The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1344

00:00:00.000 Hello everyone, welcome to the glorious podcast of the Load Seaters. I'm your host Stelios and

00:00:04.820 I'm joined today by brother Dan and brother Nick. And this is podcast number 1344. It's Friday the

00:00:13.240 30th of January, 2026. This has been the worst month for chat jack lovers and I am one of them.

00:00:21.500 Lots of things have happened and today we are going to discuss how Spain is being destabilized

00:00:29.060 how Trump is a lion and not a faulty fox. Does it have to do with some foxy lasses or anything?

00:00:37.380 I guess it's a Machiavelli thing. And why we should embrace our inner penguin. An outer. An outer.

00:00:45.280 Right so we have oil under number five. You should definitely check it out. It's running out

00:00:51.100 40.99. Check it out. It's one of the I think the best edition in the series so far.

00:00:59.060 I'm sure that the next ones are going to be even greater. It has articles but it has an interview

00:01:05.800 of Rupert Lowe. It has articles by Carl, AA, academic agent, Luca. I think is there any from

00:01:18.100 yeah Will Tanner, Morgoth of course. So check it out. Oil under number five.

00:01:24.080 Right. So we also have a gold tier zoom today at 3 p.m. Join us.

00:01:32.960 My mistake. Carry on. Okay.

00:01:35.960 Right. Okay. Join us at 3 p.m. UK time for our usual gold zoom. And I want to say something.

00:01:42.980 Check today for the daily channel because I ranted about Mom Donnie and I was in an unusually good mood

00:01:50.240 when it comes to ranting. Right. Let's talk about Spain. Spain is an interesting case and recently we

00:01:58.920 have had several bad news coming from that country. There were train disasters and there is also a very

00:02:05.460 interesting choice by the government where it says that it wants to legalize at least half a million

00:02:13.420 undocumented migrants in the country. And several Spaniards are saying that it's even more. It's close

00:02:21.200 to eight hundred fifty thousand could be about a million that the government is downplaying their

00:02:27.440 numbers. So we are going to talk about that and we are going to talk about Spain's adventures with

00:02:33.260 multiculturalism, the way that their economy is impacted by mass migration and the narratives that

00:02:41.060 are given as to whether mass migration is a net drain or net gain for the country. But one thing to

00:02:47.980 say is that we are moving slowly past the narrative where mass migration is something that is treated as

00:02:56.060 a panacea, as a cure for all diseases. And we have had the rise of several parties in Europe but also

00:03:03.480 in the West at large who have been critical of mass migration. Now we hear some

00:03:10.420 criticism of mass migration from the West, which I didn't expect, but it's interesting. Let us play

00:03:17.020 this from Larry Fink of BlackRock, now saying that countries that avoided mass migration will be

00:03:23.640 better positioned in the future for AI development. And AI is going to be one of the major industries

00:03:30.500 of the, of the future. And he says this. You know, we always used to think shrinking population is a cause

00:03:40.100 for negative growth. But in my conversations with the leadership of these large developed countries

00:03:50.100 that have xenophobic immigration policies. They don't allow anybody to come in. Shrinking unemployment, excuse me,

00:03:59.700 shrinking demographics. These countries will rapidly develop robotics and tech, and AI and technology. And if the promise, I

00:04:12.700 think it's going to happen. But as a promise of all that transforms productivity, which most of us think

00:04:19.300 it will, we'll be able to elevate the standard of living of countries, the standard of living of individuals, even with

00:04:26.580 shrinking populations. And so the paradigm of negative population growth is going to be changing. And the social

00:04:36.300 problems that one will have in substituting humans for machines is going to be far easier in those

00:04:44.860 countries that have declining populations.

00:04:48.420 So when I'm old, I would rather have a robot look after me than a Bermalian, like proper old.

00:04:54.660 I mean, robots are, generally speaking, reliable.

00:04:57.780 Especially if you can put a face on the robot than a human base.

00:05:01.440 Especially if you put a face on the robot and it's cute.

00:05:03.860 Yeah, unless it suddenly turns haywire and kills you, it probably won't hate you or resent you as much.

00:05:08.660 Yes.

00:05:09.380 Or do you quite neutral?

00:05:10.760 I think the robot is probably less likely to kill you, I'd imagine.

00:05:15.040 Oh, yeah. Certainly than beat you randomly.

00:05:17.360 Yes.

00:05:19.680 Yeah, this was shocking because they've been telling us for so long, oh, have loads of immigrants,

00:05:23.060 you've got to have loads of immigrants. Then they go, guess what? Actually, the people who didn't let

00:05:25.540 any in, they're going to do better. Soz. So annoying. But you said that you had a very insightful tweet

00:05:29.820 that was about investment, it was about predicting the market.

00:05:32.400 Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can't make it at high levels of finance if you're not living

00:05:36.420 in the future. Because if you're not living in the future, you're somebody else's exit

00:05:39.780 liquidity. This is why I'm kind of cautioning people on the gold and silver stuff at the

00:05:43.660 moment. Just be careful you're not somebody else's exit liquidity. So what, I mean, what

00:05:48.360 you have to do at Larry Fink's level is be thinking, okay, what does the world look like

00:05:51.360 in 18 months, two years, five years down the line? And then start positioning for that,

00:05:55.540 otherwise you just don't make any money. And clearly what he's doing is like, yeah, okay,

00:05:59.320 the world is going to go right-wing, re-migration is a thing. Scrap all that DEI stuff. I know

00:06:06.900 I won a load of pension mandates five years ago using the DEI nonsense, but scrap that.

00:06:11.520 We've now got to win mandates for pension funds in xenophobic countries, and that's going

00:06:15.820 to be all of Europe.

00:06:16.840 Is he reacting or suggesting, though? Because it's almost like these people suggest and go,

00:06:20.880 here's what we should do. The question, you know, you're sort of saying like he's reacting

00:06:23.840 like this is where I'll probably go. Probably people like him are forming what happens.

00:06:27.200 Well, the question to me, though, is why they let all this happen? Why did they say like

00:06:30.640 infinity migration? Then he gone, whoops, got that wrong, changed our minds.

00:06:34.420 Because that worked at the time. He won the mandates at the time by doing that. You know,

00:06:38.760 he's completely mercenary.

00:06:40.360 Right. So right now we listen to this paradigm shift on the WEF, which Nick pointed out before

00:06:47.240 it was the exact opposite narrative coming from the WEF. And we see now the Spanish government

00:06:53.620 trying to move towards the other direction. And obviously, you can't expect any government

00:07:00.460 to change direction just because Larry Fink said so. But I want us to say that there are

00:07:06.380 arguments suggesting that this is a mistake by the Spanish government. And it sort of neutralizes

00:07:13.180 all the economic arguments that are being given for mass migration as being a economic net positive,

00:07:20.880 which are given by the people who are promoting these policies. And we are going to talk about

00:07:26.420 them in a bit. So let's talk about this article written by Kieran Kelly on The Telegraph. It was

00:07:32.340 released three days ago. It says Spain gives half a million migrants legal status to defeat the far

00:07:39.700 right. Applicants will be allowed to work in any sector to help curb institutional racism that only

00:07:46.820 fuels exploitation and racist hatred. Right. So it says Spain has started to legalize half a million

00:07:53.280 undocumented migrants and give them the immediate right to work in a move to fight the far right.

00:07:58.780 Madrid officially begun the process on Tuesday after a last minute deal between the ruling socialist

00:08:04.200 party and the left wing Pademos party, which has propped up Pedro Sanchez's minority government

00:08:10.220 since elections in 2023. So what's happening here is that they are saying that they have to legalize

00:08:21.060 undocumented migrants. And one of the things that are interesting here is to talk about the arguments

00:08:27.760 that are given about mass migration being a net positive and how they don't reflect the reality

00:08:36.680 on the ground as it is felt by native people, in this case, by native Spaniards. So the argument goes

00:08:44.900 like this. There are many people who accept that illegal migration is a net drain, even people who are

00:08:54.080 promoting migration. Why? Because they're saying that precious time is lost because you have lots of

00:09:00.540 people who can't work because it's illegal for them to work. And they have been they have to be given

00:09:07.160 benefits. So this causes economic strain, but also integrationist strain. But they're saying this

00:09:15.400 changes if you make illegal migration into legal migration, because that's when they can work, they can

00:09:21.380 integrate easier and they they don't have to be reliant upon the state. So one thing to notice is that

00:09:29.600 the way that a socialist government is pushing this is bound to fail and it's bound to fail for several

00:09:39.420 reasons. We are going to talk about them, but they are the in a nutshell, what what's going on is the

00:09:45.640 following. Socialists are egalitarians. They want to put level everyone down. They want to achieve a

00:09:52.340 kind of equality. They market that equality as raising the the weaker. But at the end of the day,

00:09:58.480 what they're doing is they're pushing everyone down into a a flat line. They try to level everything

00:10:05.120 down. And what is happening here is that the they want to introduce also minimum wage laws. And as I

00:10:14.520 have here, they do this at the moment, they're proposing a 3.1 percent minimum wage rise to to Spain.

00:10:23.660 So when they're pushing minimum wage laws, what happens is that they are causing an artificial

00:10:29.820 strain on the economy. Why? Because lots of the undocumented who will become documented migrants who

00:10:37.520 are unskilled won't be able to get jobs because the employer is going to say that they're going to lack

00:10:44.720 the skills that are going to justify the new higher minimum wage. So what's going to happen is that

00:10:52.980 you are pushing again, a significant number of them back into the territory where they're dependent

00:11:00.140 and there are problems with integration. So in a socialist paradigm where they try to do this,

00:11:07.440 they actually make things worse. Right. Let's look at it. And there is extra question here as to why

00:11:14.260 they're doing it, because there are economic arguments. They are doing it in order to create

00:11:21.360 more jobs. And there have been arguments for this. But there is also the other question as to why are

00:11:28.560 they losing in the polls? And they're losing in the polls for several reasons. So they are losing in

00:11:34.300 the polls right now because they had the recent train disasters, which suggests that the government is

00:11:40.160 very much corrupt. We did a segment on this one that was released about a day ago called the Spanish

00:11:45.980 train disasters. Check it out. It shows how unbelievably corrupt and inefficient the state is.

00:11:52.160 And also the question is that the kind of economic growth that they are attributing to the economic

00:12:00.860 miracle and the also of Spain and also OECD is attributing to mass migration here isn't exactly

00:12:10.300 failed by the average Spaniard. Let me talk to you here about the OECD's claim. They say dynamic labor

00:12:17.540 market and declining unemployment. And this is the case. It does seem to be the case that there is growth

00:12:23.460 in Spain. It's about 3%, which is higher than the average in the EU. It's definitely higher than in

00:12:31.300 the UK, which is projected to be about 1.1%, if I'm not mistaken. Well, I was just looking something up

00:12:37.700 while you're talking about that, because you showed the average wage that Spain is proposing. And I just

00:12:42.800 double checked what is the average wage in Bermalia. And in northern Bermalia, it is around half that.

00:12:48.860 And in most of southern Bermalia, it is that's about five times the average wage. So that's a pretty strong

00:12:55.860 pull factor. Well, and that's the question, because if people are leveled down to a particular line, let's

00:13:03.420 say, for lots of native Spaniards, this may be a huge disincentive to raise a family. You probably have kids,

00:13:10.200 will you say? Yes. And at the moment, the current Spanish birth rate is about 1.07. It's fairly naked population

00:13:17.820 replacement. And it is also that in that level, lots of people who aren't from Spain and come

00:13:24.680 from, let's say, the Third World. And obviously, we have to talk about the various kinds of groups

00:13:30.580 that make up the migrant population of Spain, because not all groups are equally productive

00:13:37.420 or criminal. Well, I bet they're pretty much all less productive than the Spanish are. Unless

00:13:45.620 they're from more northern Europe. The issue is that for many of them, this kind of flat line that

00:13:51.760 socialist egalitarians are trying to push everyone is something that looks like just, it's experienced

00:13:57.900 like hitting a goldmine. So OECD here says the positive labor performance of recent years

00:14:03.300 is projected to continue throughout the forecast period. The expected employment gains are mainly

00:14:09.680 attributable to continued migration inflows, which are considerably expanding the labor force

00:14:16.140 and boosting the pace of job creation. And the unemployment rate is projected to maintain its

00:14:22.820 downward trend. It's about 10.4 in 2025 and is falling below in 10% in 2026. Now, what I saw is that,

00:14:31.360 let's say, they set a statistics that about 450,000 new jobs are 410,000 out of 450,000 new jobs go to

00:14:46.280 migrants. So it looks like the migrant population is profiting way more than the Spanish population

00:14:54.340 from these migration flows. But also, sorry, I was gonna say they're just a bit behind, aren't they?

