built the civilization that you live in from scratch.
You think you can't afford children. Well, you have a grandfather, not all that far back in your lineage, who built a one bedroom cabin by hand, shared it with your grandmother and eight kids, one of whom gave birth to the person who gave birth to the person who gave birth to the person who gave birth to you. You experience more comfort and luxury in a single day than that man did in his entire life combined. His life would have been easier if he never had kids, but he had them.
because he wanted you to exist. He was actually thinking 100 years into the future, 200 years, 300 years. You come from a long line of people who actually cared about what the world would look like in the distant future, even as you only care about what you're going to have for lunch this afternoon. And you don't have just one grandfather like that. Your bloodline was carried on through the centuries by men and women of that type.
They carried your family name and your lineage and your history and everything that makes you, you. They carried it on their backs and they suffered for its sake. And now after all of that, after those thousands of years of struggle and strife, just to bring you into this world, you're going to shrug your shoulders and refuse to continue. They ran marathons, handed you the baton and you're going to just sit down in a lawn chair and say, sorry.
You wasted your efforts. The race ends here. I don't feel like running. I don't feel like it. Now, all of that is it's going to end with you going, nah. Nope. You're going to wipe out your lineage and bloodline just so you have more time to watch Netflix. Thousands of years of toil end with you by your own choice because you just can't be bothered.
That is a failure of historic proportions. It is a failure to live up to your obligation because yes, you have an obligation to the people who built this world. You have an obligation to continue what they built. Now I'm not saying, I know that what I'm saying here is not going to be the most compelling argument to most people these days. I know that.
And I know that a lot of people are going to, it's going to get shared on Twitter if you're going to snicker about it. And we have an obligation to our ancestors to continue the lineage. That's stupid. Who cares about, you know, there'll be a lot of that, you know, a lot of that. I get it. Because to a lot of people these days, the idea that they should have any respect for their ancestors, much less that they have any obligations to them, is totally foreign.
Now I realize that. We are a culture severed from its own past living in a perpetual state of now as though the past never happened and the future will never happen. That's how you end up with people who act as though they're facing unprecedented financial hardships because they can't afford to buy a three bedroom house at the age of 23. I understand all that. But what I'm saying is still true, all the same.
If your parents are sad that you aren't giving them any grandchildren, this is why. They have every right to be sad. They are mourning not only their own loneliness, but also the fact that you're choosing to squander 10,000 years of work. They're mourning the extinction of their bloodline. And they're wondering what the point of any of this ever was. If it all ends like this, it all ends with you.
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So more Trump picks coming in, and this one is gray. The Daily Wire reports, President-elect Donald Trump taps former Representative Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday to serve as the Director of National Intelligence. He said in a statement, I'm pleased to announce that former Congresswoman Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard will serve as Director of National Intelligence for over two decades. Tulsi has fought for our country and the freedoms of all Americans. As a former candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination, she had broad support in both parties.
Now a proud Republican. So this is amazing for so many reasons. One of them is that Tulsi Gabbard was just recently put on a terror watch list by the TSA under Biden. And now she's going to be the boss of whoever put her on that list. And she'll be able to find out who that person is presumably. And she won't be their boss very long because hopefully they're fired, but still.
There's a lot more to like about that pick before we get into that. There was also this, Daily Wire again. President-like Donald Trump nominated Representative Matt Gaetz, one of his most ardent supporters to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States. Trump posted on social media, Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney trained at the William & Mary College of Law, was distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice.
Now this one, this one as expected has gotten a decidedly mixed reaction on the right. Now on the left, it's not mixed. They are all in agreement that it's a disaster. They're apoplectic. It's in a state of shock, trembling with rage. This was a shock and awe pick by Trump. And I have to say, I love the pick. I think it's a great pick.
