Jimmy Dore vs. Cenk Uygur: the Unfappening of Left Wing Media.

life is full of tough decisions
but we mostly talk about the decisions that we quite intentionally and consciously make and they're the decisions that reflect attitudes and assumptions that are deep seated or at least overly familiar or we're not even aware in that moment that we're making a decision at all that there were other options or that there's even an ethical component to what we're doing that it's even questionable that what we're doing is wrong when i look at a guy like jank wieger of the young turks i see someone who's actually quite committed to his own moral code to his own idea of what's right and what's wrong politically in other words but i see someone who every day wakes up picks up a newspaper takes a cursory glance at the headlines in the new york times and other mainstream newspapers and then puts together a story puts together talking points puts together an opinion piece and comes on camera and performs you know without doing any research without any self-doubt without stopping and wondering if he really knows what he's talking about if he really has something valuable to share with the audience and without thinking about the consequences for what's going to happen if he's if he's wrong you know like there are problems here of journalistic integrity that in his mind do not even arise because in that moment what he's doing he's laying hands on a newspaper he's laying eyes on the headline and he thinks i have something to say about that and he feels that he knows better than the authors of the new york times that he feels better than the people who wrote that article i'm sorry again and again and again day after day after day is it you know he's uploaded thousands and thousands of episodes and he never has that moment of danger or self-doubt of wondering what if i'm wrong what if this newspaper article is wrong what if i don't really know and what if the author i'm relying on or the two or three sources if he compares the washington post to the new york times one of them really don't know the answer this question what if they're not asking the right questions at all so these are these are partly questions about journalism journalistic integrity and ethics and these are partly questions about the meaning of life of how to lead a meaningful life of what it means to be a person with real integrity shout out to everyone in the audience we did take one in this video not a single person complained that the wrong microphone was plugged into the computer this this one was plugged in but there was another microphone plugged in by bluetooth that we didn't even know about and the computer unseen to us was using the wrong microphone so guys if this is the correct memory you should hear a click when i do this so can you confirm for me did you hear the click there when i touched the microphone i i don't think this time anything could possibly go wrong you should be getting me and very high quality audio coming through come through the correct okay but i'm committed i have my own sense of personal integrity i have my own moral code that i'm gonna come on and do take two i'm gonna talk through this issue again and the first take was an hour and a half and this time we're gonna do it in like 15 minutes i bet it's going to be more coherent it's going to be more cogent it's going to be more to the point and it's going to be just as profound and i'm just as happy to talk to you guys in the audience about anything you want to ask if you want to distract me all right so and look i'll tell you something else too i think it's going to be just as spontaneous because i really care about this stuff all right and that's part of the problem with change weaker that's part of what we're going to talk about here is authenticity and what what authenticity means in year 2021 i never like to begin these videos by summarizing the story because very often the summary of the story is the exact opposite of the story it's wildly unrelated to what it is i want to say about it what what the issues are i want to deal with politically philosophically personally or otherwise okay but the story today case you're watching this five years from now i'm certain five years from now nobody will remember this as with all of the most profound and pressing news of our times this story began on twitter this story began with people saying mean things to each other on twitter and it just became so important that it had to break into the headlines of mainstream media accusations counter accusations and debunking and facts some pretty fundamental and important questions about what it means to be a journalist and in plain english what it means to be a man have come out of a meaningless conflict between former stand-up comedian jimmy dore who is now primarily a political commentator and former lawyer former candidate running for elected office jank wieger and his co-host anna casparian the young turks created jimmy dore i mean yes jimmy dore existed as a stand-up community before this but jimmy dore's whole career as a left-wing demagogue as a political commentator the fame he has now on youtube his career as we now know it was created by the young turks jank wieger and jimmy dore used to be close personal friends and i have seen and i have heard jank and jimmy door sitting and commiserating and [ __ ] asking questions about jimmy dore's sex life and jimmy dore speaking in a very honest and very vulgar way about his whole history of cocaine and alcohol and nightclubs and stand-up comedy and sleeping with enormous numbers of women and i've heard jank say not just that he admires jimmy dore for having lived this life but that he's jealous that he's envious that he wishes he could live jimmy dore's life or that his youth could have been like uh jimmy dore's youth well um and i've seen how the dynamic of their friendship changed i've seen how their friendship itself became the news story that they were both covering and today the enmity between the two is very much a major news story as i say erupting from the pages of twitter all right now we live through a period of time when people need heroes like any other all right they look around people like alexandria ocasio-cortez they look around at people like jank weaker and jimmy dore and they see paragons of virtue and they see people look let's be real here let's be real here it's their very honesty that makes them seem so virtuous and that brings people in the audience into their orbit in a way that none of us relate to the news announcer on cnn you know yes there's something about the combination of hard-hitting left-wing moral judgment that jank weaker offers being and anna kasparian too they both do the same act being combined with the brute sensuality of hearing this guy talk about gambling and going to las vegas and how he spends money and how he eats pastrami sandwiches i don't even know the names of these sandwiches what is it phil new york philly cheesesteak philly subs philly cheesesteaks i don't i'm vegan i don't know any stuff all right hearing him talk with such passion about the food that's killing him you know what i mean hearing him talk about his sex life and his drug life and his gambling life that kind of immediacy and honesty which is lacking in cnn and frankly like it's lacking for most rock stars or something you don't really know you know you you don't really know britney spears like that you know what i mean you don't hear britney spears talking about the pastrami sandwich shade for lunch and you don't hear britney spears talking about some guy some some person she had sex with that she met in a an elevator or in las vegas and how she picked up on people you don't you don't hear that okay with these people jank wieger jimmy dore anna kasperian you have this strange and disarming immediacy can we say disarming or you know you have the immediacy of their their seemingly you know reckless honesty that they have the self-confidence to come on and talk about these personal things and and joke about their personal feelings talk about their lives and then the other hand you have this austere moral judgment because that's what they're doing all the time all right they don't do research they don't do investigation they don't do reporting most of what they do is sit back and pass judgment on others whether that is jank wieger reading the newspaper and passing judgment telling you how