Macklemore Got Dropped. Here’s What EVERYONE Is Missing

All right, ladies and gentlemen. I felt compelled to do a bonus episode this week because I kind of jumped the gun covering a little bit of the Ed Sheeran story uh a couple days ago. But the news cycle, it moves so quickly, so fast that so much develops over the course of such a short amount of time that, you know, I kind of missed the opportunity to share some thoughts uh about what's developed since in this spectacle. Um, since my last episode a couple days ago, uh, opening acts have pulled out of the Ed Sheeran tour. Mlemore has been cancelled. It's become this real, you know, microcosm of the class warfare the left likes to frame everything through with the multi-millionaire billionaire Robert Craft owning a stadium that bans uh, Mcleammore from performing. and everyone's trying to manage this and Ed Sheeran's dragged into the middle of a situation where uh he's trying to navigate it in a sort of neutral posture and he's getting flak from everybody about that. Anyway, I wanted to share some thoughts on the matter because I've had some time to think about it. Okay, first of all, I find it hilarious and rich that suddenly the left, the sensorious woke left, who's all about cancelling any infraction, punishment for any sort of infraction, slip of the tongue, are suddenly free speech warriors. Suddenly they're all about free speech. Let's be honest for a moment. Let's be honest. You're This isn't about free speech, okay? Left or right, at the end of the day. You're using free speech as a principle when it suits your political stance or narrative or agenda. The left does this all the time, right? Pro-choice unless it's vaccine mandates. Pro- feet free speech unless uh I don't know, somebody says something offensive on stage. Uh, somebody says something offensive, you know, Dave Chappelle says something offensive against the trans community, somebody says something offensive against someone in your tribe on your team, but when it suits your narrative or political stance, you're all for free speech. So, you're not for free speech as a principle. You're for it when it conveniently suits you. Here's an interesting exercise to test on yourself. Try this out, and this proves the point. If somebody got up and got up on stage as an opening act for Ed Sheeran and said, "I stand proudly in support of Israel and the IDF. I support BB Netanyahu." And they were protested against, canled for it, kicked off the tour. If a pro propalinian owner of a venue said they cannot play there anymore, you'd all be celebrating it. You'd call them champions, heroes, advocates, allies. You'd love it if they if somebody stood with Israel. So you use it when it politically suits you. The concept of free speech. Now, from my perspective, it's not a free speech issue in the sense that I apply it universally and consistently because guess what? Robert Craft has free speech, too. The venue owners have free speech. So, when they decide that they don't want this message, this ideology, and we'll get into what that is exactly that animates Mcleammore statements, when they don't want this stuff amplified on their stages, they have the right to say no. They can't be forced to put out speech or amplify ideas they don't like and disagree with. That's free speech. So, I apply it universally. And yes, ultimately, it's not about who gets canceled for what and should we allow all ideas equally. It's in in the marketplace of ideas in the culture where everyone has the right to express themselves freely. We have to evaluate the ideas on a case-by case basis. It's not the fact that somebody said something and then was canceled from a tour for it. It's what are they saying? What are the ideas they're putting out there? What's the message? And then people have a right to respond in kind. there are consequences for hearing messages you that offend you. And the only thing I'll say is that I can understand the argument that Greg Lukinoff puts out. He's a he's at the fire institute. I've had him on the podcast, a free speech absolutist as am I. But I can understand that when you encourage cancellation and reactions like of this sort to speech, you encourage a culture that's anti-free speech which extends into politics. So you have to be conscious of that. Sure, I understand that and I understand the case for that. But that doesn't mean that so the venue owners, the other people, the promoters, Ed Sheeran himself, other people don't have speech of their own that they now have to feel compelled and forced to keep this guy on a tour if they disagree with the principle of even talking politics at all on stage. And you'd all celebrate it in the streets praising brave Ed Sheeran and all the promoters if this someone took a stand for Israel, for the IDF, for the one and only Jewish state. They stood for it and then they got cancelled for it. You'd love it. You'd love it. So, spare me. Spare me the inconsistent nonsense. I don't buy it. Now, let's dive a