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Aug. 8, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:30:20
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #453
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Good afternoon, folks.
Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Monday, the 8th of August, 2022.
I'm joined by Harry.
Hello.
And today we're going to be talking about James Lindsay getting perm-vanned, why we can be sure that Amazon's The Rings of Power is going to be total woke nonsense and absolutely awful in every way, and why the inflation is just going to get worse and worse and worse because they're doing it on purpose.
Anyway, let's get into it.
Alright, so Twitter has once again shown itself to be aligned with the forces of evil by permanently banning James Lindsay for his anti-groomer activism.
Can I just interject here?
Sorry, Twitter is the eye of Sauron.
It absolutely is.
So, like, yeah, it's definitely aligned with the forces of evil.
I mean, you know...
I know, it's just impressive how they just...
It's the source of it.
They've dedicated themselves to just again and again and again, yes, we're the bad guys.
By the way, just in case you've forgotten, we're the bad guys.
We hate you and everything you stand for.
They literally may as well change the logo to the Eye of Sauron.
I mean, it wouldn't take that much effort, would it?
I mean, it's already small, you know.
Well, I'm not even joking.
Like, the analogy is completely fair.
You know, it's wherever the Twitter mob is, like, gazing, oh god, there the trouble is.
Anyway, sorry.
Well, it fixed itself on James Lindsay.
Before we go any further, I'll just point out that we've got a new premium contemplations from Josh and Connor talking about the Manosphere's disastrous dating advice.
I've not had the chance to look at this one yet.
I have seen some controversy in the comments regarding it, but I trust Josh and Connor to be able to explain adequately why it is that they disagree with the manosphere dating advice.
And Connor mentioned that one of the pieces of advice was, if a woman starts to run away, this is not a no.
Which is slightly absurd and definitely deserving of criticism.
I know.
I know what they're saying with that.
What they're saying is, some women like to be chaste, as in, you know, they want you to prove that you're actually into them, and so they want you to...
Sadly, I in the past, before I found the love that I'm with right now, I have fallen foul of that when particular women have wanted me to chase them, but because of the standards that are presented nowadays, I was like, oh, they're not interested, I don't want to come across creepy, so bye-bye.
And then later on I found out, oh, you were just wanting me to chase you.
Yeah, everyone's had it, but it's like, you know, at the end of the day, ladies.
We're not mind readers.
The eternal statement of men, we're not mind readers.
Come on, please, get this into your heads eventually.
You don't have to read our minds.
Anyway, moving on.
So, let's take a look at this article.
We're simple creatures.
Yes, we are.
We're just ape brains.
Yeah, so this post-millennial article breaks down a little bit about how James Lindsay has been permanently banned from Twitter.
The primary thing I want to show is this screenshot here, which he shared on, I think, through the New Discourses Twitter page.
If you just scroll down a bit, John, so we can see it a bit more clearly.
Your account, Conceptual James, has been suspended for violating the Twitter rules, specifically for violating our rules against hateful conduct.
You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
So it must have been something pretty serious that he did based on that, wouldn't it?
Well, we can see.
Where he said, OK, child sexualisation specialist...
I don't know who he's responding to, but okay, well...
Well, I do know who he's responding to.
Well, the question, though, is, okay, well, what category did he fall afoul of here?
Was he harassing?
I mean, I can only assume they mean harassing from this, because it's not a threat, or it's not promotion of violence.
So it must be harassment against someone's either race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
Now, I wonder which one it would fall under.
I'm guessing it's sexual orientation.
Or gender identity, which could also count as serious disease, depending on how you frame it.
Maybe, but I kind of hope it's sexual orientation, because what Twitter is saying with that is that paedophiles are a protected class, and we're going to stand in their defence, goddammit.
That's certainly what it comes across as.
That's really what it comes across as.
Yeah, so Lindsay was responding to a Slate journalist called Alejandra Carabello, who had written in response to one of James' tweets.
I couldn't see the tweet that she was responding to, because his account's suspended now, so that's fun.
But she said that, Had you ever heard of this phrase before?
I haven't.
It's a kind of portmaineau, or how that's pronounced, that means hatred against black women.
Right?
But the thing I hate about it is it's mixing Greek and French words.
Misogyny is Greek, and noir is French.
I think it's just a silly victim term.
It is absolutely a silly victim term.
But this term to me is like nails on a chalkboard, because I just hate the mixing of it.
Sorry.
I don't know, I'd love for someone to throw that at me, because it would just up my credentials, to be honest.
Yes, it is.
Yes, I am.
Let me tell you more.
But yeah, the article just goes on to point out that he was previously locked out of his account in July after tweeting OK Groomer at a Media Matters journalist, which was funny.
I think James is the person who started the OK Groomer thing.
Well, he's one of the people who helped popularise it, but a lot of people were doing it at the same time.
It kind of caught fire, the meme.
Obviously, Lindsay is very important.
For anybody who might be watching this who doesn't know the context, James Lindsay has been an activist against critical race theory and more recently queer theory as well, alongside the likes of Chris Rufo, and has actively had a hand in helping certain legislation pass in places like Florida, where you've got based governors like Ron DeSantis, deciding, you know what, let's not teach kids to hate themselves because of their race, and let's not teach kids to think that they're the opposite sex when they're so obviously not.
This is wild.
I know.
It's ridiculous that it's not this far.
What a throwback, Ron DeSantis.
But I forgot that Twitter had recently banned calling people groomers.
So, again, Twitter's like, listen...
Was that not Reddit?
No, no, it's Twitter.
Oh, really?
You can't be hurtful towards the paedophiles.
You know, not at all.
Not on our watch.
Twitter's number one paedophile defender, apparently.
Yes, well, to Steelman, they would say that the...
To Steelman.
To Steelman, the nonce defenders...
To Steel...
Yeah, exactly.
To Steelman Sauron, the nonce defender...
So what they would make the argument of is groomer is obviously a very loaded term, and they're using it in a kind of...
I've seen these people making these arguments.
They're using it in a politically and socially ambiguous way that implies that people who are, from our perspective, just simply psychologically grooming, say, for instance, with the critical race theory kind of insidiously planting these ideas in kids' head, to insinuate instead that they are actual child predators.
Although there does seem to be a hefty crossover.
Yeah, their position is, well, you're calling all gay people groomers.
And it's like, no, there's an active organization called Gays Against Groomers, who are like, we also think they are groomers and we're gay.
So, you know, what do you want?
So, again, Twitter's just being like, hey, hey, hey, all gays aren't groomers.
And everyone's like, we didn't say that.
We didn't say gays.
When did they come into it?
Yeah, that's what you heard.
Right, okay, very interesting.
So the post-millennial did reach out for Lindsay for comment, and he said, Twitter has inconvenienced me and simultaneously confessed that they have a vested interest in protecting the sexualization of children.
This also suggests the possibility of an untoward relationship between Twitter and Media Matters, which deserves investigation.
I'm glad they've drawn so much attention to the issue.
In any case, it has to stop.
We must protect our children.
Yes.
And the person who did get him banned off of Twitter was the person he was responding to originally.
this Alejandro of If we go to the next link, we can see she put good riddance and then responded to her tweet in the next one saying, Tell James I want him to know it was me.
Remember folks, if she heard that James Lindsay had died in a car accident, she'd put clapping emojis.
She would be very happy.
That's what these people think of you.
Yeah, when Rush Limbaugh died, you saw all of these types of people absolutely celebrating.
If there was a way that they could dance on his grave, that these people would be forming an orderly queue.
It's ridiculous.
But yeah, so she reported him and Twitter just went, yeah, looks like harassment to me.
Good point.
Can't be insulting this pedo.
Yeah, exactly.
Alleged pedo, I should probably say.
But, for those of you who are still interested in following James, he does still have a Getter account that you can access, and you can follow him on it, and he has responded to this having happened on his Getter account, where he just said, the bastards kicked me off to protect our predators.
I'm grateful for the attention it will bring to the issue, and look forward to going outside again sometimes, which is probably nice, because James, to be fair, did spend an unhealthy amount of time on Twitter, judging by just how much he tweeted...
But as someone who has also been suspended from Twitter, I can tell you, you do get a lot more time outside.
It does sound like a blessing rather than a curse, I'll say that.
And he also did an interview regarding this with somebody called Alison Royal, where he was discussing he feels like he's been let out of prison and he's happy to be away from all the constant hate.
This did actually get his name trending on Twitter as well, so it is really drawing a lot of eyes to it.
I think when he got...
Banned or suspended before it might have got critical race theory and other such things to start trending on Twitter.
So Twitter, as much as they're trying to censor this, when they make these things happen, they actually draw more attention to the issues that they're trying to get out of public view.
But it does show that everyone accepts that Twitter is an addictive drug.
Like, everyone is addicted to Twitter.
They're addicted to the instant responses, the dopamine hits of having a successful tweet.
I mean, that's the thing.
He mentions that in this, which is that he says that when you log on to Twitter and you get that little pause before your notifications pop up to show you how many notifications that you have, they actually studied gamblers to see what the perfect amount of time was to increase the anticipation enough to keep you as engaged as possible.
So they're taking study He's done by gamblers to try and make the apps as addictive as possible, which is very interesting.
It was a very interesting point that he brought up there.
So he said he's just happy to be away from it, and he says he's grateful more people get to see his message, and also it might get him some more TV appearances as well.
Nice to see him rocking the PJW map in the background.
Yeah, actually, you're right.
He is definitely taking this in his stride, and overall, I don't think that being forced away from Twitter is necessarily a bad thing.
More than anything, it just shows the bias that Twitter has in terms of pushing a particular...
Agenda, and he also shared some more information regarding the person who got banned in the first place, which more than anything just shows the hypocrisy.
Not that these people care about any hypocrisy.
This is all power games to them.
