Consept

He is terrible don't get me wrong, but if your democratic structures can survive it you will be stronger for it. I do agree though in terms of war in the US it's almost like they cosplay internal civil wars because they've never really been attacked from the outside. Obviously Europe has been in two world wars in the last century, which was an insane threat on people's way of life and the results of the led to the EU and relative peace in the region. It's an interesting observation the the US has just never really had something like that, they've always been the big power. So almost like this situation has manifested because of their hubris and not being able to recognise historic patterns that didn't happen to them, but that would be the case for any country in that situation. It's kinda like the rich kid that thinks he's a tough guy but has never been to the hood. The thing is whatever existential threat that could cause change could there even be? It's not like anyone would invade the US, Trump is a massive test but actually Putin is pretty big, he is basically at war with the US but it's a war of infiltration and agitation , most dint even realise what's going on to learn lessons from it.

Yeah not being conscious of it makes it so hard to address, you convince yourself there isn't any issue or you just need to get this, achieve this to be ok. It's tough. Sorry I don't think I was that clear in what I was saying, I agree with you in that you have to embrace your feminine side as a guy to be completely free, because as you say they aren't going away and also they fully round you as a man. What my point was, which you may still disagree with, is that let's say a boy grows up with a single mother, she encourages feminine side etc sometimes it can happen where she may demonise masculine qualities or if the boy is in liberal spaces they may demonise being a man or masculine. So the boy then could repress their masculine side and not properly express it. I have seen this in a lot of guys and weirdly these guys are also very liable to go down the redpill rabbit hole and blame women. Yeah for them Tate represents their idea of what freedom as a man looks like. But when I look at him I actually see someone he's completely trapped in ego and persona, he isn't free at all because without all his so called accomplishments, he's nothing. But he resonates because he gives them an easy way out of all the stuff we've discussed, even if it loving vicariously through him

The problem boys and men face is that theyre told from young they have to be 'men', if theyre not men theyll be disrespected, they wont get female attention etc. But also theyre not told how to be men in a healthy way, theres a lot of dads not being around or if they are around not being a positive influence. So when these boys get into the world they extremely easy to manipulate and corrupt, all you have to do is present them with some kind of macho masculinity and acceptance and its a wrap. But however the survive this psyche, deep down they truly believe they arent shit, thet dont want to face this and so its easier to scapegoat and blame others. I do think this issue is societies failing, men have been left behind for the most part. On the flip even if a boy grew up and embraced his feminine side, most likely he would demonise his masculine and supress that which is also not healthy, men are rarely encouraged to just be themselves, probably the only ones that are, are gay boys if they grow up in an accepting environment.

@Emerald Very interesting insights When Trump won in 2016 I was shocked but I also found it hard to like Hilary, although I wouldve voted for her if I was American. Reason being I felt the system just wasnt honest, it felt like people were putting on an act and trying to just keep the status quo despite the multitude of issues like crazy military spending, impoverished areas not getting good education etc. Obama was a good leader but i felt he was hampered by the system and also being a democrat and keeping donors happy. Bottom line something did need to change in politics, was Trump the best way to shake things up? I mean it wouldve been nice if there was another way but this seems to be the way that presented itself. What we can see Trump does well is bring a plain speaking (even if it is incoherent) being himself persona, at least thats how people take him. I think with establishment politicians, they do lack a real human connection. On the other side AOC is very good at connecting with people and i think that is because shes grown up in her area, not rich and just a normal (but quite brilliant) person. This is the shift politics needs, it needs normal but brilliant leaders, deeply entenched politicians with poitical families like Clinton and Bush are just not gonna cut it anymore, people want reality, even if its just a feeling of reality. So whatever we want to say about Trump, politics will not be the same after him and politicians really need to learn from that going forward.

I would say though I'm a fairly masculine man but and so I find myself in discussions with other guys, friends or otherwise where even if they dont outright support Trump theyll say a lot of stuff that I would say is kinda anti-left, anti-progressive, its pretty frequent actually. I dont mind holding my position and i think i argue it well, without getting emotional or anything like that. But I can imagine that within a group of guys lets say they all think anti-left it would be very hard for one of them to stand up and counter that and seperate themselves from the group. I actually think this is a big factor because a lot of the times in groups of guys, especially young guys they tend to think in the same way, moreso out of fear of being outcast from the group.

