RCR with Paul Brennan, reality check radio. Okay, it's our first Friday political panel following the general election. So that's something. And joining the panel today is Cameron Slater and Marty Gibson, Olivia not feeling too good today. I don't know if that's related to the aftermath of this election or there's something going around who knows or a bit of both. Anyway, welcome chaps. Thanks for coming in this morning. Good morning. Morning Paul, how are you doing? Well, I don't know, are we happy? Are we? I'm a bit flat to be fair. Dad, are we flat? How are we feeling? I'm a bit flat because, you know, I sat there and watched the, you know, and of course we ran our own coverage. And I think we did a fantastic job at RCR in delivering what people needed to know as the night went on. You know, we had Morris Williamson. Of course, I was coming in from Russell and we had all the other hosts coming in and doing their stuff. And I think we did a great job. I've had so many comments from people who were saying that when we finished at 1030 and they changed over to TV one or to TV three, just how appalling it was.  Oh, come on.  But I feel a bit flat because I watched Christopher Luxon and Seymour's victory speeches. And I thought that they were rather presumptuous and also rather early because, you know, at that time that Luxon was declaring victory, he was looking at like 41%.  And I think that when the specials come in, that nationals gonna lose at least one seat on the specials. They're at 50 seats at the moment. They think that they can govern with the ACT Party, with their seats, but it's a razor thin majority. And you only need one, you know, dickhead MP to lose the plot or have shonky business dealings or something like that. And all of a sudden your majority's gone. And it is rather presumptuous to have to, you know, declare that they're the winners when we don't know what the specials are. And just let's put this in perspective. The special votes are estimated to be about 540,000 special votes. Now, the Electoral Commission always underestimates that by about 50 or 60,000. So there's likely to be around 600,000 special votes. So what's that a percentage of the, of the? Well, that's a good question. And it's 20%, 20% of the vote has not been counted yet. Wow, okay. So it's not gonna change the outcome of the election, you know, the end of the tyranny, but it is gonna change how that government is going to be made up. And, you know, just talking with Matt McCartan yesterday afternoon on my show, he's pretty certain that the Maori Party is gonna pick up Tee Tai Tokarau and also Tamaki Makaro. And that will then create an overhang. And of course, we've also got the by-election.  Well, that we, well, that should, you shouldn't be feeling that flat then, Cam.  Well, what next? Yeah, yeah, something like that.  And so I don't have sugar and I don't have caffeine and, you know, maybe I just need to smoke a few more times. That's a whole nother show. Tell me about it. What was I gonna say? In terms of the overall result, I guess why I feel a little flat is I've come to the realization that, you know, so much can happen. We can be dicked around so much, unprecedented, and the needle only moves a little bit in the end. And I don't want to lose faith in my fellow countrymen, but I kind of have, I've got to say. Yeah, I mean, I've just gone around talking to people. I think the mood of the country has lifted.  And the all-black swan. It's kind of the global warming taking off our nationals in charge. But I take a more positive sign than that. And I think New Zealand First's gonna have more leverage. Well, that's the only bright spot. Forget the party, but the off-setting of the tyranny is a bright spot. Yeah, well, I mean, if we can start talking about that excess deaths, up 16% in the latest data, which was in August, and once that stuff starts coming up, and I think there's just general concern about, well, how do we let that out? And that's a theme. And I think maybe that's why, you know, if I've got any feelings of what we're saying, feeling flat, it's just because I know there's all that built-up tension. And we've been living on so many lies.  It's this kind of demonizing of the truth. Yeah. And, you know, the truth will set us free. The gaslighting hasn't stopped though. I mean, on election night, Chris Hipkins was saying, we did so many things. We've lifted all of these kids out of poverty. Did they bother to go and ask the parents of those kids? How does it feel that your kids out of poverty now?  And their parents are sick and can't go to work at a 37% disability level. Yeah. And we've saved 20,000 people. You know, how do you square that with the excess deaths going up? Well, I'm going to be interviewing someone about that early next week. And I can tell you that user, that figure is so loosey-goosey, it's laughable. Yeah. Well, I mean, the figure I'm using of 16% in August comes from the world and data. I'm talking about the 20,000, the claim that 20,000 lives were saved. It's based on nothing. No, it's disinformation, you know. And the biggest purveyors of disinformation, that is deliberate misinformation, was the government.  And you know, Who do you vote for? The government still wins, Cap. Yeah.  But half of those people are still back in there, because of the list, which, you know, that is the system, we're stuck with MMP, it's never gonna change. I don't think I like MMP. No, it isn't, but what staggers me, and it staggered me on how much time we as a radio station had to spend to educate people about the electoral system. Good point. For the first time. And we've had MMP for 27 years.  And it staggers me that a lot of these minor parties, minor, minor parties that were out there, battled on when, and when you look at the results that they got, right? And we gave them heaps of coverage. We interviewed hundreds of candidates from all of those different parties and the things like that. The ones who didn't get interviewed, it's because they didn't want to be interviewed. Apparently we're traitors. Yeah, they had even more opportunities to get coverage than they took. But I discussed this again with Matt McCartan last night. And he said, Cam, the thing is, you and I are realists. We look at polls, we look at the numbers and we deal with reality. And I cannot emphasise that enough. There's a lot of people out there, very, very good people who were hoodwinked by deluded leaders who thought something different. And I see yesterday in the media, when Liz Gunn appeared in court and then afterwards did a stand-up, she now says that the two million votes that they were gonna get was all, she was just joking. Well, I watched when she said it and she wasn't joking. Neither was she joking when she said, if everybody in Southland votes for us, we'll get the 5%, despite the fact there aren't enough electors in Southland to do that. So it annoys me immensely that we had an opportunity to get some really good quality candidates into parliament and the narcissism and the... Histrionics, isn't it? Histrionics and everything around these, look at Matt King, for example, I told him, you're not gonna win. And we even commissioned a poll and it said he'd come forth. There was three other polls in Northland that said he'd come forth. Gunn, have a hazard of guess of where Matt King came in the voting. We know how that story. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think, and maybe this shows it up, that we really need to have a look at ourselves as a nation. We've seemed to have outsourced the responsibility for keeping reality in check to someone else. Yeah. We kinda need to just grow up and be adults for once. But we saw this during the pandemic where everyone put their hand out for the government to put money into their pockets. And then also at the same time, expected the government to tell them what to do. And we actually crippled society in ways that we cannot imagine, but manifests itself in all sorts of ludicrous things. For example, during the Women's Soccer World Cup, when their fire alarm went off at Eden Park in this absolute dalt of a man, was on TV saying, nobody told us what to do when the fire alarm went off. Hmm. Right, and they expect the government to tell them what to do. How do we get to this? How do we get to this? Well, when the masks came off, when the masks went on, you got to see who was who. And they're still talking about COVID caused this. And COVID was like a possum crossing the road. And the COVID response was driving off a cliff and an effort to avoid hitting it, basically. And I mean, I always use that figure of the 33% of registered Democrats who thought people who didn't get VAC should have their kids taken off them. I mean, there's a pathology in humanity that we've been able to ignore because we've had cheap energy and things are easy. But we're supposed to be the plucky, can-do pioneering, well, that was a while back now, nation that can make use of number eight wire and let's anything get in the way. And no, we're not. I've been reading a bit of Confucius and that's instructive, you know, in terms of the conscious building of culture. And that's what it's gonna take. And I don't know that nationals got the imagination to do it. Bek on trick. Well, I'm speaking of Bek on trick. The first thing he said he's gonna do is cancel the light rail. So that light rail is not even gonna get on the track, not let alone back on it. Well, that was a no brainer anyway, wasn't it, to be fair? Well, that's good, because there's 20-odd billion dollars that was allocated in a sum budget a few years ago. We can refill that back now and spend it on something more sensible. Or, I don't know, how about putting it back in the taxpayers' long-suffering taxpayers' pockets? Well, it took me out of the taxpayers' pocket, it got printed and we lined up for the toilet paper money.  