Dennis & Julie: Fear of Reality

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I'm all right today.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Dennis and Julie podcast here on the Salem Podcast Network. We're very happy to be with you today. I want to remind all of you to please email me julie-hartman.com with your questions for both of us that we will read aloud on this podcast. Dennis, we've gotten a few over the past few weeks, and I'd love to get to some today. Before we dive in, I do have a topic that we're going to begin discussing, but before we get to that, I want to tell you about Eden Pure air purifiers. I have one here in my dorm room, and it really is a fantastic product. It is proven Oxy technology that quickly destroys viruses, odors, mold, and more. It freshens your home, it gets rid of any odor like litter boxes, trash cans, cigarette smoke, dirty diapers, cooking smells. In my case, whatever smells are in a dorm room where 6 girls live in very close quarters. It takes up no floor space. It plugs directly into the wall. There's a 6-foot USB cord. Please go to eatandpuredeals.com. You can use the discount code JULIE3. That's JULIE3 to get 3 Thunderstorm air purifiers for under $200. Oh, and by the way, just to add to all of this, shipping is free. All right. Now our topic, Dennis. One of the things I love about this podcast, I just wanna remind our listeners, we have a 5-minute conversation every morning just to sort of get an idea of where we're going. But every time we talk, it's my first time hearing Dennis's reaction to things, and the same is true with me. So I'm very, very eager to hear what you have to say about this, Dennis. This past weekend, I had a fascinating debate with some of my classmates about a scandal at Harvard that took place 3 years ago. I was a freshman, and it surrounded a graphic published by the Harvard Lampoon, which is our humor magazine here. And it They published a picture of Anne Frank. Well, actually, no, it was a picture of a woman. I think she was on Baywatch and she's in this very revealing bikini. And they Photoshopped a picture of 11-year-old Anne Frank onto this woman's head. And the caption read, "Gone before her time. Virtual aging technology shows us what Anne Frank would have looked like if she hadn't died." "Add this to your list of reasons why the Holocaust sucked." So obviously, I mean, it's unbelievably offensive and horrible to sexualize this 11-year-old girl who is the victim of one of the most egregious mass tragedies of humankind. I think really, really crosses a line. But, you know, it's so interesting because the people who I was talking to about this, I sort of did a case study. I went around and asked a lot of my peers what they thought about it. And the biggest defenders of this image, interestingly, were really woke people. And this sort of fascinated me because I thought, you know, on the one hand, as we all know, a bedrock of wokeism is that it calls benign things offensive. But there's also, I think, an equally damaging feature that we don't really recognize as much, where it calls the truly offensive things benign. And I think, you know, I'm a free speech advocate. I know you are too, Dennis. I know one thing that we love to talk about as conservatives is how people should be allowed to make fun of things and comedy should be protected. But I really, as I said, I do think that this has crossed a line and it just is imparted to me that as a society, it seems like we've really lost our sense of decorum and manners and morality. Dennis, what do you think about this?

There's a lot to unravel here.

Yes.

And when you said just now that the— on the left, which is synonymous with the woke, they find the offensive unoffensive and the unoffensive offensive, it reminded me of a great Talmudic statement, one of the guidepost ideas of my life. Those who are kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind. I think that's one of the defining elements of the left, that they are kind to the cruel. For example, the Soros-backed DAs, district attorneys, who are kind to murderers and other people who do horrible things. And then they are extremely unkind to any conservative who gets in their way politically. So it's not uncommon. You revealed something very big here in telling this story. And you pointed out to me that you didn't— something you didn't point out just now, which is fine, so I'll point it out. And that is that the woke are, were able to tolerate this. Well, you did say it now, in effect, so I'll expand on it. This is tolerable, and you want to know, and one wants to know why, which is what you're really delving into. Why don't they find this offensive? The face of Anne Frank, an 11-year-old girl murdered by the Nazis on a Baywatch bikini-clad woman, right? So the answer is— what you didn't say fully was that the Harvard Lampoon is on the left. So it's okay that they did it.

Yes.

But I think there is as well another reason which you didn't mention earlier, and I thought about just now when you were speaking. Jews are not considered victims. And since Jews are not on the victim list, you really can't offend Jews. You can offend blacks, you can offend Hispanics, you can offend indigenous people, you can offend women, poor things, but not really— the Jews aren't on the list. Jews are basically white. And you can't defend a white. So I was wondering how you would react to that.

