October 13, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour one of the Monday October 13, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Replay features...
- Kicking Kamala's Book tour...
- Fire at Dunkin Donuts & kids lack of play...
- We're Not Reading Anymore...
- We Need Brown People!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Mark as Played
Transcript
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, Joe Catty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Jet Tidy and Armstrong and Caddy Strong not
live from Studio c Hey.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
There were Armstrong in Geddi and for the first time ever,
I think we actually are taking Columbus Day off. I
do not like the way you are treating Italian Americans.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I can't handle it. I'm too angry to come to work.
I've rented three ships and I'm going to go exploit someone.
We're taking it off more for personal family reasons than
Columbus Day. But anyway, you carefully curated, delightfully entertaining collection
of best of Armstrong and Getty clips coming up in moments, So.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Now enjoy the Armstrong and Geddy replay.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
And he called me and I then again, listen this book.
I'm being in this book, are you? And in a
way that I hope is helpful for people to understand
what that all was. And part of that call that
he made to me the afternoon before the debate was
(01:14):
to wish me luck, but also to talk about something
that was more in his interest than it was in mind,
especially in the context of that time.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
She is the hardest person to follow of anyone. She
would have made a horrible president. I mean absolutely horrible.
I don't just mean in the normal I don't want
the Democrat to win. I'd rather have Gavin NUSA. You
can name tons of people I don't like that would
be better to be president.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Her brain don't work, No, no, I found myself being
lulled into this weird hypnosis by her droning nonsense.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
She can't spit anything out, she can't make a decision,
she's too coward to say anything anyway. So she's having
what Mark Alpern is calling one of the most disastrous
first forty eight hours of a book to her anybody's
ever had. And here's a little of his analysis with
a couple of the people on his show from yesterday,
(02:16):
Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
She's done two interviews Rachel Maddow last night and JMA,
and most distinctive to me, again, as someone who's as
expert in selling books is anything I'm expert at, she's
not doing a particularly good job of selling the book,
in part because she's pulling her punches when the questioners
(02:39):
have asked her about the newsiest parts of the book.
She's not backing up what she said in the book.
She seems reluctant to repeat some of the accusations she's made. So,
for instance, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow said, I'm very disappointed
that you suggested that the country wasn't ready to elect
a black woman in a gay man and picking pee footage.
She said, Oh, no, no, that's not really what I
(03:01):
What I mean, what I mean is, uh, you know,
I think it would have been tough. I mean, she
just she didn't follow it through. And then here's two
examples from Good Morning America. First, she was asked about
the phone call that she writes in the book that
Joe Biden called her right before a debate with Donald Trump,
and rather than just wishing her well, started to complain
to her about his own grievances.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Right, And that's the clip we just heard. And so
Mark Halpern made the point. And then I saw him
on Megan Kelly's shows. I thought it was said he
said instead of selling her book. So she usually you
you you you write something strong in your book, and
then you get asked about it because you made some
strong statements and you, you know, you add more to it.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You're trying to create excitement, and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And and and and get people to want to go
out and buy the book. That's the point of it.
She backs off of all of them. And he said,
instead of a selling her book, it seems like she's
being confronted with her journal that and she's trying to
explain away the passages that have leaked out.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, what she's doing. My only disagreement with Mark is
not only did she not write the book, Mark, she
hasn't even read it. Oh you don't think so? No. No,
she sat down for a bunch of interviews with some
professional writer, which is perfectly fine. I mean that's what
politicians do. Uh, and they crafted a book. But she
was probably surprised at some of the way things were characterized.
(04:27):
And she is gutless and has no principles. So yeah,
back it off of everything.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Here she is on Good Morning America asked about was
Joe Biden capable of serving four more years?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
At least? Sit here today?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Do you think he would have been up for running
the country for four more years?
Speaker 6 (04:43):
I here's the distinction that I make.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
It's and having had the experience myself, It is one
thing to have the capacity to govern. It is another
thing to go through an electrication.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I go right off the bat.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
She couldn't just even come close answering the question on
her book tour. She just keeps as the Even the
Democrat on Mark Alpern's show said, this is just a disaster.
It seems like she looks like she regrets her book
to her two days and from having to answer these questions.
We're going to play another clip. But here's something interesting
(05:18):
that came out of that. So Sean Spicer is on
Mark Alprin show. Sean Spicer was Trump's first White House
press spokesman.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Spicy Spicer loved him.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And he wrote a book after his time, and he
mentioned yesterday, I thought this was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
He said.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He writes his book, he gives it to his agent,
and his agent said, okay, did that feel pretty good
getting that off all that off your chest? And he said, yeah,
it felt really good. And he said, Okay, now that
you've gotten it off your chest, do you actually want
ten years ago, ten years from now for that stuff
to be in a book. And he said, not all
(06:00):
of it. And he went back and took some of
the stuff out. I thought that was really interesting. So
you make some score settling comments and then you think, yeah,
I don't really want that in a book. And they
were relaying that to maybe Kamla. This was her version
of like really letting it all out, and then when
she sits down to be interviewed, she can't doesn't have
the guts to stand by what she wrote.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Right, I mean it fails on everything else it does.
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So we started to play this but ran out of time.
We thought we'd give you the whole thing. She was
on Good Morning America yesterday with the football player Michael Strand,
and he asks the question about Biden running for four
serving for four more years, and listen to her answer
to athlete sitting here today, do you think he would
have been up for running the country for four more years?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
I here's the distinction, was the answer.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It's and having had the experience myself, it is one
thing to have the capacity to govern.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
It is another thing.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
To go through an election for president of the United States.
So you are an athlete, you may appreciate this kind
of metaphor. Running for president the United States is like
being in a marathon at a sprinter's pace with people
throwing tomatoes at you every step you take.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
It is not for the lightharted.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
It takes an incredible amount of endurance and stamina.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know. That was one of the more coherent things
I've ever heard her say. But that doesn't fit with
her first sentence.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh no, so, and she's making the argument is Helper
pointed out that running for president is harder than being president.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, you don't think anybody's.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Throwing at tomatoes at you when you're president, and some
of those tomatoes might be bombs if you make the
wrong decision.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I mean, what a moronic thing to say.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And the question, by the way, if you've forgotten, was
do you think Biden could have served four more years?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I had forgotten that was the question, right. So a
couple more points in her unreadable and unread book, she
says that she number two on Amazon right now, number
two book on Amazon. Yeah, that's easy to manipulate anyway,
But she and her people are buying up thousands and
(08:14):
thousands of copies themselves. But so she writes about transgender
boys and girls sports, and here's what she says. I
agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that
we have to take into account biological factors such as
(08:34):
muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine
who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports. With
goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up
with ways to do this without vilifying and demonizing children.
