Give it a listen

i thought it was a pretty good debate. it was only hampered by a LOT of circular conversation because the two disagreed on definitions.

in pretty Lex fashion he as a moderator didn't step in during these situations, in fact he was one of the most laid back moderators for a debate i can ever recall. he basically sat there for 2 hours and said "would you like to respond" until the two quit on their own. then read out flashcard topics.

Shapiro to his credit didn't get too into religion as a justification for much, though he did say religion was the answer, mostly to snikkers.

Destiny to his credit didn't debate beyond his beliefs. they have large overlap on israel and a few other issues, and rather than take a hard stance to push the debate he just ceded ground and moved to the next topic.

the least interesting part, likely Israel because they mostly agree, with the small distinction that Destiny describes israel as more hawkish in WB sect. C than Shapiro seems willing to concede. even calling Sect. C "to be settled later" territory (ok, w/e) but then saying "well israel can just unilaterally annex it like east Jerusalem". pretty illogical.

the most interesting part, iran and how to deal with them. here we have a pretty solid case of left vs right disagreement, and that disagreement from Bush, to Obama, to Trump, to Biden has had pretty bad consequences for the middle east. Iran can't figure out if they have a boatload of cash showing up along with a nuclear disarmament treaty or a full on North Korea blockade. they are both a part of the axis of evil, and diplomacy will be the only way to win outside of somehow forcing a civil war which would kill millions.

the most milktoast eye rolling part, biden vs trump. neither willing to move and inch.

There were voices in the Bush administration and the foreign policy community who argued post-Iraq that Iran should be next. The argument never got much traction because Iran is about 5 times bigger than Iraq in terms of geography, population and military strength. A full-scale, boots-on-the-ground invasion of Iran would have required pretty much the full strength of the entire US military. Back in 2004 or 05, the US could probably have pulled it off (barely), but the costs and risks would have been gigantic, so the idea never really got anywhere.

It was really an insane idea. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, I believe that these voices were right in one regard: either really clean up the Middle East by taking out the #1 destabilizing force, or stay out of it entirely. The invasion in Iraq, the half-assed Western involvement in Syria, Yemen, Libya as well as the indecisive stance toward Iran itself were a complete disaster and only made things progressively worse. Steering clear of the powder keg would imho have been the best course of action, but that ship has sailed. The way Iranian proxies in Yemen are now attacking a lifeline of our economy shows that it is too late to completely pull out of the Middle East and leave it to itself. (Not that I know a good solution for the current mess.)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 24 2024 06:16pm

It was a good debate. Destiny was on a panel with Alex Jones recently and they were just talking over each other the whole time but this was better moderated, you can tell they may not agree but they both respect each others intelligence.

I thought Destiny was grasping at straws trying to argue that the middle east is better under Biden (and Obama) than it was under Trump.

I enjoyed this decent respect level between the two which is better than hearing either of them listen to someone yell over them about some nonsense

I liked that circular debate tbh because as someone without legal background you hear a lot of noise. The legal argument for example with insurrection vs not. I think in this current world, these definitions are increasingly important.

Iran is interesting. Idk how many Muslim countries have such a divide between ruling government and the increasingly liberal population.

its a fine line imo, on the definitions. if they are broad enough that we get agreement they're usually too vague to draw much from. if they're specific enough to really say something there's rarely agreement. and sadly the disagreement is typically driven by politics, not linguistics.

its sad we live in a country that cant agree on what racism is, what is an attack on democracy, and what is treason. if we at least had baselines we could work together, but we dont sadly.

destiny is so washed i cant believe plebs still listen to that dude

and Ben, I mean... jesus fucking christ he works for dailywire, nuff said

works for? It's his company