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Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Joe Getty
Armstrong and Getty.
Jack Armstrong
And now here's Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Joe Getty
And.
Jack Armstrong
I have a handful of stories that are centered around the same theme, all of which have come out just in the last day or two, all of which are being covered in major publications and quite responsibly. Number one India's I'm sorry Inside Syria's sectarian Cauldron Kidnapping triggers Cascade of violence Blood soaked week between Sunni Bedouins, Sunni Muslims and the Druze minority in southern Syria Slaughtering the hell out of the Druze because of their religion and their tribe, et cetera. Isn't sectarian politics grand?
Joe Getty
And the Druze are? Are they Christian adjacent? I forget I read this last time.
Jack Armstrong
They're like an Abrahamic religion beliefs, all of the prophets are cool and trust me, I'm not a Druze theologian, but it's kind of a universal Abrahamist religion anyway and it's absolutely horrifying. These are not that it matters, but you look at these people, they are thoroughly moder, normal people living their lives, hoping to get a career going, raise their children, blah blah blah. And they have armed gunmen storming their houses and shooting them all dead in the streets because of their religion. Moving along, this is an interesting story from Texas of all places. Epic City replacing Old Glory with the Crescent Moon. Picture this a Muslim only city governed by Sharia law beyond the reach of democratically elected officials officials. Something like that is happening in Texas and its founders call it Epic City. The East Plano Islamic Center. Epic is the largest mosque in Texas and one of the largest in the US Last year several members of the mosque formed Community Capital Partners LLC or CCP and announced the formation of Epic City, a master planned Islamic development project that caters to the evolving needs of families in the Muslim communities. And again, we could get into this idea in depth and what is wrong with it, but don't really have time. Josh Hawley's called for us, the US to condemn the persecution of Christians in Muslim majority nations, including several that were kind of friendly with these days. But whether it's Africa or the Middle east, yeah, there's wholesale persecution of Christians going on, frequently slaughtering them by machine gun fire or machete. And, and Hawley, is he grandstanding? He often is. Or is he sincere about this?
Joe Getty
I don't know.
Jack Armstrong
How weird is it that the US doesn't condemn that? Oh, right.
Joe Getty
If my main thing politically is standing up for Christianity around the world, I think those are better stories to latch on to than Putin trying to help Christianity out by taking over Ukraine or something. Right.
Jack Armstrong
Or something. Yeah. The resolutions that are co sponsored with several other Republicans. Urge the president to prioritize the defense of persecuted Christians in America's foreign policy, including via diplomatic engagement with Muslim majority countries as well as efforts to stabilize the Middle east. Urges the president to leverage the diplomatic toolkit to advance the protection of persecuted Christians worldwide and within Muslim majority countries. So I certainly applaud that effort and all of those headlines bring us to this. And it's a piece I came across by Paul Friesen. Paul is with Cornell University. He is one of the scholars with the Let me get this right. The center for Global Democracy in the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell didn't really know his work, but I found this to be extremely persuasive. He talks, he starts this, this article talking about the Maldives, which is a chain of islands by not far from Africa, I think, actually, I didn't even look it up on a map. But they're idyllic, beautiful. It's infinity pools, bioluminescent beaches. You got your bungalows over the water. It's the stuff straight out of a Sandals ad. Or, you know, like Fiji has resorts that are just like this. And he writes few. Imagine that this archipelago of honeymoon brochures and influencer backdrops is governed by a constitutionally mandated Sunni monoculture where apostasy that is rejecting Islam is punishable by death.
Joe Getty
Wow.
