# Episode 47 - The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2025-09-17T00:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17855695-episode-47-the-assassination-of-charlie-kirk.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-47
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode47.html
- People: Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host)

## Summary

In Episode 47 of GenX Adulting, the hosts discuss the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative figure known for his debates on college campuses. They reflect on his impact on political discourse, the reactions to his death, and the broader implications for free speech and societal division.

## Key takeaways

- Charlie Kirk was a significant conservative voice, especially among youth.
- His assassination is viewed as a watershed moment in American political discourse.
- The hosts emphasize the importance of open dialogue and civil discourse.
- Kirk's approach to debates often included inviting opposition to engage in conversation.
- The episode critiques the media's portrayal of Kirk and the reactions to his death.
- The hosts discuss the role of mental health and societal influences in violent actions.
- They highlight the need for unity and understanding across political divides.

## FAQ

### Who was Charlie Kirk?

Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, known for engaging in debates on college campuses.

### What happened to Charlie Kirk?

Charlie Kirk was assassinated, which the hosts discuss as a significant event in the context of political discourse in America.

### What is the main theme of this podcast episode?

The episode explores the implications of Charlie Kirk's assassination on free speech, political dialogue, and societal division.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hynLWkBlLBo)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-47-the-assassination-of-charlie-kirk/id1764838823?i=1000727125177)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7KVLxV8HrH4UdA1mEV4Ygq)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/17855695-episode-47-the-assassination-of-charlie-kirk)

## Transcript

[Music]
Welcome to GenX Adulting. It's been a
week here in America. We've had quite a
week and I'm sure it's touched some
people around the world. So we are going
to do an episode on the assassination of
Charlie Kirk. When we first started
this podcast, our motivation, in addition
to having guests on to share their life
stories, that would resonate with people
around the world and help people feel
seen and heard and maybe not so crazy
sometimes. But it was also to tell our
story, our stories and our individual
stories and then our story together as a
married couple for almost 32 years, 31
years. I don't know, I've lost track now.
Raising children and sharing our opinions
and wisdom and thoughts through
the from what we've learned through the
years. But also in the hopes that our
grandchildren, great-grandchildren,
great-great-grandchildren and future
generations could look back and see what
their great-great-grandparents
thought about different things that were
going on in the world in addition to
listening to our story. And this week we
experienced a historical moment in
history, no question. Something that I'm
sure future generations will be
interested in and read about and maybe
even learn about. So I think it's worth
covering and I think you agreed as well,
Brian, that it was worth covering.
Yeah, I think it's worth covering. It's
covering it's, you
know, a lot of folks are
calling it a watershed moment. Yeah.
Comparing it to Kennedy or comparing it
to MLK or Malcolm X or any number of
other political assassinations or, you
know, well-known figureheads who've been
assassinated or killed. Right. So again,
yeah, the historical significance I don't
think can even be realized right
now. I don't think we even know. So I
think it's important that we do an
episode on it for that reason alone as
well as other reasons for sure. So for
those who don't know who Charlie Kirk
was, Charlie Kirk. So do you think that's
even possible at this point? Well, I
don't know. Everyone knows Charlie Kirk.
Yeah. Charlie Kirk. You know, the
interesting thing about
Charlie Kirk is that he was a
very young man. Yeah. He was 31. I
believe his birthday is
next month. He would have
been 32. I've learned. I knew of Charlie.
I listened to Charlie at different times.
He would pop up in social media and I
would stop to listen to
what he had to say or to
listen to his back and forth on college
campuses. So I certainly knew of Charlie,
but I've learned a lot about a lot more
about Charlie just in
the last few days. And one
of them is that his birthday is next
month. He started
turning point USA, I believe,
when he was 19, some reports, 18, some
reports say 19. We can go
with 18. Did you know he
was a really good, I guess, football
player like he could. He was at a
football camp. I saw on
social media a video of him throwing
footballs with some kid that became a
professional. I just
saw that today. And he threw like this 45
yard pass like it was
nothing. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't
know that. You know, he's a, he was a big
tall guy. Six, four.
Yeah. Six, four. That's pretty
good height. So that's a NFL quarterback,
you know, height type of
guy. Yeah. I did see a video
short of his or, you know, I think people
were talking shit like,
Oh, you can't throw football.
And he put up a short showing him doing
that. It was at some college
campus in a, in a stadium. And
yeah, he launched it. Yeah. Nice pass you
through. Yeah. It's a, it's a aspect
again, I didn't know
about him. So, but he started turning
point. I want to say this
was in 2012, very young, if the
math, math's and with just a folding
table and a chair, he would
go to college campuses with a
sign that would say prove me wrong and
really promote discussion
conversation. You know, the
concept of going into a college campus, I
was thinking back to
myself and how old, you know,
when I was on a college campus and I was,
and if somebody like
Charlie Kirk would have come to my
college campus, I was in college from
1989 to 1993. If somebody
would have, he was born in
1993. No, it's a trick. He was wow. Yeah.
So if somebody would have
come to our college campus,
because we went to school together. Um,
do you, do you remember who did come to
our college campus? Jerry
Brown came to our college
campus, the previous governor of
California, but do you know who else
came? Nothing. Not that I
could think of Jesse Jackson. Oh, maybe.
Do you remember that? Jesse
Jackson came. He's from the,
the SCU, the Stevenson union. Yeah. And
it, what's remarkable is there was no
security. Maybe there
was, right? There might've been security.
Yeah. The way that all that
campus laid out is it was kind
of in a bowl in a sense, right? He walked
down the hill. Yeah. He was
right there at the, the, the,
the student union. Um, I remember going
and listening to him. It
was a trip and I'm no Jesse
Jackson fan, but I know I'm skipping
ahead in some ways, but I never thought
I'd do anything bad.
Right. No, no. It was when he was Jesse
Jackson, part of the
rainbow coalition. And he was just
getting into like official politics. I
think he ran right when Clinton was
president. Yes. Jesse
Jackson was one of the candidates and he,
he was going to colleges
and he swung through Ashland.
And I remember seeing him there. Yeah.
Because we went to, again,
um, at the time it was called
Southern Oregon state college in Ashland,
Oregon, this beautiful
Shakespearean artsy community,
still gorgeous. Um, in a Valley, 20 miles
north of the California
border, very small school,
small community. So when anyone would
come to our campus, I
totally forgot about Jesse
Jackson. I went to Jerry Brown. You know,
who else came that was
famous? Who fish? Yes. So we,
yes. Side track. We saw fish in a very
small, like gymnasium type. And there was
like a hundred of us.
It was when fish just started out totally
off topic. So if somebody
like Charlie Kirk had come
to our campus, I look back at the person
I was then young, uh,
really didn't know anything, but I
thought I did. I don't know if I would
have, I certainly wouldn't
have stopped to have a conversation with
him. I probably would
have, I would have completely
totally judged him and completely scoffed
and probably stood there
and laughed along with people.
Some of the things I would have been
immature. I wouldn't have
had the maturity to realize
the impact of what he was doing. It
doesn't matter what his
views were. I wouldn't have
had the maturity to realize that he was
coming into the lion's den
of idealistic thought and
welcoming altering views, altering
opinions. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have,
I'm saying for myself
personally, the person I was then, I
would not have recognized
the importance of that of just
what he was trying to do. You maybe would
have, I don't think I would
have. What I mean by that is
I'm not claiming any intellectual or
foresight authority or superiority. I
don't, I'm not saying
I would have recognized the impact or the
power of him coming
because quite frankly,
times are different. Him coming would
have been not that big a deal because
there was discourse.
People would have conversations and
disagree and agree and it never led, it
didn't lead to violence
at that time. I think back in the
sixties, it did probably, right? With
Vietnam and a lot of
civil rights movement and stuff like
that, there was something
very tense and it's tense now.
Back in the late eighties, early
nineties, you could have a conversation
and it would not have led to violence.
And it didn't need to
be this big, wonderful,
impactful thing. You didn't need a
national tour to go
and spread the word to
deprogram or change the thinking, right?
The mass thinking that I think is
happening right now.
Um, a quick sidebar. I remember my first
time going through Berkeley, Berkeley,
California, and we hit UC Berkeley. I
remember walking through
there and there was like a person
there on the megaphone just preaching to
people. And I don't know
what the hell he was saying.
He was spouting some crap. And it was
like, I remember stopping
and listening and thinking,
this is fucking amazing. Cause where I
grew up, that didn't
happen, right? Small town,
Northwest Jersey. And there wasn't that
going on. Um, so these
are like leftover, you know,
old hippies sitting there on a, with a
little, somehow he had a
megaphone that was, you know,
back before plugging USB and battery.
Somehow he had this powered
megaphone and not a megaphone,
but an amplifier. Yeah. Just spewing
stuff. And I thought
it was great. You know,
that's an interesting point. Um, when we
were going to school, it was a fairly,
even though the Gulf war was going on, it
was a fairly low conflict
time on campuses, I think.
Now where we went to school was very
liberal. First of all, it's
Oregon and I'm from Oregon.
So I know what I'm talking about. It's
Oregon. It's Southern
Oregon. Well, you know, even though
Southern Oregon, um, you know, when you
get into Eastern Oregon
and parts of Southern Oregon,
it isn't as liberal, Portland's liberal,
Eugene's liberal. Um, and
then Ashland, of course,
is liberal, but Medford wasn't liberal,
which is right. So, um, but then, right.
But then the school,
um, itself was of course, very liberal,
very liberal. And, and
that was fine. You know,
that was especially, um, at that point in
my life, that completely
was perfect for me. Um,
but to, to understand what you just said,
I mean, that's a really good point is
it wouldn't have been as quite a big a
deal to have that back and
forth because people had that
back and forth. Because even if you
disagreed with someone, we were kind of
in an echo chamber though,
but even if you disagreed with someone,
you still could have that
conversation. And there wasn't
like you said, a concern of violence or
concern of someone just
screaming in your face or a concern
of someone calling you, you know,
horrendous names or, um,
accusing you of things or trying
to ruin your life. You know, all these
different things, these threat, there
wasn't a threat to it.
I don't think you would have been called
a misogynistic fascist
racist Nazi. Correct. Right.
Yes. It might've been called an asshole,
a conservative, or I
don't even know. Right. But
you wouldn't have been called these,
these horrendous things
that really have historical
context and are very, pretty aggressive.
Yeah. Because I mean, I
think it is a really good point
is when we were in college, yet, even if
you disagreed with someone,
you didn't, and I disagreed
with a lot of politicians and I, I went
to downtown Portland and protested the
Gulf war, um, when it
first broke out. So I, you know, again,
we've been over in Portland.
You didn't, you didn't do the,
were you in Ashland when there was like
that walk through Siski you
Boulevard or whatever it was?
I went up to the main protest in
Portland. That was in
January, I think, um, you know,
we've been over a hundred grateful dead
shows. So we've been in the
Mecca of the world that would
have called Charlie Kirk those names back
then we were in the Mecca, but that
wouldn't have happened.
I have a whole theory on this. We'll get
to it, but that wouldn't
have happened. So there
would have been discourse. You could
agree to disagree, argue, whatever.
So I think when you think about now you
fast forward to 2012 and
what he started and his,
uh, I think motivations behind why he
started it, his concept of
just sit down and prove me wrong.
So gutsy, right? Um, so I think very
courageous. And I'm just
saying that as a person to just
sit down at a table and say, have a
subject and say, let's
debate, prove me wrong. And I know
there's a ton, a ton, thousands of
amazing debaters in our country and in
the world and they enjoy it.
They get off on it. I'm sure it's a huge
adrenaline rush. I don't
even know cause I'm a horrendous
debater and I've never been put in that
position, but I've always
admired people who can debate and
who just have so much knowledge to just
pull out so many facts.
Have you ever, have you ever
watched the debate, like a high school
debate or a college debate?
I have, but it's been years.
Yeah, it's been years, but it's really
impressive. It's incredibly
impressive. And I think, um,
and I think you have to be, you have to
read a lot in order to be a decent
debater. You have to be
smart and you have to educate yourself
constantly because to be able to just
come back, I think it's
amazing. That's super impressive is he
did it all just standing there with his
head, with the, with
the head on his shoulders and would talk
about any topic. It's really
remarkable. Cause he doesn't,
he's not a college educated kid. He's
obviously was a, what a
prodigy of sorts, right? To be able
to do that. I would assume so. You know,
he had his own outlook on
college too. And, and the death
that people go in, you know, he had his
outlook, name a subject he
could speak to it. Um, so what
he did was create this movement and he
would go in and he would say, if you
disagree with me, come
to the front row, the people that
disagree with me, he platforms what they
would consider, they,
they would consider themselves his
opposition. He platformed
his quote unquote opposition.
I don't think he viewed them as his
opposition. I think he
welcomed discourse and open discussion
and communication and persuasion and
really enjoyed hearing the aspect of
people's thoughts and
opinions and motivations behind why they
feel the way they feel.
And then enjoyed, you know,
trying to persuade them as to why he's
right. I think he enjoyed
the whole exercise of it.
