Castle Magus

"Hi. Elon Musk says that empathy is 'the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.' In this episode, we look at why the right hates empathy and how they're trying to get more Americans to approve of their antisocial behavior."

---

The theme of this episode seems to be "no hyperbole here."

Two things about this video.

First, this is one of the best "real life is strangerway more fucked up and broken than fiction" views of current American RWNJ politics I've seen in a long while.

Second, this is one of the best "pulling back to look at the bigger picture" views of current American RWNJ politics I've seen in a good long while. Like a photomosaic, in a way.

Just... example after example after example after example of MAGAts and Trumpanzees and Trumps going so far beyond the pale in their... well... to call it "cartoonish evil" is an unfair insult to cartoons... so... asinine dumbfuckery that they've circled the Earth (like Superman), with all those examples serving to paint the overall picture that it's not just that RWNJs don't fucking care at all anymore about how literally evil they are, it's also a calculated ploy on their part to normalize their evil. And it seems to be working on far too many people (and this is one of those "more than zero is far too many" situations).

But but but... if you dare to bow up and express the least, tiniest bit of "cruelty" back at them in response to their vileness, they shrivel up like prunes, whinge about "lack of empathy," and run away. Something something hypocritcal piss babies.

"If you're wondering how the German people were able to ignore the atrocities around them, this is how. And now, it's happening in real time here."

(Yeah, I didn't "live-post" during watching this episode. I just watched it and then wrote the above. And please, Some More News, don't make me have to create a specific "gutfeld" tag. I really, really don't want to do it.)

I don't have a "joe rogan" tag... hmm... not sure if even this 1:18:01 episode of Some More News that is explicitly about Joe Rogan is enough for me to bother creating a "joe rogan" tag. I mean, sure I could just plop "joe rogan" down there in the tags list and then have a "joe rogan" tag for the future, in the unlikely off-chance that I ever mention him again, but he's absolutely not worth the effort of finding and back-tagging the very rare few posts from the past in which I may have mentioned the asshat. Eh... okay, I guess I'll throw a new "joe rogan" tag on this post, for what tiny bit that is worth (even just to me, let alone anyone else).

Also, disclaimer: I have never seen anything of Joe Rogan's show myself, other than a few short clips here and there over the years of him saying stupid shit.

Anyway, on with watching the video at 2x playback speed...

...

...all right, not even five minutes in, and there's some transphobia. Off to a good start.

---

Side bar: "Walmart fires 6'4" cisgender woman threatened by man who thought she was trans"

Wow. So, basically, a man came into a women's bathroom at a Walmart to harass and threaten a cisgender woman, who worked at that Walmart, because he wrongly, stupidly thought she was transgender merely because she happened to be tall, and then the woman was fired from her job at that Walmart after she reported the incident. (Ostensibly because she rEpOrTeD iT tO tHe WrOnG tYpE oF mAnAgEr... what the actual fuck ...so, then, why was the manager she did report it to not also fired for not reporting it up the chain to the, supposedly, "correct" type of manager? Probably because said manager wasn't a tall woman who "looked trans.")

And, of course, this fucking happened in goddamned Florida. That tracks.

---

And now, onto the COVID disinformation part of the show...

Ah, and there's the racism... hmm, turns out Joe Rogan apparently had very different views back in 2019 or whenever, compared to now...? Gee, I wonder why? Oh, right, it's because of the Trump stuff.

And here comes the Trump-specific stuff (though that's really been an undercurrent of the entire video all along)... Joe Rogan before: "The morons had a king." Joe Rogan now: "He's real." Also, it does indeed seem really weird that Joe Rogan, who apparently hates everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, had Donald Trump, someone who really appears to have been a close, personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as a guest on his show, and apparently never once mentioned Jeffrey Epstein. Go figure.

