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March 17, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:58

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #351

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 17th of March 2022.
	Today I'm joined by Carl.
	Hello!
	And we're going to talk about the thugs stealing the Russian army's lunch money.
	We're also going to talk about the Twitter drama between J.K. Rowling, who's apparently going to be the arch-destructor of leftism.
	Yes.
	And finally we will encounter the leftists who appear to have finally, finally discovered Atlantis.
	We are.
	Look forward to getting into that.
	But before we do, let's check out the stuff we've come up on the site since you've last checked in.
	We have this video by Carl talking about propaganda.
	Yep, this is why I despise our pro-war propaganda.
	Why I think that we should be entirely sceptical of it even if we dislike Russia.
	We also have a free article by Josh entitled, Western media are the Chernobyl engineers of our time, which I think ties in very neatly with your video.
	Yes it does, because it's true.
	And he has a really interesting perspective here.
	I'm sure you can read the metaphor yourself, but it's very much like they're in charge of this enormously powerful device created by mankind, just like the Chernobyl engineers were.
	And how's it going to end?
	Well, that's exactly one of the points that I'm pointing out in the problem with propaganda, is that the further you deviate from the truth, reality doesn't care.
	And this is why totalitarian regimes fail, basically.
	But anyway, I'll let you watch it.
	And then finally, just to let you know, we have a premium hangout tomorrow at 3.30 UK time on the subject of Britishness.
	Yep, that's me and Callum.
	So I was going to start doing something else with this.
	I started looking into what I was going to talk about here.
	And I discovered a report by the Running Me Trust that was done over a period of about two years, in 1997, sort of 1999.
	Mm-hmm.
	All good by the Blair government.
	And it came to conclusions that are very modern.
	Right.
	Britishness is racist.
	This is all part of the multicultural promise of the Blair government.
	And so we're going to be going through that and then looking at the consequences of that and the ideological rails upon which we're set and have to travel down to see the conclusions they're going to meet.
	It's going to be very interesting.
	3.30, live, be there.
	Me and Callum are going to be...
	I'm going to be, like, probably outraging Callum with some of the things, so I look forward to his disgust.
	And all of our members can check into that.
	Yeah, any premium member can watch it.
	Excellent.
	Fabulous.
	So, without further ado, let's get into the news.
	So, let's have a look at this map.
	This is the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
	Now, I don't know if you're aware, but three weeks ago there was an invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
	I have heard something about it on the news.
	I know the news hasn't covered it hardly at all.
	But yes, so this is as far as we can ascertain where the borders sit at the moment.
	And it's reasonably similar to where the borders were sitting last week, to be honest.
	So you can see Russia has made incursions into the country.
	They've made reasonable progress in the south, some progress in the east along that sort of long northeast front.
	And they have forces around Kiev.
	That's the key point, though, isn't it?
	Encircling the capital.
	That is useful, but I don't think it actually ties into Putin's war goals particularly strongly in the future.
	It seems to me like his main objective is to essentially recreate the state of Novorossiya, which is all of the southern areas with the entire coast.
	So in that sense, Kiev is something of a distraction.
	But in terms of winning the war and breaking the enemy's will to fight, it could be very useful.
	But then, of course, they're having a big problem, which is they're really struggling to take cities.
	Because the Russian army mainly consists of vehicle-based troops, these so-called battalion tactical groups of tanks and armoured personnel carriers and so on.
	Tanks aren't very useful in a city.
	Guns can only point up about 20 degrees if you're lucky.
	And the enemy doubtless hide in buildings with RPGs and things like that.
	Very hard to get into them.
	And so we're seeing at the moment that the Russians, they've made some progress in the countryside and they're surrounding a lot of cities, but they are struggling to actually take them.
	But we can, I think, conclude that the Russian invasion has not gone as speedily as they may have intended at the start.
	This is a bit of a slow grind.
	And according to this site, we can see that actually the Russian losses, if we scroll down, have been quite significant.
	So this site is reasonably good in the sense that it only counts things where there is a photograph or a video showing it.
	Right.
	So according to that, it's quite reliable compared to other sites where it's just like, oh yes, the Ukrainian government said they just got droid 30 helicopters.
	Oh, that's fabulous.
	Yeah, I'm not taking government press releases on numbers.
	On war.
	In a war.
	On anything, frankly, as factual.
	But if you actually have a video or photo evidence of a thing, then I'm much more inclined to believe it.
	Well, the good thing about this is that every single one of these, you see that's got one destroyed, two destroyed, three destroyed.
	If you click on any of those, it will take you to an image of the wreck of the evidence so that it's all quite well sourced.
	And that's really good.
	But according to this site, Russia has lost 1,381 vehicles in the last three weeks, including nearly 300 tanks.
	And this is likely to be an underestimate as well, because it's just the ones that have been recorded.
	So reading between the lines, they seem to be trading with Ukraine at roughly a 3 to 1 or even 4 to 1 ratio when it comes to military hardware, which is quite significantly a disadvantage.
	So, I think we can conclude Russia's military is not doing as well as it hoped.
	What do you think?
	I think that the Russians don't care, and that their military tactics for the last 300 years have been essentially attrition, and this is totally what they would have expected.
	Really?
	I imagine so, yeah.
	I don't think they're averse to taking losses.
	I think they're used to that.
	I think the Russians certainly have a much higher capacity to take losses than we do in the West.
	We almost, even in war, think that one death is a tragedy.
	But I think there does get to a point where even the Russians start to think, hang on a minute, this is too much.
	I don't think we're anywhere near it yet.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	Well...
	So that is one perspective, and I've been following this on both sides of the war.
	And it does seem like one thing I've noticed is a lot of people who have taken that perspective as time goes on and on, it starts to seem less like a slow advance and more like it's stalled in some places, that sort of thing.
	And the more that you actually look into the Russian army, the more it seems that there are some really significant weaknesses that emerge, that you don't have to be reliant on partial media or partial analysis to understand.
	And that's what I want to take us through today.
	Because it turns out that the Russian army has been literally bullied by the Russian people, specifically the Russian mafia.
	Okay.
	How does that happen?
	I know.
	I mean, this sounds ridiculous.
	In Britain, just imagine going up to a British military base and saying, Oi, pay me protection money.
	You know, to a six foot tall soldier with a gun?
	Yeah.
	I mean, how does that work?
	How does it work indeed?
	Well, to understand that, we have to dig a little bit deeper into Russian culture.
	And I'm going to take us through this Twitter thread by Kamil Galeev, who we've covered on this channel before.
	He's got a lot of opinions.
	Some of them I don't agree with, but some of them are a bit closer.
	He's got qualifications in international relations and so on, I believe, two master's degrees.
	And he's been quite prolific on this subject.
	So, for an insider's perspective on what's going on, let's ask the question.
	Why is the Russian army so weak?
	Assuming that it is, of course.
	His TLDR is that the Russian army is not used to fight wars against regular armies.
	It holds low positions in the Russian dominance hierarchy, the status hierarchy of Russia.
	The ruling state security fears rivalry from the military and makes every effort to castrate them.
	Hmm.
	So I think that's a very interesting perspective, because if you look through history, and of course you've been covering ancient history recently, it's not uncommon for generals to take over a state.
	No, that's a good point.
	I mean, I don't know what Putin's direct connection with the army and the infrastructure of it and the power structure of it is.
	I would have assumed it would have been fairly close, but if it's not, I suppose that he's got no choice but to keep them on the periphery.
	Well, even when the army is your creature as the dictator of a state, unless you are the general who has seized power by leading it and they have this deep personal loyalty, surely it can still be a significant political threat.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And I think, so, he starts with the assumption here, when Russia invaded, experts thought it would win in 24 to 72 hours.
	Now, this is an interesting one.
	A lot of people are now saying, oh, we never thought that.
	There are some people, let's be fair, who at the start said, no, this is going to be long and bloody, this is going to be a grind, it's not going to be over quickly.
	But a lot of people genuinely thought, oh, this is going to be over in a few days, it'll be a tragedy, Ukraine's going to be crushed, blah, blah, blah.
	of memory editing things that has happened is suddenly no one ever thought that which i find really interesting yeah but this was an opinion of many people but two weeks later now three weeks the war is still going despite the fact that russia on paper has overwhelming superiority they have 30 000 tanks they have 1 000 jet aircraft to russia to ukraine's 60 70 You know, they should have flattened the Air Force and just steamrolled it through the country, surely.
	But that's obviously not what happened.
	One thing that seems rather unpopular to say, but it does seem that Russia is playing with kid gloves somewhat.
	I mean, I'm no military expert on Russian forces, but it strikes me that Russia probably could have just started leveling its way through the country if it had wanted to.
	And the fact that it hasn't speaks to restraint on their part.
	Yeah, so I've certainly seen a lot of people saying that in the first couple of weeks, and it is true that Russia has gradually stepped up its intensity of fire, bombardment, and so on.
	But still, we're yet to see, for example, combined air operations from Russian forces.
	And in fact, there's a lot of analysts pointing to the potential that the Russian Air Force simply is incapable of mounting large scale operations with more than two planes at one time.
	And they rely on this analysis by pointing out that Russian pilots only train in small sorties of one, two or three.
	And the larger formations they only seem to use for parades, like the Red Arrows almost.
	And so they're saying, well, maybe the reason they haven't launched these massed attacks, given that Russia has, for example, taken large casualties, not just in the expendable army troops, but in their VDV, the paratroopers who are supposed to be the elite.
	There is a stronger and stronger argument saying, well, if they're still not using their full power, then maybe it's not because they've got the kid gloves on.
	Maybe it's because they don't know how to punch with them.
	So there's that argument as well.
	But let's get into this analysis of the Russian army.
	So although it projects a warlike image, he claims its military is weak and doesn't know how to fight wars.
	Big claim.
	Let's consider it.
	Despite a massive PR campaign, Russian military actually has zero experience of fighting conventional wars against other regular armies.
	They were quite successful in suppressing civilian riots in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and so on.