Whereas I think a lot of the people that
came up to the podium to debate him,
not everyone, but a lot viewed him as an
enemy. Not realizing,
viewed him as the opposition,
not realizing he, he's actually the
opposite because he was
sitting here with an open,
openness of, Hey, let's talk. Yeah. Hey,
that's dangerous. You
know, obviously. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I,
it's a, it's an interesting one because
he's obviously a conservative guy, you
know, standard tall,
short-haired, good looking white
dude with conservative beliefs, very
religious. Um, I don't know
if, you know, maybe he was
considered the opposition, but a lot of
you look at a lot of the
videos, if you binge watch a bit,
it's a lot of people that come on with,
you know, you know, purple
hair, blue hair, earrings,
tattoos, right? The polar opposite of
him. And into your point,
he was, it was, tell me what
you got type of thing. Let's talk about
it. Yeah. But I think those people, as
you watch them go up
to the mic to talk to him, they view it
as they're, they're ready to take him on,
you know, and that's
fine. I think in debate, that's part of
it. But I think, I think he
was viewed by so many as the
enemy. And I think so much of that was
from misinformation. Um,
I think I just, I think
there's was a lot of clips, quotes of his
that were taken out of
context, out of context,
and, um, put out there that people bought
into and didn't understand that,
you know, it's really an amazing thing
because he would, he
would have a great, uh,
response to someone and have facts and
reasons, and it would make
perfect sense. But within there,
there was maybe one sentence, and then
somebody would take that
sentence and say, Charlie Kirk
said this, and then use it towards, um,
just use it to dehumanize
him. Yeah. But it's happened to
us as well, right? So we've had people,
we've said something and
people jump on little sound bite.
It's the danger. We're not Charlie Kirk
here with the user base or
anything or the following, but
it happens. Happens at all levels. It
does happen. So, but I think the
dehumanization of him.
So one of, I think his most powerful, one
of the reasons I think
that, um, his opposition was
trying to stop him was because he was so
influential and he was so
influential on the youth.
He was the first person to go into
colleges to listen to the youth and to,
um, actually have an
impact in changing their minds on certain
subjects. And as a result,
that has a political effect,
right? Because a lot of people say he was
instrumental in getting
the youth vote for Trump.
So his influence over the youth, that's
really the age
demographic that companies want,
that so many people want to attract,
right? 18 to 18 to 30 or whatever. Um, he
got him. He got them.
Well, but you know, that's one of my,
I've got a couple of
observations since he was killed.
And one of them is the media's response
to it, mass media. And
I'll throw in like the main,
the mainstream media, right? The Fox is
the CNN, the MSNBC is the Atlantic, um,
daily mail or whatever it read all these
different outlets. And then there's the
political spectrum of this here. Here's
my theory. If you listen to the
commentary from, um,
and you can do a comparative contrast on
this when Trump was the
attempted assassination of
Trump over the summer, MSNBC, CNBC, the
left, let's call it the left
side of the left leaning media.
They were like, took a pause and then
just got back into mud, slinging,
shitting on him, right? And inflammatory
language. Um, what I've noticed this time
is, is, and it's partly, I think it's
because there's a
demographic they just don't care about.
When it comes to Trump, it's probably 50,
50, right? Half the
country's flying with them. Half
the country hates them. And, but with
Charlie, what I, what I think I've
noticed is that I didn't
realize he was such a force. Like I've
listened to him. Like you were saying
earlier, I've seen him.
I've listened to him. Um, I can't sit
here and say I'm the
biggest fan of his or whatever.
Cause I just, I've semi tuned out, right?
I'm involved. I'm interested in politics,
but at the same time, there's always,
it's just these two sides and
it's just constantly going at
it. Um, but what I've noticed is the
media, the media wants Charlie's
followers. They do not want
to alienate Charlie's followers. So
they've handled the
reporting of him somewhat fairly,
right? Fox for sure has because he was
family to them. Charlie was
on Fox quite a bit. Charlie's
in with the Trump family, the JD Vance,
Marco Rubio, the Trump
kids, right? Everybody. So
Charlie's in on the right and they're of
course going to treat him
fairly, hold him with, with
great reverence. And they're sad because
they hung out with the guy.
They were friends with him.
They've lost one of their own. But when
you go to CNN and MSNBC, especially,
cause that's what's on
TV, right? If you want to watch, if you
want to sit and not have
to go scour the internet,
which I do as well. But for those few
outlets, they don't want to
piss off this youth, right? This,
there's a massive, even the kids, I don't
think kids are as divided
left and right. They are
actually, they are obviously, or, or, but
at least I think the kids all
knew him. If you're 15 or 12
or even younger up through our age, but
especially that, that, that, that
segment, I'm failing to say
the right word, but if you're in that,
that bracket where the
marketers want you CNN and MSNBC are
playing very nicely. They don't care
about us anymore, right?
We're, we're, we're, we're aging
out of the demographic. They don't
totally care about us
anymore, but they want kids that are
younger than us. So anybody say 40 and
younger or whatever,
whoever's got the money, it's,
it's fascinating because they've handled
Charlie so much differently. They've
actually, MSNBC fired
a guy and I've read his rebuttal to it.
He might be right. He made a
comment that he's saying the
timing of it is, was there were shots
fired. And what he said was
when nobody even know if it,
that Charlie got shot. Does that true? No
clue. Do I care to follow
out? I don't care. I could
give a shit, but even MSNBC fired someone
for saying something in
this case, those commentators
have said absolutely horrendous
inflammatory comments about Trump and
other politicians on
the right. Look at the view. The view is
even handled Charlie with kid gloves.
Have they? I haven't seen anything.
Yeah. What have they said?
That you shouldn't kill people. Right. If
Trump was killed, they would have said,
oh, your words have meaning. Your words
matter. And they would
have written it off and then
celebrated. And there's no doubt in my
mind, right? But this is
a business component here.
I believe it. You know, what's
interesting is that TMZ, when they
announced that he died,
some of their staffers in the background
right before they announced it were
cheering and laughing.
And then the guy Harvey on TMZ announced
it. And now they've been
trying to backtrack saying,
oh no, there was a car chase going on and
they were cheering on
the car chase. But then
people on social media are showing the
actual video of the car
chase. Nothing's happening.
Like there's no reason to be cheering.
Like, and first of all, who cheers like
that for a car chase,
but either way, there's nothing happening
within the car chase in
that time that Charlie died.
There was nothing exciting happening in
the car chase for
people to cheer and laugh.
And then right when it was announced was
when they cheered and laughed,
they're trying to backtrack because like
you said, like they
want that demographic.
Yeah. That's the right word. Demograph.
Here's the thing is his influence on that
demographic cannot be
overstated enough. Like
it's amazing the hold he had because like
you said, even if you
disagreed with him and these
youth that disagree with him knew about
him, obviously because the
one who killed him was 22.
Right. Yeah. So, um, the, he was a
powerful man, but the way he became
powerful was through
talking words, thoughts, ideas, and
words, ideas, opinions,
words, and being willing to talk to
anyone, anyone with respect, when he
always was respectful and
gave them the respect and
platformed the people that came up to
talk to him. That's what I don't think
was understood is he was
giving a microphone and a voice to the
people that opposed him and
saying, let's talk it out.
Yeah. And that's what's been extinguished
here is he never
fought. He wasn't a soldier.
He wasn't a politician. He wasn't making
any laws. He wasn't lobbying for, he was,
he was a guy who went into college
campuses and said, let's
talk about these things.
You disagree with me.
Let's talk about it.
I don't think, I don't think I would say
he didn't lobby for anything
because he definitely did. He
lobbied for the antithesis of everything
on the extreme left. He
lobbied for a Christian faith.
You could argue that. I'm not a Christian
faith advocate
outselling it, but I don't care.
It's always, it is what it is, right? He
advocated for
marriage and nuclear family.
He advocated for peace and talking over
violence. He advocated for
things like everybody should be
treated equally. There should be no
discrimination against anybody, whether
it's a say a person of a
minority group or a person in a majority
group. Right. So it was
more, he's a very egalitarian
type of person. So he did, but that's his
platform. So he, you could
argue he lobbied for that.
Sure. I meant more as a
true lobbyist on Capitol Hill.
But he had a profound influence on that
school of thought. And when
you go to the belly of the
beast, the belly of the beast is college
campuses. It's changed since
we were there. When we were
there, we went to a liberal arts college,
extremely liberal,
right? Extremely liberal,
but it was liberal, not fanatic. It was
still a place where you
could share ideas and have ideas.
It wasn't this fanatical thing where you
had to be a certain way to
progress. You had to play a
game, right? That's just life, but it
wasn't completely over
the top fanatical, you know,
dogma. Right. And that's, so he's, he
shook that. He shook that foundation.
He did. And I think he, uh, opened the
minds of a lot of youth.
He countered what is on
those campuses, the fanaticism that
exists on a lot, a lot of
those campuses and with a lot of
those professors. Um, he was, he was the
counterpoint, right? He was the turning
point for that. Yeah.
So like he was so, he was so powerful in
what he did. And I, you
know, why though, I think,
not to interrupt you, sorry, I think he
was so powerful because
he, people, he had people
thinking and you sure as hell cannot have
people thinking in this
society. Right. You need people
doing well, you need people doing what
they're told. You cannot have them
thinking. Well, if they
start thinking the, the, the power, uh,
the paradigm, it's not the
power, well, it's all power,
right? But the paradigms could shift. And
if the paradigm shifts, that's not
necessarily good for
power brokers. That's what happened
though. Yeah. He got, he got the youth
thinking and it did shift
things. One of the quotes that's really
circulating around, there's a
few, um, that is circulating
around social media to help dehumanize
him, uh, from the opposition
side that, you know, if you
don't call it the left liberal, whatever
is to dehumanize him is,
um, was about empathy and that
he didn't believe in empathy. Uh, he
viewed it as a new age term. So I was
going to read you the
actual quote. Okay. Okay. From what he
said, put on my glasses for this. I
wonder, um, by chance,
because I'd be curious of this, if you
look up the word empathy, right? I don't
know if the dictionary
still do this. Maybe if you went to an
actual dictionary, it
tells you the origin of a word
and the date, I think it used to. Yeah.
Right. I didn't look that
up for this. I'd be curious.
Okay. So one of the quotes, I'm going to
read you one small snippet of a quote
that people are using to justify why they
hate Charlie Kirk. Okay.
He says, I can't stand the
word empathy. Actually, I think empathy
is a made up new age
term. So people are saying,
we're not going to give him empathy or
his family empathy for being shot and
dying because he didn't
even believe in empathy. So we're going
to give a right back to him. This is
obviously people that
hate him. Now I'm going to read the full
quote, because that was
just one little sentence in the
full quote to give some context. This is
the full quote. The new communication
strategy is not to do
what Bill Clinton used to do where he
would say, I feel your pain.
Instead, it is to say you're
actually not in pain. So let's just a
little, so let's just say a
little very short clip. Bill
Clinton in the 1990s, it was all about
empathy and sympathy. I
can't stand the word empathy.
Actually, I think empathy is a made up
new age term that it does a lot of
damage, but it is very
effective when it comes to politics.
Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy.
That's a separate topic
for a different time. So where the quote
came from that people are holding on to,
he was discussing politics. He was
discussing how empathy is
used as a tool by politicians.
He wasn't discussing it on a personal
level, how you would relate
to someone if they were shot
and killed in front of their family. He
was discussing it as it
relates to how politicians
use it. And that's one example of how you
take one little piece of
what someone says out of
context and you use it to dehumanize
them. So in a lot of ways, I do agree
with what Charlie Kirk
was referring to about empathy. I do
because he was talking about it with
politics. And I actually
typed it out because so much has happened
this week and I have so
many thoughts in my head
that I sat down and just really thought,
how do I put this into words
to explain how I agree with
what he was saying when it came to
empathy in that quote. And I had just
read you the full quote.
And when you say your thoughts, are you
comparing empathy versus sympathy or just
how it plays out here? No,
I'm first going to discuss
how empathy, what Charlie was saying
about empathy and politics.
Okay. So let me read the quote,
and then I'm going to
read my thoughts on it. Okay.
Okay. So the quote, the Charlie's full
quote, "The new
communication strategy is not to do
what Bill Clinton used to do, where he
would say, I feel your
pain. Instead, it is to say,
you're actually not in pain." So let's
just a little very short clip. Bill
Clinton in the 1990s,
it was all about empathy and sympathy. I
can't stand the word
empathy. Actually, I think empathy
is a made up new age term that does a lot
of damage, but is very
effective when it comes to
politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than
empathy. That's a separate
topic for a different time.
So then I sat down and wrote down my
thoughts on empathy because I do agree
with Charlie Kirk on
this. The context of the empathy quote
was politics. He was
discussing how empathy is very
effective when it comes to politics.
Empathy is when you almost enmesh
yourself into another
person's experience. You're diving into
it. Your mind has gone so
far into the experience that
your body is almost carrying a form of
the other person's trauma. You are
letting their traumatic
experience into your body, mind and soul
with no boundaries. This can
be a very dangerous space to
reside in. We all have our own life we're
living and within that
life we have our own joys and
sorrows and many of us are still carrying
trauma from the past. So if
we're already dealing with
our own stuff as we go through our day,
if we come from a place
of empathy without personal
protective boundaries when interacting
with our family, friends,
acquaintances, parasocial
relationships on social media and
strangers both in real life and online,
it is the equivalent,
in my opinion, of absorbing someone
else's experience into
the fiber of your being
while simultaneously being a faucet of
energy that constantly pours into others.
