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Feb. 15, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:34:44

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #68

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	Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Monday, the 15th of February 2021.
	I'm joined by Callum, and today we're going to be talking about the most acquitted president in US history, why lockdowns must end, and how things have been going in Minneapolis since the George Floyd riots.
	But first, you can go to thelotuses.com and become a member and check out our amazing book club.
	This is the part of the website I'm actually most proud of because it's The bit I enjoy doing the most, where I get to read a really interesting book, and sit down and explain to you why you should also read that book, and extract what I think are the relevant and useful lessons from it.
	And in this case, this week's one, or this month's one, was Marx Aurelius' Meditations.
	This was a particular favourite of mine, because I not only read the book, but I have the audiobook as well.
	And one of the...
	I ride my bike every day to work.
	And so for like two weeks, I was listening to this back and forth on the journey to work.
	And honestly, I could feel the tranquility rising within myself.
	I was like, you know what?
	This isn't actually all so bad.
	I can handle all this.
	Stoicism is basically a way of teaching you to deal with the harshness of the world.
	And he's basically the Jordan Peterson of the Roman Empire.
	Definitely worth people's time.
	So you can go to list.com and check that out.
	But anyway, let's talk about how Trump keeps winning.
	The goodest of good boys who didn't do nothing twice.
	Apparently not.
	So, likes and mag is in the chat for this one, because this is a good one.
	Anyway, so we covered previously how the Democrats had brought impeachment articles against President Trump for the second time, and then they put their case forward a few days ago, and it was really bad, like really, really bad for them.
	They kept getting caught out faking things.
	Mm-hmm.
	And then started to misquote people and then just gave up on the argument that he incited a riot completely and started just saying that he said that the election wasn't valid, therefore he deserves to be impeached.
	So it's just like, okay, so there is no impeachment trial here.
	This is a waste of everyone's time.
	And then it was Trump's lawyer's time to come in and give the counter-argument.
	And the counter-argument was like hitting a child.
	You could just see how much fun they had with it, watching it, where they're just like, what's wrong with you?
	Why would you come out and fake tweets to try and prove your case?
	We get to respond.
	Did you think this was a show trial?
	Like, where they were just going to give their side and then nothing else would happen.
	And it's good.
	So I mentioned that they docked a bunch of tweets to make them look more important than they were.
	There were just false statements where they just said a guy said a thing and he didn't.
	And they had to accept that that was a lie and retract it from the record.
	They also edited out Trump, as you showed on the podcast, which was they showed him saying that, you know, this is wrong, that's wrong, and then cut.
	When the next line was, and peaceably and patriotically make your voices heard at the Capitol.
	They had to cut that because that didn't fit the narrative.
	And we're not going to play all the clips from this, but I want to play one clip, which is just this defense from the lawyers.
	They kept playing clips of just Democrats.
	So the Democrats would argue, you said fight.
	And they're like, okay, here's literally every senator who's a Democrat saying the word fight.
	and it was like a 10 minute long clip of just them but this i wanted to play one that's just good it's just them in multiple elections saying every time they lose it's not a legitimate election so if you want to go for that then that's not gonna come not gonna fly so let's play manager raskin you'd been in congress only three days when you objected in 2017 It's one of the first things you did when you got here.
	I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.
	Is the objection in writing and signed not only by the member of the House of Representatives, but also by a senator?
	It is in writing, Mr.
	President.
	Is it signed by a senator?
	Not as of yet, Mr.
	President.
	In that case, the objection cannot be entertained.
	Mr.
	President, I object to the certificate from the state of Georgia on the grounds that the electoral votes were not...
	There's no debate.
	There's no debate.
	I object to the certificate from the state of North Carolina based on violations...
	There's no debate.
	There's no debate in the joint session.
	I object because people are horrified.
	Section 18, Title III of the United States Code prohibits debate.
	I object.
	I've objected to the counting of the electoral votes of the state of Ohio.
	I object to the certificate from the state of Alabama.
	The electors were not lawfully certified.
	I object to the 15 votes from the state of North Carolina because of the massive voter suppression and the closing of voting polling booths.
	There is no debate.
	And the massive voter suppression that occurred.
	The gentleman was suspended.
	I have an objection to the electoral votes.
	The objection is in writing, and I don't care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.
	I do not wish to debate.
	I wish to ask, is there one United States Senator who will join me in this letter of conviction?
	There is no debate.
	The objection is signed by a member of the House, but not yet by a member of the Senate.
	It is over.
	You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.
	He knows he's an illegitimate president.
	He knows.
	He knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did.
	There are still legitimate concerns over the integrity of our elections and of ensuring the principle of one person, one vote.
	I agree with tens of millions of Americans who are very worried that when they cast the ballot on an electronic voting machine that there is no paper trail to record that vote.
	But constantly shifting vote tallies in Ohio And malfunctioning electronic machines, which may not have paper receipts, have led to additional loss of confidence by the public.
	This is their only opportunity to have this debate while the country is listening.
	And it is appropriate to do so.
	So I know that was a bit long, but that's a cut down of the amount of clips they played.
	Yeah.
	Endlessly, endlessly.
	Return to pottery shards.
	I agree.
	Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi.
	But some people might be wondering, because the charge of impeachment was on the basis that he incited a group of people to storm the Capitol.
	You know, why are we talking about his rhetoric around this thing?
	Because that has nothing to do with incitement.
	It's because they just gave up on the charge of incitement after the first day.
	They were just like, look, we can't get him on the words, so instead we're going to go after him and quote, So the idea that he claimed that the election wasn't legitimate, and this incited people to do it, and therefore that's how incitement law works?
	It's not.
	It's not how it works at all.
	In fact, you have a First Amendment that guarantees his ability to say things that you think aren't true.
	guys have been doing for years upon years upon years you know this is just part of american politics when one side loses the other side makes a bit ruckus about how the election was conducted and that's fine and then you investigate what is true and what's not true and then that's the end of it that's how it's meant to work because the opposite is we never allow people to say that anything's gone wrong with an election yeah which is an absurd place to go obviously because how does someone contest them
	but anyway this is also a great time for the trump campaign because they didn't get trump in to give evidence but they could then use it as a ball pit to just exonerate every lie that's been told about it before.
	So the next link is just them doing this with the Charlottesville Vine People hoax.
	Oh, yes.
	So they just played the clip of the media show of him saying very fine people, and then it pauses and they play the rest of the clip on another side that just shows him saying, I'm not talking about neo-Nazis, I'm not talking about white supremacists.
	No, he expressly says, not talking about either of the two groups that are actually fighting, but supporters on both sides, they're a very fine people.
	He's very clear about it, actually.
	Which is surprising for Trump, to be fair.
	So they had a great time disproving that, because every network was running footage from the impeachment being like, you know, haha, we're going to get it.
	And instead, Trump's team could just be like, hey, this is how the media lies to you, to everyone who's watching the media right now.
	Wonderful.
	The next point was Ted Cruz putting a question here.
	So they were saying in regards to Kamala Harris with the bail fund that she retweeted to get people out of jail who were rioting.
	Does a politician raising bail for rioters encourage more rioting?
	So there's just a number of jabs in there that were also fun.
	And then the next one here is just Ted Cruz's response to him sitting listening to all this.
	So it's a Simpsons meme for people who can't see the nuclear whales meme.
	Bond the Arabs and take their oil.
	Bond the Indians and take their casinos.
	Nuke the whales.
	Oh my god.
	But then Lisa Simpson saying, you don't really believe that, do you?
	That's what dealing with the Democrats is like.
	Gotta believe in something, I guess.
	Even if you know it's false.
	And then the last one here is just their response.
	And this is amazing.
	So this was one of the Democrats running the impeachment trial against Trump.
	That...
	After watching them, so the Democrats made the argument, here's your rhetoric and then a bunch of violence happened, therefore you're guilty of it.
	That doesn't make any sense.
	Okay, well if we're going to take that stance, here's all your rhetoric about Black Lives Matter and a bunch of Black Lives Matter anti-file violence, are you guys all guilty of it?
	And the response to that point, which is that obviously if you're going to claim one is illegal, the other has to be illegal, No, no, no, no.
	Because we were brown women saying this.
	Like, she literally says in this video that because the people being shown in the video are overwhelmingly brown and female, therefore it's not a comparison that's valid to make.
	So it's just, it's okay when we do it.
	But only on the basis of your race and gender.
	Amazing.
	Like, what you say is irrelevant.
	Amazing.
	So you know they're winning when they are reduced to that.
	Or when they're appealing to race and gender privileges.
	Right.
	Yes.
	That's all they had.
	And then it got to the witnesses.
	So this was a big kerfuffle.
	So usually you bring witnesses onto a trial to give testimony about what happened.
	And they decided not to after some back and forth because the Republicans just came out and were like, yeah, we're going to have at least 301 witnesses.
	Up to you if you want to do witnesses or not.
	We're fine to do it.
	Because the argument from their side was like, wow, okay, if you're going to bring your witnesses on, we're going to bring our R's and we're going to be exonerated.
	And they wanted to call Nancy Pelosi as a witness.
	Just to grill her over the whole thing.
	Which would have been amazing.
	It could have ended up looking really bad for the Democrats, couldn't it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I imagine that's what happened.
	They thought they were going to get their witnesses and then...
	Well, they wanted to do that to Trump, didn't they?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then they couldn't get that.
	And then the Trump team were like, right, we're going to have 300.
	We're going to drag this out for four years, I guess.
	Because that was 301 so far, like on his bit of paper, you could see it was like, so far, I'm going to add more.
	They buckled and were like, eh, let's just not do witnesses at all.
	Because I think at this point as well, they understand they'd lost.
	There was no way they were going to get the numbers or to prove that this was the case.
	And there are a bunch of verified checkmarks who are very upset with this decision not to call witnesses.
	So we'll just fly through these.
	So, well, Raskin, you did a great impeachment, but no one will ever understand why you walked away from calling witnesses.
	It's because he didn't have a case.
	That's why.
	So then the next one.
	Impeachment trials normally include witnesses.
	Well, not this time, buddy.
	Not going to happen.
	Then the next one.
	Is some guy complaining about why, you know, why didn't they bring witnesses?
	Because if we're going to run this whole trial, like, why didn't we go full hog?
	Like, if you think you're going to lose, why run the whole thing?
	Because this was a mess up, I think.
	So we were chatting just before the show started.
	I think that they had the capital storming, and then they thought, right, we can get him on this, we can definitely get him.
	They just shhed themselves and went for it, and then realised a few weeks after, actually, we don't have a legal case, so we're kind of stuck with this impeachment now.
	It wasn't as bad as we had hyped it up to be on Twitter, and we kind of sold it a bit high, and now we're stuck with it.
	Yeah, and then the next one here is the Democratic coalition trying to also be like, call witnesses, we need to do this.
	It's like, no, no you don't.
	Like, you guys are absolutely screwed.
	You've got nothing, and you know it.
	I love this.