Jack Armstrong
And children are catechized not in the arts of critical thought, but in the compulsory admiration of sharia. And all non Muslim religious practice, no matter how discreet or devotional, is prohibited by law. You cannot silently pray to Jesus Christ in your living room alone in the Maldives or it is punishable. There are no churches, no synagogues, no temples, no tolerance. This is a theocracy with a customer service department. And he says here the word Islamic republic does not mean Muslim majority democracy. It means what it says on the label, a legal architecture erected not to protect freedoms but to restrict them. Islamic education is mandated in every grade, every year, et cetera, et cetera. Oh. Any dissent, whether whispered by a secular blogger or typed by an ex Muslim on Twitter, can earn you 100 lashes, 20 years or a cemetery plot. Welcome to paradise. And then he says, this is not uniquely Maldivian or even uniquely Islamic. What's on display here is the metastasis of a broader pathology, the suicide of liberalism through the intravenous drip of unchecked pluralism. All right, there are a lot of isms there. I'll explain. But this is the point of what he's writing. The Maldives is not just an outlier. It is a bellwether, a warning of what happens when civilizations that once separated church from state begin importing ideas, ideologies that merge the two, like Siamese twins sharing a judicial spine. This is not a clash of cultures. It is a conquest by bureaucracy, and we are funding it for the umpteenth time. Read Michael Holbeck's submission novel, came out a few years ago, about how it's an imagination of how Trump. Trump, I'm reading, while I'm talking, how France becomes an entirely Muslim country and freedom of speech and religion are stamped.
Joe Getty
Out and pretty plausible when you read it.
Jack Armstrong
Oh, that's the thing. How would you. How would you describe how the takeover goes, how it works in that novel?
Joe Getty
Little by little, with a lot of decent people not wanting to come off as racist or Islamophobic and then just.
Jack Armstrong
Over time, losing and as Mr. Friesen points out, like through bureaucracy, bit by bit, through the. The tentacles of government. Anyway, here's his main point, and this is the. The part that I said I found so eloquent and. And I wish we had time to just do the whole thing, but maybe we'll talk to him someday. It was Karl Popper, he writes, who warned that a tolerant society must be intolerant of intolerance or it would cease to be tolerant at all.
Joe Getty
Obviously, that's where it's the way we're always mocking the coexist bumper sticker.
Jack Armstrong
Coexist, coexist.
Joe Getty
A couple of those symbols on there want to dominate the other symbols. So you can't coexist with somebody who wants to take over.
Jack Armstrong
A tolerant society must be intolerant of intolerance or it would cease to be tolerant at all. Can you think of any other modern movements that punished you, even disagreeing with them or even asking them hard questions at a training session, for instance, that they made you go to at work or at your university's orientation? You weren't even allowed to question it. Anyway, he he goes on, it's a delicious paradox, too often quoted and too rarely heeded. For we have taken the first half of the dictum, the imperative to tolerate, and chiseled it into law, into policy, into university mission statements and NGO pamphlets. But the second half, the requirement to draw a line, to say no further, has been treated like garlic in a vampire movie, an antique and anathema, unfashionable. The paradox has become pathology. Here's what he means. Our courts allow Sharia arbitration councils to function in British cities. He's a Brit, obviously, adjudicating matters of family and inheritance with standards that would make a 12th century canon lawyer flinch. Our schools include faith based curricula that require hijabs for seven year olds and teach that homosexuality is satanic filthy. Our public broadcasters will air a documentary about the importance of free speech, followed immediately by a segment about why cartoons of Muhammad are unhelpful. This is not multiculturalism. It is masochism. It is the belief that liberalism must be so open minded that its own brains are spilled onto the prayer mat. It is the fetishization of identity at the expense of liberty. It is the ideological pacifism of a society too terrified to assert its own values lest it be accused of racism by those who mistake ideology for ethnicity. We have enshrined the right of the theocrat while criminalizing the instincts of the secularist. The result is not harmony, it is humiliation. And then he goes into let's dispense with the ritual disclaimers. Not all Muslims are Islamists. Not all believers who wish to impose their are believers who wish to impose their theology on others, of course. But neither are all white people racists. Yet no progressive chokes on the phrase white supremacy. When was the last time you heard a progressive say, now, of course, not all white people are racist. A lot of white people are good, honest, decent, hard working people who try to treat everybody well, blah, blah, blah. But still there is white supremacy. But anytime you talk about Islamism, you have to throw in the long list of disclaimers, right?
