April 18, 2024 • 35 mins
Hour 3 of A&G features...
- Who gets credit for Israel's ability to defend itself...
- The Pentagon responds to Biden's story about his uncle & cannibals...
- The head of NPR is straight of Orwell...
- who invited the High Five?
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show. According
to the Pentagon, Biden's uncle was a passenger on a
plane that was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean
for unknown reasons, both engines failing at low altitude. Three
men failed to emerge from the wreck, and Finnegan is
still missing, but the US Government Service record does not
(00:28):
attribute his death to hostile action or to cannibals, although
there was in fact documented cannibalism in that region in
the mid twentieth century. White House spokesman Andrew Bates did
not acknowledge this discrepancy in the telling of this story.
When he delivered a statement for the press, he said
that Biden was making the case of honoring our armed forces,
(00:51):
not calling them suckers and losers, again, tying everything back
to truck guys.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I wanted the whole thing, demitt So that's a story
yesterday from the Biden administration. Dang it, I want the
whole clip. That's the only way makes sense.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm flustered now, yeah, yeah, well we're all flustered by cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Jack, So what is what? What went on there? What
was happening there? Joe Biden told a story yesterday.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
He's trying to tell a story about his uncle who
was in the Army Air Corps and how he flew
single engine planes as re over horizons, yes, shut down again,
and that they never found the body because well there
used to be a lot of cannibals for real man
in that.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
PoTA and uh.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
And he also mentioned that his uncle was joined the
military right out of high school a couple of years ago.
When he told the story, he was a star football
player in college.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
The the facts, the the.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Details of the tale keep changing in a Biden Esque fashion.
But no, there is no record of Cannibal's eating his uncle.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So he had been had had he been telling me
my uncle was eaten by Cannibal's story for the past
forty years and getting away with it or is this
a new one that I don't know?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I just know that in the years, the couple of
years ago, as of a couple of years ago, because
he's told the story a handful of times, it just
keeps changing.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Coming up later this hour, if you've not heard it,
it's getting a lot of attention, probably not on the left,
almost certainly not on the left. On the right. What's
going on at NPR. You had that guy come forward
basically a whistleblower about how incredibly off the rails and
biased NPR is. I know for some of you, I mean,
(02:51):
my reaction to that was really, you know, knock me
over with a feather, as they say, I listened to
NPR regularly, but I roll my eyes and my mouth
drops regularly too. It has for years, but it's worse
now than it's ever been. This guy comes out, blows
a whistle on that he's suspended, then resigns well, not coincidentally,
I guess. Now we're hearing from the current CEO of
(03:14):
NPR and her leadership and her vision for NPR is
flip and frightening. So we'll get to that a little
bit later this hour. Absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So here's a quiz question for you, and this is
related to Joe Biden. You remember Robert Gates's famous quote
that Joe Biden has been wrong about every foreign policy
question for the last fifty years. Who gets the most
credit for Israel being able to fend off Iran's attack
(03:44):
the other day The Islamic Republic of Iran. Anybody bb
net now who not a bad guess? Anthony Blincoln organizing
a coalition of Yeah, that that played a role too.
You know who really gets credit? Ronald Reagan. As we're
to reminder by Daniel Heninger in The Wall Street Journal
in eighty three, President Reagan proposed in a televised address
(04:06):
which I remember, what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The idea was that the US would build defense systems
that could shoot down nuclear arm ballistic missiles, which we're
constantly worried the Soviet Union was going to lob at us.
Back in the day, Democrats and much of the defense
establishment mocked the idea. Senator Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion
(04:29):
of the Senate just don't date him, named it star Wars,
and Senator Joe Biden summed up the opposition in nineteen
eighty six speech quote star Wars represents a fundamental assault
on the concepts alliances and arms control agreements that are
buttressed American security for several decades, and the presidents continued
adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and
(04:51):
irresponsible acts in the history of modern state craft.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I remember the whole Star Wars argument. It was
certainly portrayed by mainstream media in the left just kind
of a crazy, old, dangerous cowboy man with his fanciful
ideas of and that's what worked on Saturday. Which the
current administration, run by the guy that was bad mouthing
it back in the eighties, is taking credit for right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And it is yet another example back to Gates a
statement going back to nineteen eighty six that when the
choice came between doing something semi bold, semi innovative, or
just not doing anything, Joe Biden opted for not doing anything.
He has no spine, he has no principles, he is
(05:41):
animated by no strong beliefs. Well, he is really is
an extraordinary human.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
He actually is a lawyer, and he's the worst kind
of lawyer whose only thing is better, not just better,
not better, not do this, better, not do that, but
not doing the top half of his class three degrees.
Come on, And his boss was the same way, which
Goddess in the law of the situations we're in right
now you're mentioning Reagan and Soviet Union reminded me. Saw
over the weekend this old Russia dude died and he
(06:14):
was in the military and the Soviet Union back in
I got the notes somewhere as eighty three, I think,
where for whatever reason, their defense system computers went haywire
and we're showing that the United States had launched some
of these ballistic missiles at Russia. This was the thing
(06:34):
that you know, everybody was prepared for for decades, the
big giant nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the
United States. And he was in charge there, and the
computers are showing their missiles coming in, the missiles coming in.
The thing he was supposed to do was respond by
fire and off missiles back, and for whatever reason, he thought,
this can't be right. This just this not is can't
(06:55):
be right, and he didn't respond, and we ended up
giving him a medal year later when the Soviet Union
fell and we found out what his name was, and
he came to the United States and got something or
other and has been might have saved.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
More lives than any human being in human history. I
never thought about that, but that's quite possibly true.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, but guaranteed, guaranteed he saved more lives than anybody
in human history, because if he'd or responded, that would
we would have seen that as a first strike and
responded to that. So but you know, and maybe that's
the exact thing you don't want out of somebody in
that position. You know our guys right now, you don't
(07:35):
want somebody saysy, this can't be right. There's no way
that China's actually fired missiles at us or the rusher
or whoever. This just doesn't feel right to me because
I read the entire interview with him and he just
he said, it's just a gut feeling. Okay, gut feeling
is also could just be I really don't want this
to be true, or I'm justifying the fact that I
(07:58):
don't want to be the guy that presses the button
at edge of whatever. You don't want gut feelings ruling
the day on this sort of stuff, do you. Probably no. No.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
But at the same time, in a world where hotels
dot Com wants a two step verification process before I
can reserve a room at the Motel six, I like
the idea of maybe you check with somebody else. Hey,
here's the computers, here's what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
What do you think. Well, he was the tech guy,
so he was supposed to run it. Up the ladder
to Yuri and drop Off, who was the guy in
charge of Russia at the Soviet Union at the time.
