Ep. 1634 - Weird S** News Outlet Is Accused of Weird S** Stuff
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Daniel Penny is free. Wokeness is on the ropes and the libs are doubling down. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. ♪♪♪

Welcome back to the show. A young woman who bedded 100 men in one day has reflected on it, and it's quite sad. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to the number three, dayblinds.com slash Knowles. There is a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters, and drapery

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Daniel Penny is free. We mentioned that on the show yesterday. Now he is speaking out. This is the hero Marine who stopped a crazy career criminal from attacking people on a New York City subway car. Here is what Mr. Penny had to say about his actions. I mean, I'm not a confrontational person. I don't really extend myself. And this type of thing is very uncomfortable. All this attention and limelight is very uncomfortable.

And I would prefer without it. I didn't want any type of attention or praise. And I still don't. The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself. And I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to...

keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed. Simple. He says if he had not acted, he would have felt guilt for the rest of his life. There is something really profound in Daniel Penny's first reflections, first public reflections that we've heard, which is that the left is calling him a murderer and a racist or whatever stupid nonsense.

But the right is calling him a hero. You say, wow, this man acted with such heroic virtue. And he's saying, no, that's not true. I acted with normal virtue. It wasn't extraordinary virtue. It was ordinary virtue. And it only seems like extraordinary virtue because we live in a particularly vicious age. I only seem like I'm a hero because we live in an age of cowards. 50 years ago,

This man's actions would have been laudable, but not particularly notable. You're on a subway car. Some wacko comes on and says, I'm going to hurt all of you. I'm going to kill you. I don't care. I'm not afraid of death. He looks like a criminal. It turns out he is a career criminal. And if you are a man at all, certainly if you're a U.S. Marine, you're going to go and you're going to go restrain that guy. Simple. That would have been commonplace.

What makes it appear to be heroic virtue today is that we live in an age where people are selfish. They're focused on themselves, not others, not on God. So the notion of living with guilt for not having acted to help other people, that doesn't occur to most people. Because they say, what are you talking about? I don't live...

to help others. I don't live in the face of a transcendent moral order or accountable to God. I don't even believe in God. I'm just living for myself. So I'm going to run away. I'm going to go cower under a bench or something. The notion of

that you would risk your own life and safety to protect others who are weaker than you, maybe women, maybe children. Today, we say, oh, men and women are exactly the same. I don't need to protect women. I'm going to go send women to the front lines in combat. I'm going to erase the distinctions between men and women in bathrooms and sports leagues and schools and everything. I don't even think there's a difference between adults and children. I'm going to give children the right to choose to castrate themselves. We're

We're going to pretend that there is no age of consent, that there is no age of reason, that we're all just exactly the same. That's what makes this so confounding to so many people. This guy comes out like a lot of heroes. He says, look, I'm not really a hero. But in this case...

His perspective is the better one. His is the more accurate one. He's saying, I really didn't do anything all that extraordinary. I didn't go run in front of a moving train and untie the woman who was tied to the train tracks. And I didn't do that. I just restrained a dangerous man who was threatening people on a subway. You all should have done that too. That's what he's saying. He is exhibiting

Ordinary virtue in a vicious age, which makes this guy who would have been laudable, it makes him into a true hero today and an exemplar for the rest of us. There is no reason that every other man on that subway car shouldn't have acted exactly as he did. Now, the libs are freaking out about it. The Associated Press writes that,

Breaking. Daniel Penny, the veteran who used a chokehold on subway rider Jordan Neely, has been acquitted in Neely's death. Hold on. Hold the fort. Stop the presses. Honey, come quick. A new leftist euphemism just dropped. Daniel Penny, the veteran who used a chokehold on subway rider Jordan Neely. Is that the new euphemism we're using? That's what we're calling him now?

This is the AP's version of when the head of ISIS was killed. They said an austere religious scholar, al-Baghdadi. Is that what's distinct about him, that he's an austere religious scholar? Is that what is notable about Jordan Neely, that he's a subway rider? I was in New York about a week ago. I rode the subway. So how do you distinguish between me and Jordan Neely?

