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Feb. 22, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:50

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #334

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	Music Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Loadseaters for the 22nd of February 2022.
	I'm joined by Harry.
	Hello!
	And today we're going to be talking about the Putin's Peacekeepers.
	If you can say it.
	I can't, because it's just funny.
	I mean, it's a meme in and of itself.
	Also, the Rings of Power not adapting Tolkien.
	Tolkien?
	Tolkien.
	That's very racist of you.
	Tolkien?
	His name's been Tolkien the whole time!
	Tolkien!
	And also Democrats vs Elon Musk 2, Electric Boogaloo.
	And we'll enjoy that.
	But some things to mention first on the website.
	So some new stuff that's up.
	So the first thing to mention here being a new article from John Wheatley, the ultimate clickbait.
	And I'm not going to spoil anything because, I mean, just look at it.
	Look at the piece of cheese that is in front of you.
	You want to click, don't you?
	Don't you?
	Give it a click, you dirty...
	Let's get to the next one.
	We can see something new.
	So this is also Carl's new interview with Dr.
	Gunnar Beck, which I was able to sit in on because we had to do it after hours.
	He's a German AFD MEP. Oh, really?
	ABC. I was wondering why I never met this guy in the office.
	No, and he was incredibly lovely.
	Honestly, an incredibly wholesome guy.
	And Karl got to talk to him about, well, the European projects, the German projects.
	I thought the AFD were Nazis!
	No, every time.
	Oh, big disappointment.
	Every time we've met one, they've been utterly reasonable and utterly insightful.
	And very wholesome, I imagine.
	Yes.
	So anyway, go give that a check.
	Also, great guy, so go and follow him as well.
	And also, the last thing to mention being a new thing up, this is an article from Hugo.
	Are we living in early stage capitalism?
	And there's an audio track there for Silver and Gold team members to go give a listen as well, of course, as well.
	So, please subscribe to get access to those things.
	Without further ado, let's get into Putin's Kees...
	Kees...
	No, I'm messing it up.
	Keespeepers.
	Keespeepers.
	Putin's Peacekeepers.
	Genuinely...
	He's genuinely serious.
	So these are peacekeepers.
	Keeping the peace.
	All sanctioned by the UN. I'm sure they've got little blue hats and all that.
	No, this is an international meme, as everyone can tell.
	I mean, I'm kind of bored of talking about Russia-Ukraine.
	Who isn't?
	But it's...
	As I was saying right before we came on, I know barely anything about the whole Ukraine situation because I've got the very little Englander attitude of it.
	It's foreign, don't care.
	It's over there, it's not on the island, don't care.
	The very roundabout way I think we'll end up there as well.
	I wanted to go through, of course, the latest news because this is big and worth talking about, I think.
	And as you can see here, this is the signing.
	so you have putin there on the right and then the two representatives of the two breakaway republics as they are now known at least within the russian sphere in the corner over there signing an agreement which putin recognizes that they are independent states and totally not meme countries i'm sure i'd love to be a meme country come on Yeah.
	So we go to the next link.
	We can see, of course, that as reported, Putin said he was going to send peacekeepers, as he called them, to the two separatist areas of Ukraine.
	And the BBC ran with that.
	As you can see, Putin promises peacekeepers and people being a little bit annoyed about the BBC calling them peacekeepers because it's a bit of a joke.
	And yeah, that is the point.
	And if we go to the next one, we can also see Reuters correcting themselves, as they put it.
	Saying, correction, Putin orders Russian troops into Ukraine after recognizing the breakaway states.
	We are deleting previous tweets that use Putin's description of peacekeepers in referring to the troops.
	So this is where the word comes from.
	It is Putin called them peacekeepers and everyone else just ran with it.
	And then wait, hang on, yeah, that is a bit dumb.
	Because he's clearly just having a laugh at us at this point, which...
	And why not?
	Our media is that gullible and stupid, they'll just go along with the whole thing, so why not just sprinkle a few memes in there, you know?
	Why not?
	Yeah, they're peace gamers.
	They're sanctioned by the human.
	What?
	Putin's just pushing it to see how far he can go.
	Yeah, they're going to hand out ice cream and chocolates as well.
	The tanks are...
	Yeah.
	If there's anything we can say about this, the whole thing is funny.
	If we go to the next one, we can see some people claiming, or at least I've seen multiple videos that were taken, at least claiming to be throughout the night of different military vehicles just arriving in eastern Ukraine in the Separatist regions, and people saying that this is the Russian military peacekeepers turning up in all their APCs to...
	Keep peace.
	To enforce peace.
	To enforce peace, yes.
	Just like all the other types.
	Are you being peaceful, citizen?
	Yeah.
	Be more peaceful!
	The big, like, no-no about this, of course, is that Putin had been claiming forever that there were no Russian troops in Ukraine, and everyone knew this was a lie.
	And you may, I don't know if you have, but there was a great video made by a vice journalist back in the day when they were good.
	Who just found this guy, Don Bayev, in the Russian military, his VK page, he's in the Russian military right now, and then managed to find photos he'd taken in Ukraine, and then stood at the same place and took a photo to prove the point.
	So he's like, well, we all know that they're all there.
	So it isn't really a change, it's just an open admittance now that he's sending his military hints there, which...
	Yeah, I mean, it's not nothing, but it's also just not really a change in the status quo, I would think, or at least the reality on the ground.
	But if we go to the next one, we can also see some celebrations, as they're being reported, of people in Donetsk setting off fireworks and having Russian flags and praising Putin.
	All spontaneous, I'm sure.
	We just decided to do this.
	Well, I mean, no, ironically, there are going to be Putin supporters in these regions because of the protests and whatnot.
	I know some people from sort of Eastern European areas who are very, very pro-Putin.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I'm not saying people are all like paid actors or something, but this situation is, of course, quite absurdist, and you would have expected a referendum on the issue that the international community could all look at to make sure it's free and fair, but...
	Not doing that instead.
	And the question I had, because I spoke with, you saw Jason Miller and whatnot earlier, and I was speaking to them about it, and the other chap, Matthew, he made the great point of just like, well, this isn't really useful for Russia either, this whole situation, because now you've got to take care of these two republics and pay their pensions.
	Yep.
	And expanding a state is basically just bringing more people under your care, if you want to put it that way, which is just effort.
	Incredibly poor regions that have just been through years of war.
	It's not really a grand prize.
	Let's see what's behind the curtain.
	Yeah, this is not by piles of gold or oil fields.
	Hundreds of refugees.
	So if we go to the next link, we can see the Ukrainian response, which is, of course, the Ukrainian president here just saying that all the Russians have kind of wrecked the peace efforts.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Sending in military tends to do that.
	I think we're a bit past that.
	I wouldn't have thought Crimea at all that would have done it, but okay, yep, yep, absolutely correct.
	Reuters is only just catching up.
	Yeah, and I thought we'd just go through, because a lot of people are seeing this as a disaster, or a massive deal, or a huge change in the circumstance, and I try to order all these things and not give an opinion, because quite frankly, other people's problems.
	Not English.
	Yes, I agree with you on that.
	Not England, don't care.
	Yeah, simple as.
	But there is the funny aspect of this, which is that it just becomes another meme country by the looks of it, or at least this is a great opportunity for it to just leave it as meme countries in Europe.
	And if you can see on there, so this is just the last People's Republic Wikipedia page, and if we go to the next one, you've got what is the Luhansk People's Republic page, and claiming to be breakaway republics, of course.
	But they're not the only ones in Europe, for many people who will know.
	And if we go to the next one, we can see some examples from Georgia, back when Georgia tried to join NATO, and then got invaded.
	And then a couple of breakaway republics were formed, and have been there ever since.
	Kind of like right now.
	Which, yeah, so this is South Assetia, and if we go to the next one, you've got, what is it, Abkhazia as well, which, meme countries.
	Recognised by Russia, no one else.
	Can we get some Kekistani flags in one of these?
	Why not?
	Why not?
	Putin, you've got a sense of humour about this, obviously, so go on.
	Yeah, and then we go to the next one.
	We, of course, have the literal meme country of Transnistria, which, you know, isn't from Russian invasion.
	Instead, it's Russians just seceding from Moldova and then getting recognised by the Russian Federation as well.
	I mean, just, you know, I've featured it before, but look at the flag.
	Look at the flag there, the hammer and sickle.
	It's just rubbing our faces in it.
	Yeah, I mean...
	The East is apparently littered with these memes, and we have two more memes, and, well, that seems like an easy out, I would have thought, to this whole situation, which is we now just accept, okay, there are some more memes, and Ukraine's gonna look like Georgia.
	We can go back to caring about Ukraine as much as we care about Georgia, which is...
	Not at all.
	I don't.
	Yeah.
	Foreigners.
	Who cares?
	And, of course, I've seen some, let's say, pro-Russian sides also comparing this to Kosovo, and saying that's a bit of a meme, and, of course, you can make some comparisons.
	Uh...
	I'm not going to, because I don't care enough about geopolitics.
	But that is what has been mentioned, so I thought I should mention it.
	If we go to the next one as well, there's also just a question of, like, who cares?
	I've heard Carl mention this a million times because he doesn't care about geopolitics in this regard at all.
	And if we scroll down, you can see the exports of Ukraine, or at least there should be a whole bunch of boxes.
	So if you keep going, John, there should be a whole bunch of boxes, as you can see there.
	Do you care?
	Do you care deeply about corn?
	I don't eat corn.
	Do you hear me about wheat?
	Or iron ore?
	It's not gold or oil or anything.
	It's...
	I would need to know more about the economics of the rest of Europe and where we're getting our corn, wheat, and iron from.
	There's nowhere else we could get those things.
	No, no, exactly.
	And as John has said before, who cares about some countries that have the economy that serves as a Mars bar?
	New Zealand's economy is twice Ukraine's.
	New Zealand.
	South Korea's is twice Russia's.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I wasn't aware of that one.
	It's not...
	This isn't global war over two superpowers anymore or anything.
	It's two countries that kind of are a bit...
	It's a bit of a spat.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there's nukes and it's all important and all that.
	Don't get me wrong.
	But I mean, come on.
	These aren't the richest places on Earth to be giving a huge toss about.
	But if we go to the next one, there is, of course, the proper response, as you would say, from the Western side.
	As you can see, Russia today.
	So reporting on NATO saying they condemn what Russia has done.
	Yep.
	You would expect that.
	We go to the next one, we can see the sanctions that have been brought up.
	So you see here the US saying that they're going to bring sanctions because they don't know what else to do.
	And that's the only thing they can do.
	We go to the next one, of course, we have the UK who are also saying we're going to do sanctions.