I mean that is, I would like it, in the
course of like an English class, to spend the entire
(08:56):
hour analyzing that handful of sentences. It is incoherent, grammatically incorrect,
it suffers from several logical fallacies, and it's just idiotic. Well,
the idiotic part's what bothers me.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So are you suggesting that we take So if you
got a dude that wants to participate in girls sports,
you say, yeah, you're kind of an effeminine boy, So
I guess your muscle mass is low enough will let
you compete against girls?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know? I mean, how are you going to determine that? Right?
Case by case basis You're gonna check their junk or whatever.
It's idiotic in the idea of Villa without vilifying and
demonizing sheldn nobody is doing that. That is a straw
man of straw men on the other hand, I find
myself fascinated by her speech, and I enjoy listening and
clips of it. And I'm reminded of what my hero
(09:46):
hl Menken said about Warren G. Harding way back in
the day, and this applies to Kamala. What he said
about Harding was he writes the worst English that I've
ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges.
It reminds me of tattered wash on the line. It
reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of
(10:06):
dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad
that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags
itself out of the dark abysm of pish and crawls
insanely up the topmost pinnacle of bosh. It is rumble
and bumble. It is flat and doodle. It is balder
and dash. Now that's right. It is almost like jazz answers. Yeah,
(10:30):
well said okay, and so a more eloquent take than mine.
Scott Bessen, Who's one of Trump's closest advisors. He's brilliant,
and he's on the economics team, and he's openly gay,
responding to that whole idiotic commalas saying that she didn't
peek pick little Pete because he's gay and that was
(10:54):
asking too much of America. You remember we played the
Rachel mattout club. We probably should have brought it back
in which say She's says, look saying you couldn't pick
a gay dude really disappointed me and comes like, I
didn't say that. I didn't say that. And then after
a bunch of flap and doodle and balderin dash, she says,
and so I couldn't pick it the gay dude because
then that would be uncool. So Scott Besons is commenting
(11:17):
on that she.
Speaker 7 (11:18):
Wouldn't take on Pete Boota judge because he was gay,
She wouldn't take on Pete Boodha judge because he was gay,
because she said it was a risk to have a
running mate who was a gay man.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Your reaction. Three things, Maria.
Speaker 8 (11:33):
First, it shows her emphasis on identity politics and the
American people have moved on too.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It shows how low regard she.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
Holds the American people that they you know, she was
just a terrible candidate. And three, you wouldn't pick Pete
Budajudge because he might have been the worst transportation secretary
in history. Like if I thought I was left to
mess a treasury, I can tell you your friend, my
friend show on Duppy our great transportation secretary, Pete Footage.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Judge left him a mess.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
The FAA is a disaster, the Amtrak, anything to do
with transportation was woefully neglected over the past four years.
So you know, she judges him on his identity, his sexuality.
Let's look and see whether he did a good job.
Let's look on merit, and I can tell you on
merit he's a failure, and on merit she's a failure.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, I thought that was great analysis. She's obsessed with
identity politics. She has contempt for the American people, and
the question of effectiveness doesn't even creep into her thinking.
It's just back to identity politics.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
The left has such a lower opinion of the country
than the right does. I remember when Barack Obama was
elected and George STEPHANOPPL was talking about how he cried,
he who's crying sitting with his wife because he just
didn't think we could ever elect a black person. And
I wasn't surprised in the least that we elected. He
didn't seem surprising to me. I'm from rural America, supposedly
(13:04):
the racist part of the country, and didn't surprise me
at all. But we're willing to elect a black person
if we thought they were capable of doing the job.
George Stephanoppas was so surprised he didn't think we were
there yet.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, did I hire me a handful of Americans? Huh yeah, these.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
So what it means is I have a much higher
opinion of the country than Kamala Airs or George Stephanopolis do.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah. Yeah, by the bye kam law. Also, it denied
that the whole Kamalas for them, donald Trump is for you.
She didn't think that would have had any real impact.
It was a minor issue. Nobody cared. She's snoring the
fact that seventy percent of moderate voters saw the issue
of Donald Trump's opposition of transgender boys playing girls and
(13:46):
women's sports and locker rooms and bathrooms and the rest
of it. Seventy percent of moderate voters said that issue
was important to them. I hope she runs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I don't think she's going to ultimately, But the other
final dirt throwing on Kamala Harris's political grave. Every interview
she does, she says, I only had one hundred and
seven days and blah blah blah blah blah blah, And
even with all of those things against me, it ended
up being the closest presidential election in the twenty first century,
which isn't true by any measure anybody can come up with.
(14:17):
It's not true in terms of raw vote total. It's
not even close. Bush Gork was closer. Bush.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Who do you run against the second time? Uh? Kerrie?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, Bush, Kerry was closer. Trump was closer and Biden
was closer. But other than that, you're right. But if
you and if you go by electoral total, it's not
true either. So but she gets away with it in
every interview because nobody does any homework and is willing
to say, wait a second, that doesn't sound right to me.
I don't think this wasn't the closest election over the
last twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, she lost all seven Swings.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Tape Jack Armstrong and Joey Who Armstrong and Getty show?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Do you have a fire extinguisher?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So do you know where it is?
Speaker 6 (15:04):
There's got to be a fire extinguisher. Do you guys
have a manager you can call?
Speaker 9 (15:08):
Yeah, there you go, fire extinguisher right there here you
wanting to help you? You have to call the fire department.
I just say it the tune and lost a nail.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But I'm good, everybody. It's really awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
You had a grown up there at the dunkin Donuts
when a fire started. Who was you know, just had
that you know, grown up way of handling a problem
and uh took care of things.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Well that this is like a rorshock test. I I
took from that that the employees didn't have a single
idea what to do in case of a fire, and
a customer had to say, all right, do you have
a fire extinguisher? Great, here's how it works. Do you
have a manager? Probably ought to call a manager. Now
(15:58):
one of you needs called fire department. And they all
just stood there looking at her.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Well, I'm excited that there was an adult there who
didn't just stand there looking at the situation. There was
some human there who was willing to do something. That's
what I'm excited about.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
That was a restaurant full of kids who are never
allowed free play.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Probably yeah, yep, so nobody Uh Yep, it'd be probably right.
That's yeah, an entire college level paper could be written
on that whole instance.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right there. I was going to say, I could rant on,
but yeah, they did not have a childhood full of
encountering problems and solving them on their own. They were supervised,
wearing their cute little uniforms and directed by adults everything
they did in their childhoods. So yes, so they make
damn fine coffee there, damn fine.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
The Armstrong and Getdy show or Jack Orgio podcasts and.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
Our hot links.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So this is not getting better.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
We've stopped reading across this on a sub stack yesterday
and thought it was damned interesting. Joe brings up a lot.
What future are we headed toward? The Orwell future or
the Huxley future That would be the nineteen eighty four
future where they banned books or the Thomas Huxley Brave
New World future where you don't need to ban books
(17:18):
because there's no one who wants to read them, As
pointed out by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death,
which I can't believe I've never read. It's one of
the classics of all time. I've never read that book.
