The Debates are Now Lopsided
A quick Jackal update.
Hey everyone, this Jackal is coming to you a little late because I appeared somewhere else this week. My piece on Jared Polis’s grant of clemency to Tina Peters was published today in the Colorado Times Recorder. So, this is mostly a Jackal directing you to read that, but I also have a couple videos for you.
Watch Dave Rubin get absolutely cooked.
You are a normal person whose YouTube algorithm isn’t filled with political videos, so you may not be familiar with the Jubilee format. I have shared a couple of their videos before, but they are basically “debates” between people on opposing side, and in the “surrounded” format one person usually sits in the middle and makes claims to be debated.
Lots of people have done these debates, including Tim Miller, Sam Seder, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and Jordan Peterson. On Sunday, Jubilee dropped the one featuring Dave Rubin, a self-described “MAGA Republican:”
Because I dislike myself, I watched the whole thing. I’ll just say this: Dave Rubin falls flat on his face, and loses debate after to debate to 20 year-olds, influencers, and the fact-checker. At times, it is uncomfortable to watch, like this part:
Again, Dave Rubin gets paid to do this for a living and has a net work is probably 100x more than Parker’s (the man questioning him), and he still cannot formulate a simple answer to a simple question. He also repeatedly just spouted nonsense and was fact-checked in real time, like this:
All that said, I don’t think these debate shows are all that great. For one, debate culture elevates snappy one-liners and quick-thinking over actual thought and discussion. But it is meaningful that we are now routinely seeing conservatives do these sorts of debates and everyone universally declaring them to be bloodbaths. Mehdi Hasan took on 20 far-right Republicans and won. Adam Mockler did the same thing and won. And Dave Rubin did his big debate and lost, big time.
The reason for this isn’t because Rubin is dumb or into being humiliated, but it’s simply because there is no defending this Administration right now. The debates are lopsided because reality is lopsided.
A.I. Might be One Big Racket
Brendan Dell came out with this whole video on A.I. a few weeks ago and it is making waves. Basically, he says that while A.I. is a real tool, the tech industry is fully aware that it will never live up to the hype they have built up or (at worse) it will collapse under heavy costs that do not produce material benefits. It is worth watching in full (and it’s not that long):
I will say this after watching the video twice: A thing I cannot actually get out of my head is the hype that surrounded the Internet in the 1990s. Basically, everyone said it was going to change everything in society and would be a revolution. Tech CEOs didn’t have to convince anyone, because everyone could see its use and utility.
The opposite is happening with A.I.: Most people think it is incredibly mid or just hate it overall. Datacenters are also increasingly unpopular (expect their construction to be a big debate in the 2026 campaigns) and pushing people away from A.I.
Nevertheless, the tech CEOs are trying to convince us all that the hunches are wrong and eventually the public will line up to use A.I. OpenAI (the people who make ChatGPT) says that the reason they need capital now (to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars) is because consumers will eventually be lining up to use their “superapp.”
Suffice it to say, the early purveyors of the Internet didn’t need to use endless hype to convince the public of their product’s value, because it was already obvious.
Enjoy the op-ed and I’ll see you on Friday, but after that the Podhaskie clan is traveling, so no Jackal.