All Episodes
Previous Next
May 6, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:32:09
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1158
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the podcast of Lotus Caesars for Tuesday, the 6th of May, 2025.
I'm John Bystelios and Luke Avery and Adam Coleman, packed house today.
And we're going to be talking about how the elites in Britain are panicking because they have forsaken their duty and gone and joined the Met Gala, although they're American elites, but...
Either way, same principle.
And how the next Catholic conclave is going to elect a woke Pope.
We can't see the future, but there's a decent chance.
Yeah, we can.
God, I hate the future so much.
I miss the past, man.
What a traditionalist attitude.
Well, around 1300, I'm thinking.
They validate.
Yeah, about the high point of just civilisation.
Probably.
Anyway, right, so let's begin.
Nigel Farage's recent seismic victory in the local elections has got them all panicking, and they don't know what to do.
They realise that something has changed, the sand has shifted under their feet, and they're struggling for purchase, and I don't think they're going to find any.
So this is an article from The Times, The Times being one of the most prestigious and well-read newspapers in the country.
It's where the elites go to get their narrative.
And, well, as you can see here, Nigel Farage has blown apart two-party politics.
Here's what's next.
And Tim here makes a good point, actually, because Nigel Farage's achievement for all of Nigel Farage's faults and failures is quite remarkable.
But it really speaks to a broader failure of the political establishment at large.
So he says, Nigel Farage has no government departments, no ministers, no budgets, no civil service, no staff of hundreds, and yet he...
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has all of the powers of the British state and one of the best election machines in the world and does not have a story.
If the government doesn't know and can't communicate what it is for and who it is against in a way that emotionally connects with an electorate, then this is the outcome.
And the thing is, they do have a story.
It's a white man bad.
Literally all the story is.
Heard this story many times.
Yes.
And, I mean, Keir Starmer was...
It couldn't have been more crystal clear when the Southport massacre happened.
It's like, listen, you far-right white people, get back in your box.
And that's almost word for word what he said.
And so the panic, you can see, is like, well, look, we've been selling the long-standing betrayal of the British electorate and treason to them, and they've finally gotten wise.
And so what do we do?
They don't have an answer.
Yeah, and it seems like...
Farage often is the focal point for people who dislike that story, the people who want to push back against the narrative we've been being told so many times.
But often that energy seems to reach a pinnacle and then Farage mysteriously disappears.
That has happened a couple of times.
So in a way, Starmer's best power is his opposition being ineffective, I would argue.
Yeah, I mean, he's...
I think they're worried at this point because Farage actually seems to be doing something.
He finally seems to have...
Yes, but I've heard this story many times before.
Farage has been incredibly effective at doing things.
Yes.
And then also incredibly consistent.
Then he pulls the football up and you woof!
Yeah.
I mean, to add to Luke's point that Labour's main weapon is the ineffectiveness of the opposition, it was a victory that was anti-Tory.
There wasn't a particularly widespread enthusiasm with Starmer.
No, that's true.
So, I mean, in fact, he goes on to point that out.
While things are bad for Labour, they're an existential threat to the Tories.
And that is true.
Labour is getting absolutely drubbing.
And it's proportionally about the same.
They both lost about two-thirds of their councillors during this election.
So for the two main parties, imagine if in America the Republicans and Democrats both lost two-thirds of their local politicians to third parties.
You'd be like, well, how the hell is this happening?
And that's what's happening here.
So it's now, like, there's a great quote, actually.
But, yeah, so this is the first time the Conservatives have not won a majority in a single council since the local government system was created in 1889.
So this is, yeah, historically bad.
I mean, it's bad for Labour, but they're in a stronger position, the Conservatives.
One person that he speaks to in this says the Conservative Party is basically its councillors.
They're the ones who organise everything.
And essentially, if the next year's local elections are the same as this year's, wiped out in key councils like Staffordshire and Kent, it will cease to be a functioning party.
So you might think that the current person in charge of the party, Yoruba Mami...
Kimmy Badenock would be on top of all this.
She'd be like, right, I'm the party leader.
I have to start making some affirmative action.
I have to do something.
But instead, quote, insiders say that Badenock spent much of Friday, quote, doomscrolling.
On her phone.
Great.
While Robert Jenrick, her potential successor, went out to do a series of live interviews.
Aides said she wants to learn lessons, and donors who had sat out the local elections were rallying around, handing over half a million pounds to a woman who was doom-scrolling on her phone.
It's like, sorry, what are we doing here?
This is a party that's ripe to die, right?
Surely.
It's crazy.
The Conservative Party, the most successful party in world history, that they've effectively won more elections in a longer period of time.
But if it genuinely does collapse, but all the same people just...
Move to some new replacement.
I think we might see a bit of the rose with any other name smells as sweet.
We might see a repeat of the same wet behaviour just reappearing.
And it's kind of crazy that Nigel Farage is prepared to take Tory defectors.
Why are you taking any defectors?
Crush them all and drive them out of politics.
You're in a position to do it.
It's pointless to just rename your party by some circuitous route.
But the ribbon's slightly lighter blue.
You're right.
That's a good point.
Slightly lighter blue.
We'll change everything.
I take it back.
So the point being, it's bad for the Labour Party, but it's even worse for the Conservative Party.
But the thing is, at least in the Conservative Party, there's a sense that they're like, okay, we have to do something different.
We'll get to that in a minute.
In the Labour Party, you've got people like Wes Streeting, which is the current health secretary, saying, like, no, mistakes weren't made.
We didn't make any mistakes.
It's like, you lost two-thirds of your councillors, mate.
Like, I mean, surely there's something.
That you've done wrong here.
And his general thesis is, well, we just had to make really unpopular decisions to maintain the current traitorous status quo that's destroying the country.
It's like, yep, that's the problem.
So it's not the fault of Labour.
It's the fault of the people who didn't understand the supreme wisdom of Labour.
Honestly, that is exactly, almost word for word, what he says.
The reason we made these choices is because we genuinely believe they're the right choices to get the country out of the massive hole it was left in.
Bye.
The Labour Party policies that were continued on by the Conservatives.
And so, yeah, as far as he's concerned, no, everything's fine.
But you can see by the expression on his face, is that a man who really thinks he did nothing wrong?
Is that a man who thinks, no, no, no, I'm confident in the future.
Or is that a man who looks like he's got a gun to his head?
It looks like a boy being told off by a headteacher.
Yeah, it does.
Am I going to get expelled to this?
And the answer is yes.
We're streeting is going to get great replaced in the next election.
Because they...
He imported a lot of Muslims into his constituency.
And so last election, he won by only a few hundred votes to an independent Muslim MP candidate who's going to win next time.
So he's out in the next election.
So I do have a question as the lone American on the panel here.
Is it a sense that the Tories What a wonderful observation.
There is a small sense of that, yes.
The Tories don't have any principles, that's correct.
That's how you become the most successful party in the history of the world.
I have principles, but if you object, I have others.
Well, the reason I ask that is because I think much in the same way that the third party was able to...
I would say temporary, at least as of right now, have some success.
It's the same reason why Trump ended up in the position that he ended up in.
Precisely.
It's because Trump is not a Republican in the traditional sense.
He hijacked the party.
The party shifted towards what Trump is doing for now.
We'll see what happens when Trump is no longer around.
And so I do see, like, there's some sort of similarity there where a lot of people had a lot of apathy towards both parties.
You know, oh, come to us, we'll fix the problem.
They go to them.
They don't fix the problem.
Oh, come to us.
We'll actually fix the problem.
And they keep going back and forth.
And at some point, they're going to be like, both of you are a joke.
That is exactly what happened.
That is exactly word for word what is happening.
Because Labour and the Conservatives are basically, George Galloway famously calls them two cheeks of the same arse.
Right.
And Nigel Farage is just standing there saying, "Hey, I could do something." And everyone decided, "Yeah, better him than these two clowns who have just ruined the country repeatedly." As you can see on West Street's face, he knows it's coming.
He knows.
He can see the train approaching, and he just can't get out of the way.
And he's like, "Yeah, so we didn't do anything wrong.
Whack." Whereas there are other Labour MPs who are like, "You know what?
We might be terrible.
We might have betrayed the public completely on the one issue that...
Literally since the 60s, they were saying we don't want this, and every time since then, they've got this, whether they wanted it or not.
And Jonathan Hinder points out that this is an existential threat for the Labour Party as well, because one thing that the...
When you look at the map, you see, OK, Labour have got there, Conservatives have got there, but Reform is starting to get places, and the Lib Dems have got this.
What it doesn't show you is what's happening under the hood, because in every Labour constituency now...
The Reform Party are the second party, and not by a long margin either.
Because it turns out, and this was something that the politicians really, for some reason, were surprised to find out, is that the average person in the country is basically far right.
They're basically patriotic, they're basically socially conservative.
Always happen.
They always happen, especially in the poorer areas of the country where social conservatism is used to maintain the integrity of the community itself.
And they're suddenly finding out that, what, you're not woke from some guy from Northumbria or something who worked in a mine his whole life?
It's like, yeah, I'm not woke, actually.
You know, I just don't want the government to screw me.
Or maybe they're not far away.
And that the Overton window has just shifted.
Well, I'm happy to call them far-right because that just means normal in a previous paragraph, which is why they don't have an ideological name for them.
It's almost the far-right ideology.
There isn't one.
They're just normal.
It's just you're a radical leftist, so you call them far-right.