Scott Galloway talks in some depth about this on this podcast -

I had a bit of respect for Rogan for not siding with either party, but to endorse Trump is nuts. I wonder if it's just an audience capture thing as most of his viewers are probably maga aligned

What is Musk's actual argument for Trump that convinced Rogan? Can't he bothered sitting through the podcast

I hear you in that, someone could be super specialised and work really hard in one academic area and succeed despite not having a particularly high IQ. In fact I think some people can be overly confident because they have a degree in say psychology and then think that they can speak on politics without studying that (cough peterson). But where I would disagree is I dont think Trump is particularly intelligent, I actually think hes quite low intelligence, I would love for him to do an IQ test. Spewing bullshit is not necessarily a sign of intelligence, especially with how transparent his bullshit is, I think there are much better bullshitters in the world even. What I think he is really good at is being ruthless and being super confident. He believes hes intelligent, he believes he is the best man thats ever lived, his super power is his ego, when you add ruthlessness to it, it means hes willing to do what ever he needs to do to get what he wants. A lot of people are hampered by trying to appear like a good person at least, if not having actual morals and values but he doesnt have to deal with any of that. I dont know if youve heard some of the Epstin tapes that have come out, not that Epsteins the most credible source, but hes said on the tapes that Trump doesnt know anything, he knows something about real estate but has no clue about anything else, political or otherwise. I think most people that have worked with him would say the same. Also after seeing him brag about passing a dementia test i really cant take any claims about his intelligence seriously

The smartest man in the world thinks Trump has the intelligence of a harvard professor? Either I'm really dumb missing Trumps intelligence or the smartest man in the world has gaps in his perception

@Scholar Basically there are pros and cons of every form of government, but the question is do you want the system to be decided by one person that is granted complete power or at least majority power or should it be a system created and maintained by many people and every stake holder has at least some say? A dictatorship in theory could be amazing if you have a benevolent leader that cares about the will of the people, but I think it's unlikely that someone who wants that position wouldn't be concerned with wanting power for themselves. I feel a genuine leader doing it for his people would want to go more democratic to avoid a malevolent leader gaining power and ruining their country. In Trumps case it's clear that he wants to minimise the system as much as possible to consolidate more power to him, he's not interested in a democratic system. It is weird that society has regressed to point of appointing a wannabe dictator to the highest political position. You just have to look to history to see how that has always turned out.

@Joshe Very good analysis and I appreciate the detail youve included. I think its hard in general not to be audience captured as a content creator, there is also a healthy version of it whereby you serve your audience and try and give them what they want. For example if you do psychology you want to cover topics your audience would be interested in. But I think what separates Brand lets say is that he was willing to compromise his core values for what his audience wanted or to grow his audience. The other thing I notice is that their ego takes over, so they become a cult of personality and they believe it themselves because of the adulation they get. They believe themselves to be brilliant. If you look at the imagery of Brand especially, hes almost presenting himself as some christ like entity. Only the most rabid, extreme fans can give you this type of devotion, most normal people will just stop watching you, but hes now left with basically crazy, fundamentalists, who are unquestioning of his rhetoric. I also think there has to be some kind of shared condition whereby these type of characters need this adulation. Both Brand and Peterson have had addiction problems, im not saying that just because your an addict you could fall in this trap but i think that plus a combination of other factors could lead to it. There seems to be something missing in them that is getting fulfilled by going down this road.

