Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. Eric Ericson is a talk host out of
Atlanta and or out of George. I think he's Atlanta
and he wrote a piece on his substack today called
we Arrive at My Fear and he talks about the
current climate. He says a philosophical festering has taken root
in the minds of the left, that their opponents are
evil and words are violence. A permission structure UH, a
permission structure formed on MSNBC and other progressive media outlets
that the right must be stopped to save democracy. An
exculpatory structure formed on CNN and other media outlets downplaying
or excusing progressive violence. A triggering event happened with the
election of Donald Trump. Then progressive politicians amped up the
rhetoric to push the disturbed and violent across the line.
What he just described there, by the way, is what
the left called until about a minute ago, stochastic terrorism.
Writing in The New York Times in twenty seventeen, the
psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett argued, quote, if words can cause stress,
and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it
seems that speech, at least certain types of speech, can
be a form of violence. Eight years ago Trump's first term,
this toxic idea has taken hold, where now people think
that anything that causes them quote unquote stress equals violence.
Donald Trump's election triggered the left, he says. Now, media
outlets and Democrat politicians insist Donald Trump's rhetoric is to blame.
He's a dictator, and Democrats need to get comfortable doing
things they would otherwise not do. In the words of
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who I think the day before
Charlie Kirk was assassinated, said this is war. See they
talk in these terms, and it's okay, see because it's different.
Let me jump over and get Chris on he's been
hanging on for a while. Hello, Chris, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Wow, you could not wait to talk to me before
you posted that. That was my exact thought.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, so sorry, Chris. Well, you could go ahead,
and you can. You you could steal man this if
you want to go ahead.
Speaker 2: So I do want to make a distinction when when
we say political violence and in say in relation to
I'll get back to Charley Kirk, but in relation to, say,
the ICE agents for the bust being shot at, I
didn't I haven't heard the news that did they catch
that guy and did he say that he no reason
we're doing it?
Speaker 1: They well, they caught his.
Speaker 2: Body, yeah, because yeah, that's right, killed.
Speaker 1: Himself and they found the they found the the the
writing on the bullets that he left. And now they've
also revealed that they found a handwritten note where he
said his goal is to inspire or to strike terror.
Uh in all ICE agents, so they have to be
on the lookout for sniper anywhere they're doing an operation.
Speaker 2: So so and that is just I'm kind of I'd
kind of make a little distinction, uh, not necessulting in
the speech, but in that relation, it's kind of related
to ignorance and the whole lot of ignorance. So we
see the media throwing out there that I say that
they're they're catching even Americans and deporting me and all
this other stuff. So in that ignorance, there's a little
bit of a I don't want to say a justification,
but a kind of a reasoning of why maybe there
are enemies.
Speaker 1: Right there being yes, they are getting in for like
just like Jimmy Kimmel right when he got on the
air and said, oh, they're trying to uh, they're trying
to tell everybody that this guy that the shooter of
Charlie Kirk wasn't a MAGA guy, wasn't part of the
Maga crowd. And a third of Democrats believe that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I get that. So and in the in
relation to Charlie Kirk, I mean, everybody's looking at Charlie
Kirk and everybody sees all this guy does is talk,
and that's where that idea is coming in his speech
is violence. And I say that, and you answered, I
was just gonna say you real quick, do you answered
the question? Because I was I figured psychology there was
there was something to this, I haven't heard from it,
and you just kind of enlighten me. So go ahead
with what you were going to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, this concept that speech is violence is rooted
in this idea that that you know, words cause you harm,
they cause you mental distress, the same uh, it's the
same thing that prompted the you know, the trigger warnings
like oh, we're going to say things are going to
make you feel uncomfortable, and so you have some right
to be protected from uncomfortable speech. And so if you
are then discomforted, made to feel uncomfortable, then that is
some sort of you know, personal physical harm that you
are suffering. Hence it's violence, which, of course then when
you start thinking in those terms, you can meet violence
with violence to make it stop. And this is the
permission structure that has been constructed.