But you are right.
Speaking of changes, though, to the Overton window and to the situation, I think that this statement does reveal a change because the left has turned its back to...
The native working class for decades.
That's why there was a Brexit.
Yeah, that's why all of this happened.
And what happened was that they opted for mass migration and now a critical mass has been reached and several, let's say, communities are making their own parties and they think, well, now we're losing their vote so we have to go back to the working class.
You know what?
That's exactly right.
And Jonathan here has a plan.
Do you know what the plan is?
Keep things exactly as they are.
I'm not joking!
Well, no plan is a plan, right?
He has recommended a, quote, one-in-one-out system.
So rather than having a net of something like a million a year coming into Britain, which is what we have, which is crazy, he just wants the number to stay the same, but just one-in-one-out.
It's like, okay, but the problem is we just have far too many people in this country.
Far, far too many people.
And if you've ever driven on the roads, or used the trains, or tried to get a hospital appointment, or whatever it is, you'll be well aware.
Try to buy a house, try to get a job, try to literally queue up for a coffee.
You'll know that there are just too many people in this country.
And his answer is to keep that number exactly the same.
It's like, right, that's not the solution.
Millions of people who came here recently need to go home.
And so he says, look, this would return us to a more or less balanced net migration.
Levels that we had for decades.
We had 300,000 a year for decades.
It turned London into a minority English city.
It turned Luton into a minority English city.
It turned Birmingham into a minority.
This new spike in immigration is very new, but these problems were already there from their quote-unquote balanced migration system.
And so anyway, the point being, Labour have no answers, because they can't sit there and go, right.
We've just done too much, and we have to reverse this.
For some reason, they're absolutely committed to having as many Somalians in social housing as possible.
I don't know why.
No one's actually explained it.
I mean, what was the answer?
I will say, stopping additional migration is better than letting it continue.
I guess it is!
Maybe it's a lesser of two evils argument, but it feels like a progress in a sense.
In a sense, but it doesn't solve any of the problems.
It's very helpful, though, for big statism and for anarcho-tyranny and, for instance, things like pushing digital ID.
Yeah, that is true.
Well, also, stopping migration causes a big problem for things like pensions because, as we know, it's essentially the more...
People come in at the bottom, the people at the top can continue to get the pension that's been owed to them.
That is the theory, but Somalians, taken as an example, they have a literacy rate of 41% in their own language.
How many Somalians can actually come into the offices in Britain and start doing the well-paid jobs that pay for pensions?
Yeah, yeah.
Not that many, obviously.
Well, I...
I'm not arguing that migration is of a net benefit to normal people, but it is to elites.
It is the theory they use.
So for somebody to be proposing that we're stopping migration...
It is a ballsy move from the perspective that surely people in powerful positions do not want even that.
It is something.
But the reason that they've got to do this is because the poor people are just like, no, I'm voting far-right.
Because the media narrative around reform is that they're a far-right party.
Now, just to be clear, Nigel Farage is not far-right.
He's centre-right at worst.
He's basically MAGA.
He's not far-right.
But the poor people have decided, yep, no, I'm voting...
Overwhelmingly, for the far right, as you can see, Labour have lost 50% of a share there, and they're going for reform.
This is the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods.
It shows that it's in the deprived neighbourhoods.
It's where the people don't have money, but do have immigrants, that they're like, you know what, I am voting reform.
I'm tired of this.
I don't want this.
And finally, some of the elite are starting to notice, hang on a second...
I think it might be immigration that is driving people to the right.
How is it we didn't see this before?
It's so insufferable.
But the thing is, even now, what they do is they talk around immigration, right?
So he says, the additional support reform is attracting at the moment comes from more swingy voters discontented about living standards, condition of public services, and blunders made by the government.
Right.
Why are living standards going down?
Why are the services all failing?
It's immigration.
It's at the heart of everything.
Because a million people a year into a country of 70 million people is enormous.
Absolutely enormous and totally untenable.
And like I say, various journalists and economists are like, we are actually sleepwalking to a massive reform victory in 2029.
And like I said, as much as I don't support Farage on a lot of personal levels, that's something different.
And I'm up for it.
I'm just up for anything different.
Is there a risk?
That the people coming into the country who are then able to vote counteract the disenfranchised feelings of the poorer people?
I would say no, because at best they could only vote in the ethnic enclaves.
So you'd get a handful of independent MPs who are Muslims.
But the country is still 75% English.
In Scotland and Wales are more Scottish and Welsh than England is English.
So we still have the overwhelming number of votes, and so we have to crack on and actually fix this sooner rather than later.
It's a boiling the frog problem, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
Because if they go too fast, they will get this revolt, and they'll lose power.
But if they can go slowly enough, they can do the replacement that they intend, and then the battle is won.
Yes, and we do, in a way, have to thank Boris Johnson for just opening the spigot and just cranking it all up.
Right, yeah, that's true.
Secretly based.
Yeah, but they can see the future too.
They can read the tea leaves and see that an absolute walloping is coming on the horizon.
And what's also good is that this campaigner for Labour was like, well look, I've heard that Number 10 and Angela Rayner are worried about doing anything that's deemed woke because they're terrified about reform and Trump.
And so anything that sounds a bit lefty, they absolutely won't do, which is very interesting and good to hear.
Anything that's not betray us.
And so you've got another...
There's Jonathan Hinder tweet.
And he's, again, just the main issue that's pushing working class people to reform is immigration.
Because he's replying here to a communist who was in the Labour Party for like, you know, 50 years or something, John McDonnell.
And he just won't talk about it.
But even then, even Jonathan Hinder, the one Labour MP I can find who's like, look, it's immigration.
He's like, well, we need one in, one out.
It's like, no, millions of people who have arrived here to claim our benefits need to go home.
They've got countries of their own.
Boris let them in for some reason.
They need to go home.
It's not that difficult.
You know, there's...
And it's not just happening in the UK.
Sometimes I see this in the United States.
It takes human beings and it turns them into numbers.
Well, if we have this magical ratio, then everything will be fine.
It's 100% what it is.
And I'm just like, that's not how human beings work.
There's a cultural element.
There's social cohesion.
All of these things you can't put a number on.
There's no magic formula if this works in this town or in this city or anything like that.
But very clearly, if you take a town that has a thousand people of the same ethnic background, of the same cultural understanding.
And bring in 2,000 people of the opposite.
What could possibly go wrong?
Like, it's going to make a big issue.
But if in the grand scheme of things, like, well, if it's in the ratio, everything is fine.
Let me just go to my penthouse right here and I'm absolutely okay.
It doesn't affect, what's your problem?
What are you actually talking about?
And so there's that, there's the social disconnect where the people who are able to pull the levers aren't actually affected by the thing that they're controlling.
And I'm seeing that, essentially, that's what you guys are talking about.
The United States is going through much of the same thing.
It's 100% what's happening.
This is why I like the example of West Streeting so much.
Because he is someone who, up until this point, probably thought very similar to that.
But then he realized that actually I've imported a demographic of voters who are not going to vote for me into my own constituency.
And so this is his last election.
He is 100% not going to win it because the numbers are now just against him.
Okay, but is the replacement for West Streeting going to lower immigration?
No, they're going to...
We're going to be an independent Muslim MP.
Assuming they don't join the Muslim party.
To be a slightly black-pilled voice here, I'm not convinced that we're going to have this true landslide back towards this idea that everyone's going to wake up and realise what's been happening to them.
I think a...
A percentage of people are moving to reform, but a larger percentage of people are going to just be led around by the media.
100%, but all it needs is for Nigel Farage to get about 35% of people on board, and then he can form a government.
At the moment he's about a quarter of people, and I think as it gets closer to the election, the argument will become stronger on his side.
Just something has to change, because what's Keir Starmer going to do to fix anything?
Okay.
I'm optimistic.
And the thing is, there was a poll the other day where just 65% of people think Farage is the next Prime Minister.
Wow.
Like, the sort of, the tide is shifting and everyone can feel this, you know, it's going away from the two main parties and they're just collapsing and they're panicking and they don't know what.
That would be crazy.
That would be great, to be honest.
And like I said, I'm not a big fan of Farage, but like...
Anything, right?
Anything.
And in the Labour Party, you get people like this.
You're idiots.
Oh, you're taking a battering for this.
He's like, yeah, we should really be doubling down on your trans-activism.
That's what working...
And that's a Labour MP.
Just, you know, no, I'm done with the radical left at this point because we're getting absolutely tanked.
If Farage becomes the next Prime Minister, he will quit on day one.
No, he won't.
He'll quit on the third or fourth month when he can't get anything done.
Yeah, maybe.
But anyway, so you've got Liberal Democrats being like, I heard the leader of reform proclaim confidently that the problem was immigration, that it was bringing people here with cultures not compatible with ours.
That sort of language should be unthinkable, says the Liberal Democrats.
Now, this is the archetype of the person who is nowhere near the problem, right?
So the Liberal Democrats in Britain are the party of Middle England.
They are the party of...
Homogenous, white, ancient enclaves of people who live in, like, Devon or, like, Somerset or whatever who have never seen a brown person in real life.
And so they are...
I mean it.
And so they're just like, I can't believe we're doing this.
Oh, this doesn't play well at the dinner parties.
It's like, okay, but in Birmingham they've got machete gangs running down the streets and you just don't know what you are talking about.
Like, this absolutely is a...
It's a case of incompatible cultures.
That's not even controversial to say it.
