He really does. How is there another Jewish guy in the moderate, heterodox-ish sphere with nearly the exact same voice as Jesse? Is this guy also seven feet tall and sexually attracted to horses?
This is not shocking to me, I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood. Half the guys in my high school could have subbed for Jon Stewart on the Daily Show without much notice.
I will defend to the death Americans who hate our country or even attend the pro-Hamas rallies. You’re from another country trying to become a citizen? Fuck you, get out. We have enough homegrown shitbags, we don’t need to import them.
The great thing about the legal immigration process is we get to choose who joins our country. We already have standards like being able to show they can support themselves, and they take tests and go through interviews to become citizens. Not supporting terrorists is a low standard to become a US citizen. GTFO
I genuinely can’t understand this position. It makes the right to free speech into a perk instead of a functional right. You really think the founding fathers wanted to give Americans shooting your mouth off and collecting guns as perks, like free breakfasts and branded hoodies at Google?
There were functional reasons for the first and second amendments. Free speech was about politics, specifically the right to speak truth to power. It was about not allowing a monarch to silence whoever he didn’t agree with, and the reason for that was because it was bad for the health of the state if ideas about how it should function couldn’t be road-tested and debated in public.
Making the first amendment into a perk of citizenship fatally undermines it. You can personally decide you don’t want to give weight to non-citizens living in the US who say things you disagree with, but cheering on deportations reveals that you’re too fragile to be free speech absolutists at all. It’s for everyone, or it’s not free. Making excuses because you don’t like this particular message just shows you don’t believe in the right, just in seeing free speech restricted when it suits you.
Ask yourself: when this happens to Americans you personally disagree with, will you excuse it? Will you be like the old ACLU and defend people you think are heinous, or will you pull out a flow chart (check: citizenship, issue, star sign, party affiliation) and then decide if the first amendment applies?
Indeed; if I showed up to someone else’s country and behaved the way this guy did here, I’d be lucky to be deported alive. The only reason this is even a conversation is because America has such strong civil liberties embedded in culture.
Well, in most countries in the world, even citizens can be arrested for peaceful protests. The U.S. is an outlier in that you can't (and this guy wasn't a citizen and he hasn't been arrested for protesting).
No, I don’t think it’s good that people are arrested in other countries for protests. Which is why I think all the people who are up in arms about this individual-who was not arrested for a protest-should direct their outrage more properly towards some of those other countries. Citizens in the UK get arrested for tweets. Someone in Australia was arrested for planning a protest on Facebook. Those are outrageous. This case is not like those cases at all.
His case is yet undecided and raises some due process questions, but it’s not a free speech case. You can be strong on free speech and still think that we can deport non-citizens for any number of reasons that are not speech.
The question isn’t whether the US is good at allowing its citizens to protest, it’s about whether “free speech absolutism” has turned out to be a rhetorical stick to beat liberals/Germans/BLM activists/trans people rather than a principled position. And so it has proved - the absolutists didn’t really mean it after all. That’s fine, now we know and can look at the rhetoric is a more accurate and realistic light.
That isn't the question. This isn't a free speech case. If all he had done was engage in protected free speech, you would never have heard of him and he would not be in custody.
What's interesting is your statement accurately describes their case as presented.
The status quo in law is that once granted entry, a person has effectively the same rights as a citizen. Deportation is contingent on a clear and present danger to national security. But this is mainly grounded in precedent and not explicit in the law (if I've understood the legal reviews of the case)
So there is a legal case to be made that the law allows this censure, though I hope it does not pass muster.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Granting free speech is a clear and unambiguous line. Once you cross into "undesirable speech" it becomes arbitrary and up to the capricious interpretation of whomever is in office. Today, it's "Hamas sympathizers"....but in the next administration it is not outlandish to believe it could be "Zionist sympathizers".....for example. There's a non-trivial portion of the left that think supporting Israel is "supporting genocide".
The level of uncertainty this would cause in our immigration process would be untenable.
Everyone loves the stick when it's their enemies being beaten over the head. Not so much when it's turned on their allies.
I've been thinking since he was detained that it's so easy for people to not defend this guy - even most elected democrats don't want to be seen as anti-Israel. They don't say something, this guy gets deported, and that sets the stage for whatever this admin wants to do. What's next? Pro-Ukraine protesters get deported?
This guy isn't a shitbag just because you disagree with his views, views which are increasingly popular and mainstream. And no one has provided any evidence that he was supporting terrorists. He opposes the dispossession and suffering of his people by a *foreign* government, he has not praised Hamas.
The whole point of the first amendment is that the government is really bad at figuring out what's objectionable and so shouldn't even be trying to do so.
The right simply does not like this person's viewpoint and so is using outlandish language in an attempt to smear it as extreme.
His organization (CUAD) supports Hamas. They called Oct. 7th a moral victory and celebrated it. They advocate for “any means necessary”. They’ve posted pictures of the hang gliders as they flew in to murder innocent kids at a concert in celebration of the event.
He is not loathsome because I disagree with him.
He is loathsome because because he is the spokesperson for an organization that celebrates the gruesome mass murders of innocent men, women, and children. The kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of hostages.
Really? Or do you just dislike the guy and think his status makes him a soft target?
I am trying to imagine what Green Card holders are actually allowed to do in this evolution of the first amendment. Can they have political opinions at all, or should they just stick to praising whoever’s in power? Where’s the cut off - if they disagreed with trans rights under Biden, should they have been deported? Can you apply this retroactively, so when the regime changes you can go back and deport people for things they said under the last administration? And how about residents of American territories - do they get free speech?
All countries who sign up to free speech as a political tool usually turn out to limit it in some way, and that way is usually controversial when it’s applied. In the U.K. it’s about whether the speaker is trying to inspire material harm to someone else/a group, and right now we have too broad a definition of what “harm” means. We are challenging that in our courts and doing pretty well on course correcting. If this is actually an example of the American first amendment being interpreted around where reasonable limits to free speech are in a democratic society, fine. But if that’s the case, let’s cut the free speech absolutism posturing, and especially Vance’s use of it to hector perfectly functional democracies.
Which members of the native populace? The whole point is that Americans are deeply divided on what they find objectionable.
Of course national guests can be deported if they actually break the law, in a way that citizens cannot. That’s the biggest citizen entitlement. But if they haven’t broken the law and have just pissed off someone currently in power with their opinions, that’s quite a different bar. I am surprised you don’t recognise that.
So for you this is a single issue application about what is permissible to say, not an actual policy position on immigrants and permanent residents. I thought that would turn out to be the case, but it’s useful to see it set out clearly as “You can’t say that in our free speech absolutist paradise”.
So let’s look at another way. Why is it okay for you for Americans to say they advocate for the murder of Jews in the US and Isreal? Or would you kind of like that to be restricted too?
That non-citizens have the same Constitutional protections while in the U.S. isn't just reasonable, it's enshrined in the 14th Amendment and the courts have upheld it for over a century.
I agree! It does, however extend an entitlement to due process and the 1st Amendment, which means non-citizens are as free to criticize the U.S. (or anything else) as much as citizens are, without fear of reprisal from the government.
I've yet to see anything objectively supporting the administration claim that Kalil has been strongly pro-Hamas. He's undoubtedly spoken in support of the right to people in the US to make such statements, but as a zionist who questions on historical grounds the argument that there's ever actually been a "nation" of Palestine or that Arabs who moved into the area in the 7th century are "indigenous" to an area with a recorded history going back millenia before that, I actually agree with that position. There's nothing about liberal thought (especially regarding free speech) which would justify stripping such liberties from the verbal support of illiberal thinkers such as Hamas and other Islamist fundamentalists. One would hope that the students claiming to "stand with Hamas" will at some point contemlplate the implications of their denonstrations in the aftermath of 10/07.
Re: the digression about people being mad at the hosts for criticizing "the right," sure there are some angry people who are just upset to see their team get ragged on, but I think there's a larger subset of people who are annoyed that the hosts understand and mock "the left" but seem to have little interest most of the time in understanding "the right" and go straight to reflexive mocking. There's lots to make fun of in the absolute clown show in DC right now, but the way the hosts have been making fun of it is just an echo of all the omnipresent lefty critiques we're already hearing, it's nothing new. This is intended to be loving, constructive criticism btw, I think you all produce a great show most of the time, I just wish you would have a few more off air conversations with thoughtful people on "the right" to get where they're coming from, it will make for better and more interesting mockery!
