The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.000 2024 has had some good moments, it's had some bad moments, but I think one of the most consistent 1.00

00:00:07.140 things about 2024, as with all of the years in clown world, is it's been a very, very stupid 1.00

00:00:14.620 year. And to get the best look into how stupid our clown world is, we need look no further 0.99

00:00:23.260 than mainstream media headlines. Yes, mainstream media headlines are the perfect encapsulation 1.00

00:00:31.060 into a single line of everything wrong with the world as it exists right now. And I wanted

00:00:38.220 to just get a collection of them so we could kind of go through a worst headlines of the

00:00:44.260 year segment this time at the end of 2024 as we look back on all of the ridiculous things

00:00:51.860 that have happened. Now this is not going in any particular order, but except for one,

00:00:56.960 which is this first one, because I think that in finding this one and choosing it as the

00:01:03.100 start and the kind of inspiration for this, I think I just found the worst straight away.

00:01:08.440 Because we all remember this right after the Rachel Reeves new budget was announced, and

00:01:13.160 we had the farmers about to go on their protests, we had this amazing Guardian article from Will

00:01:20.260 Hutton saying, farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life

00:01:27.020 to rural Britain.

00:01:28.060 This is just classic communist grievance mongering. I went over this article actually and contrasted

00:01:32.820 it to statements made by the Soviet Politburo and secret police during the Haldemar and the

00:01:38.180 confiscation of land from Ukrainian kulaks, and it sounded indistinct. I mean, lots of the justification 0.98

00:01:42.960 here saying that it's going to bring new life to the countryside. Actually, free marketeers,

00:01:47.860 don't you want to break up the non-meritorious inherited land grift?

00:01:52.500 No.

00:01:53.260 No, neither do I, because that actually means that you inculcate the right way of cultivating

00:01:57.940 the land across generations. But he was saying, oh, it's in his tactical libertarian fashion,

00:02:02.120 it's the free market in fashion, because if you can pay to buy the farm, you must be better

00:02:06.960 at using the farm. All of that is window dressing.

00:02:09.360 Or you could just be a massive global megacorp.

00:02:12.240 Yeah, he conveniently doesn't mention Blackrock or Bill Gates in here. All of that is window dressing

00:02:16.300 to the sort of great levelling strategy that he has, because he just goes to war against

00:02:22.260 hierarchy, against the...

00:02:25.260 Tradition?

00:02:25.940 Yeah, quite. It's just typical communist adjectives.

00:02:29.500 Against the idea of a genealogy of families being able to pass down their own traditions

00:02:34.400 and ways of living to their descendants.

00:02:37.700 Yeah, quite.

00:02:38.140 Just a complete detachment from any sort of ancestral heritage, therefore a Maoist cultural revolution.

00:02:44.100 Well, he says here, far from a death tax, it is a life tax on undeserved good luck.

00:02:49.760 Undeserved determined by a communist in the pages of The Guardian.

00:02:53.020 Yeah, let me just double check. If you had somebody at the end of your life assessing

00:02:58.300 all of your good deeds, all of your bad deeds, whether you deserve what came for you, would

00:03:03.020 you want it to be Will Hutton, this gentleman right here? No. No, I don't think I would.

00:03:08.440 So, sadly, I've started us off with the worst, but we can go through and find some more, because

00:03:13.660 I put out on Twitter just asking, can you send me all the worst headlines that you've

00:03:18.480 seen so far this year? And I got inundated with them, and I got a few reminders of some

00:03:23.760 things. This is a classic one. This is a classic one that's been going on for a little while,

00:03:28.520 but still pops up every now and again, which is, can milk be considered racist?

00:03:33.280 I already liked drinking it, you didn't have to convince me.

00:03:35.100 Researchers are trying to find out. That's what gives it its famous flavour, is the racism.

00:03:41.120 The more racist the milk is, the better it tastes.

00:03:43.520 Is this, and I'm being sincere here, I promise, is this an instance where the woke are more 0.59

00:03:49.440 correct than the liberals? Because is the argument that, because various cultures and countries-

00:03:56.160 And this is a Times of India article.

