Why Nikki Haley—After Destruction in Her Own State—Refuses to Leave the Race. CIA Use of Ukraine Shows Why US Prolongs the War. Hasan Piker Scandal & the Sickly Left-Liberal Streaming Culture
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Haley Not Dropping Out (11:00)
CIA Playground (31:51)
Trouble in Streamer Paradise (52:40)
Ending (1:17:18)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley suffered a deeply humiliating defeat over the weekend in our home state of South Carolina, the state where her political career was built when she served as its governor for six years.
Despite massively outspending Donald Trump in that state, many millions in advertisements for Haley to Trump's close to zero media buy, Haley was crushed by the former president by 20 points.
Haley herself sought to create for herself an extremely low benchmark.
She said, to justify the continuation of my campaign, we have to do at least better than the 17-point crushing defeat she suffered at Trump's hands in New Hampshire, where independents and Democrats were encouraged to vote in the GOP primary against Trump.
And yet, in her own home state, she could not even meet that absurdly low self-created expectation, as all polls show her trailing now from anywhere between 25 to 50 points in the 15 different Super Tuesday states, which will have their primaries and caucuses on March 5th. which will have their primaries and caucuses on March 5th.
Normally when candidates depend almost entirely on large donors like Haley, the limitation on the campaign is that those donors stop fueling the campaign as soon as it is obvious that the campaign is futile.
And some of that is happening.
The Koch network of the former Koch brothers announced yesterday after Haley's crushing defeat that they were suspending funding of her campaign.
But she has already collected so many millions of dollars.
from hedge funds and Wall Street tycoons and various arms of the U.S. national security state that she remains awash in funding.
And a lot of people continue to express eagerness to fund her campaign despite the chances being extremely low, close to zero, that she could win the nomination.
Now, she and her funders understand as well as anyone else how badly she is losing.
So, why is she continuing?
And why are they so willing to pour their money into a campaign that has almost no chance, basically no chance, of culminating in the Republican nomination?
There are reasons why, and we will examine those.
Then, the U.S.-funded war in Ukraine is now more than two years old.
From the start, from the very first week of the Biden administration's vow in February 2022 to arm and finance Ukraine, we have repeatedly asked the same question over and over.
In what conceivable way is it in the interests of the United States, and especially the lives of American citizens, for the U.S.
government to fund and arm a war, all to determine who will rule various provinces in eastern Ukraine?
A country that even Barack Obama, as recently as 2016, said was not a vital interest to the United States.
Now, at least in theory, this should always be the first question asked of any proposed U.S.
policy.
Namely, how will it benefit or secure or improve the lives of American citizens?
And there was never, and still is not, any coherent answer to that question.
Over the weekend, however, we did receive a glimpse into one reason why U.S.
elites in Washington might consider this war in Ukraine so necessary to them.
According to the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using Ukraine for more than a decade as a vital American base for gathering intelligence and spying on Russia.
Now, it seems clear at this point, especially in an election year, that the New York Times would never publish what it refers to as highly sensitive secrets about the CIA, or especially the war in Ukraine, unless the CIA wanted that paper to tell us this.
Perhaps there's a reason to convince various sectors of the American population that have come to doubt the wisdom of further financing the war as to why they should do so.
Oh, it's a crucial country for the CIA to spy on Russia.
Yet, it doesn't seem like any of this has helped, which is why there's this desperate propaganda now about Ukrainian soldiers on the front line desperately scrolling their phones to see the latest House vote to see if they're getting money.
And now this as well.
We will examine all of the implications of this revelation, but for the moment, Note how constantly, and unfailingly really, the agenda of the establishment wings of both parties and of establishment liberalism in the United States aligns so perfectly with the agenda and the ideology of the CIA.
The CIA's primary cause has been this war in Ukraine for reasons we're now starting to understand better, and that too is the top agenda item of the Democratic Party and the establishment wing of the Republican Party.
Then finally, last week we covered a scandal embroiling one of the three leading left liberal streamers.
His name is Vaush, that's at least his online name, and his scandal took place when he accidentally revealed his downloaded porn file that included animated images of child pornography that we weren't much interested in the substance of the scandal.
It arguably matters since he's been organizing with leading Democrats in Washington, such as Congressman Ro Khanna, and so obviously a child porn scandal affects the Democratic Party that way.
But we left the tawdry details to others.
We did, however, invite on a young online leftist, Gavin Charles of Vanguard, to discuss how sickly and mentally decadent is this world of political left liberal streamers.
People who, like Hasan Piker and Destiny Beyond Vouch, spend literally 8 to 10 hours, or even 12 hours, Every single day, streaming live consecutively online, just online, 10, 12 hours a day, creating a cult-like community of people whose identity and purpose in life becomes entirely parasocial.
Namely, devotion to these online communities and especially to the leaders of these online communities who become extremely wealthy by serving as a sort of creepy father figure to their audience.
Now just this week, Hasan Piker, who got his start in political streaming as a result of working for his uncle, the founder of the Young Turks, Cenk Aygar, inspired a fair amount of rage, including on the left, by suggesting that his quote, job, which is earning millions upon millions of dollars a year by sitting in front of a camera and talking about politics in his life with no boss telling him what to do,
Is somehow a job that's more difficult and burdensome, at least in some respects, than people who work at ordinary jobs involving low hourly wages and manual labor and levels and levels and layers of bosses?
Now, Piker is a self-identified socialist, even a communist.
So the idea that a person who brands himself very lucratively as a left-wing radical, as he earns many millions of dollars a year and lives in a gigantic mansion in L.A. and flies on private jets and so obviously eagerly lives the lavish life of an online celebrity, that he would, of all people, suggest as he earns many millions of dollars a year and lives in a gigantic mansion in L.A. and flies on private jets and so obviously eagerly lives the lavish life of an online
But on some certain level, I have to say, I think Hassan Piker was right when he described what he does as, quote, soul-destroying.
There's all kinds of data that continues to show in a very convincing and yet alarming way that both the millennial and G generation, Gen Z generations, are plagued with a kind of mental illness and spiritual sickness at a rate far higher than any previous generation, and their complete dependency on online identities, when used as a replacement for real life purpose and connection, is according to the data, clearly when used as a replacement for real life purpose and connection, is according to the data,
So, in some respects, Piker's plea for help That streaming 10 hours or 12 hours a day for a parasocial audience on whom you depend for your happiness destroys your soul is precisely the point we were trying to raise last week when covering the other scandal rocking this world, the left liberal online streamers.
And that's because online addiction is corrosive in so many ways in left liberal political streaming communities, which increasingly are where a lot of people go to get their politics, but not just their politics, but their sense of purpose and identity in life.
are the ultimate expression of this sort of sickness.
So we'll look at that episode, this latest episode, from that perspective, which I think merits a lot more attention than it gets.