When people function in a constant state
of empathy, there is no
end. There is no peace
because there will always be tragedy,
sadness, stress and
upheaval in life for ourselves and
for others. It is our responsibility to
maintain emotional and mental
boundaries, not only for our
own self-care mentally, emotionally and
physically, but so we aren't
an open and vulnerable vessel
for those who would target us to use for
nefarious purpose. So when it comes to
the Charlie Kirk quote,
he was referencing Bill Clinton and how
he used empathy as a
political tool. With empathy, you can
end up diving so deep into someone's
experience that you begin to identify
with their truth and
lose sight of your own. Even if your
truth is similar to theirs,
it's still your truth, not
theirs. With empathy, abandonment of your
own truth may happen
without you even realizing it.
I can see how empathy can be one of the
most effective tools for
politicians and now it can
be massively effective when it comes to
creating identity politics and
groupthink. And that's what
he was trying to say, is that empathy is
a dangerous tool when
it comes to politics.
Yeah, no, that's a lot. So what is this?
Yeah, no, you know, it's
a lot because I, you know,
it's a semantical difference. Maybe it's
important, maybe it's not, maybe it's
life or death. It feels
like maybe it is if, you know, based on
that, what you're saying
is if you empathize too much
and take on other people's plight and
existence at too personal
of a level that's actually
different than your own, then you can
start to lose concept of
yourself, your own plight,
your own frame of reference, and then now
be opened up to pure
manipulation. Yes. Is that what
you're saying? Yes. And that's what he
was trying to say, but then he said he
prefers sympathy. Right?
So let me ask you, well, go ahead and
you're going to talk about sympathy
because I do have a question
to differentiate. So then he talks about
he prefers sympathy. So
then I thought about that
and I wrote down my thoughts on that.
Sympathy is when you are able to
experience someone else's
suffering with them and show them
compassion, but you still have enough
emotional and mental distance
to maintain your own experience and
truth. You don't get lost in the other
person's experience.
Sympathy and compassion are essential to
the human experience and
our emotions we should use
and show our fellow humans when needed.
Empathy, in my opinion,
is used for more selective
circumstances, not as an overall brush
reaction to most things.
For example, when our children
go through hard situations or sad
experiences, I can say for myself,
empathy is immediately
triggered in me. It's my go-to with my
children. That said, there were
definitely instances where
I should have learned more, leaned more
into sympathy. Empathy
is the mama bear. I'll do
anything for my children reaction. And as
a mother, there were many
times I felt those emotions ride
along with them. I think that's a very
normal experience for a
parent and it never really ends.
The challenge for a parent is to have the
self-awareness to rein in
our empathy if diving in
isn't required in the situation. I'm not
saying to abandon what
your child is going through.
Absolutely not. But sympathy and
compassion may be enough of a reaction
and empathy, if overused,
could actually make things seem worse
because the parent's
overall perspective could be lost
in that moment. And that's how I view
sympathy. Yeah, interesting.
Does that make sense? Yeah,
no, it does. I think I'm more of a
sympathizer probably than an empathizer,
especially when it comes to the kids
because, yeah, it sucks you
got a bad grade, but that's
your problem. You should have studied
harder. My first is empathetic, right?
And so, and in times,
that's appropriate, but there are times I
should have been more
sympathetic instead of empathetic.
And I will say as a person, I know I have
spent a good part of my
life being way too empathetic
and I did not have personal boundaries
and I would absorb
people's experiences and I would
dive too deep and I would lose
perspective and I would lose my truth.
And it became where you
almost want to help them solve their
problems so badly that you
ignore any of your own issues.
You immediately are just there and in it
and that's dangerous
and not good for yourself.
So imagine if you have an entire group
that is empathetic to a
cause and it couldn't even be a
cause that's not even real. It's a made
up cause or whatever, who knows, but
whatever politicians
might do, however they may use, people
who are so vulnerable that
they're so easily manipulated.
And I'm not saying it's a left or right
thing. I'm talking
about a human experience.
So when it comes to politics, empathy
should not be a factor here
and that's what he was saying.
I'm semi blown away. I don't know if I
can articulate this, but
in some ways you've just described the
foundation of persistent racism to
constantly say you need
to empathize with, I say black people,
right? I'm of the mindset a hundred
percent. I view black
people as equals. I truly do a hundred
percent intellectual,
physically, emotionally equals.
And I find that so many people feel like,
oh, we need to, they need
to be, they need our help.
If we don't help them, then we're being
racist or if we don't help
them, they're never going to make
it. And I'm sitting back kind of like,
no, I don't think so. I
know, no, they're capable. Stop,
stop doing that. What you're doing is
racist because you think
they're not equal. You do not
believe that they are equal. And I truly
believe all people are equal. They're
circumstantial things
that happen in all of our lives that
separate us. Right. It's very
well known. If you're born in a
certain zip code, you have a better shot
at life than people born in
other zip codes, right? It's
really that simple. It's down to a zip
code level. That's fucked up,
but that's just the world we
live in. And I can sympathize with that.
Using your definition and
logic, you can't empathize
with it because there's not a goddamn
thing you can do about it.
And you can, I mean, I shouldn't
say that. It's not a lost cause, but very
interesting. You can
sympathize with it and have
compassion. And if there's ways that you
can help change it, you can
take action. But if you drown
in empathy, it becomes just a virtue,
virtue signaling. And it
becomes this, it becomes
virtue signaling, honestly. And nothing
ever happens. And it's
almost like it's an acceptance
of, well, this is just how it is. And so
we're just going to keep, and it's like,
no, it's almost like
when you want to believe in your, you
need to believe in your
child enough to do great things
so that they will do great things. You
have to, you have to
believe in other people and not,
and they not, you're almost treating like
you would be treating a
group of people. So let's say
black people, like they, you don't
believe in them enough to accomplish
things without your help.
That is the predominant belief that a lot
of people have. And I
will, I say I misspoke in some
ways. I do think on the empathy front,
you know, there's a, you can
solve for the zip code stuff.
And we, you know, there's just different
opportunities. There's
programs there. You can
do a few tax incentives. You know, this
zip code's not doing great.
Let's give a tax incentive to
somebody set up job, whatever it is.
There's economic. Yes.
But I do think the empathy
part of this is emotional, which is what
is, which is clouds,
any type of systematic or
fact-driven approach to solving any
problems. So locked in, in empathy and
emotions. And that's
why I say it never ends. That's why I say
if, if you are constantly
feeding that everything's so
sad and wrong and bad, and, and you're
only focusing on all the
wrongs and all the sads and that,
and that here's the villains, these are
the villains. And the
reason that everything is
so wrong and sad is because of them,
them, them. Okay. So it's a pressure
cooker, right? And if you
have a bunch of people that are
vulnerable and manipulated
and, and are just functioning on
empathy, they're almost like little
soldiers. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
No. Oh, like for sure. They
become mobilized. And then we see what
happened this week. Right.
Yeah. So instead of having
discourse and conversation and talking it
out, it went to violence.
Did you, I'm going to switch
topics or just switch terms in some ways.
Did you see the quotes
about diversity versus unity
and how Charlie used to say, I don't
believe in diversity. I
believe in unity. And I was like,
huh, so that got me thinking because
living in South Florida, we are the
epitome of diversity.
And I feel like it works. It's great. I
love the diversity of
South Florida. Yep. I love
the diversity of even like where I grew
up in New Jersey, right? New York, New
Jersey area. There's
a lot of diversity there, but his take
was, I don't like diversity because that
means we're different.
And whereas I like unity, I think it's
when you have unity, you
have strength. And I thought it
was like, man, that's kind of interesting
because I really am. I'm in
the dogma of I think diversity
is okay, you know, and I love it. And but
his unity concept was
like, look, and I'm going to
piece it together. I didn't totally dive
down the rabbit hole on it, but kind of
makes sense. I think
it's what makes South Florida work well,
because there's so much
diversity that we all unify around
it in some ways. We are unified amongst
our diversity. And I
think that's what he's talking
about. Yeah, I think he was saying, let's
instead of seeing each
other differently, we're just
together. Yeah, we're all together. It's
really interesting you said that because
we live in a very diverse area. And you
don't, I think if people
came here from other parts of
the country, they would notice it. And
oh, yeah, you don't even notice it when
you live in a diverse
area. It's just how it is like, you're
saying people up at an
individual level, rather than by
the color of their skin, the ethnic
background, you know what I mean? Yes,
you size them up. All
right, is this good? Or bad? Yes, by safe
or not type of thing that
you know, it's not based on
any of anything except like whatever,
however, you would normally
size someone up. It's not based.
So what's interesting, though, is I
think, like where I'm from Oregon,
there's not a lot of
diversity, let's be real. I mean, I'm
sure there's more than when I live there.
But come on. So I do
think, you know, it's up from like maybe
90 percent, no diversity.
It might be it might be at 88
percent or something like that. But it's
still pretty it's still
not a whole big diverse area.
No, it's not. And I think I
think out in places like that,
where some of the there are some of the
people that spout, you know, you're
racist, you're racist,
when they're actually more racist than
the people that live within
diversity, if that makes sense,
because they're seeing everyone by their
skin color and they're not
living in that unity that
Charlie Kirk was talking about, because
it is unity through
diversity down here. And so I
I do think that that's we're living it.
And we had another another
controversial front or statement,
maybe in that same short I saw video I
saw, but he was talking
about how he prefers unity
over diversity. And he prefers he does
want a single language. His
concept was I want a single
language because everyone speak in the
same language we can
actually communicate. Right.
But if you don't understand each other,
then you can't communicate
and then you have problems.
Right. I was you know, it's interesting
thought provoking. I'm not
that doesn't piss me off.
It's thought provoking. I don't know if I
agree with it. I think it makes sense. I
think it makes sense.
You know, I think people should
absolutely I think it's
amazing if you're bilingual or
trialing or whatever. You know, I think
that's phenomenal. I wish
I was. Yeah. But I do think
when you go out into the world in
America, I'm just speaking
about America, if everyone spoke
the same language, that would only aid in
unity, unifying us more.
And I do witness that I will
say in South Florida is you are amongst a
lot of people that are
speaking a lot of different
languages. And sometimes that is
isolating. You know, like I could be at
Costco and I'm walking
around and I'm hearing, of course,
Spanish, but then sometimes French and
different. And so you
would do kind of getting a little mental
bubble because we had a
guest on where when she was in
China, she called it kind of white noise
because everyone. And you
do. So it does affect that
connection with people in real life
because, well, they're speaking different
language. No big deal.
I'm not offended by it, but I'm not going
to engage with them in
any way because I don't know
if they speak English. What's interesting
in a small example,
but I think it's salient.
To your point down here, you go to
Orlando or in a hotel here, most of the
cleaning folks are going
to be Spanish, right? Right. It's just
the way the world is right
now in this country. When we
were up in D.C., the first night, I
forget where the place we
stayed at, but I was going on the
elevator a couple of times and I engaged
with the staff, but they
didn't. I don't know if they were
in the shadows or if they didn't speak
English, but they didn't
engage. And it was interesting.
And it was just like, you know, we get
we've pressed the button and
I'm like, you know, go ahead.
Type of thing. And I don't know what it
just there wasn't an
engagement and I don't think
they spoke English is what it was. So it
was very interesting
because they didn't have any
English tools. They couldn't totally make
it comfortable for them in some ways.
But I do find down here, like you said, a
lot of the staff is
Spanish, but they will engage.
100 percent. And you do. I mean, we
engage with everybody, but
yeah, they'll reciprocate back.
And it's great. So there isn't, but they
do speak enough English
to engage 100 percent.
So they've they've learned enough. Hello.
How are you? Yeah. All
that. Thank you. Yeah.
So I think I have a nice day. Yeah.
That's basic conversation.
Honestly, I think if there's
anything that Charlie Kirk really
symbolized, it was talking face to face
with people in real life,
getting off of phones, getting off of
social media, going and
having an old fashioned
conversation face to face. We may not
agree. There may we may be
in complete opposite ends
in many areas, but let's talk about it.
And we used to do that at the dinner
table. We used to do
that when we'd go out to restaurants. It
used to be feel safe
saying almost any talking about
anything in public. And everyone got so
quieted down with political
correctness and and social
media and everything. So I think what he
was symbolizing is really
old school in a lot of ways.
If you think about it and just let's just
talk. You know, it's funny. It makes
I just thought of this as you were saying
that. But when I worked
at the nursery in Portland,
I spoke English and everybody else spoke
Spanish. But we all
communicated. I got to be pretty
friendly with those guys. Yeah. And, you
know, even helped one of
them passes his American
citizenship test. Yeah. And we would at
lunch, I would, you know,
we'd sit in the little lunchroom
there and we'd talk and teach each other
words. They taught me all
the bad words. Right. I've
told you about. Yeah. I knew all the
Spanish swear words, but
I would teach them things.
And it was good. But they probably wanted
to learn English. 100
percent wanted to learn.
