August 13, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 4 of A&G features...
- The Middle East conflict & critical theory
- Trump's Kennedy Center honorees
- The pillars of happiness!
- Final Thoughts!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and
get and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Newly released drone video shows Palestinian militants pretending to be
workers from the World's Central Kitchen. They travel in two cars,
one marked with the flag of the Humanitarian Organization before
they're hit by IDF airstrikes.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Uck in real time, we're able to verify that vehicle
was not connected to the organization in any way, which
means those heres were using that as a disguise for
their terror activity inside Gaza.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Israeli airstrikes targeted multiple areas of the enclave over the
past twenty four hours, killing dozens of Palestinian civilians.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
Okay, So in spite of that, it's absolutely documented, undeniable
that Hamas guys were masquerading as food relief guys. NPR
considers it completely impossible that they would impersonate journalists, or
at least that's what they're saying in this sence, and
those views are supported practically to a person by the
American left and a lot of the left in a
(01:20):
lot of the Western world.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What the hell is going on.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
To quote Eli Lake, who's a brilliant writer in the West,
the politics of the Gaza War feature a strange marriage
between political Islam and the twenty first century Western left,
for instance, the Democratic Socialists of America. This is Mumdani's
crew simultaneously support making New York a national hub for
(01:43):
transgender medicine and want to globalize the Intofada.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
Yeah, that is a good point.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
It supp it supports the bleeding edge of social progressive
values while throwing its full support behind the fanatic fascists
who film their mass murder Jews and proudly posted the
videos to Telegram. And Lake in an absolutely fabulous piece
that will post I think you might get paywalled, but
maybe not, talks about how the what's called the red
(02:13):
Green alliance among people who think about this sort of thing,
how it came up, and it really came up, and
yes he was red, and who's green here? Reds is
and communists in green, the color of Hamas and radical
Islam and various thank you for asking for the clarification
to hit for the room.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Anyway.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
A lot of this arose during Iran's Islamic Revolution nineteen
seventy eight and seventy nine, and he goes into and
it's so interesting the details of how Ayatola Komeni, who
is in exile in France, started giving all sorts of
really carefully controlled interviews to American and European media outlets,
(02:55):
and how they're on this pr campaign to convince the
West that he's a reasonable fellow. In fact, he's really
for democracy, and Lake is writing. Anybody who spent ten
minutes looking into Komaney knew that he was a hardcore
(03:15):
is Lomist monster. You didn't even have to try to
figure it out. But the left of American journalism, in
Western journalism, and some folks like in the Carter administration
became completely convinced and touted in the face of all
of this that no, he was actually a really good guy.
(03:39):
Richard Falk, a Princeton professor of international law who met
with Gomany during his exile outside of Paris. Andrew Young,
Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that
the Iotola will eventually be regarded as a saint like
this folk, the Princeton professor. And because people were saying
(04:02):
there are some on the right who said, look, this
guy's a reactionary and a terrorist, and he said, to
suppose that Iotola Coomania is disassembling seems almost beyond belief.
His political style is to express his real views defiantly
and without apology, regardless of consequences.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Thus the depiction of him as a fanatical reactionary and
the bearer of crude prejudices seem certainly and happily false.
I know. Is also encouraging is that as entourage of
close advisors is uniformly and composed of moderate progressive individuals.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
I know you and Eli Lake are about to explain
to me why. But is it just as simple as
the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and my
enemy is mean the United States? So somebody who doesn't
like us is good.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
To I like.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Right, There's more to it than that, but yeah, the
very short version of it is essentially, wait a minute,
you want to overthrow Western civilization. I want to overthrow
Western civilization.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
You want to.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Impose Islamism, but I want to impose Marxism. Well, I
tell you what, how about we work together and then
when the civilization's overthrown, will peacefully cooperate and divide the spoils. Then,
of course, like in every revolution, they kill each other
as fast as they can. But there's one more factor.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You got jihad in my queer studies.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
You got queer studies in my jihad.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Two great tastes. It tastes great together. Oh that's beautiful anyway.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
So this brings us to the connection between something I
have been harping about for a very long time, as
has James Lindsay and other folks. If there is one
Western progressive who illuminates the emergence of the Red Green Alliance,
it is the French philosopher Michelle foucaut Well. I've mentioned
(05:45):
several times in nineteen seventy eight fou Co was absolutely
the peak of his influence. He was the postmodernist who
is revolutionizing universities with his withering critique of the Western
Enlightenment and values that under in modern liberalism. Fuko is
literally anti Enlightenment, and he is the father of all
(06:08):
critical theory. Okay, And I think people have a tendency
to think, all right, Getty and Lindsay are paranoid or whatever,
or their conspiracy theorists. I had a friend in high
school who was Indian. His parents had emigrated from India
and they were Hindus, and in visiting his house and
(06:33):
hanging out with his family, so it became clear to
me that there were figures in Hinduism that were known
and revered to billions of people around the world, who
I'd never heard of.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I would suggest to you my friends, and you are
my friends.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Fuk is that for the Neomarxists, for those who would
overthrow West civilization, he is a godhead to them.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And you don't know his name, but trust me what
I tell you.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
It's incredibly important that you understand. So this guy was
incredibly influential in the universities in the seventies, and in
nineteen seventy eight he was commissioned by two Italian newspapers
to report on the Iranian Revolution. And like one of
those you know Left East you know Time magazine guys
who were visiting the Soviet Union in one of their
Potempkin villages back in the forties, say or fifties, he
(07:28):
couldn't stop gut gushing about how great the Itola was
and he was going to get rid of the oppression
of Western politics and Zabadabadu. So and this gets a
little complicated, but I'll get to the simple part. Fuco
was a major intellectual influence on the late Columbia University
(07:48):
of professor Edward Sayd's Orientalism now a postcolonial ism study Bible,
which critiqued how Western imperial writers made Arabs, Muslims, and
Easterners objects in their narratives and impose their own agenda
on their histories. Here is the great postmodernist celebrating Ayatola
Komane overthrowing the Western government, even though Komane would would
(08:13):
execute Fuco and his company the first chance they got.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But that was the birthplace of it.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
And until you understand that postmodernism thing, you don't get
critical theory. You don't understand what DEI is and what
it's trying to accomplish. You don't understand queer theory, radical
gender theory. All the confused adolescent girls getting their healthy
breasts removed because they're momentarily confused by you know, adolescents
(08:43):
and puberty and the rest of it. This is all
straight back to Fuco and critical theory.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Clearly, this theory is true in that it is.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Happening.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
I still don't get how you're not argued out of
that position very quickly. If somebody says to you, you
realize if you're in Iran, they would they would murder
you immediately. Oh yes, So I guess I'd better pick
a different group to work with.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
I mean, right, a different philosophy. Here's the thing, and
these people are smart. I mean they're insane, but they're smart.
They convince you completely of their premise that Western society
what was that phrase, uh, have made all other people
objects in their narratives and impose their own agenda on
(09:34):
their histories. The key philosophy of critical theory is that
there is no objective truth there don't even seek it,
it doesn't exist. All there is is narratives, and narratives
come from your culture, and since Western culture is dominant,
it has created a narrative that says the Iyatola Komene
(09:57):
is a monster, but that's just because they're threatened by him,
so they're racists, they're othering him. And once you have
that down to your bones, then you can't be argued
off of it on the basis of me saying they
torture and then kill anybody who's gay or transgender because
I'm a Westerner trying to lie to them using my narrative.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So they don't.