	I do...
	I will get back to GB News in a minute, but it's just the UK saying that they're going to do sanctions.
	And the next one, we have the EU also saying that they're thinking about sanctions because they don't really know what to do, because it's the EU. It's not as unified as, say, the other two, of course, where we can just do it.
	And there are diverse opinions on the matter.
	More bureaucracy equals less efficiency.
	Yeah.
	Shook.
	Different interests.
	But if we go to the next one, there is something that we added just before we started, which is noteworthy, which apparently is that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany has been frozen, or at least on the certification side, it's been frozen now.
	So there's that as well.
	The minister responsible said no certification of that pipeline can happen right now.
	Okay.
	Right now.
	Right now.
	I don't really take it that seriously, but okay, yeah, that's a thing.
	That's a sanction, you can say.
	And what was the response in Russia?
	Or at least in the Duma...
	There was a fierce debate within the parliament.
	Much discord.
	Who knows how they would vote.
	Razor-thin margins on the vote.
	I know what votes are like over there.
	Yeah, as you can see here, 400 to 0.
	Every time.
	It's good to know everyone's unified, at least.
	We all just came to the same conclusion.
	Yeah, well, I mean, maybe they did.
	If you're a Russian nationalist, of course, or anything, I mean, what were you expecting them to vote on this matter?
	So, I mean, possibly just the case, but also it is very funny.
	I mean, 4-0 is always going to be funny.
	And if we go to the next one, we can see the reaction from the dude themselves, who were clapping.
	A lot.
	It was a bit weird.
	Oh.
	Yeah.
	Did anything happen to the first one to stop?
	No.
	He wasn't escorted out, was he?
	It's not reported missing.
	Okay, not yet.
	No, I mean, we can't say anything after...
	Remember that Labour Party conference video where they were clapping for a solid, like, five minutes about the death of their comrades?
	Well, yeah, you know what socialists are, like...
	Yeah, and some of that was mentioned as being the same here.
	And if we get to the next one, we can see some of the responses from the other Americans, and not Biden's administration, for example.
	We can see Donald Trump Jr.
	here saying, don't care.
	Not us, simple ass.
	Yeah, Donald Trump Jr.
	stepping up for North FC. So someone's saying, you know, why is the populist rights not caring about this?
	And he says, that's because there is no American interest that justifies our intervention in Ukraine, unless, of course, you consider all the shady deals Hunter Biden has going on over there to be an American interest, which I could see some sympathy with, which is, again, the perspective of don't care foreigners, which...
	Why should we care?
	That's my question.
	Okay, why should I care?
	Are they going to be dropping nukes on England?
	Probably not.
	Well, no.
	Then why should I care?
	Yeah.
	Is Greg still going to be there the next week?
	That's the weird thing.
	The British establishment and a lot of the Western establishments are obsessed with Ukraine.
	I don't get why.
	It's such a thing.
	Do they think it's going to be Holodomor 2 or something like that?
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	Is that what we're expecting?
	I don't know.
	Is Putin going to starve them?
	Not my major subject.
	But let's continue because I may not care about the geopolitics but I do care about memes.
	And memes are very funny.
	And of course we can see here Joe Biden's tweet which has also become a bit of a meme in recent times because this is when he was campaigning.
	Vladimir Putin doesn't want me to be president, he doesn't want me to be our nominee!
	If you're wondering why, it's because I'm the only person in the field who ever go toe-to-toe with him.
	You just lost.
	So, good job, boy.
	Also, Putin's seeming better and better by the minute with that sentence.
	Yeah, there's also a lot of people bringing up an old clip of when Mitt Romney ran.
	I'm not bringing up Mitt Romney, of all people, but he is right.
	Let's go back to the old clip.
	So as you can see, this is when President Obama did a big old dunk on Romney by saying that the 1990s are calling for their foreign policy back because Russia isn't a geopolitical enemy of the United States ever.
	Yeah, not looking good.
	Obama being wrong.
	Big shock.
	It's been 31 years at this point.
	Yeah, and it's not like 31 years of blissful peace that we have on this island when nothing changes for a thousand years.
	Kurt Cobain and Nirvana topping the charts in 1991.
	Where are they now?
	Yeah, however, some people do think it is still 1991.
	Specifically, the leader of Belarus, Lukashenko, who just gave this interview this month, and I thought we'd take a look because it is one of the funniest things I've ever watched.
	Okay.
	Let's enjoy.
	Well, you have a beautiful shape, but what do you have on the ground?
	I'm a sergeant.
	I'm not going to put a generalist in the name of the generalist.
	Putin, полковник, обещал мне полковника присвоить.
	До сих пор не присвоил.
	Но полковника кого может присвоить Путин?
	Российской армии.
	Но как вы себе представляете, что президент независимой Беларуси является полковником Российской армии?
	Ну и что?
	Это же моя проблема, не ваша.
	Пообещал, делай.
	No, you're in Russian army, you're in Soviet army.
	Soviet army.
	It was a Russian and a Belarusian army.
	Of course.
	I'll give you my name as a lieutenant of Soviet army.
	Well, Soviet army too, because then they'll say, well, we said that Putin wants to restore Soviet Union.
	Well, okay.
	Well, that's what?
	Well, that's what he wants to do.
	Well, that's what he wants to do.
	That's what he wants to do.
	Pitting him from wanting things?
	We should probably...
	Yeah, we should describe it because it's in foreign for people listening.
	So, Lukashenko just says that Putin promised him the rank of colonel so he could wear colonel armbands.
	And the interviewer's like, well, of what army?
	And he says, well, the Russian army.
	He was like, we haven't served in the Russian army.
	Yeah, but I served in the Soviet army.
	But that means that they'll just say Putin's trying to revive the Soviet Union.
	And Lukashenko says, good.
	LAUGHTER Why shouldn't he?
	And he says, what are you proposing?
	Prohibiting him from wanting things.
	It's like the complete lack of care given to any of it.
	He's like, no, he promised.
	I want it.
	Every one of the room is laughing except Lukashenko, who honestly looks dead serious, and you kind of have to take him seriously.
	He's just like, give it right now!
	Give me the thing.
	And then later on in the interview, he's like, ah, but if you both have rank of colonel, then what?
	And he says, well, Putin could make himself a general in the Soviet army.
	I don't care.
	I just really want to be a colonel!
	I want the fancy badge!
	Oh yeah, it's the wild, wild east.
	Again, may not have a care for foreigners doing foreign things, but foreigners doing funny things, that's a different matter.
	Oh yeah, and the east is full of meme magic.
	And speaking of meme magic, there was also the official accounts of the Russian Federation.
	Oh my god, I didn't notice that was the official account.
	Yeah, so this is the official embassy of Russia in South Africa who decided to add some memes.
	Because, of course, meanwhile in Ukraine, and it's the guy from Pulp Fiction being like, nothing's happening.
	Yep.
	Because nothing's happening.
	I love when they obviously let the interns just look after the social media accounts.
	It's probably a guy in his 30s, honestly.
	He's got nothing better to do.
	This is stopping from being an intern.
	How many Russians are in South Africa?
	I don't know, three?
	Yeah.
	Two of them interns?
	Yeah.
	He's gone out drinking with 50% of the population.
	Yeah.
	He spent the rest of the time posting meme-a-rinos.
	And speaking of meme-a-rinos, we can look at one more, which I just...
	This wasn't meant to be a meme, but it really came across as one, and I really find it funny.
	Oh, I saw you post this.
	GB News tweeted this out earlier.
	Russian-Ukrainian war could kill 50,000 people and lead to horrendous suffering in Europe.
	Don't forget to subscribe to GB News' YouTube channel!
	Don't forget to smash that like button, fellas!
	If you want to have A10 strafing Donbass in the next week, always hit the bell button, folks.
	Give this a share if you hate Putin or love Ukraine.
	I don't care.
	Just hit subscribe, dammit!
	Hit the like button for Putin.
	Love heart for Ukraine.
	I guess we'll end this segment on that.
	If you love Putin, subscribe.
	If you love Ukraine, give it a subscribe and a like.
	I don't think I'm a toss.
	If you like them both, subscribe to the website, why don't you?
	Yeah, sign up to lotusinus.com if you want to see more Mimorinos.
	Let's move on.
	Some days I really love my job.
	I barely know anything about the whole conflict, but it's just nice to laugh.
	Sometimes you just gots to laugh.
	Good news, everybody!
	It turns out that the Rings of Power is not actually a Tolkien adaptation.
	It's a token adaptation, isn't it?
	It is a token adaptation, but they also don't actually have rights to anything that they're adapting, other than the Lord of the Rings books, not the Silmarillion, not the other ones, just the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, which they're not going to adapt, because there's already an adaptation, and they're never going to stand up to it.
	So what's the point?
	Everyone's question.
	What...
	What is the point?
	Amazon.
	Seriously.
	Anyway, before we go into any more of this, I just want to bring a highlight to everybody in the audience that last week, John and Carl did an excellent premium hangout, so if you're a bronze tier member or above, you can check this out on our website, talking about why woke remakes are evil.
	It's very good, it's quite entertaining.
	I was in the chat memeing it up a little bit while it was going on, telling everybody that Carl's a vegetarian.
	Good fun.
	True fake news.
	It's very true fake news.
	And how he loves to pound down packets of Skittles in the office.
	You know how it goes.
	You've seen him do it.
	Don't lie to me.
	So check that out if you want some more in-depth discussion of other remakes alongside The Lord of the Remakes.
	The Lord of the Remakes.
	The Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, which isn't a remake, it's an adaptation slash fanfiction at this point.
	But there's just a few things to go over as well before I go into any of that sort of details, which is that the promotion...
	For the Rings of Power.
	Hasn't been going great.
	It's really not been going great.
	So, they posted this, like, weird little promo teaser, where you can see the title.
	The Lord of the Rings Superfans Review the Rings of Power Official Teaser Trailer.
	And John, if you don't mind just scrolling down a little bit, because you've got the app that allows you to see likes and dislikes.
	44,000 views.
	I think when I loaded this up earlier, it got to, like, 46,000 views.
	Only 132 likes.
	Almost 10,000 dislikes?
	Not going well.
	A little bit of a ratio.
	Why is it unlisted?
	I wonder.
	Shall we check out a little...
	Well, two clips.
	I'm only going to play two clips from this because honestly I don't feel like torturing you.
	You can probably find the link in the description and check this video out for yourself if you feel like radicalising yourself against hipsters.
	To be perfectly honest, that's what Carl's been doing, watching this all day.
	Anyway, let's just play a bit of a clip so we can get a feel for the level of discourse going on here.