There was a pride in coming here and
learning English. And that
has flipped a little bit too,
as far as I think there's some situations
where it's almost like
maybe some groups have come here
and they're prideful about not
acclimating into society and holding on
to their own culture,
which you 100 percent should hold on to
your culture. You know,
but there has to be a natural
acclimation when you if you're going to
live in another country
for the unity of the country,
for the unity of society. I do think,
though, they're living in
the shadows now more so than
probably ever. Yeah. What I'm describing
was 30 something years
ago. And it was a common known
thing that there's seasonal workers and
they'll send their money
home and then they'll probably
go home when it's whatever out of season
and then they'll be back. Yeah. And it
was accepted. And it
was just a different time. Now there's,
you know, there's human
trafficking. No one talks about it.
In very stark, simple terms, but people
are trafficked now. So
they're like, I'm just laying
low. I'm just here because I don't want
to, you know, whatever that
is, whatever that story is,
they're staying low there. And that could
be in play when we're in
D.C., right? Down here,
as crazy as this sounds, right? Florida's
got a bad rap. DeSantis is,
we've got alligator Alcatraz.
We've got DeSantis, right? He said very
bold statements about
illegal immigration and stuff,
but people are still, there's a, there's
a flow. There's
communications when we're on walks and we
see people, you know, we'll engage
people. They engage us, right? I just
felt like up in that
D.C. area, it just wasn't like that for
whatever reason. It was a different
culture. Yeah. Yeah.
It was a different vibe. For sure. I
wanted to read his quote about Second
Amendment rights. That one
is also going around to dehumanize him
and to justify maybe why
he should have been killed.
Yeah. This one's silly. I don't know
which one you're going to read, but I
know I'm familiar with it.
So I'm going to read the quote that's
going around to help
dehumanize him, right?
Yeah.
But I think it's worth it. I think it's
worth to have a cost of,
unfortunately, some gun deaths
every single year so that we can have the
Second Amendment to protect
our other God-given rights.
So that's what's going around saying that
he felt gun deaths are worth
having the Second Amendment.
I'm going to now read the
entire quote in context.
An attendee asked Charlie what his
thoughts were on Second Amendment rights.
He responded, "I'm a big Second Amendment
fan, but I think most politicians are
cowards when it comes
to defending why we have a Second
Amendment. This is why I would not be a
good politician, or maybe
I would, I don't know, because I actually
speak my mind. The Second
Amendment is not about hunting.
I love hunting. The Second Amendment is
not even about personal
defense. That is important.
The Second Amendment is there, God
forbid, so that you can defend yourself
against a tyrannical
government." And if that scares you,
quote, "Wow, that's radical, Charlie. I
don't know about that,"
unquote, well, then you have not really
read any of the
literature of our founding fathers.
Number two, you've not read any 20th
century history. You're
just living in Narnia.
By the way, if you were actually living
in Narnia, you would be
wiser than where we are
living because C.S. Lewis was really
smart. So I don't know what alternative
universe you're living
in. You just don't want to face reality
that governments tend to
get tyrannical and that
the people need an ability to protect
themselves and their
communities and their families.
Now we must also be real. We must be
honest with the population. Having an
armed citizenry comes
with a price and that is part of liberty.
Driving comes with a
price. 50,000, 50,000,
50,000 people die on the road every year.
That's a price. You get rid
of driving, you'd have 50,000
less auto fatalities. But we have decided
that the benefit of
driving, speed, accessibility,
mobility, having products, services, is
worth the cost of 50,000
people dying on the road.
So we need to be very clear that you're
not going to get gun deaths
to zero. It will not happen.
You can significantly reduce them through
having more fathers in the
home, by having more armed
guards in front of schools. We should
have an honest and clear reductionist
view of gun violence,
but we should not have a utopian one. You
will never live in a
society when you have an armed
citizenry and you won't have a single gun
death. That is nonsense.
It's drivel. But I think it's
worth it. I think it's worth to have a
cost of unfortunately some
gun deaths every single year
so that we can have the second amendment
to protect our other God-given rights.
That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
Nobody talks like this. They
live in a complete alternate
universe. So then how do you reduce? Very
simple. People say, "Oh,
Charlie, how do you stop school
shootings? I don't know. How did we stop
shootings at baseball games?
Because we had armed guards
outside of baseball games. That's why.
How do we stop all the shootings at
airports? We have armed
guards outside of airports. How do we
stop all the shootings at banks? We have
armed guards outside
of banks. How do we stop all the
shootings at gun shows? Notice there's
not a lot of mass shootings
at gun shows. There's all these guns
because everyone's armed.
If our money and our sporting
events and our airplanes have armed
guards, why don't our children?" And
that's the whole quote.
Yeah, interesting.
It's not, he wasn't saying, "Ah, yeah,
it's whatever. Who cares?
Some deaths. I don't care."
He was making a very valid point. And I
will say, I do agree with him
as far as arming our schools.
I think all schools should have metal
detectors. Our youngest son's high school
has a metal detector
at every entrance. And we do have a
couple, I think maybe at
least two, resource officers,
and they're armed. They are armed. And we
have a police car outside
of our school sitting there.
In addition to a nice man when you drive
up on a golf cart that you
have to give him your name and
stuff, but I don't think he's armed. I
don't know. He might be. But I
100% think our schools should
not be soft targets. So I do agree with
that. I think that's rational
and that makes common sense.
And I don't understand
any pushback on that.
You know what's fascinating actually, as
I think about it, because why would you,
don't you think the immediate counter to
that would be with, you
know how much that would cost
to arm and guard every school? But they
do it for all those
things you mentioned, right?
Gun shows, baseball games, the banks,
airports, nothing's free. As
a consumer, nothing's free.
So if you go to a baseball game, part of
the ticket price is
security. So it's passed down
to the consumer. If you go to the bank, I
don't know, I don't go to
the bank anymore. Are there
armed guards? I have no idea. Yeah.
There's sometimes there's a
guy, someone standing right
when you walk in. Yeah. But there's so
anywhere there's security
that's getting passed to the
consumer as the parent of a kid, we're
the consumer. You're going
to charge us more in taxes or
it's don't, don't charge us more. I'm an
anti-tax guy, but spend the money
differently and bolster
the security. I always say mismanagement
of funds. The money's there.
Use it for that. Or, you know,
I know that at least the administration
we have now would be very
pro-army in our schools and
would give federal funds, I'm sure to
that. But think about the
jobs you would create. It could
be a jobs program because you could take
on more deputies, you know,
so that could be a full jobs
program. So that's just my personal
opinion. Some listeners may disagree with
me, but I'm 100% about
metal detectors and about armed guards,
resource officers at schools.
And I love seeing a police car
right in front of a school. I love it.
Well, you know what got lost in the
shadows and I don't know
anything about it. I don't, I'm not
prepared to talk about it, but
it it's a shame. I don't know
if it's a shame. It's just another fucked
up thing that happens in the world. But
there was a shooting
at a Colorado high school the same day,
right? Completely
overshadowed, but some kid died.
I didn't think any of them had died. I
think the shooter
either he killed himself or
they shot him. So, but I think the
shooter died, but I believe so. Okay. The
shooter. Yeah, I haven't.
So we are going to, Brian and I have
talked about, we are going to
be doing an episode on school
shootings because that's another thing
that would, the what about
ism is pretty rampant right now.
Absolutely. School shootings are so
important to talk about. We are doing
research on that right
now because we want to come at it from as
educated places we can
through our research.
So we are going to do an episode on that.
And there's a couple
other things going on that we
want to talk about too. So it's not just
a episode about Charlie Kirk
and then we're not going to
discuss any of these other things that
are going on. That's been in
the works for a little bit.
It's just this Charlie Kirk thing
happens. Obviously suddenly was
unexpected and we just
felt compelled to discuss it for this
week. But I agree with you. That one kind
of got lost and also
the immigrant from Ukraine who was
brutally murdered by a
felon that had been arrested 14
times. Yeah. Monster. Unbelievable. You
know, I think she was two
years, two and a half years
into living the American dream, which she
had was had fallen in love with. So
devastating. So do we
sympathize or empathize with that one? So
for my own personal
mental health, I'm sympathizing
with that one because I have learned that
when it comes to the
things that go on in the world,
I have to sympathize because if I
empathize, it affects my mental health
because we have 24 seven
news, 24 seven news cycle going on and 24
seven access to social
media through our phones.
So we know every single horrible thing
that's going on in the
world. And 10 years ago, 15 years
ago, um, my go-to was always empathy,
empathy, empathy, and it
would destroy my mental health.
And I would feel hopeless and that, um,
there's nothing that can
go positive in the world and
what's going on. And I would have been
easily manipulated by a
politician for sure. I've learned
sympathy. Sympathy is, um, allows me
personal boundaries where
I obviously have compassion
and feel sad and I feel all the things
and I cry and, uh, depending on the
situation, but it does
not, um, completely destroy my mental
health and I can continue on
with my life and I can be there
for my family and for myself. Because if
you, again, if you empathize
too much, you lose yourself.
So with the Ukrainian young woman, my
sympathy runs very deep, but
I, I, if I empathize too much,
it's going to put me in a, I'm going to
be so destroyed over it,
you know? And not that she
doesn't deserve that, but that's not
going to solve anything.
I need to function. Right.
So, because again, this is all also about
reclaiming your energy and
holding onto your energy and
deciding where to put it. So, I mean, I
think it's, I, listen, if there's
something I can do to make
sure that someone doesn't get out after
being arrested 14 times
so he can murder someone,
I would put my energy towards that. Yeah.
That's much more
effective. Yeah. But as far as, um,
that quote, I, I agree with what Charlie
said as far as the reductionist attitude,
because the second amendment isn't going
anywhere. And I do,
you know, I do think that
we need to not have our schools be soft
targets anymore. Yeah. So, but
unfortunately out of that
quote, there's the one quote that's being
put around and, and
that, but that adds to the
propaganda, right? And that adds the
dehumanization. Well, what it adds to is
the stupid comments,
like, Oh, he got what he deserved because
he was, he's just one of the
casualties. And so it's fine.
Right. He was, he was okay with this.
Yes. He was okay with it.
Cause that's what he espoused.
Right. Yeah. And that's just, I think, I
think one of the most
disturbing things about all this
for me, obviously, other than Charlie
Kirk being murdered for
using words and speaking, um,
is the celebrations of his death. But I,
I do attribute people
that are online celebrating
his death are mentally ill. I believe
that because I don't think anyone that
doesn't have a mental
illness would celebrate someone else's
death. I certainly
wouldn't. There's a lot of people I
disagree with in my personal life.
There's a lot of people I disagree with
online and there's a lot
of people I disagree with on an
entertainment and in politics, I would
never wish death on anyone
else ever, ever. And so if you're of
sound mind, I don't think
you would ever celebrate
the death of someone and the people that
are doing this have a mental illness.
Yeah. That's my opinion on that.
I'm not as strongly opinion, opinionated
as you are on this. I'm
not saying it's okay, but I,
I'm also, I believe in free speech and
you have the right to expose
yourself to be a fucking idiot.
Right. You really do. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
You have the right to expose yourself for
someone who hates and is
stupid and all of that. So maybe
maybe I'm just, I'm, I'm fascinated by
it. To be honest with you, it
doesn't get me as viscerally
angry as the act itself. I think like I'm
really, it bothers me that,
that somehow this kid thought
it was okay to go shoot someone because
of the shit he saw online or
read and his belief system.
That bothers me. It's not okay. It's not
okay to go kill people
randomly, especially that you don't know
that they didn't weren't
trying to harm you. And now I get
it. Someone's Charlie, Charlie was
breaking into that kid's
house and middle of the night or
whatever. Go for it. You have all go for
it. I protect yourself, but
to go out and hunt somebody,
because that's what he did. He hunted
this person. He plotted and
schemed. He scoped it out. He
figured out how do I get up on top of
that roof? What's my angle? What's the
best roof? You know,
I'm hunting and there's a calculated risk
to hunting, right? When
you set up a deer blind,
if you go hunting, you try to get a good
line of sight and put it in
a strategic spot. His tent,
there was, he hunted because none of this
was guaranteed. His
tent could have been lower.
Might not have had a line of all those
things. Right. So he truly
hunted him and he got him
and assassinated him and assassinated
him. So I'm, that bothers me
more because I can't help but
think what happened in this kid's life at
such a young age that led
him to believe I'm going to go
kill somebody that I don't know. I've
never met. And I've seen
cut up snippets of that's how,
what happened? What's the, what's the
trigger there from all, for all
indications, he came from,
you know, a nuclear family that seemed to
care about him. He
admitted to killing this guy,
you know, to Charlie to his dad. So they
were close enough for him
to, to, to, to communicate
that too. So what happened? Nobody knows
quite yet. And maybe we will. I, I'm
gonna, if I had to bet
money right now, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
blame the pharmaceuticals
in, in the drugs he was taking
that were probably prescribed to him. And
then you couple that with a
lot of the stuff we've been
talking about, a social media influence.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna wager that it's
pharmaceutical driven. It usually always
is. But that's, that's
what bothers me. People's
reaction, because think about it this
way. A reaction is an, is
an emotional event that's
driven by some cause or it's an emotional
response to an event. And
words, sticks and stones may break my
bones, right? But words
won't hurt me, whatever it is.