And I've said this before, but I think that's where the missing money from the overseas buyers' tax is gonna come from. They've just got all this toilet paper money. And I think they've probably said, hey, look, we can put billions of dollars into your economy to make your books balance. No worries. We can't give this stuff away.  Oh, we pay a terrible price for it. It's an unimaginative solution, but it's a corporate guy solution. We're gonna be paying a price for what was done in the last six years for at least a generation. We had a financial journalist from Australia on in our money talk segment yesterday, David James. And he said, the problem is that management has no conscience. It doesn't need to have a conscience. It only has deliverables. And you just get to those deliverables any way you can without conscience. That's the problem. Yeah, the rate of psychopathy in the general population is about 1%. I think among CEOs, it's something like 15%. And you've got to be very suspicious anytime the government gives you a license to hate. And a lot of people, there's been a big part of the technique they got given a license to hate. Women got given a license to hate. Men, Māori have been given a license to hate, whitey. And if you're weak in character, you take it. And it has terrible consequences for you. What do you think about the media? Do you think they still, they seem to be carrying on like this never happened?  And in many respects, I guess they have.  Run an article on the 18th about what's set to get cut under a National Act New Zealand First government and then list all sorts of things like co-governance. Well, good. That's what happens when you have an election. You have a contest of ideas and one person or one team's ideas get accepted and the others get thrown out. We threw out the ideas of the Labour Party, the Green Party and to party Māori. We don't want that recipe. The voters have spoken. There's a clear majority. It's about 55% of the population don't want co-governance. We don't want bans on offshore oil and gas exploration. We don't want agricultural emissions pricing. We don't want three waters. We don't want the light rail. And these are all things that these liberal elite tosses in the media have lobbied for gone after promulgated all without actually asking the voters. And we finally have had the voters asked and those solutions were found wanting and the solutions of the National Party, the Act Party and New Zealand First were chosen above all else and they need to get over themselves. But now the reality is I don't think that the media will get over themselves unless they suffer a fair bit of pain. Well, they'll suffer pain because their business models are crumbling and it's questionable as to whether most of them will still be in business in three years in the form they are now anyway. They're propped up by millions of dollars of state-funded advertising from government departments. Now, if I was Winston Peters sitting down with Christopher Luxon right now, I'd pull out my media U2 policy and I'd say, right, what we need to do is get all the heads of all the government departments in, put a moratorium on any government spending with any media outlet for at least six months, turn that tap off while we sit down and work out how we're gonna go forward. And then the next step of that would be to say, well, this is all public interest advertising so we're not gonna pay for it anymore. The media can carry that free of charge. PSA is public service announcements. Yep, and carry it free of charge and starve them of the thing that's kept them going that means that they don't listen to their audience. Yeah, it's a perfect storm for them. There's the prospect of losing that government funding. They're probably drinking a lot more booze because you need to if you have to lie because it hurts your soul. And they've got National and New Zealand First not saying anything. There was an amazing story on Tuesday in the Herald by Thomas Coughlin where he wrote an intro that you looked all through the story. He wrote, there was nothing in the story that related to his intro. And having worked, trying to sneak colorful things through sub-editors, it's pretty tough. They are the blanderers. How would that have gone through then when there was no reference to the headline? Is that what you're saying? Well, no, there's no reference. The story, this is his intro. New Zealand First is looking to spook National into making early concessions before special votes have been counted. But National leader Christopher Luxon has signaled he might be ready to call the parties bluff and wait for the final results on November 3rd. Oh, whatever. There was nothing. But it's just total bollocks. That is total bollocks. It's like also the media are running at the moment that, you know, National's gonna use Jerry Brownlee because he's very friendly with Winston Peters. Well, anybody who knows the dynamic of those two knows that that's completely made up. It's not even close to being true. And there's probably only two people in the National Party that Winston Peters would have any comfort with in dealing with, and that would be Todd McClay and Mark Mitchell. And Mark Mitchell will be there because he's been in the parliamentary rugby team with these guys in New Zealand First, right? And at the same time, nobody in the media has picked up something that's bleedingly obvious is that guess who Christopher Luxon's next door neighbor is? Okay. Like literally next door, David Seymour. Oh, really? Right. So there's this cozy little arrangement there with National and ACT.  And his partner is Jenna Lynch from News Hub. So it's so incestuous. Yeah, I didn't want to say the word, but yeah, that's the word. Wellington Central Green Wave. You know, that really summed it up, didn't it?  Green Party welcomes new MPs vows to fight for climate change, Māori Titiriti Justice. Is the headline I'm reading from October 18th. And there's a picture of James Shaw, Marama Davidson, behind James Shaw, probably 90% young woman and a guy and he can't be long for that world.  They think that they had a stunning campaign, that they had brilliant policies and that the voting public loved them because we've got more MPs. That's literally, you know, the same as the gnomes in South Park who came up with a business plan to steal underplants, then something, and then make a profit. That was their three point plan. What the Greens don't understand is that they only got those numbers because the Labour Party was so rubbish. Yeah, so it was just a cannibalization. Correct. Exercise, like a seesaw. Yeah. Well, it's helped along by how the education system sends people out into the world, illiterate and incapable of critical thinking. That's on their side in the same way as, you know, an upside of so many Labour Party MPs being out of a job. As I guess it'll help address the teacher shortage. Okay. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I'm not sure I'd want Jan Tinedi in a classroom. Just circling back quickly to media. I see that in the New Zealand TV Awards, Fire and Fury is a finalist in New Zealand on air best documentary. Up against no Maori allowed and inside child poverty revisited. What do we make of that? How could that ever be a finalist in anything? They just can't stop patting themselves on the back. But it takes no boxes of quality. I mean, as you say, Paul, we're on the precipice of a major collapse of the media. You know, once this mal-information starts coming out, which is that people are actually getting sick and they're dying and they're having spontaneous abortions. And they knew some of that was going to happen. And rather than saying to doctors, hey, look, there's a risk of this. So if someone presents showing signs of myocarditis, you know, take it seriously and treat it.  Once that comes out, it's really going to change the complexion of New Zealand. And that's why I say it's really important that we take the heat out of a lot of these things that arise from lies, whether it's the principles of the treaty or, you know, there was if you haven't listened to that interview, Rodney Hyde did with Professor Elizabeth Rata Rata. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. It's incendiary. It was really gently put, but well worth a listen when you consider how much has flowed out from Jeffrey Palmer, basically saying, oh, it's just window dressing. Well, I mean, you know, in that, in that is also been exacerbated by John Key signing us up to UNDRIP, you know, and and that had consequences that flowed from that. I mean, Matt McCudham was talking and I keep harping on about, but he knows a lot of stuff. And he was saying to me that he thinks that the the win of the Maori Party in the Maori seats is baked in that labour aren't going to get those back. Oh, really? And that concerns me immensely because the Maori Party of Tariana, Turia and Peter Shapples no longer exists. We've got a Maori Party that is deeply Marxist in its outlook. And angry, right?  