 So let's do Saturday Night Right. So I'm reading just finished Book Two of Dance to the Music of Time, and there was a beautiful passage which I thought was quite profound. I used to imagine life divided into separate compartments. You probably experienced this too. There was a compartment for love, compartment for sex, a compartment for work, compartment for play. Right? You divide your life up into separate compartments, so there'd be like pleasure here, pain here, love here, hate here, friendship here, enmity here. But over time, these separate compartments of life turn out to not be quite so clear. Right? So as time goes on, these supposedly different worlds keep drawing closer, not to each other than to some pattern common to all. So that any diversity between these different spheres of life turns out to have no meaning. So all the inhabitants of these outwardly disconnected empires turn out to be tenaciously interrelated. So love and hate, friendship and enmity become much less clearly defined. Work and play merge indistinguishably into a complex tissue of pleasure and tedium. So I used to try to live my life in all sorts of separate compartments, but they inevitably start colliding and interpenetrating. So the word integrity comes from the word integral means one. So you really want to have a life where all the different parts of your life aren't at war with each other, but rather work together. So that if you run into, I remember once I was living on a street when I was riding down the point industry and I was walking down the street and suddenly I saw all these people from the point industry on my street and it was Sunday and I just didn't want to deal with them. I was like, how could they be on my holy street? So I used to go to an orthodox synagogue in the morning and then I'd go to a pawn set later in the morning. So I start off with prayer and Talmud study and then I'd go to a pawn set and then I'd come home and I'd write my pawn blog and then I'd write my mainstream blog and then I'd go to a Los Angeles press club party at night and I had all these different worlds. But when they started interpenetrating it got quite messy. So it's not easy to maintain separate worlds. It's not really an effective way to live to imagine that you can just live your life with discrete compartments. So there's a terrific book out by Ira Rosen, 40 years, a TV producer. It's called ticking clock behind the scenes at 60 minutes. And it is a great read. So he talked about writing, working for, I was on 60 minutes in 2004. So I spoke to the producer for probably 40 hours on the phone. I was finally interviewed by Steve Croft and yeah, he showed up about an hour late for the interview. And so this book portrays Steve Croft as just lazy, inattentive, narcissistic, rude, routinely showing up late for interviews, completely matched my experience with the dude. Ira Rosen had the misfortune of working for Mike Wallace. And where I disagree with Ira Rosen is he describes Mike Wallace as one of the great interviewers. And to me, Mike Wallace was an absolutely horrible interviewer. He would do his interviews in a way to try to garner maximum attention for himself. But did not elicit maximum cooperation and disclosure from his guests. So the viewers paid the price for Mike Wallace's preening. So Mike Wallace would just scream at his assistants, highly abusive. And if you work for Mike Wallace, typically your back would go out, people would walk around with a back brace. The attention of the job led other producers to heart disease, cancer at an early age. One producer got ulcers. And Ira Rosen says that his back would go into spasms during the entire time that he worked with Mike Wallace. He would end up sleeping on many hotel room floors to try to reduce the pain, including years later during his honeymoon. And Ira says, producing TV shows was easy when the subjects showed up on time. The correspondent got a good night's sleep and was prepared for the interview and the subject was full of wit and energy however that rarely happened. In a 2016, he talks about a 2016 trip to Chicago, Al Sharpton just dropped in on Jesse Jackson unannounced at his offices. And Jesse was sitting there in his offices in a three-piece suit watching daytime soap operas. They spent an hour together, the phone never rang. So Jesse Jackson now alone and ignored, like his hands shaking from Parkinson's disease. Now his lifestyle and his hustles are finally caught up with him. Al Sharpton said that sad scene will stay with him forever. So Sharpton thought about Jesse Jackson's fall from grace and decided to change his act. Ira Rosen writes, when I first came to Washington, I was overly impressed by congressmen and senators. Then I found that most of them lack authenticity. Most of them would say and do anything to get on 60 minutes, which made their beliefs a motive suspect. I discovered the more you know about politicians, the worse they appear. There was one time when 60 Minutes corresponded, Ed Bradley told one of his producers that he wanted to do a story in San Diego. Why San Diego, Ed? Ed said, well, the best blow job I ever received was from this girl in San Francisco. And I asked her where she learned to do that and she said she learned to do it from her sister in San Diego. So Ed Bradley once agreed to substitute as anchor of the CBS Evening News for a week and they told him he had to be on call for 24 hours if any big news broke. He didn't like that, but he was assured, look, Ed will only call you if something really bad happens, you know, like the president is shot. So about two in the morning, Ed Bradley's phone rings. He's with some new woman, he was a massive womanizer. And the phone rings, you know, Bradley shoots up out of bed and says to his female companion, the president's been shot. Turned out to be a wrong number. Charlie Rose, another huge womanizer. So Steve Croft, a massive drinker and also a womanizer. Steve Croft said he wanted to retire so he could spend more time drinking. Charlie Rose, massive womanizer. So Ira Rosen asked him when Charlie was 75 before the scandals broke. Charlie Rose, would you sleep with a woman who was 60 years old? You crazy? But Charlie, that's a woman who's 15 years younger than you. You have no idea what my life is like. He said, Charlie, you're 75. You're old enough to be some of these younger women's grandfather. They want to hang out with you. They want to talk to you. They want to go to parties with you, but they don't want to fuck you. And Charlie got a friend that got up and left the office. So he talks about arranging Charlie Rose to interview Steve Bannon after Steve Bannon left the White House in 2017. But the three-hour interview was spread over three nights of the Charlie Rose show on PBS, as well as, I think, two segments on 60 Minutes. But the interview was such a success, it created a monster. So Steve Bannon took the interview momentum, started acting and speaking as though he were a presidential candidate. So a narcissist told me he wanted to run for president if Trump decided he didn't want a second term. And he ticked off all the rich people who would support him, like the Mercer, Shordan Edelson, and the Koch brothers. And