	Every time I was like, okay, take a breath, something new would happen, and it was...
	It's middle-earth, it's never peace, right?
	If, like, Saron is hot, I feel like people will be like, I can fix him.
	Middle-earth had, like, a club.
	Yo, this tune is banging!
	Awestruck, mystified and starstruck.
	Wow.
	Do these people here appear to you to be token superfans?
	Token superfans.
	Absolutely token superfans.
	I can see the chat calling on that, and I agree.
	Yeah, but let me just highlight something there.
	If Sauron is hot, people will want to fix him.
	Why is it that these types of people, leftists, because obviously they're all leftists, look at them...
	Always identify with pure evil.
	Sauron, in the context of the universe, is the embodiment of evil.
	The Dark Lord.
	He is the Dark Lord, but because he might be hot, I think I can fix him.
	He might say trans rights.
	That's the thing.
	If Freddy Krueger burst through someone's chest in Nightmare on Elm Street and said trans rights, these people would be going, thank you for killing those teen transphobes.
	Freddy Krueger, New Bay.
	They've done it with the Babadook.
	Seriously, they do it with everyone.
	They did it with the Babadook.
	They did it with Pennywise the Clown from IT. Most recently, they did it with Chucky, when I think in the most recent television series they did of him, he said something like, oh, I've got a non-binary kid.
	I'm not a monster, of course I accept him.
	I'm sorry, you're a murderous voodoo doll?
	I don't care what your opinions on gender ideology are, but the left, they love it.
	They will forgive anything as long as you throw their slogans out there.
	So I can see the chat and be like, Sauron, the lord of the gays.
	Well, what ring do you think he was talking about?
	Do these people strike you as fans of epic high fantasy?
	These, I always classify them, are the sorts of people who would happily show you that they own the books on their shelf and use it as decoration, but don't read it.
	This is where the meme, what is it, like, read another book?
	Remember when they were all obsessed with Harry Potter?
	Yeah.
	Well, that flipped on a dime, didn't it?
	Yeah.
	Oh, you think they're looking for another one now?
	They're going to try and take Lord of the Rings, and just, they're going to quote selectively bits from that, and then try and make it...
	Oh, absolutely.
	There is more discussion, and I'll show you another clip in a moment, but I think the most damning condemnation of these people I could throw out there is that these are people who have probably only ever watched the theatrical editions.
	That there are theatrical editions of Lord of the Rings?
	Yes.
	Yes, the non-extended editions.
	They were released in cinemas and they're like two and a half hours long rather than four hours long.
	I thought you meant on stage.
	Lords of the Rings, the Broadway musical.
	I probably don't know what a theatrical means.
	Please don't do that.
	Please, Amazon, don't.
	Don't do it.
	I got some excerpts from the comments as well, because you can see the quartering is down there, and there's people who just put that these are people who are super fans of diversity and inclusion, not token, and someone who just quoted straight away, there is no curse in elvish, entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery.
	So, Tolkien fans representing right there.
	Let's play the next clip so we can see a little bit more of why this might have been taken down due to a bit of backlash.
	That's what we're here for.
	That's what we're here for.
	All right, three words to describe the Rings of Power teaser trailer.
	Go.
	Okay.
	Breathtaking.
	I literally didn't breathe.
	Exhilarating and intriguing.
	I did notice that you weren't breathing.
	I was going to call first aid.
	It was like, I was trying, but every time I was like, okay, take a breath, something new would happen.
	And it was like...
	And I was like, are you gonna fall off your chair?
	I was like, please no!
	I would say expansive, because we're getting this whole new look into the second age on screen, and it's gonna be so amazing.
	I also want to say representative, because we're getting more diversity within this series.
	We're seeing our first black elf, we're seeing the first female dwarf, and I'm very looking forward to looking at that.
	And then I guess Intriguing because obviously this period of history within the Middle-earth is very rife with notions of the plot of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and seeing how the rings of power are being forged.
	Definitely more than three words.
	I love it.
	Yeah.
	I don't want to be in the same room ever.
	You know, I'm starting to see what...
	Carl was saying things that we can't broadcast about these people.
	Are you beginning to see why?
	Yeah.
	Yes, yes.
	Come over to the dark side.
	Yeah, I think the most...
	The story may be trash, but at least as a woman dwarf.
	I'm so glad I get to torture you with this, and all of you out there as well.
	But, really, has there ever been a more convincing argument for gatekeeping?
	Then if you don't, this will infect your fandom.
	This is what happened to comics, this is what's happening to mainstream films, this is what's happened to every major property that leftists have managed to get their hands on.
	So, just, we need to keep gatekeeping.
	For all eternity.
	You can't give an inch or they will take a mile and then race swap all of your characters.
	Yeah, and just some of the points.
	Like I say, these people are not super fans.
	They're not actually excited about any of the second age stuff.
	Later on in the discussion, they only talk about how it all relates to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the era, and the Hobbit, and the era that that's set in.
	So everything that they are even tangentially related, interested in, is related purely to how it fits into the later stories.
	They're not caring about the lore, the history, or the stories for their own sake.
	It's just, oh, how will this tie into the Lord of the Rings?
	It's like, well, you should care about the story that they're going to tell, surely.
	But they don't, because I think deep down they know it's going to suck.
	And that's why they need to swipe over the whole thing with just a nice veneer of diversity and inclusion.
	But it's also the only thing they care about as well.
	Yeah, I mean, I've got it written here, they only care about the superficial aesthetics of it.
	Nothing deeper, they don't care about the characters, themes or lore, they only think about the parts that are cool.
	How many neo-vaginas are there?
	I mean, unironically, that is the question I imagine they're asking.
	Please don't.
	Do you imagine being in the room with these people?
	That's probably how they talk off-camera as well.
	No, Callum, you've no idea.
	They hired intimacy coaches for the production, which means only one thing.
	There will be sex and nudity.
	What's an intimacy coach?
	Presumably somebody who tells you how to get naked in front of a set full of strangers.
	Just take off your clothes.
	Callum just there, like, just strip!
	It's simple!
	If you were the coach, what would you coach someone on?
	You'd just be like, well, you take off your shirt, and then your trousers, and then you're pretty much there.
	I don't know.
	I don't want to...
	I dare not theorise any further.
	Has everyone in Hollywood never kissed a girl or something and they've got to advise them how to do that?
	I mean...
	I was going to say something really bad.
	I was going to make something really bad about Hollywood.
	Anyway...
	Professional groomers, aren't they?
	Yes.
	I mean, how old was the girl?
	That's the question you've got to ask in Hollywood.
	But...
	The teaser trailer came out very recently.
	Once again, we can see there the ratio not looking good if you're hoping that this is going to be a hit.
	Salutes in the chat for the dislikes.
	I'm sure that this will actually probably get a decent amount of views when it drops, but 90% of it is likely to be hate views.
	If I watch it, that's what I'm going to be doing it for.
	And if you have seen the trailer, you'll understand that by now, it doesn't really look like Lord of the Rings.
	It looks like every other piece of fantasy, throwaway garbage, trash media that's put out nowadays, with the same CGI backdrops, and just like, ooh, look at everybody running in fields, sword fighting.
	Here's Galadriel walking in front of a big explosion in full plate armour.
	That's accurate to the lore.
	This is what people watch Lord of the Rings for.
	Yeah, right.
	I mean, I had exactly this feeling watching The Hobbit.
	I ended up walking out of the last movie, so I was just like, I can't even stand it.
	This will be worse than The Hobbit.
	The funny thing is, the Battle of the Five Kings...
	Five Armies, was it?
	In the book, The Hobbit, that's half a page.
	There's barely three paragraphs.
	They managed to stretch it out into three hours for a film.
	Now this is probably going to get multiple series because you know it's Amazon.
	They've already dropped $250 million on the license alone.
	It's going to be six movies or something.
	Well, it's going to be like the equivalent of six eight-hour-long movies that are going to be 90% battle scenes because Game of Thrones did that, and let's just be Game of Thrones again.
	Anyway, there's been a few publications talking about this as well.
	Vanity Fair coming out with the ten burning questions about Amazon's The Rings of Power.
	My big question is just how bad will this be, and I don't think there is a...
	Quantifiable answer to that.
	I imagine there will be no depth to how terrible this will be.
	But here are some of the questions that they ask which have some rather revealing answers.
	So, what exactly is the source material here?
	So what did Amazon buy?
	We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, The Appendices, and The Hobbit, says one of the showrunners, Payne.
	And that's it.
	We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books, which are the books that detail the history of the Second Age, which is the era that this show is set in.
	So they don't actually have the right to adapt any of the source material for what they're supposedly adapting.
	Wait, so is any of this even lore, or is it just fanfiction?
	Well, that's the question, isn't it?
	It's fan fiction!
	So that takes a huge chunk of lore off the table and has left Tolkien fans wondering how this duo plans to tell a Second Age story without access to those materials.
	There's a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books that we do have the rights to.
	McKay, one of the showrunners, says...
	As long as we're painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don't have the rights to, there's a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that Tolkien ever came up with.
	Except he didn't, because you're not allowed to tell those stories.
	So you're telling your own stories.
	We took all these little clues and thought of them as stars in the sky.
	And then we connected to write the novel that Tolkien never wrote about the Second Age.
	So, if I'm to take that sentence literally, they're writing through astronomy.
	It's basically what they're doing.
	They're just picking any random crap and going, well, this may have been what Tolkien wanted, possibly.
	Oh, come on.
	Given all the diversity stuff, it's definitely a new.
	No, exactly.
	But yeah, this is just going to turn out to be incredibly expensive fan fiction.
	And one of the things that people noticed, once again, I already pointed it out, Galadriel is now a warrior woman, which, in the lore, she never was.
	She's always been quite peaceful, you know, looking after her forest.
	She's been involved in other stuff.
	I'm not the biggest Lord of the Rings buff when it comes to the lore before, you know, the events of the films and the books.
	But I know that she was never a warrior in that sense.
	But they addressed this.
	What's up with Warrior Galadriel?
	Is this in the books?
	Over the years, Tolkien adapters have had to get creative in order to include his female characters in the action.
	Liv Tyler's Arwen making a riverbank stand against the Nazgûl in defence of Frodo, and the very existence of Evangeline Lilly's Warrior Elftorial, all invented by Peter Jackson.
	Now, Toriel is one thing.
	The Hobbit films I classify as completely non-canon, because they took a 250-page book and extended it into nine hours.
	And it was terrible, purely because of the fact they had to come up with loads of original material that did not stand up to the classic material they were adapting.