wrong the new york times is about everything or if it's jimmy dore sitting very frequently he's sitting and reading people's remarks on twitter and then he's going to tell you you know how how wrong they are okay um i've got to say this i do have some respect for jack weaker some jank wieger is not a person lacking in intelligence he's not a person lacking in a sense of moral purpose he has a kind of grand moral cause that he's deeply committed to you know um [Music] trying to get money out of politics he's an anti-corruption activist trying to get reforms to the way american elections work the way american congresses and senates work and so on you know to some extent trying to change the court system there is a sense in which he can be regarded as a person of intelligence integrity sometimes right not all the time the problem is that he's so inconsistent right the problem is that he's got morality when it's convenient for him and the rest of the time you know he's this totally a moral slob now the details of the current controversy are the least interesting part of this to me as i've already warned um you know when it suits jank wieger to pretend to be quite puritanical and say that he would never look up a woman's skirt and make a joke about it that's his act and he uses this frankly as a political bludgeon to try to denounce and defame and destroy jimmy dore formerly his close friend and political colleague now his enemy for no good reason no reason there's no reason to do enemies and then jimmy dore is able to go through the video archives and show evidence of jank weaker sitting down and doing exactly that and not just once where again and again and again he had an act he did on video on youtube and on what used to be his uh you know digital radio show where they would show a picture of a woman getting out of a car in a short skirt where you could see your vagina where you could look up her skirt and where he's making the most crude and vulgar jokes about this now i think that one of the most incisive honest realistic things that jimmy dore said in his defense of himself and his offense against chiang weaker was to say that when jank started playing this game he was playing by the same rules as what are called shock jock radio talk show hosts right that he was someone who's coming out trying to be as offensive as possible and as vulgar as possible and and have a certain kind of comedy uh woven into his act but today jank weaker is instead trying to be something like alexandria ocasio-cortez and he has been trying to get himself elected he's been trying to step up i think it never occurred to him that vulgar jokes and commentary he offered in the year 2008 would come back to haunt him in this way and would come back to discredit him as a as a political candidate you know um and it does uh i think it's true and fair to say that jank weaker used to be someone living by the same code as uh i don't know what he's supposed to who's the one in new york the howard stern then he was someone living by the same code as howard stern now is that an excuse is that an explanation can you justify someone's immorality irresponsibility stupidity by saying well they play by the same rules as howard stern and if so does that require does that entail that they live by those same rules all the time right we say okay like there's one set of moral rules there's one standard for personal integrity that applies to alexandria cortez and then there's another that applies to howard stern to an entertainer to a comedian and if jake weaker wants to want to play with is that is that how it works is that how we should think about you know uh political commentary or uh american media personalities um from my perspective you know alexander costa cortez in a very serious way discredited herself recently um aoc made up a story again before i was laughing that you know all the political news of our times either begins or ends on twitter this story about alexandria ocasio-cortez begins in the the great pinnix of instagram live the great global parliament where ideas are aired of broadcasting on instagram live she sat down and gave this seemingly spontaneous seemingly not contrived utterly dishonest account of the events that happened on january 6th 2021 the great riot that ended up kicking down the doors of the capitol building so this is in washington dc the american equivalent to what we would call the parliament building that smashed through the glass and injured several people ended up with a few people getting killed she gave this passionate tear-jerking account her being in fear and cowering and her hearing the glass breaking and hearing the hinges and so on and it turned out with the slightest bit of fact she mentions which offices she was in there were other witnesses there were video cameras everywhere the whole story is a lie just look at a map and shadow chart out where she was and where she went to and the only thing we're left wondering is to what extent was this an intentionally contrived lie and to what extent is she's sincerely insane has she just lost her mind and she's not even aware that she's lying to she believe her own uh her own delusions you know um you know my feeling about this my conclusion about this is that being a person of of integrity it's not something you can turn off and on it's not something you have a choice about right being an intellectual is something you're doing all the time being intelligent is something you're doing all the time and you may not enjoy it it may be a burden for you it may make your life miserable right but that if you are a person of real integrity you can never do what alexandria ocasio-cortez did in that instagram live broadcast and you can never live the way jank uyghur did not even for one day not even for one weekend not even just to take a break right and i think the opposite is true also i think people like jank weaker i think they're completely incapable of being a real intellectual of being a person of real integrity right they can't just turn it on for a weekend either now most people want to be like chick weaker most people don't want to be intellectuals most people want to be able to go to las vegas and get drunk and get high and gamble and you know maybe sleep with prostitutes maybe sleep with random strangers like seduce people in a nightclub or in an elevator or whatever it is most people are committed to the same life of brute sensuality and total reckless self intelligence that the jank uighur leads and i think that's why they relate to him i think that's why they like him i think that's why they find it entertaining or affirming or heartwarming or encouraging to listen to him sit there and talk about pastrami sandwiches and the drugs he's done and the women he seduced and the fist fights he's been in i mean he tells all kinds of stories of this about his life and you know my impression is that that whole corpus of literature you know coming from jack wieger is honest but then he tries to turn it off right he tries to turn it on and off when it suits him like when it suits him to try to destroy and discredit jimmy dore all of a sudden you can turn that off and he can be a puritanical left-winger he can be more awake than thou he can be more holy than now that all of a sudden he's going to run for congress he's going to stand for election and you know he thinks he can literally delete the youtube videos and delete the evidence of you know what his act used to be and you know what you can you know you can delete the evidence of who you really are but that still is who you really are you can't delete the person that you've become you can't delete the you know accumulated effects of living that life of what it's made you and the opportunity cost of the person you didn't become you know who you didn't you know build yourself up to be now you know i admit this current clash clash of titans or a clash of midgets however you want to put it between you know jake wieger and jimmy dore it doesn't have the same uh significance as the broader question of really you know the effect of the young turks platform of the young turks you know mo modus operandi of how it is they've profoundly influenced the news they've profoundly influenced the democratic party of the united states they profoundly influenced the career of bernie sanders and of alexandria court is more than anyone else what what they had to do with her rising to fame and rising to