Totally agree. Like Elon seems like a menace who I legit think has a drug problem that has damaged his mind, but Jessie's hatred of him seeps into everything he says about it.
Sarah Isgur, John Podhoretz, Matt Welch (not on "the right" but a great advocate for the free speech and markets that Katie has now dismissed as silly and overrepresented twice), Reihan Salam... There are lots of options out there.
`by all means, Person who wants to define the word liberal, line up with a sympathizer of terrorism and a sower of disorder and chaos. That's really going to help....conservatism. It's almost like you're a double agent.'
`How about his aspirations to torment American Jewish students? May your film stock rot, or may your download be permanently corrupted.'
Doesn't strike me as thoughtful.
Matt Welch at least seems appropriately upset. I haven't listened to Sarah Isgur's latest on this topic so will reserve judgement. Reihan Salam is saying that Khalil was distributing terrorist propaganda? If so, unserious.
Moynihan, and to a lesser extent Kmele, is so reflexively anti-Palestinian that he cannot imagine anyone connected to protests on their behalf isn't a ignorant, stupid, unwitting pawn of terrorists. And this shows in his lack of concern about Khalil's arrest: not so much that it isn't a violation of free speech as that he just doesn't care because of the target.
O didn’t quite remember Moynihan that way. He definitely finds Khalil loathsome. But to be fair, I read up on the guy and his organization and they’re definitely a bunch of worthless shitbags.
I recalled him saying that despite that, he doesn’t want to live in a country where speech is policed or political opinions are used to deny immigration or to deport anyone. Which is about where I stand on it as well.
I’m puzzled by the comment Katie made about democrats being feckless and not knowing how to wield power as well as republicans and that’s why republicans are so scary. I don’t want to say I’ve seen that argument everywhere, but I have seen it a few times in my online perusing now. Do people really believe this? Is there something I’m not understanding about this argument? I understand the idea that Trump is uniquely sinister in his governance, but I don’t understand how that suddenly also means that democrats are now viewed as simpletons. Maybe the movement is a little deflated right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the democrats win the election in 4 years.
Everyone argues "oh my team is so independent it's like herding cats, the opposition marches in lockstep" and "oh my team can't get anything done, it's the enemy that is frighteningly effective." I've heard both from Republicans and Democrats (or conservatives and progressives if you broaden it) countless times. I think it's just a cope for when your team is losing.
Pretending that the prevailing behavior by our elected reps isn't odd *is* a damn odd thing to do, unless you're MAGA strategists trying to Jedi Mind Trick everybody into think this is normal. Disagree if you want, but that's my argument.
Ok. But what is it that you are referring to exactly? That they all agree or at least got behind Trump in a big way or what? What is the strategy that they are employing that is abnormal?
And if you do please respond concisely and completely and tell it to me like I’m five because it’s hard to understand you.
You seem quite dependent on poisoning the well to hedge your arguments. You've done that in ALL of your replies to me in this thread, either on the way in or the way out. It's very, *very* lame.
I don't expect to be perfectly understood by everyone, but your particular gambit here is pretty transparent: lay the groundwork for the plausible excuse that it's not that your argument stinks, it's that's MY speech is equal parts:
(A) Impenetrable ivory tower prose:
-- "Most of that was gibberish because I guess I’m not as smart as you or something, but [...]"
-- "[...] please respond concisely and completely and tell it to me like I’m five [...]"
(B) Unintelligible ape-man jibber-jabber:
--"IDK what Greg is going on about."
--"[...] because it’s hard to understand you."
(C) A touch of the regular ol' crazy-crazy:
-- "If only we could read minds like he does…"
OP started with a general statements. Replies have been in a general vein, but now you won't allow that I'm capable of rational discourse until I demonstrate my point with greater specificity that this conversation heretofore has required...
Pass.
Yeah, I know I'm I little eccentric in the way I communicate. Sometimes I go over people's heads or I makes mistakes in reading someone's tone. When that happens, people usually just ask me to clarify, or they ask me questions without contractual conditions. But most of the time, people understand me just fine.
Dude, again, wtf? I said tell it to me like I’m 5 because everything you’ve said there makes no fucking sense. To me anyway.
I got that there was a disagreement but I’m pretty sure in my opinion so to counter your opinion and do a thing called a discussion I have to understand what the fuck your are saying.
So I challenged you to leave out all the unnecessary blah blah and speak like a normal person. If you can’t or won’t do that then fine, but don’t tell me I’m poisoning the well by pointing out you make no sense.
That’s the same thing as getting a billion face tattoos and piercings and sub-dermal implants and then getting mad at me for staring.
Honestly I think you write that way to sound smart to get a point by that alone and I’m not buying it.
I heard once that smart people make complex ideas seem simple, and dumb people make simple ideas seem complex.
Now I’m not saying you’re dumb, but I have a lot of faith in that phrase and trying to read your posts here is like deciphering hieroglyphs and that don’t help no one son.
And on top of that you came out of the gate swinging with some aggressive shit at the other guy, so yeah that rubbed me wrong.
It's been funny listening to Never Trumpers over the past 10 years say with astonishment that when they were Rs they always thought the Dems were so masterful at politics and now they seem so bad at it. As an actual Dem, my thought was "they've always been like this."
No, that's not at all what's going on right now. What you're spewing is calculated nonsense meant to normalize the abnormal which right now can be observed in the failure of GOP legislators to speak up for their heretofore professed priorities vis a vis trade, foreign policy.
There's a lot of money in psychic hotlines if you are that good at mind reading, good job seeing through my calculated nonsense observation about human nature
I was about to say that you misread me... but you didn't... so I apologize for the way I worded that, although you might be annoyed anyway**. I meant something more like, "What you're spewing is the calculated nonsense meant to normalize... etc." Not much better, but I *had* intended to indicate that I couldn't say that YOU yourself were thinking that since, as you noted, such a determination would require mind-reading.
You're right about the general state of what's normal, but it's not normal now, not in any meaningful way. My city's budget, assembled by thew vanishingly few people for whom I'm allowed to cast votes, just got axed to the tune of 1 Billion. GOP didn't blink and Shumer & Co. didn't use that as the reason to vote NO.
In short:
* The GOP is dysfunctionally unifed over matters that should not be rubber stamped *ever*
* The Dems are dysfunctionally divided over matters that ought to broker uncommon unity.
(**) Kinda hard to put "spewing" into play w/o sounding accusatory.
That comment jumped out at me too. The whole NGO apparatus is Democrats wielding power. Not to mention academia and, in some cases, the civil service. It was a bizarre thing to say and think.
I'm on the West Coast, and the Nonprofit/NGO apparatus is an impediment to democracy. You want the local DA to prosecute shoplifters? Your local Advocacy groups will stop it.
Totally agreed. I would argue that the Democratic Party definitely blundered the post Biden v Trump debate aftermath, but that in no way indicates to me that have lost the ability or will to wield power. They still run most major cities, have major influence in all the things you mentioned, and after losing this election, they have a chance to win stuff in the next 2 years and in 4 years.
You're fighting a straw man, though Katie's thought could have been more clearly articulated. It's not that the Dems don't know how to perform the basics of day-to-day governance. That's obviously untrue and not what Katie meant. The Dems have been failing at wielding power in such a way as to *stay* in power. They have lost the ability to win hearts and minds -- to feel the voters' pain. There's no other way to explain the shifting numbers among traditional pro-Dem demographics.
I am cautiously optimistic that Shumer's about-face will quickly become known broadly among Democrats as Shumer's Folly, and that it will lead to something akin to a foundation for the redevelopment of a killer instinct.
Both parties have a hard time staying in power since no one is willing to govern for mass popularity vs popularity with their partisans anymore. True, Biden had that bipartisan infrastructure bill, but the benefits of it and the IRA were delayed since they larded it up with so much Groups favored regulatory stuff. I don't see how the Dems are especially "feckless." One could argue that the Rs are much less effective in actually accomplishing anything domestically or even (in the prior Trump admin) staffing the agency positions that have always been appointees or picking people capable of pushing their priorities. Who knows about the current admin yet, as they seem to be running around breaking things like insane people, but that hardly seems a staying power strategy.