	But Liv Tyler's Arwen in the original trilogy, making a stand against the Nazgul, yeah, that may have been a change, but that's like, what, three minutes...
	That whole scene?
	This is not changing the entire backstory and history of a character that we already know about.
	But Ewan's No Living Man of Eyes showdown with the Witch King of Angmar in The Return of the King is straight from the books, and shows that Tolkien was at least somewhat interested in women who pick up swords.
	And then they talk about Galadriel.
	She's full of piss and vinegar, and she's got a sword that's broken because she's killed so many orcs, McKay says.
	This young, hot-headed Galadriel, how did she ever become that elder statesman?
	And this is set...
	That's a good question.
	That is a good question.
	How did they, Mr McKay?
	Honestly, I mean, the funny thing, yeah, this is the image that people have been annoyed about.
	The funny thing is that, young and hot-headed, Galadriel by the time of the end of the books is about 8,000 something or other years old.
	So here, this young and hot-headed woman is about 3,000 to 4,000 years old, roughly.
	You'd be still so young and fiery and hot-headed after only 3,000 years to mature and develop, wouldn't you?
	I don't know what that is in elf years and human years.
	I think I'm pretty sure, other than a few discrepancies...
	Now, was that like 50 or something then?
	I mean, does it really matter?
	I mean, she still had 3,000 to 4,000 years to just exist.
	Trying to convert it into human years for some relevance, so this still doesn't make sense.
	Yeah, I know.
	But yeah, so they've gone, well, they made some minor changes here, added some big changes here in The Hobbits that nobody liked, so why don't we just desecrate the lore for the fandom?
	Who's going to be annoyed at that?
	Everyone was annoyed at that.
	And the funny thing is you can see how Tolkien himself reacted to bad adaptations in the past.
	We've got some articles from Bounding into Comics talking about how Tolkien torched a Lord of the Rings film treatment for being treated carelessly, recklessly, and And showing no evident signs of any appreciation for what it's about.
	Tolkien, the creator of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, torched a film treatment for an adaptation of the books back in 1958.
	In a letter to Forrest J. Ackerman, Tolkien did not hold back his criticism of the film treatment.
	If Mr.
	Zimmerman, who I assume was the person trying to get it started, and or others do so, they may be irritated or aggrieved by the tone of my many criticisms.
	If so, I'm sorry." But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation and on occasion the resentment of an author who finds increasingly, as he proceeds, his work treated as if it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it's all about.
	Jesus, what did they do to it?
	I don't know, but it's not any...
	I can make a good guess that none of it is anywhere near as bad as what they're doing with the Rings of Power.
	No.
	Yeah, so Tolkien hates you.
	Tolkien is rolling in his grave.
	If he could see what you're doing to the series, he would condemn you and resent you greatly.
	But one of the things that everybody is aware of is that after Tolkien died, you know, the stewardship of the series went into...
	Went into his son Christopher's hands.
	Christopher Tolkien, who died about two years ago now, quite sadly.
	He was really old, he was about 95.
	But I think his stewardship of the series, of the franchise, really sort of earned him the title of one of the best sons to have ever lived, because he did not let anybody mess with it while he was, you know, in charge, other than potentially stuff to do with The Hobbit.
	But I assume that after he saw what Peter Jackson did with the originals, That he was, you know, giving him a bit of a benefit of the doubt.
	He probably regretted that a little bit.
	But Amazon only got access to the rights after Christopher stepped down because he was like, no, you're not going to touch it.
	I bet he knew.
	He knew what they were going to do to it if they got hold of it.
	Same as Star Wars.
	Yes, his worries were very founded.
	I've got this article up from Inverse saying, Again, Amazon announced Monday, therefore, this is back from 2017 when the original announcements were made, $250 million had nabbed the rights to make a Lord of the Rings prequel television series.
	And now we have an inkling as to what is going on.
	The popular Lord of the Rings fan site, OneRing.net, reported on Wednesday that Christopher Tolkien stepped down as the director of the Tolkien estate on August 31.
	So it was only after he stepped down that they managed to get their grubby little paws on it.
	But you may think, oh god, what are the Tolkien family doing?
	They're not protecting it.
	But even then, it seems that even the people in the family who aren't as protective of J.R.R. Tolkien's legacy as Christopher was, still didn't let them do anything with the main body of material.
	This Guardian article, also from a few years ago, was talking about how a J.R.R. Tolkien expert working on Amazon's forthcoming multiseries adaptation of The Lords of the Rings claimed that the retail and streaming giant has been refused permission by the estate to use the bulk of the book's plot.
	Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, who is supervising the show's development, told German fan site that the estate has refused to allow the series to be set during any period other than the second age of Middle-earth.
	So after selling the rights to the very specific books, they were still like, but you can't adapt those.
	You're going to have to adapt to this big blob of grey area, because then you can do what you want.
	Because we know you're going to ruin it, so write your own story and ruin that.
	Keep it away from what our dad is mainly known for.
	Which, I still don't like them making the show, but it was probably a better idea than just going, make your own version of Lord of the Rings.
	I mean, if nothing else, it just proves how utterly corrupt people like Amazon are.
	I mean, you basically give them a trap to walk into.
	And they happily did so.
	Aren't we so glad about the diversity and representation?
	I can fuck Saruman now.
	Oh no!
	Why do they always want to identify?
	Why do they always want to sleep with the evil people?
	Literally, the Dark Lord Christ...
	Anyway, and it's not just the Amazon and other people who've been getting in trouble.
	Some of the fan sites have been going mental as well.
	The OneRing.net, a supposed super fan site, has been trying to ban people off the website and calling them racist and then saying they're also still a safe haven for debate.
	Exactly.
	This is what these communities are always about.
	Gaming was always about calling each other racist and banning someone for racism.
	No, it was about games.
	And calling other people racist names.
	It was only part of it.
	It was about Xbox Live chat, that's what it was.
	That's where all the good stuff happened.
	So, the Lord of the Rings fan site, TheOneRing.net, has quickly spiralled into an outlet plugging woke identity politics and has accused Tolkien of being woke...
	Tolkien?
	Wasn't he a famous Catholic?
	Or was that, um...
	I think that might have been C.S. Lewis, but...
	Tolkien was not woke.
	I think we can all agree on that.
	It didn't exist until, like, the 90s.
	Yeah.
	That's a philosophical idea, so it doesn't make any sense.
	So they're now attacking Lord of the Rings fans by calling them racist.
	In an article written by a contributor named Earl, titled The Rings of Power and the Issue of Race, which was not an issue before Amazon decided to force it into Tolkien's law, making it an issue...
	The website implies that Lord of the Rings fans are racist due to their critical reactions to the casting of Sophia Numvet as the Dwarven Princess and Ishmael Cruz Cordova's casting as Ar...uh...Arandir.
	The article makes it very clear this attack on Lord of the Rings fans is made in bad faith.
	As Earl writes, while most of the cast, such as these people, were generally enthusiastically well-received, their reactions to the rest of the diverse cast was rather dismaying.
	Shocking, even!
	Even those might be understatements.
	Who would have thought that trying to change something that was literally described as a mythology for England and filling it with all demonstrably not English people would upset people?
	I never saw that one coming.
	They made it very clear that they took issue...
	Oh, sorry, a different website, thewonering.com, which is different to thewonering.net, this is just fandoms being very confusing, made it very clear they took issue with Galadriel writing on Twitter, Galadriel is not a commander of the Northern armies.
	Galadriel is hunting down the remnants of their collaborators who claimed the life of her brother.
	So you can see there that the discourse is not strictly defined purely by the racial stuff.
	There's plenty of other things that we hate about these trailers.
	The One Ring dot net.
	You don't have to just bring it all into race.
	I'm sure everything else will be terrible as well.
	If it's actually well written, I can see people potentially putting the whole race stuff aside and being like, well, at least it's a well written show.
	But it won't be.
	I mean, evidently.
	Because obviously it won't be.
	These things never are, because they're focusing purely on the racial diversity aspects and how they can change all of the narrative and lore so they can fit stuff in so that they can make it more cool, not, you know, honest, heartfelt or accurate to the source material.
	In a subsequent tweet they noted...
	So they're just saying, well, this obviously didn't happen in the narrative.
	They also took issue with the depiction of Elrond, tweeting...
	Which is not accurate to the lore either.
	And then it goes on through a bit more of the OneRing.net article and concludes, as Earl concludes his article, he then claims debate, discussion, and interpretation has always been welcomed at the OneRing.net.
	This is what has kept us going for two decades.
	But racism, bigotry, and intolerance simply have no place in the discourse.
	So to all those Tolkien fans out there who may be feeling sidelined, belittled, marginalised, or discriminated against for various reasons, not just for your race...
	Also for your terrible taste.
	Discriminated against and marginalized.
	Hello!
	The guys who enjoy the source material.
	We're being marginalized, you're right.
	We're the minorities.
	By definition, you dum-dum slug.
	Please know that theonering.net is your safe haven.
	So if you are one of those insufferable university students from the teaser promo thing discussion that we saw earlier, the OneRing.net has got your back.
	For the rest of us, leave us alone, stay away from our franchises, please.
	I did see in the chat there was a big debate about the Catholic thing.
	Some people were saying he was devout Catholic and then someone said he was an Anglican.
	That's the thing I've heard.
	Someone just said he's a Catholic of disguise, which...
	Well, if he's not a strict Catholic, well then maybe.
	What's the zip on the back of your head?
	Everyone's a Muslim, they just don't know it yet.
	Old man Catholic, I should have known.
	I should also say the chat I'm reading, just in case someone's watching on Facebook, is the chat on the website.
	So, you know, go join that chat if you want to have me read or whatever.
	So, let's get into the next section.
	Although, no, I'll save the other announcement for later.
	Let's talk about Elon Musk versus Democrats.
	Or at least Elon Musk versus Democrats.
	Number two, electric boogaloo.
	Because this has happened before.
	You may remember.
	And this was a big old spat he had with, what was it, Elizabeth Warren?
	Who was obsessed that he didn't pay no taxes.
	Even though he provided a receipt of his massive tax bill.
	$11 billion?
	Yep.
	I've never seen someone flex their tax bill before.
	Yeah, here's your aircraft carrier.
	Thank you very much.
	And she didn't read that, or see it, or saw it in just as a continued lying, apparently.
	And it's not just her, there are a lot of others.
	So we'll start off with her, though.
	Elizabeth Warren lie?
	Yeah.
	Kodokontas?
	No.
	So you see her saying, you know how much Elon Musk paid in taxes, one of the richest people in the world?
	Zero.
	No.
	It's just a lie.