Speaker 6 (10:25):
Believe that Jihadis would murder gay people, or they think
Jahadis only murdered gay people because of the position we've
put them in.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Uh yeah, indirectly, Yeah, the first part, one hundred percent.
And or we have so dominated them and crushed their
spirits and oppressed them that they're acting out in ways
that they won't anymore when the enlightenment comes, when the
Marxist revolution comes. I mean like excusing the crimes of
October seventh. You saw that directly. Look, they're under oppression.
(10:58):
What do you expect them to do? Yeah, and I
don't believe they raped and killed babies. No, they they
just fought back against the oppressor self solution.
Speaker 6 (11:07):
That's a scary thing to be up against. There's way
too many people to believe it.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Oh, and they're in our schools, folks, our elementary schools,
our high schools, and our colleges and our grad schools.
That is one of the dominant philosophies, if not the
dominant philosophy, in our educational complex, which is why I'm
always saying it's the most important problem that faces America,
bigger than China. It's the center Street jihadism, well, post Marxism,
(11:33):
but cultural Marxism, postmodernism, neo Marxism.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
It's interesting because back then, when Mitt Romney was running
for president and after nine to eleven, jihadism did seem
like the biggest problem in the world. And it's a problem,
no doubt. But I'm more worried about neo Marxism in
the foothold it's got in the United States and Western
culture than I am about ji Hotism.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
By a log right right, Yeah, my final word, and folks,
I apologize in advance. I'm gonna use a bad letter
here if you think I don't know that seems kind
of paranoid. These efing people wrote efing books.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Their efing names are on the e fing.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
Spines, and they e fing describe precisely what they're efing
going to do, and they're doing it precisely as they
e fing described.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
End up, scrip.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Crubling societies are brought down by their own decadence.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
If you're interested in this stuff, man, go to YouTube
and just type in James Lindsay he's got some unbelievable
YouTube videos about this that are so damn interesting, and
a great place.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
To start is for the hundredth time his book with
Helen pluckrowse Cynical Theories.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It's it's great.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
So you want a completely different gear here, please, Donald
Donald Trump, just announce the Kennedy Senator Honors for the year,
the various celebrities that they are going to be honoring,
and the list is like you'd expect, and we'll have
that when we come back.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Art together.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
Celebrating one of the most revered singers of the American
disco era, Gloria Gainer, best known for her chart topping
nineteen seventy eight hit I Will Survive.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
There you go.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
So Donald Trump laying out the list of the Kennedy
Center honorees. And I'm not laughing joking because of the
people Trump picked. Really, I mean, I hate the whole thing.
I've always hated the whole thing, and it's always been
run by soup. I learned from the book what was
(13:58):
that book about How We Armed Big? Likeli Wi War,
Charlie Wilson's War. Learn from Charlie Wilson's War, How Big
a Perk? Being part of The Kennedy Center thing is
in Washington, d C. If you're a congress person or whatever,
you can get all kinds of stuff trading for you
(14:20):
get a seat there. I mean, it's like one of
the most prestigious things you can have. And it's always
been run by the progressives, and it's always been progressive
stars and musicians that get to goet comedians and get
go up there and give their speech about how great
Clinton is and how awful Reagan is or whatever. It's
always been that way. I've always hated it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So now Trump has taking it over.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
The elite of entertainment has gone nuts about how awful
that is. So they hate the fact that he's gonna
do his crowd now. But he did his crowd and
he came unannounced. The annual Kennedy Center honors today include
Sylvester Stallone we loved him and Rambo didn't We in
the crowd cheers and stuff like that, and then he
mentions Gloria Gaynor and I Will Survive, which apparently is
(15:00):
song that he plays all the time at mar A Lago.
You know, when he's djaying and he's got the iPad
and he plays music for everybody YMCA and I will
survive her is two go tos. I know that guaranteed
a dance floor packer.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, scary.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
He also went with British actor Michael Crawford, who I
didn't recognize, but that is a guy who was in
the Phantom of the Opera and Trump really really liked
that musical.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So there you go.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And country music star George Strait will be all honored
this year. Uh, how much time we got left?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Michael got about a minute thirty?
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Here, minute thirty. We better get to it quick. This
is brand new hot off the press. Is Trump saying
something to read the whole Putin hymn summit.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I want to hear this in the back. Yeah, places,
that's the president.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
How were your calls this morning with European leaders? And
was it your call not to invite President Zelenski to
your meeting with Putin?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No, just the opposite. No, No, we had a very
good call.
Speaker 8 (15:55):
He was on the call, President Zelenski was on the call.
I would rate it at ten, you know, very very friendly.
I know the leaders because I was at NATO, as
you know, I took it from two percent to five percent.
Two percent that wasn't paid five percent that is paid,
which is trillions of dollars in defense capability.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Uh No, it was always going to be. I was
going to meet with President Putin.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
And then after that, I'm going to call the leaders
and Presidents Lensky, I'm going to call Presidents Zolenski, and
then I'll call, probably in that order, the leaders. There's
a very good chance that we're going to have a
second meeting, which will be more productive than the.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
First, because the first is I'm going.
Speaker 8 (16:35):
To find out where we are and what we're doing.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Hmm. Don't feel like I gained a lot from that,
other than he's got more or less planned a second
meeting with Putin.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And uh and he in Europe's involved, and Zelensky's involved,
and he called it a ten and he didn't he
called him President Zelenski and didn't have anything negative all
didn't even hint anything negative.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So I'm happy with that. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Yeah, But I mean, if they've already agreed on essentially
a second meeting, the fear of it stringing along and
stringing along as I mean, it's it's almost a certainty,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I guarantee? Yeah, secret to happiness.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Next arrong and.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Moments of anxiety, of loneliness.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
So many people who suffer from different experiences of depression
or sadness, they can discover that the love of God
is truly healing, that it brings hope.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
That's your Chicago pope right there. Well he's the pope
of everything everywhere, but he's from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
That's Pope Leo. If you need him talking about happiness speaking,
I didn't. I didn't recognize his voice.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
Okay, speaking of which, there are trio of stories that
we really don't have time for because we're going to
do something related. But we'll get to him eventually. Alarming
new study find smartphones are ruining our brains at unprecedented speed,
and it specifically has to do with young people graded
on a variety of psychological factors. And it's miserable. In fact,
(18:14):
you need that catastrophic? Do you need that to know that?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
I don't, but it is striking, how striking it is?
Then this story, when did all these people become therapists?
As AI threatens creative careers, writers, actors, and musicians are
pivoting to pursue masters in psychology and social work, and
it's actually not that nutty. A lot of like writers
(18:40):
are saying, you know, I've spent my entire career trying
to understand human psychology and write convincing characters, and what
would people do in this situation?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So they're all becoming counselors.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
They're no a therapist who kind of got into it
late iss in life. End's making lots of money, are
clients than they can handle. I don't know if that's
going to last through chat GPT because we've talked about
what a great therapist it seems to be. But you know,
since since since COVID, there's there's more demand than supply
(19:12):
in the therapy world. Yeah, yeah, I just I worry
these poor bastards are going to get their degree in
you know, social work and psychology and whatever in chat GPT.