	But they were less successful in suppressing guerrilla movements in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
	Oh dear.
	Yeah.
	And guerrillas didn't have much heavy weaponry.
	They didn't have proper air defense.
	And yet Russians suffered high casualties and even lost the first Chechen war, despite overwhelming material superiority.
	So he continues, since World War II, Russia has never fought a conventional war against a regular comparable army.
	And that's true.
	The only exception was Georgia in 2008.
	Russia invaded to support separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and defeated the Georgian army.
	But that's like defeating the Faroe Islands at football.
	Yes, they're a very small place.
	So that was the closest Russia had to a real war in the last 70 years.
	It continues.
	Individual Russian military specialists fought in the Korean War, Vietnam, Angola, etc.
	And Syria as well.
	But the army as a whole did not.
	The Russian military machine as an entity from recruitment to logistics hasn't been checked in a war against a large regular army since 1945.
	And this is the first experiment that we're having now as to whether it can do that.
	Could we not say that about the West as well, though?
	We could.
	Iraq was our last major conventional war.
	But we also in Britain had a conventional war against Argentina and the Falklands.
	It's true.
	That was quite small scale, wasn't it?
	Reasonably so, but it was still a massive military operation.
	Iraq, certainly, I think is our claim.
	And then also we've had large amounts of troops committed to Afghanistan and so on.
	But it is true, and that's a point that's worth emphasizing.
	Most militaries, especially modern ones, when they go to war, they are usually mobilizing their military strength in With the benefit of years and maybe decades of not having actually done it.
	So they've had all of these theories, they've built new weapons, they've got new theories of warfare, but they don't actually know what the war is going to be like.
	And so we see, for example, in this war, TB2 drones being super effective despite the fact that people didn't think they would be that effective.
	Things like this.
	Right.
	So what we're discovering really is sort of 21st century warfare.
	Yes.
	What it actually looks like when it's really engaged.
	Absolutely.
	But then it happens so rarely that even though we're discovering it, we run the danger of just deciding that, ah, this is what all 21st century wars will look like, and then the next one will be completely different.
	So it's very hard.
	It's a wicked learning environment in a way.
	You could have made some very silly assumptions about the war and go into it, and then through sheer luck, Win.
	And then everyone looks and analyzes the war and decides, ah, well, you knew how to fight the war.
	This is how all future wars will be fought.
	Absolutely.
	It's harsh.
	But yes, so since 1945, Russian army fought against enemies, neither of which had a regular army of its own.
	Enemies of Russia had no structure, little training, tiny firepower.
	To compensate for this, Russia heavily invests in propaganda, glorifying its military.
	But what do they really look like?
	And then we get to the Russian Mafia.
	Right.
	It goes to the next one.
	In December 2021, thieves-in-law imposed tribute on a Russian military base, making NCOs and officers pay them cash.
	They specifically target veterans of Syria who earned cash there.
	They harass, threaten, and beat them.
	The leader of the gang was arrested but released after a few months.
	I mean, if an army can't defend, if a military base can't defend itself from extortion by thugs, then I can see what you mean when you say how good are they going to be really fighting.
	Yeah.
	And let's remember, we're not talking about the so-called super elite formations like the BDD and the paratroopers and so on.
	But the majority of your army is not going to be elite, even if they occupy a disproportionate amount of headlines.
	But your regulars should still have a certain degree of combat effectiveness.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So you'd imagine, oh, this is a wacko one-off story.
	But it's not.
	It's not an exception.
	It's a rule.
	The Russian military is constantly harassed by thieves and forced to pay money.
	Just four random headlines in the next one on how thieves force literally any military, including the ones managing the nuclear rockets, to pay them tribute.
	The Russian army is a type of prey for the mafia.
	And there's these photos of them basically being...
	That's just okay.
	I mean, if I'm one of the officers, I'm like, okay, we're going to learn how to shoot these guns, and then when someone tries to steal things from us, we're going to shoot them.
	Yeah, but the Mafia can come in and say, well, you know, we know you're here in this space, but we know where you live.
	We know where your babushka's living and all of that.
	So they've got leverage.
	Let's introduce some sociological context.
	Russian thieves traditionally portray themselves as the captor culture, the rebels.
	We don't care about the official law, the law of cops.
	We only follow the law of thieves.
	We constitute a parallel state, much superior to the official one.
	And there's a kind of a legendary mythos there.
	I can see it, yeah.
	Thieves dominate in prisons, believe it or not.
	Their propaganda is working so well that many naive prisoners really do view thieves as rebels.
	But then they start doubting the narrative.
	They wonder, what if thieves play rebels, but in reality are actively collaborating with prison administration?
	If prisoners refuse to work and try to sabotage the production, thieves will plead, persuade, threaten, and then physically force them to resume their work.
	Thieves may develop very long and complicated argumentation, but with only one imperative.
	Production goals must be met.
	Okay, yep.
	That's well reflected in culture.
	Consider Bespredel, a great movie on how Russian institutional culture shaped by prison culture works in reality.
	A prisoner refuses to work and tells administration.
	They inform the thieves and that's what happens.
	And only much later, prisoners realise thieves are not a parallel state.
	They're just another branch of the same state machine.
	They're controlled opposition, which actively cooperates with authorities.
	They do whatever the state commands and never ever cross the line or they're doomed.
	They're the antifar of Russia.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Right.
	They think they're the opposition, but they're entirely controlled by the orthodox state.
	Right.
	Thieves racketeering the military, including Syria veterans, new personnel, and so on, is not an accident.
	It's a deliberate government policy to keep professional military low in the country's dominance hierarchy.
	Russian state purposefully keeps its military in this position.
	It's all part of a plan.
	Now, that seems a bit silly, right?
	Why would you want your military to be completely ineffective and bullied and harassed by thugs?
	That doesn't seem like a way of building an effective state, does it?
	But he continues to describe why that might be the case.
	The Russian military are harassed, abused, and low in hierarchy.
	Of course, the lowest position ever is taken by conscripts.
	There are many publications on how conscripts were forced into gay prostitution to earn cash for higher-ups.
	Okay.
	Humiliating your soldiers is not going to make them effective soldiers.
	No, but when you haven't fought a conventional war for 70 years, maybe that doesn't matter.
	Maybe they're just your posse.
	You can use them however you wish if you're a senior officer.
	I mean, are they even a posse?
	They seem like livestock, in a way.
	These are conscripts.
	They've got no choice.
	They're paid for by the state, so they're guaranteed to have wealth.
	They're guaranteed to have money, and so we can just take it from them.
	Well, I've been criticizing the Russian conscription thing as a long-term social security plan rather than anything to do with the military, and this certainly seems like it.
	Especially if they don't fight wars.
	But why would the Russians develop such a plan?
	And he goes on.
	Higher-ups are afraid of the army.
	Russian thieves play rebels, being a part of the state apparatus.
	The same way Russia plays a military regime, being in fact a state security regime.
	So we know Putin's a KGB man, of course.
	The domination of state security, the new nobility over all other institutions, is a particular feature of Putin's regime.
	This hadn't been the case in the USSR. State security rule is the major innovation of Putin.
	State security, though, are not the military.
	That's another institution which has very uneasy relations with soldiers.
	State security will easily suppress any civilian revolt with guerrillas.
	For goodness sake.
	Sorry, I've lost my...
	State security will easily suppress any civilian revolt and any guerrilla.
	Thus, the only inner force that can overthrow Putin and so on would be the army.
	And so the army is kept in a state of perpetual humiliation and wretchedness in order to never be able to find the morale needed to overthrow Putin.
	Yeah.
	And he goes on to talk about some of the ways in which they do that.
	So one precaution is to do a cleansing after each military conflict, because they have conflicts in Syria and so on.
	So in peacetime, the power of military generals is low.
	They're bounded by institutions, protocols, guidelines.
	They're watched by state security.
	They've got military prosecutors, so they're kept in check that way.
	But during the war, this control basically disappears.
	Hmm.
	So the longer the war lasts, the less procedural and more personal military power becomes.
	Soon, nobody cares about procedures because it's about life or death.
	It's about winning the war.
	Everything is done by personal oral orders.
	Troops get used to unquestioning obedience to a general's word.
	So you have to do a cleaning up after the war.
	So he has to purge people with experience and knowledge of military activity.
	So what he's doing is he's getting rid of all of the competent generals and Because that's dangerous.
	So what does that do?
	Isn't that a kind of selection pressure?
	Yes, a negative one.
	Yes, an evolutionarily negative selection pressure to ensure that your army is run by the least competent people in it.
	Yes, and the army itself is demoralized and weak and ineffectual and run by incompetence.
	So do you think this is going to produce an effective fighting for us?
	It seems like a recipe for disaster, if you ask me.
	Yes, it sounds like the very worst way of running an army.
	Absolutely.
	And he points out another couple of things that they do.
	So they clean up the generals, they actively promote state security agents to army positions, and you can regularly find Russian military personnel.
	They'll give their long patriotic speech, but then they'll also complain that they'll never get a promotion because of politics.
	Then they also have an extreme and unbelievable anti-intellectualism in the army, especially among military officers, and that's to minimize the internal threat.
	Yes.
	You don't want intelligence, competent, experienced people leading the army if you're basically a gangster.
	So to minimize the threat from the army, they attack the army mythos as well.
	And this is where the mafia comes in.
	Why would the mafia dare, even dare, to racketeer military officers?
	You can't even imagine it happening in the West, right?
	Well, it's because they know that in case of a conflict, the state will back the mafia, because the mafia stand much higher in Russian hierarchy than soldiers.
	And so you get thieves harassing bases, you get soldiers forced into gay prostitution.
	All it does is eliminate the army mythos so that you have no more rivals for power.
	So there's no self-confidence within the army?
	I mean, I grew up on military bases.
	I'm a forces brat.
	And so, you know, my whole life I've grown up on military bases.
	The British and American militaries are run in the opposite or used to be run in the total opposite direction of this because they were legitimate.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	The state was legitimate, and no one thought that they were going to overthrow the state, and so we have an effective army because of that.