You're absolutely right, Dennis Prager. I think one of the main reasons why this scandal blew over as fast as it did is because it was the Harvard Lampoon publishing it. And I can't help but think, let's suppose that some state school put this out on their website. Let's say that some all-male fraternity at Brigham Young University, just to take an example, published this graphic. How do you think that would go over? I imagine Yeah, there would be. I mean, this, this Lampoon thing, I must say, did make national news and there was an uproar. But compared to what would have happened if it's again an all-male fraternity at a state school published this, it really blew over quite fast. And to your point, Dennis, we no longer judge— well, I'm not going to say we— the left does not judge actions by the actions themselves. They judge the actions based on who is committing the action. So tell me who the person is, and I can tell you if the left will deem it offensive. And also, to your point, they judge actions not by actions themselves, but who the victim group is involved. And you're right, unfortunately, Jews do not fall into this category. Why do you think that is, Dennis Prager? Do you think it's because Jews— well, you said Jews are white. Do you think the success of Israel has had A lot to do with it.

I, I think Jewish success in general has to do with it. They, they loathe the successful. And by the way, successful doesn't mean rich. It's, it's one component that, that you may have done well economically. Successful means that you have a stable social life. Mormons have a stable social life. Most Jews do, and many WASPs do, of course, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And that annoys them. The success of middle-class values is a major annoyance to the left. And if you embody that success, you can't be a victim. There are no Mormon victims. By the way, in this regard with Jews as victims, Jews are in fact the the largest recipients of hate crimes, bias crimes in the United States. It is almost unknown to Americans that that is the case, and the vast majority of the physical attacks on Jews are by blacks, which is completely unreported in the news. Jews are regularly beaten now in New Jersey and New York City, regularly. And it's not nationally reported, it's locally reported, And it's never reported that the assailants are, in virtually every case that I could document, a Black individual. And my indictment is not of Blacks. Obviously, the vast majority of Blacks are not attacking anybody. My indictment is of the left-wing media and the lie about Blacks are only victims and Jews are never victims.

Right. Well, I think that this graphic raises a really interesting question for me about the nature of comedy, because again, as I said as I was sort of introducing the subject, I do think that comedy is a place where we can push the boundaries and we should, and I don't think that people should be censored. And that was the argument that a lot of my friends who I was talking to about this were making. But to me, I mean, there's nothing funny about this. There's nothing that's sort of pushing the boundaries or revealing something deep about the Holocaust. That's the point. There's nothing funny. It's completely tasteless. It's so offensive. And you know, it's interesting. One of the responses I got when I was talking about it with people was someone said to me, you know, Julie, I thought that you were anti-calling things offensive. And I said, of course I'm not anti-calling things offensive. I'm anti-calling stupid things that aren't offensive offensive. And it's just striking to me how we've lost these distinctions. And, you know, it brings me back, Dennis, to— I feel like I always bring up your books, but I love— you know how much I love them and how much they've impacted me. But I believe it's in your Genesis commentary, just in the first few pages, you talk about when God creates the world, he has— he makes all of these distinctions and how distinctions are an important part of civilization. What I've noticed is that a bedrock objective or a bedrock sort of outcome of leftism is to eliminate those distinctions between the normal and abnormal, offensive and inoffensive. The list, I mean, man and woman, formal and informal, the list goes on. And this is an example of that where some of my friends who are defending this image, they're good people, but they've lived in this world where all of these distinctions that again, make up civilization have been unraveled. And it's really showing in the way that people think.

Here is, uh, to, to validate your point with one example. This is from the just published— the New Jersey Education— well, the New Jersey Board of Education has just released its guidelines for what should be taught to children up to 3rd grade, up to 3rd, right? 5, 6, 7-year-olds in New Jersey starting in September. So here, this is word for word from part of the curriculum. You might not feel like you're a boy or a girl, but you're a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you're perfectly normal. But that's not normal. If you don't think you're a boy or a girl, that is not normal. And it is—

no, it's not.