Joe Rogan didn't like Tim Walz, because Tim Walz was, supposedly, "a liar." Therefore, all in for Trump I guess????? The guy who has spouted literally multiple tens of thousands of documented lies over the past decade????? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Elon Musk? A genius? The smartest person alive? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Trump is "an outsider" and "anti-establishment" in the same way that GamerGate was "actually about ethics in video game journalism." Joe Rogan, by supporting Trump, is also no longer "anti-establishment," because Trump, like it or not, is the fucking, goddamned "establishment" now. Thanks, in part, to Joe Rogan, specifically.

Ah, and there comes the anti-abortion sentiment and the homophobia, too. Keep 'em comin', Joe. They're all just beach ball issues with no actual substance or value, amirite? *eye roll*

I'm on the tail end of Gen X, having been born in 1979 (Google/Wikipedia says Gen X was from "1965 to 1980"), and believe you me, I have absolutely not undergone a "right-wing turn." Maybe I'm just an aberration, though. *shrug*

Oh, and we're even getting just a smidge of antisemitism up in here (along with some Nazi propaganda/Hitler apologia), too. The hits just keep on comin', Joe.

So, in conclusion, while Joe Rogan isn't the absolutely worst grifter/con-man/right wing dumbshit that Some More News has done a video about, he's also obviously not the greatest dude in the world, either. I don't know... maybe Joe Rogan could be one of the rare few Trumpanzees that potentially could be shamed into changing his ways by being called a hypocrite, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. In any case, this video has not convinced me to suddenly start watching the 6000+ hours of The Joe Rogan Experience or whatever the fuck.

(They didn't manage to get through this video without at least some dumb skits involving Katy and Warmbo. Short as they were, they were still present. *sigh*)

"Hi. Donald Trump's relentless executive orders and illegal slashing of federal funding are already hurting Americans, including his own voters."

---

No Warmbo, no finger puppets, no "evil Katy jumping in via a video call" or whatever, no corn slop dripping from the ceiling, no time travel, no multiple versions of Cody, none of that shit in this video. Just Cody Johnston sitting in front of a camera for an hour and twenty minutes (minus however much time the ad breaks wasted, since I skipped past those, as I always do). The only "bit" in this video was Cody refraining from saying any swear words at all, until the final minute or two of the video.

I wish all SMN videos were like this. (Aside from, perhaps, the no swearing thing, because as he proved by almost breaking that no-swear rule at several points during the video, a lot of the goddamned fucking dumbshit that Trump and Elon and their criminal co-conspirators are currently doing can only be adequately described with the involvement of intense profanity.)

(EDIT) Oh, right, I didn't note it at the time as I was watching the video, but JD Vance was apparently a person who benefited from DEI. How about that. (And, no, that wasn't a JD Vance/Peter Thiel joke.) (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) Just a reminder that, seriously, Trump has not been in office for even a full fucking month yet. (/EDIT 2)

"Hi. Right-wing politicians, lawyers, and grifters (and some liberals) want to convince you that trans youth are the victims of a social contagion and that the majority of those who transition will detransition. This is a lie that puts all trans people at risk."

---

Are you a woman who, as a child, played soccer or climbed a tree, or are you a man who, as a child, might have touched a Barbie doll once or twice, but now that you are an adult, you don't do those things anymore? Well then, congratulations on detransitioning, I guess. </sarcasm>

Anyway, I think David Lynch said it best when it comes to anti-trans "clown comics": they need to fix their hearts or die. (Yes, that was David Duchovny reprising his earlier, pre-Fox Mulder role as Denise Bryson in a brief cameo for season 3 of Twin Peaks. Granted, the character of Denise Bryson may not have been the perfect representation of a trans person, and not just because she was played by a non-trans actor. But for 1990? It was still pretty damn good, and way ahead of its time.)

Good on Costco.

All the other companies mentioned in this article that have abandoned DEI in the face of MAGAt bullying are sucky cowards, and the MAGAt bullies harassing them suck even more shit. To hell with all these clownshoes "conservative think tanks" ("conservative think" is an oxymoron if ever I heard one) trying to gaslight companies into believing that they're "illegally discriminating" against "white, Asian, male, or straight" people. How ludicrous.