Rauri said, we consider them subhuman. He said that in a bloody debate. Given permission to hate, you know, it's a dangerous thing. And if you get permission to hate from your government, you better take a real hard look at your character and what they stand to gain from that. I mean, what was good about my discussion with Matt McCudham, he said, look, and we need to have grown up discussions about this. You know, it isn't about, you know, trying to force everybody into their way of thinking that's never going to work. And that's what concerns me is I think we're going to see increased activism, increased and, you know, attacks on people who aren't Maori. But but Morris Williamson raised it, you know, on the panel with us at the beginning of the week. Paul, when he said, what is a Maori? Yeah, exactly. Right. What is what is a Maori? Because because everybody in New Zealand is made up of a genetic makeup of lots of different things. And Fiji went through this and, you know, I was born in Fiji and I consider myself a Fijian. Well, that's what that's what of Anakava Kalevu. That's what of that country, by the way. Frank Baini Marama said when when he had his coup, we we're going to have one standard of citizenship for the whole country if you're born in Fiji, you're a Fijian. Right. You may be italkai. You may be of Indian instruction, or you might be like me, who, who, you know, is from European extraction. But I'm not a Kaivalangi that that's a foreigner. I'm not I was born in Fiji. I'm Kaiviti. And we need to have the same sort of same sort of discussion in New Zealand and get rid of this talk of separate this and separate that. And you see not about separatism. Can you see an administration led by Christopher Luxem, with his back on track, you know, smoothing smoothing that over? Well, I think he's just so incredibly woke that he'd entertain it. I know. Woke is weak that he was having discussions with the Maori Party several months ago. They all he ruled them out, Cam. He ruled them out. That's right. He did. But he was having discussions with them. And, you know, he did rule them out. And but he had discussions with them. Well, he's some he's taking the money from the decommissioned Maori Health Authority and giving it to Iwi. I've got the figure here somewhere. It's it's a hundred and what is it? One hundred and forty seven million or something. No, it's kind of same old, same old. Well, I mean, different label kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, again, you've got to have an understanding of the way pre-European Maori society work to understand the completion of the way it's reflected in New Zealand's politics. Winston Peters is representing the Tutu, the commoners, who basically really quite like the treaty because it conferred on them that an Englishman's home is his castle, right of ownership, which they didn't have before. They existed at the pleasure of the of John Tamahiri's niche. And so when he says, you know, we're going to be ruling these people, you know, that's what he meant. And so that radical faction has taken Tino Rangatiratanga to mean Maori as an ethnic group get to rule themselves when it meant that, yeah, again, every man is as every an Englishman's home is his castle, that you could have right of ownership. Willie Jackson not committing to serving a full three year term in parliament. But he says, and I'm reading here from our Maori news, he will stay on to consolidate Labour's Maori caucus and to work with Tepati Maori and the Greens to prevent what he says will be an attack on our people, an attack on our people under a national enact government, an attack. Well, he didn't just say work with either, Paul, he said, organised with. Oh, which is which is a very loaded kind of lefty. But what is but what is our people? Right, because Willie Jackson's got Jewish. Genetic DNA in him, he he had a test, a DNA test done and now hello, it threw up a bit of Jewish DNA. So what does he mean by an attack on our people? I mean, this is just bollocks and our people. Where's the equivalent? What's his net worth? What's millions? OK. Right, but does that matter? Does it does that matter? I mean, I don't know. Well, when you're talking about our people, you're kind of making it sound like you're down there in the working class, fighting the battle. No, he's not. Yeah, yeah, that's a fair point. He doesn't have any insecurity in life in in those terms at all. He doesn't have poor health outcomes because he's educated. Well, he did have a hard bypass. Mind you, so did I. Well, he probably got prompt treatment for it because he turned up to his appointment because he's got the education to know that if you don't, you're in the crapper. And it's not that the health system is prejudiced against Maori. It's that they have a higher rate of did not attend. I've got a I've got a bit of time for Willie Jackson, and you might be sitting there rolling your eyes, kind of. Well, no, no, that's OK. You know, I've I've had a bit of respect for him. You know, he he involved me in his radio show when he was on.  Yeah, sure. But I've had some just good discussions. Women and it disappoints me when he comes up with statements like this because he's better than that. But isn't that where the money is? That's kind of what I was alluding to.  Well, he might be right. And there will be an attack on Maori. But I think he left a couple of words out like I think he left out elites or something like that, because what I can see happening in the coalition negotiations is Christopher Luxon saying to Winston Peters or Winston Peters saying to Christopher Luxon more likely. These are the areas that we want to take portfolios in. And then go after the woke in the week and the and the racism and stand up for that for every Kiwi saying that, you know, for instance, let's see, you know, I can imagine seeing Shane Jones as the energy minister and that will just unhinge the Greens hugely funny. I can see Casey Costello being Minister of Maori Affairs and Shane Jones helping here and saying, well, that's nonsense. When we don't need Maori Affairs Ministry anymore, we don't even need those seats. The proportion of representation exceeds the 25 percent of what are we talking about here? It's over for that. Yeah, 25 percent of of Parliament is Maori. That's what MMP has delivered. Then it's done a very fine thing. And I'm OK with that. But hey, it can't go on beyond a certain threshold. Otherwise, there's no credibility in your system. Well, the other point the other point that you could make is, you know, if you took away race based funding, would Maori outcomes get worse? Could they conceivably get worse than 50 percent of the prison muster being Maori and the terrible rates of failure within the school system? Would it change the diets of people health? I think they'd get better. You know, anything that's race based is never going to work. It's never anywhere in the world. Yeah, I saw a comment this morning. I was reading through some because I've been looking at some one money of Porto's interviews, which have been quite interesting. But you know, it is going to be a huge visceral hatred for whitey and and, you know, characterised the resistance to co-governance as radical white people scaring ordinary white people rather than that it's a terrible idea that always makes murder and. But it's the language they use, Marty, isn't it? I mean, look at what Willie Jackson is saying. He says there's going to be an attack on Maori. He says there's going to be a real attack on our people over the next couple of months, and I'm not going to just leave that to them. They're going to need a lot of support. Now, what he means by that is that there's going to be some robust debate. That's not an attack on Maori. That's not people going out in the street with axes and, you know, battens and bottles and attacking Maori that's having a debate that we've been denied for the last six months, six years. You know, they foisted separatism onto this population, whether it was through mandates or it's through co-governance through three waters, through the splitting of the health system. They forced that on us, they didn't ask anybody. And now, when we're going to have a proper debate about these things, all of a sudden it's attack on Maori. No, it's not. It's a discussion. And if you can't grow up, Willie Jackson, and have a discussion without reverting to racist tropes to push your agenda, well, then you don't belong in the discussion. I mean, they play this game so much better than we do because they've got that idea that language constructs everything, that constructionist idea.   You know, in a red beret, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, I was sort of, you know, but I always think it's a bit of a nod to that former ANC Youth League president and current South African politician Julius Malema.  Yeah, in the sports stadium. Yeah, that's a dog whistle. Speaking of dog whistles, race relations calls time on abuse of wahini Maori politicians. A new study confirms anti-Maori bias. And this is an acting race relations commissioner saying here, and I'm reading from MSN.com that protection is needed against abuse and violence directed at them and their far now. And what they say here is, I think that needs to be taken up by Parliament. It's not just physical violence. It's also through social media. What physical violence? Yeah, I don't recall hearing anything reported. Absolutely condemn it. Yeah, but if there is no physical violence, you can't say it's not just physical violence. If there hasn't been any. Some old National Party supporter did poke his head into someone's house. Well, that's what they're citing. That's not violence.  