Episode 044: Loneliness TED - Part Fore

In Part 4 of the Loneliness TED series, Jeremiah explores loneliness through a broader lens—asking not only why we feel isolated, but who we trust, where we belong, and how modern culture deepens our disconnection.

Using the golf term “Fore!” as a warning to look out, Jeremiah examines loneliness as both a personal and societal issue. He contrasts loneliness and solitude, reminding listeners that being alone is not always the same as being lonely—and sometimes it’s better to stand alone than to belong to the wrong crowd.

This episode reflects on:

• Who do you trust? In a world of public figures, pundits, and influencers constantly shifting positions, Jeremiah challenges listeners to think critically and avoid blindly following any one voice. 
• Loneliness vs. solitude. Drawing from thinkers like George Washington, Nietzsche, Goethe, Thomas Wolfe, and Robin Williams, he explores the difference between healthy solitude and painful isolation. 
• The danger of tribalism. From politics to peer pressure, Jeremiah discusses how modern culture pressures people to conform rather than think independently. 
• Social media and exclusion. He examines how online life often magnifies loneliness by showing us how much fun others seem to be having without us. 
• Family, friendship, and belonging. Through personal stories and observations, Jeremiah reflects on changing family structures, the power of peer influence, and what it means to remain anchored in a shifting culture. 

At its heart, this episode is about finding your compass, anchor, and courage—learning when to walk alone, when to resist the crowd, and how to choose meaningful connection over shallow belonging.

In this episode:

✔ Why “Who Do You Trust?” may be one of the most important questions of our time
 ✔ The critical difference between loneliness and solitude
 ✔ Why social media can intensify feelings of isolation
 ✔ How tribalism pressures people to sacrifice truth for acceptance
 ✔ Why it’s better to be alone than in bad company
 ✔ The importance of family, character, and staying anchored in your values

Memorable takeaway:

“The worst thing in life is not ending up all alone—it’s ending up with people who make you feel like you’re all alone.”