I love this one. I love the Tulsa Gabbard pick. And I love them both for basically the same reason, which is that if we're serious about dismantling the deep state and gutting the federal bureaucracy, if that is actually going to happen, if it's going to happen for the first time ever, it will require certain kinds of people to do. And they're going to have to be the kinds of people that the media, the left, and many even on the right, hate.
Which is why at this point, my number one qualification for a Trump cabinet post is that the media freaks out over it. That's like, if the media doesn't freak out, if Trump picks someone and the media is like, okay, well that one's not so bad. That tells me that it's a really, really bad pick. So this is what we want.
And it's not because we're just trying to trigger the libs with the cabinet picks. I mean, that's fun. You know, we can all have fun with that. That's an added bonus.
But no, it's because we need the kinds of brazen wild card type characters who will go in there and do the job that needs to be done. You know, the, the wrecking balls, the bowls and the china shops or whatever cliche you want to use. That's what, that's what's necessary. Matt Gates is definitely that Tulsi Gabbard will be that. So I think it's a great pick. There is a time.
maybe for more buttoned up traditional business-like picks. I'm not saying that if you transplanted me into any other time in American history, I would always support Matt Gates as the Attorney General. But I do support him in this time right now for what needs to be done. And you also have to ask yourself, when Trump makes a pick,
I mean, going back to the left's reaction. When Trump makes a pick and the left freaks out about it. Why are they freaking out? What are they upset about? Are they upset that this person will not effectively advance Trump's agenda? Are they worried that it's going to make the Trump administration less effective? Is that their concern? Obviously not. This is why I say this is the number one, this is the barometer, this is the test.
is their reaction. And it's not, again, not just because we enjoy seeing them upset, although we do. It's why they're upset. They're upset because they know that people like this will actually advance Trump's agenda and they're not going to go in there and try to undermine Trump. They know these are people that they can't control, that are coming away from the outside and they're not
They're kind of, as I said, they're wild cards. You can't control them. You can't predict what they're going to do exactly. And that's what they don't like about them. So the only challenge now, of course, is going to be the confirmation process. Trump could try to recess appointments. But if that's not the strategy, then he's going to need the Republicans to get in line. And the good news is that Trump has a huge mandate from the public.
If he had just kind of squeaked in by the skin of his teeth, if it was one of those things, then it would be tougher. But that's not the case here. This is a huge mandate from the American people. He won in a landslide, and any Republican who obstructs the agenda that Trump was elected to enact will pay a price. And I think they know that going in. So I think more of these picks will make it through than maybe what people are expecting.
All right, Trump met with Biden in the White House yesterday. Seems to have been quite a pleasant experience for both guys. Here's a quick clip of them sitting by the fireplace and just enjoying a nice chat.
Thank you very much and politics is tough.
And it's, in many cases, not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate it very much. A transition that's so smooth, it'll be as smooth as you can get, and I very much appreciate it, thank you. You're welcome.
First of all, what the hell is going on with that fireplace? That fire is way too big. Did you notice that? That's a bonfire in the middle of a living room. That's a fire hazard. I know old people get cold easily, but that's too distracted by the fireplace, Steve, and hear what they were saying.
But, you know, it seemed like they were getting along. They took a bunch of pictures together also. Let's see some of those pictures of the, they are looking at the pictures. What else do we have? Okay, look at the smiles. Look at the smile on Joe Biden. This is the happiest he's looked. He hasn't looked as happy in years. Look at that. Look at these beaming, ear to ear. And look, I'm not a Joe Biden fan by any means, but it's nice to see him. Nice to see the old guy, you know.
having a good day for you. He hasn't had a good day in a long time. So, very happy. Happy as he's looked in a long time, triumphantly happy. Why does he look so happy? Well, because he is happy, right? He's so happy that Trump won. This is a man who was absolutely relieved, overjoyed. Full on MAGA right now is Biden. He's on, I guarantee you voted for Trump. I guarantee you did. How could he not?