And it's a subject that is on my mind all
the time. It's clearly the latter. You don't need to
ban books because people aren't going to read any books
that are put out there.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And let me get into that with this piece.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
One of the most important revolutions that happened in human
history happened about three hundred years ago. Now, the printing
press was invented around fifteen hundred, but it took a
couple of hundred years before reading really caught on a thing,
partially because no one could read. I mean, you also
had the actual printing and distribution of reading material, and
somebody had to write it, but nobody could read.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Really. But by seventeen hundred in Britain and France.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And Germany, and then you know, growing in the United States,
literacy was just exploding and people loved reading, absolutely couldn't
get enough of it, pamphlets, books, poetry, whatever to get
themselves more knowledge or having an idea what's going on
locally or around the world.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now I get to the piece that I read yesterday
that horrified me.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
More than three hundred years after the reading revolution ushered
in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying
numerous studies showed that reading is in free fall. Even
the most pessimistic twentieth century critics of the screen age
would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis.
In America, reading for pleasure has fallen by forty percent
(18:50):
in the last twenty years. Since two thousand and five,
reading for pleasure has dropped forty percent. That's incomprehensible and stunning.
In the UK, more than a third of adults say
they've given up reading entirely. The National Literacy Trust reports
shocking and dispariting falls in children's reading, which is now
(19:11):
at its lowest levels since they've been keeping track. The
publishing industry is in crisis. Has pointed out books that
once would have sold in the tens even hundreds of
thousands are now lucky to sell in the mid four figures.
So a book that might have sold hundreds of thousands
of copies just a few years ago is going to
(19:32):
sell five thousand copies now.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Wow, nationwide. Talk about a different industry. Oh that you know,
the money changing part of it is the least of
our problems, right. But Tim Sandifer, who's written a number
of books, was pointing this out to me. We were
texting the other day about how he said, nobody reads anymore.
You can't sell books. Nobody reads. That's horrifying.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
An article published in the Atlantic called the elite college
students who can't read.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Books and somebody read that article but you.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Cites the characteristic experience of one professor twenty years ago.
This professor's class has had no problem in engaging in
sophisticated discussions of pride and prejudice or crime and punishment,
some of the classic texts of all time. Now, as
students tell him upfront that the reading load feels impossible,
it's not just the phrenetic pace. They struggle to attend
to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.
(20:28):
Most of our students, according to the professor, are functionally illiterate.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Oof.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
The person that wrote this said, this chimes with everything
I've heard in my own conversations with teachers and academics.
One Oxbridge lecturer I spoke to described a collapse in
literacy among his students.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And these are.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
People at some of your better universities. This isn't the
average population. The transmission of knowledge, the most ancient function
of the university, is breaking down.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
In front of our eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Writers like Shakespeare, Milton, and Jane Austen, whose works have
been handed on, handed out for centuries, can no longer
reach the next generation of readers. They're losing the ability
to understand them.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Isn't that stunning?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
This is happening before our eyes, but getting like no conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
This is the sort of thing that people have said
throughout history because it's kind of an egotism, but I
think it's right. Finally we witness the peak of mankind.
You are correct on both.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It is the sort of thing that people say because
of presentism, and it's exciting to have your moment be
the most this or that.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
But it's also true. Yeah, sometimes it takes the form
of I can't bring a child into this world because
it's so terrible. No, it's not. It's one of the
most comfortable, cushy worlds that's ever existed in any universe
of baby. On the other hand, we have witnessed mankind's
peak and are now witnessing the decline.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
They point to one particular thing, saying, I'll give you
one guess as to what it is that really caused
the super rapid decline. Anybody do I even need to
say it, not mind porn. I won't even say it.
The freaking smartphone, of course. I mean it's made it
(22:17):
hard for me to read, yes, and we all know it.
So that's just a that's just a fact. But what
is what is a world where there just aren't books?
We're practically there, we might already be there, where they're
just hard books. I mean, people write them and you
can print them, but nobody's buying them or reading them.
(22:39):
What is a world where there are no books?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
How does it?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Because they point into this article is very very long
in the way that substack is, but it goes through
how it is tied into the rise of democracies and
capitalism and civil rights and all the different things that
have the good things that have happened for mankind humankind
in the last.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Three hundred years, not to mention technological advances and food
production and a thousand things. Yeah, the college.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Professor as saying, Shakespeare's just going to disappear from the scene.
My students can't read it, they can't understand it, and
they won't read it because they hate reading so much.
So exactly, my kids hate reading. They just hate it,
and they've grown up in a household with a dad
who reads constantly.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
But they just hate it, and so do all her friends.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
And I it's hard to be critical of it because
I know that feeling. It's work for me to read
in a way that it wasn't years ago, just because
of you know what the dopamine addiction and the attention
span and everything has done to us.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
But I feel like there's zero possibility.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That you can have progress with humankind if reading disappears wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I am I just an old.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Person who claims that, you know, the invention of the
automobile is going to ruin society or.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Oh that's true too, but oh yeah, no, you're right,
You're absolutely right. I've made an important life decision. I'm
going to dedicate the rest of my life to deceiving
and taking the money of the ignorance. I mean, just
because the question before us is how do you have
a happy life in the world of the decline of humanity?
And that's exploiting the ignorance of others for your own wealth.
(24:22):
So ripping people off is the key to joy. Well, yeah,
in words of a single syllable, yes, Michael, those suit
harlance of the common men.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yes, those who do not read but have some money,
let's separate them from their coinage.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Precisely, we the learned owe it to them to administer
the firm handed spanking that they deserve.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I'm trying not to have any judgment in this conversation
about the reading because I didn't read, because I'm a
good person and I'm going to blah blah blah. Whatever
it was. There was a lot less to do. The
pace of life was slower, and I really enjoyed it.
And like I said, it's my enjoyment of reading. I
(25:02):
read much less than I used to, certainly long form
books stuff like that, because my attention span has gotten
so short. So we've created a world where our brains
are ruined and people don't read as much.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But the chart about a young.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
People, people under the age of eighteen, it was amazing
the two lines crossing at about two thousand and eight,
right when the smartphone hit, but it was already on
the decline. I wonder why that is just the Internet
in general, Maybe the Internet in general.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
The omnipresence of media I think could be. But anyway, look,
when you've got when you've got two hundred channels, you're
more likely to find something you liked, and when there
were three.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
But it is something like seventy five percent of young
people read nearly daily back in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I did, Yeah, I did. I read every day just
for fun.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
I knew not only just stuff assigned I'd read before
I went to bed, things that I like to read.
