Find below an abridged transcript of a segment of System Update, lightly edited for clarity and readability. You can watch the complete episode here or listen in podcast form here.

System Update is an independent show free for anyone to watch, made possible with your support. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can join our Locals community here. In addition to helping fund the show, subscribers have access to the after-show (where we take questions from the audience), the SYSTEM UPDATE Weekly Newsletter, articles and other exclusive perks.

Bashar Assad, who has ruled Syria for the last 24 years, was forced out of the country over the weekend by anti-government rebels who – with remarkable speed – advanced from their stronghold in the Northwest to the capital in Damascus. Assad fled to Russia, where he and his family were given safe refuge. Thus, the long-time goal of major powers – including the U.S., Israel and Turkey - has finally come to fruition, as both Tehran and Moscow have lost a key ally in the region, leaving a power vacuum in Syria for those other countries and all sorts of different factions in the country itself. 

Because Assad was a brutal and violent dictator, we in the West celebrate that the Syrian people are finally free and joyous. This is always the highly self-serving and self-flattering narrative to which we are subjected in the face of any major geo-political events and there is, undoubtedly, a compelling emotional appeal to it, just as there was for similar scripts about how devoted we were to liberate the Vietnamese or the Iraqis or the Afghans or the Libyans and even the Ukrainians. 

Anyone paying even minimal attention to political reality knows that this script is a pure fairy tale. The U.S. and its Western allies are not remotely opposed to tyranny and oppression. In fact, we love tyranny, which is why we spend so much time and money installing tyrants all over the world and then doing everything possible to prop them up, even when opposed to and trying to crush a pro-Democratic citizen movement, as we are doing right this very minute for states at least as brutal and autocratic as Assad ever was, including the butchers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our close allies and partners.

Western Reaction To Assad’s Ouster Reveals Glaring Double-Standard

Watch the Interview; Listen as a Podcast; Subscribe on Locals.

On a recent After-Show on Locals, the most common question was from people who wanted us to address the oral argument held at the Supreme Court this week that discussed the constitutionality of a law in Tennessee that banned all minors, all people under the age of 18, from getting what is called gender-affirming medications, particularly cross-sex hormone. So, giving, for example, estrogen to boys when they claim that they're trans women or trans girls, or giving testosterone to young girls who claim that they're actually trans men. 

Watch the Interview; Listen as a Podcast; Subscribe on Locals.

One of the most direct assaults on free speech received a significant push forward as a federal appellate court in Washington – the court, immediately below the Supreme Court – upheld the constitutionality of the bill, now a law, that forces a sale of TikTok and, failing that, would ban the app entirely in the United States. 

Appellate Court Upholds TikTok Ban After Trump Vowed To Reverse It