00:03:58.000 So, yes. Is this a debate that the various cultures and countries didn't develop subsistence

00:04:04.660 agriculture and livestock farming using cows, and therefore they didn't do the prerequisite

00:04:12.260 drinking of milk over generations to inoculate them to lactose, and because they all have

00:04:17.020 lactose intolerance, it's therefore racist to insist that milk is good for your diet because

00:04:22.100 they can't drink it.

00:04:22.820 It does seem to be that way, because if you look at the maps of lactose intolerance across

00:04:27.120 the world, Northwest Europe, particularly Britain and Scandinavia, has easily the lowest rates

00:04:32.660 of lactose intolerance in the entire world. When you start to spread out from that, it gets

00:04:38.380 exponentially higher the further you get away from Northwest Europe, except for obviously

00:04:43.040 the places that were colonised by Northwest Europe and currently consist of majority descendants

00:04:47.780 of those colonisers. And so, yeah, is it any sort of coincidence that the people of Northwest

00:04:55.240 Europe tend to absolutely dominate, say, strongman competitions, when milk is known to be rich

00:05:01.320 in nutrients and protein and really good for you?

00:05:03.800 It's also really good for you if you're in Northwest Europe and half the year is cold and miserable

00:05:07.760 because it's got lots of calcium, so that's good for your boat.

00:05:11.060 It's just really nice and refreshing. But is it racist? I think Connor is determined, yes.

00:05:15.680 Yes, it is. So we've answered that one. Let's see what other ones I got set. Oh, yeah, this

00:05:20.240 was just a depressing one that somebody sent. Sadiq Khan reported to be in line to receive

00:05:24.700 knighthood in New Year's honours. London mayor expected to be awarded for political and public

00:05:29.140 services.

00:05:29.980 I'd give him a prison sentence.

00:05:31.840 That would be fitting, given his political and public services.

00:05:34.980 Oh, yeah, his public services of defending multiple convicted terrorists, including the

00:05:40.120 one man who was put on trial for 9-11, going to various conferences with other convicted

00:05:45.880 terrorists, calling moderate Muslims Uncle Tom's on Iranian state TV, destroying London

00:05:52.080 with knife crimes and a rape every hour reported, saying that terror attacks are just part and 0.96

00:05:57.480 parcel of living in a big city, saying that white families don't represent London, all the

00:06:01.340 litany of crimes that Sadiq Khan should be in prison for the rest of his life for.

00:06:04.760 Sadly, there's a woke more correct, because now, they don't. Sadly.

00:06:11.640 Moving on to those sorts of immigration concerns, this was one of my favourites. 1.00

00:06:16.400 Apparently there are none. There are no concerns, no legitimate concerns. Bear in mind, this is

00:06:21.120 the 13th of August, only a few weeks after Southport and the Guardian felt fit to publish the headline,

00:06:28.980 We keep hearing about legitimate concerns over immigration. The truth is, there are none.

00:06:34.400 From Maya Goodfellow, might there be a vested interest that she's promoting here?

00:06:40.820 Tell that to the thousands of victims of grooming gangs, you disingenuous hack.

00:06:45.080 Yeah, so that's a pretty bad one. That's not really comedy value, just horrifying in its

00:06:51.300 implications for the fact that this person really has no empathy for people outside of

00:06:56.820 her own in-group.

00:06:57.720 Yeah, morally bankrupt gaslighting.

00:06:59.800 Yeah.

00:07:00.160 Brought to you by the Guardian.

00:07:01.060 Oh, this is one of my favourites?

00:07:02.160 Yes.

00:07:02.380 We can't afford a taboo on assisted dying. The highlight here really is the byline.

00:07:07.720 The argument against it is that pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their

00:07:11.620 own deaths. That's not a bad thing.

00:07:13.900 There's even worse stuff in the body of the article that I was sending to people who were

00:07:17.660 trying to make excuses for the assisted dying legislation.