Talk about missing the point, what I'm saying is that we are all human, you can choose to seperate bathrooms out on anything you like but that's still a construction for whatever reason. You can choose to seperate them for gender, you can choose to seperate them for race, it's still a choice that a society makes either way

Imo he's strawmanning the position that Trump is a facist. I would be impressed if he did a video saying why when Trump says things like the constitution should be ripped up or that he will be dictator for a day, or him looking up to figures like Putin. Or of course him literally trying to stop thr peaceful transition of power and leaning on states to 'find votes' for him. All these are valid criticisms that Trump has a facist play book and wants to be a dictator. But what I've noticed is that most maga people latch on to being outraged that people are calling them Nazis, even though he is literally using tactics that Hitler used. Still they aren't literal Nazis but the criticism is valid. Kisin is making light of the left being so out of touch with reality that they're calling normal people Nazis but this is extremely dishonest from someone that is supposed to be centrist, free thinker. Why is he only engaging in the strawman and not the substantive evidence against Trump that he's basically a facist. Not only that there are lots of people including generals that worked with Trump and they all say this.

@spirtualwarfare Don't really get your argument. You understand that separating male and female bathrooms in the first place was probably a decision to make things safer for women. It's like when they had seperate bathrooms for black and white people, that was a social construction made for whatever reason. If you think everyone should be treated the same the social construction either has to be a seperate bathroom for trans or no gender bathrooms or let them use whatever bathroom they want out of male and female. There's not really another option.

I noticed a real shift during covid, whereby Brand and Rogan and even Peterson previously wouldnt have outright agreed with Maga or conspiracy theories in general, but at that time i think they realised how many of the followers did actually want them to talk about that stuff. Its hard to say whether it was consciously done on their part but i think when you get adulation and money you kind of go toward it and i think thats what theyve done. Basically theyre completely audience captured. Another thing to realise is that the right pay extremely well. They are all smart people so for them not to realise in some way i find hard to believe, however they are also smart enough to fool themselves. Either way though its very sad how people can just be bought in this manner.

@zazen It depends how you see it, do you want a secular society whereby you can do anything you like as long as it doesnt infringe on the freedom of other people or should there be an objective set of values and morality that we should all live by regardless of if it is against ones personal values and morality? I think that the left generally want the 1st option and the right generally want the 2nd option. The trouble with the 2nd option is obvious in that most people may not share the values, in this case christian nationalism, in a lot of instances the right is unashamedly not tolerant of certain things like lgbtq, abortion rights etc. The left is tolerant of everything except intolerance. This is where the conflict happens because the right fundamentally cant accept the left and the left cant accept the intolerance of the right. Its like a paradox how can you be tolerant and also accept intolerance? My stance would be that a secular society whereby anyone can practice whatever religion and whatever culture they want is a better society in that it can include everyone, it can include christians, muslims, black, white, gay straight. In principle these are the foundations of America, the country was designed to be secular and to be equal, the success of the country has come from that even despite them not really sticking to it a lot of times. But the country is built on immigration essentially and really the culture is a massive mix of all different cultures throughout the years. The fundamentalist view where you say things should be a certain way, was successful at one point in history but all massive civilizations have had to become secular in some way. The general issue with it is that its too inflexible and doesnt let a society grow, its born from fear, fear of change, fear of being replaced. Even on a individual level, fear does not lead to great outcomes. Most people just want secular values that allow them to be themselves, whatever that might be. If you take 10 random people, a couple of their views are going to be extreme, theres no way around that. What i think is dangerous, both sides do this as well, is when you take the extreme view and try to present it as the moderate view of that side. This has what has taken the right v left battle to absurd level, the whole discussion over trans people who are probably less than 0.1% of the population is such a non-issue but it seems to be at the forefront of political discourse. I would argue maga is the highest level of absurd, its worse than the woke side imo in that maga will change whatever they think based on whatever Trump says, its scary to me to have a large group of people who will basically believe and follow whatever their leader says, regardless of the truth. You can say what you want about the left but they dont just follow randomly, most of he time they dont even agree with each other. The results of following a leader were shown on Jan 6th.

Apparently Trumps team cleared all the jokes beforehand and took out one of Tony calling Kamala a cu**, that was the line

A lot of people say hes a dumb persons idea of what an intellectual is and i think thats pretty accurate, he looks and sounds smart but the actual content if you get passed all the unnecessary vocabulary is pretty shallow and a lot of times doesnt even make sense. He recently had a debate with Dawkins and they asked Peterson whether the virgin birth in the Bible literally happened. The amount of yapping he did because he couldnt say 'I dont know if its true but the mythology has meaning' was incredible. He now doesnt want to alienate his obviously, mostly christian audience but as a supposed man of a reason he can't say the virgin birth literally happened.