Yes. So, so it's— it just validates with— I mean, the examples are legion, but it just validates of the point you're making. It's very important to understand I don't have a problem with ethnic jokes. I tell them about every ethnic group, including Jews. You have been present when I've told these funny jokes at Jews' expense. I have no issue with that. I don't think that that's off-bounds, whether it's Blacks or it's Hispanics or Jews. Or any group. A joke that is a joke is funny. There is one criterion though that I use where I don't find them funny and I do find them offensive is when they are done with malice and when they are done about something that— and/or when they're done about something that can't be joked about. It is not possible to tell a lynching joke. There's no such thing as a lynching joke. There's no such thing as a gas chamber joke. Okay, your point is key. If there were no boundaries, I guess we live in the age of no boundaries. So that's why I think the issue that you're raising, which is you're raising because it came up in conversation with fellow students, is really important for all of these reasons. Are Jews whites? Can a white be a victim? Can a black be a perpetrator? Whom can you make fun of? Whom not? These are all big issues. There's one other thing I would add to the ability to joke about Anne Frank in that way, or any way. I don't think any joke about Anne Frank you know, a girl murdered by the Nazis, you know, the prime of her adolescence. The notion can be done only if the person isn't real. And I have this theory about the left, including my own generation, which remember came up with the idiocy, don't trust anyone over 30. Starting with the baby boomers, there was a negation of the importance of those who lived before them. There is a belief on the left, and it's an amazing thing, we are, we leftists, we the woke, are the finest human beings who have ever lived. Those who lived before us, like in America, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, We are way, way morally superior to them. That is one aspect of this. Another one is people who lived before us aren't really real. Anne Frank is not real to them. And I don't know why. I don't have that issue. People who lived before me are very, very real to me. Those I never met, those who lived 1,000 years ago. Maybe it's because I grew up in a traditional Jewish home where we spoke about Moses as if he was the next-door neighbor. I'm not joking. I mean, he was so real, Moses, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and so on, that maybe I was inoculated against the belief that those who lived before me just weren't that significant. But I think that's an element in what the Harvard Crimson did, or the Harvard Lampoon.

That's a very interesting theory, Dennis. I think that you're right, and I think it just speaks to the fact that we've really lost our sense of tragedy as a society. That's something that I— we've talked about a lot off the air, you know, even just the other day. As you know, I have an older sister with very severe autism, and that's been an incredibly, incredibly painful situation for our family. She's in a group home with, historically, they've been utterly incompetent and abusive and negligent caretakers. And it's just, it's been awful for us. And I don't talk about it a lot, but sometimes I do open up to people. And I just, obviously it's a hard subject to deal with, but I have just noticed that people, especially people my age, have no idea how to handle it. And they get really uncomfortable and they can't look at me in the eye. And just the other day, as I mentioned, I was talking to someone about it and she said to me, "I'm sorry, dude." And I thought, dude, again, like we've lost our sense of decorum. I mean, say I'm sorry, dude, is something you say when, you know, you lose your driver's license, you drop it on the street and you can't find it. I'm sorry, dude, is not a response you have when I'm opening up about something as tragic as this. I think—

Again, Julie, it is so important. By the way, let me— you shouldn't listen now because I'm going to extol your virtues. This is why, for those of you watching or listening, I have agreed to do this podcast with Julie. Every generation— it's really a rule of life— every generation throws out some exceptional human beings, and she's one of them. It's so— and I have no problem saying it because it's really a gift. What you get credit for are not your gifts, but that you're using them for good values and good things. But your insights are so accurate. I'll give you an example. You'll— this will blow your mind because it comes from the completely different direction. People don't want to acknowledge tragedy. Is even beyond just the issue of the woke and the left or the young. So I had a call on my show. I don't know how it arose. Oh yes, by my— when I spoke about this on my radio show, oh, even if you don't think you're a boy or a girl, you're completely normal, which is just a lie. You're not completely normal. I said, you know, you're not You're not completely normal. I said something to the effect, if you're, if you're born with one arm, you can make a good life, you could live it, but you're not. So a man called up whose son was born with only one arm. That's the beauty of doing a radio show, because you get everybody. No matter what you say, somebody will relate to it. And he said, I don't agree with you, Dennis. I regard my child as having a complete life. I said, I didn't say he can't have a complete life. I said it's not completely normal to be born with one arm. And he said, "No, I regard it as a gift from God." So I said, "If that's a gift from God, what's two arms? Is that a double gift?" I mean, it's not a gift from God. First, I don't hold God responsible for your child having one arm. I don't hold God responsible for your sister's autism. These are tragedies. People, including religious people who are my allies on most every issue, They don't want to acknowledge tragedy. If it happened, it was God's will. But I said, what if you were hit by a drunk driver? Was that not a tragedy? Is that God's will? Well, that's human decision. Okay, fine. So if a child is born with a horrible debilitating illness, with spina bifida, is that a gift from God? People don't want to say this tragedy, just as you're saying, but it goes across the board. It's not just left.