In this Breitbart article where she is a Harvard Law School instructor as well, Alejandro Carabella called for the six conservative supreme justices who voted to overturn Roe v.
Wade to be harassed in tweets that gained wider attention in the past several days.
Just go and harass these judges, please, says Harvard Law School.
So it's a nonce defender.
Yeah.
The six judges...
So one of the tweets that she put out, you can see if you scroll down, she said, Oh, the six judges who overturned Roche never know peace again.
It's our civic duty to accost them every time they're in public.
They are per-right.
Now this seems a lot more like targeted harassment than James throwing out a funny meme.
I mean, this seems like a crime.
I mean, this does sound like...
I mean, she's not saying it strictly, but if you wanted to interpret it in such a way, and Twitter has more often than not interpreted things wildly in the past, this seems like call to violence.
Even if it's not call to violence.
You're not allowed to protest outside of judges' houses because it prejudices the legal system, right?
And so she must know that that's the case, and she must know that this is also prejudicing legal decisions.
But moreover, like...
It's just amazing.
There was a guy who was arrested trying to kill Kavanaugh, another one, Alito I think it was, and she's just posting stuff like this and no one cares.
There's going to be no accountability for any of these people, folks.
No, of course.
Not from Twitter at the very least.
Not from anyone.
This looks like a crime to me.
That's fair.
Noted by Campus Reform, she also is an advocate for censorship.
I know, hold your shock, everybody.
Calling for Twitter to ban the popular conservative site Lives of TikTok as a terrorist enterprise.
A terrorist is like, hey, they're terrorists.
Okay, sorry.
Yeah, okay, listen to what these people have to say about their own movement.
What are you, some kind of terrorist?
And, yeah, so she's not exactly squeaky clean, but it's just another example of the obvious...
She's awful.
Yes, she's just another example of the overwhelming political bias that Twitter has.
The Elon seemed to be trying to sort out for a little bit, but who knows where that's going now that it seems to be up in the air, legally speaking.
Chris Rufo, who I mentioned earlier as well, has worked with James Lindsay, and he had a response to this, which is, it's a perfect example of discourse engineering using the tools of language control to shape and restrict public narratives.
Hateful conduct is a pretext.
Hate is, in fact, widely permitted as long as it's directed toward regime-approved targets.
This is totally true.
What we're seeing here is just the noose tightening on Twitter.
Every time, the right has some kind of mimetic weaponry that they can deploy against the left.
And Gruma was a really powerful way of doing it.
As soon as it became obvious that, oh God, everyone's actually pointing at us and going, hang on a second, you're weird pedo...
Not you personally.
You're weird pedo-groomers.
You're trying to sexualise kids.
They're like, yeah, okay, well that's banned.
Shack, shack.
And so eventually it's going to be only regime-approved talking points, as Christopher is pointing out here.
When it gets there, to be fair, Chris is probably a little bit safer than James because James likes to indulge in a lot of the meme-y side of it and throw out ad-homs at people.
You can see how the salami slicer is getting closer.
Chris conducts himself in a more professional manner, but yes, of course, they will get to him.
They will.
They will.
Yes, and although mentioning the whole queer thing, it did amuse me how easily and quickly they adapted to it when Reddit banned the word groomer and they immediately adapted to Predator.
Yeah, it was great.
Which was fantastic, because it's just so memetic as well.
And one of the reasons that they so obviously want to tighten the noose on people like James Lindsay and Chris Rufo is because they just...
As shown in this tweet, tell the truth.
And this next one we've got here...
We can't have people telling the truth on our watch.
No, Chris has been fantastic the whole time at being able to find information that should not necessarily be out in the public or is not intended to be out in the public and just throw it out there for everybody to see what's going on.
And he shared this one, which...
Brilliant.
What LGBTQ students want you to know.
I'm a 17-year-old Chicana lesbian and intersectional feminist living in Houston, Texas.
And then, I'm a 15-year-old transgender guy.
I am asexual and pan-romantic, which means I take the phrase hearts, not parts, very literally.
You are just mentally ill.
This is just...
Not the product of grooming, folks.
No.
Not the product of grooming.
Not at all.
This is just organic, natural.
This is what these teenagers came up with themselves.
They were just like, yeah.
One day I was just like, yeah, I think I might be a pan-romantic, transgender, asexual.
It happens every teenager.
All the time when I was in school, you know, all of the girls were so eager to tell everybody about all of these words they'd just made up about themselves.
I think I do use they, them pronouns.
You know, as every teenager thinks.
Totally not grooming, folks.
Obviously, and Rufo puts it very well here, where he says, the best way to understand these synthetic identities and neopronouns is they're reducible to politics, not sexuality.
It's not about LGBT, it's about the Q, as in establishing credibility and advancing the ideology of...
queer theory and that's one of the other interesting things that um i didn't mention that james pointed out in his interview following his ban which is that it didn't critical race theory isn't what got him banned from twitter it was purely this stuff calling out queer theory which shows in the hierarchy what it is because critical race theory yeah is a way to get differing groups of people based on race and ethnicity to combat each other but But queer theory at its base is going straight to the foundations of our understanding of reality.
Biological reality between men and women and how you express yourself in society.
Critical race theory does as well.
It's just not as...
Tripwire-like when it comes to queer theory.
Yeah, it's not quite as drastic.
When they say queer, they're laying claim to every gay person.
It's not that the critical race theorists aren't laying claim to every black person, but they actually accept that there is a kind of difference of opinion in the black community.
Because a lot of it is Kimberley Crenshaw arguing it's Thomas Sowell.
But the queer theory stuff, weirdly it's more sensitive.
I can't believe somebody decided to think that they could take on Thomas Sowell like that and win.
I mean, sadly, culturally, she seems to.
She's done it, yeah.
Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous.
But yeah, the queer theory as well, I would say, is not necessarily just restricted to, oh, we lay claim over all queer people.
people.
They fashion it as a mode of expression, how you express yourself.
That's why a lot of these people who are they-them pronouns, they don't necessarily actually, I know, shockingly enough, believe that they're not a man or a woman, or even necessarily that something else exists.
It's all about how they express themselves.
Oh, I'm a guy, but I feel more like dressing in a girly way.
Therefore, I am something completely different than anything that's been understood by humanity up till now.
Yeah.
And once again, the way that it's been effective is Vocal Distance pointed out very recently, and I think it's come off the back of this probably, that queer theory started trending again.
And he says that the strategies that Chris Rufo has developed to fight against radical gender theory is working, because that's what makes these people, like James Lindsay and like Chris Rufo, so dangerous to the regime as it stands right now, because...
Their activism really does have an effect, at the very least, of getting people aware of what's going on.
The more parents, especially, are aware of something like queer theory being taught in schools, the more parents push back against the schools, the less the schools have the ability to push the agenda, the less the next generation is affected.
Because pushing it all on the kids is just trying to raise an army of queer revolutionaries.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Is what they're going for, as far as I can see.
Critical race theory is black revolutionaries.
Oh, absolutely.
It's all the same mission.
And if you want to see explicit examples of how this is so damaging and how it gets about, just move to the next link for me, please, where Libs of TikTok pointed out this person.
You may have seen this person.
Ellie Ehrlich, who is saying that there are 20 states trying to criminalise hormone therapy, particularly for trans youth.
So my friends and I had an idea.
Sending out our extra prescriptions, this is for hormones, around the country.
How could this go wrong?
Yes, this doesn't seem like...
Sending out drugs...
Experimental, in some cases, drugs.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for them to traffic these drugs around the country.
Yes, it is, in fact.
Matt Walsh, in the next link, points out that this is very illegal on several levels.
I don't think you're allowed to sell drugs through the postal service in this way.
But also, right...
These are prescription drugs, as in, the doctor will write a prescription for your particular case.
Being like, oh, you can just have this and give it out, as if no adverse consequences will come from this.
Do you know the dosage you need?
Do you know that's the right kind of drug that you need?
Do you know this, that, and the other?
There are loads of other really complex factors.
You're like, no, just hand them out to kids around the country.
Nothing could go wrong there.
I mean, not to diminish this, I suppose prescription drugs may be slightly better than what some of the other queer theory activists do, like a certain person I had a run-in with who was trying to organise bathtub hormones to be sent off to children over the internet, through the postal service, in anonymous packaging, so that parents won't know.
Jesus Christ.
Yes, that is Kefels, of course, who is a complete degenerate and deserves to be put in prison for the rest of its life.
These lunatics, though, are actually going to hurt children?
Like, that's actually what is going to be the consequence of this?
Oh, they don't care.
At the end of the day, they think they're helping children, and anything that shows the opposite is just an unintended consequence that we can brush past.
I don't think they do think they're helping children.
I don't think they care about that.
Scroll down a bit on this one, John, just so you can see the picture a bit better.
This is all about that person.
Oh yeah, I really hate that look of absolute smug, condescending smirk on the face.
It's not even that.
The reason you would take this photo and put this on the internet, if you genuinely thought you were helping trans children, you wouldn't put this on the internet where the authorities might find it or conservative activists might find it.
You know, you would just do the thing you were thinking of doing because you thought it was the right thing to do.
But that's not why they've done this.
Look at the pose.
It's not like it's a random pose.
They've taken ages, you know, doing their hair, doing their makeup.
Getting everything nicely in focus.
Exactly.
Getting everything beautifully in focus.
Right, take this amazing photo.
I'm going to look like a star while I'm doing this.
And then, you know, paragraph of all this stuff.
This is about her.
This is not about any potential trans youth if there is such a thing.
This is about her.
And that's what all of this is about.
Well, I would like to think that it's a combo of both of them, because there's no way that this person is not getting an immense amount of satisfaction over this photo going viral.
Yeah, this is exactly what they wanted.
Yes.
