About that contra-Tom on Peers Morgan.

April 22, 2026.

Introduction.

So on Monday, I was slated to appear on a panel of Peers Morgan, and, having done so,

I encountered what passes for enlightened discourse these days, you know, in the twilight of our Republic. Pears was the host and did an okay job trying to be the host, and I shared the panel with Tim Miller of the Bullwork and Wajahat Ali, who has a substack newsletter, the left hook. When I say we shared the panel, that way of putting it is kind of misleading. The word sharing might make you think that it was a feast of reason and flow of soul, which it more or less was not. And when I say more or less, I mean less, more than more, if you know what I mean. Michael Knowles was supposed to join us, but was providentially prevented somehow. With him missing, it was three against one, which I think Pierce felt a little bad about. The conversation started out reasonably enough,

but it wasn't too long before my fellow guest decided to descend to personalities. Here's the show,

if you want to verify what I say for yourself. Our segment starts around 1615. When agreement doesn't cut it, one of the marks of someone who's being fanatically loyal to his ideological tribe is that

if you are outside that tribe, he won't let

you agree with him. About anything. During the course of the interaction, there were a number of things

that we actually agreed on, believe it or not. The reason you might be excused for not realizing

that we agreed on anything was that nobody there acted as though we agreed, except for me,

of course. I was trying to be reasonable. We agreed on the blasphemous image of Trump as Jesus. We agreed that his Easter tweet was not good. We agreed that the IDF soldier who desecrated an image of Christ had done a really bad thing. We agreed that if Trump campaigned against endless war in the Middle East and wound up presiding over an endless war in the Middle East, this would be utterly inconsistent

and really bad. But did this cause any of the rancorous discourse to calm back down? Not a bit of it.

The more we agreed, the more agitated things got. It was the kind of thing that would make

intelligent observers go, huh. My colleagues on the panel did not say anything like, well,

I'm glad to see that we agree that endless war in Iran would be terrible. It would seem that we have isolated our disagreement then. You don't believe this will be an endless war. Have I understood you correctly? No, no, nothing like that. And so all the puppies and kittens came out to play. So, Pierce Morgan has something of an audience. At the time of posting this, that particular show has half a million views on YouTube and lots of lots of comments, almost 6,000. And if the comments don't reveal a great

deal about our fiend de Sicle era, they at least reveal a great deal about the thought patterns

of American basement dwellers. After having taken something of an unscientific sampling, allow me to

divide the comments into two broad categories,

while recognizing that there are a few lonely voices that don't fall into these categories.

The first is the kind of fan who enjoys watching professional wrestling, and the second is

the kind who tries to climb into the ring himself.

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