WTF Happened to Penn Jillette?!
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Textbook TDS. Comparing 2015 and earlier Penn and post 2016 Penn and it's radically different. He said he had some negative issues with Trump when Trump was hosting The Apprentice (which may be legitimately true) but then translated that into full-on Orange Man Bad. Even then, he still called himself a Libertarian up until The Coof, at which point he went full-on pro-lockdown and pro-mandate and has continued sliding.
Wasn't he always the smug Reddit-atheist-liberal type? He just went with the times on the issues that the left made a 180 on. Full blown TDS is merely a natural progression.
To some extent. Still, on the Penn and Teller Bullshit show in the early 2000s some of the episodes did take shots at some liberal sacred cows including environmentalism, recycling, new age hippie stuff, etc.
They had a pretty good take on the 2A. But he went crazy.
Yeah, he was the textbook Reddit deboonker
I think in his case it's worse than just TDS.
It's literally a physical deepfake. Magicians are painting a fake picture using tricks. To levy this criticism of Trump, to tie it to his profession, makes me think it's personal in that way.
In other words, Penn Jillette views Trump as a fellow performer who manipulates his audience and is better than Penn is. Like he's fine with Trump until they meet head-to-head, Trump looks like a boss, and Penn looks small.
He hosts a show where he essentially portrays himself as the best magician of all time. Occasionally they are "fooled", but not really; they're still the arbiters of magic, and being "fooled" is portrayed like tipping the hat.
It's envy.
The guy used to be an independent thinker and now he's a dyed in the wool NPC captured by the mind virus!
He's (or was) a Regime Libertarian:
It's easy to be a "free thinker" when you're making fun of Christians from "flyover country", because they'll generally keep going to your shows and have no leverage in getting your contract terminated. Not so easy when it comes to making fun of blacks screaming "racism"
Unless he's changed he used to defend Christians. It's one of the reasons some liberals considered him different. He would say the vast majority are good people and misunderstood by Hollywood.
I remember him being a mainstay in New Atheism in the early 00s. Think he even did a Bullshit episode on Christianity.
Yeah he's an atheist but he wasn't edgelord atheist.
All atheists are edgelord atheists if you dig enough.
Yea. Him and Glenn Beck used to have good discussions
Penn just said in the article he wished everyone would believe in Christianity more than what happens now.
Depending on the subtext, he might be digging at Christians for not behaving how he thinks they should.
I think he was giving credit to Christianity as a unifying framework, but yes he is an atheist. He is not retarded tho, so I like him.
That's a good phrase, never heard it before. I especially liked the "His magazine..." part.
It's a favorite phrase of Lew Rockwell, who as far as I can tell coined it in this 2005 article.
I think the trick is that, these people were always like this, just picked more acceptable targets. As the Overton window shifts, and as people like us get more "extreme" - even if we stay in the exact same place - what these "free thinkers" feel the need to call out starts looking more and more deranged.
Basically, they probably didn't change...they just went mask off and felt they could (and should, to be a Good Person) talk about things that make them look (to people more on "our side") like absolute slobbering retards.
It's not a shift in their personality or opinions, it's a shift in what Free Thinkers should think freely about. Similar things happened to the "skeptic community" and the like. "Skeptics" went from calling out a lot of normie stuff to, ironically, calling out "conspiracy theories," and anyone who doesn't buy into the the normie stuff.
A lot of "free thinkers," especially self professed Free Thinkers, were never actually thinking that freely. Ironically, they were adopting the acceptable opinions of the "free thinker community."
Maybe not "free thinkers" so much as "fedora wearing atheists".
I saw a microcosm of that on Digg where a bunch of "free thinking atheists" started gaming the moderation system to boost their socio-communist ideas. For all their "free thinking" because they rejected conformity and the constraints of "morality and Christianity" but enforced upon themselves the dogmatic beliefs of atheism and socialism.
LGBTQ123 community too. They're so liberal and free thinking but you hit the programming/brainwashing tripwire and boom, it's all NPC talk and conformity.
I feel like atheism is like libertarians. It has no protect from bad actors.
Libertarians are plagued by retards not understanding economics, and just thinking "whatever I want should be legal, I'm libertarian". Left libertarians don't exist. If you just want drugs and abortions, but are otherwise pro-government, you aren't libertarian, you're a degenerate.