00:14:59.460 That's what it, you know, you used to go like to Europe on hold, they'd always seem to be a bit

00:15:01.920 behind. The Coke cans looked older and stuff. They're just behind the trend because Larry

00:15:06.340 thinks announced this is over. Yes. And even Keir Starmer has said it doesn't work financially

00:15:10.260 anymore. It just feels like they're still on the old programming. I think the thing I remember from

00:15:13.780 teen Spanish holidays is, is they were all getting excited about something that had left the charts

00:15:18.660 like a month ago. Right, the music was behind. Yes. They're behind on this trend. Yes. I think that there is a

00:15:24.460 tremendous leftist streak in Spanish culture. Yeah, I've noticed that. Yeah. There's a whole civil war,

00:15:31.820 wasn't there? It's a problem. So what is the case here? And what I want to mention, because these are

00:15:37.640 historical conversations for another time, is that there, despite the strong GDP growth and the

00:15:44.240 falling of unemployment rates, there is, there is a significant downward trend of the ruling party in

00:15:54.440 the polls. They're losing popularity. One of the reasons has to do with several scandals and corruption

00:16:01.640 that they are perceived to be involved in. And the other has to do with the same kinds of problems that

00:16:07.920 we're talking about when it comes to economy, like housing crises. And they say that there's a severe

00:16:14.020 shortage of affordable housing in major cities like Madrid and Barcelona. And one of the primary

00:16:19.940 sources of primary, of frustration of the young voters. Then there is stagnant productivity. While

00:16:27.860 people are working productivity, GDP per capita, again, per capita strikes back, has barely improved

00:16:34.520 since 2019, keeping real wages lower than many hoped for, given the inflation seen in the last years.

00:16:41.580 And there's also tax pressure, increased tax pressure to manage high public debt has alienated

00:16:47.300 middle class voters. And it looks like the panacea for socialists is always raise taxes, raise taxes,

00:16:55.420 raise taxes. And one thing to say about, about leftists right now is that they have gone global.

00:17:02.040 They don't operate just on the old domestic proletariat versus capitalist Marxist framework.

00:17:08.420 They are, they have gone global and international. So when they're talking about taxing the rich

00:17:14.800 to give to the poor, they're talking about taxing the globally rich to give to the globally poor. And by that

00:17:21.860 they are, according to their calculations, almost every native Spaniard counts as globally rich, because

00:17:29.620 there is a fundamental hatred of Western civilization in the left. And that's one of the reasons why they are

00:17:37.440 trying to say that the Westerners have to pay for the entire world. And they're promoting

00:17:43.500 the worst kind of combination, welfarism and relatively relaxed open borders, which doesn't

00:17:50.300 work. Here we have accusations of the Catholic clergy as being supportive of it. They're saying that

00:17:59.380 the Catholic clergy worldwide are almost universally in favor of unrestricted illegal migration at the

00:18:06.580 expense of Western nations. And here they are talking about Catholic bishops being in favor of the

00:18:13.980 royal decree to legalize 500,000 undocumented migrants in Spain. This is definitely something to check

00:18:22.340 out. Here we have Santiago Abascal. He's the leader of the third largest party, the Vox Party,

00:18:27.120 who is talking about this as being declined. He says, when a country like Spain has received three

00:18:33.780 million immigrants in the last five years, but the public services, the hospitals, the housing,

00:18:38.560 the number of doctors and the police remain the same, there is widespread collapse.

00:18:44.400 And here let's end with this one. So to talk to the Spaniards here, we're going to talk about

00:18:51.340 Denmark. There was an economist article here. Why have Danes turned against immigration? And the Danes

00:19:00.180 are governed by social Democrats. It's important to bear this in mind. And they have said here that

00:19:06.200 the average net contribution to public finances differs according to population groups. And it's one

00:19:14.260 thing to talk about migration and foreigners. It's quite another to break the population into groups and talk about

00:19:23.420 these groups' culture, which is the exact opposite of what abstract universalist humanitarians who aren't

00:19:29.820 actually humanitarians want to say. And this is what they consider to be far right, talking about the harsh realities of

00:19:38.360 culture and how culture, how culture affects people and how people's people being affected from their culture

00:19:45.160 manifests occasionally in things like contributing to a particular country, but also like in crime, how they are

00:19:53.080 represented in crime. And here they find a pattern that we see in several countries across Europe of

00:20:00.240 migrants from the MENAP countries especially, which is Middle East and North Africa, who are a net

00:20:08.080 drain. So it looks like at the moment, maybe the economic argument for mass migration shows a link between mass

00:20:20.140 migration and the economy of Spain. But bear in mind that this is also not helping the average Spaniards the way

00:20:29.980 they see their country long term.

00:20:38.080 All right. So Johnny Pat 18. No one else came to work today because of snow. So I guess I'm getting paid to watch TV. I'm a

00:20:49.020 Euromaxing right. If you're cool, you're Euromaxing. Sigilstone 17. No one expects the Spanish situation.

00:20:58.080 All right. Okay. Can I grab some? Yeah, of course. Heck. Thank you. So. What? The box is not working?

00:21:13.820 Yeah. I click with this thing, do I? And then it works. Right. Good. Let's do that then.

00:21:20.460 Okay. So there is a disturbance on the Jedi Council. There are those who feel that Trump is a bit erratic

00:21:31.880 and chaotic. And there's a minority of us who are, yes, but that's the point. So broadly, I'd say the

00:21:42.920 camps are, you know, AA is a big proponent of this. Morgoth, I think yourself and Harry, you see Trump as very chaotic.

00:21:52.080 Mark did a stream on this last night. And then there's a minority of us, you know, myself, maybe Carl, maybe Aaron McIntyre,

00:21:59.440 who say, no, no, he's not a fox. He's a lion. He's not, he's not a faulty fox. He's not behaving wrong.

00:22:05.540 Sorry, I want to see how the framing goes. So we go from erratic to fox, because you started by saying

00:22:10.920 that AA, Morgoth, Harry and myself think that Trump is erratic. And now you're framing us as trying to...

00:22:19.100 I think he comes across to me like you're describing him as a faulty fox. Why isn't he being more cunning?

00:22:24.500 Why isn't he being more... What's a lion and what's a fox? Well, let's get into that then, shall we?

00:22:28.920 So it started originally with some Machiavellian chap, and he kind of alluded to this, but he didn't really

00:22:36.880 sort of flesh out the theory. And then this Frodo Pareto chap comes along, and he writes a book, Mind and Society,

00:22:45.800 and he basically describes two kinds of elites. He says there were foxes, and these people use sort of cunning,

00:22:51.940 persuasion, negotiation, narrative procedure, complexity, that kind of stuff. And lions,

00:22:57.440 they're all about enforcement, hierarchy, boundaries, assertion of order. So the simple way to think

00:23:02.720 about this is foxes are the ones who used to be in charge basically for the majority of human history,

00:23:09.580 and it's foxes that really prospered in the later eras. Almost every world leader you can think of

00:23:15.600 today, almost all of them are foxes. Yeah, like Blair is your classic fox. Yes. But your lion is like one

00:23:21.420 of those African generals with like loads of medals. Yes. We like that. Anyone with medals

00:23:27.120 that has a uniform, you could probably put down being a lion. Yes. So fox government works when

00:23:34.640 there's already order, and it's credible, but it's largely untested, because fox works within this

00:23:42.140 sort of framework. And by the way, I've got a lovely preset background slide thing that I found

00:23:47.260 on Google Slides, so I've made a lovely presentation. So foxes will dominate when trust

00:23:52.360 is high and volatility is low, and rules broadly get obeyed, and the legitimacy has been inherited,

00:23:59.400 but not really tested. And I've slapped in some quotes. I've got a bunch of quotes from Pareto here.

00:24:06.260 Most of them are slightly paraphrased, because otherwise I'd have to quote a whole bloody passage,

00:24:10.000 but they are legitimate for what he's actually trying to say in those sort of broader passages.

00:24:15.340 So basically foxes do well when everybody believes in the system, and everybody just kind of expects

00:24:22.340 the rules to be enforced, and they all kind of go along with it.

00:24:28.340 So the sort of hidden dependencies that fox rely on, well, actually, I just kind of over-explained

00:24:36.240 the last slide, but that's basically going on. Where does he say this? So the governing class

00:24:42.300 is chiefly composed of foxes, it is rich and cunning, but poor in force. But yes, when foxes try to use

00:24:51.640 force, it looks really bad. It looks bad. Like Starmer with Southport, suddenly he was trying to

00:24:56.500 use force. He started slamming people in prison, Lucy Connolly, and it was just poorly done.

00:25:01.720 Everyone ended up hating him. Yes, that is a really good example of foxes trying to use force.

00:25:05.960 They just do it badly. COVID would be another era, and Justin Trudeau, all that kind of stuff.

00:25:09.680 Whenever they try and use force, it just looks cack-handed and clumsy.

00:25:13.760 I believe that every leader needs to be cunning.

00:25:18.680 Well...

00:25:19.020 And I think it's funny that you say he's a Machiavellian, but yeah, he was in some respects,

00:25:24.380 but I think in Machiavelli it's nice because he's linking force with cunning in several respects.

00:25:31.280 Yeah. Yeah, Machiavelli, I mean, I think from what I recall...

00:25:35.360 He's incredibly cunning because he said one thing that stuck is when you want to do something

00:25:40.580 that is unpopular, get someone else to do it.

00:25:42.960 That's a good idea.

00:25:43.760 And he gave the example of Cesare Borghi, I think, who had to do something to a particular

00:25:49.940 city-state in Italy, and he put someone else, and that person was really unpopular.

00:25:55.920 He did the job, he became unpopular, and then he came and he severed his head and became

00:26:02.560 popular.

00:26:03.080 Well, that's...

00:26:03.380 Yeah, Trump should remember that one, because that is a good tactic.

00:26:07.840 Yeah, I think Machiavelli, I mean, he had these stories about how leaders should be...

00:26:11.980 I think he used bears in his example as well, but you should incorporate elements of both.

00:26:16.140 But what Pareto is basically saying, there are two different kinds of elite, and basically

00:26:19.920 one gives rise, a certain set of conditions give rise where one is more likely to step

00:26:25.840 in than the other.

00:26:27.180 So why do lines emerge?

00:26:28.500 Well, lines emerge when persuasion stops working and order must be reasserted.

00:26:34.280 So if, you know, if legitimacy has been eroded and no longer people believe in it, when enforcement

00:26:40.380 has become selective or symbolic, I mean, you'll recognise all of this in modern society, when

00:26:46.440 boundaries have dissolved, I mean, quite literally, that is exactly what has happened in our modern

00:26:52.140 society.

00:26:52.800 I mean, boundaries have all sort.

00:26:53.720 Everything from borders to every other kind of boundary has dissolved.

00:26:57.200 And the narratives are just not working anymore.

00:26:59.840 Nobody believes them.

00:27:00.960 They think they're a load of rubbish.

00:27:03.260 And so basically what Pareto was saying is that the lion is a resurgent.

00:27:07.220 He's a corrective phase.

00:27:08.800 So a lion can build order, but he can't...

00:27:12.400 But he's not good at arbitraging the differences in the power structures.

00:27:16.440 So let's put it this way.

00:27:18.860 Is the lion the force that restores order in a situation of disorder?

00:27:24.700 Well, they build it in the...

00:27:25.820 Whereas the fox is the...

00:27:26.520 Yes.

00:27:26.720 ...administrating peace, peaceful times.

00:27:28.960 Yeah.

00:27:29.120 So foxes are natural administrators.

00:27:31.080 Yeah.

00:27:31.400 And when it starts to break down, suddenly that's when your lion has to come in.

00:27:34.380 Especially legitimacy.

00:27:35.520 I mean, everyone talks about legitimacy crisis.

00:27:37.740 No one believes the police are fair.

00:27:40.020 No one believes the prisons are fair, etc.

00:27:42.420 So the whole...

00:27:43.220 That's when you start to need a lion.

00:27:44.680 But it's quite half a lion to get in, in a world of foxes.

00:27:47.280 That's another...

00:27:47.940 Yes.

00:27:48.700 Well, I mean, quite.

00:27:50.720 Yes.

00:27:51.020 The whole system we have at the moment is just entirely a fox system.

00:27:54.860 Yeah.

00:27:55.500 But because it's eroded everything...

00:27:57.480 Because it is relying on an inherited order structure,

00:28:01.940 it's basically arbitraged everything away to the point where it's just a joke at this point,

00:28:06.660 and they can't generate their own order because they don't know how to do that.

00:28:09.800 It's just not in their nature.

00:28:13.700 So...

00:28:14.140 And they look...

00:28:15.120 And these different kinds, they look bad to the other one.

00:28:18.880 So I think that criticising lions for not behaving like a fox is a category error.

00:28:25.660 If you've got a lion and you're demanding that he be more persuasive,

00:28:29.820 well, no, that doesn't work because legitimacy is gone.

00:28:33.760 And you can't expect elegance from them because, again, that's a fox characteristic.

00:28:37.880 And I think what we've got at the moment is a situation where we're starting to get lion leaders re-emerge.

00:28:42.940 And I'll go from examples in a minute of people who I think are the sort of lion leaders.

00:28:49.120 I mean, Bacalian, El Salvador, he's a good example of a lion.

00:28:52.800 Yeah.

00:28:53.400 You know, he was...

00:28:54.540 We were told about El Salvador.

00:28:56.180 We had all those...

00:28:56.900 I did a segment on it once.

00:28:57.960 We had all these experts who were saying,

00:29:00.400 oh, the crime situation in El Salvador, it's impossible to solve.

00:29:04.080 And they kept on studying it and doing these commissions and doing inquiries

00:29:09.900 and just kept on coming to the conclusion, yeah, it's impossible.