"Hi. Well, we're doing this again.... I guess. So, let's ask the tough question: are Americans just plain stupid for electing Donald Trump?"

---

The gist of the above video:

1. Voters in general = ignorant and gullible and inattentive and very checked out of politics on the whole (because politics, granted, is indeed very fucking banal and insane and enraging), but not necessarily full on stupid, and as such it almost, almost makes sense that more of them voted for the loud, obnoxious, brazen liar/con man/criminal who claims he very definitely has real, true, totally legitimate plans to Fix Everything™ instead of for the establishment bozos who appeared (to ignorant, gullible, inattentive, very checked out eyes) to have been, at best, keeping everything bad or, at worst, actively making everything worse, in large part because the loud, obnoxious, brazen liar/con man/criminal repeatedly, incessantly said they were.
2. Democrats (specifically Democratic politicians) = very definitely stupid, for myriad reasons.
3. Liberals (extended from Democrats and distinct from progressives [and mainly referring to vapid talking heads on the ol' boob tube and the not so ol' social media]) = apparently secretly racist, sexist, transphobic, MAGA-lite shitbags all along, who don't have a clue what they're talking about, because now they're apparently trying to blame "special interest groups" (like, you know, immigrants and trans people and Palestinians) instead of their namby pamby, wishy washy, milquetoast, "trying to please everybody but actually pleasing nobody" candidates (e.g. Biden and Harris, see point #2), even though said politicians didn't even really do all the "bad" stuff that the pundits are claiming cost them the election (e.g. "bad" stuff like "caring too much about" immigrants and trans people and Palestinians). Let's just say pants-on-head stupid and leave it at that, I guess.
4. Republicans (specifically, the vile, self-centered, hypocritical asshats who knew and continue to know that Trump is eminently terrible and have explicitly said so in the past, but who now pretend to adore the taste of Trumpian dingleberries) = vile, self-centered, hypocritical asshats who slurp the shit on Trump's ass hair either out of cowardly fear of reprisal, out of the hope that Trump can directly benefit them at the expense of everyone else, and/or out of petty, hateful revenge for racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc. very stupid reasons.
5. Some More News (both the creators and the fans of the show): could and should and need to do better.
6. In conclusion: We, all of us, even those who voted for Trump, are almost assuredly about to be properly super fucked by Trump and his incoming administration of utter clowns (with apologies to clowns for the unfair comparison), and we need to be prepared for the consequences of that, despite the fact that this is a thing that was easily predicted and long foreshadowed due to the very words that have come out of the face-anuses of Donald Trump and those who disingenuously support Donald Trump. We're all in this together, whether we like it or not.

Unless things miraculously swerve somehow between now and when the fuck ever I happen to lurch out of bed tomorrowlater today, it looks like the United States has probably collectively brainsharted, yet again, and elected a brainshart-in-human-shape, yet the fuck again.
Fuck Donald Trump.

I will not stop saying that just because he has, somehow, almost assuredly become the goddamned President of the fucking United States of shitsucking America yet again, no more than I stopped saying it after the last time this living nightmare came to pass. The "bitter, unvarnished rage" I felt back then pales to that which I feel now, because we should have known better this time. (Too few, apparently, of us did and do know better, for what fucking good that has done.) He belongs in a prison cell or a fucking grave, not in the goddamned White House again. So yeah, fuck Donald Trump to hell forever.

Also, keep in mind, if Trump does somehow fail to make it through the next four years, JD Vance becomes President.

Oh, and the GQP have apparently also taken the entire Congress, both House and Senate, now. That, combined with the SCOTUS already having been stacked by Trump with dumbfucking assholes, along with the fact that Trump will likely get to appoint even more dumbfucking assholes to it, well, just goes to show that this country is utterly fucked up broken now, possibly irreparably.