	If we don't convict Trump this time, it'll be a disaster for American democracy.
	Why is that?
	If he did nothing wrong, why is that a disaster for democracy?
	Will it not be very fortified if that's the case?
	Anyway, Karen.
	And then the next one is just them talking about Pelosi.
	Like, why did the Democrats run away like a bunch of pansies when the Republicans wanted to put Pelosi on the stand?
	What are they afraid of?
	I wonder.
	I very much wonder.
	And we got to see some of the behind the scenes here because thanks to Ted Cruz.
	So Ted Cruz met with Trump's team beforehand, apparently during and then after as well.
	High-fiving or something.
	Okay, good.
	And this was a clip where he did an interview on, I think it's the Daily Wire.
	And he's talking to Michael Knowles about the strategy that we're going to come up with this.
	And it's really interesting to watch because he's just like, well, we met with them.
	And we just told them, you've got the numbers, so don't rock the boat.
	Just come there, point out their nonsense and leave.
	You don't have to attack anyone and you'll be fine.
	No one will care.
	And that is what happened.
	They got the numbers and it's done.
	So the next link here is just the acquittal.
	The news coming out that these are the Republicans here who are traitors and decided to side with the Democrats on the basis that they won't be eaten, they swear.
	Which, no, you're getting in the same camps.
	Good luck, Mitt.
	And the response from the checkmarks again of Trump being acquitted for the second time, the most acquitted president in US history, was that this has to do with white supremacy.
	Oh yeah, that's it.
	That's what this is all about.
	The 43 GOP members have handed a victory to white supremacy today.
	Hashtag impeachment.
	And then the next one.
	Thanks, JVM Munoz.
	Oh, Camu Bell.
	Oh god.
	And because America's system of white supremacy can't work without putting its pasty.
	Torbid thumb on the scale, Donald Trump was acquitted even though he lost the popular vote again.
	Yeah, of course.
	So what?
	The popular vote doesn't matter, and this has got nothing to do with the vote itself anyway.
	Anyway.
	So they had nothing.
	And then this was just some cope from one of these people.
	House managers utterly vindicated.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Jennifer Rubin.
	Jennifer, who says, Jennifer pro-reality Rubin.
	That is amazing.
	If you know anything about...
	Like, Dave Rubin has essentially had a constant Twitter spat with her because they share a surname despite not being related, and he's just been like, look, I disavow every lunatic thing she says.
	But 38,000 likes, I guess, you know?
	So after losing the impeachment on the facts and being outvoted, House managers utterly vindicated.
	How?
	They just lost.
	They just got destroyed.
	I mean, they got every vote possible, which is just not enough.
	Yeah, that's it.
	That's all they've got.
	So the last thing here is just Nancy Pelosi.
	Her response was not going to apply it, but she was just literally shaking the whole time.
	You should watch this video.
	She just walks out and she's hovering or something.
	She's really, really mad.
	And she's banging on the table about how these cowardly Republicans have let democracy die.
	Oof.
	Okay.
	Okay, love.
	Sorry to hear it, Nancy.
	So Trump's response on this was tweeting out, well, gabbing out an image, and the image was his full response.
	To be honest, I didn't find it that interesting, but the last part I found interesting, saying that the MAGA movement has only just begun.
	So he was like, look, in a few months I'm going to come back with some news.
	Okay.
	We're going to do things.
	It's like, okay, I'm hyped.
	I'm up for this.
	And then Donald Trump Jr.
	posting on Twitter that MAGA is ascending as well.
	But the last thing I wanted to play here was one of Trump's lawyers gave an interview to CBS. So they just won victory time.
	They'd just proven that the Democrats were utterly lying about this, this, and this.
	You know, the tweets, the fake statements, the clipped video.
	And this interview is great because it just illustrates the problem that...
	It's actually kind of a weakness that the media are all Democrats, because it means they just perpetuate their own nonsense, and it means they end up living in a fake world.
	So let's play the second clip here at home with this interview, because it's just amazing.
	Were you, though, surprised to hear those words coming from the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate?
	I'm not surprised to hear a politician say anything at all.
	No.
	Let's follow up with a point that you're making right now about the house managers, as you say, doctoring evidence.
	They didn't deny it.
	I put it in front of them three times.
	What you're talking about now is a check mark that's a verification on Twitter that did not exist on that particular tweet, a 2020 that should have actually read 2021, and the selective editing, you say, of the tapes.
	Is that the doctored evidence of what you're speaking?
	That's not enough for you?
	That's not enough for you?
	I can't believe you would ask me a question indicating that it's all right just to doctor a little bit of evidence.
	You have won the acquittal of your client.
	Yes I did.
	And if you'd like to continue to talk about this conversation we can have that discussion.
	I don't need to.
	But for me to ask a question.
	A slanted question that was set up to say it's okay for them to cheat.
	That was your question.
	Isn't it okay for them to cheat?
	It's just a little bit.
	You said, to be fair, it was only a check on the Twitter.
	That's what you said.
	You got to live by your words.
	That's the problem.
	The media has to start living by the truth and not try to create a narrative.
	Michael Van Der Veen.
	Thank you for joining us.
	I do appreciate...
	Who's this legendary Chad?
	See, he was one of his lawyers that was defending him on the floor.
	Totally destroyed there.
	Just had enough with these people.
	And he's totally right.
	The defence was, oh, it's only a little bit of cheating.
	Don't care.
	We can talk about this?
	I don't need to talk about this.
	I just won.
	I'm out.
	I'm done.
	So this is just a meme of like, it really brings back memories of the victory in 2016 for me, where you're getting the same energy.
	But I just love this.
	The other side literally tried to doctor evidence to then present it as being more important or to lie about what was really going on.
	Literally presented false statements.
	Yeah.
	And they thought they would get away with this.
	And I'm just like, why would you do that?
	Like, what did you think was going to happen?
	I don't understand.
	And then the Trump campaign came in, and they just told him to shreds.
	They're like, all of your words are nonsense.
	Here's all you guys doing exactly what you accuse him of.
	Here's all your evidence, and here's how it's all made up.
	Like, adding fake checkmarks of things, changing the date on things, false statements, deceptively editing.
	Yeah.
	And they had nothing.
	They utterly retracted themselves, got rid of all the ideas of bringing up witnesses, and they're done.
	Like, completely routed.
	It's over.
	There's nothing there.
	Excellent.
	I can't get over how investigated Donald Trump has been, and they've found absolutely nothing.
	Like, after all the Russia investigations, after this, after everything, it's like, of all the people who turned out to be squeaky clean in American public life, if you'd gone back 10 years and said to me it'd be Donald Trump, I'd be like, okay, sure.
	You know, the billionaire playboy has done nothing wrong, okay, yeah.
	But it turns out after, you know, probably tens or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investigations, and all of this time in the courts, and all of the, you know, intelligence agencies, it turns out he did nothing wrong.
	Literally.
	He's the goodest boy alive in politics.
	The most pure man in America happens to have been Donald Trump.
	Well, he's got absolutely nothing on the guy.
	I don't get it, but it's great to see, and I'm very happy to have seen it.
	I just can't get over it.
	Of all the strange twists of the last few years.
	But no, I'm glad to hear it.
	And I've enjoyed watching the car crash as the Democrats, because you are right, it is a weakness that they are all in this, like, it's a large echo chamber, but it is an echo chamber.
	And as soon as the echo chamber, like, moves out of its comfort zone into an area where it's got to start competing with, like, reality, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, you see everything getting knocked down.
	It's just this complete car crash of a failure.
	It's like, wow, that's embarrassing.
	I'm glad that's not my political party that's doing that.
	I mean, like that interviewer there trying to argue that, well, it's only a small amount of doctoring, therefore it's not.
	He points out in the case where he's arguing his point.
	If you guys did this in front of a judge in a normal courthouse, you'd be penalised for this.
	The judge would probably end up throwing you out because he'd be so annoyed.
	And you dare do this in a place where literally everyone's watching?
	Millions of people around the world are watching this and you're so brazen.
	Oh, man.
	It's great because they all showed the footage of him also ripping them to shreds.
	Donald Trump, the goodest boy around.
	Right.
	Unfortunately, I haven't got any such good news in the UK. It's the long march through the COVID nightmare that we're going to have to talk about, I'm afraid.
	But frankly, I think that it is time for the lockdowns to end.
	And it seems that the country is starting to wake up to this.
	There has been what I would consider to be more sort of grassroots support.
	Whenever I go to normie spaces on the internet, I'm seeing many, many more people saying, oh, this is bad, we should really stop doing this.
	And finally, some conservative MPs are actually starting to say the same thing.
	So just to give us a recap, this is the latest COVID data.
	The number of cases peaked about a month ago at 62,000.
	Now it's down to 13,000.
	There were 4,000 people in hospital with COVID. Now there's 1,800.
	And just say this is not overwhelming the NHS. We've covered this before, but the data...
	Has shown that the NHS has not been overwhelmed.
	The UK is, of course, leading the way in COVID vaccinations, as we covered last week, I think it was.
	If we can scroll down a little bit so we can see the graph, John.
	There we go.
	We're third on the list still, with...
	The only major country that's actually got a high percentage.
	Yes, yes.
	Sorry to Israel and the UAE there, but...
	Yeah, but that's about seven people that have been vaccinated.
	But we have just passed the 15 million vaccinations milestone, which puts us somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the population, depending on what this year's census tells us.
	But yeah, so we've hit a vaccination of 15 million.
	These were actually, honestly, I've got to give to them, right?
	No matter where you stand on the question of the rushed COVID vaccine or not, the way they've rolled it out has actually been fairly sensible.
	It was older people who live in care homes, care home workers, people at age 80 or more, health and social care workers, and then they start rolling it down through the age tiers.
	From 75 to 79, 70 to 74, things like that.
	And that's a sensible way of doing it, because these are the vulnerable groups in society.
	And then any clinically extremely vulnerable people under 70.
	So this has generally actually been fairly competently done, which shocks me, to be honest.
	I didn't really expect it.
	Anyway, Boris has said that he wants the schools to reopen by the 8th of March, and on the 22nd of February we're going to get a roadmap to unlocking, which would be lovely.
	And of course we have to go for the next one, which is an obligatory dunk on Europe.
	We did this last week, but I mean, you love to see it, don't you?
	What's the little rhyme there?
	I assume this is for Valentine's Day.
	Roses are red, violets are blue.
	I'm glad our vaccine rollout isn't controlled by the EU, says someone on the Bruges group.
	But yes, as you can see, the European Union is far, far behind us, and we covered why last week.
	But the interesting thing is that the Conservative government's view on this is absolutely bipolar, right?
	They have been, I mean, I don't want to just say flip-flopping, because it's not flip-flopping.
	That would imply there's a coherent message that changes, right?
	But there just isn't a coherent message, and it is rather frustrating.
	So the first thing we'll talk about, I guess, is the fact that there have been measures to increase House Party fines.
	because of course we can't have people having fun during a lockdown.
