Below is a transcript of Monday's monologue
I want to have a conversation with you today about something really important.
If you are a longtime viewer of this program, you have seen me in the past make predictions, and I am going to make one today, but I need to take you back to the very beginning because this one I urge you to hear and then follow through on. I want to take you back first to September 11, 2001. We all remember it. We remember exactly where we were, who we were talking to. We remember the whole day, honestly, the shock.
Our comfortable little worlds had been shattered. We didn’t know what to do. We had no idea. Sadness, fear, knowing that this whole thing could just come apart, we didn’t know, knowing that we were at war but not even who we were at war with. Then the next day happened, and the next day will always be the most important date to me. It was 9/12, September 12. We were never prouder to be Americans, and it wasn’t just because the flag. It had nothing to do with that.
We had stood in line that day to give blood. We hugged each other. We stopped, and we asked strangers, “How are you doing?” We looked at one another. We loved one another. For one moment in time, we saw each other as human beings, and all of the labels just vanished. There was no pretension. There were no classes. There were no political parties. We were just human beings looking out for one another.
We weren’t, you know, naïve enough to forget our differences. We knew that we were still different, but we put them in their rightful place, low on the priority list. We’re at our best when we live like that, and that’s what America used to be. America, when we are at our best, we look at the things that unite us, not divide us. Our humanity reigns over polarity. It used to be that we were calling ourselves a melting pot, and that’s what it meant, we’re all in it together.
Today, September 11, our kids don’t even know what September 11 is, and September 12, 9/12 is a distant memory for most. And people are put right back into their little boxes. We’ve all done it. Everything about them is assumed. There is vitriol and hatred.
We have to find the way to lay our differences aside and to see each other as humans and as Americans first before the next big tragedy, because the globe is spinning into chaos, and what I see happening next is going to make the banking collapse look tame by comparison. And I want you to understand the cascade effect of all this because in the end, men’s hearts will fail. In the end, the human heart collapses, and I believe it’s already happening in some places of the world.
We are more than just political animals. We’re just animals. When you have a seven-year-old holding up a human head, and the world says, meh. I want to show you the timeline and take you back here for just a bit. In 1999, I talked about a guy I couldn’t even pronounce his name. I was on WABC in New York, and I think we had just bombed the aspirin factory or something, and I remember because conservatives were saying that I was trying to help Bill Clinton.
And he had just bombed the aspirin factory, and I said, “It has nothing to do with politics. Have you read the words of Osama bin Laden?” Most had not. They didn’t know who he was. I couldn’t even pronounce the guy’s name, and that’s not a surprise for anybody, but I didn’t even know how to pronounce the guy’s name. I’d never heard of him before. I read about his name, saw that’s who we were targeting, and then decided to do my own homework and look into him.
And I got so frustrated at one point, a caller, I said, “Look, within the next ten years, this guy is going to rain blood and bodies and buildings in the streets of New York.” Will you then wake up?” Well, it wasn’t ten years. That was in 1999. It was September 2001 where he rained blood, bodies, and buildings in the streets. It was too late. We could’ve done something, but it was too late.
In 2003, I started talking about the head of the snake being Iran, that we could not mess around with Iran. And I started talking about the 12th Imam, started really looking into the 12th Imam and didn’t really understand it in ’03, but when we were going to war, and we started to ramp up about going into Iraq, I started paying attention to Iran and what was going on. And I said at the time there’s going to come a time, if you don’t act soon, there’s going to come a time you’re not going to be able to deal with Iran.
In 2004, I figured out that the Republicans were lying to us because there was stuff happening on the border that didn’t make sense. They weren’t protecting our values. They were going on some other set of values. They were going on their interests, what was politically expedient for them. That’s when I started pulling away from the GOP.
The housing crisis in ’06, I started talking about that, in ’07, the stock bubble. In ’06, I was saying, “Please don’t take out these loans. Please, they don’t make any sense. Listen to your values, not your interest of getting a house, not just somebody who’s trying to sell you something. Listen to your values. It’s not going to work.” And as that started to grow, I saw the stock market up about 14,000, and I said, “This is insane, because none of it is real. There is a collapse coming.”
At this point in ’07, we were in the middle of an election, and what were Republicans saying to me? Republicans were saying, “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, there’s a bigger problem. It’s Barack Obama or it’s Hillary Clinton getting into office, and this isn’t going to happen. And even if it does, you’re hurting the chances of the Republicans because the Republicans were the ones who did it all.” Really?
Stop looking at your political interests and start concerning yourself with the values. So it collapsed. At about this point, I started talking to, it was right around here that I started saying, “This is a highway. These are off ramps. There’s things on the horizon, and if you don’t take this off ramp, if you don’t get off here, if you don’t get off here or here or here or here, at some point we run out of road. There’s nothing left.”
That’s why when I started sensing all of this in 2009, we started the 9/12 Project. What was the 9/12 Project? The 9/12 Project, a lot of people will think that it has something to do with the Tea Party. It had nothing to do with the Tea Party. If you remember, I was against the Tea Party. I said that it was about taxes, and that’s not what it was about. It needed to be about values and principles.
Follow me here, values and principles in 2009. Then I started talking about the European uprising with a little book called The Coming Insurrection, and I said there’s going to be Nazis, and the old hatreds of the 1930s are going to start rising up. But that was a conspiracy theory, and I was an anti-Semite bigot for even bringing that up.
Then we did Restoring Honor in Washington, D.C., principles and values, Restoring Honor. Then I started talking about the caliphate and how the left and the Islamic extremists would unite to collapse the Western world. First, they’d go after Israel, and then they’d go after the rest of us. That was insane. I followed that that summer with Restoring Courage. We continued on that vein in one form or another, and then we did Restoring Love.