I mean, think of it from Biden's perspective. He nominated this total incompetent do nothing to be his vice president. He drags this woman up, right? He pries her loose from the grip of failure and irrelevance, gives her this job she doesn't deserve and isn't qualified for. She's a total disaster for three years. Total liability, can't do anything, can't complete any task assigned to her. Biden stands by her anyway.
Now, yeah, he didn't know where he was standing. He didn't know what was going on. But still, he stands by her, defends her the whole time. Then a few months before the election, this woman stabs him in the back, orchestrates a coup against him and takes the job from him. I mean, so was Biden rooting against her? Yes. I mean, Biden was hoping to God that Trump would win. No question about it, of course he was. And look, I have zero sympathy for the guy, but I at least understand
I can understand that. If I was in his shoes, I would totally be rooting for Trump and I would be overjoyed that he won. So he can retire in peace now. Now, sure, he's a one-term president. His tenure was a disaster. He's been totally disgraced. So there are a lot of reasons for him to be unhappy right now, but at least that horrific she-devil didn't win. So he's happy about that. And of course, the other very interesting thing is that
He's so happy and so pleasant in this panning, this transition, handing over power to a fascist dictator. That doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Donald Trump is literally Hitler, worse than Hitler, if anything. And you're just handing him the reins, posing for pictures, happy.
Like it's almost like all that fascist dictator stuff was nonsense that the people saying it never believed for a second. Almost as if. All right, speaking of She Devils, AOC had some thoughts about the election. She was asked during a livestream whether the Dems lost because of wokeness, you know, which she attribute too much wokeness to the, as one of the reasons for the loss. And here was her response.
Personally, I don't. I think that a lot of voters really don't like fake people. And they're sick and tired of fake politicians. And so what I actually think is worse is saying something you don't believe. And so if during the entire time and campaign season, you're saying that you're down with trans people or
like the LGBT community, and then you lose an election, and then the next day you say, all that stuff was wrong. I actually think what people are more upset about is someone was doing something they didn't believe and just saying something. Like if you actually weren't about that life, why did you campaign as though you were?
All right, now some people have seen me interpreting this as AOC taking a shot at the Democrats, maybe taking a shot at Kamala, accusing her of being fake. She's saying what voters want is authenticity. So she's saying Kamala was not authentic, she was fake, which she is. Kamala is fake, I mean, but I don't think that AOC is taking a shot at her. I don't think that she's bold enough to do that because
AOC is fake herself. She's a coward. And so she's not going to take a stand like that against her own party. No, what she's doing, actually, is the opposite. She's trying to defend wokeness. She can't admit that the party has gone too woke. So instead, she says, the real problem is anyone in the party who responds to the election defeat by pulling back from the wokeness. That's the real problem according to her.
because that would be fake and inauthentic. And so that's her point. And she's totally wrong, of course. But it's kind of awkward for me because I don't really wanna correct her. This is the thing was we're talking about why the Democrats lost and all of that. And there are a lot of Democrats that are just completely, they don't understand what just happened or at least they're pretending not to. And I don't really wanna
you know, help them. I mean, never interrupt your enemies when they're making a mistake, obviously. And I'm happy to let them keep making this mistake. Still, the truth is for the record that, yes, the Democrat party went to Oak and that is largely why they just got taken to the cleaners. I mean, that is pretty much the whole story. The trans stuff, the racial demagoguery, DEI, that's it.
If the economy was in the exact shape it's in right now, but the Democrats never went full trans, full DEI, full defund the police, if the economy was in the same shape as in right now, but Democrats had stopped their leftward lurch, say in 2013. So still pretty left wing, still very left wing, but let's just say it had stopped there and had gone no further.
then I don't think they would have gotten annihilated the way they just did. Trump still would have won because Kamala is a terrible candidate, but the worst presidential candidate in American history probably. But it probably would not have been the landslide that it was. The Democrat party over the past decade has completely divorced itself from reality and insisted that we live in their fantasy world with them. And so it's gone beyond just political correctness
to now we've got this whole new version of reality that we want you to pretend you're living in. And we need all of these various signs and displays of loyalty. We need you to talk a certain way, do certain things just to demonstrate that you're playing along with us. People get sick of that. Of course they do.