	That's haram.
	And so the fine for this went up from like £200 to £800 with a cap of like £6,400 if you go and have fun, obviously.
	So these new rules to give police extra powers to access test and trace data to find out whether you've been going to these House parties was approved in the Parliament by 526 votes to 24 votes.
	That's staggering.
	Only 24 people are like, you know what?
	Maybe the government shouldn't be able to surveil you everywhere you go, no matter what you do.
	I mean, maybe it's just 24 Conservative MPs.
	Obviously, all of the other parties, all of them, are all like, yeah, of course.
	All of the socialists are like, yeah, why not?
	Exactly.
	All of the socialists are like, yes, obviously.
	I mean, you think the Liberal Democrats could polish off the sort of Liberal in their title and be like, hang on a second.
	Should the government have access to track me all the time wherever I go?
	Is that liberal?
	Well, apparently it is to them.
	I'm sorry, I'm always going to be salty about the Liberal Democrats because they're just everything they shouldn't be, and it really annoys me.
	But anyway, so, I mean, one MP is a Brox-born MP, Charles Walker, was one of the rebels and said, what the government is doing now is bordering on the very dangerous, to be perfectly honest.
	It's robbing people of hope, robbing people of something to look forward to, and very, very stupid and very short-sighted.
	I don't hold the Prime Minister responsible, but I do hold the Secretary's State responsible for this, and he used to rein them in very quickly.
	I'm sure he knows more than we do.
	But the big news on this was the question of holidays.
	Should we be booking our summer holidays?
	And, of course, Boris, in one of his COVID press conferences, had said, well, it's probably too soon to say, blah, blah, blah.
	And the problem is Matt Hancock had come out and gone, yeah, I've booked mine to Cornwall.
	It's like, Matt, you...
	Matt...
	I mean, A, that's just stupid messaging, but B, it makes it look like it's one rule for you and one rule for the rest of us.
	And it's not like Matt Hancock is a paragon of popularity anyway, so this really isn't helping his case.
	But Boris said that he is optimistic that people will be able to enjoy a summer holiday.
	Oh, thanks, Boris.
	I'm optimistic that one day I'll be able to go on a summer holiday too.
	Maybe.
	Who knows?
	Fingers crossed.
	Legalize holidays to Cornwall, huh?
	Maybe one day.
	Maybe.
	That's the light at the end of the tunnel.
	I don't know, Cornwall's nice, but...
	It is nice!
	It's not Blackpool.
	Sorry, Blackpool, I'm not trying to dunk on you.
	But anyway, yeah, the point is, he's like, when asked whether the UK could have a happy and free summer, he said he was optimistic as long as the vaccine programme went well.
	Okay, but that's fine.
	So why, if the vaccine program is doing so well, is it not just a guarantee, right?
	Because as some of the Conservative MPs have been pointing out, literally 99% of all the people who are in the danger zone for COVID have actually been vaccinated with their first shot.
	Something like half a million people have also had their second shot, and I'm sure that will carry on fairly quickly as things go on because they've got the army involved and We're forced to vaccinate old people.
	Just suck it, Grandma.
	Just look, the government has said.
	But jokes aside, right?
	The point is, if all of the vulnerable people have been vaccinated and the vaccines have a 95% success rate of protecting people, then why wouldn't we be able to just open up the country tomorrow?
	Who's at risk of death.
	Exactly.
	Literally, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of people.
	And so it seems that we would actually, in fact, now be in a perfectly good position to act from.
	But anyway, I guess the question really now is, did the lockdowns even help?
	It turns out that most people, well, not most people, sorry, a huge proportion of people, up to 40% of the first wave of COVID patients, caught COVID in the hospital.
	And my wife was one of these people.
	When she gave birth to my son recently, she came back with COVID. I was like, great.
	Turns out that if you centralize people all into various small but very heavily trafficked institutions, such as supermarkets and hospitals, then if you have a disease going around in society, well, that's a really, really useful vector of transmission.
	In fact, it might well be even better than having it as a more dispersed network of people who might come into contact.
	It may have been actually more efficient to transmit the disease than not.
	But it was previously thought around one-fifth of the infections have been caught in hospitals, but apparently it could have gone up to four in ten patients, which would have had a substantial impact on deaths.
	And this is just emblematic of the problem of central planning, right?
	People act before they have all of the information because the information doesn't exist until X amount of time has passed and various studies have occurred and the data has come in.
	And so they move, they take an action, and it turns out that actually, maybe that really wasn't the best thing to do.
	But we didn't know.
	And so now, the entire economy has been absolutely trashed for something that didn't actually slow down infections.
	And in fact, we may as well get on to the economy now.
	The Guardian have done a report.
	Not that I like to recommend The Guardian, but they seem to have actually done a good job here.
	And that shows that Britain is, of the G7 countries, we took the worst economic hit.
	So The Guardian chose eight economic indicators, as well as the level of the FTSE 100, to track the impact of coronavirus on jobs and growth, and the measures used to contain it.
	And we, according to the IMF, they estimated we contracted by 10% in 2020, and it is still shrinking, of course, because we're still under lockdown.
	The GDP fell by 2.6% on the month of November, and economists have forecast another 5.7% monthly decline.
	So as the months roll on, the economy just gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
	More severe job losses have so far been prevented by the Treasury's furlough scheme.
	Unemployment has hit the highest level in four years at 5%, with more than 1.7 million people out of work.
	I mean, it could have been worse, but all we've done there is allowed Rishi Sunak to mortgage the future of our children, grandchildren.
	Great-grandchildren going on a time immemorial.
	What is it, 1.2, 1.3 trillion pounds in debt now?
	It's ridiculous.
	There's presumably never going to be paid back.
	But almost a million more are expected to lose their jobs after the furlough is wound down at the end of April.
	So we really have to get on with this.
	And so the solutions have started to be floated.
	And I mean, the most obvious solution being if everyone has been vaccinated, everyone in the vulnerable zone has been vaccinated, then why do we need to prevent people from working?
	But that's simply something we're not going to talk about.
	So then we have to come to other solutions like a one-off wealth tax.
	It's like, okay, this doesn't affect me at all.
	I'm nowhere near the person owning £500,000 or more or a million pounds or more for a couple.
	I'm nowhere near that amount of money or assets.
	So I've got no problem here.
	It's not going to affect me.
	But the thing is, I just don't like the way that they're thinking.
	It's like, oh, we'll just have a one-off wealth tax.
	Hang on, it's on assets.
	Well, it's on assets, presumably, like, income.
	But not income.
	They include assets.
	That's crazy.
	I mean, just think for London for a minute.
	Like, a couple who own a house in London.
	What's a house in London?
	Maybe half a million?
	Yeah.
	They'll charge you a tax on that, so you'll have to pay money on the assets that you own.
	That's crazy.
	They don't care.
	It's not their money.
	I don't even own a house.
	That's just wrong.
	If you bought and paid for that house in London...
	You thought you'd invest in some assets that would hold your wealth and maybe you could sell them later?
	No, you just give a handover.
	Again, I just hate it.
	I just hate the principle of it.
	If they were taxing income, I could maybe see a reason.
	I hate that too, but okay, fine.
	But it's just like, oh, you were successful?
	Gibbs.
	There's government Gibbs now.
	But yeah, so basically for anyone earning 500,000 pounds or a million pounds for a couple, they could end up getting like a 1% wealth tax or things like this.
	But the thing is, and this could raise something like 280 billion pounds apparently for this financial year, which I guess, I mean, sure.
	I mean, I personally would be...
	Asking for donations.
	I would actually, unironically, be soliciting donations rather than being like, right, we're just going to impose this.
	I just googled the debt.
	Apparently it's 2.4 trillion.
	Oh, Jesus.
	Really?
	Okay, that's way worse than I thought.
	But this is the thing, the wealth taxes don't work.
	And this is actually not a controversial or new opinion.
	And, I mean, I guess it's better than it being a bank run like Cyprus did a few years back.
	But Hugo had written an article on losis.com a little while ago that we'll leave linked in the description.
	Because Argentina was going to implement a wealth tax because they obviously need money too.
	And Hugo had done a really good article on this.
	And I'll just read out one quote from it because it's, again, not a controversial issue.
	He says, Wealth tax is notoriously difficult to enforce.
	Despite often inaccurate perceptions, net worth attributed to the most wealthy people simply reflects the market valuations of the company they hold stakes in or lead.
	This market valuation can and does change in response to people's anticipation of developments in the economy, including an incoming wealth tax.
	Furthermore, rapid liquidation of corporate stakes can easily cause their price to fall, invalidating previous wealth tax-based calculations.
	However, if the wealth tax is restricted to a limited portfolio of assets, it will cause wealthy people to divest en masse from these assets in favour of those where value is better preserved, as you might expect.
	The pitfalls of wealth taxation are well documented and understood even by governments, Since 1990, the number of OECD countries with such taxes on the books has decreased from 12 to 4, according to one 2018 report.
	So, governments realise that wealth taxes are A, punitive, and B, do not have the returns that the people who impose them think they're going to, and so they're falling out of favour.
	I mean, this is something Bernie Sanders has been promoting for eons now.
	He's just like, well, we'll just tax all the millionaires and billionaires a one-time thing and then they'll pay for everything.
	Yeah, and why would you take economic advice from Bernie Sanders?
	Exactly.
	Rishi.
	Like, the Conservative Party leader.
	Well, Chancellor.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, Chancellor of the Economy.
	But yeah, and so it's like, okay, well, the only options we've got are bad ones, when what we could actually do, given by their own, like, I don't want to say propaganda, but I can't think of a better word for it, is actually, surely, logically, safely open up now.
	Seems to be the case.
	Weatherspoons is calling to reopen, so doubtless their stock's going to go up, Callum.
	You must be thrilled.
	I'm going to have to recuse myself, aren't I? Yeah, recuse yourself.
	Yeah, I'm going to recuse myself.
	You've got like five stocks in Weatherspoons.
	I invested in Weatherspoons.
	So what did you get, like £30 or something?
	Yes.
	That's going to be £70 by the end of this.
	You're doing great.
	But no, Tim Martin doing the Lord's work here, warning that the pub industry was on its knees and needed to reopen to save jobs.
	Obviously, everything is falling apart because no one's allowed to open.
	Martin suggested that the various lockdown measures imposed on pubs could spell disaster for public finances because this generates 764 million dollars in tax, pounds even, dollars.
	Sorry, 764 million burgers in taxes.
	And this just goes to show what a huge chunk of the economy is being shut down.
	There's been some breaking news just before we started the podcast as well.
	I haven't, what?
	Someone in the chat just said popcorn.
	Popcorn, yeah.
	Yeah, right?
	Where is it?
	Like, come on.
	No, but that's, you know, weather experience is popcorn.
	Yeah, but like, why can't there be a sort of British version of Bitcoin?
	It's like fish and chips coin.
	Come on.
	What's going on?
	Yeah.