Joe Getty
Well, the first one, though, is not seen as true by, you know, your local school quite possibly spent a lot of money getting Ibram x Kendi to come speak at the school, or at least bought all his books. And his whole theme is you are automatically racist if you're white by definition, right? So that's one reason you wouldn't say that.
Jack Armstrong
He goes on. Why must we say religiously motivated extremism instead of naming the doctrine that inspired the bomb. Why do we hear of Asian grooming gangs instead of Pakistani Muslim sex trafficking rings? Why do we refer to the Maldives as a challenging democracy rather than a theocratic prison with coral beaches? Because the liberal west, having abolished blasphemy laws, is now enforcing them in reverse. The new heresy is criticism of faith, at least of one faith. To mock Christianity is edgy. To mock Islam is hate speech. To question Jewish nationalism is a principled resistance. To question Islamist imperialism is bigotry. This is not diversity, it is double think. It is a sacred exception carved out in the name of peace, which is to say, in the name of fear. And then he goes on to make the point more at greater length. Fear is the root of all of this. And he's absolutely right, especially about Europe. Europe, Britain, France are humiliating themselves and twisting themselves into bizarre quasi legal knots to try not to anger the Muslim folks. And I'm telling you to return to the main theme. If you take away nothing from this, take this away, a tolerant society must be intolerant of intolerance or it would cease to be intolerant. I'm sorry. Or it would cease to be tolerant at all.
Joe Getty
Yeah, pretty obviously. But obviously not obvious enough to keep it from happening the way it's happening.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah. Those of you who don't have the courage to say this sort of thing, we suggest you try to find it if you can. Those of you who do, we're with you.
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The Armstrong and Getty show get more.
Jack Armstrong
Jack, more Joe podcasts and our hot links@armstrongetty.com the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Joe Getty
Music radio training from back when I was younger or just my personality. But I like to be aware of crazes, even if it's not something I'm into. I like to know what the hot TV show is, hot movie, hot music, whatever. I like to know what's really popular, even if it's not my thing. I just, I've always thought I need to know that.
Jack Armstrong
I like to think about the ancient Greek Republic.
Joe Getty
I am reading Ulysses, so I get both sides of it, I guess. But because that's not hot, nobody else is doing that. The Labubu craze I was reading about in the New York Post. I know this come up on the show, but this is a craze I'm not tuned into yet. They've got a picture of this furry little doll that looks frightening, but so fill us in on the Labubu craze there, Katie.
Jack Armstrong
So the Labubu craze actually started back in 2015 when he was first introduced. But he's part of this he. It's a he.
Joe Getty
What's a he?
Jack Armstrong
Gender fluid. To me, I'm gonna go with gender fluid, but the article that I'm reading says he don't use gendered language. Let's see. Hong Kong based artist created a series called the Monsters and one of the characters was a labubu. It's influenced by Nordic folklore and mythology.
Joe Getty
Okay.
Jack Armstrong
That he enjoyed during his childhood.
Joe Getty
It's a furry little. It's. It looks cute while at the same time kind of menacing with bangs and whatnot.
Jack Armstrong
And there's this. This whole craze about them right now is that it's called blind buying. So you buy this package and you can't see what one is inside. And people are trying to collect all of them. So they're buying a lot. And it says like baseball cards or Nintendo cards. Back in the day you just buy a pack hoping it's stuff you don't have or good stuff or whatever.
Joe Getty
It says here. The Boo Boo dolls have been spotted dangling from Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent purses as fashions quirky new status symbol. But their popularity could soon spell doom for the economy. And expert warns during economic downturns, consumers gravitate toward what experts call affordable luxuries. Small dopamine spiking splurges that don't break the bank like Lipstream lipstick, ice cream or movie ticket. Studies have shown it's sometimes called the lipstick index in economics which I found very, very interesting. And this heard of that.
Jack Armstrong
This is more interesting than I anticipated. Go on.
Joe Getty
I was hoping so. And the creepy but cute mischievous do.
Jack Armstrong
Dolls could be its latest iteration.
Joe Getty
It's just. And it's an example of people are not wanting to splurge on real.
Jack Armstrong
How.
