We Need To Talk About Our Teenagers’ Mental Health

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My mom was talking with me the other day and
she was talking about a hair appointment she had, and
some of the gals and salon were talking, and one
of them mentioned that she had pulled her kid out
of a local public school district, and one of the
reasons why she had done this is because there were

(00:24):
a bunch of kids in the school who were presenting
as furries. Now, for those of you who are older,
you're not going to know what that is. Those of
you who are kind of millennials are younger, you're gonna
know what that is, and you are already cringing at
the embarrassment of it. A furry is a person who

(00:52):
wants to kind of identify sort of as an animal
and likes dressing up kind of like an animal and
wearing kind of animal costume type things on a habitual basis,
like a fake animal tail or maybe even dressing up
in like an animal mascot kind of outfit. It has

(01:17):
a certain kind of stylized nature to it, and with
adult freeze, there's a weird sex element to it as well.
It's bizarre. It's clearly for some people kind of a fetish,
but it's more and more something that is creeping into

(01:42):
teenagers and even into children. Hopefully it's less of a
fetish thing in that regard, but I've seen this before. Also.
I remember one time taking my kids to a park
and there was looked to be like a nine or
ten year old girl there who the whole time was

(02:03):
wearing like a dinosaur mask and had like a dinosaur
pretend tailor I guess, tie around her middle, I guess.
And it was clear that this child was doing this
as some kind of form of mental illness, that this

(02:26):
was some kind of way of withdrawing from society. The
author of Harry Potter, jk Rowling, tweeted out something similar,
some story from some news outlets showing other children doing
this similar, a similar kind of thing. Some mom posting

(02:48):
pictures of a child wearing this sort of weird stylized
animal mask. It looks like a cat mask, and the
article is by some saying my daughter identifies as an animal.
This is what I want you to know, and sort
of presenting this almost as if this is normative. Now,

(03:11):
this friend of my mom's who is discussing this was saying, yeah,
I'm pulling my kids out, this is weird. Why is
a school district allowing this. This is bizarre in the
whole discussion about transgenderism, and the discussion of even into

(03:32):
the discussion of even other more bizarre forms of identity,
like animal identity or which is apparently happening more and
more among young people. I think what it's showing is
the limit of mental health sciences and how useless they
are without an objective moral code, an objective set of ethics,

(04:02):
and without a clear understanding of human nature. And that's
what I want to get into today. And this definitely
applies within the context not just of this sort of
bizarre example, but this is sort of illustrating issues that
are in play also with transgenderism. Transgenderism is presenting as

(04:29):
normative human beings wanting to identify as a sex that
is the opposite of themselves. They are taking the given
reality of their body. They are rejecting that reality and
wanting to supplant it with the reality of their own,

(04:53):
making a reality that is only existing in between their
two ears. Allegedly, the scientific community refuses to call this
mental illness and in fact says no, no, no, this

(05:15):
is good, this is good. Why are they doing that? Well,
They're doing that because the largely left captured mental health
community also rejects any kind of is that the mental
health community is composed of doctors. It's not composed of philosophers.

(05:38):
Why is that important, Well, not to say all philosophers
are good. In fact, probably at its upper echelons, the
philosophical underpinnings of the modern practice of mental health are
probably influenced by bad philosophy. But if you are going
to say that mental health, mental health care, psychiatry, and psychology,

(06:02):
that it involves maintaining someone in a state of mental
health or helping address something that is a mental health disorder,
you need to have a clear conception of what a
healthy human is, what is health in the context of

(06:24):
your mind, And to do that, you have to have
an understanding of like, what is healthy human nature? What
is it to be a healthy human? If you can't
really answer that, then you're going to supplant any kind

(06:51):
of objective notion of what human nature is with something
of your own choice. And this is the thing I hate.
In the discussions about transgenderism, we on the right get
castigated for not accepting the premises of the left, because
the left will say, well, the mental health community accepts

(07:12):
the reality of transgenderism. They accept the right well. I
reject the premises under which the scientific community reached those conclusions.
There's nothing about transgenderism I think that is scientific. The
acceptance of transgenderism within the mental health care community is

(07:32):
premised on a certain kind of philosophy, a conception of
human nature. What does it mean to be human? Does
being human mean that you have a body animated by

(07:53):
a soul? Does your biology the objective reality of your body?
Is that something that is constitutive to who you are?
Is your body relevant to who you are? Does your
body help construct who you are as a human being?

