Where Did My Country Go

0:00 Unknown: And I got to see a very graphic video of that, and it's different than in the movies. Live from the basement. It's building a better Dave. Check us out@betterdave.com Email us at dave@betterdave.com or call in your comments, 888-563-3228, now here's your host, Dave Jackson, hello, hey, this is going to be one of those just me shouting into the void kind of episodes I I was aware of who Charlie Kirk was. He was very much a right wing guy. But what I liked about Charlie is he would go to people, and he would listen to them, and then he would give his, you know, response, and then they would say something that may or may not make sense, and he would say his he would have actual dialogs with people.

1:09 And today he was in Utah, of all places, not really known for their crime, and the guy got shot in the neck, and I got to see a very graphic video of that, and it's different than in the movies, and that was shocking enough that a guy was simply voicing his opinion and was murdered for it. But I always hear how bad Twitter is. And when I go to Twitter, I'm looking at my friends and, you know, colleagues, and we're all talking about podcasting, and I'm like, I don't get what's so bad about Twitter. I don't get it. So I see on the right that Charlie Kirk is trending, and I click on it, and that's where I saw the video. But then I saw people that were cheering like, not kind of cheering like cheering like, All right, one, you know, part of the patriarchy is dead, and heart emojis and rainbows and, you know, pictures of Kamala Harris laughing. You know, obviously she's not, but just the fact that this is a guy with two little kids, two daughters, and their dad's dead.

2:31 And you know, eventually, somewhere, they're going to end up seeing that video. And I can only imagine how scarring that would be. Then I fire up LinkedIn, and my buddy Larry says it's day two in Portland, and I have to say it's been a complete shock to the system. The streets are covered in graffiti. Homelessness is everywhere, and people lost to fentanyl slump on every street corner. I've been across all the country, but I've never seen anything quite like this. Within two hours, a stranger ran up yelling at me to guess the name that three police officers had given him. I had to play a real life game of Minesweeper to dodge human waste on the sidewalks, and when I tried to buy a monster, meaning an energy drink at Walgreens, I couldn't even grab it off the shelf because everything in the store was locked up. I can't wrap my head around how this became our normal, or how policy makers allow an environment like this to take root. It's disturbing, it's disheartening, and it's hard to accept. And then I'm in Akron, Ohio, and look, I'm a huge LeBron James fan. He has done a lot for this city. Every spring, he comes back and gives away a boatload of bicycles, and all these kids ride down Main Street. He's taken an old restaurant that was kind of one

4:05 of the pillars of Akron, but had really been run down, and he turned it into a work center to give people skills they need. He built a school where he pays all the children. It's actually now part of the Akron public school system, but in theory, they're supposed to get free college. And there are kids that are graduating, you know, like the eighth grade, and they can't read. And part of that, I saw a YouTube video of a teacher that taught there that said the kids, if they don't feel like learning, can just get up and walk out like that's the norm.

4:48 And it seems to be a lot, especially with children, where we're kind of letting the inmates run the asylum and there needs to be order. So that's crazy. But it was just weird. And then throw on top of that, I had a friend of mine yet another one drop dead this week. And it's weird because I I just saw him two weeks ago. He had lost 30 pounds. Was looking really good. His doctor gave him a great bill of health, like, keep up the good work. And then he had a blood clot and was gone, and I'm like, Okay, I instantly go to the internet, like, what causes blood clots? So it's really weird, and I don't know, because the news makes their living by only. Like, there was a video when I was on Twitter of, I believe it was CNN. And, I mean, this guy gets hit in the throat, right? It's and, and, you know, they said, Well, maybe it was one of his supporters firing off a celebratory shot. And I'm like, really like, you're, you're, you're that biased that you can't say, Holy cow, somebody shot this guy. And that's when I was just like, we are so far left and so far right that the mainstream media just

6:25 makes a living out of stoking the files the fires of recreational outrage. They just want us mad at each other. And now I was listening to a podcast called no agenda, and they were talking about how, like, the latest shooting at the Catholic school, and that person was mentally ill and was on all sorts of drugs. And everybody was like, pointing at them because this person happened to be trans. And they're like, well, this isn't like, just because he's he or she is trans, like, that's not it. And then that show, because it's not the mainstream media went back and there were, like, six of that situation, and they weren't even pointing at the transfer.

7:14 They're just like, hey, can we look into some of these drugs people are taking that are prescribed? And it's just, but the Twitter thing, I now go, oh, that's a cesspool. It really is, where the cesspool myself included, I guess. I mean, I go there to talk to my friends, and I don't look at other things. But I just, I could not believe people, you know, shooting confetti cannons and jumping up and down. And I just was like, that's a that's a person, a young person, who's, what, 36 something like that, and he got shot for speaking his opinion.

8:01 And this is where, you know, he could say one thing, and we're not communicating, because if he says something about, you know, there are only two sexes, you know, that is translated as they want to kill us all. We have to kill them first. And I'm like, I don't think that's what he said. It's just so weird. And I didn't know how to feel my body, the whole my whole body was just tense, like, What? What? Because, being a man, I want to fix stuff, and I go, I don't know how to fix this, but I am starting to understand why more people are homeschooling, because we're not. We don't feel like our kids are safe at school. And I'm starting to wonder. This week, I went and saw Tom Segura at a theater, and he's kind of crazy. He does some Nazi for work stuff. And is this a case where we're all because that's what they want. They want us all scared. And are we just going to be afraid to go to any kind of public events, you know?

9:19 And the bigger it is, the the better the chance, you know, somebody's gonna, and I don't know about the whole gun situation, because this wasn't a machine gun. It was a rifle, you know. So it wasn't like he had a ak 47 or what. I'm not a gun guy, you know, he shot one person, and so it wasn't a mass shooting, it was the direct opposite. Was very targeted. And my heart goes out to his family. And I I'm it's weird because I heard they don't have a suspect, and I'm like, wait, no. But he saw this guy, so I don't know. We'll figure it out. I hope I just feel so bad for his kids.

10:09 And I'm just letting you know don't go looking for the video, because there was one guy that was like three rows from him, and you just see him get shot in the neck, and blood just comes flowing everywhere. And then there was the video I missed, this story of the one woman on some sort of train or bus, and the guy behind her just stabs her, and nobody does a thing, which I don't know what I would do in that situation. You got a crazy guy stabbing people, but it again, it's way different than the movies, when all of a sudden you just see a river of blood go flowing down this bus, and I'm just like, what's going on? We need to teach people how to de escalate things. And maybe we need to start looking into, you know, remember when Reagan emptied all the the quote, asylums, you know, maybe we got some people with serious mental problems that need help. And that's a tricky that's a slippery slope, because some people are obviously mentally ill, and then other people are kind of on the borderline, if we go locking up everybody, but we got to be safe. I don't know. I don't have the answers. I just know I don't recognize my country anymore, and I don't

11:42 think it's a case where this has always happened. You just didn't see it before. Now, with 24/7 I don't think that's the case. I think because I remember growing up when you could say what political party you were, and then you'd be like, Oh, you're a Democrat, oh, I'm the other guy, oh, I'm a Democrat, oh, you're the other guy. And then you kind of talk about things it wasn't any big deal, because I think we all knew in the end, they're all crooked politicians owned by the banks, and so why lose a friendship over it? I don't know it's very weird. Everything's very extreme, but I just know right now, I don't recognize my country anymore, and Twitter, Twitter makes me depressed. If I go into Twitter and look at whatever's trending, we're all just it's just amazingly horrible. So is it gonna get better? I always end by saying, well, it's gonna get better. I Sure, sure it is, because in the mortal words of John and Paul, It can't get much worse. You i.