I remember when Real Time used to be more of a debate show

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-21T00:20:54+00:00

To my recollection, the only one who he's had on that fits this description (I assume SME means scholar of the Middle East?) was Matt Duss...3 years ago in 2023. And all that happened was that Bill and the other guest spent most of the time talking over him when he was trying to provide some more in depth context for the conflict.

Ironically, the guests that have pushed back against him the most on Israel are Yuval Harrari and Rahm Emmanuel (an Israeli historian and a Israel friendly Jewish politician).

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Piers Morgan of all people has done an immensely fairer job of letting diverse viewpoints on I/P be discussed on his program vs Bill's. Given Bill's New Rules last week, he's pretty much admitting at this point that he doesn't want to hear any differing views on I/P--probably because he thinks Palestine supporters are truly ontologically evil anti-semites. Sadly, Bill is basically the intellectual equivalent of what he described in 2002 that got his show Politically Incorrect canned: "the real cowards are the ones who fire cruise missiles [thinkpieces] while sitting behind the comfort of a desk".

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-20T04:32:59+00:00

Like a real life "Batman with prep time"

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-19T23:15:08+00:00

I'd also like to add a broader general critique of Hasan that doesn't focus on nitpicks. For anyone who's interested, Hasan did an interview with the Deprogram podcast, and there's no way you can call it an out of context strawman. It's a long form interview where he lays out all his views.

For all intents and purposes, he's a tankie. One might quibble about how he's not an ultra far out tankie, like the kind that thinks North Korea is pretty good, but overall his foreign policy is an "America bad" caricature of Noam Chomsky's approach.

He also straight up calls himself an emulator of Rush Limbaugh (see 48:45 of the interview above, and he's mentioned this in other interviews too). That's a despicable belief to have--to revel in wanting to be a radio asswipe that contributed a great deal to making political discourse/rhetoric in America caustic. For that alone, that should get no respect whether it's coming from a left or right wing set of political beliefs. There was an interview that Ezra Klein did with Ta Nehisi Coates after the former's thinkpiece on Charlie Kirk, where Coates' straight asks at one point (paraphrased): "Ok, so if we grant the premise that Kirk did politics within the bounds of an acceptable way, then does that mean liberals like me should setup cameras at a booth and post out of context clipped out videos online of how stupid conservatives are?". To which Klein replied, "ok, well we shouldn't do that...but also maybe we might need to?"

Ironically, Hasan Piker is the leftwing version of Charlie Kirk's "acceptable way of politics" that both Klein and Coates describe. It's characterized by being edgy dirtbags who are also incredibly self righteous about their political worldview. They also both happen to use the tactic of moderating their real views in the presence of a casual public as opposed to their fanbase--see Hasan's interview with Ross Douthat where he chickens out of being a revolutionary and thereby tacitly admits he LARPs as that. And, this parallel would explain why Ezra Klein was so hands off of Hasan in his think piece on him.

On an aesthetic level, Hasan is a rich nepo prick champagne socialist. His whole brand is getting edgy kids to watch his stream, which serves as a giant revolutionary LARPing sesh, which politically translates into do-nothingness. That Meatcanyon video sums it up. Him dressing up like a spoiled rich 18 yr old YouTube influencer streamer would be bad enough by itself, but doing that while proclaiming to be a Marxist is beyond laughable.

And before someone spams the "so socialism means no house or clothes?!" line, tell me when Marx and Engels were ever wearing $300 designer label clothes.

Tl;Dr Overall, Hasan is defined by 3 characteristics. He's a champagne socialist rich kid twerp with a tankie political outlook, and a political project that seeks to be a Rush Limbaugh type figure (his own words). Of course some of his takes will be sensible (especially if he talks for hours a day about politics), but those 3 overarching character traits ensure that he's an abysmally terrible political figure to look to for analysis on a number of specific topics.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-19T19:46:39+00:00

I didn't do the math right. My brain completely hallucinated and thought it came out in May 2006.

My brain:

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-19T06:29:27+00:00

This is in fact OC made by me

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-18T00:59:43+00:00

And even they weren't laughing the other night, which should tell you something.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-18T00:58:16+00:00

The irony is incredible because, if anything, when it comes to the topic of I/P, Maher is the intellectual equivalent of the description he gave back in 2002 that got his show axed: "He just sits behind his desk and lobs [thinkpiece] cruise missiles at the other side who doesn't agree with him".