	And the final point he makes, which I think is worth thinking, he points out that Russia's army is artillery-centric.
	Well, consider that in a political context.
	You must be artillery-centric if you have low morale troops, because no one respects them.
	They don't respect themselves.
	They can't stand a close-range fight.
	They just want to be out of there.
	Yep.
	And so if they trained capable, high morale infantry, intelligent officers, it would be a mortal political threat.
	So they maintain low morale, incapable infantry with the dumbest officers possible and kill the brighter ones.
	Then the only way to fight that war is with artillery.
	And this perfectly explains why Russia has failed to take cities.
	If the desire of the Russians is not to level everything in Ukraine and instead...
	Well, okay, you can't just start shelling something from 100 miles away.
	Now you've got to send in these just weak ground troops to try and do anything.
	And the Ukrainians are, of course, not in that position.
	They want to defend their homeland, respectively.
	And so they fight with a much more effective animating force.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, if this was the army that I was fighting with, I would never start a war.
	But then I think that the Russian regime was not intending to start a war either.
	I think the indications are that they got enough intelligence reports that they thought this would be like Crimea.
	They move the troops in, the Ukrainians switch sides, they take the territory they need, job done.
	That's why it's a special military operation, not an invasion.
	But now I think that they seem to have found themselves in a war, and they are panicking like headless chickens.
	So one of the heads of the intelligence services was arrested.
	And the argument is that he was arrested for essentially feeding false information in the lead up.
	And if you watch their body language and everything, the Russian high command, I think they're a little struggling right now.
	High command is probably a bit of a misnomer, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Very low in the pecking order for high command.
	I mean Putin and the regime leaders, yeah.
	But okay, that's fascinating.
	That's actually fascinating.
	I did work experience in the various military administrations and things like this.
	My dad always wanted me to join the RAF like him, but I was too much of a person who wanted to do my own thing.
	But you get to see the kind of people involved.
	And the idea of trying to make your men...
	Trying to humiliate them, deprive them of their self-respect, and then expect them to fight a war is just the utter antithesis of what you need to win a war.
	You're just sending men out to their deaths or to fail, if that's the case.
	I imagine desertion from the Russian army is just staggering.
	Absolutely staggering.
	So that's fascinating.
	I had no idea about the internal workings of Russian military.
	I brought it up.
	I know it might seem a little speculative, but I've heard these stories from people I've known from Russia and from Eastern Europe, but mainly Russia.
	And this very much ties together the social side of the jigsaw puzzle with the military side.
	I don't see how else you can explain gangsters robbing military bases without the military literally being so demoralized they wouldn't even consider fighting back because there's no camaraderie, there's no teamwork, there's no esprit de corps that's been built between them.
	They're all sort of, you know, essentially atomized and isolated so they can be predated on in this way.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We'll end up there.
	Right, so now for something completely different, but I think important from our own internal position, because if we're talking about demoralization and internal weaknesses, well, we certainly have some.
	The leftist reactions to J.K. Rowling's statements that women are adult human females...
	Are remarkable and very revealing and have caused something of a death spiral within online leftism.
	And online leftism is important because it is the cauldron in which the ideas are boiled, I suppose we'll say, and filtered down to our politicians.
	Because our politicians are stupid.
	As Christopher Hitchens put it, as soon as he started meeting politicians, he was surprised at how...
	Frankly, unremarkable intellectually that they are.
	And he's not wrong.
	And they were a lot more remarkable, intellectually speaking, in Christopher Hitchens' day than they are now.
	Oh my God, absolutely.
	Just look at some of the social media feeds, and again, thank God for social media in this regard, to see the...
	The dull class that we have these days.
	But anyway, so let's talk about this article that Owen Jones was compelled to write on Medium about J.K. Rowling because he says the cycle is predictable.
	J.K. Rowling presses send tweet and he then has to spend a lot of time trying to contradict her messaging.
	Welcome to my world, Owen, but I need to tweet you.
	It has become ever more fashionable to argue that trans rights is on a collision course with gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights.
	And it seems that's because it's inevitable.
	And you seem to be unable to avoid this because inherent in the definition of what a trans right is, is that a male can be a woman and a female can be a man.
	This is a problem for the gay and lesbian communities and the feminist community who predicate their entire arguments on what man and woman are.
	Can't really be gay if you can't identify what a man is.
	That's a very good point.
	Can't really be a woman's rights advocate if you can't define a woman.
	And so these are not...
	Bugs.
	These are features.
	These are inherent to the intersectional worldview.
	But the intersectional worldview is the latest progressive fad.
	It includes everyone.
	It allows us to map out a hierarchy of oppression and really protect the most marginalized.
	And so he says, complains that Rowling herself shared a tweet of a like-minded gay man denouncing gay rights organizations for supposedly undermining the very foundation of same-sex attraction.
	Wow, if my arguments were so easy to destroy in a single tweet, I'd probably have to rethink my worldview.
	I love the way they have to go after everyone who's like, what is it, negating their arguments and their existence and so on.
	Well, if it's so easy to negate, then maybe there's a problem with it.
	Exactly.
	And how are they wrong when females can be gay men?
	And you're a gay man, and vice versa for males and females, the answer really does boil down to, sorry, you're going to have to suck the dick, bigot.
	I know you're a lesbian, but that's a penis, and it's a woman's penis, and you're going to have to engage with it, or else you're a homophobe, or transphobe, or whatever it is.
	And so, this is inevitable, of course, you know, bringing in the antonym into the definition of a thing means that you don't have a definition anymore.
	And so he says, it's worth explaining exactly why the T cannot really be separated from the LGB. And he says the argument against LGB and T unity goes like this.
	Sexual orientation and gender identity are two different things and should not be conflated.
	No.
	That's not an argument, that's a diktat.
	Yes, that's not the argument.
	The argument, as he pointed out that J.K. Rowling made, is that you are destroying the very nature and definition of what it is to be gay or woman or whatever by bringing in the T, the trans, because the trans presupposes a particular definition of these words that undermines all activism going in the other direction.
	And so he says the LGBT world is only dominated by white, cis, gay, middle class men like him with and they are living with all sorts of prejudices afflicting our minority racism, ableism, stigma towards people with HIV, misogyny, lesbophobia.
	This is for the entire LGBT catch all umbrella term.
	Prejudice against gay men coded as camp or effeminate, and he goes on and goes on.
	And then he ends this with an example of a gay person discriminating against a Sikh person, saying, just because you were oppressed doesn't mean you can't simultaneously be an oppressor.
	Then why do we even use the word oppressed?
	Yeah, maybe it's overly loaded.
	Oppressed people are also oppressors.
	It's not normally how it works.
	You've really done a wonderful job of stirring in everything to a series of definitions and so what we have to in reasonable terms say is that if someone is doing the oppressing they're not oppressed themselves But I think you can also push back on that, because like with the Russian mafia example, you could have some underling who is oppressing the military base, but also being oppressed by his boss, who's oppressed by his boss.
	Okay, so we're saying...
	That's predicating everything on a dominance hierarchy.
	Okay, that's fantastic, and we're going to lean into that in a second.
	I like the way you say it.
	Right, so yeah, we are going to lean into a dominance hierarchy, but of course, this is the movement for equality.
	This is the movement to abolish hierarchies, and therefore...
	This is Owen Jones admitting that, in fact, this is yet another hierarchy.
	Yeah.
	They are never going to escape it.
	It is inevitable that humans have hierarchies.
	And what would be good is to have accountable hierarchies.
	Hierarchies of competence, as Jordan Peterson puts it, rather than merely ideological or physical dominance.
	But anyway, so he says you can't disentangle trans people from the LGBTQ plus experience for many reasons.
	Let's start.
	Many trans people are themselves lesbian, gay, or bisexual.
	So?
	He's like, well, we exist and mix together.
	So?
	That's not an argument.
	You know, blacks live among whites, so does Black Lives Matter have to do activism for oppressed white people now?
	We're waiting.
	So he says, but the reason above all else that we are bound together is because there is a common basis for our oppression.
	LGBTQ plus people are persecuted because we are all deemed to be traitors to our assigned gender identity.
	It's quite novel.
	I've never heard this argument before.
	Not in that formulation, but it does fall into the usual thing, which is, oh, the reason we're all together is because we're all oppressed.
	So there's no actual logical thing bringing us together is what he's admitting.
	It's all an alliance of convenience in politics.
	Yes, it's all contingent.
	The LGB argument is very much, well, there are things and perspectives and behaviours that these groups share in common, and then maybe that doesn't work with tea.
	That's what the LGB movement is saying.
	And then he's coming in and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, politics.
	We're all together.
	But there's also a necessary a priori argument with the LGBs, which is we are using consistent definitions to which we can all agree that do not damage our colleagues in the other categories.
	In fact, it reinforces it.
	In fact, all of their arguments are based on the assumption.
	That there can be a solid and essential definition that's based in some kind of biological reality.
	Whereas the Ts are upending this completely.
	And so complaining, well, yeah, but we're all being oppressed by the same person.
	It's like, okay, sure.
	And let's assume the coalition can overthrow that oppression, right?
	Let's assume this is all true.
	What happens then?
	Well, the Ts still destroy the foundations of the LGBs.
	And so arguing that they can't be separated is wrong.
	It's absolutely wrong, even if they are all being oppressed in the same way, which I don't really agree.
	But I like – there's an interesting novel argument here.
	So the root of all of the oppression for all of them is apparently because they're traitors to their assigned gender identities, which is interesting because gay isn't a gender identity.
	It's a sexuality.
	Mm-hmm.
	Again, you're not doing a very good job here, Rowan.
	Rooted of hatred against gay men, for example, the root of hatred against gay men, sorry, is that we have made the ultimate betrayal of masculine identity, which is to be attracted to and have sex with men.
	That's seen as the most unmanly act you can do.
	Well, it depends on the culture, actually.
	Yeah, I don't really agree with that, frankly.