little deeper. A a little deeper. Let's get a little deeper into the controversy because I think it's easy to be tricked. It's easy to fall for this presentation of um you know, what exactly did MLmore say? I don't get it. What was so offensive? He's up there talking about freedom for all people. He's saying free Palestine. What could be wrong with that? This isn't hate speech. This isn't anti-semitism. Why would he be canceled for that? So, it's not the uh idea of cancelling somebody for something. I mean, I think if he got up there and advocated for pedophilia or rape and was canceled from the tour, no one would say, "Hey, free speech. Free speech. I mean, how could we kick somebody off of a stage on a platform? It's free speech." everyone would would you know coales and agree there'd be consensus around oh well those ideas are obviously repugnant and he should be kicked off for saying such things but the thing with the left especially the woke left and the anti-Israel uh mob and in general on the left is a lot of their most dangerous ideologies are coded in sanitized language meant to deceive you mlemore the whole left-wing platform is all about progress. You you know so who could be against such messages and ideas? Who could be against affordability? Who could be against universal healthcare? Who could be against bodily autonomy? These are all words and phrases and language designed to deceive, designed to actually evade the actual core moral and ideological issues underpinning them. Well, who could be up against affordability? But behind that is a political agenda that's coercive, that punishes productive people, that steals their wealth, that perverts economic incentives, that's incredibly destructive, that gives power, you know, increasingly to bureaucrats and rulers to rule over you, to make decisions for you. But they're not going to pitch that. That's not a good sales pitch. Instead, it's under affordability. The same thing here. What is it's not just saying freedom for all people. That's a that's a great idea. Sure. What's the ideology that's animating such statements? What does McLemore actually believe? What did the protest movement, the encampment movement that he celebrated? What do they believe? That's what matters. And for all you people wondering, it's like, remember during COVID when they're like, "Hey, don't you want to save grandma? Don't you want to save grandma and the elderly and the vulnerable and the immuno compromised from certain death? Save the children. Lock them down." Well, who doesn't want to save the elderly, save the vulnerable? Who doesn't want to do that? How could you be against such a thing? But we all knew that was linguistic trickery to get you to comply, to conform. And that's how you can convince good people to get behind dangerous, poisonous, toxic ideologies that are destructive and evil because you convince them that you put it on the banner of a phrase of, you know, a great society. uh you know the all these movements especially on the left-wing revolutionary side are under the guise of phrases and slogans that seem amazing meant to deceive you meant to get you to buy into it by the same token here free Palestine the encampments calling for justice who's against justice well what's the ideology that animates it who are they supporting on October 8th mind you these encampments began immediately after the slaughter and massacre of men, women, children, and babies targeted because they were Jews, because they were Yahood. The kamas resistance fighters framed as resistance fighters as opposed to murderers, targeting intentionally men, women, children, babies, elderly, Holocaust survivors, taking them hostage, going to homes and mowing them down, intentionally, burning them, setting them on fire. Sexual violence, rape is framed as resistance is justified when people are occupied. That's how it's framed. And that's what they're all supporting. Liberation is actually violent, bloody massacre, intentionally targeting civilians, which is very different than the IDF targeting those people who committed these massacres and civilians die unintentionally in the process. That's collateral damage and war. It's icky. It's gross. It's yucky. Nobody likes this as a state of humanity. But that's what justice is. It's going after murderers, not being accused of being a murderer just because you're pursuing one and bringing them to justice. But that's what these people are celebrating. Make no mistake, they don't want to even build Palestine. Why? How do I know that? They simply want to destroy Israel from the river to the sea. Inifat revolution. What does inifat revolution mean? The inifat was a series of suicide bombs on buses, malls, and cafes in Israel. That's you sitting in a restaurant, in a cafe, having a latte, some matcha tea, and a suicide bomber comes in and blows himself up and kills you and all your friends. That's what inifat means. And they want to globalize it. You go to the encampments, that's what they