Now it's down to like ten percent of people under
eighteen that read pleasure daily.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
For a while there, I was reading Brave New World
like every other year in nineteen eighty four, like once
or twice a decade, just because it's long and a
little tar tougher. But yeah, one of the themes of
Brave New World is that you don't have to work
very hard to oppress people. You just keep them high
and amused, and they have no interest in opposing totalitarianism.
(26:24):
Oh yeah. And the other aspect that I wanted to
mention of the people in the book was they were
very shallow ding you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You're you're gonna, you know, take money from uh dullards,
you know, exploit people, You're gonna figure out a way
to steal from them. What do you think governments are
going to do or are doing when people don't read anymore, or.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
They're milk and us like cows. Yeah, oh man, they
call the theft taxes, but it's the same process.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
You know, I won't live long enough to be able
to win this bet, but you are right.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We saw the peak of mankind in our lifetime. Right. Wow,
Planet of the beavers, that's fine again. They're hard working,
they got the flat tail, they build stuff. Bees Maybe
can be their buzzy little assistance. Let the bees have
their shot at the world. Huh, you say a lot.
(27:27):
That's in some of your song lyrics. You want to
tell us what it is. Tota.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
It means either live your culture or you kill your culture,
and there's no in between.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
So I'm gonna get up every day and I'm going
to live my culture today. What was that nonsense? He
was muttering in the middle. That was French Jacket's own language.
That was Jordan Thibodeaux, who was featured on sixty Minutes
as part of a really interesting segment about essentially Cajun
and similar music in that culture. I thought that was
(27:59):
a really interesting statement, you either live your culture or
kill your culture, especially because I was corresponding with a
friend of mine about my upcoming trip to London with
my bride and and and he sent along some commentary
about have you been brushing up in your English to
get ready for it? Hilarious? And it was a commentary
(28:22):
on how Britain and Europe, having permitted rampant immigration that
nobody voted for but the elite wanted, had caused enormous
dislocating cultural problems. And it's something we've talked about several times,
and pointing out that like the mayors of most of
the big cities in Britain are all Muslims, inexplicably because
there's still a fairly small minority, but there are hundreds
(28:45):
of Sharia councils in Sharia courts and the rest of
it in Britain. And I found that really intriguing.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Which way to Buckingham Palace right over there?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Which way over there? Over there? Why are you talking
like that? So I was for whatever reason that came
within twenty four hours of hearing mister Thibadeau talking about
you live your culture or you kill your culture.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I always remember when I read the giant biography of
Pope John Paul the Second, he was constantly saying language
is culture, talking about that it is. They travel together,
they just do. And if a language dies out, that
culture has died out. And if you can and that's
why Russia goes in and forces people to speak Russian
(29:37):
various languages in various areas.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Because you use China. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you dare speak
one of your ethnic languages in China, you will be
hauled into re education.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
That's why it's so hilarious that we're so willing in
the United States to like turn over giant swass of
the country to another language. We just put up signs
in that language, start putting things in that language, and
say that's fine, we don't care.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We don't need to hang on to our language. Well exactly,
you called it funny, and I get you're being kind
of ironic, but I was just going to say it
is one of the more horrifying and obscene things I've
observed in my life that we of the West, Europe,
in the United States and Canada, primarily the English speaking
world and Europe have been convinced that we have the
(30:24):
one culture that not only is not beautiful and worth
preserving or awesome or successful or whatever, but it's evil
and we deserve to have it stamped out, and anybody
who doesn't participate in that stamping out enthusiastically is an
awful person and should be shamed or forced out of
their job or what have you. And you know, if
(30:48):
you just look at England, never mind the United States,
look at England, they've practically brought us democracy. It's existed
in different forms in different places. But my god, the
Magna carta and and the emergence of the parliament as
a counter to the king and working with the monarch,
and just over hundreds of years hammering out the details
(31:09):
of how does a people self govern? Hm, and then
that giving birth to the United States. I mean, you
want to talk about a culture worth being proud of
and preserving? How about British culture and it's off shoots?
So do you have more you want to say on
that topic Before I get to my next this all
came together like in the last three minutes in my head. Wow,
(31:30):
So why would those who were browbeating us to flush
our own culture down the toilet, hate our own history,
hate our own people. Why would they do that? I
think a lot of you are probably a little bit
ahead of me at this point, but I came across
this this morning. It's a piece in the National Review,
(31:51):
and let's see. Oh it's by the notorious MBD Michael
Brendan Doherty, who came across some audio of Hillary Clinton,
of all people, doing an interview at one of those
never ending Look how smart and cool and rich we
are speech athons. God who goes to those things? Well,
it's a certain class of people, but I've never heard
(32:13):
of most of these things. This is the ninety two
and Why, part of the Newmark Civic Life series.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Oh yeah, the ninety two Street Why is a huge
deal in New York. If you're important, they have those
all the time with Yeah, I see those on YouTube
videos regularly.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I've never been so. Hillary was jabbering about she launched
into the screed, and we could get the audio, but
it's better to shorten it because, you know, ramble a
little bit. She launched into this, mocking the idea of
the Trump administration or anybody else trying to get Americans
(32:46):
to have more babies, and she's right in that it's
ultimately going to fail. But she launches into a screed
in which she says the quiet part out loud, that
the progressive the affluent progressive lifestyle. However you want to
describe it, lifestyle liberalism, certain forms of feminism. It's the
(33:09):
privilege of affluent Americans and is supported by mass immigration,
legal and illegal. Progressivism is not economically or socially sustainable,
except if we import brown people and foreign people. She said,
it's crazy trying to make America great again by returning
(33:30):
to lifestyles and the economic arrangements of not just the fifties.
I mean, let's keep going back as far as we can.
The nuclear family, returned to being a Christian nation, a
return to producing a lot of children. These are quotes,
even though she says they alleged.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Particularly offended her, throwing out the nuclear family as something
to give up on easily.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Wow. Then she takes a shot of Republicans say that
they have no interest in paid family leave or funding
quality childcare. They're cutting head start. But she said, it's
sort of odd because the people who produce the most
children in our country are immigrants, and they wanted to
port them. None of this adds up. This is all
a quote. In fact, one of the reasons why our
economy did so much better than comparable advanced economies across
(34:10):
the world is because we had lots of immigrants, legally
and undocumented, who had a larger than normal by American
standards family. So, quoting Doherty, taken together, Clinton says that
immigrants make the American lifestyle of today add up in
part because of their higher birth rates, and she's right,
although he later points out within two generations, certainly three,
(34:33):
immigrant birth rates plunge down to native American birth rate.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Also to point out the reality, any neighborhood you ever
lived in, Hillary become primarily a different language speaking in
the restaurant you used to go to, become a food
and language that you don't know in your school.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
The teachers she couldn't learn in schools because there are
so many languages that a lot.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Or when you go to the emergency room a lot,
a lot of Spanish speaking or whatever. That really slows
things down. That no, it doesn't happen to you. It's funny,
it happens there nobody else.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Gatty, the Armstrong and Daddy Joe
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe Catty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Jet Tidy and Armstrong and Caddy Strong not
live from Studio c Hey.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
There were Armstrong in Geddi and for the first time ever,
I think we actually are taking Columbus Day off. I
do not like the way you are treating Italian Americans.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I can't handle it. I'm too angry to come to work.