00:29:12.720 It's too complicated.

00:29:14.220 Yeah, because they're trying to use fox methods and it needed a lion,

00:29:16.880 much like our small boat situation.

00:29:18.840 And the craving for a lion is so great that when you just see a video

00:29:22.080 of prisoners chained up in El Salvador, normally you'd be like,

00:29:25.500 that doesn't mean anything to me.

00:29:26.440 But now you're like, I want that.

00:29:27.760 Yes.

00:29:28.300 Yes, exactly.

00:29:29.080 Give me the lion.

00:29:29.700 A lion would solve the small boat thing in an afternoon.

00:29:33.880 Eat them all.

00:29:34.840 Yeah.

00:29:35.260 But the foxes, they just cannot do it.

00:29:37.260 They're like, well, the ECHR.

00:29:38.960 Oh, yeah.

00:29:39.620 The lion doesn't care about anything.

00:29:40.380 Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, this rule and that rule.

00:29:41.980 And then we've got to do the, oh, piss off you little fox.

00:29:45.320 Yes.

00:29:45.880 Just to pop them.

00:29:47.000 Pop the thingy.

00:29:48.400 Sorry.

00:29:48.900 The mistake is to suppose that methods which succeed under certain conditions

00:29:52.720 will succeed under all.

00:29:54.620 So basically he's saying, you know, there is a time and a place for both of these.

00:29:57.900 And actually, if you've built a nice lot of order, but it's a bit blunt, well, maybe you

00:30:04.340 do want a fox to come along and arbitrage it a bit and realign it and do this, that and

00:30:09.120 the other thing.

00:30:09.660 And it's just a bit smoother and nicer.

00:30:11.280 But if you leave foxes in for too long.

00:30:15.060 You know, another good example of that is Churchill probably after the war, no one wanted him

00:30:18.460 because he was a lion.

00:30:19.880 And then like, hang on, now we want a fox now.

00:30:21.360 The war's done.

00:30:21.880 We don't want to be looking at that lion anymore.

00:30:23.340 He reminds us of all the nasty lion stuff that went on.

00:30:25.580 Wasn't he reelected after the war?

00:30:28.040 No, he was kicked out very, very quickly after the war.

00:30:31.820 Didn't he get reelected afterwards?

00:30:33.580 Oh, yeah.

00:30:33.860 He came back for a little bit.

00:30:35.000 Yeah.

00:30:35.580 And then they got rid of him again.

00:30:37.180 But that was later.

00:30:38.700 Yeah.

00:30:38.960 Hang on, I need to.

00:30:39.660 Yeah, not instantly, but.

00:30:41.340 Yeah, but they got rid of him in the immediate post-war era.

00:30:43.760 Yes.

00:30:44.300 Is what I meant.

00:30:45.020 Yes.

00:30:45.380 And let's have.

00:30:45.980 I have several things to say about the previous slide, but I don't know if you want me to

00:30:51.040 say it.

00:30:51.340 No, I don't know how to go backwards on this thing.

00:30:53.360 Can you remember what they were?

00:30:55.520 Yeah, by the category error.

00:30:57.300 Okay, go ahead.

00:30:57.840 Right.

00:30:58.420 So there are two things to say, three things to say here.

00:31:01.380 Number one, you say criticizing a lion for not behaving like a fox is a category error.

00:31:09.280 Well, number one, you could say criticizing a fox for not behaving like a lion is a category

00:31:13.960 error.

00:31:14.020 No, I'm saying it's the time to get rid of the foxes.

00:31:16.840 Let's get the lions in.

00:31:18.320 Okay.

00:31:18.720 Also, the other bit is that you could have someone who is a lion in that framework, whatever

00:31:27.700 exactly that means, but you don't want them to act like a lion.

00:31:30.980 So for instance, let's say I don't, I don't want, I'm an anti-communist.

00:31:34.660 Yes.

00:31:35.060 You can have people in the communist camps, in the communist camp who have, let's say,

00:31:41.540 a tremendous amount of strength of will.

00:31:44.560 Can you remember that?

00:31:45.260 I don't want them to be able to, to enforce that.

00:31:48.480 Can you remember that and bring that up in a couple of slides time?

00:31:50.840 Because there was the perfect bit that relates to that.

00:31:53.180 Um, so foxes, um, look corrupt to lions.

00:31:58.200 Lions look at foxes and they see selective enforcement and hidden veto players and moral

00:32:02.280 language, masking power and process to avoid action.

00:32:06.540 And they think, yeah, these guys are corrupt.

00:32:08.740 Whereas a lion looks, uh, uh, sorry, a fox looks at a lion and they say, well, look, they're

00:32:13.940 breaking procedures and they're, and they're needlessly escalating things in public.

00:32:17.840 You know, they're ignoring the, the narrative finesse.

00:32:21.160 Yeah, but it could be due to corruption.

00:32:23.200 I love how all three of these are just totally Trump.

00:32:25.680 Yes.

00:32:26.320 Yes.

00:32:26.640 Well, this is my point.

00:32:28.260 As soon as you start looking.

00:32:28.960 I can see you were, you were building towards it.

00:32:30.260 You are trying to frame it in order to make Trump the lion.

00:32:34.520 Well, no, I'm just, I'm, I'm just saying.

00:32:36.660 I'm just giving the facts.

00:32:37.560 Well, yeah, I'm just giving the facts.

00:32:39.060 Exactly right.

00:32:40.360 Um, and, um, the lion damages institutions that the foxes rely on.

00:32:44.280 And so to the fox, the lion looks stupid and blunt, needlessly escalating in public, needlessly,

00:32:50.760 you know, tearing up cooperation.

00:32:53.160 And, you know, basically each judge the others by standards that have ceased to be appropriate.

00:32:58.100 That's perhaps the better church analogy since he tried to ruin my other one.

00:33:01.380 Halifax trying to negotiate Chamberlain, but Churchill going, no, no, you can't.

00:33:05.600 You can't negotiate with this guy.

00:33:07.920 Because he was lion and they were fox.

00:33:09.420 Yes, exactly.

00:33:10.180 Yes.

00:33:10.400 Um, so, so what my argument is, is that Trump is an early stage lion.

00:33:14.660 You know, he's not, he's not a failed fox, as a lot of people are arguing.

00:33:17.820 He's not a fox in disguise.

00:33:19.540 He's an early stage lion.

00:33:21.460 And what he's actually doing is he's publicly escalating this stuff.

00:33:25.620 And by the way, I don't think he's doing any of this consciously.

00:33:28.040 I don't think he's sat there and he's read Machiavelli and he's read Plato and he's like,

00:33:31.780 Right, he's called Machiavelli.

00:33:35.220 I don't think any of that is happening.

00:33:36.640 This is a character type and he's, he's, he's just running on autopilot, but nevertheless,

00:33:44.060 it is exactly what Plato was, was predicting.

00:33:46.380 Yeah, but there's the most, let's, okay, personally, I don't see why we need to bring the fox and

00:33:51.700 the lion in, but let's, let's do it for, for the purpose of the discussion.

00:33:56.640 Because it's illustrated to my point.

00:33:59.060 No, because I don't see what it adds to your point.

00:34:02.640 Well, because, because, because you're missing the most important thing that when you have

00:34:08.060 a lion, lions represent, let's say, force or the will to use force to a much larger degree

00:34:15.020 than the fox is wants to use force.

00:34:17.420 The question is, right, you have force.

00:34:19.900 What do you want to do with it?

00:34:21.020 Well, whatever your agenda is.

00:34:25.100 I mean, you can have left wing boxes, sorry, left wing lions and right wing lions.

00:34:28.860 Yeah, but that's the, that's the important thing there.

00:34:31.800 What is he doing with the exercise of the power he has, to whatever extent he has?

00:34:37.800 What he is doing, I'll have a slide for that, is he's, he's publicly escalating about, in

00:34:43.880 fact, I'll go on to the next one, because.

00:34:45.560 Let's say, I think early stage line is right, because I knew you had cage lion, and I thought

00:34:49.600 really he's a lion cub, because he's an early lion, but he's not doing all the full lion

00:34:53.120 things, so early stage is perfect.

00:34:55.060 Well, he's got, yes, he's got serious constraints on him.

00:34:57.820 Yeah, but just to say to your point, it's not that Dan's, the political theory is there,

00:35:01.680 right?

00:35:01.920 So it must be able to apply to any leader, potentially.

00:35:04.940 So it's not really that Dan's bringing it in, it's just, it's there, isn't it?

00:35:07.980 Well, especially since a lot of.

00:35:08.900 Yeah, no, but I want to say that it, to me, doesn't matter where someone feels that they

00:35:12.420 have wasted potential.

00:35:14.380 I guess the reason I'm using this.

00:35:15.860 Life is incredibly wasteful in their respect.

00:35:17.660 Yes, I guess the reason I'm using this framework is because one of the key people on your side

00:35:21.940 of things is not just you and Harry, it's you, Harry.

00:35:24.540 I mean, AA uses the fox lion distinction and stuff a lot, so therefore it is useful to this.

00:35:30.340 But, you know, new elites arise by, you know, not by persuasion, but by proving where trout

00:35:35.640 power really lies.

00:35:37.020 That's the job of an early lion, is to prove where power really lies.

00:35:40.980 And I want to give you a couple of case studies on this.

00:35:44.200 So the tariff stuff, because the criticism will be, well, Trump is just a fake lion.

00:35:52.240 He's just a fox disguised as a lion.

00:35:54.740 And he does all of this stuff and then he backs off.

00:35:56.600 And I think they've got a term for it, what is it, taco, Trump always chickens out.

00:36:00.700 Yeah, taco.

00:36:01.400 Yes.

00:36:03.240 What I'm saying is the tariffs were not about optimal trade policy.

00:36:06.460 They were forcing the global system to reveal who subsidized whom.

00:36:10.020 Okay.

00:36:11.020 Yes.

00:36:11.660 I have, there is an issue here, which, I mean.

00:36:13.920 Well, you can disagree with who's doing the subsidizing.

00:36:16.820 I'm saying this is what the lion behavior is trying to expose.

00:36:19.980 Maybe, maybe.

00:36:20.600 But there's another bit here that I think is important is that it seems to be the case

00:36:27.380 in commentary that there are some people who are buying into a framework where they can't

00:36:33.420 criticize Trump because everything is treated as a tactic.

00:36:37.300 And that's how the people who are promoting the taco narrative, they're saying in the beginning,

00:36:41.720 Trump makes a wild maximalist demand.

00:36:43.480 I have criticized Trump.

00:36:44.360 Everyone starts going, the MAGA infospace starts going, ooh, that's great.

00:36:49.200 That's a great plan.

00:36:50.380 And then when he backs down from the initial demand, then it's the art of the deal.

00:36:55.400 It's like, yeah, but what would he have to do for you to criticize him?

00:37:00.680 Well, I have criticized him plenty.

00:37:02.540 So.

00:37:03.520 Yeah.

00:37:03.960 When you did.

00:37:04.420 He would just have to do the things I've already criticized him.

00:37:06.480 I'm not saying you're brain dead.

00:37:08.120 When you did criticize him, why did you criticize him?

00:37:11.020 Um, because he, um, hasn't gone far enough.

00:37:15.220 Okay.

00:37:16.640 So, so that.

00:37:17.600 Yeah.

00:37:17.620 Not building the wall.

00:37:18.620 I criticized him when he seemed to criticize the UK military.

00:37:21.500 Lots of things he's done.

00:37:22.700 Yes.

00:37:23.400 Not building the wall.

00:37:24.440 Not, not going strong enough on immigration.

00:37:26.840 Right.

00:37:27.160 Okay.

00:37:27.540 Okay.

00:37:27.820 Yes.

00:37:28.140 Then why not go, well, he's a lion there.

00:37:30.460 So when he said that the, that the NATO, um, sold, that the allies, uh, played it safe

00:37:38.660 in Afghanistan, why not just say, well, it's okay.

00:37:41.360 He's a lion.

00:37:42.420 I also criticized him for this, but why not just go.

00:37:47.240 It's bad lion.

00:37:48.440 You're the bad lion.

00:37:49.500 Again.

00:37:50.160 So you can be a lion and do bad things.

00:37:52.100 The point you can back to, we come back to the point there that having power is one thing.

00:37:57.620 Asking yourself how to exercise it and whether you exercise for good or bad.

00:38:02.320 So I think it's a style, isn't it?

00:38:04.420 So you can do good or bad lion and good or bad fox, but it's the style.

00:38:08.080 So the way Trump does good things is lion.

00:38:09.820 It's like, Hey, we're suddenly invading Greenland or whatever it is.

00:38:12.660 And we're taking Maduro.

00:38:14.200 That's kind of lion.

00:38:15.220 But the way he does bad things is lion.

00:38:16.920 It's not about good or bad.

00:38:18.260 It's about the character of the good or the bad.

00:38:19.940 Okay.

00:38:20.160 Would, if, if, if Trump truly was a fox, would he have done the Maduro bag on the head

00:38:27.560 in the helicopter thing?

00:38:28.940 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:29.760 No, it would have been a bloody treaty or something.

00:38:32.380 Oh, nor would he, probably he wouldn't either bomb the Narco boats.

