Gaming and Political Divides

In this episode, we delve into research papers exploring how political ideologies affect empathy and understanding between left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon where conservatives seem to display more empathy towards liberals than vice versa. Studies like 'Empathetic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals' provide insights into this asymmetry. We also touch on dehumanization, cultural narratives, and real-world examples from gaming communities. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on political empathy and cultural dynamics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be an episode where we're gonna go over a few research papers that explore lefty and righty brains. Again, really interestingly, but with a focus on a persistent phenomenon that has been found, which is that people on the right politically.

Have a much easier time modeling how people on the left think than people on the left able to model people on the right.

Simone Collins: That is so strange. That is so strange. Yeah. The people I grew up thinking as someone on the left, that we were the empathetic ones, that we understood everyone better and we knew what everyone we needed.

Malcolm Collins: How can we get this so wrong? Oh, it's not just that we're gonna go into other things. So like, just speaking of them not being empathetic, just to give a little sure thing away here. So there were four studies with nearly 4,800 participants in the UK and the us Okay. To look at how much empathy each side had for their political opponents.

Yeah. This was called empathetic [00:01:00] conservatives and moralizing liberals. Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment.

So what it showed is that liberals have less empathy for conservatives than conservatives have of liberals. This actually

Simone Collins: makes a lot of sense too, because I remember being on the left, growing up. Having empathy for the entire world, but still seeing conservatives as this inhuman boogeyman. Yeah, so that actually checks out.

That's wild.

Malcolm Collins: Conservatives do not dehumanize lefties. But lefties do dehumanize conservatives. They do. They do. And, and this is, this is seen in the data, like this study was like, surprisingly, conservatives showed more empathy for liberals than liberals showed of conservatives. This asymmetry was found across studies and was statistically reliable.

Why is it surprising? Maybe it's surprising because of your own biases going into the study. And I love the way the study explained this away. It's like, well, this is actually justified because [00:02:00] lefties beliefs, conservatives want to kill them, and conservatives don't think lefties wanna kill them. And I was like, well, but conservatives don't want to kill them, so it's not, this is like saying the Nazis were were justified because blood libel.

They're like, yeah, well they did think the Jews were murdering their babies. And it's like, yeah, but the Jews weren't murdering their babies. That doesn't make their ideology justified. What? What are you talking about? Now I note here that there was a great study done on the nature of the dehumanization, which I think can help.

So, this was the study, political meta dehumanization in mental representations, divergent emphasis in the minds of liberals versus conservatives. And this study found that liberals and conservatives differed in how they dehumanize the other, at least in the framing of this static. Okay. So what this study found was that.

Conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, while liberals see conservatives as savage. Which is true. But one is like a pitying, like if you had more information. Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: You're just misinformed. You're [00:03:00] just, you're not exposed to the world as it's, I, I

Malcolm Collins: like that's dehumanization. It's not dehumanization.

That's just like. Actually the way it is. If, if I believe that, if they, if, if you actually empathize with someone and see them as human, you're going to think that the reason they hold these views is they just don't have access to as much information as you Yeah.

Simone Collins: That you must know something that they don't know and then that's why you view what you view.

Yes, yes. Which, which is framed as, that's how I remember viewing conservatives as. A leftist young lady.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I remember, Hey, I was a leftist at one point too, and I remember conservatives are the savages who live in the woods and are religious extremists and don't know any. Yes, scary

Simone Collins: Bible. Thumping.

Cultist. Monsters who don't care about other people at all and just want you to live like them. And

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So I wanna talk about like what creates this phenomenon. Yeah. And, and I should note the first study that I was mentioning that led to all of this I heard one guy, I. Point out this was short phyto, Taku [00:04:00] say that in one study it was actually that lefties were three x worse the rate of conservatives in terms of modeling them.

Oh my gosh, I blind that exact study, so I don't know where exactly he was getting that from, but it seems believable given what I've seen. And we recently, oh wait,

Simone Collins: no, no, no. This was What if all test Who said that? While we were driving. Oh yeah. It's one of our hits.

Malcolm Collins: You said that. Yeah. Not short fighter ta.

And, and this was a great video by would've called his, by the way, he's totally back. He's got some fun videos. The one that you missed that I thought was really good was on, and you should check it out was on the anti civilization, looking at how the steps. Kept producing people in groups that went out and destroyed all of this various civilizations of the world.

