Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
For addicts, there's a natural progression where you, whether from trauma or just because you enjoyed getting high, your addiction gets in the way of your job and you stop going to work, and you often live at home with your parents or with friends. You lie, steal, and cheat from them repeatedly. They give you multiple warnings. They finally kick you out. That's often the route to homelessness.
You end up on the street. That's the moment where the society, the family and friends were not able to impose an intervention. So the way it should work is that you end up, you go out camp on the street and the cop goes, hey, you can't camp here.
And they go, what am I supposed to do? And they're like, well, we're going to take you to jail or you can go to rehab. Like those are your two choices, two choices. A natural intervention is imposed in that situation. What progressives and Democrats did for 40 years is they just removed the intervention in the name of compassion. The most compassionate thing is to impose the intervention.
I mean, the thing that's most common, I'll even find this with like harm reduction workers. I was just with some harm reduction workers in California. In Skid Row. And one of them was telling me the whole usual thing. Oh, you can't make somebody get clean. They have to hit their own bottom, like whatever. And I was like, and they were like, I used to run around here, you know, on meth.
It was an Asian American woman who was doing this. And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, what did it finally take you for you to get clean? She was like, well, I went to prison. You know, it's like, well, right.
And they're like the, by the way, the recovering addicts are like the greatest people. I mean, they're the funniest, most honest people.
Yeah.
100%.
They've all died in some way. Yeah.
I mean, you've done more on this than I have much more, but it's sort of coming back a little bit. People talk about meth induced psychosis now more, but
yeah it's uh it's really psychosis oh yeah and the weed now it's just so potent and dangerous and yeah so but you as a someone who still lives in california does anybody do you ever hear people say that like why are we paying people to use drugs like should it surprise us that things are falling apart i mean i do think i do think that the the conversation has changed a bit um i'll take some credit for it with san francisco and the videos in particular um
But yeah, it's just still that thing where it's like they kind of go, but yeah, but there's a black woman running for mayor. And it just, it's like the singularity. It's like when I always say that, it's like this just, it's just hovering over people. It's a race thing. Yeah, it's really about race in a really important sense. And then the guilt.
It's like the dealers are all immigrants from Central America. We can't do anything about it. Right. Oh, Sanctuary State, Sanctuary City. That's part of what they're going to sue on. Yeah.
yeah i mean i think that it's just um yeah it's a big trap i mean i think that it's funny because you know we're a guilt culture and so you know like you know japan's a shame culture yes and you know guilt is this um incredibly important part of the christian tradition yes well you stop believing in original sin and you stop believing in christianity you still apparently there's still this deep desire to feel that guilt and to sort of
show it as well. In other words, it is a social part of it. People wanted to see in that focus, they wanted other people to see in that focus group that they felt guilty. You know, it was very important to them.
Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. Well, then they talk about it that way. Even when you talk to the activists that justify it, they're like, well, that's a, you know, those people are suffering because of capitalism. Exactly. And, you know, slavery and white supremacy. But the whole point of Christianity is, no, no, no, you suffer.
Right. Well, it's the part of it that's just really satanic. I mean, not to be theological about it, but it's just a complete reversal of the traditional Christian process. It's just, yeah, it's exactly, it's making other people. Atone for your sins. Yeah, it's crazy. It's unfortunate. It's so bad. And they're sort of on display.
You know, it's the it's the it's really if you kind of read it, I mean, it's like it's like it's like they want to they want it to be on display. They want to sort of show it. And that's why they insist that they not be arrested or mandated treatment. It's wild. It is like, you know, like you go to Skid Row and it's still like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
You know, it's just like, you just can't, you still can't believe it. I mean, you still can't believe there's a person lying there, you know, sweating profusely, passed out. You can't tell if they're alive or dead. You don't know, like, do I do an intervention? And it's just, it's really breaking down. Yeah. These are human beings.
It's a healthy response, by the way. Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Those are the people that end up getting off the street. You raise the bottom instead of lowering the bottom.
Showing 1001–1020 of 1,228 · page 51 of 62
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