You know, AI is going to replace therapists. But anyway,
I wish them well.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
And then finally the third story, we're not actually going
to get to the fabulous Abigail Shreier, who is fabulous,
is talking about the now wide spread like Illinois is
just signed into law their their child mule aiding Governor JB.
Pritzker signed in law mandatory annual mental health screenings for
(19:47):
all public school children in third through twelfth grades. And
the title of our article is stop asking if stop asking.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Kids if they're depressed.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Swiss children are wildly suggestible asking repeatedly if they're mentally ill.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
She might just decide she is right because I had
I don't think i'd ever even heard of the concept
of depressed when I was in third grade, but if
you explained it to me, I might have decided, huh,
maybe I'm depressed. I had never thought about it before.
But if I was told we're going to do mental
health screening on your son, I'd say, no, you ain't.
(20:25):
I'd like to know a lot more about this before
you do this is what is this going to look like?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:31):
Abigail who has written a couple of really important books,
including just last year she published a book called Bad Therapy,
an investigation into the surgeon adolescent mental health diagnoses and
psychiatric prescription drug use.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Anyway, because I yeah, go ahead, my kneed Jeric.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
It might like with my local school system. Is if
I heard they're gonna do mental health screening testing on
your son, I would think, Okay, They're gonna sit him
down and say do you ever sometimes.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Feel like a girl? Are you sure you don't? Have
you ever? Just have you ever?
Speaker 6 (21:02):
Do you like musicals? Or have you ever played with dolls?
You can be honest here. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Interesting, So do you I mean, do.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
You know your gender is different than you know? How
sex the doctors guessed at right, right. So anyway, there's
plenty to get into there, and we will absolutely. But
the point is, I think we're all kind of a
lot of people are searching for for what we used
to have or had more. Anyway, I mentioned Arthur Brooks
(21:30):
yesterday did an interview with Brett Bear on Special Report
a couple of days ago talking about his new book,
which is all about the actual pillars of happiness. Let's
start with thirty one here, Michael, and we'll pick and
choose a few more.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Or what are the things that we need to think
about well, happiness front.
Speaker 10 (21:46):
Well, to begin with ordinary citizens around the country. They
want to be good citizens, they want to pay attention,
they want to know what's going on. I admire that,
but the truth of the matter is that if you
watch too much politics, they're not there to make you happy.
On the contrary, there to actually win you over and
the way that they do that is through fear and anger.
That's what politicians do. So people have to be very
careful how much are that they're looking at. This is
(22:08):
a bad influence, This is walking through a bad media
neighborhood sometimes, so.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
A little goes a whole, It goes a pretty long way.
Speaker 10 (22:15):
Maybe fifteen minutes in the morning and special report at night,
and that that should be.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
A pretty well for the little ad there.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
So one might say, dudes, you talk a lot of
politics on your show. Well, that's one of the reasons
that we try very hard to our ideas to help
you understand what's going on and help ourselves understand what's
actually happening in the world, as opposed to the you know,
the rhetoric politicians whose interest is just whipping you up
(22:42):
and making you money. So I feel like we kind
of are trying to do the opposite of that. Anyway,
mister Brooks goes on, this is the key right here.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Thirty two.
Speaker 10 (22:53):
The happiest people do four things every day. They pay
attention to their faith or life philosophy. They pay attention
to their family, They cultivate their friendships, and they try
to serve other people through their work, faith, family friends,
and serving other people through your work. Those are the
Those are the happiness pillars. That's the happiness four oh
one K plan.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
He didn't mention many hundreds of thousands of followers online.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
I'm rock solid on one and two. I think four
z practically zero one three. So you know, so seventy
five percent?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
What is that?
Speaker 6 (23:26):
A C minus?
Speaker 5 (23:28):
You know what? Yeah, you're past. So once again, it's
a family friends.
Speaker 6 (23:36):
Faith was the first one.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Faith, that's right, and then other people. That's right, sir.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And then he talks about how when people engage in
online bitter snark, they actually get less happy, and it
describes in the book how they did these studies.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
That doesn't surprise me a bit either.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
Yeah, it's not like you dance around, touchdown dance, I
got him. Yeah, this is great. I'm really having fun. No,
you just consume with anger.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
I've heard this before, but I heard it again yesterday,
this meme of sorry, honey, I'll beat to bed in
a minute. Somebody just said something on the internet that
wasn't true and I have.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
To fix it. Yeah, right, Well, thanks for happiness.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
And then they talk a little bit about how exercise
is really good. It resets your brain in a way
that's incredibly powerful.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Anybody who does it knows that that's the case.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
That's the best thing I can do, speaking for myself,
if I'm really in a foul frame of mind, is
just to just to get my blood flow in my
heart pumping anyway. But then he gets well, thirty five
takes care of itself. Michael Roland, do you.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
Think we're getting more happy as a culture or less
less so?
Speaker 10 (24:44):
And that's really pretty alarming. I've been looking at data
going all the way back to nineteen ninety and we
find kind of things tiken down. Remember faith, family, friends,
in work, or the happiness habits, and all four of
those things have been in decline over the past thirty years.
Then there's been these storms as well, these kind of
hurricanes have happy In two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine, when everybody got smartphones and they got social
(25:04):
media apps on their phone, terrible for happiness. What happened
with polarization were being encouraged to hate our neighbors because
they don't vote like us.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Awful and last, but not.
Speaker 10 (25:13):
At least, of course, was our response as a nation
to the coronavirus epidemic, locking everybody down, more loneliness, more depression.
Those things have been real bad for our happiness.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Putting aside the constitutional horror of the COVID shutdowns, the
crime against the assault on people's souls, particularly children, We've
talked about it plenty here, it is cruelly under discussed
in society. I think there's a huge mass of people
(25:43):
who they don't understand the damage they did, and they
feel that they did the right thing and that they're heroes.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
I hate you people. If you feel like you're a
hero for that, then I hate you with a deep,
deep hatred that will keep me from being happy.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Yeah, you see it. Still people talking about how you
know anybody who was the least a bit hesitant over
the COVID vaccine, or anybody who didn't think young soldiers
need to get it, or anybody who wanted to open schools.