This fourth installment of Loneliness TED is a thoughtful warning—and an encouragement—to seek truth, guard your mind, and choose your company wisely.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, good morning, afternoon. Hey, hey, hey. Good morning, afternoon, whatever it is, wherever you are. This is Jeremiah Gunn Show. Jeremiah Gunn Show, the Gun Show. Uh, thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in. This program's dedicated to Charlie Kirk. We are broadcasting from behind enemy lines. This is not bombast, it's not exaggeration, it's not hyperbole, it's not any of those things that the liars will tell you. It's dedicated to Charlie Kirk. You know, what what do you want? Someone who tells you we're not in a civil war or someone who warns you that we are? What um, you know, nine o'clock and all's well. Well, what if it isn't all well? It falls to people who are willing to tell the truth. And um we're broadcasting behind enemy lines. We're in the Confederate States of America, the Democrat states of America, the blue no matter who, the ones that don't love the Constitution. And that's just a reality. Know your enemy. Know your enemy. Otherwise, nothing's gonna get fixed. This is um loneliness, Ted. Loneliness, Ted. That's the bottom line. Uh part four. And I spell that F-O-R-E. That's not to be cute. I spell three F-R-E-E, not because I have little grandkid toddlers, but because we are only part free. Uh part two is TWO or T-O-O, because the hashtag me2 and uh two, we're in two. We're not one. We're not one anymore. Whether that's in your marriage or in your country or your community, we're not one. And so the people that are running around screaming about uh he's divisive, he's divisive, are the most divisive people you will ever meet. Uh have the unfortunate to have them cross your path. So let's let's talk about these things a little bit. Uh this is Jeriah Gunshow, and we're talking about loneliness, Ted. Ted being Ted Talk. This is a part four, F-O-R-E, like in golf. What does four mean in golf, F-O-R-E? Why spell it that way? Because it means look out, heads up, like I said in baseball. That always seemed kind of dumb to me. Guy pops a pop up and it comes into the crowd or into the guy on deck and into the dugout and they yell, heads up. Well, if you it seems like cover your head would be better than look. You want to get hit in the nose, face, heads up, you know. Look look at it so you can protect yourself better from it. I don't know. I manage Little League a little bit, and um uh some things I just don't totally understand. Okay. So the the leadoff question here is is kind of who do you trust? Who do you trust? You know? Um I think that's really important. There was a game show in the early days of television called Who Do You Trust? And the host was Johnny Carson, the second host. That kind of put him on the map. Johnny Carson is the one who blazed a trail in late-night TV shows, variety shows, talk shows, whatever you want to call it, uh based based around comedy, of course. And then it follows in this trail of uh a bunch of people who are not qualified, not comedians, and then there's this controversy. Um I just saw um Kimmy Kimmel talking to Michelle Obama on her podcast. Uh it was a little clip from another show, and they showed, and they were talking about, they were talking about um, you know, well, I don't have to be a comedian. Who said I have to be a comedian? Kimmy Kimmel tells her. My boss tells me what to say. Well, his boss is his wife. She's a she's an absolute sick person with TDS. She can't go. She has to go to a therapist because she can't, she doesn't understand why she hates her family so much. She hates her family because she hates Trump instead of the other way around. Whatever, whatever that means. But you you you see where I'm going? So he he says, I don't have to be a comedian. Well, wait a minute. That whole thing about the Second Amendment, and can a comedian even criticize the president? And then so, but so what where does Johnny Carson come in? Because he compared himself to Johnny Carson. Because there's a famous clip of Johnny Carson talking to Mike Wallace about I'm not going to get political. I'm what why am I going to cut off half of my audience? Greg Gutfeld, I'll I'll give you an example, he's very funny. He's very extremely witty and very funny. But the but the point is what what uh Kimmy Kimmel was telling Michelle Obama uh about how I I I don't come to your work and tell you how to do your job. Well, you know, I excuse me, I thought your job was being a comedian. That's what they said when they defended you when you got when you got given a day off disciplinary, and you came right back with more venom, more vengeance, and and just just sort of silliness. So um so so Johnny Carson, so so the question is, you know, who can you