Then there are the grifter fags that try to boost individual elements of libertarian ideology - that do not work in a vacuum. Free migration in a welfare state is just parasitism. Free market ideals only work when EVERYONE does them - when the rest of the world is engaging in protectionism and economic warfare, you must as well.
You can apply race to your last point. If only whitey cares about equality(left whitey) meritocracy(boomer right whitey) and every other race is out for themselves you are just being retarded.
Like GRRM, Penn proves that intelligence oft isn't fungible, and weakly correlates with virtue. The responsible man opposes Biden and Newsom, simple as that.
Now that there are dozens of additional studies showing that mask mandates are useless at preventing transmission of flu viruses, has he ever recanted his statement?
(I said "additional" because the CDC, of all places, had already released a meta-study in 2018 that observed these types of viruses using data from the previous 40 years, and concluded that there was no perceivable difference between populations that imposed mask mandates and those who didn't. We'd known for decades that they were useless, long before covid ever appeared, and long before the CDC confirmed prior observations.)
I actually have one of his metal Bill Of Rights cards which used to be sold at his shows (they're designed to set off airline security detectors, so that you must hand off your rights to them in order to fly, a sarcastic commentary on the TSA).
Going from highlighting the dangers of handing over your rights and making sure you're aware of it, to advocating for the surrender of your rights for temporary feels... My how the mighty fall.
They stopped selling those? I have one that I actually did keep in my wallet but most of the ink wiped off.
So close to connecting the dots, and yet so far…
Oh the ironing...
Trump was President for 4 years and things were great, especially comparatively speaking. Only drooling retards like you will hear this warning and take it seriously.
He also brought out the face diaper/seat belt comparison. Dude's a total mess.
Almost all the left-libertarians evolved into fully TDSed psychos.
Yes but "you're fat" isn't making fun of appearance. It's just a straight insult without humor. "What's your blood type? Gravy?" would be both an insult and a joke. It's splitting hairs, but I can see where he's coming from on that one.
But he's wrong anyway because Trump has told jokes during speeches. "Last time I put up that chart, I never really got to look at it," was a great line.
i dont know if he is ethnically jewish but he is certainly spiritually jewish
Teller (bless his heart!) is jewish, and Penn has been surrounded by other jews his entire life.
In between destroying civilizations and the lives of non-jewish people, the jews are excellent at magic, decent at comedy and writing and average at science. But they give themselves awards. They're not bad people -- as long as you give them everything they want.
#notAllJewsDom.
#yesalljews
Lolberts, if they aren't attacked enough to become fascists, always revert to being liberals.
No. Begone, goblin.
He developed TDS. Used to make some good points but now pretty much a leftist
Have you ever seen Penn&Teller's Magical Mystery Tour? (I think that's the name).
It's a 3-part TV show where they go to India, China and Egypt and talk to magicians in those countries.
If you can 'find' it, it's wonderful. It's also really, really jarring to see the difference in the quality of the magic between those countries and the USA/Europe.
Never seen it but he knows his stuff on magic
Wut? 4D chess playing for Israel I guess.
Yeah, it's like 1D chess.
Maby as a piece on the board manipulated by the actual player.
As soon as I clicked and saw cracked I could tell 95% of what he was going to say.
I wonder how long it'll be until Penn walks back his video on the 2A, unless he's already done it.
I remember P&T's Bullshit! Episode about Global Warming. Gee how the mighty have fallen!
Me too and from his Wikipedia page he’s completely renounced that he ever thought it was wrong and is now a troo-believer.
Allegedly, on the apprentice he was asked if he would support Donald Trump as a president and he said no.
Penn then said it was down to him and one other and they just couldn't pick because the race was so tight. That's when he was asked the presidental question.
Then he wasn't picked, and believes that was the deciding issue.
But is it true? Find out on this episode of Bullshit.
Yes, but has Teller spoken about it?
I'm guessing his wife has him thoroughly cucked. If he doesn't toe the "#TeamBlue no matter who" line he loses most of his wealth and access to his kids.
Dude's clocking 70 years old. Probably just going along to keep the peace.