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We actually had several lengthy and substantive critiques that we purposely chose to address on Thursday night's show, including our coverage of Israel and Palestine and Gaza, as well as our choice of a guest for Thursday or Friday night, Thursday night rather, to whom some of you objected, namely Gavin from Vanguard.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
So before we get to the first topic of our show tonight, I saw in the chat, I've heard from a lot of people online, including by email, requests that we talk about this very tragic episode yesterday where a member of the U.S. requests that we talk about this very tragic episode yesterday where a Air Force immolated himself, burned himself to death in front of the Israeli embassy as a means of protesting United States support for the Israeli destruction of Gaza.
He left no doubt about what his cause was before he burned himself.
As he burned himself, he was yelling, free Palestine.
Apparently belonged to online communities, was a subscriber to several, where he had manifested his opposition to the U.S.
supported Israeli war in Gaza.
We decided not to cover this tonight only because there's not very many details about this episode or about this person who has yet been published and I really would hate, would be reluctant to just jump on a story Time to try and squeeze a preconceived narrative out of it.
I do think in general, without applying it to this person, that people who risk their lives or their careers or their reputation for a cause that they truly believe in generally are people who are noble and who I admire.
But that doesn't mean that I think this particular act, without knowing more, is something that merits that sort of Praise, I think we ought to just take a deep breath and wait until there's more details about the act and about this person before commenting, if it even merits a particular comment at all.
So I just wanted to address what I know a lot of you are hoping we would address.
I do think it's a story worthy of discussion, but I feel like it would be much better served once at least I know more and feel more comfortable in my set of knowledge about who this person is and what this act was before commenting.
All right, let's move to the first story, which is the question of why it is that Nikki Haley is so willing to endorse such extreme and public humiliation.
In order to stay in a presidential race that she has almost virtually no chance of succeeding in, at least presuming that her goal is actually her stated goal, which is to secure the Republican nomination and to defeat Donald Trump.
I think it's very questionable, though, whether that's her actual goal and more so the goal of her donors, because increasingly it's becoming clear that the chances that she will win the Republican nomination through her campaign are basically zero.
Last night, or on Saturday rather, Nikki Haley suffered the kind of humiliating defeat that is very rare in politics, where somebody not only loses their home state, but the primary of their own party in their home state, and does so by a gigantic margin.
Here from the New York Times, which we've demonstrated many times is highly favorable to Nikki Haley, as most of the liberal corporate media is.
There was the headline, Haley's loss to Trump in South Carolina fuels more doubts about her viability.
Oh, do you think?
Do you think that her 20 point loss in her own home state, where she outspent her opponent Donald Trump by massive numbers, only to lose by 20 points, might fuel more doubts about her viability?
I would say that that's a pretty safe bet.
Quote, Donald Trump swept yet another early nominating contest, delivering Nikki Haley a crushing home state loss at the hands of voters who were arguably the most familiar with our politics.
He beat Ms.
Haley by 60% to 40%, carrying all but three counties in South Carolina.
Still, Ms.
Haley has insisted she will stay in the race, arguing that she is providing an alternative for voters opposed to Mr. Trump, and maintaining that Americans deserve a chance to choose a candidate.
Now, one of the things that's so bizarre about all of this, among many other things, Is that the Democratic Party declared from the beginning that it will not allow a competition for the Democratic Party nomination.
There were two declared candidates at first, Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr., who were originally Democratic Party primary challengers to Joe Biden.
Marianne Williamson had run in 2020, had made the campaign, the debate stage several times, is a fairly well-known candidate within Democratic Party politics.
And RFK Jr., regardless of why his name or people Loving his family and the Democratic Party, or actually being impressed by his heterodox views on certain issues like COVID, was polling quite high, often as high as 20%.
Frequently, in fact, 15-20%.
And Marianne Williamson was often polling at 6 or 9 or 10.
And yet the Democratic Party, through their various officials, said, we're not having any debates.
Biden is not debating anyone.
There will be no presidential campaign that the DNC will permit.
Joe Biden is our nominee.
And of course, a lot of Democratic Party spokespeople love Nikki Haley for a variety of reasons.
They love that she's criticizing Trump and they think she's weakening him.
But they also love the fact that Nikki Haley's ideology is far closer to Democratic Party politics and therefore is normalizing Democratic Party politics, trying to bring the two parties back into alignment, where they have the same fundamental view on most questions, kind of like a Mitt Romney figure or John McCain figure or Nikki Haley.
Or Mitch McConnell?
So then imagine if Nikki Haley and Joe Biden were debating Ukraine or China or Israel or the Middle East, they would have exactly the same views.
You would have no choice to make, which is how they like it.
Now as I indicated there are some of her very wealthy donors who seem to be funding her campaign because they actually were hoping maybe she could win and now that they're seeing it's a possible in light of her humiliating defeat in South Carolina are actually pulling back.
Here from NBC News today.
The Koch Network says it will stop funding Nikki Haley's presidential bid.
Quote, The blow comes a day after Haley lost to Trump.
In her home state of South Carolina, the Koch Network's advocacy arm said that following Haley's loss in South Carolina, the group no longer believes it can make a meaningful difference for her and the race, senior adviser Emily Seidel said.
Instead, Americans for Prosperity Action, which is the Koch brothers' But it really doesn't matter at this point.
She doesn't need the Koch brothers money.
She is drowning in so much money.
races.
Quote, she has made it clear that she will continue to fight and we wholeheartedly support her in this effort, Seidel said.
But given the challenges in the primary stage ahead, we don't believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory.
But it really doesn't matter.
At this point, she doesn't need the Koch brothers money.
She is drowning in so much money.
She has been sent so many millions of dollars for a candidacy who, which is advocating an ideology that polls continuously show that Republican Party voters hate and rejected twice in 2016 and 2020 by making Donald Trump their nominee who ran against very intensely the which is advocating an ideology that polls continuously show that Republican Party voters hate and rejected twice in 2016 and 2020 They nonetheless are pouring money into her race and continue to and
As though they obviously see a real benefit to it.
From the Wall Street Journal on February 21st.
Donors keep pouring millions into Nikki Haley's long shot campaign.
Biden-Trump campaigns end January with more cash on hand.
Quote, Nikki Haley has vowed to stay in the presidential race despite losing every Republican primary so far, and her donors appear to share that optimism.
Last month, the former South Carolina governor's campaign pulled in more than $9.8 million in contributions.
A pro-Haley super PAC took in an additional $5.8 million in individual donations, thanks almost entirely to donations of $100,000 or more.
Venture capital and business leaders were among the most generous.
So in case you're wondering who is financing Nikki Haley's campaign, her stash is thanks almost entirely to donations of $100,000 or more.
Venture capital and business leaders in particular are leading the way among the most generous.
Why are venture capital and business leaders and people who are capable of donating more than $100,000 so excited about Nikki Haley's campaign?
I think that's really worth asking.
The Wall Street Journal today decided to ask that question in light of the fact that she couldn't even get closer to Trump in her own home state than the crushing defeat she suffered just a couple of weeks ago in New Hampshire and before that in Iowa.
Quote, the Wall Street Journal, February 26.
What Nikki Haley is really doing The challenger to Trump has no path to victory, but her fans don't care.
Quote, it's like a lottery ticket.
Quote, there might not be an end game for her, but there is a market.