And then, of course, you've got another Labour MP here who's pointing out, look, they know that the actual, like, normal MPs, most of the straight white male MPs, to be honest, are like, look, the working class core voters of Labour find reforms messaging on immigration attractive, which is why they're going to reform.
In the North, rather than to the Conservative Party or the Labour Party.
And this is something that is just coming and they can't stop it and they have no good answers for it.
So good news on that, to be honest.
Anyway, going to the comments, I've got a squirt.
Arch my neck.
Heinleinism fixes all of this?
It does, but we're never going to get that.
At best, the Americans could get that.
And I just had a thought, what if Trump is like Margaret Thatcher and it's only a matter of time until the US gets their own version of Blair and their own version of Blairism?
I don't know that Trump is as thoughtful and principled as Thatcher.
I don't think he's as well-read as that.
I can't imagine a long lineage of random tariffs being proposed by people in his wake.
Yeah.
Well, I do have a question as far as, I'm just going to be sort of crude, balls.
Like, does Farage or anybody else, you guys were saying, like, he might step down or something like that, but does anybody within Reform have the balls to actually do the thing?
It's one thing to run on something.
You don't last very long in the party if you stick to...
There was one guy, and Nigel Farage kicked him out of the party.
Okay.
For being too ballsy.
See, that's the difference between people saying Trump and Farage.
Trump has the balls, especially now.
Trump 2.0 is different than Trump 1.0.
Trump 1.0 was trying to do some of those things, but was also trying to appease people who hated him, like the media.
But now, this time around, he's very much so like, I don't care.
I don't care.
And he's doing exactly the thing.
He's going as far as like...
Questioning birthright citizenship if it was actually meant for the way that it's been used.
And that's the thing that actually took me some time to kind of consider because I was like, you know, maybe he's right.
Maybe it's being exploited.
But nobody, I'm telling you, like I've been paying attention to politics since I'm 40, since like my mid-20s.
No one has ever talked about birthright citizenship.
Honestly, it's a very peculiar Americanism.
Yes.
Because in the old world, of course, you don't have that.
Right.
Your citizenship is through your blood.
So it's a very American, sort of, new world social contract perspective, the birth of citizenship.
And so it's weird for us.
In fact, weirdly, Kemi Badenock somehow managed to get over here.
I don't know how.
I don't know how our system works.
But it's good that Trump's pushing at some closed doors, isn't it?
Yeah.
Making some interesting stuff happen.
But anyway, let's go to the Met Gala.
Right, so I'm wondering whether civilization is coming to an end because I'm thinking of the painting called The Decadence of the Romans.
And we have several events that remind me of this painting.
Last August, I think, we had the Olympic Games in Paris, and the opening ceremony was particularly decadent.
We made a segment about it.
It was a fun segment.
We tried to laugh about it.
And it seems like there is a trend within the Western world that tries to celebrate a sort of detachment from worldly affairs.
Perhaps that's not the best way of putting it.
It's not necessarily that we're going to talk to you about spiritual people who are in the world but not of the world.
But they seem to be completely detached when it comes to things most people care about.
I mean, they care more about the abstract notion of human rights than they do anything else, right?
While hating flesh and blood human beings.
More often than not.
It's definitely a trend within the left.
Now, I want to say one thing, because I'm a bit of an insomniac, and I woke up today at 4 a.m.
I just started watching X. I saw a trending category.
I saw the Met Gala.
I said, what on earth is this?
And it had millions of posts about it.
I just clicked on it.
So, why on earth is anyone interested in it?
Yeah, it's a bit weird that I'm doing this segment today about it.
But let's go and see.
The reason I want to say this is because it looks like we are on a stage of bread and circus.
We're on the bread and circus stage.
And I think that this is preventing people from waking up and looking at things that are happening around the world.
And it keeps us in our bubbles.
And we literally don't ask questions that we should be asking.
And I'll just show you the Associated Press and several headlines of things that are happening at the moment in the world.
Israeli plan to seize Gaza.
Trump fighting with judges, you know, lots of important things actually happening that were going to have precedental impacts going on in the future.
Exactly.
We have the rivalry of India and Pakistan, both of which are nuclear powers, and have the ability to drug major players within the region there.
But also we have Cardi B. So you're going to show us your three favourite looks from the Met Gala?
Not just three.
Not just three.
What are you talking about?
All right, here we go.
Not just three.
So we have other things that are happening.
The AFD was announced extremist last Friday by the BFV.
That's a quarter of Germany's voting base.
Yeah, we have Friedrich Merz, who won the election today.
He isn't able to become the Chancellor of Germany.
Why not?
I don't know.
That's big stuff going around.
But we also have Andre 3000, who was strapped to a piano dressed like a French infantryman.
I'll show you pictures.
Right, so we have here...
What's this?
Sorry.
Right, so anyone who wants to go on the...
Anyone who wants to go on X for Met Gala, you can go here.
Just...
I'll just give you an idea of the dresses that they wore.
Oh my god, look, this is like something like Hunger Games versus Eyes Wide Shut, right?
Right.
You know, like the wildly out-of-touch elites dressing like absolute freaks to each other.
But I think Carl...
Maybe you have dressed up for the Met Gala today.
Not very often, no.
Because the black-purple combination is a particular one.
I didn't know the Met Gala was going on.
Maybe this is the Met Gala outfit of Carl.
No, I just like color.
Let's just scroll down.
I think I could have done better if I was going to be dressing for the Met Gala, right?
Go back up a second.
Lewis Hamilton's the most normal one there.
Like, what's this guy on the far left here doing with the blue regal robe?
What are you dressed like, you clown?
It's interesting that...
Who is that?
Yeah, right?
Who are you?
The craziest clothes, the most patterns, the most vivid shapes have always been for the rich and powerful.
Oh, yeah.
We live in an age where the rich and powerful wear hoodies and pretend to be normal people.
And this is like a little...
It feels like a glimpse behind the curtain to me of like...
It's like you've shown the poisonous colours.
Here they are.
They are actually powerful.
It's like some sort of 18th century aristocrat's ball in French court, right?
But this is supposed to be a charity event.
Oh, is it?
So the Met Gala is supposed to be the greatest fashion event.
And it's celebrating the initiation, the beginning of the new fashion year.
And everyone has to go there and pose.
I don't know.
This doesn't seem exactly close to what people would be concerned with.
You don't walk down the street and see people dressed like that.
It's all vanity film.
To take an argument on the other side for a second, I like creative, expressive, interesting things.
I like people putting stuff out into the world that's vibrant.
This stuff is not too crazy sexualised.
I mean, I'm sure there is some.
There's that.
It's actually expressing a certain kind of joie de vivre to be dressed in an interesting way.
So I'd rather that than that people were just filling the world with one plain colour.
The thing is, this feels like...
I don't know how to describe it.
Like some...
Again, like, Eyes Wide Shut sort of style thing, right?
Where it's, like, very choreographed, very organised by a cabal of international paedophiles.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, the paedophilia poisons everything.
Yeah, it does, you know.
If the dressing is the focus rather than the penis crimes, then maybe we've got the wrong...
There's something vaguely sinister about it to me.
It is.
Have you watched a movie with Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D 'Onofrio where he is a serial killer?
I don't remember the name of the movie, but she somehow, she was the psychologist who entered his mind.
It was something like that.
No, I haven't.
Interesting.
There's something about the orchestral arrangement of it that is so outside of just normal morality.
Which makes me wonder the kind of morality these people have.
If you...
Suppose...
Reform sweeps to victory.
The celebrities all turn based.
We've got this world where everybody is proclaiming these truths about important things.
And then the rich and powerful have a big pageantry, a big celebration.
But they all are good people.
Do we approve at that point?
I don't know if I can guess who you're talking about.
In that, actually, but...
It's a pure hypothetical.
I'm saying, are we opposed to these people because they're also progressive and woke and leading the world in a horrible direction?
It's not the wokeness of it.
It's the falsity of it that bothers me.
I mean, look at this.
A lot of work came into putting all of this together, but it's just about vanity.
It's just about...
Exclusion.
I do think that there is the wokeness and false it intermixed.
So this is AOC from the 2021 Met Gala with the tax the rich thing.
And these people seem to not particularly have an issue with money.
It costs tens of thousands of dollars to buy a ticket.
Yeah, and AOC recently was taking the private jet, right?
She claimed she would fly coach.
Not just that, but the celebrities there are, generally speaking, very much into the woke camp, generally speaking.
And they seem to think that this expresses...
That's an interesting cognitive dissonance, isn't it?
That we, on the one hand, want to portray ourselves as of the people and nobody should be above anyone else.
But also, there's one day of the year we're going to strut our stuff and show that we are bigger and better than you.
Like I said, with the Eyes Wide Shut vibe as well, the thing looks aesthetically like something sinister represented in cinema as well.
So it's like that's going to be in people's heads when they see this.
And yeah, like you say, you're like, oh, we're all for equality, except when it's the $50,000 ticket that I'm going to wear with this ridiculous dress and a mask and all of this pageantry.
It's like, okay, this is gay.
At the very least, what are you doing?
By comparison, the royals would have quite extravagant colours.
Okay, that's great, but they at least are like, we're royals, we're not equals.
No, and another interesting difference is that the people...
Parading are often blocks of military men wearing the same as each other, showing solidarity.
Whereas in this case, the whole point is every celebrity must look as different to everybody else as possible to express their individuality.