00:07:20.860 He just says, look, we can't afford to pay pensions in the NHS, so what we can do is just

00:07:25.880 expedite the deaths of all of these predominantly native English boomers, administrated, I'm sure, by all of their imported African care workers. 1.00

00:07:34.320 I love that it's just a blatant admission that, yeah, we're going to pressure them into killing 0.97

00:07:38.320 themselves. Fantastic. Matthew Paris writing back in March. So that was a precursor. Here's one on assisted dying, but going to Canada. 0.99

00:07:48.220 First reading, hundred seeking death due to loneliness inside Canada's new maid figures. 0.91

00:07:52.440 Because you see, the second that you open it up to, oh, well, the terminally ill, all of a sudden you get these questions of, well, I may not be terminally ill, but I am terminally lonely or depressed or this and that.

00:08:05.600 So you just go, okay, well, I guess we'll open it because under liberal democracy, we don't have any actual arguments against this.

00:08:12.860 From a human rights perspective where the ultimate human right is consent. Well, you consent to be killed. 0.69

00:08:19.340 Yes, we saw cases before we covered them as well. I think it was Belgium, the Netherlands, might have even been Canada, where women with chronic fatigue syndrome or depression were euthanized by the state.

00:08:29.860 Because the moment that in a materialist consent-based philosophy, your ability to indulge in recreational pleasures is limited by some sort of life ailment, even something as vague as chronic fatigue syndrome or depression, then it is your imperative, according to Matthew Paris, to pull the lever on the suicide booth.

00:08:50.920 Because the only defining feature of what makes life worth something is your happiness, which is defined by indulging pleasure.

00:08:56.840 So if you can't indulge in pleasures, their narrative is to kill yourself. 0.73

00:09:00.100 One final thing. Did you read the Canadian government's recent report about MAID?

00:09:04.820 Was this the one where it was like, I think it was one in 20 deaths in Canada is now directly through MAID?

00:09:10.660 And the average age of death is around 70. Bear in mind life expectancies in the low 80s.

00:09:17.080 So that means half of those people are below the age of 70.

00:09:21.420 So that means that people in their 20s, 30s, 40s are being killed in at least their dozens by the Canadian government.

00:09:27.960 Well, I'm sure The Guardian will come out saying that there are no legitimate concerns over the abuse of assisted dying once that's fully been put through.

00:09:35.300 Authored by Harold Shipman, I assume.

00:09:37.000 Well, maybe they'll tap him up from beyond the grave.

00:09:40.300 Let's move over to America now.

00:09:42.100 Do you remember this classic?

00:09:43.980 Trump removed from stage by Secret Service after loud noises.

00:09:48.140 Loud noises startle former president.

00:09:50.580 Is this written by Steve Carell's character in Anchorman or something?

00:09:54.960 Maybe. Maybe, yeah.

00:09:56.380 He was just startled by loud noises.

00:09:58.980 Loud noises right here.

00:10:00.740 The blood on his face. Loud noises.

00:10:03.120 He burst an eardrum.

00:10:04.860 That's what this was.

00:10:06.080 I still can't believe that some of these headlines happened.

00:10:09.860 Now, remember that this is archived from the original because as soon as people started pointing out,

00:10:14.660 Hold up! 0.98

00:10:15.900 This is a lie.

00:10:17.500 People immediately started to go,

00:10:18.860 Okay, we should change these headlines.

00:10:20.320 We should change them very, very quickly.

00:10:21.660 But still, the fact that it got published like this,

00:10:23.800 with the photograph of him bloody and shot as well,

00:10:28.380 surrounded by Secret Service,

00:10:30.660 is pretty incredible.

00:10:32.940 I'm almost glad that they did this because

00:10:34.540 this kind of rapid discrediting of the mainstream press,

00:10:38.100 the establishment, corporate press,

00:10:39.840 is what helped Trump win the election.

00:10:41.760 So we've now got four years of the Golden God Emperor

00:10:44.040 because of the types of malfeasance that we're seeing here.

00:10:46.740 Yeah, I tell you who is an absolute treasure trove

00:10:49.960 for terrible headlines from America over the past year.

00:10:54.580 It's Oron.