But he didn't because he knew that, you know, he was.
If he gave them the information what was happening, they
might then say, okay, we've got a respond But he
didn't think it was real, so he didn't pass it
along until he could figure it out. And after figured
(08:43):
twenty minutes or something like that, he's able to figure
out that they'd picked up some solar flares or something
like that their computers had. But it's exactly we'll ask
your brother about it.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
He was.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
He was in this world. You just you can't have
people going with their gut feelings of I don't think
this is a real attack. I mean, that's the exact
opposite of what you need to do. But thank god
he did. I don't know what to take from this story.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, I think part of the what's missing because you're
right on both counts, but obviously they're in conflict. He
was aware of the imperfections of his technology, his system,
and his government. I have a feeling he grew up
seeing fake tractor production numbers come out of the factory
(09:29):
down the street to satisfy communism. People who live in
communist societies are generally pretty savvy about what they live in,
at least from whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I'll bet you're right that it's much more likely in
that system where everybody is distrustful of everything, as it
would be an our military. We have a place belief
that we got the best equipment out there, and then
it's real and etcetera.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Well, and hierarchies or echa or meritocracy, if you will.
The quest for excellence animates free markets. It's animated the
United States. There's a certain Cabala folks on the left
who are trying to end meritocracy, and that will do us.
But I think a guy who lives in that system
understands that everybody involved in that chain of command, including
(10:12):
the computer guys, there's no incentive for excellence, or at
least not much.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
In a communist system.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So he was thinking, all right, the stupid computers with
the stupid programming is giving me stupid information. I'm supposed
to run up the flagpole to the stupid generals.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I would love to hear more of what he is.
What he said generals Yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Ask ask a soldier in Ukraine, a Russian soldier in
Ukraine right now about corruption in the Russian military.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He could write a book checking in on the Trump
trial real quick before we take a break. There is
no indication that the makeup of the jury so far
has anyone that Team Trump can rely on to engineer
a hung jury. Watch today it says here if you
see a young blackmail or a copp or a firefighter
that gets slotted on the jury, but so far, just
(11:05):
by the kind of person that they got on there,
there's no clear you're probably in Trump's camp sort of person. Noah,
we're really reading Tea Leaves here. Sure, but I went
through the you know, the demographics of all the jurors yesterday,
and you had a lot of Upper West side lawyer
(11:25):
reads the New York Times types that probably hate Trump
as opposed to if you had a firefighter or a cop.
Mm hmm. But you're right, it is Tea Leave reading,
and you hope that people have the ability to h
You'll put whatever it is the side and look at
the rules. And one other thing is Cohen what pulse
(11:46):
Michael Cohen has been making the rounds. He's on a
media blitz right now, bad mouthing Trump and calling him
a scumbag, and all these different sorts of things, as
Byron York says The Washington Examiner, while Trump has a
gag order and can't say anything back. In theory, that's
that's not the way it's supposed to work. Even Michael
Lavanati of all people, said that there is a great
(12:08):
deal that is rotten in Denmark. We'll get to that
in pr stuff later. You're gonna love to hate that,
among other things. Stay here, Okay, Armstrong and Getty. Hello,
James Bond.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
What makes you think this is my first time? I
just want to remind you that I never miss.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
All movie trailers are too dramatic. Can't accuse it of
being overly wordy.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That was the movie trailer for the new James Bond
film starring Henry cavill Or cavill actor famous from a
Witcher something, Except it's completely Ai created. The movie doesn't exist.
He's not Bond. It's odd that they would give him
him in an American accent for a Bond movie.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Is that a real person? Yeah, that's an actual person.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So, and they actually have Margot Robbie as a Bond
girl or worked into its.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wow, that'd be a good Bond girl. So did somebody?
So did somebody just say make a James Bond movie trailer?
Is that all the prompting it requires?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't know, honestly, It's probably a little more extensive
than that. I've just looked at some of those. You
can create video with the text prompts things. I've not
actually used them, but yeah, so that's so, that's odd.
It's been uh viewed by millions of people already, some
of whom have no idea it's fake, I guess. But
a couple other AI related stories that I found very interesting.
(14:08):
We have such a conundrum in education with AI going forward,
not just some of the obvious, Hey, AI, write my
paper for me. But here's this gal who I think
she was a University of North Georgia student. She ended
up on academic probation because she used grammarly on her
criminal justice essay. If you're not familiar with it, it
(14:30):
advertises constantly on certain websites and video feeds or whatever.
It provides a grammar and syntax help. It's essentially an
editor to clean up your well your grammar.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So it's kind of a fancier audio correct, like a
step above autocorrect. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
If it notices that your verb doesn't match your pronouns
or whatever. You got a singular there and a plural there,
it'll say, hey, you ought to fix that. But the
problem is it' it's gotten a little more sophisticated and
now makes suggestions for you. Hey, instead of phrasing it
like this, you could phrase it like this.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is it a suggestion? How about you read the book
before you do this report? Does it ever have suggestions
like that? Well, I think this young lady did.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
In fact, she's on academic probation, but her professor accused
her of quote, unintentionally cheating on her academic work because
she used the program to proof read her paper.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Man, they're going to have to draw a line on this, obviously.
I mean, if a program tells me you're using the
wrong version of your here just because you typed it
in correctly, is that cheating? Or is I supposed to
catch out with my own brain? Is that important?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Well?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This journalist who's writing an article for USA Today says
it reminds him a great deal of the debate over
calculator use in schools in the nineteen seventies because this
gal had no intention whatsoever in factor. Professor said that
of like artificially generating her content, she just used it
as an editor.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It's right, well not to see. I used to get
so angry in school about the grading. Was so much
about our your margins are correct at the top and
the bottom and stuff like that. Who cares. Nobody cared
about the content. It was all about the particulars of
the stuff that doesn't matter in my mind. I hated
that as a kid, And that's what this seems like. Yeah,
(16:25):
I understand.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Why that exists, because they're trying to teach you a
certain rigor. Its like in the military. That's why you
make your bed perfectly. It's an example of discipline. I
just think it got upside down when we were in school.
