Who Is REALLY Celebrating This Trump Verdict?
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So the Donald Trump verdict, I would say it was a majestic day, a big day for demons. That’s right, demons. I’m a I’m a fan of the works of C .S. Lewis and the screw tape letters. I’m going to recommend this book to everyone. It’s fantastic. I wish I wish I could write.
that well. And basically the book is, it’s a series of letters. It’s a series of letters. It’s basically this demon, this demon who’s writing to his nephew demon, whose job is to try to lead someone to help. And it’s, well, it’s not so much of a back and forth. The only letters in it are screw tapes letters responding to his,
his nephew and his endeavors in trying to lead someone down the wrong path. And the genius behind it, it’s extraordinary. It really is. And singing about it yesterday and watching what’s taking place and you can flip around, you can flip to MSNBC, you can flip to Fox News back and forth and you can see the type of vitriol.
the type of hatred that has been drummed up. And you can imagine, you can imagine the demons out there just, big day, big day. Let’s drive a wedge between people. Let’s drive that wedge even further. Let’s split this country even further. Let’s put people at each other’s throats.
And if you’re crying out loud, you could add a verse. You could add a verse to the Rolling Stone’s sympathy for the devil with what’s going on at this country at this point in time. Today, we’re going to do a few podcasts on topics, various topics surrounding this case. But I want to start off today. Again, Peggy Noonan seeing things the way I
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have been seeing them. Again, I’ve talked about this case. I’ve talked about what’s happening to the country, the divisiveness that is out there. And I see it in some of my listeners out there that if I make a point that might counter whoever they are supporting, particularly more often than not, it’s Trump supporters, man, they come back at me.
And with anger. And, you know, rather than, you know, some try to offer a debate, some sort of Socratic debate, but more often than not, that’s not it’s not the case. And sometimes people coming back at me, you know, in regards to, you know, my thought process and dialing down the volume on all of this and trying to find some common ground.
Chris, you’re going to church too much. I mean, nonsense like that. But anyway, I want to go to a piece today. It’s probably one of, again, I’ve been critical of Peggy’s piece. She’s a long time writer for the Wall Street Journal. She was what, Reagan speech writer. And yeah, sometimes she comes off as a New York elitist without, but that doesn’t mean, okay, that because she’s from New York and she’s a member of the elite that.
what she’s saying doesn’t have valid points.
Anyway, your piece today, we’re starting to enjoy hatred. I’m seeing something and maybe you are too. We talk in our country about political polarization and it’s real. We’re split into a thousand pieces within two big camps of left and right. We decry the harshness of our political discourse, particularly online, where outrageous and dehumanizing things are said again.
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I’ve been saying this for years when it comes to social media and what it was going to do. Saw this coming a million miles away. A million miles away at what this was. Again, it’s as if, you know, the screw tape and Wormwood, those are the demons from the screw tape letters. They couldn’t have thought this up for crying out loud.
I couldn’t even imagine C .S. Lewis trying to write about this stuff today and the climate and how easy it is for these demons to work their evil magic. What I’m seeing is that we don’t mind disliking each other now. We like it. That’s the new thing. We’re enjoying the estrangement. Been listening to this show, not me.
Not here. Nobody’s trying to win anybody over. Not nobody, Peggy. Certain people are trying to do it. Again, we’ve been listening to this program. Again, we try to have a meeting of the minds. We try to find some sort of common ground when it comes to things.
But yeah, mainstream, no, no, no, no, they want the conflict. They want the fight. We know this. It’s good for ratings. It’s good for clicks. The biggest recent example of this is the story about the Supreme Court justice’s wife who didn’t understand that flying the American flag upside down outside her home during a crisis might
be experienced by others as unhappily weird and possibly alarming. And her neighbor who didn’t understand that when engaged in a political dispute, it’s not really nice to spew lewd and ugly epithets on Biden or put them on lawn signs. Again.
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Yeah. Yeah. But now again, you know, now we’ve got a problem with a you know, a Catholic or a Christian flag going back to the Revolutionary War. It’s gone bonkers.
There was a local particular expression of a larger trend. Bill Maher wrote of it in an essay last month. Would anyone ride the New York City subway wearing a MAGA hat or go to a NASCAR race in a Biden t -shirt? That’s where we are now. Other parts of the country are seen as no -go zones. You know, the funny thing is, I don’t know if Peggy missed this, this last season.