You know, that sort of reminds me, I was talking with someone again about this topic and she said to me, you know, I always thought that it was weird that people call people like your sister disabled. Because they're not disabled, they just have different abilities.

Oh God. Oh, that's perfect.

Oh my— isn't it?

Oh my God, it's painful, actually. It's painful knowing the state of your sister from you to say that she has different abilities is— I know, pure absurdity.

It is. And it just— and I— what I wanted to say to this person Can you just not acknowledge that it's tragic, period? I mean, just say it. We don't need to— it's such a— I'm sorry, but it's such a— and you're right that it does transcend the left and the young, but it is kind of a characteristically woke left thing to not be able to acknowledge how tragic the situation is.

Well, here, I'll give you— Julie, you don't know this example. I will give you another one. This is such a big issue. This is their tragedy. The deaf community announced years ago it was opposed to a cochlear implant. In other words, kids who were raised in the deaf world with sign language, etc., and deaf culture as they call it, they actually oppose, officially oppose, they don't prohibit, you can't, but they officially oppose a cochlear implant, which would give some deaf children hearing. And their reasoning is there is no superiority in the hearing world to the deaf culture.

Oh God, tell that to someone who can't hear.

Well, they do, no, they do tell that to people who can't hear, and I assume that some buy it. So, so it— nothing is better than anything else. It's, it's a fear of reality. I don't know, I don't know how else to express it, but that is a great way to say it, Dennis.

You're absolutely right, it is a fear of reality. I got to write that down. That, that's on the nose. They cannot acknowledge the tragedies of life. The real— just and the happinesses of life, and that there are differences with the way people live and abilities, and those are good and bad. I mean, it's again circling back to what we talked about earlier, unraveling of distinctions.

You're— yes, that's right. I, I, I must tell you, I, I will literally never forget what you just said earlier, that someone said to you that your sister has different abilities. She's not disabled. What— is there anyone they wouldn't say that of? What if you have no legs? Are you differently abled? What is your different ability? To get around in a wheelchair? I would like to— what? It's absurd. And it is because people just don't want to face it. See, I have always said religion, certainly biblical religion, inoculated me in so many ways in the best sense. It said there's tragedy in life. That's why there's the Book of Job. Everybody knows— well, I, by the way, just— I want to get back to it, but I— it provokes me to ask you, if I asked 100 people in the, in the middle of Harvard Square, can you identify Job? How many, how many do you think would be able to?

Um, a 3.

Okay, right. I, I agree with you, and, and it may be 0. It could, it could well be 0. They would think I meant probably 0, that I've been jobbed. So I, I want to make this point: by having been raised steeped in the Bible, I was steeped in the knowledge of tragedy. And Job is the best example where he suffers horribly and asks, well, how could you do this to me, God? Or how could this happen? And deals with the problem. Abraham argues with God. I grew up knowing you can argue with God. That the name of the Jewish people is Israel. Israel means— it's in the Bible itself in Hebrew. Israel means argue with God, struggle with God. So I, I, in, from the earliest age that I could think, I was told the world isn't the way God would like it or I would like it, and I can struggle with God about it, but I won't deny it. There are a lot of Jobes walking around.

Religion is such a key part of this, Dennis, because As you just said, religion gives you a context in which to understand and process the tragedies of life. And, you know, we focus a lot on Judeo-Christian religion, but look at— I really admire Buddhism. Look at the premise of Buddhism. Life is suffering. It's how to overcome and deal with that suffering. And in this post-World War II secular humanist progressive credentialist, institutionalist, list goes on, me-first society, we don't know what to do with tragedy. And I think another big part of this, Dennis, in addition to the decline of religion, is also in our post-World War II society, we've had an unprecedented amount of prosperity and security in the United States. And so many of us are just accustomed to living our daily life with so much, again, freedom, prosperity, happiness, security. I actually, as you know, I'm writing an article about my recent trip to Israel, which if you give me any moment to talk about it, I will gladly take. You know how much that trip impacted me. And one of the things that I'm arguing is that the Israelis have such patriotism, which Americans don't have. And the reason why they have such patriotism is because they know that their country is precious. Because it's— the existence of Israel is threatened every single day. They have attacks coming from all of its borders, even within its own borders. And in America, we have had such territorial comfort, we've had such internal security that we've really taken it for granted. And as a result, we're not patriotic, we're not proud to be American, we don't understand how lucky we are. And again, this, this also bleeds into our discussion of of understanding life and tragedy, because every single day, compared to other people in the world, we live so well. We haven't had to confront tragedy, so we sort of don't think it exists.