privately, he would tell Ira Rosen that Trump was suffering from early-stage dementia and he should be removed from office by the 25th Amendment, where the Cabinet could vote the president was no longer mentally capable of carrying out his duties. So Steve Bannon began pushing that story hard. So Bannon complained that President Trump had no attention span, that he'd never read a book in his life and he didn't listen. And he complained that Trump was always repeating himself telling the same stories minutes after he told it before. Yeah, Henry VIII was just like these media men. Yeah, I'm really enjoying Wolf Hall, the trilogy. I just let it play all night. And I fall asleep, wake up, listen to some more fall asleep, so I'm enjoying the Wolf Hall trilogy. Great stuff. And Bannon was pushing Ira Rosen 60 minutes to do a 25th Amendment piece. And he was pushing all sorts of friends and Trump's backers to push for a 25th Amendment removal of Donald Trump. And so in the summer of 2017, Steve Bannon went to the Long Island home of Bob Mercer and briefed him about trying to build up a consensus to remove Trump from office. He mentioned a Sunday prayer service where various cabinet officials attended, along with Vice President Pence, that this is a place where the conspiracy to remove Trump could begin. And Mercer dismissed the talk and began to start having serious stout spells, Steve Bannon. Then Bannon got removed from Breitbart. So next time I saw him, Steve Bannon was at the Bryant Park Hotel. It's a place known on Wall Street. That's where you go for discrete affairs. And Bannon wanted me to meet his new girlfriend. So she was 20 years younger than Steve. He was smitten. He'd already bought her a car and a house. And he later texted me, she could be the next ex-Mrs. Bannon. She's very, very cool. First time I've enjoyed anything outside of work in 30 years. So let's have a look at the chat. LaShonhara, gossip and slander, this is. Now we're not in Elul the month for repentance prior to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Seriously, a man is still a man. Henry VIII was just like these media men. Why did Henry keep going after women who clearly were situationally wrong for him? Married to your dead brother's wife, who does that? Or marrying one sister after nailing the other? What was he thinking? When the penis stands up, the brain leaves. Like when the little head rules the big head, that's what happens. Like many men have a fantasy about doing sisters. That was the whole point of the Ed Bradley story. He wanted to go to San Diego. Why did Ed Bradley want to go to San Diego? Because the greatest blowjob he'd received in his life was in San Francisco from a woman. And he'd asked her, how did you learn to do that? And she said, I learned to do that from my sister in San Diego. So Ed Bradley wanted to go to San Diego and get the primo blowjob version from the sister. Guys like to do sisters. So Rebecca Mercer apparently liked Ira Rosen and invited him to a lot of parties. So Steve Bannon tried to support President Trump as a way of building up his own brand, but it conflicted with his true feelings of loathing for Trump's family. So Steve Bannon thought he could throw Trump's kids under the bus and still be a Trump oilist. So Bannon said on the radio show that he still supported Trump after Michael Wolf spoke fire and fury came out. And then five hours after he sent that, he emailed me a story from Politico on the 25th Amendment and how it could be used to remove Trump from office. So Steve Bannon was living in an alternate reality. So Ira Rosen goes to these parties thrown by Rebecca Mercer. And he meets Bob Cohen, the New York marriage attorney who represented Trump's ex-wives, Ivana and Marla Maples. And so this 80 year old attorney, Bob Cohen, tells me that he represents Melania Trump. But she's not divorced, I said. Well, I got her a post-nup agreement. Well, what is a post-nup? Well, you know what a pre-nup is, sure. Well, a post-nup is after you have a pre-nup. After Donald got elected, he said, I can't be president without a first lady. So he added four years to her existing agreement. I got a millions more added to a deal. So Cohen implied that had Trump lost in 2016, he might have separated from Melania. And if Trump had won in 2020, there's gonna have to be another renegotiation. So Rebecca Mercer had direct access to Donald Trump before the 2016 election. She advised him on his cabinet picks. The 2020 was different. She withdrew her financial support of Trump because he did not deliver on his promise to drain the swamp, to take on the entrenched corruption on both sides of the aisle. The political swamp only grew during Trump's presidency. She was also offended that Trump's campaign manager, Brad Pascal, had been spending millions of dollars on fancy cars and expensive real estate and that he and his company were being paid millions by the campaign. She didn't want her contributions to benefit Brad Pascal's lifestyle. So given her misgivings about Trump, Iro Rosen was surprised that Rebecca Mercer did not support Vice President Pence. She gave me a look. You know, he talks to God, she said. A lot of people talk to God, what's wrong with that? God answers, she said, like the burning bush? Yeah. So that's why she didn't wanna support Trump. Wib says I was hoping if Trump was re-elected, there'd be a TV show to select the new first lady. So Trump invited Dylan Howard and David Pecker, both from the National Inquirer to the White House July 12, 2017. And they were touring the executive residence, the White House, and just outside the Lincoln bedroom, the president says to Dylan Howard, does former Playboy model Kara McDougal, does she still love me? Of course she does, Howard says. Trump seemed pleased. Trump then told Howard the secret nickname he had for us. So former Playboy model Kara McDougal, Trump nicknamed her Hoover Dam, Trump said, because she was always so wet. Yeah, if you elect me and I would dump Melania and let you pick your next first lady in America as a winning campaign. Palm Beach Culture. It was never more evident that when Patriots owner Robert Kraft got busted, along with other worthy people for going to a low-rent massage parlor to get a handjob. So Kraft was caught on surveillance, getting masturbated by a Chinese female and apparently anally stimulated. So you may have heard a lot of Californians were moving to Texas. I wonder how they're feeling now that they've got temperatures of 20 degrees and no power. So Brett Alder, yeah, when I let my viewers pick a wife for me, whoever gives the biggest superjack has to pick my wife. So Brett Alder is a Mormon and he decided to move to Austin. And then he regretted it, moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area, published an essay on media, 10 reasons why Austin is not the California of Texas. Okay, so I think he had like six kids, but the two long didn't read if you just want the one sentence summary. It's, so if you love football, live music, barbecue, really nice houses, and moving from another place with terrible weather and you're not moving to save money, you'll be fine. Otherwise think twice about moving to Austin. So here's 10 