The most powerful teachers' unions in the nation are pitching
the idea that they are heroes for keeping the kids
(26:22):
at home alone.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
I traveled quite a bit during COVID, and I said
that in a certain setting one day and a person said,
oh my god, you traveled during COVID. You concerned about
spreading the disease all over.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
I'm just like, no, they had.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
I flew for practically nothing, and the hotels.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Were like giving the rooms away. It was awesome, right.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
It's several times a week I run across some person,
whether they're you know, progressive Ninnis or somebody you know
of a more reasonable of you. But they're talking about
how life changed so completely and fundamentally during COVID. And
if I'd had kids in public school at that point,
(27:09):
that would have absolutely been true. But for me, in
a very conservative county of California, of all places, life
changed very very little. We had barbecues, folks, we had
get togethers with friends, we went drinking, we got together
after golf.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
There were very very few.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Changes to our lives, and nobody got sick disproportionately or
died those who were weak and vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Some lost people they loved.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
And I don't mean to minimize that grief in the least,
but all of that was misplaced and it's terrible, and
if we ever have another pandemic, that's the last thing
we should do. And I'm not bragging or anything, or
look how brave I am. No, I'm saying everybody needs
to understand the Well, part of it was just stubbornness,
(27:58):
and I will not let people do that to me
if I don't want them to anyway. Worried about it,
Well yeah, well yeah, I mean it all goes into
the same thing. That's how you formed the belief that
that was wrong, but in a weird way. I think
people need to be unhappier about what happened to them
(28:19):
to then, because you know, one other factor of happiness
that you hear about a lot from you know the
learned is that if you have some sense of self determination,
that gives people satisfaction. And I think empowering people to say,
what was done to you during COVID was awful. They
(28:42):
convinced you and authority figures that it was for your
own good, but what they did to you was terrible.
Now go forward in your life knowing that and with
the courage to stand up for yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think that's empowering to people.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
I flew into San Diego a couple of times, like
eighty bucks a ticket, stayed at the Hilton and the
Gas Lamp for I think seventy five dollars a room.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
It was awesome Yeah, compare reason prices, folks. You'll get
his point in an empty airplane. Oh god, it was
so great.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Yeah, no traffic, Bring back COVID, Bring back COVID except
for the.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
School part and the freaking masks.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
Yeah, oh yeah, we'll finish strong next.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
I'm a big believer in love. Will she actually get
engaged to the famous chiefs tight end mister Calsey At
this particular point, the betting markets say there's only a
twenty six percent chance that it happens this year.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
That's an analyst on CNN for some reason, giving the
betting odds of whether Taylor Swift Mayors marries her football
player boyfriend. You go back a few years and it's
hard to imagine why CNN would have an analyst.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
Okay, well, although the Taylor Swift getting engaged to Travis
Kelsey Benning analyst did put the number at twenty six percent,
which seems low to me, Jack, which seems oddly specific,
not around a quarter twenty six, Almost as if they're
(30:23):
trying to make horse s seem like science, right, exactly exactly,
like they plugged in all these different sicker circumstances into
a formula an algorithm and came up with twenty five
point eight.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, round it to twenty six percent.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
We had our Taylor Swift supercomputer run five thousand simulations
to predict whether right.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
In some simulations, Travis Kelcey has a season ending injury.
In some simulations, the Chiefs win the Super Bowl. In
some simulations, Taylor Swift loses her voice or gets fat.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Oh wow, see you've got That's why science is involved
in supercomputers.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You need to take all of that into consideration.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
It's not as simple as she's hot, he's hot there young,
Yeah bet they no, No, didn't get to this today.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
AI robs my students of the ability to think. This
is this college professor who says.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Students have told her.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
That they feel like their ability to write or think
has diminished since they started using AI. Well, well, I'll
take their word for it. I can't believe it happened
that fast, although I wouldn't have believed that my ability
to read long form books would have been damaged as
quickly as it has been by smartphones.
Speaker 5 (31:47):
Yeah, I just I'm a firm believer in the the
The muscles of the intellect have to be exercised or
they go slack. Yeah, like probably not a great metamorid
if I was a smarter guy, have a better metaphor
for you.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
Yeah, your muscles go atrophy super fast if you don't
use them. See the astronauts. I mean, like ridiculously fast.
And I'm sure obviously our brain does to a certain
extence or parts of our brain.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
With the whole paying attention to reading thing. It's troubling.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
And then the most interesting thing that happened to me
yesterday probably has got to be the Groc story that
I've already told of driving in my Tesla is on
my way to a meeting, and I was thinking about
this meeting, and I thought, just for fun, since Groc
is now in the Tesla screen, I just said, hey, Groc,
I'm going to this meeting, and I got a blah
blah blah, laid out the scenario, and Groc said, in
(32:40):
her voice, well, here's what you should do. Why don't
you blah blah blah, And if they react this way,
you could say that.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Do you want any other suggestions? I said nah? And
she said, cool, you got this? Why not? What the
hell just happened?
Speaker 9 (32:54):
Yah?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
What the hell just happened.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
But as we discussed early in the show chat, GP
just put out is their edition number five, whatever they
call it, and they're getting real blowback from users because
it's dropped some of that. Not only am I human,
I'm your buddy and I believe in you stuff. People
liked it better when it was doing that. Maybe some
(33:18):
people need the.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Kind of.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Football coach cheerleader thing in their life for some reason.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I don't need.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
A computer program to say, great, you got this to me.
That's just freaking weird.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Right well, and I will think, wow, that's interesting. That
provoked emotional response in me. That's a machine. How odd.
But I think a lot of people just go, I
feel good.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I'm strong, I'm strong.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
I'm strong.
Speaker 6 (34:08):
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Hey, let's get a final thought from everybody on the
crew to wrap up the show for the day. There
he is pressing the buttons, Michael Angelo. Michael, what's your
final thought?
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Okay, I'm gonna make this prediction, mark my words.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I think this is gonna happen.
Speaker 11 (34:21):
Trump lets putin invade Vancouver and he gives up Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
What do you think?
Speaker 5 (34:27):
Wow, it's Vancouver isn't technically ours, But that's a hell
of a deal. That's what makes it such a trumpy deal,
Katie Green or a Steam Newswoman.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 6 (34:36):
Talking about COVID brought back the memory of a well
now past friend who read me the Riot Act for
flying to see my parents during that bizarre time.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Oh really, yeah, and I'm alive.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I made it.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Who you gotta let grandma die alone? Otherwise you're a
bad person, I swear to God.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
Anyway, Jack final thought, do I have the guts to
try driving down the road to my testla and say, hey,
groc had a rough day at work, My kids are ungrateful.
I think I'm gonna just drive my car into the
next cemental buttment?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
Oh now, reacts, No, Hey, I hear you, brother, Let's
do this.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You got this.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
Just certifize considerably more cheery. I was wandering around in
our our remodel area yesterday at home and was admiring the.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Work of the carpenter's court.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Building, the roof, and so much more goes into it
than I'd realized. And it's the skill is and and
care is amazing. So I salute ye who builds stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I really admire you. Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
Wrap up another grueling four hour workday.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
So many people think, so little time. Good Armstrong and
Getdy dot com. A lot of great clicks there the
hot LANs Katie's Corner. Drop us a note mail bag
at Armstrong and Getty dot com. Pick up a T
shirt or a hoodie while you're there. It'll be chilly
soon enough cool.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
We will see you tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I'm Strong and Getty. There were so many great moments.
Speaker 6 (36:11):
On today's Armstrong and Getty Show, but perhaps none as
great as this man.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Sound like it's hearing day. We need your walt Man
and you over there. We need your mutton.