But you know, we don't really have time to get
to this. But both Elon Musk and Jamie Diamond, the
famous banker from JP Morgan Chase, we're talking about AI recently,
(16:47):
and they said all sorts of interesting things that again
we don't have time for. But one quote that I
thought was interesting. One thinker said AI will take on
eighty percent of eighty percent of the jobs that exist
today within ten.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Years, eight of eighty percent of the jobs, Yes, within
ten years, Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And the political and economic upheavals will be super upheavally
highly crappings.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
That's quite a stat. NPR has gone nuts. Stay with
us strong.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
NPR has a huge effect on the radio industry, which
I've been into my entire life, because they get tremendous ratings,
partially because they get to compete in a way that
nobody else does.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
They don't have any commercials, and their business model is
different that they can throw a hell of a lot
of money at the programming in that you can't do
when you're entirely for profit. And so a lot of
the reporting is really really good.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, And they have always been a lefty organization because
that's what journalists tend to be. Fifteen years ago, you know,
it was kind of mindly annoying from a conservative point
of view, but it was good solar reporting. But as
Uri Berliner made clear in his recent essay criticizing NPR,
it has gone full on progressive activist. Every story is
(18:16):
run through identity, race, gender, whatever. That's the only thing
they do. At this point, he called him out for it.
Name check the new CEO whose name is what the
heck's her name? Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Sorry, just lost it.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
It's mayor Catherine mayor maher mar or something like that.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Blonde headed gal, forty one.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Year old nyu hatty, intellectual, exactly upper crust Connecticut, livesine liberal,
and people have looked into her and she has a
history of saying and doing things that is extraordinary. She
is the absolute distillation of the woke, regressive, neo Marxist,
(19:01):
self hating white person we need to tear down the
system activist, and the things she says are mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Do you want to go ahead and just play your
little screen now?
Speaker 3 (19:13):
This was a Ted talk from a while back when
she was in a leadership role at Wikipedia.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Go ahead, Michael.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
The hard things, the places where we are prone to disagreement,
say politics and religion. Well, as it turns out, not
only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works really
well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations tend
to erupt or disagreement about what the truth actually is.
(19:42):
But the people who write these articles, they're not focused
on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is
the best of what we can know right now. And
after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've
come to believe that they are onto something.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That perhaps, for our most.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others
of the truth might not be the right place to start.
In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a
distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground
and getting things done.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Now, that is not.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
To say that the truth doesn't exist, nor is it
to say that the truth isn't important. Clearly, the search
for the truth has led us to do great things,
to learn great things. But I think if I were
to really ask you to think about this, one of
(20:46):
the things that we could all acknowledge is that part
of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the
human experience in all forms of culture is because we
acknowledge there are many different truths. And so in the
spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth exists for
you and probably for the person sitting next to you,
(21:07):
but this may not be the same truth. This is
because the truth of the matter is very often for
many people. What happens when we merge facts about the
world with our beliefs about the world. So we all
have different truths. They're based on things like where we
come from, how we were raised, and how other people
(21:29):
perceive us.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
You could write a book on that two minutes of audio,
and I suspect people were where to begin.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, Peter Bagoshin probably will write a book about this.
We've had Peter on the show many times. PhD and
one of the great warries against Wolcism in America said,
this is an absolutely extraordinary clip delivered in a sacarine manner.
It is the most toxic of screeds. It contains a
blueprint for the end of every civilization Yead due to
(22:00):
paraphrase her at one point, our reverence for the truth
is a distraction, getting in the way of getting things done. Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So, first of all, that was not somebody reading a
passage from a villain in nineteen eighty four or Well's
classic work.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
That was a real human being expressing those views.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
It's to say it's Orwellian is to understate how Orwellian
it was. She said, Essentially, the question for the truth
was fine and good, but that's over now we all
have our own truth. And if we want to get
things done and get along and find common ground, we
need to stop worrying about the truth. The next step being, obviously,
(22:48):
we will tell you what the truth is and which
truths are permissible. It is an explanation of what ideological
totalitarianism is and what conformity to that totalitarianism looks like,
and how it must be with a smile, at a slow,
gentle pace.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So that whistleblower that came out that is now who
got suspended by NPR after twenty five years of being
there and has now resigned. He was talking about some
of his for instances, was how they would not cover
the Hunter Biden laptop story, for instance. And so I
guess that's what she's talking about when she says the
truth is getting in the way of shared values or
(23:34):
something like, she believes she gets to determine her and
her type, get to determine what things should be known
and what things shouldn't be known to help move us
in the right direction, whatever that is. And so it's
not the truth that you should hear about the Hunter
Biden laptop because that would get in the way of
the more important truths of Donald Trump is evil and
(23:54):
we got to make sure he loses right to quote
her directly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
A reverence for the truth might be a distraction, getting
in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.
So the Hunter Biden laptop's a perfect example of that.
Don't spend so much time worrying about the truth. Worry
about what we need to get things done. To throw
a couple or Well quotes around in a time of deceit,
(24:18):
telling the truth as a revolutionary act. Who controls the
past controls the future, Who controls the present controls the past.
War as peace, freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. They
will tell you what you need to know. Stop trying
to seek the truth.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's exactly the same as censorship in that the reason
it doesn't work is somebody's got to decide what gets
censored and what doesn't. And so she is. She believes
that there's, you know, there's an important truth, a truth
you can choose that's best for society, and she and
her friends are the ones who should choose that. Well,
that is horrifying. They know what's best for you, exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Departing briefly from Orwell's works of fiction, which were obviously
meant to illustrate truth. This is something he wrote under
his own name, not fiction. If liberty means anything at all,
anybody out there kind of a fan of liberty, I
know we are. If liberty means anything at all, it
means the right to tell people what they do not
(25:19):
want to hear. That saccharine, sweet little presentation was presenting
exactly the opposite point of view. If it does not
fit the narrative, even if it's true, we don't want
to hear it.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So well, here a little more from mar here in
a second. But so byron Yorke was commenting. He's with
the Washington Examiner. He was commenting on, you know, how
is this landing at NPR? Is this making a dent?
Is this making them, you know, have a little look
in the mirror moment or self reflection? He said, I
don't have any inside scoop, but NPR is making it
pretty clear it ain't gonna change after this whole thing
(25:59):
happen this week. Maybe even doubled down on the issues
that he was complaining about. Why did he say that?
Because Mary Louise Kelly, which is a name you know,
if you listen to NPR a lot she tweeted out.