I think members of both parties use a similar construction of "there was a clearly defined problem that needed fixing and our party had the votes to fix it and didn't fix it and thus the party has extended its long history of being feckless."
And a common corollary is, "our legislators need to be like the other party's legislators, who are highly disciplined and always vote in lockstep."
I listen to a lot of right wing stuff and before Trump got back in they were saying the same thing about republicans but now all of a sudden I hear “lockstep” a bunch. And during Bidens term it was “Dems are all on board with the progressive shit 100% all the time.”
It’s just whoever isn’t in power is just useless and divided until they get back into power or something. It seems like bullshit to me. Very weird narrative.
They are a bit deflated and scrambled but as far as I can tell it’s business as usual on both sides.
Both sides absurdly purport to know what "The American People" want Congress to do about farm subsidies for alternative protein sources.
Both sides walk super fast down the hallway when reporters are asking them important questions regarding vital matters of the day.
Until the 90s, and depending how one feels about Robert Byrd, both sides had barely-reformed old-style segregationists in elective office.
Until 2025, both sides respected the sacrifices made at home and abroad by the men and women of the so-called Greatest Generation. They both believed that a Free and Democratic Europe and the projection of soft power _everywhere_ was America's best defense against despotism.
Until 2025 -- and but for Rand Paul in the Senate and Thomas Massie in the House -- both sides offered broad deference to the office of the President when it was helmed by one of theirs **without** surrendering their agency or abandoning their principles.
It is a manifestly ludicrous notion that the GOP's near-total subservience to Donald Trump's plans and whim bears any resemblance to the dynamic that existed between Biden and Article II Dems. This fiction persists as a blanket assertion by GOP propagandists to keep their base so bewildered that they are impervious to claims to the contrary, like this one.
Most of that was gibberish because I guess I’m not as smart as you or something, but it SOUNDS like you don’t think the dems were “in lockstep” during most of Bidens presidency?
I’m quite sure that 9/10 times the majority of each party are on board with their overall policy agenda.
As a proud card-carrying Democrat who has never voted but blue**, I'm here to tell you that the Democratic Party Leadership is feckless, by which I mean they are perniciously ineffective. I don't know where you got "simpletons" from, did Katie say that too? Sure, we have our share, but that's not the nature of the rot, to wit:
They handed Trump the keys to the Oval Office with the Bo-Bo way they handled Biden in the back Q of 2023, but moreover, the Bo-Bo Next-Gen Max way they handled Harris. In both cases, it was a matter of leading by fear and it was *deadly*.
They should have dropped all pretense and pushed a message of Our-Doddering-Old-Geezer vs Your-Decrepit-Malefactor-of-Wealth-and-Gonad-Grabbin which I think ol' Joey Robinette could have won. Or... make him step down before 2024, which probably would have resulted in a winnable ticket with Gavin, Witmer, Mayor Pete or whoever else.
With Harris, it was even worse. Things jumped off with that deeply weird (and ironic, given Walz's later contributions), treacly, icky joy-fest that, once the phenomenon was noticed by DNC folks, must have been enthusiastically encouraged because it served as 2-3 week delay tactic that gave them time to huddle and transfer all their bad advice to Harris.
Meanwhile, Movement Progressive, Pro-Hamas Jew Hunter, Much-Besmirched Corporate Dem and Centrist alike were allowed to stew in their own giggle juice and carefully color in Harris with whatever they most hoped for in the fall campaign, *guaranteeing* widespread disappointment.
But so unenthusiastic were most Americans for Trump, that somehow she found herself in the pole position by fall! Things started off great with her wily takedown of Trump in the debate and then... ugh... they unveiled the Fascist-Fascist-Fascist-And-Dodge-Everthing-Else plan that offered no meaningful contrast with Trump.
Meanwhile the Wokelicious Wonderland that the Trump campaign was forecasting went unchallenged. Low-info voters may not have been enamored with Trump, but they knew who he was. Harris? Who knows! "But look at her get all the free air time on SNL", they might think to themselves. "She's not even funny, like Sarah Palin was with the rap thing, remember? Ooh, or Trump when he did literally the *exact* same mirror skit in 2016!"
So they shrugged like Atlas and voted for Trump, rationalizing, "Well.. immigrant criminal terrorists shouldn't be able to get their boobs or dongs lopped off at taxpayer expense while eggs cost more than Duracell batteries... and didn't Trump say something about fixing the economy and not giving murderous Cartel gang members new private parts? I thought he did..."
Own goal. And now Shumer just executed the same playbook by giving up the one itty bitty piece of leverage he had without so much as a whimper in anger.
Feckless. No feck. Feck off. Feck no.... Feck.....
(**) Though I ain't against jukin' right if the situation calls for it.
I haven't listened to the episode yet, so perhaps I'm missing a world of nuance. I don't know why you mention mask mandates when the original poster clearly alludes to vaccine mandates.
Yeah, this stopped me for a moment, too. Say what you will about Democrats, but their agenda is normally about building things: Medicare, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, etc. Republicans tend to want to tear things down, like, say the three programs I just named. I guess that makes sense since they are the self-proclaimed party of small government, but let's not pretend they are trying to make anything new.
(I think the Affordable Care Act is one of the most underrated public policies ever to get through Congress. It's underestimated, too, which is something Trump 1.0 learned when he tried to get rid of it.)
Democrats have failed to achieve any of their most important policy goals. We still don’t have public healthcare nor do we have necessary environmental protections to fight climate change.
Yet republicans are in office for two months and we’re ready to go to war with Canada. Republicans suck but they do what they set out to do.
"I'm a moderate (not a centrist). That's why I support the abolition of the prison system and view the very complicated citizen hamas situation as a black and white free speech issue. Anyone that disagrees with me is disappointing. I'm a moderate."
It means a urban PMC liberal who does not think he/she is a liberal. They vote dem 100% of the time, they are 100% liberal on every issue of consequence, but they have somehow convinced themselves that they are not partisan.
First 20 or so minutes had me hopeful but once we got to his actual opinions he just seemed like a self aware leftie chasing his "moderate" bag. At least The Fifth Column tries to make a Trumpian argument before calling it stupid. Not once did this guy try to communicate where the other side was coming from.
Agreed, seemed pretty performative and calculated rather than principled. Like he intellectually believes in the project, but in no way feels it.
Derek Thompson at the Atlantic is like this a lot too. Pretends like he wants to present/understand both sides, but really never actually understands/groks/interacts with actual conservative values and instead just sort of thinks covering up his dismissiveness with a blanket of platitudes somehow makes it a balanced presentation.
Like he will talk gun control and just never really actually fully interact with any of the main reasons people like having guns/counterarguments.
I went to high school with Isaac and was so pleasantly surprised to hear him on this ep! We were in our hs tv news club together… he is true to this not new to this!!
Am I the only one that thinks that these two talking about the "importance of Twitter" are coming from a semi-deranged POV? I'm admittedly no longer on that platform (nor am I on BlueSky, because echo chambers suck) so my perception is biased; but does anyone outside of the extremely online really treat that place as the bastion for determining the direction of the Zeitgeist?
I know so many people that have left it, and the ones still there (those that aren't pure MAGA/Elon dick riders) repeatedly call it a disaster that they no longer take seriously. So why do Katie and her guest hosts keep trying to tell us how important it still is?
That's endemic in the profession. I swear that journalists are the only ones that can give veterans a run at being most in awe of their own career path. Just an incredibly self-fellating group.
Because the journalists on Twitter write the news that we all read. Stories that are big on Twitter have a greater likelihood of getting big in the media.
So they all admit that the app is shit, nothing but techboys sucking off Elon while bots push MAGA talking points - yet they all still decide that *this* is the place to get their stories from?
That seems counterintuitive, maybe journalists need to do the work and get TF off of that bad habit?
I partly agree, though I’d quibble with “nothing but.” I think some noteworthy stuff takes place on Twitter occasionally. But it’s also true that Twitter-addicted journalos need to touch grass.