And the end result, when you look at all of the pictures together, is horrific.
That's one of the reasons it's ugly.
It's because there's no organization at a higher level.
Everybody's coming, bringing their own kind of, I want as much limelight as possible.
I mean, it's supposed to be considered high fashion.
Honestly, I don't really have a problem with the Met Gala.
I have a problem with them wanting us to care about the Met Gala.
And so if they want to parade around and look like old kings and queens from some distant era, fine.
Go ahead and be weirdos.
If you want to have your Oscar awards, go ahead and have your Oscar awards.
But I don't care about them.
The want from the American media for us to care about the celebrity class and what they're doing, I think, to me, is the problem.
This is my objection and where I divorce from the Americans.
Because the Americans are very live and let live.
And I'm like, no, we should be shaming these people.
Actively shaming them.
Well, we can do that too.
Yeah, we can definitely shame them.
But at the same time, I'm also like...
I don't care enough to like, oh, what were they wearing?
Oh, is that the designer?
Wow!
I agree with Adam, and my issue is that every mainstream media platform constantly throws you stuff about the Met Gala.
That's the issue.
I bet it's way worse in America.
Yeah, most probably.
On the one hand, you have all the news that...
Things that are important.
Things that are important and that...
The establishment doesn't want you to think about and you constantly have this force on you and celebrity culture.
Is the Met Gala for women?
Is that why we're failing to understand it?
In certain men.
I don't know.
To be fair, the thing on the left there, the royalty thing, is something I would wear.
It looks like he's having his haircut.
He's just a very poff barber.
It's some foil.
Also, I'd had the ribbon there to be the Mediterranean aristocrat.
So let's go down a bit.
So Rihanna is...
I don't know who these people are.
Diana Ross is good, but I mean, she...
I don't know who that is.
Egon Wadden.
She doesn't seem to have put very much effort in, really, does she?
No.
No, it's the rainbow bangles.
Yeah.
Perhaps this is a subtle message.
We have Lewis Hamilton here.
Word on the street is he isn't as good a driver as he used to be.
He sort of lost it.
That's what I've heard.
That he was a superb driver.
But he was also very much into the woke stuff.
Oh, I believe it.
I mean, you probably don't arrive at these sorts of events if you're not woke.
Yeah, and this is so woke of...
Kind of weird, isn't it?
What about this bag here?
That's a bowling bag.
It is.
Who calls themselves Bad Bunny?
What about these gloves?
It's a wrapper.
It's like pistachio all over them.
I actually think Zendaya was well-dressed.
That's reasonable.
No.
That's fine.
I mean, that's just a dress.
It's just slow energy.
Nothing new in it.
Yeah, but that's a fairly normal looking dress.
Yeah, and...
I don't know.
I think it should be disqualified.
Look at those shoulders!
I love the zoom in.
She looks like a Batman villain.
Yes!
Yes!
That's exactly, yeah.
Literal supervillain costume.
Yeah, and not just the sort of Klaus Schwab...
Semi-realistic.
Like an exaggerated cartoon Saturday morning.
You will watch Met Gala and be happy.
You will eat the bugs.
I mean, this is genuinely Hunger Games stuff, right?
I mean, that's also an okay-ish dress.
I'm kind of in favour of bringing back capes, to be honest.
Yeah, me too.
And also, I like Lupita Nyong 'o.
I liked her in Us.
Have you watched Us?
That was a good movie.
Yeah, she was good there.
We have here Trammell Tillman.
He reminds me of Bugs Bunny as a maestro.
Why is he turning on the floor?
He looks like he's wearing his dad's...
I don't know.
What are these weird feathers here?
I don't know.
Oh, I didn't catch that.
I thought that was the background.
That's on his suit.
They are here, but they are not visible on the picture.
There's this difference between couture and then what you wear on the...
Whatever they're doing here.
So you ask who's the Megaloth...
Yeah.
These are the certain type of guys.
I guess.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess it is.
But I love the expression as well.
Like he's showing us.
It's like, look, man, you're the rich guy.
I don't know.
I'm not, you know, I can't afford to go to the Met Gala.
This is the Met Gala meets Saturday Night Live.
This is the Bernie Sanders opener.
Was it Saturday Night Fever?
It's got the disco vibe going on.
Why has he got a dress as well?
He's going to escort AOC to her next Bernie Sanders rally.
I guess he is.
I don't know who this is, by the way.
I don't know.
I don't know if any of these people are.
This looks like the icing on a cheesecake.
It's not the worst one.
I think we found the worst one.
This is the Hunger Games one, right?
This looks a lot like the Hunger Games type.
Looks like a clownfish.
Or something of the fifth element or something, right?
Yeah, exactly.
What are you doing?
Doesn't this look like something you would see out of like a humiliation ritual?
Yes.
Yeah.
You have to dress like this.
Right.
Here we have Liz on the left and probably Fu Manchu on the right.
What's up with these claw-like nails?
Because girls have them and they always look like talons of a predator to me.
Yeah, like Wolverine.
Super villain coded.
Yeah.
It's incredibly funny where they try to type and you hear the click on the...
The advantage is you can type from across the room.
I mean, I just look at those and think...
How terribly impractical, right?
I mean, I wouldn't...
At least it stops you from scrolling on your phone, I suppose.
I think that's the reason why they...
Subconsciously, because it's impractical, you know that these people are higher class because they don't have to do manual labour.
Someone else is putting the cake in Lizzo's mouth.
Kudos to Lizzo.
I've got to put cake in my own mouth.
Imagine how big the piece of cake you can hold with those laws.
So, I will give kudos to Lizzo because she has lost weight.
What is interesting is that she was the flag bearer of the body positivity movement.
I know.
Saying that you shouldn't lose weight and all sorts of weights are fine.
Now she's far right.
This is the...
Far right.
Far right.
Jodie Turner-Smith.
Oliver Twist or something.
Anyway.
Right.
So we have several things.
I want to show you Andre 3000.
Where is he?
Yeah, here.
He's strapped on a piano.
Oh, wow.
Doesn't he look like a soldier of Napoleon in that French military?
He would need a white...
Looting this from Russia.
Yeah, to...
And a musket.
He lost a bet.
Like, that's a look at his face.
That's something as well.
They don't look like they're having fun, do they?
No.
No.
Well, I think, to be sort of fair to the celebrities, obviously, like, they didn't come up with these creations.
I hope not.
Right, so you have these different designers that grab a hold of these different celebrities, and they wear these outfits.
It's just a piano.
Right.
So, part of me is wondering, is there some symbolism by the people who make it, and these celebrities don't realize it?
Interesting.
Quite possibly.
Yeah.
Huh.
I want to slightly push back in that I think we can be accused of being on the right.
Sometimes we could be accused of being staid and boring.
I think that we should be more selective about pushing back against things that are actually wrong rather than just things that are fun.
Because there's a kind of grouchy attitude that I don't like anything that's new.
And some of the stuff that I was saying there, I was like, I think it's harmless.
If anything...
You were saying it doesn't look like they're having fun.
I think, overall, the pictures, with that much expression and colour, there is something undeniably fun going on there.
It's not all bad.
But I think there's something uncomfortable.
Because that's the type of outfits they wear, especially when you talk to certain women.
They're not wearing stuff because it's comfortable.
They're wearing it because it looks a particular way.
But those heels are not comfortable.
That tight outfit is not comfortable.
Carrying the piano on your back surely isn't comfortable.
But almost all of the stuff the women are wearing there is a structured garment, which is how all women dressed until 100 years ago.
So would you rather see women...
Putting lots of effort into their appearance and being creative or wearing aft leisure wear.
This is the most faced thing we've ever looked at.
Luke, would you say that this is how women dressed a hundred years ago?
I can't believe we're pushing back against objectifying women.
Okay, so I will disagree.
Women should be flowers.
I will disagree with you and I think I'll join Carl there because I think aesthetics matter and the...
Trends we see in aesthetics are symptomatic of trends of disconnect between people.
And the fashion designers are, generally speaking, meant to be sort of detached.
But when you have Sidney Sweeney, you just don't make a dress like this.
This is the worst dress I've seen, Sidney Sweeney.
Why?
What's wrong with it?
It's not particularly revealing.
Just one thing.
I was not revealing enough.
Oh, all right.
Okay, gotcha.
Okay, so we have here another thing.
White Lotus star Lisa shocks at Met Gala.
She appears to wear lace panties with face of Rosa Parks on her crotch.
Just like Rosa Parks on one day.
How best to honor her memory.
First you take the front of the bus.
Oh, but I bet, is that Ruthie Ginsburg as well?
That is some headline.
That is remarkable.
Yeah, exactly.
And look, this is the Daily Mailer.
And if you see on the left, on the right, don't miss.
Almost everything is about the Met Gala.
Right, right, right.
Now, I don't know if this has to do specifically with the showbiz section, but generally speaking, they try to force this.
Right.
Here we had Halle Berry at the...
Tender age of 58. Draw a strong reaction for exposing her pubic area and sheer dress.
Oh, man.
Put some clothes on.
We have it censored.
No.
Yeah, here.
Weird.
I don't think we should be showing it.
Yeah.
Nicki Minaj here.
Again.
Surprisingly conservative for Nicki Minaj, to be honest.
We have Joey King.
What on earth is this?
Oh, no.
Hang on, hang on.
She looks like Alice in Wonderland.
Something out of Alice in Wonderland, right?