I mean yeah you can do mental gymnastics for anything, but it doesn't really have much value when speaking relatively. We could say Hitler is empathetic because he wanted the best for Germany and loved animals but it's probably pretty irrelevant considering what else he did. I think most personas would think insulting disabled people for being disabled is not very empathetic

Peterson is making the claim that hes a particularly empathetic person, this is not true going by his history. Someone whos empathetic would not treat their nephews child in such a manner or for example take out an ad calling for the death penalty for young boys who turned out to be innocent and not apologising when he found out he was wrong. Is he capable empathy? Yeah probably but to say hes an empathetic person, im sorry no

1. Hes pro free speech for his side, he regularly threatens journalists, says networks should have their licenses taken away because of unfavourable coverage toward him. Violence against journalists has increased because of his rhetoric. If you said something negative about maga in a maga space, youd get an army of magans coming for you, in a lot of cases doxing you. This can happen on the left of course but youre making the claim Trump is pro free speech 2. Trump doesnt care about bitcoin, he trashed it previously but the change in stance is because he knows some people will vote just because of a pro-bitcoin stance - "“A lot of these people consider themselves single-issue voters,” said tech writer Jacob Silverman, author of the best-selling book “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.” “If Trump or anyone else says they’re pro-bitcoin, that matters to them.” 3. His tax cuts only really benefitted the rich, not majority of citizens 4. He wants to decrease government to have more control over it, this is why he only hires loyalists and his family. This is typical dictator behaviour 5. Again he knows his base are hyped up about the trans issue and so to appeal to them he uses trans a scapegoat - “Kamala is for they/them,” each ad concludes. “President Trump is for you.” (whos the you?) -Project 2025 all his previous and some current campaign staff are working on project 2025. It's aligned to christian nationalism, they heavily support and back trump and are able to get him to enact their policies. So even if hes not attached to project 2025, he will be enacting their ideologies. - federal ban probably wont happen, but obviously repealing roe vs wade was a step that could set a foundation for it. Even so I agree, I would be surprised if it happened - He may not be as bad as Hitler in that he doesnt appear to be trying to commit genocide, but a lot of his strategies and rhetoric are very similar. For example 'make america great again' is basically the same rhetoric Hitler used in Germany to rise to power. Scapegoating immigrants, saying theyre all criminals etc Trump said 'we shouldnt poison american blood' or something along those lines. He constantly fear mongers and presents himself as the only solution, this is something Hitler did. I think when people think of Hitler they think of the war and the genocide, Hitler was basically a lesson in what could happen if facism takes hold of a powerful country and was why the democratic process was reinforced so that another dictator would not be able to rise up. Trump has a lot of hallmarks of a dictator, however I'm not sure he would go as far as Hitler but still why would you give anyone that kind of power or let them have that power.

Trump is empathetic? This whole piece from Peterson is basically propaganda. Trumps nephew would definitely disagree - Can you point to intellectuals have come out in support of Trump?

You could just have individual stalls and then unisex sinks etc in theory everyones home has a unisex bathroom so its not really a stretch. The other option is go with what you present as because if trans woman is more undistinguishable from a woman, it would definitely be more strange if they use a male bathroom. But yeah i think a lot of the people making noise about this are basically trans-phobic it really shouldnt be that big of an issue

Musk regularly bans those he doesn't agree with- https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-journalist-ban-elon-musk-b2476153.html The experiment failed by every metric, financially it's down according to some estimates by 80%, usership is down, new users are down, ad spend is way down, literally in every way it's failing. He's also artificially promoting his and other accounts he likes tweets. Every platform has to have blanket regulations, preventing hate speech, incitements of violence etc otherwise the site becomes unusable for the average user, this is what's happening with X. You seem to have a bias toward the right, which is fine but it's blinding you to the reality.