Transcript
Michael Knowles (0:00)
The stakes are high. The slippers are red. Within a matter of hours we might have a new pope. And even if you're not Catholic, what happens today in the Sistine Chapel is going to affect you in a big way. Because whatever your religious views, the Catholic Church is the single most important institution in the West. It is the only institution in the west that has survived from antiquity and it is the last institution who holding our decaying civilization together. We will get into what is going to happen. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. We got the inside scoop on what's going on around Rome today. We have a bishop coming on this show, Bishop Baron. Have you heard of him? I think you might have heard of him before. He is in Rome to discuss what's about to happen. Because I don't care if you are a hardcore Calvinist. I don't care if you're a Jew, a Muslim, an atheist, an agnostic. What happens today in Rome is going to have very serious effects for all of western civilization, which we will get into it. We're gonna see right through what all of this means. I have a lot more to say but first I want you to go to three the number three dayblinds.com knowles you know what really grinds my gears? You know what really peels my bananas? Cheap blinds. Low quality blinds that are not going to make your house beautiful. There's nothing worse than realizing that your neighbors can see right into your living room because your old blinds don't quite do the job anymore. And then you're all embarrassed because you're sitting there in your boxer shorts playing ukulele. That is why I'm so excited to tell you about three day blinds. They're the leading manufacturer of custom window treatments in the US they make the whole process super easy. You can do all the shopping right from the comfort of your home. 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Just broadly, though, what is happening right now. Pope Francis died. We had a period of mourning for Pope Francis. We had the funeral of Pope Francis today. This morning, there is a Mass for the election of the Pope. Then the cardinal electors process into the Sistine Chapel. Then they sweep the chapel for bugs, for wiretaps. They have military grade signal jammers turned on. This is a very, very serious thing. You are not going to get a lot of information out of this, if anything. And then they vote. If no one is elected Pope on the first ballot, this could go on for some days. This could really go on. This could three days. They could take a break. It could go on for six days, seven days, maybe longer. There will be the first vote. If no one is elected on the first ballot, then tomorrow there will be two votes in the morning, then two votes in the evening. Eventually they'll narrow it down to two. Eventually, we'll have a Pope. When the cardinals are done voting, they're gonna burn all their ballots in a stove that will go up through a flue in the Sistine Chapel. If the smoke is black, that indicates that we don't have a Pope yet. If the smoke is white and they have little chemicals and things to change the color of the smoke, if the smoke is white, that indicates that we have a Pope. Why do you care if you are not Catholic? This matters even if you're not Catholic, because the Catholic Church is the institution that built our civilization. The Catholic Church built the cathedrals. The Catholic Church built the universities. The Catholic Church built the governments, in many ways, of a lot of our nations. Even though religious influence has waned over time, the Catholic Church built our art, our paintings, our sculptures, our everything. It built our whole civilization. Okay, so even if you're not Catholic, what happens today and what happens to the Catholic Church will affect you. There is an old expression, lexerrandi, lex credendi. The way that we worship, the law that we worship. The law of worship is the law of belief. And by the way, speaking of the lex burandi, the liturgy is going to be a really important part, I think, of the conclave. The traditional Mass has become a big draw for a Lot of converts for a lot of reverts for a lot of young people, for myself included. And during Pope Francis pontificate, the Vatican tried to suppress the traditional Latin Mass for all sorts of reasons which I don't think were very persuasive. The Latin Mass persisted in substantially its same form from the year 600 until after the Second Vatican Council in the 20th century. Then there was a big tumult, a big change to the liturgy, and that affected a lot of the ways that we believe. If you no longer receive our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, kneeling on the tongue, if you receive our Lord in some different way, that's probably going to affect the way that you believe. If the priest is facing the people like he's putting on a vaudeville show for you, instead of facing the altar and leading all of the people in worship of God, that's going to affect the way that you believe. So there have been liturgy wars. I think that's going to be a big part of it. Obviously, some geopolitical issues are going to touch on it, too. But I don't care if you've never been inside a Catholic Church. I mean, I do care, and I think you should go. But I'm just telling you, this institution, the sole institution in the west to survive from antiquity, the institution that has had more influence than any other in our civilization, what happens to that institution is gonna affect everything, okay? The other institutions that could have, you know, that could have held the west together have fallen. The universities, the old regimes, the old monarchies, the pomp and the circumstances, it's gone. The one institution that remains, that endures somewhat expectedly, if you ask me, is the Church. So we gotta hope and pray that the conclave goes well. Now, speaking of reforming institutions in our dying civilization, by the way, when I say dying civilization, I don't just mean we're, like, getting dumber or we're more impolite or something. I literally mean dying. Now, when I say the universities are dying, when I say the regimes are dying, I mean, like, the nations are literally dying. We don't have enough people to replace ourselves. So reform is important. And at the political level, that's what Trump is trying to do right now. Well, Doge is announcing. Elon Musk is announcing that they've saved over $1,000 per taxpayer. Doge says the total savings has now reached $165 billion. That's through a combination of it, asset sales, contract lease, cancellations, renegotiations, fraud, improper payment, deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions. Which means if you divvy that up among the taxpayers, you get down to $1,024.84 per taxpayer, because there are 161 million individual federal taxpayers in the U.S. that's pretty good. If you pay taxes, Elon Musk has saved you, on average, 1,000 bucks so far. It's only early. Maybe this guy is keeping his promise. Trump is keeping his promise. The libs are blowing a gasket against Doge. But whatever they say about the importance of transgender ballet recitals in Tunisia, just ask yourself, would you rather have that? Would you rather have some bloated bureaucracy where people aren't doing all that much, or would you rather have an extra thousand bucks in your pocket? By the way, on the topic of the government saving money and 1000 bucks, I have to correct an egregious error that I. I made yesterday. I pointed out that Trump has this new policy where he says he's gonna pay illegals a thousand bucks to deport themselves. And I don't know, I guess I did the math too quickly or I was too tired or something, but I said. Or maybe I just misspoke. Whatever. I said that it was gonna cost $11 billion or $11 trillion instead of $11 billion, which is a rather different figure, you know, in the way that we conceive of numbers that we don't really. It's difficult for us to understand orders of magnitude, but that's a rather different number. So, anyway, my point still stands on it, which. And in fact, now the point is all the clearer and all the more compelling, which is 11 billion bucks to deport all the illegals. Great. Where do I sign? Let me donate more. I'd like to donate. I'd like to pay more in taxes, actually, if that's the result that I'll get. Where I don't want my tax dollars going is to stupid programs that promote leftism overseas that are super corrupt, and to bureaucrats who are not doing their jobs. Elon Musk came out with a shocking fact yesterday about the federal employees that you're all paying, taking even more of your money. We've actually found there's a lot of.