reasons why Austin is not the California of Texas. Number one, Austin, like California, is not affordable. Josh is the superjack king, so he wants me to marry a Chase Ukrainian 18 year old. You watch some of my exes podcast, she does a great job. Do you mean Holly Randall? Which one? I've had so many. So two things that California and Texas definitely have in common is that they're both very expensive. So Austin is not cheap, it's quite expensive. We moved from San Diego owning a 2000 square foot house on a third of an acre in 2015 looking for a boost in lifestyle. So if you're looking for great schools, the Southwest, Northwest sectors of Austin are the options. But it's also the most expensive real estate in Texas. Oh, Brandon, throw down the link. Lionel Nation got tough on rush. Yeah, Houston is cheap. So anyway, they buy a 4,000 square foot in B cave, an affluent suburb of Austin with great schools. All right, so property taxes are incredibly high in Texas. So they're 1.25% in California. They're two to 3% in Texas. Okay, so property taxes are two to three times as expensive in Texas compared to California. Power, all right. The weather is horrible in Texas. So you're gonna be spending enormous amounts of money for air conditioning and heating. And then in difficult times such as what Texas has gone through over the past week, Texas homeowners have been hit with eye watering electricity bills up to $17,000 due to high demand during freeze. So rates in Texas jumped from $50 to $9,000 per megawatt as demand soared during the energy crisis. That $1 resident is bill spiked from $600 last month to 17,000. Just imagine your rates, so 50 to 9,000. That's going up 180 times. Your electricity bill just got up 180 times. So they were paying back when energy prices were normal and reasonable. They were paying $400 per month during the summer and winter and we were uncomfortable. 79 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. To have been comfortable, we were about to spend $1,000 a month for your electricity bill. Texas equals free markets. But just imagine your electricity bill goes up 180 times per megawatt. Yeah, property taxes are high in non-income tax days like Texas and Florida. Live from Los Angeles, it's the Luke Ford Show with talent unlearned from Hashem. Yeah, East St. Louis, Houston, Detroit, much cheaper. Lionel Nation got tough on Rush. Rush was on 400 stations, so you knew he was safe. Surface level depth never spoke of 9-11 shadow government survivalist. Okay, Lionel Nation here gets tough on Rush. I can't play any exos because I'm just doing this show to my cell phone. But I'll try to make a note of that. Luke Ford deserves a no hymen, no diamonds, submissive hearty. Okay, water, incredibly expensive. We paid $89 a month just for the privilege of being connected to city water. And then the water bill was about a thousand a month. Services, we thought living in Texas stuff would be cheap but with so many people moving to Austin, the service industry is in red heart demand, expensive pool maintenance, expensive landscaping services, expensive home repairs, expensive dining, expensive movies. Anyone who can afford it leaves Austin for a couple of months during the summer to escape the heat. Now that's expensive since to get away anywhere interesting bulls flying in hotel stays. So you have to budget an extra a few thousand dollars. And taxes is very hard on houses. Tailstones will ruin your roof, torrential rain and scorpions will get inside. We spent tens of thousands of dollars on unexpected home repairs and remediation. Talking to other people that was not uncommon. Then finally lifestyle, although we doubled the size of our house and kitchen and yard, we felt more cramped and cooped up in Austin than in San Diego or San Jose due to the bad weather and lack of public spaces. So it's not really comfortable to go outside in Austin most of the year. It's either too hot or too cold. Not to mention Mexican squatters. You should try Canada frozen tundra half the year. Okay, the weather, you've heard it's hot and humid, but how bad can it be? So first of all, Austin is wet, gets 90% as much rain as Portland, Oregon. Okay, so you get all the problems that come with the wet climate. You get mold, allergies, mosquitoes, water penetration and the rain all comes in just a handful a day like pouring inches in a single night. Humidity is great for your skin, but it causes food to spoil fast. Tows to get mildew, it drastically limits the temperature range where you feel comfortable. So 32 degrees in high deserts like Nevada or Utah is not that bad, but 50 degrees in Austin is buck cold. It's annoying cold and Austin is hot. It's not California hot, it's Texas hot. California heat is weak by comparison. Much California, the temperature cools down at night, you open windows, you breathe fresh air, drastically limit your utility bill. And Austin during the summer, it only get down to a smothering 80 degrees at night. That means your AC will be running all day and all night. Evening walks are less refreshing when it's 11 p.m. and you're sweating. Hard to describe how oppressive it is. Although we had a huge yard, though we had our own half basketball court, we really only felt like going outside about three to four months of the year. The rest of the time was too windy, too hot, too cold, too many mosquitoes, too many horseflies, too many fire ants or pouring down. The kids would go outside anyway, come back with heat rashes and bug bites. Compare this to San Jose or Los Angeles or San Diego where you can enjoy being outside pretty much every day of the year. Public land. In the West we take public land for granted, Soros, Sierra, Nevada, mountains, Sandy beaches, public space, canyons, trails, long creeks, standard fare in the West, not to mention Yosemite, not in Texas because of Texas history, lack of natural barriers, mountains and oceans, barriers to settlement. Most all of the land is private and flat or rolling hills. There's a lot of land in Texas but it all has barbed wire fences, no trespassing signs on it. Even creeks are puzzled up as private property. So even though Austin is supposed to be outdoorsy, there are very few places to go and because there are very limited numbers of public spaces serving such a large population, good luck getting in. We drove 90 minutes to visit Enchanted Rock. It's a granite rock outcrop who would largely go unnoticed in the West. We visited on a Saturday, met a three mile long line of cars waiting to get in. Running out of gas, we grabbed lunch in a nearby town, tried again later. No dice, the parking lot was full and closed. We've now christened the site, disenchanted rock, three hours of driving, no hiking. Even more annoying when you can see how much land is in Texas and they didn't build a big enough parking lot. It's common not to be able to get into other public attractions on weekends and holidays. Even our neighborhood creek was divvied up as private property. So much for the kids exploring and catching crawfish. Third problem with Austin, no way to go. Everything is private, so where are you gonna go? There are no snowy mountains, there are no raging rivers, there are no soaring arches. If