But this is the danger of queer theory, this is why Twitter has banned James Lindsay, and this is why, as always, they show themselves to be on the side of pure evil.
Hard to argue with that, to be honest.
Anyway, so, there is more than enough evidence to show that the Rings of Power, the new Lord of the Rings epic series from Amazon, is going to suck really badly.
I was going to say something rude there.
Nice containing yourself.
I had to.
It began, the evidence of this is mounted, and so I thought we'd go through some of that.
I'm not going to play any of the clips, because I don't want to get copyright struck.
Especially not over something like this.
Exactly, it's not worth it.
So this first teaser trailer came out on the 14th of February this year, and essentially all I took away from this is, there are things in the world, and we should go see them.
It's like, okay, brilliant.
It's a world that has things in it.
The only thing that I personally took away from this, John is pointing out as well, he's got the thing installed showing that I think it's a rough estimate of 1.8 million downvotes.
Yes, 30 million views, 129,000 upvotes, 1.8 million downvotes.
That's pretty indicative that people didn't want this.
Did they turn off the comments on this one, John?
Scroll down for us, John.
They did turn off the comments.
They initially hadn't turned off the comments, and the comments were all Tolkien's quote of evil can't create, it can only warp and destroy, or whatever the actual word is.
Oh yeah, it was fantastic.
And then they started filtering that phrase, so people started posting it in foreign.
LAUGHTER In Spanish and stuff like that.
And it was just like, right, we'll just turn the comments off.
We can always find a way to break the system.
Yeah, but exactly.
This trailer just gave no information.
The only information that I got from it is, wow, it looks like a generic action series.
Not even, I thought.
Not even generic.
Subpar.
Yeah, but I'm using generic as a synonym for subpar in this case, because I looked at it and I went, okay, what about this feels Tolkien?
What about this has the whimsy, has the sense of adventure?
Oh, we've got a woman climbing up a big mountain.
I'm pretty sure I saw that in an episode of Game of Thrones when they were crossing the wall with Ygritte.
And not only that, it just looked like a very poorly, not even poorly done, but there's something about CGI that is not deceptive to the eye anymore.
I don't know what it is about CGI. Maybe I've just seen enough CGI in my life to recognize it when I see it.
I think it is a problem with the streaming service original shows, because for whatever reason, in a lot of big-budget films, I have started to see a bit of an improvement in quality, not necessarily in the Marvel stuff, because obviously they're stretching their animation studios out so thin it's untrue, but with some films that kind of one-offs, they know how to use CGI, like even The Northman, which I saw recently, had some brilliant special effects in it, both physical and CGI, but these...
Original series on streaming servers always have a budgetary issue that I can see immediately.
I don't know what it is.
This had a budget of a billion dollars.
So if they had a budgeting issue...
It doesn't look it to me, though.
Yeah, exactly.
It doesn't look it.
But I don't know what the problem is.
I think it's just that...
I don't know.
It's just not persuasive to the eye to see a massive 3D rendering of like, oh, look at this gorgeous valley or something.
I'm like, yeah, but I know it's just fake.
Maybe it's just me.
No, I agree.
I think it might be the way the light hits things, perhaps.
Who knows?
But anyway, on the 14th of July, they put out another teaser trailer.
I was like, oh, brilliant.
And this one had slightly more info, but still, I don't really know what's going on.
You've got Galadriel arguing with...
I can't remember which one he's arguing with.
Yeah, who cares, right?
But the one line that stuck out to me on this one was, the elves have the forest to protect, the dwarves have the mine, men have the fields, and half-foots have each other.
And there's some kind of enemy that Galadriel keeps going on about, but we don't really know.
So it's like, right, okay, there's a kind of vague story forming.
Galadriel will be fighting an enemy.
There are things in the world and people.
It's not...
It's not even like you can really refer to the books properly to understand what's going to go on, because they've flat out admitted that they don't have rights to the books that they're supposed to be adapting, like the Silmarillion.
But this focused on the Harfords.
Now, the Harfords are interesting, so let's talk about the Harfords.
Lenny Henry's Harfords.
Now, I'm not really interested in the race swapping anymore.
It's like that's been done to death.
But what's interesting, though, is that the term Harford is being used in lieu of the term Hobbit.
As in, they do not refer to them as hobbits.
They refer to them as, like, proto-hobbits or prehistoric hobbits.
Oh, no, they're the indigenous hobbits.
Kind of, yes.
But they call them harfots and not hobbits, which is very interesting, right?
But as he says, Lenny Henry says this, quote, We're a nomadic tribe, moving with the weather and the fertility of the crops.
You moved your crops?
Crops go in the ground.
If you're a nomadic tribe, you have herds.
You don't plant crops, because crops don't move.
I'm not particularly surprised that Sir Lenny Henry doesn't really know what he's talking about here.
It's not him, the problem, really.
It's whoever wrote this is the problem.
They're like, yeah, we'll just move with the fertility of the crops.
You've never been near a farm in your life.
Shut up.
But anyway, he says, with regards to the diversity and representation, he says, if you can't see it, you can't be it.
Okay, well, I've seen a bunch of hobbits now, Lenny, and I'm five foot nine.
How do I become four foot tall?
I can't be a hobbit, even though I can see it.
I mean, there are a few ways to become four foot tall.
Practically speaking, it's not possible.
Finally, in this show, kids are going to see people of colour taking up space in the centre of a fantasy series.
That really sounds like they're occupying it.
We're taking up space.
It's like, well, could you take up less space?
Because you're sounding like, again, it's about you and not the property, right?
No one was like Aragorn is taking up space in Lord of the Rings.
No, he was a key character.
You sound like an extra, an addition that nobody wants.
But we're very visible in this world, and that's very exciting.
Ooh, I'm so excited!
Anyway, so ScreamRant did an explainer on the Harfoots, which is interesting.
You won't find traditional Hobbits in Lord of the Rings, because this is thousands of years before the Hobbit.
There's no Shire and no Baggins, etc., etc.
So you only get Harfoots.
So we see the Harfoots for the very first time.
Though not Hobbits in the typical sense, Harfoots assume the same role.
So Harford's aren't hobbits, according to these.
They're insular country dwellers who show little interest beyond their own narrow borders.
They're nomads.
They don't have borders.
What are you talking about?
The Nomads.
Okay, never mind.
They've got narrow borders.
They say, during this era, the Hobbits were split into three distinct breeds, Harfoots being the largest.
Now, when they say largest, they mean most numerous, which is, as Tolkien said.
So, Tolkien describes Harfoots as browner of skin, smaller and shorter.
So, most people would have said Mediterranean, but they were like, yeah, so Lenny Henry.
And they go on about how they were established, which is fine.
But that's obviously not canon to the lore.
Half-foots are a form of hobbits.
If we go to the next one, it's just like the Lord of the Rings fandom, which is the most comprehensive place on the entire bloody internet.
You'll find about it.
But half-foots are just a type of hobbit.
There are other types of hobbits.
They're just one of them.
So they're using them as like...
Oh, they were even the most common hobbits, according to this.
Yes.
But now Harfots are not even hobbits.
Which makes me think that they don't have the right to use the word hobbit.
That's kind of the vibe that I was getting.
Especially when it comes to...
They basically fill the exact same purpose in the plot and world and universe.
Well, why don't you just call them Hobbits?
Well, you know, our lawyers have told us we can't.
Because I'm pretty sure it's Warner Brothers that owns The Hobbit.
And Amazon, of course, doesn't.
Anyway, so on July 22nd, another trailer dropped.
And I was really excited about this trailer because this is where we got to see Sauron.
Sauron is featured.
And again, we don't get very much information about what the actual story is going to be.
I don't really know what's going on.
And if I didn't know anything about Lord of the Rings anyway, and I didn't know that this character was Sauron, I wouldn't know that this is probably going to be about how the rings are forged, and how he ends up deceiving the elves and forging them.
Let's be honest, these trailers are made for the kind of, let's be honest, retards that we saw in some of the previous teasers for the show.
The kinds who are like, I'm so excited for queer representation.
You have never watched anything related to Lord of the Rings.
You have never read anything related to it.
You just want to see black people.
And gay people.
Which we'll get to in a second.
Something about a shadow, but again, we don't know, really.
But we have slightly more info.
Still don't know anything about it, but as you can see, 11 million views, 79,000 upvotes, 312,000 downvotes.
You need to up those numbers.
I think they'd have learnt their lesson by now.
So anyway, let's look at Sauron in the trailer.
If you can go to the next one.
Sauron arrived in the full trailer for Lord of the Rings and Rings of Power.
As you can see, all of Middle-Earth's inhabitants are represented, from dwarves to elves to Harfoot and men.
Again, not hobbits.
Not hobbits to Harfoot.
To evil white men.
Well...
That's literally what Sauron is.
Evil white man.
But it's fine.
It's fine.
He's striking fear into my heart right as we speak.
Yeah, exactly.
He looks utterly emaciated.
But they're all confronted with the terrifying reality that a long-feared evil has returned.
So that's exactly the same as Lord of the Rings.
It's the exact same plot as Lord of the Rings.
The evil has returned to Middle-earth.
Again.
We must go on an adventure to stop it.
Yes, that is exactly it.
Except this is going to take place over multiple millennia by the sounds of it, judging by some of the tiny skips I've heard and some of the leaks.
Well, this is the major problem with the entire thing that, obviously, Tolkien purists, as opposed to Tolkien heretics, have a problem with, and the Tolkien purists are the fans of Tolkien.
The entire timeline takes place over a thousand years, so they've compressed it to one lifetime, one human lifetime.
So it won't make sense from a Tolkien purist perspective, but that doesn't really matter.
Who cares?
No one watching this is going to care about that, surely?
No.
Tolkien fans are well known for being very casual, really, aren't they?
