It's a Slopulist World and We're All Just Living in It - Konstantin Kisin

Konstantin Kisin (0:05)

Is it just me? Can it really just be me? Can I really be the only one who wakes up every day, looks at my phone, and begins to suspect that I'm the main character in a Truman Show sequel, where there's a plot twist, which is that the director's job is to keep upping the retard level to the point that I work out this can't possibly be real, and start shouting stop into the heavens. Don't get me wrong, this cultural moment is not without its entertainment. This week, the lulz were furnished by ICE, who arrested and deported online provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos. Provocateur is French for someone who's made a lucrative career out of being an asshole. Don't get me wrong, he's undeniably a funny man. For example, last year, he tweeted, What is the etiquette if you're going about your business and find yourself observing an ICE raid? I want to show a little respect and decency, said Milo. Are you allowed to masturbate where you stand, in the street? Or should you find some kind of awning or motorized vehicle? Despite previously quipping that he would never move back to Britain because he doesn't speak Arabic, this week he found himself on Piers Morgan's show, chronicling the brutality of his deportation, confessing his shame at supporting President Trump, and crying about the dehumanizing treatment at the hands of ICE, for whom he's repeatedly advocated to have complete immunity, by the way. How could anyone with a conscience and a sense of humor not find this entire episode deeply amusing? Milo, incidentally, is a very good example of the broader trend which it is the purpose of this video to describe. Ten years ago, he was a bright, edgy commentator who said provocative things about matters that were serious and important. He appeared on prominent podcasts like the Rubin Report and the Joe Rogan Experience, to talk about the meaning of conservatism, censorship, the cultural vandalism of the progressive left, radical feminism, mass immigration, and the rise of Donald Trump. He didn't have to agree with all of his views to recognize that the issues he was talking about were significant and his acerbic quips were a way to shake his listeners out of the straight jacket of political correctness. He was a fringe, but nonetheless notable part of a bigger conversation led by people like Jordan Peterson, Brett and Eric Weinstein, Sam Harris, Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, and others. Those were the big voices of the online center and center-right who were breaking open the Overton window imposed on reasonable people by the legacy media. They debated God, atheism, meaning the decline of the West and its institutions and the future of our civilization. Who are the big voices on the online right today?

And what are they debating?

Here is forensic investigator Candace Owens debating whether Israel and or the French Foreign Legion killed Charlie Kirk with the connivance of Erica Kirk, his wife. Here's a debate about the future of the Republican Party with respected political commentator Alex Jones.

This stuff is inevitably popular, of course, because these people know exactly what they're doing. Think back to that Milo joke about not wanting to move back to Britain because he doesn't speak Arabic. The joke works because you get the idea Britain's been overrun by Muslims. There's only one problem. The overwhelming majority of British Muslims don't speak Arabic. They're not from the Arab world. They're from Pakistan, India, Somalia, Turkey and Bangladesh. Milo is smart enough to know this, but he's also smart enough to know that the people to whom he's pandering do not. This is the essence of sloppulism. Smart people saying dumb things to profit from the ignorance of the baying mob. Case in point, the entire online write has spent the last month screeching about the Lindsay Clancy story. On the 24th of January 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a 32-year-old labor and delivery nurse, killed her three children, then cut her neck and wrist and jumped from a second floor window, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Clancy had been treated for worsening anxiety, depression and insomnia by multiple providers, and was prescribed a dozen psychiatric medications, many via phone appointments. The killings came less than three weeks after her discharge from a psychiatric facility. She pleaded no guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. At the time we're recording this video, the jury has deliberated for five days, declared itself deadlocked twice and continues. A mistrial is possible. Naturally, with a case of this nature, there's much conjecture and speculation. There's also a debate about whether she was capable of criminal responsibility or not. All of this is understandable, reasonable and legitimate. Even the debate about the death penalty is, in my view, perfectly rational. What is not reasonable, rational or legitimate is what I've seen in response to the story from many commentators who've spent the last weeks using the story to drive a wedge between people. According to the internet, if your girlfriend supports Lindsay Clancy, you should immediately dump her, if you're endorsed by a whole host of prominent online commentators. Clancy had no criminal record, no history of violence towards the children or anyone else, no prior contact with child protective services. She was by every account in testimony, including her former mother-in-law, and as objective a source as you're likely to get in these circumstances, who testified that she was begging for help. She was a devoted mother and respected labor and delivery nurse at Mass General, whose only documented history was the escalating anxiety, insomnia and depression of her final four months, plus the suicidal thoughts that led to her voluntary psychiatric admission on New Year's Eve. Clancy's ex-husband Patrick, who has more reason than all of us combined to be vengeful, has said publicly that he forgives her and views her as ill, rather than evil. You may disagree with him. You may say that sitting at home or in the comfort of your air-conditioned podcast studio, you know beyond a reasonable doubt that she didn't have a psychotic episode and was just depressed, tired and looking for an easier way out. But you can't possibly deny that a reasonable person could look at all that same evidence that I just laid out and conclude that this was a person whose care was badly mishandled, leading to a tragedy. This is, in other words, one of those issues about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Twelve people who sat through five weeks of evidence cannot agree for a reason. But sloppy lists are incentivized to deny that such things exist. The possibility of reasonable people having a respectful disagreement is a direct threat to their business model, whose purpose is to present any event as a debate between good and evil. The progressive left spent the last several decades practicing this model to perfection.