Joe Getty
I set myself apart from other items. So they're going with this cheap trendy thing. That's the lipstick index.
Jack Armstrong
I had never heard of that, but that's. That's interesting. Agreed. Yeah. Clever.
Joe Getty
Okay, we'll keep our eye on that. What do we got coming up?
Jack Armstrong
Is there a male equivalent to that?
Joe Getty
I don't know. I don't know.
Jack Armstrong
I'd have to think about that. Coming up, the incredible lack of purple states in the US and why that might matter as we gerrymander ourselves into like two different countries that live side by side.
Joe Getty
Which leads me into this. I had this interesting experience and I'm glad I have met a person that can be. My conduit's not the right Word. What? I want to guide entrance point into.
Jack Armstrong
A world I don't really know because.
Joe Getty
I got as in, in conversation. Conversation with a woman, a mom.
Jack Armstrong
Her.
Joe Getty
And her husband, successful business people, raised kids, sound like the kids are all.
Jack Armstrong
Successful, blah blah blah.
Joe Getty
Like perfectly upstanding middle upper class people that have no interest in any of this crap we ever talk about. Like none don't know anything about any of it. And it I just thought, wow, that must be awesome. That must be really awesome. Well, at the same time, you know.
Jack Armstrong
You got to participate and pay attention.
Joe Getty
To make the world work or it.
Jack Armstrong
Will, you know, rules will be get.
Joe Getty
Made, blah blah blah, all that stuff, you know. But it was just so interesting. I don't hang around people like that and it's just so. It's just like they just don't know about any of the, any of the scan, you know, the, the jeans commercial from last week or just any of those things. They're completely unaware of them. And I thought that that must be fantastic.
Jack Armstrong
Do they have any concern about how their tax money is spent? Because it sounds like there's probably a fair amount.
Joe Getty
I don't know them well enough to know that, but that's why I said I look forward to this entrance into this world of learning more about it.
Jack Armstrong
Do they have Labubus?
Joe Getty
I bet they don't know what that is.
Jack Armstrong
That'd be hand good for them. The Armstrong and Getty Show. Get more Jack more Joe podcasts and.
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But wait, there's more.
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Jack Armstrong
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty the Armstrong.
Joe Getty
And Gettys Show I went to Florida south beach for a couple of days, then went down to Key west, rented a house. We were down there for a couple of days. Interesting. I talked to a number of people who worked at restaurants and whatnot while I was in Florida and they were talking about how awesome it was during COVID in Florida to be in their industry because people were coming from all over the country because they didn't shut down. They shut down for a couple of weeks total. Then we're up and running like it.
Jack Armstrong
Was normal while the Iran death sentence I Remember that?
Joe Getty
Right. While the rest of the country was acting like, you can't do that, everyone will die. They're talking about how awesome it was down there. And I doubt that these servers were, like, conservatives. I mean, they could have been, but they. They looked like liberals. I mean, they're island hippies with, you know, things through their nose and. And, you know, the usual. But it's really interesting that that happened. Part of the country said, yeah, we're gonna pretend it's not happening, and everything was fine. It's just. It's crazy sometimes.
Jack Armstrong
Counties that are practically side by side took wildly different approaches. And when one worked way better than the other, the people who went with the bad approach said nothing.
Joe Getty
Yeah. Drove or flew back up to New York because it was too hot. We just got too hot with too much beach sun. Sam and I flipped our jet ski, rented a Jet skis, a double jet ski. And I was somehow. We flipped it. He was driving. And that ended up costing me a lot of money because if you flip it and ruin the motor, then you got to pay for it. Part of the deal, you sign. And so that cost me a lot. But so we flipped it, and I was panicked about trying to get it turned back up, forgetting the warning they had made about all the barnacles in the bottom and stay away from it, and sliced my knee open so bad and was bleeding all over the place. And I'm glad a shark didn't come eat us, because that would have sucked anyhow.
Jack Armstrong
Oh, agreed. Yeah, that would be a terrible thing to happen.
Joe Getty
We just getting eaten by a shark.
Jack Armstrong
Yes.
Joe Getty
So we.