	Like, we all know this is a lie, because Elon paid the biggest tax bill in US history.
	The most dollary-doos ever for a single person.
	And if you go to the next one, we can see Elon Musk responds to this, which is just him saying to them, We'll visit the IRS next time on DC and just say hi, since I paid the most taxes ever in history for as an individual last year.
	Maybe I can have a cookie or something.
	Maybe the dentist will give me a lollipop.
	Not bitter or anything.
	I would be bitter if I had to give them that much bloody money.
	It really gets into taxation as theft for me.
	Yeah.
	Well, he's made loads of money anyway, so you could argue that.
	But also, having senators go around and lie about you, that you've paid zero in taxes.
	I paid an unbelievable amount.
	You dishonest...
	Anyway, so we go to the next one.
	We can see him also saying that he paid $11 billion in taxes, for anyone wondering.
	Not a lot of money.
	Gadsad.
	Can't you pay a bit more?
	You know, your fair share?
	Can't you just pay your fair share?
	Very good.
	I always love Gadsad.
	He's great on Twitter.
	There are also some weird defenders of Pocahontas who decide to come out of the woodwork.
	I don't know who these people are.
	I don't know how they exist.
	And Warren voters?
	Is there such a thing?
	Are they alive?
	Are they real?
	Or are they Biden voters?
	Let's go to the next one so we can see one of these defendants.
	This person says she's talking about Tesla.
	She's talking about Tesla in 2018, not this year.
	That doesn't make any sense either.
	I'm sure in 2018 he probably paid a lot of tax then too.
	You can have him pointing out I didn't pay any federal tax in 2018 because I overpaid in 2017.
	Since they stole my tax records, they actually know that.
	I was like, if you pay too much, then the next year that amount gets deducted.
	And that was, well...
	That makes sense!
	That's how taxes work.
	None of you own a business.
	None of you know anything about anything, apparently.
	Or at least the defenders of Pocahontas don't know anything about anything.
	Absolutely.
	But if we carry on, it's not just Elizabeth Warren in the Dems who've decided to pick a fight with Elon Musk because they'd screw over the richest person in the country.
	There's no way he could...
	Let's just scare all business away from America.
	No, but it's also just a political level, right?
	Like, you're a Democratic senator or whoever, and you're like, right, who should I try and go after?
	The richest person in the country.
	If only there was a way he could affect change...
	Hang on a minute.
	He's the richest person in the country.
	In a country where apparently you can just buy politicians.
	Yeah.
	So as you can see here, Joe Biden deciding to tweet out.
	We're gearing up to make all 600,000 federal government vehicles electronic, bringing more manufacturing jobs back to our country and building supply chains here at home.
	We're making Buy American a reality, not just a promise.
	Go to the next one.
	Maybe we'll just scroll up a little bit, just so we can see Elon's initial response, which is just, ahem!
	I wonder where Tesla's made.
	Yeah, still, I don't know if you...
	We mentioned this last time.
	Joe Biden held a press conference and a big old meeting of the electric cars of America.
	Didn't invite Tesla.
	The biggest electric car manufacturer in the United States wasn't invited.
	They export them all over the world.
	I see more and more pop up even just around Swindon nowadays.
	Just man in the country.
	Skipped his mind.
	Just forgot.
	No idea.
	And Joe, you could have asked him to pay his taxes personally.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, Elon being incredibly angry for obvious reasons, which is...
	Dude, I'm literally leading the electronic car revolution.
	I'm not even getting a mention.
	If you scroll down, you can see his other response, which is on point as well.
	Model 3 is literally the most made-in-America car in, well, of course, America.
	And yet, still doesn't get a mention.
	No invites.
	No communication.
	Well...
	Elon has been very critical of the government recently.
	I feel like he may have picked up some Thomas Sowell and taken a little bit of a read and gone, oh, really?
	Yeah, he has been talking a bit about how the government is the largest monopoly out there.
	They've got a monopoly on violence.
	They are a giant corporation that will steal your money.
	Yeah.
	I don't...
	I think he's pretty bob-on.
	He's very based.
	Yes, he's very based with a lot of it.
	So I can see why the establishment government, who don't like big business, they don't like rich people, unless, you know, they're the Speaker of the House.
	Unless they're them.
	Yes, unless they're them.
	They don't like people who appear to be...
	Well, I know he's not really a self-made man, but they don't like independent business.
	They're just trying to ignore it.
	And so, here's the thing.
	It's just...
	You compare this to Trump, but everyone's seen the clip of Trump talking about Elon.
	He's one of our great geniuses.
	We have to take care of our genius or they're going to go elsewhere.
	And it's like, yeah, absolutely true.
	And we can see more of, as you mentioned, him being anti-government and hating tyrants.
	And if we scroll up on this one, you can see...
	It's in my eye.
	We mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again, of course, which is Elon talking about the truckers.
	As you can see, he says, I wish I could help at this point.
	It seems that voting is the next election and is the remedy to the solution of the Freedom Convoy and the truckers.
	I'm surprised to see him honestly respond to Dominique Samuels, who, as far as I'm aware, is kind of just a mainly English-based pundit.
	It's very interesting to see that he's, like, actually responding to relatively normal people on the ground.
	Well, she's a good guy.
	Yeah, it's almost humble or something, you know?
	Well, she's just a good guy.
	Like, just wants to deal with the problems, and one of the problems being tyrants in Canada.
	And if we move on, we also have, of course, the other tweet from him about this issue, which was the broken heart in response to the Canadian government saying, we will steal and shoot your dogs.
	Pfft!
	Still can't get over.
	I still can't believe they said that.
	And then the Ottawa police chief came out afterwards and was like, oh yeah, even once the protests are gone, we're going to track you down.
	We're going to track you down, and we're still going to shoot your doggo.
	Speaking of petty tyrants, I thought we'd also combine this segment with someone else who had a bit of a public breakdown this week, or this time, and it's AOC.
	You can see this tweet, and I saw this pop up, and it's her going, I genuinely want to know why Tucker Carlson is allowed slash paid to engage in clear, targeted, libelous harassment that endangers peoples and drives so many violent threats that people have to fundraise for their own safety.
	Why would they have to pay for this harassment?
	Make it make sense.
	100,000 likes.
	What the hell is this about?
	What the hell did he do?
	Did he call in a bomb threat to our office?
	Did he call up his buddies and be like, send pipe bombs?
	AOC is one of those politicians in America who I think literally just wants to quietly repeal the Constitution.
	Yeah.
	She would be thrilled if they just threw the Constitution, all of the founding principles of America, in the fire, started again.
	In the Boston harbour.
	Yes.
	But what the hell does this have to do with it?
	She's randomly out of the blue, just Tucker Carlson, libelous, targeted, harassment, I'm under threat, safety, safety.
	What's going on?
	Oh, Bubby, what did he do to you?
	He called her white.
	Is that it?
	Wait, no, I saw, didn't he also make a comment?
	She posted something like Lonely and Alone or something, and he was like, doesn't this sound like a booty call to you?
	He also made a joke.
	Oh my goodness gracious, socialists can't take jokes.
	Let's go to the next link.
	Just to prove that, if we go to the next link please, you can see the clip.
	It's just Tucker Carlson saying, you're not a woman of colour, you're an entitled rich white lady.
	This hit her hard.
	Let's play it.
	The funniest of all was hearing Sandy Cortez describe herself as a woman of colour.
	She often does.
	No one ever dares to challenge that description, but every honest person knows it is hilariously absurd.
	There is no place on earth, outside of American colleges and newsrooms, where Sandy Cortez would be recognized as a, quote, woman of color.
	Because she's not.
	She's a rich, entitled white lady.
	She's the pampered, obnoxious ski bunny in the matching snowsuit who tells you to pull up your mask while you're standing in the lift line at Jackson Hole.
	They're all the same.
	Doesn't matter which shade they are.
	Apparently the editor...
	I mean...
	It's so true!
	She's just right!
	Tucker never misses, man!
	She's not black.
	Like, I don't know, we all play this game of, like, she's definitely the woman of...
	No!
	No, she's not!
	I mean, surely even...
	Even politically speaking, she's part of the United States government, which supposedly upholds the systems of white supremacy.
	She's probably prudent and on time.
	I imagine she's quite organised when she maybe...
	Behind closed doors, perhaps.
	So she's upholding white supremacy.
	Ms Cortez is as African as a Spaniard.
	Let's not waste our time with this.
	But the reason I mentioned the white thing being the most stingy, of course he did make the joke about her asking for a booty call as well.
	But the most stinging part about being her race, because there's also the DSA slowly falling apart on racial lines at the same time, and her being a member of the DSA, of course, this is going to make her quite mad.
	She's on the wrong side of the aisle, if she turns out to be white.
	The history of the DSA has been one of just slowly falling apart.
	It's good memes.
	It's always good memes.
	So you can see here, so this is someone pointing out that there's a DSA chapter that's collapsing in Baltimore, and he says it's so clucked it's hilarious.
	The chapter is literally giving away the majority of its funding to the Afro-Society Caucus and implementing race-based weighted voting.
	Did this not turn out to be a joke?
	Is this true?
	No.
	This one is real.
	I thought this was a meme.
	You click on this.
	You click on the left image here.
	There's just some, like, leaflets about what they're going to do.
	So as you can see, someone says, we're going to have opt-in, not opt-out dues for members of colour.
	So if you say you have brown skin, you don't have to pay.
	Great.
	51% of the Charter's dues to be paid to the following buckets.
	The caucus for black-led mutual aid work, ongoing black liberation work, and also restorative justice to heal chapter, charter, and member trauma.
	Trauma.
	What trauma have you been putting to these poor people?
	I've been delivering leaflets in Baltimore.
	It's tough.
	I mean, very well be.
	And being a socialist must be quite traumatic in the first place.
	I have to deal with the rest of them.
	You get the next image on there.
	You can see that they also say that they all have proportional equitable voting for general body members and for the steering committee until such a time that the chapter is either majority black and steering is also majority POC. In human words.
	Or that Baltimore's demographic basis is not majority BIPOC. Did these guys see your highlights of the Labour Party conferences and be like, this is a great idea.
	Brother makes a good point.
	If we go to the next link, you can also see him pointing out that 51% of their funding is going to go to apparently 4.5 people.
	I don't know if they use a three-fifths rule or something.
	I don't know how they got the 0.5 person.
	They've jumped by the one drop.
	I don't know how they measure a black person.
	Get the swatches out.
	You're only worth about 0.6, maybe.
	It's not one, that's for sure, unless you don't have a 0.5.
	So...
	But this is going on apparently.
