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Glenn: Let’s get real

October 31, 2014
Wilson

Writer

Last night on TV Glenn talked about the need to put down social media, ignore the noise, and just get real. There are so many things clouding our vision, causing us to lose touch with our common human bond. When college kids believe it’s ok to ‘post-abort’ a baby up to five years old, something has gone tragically wrong.

Below is a transcript of this segment

I want to give you some really good news, really good news. Do you remember Brittany Maynard? She’s the 29-year-old woman who has terminal cancer, and she was the woman who publicly said she wanted to die with dignity, and so she would take a suicide pill on November 1. Well, that’s Saturday. Update: She’s now released a new video where she says she’s feeling enough joy to continue to live for now. Watch.

VIDEO

Brittany Maynard: So if November 2 comes along, and I’ve passed, I hope my family is still proud of me and the choices I’ve made. And if November 2 comes along and I’m still alive, I know that we’ll just still be moving forward as a family like out of love for each other and that the decision will come later. And I do it because I still feel good enough, and I still have enough joy, and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn’t seem like the right time right now. But it will come because I feel myself getting sicker. It’s happening each week.

I think this is a miracle myself, and I’m still praying for a bigger miracle that she’ll continue not to lose hope, and she’ll find more and more joy, and she will see that life even…and maybe especially in the darkest of hours is precious. We are living in an amazing world, and we’re losing touch with our human connection.

You see the woman who says I don’t care, it’s me, me, I went over to serve, I’m the one, I went over there, and I know what’s right about Ebola, and you don’t have any rights. Wait a minute, you’re putting us all at risk…possibly. We don’t know. Then this woman, how can you condemn her? You can say it’s not right. I hope and I pray that she doesn’t do it, and that’s not the way I would choose to do it, but I don’t condemn her for it, because life is precious.

Now there’s a new poll out that says college students are beginning to think about postabortion. What does postabortion mean? It means you can kill a baby up to five years old. Man alive, we’d better start grabbing onto things that are true.

I was disturbed by Carol Costello earlier this week. That’s the CNN host who actually got some sort of weird, sick pleasure out of listening to Bristol Palin describe being physically assaulted. She hasn’t apologized for this on the air, and I don’t expect her to. In fact…well, I did hope that maybe, maybe somebody would see the pleas that we made in a reasonable sort of way and say hey, this isn’t right, and maybe somebody would join.

But you know what, in the end, it might just be us, but that’s okay. The only reason to mock a Palin or to mock the Obama children…if they were being assaulted, can you imagine what people would say, and we said hey, that gives me some sort of sick pleasure? My gosh…the only reason why you would do that is because you wouldn’t see them as human because they’re just a political prop. That’s got to stop.

This week, we tried to bring the human connection back into focus. We have a lot of things clouding our vision. Social media is such a misnomer. It is making us more antisocial, and here’s why, we’re not seen truth. We’re seeing an edited feed. It’s just like reality television, except we’re doing it ourself. We’re seeing the person that that person wants us to see.

I told my wife the other day, I said honey, I’m going to start just taking pictures of you and me at our absolute worst, my son with his finger up his nose and everything else, because I just think people need to start seeing real stuff. Because what we’re seeing is only partially real. We’re programming our brains with a completely false perception of reality.

None of us will be able to hit that standard ever, and social media is clouding us, but it goes a step further. We talked on the radio today. Social media, Facebook is really dangerous. We’re playing with fire if we’re not careful, because we just get on, and we just vent. We say whatever it is we want, and we don’t think about it. We have to stop that too, and then we have to be big enough—and this is me—I have to be big enough to forgive people and look past their faults, because I’ve already made all those mistakes. I’ll probably make more tomorrow.

So we’re clouded, and regular media is clouding us too. They edit our vision of reality as well. We see so much negative, we don’t see any of the positive. Are the problems really getting worse? We talked about this with Halloween candy. Remember when we couldn’t get out, you know, we were afraid that somebody’s going to put razor blades or poison? That never happened. In our childhood, that never happened. Do you think that crime on Halloween is worse or better than it was when we were growing up? I’ll bet you you think it’s worse. It’s actually better, but we don’t think that because media.