Jack Armstrong
How does it look, by the way? How's your knee look? Is it healing okay?
Joe Getty
Yeah, it's the same knee I hurt on my motorcycle wreck, so I have no feeling in it.
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It.
Joe Getty
Because it damaged it so much, and so I couldn't even tell that I got myself. I was just bleeding all over.
Jack Armstrong
Well, I was gonna say, because refresh is a thing, and I don't know if barnacles are similar, but if you, like, scrape yourself on a roof.
Joe Getty
Yeah.
Jack Armstrong
There's so much microbial life in there. My brother, healthy, strong naval officer, he got re. Refresh, and it was horrible to get rid of.
Joe Getty
Yeah, they told us about that. Some trip we took out to see a reef in Key West. I don't remember they're telling us about that.
Jack Armstrong
That.
Joe Getty
Anywho. So we fly up to New York because it was too hot and decided to do something else. And we go and we spend several days in New York and we're at this park where all the people are playing chess, just like I'd seen in movies. Do they do that in cities all across the country, or is that local to New York? Do they do that in Chicago? You're a Chicago guy.
Jack Armstrong
Oh, gosh. When I picture it, I picture it in New York. Yeah.
Joe Getty
I think it's a New York thing, and I need to do some research because I don't really know what it is or how it works. Like, do they make. How do they make money? Or do they make money or what. What's exactly going on there? I've just seen in movies where all the people are playing chess in these parks. Well, my son is obsessed by chess, as I've talked about several times, although he's still a beginner. And. Or he. The whole time on the trip, he said, I want to play chess in the park with one of the. One of those guys. I want to play chess. So he really wanted to do that. So we're walking through Washington Square park after we watched the weird hippie chick do her art that I talked about earlier. Get the podcast if you didn't hear that. And. And he said, there's a guy, he's not doing anything. I want to go play chess with him. I said, okay. So we go over there, and it's. I very quickly figure out that this guy, he's probably 60. Old black guy. He sounds exactly like Tracy Morgan from Saturday Night Live. So when I'm doing my impersonation, if it sounds like that, that's why. Because that's what the guy sound like. He's hammered drunk. Just hammer drunk, sitting there at the chest table. And he said, what's your. What's your name? Henry. What's your rating, Henry? And Henry told him, I don't know, whatever his number is on his rating, because you get a chess rating when you're on chess.com. oh, yo, beginner. Okay, Henry. Well, then I won't play you. I will give you a lesson. Five, Dad. $5 for a lesson. I. Okay, fine. And. And he sits down there, and it was just one of the most amazing, interesting things I've ever witnessed. Henry walked away from it saying, this is the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. But it was so strange. The guy was so drunk, for one thing. He had the really drunk guy eyes, you know, where they're, like, really glassy.
Jack Armstrong
Yes. And watery.
Joe Getty
And he kept shoving, shoveling these. He had a paper bag with him. He brought sandwiches from home. This gets to the. I don't know what these people are doing. If they make money doing this or. Is this your job? I mean, I guess you play them for money. I don't. I don't know.
Jack Armstrong
A good friend of the shows, a friend of mine just texted. The New York chess hustlers usually play for a few bucks. They're usually very good.
Joe Getty
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was unbelievable. As drunk as this guy was, he started. I'm going to give you a lesson, Henry. You'll remember this the rest of your life. First of all, well, number one, get 1,001 chess moves. Get the book. And he names the guy dad. Buy him that book. Okay. And they set up the chess pieces and they. They start to play. Let me see how good you are, Henry. So they play for a little bit. And Henry would go to make a movie. Henry, put it back.
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Henry.
Joe Getty
Henry, put it back. No, Henry, think about it.
Lowe's Advertiser
Henry.
Joe Getty
And so. So then we do that. So, okay, so let me give you a lesson. And so then he gives him a lesson and. And he's sitting back and he's shoveling this sandwich that he made into his mouth. And parts of it are getting in his mouth, but most of it's not. And the rest of it's just on his shirt and onto the chessboard. And he'd have to wipe the chunks of sandwich away as he's moving the chessboard. Or at one point, he kicks over his half a bottle of Miller Light and it sits over and rolls between my legs. I mean, he's just. He's a. He's a drunk. Like, he seems like a homeless guy.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah.