As for the rest of the world... let's see... well, Ukraine is proper fucked now. I'm sure Putin is tickled pink, now that his puppet is back in power again. And anyone who has a problem with the way Israel is doing business in that part of the world is in for an even bigger world of hurt now than they already were. No telling what other fresh hell will come about as a result of Trump being POTUS again, either here or abroad. The dumbass is nothing if not unpredictable.

I guess the very thinnest silver lining to this is that this is the last time Trump can ever be President. You know, unless he wrecks the government so horribly to the point that the GQP becomes able to install him as dictator for the (hopefully very short) rest of his life. It's not like he hasn't floated the idea of being more than a two-term POTUS before, after all. You know, assuming he doesn't end up killing us all in a nuclear hellfire. That's still a very much not insignificant possibility, too, after all. "Destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion," and all that shit, perhaps literally.

So yeah. Pleasant dreams, everyone, for the next four years of utter hell on Earth. Oh, and 2024-2028-plus are going to be far worse than even 2016-2020 were, of that I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever. After all, there were at least a few guardrails in place back then to prevent Trump from just doing whatever the fuck he wanted. Not so much the case, this time. Trump and his army of lickspittles made sure of that.

(Speaking very selfishly here, I guess I can say, for once, that I'm glad I'm a cishet white male, because things are probably going to be very, very shitty for anyone who is not that for the next four years. But, then again, I also am neither obscenely rich nor a [hypocritical or otherwise] Christian, so... *shrug*

Well, no matter. Things are going to be shitty for everyone, even those who stupidly think that SCROTUS IMPOTUS Trump II was a wonderful idea. I just hope they live to regret it.)

"Conservatives thought they saw a sacrilegious mockery of the Last Supper. But that's not what it was about at all."

Here's another thing to consider, beyond what that article talks about: how do we know that the so-called Last Supper itself (as depicted by Da Vinci or otherwise) actually wasn't a bacchanal to begin with? It certainly wouldn't be the first time a pagan practice has been (mis)appropriated by Christianity, after all. Like how Christmas was originally Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (see also: Saturnalia). Christians just took that and replaced Sol Invictus with Jesus Christ. Oh, and let's not forget the old Norse ritual of Yule, and how the Christians just took that and replaced Odin with Santa ClausJesus Christ (and rolled it up together with Christmas). Like how Easter was originally all about the goddess Ēostre (or, alternatively, Astarte/Ishtar, depending on who you talk to, though this seems to have been discredited now). Christians just took that and replaced Ēostre with the Easter BunnyJesus Christ. And so on and so forth. There's a whole lot of pagan shit into which Christians have merely shoehorned Jesus Christ, with varying degrees of success. It's all pretty easy to Google, as a starting point. So, yeah, how do we know that the story/concept of the "Last Supper" isn't a similarly co-opted-from-paganism kind of thing as well? All we (ostensibly) know as "fact" is that Jesus supposedly had a final meal with his disciples. How do we know for certain (assuming that this "fact" of the Last Supper is actually true at all) that they didn't actually have a big ol' freaky party as well? *shrug* As far as the "myth" of it goes, maybe Biblical writers just later took the idea of the bacchanal and replaced Bacchus/Dionysus with Jesus Christ, in this case (and "toned it down" as necessary), same as with all that other pagan stuff that was incorporated into Christianity. (And besides, while I'm on the subject, Bacchus/Dionysus was depicted as turning water into wine long before copycat Jesus ever came along, after all. And that's not the only thing that Jesus blatantly copied from Dionysus [and many others], either.)

In any case, even ignoring all of the above, why the fuck would Christians watching the Olympics in 2024 see a bacchanal and immediately go "That's the Last Supper!" anyway? I mean, sure, I can easily see them getting their undies bunched up over the bacchanal, because, y'know, it's a bacchanal, but the near instant association of it with the Last Supper? What.