It creates in people's minds. It's meant to. I know and it works, you can see. Yeah, it's BS.   Upward pointing fist, Paul, you know, that's the sign of of the Marxist revolutionary. It means what the means justify the ends. Violence against your oppressor is is what you should do. Yeah, and they'll lie about it. And I hope we, you know, part of this taking the pressure out, I think, is acknowledging, yeah, it'd be great to see Maori do better. It'd be great to see the education system working for them. That was why I was so disgusted when one of the first moves when Labour got in was to to take away to established charter schools because they were actually working for a lot of those kids who had been failed by the unionist education system. That was the teacher unions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Making that happen. Well, which is to say it was the Labour Party, right? Yeah, because they're to a same. Yeah. OK. But they've always got to pay back the unions, the Labour Party. That that's the thing is, you know, they're lurking there underneath the Labour Party all the time.   She, you know, got them all on there. And she said, look, guys, we don't think we can win this election, but we're really going to need your help to give it a good go. And they said, oh, yeah, well, what do you want?  It'd be really, really helpful to us if you could make those reasonable and and not, you know, have any strikes or anything like that. They will just, you know, annoy people.  And then the meeting ended and then there was another Zoom meeting that was started immediately afterwards without Jacinda Ardern, where they all said, you know, stuff that if they don't think they're going to win, that means the Nats are coming in and we won't get any pay rises with those guys. So we'll go to the doctor. And of course, that's exactly what happened. We saw those pay rises.  They just caved. Yeah. But those costs, those increased costs are now baked in because of that. And the rise in the minimum wage, the right.  It's terribly cynical in a way that you don't, you know, you wouldn't do yourself so you can't concede. It's like putting booby traps in, you know, it's just like landmines. I mean, Richard Preble, you know, I don't know if he caught his his column on Wednesday and the Herald. He was basically saying that Luxon should let Act take the tough jobs and catch the flak. He patronizingly said, oh, and, you know, if Winston's part of it, he could make the gold card better or something. But, you know, poor old Prebs, poor old Prebs. Yeah. Should we talk about these? We've got to talk about these small parties as well. I did a quick scan read of the judgment of, you know, the NZ loyal thing and where it fell to pieces on list candidates. And one thing I did pick up from it and there's a lot of detail in there to digest. But how loose, how loosey-goosey the whole thing was.  And which tells me that you can't be that serious if you neglect those. It's not hard to do. And no other political party, including Leighton Baker and Democracy New Zealand had any sort of problem, right? No other party had a problem, but NZ loyal debt. Yeah.  Its job is to help these smaller parties. Well, that's a heroic assumption about what the Electoral Commission is is there to do. They're there to actually enforce the electoral act. Administer. That's administer and enforce the electoral. Yeah. Right. That's their job. But their job isn't to babysit the newbies who haven't learned even the basics of MMP. But when you sit down and say, OK, guys, we need to do this. This is the serious part of it. OK, what do we need to do? Line item by line item, check off everything, make sure it's done. Well, I mean, you just have a look at some of the policy development that went on in these small small parties, you know, Liz Gunn herself basically picked up a whole lot of fruit loop policies and everybody uncritically said, oh, this is great. It's like the one percent transaction tax. You know, this will work. Well, that's social credit. That was the right it's never had any pick up anywhere in the world where it's successful, where it works, where where would even, you know, even get any sort of semblance of support in New Zealand. It's a slimy tune stuff. But we were told this was going to solve the problems of the world, you know, and and that's the that what they haven't realized. A lot of these minor parties is that in the contest of ideas, they lost and doesn't mean the ideas were dumb. It means they didn't sell them properly. And, you know, you can't expect the media to be your friends. They we learned that with the Wellington protests, the media, our enemies, they're not our friend. So if you're sitting there moaning now that you didn't get in because the media didn't give you a fair go, well, you knew that before you even got started. What could have been the strategy to do better? Well, Winston's strategy, he just did everything on Twitter and Facebook and bypassed the media and refused to talk to them. And it worked. And these, you know, it's that old thing of people overestimate what they can do in the short term and underestimate what they can do in the long term. And that they they wanted to get there. And they were looking for a Donald Trump kind of miracle, but forgetting that he had that kind of profile that fit with. And he did the work. Why did he do the work?   But you're up against the machine and it takes generations to get there. Like New Zealand first has been in existence for 30 years and they've got the result of eight seats. So why did anybody like Baker, Liz, Gunn, Matt King, all of these people? Why did they think that they were going to get five seats or four seats or eight seats when they haven't even been in existence for five minutes? Electrally, the act party has been in existence for longer than New Zealand first thirty six years to get to the point that they're at. The Green Party has been there since the values party. Fifty years to get to the point where they're at. It's a it's a hard slog. Starting a new party and going, we've got these cool ideas. Vote for us doesn't work. Yeah, I've drawn the analogy. It's a bit like trying to cook bacon fast. You know, doesn't bacon doesn't transmit heat in the same way as passionless Kiwis don't tend to transmit enthusiasm that well. You've got to just slowly warm them. Yeah, you know, if the pans do hot, the baking gets crispy and it's horrible. Nobody likes you. You can feel a lot of energy at the pan level and think, well, all the whole the whole Russia must be heating up. But no, it's not. Yeah. Do you think that there's any hope for any of those parties where they just disappear, they just evaporate into nothing now? Well, you know, looking at the Facebook comments and, you know, we've started this movement, it's it's going to grow. It's going to rah, rah, rah, you know, I admire their enthusiasm. I really do. But three years in the wilderness and the issues that, you know, galvanized you dissipate over time and at the same time, you've got political parties that are in the parliament that will make some inroads on some of the things that galvanized support for you, particularly around a covid inquiry and those sorts of things mean, means that your support is going to wane and New Zealand first support and ex support is going to grow. And that's just the way I see it going. And, you know, I could be wrong and I've been known to be wrong. But hey, I make I make a living talking about this sort of stuff. And if I was wrong all the time, then, you know, I wouldn't have much of a living. Hmm. Yeah, I think that the collapse has been hasn't been particularly graceful, which would have helped longevity. You know, there's, as I said, there's been a fair bit of histrionics. And yeah, I think what Cam said earlier about the that kind of surety that there was going to be some kind of miracle has effectively resulted in two or three or maybe four really good candidates who were all on board with telling the truth exactly in Parliament when they could have been. Here's a question. This is a bit navel, Gazy. Do you think we made any difference anywhere? Yeah, I think we did. What, how many percent do you reckon, Cam? I don't know about percent, but I think we did make a difference. You know, we we interviewed a whole lot of people who would never have made it to any media ever. Right. We we talked to all sorts of candidates across the various different political parties. And we educated people. We particularly focused on the issue of wasted vote. And that upset some people. Boy, that was like pulling teeth. But but I think we did. We, if I look at the coverage across the mainstream media, they didn't cover anywhere near the number of candidates that we did. They didn't cover anywhere near the parties that we. And we did long form stuff. We wasn't just on the surface. It was like, yeah, everything we could think of. We asked. Yeah. When I shared and often shared the crunch, I'm a big fan of the crunch. I feel it, by the way, and enjoy it. Just like I'm loving your world news at the moment, Paul, it's the best world news available on New Zealand. Good to know. Thank you. And the crunch is the best political journalism in New Zealand. It receives zero government funding, which probably isn't a coincidence. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that we let these guys talk. We let people talk, right? If you have a look at the way the mainstream media does things, it's combative, it's confrontational. It's like, you know, sticking camera in Winston Peters face when he arrived at the Wellington Airport on on Wednesday. Yeah. What was the point of that? You know, trying to get reactions. Well, it's part of the game show, isn't it? Yeah. But we sat down with candidates and like I look, I think, one of the best interviews that I had was with Hecker Robertson from Vision New Zealand in Wellington and and also on the the week before the election with Kane, who runs the man up program. I just, you know, I I felt energised by speaking with them for an hour or so, right? And we that's what we do.  But we talked to those people and we heard what they had to say.  It is, you know, and some of them, I felt sorry for them because I just knew they weren't going to get there. Yeah. I did well not saying that too brutally, though. Well, I didn't want to. I wanted to understand the person that I was talking to, not the character that the media is portrayed. And, you know, the discussion that I had with Brian Tamaki about crime and law and order and the law and order policy. That's another example. I think he had some good things to say and they're worth saying just because it's Brian Tamaki doesn't mean we should turn our ears off. You know, there's a lot of things I don't like about Brian Tamaki, but it's not my job to tell everybody that I don't like those things about Brian Tamaki. It's my job to have a discussion with that person. Let them explain what their policy is or where the what their core beliefs are and let the listeners make their own. Well, that's what we're all about. Yeah, that's the mission, as I say. Do you think we added is another sort of kind of naval gaze equation? Do you think we added in the end to the New Zealand first vote total in any way? I think we did. And, you know, when I interviewed Winston on election night, it was the only one on one interview he's given since the election. He hasn't given any other one on one interviews. He hasn't been on any other TV or radio or anything else. He was effusive in his thanks to the listeners of reality check radio. And if he's thanking the listeners of reality check radio, I guess he's thanking the station as well.  You know, Paul, you spoke to him for quite a considerable time. Four times would have been half an hour or more each time. I spoke to Winston twice. It was an hour each time. So people got to hear the real Winston Peters, the Winston Peters that I've, you know, known over 30 or 40 years. They got to see beyond the headlines and beyond the mainstream media and how they paint them. And I think that helped. And I don't do anything different. You know, here's the thing, right? I asked probably 30 National MPs to come on my show. I asked probably 10 or so Labour MPs to come on the show. I asked David Seymour and some ACT MPs and ACT candidates. And every single one of those, apart from Mark Mitchell, either didn't reply to us asking or just said no. Whereas every candidate from a smaller party that I asked on, including New Zealand First, as soon as I said, you know, would you like to come on the show, I was, yes. And they were there. There was no coordination. No, that's right. And so you want them to listen to us understand that.    And and so, you know, I'd never voted for New Zealand First. I and I hadn't really understood the said this on a couple of occasions, the extent to which the decision to install the Marxist student politicians who didn't have any work experience in charge of a whole country. I didn't understand the extent to which that was a caucus decision rather than a Winston Peters decision. And that ameliorated my my rage at a little bit. I didn't understand the extent to which national been inept in in negotiating with them. So, yeah, I wasn't left. And then I know Kirsten Murphy personally and and I know that she's there for all the right reasons and would rather not be there and has got a career where she'd earn more money if she wasn't there and dealing with a whole lot of stuff at home, too. Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, that never came came out really. Yeah, we had David Seymour once. I don't think he enjoyed the experience. And like you say, Cam, we reached out to all the leaders, all the players. We were so nice about it. So inclusive. And I think most of them didn't even reply. So it reminds me a bit of, you know, I think I mentioned the Godfather earlier, but that scene in The Godfather, too, where Michael Corleone sees the rebel and Cuba blow himself up and he tells a story and he says, well, you know, the soldiers get paid to fight. But the rebels just do it because they believe in it. That means they can win. And I think the mainstream media will be looking across at reality check radio and thinking much the same thing. I wonder what they think of us. Well, I don't really care what they think of us. No, I know. But you know, I mean, I've got that background. So I know what it's like. And I know what the attitude is to new players and not many that come along. And you wonder what they're thinking because one thing's for sure, there have been no hit pieces, none. No one, you know, and there's a reason for that. And I'm known as somebody who does hit pieces, right? But not one of my interviews. Did I attack anybody? Yeah, you're changed, man. Can something's something happened. No one's done it on us is the point I'm making. And we are fair game, man. Well, we're sort of just probably coming into the out of the first to ignore you face and they're probably looking for an opportunity. You know why? Because we're doing what they dream of doing. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. I think we should finish up on a light note. And I'm going to play some of this because I think it's worth hearing again. I put it in the the news yesterday. And this is the Canadian opposition leader, Pierre Polyev, smacking down, as people are saying, while he's eating an apple, while he's eating an apple. So cool, so laid back, yet such a heavy punch to this guy. I think it says it all. So I'm going to play this and then I will some of it anyway. And then I want to come and get a few comments at the end before we wind it up. Are you OK with that? Yeah, here we go. On the on the topic, I mean, in terms of your sort of strategy, currently you're obviously taking the populist pathway. What does that mean? Well, appealing, appealing to people's more emotional levels, I would guess. I mean, certainly you certainly you tap certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently like what? Left wing, you know, this and that right wing. They are I mean, it's that that type of ideological. I haven't really talked about left or right. But anyways, a lot of people really believe in that. OK. A lot of people would would say that you're simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump like which people would say that? Well, I'm sure a great many Canadians. But like who I don't know who. But well, you're the one who asked the question. So you must know somebody. OK. I'm sure there's some out there. But anyways, the point of this, the point of this question is, I mean, why should why should Canadians trust you with their vote given? You know, not not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page of Donald Trump's book. But what are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you give me a page? Give me the page. You keep saying in terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of of Trudeau and the left wing and all of this.  So I'm I'm not sure. I don't I don't know what your question is. Then forget that. Why should Canadians trust you with their vote? And so it goes on. You know, it's a masterclass, isn't it? A masterclass. If you're going to come to, what do they say, a gunfight? Don't bring a knife, you know. But I mean, that's the thing is they make these truisms. You know, they say things are your populist. What does that mean?  Well, what does that mean? So give me an example and a page out of Trump's book. What what page? Give me a page. Give me a page.  There's that glibness, isn't there? Where there's just this accepted reality that doesn't bear close scrutiny or questioning. And I mean, you could do the same thing about climate change. You could do the same thing about the COVID response. You could do the same thing. But we've got this terrible situation where journalists don't ask those kind of questions and the education system doesn't prime people to be curious in that way. And so we're just hurtling for a war. I'd like to see some, you know, some responses like that to our. Our journalists, you know, because it's so easily taken apart. It's like, who could do it? You know, you think about there's only one name that comes exactly. It's the one name that comes to mind. I mean, David Seymour wouldn't be able to do that. I don't think Christopher likes to say something snarky, personal and snarky, that wouldn't be funny. Yeah, probably.  And and, you know, this is the problem with MMP, is that we've actually dumbed down our MPs.  They're so, you know, polished up into nothingness. They're too scared to actually say something. And, you know, I think that is the fault of MMP, where we're going constantly for the middle ground, but no one knows what the middle ground is. So we'd be it's not. We don't want to upset anybody.  Sorry, Paul. I don't know.  