Speaker 5 (36:27):
Yes, yes, slaughter me take my maid.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I have no will of my own bath. Bye bye,
Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and
get and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Newly released drone video shows Palestinian militants pretending to be
workers from the World's Central Kitchen. They travel in two cars,
one marked with the flag of the Humanitarian Organization before
they're hit by IDF airstrikes.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Uck in real time, we're able to verify that vehicle
was not connected to the organization in any way, which
means those heres were using that as a disguise for
their terror activity inside Gaza.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Israeli airstrikes targeted multiple areas of the enclave over the
past twenty four hours, killing dozens of Palestinian civilians.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
Okay, So in spite of that, it's absolutely documented, undeniable
that Hamas guys were masquerading as food relief guys. NPR
considers it completely impossible that they would impersonate journalists, or
at least that's what they're saying in this sence, and
those views are supported practically to a person by the
American left and a lot of the left in a
(01:20):
lot of the Western world.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What the hell is going on.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
To quote Eli Lake, who's a brilliant writer in the West,
the politics of the Gaza War feature a strange marriage
between political Islam and the twenty first century Western left,
for instance, the Democratic Socialists of America. This is Mumdani's
crew simultaneously support making New York a national hub for
(01:43):
transgender medicine and want to globalize the Intofada.
Speaker 6 (01:48):
Yeah, that is a good point.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
It supp it supports the bleeding edge of social progressive
values while throwing its full support behind the fanatic fascists
who film their mass murder Jews and proudly posted the
videos to Telegram. And Lake in an absolutely fabulous piece
that will post I think you might get paywalled, but
maybe not, talks about how the what's called the red
(02:13):
Green alliance among people who think about this sort of thing,
how it came up, and it really came up, and
yes he was red, and who's green here? Reds is
and communists in green, the color of Hamas and radical
Islam and various thank you for asking for the clarification
to hit for the room.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Anyway.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
A lot of this arose during Iran's Islamic Revolution nineteen
seventy eight and seventy nine, and he goes into and
it's so interesting the details of how Ayatola Komeni, who
is in exile in France, started giving all sorts of
really carefully controlled interviews to American and European media outlets,
(02:55):
and how they're on this pr campaign to convince the
West that he's a reasonable fellow. In fact, he's really
for democracy, and Lake is writing. Anybody who spent ten
minutes looking into Komaney knew that he was a hardcore
(03:15):
is Lomist monster. You didn't even have to try to
figure it out. But the left of American journalism, in
Western journalism, and some folks like in the Carter administration
became completely convinced and touted in the face of all
of this that no, he was actually a really good guy.
(03:39):
Richard Falk, a Princeton professor of international law who met
with Gomany during his exile outside of Paris. Andrew Young,
Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that
the Iotola will eventually be regarded as a saint like
this folk, the Princeton professor. And because people were saying
(04:02):
there are some on the right who said, look, this
guy's a reactionary and a terrorist, and he said, to
suppose that Iotola Coomania is disassembling seems almost beyond belief.
His political style is to express his real views defiantly
and without apology, regardless of consequences.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Thus the depiction of him as a fanatical reactionary and
the bearer of crude prejudices seem certainly and happily false.
I know. Is also encouraging is that as entourage of
close advisors is uniformly and composed of moderate progressive individuals.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
I know you and Eli Lake are about to explain
to me why. But is it just as simple as
the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and my
enemy is mean the United States? So somebody who doesn't
like us is good.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
To I like.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Right, There's more to it than that, but yeah, the
very short version of it is essentially, wait a minute,
you want to overthrow Western civilization. I want to overthrow
Western civilization.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
You want to.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Impose Islamism, but I want to impose Marxism. Well, I
tell you what, how about we work together and then
when the civilization's overthrown, will peacefully cooperate and divide the spoils. Then,
of course, like in every revolution, they kill each other
as fast as they can. But there's one more factor.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You got jihad in my queer studies.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
You got queer studies in my jihad.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Two great tastes. It tastes great together. Oh that's beautiful anyway.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
So this brings us to the connection between something I
have been harping about for a very long time, as
has James Lindsay and other folks. If there is one
Western progressive who illuminates the emergence of the Red Green Alliance,
it is the French philosopher Michelle foucaut Well. I've mentioned
(05:45):
several times in nineteen seventy eight fou Co was absolutely
the peak of his influence. He was the postmodernist who
is revolutionizing universities with his withering critique of the Western
Enlightenment and values that under in modern liberalism. Fuko is
literally anti Enlightenment, and he is the father of all
(06:08):
critical theory. Okay, And I think people have a tendency
to think, all right, Getty and Lindsay are paranoid or whatever,
or their conspiracy theorists. I had a friend in high
school who was Indian. His parents had emigrated from India
and they were Hindus, and in visiting his house and
(06:33):
hanging out with his family, so it became clear to
me that there were figures in Hinduism that were known
and revered to billions of people around the world, who
I'd never heard of.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I would suggest to you my friends, and you are
my friends.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Fuk is that for the Neomarxists, for those who would
overthrow West civilization, he is a godhead to them.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
And you don't know his name, but trust me what
I tell you.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
It's incredibly important that you understand. So this guy was
incredibly influential in the universities in the seventies, and in
nineteen seventy eight he was commissioned by two Italian newspapers
to report on the Iranian Revolution. And like one of
those you know Left East you know Time magazine guys
who were visiting the Soviet Union in one of their
Potempkin villages back in the forties, say or fifties, he
(07:28):
couldn't stop gut gushing about how great the Itola was
and he was going to get rid of the oppression
of Western politics and Zabadabadu. So and this gets a
little complicated, but I'll get to the simple part. Fuco
was a major intellectual influence on the late Columbia University
(07:48):
of professor Edward Sayd's Orientalism now a postcolonial ism study Bible,
which critiqued how Western imperial writers made Arabs, Muslims, and
Easterners objects in their narratives and impose their own agenda
on their histories. Here is the great postmodernist celebrating Ayatola
Komane overthrowing the Western government, even though Komane would would
(08:13):
execute Fuco and his company the first chance they got.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But that was the birthplace of it.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
And until you understand that postmodernism thing, you don't get
critical theory. You don't understand what DEI is and what
it's trying to accomplish. You don't understand queer theory, radical
gender theory. All the confused adolescent girls getting their healthy
breasts removed because they're momentarily confused by you know, adolescents
(08:43):
and puberty and the rest of it. This is all
straight back to Fuco and critical theory.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Clearly, this theory is true in that it is.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Happening.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
I still don't get how you're not argued out of
that position very quickly. If somebody says to you, you
realize if you're in Iran, they would they would murder
you immediately. Oh yes, So I guess I'd better pick
a different group to work with.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
I mean, right, a different philosophy. Here's the thing, and
these people are smart. I mean they're insane, but they're smart.
They convince you completely of their premise that Western society
what was that phrase, uh, have made all other people
objects in their narratives and impose their own agenda on
(09:34):
their histories. The key philosophy of critical theory is that
there is no objective truth there don't even seek it,
it doesn't exist. All there is is narratives, and narratives
come from your culture, and since Western culture is dominant,
it has created a narrative that says the Iyatola Komene
(09:57):
is a monster, but that's just because they're threatened by him,
so they're racists, they're othering him. And once you have
that down to your bones, then you can't be argued
off of it on the basis of me saying they
torture and then kill anybody who's gay or transgender because
I'm a Westerner trying to lie to them using my narrative.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So they don't.