Speaker 2: All right, So here's one more question than do we
have any data from say, twenty years ago and any
thoughts on what people thought of violence at the time
are because I get this feeling that this is a
new thing five ten years ago that made.
Speaker 1: It it is, Well, it has gotten worse. I mean,
that's the it has gotten worse. And I can just
tell from my personal experience, and I know it's just
my experience, but I mean, I've been covering this stuff
for a very long time. The idea that that political
violence was acceptable was not a wide held a belief
that was you know, widespread. And look, even now it
should be pointed out that, you know, ninety seven ninety
eight percent of Republicans and ninety percent of Democrats say
that's still the case. However, it has increased. This this
acceptability has increased, and it has increased according to that
Carolina Journal poll that I did that I covered in
the first hour, that has become more acceptable among the
more liberal educated group inside the Democrat party.
Speaker 2: Right well, right quick of a good about education and
we're saying the college campuses and stuff like that. Is
there any is there anything that points to the creation
or manifestation of this idea there by somebody teaching or
or you know what I'm saying, because that seems like
this is where a lot of this is coming from,
too and there, But there's no I'm never hearing anything
like it's bringing it into manifestation, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So, yes, so I would trace the roots of this
to the long march through the institutions. This is all
part of critical theory. Whether it manifests as radical queer
theory or critical raise theory, it all stems from that
same source. That's where it's all coming from. And over
the last you know, forty years, you have K twelve,
and you have colleges that have become infested with this
kind of mentality. It is a it's a mark exist
mentality that is rooted in the idea that there is
an oppressor and an oppressed and that all relationships and
really all society is best identified and described through power dynamics.
And so in any relationship, you have the power or
someone else is exerting power over you. And so when
you start viewing yourself like that, as this perpetual victim
in a constant power play at a societal level, at
a family level, at a personal level, it then it
robs you of your ability to empathize with other people.
It makes you look inward, if you become self absorbed.
And there's a name for this, which is called the
tendency for interpersonal victimhood TIV. And it's a personality i
would say disorder. And once you become, once you identify
yourself as this victim, it becomes almost impossible to break
free of that mentality. You can, but it's virtually possible.
And when you have the superstructure that exists with media, Hollywood,
h K twelve, education, college professors, when and everybody is
reinforcing this in your world, then you don't even know
you're the fish that doesn't know it's wet. You don't
even realize that you have. You've been sort of indoctrinated
into this way of thinking. Cool good, all right, Yeah, man,
I appreciate the call, Chris. It's it has been a
it has been a long project that the left has undertaken,
and people have been talking about it and trying to
fight against it for a long time. I think now
it's become so obvious and it's so pervasive that you've
got a lot of people that realize, you know, the
alarm is going off.
Speaker 2: You know.
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this piece that Eric Ericson wrote over at his substack,
and he points out that the Atlantic, beloved publication of
the progressive elite, even the Atlantic, is now sounding the
alarm that left wing violence is outpacing right wing violence.
Democrat politicians, he rights, are forcing a government shut down,
scared of their voters or scared that their voters might
turn physically violent against them. Democrats are going to have
to be the ones to take the lead, To lead
this charge to confront the radicalized leftists and the increased
violence coming from the left. And that's the bad news.
I don't think they're able to do it. I really don't.
News outlets continue making excuses, blaming Trump and stacking bodies
to see which side is more violent. California Governor Gavin Newsom,
after suggesting that everybody should tone it down after Charlie
Kirk was assassinated, then went on to Stephen Colbert's show
to declare he really does believe Trump will cancel the
twenty twenty eight presidential election. In the meantime, Charlie Kirk
is dead, a gun control activist shot up in ABC
station in California. ICE agents have been shot, detainees have
been killed in Texas. Mourners for Kirk were hurt in Arizona,
and explosive device was placed under a local Fox TV
van in Nevada. A federal facility in Oregon was vandalized
and employees assaulted by protesters. And that's just the last
two weeks. Until Democrats police their own side, the violence
will only increase. Yeah, he's exactly right, And here's here's
a solution. Maybe. Sean Davis suggested this over at the Federalist.
