He legitimately had his brain damaged during his induced coma. This isn't like making an ableist joke either, I'm being 100% serious. He was somewhat always angry (for no reason) would cry and stuff inappropriately before, but ever since he almost died he's been so fucking pissed constantly. No off button, no "deep thinking", just yelling, screaming, etc.
He went from anti-trans grifter "professor man" hiding under the guise of "I just want men to be men" (while crying and sounding like Kermit, but moving on...) to an oil lobbyist, just outright Trump supporter, just all the shit right winger love to push and talk about, he picked it all up. He dropped most of the weird Bible shit that, while weird, was at least somewhat unique to him and now just rants about "fat women not being attractive" or retweeting "cum milking gifs from China" (lmao). He really dropped all pretense of being an academic. Perhaps to appeal to a broader audience, but I think it's because he can't think like he used to. Not claiming he was some super thinker, whatever, before, but he had to be able to perform in a certain way to have his former career, and I don't think he can do that anymore. It's sad in some ways, hilarious in others. He lost whatever ability he had to ramble and make shit up about how Marx didn't clean his room enough and instead he's like "yeah!? Well! Uh! Those studies use, uh, you know, well, you know, the data, the data is bad, and well, the LEFT, the Je-I mean the Bolshev-, the Marxists! are just, well, you know, the women are taking all the jobs and DEI and, well, there you have it! No more oil! It's like, wow! There it is! Bloody obvious, don't you think?"
You can also see the exact same behavior in Fetterman post-stroke (not trying to pretend he was a socialist before, but there is a huge difference in how he acts after the brain damage from the stroke) and Biden as his dementia worsens. Like literally you can see these liberal guys, already various levels of right wing, have major brain injuries of different types, and they start going harder and harder right wing. And it's not subtle either.
I dunno. I'm not gonna claim like "all right wingers suffer from bad brains." I'm simply observing a small group of people and stating what I see as a pattern 🤷♂️
He was in an induced coma due to some problems with his carnivore diet, then his daughter went clubbing during the pandemic and gave him coronavirus while he was out lmao. Critical damage x3
The induced coma was due to wanting to avoid benzo withdrawal.
Instead of going to rehab and tapering off like he can definitely afford to do, he decided to ignore all medical advice, go cold turkey off benzos, and get into an induced coma in Russia to not have to go through withdrawal.
He's been on carnivore diet pre-benzos, and idk how much you can specifically attribute to that and the covid. Those are both sprinkles on top rather than being clear causes like the coma.
Wasn't even due to the carnivore diet it was for benzo withdrawals.
He was trying tonget off pills, every doctor worth the paper their licensce is printed on wouldn't let himself go into a medically induced coma to skip the withdrawal sysmtins, so he went to someplace with lower standards for medical procedures that would let him.
So much for facing your dragons and making sure your room is in order.
I agree, he's not as coherent as he used to be. 5-6 years ago he was probably the smartest right-wing online figure out there, now I'd probably give that spot back to
The smartest person on the right is whoever is the most obviously grifting and doesn't actually buy their own bullshit.
My money's on Roger stone, he's cosplaying as a steam punk villian but it's fairly clear all his beliefs are motivated by not wanting tonget thrown in prison for habitual election interfearance.
Hilariously that also puts Trump near the top of the list because he's open contempt for the actual Maga base is very thinly veiled.
Steve Bannon seems intelligent if we're giving credit to these sacks of shit. He's an asshole, a dumbass, but he knows how to think and strategize.
Peter Thiel (sp? But who cares) is another actually smart right winger. And no I don't mean "oh that's why he has billons of dollars!" I mean he knows where power resides, and he put himself into positions to have control over things that no fucking person should control. He's apparently dogshit at speaking, and I'm judging that on precisely the only one clip I've ever seen of him speak, but his actions speak loud enough. He's making all the right evil moves. Evil maxxing. Pretty sure he's behind a lot of the boosting of the faux-pro-labor movement you see with some, and growing, right wingers in the US. Might not have been his idea but he saw that it's a smart idea. His only downfall seems to be his inclination towards thinking weirdo liberals like JD Vance are popular or can be popular. He doesn't seem to understand that you can't fake the thing that people like Shawn Fain (sp?) have naturally where they can appeal to workers in an authentic way because they've lived the shit. Also makes people like him hard to fully corrupt so Thiel has to go back to his blood-boy collection and find JD at the bottom.
I think when it comes to right-wingers, the line between "true believer" and "grifter" is a lot more blurry than with left-wingers because they're not beholden to truth. Their only true belief is that some people are inherently better and more deserving than others, every other "belief" is flexible and interchangeable, but that doesn't necessarily mean that in the moment they're fully aware that their beliefs are bullshit. This might sound incoherent but from everything I've seen, I really don't think it's that simple.
I think the line is deffinitely blurry but there's some exceptions.
Like Trump groping a flag while saying "you dumb fucks love this shit huh" is pretty obvious and I think it's funny trumps the most obviously aware of the grift and he's their literal messiah.
Shapiro and some of his ilk over at turning points seem to actually believe they're intelligent but this seems like more of a reflex to maintain their own sense of superiority.
Maybe you should sort them into three categories. True believers, people who are willingly lying to themselves, and people who are willingly lying to everybody else.
Has Lil' Ben actually ever made any coherent arguments for whatever passes for "conservative values" or rebuttals of anything to the left of him? All I know about him is he's the Daily Wire that wrote a terrible Tom Clancy knockoff novel rife with latent homoeroticism and racism that got a Chapo reading series, and he's got one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard and thinks "more gish gallop=more smarter." Everything I've seen of him has been reactionary culture war teeth gnashing hysterics since he knows what gets hogs to click his videos. If he's the smartest online reactionary slop-peddler, that's a scathing indictment of the rest of them. Then again, if your peers are Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, Tim Pool, etc I guess he might be like a pro level benchwarmer playing in the minors making the rest of them look worse by comparison.
Has Lil' Ben actually ever made any coherent arguments for whatever passes for "conservative values" or rebuttals of anything to the left of him?
Depends on your definition of "coherent". He has to leave stuff out, misrepresent and straight up lie because he's arguing for things that are morally, factually and philosophically wrong, but he's good at being a debate bro and he's capable of logical thought more so than morons like Tim Pool, Steven Crowder or Matt Walsh. Especially if you compare him to Michael Knowles, one of the other Daily Wire bozos, Shapiro comes off as way more intelligent.