	Britcoin.
	Britcoin, yeah.
	We're missing a trick here.
	We're allowing the rest of the world to get ahead of us, lads.
	But yeah, so some breaking news on this was the discussion about a vaccine passport, which I haven't had time to look into properly because this is very, very, literally just today, like this morning, these things were published.
	Matt Hancock had confirmed that the government was indeed working on a vaccine passport.
	This being for people leaving the UK, not for internal UK travel.
	Thank God for small mercies, I guess?
	I mean, he'd only published a website about it with a list of how it's going to work and the requirements.
	But we finally have official confirmation.
	He says it will be important for people from the UK to be able to show whether or not they've been vaccinated.
	We want Brits to be able to travel to those countries and therefore enable Brits to be able to demonstrate their vaccine status.
	So a sort of vaccine certification is something we are talking to our international counterparts about.
	And there are people who are arguing that the right way to have safe global travel again, because it's obviously very restricted at the moment.
	It's like, great, I do not want a vaccine passport.
	And I guess I just won't be able to go to certain countries because...
	I don't feel the need to take any of these vaccines.
	And the last thing on the vaccine subject that was worth talking about is Boris Johnson's rhetoric on reversing the lockdown.
	So on the 22nd of this month, he's going to be giving us a roadmap to ending these lockdowns.
	I mean, it could just be you're allowed to open your business now, lads.
	Could be it.
	Just, that's it.
	Go back to work.
	It's fine.
	Everyone important has been vaccinated.
	But no.
	He says, Such as proof of immunity to allow entry to pubs, concert halls and sports arenas.
	I mean, good.
	You know, I like ruling out vaccine passports for domestic use.
	That's a start.
	And I like the term irreversible because that implies there can't be any more lockdowns.
	So that sounds good.
	But it's so far just rhetoric and no action.
	That's something you also said before.
	Do you remember the two weeks to flatten the curve, Carl?
	Yeah, I do.
	It's a long two weeks.
	It's been a very long two weeks.
	Depressingly long.
	I had to include it just because it was pertinent to the subject, but I can't say that I'm especially optimistic when it comes to this.
	I think they're going to have us in cubicles, eating the bugs, drinking the soy, and working forever.
	No, not working at all, just sat on UBI, innovating and being kumas until the end of time, and I kind of hate it.
	Did you see Talk Radio has the debate between Dan Hodges and Peter Hitchens about lockdowns?
	I haven't seen it, no.
	You should.
	It's actually worth watching.
	And Peter Hitchens comes out of it on top, I think, because the other guy just couldn't even engage with the points about proportionate and freedoms.
	Where do I know the name Dan Hodges from?
	I know the name.
	He works at the Mail on Sunday, but he's quite a leftist.
	So that's his viewpoint.
	I think he's very Labour.
	Anyway, one of the points, though, was Dan Hodges was trying to embarrass Peter, being like, oh, you're just a conspiracy theorist for saying that they want to take away your freedom.
	Because he was like, well, what does Boris want to do?
	Vaccine passport?
	No, no, it wasn't about that.
	It was about all your concerns about the government taking away freedoms.
	What do you think they want to use it for?
	Why would they think Boris is plotting to take away people's freedoms?
	To do what exactly, Peter?
	Go to the pub?
	No, but it's like, you absolute moron.
	Like, control in and of itself for authoritarians is a good thing.
	They don't really care what for yet until they need a reason to exercise it.
	Any government prefers to have more control than less because more control makes their job easier.
	And so why wouldn't they?
	But I mean, like, oh, you can take away the freedoms.
	Dude, they've taken away all our freedoms.
	Don't have any freedoms.
	What are you talking about?
	We're not free to do anything.
	Can't even run a business now.
	Like, what the hell?
	It's terrible.
	We can't even go for two walks.
	Yeah.
	Boris Johnson, in one of these press conferences the other day, was forced to say, going on holiday is illegal.
	That is really the kind of country that Boris Johnson wishes that he was leading, right?
	Going on holiday is illegal.
	You're going to get fined if you go to a house party, up to £6,400, because for the good of everyone else.
	And there was one question where it was like, so could two people sit next to each other on a park bench?
	And he was like, well, not at the moment.
	It's like, whoa, whoa, okay, right, yeah.
	Did you see the couple that got caught dogging?
	No.
	They drove their car to the middle of bloody nowhere and started having fun.
	And the police turned up and arrested them and charged them for it.
	Who were they infecting?
	The COVID stars are here to make sure that you're not out dogging, okay?
	It's time on a British tradition.
	It is, actually.
	But it's actually one of the worst things about this is the way the police have acted.
	Because they're not perfect at the best of times.
	But at these times, they seem to have taken this as a golden ticket to do whatever they want.
	And they know there's going to be no repercussions.
	Yeah, there have been some very awful viral videos of them arresting pensioners for their own good.
	You just look like thugs.
	Yes.
	Unbearable.
	I'm someone who, you know, I'm pretty lenient on police's actions and try to see the best in what they're dealing with.
	But no, there's no defending some of this.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, so I mean, speaking of the popo, let's head over to Minneapolis.
	And there was no particular reason for me doing this other than I saw a bunch of memes about this going around.
	And I thought I'd fact check the memes, basically.
	And it turns out the memes were actually true, right?
	So what's happened?
	So this is obviously referring to the death of George Floyd, Saint George Floyd, I believe is the way that YouTube is going to make us refer to him, who was brutally murdered by a white supremacist in Minneapolis in June 2020.
	And obviously, there were huge riots, segments of the city got burned down, people died because of this.
	And so the very progressive, very woke Minneapolis city council moved to defund the police and establish a, quote, holistic public safety force.
	Just sounds like police with extra steps, really, doesn't it?
	Was this the social workers thing?
	Yeah.
	Where they wanted to fire all the police and then bring in social workers to deal with the terrorist attacks.
	And they unanimously, in June, voted to approve a proposal to eliminate the city's police department, marking the first step towards establishing a new holistic approach to public safety.
	Which worked great.
	So this obviously comes on the heels of the George Floyd death.
	And I love some of the activists.
	I love some of the way the activists chime in.
	And they obviously get some radical Twitter person to come in and give us their opinion.
	And this is brilliant, right?
	Young black and brown people in the streets made this happen.
	Black organizers demanding abolition for generations made this happen, says Miski Noor of Black Visions Collective.
	Now on this new terrain, Minneapolis can start practicing a new vision of safety that defends black lives.
	I'm reading this out verbatim because I want everyone to pin this on the wall.
	This is something they claim.
	We are the ones who deserve credit for abolishing the police.
	Thank you very much.
	If it wasn't for the black and brown people in the streets and the activists demanding this, black organizers demanding this, all of the deaths that came from the defunded police wouldn't have been possible.
	They want you to know they're proud of this.
	We are closer than any time in history and anywhere else in the country to a safe, thriving city without police.
	In what universe does that make any sense?
	So, under the proposed plan, the city would eliminate the existing police department and replace it with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritising a holistic, public health-oriented approach.
	So, it's like the hippies have taken over the police, right?
	Like...
	Actually, it kind of sounds like Ancapistan Public Safety Services Limited.
	It kind of does, doesn't it, right?
	But it would be overseen by a director, nominated by the mayor, approved by the city council, and only individuals with non-law enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and or restorative justice approaches, would be eligible to hold the post.
	So nobody who was in any way trained to be able to act like a police officer.
	Because, you know, the people who are best at handling police officer duties under pressure, at risk of your life while holding a gun, the best person to do that is someone who's completely non-trained.
	Bureaucrats.
	That's what I want.
	When there's gunshots going off and hell's going down, breaking loose, what I want is someone with a clipboard there, or presumably a tablet that But even if we want to take them at their best here, they're saying...
	Still ridiculous.
	The argument is that a police officer is bad at handling black and brown communities because they'd be more likely to kill them.
	Okay, well, if you take a complete rando off the street who's completely untrained in anything, give them a gun and put them in the same position...
	I'm sure they'll do fine.
	You think they're better?
	I'm sure they'll do great.
	You don't want someone trained as a police officer to be a cop, man.
	Trust me.
	I want Karen.
	I want Karen who has her strong opinions.
	Racist Karen as well.
	That's the thing.
	These are very racial organisations.
	But, I mean, this went downhill very, very swiftly, right?
	So within one month, 200 police officers had left Minneapolis Police Force because they were like, oh, well, we feel persecuted.
	You do.
	Yeah, which, understandably, right?
	And that was around 20% of the time.
	Because they only had 850 police officers anyway.
	So 200 of them leaving, like, in a month, that's pretty bad.
	I mean, one officer said, it's almost like a nuclear bomb hit the city, and the people who didn't perish are standing around.
	I'm surprised that we've still got cops showing up to work, to be honest.
	So, two months after that, it was reported that there was a massive crime surge going on in Minneapolis.
	I mean, like, wow!
	Who could have imagined this?
	What is the causal reason for this crime surge?
	It's like we threw our police department under the bus, said we were going to disband them and defund them.
	They all quit in protest, and now there's no one to police the streets.
	And now there's crime rocketing out of control, right?
	So, Council Members Press, Police Chief Medaria Arondindondo...
	Probably pronounce that wrong.
	About the uptick in crimes that included daylight carjackings, robberies, assaults, shootings, and street racings.
	Residents are asking, where are the police?
	Said council member Jamal Osman.
	Well, Jamal, we know where they are.
	They're at home saying, not my problem, sorry.
	Jamal, how did you vote on the council?
	Well, incidentally, Jamal himself probably is a Democrat, yes.
	It's very much a Democrat stronghold.
	It's Ilhan Omar's district.
	I assume as well these robberies, assaults, shootings and street racings are all taking place.
	The Ku Klux Klan are doing this, presumably.
	Because they kept saying the far right were infiltrating the protests.
	They have travelled to Ilhan Omar's constituency, which is colloquially known as Little Mogadishu, in order to enact racist violence, I presume.
	That's not included in any of the reports, but we can just make that assumption.
	But Jamal says, that is the only public safety option they have at the moment, MPD. They rely on MPD and they're saying they are nowhere to be seen.
	Council President Lisa Bender accused police of intentionally not enforcing laws or making arrests.
	Yeah.
	You voted to get rid of them.
	Of course they intentionally decided to not enforce the laws.
	No, no, because it's like, the police are not enforcing the law.
	What police?
	Yeah.
	A fifth of them are gone.
	There's no police officer who's going to enforce the law, you idiot.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But they're right, yeah, they're not enforcing the laws.
	But the crime data showed a rise in assaults, robberies, and homicides.
	So it was property crimes, arson, etc, etc.
	And more people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than those slain in the previous year in its entirety.
	So it's like, right, good trend.
	Nice upward trend of murders.
	But, I mean, it's really bad stuff as well.
	We're flipping about it because of our distance to it.
	But if you were getting close to it, you'd realise just how horrific this actually was.
	But who didn't see this coming, you know?
	Exactly.