I've rented three ships and I'm going to go exploit someone.
We're taking it off more for personal family reasons than
Columbus Day. But anyway, you carefully curated, delightfully entertaining collection
of best of Armstrong and Getty clips coming up in moments, So.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Now enjoy the Armstrong and Geddy replay.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
And he called me and I then again, listen this book.
I'm being in this book, are you? And in a
way that I hope is helpful for people to understand
what that all was. And part of that call that
he made to me the afternoon before the debate was
(01:14):
to wish me luck, but also to talk about something
that was more in his interest than it was in mind,
especially in the context of that time.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
She is the hardest person to follow of anyone. She
would have made a horrible president. I mean absolutely horrible.
I don't just mean in the normal I don't want
the Democrat to win. I'd rather have Gavin NUSA. You
can name tons of people I don't like that would
be better to be president.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Her brain don't work, No, no, I found myself being
lulled into this weird hypnosis by her droning nonsense.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
She can't spit anything out, she can't make a decision,
she's too coward to say anything anyway. So she's having
what Mark Alpern is calling one of the most disastrous
first forty eight hours of a book to her anybody's
ever had. And here's a little of his analysis with
a couple of the people on his show from yesterday,
(02:16):
Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
She's done two interviews Rachel Maddow last night and JMA,
and most distinctive to me, again, as someone who's as
expert in selling books is anything I'm expert at, she's
not doing a particularly good job of selling the book,
in part because she's pulling her punches when the questioners
(02:39):
have asked her about the newsiest parts of the book.
She's not backing up what she said in the book.
She seems reluctant to repeat some of the accusations she's made. So,
for instance, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow said, I'm very disappointed
that you suggested that the country wasn't ready to elect
a black woman in a gay man and picking pee footage.
She said, Oh, no, no, that's not really what I
(03:01):
What I mean, what I mean is, uh, you know,
I think it would have been tough. I mean, she
just she didn't follow it through. And then here's two
examples from Good Morning America. First, she was asked about
the phone call that she writes in the book that
Joe Biden called her right before a debate with Donald Trump,
and rather than just wishing her well, started to complain
to her about his own grievances.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Right, And that's the clip we just heard. And so
Mark Halpern made the point. And then I saw him
on Megan Kelly's shows. I thought it was said he
said instead of selling her book. So she usually you
you you you write something strong in your book, and
then you get asked about it because you made some
strong statements and you, you know, you add more to it.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You're trying to create excitement, and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And and and and get people to want to go
out and buy the book. That's the point of it.
She backs off of all of them. And he said,
instead of a selling her book, it seems like she's
being confronted with her journal that and she's trying to
explain away the passages that have leaked out.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, what she's doing. My only disagreement with Mark is
not only did she not write the book, Mark, she
hasn't even read it. Oh you don't think so? No. No,
she sat down for a bunch of interviews with some
professional writer, which is perfectly fine. I mean that's what
politicians do. Uh, and they crafted a book. But she
was probably surprised at some of the way things were characterized.
(04:27):
And she is gutless and has no principles. So yeah,
back it off of everything.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Here she is on Good Morning America asked about was
Joe Biden capable of serving four more years?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
At least? Sit here today?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Do you think he would have been up for running
the country for four more years?
Speaker 6 (04:43):
I here's the distinction that I make.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
It's and having had the experience myself, It is one
thing to have the capacity to govern. It is another
thing to go through an electrication.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I go right off the bat.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
She couldn't just even come close answering the question on
her book tour. She just keeps as the Even the
Democrat on Mark Alpern's show said, this is just a disaster.
It seems like she looks like she regrets her book
to her two days and from having to answer these questions.
We're going to play another clip. But here's something interesting
(05:18):
that came out of that. So Sean Spicer is on
Mark Alprin show. Sean Spicer was Trump's first White House
press spokesman.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Spicy Spicer loved him.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
And he wrote a book after his time, and he
mentioned yesterday, I thought this was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
He said.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He writes his book, he gives it to his agent,
and his agent said, okay, did that feel pretty good
getting that off all that off your chest? And he said, yeah,
it felt really good. And he said, Okay, now that
you've gotten it off your chest, do you actually want
ten years ago, ten years from now for that stuff
to be in a book. And he said, not all
(06:00):
of it. And he went back and took some of
the stuff out. I thought that was really interesting. So
you make some score settling comments and then you think, yeah,
I don't really want that in a book. And they
were relaying that to maybe Kamla. This was her version
of like really letting it all out, and then when
she sits down to be interviewed, she can't doesn't have
the guts to stand by what she wrote.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Right, I mean it fails on everything else it does.
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So we started to play this but ran out of time.
We thought we'd give you the whole thing. She was
on Good Morning America yesterday with the football player Michael Strand,
and he asks the question about Biden running for four
serving for four more years, and listen to her answer
to athlete sitting here today, do you think he would
have been up for running the country for four more years?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
I here's the distinction, was the answer.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It's and having had the experience myself, it is one
thing to have the capacity to govern.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
It is another thing.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
To go through an election for president of the United States.
So you are an athlete, you may appreciate this kind
of metaphor. Running for president the United States is like
being in a marathon at a sprinter's pace with people
throwing tomatoes at you every step you take.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
It is not for the lightharted.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
It takes an incredible amount of endurance and stamina.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know. That was one of the more coherent things
I've ever heard her say. But that doesn't fit with
her first sentence.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh no, so, and she's making the argument is Helper
pointed out that running for president is harder than being president.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, you don't think anybody's.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Throwing at tomatoes at you when you're president, and some
of those tomatoes might be bombs if you make the
wrong decision.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I mean, what a moronic thing to say.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
And the question, by the way, if you've forgotten, was
do you think Biden could have served four more years?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I had forgotten that was the question, right. So a
couple more points in her unreadable and unread book, she
says that she number two on Amazon right now, number
two book on Amazon. Yeah, that's easy to manipulate anyway,
But she and her people are buying up thousands and
(08:14):
thousands of copies themselves. But so she writes about transgender
boys and girls sports, and here's what she says. I
agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that
we have to take into account biological factors such as
(08:34):
muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine
who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports. With
goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up
with ways to do this without vilifying and demonizing children.
I mean that is, I would like it, in the
course of like an English class, to spend the entire
(08:56):
hour analyzing that handful of sentences. It is incoherent, grammatically incorrect,
it suffers from several logical fallacies, and it's just idiotic. Well,
the idiotic part's what bothers me.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So are you suggesting that we take So if you
got a dude that wants to participate in girls sports,
you say, yeah, you're kind of an effeminine boy, So
I guess your muscle mass is low enough will let
you compete against girls?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know? I mean, how are you going to determine that? Right?