Might it have something to do with his criminal record a mile long? Might it have something to do with the fact that Jordan Neely, who we're told is a subway rider, a Michael Jackson impersonator, a promising youth, might it have something to do with the fact that he broke an elderly woman's face? And I think he punched an elderly man in the face too. And he was just a violent, violent criminal.

forever, for like his whole life, and was in that moment. And we're not even saying he deserved to die because he had been a criminal. He was threatening to harm and kill people in that moment. A subway rider. Wow, can you believe it? What's Daniel Penny got against subway riders, you know? Boy, I got to stash that one away. That's a euphemism par excellence. Meanwhile, you have a member of the New York City Council, Tiffany Caban, who says,

Jordan Neely deserved better than the violence of being denied access to stable housing and health care and then dehumanized for it. Jordan Neely deserved better than the systems that allow for and justify extrajudicial white supremacist violence, lowercase w, against black, capital B, people. So,

Thanks to Elon Musk, we now have community notes. So readers have added context to this post from the New York City councilman. And they write, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors after he punched a 67-year-old woman in the street in 2021, Jordan Neely was given free access to stable housing and healthcare at a treatment facility in the Bronx. He abandoned the facility after 13 days. Ooh.

That really seems to undercut that argument. Jordan Neely deserved better than being denied access to stable housing. He was offered stable housing. He turned it down because he was a violent career criminal and also on drugs and also drugged.

to the left's point, did have a very terrible past. Apparently his father wasn't all that present when he was a kid and his mother dated a crazy violent person. The crazy violent person murdered his mother and he found out about it and it supposedly set him off on this trauma. And of course that's deeply traumatic, but none of the accusations here against the evil white people, according to Tiffany Caban, none of that is true. He was given housing. He was given healthcare. He turned it down.

There was no extrajudicial white supremacist violence against black people. It was just a marine of virtue in a vicious age was protecting the people that Jordan Neely was threatening to kill. That's all it was. But what about the first claim? Jordan Neely deserved better. Even assuming she hadn't been totally wrong on the facts, Jordan Neely deserved better. That isn't true. Actually, he deserved much worse than he got. Actually, all of us deserve worse than we get.

It's that line from Shakespeare. I could accuse myself of such things that were better. My mother had never born me. In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. This is another example. Just zoom out a little bit from this particular case, Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely. Zoom out a little bit from New York City. Zoom out a little bit even from the way we talk about crime and punishment in America today. This is another example of religion dictating our view of politics without many of us even knowing about it.

In this case, what this woman is advancing is a particular view of original sin. She doesn't know that. She probably doesn't think deeply about original sin or religion or much of anything at all. But that is what she's talking about here. She is talking about the notion of what we deserve. The modern leftist view is that we all deserve everything. We're so good. We deserve everything.

to be treated kindly all the time. We deserve to live forever. We deserve, we just deserve only sunshine and rainbows, but we don't get only sunshine and rainbows. We get sick, we're hurt, we are treated to injustice and we die. And so how do you explain that? The left explains that by saying there is systemic oppression.

And so what is the systemic oppression? Well, he's a black guy and the black people are always oppressed. And there has to be a white person oppressing us. Someone has to be oppressing us. In this case, not a black person. So it's a white person. And so that's why. That's why things went wrong in this guy's life. It's because of white people. Well, hold on. The father who was not present for him, he's not a white person. The guy who murdered his mother, I don't think he was a white person. The...

The drug addictions or the mental illness or the appetites for disordered living on the street, those weren't white people. There's got to be something else here. What is it? And the answer, the Christian answer, the traditional answer is it's original sin. We have problems. We are broken. There's something in us.