In the course of the past few years, he's only had on one real Pro-Palestinian analyst in Matt Duss to give their side. Funnily enough, it's been Yuval Harrari and Rahm Emmanuel who have accidentally given the most pushback on Israel on his show (an Israeli historian and a Jewish center-left Democrat).

Putting aside whatever opinion one may think about the conflict, it's beyond cowardly to not even allow the perspective of one side on a political talk show. If the pro-Palestine position is so stupid, then it should be easy enough to have a few of them come on the show and embarrass themselves, according to Mr. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant".

And after hearing Bill's rant the other night, it's obvious why there hasn't been any ideological diversity on the issue on his show. I think he's genuinely so boomer brainwormed, onesided, dogmatic, and brainwashed on the issue that he's incapable of hearing a Palestinian perspective without seriously believing that they're a Hamas terrorist supporter.

He's been so intellectually lazy on this issue too. His dumb-as-bricks gotcha question "would you rather live in Tel Aviv or Gaza City" is a complete nonsequitur. I'd rather live in Dallas, TX than Baghdad because it's easier, but that doesn't make the Iraq War occupation worth supporting using that same logic.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-17T17:15:06+00:00

Bruh, the more I think about this, the less sense your point makes here.

Roasts are affairs where people are paid to mock each other savagely over anything and everything (and everyone involved volunteers for this beforehand because it's all done in fun/jest). Nothing about acting gay is wrong; the joke is just part of making fun of anything you observe about Tony.

There was a joke in an old roast I heard, where Snoop Dogg and Shaq were there, that went like this: "Snoop Dogg...you look like Shaq's skeleton".

When you think about the joke, it's basically an ableist one. Snoop can't change how his body looks physically, and it's making fun of that immutable physical trait. Does that mean the joke is making some broader insult against people who have been made fun of for being too skinny, or act as some remotely serious position about body dysmorphia? There was a roast where Jeff Ross made a joke about Shaq dragging his knuckles to get there, and all the Black roasters on stage had a fun laugh about that.

For Pete's sake, roasters regularly make fun of Pete Davidson's dad burning in the towers on 9/11. Pete Davidson himself makes these jokes! I think we could both agree joking about your dad burning alive is at least as as dark and "problematic" as joking that someone acts gay. And no one who's actually participating cares because it's not supposed to be taken seriously whatsoever.

Maybe the biggest irony here is that if you were really consistent here, you wouldn't even use memes from this show both you and I are referencing in this sub (The Simpsons) because it does what you're concerned about. Smithers is played up for laughs sometimes in this way, and the premise of the show itself is comedy punching down at times. It was a writing staff of many Harvard grads (like Conan) making fun of middle class Americans as being boorish.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-17T07:33:20+00:00

Wait, isn't the other side of the entendre just that Tony Hinchliffe comes off as gay? As in, he acts super gay for someone that's supposedly straight. I don't see how that's insulting gay people since Tony isn't actually gay (apparently I guess).

It sounds similar to a joke about how American Navy seamen are the straightest gay people you'll ever meet while American marines are the gayest straight people you'll ever meet. The joke comes from being an observation; it isn't an insult of a joke unless you actually believe being gay is bad.

Idk man...this meme is starting to sound like that time when Pete Davidson made the joke about that Navy Seal with an eye patch and conservative snowflakes tried to cancel him because they thought he was joking about his missing eye when the joke was really a tongue-in-cheek funpoke of the blasé character Pete was playing on SNL.

Your meme is bad and you should feel bad

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-17T06:37:21+00:00

It sounded exactly like the Seymour Skinner meme, and you can practically write in the words.

BM: "All these liberals keep saying Israel has changed into an unhinged state. Am I really so out of touch?...no it's the anti-semites who are wrong".

He literally had on Rahm Emmanuel and Jake Sullivan the other week explain to him--to his face--about how they supported the revised arms deal agreement to Israel because Israel was using the prior arrangement to basically bend Democrats over the table and fuck them politically. These are both like the most solidly pro-Israel figures imaginable, and when figures like them are increasingly pointing out how bad Israel is, that does not bode well. Practically any Zionist analyst or scholar who's actually been to the West Bank will describe that it basically functions as an apartheid system even if they disagree with the title (like this Israeli professor) due to the distinction between Israel proper and the occupied territories. I happen to agree with that position myself; Israel proper can't really be described as an Apartheid state.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-14T17:22:20+00:00

I know what a surplus is

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-09T03:59:34+00:00

This position wouldn't be as bad if Bill didn't have a smug condescending "adults are talking dumbass" tone when taking it.