power and getting elected in the first place they've already had a tremendous effect on history and we don't know moving ahead uh how much more influence they they might have on history in in the in the years to come right okay but in a very particular sense you know uh journalism real journalism it requires authenticity and it requires a commitment to personal integrity that the young turks utterly lack and even if it's the shallowest thing even if it's the most minuscule thing um the conflict with jimmy dore i think demonstrates that it demonstrates that in a powerful way that's that's easier for people to to apprehend and it's harder for people to see it's harder than to see what's wrong when jack wieger reads a newspaper headline about the central park five and he just gets on the microphone again and again and again anna casparian did this too i made a video with quotes he gets on the microphone again and again again what does he do what does he do he takes what's already there in the mainstream newspaper uh coverage and he just ratchets it up a level he just adds this extra layer of left-wing hysteria left-wing judgment he makes it more woke more left-wing and he never once stops the question do i really know what i'm talking about do i really know what happened did i do the basic fact checking did i look into the police report did i establish the facts of the case or could it be that i'm taking something that's already a lie and i'm just elevating it up to another level of mythology let me just say it doesn't take a genius in that case it doesn't take a genius to figure that out i stayed up all night making my video about that i forget if i went to bed at four o'clock in the morning or what but i did it in one night and it was it was emotional for me i think i i think i think i heard about the central profile when i was a very young teenager i can remember talking about it with one of my first girlfriends i mean a long time ago i first heard about the central park fire it's really and all my life i heard the same [ __ ] about it too right i always heard and this is way before donald trump became a politician but donald trump had made these statements about it and oh don't you know this proves the corruptness and the corruption and racism of the whole justice system i'd heard that i'd i'd in a sense grown up with this legend and no one around me had ever questioned i'd never seen a single newspaper article or heard a single commentator shed any doubt on this whatsoever all right and this hit uh i was gonna say documentary movie comes out but it's not there was a fictional movie loosely inspired by the historical events that came out that suddenly made this uh controversy new again and the guys in question the criminals in question who have been long since released from prison they started going around doing interviews to promote the movie and promote themselves talk about what wonderful people there know and it just occurred to me i just challenged my ears i just stopped and thought do i know what happened how do i know what happened in a split second of course as soon as i wondered as soon as i questioned myself as soon as i had any doubt i realized all i've ever known about this is propaganda i've never read anything i've never heard anything from anyone trying to establish the facts i remember sitting there and thinking no no no no no no it can't be because as soon as i'd even thought that there were so many holes in the story there were so many problems with the narrative right oh but there were multiple witnesses to these young boys in the park throwing stones at people smashing cars there were multiple witnesses of them assaulting and robbing a whole series of pedestrians in the park before the particular rape oh and then this was confirmed by this person this is like even within the narrative that's kind of celebrated by the movie and the stereotypical left wing just stopping to question it for a like well wait a minute there are so many empirically verifiable elements of this story that are wildly incompatible with what [ __ ] wieger and anna conspirion are the young turks are saying about it you know i really it had an emotional impact on me i don't know five minutes later i got the police report the actual there is more than one plus report this was the final big police report this was all the conclusions from the police about exactly what the evidence was who did what who was where what witness gave what statement at what time to who exactly what the police did in the interrogations they'd investigated everything this was the final investigation report about everything that happened and all the misconceptions and what didn't happen and all the facts established the case and i'm sitting there and i'm reading this thing and i'm putting together the video and i'm quoting jankweger and anna and contrasting the mythology they're presenting to these truly incontrovertible facts you know again i stayed up all night doing it can i forget if i went to bed at 2am or 3am or 4am but i stayed up i really stood up very late in the night finishing that video because i knew i didn't want to go to sleep with it you know i didn't want to go to sleep with it half done you know i said no like this is going to completely take over my life you know one until i'm through with it and why why does it mean so much to me so by the way in this case the police did nothing wrong it does has nothing to do with george floyd in the george ford's flood case the police did some things wrong it's no doubt okay but doesn't mean george floyd was an angel doesn't mean george floyd wasn't a drug addict doesn't mean george floyd wasn't a drug deal guess what you know the police killed a man on the sidewalk in broad daylight when there was no need to kill him you know that's fundamentally whether you call it murder or you call it manslaughter you know i have no real opinion on that technicality but you know of course george floyd's tragedy it shows all kinds of things around the places but not the central park five right central park five is is a myth okay why did it why did it mean so much to me i've never lived i've visited new york city new york city means i i'm not even american i'm canadian i'm not involved i'm not invest investing this okay it matters to me because i have a sense of personal integrity all right it means so much to me because i live in a world where people like jack wieger and anna kasparian have real power and real influence and make decisions that have knock-on effects and consequences frankly for millions of people over the past few times that's not overstating and again they created the career of aoc alexander because of courtesy they certainly modified the career of bernie sanders they influenced these things they do influence the politics they report on you know i could dig into all kinds of other examples um they certainly influenced pete butterjudge's uh political career too mayor mayor pete as they call them they on earth they've and they may go on to influence these questions about corruption and government and so on but there's something really deeply wrong with people who can come on the microphone again and again they don't even read a wikipedia article about this stuff they don't think it's true they don't have that moment of doubt even if it is just a fleeting moment of doubt where they ask themselves how do i know this do i really know when i'm what i'm talking about you know and when you challenge yourself to learn something because of course as soon as you realize that you don't know as soon as you question it then there's a question how much work am i willing to do to live up to my own standards and sure it's it's partly my own it's my sense of integrity it's also my my relationship to you people shout out to max shout out to freda show everyone in the audience right right i have a commitment to myself i have a commitment to my audience right what's the standard i'm going to impose i'm going to live up to see i'll say this real briefly but you know sorry i got a stack of very miscellaneous books here but you know um i'm writing a book myself right now and there are there are a whole bunch of topics in this book that come up for just a few sentences or just a few paragraphs but where you know i did like a first draft where i write and like oh here's my snap judgment about the history of corsica and how the history of course goes linked to the french