And it does, even though AOC doesn't seem to understand this, and never will, never will. And even if she does understand it, she'll never admit it. She can't, because this is her whole, this is her whole life. I mean, this is her whole political career. She is one of the principal people responsible for bringing the Democrat party into just full-on, crazy, bad-wokeness.
So she can't. She can't turn back from it. She can't. She's all in and always will be. There are some on the left who seem to be coming around a little bit though to this reality. So for instance, this is pretty remarkable. Here's Ezra Klein with some insights that probably would have helped his party if he had said it like a year ago and said he waited until it was too late, thankfully. But let's listen to this.
I come from outside Los Angeles. I lived in San Francisco until 18 months ago, and I live in New York City. The thing that surprised me least about the election was the sharp red shift in these big cities, because if you just talk to anybody who lives in them, they are furious. And this idea that, like, oh, no, the economy is actually good, or crime is actually down. This is all just Fox News. Like, shut the fuck up with that.
Like talk to some people who live near you. The rage I just hear from people in New York. This is partially Greg Abbott busting huge amounts of migrants here. But that does mean, by the way, there were enough migrants that Greg Abbott could bust actual human bodies to New York City. And it was a big enough problem that New York City was not able to effectively deal with it, right? It does show that what was going on on the border was much worse. I think the Democrats were letting themselves accept for all the cruelty of what Abbott did there.
That was not like an ad campaign. Those were like actual people who had come into the country who were overwhelming Florida States. The sense of disorder rising, right? Not just crime, but homeless encampments, trash on the streets, people jumping turnstiles in subways, crazy people on the streets.
You just talk to people and they're mad about it. They feel it's different than it used to be. I mean, in San Francisco, like the fury is overwhelming. And you see that it's not just the presidential level. London breed, the SF mayor just lost reelection. In Oakland, they recalled the mayor. A bunch of the progressive DAs across the country were recalled or beaten in reelection campaigns if Eric Adams has a lot of problems. But if you were obviously on the ballot, he would almost certainly, it seems to me lose. You have to be able to govern well. People don't follow politics.
But they live in the place they live. They see if prices have gone way up. And a bunch of economists telling them, no, no, no, no, don't worry about the price of everything. At least for some people and maybe net net, a slight majority of people, real wages have modestly outpaced inflation is like not going to do it. Because people feel when they get a raise, that's them. And when prices are going up, that's you, the government. Wow. You don't say.
Now there's a shocking bit of analysis. So what you're saying, Ezra, is that people don't like it when your policies make their lives worse. When you make people's lives worse, they don't like that. They prefer for their lives to not be worse. This is the base. This is the insight that you're actually kind of shocked to hear it from somebody like this.
It's just the most basic level of common sense. I mean, it should tell you something if you're on the left, that when we hear even the most basic common sense, we are shocked to hear it from somebody like this. People aren't very happy when you put in place policies that have the direct intentional effect of making their lives more miserable.
And really, the central proposal of wokeness, I suppose, is that the central proposal is that you should put the feelings of privileged groups over your own well-being. I mean, if I had to boil it down, if I had to boil it down, what is the central thing?