Something has gone a little bit wrong in creation. So then there are all these questions. Okay, is it God's fault? Did God do this to us? And the Christian answer is no. God created all things good, and man, through the abuse of his free will, permitted sin and death to enter into the world. And that good has real existence. And evil, we're not in a manichaeistic situation.

dualistic world where there are two opposing forces, good and evil. Some people hold that view, but the Christian view is that there is good, which is real, which has existence, and that evil is the privation of the good. But because we live in a fallen world, we cannot save ourselves. So we are in need of a savior who through his grace, through grace that we have not merited, we are offered salvation, even though we don't deserve it.

This is the context of the debate in which you see a stupid comment like you get from this New York City councilman, Jordan Neely deserved better, that we all know doesn't quite make sense, but most people today can't articulate why it doesn't make sense. And I think a lot of people have at least a sense that maybe...

religion has something to do with politics, but most people can't explain exactly how. So when we threw Christianity out of our civilization, we thought, okay, maybe we can keep all the nice stuff, but we don't need to go to church on Sunday. Well, this is what we threw out too. What we threw out is that our most basic questions of civilization no longer make sense to us. We no longer provide answers to them. There's so much more to say. First though, go to ramp.com slash Knowles. It is time to ramp up

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slash Knowles. Get 250 bucks when you join Ramp. That's R-A-M-P dot com slash Knowles. Ramp dot com slash Knowles. Cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. The libs have lost it, not just on the Daniel Penny issue, not even just on petty street crime and punishment.

Senate Democrats are still, after the November elections, after Trump won in an electoral college landslide and won the popular vote and Republicans won unified government, Senate Democrats are still dragging their experts before Senate committees to push for mass amnesty for illegal aliens. Congress has a choice.

Instead of going down that path, we can instead crack down on exploitation, strengthen millions of families, and build American prosperity by providing undocumented immigrants a way to fix their papers. The choice is clear. The choice is clear. We need mass amnesty, even though most Americans voted against that explicitly.

I love to another euphemism. We open up with the subway rider, Jordan Neely. Now we get to, we need to give Americans the opportunity, the undocumented America. They're Americans, but they're undocumented. And we need to give them the opportunity to fix their papers. Just again, just to clarify a little bit, the problem with the

11 million plus illegal aliens in our country is not that there are typos on their papers. It's not that they don't possess a physical document. And if we only hand them a sheet of paper, everything will be better. The problem is what their lack of documents or their forged documents represent, which is that they are in this country illegally.

This Democrat seems to be confusing sign for signified, symbol for symbolized. The problem is not the document. It's what the document represents, which is that they've committed a crime and they have violated some of those basic laws of our country. And we don't want them to do that. We need to punish them for doing that because we want to actually have a nation. That's the problem.

But I think he knows that, and I think he's being obtuse, and I think the libs are using euphemisms, as they always do, to control our minds and hypnotize us. Regardless, he comes out and he says, we need mass amnesty for 11 million plus illegal aliens. And you listen to these Democrats and you say, yo, bro, read the room. Did you see what happened in November? Maybe cool it with the mass amnesty calls here. You guys are really unpopular. You managed to lose married women, right?

44% of women under the age of 45, 40% of women under the age of 30. You lost 20% of black men. You lost 46% of Hispanic voters. You lost a lot in this election. And immigration was in the top three issues for people. And the majority of Americans, the vast majority of Americans, have signaled on public opinion surveys that they want to drastically reduce all migration for years now.

So like maybe cool it with your plan to flagrantly violate the law and legalize 11 million plus people. What are you guys thinking? Seems crazy, right? Until you realize that the Democrats understand the issue of mass amnesty is not a way to give the people what they want. And it's not even a way to persuade people that this is in fact what they want. It's a way to get around the people.

That's what mass amnesty is about. Mass amnesty is about Democrats saying, yikes, we cannot consistently win elections with Americans. The American people don't really like us that much. So if we're not going to persuade Americans, if our plan is not appealing, we're just going to make new Americans. We're going to import people by the millions into this country who are statistically much more likely to vote for us. Now, you might say,

Trump won 46% of Hispanics. Maybe Democrats are not correct in their calculation that illegals are more likely to vote for Democrats or that the children of illegals through birthright citizenship are more likely to vote for Democrats. Again, they're much more likely than the native-born population, so it's probably still a good bet for Dems. But that's what this is about. It's not that the Dems are just stupid. It's not that the Dems are just not reading the room or something. They are. They know that mass migration is deeply unpopular.