revolution and the american revolution you know and in the first draft it was snappy it was interesting right but i read that and just like asking about the central park five okay but how how do i know what i really know here how do i know this how how what if what i've been reading is also propaganda there's there's still propaganda about the french revolution they're still propaganda with the american revolution the american constitution right all these things like okay well i have my snappy opinion but i don't want to be like jank weaker i don't want to be like anna kasperin i don't want to just glance over the headline in the first few sentences of an article in the new york times and then feel like i'm morally superior to the author and i know better and i'm going to tell you my judgment again when the final book comes out you guys can count how many sentences are there about the history and politics of corsica and it might be like three it might be like three sentences and i can tell you i did a mountain of research i researched the hell out of what happened in coruscant at that time and i researched what the connections were and what they weren't to the french revolution in the american revolution how it matters and how those pieces fit together all right and what what's what what does it matter maybe nobody in the audience cares maybe you know again maybe nobody in the audience cares about what happened with uh you know the central park five you know what i mean right but i i have a commitment i have i'm a person of integrity i'm not going to [ __ ] you and i'm not going to [ __ ] myself if i don't know what really happened i'm not going to make a youtube video about it i'm not going to write a chapter of my book about it right i've got to live up to this standard and there's a real easy way to live up to that standard without doing all the research if you don't want to read a bunch of books about what happened in corsica sorry another example i never i'd never read sallust before i had a couple sentences about the cataline conspiracy sorry i realize the cover is somewhat horrifying i had a couple of senses about the cataline conspiracy and cicero and caesar and what was going on at rome at that time it's like wait a minute i've never read the primary sources on this stuff if i don't actually read you know cicero and salis and appy and if i don't do that i and it doesn't matter it doesn't matter that it's only a few sentences or a few paragraphs in my book it's not a book about corsica it's not a book about ancient rome those things just come up in passing right but i'm never going to be jank weaker hey i can turn it around jenk weaker is never going to be me [Music] um i did a video i i could i could post the link here okay let's let's get her name althea brown uh some of you guys will remember this some of you don't you know i made a video about this case of a young african-american woman who claimed she claimed that while she was driving her car passed a right-wing protest past some kind of neo-nazi protest she claimed that um some men who looked like skinheads or looked like right wingers um leaned through her car window sprayed her with uh lighter fluid and lit her on fire that's what she claimed and jan kweger and the young turks jank wieger and anna kasparian they did exact exactly the same thing they did with every newspaper story with the central park five with something about russia or biden or syria it's like they just look at the headline and then they come on to pronounce to you to explain to you how they're morally superior to the journalists who wrote this article or they tell you what the like ratcheted up left-wing moralizing perspective on this is like well the new york times says that this is a travesty and i'm gonna tell you it's a triple double travis team like you know like i don't know this is like mcdonald's competing with harvey with harvey's hamburgers you know if you guys have the double cheeseburger we've got to have the quadruple double cheeseburger you know what i mean like well if the new york times says this is a travesty i'm gonna get out my thesaurus and tell you it's something worse than a travesty you know you don't have to be an expert you don't have to do a ton of research you don't have to read the police report but i did nobody's paying me to do this i did the job jake wieger was paid to do i did the job and i caspar was paid to do but they never did it they never attempted they never tried in both of these cases i read the police report about the central park five so i know what really happened i at least know the right questions to ask i know the right doubts to have are you kidding me i read the police report about what happened with althea brown and let me tell you something there is videotape evidence of every intersection she drives her car through the whole thing is fiction okay but even if you didn't do that if you never did the research or it never occurred to you that it was your job to do the research day one when that story came out before there was any time for the police to report on the process progress of the investigation because you know they like to keep it quiet until the final report comes out until they've done all the interviews and established all the things and by the way tyt they never did a follow-up story they never came back and said hey we were wrong and debunked and attacked of theater they never pointed the finger at her and said oh well if if the new york times says this it's a travesty we're going to continue nope you just get the left-wing hysterical hit piece you just get the fiction you just get the myth you just get the lie and there's never the follow-up dealing with the truth or the reality once it's established once it's exposed right by the way most of the newspapers were super vague they're just like well according to police reports it seems like not everything in her story added up do you think when i was doing my due diligence to put together my own youtube video on this i looked at web pages like local newspaper articles that were still up unchanged from when the event happened from like day one from the first couple days after the events and there were people in the comments section i'm like summarizing here like three or four people it wasn't a huge number but there were like three or four people i saw that said look guys if you think this is what somebody looks like after they've been doused with lighter fluid and set on fire you know you've never worked in the emergency room of a hospital you've never been in the back of a what's the word i was going to say a paddy wagon you've never worked at the back of an ambulance you know what i mean you've never you've never worked as an emergency medical technician and if you talk to anyone who has a lot of people in america barbecue on the weekends there were a lot of accidents involving lighter fluid there are a lot of people get lit on fire and it would be very easy to do the fact-checking just look at the well there wasn't just video of her it wasn't just you know like you can look at a lot you can look at the interior of the car you can look at her face you can look at her hair in photographs and videotape right and you could phone up a friend of yours who works as a nurse who works as an immersion you could say is this what it looks like after you've been dosed with does this match the other parts of her story and you know what it'll give you nightmares you could probably go on google image image search right now you could go on google image search and you could look for images of people who have been burned by accidents involving lighter fluid okay you could from the moment you saw the headline from the moment you first glanced at the newspaper you could have the moment of doubt oh i don't know it looks like her hair isn't damaged anyway it looks like the car the interior of the car where she was supposedly dose of the lighter fluid isn't damaged away if there was if there was smoke and fire part of me if there was smoke and fire going up wouldn't even the the roof on the interior wouldn't it be scorched wouldn't there be smoke you know the the injuries to her skin for you to question any of those things you have to start with and proceed from this kind of authenticity i'm describing this kind of sense of personal therapy where first at bottom at it's most simple it's most fundamental you are admitting to yourself i don't know you