This actually reminds me of iDubbbz's old gaming videos for some reason, just dicking around with tech and mods. It's the least offensive thing he's done in a while, but he's obviously resorting to gimmicks because it's all he's got left.
Why is Ian always so smug about absolutely nothing? He can't give a definitive answer because he has no point. He's constantly mentioning how he's trying to make punchier, less safe political points, but what he's really saying is that he's going to die on a hill of some contrarian stance that doesn't serve any purpose. He knows absolutely nothing about politics and history, just hang up the hat already.
He categorically has
no personal empathy, and hasn't for some time. He can't relate to anybody, even in a setting as sterile as chat. What I think he actually meant by 'learnt empathy' is that was it was a substitute for 'woke', because mainstream media tried to rebrand it as merely empathy a few years back. It didn't work, because what "empathy" means in this context is looking at the world through blind Progressive preconceptions without compassion or curiosity, such as when Ian, the white man, scorns an Iranian for his description of his own country and thinks it more believable that the government would insert a propaganda plant on a reality TV show than accept he's telling the truth about this Muslim utopia he will never visit. Believing the Progressive worldview is Ian's understanding of attaining moral supremacy, from which all disagreement can be dismissed as the opinions of bad or less moral people. He's smug because in his mind simply holding these views makes him so obviously right - yet has to cope and seethe that they also make him inexplicably unpopular.
His moral compass and sense of social norms is completely gone. His personality and worldview is directed entirely by whatever is on the new Progressive rightthink decoder ring. CritiKal is in the "alt-Right pipeline" because he's largely apolitical, which Ian considers suspicious. Apolitical or unopinionated people clearly trigger his paranoia because he has no metric to judge them.
It seems the primary reason Ethan Klein gets under his skin with no effort is the backlash to the Content Cop had nothing to do with politics or Ethan's online standing as a Jew defending Israel, the only two factors Ian recognises. Ethan simply exhibited a bit of dignity and common decency, and every time he needles him over this Ian is left there, shuddering with demented, hateful vitriol because he has the Progressive moral high ground yet it doesn't register that he constantly exposes himself as having virtually no humanity. Everything now is about the 'fight' between an abstract good and evil, Democrat vs. Republican, Jew vs. Muslim, ICE vs. immigrants, reality vs. crayons, etc. He won't go down and protest immigration crackdowns himself because he's terrified of real people, but you bet he'll bravely mumble something about how Nazily chuddy they are.