Donors have proved impressively willing to continue throwing money away.
Her campaign last month outraised Trump's, powered by large donation from wealthy capitalists.
That's what they're called in the Wall Street Journal.
What they are, hedge fund and vulture capitalists.
Wall Street tycoons, major institutional investors, quote, and there is an audience, Haley has a vocal cheering section in the GOP's Never Trump faction, which includes a swath of highly credentialed former officeholders who say they no longer recognize their party.
Speculation abounds about Haley's real motives for staying in the race.
Some principal's first attendees theorized she might be positioning herself as a fallback for the party this cycle if Trump, who faces 91 charges across multiple cases, is convicted of a crime or in case of what one called an errant cheeseburger.
Other hope she might join a third party ticket or lead the party forward after a loss in this year's election.
Now, I guess it's possible that Nikki Haley might be thinking that if something happened to Trump, now, she might be the natural person who would be selected, but that's very dubious, very questionable, in part because all of these people who are being elected as Trump delegates would have a more Trump-like alternative in the event that that happened.
Also, there's almost no chance that even if Trump is convicted, that he would pull out of the race.
If anything, he'd be more motivated than ever to win, and there's been polling data suggesting recently That he's not only leading in most of the swing states continuously in polls, but now when asked if Trump is convicted of things like the criminal case in Georgia, or the federal charges brought by Jack Smith, or even the classified documents case in Florida, would he still vote for Trump?
And many people have said they would.
In fact, there's a good chance he could still win.
So that doesn't seem very likely to me.
What seems far more likely is the financial motive.
Remember, Nikki Haley is a deeply corrupt politician.
She spent most of her life in public service, wallowing in all kinds of personal consumer debt and other kinds of debt.
And then the minute she won the Trump administration, she built a multi-million dollar fortune Serving the very factions whose agenda she now unfailingly advocates for and represents.
Let's just remind you of how she got so wealthy so quickly.
This is from a segment we did in August of 2023.
Vivek Ramaswamy had called her corrupt in a debate and she and her media allies were outraged about this and we decided to examine whether that accusation was in fact sustainable in the faction.
Here's what we concluded.
The reason Nikki Haley left After less than two years, and apparently developed extraordinarily profound foreign policy experience in those one and a half years where she raised her hand elegantly at the UN, is because she had all kinds of opportunities to enrich herself.
And that's what she told President Trump is the reason she was leaving.
She wanted to join what she called the private sector.
And boy, did she join the private sector.
I mean, she thrived within it.
Here from Forbes, In August of this year, how Nikki Haley built an $8 million fortune and helped bail out her parents.
Quote, Haley stunned Washington by resigning her role in the Trump administration in 2018, less than two years after taking office.
A spokesperson for Haley claims that the family financial troubles had, quote, no bearing whatsoever on Ambassador Haley's decision to leave her position.
So the Forbes article prior to this paragraph detailed all of the debt in which Nikki Haley and her family had long wallowed, which is not at all a mark against her.
That is very common for Americans.
She was middle class.
She was in a lot of debt.
She had no real personal wealth.
And she recognized that once you're something like the UN ambassador, there's tons of people waiting to hand money to you.
And she wanted to go and collect those checks.
And that's what she did.
She points to a section of Hillary's resignation letter in which she expressed support for, quote, rotation in office.
Okay, so that wasn't her motive, the fact that there were millions of dollars waiting for her from the military-industrial complex and from neoconservative think tanks, but...
Whether that was her motive or not, she certainly was eager and efficient about sweeping up those millions of dollars, quote.
But the same letter also suggested that Haley may have had money-making ventures on her mind.
Oh, you don't say, quote.
As a businessman, she wrote to Donald Trump, I expect you will appreciate my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down, but a step up.
If you measure somebody's character by net worth, Nikki Haley definitely took a step up.
When she left the Trump administration for the, quote, private sector.
The article continues, quote, Indeed, since then, Haley's net worth has ballooned from less than a million dollars to an estimated eight million.
How did she make so much money in so little time?
By following a tried and true playbook for politicians looking to cash in on their fame.
Speeches to companies like Barclays and organizations such as the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs provided more money in a day than Haley had previously earned in a year.
It's not clear how many talks she gave from 2019 to 2021, but Haley hauled in $2.3 million from just 11 events in 2022.
She became a director of Boeing in 2019, then stepped down the next year, collecting over $300,000 in cash and stock.
So when Vivek said to her, congratulations on your future as a member of the board of directors of Boeing, he was not really predicting the future, but just describing the past.
Just like Lloyd Austin came right from the board of directors of Raytheon to run the Defense Department, Nikki Haley left the Trump administration to go sit on the board of Boeing and now is using her campaign to support policies of endless war and cutting back entitlement programs for Americans that many Americans subsist on in order to feed Boeing and the other companies that made her rich.
Isn't that so inspiring?
So if you want to go see the full, taught-through details of Nikki Haley's wealth, you can go and watch our August 23rd episode, which delved deeply into the way she built her post-government fortune.
But suffice to say, Nikki Haley is a person who cares very deeply about personal financial reward and the accumulation of power.
I don't think there's any question about that.
Here is the libertarian activist, Spike Cohen, who offered this, I think, very plausible explanation for what is motivating Nikki Haley.
Quote, for those who don't understand why Haley's not dropping out, she's raising millions, both directly to her campaign and to PACs that support her.
The longer she stays in, the more she raises.
When her campaign ends, all of that money can be either rolled into a PAC or a non-profit that she runs.
And this is actually not the first time we've seen something like this.
And this is actually not the first time we've seen something like this.
You might recall that in 2020, it was very clear that the only plausible Democratic nominees running for the Democratic nomination were either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.
and Bernie Sanders had won the first three races in Iowa where he tied Pete Buttigieg but actually won New Hampshire and then by a large margin Nevada.
And then they went to South Carolina, which saved Joe Biden, where Jim Claiborne and other centrist kind of establishment Democrats made sure that Joe Biden won.
And then heading into Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren had no chance whatsoever.
And despite claiming all the time that she was this anti-establishment leftist, she did the one thing that could have helped Joe Biden and harmed Bernie Sanders, which is she stayed in the race past Super Tuesday.
Splitting the vote between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, obviously helping Joe Biden.
The question was, why would Elizabeth Warren do that?
And how is she doing that?
Her campaign was a complete failure.
She had no chance to win anything.
She hadn't even come close to winning a state.
By the way, she ended up losing, I think, came in third or fourth in her own home state in Massachusetts on Super Tuesday.
Not quite by the margin that Nikki Haley lost her own state, but still by a pretty significant margin to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
And as it turned out, Elizabeth Warren, who's basically built her career by opposing dark money in politics and super PACs and corporate donors and all of that, that was Liz Warren.
That was who she was.
That was how she ran for senator from Massachusetts and won based on that whole ethos of getting big money out of politics.
She had a single dark money funder, a woman who was married to a Silicon Valley tycoon who divorced him, got many, many millions of dollars in that divorce, and was funding Elizabeth Warren's campaign single-handedly by pumping millions of dollars into a super PAC that Elizabeth Warren refused to disclose.