My take on all this Olympics bacchanal/Last Supper shit, just in general, is this: fuck Christianity, same as always (I had originally [before pre-post editing] just written "fuck religion" there, but this is some Christian-specific bullshit). Or, at the very least, fuck all the dumbshit parts of Christianity which empower Christians with the asinine self-entitlement to feel extremely pissy over stupid, trivial, petty shit, such as belligerently confusing this 2024 Olympics opening ceremony bacchanal thing with their precious fucking Last goddamned Supper or whatever. Not to mention their asininely self-entitled, extreme pissiness over all of the not stupid, not trivial, not petty things that they love to get extremely pissy about. Like, say, the very existence of LGBT people. Or like, say, a woman's right to do whatever the hell she wants with her own body. Or like, say, the fact that roughly two-thirds of the country thinks that their chosen God King (i.e. Donald Trump[1]) is actually a fetid brick of criminal shit, who knows only a single thing about the Bible, which is that he can hold it up like a talisman and apparently magic too many Christians into just instantaneously falling in line with his deceitful dogshit, the same way people hold up crucifixes to ward off vampires, (And, I mean, if God was actually real and the Bible actually was imbued with His essence or whatever, it would almost assuredly cause Donald Trump to instantly be struck by lightning and spontaneously combust and probably turned into a pillar of salt or whatever the fuck, if he ever so much as came within ten feet of a Bible.)

For that matter, I'm somewhat surprised that Christians don't get way more pissy about the Olympics, just in general. After all, it's right there in the fucking name. Olympics. As in, you know, the Olympian gods, like Zeus? There isn't a damn thing that is Christian about the Olympics and how they originally came to be.

(Also, apparently, depicting a fucking bacchanal, of all things, is yet another thing that is "woke" now? Go fucking figure. "Woke" absolutely is utterly fucking meaningless now.)

[1] - Who, by the way, also felt the need to spew some diarrhea out of his puckered face-anus about the Olympics opening ceremony, because of course he did. *eye roll*

I love how invigorated Woolie invariably gets via mocking banal dumbfuckery like this. That said, they don't even explain what they're talking about until almost 9 minutes into this 10 minute long video.

Also, it is almost kind of amazing just how quectoscopic the amount of shit is that I give about this Stellar Blade game, outside of vague, morbid interest in stuff that mocks its ridiculous, wrathful, incel, coomer, Irredeemably Toxic Shithole fanbase, ever since I first learned of its existence. The fact that so many people are choosing this particular game as the hill on which to die in this ludicrous anti-"woke" culture war that they're fighting, about which normal-ass people give barely a single solitary fuck, outside of the "gruesome train wreck, can't look away" factor, is just peak 4chan-esque Internet.

I mean, it's like... actual porn/hentai games exist, my dudes. They're right there, easily accessible. (Hell, just sign up for GOG's newsletter if you want to get emails full of it at least once a month or so, or just go through a Discovery Queue on Steam if you want to see it almost every other Queue or so [and that's with the publishers that release such games set as Ignored].) What's the big deal? Why is this particular game so vitally important, apparently? Why is the fact that the devs of this game added lace to one of the costumes or some shit like that basically The End of Free Expression As We Know It™?

(EDIT) And man, oh man, did they stir up a hornet's nest of ridiculous, wrathful, incel, coomer, Irredeemably Toxic Shithole fanboys in the comments under that clip, too. (EDIT 4) No, wait, apparently, I should've said "gooner," not "coomer." I had to look up what the fuck "gooner" even means because of this fucking video. Apparently a "gooner" is almost the exact same thing as a "coomer," except that it just takes longer. *eye roll + smdh + weary sigh + facepalm* (/EDIT 4) (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2)

This is what they're talking about in this video.

( A bunch of blockquotes behind cut )

All that, because the devs decided to add a few inches to one (1) costume, in a game where even skimpier, unaltered costumes apparently still exist.

Just... even is the thing that I can't, right now.