	I don't know where he's got this from, because, I mean, like, gay sex, I mean, in ancient Greece, it used to be incredibly manly.
	In the Roman Empire, it was sexual passivity that was seen as unmanually.
	So you could be an active sexual gay, and that doesn't make sense.
	You could be an assertive homosexual, and that would be seen as manly in Roman contexts.
	Absolutely.
	And this is something that's been a thread that goes all throughout history, frankly.
	And so, I mean, I think that what it is, is, I mean, he is in a sense right that it is the betrayal of the masculine gender role, but it is to become feminine and submissive.
	Not to have sex with men is the problem, right?
	He's conflating the two.
	And the thing is, how do you explain, like, internalized homophobia of gay men who also hate LGBTQ then, if that's the case?
	You can't really explain that.
	And it's a bit of a long-running joke that the most manly thing you can do is have sex with a man.
	Having sex with women is gay.
	Sorry, it's just a joke, obviously, but I don't really agree with him.
	But he says, homophobia, you see, is the violent border guard of masculinity.
	It's an offshoot of patriarchy and misogyny.
	That's not true.
	No, it's not true.
	I love the genealogy of the leftist mind.
	The street-level violence against LGB and trans people is driven by the same impulse, a violent disgust at those who defy traditional gender norms and expectations.
	Maybe, but perhaps it was because you were offending against Allah.
	Where trans people are not defying traditional gender norms, as the Islamic Republic of Iran explains to us.
	So my understanding is in Iran, people will transition rather than declare themselves as homosexual because homosexuality is punished by the law in Iran.
	Because Islam prohibits homosexuality, but it doesn't prohibit transitioning.
	And so it's not that they will, it's they have to.
	If you're a gay man, or if you're a man, and you get raped, then you also get transitioned, apparently.
	So anyway, so he says, it should be said that the lived experience of trans people is significantly worse than for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people today.
	Traditionally, LGB people are on the receiving end of media campaigns portraying us as sexual predators, threats to children, defilers of biological reality defined by mental illness, Dismissed as an unsettling fetish, attacked as a tiny minority, imposing themselves on the normal majority, and so on.
	Moving on.
	An attempt to separate the T from LGBTQ will fail because it is nonsense.
	It's not just wrong-headed, it simply collides with the lived reality of LGBTQ people.
	Exceptions may tell you otherwise, but that's all they are, exceptions.
	There is no LGB without the T. It is simply not a moral declaration, but a statement of incontrovertible reality.
	He's literally made no argument there.
	That's correct.
	No, I'm right, guys.
	I'm right.
	I'm still right.
	No, no, it's just an exception.
	I'm still right.
	And it's incontrovertible reality.
	We're going to talk about incontrovertible reality from the movement that thinks males can be women, are we?
	That's a bold statement.
	I mean, literally, the modern intersectional movement does not believe in an objective, incontrovertible reality.
	They believe in lived truths and the epistemology of the oppressed.
	This is just, what are you appealing to?
	You have not refuted the central thesis that the two things are different and should not be conflated.
	They are different.
	But anyway, so he moves on.
	I mean, literally, before we move on, if transgenderism means that the definition of man and woman has to include both sexes, then being gay literally means nothing at all.
	That means every heterosexual person could be gay if they just said it.
	Literally, there's nothing.
	No wonder gay activists are concerned about this, being like, hang on a second.
	But anyway, so this is one angle that JK Rowling has just annihilated here, and shows that they are floundering, looking for a place to attach an argument.
	The next one is a Twitter beef between a YouTuber called Kat Black, who I actually kind of like, to be honest, and Vorsch.
	Kat Black is a relatively small YouTuber with a relatively small audience, but is more inclined to make anti-progressive statements.
	I haven't watched her for a few years, actually, but she used to do these segments called Kat Black's Unpopular Opinions.
	And it was basically where she had to explain to radical leftists that, look, okay, I know what you're saying, and I know logically this may be true within our framework, but It's also nonsense that's not going to work.
	And so she goes on this unbelievably long Twitter rant about Vorsch, and it's not terribly interesting.
	But there are some bits out of it that I think are worth picking out.
	There's literally like a hundred tweets in this thread.
	But yeah, this is a novel, basically.
	But it is still quite interesting.
	Because if you can scroll down a little bit, you can see where this all begins.
	Because this begins from Vorsch going after J.K. Rowling.
	He had put, all J.K. Rowling had to do was shut up and be the most uncritically beloved person for like a century.
	Women be quieter and start to apologise and challenge.
	Now, you know...
	That sounds a little misogynist to me.
	Well, that's the contention!
	It's quite amusing, though, because, I mean, it's obviously a joke, and it's quite a funny one in Vaush's defence.
	Which I never thought I'd ever say.
	It is quite a funny one.
	And so she says, well, look, a few days ago I made this tweet where I was asked...
	She, by the way, is transgender herself.
	I should point out, and I'm going to be polite about that.
	I asked transgender women specifically if misogyny, even when ironic, is helpful in advocating for transgender rights.
	My position was, and still is, that misogyny, even when ironic, is incredibly easy to avoid when advocating for trans women, especially against people who believe misogyny is the driving force for trans women.
	So the J.K. Rowling position, basically.
	And she's not wrong, obviously.
	Vaush got picked up by J.K. Rowling, was made a big show of to her 14 million Twiff followers, and the argument is, well, look, it's misogynistic to bring men into women's spaces and have men being the face of women's activism, even if they put on makeup and call themselves women.
	This is an attack on women as a category and women's ability to represent themselves and of course this leads us to the contradiction of are women adult human females or are women whoever claims to be a woman.
	And of course trans women are women is Kat Black's position because she's a progressive.
	And this is not something that can be avoided.
	So she basically goes through this long thing saying, look, I think Vos is kind of gross, which is true, and says that, but she doesn't really care because why would you?
	I'm not a big fan of Mike Graham either, but I don't spend a lot of time criticizing him.
	As stated, she says, my issue with what he said is he was advocating for transgender women while citing misogyny, and I do not think that's helpful.
	And that's kind of true.
	But the thing is, again, from Vaush's position, if trans women are women, then telling women to be quiet is also telling trans women to be quiet.
	And therefore, is it advocating for trans people?
	Because you're not treating them like women in your advocacy, but of course it's ironic, so...
	Who knows?
	So he came up with a hypothetical to apparently prove his point, and they have a back and forth in DMs, which I'm just going to...
	Skip over because it's very long.
	But she basically gets to the conclusion that, look, there's always a speck of truth in everyone's position.
	And it's that that allows the TERFs to focus on this and say, well, the people arguing for trans rights are misogynists, really, because they're attacking women.
	And Vorsch looks like that speck of truth when he's saying women be quiet, which is fair.
	And so she goes on and says, like I said, there's a speck of truth in the TERF arguments that trans women and the defenders engage in misogyny, because you can't really deny it, when Vaush is one of the most prominent leftists online and is literally saying, women, be quiet.
	The extraction and overall argument they make is wrong, but these things happen, and I hold the position that Vaush didn't need to be misogynistic in his defense of transgender people to Rowling.
	He didn't need to, that's true, but also, it is more effective if he is, because he's pushing the buttons of the TERFs.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I like irony, and I have an incredibly dark sense of humour.
	I go to a lot of comedy shows and laugh at F'd Up S all the time, but I do not find that sense of humour to be productive in the advocacy work I do for transgender rights.
	There is this contradiction here as well, because if you are a transgender woman who wants someone to stand up for you, do you want someone to be advocating for you on the basis that you are transgender while advocating against you on the basis that women should shut up and you're a woman so you should shut up?
	Because there is this very strong contradiction here.
	The implication is that the transgender person isn't actually.
	Exactly.
	And this is the problem with their definitions.
	And this is entirely about their definitions.
	Because, I mean, you know, Kant's not adverse to being a massive hypocrite about this.
	I spent a lot of time saying this the other day.
	I don't really care to be polite to transphobes.
	I think being rude to transphobes is a win-win.
	But I do think it says something when you jump to bigotry on your rudeness.
	Bigotry means an intolerance to other people's opinions.
	So being rude to transphobes, that's bigotry in and of itself.
	That's true.
	So never mind.
	But rudeness is good, but just not the kind I don't like, which...
	I mean, okay.
	We're not looking for consistency here, is it?
	But anyway, so to this massive thread, Vorsch replies and just gives a dismissive remark.
	And he's just like, look, he's being...
	self online, I would say.
	And he says, apparently one of them leaked the conversation, but I couldn't find it.
	Who cares?
	Her responses were so bizarre and alien and disconnected from what I was saying that I genuinely didn't know if there was a difference between her choosing not to listen and being capable of understanding.
	To be honest with you, I think cats are not operating in good faith here because Bosch always acts in bad faith.
	But Now, ContraPoints is...
	I've spoken to Vorsch and ContraPoints, but I've never spoken to Cat Black.
	Right.
	But ContraPoints, I actually quite like and seems like a nice person.
	Vorsch is obviously not a good person.
	And I don't really know that much about Cap Black beyond the videos I've watched first.
	But this is interesting because ContraPoints usually stays above this.
	She's the queen of bread tubes.
	She tries to avoid all of this.
	And so the fact that she got involved in this is very interesting and gave Vaush a big win.
	He ends up winning this exchange and I'll show you why.
	So she says, I think you should think about what you're saying here instead of getting really defensive about her correctly pointing out that your perspective on this is limited by your not being trans and not being a woman.
	So ContraPoints is citing the intersectional doctrine of the epistemology of the oppressed.
	Yep, it's lived experience.
	Exactly.
	She's saying, stay in your lane.
	Yeah.
	And she's calling rank and pulling authority over Vorsch based on identity politics.
	Vorsch being a straight white man can sit down and shut up.
	Mm-hmm.
	is a trans person.
	Uh, Cat Black is a trans person.
	Vorsch needs to be quiet.
	She says, "Doing edgy, ironic misogyny while defending trans people magnifies the grain of truth in what TERFs say about there being misogyny in trans activism." Mmm.