trust? I I saw a clip, I didn't click on it, but it was on YouTube, it was um Russell Brand talking to Tucker Carlson and talking about how um he's uh he he's gonna run for mayor or something like that, and you know, Trump's fall and all this stuff. Well, you know, I I've read I read his book, Mentoring, How to How to Find One, How to Be One. Yeah, you know, he's he's a smart guy, but I mean who who says that he has the answers? Who says that Tucker has the answers? Who do you trust? I mean, a lot of people trusted Tucker Carlson, and then all of a sudden he comes up just like Candace Owens and uh other people, just come out of the left field. Rogan, I saw Rogan standing behind the president. I could almost not see him. I didn't realize how little a man he is. You know, there's a saying this small dogs bark the most. Uh he's standing behind Trump, and I guess it was recent, but Dr. Oz was there, and of course Robert Kennedy Jr. And he's talking, he's just commending Trump. As usual, the headline, the subtitles, you know, the the thing introducing it, the banner says that he apologized to Trump. I never heard an apology. I watched it a couple different versions a couple different times, but he he certainly laughed at Trump. He thinks Trump's very funny because he is. He's very self-effacing. He's very he's very humble. Uh, you know, uh if you don't get that, yeah, he's braggadocious and bombast, but he's also very humble. And look, look at what he does, not what he says. That's what that's what the greatest teacher who ever lived said. Look at look at what he does, not what he says. And and conversely, you apply that to Tucker, Rogan, you know. So Rogan is there because he suggested the psychedelic drug to help veterans with PTSD and so on. And Trump says, let's do it. Talks to Bobby, Robert Kennedy Jr., talks to Oz. And it's almost like he didn't put those guys in that position or something. I mean, do people ever stop and think? You know, so so Rogan, he's back there and he and he he he's talking about how he just sent Trump. Well, he's been he's been a knife in Trump's back for quite a while. Over what? That's another show we'll talk about. Over what? But but I mean, so so the question is who do you trust? Like the name of that game show. Who do you trust? What is Russell Brand going to say next month? Well, uh I don't know. An indication is not of what he said last month. Same with Rogan, same with Tucker Carlson, same with Candace Owens, Dave Smith, whoever you want. I I I've seen Kelly, Meghan Kelly's name thrown in that batch. And and Victor Davis Hansen, who I think you can trust, explains why those guys went wrong. Ben Shapiro, who I think you can generally trust, explains how those guys go wrong. See, so you can't just you can't just follow one person and say that's the way it is. So so we're talking about we're talking about loneliness, Ted. And and this is part four. Uh, and uh I'm just gonna play a couple of clips and a couple of quotes, because the most important thing about loneliness is it's it's like a um it's like a coin. It has two sides, right? Uh love and gratitude is one example. The more love you have, the more gratitude you have. The more gratitude you'll have, the more love you'll have for people. I remember when I when I got married, I I just had this sudden sort of appreciation or love or gratitude for my parents. And it was, it wasn't until I was in that situation, but I I really tried to just really do like most believers should do with their pastors. They should, if they're good, if they're good pastors and not what they call hirelings or false shepherds. Uh, and they should, there was a song by Crosby Silson Nash, just about your parents. Don't don't ever ask them why. Just look at them and sigh and know they love you. So kind of like Jesus told the uh the people, the Jews, you know, he told the church, the congregation, he told them, uh, do do what the Pharisees say, because there's these the priests, they sit in Moses' seat. So they have an authority, but don't do what they do, because they don't do what they're supposed to do. They do the opposite. So uh let's let's just begin with a couple of quotes. So so just as love and gratitude are two sides of the same coin, inversely proportional and directly proportional and so forth for you engineering heads. Um, but same thing with loneliness and solitude. There's a place for both. So I'm gonna play a couple of things, not to be depressing, not to add to depression, which is caused by loneliness frequently. But just just to kind of illustrate a point, let's see if this'll work here. Let's clip this is from a a great movie, um kind of a real watershed iconic movie. It got this guy the Academy Award. But just a small, sweet movie that you you probably ought to watch. It's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