Case by case basis You're gonna check their junk or whatever.
It's idiotic in the idea of Villa without vilifying and
demonizing sheldn nobody is doing that. That is a straw
man of straw men on the other hand, I find
myself fascinated by her speech, and I enjoy listening and
clips of it. And I'm reminded of what my hero
(09:46):
hl Menken said about Warren G. Harding way back in
the day, and this applies to Kamala. What he said
about Harding was he writes the worst English that I've
ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges.
It reminds me of tattered wash on the line. It
reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of
(10:06):
dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad
that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags
itself out of the dark abysm of pish and crawls
insanely up the topmost pinnacle of bosh. It is rumble
and bumble. It is flat and doodle. It is balder
and dash. Now that's right. It is almost like jazz answers. Yeah,
(10:30):
well said okay, and so a more eloquent take than mine.
Scott Bessen, Who's one of Trump's closest advisors. He's brilliant,
and he's on the economics team, and he's openly gay,
responding to that whole idiotic commalas saying that she didn't
peek pick little Pete because he's gay and that was
(10:54):
asking too much of America. You remember we played the
Rachel mattout club. We probably should have brought it back
in which say She's says, look saying you couldn't pick
a gay dude really disappointed me and comes like, I
didn't say that. I didn't say that. And then after
a bunch of flap and doodle and balderin dash, she says,
and so I couldn't pick it the gay dude because
then that would be uncool. So Scott Besons is commenting
(11:17):
on that she.
Speaker 7 (11:18):
Wouldn't take on Pete Boota judge because he was gay,
She wouldn't take on Pete Boodha judge because he was gay,
because she said it was a risk to have a
running mate who was a gay man.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Your reaction. Three things, Maria.
Speaker 8 (11:33):
First, it shows her emphasis on identity politics and the
American people have moved on too.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It shows how low regard she.
Speaker 8 (11:43):
Holds the American people that they you know, she was
just a terrible candidate. And three, you wouldn't pick Pete
Budajudge because he might have been the worst transportation secretary
in history. Like if I thought I was left to
mess a treasury, I can tell you your friend, my
friend show on Duppy our great transportation secretary, Pete Footage.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Judge left him a mess.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
The FAA is a disaster, the Amtrak, anything to do
with transportation was woefully neglected over the past four years.
So you know, she judges him on his identity, his sexuality.
Let's look and see whether he did a good job.
Let's look on merit, and I can tell you on
merit he's a failure, and on merit she's a failure.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, I thought that was great analysis. She's obsessed with
identity politics. She has contempt for the American people, and
the question of effectiveness doesn't even creep into her thinking.
It's just back to identity politics.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
The left has such a lower opinion of the country
than the right does. I remember when Barack Obama was
elected and George STEPHANOPPL was talking about how he cried,
he who's crying sitting with his wife because he just
didn't think we could ever elect a black person. And
I wasn't surprised in the least that we elected. He
didn't seem surprising to me. I'm from rural America, supposedly
(13:04):
the racist part of the country, and didn't surprise me
at all. But we're willing to elect a black person
if we thought they were capable of doing the job.
George Stephanoppas was so surprised he didn't think we were
there yet.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, did I hire me a handful of Americans? Huh yeah, these.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
So what it means is I have a much higher
opinion of the country than Kamala Airs or George Stephanopolis do.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah. Yeah, by the bye kam law. Also, it denied
that the whole Kamalas for them, donald Trump is for you.
She didn't think that would have had any real impact.
It was a minor issue. Nobody cared. She's snoring the
fact that seventy percent of moderate voters saw the issue
of Donald Trump's opposition of transgender boys playing girls and
(13:46):
women's sports and locker rooms and bathrooms and the rest
of it. Seventy percent of moderate voters said that issue
was important to them. I hope she runs.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I don't think she's going to ultimately, But the other
final dirt throwing on Kamala Harris's political grave. Every interview
she does, she says, I only had one hundred and
seven days and blah blah blah blah blah blah, And
even with all of those things against me, it ended
up being the closest presidential election in the twenty first century,
which isn't true by any measure anybody can come up with.
(14:17):
It's not true in terms of raw vote total. It's
not even close. Bush Gork was closer. Bush.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Who do you run against the second time? Uh? Kerrie?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, Bush, Kerry was closer. Trump was closer and Biden
was closer. But other than that, you're right. But if
you and if you go by electoral total, it's not
true either. So but she gets away with it in
every interview because nobody does any homework and is willing
to say, wait a second, that doesn't sound right to me.
I don't think this wasn't the closest election over the
last twenty five years.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, she lost all seven Swings.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Tape Jack Armstrong and Joey Who Armstrong and Getty show?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Do you have a fire extinguisher?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
So do you know where it is?
Speaker 6 (15:04):
There's got to be a fire extinguisher. Do you guys
have a manager you can call?
Speaker 9 (15:08):
Yeah, there you go, fire extinguisher right there here you
wanting to help you? You have to call the fire department.
I just say it the tune and lost a nail.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
But I'm good, everybody. It's really awesome.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
You had a grown up there at the dunkin Donuts
when a fire started. Who was you know, just had
that you know, grown up way of handling a problem
and uh took care of things.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Well that this is like a rorshock test. I I
took from that that the employees didn't have a single
idea what to do in case of a fire, and
a customer had to say, all right, do you have
a fire extinguisher? Great, here's how it works. Do you
have a manager? Probably ought to call a manager. Now
(15:58):
one of you needs called fire department. And they all
just stood there looking at her.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Well, I'm excited that there was an adult there who
didn't just stand there looking at the situation. There was
some human there who was willing to do something. That's
what I'm excited about.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
That was a restaurant full of kids who are never
allowed free play.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Probably yeah, yep, so nobody Uh Yep, it'd be probably right.
That's yeah, an entire college level paper could be written
on that whole instance.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Right there. I was going to say, I could rant on,
but yeah, they did not have a childhood full of
encountering problems and solving them on their own. They were supervised,
wearing their cute little uniforms and directed by adults everything
they did in their childhoods. So yes, so they make
damn fine coffee there, damn fine.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
The Armstrong and Getdy show or Jack Orgio podcasts and.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
Our hot links.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So this is not getting better.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
We've stopped reading across this on a sub stack yesterday
and thought it was damned interesting. Joe brings up a lot.
What future are we headed toward? The Orwell future or
the Huxley future That would be the nineteen eighty four
future where they banned books or the Thomas Huxley Brave
New World future where you don't need to ban books
(17:18):
because there's no one who wants to read them, As
pointed out by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death,
which I can't believe I've never read. It's one of
the classics of all time. I've never read that book.