There's there's a selection process that eliminates people like that. And it eliminates conscious conviction politicians. Yeah. And there's very few conviction politicians. And it turns out that after 30 years, most New Zealanders don't even know how it works. Still.  And people talk about I've been woken up about the political system, but that in many respects, that's all they did is wake up. What they didn't do is is the, you know, I mean, the feedback I had on my show from people and argue the toss about, you know, what I was thinking about something or how something was going to operate or how it did actually operate. And I get this all the time and people want to come up to me in the street and they say, you know, you you're wrong on that. Yeah, no, I'm not. No, so it's like you're going to be chewing an apple, chewing on an apple to get that one right. But it's like they woke up and then put their fingers in the ears and shouted, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, when everyone when anybody pointed out the reality of situations to them. Yeah. And then got angry and then got angry. And, you know, we should be doing this and we should be doing that. Look, I've had it for years. And when I ran whale oil and the BFT, I've had it for years. People would say to me, you know, you should be supporting the National Party. And because you're not, I'm cancelling my subscription. I want nothing more to do with you. Well, you know what? In almost every instance that somebody did that, they never had a subscription. They were just being all about Aztec and bullying and threatening.   This is this is the truth. This is reality in some ways. We're in a bubble, but the bubble is not about the information. The bubble is about the sort of people who do say, hey, this is this is not right. This is unacceptable. And this is not going in a good direction for everyone. And right at the outset of the covid response, I went to I went to a dinner. I think it might have been a Jodi Brunning's place. And I think she said to me, you know, everyone who's who's against this is an outsider. They've been an outsider as a child. And interesting. I think I think that's if you if you tap into what people's backgrounds are, that's often true. I changed school four times. I'm thinking of myself now. Was I? What was I? I've always been an outsider. Yeah. Yeah. Comfortable, not being in the herd. Yeah. And it's hard for people who are comfortable not being in the herd to really fully understand the terror a lot of people feel of leaving it when they're threatened with exclusion from the herd. It's a very powerful force. And it's like Matt Shelton told me and I think he's right. And we talked about this, that if you're inside that herd and you see people who are not part of the herd and especially if it's a medical thing where there's fear of death, you kind of seen as dead already to them. Yeah. Yeah. That zebra is going to get eaten by the they did an experiment where they marked a zebra so they could study how they moved in the herd. And the zebra that was marked got nailed because the lions could kind of keep an eye on them and and and and follow them specifically. Right. Murderers, murderers. Any any last words, any any last words, chaps? Well, I think that things are going to get interesting when the special votes come in. We're going to see that last 20 percent of the vote. I think there's going to be some changes. I don't think nationals going to be as ascendant as they think they are. We are going to have a three way government. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that's what we've mostly had under MMP. So the National Party lines about getting on with it. We have to fix things fast. We can't wait. We it's just PR and spin and ultimately anti-democratic. And I think we do have to wait for the specials. It's part of the voting system. It's how it works. It's not long. It's only two weeks. And on the day after my birthday, we'll we'll find out what what it actually looks like. Is the most temperamental and staunch party in a three party set up the one that has the power in the end, because they're the one who could flip at any moment. What I'm thinking is if again, NZ first, if, you know, if there are some bottom lines that won't be met, there's not much the other two can do. Well, bottom line, it's NZ first. Well, bottom lines is a media construct. Well, they seem to have they could be the more grumpy is what I'm thinking. Yeah. But again, you can only deal the deal. You can only play the cards have been dealt. And this is the perennial problem with NZ first and indeed, the act party. In the act party, they've they've normally only been dealt one card. And even first has only been dealt five or six. And so when you're really small, you really can't. Yeah. And that's the thing that people who hate Winston Peters say, they are never on as his promises. Well, did you vote for him? No. Well, then why are you complaining? Well, he never honest as promises. Well, you didn't vote for him to give him the power to be able to negotiate. This time around is a little bit different. Yes, he said ruled out labor and doing anything with them. And they're out of the game anyway. There's no way that anything can happen in that respect. But they've got more MPs than they've had, you know, for a while. And so and national actually does need them. So yeah. So he can say, look, we want this inquiry. Oh, we want to water it down. No, if you water it down, this won't happen. This won't happen. This won't happen. Yeah. And I think he can do those things. And, you know, in my interview that I had with him after the election results were nine. That's the one thing he focused on. He really thinks that there has been a huge injustice to many people and come and he's got a plan for if national doesn't agree with it with an inquiry, well, that's all right. Oh, he said to me, you'll just use parliamentary questions and ask them over and over and over again until we get questions answered. And national was actually it's in their best interest to actually allow an inquiry because they can completely have clean hands. They can have the inquiry. You know, Christopher Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield and all of those people can be dragged before the inquiry. They can be made to answer and it will destroy the Labour Party. They must be crapping themselves.   He's not going to be an MP. He can see the writing on the wall. He was the health minister, right? So he can happily now that he's no longer an MP, come before an inquiry and throw all of his all of his fellow people under the bus to save his own skin. So I think that we should have that. This could be a great show. Absolutely. And imagine it over a year. It's death by a thousand cuts. Yeah. Marty, any last words? The truth will set us free. You know, just keep keep pushing the truth and looking for the truth and and being genuinely kind. No, I totally agree with that. I think that'll like I think that'll get us through. And I really hope, you know, if we can make a place where Marty can can understand that that by seeing people like us as allies, they're not we're not bashing Marty.  There's our post election Friday political panel. I want to thank Cam Slater and Marty Gibson for being here this Friday morning. We've got a long weekend now. I've got a 60th birthday to celebrate on Saturday. How about that? I made it that far. Happy birthday. Thank you for a few moments there along the way. I wanted to forget here, but here I am. And and we'll do it all again next Friday here at RCR. OK. Awesome. I'll be here. Have a great week. RCR with Paul Brennan, Reality Check Radio.


Hey, I'm Mia from Team Amuké, and here are some questions that I've never answered before. I have literally no regrets about being a team man. At first I used to think maybe if I was older it would have been different or better, but now I really genuinely don't wish I was older. I don't wish I was weighted, I don't wish I had I was anyone else. I'm just happy with my life, let everything happen for a reason, and I had her at this age for a reason. I had her with Manley for a reason, and I would never change any of it. I don't regret things. I regret getting drunk when I was younger, I regret being horrible to my mum, I regret buying that chocolate bar, I regret eating that burger, but I don't have regrets as in I really regret this and I change it. I feel like everything that's happened in my life has made me who I am now, and I don't regret anything. I'm moving the really bad stuff I did. The hardest part of being a team man for me is watching all your friends go off to uni, go travelling on holidays. So the hardest thing is that, watching them and think that's what I would be doing if I didn't have Malia, but then at the same time I wouldn't change my life now anyway. My love life after having Malia went from one of the stars in the sky to one of the stones on the ground. Awful. I don't even know what the cause was, but I just know from the minute we had Malia everything went wrong, which is sad really because she should have brought us closer. And in a way, the only thing she liked, the only thing in those times she did do was keep us together for so long, but she did bring us closer as in like happy and closer. If I was living any other dream life right now, it would be on an island with the best tan, the best eyelash extensions, my favourite chocolate, laying directly under the sun without it hurting my eyes.