00:10:56.140 Oron really keeps a great eye on this

00:10:58.660 and has a collection that you can go through here.

00:11:00.880 So here's one.

00:11:02.040 This is back to England, to be fair.

00:11:03.680 I covered this on my show, yeah.

00:11:05.180 Extreme misogyny to be treated as terrorism.

00:11:07.860 Yesterday, this is the 17th of December,

00:11:12.060 they just appointed a new counter-extremism advisor.

00:11:15.740 He's permanent and he's going to be overseeing areas of prevent

00:11:18.500 that, yes, while they acknowledge Islamist extremism

00:11:21.800 and far-right extremism are on the rise,

00:11:24.140 are going to be monitoring things that are not necessarily illegal,

00:11:27.580 but that glorify violence and misogyny.

00:11:31.820 So there's going to be a cabinet office body

00:11:33.380 that surveils Andrew Tate clips.

00:11:36.600 And does. Hello.

00:11:38.000 Yes.

00:11:38.860 Let's go to the next one.

00:11:40.280 Here's one of my favourites.

00:11:41.740 Trump is speaking like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.

00:11:45.860 So he's speaking German, Russian, and Italian all at once.

00:11:48.780 It's very impressive.

00:11:49.760 Why do you think so many voted for him?

00:11:51.280 Well, that's why he's blurring.

00:11:52.220 He's literally transcending the space-time continuum

00:11:53.900 to speak in multiple languages.

00:11:54.900 Well, also, surely, like, say what you want about the men's actions

00:11:59.820 and what they achieved, yes,

00:12:02.100 but at the very least, Hitler and Mussolini 0.90

00:12:04.340 were very well known for being incredible orators.

00:12:08.520 Yeah, they spellbound entire populations

00:12:10.640 because they were good at speaking. 1.00

00:12:11.520 Stalin was rubbish. 1.00

00:12:12.640 This is why he executed the first person to stop clapping 1.00

00:12:15.160 as per Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

00:12:17.340 Yeah, so I feel like, if anything, Stalin's the odd man out here

00:12:20.080 because he was terrible at it.

00:12:22.240 Let's move on.

00:12:23.400 When you think of American coxervatives, who's the first- 1.00

00:12:28.320 David French.

00:12:28.740 Yep.

00:12:29.820 To save conservatism from itself, I am voting for Harris.

00:12:33.900 Are his bad takes drawing his eyes closer together?

00:12:37.000 They might be.

00:12:37.740 Or maybe the editors have a little in-joke with themselves.

00:12:41.100 It's like the Power Girl thing that they did in the- 0.96

00:12:44.320 Every time he has a bad take, they just edit his eyes slightly closer together.

00:12:49.440 Because David French is an absolute goldmine for terrible, terrible takes.

00:12:55.780 Because to save conservatism from itself, I'm voting for a communist.

00:12:59.940 What, because you don't like Donald Trump?

00:13:03.900 Yes.

00:13:04.440 That's the-

00:13:04.900 That's literally it.

00:13:06.200 Okay.

00:13:06.720 What else did he have to say for himself?

00:13:08.740 Thou shalt not post the Ten Commandments in the classroom.

00:13:11.640 Has David French ever actually said anything remotely in keeping with the American traditions

00:13:18.600 or defending constitutionalism or anything-

00:13:22.760 or Christianity for that matter.

00:13:24.540 Anything like that.

00:13:25.640 Did he defend the Iraq War?

00:13:27.440 Uh, he's certainly on the more liberal side of the fusionist coalition.

00:13:31.420 Well, you don't-

00:13:31.940 You're telling me.

00:13:32.760 He's happy with large-scale migration to depreciate the wages of American workers 0.77

00:13:37.840 so GDP will increase.

00:13:40.280 Yeah, I don't-

00:13:40.960 I don't really think so, no.

00:13:43.240 He might be taking a position against the Ten Commandments

00:13:45.940 because thou shalt not bear false witness is one he can't quite get over.

00:13:49.480 Maybe, maybe not.