	But you're admitting that the TERFs are right, that there is misogyny in trans activism, You're trying to paper it over and pointing the finger at Vaush and saying he's the problem, but he isn't the problem.
	The problem is, as the TERFs have been saying, the attack on the category of woman.
	Maybe your tweet at JK didn't land the way you wanted.
	Okay, fine, it happens, but why get so defensive about reasonable criticism?
	Bro, have you met Vaush?
	LAUGHTER Come on!
	So Vosch replies to this saying, ContraPoint simply doesn't understand the context of what's happening.
	And says, basically, I'm extremely confident you'd agree with me if you were fully caught up, which is typical.
	To which ContraPoints replies, it just strikes me as off that you're extremely confident that you know better than a trans woman who's been doing this activism for over a decade.
	It kind of compounds my discomfort with the women be quieter tweet.
	So this pure identity politics argument, Roach is wrong because of what he is, not because of what his opinions are.
	And Cat Black and, of course, by extension, ContraPoints are right because they are what they are.
	So Vorsch replies with, is that really your argument?
	That I, by way of being cis, couldn't possibly be correct in a disagreement on trans issues of the trans person?
	Can't believe I'm agreeing with Vorsch.
	I can't believe he's right about this.
	But this is exactly the argument I would make in this situation.
	But the thing is, it's not actually about right or wrong, because they don't really care about that.
	What they're actually caring about, I think she goes on to say, is confidence.
	Because they want to undermine the confidence of their opponents.
	That's entirely what it is, based on their identity.
	And it's also about hierarchy.
	Notice that Vaush is merely incapable, simply incapable, of making a correct assertion in the face of his betters.
	That's what's happening here.
	And so she misunderstands what he has to say and says, I haven't heard any arguments yet.
	Only your assurance that you're extremely confident that you're correct.
	I don't think extreme confidence is warranted.
	Men who are extremely confident they know more than women what isn't misogyny don't have a great track record.
	So she misread what he said there.
	He's not saying her argument.
	He's...
	Sorry, he's saying her argument, not the argument he is representing.
	He's waiting to hear what she's actually asserting.
	Because ContraPoints has merely by framing only asserted identity politics.
	And so this is all people...
	Could really read from what ContraPoints has said here.
	It's like, I'm trans, therefore I'm better than you, therefore I'm right.
	You're a white man.
	You're worse than me.
	You're incorrect.
	You don't know what you're talking about.
	Be less confident.
	Be less confident.
	Exactly.
	Which is not really a nice thing to say to anyone.
	But, I mean, who cares?
	So, in response to this, ContraPoints tweeted out and then deleted the next tweet.
	So, is idpol, identity politics, the new SJW, have we moved on from woke so soon?
	And she deleted this.
	And Vorsch actually replied to this just with, in before the delete.
	I can't believe they're allowing Vorsch to cover himself in glory.
	Yeah.
	He got the better of them in this.
	And then she says, are you done being mad that some trans women disagree that being misogynistic is actually an intricate strategy for being our saviour?
	And Vorsch replies, this is just not the argument, because it's not.
	The argument is, is Vorsch allowed a valid opinion on transgender issues as a white man?
	And the answer is no, because he's at the bottom of the hierarchy.
	And she replies with, so you didn't defend misogyny, but you do defend misogyny in the service of saving the transgenders.
	I honestly don't get it.
	It's maddening to watch you pose as the savior of transgenders, then do edgy misogyny in the name of that, and finally melt down when a trans woman who knows more than you criticizes you for it.
	And Vorsch responds to her with, is this not what the woke scold type said to you?
	I'm not trying to be anyone's savior.
	I'm a guy with the arguments, which you've admitted you're unaware of, and still somehow you have strong opinions of them.
	This is highly ironic, given all of these people are woke scolds.
	I'm not a woke scold.
	No, you're all woke scolds.
	This is what woke scolding is.
	You're engaging in it right now.
	And so the conclusion of this is that ContraPoints blocks Vorsch.
	There we go.
	But no, no, no, no, no.
	Think about that.
	So Vorsch has successfully challenged an aristocratic power structure.
	And all ContraPoints, you can go to the next one, you can see the block.
	It's always worth having up.
	There we go.
	So what this has done is, ContraPoints has got to the guillotining.
	I have nothing that I can reply to you with because you are right.
	You've exposed the hierarchical nature of the power structure of the progressive ideology, upon which I sit as one of the people near the very top.
	Cat Black is slightly above because she's black.
	And this is all the future of leftist politics.
	It's just patrolling language by people who are hypothetically oppressed by this language use.
	And Vaush is, in fact, showing how he is punching up By criticising these people.
	Because he is relegated to a lower position in the movement about equality.
	And so they are asserting their privilege to be at the top.
	And this argument is literally only right because of who they are and because of who Vaush is.
	And this, again, it's why Rowling is such an absolute thorn in their side.
	Because Rowling is essentially making the same argument to them.
	You are not women.
	You are men posing as women.
	And they are just cascading that down to Vorsch.
	And so they can't say Rowling is wrong when she points out this because she's not wrong.
	And Vorsch is a bit of a useful idiot in this regard because he's exposing this hierarchy for what it is.
	I expect this hierarchy will be temporary, though, because all of these things are based essentially on lies.
	Yep.
	You can't maintain lies indefinitely.
	But if you want to know more about this, you can watch my critical race theory video.
	CRT explained number two, the epistemology of oppression.
	This is how the Insectionals get to the conclusion that actually it is the innate lived experience of those aristocrats at the top of the hierarchy that we should be paying attention to.
	Interesting.
	Right.
	So let's move on very quickly.
	So there is a quote that goes around the internet, and I'm not really sure who the originator of it is, but it's a very good quote.
	It goes something along the lines of, periodically progressives reverse-engineer traditional behavior and act like they've discovered Atlantis.
	And it's because it's true, and we keep seeing examples of this.
	For example, patriotism.
	Here's a progressive case for reducing immigration.
	Hmm.
	What could this revolve around?
	The chap who writes this, Philip Cafaro, says, I'm a philosophy professor specializing in ethics and political philosophy.
	Like many of my fellow academics, I'm a political progressive.
	I value economic security for workers and their families and a much more equal redistribution of wealth, strong, well-enforced environmental protection laws, and an end to racial discrimination in the United States.
	I want to maximize the political power of common citizens and limit the influence of large corporations.
	immigration into the United States.
	If this combination strikes you as odd, you aren't alone.
	Friends, political allies, even my mother, the social worker, shake their heads or worse when I bring up the subject.
	I've been called a nativist, a racist, thankfully not by my mother, been picketed on my own campus, and I have had close academic friendships strained.
	Why?
	If we increase immigration, many hardworking men and women will continue to see their economic fortunes decline.
	Mass immigration is an economic attack against the working class.
	But I think it's favoured from a GDP perspective because the leaders of the country can basically say, well, I rule a country of 80 million, not 60 million, so the GDP is greater.
	Even if the GDP per capita is lower and the society is crumbling into atoms beneath me, I'm still a bigger ruler.
	And that is why the very measurement of GDP is the tool of the neoliberal international elite.
	Yes.
	You're listening, progressives.
	Anyway, so he says, acknowledging trade-offs is the beginning of wisdom.
	We should not exaggerate conflicts or imagine where they don't exist.
	Neither can we ignore them.
	And that's where you're wrong, kiddo.
	I mean, they've been ignoring them for years, and I don't think they're going to start acknowledging they may have made a mistake.
	Now, but you can see that this is exactly the right-wing argument against mass economic immigration.
	There are other arguments, but he obviously doesn't care about those because he's progressive, but he has arrived at the correct position.
	Hang on a second.
	This is actually an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable classes of our society for the interests of those at the very top.
	And we only cared about it when there was a racial disparity because we don't like certain races.
	Isn't that interesting?
	So we've come around to patriotism, maybe not hurting the people who live alongside us is good.
	And so the next thing we get to is abstinence.
	Oh.
	Oh.
	Never thought you'd hear that, right?
	So in America, from 2019 to now, the Republicans have been on the march, deciding, right, we've had enough of the abortions, you're murdering babies, and you seem to be utterly unrepentant about it, and you seem to want to do it up until the point of birth or beyond, and this is frankly evil, and we're not having any more of it.
	And honestly, given the way the progressives have acted, it's hard to say they're wrong.
	And so, Hollywood celebrities were like, right, that's it.
	You're not having access to our vaginas.
	To which I'm sure most men were like, pfft, you never did anyway.
	What are you talking about?
	Alyssa Milano was like, right, we're going to have a sex strike against these Georgia abortion laws.
	Our reproductive rights are being erased.
	Therefore, we won't reproduce.
	Until women have legal control over our own bodies, we cannot risk pregnancy.
	Join me...
	It's like pregnancy is a death sentence or something.
	Join me by not having sex until we get bodily autonomy back.
	I'm calling for a sex strike.
	Pass it on, she tweets.
	And this was followed up in 2021 with Bette Midler.
	Going sex right?
	Anyone want to have sex with Bette Midler these days?
	I don't know who Bette Midler is, I'm afraid.
	She's a very old actress.
	So she says, I suggest that women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.
	This was, I think this was the Texas one.
	Yeah, it was Texas.
	Because they're not happy about that, of course.
	So we have discovered that abstinence, it is not only possible, but it can get women what they want.
	So my first encounter with this idea was Aristophanes' Lysistrata.
	That's correct.
	Which is like 2,500 years old.
	Yes, there is a lot of talk about the Lysistrata.
	And they point out, well, hang on a second.
	Well, we'll get to it in a second.
	It was a comedy.
	It was a comedy, but it was also written by a man.
	But sex works aren't new.
	They've been around for a long time.
	But we've discovered that abstinence works.
	Abstinence prevents pregnancy, and therefore it prevents abortion.
	And so we've arrived at the conservative position.
	So you get articles like this from Salon, the crying soy face.
	No!
	Withholding sex isn't the answer.
	We can't stop being whores, for God's sake!
	That's literally the conservative position!
	We can't do that!