00:38:37.160 Nobody's saying that Somalia is not even a country.

00:38:40.000 It's just people walking around killing each other.

00:38:42.080 Well, I'll finish the examples and it will highlight some of the stuff that you're talking

00:38:45.500 about.

00:38:46.040 So the wall is basically the same pattern again.

00:38:49.460 It's less about the lump of concrete itself.

00:38:52.280 It's more what he was doing was just completely exposing the asymmetries that had built up in

00:38:59.780 the immigration system and proving where power lies.

00:39:03.600 And, and it, that's kind of a key thing with an early stage lion.

00:39:06.400 It's not so much about, because there were different, there were different stages to your

00:39:10.180 lion.

00:39:10.740 It's not that he comes in and in one term he turns it in America into a based mega state

00:39:17.320 of infinite baseness.

00:39:19.140 No, the, the, the, the job of an early lion is to come along and say, look, this is a

00:39:24.280 massively Fox built structure.

00:39:27.420 Let's expose who actually has power, who actually does things.

00:39:31.140 And the, and the, and the board, the border stuff was great for this because it kind of

00:39:34.580 exposed, well, actually it comes down to, um, actually it's just a lot of media narrative

00:39:39.160 and Ninth Circuit judges who block everything if you try and do anything.

00:39:43.800 But that wasn't obvious until he came along and flushed all this stuff out.

00:39:48.660 It's kind of a good image.

00:39:49.600 He's like a lion lashing out, surrounded by loads of foxes, nipping at his tails.

00:39:53.080 And he's like, ah, he can't deal with them all because he's in a fox world.

00:39:56.340 Yes.

00:39:57.000 But, but one or two of the foxes, they're the, they're the big ball foxes.

00:40:00.280 And he's not fully grown either.

00:40:01.560 Yes.

00:40:01.760 And he wants to know who the big ball fox is.

00:40:04.120 What's going on here?

00:40:05.140 A couple more case studies.

00:40:06.540 Um, he, he, he's absolute genius.

00:40:08.440 I mean, the thing that I think he should be put on Mount Rushmore for was exposing the media.

00:40:11.960 Right, fake news.

00:40:14.080 Yes.

00:40:14.700 Now, it's difficult, if you're young, it's difficult to remember.

00:40:19.180 But for those of you who can remember, say, George Bush or, I mean, any right winger prior to Trump,

00:40:25.860 they all did the sort of massive, um, you know, deference rituals to the media.

00:40:31.340 All of that has just ended now.

00:40:32.860 And that was, that was brilliant.

00:40:33.960 He exposed them.

00:40:34.760 He goes and he names them.

00:40:36.440 He refuses the whole narrative discipline stuff.

00:40:39.200 He treats them as an adversary.

00:40:40.500 You know, that just wasn't done before Trump, because he just exposed what is the actual power here.

00:40:48.420 And it turns out not a lot.

00:40:49.760 You can just bypass them.

00:40:51.300 I don't want to confuse things, but of course, you could make an argument.

00:40:53.640 Bush and the whole chain year was quite lionish.

00:40:56.160 And they just went, you've attacked us.

00:40:58.880 We're going to take, take out the whole Middle East.

00:41:01.500 You know, get those, go get those.

00:41:02.560 Well, I mean, that's, that's another narrative running through this is the further back in time you go,

00:41:05.980 the easier it is to be a lion, um, certainly.

00:41:09.220 So, uh, and, and Greenland, which is kind of directly dressing, you know, York and yours and Harry's sort of objection.

00:41:16.440 You know, it's, you know, he, he wanted Greenland.

00:41:19.180 He wanted to buy it.

00:41:20.220 And he did rule out doing it by force, but all the same, he kind of did it in a way where it was a little bit,

00:41:26.560 well, he's actually going to invade them.

00:41:28.120 It was a little bit of ambiguity around there.

00:41:29.840 You know, it's, it's, it's, it's lovely bit of early lion chaos to see what comes up.

00:41:35.600 So he went out and he made all these maximally public claims.

00:41:39.700 He was a bit ambiguous about how he's going to get it done.

00:41:42.240 Um, he forced his allies to react quite openly to this, you know, and, and you, and you actually saw how are they going to respond?

00:41:49.940 Well, they responded by sending 13 troops to Greenland to defend it from the 101st Airborne.

00:41:56.260 Um, good luck with that.

00:41:58.340 Um, he accepted the short-term panic.

00:42:00.780 Now, a fox would have handled all of this quietly.

00:42:03.440 And, and this is the sort of main criticism of Trump on Greenland is, oh, we got a deal that he probably could have negotiated in three years in the background without.

00:42:14.960 Trump is the discombobulator.

00:42:16.380 You know, he has that weapon, the discombobulator.

00:42:17.980 He's actually, that's what he is.

00:42:19.520 Right.

00:42:19.960 So let me, I'll quickly finish the point and then come back to you.

00:42:23.660 But so what, but what he exposed, I mean, it's everything at the bottom there is that Greenland is indefensible without the US.

00:42:30.200 It's that Danish sovereignty is paper sovereignty, that NATO without the US is just symbolic, and that European defence autonomy is just non-existent.

00:42:40.960 Okay.

00:42:42.260 May I say what I think?

00:42:43.840 Yes.

00:42:44.400 Harry and I were saying.

00:42:45.780 Right?

00:42:46.180 Yes.

00:42:46.780 Okay.

00:42:47.700 So you're saying a fox would have handled this quietly.

00:42:51.320 Probably a fox would understand that there was, there were very few things to say there.

00:42:56.260 Why?

00:42:56.580 Because what happened was that there was already an agreement in 1951 about military presence of the US in Greenland.

00:43:06.180 This is all fox thinking.

00:43:08.400 This is just, oh, we're going to negotiate it.

00:43:10.520 Yeah, but that's the point.

00:43:11.460 That's when, in some cases, you may need to use some tranquilizer with some lions.

00:43:16.980 Right.

00:43:17.480 No, because, I mean, it's all built on fiction.

00:43:21.900 Danish sovereignty is a fiction.

00:43:23.600 Can I give, oh, sorry.

00:43:24.440 Sorry, sorry, excuse me.

00:43:27.100 I don't think that the things you are saying that he exposed were things that were much doubted.

00:43:36.220 So I don't think he did.

00:43:38.140 They were, because in a fox system, you get all of these, none of these assumptions were ever tested, and it's just this network.

00:43:44.540 I don't think that anyone doubted that the US was the biggest party in NATO before this.

00:43:50.420 But there was these layers of obfuscation.

00:43:52.000 People weren't naming it.

00:43:53.140 Trump forced everyone to name it, and therefore say, well, hang on, given that we back all this, you need to do what we say.

00:43:58.620 And he got rid of the illusion that they had any control, is what you're saying.

00:44:03.020 Yes.

00:44:03.520 He's stripping away all of the illusions, and it forced it to surface.

00:44:06.780 I mean, who was it?

00:44:07.580 I mean, one of the things that surfaced is who was it that actually came to Trump in the end?

00:44:12.260 It was Mark Rutte, the head of NATO.

00:44:15.540 It wasn't the Danish prime minister.

00:44:17.340 It wasn't the head of the EU.

00:44:18.900 For example, that's one of the things that it flushes out.

00:44:21.700 If you don't stir this stuff up, if you don't test those assumptions, it forced all of the European leaders to sit there for three weeks and think, well, what does our defense without the US actually look like?

00:44:33.200 And one thing that he, I think he said that they didn't discuss about Greenland.

00:44:37.360 That's the interesting part.

00:44:39.020 Rutte.

00:44:39.740 Yeah, right.

00:44:40.320 Said that Greenland wasn't discussed with Trump.

00:44:44.620 Interesting.

00:44:45.500 Right.

00:44:45.700 Which sort of suggests, that's actually reinforcing your point.

00:44:49.600 Okay.

00:44:49.900 That it wasn't about Greenland.

00:44:51.260 Yeah.

00:44:51.600 By the way, there's a real-time breaking news from Don Lehman.

00:44:55.120 Yeah, that Don Lehman has been arrested, which totally proves Dan's point.

00:44:58.420 That's pure lion.

00:44:59.620 They've actually arrested Don Lehman.

00:45:01.160 There we go.

00:45:01.760 Pure lion.

00:45:02.380 More and more lion behavior is surfacing.

00:45:04.820 But what I'm saying is, unless you shake this, unless the early stage lion shakes this stuff up and see where power actually sits, there's nothing for a later lion to then attack.

00:45:15.080 Because otherwise, you just, the foxes will just scatter into their web of, you know, fox bullshit.

00:45:22.080 Right.

00:45:22.280 So basically, what I'm saying is, there's one pattern, which is across all of these domains, what Trump is doing is the same diagnostic move,

00:45:29.600 which is to force the system to reveal who actually enforces the outcomes.

00:45:35.020 Right.

00:45:35.180 That's the important bit.

00:45:36.860 And yes, it looks like chaos short term because those hidden dependencies are forced open.

00:45:43.320 The procedural ambiguities collapse into, well, who actually does stand up in the end?

00:45:48.240 Who actually does push back?

00:45:49.720 You know, who is really enforcing the miasma on the border?

00:45:54.620 Oh, look, it's the night search of judges.

00:45:57.240 How powerful really is the media?

00:45:59.340 Oh, actually, they're not.

00:46:00.060 You can just ignore them.

00:46:01.400 You know, who really is going to put their foot down when it comes to realignment of NATO and the defense structures?

00:46:08.360 And in all of these things, everything is exposed.

00:46:11.200 So a fox wants to minimize disturbance.

00:46:14.560 The lion isn't trying to necessarily maximize disturbance.

00:46:17.400 They're trying to maximize information.

00:46:20.600 The Trump isn't someone who says that you can ignore the media.

00:46:24.800 You can ignore some mainstream media.

00:46:28.320 But also he doesn't ignore it because he's very media minded.

00:46:32.020 He eats the media.

00:46:33.480 He creates chaos like a lion.

00:46:35.080 They try to follow him and go, oh, what's he just done?

00:46:36.880 He smashed everything up.

00:46:37.680 First of all, he doesn't have a classic lion behavior.

00:46:40.440 He has intentionally created.

00:46:42.040 I think he's a bit more strategic thinking than you make him.

00:46:45.360 He isn't that moving on a day-to-day basis.

00:46:50.900 I really don't think that he didn't plan how he was going to create and utilize what is called the mega infospace.

00:46:58.700 Yes.

00:46:58.880 I think that was entirely intentional.

00:47:00.500 Well, I'll just rattle through the last couple of things.

00:47:02.760 And also, trashing mainstream media is one of the ways in which he's galvanizing his base.

00:47:09.500 Right.

00:47:10.200 Yes, I'd accept that.

00:47:11.920 So, you know, I think, you know, perhaps yourself and Harry and AA and Morgoth and so on would say that, you know, a real lion follows through regardless of trust, regardless of cost.

00:47:23.380 Whereas Trump, he escalates and then he stops, leading to this whole taco thing.

00:47:28.060 You know, my view is that Trump is basically pushing as far as the system will allow without breaking it.

00:47:33.300 But, you know, all of the structures that the U.S. have do impose a kind of hard constraint on this, unless you're willing to really break it.

00:47:41.920 Unless you're willing to go full start.

00:47:42.860 Isn't that also Morgoth's fee?

00:47:44.020 Was it?

00:47:44.620 Wasn't that Morgoth's fee?

00:47:47.200 Well, actually, no.

00:47:47.900 To be fair, Morgoth did hint at the constrained lion thing.

00:47:51.520 But I heard him say that he's a fake lion.

00:47:53.940 But then he did hint at the other thing as well, which I quite like.

00:47:56.760 So I thought, yeah, I'll steal that.

00:47:57.780 That's good.

00:47:59.820 But, you know, you can't criticize Trump for not going full Stalin and just going around and machine gunning judges in the street.

00:48:07.060 Yes, obviously, it would be awesome.

00:48:09.900 But you can't really do that without, at that point, you're not correcting the system.

00:48:14.120 You're just destroying it.

00:48:16.080 And then you'd have to build something else entirely on the other side of it.

00:48:20.180 And I pushed AA on this, for example.

00:48:22.720 And I said, well, who are all lions then?

00:48:24.800 And his answer was Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Frederick II, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin.

00:48:30.780 Now, I think that is setting the bar just a little bit high because it would be tricky.

00:48:38.120 He's not in that category.

00:48:39.560 Especially the older category.

00:48:40.960 Because you just can't, the society's changed so much.

00:48:42.760 You can't be a lion like Genghis Khan anymore.

00:48:45.800 And then we pushed back and said, okay, what about, you know, post-war lions?

00:48:49.440 We're getting sort of Mao Castro, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Pinochet.

00:48:53.960 I mean, okay, fine.

00:48:55.940 But you are setting the bar at the point where he would have to completely destroy the US.

00:49:04.000 Maybe he's a Western lion because it's very hard to get a lion in the West.

00:49:06.860 Those are not Western examples.

00:49:08.040 I think Gaddafi is a surprising example, given that AA knows he was a kind of fake, patsy villain.

00:49:13.420 He has said that, hasn't he?

00:49:14.280 Yes.

00:49:14.540 Yeah.

00:49:14.780 We did it on a stream with him about hyper-normalization.