	But if we go to the next one, this resulted in also, as I'm sure you're aware, this was one meme that went on in another DSA chapter.
	Some lady tweeting out that the DSA's relative abundance in certain demographics, people without college degrees, sorry, and people of colour, is a strategic concern, not a moral failing.
	Yeah.
	If you don't represent the colour swatch accurately enough in your chapter, you are upholding white supremacy.
	That's socialist thinking in this regard.
	You are a mole failing.
	Dumb dumb.
	I don't know what else to say.
	But then she tweeted out this thing, which caught fire, of course, because she says, tragically, our DSA chapter no longer exists, as we voted to divide it into five ethnically segregated entities so as to better fight racism.
	We We decided to segregate racially to fight racism, oh my god!
	Unfortunately, apparently this is a joke.
	Oh, no!
	Is this the joke?
	I mean, it is good.
	But the thing is so believable, because you people would do that tomorrow, and we'd all just be like, yeah, it's the socialists, of course they're doing that.
	I'm surprised Labour hasn't already, to be honest.
	Why have they not?
	Comrades!
	If you're upholding your own principles, you kind of have to.
	Divide and fight racism in your segregated zones.
	You can only fight certain kinds of racism.
	Don't step out of your corner.
	But speaking of that, I also thought we'd just check in with another leftist big L that's gone on this week.
	Enjoy.
	And this is what I was waiting for, and I didn't want spoilers for you.
	Oh, okay.
	So this is, World's first queer history degree faces acts as staff fight for their jobs during LGBT History Month.
	What a headline.
	What a beautiful headline.
	Who can ask for a better headline?
	Pink news of all places as well.
	Gritted teeth as they write.
	It's not profitable.
	Nobody signed up for our queer history degree.
	Five years ago, Goldsmiths, University of London, launched the world's first ever master's degree in queer history.
	Master's.
	Is it just a list of gay people?
	Just six weeks later, Davidson, Bengry, and other staff in the Department of History, English, and Creative Writing received letters notifying them that their jobs were at risk of redundancy.
	Queer history isn't the only course at risk.
	The master's degree in black British history is also under threat.
	Oh no!
	Anyway!
	Surely the degree on black British history is just one seminar.
	Well, we've covered everything we've got, boys.
	Let's head out.
	We've mentioned the three guys before 1940, and then...
	And then there was Windrush, you know?
	And that's about it.
	A few people in the Empire, of course.
	Yeah, I... Stop.
	Just stop.
	Get some help.
	I don't know what else to say.
	But both lecturers say that if they're let go, the course would be unavailable, especially at master's level, with extensive knowledge and understanding of an area that is needed to teach queer history.
	You don't understand that all I studied my entire life was queer history.
	Without this, I'm homeless.
	You can't go on without me!
	That's like...
	Eh, I think we can.
	I don't know, it sounds like the desperate attempt of someone who knows they'll be on the street if they don't have this job.
	Gets better.
	Quote, I wasn't even in the job for six weeks before I got a letter saying my job might be cancelled, David Dunn tells Pink News.
	We realise this is a really terrible course.
	Look, I was high when I wrote, I was in a BLM seminar, there were a million people pressuring me, I don't really want to hire you.
	I would.
	She was devastated when she received the letter.
	Come on, how are you surprised your job isn't worthwhile for that one?
	She had uprooted her entire life to teach at Goldsmith.
	Well, that was your first mistake.
	Quote, What visions and dreams.
	Of a gay future.
	I was going to tweet queer history for years.
	It was going to be so successful.
	I was going to make the university so worthwhile being at it.
	I was going to convince so many gay kids they were trans.
	But also, the predominant feeling that I have been throughout this whole process is just discombobulation.
	That's a great word.
	Discombobulated.
	The furore is particularly painful for Burgdy, who has built the master's degree in queer history up from the ground level for five years.
	He says the process that imperils it has been long, drawn out, and painful.
	I wonder if that's because finding queer history is kind of difficult.
	Bro, we feel your pain.
	It must have been so painful to be told, this is a waste of time.
	This is a useless decree.
	Get a job, freeloader.
	I hope that this pain continues.
	This is also astonishing, because other than Kate and I, not a single person in the department has ever published anything significant in queer history.
	LAUGHTER Everyone else in the department's useful!
	I'm bloody useless!
	And they've got rid of me!
	Not anyone else!
	If only they could give me ten more years!
	In five years, I've purplished bollocks, and everyone else has been doing a job, and then they want to get rid of me, not the other people!
	Big shock.
	And certainly, between Kate and I, I'm confident we know every other person in the country qualified to work in our roles.
	There's five of them!
	Five of you nut jobs.
	We meet on the weekends.
	Given your bloody lives to teaching queer history at a master's level, listen to yourself!
	Listen to yourself, for God's sakes!
	If he and Davidson are let go, the masters in queer history could not operate, Bergy says.
	Such a move would undermine the credibility of the program.
	And undermine any claim for quality of the degree.
	I have a quality degree in queer history, sir.
	It would undermine the credibility of the program and undermine any claim of quality of the degree.
	There was beyond so many claims, so much rock-solid evidence.
	You know the physics department.
	You fire two people from that, it's gone.
	There's no use to it.
	You fire this one person, all of it's gone.
	There's only like three physicists in the whole country.
	Yeah, it's all based on this one guy's delusions.
	So you get rid of him, there's nothing left.
	Because it is that paper thing.
	People just think any historian can tweet queer history.
	They just have to talk about queers.
	I mean...
	This is a total misunderstanding of what we do, Davidson said.
	See, we take people who weren't queers and tell you they were queers!
	It's very different!
	I did have some other stuff, but we'll save it for another time, because that's just beautiful, isn't it?
	I thought I'd only want a lovely little story like that.
	I'm so glad I didn't spoil that for myself, because that was hilarious.
	We're going to undermine the quality by firing us.
	There's no one else who can do it.
	Yeah, it's because it's a delusion between you and five of your mates, and you're the only people in the country who are that delusional.
	That's beautiful.
	Let's go to the written...
	Sorry, let's go to the video comments.
	So I hate to go full Snopes on you, Harry, but, um...
	This is about fully grown for a bearded dragon, not quite massive.
	I think you may be thinking of either an iguana or a tegu.
	Tegus are excellent, very evenly mannered.
	They're essentially just a bearded dragon the size of a small dog.
	Go for one of those if you're wanting a big lizard, but the heating is going to cost you.
	Just bear that in mind.
	Oh, Holly, no!
	She was hyper.
	She's very hyper today.
	Thank you for the fact check.
	You know my usual feelings on fact checkers, but you did a good job there.
	Thank you for correcting me.
	I've got a friend who's got loads of snakes in loads of enclosures, so I know that it costs a lot of money for the heating and stuff, but I don't know, reptiles are just cool, man.
	I agree.
	I do like reptiles.
	I did forget.
	I was meant to say this at the start.
	I completely forgot because I'm useless.
	Which is that we're meant to have Jason on today, but he had to not do it.
	He had to reschedule.
	He needed to go back to London.
	He did an interview with Carl in the morning, so if you want to see the interview with Carl and whatnot, that'll be up on Monday.
	Oh man, really nice guy.
	Yeah, he also gave him some tough questions, so that'll be fun.
	Otherwise, because Jason had to go to the House of Lords.
	Just as you do.
	Yeah, I had to go do that instead.
	So that's fine.
	So go and check out the interview on Monday.
	Oh yeah, also, go check out Getter, his account on there, Jason Miller.
	You can go see the magical roundabout.
	Americans are amazed by roundabouts.
	Yeah, he told me he was like, I really want to see the roundabout.
	I was like, yeah, sure, you can do that.
	And it's Swindon, it's full of them, but we do have the special roundabout.
	For foreigners who don't know, we have the Magic Roundabout in Swindon, which is one roundabout surrounded by five other roundabouts, and you can go through it.
	It's really disorientating to drive on, to be fair.
	All of it just works.
	That's all it could be said about it.
	You know, John was doing some drag racing style stuff, some handbrake turns around it.
	So we went, if you check out Jason Miller's Getter account, you can find the livestream he did, in which, yeah, John did some excellent manoeuvres around the Magical Roundabout.
	Let's go to the next video coming.
	You know how the leftists always refer to themselves as superheroes?
	Essentially, yeah, we're the Avengers, we're Dumbledore's army, we're this, we're that, everyone we disagree with is evil because we said so, therefore we're justified in everything.
	Well, I love what's happening in Canada right now.
	Literal comic book levels of evil.
	I'm waiting for Justin Trudeau to just snap and do the Joker makeup and come out with a little dog in his hands or a cat and a gun in the other hand and just be there like, you know what happens next.
	The sad thing is I could see him doing that.
	I know we already live in clown world.
	It would only take a few extra steps to get there.
	He just completely snaps.
	I mean, he applies the black face the wrong way.
	In my head, he's like got Lauren Chen.
	He's taken her hostage.
	No, not Lauren!
	And he's like, this is Mrs.
	Chen.
	I've frozen her bank account.
	This is her puppy.
	Oh, God.
	It's been eight days and she didn't claim him.
	Yeah.
	But it is quite amazing how...
	I think it's because they see things in sort of moral absolutist ways that they go, well, as long as I'm the one doing it for my pet good cause, it's fine.
	Who cares if millions of people die?
	Who cares if people get thrown aside by society?
	But on the topic of them always identifying with the heroes, I mean, when you're also saying Sauron...
	Sauron says trans rights!
	Sauron, yeah.
	Not always, apparently.
	Go to the next one.
	My fiancé is from Brisbane, Australia, and she came to visit finally since they released the lockdowns.
	And I live in Seattle, Washington, and she was absolutely blown away by the state of homelessness.
	I'm also a big fan of Dr.
	Drew After Dark on Your Mom's House podcast, and he says this is not a socioeconomic crisis.
	This is a crisis of addiction.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not even funny, is it?
	The state of homelessness in a lot of American cities is just embarrassing.
	It's an international embarrassment.
	It's pretty much Democrat cities as well that I see doing it as well, because they are so lax on addiction, just sort of handing out paraphernalia for people to get high on and stuff like that.
	I mean, if you give a man more drugs so that he can continue ruining his life...
	What are you expecting to happen?
	Sure.
	It's a multitude of problems, obviously, that cause homelessness.
	I mean, one of the ones...
	I mean, maybe I'm wrong on this, I don't know enough, but there was a video, I think I sent it to you, I'm not sure, where a guy just went to Los Angeles and just had a look, and was like, well, it's all full of Wokery and homeless people.
	Oh, was this, um...
	What was his name?
	Glide?
	Something like that?