you live in Austin, things don't change much in a huge seven hour drive radius. Since we love the outdoors, exploring, climbing, rafting, Austin was not our cup of tea. Dishonesty, think about integrity. I didn't, I've worked with hundreds of companies and thousands of people in California. By and large, integrity is a default way to treat people in California, that's true. It's not something we even talk about, not so in Austin. First, there's the people we bought the home from. They lied to us about the cause of the leak. They failed to disclose well water quality issues that made us sick. They lied about how much stuff costs to repair. Didn't stop there. We hired a guy with a five star rating on Yelp to pull up flooded carpet. He busted our closet doors while removing them, never said a word about the damage. Our carpet cleaner made a foot long burn mark upstairs left without a word. The mover also five stars on Yelp and he stole from us. We realized our experience wasn't exceptional. People are used to it here and they know to do extra, extra due diligence, more inspections, more testing, more distrust. So there's actually lower social trust in Austin compared to California. Yes, there's good food in Austin but you can't trust Yelp to help find it. Roudness. We met some amazing people in Austin but large percentage of them were quite rude. Native taxons pretty much hone to the stereotypes. I've never been told so often what to do and what not to do. And the delivery is this in this. This is just the way it's done tone. It is completely oblivious to any other views on the matter. Austin does not conform to the notion of Southern hospitality. Austin drivers are terrible. They don't yield to pedestrians on crosswalks unless forced. They'll inexplicably tailgate. They'll illegally pass you on a double yellow just to drive 30 feet in front of you for the next 10 minutes on open roads. They may be conservative but not with their horns. So why Austin is not the California of Texas? So this is Brett Alder writing an essay here. Service is awful. Austin has the worst driving I've ever experienced. Service is awful. It doesn't matter if it's a rental company. It doesn't matter if it's a restaurant. You name it. Conservative utopia? Well, not really. There's little public school choice. Not in California, there are charter schools, to day schools, public schools, cash combo charter schools, homeschooling, you name it, West Austin, just public schools. Austin has massive water restrictions in place even while it's flooding. And your Texan neighbor will call you out for having a green lawn. Welcome to the monoculture. Lack of openness to diverse ideas leaves you with the feeling you traveled 15 years back in time. They voted out Uber and Lyft. They think it's not a big deal because they have a ride-sharing Facebook group. Car washes were lame. You can't trust things to be as well thought out and executed as in California. Well, you're moving from a higher IQ community to a lower IQ community. Punity of militaristic schools and sports. Massive emphasis on conformity, good for teachers, bad for kids. I went to read to my kindergarteners class and it felt like I landed in North Korea. There's a good chance you'll be sick your whole first year in Austin being exposed to a new set of pathogens. We were, such as cedar allergies. They're so bad we knew at least two professionals going through subcutaneous immunotherapy shots over a period of years because their cedar allergies were ruining their lives. There are only two trees in Austin, cedar and oak. Austinites really get into their homes so they have a big luxury home obsession. And there's a pressure to keep your house immaculate. You can buy a home that is nice by California standards only to find out that everyone else's house is much nicer than yours, which we didn't care about till we found that no one wanted to buy our less than luxurious home. It would take a lot of money to buy a California-like lifestyle in Austin. If you're moving to Austin, make sure it's because of the things that it offers. Downtown lifestyle, barbecue, football, live music, nice houses, professional opportunity and you won't miss the things you're leaving behind. This game musician from my city moved to Austin to develop his career. He got a job performing on carnival cruise ships. Good for him. Richard Spencer is bragging about a live stream coming up Sunday. Tennessee is supposed to be nice. Yeah, you can go hang out with Ben Shapiro. Okay, interesting article in the Washington Post, early 40-in. His pastors tried to steer him away from social media rage. He stormed the Capitol anyway. His pastors tried to steer him away from social media rage. He stormed the bloody Capitol anyway. Facebook was making him angry. Tiki Torch rally in Edmonton today, scary. John, long time no see. Facebook was making him angry, angry. For weeks last spring and summer, Michael Sparks watched videos of protests for racial justice around the country with growing unease. He could not turn away from his phone. Even as he feared it was changing him. It's not the phone that was changing him. He had a particular vulnerability that his phone was exposing. That even without a smartphone, that craziness was just looking under the surface waiting to come out. He posted his outrage. He posted that he hated seeing what was happening to his country. He posted that it made him want to kill people. The 43-year-old husband and father didn't believe that he would. But he knew even just saying so fell short of the Christian witness he wanted to bring to the world. His pastor at Franklin Crossroads Baptist Church in Cecilia, Kentucky, advised him to leave Facebook. He considered it. Instead, the rage that had begun online led him to Washington, D.C. January 6th with the Capitol Hill riot. Though he was the first to enter the Capitol through a smashed window wearing jeans, a light black jacket and eyeglasses. He crawled over broken glass to overturn a presidential election. In his booking photo taken 13 days later, he's wearing a t-shirt that reads, Armour of God, and cites a Bible verse, Ephesians 6-11. Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. So this January 6th attack on Capitol Hill was for many a Christian insurrection urged along by passages from scripture and culminated with prayers interned in the occupied Senate. But his faith played a more complicated role in his journey to the January 6th Capitol Hill riot. While the social media posts made clear he connected the election and his religious beliefs. His church community had been a force cautioning him against allowing his online resentment to take over his life. So this tension between religious rhetoric as a go to extremism on the one hand, community religious accountability as a safeguard against it on the other highlights the complex influences churches have had over the past tumultuous few months. So this guy's been charged with nine counts of knowingly entering or remaining in restricted buildings without lawful authority, violent entry, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and obstructing law enforcement. Each violation carries fines and anywhere from a maximum of one to five years in prison. Not long after he was charged, he took his Facebook page down until then his increasingly agitated comments preserved in screenshots before the account went dark, mapped the mental landscape of someone falling ever more deeply down rabbit holes of groundless claims. So his occupation at the time of arrest is unclear. Okay, so this is so important, right? If you have a good job or fulfilling job, you're much less likely to do crazy, self-destructive, socially destructive things, right? So people like Angelo, John Gage, right? They're on disability. So many of the distant right types are on disability. They're on various forms of welfare. So if they had a good job, they wouldn't be so extreme in their politics, but because that people like this bloke is so passive in their day, in their real life, that they then become keyboard warriors online and become increasingly unhinged. Like there's nothing more anchoring than having a good job. So apparently he may have been working in an auto parts company. He once owned a small construction firm, but it was no longer active. Yeah, getting in on the take is a good way to be bribed into conformity. That's a negative way of looking at it. Or just being an adult means that you support yourself, it doesn't being a man mean that you pay for your own bills, right? I thought going on welfare and claiming disability is kind of unmanly. That's just how I was raised. I've never taken unemployment in my life. I wouldn't know how to ask for unemployment. I've never taken unemployment. I find it, ugh. Early in 2020, his Facebook page showed evidence of a simpler family focused time. Profile picture of his twin toddlers, photo of fresh caught fish wriggling on a line, his wife tagging him on a home for sale. But in his post later that year, misinformation about the election was punctuated only by misinformation about COVID-19. Regarding the election, he urged friends and family to get rid of all news channels and go to Newsmax. Regarding COVID, he copied and pasted a mainstay of evangelical Christian fears. One world government known as Agenda 21, blaming the United Nations for this. But also on social media, you see a reflective man struggling with fears of what he was becoming. And he shared a 17 minute video with his church family. Speaking directly to a camera in July, apparently through Facebook, he acknowledged that his attitudes on line had become extreme, right? This sounds like Godwood podcast. With an air both abashed for things he had said and hopeful that he had put those things behind him, he recounted multiple attempts at community intervention. So people in his church community were intervening. This is why you generally speaking, you can't go to a shooting range alone. You have to go with a friend. So my friend, Godwood, when he was talking to me on my show, he never said anything ridiculous. He never said anything that was indefensible. He sounded completely reasonable, thoughtful. But when he went off on his own, he became completely unhinged. So just like you don't, you don't go to a driving, shooting range alone. Usually you have to go with a friend. Maybe you shouldn't publicly discuss dissident politics alone. Luke, would you take a vaccine to keep being a wage slave and not own anything? Okay, I just don't buy this paranoia and this bizarre take on life. Like from my perspective, a man holds a job and pays a bill. Like you can call that being a wage slave. Most people, I don't share this thinking that holding down a job is somehow dishonorable and that it's a sign that you're sold out. I just think that incredibly self-destructive. Like this wage slave talk, I mean, this is talk for losers and freaks and paranoid people, right? Jobs are not slavery. There's no equivalent between holding a job in America in the 21st century and slavery. And there's nothing dishonorable about holding a job. Our contrary, there's nothing more honorable than you can do than holding down a job, right? So people who talk about being a wage slave, people must be failing at life and think that somehow the systems just screwed them over and that they really have a millionaire entrepreneur inside just waiting. You will own nothing? What prevents you from owning something? Like why? Why are you incapable of working hard and buying land? Why are you incapable of working hard and buying Bitcoin on Coinbase? Why do you wanna embrace being a total passive victim that life just lays you down on the bed and just anally rapes you? And why do you wanna embrace that? Like, why do you wanna take the attitude? Oh, because I have to work for a living, it's like the world is just anally raping me every day and I'm just a slave. Like I don't get that perverse, disgusting, dishonorable, unmanly, repulsive attitude that looks at holding down a job as somehow dishonorable, that because you have to work for someone to pay the bills, that you're just being anally raped. Like get it together, man. There's nothing about holding down a job that prevents you from owning anything. You can hold down a job, you can hold down two jobs, you can hold down three jobs and you can run your own private business on the side. Pathetic. Like I loathe this attitude that somehow holding down a job and paying your bills is a sign of selling out, right? So it's just increasingly prevalent in the distant right that they all wanna be on welfare. They all just wanna go on disability. That holding down a job, being a responsible adult, being a real man is just way too much for them. So in life, they're just totally passive. Imagine the self just lying face down on the bed, getting anally raped by the world, but then in their fantasy life, they live online like they're the second coming of the furor, right? Talk tough online, keyboard warrior online. In real life, just a total passive wussy pussy idiot jerk who just puts himself down and says, hey, the world's gonna rape me if I dignify it by going out and getting a job. And then why would you get a vaccine? Because it renders you in all likelihood immune from getting a dangerous disease and perhaps more importantly, reduces the chances that you will transmit a dangerous disease to people who kill. So yeah, I'm not a big fan of people who just gratuitously behave in such an irresponsible way that they pass along deadly disease to other people who it kills. Now, you may be fine with killing innocent people. Like that may be how you approach life. Just like, oh, you know, I heard this podcast that said the vaccine's dangerous. I don't care how many people I kill. You know, that may be the way you approach life. I think it's disgusting. Individual economic prosperity gospel is not gonna get us anywhere. They will take over everything if no political action is taken. Right, cause you feel like there's nothing you can do. You feel totally hopeless in this life. You're failing at this world. You find, you know, actually working and being a man is just too much for you. And so you'd rather live in a fantasy world where, you know, collective political action, right? You're gonna bring in the forthright and that's gonna solve the problems. Cause you would prefer to live in a fantasy world thinking about, you