Aaron Cariotti
Appearances
Ask Dr. Drew
Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
If you look at the history of religion, this is a very, very excellent question, really important question. The word scapegoat actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the Jewish Old Testament, where essentially the Hebrew people on the Day of Atonement would place the sins of the people onto the head of literally of a goat, and they would take it out into the desert and throw it off a cliff.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
They would sacrifice it. as this kind of, again, symbolic ritual of cleansing from sin. And probably there was some degree of reduction of social tension in there. And then you see this in pagan religions. You mentioned the Aztecs. Basically, most religious systems throughout human history, people had the implicit sense that something is off kilter, right? In Christian terms, that would be
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
that would be called original sin. But the universe is out of whack. Society is out of whack in some ways. The human nature is off kilter. And something needs to be done to sort of make reparation for that. And then in some cases, this took the extreme form of actually sacrificing human beings and not just animals or grain or something that was valuable to the community.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Gerard's insight about Christianity is interesting because he said, yes, you obviously see that scapegoating mechanism in the story of the crucifixion. And it's, I mean, it's a clear Isabel example of the scapegoating mechanism at work. But what the Christian story does to sort of turn that on its head is the revelation that actually, in this case, the victim is innocent.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
The victim in this case is entirely innocent, the most innocent victim. um which if we were to uh morally ethically spiritually fully assimilate that truth should rob the scapegoating mechanism of its power of its social force um and you know should be as as you pointed out should be the end of of all of this repeated uh attempts to um
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
to right all wrongs through the sacrifice of, um, of other human beings. Uh, but of course we haven't assimilated that, that truth fully of the, the innocence of the scapegoated victim. And so, you know, we continue to do it over and over again. We continue, uh, to place, you know, all of our social problems onto the head of a CEO of a company or some political leader or, um, you know,
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
some other figure that becomes sort of the public object of this repeated mechanism. So I think one of the things that the story of the crucifixion, whether or not you're a Christian, the story of the crucifixion, if you read it very carefully, should remind you of is that the victim, the scapegoated victim in this case, is innocent.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Maybe not wholly innocent, maybe not perfect like Christ, but certainly not responsible for everything that has been placed on his or her head. And as Matthias points out, this cannot be the resolution or the solution to the underlying social tensions, free-floating anxiety, loneliness, isolation, alienation that is currently infecting our society. It won't work.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
We could keep doing it over and over and over again. But any catharsis or relief or quasi-social cohesion that you get from this is only going to be temporary. It's going to be fake.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Well, I mean, look, the solution is anything that pushes back against the nature of the problem. So if the nature of the problem is loneliness, isolation, and alienation, then the solution is connecting with our fellow you know, fellow human beings in ways that are, uh, deep and resonant and grounded in friendship and solidarity and care and concern.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Um, so I'm sorry to sound corny, but like love is actually the solution.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Dr. Drew. You want to spend the whole session talking about Dr. Drew?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
There's been a lot of research in recent years on the psychological and social effects of forgiveness, Drew. And You can only forgive someone if they have actually wronged you. And we are, because of our selfishness, our narcissism, our wounded, fallen human nature, we are going to hurt one another. that does happen and people have been sincerely hurt.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Everyone has to some extent, some people much more than others. So there's a lot of suffering people out there and there's various ways to try to contend with that suffering. Retaliation and scapegoating would be a very common mechanism to try to deal with the aggression, anger, hatred, resentment, and so forth that stems from those experiences.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
from those wounds from having been wronged in many cases seriously wronged forgiveness is giving something to someone that they don't deserve it's letting go and relinquishing that anger hatred resentment and desire for revenge it can be an interior process that doesn't necessarily entail that I reconcile a relationship, right?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
I can forgive someone who has abused me in a relationship without getting back into a relationship with that person. The forgiveness process can be an interior process of letting go of that anger, hatred, resentment, and so forth. To me, that is actually, it's a much more difficult process to undergo. It's very, very hard.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Sometimes forgiving someone who's sincerely wronged you is going to be one of the most difficult things a human being can do. But if you don't engage in that process, what are you left with?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
