Knowledge Fight - #1120: March 15, 2006
Aired: 2026-02-27
Duration: 01:21:36


=== Baseball Classic Countdown (02:05) ===

[00:00:59]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:00]  Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.
[00:01:01]  I'm Dan.
[00:01:02]  I'm Jordan.
[00:01:02]  We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones.
[00:01:07]  Oh, indeed we are.
[00:01:08]  Dan.
[00:01:08]  Jordan.
[00:01:09]  Dan.
[00:01:09]  Jordan.
[00:01:10]  Quick question for you.
[00:01:10]  What's up?
[00:01:11]  What's your bright spot today, buddy?
[00:01:12]  I'm looking it up here, and tradition tells me that since we're still in February, you got to go first.
[00:01:18]  All right.
[00:01:18]  Well, then I will go first.
[00:01:19]  And my bright spot is about something that's not in February.
[00:01:22]  What?
[00:01:23]  My bright spot is about something that is coming up shortly, and that is motherfucking baseball.
[00:01:29]  Okay.
[00:01:29]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:30]  Oh.
[00:01:31]  World Baseball Classic.
[00:01:33]  World Baseball Classic is playing against the ball.
[00:01:36]  Yeah.
[00:01:36]  Yeah.
[00:01:38]  What does that entail?
[00:01:39]  Well, every few years, I think it's three for whatever reason, a bunch of countries play baseball in a big tournament called the World Baseball Classic.
[00:01:48]  And it's funny because there are some countries who are really, really good at baseball.
[00:01:54]  And then there's like Great Britain who is like, we've never even really seen a baseball before.
[00:01:59]  But they all get to play together.
[00:02:01]  It's fantastic.
[00:02:02]  Sure.
[00:02:02]  It's fantastic to watch some people get really confused about the rules of the game.
[00:02:07]  So I'm guessing that the United States probably pretty good.
[00:02:12]  Very good.
[00:02:12]  Probably going to win it.
[00:02:14]  Probably some Caribbean countries.
[00:02:17]  Tons of them.
[00:02:17]  Very good.
[00:02:21]  Yeah, that's fun.
[00:02:23]  It's kind of like the Olympics.
[00:02:25]  It is.
[00:02:26]  But for baseball.
[00:02:28]  What percentage of the people who are playing in that are also in the MLB?
[00:02:32]  I would say across, there's like, I don't know, maybe 24 or 32 teams, something like that.
[00:02:38]  I would say maybe 47 to 60% of them are full-on, already major league players.
[00:02:44]  If you add like people who've done a little bit of time, people who've had a cup of coffee, I'd probably say about 80%.
[00:02:50]  Okay.
[00:02:51]  Something like that.
[00:02:52]  And then would you say that the 20% are young, up-and-comers who are going to be in the MLB, or are they...
[00:03:00]  Here's what I'm imagining.
[00:03:02]  Here's what this's important.

=== Warning Bomb on the Boat (08:50) ===

[00:03:04]  Okay.
[00:03:05]  Okay.
[00:03:06]  Imagine some people who maybe shouldn't play any sports, professionally or otherwise, allowed to play in this tournament.
[00:03:17]  Okay.
[00:03:17]  That's the other 20%.
[00:03:19]  Okay.
[00:03:19]  People who are like, you are the best beer league softball player in all of your country, and now you're hitting eighth.
[00:03:27]  So it is kind of like the Royal Rumble, where there'll be like surprise entrants.
[00:03:34]  Really mix things up.
[00:03:35]  Absolutely.
[00:03:36]  There will be darlings.
[00:03:37]  There will be people because the first round is round robin.
[00:03:41]  So you get to play at least a few games.
[00:03:43]  And if you're watching the whole thing, you'll see somebody will be like, I am a fan of that guy because I don't know if he can run.
[00:03:49]  I don't know if he can do it.
[00:03:50]  He stands very still great, though.
[00:03:52]  Nice.
[00:03:52]  Yeah.
[00:03:52]  Well, that sounds fun.
[00:03:53]  I'm excited for you.
[00:03:55]  And, you know, baseball season, people starting to play, that means that it's going to be warmer a little bit.
[00:04:00]  It's going to get warmer.
[00:04:01]  That's nice.
[00:04:02]  Fingers crossed.
[00:04:02]  Yeah.
[00:04:03]  What's your February bright spot by the way?
[00:04:05]  Well, my February bright spot is something that might have happened in February.
[00:04:09]  I don't know.
[00:04:09]  Okay.
[00:04:10]  It was back in the 80s.
[00:04:11]  All right.
[00:04:11]  And that is an episode of MacGyver.
[00:04:13]  Okay.
[00:04:13]  All right.
[00:04:14]  I got to tell you about this.
[00:04:15]  What is about it?
[00:04:16]  There's no kissing.
[00:04:17]  Okay.
[00:04:18]  But the episode ends so close to a kiss.
[00:04:22]  MacGyver almost kisses a ship captain.
[00:04:25]  And it's real close.
[00:04:27]  It's implied they might go on a date.
[00:04:29]  That's fun.
[00:04:30]  Yes.
[00:04:31]  Okay.
[00:04:31]  All right.
[00:04:31]  So here's what happens.
[00:04:32]  Yeah.
[00:04:33]  That lady that I said MacGyver might have been on a date with because he's playing the air table hockey thing.
[00:04:39]  Yep.
[00:04:39]  I think that's his landlord.
[00:04:41]  And she was back.
[00:04:43]  All right.
[00:04:43]  I think she's a recurring character that is going to come up.
[00:04:47]  And she's fun.
[00:04:48]  She's fine.
[00:04:50]  No kissing.
[00:04:52]  MacGyver gets a call from his handler guy who he works for.
[00:04:57]  Unclear.
[00:04:58]  Yeah.
[00:04:59]  There's a bomb on a boat.
[00:05:01]  And there's a guy named the Viking who has planted this bomb.
[00:05:05]  All right.
[00:05:06]  And is brilliant.
[00:05:07]  It's such a good bomb.
[00:05:10]  So we got to get MacGyver out there to take care of this bomb.
[00:05:13]  No other bomb diffusers have a shot against the Viking.
[00:05:17]  Well, hold on to your hat.
[00:05:18]  All right.
[00:05:18]  All right.
[00:05:19]  So they can't get people off this boat because they're heading for a storm.
[00:05:23]  Right.
[00:05:24]  So if they put out life rafts, all those people would be dead.
[00:05:27]  Right.
[00:05:27]  So they have to stay on the boat.
[00:05:28]  Right.
[00:05:29]  Bad luck.
[00:05:30]  Bad luck.
[00:05:30]  Yeah.
[00:05:31]  And so they can't airlift people in or out, but they can get MacGyver in.
[00:05:35]  So they're going to send MacGyver in.
[00:05:37]  Okay.
[00:05:37]  As he's showing up to get debriefed, who should he run into but his bomb-diffusing buddy from Vietnam?
[00:05:45]  The two of them served in Nam together as bomb diffusers, which I did not know.
[00:05:49]  Did not know this was part of his.
[00:05:51]  That is a huge backstory upgrade.
[00:05:53]  Yeah.
[00:05:54]  Wow.
[00:05:54]  So on the last episode with Robert England, we learned that he was in the science club in college and then broke up with his very serious girlfriend.
[00:06:02]  That went straight to Nam.
[00:06:04]  No, because at that episode, he went to go fuck around on a boat in Greece.
[00:06:08]  Okay, fair enough.
[00:06:09]  But somewhere he went to Nam and was an amazing bomb diffuser guy.
[00:06:14]  Right.
[00:06:15]  Along with his best buddy.
[00:06:16]  Yeah.
[00:06:16]  Who he runs into going to the debriefing.
[00:06:20]  They're both enlisted to come onto this ship to take care of these bombs.
[00:06:24]  I'm saying that might be too many cooks in the kitchen.
[00:06:27]  From what I understand, MacGyver works best alone.
[00:06:31]  If anything, partners usually make him work twice as hard to account for them.
[00:06:36]  And they don't really last too long.
[00:06:38]  This guy blows up.
[00:06:39]  Yeah, that's he very, was he wearing a red shirt?
[00:06:42]  No.
[00:06:42]  Yeah.
[00:06:43]  But, okay, so you find out they get on the boat.
[00:06:46]  Yeah.
[00:06:46]  They start looking at this bomb.
[00:06:47]  Sure.
[00:06:48]  We find out there's two bombs.
[00:06:50]  Right.
[00:06:50]  So the two of them have to split up, one taking care of each bomb.
[00:06:54]  Okay.
[00:06:54]  MacGyver's buddy gets a little bit too eager, blows up the bomb.
[00:06:59]  Wow.
[00:06:59]  He's dead.
[00:07:00]  Okay.
[00:07:00]  Somehow that doesn't impact the boat.
[00:07:02]  I was going to say that seems very important to the boat's continued survival.
[00:07:05]  But I guess not only did you need one massive bomb to go off, but you needed two at the exact same spot on either side of the ship.
[00:07:12]  So yeah, they're like, we contained the damage.
[00:07:15]  Everything is fine.
[00:07:15]  Sure, why not?
[00:07:16]  But also we lost your best friend.
[00:07:18]  Wow, what are you going to do?
[00:07:19]  What are you going to do?
[00:07:20]  He blew himself up.
[00:07:21]  So now MacGyver's like, all right, I got to figure out how to take care of this bomb.
[00:07:25]  Yeah.
[00:07:25]  Now, it's just me, I guess.
[00:07:28]  And then we find out there's a third bomb.
[00:07:29]  Oh, fuck.
[00:07:31]  So now he has to talk the captain of the boat.
[00:07:35]  Oh, no.
[00:07:36]  Who I forgot there's a fourth bomb.
[00:07:39]  Okay.
[00:07:39]  There was a warning bomb that went off at the beginning of this episode.
[00:07:42]  Well, that's a polite bomb.
[00:07:43]  And that killed the captain of the boat.
[00:07:45]  Right.
[00:07:45]  So the captain, who is now the captain, was the deputy captain.
[00:07:50]  Sure, first mate.
[00:07:51]  Right.
[00:07:51]  Yeah.
[00:07:51]  And so she's like in over her head.
[00:07:54]  Wow.
[00:07:54]  But MacGyver enlists her to deal with the last remaining bomb.
[00:07:59]  The two of them are going to defuse this thing.
[00:08:01]  They figure it all out.
[00:08:03]  They save the boat.
[00:08:04]  And it turns out that Viking is the bomb specialist who's at the headquarters talking them through.
[00:08:14]  Right.
[00:08:15]  He was behind it the whole time.
[00:08:16]  Oh, man.
[00:08:17]  Yeah.
[00:08:18]  Woof.
[00:08:18]  That's no good.
[00:08:19]  No, not really.
[00:08:20]  It was unsatisfying.
[00:08:22]  I bet.
[00:08:23]  Somebody in the writer's room was like, we're going to have a ladyship's captain.
[00:08:28]  And everybody applauded.
[00:08:30]  They were like, I can't believe you're so inclusive.
[00:08:32]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:32]  This is the most inclusive any show has ever been ever.
[00:08:35]  But are they going to kiss?
[00:08:37]  Close.
[00:08:38]  Real close.
[00:08:39]  Real close.
[00:08:40]  I thought it was a great episode.
[00:08:42]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  I thought it did everything it needed to do.
[00:08:44]  Which is blow up a friend.
[00:08:46]  Yeah.
[00:08:47]  And expand this lore in a way that is becoming crowded fast.
[00:08:52]  Yeah, that is.
[00:08:53]  Yeah.
[00:08:53]  We have his grandpa who's good at setting traps and all this stuff.
[00:08:57]  We have that.
[00:08:58]  Right.
[00:08:58]  We have his college days now.
[00:09:00]  Yeah.
[00:09:00]  We have bombs in Nom.
[00:09:02]  Right.
[00:09:04]  They're not going to be able to keep all this up.
[00:09:06]  I mean, he's for a guy with as many varied skills as MacGyver.
[00:09:12]  You would expect a varied background, of course.
[00:09:14]  I don't know how you could fit this much in such a short span of time.
[00:09:17]  He's still a young-looking guy.
[00:09:19]  Yeah, he's 35.
[00:09:20]  That's all.
[00:09:21]  I don't feel canonically 35.
[00:09:23]  Richard Dean Anderson was 35 at the point when the first season of MacGyver is being shot.
[00:09:28]  Yeah.
[00:09:28]  Which is not old nor young.
[00:09:31]  But it's also like at that point, how old would he have been in Nom?
[00:09:35]  Right.
[00:09:35]  Could he have gone to college?
[00:09:37]  Right.
[00:09:38]  I don't know.
[00:09:38]  I mean, you don't have to go.
[00:09:40]  Wasn't part of the draft dodging is going to college as that would keep you from being on the draft list.
[00:09:45]  So he would have had to enlist himself.
[00:09:48]  Yes, but from what we are to understand, he graduated and then went off on that boat.
[00:09:54]  Oh, right.
[00:09:56]  Should have gone back to college.
[00:09:57]  Should have gone to grad school.
[00:09:58]  But the boat didn't lead to.
[00:09:59]  Maybe it did lead to NAM.
[00:10:01]  I don't know.
[00:10:01]  Did he get kidnapped in Greece and forced to go fight Nam?
[00:10:07]  Was he in the Viet Cong?
[00:10:09]  We don't know what side he was on.
[00:10:11]  See, this is the- No, we do.
[00:10:12]  Oh, no, yeah, because his best friend was also- Yeah.
[00:10:14]  But- But maybe they were on the opposite side, so they kind of had a romance going on.
[00:10:18]  Tell anyone.
[00:10:19]  Just a little, yeah.
[00:10:21]  I don't know.
[00:10:22]  I'm so excited about the lore of this show, though.
[00:10:25]  Like, the backstory is fucking blowing my mind.
[00:10:28]  Yeah.
[00:10:29]  And the quality of it, I'm like 12 episodes in, and all of them have been good.
[00:10:33]  And one, the villain was ants.
[00:10:36]  It's awesome.
[00:10:38]  So that's my bright spot.
[00:10:39]  That's good stuff.
[00:10:40]  Jordan.
[00:10:41]  Yeah.
[00:10:42]  Today we have an episode to go over.
[00:10:43]  We're going to be talking about March 15th, 2006.
[00:10:47]  Oh, yay.
[00:10:48]  Way back in the past.
[00:10:49]  Nice.
[00:10:50]  So I'll explain how we ended up here.
[00:10:54]  But first, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks.
[00:10:56]  Oh, that's a great idea.
[00:10:58]  So first, congratulations to Sarah, spelled S-E-R-A, and Tanner on your wedding from Charlotte.
[00:11:05]  Thank you so much.
[00:11:05]  You're now a Palzywonk.
[00:11:06]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:11:07]  Thank you very much.
[00:11:08]  Thank you.
[00:11:09]  Next, Jules Makes Games, developer of the Outbreak Story.
[00:11:12]  Thank you so much.
[00:11:12]  You're an Iowa Policy Wonk.
[00:11:14]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:11:15]  Thank you very much.
[00:11:15]  Thank you.
[00:11:16]  And get this away from me.
[00:11:18]  I think the computer is scary now.
[00:11:19]  Thank you so much.
[00:11:20]  You're an Iowa Palzywonk.
[00:11:21]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:11:22]  Thank you very much.
[00:11:23]  Thank you.
[00:11:24]  And we got a technical credit in the mix, Jordan.
[00:11:26]  So thank you so much to Dan.
[00:11:27]  Last time I let it go because I was getting caught up on episodes, but it's pronounced Anawak, bear and buoy.
[00:11:35]  Sorry, lifelong Texan here who was forced to take Texas history in junior high.
[00:11:40]  Thank you so much.
[00:11:40]  You're an Iowa Technocrat.
[00:11:42]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:11:43]  Four stars.
[00:11:43]  Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.
[00:11:46]  Someone, sodomite, sent me a bucket of poop.
[00:11:48]  Daddy Sharp.
[00:11:49]  Bomb, Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent.