	Who didn't see this coming and exactly why this should be pinned on the Black Lives Matter activists who demanded it after they went and burned down and looted and robbed and did a bunch of stuff.
	For example, this is just reports from locals of how bad this is.
	Scores of victims have included a seven-year-old boy wounded in a drive-by shooting, a woman who took a bullet that came through a living room wall while she was watching TV with her family, and a 17-year-old girl who shot in the head and killed.
	One longtime community activist who cannot recall another time when things were this bad, not even when the city was branded Murderapolis during a spike in violence in the mid-1990s, says, if you want to talk about pandemics, we're dealing with a pandemic of violence.
	We're under siege.
	You wake up and go to bed in fear because you just don't know what's going to happen next, and our city failed to protect us.
	Homicides are up 50% with nearly 75 people killed across the city.
	More than 500 people have been shot, which is the highest number in more than a decade, twice as many as in 2019, and there are more than 4,600 violent crimes, which is carjackings, robberies, and various other muggings.
	Good news.
	Good news for Minneapolis.
	Black Lives Matter.
	Real success story there, right?
	So, that was by September 16th.
	Come the 28th of September, so just later that month, the New York Times reported that actually a bunch of the council members were saying, maybe we want to redo on defunding the police.
	Maybe we want to rethink this, because actually the changes happened very quickly and the results came back very, very swiftly.
	Council member Philippe Cunningham reported that the pledge itself was up for interpretation.
	The defund the police pledge.
	Yes, yes.
	And following the pledge being made, the majority of the council members had interpreted the language differently.
	Council President Lisa Bender said, I think our pledge created confusion in the community and in our wards.
	Yes.
	No, I don't think it did.
	No, I think it was crystal clear.
	You signaled to the criminals that you weren't going to arrest them, that you were going to target the police for trying to target them, and the criminals were like, thank you, sir!
	You know, message received!
	You know, and I'll get out there and just start shooting them, I guess.
	So yeah, it's just unbelievable, right?
	But the thing is, did they ask the residents of Minneapolis whether they'd like the police to be defunded?
	Because the answer is obviously no, they damn well didn't, right?
	Um...
	According to the poll from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a majority of residents, including 50% of the black community, opposed reducing the size of the police department.
	That's not like, you know, including ones who wish to increase it.
	That's just people who oppose reducing it.
	So most black people do not want to abolish the police.
	And that's because, presumably, they have to live in these neighbourhoods that have suddenly had massive, sky-rotting crime.
	But anyway...
	The wrap-up of the story and why it's come up now is because on 13th of February, we found out from ABC News that, in fact, millions and millions of dollars are going to be spent actually recruiting new police officers after this catastrophic failed Black Lives Matter experiment got a bunch of people killed, like dozens and dozens of people killed, actually.
	And it's clear that major cities must have policing.
	It's just...
	Writing's on the wall.
	Jesus Christ.
	We've tried it.
	Fellas, after these million dollar exercises and lots of people killed, we come to the conclusion, we need a police force.
	Yes.
	Jesus Christ.
	Any sensible person who could make logical inferences already knew this, but for some reason, Black Lives Matter didn't know this.
	Slows kids in the classroom.
	Absolutely.
	And now that we've run the experiment, and it killed way more people than should have died, we now have returned to the point where they're like, okay, we are going to...
	Refund the police.
	Refund the police, yes.
	They were down 638 officers.
	So, more than 200 officers had quit.
	And an unprecedented number of officers went on extended medical leave and basically just clocked off.
	So, this is...
	Being beaten up at a lot of these protests as well.
	Yes.
	Sorry, peaceful protests.
	Yeah.
	And the constant demonization of the police online probably hasn't helped this at all.
	Because the police, obviously...
	I'm not someone who's like, oh, police have done nothing wrong, back the blue, and all this sort of stuff.
	I'm not one of those people, right?
	No.
	I just recognize that, A, being a police officer should be a position of honor.
	There should be some honor in it.
	And that helps put the police officer in a mindset where he feels that he is held to a higher standard.
	Because they have to be held to a higher standard.
	But that doesn't mean that police officers are bad or anything like that.
	That actually means that they serve a necessary and good role in society.
	But they exercise power on behalf of the state.
	And therefore, they should be subject to excess scrutiny because of the position they have.
	Which makes sense.
	But anyway, the city council, so less than a year on, unanimously, and remember they unanimously voted to defund the police and get rid of the police department.
	Well, now they've unanimously voted to approve additional funding that the police have requested.
	So all of them...
	Six million dollars.
	Yep, six million dollars.
	That's not even very much, to be honest.
	The budget for the police department was 200 million.
	No, sorry, 1.3 billion.
	That's just for recruitment.
	That's just for the recruitment process.
	Because they've lost more than a fifth of the staff there.
	They have.
	If this was any other industry, you would call this industrial action, this is a strike.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	You know, 20-odd percent of your staff just leaving outright.
	They can't do that because they're police, so they just quit instead.
	More importantly, the people who are running these organizations would probably get fired.
	Like, you'd be like, what the hell have you done to get, like, you know, a fifth of the staff to quit?
	You know, what have you done?
	Whatever you've done, you're fired because you've messed up, right?
	But yeah, they unanimously voted to approve the funding, and yeah, so that's basically the end of the story.
	I did want to come back on something you said though.
	So you said, what was it?
	What was the percentage that said they didn't want the police defunded?
	50% of black people, but they didn't give a percentage of just overall, but it was majority.
	Majority did not want defunding and 50% of blacks didn't want defunding.
	A percentage of those would have been increased funding as well.
	Because there's the thing.
	It's complex in the sense that, of course, you've got sympathy for the people.
	Because anyone could have seen this coming, but if you've owned a house there, your life's there, you ain't moving anywhere.
	You're just having this thrust on you.
	Fair enough.
	Oh, a bunch of crazy activists in the street are screeching about black people and want to get rid of the cops.
	No thank you.
	But just, you know, if you're not aware, like, these people are going to have a bad time.
	Let's put it that way.
	Yeah.
	And you've got sympathy for them.
	But at the same time, I looked at the voting record of this district, and this voting record is very, very, very Democrat.
	Insufferably Democrat.
	Insufferably Democrat.
	Like, 25% Republican, 65% Democrat on any given election, as high as 80% Democrat.
	And that's, it's like, I did this interview with Andy Ngo in here talking about Portland.
	Yeah.
	side of the vote, they would have actually, if they just ran one candidate, the Antifa side would have won that mayoral election in Portland.
	That's how bad the population are there.
	They're voting for this.
	So I have to look at Minneapolis as well and think, if you guys are voting 60-80% Democrat, you get what you deserve.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, you find out the hard way that actually...
	No individual deserves this, obviously, but as a collective...
	Yeah, I mean, if you guys are just going to keep voting for the people who are going to end up getting more people in the street killed, then what can anyone do?
	But I mean, at least...
	Go on, blame Trump.
	Go for it.
	Yeah, orange man, bad, somehow.
	He calls these people to die over the last few months.
	I guess he must have done.
	I mean, Trump's got nothing to do with George Floyd or Derek Chauvin, who wasn't charged anyway, was he?
	He's always been a Democrat stronghold.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's Democrats doing this to black people, I guess you could say, if that's how you frame these things in racial terms.
	But it's just that they found out the hard way that, look, this is just not going to fly.
	You're not going to have a city, some sort of utopian city that doesn't have police.
	It's just not going to happen.
	Right, so if you want to send us comments for us to read out and analyse on the podcast, there are a few methods of doing it.
	The first one is by signing up to Logistics.com on our gold tier and sending us a video message, which I believe we have a few of.
	And the alternative is when you're a member of Logistics.com...
	For £5 a month or more.
	You can also leave comments on the webpage that we stream to.
	So we've taken a bunch of those as well.
	So I guess we'll go for the first video comment.
	Maybe?
	Alright, let's just snap back from the world of politics.
	You know, AOC and her fantastical adventures of magic.
	We gotta go to the cheese question.
	Spray-canned cheese is not cheese.
	It's Norwegian.
	It's gouda with tomato and olives.
	It's smoked cheese with ham.
	Regular smoked cheese from Dutchland.
	Muzdana.
	And of course, feta cheese from Greece.
	These are cheeses, my lads and ladies.
	This is cheese.
	Even white-mold and blue-mold cheese.
	Now, that's cheese.
	Not that spray-can bullcrap.
	Get your cheese facts in order.
	Don't be heretical.
	I mean, correct.
	I'm going to mark him down because no cheddar, obviously.
	But a good 7 out of 10.
	I endorse the message?
	Yeah, I endorse that message.
	Yep.
	Let's go for the next one.
	I've been trying to wrap my head around the idea that more than 70 million people legitimately voted for Joe Biden.
	As a result, I've come up with what I call the anti-leader hypothesis.
	Both Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have a complete absence of leadership qualities, yet they are clearly popular with voters who are dependent on the cathedral.
	If you are dependent on the cathedral, you don't want to risk elevating someone who could disrupt the cathedral.
	As anti-leaders, They signal they are empty suits, puppets, avatars of the will of the cathedral, and therefore safe.
	What do you think?
	Are Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau anti-leaders?
	I think that's quite a good term, actually.
	It's a very interesting term, yeah.
	Yeah, anti-leaders is pretty damn good.
	Keir Starmer comes to mind.
	He does, doesn't he?
	In fact, it's like the empty suit is an anti-leader.
	That's very interesting, because it is protecting elite interests.
	And being essentially like an interest group for, well...
	Whoever wants to buy you.
	Yeah, China.
	Make me Prime Minister and I'll do what you want.
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, that's a good term.
	I like it.
	Anti-leader.
	It's very good.
	Have we got another one?
	How many...
	Okay.
	Okay, go on.
	Hello.
	I have recently finished the book and I was wondering if you were willing to give it a shout out.
	Or possibly even go through it in your book club because I would like to know whether my reputation of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is a philosophical masterpiece or a loaded s*** post.
	I've not heard of his book or anything like that.
	Dialectic of Enlightenment is actually a very interesting book that we'll go through on the book club at some point.
	It won't be for a little while, but it's really useful, actually.
	One of the things that I think the right wing forgets is that the Frankfurt School I mean, it's used as a kind of boogeyman, right?
	And so it's not well read, it's not well understood, and in many ways, I think a lot of the things they were doing were kind of inevitable, but one of the things about Dialect of the Enlightenment is the value of magical thinking, which I won't get into now, but it's actually something that has some strength in it, and It's worth kind of reclaiming some of that.
	But I will definitely talk about that in a book club.
	I haven't seen his dialectic of postmodernism book or anything like that, so I don't know anything about that.
	But it is something we'll talk about.
	Right, let's go for another video comment since we have them.
	Hey guys, hope you had a good Valentine's Day.
	As a father, I've had to have a lot of conversations with men about fatherhood and reassuring them mainly.
	And this has happened so many times that I've come to question it.
	So what is your reassuring advice to men in the situation of being a father?