know, being a massive furor, you know, bringing about collective action rather than being a good employee rather than starting your own business rather than taking an extra job. It's like, oh, you know, just working and paying the bills. That's just not really for me. I'd rather be, I'd rather get welfare. I'd rather be on disability. I'll take the Russian vaccine that uses a deactivated virus, not an mRNA vaccine. And, you know, where are you getting your information? There's simply no evidence that any of these vaccines are particularly dangerous. Now, sometimes wearing a seatbelt, right, will cost you your life. Overwhelmingly, wearing a seatbelt will save your life. Bob Simon, the 60 minutes correspondent of the veteran CBS Newsman, he died in a car accident because he was in a limo, you know, driven by a guy with really one arm. He shouldn't have been driving, but he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. So generally speaking, if you're in a car accident, wearing a seatbelt will protect you, will reduce your injury and chances of dying. But on rare occasions, you know, wearing a seatbelt will kill you. So there may be, you know, infinitesimal number of examples where taking this vaccine may do you harm. But overwhelmingly, the vaccine is, there's no reason to be scared of it. Most people don't have the energy to expand their labors, bro. Why don't people have the energy? Because they don't have inspiration, they don't have passion, they don't have purpose, they don't have clarity, they don't have midaphanel, all right? If you're fired up by God, if you're fired up by your connection to higher power, if you're fired up by your place in the community, if you're fired up by looking after your community, it's amazing what you can accomplish. But if you don't have energy, you know, you're gonna get into a funk. You're not gonna get much done. So you find a reason to live, you find a good job, you get into better relationships, right? You can turn yourself around, you can get motivated and you can chase your goals. Like people, you know, find 4chan poll and just fall into some kind of neo-Nazi, white nationalist rabbit hole. Spend their nights on 4chan poll and the like. Just thrilled to be learning all these provocative things and feel like, oh, I'm finally working up to how the world really, really works. And then, you know, they'll tell their goal, you've got to accept me just as I am. I'm a proud Aryan warrior. I don't want to lower myself to work for a living. So then you start ignoring deadlines in real life. You finally alienate your girlfriend, you stop taking your exams, you don't turn in your homework, you cope with the stress using fast food or marijuana or drinking, right? So you give up on your education, you work many of your jobs, you get grossly obese, you're a virgin, you have no savings, you have bad habits with money, with family, with other people, people don't want to be seen in public with you and you have no ability, desire or will to change your horrible situation. So what do you do? All right, so psychotherapy can help, low-cost therapy centers, like where people are getting in their hours to get certified, that can help. Finding the right 12-step program, whether it's for sex addiction, love addiction, dating, for under-owning, for marijuana addiction, for food addiction, over-eaters anonymous, for food addicts anonymous, these programs can help. Oh, Medaphno, that can help give you energy. It's a forced multiplier. The Fisher Wallace device really helps with anxiety and depression. So yeah, you can turn your life around. I think the world is raping me, mentality comes from fatherlessness while being raised in a single mother home whereas modeled. What is the point of having religious principles if you won't follow through with them? Yeah, so most people's religious principles or religious beliefs are pointless, right? Most people, they believe in Christ or they believe in Torah, it doesn't actually mean any significant difference in the way they live. Look at the way they live and God makes absolutely no difference. They practically live as an atheist or an agnostic even though they say they believe in God. Accepting the enemy's currency is the equivalent of swimming upstream. Okay, so this is such a mindset, so detached from reality that I'm speechless. The majority ends up being modern-day slaves. People don't have to be slaves. If you're a slave, it's because you can't take responsibility. You don't need to beat yourself down for your problems but you do need to get help and usually that means finding the right 12-step program. Brandon says I had 10 plus jobs before I got the good job I've had for the last 18 years. If JFK repeat can become popular and have a fiance, so can you. All right, so this is a great story on the Washington Post about this guy, his church trying to pull him back into reality. But, so he made the 17-minute video in July of 2000. Look, with respect, I think what's missing in your life is a steady, regular fornication. So he speaks directly in the camera and Michael Sparks acknowledges his attitude online has become extreme because he's talking online about wanting to kill people. And he's both embarrassed for things he said. He's hoping he can put those things behind him and he recounts all these examples of community intervention and he vows to resist forces that will overwhelm him. Says, you know, I'm a devout Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. Now everything that's going on politically has been a rough time for me and I've been fighting really hard with my anger and it's just eating my lunch. So he talked about the importance of going to church, relying on others to keep one on the straight and narrow. He spoke of gratitude and love for people in his life who've helped him through a hard time that he could not let go of the notion of a world under siege. And the problem he saw it began with Black Lives Matter, which he regarded an absolutely racist, horrible, non-Christian organization. He says, I'm a patriot and we are under attack there. It's good versus evil now. But it wasn't just the fact of what was happening, it was the way seeing it felt impossible to escape. It's really got me, it's got me really angry. Facebook is where they're feeding this anger and hatred. They'll find out what you are for or against and they're gonna feed anger. That's what they're doing, it's blaming the Facebook algorithm. And if you're incapacitated by rage due to what you read on Facebook, the problem's not Facebook. And he continues in his video, I wanna apologize, I've definitely not been showing godly things on there. I've even said as far as I shoot that person in the head or shoot this person in the head, whether I would or not doesn't matter. I don't need to go on there and spread this because I'm not showing the love of Christ. So social media in Michael Sparks's description is a tormentor that has mainly done him harm. Facebook has become the site of an ongoing clash with himself, a constant reminder that as a Christian believer, he was locked in a spiritual war with forces, posing a threat to his family and country. Seeing everything that's been going on mediated