It's a tough day in America. First and foremost, please pray for the people involved in the Virginia shooting, the police, their family members and all of our congressional members.
It's going to feel good to lash out with words today --- but I urge you not to. Instead, stand firm in the truth. And the truth is, we don't yet know the motivation behind what happened at a baseball field in Virginia.
Please, let's do our best not to speculate. This guy may have been completely nuts. This guy may be politically motivated. If so, he could be a liberal who believes Republicans are evil because of their beliefs or he could be a conservative who believes Republicans are evil because they're not doing what they promised. We just don't know.
So please, it's going to feel good to lash out. You literally will get hit with a rush of dopamine. When you read or post something that makes you go, "Yeah, stick it to him!" you literally will get a hit a chemical rush that plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. It will feel good. But just because it feels good, doesn't mean we should do it.
Look, I am sick and tired of the hypocrisy just like you are. Here's what I want to say: screw you, Democrats. I mean, look what's in Vanity Fair today. It's a whole painting of Trump's hell, where they've made all of the people around Donald Trump --- you know, Paul Ryan and everybody --- look as though they are literal demons and Klan people and everything else.
What I want to say is, if we would have produced something like that about you and Gabby Giffords, you would have been scooping people up. You were on the air saying, "Gabby Giffords, this is Tea Party rhetoric." You did that for days, even after it was discovered the guy votes Democrat --- and he was insane. You still were doing it.
Turn around is fair play, isn't it? No, it's not. It's not.
We have to find a way to reduce the friction, to reduce the chaos, to reduce the hatred --- and it's going to go against everything that feels good.
We don't know anything about the Virginia shooter yet. Even after the reports come out, we may not know really anything true about him. But what is going to be said about us?
We've been talking about this for a while. I said years ago --- and I don't even know why I said it . . . I'm not smart enough to come up with this --- everything that you think is solid will be liquid and everything liquid will be solid. The world will be upside down and inside out. There was really no reason to start saying that in 2006, but now we see what has happened.
As convinced as I was on that, I am also convinced, equally so, that there now is no truth. There is no truth, and that is by design. Our colleges and universities are telling us all truth is subjective. That truth is a lie. It's a myth.
I want you to know, I am not going over the cliff with the rest of humanity. There is truth. It is easy to find.
Common sense does not exist anymore. It is now uncommon sense. But everybody still has access to common sense. They just have to listen to the small voice, to the still, small voice. Listen. Truth speaks; lies whisper all the time.
But you can find the truth. It is verifiable. It is easy. There is truth. My question to you is, what is the truth about us?
Are we people who are at civil war and are ready to condemn our neighbors and our friends --- who I am convinced, with an exception of probably 10 percent on the right and 10 percent on the left who want us to hate each other and need us to hate each other --- there is a good 70 to 80 percent of this country that doesn't want any of that. And I stand in the middle with them on that point.
I will live next to any man, no matter their faith, their creed, their color, as long as they respect my right to live my way, just like I respect their right. It doesn't matter to me.
I believe that is the majority of Americans. You can allow yourself to be derailed and believe that we're in the minority, but I will go to my grave not going over that cliff with the rest of humanity. I do not believe that is who we are. And I would rather go out believing that than buying into the darkness that we're at civil war --- that we've got to go to war, strap arms to us and hate the other side.
I'm not going there, and I invite you to join me --- because the truth is a much better place.