	You have a lovely day.
	I guess I've got to answer that one, don't I? Yeah, this isn't all for me.
	Reassuring advice.
	It's...
	I mean, well, the first thing's first.
	It's a huge responsibility, and that is intimidating, right?
	Because you think, oh my god.
	But then you realise, hang on, hang on, everyone's in the same boat here, right?
	Because, like, there's...
	There's...
	How to describe it.
	So...
	It gives you the opportunity to do something that is actually unique and special.
	It's not perfect, but it is amazing, and it makes you feel like you have done something with your life.
	So if you're just working in a regular job, you will definitely feel like you are contributing to the world by having kids and being a father.
	And it gives you a different perspective on that.
	It really does.
	I can actually now understand the won't someone think of the children arguments, because I never used to be able to understand them.
	But I tell you what, man, I'm starting to, right, one of the things that I've been, like, going at my wife for recently, actually, because you'll just let them watch TV, you know, she doesn't really pay attention to us, cartoons on TV. But don't let your kids watch cartoons made by millennials, because they're awful.
	They're Awful.
	Millennials are the worst content creators in history, right?
	Because everything they do is totally ironic.
	And they are, aren't I so clever?
	I've got my postmodern education.
	I've got my degree in English literature.
	I'm so clever.
	It's like, yeah, you might, but my five-year-old son isn't.
	My five-year-old son does not need everything you do layered in irony, a subtle attempt to undermine horror.
	All of the values that you're actually having to put forward in these things.
	I would much rather your kids watch something sincere from the 80s or 90s.
	So it's before all this post-modern stuff starts seeping in.
	Because it's all meta-commentary.
	Everything is...
	And it's insufferable.
	My son loves Teen Titans.
	But everything in it is totally insincere.
	They have conversations about them doing something and being involved in something.
	And it's like...
	Why can't they just, like, live in it?
	You know, do it, you know?
	Don't give me, like, a sort of fourth-wall-breaking, sort of snarky comment.
	Because, A, my kid doesn't get that anyway, and I don't really want them thinking that way.
	Because, again, it's taking yourself out of the moment, and taking yourself out of the story, and, like, you know, revealing the thing.
	And it's like, no, you're missing the point.
	Like, the point is for them to want to be the superhero, to be, to do the heroic thing, to be the paragon of virtue, not to be a sarcastic commentary on paragons of virtue, right?
	And all millennial stuff seems to be this way.
	And I don't think it's the millennials' fault.
	It's not a character judgment.
	It's the people that raised them did this to them.
	But don't let your kids be raised on millennial cartoons.
	They're absolutely awful.
	And I think it's fundamentally not worth the time at all.
	I've probably gone off a bit of a tangent there.
	But yeah, so these are the sort of things I find myself paying attention to now.
	And yeah, sorry millennials, you suck for cartoons.
	The only thing I was thinking in my head then, what was that cartoon show?
	I think it's Big Mouth?
	Something you wouldn't show to a kid, obviously.
	But even watching it as an adult, I was just like, this is cancer.
	It's awful.
	Watch good, wholesome 80s and 90s cartoons, because A, they're full of gender stereotypes.
	Brilliant.
	Love it.
	B, they're totally sincere.
	There's nothing ironic about them.
	They genuinely mean the messages they're putting across.
	And the thing is, you go, oh, well, that's sad or lame or whatever.
	It's like, yeah, to you, you know, a university-educated, you know, balding 35-year-old millennial.
	Yeah, this is all like stuff you hate, but your five-year-old child loves it.
	They do not see it as being lame or, you know, not ironic enough or anything like that.
	They want sincerity.
	They want it.
	And it's good for them.
	It's good for them to have sincerity.
	It's good for them to have gender roles too.
	So we've got some comments on the site, do we?
	I don't know.
	You haven't been looking, right, okay.
	I was just thinking about old cartoons that are problematic.
	Have you ever seen the, what is it, Street Racer, whatever?
	Like the OK thing?
	Oh, doubtless.
	I love that.
	It's just like when the old stuff that would have never been considered problematic is now problematic.
	Oh, He-Man.
	He-Man is the most gendered thing in the world.
	Like, literally, He-Man.
	What is it?
	It's a giant buff guy who's out saving the world.
	And it's like, that's awesome, actually.
	What's wrong with that?
	Obviously, it's not good if you, like, live in California or something.
	But we've got a comment here that apparently Parler's coming back.
	Is that something you've put on, Vicky?
	The page has a message that has technical difficulties, but, like, that has something now compared to having nothing.
	Yeah, but that's been on for a while.
	I don't know.
	John's saying he's back, too.
	There you go.
	Oh, he's actually back.
	Right, okay, okay.
	I'll post something, see if it works.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Let's try not to DDoS them.
	Right, okay.
	Yeah.
	In the meantime, you can use Gab.
	I'm using Gab.
	It's running really smoothly.
	Andrew Tom is a cool guy.
	Yeah, he's doing a good job.
	Genuinely quite impressed.
	I wonder if he'll get rid of his embargo on non-Christians.
	Yeah, I mean, as filthy pagans, Andrew, come and give us an interview.
	Make an exception for us, come on.
	Robert Evans, if you had to pick a current sitting British MP to be Prime Minister, who would you pick and why?
	Philip Davis, if I can do it.
	I don't trust Jacob Rees-Mogg.
	I know a lot of people are going to be thinking that.
	I met Philip Davis at the ICMI a couple of years ago.
	Really nice guy.
	Solid.
	On any issue, he is completely solid.
	Jacob Rees-Mogg, for all the praise he gets, and rightfully on a lot of things, I just don't trust him with the issue of free speech.
	Too much of a savvy political actor.
	Yeah, more versed in that than most MPs.
	I want a complete idiot who just wants to do the right thing.
	Yeah, I also did sponsor the video, so we did pay him money for that, of course, because it was a sponsorship, and that's what a sponsorship is.
	And he did say, you know, this video is sponsored by...
	But no, I really...
	I like Mr.
	Obvious, so I've been watching his content for ages.
	We're thinking it seems like a smart way to do sponsorships instead of paying Google money to do things or whatever.
	I'd rather give the money to people I like.
	This is the thing.
	We'll doubtless have other YouTube...
	I mean, if you're a YouTuber and you wish to have us sponsor you, you can email us at contactatlotuses.com.
	No promises, but that's the best way to get in contact.
	If we're going to do advertising at all, seems like the best way to do it.
	Exactly.
	I'd rather advertise to people I like and want to support.
	And I think that more people should do that.
	Edward of Woodstock says, Yeah, it really will.
	That's the whole point of stoicism, is to give you the sort of emotional tools to be able to deal with the difficulties of the world.
	And Aurelius, even though he's a Roman emperor, gives advice that the most humble man can use in their daily life.
	And it's really interesting how a guy who got to the very top and apex of civilization ends up with a worldview that's Exactly useful for the guy right at the bottom.
	It's really interesting.
	So you're going to have a load of midwits who are like in the middle.
	Where was he born?
	Like 160 AD or something.
	No, no, no.
	In the class strata.
	Oh, high class.
	He was born in high class.
	He was, you know, bound to be somewhere around the very top of the Roman Empire for his whole life.
	And that's what makes it all the more remarkable that he is such a humble man and he actually thinks about the regular concerns of regular people and how they can deal with their lives.
	Really interesting.
	And I'm so glad that I've got a platform that I can actually promote this kind of stuff on.
	Because, you know, who else is interested in hearing about it, right?
	Harlot of Babylon says, Hey Carl, I finally found the time to chip in some Britbong bucks after following your channel since 2014.
	Well, thank you.
	It's been quite a few years since then, so I have a question to ask you.
	What do you see as being your narrative arc in your YouTube career journey so far?
	Thank you for your hard work and please keep it coming.
	I don't know.
	Failed Icarus?
	I didn't fly quite high enough to the sun to get completely burned, but I definitely got a bit of scorching from it.
	I don't know.
	I guess that's about it.
	Try to be Daedalus is the lesson, because Daedalus escaped.
	Chris Simone says, if we just let the Democrats keep going as it is, do you think they will self-destruct?
	They seem to be their own worst enemies.
	I love the response from him being acquitted again, which is I saw a bunch of Democrats who were like freaking out about the whole thing with him threatening to come back as well.
	So you seem like a bunch of people who are really, really comfortable about being in charge, aren't you?
	Like you're very confident about your position, aren't you?
	I mean, the thousands and thousands of troops that are still in the Capitol.
	Yeah, that's something I can't because it didn't quite fit.
	But apparently Biden has said that the National Guard will remain for the entirety of 2021.
	We had some insider info from our roving reporter on the ground in the capital who said apparently they've been doing practice war games against demonstrators and stuff like this.
	And it's like, okay, that's weird.
	It's like...
	But what demonstrated?
	Like, where are they?
	Yeah.
	The only story I did see that came out over the last week was that there was an attempt on Biden's life in October, and then when you read into the story...
	Yeah, yeah.
	When you read into the story, it was framed as like, oh my god, people are trying to kill Biden.
	Was it his dog that broke his leg?
	No, no.
	It was this guy who brought a gun and didn't want to kill him, but he told me he was a Bernie bro, and he thought that Bernie had been done a dirty.
	Well, he had, I mean...
	But it's the whole thing of like, really, okay, so...
	This kind of confirms that the threats against Biden's life actually do seem to be coming from the far left.
	Well, I mean, threats on a lot of people's lives seem to be coming from the far left.
	But yeah, I think they are their own worst enemies.
	And basically, if the Republicans just do the right thing, I think they will self-destruct.
	Because this kind of...
	You can manage a kind of empire of lies for a while, right?
	But if it's not connected to decency and truth, then I think that it will eventually implode because of its own flaws.
	And I think that's what's going to happen.
	Derek Pratt.
	Across Europe and parts of North America, paganism is becoming the fastest growing religion.
	What, in your opinion, do you think could be a reason behind this?
	And would you consider perhaps doing a deep dive into it if you have the time?
	What do you think?
	I don't have any views on paganism except from my little corner.
	For people who don't know, I was born in a town near Stonehenge, so there's unironic druids.
	One of our candidates for member of parliament is literally called Uther Arthur Pendragon, and he's an unironic druid who wants to declare a holy site.
	To be honest, my interactions with them, when you go there, sometimes there's one of them who's trying to preach to you, and you're just like, what are you talking about, mate?
	They're genuinely serious.
	I'm just like, oh god.
	They're fine.
	Or at least the pagans seem to be fine where I am.
	But I don't want to join them.
	I don't want to promote them.
	They're just strange.
	I'm fine with this kind of eccentricity.
	I don't think it's going to catch on.
	I don't think it should be persecuted or anything.
	I don't really have any particular views on it.
	Like, when people say things like fastest growing religion, that's because it's a very small thing.
	And that's the only sort of really positive thing.
	We had 10 members and now we've got 20 members.
	Yeah, 100% growth.