	I can't remember.
	Was it the documentary, 30 Minutes?
	Kind of, I think.
	Yeah, I think I saw that as well.
	But one of them I can't even wrap my head around is the patriotic homeless guys who were all outside the vet's centre in their tents with the flags...
	I don't understand that, because they were saying, well, if we go to the vet centre, there's a curfew, you have to be back by a certain time, and you have to stay sober, and we don't want to do that, so we'd rather be homeless than free, and it's like...
	Yeah, I get the freedom part, but the homeless part...
	You can be free and not homeless, but it's weird.
	I think there's something...
	I mean, I'm no expert on this.
	People have pointed out in the past on some of the comments, I'm not an expert on the war on drugs or anything like that.
	But I think it's elements of a pathologic...
	And the American society clearly isn't winning it.
	No.
	It's rough.
	No, I don't necessarily agree with the war on drugs and the way that that's been done, I just don't necessarily know if the government helping people to take drugs instead is the right answer.
	It's not just drugs, that's why I was saying it.
	Oh yeah, yeah, no, I'm just referring to the drug stuff.
	I can also see people mentioning, of course, mental illness and that.
	You know, you don't have these levels in any other civilised country, at least in the degree that we're seeing in democrat cities.
	This isn't normal, and...
	Yeah.
	Don't know what to do about it, but it's just not my problem.
	There's a book called San Francisco that came out recently that I need to give a read because it's kind of talking about how Democrat policies have destroyed some of those major metropolitan cities, including, as you can imagine, San Francisco by the name.
	Let's go to the next video comment.
	Callum.
	LaCroix?
	This is LaCroix.
	LaCroix?
	Does that?
	It's really good.
	So it's wine?
	Whatever.
	I swear, can I? City people.
	We're in comments, or will Carl punish us?
	No, he'll come back and give us a disciplinary.
	Oh, no.
	It'll be my final warning before.
	Let's go to the next one.
	This book, I think recommended by a lotus eater, and I apologise, I forget who, both fails and succeeds in this purpose.
	Concentrating on the actions of Police Battalion 101, the opening chapters are difficult reading as they go into nauseating detail of the extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe.
	However, the last three chapters analyse why apparently ordinary men would take part in such brutality.
	Browning has no time for blaming anti-Semitism, but concentrates on the willingness with which people will follow authoritative orders, right or wrong.
	Browning's examples of experiments in role adaptation point to problems today.
	It's a very interesting point.
	I mean, considering that the topic is about mass extermination in general, not specifically the Holocaust, let's say, in a sense.
	It's more about how the Holocaust happened rather than the Holocaust event.
	Absolutely focusing on how humans will just go along with authority...
	It's perfectly acceptable, and also probably the right thing to do there, rather than just anti-Semitism.
	Because you can replace anti-Semitism with other kinds of hatred and bigotry, and get mass murder.
	That's the interesting thing, is relevant to that subject.
	Thomas Sowell has an essay called, Are Jews Generic?
	And that's more talking about the treatment of Jews during World War II, how they were, you know, mass extermination, stuff like that.
	But he basically just makes the point there have been lots of different classes throughout the years that have all been persecuted as persecuted sort of middlemen minorities is what he refers to them as.
	And basically just says, yeah, the Jews were the first time that somebody had that will, but also the technology to just, you know, throw them in camps.
	Yeah.
	But of course there is the anti-Semitism as well.
	Oh, obviously the anti-Semitism.
	I really should read Ordinary Men because I've been recommended it a few times.
	I don't remember if it is the same guy, but I remember Dr.
	Peterson talking about how there was a book by an Italian survivor of the Holocaust who...
	He was a survivor and he knew everyone, right?
	In the camp with him also survived.
	But after the war, they made a purposeful effort never to talk to each other because none of them were proud of what they'd done.
	Yeah.
	You know, how do you survive?
	And that's, once again, an interesting thing from, I know you've sort of, like, quit reading it partway through because of how miserable it is.
	It's a point that Solzhenitsyn makes in the Gulag Archipelago, which is that by the time you come out of the other side of the Gulag camps...
	Yeah, I don't want to meet anyone else.
	You just think to yourself, well, I'm a completely different person.
	What did I have to do to survive?
	Maybe it would have been more noble if the moment they arrested me, I just thrown myself in front of a bullet.
	Because it completely changes people.
	It's awful.
	Thanks, Alex.
	Let's go to the next one.
	It will be interesting to see if Biden's Bolsheviks mimics Trudeau's terror troops for the upcoming U.S. convoy.
	I mean, Americans ain't as polite as Canadians, after all.
	And besides, some folks might get the in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound mentality.
	Or in other words, if they're gonna get in trouble for it anyway, might as well make it worth it.
	Especially with the mistreatment of January 6th detainees.
	There are few things more dangerous than a cornered animal, or a man with nothing to lose.
	Good points.
	Good points.
	Got enough to say on that.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Hi guys, I've been a bronze tier sub ever since you started The Lotus Ears, and I'm glad to say I'm now a gold tier member.
	And that's because last week I published my very first novel.
	It is a cyberpunk murder mystery about a VR video game developer who got depersoned before his death and the detective who has to look into how and why.
	It's got artificial intelligences, VR, and moderately sized robots.
	If that sounds good to you, you can check it out on my website, jamescrake.com.
	We're on Amazon.
	It's Faceless by James Greig.
	Cheers.
	Sounds interesting.
	Thanks for becoming a Gold Tier member.
	Just in case you're trying to start another meme, I'm not learning another website.
	I've learned enough of CS Cooper, so...
	I'm not thinking that any further.
	CS Cooper got in there first.
	No, but my brain is going to end up just garbage by the end of the two of them up.
	But anyway, that's faceless, so go and check that out, of course.
	So we're looking at a snake eating a...
	Is that a mouse?
	Yeah, it's a...
	Oh no, it looks like a...
	Ferret or something, maybe?
	Oh, that's a big boy.
	Look at it go.
	Have you ever...
	A big, big boy and a big old boy.
	There's a big banana boy.
	Have you ever seen a snake eat something in real life?
	I don't know if I have.
	Because it is really interesting how it just sort of like, because like I said, my mate's got snakes, and he feeds them, they're much smaller than that one was, so he just feeds them tiny little dead frozen mice, but it is really interesting how- Well, I think you get them frozen, then you thaw them out.
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	It was an ice cube, basically.
	Sorry.
	Interrupted.
	No worries, no worries.
	And they just snap straight for him.
	You kind of hold them by the tail, and it'll just go, bam, straight in there.
	And then you'll see it just slowly go down the length of the snake before it just sort of, at some point, vanishes.
	It kind of just sinks down into the rest of it.
	I think it's cool.
	I can agree.
	That sounds kind of cool, but...
	It's kind of...
	But that's the beauty of nature, isn't it?
	It's all gross.
	You ever seen ants eating snakes?
	What?
	Is that a thing that happens?
	Yeah, I'll send it to you.
	I started watching this chat, I can't remember the name, it was just like, there's loads of video of ants, and I just, I really like ants, apparently.
	Oh, okay.
	There's some really aggressive ones, and they, like, they can eat, like, well, they tried to eat mantises and got screwed.
	And then they can eat, like, entire lizards, and then there's one example they got on camera of them, like, pinning down a snake, paralyzing it with poison, and they're just devouring it.
	Good God.
	I'm getting kind of worried about these ants.
	Yeah, man.
	Next time I've got ants, I ain't going easy on them.
	Yeah.
	It's getting worse.
	Let's go to the next one.
	It wasn't just only talking about feminists.
	It was talking about anybody on the left that is now wanting to just abandon ship.
	The point is that they're going to want to always try to reset the clock back to wherever they were winning.
	So for Black Lives Matter, it would be 2016.
	For feminists, it would be 2010.
	Yada, yada.
	Like, all it's going to do is end up right back to where we are again, but probably in a worse state.
	We could definitely turn them away because where else are they going to go?
	I'm not really sure I followed the point, but we definitely are going into a future which we have to decide ourselves.
	We can't really look back and just decide we're going to do that again.
	Because it doesn't really work.
	Yeah.
	Because as those people do, it doesn't really work.
	I love the idea of BLM going back.
	Oh, we're going to go back to the great heights of 2016.
	What?
	Where one of your members went out and shot five cops?
	Yes, but that was only one member and five cops.
	It wasn't entire cities erupting...
	Rookie numbers.
	Yeah, it wasn't entire cities erupting in flames.
	Were the feminists winning in 2010?
	Kinda, yeah.
	Oh, okay.
	I mean, they're still kind of winning, but now they're all...
	Now they're a kind of laughing stock.
	Yeah.
	Well, no, it's not...
	The TERFs...
	It's that they developed into two groups, and you have the...
	Yeah, well, everyone knows.
	The TERFs are winning.
	I would rather the TERFs win than the trans-activists.
	I don't know if there's like turf badges you can buy or something.
	I feel like doing it for a laugh.
	Let's see what Posey Parker's selling.
	That's right.
	I'm a turf.
	Let's go to the next video.
	Hey guys, just wanted to add to the discussion about cleaning things with sand.
	When I was a kid, I was a Boy Scout, and the Boy Scouts would go to the Pine Barrens, and the Pine Barrens is nothing but sand and pine trees, and since we didn't have extra water to clean the dishes from the campsite, we would use sand to scour, you know, everything in camp was like metal, so you'd use the sand to scour things, and then you'd wipe off the sand, and the dishes would be clean.
	Yeah, interesting.
	Scout knowledge.
	I also love how he put in there, the older scouts would scare them with stories of the Jersey Devil, of course.
	It's never going to end.
	I think there's plans for us to potentially go camping later on this year.
	I want to see what sort of scary stories we can all tell each other around the campfire.
	Yeah, but they're all going to be real.
	Let me read from critical race theory.
	Well, there's going to be stories about, like, grooming gangs and stuff, and then none of us are going to be happy and we're all going to jump off a cliff.
	Well, you just don't camp next to a cliff then, Callum.
	Fine.
	Go wherever the sand is.
	John's typed out, there's also in Song of Ice and Fire, Danny has a sand bath in an abandoned city in a desert.
	Ah yes, you're right there.
	Song of Ice and Fires, do you know what that is?
	The book series that Game of Thrones is based on.
	Danny Daenerys.
	A little bit of nerd knowledge for you.
	We have a discussion sometimes, me and Harry.
	I just said to him the other day, are you into music?
	And he just looked at me and kind of laughed.
	I'm so disappointed whenever you ask.
	You're one of those music people, right?
	You're like the most awkward, not to fire up the fan theories or anything, but talking to you sometimes is like going on the most awkward date ever.