NPR Senior Business Editor Uri Berlinner resigned this morning. Among
the many things that could be said, I will say
this thank you to my colleagues here in the newsroom
today for your grace, collegiality, and hard work during a
(26:22):
challenging period, and for showing up today as always to
produce some damn fine journalism. In other words, we were
weathering the tough storm of him leaving and like bad
mouthing us or something. But we're sticking together and we're
going to move forward with the same crap that we've
been doing before. And as you heard, this is the
new CEO, by the way, and the case we didn't
(26:43):
make that clear. Who's saying the whole truth's getting in
the way of what we want to do. She's the
new CEO. She's not like past CEOs. She's in charge right.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Now right Which is why Uri berlin or the whistleblower,
wrote that piece. He thought, oh I thought it was
bad before, or now look at the new gal. So
she I feel like she watered it down a little
for her ted talk. She has some self awareness of
knowing how clearly she could state these things. Here's her
(27:15):
a little More Unfiltered from oun't know how many years
ago and a video she released.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
I started by talking about the idea of free and
open as some of our founding principles sort of free
and open source coming from me to the open source community. Well,
I have come to the opinion and the perspective that
free and open was a way of looking at the
world that was inherently limited relative to what we were
trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality,
(27:43):
but in the end, what free and open often ended
up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was
really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics
that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet.
And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really
rebuilt this idea knowledge as a whole around what the
Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities of languages
(28:07):
because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on
reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition is something
that is particular to many I mean not sorry, the
idea of a written tradition which is particular to some
cultures and not to others. The ways in which we
I ascribe notability often really comes from.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Sort of this white male there you go.
Speaker 7 (28:28):
Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is
elevated and whose voices and so some of these ideas
of sort of this radical openness really did not end
up with the intention, really did not end up living
into the intentionality of what openness can be.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Radical openness like the sort of thing that, like the
Founding Fathers believed it was a good idea with the
First Amendment, is getting in the way and helping perpetuate
as you heard, their white male stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Right exactly, we can't trust society, so we must reform it.
This is why I and others constantly refer to these
people as neo Marxists. It's a different argument for we
must tear it all down and rebuild it according to
our truth and which the most hilarious part of this,
unintentionally is the constant you hammering of the word diversity
(29:20):
when diversity is the last thing they want. There is
one doctrine permissible at NPR, for instance, at Columbia University
for instance, on the pages of the New York Times
for instance, although they do throw a couple of token
conservatives out there in their defense. The idea that they
want diversity is hilarious. So it's not like this is
(29:43):
new to us. Over the last couple of years, somebody's
saying this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The fact that she's the CEO of NPR is striking.
We've got a post truth world. All decide what's true
and what's not. I know, what's good for America. Person
in charge of one of the most popular news outlets
in the country that's funded by taxpayers. Yeah, it's almost.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Refreshing that she's willing to come out and say, Look,
we don't care about the truth. The truth gets in
the way. That's not what we're about. At least the
mask is off. Boll You're right, that's a little true.
That's troubling on its own. The fact that she believes
she can get away with that and that it will
be accepted because they now own the public square.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, she thinks it's so universally agreed upon, and I'm
sure in her world it is. I'm sure she you know,
runs in a crowd that also has graduate degrees from
NYU or wherever, and they all agree. Oh, absolutely, the
whole truth thing. Wow. Geez, hello, boomer a truth give
me a break, and so she doesn't know how that
strikes a lot of the rest of us.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
So I realize I'm leaning on Orwell a bit. But
he's one of the great gen uses ever to speak
the English language or any other. The idea that you
obliterate history, which they are trying to do, you make
us forget our history and who we are as a
people in a culture they are trying to You can't
get Western culture taught in universities. All all you can
get is this sexism of Western culture, the racism, the
(31:19):
colonial is in Western culture.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
They're erasing all of that.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
They're redefining what the truth is and or openly saying
the truth doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
All that matters is the party truth is getting in
the way. That is absolutely amazing. And she is running
in pr currently in a.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Time of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
I will tell it until I am in a gulag.
This will animate me. I am never going to retire.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Any comment text line four one five nine five KFTC. No,
I didn't invent the high five. All I did was
respond to Glenn. And on the on deck circle was
(32:08):
Glenn Burke, the excited rookie Glenn put his arm high
in the air, and Dusty wasn't sure what to do,
so he slacked it. But you can go anywhere around
the world and people know what that is. Everyone wants
that moment, and a high five made it accessible to everybody.
When you look at how it's changed the world, and
it's a universal symbol for all of us to share.
(32:30):
Sometimes you don't know why you do some of the
things you do, especially when you're extremely happy. You just
respond to each other. ESPN with a little documentary about
the invention of the high five by baseball legend Dusty
Baker in nineteen seventy seven. I feel like the high
five was around before seventy seven, but I can't tell
(32:51):
you that for certain. I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
But shout out to Dusty, who lives not far from
the radio ranch. Hope you're in good health, my friend.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So we were just play that thing from the CEO
of NPR and her worldview and everything like that, and
people who follow her, and I came across this thing
I thought was really interesting, not specifically about that, but
about personality types. And I think this person's onto something.
I think they might have the percentages off. But listen
to this. Many people are hating on this video the
(33:19):
audio we just played, but I actually think it's a
fascinating display of the two very distinct modes that exist
to relate with realitymesis versus first principles. Thinking ninety five
percent of people operated by mimesis. I don't know if
I'm saying that word right. Did you say one minute? Okay?
Truth doesn't matter to them as much as getting along.
(33:41):
And you decide your truth based on what the people
around you believe, and so you go along with that,
and I think that is true for most people. Then
you've got it, says five percent again. I think the
percentages are wrong. But these people hold opinions that are
outside the most popular. And this is the part that
I thought was most interesting. The reason they do this
(34:02):
isn't courage as much as social ineptitude. It's not that
they're strong enough to fight against the grain. It's that
they don't feel the grain in the same way as
other people. They're sort of rude by a mission not commission.
I feel that rude, whatever term you want to use.
But like I've always had the most popular band, I
have to like make myself, like my instant thing is
(34:25):
to like not want to like the popular band or
wear the popular clothes or whatever. And I think so.
I don't know what the percentages are, like you said there,
but I think it does help you with the going
having your truth be determined by the crowd, because some
of us are just built to hate going along with
the crowd, right.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And I think Orwell would agree with me when I
would suggest that a certain personality type which I may
or may not hold, like to my marrow seese the
dishonesty and conformism inherent in the mimetic thinking or whatever
it is, and can't stand to go there. It's just
it's a betrayal.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That is interesting that you either have their personality type
that like. The thing you want to do the most
is what's everybody saying and thinking and watching and listening
to and dressing and believing I'm in That makes me
feel good as opposed to I really hate to be
doing what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I wish we had time to talk about the Founding
Fathers and how clearly they were of the latter group.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Now all were the same silk stockings. I mean, somebody
decided that was a good look, Nepotterphy flattering to the calf.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
It's not conformity, it's just looks good, armstrong and getty.