They're big on their member berries, though.
Because, I mean, in this, they're like, hey, did you catch the Balrog at the end of the trailer?
Oh, Balrog!
I remember Balrog!
From a film I actually enjoyed!
The Dark Lord Sauron isn't messing around.
Well, neither are memes on the internet, because Sauron actually looked a lot like Eminem, and so that's exactly what people came up with.
Oh, what?
We can't see the...
Oh, well, there was a picture of...
Sadly, we can't see the picture of Sauron.
But he looked a lot like M&M, and so people just started repurposing M&M memes with what Sauron would write if he was talking about it.
But what was very interesting is, for some reason, Sauron...
Well, he looks like, you know, a sort of like 20-something Californian twink.
And there's the picture, right?
And people on Twitter were like, hey, he's a non-binary icon.
Oh no!
Really?
Sauron's a non-binary icon?
That's brilliant.
Every single time they immediately side with the bad guys.
I was thinking School Shooter, but if you want him to be a non-binary icon, that's fine.
A non-binary school shooting icon, perhaps.
Which has happened.
What were you going to ask?
No, no.
The whole thing is, okay, well, fine.
He's going to be the evil white man, but he's not going to be straight.
He's not going to be a cis.
He's going to be the NB icon.
And they are beautiful, quote-unquote.
You don't know that Sauron's pronouns are they, honestly.
So, we don't actually know, from Tolkien's perspective, what Sauron actually looked like, because the good thing about Sauron was that we didn't know what he looked like, and they were like, hey, we can ruin that for you.
I know one thing about what he looks like, which is his awesome armour.
And that's all I needed to know.
Yeah, well, Tolkien said, it seemed to men that Sauron was great, though they feared the light of his eyes.
To many he appeared fair, to others terrible, but some evil.
So we don't get a description of Sauron, which is how you want your villain to be.
So it looms large in your mind, but you can never really pin it down.
Or you can have an M&M clone, whatever.
But anyway, so there was a clip that was leaked ahead of time.
Oh, no.
This is what people have been calling the Yeeting of Galadriel.
Let's just let this play.
So this guy throws down his sword and fighting a troll and throws Galadriel up to stab or slash the troll.
Weightlessly throws her up as well.
He just sort of gives her a little bit of a...
It's such obvious like...
Wirework.
Yeah, wirework.
That's it.
With a harness.
And it's just like, look, this is absolute cringe.
A billion dollars, folks.
A billion dollars.
Bring back the CGI. Just do everything.
Why is...
I mean, I know why she is.
It's because, like, with new NB icon Sauron, they want her to be a strong feminine icon who's able to do everything the men can do but twice as good.
Galadriel is now the warrior girlboss, which is wonderful.
I don't know if you remember Lord of the Rings and Galadriel in it.
Never heard of it.
For anyone who doesn't know, some person on a remote island somewhere, she was a more Yoda-like figure.
ethereal presence that meant that essentially she falls into the same sort of category and so the phrase Yoda should not wield a lightsaber applies also to Galadriel right it's beneath their dignity these characters have power that is beyond merely hitting things with swords and she's so fair and noble and regal that simply presenting a small strand of her own hair to Gimli is seen as a Yes, yes.
It is a great honour to him.
And so, essentially, turning these characters into warriors is debauching them, in a way.
It dishonours them.
But anyway, let's go to Entertainment Weekly's big reveal of this.
Look at this video.
This was how they decided to pitch all of their characters.
Is this a daytime TV soap?
I feel like they're all about to start bashing out Bohemian Rhapsody.
It is just the worst, isn't it?
What's she doing?
I don't know!
It's just...
What is this?
Like, I'm meant to look at this and be like, oh, I can't wait to watch this obvious cosplay.
God, the proud warrior women flaring their nostrils derisively at me.
Wonderful.
I just...
He seems happy to be there.
I know.
He's the only one.
It is so awful, right?
So, anyway, it's absolute cringe, and it's going to get even cringier.
So, in fact, someone actually did do a little Days of Our Lives parody of this.
More than anything, they all look like they absolutely hate me, the viewer, looking at this.
Yeah, but that's the thing.
This is actually this style from the 80s.
It's really bizarre.
Why they chose this...
Is just...
Well, return to tradition, obviously.
Maybe.
But anyway, let's go back a second.
I want to pull up a few quotes out of this, because this is really good, right?
So, it's been made by two chaps called Payne and McKay, who are the showrunners for it.
Two writers who were, at that point, best known for uncredited work on the Star Trek franchise?
So, like, Amazon are like, yeah, have a billion dollars.
You guys who've done nothing, and made nothing, and have an uncredited work on Star Trek.
This is a massive problem in the entertainment industry, specifically surrounding Hollywood.
They keep giving absolute nobodies the keys to gigantic franchises, and millions, if not in this case, billions of dollars, and all I can say is these guys must give incredible handjobs.
I can only imagine.
That's the only thing I can explain it with.
It's amazing.
Like, two nobodies got given a billion dollars and permission to desecrate Tolkien's work.
So, okay.
Amazing.
Like, uh...
One thing I find really amusing is, like, they joke that they share a brain and it's like, that's not something cool.
That's weird.
Also, that means you've got one brain between two people.
No wonder you're both half-wits.
I mean, the show certainly looks that way so far.
Yeah, exactly.
It certainly shows.
Um...
But they say, we care so much about this.
We want to get it right.
We know what this means to so many people.
This isn't a job you take just to do another job.
This is a job that you know is going to be part of your legacy forever.
It's like, God, can you feel the sword of Damocles hanging above your head there?
This is going to be part of your legacy forever.
You are going to be the guys who incompetently screwed up this.
You're never going to get away from this, right?
But anyway, so the actors and actresses were like, working on this became a fellowship.
Sigh.
Became a fellowship, folks.
We were forced to lean on each other.
We didn't have anyone else.
We were on an island away from our support systems mid-COVID pandemic.
Oh, spare me.
You know, you were being paid millions of dollars to go to New Zealand and cosplay as Hobbits.
I'm being on the same island as Jacinda Ardern.
Okay, I get it.
Fair enough, yeah.
It probably was tough.
But anyway, they say this show also presents a more diverse version of Middle-earth.
The Rings of Power will include the first female dwarves depicted on screen.
That's not true.
The female dwarves in The Hobbit.
Oh, yes.
And they actually had beards as well, incidentally.
Several of the actors note...
Oh, sorry.
Many of the actors of colour will be playing elves, dwarves, half-foots, and more.
Again, they don't call them hobbits.
They're not allowed to call them hobbits for some reason.
Several of the actors note that although their casting may be a milestone, diversity has always been a theme of Tolkien's work, which often tells of characters uniting in the face of adversity despite their different backgrounds.
Lol.
Just...
Okay, yeah.
Tolkien was always diverse, don't you know?
This is not stunt casting, adds British actress Bonaidi.
A very British name.
Well, she was born in Iran.
Oh, there you go.
This isn't tokenization, or a lot of the things that we're used to in past roles.
Every person has been cast because they're the best people for these roles.
So the fat black woman is the dwarf, without the beard, best person for the job.
Only person.
She just came in and blew them away with the audition.
Incredible.
They were the best person for those roles, regardless of ethnicity and race, and I find that super empowering.
Okay.
So, anyway, this is obviously and horrifically woke.
So, the...
Lots of people have been pointing this out, and so the people who are creating this show, the executive producer, Lindsay Webber, we've told this before, but she was like, well, it's only natural that an adaptation of Tolkien's work would reflect what the world actually looks like.
What?
There's whole races of midgets running around.
This incredibly detailed and comprehensive fantasy world that he created.
Why can't it look like Middle Earth?
It's got to look like New York.
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
All right.
The woman who plays the dwarf princess, Disa, says, We are redressing the balance within film and television, television industry, and of course this franchise, and I hope lots of franchises moving forward.
So this is a ploy for diversity, but they're redressing balances here.
It's their time, and it's so important, and I hope many people will see this fantasy and be able to relate to it.
This is a reflection of the world we live in.
Is Middle Earth a reflection of the world we live in?
I'm pretty sure Middle Earth, shockingly enough, is its own self-contained fantasy universe.
I thought so too.
But it turns out...
If I remember correctly as well, Tolkien was also very, very explicit that any allegory that could be taken from Lord of the Rings was completely coincidental because he never intended any allegory.
He just wanted it to basically be a big fairy tale mythology for English people.
Yes, that's exactly correct.
So them saying this is a reflection of the world we live in, well, then you've screwed it up.
Then you've messed it up.
You didn't understand what the point of this was at all.
Another person in there, the guy who plays Arondir, said, The awareness of diversity with Tolkien's source material has grown.
The cinematic world that Peter Jackson created has immense value, but we've shifted lenses since then.
Very just explicit.
They've shifted lenses.
They're not interested in the Tolkien lens to create, as Peter Jackson approached it, to create the most Tolkien representation that was possible.
No, no, no, no.
This is a reflection of the world we're in.
So it's going to be diverse.
The conversation is different right now, but we're going back to the source material.
The world is diverse, not only in race, but also in thought.
It's a diverse mix.
We're just adding people from diverse backgrounds.
This keeps saying the word diverse like it's meant to make it good.
I mean, that last bit there is we're just adding people from diverse backgrounds.
Yes, that is all you're doing.
Yes, that is literally it.
But anyway, if you want to know why representation is actually important to them, you can go and check out my deep think on the politics of Warhammer 40,000.
Now, this isn't really just about Warhammer 40,000.
That's just a framing device.
There are lots of things in this that are important, especially the section about political representation.
Because I go through Hannah Pitkin's work on the concept of political representation...
And explore why they're doing this and why they keep talking about it, why they keep talking about diversity and representation, right?
And Pitkin has four different views on what representation actually means.