know and to me the whole left-wing mentality which is embodied by jinkweer embodied by anna kasperian is exactly this false sense of self-confidence that begins and ends with their certainty that they know you know that they they're so certain they know and they know better than the journalists and they know better than the police they know better than everyone and they know better than their audience that's why all of it's dripping with this weird sanctimonious smug like in the sense of condemnation right they're morally superior to everyone and their their morals priority is based entirely in ignorance and yes you know the topic of the day is jank wieger turns around and stabs his own best friend in the back this guy was his friend and colleague for so many years jimmy dore and he turns around and says hey i'm morally superior to you too i'm more woke than you are i'm more left-wing than you are i'm more i'm more pure um the ethics of journalism matters but it doesn't just matter for the sake of journalism the ethics of journalism matters but not for the sake of the truth not for the sake of doing justice to althea brown this hypocritical lying quite possibly insane piece of [ __ ] who made up a story that she was lit on fire you know it doesn't matter to her doesn't matter to her parents it doesn't matter to the innocent men who were you know investigated by the police for a made-up crime that it didn't happen no no no you know who it matters to it matters it matters to you it matters because of your sense of personality it matters because of who you want to be who you want to become right and if you're a person of integrity you can't do what jenk weaker does you can't turn it off right you can't turn it off you say oh just for the sake of this news story i'm gonna i'm gonna pretend that i know what i'm talking about i'm gonna pretend that i'm certain of this and i have this moral crusade that i'm a part of no you know and you can't just for the sake of a hit youtube video turn around and condemn you know jimmy dore in the way that he has either you can't go from enjoying your pastrami sandwiches and your trips to the casino when you're gambling and and watching untold hours of sports on tv you know the the sex the drugs the stupidity you know it's the opposite of the life of the mind it's the death of the mind that's who he really is right and and to some extent he attracts and retains his audience because he is a vulgarian right because he's a person of no intellectual sophistication right he's a person of no integrity um [Music] you can't turn it off and on right now this matters to me in more levels than one and um you know it's it's not pleasant it's not great it's it's not enjoyable or fun you know being an intellectual and researching everything all the time so most people don't want to live this way i read the ingredients of every food i buy in the supermarket i don't take aspirin if i haven't researched the side effects of aspirin i had to take some crazy medication uh for for uh malaria this is a million years ago when i was out in the jungle where they had malaria there's no jungle anymore they cut down the jungle so don't worry about it but at that time i was watching the jungle getting cut down day by day on the border between laos and myanmar um you know i had to read terrifying facts and speculations because a lot of science is speculating a lot of times the scientists don't know well it seems like this causes brain damage you know and i've got to make that decision and take that you know i have to live with all that on my shoulders and it's nobody's fault but mine it's nobody's responsibility but mine right and that that's that's a good comparison because before i was saying journalism the ethics of journalists it's not for the truth it's not for healthier brown it's it's for you it's for me it's for what kind of person you could be who are you gonna become oh wouldn't it be so much easier to just make up a story just tell yourself it's harmless just tell yourself the doctor wants the best for you if the doctor says this is the best pill to take from malaria just do it just just go with the flow just make up the story it must be harmless there was a class action lawsuit like a few months after i took that drug against the manufacture of the drug saying it had terrible side effects and i had i had side effects i had mental side effects and this malaria medication you know and i don't know and i'm never going to know the harm done right i have to live with that worry i have to live with that doubt i have to do that research about everything and i'm surrounded by people who are instead positive and warm and effusive than exactly the way jenk weger is and exactly the way anna kasparian is who say just get out there and enjoy your life and you don't care about the effects of cocaine and don't care that marijuana causes brain damage which it does you'll be waiting a long time for the young turks to break the news on that you know guys let's let's get serious what we're doing and don't care that pastrami sandwiches give you a heart attack and in case you hadn't heard eating beef kills cows and eating pork kills pigs you know they're all kinds of you know strange contradictions in this i know a guy it's not worth explaining how i know him or how i had this conversation with him i know a guy who was talking to me to the most minute details about the process of of buying a second-hand cell phone because uh me and melissa both we have experience with second-hand cell phones where cheapskates you know whatever you know and it's like oh okay if i order it this way and should i do this it's like all these questions and all this crap and you know sorry i don't i don't especially and then like this conversation moves on it's like okay now here's the conversation we really care about here's what we're really supposed to be dealing with like bro like you know there are these prescription drugs in your life these are drugs in the class of you know antidepressants and antipsychotics and so-called mood stabilizers it's it's this kind of thing i got i got one book in the stack on that topic by the way uh robert whitaker personality epidemic um you know all of a sudden he's completely run out of patience he's completely run out of acumen to deal with it he's completely run up oh no i i just don't have time have you read have you read the label have you read the fda warnings have you read the american government's food and drug administration label have you just no there's no no most people and this this is typical because what's he committed to he's committed to enjoying his life and for him that means for the most part or entirely an unexamined life right we have this saying very loosely attributed to socrates the unexamined life is not worth living well for most people like jake wieger guess what it's the opposite the examined life is not worth me that's what they're running away from right they don't want to have an exam in life they just want to bite into a hot dog and not question what the hot dog is made of or where it came from or what it's going to do to them or what the health effects are or how many animals are living underneath a concrete sky in a steel cage you know eating food out of a bag suffering and dying to produce this hot dog with what ecological consequences and what it says about you ethically that you're willing to endorse this people want to eat hot dogs without questioning what's in inside them people want to get drunk and get high and go to a nightclub and dance and seduce or be seduced by a complete stranger and not question what kind of terrible person they are and not question what kind of a terrible person they're going to become themselves through this process of again and again over years getting drunk getting high sleeping with strangers gambling at the casinos in los angeles on and on the whole cycle the whole cycle of suffering that's perceived as pleasure of the life of jank weaker the whole meaning the rebarbative meaninglessness of the life that's made this guy who and what he now is and what does he want to do what does he want to do he wants to live that life he wants to watch the game on tv watch football and baseball and this horse [ __ ] and ice hockey and he wants to gamble on it and he wants to drink beer and get drunk and eat meat he wants to live like someone who is in no way an intellectual in no way a person of principle a