We call this thing wokeness, left it, whatever you wanna call it. But what is, it's like one sentence. What is the message? What are they proposing? What are they demanding? Really? It's not even a proposal, it's a demand. So what is the demand that this ideology is making? And that's probably it. I think that's probably a pretty good summary. It's just, here are these privileged groups of people and how they feel is more important
than your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of your family. And so they say that, hey, it may be bad for you and your daughter when a man is in the changing room or in the bathroom or on the girls sports team. But these people are in a privileged group that it makes them feel better. So you should just allow it. It may be bad for you when you've got violent criminals.
who are allowed to walk the streets free in your own, in your community. It may be bad for you. Makes you, makes you less safe. You know, you could become a victim of crime, brings down property values. It's just bad all around. Like there's no advantage for you. There is no upside to having these, to letting these bail reform, letting them out, letting them out again and again and again. No advantage to you at all. But, you know, these people belong in a privileged group.
makes them feel better. And so you just have to tolerate it. And so it's this kind of thing over and over and over again. Hey, you're a business owner. It may be bad for you. It may really harm you and your family. If people just come in and steal and mass, they come in and shoplift to the point where you have to lock up shampoo bottles
You have to put like a ball and chain around a shampoo bottle so that nobody can, they have to drag it slowly out of the store to get it out. Maybe bad for you, it may actually hurt you in very real ways and it hurts your family. It may devastate you, but
A lot of the people doing the shoplifting, they belong to a privileged group, makes them feel better to be able to do this, to stop them and make them feel bad, so you just got to put up with it. So again, it's just that over and over and over again. Your well-being is less important than the feelings of these particular people. That's it. And it's not sustainable.
Philosophy is not sustainable, and you may be able to berate certain people into going along with it for a certain amount of time. You may be able to pick on the most gullible and hapless and easily influenced and most impressionable people. You may be able, for a period of time, you may be able to make them go along with it.
You may be able to berate them, harangue them into pretending that they're okay with it when this dude walks into the locker room with a bunch of women and your daughters in there. But it can't last forever. It is not sustainable. At a certain, people are people. And at a certain point, it's a caring for your own well-being is a biological necessity.
So you are asking them to reprogram their, not just to have different priorities and different preferences, but to reprogram their biological nature. These are like basic survival instincts that you are demanding. They reprogram within themselves. They can't. And so eventually and actually very quickly it all falls apart. And all you're left with is just,
whining and crying. Oh, it makes us feel bad. But yeah, it may be a lot better for you and your family, obviously, so much better for you if this country is not overrun by illegal immigrants. Okay, having 20 million illegal immigrants here, 30 million, whatever we're up to now, who knows how many people, having tens of millions of illegal immigrants obviously does not help you in any way as an American citizen.
but making them leave makes them feel bad. And these people belong to a privileged group. So if you kick them out, they're gonna feel really bad about it. Yeah, it's gonna make your life better and it's gonna make your children's life better, but it's gonna make them feel bad. And that's gonna be the argument, but I just think it's not going to, that is kind of run its course. I think that there's now far beyond a critical mass of Americans who are just
are numb to it. They're numb to those kinds of emotional manipulation tactics because it's just too much. They've heard it too much, and you've screened in their face so much now it doesn't matter anymore. So that's the problem. But I don't think that can the Democrat party really turn back from this? Can they make this change? Can they reverse course?
Can they settle back into like a pre-2013 state where they're still pretty crazy and wrong about almost everything, but can they at least pull back a little bit? I think not. I think they can. Attention parents, I've got an early holiday gift for you. We've all been there one minute. Your kiddo is bouncing off the walls and an hour later,
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Every time we check in on Disney's upcoming Snow White remake, somehow things get even worse than they were before. This is a production that went off the rails a long time ago, which is quite an achievement, if you think about it. With all the money and technology we have in 2024, somehow Disney is struggling very hard to match the quality of a film from the 1930s. Now, first, there were the leaked images of the actors playing the Seven Dwarves, which weren't dwarves at all because that would be culturally insensitive. So instead, Disney replaced the dwarves with a diverse array of magical hobo's.
Then whenever one pointed out that the dwarves are kind of important to the story, Disney delayed the production, fired all the actors playing the magical hobos, replaced them with CGI dwarves, which didn't look particularly convincing, but at least they were better than the actors. So some progress was made, I suppose. Good will was restored to a degree.
