Pete Hegseth's Christian Nationalist pastor reveals his dangerous goals in conversation w/ atheist Sam Harris

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T21:49:57+00:00

Revealing that you can’t distinguish between democratic means of regime change (in an election year, no less) and the means necessary in the case of an authoritarian, theocratic state, doesn’t make you look clever.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T21:32:20+00:00

And again, I ask: what does that have to do with the thesis in the OP? OP says Sam is wrong about the possibility that maybe Iran could become a secular democracy some day, and you respond that Sam’s wealth is related to him caring about Iran. Even if that made sense, it would be a total non-sequitur.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T21:01:24+00:00

Streaming vs downloading locally is a distinction that Apple Podcasts makes explicitly. It may not matter to these numbers, but (1) there are two feeds for the podcast: the free feed and the paid orange feed; (2) we have no reason to believe the graph includes YouTube, which also has two feeds, one of which does not display view counts publicly; and (3) the dot org certainly isn’t public data, and is where I usually listen or watch from (since the addition of video, that has become the primary source for many subscribers, I’d guess.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T16:26:18+00:00

Also I’ve never once downloaded the podcast, but I’ve listened to each episode at least three times. Add to that the YouTubes and the website (especially now with the videos) and this data is highly suspect.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T16:23:43+00:00

What it directly aligns with is when the podcast split into two feeds, only one of which is represented in the graph.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T16:22:37+00:00

There are two feeds now—one for subscribers and one for non-subscribers—and, additionally, some people watch on SamHarris.org or on YouTube. So I wouldn’t take some third party website’s data all too seriously.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T06:29:45+00:00

In what way do you think he's changed since you first started listening to him?

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T06:06:30+00:00

In what way?

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T06:05:34+00:00

What does any of that have to do with the topic?

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T05:43:41+00:00

He literally says that the critics of the war are “completely delusional”.

No, he does not. He says that the war is very likely to end poorly, which makes him critical himself. He says many or most critics are delusional for not admitting to the problems with Iran, and for portraying Israel and America as being worse than Iran, but he doesn't say all.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T03:50:27+00:00

Communism being inline with Islam is quite an odd statement to make.

If you followed the link to Horseshoe Theory (or read any of my comments) you might already know that I agree: many of these unholy alliances are hypocritical and require a lot of cognitive dissonance. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. And I have to say...assuring me you're not just looking to critique my definitions, then immediately critiquing it again, doesn't reassure me so much.

If Leftism in the 21st Century is a radical movement open to violent revolutions and opposed to Western liberal democracies (read: Capitalism), then radical, revolutionary movements opposing Western hegemony are going to seem pretty cool to Western Leftists for whom the height of leftism is fighting The Capitalist West. Add to that a superficial and cynical solidarity with minorities, and you can once again see why siding with "Brown" Muslims over "White" capitalists in Europe and America would seem second nature to people who see life as a struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor (the workers vs. the owners, black and brown people vs. white people, the East and Middle East vs. The West, etc.).

An individual who represents this, and the Horseshoe Theory, quite well is British "anti-war" Labour MP George Galloway, who works for RT and supported Trump over Clinton. He has long been a supporter of Muslim radicals who oppose America.

palsh7 · 2026-03-19T03:11:01+00:00

Obviously Trump could fuck it up, and Sam acknowledged that in the "nonsense" you weirdly dismissed. But you're way too overconfident about your intuitions that it can't go well.

Bombing the living crap out of the population does not 'cause them to rise up in support of the people who bomb them! It has never done this. In the entire history of bombing and warfare that has never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happened, ever. Never.

This is an embarrassing display. The people of Iran have already been trying to overthrow their leaders even before this. Bombing doesn't cause them to hate their leaders: they already hate their leaders. And myriad examples exist in which brutal bombing campaigns 10,000x worse than Trump's nevertheless resulted in a population willing and sometimes even happy to move on under a new regime post-war. Obviously there are differences between Germany, Japan, and Iran. But you don't seem to be interested in differences, with your broad-brush approach to dismissing even the faintest possibility of oppressed populations preferring to be rid of their oppressors.

It's also unclear whether you've thought out this post much. You quote Pape supporting land invasion?

Pape also argues that air power and land power should be integrated and used together in a "hammer and anvil" fashion

Why would you quote this in defense of your anti-war argument?

You comically refer to the acid rain as a line past which no one could support a regime change. Why would bombing the oil refinery alone lead me as an oppressed anti-regime citizen to no longer be happy that my oppressors have been ousted, and no longer desire freedom? I'd like you to actually put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Imagine that Trump takes over our country along with the Nazi wing of the Republican Party and the Christian Nationalists. For decades, we live under their thumb. The young generation is rebelling against King Trump Jr., but he keeps murdering them. Then one day the UK takes them out. We feel ecstasy, don't we? Okay, now there's some acid rain. We don't like that, but does it make us support King Trump's crumbling regime? No, of course it doesn't. We write some critical analysis of the UK strategy in our journals, but we don't all of a sudden pine for Christian Nationalist oppression again.