I might've jumbled that, but you're, if
you're laughing because
somebody died, what if it's
nervous laughter? I don't, I'm not
defending it. You know what
I'm saying? But it's, it's an
uncalculated thing. I don't know. See,
and I have a totally
different opinion on that because
I think there's actually a Charlie Kurt,
Kurt quote that said, you
can tell a lot about someone
by how they react when a person dies.
Yeah. I think, I think you
can have all kinds of reactions
and, but then I think to take the next
step and to thoughtfully make a video,
watch the video back
and think, yeah, that's right. And then
like put it up or a meme
or whatever to actually type
something out and hit publish the intent
behind that in my mind is
evil, but I think it comes
from mental illness. So I, I, I don't
think people that respond that
way are in the right state of
mind. I really agree with that. That's
what I'm saying though. That
to me is the emotional side.
And they, they have this emotional void
or, or a disconnect, a
disconnect, a coping disconnect
to think that, Oh, I'm going to go and
throw gas on this fire to
make it bigger and somehow get
attention. Well, because in so many ways
it's, it's absolutely cruel, right? I
don't know if you've
seen a lot of what I've seen, but some of
it is just so blatantly
cruel and heartless. And it
doesn't matter who you'd be talking
about. It's, it goes so deep
that they're just projecting
the ugliness that's inside of them. And
that's so true. And in a
lot of instances when people,
whatever people are putting out there,
it's really, they're
telling you who they are.
And so they are exposing themselves. And
I believe in free
speech. Obviously they can put
out whatever they want and say whatever
they want. I don't think they should
listen. That was what,
what Charlie Kirk was all about. So, but
I think it's unfortunate and
it's sad when you see that.
And at first it did make me angry because
I thought it was just
being cruel for cruel's sake.
And I don't like that at all. There's
just so much negativity
in the world. Why are we,
why are we going that low? But then I
realized, you know, these are
just people that are mentally
ill and are probably chronically online
and have lost perspective of life in
general. And it really
doesn't have anything to do with any of
us. It's their own thing.
And you got to put it in
perspective. And see, I had an emotional
reaction at first and that
was my own, but I didn't go
online and express it or I just had my
own process. Yeah. It's been a
processing. It's very
shocking. When you, I go to anger first.
I did not watch the video
of Charlie. Yeah. I know
a huge majority of people, including our
children did. Um, now it's really
honestly, that part,
that pisses me off. Now two of our kids
are in their 20, we have
a 28 and a 24 year old,
but our 15 year old saw it. Um, that
generation is very
desensitized to that type of stuff that
have kids younger than our 15 year old
who saw it. And now they
have to talk about it. And you
know, let me, let's be real. Us having to
talk about sensitive
topics with our kids shouldn't
piss us off, but it's one that we don't
want to have to have
because of something so stupid.
And it's so graphic. That's what I mean.
Well, not even that it's
just so unacceptable to go
and hunt another human being and kill
them for some ideological belief. So
you're what you said
about pharmaceuticals. And I think we're
going to cover this with
the school shooting to the
school shootings. Um, I would wager you
could be right there.
Maybe, um, combined with the
propaganda that's put online to feed the
minds, to create the empathy, to make
everyone vulnerable,
to manipulate that vulnerability and to
use them as a tool and to
create their little soldiers.
Right. Um, so I do think that the take,
taking the quotes out of context
is a huge part of dehumanizing him and
the whole racist, fascist, that whole
tired, tired argument
magga. Yeah. It's like after a while it's
like, it's lost its
luster. Yeah. It doesn't have an
effect anymore because it's just been so
overused that apparently it
does well on certain people,
but like you call someone racist,
fascist, magga, all this
stuff over and over again.
It's like, people start to ignore that or
blow it off because
you've used it for everything.
You dropped an apple. All your racist,
you know, like it's
used for everything. Um,
one of the areas that was being put
around is that he hates gay
people. He hates homosexual
people. So I'm going to read you a back
and forth he had with a
young man who from his own
admission, the young man is a
conservative Christian and
they had a back and forth.
So a conservative Christian, young man,
gay man. No, no, just a conservative
Christian white man.
Him and Charlie had a back and forth. So
Charlie said, this is in the
middle of the conversation.
Charlie says, so I'm going to ask a very
respectful question as
respectfully as I can.
What does what they do in their private
life concern you so much
that you have to go up in
front of a crowd and, and then the young
man, inner, inner raps him
and says, it is against God.
That is why we're talking about
homosexuality. Are you a
Christian or not? Charlie says,
do we live in a theocracy? Yes or no. No.
That's a, do we live in a
theocracy? And then the young man
inner, interrupts again and says, you
said you're a Christian.
Charlie says, I am a Christian. And
you know what? And guess what? I will say
this part of being a
Christian is appropriately
interpreting what the theological says
for the individual, but
also means to be long suffering
and patient and loving and kind. Jesus
Christ talked to all
people. Jesus Christ went and did
his ministry through Judea and Samaria
and he had dinner with tax
collectors and he had dinner with
prostitutes and he did his ministry in
every part of the
Mediterranean. What it means to be
a Christian, my friend, is to be
open-minded, but firm in your beliefs. So
you can have that belief.
But if you say there's something
inherently wrong with
communicating or associating,
just because they make different personal
decisions than you,
then you, sir, are not a
conservative. And that is how Charlie
felt about homosexuality.
But that's not what's been fed.
And that's the dangerous part of this.
That's the dangerous
part of this, right? Is that
it's lies. It's lies that have been fed,
but no one's going
and fact-checking this.
They're believing and that's part of that
being vulnerable and easily
manipulated because they're
running on high emotions and maybe
they're on some pharmaceuticals. I don't
know. So what's your
theory? I don't know if it's a theory as
much as it's an observation
and something that, again,
I just can't help but think of how did
this 22 year old white kid
from a family go out and decide
to go hunting humans? And because I was
once a 22 year old white
kid from a family and I never
decided to go hunt humans. And we see
this, right? There's a profile. It's
white kids, white kids now.
Historically, the mass shooters have been
white men. And then now
we're seeing white kids and kids
in their twenties. And there's been, so
I'm thinking why, what's
going on here? And I think
back to when I was that age and I grew up
in a, with a nuclear family
we've talked about, I don't
really have huge issues. Maybe, you know,
maybe I do and I don't
know about them, but you know,
when I hit, I was in, when I got out of,
you know, you get into high
school, you know, you're, go to
school and you get into high school and
high school starts to
open your mind a little bit,
right? And then you survive high school
and then you get into
college and then college is, is a
time where it's expand your mind, right?
You're away from your
parents and, and it's time to
figure out who you are. You're in the
world now operating on
your own. You know how to,
you got to figure out how to do your own
laundry or pay someone to do
it, right? How to cook your
own food or pay someone to go do it type
of thing. And so you're out there
figuring out the world.
And I think back to for me, I grew up
very athletically minded,
playing sports and had a
lot of attention on me that way. And it
was the very much, you had
to kind of sort of dress a
certain way. You had to have shorter
hair, be conservative type
of thing is where I grew up,
right? And, and I, when I got to college,
I grew my hair up doing it again, right?
Grew my hair out, found the grateful
dead, found music. And, and I think,
I think there's a void for 22 year old
kids to have some peaceful,
non-violent outlet nowadays.
There, there are, for if you're
conservative, Charlie represented
something that was non-violent
and it was conservative. And he talked
about getting married
and having a family. And,
and he had opinions, right? He, he had
strong opinions. He's very
faith-based. That would not
have worked for me then. It doesn't work
for me now. I think Charlie's a
remarkable guy. I do not
identify with his faith-based stuff, but
I also, I'm curious. It
worked for him, works for a lot
of people. Just not my cup of tea. And
maybe it will be someday,
but I'm a non-violent person.
I'm an extremely peaceful person. But I
think for kids in their
twenties, college age kids,
you either kind of go the route of
Charlie or you go the
route of this kind of this left
interpretation, the other, the
counterbalance to Charlie, which is very
different. And I don't
know how much is in the middle. There
might be something in the
middle, but what I think,
here, my theory, long story short is I
don't think there's a
non-violent alternative to
a turning point on the left. I think it's
all very violent. I think it's very
confrontational. I think
it's, you know, we got to get out in the
street and get in people's
faces and be loud and scream
at people. No, you don't. No, there's
another alternative. And,
and it, and it can just be,
accept people for who they are and not
try to change them. You
don't have to go change the world
or, or convince people of, of your
beliefs. But I think back to
when I was that age, I tried.
I got into environmentalism, very much
into environmentalism.
I got into thinking that
everybody was racist. I did get into
thinking all these oppressive
thoughts, right? And part of
that's because it's college and it's also
this new way of thinking and
colleges, we went to a very
liberal liberal arts college. So that was
fine there. For me, I
very much got into the
Grateful Dead and that type of music
scene. And if you think
about it, the sixties were
strife with political chaos, right?
Vietnam war, there were the, I can't even
remember the people's
names, the key things or whatever at the,
the people were blowing
up government buildings.
I remember moving to Oregon, I think
earth first had just
blown up some like timber
trucks and stuff. This is the late
nineties or late eighties, early
nineties. There was shit
going on, but you go to a dead show and
it's like, okay, whatever you're, you
know, it's all about
the music. And even back then Crosby
stills in Nashville, Neil Young, uh,
those guys were all,
it was very somewhat activists, but they
were still about peace and getting along.
Think about it. There's no country, Joe
McDonald. Remember that's a
name, right? Remember country,
Joe one, two, three, four, what are we
fighting for? I don't give
a damn, you know, that whole
song there. That's not happening today
that I'm aware of. Maybe it is. And
we're, I just don't know,
but there's no one espousing peace and
getting along. There's no
John Lennon, Lennon singing.
All we're saying is give peace, peace of
chance, right? That that's
an Anthem. And there's no one
doing that today on the left, on the
right. I don't think
Charlie, Charlie was not a pro war
activist. I don't believe he was saying
we need to go to war.
We need to be fighting
quite the opposite. I think he was more,
he was a conservative.
I also think he was more
of a libertarian, which is something I
can identify more with on that
front. But on the left, it's,
it's very, it's, it's very aggressive.
And I think that's part of
what's happening is there,
there, these kids are trying to figure it
out. I just, again, I put
myself back to then there was
an outlet. There was the Grateful Dead.
There was be weird, be in
type of thing. It's okay.
Wave your freak flag, right? That was
sort of an Anthem. Wave
your freak flag. It's cool.
It wasn't wave your freak flag and make
sure that everybody saw your
freak flag and that if they
weren't as weird as you, or as freaky as
you, you need to get in their
face and tell them that they
needed to be. And that's what I think has
happened is we've lost that
it's fine. If you want blue
hair, nose rings, earrings, and you want
to tattoo your whole body.
I'm telling you as a Gen Xer,
you're cool. We are good. You're good.
Truly are right. That's
acceptable today. And it's awesome.
It's amazing to think that all these, I
don't have any tattoos. And
I don't care that people do.
I think it's cool. It's just not for me.
Maybe I'm chicken shit just
to not get one, but I just
don't have something. The only thing I
would ever get would be a
peace sign on my body. But
I don't have multiple earrings. I don't
have a nose ring, but you
know, so all that shit is okay.
But you don't have to do it and then get
in people's faces and
make them accept it.
Yeah. Does that all make sense? It does.
I think that there's, I'm
obviously, I'm obviously fairly
passionate about it. Right. Yeah. No, I
think it's interesting that I
feel like there's almost this
made up paranoia that's been fed to young
adults and kids, kids that
everyone has an issue with them
or that they have something they need to
fight against. I think
that's real. I remember being
the kid and thinking we need to fight for
the environment that I
remember that book, 32 ways
to save the environment. And one of them
was like, turn the water
off while you're shaving.
And if you don't turn the water off while
you're shaving, we're
going to run out of water.
Yeah. No, no, no. I understand that, that
natural rebellious
spirit. I get that. But I,
to your point, I feel like now the
younger generation in a
certain group has been fed
to do like what you said, that it needs
to be shoved down
people's throats instead of just
doing your thing, flying your freak flag.
What is it? Think globally, act locally,
work for whatever you believe in, put in
the work, volunteer, try to
make change, all those things.
But instead there is the, it seems like
there's this aggression just
to anyone who is, if you're
not like them, you're the opposition.
Yeah. And, but then they
need to act on it or treat you a
certain way or do something like, like, I
don't know, it is
interesting though. There, and there
isn't a outlet. There's not an outlet.
Like you said, there isn't a peaceful
outlet. It's all very
aggressive. And I can respect the, you
know, the hustle of wanting to
change the world. And I think
there's a lot of wonderful things that
come from every new
generation. And, you know, if it, I, I
actually think that there's a lot of
things that the younger people who had
issues with Charlie Kirk,
I think if they really would have talked
with him, they would have
found they have a lot more common
ground. But I think that is the case. And
that's why we go back to my
other theory on the media.
His support was broad based. When I saw
the video where a girl came up, she had
like a nose ring and
almost like the bull ring blue hair. And,
and she was trying to define
to define to him what it meant
to be queer. And he's like, you saw that
one. Very respectful. And she
didn't know how to articulate
it. And, but I think for her, she's
seeking something out.