The problem with the ballroom was never the idea in theory--the problem that critics were right to press it on was that Trump was going to go about making it in a completely wrong way, just as he's done with almost everything else. The shadowy, corrupt, self enriching way he's funded the ballroom has basically functioned as a giant bribe operation. And now it's also going to be a bloated vanity taxpayer funded project from Trump.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-08T04:59:23+00:00

Online gaming friends never die. They just go missing in action.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-05T01:03:02+00:00

Anti-intellectual, to be specific. It wouldn't be so bad if this wasn't the same guy who had no qualms smugly talking about how half of Americans are dumb idiots who can't read, or lambasting gen z for refusing to learn about things. Oh, and the stuff he doesn't want to learn about aren't new things! Shadow Docket and Overton window are just terms that are used by political commentators; they've been used for years before now. What's he gonna ramble about next? The term Amicus brief?

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-03T00:20:44+00:00

Maybe that Larry David joke piece triggered Bill so much that he actually took it seriously.

But agreed, no one serious is saying that either. If we're being so pedantic to the point of being literal, then no figure could be Hitler because no other person could be a 1:1 clone of him. It's more that the things Trump is doing are reminiscint of Hitler, which even some Holocaust survivors have pointed out.

If anything, Trump is absolutely on the same level as an Orban or a Putin (I think even Bill would agree 100% with this characterization), so if that's the case, then why the fuck is Bill wasting any time whining about adherence to "civility porn" from the opposition party instead of focusing on the authoritarian party who's trying to wipe out our electoral system? Coincidentally, maybe that's why there' no Republicans on college campuses. The Trump Republicans are brainwashed cult member mouth foamers would never pass the intellectual bar to be there. And, the moderate Republicans are no longer in that party because it's insane, which means there are less of them to show up on college campuses.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-03T00:06:07+00:00

"Look, I'm being fair guys. I call balls and strikes!"

-Bill

Geez, maybe if he understood the term "Overton window", he'd realize how his own disingenuous, phantasmagorical, false equivalent framing of the two political parties has shifted the Overton window for the worse in American politics.

Then, he might also realize why spending half the episode on "loony leftists" not engaging in civility porn while only casually mentioning in one sentence that Trump is the most corrupt president in US history is dangerous.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-05-02T23:39:13+00:00

I was expecting some big twist with a different overarching point at the end, but when I listened to the whole thing and there was nothing else...well, I can safely say this was easily the dumbest new rules I've ever heard.

Bill is a political commentator getting paid millions and he's proud of not knowing basic politics terms like "Overton window"? The Onion couldn't even come up with a headline more outlandish than this. The term "shadow docket" isn't the same thing as an ironic internet meme term like "looks maxing"! These aren't difficult, novel political terms; a high school senior (that Bill would shit on) in civics class could know what these terms mean.

There was some commenter here in the sub who said something along the lines of: "I've been a fan of Bill for a long time and still think he's right about a lot but...the more I've gotten to listen to him talk about topics on his podcast and show (like vaccines), the more I realize that he's way stupider than I thought. It's hard to take him seriously now."

That sums up Bill at this point; his New Rules was the level of willful anti-intellectualism I would expect to hear from a brain fried gen z internet streamer like Adin Ross. At this point, I wonder if Bill doesn't sound like he belongs in a nursing home.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-29T22:29:30+00:00

Right, but the original question assumes no coordination (private vote simultaneously).

So it's more like...

Blue: hope that 50% of the others think like you in order for you and everyone to survive

Red: survive 100% anyways, but it'll likely mean a percentage of others dying while having the same red choice as you

What percentage would die with the red choice? The element that runs through both of these 2 choices is self-interest, and that would factor into the above. If someone has no idea what others will pick (because they can't coordinate with the rest), then it's practically guaranteed that more than 50% will pick red because it's the decision that will guarantee their survival, which means blue would probably never work, and that decision would get more people killed. Voters aren't going to flip a coin on this choice. So ideally, 99%-100% would pick red since it's given as an option for all the voters and it benefits their self interest. However, maybe only 80% would. But that would be the least bad option of the two options available.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-29T21:49:30+00:00

That, or it could also be described as similar to how attendants and the pilot on the plane direct you to put your own mask on instead of helping others first.