=== Impression of Impossible Politics (04:49) ===

[00:11:55]  He's a loser, little, little kitty baby.
[00:11:58]  I don't want to hate black people.
[00:12:00]  I renounce Jesus Christ.
[00:12:01]  Yeah, that's not true.
[00:12:04]  Sure.
[00:12:04]  Yeah.
[00:12:05]  Works for me.
[00:12:05]  No, I mean, like, I'm from Missouri, and there's like Versales Versailles or Versales.
[00:12:12]  Who knows?
[00:12:12]  Yeah.
[00:12:13]  I don't care.
[00:12:14]  You know, there's an X in that word.
[00:12:16]  It's Bexar.
[00:12:17]  Here's what I was thinking.
[00:12:18]  I was thinking, Bowie.
[00:12:21]  Nobody's ever going to call it a buoy knife.
[00:12:23]  And then I was thinking, you know what?
[00:12:25]  You should have just been buoy, you know?
[00:12:27]  And then I was writing out buoy in my head and I was like, yeah, put a W in there.
[00:12:31]  B-O-O-I-E.
[00:12:33]  That's no good.
[00:12:34]  You don't want to write that out for the rest of your life.
[00:12:36]  No.
[00:12:37]  Yeah.
[00:12:37]  But that X.
[00:12:39]  It's not fair.
[00:12:40]  So this week, Jordan, I made the interesting choice of watching Trump's State of the Union speech.
[00:12:45]  Oh, God.
[00:12:46]  And for a moment, I considered the idea of doing an episode just about that.
[00:12:49]  I was pretty close.
[00:12:51]  It was one of the most nakedly hostile and dictator-ish displays I've seen in my life.
[00:12:56]  And the spectacle of these hundreds of oh-so-serious politicians just sitting by and being part of it was too much to handle.
[00:13:03]  Hilarious.
[00:13:04]  It was grotesque.
[00:13:05]  Yeah, I bet.
[00:13:06]  Watching it, I had a bit of a realization that may be overdue, which is that I hate what is now politics.
[00:13:13]  Yeah.
[00:13:14]  I didn't come doing this show because of an interest in politics.
[00:13:17]  I didn't study political science in college, but I've learned a fair amount about the subject in the process.
[00:13:22]  And I'm fucking sick of what this has become.
[00:13:25]  Yeah.
[00:13:25]  I'm interested in rights and people being allowed and enabled to live the lives that they want to live.
[00:13:31]  I'm interested in how we can organize society better to maximize that.
[00:13:35]  And I'm interested in figures in the media space whose only real function is to lie to everyone to make it impossible for us to improve anything.
[00:13:43]  I'm interested in those things.
[00:13:45]  And I think for a while, I've had a belief that politics was the most disciplined and effective way to do the work of organizing society in a way that maximizes rights and people's freedoms to make choices themselves.
[00:13:57]  But watching that fucking State of the Union, I don't know if that feels accurate anymore.
[00:14:02]  Maybe it was never a useful avenue for that pursuit, or maybe things have gotten worse in the past 15 years.
[00:14:09]  I'm not sure, and I don't care.
[00:14:11]  But I know that watching that State of the Union made me certain that our structure of government does not have an effective answer for what Trump is doing.
[00:14:20]  That was fucking outrageous.
[00:14:23]  It was 10 steps past unacceptable.
[00:14:25]  Yeah.
[00:14:26]  Nasty, malevolent creeps have essentially seized the power of our government and are clearly indicating to anyone who's willing to listen that they don't care about checks on their power.
[00:14:35]  Nah, that doesn't sound true.
[00:14:37]  I can't imagine what message you're supposed to take away from this other than we intend to stay in power no matter what.
[00:14:43]  Yeah.
[00:14:43]  Fuck all of you.
[00:14:44]  Obviously.
[00:14:45]  Any attempt to stop them from attacking other countries or rigging the economy is going to be treated as a treasonous attack on American prosperity.
[00:14:54]  Any attempt to run a fair election against them is going to be treated as an attempted coup.
[00:14:58]  It was screamed from a pulpit at people in this speech.
[00:15:05]  It was horrifying.
[00:15:06]  Yeah.
[00:15:07]  You know what I was thinking?
[00:15:08]  I was thinking on the walk over here.
[00:15:10]  Oh, man, I wish I was W.
[00:15:12]  That, man, he is fucking his legacy is so saved.
[00:15:18]  Like, this guy should have gone down in history as the single worst president who lied us into a war, who's a fucking monster, a serial killer, a murderer, a horrible fucking person.
[00:15:28]  Now everybody's going to be like, he wasn't that bad.
[00:15:30]  It's almost impossible to rate politicians on a scale that includes this anymore.
[00:15:37]  Well, I mean, it is literally like the guy who did the trail of tears and this guy.
[00:15:42]  It's hard to, it's hard to compete, you know?
[00:15:45]  Yeah.
[00:15:45]  And so when I was watching that, I realized something or something clicked over.
[00:15:50]  And I just, I realized that whatever this is is not what it's like the place that it's existing in.
[00:16:01]  Yeah.
[00:16:02]  Like the state of the union, the president, Congress, all this, that is no longer what a politic is.
[00:16:09]  Yeah.
[00:16:10]  It is just this is a fucking extended, not very interesting Klan rally.
[00:16:17]  Yeah.
[00:16:18]  That some people are humoring.
[00:16:21]  Yeah.
[00:16:22]  I mean, I suppose that my entire political adult life, I felt like I was being gaslit.
[00:16:27]  But now most people feel like they're being gaslit.
[00:16:30]  So I don't feel as alone.
[00:16:33]  So that's nice.
[00:16:37]  After watching it, I was like, well, we should probably talk about Alex's response to that, but I'm not quite ready to after having taken it in and sat with it.