Whether it was the Chinese, whether it was the Europeans, whether it was the Indians. Wow. And this one region of the world, like in civ, like a, a sponsor reefers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Just kept spotting the things that destroyed civilization. Yeah. Wait, the reefers, how do you know mass effect? '

Simone Collins: cause Well, in, in, in. In [00:05:00] Serenity, there were, oh, this is the different, oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, this is different universe, whatever.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway yes. Very interesting. And we might do a, a different video on that. I idea, because I think it's really interesting the idea of an anti civilization uhhuh. Although I'd go further and I'd say that their civilization is the anti Jews. They are the exact antithesis of Jewish history.

IE Oh, because they're,

Simone Collins: they're, well. If Jews represent order and process, if leaving

Malcolm Collins: urban centers, these, these

Simone Collins: represent anarchy in distribution. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And having a vested interest in maintaining a stable status quo. Mm-hmm. These individuals mm-hmm. They are entropy, entropy incarnate. They lived almost entirely outside of cities, almost entirely with the benefit of the status quo being destroyed.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: they're very, very interesting to go into. But that's for another episode. But anyway, so, yeah, he, he pointed that out and I don't think that Rudyard lies about stuff. He seems to know his stuff, so he got it from somewhere. But what I was getting from short fatty taco oh, [00:06:00] was a really interesting instance of this that happened recently.

Okay. Where an individual named Bonni or Bunny or something who is a trans game maker. So one of our friends, stuttering Craig, who does Side Scrollers which is a conservative leaning video game podcast, the number one video game podcast, I think. He did this like just focused on like video game news.

Yeah. He put together a reward show called The Real Gamer Awards and, and Bunless Game, nightmare Cart ended up winning. People would pay to vote and the idea was to build an award show without any of the political bias. Nice. And they really wanted to do that. They wanted one that didn't have the lefty bias.

It didn't have the righty bias. It was just like, these are games that we love. And this person because they were so bad at modeling. The, the modern right. And what the modern Right. Is striving for. Yeah. Did some treat or just game

Simone Collins: enthusiasts

Malcolm Collins: based on merit, how they Well, I mean, he is a genuine righty, but the, the genuine righties [00:07:00] today are just fighting for a fair playing field for everyone.

And they were unable to see this, so they reached out and they said because the general readies don't have control of our culture right now, our culture is controlled by the urban monoculture, which attempts to impose itself on everyone through media, through news, through leftist policy and the right just wants everyone to be treated equally regardless of your gender, sexuality, skin color, et cetera.

You know, we've had reporters do double takes on us where I was like, yeah. I believe that someone should only be promoted based on meritocracy. And they were like, are you sure you want? Don't wanna rephrase that. And I was like, no. I comfortable with that, like famous racist who said, I believe that we should judge people on the content of their character, not the, the color of their skin.

You know, that's, that's who I agree with. But anyway, so this person bonus they ended up winning one of the categories and of course. The people knew that they were trans. Nobody cared that they were trans. They had made a good game that didn't have a lot of politics in it. Mm-hmm. It was a racing game.

It was called Nightmare Cart. And it was like a redo of like other, other racing games. So [00:08:00] anyway, they won. This individual said, oh, I'm gonna go have gay trans sex, was my like, great gay trans girlfriend furry sex or whatever. And they expected the people running this to be like. I hate you. How could you do that?

How could you, oh no, we screwed it up, giving this to a transfer. And they were like, no, cool. Like, do what you want. Like, we're just trying to, you know, award you for your work. And they then freaked out about this. And they it was clear that they didn't understand the, the people who were hosting this award show at all, that the, the, the work show just wanted to genuinely help them and didn't care what their gender was.

And so then they were like, I. Won't take the award even though they had already accepted the award. Okay. And like, you didn't ask me for permission to give me this award. And this was, you know, and then a lot of people started hating 'em because they were basically being a, a jerk. Right. And even in their own internal understanding of the story, even still, they believed that the people hosting the show were like upset or didn't know that they were trans, which [00:09:00] just wasn't the case.