person with real integrity but then when it's convenient for him he wants to paint a layer on top he wants to paint a layer of intellectualism of of personal integrity you know so guys i'm not going to digress in this to too much uh detail shout out to everyone in the audience uh so look i'll just say real briefly i've got a question here about vicodin specifically you know as as as a drug you know you got to do your own research you know i can't do it for you i i just say that honestly okay i can't do push-ups for you i can tell you how to do push-ups i can tell you why to do push-ups so the dude who sent me this question it could be a woman but whoever you are who sent me this question i know you're asking for a reason either you're taking vicodin or someone you love is you know your parents or somebody and you're asking me this vicodin kill brain cells okay i'm telling you how to do push-ups i'm telling you why to do push-ups you have to do the push-ups you have to do it it'll never be the same i made a video talking about haldol h-a-l-d-o-l that's less famous than prozac but it's one of these drugs it's out there used by i made other videos dealing with um benzodiazepines right he's different and they're negative but guess what ultimately the point is not for you to take it from me the point is not for you to be dependent on me or this book for that matter as the source of wisdom you know what i mean like the point is not to turn on youtube every day and watch someone doing push-ups you know i i can read these books i can do the research right the point is you've got to start living a meaningful life for yourself you've got to start doing your own research and you know what just say i think i think melissa i don't know how long i think that's something you really got in this and i don't know you know i mean i think it's one of the biggest changes in your life you know is really getting you know and look sorry i just say you know this isn't specific to melissa i think it's true for millions of people a lot of people think about the life of the mind whether it's politics philosophy you got a question from philosophy or literature you know because the life of the mind is very part of the arts they think of the life of the mind about the difference between being right and being wrong being correct and being incorrect like you write a test for the teacher and you handle them they say oh right right wrong wrong and it's not it's like push-ups okay guys like there's right and there's wrong and then there's doing it for yourself and that's what it's all about you know what does does vicodin kill brain cells uh uh is haldol better or worse than uh benzodiazepines are benzodiazepines better or worse higher risk or low risk or better or worse brain damage than wellbutrin you know you know like guys ultimately like it's you know it's it's got to be about you you know learning to to do your own research and develop your own acumen you know your own ability to come to uh to these kinds of conclusions um i used to get questions like that too so i have a lot to say about that i mean i think i could come up with a better image than just of uh of doing push-ups but you know there was a time when i was a scholar of buddhism and in some ways i was a buddhist preacher because you know different people are trying to take the buddhist religion in different directions most of them are trying to take in the direction that makes a lot of money you know money is a big thing in religion okay you know but you know some people were trying to take buddhism in the religion that would get them supported me trying to take the religion in the direction that would get them laid so you know there's the buddhists who are after money the buddha buddhists who are after sex you know tantric buddhism and this [ __ ] you know taking a monastic tradition and making it into an orgy or whatever you know sino as long as i was within buddhism no matter how secular and nihilistic i was i was making powerful arguments that often really appeal to buddhists and you know i was advocating for my perspective and you know a lot of what i was saying was you know it's like in this video saying to you look if you think you know what happened with the central park five you don't you're wrong you've been misled you've got to find out for yourself you know i'd write these articles saying look what you know about buddhist morality is wrong and i would give examples from the ancient texts where i was able to read the ancient language so it's like being able to read ancient latin or ancient greek i would read pali which is the scriptural language most people think it's sanskrit it's not sanskrit it's pali that would explain but i read this ancient language and i'd be able to quote it and say look look you guys think you know what buddhist meditation is but you're wrong you think you know what buddhist morality is but you're wrong you think you know what but his philosophy is the philosophy of the self for example self and self is but you're wrong i'm giving you some stimulating quotations these people who write back to me i would say they could send me an email or whatever you know because i write this would be an article you know and they'd say oh well this isn't what i want what i need you to do is is give me a list and say believe this not that i need you to give me a list of what's right and what's wrong of what i should believe and what i should not believe and this is like the child going to the teacher and handing in the test and saying i want to know what's correct and what's incorrect and no it's all incorrect because you're writing the teacher's test and not your own right the only thing that's ultimately correct is you doing the research for yourself it's what you choose for yourself it's what you learn for yourself it's the mistakes you make for yourself and then the evaluation that comes out of it's like no i'm i'm showing you how to do push-ups i'm giving you the the tools but now you have to do the push-ups for yourself i'm telling you why you should do poison why you should be motivated why you should question what religious leaders are saying and i'm sure and now you have to do it for yourself i think this is the most fundamental advantage democracy has over any other political system this is especially direct democracy or democracy that's as direct as possible i'm not really talking about the you know hybrid system of places like the united states of america which is just has some features of democracy but it's not democratic in many other sense you know um if you trust your grandparents to choose the person you're going to marry if you trust your parents to choose the person if you trust your brothers or your sisters or your aunts or uncles if you have a culture of arranged marriage it means someone else chooses the person you're supposed to fall in love with on your behalf and i'm out here saying no you've got to choose for yourself you've got to find them for yourself you've got to decide whether or not you can love them for yourself you've got to make your own mistakes right again and again and again i know people don't think about falling in love as research it is it is you're finding out who that person is and you're finding out who you are and you're finding out what kind of life you could have together and what expectations you had that were false like when you're 18 you don't know any of this stuff especially not you know what it's 16 you don't know any of this stuff you know i'm being honest by 18 you're starting to figure some of it out right like you know i think i think those are big years like each year that goes by 16 17 18 19 20 you're starting to figure out whoa now i get why all the situation comedies on tv are about marriage and dating like you know when you're a child you think why is why are people making such a big deal about this find someone you think is handsome and get married find someone you think is pretty so what why you why do you need to have why is every stand-up comedian talking about this why is this endless obsession oh now i'm starting to figure out what a high-stakes game this is and where i'm discovering who i really am and who you are and what kind of life i'm going to do you know um you know the difference between uh marriage and an arranged marriage right nobody else can choose for you who you should fall in love with right nobody else can make that mistake for you and