=== Alex's Palpatine Impression (03:03) ===

[00:16:45]  So I bet he's going to do a Darth Vader impression.
[00:16:49]  I know I would.
[00:16:51]  I would definitely do an Emperor Palpatine impression.
[00:16:54]  Hey, Palpatine may come up in this episode.
[00:16:56]  Hey!
[00:16:57]  20 years!
[00:16:58]  Man, it is crazy.
[00:17:00]  So we're going to start here, and as a familiar topic we've talked a little bit about in the past, we're talking Slobo.
[00:17:07]  Okay.
[00:17:08]  Meanwhile, they've gotten rid of Slobod Milajevic because he was demanding a real trial and had been exposing how al-Qaeda works for the U.S. government and had attacked his country.
[00:17:17]  So he was unceremoniously murdered and the poison was even found in his bloodstream.
[00:17:21]  And the media admits it and claims he did it himself.
[00:17:24]  Sure.
[00:17:25]  I hope they don't kill me and then claim that I killed myself.
[00:17:28]  They're so good at doing that.
[00:17:30]  Saddam's microphone was cut after he suggests U.S. behind bombings.
[00:17:35]  That's how free his trial is.
[00:17:36]  He's not allowed a defense.
[00:17:38]  That's out of the AP.
[00:17:40]  And again, Saddam Silence for fingering U.S. in-Iraq bombings.
[00:17:44]  We know some of them are.
[00:17:46]  So this is a great example of Alex reporting pieces of disconnected information in order to promote a larger false narrative.
[00:17:54]  As we've discussed, Slobodan Milosevic's blood sample from two months prior to his death did have traces of a drug in it that could make his hypertension medications less effective.
[00:18:04]  In theory, if he died from a heart attack when this drug was in his system, you could speculate that the drug played a role in making that heart attack more likely.
[00:18:13]  Alex needs to present the image that Slobo was murdered for standing up to the globalists, so the conclusion comes before the evidence.
[00:18:21]  And all information needs to conform to propping up the story that will be told.
[00:18:27]  To make the charade work, Alex just pretends that the drug was found in Slobo's system when he died, not months prior.
[00:18:33]  He pretends that this was definitely the cause of death and not a possible non-sequitur because he's a lazy liar.
[00:18:40]  Right.
[00:18:40]  Alex relies on his audience not paying attention or knowing much about the stories he rambles about because if they focused and did their own research as he so often begs them to do, they would start to notice that he does this all the time.
[00:18:53]  Little pieces of accurate information are distorted and misused to make unfounded points and they become load-bearing pieces of propping up these outlandish theories.
[00:19:04]  And I think if you pay attention, you notice that over and over and over again.
[00:19:08]  As for that part about Saddam Hussein's trial, they didn't shut off his mic after he said that the U.S. is involved in bombings.
[00:19:15]  He was ranting about still being the president of Iraq and trying to rally the Iraqi people to unite against the American invaders.
[00:19:22]  So the Iraqi judge transferred the hearing into a private chamber where the press wasn't allowed in.
[00:19:28]  This was a common occurrence during Saddam's trial.
[00:19:31]  He was pretty regularly yelling at judges, giving long, angry speeches, and having his mic cut off.
[00:19:36]  When people are super guilty, they usually recognize that their only option at trial is to try to derail the proceedings and pretend that they're putting the system on trial, much like Alex did himself in the Sandy Hook case.

=== Worshipful Companies And Truth (12:25) ===

[00:19:48]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:19:49]  He knows the behavior.
[00:19:50]  He is a lot like Saddam.
[00:19:54]  They have some PR similarities.
[00:19:58]  I mean, it is hard not to, like, okay, in this era of AJ's career, if you're an InfoWarrior, it makes more sense, I guess, period, to be an Info Warrior, but maybe not.
[00:20:12]  But in terms of like Slobodan Milosevic, evil guy should be, is connected to a bunch of evil other guys, some of whom are what you would consider in the regular world, right, of non-super evil kill guys.
[00:20:28]  So he should kind of know something about somebody who maybe should want to eliminate him.
[00:20:33]  That makes sense.
[00:20:34]  You can easily conceive of him as a loose end.
[00:20:37]  Totally.
[00:20:37]  Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:20:38]  But he was already there for so long.
[00:20:40]  True.
[00:20:41]  He was already there for so long.
[00:20:42]  You want to get rid of that guy pretty quick if you're trying to get rid of a guy.
[00:20:46]  You're not going to be like, oh, well, let's just see what he says for four years or whatever.
[00:20:49]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:50]  You know?
[00:20:51]  You're either really, really playing it.
[00:20:54]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:55]  Or you're engaged in one of the silliest negotiations of all time.
[00:21:00]  Like, maybe he won't say anything.
[00:21:01]  I don't know.
[00:21:02]  I don't know.
[00:21:02]  We'll see.
[00:21:03]  I've got Patrick Byrne talking to him in jail.
[00:21:05]  Let's give him another go.
[00:21:07]  Let's give him another shot.
[00:21:09]  It's nonsense, but you can see where the kernels of, like, I get how you take the first step.
[00:21:14]  Totally.
[00:21:15]  It's the second, third, fourth word.
[00:21:17]  Absolutely.
[00:21:18]  And if they were going to, if they were going to do it, you shouldn't have evidence.
[00:21:23]  That should be your evidence is like, oh, it didn't.
[00:21:26]  There was no evidence of foul play.
[00:21:28]  See, that's how good these guys are.
[00:21:29]  That's the level we're at.
[00:21:31]  Yeah, you really think that blood sample would get lost.
[00:21:33]  Yeah, right?
[00:21:34]  If they're capable of all of this shit.
[00:21:36]  Exactly.
[00:21:37]  But Alex, a lot of the beginning of this episode I found a little bit tiresome.
[00:21:42]  Sure.
[00:21:43]  And that's because he's talking a lot about how popular he is.
[00:21:47]  Internet means end for media barons, says Rupert Murdoch, magnet hail, second great age of discovery.
[00:21:56]  Power moving from the old elite to the bloggers.
[00:22:00]  Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today's internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a second great age of discovery.
[00:22:14]  I'm going to get into that.
[00:22:16]  And of course, we hailed this several years ago with articles we wrote.
[00:22:19]  I mean, when I can start a website in a few months, have it be bigger than, say, the Austin American Statesman, 100 and something-year-old newspapers website, when I can have websites that now rival the size of the Dallas Morning News, and I don't have near the biggest freedom websites, truth-telling websites, whatever you want to call them.
[00:22:40]  There are just hundreds and hundreds of gigantic ones bigger than most major newspapers.
[00:22:45]  And these illusional papers are all arrogant and they're aggressive, and they've got all these simpering writers who are on power trips, and they're a joke.
[00:22:55]  They're a joke.
[00:22:56]  I mean, an email we post gets conservatively five, ten times the readership of, say, a letter to the editor in the Dallas Morning News or a hundred times some pathetic letter to the editor in that joke rag, the Austin Chronicle, that nothing.
[00:23:13]  You know, people want reality.
[00:23:15]  They want to hear the truth.
[00:23:17]  They already know the truth in their guts.
[00:23:19]  It's terrorists run this government.
[00:23:22]  But let me tell you something.
[00:23:23]  We're not out of the woods yet.
[00:23:25]  And they're playing possum right now.
[00:23:27]  And all I'm going to break down internet too, what they're really planning.
[00:23:30]  And don't worry, they're not about to give up their power without a fight.
[00:23:35]  And if A-bombs need to be involved, they will be.
[00:23:37]  Oh, yes.
[00:23:40]  So we'll go over this a little bit, but we are kicking their teeth in.
[00:23:43]  We're knocking their teeth out.
[00:23:44]  We're pounding their eyes into their skulls.
[00:23:47]  We're stomping their heads.
[00:23:48]  We're putting the boots to them.
[00:23:49]  Yeah, A-bombs.
[00:23:51]  Cool.
[00:23:52]  So this is a great encapsulation of Alex's sense of what he's doing.
[00:23:56]  He's part of the truth-telling media, but that media is also super popular because it's telling you what you know in your gut.
[00:24:04]  The truth of what feels right, you know, what you think must be right, is far more true than someone reporting about an event that's actually happening.
[00:24:13]  They're trying to lie to you with facts and statistics, whereas Alex is telling you the truth through vibes.
[00:24:19]  And this is dumb.
[00:24:20]  Wow.
[00:24:21]  The headline that Alex bases this little riff on is actually, it's a little confusing, but it was just Rupert Murdoch giving a speech at the annual livery lecture to the worshipful company of stationers and newspaper makers in London, mostly about how the internet was transforming media from a business that created a thing for consumers to a thing that catered to consumers' demands.
[00:24:42]  Sure.
[00:24:43]  This is mostly discussed in terms of the pivot from newspapers that were primarily print to news outlets that focused a lot on online articles and apps.
[00:24:52]  It comes off as a reassuring speech meant to argue that high-quality content will always win the day and that the existing media companies should rise to the challenge that the internet presents.
[00:25:03]  With hindsight, I read this speech as a deludedly optimistic view.
[00:25:08]  The dynamic that Murdoch is talking about, where the power and influence in the media is held not by the reporters or editors, but by the whims of the consumer, is basically what we're living in now.
[00:25:18]  Media companies, both old and new, have made themselves slaves to the clicks and artificial traffic that social media appears to provide.
[00:25:25]  And in the process, they've allowed a small number of lunatic consumers to have outsized influence on what the rest of us has to live with as our prevailing culture.
[00:25:34]  Yep, pretty much exactly that.
[00:25:36]  And that's the opposite of what I think Rupert Murdoch was hoping for in that speech.
[00:25:43]  Yeah.
[00:25:43]  I mean, you know, it's tough not to say that when the guy who buys the internet does something with it that's the opposite of what he was saying when he was talking about the internet, I think he kind of knew what was up.
[00:25:59]  Maybe.
[00:26:00]  You know?
[00:26:00]  I don't know.
[00:26:01]  Like he bought a big chunk of the internet.
[00:26:03]  He did.
[00:26:04]  You know, and then he was like, I can do the pie in the sky thing, or I can get your money.
[00:26:11]  Well, I think the goal was to get the money.
[00:26:13]  Right.
[00:26:14]  And I think the goal was to like, you know, maximize this new industry in the same way that like, okay, TV exists now.
[00:26:22]  Yeah.
[00:26:22]  We've got to make more money off that than radio.
[00:26:24]  Yeah.
[00:26:24]  The internet exists now.
[00:26:26]  We've got to make more money off that than TV.
[00:26:27]  Yep.
[00:26:28]  But I think it went bad.
[00:26:29]  I think it went south.
[00:26:31]  I think the dynamics that exist now are not necessarily the ones they wanted.
[00:26:37]  Probably not.
[00:26:38]  But it's where profit chasing drives them.
[00:26:40]  Yeah.
[00:26:42]  You know, you wonder if it is just like, this is the end of profit chasing and we will have to, as a people, like decide not to chase the maximum profits.
[00:26:54]  Like we will have to decide to do that because it seems like this is a function of the system.
[00:26:59]  Yeah.
[00:27:00]  Yep.
[00:27:00]  Yep.
[00:27:01]  Probably.
[00:27:02]  Probably.
[00:27:02]  So the organization that he's speaking at is this worshipful, worshipful stationers.
[00:27:11]  Yeah.
[00:27:12]  And Alex gets hung up on that.
[00:27:14]  The newspaper media magnet nurtures a long-held distaste for the establishment.
[00:27:20]  This is such propaganda.
[00:27:22]  But last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong, the worshipful company of stationers and newspaper makers.
[00:27:31]  That's actually what it's called, a Masonic title, that he may be among the last of a dying breed.
[00:27:37]  They're worshipful, you see.
[00:27:39]  Almost all of the livery companies that exist as trade organizations and guilds in the UK are called worshipful companies.
[00:27:45]  It's an old term that means that they're the best people for the job, going back to the late 1300s.
[00:27:52]  They are worthy of worship.
[00:27:54]  Yeah.
[00:27:55]  It's a weird word to just stumble across in a news story that you're reading, but Alex pretends to be like an expert on the British economic history that the globalists grew out of.
[00:28:05]  So that response seems kind of strange.
[00:28:07]  Yeah, I mean, in one way, you can look at it as a word that signifies that you're in a Masonic temple.
[00:28:14]  Or in another way, you could say that it's exactly like a big sign that says we have the best pizza.
[00:28:20]  Worshipful pizza.
[00:28:21]  Yeah, I mean, it's basically the same thing.
[00:28:23]  Yeah.
[00:28:24]  The list of worshipful companies is kind of funny because some of them are so fucking specific.
[00:28:30]  Like the worshipful company of needle makers.
[00:28:33]  Like, what?
[00:28:34]  I like it.
[00:28:34]  The worshipful company of playing cards.
[00:28:37]  We make the best fucking playing cards, and I don't want anybody coming at me about these other fucking playing cards.
[00:28:43]  Yeah.
[00:28:43]  If it's not signed off on by the worshipful guild, then it's not a playing card.
[00:28:48]  Your playing cards have naked ladies on them.
[00:28:51]  Not worshipful guild material.
[00:28:53]  No.
[00:28:53]  Get the fuck out of here.
[00:28:55]  So a lot of this interview, this article, this speech that Rupert Murdoch gave has to do with him having bought MySpace.
[00:29:06]  Right.
[00:29:06]  And Alex seems to not really recognize that.
[00:29:10]  I mean, that's all this is.
[00:29:12]  They've been caught.
[00:29:12]  They've been caught lying.
[00:29:13]  They've been caught being on government payroll.
[00:29:15]  They've been caught selling out America.
[00:29:17]  They've been caught taking billions in Pentagon and government money to put billions to put out lies, not liberal lies, not conservative lies, world government empire lies.
[00:29:29]  And they tried to give us fake left-right paradigms and get us, oh, Russia's real, or, oh, Al Franklin's real, or these Democrats will save us.
[00:29:36]  And they try to give you these two false choices owned by the same companies.
[00:29:39]  And it just hasn't worked.
[00:29:41]  People are very discerning.
[00:29:43]  The larger and larger minority, and it will become a majority soon, has developed taste buds, has developed a palate, has developed a nose, has developed an ear, has developed a touch, has developed a sense.
[00:29:56]  Name five points.
[00:29:58]  I don't even have to defend myself when big major publications attack me or when low-level Co-endelpro operators on the web attack me, because people know, they recognize it, they see it, you instinctively know.
[00:30:08]  Now it's very exciting.
[00:30:15]  And so they're trying to run around and, and they're trying to put a good face on it, they're trying to uh claim that they've had some victory through their defeat.
[00:30:28]  I mean, FOX has, you know, had quote the biggest ratings of cable tv.
[00:30:32]  A few million people at three million tops on their biggest show.
[00:30:36]  I mean old line talk radio makes that look puny.
[00:30:41]  Their media is all fractured.
[00:30:43]  They're Trying to supply all the different niches, all the different niches that are out there, and they can't do that.
[00:30:49]  They can't supply thousands of different viewpoints and niches.
[00:30:54]  And they have to constantly try to lie and cover up their whole lives.
[00:30:57]  And no matter how good-looking the info babes are, or no matter how they look at you with sexual desire for the television tube, I mean, how dumb are you, folks?
[00:31:05]  Some of you out there, you know, you like Fox News because the info babe sits there, Lori Dew, smiling at you and winking at you, you know, as if she's a real woman there five feet from you who really desires you.
[00:31:16]  It ain't real.
[00:31:17]  It's television.
[00:31:18]  See, it's all.
[00:31:19]  Megan Kelly wants to fuck me out there.
[00:31:21]  And most people are getting wise to that.
[00:31:24]  They don't want something that's false.
[00:31:26]  They don't want a facsimile.
[00:31:27]  They don't want something that isn't even a prosthesis, something that's just a fraud.
[00:31:32]  People don't want plastic fruit, folks.
[00:31:34]  They want a real apple, a real orange.
[00:31:37]  They want real grapes.
[00:31:38]  And you're going to get that right here.
[00:31:40]  We're going to fill your belly up full of the truth, full of good information, and it feels good and it tastes good.
[00:31:46]  And you know it's real.
[00:31:47]  And you know, once you've tasted the truth, you know what they're giving you is a big fat lie.
[00:31:57]  You ate it and it was good.
[00:31:58]  You tasted it, it was good.
[00:32:00]  What they're giving you isn't good.
[00:32:02]  Oh.
[00:32:04]  Now, I want to get into what their plans are to try to shut us down, what their plans are to try to stop us.
[00:32:10]  So eventually there's going to be a shooting at a school and then they're going to sue me over.