Speaker 6 (10:25):
Believe that Jihadis would murder gay people, or they think
Jahadis only murdered gay people because of the position we've
put them in.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Uh yeah, indirectly, Yeah, the first part, one hundred percent.
And or we have so dominated them and crushed their
spirits and oppressed them that they're acting out in ways
that they won't anymore when the enlightenment comes, when the
Marxist revolution comes. I mean like excusing the crimes of
October seventh. You saw that directly. Look, they're under oppression.
(10:58):
What do you expect them to do? Yeah, and I
don't believe they raped and killed babies. No, they they
just fought back against the oppressor self solution.
Speaker 6 (11:07):
That's a scary thing to be up against. There's way
too many people to believe it.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Oh, and they're in our schools, folks, our elementary schools,
our high schools, and our colleges and our grad schools.
That is one of the dominant philosophies, if not the
dominant philosophy, in our educational complex, which is why I'm
always saying it's the most important problem that faces America,
bigger than China. It's the center Street jihadism, well, post Marxism,
(11:33):
but cultural Marxism, postmodernism, neo Marxism.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
It's interesting because back then, when Mitt Romney was running
for president and after nine to eleven, jihadism did seem
like the biggest problem in the world. And it's a problem,
no doubt. But I'm more worried about neo Marxism in
the foothold it's got in the United States and Western
culture than I am about ji Hotism.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
By a log right right, Yeah, my final word, and folks,
I apologize in advance. I'm gonna use a bad letter
here if you think I don't know that seems kind
of paranoid. These efing people wrote efing books.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Their efing names are on the e fing.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
Spines, and they e fing describe precisely what they're efing
going to do, and they're doing it precisely as they
e fing described.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
End up, scrip.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Crubling societies are brought down by their own decadence.
Speaker 6 (12:39):
If you're interested in this stuff, man, go to YouTube
and just type in James Lindsay he's got some unbelievable
YouTube videos about this that are so damn interesting, and
a great place.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
To start is for the hundredth time his book with
Helen pluckrowse Cynical Theories.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It's it's great.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
So you want a completely different gear here, please, Donald
Donald Trump, just announce the Kennedy Senator Honors for the year,
the various celebrities that they are going to be honoring,
and the list is like you'd expect, and we'll have
that when we come back.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Art together.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
Celebrating one of the most revered singers of the American
disco era, Gloria Gainer, best known for her chart topping
nineteen seventy eight hit I Will Survive.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
There you go.
Speaker 6 (13:36):
So Donald Trump laying out the list of the Kennedy
Center honorees. And I'm not laughing joking because of the
people Trump picked. Really, I mean, I hate the whole thing.
I've always hated the whole thing, and it's always been
run by soup. I learned from the book what was
(13:58):
that book about How We Armed Big? Likeli Wi War,
Charlie Wilson's War. Learn from Charlie Wilson's War, How Big
a Perk? Being part of The Kennedy Center thing is
in Washington, d C. If you're a congress person or whatever,
you can get all kinds of stuff trading for you
(14:20):
get a seat there. I mean, it's like one of
the most prestigious things you can have. And it's always
been run by the progressives, and it's always been progressive
stars and musicians that get to goet comedians and get
go up there and give their speech about how great
Clinton is and how awful Reagan is or whatever. It's
always been that way. I've always hated it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
So now Trump has taking it over.
Speaker 6 (14:38):
The elite of entertainment has gone nuts about how awful
that is. So they hate the fact that he's gonna
do his crowd now. But he did his crowd and
he came unannounced. The annual Kennedy Center honors today include
Sylvester Stallone we loved him and Rambo didn't We in
the crowd cheers and stuff like that, and then he
mentions Gloria Gaynor and I Will Survive, which apparently is
(15:00):
song that he plays all the time at mar A Lago.
You know, when he's djaying and he's got the iPad
and he plays music for everybody YMCA and I will
survive her is two go tos. I know that guaranteed
a dance floor packer.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, scary.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
He also went with British actor Michael Crawford, who I
didn't recognize, but that is a guy who was in
the Phantom of the Opera and Trump really really liked
that musical.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So there you go.
Speaker 6 (15:25):
And country music star George Strait will be all honored
this year. Uh, how much time we got left?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Michael got about a minute thirty?
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Here, minute thirty. We better get to it quick. This
is brand new hot off the press. Is Trump saying
something to read the whole Putin hymn summit.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I want to hear this in the back. Yeah, places,
that's the president.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
How were your calls this morning with European leaders? And
was it your call not to invite President Zelenski to
your meeting with Putin?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No, just the opposite. No, No, we had a very
good call.
Speaker 8 (15:55):
He was on the call, President Zelenski was on the call.
I would rate it at ten, you know, very very friendly.
I know the leaders because I was at NATO, as
you know, I took it from two percent to five percent.
Two percent that wasn't paid five percent that is paid,
which is trillions of dollars in defense capability.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Uh No, it was always going to be. I was
going to meet with President Putin.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
And then after that, I'm going to call the leaders
and Presidents Lensky, I'm going to call Presidents Zolenski, and
then I'll call, probably in that order, the leaders. There's
a very good chance that we're going to have a
second meeting, which will be more productive than the.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
First, because the first is I'm going.
Speaker 8 (16:35):
To find out where we are and what we're doing.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
Hmm. Don't feel like I gained a lot from that,
other than he's got more or less planned a second
meeting with Putin.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And uh and he in Europe's involved, and Zelensky's involved,
and he called it a ten and he didn't he
called him President Zelenski and didn't have anything negative all
didn't even hint anything negative.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So I'm happy with that. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Yeah, But I mean, if they've already agreed on essentially
a second meeting, the fear of it stringing along and
stringing along as I mean, it's it's almost a certainty,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I guarantee? Yeah, secret to happiness.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Next arrong and.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Moments of anxiety, of loneliness.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
So many people who suffer from different experiences of depression
or sadness, they can discover that the love of God
is truly healing, that it brings hope.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
That's your Chicago pope right there. Well he's the pope
of everything everywhere, but he's from Chicago.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
That's Pope Leo. If you need him talking about happiness speaking,
I didn't. I didn't recognize his voice.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
Okay, speaking of which, there are trio of stories that
we really don't have time for because we're going to
do something related. But we'll get to him eventually. Alarming
new study find smartphones are ruining our brains at unprecedented speed,
and it specifically has to do with young people graded
on a variety of psychological factors. And it's miserable. In fact,
(18:14):
you need that catastrophic? Do you need that to know that?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
I don't, but it is striking, how striking it is?
Then this story, when did all these people become therapists?
As AI threatens creative careers, writers, actors, and musicians are
pivoting to pursue masters in psychology and social work, and
it's actually not that nutty. A lot of like writers
(18:40):
are saying, you know, I've spent my entire career trying
to understand human psychology and write convincing characters, and what
would people do in this situation?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So they're all becoming counselors.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
They're no a therapist who kind of got into it
late iss in life. End's making lots of money, are
clients than they can handle. I don't know if that's
going to last through chat GPT because we've talked about
what a great therapist it seems to be. But you know,
since since since COVID, there's there's more demand than supply
(19:12):
in the therapy world. Yeah, yeah, I just I worry
these poor bastards are going to get their degree in
you know, social work and psychology and whatever in chat GPT.