They just think it's a way around the people with whom it is unpopular. They think if they can ram that through, they'll get a permanent electoral majority, and they very well might. Now, the Democrats are doubling down on everything. They've learned nothing from the election. So let's move away from crime and punishment on the street. Let's move away from migration. What about the sexual revolution front, which is also at the top of people's minds?

Pink News is an outlet that has maligned me on a number of occasions. Pink News is one of the leading LGBT, LMNOP news outlets in the country. And you're going to be shocked by this. Here's a headline from the BBC. Pink News bosses accused of sexual misconduct. Could you believe that?

The guys, the two fellas who run the most prominent LGBT sexual revolution, aberrant and deviant news outlet in the world, they've been accused of sexual misconduct. Wow. It's always the ones you most expect, isn't it? I won't read this whole article, though it's worth reading. Here's just a little bit.

The couple who run Pink News, the world's largest LGBT news website, have been accused by staff, this is by staff, of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct. Several former staff members told the BBC they saw Anthony James, a director at the UK-based company and husband of its founder...

Again, give the BBC a little leeway here. It is not possible for a man to be the husband of another man, of course. But, I don't know, we're all confused in our language now. They saw this man, the husband of the founder of this outlet, kissing and touching a junior colleague who they say appeared too drunk to consent.

and more than 30 current and former staff members said a culture of heavy drinking led to instances where founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband, quote unquote, behaved inappropriately toward younger male employees. But

away from the cameras and red carpets. Multiple staff members have told the BBC they had experienced bullying and sexual misconduct, which made some of them feel unsafe to be alone around Mr. Cohen and Dr. James. Allegations of misogyny, so it's not just the men. Apparently, in one of these instances, this guy said, look, my husband, quote unquote, isn't at home anymore, so let's go back. He's always getting with other men. So again, to the

to the point of the people who said it's ridiculous to try to redefine marriage. I guess even if two fellows could get married to each other, they don't seem to take their vows all that seriously. Of course not, because men and women are different, and it's an absurdity to pretend that there's such a thing as same-sex marriage. Regardless, it's not just the fellows. Allegations of misogyny

have also emerged, and several people told us that some young female staff members have been asked to act as the couple's surrogates. So these two fellas, when they're not busy trying to prey on the young men in the office, they decide they want to go to the baby store and purchase a child because they've indulged their fantasies and deviant thoughts

desires to such a degree that they don't pursue women. They can't have a child with a woman the way it actually works. So they're going to go buy some woman's egg and then rent some woman's womb and maybe pressure some of their staff members to act as their surrogates so that they can have a baby and deprive them of the natural mother and expose them to this abject degeneracy. It is always the ones you most expect.

And having been maligned by this particular news outlet on a number of occasions, I can't say that I'm surprised. I guess I take that as an honor now that these guys don't like me. I guess you know a man by his enemies. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to strongholdrescue.org. As Americans, we are blessed to have people like Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and a lot of other people to represent and defend us during the worst of times. However...

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I mentioned on this show, I think it was last week, this gal who is in pornography and she's endeavoring to bed 1,000 men in one day. This is a family show, so I'm going to speak a little bit in euphemisms and blur some things out. Anyway, this gal is training for the project and she has already bedded 100 men in one day. And there's a clip of her come out reflecting on that experience. Here's what she had to say.

It's not for the weak girls, if I'm honest. It was hard. I don't know if I'd recommend it. Why not? I think if you're a different type of girl, it's very like... It's kind of like being a in a sense of like, it's just a different feeling. I don't know how to explain it. It's not like just having sex with someone? Yeah, yeah. Just one in, one out. Like, it feels intense. Like more intense than you thought it might? Definitely.