Like the Red Queen or one of her attendants or something.
Yes.
Which, again, is always bringing up aesthetics of royalty, but it's appropriating it and saying we're smashing.
I mean, this is almost like a Republican statement.
We're taking the opulence of the royal court from Europe in times past and we're wearing it like trophies of conquering.
It's like Escape from New York, you know, where they just planned everything and it's just a mob.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I do think that these trends are very worrying, and they do suggest worrying, extra worrying trends of disconnect between elites.
I'm kind of with Luke on this.
I agree that it definitely represents a massive disconnect from the elite and regular people, right?
I mean, like, why regular people would be interested in this is, it just...
Yeah.
I mean, like, it's just...
Literally, like, supervillains on parade, right?
Here's the Joker and his clown makeup.
And, I mean, look at the amount of time and effort and money that went into this.
Anyway, but I don't know if this in itself...
I'm kind of with Luke on this.
This isn't necessarily the worrying part.
It's the fact that the media is constantly bombarding with it.
It's like you were saying.
If the media was just like, you're not really interested in that, I'd be like, that's true.
I'm not interested in this.
But as you say, with the Daily Mail, it's just constant, non-stop clickbait.
I still think, for women...
Reading these articles is the same as if we were reading about tanks.
You've just got to let people have their interest.
For one day a year, for the celebrities to strut their stuff, that sort of contains it.
That's very generous.
Now you've said it like that, I'm like, no, I don't want celebrities, ever.
I'm totally basing them.
That wasn't my point, the point I wanted to raise, because when it comes to media and mainstream media, People watch headlines and they know how it operates.
So they are constantly bombarding everyone with it.
So it's more like saying, you have to see this.
You have to think about Matt Gala.
And I think what you were saying before, that in the US there is definitely a trend to push celebrity culture.
Would you say that's unfair to say?
No, that's definitely fair to say.
The idea that we should give a damn about...
What they're up to.
Listen, there's always niche stuff.
TMZ exists for a reason.
There's a market for it.
And I will admit, there was one point in my life where I would watch TMZ and I was like, why do I know this?
But it's stuff that you just kind of pass by.
This is a distraction.
But that's a niche thing.
But there's some times where it's like it's it's in the mainstream where they want you to focus on these things and care about that Kim Kardashian is doing X, Y and Z and why you should care.
I was like, I don't care what any of these people are doing.
I don't care what Kanye is doing.
Kanye is quite funny.
It's always...
He's funny and tragic at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's completely mad.
And I miss Christine Kanye.
Do you remember a few years ago when he was doing gospel singing and stuff and he was hardcore Christian?
I'm like, okay, that's wholesome.
I can totally see that being a respectable thing.
And then he's like, actually, I'm a Nazi and I love Jews.
It's like, what are you doing, man?
You're mad.
Yeah.
He's all over the place.
Sorry, carry on, Sinus.
No, that's it.
I just think that it's weird that people care about this, and who on earth would make a segment about it?
Yeah, what I most despise is media organisations talking about the Met Gull.
Anyone who does that.
There's one thing that bothers me.
The movie was called The Cell Stelios.
Yeah, that's it.
I haven't seen it.
Hapsification says, after what comes out of the elites in Hollywood with Epstein and Diddy, I believe they're all a bunch of child-sacrificing homosexual sex cults.
Yeah, to be honest, it's hard not to believe that.
Well, not all of them.
Well, you say that.
But there have been loads of, like, Elijah Wood was like, yeah, there were loads of pedos around me in Hollywood and my mum protected me from them.
It's like, sorry, what is going on here?
Oh, there's just loads of pedos on the film set.
It's just normal.
Is it?
I don't know, man.
I'm just saying, like...
It doesn't sound normal.
It doesn't sound very normal to me.
Well, normal is an exception.
Relative concept.
Right.
In this city, there's a lot of pedos.
And it just so happens that all of your movies are produced here.
So go over to the cinema and watch them.
It's like, do you want kids to be safe or a really good blockbuster?
You gotta pick one.
The same with the BBC, though.
The BBC literally has a statue that was made by a pedophile outside of it.
And then someone went and vandalized it.
And they're like, no.
And they repaired it and kept it back up.
But the statue is of...
A paedophile doing something noncy by a paedophile?
It's like, why have we got that up?
Why do we have to pay for this?
Like, we're forced to pay for this.
And so it's just like, I don't know, man.
Just saying.
This is all bad.
Just stop it, you know?
Shamo says, the parents' false teachings create the cross their children will carry.
Therefore, good teachings will make it lighter.
I choose the Catholic Church.
Bad people doesn't necessarily mean bad doctrine.
True.
But have you seen the number of trans kids celebrities have these days?
There's a lot.
Yeah.
It's not just a coincidence, I think.
I think it's a deep social contagion in this sort of sphere of people who dress up like weirdos, you know, flaunting their wealth.
It's like, okay, these people are mental.
I am not joking when I'm saying this is end-of-civilization stuff because this is excessive sympathy to the place where every sort of discipline seems tyranny.
That's why the kids are...
Yeah, I mean...
The Roman Republic's actually a really good example of this, right?
Because, I mean, if you look at, like, people like Cincinnatus didn't go to the Met Gala, or the Roman equivalent of Met Gala, but then you look at, like, you know, Commodus or whoever...
Well, he didn't have a choice.
Well, yeah, sure.
But, like, you know, later Roman emperors who are just, you know, total degenerates.
And it's like, yeah, this is...
The arc of the civilization is coming down now, you know?
Anyway, right, dark youth serum's everywhere.
All I see in this gala.
I don't know what that means, Caliph, but I appreciate the comment.
Right, let's move on, because apparently we're getting another woke pope.
Yes, the previous Super Chat mentioned the Catholic Church.
This is a big day for Catholics.
I'm a Protestant, but...
I'm happy to bring you the news of our brothers from Rome.
I'm an atheist, but I'm also a Protestant.
Classic Anglican atheist.
Yes, yes.
And they are going to elect their next Pope.
So, Pope Francis, let's ask the panel, what were your thoughts on Pope Francis?
They really went downhill when he decided he was just going to kiss some Muslim's feet for no reason.
That was one thing, yeah.
Do you remember anything about...
His reputation, what he got up to?
Well, the American, I'm speaking as the American, but the American perspective was that he was very liberal.
I'm being very generous when I say liberal.
In some ways, there were things that I appreciate about him as far as he did seem like trying to be a man of the people.
But then there were moments where it seemed like he was going a little bit too far, where he was...
Especially when it comes to, I think if I remember correctly, he had some kind of controversial things as far as like abortion.
Not very Catholic.
And gay marriage and things like that.
Not very Catholic.
Yes.
So there are things that are, like, if you told me the Pope said he's against gay marriage, I would have been like, yeah, that's about every Pope would say that.
But he was someone who stood out that was different in regards to that.
Yeah, he's a communist.
Right.
Very light on sin.
I think that's the...
Typical Catholics.
Right.
It was something that was very obvious to me, that he was very light on calling things what they are.
And I say this as far as being a Christian, obviously you give people grace, and you're supposed to hate the sin, not the sinner.
So completely understand that.
But there's a point where you're supposed to call out the sin.
Pope!
Pope!
You meant that?
Yeah, and Jesus was known for spending time with the prostitutes and the sinners, but only if they were repentant.
These were people who were turning their lives around, and we have to remember both.
Anyway.
Just a quick thing, though.
I think that the...
I mean, like I said, I'm not a Catholic, but I really hate it when things are inauthentic.
I want Catholics to be Catholic.
I want Protestants to be atheists.
I want...
Whoa!
Sorry, sorry, I'm just joking.
I want the thing to be the thing that it claims to be and actually embody it essentially as well as aesthetically.
And for me, the thing that really annoyed me about Francis was when he was like, oh no, any religion is a path to heaven.
All religions are a path to heaven.
Which is mind-boggling.
You can't say that.
That's open heresy.
That is just open heresy.
And like I said, I'm not a Catholic, but I don't want you to be a heretic pope and lie, because it can't be true.
It can't be that every religion is a path to God, or else why are you a Catholic?
Be something else.
Don't be anything.
You just feel like, well, none of it matters.
Actually, just throw this all away.
Bollocks.
It can't be true.
Right.
There are truth claims made by every religion.
And so they cannot...
All be true at the same time.
They are all directly contradictory.
So if you are the Pope, someone who is supposed to be a Christian, you're making a truth claim about Christ.
And that is antithetical to everything else that other religions are saying, especially if we were to pick one, Islam.
Islam is antithetical to Christianity.
Or Judaism, which also denies Christ.
Or paganism, which denies Christ.
I mean, like, every religion is...
They're mutually exclusive.
You can't just say, oh, they're all okay.
They're all basically the same, right?
I mean, that's what an atheist would say.
That's what basically the same.
You have to figure out what Jesus was meaning when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through me.
He's not saying, I am a way, a truth, a lie.
Come to the Father, all different directions.
I'm just one but one root.
Maybe worshipping Zeus is just as good as worshipping me, you know, whatever.
So, let me explain for people who don't know what's going on.
Sounds mystical.
Yes, a conclave, it basically means with key.
They're going to lock themselves in a room, a bunch of cardinals, and have a series of votes until eventually they reach two-thirds agreement.
Has it always been done this way?
No, they had various different rules.
Essentially, one time it took them three years to elect a pope.
And they said, OK, we need a system.
That's how democracy started.