What do you want from me? What do you want from this?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

I kind of like the way she said uh she said, You're not ugly. When he said, I'm fat and I'm ugly. You know, I used to coach basketball, high school level, and youth sports, and we used to have a joke that we would say to each other as coaches. We'd say, uh, you know, he's short, but he's slow. You know, in basketball we had a saying, just like volleyball now, you you can't teach height. That's something that it's good to get out of the shoot. So um, but anyway, we used to say he's short, but he's slow. Well, I used to play basketball at lunch with all these engineers, uh, and one of them was a very smart guy. He he w we were talking in the hallway and so someone said, Oh, this guy plays basketball with you guys, and and he said, Yeah, he's deceptively slow. I thought that was very funny. Very clever. Anyway, g guys, like I said, they cut pe they cut each other down to show their love. The opposite of of women. Just the opposite. They just cut each other down and show their hate, but they don't do it in up front. They're very deceptive. Anyway, here's another one. Let's see if this'll work. This famous, famous movie. So that was a very famous picture called um uh taxi driver. It had some famous actors. Uh one was a child who went crazy and went off the deep end, and the lead, Robert De Niro, who went crazy, went off the deep end. I mean, he played a he played a guy who's uh a soul warrior for righteousness, and now now look at him. Uh he played a tough boxer and a good family man and all, and now look at him. He played uh he played a guy that was crazy in a movie, a mental illness, and now look at him. Movie called Awakenings with Robin Williams, and now look at him. By the way, Robin Williams had pretty good quotes on loneliness. So so let's let's talk about a couple of things with regard to famous quotes of loneliness and where is that? Let's see here. Let's find it out, let's pull it up. Um this idea of being alone versus being with people. So it's not, remember, it's not it's not the absence of people that makes you feel lonely. It's the you may be in a bunch of people, but they're not the right people. So George Washington, who wrote he had he wrote 110 rules of civility and decent behavior. What made him think he could do that? He wrote it when he was 14. He wrote a he wrote 110 rules of civility and decent behavior. It's pretty good. You you should read it. Uh you know, again, who do you trust? I think he proved that he was trustworthy. But one of them, number 56, was associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. For it is better to be alone than in bad company. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It's better to be alone than in bad company. Here's another one here. Let's see. This is on inner strength. It's by Nietzsche, actually, who really, surprisingly enough, I mean, I don't know if you can blame him for becoming the sort of patron saint of Nazism. They adopted him as their philosopher, but he's got a lot of great things to say. He really did. He said the individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. That's what we have today is tribalism. The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. To thine own self be true, said Shakespeare, right? On the beauty of solitude, here's another brilliant, brilliant philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goth. He's the one who said that there's nothing as terrible as or as frightening as ignorance in action. I think about progressive and I think about movement. Well he said the soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. On the pain of being alone, Thomas Wolfe said, loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. A great writer named A. W. Tozer, a great teacher, pastor, he's written incredible books, a whole series of them from lectures that he gave. It was kind of like a more hardcore C.S. Lewis. Anyway, he he said he wrote a chapter, an essay called The Saint Must Walk Alone. You gotta be alone, like they said in uh Oh Brother, where art thou? Nobody else, no, sir, can go there with you. You know, the blind, the blind Alabama man or whatever they were called. You got to go there by yourself. Yes, sir. Anyway, loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. On misplaced company. This is what Robin Williams said. I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel like you're all alone. So I I I think that's that's all the quotes I wanted to read today about loneliness, but uh I wanted to make sure we got them in. So so you kind of see there there's this sort of a uh a compass. One of the things that we need in life is a compass. We need a compass, a rudder. If we're gonna sail through life, we need a sail, a compass, a rudder. Uh those are the three things you gotta have, otherwise you're not gonna make it. You also need an anchor because you don't want to drift. That's not gonna help. When you wake up in the morning or whatever and you're gonna start sailing again, you can't have drifted somewhere to where you don't even know where you are. Compass won't even help then. I know now we have GPS and all that stuff, but you get the point. So um we left off on talking about we talked about uh friends and peer pressure. Um I said that we homeschooled our kids before we found a really good, we thought was a very, very good charter school, so we could kind of put them into that. But the biggest thing we ever faced was peer pressure because you don't want other people's kids raising your kids. You don't know and and they don't know how to handle it. If they're with you, I mean if they're with their friends all day and then with you for a couple of hours while you supervise their homework that they shouldn't have, but anyway, um, or they're watching a show, or they're worse now, they're on