Sorry. So then she goes off and cries about this experience because she says, you know, as if it's just dawning on her. She says, when I slept with 100 men in one day for money, it's kind of like being a prostitute.

But it's more than kind of like that. It literally is that. You are selling your body for money. You're selling sex acts for money. That's about as basic a definition of prostitution as there can be. Now, in America today, in the decadent West, we've tried to draw a distinction between pornography and prostitution, but they are the same thing. They're distinct in some ways because, one, there's a camera in the room, but the acts that the human beings are going through are the same act.

So she says, yeah, it was really, you know, it's very intense. All of these men, it's dawning on her that she is not merely a body. If she were merely insensible matter, if we were merely insensible matter, then physical actions, then the quality of actions would be determined strictly by the physicality of them.

Let me try to bring that down to earth. If we were merely insensible matter, then sleeping with someone you love, maybe your husband or wife, would be exactly the same as being raped because the action would be strictly based on the physical action, all things being equal, that the physical action would dictate everything. But we all know that

Sleeping with someone you love, your husband or your wife, is very much not the same thing as being raped. Why is that? Because there is a non-physical aspect to sex. There's a non-physical aspect to everything in our lives because we're not merely matter. We are also souls. If it just came down to a physical action, then sexual assault would really not be all that different from any other assault.

A rape would not be all that different from, you know, I don't know, slapping someone across the face or giving someone a shove. Of course, one action is far graver than the other, but it can't come down to physicality. It also has to come down to soul. Ultimately, really, it does have to come down to soul. So you really feel for this woman. I feel for this woman, at least. I saw even some relatively heartless people on the internet express sympathy for this woman. She should not be permitted to do this.

That's my take. That's, I think, the conservative take.

But there are people with diametrically seemingly opposed views who say the opposite. You have, on the one hand, the feminists who say, this woman absolutely should have the choice to do this. Her body, her choice. Sex work is empowering. And no man or anyone else should be telling her what to do. And yeah, it's intense, but she's a girl boss and she's going to handle it. And it's actually good for her to be used by 100 men in one day and in turn to use those men. Yeah.

Her choice. You might not agree with that choice, but it's her choice to make. You go, girl. Girl power. That's the feminist take. On the flip side of that coin, there's the misogynist take, the sincerely misogynist take, which is this woman, she made her bed. Now she can lie in it. These are her choices. She made those choices. I'm not going to feel bad for her for the choices that she made. That was her choice. So why are you asking me to feel bad because she made that choice?

Two sides of the same coin. Notice it all comes down to choice, which is super lib. That is very liberal. That derives from a liberal anthropology and a liberal system of values, according to which autonomy is the highest good, according to which procedural norms are exalted above all else. Substantive goods are denied, according to which the right supposedly to choose something

is much better than anything you might actually choose in practice. All choices are basically on the same moral level so long as we have choice. But I'm a conservative. I'm not a liberal. Okay? I'm a Christian. I'm not a pagan. So I don't think that choice is the highest of all goods. I don't think choice is much of a good at all. I don't think that what this woman is doing is really an expression of her freedom.

The feminists say this is her freedom. This is her liberation. The misogynists say she had her freedom. She was free to choose. Was she really free to choose? This kind of draws us back even to the conversation about Jordan Neely. No one put a gun to her head and said sleep with 100 men. But I'd be curious to know her relationship with her father.

I even saw someone on the internet say this is her choice, it's typical fatherless behavior. Okay, well, if you're acknowledging that this is the kind of behavior that is typical of women who have a bad relationship with their father or who don't have a father who's present, then you are implicitly acknowledging that her choice was circumscribed. It was inclined in a certain direction before she ever made any conscious decision.