People think since World War II, people in America have tended to think, especially the generation born like mine after the war, that this is normal— freedom, prosperity, peace— that that's normal. It's not normal. That even healthy is normal. Healthy is desired, but in the history of the world, it, the— it was an abnormal condition. Most people— I mean, most babies died before— most children died before the age of 5. They, they, and they had to grapple with tragedy, and apparently this generation didn't. So if you weren't taught like I was by religion, specifically biblical religion— I'll get to Buddhism in a moment, I have some other thought on that— but if you were not taught biblical religion, you did not assume tragedy was the normal state of human life. By the way, you may not know this, although I think I wrote it in my happiness book, but it doesn't matter. Buddhism changed my life. When I was a junior, I was in England and I studied comparative religion. My teacher, Trevor Ling, major historian of religion, was a Buddhist, an Englishman who converted to Buddhism. And he— which is great, you should always study religion under people who believe in it. Otherwise, it doesn't really work much. And he said Buddhism— what was it? Buddhism believes— yes, Buddhism believes all suffering comes from desires and expectations that are not fulfilled. So it basically comes from having desires and expectations. It hit me like the proverbial lightning, and I thought, oh my God, he's right. All pain comes from desires and expectations. And, and then he added, therefore Buddhism says you should have no desires and no expectations. So I made— do you know this about me?

This is the premise of your book. Yes, that's a huge part of your happiness. Well, yes.

Oh, half is— no, this is key. Half. I, from that day to this, I have had no expectations in life. The man changed my life with one sentence. But I'm not a Buddhist because I believe in desires. We should desire health, we should desire peace, we should desire prosperity to the extent that we can achieve it honorably. So I, I took half of the Buddhist message and, and I didn't take the other half.

I love Buddhism. I learned about it sophomore year, really in depth, in a Buddhist art and architecture class. And I, I really appreciate that they— that again, the premise is that suffering is an unavoidable part of life. And by the way, I want to just clarify on something I said a few minutes ago. Obviously, tragedy still, you know, the fact that we live in America doesn't mean that tragedy is eliminated from our lives. Obviously, people get hit by cars, their parents die, their children are born with autism, etc. But to your point, Dennis, and the examples, I really appreciated the examples that you listed. We have not had to confront so many other parts of life that add on to those inevitable cosmic tragedies like Having the government censor you and retaliate against you if you speak out against them. Having ethnic conflict within our own state territory. I mean, those again are just things that I, we don't even process that they happen to the rest of the world. It's like the famous Elie Wiesel quote, there are more people, what is it? There are more oppressed people in the world than free people. And that's just something that we have totally, totally become unaware of. And it scares me because you have to understand just how bad it can get, just how much evil there is in the world, in order to prevent it and to preserve this system we have now.

Right. So I'll, I'll just end with this, an insight that I had in the last few years. There are so few real evils in America that the left makes up evils. Systemic racism is a perfect example. Why are there so many racial hoaxes? Because there's so little racism. When you, when you need meaning in life, you will make up evils when they don't exist.

Yes, well, that's— I remember Candace Owens said this right when I was discovering conservatism, and it was a— it hit me like a lightning bolt. She said Only in the most prosperous, free, least racist societies do you have the time to sit and debate about microaggressions. I mean, do you think people across the world who are starving and the victims of oppression and, I mean, slavery still exists in countries like Ghana. I mean, it's unbelievable. Do you think they have time to sit and talk about whether the word freshman is appropriate because it has the word man in it? I mean, come on.

What can I add?

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Julie, as always, it was great being with you.

So fun being with you, Dennis. And yes, I did just use the word fun because it— we have the best job in the world, even when we're talking about tragedy and the existence of evil. I mean, it's— how lucky are we? That we get paid to just talk about the big issues of life. It's not lost on me.

I know it's not, and it's not lost on me after 40 years.

Thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week.

Dennis and Julie, bye-bye.

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