You know, AI is going to replace therapists. But anyway,
I wish them well.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
And then finally the third story, we're not actually going
to get to the fabulous Abigail Shreier, who is fabulous,
is talking about the now wide spread like Illinois is
just signed into law their their child mule aiding Governor JB.
Pritzker signed in law mandatory annual mental health screenings for
(19:47):
all public school children in third through twelfth grades. And
the title of our article is stop asking if stop asking.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Kids if they're depressed.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Swiss children are wildly suggestible asking repeatedly if they're mentally ill.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
She might just decide she is right because I had
I don't think i'd ever even heard of the concept
of depressed when I was in third grade, but if
you explained it to me, I might have decided, huh,
maybe I'm depressed. I had never thought about it before.
But if I was told we're going to do mental
health screening on your son, I'd say, no, you ain't.
(20:25):
I'd like to know a lot more about this before
you do this is what is this going to look like?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:31):
Abigail who has written a couple of really important books,
including just last year she published a book called Bad Therapy,
an investigation into the surgeon adolescent mental health diagnoses and
psychiatric prescription drug use.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Anyway, because I yeah, go ahead, my kneed Jeric.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
It might like with my local school system. Is if
I heard they're gonna do mental health screening testing on
your son, I would think, Okay, They're gonna sit him
down and say do you ever sometimes.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Feel like a girl? Are you sure you don't? Have
you ever? Just have you ever?
Speaker 6 (21:02):
Do you like musicals? Or have you ever played with dolls?
You can be honest here. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Interesting, So do you I mean, do.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
You know your gender is different than you know? How
sex the doctors guessed at right, right. So anyway, there's
plenty to get into there, and we will absolutely. But
the point is, I think we're all kind of a
lot of people are searching for for what we used
to have or had more. Anyway, I mentioned Arthur Brooks
(21:30):
yesterday did an interview with Brett Bear on Special Report
a couple of days ago talking about his new book,
which is all about the actual pillars of happiness. Let's
start with thirty one here, Michael, and we'll pick and
choose a few more.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Or what are the things that we need to think
about well, happiness front.
Speaker 10 (21:46):
Well, to begin with ordinary citizens around the country. They
want to be good citizens, they want to pay attention,
they want to know what's going on. I admire that,
but the truth of the matter is that if you
watch too much politics, they're not there to make you happy.
On the contrary, there to actually win you over and
the way that they do that is through fear and anger.
That's what politicians do. So people have to be very
careful how much are that they're looking at. This is
(22:08):
a bad influence, This is walking through a bad media
neighborhood sometimes, so.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
A little goes a whole, It goes a pretty long way.
Speaker 10 (22:15):
Maybe fifteen minutes in the morning and special report at night,
and that that should be.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
A pretty well for the little ad there.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
So one might say, dudes, you talk a lot of
politics on your show. Well, that's one of the reasons
that we try very hard to our ideas to help
you understand what's going on and help ourselves understand what's
actually happening in the world, as opposed to the you know,
the rhetoric politicians whose interest is just whipping you up
(22:42):
and making you money. So I feel like we kind
of are trying to do the opposite of that. Anyway,
mister Brooks goes on, this is the key right here.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Thirty two.
Speaker 10 (22:53):
The happiest people do four things every day. They pay
attention to their faith or life philosophy. They pay attention
to their family, They cultivate their friendships, and they try
to serve other people through their work, faith, family friends,
and serving other people through your work. Those are the
Those are the happiness pillars. That's the happiness four oh
one K plan.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
He didn't mention many hundreds of thousands of followers online.
Speaker 6 (23:16):
I'm rock solid on one and two. I think four
z practically zero one three. So you know, so seventy
five percent?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
What is that?
Speaker 6 (23:26):
A C minus?
Speaker 5 (23:28):
You know what? Yeah, you're past. So once again, it's
a family friends.
Speaker 6 (23:36):
Faith was the first one.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Faith, that's right, and then other people. That's right, sir.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
And then he talks about how when people engage in
online bitter snark, they actually get less happy, and it
describes in the book how they did these studies.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
That doesn't surprise me a bit either.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
Yeah, it's not like you dance around, touchdown dance, I
got him. Yeah, this is great. I'm really having fun. No,
you just consume with anger.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
I've heard this before, but I heard it again yesterday,
this meme of sorry, honey, I'll beat to bed in
a minute. Somebody just said something on the internet that
wasn't true and I have.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
To fix it. Yeah, right, Well, thanks for happiness.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
And then they talk a little bit about how exercise
is really good. It resets your brain in a way
that's incredibly powerful.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Anybody who does it knows that that's the case.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
That's the best thing I can do, speaking for myself,
if I'm really in a foul frame of mind, is
just to just to get my blood flow in my
heart pumping anyway. But then he gets well, thirty five
takes care of itself. Michael Roland, do you.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
Think we're getting more happy as a culture or less
less so?
Speaker 10 (24:44):
And that's really pretty alarming. I've been looking at data
going all the way back to nineteen ninety and we
find kind of things tiken down. Remember faith, family, friends,
in work, or the happiness habits, and all four of
those things have been in decline over the past thirty years.
Then there's been these storms as well, these kind of
hurricanes have happy In two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine, when everybody got smartphones and they got social
(25:04):
media apps on their phone, terrible for happiness. What happened
with polarization were being encouraged to hate our neighbors because
they don't vote like us.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Awful and last, but not.
Speaker 10 (25:13):
At least, of course, was our response as a nation
to the coronavirus epidemic, locking everybody down, more loneliness, more depression.
Those things have been real bad for our happiness.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Putting aside the constitutional horror of the COVID shutdowns, the
crime against the assault on people's souls, particularly children, We've
talked about it plenty here, it is cruelly under discussed
in society. I think there's a huge mass of people
(25:43):
who they don't understand the damage they did, and they
feel that they did the right thing and that they're heroes.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
I hate you people. If you feel like you're a
hero for that, then I hate you with a deep,
deep hatred that will keep me from being happy.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
Yeah, you see it. Still people talking about how you
know anybody who was the least a bit hesitant over
the COVID vaccine, or anybody who didn't think young soldiers
need to get it, or anybody who wanted to open schools.
The most powerful teachers' unions in the nation are pitching
the idea that they are heroes for keeping the kids
(26:22):
at home alone.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
I traveled quite a bit during COVID, and I said
that in a certain setting one day and a person said,
oh my god, you traveled during COVID. You concerned about
spreading the disease all over.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
I'm just like, no, they had.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
I flew for practically nothing, and the hotels.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Were like giving the rooms away. It was awesome, right.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
It's several times a week I run across some person,
whether they're you know, progressive Ninnis or somebody you know
of a more reasonable of you. But they're talking about
how life changed so completely and fundamentally during COVID. And
if I'd had kids in public school at that point,
(27:09):
that would have absolutely been true. But for me, in
a very conservative county of California, of all places, life
changed very very little. We had barbecues, folks, we had
get togethers with friends, we went drinking, we got together
after golf.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
There were very very few.