You're acknowledging that our choices are shaped by something. You're acknowledging that we don't have all exactly the same kind of freedom. You're acknowledging that freedom is not perfect neutrality between alternatives. You're acknowledging that freedom is not merely the ability to do what we wish. You're acknowledging that true freedom is

is an inclination to do right and the right to do what we ought to do. That's what you're acknowledging. You're acknowledging that the feminists are wrong and the misogynists are wrong and the liberals broadly are wrong. And you're acknowledging that maybe we should restrict some of our choices. And then I think you have to come to my conclusion, which is the way to deal with this is to restrict what this woman can do with her own body.

Because we restrict what we all do with our bodies. I can't go shoot up heroin on the street. Well, in San Francisco, I could. But here, I can't. That's against the law. So that's a restriction on my body. But that's a good restriction on my body.

I can't drive my car 100 miles an hour to work. I can't push that gas pedal down all the way with my foot. That's a restriction on my body. I can't cross the street when the light is red. That's a restriction on my body. Laws impose restrictions on our bodies. But a law is an ordinance of reason for the common good by him who has care of the community and promulgate it. That's just what law is. It puts restrictions on certain of our behaviors, not to oppress us. That's the anarchist view. That's the liberal view. Sometimes that's a libertarian view.

The law does that, in fact, to make us more free, to give us an exalted freedom, to allow us to flourish. It's not all that complicated. It's complicated in an age that has no moral reasoning left. It's complicated in an age after virtue, but it's not really complicated in normal circumstances. Tell this woman no, she can't do that. She'll thank you for it later.

Speaking of women suffering from psychic and mental darkness, Taylor Lorenz, a prominent left-wing journalist, I was just on Piers Morgan's show. She was discussing the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, and she explained that his murder made her feel joy.

I do believe in the sanctity of life. And I think that's why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately, you know, because it feels like... Serious? I mean... Joy in a man's execution? Maybe not joy, but certainly not, no, certainly not empathy. Because again... We're watching the footage. How can this make you joyful?

This guy's a husband, he's a father, and he's being young down in the middle of Manhattan. Why is that making you joyful? So are the tens of thousands of Americans that are being murdered. So are the tens of thousands of Americans, innocent Americans, who died because greedy health insurance executives like this one push policies of denying care to the most vulnerable people. And I...

The many millions of Americans that have watched people that I care about suffer and in some cases die because of lack of health care. So should they all be killed then? Should they all be killed, these health care executives? Would that make you even more joyful? No, that would not. But why not? Why are you laughing? I think...

Because here is because imagine you're this this guy's kids, the murdered health care CEO's kids. And you hear this woman, this liberal journalist who presents herself as a good person, as a paragon of virtue on the right side of history, saying that she felt joy at the murder of your father. Because why? Because he works in the health insurance industry. Now, this woman purchases health insurance, I'm certain.

Well, I think she just lost her job, so maybe she doesn't have health insurance right now. But in general, she pays for health insurance, I'm certain. So she's participating in the health insurance industry. She's funding it. She's part of it. But she says no, because this guy held a particular corporate office in a particular health insurance company. It is good. It is a joyous occasion that he was murdered.

I had a journalist from a very prominent outlet, more left-leaning outlet, text me yesterday. And he asked, why is it that people are saying that the celebration of this guy's murder is a left-wing thing? Everyone, you know, is frustrated with health insurance companies. So why are they saying it's like a left-wing thing? And I told him, I said, I think it's coding left in particular because of this woman, because of Taylor Lorenz. She's the most prominent figure. She's super lib and she's out there celebrating his murder. But I think it's also because

No matter how frustrated a conservative might be with health insurance, no matter how much a conservative might want to change health insurance, the conservative view of the world does not permit us to celebrate people's murder. Because the conservative view of the world, even still, broadly recognizes a transcendent moral order. The conservative view of the world, even still, is largely Christian, in which case it's quite sinful to celebrate the murder of someone.

The conservative view of the world still exalts law and order. We still want to be tough on crime. We still want to side with victims more often than perpetrators. The left-wing view of the world is about, well, emptying out prisons. Prominent left-wing politicians said they wanted to abolish prisons. They always want to go soft on crime, it seems, these days. They malign the police and anyone who represents law and order.