One of them, and this is the one they keep talking about, is descriptive representation in the way that something stands for a particular group based on observable characteristics, such as race, sex, class, etc., etc.
This is in opposition to what she calls substantive representation.
As in something that is represented and acting in the interests of those people represented, rather than actually being the descriptive representation.
And so what we could say is, right, the reason, for example, that Gandalf is something you like is not because he's a straight white man.
It's...
Say the Hobbits, in fact.
Let's take Samwise Gamgee.
He's my favourite character in Lord of the Rings.
He's most relatable to me.
Why?
Because he's four foot tall.
Oh no, I'm not four foot tall.
He doesn't represent me in any way.
What he represents is my interest in being the regular person in this giant fantasy world.
He's the regular dude.
He wants to get a girl, raise his family, grill, and just chill out.
That's how he represents me.
Not in what he actually is.
It's not because he's four foot tall.
It's not because he's a hobbit.
It's because of his personality and his character.
And that is the substantive representation.
That is not the descriptive representation.
But again, go check that out.
It's really worth telling my word really hard on it.
Anyway, so the co-creator, J.D. Payne, was like, hey, this is the story that fans have always wanted.
You thought Lord of the Rings was the story fans have already wanted.
The fans might have something to say about that.
Well, millions of them already have, if downverts are anything to go by.
But this is the story fans have always wanted to see fleshed out, but until now has only been told in whispers.
And it's like, okay, well, fair enough.
I'm all for this.
I think this is a brilliant idea.
Can't wait to see the diversity in action.
And at least you went and were like, okay, so who actually made The Lord of the Rings films?
Oh, that's it, Peter Jackson.
And he did really well.
So we messaged him, right?
And he was like, yeah, I'd love to help.
Can I get a copy of the script?
And they were like, no.
He got ghosted, apparently.
Even go to the next one.
He says, they asked me if I wanted to be involved, and I said, well, that's an impossible question to answer without seeing the script.
And they were like, yeah, as soon as we finish the scripts, we'll send them to you.
And they never showed up.
Okay?
And there are allegations that this has come from the Tolkien Estate itself, which is very strange, and I don't really think I believe them.
So this last article here says that this appears to have happened on Amazon's side, right?
So when we reached a comment, the company gave a statement that said, in pursuing the rights for our show, we were obligated to keep the series distinct and separate from the films.
Because Warner Brothers owns the rights to the Jackson movies, so Amazon can't use any elements that originated in them.
But the Tolkien estate, whose chief representative was Christopher Tolkien, although I believe he's recently died...
Yes, I think it was two years ago or last year?
Yeah.
Oh wait, no, it might have been even further back than that, sorry.
He had been vocal in the past about his distaste for Jackson's films, saying the commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing, he said in 2012.
And so, basically, they think it might be to do with that, but nobody actually knows, and some insiders are like, don't know.
But the point is, Peter Jackson got ghosted, and why would you ghost the person who created the films everyone likes of this when making this?
Well, it's very simple.
There's the quote that's gone around a long time where he said that when they went to create it, they didn't want to inject politics in it whatsoever.
They wanted to make it for Tolkien if he had still been alive.
Yes.
And one of the things that the showrunners have been saying is, oh, well, this is going to be timeless.
It's like...
It can't be timeless if you're injecting contemporary politics into it.
Ironically, Lord of the Rings, the films that Jackson made, are actually timeless because he didn't inject modern politics into them.
It's purely Tolkien.
And, I mean, go back and watch them now.
They're still just as good as the first times you bloody watched them.
Anyway, this Rings of Power thing is going to suck.
And it's going to be glorious how badly this does.
And I'm going to have to hate-watch it.
Yeah, same.
Alright, let me just give you a second.
Honestly, the whole thing is so transparent.
They're so obviously just wearing a Tolkien skin suit.
They're like, hey, this is diversity.
This is the story you wanted, isn't it?
It's like, no.
You're evil.
I think the skin suit analogy is at its most pure with this as well.
Because nobody wanted this.
Nobody asked for this.
Nobody asked for this.
Nobody went, oh, you know what?
I really want two nobodies to create a facsimile of stuff that may have happened in the Silmarillion that they don't have rights to.
I'd also really love them to stuff it with diverse politics.
That'd be great.
That'd be brilliant.
Anyway, let's move on.
So, for all our American fans, I am sad to say that the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act will not, in fact, do what it says on the tin.
It will probably make inflation far worse, let's be perfectly honest.
I always find it interesting that there is the tendency of legislators, when they're trying to pass New Year's laws, to basically name them the equivalent of the Good Things Act, where everything that is good is held within this act, and if we pass it, only good things will happen.
And if you don't go ahead and pass it with us, you are one of the people in favour of the bad things happening.
That is a very childish and very manipulative way of doing it, but I'll go through exactly what is in the Inflation Reduction Act in a few minutes.
First, I'll just draw your attention.
I have recently done an interview with Angela McArdle, the sitting chair of the Libertarian Party US, which recently had a big shake-up where a bunch of the, shall we say, cooked and blue-pilled Libertarians got ousted in favour of the Libertarian Mises-Caucas section...
who have basically taken over the party and are much better about pretty much every issue imaginable.
When's the Hopper caucus taking over, though?
I don't know exactly.
That's what we want to see, right?
That's what I would like to see.
But plenty of people in the Mises caucus are big hopper guys, including people like, I think, Dave Smith's into hopper and other such people.
So it is a very interesting turn for them to take, and if you're looking to see about options outside of the typical two-party dichotomy that America and places like over here in the UK typically suggest, maybe check it out, see what she's got to say, and see if it interests you.
But, moving on.
So the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was a completely partisan passing.
As far as I can tell, no Republicans whatsoever voted in favour of this.
Every Republican involved voted nay.
All the Democrats voted yay, and it was an absolute tie.
The yeas were 50, the nays were 50.
so Kamala Harris decided to give the tiebreaker and voted in the affirmative, so the bill has passed as amended.
So, yes, a report by the Congressional Budget Office stated that the Inflation Reduction Act would not lower inflation in any meaningful way in the upcoming years, as Fox News reported, of its $739 billion.
I mean, to be fair, for the Democrats, reasonably, that's actually being rather conservative.
Well, yeah, I mean...
Paris and some of the other bills have been trying to pass recently.
$3.5 trillion was the original Build Back Better plan when it was 2,000 pages long.
Yeah, it's just absurd.
This is the final phase of Empire where the elite start looting the treasury, frankly.
And that's what I can see here because of that $739 billion, $369 billion goes to climate change initiatives.
You know those things over in the UK and already in the US that have been helping so much with the cost of living already?
This is going to reduce inflation, guys!
Somehow, this will do something.
Somehow, you'll be...
Just cranking that money printer going, yeah, the inflation's going to go down.
What are you talking about?
And $64 billion in funding goes to the Affordable Care Act.
So Obamacare pushed out even more.
Democrats claim the size of the bill's budget will be made up by a 15% corporate minimum tax.
And I've got a bit more on that as we go on, because it is ridiculous that they think they can actually find the funding for this sort of stuff without just printing billions and billions of dollars.
It's just going to be printing money.
Well, the funny thing is, to even get to the point where they'll be able to enforce the extra taxes, they're going to need to print billions of billions of dollars to be able to afford it in the first place.
So it cancels itself out.
But as far as I can tell, as always, the plan seems to be to tax corporations and redistribute their wealth to presumably special interest groups that support the party and people who are political lobbyists.
What they already said is climate change initiatives.
So it's going to be special interest groups who support the Democrats.
And also $350 billion for climate change and the fact that it's just voted entirely for by Democrats just is another blatant example of how partisan this is.
This is not to actually reduce inflation.
This is not to help people who are in financial trouble right now.
This is to make sure they can slip all of their agenda through the door.
They're not even doing it subtly.
They gave it a nice name, the Good Things name, but they didn't actually do anything else to promote it.
The Sunshine and Rainbows Act.
But Americans have got to understand that your republic is actually over at this point.
When you get this level of partisan division, this isn't a republic anymore.
This is two warring factions that have to occupy the same space.
This is what they're doing to you.
And the thing is, the massive spending package raises taxes for everyone except those making between $10,000 to $30,000 per year, which is basically, with inflation as it is right now, going to be a completely irrelevant bracket as everybody's wages get raised past that, just so they can afford to get bread and eggs.
Yeah.
And Biden, of course, did say that, oh, if you're earning less than £400,000 a year, you won't get taxed.
Well, there we go.
Well, that was a lie.
Yeah, obviously it was a lie.
Yeah, and Moody's analytics chief economist Mark Zandi noted that the bill would only marginally reduce the consumer price index, which is not the only measure of inflation.
No.
actually be the inflation here, which is an economic gauge on the price consumers pay for goods and services, and even that slim savings won't be seen until the later half of the decade.
By which point they'll have just inflated more and made any of those slim savings completely null and void in the first place.
So it's pointless, and none of this gets to the heart of inflation because the government, shockingly enough, hold your surprise here, doesn't want to admit that it's government That causes inflation.
Really?
By printing trillions of dollars, such as they did over the course of COVID, and then locking down the country, such as they did over the course of COVID. It's not something to do with that old archaic concept of supply and demand, is it?
Well, no.
The thing is, supply and demand, very important.
Very, very important.
Supply and command graph, right there, very important.
You can't live without it.
Doesn't apply to money, though.
Does it not?
No.
Shockingly enough, we found it.
I asked the shaman.
Right, okay.
He divined from the stars that, of course, well, actually, I asked Joe Biden.
Because the same number of goods is going to be available, but the amount of money to buy those goods is going to have, like, tripled or whatever.
Yeah.
And the shaman was just like, yeah, no, don't worry about it, bro.
Don't worry about it, bro.
Here, do you want $50?