Joe Getty
I don't even know what's going on there. Henry, I'm gonna give you a lesson now. The best guy in the park, that guy over there with the sunglasses on, he's the best player in the park right now. Nobody will play him again. Which gets to my. If nobody will play you because you're so good, how do you make any money? I'm not sure how this works.
Jack Armstrong
You gotta wait for somebody strong. My chess playing friend also pointed out that it's a thing among chess enthusiasts. There are pick. There are videos of grand masters going undercover and playing these guys and appreciating how good someone.
Joe Getty
Oh, yeah, this dude was amazing when Henry was actually playing him, how fast he would move and how he saw the whole board was. To be as drunk as he was in the hot sun was really quite amazing. Was he really drunk, or do you.
Jack Armstrong
Think this was part of the hustle?
Joe Getty
No, he Was drunk. I know. I know. A drunk guy when I said, he's just. He was very drunk. And there were many people playing chess. It was mostly dudes sitting at empty chess tables waiting for somebody to come play him or whatever. Anyway, so his lesson was. Henry, let me ask you a question. You're home by yourself, and outside the door, there is a gorilla and two dogs. Okay, a gorilla and two dogs.
Jack Armstrong
Wow.
Joe Getty
They knock down the door and they come in the house. What do you do, Henry?
Jack Armstrong
I don't know. I call my dad.
Joe Getty
You don't have a phone. Henry, what do you do when the gorilla and the two dogs come in your home? And it was just like this the whole time. It was so wild.
Jack Armstrong
Take the dogs and punch the gorilla.
Joe Getty
No, I guess the dogs, because I can't fight a girl. No, Henry. Henry, that is wrong. What is the biggest threat, Henry? The gorilla. That's right. The gorilla is the biggest threat. So do you see where my queen is right now? That is your biggest threat. Get rid of the gorilla, Henry. And so Henry moved and got rid of the queen. Now you don't have to worry about the gorilla. Do you see where my two dogs are, Henry? And it was just like that through the whole thing. This went on for, like, 45 minutes. It was incredibly entertaining and really interesting imagery to try to figure out some chess strategy.
Jack Armstrong
For a few bucks. For five bucks, please. That's the best money you've ever spent in your life.
Joe Getty
The entertainment alone, let alone the chess lesson, it was really so. It was like out of a freaking movie. And I thought, what are you. I mean, his clothes. He looked like a homeless person. I mean, his shoes had holes in them. He smelled bad. He's spitting his sandwich all over. He's hammered drunk, but. But brilliant at chess. I just. So I don't know what's going on there.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, I think we've all known people like that, whether they're musicians or. Or writers or what have you, that they have an incredible level of capability at one thing, but not so much on life skills or hanging out to a job, for instance. Yeah.
Joe Getty
Or don't want to.
Jack Armstrong
Right.
Joe Getty
For whatever reason. God dang it. That was interesting. Like I said, Henry walked away from saying, that was the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. He really, really liked it. That both the chess lesson and just the entertaining flair of the whole thing was so, again, like, straight out of a flipping movie.
Jack Armstrong
Well, the downside was you didn't get a chance to talk about the big, beautiful bill on the air since you were on the on your vacation. On our vacation.
Joe Getty
Didn't come up in conversation with anyone. I'll tell you that.
Jack Armstrong
A roundup of different people, many of them conservatives and their takes on that.
Joe Getty
Henry, a gorilla is in your home. You're going to worry about the dog. Dogs first think about it. I don't know.
Jack Armstrong
I'm trying to imagine this anyway, so.
Joe Getty
You keep spitting sandwich all over. I don't know what to say.
Jack Armstrong
The dogs are happy with the sandwich. Leaving Armstrong and Getty.
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Joe Getty
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Jack Armstrong
The Armstrong and Getty show.
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Well, I.