nobody else can learn from that mistake for you you've got to choose yourself even if you're wrong or even if you're wrong 10 times before you're right the 11th time and you've got to learn from making the wrong choice in the wrong decision right that's love that's falling in love and falling out of love and that's getting married and getting divorced or whatever i mean whatever however you have a relationship last two months or two years or 20 years whatever it is right it's all on you and look i'm i'm not above giving dating advice i'm really not i can talk about dating and sex and love and lifestyles totally totally okay but ultimately i can show you how to do push-ups i can show you why did you push i can't do the push-ups for you know i can never choose some okay not many you could write to me saying well you know i want you to choose which of these guys i should marry i can't choose for you you know what i mean um i can't fall in love for you and i can't learn from your mistakes for you that's why ultimately you've got you've got to do this yourself um even with something as simple as antidepressants held all vicodin whatever the case might be um just reading some of your questions guys mercia asks isil can you make a video for tips for women on how to flirt [Laughter] not today the short answer is yes you know but not today okay guys so i'm going to try to wrap this up um this conflict between jank weaker and jimmy dore or anna kasparian alexander casa cordes it does matter to me for another reason it does matter to me for a deeper reason it does get to me for a deeper reason and you know um it has to do with my own relationship with my own parents okay i grew up with parents who weren't just left-wing who weren't just left of center they were communists and they had this same pattern of self-righteous certainty where they could pick up the newspaper every day and they could without hesitating read the headline read the first few sentences and just come down and make this 100 percent moral commitment that they were right and that the newspaper reporter was wrong and the canadian government was wrong everybody else or nobody knew as well as they did and already for me eight years old 10 years old 12 years old ready for me as a small child i could challenge and i could very often overturn what they were saying politically okay i could prove them wrong when i had no proof at my disposal and you know kids it's not that you have a stronger counter argument it's just that you learn you learn to feel out your parents weaknesses you notice the change in the timbre of their voice when they're bullshitting you know what i mean and and this this kind of [ __ ] i mean when somebody like jank weaker does it is he doing it for his audience is he doing it for himself like is he doing it to convince himself of his own moral superiority that he knows that he knows better than the police that he knows better than the journalist the new york times that he knows better than his own audience that he knows better than you and you should trust his inerrant moral judgment because he has superior more woke more left-wing you know values or is it possible that he doesn't know why he's doing it at all that he's not like this has just become a cycle he lives in where he wakes up and he looks at the newspaper and he reacts in this way he's not he's not really sure what he knows and doesn't know anymore he doesn't you know um you know i didn't want to rebel against my parents authority i had to okay i wanted them to love me i wanted them to approve of me okay and i wanted to feel like i could trust them and i wanted to feel like i could admire them and look up to them as morally superior people you know i think all of us would like to believe that those who beat us and scream at us are morally superior to us but it's just so hard it's so hard to convince yourself these people know what they're talking about or know what they're doing or even know why they're beating you up and screaming at you you know but i had those same conformist instincts every little kid has of wanting to admire my parents no matter how despicable they might be in ten thousand different ways no matter how i saw how they fought with each other or how they fought with me right um when my mother was standing in front of me and denouncing the pro-democracy protesters in the czech republic in prague you know when my parents who enjoyed nothing more than reading a newspaper article criticizing the government were saying that it was quite quite correct for the communists to murder people rather than allow them to enjoy the simple freedom of having a newspaper that criticized the government also you know what effect did that have on me and i could say it forced me to be skeptical it forced me to be nihilistic it forced me to doubt them and their judgment and doubt myself in a radical way and to engage in this kind of context this contest of ideas from uh from a very early age and you know what i discovered soon enough is a very small child was that precisely the things they pretended to be most morally certain about were in fact the things they were most brittle about they were most uncertain of that were to the greatest extent built on their own ignorance that self-righteous ignorance yet ignorance remains you know no matter how much self-righteousness you stack on top of it you fundamentally don't don't know what you're talking about and even as a small child just asking just question you know how does that make sense you know so you know like most communists and socialists they talk about uh indigenous peoples and independence and the right to self-determination and so on oh but you don't think the people of the czech republic have this right to independence and freedom of self-determination you thought the people of vietnam did when the people of vietnam were communists fighting against you know supposedly colonialism from america and france you you were big on that independence but when it's the czech republic and they say they don't want to be colonized by the russians what what what what sense does this make you know you're a little kid you don't know anything but you see the contradictions within what your parents are saying and you see how utterly stumped they are how stymied they are when you ask questions that they should be able to answer so you know obviously i'm reproducing this in the wrong tone of voice here too because a lot of those questions i was first asking i hear my father justifying and supporting mass murder by stalin i hear my mother justifying and supporting mass murder by mao zedong right when i start asking those questions as a kid it's not because i'm hostile it's not because i assume i know better than them i was a small i didn't they were all i knew the only source of information i had were my my parents my school teachers and once in a while a few minutes of exposure to the nightly news but you know i didn't was a child you know like you know i don't even want to prove them wrong like i'm challenging them or i'm questioning them hoping that they're they're going to be right you know hoping that they're going to validate or justify the trust i place in them hoping that my parents will prove to me that they're the kind of person i can look up to and should look up to right and instead you ask these questions you have these confrontations and you see your own parents moral certainty completely fall apart you see that it's all [ __ ] you see that precisely the things they feel most certain of and most confident about in fact are not just built on ignorance they're built on a profound moral hypo hypocrisy they're built on hypocrisy and self-contradiction that goes all the way down to the the root of their soul um so in this sense i've got to say i'm a very biased observer when i look at jank wieger when i look at anna kasparian when i look at someone like um alexandria ocasio-cortez you know and part of me great great great comment from the audience thanks max you gotta eat popcorn fast or gets mushy by the way max he asked about t-shirts you can get the ab alicio t-shirt right now t-shirts sweatshirts uh solid steel mug so just just let me tell you i'm glad you asked slight digression from our topic here but it's true you gotta eat popcorn fast or else it uh or else it gets mushy um all right i'm a biased observer of this i see a lot of the same faults in someone like jake weaker that could see