Or no, was it the second to last season, I think. For Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David, he wanted to keep people away from him in California. He would go out to restaurants and he’d wear a MAGA hat. It was actually part of the skit.
When was the last time you saw anyone try to address the other side with respect and understanding and venture something like, I think you’re seeing it this way, but I want to explain why I see it so differently. And that’s why we both understand each other and proceed with respect. Instead, we accuse each other and put each other down.
and it doesn’t feel merry and high spirited like political business as usual, it feels cold. Again, it’s a lesson, a lesson I learned a long, long time ago. And I’m gonna excuse Peggy, she isn’t in the radio business like I’ve have been and having a drive time radio show three hours a day. I learned, I learned you do not,
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argue with idiots. Now, I’m not calling somebody that has got a different viewpoint than I do. I’m not calling them an idiot. Okay. So to me, what I’m saying an idiot, I’m saying somebody that calls up that instantly attacks you personally.
personally tries to rip you and tear you down rather than make an argument. You cannot argue with idiots. And we watch it happen all the time. And you can see it on social media. You can see it on comments boards after columns. It’s trying to get one up on somebody or say a nastier comment.
What exactly is going to be achieved by that? Again, both sides have an equal but different sense of superiority. Both sides enjoy looking down on the other. The left leans toward condemnation. It’s going from Trump is a criminal to Trump supporters are criminal. They understand things the other dopes don’t. Class is involved.
She said, I quoted a friend who recently said with no bitterness, the Democrats see Trump voters as toothless, smelly Walmart shoppers. The left does look down. Sometimes somebody privileged economic position, which makes it the more shameful. So Trump supporters lean toward manipulation. They charge the other side are bad human beings, selfish elites who have no feeling for, no affiliation with the common man. They’re close to elites.
who looked down on flyover states as they sit martinis in first class. Some Trump voters say his foes oppose him to go do Georgetown cocktail parties or similar gatherings. Again, she says, are cocktail parties still going on? She said, I knew they used to happen, but not so much. She says the elites in her where she hangs out with, they don’t go to cocktail parties. They attend fundraisers for hospitals and libraries and go to professional events.
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The most establishment Trump foes are, she says, some of the hardest working people in America. They are earnest, they run the institutions you’ll rely on. If you have a heart attack on the sidewalk or a story that needs exposing or a court case that needs taking. Again, I think Peggy’s pushing it a little bit, but again, you gotta understand the world that she lives in and it’s her perspective and I will give her that. Again, do I necessarily agree with it?
No, I don’t. Okay. Is it really something that we’re so estranged that we know nothing of others, other sides lives and because we know nothing, even our insults are lame and need updating. The class aspect of the big estrangement pretends nothing good. America has been navigating its way through issues of class since the beginning. It is text or subtext of the country’s great novels. Now it is emerging in a new way in our politics. One more lay in.
with meaning and encouraging of unshamed judgment. I said I sense people are enjoying their political hatred now. Why would that be? Some of it’s human and has been around forever. People enjoy hating. It feels so vigorous. Again, yeah, wormwood, screw tape, demon, they love this. Some enjoy their hatred.
because they are by nature shallow and see the implications of nothing. Some enjoy it because they see politics as an extension of sports, booing the other team as part of the fun of being at the game. Some enjoy it because it lets them feel immense in a warm bath of righteousness. I am not immoral like a Trump supporter. I am not a mindless snob who drove the country into a ditch like a Democrat.
But some enjoy their hatred, which is this is a new part, because it helps them avoid seeing that they are involved in a tragedy. Ken, Peggy, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. Underlying theme of this show for a very long period of time.
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This is spot on. The tragedy is that one of two old men, neither, OK, neither of them are great. Neither, OK, neither of them are distinguished in terms of character or intellect. Who are each in his own way.
and embarrassment and whom two thirds of voters do not want as presidential candidates. One of those two old men are gonna be chosen in a very crucial historical moment where stakes, yes, are very high for the most powerful nation on earth.