=== Premise And Its Consequences (14:54) ===

[00:32:14]  Right?
[00:32:14]  Like, it is hard to listen to that and not go, yeah, man, that's what you used to be.
[00:32:20]  That's that's the rhythm of it.
[00:32:21]  That's the fucking that is the reason that you got to be the shitpile that you are today is because you used to be able to pull that out.
[00:32:31]  Right.
[00:32:32]  You know?
[00:32:32]  And like, I think that that was exhausting in a way.
[00:32:36]  But it also, like, it wasn't transparently like annoying how much that was just about himself.
[00:32:44]  Yeah.
[00:32:45]  That was all just talking about how I'm the only real thing in a sea of fakers.
[00:32:50]  100%.
[00:32:51]  You know, like, but it's still like, you could kind of listen to it without it being like, this is a man having a narcissistic fit.
[00:32:58]  No, it's utter complete nonsense that is propped up by repetition over and over and over again.
[00:33:03]  And then at the end, he's like, we're going to feed you.
[00:33:05]  And you're like, I guess that's fine.
[00:33:06]  And then you move on with your day.
[00:33:08]  That's what he used to be able to do.
[00:33:10]  Yeah.
[00:33:10]  So I'm listening to it, though, and I had read the Rupert Murdoch speech.
[00:33:16]  So I was confused a little bit.
[00:33:17]  Like, why isn't he not really getting what the point is?
[00:33:22]  Because he didn't read the speech.
[00:33:23]  I'm not sure.
[00:33:24]  Right.
[00:33:25]  I don't know.
[00:33:25]  But, like, the point of this, if you're Alex and you're a conspiracy theorist, should be the part about MySpace.
[00:33:31]  Right.
[00:33:32]  I'm going to read to you here a little bit from his speech.
[00:33:35]  Okay.
[00:33:35]  Quote: The internet was crucial to that astonishing development, and I'm sure that the web will continue its rapid development as the prime media channel for information, entertainment, business, and social contact.
[00:33:48]  One of the reasons I say that is the success of a company we bought last year called MySpace.com.
[00:33:54]  This is a networking site in which millions of people, aged mainly between 16 and 34, talk online to each other about music, film, dating, travel, whatever interests them.
[00:34:04]  They share pictures, videos, and blogs, forming virtual communities.
[00:34:08]  Since launch last just two years ago, the site has acquired 60 million registered users, 35 million of whom are regular users.
[00:34:18]  This is a generation now popularly referred to as the MySpace generation, talking to itself in a world without frontiers.
[00:34:26]  It's just one example of how the media, with its ability to reach millions with information, entertainment, and education, can use the achievements of technology to create better and more interesting lives for a great many people.
[00:34:40]  The speech is really Murdoch discussing a new ownership model of the media in the internet age, where the Barons still own these hubs like MySpace, and it plays into a larger existing paradigm.
[00:34:54]  He says, Caxton's printing press marked a revolution that is with us 500 years later.
[00:35:00]  But the history of that revolution is not one in which the new wipes out the old.
[00:35:05]  Radio didn't destroy newspapers, television didn't destroy radio, and neither eliminated the printing of books.
[00:35:12]  And internet has destroyed all!
[00:35:14]  All becomes part of one.
[00:35:17]  Well, whatever you think of Hollywood, the film industry is very much alive.
[00:35:22]  Each wave of new technology in our industry forced an improvement in the old.
[00:35:26]  Each new medium forced its predecessor to become more creative and more relevant to the consumer.
[00:35:32]  So your take on it was a little different than his.
[00:35:34]  A little bit different.
[00:35:35]  A little bit different.
[00:35:36]  This will eat everything.
[00:35:38]  All of you will just provide content for fake machines to think that they're real.
[00:35:43]  That's it.
[00:35:44]  You're nothing.
[00:35:45]  Oh, boy.
[00:35:46]  Thank you, Murdoch.
[00:35:47]  Yeah.
[00:35:47]  So on the surface, this might look like a speech.
[00:35:50]  And the headline might make you think that it's Murdoch saying that there's a new media that's going to replace media barons.
[00:35:56]  But it's really just about him trying to encourage the existing structure to embrace things like MySpace, own them, and use them as part of the larger model.
[00:36:06]  It's fascinating to me that Alex could be reading this article, and he's covering it not like that.
[00:36:12]  Yeah.
[00:36:13]  That's the point that.
[00:36:15]  Because the take that he's expressing is: you guys better own this shit now, otherwise it's going to own itself.
[00:36:24]  And then it'll own us.
[00:36:26]  Right?
[00:36:26]  Well, the take that he's having so much on this episode is about like, yeah, that's right.
[00:36:31]  We're eating your own.
[00:36:32]  No, no, no.
[00:36:32]  I mean, stepping on you.
[00:36:33]  Yeah, Murdoch's idea is you guys better buy in now.
[00:36:38]  Otherwise, you're not going to be Baron anymore.
[00:36:41]  Yeah.
[00:36:42]  Like these tools are the next wave of whatever this thing is.
[00:36:48]  We should own these platforms.
[00:36:49]  Which Alex should be like, this is literally the globalist trying to buy up all of our communications.
[00:36:54]  Yeah, and I don't know if he eventually comes to that point, but that is not how he's covering the story through his coverage of the headlines.
[00:37:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:06]  But I thought that was really strange.
[00:37:07]  That one seems pretty much down the pipe.
[00:37:10]  Yeah.
[00:37:11]  To use a baseball analogy.
[00:37:13]  And it even takes him quite a while to get to even bringing up MySpace.
[00:37:18]  Yeah.
[00:37:19]  Which he does.
[00:37:20]  And he's not on there.
[00:37:21]  All right.
[00:37:22]  Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace.
[00:37:24]  40 million.
[00:37:25]  It was 38 million a few months ago.
[00:37:27]  Now it's 40 million members.
[00:37:29]  I'm not saying there isn't a lot of cool stuff on there and you guys don't have nice web pages and gee, it's a lot of fun to be part of this big community.
[00:37:35]  The point is they'll erase your blog if they don't like it.
[00:37:37]  The point is you don't own all the stuff you've put up there.
[00:37:40]  The point is, is that it's like Internet 2.
[00:37:43]  It has automatic censoring systems that go in and erase keywords.
[00:37:48]  The point is, is that they're trying to contain it.
[00:37:53]  And sure, it's big and it's fun, but it leads into stagnation and destruction.
[00:38:01]  I mean, I've been wrestling with the fact that people keep asking me to get a MySpace blog.
[00:38:07]  And sure, we can do that, but just so I can send Rupert Murdoch money and just so Rupert Murdoch can take it away from me anytime he wants, we'll be right back.
[00:38:16]  So in 2006, Alex doesn't want to get on MySpace because he understands that him having a page there would be making Rupert Murdoch money and he doesn't want to have to be bound by the terms of service of the website.
[00:38:29]  If Murdoch took down his blog, that wasn't an attack on free speech that the president needs to address.
[00:38:35]  That was just Alex not behaving in a way that was consistent with how the owner of the site required customers to act.
[00:38:41]  Wow.
[00:38:41]  That's changed a lot.
[00:38:43]  It has changed quite a bit.
[00:38:44]  Weird.
[00:38:45]  I mean, it changed in the 10 years since then.
[00:38:49]  So it changed in 2016.
[00:38:51]  But then it changed again in the 10 years since then.
[00:38:54]  It's a crazy up and down world we live in.
[00:38:56]  A lot of evolution.
[00:38:57]  Yeah, it happened real quick, too.
[00:38:58]  20 years isn't that long.
[00:39:00]  I have zero problem with giving up on the I would be making Murdoch money angle because even if we pretend that mattered, Alex would be perfectly fine with his Twitter account making Elon money now.
[00:39:11]  Absolutely.
[00:39:12]  But him understanding that having your blog posted on a website isn't guaranteed by the First Amendment represents a very serious shift.
[00:39:19]  And I think I understand generally what's going on.
[00:39:22]  In 2006, Alex was still pretty heavily a radio guy.
[00:39:27]  He's never been on as many stations as he claims, but he was more widely syndicated at this point.
[00:39:32]  So he didn't have to rely on social media and desperate attention jacking to get an audience.
[00:39:37]  He had a job, and adding a blog would be a nice way to reach people and get the information out, but it wouldn't make or break his gold and water filter revenues.
[00:39:47]  Somewhere along the line, radio became a much less lucrative market to be in, and corporate consolidation started to limit the number of stations he could even be considered for.
[00:39:57]  So Alex over-relied on the internet.
[00:40:00]  That had some upsides, like how he created PrisonPlanet.tv, which was making live internet broadcasts a bit ahead of the curve, but it also had major downsides, like how clearly addicted he is to using social media to promote his bullshit.
[00:40:13]  Right, right, right.
[00:40:14]  He does not actually believe that the First Amendment guarantees you a right to have a Twitter account and say whatever you want on it.
[00:40:20]  That's just the position he's adopted.
[00:40:23]  So he doesn't have to admit that he's just personally and professionally desperate to not be kicked off again.
[00:40:29]  If all of the cancel culture bullshit we've dealt with in the past years, if all that came from a sincere place, then Alex wouldn't be so dismissive of the idea that Rupert Murdoch can just take down blogs that he doesn't like on MySpace.
[00:40:42]  That would be a violation of the Constitution, not just a choice that makes Alex not want to be on MySpace.
[00:40:50]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:40:51]  It's very much like, now I have an opinion on the capital gains tax of that kind of thing.
[00:40:59]  Like, I used to think something very different, but now I think something very different.
[00:41:03]  No change in my lifestyle, except for I might owe money this time.
[00:41:07]  I now have capital gains.
[00:41:08]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:41:09]  Now suddenly I am worried that they will be taken from me.
[00:41:12]  Yeah.
[00:41:13]  Alex knows, and it's not the case in 2006.
[00:41:16]  He knows now that like without that shit, no one's coming around.
[00:41:22]  No.
[00:41:23]  I don't think, you can't promote anywhere.
[00:41:26]  Yeah, man, that is, it's so tough to, it's so tough because in 2006, you know, you see like Murdoch is buying MySpace, but it doesn't have to be, it doesn't, that's not the whole internet, man.
[00:41:38]  Like, it didn't have to be like that.
[00:41:39]  It didn't have to be like what it became.
[00:41:42]  And it's, it feels like that's the echo of every new media.
[00:41:45]  What they're describing is the other side of it.
[00:41:47]  Every echo is these people made this space where they can't get us anymore.
[00:41:52]  You know, this free open space.
[00:41:54]  Like when podcasting started, it's this free open space where we're allowed to do everything.
[00:41:58]  And then slowly those rich fucks own it all.
[00:42:01]  They just, but if we had really buckled down, circled the wagons and been like, no, no, maybe we could have pulled it out.
[00:42:11]  Yeah, I wonder about that too.
[00:42:15]  I wonder if that is possible.
[00:42:17]  I think that, you know, in as much as there's something that, you know, you look back at 2006 and you're like, well, Alex is onto something there.
[00:42:25]  Is the like, yeah, ushering people onto these platforms and that being your whole internet existence.
[00:42:33]  Yeah.
[00:42:33]  Like, they didn't do the other thing that Alex was talking about, which is destroying the rest of the internet.
[00:42:39]  Right, right, right.
[00:42:40]  The rest of the internet exists.
[00:42:41]  It's just that everyone congregates on these things.
[00:42:45]  Yep.
[00:42:45]  So you worry that no one will see your shit unless you put it there.
[00:42:49]  Right.
[00:42:49]  And that keeps you emotionally trapped there.
[00:42:53]  Yeah.
[00:42:53]  And that's what Alex is talking about, except the part where he's wrong is this is the only option.
[00:42:59]  Yeah.
[00:43:00]  Yeah.
[00:43:00]  It's self capture.
[00:43:04]  Yeah.
[00:43:05]  Yeah.
[00:43:05]  I mean, he's describing, you know, addiction.
[00:43:09]  He's describing his own pathology rules.
[00:43:12]  Right, right, right, exactly.
[00:43:13]  Yes.
[00:43:14]  So Alex talks about how the classified ads don't work anymore.
[00:43:19]  Sure.
[00:43:19]  Apparently.
[00:43:20]  Just in the few minutes we've got left in this short segment, let me get back into what's happening.
[00:43:24]  The old line media is dying.
[00:43:27]  Here's just a local example.
[00:43:28]  We put an ad in the Chronicle, local paper, for job applicants for a new position that we've already filled here at Infowars.
[00:43:40]  And we got about 10 responses.
[00:43:43]  Bad responses at that.
[00:43:45]  We put a free ad on Craigslist and got over 200 by the time they shut it off.
[00:43:50]  And after a few days, we took it down because it was so ridiculous.
[00:43:54]  And these were good responses locally in Austin.
[00:43:58]  See, but there's the Chronicle with all these arrogant people working there and all this money they make.
[00:44:04]  Oh, the old line media still makes all the money.
[00:44:06]  But it's a hoax.
[00:44:07]  It's a hoax.
[00:44:09]  The statesman, we put ads in the statement before.
[00:44:11]  You might get 30 responses.
[00:44:13]  But you do something on the web, hundreds.
[00:44:15]  Again, the old line media is a hoax.
[00:44:18]  So the argument Alex is trying to make can be diagrammed like this: Premise one: if I get more job applicants through using Craigslist than through the newspaper, then the media is a hoax.
[00:44:29]  Yes.
[00:44:29]  Premise two: I have gotten more job applicants through Craigslist than through newspapers.
[00:44:34]  Right.
[00:44:34]  Conclusion: Therefore, the media is a hoax.
[00:44:37]  Yep.
[00:44:37]  Logically, this is all valid.
[00:44:39]  The premises are set up in a way that if they're true, then there's no way for that conclusion to be false.
[00:44:44]  And this dynamic is one of the ways that Alex's audience just subconsciously end up thinking he's making more sense than he actually is.
[00:44:51]  Yeah.
[00:44:52]  The first premise in his argument is fundamentally flawed.
[00:44:56]  So although this argument can be valid, it can never be sound.
[00:44:59]  It's not possible for the first premise to be true because the number of job applicants you get from a certain source has no inherent connection to whether or not the media is a hoax.
[00:45:10]  When you hear an argument like this, it's a good idea to search for unspoken or implied premises.
[00:45:16]  Sometimes the person making the argument is trying to hide something about what they're arguing, but sometimes they're just lazy and bad at thinking, so they come up with dumb shit like this.
[00:45:25]  I highlighted this example because there's at least one very obvious hidden premise that Alex isn't saying that he needs for this argument to make sense.
[00:45:34]  He needs to have a premise included that illustrates how getting more job applicants makes something a hoax.
[00:45:41]  Ideally, a premise that defines what it even means for something to be a hoax.
[00:45:46]  Once you start to tease that question out, it begins to look like the hoax is that the media pretends more people are reading the newspaper, whereas more people actually respond to Craigslist ads.
[00:45:58]  Sure.
[00:45:58]  The hoax is about audience size.
[00:46:01]  And that's implied, but not included in his argument.
[00:46:06]  So it appears that what Alex is saying is that he's gotten more job applicants from Craigslist than through the classified ads in the newspaper.
[00:46:13]  So he's concluded that the newspapers are far less influential than they claim to be.
[00:46:18]  But immediately it becomes clear how dumb that argument is once you realize that premise is included.
[00:46:24]  Newspapers don't exist solely to post job openings, whereas the vast majority of people who are going to Craigslist are going there for that reason.
[00:46:32]  If newspapers were just help-wanted ads and Craigslist did that more effectively, then Alex's argument starts to hold up.
[00:46:40]  But Craigslist didn't do journalism.
[00:46:43]  There is that.
[00:46:44]  Yeah.
[00:46:45]  Well, I mean, there's journalism that you could find on Craigslist, but I don't think it's quite different.
[00:46:49]  Some people wrote some things.
[00:46:50]  I don't think it's the stories that you'd want to hear.
[00:46:53]  Yeah.
[00:46:53]  So I think that when you're analyzing some of these arguments, it's important to fill in some of the blanks that are intentionally being left out because they oftentimes help you realize how kind of stupid this is.

