The Liberal, The Trump Supporter, and the Monk

Last night, I was wasting time at the office watching YouTube videos instead of working. I found the strange discrepancy between the two videos I watched so striking that I felt compelled to share them here.

Now, some of you will probably be disgusted by what I’m about to show you but I do feel there is some merit in entering the mire to see where we are at as a society (at least that’s what I like to tell myself when I’m wasting time instead of getting deeper into my faith).

The first video is a “debate” between a young male liberal, Dean Withers, and a female Trump supporter, Emily Wilson. The “debate” is hosted on the One Night With Steiny podcast, which is a podcast hosted by Aaron Steinberg of the Nelk Boys. The cohost of the debate was bodybuilder and gym owner, Brad Martyn.

The video itself is quite literally a snapshot of contemporary society without even trying. The video itself starts with an advertisement from Steiny. Not only is he promoting gambling through his advertisement of “PrizePicks,” (see Meta description: The easiest and fastest way to play Daily Fantasy Sports. Pick more or less on player stats to win up to 1000x your money! Play $5 -> Get $50 Instantly.), but he also is promoting drinking alcohol through wearing a “Happy Dad” hat. We aren’t even 10 seconds into the video.

Again, Steiny is the host of this podcast, which on any other day, is mostly Steiny interviewing popular influencer girls that are usually related to the OF, or p*rn industry, in general. His father is Harvey Steinberg, “one of the nation’s top lawyers,” who made his name defending high profile athletes (Source). I know some of you conspiracy theorists are going crazy right now but I don’t think we need to go there. I don’t think it’s that deep (every single time…). I don’t dislike Steiny. I think he’s actually kinda funny, but he is a direct product of the times. But to put his podcast into perspective, he recently had on the girl who was going for the world record of having sex with the most men in like 12 hours or something (at the very least, 100 men in one day).

Steiny himself is part of the Nelk Boys. The Nelk Boys were a YouTube Channel dedicated to pranks and party culture before switching to a podcast and eventually more right-wing political issues. Again, I know some people might be like, ‘Why do you watch this filth?’ You have to understand. When we look at the Nelk Boys - we see ourselves. Prior to finding God, I lived a vapid, meaningless lifestyle primarily focused on partying.

Bradly Martyn, the cohost of the podcast, is a successful influencer, gym owner and bodybuilder (I’m 260 bro..). If you’ve ever spent time in the fitness space, you know Brad is an OG and one of the only fitness influencers to really survive after so long. A key thing to note about Brad is that in almost all his podcasts he talks about how his Father committed suicide when Brad was a young man (I think 17), and how that shaped his entire life. In fact, Brad puts most of his success in life as his reaction to his father dying. I can relate because my Father is dead too albeit he died under different circumstances. Though guest cohost of this podcast, Brad repeatedly states that he has no idea why the two guests are mad at each other and he is largely uninformed on the topic.

Now the guests.

On the left side, we have Dean Withers. Dean got famous in the last few months solely because he debated NF. The left thinks he won, the right think he got demolished. Either way, he was caught cheating during the debate. Dean is classic young liberal who seems to be a direct mouthpiece of the liberal propaganda arc by repeating direct talking points from that side. I hate to say anything negative (because who am I), but you can feel the anger, hatred and arrogance whenever the kid speaks. He has very negative aura. I’m talking dark cloud energy. You’ll know what I mean if you watch the video (don’t watch the video).

Dean has gotten exposed previously for saying racist words or pretending to be like Andrew Tate selling Get Rich Quick courses to kids while himself being an unsuccessful kid (at that time). He has since acknowledged this by saying he was younger and immature. Interestingly enough, Dean also says that his brother, who is a Christian, recently kicked Dean out of his house for being the anti-Christ.

On the right, we have Emily Wilson. Admittedly, I don’t know anything about her other than from this podcast, and some clips from the previous podcast these two did together. She is a self-proclaimed Trump supporter and seemingly successful influencer on the right. Steiny hits on her the entire podcast (but he does that with every guest). In the first debate, Dean tried to catch her with some click bait questions like, ‘Do you support slavery?’ in a conversation about abortion. Emily didn’t care for “debate tactics,” she was simply trying to have a “common sense” conversation. The same themes ran into this podcast.