stand for. That's what and and they have no love for the West in general or the United States. They want to burn it all down. And McLemore praises their bravery, the bravery of upper middle class kids who have no orientation towards anything virtuous or good. So they want to project it. They need to project it and find some sort of cause. And yeah, there's no cost to them for supporting such a cause because it's not at their doorstep. They can support kamas all day. There's no rockets flying over their head. Nothing's easier than doing that. From a an encampment protest in which you have an actual nice home to go home to to parents who are paying your tuition to be indoctrinated into this nonsense blabble. Your parents are funding your education to be taught to hate them and the country that they raised you in. Interesting. That's the ideology animating somebody on stage like McLemore advocating for a free Palestine. And I know that they don't care to create one because the people that they're supporting don't hold any of those values of freedom, rights, human life. No, it's a totally different culture they're advocating for that supports death. It's a cult of death. Martyrdom. They have different values. Martyrdom. Death. um killing the Yahood, spreading Islam around the world to have everybody submit to it. That's the ideology. That's the values that they support uh in Gaza and the West Bank. I'm I'm sorry to say it's people don't want to accept that. But, you know, I've spoken to IDF soldiers who've gone from house to house in the West Bank and find copies of mine comp in home after home. Kamas support everywhere all over the West Bank. kamas cells and operatives in the West Bank. For those of you who don't think, "Oh, there's no kamas in the West Bank." That's a different thing. When you look at the images and footage from October 7th, you don't just see militants, armed attacking Israeli soldiers as if it's some sort of armed conflict, one against the other, guerilla warfare. No, no, no, no, no. You see mobs and mobs of cheering crowds elated, thrilled to be dragging Jewish bodies through the streets, spitting on their bodies as they do it. You hear accounts of hostages held in civilian homes, in the homes of teachers who work for the UN. The people responsible for educating children in the Gaza Strip are holding hostages in their attic or their basement. home after home after home in Gaza with access points to tunnels. Not to protect Gazan children from bombardments, from aerial bombardments. No, no, no, no. To protect terrorists so that they can continue to operate and attack Israel. I got news for you. When you commit acts of aggression against other people, yeah, you lose autonomy and rights. That's what happens. Everybody understand that? It's the basis of criminality. That's the basis of justice. You lose rights on behalf of yourselves and your citizens when you continually attack your neighbors. Every gesture that Israel's offered for peace over decade after decade after decade has only been met with more bloodshed, seen as a sign of weakness because there's an ideological belief that this land must become Islamic land. It must be restored and the Yahood must be killed and fought. The end of days will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. Behold, behold, oh Muslim, behind a rock there is a Jew. Behind a tree, there's a Jew. Come kill him. That's in the Kamas founding charter. And that's the culture, the ideology that McLemore is advocating for when he talks about free Palestine on stage. That is what it is. And if it's not, let's have him clarify it. I'm all for freedom. I'm all for rights for everyone, universally, for sure. But if you have large swats of people that don't accept that value system and it's a choice between your own security, well then it just becomes suicidal empathy. Because if you grant people political power over you that seek your destruction, you're not only supporting the homicide of the Jews by their neighbors, you're supporting the suicide of the Jews by themselves. So, that's what uh that's what's meant by these sugar-coated sanitized phrases and slogans. How could I not get behind such phrases and slogans? Well, because it's the same tactic every single time. It's the same sloganering to disguise a very violent, bloody, and evil agenda. the free Palestine movement, the encampments, the people that simp for Hamas or the IRGCA, they don't want to create a free, prosperous Palestine. They want to destroy a free, prosperous Israel. And they're offended by Israel's success and Israel's virtue. The the place in the Middle East that upholds those progressive values these people claim to stand for the most is Israel without question. women's rights, gay rights, minority rights, civil rights. Education, art, music, culture, go to Israel. It'll be very familiar to you because it's all there. You want to have this experiment of providing more autonomy to people who seek your destruction? Let's try