What on Earth is going on in the world today? It's gone mad

[Kieran]

I wholeheartedly agree. I would go a bit further in expanding the problem. On the right they tend to focus on platforming the conspiracy theorists because they have an anti-establishment bias. The tendency is to believe the Establishment is the "Deep State" and thus anything coming from it is fruit of the poisoned tree. It's dangerous and irresponsible for people like Joe to participate without trying to achieve an apolitical balance.

That’s it! We see this in all the covid conspiracies, there had to be some vast underground network of super villains prospering and steering the game to their benefit. A friend of the missus insisted without nary an ounce of shame or wit that Jewish banks were controlling everything, including every other bank in the world, since according to her, the Jews owned all banks.

Incoherent bigoted hack work - because the truth surely couldn’t be more simple than that.

Or, more simplistic.

BUT... in my view what's going on, largely on the left, but even on the centre right is actually more dangerous. There is an orthodoxy that is largely unquestioned that is doing tremendous societal harm. It's the phenomenon where so called marginalised groups can be openly biased or hateful to majority groups with no consequence. We see this in so many ways now. Here are a few examples...

• there are multiple cases of immigrants committing heinous crimes like violent rape in the UK and the courts have felt it unnecessary to punish them with custodial sentences. Yet on the other hand citizens who voice dissatisfaction with what immigrants have actually done have been jailed. Make that make sense

• Or I can bring up TikTok, where women are allowed to say horrific things about men, like wishing they didn't exist, or they're evil or stupid, with no consequence. But yet if a man even suggests that a woman is overweight or ugly on the same platform they can get demonitised. Again.. make it make sense

I could go on. But you get the point. I hate to be that guy, but there are problems on both sides. I bring this up, not as a defence for the conspiracy theorists, I find them frustrating to be honest. But we can't take our eyes off the ball. While I see harm from the conspiracy theorist, probably most seriously when it comes to the real world implications of refusals to vaccinate. There are profound implications to the cancel culture and social destruction we see on the other side. It's actively harming the productivity of companies now, where workplaces more concerned about protecting feelings than ensuring productivity its maintained. Where universities no longer have the courage to foster innovation, rather to focus on protecting feelings and stifling real debate. Thankfully I think that the virus is probably playing itself out in Hollywood now. Money talks. Snow White is the perfect example of how badly out of sync these folks are!

This is sickening. And so much of it went mainstream. It’s why the left are unelectable, in my opinion. They invent things, the sole aim of which appears to be to destroy.

As for Joe Rogan and his guests, after an initially favourable reaction to his Murray episode, more time is being spent wondering if Douglas Murray wasn’t actually onto something, with his “intervention”, and that comedians and historians-without-proper-footnotes actually need to apply more rigour and soundness to their arguments - and so do we when we hear them..