Here you go, $50 right here.
Where did this come from?
I don't know.
Just there you go.
And, you know, this has become such a big thing that people like the ever-insufferable John Oliver have been commenting on it.
John Oliver had a segment on his show last week, tonight, recently, where he was explaining...
John Oliver went and told bold-faced lies to a few million people.
Yes.
Explaining inflation, which, you know, if social media companies and the like are so eager to censor misinformation, I've got one to submit for you.
If you just go to the next article, Rolling Stone reported on it.
And I won't use anything from the article because it's basically just a fluff piece going, oh, isn't it so good that he wanted you to understand?
We all now really understand inflation.
What I actually did to look into this was watched, I mentioned him earlier, Dave Smith.
Yeah.
Who's a man who, shockingly enough, understands economics, talk about this whole thing, and he went through some clips of it, and John Oliver, to be fair, does point out a few things like supply chain issues, that it's kind of bypassed and the fault can fall on it, even though he then goes on to say, oh, right-wingers are all complaining that it's the government printing money, like that has much to do with it, even though it does.
But the mainstream just desperately do not want to address the government intervention and deficit spending, which is when you spend more than you raise in tax revenue, causes these problems, because you just print money out of nowhere.
He even goes as far at the end to suggest that the way to solve this is to give the Fed more power.
Give the Federal Reserve more power.
Where does he think inflation comes from if it's not the government increasing the amount of money in the system?
Well, that's the thing.
This is the kind of normy interpretation of what inflation is, which is just the CPI index.
And they don't want to acknowledge that, you know, because Democrats and leftists, their go-to solution for everything is government intervention.
So if we admit government intervention causes some major bloody problems, then it kind of destroys our whole argument.
But where's he claiming the inflation is coming from?
Well, he's doing the kind of centrist thing of like, oh, don't you understand?
Yeah, money printing might have something to do with it, but it's multiple factors.
I can see the big picture.
It's like, yeah, the big picture might have factors that are relevant, but Dave Smith explained it quite well, which is he used a term that Michael Malice uses, which is factual but not truthful.
Yes.
Yes.
Factually, you may be right, but you're not being honest about the facts.
Dave Smith used a great analogy, which is that, say...
I'll use this on you, Carl.
Say I'm in a really bad mood with you one day, and I get a sledgehammer, and for no reason, just smack you in the back of the leg on your hamstrings.
For whatever reason, you don't fire me.
You just go about your day as you do.
And then a few days later, you come to me and you go, you know, Harry...
My leg really hurts after the other day.
And I just say to you, well, it might have been something to do with me hitting you with the sledgehammer, yes, but you have been walking on it since then.
And also, when you consider it, gravity makes everything hurt eventually, so that might have had something to do with it as well.
And it's like, yeah, that all might be true tangentially, but...
But you're missing the obvious causal factor that's led to your leg hurting in the first place.
It's a constant pressure that puts on the money supply, just printing more of it.
And to ignore it and just brush it aside and say, oh there's multiple factors, ignores the problem.
And speaking of which, when you're talking about whether it's actually going to solve inflation or not, even people like Bernie Sanders, shockingly enough, seems to understand economics enough to know that this will not reduce inflation.
But then he just went on to say he wanted it bigger anyway.
Yeah, but Bernie Sanders has been to enough communist countries to know that printing money isn't the end of your money problems.
No, but he still wants you to spend more.
What he said was, let me take a moment to say a few words about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that we are debating this evening.
And I say so-called, by the way, because according to the CBO and other economic organisations that have studied this bill, it will in fact have a minimal impact on inflation.
The White House then denied this claim on Friday when...
The press secretary, that new woman, Jean-Pierre...
The diversity hire.
Yes, diversity hire.
Said, could you address...
Was asked, could you address the CBO analysis on this?
And she said, you know, leading economists have said that this Inflation Reduction Act that's been analysed by them, that's been looked at by these economists, will indeed reduce inflation.
So she just gave...
Name them.
She just gave the nuh-uh answer.
Yeah.
Name those leading economists.
Well, it won't actually reduce inflation.
Nuh-uh.
That's the...
And I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of, you know, Paul Krugmans out there who are more than happy to say, actually, this won't reduce inflation, while he's already preparing his next opinion piece for the New York Times, why I was wrong about inflation again.
Oh, God.
Probably.
But mainstream economists are completely less than useless.
They are paid for shills who are just more than happy to give the government any sort of expertise go-ahead on whatever it is that they were planning on doing anyway.
Don't listen to mainstream economists.
I'm wondering if it's not just intentional, though.
Do these people know?
I mean, they must know.
They must know that this is going to have a negative impact, just printing loads of money.
They must know.
Yes, but if enough of that printed money is immediately funneled into their bank account, they might be able to live with themselves.
That's a good point.
And Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were holdouts on the Inflation Reduction Act until I wonder if
government...
Handing out political favours.
No, no, no.
I can see where Bernie Sanders is coming from.
You've got to understand, Harry, this is 4D chess from Bernie Sanders.
Like, you're right.
At the moment, there is wealth inequality.
Some people are poor.
Other people are rich because money itself has value, Harry.
Oh, I'm sorry.
That's the problem.
But if we reduce the value of money to zero, inequality disappears.
This is one way of getting to the moneyless society, I suppose.
Everyone becomes as rich as Elon Musk, because wealth means nothing.
I thought you were going with the Sandys, was saying, yes, we've got more income and wealth inequality today than ever before, and it's still not enough.
We need even more inequality.
No, no, no.
He's got his head screwed up, right, Bernie?
He's a proper commie.
He knows that to get to the moneyless society, money has to be worth nothing.
Well, we do need to punish the billionaires, after all.
Not the millionaires anymore, just the billionaires.
And he says, this bill does nothing to address the systemic dysfunctionality of the American healthcare system.
And it also doesn't address affordable housing.
And that it doesn't give Medicare enough power.
Basically, it just doesn't do all the things that I desperately so wish it would do.
And it's spending almost...
Well over half a trillion dollars, 730 billion dollars, still not enough.
Typical socialist thinking we can just spend our way into prosperity.
Why doesn't the government just come down from heaven and divinely ordain the problem is over?
I don't understand either,
is an economic assault on the middle class, which it is because inflation, as always, is a stealth tax that will hit the middle class first.
If anything, as opposed to what Sanders is trying to suggest, it will expand inequality.
It's already grinding the working class into the dirt.
It's like, yeah, well, you know, a pint of milk cost you a dollar.
Well, now it costs two dollars.
Good luck.
You know, but it's just everyone.
Everyone is getting it from this.
Yeah, and Senator Marsha Blackburn slammed the Democrats for passing the bill, which increases taxes and decreases energy production ahead of what analysts say is an inevitable recession.
We're in a recession right now.
Well, we've redefined that, Aaron.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
It's just that the government desperately doesn't want people to.
This is in the next article, by the way, John.
Thank you.
And the spending spree also includes $80 billion to double the number of IRS agents practically giving every American a personalized tax auditor.
We should be cutting taxes, not increasing them.
Not just increasing them.
$80 billion to expand the people who tax you.
Oh, that's just so great.
Yeah, they say we should be cutting taxes, not increasing them.
And it's not just increasing them, it's actively making it more difficult for anybody to, maybe legally or otherwise, get around taxes.
So you're basically going to be under constant surveillance, as if you're not already by the IRS in America, to make sure that you don't spend a stray $5, because Nancy Pelosi really wants to know where you got that $60 from.
It would literally be more profitable to the American people to take that $80 billion out into the middle of the town after tax, from the taxes of everyone, and just burn it.
Well, that would probably help with inflation.
Yeah, I know.
That would actually be good.
Just tax everyone $80 billion and burn it.
At least then you wouldn't have a massively inflated government apparatus that was going to start intricately taking a detailed look at every single little part of your life.
Oh, well, the funny thing is that they're also hoping to use this bill to reduce the deficit by about $300 billion, which is kind of a drop in the water when you consider the deficit is currently $28 trillion.
Yeah, who cares?
Who cares?
What difference is that going to make?
A visibly emotional Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took the Senate floor to thank everybody from congressional staffers to the Capitol cafeteria workers for aiding the effort, telling them, you'll tell your grandchildren we're here and you were here.
So yeah, in the ashes of civilisation...
It's like an economic 9-11, you see.
You'll tell your grandchildren where you were on this day when the Democrats decided to liquidate the economy.
Yeah, and earlier on the Sunday, Republicans had successfully forced Democrats to remove a provision in their package that would have capped the price of insulin for all Americans at just $35.
So, literally everything in this bill is just to push agendas.
Just constantly, everything that they want, we want cheaper this, cheaper that, cheaper this, cheaper that, without realising, hold up, won't this cause shortages of some form, which we've seen constantly.
Of all the things to do as well, that's the thing that seems evil.
Like, yeah, well, we can't have a cap on insulin.
That sounds terrible.
It's like, no, no one cares about that.
Who cares about that at all?
But if we want to take a look a little bit at what is inside the bill, so the things that they're going for, primarily cheaper drug prescriptions, typical Democrat talking point, affordable healthcare coverage and suspension...
Pretty typical Democrats again.
And tax rebates and credits for energy and climate change.
And the big amount of money, that $369-ish billion for climate productions, it doesn't seem you've got the link, so I'll just read it from my document that I've got here.
So they're trying to, for the climate stuff, they're trying to manufacture clean energy products.
They are planning on using $20 billion to cut emissions from the agriculture sector and $3 billion to...
Too many cow farts, right?
Too many cow farts.
Very interesting that Bill Gates has been buying up all that farmland.
But anyway, $3 billion to reduce air pollution at ports.
So, you know, all of those issues with getting boats into California and LA. We're going to see even more of those.
Research and development.