00:49:17.160 I don't see how he's a weak lion.

00:49:18.460 What happened to all these lions?

00:49:22.200 Were they destroyed by foxes?

00:49:25.980 I suppose, yeah.

00:49:27.040 In many cases, they were, weren't they?

00:49:28.740 Yeah.

00:49:29.060 Yeah.

00:49:29.280 So maybe, you know, going full lion, doing, doing, you know, never go full lion, never go completely unconstrained.

00:49:37.500 And just to really irritate the elite theorists, I've gone and lined up the big boys.

00:49:43.740 I've got Pareto, Mosco and Burnham.

00:49:46.060 Again, on some of these, there's a little bit of paraphrasing because I'm condensing passages into sentences.

00:49:52.420 But Pareto himself says that force does not operate in a vacuum.

00:49:56.900 It's effective only in relation to the sentiments and beliefs of the prevailing society.

00:50:02.380 Mosco, you know, says the manner which political power is exercised depends on the conditions of the social environment.

00:50:08.800 Different social environments give rise to different political organizations.

00:50:12.800 Burnham says it is a persistent political myth that foundation of power is just physical force.

00:50:18.480 You know, the forms for which power is exercised can vary with the structure of society.

00:50:23.700 And changes in social organization brings corresponding changes in political.

00:50:28.780 The political theorists understood this.

00:50:30.560 You have to operate within the sort of set that you're working on.

00:50:33.020 So ultimately, the whole discussion boils down to this.

00:50:35.580 And this is where we can probably get into it.

00:50:37.860 Is Trump a fake fox pretending to be a lion?

00:50:43.540 Or is he a constrained lion basically doing as much as he can?

00:50:47.440 I don't think he's a fox.

00:50:49.740 Honestly, I don't think.

00:50:50.660 Right.

00:50:50.980 So I've won you over.

00:50:53.080 Yeah.

00:50:53.600 Now we just need Harry, A.A., Morgoth and Mark.

00:50:56.660 Yeah, I don't think that was exactly the disagreement.

00:50:59.400 But you have won me over in this.

00:51:00.920 Yes.

00:51:01.520 Yeah, I think he is a constrained lion.

00:51:03.300 I'm basically saying that...

00:51:04.580 There are several arguments as to whether it's good to constrain lions or not.

00:51:08.300 Because, you know, the people who went full lion before...

00:51:12.800 Yes.

00:51:13.120 So basically what I'm saying is, look, after long periods of near total fox domination,

00:51:19.380 what he actually is, and this is consistent, I think, with the Prato theory,

00:51:26.060 is that he's basically the most...

00:51:28.920 He is the plausibly the strongest lion that the system is capable of selecting at this point.

00:51:37.180 So, um...

00:51:38.420 But yeah, as you said, they don't end well.

00:51:39.640 And the problem with Trump is when he gets out, the foxes will try and put him in jail.

00:51:43.140 Oh, the fox will use fox-like...

00:51:45.020 Yeah.

00:51:45.780 ...foxery.

00:51:46.340 I suppose he's got to have more and more lions.

00:51:47.680 He needs to line up his next lion, J.D. Vance, not have elections.

00:51:50.920 Yes.

00:51:51.680 Well, I mean, that is kind of a thing, isn't it?

00:51:54.200 So, I mean, quite often, and that's why I kind of describe him as a constrained early lion,

00:51:59.380 is quite often you get lions pop up in history, and the first one is quite constrained,

00:52:04.080 and he exposes stuff, and then the next lion comes along, and he finishes the job.

00:52:08.700 So I'm probably being a little bit reductive here,

00:52:12.220 but you could think of Caesar and Augustus in this kind of phrase.

00:52:15.560 Caesar exposed the corruption of the Senate, but he still tried to work within it.

00:52:21.360 Augustus just comes along, he's like, yep, right, do away with all that.

00:52:24.660 You know, a great historical example is the distinction between Louis XIV and Louis XVI.

00:52:30.540 I hadn't thought of that one.

00:52:31.380 Because Louis XIV, I think he sort of was a lion, and he started being the ultra-absolutist.

00:52:37.900 He was saying, I am the state.

00:52:39.920 He was just, everything revolves around me.

00:52:42.740 And he created, he erected this giant absolutist state,

00:52:48.320 which sort of, and he sort of tried to play balance of power with several groups.

00:52:53.180 And that's also the rise of modern absolutism, because they created the centralized state,

00:52:58.080 and there was a new group of bureaucrats that the monarchs and the absolutist rulers used

00:53:04.620 in order to lower the power of the nobility.

00:53:07.860 And Louis XVI was incredibly weak.

00:53:11.800 And he just...

00:53:13.120 I hadn't thought of that one.

00:53:13.920 The other ones that I thought of was Rob Spear...

00:53:16.560 If he weren't weak, if he weren't weak, most probably the revolution would have failed.

00:53:22.180 Yes.

00:53:22.600 I mean, the other examples that I could think of was Rob Spear leading to Napoleon,

00:53:27.320 and Cromwell leading to William III.

00:53:29.180 They had aura.

00:53:31.380 Yes.

00:53:31.500 That's the problem.

00:53:31.980 You can't see someone following Trump.

00:53:33.460 Stephen Miller's quite lying, obviously Bannon.

00:53:35.280 But J.D. Vance seems more fucked in his nature.

00:53:38.880 He seems a little more...

00:53:39.680 He's not as extreme as Trump.

00:53:41.260 But then Trump's loosened the lid for him, so...

00:53:43.940 Yes.

00:53:44.400 Let's see.

00:53:45.100 Oh, you...

00:53:45.600 And the next line will get ahead of a lot more done,

00:53:47.920 because the early line has come along and shaken everything up.

00:53:51.780 Examples of...

00:53:52.580 I mean, quickly, examples of...

00:53:54.020 This is the bit that you were going to bring in, Stelios, earlier,

00:53:56.560 but examples of sort of actual lions.

00:53:59.360 I would say that Putin is, but Putin, you know, was an early lion

00:54:05.240 and kind of did the whole life cycle of the lion because he's been in for so long.

00:54:09.220 He's now a late-stage lion because he's been in for whatever it is, 27 years.

00:54:15.240 Who else?

00:54:16.000 Bekeli, absolute lion.

00:54:18.360 Yeah.

00:54:18.680 I mean, obviously, Putin's sly and everything,

00:54:20.780 but starting a land war in Europe has to be lion.

00:54:23.400 Yes.

00:54:23.680 And Bekeli lion, yeah.

00:54:25.140 And I'll just ask the critics this.

00:54:27.920 If Trump isn't a lion,

00:54:31.900 why is the entire system of foxes reacting to him as if he is a lion, not a fox?

00:54:37.300 They might say that's all theatre and really they want him.

00:54:40.320 Well, yeah, but I think you're really stretching at that point

00:54:42.260 because, I mean, the immune response has been pretty damn strong.

00:54:46.720 So, yes.

00:54:48.000 Also, Rupert Lowe lion, Farage is a fox.

00:54:50.540 Farage is a fox.

00:54:51.720 I'll give you that.

00:54:52.280 Yeah.

00:54:52.720 He's totally...

00:54:53.340 He does everything with...

00:54:54.520 He tries to manipulate the narrative

00:54:56.500 and he's all fox-like behaviour,

00:54:58.940 but, yeah, Lowe lion.

00:55:01.200 Lowe comes up with his wheelbarrow full of...

00:55:03.080 Yes.

00:55:03.240 I don't know if I can say it on YouTube,

00:55:04.240 but he just takes over Parliament with one wheelbarrow.

00:55:06.820 That's pure lion.

00:55:07.820 Yes.

00:55:08.560 Yes, that's what we need, 100%.

00:55:11.000 Right.

00:55:12.620 Do we have any comments on this one?

00:55:15.000 I don't know.

00:55:15.280 I have to...

00:55:15.900 Yeah.

00:55:16.300 So, Sigilstone17 says,

00:55:19.300 all this fox and lion talk is just a cover for what Dan really wants to talk about.

00:55:24.520 What fursuit would each world leader wear?

00:55:27.600 What is a fursuit?

00:55:28.560 I don't know.

00:55:29.060 I know, but this sounds cringy AF.

00:55:31.980 Kasadwin says,

00:55:33.920 this is all happening because the last several decades of anti-white, anti-Western fox activity

00:55:38.680 has essentially served as some kind of a cult summoning ritual for the lion to rise again.

00:55:44.660 The lion will rise.

00:55:46.980 Okay.

00:55:47.780 All right.

00:55:48.340 We've got a bit of time to blast through the penguin then.

00:55:50.460 Let's embrace the penguin.

00:55:51.640 It's the last segment on a Friday.

00:55:54.340 I thought we'd have some penguin-related fun.

00:55:56.860 I'm amazed it hasn't been covered yet already.

00:55:58.800 So, I want to cover the penguin meme.

00:56:01.040 And I'm going to ask the question,

00:56:02.380 but why?

00:56:03.620 And that's what we're all trying to find out.

00:56:05.060 Are you going to explain why everyone's been talking about penguins in my timeline?

00:56:09.080 Because I'm completely confused by this.

00:56:10.160 I will.

00:56:10.220 That's exactly what I'm going to do.

00:56:11.400 Good.

00:56:11.700 So, this was the clip.

00:56:12.800 And it comes from Werner Herzog's 2007 film, Encounters at the End of the Earth.

00:56:18.780 Is my mouse working?

00:56:19.680 Can I just not see it?

00:56:20.600 Because I'm a boomer.

00:56:21.380 Or is it not working?

00:56:21.840 Oh, there we go.

00:56:22.880 Okay.

00:56:23.280 And so, there was a clip from this film.

00:56:24.600 It suddenly started going around.

00:56:25.380 Even though the film is almost 20 years old.

00:56:27.440 And this was the clip.

00:56:28.220 And then we'll talk about it.

00:56:30.000 These penguins are all heading to the open border to the right.

00:56:38.960 But one of them caught our eye, the one in the center.

00:56:44.260 He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice, nor return to the colony.

00:56:51.960 Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains, some 70 kilometers away.

00:56:58.660 Dr. Ainley explained that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head right back for the mountains.

00:57:13.980 But why?

00:57:16.960 So, Herzog said he actually got that from Unsolved Mysteries.

00:57:20.380 Apparently, you'd see a murder at the start of the episode.

00:57:22.480 The narrator would say, but why?

00:57:24.180 And I love the supervillain voiceover.

00:57:26.780 Yeah.

00:57:27.020 That is kind of creepy supervillain.

00:57:28.660 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:28.880 Well, that's how Herzog's always spoken.

00:57:30.080 That's why he was in Jack Reacher as the baddie.

00:57:32.080 And it was perfect for him.

00:57:33.540 Oh, was he?

00:57:34.060 I thought I'd heard it before.

00:57:35.480 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:57:36.100 He's like, prison in America, a retirement home.

00:57:39.180 This is just how he talks.

00:57:39.940 He's just hilarious.

00:57:40.900 I've been doing a Werner Herzog impression for years.

00:57:42.920 It's only just now become relevant.

00:57:44.900 This was the original film.

00:57:46.560 Encounters at the End of the World.

00:57:47.780 It wasn't really about the penguin.

00:57:49.040 What's kind of ironic about it is that it wasn't supposed to be about the penguin at all.

00:57:52.900 It even says, Herzog said that the film will not be a typical Antarctica film about fluffy penguins,

00:57:59.920 but will instead explore the dreams of the people in the landscape.

00:58:02.220 But it ended up being a penguin meme.

00:58:04.660 It's a throwaway part of the film because he's always capturing these little things.

00:58:08.540 Have you ever seen many Herzog films?

00:58:11.000 No.

00:58:11.680 He has a couple of recurrent themes.

00:58:13.660 One is that nature, he sort of talks about.

00:58:15.580 He's like, the jungle is cruel and pointless.

00:58:18.320 So he sees nature as futile and indifferent.

00:58:21.400 And he also just has weird stuff happen.

00:58:23.540 One of them has a lot of dwarves in it.

00:58:25.080 There's a lot of dwarves popping up and things like that.

00:58:26.500 The jungle?

00:58:27.420 Not in the jungle.

00:58:28.160 He hasn't put those two together yet.

00:58:29.560 Okay.

00:58:30.320 That's the obvious next move.

00:58:31.760 Yeah.

00:58:32.140 You've not even seen Grizzly Man about the bear.

00:58:35.100 That was great.

00:58:35.900 But I want to see dwarves on location, dwarves with bears, dwarves in the Arctic.

00:58:39.280 Just dwarves everywhere, basically.

00:58:41.080 That's the Grizzly Man where he's like, the bear doesn't care about people.

00:58:44.100 All I see is stupidity and indifference.

00:58:46.460 There's that stuff.

00:58:47.580 I like that.

00:58:47.980 But the penguin now is in a completely new context.

00:58:50.480 So everyone relates to the penguin.

00:58:52.060 Every man trying to sleep tonight, I bet he's thinking about other women.

00:58:54.380 I'm the penguin.

00:58:55.340 That's all that men are thinking.

00:58:56.660 I immediately resonated with the penguin.

00:58:58.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:58:58.880 I've got to say.

00:58:59.660 But why?

00:59:00.320 But why?