And her identity became only known well after Elizabeth Warren dropped out.
But she clearly was running, even though she had no chance of winning as well, in the hope of collecting that money into a PAC.
And or helping Joe Biden win the election and getting benefits for her once he did.
In Nikki Haley's case, it's very clear that the people who are supporting her don't care about the Republican Party at all.
In fact, would rather destroy the Republican Party if it means that Donald Trump runs it and has any chance to win.
She is there as an establishment spoiler.
Thinking about running as a third party candidate to siphon votes away from Trump?
And she is being funded by the gigantic money, by the big money in American political life that was behind Jeb Bush and then behind Marco Rubio in 2016, that has always hated Donald Trump and increasingly hates Donald Trump and fears him.
And Nikki Haley is a tool, which is what she has been her entire political life.
She believes in nothing.
She advocates whatever ideology is what will make her richest and most successful.
And, as you can see by the way in which she got rich, advocating for wars is the way that you get very rich in Washington.
Pro-war groups direct huge amounts of money to you.
Pro-Israel groups and pro-military industrial complex groups will pay you, as the Forbes article said, more money for a day than most people make in a year.
That's how Hillary Clinton got so rich as well, running around collecting $500,000 checks, $750,000 checks, sweeping them up like a hungry pig in a trough from Goldman Sachs and defense contractors.
Even though Bill Clinton did the same and she was wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, she was just so greedy that she couldn't stop collecting all that money from the industries that she was going to serve when she got to be president.
And it ended up harming her.
Nikki Haley doesn't care about the political appearance of it because she's representing a political faction that doesn't care if she really gets the Republican nomination at this point.
They just want her to weaken Trump as much as possible.
And most of all, to reposition the Republican Party back into captivity to standard, traditional Republican ideology that Trump pretty much single-handedly vanquished by running against it in 2016.
doing an okay job while president to try and subvert it and undermine it, but clearly now running again against this ideology that both political parties and the special interests that own them and run them are so desperate to get back.
And Nikki Haley is their tool, their vehicle for doing so.
In the war in Ukraine, which is still ongoing, The only thing that has been surprising is that Joe Biden's request for $60 billion more to send to Ukraine has been held up since September or early October when he first made it.
And that's the case, despite the fact that there is no question that Joe Biden's request for $60 billion more to send to Ukraine has been held up since September or early October when he first made it.
That majorities of the Senate and majorities of the House, people in both political parties, want to send $60 billion to Ukraine on top of the $120 billion that we've already sent.
Even though Ukraine is clearly losing the war, has no chance to achieve any of the ends, and the question has always been and continues to be, why are people in Washington on a bipartisan basis so desperate to send that $60 billion there and keep this war continuing, keep this war going?
And the only reason, at least for now, as to why that $60 million isn't approved is because the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, knows that the minute he agrees to bring that bill to the floor, he will lose his speakership.
Because members of the populist right are so opposed to the idea of sending billions to Ukraine that they will sabotage his speakership.
And they've kept him in check.
And yet now both political parties are working on a workaround to get it to the floor without Mike Johnson.
And as I've always said from the beginning of this conflict over the 60 billion dollars, I will be shocked if that money doesn't end up in Kiev.
Because I have never, in all the time I've been covering politics, seen the military-industrial complex lose when it really mattered to them to get something.
But the question was always, why does this war matter to them so much?
And today, or yesterday rather, there's an article in the New York Times that I do think sheds light on it, even though this is not an unauthorized leak.
You don't hear people demanding the heads of the New York Times reporters who publish this supposedly deeply secret information.
You don't hear any suggestion that the DOJ is going to bring charges against them or Ukraine war supporters advocating that they do, even though this is supposedly very sensitive information.
And I believe that's because the power centers in Washington wanted this to be out as a reason to try and convince Americans why Ukraine is so important to the United States.
And this is the New York Times, not acting against the CIA, but serving as their spokespeople.
And the headline was, quote, The Spy War, How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.
For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries encountering Russia.
Now, look at the framing of that.
This CIA relationship with Ukraine, says the New York Times, is now critical for both countries encountering Russia.
So are you wondering at all why nobody is saying, oh the New York Times published this sensitive information, they should be treated like Donald Trump and charged under the Espionage Act?
Or like Julian Assange or like Edward Snowden.
After all, they're supposedly leaking some very sensitive CIA intelligence there about a, quote, secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine.
But the way you know that it was an authorized link, it was a mandated link, is the way it's framed.
This is now a critical tool for both countries encountering Russia.
Obviously, anybody who sees Russia As a threat to the United States, certainly, which is almost the entire Democratic Party at this point, and large numbers of Republicans as well, would look at this and say, oh, this is another reason why we need to fight Ukraine, because the CIA program that we have there is, quote, critical for both countries, the US and Ukraine encountering Russia.
Here's what this supposedly adversarial to the CIA article says, quote, the underground bunker Built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia's invasion is a secret nerve center of Ukraine's military.
There is also one more secret that the New York Times is going to expose because that's what they do.
They expose the secrets of the powerful.
Quote, the base is almost fully financed and partially equipped by the CIA.
The intelligence partnership between Washington and Kiev is the linchpin of Ukraine's ability to defend itself.
The CIA and other American intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements, and help support spy networks.
But the partnership is no wartime creation.
It took root a decade ago and has transformed Ukraine, whose intelligence agencies were long seen as thoroughly compromised by Russia.
Into one of Washington's most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.
So you see, every paragraph is framed to convince Americans to support the CIA's policy.
Because this CIA program that we have in Ukraine that we might lose if Ukraine loses has become, quote, one of Washington's most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.
And obviously people hear the Kremlin and they think, oh, that's the evil thing that's threatening us.
And therefore, anything that is an important intelligence partner against the Kremlin, such as Ukraine, is designed to become of great importance to Americans.
That's the point of this article.
Even though it's framed as a intrepid bit of exposure by the New York Times revealing the secrets of the CIA, it's obviously carrying its water propagandistically, quote, Quote, the listening post in the Ukrainian forest is part of a CIA supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations across the Russian, along the Russian border.
Now by the way, on the question of why Russia might have looked over its border into Ukraine, And regarded what they were seeing as threatening, is it possible that the fact that the CIA, there's a CIA-supported network of spy bases that have been constructed in the last eight years across 12 secret locations across the Russian border?
Do you think this might be a reason why Russia took a look at what was going on in Ukraine and said, oh, this is very threatening to our security?
The CIA now has 12 secret locations across our border on the Ukrainian-Russian border.
Do you think if the Russian intelligence services or the Chinese intelligence services had a deep and longstanding partnership with the Mexican government or the Cuban government that permitted it to build 10 secret or 12 secret spying locations across our southern border that we might regard that as threatening?
Looking over at what was going on in those countries?
I think probably we would.
Quote, obsessed with, quote, losing Ukraine to the West, Mr. Putin has regularly interfered in Ukraine's political system, handpicking leaders he believed would keep Ukraine within Russia's orbit.
Okay.