Jack Armstrong
Found this very interesting. I was considering trying to cram these two things together. The incredible radicalization of young women around the world as their male companions. They don't have companions, but as the males of their generation are swinging to the right. Not, not a lot, but some. And how weird and interesting that is. But we'll do that another time. I'm just going to go with this. It was a piece written by Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, and they're both Democrats. Penn, you may recognize recognize his name. He's a pollster and Advisor to the CL deal in the 90s and 2000s. And, and this other guy was a New York City Council president for a number of years in the 80s and 90s. But the title is Gen Z, the Useful Idiot Generation. Young people usually become less radical with time. Are we seeing an exception? And they go into describing, you know, hippie Vietnam War protesters who got jobs, got married and had children. Got a haircut. Exactly. Wash your damn dirty hippie feet. Now their grandchildren see them tethered to Fox News. Today's young Americans are following the first part of that pattern. Ask a group of them to choose between capitalism and socialism. They'll split right down the middle. And he goes into nominating.
Joe Getty
Horrifying.
Jack Armstrong
Zoran Mandami. Yeah. Who says he wants to capture the means of production.
Joe Getty
I've heard that phrase.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah. You know what? Oh, I ought to get into the PolitiFact thing someday. PolitiFact rated as false the idea that Mandami is a communist. And then when it came out that he said we need to seize the means of production, which is straight out of the Communist Manifesto, they said incomplete data anyway. But will the young people outgrow their radicalism? And this is the part that really intrigued me. There's reason to doubt it. Record numbers of Gen Z are pursuing higher education, with 53% of those 18 to 24 having completed at least some college. That's a troubling sign given how left wing ideology has come to dominate higher education. And again, these are two mainstream democrats writing. College is where many young people learn that socialism means free stuff. They're indoctrinated to blame capitalism for racism, inequality and climate change. Unlike the older generations, they grew up after the end of the Cold War and have no memory of the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union, Maoist China and other socialist regimes.
Joe Getty
Have no memories is an interesting way to put it. I didn't live through most of that stuff. My memories are because somebody taught them to me.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, that's an excellent point. And they say maybe they'll see socialism in action in New York. But here's the really intriguing part. Part. Meanwhile, the process of growing up is slowing down. They're talking about what I mean. It's not automatic that a young idealistic way left person becomes a conservative. It happens through processes experience.
Joe Getty
Mugged by reality.
Jack Armstrong
Exactly. The process of growing. That's actually a great phrase. The process of growing up is slowing down. The median age of first marriage is 30, almost five years later than it was in 1985. And that means that young people settle down and take on responsibilities later, if they ever do. Nearly half of Gen Z adults aren't are not in a committed romantic relationship. They largely live communally, often work from home, and are connected primarily through the four plus hours they spend each day on their phones. Their primary sources of information are TikTok and Facebook Book, whose algorithms lead them to to material that reinforces their preconceptions rather than challenges them.
Joe Getty
Four hours a day on their phones. What would they have been doing before? Because I mean, that's the whole opportunity cost thing. There are only so many hours in a day. There would have been more television watching back in the day, but all four hours wouldn't have been taken up with that.
Jack Armstrong
No, but lots and lots and lots of relating to real human beings who don't feed you agreement based on their algorithms. In my experience, my friends, my girlfriends My wife, my family, they all feel free to disagree with me semi regularly in a way that Facebook and TikTok never will. They will, with all due respect to your, your, your sister in law who constantly posts garbage that you hate. Those algorithms again lead them to material that reinforces their preconceptions.
Joe Getty
I think even more than that, your real life, maybe that's not true anymore. I was about to say your real life, you don't talk about politics nearly at all as opposed to being bombarded with it on your whatever device you're looking at.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, but I think in general, because I, I actually do agree with that. But in general real life, quote unquote is much more messy and much less catering to you in a hundred different ways than, than virtual life is, which tends to lead people toward less Dewey eyed idealistic progressives.
Joe Getty
I'm going to tell people I know from now on I want you to, I'm going to use an algorithm and I want you to feed me things I only want to hear, only say things I want to hear or I'm interested in.