00:59:01.300 And we're going to look at it.

00:59:02.140 So here's the debate.

00:59:03.800 The penguin is an ubermensch.

00:59:05.220 No, he's the last man.

00:59:06.040 Did you ever even read Nietzsche?

00:59:07.120 No, did you?

00:59:07.620 No.

00:59:08.180 But excuse to put Sidney Sweeney in.

00:59:09.600 But that's the question.

00:59:10.820 Is he the ubermensch or is he the nihilist or the bug man last man or is he something else?

00:59:17.260 He's just having enough.

00:59:19.000 Yeah, well, that's the debate.

00:59:19.860 And just to explain in case anyone hasn't read Nietzsche, the last man.

00:59:22.760 The one on the left has defeated John Wick.

00:59:26.180 Who's the one on the left?

00:59:27.680 Ana de Armas.

00:59:29.120 Oh, I like both of those girls.

00:59:30.080 Both impressive.

00:59:31.600 But the last man represents the lowest stage of humanity.

00:59:34.040 This is straight off AI.

00:59:35.080 A nihilist who shuns risk, creativity and ambition in favor of comfort, safety and mediocrity.

00:59:40.140 And obviously the ubermensch is the opposite of all those qualities.

00:59:43.140 The White House have embraced the penguin.

00:59:45.840 But some people don't get it.

00:59:48.580 So here's the people who don't get it and think of it as the nihilist penguin and fail to see the romance of it.

00:59:52.780 And they are the left.

00:59:53.920 This guy seems to be more on the sort of Mearsheimer left than the sort of libtard.

00:59:57.780 But he says there are no penguins in Greenland.

00:59:59.480 And they're actually in the Southern Hemisphere.

01:00:01.040 I do not think the White House know what they're conquering.

01:00:02.660 It's like, bro, you didn't get the meme.

01:00:04.620 No, that's a pretty hard fail, I've got to say.

01:00:08.360 A hard fail.

01:00:08.860 The left don't get it.

01:00:09.640 Guess who else doesn't get it?

01:00:10.680 Midwits.

01:00:11.500 The penguin is happy.

01:00:12.780 The penguin is depressed.

01:00:13.920 The penguin is happy.

01:00:15.200 So the bell curve, midwit doesn't get it.

01:00:18.260 Penguin doesn't have to put up with the other penguin bullshit anymore.

01:00:21.600 Of course he's happy.

01:00:22.520 Exactly, exactly.

01:00:23.520 He's free.

01:00:24.380 Women don't get it, of course.

01:00:25.620 How it feels to watch the depressed penguin.

01:00:27.560 This is why women were dismissed by all the great philosophers and capable of philosophizing.

01:00:31.500 She just doesn't get it.

01:00:32.520 She thinks he's depressed.

01:00:33.340 He's not depressed.

01:00:34.340 He's a hero.

01:00:35.700 The canceled Netflix show meme doesn't get it.

01:00:39.680 Why did he go to the mountains?

01:00:40.640 Why are they posting about it?

01:00:41.680 Doesn't get it.

01:00:43.680 Guess who else doesn't get it?

01:00:45.240 The French.

01:00:46.160 French don't get it.

01:00:47.000 So this French bloke, a bit more eloquent, but he says Americans have discovered the clip from Werner Herzog's documentary where a confused penguin decides to commit suicide for no reason at all.

01:00:55.500 They think it's an example of heroic behavior.

01:00:57.180 These people have a stupidity that defies understanding.

01:00:59.800 Very French.

01:01:01.000 And he goes on to point out how the Herzog clip in Grizzly Man where he's like,

01:01:05.520 And what haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy.

01:01:16.400 I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.

01:01:21.460 To me.

01:01:22.300 That's one of his big themes.

01:01:23.300 So Herzog himself is a bit of a, he wouldn't get the penguin, but the penguin has now been brought beyond the Herzog context.

01:01:29.880 But he's right to say that.

01:01:30.960 Can I just quickly add something?

01:01:32.320 Yeah.

01:01:32.540 You know how apparently there's this other discussion, completely separate, which is like stupid people don't have an inner monologue.

01:01:38.820 Yes.

01:01:39.580 Is it possible to get my inner monologue to the point where it talks in Werner Herzog's voice?

01:01:44.260 I've got mine.

01:01:44.820 Because that would be awesome.

01:01:45.840 Training.

01:01:47.440 You're like, these people are stupid.

01:01:49.440 I'm on the tube.

01:01:50.600 I don't relate to them at all.

01:01:52.140 Yeah.

01:01:52.840 Yes.

01:01:53.300 That would be very entertaining, wouldn't it?

01:01:54.720 That or Jordan Peterson.

01:01:56.020 Well, it's a pretty complicated question.

01:01:57.700 Anyway.

01:01:59.080 So yeah, he says it's been almost 20 years since the clip could be found on the internet.

01:02:02.100 It's always been seen as a sad thing.

01:02:04.040 People would have loved for the penguin to be saved by the film crew and these morons see a rugged individualist hero.

01:02:08.820 So the French guy's not having it.

01:02:10.500 Guess who else doesn't get it?

01:02:11.920 Redditors.

01:02:12.880 So Redditors don't understand the penguin.

01:02:16.180 They come up with all these things that it's just, I don't need the sound there, but they're saying in this clip that it's dumb.

01:02:22.100 It's an idiot.

01:02:22.760 This is absurd and pointless.

01:02:24.780 Why is the penguin bothering?

01:02:26.880 F nature.

01:02:28.480 That's really sad.

01:02:29.900 Idiot.

01:02:30.340 Absurd.

01:02:30.780 Pointless.

01:02:31.100 Towards oblivion.

01:02:31.720 So Redditors don't get it.

01:02:33.120 And this was a response.

01:02:34.460 Stop.

01:02:34.760 You're headed towards certain death.

01:02:35.920 Well, then I guess we have something in common because, of course, it's the same fate for everyone.

01:02:39.560 So the penguin is just embracing it.

01:02:42.640 More elaboration on that.

01:02:43.760 Reddit doesn't understand that the penguin represents everything they're not.

01:02:46.660 They're content to just exist, happy in their hedonistic materialism, grind, eat, sleep, wake up and repeat.

01:02:51.420 The penguin wants more.

01:02:52.540 It wants to know what's out there.

01:02:53.780 The dangers don't matter because the question is before it and demands an answer.

01:02:57.600 Is there more to life to existing than the comforting routine?

01:03:00.660 The penguin is more human than any Redditor.

01:03:03.000 I almost said penguin-guing there, which would turn me into Candace Owens not being able to read.

01:03:07.820 But, see, it's resonated with people because, you know, we're in this bug man existence.

01:03:12.360 We saw it, especially during COVID, everyone just watching Netflix.

01:03:15.040 But then young people, particularly young men, want more.

01:03:17.580 So this is the argument you're seeing.

01:03:20.640 Nihilist penguin misses the point, as illuminated by that meme.

01:03:25.580 This is a bit long, but reflecting further on this.

01:03:27.500 To reduce the solitary penguin to a meme of depression or nihilistic surrender represents a truly pedestrian intellect.

01:03:32.380 It's a diagnosis that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the will to power.

01:03:36.380 The colony represents the last man, content, loud, driven only by the banal biological imperatives of breeding and feeding.

01:03:42.560 Trapped in the safety of the herd.

01:03:44.100 To remain there is the true death.

01:03:45.640 The deranged penguin is not fleeing life.

01:03:47.940 He is rejecting the aesthetic stagnation of mere survival.

01:03:50.640 The lion has to eat something, doesn't it?

01:03:53.680 You don't get those in Greenland either, if you're going to be...

01:03:56.280 Yeah, don't get...

01:03:57.260 The penguin is also Euromaxing.

01:03:59.060 There is also that.

01:04:01.380 Torba, very similar.

01:04:02.380 But the bug man is fundamentally incapable of understanding the penguins yearning to strive, conquer and transcend.

01:04:07.280 Waddling against the Antarctic winds of modernity.

01:04:09.700 It is he alone who reaches for impossible heights.

01:04:12.000 And he alone who trades safety and comfort for the thrill of the void.

01:04:15.400 Yeah.

01:04:16.500 That's the territory where, you know, just say that they made a huge mistake.

01:04:20.860 And now everyone is trying to create a large-scale narrative.

01:04:27.300 They just don't use enough to make sense out of it.

01:04:30.140 Well, that's the thing.

01:04:31.020 People are projecting their own narrative, which we'll get onto.

01:04:32.660 So that's why all the people don't get it, because they see the nihilists.

01:04:36.220 And as this gets into, really, the penguin is a Nietzschean or an adventurer.

01:04:40.080 Some say he's an ubermensch.

01:04:41.400 It's not nihilism.

01:04:42.360 It's hope.

01:04:42.800 It's ambition.

01:04:43.440 He's Nietzsche's uber-penguin.

01:04:45.180 And this is very similar.

01:04:46.680 I know of no better life purpose than to perish attempting the great and impossible.

01:04:50.340 By the way, I was going through all these last night with a headache.

01:04:52.380 There are so many penguin meat.

01:04:53.660 I barely scratched the surface.

01:04:54.960 There are thousands of these things.

01:04:56.480 Happy Feet now will be announced as a far-right movie.

01:04:59.740 Happy Feet.

01:05:00.440 Oh, yeah.

01:05:00.640 With a penguin.

01:05:01.600 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:02.640 Sometimes you just have to go to the mountain.

01:05:04.020 Baby, you can't just go to the mountain.

01:05:05.160 I have to go to the mountain.

01:05:06.740 Women don't understand, as I said.

01:05:08.960 So this is the Nietzschean-beg.

01:05:10.000 Of course, Lord Miles relates.

01:05:11.540 I've been talking about this penguin since 2018, and finally the world has caught up to me.

01:05:14.940 So he sees in the penguin a sense of adventure.

01:05:18.800 I see the aristocrat penguin here.

01:05:20.500 Abandons society.

01:05:21.480 Refuses to elaborate further.

01:05:22.760 That inspires millions from a completely different species.

01:05:25.580 Never complain.

01:05:26.340 Never explain.

01:05:27.240 Just leave the herd.

01:05:30.000 This is a claim that Herzog himself has something in common with the penguin, despite his view on nature that we saw earlier.

01:05:36.480 When I came back to Germany and I tried to hold all the investors together, they said to me,

01:05:41.700 Well, how can you continue?

01:05:43.060 Do you have the strength or the will or the enthusiasm or so?

01:05:47.860 And I said, how can you ask this question?

01:05:50.300 If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams, and I don't want to live like that.

01:05:58.380 I live my life or I end my life with this project.

01:06:02.360 Pure penguin energy, you see.

01:06:05.380 So Herzog, he was always doing these, don't think there would be a, didn't think there'd be a more Faustian Werner Herzog clip than the penguin, but here we are.

01:06:11.460 So Herzog was always doing these things like getting a whole ship over a mountain pointlessly, and he's like, we have to do it for real, which was absolutely a nightmare.

01:06:19.120 He was always falling out with local pygmy tribes and stuff.

01:06:21.920 He did extraordinary things to make his film.

01:06:23.320 So he took a ship over a mountain?

01:06:25.020 Yeah, with Klaus, and he worked with Klaus Kinski while doing it, which is a kind of insane prospect anyway.

01:06:31.380 I'm trying to remember the name of that film.

01:06:34.540 I mean, I'm not automatically against it.

01:06:36.200 I just don't...

01:06:36.580 It's Corraldo.

01:06:37.760 He's like, right, we have to actually bring this boat over the mountain and do it for real.

01:06:41.100 And it was hellishly near impossible.

01:06:43.640 I'm just...

01:06:44.200 The movie's not even that good.

01:06:45.160 I mean, what kind of ship are we talking about?

01:06:46.220 Like an oil tank or something?

01:06:47.100 No, no, that was like a boat.

01:06:48.440 That was...

01:06:49.040 It was...

01:06:51.140 So this was in 1982.

01:06:52.440 Klaus Kinski...

01:06:54.160 Right.

01:06:54.660 And I'm just trying to remember how they did it.

01:06:56.620 They had to assemble steamboat.

01:06:59.000 Yeah, it was a big steamboat.

01:07:00.880 They had to try and do it exactly how it had been done in reality.

01:07:05.040 So Herzog had his crew attempt to manually haul the 320-tonne steamship up a steep hill, leading to three injuries.

01:07:10.920 People were always getting hurt on his sets and stuff.

01:07:13.740 It was quite...

01:07:14.200 I mean, I want to watch the Netflix documentary,

01:07:16.640 where they try and take a proper ship over a mountain.

01:07:19.640 And they don't need to explain why they're doing it.

01:07:21.740 I just want to see them do it.

01:07:22.880 Yeah.

01:07:23.420 Well, Herzog's got the closest.

01:07:25.100 I'm surprised you haven't watched all his films.

01:07:26.540 I watched them back when films were good.

01:07:29.540 Now, there's another claim I want to make.

01:07:32.620 I love this.

01:07:33.500 I don't want it all to be about Nietzsche.

01:07:35.380 Because, you know, there's Christians like me here.

01:07:37.140 It's like, hang on, Nietzsche had his problems.