$27 billion clean energy technology accelerated support deployment of technologies that curb emissions and $2 billion for breakthrough energy research.
I mean, honestly, this all just sounds like fantasy to me.
Yeah, this is them.
They're going to waste all of this money.
We're just going to spend all this money on things that probably don't even really exist yet to hopefully, potentially curb emissions by 2030, which we hope will help improve the world somehow.
This is going to hurt so many people.
Support for states, including $30 billion in grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities to advance the clean energy transition.
Once again, electric is coal power.
That's all it is.
I don't understand.
Unless you're in France when it's nuclear power.
Oh, that's true, but of course nuclear power is not mentioned.
This is just a stealth way of trying to pass the Green New Deal.
Yes.
After it was initially thrown aside.
Just bit by bit.
Yeah, just put enough of it in each of these individual bills that's going to pass because we've got partisan support on this, and we will get the agenda in there eventually.
If there's a single Republican left in America who doesn't realise that everything the Democrats do is in bad faith, well, this has got to be the wake-up call, right?
And here's another interesting part.
For individuals, a $7,005 tax credit to buy new electric vehicles and a $4,000 credit for buying a used one.
Sorry, how much?
$7,500.
They cost 50 grand.
Yes, they cost 50 grand.
But now it is official that Let Them Buy Teslas is actually part of the Democrat Party line.
That's what this is.
Let Them Buy Teslas.
Here's pennies so you can afford one.
It's only $42,500 now, guys.
It's all only.
Brilliant.
And interestingly enough as well...
As if that's not going to go up because of the inflation.
Well, yeah, because one of the things...
Yeah, that's a good point.
But one of the things as well is that they are trying to basically ban all cars, all gas and diesel cars by 2030 anyway, both in the UK and the US. This is the WEF agenda.
And our very own New Connor has an article in C3 News Mag from a few months ago talking about this, just pointing out that banning combustion engines won't actually make their more electric vehicles.
They won't just puff them into existence out of nowhere.
Really?
I can't believe it.
50% of all car sales by 2030, electric cars comprise only 4% of annual sales.
And like you said, they're $47,000 minimum, so they will go up and beyond that.
And then we've got record-level inflationary pressure and the administration's unprecedented $120 billion in monthly quantitative easing, making upgrading to electric vehicles unaffordable at this time.
And I think Conor's putting it quite likely there because it is just a pipe dream.
This is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
And then the next one was just pointing out that, you know, actually closing tax loopholes and increasing taxes on everybody might just lead to less tax revenue being brought in overall.
Isn't this, what was it called, the Laffer Curve or something like that?
I think I know what you're referring to.
It's basically...
The prediction never pans out because people essentially move their money...
They move their money to, say, government-backed securities that don't have as much taxes on them.
Or, for instance, if you thought to yourself, I'm going to start a business that's going to make me lots of money.
Hold up, it's all going to be taxed away from me.
Not going to bother.
Lots of missed opportunities means lots of missed opportunities by the government to actually raise any tax money, which just means, in the end, more deficit spending.
And this is a point that Daniel Hannum makes.
It sounds counterintuitive, but actually lowering the taxes allows businesses, and I can speak firsthand as a business owner, if I had to pay less tax, I would be able to afford more business.
I know.
It would be fantastic.
Yeah, it would be fantastic.
And so the government is actually holding us back by taxing us.
So if they tax us less, we'd end up being able to pay more in taxes.
That's the funny thing as well, because less taxes for the business means more money, more money, which means probably higher wages.
Higher wages that also get taxed less mean I get to go out and stimulate the economy a bit more as well.
That's exactly what it is.
I saw a thing where it's...
I saw a thing a while ago.
It was ages ago.
So it was something like 12% or something was the optimum amount of tax.
Because then you get a reasonable amount from the government where people aren't like, oh, I'm going to have to try and escape the taxes.
And it still gives you enough money to, as you say, stimulate the economy and spend loads of cash.
But, of course, more money for the government, less money for you.
I hope you're enjoying the gradual decline of Western civilisation, because I sure am.
Idiots in charge, that's what this is.
Let's go to the video comments.
I've just realized why I disagree with Carl's idea of the Sith in the Star Wars universe being the misrepresented good guys.
It's the Sith who have the rule of two, where the apprentice must kill the master in order for their society to progress.
It's the Sith who fear rules because they believe it holds people back from their true potential.
It's the Sith who have the idea of bringing peace, justice, order, stability to my new empire.
The Sith are just progressives, and the Jedi, for all their flaws, are conservatives.
No, I don't agree.
I'm going to have to do a 10-hour video breakdown now of how the Jedi are a bunch of leftists.
You and Morla can collab on it.
Yeah.
It's amusing.
That was just a meme video anyway, to be honest.
I was just doing it to wind up...
What was I doing to wind up?
You tell me.
I can't remember.
I know Academic Agent has a video sort of basically saying the same thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I was kind of piggybacking on that, but I was doing it to wind up like V or something.
I mean, at the end of the day, as much of a meme as it is...
Excuse me, one of the first things you see the Empire do is just blow up a planet, so...
So?
A planet full of rebels.
Alright, moving on.
At the time I joined Lotus Eaters, I think we were at about episode 60 or something.
And I remember you guys read a lot of super chats from YouTube as I guess that was a major income or something.
And then you had the strike and you decided to move off YouTube as the primary platform.
And how has all that turned out?
Was it a blessing in disguise?
Did that have a big impact on your subscription base on Lotus Eaters?
Because I know certainly I joined after that.
Curious.
Have a nice day.
Well, I mean, we certainly got fewer strikes on YouTube because of it.
This is honestly the problem with YouTube is that their rules are Byzantine at this point and it's just safer to be able to edit stuff after the fact rather than live stream to YouTube.
I don't know if it's had a particular effect.
I mean, we're doing quite well for subscriptions, so thank you everyone for subscribing.
If you want to support us, go and subscribe.
So I don't know is the answer because I'm not a very good businessman.
But no, it seems to go okay.
I mean, obviously it's annoying to lose the revenue of Superchats, but what can you do?
Karl bought an airbrush for his miniatures and during lockdown I bought one for my scale model making.
I now own two and this is my Pash airbrush that was quite pricey.
What you pay for is out of the factory alignment.
See how the shroud, nozzle and needle are all concentric.
This is my cheap one.
The alignment is pretty good but only because I corrected it by removing the needle and using pliers to force the brass nozzle to centre.
This is the best way to get a cheap airbrush performing.
Also buy very fine sandpaper and brasso to polish the needle to a mirror finish.
Good advice there.
All very satisfying as well.
Oh yeah.
It's really fun to use an airbrush.
Hey guys, watching the segment from Monday about the woman with the normal life who was complaining about it.
It's very tempting to make fun of her for her asinine complaints, but I think in today's world, people are told they could be anything.
And then when they turn out to live kind of normal lives, they're not the hero of any particular story, even their own.
People tend to get bitter and they dwell on everything, and we've got to figure out a way around that.
I think that's a great point, because I didn't actually see the segment.
I saw it come up in my subscription box.
I think it might have been Callum and Connor or someone covering it, so I wasn't part of it.
Yeah, I didn't get the time to see it.
But I think he's absolutely right.
This is genuinely something I've been thinking about with kids, is you are definitely the heroes for your kids.
You definitely are.
When something goes terribly wrong, you're the person they cry for.
That's true.
And you're the person who comes and saves them from whatever mess they've gotten themselves into.
And if people understood that a bit better, then maybe they would feel less like their asinine problems are holding them back.
Well, yeah.
I mean, this is something that I have experienced recently, thinking about whether I want to start a family quite soon.
Whenever I talk to people, not just of my generation, but even of certain older generations, like the Baby Boomers and the Gen X, Like your generation, they all conceptualise children as nothing but a burden.
No, it's terrible.
Which is just the wrong way to go about it.
Even my own parents, when I've mentioned it to them, have gone, oh, you want to put that off for a few years?
You don't want to do that right now, do you?
And it's like, why not?
What about my life will be somehow less fulfilled if I have children?
No, it won't.
It seems counterintuitive.
I think you'll really enjoy it, but, like, it's also, like, it is tiring as a 42-year-old to have a two-year-old running around.
Oh, I imagine.
It's a tiring thing.
My dad was 43 when he had, when him and my mum had me.
Oh, yeah.
He'd already been a dad for 17 years up to that point.
So I know there have been times when I've been growing up when he has been tired and lost his patience.
And sadly, and I don't want to get too personal with this, it does come to the point where now I'm 26 years old.
I only just recently had my birthday.
I'm 26 years old and in the prime when I can, you know, speak to my dad and enjoy my time with my dad and possibly do things with my dad that I couldn't when I was a teenager because, you know, it felt more like an obligation whereas now it feels like something I want to do.
All of a sudden my dad is nearing 70.
And it's to the point where it's like, I don't...
He's had some health troubles.
I don't know how much longer I've got with him.
And I kind of look around and go, I don't want to get to that age and my kids be only just getting to the age where I can enjoy spending time with them again.
Honestly, I would definitely recommend having your kids younger.
I wish I'd done it.
Let's go to the next one.
So recently, I know you guys probably don't care about The Sims 4, as most people shouldn't.
The Sims 4 went woke more, even more.
Now you can choose your gender options and your custom pronouns and stuff, but it horribly broke the game and messed up all the aging cycles and made it basically impossible to have children because they kept glitching into oblivion.
Just like in real life.
The number one complaint on the site was that they didn't go far enough with their woke updates, not that the game was horribly broken and was unable to be played.
But what do we expect from EA? That's a really good representation of what's happening.
Oh no, you can customise pronouns in it now.
Why not?
I mean, why not?
I mean, I don't know if this is just...
I've never really been into the Sims, but I've seen people play it.
I don't know if this is just mods, but couldn't you already get men pregnant in it?