	So, you know, perhaps one could exclude this sort of reductive gender-essentialist thinking because a man wrote it in 411 BC, speaking there of Aristophanes, but this is insultingly limited for its time.
	Even if everyone abided by such heteronormative definitions, calling such strikes is embarrassingly out of touch and glib.
	All the more when matters are so grave in Texas and soon for the rest of the country.
	Matters so grave.
	We're not allowed to murder babies.
	We've got to stop having sex with everything that moves and then not murder the babies we're getting pregnant with.
	My God, matters are so great.
	Like, God, how awful for you.
	I'm so sorry this is happening to you, ladies.
	You know, I'll ask those babies to just volunteer themselves.
	There is a pervasive sense of whiteness and white liberal femininity emitted by these strikes.
	Wait a minute.
	Wait a minute.
	Abstinence is white supremacy.
	What are you saying?
	What are you saying?
	What are you saying about black women?
	That's a very good point.
	What are you saying?
	You are saying we can't expect minority women to have sexual self-control.
	That's what you're saying.
	Margaret Sanger must be like, yeah, I told you.
	I don't split any of this.
	I disavow completely.
	That's what you're saying!
	And of course the next one is just, oh, you're playing right into the hands of the misogynists.
	It's like, yeah.
	Yeah, it seems to me.
	The activist's proposal dances perilously close to the argument that if women could stop having sexual pleasure, we wouldn't need to terminate pregnancy at all.
	Yeah.
	Because that's what you've arrived at.
	Because it's true, basically.
	I'm going to skip over this argument just to get to the next one.
	So the third discovery that the progressives have made is that actually monogamy is a good idea.
	Wow.
	I know.
	Stunning and brave.
	Call me a trad wife, but polyamory isn't praxis.
	Oh, yeah.
	The desire for human exclusivity, loyalty, and love is destroying the Marxism within her.
	She says, declaring your devotion to just one imperfect person is a refusal of a disposable attitude to relationships.
	What?
	You're going to get married and not get divorced?
	Like, what are you talking about?
	This is not leftism.
	This is raw traditional conservatism pouring out of Novara media.
	Like, what is this?
	They've reasoned themselves around to their grandmother's opinion.
	That doesn't mean subordinating yourself to someone else's demands or getting bogged down in abusive power dynamics, but monogamy does suggest a dedication to something bigger than yourself, something known to be extremely difficult.
	Oh, the metaphysical construct of marriage.
	The sanctity that you should be preserving.
	We've arrived back.
	At 300 years ago.
	Goodness me.
	In refusing other options, they acknowledge that love and care are impossible to calculate your price up and are often complicated by feelings of boredom, irritation, anger and jealousy.
	The challenge is to stick with it rather than to twist.
	And that's exactly what your nan would have said.
	It's almost a stoic attitude towards the difficulties of relationships, isn't it?
	Exactly, exactly.
	You know, this is a refutation of polyamory.
	But the thing is, how are you going to sell traditionalism to progressives?
	You have to probably slap an adjective on it, don't you?
	That's correct.
	And there's only one adjective that'll do.
	Revolutionary?
	Radical.
	I mean, they could have used revolutionary.
	There's two that could have used.
	Radical monogamy.
	There's a new type of relationship in town, say vice.
	Bravo.
	Pat yourselves on the back for discovering radical monogamy.
	This is going to be the wave of the future.
	This is going to revolutionize what life is.
	Guys, conservatives, shut up.
	We've discovered monogamy, right?
	We have this thing called marriage, right?
	And that way, oh my goodness, these guys.
	A man and a woman are going to get together, stay together for their entire lives and have children, and that's progressive.
	I love this so much.
	There's a pretty high chance you haven't yet heard of radical monogamy.
	Well, that's because you just made it up.
	Before writing this piece, I asked around to see if anyone knew the term.
	The most common response was, what WTF is that?
	Monogamy is the building block of the traditional cishet relationships, after all.
	Unless you're in a queer relationship in an anti-queer country, for example.
	So what the hell's so radical about monogamy?
	But look, it's a thing now.
	One of radical monogamy's most prominent advocates is Boston-based Robin Ochs, an educator, speaker, and grassroots activist who edits Bi Women Quarterly.
	Ochs said her own journey towards embracing radical monogamy involved a lot of self-scrutiny and questioning the cishet status quo.
	To explain the concept she draws between, contrast between reflexive monogamy, which is blindly accepting it, sorry, blindly accepting it somehow morally superior just to have one sexual partner, And more informed and conscious choice of radical monogamy.
	So normal monogamy is just you accepting the dead hand of tradition that weighs you down and represses you.
	But radical monogamy is the enlightened choice to engage with the dead hand of tradition and shake it and say, you know what?
	You were right about everything.
	They've finally realized the value in tradition, but they can only accept it if they're able to rationalize it.
	And so they have to go on a long journey of making all of these mistakes to arrive at the beginning.
	And then they have to express it in radical revolutionary language.
	Because that's all they know.
	Yeah.
	I reached a place where it became clear to me that there is agency and power in questioning these cultural norms.
	However, monogamy can be a choice that you arrive at after considering your own agency and options rather than a blind expectation.
	That was always allowed.
	Congratulations.
	It was always allowed.
	You know, you've been shaming people for monogamous relationships for decades, but here we go.
	But, like, there's not some sort of government diktat that says, right, okay, you get assigned a husband when you arrive at 21 or whatever.
	You're always allowed to be a spinster if you want.
	It was just never a very good idea.
	Because you're a human?
	Anyway.
	Ox says that monogamy is the relationship configuration that works best for me.
	And that she arrived at the conclusion through a very different route than before.
	Yeah, you and literally everyone else.
	Literally everyone else.
	And there's another guy called Jericho Vincent who uses the term radical monogamy.
	He's gay and he practices it with his husband and teaches it as a form of intimate relationship.
	Radical.
	To a progressive, they're like, what?
	Intimate relationship?
	Oh my god, I mean, I'm on Tinder all the time.
	I mean, I don't know what you're talking about.
	But listen to this, right?
	Generation Z, right?
	Zoomers.
	Listen to this radical, novel progressive proposal, right?
	Radical monogamy works for me because I always wanted a gigantic love.
	I wanted to be one person's joy and delight, and I wanted them to be mine.
	Oh, that's so forward-thinking.
	That's not all of romantic literature from the beginning of time up until now.
	I can't believe it.
	I'm so glad someone thought of it, right?
	Then I grew up and told that that was ridiculous, unrealistic and healthy by progressives.
	And so I gave up on monogamy and practiced polyamory.
	But now I've come around to believing that all of those other people's messages were wrong.
	Yes, I agree.
	All of the progressive messages are wrong.
	Yeah, just start those ones and build outwards from there, right?
	If approached with intentionality, effort and a willingness to grow, it is possible to have a love that is big and magical.
	Bravo.
	Absolutely bravo.
	If you're committed to the relationship and the emotions in it, then you can have that love story that you wanted.
	There we go.
	Literally, return to tradition.
	The progressive position.
	Oh, goodness me.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	I get that John is saying that meaning's in the eye of the beholder, but there's just so many red flags.
	The pigs all come in on boats.
	They lie about their ages.
	They have beards.
	They talk about how they're bringing culture to the birds.
	They have an organization called Hamnesty International.
	And then there's Mighty Eagle who spends all of his time eating and getting fat and skeeving on women and singing songs about how great he was and looking at pictures of himself.
	All while then eventually taking credit for solving all the problems when he gets involved last minute.
	Basically the summary of how America operates on the world stage.
	Sorry, what is this?
	This is part two of his contention that Angry Birds, the movie, is a radically based film.
	Okay!
	I don't think I've seen it, but maybe I'll have to watch it.
	He's making a good case for it so far.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So in the Galactic Hero novels there's a scene where the main character is channel surfing like a boomer and finds himself musing about why it is that in a democratic society the primary stories we sell our children revolve around wise kings and precocious princesses and how the first concept of state government we ever encounter as children is the concept of monarchy.
	And what this might indicate regarding the humans' natural inclinations towards hierarchy.
	I was just thinking that Carl or Callum might have some interesting observations regarding this paradox.
	It's basically the model of the family.
	Yeah.
	So it's like, it's a very simple, psychologically understandable paradigm in the family, right?
	You've got your mum and your dad and so on and everything.
	Except that's abstracted out to the mum and the dad of the nation.
	It's like, oh, okay, that's congruent to my natural experience.
	Yeah, the whole thing was based more on what you could consider an extended familial relationship.
	As in, you know, the king had a responsibility to the people and the nobility are more like a sort of older sister or brother that need to be restrained by the And the fact that then myths and fairy stories and so on sort of form a continuation that links the king and his role to the family and their role is quite interesting.
	Absolutely.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Carl, thanks for the ARC server and having a lot of fun on it.
	I haven't managed to find your base yet though.
	I was out exploring and I saw something which made me think of a question for you.
	Is there ever going to be a Bigfoot part two?
	Yes, I have all the notes made up for it.
	I just haven't got around to recording it because it didn't seem that important, but I will do it next week.
	I'll do Bigfoot Part 2 next week, which we'll be discussing just historical stories and documentary about Bigfoot, where people literally are like, well, okay, five of us saw this thing happen.
	I know you're not going to believe it, but that's what we saw.
	And it's like, okay, am I going to tell them they're wrong or they're lying?
	I mean, there's one example of a salmon cannery town that was abandoned because the people in there all claimed they were being terrorized by a Bigfoot.
	It's like, right, okay.
	I mean, you were being paid good money to be there.
	And they're like, yeah, I'm not living there.
	Wow.
	You're being terrorized.
	And it's like, okay, but I've not seen anything.
	You know, I don't know anything.
	But, like, am I going to tell them all they're lying?
	Like, there was a bear?
	What?
	I mean, you know.
	But anyway, yeah, there will be a party just for the fun of it.
	A few years ago, my sister bought me this book for Christmas, and a long time later I got around to reading it.