Jack Armstrong
It would make a squinty face and say no, I'm not doing that. And there's more. Another traditional source of ballast. Religion has been become lighter as well. More than one third of Gen Z reports zero religious affiliation. Roughly 60% did not participate in religious services growing up. That produces a lack of moral grounding. We've had a really interesting couple of conversations about that. Let's not get off on that.
Joe Getty
But yeah, I don't know if you can make a blanket statement of lack of moral grounding because you didn't participate in organized religion.
Jack Armstrong
Right. But their greater argument is the things, the inputs, the influences in life that tended to make you more real and therefore more conservative are missing, including religion. Put this all together and it's little wonder that about half of 18 to 20 year olds, 24 year olds tell pollsters that they support Hamas over Israel, Hamas specifically, not the Palestinian people effing Hamas. By and large, these young adults aren't hardcore ideologues, they're merely ignorant. About half of young Hamas supporters say they don't want to wipe out Israel. They prefer a two state solution. Call them the useful idiot generation, mouthing slogans and causes they don't understand and from which they would recoil if they did.
Joe Getty
Again, this was written by Democrats.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, and, and that's, you know, the, the queers for Palestine thing is the perfect example of that. It's the useful idiot generation mouthing slogans and causes they don't understand, and from which they would recoil if they did.
Joe Getty
Well, a guy like Mark Penn, who worked for the Clintons, he realizes Democrats are never going to win another major election unless they get this under control. So he's trying to figure out, why do our young people why are they so crazy? That's what he's trying to figure out.
Jack Armstrong
Final couple of sentences. The older generations are not blameless here. We created the environment that produced this unmoored generation. Socialism and antisemitism will continue to fester and grow if we don't stand up and reform our universities, reinforce our basic values, and balance our social media. I agree completely. I am. I am sticking with the idea that reforming our education systems or tearing them down and building substitutes is the most important issue for America for the next 50 years. Armstrong and Getty it's the end of.
Joe Getty
The show as we know it.
Jack Armstrong
Jack and Joe will be back tomorrow. Be Armstrong and get a show.
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Episode: The A&G Replay Thursday Hour Two
Date: November 27, 2025
Hosts: Jack Armstrong & Joe Getty
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts
In this dynamic hour of Armstrong & Getty, Jack and Joe weave through today’s most provocative stories—religious and sectarian violence abroad, Western liberalism’s paradoxes, Gen Z’s political radicalism, and curious pop culture trends. The conversation ranges from global politics to playful observations of everyday quirks, all delivered in their signature tone: wry, candid, thoughtful, and often irreverent.
Syrian Sectarian Violence
Epic City in Texas: Sharia Law and Pluralism
Christian Persecution in Muslim-majority Countries
Main Point:
Maldives as a Case Study
Popper’s Paradox & “Coexist” Critique
Friesen’s Thesis on Western Multiculturalism
Key Conclusion:
(16:16–18:46)
Global Pop Culture Trend:
Affordable Luxuries During Economic Uncertainty
(18:53–20:30)
(23:49–33:45)
Florida’s Covid Approach:
Jet Ski Mishap and Chess in NYC Parks:
(37:04–44:27)
Penn & Stein’s Op-Ed:
Religion and Social Media as Decreasing ‘Ballast’
Practical Consequences
Critique of Blame
Armstrong & Getty fluidly merge serious commentary with playful banter. Their hourlong discussion artfully interlaces the day’s salient issues—religion, pluralism, youth radicalism—with lighter asides about toys, vacations, and street chess hustlers, all while maintaining a skeptical and humorous tone. They excel at moving from the global (sectarian violence) to the immediate (family stories, trendy toys) and back to intellectual frameworks (Popper’s paradox, education reform).
Listeners are encouraged to reflect on both the humor and seriousness of Armstrong & Getty’s conversation—a show where the “coexist” bumper sticker is ruthlessly skewered, generational political trends are critiqued, and even a blurry NYC chess lesson becomes a lens on American curiosity and chaos. The hour is a brisk, engaging ride through current events, culture, and timeless questions about freedom, tolerance, and what glues societies together.