The guy who murdered the detainees at the ICE facility
yesterday and then killed himself, he went looking for that app,
which we talked about at the time when it was
when it was developed and people started using it. A
guy developed an app to track ICE operations, and the
shooter went looking for those apps. I think, I don't
know how many there are, but he went looking for
the app. What is the reasonable expectation that the maker
of the app, the developer? What is the reasonable expectation
that the developer had when it comes to how his
product would be used? Well, luckily we don't really have
to wonder about that because CNN did a fawning interview
with him and he explained it. It was to beat
the ICE operations. Was so people could avoid detection, so
people would know where ICE was operating, so then they
could avoid that area and escape arrest, which is criminal activity. So,
as Sean Davis suggests, maybe go after this guy for conspiracy.
Whoever develops these apps, you then could be targeted and
arrested yourself for obstruction, conspiracy, and in this case maybe
even murder. Maybe that would stop people from doing this
sort of thing. Jim Garretty at National Review. He said,
considering how quickly a false narrative that a right wing
lunatic had killed Charlie Kirk spread, I wonder if authorities
were eager to fill the vacuum with clear facts about
the crime and likely motive. Right. This is what I
said earlier. I agree with Jim Garrity that the publication
of that photo of the AMMO and now the release
of the written note from the shooter in order to
get ahead of the false narrative that the left constructs
in the immediate aftermath of these events, in order to
muddy the waters and to have the lie calcify as
the narrative. He says, while everybody has the right to
criticize our immigration policies, and Dice is not above criticism,
you start to wonder whether months and months of calling
ICE agents, fascists and jack booted thugs are convincing left
wing nut jobs that this really is the time for
violent resistance to the US government. And then he mentions
The Atlantic, which actually ran an article and a headline
that its lefty readers are not probably happy about. They
would prefer not to encounter this kind of of a
headline and story. The headline read left wing terrorism is
on the rise. For the first time in more than
thirty years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by
the far right. Slight problem, a little bit of a
bone to pick, is that some of the data that
they use, and I'm going to go into this deeper
tomorrow because these studies it's all about the classification of
the crimes. For example, if you've got a bunch of
Aryan Nation gang members in a prison and they murder
somebody in a prison and it doesn't even matter what
the race is of the person they murder, that gets
coded into the data set as right wing violence, political
right wing violence. Do you think that's appropriate? Or how
about this one? The murder the assassination of the Minnesota
Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman. You've heard a lot
of her name and her husband. They were murdered by
this nutjob in Minnesota couple of months ago. That guy
is coded as a right wing terrorist. However, the guy
who actually did it seems more like a delusional maniac.
He wrote a letter where he said that he had
been secretly trained by the US military and had participated
in secret overseas missions, all in the line of what
I thought was doing right and was in the best
interest of the United States. He claimed he had been
approached by Governor Tim Walls, a Democrat, who ordered him
to kill the state's two US Senators, Amy Klobucharentina Smith
because quote Tim wants to be Senator? Does that sound
like a right wing, politically motivated guy or does that
sound like a nut job? Game on Week one starts
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limited timeofer message from Russ my Son mentioned this morning.
It's not just violent rhetoric coming from the left. They
keep setting up fake scenarios like put y'all back in chains.
That was Joe Biden. Remember talking to a black audience
during the twenty twelve election I believe, or maybe it
was his twenty twenty race, I forget, but he promised
black people that Republicans were going to enslave them U
which is weird because it was the Democrats who did
all that. Anyway, threat to democracy, climate change, everything is
an existential threat, right, suspension of elections, all of this stuff,
and people are told there's a dire threat that you
can't stop through the normal political process, and so they
are left with the only reasonable option, which is to
eliminate their opponents. He's a very that is a wise
and astute observation. Rust this is the problem. For example,
I mentioned this guy's name earlier, Hassan Piker. You may
not know who this is. This is a Twitch streamer.