00:13:50.800 But in response to a lot of the immigration concerns,

00:13:53.920 because Donald Trump has now been voted in,

00:13:56.800 obviously he's not started his second term of president,

00:13:59.360 but one of the big promises was mass deportations,

00:14:01.960 deport, deport, deport, all of these foreign criminals, 1.00

00:14:04.120 what was it that you think maybe people began to be concerned about?

00:14:10.160 The deportation of the cheap foreign labor who mows their lawns? 1.00

00:14:13.720 Well, and also, of course, closing the board as well.

00:14:16.420 Prepare for guacamole to be a luxury item.

00:14:20.400 Good, it's terrible.

00:14:21.240 Do you really want borders?

00:14:23.800 Do you want borders?

00:14:24.880 Do you want safe communities when you could have guacamole, apparently?

00:14:28.700 Think of the food.

00:14:30.060 Think of the food.

00:14:30.920 I did, and it's disgusting.

00:14:33.020 Here's one of my favorites.

00:14:34.340 Is it time to torch the constitution?

00:14:38.680 Some scholars say that it's to blame for our political dysfunction

00:14:42.020 and that we need to start...

00:14:43.560 Some scholars.

00:14:44.680 Who are these magical scholars?

00:14:47.800 But remember, Trump himself is going to be a dictator on day one

00:14:51.620 and dispense the constitution, therefore he's literally Hitler, 0.79

00:14:54.840 therefore stop him.

00:14:56.080 Which is why it's time to torch the First Amendment as well. 0.59

00:15:01.240 We need to throw it out because it's out of control. 0.84

00:15:04.460 As Oron pointed out, Putin's an evil dictator undermining human rights,

00:15:08.460 but free speech, no. 0.62

00:15:10.860 Not in our country.

00:15:12.020 This does make sense within the liberal logic, though,

00:15:13.560 because when they say threat to democracy,

00:15:14.900 they mean the threat to the processes by which

00:15:17.040 every single person's presumed self-interest is realized.

00:15:20.180 Because if they think we're all blank slates,

00:15:22.100 if you vote against the Democrats or Labour or progressivism in general,

00:15:26.380 then somehow magic bad Trump man has cast a spell of divisive racist populism over you

00:15:32.100 and he's used free speech to mislead you.

00:15:34.660 So we've got to curtail your free speech so that you vote for Utopia,

00:15:37.820 don't you understand?

00:15:39.780 Yeah, you know what?

00:15:41.760 I'll pass.

00:15:42.820 Yeah, I'm good.

00:15:43.420 I'll pass on that.

00:15:44.840 Anyway, but to be fair,

00:15:46.640 you bring out all of these problems to do with Donald Trump as a president.

00:15:49.540 It does make you question,

00:15:51.100 does America need a president?

00:15:53.700 It might need a king.

00:15:55.340 Reminder as well,

00:15:56.180 all of these articles come out within weeks of one another.

00:16:01.440 Just a complete questioning of the American system altogether

00:16:04.740 in the name of saving the American system and democracy.

00:16:08.400 I do love liberal whiplash because they read the New York Times

00:16:11.640 and yet they're still saying that Trump is going to inevitably be a dictator

00:16:16.760 despite looking at headlines and articles like this.

00:16:19.720 Also, as Oron says,

00:16:21.900 you write a book about this,

00:16:22.880 but it's still surreal to watch the total rate state speed run this thing.

00:16:26.380 It might be too late to get it as a Christmas present,

00:16:28.240 but you should read the total state.

00:16:29.240 It's one of the best books from this year.

00:16:30.420 Oh, well, thank you.

00:16:31.100 I will try and read it at some point when I get the chance.

00:16:34.240 But this is not just an American thing.

00:16:36.060 This is a global thing where people are just asking the question,

00:16:39.420 can democracy be saved by cancelling elections?

00:16:41.800 Labour are looking to answer that question next year

00:16:45.820 as they're starting to pull back on some of their local elections

00:16:48.500 with all of the devolution and decentralising of government

00:16:53.300 through local councils being shifted from being, say,

00:16:55.920 15 into four mega councils

00:16:58.680 because that's decentralisation, right?