it, right? Oh. Oh, it did happen. It was called Gaza 2005. that every last Jew was removed from the Gaza Strip and what was it met with? Just like in every other case, more bloodshed, more attacks on Israel. Hamas comes to power and they always take the they always look at the uh effect and not the cause. They go blockade, siege of Gaza. They they control the air, the land, and the sea. Why? Why does Israel have to monitor for security measures the air land and sea? What what happened? Oh yeah, they're smuggling rockets and weapons into the Gaza Strip to attack Israel as opposed to building schools and infrastructure and roads to take care of their citizenry and build a prosperous society with beachfront property. Could have been a really nice place, a nice neighbor alongside Israel. But they didn't do that. They made choices. Those choices have consequences. And then Israel has to put into effect monitoring for security purposes. And guess what? They were right. I would say if Hamas didn't smuggle weapons in and keep firing them at Israel over these many many years then you wouldn't have that response. I don't like seeing a security fence along the Jude and Samaria and along the West Bank. I don't nobody likes to see that. Why did that happen? You know what only happened in 2002? Why? Oh yes, there was a surge of terrorism against Israelis. The inifat suicide bombs in malls and cafes and buses. And so they look at the effect. Ooh, that's an unsightly sight to have to see a security fence. But what's the cause? It's not Israel. It's the attacks against it time and time again. And so I hope for a peaceful future. I would like that. But it's always been to me clearly demonstrated that when Israel has the opportunity to seek peace, they take it since its inception as a modern state in 1948. But in Palestinianism, there's a rejection of such a state. They don't want a state provided there's a Jewish one next to it. That's unacceptable. And that's not a place to compromise from. That's not a place where you can dialogue from where how about we split it? How about we compromise? How about and they say how about you all die? You have no place here in your ancestral spiritual biblical homeland. I mean, you can't deny the historical ties of the Jews to the land. You can't. But anyway, that's uh there's no room for compromise and conversation there if uh there's no partner for peace. If the so-called partner is elimination eliminationist to you and seeks your absolute total destruction, you know, so you have to prioritize your own life, your family, your community, your people. You have to otherwise what you're asking, you're requesting suicide on behalf of Israel to destroy itself, to appease the West and the Arab world. They don't want to. They're not going to do that and they shouldn't. They shouldn't. Now, in a way, this whole controversy is interestingly like a emblematic and a microcosm of the whole Middle Eastern conflict in a way because like you have Mcleammore, a provocator, gets on stage, hijacks the audience and the stage that is not his stage. These are not his shows. He is not headlining. hijacks Ed Sheeran's audience and his stage and then faces consequences for doing that to promote his political agenda and I think a very dangerous ideology as we discussed and then he faces consequences for that and then cries victim and complains and then everybody gets on the trend supporting him whether they really understand it or not. People follow suit. They think they're being brave. They're being cowards. They get on uh they get on the uh McLemore train and they start pulling out. Ed Sheeran is kind of dragged into the middle. It's very representative of the different factions having these conversations about the Middle East in general. It's like the Mackmore representing the Palestinian side provokes and then cries victim. And on the Jewish side, it's so funny. of a Robert Craft who's being portrayed as the powerful Jew, the millionaire, the industrious, prosperous one with the power and influence in the same way people portray Israel as such. It's fascinating. And then you have this middle that doesn't know where they stand because they've been poisoned by the conversation to believe it's complex. It's complicated and they can't understand where to morally stand on such an issue. and you try to be neutral and I can actually understand that because frankly, you know, Ed Sheeran wants to not focus on politics, wants to not participate in this hyper politicized world, wants to bring people together and unify around music. And I I think we take for granted on the pros side, like how close we are to this issue, how educated we are on this issue. But if imagine you're not imagine you just learned about this in the last year barely from a from very unreliable sources, Tik Tok, Instagram, social media, you know, a media that's completely skewed and biased in all directions. It's hard to know what's what, right? And you've been told and you've been told, well, these