One will likely fail physically in coming years. Biden’s failing now and be replaced by a vice president who is utterly wholly unsuited for the presidency. She’s not serious, wholly unserious. It’s had four years to prove herself in a baseline way and has failed to meet even the modest standards by which vice presidents are judged. The other?
man being elected or even before then be thrown into the slammer for one of the felony charges against him, including those connected to attempting to overthrow a democratic national election.
This is the tragedy, okay? This is the tragedy, this is what we got. This is our choice right now. Hey, hey, when you got your hate on, when you’ve geared in, you go, I got my hate on right now. You don’t notice any of this stuff, you’re blind.
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You’re blind. And that’s what we have right now is a nation of blind people.
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How are we gonna make our way through this in a constructive manner? And then people, they had that movie that came out, Civil War, just came up on streaming. I watched the trailer of it and I was like.
Nah, nah, I’m not, I don’t know, maybe, I’m just not really interested. And she talks about people prattling about an upcoming civil war. Did you see any side looking to raise an army and fight in the streets? You could pick the most Trump -supporting state in the country. Not gonna be firing on Fort Sumter, okay?
Let’s say the country splits. How do you do that? Which makes good point. Who gets the nuclear arsenal? Who’s handling social security?
Again, you know, she talks about how to suggestion and how to turn things around. She says it starts with understanding that the people were so harshly judging our countrymen. They share the country with you, we have to go forward into the future together because if we don’t, we won’t have a future. We have to ease up. We have to slow down our desire to look down.
We have to be a little more generous. We have to stop enjoying our hate so much. And we’ll have to come up with thoughts that are better than that because we cannot go on indefinitely like this. I was Peggy Noonan today with obviously my two cents in her column. I’m going to go through, like I said today, some of the various different bits and pieces when it comes to this case.
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What would I like to see?
What would I like to see? Again, it’s, I’m doing this podcast today prior, I’m just gonna kind of timestamp it. Okay, I’m doing it before Trump is scheduled to come out and speak at 11 a
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We all know the polls. We all know the polls, right? If Trump decided to come out, and again, I know I’m gonna get such MAGA backlash from saying this, okay? And said, you know what? I’m gonna spend my time fighting these awful charges and trying to rid the country of lawfare, but I can’t do that and run.
the country at the same time. And you have, and you put somebody else in that position against Joe Biden, it will be a landslide. I know, no, I can hear people shutting off the podcast now. Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga, Magga,
I bet a I bet a I didn’t play. I wasn’t ever involved in individual sports outside of stuff I do gym class and whatnot. OK. You know, or playing badminton against my father in the backyard. Team sports. And there are times when they say you’ve got to take one for the team. If you truly love this.
country, you’d win, okay? It would be a landslide for your side. Okay, all you need to do, again, and this is Sun Tzu, the art of war, do the unexpected. Do the unexpected. Don’t come out. Don’t come out and start talking revenge. And I’m gonna get them back. Don’t do that.
Don’t do that. You know what you do? And I was thinking about, I don’t know why it popped into my head. And I love the movie. It was kind of a simple movie, but again, I’m a big Schwarzenegger fan. Kindergarten cop. Arnold Schwarzenegger is, you know, again, not able to handle little kids. They’re going crazy inside the classroom. He’s a police officer working undercover as a kindergarten teacher. And the kids are going nuts.
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And all of a sudden he just screams at the top and you know, Austrian accent, stop, stop! As loud as he can, you know, everybody just stops, all the kids stop and then they start.
Somebody has got to say, okay enough stop. In essence, shut everybody up. Shut everybody up. Do the unexpected. Do the unexpected and pull back from all of this. Pull back from all of this. Go out there and say, you know what? We’re not, but there’s not going to be any revenge. You come out and you play it where, you know what? I feel sorry for these people.
that this is what they had to do. I’m sorry, I know, I’m gonna get all the people there nailing me on Christianity. You turn the other cheek on this. I know what you did, I know what’s going on, but you know what?
The country is more important. It’s more important than getting revenge.
It’s more important that somebody steps in and tries to, again, try to bring people together as best we possibly can. There’s gonna be differences. There’s always been differences all the time.
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But where we’re at right now is, I don’t know how long it can go on either. Anyway, more on this today. Don’t go anywhere. Watchdogonwallstreet .com is our site. I’ll do a few more on various different nuances of this case today as well.