=== Why Trust Alex? (03:30) ===

[00:47:09]  Yeah.
[00:47:09]  I mean, it's generous to even go along with them to the point where you can parse that the hoax is the media trying to claim a larger readership.
[00:47:19]  Because when you just say the media is a hoax, that is, I mean, a blanket statement of like, you just can't trust anything they say simply because of job applicants.
[00:47:29]  Yeah.
[00:47:29]  You know, that's a broad sweeping statement.
[00:47:32]  So it's like, oh, well, now you can't trust this person saying this thing because I didn't get more than four job applicants from this classified ad.
[00:47:40]  And that makes sense.
[00:47:42]  Yeah, it's it's on it's when you just hear it, it can flow by.
[00:47:49]  Yeah.
[00:47:50]  But if you stop for even a second, you're like, only an idiot would say that.
[00:47:54]  Yep.
[00:47:55]  And he's an idiot.
[00:47:56]  I mean, imagine an SAT question that's like, classified ad is to media as fucking responders are to hoax.
[00:48:06]  You'd be like, there's no way for me to have figured that out.
[00:48:09]  Zero.
[00:48:10]  You fail then.
[00:48:11]  Zero possible way for me to have figured that out.
[00:48:13]  So Alex, he has some interesting ideas about how statistics work.
[00:48:18]  And this continues from that last thought, sort of.
[00:48:22]  And people all stoop and fetch and get so excited.
[00:48:25]  People send me stuff.
[00:48:26]  Oh, you were in the Washington Post, Alex.
[00:48:28]  Oh, you were in the New York Times.
[00:48:30]  Oh, you were in Vanity Fair.
[00:48:32]  Oh, don't you feel big?
[00:48:33]  And I'm like, no, I don't feel big.
[00:48:35]  Nobody reads that.
[00:48:36]  My website gets plugged in Vanity Fair three times.
[00:48:39]  And I get a few emails, and that's about it.
[00:48:43]  But I go on some little local Christian radio talk show in Florida or Alabama or Tennessee, and we get 50 video orders and tens of thousands of visitors to the website.
[00:48:54]  Because let me tell you something.
[00:48:56]  Mainstream media, people don't trust you, and they don't like you.
[00:49:00]  And I don't think you realize just how much we don't like you and just how much we don't trust you.
[00:49:06]  The fact that Alex's store gets more sales from him being on a Christian shortwave show than him being in Vanity Fair, that doesn't illustrate that the public hates outlets like Vanity Fair.
[00:49:16]  It tends to suggest that people who read things like Vanity Fair aren't interested in what Alex is selling, whereas Christian shortwave audiences are.
[00:49:24]  Seems pretty obvious.
[00:49:25]  The game Alex is playing here is he's trying to pretend that all audience reactions are starting from a neutral base.
[00:49:32]  Just to make up numbers, he believes that if he goes on any show, 5% of the people watching will go buy something from the store.
[00:49:40]  Yes.
[00:49:40]  So if he goes on a Christian shortwave show and he gets 10 sales, but only gets two after being featured in Vanity Fair, the only explanation you can come up with is that Christian shortwave stations have five times the audience of Vanity Fair.
[00:49:54]  Makes perfect sense to me.
[00:49:55]  That's where the people are.
[00:49:56]  That's the math.
[00:49:57]  They hate the media.
[00:49:58]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:50:00]  In reality, he might be getting a 50% conversion rate on the total 20 listeners on that Christian shortwave station, whereas Vanity Fair has a circulation of 1.2 million copies per issue back in 2006.
[00:50:13]  So his two sales would be about one thousandth of a percent conversion.
[00:50:18]  Yeah.
[00:50:19]  He doesn't take any of this.
[00:50:22]  I don't know if it's intentional.
[00:50:25]  That is the question because it seems far too obvious to a guy who is really obsessed with internet traffic at this time, especially, to not understand the demographic difference of the audience being so important towards actually converting into sales.