They just don't care.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They were voting on the game.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they were voting on the game, right? And so we need to ask why aren't they capable of seeing this? Like why aren't they? And I think it's because the left has a big problem right now. If they admitted the political reality was in which they find themselves.

A core part of their narrative begins to dissolve in a way that makes it hard to continue to support the left. Mm-hmm. And this is why they're so bad at modeling the right, yeah. Which is they genuinely believe that the right is a group fighting to culturally oppress them or imposition them, and they.

Cannot see that the right, just wants to be able to live life the way they wanna live life, to just do what they want. To be able to work at jobs without being discriminated against. To be able to play [00:10:00] video games without them having gone through some sort of counsel that makes them, you know, obviously not produced by the best writers.

Obviously not produced by the best game makers or they'd be good. You know, and we know this, like video games used to be good before you guys took over, right? Like, if you made games that were woke and good as we have repeatedly seen, like, okay, you're like, oh, the right won't buy a game that's woken good.

What about Boulder's Gate three? Like, that was the wokes I've ever seen. And you could, you could choose to play. You know, did a trans character who hadn't gone through gender reassignment yet, you know, like, that was such a woke game and I loved it. The rest of the right loved it. We talked positively about it on our shows, what we hate.

Isn't trans individuals, it's trans individuals who make shitty games, who use our money from like previous games we supported before these individuals started ruining them to destroy the quality of something that [00:11:00] we care about.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Whether it's, you know, acolyte or you know, veil guard and, and as we've, you can look at our um, Wachowski effect.

With Veil Guard, you can be like, well, these individuals were involved with the previous games. And it's like, yes. But after people become infected with the urban Monocultural Mind virus, they get really bad at everything. Often, not always, but often part with like narrative storytelling is why, why was Nightmare Cartt able to still be good?

It's because I think you could be heavily infected with the urban monocultural mind virus and still be a good engineer or still be good at like non-narrative based games. You're just very bad at like creating narrative experiences often because you struggle to understand what people who aren't like you see in the world, and that's why games within that category are so rare.

Simone Collins: Hmm. I, I guess I could see that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it's, it's understanding because if they could put their mind in somebody like stuttering Craig Right. They would understand that what he [00:12:00] wants is just the best games to win.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. He just likes games. Well, that's that. I mean, I was under the, I don't, I don't know him as well as you do.

I was under the impression that he was. Only right in so far as Gamergate pushed a bunch of people to the right and also anyone who actually cared about games became opposed to the urban monoculture was, which was actively killing good games.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and I think that this is something we're seeing across the board here with the modern, right, which is.

The, the urban monoculture created them by taking the things they care about and making them terrible. Mm-hmm. A lot of the, the left thought in the urban monocultural thought that if it could gain control of Star Wars, if it could gain control of the Assassin's Creed series, if it could gain control of these studios, that it would be able to use that control.

To finesse or sort of impose their cultural ideology on the people who were consuming that product. Mm. And that may have [00:13:00] worked had they focused on also making those games. Good. But no, because. Gaining control of the studios also became affiliated with their sort of DEI promote people based on their beliefs, not based on their or their beliefs or their race, or their sexuality, or their gender presentation, and not based on their competency.

Okay. It was associated with bad products. And as the oh, what's he called again? The, the troll guy, we have a big overlap with him, Bri or whatever. He, he, he said if they had only not come for our games, like we were happy if you had just knocked with our games.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We wouldn't have cared.

And this is the way, like all of nerd culture was like nerd culture used to be a solidly lefty thing. 100%. Now nerd culture is solidly right wing, pretty much across the board except for the people who still control like the the, the, the conventions and stuff, because these are the large bureaucratic boards.

And it really was

Simone Collins: the gaming that did it too.

Malcolm Collins: It really was [00:14:00] the gaming, like, did, did you? Not with gaming, but it, no, the more I think about it, it's wild. It wasn't just gaming, it was the Star Wars nor Nerds. It was the Star Trek nerds. It was the, you know, everybody who liked this stuff for its quality and who like had a genuine attachment to it feels genuinely betrayed.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That's so bad. That's so bad. Oh my gosh. What, what are your thoughts? I mean, do you have a different take on why the left can't model the right?