	Perry's book is a clumsy rebuttal to the peerless series The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.
	Instead of man as an abstract, challenging assumptions, looking at evidence, and striving for a better description of the world that can take us into the future, Perry suggests men stop wanting to always be right, stop trying to compete, and try to be more tender and nurturing.
	Maybe he has some good points, but the only sort of person who can talk like that is an artist who dresses like little girls as part of his act.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, there is this argument, and I think it was actually made during the infamous Jordan Peterson-Cathy Newman debate, which is, oh, why can't men just be a bit more feminine?
	Then we'll have a more tender and wholesome world.
	And Peterson's point, I believe, was very much like, yeah, well, that may be, but no one's done the experiment, and the evidence indicates that that's not what would happen.
	Also, you know, it assumes there is one definition for tenderness, compassion, and, you know, empathy.
	For men and women, which I don't think is true.
	I think that it is compassionate for a man to be a responsible father figure in order to prevent problems that would occur down the road.
	It's one thing saying, well, something bad's already happened, so now I'm going to be empathetic.
	But it's also a form of empathy to presage that and to get in front of it and to prevent the bad thing from happening if you were to fail in your duty as a man.
	I don't agree that men aren't empathetic and compassionate when they spend their lives grinding away in jobs they hate to provide people they love.
	Absolutely.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Hello, long time no see.
	Work and life has just in general been a bit of a bitch to me as of late, so sorry for being away.
	But on the whole thing of you guys being accused of being either or, I think it's because people are just used to being either you're on this side or on that side.
	People are just not used to thinking they're just more sides.
	Like my side.
	I just don't care because I got too much to deal with otherwise.
	Have a nice day.
	I totally agree.
	So there's people being like, why aren't you Russia or Ukraine?
	It's like, I don't care about either country.
	I think I've been accused of being a Putin apologist and or a NATO stooge on the same video.
	How does that even work?
	One of the things I was trying to point out, especially with that video that we put at the beginning, is that really I just have a commitment to truth.
	I just care about what is real and what is honest.
	There was one interesting critique I came across, which was that by not accepting the essentially propaganda line of the Ukraine narrative, what we are doing is Yuri Bezmenov's demoralization because we are demoralizing people from their ability to fight back against Russian invasion.
	That's a very interesting perspective on it, I thought.
	But I think it presumes a lot.
	One of the points that I was making is, okay, but if your attempt to drive us towards war on behalf of Ukraine, which again is a country I'm just not invested in, sorry, forces us all to be liars in your cause, then Besmanov would say, well, that's part of the process of humiliation and demoralization itself.
	Meaning people can't look themselves in the mirror and say, I told the truth today, is to say, well, you're all a bunch of liars, which we are.
	And I don't want us to be a bunch of lies.
	And I can't stand it, in fact.
	And I'm not going to go along with it.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Let's get to the next one.
	Hi, guys.
	So earlier this year, a study came out that the Epstein-Barr virus seems to be the cause of multiple sclerosis.
	Oh, it should be a really big breakthrough for treating a pretty nasty disease.
	However, the plan seems to be Pfizer releasing another mRNA vaccine that I assume will be mandatory for university.
	But I'm no medical expert.
	I'm an author.
	Well, I'm sure that's going to be nothing but good news in the future.
	Yeah, yet more mRNA vaccines.
	I do find it very creepy the way that, despite scientific evidence, lots of governments are now saying, well, your children under 10 need to be vaccinated.
	Yeah, I mean, those Pfizer executives must really need that third yacht.
	What else can it be?
	Let's go to the next one.
	Good news and bad news in Canada.
	Good news, in British Columbia the mask mandate is finally over and next month they're getting rid of the vax passes.
	Bad news, in Ontario they've made teaching critical race theory mandatory K-12 and in post-secondary education and also teachers are required to provide proof that they've taken the critical race theory and made critical theory plans.
	This will likely spread to the other provinces as well.
	So that's kind of horrible.
	Mad.
	I mean, Callum covered this in a weekend segment, I think, but the American school in London, which is obviously a very expensive private school, gets lots of rich kids going there, they got an unsatisfactory report from Ofsted because all they were doing was indoctrinating their children with Black Lives Matter nonsense instead of, like, actually teaching them the stuff you need to learn at school.
	And Ofsted's like, yeah, unsatisfactory.
	Sorry, no, that's abominable.
	I know, I know.
	Unsatisfactory?
	I don't think that was quite a strong enough term.
	Mm-hmm.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So this sword right here is called the Copas, whereas the Xiphos is primarily stabbing and can also slash.
	This one is primarily a chopping sword that can also stab.
	But this particular one is very short.
	I kind of didn't realize how small it was when I ordered it.
	I might have gone a little bit bigger, but it's still very fast, very comfortable to use.
	And the interesting thing is that the way it's much bigger at the end gives it a weighting that's actually almost more similar to an axe than a sword, which lets it inflict particularly grievous chopping wounds.
	Yep.
	Oh, very nice.
	Didn't you make a bronze sword back in the day?
	I did.
	It was a leaf-shaped Irish sword from about 1200 BC. Oh, fabulous.
	Very nice.
	But the Spartan swords were famously shorter than the swords of other Greek nations.
	And there's an old saying that when one Spartan soldier complains about it, his mother's like, well, you're going to have to step closer, aren't you?
	Yeah.
	I can see that being part of the whole mythos, but personally I'd rather have the longer sword, I think.
	Well, horses of course is not necessarily good or bad, actually.
	Let's get to the next one.
	Tony D and Little Joan with another legend of the Pines.
	Ye Olde Centerton Inn in Pittsgrove, New Jersey.
	Built in 1706, it was the site of the Hancocks Bridge Massacre in 1778.
	During the Revolutionary War, 20 members of the Salem Militia were killed and one of the ghosts is of a young woman who still haunts the inn.
	And at times, random cold spots appear in the dining room.
	It's funny how I get random cold spots in my dining room and there's no ghosts to that, but interesting.
	Go to the next one.
	Where are we shooting, Braden?
	I'm gonna shoot a teddy bear and make it go boom.
	Two pounds.
	I'll shoot two pounds.
	A teddy bear.
	Okay.
	Let's go practice medicine.
	We're gonna make it go boom.
	Yes.
	Stuffed and ready to go.
	There we go.
	Okay, bye buddy.
	Okay.
	I Okay.
	Let's catch the next one.
	Howdy, Lotus Eaters.
	So to explain the whole south of the border thing and why most Americans don't care is typically just due to the fact that a lot of them just follow mainstream narratives and they don't dig much further.
	Now also when it comes to deserts they are actually cold at night because the sand does not retain heat among other things and a lot of desert climates are actually pretty cold at night.
	Now they're not near tundra levels though so but they are cold so that's not really uncommon.
	Yeah, that's about the Ukrainian immigrants, refugees in Mexico, having troubles with the cold at night there, apparently, which obviously in the headline just sounds a little strange.
	Yeah, you think Ukrainians know a thing or two about the cold.
	Yeah, but obviously it's a very different situation.
	Nice chaos night, by the way.
	Hello, Lotus Eaters.
	Since Mexico was brought up the other day, I'd like to add more context to the state of Mexico.
	Mexico is a failed state and has all the characteristics of a failed state.
	From cartels being able to beat the military and even shooting down a military helicopter, to one town, the federal, state, and local police fighting one another because each one was paid off by a different cartel.
	The problem is not financial support, it is accountability, something Trump tried to do.
	For more in-depth info, I'd like to recommend these podcasts involving Ed Cateron.
	I've trained with him, he knows what he's talking about.
	Honestly, I think there's a strong argument for US annexation.
	Well, certainly military intervention, right?
	Full-on annexation, I would say.
	Mexico's a failed state.
	The drug cartels are running around.
	It's an incredibly failed state as well.
	Josh, the stories Josh was pulling out was just like, oh my god!
	That happened once, I'd argue that, okay, law and order needs to be brought to this place by force, and yet he had story after story of these, just the most horrific things.
	It's like, look, if I were a Mexican, I'd be begging the Americans to come in and take over.
	Well, this is one thing that happened, and when the Americans went into Afghanistan, there were people in other parts of the world, not all of them, some saying, oh, why'd they have to go to Afghanistan and Iraq?
	Look, we've got problems.
	If you want to institute democracy, we've got a dictator you can sort out and say, yeah.
	Yeah, it's very, very interesting.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So, I just got a bit of a funny story for you.
	My hair got headhunted to be a model.
	Not me!
	My hair!
	But now it's on my CV and officially I am a model.
	Well, congratulations!
	That sounds like such a kooky story.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	By the way, for anyone wondering, I started NARC server, so you can find it on my Thinker channel, but I basically only get a couple of hours at the weekend to play it, so I'm rarely on that, but it's for my mum and my son, mostly.
	But feel free to go join it.
	But anyway, Anonymy says, isn't Russian military tactic acceptable and tactical loss?
	They send out units to scout, they get destroyed, killed, and the enemy location has been identified.
	So this is a type of reconnaissance in force.
	The Russians are more known for reconnaissance by fire, where they actually just bomb, they shoot at a location, see what moves, and then it's a bit like stomping on an ant's nest in a way, and that gives them, lets them understand where they are.
	Right, okay.
	Alfred the Beta says, John is misreading the tactical situation.
	John and Western pundits in general think because cities are not taken, Russia is failing.
	The goal of the Ukraine is to demilitarise Ukraine.
	They have avoided the farmland of central Ukraine.
	They have steamrolled the coast and rolled up the Ukrainian army into pockets where they are waiting them out.
	They could massacre them, but they don't want to.
	They are not the US army in Iraq.
	They want to live with Ukraine post-war.
	Secondly, these are not A-list troops.
	These are 30-year-old tanks and reserve troops gaining experience.
	God help you if Russia unleashes the A-team.
	Russia parked a supply convoy outside Kiev for two weeks.
	You don't do that without air superiority and no chance of insurgency.
	Under no situation could Ukraine have ever won.
	The only thing Ukraine and the West are winning is the propaganda war.