So we’ve tried to spend the week this week to try to reconnect to human, try to reconnect to hope, reconnect to those things that will bring us to a better place. The media is going to show you the horrors of human trafficking. This week, we wanted to show you Operation Underground Railroad. We brought some guys in that are doing absolutely amazing work. They brought the video in, not seen anywhere. Why is this not everywhere, people rescuing young boys and girls from a horrible existence of the sex slave industry?

Over 100 children were rescued in this mission alone. We told you about it. Where was the rest of the media? And more importantly, this happened because one man had a vision, proving one man makes a difference. You will, if you don’t listen to the media, if you don’t listen to the social media, and you don’t listen to the crazy things that are going on in your own head saying you’ll never make it.

We see in the media the highly sexualized clothing that society continues to push on our children on all fronts. This week, we featured a panel of feminists. We don’t agree on anything, except on this one issue. What does that say? There’s a few things, and it’s our children, we can come together, and we can come together and effect positive change. And if we can do it, anybody can.

Our vision has been clouded, and we spend our whole day doing this [looking down typing]. I used to get yelled at by my wife because I would walk around the house like this—[looking down at book] uh huh, uh huh…drove her crazy, crazy. Now she’s doing this [looking down typing]. Honey, put it down. I can’t. I’ve got to get this done. How do you expect me to…I don’t know, but I’m now doing the same thing, and we didn’t do it before, and we somehow or another made it.

We don’t look up from our screens anymore. We don’t survey reality for ourselves. People who are using Facebook…and look, I’m a big user of Facebook. I like Facebook. It helps me stay in touch with you. But people who use that, they see this image, and they start to go down. Their attitude goes down. They start to think I’m not good enough. I’ll never make it. Studies show that.

We’re listening and we’re seeing everything through a filter, and it’s a filter of what someone else is telling us is the truth. Technology is not bad. In fact, I had a guy sitting in my office today who’s from Argentina. The guy is just amazing. He grew up on a goat farm in Argentina. His family was wiped out three times by hyperinflation. He works in Silicon Valley now. He is one of the giants in Silicon Valley—amazing guy.

He didn’t have any of that technology until he moved here to the United States. I mean, you want to talk about a culture shock, he lived literally five people in the mountains 100 miles away from anybody else his whole life. He remembers when his dad built a ham radio and he could hear the outside world. The guy’s like 30. It’s incredible.

Technology is not bad. Technology just may save us if we get there with our soul. Technology is good. I started a media company based on technology. We just have to self-evaluate. Run from anyone telling you that they have all of the answers. Run from anyone who is saying those people, it’s those people, get ‘em. Run from yourself or that part of you that is angry.

There’s nothing wrong with righteous indignation, but we’ve got to be in control of it. We have to be better than we ever thought possible. And we can do it. We can do it. We just need to help each other with our kids and our family.

I want to provide you with stories of love and courage. I want to provide stories where the good guys win. I’m working on some things where I think our families will start to meet together again, and we’ll start to believe that people are good and that we’re going to make it, because we won’t make it if we don’t believe it. A lot of people just want to keep you latched to the TV set. I don’t.

At the end of the day, we have to see each other as people first. We have to do our own homework. We have to question absolutely everything. We have to find our own, our humanity, and then the humanity of others. Instead of saying yeah, see, that lady is chickening out, which I know somebody has probably said that, saying oh, what a miracle, what a miracle that is. Hopefully every step of the way, think of the change that could be wrought by her if she holds on until the end, somebody who believed in taking her own life, but in the end she held on the whole way.

And don’t think darkness isn’t going to be trying to get her to make another choice. Pray for her. This is really good. We just have to not be prepackaged. We have to not be reality television or reality Facebook or anything else. We have to be real, not the perfect mold of a person who knows everything. We need to see the real person. The thing about people, we’re all really alike, and you can put a happy face on whatever it is you’re struggling with, but I know you’re struggling, and I know you’re struggling because I’m struggling. So why put on a charade? Why not just be real with each?

That, I think, has been the lesson this week. It’s the lesson we’ve tried to do this week on this program, for me, trying to find it myself, just be real. Let’s be human. Let’s go find people that we don’t agree with, and let’s see if we can connect, even though that got a little dicey. Let’s see the human in the other fellow that we happen to be seeing on screen.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.