They mock religion, they mock the notion of God's existence, and they mock notions of the common good. Really, ultimately, what it comes down to is the self. And they come up with all sorts of ideologies that try to preserve society while still acknowledging that the self is all that really matters, but it never ultimately works. So you get down to a consequentialist morality on the one hand, you get down to...

utilitarianism or Marxism or, you know, Stalin, you can't make an omelet without cracking some eggs, you know, that can really justify any immoral actions so long as you can at least convince yourself there's a good end in sight.

Or it comes down to Nietzsche, which is the will to power. You know, it comes down to Nietzsche, the Superman who can overcome morality in the very act of committing hideous sins like in Crime and Punishment, an axe murderer, you know, killing an old woman in order to, you know, prove that you're really above these bourgeois illusions of morality. I think that's why.

And then furthermore, there's one last aspect, which is the left habitually engages in and encourages as a matter of principle, mortal sin, which darkens the intellect and inclines people to this kind of nasty behavior. I'm not saying the right doesn't sin, the right commits plenty of sins, but the right does not in principle encourage sin. And so the right has a little bit of a clearer view on this. And even if they don't like their healthcare companies, they're not going to dance at the murder of its leaders. Right.

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Go to dailywire.com. Now, give the gift of Daily Wire Plus. My favorite, I actually didn't pick a favorite comment yesterday. I told the producers, I said, you pick your favorite comment for once, and I'm going to read it. I'm going to see how it is. So they picked, RyTilo88. Michael did not specify how long he was going to explain something. Now we may never know. Hold on. What was the title yesterday?

It was the trial results explained, and I didn't specify how long it took you to explain the trial. It took me about 90 seconds? How long did it take? I would say about three minutes. About three minutes. Wow, that was a huge oversight, Mr. Davies. Because we don't want to be inaccurate. We don't want to be ambiguous here. You've got to give people exactly how long it takes me to explain something. So next time, I would say, yeah, maybe three minutes, probably three, three and a half minutes tops.

Speaking of social media sensations, the New York Times has a depressing headline. The New York Times writes, big piece here, how being an influencer became a new American dream. Two preteen girls promote fashion and beauty products to thousands of online fans from their rural Alabama home. This is the dream. And I

I really want to speak on this topic because by some accounts, I think I am an influencer. Am I an influencer? I know I'm not a preteen girl hawking cosmetics or something, but do I... Mr. Davies, do I count as an influencer? I think so, Michael. I think you do. You influence people to buy cigars and yes or no games. And there's a lot of things that make you influential. And candles. Don't forget candles. Thecandleclub.com. Hold on. I forgot to light my candle. Thecandleclub.com. That way you can get the...

The old wise man candle. Okay, anyway, I digress. As an influencer myself, though an influencer of a certain kind, this is a depressing but totally expected headline from the New York Times. I'll just read one paragraph from this article. In a time of immense wealth disparity, influencer culture has created a more fantastical kind of American dream. Perhaps that's why nearly one-third of preteens say becoming an influencer is a career goal. One-third of preteens say

saying they want to be an influencer, seeing the field's potential for a steady income, not to mention the prestige, the prestige of an ever-growing follower count. That's the prestige they're aiming for. Not some great professional achievement, not a doctorate degree, not a, I don't know, an ambassadorship or something. No, no, no. Follower count. That's what confers prestige. Some parents are encouraging it.

Oh, yes, honey. That's right. You should aspire to someday to be an influencer. I sought to go behind the scenes of this new creator economy with curiosity and a focus on the girls' experiences aiming to allow viewers to come to their own conclusions. Okay.

Now, I like to think I am not merely an influencer. I at least tell myself on occasion I will write a book on a subject or at least publish a book on a subject. Sometimes the books have words, sometimes they don't. I like to think on occasion I engage in real substantive issues to try to illuminate them or otherwise edify the audience. I'm not saying it's all the time. Sometimes I'm slinging cigars, but sometimes I like to think that's what's going on here.