(08:13):
Or is it totally irrelevant? Is literally all that's important?
What's rattling around between your ears? I would say being
human necessarily means having a body, and that body helps
give you identity, and that to fundamentally reject your body

(08:44):
that would seem to me to go contrary to your
nature as a human and thereby to be something that
is not mentally healthy. Okay, I have a clear philosophical
account for why I would say that gender dysphoria is

(09:06):
a mental health problem. However, I can do that because
I have a lot of confidence in my philosophical beliefs.
I studied philosophy a lot. I studied philosophy human nature
a lot. I was very thoroughly grounded in studying Saint

(09:28):
Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle and Plato and lawlow natural law, philosophy,
and Christianity, also with Christianity very much guiding me and

(09:49):
having myself learn a lot from sort of the Christian
philosophical tradition, but also from pre Christian philosophical traditions like
i e. Aristotle, Plato, et cetera. I have this great
confidence in what human nature is. Most of the upper

(10:09):
echelons of the scientific mental health community don't even seem
to realize that they are straying away from science into
what is fundamentally philosophy. They are doing a philosophy of
human nature. They are exiting their area of expertise and
entering into this whole different world. And their judgments about

(10:31):
what is and isn't mentally unhealthy are premised in a
certain kind of anthropology that maybe they haven't clearly thought out,
a certain kind of anthropology that says, anthropology means just
like the study of man, what is a man? What
is human nature? Anthropos means man like human logos means

(10:53):
study anthropology. They I think are operating, you know, members
of the scientific community who support transgenderism in various ways.
And it's and it's trickling down now into these kinds
of other bizarre identifications self identities, kids dressing up like furreze,

(11:17):
kids wearing animal costumes, et cetera, where basically we're redefining
things as not unhealthy, not based on anything that's like hard, uncontroverted,

(11:38):
uncontrovertible science. This is based on a kind of full
philosophical idea of human nature that I don't think has
been very thoroughly thought through by leading members of the
psycho psychiatric and psychology communities. They view what's important in

(12:01):
human nature as a kind of expression of liberalism. That
everyone's ability to choose the good for themselves is the
sort of fundamental principle here, and that fundamentally, if reality
is starting from your head and your choosing of the good,
what is the good? If all of that is starting
from what's rattling around between your two ears, then yeah,

(12:27):
I identify as a woman. I identify as a cat.
You know, the one thing liberals won't allow seemingly is
white people to identify as black people. That's cross racial identifications.
They're not allowing that. They're not allowing that. They have
other ideas that seem to preclude that. But again, fundamentally, like,

(12:51):
what is the difference. Well, that's just denying the basic reality.
Well what do you mean it's denying your basic reality?
I identify as black? Well you can't. That's denying your
basic real. Oh, because I don't have enough melanin in
my skin, I can't identify as black. I mean melanin

(13:13):
is you know, it's a significant thing, but I think
it's a little less significant than you know, not having ovaries.
I'm allowed to identify as a woman if I wanted to,
but not as a black guy. All Right, well that's offensive.
Why is it offensive? Do you see the comparison? I'm

(13:36):
not going to identify as either? Okay, the reason why
one is deemed oh, noble, wonderful choice and the other, Oh,
that's completely ridiculous. It has nothing to do with any
kind of consistent application of philosophical ideas. It has to
do with politics, with different kinds of political ideologies that

(13:59):
are floating. So I think the point I'm trying to
make here is that I am less and less trusting
mental health science as well. I mean, I am firmly

(14:23):
aware that mental health sciences can only take us so far.
Mental health sciences are only meaningful if they start with
a clear conception of what human nature is. And that's
the problem we're getting at. We are making all this