That's a fair assessment. I'm biased because of how much better my mental health has been since I left. Not being exposed to leftist scolds & MAGA nutjobs does wonders for your mind.
I think it mainly shows how deranged and broken the perspective of most people who consider themselves journalists are. It just doesn't matter at all to like 80%+ of the population. But they aren't in that group so they cannot see it.
I think Twitter used to have an outsized effect on the direction of mainstream journalism and left-wing political priorities, and a bad one, so I'm relatively happy that seems to be over.
I fear there's truth in it. I remember when news stories first started including tweets about the subject matter in articles, often from nobody important. I was like, well this is a piss poor excuse for journalism, seeing what yahoos are saying on social media, but surely it won't catch on. Then it did.
Or the articles saying that "people are criticising X" with random Twitter nobodies quoted rather than writing an article criticising the thing itself.
This has been an issue on the pod since Day 1. Or at least since Jesse started using “but it’s so important for my real journalism” as an excuse for his frequent Twitter relapsing.
Also came here to say congrats on the new Jesse AI bot. Amazing.
Also, the recent negative feedback for BARpod from the right might stem in part more from pod's tone/emotion than its content for the first few episodes of this new administration.
A "chaos agent"? So, basically someone who saw The Dark Knight as a teenager and is in a state of arrested development. In other words, Katie, not so much a "nihilist" as a fucking dork.
Great episode! Not usually a big fan of the guest eps but Isaac is great, appreciating the introduction to Tangle. Also, he sounds like an alternate version of Jesse where Jesse is super stoned and, like, just chill.
The issue with Khalil is that that Trump is obviously breaking the law and abusing rules. At the same time Khalil should never have been a candidate for a green card.
Immigrant from a poor country who works hard enough to get into Columbia isn't someone we'd want?
He was accepted before the October attacks in Israel---no one could have known that he'd be protesting. So basically, since we can't tell the future and couldn't know he was going to be a protestor, we should not want him just because he's of Palestinian descent and likely to advocate for his countrymen?
The reason Trump has the support of the population to do the former is because the latter is the status quo with immigration and has been for quite a while. The advocacy groups have completely broken our system and made it badly at odds with the population's desires.
It is literally probably like the main thing his voters want him to do, show human trash like this the door. He doesn't like it here, great, goodbye!
I guess this is at least consistent if stupid. Why bother letting in anyone at all? Genuinely, why fucking bother at this point? This country fucking sucks with trump in charge. I’m thinking of leaving.
Yep. It’s clear the disdain these people have for immigrants when holding this stance. I am an American citizen who is living in the UK on a visa. I would be (and I assume most British would be) horrified if I was deported for being anti Brexit and attending protests where a huge number of natural citizens hold the same opinion. Being a free speech enthusiast and wanting to only allow citizens in who think exactly like you is such a messed up world view, it’s difficult to even understand.
As a Brit, if you were protesting for the IRA (a much more apposite example than Brexit), I'd be very happy to pack your bags for you. Show some respect for your host country!
That was definitely not my example. And it also doesn’t at all align with what’s happening in the U.S. regarding deportation. So really poor point made there..I’m very glad you’re not in charge of immigration in the UK! I thankfully know a whole lot of Brits who oppose your views. And you know nothing about me or my situation so please don’t tell me how to feel about the UK.
I was not the founder of the /r/PhilosophyOfRape subreddit. That's a piece of false Reddit slander that I've refuted many, many times. I have stated repeatedly that that was not me. The claim that I was /u/PhilosophyOfRape was even removed from the Wikipedia page about me because it's not true. I made it explicitly clear in my first public statement, because that was something that Redditors were trying to slander me with: https://medium.com/@MoonMetropolis/first-public-statement-from-joshua-goldberg-8bb061aa56a0
From the public statement:
The Reddit hivemind is extremely predictable and extremely easy to manipulate. I had 27 different Reddit accounts that I remember (and I won’t say what they are because I want to keep Reddit neckbeards guessing), but some of the Reddit accounts that have been attributed to me were not, in fact, me. I was not /u/Jewish_Neocon and I was not /u/PhilosophyOfRape either. While I briefly had European88 latch onto the whole “Philosophy of Rape” thing in order to establish him as the most vile and despicable neo-Nazi on the internet (and, of course, to drum up outrage), that was the full extent of my involvement (the alt-right constantly spews vitriol about the evils of pure white women being raped and defiled by filthy shitskins, yet they themselves tend to view rape as a suitable punishment for those winsome trollops gallivanting about in wanton licentiousness). I had nothing to do with the original /r/PhilosophyOfRape subreddit. I had spoken to /u/PhilosophyOfRape a few times (as European88) and he really came across like a genuine rapist who sincerely believed his sick ideology, rather than just a juvenile troll merely trying to get a rise out of people. Rest assured that I am not now, nor have I ever been (and nor will I ever be) a rapist. Troll, yes. Rapist, no. Of all of the bottom-feeding plankton that I am surrounded by in prison, the sexual predators are the ones that I despise the most.
EDIT: Thank you for removing it. I legitimately felt a rush of anxiety when I heard you say that, because that particular piece of defamation is, in my view, even worse than the narrative of me being a jihadist wannabe. There is absolutely nobody in the world who I hate more than sexual predators.
My next Substack article is going to be one exposing a prominent rDrama user (and former site administrator) as a pedophile and highly prolific Discord sextortionist.
For those who are curious about my story, here's an interview of me that was conducted from prison over the prison telephones by someone who had formerly been on the unit with me:
Ok, so this dude sounds exactly like Jesse… Doppelvoicer!
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Jesse!™️
I thought there was only a Singal one of him.
He really does. How is there another Jewish guy in the moderate, heterodox-ish sphere with nearly the exact same voice as Jesse? Is this guy also seven feet tall and sexually attracted to horses?
This is not shocking to me, I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood. Half the guys in my high school could have subbed for Jon Stewart on the Daily Show without much notice.
If Katie ever kills Jesse, this guy could step in and it might be awhile before anyone notices.
I want Jesse to interview this guy so it would be like that Spider-Man meme.
Came here to say this 😂 Head cannon: they couldn’t book their interview so Jesse pretended to be someone else.
This made me laugh so hard. There’s a tiny part of me that almost believes it, the vocal resemblance is so uncanny.
Same expressions, too. "Jesus Christ!" like Jesse.
Odd to hear it in a show about a guy posting online with multiple identities.
He’s what Jesse would sound like if he was cooler and more successful
Seriously! Is this a pseudonym so we can give Jesse a new start?
I had to restart the episode to understand what’s going on. So confused
Sounds more like Jesse Singal than Jesse Singal does.
He even drops his 't's'!! They're voice twins!
It's true, there no T in this episode.
Came here to say the same thing 😁
Get rid of the nasal aspect of Jesse's voice and you have Issac! It's kind of wild.
Came here looking for this comment 😄
Agreed. Jesse with a professional microphone!
You beat me to this observation!
I will defend to the death Americans who hate our country or even attend the pro-Hamas rallies. You’re from another country trying to become a citizen? Fuck you, get out. We have enough homegrown shitbags, we don’t need to import them.
The great thing about the legal immigration process is we get to choose who joins our country. We already have standards like being able to show they can support themselves, and they take tests and go through interviews to become citizens. Not supporting terrorists is a low standard to become a US citizen. GTFO
I genuinely can’t understand this position. It makes the right to free speech into a perk instead of a functional right. You really think the founding fathers wanted to give Americans shooting your mouth off and collecting guns as perks, like free breakfasts and branded hoodies at Google?
There were functional reasons for the first and second amendments. Free speech was about politics, specifically the right to speak truth to power. It was about not allowing a monarch to silence whoever he didn’t agree with, and the reason for that was because it was bad for the health of the state if ideas about how it should function couldn’t be road-tested and debated in public.
Making the first amendment into a perk of citizenship fatally undermines it. You can personally decide you don’t want to give weight to non-citizens living in the US who say things you disagree with, but cheering on deportations reveals that you’re too fragile to be free speech absolutists at all. It’s for everyone, or it’s not free. Making excuses because you don’t like this particular message just shows you don’t believe in the right, just in seeing free speech restricted when it suits you.