are the positions you have to take. This is the binary. Do you support genocide or not? Either this is the choice you're offered. False a false binary. Either you support the genocide or you're against it like us good, virtuous people, which is what the left always does. Oh, either you're, you know, oh, you you're you're uh you're against abortion. Oh, you must hate women. Oh, you you don't want to take the vaccine. Oh, you must want grandma to die. Always a false binary where you can't have actual disagreements about such things and dialogue. You're either with us on the good left-wing virtuous progressive side or you're against us and you're evil. And Ed Sheeran is trying to play a neutral stance and I can kind of understand it. And you know, you ever consider that maybe he's had some experiences that have informed him otherwise? I saw an image a couple months ago, I think, of of Ed Sheeran, who met Noah Argammani, someone who was taken hostage on October 7th. I'm sure. That was her. And this was Ed Sheeran meeting her. Look at this picture. And so I can understand seeing these experiences he's had that he at least is seeing trying to see the humanity on both sides which there is. Obviously individual human beings of all sorts have there's so much diversity amongst human beings that there are there is humanity on both sides. There's children on both sides. You meet individual people who don't agree with their, you know, even on the Palestinian side who reject Hamas, who reject these regimes that are radical, that want to see Israel destroyed, that want to fight the Jews, who reject terrorism. you do see it and that's what Ed Sheeran was trying to appeal to. But of course the left is dragging him in as a Nazi apologist and they're drawing all these pictures of him with blood on his hands, you know, because he's not allowed to see the humanity. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so it's an interesting phenomenon. It's an interesting event, a spectacle that's happened. And I see it as that little microcosm of the of the conflict entirely. But just know that you should be a little smarter and uh more discerning when you see these slogans and things are thrown at you like free speech. Nice phrases don't necessarily represent the ideologies they're putting forth, the ideas behind them. You could put nice phrases on anything. You could put nice slogans on anything. It's been a tactic in politics, especially authoritarian politics. forever. And that's how they get you to believe certain things. Examine the behavior, the ideology, the results behind such slogans. Israel, the startup nation, prosperous, free. Let's examine it. I'd say the proof is in the pudding. Free society that protects the individual rights of its citizens, upholds them fairly well. minority rights, women's rights, gay rights, successful, industrious, productive, free. Are there complications given the neighborhood that it's in? Yes, obviously. Nothing is easier than pointing to a good country, but pointing out its imperfections. But is it true to its underlying principles and slogans? Does Israel match up to that? I would say so. go there. If you any of these college encampments were staging a protest, would they be able to protest the way they are in Gaza? Could you set up a college encampment protest in Gaza against Hamas? You'd have your feet crushed by bricks and thrown off rooftops. Could you do it in Israel all the time? Go to Tel Aviv on any given day. It's protests against their leadership, protests in the press, a free press, freedom of religion, all of those things. any one of these Colombia students would run to Tel Aviv if they found themselves in the Middle East in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, the progressive language used to defend terrorists as liberation movements, as resistance movements, what kind of societies do they create? What culture do they facilitate? How do they raise their children? Proof's in the pudding. Thanks for watching everybody. That's my rant for the day to catch up on this whole spectacle. Ed Sheeran, you're welcome on the show anytime. Uh we can chat about it. Um and I can understand being in a in a position like that. Um so I can offer an olive branch in that regard. Uh but I don't take for granted, you know, that I've been educated on this subject, on this topic, and have built up enough protections to see through the and the nonsense. And not everybody has, unfortunately. And that's where we find ourselves. But the counter punch is coming. I think we're getting enough distance from this to see just how much lies have been spread, how much the propaganda war, yeah, you could argue, has been won by the wrong side. But that doesn't mean they're right. doesn't mean they're truthful or correct. There is a right and a wrong here. There is a truth. And uh I think as time goes on, we'll be seeing more and more of it. Thanks for watching everybody and uh appreciate all of you. Thank you. That's it for today.