(14:46):
public policy around transgenderism that's premised around, well, the scientific
community supports people in their desire to transition to be
a different gender, and the mental health scientific community is
making such a decision not based on just plain old science.
They're making that decision based on a certain kind of

(15:09):
philosophical idea, a certain kind of philosophical idea that I
think is highly questionable and flat out, frankly, frankly, flat
out wrong about what it means to be a human being.
I think to be a human being means to have
a body. They think to be a human being just

(15:35):
means whatever is rattling around between your ears and your
own choices within that space, rattling around between your two ears.
When we return other ways that I feel like we're
just allowing kids to profoundly socially withdraw. Next on the
John Girardi Show. On The John Girardi Show, I saw

(15:58):
this piece about kids dressing up like animals, the phenomenon
called furries, and there seems to be a lot of
different expressions of this phenomenon. On the really bad end,
furries are adults who are just engaged in bizarre sort
of fetish activities. They dress up like animals, they wear

(16:20):
almost like animal mascot costumes, and they it's all kinds
of gross sex stuff that's associated with it. On the
more mild end, but still really really bad end, is
kids who are sort of in an habitual state of
dressing up like animals all the time, and especially with

(16:46):
some kind of mask on their face. And I've seen
kids doing this, and I've seen news stories about kids
doing this. It reminds me, frankly, of the way that
more and more people seem to be using COVID masks.
Who people who still wear COVID masks, especially teenagers who

(17:08):
still wear COVID masks. I remembered this very clearly. I
was at some I think I was at an in
and out once. This was about two months ago, and
I see what clearly looks like a kind of boomer ma.

(17:30):
It looked like a mom, a grandma and two kind
of older teenage maybe younger twenty daughters. And the two
older teenage younger twenty daughters were dressed in a very
kind of, I don't know, weird kind of countercultural way.
Both of them had blue hair. Mom looked normal, kind
of in between gen xer boomer. Grandma was older obviously,

(17:55):
and here's mom and grandma clearly just wanted to have
dinner with their you know, daughters, slush grand daughters. And
the two girls who again looked like they were late
teens maybe early twenties, blue hair, both wearing COVID masks.
Just it's twenty twenty four, COVID hasn't been a thing
for two years, just trying to have and we're clearly

(18:18):
kind of embarrassing the mom and ground just they were
so socially awkward, so socially like clearly withdrawn. And I've
seen this more and more with teenagers where they're wearing
COVID masks still and it's almost like they want to
be wearing them still, almost like to not it's almost

(18:40):
like it's a way of not engaging with people, to
not be showing emotions. And I think It's a similar
thing with kids in this sort of world of furries
or dressing like animals or are identifying as animals. One
or two times I've seen kids like this. These kids

(19:03):
seemed profoundly mentally unhealthy, and they're wearing these masks like
just continuously, and it's clear like, oh, this is a
way for kids to withdraw from normal social interaction. It's
kind of when when you're putting some kind of mask

(19:25):
on your face. And this is me just engaging in
maybe a bit of amateur psychiatry psychology here, I feel
like by putting a mask on their face, it's a
way of making yourself less available to other people, hiding
a bit of your personality, hiding a bit of your
identity from other people, shielding yourself off from social interactions,

(19:51):
in some way, making yourself less vulnerable, less available to
other people. And I think liberals were so gung ho
about COVID, so gung ho about wearing masks that for
a lot of kids, for whom this is just an

(20:11):
unhealthy manifestation of your whatever, your social anxiety is, whatever,
Like we're letting kids continue to do that when it
seems like this is clearly not mentally healthy for them
to keep doing this. This is just egging them on
in some kind of bizarre form of social withdrawal. I mean,

(20:35):
I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to kind
of figure that out, that that's kind of clearly what's
happening here, both with these kids wearing masks, like COVID masks,
but also with kids who are doing this like animal
identification nonsense. And I think there's so many things about

(20:59):
society that are all allowing kids to withdraw from normal
social interactions. The proliferation of smartphones, the proliferation of social media,
the ability to create sort of a social media identity
for oneself that is different from one's actual human identity,
To create both the actual online avatar, but a more