00:17:00.940 That's devolving things and making things more dispersed.

00:17:04.640 If you just rename it to the antonym of what it actually is,

00:17:07.700 it makes it true.

00:17:08.440 It does make perfect sense.

00:17:11.080 And I think I'll end on this next one

00:17:12.660 because, guys, I'm tired.

00:17:14.260 And do you know who else is tired? 0.98

00:17:16.320 Black women. 1.00

00:17:17.280 I was going to say Andrew Tate 0.99

00:17:18.320 because he said sleeping was gay yesterday. 0.86

00:17:23.080 But this also, this suffices. 0.92

00:17:26.160 What?

00:17:27.640 He said, he said...

00:17:28.900 But if you want to regulate...

00:17:30.080 Right, he's all about the high testosterone, right?

00:17:32.780 But if you want...

00:17:33.260 Other than the chin.

00:17:34.160 Other than the chin.

00:17:34.700 If you want high testosterone

00:17:36.460 and normal levels that are regulated properly,

00:17:38.840 you need adequate sleep.

00:17:40.540 Yes, but he said that

00:17:41.700 warriors did not sleep deeply and sufficiently

00:17:44.760 to get REM rest or whatever.

00:17:46.580 Therefore, you should be sleeping

00:17:47.700 like your warrior ancestors.

00:17:50.180 That sounds like...

00:17:51.380 No, no, no, no, never mind. 0.51

00:17:53.400 But yeah, black women were so disillusioned 1.00

00:17:55.900 by the election, 0.94

00:17:57.240 they're deciding to rest.

00:17:58.480 They on break.

00:17:59.440 Oh, right, okay.

00:18:00.180 I'm on break.

00:18:00.720 The DMV has been an absolute disaster

00:18:03.320 ever since the election.

00:18:04.700 Well, that's very convenient

00:18:05.900 because I'm sure the majority of the rest of America

00:18:08.660 actually go to work paying your welfare

00:18:10.320 so that you can do this.

00:18:14.200 Per capita, I'm correct. 1.00

00:18:15.320 Anyway, it's been a very stupid year, folks. 0.99

00:18:18.000 Here's to 25, 1.00

00:18:19.020 which I'm sure will be even stupider. 0.97

00:18:22.780 Merry Christmas and a happy new year. 0.99

00:18:25.120 And what you should be doing

00:18:26.080 is using your new Lotus Eaters gift subscription,

00:18:28.940 that new feature we've got on the site,

00:18:30.280 to watch all of our premium content

00:18:31.900 where you've got lots of downtime over the holidays.

00:18:33.840 I hope you're having a nice time.

00:18:35.640 Also, check out our Twitter

00:18:36.900 where we post links to everything

00:18:38.100 that we're putting out.

00:18:39.060 Thank you very much for watching.

00:18:40.660 Have a nice holiday.

00:18:41.440 Bye.

00:18:41.780 And goodbye.

00:18:42.560 Goodbye.

00:18:42.780 Bye.

00:18:43.020 Bye.

00:18:44.000 Bye.

00:18:51.460 Bye.

00:18:52.780 Bye.

00:18:53.140 Bye.

00:18:53.620 Bye.

00:18:54.460 Bye.

00:18:54.660 Bye bye.

00:18:56.420 Bye.

00:18:57.200 Bye.

00:19:02.640 Bye.

00:19:03.060 Bye.

00:19:03.760 Bye.

00:19:03.820 Bye.

00:19:04.240 Bye.

00:19:04.480 Bye.

00:19:04.760 Bye.

00:19:05.100 Bye.

00:19:05.120 Bye.

00:19:05.260 Bye.

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00:19:06.040 Bye.

00:19:06.360 Bye.

00:19:07.080 Bye.

00:19:07.140 Bye.

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00:19:08.120 Bye.

00:19:08.960 Bye.

00:19:09.840 Bye.

00:19:10.220 Bye.

00:19:11.080 Bye.

Christmas Pre-Record ｜ This Year In Stupid： 2024

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