	Fastest growing religion.
	Yeah.
	And I would quite like to see, I mean, the Consolive MP there, John Glenn, and not to get on a tangent about, you know, just having a little bit.
	If Arthur Pendragon did become the MP, my God, that would be hilarious.
	It would be narratively satisfying, wouldn't it?
	The King Arthur walking into the parliament dressed in robes with a fucking staff.
	Exactly.
	Fuzzy Logic says, hail the true emperor, Donald the Unimpeachable.
	Yeah, I mean, you literally can call him unimpeachable at this point, which is a hell of a title.
	Every other president, they've either had one impeachment put against them and they've been acquitted or resigned, like Nixon.
	Trump's the only one that I could see on the record who's had two attempts.
	Survived both of them and is going to come back.
	Glowing orange face.
	It will return.
	Zen Chan says, I know you're not a legal expert, but as you say, if they did that kind of doctoring in a regular case, they'd likely lose their law license.
	How are they able to just do that in a federal court?
	What are the consequences?
	One of the things that I've noticed from people that I know who have been ranting and raving on Facebook about this, because they're on the internet way too much, is that they know that this was a purely political stunt.
	And so it's like, well then...
	Who cares?
	Why do it?
	I mean, it's literally just say, we impeached him.
	It's like, what does that mean?
	That means we don't like him.
	Yeah, we know.
	Like, no one was under the illusions that the Democrats had secret affection for Trump or something.
	You know, everyone knew.
	Like, we read that Vox article, and there was a senior correspondent at Vox.
	Like, he writes all their politics stuff.
	I was just reading about, like, he was like, yeah, we've got no case, but we think it's good to just show that we don't like him.
	I was like, that doesn't make you look good.
	It's not news.
	But also him being like, if we're hyper-partisan and destroying the system like this, this helps the Democrats?
	It's like, you're living in a parallel world, man.
	This does not make you look good.
	Yeah, but they're for revolution, right?
	And so if they can destroy the system, that necessitates revolution.
	Perhaps.
	So if that's what they're for, then, you know...
	Bernie Sanders wrote a book called Our Revolution.
	They've been using the word constantly.
	We should take them at the word.
	They're a bunch of revolutionaries.
	Who's the real insurrectionist here?
	Just out of interest.
	Anyway...
	Alistair Crowley, weight 40% from hospitals and previously mentioned 50% from care homes really makes you think.
	Yeah, I think the care homes and hospitals are actually overlapping in the data.
	But yeah, it's a massive amount from the centralization of where things are.
	So some people calling King Arthur the king.
	I should probably message him and be like, do you want to do an interview?
	Be funny.
	I mean, I'm interested in hearing what he's got to say.
	Maybe he's got some interesting stuff.
	Druid rights.
	Yeah.
	He doesn't make a bad argument for Stonehenge though, so you have to pay if you want to park for Stonehenge, and then they built this visitor centre and it's a whole mess.
	Yeah, it's not far from it.
	You have to pay to go there and it's too much.
	Anyway, so he argues that, no, well for us, this is a religious site, just like a church, therefore we should not have to pay for this.
	The state is profiting off of our building here.
	We ought to be able to go for free at least.
	Tax exempt status, that's what he wants.
	Because I was a resident of Amesbury, and the town, everyone there, thanks to a loophole, actually got free...
	I can go there for free.
	Oh, right, okay.
	But the druids can't.
	A druid who lives somewhere else can't, so...
	Oof.
	It's not fair.
	Yeah.
	Henry Ashman.
	In terms of the UK restricting freedoms, it is currently illegal for me to engage in sexual acts if I don't live with my partner, which by extension makes it currently illegal for me to have children.
	The government are deciding who is and isn't allowed to breed, and people have the temerity to ask what freedoms are being infringed.
	Yeah, just a weird eugenicist bent that the government has gone on here.
	I mean, it sounds crazy, but they've locked everything else down, so we may as well add that to the pile.
	Wouter Voss says, How is government a practical solution when it never delivers on any of its false promises?
	It's government that protects gang rapists?
	I don't see how that's practical.
	Well, I mean...
	True.
	I don't know what to tell you.
	White Raven says, Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
	Don't know what we're going to do about that, though.
	I'm not a web dev.
	No, I'm not a web dev, and we're understaffed as it is.
	We're doing our best.
	We are recruiting new people, though.
	So maybe in a few months' time, if people keep signing up and enjoying the premium content, then we can do something like that.
	We have a comment from Sergeant Peppers here.
	Oh, yeah, White Hot Peppers, yeah.
	She's the roving reporter that we have on the ground.
	I'm trying to remind soldiers in DC of historical government takeovers and how we are playing a part in one.
	A lot of them are realising blind devotion leads them to a cliff.
	Some are in denial because that would never happen in America.
	I'll do my best.
	Then why are you stationed in DC? Exactly.
	Exactly.
	That could never happen in America, says the soldier literally occupying the capital.
	Oh, man.
	That's funny.
	From the soup chats.
	Cooldudes4208.
	Greetings from Canada.
	Greetings.
	In Ontario, most of the province is opening up tomorrow, yet my region has hardly any case of the coup and is still locked down.
	This is the last straw breaking the camel's back because a good portion of people are now losing their minds.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Lockdowns are awful.
	Lockdowns are absolutely awful.
	John's the producer and he's got the sort of mindset of a very old, grumpy Chinese father.
	And so his comment is, tell them to write better comments if they want them to be read.
	Fair point.
	I mean, you know, like, can't argue really.
	But no, so jokes aside, we're just at time.
	There are a lot of comments that come in and we're doing our best to read more, but obviously we're just restricted because of time.
	So we allow Vicky just prunes what she thinks are the best ones, which is just the best system we've got at the moment.
	Try and think of something better.
	Well, yeah.
	Anyway, Student of History says they punt out on witnesses because legitimately their entire story, control and grift for power would have been Joan d'Arc'd before the legislature, the people and God himself, also Benny Hill theme over Dem montage for the win.
	Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it?
	Like, they would have...
	That's the thing.
	Their entire narrative, it operates on the presumption that the opposition don't get to reply.
	And as soon as the opposition gets a reply, well, hang on a second.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa.
	Shh.
	That's enough.
	We'll move on.
	That's what they've been doing for the last four years.
	So take the very fine people comment, for example.
	That's always been just that they clip it there and there's never been a response.
	And in this case, no, they had to film the whole thing and put it on the TV schedule.
	So what were they going to do?
	When does the left ever engage with hostile media?
	When does AOC go on Fox News?
	When does Nancy Pelosi have an interview with some outlet that just challenges her, asks her challenging questions?
	I mean, look at Jen Psaki at the moment.
	She's acting as if the media is hostile to Biden because they're asking her reasonable questions in a respectful manner.
	And it's like, that's not...
	Like the Fox News guy.
	The most tepid question you could even get out, which is, he passed a mask mandate, why isn't he wearing a mask on federal land?
	You're here to destroy the Biden administration, is the opinion that she's giving us.
	Compare this to CNN reporters to Trump.
	You're a Russian plot.
	You're a racist, a white supremacist, a Russian asset.
	Need we go on?
	So yeah, it's embarrassing.
	And you are right when you say it's actually a vice.
	It makes them weaker to be like this.
	It makes the right-wingers a lot stronger.
	and it's good for them.
	Marcus Horn says "Plan, try to force a public referendum on continuation of lockdowns.
	This will force big tech to stop suppressing the other side of the argument and lots of joe normies will be exposed to all the damage being done checkmate." That would be nice but I don't see how we're going to do that.
	I mean, you're free to send us an email, and I'm happy to read an email.
	Most of the Q claims I guess I would describe as metaphysical, and therefore I don't really follow.
	But I mean, if the limit of QAnon, if it wasn't involved in some sort of deep state conspiracy, it was just like there is a network of Billionaires who are also involved in child sex trafficking, then that's demonstrably true.
	Like, that's absolutely true, right?
	We know that's true.
	There have been people who have been convicted for this.
	Epstein killed himself over this.
	Like, we have the flight logs, the black books.
	We know who was traveling with Epstein to Little St.
	James.
	We've got people who have made allegations, like Virginia Guthrie and various others.
	There is definitely truth to this claim.
	And that's as far as I would take it, if I were, like, one of the QAnon people.
	That's just...
	Where I'd go with it.
	Anyway.
	There's people pointing out that apparently QAnon and Q are meant to be different things as well.
	This is a problem, man.
	Oh, are they?
	But that's the thing.
	There's just so many conflicting claims about what this is and all the rest of it.
	I'm just like, okay, in the trash with a lot of it.
	I'm just going to talk about the idea that they're a bunch of pedophiles who are billionaires.
	That's enough.
	I don't need any of this other stuff.
	Yeah, I don't need a mythos behind it.
	No.
	You know?
	I just want convictions, damn it.
	Anyway, Daniel J. Carica for $17.76, exactly the right amount, says, Happy President's Day.
	Here's money.
	I'm on the tail end of a 16-hour shift, ready to enjoy the show while making a time and a half.
	Wow, nice.
	1-6-21, we did nothing wrong.
	That's correct.
	KT says, What do you call a coven of feminists fighting each other?
	A turf war.
	Haha.
	But that is actually, I like that.
	No, that's great.
	A coven of feminists.
	I like that a lot.
	I'm going to try to remember that.
	Palindrome says, if the impeachment don't fit, you must acquit.
	Well, it turns out they didn't.
	Scrunchman01 says, has the time come for unironic anti-centrism?
	I mean, you're the JRAG fan, you tell me.
	No, J-Reg's actually hung his gloves up.
	The centricide.
	Oh!
	You don't keep up with him?
	No, I don't keep up with anything really.
	Yeah, no, J-Reg did his last video on the centricide.
	He wants to move on to other things.
	Oh, that's sad.
	Well, there wasn't really much else to do.
	Like, by the end of it, they...
	Everything has become radical anti-centrism.
	Yeah, but, like, they were fighting a...
	Like, he was writing the story and it just became them fighting a massive robot for no reason.
	He was just like, why am I doing this?
	Fair enough.
	But, ironically, that is kind of what politics is now.
	Yeah.
	Andrew O says, To be honest with you, Nero has been a bit maligned in the historical record there.
	Nero actually did try and help.
	He was a massive drama queen in every other respect.
	But when it comes to Great Fire...
	It wasn't his fault, and he did try to help, so...
	This is the guy who used to burn Christians as candles.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	But that's because they were anti-state heretics.
	I mean, like, when the city's on fire, he did try and put some relief efforts out.
	It wasn't one of my candles, I guess.
	He's probably involved in various genocides of German tribes and things like that.
	I mean, like, you know, I'm not saying he's a great guy or anything, but, like, on that particular count, I don't believe he was actually fiddling while around Burnt, although I'm happy to be fact-checked by Bo.
	Bo Dade.
	Bo's articles are doing great on the site, by the way.
	Some of the most well-read articles we've got on the site are B.B. Dade's history articles, because they're really good.