This is the kind of thing that genuinely drives me crazy.
What has Russia been doing in Ukraine?
Ukraine according to the New York Times Russia, Mr. Putin specifically, has regularly interfered has regularly interfered in Ukraine's political system even going so has regularly interfered has regularly interfered in Ukraine's political system even going so far as to handpeck leaders they believe would be would keep Ukraine This is exactly what the United States did in 2014 in Ukraine.
Exactly what the U.S.
did.
They interfered in Ukraine's political system because they had a democratically elected president who the U.S.
perceived was closer to Moscow than they wanted them to be.
And then we heard on the audio that leaked, Victoria Nuland and the U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine handpicking the leaders that they believe would keep Ukraine within U.S.
orbit.
Do you see the extent to which our media outlets, our corporate outlets, are completely subservient to the narrative and the agenda of the security state?
They're accusing Russia of doing exactly what the United States did in Ukraine.
And they're saying that, unlike Our efforts, Russia's, quote, backfired because they drove protesters into the street.
What does that mean?
Ukraine in 2010 elected a president whose constitutional office went to 2015.
And in 2014, the U.S.
government and both parties announced people like John McCain and Chris Murphy, a senator from Arizona from the Republican Party, a senator from Connecticut from the Democratic Party, went to Kiev and encouraged the protesters to overthrow their government.
And Victoria Nuland went and handed out donuts from her pocketbook, which I'm certain she keeps there all the time.
She was like food feeding and providing sustenance to these protesters.
Because we wanted the government of Ukraine, the democratically elected government of Ukraine, removed so that Victoria Nuland could handpick who would be running Ukraine.
And the New York Times turns that around and says that's what Russia has been doing.
Quote, Mr. Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kiev and sowing anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine.
I wonder where he got that idea?
Mr. John Brennan, former director of the CIA under President Obama, explained that to unlock CIA assistance, the Ukrainians had to prove that they could provide intelligence of value to the Americans.
Mr. Brennan returned to Washington, where advisers to President Barack Obama were deeply concerned about provoking Moscow.
The White House crafted secret rules that infuriated the Ukrainians and that some inside the CIA thought of as handcuffs.
Some of Mr. Obama's advisors wanted to shut the CIA program down, but John Brennan persuaded them that doing so would be self-defeating, given the relationship was starting to produce intelligence on the Russians that the CIA was investigating Russian election meddling.
And the article actually goes on to say that these CIA sites in Ukraine and the relationship with Ukrainian intelligence was crucial to, quote, investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, meaning that these relationships with Ukrainian intelligence that John Brennan had fostered under President Obama were crucial to spreading the lies of Russiagate.
And as we've shown you before, there was reporting from Politico that described how Ukraine had basically gambled on the wrong leader by engaging in all kinds of conduct in 2016 to help the Democrats and Hillary Clinton win the election, assuming that Clinton would be the president and they would benefit the Ukrainians.
What is the result of that interference in our election by helping the Democrats?
Everything that's being said here.
By John Brennan.
Oh, this is such an important program to us because that enabled us to investigate Russian interference.
In other words, it enabled the CIA to fabricate and interfere in our 2016 election with the Ukrainians through this Russiagate fraud.
It's the reason that John Brennan is saying it's so important that we maintain these bases here.
And obviously when political liberals read this New York Times article, it's going to be like crack to them.
In case you're wondering why nobody's concerned or angry that the New York Times spilled supposedly sensitive secrets, it's because the whole story is designed to show why Ukraine is so important to the United States, even though I have no doubt that the New York Times story is true, that the CIA is all over Ukraine, that we have all kinds of spying intelligence that goes on there right on the Russian border, and perhaps someone might wonder whether or not
The CIA expanding bacteria, like a fungus, inside Ukraine up to the Russian border might be a reason why Russia considers U.S.
presence and the U.S.
activity in Ukraine to be mildly threatening and provocative.
Here's Victoria Nuland, who, as we talked about before, ends up in charge of American foreign policy no matter who you vote for.
She was in the Clinton administration.
She ran.
She was Dick Cheney's top advisor for the Iraq War.
She was then the U.S.
ambassador to NATO in the second term of the Bush-Cheney administration when all this talk about expanding NATO up to the Russian border began with Condoleezza Rice and actually including Ukraine in it.
She was part of the original provocation of Russia back in 2008 when she was working for George Bush.
And then Barack Obama wins and she ends up at the Hillary Clinton State Department and then eventually runs Ukraine for John Kerry.
The only time she was out of office was 2016 to 2020 when Donald Trump was elected.
In case you're wondering why neocons hate Donald Trump.
And then as soon as Joe Biden got back into office, she was put back in the State Department where she continued to run Ukraine.
And she's now been promoted to Assistant Deputy Secretary of State.
So you can go vote for whoever you want, as long as you vote for someone other than Donald Trump, she's gonna win.
Obviously, if Nikki Haley won, she'd be right in the State Department.
She thinks just like Nikki Haley, she thinks just like Joe Biden, because this bipartisan war establishment is the same.
She went on CNN with Christiane Amanpour, who is a vocal supporter of the US support for the war in Ukraine, needless to say, she works at CNN, to continue to try and propagandize to the public why Ukraine is supposedly somehow so important to the United States that we ought to support Joe Biden's request to give it another $60 billion.
Here's what permanent neocon warmonger Victoria Nuland said.
It is, and I do hear you and the others in the administration and supporters talking about the vital necessity to do this.
But as people say, hope is not a strategy.
And do you have any actual belief or reason to believe that eventually this bill will be paid?
And if not, how are you going to make sure Ukraine gets vital weapons and ammunition?
Christiane, I have strong confidence that when the House comes back after they've been out in their districts hearing from the American people, after they have heard from Ukraine, they have heard from Europe, which by the way just passed $54 billion in additional aid itself, that we will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world.
In case you're wondering what the United States has always done, When it was invading Iraq, and removing the leader of Libya, and leaving that country in ruins, and fighting a CIA dirty war in Syria, and leaving that country in ruins, and all the other wars that the United States has fought, it's the same thing that Victoria Nuland is now doing in Ukraine.
They're fighting for freedom and democracy.
This is what the United States has always done.
As they fund and prop up the regime in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt after they funded and supported the military coup in Egypt that removed the first ever democratically elected president from Egypt because the Egyptians voted for the wrong person less than a year after he was in office, and was removed by a military coup and is ruled to this day by a military dictator, General Sissi, that the United States supports.
This is what the United States has always done, fought for freedom and democracy throughout the world.
And the fact that Victoria Nuland can go and look into the camera with a straight face and say that to you, knowing that Christiane Amanpour, nor anybody else who is a working journalist in corporate media will challenge her on that, shows the contempt for your intelligence that these people have.
The fact that they can tell you that this is what US foreign policy is and always has been.
... which is defend democracy and freedom around the world, not just for victims of tyrants like Putin, but in our own interest in preserving a free and open international order.
That's what we need to do.
We've done it before.
And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S.
economy to make those weapons, including good-paying jobs in some 40 states across the United States.
Now, listen to what's going on here.