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All right, what is justice? The subheading in Opa for justice is justice as rationality in the evaluation of man. Justice as rationality in the evaluation of man. So justice is the application of rationality to human relations, to evaluating other people, to judging other people. Justice, quote Leonard again, is the virtue of judging men's character and conduct objectively, on of acting accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. Another way of thinking of it is treating people the way they deserve. Justice is required, you is the virtue that requires you to treat people the way they deserve to be treated. Now, why is this important? Why is it important to judge people and treat them the way they deserve, right? Why is this such a crucial, objectivist virtue? Well, because as I said at the beginning, human beings are a great value to you and can be a great danger to you. That is, if you value your life, if you value your life, then you must figure out which people are worthy of dealing with and which people are not. We live, we live, which is good, in a society. We live with other people. We gain potentially massive benefits from other people. But because we live with other people, we could also be really, really, really hurt by other people, physically damaged, spiritually damaged, monetarily damaged. People can really, the bad people can do immense damage and I don't need to tell you about the history of human society. I mean, just think of politicians and the damage they can do to your life. But think of a bad business partner. Think about what a bad business partner can do to you. The extent to which you go into business with somebody, the extent to which you're exposing yourself to this person, to the extent to which they can destroy your reputation, they can destroy you financially, they can make it really difficult for you to recover. If they turn out to be bad, if they light sheet steel, you're their business partner, you're gonna be held accountable. You're gonna have to find a way to recover. You might be holding the bag financially. But in every respect, they are impacting your life in significant ways.  So people believe them and they can do you real damage, not to mention the emotional, spiritual damage of having been somebody's friend and then being stabbed in the back. I mean, there are very few occurrences in life that are in a sense worse than that. You've given somebody's trust. You've engaged with somebody on an intimate level and they're not worthy of it.  It truly is horrible. Think of somebody you love and they betrays you and how bad that is, how much damage that can do to you. Again, physically, materially, spiritually, emotionally. So other people, even if you have immense self-esteem, even as we discussed last time, you are amazingly independent. We interact with other people on many, many levels. From business relationships, we trade, we employ people, we go to work for people. We have friends, we have acquaintances, we have love relationships. And those are all amazing, rewarding, satisfying, beneficial relationships to have. But when they go bad, they can be really awful. So from a perspective of your own life, as an egoist, it is on the one hand crucial to avoid evil, to avoid bad people, to avoid doing yourself damage by interacting with bad people. But of course, the flip side is even more important. The reward of dealing with good people, the reward of having satisfying relationships, the reward of great trade, the reward of employing great people, the reward of working for a great boss or a great company, the reward for interacting with good people and benefiting from what they produce, what they create, what they are is immense. It adds hugely to one's life. And in spite of the fact that it's easy to emphasize the negative, in spite of the fact that many of us think in terms of the negatives, objectivism is not focused on negatives, it's focused on the positive, it's focused on your life, it's focused on living a great, successful, wonderful, happy, flourishing, fulfilling life. And to do that, one wants to surround oneself with good people who represent one's values. And yes, as an aside, one wants to avoid the people who can do one's harm. But the focus should always be on the positive. The focus should always be on the way in which moral judgment, the way in which justice affects us positively. So the first thing to know about moral judgment is you've got it about, sorry, about justice, is that you have to judge. You have to judge. You have to judge other people. Morally judge other people. What does it mean to morally judge them? Judge their character. Are they good people? They are principles. We're talking about some of them. Moral principles. Do they live up to the moral principles necessary for successful human life? Or do they reject them? Whether they reject them explicitly or implicitly in action or in words, do they, to some extent or another, reject these principles? Do they act and speak against them? If they do, if they are not moral people, then one should avoid them. If they act immorally, then one should avoid them.  And depending on the context, interaction is a good thing. So moral judgment is essential. It's what justice requires. It means judging other people, having an assessment of other people. Good, bad, mediocre. But even mediocre. In what sense mediocre? In what ways are they good? In what ways are they bad? What things, is it okay to interact with them on? What things you wanna avoid completely from them? Christopher says, judge yourself as well. Yes, you should judge yourself as well. And we'll really get to self-judgment when we talk about pride. Pride really, the virtue of pride, really involves judging oneself. But the virtue of justice involves judging other people. It's the application of rationality to the challenge of judging other people. As Peacock says, rationality in the evaluation of men. And what does rationality in the evaluation of men mean? It means going by the facts, going by evidence, not going by emotion, first impressions, instinct, intuition, whatever. It's by using your mind, we're using reason, facts, evidence, logic, figuring out. And again, I don't know that there's anything more difficult to judge than other human beings. But that's why you need to use reason more than ever. More than ever, right? You always need to use reason. So there's a common phrase in our culture today, right? And oh no, don't judge, don't judge, so that you will not be judged. But that's basically saying, don't strive to be a good person. Don't strive to be moral. Don't strive to attain morality, because if you're good, why would you be afraid to be judged? So, objectivism holds the opposite of you. Our view is judge and be prepared to be judged. And there's important implication to all of this that Ayn Rand discusses. And that is the you are the product of you. The you shape your character. The you shape your soul.   That you are not just influenced by happen hand. So whatever happens out there, your genes or the environment or what your mother did to you when you were four years old, that in terms of your actions and your thoughts, maybe not in terms of your emotions, because that most psychology in that sometimes is harder to control and sometimes needs professional help to control. But in terms of your thoughts and your actions, you are in control. And therefore, what you say and what you do, you should be judged on. What you say and what you do are products of you. See, today in our culture, we have this attitude of, oh no, no, people are not responsible for themselves. They're not responsible for their actions. They're not responsible for their thoughts. They're just products of, I don't know, Russian election interference.  All they can do is give you information that you then can check out and find whether they're right or wrong, whether they're good or bad. But you have to decide what information you accept as truth. Nobody else is responsible for that. You shape your decisions. You shape your actions. And therefore, you must be judged based on those. And other people should be judged as if they do, even though many of them default, don't use reason to shape their conclusions and to shape their actions. But since they have the capacity to do so, since they have the ability to do so, they should be judged accordingly. They should be judged as if they did. And in that sense, in that sense, everybody you interact with should be judged within the context, within the context of what kind of interaction you're having with them.   Jennifer asks, and by the way, I'll take Super Chat questions, I'll give priority to Super Chat questions that are on the topic. And there should be a lot of questions here. I mean, I'm not, don't wanna put any ideas into your minds, but you know, this is not easy. How to judge other people, what appropriate actions this has to do with the fact of sanctioning other people, who you get up on stage with to debate and who you don't, why you don't, some people, you do others. These are not simple issues, but they're all issues of justice and they're all issues related to egoism. They're related to your life. They're related to the benefit or harm of your life. Jennifer says, some people prefer pets to other humans because animals can't lie, but animals can't choose. Isn't it the fact that a person chooses to be good that makes that person a value to you? Yes. The value that an animal represents is you're projecting onto them. It's in a sense, some kind of unconditional love that they're giving you, right? It's of course also conditioned and you treating them well, but there's no choice there. So you get kind of a sense of, some kind of sense of pure emotion, those dogs with those eyes that look at you, gaga eyes kind of looking at you in admiration, right? That as soon as you open the door, they rush to you and celebrate your arrival. But while that gives you that sense of being loved, being appreciated, being seen, it doesn't come anyway, I think, anywhere close. I don't have much of a relationship to pets and animals. It doesn't come close to getting that from another human being. Where you know it is a choice, where you know it is a cognitive, rational, and emotional, emotional, but emotional based on rational values. Response to you, that is so much deeper, so much more meaningful, so much more pleasurable, so much more important. So, and it comes from the fact that it was chosen, imagine if your spouse loved you because they were conditioned to do so. They had no choice about it. It just wouldn't be the same. Choice is crucial. Free will is crucial to everything we talked about in ethics. Ethics is meaningless without this idea of choice. So it's, yeah, so it's crucial to shape your own soul, it's crucial to make you the best you that you can be. It's crucial to live up to your values, to live up to morality, and then let them judge. Part of your self-esteem comes from the idea, from the knowledge, from the knowledge that here I am, judge me. Judge me for what I've said, judge me for what I've done. I've said this before on a show. The only two options, your judgment can be right or wrong. If it's wrong, it's on my business. If it's right, hopefully it matches up to my judgment, but if it's right and it doesn't, then it's good for me to know. Andrew writes, a lot of religious folks pay lip service to non-judgment, but a hyper-judgmental on the brother's keeper primes, yes. See, every religion or morality requires you to make some form of judgment of other people, but the standard for judging is not, cannot be the benefit that other people represent for you, to you. What does it mean to judge somebody based on the premise of altruism? Because if they're doing something that's good for you, then how should you judge them?  Good people sacrifice, you should be sacrificing.  So one of the main reasons people don't want you to judge them is because they know they fail. They know they're far from their own ideal. They know that they don't live up to the altruistic standard and almost nobody can. Really, nobody can, but, and nobody, very few people actually try on a day-to-day basis to live up to the standard of altruism. They couldn't survive if they did. And it's no, not fun. It's a frigging disaster. So think of this, they walk around afraid of being judged because they know that if somebody was honest about they're judging them, he would say, but you're not living up to your own ideals. You're not living up to your own morality.  How many of God's requirements and commandments do you actually practice? Do you actually follow? How much are you evading, distorting, pretending? So they can't live up to it and therefore they don't want to be judged and therefore they don't judge. And when they do judge, by what standard should they judge? By the standard of benefit to themselves? Well, that would be egoistic. So by what standard? Well, they've been told that honesty is a good, as they judge people as honest to dishonest, right? But since the connection of that honesty to their own values, to their own life, to their own happiness is not solid, right? I mean, we understand, I hope, that somebody else's dishonesty is bad for me.  And that's why I avoid it. So, objectives should be passionate about their morality, passionate about condemning evil and passionate about rewarding and supporting the good. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  Start liking it, I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this, and you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego, it's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes, but if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share and you can support the show at your own bookshow.com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals and show your support for the work, for the value, hopefully you're receiving from this.  So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support, there you go. Easy, do one or all of those, please.