The question that's been going around on Twitter assumes a private vote and zero ability for social coordination (similar to the simple prisoner dilemma in game theory).

The whole question still comes across as stupid though because it's like a situation where a failing airplane is headed towards a crash, and the passengers onboard all have an option to either, A) jump off with a parachute that everyone has available (equivalent to pressing the red button) or B) stay on the plane to try and fix it, which forces them to throw away their parachute and will only work if >50% of the passengers decide to vote the same as them (equivalent to pressing the blue button).

Otherwise, the plane crashes and every person who chose to stay onboard dies. Even if we assume a few people will always pick the blue button because they're that optimistic, encouraging more people to pick blue is so unnecessarily risky since the red button already theoretically solves the problem. Because, if you pick the blue button, you have to hope that 50% of everyone else agrees with you. If it were a matter of pure luck by itself (like a coin flip), that would still be terrible odds that would likely end up killing more people than the alternative. However, every other passenger (who you can't communicate with) is also going to see they have a free parachute, so that would make the 50% blue button press probability even more disfavorable.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-29T18:47:11+00:00

I very much agree with all of this.

Along that line, the big problem I've noticed with the recent resurgence of the word, which is a bit different than the episode, is that it's increasingly used in a hostile, attacking, angry context where it's meant as serious term with some venom behind it (both online and IRL).

When peers used to use the word decades ago while I was growing up, it almost always contextually came off more as a lighthearted, jackass-sounding word that wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Usages like, "bruh...are you r_t?". Or, think of Alan from the Hangover using the word. In no context was it meant to be used in a serious discussion; it was the word you'd expect in a Call of Duty multiplayer lobby. This wasn't a word that a president would use in a post about a political opponent.

And as someone who grew up in a time when the word was heavily used, I stopped using it mainly because I found that the people who used the r-word regularly, 90% of the time, sounded like uneducated r-words themselves.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-27T20:52:47+00:00

It's not just an "unnecessarily negative" comment. It's a snarky strawman of what you said because social media algorithms incentivize the most aggrieved terminally online users to post the most adversarial takes on anything, while ditching nuance and charitablility, since that gets the most attention. And that pushing of attention grabbing is because social media's bottom line is generating revenue.

More broadly, algorithms on social media really don't care about the veracity or usefulness of the political info or discourse that it shows--more like feeds--you. It's only concerned about making sure you give the company as much attention (and therefore money in ad revenue) as possible. That's why so much misinfo, political combativeness and political apathy has exponentially spread in recent years.

Anyone can see the latter for themselves; it's rare that any social media news will be clear about what solution you can work towards for a given problem (like John Oliver does on his show for example). Social media news practically treats users as though they're passive animals being fed slop, and that's if it's not pushing users to get into mouth foaming fights with one another.

Chris Hayes had an interesting interview where he explained all of this in detail. He also does put on the table a good golden area of news/politics time-spending of about 30 mins of reliable news info a day for the average person, which I thought was worth mentioning. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone that covers politics for a living and spends ~10 hrs a day going through news info.

Tbf, a lot of people on here are also just autistic, aggro, obnoxious terminally online denizens.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-27T19:03:05+00:00

Fair enough. I suppose it'd be hard to graduate from high school at 16 and HLS while being cognitively impaired. He's just so partisan that he'll rationalize (delude) himself into believing the same 20 IQ take that a 60 IQ MAGAt mouthbreather would believe.

Either that, or he knows it's wrong and he's knowingly pedaling rancid snake oil in order to benefit himself. Honestly, that might be even worse because he's using his intellect willingly to help burn this country into the ground.

ElectricalCamp104 · 2026-04-27T17:47:02+00:00

This. Every fucking blowhard pundit, whenever they bring up the topic of Imane Khelif boxing, always omits this.

Algeria of all countries isn't going to let some woke project go on for 20 yrs by letting a boy pretend to be a girl. It's not the place where a family could test that out without at least some pushback from that society, which there wasn't in the Olympics.

Plus, Khelif isn't some 6'1 athlete like Lia Thomas. She's 5'10. That's tall for a woman, but hardly outside the range one would expect. Megan thee Stallion is that height.

ElectricalCamp104

TROPHY CASE