my own father and my own mother part of me wants to look at these things and be more of a moral relativist feel like there's as we as we vegans like to say more than one way to skin a cat i'd like to think there's more than one ethical code that we can live by i'd like to think that if you're a gangster you know you're a member of the mafia or something that you can commit to a set of moral principles that are different from other people's moral principles that are different from the rest of society but that have a kind of internal coherence that's still meaningful and you know there's this this is this thing in english the golden rule there definitely are gangsters who will with perfect equanimity except well this rival gang they killed one of our people but under the same circumstances we would have killed one of their people so there are no hard feelings or even when it's escalated the level of murder they recognize hey these guys are living with the same principles we live by if we live by these principles we have to accept it you know this is this is the code you know um i'd like to think that there's more than one code we can live by i'd like to think that some people could live by jake weaker's code and some people could live by mine but it's not true neither in principle nor in practice is it true it falls apart on the the slightest uh inspection um [Music] the reality is that somebody like jen guiger wants to be a tough guy wants to be a gangster when it's convenient for him and then he wants to be a civilian he wants to be a softie he wants to run to the cops when it's convenient for him also right he's not willing to live by any one code consistently and all the time and that's because he's a person of no integrity no matter which code he's operating under right and these same people who eat pastrami sandwiches and drink beer and watch sports on tv and gamble and boast about the complete strangers they've seduced and slept with and live this kind of reckless brute sensual reckless self-indulgent life of brute sensuality to put the sentence together correctly you know they are going to be hypocrites they are going to break the code no matter which code it is they elect to follow now um we had a we had a suggestion from the audience instead of saying more than one way to skin a cat more than one way to pet a cat um more than one way to strap a snowshoe is that is that true is there more than one way to strap a snowshoe i don't know you know i just say uh within african-american gangster culture or organized crime culture or disorganized crime culture you know one of the things that's resented most is precisely that there are these guys who wear gang colors and want to have a certain level of respect and a certain level of fear for their affiliation with a gang but they only want to be a tough guy sometimes they only want to live by that code sometimes and there are other times when they want to tuck their chain or take off and either chain and they want to be a civilian they want to talk to the cops they want to live by some other code or be treated in some other way i know that's one of the most bitterly contested issues within gang culture is no either you're a civilian or you're one of us like either you're part of the coast and no destroyer or not either you're either you're living by one moral standard the other and once you commit to it it's all the time until the day that you die um you know i don't think there is more than one moral code for us to live by not in the context of this discussion having spent a full hour now introducing you what i'm talking about you know i think there is a sense in which either we're really talking about authenticity or talking about something phony you know and when jank weager covers the news whether he's talking about the central park five or he's talking of notes uh althea brown or he's talking about joe biden or bernie sanders or uh oh jesus can you guys remember i did the video about um i did the video about the zeitgeist movement the history of the five percent zeitgeist movement and jank weaver covered that and i had clips that whoo chiang kwiger's contribution to the economics of the zeitgeist movement there's there's another scandal to dig up it's a scandal if you if you care about the difference between truth and fiction anyway um [Applause] i'm sorry i have derailed myself um you know no matter which topic it is we're talking about what jank weager is doing is inauthentic and what i'm doing is authentic you know why what's the claim to authenticity because everything i'm doing begins and ends with this simple fundamental admission i don't know now you know i'm not the world's greatest expert about the zeitgeist movement but i sure as hell did more research on that than chuck wieger did i presented much more of an informed opinion to you than chuck wigger did i'm not the world's i'm not the world's greatest expert on the politics of china either i'm not you know i'm really aware of my limits on that but you know i do the research i put in the work i get the results and you know again these things it partly matters as a positive example to your audience all of them begin and end with me admitting to myself i don't know i didn't know what happened with the central park five so i did the research and i challenged the consensus view and the mythology is you know and you you come to some conclusions and then you can you have something to share with your audience but it all has to begin with this kind of authenticity of admitting yourself you know what it is that you do and don't know um but in the end the point is not for me to prove to you that i know more than jank weaker right and the point is not for me to prove to you that i know more than you do maybe i do maybe i don't you know you guys in the audience somebody might know more about any one of these topics or all these topics than i do right like i am showing you how to do push-ups and why to do push-ups like i am showing you how to live a life with active dynamic self-doubt where you're making your own mistakes but you're also learning from your own mistakes where you're being a real intellectual and you're becoming more intelligent than you used to be every month and every year because of that questioning because of that self-examination because of that research you know i'm showing you how to do push-ups i'm showing you why to do push-ups and then ultimately you've got to get out there and do themselves and what's so dangerous about a phony like jank wieger what's so dangerous about his lack of authenticity whether he is using it as a bludgeon to denounce and defame jimmy dore or to put on parade any of his sanctimonious claims to moral superiority over others politicians celebrities people great and small you know the problem is that he's demonstrating the exact opposite right he's showing you precisely how to live your whole life as a sleepwalker he's showing you how to continue dreaming when you're still awake and what is the dream ultimately what is the fantasy that he's living it's that he can pick up a newspaper at any given time it's just that he already has within him this moral and intellectual superiority that lets him sit down in front of this microphone and be so certain people live their whole lives that way when my parents were raising me there was no microphone right there was no talk show they weren't hosting a youtube channel they weren't on the radio right when i wasn't there they weren't just doing it for me with their employees with their co-workers right like the camera is on all the time but there's no camera the performance never ends people live their whole lives like jake wieger especially on the left wing people live committed to this sense of moral superiority moral superiority over the police moral security over their own teachers professors moral superiority over medical doctors moral spirit over whoever wrote that newspaper article or whatever right this sense of moral superiority maybe it is just because you're left-wing maybe it's because you think you have this veneer of being a real intellectual on top of you know all the time you spend playing video games or watching sports or gambling or sleeping with prostitutes or whatever your vices are right but your discourse begins and ends with the assumption that you know better as opposed to it beginning and ending with that fundamental admission of what it is you just don't know