(21:19):
generalized avatar of yourself, to present yourself as something you
aren't because you're profoundly unhappy with the actual givenness of
what you are. Wear a COVID mask to hide your
actual face, dire hair of blue, wear an animal mask,

(21:40):
you know, be online with you know, some other picture
other than yourself. There are all these different things that
I feel like, I mean, there's plenty of research out
there to say that there's a kind of there's a
massive problem with mental health among children, and that these

(22:01):
problems have massively spiked since roughly two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine when the iPhone was introduced, and
that these problems massively spiked again during COVID. And I
feel like school administrator, like, if there's any school administrators
listening to this, they should not allow kids to be

(22:23):
dressed up like animals. That should be like a blaring
warning that a kid is profoundly mental health wise unwell,
that just seems to me very clear. And to sort
of treat this with mild kid gloves of oh, well,

(22:44):
they're just that's how they're identifying or something some nonsense
like that is I think profoundly wrong. And I think
transgenderism is coming from this. You know, I read a
story that three percent of high school kids today are
now identifying as transgender. And this is not I think,

(23:05):
because oh, there were always three percent of young people
were transgender. Now they've finally been able to come out
in the closet. No, that's social contagion. It's the idea
of an idea getting out into the general populace and
people thereby thinking and convincing themselves that that idea applies
to them. Three percent of kids are self identifying as transgender,

(23:27):
with five I think it's like five percent of kids
who are questioning their gender. And again, I think it's
because that idea is out there. And I would guess again,
there's this profound mental health care crisis among high schoolers
that is, as I say, it's leading them to want
to socially withdraw, leading them to dislike who they actually

(23:51):
are and want to either hide who they are or
present something else. When we return, I'm gonna go through
all the state wide ballot initiatives. John Girardi helping me
out voting next on the John Girardi Show, I am
now going to go through all of the state wide

(24:15):
ballot initiatives. I'm gonna give my gut instincts on these.
I might update this maybe sometime next week once I
learn a little bit more, but this is sort of
my gut instincts what I know about all the ballot
initiatives right now. So these are all the statewide ballot initiatives.
This isn't counting the local initiatives that will likely be

(24:39):
on your ballots depending on where you are you who
are listening to my voice. If you're within the city
of Fresno, you're gonna have something different from if you're
into Larry County, et cetera. I will just say for now,
for all of your local ballot needs, just vote no
on any bond measure. Vote no on a school bond measure.
Vote no on any but if it's if the word

(25:00):
word bond is there, just vote no. All right, let's
go through the ballot initiatives. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
We got ten ballot initiatives Proposition two, three, four, five six,

(25:20):
and then propositions thirty two, thirty three, thirty four to
thirty five thirty six. Why are they numbered that way?
I don't exactly know. I think actually there are shenanigans
that are done at the level of the Attorney General,
for like which get put first and which get put

(25:42):
you know, which get put at the top of the list,
And they're they're various kind of weird shenanigans like that.
You'll note that the proposition to sort of toughen up
to reform the old Prop. Forty seven is like the
last one on the list, So the one that Republicans
like to actually toughen criminal sentences. That's proposition thirty six.

(26:07):
That's a very last one on the whole list. So anyway,
let's go through this Proposition two. This is the ten
billion bond for schools. No bond spending is basically, again
let's remember what a bond is. A bond is a
loan to a governmental entity. The loan has to get

(26:30):
paid back by the taxpayers. It gets paid back over
the period of approximately thirty years. It gets paid back
with interest. We aren't spending ten billion dollars on our
public schools. This will be twenty billion dollars or so
of spending to get ten billion dollars worth of benefit. No,

(26:50):
this is this is something that the teachers' unions demanded
Gavin News some support because he didn't give them enough funding.
In their eyes, he didn't give them enough funding in
the normal budget. I don't know where this ends. We're
not gonna have We can't do a bond measure like
this every year, even every two years, and I don't

(27:13):
think it's The state budgetary situation is such that we're
gonna be running deficits for the foreseeable future because a
lot of money left the state in the last four years.
A lot of people during COVID said I'm out of here,
and a lot of people with a lot of money
and a lot of taxes from capital gains tax and