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty Show. According
to the Pentagon, Biden's uncle was a passenger on a
plane that was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean
for unknown reasons, both engines failing at low altitude. Three
men failed to emerge from the wreck, and Finnegan is
still missing, but the US Government Service record does not
(00:28):
attribute his death to hostile action or to cannibals, although
there was in fact documented cannibalism in that region in
the mid twentieth century. White House spokesman Andrew Bates did
not acknowledge this discrepancy in the telling of this story.
When he delivered a statement for the press, he said
that Biden was making the case of honoring our armed forces,
(00:51):
not calling them suckers and losers, again, tying everything back
to truck guys.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I wanted the whole thing, demitt So that's a story
yesterday from the Biden administration. Dang it, I want the
whole clip. That's the only way makes sense.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I'm flustered now, yeah, yeah, well we're all flustered by cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Jack, So what is what? What went on there? What
was happening there? Joe Biden told a story yesterday.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
He's trying to tell a story about his uncle who
was in the Army Air Corps and how he flew
single engine planes as re over horizons, yes, shut down again,
and that they never found the body because well there
used to be a lot of cannibals for real man
in that.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
PoTA and uh.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
And he also mentioned that his uncle was joined the
military right out of high school a couple of years ago.
When he told the story, he was a star football
player in college.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
The the facts, the the.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Details of the tale keep changing in a Biden Esque fashion.
But no, there is no record of Cannibal's eating his uncle.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So he had been had had he been telling me
my uncle was eaten by Cannibal's story for the past
forty years and getting away with it or is this
a new one that I don't know?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I just know that in the years, the couple of
years ago, as of a couple of years ago, because
he's told the story a handful of times, it just
keeps changing.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Coming up later this hour, if you've not heard it,
it's getting a lot of attention, probably not on the left,
almost certainly not on the left. On the right. What's
going on at NPR. You had that guy come forward
basically a whistleblower about how incredibly off the rails and
biased NPR is. I know for some of you, I mean,
(02:51):
my reaction to that was really, you know, knock me
over with a feather, as they say, I listened to
NPR regularly, but I roll my eyes and my mouth
drops regularly too. It has for years, but it's worse
now than it's ever been. This guy comes out, blows
a whistle on that he's suspended, then resigns well, not coincidentally,
I guess. Now we're hearing from the current CEO of
(03:14):
NPR and her leadership and her vision for NPR is
flip and frightening. So we'll get to that a little
bit later this hour. Absolutely so.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So here's a quiz question for you, and this is
related to Joe Biden. You remember Robert Gates's famous quote
that Joe Biden has been wrong about every foreign policy
question for the last fifty years. Who gets the most
credit for Israel being able to fend off Iran's attack
(03:44):
the other day The Islamic Republic of Iran. Anybody bb
net now who not a bad guess? Anthony Blincoln organizing
a coalition of Yeah, that that played a role too.
You know who really gets credit? Ronald Reagan. As we're
to reminder by Daniel Heninger in The Wall Street Journal
in eighty three, President Reagan proposed in a televised address
(04:06):
which I remember, what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The idea was that the US would build defense systems
that could shoot down nuclear arm ballistic missiles, which we're
constantly worried the Soviet Union was going to lob at us.
Back in the day, Democrats and much of the defense
establishment mocked the idea. Senator Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion
(04:29):
of the Senate just don't date him, named it star Wars,
and Senator Joe Biden summed up the opposition in nineteen
eighty six speech quote star Wars represents a fundamental assault
on the concepts alliances and arms control agreements that are
buttressed American security for several decades, and the presidents continued
adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and
(04:51):
irresponsible acts in the history of modern state craft.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I remember the whole Star Wars argument. It was
certainly portrayed by mainstream media in the left just kind
of a crazy, old, dangerous cowboy man with his fanciful
ideas of and that's what worked on Saturday. Which the
current administration, run by the guy that was bad mouthing
it back in the eighties, is taking credit for right.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And it is yet another example back to Gates a
statement going back to nineteen eighty six that when the
choice came between doing something semi bold, semi innovative, or
just not doing anything, Joe Biden opted for not doing anything.
He has no spine, he has no principles, he is
(05:41):
animated by no strong beliefs. Well, he is really is
an extraordinary human.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
He actually is a lawyer, and he's the worst kind
of lawyer whose only thing is better, not just better,
not better, not do this, better, not do that, but
not doing the top half of his class three degrees.
Come on, And his boss was the same way, which
Goddess in the law of the situations we're in right
now you're mentioning Reagan and Soviet Union reminded me. Saw
over the weekend this old Russia dude died and he
(06:14):
was in the military and the Soviet Union back in
I got the notes somewhere as eighty three, I think,
where for whatever reason, their defense system computers went haywire
and we're showing that the United States had launched some
of these ballistic missiles at Russia. This was the thing
(06:34):
that you know, everybody was prepared for for decades, the
big giant nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the
United States. And he was in charge there, and the
computers are showing their missiles coming in, the missiles coming in.
The thing he was supposed to do was respond by
fire and off missiles back, and for whatever reason, he thought,
this can't be right. This just this not is can't
(06:55):
be right, and he didn't respond, and we ended up
giving him a medal year later when the Soviet Union
fell and we found out what his name was, and
he came to the United States and got something or
other and has been might have saved.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
More lives than any human being in human history. I
never thought about that, but that's quite possibly true.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, but guaranteed, guaranteed he saved more lives than anybody
in human history, because if he'd or responded, that would
we would have seen that as a first strike and
responded to that. So but you know, and maybe that's
the exact thing you don't want out of somebody in
that position. You know our guys right now, you don't
(07:35):
want somebody saysy, this can't be right. There's no way
that China's actually fired missiles at us or the rusher
or whoever. This just doesn't feel right to me because
I read the entire interview with him and he just
he said, it's just a gut feeling. Okay, gut feeling
is also could just be I really don't want this
to be true, or I'm justifying the fact that I
(07:58):
don't want to be the guy that presses the button
at edge of whatever. You don't want gut feelings ruling
the day on this sort of stuff, do you. Probably no. No.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
But at the same time, in a world where hotels
dot Com wants a two step verification process before I
can reserve a room at the Motel six, I like
the idea of maybe you check with somebody else. Hey,
here's the computers, here's what they're saying.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
What do you think. Well, he was the tech guy,
so he was supposed to run it. Up the ladder
to Yuri and drop Off, who was the guy in
charge of Russia at the Soviet Union at the time.