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Changes to our lives, and nobody got sick disproportionately or
died those who were weak and vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Some lost people they loved.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
And I don't mean to minimize that grief in the least,
but all of that was misplaced and it's terrible, and
if we ever have another pandemic, that's the last thing
we should do. And I'm not bragging or anything, or
look how brave I am. No, I'm saying everybody needs
to understand the Well, part of it was just stubbornness,
(27:58):
and I will not let people do that to me
if I don't want them to anyway. Worried about it,
Well yeah, well yeah, I mean it all goes into
the same thing. That's how you formed the belief that
that was wrong, but in a weird way. I think
people need to be unhappier about what happened to them
(28:19):
to then, because you know, one other factor of happiness
that you hear about a lot from you know the
learned is that if you have some sense of self determination,
that gives people satisfaction. And I think empowering people to say,
what was done to you during COVID was awful. They
(28:42):
convinced you and authority figures that it was for your
own good, but what they did to you was terrible.
Now go forward in your life knowing that and with
the courage to stand up for yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think that's empowering to people.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
I flew into San Diego a couple of times, like
eighty bucks a ticket, stayed at the Hilton and the
Gas Lamp for I think seventy five dollars a room.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
It was awesome Yeah, compare reason prices, folks. You'll get
his point in an empty airplane. Oh god, it was
so great.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Yeah, no traffic, Bring back COVID, Bring back COVID except
for the.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
School part and the freaking masks.
Speaker 6 (29:21):
Yeah, oh yeah, we'll finish strong next.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
I'm a big believer in love. Will she actually get
engaged to the famous chiefs tight end mister Calsey At
this particular point, the betting markets say there's only a
twenty six percent chance that it happens this year.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
That's an analyst on CNN for some reason, giving the
betting odds of whether Taylor Swift Mayors marries her football
player boyfriend. You go back a few years and it's
hard to imagine why CNN would have an analyst.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
Okay, well, although the Taylor Swift getting engaged to Travis
Kelsey Benning analyst did put the number at twenty six percent,
which seems low to me, Jack, which seems oddly specific,
not around a quarter twenty six, Almost as if they're
(30:23):
trying to make horse s seem like science, right, exactly exactly,
like they plugged in all these different sicker circumstances into
a formula an algorithm and came up with twenty five
point eight.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, round it to twenty six percent.
Speaker 5 (30:39):
We had our Taylor Swift supercomputer run five thousand simulations
to predict whether right.
Speaker 6 (30:47):
In some simulations, Travis Kelcey has a season ending injury.
In some simulations, the Chiefs win the Super Bowl. In
some simulations, Taylor Swift loses her voice or gets fat.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Oh wow, see you've got That's why science is involved
in supercomputers.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You need to take all of that into consideration.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
It's not as simple as she's hot, he's hot there young,
Yeah bet they no, No, didn't get to this today.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
AI robs my students of the ability to think. This
is this college professor who says.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Students have told her.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
That they feel like their ability to write or think
has diminished since they started using AI. Well, well, I'll
take their word for it. I can't believe it happened
that fast, although I wouldn't have believed that my ability
to read long form books would have been damaged as
quickly as it has been by smartphones.
Speaker 5 (31:47):
Yeah, I just I'm a firm believer in the the
The muscles of the intellect have to be exercised or
they go slack. Yeah, like probably not a great metamorid
if I was a smarter guy, have a better metaphor
for you.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
But you know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
Yeah, your muscles go atrophy super fast if you don't
use them. See the astronauts. I mean, like ridiculously fast.
And I'm sure obviously our brain does to a certain
extence or parts of our brain.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
With the whole paying attention to reading thing. It's troubling.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
And then the most interesting thing that happened to me
yesterday probably has got to be the Groc story that
I've already told of driving in my Tesla is on
my way to a meeting, and I was thinking about
this meeting, and I thought, just for fun, since Groc
is now in the Tesla screen, I just said, hey, Groc,
I'm going to this meeting, and I got a blah
blah blah, laid out the scenario, and Groc said, in
(32:40):
her voice, well, here's what you should do. Why don't
you blah blah blah, And if they react this way,
you could say that.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Do you want any other suggestions? I said nah? And
she said, cool, you got this? Why not? What the
hell just happened?
Speaker 9 (32:54):
Yah?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
What the hell just happened.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
But as we discussed early in the show chat, GP
just put out is their edition number five, whatever they
call it, and they're getting real blowback from users because
it's dropped some of that. Not only am I human,
I'm your buddy and I believe in you stuff. People
liked it better when it was doing that. Maybe some
(33:18):
people need the.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Kind of.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Football coach cheerleader thing in their life for some reason.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I don't need.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
A computer program to say, great, you got this to me.
That's just freaking weird.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Right well, and I will think, wow, that's interesting. That
provoked emotional response in me. That's a machine. How odd.
But I think a lot of people just go, I
feel good.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I'm strong, I'm strong.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
I'm strong.
Speaker 6 (34:08):
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Hey, let's get a final thought from everybody on the
crew to wrap up the show for the day. There
he is pressing the buttons, Michael Angelo. Michael, what's your
final thought?
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Okay, I'm gonna make this prediction, mark my words.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I think this is gonna happen.
Speaker 11 (34:21):
Trump lets putin invade Vancouver and he gives up Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
What do you think?
Speaker 5 (34:27):
Wow, it's Vancouver isn't technically ours, But that's a hell
of a deal. That's what makes it such a trumpy deal,
Katie Green or a Steam Newswoman.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 6 (34:36):
Talking about COVID brought back the memory of a well
now past friend who read me the Riot Act for
flying to see my parents during that bizarre time.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
Oh really, yeah, and I'm alive.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I made it.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Who you gotta let grandma die alone? Otherwise you're a
bad person, I swear to God.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
Anyway, Jack final thought, do I have the guts to
try driving down the road to my testla and say, hey,
groc had a rough day at work, My kids are ungrateful.
I think I'm gonna just drive my car into the
next cemental buttment?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
Oh now, reacts, No, Hey, I hear you, brother, Let's
do this.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You got this.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
Just certifize considerably more cheery. I was wandering around in
our our remodel area yesterday at home and was admiring the.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Work of the carpenter's court.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Building, the roof, and so much more goes into it
than I'd realized. And it's the skill is and and
care is amazing. So I salute ye who builds stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
I really admire you. Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
Wrap up another grueling four hour workday.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
So many people think, so little time. Good Armstrong and
Getdy dot com. A lot of great clicks there the
hot LANs Katie's Corner. Drop us a note mail bag
at Armstrong and Getty dot com. Pick up a T
shirt or a hoodie while you're there. It'll be chilly
soon enough cool.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
We will see you tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I'm Strong and Getty. There were so many great moments.
Speaker 6 (36:11):
On today's Armstrong and Getty Show, but perhaps none as
great as this man.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Sound like it's hearing day. We need your walt Man
and you over there. We need your mutton.
Speaker 5 (36:27):
Yes, yes, slaughter me take my maid.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I have no will of my own bath. Bye bye,
Armstrong and Getty
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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