(27:33):
income tax they left to Nevada, Texas, Florida, Idaho, and
they're not coming by Arizona. They're not coming back. So
our state spending levels are really high. We're used to
these very high levels of state spending, and the revenues
we're getting from taxes are not high enough, and they're

(27:55):
not going to catch up. I don't think they're going
to catch up anytime soon. So the schools are never
gonna be happy with how much funding they get. And
if they're never gonna be happy, there are they gonna
want a bond measure like this every year every two years.
Like this is not sustainable. We can't just keep taking
on debt debt, debt, debt, debt. So no no on

(28:16):
Prop two. Prop two, by the way, is the reason
why all of your local school districts are doing bond
measures right now. They're doing bond measures right now, not
because there's some emergent need within the school district. Maybe
there happens to be some emergent needs. I'm sure there
are always needs. They're doing the bond measure right now

(28:37):
because Prop two is on the ballot. President Unified is
doing Measure H because Prop two is on the ballot.
Clovis Unified is doing Measure A. Because Prop two is
on the ballot. They know that if they raise bond
money locally through a local school district specific bond measure,
they can get matching funds from the state from Prop

(28:57):
two if Prop two is passed. So this is just
bad policy. It's bad policy for because it incentivizes local
school districts to do bond measures that increase your taxes.
Clovis Unified's bond measure won't increase taxes. Well, it will
prevent our taxes from ever going down. Okay, our taxes

(29:21):
would go down once we pay off older bond measures.
But no, if we pass Measure A, our taxes will
continue to be high forever, or at least for another
thirty plus whatever years. All right, So Proposition two vote no.
Proposition three vote no. Vote no no no no, no, no,
no no no. Proposition three is putting a constitutional right

(29:42):
to marriage into the state constitution. How can you be
opposed to that, John Girardi, cause it doesn't define marriage.
The idea of this is to wipe out Proposition eight
two thousand and eights. Proposition eight. Remember when we define
marriage in California as being between one man and one woman,

(30:03):
and the courts kind of immediately just overturned the will
of the people of California and just threw it out
on some specious grounds that it was unconstitutional. This was
ratified by the It'll probably be the last hurrah of
living constitutionalism is the Obergefel decision, in which Justice Kennedy

(30:24):
and the liberal majority on the Court redefine marriage for
the whole country as No, a marriage doesn't have anything
to do with a conjugal relationship that can result in children. No,
it's just any two people who kind of like each other.
So the idea behind Proposition three is, let's remove the

(30:46):
relic language of Proposition eight from the California state constitution.
Proposition eight got passed, a judge held that it was unconstitutional,
so it was in the state constitution, but it wasn't
able to be enforced. This would remove Proposition eight, and
supporters of Prop three are saying, well, it wouldn't actually
change the law. I would just ratify that gay people

(31:08):
have the right to marry. But it does more than
that though. It just says that a fundamental right to
marriage will be respected. But it then does not define marriage.
For example, it does not define marriage as being between
two people. It doesn't define marriage as something having to

(31:29):
do with age. So any state laws restricting marriage on
the basis of the number of people who are a
part of it, or age of the parties engaging in marriage,
and things like that, I think immediately becomes suspect when
you write a constitutional amendment with this incredibly broad language
in it, and if you don't think that's happening, I mean,

(31:50):
like the City of Oakland is like passing stuff to
respect the rights of people in thrupples or pollocules as
they call them. Hilarious how liberals think like Mormons style,
like old school Mormon style polygamy relationships, Oh, that's bad,
but polyamory is good because polyamory is polyamory is when

(32:15):
liberals from Brooklyn do it, And polygamy is bad. When
when Mormons, you know, radical, not like actual normal Mormons,
but like weird offshoot Mormon sects like living in the
desert somewhere in Arizona. When they do it that that's
liberals think that's bad. But not when they do it

(32:36):
in you know, they're weird Brooklyn setting. Anyway, Vote no
on Prop three. No, no, no, no, no no no.
Prop four. This is a bond for various kind of
ill defined climate proposals. Again, I think this was another
thing where liberal environmentalist groups whom the Democrats fear because
humongous donors within the Democrat support them. They wanted more

(33:02):
funding for stuff. They didn't get enough funding in the
state budget, so they want this bond measure passed again.
Ten billion dollars a ten billion dollar loan that you,
the taxpayer, will have to pay off. No Proposition five.
Proposition five. Proposition five I don't feel as strongly about.