Ask yourself: when this happens to Americans you personally disagree with, will you excuse it? Will you be like the old ACLU and defend people you think are heinous, or will you pull out a flow chart (check: citizenship, issue, star sign, party affiliation) and then decide if the first amendment applies?
Indeed; if I showed up to someone else’s country and behaved the way this guy did here, I’d be lucky to be deported alive. The only reason this is even a conversation is because America has such strong civil liberties embedded in culture.
He peacefully protested a perceived injustice, what was so horrible about that?
Well, in most countries in the world, even citizens can be arrested for peaceful protests. The U.S. is an outlier in that you can't (and this guy wasn't a citizen and he hasn't been arrested for protesting).
And you think it’s good that people in other countries are arrested for protestests? That’s stupid.
No, I don’t think it’s good that people are arrested in other countries for protests. Which is why I think all the people who are up in arms about this individual-who was not arrested for a protest-should direct their outrage more properly towards some of those other countries. Citizens in the UK get arrested for tweets. Someone in Australia was arrested for planning a protest on Facebook. Those are outrageous. This case is not like those cases at all.
His case is yet undecided and raises some due process questions, but it’s not a free speech case. You can be strong on free speech and still think that we can deport non-citizens for any number of reasons that are not speech.
The question isn’t whether the US is good at allowing its citizens to protest, it’s about whether “free speech absolutism” has turned out to be a rhetorical stick to beat liberals/Germans/BLM activists/trans people rather than a principled position. And so it has proved - the absolutists didn’t really mean it after all. That’s fine, now we know and can look at the rhetoric is a more accurate and realistic light.
That isn't the question. This isn't a free speech case. If all he had done was engage in protected free speech, you would never have heard of him and he would not be in custody.
So it appears that he has not broken any laws, but you’re still insisting he’s really a terrorist.
You could not be doing a better job of illustrating the degradation of American principles under the culture war.
According to the BBC he claimed he wasn't actually a protester, but was rather acting as a mediator.
However, how unpeaceful would his protest have to be before you would deport him?
Given how easy it is to get a misdemeanor charge at a protest, a felony-level charge so aggravated assault/battery.
That seems reasonable.
(I myself am unkeen on people who close down campuses, though I'm not sure how I would frame that in US law.)
What's interesting is your statement accurately describes their case as presented.
The status quo in law is that once granted entry, a person has effectively the same rights as a citizen. Deportation is contingent on a clear and present danger to national security. But this is mainly grounded in precedent and not explicit in the law (if I've understood the legal reviews of the case)
So there is a legal case to be made that the law allows this censure, though I hope it does not pass muster.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Granting free speech is a clear and unambiguous line. Once you cross into "undesirable speech" it becomes arbitrary and up to the capricious interpretation of whomever is in office. Today, it's "Hamas sympathizers"....but in the next administration it is not outlandish to believe it could be "Zionist sympathizers".....for example. There's a non-trivial portion of the left that think supporting Israel is "supporting genocide".
The level of uncertainty this would cause in our immigration process would be untenable.
Everyone loves the stick when it's their enemies being beaten over the head. Not so much when it's turned on their allies.
I've been thinking since he was detained that it's so easy for people to not defend this guy - even most elected democrats don't want to be seen as anti-Israel. They don't say something, this guy gets deported, and that sets the stage for whatever this admin wants to do. What's next? Pro-Ukraine protesters get deported?
Didn’t he already revoke Ukrainian refugee visas?
Anyway, I hope the courts extend free speech to legal immigrants.
But this is definitely Skokie, Illinois situation. What an utterly loathsome person is Khalil.
If material support can be shown, I hope they deport him for that.
This guy isn't a shitbag just because you disagree with his views, views which are increasingly popular and mainstream. And no one has provided any evidence that he was supporting terrorists. He opposes the dispossession and suffering of his people by a *foreign* government, he has not praised Hamas.
The whole point of the first amendment is that the government is really bad at figuring out what's objectionable and so shouldn't even be trying to do so.
The right simply does not like this person's viewpoint and so is using outlandish language in an attempt to smear it as extreme.
His organization (CUAD) supports Hamas. They called Oct. 7th a moral victory and celebrated it. They advocate for “any means necessary”. They’ve posted pictures of the hang gliders as they flew in to murder innocent kids at a concert in celebration of the event.
He is not loathsome because I disagree with him.
He is loathsome because because he is the spokesperson for an organization that celebrates the gruesome mass murders of innocent men, women, and children. The kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of hostages.
That is why he is loathsome.
100% agree.
Really? Or do you just dislike the guy and think his status makes him a soft target?
I am trying to imagine what Green Card holders are actually allowed to do in this evolution of the first amendment. Can they have political opinions at all, or should they just stick to praising whoever’s in power? Where’s the cut off - if they disagreed with trans rights under Biden, should they have been deported? Can you apply this retroactively, so when the regime changes you can go back and deport people for things they said under the last administration? And how about residents of American territories - do they get free speech?
All countries who sign up to free speech as a political tool usually turn out to limit it in some way, and that way is usually controversial when it’s applied. In the U.K. it’s about whether the speaker is trying to inspire material harm to someone else/a group, and right now we have too broad a definition of what “harm” means. We are challenging that in our courts and doing pretty well on course correcting. If this is actually an example of the American first amendment being interpreted around where reasonable limits to free speech are in a democratic society, fine. But if that’s the case, let’s cut the free speech absolutism posturing, and especially Vance’s use of it to hector perfectly functional democracies.
There is not a single thing that anyone can do that wouldn’t offend some American. This is *literally* an impossible standard.
I genuinely think you’re a really bad person for this view. I think you should re-evaluate a lot of things.
Then let’s just close up the whole country since someone hurt your feelings. God. What a bunch of fucking snow flakes.
Which members of the native populace? The whole point is that Americans are deeply divided on what they find objectionable.
Of course national guests can be deported if they actually break the law, in a way that citizens cannot. That’s the biggest citizen entitlement. But if they haven’t broken the law and have just pissed off someone currently in power with their opinions, that’s quite a different bar. I am surprised you don’t recognise that.
So for you this is a single issue application about what is permissible to say, not an actual policy position on immigrants and permanent residents. I thought that would turn out to be the case, but it’s useful to see it set out clearly as “You can’t say that in our free speech absolutist paradise”.
So let’s look at another way. Why is it okay for you for Americans to say they advocate for the murder of Jews in the US and Isreal? Or would you kind of like that to be restricted too?
That doesn't sound unambiguous at all.
That non-citizens have the same Constitutional protections while in the U.S. isn't just reasonable, it's enshrined in the 14th Amendment and the courts have upheld it for over a century.
I agree! It does, however extend an entitlement to due process and the 1st Amendment, which means non-citizens are as free to criticize the U.S. (or anything else) as much as citizens are, without fear of reprisal from the government.
Would you say the same thing if this guy agreed with you about Israel?
I've yet to see anything objectively supporting the administration claim that Kalil has been strongly pro-Hamas. He's undoubtedly spoken in support of the right to people in the US to make such statements, but as a zionist who questions on historical grounds the argument that there's ever actually been a "nation" of Palestine or that Arabs who moved into the area in the 7th century are "indigenous" to an area with a recorded history going back millenia before that, I actually agree with that position. There's nothing about liberal thought (especially regarding free speech) which would justify stripping such liberties from the verbal support of illiberal thinkers such as Hamas and other Islamist fundamentalists. One would hope that the students claiming to "stand with Hamas" will at some point contemlplate the implications of their denonstrations in the aftermath of 10/07.
I wouldn't defend somebody's free speech rights to the death even if I AGREED with them, but I'd definitely vote for free speech.
Plot Twist: Isaac Saul is the actor who plays Jesse Singal, who is actually a scripted character.
The irony of this episode's title and what's happening in the chat doesn't escape me!
Pretty funny that that one guy is “lol cow milker,” bc all I can think of, looking at his posts, is “Don’t touch the poo! Don’t touch the poo!”
The timing of this episode has me wondering if my position that gods are unlikely, isn’t the solid thing I thought it was.
Can’t wait to hear what the gang have to say about this character- bet he gets a shout-out at some point.