But he didn't because he knew that, you know, he was.
If he gave them the information what was happening, they
might then say, okay, we've got a respond But he
didn't think it was real, so he didn't pass it
along until he could figure it out. And after figured
(08:43):
twenty minutes or something like that, he's able to figure
out that they'd picked up some solar flares or something
like that their computers had. But it's exactly we'll ask
your brother about it.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
He was.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
He was in this world. You just you can't have
people going with their gut feelings of I don't think
this is a real attack. I mean, that's the exact
opposite of what you need to do. But thank god
he did. I don't know what to take from this story.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, I think part of the what's missing because you're
right on both counts, but obviously they're in conflict. He
was aware of the imperfections of his technology, his system,
and his government. I have a feeling he grew up
seeing fake tractor production numbers come out of the factory
(09:29):
down the street to satisfy communism. People who live in
communist societies are generally pretty savvy about what they live in,
at least from whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I'll bet you're right that it's much more likely in
that system where everybody is distrustful of everything, as it
would be an our military. We have a place belief
that we got the best equipment out there, and then
it's real and etcetera.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Well, and hierarchies or echa or meritocracy, if you will.
The quest for excellence animates free markets. It's animated the
United States. There's a certain Cabala folks on the left
who are trying to end meritocracy, and that will do us.
But I think a guy who lives in that system
understands that everybody involved in that chain of command, including
(10:12):
the computer guys, there's no incentive for excellence, or at
least not much.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
In a communist system.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So he was thinking, all right, the stupid computers with
the stupid programming is giving me stupid information. I'm supposed
to run up the flagpole to the stupid generals.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I would love to hear more of what he is.
What he said generals Yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Ask ask a soldier in Ukraine, a Russian soldier in
Ukraine right now about corruption in the Russian military.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He could write a book checking in on the Trump
trial real quick before we take a break. There is
no indication that the makeup of the jury so far
has anyone that Team Trump can rely on to engineer
a hung jury. Watch today it says here if you
see a young blackmail or a copp or a firefighter
that gets slotted on the jury, but so far, just
(11:05):
by the kind of person that they got on there,
there's no clear you're probably in Trump's camp sort of person. Noah,
we're really reading Tea Leaves here. Sure, but I went
through the you know, the demographics of all the jurors yesterday,
and you had a lot of Upper West side lawyer
(11:25):
reads the New York Times types that probably hate Trump
as opposed to if you had a firefighter or a cop.
Mm hmm. But you're right, it is Tea Leave reading,
and you hope that people have the ability to h
You'll put whatever it is the side and look at
the rules. And one other thing is Cohen what pulse
(11:46):
Michael Cohen has been making the rounds. He's on a
media blitz right now, bad mouthing Trump and calling him
a scumbag, and all these different sorts of things, as
Byron York says The Washington Examiner, while Trump has a
gag order and can't say anything back. In theory, that's
that's not the way it's supposed to work. Even Michael
Lavanati of all people, said that there is a great
(12:08):
deal that is rotten in Denmark. We'll get to that
in pr stuff later. You're gonna love to hate that,
among other things. Stay here, Okay, Armstrong and Getty. Hello,
James Bond.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
What makes you think this is my first time? I
just want to remind you that I never miss.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
All movie trailers are too dramatic. Can't accuse it of
being overly wordy.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That was the movie trailer for the new James Bond
film starring Henry cavill Or cavill actor famous from a
Witcher something, Except it's completely Ai created. The movie doesn't exist.
He's not Bond. It's odd that they would give him
him in an American accent for a Bond movie.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Is that a real person? Yeah, that's an actual person.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So, and they actually have Margot Robbie as a Bond
girl or worked into its.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wow, that'd be a good Bond girl. So did somebody?
So did somebody just say make a James Bond movie trailer?
Is that all the prompting it requires?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't know, honestly, It's probably a little more extensive
than that. I've just looked at some of those. You
can create video with the text prompts things. I've not
actually used them, but yeah, so that's so, that's odd.
It's been uh viewed by millions of people already, some
of whom have no idea it's fake, I guess. But
a couple other AI related stories that I found very interesting.
(14:08):
We have such a conundrum in education with AI going forward,
not just some of the obvious, Hey, AI, write my
paper for me. But here's this gal who I think
she was a University of North Georgia student. She ended
up on academic probation because she used grammarly on her
criminal justice essay. If you're not familiar with it, it
(14:30):
advertises constantly on certain websites and video feeds or whatever.
It provides a grammar and syntax help. It's essentially an
editor to clean up your well your grammar.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So it's kind of a fancier audio correct, like a
step above autocorrect. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
If it notices that your verb doesn't match your pronouns
or whatever. You got a singular there and a plural there,
it'll say, hey, you ought to fix that. But the
problem is it' it's gotten a little more sophisticated and
now makes suggestions for you. Hey, instead of phrasing it
like this, you could phrase it like this.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is it a suggestion? How about you read the book
before you do this report? Does it ever have suggestions
like that? Well, I think this young lady did.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
In fact, she's on academic probation, but her professor accused
her of quote, unintentionally cheating on her academic work because
she used the program to proof read her paper.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Man, they're going to have to draw a line on this, obviously.
I mean, if a program tells me you're using the
wrong version of your here just because you typed it
in correctly, is that cheating? Or is I supposed to
catch out with my own brain? Is that important?
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Well?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This journalist who's writing an article for USA Today says
it reminds him a great deal of the debate over
calculator use in schools in the nineteen seventies because this
gal had no intention whatsoever in factor. Professor said that
of like artificially generating her content, she just used it
as an editor.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It's right, well not to see. I used to get
so angry in school about the grading. Was so much
about our your margins are correct at the top and
the bottom and stuff like that. Who cares. Nobody cared
about the content. It was all about the particulars of
the stuff that doesn't matter in my mind. I hated
that as a kid, And that's what this seems like. Yeah,
(16:25):
I understand.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Why that exists, because they're trying to teach you a
certain rigor. Its like in the military. That's why you
make your bed perfectly. It's an example of discipline. I
just think it got upside down when we were in school.