Simone Collins: I, I, I think that it, a lot of it comes down to isolation. That for whatever reason, and you see this in graphs of friendship, that people and especially women who are left-leaning, are actively uncomfortable with having friends who are on the right. And they actively shun friends who are on the right.

And when you look at the [00:15:00] same rates of exchange, people who are, who report on surveys as being conservative also report as having a few progressive friends. So for some reason there's this selective cultural isolationism whereby. A lot of conservatives are perfectly happy to be friends with progressive people, which would give them more ability to model them.

The more time you spend around someone, the more you're able to model them, right? Mm-hmm. And there's just a lot less willingness on the part of progressives to be friends with conservative. Now, the question would be, when you look at these, these graphs, well, how is it. That you have conservatives who are friend with friends with progressives and progressives who have no friends who are conservatives.

I think that maybe there are just some progressives who are friends with lots of conservatives and they're unusual, but I think what's more likely is there's a lot of conservatives that just hide the fact that they're conservatives. And are therefore friends with? Well, this is like a

Malcolm Collins: known thing. Like I, I, well, [00:16:00] until I got famous, I had lots of friends who didn't know I had conservative views even after my views had started to grow.

And well, we

Simone Collins: know plenty of people who are like, yeah, I totally agree with you, but I would never say that in public. So I guess that's what's going on is that there are a lot of sneaky conservatives or closet conservatives that. Are able to model progressives really well because they're friends with a bunch of them and progressives just can't.

And,

Malcolm Collins: and this is a fascinating point when we talk about cultural imposition being the hallmark of modern progressivism is the very fact that people need to be closeted shows which direction the cultural pressure is going in the same way you need to be like a closeted gang in the nineties or something like that.

You knew you would face cultural repercussions for, you know, and, and today you knew you would face cultural repercussions if you wanted a game show that was. Completely meritocratic. You know, and, and so you hide that. You know, I, I see this was the message thread was my class. You know, people f*****g crazy like, they're like, oh, all these Nazis and [00:17:00] everything like that.

And I'm not, not even replying, right? Because I'm like, I seem to remember you guys like marching through the streets, starting from the river to the sea. Like you guys actually supporting the people who want to exterminate the Jews. And this isn't like. A fringe thing. This is like Claudia Gay, the woman who literally ran Claudine gay.

Claudine Gay, the number one like educational institution being like, well, you know, we shouldn't punish people for saying stuff about Jews. Like obviously you know, this, this is a dehumanization of the Jews on the left. This is a breaking society into an ethnic hierarchy. Within the mainstream of the left and the people who are fighting against us genuinely want a meritocratic society.

Yes. IE what Martin Luther King was fighting for. And I think that the left still tells itself that that's what it's doing. Like that, it's unable to see that its actions no longer do that. And therefore the people who actually wanted that but are free of it oppose them. [00:18:00] And I think that this also comes down to a question that I have had for a long time, which is why is it the, the right.

And right-leaning influencers seem more prone to audience capture than left-leaning influencers.

Simone Collins: Ah,

Malcolm Collins: so if, if you are not familiar with audience capture, this is where an individual may start as a centrist and then become more and more in lines, whichever political direction they were leaning, because they end up developing an audience that is more extreme than them was in that political direction.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: And this happens much faster towards the right people who, influencers who are centrist, moving towards the right than influencers who are centrist moving towards the left. And I think that the reason for this is actually due to the, a false narrative of their opponent that the left relies on to maintain its followers or its supporters.

Which is to say that once you begin to challenge the [00:19:00] narrative that is normal and allowed was in society, and you see that they have been lying to you, it is much harder to go back. Whereas if you start as a centrist and you begin to challenge. Things in a left-leaning direction, you are not gonna see as many.

Oh, here's all of the places. The right lied to me about this because the right is, honestly right now, j because it's not the right of the past. It's not like a religious right. Like yeah. When you see people go, for example, anti-trans they're not doing that for like religious reasons anymore. The, the main activist, whether it's like JK Rowling or Elon or whatever.

Right? Mm-hmm. It's because they gained access to more information. And you also see a pattern of. When people entertain the right, specifically influencers or right-leaning ideas, they are pushed further right by anyone on the left. And Joe Rogan is a great example of this. Oh yeah. Like the left was like, we need a lefty Joe.

We need Joe

Simone Collins: Rogan of the left.