(/EDIT 2)

(EDIT 3)

Oh, and this game is apparently what Woolie was talking about with the JRPG with two anime characters and a black girl on the cover art and the black girl is circled angrily thing. Apparently, some racist chode somewhere once again despised the fact that a black character existed in a vidya gaem.

*drops down and adds the "racism" tag to this post as well, because I forgot it before*

And yeah, FOXDEI is pretty fucking strong. It almost killed Woolie.

(/EDIT 3)

I'm currently sitting in JDK Automotive, because my sister asked me to bring her Rav4 down here for an oil change and tire check. They have a TV up on the wall in the corner blasting Faux Noise at high volume. Right now, they're doing a segment on "tHe TrAnSgEnDeRs" and about how "wOmEn'S sPoRtS aRe RuInEd FoReVeR bEcAuSe Of ThE tRaNsGeNdErs." Oh, it just went to a commercial with a campaign ad of some dipshit blathering about "wOkE pOlItIcS." It is... decidedly unpleasant, to say the very least.

While I could just, like, go outside or something, I'm kind of morbidly curious to see just how ludicrously terribad it can get.

(EDIT)

Oh goody, their main story is apparently about "tHe BoRdEr CrIsIs" and how "bIdEn Is DoInG nOtHiNg." But then, in the very next breath, they started talking about the bipartisan border control bill that the Trumpanzees in Congress just killed because their God Emperor Trump commanded them to kill it, since Trump would rather have "ThE bOrDeR" as a talking point, instead of actually fix anything (or, at least, let it be even partially fixed without sticking his own tiny, piggy fingers into the pie and poisoning the whole goddamned thing for everyone involved).

Basically, so far, the main thrust of the Faux Noise "discussion" has been "drug cartel gang murderer rapists are flooding into this country in droves and BIDEN IS DOING NOTHING!!!!!!11!!"

Seriously, it's like a window into... well, I'd say "Bizarro World," but I don't want to libel Bizarro, his planet, or DC Comics.

...

...

Oh fucking Jesus... some ancient dude (who apparently works here) just came in the door, glanced at the TV, and immediately launched into a tirade with the guy at the desk about "tHe IlLeGaLs." And the desk guy is ranting about all the "iNnOcEnT pEoPlE bEiNg PeRsEcUtEd" who were at the capital on Jan 6. Both of them are going on and on about how "the world has gone to hell" or how "I don't know what to tell my kids and grandkids about their future" and other such loony, melodramatic asininity. The ominous phrase "I'll tell you one thing, a lot of 'em have guns" was said. I am embarrassed to even be in the same room with these fuckwits.

Car stuff is done, so I'm stopping for now.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2, 5:02pm)

Okay, back home now. Don't really have too much to add to the above though, aside from a bit of editing/fixing stuff, because I wrote all of the above on my phone (well, aside from whatever I end up adding/editing, here and now). One thing else I remember was that the Faux Noise dumbfuck talking heads discussing the Trumpanzee killing of the border control bill were trying to frame it as "tHeY kIlLeD iT bEcAuSe It DiDn'T gO fAr EnOuGh To CuRb BiDeN's EvIl OpEn BoRdEr PoLiCy" or some such astounding buffoonery, rather than the truth, which was that they killed it because Dumbshit Jackass Trump ordered them to kill it, no more and no less.

I guess the point of all this is to just remember... this... all of the dumbfuckery described above... this is the diseased, malformed, hateful mindset of at least a third of the entire fucking country right now, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of dishonest horseshit like Faux Noise here and their equally disinformational contemporaries over the past several decades. It's abjectly fucked up, and I just don't know what can be done to fix the problem. I mean, besides the obvious solution that I've already talked about before, of course. Even if that solution would be nigh impossible to ever actually implement. (EDIT 3) And even if it somehow were successfully implemented, that wouldn't magically make the wrong-headed, dipshit one-third or more of the country suddenly become not that. (/EDIT 3)

(/EDIT 2)