(33:24):
I think I'm likely to know. What it would do.
Is it allows certain local bonds and related property taxes
could be approved with a fifty five percent vote rather
than a two thirds approval vote. This is sort of
stuff from historic Proposition thirteen in order to help fund

(33:48):
affordable housing and other kind of public infrastructure related to it.
I think I'm likely to know, just because I don't
like bond measures, and I think the problem with housing
in California is never going to be solved on the
demand side. By subsidizing demand, which is what this is.

(34:09):
It's helping fund the demand rather than just allowing for
more supply. Just allow builders to build, get rid of
environmental regulation that that would help resolve the housing crisis.
So I think I'm probably a no on Prop five.
Prop six seems kind of silly. It's prohibiting slavery in

(34:29):
any form, which I think what it actually means is
it's going to limit the kinds of labor that prisoners
within the California prison system can do. I've seen people
vote both ways on it. My gut instinct is a no.
I've seen some conservatives say vote yes on it, though,
so I'm not exactly sure. I might be a yes,

(34:52):
but I'm not sure. Thirty two raises the minimum wage.
I think I'm not sure that I'm a yes on
raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage for fast food
workers has already gone up to twenty dollars. I think
that's effectively a minimum wage increase for everybody. I don't

(35:13):
know necessarily that we need to do another minimum wage increase,
and I don't know even that that necessarily is helping
out people, you know, who are on that lower end
of the spectrum. I think a lot of people wind
up losing their jobs as a result. Prop thirty three
this expands local government's authority to enact rent control and

(35:36):
residential property. No rent control is a bad idea. Proposition
thirty four This is why you should vote yes on.
It's this bizarre measure that's basically only targeted at the
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which sucks. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is
this terrible entity that it funds all kinds of other
liberal activist things, and they take advantage of certain kind

(35:57):
of tax loopholes because they buy certain kinds of medications.
Then they use that money to fund different liberal proposals.
So you should vote yes on Prop thirty four. Prop
thirty five, this one I'm also ambivalent about, and I
might need to research this a bit more. It basically
locks in certain kind of taxes that fund medical On

(36:17):
the one hand, medical is a train wreck. On the
other hand, it's going to be more of a train
wreck if it loses more funding from its existing levels.
I mean, so, I kind of I think the Republican
Party is actually encouraging a yes vote on this. I
think I might be inclined that way myself, even though

(36:38):
Planned Parenthood is supportive of it, which almost always makes
me think, no, that that's a bad idea to be
on the same side of Planned Parenthood on almost anything.
But I'm kind of inclined to say, maybe this should
be a yes. Again, not exactly sure. Prop thirty six
allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain drug and
theft crimes to reduce crime. Vote yes, Yes, I think

(37:01):
we need tougher criminal sentencing in California. That's the John
Girardi ballot review when we return. Is Kamala getting desperate?
That's next on the John Girardi Show. So there's a
lot of weird rumblings coming out of the Harris campaign
Kamala Land in general, weird rumblings that she's getting desperate.

(37:25):
There's now some rumbling that she's making these like last
ditch efforts to go after mail voters, like some story, Oh,
she might go on the Joe Rogan podcast, because Joe
Rogan has a lot of men who listened to her,
and which I think Rogan's show he has like these
three hour long interviews. No no way that Harris's handlers
are going to let her go three hours, no holds

(37:46):
barred with a skeptical interviewer. Uh Like, I'm I'm not
sure how much fire there is with all the smoke.
I guess I kind of instinctively think Trump's gonna win.
I think he tends to just do better than his
polls indicate, and his polls are pretty good right now.

(38:09):
We will see, but it seems like Harris is really
starting to panic. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See
you next time on Power Talk