Then the star of the film, Rachel Zagler, proceeded to light all that goodwill on fire. She made it clear that she thinks the story of Snow White is actually very creepy and misogynistic. She said Disney was basically going to, throughout the old story, get rid of the prince, make a film that supposedly empowers women. And that means downplaying the whole romance thing.
which was the whole point of the story, hiring the Barbie screenwriter and going full on Girl Boss was the plan. Then a short clip of the film, Serviced Online, and we saw exactly what a Girl Boss Snow White looks like. The clip showed Snow White directing the dwarves to clean their own cottage for her as she instructs them to whistle while they work. Yes, the dwarves come home from a long day at the mines and they're met by a bossy, unpleasant woman telling them to clean up.
doesn't even help them in this version, which is a pretty big change from the original. She also doesn't seem remotely grateful that they're giving her a place to stay when she desperately needs it. Instead, she just sings along and watches the dwarves do all the work almost sadistically, really. And once again, as you'd expect, this footage caused a backlash and Disney quickly had it scrubbed from the internet. Then a couple of months ago, Disney uploaded this teaser for the film. This was their big moment to win back the fans. Here's just a quick part of it.
So I whistle while you work
So the whole thing has this kind of uncanny valley vibe to it, and pretty much all the comments are negative. It's going through some of them. These are the top comments in order, by the way, I'm not cherry picking, this is just the top comments, here's what they say. Quote, this is actually hilarious, the first Snow White saved Disney, the second ruined it. Now this says, what's the point of doing a live action remake of an animated movie if you're just gonna animate half the characters anyway? Then there's this one quote, it's okay Disney, you could just cancel the film, we won't be mad if you admit defeat.
There are a few people who point out that the trailer has more than a million dislikes on YouTube and fewer than 100,000 likes. There's information that YouTube hides, but it's still accessible apparently. Comments go downhill from there. One reads, wow, Disney, you truly are incredible. It took you three years, multiple rewrites, unnecessary CGI, $209 million just for me to enjoy a comment section of a movie I will never watch, bless you. And someone writes, I'm rooting for the poison apple.
So you get the idea, everything about this film is an unmitigated disaster, even their teaser trailers are bombing. After all this, if there are any adults left at Disney, you'd think they'd be in damage control mode at this point. Maybe they can't control how bad this film is going to be, maybe they can't improve the CGI on the dwarves anymore, way too late for script rewrites, cost a lot of money and they're probably well over budget at this point. But at a minimum, you'd think that they could at least say,
tell Rachel Ziegler to stop talking like a deranged left wing activist just for a little bit. Just until the movie comes out, that might mitigate some of the potential future damage for this film, which is somehow already getting even worse pressed than Joker 2 and not even out yet. But apparently telling Rachel Ziegler to behave normally just isn't an option either. So the other day in response to the presidential election, Ziegler had a very public meltdown on her Instagram stories. She wrote quote, F.U. Donald Trump,
And she proceeded to insult the 75 million Americans who voted for him, quote, I find myself speechless in the midst of this, another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world I do not want to live in. Yeah, you always got to love starting with FU and then ending with, you know,
complaining about all the hatred in the world. Of course, if Ziegler doesn't want to live in America anymore, she's free to leave. She certainly has the resources to do that. But she seems to suggest that Donald Trump will make the entire world uninhabitable, which
It's kind of a new one. Actually, it's not entirely new. It reminds me of 2016 when Cher declared that she would have to leave the planet if Donald Trump won, and she never left strangely enough, although she kind of looks like she did. And ironically, if she wants to leave the planet now, Elon Musk is probably her best bet, which raises his own complications, I guess. So these celebrities are really running out of options.
But Ziegler wasn't done there. Her post added that Trump is, quote, leaning us towards a world that will be hard to raise my daughter in, leaning us towards a world that will force her to have a baby she doesn't want, leaning us towards a world that is fearful. She stated that, quote, the left continues to fail us in forging a new path forwards. This loss should not have been, and it certainly should not have been by so many votes. May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.