Malcolm Collins: Joe [00:20:00] Rogan was Joe Rogan of the left. You guys made him right wing by attacking him whenever he talked to somebody on the other side. Yeah. And the question here, is this gonna happen to Gavin Newsom? He's gonna talk to some right wing individuals and he's eventually gonna be like, wait a second.

Were they right All along? Like

Simone Collins: I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. Well, he's definitely getting points for hosting a podcast in which he has active deep conversations with people who are on the right.

Malcolm Collins: And if anyone knows how to contact him, let us know. 'cause I would love to chat with him.

Simone Collins: But it's, I think that's one reason why he.

Is, is winning over so much respect from the world, right? Like, oh my gosh, this, this progressive mainstay, this staple is actually listening to us. This is insane. But because conservatives are never listening, I don't think so. I don't think so because he is playing a very, very, very long game, and he is the slickest of [00:21:00] slick political operators, and he's going for president.

And he's not going to leave his party and he knows he is. He what he cares about more than the truth is winning. And he. He wants to win as a Democrat, a Democratic candidate in the next presidential election.

Malcolm Collins: I will say that this is like an interesting phenomenon as well, that when Lefts learned to empathize was the right, they often become the right.

So there was like the case of the people who went to make like the Red Pill Community documentary and seemed pretty hostile to it at first, and then they learned about it and became like, so Red Pill, like it was like a group of women too. Play the woman who decided she would try to be a guy, just to show how easy guys have it.

Oh yeah. And have it much harder and ended up, you know, unliving her, is herself. Yes. Yeah. Thi this, this is an interesting, and it's a phenomenon people have when they're talking to us, like lefties have when they're talking to us and, and like the prenatal stuff. Mm-hmm. And they come to us. They expect to think that we are absolute demons, and then they're like, why [00:22:00] are you being so reasonable?

Is this a trick? Where, where is the trick? We just did an interview as Mother Jones. We'll see how that goes. But they were very much like, yeah, it seems reasonable the positions you guys are pushing. And I think that this is the challenge. It's that the lack of empathy is sort of core to staying on the left.

And it's also core to, like, even even the old version of the left, I remember I thought of righteous as being just completely illogical and animal-like, like savages. They were like literally like a different species. I was like, I, yeah, like

Simone Collins: ending up on an island full of cannibals. You'd, you'd be very scared.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, left. I have empathy for everyone. Horrible. And you're like, well, what about the, like, what about me working poor America? Like the, the right, you know, the, the factory workers, the coal miners, they're like, well, there's so much

Simone Collins: distaste. Everyone,

Malcolm Collins: you know, you know, you know what I mean by

Simone Collins: everyone? I don't know.

I, I think it's a major blind spot. It's, it's a blind spot. Like they, [00:23:00] maybe part of it too is that they're seen as not counting. Because they're seen as coming from a position of privilege and cumulative wealth. Even if they're not, even if they're not wealthy, like even if they're the disenfranchised Appalachian poor described in JD Vance's, hillbilly Elegy, they're seen as still being.

No, I think they say this, but they,

because they know this isn, they're not, they're not black because they're white. Because they, they

Malcolm Collins: know this isn't true. I think the lefties like in, I don't think so. No. They know that there are poor, disenfranchised white people out there, but they do not see them as human.

When they think of the people who are opposing them, they break them into two classes. One, a group of white wealthy elites who keep them down. Hmm. And then the subhuman, tri Luddites, who mine work in the mines, who work on the farms, who this other group, they understand this other group doesn't have power.

They're just beneath [00:24:00] hearing about or relevancy.

Simone Collins: Or they're, maybe it's that they are expected to have views that are so repugnant lifestyles and views that are so repugnant to. The educated elites that they see them as subhuman but not deserving subhuman. Like you grew up in America. You should have had the good sense to be progressive and educated and to live like me.

And you don't, therefore

Malcolm Collins: you had, you should. No, it, it's like you should have had the good sense to be born

Simone Collins: to a rich family

Malcolm Collins: like

Simone Collins: me. How, how did this not happen to you? No. You know what, but like the thing is like there are view, there are people in other countries who live lives of poverty and have cultures that ultimately are repugnant to.