And it's a subject that is on my mind all
the time. It's clearly the latter. You don't need to
ban books because people aren't going to read any books
that are put out there.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And let me get into that with this piece.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
One of the most important revolutions that happened in human
history happened about three hundred years ago. Now, the printing
press was invented around fifteen hundred, but it took a
couple of hundred years before reading really caught on a thing,
partially because no one could read. I mean, you also
had the actual printing and distribution of reading material, and
somebody had to write it, but nobody could read.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Really. But by seventeen hundred in Britain and France.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And Germany, and then you know, growing in the United States,
literacy was just exploding and people loved reading, absolutely couldn't
get enough of it, pamphlets, books, poetry, whatever to get
themselves more knowledge or having an idea what's going on
locally or around the world.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now I get to the piece that I read yesterday
that horrified me.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
More than three hundred years after the reading revolution ushered
in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying
numerous studies showed that reading is in free fall. Even
the most pessimistic twentieth century critics of the screen age
would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis.
In America, reading for pleasure has fallen by forty percent
(18:50):
in the last twenty years. Since two thousand and five,
reading for pleasure has dropped forty percent. That's incomprehensible and stunning.
In the UK, more than a third of adults say
they've given up reading entirely. The National Literacy Trust reports
shocking and dispariting falls in children's reading, which is now
(19:11):
at its lowest levels since they've been keeping track. The
publishing industry is in crisis. Has pointed out books that
once would have sold in the tens even hundreds of
thousands are now lucky to sell in the mid four figures.
So a book that might have sold hundreds of thousands
of copies just a few years ago is going to
(19:32):
sell five thousand copies now.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Wow, nationwide. Talk about a different industry. Oh that you know,
the money changing part of it is the least of
our problems, right. But Tim Sandifer, who's written a number
of books, was pointing this out to me. We were
texting the other day about how he said, nobody reads anymore.
You can't sell books. Nobody reads. That's horrifying.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
An article published in the Atlantic called the elite college
students who can't read.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Books and somebody read that article but you.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Cites the characteristic experience of one professor twenty years ago.
This professor's class has had no problem in engaging in
sophisticated discussions of pride and prejudice or crime and punishment,
some of the classic texts of all time. Now, as
students tell him upfront that the reading load feels impossible,
it's not just the phrenetic pace. They struggle to attend
to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.
(20:28):
Most of our students, according to the professor, are functionally illiterate.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Oof.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
The person that wrote this said, this chimes with everything
I've heard in my own conversations with teachers and academics.
One Oxbridge lecturer I spoke to described a collapse in
literacy among his students.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And these are.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
People at some of your better universities. This isn't the
average population. The transmission of knowledge, the most ancient function
of the university, is breaking down.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
In front of our eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Writers like Shakespeare, Milton, and Jane Austen, whose works have
been handed on, handed out for centuries, can no longer
reach the next generation of readers. They're losing the ability
to understand them.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Isn't that stunning?
Speaker 3 (21:14):
This is happening before our eyes, but getting like no conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
This is the sort of thing that people have said
throughout history because it's kind of an egotism, but I
think it's right. Finally we witness the peak of mankind.
You are correct on both.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It is the sort of thing that people say because
of presentism, and it's exciting to have your moment be
the most this or that.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
But it's also true. Yeah, sometimes it takes the form
of I can't bring a child into this world because
it's so terrible. No, it's not. It's one of the
most comfortable, cushy worlds that's ever existed in any universe
of baby. On the other hand, we have witnessed mankind's
peak and are now witnessing the decline.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
They point to one particular thing, saying, I'll give you
one guess as to what it is that really caused
the super rapid decline. Anybody do I even need to
say it, not mind porn. I won't even say it.
The freaking smartphone, of course. I mean it's made it
(22:17):
hard for me to read, yes, and we all know it.
So that's just a that's just a fact. But what
is what is a world where there just aren't books?
We're practically there, we might already be there, where they're
just hard books. I mean, people write them and you
can print them, but nobody's buying them or reading them.
(22:39):
What is a world where there are no books?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
How does it?
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Because they point into this article is very very long
in the way that substack is, but it goes through
how it is tied into the rise of democracies and
capitalism and civil rights and all the different things that
have the good things that have happened for mankind humankind
in the last.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Three hundred years, not to mention technological advances and food
production and a thousand things. Yeah, the college.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Professor as saying, Shakespeare's just going to disappear from the scene.
My students can't read it, they can't understand it, and
they won't read it because they hate reading so much.
So exactly, my kids hate reading. They just hate it,
and they've grown up in a household with a dad
who reads constantly.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
But they just hate it, and so do all her friends.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
And I it's hard to be critical of it because
I know that feeling. It's work for me to read
in a way that it wasn't years ago, just because
of you know what the dopamine addiction and the attention
span and everything has done to us.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
But I feel like there's zero possibility.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
That you can have progress with humankind if reading disappears wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I am I just an old.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Person who claims that, you know, the invention of the
automobile is going to ruin society or.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Oh that's true too, but oh yeah, no, you're right,
You're absolutely right. I've made an important life decision. I'm
going to dedicate the rest of my life to deceiving
and taking the money of the ignorance. I mean, just
because the question before us is how do you have
a happy life in the world of the decline of humanity?
And that's exploiting the ignorance of others for your own wealth.
(24:22):
So ripping people off is the key to joy. Well, yeah,
in words of a single syllable, yes, Michael, those suit
harlance of the common men.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yes, those who do not read but have some money,
let's separate them from their coinage.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Precisely, we the learned owe it to them to administer
the firm handed spanking that they deserve.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
I'm trying not to have any judgment in this conversation
about the reading because I didn't read, because I'm a
good person and I'm going to blah blah blah. Whatever
it was. There was a lot less to do. The
pace of life was slower, and I really enjoyed it.
And like I said, it's my enjoyment of reading. I
(25:02):
read much less than I used to, certainly long form
books stuff like that, because my attention span has gotten
so short. So we've created a world where our brains
are ruined and people don't read as much.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But the chart about a young.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
People, people under the age of eighteen, it was amazing
the two lines crossing at about two thousand and eight,
right when the smartphone hit, but it was already on
the decline. I wonder why that is just the Internet
in general, Maybe the Internet in general.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
The omnipresence of media I think could be. But anyway, look,
when you've got when you've got two hundred channels, you're
more likely to find something you liked, and when there
were three.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
But it is something like seventy five percent of young
people read nearly daily back in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I did, Yeah, I did. I read every day just
for fun.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
I knew not only just stuff assigned I'd read before
I went to bed, things that I like to read.
Now it's down to like ten percent of people under
eighteen that read pleasure daily.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
For a while there, I was reading Brave New World
like every other year in nineteen eighty four, like once
or twice a decade, just because it's long and a
little tar tougher. But yeah, one of the themes of
Brave New World is that you don't have to work
very hard to oppress people. You just keep them high
and amused, and they have no interest in opposing totalitarianism.