You're left with this cancer inside of you that eats you up and then finds an outlet in things like a public murder that I then go on online and celebrate because it feeds into that desire for vengeance that's been stewing in me for years or even in some cases, maybe for decades.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And again, at the risk of sermonizing, we can just go back to that paradigmatic example of Christ's crucifixion, the centerpiece of which is he's there hanging on the cross, being tortured in the most gruesome way that the Romans could have devised. And he's praying for his persecutors. He's saying, Father, forgive them for they know not Christ.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
what they do, that perfect act of love and forgiveness, even for those who were harming him in the most egregious and unjust possible way in that moment. So, yeah, we could talk about love, but how do you actually make that real? Well, examine your life, examine your interior dispositions and ask yourself, okay, who's hurt me? Who has wronged me?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And then go through a process of trying to relinquish and let go of the ill effects of that. This is very characteristic as part of the 12-step programs that many recovering alcoholics and people recovering from other addictions have to go through. You understand this very well, given your medical background. Drew, right? You take a moral inventory. I think it's step four, right?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And then you go in subsequent steps. You go through this process of trying to make amends and make apologies and seeking forgiveness from others, but also offering that to others who have wronged you. This is a very powerful process. It's not easy. Many people find support.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
So I think getting on X and arguing in the comments section with Taylor Lorenz is a project obviously doomed to failure, which is why none of the three of us is spending a lot of time doing that. We all intuitively know we're just going to get stuck there in an endless, infinite cycle.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, it's the crowd. So that's the key. That was going to be the point that I was going to make. I mean, the only reason to have public debates with someone like that, if there is a reason, is not for them, but for the person who's listening. Right. To see how an individual like that behaves versus how you behave in conversation and in public discourse.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
To reach the muddy middle majority of people that are not in the 20% who are already entirely hypnotized and who are not going to budge and not in the 10, 15% who are not drinking the Kool-Aid, but who can be swayed either by reasonable voices on one end or by propaganda or the hypnotized mass on the other end. Those are the folks that we're trying to reach.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And just to use those two examples that you just mentioned, right, if if they convince 60, 80% of the population of what they're saying, that's only going to strengthen their own convictions.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
But if, if they find themselves, you know, in a 20% minority where the rest of the population is not going on and going along with them, that might be the only occasion for them to introduce some doubts into their own thinking, because these people are so mimetic and they're so, they don't have an original thought in their head, right?
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
None of Taylor Lorenz's ideas are ones that she dreamed up on her own. They're all borrowed from some weird zeitgeist and always moving in this kind of toxic direction. And so I think it seems to me that the answer is not to try to persuade those people.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
If you do engage with them, realize that you're not actually going to persuade or change their mind, but you can do that as a demonstration to them. the onlookers of maybe a different way of engaging in public discourse and different set of ethical principles that you're trying to advance and so forth.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
So those are the folks that I think we're really trying to reach, the people who are sitting back quietly just observing and listening and trying to get their bearings. We need to be a voice in the public square. And I say we as though I'm always behaving virtuously and I'm never prone to mass formation myself. I mean, all of us are vulnerable to these things.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
All of us are vulnerable to being wrong. So also the epistemic and intellectual humility to recognize that we don't have all the answers and the stance that I have all the answers and I'm one of the righteous rather than just another flawed person imperfect, you know, sinful member of the human species. I think that's, that's important as well.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think Whenever I speak, assuming that I am not infallible and I could be wrong and I want to maintain an open disposition, which feels vulnerable. I mean, intellectual certainty provides some sense of security. That's why people seek it out so fiercely and cling to their ideas so fiercely.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And so to be able to let go of some of that security and just, I'm open to being persuaded. I'm open to being convinced and let's learn how to have civil dialogue and debate.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Well, so that's that's a great update. And just I'll answer your question about the case in just a minute. There has been a recent positive development in the case. But just by way of background, many of your viewers and listeners will know this. But for those who don't. So Missouri versus Biden later turned Murphy v. Missouri.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
is a case challenging government censorship on social media that I am a plaintiff in, along with the state of Missouri, Louisiana, and four other private plaintiffs. And one of those other private plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya, My dear friend and colleague has recently been appointed the director of the National Institute of Health.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And he was censored by the previous director of the National Institute of Health. We have an internal email that we got on FOIA discovery
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