	Unfortunately for Ukraine, reality decides war's not lies.
	Yeah, so I've come across this narrative a few times in comments and so on, and it's very consistent with the Russian state media narrative and what the Duran have also been putting out, which some of our viewers also watch.
	The thing is, right, the...
	The reading of the situation which goes with that has these rather silly maps where they declare that the Russian front is far in advance in certain areas of where it is.
	Now, I agree with the argument that, okay, well, maybe the Russians are holding back.
	You shouldn't read this war through advancing of fronts.
	You should read it through the attrition that's happening on either side, and they're actually just chewing up the Ukrainian army here, there, and elsewhere.
	The thing is, the footage on the ground just does not support that narrative.
	And you could argue that, oh, well, that's because the footage is mostly coming from Ukrainian civilians.
	And that is a reasonable point.
	But there are simply such volumes of footage and the locations that they're from.
	You can quite reasonably read the situation.
	And it's not purely Western propaganda, the idea that the Russian military advance is stalling.
	So I'm afraid I do reject that narrative.
	I think there's probably truth to both sides, though, to be honest.
	I mean, I doubt the Russian military is particularly homogenized.
	So I imagine there probably are pockets where areas of the Russian military that are affected, that aren't being robbed by the mafia.
	Oh, certainly.
	Especially in the south and in the northeast and so on.
	So I don't doubt that there is some legitimacy to the narrative, but I agree with you that it doesn't seem like the Russians have advanced as far as they can, and it could be because the conscripts are being sent.
	And potentially there's that as well.
	But it's also the fact that where we have documented evidence of the elite units being used, like the VDV, like the Kadyrovtsy and so on.
	Yes, we see some advance.
	We see a battle and so on.
	They are fighting a battle, which is more than you can say for some areas of the front.
	But you're also not seeing the steamrollering of the A-team.
	This whole, we have an A-team in reserve, we're just not using it narrative is looking quite thin at the moment because they are using their Camo 52 helicopters, which are their so-called Potemkin village super tech and so on.
	They are using these things and they are getting shot down and blown up and so on.
	So I think that I'd be very skeptical of this narrative if I were you.
	But I don't think we can decisively say either way is the point, though, isn't it?
	As with all things of this, I think you've got to give it a certain amount of strength rather than certainty.
	Absolutely, and I do agree with that.
	There is trouble here that I think there are some people who don't believe the mainstream media narrative.
	Absolutely fantastic, brilliant.
	And that's a very valid position to have.
	Yes.
	However, I think there is a minority who then jump off that and sort of decide that whatever the media is saying, the opposite is true.
	And I think that you have to be as careful of that as you do with mainstream media sometimes.
	I think that's fair.
	Mr.
	Tucker says, what do you guys think Russia is actually after?
	I think Russia has goals outside of what mainstream assumes.
	They have massive cyber warfare abilities.
	And as far as I can tell, they haven't used full effect.
	If the whole point is just take Ukraine over, they could have shut off the power grid and taken over in a day.
	That leads me to believe it isn't as simple as a land grab.
	But nobody seems to talk about the possible alternative goals for Putin.
	Just a blanket state.
	He's crazy.
	Why not?
	Well, I actually have a video coming out about, well, I'm recording about this tomorrow.
	And essentially, Russia and Putin have stated their goals very clearly, multiple times, for weeks and weeks.
	And in fact, you could argue four years leading up to this, they have alluded to them.
	And those goals are essentially the denazification and demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine, and some territorial concessions and recognition of Crimea and East Onbas.
	They want a buffer state.
	It's quite clear.
	There is another argument that they also wish to occupy the Novorossiya region on the south, and that's reinforced by the fact that the flags that the separatists have been using for the last eight years are the flags of the province of Novorossiya.
	So there is also that argument.
	Paul says, you have to compare not the entirety of the Russian military, but only what it can commit to the Ukraine campaign against what the Ukrainians can commit.
	Fair point.
	No, that's true.
	There are estimates now that Russia has about 75% of its military effort now being directed towards Ukraine.
	Hmm.
	There are areas in Ukraine where it seems like the Russians don't have numerical superiority because they are, of course, funneled into the country through all of these roads and joke points and so on.
	Whereas the Ukrainians are already there in their country in the fight.
	Ukraine started the war with just under 200,000 soldiers in its military with a further up to 900,000 trained reservists.
	So, you know, this is not going to be over quickly.
	Alex says, those military strength charts are always so misleading.
	Usually one of the belligerents can only bring a fraction of their forces to bear, whereas the other one is typically forced to bring the lot.
	Russia has other obligations and borders as well, as protecting themselves against potential outcomes.
	Also, Russia is by far the largest country in the world by landmass, which is a significant distance of borders to patrol and protect.
	Yeah, that's a really good point.
	Yeah, totally true.
	I mean, this is why the American force charts are always so disingenuous.
	It's like, yeah, but America literally has fleets patrolling every sea.
	So even if its tonnage worldwide outweighs China or Russia or wherever...
	It's not going to abandon one theatre of potential water, send it all to the other.
	Absolutely.
	But I would point out on this that one thing Russia can deploy, and one of the reasons air power is so powerful, is you can just deploy all of your assets to a reasonably small area.
	That's a good point.
	And they don't seem to have been able to do that so far.
	X, Y, N, Z says, And therefore you should be hung outside the place you took up the position.
	Yeah, but I don't think it's going to stop doing it.
	JJHW says, no, no, no.
	The Russian way of war is to surround the opposing forces in what they term a cauldron and then heat it up by attacking it until they surrender.
	They eliminate the opposing force.
	This is completely different to the West doctrine of total war.
	You're about as accurate as the BBC on the Ukraine conflict.
	Do better.
	Well, hang on a sec.
	I guarantee you watch the Duran.
	That's all I can say.
	We're presenting another series of arguments, but we're not saying that this is categorically the case.
	But I've made the point that I don't think Russia's engaging in total war.
	They're using kid gloves.
	I'm going to disagree with you.
	Edward of Numenor says, Funnily enough, there's a relationship that reminds me of the relationship between the Romulan Imperial Navy and the Tal Shiar in Star Trek.
	Taushar similarly demoralized police and belittled the navy, and ultimately used the power of them, meaning usually the Romulan commanders would end up being more sympathetic to the Federation as a result.
	I'm not familiar with that.
	That's a good point, and also it's worth pointing out that the Romulans were largely based on the USSR in many ways.
	George says, these fights on the left are nothing more than power struggles.
	Well, that's the point, isn't it?
	Each of these lunatics wants to be representative of the message, so inevitably they've taken down the others for wrong think.
	Ironically, this is what happened to J.K. Rowling and Posey Parker.
	Rather than wasting time defending them, we should just enjoy the show.
	Yeah, but we should also be aware of what's happening and actually have an accurate structure of what's happening, because that's what's being revealed.
	It's a power hierarchy.
	As you say, there's power struggles.
	Yes, that's exactly the point.
	And they can't stop representing them.
	And then they claim, therefore, equality.
	No, they're not.
	They're just for their own form of power hierarchy.
	Hammurabi says, reading and listening to Vaush is like attempting to commune with Nyarlathotep.
	Nyarlathotep from Thulhu Mythos.
	Yes.
	The crawling horror out of Egypt.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I've read the entire Thulhu Mythos.
	It's only going to result in the complete loss of one's higher brain functions.
	That's a brilliant analogy.
	It is.
	It's really good.
	And it's even more funny that in this argument, Vaush was right.
	Like, how have you made Neil Arthur Tep correct in his argumentation, ContraPoints?
	Come on.
	This is embarrassing.
	Like, honestly, I expected better of ContraPoints.
	Brandon says, The new Pride flag should just be the meme of all the Spider-Men pointing at each other.
	Yes.
	Student of History says, Julius Caesar was mocked once after spending too much time negotiating with a foreign king, not for supposedly sleeping with him, but for being conquered.
	Okay.
	Oh, yeah, that was...
	Not Mithridates, is it?
	I can't remember.
	He used the catamite of some...
	It was of Bithynia.
	Nicomedes of Bithynia or something like that.
	Fact check me.
	I can't remember.
	It's definitely a Bithynian king.
	And then he went on to bang every woman he ran into, including Cato's sister.
	Yeah, there was an event where Caesar was reading out the love letters Cato's sister sent him in the Senate, which was like...
	Sorry, stop being a chad.
	Nicholas says, got to love the circular firing squad of left-wing ideology and how people like that woodchipper bait Vorsch think that bleating in favour of the current ruling class of the progressive stack will help keep the rifles off even if momentarily.
	Well, what Vorsch is doing, he's presenting a strategy to expose it and ultimately to upend it.
	And the thing is, by the progressive standard, he's right.
	The ultimate progressive value is that anyone can choose to be anything, and that the idea is what matters more than the individual.
	It's like, okay, well then why can't Vorsch, if he is correct, adopt the top of the progressive stack?
	And I, for one, I'm in favor of putting a straight white male in charge of the progressive movement.
	I want Vorsch to become the leading light, the main voice, the arbiter of progressivism, where ContraPoints and Cat Black currently stand.
	I want him to win this battle.
	Lord Nerevar says, I'm really warming up to J.K. Rowling for all of this.
	It's like watching a butterfly emerge fully from the cocoon and become something far better than it ever was before.
	I think you should be wary there.
	She's still an insufferable feminist.
	It's just funny that We can agree with her on the definition of what a woman is.
	S.H. Silver says, Yeah, the Ts are an open repudiation.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And an attack on the foundations.
	Brandon says, it's okay if Walsh makes a good point today, tomorrow, in order to win the argument he's having at the time, he'll contradict this point and present the opposite.
	Great point.
	Just from the last segment we have from Captain Charlie the Beagle, regarding progressive monogamy, this just goes to show that when every degeneracy has been tried, people will fall back on tradition.
	All progressives come full circle.
	That's how we ended up with hipsters.
	And on that note, thank you for tuning in.
	You can catch us at the same time tomorrow.
	I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.

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