More like a bitch out but yes
Does the chat have any moderation? This guy is hogging it with his millions of posts.
Unfortunately no
Ha!!! How timely
But that is Nate right? I don’t think he’s trolling as much as going through something. Hope he’s back to himself again soon.
Re: the digression about people being mad at the hosts for criticizing "the right," sure there are some angry people who are just upset to see their team get ragged on, but I think there's a larger subset of people who are annoyed that the hosts understand and mock "the left" but seem to have little interest most of the time in understanding "the right" and go straight to reflexive mocking. There's lots to make fun of in the absolute clown show in DC right now, but the way the hosts have been making fun of it is just an echo of all the omnipresent lefty critiques we're already hearing, it's nothing new. This is intended to be loving, constructive criticism btw, I think you all produce a great show most of the time, I just wish you would have a few more off air conversations with thoughtful people on "the right" to get where they're coming from, it will make for better and more interesting mockery!
Totally agree. Like Elon seems like a menace who I legit think has a drug problem that has damaged his mind, but Jessie's hatred of him seeps into everything he says about it.
`thoughtful people on "the right"'
Name them. The conservatives at Breaking Points are basically saying the same thing as J&K.
Sarah Isgur, John Podhoretz, Matt Welch (not on "the right" but a great advocate for the free speech and markets that Katie has now dismissed as silly and overrepresented twice), Reihan Salam... There are lots of options out there.
David French, Jonah Goldberg, George Will
John Podhoretz on Khalil:
`by all means, Person who wants to define the word liberal, line up with a sympathizer of terrorism and a sower of disorder and chaos. That's really going to help....conservatism. It's almost like you're a double agent.'
`How about his aspirations to torment American Jewish students? May your film stock rot, or may your download be permanently corrupted.'
Doesn't strike me as thoughtful.
Matt Welch at least seems appropriately upset. I haven't listened to Sarah Isgur's latest on this topic so will reserve judgement. Reihan Salam is saying that Khalil was distributing terrorist propaganda? If so, unserious.
Fifth Column, in general, is a decent source.
I like French. Ross Douthat is thoughtful.
Matt Welch seems principled.
Moynihan, and to a lesser extent Kmele, is so reflexively anti-Palestinian that he cannot imagine anyone connected to protests on their behalf isn't a ignorant, stupid, unwitting pawn of terrorists. And this shows in his lack of concern about Khalil's arrest: not so much that it isn't a violation of free speech as that he just doesn't care because of the target.
O didn’t quite remember Moynihan that way. He definitely finds Khalil loathsome. But to be fair, I read up on the guy and his organization and they’re definitely a bunch of worthless shitbags.
I recalled him saying that despite that, he doesn’t want to live in a country where speech is policed or political opinions are used to deny immigration or to deport anyone. Which is about where I stand on it as well.
But maybe I’m misremembering.
I’m puzzled by the comment Katie made about democrats being feckless and not knowing how to wield power as well as republicans and that’s why republicans are so scary. I don’t want to say I’ve seen that argument everywhere, but I have seen it a few times in my online perusing now. Do people really believe this? Is there something I’m not understanding about this argument? I understand the idea that Trump is uniquely sinister in his governance, but I don’t understand how that suddenly also means that democrats are now viewed as simpletons. Maybe the movement is a little deflated right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the democrats win the election in 4 years.
Everyone argues "oh my team is so independent it's like herding cats, the opposition marches in lockstep" and "oh my team can't get anything done, it's the enemy that is frighteningly effective." I've heard both from Republicans and Democrats (or conservatives and progressives if you broaden it) countless times. I think it's just a cope for when your team is losing.
That’s definitely what I’ve seen as well. IDK what Greg is going on about.
If only we could read minds like he does…
Pretending that the prevailing behavior by our elected reps isn't odd *is* a damn odd thing to do, unless you're MAGA strategists trying to Jedi Mind Trick everybody into think this is normal. Disagree if you want, but that's my argument.
Ok. But what is it that you are referring to exactly? That they all agree or at least got behind Trump in a big way or what? What is the strategy that they are employing that is abnormal?
And if you do please respond concisely and completely and tell it to me like I’m five because it’s hard to understand you.
You seem quite dependent on poisoning the well to hedge your arguments. You've done that in ALL of your replies to me in this thread, either on the way in or the way out. It's very, *very* lame.
I don't expect to be perfectly understood by everyone, but your particular gambit here is pretty transparent: lay the groundwork for the plausible excuse that it's not that your argument stinks, it's that's MY speech is equal parts:
(A) Impenetrable ivory tower prose:
-- "Most of that was gibberish because I guess I’m not as smart as you or something, but [...]"
-- "[...] please respond concisely and completely and tell it to me like I’m five [...]"
(B) Unintelligible ape-man jibber-jabber:
--"IDK what Greg is going on about."
--"[...] because it’s hard to understand you."
(C) A touch of the regular ol' crazy-crazy:
-- "If only we could read minds like he does…"
OP started with a general statements. Replies have been in a general vein, but now you won't allow that I'm capable of rational discourse until I demonstrate my point with greater specificity that this conversation heretofore has required...
Pass.
Yeah, I know I'm I little eccentric in the way I communicate. Sometimes I go over people's heads or I makes mistakes in reading someone's tone. When that happens, people usually just ask me to clarify, or they ask me questions without contractual conditions. But most of the time, people understand me just fine.
Dude, again, wtf? I said tell it to me like I’m 5 because everything you’ve said there makes no fucking sense. To me anyway.
I got that there was a disagreement but I’m pretty sure in my opinion so to counter your opinion and do a thing called a discussion I have to understand what the fuck your are saying.
So I challenged you to leave out all the unnecessary blah blah and speak like a normal person. If you can’t or won’t do that then fine, but don’t tell me I’m poisoning the well by pointing out you make no sense.
That’s the same thing as getting a billion face tattoos and piercings and sub-dermal implants and then getting mad at me for staring.
Honestly I think you write that way to sound smart to get a point by that alone and I’m not buying it.
I heard once that smart people make complex ideas seem simple, and dumb people make simple ideas seem complex.
Now I’m not saying you’re dumb, but I have a lot of faith in that phrase and trying to read your posts here is like deciphering hieroglyphs and that don’t help no one son.
And on top of that you came out of the gate swinging with some aggressive shit at the other guy, so yeah that rubbed me wrong.
It's been funny listening to Never Trumpers over the past 10 years say with astonishment that when they were Rs they always thought the Dems were so masterful at politics and now they seem so bad at it. As an actual Dem, my thought was "they've always been like this."
No, that's not at all what's going on right now. What you're spewing is calculated nonsense meant to normalize the abnormal which right now can be observed in the failure of GOP legislators to speak up for their heretofore professed priorities vis a vis trade, foreign policy.
There's a lot of money in psychic hotlines if you are that good at mind reading, good job seeing through my calculated nonsense observation about human nature
I was about to say that you misread me... but you didn't... so I apologize for the way I worded that, although you might be annoyed anyway**. I meant something more like, "What you're spewing is the calculated nonsense meant to normalize... etc." Not much better, but I *had* intended to indicate that I couldn't say that YOU yourself were thinking that since, as you noted, such a determination would require mind-reading.
You're right about the general state of what's normal, but it's not normal now, not in any meaningful way. My city's budget, assembled by thew vanishingly few people for whom I'm allowed to cast votes, just got axed to the tune of 1 Billion. GOP didn't blink and Shumer & Co. didn't use that as the reason to vote NO.
In short:
* The GOP is dysfunctionally unifed over matters that should not be rubber stamped *ever*
* The Dems are dysfunctionally divided over matters that ought to broker uncommon unity.
(**) Kinda hard to put "spewing" into play w/o sounding accusatory.
This supports an argument that Congressional Rs are feckless (which I would agree with) and not that the Dems are.
That comment jumped out at me too. The whole NGO apparatus is Democrats wielding power. Not to mention academia and, in some cases, the civil service. It was a bizarre thing to say and think.
I'm on the West Coast, and the Nonprofit/NGO apparatus is an impediment to democracy. You want the local DA to prosecute shoplifters? Your local Advocacy groups will stop it.