between Francis Collins, former director, and Anthony Fauci, saying that we need a, quote, swift and devastating takedown of the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration, which Jay co-authored, along with Martin Kulldorff, one of our other- A fringe epidemiologist. Yeah, and he called them fringe epidemiologists.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And now this fringe epidemiologist is going to replace him as director of the NIH. I agree, that's just poetic justice at work there. Another interesting development in terms of government appointments
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
is that the legal mastermind in our case, former Solicitor General of Missouri, a man by the name of John Sauer, who is a tornado in the courtroom and an absolutely brilliant litigator, has just been tapped to be the United States Solicitor General. That is the highest litigator in the land.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
you could say so uh so we have two people from our case that will be taking up positions of considerable influence in the next administration so that's very exciting the case itself continues of course John is not going to argue again. He's going to have to recuse himself if this case goes back to the Supreme Court. Usually it would be the Solicitor General arguing on behalf of the government.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
But of course, he was involved in the case earlier and he's very sympathetic to our side. So I'm not sure how much of a defense the government's going to be able to mount at this point. They'll probably have to get a replacement lawyer. But the case is back at the district court. The Supreme Court earlier in January set a very high threshold for a legal requirement called standing.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Basically, the ability for us to prove that it was the government, not social media companies, that censored us. And so according to that strict criteria, we petitioned.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
the court again for additional discovery that means we're gonna we're gonna learn a lot more information we're gonna have more depositions of defendants we're gonna have more documents that we recover um that are were previously you know private communications between government and social media companies so and the court granted that request for additional discovery to try to help us establish standing and so that is going to basically break things open even more and
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Regardless of the final outcome in this case, the case is serving the purpose of shining a very bright spotlight on the nature of government censorship. And I think this next stage of the case where we're going to get additional discovery is going to continue to sort of blow this thing open and publicize what happened. There was a very important moment, too.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
in the vice presidential debate with JD Vance, the very last question that they put to Vance, which was, what about January 6? Isn't Trump a threat to democracy? And while acknowledging that there were obviously problems on January 6th, Vance said that the real threat to democracy is the government-sponsored censorship that has been happening on an industrial scale for the last several years.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And that was a clear reference to the information that's been uncovered in our case. So the next administration is very aware of the censorship issue. They've said publicly they want to dismantle the government's
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
censorship machinery i like to tell people this is not a partisan issue they shouldn't see it as a partisan issue maybe you don't want donald trump to be president fine i don't want donald trump or joe biden or obama or any other future president
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
left right republican democrat to have access to this kind of control over speech so it's not a partisan issue it's a constitutional issue regardless of who's in power you do not want to give them the ability to censor people online and that's i think that's why this case continues
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
to be important and um i'll come back on as soon as we have those documents that we recover on discovery to discuss you know what we've found mark zuckerberg one other quick update on this case was just a month or two ago leading up to the election i think you probably saw the writing on the wall and um and wanted to establish a good relationship with the next administration and zuckerberg published a letter
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
admitting exactly what we had accused the government of in this case, saying, yes, the government did pressure us to censor during the 2020 election and during COVID. And I regret that we caved into the government's demands and threats on several of them. I mean, it was a really extraordinary admission from the inside, from someone at obviously one of the biggest platforms out there.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
admitting precisely what we had alleged in the case. So I think at this point, there can be no doubt that this was happening. I think there can be no doubt that it violated the United States Constitution and the free speech rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans, literally, on social media.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
At the same time, we've seen the poetic justice of one of our plaintiffs now taking over the NIH, which funds 85% of biomedical research in the United States, obviously hugely influential for the future of science and medicine in this country. And the lead legal mastermind in our case, the man who argued the case of the district and appellate court,
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
level last year is has now been tapped for this you know very important role as the solicitor general of the united states so i would say um i would say we're on the right track with missouri v biden
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, YouTube is still at it. They're one of the worst. It's unbelievable.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Well, the new director of the CDC, I know less about. I'm not personal friends with him, but he is a physician, former member of Congress. And he did have the Weldon Amendment that is named for him, a law that he sponsored.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