That brings us to here. We didn’t take any of these exits. We mocked. We ridiculed. Why? Why? Whether you’re a Republican, and you mocked here for your political interests or you’re a Democrat, and you mocked here for your political interests, that’s the only reason why we didn’t get off. There is one other reason, it’s too horrible to look at these things. It’s too horrible to imagine any of these things. All of these things have happened now.
All of these things were insane to say at the time. They were too hard to imagine. I understand. I don’t want imagine them. I say to people all the time, they say, “I don’t want to hear any more from you on your predictions, because they tend to come true.” Try living with me. Try being me. Do you think I want to think these things?
I believe we’re at the end of the highway. This is it. This is it. What’s the answer? Let me just speak to the religious in our audience – gospel principles. That’s it, live like Jesus, live like Gandhi. I don’t care who your model is. Live like Buddha. You’ve got to shed pride. We have got to shred wanting stuff. Buddha said that life is suffering. I don’t agree with that.
Yes, actually when you understand that suffering is caused from desire to have something, whether that be I want my kids to get better, that causes you stress and suffering, to I want that car, stress and suffering. I don’t care what religion you’re in, we have to start living eternal principles, and we have to start softening the heart. I don’t care what religion you’re in. I don’t care what party you’re part of. I don’t care if we disagree with each other. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
What is coming is all of this stuff, all of this stuff. The caliphate is here. We are headed towards World War III. I hope we don’t get there. I don’t want to get there. I don’t know how to tell you not to get there, because we’ve missed all of the exits. We are headed for massive European anti-Semitism. Europe does this over and over again. We’re headed there.
We’re headed for a collapse beyond our understanding because we got off the gold standard. What’s our money worth? Did you notice that this weekend Russia and China finished the de-dollarization of their relationship? They don’t deal in dollars anymore with each other. They don’t have to. Which side do you think China has just picked? They picked Russia.
Which side is Russia on when it comes to the caliphate? Oh, that’s right, Iran and Syria. What side are we on? Saudi Arabia. Gee, that puts America in the position of World War II where you look at World War II, well, you’ve got communists, and you have fascists. Well, neither of us want to live under communism or fascism, oh, but we really don’t like the Nazis compared to the communists, so we’ll just cozy up to the communists.
It’s almost like who do you want to cozy up to? You’ve got Iran running a caliphate, or you have Saudi Arabia. Well, we really don’t like Iran, but we kind of like Saudi Arabia. It’s World War II all over again.
I thought about this all weekend. I thought what can I possibly say to you, what can I possibly say to you on how to get out of this? I don’t know. I’ve already said it all. We are now down the highway. There’s no more exit ramps. What you have to be is the impact zone. You have to be the parachute. You have to be the one that helps society absorb what’s coming.
If we don’t stand and stand together across all political parties, all lines, all classes, and we just help each other, and we exercise the human heart – it’s a muscle, if you don’t use it, it ain’t going to work – if we don’t do that, I don’t know if we survive. I don’t know who does. I don’t know who does, but the world is about to change.
I have a guest on here in a few minutes, I can’t wait to talk to him. I’ve never talked to him before. I don’t know much about him other than he was writing for the Village Voice, which I don’t usually go to the Village Voice for, you know, anything that I would agree with. But I want to show you something.
In the Village Voice, he wrote to a reader who wrote in and said this: “Hi Andrew, I’m writing because I just can’t deal with my father anymore. He’s a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who’s basically turned into a total a**hole, intent on ruining our relationship and planet with his politics. I’m more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know people like my dad are going to destroy us all. I don’t have any good times with him anymore. All we do is argue.
When I try to spend time with him talking about politics or discussing current events, there’s still an underlying tension that makes it really uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I love him no matter what, but how do I explain to him that his politics are turning him into a monster, destroying the environment, and pushing away the people who care about him? Thanks for your help, Son of a Right-Winger.”
How do you respond to that? This guy responded in the best way I…This is the best thing I’ve read in a long, long time. Here are the highlights: “Dear Son of a Right-Winger, Go back and read the opening sentences of your letter. Read them again. Then read the rest of your letter. Then read that again. Try to find a single instance where you refer to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man. There isn’t one. You’ve reduced your father – the person who created you – to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to you. And you don’t consider your dad a person of his own standing – he’s just “your dad.”
You’ve also reduced yourself to a set of opposing views, and reduced your relationship with him to a fight between the two. The humanity has been reduced to nothingness and all that’s left in its place is an argument that can never really be won...
The world isn’t being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist. The world is being destroyed by one side believing the other is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they’re truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen...
So we must protect and respect each other, no matter how hard it feels. No matter how wrong someone else may seem to us, they are still human...Love your dad because he’s your father, because he made you, because he thinks for himself, and most of all because he is a person. Have the strength to doubt and question what you believe as easily as you’re so quick to doubt his beliefs. Live with a truly open mind – the kind of open mind that even questions the idea of an open mind.
Don’t feel the need to pick a side. If you do pick a side, pick the side of love. It remains our only real hope for survival and has more power to save us than any other belief we could ever cling to. Your friend, Andrew W.K.” That is the best advice I’ve heard in a long time. Andrew, who writes for the Village Voice, oh boy, that goes against everything politically, doesn’t it? Uh huh.
When there is comfort, there is no growth. When there is growth, there is very little comfort. Let’s get out of our comfort zone and grow and exercise the human heart just a bit.