This is a liberal network, CNN, that speaks to American liberals and Democrats.
There's no doubt about that.
I could show you all night pulling data that proves that only liberals and Democrats listen to CNN.
And this is a representative of the Biden administration who is convincing, trying to convince her audience That the war in Ukraine is worth fighting.
And the message that she's delivering, and that you're about to hear from CNN itself, is that there are two different ways that you should be happy about the war in Ukraine.
One is that, as the New York Times said, we have a CIA presence there, and so it helps the CIA, which liberals love.
And two, the new theory, the new message, oh, don't worry, this money we're spending goes into the pockets of the arms industry.
And you're supposed to believe that it doesn't go to enriching the oligarchs who control the arms industry?
No, it's going to create good-paying union jobs throughout the industrialized Midwest and keep the economy running.
It's good for the American people.
Maybe there's another way that we could create jobs beyond Funding a war that is sending tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of unwilling young Ukrainian conscripts and increasingly middle-aged Ukrainian conscripts to their death.
Destroying the entire country of Ukraine.
Maybe there's a way we could create jobs besides that.
Here is the CNN anchor herself.
She's one of these anchors.
Breonna Keller, I think is her name.
And there you see them doing propaganda.
The $60 billion aid package has passed the Senate, hasn't passed the House.
And I think Victoria Nuland, when she's saying, I'm very confident the House will do it, this is a message we're hearing from a lot of people.
Mike Pompeo just went to Kiev and he's told the Ukrainians, don't worry, this money is going to come.
I think they know that They're going to find a way around Mike Johnson's inability to bring it to the floor and get that $60 billion to Ukraine.
And here's their attempt.
And you'll see how exactly alike CNN itself sounds to this script that Victoria Nuland was just reading from, because obviously CNN and the Biden administration have no separation between them at all.
We gain a lot of intelligence from the Ukrainians.
They have a special relationship that was reported in the New York Times just the other day with the CIA.
They also have relationships with the other U.S.
intelligence agencies where they're providing very unique insights.
Do you see how they're already using the advocates of the war in Ukraine are?
The New York Times article?
That was supposedly spilling the secrets of the CIA.
This is a person who's here to tell you why the war in Ukraine is so important, why the $60 billion needs to get to Ukraine.
Everything on the chart you can see is just propaganda.
$20 billion to replenish the military weapons.
$14 billion to allow Ukraine to rearm itself through the purchase of U.S.
weapons.
$15 billion for military training, intelligence sharing, increased presence and other support.
So it's all designed to sell this war like a PowerPoint to you.
And his first argument is, well, we just learned from the New York Times that this is a very important country for the CIA, and then let's hear what the rest of it is.
Also in our ability to secure NATO's eastern flag.
Yeah.
People forget, and we've known because of this Washington Post analysis for months now, about 90% of this money going towards weapons is actually coming back into the U.S.
People think it just goes to Ukraine.
It's not.
This is where they're getting the weapons, so it also does contribute to the industry here in the U.S.
Cedric, thank you so much for taking us through that.
We appreciate it.
Isn't it bizarre that they sound exactly exactly like the Biden administration who we just watched, who was also a Bush administration official and a Obama administration official and a Clinton administration official selling the war in Ukraine.
There's no space between a CNN anchor and a government spokesperson.
They're all acting in unison.
So is the New York Times in this story.
And they're all creating a narrative, putting the pieces together to try and convince you over and over and over and over That somehow your life is going to be better if you allow your government to send another $60 billion to keep this war in Ukraine funded.
So last week, we covered a little scandal among the left liberal streaming community, which basically is composed of three major figures.
The person we covered last week, his name is Valsh.
And there was the scandal surrounding him because he had long been advocating things like lowering the age of consent for sex and advocating for the reasons why people should not think so poorly about child pornography and sex between adults and children.
And he has increased in influence and stature doing things like appearing in Washington where he's organizing directly with Democratic Party officials like Ro Khanna and other members of Congress.
And so in a stream, he's one of these people who stream 10, 12 hours a day and has created this like large group of online, mostly young people who are obsessed with him, who spend all their time within his community and are devoted to him like a cult leader.
There's like a nominally a political ethos around it of electing Democratic Party officials.
They criticize Biden sometimes, but they are there to canvas for Democratic Party officials after Vaush got caught showing accidentally his pornography stash that had animated depictions of young people, young girls having sex.
When he was asked by his audience, well, are you going to change anything now that this controversy and scandal has engulfed you?
He said, no, this is an election year.
Our work that we're doing in electing Democratic Party leaders and canvassing for Joe Biden is way too important to allow it to be affected or impeded by these things that are being said about me and us, about our community.
And so we didn't spend much time delving into that controversy itself because, like I said, a lot of other people have covered it.
It's not really my interest.
I would not have talked about it had it only been about that.
But what was so interesting to me is the nature of these online political streaming communities among the liberal left in particular, these three people in particular.
Like I said, I was kind of paying more attention to it because I debated one of them, Destiny.
And it honestly shocked me when I was preparing for this debate to see that he is somebody who actually streams 10 to 12 hours every single day, 8, 10, 12 hours every day.
And I could see as well that the people who are following him don't really have a political ideology.
They don't actually think for themselves.
They're like just monomaniacally devoted to him.
This community becomes their identity, their purpose, and it's completely online.
It's completely parasocial.
And we went over last week the data, which we'll show you now because we didn't really show it to you, about the reason why this matters so much.
That in the United States, there is extremely high levels in younger generations, the millennials and Gen Z, increasingly, first millennials and now increasingly in Gen Z, of all kinds of mental illness, of anxiety disorders, of depression, of addiction and alcohol, of suicide.
All these indicia of mental health pathologies have increased.
And the major reason that distinguishes these generations from ones prior is that they live almost entirely online, oftentimes.
And these parasocial relationships and the connections that they think they're getting through online communities are no substitute for things human beings really need, which is in-person interaction and spiritual fulfillment and connection to other human beings, sense of community that's real in real life.
The writer Yohan Ari wrote a whole book on how online addiction is spawning all kinds of mental health problems.
And the thing he says is that, and he quoted all kinds of experts and did all kinds of research in that field, is that thinking that you can get a human connection and human community and human meaning through online interaction exclusively or primarily is similar to the way you might think that you're actually getting the fulfillment of sex with a person you love by consuming pornography.
Pornography might give you a kind of fraction of the benefits, but you're depriving yourself if you only use online pornography of all sorts of important and deep fulfillment that you can only get from real life in-person connection.
And it's the same thing, even more so, with people who seek identity and purpose and communion and community by following an online leader.
And obviously, there's a parasocial component to a lot of relationships if you are dedicated to a celebrity, even if you like a particular show.
But usually it's a very limited part of your life.
You may watch a show for an hour.
What distinguishes these communities is they're all consuming.
They go on every day, all day, for literally 10, 12 hours a day.
And so just like Vosch drew attention to this sickliness that's spreading among the largely young left liberals who follow these communities, And a lot of those followers of Vasha's were defending him even though he got caught with animated child porn.