It's a very important law for conscience protection for physicians and nurses that want to recuse themselves from procedures and cases that they believe would be unethical for me to participate in. So, you know, hopefully he can produce some changes at the CDC. It's a very important agency to reform. And the new FDA commissioner, Marty McCary, is a friend, and he's terrific.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
He's not – he wasn't perfect during the pandemic, but he was very, very, very good during the pandemic, I would say. Nobody was perfect. Nobody was perfect during the pandemic.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Marty's not beholden to the pharmaceutical interests, and he's written some very good books on reform of medicine and public health. And so I think that is going to be a breath of fresh air. And hopefully he can, you know, that's an agency that's really been captured by the very industry that it's meant to regulate.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
So big pharma more or less controls the FDA in all kinds of ways that undermine its mission. And so it's going to be a really heavy lift to try to get on it.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, but listen, Drew, this is the most important thing about today. It's that you need to stop prostituting yourself. Stop prostituting yourself, Drew.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
You just got to stop it. Please forgive him. He not knoweth what he said.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
I just, I just can't, I can't say anything. I just, it doesn't matter what I say about my two children that were born at separate times, no matter what you always have triplets.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Wait, I need to call Taylor in here to listen to this. Taylor, you totally could have driven by yourself all those hours and I could have stayed home.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's an enormous amount of social tension, free-floating anxiety, as Matthias describes it. There's another social theorist, formerly at Stanford University, named Rene Girard, and he described this scapegoating mechanism that we see at play in this particular case of this murder that's being celebrated by so many otherwise known
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
ordinary, normal-looking people in society that social tension builds up. Girard called it mimetic violence, that people... people begin imitating not only other people's behaviors, but other people's desires. And in this case, it's a desire to purge or expunge the evil from our midst, right? In this case, that's projected onto this individual who is
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
whatever his faults might be, and perhaps the company that he was running was unjust or corrupt in various ways, as all large corporations to some extent are going to be perhaps in one way or another. But then to place upon him
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
all of the responsibility or sort of the symbolic distilled injustice, right, that people are feeling, to place it all on this one person and then come to believe that if we can only do away with him, if we can only, in this case, murder him, gun him down in broad daylight, then somehow we can, I don't know, make things right or establish justice.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
And you see this scapegoating mechanism repeat over and over again in various societies throughout human history. You see it in the history of religions, you see it in the history of political societies.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
It's been very well characterized, very well described, but when you see it in real time with something like this, and in this case it's probably amplified by the power of social media, it's very striking. So not only do we, you know, today versus let's say 20 years ago, not only today do we have many people who are cheering on the murder of this innocent person,
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
presumably innocent person, let's say, but they're doing it very openly and visibly and publicly because they can post about it on social media or they can actually follow and endorse the account of of someone who's celebrating this or someone who's been accused of this or someone who's cheerleading this. It's very striking to see it in real time.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
On the other hand, given what we know about human history and given what we know about human nature, everything that Matthias has described, René Girard and others, it shouldn't surprise us, but it's still shocking when you see it unfolding in real time.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Well, there is a catharsis, but it's always only temporary. That's one of Gerard's observations, is that there'll be immediate reduction of social tension. And probably some people felt some sort of catharsis when they read about the murder of this CEO. It was you.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
Just so and it's not going to last very long because people are going to wake up in a week or two and realize, no, actually, my loved one still has cancer and it's still a pain in the neck navigating. And, you know, I was denied coverage for this procedure that I think I need or whatever, whatever it was that was being projected on this person or the health care system as a whole.
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
is broken and i don't trust doctors i don't trust hospitals i don't trust the whole machinery because of you know whatever this murder is obviously not going to resolve that and so the catharsis does happen but it's always only temporary and then the social tension builds up again and the scapegoating cycle just repeats itself until we step back and get out of this mass formation and realize that it doesn't work and this is why i think matthias is
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Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436
description of what needs to happen in order to protect yourself from and extricate from this phenomenon of mass formation is so important for us to heed.