She went and talked to him,
which took a lot of courage and a lot of
curiosity. And so there was
something about him that was
disarming for someone like her. They're
obviously very different. She
is a unique person, right? And,
and probably very sensitive and very, you
know, insecure and has wild
thoughts. And, and he made
it okay to talk to her. So his appeal was
broad based. And that was
the real threat is that he
connected with more than just, you know,
short haired, fratty
looking conservative kids. He had
appeal from the broad base. And even if
he didn't, because I think some of the
kids that went up to
talk to him were already prepared at
adversarial with him. You're a fascism.
Right. Right. But then
I think through the conversation,
sometimes I saw some stuff
where by the end they were like,
Oh, okay. You know, I, you know, or, and
some would get mad and
call him names or whatever and
stomp off, but some were like, okay,
yeah. Okay. I can respect that. I can see
that. Like he went on a,
um, a show that had only, only fans,
girls or girls that were
involved with pornography.
And he just, he was just talked to them,
you know, he was just like
talking about how, you know,
I hope that you can find to use your
talents in other ways. And, you know,
I'll pray. He came in,
I'll pray for you because I think you
have so much more to offer
in the world than this. And
he was so respectful. And even at the
end, one of the girls said,
you're the most respectful
one who's ever been, you've been the most
respectful than
anyone. So like, I know you
talked about his faith and something, if
you listen to our podcast regularly,
we've acknowledged this
before as I am have a very strong faith
and, um, Catholic and have a strong
belief in God and Jesus
Christ. And he is my savior and all that.
And Brian does not. And,
but we work, we work, right?
That makes me uncomfortable.
I'd say Brian is, I like to say Brian is
agnostic, not an atheist,
but, um, I do have a strong face.
So when it comes to where Charlie Kirk's
coming from, I can see
that perspective. Um, and I do
think he approached, if I were to guess,
he approached every
single thing he did from his
faith. And he believed he had said this,
that every person is in
the form of God and deserves
all the rights and all those things,
right? He respected everyone.
So because he was coming from
it from that place, what resulted was
what you were talking about where he
appealed to the masses.
Even if they were coming in to be
adversarial, they still were coming in.
He was still triggering
conversation. And I do give the kids that
would go up to talk to him,
I give them so much credit
because the courage it must have taken to
eat well. And for some,
they may be so blind with rage
that they don't care, but, um, I still
give them props for going up
and talking to him because that
man was smart. He was smart and quick and
knew what he was doing. So
I think it's awesome. Even
if he totally disagreed with him, I think
it's awesome. They went
up and talked to him. Yeah.
That's what we needed. Whether you're
from the left, the
right, the center, whatever
that conversation it's when, and I think
there's another quote he said, it's when
you stop talking that violence results
and, and, and, and, and so
what will be interesting in all
of this, but well, before I go on, I
think, um, your, your point about that
there isn't an outlet
for we'll call it the left side, right?
Okay. So Charlie, um, kids
are on the more conservative
side identified with him and lean towards
him or kids that maybe
were on the left or center and
they talked to him and he persuaded them.
And then they started
leaning towards him. Right.
And then you have maybe just this liberal
group that maybe could go
either way. And then you have
this far left, which is more radicalized.
They're out of fairness.
There's a far right. Oh,
absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. 100%.
There's a far right with the
younger groups, like on the
campuses. I have yet, I haven't seen a
far right. I'm not saying
it's not there. I've seen a
conservative for sure. I haven't seen the
far right, um,
represented, but they could be there
just may not be as obvious. Cause when I
think of far right, to be
honest with you, I think of,
um, like, uh, race, really racist, like
skinheads, that could be our
generation and, and being from
the West coast. I mean, there are though,
like I've seen some, like
I don't, it was a headline.
So take it with a grain of salt. It was
like a headline around
people saying you better treat,
you better celebrate Charlie's death,
right? Or there's going to
be problems, something to that
effect. And it's like, you know, I mean,
there's absolutely a far
right in this country. They're
absolutely, they're fucking crazy. Right.
They're total racist and
bigots. Yes. They hate black
people. They hate Jewish people. They
hate anybody. Right.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
All I'm saying on the college campuses, I
think the far left kids
are, well, they're very
comfortable, right? That's kind of their
Mecca. It's their home. So
they're easily identifiable
usually. And they're more outspoken. So
they will, like we talked before, they
tell you what's going
on. They, whether you want to know or
not, you know, they're
going to, uh, so, um, you know,
confront you or scream at you or
whatever. Like
they're not quiet about it.
I don't see skinheads walk around
campuses. It doesn't mean
that some of these conservative
kids are racist. Yeah. So, so for the
sake of my own
experience and what I've seen,
I can tell you that I've seen like a far
left, I've seen a left C,
but even like, like, okay,
so I view the shooter as a radicalized
far left, but I don't view
these kids that go up and talk
to Charlie that way. They're just on the
left. They're liberal. I
don't see them as radicalized,
you know, where they're going to get a
gun and go shoot someone. And I think
that's the difference
there too is like, there's liberal left
young adults and teenagers
and people, obviously we're
talking about college days right now.
Then there's radicalized far left, but I,
I don't, I, you know,
it's funny. Yes. You're trying to split
hairs here. I think this kid's mentally
ill. I don't know if
it's almost an insult to the far left
possibly. And I'm not here
to defend them by any means or
the far right, or I'm not defending
anybody. This kid, I think he took, it
was given he's been on
prescription drugs or something at some
point in his life, fucked up
his brain chemistry. And he
went out and hunted a human for things he
thought were real that he
was imagining. And the reason
I say it that way is because the kid who
shot up those kids at the
Catholic school in Minnesota,
total fucking whack job, the kid down
here in Parkland years and
years ago, right? That kid
was a total whack job. So these aren't
radicalized people. I think that's almost
too simple. They're,
they're crazy. And they've been, their
brain chemistry has been
altered through something
within their life, whether it's
pharmaceuticals or the food, most likely
pharmaceuticals, right?
I'm not going down the RFK route here,
but there's, they've
been more than radicalized.
They've been, I don't know what the right
word would be there, but they're insane.
To, to they're, they're not connecting
the dots around what's
reasonable versus what's not
what's permanent. What's verse verse
what's temporary, right?
They don't, there's no,
there's just a cerebral lapse of
connectivity that's letting
these people think this is the
right course of action. Well, and those,
and they're ripe for
manipulation for propaganda
and all that stuff. Yeah. So you can have
one type of left, um,
young adult that just
believes one way, you know, maybe we're,
we're just, I'm so like,
um, what's the word? You know,
speculating. Yeah. But also, you know,
like, um, like, say pink
hair, piercings, all that,
they don't all have that, right? We're
just saying that. Yeah.
So, but let's say, and they,
and they believe one way and then they go
on with their life, right?
They just live the normal life.
And then you have, what I'm saying is you
have the ones that are
radicalized, but I would say
it more often than not, the ones that are
radicalized are like
what you're describing. They
have the mental illness. They probably
have been, um, influenced
with some sort of pharmaceutical
prescriptions in their lives that has
altered their brain
chemistry. That's the dangerous part,
right? And you could, and you could say
that might be on the
right too. What's interesting,
I'm not saying it's not, but what's
interesting is that, um,
what Charlie Kirk was talking about when
he would touch on all
these different topics
overall was positive. It was a positive
vision, right? And it
was strife with, with hope.
If, if, if, if you can listen to him with
an open mind and you
can rationalize his words,
you'll see that he was, uh, he was
open-minded. He did have a faith. He had
a strong opinion about
God. And in my younger days, I may have
discounted him once he
started saying God, I've matured,
I've evolved, right? I'm a, I'm an adult.
Um, but if you're 22 years old and
someone starts saying
God and you're, don't believe in that
stuff or whatever, then you stop
listening. And actually,
the one thing, um, one thing that this
kid was brought up in a
Mormon family. And it sounds like
he's probably no longer has that belief
system, right? So, you know,
in some ways if, and I'm not
blaming Mormons, but if you're brought up
in, in a, on, in a
construct, a religious construct,
and you start to move away from that
construct and then someone's
talking about it, you could
get enraged. And you see that with me,
right? I, I'm, uh, I shut down when I
hear certain keywords,
right? I, I start to move away a little
bit and I would say it, I'm
guilty of that with Charlie.
And being such a faith-based guy, it's
like, okay, that's cool. It's
not for my, not my cup of tea.
I don't, you know, it is what it is.
Don't dislike them,
whatever. Don't judge them. Um,
but you can start to shut down or again,
I'm a rational
person. I don't, it's like,
he's talking about God, I'm going to go
kill him, right? That's not
happening. Yeah. But for some
people, I think different constructs,
enraged people and take it really over
the top. It's a trigger.
It's a trigger. And again, that goes to
the mental illness.
What's interesting is that
I do think that this boy or this,
whatever young man came from a
conservative family,
I think the father is in law enforcement
and they are Mormon. So there's a
religious support system.
Correct. Um, but I think a lot of young
adults that end up so far
left, um, if you, you go,
some of them have come from conservative
families, right? And maybe
they've gone so far left in
rebellion to whatever had they been
taught in their family or whatever
structure they've been
raised in, or it, the left, the left
things they've learned are so different
than what they learned
growing up that there's just this break.
It's just a complete break. And there
isn't any middle ground.
Yeah. Because there is middle ground. I
think that's so much of what
our country is missing now.
There is middle ground. So many people
want to say you're on the
right or you're on the left
and they want to make everything,
everything political, everything they
want it. Everything's
a binary choice these days when the
world's everything's got a
touch of gray. Yes. Right.
Yeah. And it's just the middle ground and
what people don't realize
is Charlie was a moderate
and he was middle ground. He was a bridge
between the two sides.
Well, it's, you know,
and that's what people don't realize. And
that's, that's what makes
me sad because as a moderate
myself, you know, we, we don't make this
a political podcast because this is a
place for everyone and we
don't judge anyone based on their
political beliefs, their sexuality,
anything. Like we are,
we are open to everyone. And, but we
don't like to talk, like get
political political because
we want everyone to feel comfortable to
come on here and, and
not make a decision not to,
or not to listen to us because they think
we're leaning one way or
another. But I will say,
you know, I am a moderate, but, and I
view Charlie as a moderate
and see some listeners may say,
Oh, well then you're far right if you
like Charlie, but I have no
control over how someone's
going to interpret that. I just know me
and my heart, how I feel.
And, and when you listen to
what Charlie Kirk said, if you really
listened, it was very
open-minded. It was very accepting.
It was very loving. And it was coming
from a good place and it
was fairly moderate. Now,
yes, there were things that I didn't
align with completely, but
you're not going to agree with
everybody on everything. But he was that,
that bridge between the
two sides were, okay, hey,
can we meet in the middle and can we just
like have a conversation?
And to be killed over that
is it's an American tragedy. It's an
American. He's not the first.
I think I actually think it's a world
tragedy because he was
exercising his right to free,
openly speak free speech, right? And a
lot of countries don't have
that. Uh, most were one of
the few, even in Britain, I was listening
to something recently,
how some comedian just got
arrested at the airport. Five, uh,
British police officers arrested him. I
think when he got into
like Heathrow or something, he's a
comedian because he made
some jokes. Yeah. Words.
No, no, you can be arrested now for
putting things on Facebook, on social
media over in Britain.
Britain's gone crazy. Even here, I think
people coming into this
country, there's complaints of
people landing that get their phones
reviewed and are getting
maybe kicked out or sent back type
of thing. Was that tied to illegal
immigration? I think it's the, no, you
know what it is. I don't
totally disagree with this by the way,
which is crazy that I'm
don't totally disagree with it
because I do fundamentally, but I think
what it is, it's like, look,
we're, our cup is full right
now here in the U S a people talking shit
about the country and
trying to radicalize people.
So we're, we're going to put a stop to it
for now. Cause we're going
to deal with what we have.
Right. And that's sort of what this kid's
an indication of is
we're, we're killing each other
over words that why let more people in
that are, that are in that same boat,
which is really crazy.
I don't know how I feel about it, but
it's, it's fundamentally
wrong. But then you can also see
that. Yeah, that's a, it's a weird one.
Honestly, weird one. But what's
interesting is when, when
we're in finding is obviously when our
enemies are from outside of
our country are watching us
and that's the less unified we are, let's
face it, the more vulnerable we are too.
Yeah. But let's face it. Most of this is
probably from outside
influences. Anyways,
there'd be no greater victory for a lot
of the world to see
the U S implode. Yeah.
There are right. Yeah. A hundred percent.
We've allowed, we have
people in Congress who want to
see our country implode that have come
here from other places that are just
espoused hate and, and,
and red violent rhetoric, right? We all
know who they are. They're
pieces of shit. And it's,
but it's, it's something that you have to
deal with. And in a civil society,
you should be able to do it. And, and I
think those are words
it's voting, you know, it's,
it's all of that. It's not going out and
shooting some, no, no, not
at all. It is, it's voting.
It's conversation. We should all, we've
gotten to the point now where
we stopped talking
because if you say anything,
you're there's going to be some,
someone's going to get in
your face, scream at you,
yell at you, whatever. But I think what's
interesting with Charlie
Kirk being assassinated
is I think there's going to be a shift. I
do think it's a watershed
moment, a turning point.
