CLAY: We talked a little bit about this earlier in the week, Buck. “Pride in the U.S. Down Significantly.” Remember we were talking about, hey, how much do people, like, really kind of embrace America right now. This was a Fox News poll. The percentage of people who are proud of their country is down 12 points since 2017, down 30 points since 2011, and only 39% are proud of the country today. In June of 2011, 69% were proud. So in the space of a decade, it’s kind of seismic shift that we’ve seen in the direction of the country.
BUCK: I think a big part of it is actually the changing of the narrative of our history that the media has engaged in — or I should say, the focus on a particularly negative portrayal of America’s history, right? The hyperfocus on it, 1619 Project from the New York Times, but just many other parts of the media apparatus have tried to do everything they can to make it seem like America should be sorry; America should apologize, constantly be making amends for all the victimization that it has engaged in in the past. I kind of sit here and say, “Okay. I mean, there are some historical basis for the criticisms, obviously, of America just like there’s basis for the criticism of any country that has existed for hundreds of years. But beyond that, if we’re gonna take the criticism, how about the saving the world from totalitarianism and fascism thing?” I’m just wondering.
CLAY: Kind of a big deal.
BUCK: Kind of a big one. You know? Read a little bit about what the Germans and the Japanese had planned for everybody if they were able to take over everywhere else, and I think you feel like America has a bit of a debt of gratitude the world should feel to this place and to our grandparents’ generation.
CLAY: I think also there’s a general anger, probably, that’s at a higher level than I’ve ever seen before. And you and I were talking about off air, everything is bad in the Biden administration. It really does legitimately feel that way. I started off this morning, one of the first tweets I saw was, “The worst six months in the stock market since 1970.”
BUCK: 50 years.
CLAY: Fifty-two years.
BUCK: Yes.
CLAY: Fifty-two years we have not seen it this bad. I’m sorry to bring that up for everybody out there who has been paying attention to their 401(k) or has investments, but 52 years. Many of our audience have not been born in an era where the stock market has been this bad to start off a year before. We know the stock market is down, effectively, the whole time that Biden is there before we even get the inflation impact and everything else. It just… It feels like every day in the Biden administration there’s something else going wrong. It’s a car that has a flat tire, and the flat tire is throwing everything else in the car out of whack.
BUCK: And this I think is part of why the frustration grows too, Clay, we started out the show talking about this. Some of what is really making people upset, anxious, and feeling like they can’t get ahead, gas prices, et cetera, deep down the people in charge New York Times Biden White House are like, “Sorry. The price of saving the planet and defending democracy.” That’s what they actually think.
CLAY: Yeah. And it’s incredibly frustration.