To progressive leftists, and yet the poor morally repugnant white people in America are seen as irredeemable, I think because they should have known better or something. That they, they're us. They, they, how, how dare they have those views, like those people who [00:25:00] practice genital mutilation? Well, I may not agree with that, but you know, once they, once we give them our culture and our assistance, they will become enlightened and know better.

Oh, okay. So what, you see what I mean? What you're

Malcolm Collins: arguing is they see them kind of like apostates.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think they see them like apostates if I'm modeling my old way of viewing things. I think that that's, it's like they should have enough money. They had, they had a chance to be a civilized good person and progressive, and they chose, they chose not to be.

Therefore, they are fallen. We do not need to protect them. They don't count. And we view them as less than human because they had a chance they could have been baptized, they could have been serious. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: we're okay with supporting, you know, the gays for Gaza stuff we're okay with supporting these people who throw gay people.

'cause once we

Simone Collins: help them and save them, they will see the light and they will be just like us, us they'll be able to

Malcolm Collins: erase their cultural practices. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's, that, that's the, but that's the plan. That is 100% the plan.

What would happen to a gay couple [00:26:00] in Gaza?

Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not

Malcolm Collins: And they don't believe that the plan isn't working. Like fundamentally, there is a disbelief that the plan may not be working within any different.

No. Got of them. Wait, the plan will work. This is why you can take them like directly to like one of these individuals in the US and they'll be like, yeah, we plan to kill the gays. And they're like, we need to give you more assistance. Know. 'cause when

Simone Collins: you, and a lot of this is like the USAID thing, like when we give you more assistance.

You will see that our ways are better. And I think this happened a lot in Europe too, that like, don't worry, once they experience our European social services and see our enlightened European systems, they will drop these, these savage views and they will be just like us. They will [00:27:00] assimilate by choice, but we will never obligate them to assimilate because that is not our culture.

And then I, I think, but they're cultural nationalists.

Right for the urban

monoculture. Right. But they do that through the provision of services. The, the, the ization is by wealth distribution. We do not expend our energy attempting to change your mind because that is wrong. We accept all, rather, we will take someone else's money and spend it on you and then you will love us so much for doing so that you will be just like us.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and well or your culture will naturally evolve in this direction when you get in access to our information or more information. Yeah. Your kids

Simone Collins: will go to our schools, your kids will. Become like us.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is also what we see in so I was reading some posts on ask Liberals, right?

And it was somebody saying, Hey, so like, here's the data showing that liberals have lower amounts of mental health than conservatives. Here's the amount [00:28:00] the polls showing, you know, liberals have, et cetera, right? And anyone who looks at liberals can tell they have way more mental health problems than conservatives.

This is just like a really obvious thing. And what people said was, oh, this is actually just an artifact of conservatives being liars. That's why liberals are more open and honest with themselves and that's why you have more mental health problems. Mm-hmm. And I think that, that, this is broadly what we see.

Like conservatives are all liars. Conservatives aren't honest about themselves. Even though like any rational person can look at the two communities and be like, you guys aren't mentally healthy though. Like you see that, like I always note that the Natalus Convention, one of the interesting things about it is everyone there seems to be happy to be alive and excited about the future.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And it's

Malcolm Collins: rare for me to be around a community like that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even if they don't have, you know, everything in the world. Yeah. They, they're happy with what they do have and that's key and so unusual, but delightful.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Simone, any [00:29:00] closing thoughts from you?

Simone Collins: This has just been somewhat mind blowing for me because even though it's been a long time since I've had that progressive cult mind space, it's still, I can still go back to it and it's kind of shocking to realize that I wasn't this enlightened, empathetic person that I.

And I still sometimes have this feeling like, well, I'm the evil conservative now. Ha ha. Like, I don't care about people. And then I actually realized that the reason I switched over to this is I actually do, I, I do care about people and I care about evidence-based solutions and outcomes, and I can't, I can't do that.

And also still be on the left. Yeah. And there were many instances in my life in which I had to encounter that in environmental advocacy and then in [00:30:00] policy and then in tism it just keeps coming back. So the, it's, it's just crazy. 'cause I, I still in kind of brainwashed a little bit in the cold to believe, but of course.