He is actually I think the number one twitch streamer
on Twitch well the platform. Usually gamers are on Twitch
and they broadcast their games and such. But this guy
has turned his platform into a talk show if it
ever was about gaming. I don't know, Hassan Piker. He's
got three million followers on Twitch. Here's a quote. Let
the streets soak in their bleeping red capitalist blood. This
guy has directly called for the murder of conservatives repeatedly
on his streams, and Twitch does not remove him. He
has not been removed. He's been reported, but he's not
been removed. So is this tacit approval? Is this? Well,
we don't want to jeopardize the you know, all of
the audience lost and all of that. Is it a
business thing whatever? Right? That's why I say, like the
left has to they've got to be policed by Democrats.
But the Democrats are not going to do it. They're
just like, I've seen no indication that they're interested in
doing it. In fact that it seems like they just
keep ratcheting up the rhetoric, which then leaves what as
a response, You're going to have to have government do
it government when Republicans are in control of it, and
then they'll be criticized. Oh there they go. Look at them,
their tyrants, their fascists, their authoritarians. This is from Jim
Garrity talking about the mainstream media's role in all of this.
Why is it that, when confronted with a horrible situation
where somebody who identified with the left did something terrible
and someone on the right is the innocent victim, that
the media feels an apparently uncontrollable urge to romanticize the perpetrator.
Why in recent days have we witnessed this full court
press from Lawrence Tribe the Lawyer Guy, to Jamel Hill,
to Jimmy Kimmel to Reuter's contending that Charlie Kirk's assassin
had to be a right wing figure. Why is there
this reflexive refusal to believe that someone who identified as
being on the left side of the political spectrum could
do something terrible and violent. Noah Rothman at commentary dot
Com recalled the degree to which the mainstream media downplayed
the crimes of those involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Remember that one, that's a blast from the past. That
was fifteen years ago, Noah Rothman wrote, After well after
Occupy exposed its pensiont for violence to all who were
willing to see it, the left liberal intelligentsia reserved most
of its revulsion for the police who were ordered by
their superiors to contain displays of public order disorder the Atlantics,
James Fallows mourned, quote what has happened before the world's
eyes at Davis and Berkeley and other recent occupy sites,
by which he meant local law enforcement's efforts to roll
up the illegal encampments. We saw the same treatment with
the Tenti Fada as well, and PR reported the aggressive
new police tactics have focused attention on the ongoing protests
against economic inequality that began in New York City last
month that have spread to several US cities. And of
course we know now, and we knew very early on
actually that these were astroturfed. Right. These were backed by
big money nonprofit organizations with funding from corporate entities and
leftist foundations. Right, these were astroturft. People who identify now
as Antifa have a long history of vandalism, attempted arson,
successful arson, building, incendiary devices and improvised explosive devices, harassment, stalking, shootings, looting, burglary,
even murder. NPR's Mara Eliason, why did you assert that
Antifa are comparable to the Allied forces? Landing at Normandy.
Remember that they fought they fought fascist too, That's what
she said. Why can you not discern that a bunch
of violent guys claiming to be anti fascist does not
actually make their actions opposition to fascism? Why do we
get the same argument from julia iafe or whatever her
name is over at Puck as well? He's calling people
out here, Jim Garretty is. After the appalling Capitol Hill
riot on January sixth, did you hear anybody in the
mainstream media trot out the Martin Luther King junior quote
that a riot is the language of the unheard? No,
nobody said that. How come when the right wingers riot,
the mainstream media can see right and wrong and four
K crystal clarity, But when left wingers riot, everything suddenly
becomes murky and complicated. Why are you like this media?
Be better? Or, as Milanie would say, be best. So
when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's,
and before he died, my mom and my dad took
care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago,
there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers
and family. But things are different today because of the
work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of
Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with
huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years.
This cause means a lot to me. I participate in
the annual Walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a
Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once again
Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join
the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth,
that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash
Walk and then you can search for my team name
Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com.