I don't think people are going to be
scared anymore of
speaking their mind. And
I think it'll be interesting to see how
things are, start to
change a little bit in society.
You know, I don't know. I know you're not
sure, but I do think
there'll be a change.
I'll, I'll be slightly more convinced if
in two weeks he's
still being talked about
because the girl from Ukraine who got
stabbed, she'll probably
be out of the news soon. If
she's not already the kids that got
killed up at that
Catholic school in Minnesota,
they're probably, they're kind of out of
the news cycle. Those
democratic politicians up in
Minnesota that got killed by the cop
impersonator, right?
They're out of the news cycle.
No, I know. Yeah. But I think that he
represents, he has such, he
represents so much. So I don't
know. I don't know if I don't. I think
he'll still be in the conversation for the fucked up reason
I said earlier. And it's because he
represents a demographic
that the mainstream media
wants as their audience so they can still
advertising. And right now, I don't know,
Fox probably has them because Charlie's
one of their guys, but CNN
and MSNBC, I think even the
Atlantic, the Atlantic magazine, read
articles from them. Even
I think they're somewhat
moderated at the moment. What about
Drudge? Drudge? Drudge is,
they're so anti-Trump at this
point. And you know, it's sort of a
hodgepodge. Drudge is somewhat
irrelevant. You know,
how did they treat, have they been pretty
neutral about the assassination or?
I actually, let me say that I think
Drudge is somewhat more
fact there. It's a, it's a, it's a,
what's the right word? They put up posts
of from other people,
right? They're, they're, there's like a
vehicle, an aggregator,
there's, there's a news aggregator.
So there's Drudge himself or them as an
entity. They don't put up any stories.
They don't write it.
They don't have a staff. It's all just
put up links to different
things, right? Which is also
very manipulative in many ways, right?
Cause it's all about clicks
and Drudge is all about clicks.
I don't say that. Like I don't, it's just
a fact. I'm not, that's not
an opinion. It is all just pure
facts. And, and it's a model that, let me
go back a second. Cause
Drudge years and years ago was the
only news aggregator, right? So he had a
corner of the market and would put up
whatever probably was
more representative of his political
beliefs at the time. But now
it's just to get clicks because
now he's competing with Apple news, CNN,
or just Google, right?
Google search, duck, duck, go to
everybody, everybody's AI, whatever. So
there's no longer the
single game in town. So now it's
really just putting stuff out there
that'll drive clicks.
That's a more emotionally based.
Um, so long story short,
it's kind of all over the place.
Yeah. Cause they're, so I saw time put
something up that was
like, it said like enough.
And it was talking about ending
political, violent talk,
right? They, and so it wasn't,
it wasn't leaning either way. I would say
for time, it wasn't
leaning. I didn't read the article,
so I could be speaking. I know it's
disingenuous and that, but
then rolling stone, of course.
Um, so well they talked
about how people are getting, um,
outed and for what, how they reacted
rolling stone out of all
this, that's what they decided.
No, that's a warning. Hey
guys, temper it down temporarily.
They were anti, they were focused more on
how people who
celebrated Charlie Kirk's death
are getting exposed and they were, they
were presenting that as how
that's not right, not fair.
Yeah. And that's a whole nother topic is
cause we've talked about
this. Um, and I know you,
I think you and I have a little bit
different views on this. So
I think it's fine to expose
the people who are celebrating the death
of someone else in a
gleeful sick way. Um,
and I, but I think they have their
freedom of speech to say
what they said, but I think it's
okay to expose them and then let their
employer decide what they
want to do with it. And some
employers may stand by them and some
employers may not, but I, but again,
initially I just am so
disgusted by it, but then again, they're
mentally ill. But then
again, I don't want to be like,
if these are the people there are, you're
interacting with when
you're out and about in
society, it's like, it's a tough one,
right? Cause I don't
know if it's tough. I mean,
what you're describing is the mob rules.
And I don't know if
the mob shouldn't rule,
meaning the mob of people, right? Not
the, not the historical Tony Soprano mob,
but the mob rules, right? So if it's part
of civil society is that we
as civilians and participants
in this game of life, that's where the
rules should be set. And
that's probably the fundamental
problem I have with a lot of stuff is I
don't think it should be
regulated at a federal level.
And what I mean by that is I don't, you
know, I'm a simple
government guy defense,
you know, enforcement, those types of
things, safety infrastructure,
you know, that kind of stuff.
We shouldn't be legislating anything
social and we are right. That's the
problem. And that's why
this temperature has risen so much. It
should come down to people with the,
there should be basic
constructs. There should be roads we all
drive on. There should be
stop signs, green lights,
red lights, on-ramps, off-ramps, all that
shit, right? We shouldn't be
able to go to sleep knowing
that some foreign government's not going
to attack us. That's the
role of the government.
When we have a fire in your kitchen, you
should be able to call the fire
department and it should
be, they should come in, right? There's
schools, all that. But
what's happening is this is the
problem. The fundamental problem is
people are looking for
government to decide what civil
society versus what isn't. So long story
short, if you, if
someone puts something up
that is stupid, then it's, they're
probably fair game with
words, but not violence.
No, of course not. Yeah, no, absolutely.
It's been very
interesting because a lot of people
have lost their jobs, but as far as you
saying the federal
government, but then civil rights,
I mean, those, that was a
turning point in the city.
Yeah, but that was correcting a wrong. We
had very discriminatory
policies. No, we should fix
things. Everybody should be treated
equal. You cannot
discriminate against people because of
the color of their skin, their sexual
orientation, quite frankly,
even how they look. Who gives a
shit? They're people. So the civil rights
was the absolute right
thing to do. You can't tell
black people. You can't go to school with
white people. Fuck you. Who
are you to make that call?
Right? Yeah. So that's crazy. But now
we've gone to this completely opposite
side of the spectrum.
Right. It's almost like gay marriage
versus traditional
marriage. Why can't a two men get
married or two women get married? Right.
That's crazy. And here,
that's the interesting thing.
As far as like, let's take it back to
Charlie Kirk. He was the
first to say, that's not my
beliefs. I believe a traditional marriage
is between a man and a
woman. But what you're,
how you're living your life, I'm not
going to, I'm going to still talk to you
and I can be friends
with you or whatever. That doesn't bother
me. That's your choice. Well, what I
think is interesting,
which is how, although I don't care if
it's man and woman, woman,
woman, man, man. But if I did
care if it was just man and woman, I
would feel like him, like this is how I
believe, but I still
think you deserve respect and everything
else. And I'm not going to
treat you any different. I just
don't believe in that. Even though that's
not how I believe it. I'm
saying if I, so that's where he
was coming from. Like, what's the deal? I
think you said it earlier
and I didn't know he had this
thought that it was his view on this, but
he, his perspective that we
don't live in a theocracy.
We live in a democracy. That's a huge
difference. If you live in
a theocracy, guaranteed it's
oppressive because everyone's got to
think the same, look the same, act the
same, dress the same.
That's not what we all signed up for.
That's what we left.
Yes. And he wasn't trying to convince
anyone that the world
should be like that.
But I think, again, to go back, he was
trying to be the antithesis
to what existed on college
campuses. He was trying to be another
option because there are
kids on college campuses
that do are conservative or that aren't
liberal. Maybe they're
middle, right? Or they're far right,
but they didn't have a place and they
still were, they deserved a place too.
They just, and they,
I don't think they felt comfortable
anymore because so many
professors were liberal and I
think you would get downgraded on your
papers and stuff if they
found out. So it was almost like
they were targets. Well, you know, and so
I think Charlie also gave
them a place to come to feel
comfortable and accepted and they have
just as much right to feel
accepted and comfortable just
because they're conservative does not
mean they're racist or fascist. And
that's the problem. They're
people too. They just may feel
differently about certain
subjects, topics or whatever,
but they're not going out and trying to
hurt anybody. Not his supporters per se.
There probably were, right? There's
probably people who took Charlie's words
the wrong way to the
conservative side. We haven't talked
about it. And if someone's made it this
far and not thinking
we're total conservative, you know,
whatever, whatever. But
there's people within Charlie's
orbit that would go to his things that
would take it to the
another extreme to the right.
There has to be, it's
just a law of averages.
I think you should be able to talk about
the, that kind of pisses me
off that you just did that.
I think you should be able to talk about
the conservative group
of young adults without
what about ism. I don't give a shit. We
already established
there's far right and there's far
left. And then we talk all nicely about
the liberal young adults
without saying, oh, but now there's
these young conservatives deserve just as
much of a space to feel
comfortable and accepted
as young liberals. And that's what's been
lost. And that's what he gave. He gave
them a place to come
and feel accepted and for who they are.
And then he gave liberal young liberal
people place to come
to use their voice, to speak their mind
and express their beliefs. What a
beautiful fucking thing that
is. That is a beautiful fucking thing.
And that's what they killed. Yeah. And
that's why I'm pissed.
Because he was trying to give the youth
both sides a platform and a
space. And he did successfully.
And to your point earlier, he drew both
sides in for two totally different
reasons, but he brought
them together. And sure, sometimes there
was strife and animosity, but there was
dialogue and there was
voice and it was America. That's America.
He was bringing it back.
That is what America is about.
And that's what was destroyed. And that
is a heartbreak and a
tragedy for America. It is a
historical moment. It's a big fucking
deal. Yeah. And that's what pisses me off
the most about this.
Other than it being an utter tragedy that
a human life was lost,
who has a wife and two
young children for what?
You know what's fascinating is I do think
the void will be filled, but
it won't be an organic void.
And he brought it as an organic thing.
And so there might be,
let's have open debate and let's
have people come and talk and debate and
shit, but that's
manufactured. This was organic driven
by one man who's very brilliant made it
happen. Right. It's his
idea. It was his idea. He started
with a folding table and a chair and a
sign that he wrote, prove me
wrong. Just like the banner I
made for Kaya at her marathon yesterday,
he wrote it, prove me wrong.
And he sat there. Yeah. And I
do think that there will be a rise up and
I do think people will go,
you know, I mean, his wife,
Erica said they're going to continue the
campus tours. I know that other
conservative personalities
are saying that they're going to pick up
the mic and, and, and keep
everything going, but you're
right. There won't be another Charlie
Kirk. I hope there will be. I hope there
is. I hope I'm wrong.
I don't know. I mean, has there been
another MLK or Malcolm X or JFK or, or
RFK or what it Bobby?
Right. You got a Charlie. Yeah. I don't
know. You know what I mean?
It's, I don't know. And that's,
that's also what's sad is there's not,
there's not been another
Jerry Garcia. There's no
John Lennon, right? Those, they were
fairly pivotal voices of,
you know, not so much Jerry,
right? Jerry was just very much a
pacifist, but that alone is a statement.
I don't know. I mean,
I just think we witnessed Bob Marley,
someone great get
assassinated. And I am saying is speaking
for anyone that listens to this in a
hundred years or whatever, if the
technology can keep up,
we're here to say we were here during it.
And it, it was, it was very sad and
disturbing and upsetting.
And it makes you question so many things,
but being a Gen Xer
and being someone older,
it really hits different because he was
so young. And so you know how
much life he still had ahead
of him and all the things he might've
accomplished. You'll never know.
He would have been president one day. I
think there's no doubt. I
think so. I think so. And
he might've been a decent one as a, as a
uniter possibly. I don't know.
I think so. Yeah. So I think just the
possibility that not knowing,
and this is not coming from a
political place. That's what I'm trying
to say. And there's going to
be people who no matter what
only view Charlie Kirk as political and
only view him as
conservative or only view him as Trump.
There's some people that hate Trump so
much that if you're
associated with him at all,
they're blind and they blind to it. They
can't see anything beyond that, but
that it almost, that doesn't matter. It's
like that. Again, that's
another form of you can't
get beyond your blinders to look, be
open-minded enough to see the big
picture. You know, like
I try to look at each person, whether
it's a political figure or
anyone, the entertainment
world, I feel has gone down. It's hard to
find anyone in the
entertainment world anymore, but
I think I try to look at the whole
picture. I really try hard
to look at the whole picture
and really take it all in, whether
they're left or right. And I just don't
know if, when it comes to
anyone on the, if anyone that's on the
left, if they're
looking at anyone on the right
politically, if they can do that.
I think the only person that comes to
mind might be Bernie
Sanders. And right. He seems to,
yeah, he can, whether you agree with him
or you totally disagree with him,
he is consistent in his beliefs,
consistent in his
messaging. And he is a politician,
but he is a human and his rise, his
ascendancy has been on a
consistent message. And again,
whether you hear him or not, but then you
get into like, you know,
him and AOC are buddy, buddy,
right? But Bernie's genuine. I find her
to be completely just full of shit.
And Bernie polls from both sides. He has.
He does.
He does.
Like there's been Republicans,
independents and Democrats that he's
polled. So no, yeah. So there's,
you know, it exists. It's just everything
has been so polarizing. And I think that,
I think it got lost that Charlie was
actually not there to be
polarizing. He was there to, to,
to kind of
counterbalance counterbalance things.