social media. You mean you don't even have any interaction with them, let alone influence. A couple of eye problems. So, you know, like I the headmaster of our homeschool group said, kids would rather be wrong than different. They just can't take it. And so, you know, someone told me long, long ago, you you don't have to change the word friends very much to come up with fiends. All you have to do is take out the R. So the question is whether your kids' friends are friends or fiends. And uh in this country, we have we were based on e. pluribus unum. It's part of the American Trinity and God we trust, liberty, and e. pluribus unum. That that's it. Those are the founding principles. That's the triangle, the triangulation to sail by. That that's the, you know, when when Madison built the Constitution, he he he called it a, you know, he thought about a triangle. That's why he set up three branches. It's a it's a strong, strong shape, and it's a check on each other. So anyway, so so my son um he goes to school with his friends, and this has to do with social media. And and um they live in another part of the county where the school was, and we drove them to the school because we liked it so much. And uh, but all of his friends lived right in that area. But they would come out more west. And be right in his town, right in his backyard. And they wouldn't even tell him. And then they'd post on social media, here we are at this store, here we are at this mall, whatever it is. Uh, and and man, we had a good time. And he's just like, What are you guys trying to do? You I I wouldn't even know that you went there without me unless you posted it. You're just rubbing salt in the wound. My daughter had a friend after high stayed in touch, a good, good friend in high school, her best friend. And she kind of summed up Facebook, I think it was, social media. She said it's it's like that quote from T. S. Elliott, who said, with TV, it's now possible for a million people who used to go to a theater and sit and at least sit next to somebody or a theater. And and now they TV or on the radio, they're they're able to hear with social media, they're able to hear the same joke at the same time and still remain lonely. So she said, you know, the only purpose that Facebook has, social media. And and we talked about that uh movie called the uh The Anxious Generation and also the um coddling of the American mind. This uh social scientist has pretty clearly laid out how devastating this stuff is out, especially to women, but men suffer by extension because the the women in their lives are messed up. Or the women that could be in their lives. Anyway, she said she said, you know, all all you do on Facebook is see how much fun your friends are having without you. That's about it. So excuse me a second. So yeah, that that's that's kind of a problem with social media. Well it's kind of a it's kind of a different kind of peer pressure when they underscore your loneliness when they don't really have to. I mean, it kind of they just kind of it's an enabled people to be able to show cattiness, meanness, uh, what's that called? Click, clique. Some people say clique, some people say clique, tribalism. You're in our tribe or you're not in our tribe. I was walking by the uh Greenbelt swimming pool clubhouse, whatever over HOA. This was when Trump was first running, and a bunch of little girls, you know. They were talking. They weren't anywhere near old enough to vote. I would guess they were 12 or 13. Trump is crazy. Trump is crazy. Trump is crazy. And I'm thinking, you know, David Memet did a great job of talking about this on a show called um Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson out of the Hoover Institute. Great. If you get a chance to listen to any of that, it's just great. But anyway, David Memet, he's the one who wrote the screenplay for Glenn Glary Glenn Ross and things like that. And he's written this book about what happened to our generation, his generation. And he says, you know, he he said he was talking about using John Voigt in a movie. And this woman says, Oh, John Voigt's crazy. You know, she hasn't gotten any older than 12 or 13. I imagine she was probably 50 or 60. Oh, John Voigt's crazy. And he said, Well, I happen to know him. I like him. He's a good man. I don't think he's crazy. She wasn't she wasn't expressing a thought to me that he's crazy. She she was wanting to see if am I in her tribe or not? Just like those little girls. If one of the little girls said it could could buck the peer pressure, you know, a dead fish floats downstream, but a strong live one swims upstream. Just like those things about solitude versus loneliness. There's a difference. You're not going to fix your loneliness by just swimming, you know, floating downstream with the other dead heads just because then you'll have belonging. You got to decide which group you want to belong to. So, you know, he kind of David Memet Memet, whatever his name is, he he pointed out that, hey, this is uh, she she wasn't, she was just trying to do a litmus test to see if I'm if I'm in her tribe, the one that's currently popular. Remember, to be popular is easy, to be right when it's not popular is noble. That's been true of every hero, every leader, every philosopher, every every priest, every pastor, anybody we've ever had in our life, teacher. They don't have to drink the Kool-Aid. And those of you who might be younger, you don't know what Kool-Aid reference is. I don't even think it was Kool-Aid, but in Jim Jones had this tribe that he took to Guyana, which is in South America, from the Bay Area of Frisco. And he called it the People's Temple, and he tried to move him to Russia because he was a communist. They're always communists, these leftist maniacs, collectivists. They always want to tell you how to live, as long as you live their way.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