Welcome to Toffy TV, here is the Matriac in Wolves 2 at Everton 1, another disappointing night for Everton at Molyngu this time, third defeat on the run with certainly the first half an absolutely awful performance, it got better in the second half, not much, but it was definitely better, and they ended in a disappointing defeat and Everton have got to pick themselves up, another tough game on Sunday against Spears at home and you're going to have to pick themselves up. The couple of changes in the side tonight with Charleston started the game, Mason Holgate came back in to the back for Ben Godfrey, replaced the injured Luca Dean at left back, and Everton, John Felipe Baman as well, I mean that really should have been the big story, shouldn't have him starting the game for Everton Football Club, it was in my feel with Alan, and my initial thoughts for the team was that I felt as though he should have played three in my feel, that was my initial feeling, it was why aren't we trying to do that? Why aren't we trying to get older the ball in midfield and have maybe Townsend off the right and Grey off the left with Charleston through the middle, so I would have had the next man, especially because Gabbaman has just come on, he's played, the last time he started the game was 2019, August 2019, so I would have had another midfielder in it, probably Tom Davis to be honest, just because of fitness, stealth, I don't think it would have been fit to start, but Davis would have had a fair start, and then maybe looked at it there. But he went with what he went with, and to be honest Wolves were all over us, they just came out the traps quickly, they pressed us, they were better than us, they knocked it around comfortably, him and us were dropping in to pockets just because there was a gap between Alan and Gabbaman on our back four, no-one was going with them and he was causing us problems, and we got away with it, or we had a warning, I mean get away with it because it was offside, but we had a warning, Reuben Nevers had had a volley with Stioban Pick for me to go to save from, but Wolves thought they had the ball in the net and Hwang Heechan scored it, but he'd been offside in the build-up, and you would have thought that would have woke them up, it didn't, and a couple of minutes later we go and can see it yet again from a set piece, the manager can talk about his own own marking, and I understand where he's coming from with it, the best managers in the world use it, but you have to pick what's good for your team, and at the moment we aren't coping whatsoever with its own own marking, we're just not doing for whatever reason, a corner's played in, Ben Godfrey getting away near it, neither does Michael Keane, Andrew Sanzend as well, and it's headed in by Kilman into the floor beyond Joven Pickford and it's 1-0, and you know a poor start, they've been rewarded with the goal, and it was always going to be an uphill battle for him there, we made it even more difficult for ourselves with Ben Godfrey, with a shock on Backpass, which gave Rael Himenez the chance of running on Joven Pickford and he'd dinked it over and he doesn't miss them, and completed his record of scoring in every game against Devon to make it 2-0, the first half was really poor, the Marey Grey had two attempts at goal, that was probably the best we came, the closest we came, Mason Holgate put one over in the last seconds of the first half off a set piece, but I feel like he was offside, came out for the second half, the man had to make the change, took off Jean-Philippe Gabaman and put on Fabian Delth, and to be fair to Fabian Delth, he was evidence best played in the second half by a mile, I thought Gabaman done alright in patches in the first half, but I feel like they still him and Alan still needed someone sitting so they could go and get about, they were both leaving gaps and that's where Himenez was killing us, what Delth did second half was he sat in there, he got older a ball a little bit more, and everything went much better in the second half, there's no doubt about it, got back into the game through Alex Oboby, we'd had a couple of moments one, excuse me, which was almost an own goal, a header from Sight I think, it was a conacody it was rather, just went wide, we'd had another couple of attempts that were blocked, we'd shown a little bit more about us, but we got ourselves a goal, Ben Godfrey hit a shot that was, I don't think it was causing the keeper too much trouble, it broke back and there was Alex Oboby to smash it in to give it a bit of hope and there was still, I think there was still something like half an hour to go or 25 minutes to go when we got the goal, so we were in the game, but we just didn't really press that advantage on, we had that, you know, we moved in around well but at times, but we just, at that final third of, you know, British Alice had almost got in earlier on when they made the mistake off a back pass, but we didn't really create anything for them, of note, Anthony Gordon came on and did very well, it was very, very bright and they almost actually got evident in equaliser cornering and it was a header by Gordon, a good save from the keeper and it just evaded Mason Holgate running in, but other than that it was few and far between and we ended up, you know, putting them under a bit of pressure at the end but still taking too many touches and it was just not enough really and I think I'm sitting here and I probably, to be honest, find it hard to say that we deserved the point, even though we were much better than the second half and we were better than Wolves, I think the first half this play from them was far better than us and that probably deserved them the three points the manager's got to pick these up now and like I said before, big game on Sunday before the international break, they're probably going to have Antonio Conti in charge, coming to goodness until they'll be up for it and evidently they've got to use the crowd and everything to try and get points on the board without Calvert-Lewin, without Mina, without Decore, without Luca Dean, we're just not the same side and we're a team that looks devoid of any kind of pace in the team, it was good for the charlatans to get the 90 minutes, we wouldn't create anything for them and I think the manager's got some decisions to make with how destructive the team is as well I thought there was a lot of plays we reported and I thought Michael Keane was very poor, Mason Holgate didn't have a good game, the fact that back four I didn't think I had a particularly good game at all, I thought that Alan was way off it in the field and while we wasn't good, timeshems was below par, gravy was below par, Alan was a charlatan worked out but we didn't create anything so there was a lot of poor performances tonight and we'll have to be much better on Sunday it's disappointing, it's three defeats on the run, it's frustrating, it's gotten really because it does just feel at the minute like it's rinse and repeat season after season when we start the season, well there's some optimism, we get a few injuries, we go out the carabao cup or whatever and we just tail off and we limp home and it just feels like the same script each year and I don't know when or how we change it but it's frustrating we need a win, three terrible results on the run now, we need a win and spares won't be easy by any stretch but that's there the next in front of us and after that there's an international breaking and hopefully Abdelhaid y Cori is back after that, we've got a nice easy game after that I think it's man's city away so it doesn't get any easier but it's a long season and we're going to have to try to get as many points quickly as we can and just keep ourselves out of any stupid conflict so there you go, very disappointing tonight, man of the match, Fabian Delph, there you go, that's the man of the match thanks for listening, give the video a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't and if you want more videos join us on Patreon, see you later