Think about this. I think you, you know
this, but, and it's
something I've always,
I've told the kids as they got into
college is you've got to
figure out your profession,
your professor's political leanings.
Because if you don't know your
professor's political leanings,
you're going to fail that class. Because
it's not about what you
know, related to the material,
as much as it is how you interact with
that person. And cause
there's always little, right?
It's so, I'll give you an example. I
remember taking this, I
had, I needed a filler class in
my senior year to get to graduate
college. And I took this social sciences
women's studies class.
This lady was super, super, everything
was, women were victimized
and, and it was, it was like,
holy shit. Wow. I don't, I don't believe
this. Cause I have a
strong mom. I have a strong
grandmother. I have strong aunt. So, you
know, I've grown up
around women that are strong.
They're not, they don't espouse this
victimism stuff, this
victimism stuff. And so I just
learned, I had to write that. That's what
I wrote. And I got a
straight A in that class.
Right? So I've always told the kids, know
your professor's
political leanings, because if you
sidestep them, you're fucked. God, you
just came at that from
such a male perspective.
That's so interesting. That's such a male
perspective. What you just said,
why not the, um, no, the professors, like
you should play the game.
Like you should figure out
of your professors, like leading a right
and play the game for sure. But the
whole, what you just
said about the whole class, it's like
that you were shocked.
Women have been victimized.
No, it's, I'm not, I'm not saying that
because they were
talking about the patriarchy.
No, they weren't. It was, it was just, it
was over the top. Even
now in a more enlightened
frame of mind that I'm at at this age, it
was over the top. It was
men are the pure evil men
are the Wabam. Right. That's what it was
all about. Yeah. But that's what, um,
like taking down the
patriarchy, that's that movement a
hundred percent. Yeah. So that's what,
that's what you were,
you were in there with it like that.
Yeah. A hundred percent. But, but a lot,
so I had to write that
there's a lot of validity though, with
that movement, there's a,
there's a lot of historical
references you could go to. And there's a
lot of ability, but I,
but I understand what you're
saying is, was coming from, you know, I'm
sure she, were you the only guy in there?
Uh, there's probably a few of us had to
have been a few of us. I
agree with you. I'm not saying
women haven't been short changed. I think
that the history of the
world and how women fit into it
is crazy. Honestly, it is definitely a
male dominated world.
Right. Yeah, for sure. We haven't
done the patriarchy, but I'm, I don't
think I don't remember the
contents, but I just remember
thinking, holy shit. All right. So I have
to blame men for
everything to get, I want an A.
Okay. So, but that brings me back to, um,
I think, especially for
kids in the last 10 years
on college campuses that are
conservative. If you're
going, waking up, going to school,
going to your classes and you're
surrounded by people, people who are
liberal, your professors
are liberal. It can become very isolating
feeling and you feel alone.
And again, I think Charlie
became just a comforting space for them,
you know, where they could
show up and all be together and
almost like probably discover, okay,
who's conservative on my
campus? You know, like,
okay. You know, so they deserve that too.
I think we've catered
and that's fine. Whatever.
We've catered to one side now long enough
where the other side's been
demonized and you have young
people who have been demonized simply for
what they believe in. And
they, they haven't been given
a space to feel comfortable. So I think
Charlie did give that to
them. But again, I go back to,
I think he's a real threat because he
gave it to both sides. Right. And if
you're, you're right.
He gave a voice to conservatives on
campus by having dialogue
with anybody, right? And,
and espousing conservative dogma. So he
absolutely gave that space. I think
you're right. I think
it's a shame it's lost. The reason he has
such broad appeal, the
reason the media wants his market
segment is because people who were in
that dogma were hearing
something from someone else with
actual facts and data and reasoning for
why they should question
their own left leanings. Right.
So that, that was a real, that, that
extended the spectrum. So he didn't just
have people on the far
right. He started to creep into that left
zone, that left side, a
little further and further.
Yes. And once you get there, that's a
problem, which, but then
if I put my tinfoil hat on,
who is this kid who killed him? Wow. And
why, who, who, who got to him and, and,
and made that happen.
Right. Yeah. How? And so I saw something
today, and I don't even know if this is,
has been verified, but a neighbor said
that she saw cars coming and going from
his house a few days
before the assassination with different
license plates from
different States. That'll be
interesting to see if that is a falsehood
or that's verified. Cause
that's weird. I know the mother,
I've seen reports that she's been just
wiping out everything on
her Facebook, basically.
So, cause there's stuff of him shooting
guns and things like
that. Who knows? I mean,
we know nothing still about the guy who
tried to assassinate
Trump in Butler. You know,
it's how like there's no extended
information about him. So tinfoil hat,
I'm right there with
you. You know, it, was it a hit? Was this
kid just manipulated and
radicalized to be used as
a hitman by a larger group or was this
just a lone wolf, you
know, what a mental illness.
Here's what I would like is if someone's
made it this far, who
has interest and experience
in studying these, I'd love to have you
on as a guest to talk about
this. If you have some data
driven approach that can shed light on
this, even anything from the Benzo
epidemic to the Adderall
epidemic to just prescribing our kids
psychotropic drugs that
fucks with their brain chemistry,
that stops them from connecting the dots.
Yeah. And also anyone that
maybe has some experience
and this could be redundant because they
may have experience of
what you just talked about,
but with school shootings in general or
something has studied school shootings,
because that is going to be a topic we're
going to cover and we'd
love to do a deeper dive.
Yeah. I, I feel like as more information
comes out, we may do a
mint, another mini episode on
this depending on what happens. But
again, we felt this is a moment in
history and it deserved
this time, this moment in time deserved
its own episode for
his, for history's sake.
I think we felt that Charlie deserved an
episode. We, you know, I
personally felt compelled to speak
about, I respected Charlie Kirk and we
may lose listeners and
followers for that. I hope not,
but I'm also not going to be scared to
say that. Um, cause I know
who I am and I am a good person
and have a good heart and I love people
and I'm not hateful or
racist. Um, but I did, I like
Charlie Kirk a lot. I had a lot of
respect for him and I enjoyed listening
to him. I think he was a
very bright young man, incredibly smart,
smarter than most people I
will ever know. And I think
he had an amazing future ahead of him.
And I think what happened to him was
tragic. And my heart
breaks for his wife, his two young
children who will never know
him and his parents and his
family and friends. Um, you know, I am
heartbroken all of over all of it. I, I
really truly am. I've
been very, it's been very upsetting this
week to go through this
whole experience. And I assume
this is probably how a lot of people felt
when JFK Jr was shot, when
MLK was shot, when Malcolm X
was shot. Um, you just, you mourn it's
someone you never knew,
but it was someone that was
important. John Lennon, you know, yeah,
it was important to in
society in America, the world.
Um, at least that's how I feel. Not
everyone feels that way. And
I understand and respect that,
but that's how I feel about it. I know
Brian, I think you also
felt similar feelings about it.
You know, I went through the anger. I
hate seeing these things where
people are just getting killed
from for no reason, right? I found the
stabbing very upsetting. I
found the, the killing of the
kids at that school in Minnesota
upsetting. I found killing those
politicians that the Democrats,
politicians in Minnesota, very, you know,
unfortunate and just
terrible. It makes no sense.
I think when it comes to Charlie, I do
think it's, I don't want to belittle
those what I just said,
but he had such a large platform. I do
think he's in that same, that same
category of a, of an,
of an MLK, of a Malcolm X, of a John
Lennon of someone who had a
pulse for what's going on and
what's important and gave people a voice
and gave people something to
look forward to. He's larger
than life. What he was doing became
bigger than him. And to be
hunted like that, it's just,
it makes no sense. It's got to stop. I
know that's so cliche. It's
got to stop. We got to turn the
water down or the temperature down a bull
size, right? It's so
cliche, but it's, that's up to us.
That's up to us as people, not, not the
government, not the media outlets. It's
up to people engaging
with other people. If you feel so
inclined, don't, you know, the one thing
that comes to mind is we
all have a confirmation bias, right? We
all look at things to confirm our
predisposed position of
whatever that event is. So to your point
about Charlie and you
know, you don't want people to
be upset or, or, you know, think
something differently about us, we're,
we're just open-minded
people. And I think if you drop your
confirmation bias and dig into the, dig
into Charlie, if this,
you know, you know, gets you motivated to
do it, you'll find that
he was speaking pretty
relative. You know, nothing was bad. None
of it's bad. None of it
should be inflammatory.
No, it, none of it was bad or negative,
but I think we lost the art of,
art of communication, art of discourse,
art of the back and forth
face to face. COVID could have
had a lot to do with that. And so, and
then we went so politically
correct where we almost went
mute about talking about almost anything.
So then when Charlie
came on the scene and
talked about everything openly and
loudly, it might've, it
triggered people and could have been
very jarring for people because it was
almost like going from
nothing to talking about everything.
That could have been too much of a, there
was no transition for, it
was just too jarring to them
or something. I don't know, but I do
encourage people to go listen
to Charlie and really listen
to him, not just listen to snippets, but
really go and listen to what
he has to say about different
topics and watch the prove me wrong
snippets because I find
them, I think some of them are
hilarious actually, but they're very
entertaining and informative and, and
it's, it is, it's very,
it's very sad. It's very sad that he's no
longer a part of our
society and, and that we'll never
know what could have been with him. And I
think that's also just
such a sadness. And he was so
young. So, you know, and his wife, you
know, she's watch her
cause I think she's gonna,
she's coming out strong, you know, one of
the, and I think we should
wrap this up somewhat soon here,
but one of the best ones is when he goes
to Cambridge, he dresses
up and have you seen that
where he's in like a tux and he's talking
to kids in Cambridge. No, I
never went to university and
at an intellectual level, he eviscerates
them because he, he's smart.
Like this dude, he's smart.
Yeah. Very, I don't, I'm curious. How the
hell did he get so well read
and smart at such a young age?
Just read. I guess so. But he says he
just read, he re he
never stopped reading.
That's that what it is. Yeah. People he,
and he would tell people, read, read, read everything,
read everything, read everything you can.
And I think that's
great advice, sage advice,
is to read more and scroll and doom
scroll less. Yes.
Right. There's so much about,
you could take away from what he has to
say. That's what I'm
saying. Like he was an asset to
our culture and, and that's, that's
what's just so shocking. I think about some of the reactions
about him. So, but again, I think his
wife is going to carry the
torch and she seems to be an
incredibly strong woman. And you know,
she's got those two babies
to raise. And I think turning
points going to take off strong. This is
going to become bigger than
Charlie. Like that. I think
when Charlie was assassinated, I think
there's going to be thousands and
thousands of Charlies
from this. I really do. It'll be
interesting to see the, the
only thing there would be,
I was reading, they have what, like 1600
or 18. Let's make up a
number less than 2000 chapters
across the US of which 1100 and something
are in high schools. I
didn't know that I found that.
That's interesting. Yeah. The thing that
you can't have happen is
for those people that get into
and start turning point chapters and
start speaking the dogma.
And I don't know what the
right word is, but putting Charlie on
that pedestal, don't you can't
misinterpret where he was at and
make it something that it wasn't. He
wasn't about hate. He wasn't
about this or that or racism.
So you got to be careful, right? Is that
interpretive, yes. A
morphing of ideas. Yes.
From young minds to becoming something
negative and not altruistic
and not open-minded and not
accepting and not a dialogue of equals.
Yeah. Right. And cause
that's the, that's the other side
of the pendulum. Yeah. Well, and I think
that's where the faith
balanced out. Cause he, he, it
came from a source of faith. It was a
faith base for him, which,
you know, for him was love and
open-mindedness and acceptance. Yeah. And
that's where he was not
far right. People are like,
that's the people that have an issue with
him. He was a moderate. He
was accepting of everyone.
But, but to, to the example you brought
up earlier with the
Christian, talking about the,
you know, gay people and he had to kind
of moderate them. Yeah.
That's the danger in all of this.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Is that people could
take his words and run with
them. Yeah. But I think that's,
I think that's happened on the left all
the time. All the, oh,
they're at the worst of it. Yeah.
Obviously. So, um, anyways, again, this
just want to reiterate, this
was not a political episode.
I would love to talk about politics, but
we can't because it's so polarizing.
Yeah. You can't talk
openly about both sides of the same coin
because someone is going
to, you know, it just doesn't
work, which is a shame. I love politics.
I know. Maybe, maybe that'll change. I
don't know. It would
be nice to be able to just talk about
everything, not talk about both sides.
And maybe, and maybe
we can figure out a way to do that
without polarizing. We just
don't want to alienate people
because we want, we want this to be a
place where everyone can
come to and enjoy and, um,
and not worry about any of that stuff.
It's supposed to be kind
of a refuge or at least
a place where you can connect and
resonate or you feel seen, you feel, you
know, that, um, what your
life experience is going through. Other
people are going through it
too. We don't want to take
that away from anyone. So again, this was
not a political post, but
this was a moment in history.
And also we felt Charlie Kirk deserved an
episode for all of his
accomplishments, especially as a
31 year old man. And what he has the
legacy that he most
assuredly has left behind. So, um,
thank you listeners for listening. You
can leave any comments,
um, good or bad, you know,
feel free to leave them. Uh, we, we can
handle it, I think. And, uh,
we will see you next time. Bye.