01:07:38.680 So there's also the Tolkien-esque heroic penguin,

01:07:43.260 who's not necessarily Nietzsche,

01:07:44.160 but it's the ancient heroism that Tolkien spoke about when it came to Beowulf.

01:07:48.060 He loved Beowulf because of the last stand against impossible odds.

01:07:53.360 This is one thing he loved about Beowulf.

01:07:54.900 It was about facing impossible odds.

01:07:56.720 And obviously, that's a theme of Lord of the Rings as well.

01:07:58.680 So it's not strictly Nietzsche.

01:07:59.740 And this is an ancient theme of the heroic,

01:08:02.100 as we see here with the Frodo penguin,

01:08:03.700 I will take the ring to Mordor.

01:08:05.980 And our other heroic penguins memes,

01:08:09.080 the meme is stupid.

01:08:10.000 He walks to...

01:08:10.500 The penguin is stupid, sorry.

01:08:11.320 He walks to certain death.

01:08:12.420 This one gets it.

01:08:13.340 That's why no one will name your name.

01:08:14.180 Yeah, the Troy penguin.

01:08:16.120 Yes.

01:08:16.560 I mean, how many individual penguins would you say

01:08:19.140 that has transcended species is well known?

01:08:23.620 I mean, it's that one, isn't it?

01:08:25.220 Right.

01:08:25.820 Can anyone name a second famous penguin?

01:08:29.140 Jack.

01:08:30.220 Who's Jack?

01:08:31.780 Right.

01:08:33.620 It's a great point.

01:08:35.100 I suppose the penguin on the penguin bar,

01:08:36.920 we don't know his name.

01:08:40.940 Another one.

01:08:41.660 A penguin should know when it is lost.

01:08:44.020 Would you, Quintus?

01:08:44.900 Would I?

01:08:46.920 Very similar.

01:08:47.720 The heroic spirit of the penguin.

01:08:50.040 So now we've also got the hero's journey penguin.

01:08:53.840 Hero with a thousand waddles by Joseph Campbell.

01:08:57.440 So this is the hero with a thousand waddles

01:08:59.760 is Joseph Campbell's influential 1949 book

01:09:01.820 that outlines the penguin's journey,

01:09:03.480 a universal narrative pattern found in myths

01:09:05.240 across cultures, combining psychology and mythology

01:09:07.540 to explore a single archetypal adventure of transformation.

01:09:10.520 So check that out.

01:09:11.400 So this is the heroic journey penguin,

01:09:12.840 which I prefer slightly to the Nietzschean framing.

01:09:15.660 He's beginning to believe.

01:09:16.920 You see, it's all about,

01:09:18.560 see, some people call him the nihilist penguin,

01:09:20.160 but this version, the matrix penguin,

01:09:22.100 is the rebellion against nihilism.

01:09:24.660 Why do you do it?

01:09:26.860 Why?

01:09:27.400 Why get up?

01:09:29.040 Why keep fighting?

01:09:30.040 You believe you're fighting for something

01:09:35.040 for more than your survival?

01:09:37.900 Can you tell me what it is?

01:09:39.820 Do you even know?

01:09:40.900 Is it freedom or truth?

01:09:46.680 Perhaps peace?

01:09:47.640 Could it be for love?

01:09:49.320 Illusions, Mr. Anderson,

01:09:50.860 vagaries of perception.

01:09:53.120 Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect

01:09:56.000 trying desperately to justify an existence

01:09:58.500 that is without meaning or purpose,

01:10:01.280 and all of them as artificial as the matrix itself.

01:10:04.500 Although, only a human mind

01:10:07.200 could invent something as insipid as love.

01:10:11.080 So there you go.

01:10:11.880 So he's rebelling against the materialism,

01:10:14.760 the nihilism,

01:10:15.960 and of course it's romantic

01:10:16.960 because he mentions love there.

01:10:19.060 So I like that idea of the penguin

01:10:20.280 as defying all that,

01:10:23.100 and he's the antithesis to nihilism.

01:10:25.560 A couple more while we're here.

01:10:27.180 Oh yeah, the angels.

01:10:29.160 Of course, the penguin ends up with the angels,

01:10:31.060 and ultimately he's sent by God.

01:10:33.000 God looking down on the penguin.

01:10:33.820 Why am I being sent to the mountain to inspire them?

01:10:36.140 And this is what he's done.

01:10:38.000 Of course, there are just some pure nonsense ones

01:10:41.920 at this point.

01:10:42.520 It doesn't have to make sense.

01:10:44.080 That's just the ice penguin.

01:10:46.400 No one even knows what that means anymore.

01:10:49.280 I like the God bit though,

01:10:50.740 because is it possible that, you know,

01:10:53.940 God is not just inspiring Christianity amongst people,

01:10:56.540 that he's doing amongst all the other species,

01:10:58.220 and what we're witnessing is Jesus penguin?

01:11:01.280 It could be a saviour penguin.

01:11:02.660 Yeah.

01:11:03.400 Yeah.

01:11:03.820 And this will then inspire devotion throughout the penguin kind.

01:11:08.900 It's possible.

01:11:09.540 I hope that's not blasphemous,

01:11:10.340 but I hope it's possible.

01:11:12.860 Is it suddenly broke on me right at the end?

01:11:17.580 You blasphemed.

01:11:18.540 I'll try this one.

01:11:20.040 There we go.

01:11:20.260 We went to God.

01:11:21.140 You want another one?

01:11:21.620 Well, that's the, so that's the...

01:11:24.260 Yeah.

01:11:24.580 All right.

01:11:25.000 All right.

01:11:25.500 Oh.

01:11:26.540 See, now it's gone completely wrong.

01:11:27.740 So my point is here, these are just the random ones.

01:11:29.680 There's only one man that can save Minneapolis now,

01:11:31.580 and he's a penguin.

01:11:32.540 And this is just a penguin in ice, basically.

01:11:35.000 It's completely, it's just ridiculous AI slot.

01:11:37.680 But these are the...

01:11:39.100 All right.

01:11:39.380 All right.

01:11:39.400 Let's check out the next one, which is Amelia Penguin.

01:11:42.740 Oh, what the...

01:11:43.480 Now we've been zoomed in.

01:11:45.700 Can we on...

01:11:46.560 Yeah, right.

01:11:47.420 There we go.

01:11:49.180 No, but mine's not working.

01:11:50.120 Okay.

01:11:50.460 This is Fight Club Penguin.

01:11:51.480 I won't play the music as we get zapped,

01:11:53.100 but this is...

01:11:53.700 You met me at a very strange time in my life with the pixies playing.

01:11:56.480 Probably get copyrighted.

01:11:57.420 But that's Fight Club Penguin.

01:11:59.680 Can we go to the next one?

01:12:02.480 You're going to...

01:12:02.860 Yeah.

01:12:03.540 I can't do it.

01:12:05.100 Okay, then.

01:12:06.240 Our producer has done it, I think.

01:12:08.320 Amelia Penguin.

01:12:09.260 So these two had to come together, ultimately.

01:12:11.640 I would immediately head right back for the mountains.

01:12:14.640 But why?

01:12:16.100 Because he met Amelia.

01:12:20.000 You're trying to reach the top of the mountain, too?

01:12:23.900 Amelia would get it.

01:12:24.940 I saw what they did to your colony.

01:12:27.420 They are damaging my home, too.

01:12:38.540 Together, we will get our homes back.

01:12:42.300 Embrace the penguin.

01:12:44.360 Embrace Amelia.

01:12:46.120 There you go.

01:12:47.040 Two great memes coming together for pure slop.

01:12:49.580 And one more.

01:12:51.980 Can we go to the next one?

01:12:53.980 Which is, of course, Game of Thrones Penguin.

01:12:56.100 Now his watch has ended.

01:12:58.500 And so, just to conclude, if we move on, there is a thin line.

01:13:04.320 The debate over the penguin is because the line between depression and a Faustian spirit is thin.

01:13:08.500 It's hard to tell if a man is suicidal or pursuing a goal that transcends life, sometimes even to himself.

01:13:14.220 So that's why the debate rages between the Nietzsche and the nihilist penguin.

01:13:18.360 Can we go to the next?

01:13:20.220 The penguin is a Rorschach test for your own spirit.

01:13:22.860 A Faustian sees him as a hero.

01:13:24.780 A last man sees him as insane.

01:13:26.820 And that is ultimately the difference.

01:13:27.980 And it reminded me of this joke from Rorschach.

01:13:32.440 I always find it really ironic that this guy claims to oppose degeneracy, but walks around with silhouettes of gay men having sex on his face.

01:13:39.160 So, I think that's apparently it's a stolen joke.

01:13:41.280 Some people said it came from 4chan, but it's because Dan doesn't get it.

01:13:44.360 But it's because the guy is seeing that in the Rorschach test so that he actually is thinking of it.

01:13:49.900 Oh, okay.

01:13:50.560 So, that's the point.

01:13:51.780 Whether you see a nihilist, a Nietzschean, or men having sex, it all depends on your projection onto the penguin.

01:13:58.080 Of course, I prefer the heroic adventurer penguin than the nihilist claim.

01:14:02.300 But it's inspired people for that reason, I think.

01:14:04.700 Because we're in this nihilistic, materialistic, utilitarian world.

01:14:08.280 So, the penguin is a glimpse of something greater.

01:14:11.760 I like that a lot.

01:14:13.140 I like that a lot.

01:14:13.760 Yeah.

01:14:14.640 Thought it'd be fun for Friday.

01:14:15.940 And now, penguin comments, I guess.

01:14:20.560 Do you want to read them?

01:14:25.460 Where are they?

01:14:26.140 Where have the new ones started here?

01:14:30.260 Here we go.

01:14:31.140 Well, there's Sigil Stone says, I can name several famous penguins.

01:14:34.860 Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Evangeline Malkin, Jaramir Jagr.

01:14:40.100 I don't know any of the...

01:14:40.820 I mean, there's the penguin.

01:14:41.600 I'm not familiar with those ones.

01:14:43.140 There's a...

01:14:44.720 One of them's a hockey player.

01:14:46.120 The penguin video has risen to the level of divine art thanks to the narrative.

01:14:49.240 The nihilistic atheists on Reddit.

01:14:50.560 And capable of understanding.

01:14:52.240 Thank you, Cranky Texan.

01:14:53.260 That is exactly...

01:14:54.300 Exactly correct.

01:14:57.520 Do we have any videos, Samson?

01:15:03.900 Impotent when that stops working.

01:15:10.600 Samson is checking.

01:15:12.020 Ah, we have four videos.

01:15:13.720 Great.

01:15:14.220 Let's play them.

01:15:14.860 The title of these two speeches and the Canadian perspective of Michael Ignatiev intrigued me.

01:15:24.660 Predictably, he sets out to describe post-World War II human rights and how they are important.

01:15:29.500 He then explains how fragile they are, needing careful protection from activists who would use them for political ends,

01:15:34.720 or ideologues who would use incompatible global positions to dilute what rights are.

01:15:39.900 Unfortunately, Ignatiev is too focused on the why, where, and how to realize that the what of human rights themselves is the problem.

01:15:48.000 His speeches only show the post-World War II order as a panicked reaction to the horror of war and utterly unsuited to purpose.

01:15:54.420 I always like Alex's videos.

01:16:01.540 Let's go to the next one.

01:16:05.100 I've recently been using ChatGPT to rewrite these screen drivers to show two separate images.

01:16:11.160 As you can imagine, the first solution didn't work, and after hours of debugging, it turns out the frame rate is too low.

01:16:17.140 When you make something, you face a real threat that hours of work could all be for naught.

01:16:21.100 But if you want the thing to exist and work, you have to be willing to make that sort of sacrifice.

01:16:28.080 Yep. Let's go to the next one. Craig.

01:16:31.400 Here at the Australia Day celebrations in Wollongong.

01:16:35.300 Oh, very good. Thank you.

01:16:38.700 Next we've got juggling, man.

01:16:51.100 Sounds wholesome.

01:17:02.720 Wholesome, yeah, I was going to say.

01:17:03.800 Thanks, Craig.

01:17:04.960 And the last one.

01:17:06.980 I was listening to Stelios' segment about Euromaxing the other day, as I cleaned up the park in my local village,

01:17:12.760 and I just thought, what a huge supply of tears.

01:17:17.500 I want to hear the counter segment about how you can do things for the...

01:17:22.300 About the greater good.

01:17:23.700 The greater good.

01:17:25.940 And while you're doing things for the greater good...

01:17:29.760 You can listen to the podcast while cleaning the snow.

01:17:33.560 Just wanted to say.

01:17:38.340 Absolutely so.

01:17:39.160 So, let's go to the comments.

01:17:42.740 Let me check.

01:17:44.260 Pittsburgh's hockey team is the Penguins, says Sigil Stone.

01:17:47.640 Right. So, Michael, dry bulbous.

01:17:50.420 What?

01:17:51.420 Illegal migrants do better than the native population.

01:17:54.480 Well, when you hand the illegals free housing, free food, free everything, that's a no-brainer.

01:18:01.880 And so if you live well, be positive.

01:18:05.120 We're not expecting the Spanish Inquisition, which is exactly what they're counting on.

01:18:10.400 It's kind of weird when you get all these politicians who are saying, well, we need to combat the far right.