So, um let's talk about let's talk about the this this tribalism.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

You know? The oath that used to make us be part of Epluribasunum was the um Pledge of Allegiance. And uh, what did they do to that? They still say it, I guess, but it's kind of like somebody saying the the Lord's Prayer or something when they don't mean it at all. It's not an incantation, it's not magic. It's it has a purpose. An oath has a purpose. Anyway, uh let's talk about the cause of these problems. The the cause, one of the main causes of loneliness. You know, there's a great quote. I love great quotes. It said the main cause of problems is solutions. We used to talk in high-tech, we used to talk about systems that were designed or solutions or services you could buy in high-tech and data communications or SATCOM or whatever. And we and if it was a dumb one that wasn't helping, we would we would declare that it was a solution in search of a problem. As something that we didn't need or wouldn't help. You have to call it that. So the main cause of problems is solutions. Government tries to do something. I saw a beautiful meme the other day that they they cut off your leg, they they sell you a wheelchair, they tax your use of the wheelchair, and then they and then they tell you that you you couldn't make it without us. They just they just don't know how to do anything except ask for more money. Never have to explain what they did with the last. So i there there's a little a little joke, you know, how many democrats does it take to solve a problem? And the answer is uh uh nobody knows because they never have solved a problem. And you say, well, why why you pick on Democrats? Well, it's the government, which is Democrat now. Don't kid yourself. It's a government, education, media attainment complex, and the left, which is now bundled, you get a bundle like you do from your carrier, whether it's cell or cable. You get a bundle, you get communism, socialism, Islamism, governmentism. You know, the DNC a few a few uh conventions ago, a guy got up and said, uh, government is the only thing we all belong to. It's their family. You know what? This is America, dude. Fool. The government belongs to us. It starts off with we the people. We belong to the government. Really? You you you want to have a revolution, you want to just destroy a revolution without firing a shot. Pretty good, pretty good doing so far. So let's look at COVID. When it started, and that was a scandemic, that was launched in the spirit of uh this guy named Rahmanuel, who was uh Obama's uh advisor. Comes from Chicago, just like all the rot and cancer does. And he and he said, he said, you know, never let a problem go to waste. That comes from Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson embraced the World War I because he could tell people how to how to live, how to dress, how to eat, where to stand, where to this, where to that. He was a racist, a eugenicist, tyrant, a fascist. He wanted, he wanted to uh, oh, there you go again. Yeah, Democrats. It's complicated. It's more complex. You're too simple. It's not any more complex than that. Anyway, so look at COVID. You know, it started off kind of being a unifier. People were like, hey, we're all in the house together. I had my kids, my married kids, because they had just moved down here. You know, we're we're all in the house, we're all working. And daughter was a teacher, she was teaching out of one room, I was doing my work in the other room because we were told by we couldn't go to work by the county and the city and the state, and then the president, you know, can't couldn't go to a barbecue, couldn't do it. So you kind of we kind of pulled together initially, and then and then it really started to divide people into the vax and the vax knots, and and and it started ruining people's lives and careers and education and everything. And it kind of really started to expose what they really wanted out of it. But initially it it did kind of unify us. Hey, we're all in this together. It's like the people that saved up scrap iron or newspapers or rags or rationed their gas and sugar during World War II. It wasn't really, really necessary, but it made people feel like they're part of the effort, part of the team. So it started with a we're all in this together. And then it became obvious that, oh, not really. We're just on the plantation. We're just in the POW camp, the re-education camp. They stole your country. They stole your birthright, which is citizenship. Your birthright is citizenship, and they're the highest level that we have that don't understand. We're going to talk about this on another show, but the biggest problem is they don't understand what they're doing. SCOTIS is talking about birthright citizenship. Your birthright is citizenship, and the Democrat government, education, media attainment complex is taking away your citizenship. If you give it to anybody on earth, then mine doesn't have any meaning. It's just like money. If you print more, mine is worth less. You can't give something to everybody without taking it from somebody. So, you know.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

They they they lie about math, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