Which is the only way I could really justify it. If one were merely going on camera for the purpose of

slinging cigars and getting the follower count up a little bit to sling more products. By the way, it's not even about slinging a particular product. It's the notion that it doesn't matter what product you're even slinging. The notion that you're just going to become famous in order to sell anything at all, in order to make money, in order to become more famous, in order to sell anything at all. That's what seems a little empty and shallow to me.

Certainly no knock on commerce in itself. It's the notion that you're just a vessel for no purpose other than becoming a shinier vessel or so, you know, to what? To just keep churning your follower count. Why is this the new American dream? St. Thomas Aquinas tells us in the Summa in Prima Secundae question two. He asks, what is the end of man? What is it that we are seeking?

The classical answer is happiness. So he says, okay, where is happiness going to be found? And he asks, is happiness going to be found in wealth, honor, fame or glory, power, good of the body, pleasure, good of the soul even. And then finally he asks, is it in any created good? So the fact that he's going through all of these, you could probably infer the answers that he comes to. The answer is no, happiness is not in wealth. I've had no money. I've had a fair bit of money.

It's nice to have money. It's generally a nice thing and you can pay your bills and it gives you peace of mind. But I know people who are far richer than I, who are far less happy than I am. So happiness cannot lie merely in wealth. And St. Thomas says there are two kinds of wealth. There are natural goods, food and clothing and things like that. And then there is artificial wealth, which is like money. And neither of these really make you happy.

Because the natural goods are all in service of something else. I eat so that I have energy so that I can go do something else. I wear clothing so, well, so that I don't impress too many people when I walk down the street. But also I wear clothing so that I'm warm, so that I maintain my body temperature, so that I can go into certain buildings, so that I can do something. It's in service of some other end, so it can't be the end in itself. Money certainly can't be because the

Money is just a way to get those natural goods, which are just a way to get other goods. How about honor or fame or glory for that matter? What is that for? We want the honors or the fame or the glory, not as an end in themselves, but as a representation of some other good. We are honored for some other good or the fame and the glory in pursuit of some other good.

It's not just that people walk up and say, hey, I know you. It's in pursuit of some other thing. Even the influencers would say that. It's in pursuit of being able to sell more makeup or whatever. I won't belabor the point, but power, good of the body, pleasure, even good of the soul. What is the good of the soul for? It's in service of some other thing. Any created good. It's all going to fail you. We desire these things usually with good intentions.

We want fame often because we want to be loved. We want money because we want peace. We want security. But they're just means to those ends, which are higher goods. All created goods are going to fail us. The only thing that will make us happy ultimately is God himself, who is good. That's it. And this is not just, you know, simple piety.

This is also a conclusion that one must have to arrive at through the use of our reason. You're not going to use your reason properly and come to the conclusion that money is going to make you happy in the end. That just isn't true. So it has to be God. But in a culture...

That either outright denies God or otherwise says that God just, it doesn't really matter. We can't really know anything about God. It's all just a matter of preference or subjective opinion. In a culture, I'm thinking of St. John Henry Newman here, who points out that universities, right there in the name, they claim to promote universal knowledge. And yet, they often don't teach about God.

Are you saying that God, that religion is not a subject of knowledge? That's the implication. Or you're saying it's not, or the university is not the university. But really what they're saying is we can't really know anything about God. So it's not really a matter of fact. It's not really a matter of reason. It's really just a matter of subjective feeling. And in part, that's because of the last 500 years of deformations in our religious thinking. But regardless, this is what happens in a culture that says God doesn't exist or God doesn't matter.

inevitably, you're going to still desire all those intermediary goods, but there's not going to be any point to it. So these people aren't even saying, I want to become a pundit. They're not even saying, I want to become a commentator. They're not even saying, I want to become an author or a thinker or an intellectual or a talking head on the TV. They're saying, I just want to influence, but there's no end to their influencing.

It's totally senseless, as our culture increasingly becomes. Today's Woke Wednesday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKIN at WLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.