through a Facebook screen, he could put that down, we can talk about forming a patriot group. Sounds like Angela Jungage, gathering men together to offer protection in case something does happen. But his participation in his looming spiritual war came with a price. He noted that the population of his friend list has dropped in half. So it doesn't sound like he's working a job. So he's become an online warrior and in real life, he's become a passive loser. And yeah, a lot of his friends decided to cut ties. Perhaps your Orthodox friends in New York need this lecture. Why would they need this lecture? I'm reading from a Washington Post article. Oh, because yeah, there are some Orthodox Jews in New York who abuse the welfare system. Absolutely, and I think it's disgusting. So members of his own church were calling him out. So a woman who worked as a church's office manager contacted him to let him know these online comments had gone too far. So he goes to seek out his pastor. And the pastor says, oh, you need to get our Facebook, get away from all this stuff. But he couldn't, he couldn't let it go. I need to see this stuff. I need to be informed. And then another pastor, Jeffrey Johnson delivered a sermon that seemed directly aimed at him. Subject was Daniel in the lion's den. And the pastor put the story in terms that resonated. When Daniel's very life was threatened, he prayed. Daniel didn't draw a Glock 19. The pastor says, I'm sure many of us here would just do about anything to protect our families from physical harm. Many of us have purchased firearms. We spend money and time at the range, practicing with them. We spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on guns and ammunition. But are we as ready? Are we as invested? Are we as equipped to defend our families from spiritual threats as well as physical ones? People tell me I don't have time to pray. I don't have time to read my Bible. I don't have time to memorize scripture, but guys, we sure do have time to get on Facebook and trash talk. So Michael Sparks reflected, he preached a hit on me. He swore he'd do better. He swore he'd refocus his life on reading scripture and other spiritual pursuits. I've noticed that my phone has been in my hands more than my Bible. I've been locked in on my Facebook, watching all this stuff, and I get angrier and angrier. But he promised to make a change. I'm not gonna let my anger overtake me anymore. I'm gonna get into the word of God. Like I should be doing, get back to the me that smiles more because I got wrapped up in Facebook. There's a danger everyone faces, he argued. Trust me, they watch your posts. Whatever you're for, they're gonna send you something that you're against. They're just feeding this hatred. Talking about Facebook and social media is unbelievable. They're turning people on each other. But summer 2020 gave way to the fall. Charlie Eyre, in his online post, turned from Black Lives Matter and pandemic shutdowns to the election and then to the results which he refused to accept. December three, he praised President Trump, saying, God put you where you are. Stay strong. Do great things for the American people. Yeah, the good book is just like Facebook, but with no friends. December 16, he posted, we're getting ready to live through something in biblical proportions. Be prayed up and ready to defend your country and your family in the United States of America. And Trump made a Facebook post of his own December 30th that read January 6th, CUNDC. Michael Sparks shared it on his own Facebook page, along with a comment, I'll be there. So he was part of a gang of rioters who chased US Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goldman up a flight of stairs. This is our America. Sparks shouted during the confrontation caption of videos. This is our America. Then he then posted about his exploits January 7th. Well, my family and friends, I love you deeply. I love this country deeply. Many brave men and women gave their lives for our freedom. I would give my life to defend our country. I will never give up on the American people. We are a strong resilient people. I have, however, given up on democracy and I believe we have lost it for quite some time. So he tried to resist the lure of social media, but he could not in the end. Got the better of him. Okay, this is a terrific book, which I'm just rereading. Jews in the American Academy, 1900s to 1940, the Dynamics of Intellectual Assimilation. So good. So this book is about the integration of Jews into the American Academy. You did not have your first Jewish professor of English literature in an American major university on a tenure track until about 1940. So that was Lion or Trilling. So in 1936, he became the first Jewish professor of English and American literature at Columbia University. So this book's mainly about the gradual acceptance of Jews as professors of English and American literature. Yeah, don't give away your life. You might eventually find out it has more value than you thought it did. So the English department, particularly those at the Ivy League schools, thought of themselves as the last bastions of Anglo-Saxon culture. Once their defenses broke down, first with the appointment, 1939 of Lion or Trilling at Columbia University and Harry Levin at Harvard University, both in 1939, took another two to three decades for Jewish appointments in this field to become a matter of course, or for the rejection of a Jewish candidate to be freed from the suspicion of residual anti-Semitism. So Thorsten Verblaine had a great comment. So in 1919, Thorsten Verblaine said, he hoped the Jews would never form a nationalist movement of their own, since that would be a great last to world culture. So Thorsten Verblaine said, it appears to be only when the gifted Jew escapes from the cultural environment created and fed by the particular genius of his own people, only when he falls into the alien lines of gentle inquiry, becomes a naturalized, though hyphenate citizen in the Gentile Republic of Learning, hyphenate citizen, so a Jewish American or a Jewish German, that the Jew then comes into his own as a creative leader in the world's intellectual enterprise. It is by loss of allegiance, or the best by force of a divided allegiance to the people of his origin, that the Jew finds himself in the vanguard of modern inquiry. So Thorsten Verblaine was a great fan of assimilated Jews. He becomes a disturber of the intellectual peace. But only at the cost of becoming an intellectual wayfaring man, a wanderer in the intellectual no man's land, seeking another place to rest, farther along the road, somewhere over the horizon. Wow, that is powerful, Thorsten Verblaine. Old Luke used to be more contentious. Okay, what's going on in the chat? Never before has a stream simultaneously been so comfy yet contentious. No one's cried yet, but it's coming. Luke can sip his orange flavored crystal light while Dover eats his Greek salad. Hey, I've been no fap since 2012. Never noticed how small Luke's nostrils are. So this is a great... Yeah, any recommendations for people starting out on no fap? Yeah, listen to inspiring lectures on it. The more you get informed about the benefits of it, then the more