If when there was this thing called Enron, where this guy did all of these uh synthetic leases and these shell corporations, you know, and he created this pyramid Ponzi scheme, and uh Ken Lay was his name. He he eventually went to jail because whistleblowers that they put on the cover of Time or Newsweek called in women. They wanted to highlight that these women were whistleblowers. Well, they didn't do it early enough, but they did it finally. But but if I were the lawyer representing all those people, you know, people moved from all over the country to move to Houston to work for Enron. And and what they did is they made them buy Enron stock as part of their retirement plan. So so when it all crashed, and the guy, this guy Ken Lay, should should be on a chain gang brought around the country with the other ones from Global Crossing and all these others that did all this stuff. Um, they should have been brought Toiko, Toiko? Tyco, Tyco. You know, there was this gang of filthy robber baron devils, and they they should have brought them, you know, in the in the in the winter they could be a chain gang in Alaska, and in the summer they could be a chain gang in Death Valley or uh Alabama or anywhere else that's miserable, Minnesota, and and move them around the country and have the name of their name on the back and the name of their company, and let the whole country see that they're that they're paying back their debt to society. But but they've destroyed people's lives. They moved from all over the country to go there. And and then it went belly up. And what did he do? You know, somebody saw him in Vale, Colorado at a resort, not long after the the big trial, whatever. And he gave all his money to his kids. There's a way that you can do that. Put it, put it on whatever that island's called off off the in the Caribbean or whatever, you can just hide the money from the justice. So no justice, no peace. If I were the lawyer representing those people against him, and and why should you even have to argue what these people should get? But I would have said he stole Ken Leigh, you know, the head and the and the people that were with him, the enablers, the helpers. They stole their past, present, and future. You take somebody's life, you take their career, and you just shipwreck them when they're middle-age and they got debts and children and everything, and you just dump them after having stolen everything. There's a great movie by Dickens. It's called Nicholas Nickleby, great story. And it opens up, his father dies heartbroken, and he loved his dad. Nicholas Nickleby Jr. loved his father. Dickens always had to give people weird names. But he loved his father, and his father died of a broken heart, basically, because he uh he he was ruined by investors, by financial planners. And the way Dickens sums it up so beautifully, he says six um brokers took villas in Italy, and 600 nobodies were ruined. It just breaks your heart. So so I took my wife and I took a class on planning for your retirement and financial planning and all this stuff, and the guy's telling a story about a kid, the instructor. He was a financial planner, and he was basically teaching this class at the community college to get customers. But anyway, he told a story about a kid who inherited his dad's 4001 K. And you can't you can't do that. His dad just gave it to his son. And uh it was $2 million. And um the son took it and gave it to a financial planner who was one of these ones who took a villa in Italy type, turned up, but you don't know till later. And the guy blew half of it. He lost 50% of the $2 million. First of all, so remember, you can't give your 401k directly to your son. But but that's what this dad did. He thought he could. And so this financial planner didn't say, hey, you that you can't do that. And and you know, they make them take all these classes and sign all these waivers and what kind of an investor are you, and all this stuff. But it doesn't matter. Um so he went to this financial planner and he said, or he went, he came to them, I guess, ultimately, and said, Hey, the last guy lost half. I had uh I had two my dad gave me two million bucks, he'd lost it, so now I only have a million. And this teacher says, Well, I got a you got a bigger problem than that. You got a bigger problem than that. You have to pay, you have to pay 50% on that investment as tax. That's that's what the government wants. They want to take this dad who built up on already taxed money and spent his whole career trying to build a nest egg to give it to his son. Um, they said, well, we get half of that. And and by the way, government says, we we don't get half of the one million, we get half of the two million. So you owe you owe that whole 500k that's left. Uh I mean, of that million that's left, you you owe all of it because they don't care. The government doesn't care that you that you went to some financial guy and lost it. What what is um HR Block every year? I've got a financial planner in the family, and I asked him about this. What do their commercials say? Come and get your billions, America. And and I was relating this to him, I said millions. He said, no, no, no, it's billions. So so HR Block says that the IRS, that Joe uh Joe Biden wanted to hire 87,000 more agents to grind you into powder a little more, a little more than he's doing already. It's all they know how to do is just suck. You know, the good book says in the Proverbs, it says, Old wisdom literature, it says, the leech has two daughters. Give, give, they cry. So anyway, so this woman raises her hand and says, the government should do something. They should do something. And the teacher says, Well, you know, every single financial planner says we're not tax lawyers. Consult a tax lawyer first. And I raise my hand, I said, ma'am, the government is the one stealing the money. What do you want them to do? You you when you look to the government, oh, the government should do something. They should do something, they they should do something. So this kind of thing won't happen. Well, what did they do to Ken Lei? Did you say nothing? What did they do? Did they re did they make those people whole, as it's called in legal jargon? Did they restore them financially?