Yes.
So I think it was Gregory X who...
I think the last couple of times it's only taken two days, in fact, for them to vote.
They can count the votes faster than California.
But, interestingly, of the 135 cardinals who will be voting this year, 108 of them were directly appointed by Pope Francis.
So, the chance The chances of the next pope being a great departure from the very progressive liberalizing, as we've been discussing, the chances of the next pope being completely in the opposite direction is quite low.
I've seen that there have been a bunch of based African popes who are like, actually, we are Catholics.
Yeah, no, I had to fact check this to see if it was true.
I believe one of the potential...
New popes from Africa.
His name is actually Ambongo.
Hey look, I'm not against them having...
He's the one we should all be hoping for.
Yeah, yeah.
He's probably the one who's like, yeah, no, we're definitely against, you know.
Yeah.
Well, did you see the Conclave movie?
This was...
No.
One of the themes in that was that the liberals are really stressing because there's one of the...
Frontrunners is an African Pope, and they're all like, it would be great to have a black Pope.
But then they're also like, he's also very, very conservative.
So, yes.
I mean, that was another part of Francis's agenda.
While he was Pope, was to expand the Catholic Church around the world.
It was massively Eurocentric, and most of the people who have been added as cardinals are from Africa or Asia.
So there's a fair chance that we will get the first non-white Pope.
But frankly, I'm less concerned about that as I am about the opinions that the guy will hold.
I want a based African Pope going, why are you gay?
There's one of them who's slightly on the more conservative end, whose name is something like Pasta Balls or something.
He's Italian, so he's my other shoe-in.
If he gets it, I'm...
Pasta Balls.
I can't remember what the exact name was, but...
Yeah, so there's a good chance that it'll be Zupi, I think, who was the peace envoy to Ukraine.
There's a guy...
Do you want to go down?
Yes, if we could scroll down a little bit on my notes.
There he is.
Pizza Bala.
Piero Bastista Pizza Bala.
Oh, that is actually his name.
Pizza Ball.
Who is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
And he visited Gaza during the recent...
His Holiness Pizza Ball.
Apparently, one of the things that happens is that you often alternate between a Pope who is more pastoral and then a Pope who is more kind of diplomatic.
And Francis is considered to have been a...
Pastoral Pope.
What do we mean when we say pastoral exactly?
Rather than putting a lot of attention on giving a Catholic opinion on conflicts around the world and telling people what they should be doing, he's giving more soft advice about...
So you could argue, if it's going to be this TikTok, that the next guy might be a little bit more strict on doctrine.
That would be a good outcome.
Peter Erdo is another possibility.
He's probably...
The most right-wing, as in conservative, realistic one.
He's connected to Hungary.
I think he's endorsed Orban.
Orban, yeah.
So maybe he's secretly the one that we should all be hoping for.
I mean, look at what it says.
He's famously been a more conservative voice within the church.
And I love this, though.
Having opposed the practice of divorce.
I mean, that is one of the major schisms.
Historically, right?
Yeah.
Like, remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion, and he also compared the act of taking refugees to human trafficking.
There's been a bunch of media.
Yeah, he sounds great.
I was going to say, a lot of the media around the Pope recently, there was that Two Popes movie, there was the Young Pope TV series, are often portraying these different...
Papal figures where you have one who's clearly portrayed as the good guy, you know, stroking cats and being nice to people.
And he's talking about how the church needs to liberalise and allow women bishops and so on.
And then you have the guy who's stomping around slapping people and saying we need to go back and bring back the Latin mass, things like this.
I vote for that guy.
So we will see, but if I was a betting man, I think we're seeing a woke Pope.
It's going to be someone like this guy, right?
Liberal.
Yeah, I mean, Pope Francis had an inner circle, and often it's a surprise, the guy who comes out...
As the Pope, I don't think Francis was on most people's bingo cards last time there was a conclave.
So there's a saying...
Ah, it's Pizzabala.
Yeah, I know.
There you go, Pizzabala.
It's Pizzabala versus Bombongo.
That's essentially what's happening here.
Where are the African ones?
I want some of their statements.
So there's a saying, if you go into a conclave Pope, you will come out as a cardinal.
The Cardinals are just fairly senior rankings.
Out of Africa, says the Independent.
That's a weird way of framing it.
Cardinal Peter Turks and Conservative, love it.
Yeah, so, I mean, expanding to the world, it's a bit like our first topic, that if you bring in people from around the world, they will probably actually be more conservative than the liberals, the white liberals.
Against the use of condoms despite the AIDS pandemic in Africa.
Yeah, so it's the same thing.
What Francis thinks was he expanded a lot of, he added a lot of cardinals to Africa, but of course the African cardinals tend to be fairly conservative, yeah, fairly based, so it's a kind of two-edged sword.
I'm not a Catholic or anything like that, but I don't know why, but something bothers me about how they're ranking things like conservative, liberal, and things like that, but none of this is about Christ.
Yeah, I should say the ranking of the potential candidates from liberal to conservative is not...
Something that Catholics themselves generally talk in terms of.
It's more of a perception people from the outside put onto what's going on.
And that's fair.
I should say in defence of Catholics, who I don't think we have represented in this conversation, when I've spoken to them, their prayers for the next pontiff is that they're somebody who loves Jesus and who is humble and will...
Call the Tenth Crusade.
That's the Catholics I know.
That's what I'm reading through the lines.
The Catholics I know are calling for that.
So, you know...
I mean, look at this guy, though.
Cardinal Sarah is traditionalist and conservative, but I love the way the Independent are framing this.
One of his strengths is that he has a deeper understanding and respect for Islam.
It's like, you're the Catholic...
I mean...
Traditionalist and conservative and...
Loves Muslims, but he's against anti-LGBT, so I guess there's that.
It's funny how the media can't decide when they're talking about the Catholics if they are an organisation on the precipice of liberalising into atheism or if they are the arch-conservatives and they're doing all of this child abuse.
Depending on what the recent news story is, it goes one way or the other.
I don't think the surname Marx is good.
You don't want a leftist.
Was there a Marx?
I didn't even...
Oh yeah, Cardinal Marx.
Dun-dun-dun!
Ah, he's a little workshop.
So I think we should pray for this that's happening, even though I'm not a Catholic.
I think it would be great if the person chosen is...
Was a Catholic?
Yeah, is a real representative of God rather than a kind of self-aggrandizing liberal, you know...
Just a quick thing.
As a Protestant, what could the Catholics do to win you over?
Oh, to win me over?
Well, I had an interesting conversation with someone recently who was a Catholic who said that...
Part of the ethos of Catholicism is about tradition.
And because I was not brought up in a Catholic tradition, he said, that would be the least Catholic thing for you to do, to switch.
Now, there are specific theological claims that are made by the Catholic Church that I differ on.
So realistically, they would have to convince me on those fundamental arguments.
We're going to get into them now.
I don't think we have time, but...
Yeah, I certainly...
So, one of the things...
I've talked to lots of Christians over the last few years online, and we've got a little community, people from all different denominations, and I've made it quite an effort to be cross-denominational and not to get dragged into lots of fighting.
I feel more...
The meme of, like, we're more similar than the first thought, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, but one of the things people from all the different denominations talk about is how they struggle in their church with how woke things have become.
And it's kind of cross...
Because sometimes Catholics will go to Protestants and point at their churches which are covered in the rainbow flags.
As if the Catholics don't have that to do.
But then you go, well, yeah, okay, but what has your Pope been saying?
So actually, I think we need to band together as based Christians in solidarity and say, actually, we are part of the body of Christ and we're not defined by the...
I have a question for you, because I'm not particularly familiar with it, and especially because you also asked us what we think about the previous pope.
I think there was a notion going around that he was very much pro-mass migration, but I have heard lots of Catholics saying that he has been misrepresented on this.
Do you think he was misrepresented or not?
I think a bit of both.
Okay, okay.
In what way?
His statements have been taken out of context a bit.
Yeah, okay, so that's good to hear.
On the other hand...
How were they taken out of context?
I can't tell you in that specific instance.
Sorry, I'd have to go and research.
Exactly what he said.
I don't want to perpetuate the misrepresentations.
The other thing I was going to mention is that for Christians who are based and want to find a based community, I'm running a weekend retreat.
It will only be for the based.
I don't want to say only for Christians, but a lot of the content at it is for Christians.
I imagine it's going to be good.
Pope Francis probably isn't going to want to go.
Can I give you a couple of quick details about it?
So it's on the 11th to the 13th of June.
It's in Norfolk in the UK and I've done it for a few years.
If you're interested in coming along then you should email me at lambda.retreats at gmail.com and I tell you it's such a relief to be around people who have that rare combination of being serious about their faith whether or not they feel that they've reached there or not and serious in terms of finding truth about broader society because so often you go to a church and you're like The person preaching from the front is just reciting the woke agenda at me.
Unfortunately, occasionally I have to go to churches because family functions and stuff.
And the local church that my wife's family church, they go to.
It's run by a very nice woman, but she's woke.
I have to sit through it.
The funny thing is, often the pastors aren't actually as woke as they...
And their perception is that they can reach out to people by saying, well, look, Jesus lines up with your existing woke opinions.
In these ways, if I kind of blur it and stretch it to pull people in.
I just don't want that when I go to a church.
I want to be told that I'm a sinner.
Half the people in the congregation have been sitting there quietly thinking, well, I don't like woke, and if you're telling me that Jesus is woke, then I'm out twice because he's also going to ask me to do a bunch of other things.