There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also,
I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh,
and so you can make a team and join that
one too, or make a donation and help me hit
my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I
really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks
all all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz
dot org slash Walk for all the dates and locations.
We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help
us get there? Will you walk with me? For a
different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This
is why we walk. I will read some of the
massages here on the text line from Danny. The public
education system, along with universities, have built a wall for
the intrusion of logic. Center we're center right thinking individuals
to join, potentially come to leadership positions, and possibly higher
like minded people to join them. If you're a center
or center right, you have an uphill battle not only
penetrating these institutions, but climbing any type of leadership ladder
is nearly impossible. This person says, I work for a
large healthcare system in the area, and because the leadership
is left leaning, all of the left leaning employees feel
like they can be more outspoken and are without any
repercussions no matter how outrageous or divisive their statements are. See,
and this is something that people on the left have
no real comprehension. A lot of people on left don't
have any understanding of this. Of this dynamic. Conservatives self
censor all the time in the workplace, family gatherings, and stuff.
They won't say stuff, They won't engage with people, They
won't say things because they fear retribution, particularly in the workplace,
and people on the left, they just say whatever they
want because there's no fear of retribution. It's the same. Look.
It's very logical to me that you have a group
of people in America who believe that there are all
these existential crises, that their political opponents are literally Nazis
and fascists, but they don't behave like that. They will
walk up to a Charlie Kirk memorial and destroy it
without any fear of physical confrontation. Right. Those are not
the actions of people who actually believe everyone's trying to
kill them. Corey says, we need to get you a
bigger soapbox. Keep preaching. Great show today, rich and compelling.
Thank you, sir. Would a lawsuit get results against Twitch?
Any conservative should be able to claim standing, says John
in New Jersey. That's a good question. I don't know.
Another message. Twitch is a meeting place for the domestic terrorists.
The Left has to be destroyed and discarded by everyone.
This won't happen. It'll come to violence in the streets
over the country. Believe me, and then Kevin says, silence
is violence. Words and disagreement or violence. Make it make sense, Pete,
Oh okay, well I can do that for you. The
point is chaos, that's the point. It's why they change
the meaning of words. It's why they're constantly, you know,
trying to get you on your back feet with regard
to framing of narratives and what is real and what
is not and men can be girls and girls can
be boys and all of that, Like, the whole point
is to create chaos. Why well, if you create chaos,
then you fight among each other, you don't know what's real,
and Western civilization collapses. The institutions, the center can't hold
and when that happens, then they step into the void.
They assume power because remember these are revolutionaries, these are Marxists.
Everything is power dynamics. Who has the power. You can't
do anything unless you have the power. So we're going
to take the power, which is what animated people like
the Black Liberation Army, the weather underground. In fact, this
was a Mark Hemingway piece at the Federalists the other day,
who he said, you know, in going over some of
this stuff, he was reminded of Chase Abowden, who was
the DA in San Francisco, got there with the George
Soros money. He eventually got thrown out, But remember his
parents went to prison for terrorism, domestic terrorism, and he
was then raised by his adoptive parents, Bill Ayres and
Bernadine Dorn And you'll recall they were specially radical. They
got teaching positions at colleges, and Barack Obama launched his
political career at their house. In fact, Chase Abouden would
have been about fourteen or fifteen years old at that time,
and it never occurred to anybody that this would be
like some sort of a disadvantage for Obama. Right to
launch your career in the home of unrepentant domestic terrorists.
He was rewarded, so Hemingway says, says, if you have
ever excused or condoned violence, or knowingly consorted with those
who have, I don't care one wit. If you're someone
as lofty as Barack Obama, you need to be driven
from polite society. I will happily engage in the ritual
malediction of saying that call to ostracize obviously extends to
forces on the political right as well, except I do
so knowing that no matter how much corrupt Democrat leaders
cook the stats to pretend right wing violence is a
serious threat, nothing the right has done comes close to
setting off five bombs a day for eighteen months straight,
proceeding to terrorize the country for more than a decade,
and then electing new generations of politicians that knowingly excused
this insane level of violence and it has led to this.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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