unknown 40:44

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

So I said, ma'am, you know, you gave yeah you're looking for the government. You're the government. We the people. When you give the controls to people that have no soul, you're gonna get stuff like this. What do you mean the government should do? The government is the one taking every last penny that his dad tried to give him. Do we understand? When I talk about know your enemy, this is it. So what else? Who who, how? You know, in real journalism, you say who. Who, what, when, where, why? You know, you're supposed to report that when they taught if you took a class in journalism. That's what you're supposed to report. So who is it? They, them. Feminists of both sides, you know, Gloria Gloria Steinem told women. And women's life affects men, whether it's your mother, your sister, your boss, your associate, your coworker, your subordinate, whatever. Your your your wife, your girlfriend, your shack up, whatever. What what women are taught affects the affects men, no? So Gloria Steinem said, uh a woman needs a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. And then when after she's trashed a whole generation of men and women, she gets married, has an old bag. Super sorry. I don't know, I might have been wrong. It gets back to who do you trust. I was walking through work one day. Uh I was a contractor and called on these different companies, and I'm walking past this woman who's sitting, she's a secretary. Now they call them, what do they call them now? Gosh, I can't believe it. Admins. They call them admins. They used to call them secretaries. Even though all the cabinet's name secretary of this, secretary of that. So it's not like it's a demeaning name. Anyway, she's on the phone, and I'm walking by her and she says, No, she's just a housewife. And I thought, I thought, wait a minute. Uh, what are you? You're just a lady that answers the phone and gets and gets uh gets coffee for the guy that or woman that's in charge of you. What are you doing? What are you doing dissing people for roles that they choose to play? You don't want that done to you? You know, they didn't just steal your wife, they stole your life. You know? My my my daughter was in kindergarten, and uh, I guess I'll end with this one here, but uh you know, my daughter was in kindergarten and uh they had a come to work day, you know, spend the day. So we we we were very involved in our kids' education. We teachers appreciated that, so did the school, the PTA and everything. So anyway, I go there and and they say, okay, you you're gonna not just watch, but you're gonna help out. So take take a bo take ex-kids, seven, six kids, take them out to the little picnic benches in the kindergarten area. Take this picture with you. And it was a picture of uh, this was the exercise we We're going to do. So we were going to be a teacher for the day with our little group. And they divided the kids up. So I take my six or seven kids out there, including my daughter, and say, here's a picture. And it's a picture of a mom and a dad and a boy and a girl, like you'll never see on TV commercials anymore. And anyway, they're they're washing a car. And they said, talk about what they're doing in the picture, talk about who they all are, and then have them draw a picture of their family, and then have them explain what their family's like. And I gotta tell you, it just about broke my heart because I said, Who's this? That's the daddy, who's that, that's the mommy, who's that? That's the sister, that's the brother. And what are they doing? They're washing a car. Okay, so then we they spend some time drawing theirs, and then we go around the table, and the first one says, This is my dad and my sister and my brother. Um, my mommy moved away. My mommy moved away. So I get to the next one. Same story. This is my dad and my two brothers. My mommy moved, my mommy moved moved away. Every single kid except for mine. The mommy moved away. Not the dad. You know, it was always this deadbeat dads and dads and evil, you know, men are pigs and all this stuff. But here was the generation where I was the only one. So um there's this great cartoon. It was in Mad Magazine, actually, and it said morality then, and it showed a black sheep in the middle of a bunch of other white sheep that were glaring at it. And then it and then it showed morality today, and it showed a white sheep in the middle, and all the black sheep were d this is not racism. Black sheep meant the bad one in your family. Is that what so here my you know, the idea was to try to make the kids feel better about the fact that they don't have the mother, the nuclear family, the mother, father, boy, and girl, whatever. That would that's what it was supposed to be. But the point, the lesson learned is my daughter is now the the one that has the traditional family. And I guess I I don't know, maybe it's supposed to make you start out trying to make somebody feel better, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You're not trying to single out that girl that got pregnant. You're not trying to single out these people that don't have a mom and a dad. And then they tried to celebrate that they have two dads, two moms. Anyway. We'll pick it up next time. Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. This is Loneliness Ted Part four. We'll pick it up next time. Thank you for listening. Appreciate you more than you'll ever know. Thank you, thank you. Go in peace and love.