=== Demographic Differences Matter (14:23) ===

[00:50:40]  Yeah.
[00:50:40]  Right.
[00:50:40]  He knows that.
[00:50:41]  Yeah.
[00:50:42]  He's he's made an entire career off exploiting that.
[00:50:45]  Right.
[00:50:45]  So for this monologue to make sense, he would have to suddenly have forgotten all sales information that he has ever known, the most important thing to him in order to go on this rant.
[00:50:57]  Yeah.
[00:50:58]  Or he's lying about it and it seems easier than making sense.
[00:51:02]  Yeah.
[00:51:02]  Well, I think the two options that come to me are that he's like lying to hide like his true marketing intentions.
[00:51:15]  Sure.
[00:51:16]  Or like he just, this is what feels good to him.
[00:51:21]  I mean, yeah.
[00:51:22]  There's a way that this isn't lying soothing.
[00:51:25]  I bet it feels great to the audience too for them to be like, yeah, you're right.
[00:51:29]  The Christian shortwave stadium group is huge.
[00:51:33]  That's who we are.
[00:51:34]  We're not like those tiny little vanity fair people.
[00:51:37]  Yeah, the larger and the broader the audience you get, the lower the percentage of those people are interested in your crazy bullshit.
[00:51:47]  When you have tiny, self-selected groups of people who are very, very similar to you, they are going to respond at a higher rate.
[00:51:56]  Yes.
[00:51:57]  Yep, that's how it works.
[00:51:58]  You got it.
[00:51:59]  Come on, Alex.
[00:52:00]  Yeah, but it feels better to be part of the movement instead of just, we're the 20 creepy people who listen on this shortwave stadio that he's saying.
[00:52:09]  Yeah, that he's referencing yeah so um, a caller asks Alex if uh, false flags are coming.
[00:52:16]  Oh boy howdy, it's as bad as it's ever been.
[00:52:20]  You feel Alex, that there's going to be some state-sponsored attack or something that's going to take place.
[00:52:24]  You feel that in your gut instinct, that is a huge shadow that always hangs over us.
[00:52:30]  It's a dark pall.
[00:52:32]  Yeah, what Paul means it?
[00:52:34]  You know.
[00:52:34]  It's a dark mass hanging over our society, and we know state-sponsored terrorists were yelling.
[00:52:42]  We're in a greater danger now since any time uh, before or after 9-11.
[00:52:48]  Clearly, the Republican memos that are now been documented say they need a quote 9-11 style event to jumpstart the Globalist agenda.
[00:52:56]  Uh, we know that they're in deep trouble on every front.
[00:52:59]  They're losing control.
[00:53:00]  That's why they're so aggressive right now is they know the people are getting wise.
[00:53:04]  Uh to uh their uh shenanigans to their machinations.
[00:53:08]  Oh man, that sounds exactly like right now, sounds almost identical.
[00:53:12]  Oh yeah, it sounds like this is always the case.
[00:53:14]  Seems like it's been that way for 20 years at least.
[00:53:17]  Yeah, probably longer than that, considering how familiar everybody is with how he's going to say this, yeah yeah, this seems uh, very standard.
[00:53:26]  Also, the idea of asking the question, do you think there's going to be a false flag?
[00:53:30]  Is insane.
[00:53:31]  Right, because what if his answer was no?
[00:53:33]  Right that, but you, you're.
[00:53:34]  The answer can never be no, because Your belief is that eventually it will happen.
[00:53:40]  So the moment you are losing, the moment you lose vigilance, that's when it's going to happen.
[00:53:44]  Right.
[00:53:45]  Right.
[00:53:45]  If this caller calls in and is like, hey, Alex, is there going to be a false flag?
[00:53:48]  And Alex says no, then there's going to be an attack.
[00:53:52]  There has to be.
[00:53:53]  They finally caught me off guard.
[00:53:54]  Exactly.
[00:53:55]  It has to be the way it is.
[00:53:57]  You can't say no.
[00:53:58]  Yes.
[00:53:59]  There's always the possibility of a false flag right now.
[00:54:02]  Right.
[00:54:02]  Yeah.
[00:54:03]  And what if I were to tell you that this clip is actually from 2011?
[00:54:07]  I would believe that.
[00:54:08]  Right.
[00:54:09]  Yep.
[00:54:09]  But that would be a lie.
[00:54:10]  This is from 2006.
[00:54:12]  Well, it's all right.
[00:54:12]  Who knows?
[00:54:13]  Who knows?
[00:54:14]  It could be 2006, but I could be lying.
[00:54:16]  It could be from any date.
[00:54:17]  You'll never know.
[00:54:18]  And there's no reason to find out.
[00:54:20]  The whole time, we've been as great a danger as we have been before or after 9-11 at every moment.
[00:54:28]  All right.
[00:54:29]  So you're calling in, and you're like, oh, man, I love Alex.
[00:54:34]  First time, long time, first time.
[00:54:36]  Right?
[00:54:36]  I'm going to ask him my biggest question.
[00:54:39]  Do you think there's going to be a false flag?
[00:54:41]  Was he curious or did he just want to see if Alex would go on a, you know?
[00:54:45]  He was curious.
[00:54:46]  He also had a question about oil, but this was the second question.
[00:54:50]  Oh, my God.
[00:54:51]  So this was, you know, not the primary reason he called in.
[00:54:55]  Sure, sure, sure.
[00:54:55]  All right.
[00:54:56]  Then I didn't have the full picture of this person that I'm imagining.
[00:55:01]  He's not trying to give him an improv suggestion.
[00:55:04]  Okay.
[00:55:04]  Just to let him roll.
[00:55:05]  Right, right, right.
[00:55:06]  He's actually interested in the answer.
[00:55:07]  It feels like that's what you would do.
[00:55:09]  Yeah.
[00:55:10]  So Alex, he realizes like, you know what?
[00:55:13]  I should get on MySpace.
[00:55:14]  It's a bit.
[00:55:15]  I mean, obviously.
[00:55:16]  It's been about a half an hour since MySpace was brought up.
[00:55:19]  So he's realizing like, why not?
[00:55:22]  Yep.
[00:55:22]  And people are telling me, I got to join.
[00:55:24]  I got to be part of it.
[00:55:25]  Let me ask you.
[00:55:26]  Should we have one of my webmasters go build a site, get thousands of friends and members and promote it, and then just have them just take it?
[00:55:34]  Should I go sign a contract with Murdoch saying, sure.
[00:55:38]  I mean, you understand, folks, this is internet too, where you have, in the future, you'll have to go under them, have to sign a contract with them to be on the web, and then they'll shut you down.
[00:55:47]  They're shutting down most of the 9-11 sites.
[00:55:49]  They're shutting down pro-Second Amendment sites.
[00:55:51]  They're shutting down sites that bash Bush.
[00:55:53]  They're shutting down sites that bash News Corps.
[00:55:56]  I mean, it's despicable.
[00:55:58]  I mean, we all talk about China censoring people.
[00:56:02]  What about Rupert Murdoch?
[00:56:03]  What do you say to that?
[00:56:04]  I mean, what should I do?
[00:56:05]  What should I do, James?
[00:56:07]  I mean, Evan?
[00:56:09]  I think you should maybe try another.
[00:56:13]  I'm actually setting him account on tagworld.com.
[00:56:16]  You know, I just figured out what I'm going to do.
[00:56:18]  I'm going to have my guys right now, today.
[00:56:22]  We're going to set up a MySpace, and everybody else should do this.
[00:56:25]  With its whole point being, will Rupert Murdoch shut this down?
[00:56:30]  We're going to set up a MySpace exposing MySpace.
[00:56:34]  Aha, brilliant.
[00:56:36]  That's disqualifying.
[00:56:38]  Yeah.
[00:56:39]  All right, man.
[00:56:40]  How bored are you?
[00:56:41]  All right.
[00:56:41]  We're going to set up our own Facebook and we'll call it Bookface.
[00:56:45]  How dare you, Mark Zuckerberg?
[00:56:47]  We'll get you.
[00:56:48]  Well, yeah, I think that that caller, that was an interesting dynamic because he's like, hey, should we do this?
[00:56:53]  Should we join Myspace?
[00:56:55]  Yeah.
[00:56:55]  And the caller is like, I think I'm going to join something else.
[00:56:58]  I'm going to join an alternative platform.
[00:57:00]  Alex ignores that and is like, I'm going to make a publicity stunt out of joining MySpace.
[00:57:05]  Yep.
[00:57:05]  Yep.
[00:57:06]  Because it's bigger.
[00:57:07]  Cool.
[00:57:08]  Yeah.
[00:57:08]  I wonder if there really was a chance for Alex to just like catch it, understand it, and then make info Twitter right then.
[00:57:18]  You know, like, could he have, could he have leveraged this whole spot into an actual social media?
[00:57:24]  No, because he tried.
[00:57:26]  They tried to make their own InfoWars social media.
[00:57:29]  Oh, did they?
[00:57:29]  Yeah.
[00:57:30]  When did they try that?
[00:57:31]  Well, I don't remember exactly, but yeah, they tried to do that.
[00:57:34]  They tried to do a dating site.