They'll do modern things as well, like rework the lyrics of a modern pop song to be like, and it's just like, give me the Gregorian chance, man.
Give me something classic.
Give me a bit of fire and thunder.
Tell me what right from wrong is.
And make me think that there might be something transcendent rather than some sort of Tony Blair-ized version of the church.
I hate it.
I was going to say the fundamental issue with, you were saying, a pastor or a priest trying to bring someone in who's maybe more left.
The problem is that it goes against the core thing about love.
Love includes being truthful.
So if you have to lie to people, you say, oh, I'm bending it, but it's not true.
So if you have to bend the truth, it's a lie.
It's falsehood.
That's not love.
That's not based on love.
So if you have to bend the truth, aka lie to people, to bring people towards Christ, then this isn't the way forward.
So that's partly my issue with that particular strategy.
I think our culture is daft of truth.
They're having people who think that being honest with someone is hurtful because they've grown up in a culture where being honest with someone is something that is rare.
And so everyone just sugarcoats things, like you mentioned before, like being very feminized, like in the schools.
It's a very feminized culture where they're worried about social dynamics.
And sometimes you need to be truthful.
You need to be honest.
And so there needs to be that mix of masculine energy in our society.
And so for the church, Or Christians in general, to adhere to the more feminized approach, where you're worried about losing people.
I'm tired of that as well.
Because, let me tell you, as a, I'll say this, as a man who grew up without his father and growing up with his mother and sister, and learning that, I'm also adhering to that.
And when I started adhering to being truthful, like, I'm 100% honest with my wife.
I'm 100% honest with my son.
And they respect me for that.
There is so much respect in truth, even if they don't agree with you, but you're at least being honest with them, rather than lying so you can try to sort of please them.
And no one respects that at the end of the day.
We want people to respect Christ as well as love him.
You can't love Christ without truth.
So that's my fundamental issue.
I think that's a great point.
And another thing that bothers me as well is exceeding the morality.
To leftism.
It's saying, yeah, leftism is actually the correct morality and I'm just going to try and squeeze Jesus into this thing.
It's like, no, I want some sort of Cromwellian preacher to tell me what right from wrong is and how everyone else is wrong and he's the guy who's right.
And by God, you know, there's going to be hell to pay.
I think you're totally right.
People are not coming to churches saying, I have an existing morality and I want somebody to tell me the root of it.
They're saying, I'm confused.
Morality is this shifting sand under my feet.
I don't agree with her.
Weirdly, we have a book.
I want somebody to tell me there is a morality, and I will listen to them when they tell me what it is, even if it's different from what I currently believe.
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
It's weird, because if you don't think that there is a morality yourself, just someone else telling you that there is isn't going to help.
No, but most people think there is a morality, and when other people tell them that it's all relative, they go, no, it's not.
So if somebody comes along and at least opens the conversation with, I believe there is an objective morality and I can tell you why I believe it and where it comes from.
You have that conversation and maybe you don't convince them.
But at least that should be an attractive starting point.
People are dying to be told there is right, there is wrong.
If I see evil, it's evil.
It's not just some adaptive thing that evolution or societal change and culture has labelled as bad.
It's genuinely wrong in a deep way.
Where does that come from?
Yeah, I agree with you, but I think...
The problem mainly is inverted morality because we have all sorts of moral fanatics at the world right now and for the last decades who weren't exactly moral relativists.
They wanted their opposition to be morally relativistic and they really hammered on a very fanatic vision of morality.
We need the same on the right.
So someone possibly in like 17th century.
I'm not even joking.
Or just not recreate the 1517-1648 period in Europe.
Maybe we shouldn't want to recreate that.
There was far fewer relative morality going around, you know.
Yeah, morality going around slicing each other's throats.
Hey man, you have to really believe in your morality, the objective morality to get to that point.
But no, I'm with you.
I think that there are a lot of young people who are actually, Just confused by what leftist morality is presented.
And actually, my experience with Christians has always been that they're actually people with a firm moral compass who do the right thing and know right from wrong.
And even if I'm personally not a Christian, I still really appreciate what Christians believe and how they comport themselves in reality.
Well, and you were the original inspiration for my weekend retreats.
I know.
Good.
Get the monasteries back together.
The classic Anglican made.
Cars pictures.
It's been really meaningful to a lot of people, so I want to pass on thanks for inspiring it in the first place.
Well, you can just do things, it turns out.
You can actually just do stuff and people enjoy it.
Yes, life is not on rails.
It feels that way for a long time and then you sort of realise, oh, actually I can do whatever I choose to do and you should do the things that you think are meaningful and important rather than the things that are just pleasure-inducing in the short term.
I agree.
And I do think that there's an element of making sure that the people who are trying to come to Christ are actually trying to come to Christ.
I think you'll understand what I mean by this.
There are people who are in love with Christianity, and there are people who are in love with Jesus.
And they tend to be fundamentally two different people.
One likes the structure, the rules.
The Bible says do this, that's why you should do this.
Don't do this.
Don't do this.
Whereas there's an element of missing out.
On the love of Christ, right?
And it's a balance between the two.
It's not one or the other.
Just in the same way that people talk about the love of Christ, but then they get manipulated into saying, well, then he loves everything, including your sins, so you can be this way and that way.
You know, you're trans, you're gay, he loves everybody.
Pope Francis.
And it becomes that type of perversion.
It's a balance between the two.
But I do think there's an element of making sure that we love Christ first.
And use Christ as a human example of, like, he's the North Star of our conduct.
I think that's the beauty in Jesus Christ, is that for other religions, it is, God is something that you cannot visually see, whereas with Christians, you have God in human form, so you can mimic his behavior, or at least know if his conduct was like this, if his moral compass was like this as a person, that's the direction that we should go.
I want to add to what you said, to contextualize what I said before, because I think I'm going to be misrepresented.
I don't say that if people are morally objectivist and speak about objective morality, that this is going to recreate Europe.
Right.
15, 17, 16, 14. You've lost me there, though.
No, no.
I want you to lose me.
I want you to lose me, because what I want to say is that There has to be a balance between the more emotional and sympathetic style approach and the more, let's say, morally steadfast approach.
I'm for the fire and brimstone.
Because if you have the latter without the former...
If you have the latter without the former, and you combine this with the idea that a side is going to enforce a totalistic doctrine on any dissenter, no, that's when you have people slicing each other's throats.
Not when they're morally objective.
Yes.
No, I think that's right.
Rather than talking about a balance, which sounds like a compromise and neither thing is fully embraced, like Jesus, who was 100% in on...
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Also said that I've not come to abolish the law but fulfill it.
We've got that phrase like a jot or tittle.
He's saying that that comes from Jesus talking about he's not going to let even a jot or tittle of the law pass away, which was meaning like the little dots and punctuation marks on the Hebrew.
So he's saying 100% people should be following.
Goodness and law and should keep the commandments.
But if you have not love, you have nothing.
On that note, we're going to go to some comments.
See the cross the parents create for their children creates how much the children will participate in Christ's sufferings on the cross because of it.
They must shed their false beliefs.
Yeah, I mean, even from a secular point of view, it's just like, you know, if you don't do the right thing for your children, you just create burdens for them later on in life.
And the thing is, it's way easier.
This is the eternal problem with smartphones and tablets, right?
It is just easier just to, yeah, okay, we'll sit you in front of a tablet.
But man, that is a cross they're going to bear for their whole lives.
You know, you are dementing them.
And it's not good.
Hapsification says, from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, we may come across as wizards and mystics, but at least we stick to tradition.
To be honest with you, that's the big strength of Eastern Orthodox.
It looks like mystic wizarding.
And that is awesome.
I'm up for some of that.
No, seriously, I'm up for some of that.
I might be a Puritan at heart, but I really do appreciate the aesthetics of Eastern Christianity.
There's probably a reason that so many of the people who have come to faith from the right have ended up in Orthodox churches.
The thing that prevents me from it is just lack of Crusades.
Well, they objected to the Crusades on religious grounds, which is probably fair, but boring.
I wouldn't say it's just that.
Maybe it's more historical as well.
I don't know.
Not the best.
Yeah, but that wasn't the reason they objected to it, because they kind of inspired the crusade, saying, look, we need help with the Turks.
And then it was like, okay, but we're not actually going to participate in the crusade for religious reasons.
It's like, okay, kind of both ways.
You've got to agree on one side, which is beheading Turks.
Anyway, Tomara says, like a Gregorian chant like the next car, but love Brandon Lake's Gratitude or That's Who I Praise.
I've never heard of any of these, sorry.
I'm just for something that sounds medieval.
No, I actually agree with this comment.
I mean, as much as it's based to say, oh, I only listen to Gregorian chant, or Gregorian chant is too recent for me.
Probably, yeah.
I actually think both of those songs have been a real blessing to me also.
I've never heard them.
Now, Brandon Lake, as I understand it, is a bit of a progressive as well as being a Christian.
So you can't take somebody's hymn and say, because I sing it, I agree with the hymn writer on everything that they believe.
Oh, it's the death of the author now, is it?
This is post-modernism.
Yeah, I see it.
So if Cromwell wouldn't approve, I don't approve.
Anyway.
Christmas is out.
Well, I mean, it would be cheaper.
Buona Joe says, As a Yank, I don't understand why everyone thinks reform will save England.
Didn't they let a leftist organisation dictate who they could run for office?