Totally agreed. I would argue that the Democratic Party definitely blundered the post Biden v Trump debate aftermath, but that in no way indicates to me that have lost the ability or will to wield power. They still run most major cities, have major influence in all the things you mentioned, and after losing this election, they have a chance to win stuff in the next 2 years and in 4 years.
You're fighting a straw man, though Katie's thought could have been more clearly articulated. It's not that the Dems don't know how to perform the basics of day-to-day governance. That's obviously untrue and not what Katie meant. The Dems have been failing at wielding power in such a way as to *stay* in power. They have lost the ability to win hearts and minds -- to feel the voters' pain. There's no other way to explain the shifting numbers among traditional pro-Dem demographics.
I am cautiously optimistic that Shumer's about-face will quickly become known broadly among Democrats as Shumer's Folly, and that it will lead to something akin to a foundation for the redevelopment of a killer instinct.
Both parties have a hard time staying in power since no one is willing to govern for mass popularity vs popularity with their partisans anymore. True, Biden had that bipartisan infrastructure bill, but the benefits of it and the IRA were delayed since they larded it up with so much Groups favored regulatory stuff. I don't see how the Dems are especially "feckless." One could argue that the Rs are much less effective in actually accomplishing anything domestically or even (in the prior Trump admin) staffing the agency positions that have always been appointees or picking people capable of pushing their priorities. Who knows about the current admin yet, as they seem to be running around breaking things like insane people, but that hardly seems a staying power strategy.
I think members of both parties use a similar construction of "there was a clearly defined problem that needed fixing and our party had the votes to fix it and didn't fix it and thus the party has extended its long history of being feckless."
And a common corollary is, "our legislators need to be like the other party's legislators, who are highly disciplined and always vote in lockstep."
I am not and have never been a member of the Democratic party. Democrats do not control academia or use it to wield power.
People are always just obsessed with the present.
I listen to a lot of right wing stuff and before Trump got back in they were saying the same thing about republicans but now all of a sudden I hear “lockstep” a bunch. And during Bidens term it was “Dems are all on board with the progressive shit 100% all the time.”
It’s just whoever isn’t in power is just useless and divided until they get back into power or something. It seems like bullshit to me. Very weird narrative.
They are a bit deflated and scrambled but as far as I can tell it’s business as usual on both sides.
Both sides absurdly purport to know what "The American People" want Congress to do about farm subsidies for alternative protein sources.
Both sides walk super fast down the hallway when reporters are asking them important questions regarding vital matters of the day.
Until the 90s, and depending how one feels about Robert Byrd, both sides had barely-reformed old-style segregationists in elective office.
Until 2025, both sides respected the sacrifices made at home and abroad by the men and women of the so-called Greatest Generation. They both believed that a Free and Democratic Europe and the projection of soft power _everywhere_ was America's best defense against despotism.
Until 2025 -- and but for Rand Paul in the Senate and Thomas Massie in the House -- both sides offered broad deference to the office of the President when it was helmed by one of theirs **without** surrendering their agency or abandoning their principles.
It is a manifestly ludicrous notion that the GOP's near-total subservience to Donald Trump's plans and whim bears any resemblance to the dynamic that existed between Biden and Article II Dems. This fiction persists as a blanket assertion by GOP propagandists to keep their base so bewildered that they are impervious to claims to the contrary, like this one.
Most of that was gibberish because I guess I’m not as smart as you or something, but it SOUNDS like you don’t think the dems were “in lockstep” during most of Bidens presidency?
I’m quite sure that 9/10 times the majority of each party are on board with their overall policy agenda.
As a proud card-carrying Democrat who has never voted but blue**, I'm here to tell you that the Democratic Party Leadership is feckless, by which I mean they are perniciously ineffective. I don't know where you got "simpletons" from, did Katie say that too? Sure, we have our share, but that's not the nature of the rot, to wit:
They handed Trump the keys to the Oval Office with the Bo-Bo way they handled Biden in the back Q of 2023, but moreover, the Bo-Bo Next-Gen Max way they handled Harris. In both cases, it was a matter of leading by fear and it was *deadly*.
They should have dropped all pretense and pushed a message of Our-Doddering-Old-Geezer vs Your-Decrepit-Malefactor-of-Wealth-and-Gonad-Grabbin which I think ol' Joey Robinette could have won. Or... make him step down before 2024, which probably would have resulted in a winnable ticket with Gavin, Witmer, Mayor Pete or whoever else.
With Harris, it was even worse. Things jumped off with that deeply weird (and ironic, given Walz's later contributions), treacly, icky joy-fest that, once the phenomenon was noticed by DNC folks, must have been enthusiastically encouraged because it served as 2-3 week delay tactic that gave them time to huddle and transfer all their bad advice to Harris.
Meanwhile, Movement Progressive, Pro-Hamas Jew Hunter, Much-Besmirched Corporate Dem and Centrist alike were allowed to stew in their own giggle juice and carefully color in Harris with whatever they most hoped for in the fall campaign, *guaranteeing* widespread disappointment.
But so unenthusiastic were most Americans for Trump, that somehow she found herself in the pole position by fall! Things started off great with her wily takedown of Trump in the debate and then... ugh... they unveiled the Fascist-Fascist-Fascist-And-Dodge-Everthing-Else plan that offered no meaningful contrast with Trump.
Meanwhile the Wokelicious Wonderland that the Trump campaign was forecasting went unchallenged. Low-info voters may not have been enamored with Trump, but they knew who he was. Harris? Who knows! "But look at her get all the free air time on SNL", they might think to themselves. "She's not even funny, like Sarah Palin was with the rap thing, remember? Ooh, or Trump when he did literally the *exact* same mirror skit in 2016!"
So they shrugged like Atlas and voted for Trump, rationalizing, "Well.. immigrant criminal terrorists shouldn't be able to get their boobs or dongs lopped off at taxpayer expense while eggs cost more than Duracell batteries... and didn't Trump say something about fixing the economy and not giving murderous Cartel gang members new private parts? I thought he did..."
Own goal. And now Shumer just executed the same playbook by giving up the one itty bitty piece of leverage he had without so much as a whimper in anger.
Feckless. No feck. Feck off. Feck no.... Feck.....
(**) Though I ain't against jukin' right if the situation calls for it.
I will consider Trump "uniquely sinister" when I have to carry around papers that certify that my ivermectine dose is up-to-date.
Strange. Why that specifically?
He is making an analogy to COVID.
COVID happened under Trump, so I fail to understand the analogy.
Trump definitely wasn’t the one who was big on mask mandates. Were you asleep?
I haven't listened to the episode yet, so perhaps I'm missing a world of nuance. I don't know why you mention mask mandates when the original poster clearly alludes to vaccine mandates.
Yeah, this stopped me for a moment, too. Say what you will about Democrats, but their agenda is normally about building things: Medicare, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, etc. Republicans tend to want to tear things down, like, say the three programs I just named. I guess that makes sense since they are the self-proclaimed party of small government, but let's not pretend they are trying to make anything new.
(I think the Affordable Care Act is one of the most underrated public policies ever to get through Congress. It's underestimated, too, which is something Trump 1.0 learned when he tried to get rid of it.)
Democrats have failed to achieve any of their most important policy goals. We still don’t have public healthcare nor do we have necessary environmental protections to fight climate change.
Yet republicans are in office for two months and we’re ready to go to war with Canada. Republicans suck but they do what they set out to do.
"I'm a moderate (not a centrist). That's why I support the abolition of the prison system and view the very complicated citizen hamas situation as a black and white free speech issue. Anyone that disagrees with me is disappointing. I'm a moderate."
What do you think moderate means? Do you think it is supposed to mean “conservative” but in disguise?
It means a urban PMC liberal who does not think he/she is a liberal. They vote dem 100% of the time, they are 100% liberal on every issue of consequence, but they have somehow convinced themselves that they are not partisan.
First 20 or so minutes had me hopeful but once we got to his actual opinions he just seemed like a self aware leftie chasing his "moderate" bag. At least The Fifth Column tries to make a Trumpian argument before calling it stupid. Not once did this guy try to communicate where the other side was coming from.