(26:24):
Oh yeah. And the other aspect that I wanted to
mention of the people in the book was they were
very shallow ding you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You're you're gonna, you know, take money from uh dullards,
you know, exploit people, You're gonna figure out a way
to steal from them. What do you think governments are
going to do or are doing when people don't read anymore, or.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
They're milk and us like cows. Yeah, oh man, they
call the theft taxes, but it's the same process.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
You know, I won't live long enough to be able
to win this bet, but you are right.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We saw the peak of mankind in our lifetime. Right. Wow,
Planet of the beavers, that's fine again. They're hard working,
they got the flat tail, they build stuff. Bees Maybe
can be their buzzy little assistance. Let the bees have
their shot at the world. Huh, you say a lot.
(27:27):
That's in some of your song lyrics. You want to
tell us what it is. Tota.
Speaker 8 (27:34):
It means either live your culture or you kill your culture,
and there's no in between.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
So I'm gonna get up every day and I'm going
to live my culture today. What was that nonsense? He
was muttering in the middle. That was French Jacket's own language.
That was Jordan Thibodeaux, who was featured on sixty Minutes
as part of a really interesting segment about essentially Cajun
and similar music in that culture. I thought that was
(27:59):
a really interesting statement, you either live your culture or
kill your culture, especially because I was corresponding with a
friend of mine about my upcoming trip to London with
my bride and and and he sent along some commentary
about have you been brushing up in your English to
get ready for it? Hilarious? And it was a commentary
(28:22):
on how Britain and Europe, having permitted rampant immigration that
nobody voted for but the elite wanted, had caused enormous
dislocating cultural problems. And it's something we've talked about several times,
and pointing out that like the mayors of most of
the big cities in Britain are all Muslims, inexplicably because
there's still a fairly small minority, but there are hundreds
(28:45):
of Sharia councils in Sharia courts and the rest of
it in Britain. And I found that really intriguing.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Which way to Buckingham Palace right over there?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Which way over there? Over there? Why are you talking
like that? So I was for whatever reason that came
within twenty four hours of hearing mister Thibadeau talking about
you live your culture or you kill your culture.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I always remember when I read the giant biography of
Pope John Paul the Second, he was constantly saying language
is culture, talking about that it is. They travel together,
they just do. And if a language dies out, that
culture has died out. And if you can and that's
why Russia goes in and forces people to speak Russian
(29:37):
various languages in various areas.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Because you use China. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you dare speak
one of your ethnic languages in China, you will be
hauled into re education.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
That's why it's so hilarious that we're so willing in
the United States to like turn over giant swass of
the country to another language. We just put up signs
in that language, start putting things in that language, and
say that's fine, we don't care.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
We don't need to hang on to our language. Well exactly,
you called it funny, and I get you're being kind
of ironic, but I was just going to say it
is one of the more horrifying and obscene things I've
observed in my life that we of the West, Europe,
in the United States and Canada, primarily the English speaking
world and Europe have been convinced that we have the
(30:24):
one culture that not only is not beautiful and worth
preserving or awesome or successful or whatever, but it's evil
and we deserve to have it stamped out, and anybody
who doesn't participate in that stamping out enthusiastically is an
awful person and should be shamed or forced out of
their job or what have you. And you know, if
(30:48):
you just look at England, never mind the United States,
look at England, they've practically brought us democracy. It's existed
in different forms in different places. But my god, the
Magna carta and and the emergence of the parliament as
a counter to the king and working with the monarch,
and just over hundreds of years hammering out the details
(31:09):
of how does a people self govern? Hm, and then
that giving birth to the United States. I mean, you
want to talk about a culture worth being proud of
and preserving? How about British culture and it's off shoots?
So do you have more you want to say on
that topic Before I get to my next this all
came together like in the last three minutes in my head. Wow,
(31:30):
So why would those who were browbeating us to flush
our own culture down the toilet, hate our own history,
hate our own people. Why would they do that? I
think a lot of you are probably a little bit
ahead of me at this point, but I came across
this this morning. It's a piece in the National Review,
(31:51):
and let's see. Oh it's by the notorious MBD Michael
Brendan Doherty, who came across some audio of Hillary Clinton,
of all people, doing an interview at one of those
never ending Look how smart and cool and rich we
are speech athons. God who goes to those things? Well,
it's a certain class of people, but I've never heard
(32:13):
of most of these things. This is the ninety two
and Why, part of the Newmark Civic Life series.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Oh yeah, the ninety two Street Why is a huge
deal in New York. If you're important, they have those
all the time with Yeah, I see those on YouTube
videos regularly.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I've never been so. Hillary was jabbering about she launched
into the screed, and we could get the audio, but
it's better to shorten it because, you know, ramble a
little bit. She launched into this, mocking the idea of
the Trump administration or anybody else trying to get Americans
(32:46):
to have more babies, and she's right in that it's
ultimately going to fail. But she launches into a screed
in which she says the quiet part out loud, that
the progressive the affluent progressive lifestyle. However you want to
describe it, lifestyle liberalism, certain forms of feminism. It's the
(33:09):
privilege of affluent Americans and is supported by mass immigration,
legal and illegal. Progressivism is not economically or socially sustainable,
except if we import brown people and foreign people. She said,
it's crazy trying to make America great again by returning
(33:30):
to lifestyles and the economic arrangements of not just the fifties.
I mean, let's keep going back as far as we can.
The nuclear family, returned to being a Christian nation, a
return to producing a lot of children. These are quotes,
even though she says they alleged.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Particularly offended her, throwing out the nuclear family as something
to give up on easily.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Wow. Then she takes a shot of Republicans say that
they have no interest in paid family leave or funding
quality childcare. They're cutting head start. But she said, it's
sort of odd because the people who produce the most
children in our country are immigrants, and they wanted to
port them. None of this adds up. This is all
a quote. In fact, one of the reasons why our
economy did so much better than comparable advanced economies across
(34:10):
the world is because we had lots of immigrants, legally
and undocumented, who had a larger than normal by American
standards family. So, quoting Doherty, taken together, Clinton says that
immigrants make the American lifestyle of today add up in
part because of their higher birth rates, and she's right,
although he later points out within two generations, certainly three,
(34:33):
immigrant birth rates plunge down to native American birth rate.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Also to point out the reality, any neighborhood you ever
lived in, Hillary become primarily a different language speaking in
the restaurant you used to go to, become a food
and language that you don't know in your school.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
The teachers she couldn't learn in schools because there are
so many languages that a lot.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Or when you go to the emergency room a lot,
a lot of Spanish speaking or whatever. That really slows
things down. That no, it doesn't happen to you. It's funny,
it happens there nobody else.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
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