Yes, so for anyone who's not familiar, there's a communist organisation in Britain called Hope Not Hate, and they spend their time looking into your background, and if you've ever said something right-wing, they make a public spectacle of you, get the media to write articles shaming you, and then Nigel Farage kicks you out of the party.
And yes, Nigel, the Reform Party.
Yes, absolutely.
Completely weak.
And they have kicked out Bo and Dan for exactly this thing.
So yeah, like I said, I'm not a fan of Nigel Fry's in the way he's running his party.
But we do need change.
We need something that's not more of the same.
We've got to accept it.
Chase says, Men are women, diversity is strength, and strength is weakness.
The woke mind virus demonstrates a mirrored dimension.
Interpretation of war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
That it does.
Arizona Desert Rat says, If migrants are paying for current pensioners' pensions, who's going to pay for the migrant future pensions?
Sounds like it just kicks the can down the road.
Well...
Have you ever heard of a pyramid scheme?
Yeah, you have put your finger right on the problem, in fact.
It also turns out that migrants live in houses and need health care, and when they're exposed to Western decadence, tend not to have 27 children.
And so the entire thing doesn't work, and it was a big boondoggle to start with.
Never mind.
Bradley says, Carl, the way the birth citizenship works in the UK has changed since Kemi was born.
She was born when you could come at a time where you could come give birth and that child is a citizen.
However, now the immigrant needs to have settled status.
Right, okay, that's interesting.
I imagine this was probably just one of those rules we just had because we didn't know, because we didn't know we didn't want it.
That sounds like a change that we should celebrate then.
Yeah, it does, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And remove Kemi by not citizenship.
Retroactively uncelebrated.
Angel Brain says...
No, I'm just joking.
Angel Brain says...
That's so obviously true.
For anyone who's not familiar, it's just palpable.
And it's kind of grim.
Twermos says Met Gala.
Met is the Finnish acronym for Nothing Ever Happens.
Oh.
Okay.
Roman Observer says the Gala is mad and the elites are disconnected.
Also, the Gala is very Democrat and very progressive.
No connection there.
Yeah, I can imagine there aren't very many Republicans in the Met Gala.
And if there were, they would be like, why did they invite?
It's basically peacocking, isn't it?
It's the same thing that animals do when they want to gain attention.
And you can do it with your clothes, or you can do it with your political beliefs.
Oh, here's an interesting fact.
Arizona Desert Rat is a woman, and she informs us that women with nails like this, the long, scratchy ones, tend to type with a pen and not their fingers.
I suppose you'd have to, wouldn't you?
That's very efficient.
It's just a bizarre thing.
There was a big trend, as I understand it, in fashion of witch aesthetic.
Women were explicitly describing themselves as being witches.
Buying clothes that were witchy.
It really feels like a deeply symbolic embracing of an archetype.
Even though it was being done with a certain kind of ironic detached humour.
There's a feminist inversion of morality here.
You saw it in the one with Angelina Jolie where she's the Wicked Witch.
What's that film?
Yes, I can picture her.
I know that.
Maleficent.
Maleficent, yeah.
Yeah, because she's the evil witch in the Snow White story or something like that, right?
And it's like, oh, actually, she's really, you know, misunderstood.
And really, she's the victim.
It's like, she's the evil witch.
You know, I'm going to credit women with agency.
That's essentially what they do with Wicked.
Yes, yeah, yeah, and Wicked 2, yeah, yeah.
Maybe the evangelicals were right about Harry Potter all along.
No, man, I'm just saying, if you use Cromwell as a standard, you rarely go wrong.
The bad guy is just misunderstood.
It's like Joker.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
To be fair, though, Joker was pretty good, so give him credit on that.
David says, being a man of the people doesn't help when the people are lame and gay, in reference to the Pope.
That's a fair point.
Actually, moral leadership is important to make sure that people aren't lame and gay.
And I think he's completely correct about that.
Oh, Pope Francis said the Falkland Islands belong to Argentina.
Well, case closed.
Yeah, exactly.
This will be less relevant to you chaps, but trust us, that's important.
Incorrect.
Yeah, it's very incorrect.
A guy from Hungary says, the Bundestag needs to enforce conclave protocols to elect my next chancellor.
No phones, no outside contact.
Bread and water only after day three.
My only hope is most left liberals will not survive day two.
South Dakota pastor says, brought all the Christians out this time, hasn't it?
Here we go.
I'm a confessional Lutheran.
What's the difference?
What's a confessional Lutheran?
Confessions are the things that you believe.
So if you're a confessional Lutheran, it means that you're a Lutheran who agrees with the confessions.
What, the 95 Theses?
It's like signed up.
It's different from the 95 Theses, but it's derived from Luther's teachings.
That's one of my favourite Chad moments in all of Christian history.
But yeah, you know what?
I've had enough.
I've just had enough.
As I understand it, the church doorway acted as a kind of bulletin board, so it wasn't quite as dramatic.
It was more like, oh, you log in, there's a bunch of posts, Martin Luther's been up all night, and he's like, spammed the chat room.
But this is the point.
I just like the kind of ballsiness of it.
It's just like, no, I'm just sick of this.
I don't agree with any of this crap.
And I'm in trouble now.
This is one of the deep decisions that you have to make when you're thinking about denominations, because the argument from the Catholics is that as soon as you start fracturing, it's endless.
And they will point at the Protestants and say, there's an infinite number of...
They're not wrong.
Quality control.
Any church can just decide to become its own congregation and preach whatever it likes, which is a very good argument.
On the other hand, when there are genuine problems in the original organization, sometimes it is the right thing to splinter off.
So if you're a based Catholic...
And your view is, it doesn't matter what the Pope says, I'm going to stick with Rome, you've got the same exact problem in reverse.
Hope just validated Islam.
Now what?
But if you look in the Bible, like...
The history of ancient Israel, which was God's people, is just a series of evil, terrible people, and the nation themselves keep going off the rails.
And yet, God's will was done nonetheless.
So I think as Christians, we should not be surprised when Christian organizations are full of people who are...
Doing the wrong thing.
The nation of Israel was evil and terrible people.
Luke Avery, 2025.
Well, as described in the Old Testament, you are a stiff-necked people.
It's one of the things I think is very admirable about the Old Testament.
It's very different from a lot of other ancient literature in that most of it valorizes the people from which it was written.
Whereas the Old Testament is almost unique in the fact that it goes on about how terrible the people were.
Well, you know, it's actually in the same tradition as Middle Eastern lawmaking.
Okay.
Because actually, if you go back to like Hammurabi or something, he's got a preface at the beginning of his laws, which is just always empowered by Marduk to bring justice to this sinful land.
Everyone's a sinner and they're all terrible.
And so it's actually completely in keeping with this tradition.
Ancient Near Eastern people were kind of humble.
All lawgivers are just like, you know, the laws of Ur-Nasu.
It's just like, God, this is a corrupt land.
I need to fix this.
And whereas in the sort of, especially in the Northwestern Europe, it's always just like, we're pretty good, actually.
And we're happy.
Yes, the gods descended on the most virtuous people and gave them special powers.
That's us.
I mean, that's literally what, like, they thought when they were kings.
So, you know, I've been king, therefore the gods must think I'm brilliant.
Therefore, I'm right.
But anyway, South Dakota's past...
Sorry, I missed your comment there.
I'm a confessional Lutheran, and I pray that the next bishop of Rome will be one who presents the whole counsel of God, the law and the gospel.
I pray that you'll be willing to engage in serious dialogue with Orthodox patriarchs and the Lutheran Church to mend the schism.
Amen.
Realistically, the schism isn't getting mended.
But I agree with the sentiment that it is good to show solidarity with our Christian brothers around the world, whilst having honest conversations about our...
You know, the differences in theology are important, and we shouldn't just bury them.
They're not very important to me.
What's more important is the difference in Christian theology seemed very narrow compared to the Pope being like, yeah, Islam's just as valid.
I mean, come on.
What you say is largely true, although...
I think your interest in Christianity tends to be the effect that it's having in this world.
Sure.
Whereas, and we've had this conversation.
We have, of course.
In my opinion, all of the social differences that churches make pale into insignificance in comparison with everybody's eternal future.
And that's, I mean, that is why all these wars have happened.
People have been called heretics and burned because people are worried about the eternal security of people's souls.
Well, and last comment.
From Roman Observer, quote, stop being an imperialist?
Well, that's Protestantism destroyed, then.
Right, Luke, where can people go to find more of you?
I want to, again...
Point people towards my weekend retreat that's coming up on the 11th to the 13th of July.
And the way you find out more information about that is by emailing me, lambda.retreats at gmail.com.
Can they at you at IamLambda?
Oh yeah.
I mean, I have a Twitter account.
You'll get the odd Bible verse tweeted out.
The very rare...
Topical reply.
But yeah, why not?
You were present for that.
Oh yeah, I was.
I was smashing a box to get into it.
And Adam, where can people get from you?
I'm active on Twitter at wrong underscore speak.
I have a sub stack, adambcoleman.substack.com.
And I have a new book, The Children We Left Behind.
That actually seems like a really worthy subject to talk about.
Absolutely.
So yeah, people can buy the book.
The audiobook is out.
I think the only place is Audible.
It might take another week or so before it's on Audible.
But the book is available at all retailers.
Great.
Well, thanks so much for coming on, gentlemen.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us, folks.
▲
Export Selection