[00:57:35]  Like, there's a lot of people.
[00:57:36]  The dating site's probably not going to work.
[00:57:38]  Yeah.
[00:57:39]  But you've got to only date people who were woke.
[00:57:42]  No, not woke.
[00:57:43]  Awake.
[00:57:43]  Awake.
[00:57:44]  All right.
[00:57:46]  The opposite of woke.
[00:57:47]  Wait.
[00:57:48]  Yeah, they tried a lot of kind of new web things that didn't work.
[00:57:53]  And thankfully, for him, most of them are forgotten.
[00:57:56]  Yeah.
[00:57:57]  Yeah, I mean, man, the dating site should really just stay with you.
[00:58:03]  Because there's one thing that you know about an InfoWars dating site.
[00:58:06]  It's cool, full of cool people.
[00:58:08]  Maybe two women ever were on that.
[00:58:12]  It's been years and years, but I did try and I did see some archived pages on there.
[00:58:20]  And I remember it being cool.
[00:58:22]  Yep, I bet everybody's nice.
[00:58:23]  Distant memory.
[00:58:24]  Yeah.
[00:58:25]  So Alex, I think that he really wants to present this as like, I don't want to join MySpace.
[00:58:32]  I'm kicking and screaming.
[00:58:33]  Everyone wants me to join.
[00:58:36]  And they may ignore us, not wanting to give us attention, but I have a feeling they'll just squash us.
[00:58:40]  And it'll be a nice example of how free MySpace is.
[00:58:44]  Okay, you want me to get a MySpace account?
[00:58:46]  We will.
[00:58:46]  We're getting one right now.
[00:58:47]  And we've got squadrons of people.
[00:58:49]  If they shut us down on this one, we'll just keep creating new accounts and exposing them.
[00:58:53]  So the war is going to be a- That's against the terms of service.
[00:58:55]  You want me to have a MySpace account?
[00:58:57]  We are invading.
[00:58:59]  We are invading MySpace.
[00:59:01]  You really can't do, like, this is a bad way to start a campaign.
[00:59:06]  Yeah.
[00:59:07]  Because if they ignore you, then what?
[00:59:09]  Yeah.
[00:59:10]  We're setting out to prove that they are censors and they're going to just, like, you have to then keep upping the ante of disgusting shit to try to get yourself kicked off.
[00:59:20]  Exactly.
[00:59:21]  Or else you look like a loser.
[00:59:23]  You got to be more vague.
[00:59:24]  You can't go out there trying to prove something because then you can prove the opposite, too.
[00:59:29]  You can't just only prove one thing.
[00:59:31]  That's just not how proving things work.
[00:59:33]  Well, I mean, you eventually have to get into like, I don't know, maybe Holocaust denial or something in order to like them to get you kicked off.
[00:59:41]  That'll get you there.
[00:59:42]  There are consequences for that, though.
[00:59:44]  And it turns out you won't want to get kicked off YouTube.
[00:59:47]  So speaking of Holocaust deniers, Alex has a guest on the show.
[00:59:52]  Yeah.
[00:59:52]  He's a noted racist-y guy.
[00:59:54]  Sure.
[00:59:55]  Has questions about the Holocaust.
[00:59:56]  Wow.
[00:59:57]  Former editor of V-Dare, Paul Craig Roberts.
[01:00:01]  And I don't care about his interview.
[01:00:03]  It's pretty boring.
[01:00:04]  They have no energy between them.
[01:00:05]  Yeah.
[01:00:06]  But I'm playing this clip because Alex makes a prediction.
[01:00:09]  And as we know, God talks to him.
[01:00:11]  I like it.
[01:00:12]  And he knows when they come true.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:14]  Where do you see it going in, Iraq?
[01:00:16]  I mean, I think they're just going to try to get us so deep into a war with Iran in the future, or they're going to attack Iran and hope that Iran strikes back.
[01:00:24]  And then, oh, everybody will be shocked if they fight back.
[01:00:27]  And then we're going to be off for the races.
[01:00:28]  And I think they'll force us into a full war mobilization and bring in the draft and everything else.
[01:00:35]  You know, I just don't know what their plan is.
[01:00:39]  If that's the plan, it's highly risky, isn't it?
[01:00:42]  I mean, it's the most.
[01:00:44]  I've never known a government to undertake so many extreme risks for no clear reason.
[01:00:54]  So I don't know whether.
[01:00:56]  You keep using the Hitler parallel.
[01:00:58]  He was nuts and started attacking everybody, too.
[01:01:01]  Well, yes, but he at least had an agenda.
[01:01:08]  And he may have done okay.
[01:01:12]  Wait, Hold on.
[01:01:15]  If Bush marches off into Iran, he will have done the equivalent of Hitler marching off into Russia.
[01:01:24]  It may be more than they can chew.
[01:01:27]  Paul.
[01:01:28]  Paul.
[01:01:30]  That's not good.
[01:01:31]  That is the single worst at least I have ever heard in my entire life.
[01:01:36]  Yeah.
[01:01:36]  I've never heard an at least worse than, well, at least Hitler had an agenda.
[01:01:40]  Yeah.
[01:01:40]  That's the worst one.
[01:01:42]  What do you think about that agenda?
[01:01:44]  That's the worst one.
[01:01:45]  That is the worst one.
[01:01:46]  Yeah, when I was listening to that, when Alex is like, you use the Hitler comparison, and Paul Craig Roberts said, well, I was like, that's the scariest well.
[01:01:56]  Yep, that's no good.
[01:01:57]  That's no good.
[01:01:58]  That's not the word Alex wanted to hear next.
[01:02:01]  Jesus, at least Hitler had an agenda.
[01:02:06]  Wow.
[01:02:07]  Yeah, it's almost not surprising at all that all of these creeps beget what has happened.
[01:02:14]  Yeah, yeah, it does make sense if you listen to them like they mean what they say.
[01:02:18]  It's no good.
[01:02:19]  No.
[01:02:20]  But, you know, I think that Alex, a lot of people call him a racist.
[01:02:25]  Sure.
[01:02:25]  We do.
[01:02:26]  It's true.
[01:02:27]  I've called him that a number of times.
[01:02:29]  But this next caller that Alex gets after he speaks with the guy who thinks Hitler is at least he had an agenda.
[01:02:37]  This guy is real thrilled that Alex isn't a racist.
[01:02:40]  Great.
[01:02:40]  Fred and Philly, you're on the air.
[01:02:42]  Go ahead, Fred.
[01:02:43]  Hi.
[01:02:44]  I want to tell you that I really appreciate the way that you handled all these issues non-ideologically, and also that you don't bait ethnic groups and that you don't bait religions.
[01:02:58]  And I think that's very commendable.
[01:02:59]  Well, those are all hot buttons.
[01:03:01]  A lot of people like to, you know, they stick their finger in it and they think because they got a feeling that that electricity going into them is good.
[01:03:09]  And they think because they're getting attention that it's good.
[01:03:12]  But overall, it's very, very disruptive.
[01:03:15]  And that's what the neocons do.
[01:03:17]  Yeah, and I think that it took me several years to get into that mode of thinking, but it's very valuable.
[01:03:27]  That he still is.
[01:03:28]  I'm proud of this guy from Philly.
[01:03:29]  Yep.
[01:03:30]  What Alex is describing almost sounds like someone who, I don't know, this is crazy.
[01:03:35]  Yeah, hear me out.
[01:03:36]  It almost sounds like someone who would say that you get the most flack when you're over the target.
[01:03:42]  Yeah.
[01:03:42]  You know, like someone using that kind of like negative feedback as a way to prove that they're onto something.
[01:03:49]  Yep.
[01:03:50]  It's very similar to how Alex is saying, like, you press the button, you get a charge of electricity and you think you're doing something.
[01:03:55]  That does feel right.
[01:03:56]  Huh.
[01:03:57]  Seems like, ah.
[01:04:00]  I don't know.
[01:04:01]  I don't know what.
[01:04:02]  You know, like, maybe, maybe the question of awareness is actually the question that we should really be dealing with, but not in a way of like, is he aware of what does this mean or anything?
[01:04:15]  Like, maybe we actually have to get to the fundaments of what the concept of awareness is.
[01:04:20]  Because maybe he just does not have it.
[01:04:23]  You know, like, maybe, you know, like whenever you see a fucking fish go to where it was born, right?
[01:04:31]  You don't know why that happens.
[01:04:33]  Does the fish have an awareness of why it happens, but the fish does it.
[01:04:37]  Maybe this is Alex being the fish.
[01:04:40]  So, and okay.
[01:04:42]  If that's, if what you're saying, if I'm following you correctly.
[01:04:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:46]  It's tough to do.
[01:04:47]  It's tough to do.
[01:04:48]  We have spent nine years of our lives, a thousand episodes plus of like, look who's talking now, putting dialogue into a dog's head, of like trying to figure out why Alex is doing any of the shit he's doing.