Now, what's amusing about this, of course, is that it's pretty clear that Zegler is the one who doesn't know peace. She's obviously an emotionally unstable basket case who has no idea how to process the fact that none of her paranoia is based in reality. And the vast majority of Americans don't agree with her political views. So instead of coming to terms with her own faults and misconceptions, she says that she wants Trump supporters to suffer emotionally just as she does every single day. Misery loves company, as they say.
And further examples of projection, Ziegler went on to state that Trump voters are part of a quote, deep, deep sickness in this country. She added quote, there's no help, no counsel in any of them, whatever that means exactly. Then she told all of her fans to delete their ex-accounts, charging the Elon Musk, helped get that man elected.
This is a bit of an aside, but this is a common trend now on the left. They're suddenly abandoning X. Now that Trump has won, the Guardian just announced that it's going to stop posting its articles on X. For one example, XCNN anchored Don Lemon along with a random NYU professor named Jay Rosen did the same thing. I just saw this morning, Joy Reid has also deleted her X account. What a tragedy. This is a platform that until election day, these people claimed was a cesspool of fringe ideas and radical beliefs.
But they remained on it anyway. Now that the election has proven that X is actually representative of mainstream thought in America, suddenly they can't tolerate it anymore. They have to abandon the platform. It doesn't really make any sense. It can only conclude that the left is simply incapable of realizing that they're the ones who are far outside the mainstream. When they're confronted with that evidence, they can't process it. So they have to scamper away. They're just totally humiliated.
Many of Aunt Rachel Ziegler is not capable of experiencing humiliation, so she has no problem telling her supporters to abandon ex entirely. She also has no problem going on an unhinged rant against more than half the country, including a lot of people that presumably Disney would like to sell tickets to. Many of those Republican voters are in the target audience for the Snow White remake. They're the people who like these kinds of traditional stories. They're the people who are having kids. These are the kinds of people Disney needs to show up if the movie is going to be remotely profitable.
And now the star of the film is telling them all to go to hell. Now, one of the many ironies here is that about a year ago, a Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company would stop getting involved in these political fights. He said that they wouldn't push any kind of agenda. He said they'd quiet the noise and proceed with decency and respect for their audience. Well, I guess so much for that.
Now, according to the star of Disney's upcoming marquee film, 75 million Americans are horrible people who should suffer for all eternity. The other remarkable aspect to this is that Disney, as you may recall, fired Gina Carano for her allegedly controversial social media post just a couple of years ago. And, you know, Gina Carano never did anything remotely like what Rachel Ziegler has done.
Gina mocked the idea of wearing masks and preferred pronouns, which makes sense because wearing masks and preferred pronouns are both really dumb ideas. And she pointed out that the totalitarian governments make citizens hate one another, which is true. History proves that's true. And for all this, Disney fired her. And her talent agency dropped her on top of it. Gina Chrono did not personally attack tens of millions of people. She didn't berate her own fan base. She didn't say that half of the people who watched Star Wars are bad people. She didn't say that.
Instead, she articulated views that the vast majority of Americans agree with. So why is she still involved in litigation with Disney to get her job back while Rachel Zegler is the face of the company's upcoming blockbuster film? Now, we all know the answer to that question. Disney, despite what its CEO says, is an explicitly political operation. But more than that, they're vengeful. Even though it's clearly not helping them financially, they can't hide their disdain for tens of millions of Americans.
That's very bad news for Disney shareholders and everyone else hoping that this company might one day return to what it once did, which is to create entertaining family films that normal people want to watch. It's virtually guaranteed the Snow White remake is going to continue crashing and burning over the next few months, like a slow moving train wreck. And especially now after this was the nail in the coffin, now that you've insulted
more than half of the people you would need to come watch this movie. And that is why once again, Disney, their new Snow White film and Rachel Ziegler herself are all today canceled. I'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.
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