But you know, we don't really have time to get
to this. But both Elon Musk and Jamie Diamond, the
famous banker from JP Morgan Chase, we're talking about AI recently,
(16:47):
and they said all sorts of interesting things that again
we don't have time for. But one quote that I
thought was interesting. One thinker said AI will take on
eighty percent of eighty percent of the jobs that exist
today within ten.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Years, eight of eighty percent of the jobs, Yes, within
ten years, Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And the political and economic upheavals will be super upheavally
highly crappings.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
That's quite a stat. NPR has gone nuts. Stay with
us strong.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
NPR has a huge effect on the radio industry, which
I've been into my entire life, because they get tremendous ratings,
partially because they get to compete in a way that
nobody else does.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
They don't have any commercials, and their business model is
different that they can throw a hell of a lot
of money at the programming in that you can't do
when you're entirely for profit. And so a lot of
the reporting is really really good.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, And they have always been a lefty organization because
that's what journalists tend to be. Fifteen years ago, you know,
it was kind of mindly annoying from a conservative point
of view, but it was good solar reporting. But as
Uri Berliner made clear in his recent essay criticizing NPR,
it has gone full on progressive activist. Every story is
(18:16):
run through identity, race, gender, whatever. That's the only thing
they do. At this point, he called him out for it.
Name check the new CEO whose name is what the
heck's her name? Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Sorry, just lost it.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
It's mayor Catherine mayor maher mar or something like that.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Blonde headed gal, forty one.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Year old nyu hatty, intellectual, exactly upper crust Connecticut, livesine liberal,
and people have looked into her and she has a
history of saying and doing things that is extraordinary. She
is the absolute distillation of the woke, regressive, neo Marxist,
(19:01):
self hating white person we need to tear down the
system activist, and the things she says are mind blowing.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Do you want to go ahead and just play your
little screen now?
Speaker 3 (19:13):
This was a Ted talk from a while back when
she was in a leadership role at Wikipedia.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Go ahead, Michael.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
The hard things, the places where we are prone to disagreement,
say politics and religion. Well, as it turns out, not
only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works really
well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations tend
to erupt or disagreement about what the truth actually is.
(19:42):
But the people who write these articles, they're not focused
on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is
the best of what we can know right now. And
after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've
come to believe that they are onto something.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That perhaps, for our most.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
Tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others
of the truth might not be the right place to start.
In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a
distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground
and getting things done.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Now, that is not.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
To say that the truth doesn't exist, nor is it
to say that the truth isn't important. Clearly, the search
for the truth has led us to do great things,
to learn great things. But I think if I were
to really ask you to think about this, one of
(20:46):
the things that we could all acknowledge is that part
of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the
human experience in all forms of culture is because we
acknowledge there are many different truths. And so in the
spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth exists for
you and probably for the person sitting next to you,
(21:07):
but this may not be the same truth. This is
because the truth of the matter is very often for
many people. What happens when we merge facts about the
world with our beliefs about the world. So we all
have different truths. They're based on things like where we
come from, how we were raised, and how other people
(21:29):
perceive us.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
You could write a book on that two minutes of audio,
and I suspect people were where to begin.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, Peter Bagoshin probably will write a book about this.
We've had Peter on the show many times. PhD and
one of the great warries against Wolcism in America said,
this is an absolutely extraordinary clip delivered in a sacarine manner.
It is the most toxic of screeds. It contains a
blueprint for the end of every civilization Yead due to
(22:00):
paraphrase her at one point, our reverence for the truth
is a distraction, getting in the way of getting things done. Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So, first of all, that was not somebody reading a
passage from a villain in nineteen eighty four or Well's
classic work.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
That was a real human being expressing those views.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
It's to say it's Orwellian is to understate how Orwellian
it was. She said, Essentially, the question for the truth
was fine and good, but that's over now we all
have our own truth. And if we want to get
things done and get along and find common ground, we
need to stop worrying about the truth. The next step being, obviously,
(22:48):
we will tell you what the truth is and which
truths are permissible. It is an explanation of what ideological
totalitarianism is and what conformity to that totalitarianism looks like,
and how it must be with a smile, at a slow,
gentle pace.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
So that whistleblower that came out that is now who
got suspended by NPR after twenty five years of being
there and has now resigned. He was talking about some
of his for instances, was how they would not cover
the Hunter Biden laptop story, for instance. And so I
guess that's what she's talking about when she says the
truth is getting in the way of shared values or
(23:34):
something like, she believes she gets to determine her and
her type, get to determine what things should be known
and what things shouldn't be known to help move us
in the right direction, whatever that is. And so it's
not the truth that you should hear about the Hunter
Biden laptop because that would get in the way of
the more important truths of Donald Trump is evil and
(23:54):
we got to make sure he loses right to quote
her directly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
A reverence for the truth might be a distraction, getting
in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.
So the Hunter Biden laptop's a perfect example of that.
Don't spend so much time worrying about the truth. Worry
about what we need to get things done. To throw
a couple or Well quotes around in a time of deceit,
(24:18):
telling the truth as a revolutionary act. Who controls the
past controls the future, Who controls the present controls the past.
War as peace, freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. They
will tell you what you need to know. Stop trying
to seek the truth.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's exactly the same as censorship in that the reason
it doesn't work is somebody's got to decide what gets
censored and what doesn't. And so she is. She believes
that there's, you know, there's an important truth, a truth
you can choose that's best for society, and she and
her friends are the ones who should choose that. Well,
that is horrifying. They know what's best for you, exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Departing briefly from Orwell's works of fiction, which were obviously
meant to illustrate truth. This is something he wrote under
his own name, not fiction. If liberty means anything at all,
anybody out there kind of a fan of liberty, I
know we are. If liberty means anything at all, it
means the right to tell people what they do not
(25:19):
want to hear. That saccharine, sweet little presentation was presenting
exactly the opposite point of view. If it does not
fit the narrative, even if it's true, we don't want
to hear it.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So well, here a little more from mar here in
a second. But so byron Yorke was commenting. He's with
the Washington Examiner. He was commenting on, you know, how
is this landing at NPR? Is this making a dent?
Is this making them, you know, have a little look
in the mirror moment or self reflection? He said, I
don't have any inside scoop, but NPR is making it
pretty clear it ain't gonna change after this whole thing
(25:59):
happen this week. Maybe even doubled down on the issues
that he was complaining about. Why did he say that?
Because Mary Louise Kelly, which is a name you know,
if you listen to NPR a lot she tweeted out.
NPR Senior Business Editor Uri Berlinner resigned this morning. Among
the many things that could be said, I will say
this thank you to my colleagues here in the newsroom
today for your grace, collegiality, and hard work during a
(26:22):
challenging period, and for showing up today as always to
produce some damn fine journalism. In other words, we were
weathering the tough storm of him leaving and like bad
mouthing us or something. But we're sticking together and we're
going to move forward with the same crap that we've
been doing before. And as you heard, this is the
new CEO, by the way, and the case we didn't
(26:43):
make that clear. Who's saying the whole truth's getting in
the way of what we want to do. She's the
new CEO. She's not like past CEOs. She's in charge right.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Now right Which is why Uri berlin or the whistleblower,
wrote that piece. He thought, oh I thought it was
bad before, or now look at the new gal. So
she I feel like she watered it down a little
for her ted talk. She has some self awareness of
knowing how clearly she could state these things. Here's her
(27:15):
a little More Unfiltered from oun't know how many years
ago and a video she released.