That just shows you the extent to which their devotion is to the person and the importance of this community that they were trying to protect from disintegrating was so desperate because of how much of an important part it plays in their lives.
Hassan Piker, who's probably, of the three, the one with the biggest audience, certainly the one who makes the most money.
They make many millions of dollars a year spouting this left liberal ideology, but he probably has the most radical branding.
He claims he's a socialist, even a communist.
He loves to posture as a left-wing radical, but at the end of the day, just like the other two, his ultimate politics is he keeps everybody captive to the Democratic Party.
He always tells them to go vote, not just for pseudo-left-wing Democratic candidates like AOC or Bernie, but like Gavin Newsom.
He's like, if you're in California, make sure to vote for Gavin Newsom.
Make sure to vote for Joe Biden.
So he's always within the realm of mainstream Democratic Party politics.
AOC goes on his stream for that reason.
He knows the limits very well.
But what was always out about Hasan Piker is that he says he's a communist, he says he's a socialist, he wears t-shirts that say, eat the rich.
And yet Hasan Piker grew up with an extremely wealthy family in Turkey.
He got his start in media because his uncle was the founder of a very lucrative media outlet, The Young Turks.
He's somebody who goes around living these kind of decadent, extremely wealthy online celebrity lifestyles.
Here he is on a private jet from that concert in the desert, what is it, Coachella?
Yeah, flying to New York for some kind of awards that are given to streamers.
And of course, he says, like, climate change is the most important issue threatening us all, and he's riding on a private jet.
And his excuse is, oh, well, I didn't hire this.
It was somebody else who out-hired it and then invited me on.
But he lives in a gigantic mansion.
We've been over this before.
That's one of the things I hate most about left liberal politics is they're all about signaling the virtue that you have, constantly saying, oh, I hate racists and I hate rich people and I, you know, eat the rich.
And all that matters is the things you pretend you believe in, like how you live your actual life and the values that it reflect matters least.
So here is this socialist, communist, champion of the working man, Hasan Piker, from his multi-million dollar mansion in Los Angeles that he has bought with the many, many millions of dollars he has squeezed out of this community of people who follow him.
Here he is on February 24th, just a couple of days ago, explaining why his job
Is actually, at least in some respects, more difficult than, more trying than, more socially and spiritually draining than, and emotionally burdensome than, the jobs of people who have ordinary jobs that make hourly wages, that have bosses, that involve manual labor, where they have to be at work by a certain day, a certain hour every day, like 9 to 5, or 9 to, or 10 to 6, or 10 to 7.
They take buses back and forth to their jobs.
Yes.
A real job can be gruesome.
A real job can make you very tired.
But a real job doesn't suck the soul out of you.
You know what I mean?
In the same way that nine hours of streaming absolutely will.
and more difficult than all of those people.
And here was his explanation for why.
Yes, a real job can be gruesome.
A real job can make you very tired.
But a real job doesn't suck the soul out of you.
You know what I mean?
In the same way that nine hours of streaming absolutely will.
So.
So that was the.
Accept of his stream that circulated it.
It created a lot of anger and rage even among some people on the left because
If you're making $7 million a year, that's my guess of what he's making, maybe more, and you basically just sit in front of your computer, in your mansion, and you stream whenever you want, and you talk about whatever you want, he spends a lot of time just showing other people's videos without crediting them, or whatever he wants to do, that's what he does, and he makes an enormous amount of money and lives this life of an online celebrity.
It's probably not a good idea, especially if you claim that you're a champion of the working person, To go around talking about how difficult your job is, as he did here.
Now, he claimed this clip was out of context and didn't really show the full context of what he was saying, so he and people on his staff began circulating what they said was the fuller picture, and I think a lot of people pointed out correctly that it didn't make it any better.
If anything, it made it any worse.
And you can see, even though this is the clip they chose, it begins, obviously he's responding to people In his audience, objecting to the things he said, like, what are you talking about?
What do you mean that there are some respects in which your job is harder than the ordinary worker?
And here's what he said while responding to it.
This is, again, the clip they published that was designed to show what they claim is the fuller context of his comments.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Social battery wise, unless you're in retail, unless you're in fucking retail, It's very different.
You're out of touch, Lamont.
I'm gonna die, dude.
There's motherfuckers who are accountants in here, and they're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
A real job does not expend your social battery in the same fucking way as someone who did a sales job, a real job, okay?
I'm telling you, as someone who did both, like, nine hours of constant performance and people-pleasing Paps you out from social scenarios.
After nine hours of that, I could probably do fucking physical labor.
It would not bother me.
But I can't fucking do more social shit.
That's my point.
Like, there are obviously real jobs out there that are good comparisons.
Service sector, people-pleasing jobs would be very similar.
Those are like, I think, customer service type shit.
But, like, if you're an accountant, or if you're... Even, like, in sales, my interactions with clients was limited.
Way more limited than, like, constantly having to do this for nine hours.
With, like, a back-and-forth interaction for nine hours.
That's what... That's what, like, sucks your social battery, and you just tap out after it.
Yeah, think about it this way.
Like...
You give presentations for your job, right?
Imagine giving a presentation for nine hours straight.
It's like, after a while, you'd be like, I don't want to talk ever again.
Now, here's the thing.
I guess kind of in his defense, which is that everything in life ends up balanced.
If you pursue anything, whatever it is, and end up obtaining it, fame or notoriety or great wealth, There are actually costs to it.
There's harms to it that come to you from that, no matter what it is.
Everything that's up in life being balanced.
There's a cost and a benefit to everything.
If you try and live the most ordinary life, there's actually a benefit to that and there's a cost to that as well.
It's true to try and live an extraordinary life.
Whatever it is, nothing is free in life.
And I don't doubt in part from experience that if you have some sort of public platform, that it's not always easy.
The problem is that if you're making many millions of dollars a year by sitting your ass in a chair and streaming online whenever you want with no one telling you what to say, whatever difficulties you're having in life, don't go around complaining about those to people who are making 15 whatever difficulties you're having in life, don't go around complaining about those to people who are making 15 hours, $15 an hour, and who take the bus back and forth to their jobs and make $60,000 a year and struggle to sustain their family without health insurance and have bosses a year
Just Just keep that to yourself.
That is not a grievance that you should be expressing to the public about how Difficult your multi-million dollar completely autonomous life is that you choose to do But I have to say and here's just by the way When he's saying he's online for nine hours a day.
I mean, it's not an exaggeration.
This is what we showed you Last week as well with a different streamer But here right now when we went on live on the air and grabbed this I The statistic of his last number of days streaming, he was online right then.
He had been online for 4 hours and 25 minutes.
I assume he's still going.
He's live.
Then, yesterday, the 25th, he was on for 6 hours.
The 24th, 5 hours and 25 minutes.
The 23rd, 9 hours and 55 minutes.
The 22nd, 9 hours.
The 21st, 8 hours and 40 minutes.
The 20th, 10 hours and 50 minutes.
The 19th, 11 hours.