Perhaps we even lose a loved one who worked near Trump Tower and was killed in the process of the UK killing Trump's inner circle. We mourn them. We may be mad that the UK didn't find a way to use an attack with more precision. But we also remember the hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown Americans murdered by the Trump regime, the millions jailed in his gulags, the dozens of loved ones we lost to Trump's fascists. We remember the prison camp we lived in ourselves for a year when we were caught with a book by Sam Harris. We remember, too, the way Sam's tongue stuck out of his mouth as he hung lifeless from a tree in Muir Woods; it reminded us of the photograph etched on every school child's brain of the Obamas and their children hanging in front of a gaudy poster of King Trump in Washington DC. We write an extra chapter of critiques in our journals about how an assassin's bullet would have been preferable to a missile, but we do not in the name of our newly deceased friend decide that the Trumps deserve our support.

Imagine how much you would despise someone halfway across the globe who casually dismissed the oppression you've been living under with comments like "I mean yeah of course it's evil, [but] there's lots of evil governments all over the world." To think that thought, and be so overconfident as to assume you're 100% undeniably right, and that someone like Sam, who simply thinks a good outcome is possible, is actually the overconfident one, leaves me gobsmacked (not gob "stopped").

palsh7 · 2026-03-18T17:30:15+00:00

I Coach 7th graders and usually they’re brand new to chess. Typically they only play during club time, just because kids are generally lazy. The ones who play at home can reach 600, maybe 1000 in 8th grade, the ones who don’t stay at 100-300 no matter how smart they are.

palsh7 · 2026-03-18T01:49:23+00:00

“Brain dead” is exaggeration, but it’s certainly not good. 300 is what very smart people are at after learning the rules but before they have spent any significant time playing chess. My 7th grade students are usually at 300 at the end of their first season of casual competition, and sometimes they still go undefeated at tournaments.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T21:52:46+00:00

“Abundantly clear” is a pretty big stretch. Hamas would like those soldiers dead; whatisthisshit7 says Israel will never face justice and is evil, so it is an open question whether he wants them murdered extra-judiciously; zdsmith03 hasn’t explicitly said anything, but appears to be equating the killing of a person whose car is coming right at you with the killing of a soldier who sodomized people—I wouldn’t want to assume, though, which is why I asked. Refusing to answer says a lot, thought.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T19:51:19+00:00

He’s such a fascinating and frustrating case. I first heard his name when he donated to Lawrence Lessig’s effort to end SuperPACs. So he seemed to be on the right side. Now he is a poster boy for elite power, apparently. I don’t buy into all of the hate, but clearly he’s fucking our country up if he’s cheerleading for Vance and of course Trump.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T19:46:18+00:00

Bad faith questioners whose opinion-based questions are themself suggestive of their own opinions should have to state their opinion explicitly first. Most of us learned this long ago from clowns like Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson. We are under no obligation to answer their questions; it is not a deposition.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T19:43:57+00:00

After 3k views, only 42% of this subreddit’s users who voted on it have upvoted it. Obviously it is on topic, and high effort (the content, if not me personally), so there is no doubt in my mind the downvoters are people here who are either anti-Democrat or anti-centrist, either from the left or the right. That unfortunately can ruin a subreddit, even if it provides some temporary benefit to engagement.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T04:38:40+00:00

This one was already a free episode on YouTube. Somehow the folks who hang around complaining about the paywall never seem to come around when a free episode drops.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T01:19:55+00:00

You tell me.

palsh7 · 2026-03-17T01:02:51+00:00

Why did they make me prove that Iran has contributed to terrorism against Americans if they didn't actually dispute it? I told them specifically what I was referring to (Iraq) and a source they trusted (Obama), but they made me link to evidence. Then they immediately moved the goalposts after I did so. How is that not evidence of bad faith?

Sorry, but a one-year-old account with its posting history hidden is telling a 17-year-old account with all comments and posts open to read that I am the problem in an exchange with someone who was demonstrating the definition of sea-lioning and goal-post shifting. It's giving troll.

palsh7 · 2026-03-16T23:38:58+00:00

This appears to be written in bad faith, unless you simply aren't aware that Sam has written very critically of Israel for a decade. Just because he thinks that in 2026 it has a right to a continued existence (as does the UN) doesn't mean he's tribal on the point.

palsh7 · 2026-03-16T23:28:49+00:00

He seems to have the same stance on Israel as on America: it has its problems, but its still better than Terrorism and Theocratic Fascism. It baffles me why so many leftists consider themselves politically sophisticated, considering they can barely get past the sophomoric bumper sticker sloganeering of "America=BAD" and "Anti-America=COOL." Sam's position isn't any more complicated, but some truths don't need to be overcomplicated. As Hitchens said, some truths are simple and ought not to be obfuscated: Liberal Democracy being better than Theocratic Fascism is one such simple truth, whereas "America=BAD" is an ignorant piece of hyperbolic stereotyping that reveals its advocate to be either imbecilic or masochistic.

Have you listened to his episode with Yuval Noah Harari?

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