	And he's got another one coming as well, which I'm actually really excited about, because I'm really enjoying his writing style, too.
	Charlotte says, Great chat with Daisy.
	Do another soon.
	She's a babe.
	We have one tomorrow, don't we?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	So we're interviewing her tomorrow.
	So she is a babe, and I'm looking forward to speaking to her again.
	Whitehall Peppers, we covered that one already, didn't we?
	Yep.
	I think.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So she says, word from the White House is the National Guard will be in D.C. until September.
	There have been a lot of exciting BS happening, staged breaches, unorganized, soldiers are getting fed up with being here and are starting to...
	If we can scroll up a little bit, John, see if we can find White Hot Peppers follow-up.
	There we go.
	Talk about going AWOL, lower and higher ranks.
	It's been incredible to watch blind devotion to the government just erode to dust.
	Soldiers are waking up to BS. I'm regaining faith in the American spirit.
	That's great to hear.
	That is good to hear, yeah.
	Have a nice white pill.
	Student of history.
	They punked out on witnesses because...
	Oh no, we read that one already.
	Kevin K. Any thoughts on Putin's recent comments about keeping the Rothschild bankers out of Russia?
	No.
	I have not heard that.
	No, so Putin always says something kind of, you know, amazingly funny in a Western context every so often.
	And I'm just to the point where I'm just like, this is just you playing to the crowd for a laugh.
	Probably.
	I don't trust him.
	Yeah.
	Well, obviously don't trust him.
	Jesus.
	Your opinion on Daily Wire Entertainment making movies?
	Great.
	That's the best guy for it, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Branch Anticulture.
	We've got to do that.
	I mean, if loadseasers.com became sufficiently large, I'd make stuff too.
	Why not?
	I've got loads of ideas for stuff I'd like to make.
	I just can't.
	Distro says, the impeachment trial was like the scene in The Dark Knight Rises.
	We're crashing this trial with no survivors.
	Michael Harrison, thank you.
	Daniel J. Carica, I'm okay on a vaccine.
	You all can have mine.
	I'm a wastewater treatment plant operator.
	I'm immune to everything.
	Yeah, Jesus, man.
	You must have some seriously good immune system.
	Yeah, like, I mean, I just hate it.
	I don't know.
	We do need to set the merch up at some point, actually.
	So we should look into doing that.
	Mike DeJesus.
	I know we've done that one already.
	By the way, it's pronounced DeJesus.
	It's Puerto Rican.
	You can continue saying DeJesus, though.
	Haha.
	Well, that's good, because I'll never remember that.
	Literally, you translate into English, you get Jesus.
	Yeah.
	We have a word for Jesus, so...
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I think we might have a historic commitment to repudiating the Spanish language as well.
	But it's like saying España instead of Spain.
	It's like, we have a word for that in English, though, so why would you not use the English one?
	Yeah.
	In fact, why aren't you using the English one?
	For what?
	Imperialism rises.
	I doubt the wealth tax will be a one-off, says Brazer.
	Nothing more permanent like a temporary government solution.
	Yeah, that's a Thomas Sowell quote, isn't it?
	But it's completely true.
	And exactly as you're saying, it's not going to be a one-off.
	It's going to be, we did it once, and we raised some money, we'll do it again.
	And again, and again, and again.
	This can carry on.
	Easy.
	If the Great Reset is going to make sure that we own nothing, how will governments get their property taxes?
	Not my problem, I guess.
	You know, I'll just be one of those smiling, happy, brave new world serfs who takes his soma and doesn't have to care about whether the government's getting their goddamn taxes anymore, I suppose.
	Cool Frog says, Is that fake news?
	Sorry, well, I was laughing at the term libtard.
	I've got to get over how people use that.
	Where is it?
	During the trial, I heard that the defense was thinking of using Madonna's impossible defense.
	I hadn't heard anything about that.
	It might be fake news.
	But she literally came out on a stage and said, I thought a lot about blowing up the White House.
	With 300 people, I imagine, because they did play a clip that also included her saying that.
	Yeah.
	I love how you can hear the dramatic music in the background.
	They've clearly just taken it off Twitter.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's so wholesome.
	Use it.
	Use the Twitter clips.
	No, but I love how the Democrat one would be like, you know, they literally had to frame the tweets and doctor parts of it.
	It was so carefully made, like some guy had been paid to do it.
	And the Republican guys were just like, rip it off Twitter, shove it up, you know, with the weird music and everything.
	I don't care.
	But what are you trying to do?
	Put across the message that the Democrats want to blow stuff up.
	Or here's a big selection of them doing it.
	But it's the very human part of it.
	It's like anyone, any random person could do that.
	Whereas what the Democrats always do, it's always stage managed.
	I love the fact that you must have been...
	I didn't watch the impeachment trial because it went on for ages.
	But you can imagine, like you're saying, we've got like 10 minutes worth of clips.
	And like 7 minutes into the Democrats screaming, revolution, blow up the things, kill Trump.
	You must have been thinking, right, okay.
	We need a bare defence.
	This is not what we want.
	From the Democrat side.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Imagine sitting in that hall.
	Because they literally, the one with all the violence.
	That's just been embarrassing.
	Everyone in the damn room had made a speech about it.
	All of you.
	All of you are getting done.
	Yeah.
	You lunatics.
	Anyway, Neil Cohen says then, COVID is super bad.
	Don't buy masks.
	Nurses need them.
	Now, it's worse than it's ever been, but screw it.
	Wear three masks.
	Hell, wear the box.
	Yeah, I saw a picture of Biden wearing two masks the other day.
	I'm just like, that is just embarrassing.
	He's been doing that for a while, actually.
	Has he?
	Yeah, I saw him doing it during the campaign.
	It's weird.
	It's creepy.
	It's like, look, no one's wearing two masks, dumbass.
	Well, no, it just exposes that it doesn't work.
	I mean, this is why when we went on a plane, we got an N95 mask, because it was like, that actually works, whereas these surgical ones don't, and that's why you have to wear two, three.
	Yeah.
	But don't wear two or three masks, just for Christ's sake.
	Darun Albon says, just released michaeljlindell.com.
	You think it's valid?
	Is that the MyPillow guy?
	I assume so.
	I think so.
	I haven't watched...
	Excuse me.
	He's got a video on Gab, I think, and probably on BitChute called Absolute Proof or something, but I haven't watched it.
	Not that I'm dissing or anything like that.
	I looked at it.
	It was like two and a half hours long.
	I was like, oh, jeez, I wish I had two and a half hours for anything.
	You know?
	Christ.
	Cruz criticized Trump of not doing anything to fight back with big tech.
	His social media summit was useless, so he still isn't on Gab.
	Thoughts on Trump?
	On Cruz.
	Cruz isn't on Gab.
	Cruz is a non-gab, yeah.
	I mean, well, Trump actually does a thing there, so I'm more sympathetic to him.
	And Trump has been posting things.
	The idea that Cruz is a bit of a show voter, I have some sympathy for this worldview, because I've seen some people who have worked with him saying that we're not sure about him either.
	Maybe, but he is saying the things and that's nice.
	I would prefer someone who could also do stuff, but I don't know what he can even do.
	Yeah, I mean, at least he's saying things.
	It's entirely possible the Republicans wouldn't.
	Like, I'm not going to sing his praises over it, because as you say, people that do things are better, but I'm not going to condemn him at all.
	Like, he's doing the right things.
	Jake Bartlett, do you think governments will release the real numbers of suicides, overdoses, death from domestic abuse, etc., resulting from the lockdowns?
	No.
	And if it does get released, it's not going to be widely publicised.
	But I suspect things have not gone well.
	Joda says, we're police officers.
	We're not trained for this kind of violence.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's exactly it.
	They're asking for the demolition man future.
	It's like, sorry, the population won't permit it.
	Apostrophe says, what happened to the debate where you were going to have our modern day debates?
	I wasn't going to have a debate on modern day debates.
	Yeah, I'm in charge of the schedule.
	I know what you're talking about, mate.
	Yeah, I heard...
	I did see that some rando on Twitter had booked a debate with you through a random person on Twitter that isn't me.
	Yes.
	Even though they knew who I was.
	Yes.
	And then just said, you didn't turn up.
	And I was like...
	Yes, I didn't.
	You know me.
	I'm the one that books it.
	Why does it...
	Yeah.
	If it wasn't booked through Callum, I was not consulted and it is not legitimate.
	Yeah.
	And to anyone who's booking things on Twitter in my name...
	Good job, that was really funny.
	But it would be like me, because I'd spoken to the guy, so it's like if I knew Vosh, I'd messaged Vosh in the past, and instead just messaged, I don't know, ObamaLies1695.
	I'd be like, hey, Vosh, you're coming up for debate.
	And the ObamaLies guy was like, yeah, sure.
	Yeah, I'll be there at this time, this place.
	It's like, oh, he didn't turn up.
	What a shock.
	Yeah, no, sorry.
	But, you know, I'm always happy to talk to leftists.
	But just, you know, don't book fake ones.
	I'm sorry, that's embarrassing.
	There is an official process, and you must follow it.
	Yes, you must speak to the person you're booking.
	Yeah, yeah.
	At the very least.
	But, I mean, are you not happy with this level of bureaucracy, leftists?
	This is what you want.
	This is the world that you've begged for.
	Segrims Gin says, None of those people have sworn on to uphold the Constitution.
	Which people?
	I don't know which people.
	Scott East.
	I live in St.
	Paul.
	People are coming here to flee MPLS, Minneapolis.
	Crime is getting crazy here.
	The helicopter goes up constantly.
	I'm moving.
	There we go.
	I hope we did justice to what's happening there, Scott.
	Student of history, has anyone in Minneapolis thought of organizing a group of armed individuals to patrol and protect against property and violent crimes?
	Yeah.
	Maybe you can call it the Minutemen.
	Yeah.
	Maybe eventually it'll turn into a department that will...
	Police.
	Crime.
	Right, we'll go for one more, and then we've got to go.
	Eric Just, in Denmark, several smaller shops are saying enough is enough and opening their shops, despite it being illegal because of the lockdown.
	And you should probably consider it a moral duty to shop there as well, because those people are going to be hit with massive fines, they're going to get in trouble, and they're doing the right thing.
	So there we go.
	Right.
	Thank you, everyone, for joining us.
	If you would like more content from us at the Lotuses, you can go to Lotuses.com, sign up for our premium membership, and get access to all of our premium content.
	And now that we go for a few months, we've got loads stacked up there.
	One of the things that I'm most proud of is the Conservatives' Guide to White Fragility, which is something that actually took me a long time, because I had to sit there and read through all of Robin DiAngelo's nonsense.
	And then, you know, cross-reference it with other nonsense that other, like, contemporary political thinkers in her sphere had agreed with, and to extract the essence of what's going on so a normal person can understand it.
	And that's something that's been doing very well and very proud of.
	So that's, I thought, worth promoting.

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