Speaker 7 (27:21):
I started by talking about the idea of free and
open as some of our founding principles sort of free
and open source coming from me to the open source community. Well,
I have come to the opinion and the perspective that
free and open was a way of looking at the
world that was inherently limited relative to what we were
trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality,
(27:43):
but in the end, what free and open often ended
up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was
really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics
that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet.
And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really
rebuilt this idea knowledge as a whole around what the
Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities of languages
(28:07):
because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based on
reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition is something
that is particular to many I mean not sorry, the
idea of a written tradition which is particular to some
cultures and not to others. The ways in which we
I ascribe notability often really comes from.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Sort of this white male there you go.
Speaker 7 (28:28):
Westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is
elevated and whose voices and so some of these ideas
of sort of this radical openness really did not end
up with the intention, really did not end up living
into the intentionality of what openness can be.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Radical openness like the sort of thing that, like the
Founding Fathers believed it was a good idea with the
First Amendment, is getting in the way and helping perpetuate
as you heard, their white male stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Right exactly, we can't trust society, so we must reform it.
This is why I and others constantly refer to these
people as neo Marxists. It's a different argument for we
must tear it all down and rebuild it according to
our truth and which the most hilarious part of this,
unintentionally is the constant you hammering of the word diversity
(29:20):
when diversity is the last thing they want. There is
one doctrine permissible at NPR, for instance, at Columbia University
for instance, on the pages of the New York Times
for instance, although they do throw a couple of token
conservatives out there in their defense. The idea that they
want diversity is hilarious. So it's not like this is
(29:43):
new to us. Over the last couple of years, somebody's
saying this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The fact that she's the CEO of NPR is striking.
We've got a post truth world. All decide what's true
and what's not. I know, what's good for America. Person
in charge of one of the most popular news outlets
in the country that's funded by taxpayers. Yeah, it's almost.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Refreshing that she's willing to come out and say, Look,
we don't care about the truth. The truth gets in
the way. That's not what we're about. At least the
mask is off. Boll You're right, that's a little true.
That's troubling on its own. The fact that she believes
she can get away with that and that it will
be accepted because they now own the public square.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, she thinks it's so universally agreed upon, and I'm
sure in her world it is. I'm sure she you know,
runs in a crowd that also has graduate degrees from
NYU or wherever, and they all agree. Oh, absolutely, the
whole truth thing. Wow. Geez, hello, boomer a truth give
me a break, and so she doesn't know how that
strikes a lot of the rest of us.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
So I realize I'm leaning on Orwell a bit. But
he's one of the great gen uses ever to speak
the English language or any other. The idea that you
obliterate history, which they are trying to do, you make
us forget our history and who we are as a
people in a culture they are trying to You can't
get Western culture taught in universities. All all you can
get is this sexism of Western culture, the racism, the
(31:19):
colonial is in Western culture.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
They're erasing all of that.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
They're redefining what the truth is and or openly saying
the truth doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
All that matters is the party truth is getting in
the way. That is absolutely amazing. And she is running
in pr currently in a.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Time of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
I will tell it until I am in a gulag.
This will animate me. I am never going to retire.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Any comment text line four one five nine five KFTC. No,
I didn't invent the high five. All I did was
respond to Glenn. And on the on deck circle was
(32:08):
Glenn Burke, the excited rookie Glenn put his arm high
in the air, and Dusty wasn't sure what to do,
so he slacked it. But you can go anywhere around
the world and people know what that is. Everyone wants
that moment, and a high five made it accessible to everybody.
When you look at how it's changed the world, and
it's a universal symbol for all of us to share.
(32:30):
Sometimes you don't know why you do some of the
things you do, especially when you're extremely happy. You just
respond to each other. ESPN with a little documentary about
the invention of the high five by baseball legend Dusty
Baker in nineteen seventy seven. I feel like the high
five was around before seventy seven, but I can't tell
(32:51):
you that for certain. I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
But shout out to Dusty, who lives not far from
the radio ranch. Hope you're in good health, my friend.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
So we were just play that thing from the CEO
of NPR and her worldview and everything like that, and
people who follow her, and I came across this thing
I thought was really interesting, not specifically about that, but
about personality types. And I think this person's onto something.
I think they might have the percentages off. But listen
to this. Many people are hating on this video the
(33:19):
audio we just played, but I actually think it's a
fascinating display of the two very distinct modes that exist
to relate with realitymesis versus first principles. Thinking ninety five
percent of people operated by mimesis. I don't know if
I'm saying that word right. Did you say one minute? Okay?
Truth doesn't matter to them as much as getting along.
(33:41):
And you decide your truth based on what the people
around you believe, and so you go along with that,
and I think that is true for most people. Then
you've got it, says five percent again. I think the
percentages are wrong. But these people hold opinions that are
outside the most popular. And this is the part that
I thought was most interesting. The reason they do this
(34:02):
isn't courage as much as social ineptitude. It's not that
they're strong enough to fight against the grain. It's that
they don't feel the grain in the same way as
other people. They're sort of rude by a mission not commission.
I feel that rude, whatever term you want to use.
But like I've always had the most popular band, I
have to like make myself, like my instant thing is
(34:25):
to like not want to like the popular band or
wear the popular clothes or whatever. And I think so.
I don't know what the percentages are, like you said there,
but I think it does help you with the going
having your truth be determined by the crowd, because some
of us are just built to hate going along with
the crowd, right.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
And I think Orwell would agree with me when I
would suggest that a certain personality type which I may
or may not hold, like to my marrow seese the
dishonesty and conformism inherent in the mimetic thinking or whatever
it is, and can't stand to go there. It's just
it's a betrayal.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
That is interesting that you either have their personality type
that like. The thing you want to do the most
is what's everybody saying and thinking and watching and listening
to and dressing and believing I'm in That makes me
feel good as opposed to I really hate to be
doing what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I wish we had time to talk about the Founding
Fathers and how clearly they were of the latter group.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Now all were the same silk stockings. I mean, somebody
decided that was a good look, Nepotterphy flattering to the calf.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
It's not conformity, it's just looks good, armstrong and getty.
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