01:18:16.600 And the next thing they're doing is try to create the conditions that are fueling the far right.

01:18:22.920 So it's every politician of progressivist.

01:18:26.120 Every progressivist.

01:18:28.180 Omar Awad.

01:18:28.800 No foreigner willing to break immigration law would volunteer to follow employment and tax laws when they could work illegally and keep it all for themselves.

01:18:37.340 Those from Izat cultures would even find honor in having successfully tricked naive Westerners out of their wealth.

01:18:45.200 Despite claims that foreigners aren't voting or receiving benefits, there are too many examples to the contrary for it to be the occasional accident.

01:18:52.920 White writer says you'd think Spain would know better considering them being completely taken over by foreign Muslims was one of the triggers for the Reconquista.

01:19:03.400 And it lasted for about four centuries.

01:19:06.020 Not just it wasn't just a quick event, but it's leftists.

01:19:11.860 It all starts from there.

01:19:13.580 Leftists are ecophobic.

01:19:16.660 Right.

01:19:17.040 Someone online.

01:19:17.900 A smaller population does mean there will be less unemployment.

01:19:21.040 He's accidentally right about that.

01:19:24.380 Hossup.

01:19:25.260 Yeah, I think also he's talking about the percent.

01:19:28.920 Right.

01:19:29.300 Hossup.

01:19:30.100 Yenikom Sheehan.

01:19:32.080 What purpose is immigration supposed to serve in a country with chronic unemployment?

01:19:37.640 Roman observer.

01:19:38.800 We will defeat the far right by proving them correct and everything they warned about.

01:19:43.260 And Derek Power.

01:19:44.180 Master of chippies.

01:19:45.520 Remember, hyperinflation turns everyone into a billionaire.

01:19:49.440 I like that.

01:19:51.040 I don't know.

01:19:52.460 Yes.

01:19:53.140 I'd welcome being a billionaire.

01:19:55.300 That would be good.

01:19:57.080 The line is not a fox.

01:19:59.320 Sophie lives as I love how Dan is using all this fancy terminology just to describe alpha and beta males.

01:20:06.260 No, I don't think I would use it quite that far.

01:20:08.380 But I see where you're going with that.

01:20:10.160 Omar Ward.

01:20:12.420 Between lions and foxes to varying degrees, both use and dominate the rodents.

01:20:19.400 When there are no foxes or lions in leadership, guess who takes charge?

01:20:23.360 It's hard to ignore the imagery when our resident rat visits a Chinese fox and was made to look like a midget in front of the cameras.

01:20:32.280 Yes.

01:20:32.520 Did you see that image of the very, very tall Chinese people?

01:20:36.100 They're all like six foot four.

01:20:38.180 Now, they're obviously like, that's like all of the six foot four men in China.

01:20:41.980 They just rounded them up.

01:20:43.220 I think Manchurians are very high.

01:20:45.620 What was that?

01:20:46.760 Manchurians.

01:20:47.800 Right.

01:20:48.020 North, northeast China.

01:20:49.980 I think they have a reputation for being very tall.

01:20:52.840 Really?

01:20:53.320 I've not encountered lots of tall Chinese.

01:20:55.260 My only criticism here is he abandons the metaphor at the end.

01:20:58.100 Perhaps shrimp would have worked because these are all animals and he suddenly says midget.

01:21:01.960 Yes.

01:21:02.380 That's my only concern.

01:21:03.200 Yes, that's fair.

01:21:04.120 We have had an animal heavy segment this time around.

01:21:08.240 Cumberland Kulak.

01:21:09.400 Trump is a lion.

01:21:10.920 Scar from Lion King.

01:21:12.720 A weak lion who behaves like a fox.

01:21:14.420 Might is right.

01:21:16.520 I don't know.

01:21:17.700 I'm still comfortable with an early stage lion.

01:21:23.240 TPPT says,

01:21:24.060 Dan, it's all lovely.

01:21:25.060 But let's judge Trump on being a lion.

01:21:28.820 Greenland.

01:21:29.740 You said the USA needs total sovereignty over Greenland, which he won't achieve.

01:21:33.880 What I said was it needs to collapse the ambiguities is primarily what they're doing.

01:21:37.980 And I think maybe they probably will get it in time.

01:21:40.600 You know, I don't think the true test of lioness is whether you achieve all of the possible lion things that you can imagine a lion would do in a single term.

01:21:49.840 Otherwise, you're not a lion.

01:21:51.420 It's are you displaying lion behavior even if you don't achieve?

01:21:54.080 Because what I think people are doing is they're imagining a hypothetical lion in their head, which is the perfect lion, and then saying, well, he doesn't meet that standard and therefore he's not a lion.

01:22:04.400 I think that's a little bit too hard.

01:22:05.880 Potentially starting a war with Iran for no good reason for the U.S.

01:22:11.360 Well, I agree with that one, actually.

01:22:13.040 He is not dealing with the entire ICE situation like a lion whatsoever.

01:22:16.580 Now, that one I strongly disagree on because the fact that he's doing the ICE stuff at all is 100% lion behavior.

01:22:25.340 To give you an example of foxes trying to deal with immigration, just look at the Tory party for the last 20 years.

01:22:31.040 It's like, oh, we're going to do this Rwanda thing.

01:22:36.820 And every 18 months, if you go back, they had a new scheme.

01:22:41.300 They're going to do this scheme and they're going to do that.

01:22:42.960 That is how foxes deal with immigration.

01:22:45.020 Yeah.

01:22:45.500 Although one counter would be that Obama, you know, there's this list of previous leaders that actually deported more.

01:22:50.860 Just no one cared because it was Obama.

01:22:53.420 So has he actually done more lion stuff there?

01:22:55.640 Well, that leans into my whole constrained argument.

01:22:57.920 But there was, it isn't just constraint, it's also the economic argument that lots of Republicans are giving.

01:23:04.640 For instance, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene was saying on the one hand, zero illegal migration.

01:23:11.440 But on the other, I think she started saying, well, we need some of them, let's give them jobs.

01:23:17.920 Well, there can still be inconsistencies.

01:23:20.340 The question is, though, the other bit, whether, yeah, absolutely.

01:23:23.540 The question is whether they, whether he's a typical politician and that he made several promises and didn't keep them, which isn't exactly lying behavior, presumably.

01:23:36.800 Or that's more cunning.

01:23:38.280 Yeah, I mean, did Starling keep all of his promises?

01:23:44.080 Yeah, the understudied lion master.

01:23:46.040 No.

01:23:46.300 Yes.

01:23:47.460 So that's another angle to it.

01:23:49.360 Sean Gaffney says, Dan's segment led to quite the discussion.

01:23:53.960 Trump gets quite a few different framing devices, lion, hand grenade, wrecking ball.

01:23:58.260 On the whole, Trump is an eight out of ten president.

01:24:00.520 Not great on everything, but better than we've had in a while.

01:24:02.840 And that's kind of my core point, that he is the best lion that you could reasonably get in this situation.

01:24:10.500 He's the best you could reasonably get at this stage in the system,

01:24:13.120 which is after a period of undeniable, complete and total fox domination.

01:24:20.060 Expecting much more than this at this stage, I think is unrealistic.

01:24:22.400 The question is, though, the other issue is, though, which I think I'm sure lots of people are going to think,

01:24:29.940 is that if we're talking just about lions and foxes and talking about the characteristics of lions and foxes,

01:24:36.800 we tend to become a bit leftist in one respect, in the respect that we view the situation way more abstractly than it is.

01:24:44.760 And let me just give you an example.

01:24:46.180 You mentioned before Bukele.

01:24:47.360 I think he did good for El Salvador.

01:24:50.680 The question is, though, whether the situation that called for Bukele is the same situation in the U.S.

01:24:59.440 And you will have people who will say yes, but you will have also lots of people who say no.

01:25:07.260 So that's one of the constraints that a lion, a possible lion has, is what does the public think, generally speaking?

01:25:18.280 And in this framework, he has to think of the independents.

01:25:23.200 Now himself a bit less because he isn't going to run for elections again.

01:25:28.980 But I'm sure he doesn't want to tank the Republican Party because that would harm his rule right now for the next three years.

01:25:36.660 Better hand over to Nick for a couple of your comments.

01:25:39.540 Yeah.

01:25:40.020 So, Scotty of Swindon, can you explain why my timeline has been, this is, this is, he's quoting you.

01:25:45.300 Can you explain why my timeline has been filled with penguins?

01:25:47.340 I don't get it.

01:25:47.920 Five minutes later, of course the penguin is happy.

01:25:50.060 Dan gets it.

01:25:50.840 Welcome to the flock, Dan.

01:25:52.560 Omar, if you can't answer the breakfast question, you have no brain.

01:25:55.240 If you can't answer the penguin question, you have no soul.

01:25:57.760 I think that's absolutely right.

01:25:59.320 George, the penguin memes are the best thing to come out of the Greenland situation.

01:26:02.940 Dan can confirm that it's good for the meme economy.

01:26:04.840 Beg a hero, I don't trust penguins, they smoke tons of pot.

01:26:08.300 According to Guar, fairly obscure.

01:26:11.640 Dan Taylor, it's a Moses penguin looking for the burning iceberg.

01:26:15.740 Sneed a chuck, the penguin had the Victorian spirit of exploration.

01:26:19.140 And Polsky, can I read this one?

01:26:21.240 I feel like I can just about.

01:26:23.520 But it's saying the existence of the penguin Jesus implies the existence of penguin Jewish people.

01:26:30.160 I mean, that's completely true, technically, so, yeah.

01:26:33.300 I mean, if Werner Hortzard goes back in, like, a few months and there's, like, a little penguin crucifix, I guess so.

01:26:40.800 Yeah.

01:26:41.220 That would be terribly sad.

01:26:42.920 That would be sad if anything happened to the penguin Jesus, yeah.

01:26:45.400 Yeah.

01:26:46.000 Almost certainly would, because that's how it always tends to go.

01:26:48.100 Yeah.

01:26:50.820 Pharisee penguins.

01:26:53.380 Someone's asking, I don't know if I'm going to do the honourable mentions, I've just kind of gone into them.

01:26:56.420 Why not?

01:26:57.380 Why not?

01:26:57.560 Dan, can you do a Brokonomics on the disappearance of the dividend?

01:27:02.140 Yeah, fair point.

01:27:02.880 I mean, well, I mean, they're still there, but it's just the smaller companies that pay them now, not the growth companies.

01:27:07.160 And we're in a growth company era, so I suppose I could do.

01:27:10.360 I was just saying.

01:27:10.640 Or at least mention it.

01:27:11.640 Yeah.

01:27:11.800 I don't understand economics at all.

01:27:16.140 Right.

01:27:16.580 So, should we still have two minutes?

01:27:21.080 I think the audience wants us to chat for two minutes more.

01:27:25.180 No, well, what are we going to chat about?

01:27:26.720 Right, about lions and foxes.

01:27:28.520 Who's your favourite lion from history?

01:27:31.920 We've got one minute now.

01:27:33.160 I've got to get my chain.

01:27:34.220 So, one minute for your favourite lion from history.

01:27:36.040 I mean, literally, Richard the Lionheart.

01:27:38.320 I mean, he was a total bloody champion.

01:27:41.540 Absolutely.

01:27:42.000 I mean, if you read some of the exploits of Richard the Lionheart.

01:27:43.780 What about Arthur?

01:27:45.620 Arthur or Alfred.

01:27:47.660 And I'm just naming people, beginning with A.

01:27:49.220 I don't know which one I mean.

01:27:51.300 What about...

01:27:52.120 But Richard the Lionheart was a proper warrior.

01:27:53.800 There's one bit where he's got, like, a big army of Muslims lined up in front of him.

01:27:58.400 And they've got, like, 5,000 dudes.

01:28:00.460 And he's only got, like, 200 knights.

01:28:02.660 And he was just absolutely, absolutely destroying them.

01:28:05.800 And it gets to the point where the Muslims are all lined up.

01:28:08.380 And he's just pacing up and down in front of them, mogging them off, saying,

01:28:12.300 Come on, then.

01:28:13.100 Come on, have a go if you think you're hard enough.

01:28:14.780 And, like, none of them wanted to fight him.

01:28:16.920 That Baron from Dune was quite a good line.

01:28:20.180 Baron from Dune.

01:28:20.700 Harry Conan.

01:28:21.880 Yeah.

01:28:22.100 Oh, yes, him.

01:28:23.040 You're just like, if you can't get this done, you're in big trouble.

01:28:26.080 Even though that's, like, your son or whatever.

01:28:27.680 And what about the dude from Avatar?

01:28:29.880 The one who you're supposed to think is a villain, but he's actually the hero.

01:28:33.700 No, I've never even watched it.

01:28:35.180 No, you know.

01:28:36.040 What?

01:28:38.440 Whoever the military guy was in Avatar, I liked him.

01:28:41.300 He was the proper hero of the movie.

01:28:44.420 Right.

01:28:44.820 And on that note, bye Islander 5.

01:28:49.160 And also come for the Zoom call at 3 p.m.

01:28:54.160 Have a lovely weekend.

01:28:55.860 Thank you, Brother Nick.

01:28:57.040 Thank you, Brother Dan.

01:28:58.640 And goodbye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 30, 2026

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1344

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