"the 22nd, nine hours, the 21st, eight hours and 40 minutes, "the 20th, 10 hours and 50 minutes, the 19th, 11 hours, "the 18th, seven hours and 30 minutes." That is insane.
He streams every single day, all day.
Most of his waking life is devoted to sitting online, talking for an audience.
And that's what these streaming communities are because these people who follow them and are in them need it.
It's like their sustenance.
They have to be available all day, every day.
This is what these people do.
And in a certain way, I guess this was the point that we were making, this is the reason why these communities are so sickly and so unhealthy.
Because if you are spending that much time of your life online, performing for an audience, desperately needing feedback constantly, and when I was watching some of the content about this controversy, Part of it was showing how he supposedly went on a vacation to Italy, was going to take off, and because people were saying things about him on some forum, he ended up spending his entire vacation online, ranting and raving and screaming and yelling about people criticizing him into a camp.
This is extremely unhealthy behavior.
Extremely unhealthy behavior.
And the communities that are being spawned based on this ethos that hundreds of thousands of millions of people are dedicating their lives to and deriving their identity from is extremely destructive.
And it's why we have so much mental health pathology.
Here from the Economic Times on December 14th of 2023, you see the headline, Gen Z is addicted to YouTube.
A Pew survey finds one in 16 visit the video sharing portal daily.
Quote, 71% of teens said they visit YouTube at least daily.
16% described their usage as, quote, almost constant.
According to the survey, YouTube remains by far the most popular social platform among teens, with 93% responding that they use the service.
Here from the journal Attitude in March of 2022, internet addiction may indicate other mental health problems.
Adults who spend an unhealthy amount of time online are more likely to demonstrate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, a new research study suggests.
So that might explain why some guy who's 30 years old or 35 years old, whatever he is, who has been making many millions of dollars a year, who has bought a big mansion in Los Angeles, who rides around on private jets, who has the lifestyle of a single man who's a online celebrity, who goes to concerts all over the world and parties all over the world and talks about his celebrity friends.
That is why he could get to the point where he's saying, This job is killing my soul.
Think about how serious that is.
That's because he spends 10 to 12 hours online and the problem is that these communities are based on that because they need, the people who are followers of theirs need this constant available access to their communities because it provides them their sense of worth and their identity and self-esteem.
And it's not something that merits kind of condescending judgment, but concern and pity.
Quote, spending an unhealthy amount of time online may indicate problems above and beyond internet addiction, a new study finds.
Specifically, adults who spend the majority of their waking hours online may be at higher risk for depression, anxiety, or other mental health problems.
For example, like adults who spend 10 to 12 hours a day online getting constant feedback about whether they're good, whether they're bad, whether they're loved, whether they're hated.
To the point that they can't even go on vacation and travel without getting back onto line and screaming and yelling all day from a hotel room about why the people criticizing them are evil and stupid.
Quote, the study conducted by Canadian researchers at McMaster University in Ontario was presented at the 29th European College.
Of Neuropsychopharmacology, earlier this week in Vienna, researchers presented 254 university students with an average age of 18.5 years with a survey that included the dimensions of problematic internet use, a tool designed by the researchers themselves and based off the DSMV criteria for addiction.
33 of the students met the criteria for a full-blown internet addiction, while an additional 107 participants raised flags for quote problematic internet use.
Now, if you're a parent, especially a parent of teenagers, you know the challenge of how these machines are built to try and lure them into devoting their lives, giving their lives over to this technology.
It's a major challenge to parents to limit that, to keep them offline so that they remain mentally healthy.
And they just wither away if all they're doing is constantly spending time behind their phone developing their sense of identity based on parasocial friendships that don't actually exist or communities that are imagined and fabricated.
And that is why this is so worth examining.
These are real mental health epidemics in the United States among particularly people who are born into the era of the Internet.
And you have to ask why it is, and there are studies that explain.
Here from the American Psychology Association in January of 2019, Gen Z is more likely to report mental health concerns, the latest APA stress in America.
Survey focuses on the concerns of Americans ages 15 to 21.
Quote, this generation is also significantly more likely, 27%, than other generations.
Including Millennials who are at 15% and Gen Xers at 13% to report their mental health as fair or poor the study found They are also more likely 37% along with Millennials 35% To report that they have received treatment or therapy from a mental health professional compared to 26% of Gen Xers 22% of baby boomers and 15% of older adults Now part of that may be just a
greater willingness on the part of younger people to acknowledge or talk about mental health problems, and that actually probably is a positive.
But the data is indisputable at this point, irrefutable, that it's not just a willingness to talk about mental health disease, but a actual explosion, an epidemic among mental, among these generations in mental health pathologies.
Here is a chart from the 74 that collects psychological data in September of 2022 that asks, over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems?
Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge?
Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?
Thoughts that you would be better off dead?
Or thoughts of hurting yourself in some way?
And that last?
Question, thoughts that you would be better off dead or hurting yourself.
2% of boomers said yes, 6% of Gen X said yes, 10% of millennials said that, and almost 20% of Gen Z said that.
In the last two weeks, 20%, one out of five, said that they have had thoughts of suicide or thinking that they would be better off dead.
You look at the feeling down or depressed, 42% of Gen Z.
said that within the last two weeks, they felt feeling down, depressed or hopeless, and then feeling nervous or anxious or anxiety.
It's an overwhelming majority, a large majority of Gen Z just in the last two weeks alone in a majority of millennials.
And you go down every time the generations from people who are more distant from the Internet to people who are more immersed in it.
And not just the correlation, but the causation is undeniable.
So the reason why the kind of scandals and pathologies of this online left liberal streaming community, and I don't think there really is a right-wing analog to one where people have kind of gathered around these figures, these kind of like cult-like figures for hours at a time, willing to defend them no matter what, They say are what they do, as we've seen over the last couple of weeks, that's why these are worth examining.
Not because these particular people matter, although they do command a pretty sizable audience that make them worthy of notice and commentary on their own, but it's really because they're manifestations of what is a true social pathology.
Books have been written about it, there's data about it, there's a lot of research on it, emerging more and more about the effect on mental health from Developing your identity primarily from online communities and online relationships, and there's nothing that these streaming communities Generate more than that someone someone like Hasan Piker Who's making millions of dollars a year from doing it the easiest job possible?
is saying that his soul is being destroyed by doing it and i don't even think he's making that up even though like i said a lot of people resent him for complaining about a job that's infinitely better on every level than pretty much every other kind of ordinary job that you could get even though there was a lot of resentment raised by it there's actually some truth to it clearly and i think if you're not only imagine how much worse it is if you're not doing it and getting paid millions and millions of dollars and gaining some fame that you obviously seek and want
and it kind of quasi celebrity lifestyle that involves private jets and parties and like if you're just kind of the person who's consuming it all day in your home for no compensation to Just from a sense of, just getting a sense of purpose.
It's a facsimile of real life connection and real life interaction.
Imagine how much mental health harm there is and you're seeing the effects in all of this data.
And I think that even though it can seem like a petty issue, if you frame it only as a examination of a scandal over the last week from some online personality, if you look at the overall dynamic of what it's fostering, it's clearly anything but trivial.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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