But it was more like, I think you had to get aliens to abduct them.
I've never played the Sims.
Alien babies.
Yeah, I don't know.
That might just be mods.
Correct me if they are.
Going back to a previous comment I made to Kyle in which I asked him when was it that he ceased considering himself left-wing.
I wanted to ask the panel, when did you guys think the left lost all sense and purpose?
In other words, what year do you guys think the left truly became woke?
Did you ever consider yourself left-wing?
Yes.
Oh.
For a long while, actually.
Even though I would say my instincts and my moral foundations to go all height haven't changed at all, I was just going with the prevailing winds that the culture around me seemed to be pushing me in, whereas now that I would consider myself right-wing, I would say that I've actually just made myself consistent with my principles and my...
And my instincts regarding all of this.
But no, for me, I don't know about for you, for me there was a very distinctive point around maybe February, January, March, around that time last year where I'd been watching a lot of content, reading some books, and all of a sudden I went on a walk with the missus and just sat down with her and I was like...
I was really worried about it at the time as well because as you can tell because of the fact that I got cancelled being right wing in the kind of circles that we travel in is a bit of a stigma so I was really worried especially because she's a punk I was worried that she might abandon me I was like I think I'm right wing you know it felt like coming out and she was like fair play whatever and I was like oh thank god but that was it for me I don't know about you Honestly, there was never really any one particular moment.
It was just, you know, I spent a few years being like, look, if the left is going to be like this, then this is terrible.
And everyone was like, yeah, this is the left, and we're going to keep doing it.
And I was like, okay, well then, I'm not left-winged.
Yeah, I think for me, I'd been broadly for a long time against the SJWs in a similar way to perhaps you had in the past as well.
But I'd never really consider myself part of, you know, the right wing.
No, no.
Very just casually was like, oh, Jeremy Corbyn's saying free things for people my age.
Oh, that sounds fine, whatever, and didn't really consider it any more than that.
And then all of a sudden I started looking into it and thinking about it.
It's like, oh, this is all nonsense.
Yeah.
And actually, the more I look into it, these things going on with the transgender agenda is very strange and seems to be getting a little bit noncy for my liking.
Yeah, and the whole thing is just built on a foundation of lies, frankly.
Well, yeah.
It's like, okay, well, I'm just not having that.
The actual conservatives, the sort of pre-rational conservatives, seem to have more real things that they rest their views on.
Yeah, I just...
I think that recognising that as an ideal to aspire to, that aspiring for equality between all peoples everywhere at all times is just a ridiculous, destructive pipe dream.
Seems evil.
Yeah, it does begin to be evil, especially when you start to see the means by which they try and achieve those ends.
The lack of scruples.
So recognising that for a lot of people, I would say, is probably where they make a hard cut with whatever political affiliation they might have had before.
Yeah.
No, no, I think that's true.
Anyway, Colin says, Yeah, that's Maxine Waters.
Yeah, that's what repressive tolerance is.
Callum says, Seeing stuff like this on Twitter, Facebook and other places makes me incredibly grateful I never jacked myself into the network any time during school.
Yeah, I'm so glad this didn't exist when I was a kid.
Even though it did exist while I was growing up, my parents only got me a flip phone.
And I only started using an iPhone, I think it was, when I was 18 years old.
And honestly, that was so healthy for me.
Yeah.
Screwtape Laser says, These children parroting adult jargon is nothing new.
30 years ago in grade school, I recall the bratty girls calling everyone a male chauvinist pig.
Instead of being reprimanded, the teachers indulge them as precocious young women.
I would just take that as a compliment.
Itachi says, Misogynoir.
1940s French film-style production of base men being actual men instead of overly feminized soy boys with pronouns in their bios.
That's the good interpretation of misogynoir.
Well, When we get Lotus Productions going, we just make that our genre of choice.
Kevin says, Wow, and I thought Thailand was bad.
Predators dealing transition hormone drugs online.
Here, at least in Thailand, it's just pot they're flogging online.
Even on Fakebook.
I get about 20 adverts a day offering somebody pot on my Fakebook account.
Can't order beer online, that's a criminal offence, but get stoned off your tits, that's fine.
Michael says, hormone imbalance can cause osteoporosis, stroke, deep brain thrombosis, and cancer, just to name a few things.
Pushing this on kids is damn right evil.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.
So this is just...
We're just going to send you random hormone-altering drugs through the mail, and this is just what you need.
It's just good for you.
It's just good for you.
Malevolent is a good word for it.
Yeah, it's also, again, if it wasn't so obviously self-centered activism for their own vanity, then I wouldn't be so bothered about it.
It'd be like, look, you're an idiot and you're doing the wrong thing, but at least you have a genuine conviction that you need to do this and this is the right thing.
So it's a mistake, but this is now about self-gratification.
To be fair, people could probably throw the same sort of insult at people like James Lindsay and Chris Rufo, because they're activists as well.
Chris Rufo is very clear that he's an activist.
But the difference, of course, being that they're doing the right thing.
There is that.
There you go.
Sorted.
Zen Chan says, Sure, but it's in the way that it's being framed, right?
Right.
But that was back when diversity was something that mattered.
They didn't just look different or want sex from different people.
They came from different cultures with different fighting styles and even different kind of armor.
The differences between them were just interesting, not just me black.
Well, that's exactly the point.
It's not diversity to have a black and a white dwarf, as in they're both dwarves.
So it's not like they're not diverse.
A dwarf, a hobbit, an elf, and a man, okay, that is diverse, even though they've all got the same skin tone.
And that was kind of the point of Gimli and Legolas' friendship in the films, and them growing to trust one another.
Yeah.
Radchick was right, says, A billion dollars and they couldn't form plane tickets to New Zealand?
They couldn't make it look like they were trying?
No, because they hate nerd culture.
They have nothing but contempt for any form of escapism that lets people tune out of politics.
I hate this decade.
And that's totally true.
It's contempt for escapism that lets people tune out of politics, because of course everything is political to these people.
So there's no getting away from it.
And the thing is, to get away from it means they lose their purpose in life.
Because then they're like, yeah, well, you know, it's diversity, diversity, politics, politics.
You may as well say politics when they say diversity.
And if you take that away, well, then what have they got?
They don't have great acting skills.
You know, they don't have...
Certainly don't seem to have a story.
No, exactly.
They don't seem to have a story.
They don't seem to have anything other than the diversity.
Can you wait to hear millennial California-style dialogue coming from Tolkien-style characters?
Oh, well, and the kind of sarcastic quips, oh, it's a Balrog.
Yeah, there's going to be Marvel quipping here, there, and everywhere.
There's not going to be any of the poetry of Tolkien.
I'm actually looking forward to watching it.
I'm going to hate-watch it.
I think we should get an office watch party going for it.
Maybe.
Maybe, actually.
If we just film it, there's good content straight there.
Live stream us commenting on it after hours.
Henry says, Rings of Power was doomed the moment writers came out and said they wanted to write a story better than Tolkien that also ties into all the modern talking points, trying to make a show for everyone when a show for everyone is really for no one.
great point by comparison when it's the War of the Rohirrim comes out I'm probably going to I'm probably going to like it based on what I've seen it's by New Line Cinema I haven't even seen any trailers I've not heard of this who did a good job of the Lord of the Rings films and tells the story of how Helm Hammerhand whose Helm's Deep is named after fought off the invading Duand Dunlendings?
Okay, it's going to be an anime, but if it's good, I'll take it.
Well, I mean, if it's good.
Ignacio says, Yeah, no, that's exactly what it is.
Just make your own thing.
Just make your own thing.
And Supreme Duck says, as a Lord of the Rings fan, I will proudly watch something else.
Fair.
Literally anything else.
Yeah.
I'll even go back to the Hobbit films and go, you know, maybe I didn't give these a fair shake.
Another Bloody Dane says, this doesn't need to be read out.
Well, I'm going to read it.
But Yoda wielding a lightsaber is because Jedi are partly based upon monks who use martial arts as a means to reach in a peace.
Yoda can wield a lightsaber, but of course George couldn't leave well enough alone and made the little guy into a green battle girl.
Yeah, but it's not that he can't, right?
It's presupposed that Yoda has transcended the need to wield a lightsaber.
He's like 900 years old as well.
I don't mind if George wanted to go back to, I don't know, 50-year-old baby Yoda or something with his tiny little lightsaber.
By the time he's in his late hundreds...
But it's also, like, it ruins the aesthetic of the character to have them doing these things.
The point is they know things that are supposed to transcend the need to swing about a sword.
And that's good.
That's what you've got Aragorn for.
Actually, that's a good point.
That's an interesting link between the prequels and the original that George didn't really close up because in the original, as it's very clear, Yoda does not use a lightsaber and does not seem to like using a lightsaber.
There is no connective tissue showing that Well, maybe.
I don't...
But it's...
The wise mentor, ethereal mentor character, it just brings them down to the level of an orc who's also swinging his sword.
It ruins the archetype, and there's a reason archetypes are so prevalent.
Exactly.
Anyway, Daniela says, You know, I'm very well acquainted with inflation and other artificial problems.
I'm Venezuelan.
I'm sorry.
My biggest red pill moment was realizing that First World countries' governments are just as dumb and malevolent as mine.
I can just advise to reinforce your familial relationships.
In the end, it's your relatives and your good friends that will help you survive and stay sane.
There we go.
I totally agree with that.
Casey says, 430 million printed to stop inflation is like drilling more holes to stop the boat from sinking.
Couldn't put it better.
We're past never a tribute to malice, what can be explained by incompetence.
Totally true.
Meanwhile, at the UN, we global elites believe it should be illegal to claim global elites are controlling everything.
Malicious intent is obvious.
Yeah, I think it is malevolence at this point.
I don't think you can...
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