Of the four guests, I’ve only heard Brad say he is 'basically Christian,’ but doesn’t seem to have any deep relationship with Christ or the faith, and for sure, not the Orthodox faith (for clarity, I’m not Orthodox yet). Steinberg is most likely Jewish (I’m guessing) however I don’t think he’s practicing, Dean absolutely is not Christian as he was kicked out of his home by his Christian brother and, again, I don’t know anything about Emily but I’m going to guess she has a similar background to Brad, ‘spiritual but not religious.’

At the time of this recording, LA is literally on fire. They record this podcast in an LA studio. 3/4 people here live in LA and, at least 2, Brad and Steiny, were evacuated due to the fires. Dean, who does not live in LA, thought LA Government’s response to the fires wasn’t really the Governors fault and that nature is just nature every now and then. Also he mentions that the infrastructure wasn’t set up to provide adequate water pressure to fight the fires (whose fault is that?).

Steiny and Brad, who live in LA, felt it was absolutely the Governor’s fault with the mayor taking responsibility as well. Emily, who also lives in LA, suggested that the recent election for Mayor was rigged and that the current mayor was not who the majority wanted. Dean scolds her because he believes that it is impossible for a democratic election to be rigged.

They pulled up a clip of the LA Mayor not answering questions. The question then became about DEI, race, etc., but realistically, Brad and Steiny wanted to know why the Major had no answers without caring what ethnicity she was. Dean said it’s amazing that just because she’s black people start to question her when Brad nor Steiny never said anything to that affect and the two gave the same amount of hate towards Newsom, a white male. etc. etc.

Since you know all the people now, you can largely predict what they would say during the rest of the discussion. It’s all very boring and tired. A lot of people say Dean mogged Emily but I don’t see it that way because he really gave off the negative aura I talked about above. It literally feels demonic. Emily didn’t do herself any favors but she was pretty honest that she didn’t care for weird debate tactics.

I was trying so hard not to turn off the video. Every second was painful. I literally kept thinking to myself - ‘It doesn’t get worse than this…’ which is ironic because I had a second tab open with a different video ready to play.

Here it is:

This video is so anithesis to the video before and it is, in my opinion, the exact counter argument needed. Remember how the last video started? Let’s look at the image we see in the beginning of this one:

Here’s the video description of the video: Handwritten by candlelight on a remote island in Alaska in the 1990’s, this is a video adaptation of the 2nd edition for 2024. The book brings the reader through landscapes of despair, addiction, nihilism and suicide to a place of hope and redemption that is found in "the last true rebellion", that is, taking a stand against the world and all it's emptiness; living a God centered life that leads to inner healing and resurrection.

In short, it’s about a guy who, jaded by the partying and meaningless of his youth, left the world and became a monk. That guy was Justin Marler.

In 1991, he walked away from a promising musical career with doom-metal band Sleep and, after a few months of soul searching, entered an Eastern Orthodox monastery near his hometown in Chico, Calif. (Orthodox Christian)

Here are some messages from the video:

The machine of nihilism has brought us to our knees. The spirit of the times is dark and the future seems unimaginable. The most perverse thoughts have become reality and the most ruthless deaths imaginable have been executed. Things can’t get much worse.

When I heard that quote, I thought there was enough synchronicity in the moment for me to write an article.

The youth of today are a rootless generation floating in the mire of corruption in a Nihilist world. Yet, within each one of us is planted a seed of Truth that recognizes the surrounding mire of falsehood. It is the image of truth within us that sparks the rebellion against the sea of lies we are drowning in.

The first video is really about a lack of faith and hatred. The left and right really hate each other even if they won’t admit it. The left seems to have blind faith in the government while the right is moving towards no faith. Both sides are Godless. Both sides think they are completely accurate. Neither side is rooted in Truth.

Truth cannot be rooted in falsehood. When that spark of truth dies within us, our rebellion turns into a double negative: hate cannot case out hate. Until our rebellion is rooted in truth, it will not be successful in conquering the world that oppresses us. If we continue to rebel in a spirit of greed, anger and hatred, we will defeat ourselves; we will become unto ourselves that very spirit of destruction against which we are fighting.