This makes me evil to wanna, you know, save. Yeah. I, I'm the, I'm the one who's not empathetic. I'm the one who can't model other people. I'm the tone deaf one. And, and to realize just how not true that is, is, it's not the satisfying thing I hoped it would be. I'm, now I'm just like, well, what do they have, Malcolm?

What do they, they had, they, they don't have good empathy. They can't model the other side. Well, they don't have really great evidence-based solutions. Their mental health sucks. They just lost.

Malcolm Collins: Come on. They need something. I think this is why they can't, when everyone's like the left is lost. Right now, I think it's, it, it, like nobody knows, like the leftists are all internally talking.

They know something is wrong. They're trying to fix it. And the reason why they're struggling so much is it requires seeing [00:31:00] that they are the cultural imperialists. That they want everyone to follow their way of life, their cultural practices, whether it's the immigrants or the conservatives or anyone else.

And their entire party is built around enforcing that.

Simone Collins: And the thing is, I feel as though if they actually owned that, yeah, it would go better because, for example, they would require assimilation from immigrant groups.

Mm-hmm.

Or only let in immigrants who were willing to assimilate, which would. Which would go better, you

Malcolm Collins: know, it would go better than the, the, the Hispanics coming here and then voting more than 50% for Trump, the male ones at least.

And the, the, the females, you know? Well,

Simone Collins: yeah, but I mean, the, I feel like they're qualified to, to say that because like Mike Solana has said, would, you know a minimum requirement for coming here should be that you, you like America and you wanna be an American?

Malcolm Collins: The, the, the, and that's a Trump view there being is that [00:32:00] these, these Hispanic immigrants came here and the left just assumed that they would be converted to the urban monoculture and they haven't been.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a serious miscalculation. And they have adjusted on that. They've become incredibly anti-Hispanic. They've become incredibly racist against Hispanic people. You see them talking about it all the time. They're like, oh yeah, let's. Get rid of them all now because they didn't follow what I wanted, you know?

But anyway. Hey Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight? Curry again.

Simone Collins: I Curry night number two. And I will not burn your non tonight, I apologize.

Malcolm Collins: Would you put in a, a little bit of chili oil and a little bit of the chili flakes?

Simone Collins: The red ones?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the little red chili flakes. Or if we have any chilies that we haven't used yet, put them in.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I don't know if you roasted some that we haven't used.

Simone Collins: Roasted. Oh, I haven't roasted. Yeah, those if they're still good 'cause we were, we were out of town for a little bit. You think they're still good?

Malcolm Collins: I would imagine so. Okay. Yeah, I can chop, I can just

Simone Collins: chop them up fresh and [00:33:00] then simmer them.

No, that's

Malcolm Collins: nicer.

Simone Collins: Okay, then I will do that. How about that instead of the chili oil and flakes? 'cause those are pretty strong. No, that plus chili oil. You really wanna hurt tonight, don't you? Chili oil isn't spicy. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't know. Or not particularly. It's incredibly mild actually. It just sort of adds to the,

Simone Collins: to the what? If not, I don't know the the, okay. The thing that Cal shows, the qua that possess. I will make sure you have it. And well, I'm gonna

Malcolm Collins: go hang out with are we gonna, we gonna do NPR soon? We got a BBC. We got Ireland. We got a lot of news, news coming up in the near future. So for those of you who still read the mainstream media, they're gonna be freaking out about us for a while.

Which I'm excited about. I love throwing s**t at the s**t at the, at the, the fan because I'm in their house

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: I [00:34:00] just watch it splatter on everything. They, they're, they're all covered in it. It's hilarious.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: love you.

Simone Collins: I love you.

Malcolm Collins: You don't have to, I mean, you're fine.

Simone Collins: I don't have to, but I do.

Malcolm Collins: I love you.

But too, by the way, you're, you're an amazing mom and wife. Yay. And I am extremely lucky for this life that I live, mama.

Simone Collins: I feel the same way. Mama. So does Indy. She's, she's ready. She's ready, mama. All right. I will see you downstairs shortly. Bye.

Bye.

Speaker: What did

Speaker 3: you bopped him with? A soccer B Dusty. You gotta get him back.

Speaker 4: I stronger. Oh yeah. Oh, Josie, you gotta power up. Power up. You gotta boost [00:35:00] your power. Bam, bam, bam.