	So, you like music?
	No.
	There you go, see?
	He only listens to Eastern propaganda music.
	And to be fair, it's starting to infect me as well.
	I got him singing Al-Azuri Al-Bashar, I guess.
	Al-Azuri Al-Bashar.
	God Syria Al-Bashar.
	I got you to listen to Rushkaja Energia, which you seemed to be okay with.
	I'll get you listening to Van Halen before the end of the year.
	Alrighty, anyway, to the written comments on the side.
	So on Putin's peacekeepers.
	M1Ping says, I have a feeling Putin's peacekeepers will trample fewer civilians than the Canadian police.
	No, I don't agree on that one.
	Jimbo G, capitalism is bad unless it wears a skin suit of diversity and progression.
	It's quite remarkable how many communities of communists support major corporations just because they throw some black people on their product.
	Okay, consumer.
	These people are kind of just consumers, aren't they?
	It's not a bad meme either.
	You know when you see people being like Yas Queen to Black Pitcher?
	Okay consumer.
	Yeah, like okay brand or like silence brand.
	I mean, the point that they're making though is the whole woke capitalism thing, which is something that I also hate.
	It's like, you're a business, stop being stakeholder capitalism.
	Wasn't it you and me who did the, what was it, Black History Month at Microsoft?
	They're like, you can play as MLK in Minecraft.
	Oh yeah, that's just what he would have wanted.
	Digging for gold, just what MLK wanted.
	Brandon Napier says, Biden, guys, we need to work with Ukraine.
	We have vested interests in them.
	Everyone else, no, you and your son have a vested interest in Ukraine.
	Biden, listen here, you little...
	Student of History says, are Putin's peacekeepers?
	Hopefully more UN and less Kazakhstan peacekeeping.
	Not holding my breath.
	UN peacekeeping isn't really peaceful either.
	At least, that's what the UN would say in their own reports.
	Do you know about the Bangladeshi ones they sent to the Congo and whatnot?
	Nope.
	Nonsense.
	Every time.
	Every f***ing time.
	And no one was charged, because, well, they're UN peacekeepers.
	What are you going to charge them with?
	Under what law?
	I think...
	Yep, Shakespeare's...
	It should be international law.
	Yeah.
	Shaker Silver says Putin is deliberately using language like peacekeepers and autonomy to match how the West has treated Russian allies like Syria and their own separatists and schemes of regime change.
	It's mockery of the West's imperialism that it has no answer to, other than to complain that Putin is more effective.
	Kind of, yeah.
	I mean, that is what he's doing.
	He's using it for mockery.
	It's not to say that there can't be, of course, actual useful or productive ways of doing these things, but there have been a lot of F-ups, and him making fun of that is fair, because there's a lot of F-ups.
	Brendan Von Vorhoek says...
	While Joe Biden and his swamp creatures seem hell-bent on war, it's not surprising that most Americans don't care about Ukraine, nor can understand why American boys have to die for some Eastern European country on the other side of the globe.
	Most can't even find Kiev or Odessa on a map, but then again, in our defence, how many Ukrainians can find Pittsburgh or Boston on a map?
	Probably more than can find Odessa.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's fair.
	We've all got to learn about America as non-Americans, so that is a thing.
	Which is weird, thinking about it.
	Did you see Biden...
	He moved the embassy from Kiev to, what is it, Lviv?
	Like, wildly, wildly in the West.
	Miles and miles away from anything.
	Oh, okay.
	And everyone was like, calm down.
	We're not going to have another Afghan moment.
	We have to airlift them.
	I know you're scared of that.
	I mean, under Biden's leadership...
	But then yesterday he moved it from Lviv to Poland.
	He's like, I'm getting the hell out of here!
	We need to get out of Dodge!
	So FreeWill2112 says, Russia has a weak economy, but has about 7,000 nuclear warheads.
	You can't just dismiss them.
	The Arnie has about 1,500 tanks.
	Britain has 200.
	We shouldn't fight in Ukraine, but if he attacks NATO, has our duty-bound treaty to defend our fellow NATO countries.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Except that, you know, he has spent all this money on the military.
	Where can he really use it?
	If he uses it to attack NATO, it's World War III. And everyone knows that.
	So, it's all great having a huge military and a huge military budget, but if you don't know where to use it, then it's kind of a waste.
	Because then you end up with loads of Soviet-era tanks just rotting.
	So...
	These next two comments are for Lord of the Rings.
	32112 has another one for Putin, if you want to do it.
	Oh, sure.
	Yeah, Pete, come on.
	So 32112 says, Yeah, that's why I'm not taking some pro-Putin side or anything on this, because he's...
	I've mentioned it in the office a lot of times.
	It's a gangster state.
	It's not good.
	But also, I'm laughing at the memes because, quite frankly, what can we plebs even do in regards to all this?
	Listen, if the global powers are going to push it to a particular end point, you or I aren't going to have any influence on that, sadly.
	It reminds me of a lot of the discussion I have with my parents when I ask them about the Cold War and they're like, I won't really remember much, but They just remember, well, everyone thought they were going to get nuked and die, so everyone just kind of potted about and have fun.
	Because, I mean, what can you do as a pleb?
	Explains the 80s.
	It's like Washington and Moscow talking about nuking the entire planet.
	Okay, I'll go get the beans.
	Great, what you fancy for dinner.
	Yeah, I don't unappreciate any of those points.
	I mean, those points are valid things to say, but at the same time, what can we actually respond in a way that's entertaining or useful?
	Yeah, and also for somebody like myself or Callum, it is really also the...
	Sort of the question of like, well that's going on all the way over there.
	What does it have to do with you or I? Sure, but it's, you know, even if it was in Germany and Germany wasn't a NATO member, you'd just be like, well...
	Okay.
	Okay, let's talk about it and then we'll do other things, but I appreciate the points.
	Alright, on to the Rings of Power comments.
	So Baron von Warhawk says, Tolkien's work was meant to be English mythology.
	They're not just pissing on Tolkien's work, they're pissing on England.
	P.S. Also, where did all those black dwarves and elves go since they don't appear in the movies?
	Mmm.
	Mmm.
	Can I have a conversation about black genocide?
	Mmm.
	Well, maybe we need to have a talk about Middle-earth Hitler.
	No, no, no.
	Planned Parenthood turns up, isn't it?
	Oh, no!
	No, we need to make that canon.
	If anyone has, it was definitely Planned Parenthood.
	Sauron started Planned Parenthood in Middle-earth and just handed out the condoms.
	Do you know the term the Black Nationalists call Planned Parenthood?
	Oh, no.
	The Negro Baby Holocaust.
	Really?
	That's the term they use for it.
	I mean, Margaret Sanger!
	She had some views.
	She had some views.
	Oh, wait.
	And if you want to learn more about that, check out my article that you can find on the website, Hollywood Does Not Care About Justice, which goes into a few of the examples of those mutually approved sexual encounters.
	There's not many of them in Hollywood.
	Let's put it that way.
	Another one from Baron von Warhawk.
	Have you seen Tolerant Hitler?
	No.
	Okay, it's a great cartoon series.
	And it's Hitler comes back and is pro-diversity.
	And he's like, diversity is a strength.
	Diversity makes us great.
	That's the thing.
	That's the point I was making.
	I think it's the moral absolutism.
	Because they see themselves as morally absolute, any position they take is a moral good.
	Therefore, if somebody who's objectively evil has that same position, well, I'm not a bad person, so they must be a good person.
	That's what it is.
	M1 Ping says, wouldn't the logical conclusion of race-swapping everything regardless of source material lead to a movie like The Passion of Fentanyl starring Peter Dinklage as St.
	Floyd, Terry Crews as Officer Derek Chauvin, and Snoop Dogg as Judge Carhill?
	Directed by Quentin Tarantino, produced by Harvey Weinstein.
	Yes, I see that you also were memeing along in the chat on Friday.
	Good to see.
	Long Talks on the Nietzsche says, So this is how high fantasy literature dies, with thunderous applause and horny coumarism.
	Yeah, sadly.
	Chris, wall fantasy is a pocket reality.
	You're supposed to suspend your disbelief.
	We can suspend our disbelief in Middle-earth until people start forcing reality into the world.
	I can almost guarantee they will be fighting industrial orcs and dwarves who are causing climate change.
	That's one of the good things about Peter Jackson's trilogy.
	There's been a quote that's been going around from Peter Jackson when he was talking about making the series, where he literally just says,"...we made a promise to ourselves that we weren't going to make this for us, or insert any of our politics into it.
	We thought of it like we're making this for Tolkien." Whereas this is being purely made for the egos of the showrunners involved.
	Who, by the way, are complete unknowns.
	Their only other listing on IMDB are additional writers, uncredited, on some of the Star Trek films.
	They're NPCs.
	Yes.
	George Hap says, "Do you think that normies would reject the woke skin suit of Lord of the Rings, or will there be enough culture junkies to sustain it, similar to Star Wars and the MCU?" See, is culture junkies the right word?
	Because I would see a culture junkie as maybe someone like myself who actually cares about the pop culture that they're absorbing.
	I don't like that word.
	I don't like it either.
	It implies caring about things is something abnormal.
	That's true.
	Maybe it is the wrong word.
	I think the normies will lap it up.
	Because we've seen...
	Normies do that because we've seen...
	I still have friends, people I'm very close with, who are more than happy to look at all the garbage that Disney puts out that just has a Star Wars sticker slapped on it.
	Even if it has nothing to do with any of the franchises or where they came from.
	People are just happy to accept it because people like popcorn terrible entertainment.
	That's as far as it goes with some people.
	Snowdog, a wizard does not approve of this mocking of my world.
	Leftist thou shall not pass.
	Snowdog.
	Snowdog.
	I'm assuming that's another one of the insults about white people back when we did that.
	Oh yeah.
	Well, I'm a child of the chalk, personally.
	I like Mayo Monkey.
	Still the best.
	I don't know.
	Child of the chalk sounds so beautifully like a cult.
	Yeah, kind of.
	Would you like to become a child of the chalk?
	Oh...
	We'll end on one from the last segment because we're out of time.
	So Student of History says, Democrats attempting to continue to oppress successful African-American.
	The apple hasn't fallen far from the damn hooded tree.
	Got him.
	It's a good point.
	On that note, it's time to end the show.
	If you'd like more from us, go over to LotusEaters.com.
	Please do subscribe.
	You can access all the premium content.
	And, of course, we have Jason Miller's interview coming out on Monday as well to look forward to.
	But otherwise, we'll be back tomorrow at 1 o'clock.

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