Agreed, seemed pretty performative and calculated rather than principled. Like he intellectually believes in the project, but in no way feels it.
Derek Thompson at the Atlantic is like this a lot too. Pretends like he wants to present/understand both sides, but really never actually understands/groks/interacts with actual conservative values and instead just sort of thinks covering up his dismissiveness with a blanket of platitudes somehow makes it a balanced presentation.
Like he will talk gun control and just never really actually fully interact with any of the main reasons people like having guns/counterarguments.
I went to high school with Isaac and was so pleasantly surprised to hear him on this ep! We were in our hs tv news club together… he is true to this not new to this!!
Am I the only one that thinks that these two talking about the "importance of Twitter" are coming from a semi-deranged POV? I'm admittedly no longer on that platform (nor am I on BlueSky, because echo chambers suck) so my perception is biased; but does anyone outside of the extremely online really treat that place as the bastion for determining the direction of the Zeitgeist?
I know so many people that have left it, and the ones still there (those that aren't pure MAGA/Elon dick riders) repeatedly call it a disaster that they no longer take seriously. So why do Katie and her guest hosts keep trying to tell us how important it still is?
I think katie forgets that the center of journalism’s universe is not the center of everyone’s universe.
That's endemic in the profession. I swear that journalists are the only ones that can give veterans a run at being most in awe of their own career path. Just an incredibly self-fellating group.
I maintain it is the single profession with the biggest delta between who they think they are and who they actually are.
Because the journalists on Twitter write the news that we all read. Stories that are big on Twitter have a greater likelihood of getting big in the media.
So they all admit that the app is shit, nothing but techboys sucking off Elon while bots push MAGA talking points - yet they all still decide that *this* is the place to get their stories from?
That seems counterintuitive, maybe journalists need to do the work and get TF off of that bad habit?
I partly agree, though I’d quibble with “nothing but.” I think some noteworthy stuff takes place on Twitter occasionally. But it’s also true that Twitter-addicted journalos need to touch grass.
That's a fair assessment. I'm biased because of how much better my mental health has been since I left. Not being exposed to leftist scolds & MAGA nutjobs does wonders for your mind.
I think it mainly shows how deranged and broken the perspective of most people who consider themselves journalists are. It just doesn't matter at all to like 80%+ of the population. But they aren't in that group so they cannot see it.
I think Twitter used to have an outsized effect on the direction of mainstream journalism and left-wing political priorities, and a bad one, so I'm relatively happy that seems to be over.
I fear there's truth in it. I remember when news stories first started including tweets about the subject matter in articles, often from nobody important. I was like, well this is a piss poor excuse for journalism, seeing what yahoos are saying on social media, but surely it won't catch on. Then it did.
Or the articles saying that "people are criticising X" with random Twitter nobodies quoted rather than writing an article criticising the thing itself.
I think people overestimate twitter’s impact and have for years. It never drove as much traffic as podcasters and the like tend to believe.
At the same time, other social media websites like Facebook or Reddit are underrated in this regard.
This has been an issue on the pod since Day 1. Or at least since Jesse started using “but it’s so important for my real journalism” as an excuse for his frequent Twitter relapsing.
Also came here to say congrats on the new Jesse AI bot. Amazing.
Also, the recent negative feedback for BARpod from the right might stem in part more from pod's tone/emotion than its content for the first few episodes of this new administration.
A "chaos agent"? So, basically someone who saw The Dark Knight as a teenager and is in a state of arrested development. In other words, Katie, not so much a "nihilist" as a fucking dork.
Great episode! Not usually a big fan of the guest eps but Isaac is great, appreciating the introduction to Tangle. Also, he sounds like an alternate version of Jesse where Jesse is super stoned and, like, just chill.
This guy's voice sounds like a different, cooler version of Jesse's and it is kind of turning me on.
The guy in question liked this comment. 🫣
The issue with Khalil is that that Trump is obviously breaking the law and abusing rules. At the same time Khalil should never have been a candidate for a green card.
Immigrant from a poor country who works hard enough to get into Columbia isn't someone we'd want?
He was accepted before the October attacks in Israel---no one could have known that he'd be protesting. So basically, since we can't tell the future and couldn't know he was going to be a protestor, we should not want him just because he's of Palestinian descent and likely to advocate for his countrymen?
"advocate for his countrymen" is one way to put it.
The reason Trump has the support of the population to do the former is because the latter is the status quo with immigration and has been for quite a while. The advocacy groups have completely broken our system and made it badly at odds with the population's desires.
It is literally probably like the main thing his voters want him to do, show human trash like this the door. He doesn't like it here, great, goodbye!
Would you be saying the same thing if this guy happened to share *your* politics? I think it’s strange that no one will answer this question.
And was a permanent resident? Sure, I don’t have much care for the “rights” of permanent residents as regards staying here. They are on probation.
I guess this is at least consistent if stupid. Why bother letting in anyone at all? Genuinely, why fucking bother at this point? This country fucking sucks with trump in charge. I’m thinking of leaving.
Ciao?
Yep. It’s clear the disdain these people have for immigrants when holding this stance. I am an American citizen who is living in the UK on a visa. I would be (and I assume most British would be) horrified if I was deported for being anti Brexit and attending protests where a huge number of natural citizens hold the same opinion. Being a free speech enthusiast and wanting to only allow citizens in who think exactly like you is such a messed up world view, it’s difficult to even understand.
As a Brit, if you were protesting for the IRA (a much more apposite example than Brexit), I'd be very happy to pack your bags for you. Show some respect for your host country!
That was definitely not my example. And it also doesn’t at all align with what’s happening in the U.S. regarding deportation. So really poor point made there..I’m very glad you’re not in charge of immigration in the UK! I thankfully know a whole lot of Brits who oppose your views. And you know nothing about me or my situation so please don’t tell me how to feel about the UK.
I was not the founder of the /r/PhilosophyOfRape subreddit. That's a piece of false Reddit slander that I've refuted many, many times. I have stated repeatedly that that was not me. The claim that I was /u/PhilosophyOfRape was even removed from the Wikipedia page about me because it's not true. I made it explicitly clear in my first public statement, because that was something that Redditors were trying to slander me with: https://medium.com/@MoonMetropolis/first-public-statement-from-joshua-goldberg-8bb061aa56a0
From the public statement:
The Reddit hivemind is extremely predictable and extremely easy to manipulate. I had 27 different Reddit accounts that I remember (and I won’t say what they are because I want to keep Reddit neckbeards guessing), but some of the Reddit accounts that have been attributed to me were not, in fact, me. I was not /u/Jewish_Neocon and I was not /u/PhilosophyOfRape either. While I briefly had European88 latch onto the whole “Philosophy of Rape” thing in order to establish him as the most vile and despicable neo-Nazi on the internet (and, of course, to drum up outrage), that was the full extent of my involvement (the alt-right constantly spews vitriol about the evils of pure white women being raped and defiled by filthy shitskins, yet they themselves tend to view rape as a suitable punishment for those winsome trollops gallivanting about in wanton licentiousness). I had nothing to do with the original /r/PhilosophyOfRape subreddit. I had spoken to /u/PhilosophyOfRape a few times (as European88) and he really came across like a genuine rapist who sincerely believed his sick ideology, rather than just a juvenile troll merely trying to get a rise out of people. Rest assured that I am not now, nor have I ever been (and nor will I ever be) a rapist. Troll, yes. Rapist, no. Of all of the bottom-feeding plankton that I am surrounded by in prison, the sexual predators are the ones that I despise the most.
EDIT: Thank you for removing it. I legitimately felt a rush of anxiety when I heard you say that, because that particular piece of defamation is, in my view, even worse than the narrative of me being a jihadist wannabe. There is absolutely nobody in the world who I hate more than sexual predators.
My next Substack article is going to be one exposing a prominent rDrama user (and former site administrator) as a pedophile and highly prolific Discord sextortionist.
For those who are curious about my story, here's an interview of me that was conducted from prison over the prison telephones by someone who had formerly been on the unit with me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giSwdghV-PU
I miss your autistic longposts on the gay cat site. Man that place is boring now.
I don't mean to offend you unnecessarily, but I was hoping this episode would be about Ken M, the internet's greatest troll.