likely you will be out to practice it. Anytime you want to instill a new discipline, you have to continually reinforce the benefits to yourself. So this excellent book traces the process of the admission of Jews born around 1818 to the American Academy. Follows their slow progress via professorships in philology. That means the study of language and philosophy to appointments in English literature. Then's with a discussion of Lionel Trilling. So this is Lionel Trilling here. He was born in 1905. So this process of admission of Jews into English departments, it's not a simple unilateral act of consent. It's not a throwing open of hitherto closed doors by the guardians of Anglo-Saxon culture, rather it was a complex bilateral process, a give and take between two cultures. So the majority gave more than it took and the majority almost succeeded in remodeling Jews in its own image. I've never gotten as to why people think negotiation at all costs even when eroding your stances somehow makes you wise. Yeah, so what's the alternative? So don't negotiate, just go out, live life on your terms, refuse to compromise and be sure to report back how that works out for you. But you're not an all powerful being, John V. So you don't have the power to force other people to do anything. So if you're not willing to accept life on life's terms, if you're living a life at war with reality, reality is gonna win. Reality is gonna kick your butt. You're not willing to get along with other people, if you're not willing to accept those things that can't be changed. Getting along with other people always requires making compromises, but keep up with your war against reality and let us know how it works out for you. Everybody dies alone. Married people die alone. Single people die alone. Everybody dies alone. Everybody will meet their maker alone. So this book is about the remodeling of Jewish intellectuals in the image of America, kind of restructuring the way they think and the impact of the idea of America and the idea of the gentility of English literature. So it was Jewish intellectuals who led the way into the American Academy were generally separate from the Orthodox Judaism that they were raised with. So they didn't have any emotional or intellectual access to the Orthodox way of life. How is streaming for 25 people working out? Excellent. Many people are very happy to enter a room to give a talk to 25 people. So many people are very happy. My father would preach before 12 people. My father devoted his life to preaching and teaching. Sometimes he had an audience of six people. Sometimes he had an audience of 15 people. Sometimes he had an audience of 25 people. So I will live stream before 25 people and then I will upload this live stream to multiple sites and then eventually hundreds and possibly even thousands of people will listen to me. So you won't find many public speakers who would turn up their nose at the opportunity to speak to 300 people, 400 people. So I could do a trash stream and get a thousand live viewers or I could do a high quality stream and then to get 20 live viewers. So it's a lot easier to get viewers to a trashy stream, appeal to the lowest common denominator. I could pitch this show at a 100 IQ level or I could just pitch this show at 120 IQ level. Okay, most people don't have a 120 IQ or above. We're talking only about 2% of the population. So I could choose to pitch this show where it'd be accessible to say 60% of the population of the possible viewing audience. Instead, I choose to pitch this show to the upper 2% of the viewing audience. So if you want, you know, a more ironic discussion where all your prejudices are affirmed, what happened from the do the brindlefly days and the huge following to the new style now? You may have heard about social media censorship, may have heard about crackdowns on the things that you can say. You may have seen many people essentially run into a brick wall, all right? And they've dropped out of the live streaming business. So everyone's gone their own way. So it used to be I'd do a show and you'd get, you know, six, eight, 10 people on my show. We'd have a vigorous discussion with six, eight, 10 people. But most of those people, they no longer live stream. Everyone's pretty much gone their own way. J.F. Garopi did a much better show when he was with Andy Waski. And he'd have a whole bunch of guests. Now, J.F. doesn't have any guests and he gets about 5% of the audience he used to get. And so all the group streams have largely died away. We don't get to have blood sports anymore. Steve Saylor has been remarkably successful pitching his blog to a 100 IQ audience. Yes, he has been very successful. And he's also quite melancholy. There's often a melancholy turn to Steve Saylor's blogging. He talks about how much he regrets writing under his real name. So you turn into me, you get a guy who's happy. 95% of the time I do these live streams, I'm a happy guy. I'm not here complaining. I'm not here asking for donations. I'm not saying the world's out there screwing me over. Right, I'm just here having a good time. And so Steve Saylor just made a blog. Wikipedia deletes single most important fact about me. As an opinion journalist, I'm used to being the subject of individual opinions about me. Everyone's got me. But I do value more significant scientific opinions such as the 2019 Intelligence Paper, the Survey of Human Intelligence Experts who found me to be by far the most accurate media source on their academic field. In recent years, highly opinionated people who edit the Wikipedia page about me have been pretty scurrilous. Recently, however, somebody added some actual factual information. Quote, 2014 survey of expert opinion on intelligence found that Saylor's blog was considered the most accurate media source on intelligence research. But Steve is pretty bummed that that sentence was removed from his Wikipedia entry. But all good things come to an end. The fact that I'd been voted the most accurate media source on intelligence research in the survey of experts only lasted a little over 24 hours before being deleted as being not something that Wikipedia wants Wikipedia readers to read about me. So Steve is pretty bummed that he's been blogging under his real name. Steve is pretty bummed that Wikipedia deleted the single most important fact about me. And Steve was pretty proud that a recent survey of intelligence experts voted his blog the best media source. So Steve says, I'm now past my prime in covering intelligence-related issues. I've always found writing about IQ to be the single most mentally demanding topic I've regularly taken on. So I do it less often these days, yes. So you can do streams that are quite mentally demanding or blog posts that are quite mentally demanding and that takes us tall. So Steve Saylor notes, I've always found writing about IQ to be the single most mentally demanding topic I've regularly taken on. And then he concludes, that said, why isn't this survey even mentioned in the Wikipedia article about me? Not a good idea, I think, to complain about not getting your dues on Wikipedia or from life that other people do that complaining for you. Okay, that's it. Talk to you later.