=== Code Pink and Children's Deserve (14:45) ===

[01:05:04]  Who cares?
[01:05:04]  He's a dog.
[01:05:07]  You want to have conscience and intention there.
[01:05:12]  It's just not there.
[01:05:14]  It's Danny DeVito.
[01:05:18]  Yeah, you know, that probably isn't right.
[01:05:22]  But it's hard to find other explanations for this behavior.
[01:05:26]  It's a hypothesis I would have thrown out in the past.
[01:05:29]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:05:30]  But now we've got a question.
[01:05:32]  We're a little, yeah.
[01:05:35]  So Alex had that shitty guest on Paul Craig Roberts, and then he had some calls.
[01:05:40]  Sure.
[01:05:41]  And I was blown away by his final guest of the show.
[01:05:45]  Yeah.
[01:05:46]  This is a woman from Iraq who is a part of a group who is a women against the war.
[01:05:52]  She's a pharmacist from Fallujah.
[01:05:55]  Wow.
[01:05:55]  And it's strange.
[01:05:57]  This is strange.
[01:05:58]  Dr. Rashad Zaydan is a pharmacist and works in Baghdad and Fallujah with women and children who are victims of war.
[01:06:09]  She's worked especially with orphans.
[01:06:12]  And she works with the Knowledge Society to aid victims of war.
[01:06:17]  And she joins us.
[01:06:18]  She's part of the Iraqi Women for Peace.
[01:06:19]  It's traveling around Code Pinks.
[01:06:21]  Helped set this up, part of the Women Against War movement in this country.
[01:06:25]  And they have amazing stories to tell.
[01:06:27]  Dr. Zaydan, thank you so much for joining us today.
[01:06:31]  Thank you.
[01:06:31]  Thank you very much.
[01:06:32]  I don't want to play a ton of her interview because from everything I can tell, what she is there to advocate for is just bringing attention to the victims of the Iraq war.
[01:06:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:06:46]  And I think that's sound and good.
[01:06:49]  And I have no problem with it.
[01:06:50]  And Alex, even though he is a piece of shit, platforming that conversation is a voice that it is better people hear than not hear.
[01:07:00]  Sure.
[01:07:01]  So I don't really have a lot to say about her interview outside of crazy that Alex is doing this.
[01:07:09]  Yeah, what a weird, okay.
[01:07:11]  All right.
[01:07:12]  But that's not to say we don't have any clips.
[01:07:15]  All right.
[01:07:16]  So I think that there is a pattern that Alex engages in while talking to this woman, which is to try and make it all about himself.
[01:07:26]  Yeah, that sounds about right.
[01:07:27]  Now, you've come to the United States now.
[01:07:29]  You're traveling with women sayno to war.org.
[01:07:34]  We have links to it on Infowars.com.
[01:07:36]  Tell us how you came to the United States, Dr. Zaydan.
[01:07:40]  Global Peace for saying no to war, they invited us to sharing their activities, and we came here just to tell the American people what is happening really in Iraq.
[01:07:51]  We just want to tell them the truth, which they don't hear it from the media.
[01:07:55]  We have some pictures, we have some films about what's happening, and we hope we can reach every American people in order they know the truth because we believe that America is the center for truth and freedom, but the picture now is different.
[01:08:09]  After three years, we see everything is different.
[01:08:11]  Are you aware that America are the average Iraqis aware that we've just been captured too by the same people and that it's just more sophisticated?
[01:08:19]  See, we've been captured too.
[01:08:21]  We're controlled as well.
[01:08:23]  The average American doesn't even know what's going on.
[01:08:26]  The average American's been mind-controlled.
[01:08:29]  I think if they know the truth, our letter is just telling them the truth.
[01:08:36]  And awaiting from being captured, my country has been gone, and I have to work hard for my children.
[01:08:43]  I have both children, and I have to think about their future.
[01:08:46]  So if anything happened to me, I would not be cared because all my country are suffering.
[01:08:52]  So no problem.
[01:08:55]  So you're saying you're willing to, I mean, you're doing whatever it takes to stand up for the little ones.
[01:09:00]  Yes, I will try.
[01:09:01]  I'll do my best.
[01:09:05]  But I'm sure even through all the pain, is it rewarding to you?
[01:09:09]  Jesus.
[01:09:10]  So the thing that he was doing there, of the, like, we're captured too, we're under the same occupation, that happens a number of times.
[01:09:20]  There's a couple of times where he tries to steer things in that direction.
[01:09:24]  And I find that disgusting.
[01:09:25]  Yep.
[01:09:26]  This is a person whose home is war-torn.
[01:09:30]  Based on the president of our country's actions.
[01:09:35]  Lies.
[01:09:35]  Yeah.
[01:09:36]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:09:37]  And to like have his weird, I can't have my guns or whatever.
[01:09:45]  Oh, FEMA is bad.
[01:09:46]  Yeah.
[01:09:47]  All this stuff.
[01:09:48]  And try to talk to somebody who's advocating for real war-torn shit.
[01:09:54]  Yeah.
[01:09:55]  Like, it's just insulting.
[01:09:56]  I feel like it's like.
[01:10:00]  My two thoughts were this.
[01:10:02]  My first thought was, she doesn't deserve this.
[01:10:05]  This woman does not deserve this.
[01:10:07]  There's no way that anybody deserves it, but she especially does not deserve it.
[01:10:13]  And then my next thought was, I don't know if you remember this, but a while back, probably a good while back now that we're old, there was a football coach who had this huge meltdown.
[01:10:23]  And at the end of it, he's screaming like, I'm a man.
[01:10:26]  I'm 40.
[01:10:28]  Because these media people were talking shit about kids.
[01:10:34]  You know, like they had forgotten that those were kids and they shouldn't be talking like that.
[01:10:39]  And he was expressing that it's like, no, come at me.
[01:10:42]  Come at me.
[01:10:42]  I'm prepared for this.
[01:10:43]  This is our arena right here.
[01:10:45]  That's exactly how I felt with Alex.
[01:10:47]  Like, don't leave her alone.
[01:10:50]  She doesn't deserve this shit.
[01:10:52]  I get where that reaction is coming from.
[01:10:54]  Yeah.
[01:10:55]  And the weirder feeling that I have is I wonder if this is his attempt at empathy.
[01:11:02]  I mean, it feels like it's his attempt to relate.
[01:11:06]  We are the same.
[01:11:07]  Yeah, I'm like you, you're like me.
[01:11:09]  But from him, it's more like now I want you to be like, yes, you're right, Alex.
[01:11:15]  You guys are captured, you know?
[01:11:17]  Yeah, to sign off on my weird sovereign citizen paranoia being the same level of oppression as having your cities bombed out.
[01:11:28]  Take time out of your helping orphans lives day to give me a little bit of props for how Americans also have it hard.
[01:11:36]  Yeah, it's fucking awful.
[01:11:37]  Yeah.
[01:11:38]  But there is a part of me that wonders if he even recognizes the way in which it's awful.
[01:11:44]  I think it might not be fully malicious.
[01:11:46]  Yeah.
[01:11:47]  It might just be he's a dog.
[01:11:49]  Yeah, I mean, no, I mean, I think this is very much like consistent with narcissistic psychopath behavior of that like, don't you understand?
[01:11:59]  I am reaching out to you.
[01:12:01]  This is us relating to each other, not like you're clearly having some weird psycho mind game with me for no reason.
[01:12:09]  Yeah.
[01:12:10]  And so we're not going to listen to too much more of her interview.
[01:12:13]  Good.
[01:12:14]  But she's there with another person.
[01:12:16]  Oh, God.
[01:12:16]  This is weird.
[01:12:18]  Can we, I like to go back to you, Dr. Zaydam, but can I speak to the founder of Code Pink, which is a women's peace activist group, Gail Murphy, here for a few minutes?
[01:12:28]  Yeah.
[01:12:28]  Okay.
[01:12:29]  Thank you.
[01:12:33]  Gail, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:12:36]  Can you break down some of the things you guys are doing and where you're going to be and what some of this horrific testimony these women have been giving is like?
[01:12:44]  Well, it's been very emotional.
[01:12:45]  The women came more or less around the 5th of March and started in New York where we had a large public event.
[01:12:53]  This is really weird.
[01:12:55]  They have a very friendly and cooperative interview.
[01:13:00]  And that's strange because Alex thinks that Code Pink is a communist Soros front, right?
[01:13:06]  And it's not like he started thinking that in 2015 or something.
[01:13:11]  He's thought that for a long time.
[01:13:12]  Yeah, Code Pink was doing shit around 2004.
[01:13:16]  Almost immediately.
[01:13:16]  Well, I mean, they've been doing shit before that, but that was whenever they made big splashes about the Iraq war and all that stuff.
[01:13:22]  He uses Code Pink as shorthand for like commie women agitators.
[01:13:30]  Hey, Gail, how you doing?
[01:13:31]  What's going on, Gail?
[01:13:33]  Tell me about the future.
[01:13:35]  It's really hard to see that and not think that what he's doing is exploiting their advocacy so he can condescend to a woman from Iraq.
[01:13:44]  Yeah.
[01:13:45]  It's hard to imagine him being like an unthinking, unintentioned dog.
[01:13:50]  Yeah, you're talking to someone from Code Pink.
[01:13:54]  Now, this is insane.
[01:13:56]  Yeah.
[01:13:57]  You're a militia guy.
[01:13:58]  You know, you know.
[01:14:00]  You know, you know.
[01:14:01]  You have to know.
[01:14:03]  You have to know.
[01:14:04]  That's what I feel.
[01:14:05]  That's what I feel like.
[01:14:06]  Like, my entire emotional journey will just be through you knows.
[01:14:12]  You know, like, you know.
[01:14:13]  No, you know.
[01:14:14]  You have to, you know.
[01:14:15]  Come on, you know.
[01:14:16]  You know, you know.
[01:14:17]  You, oh my God, you know.
[01:14:19]  You, you know.
[01:14:21]  Yeah.
[01:14:22]  You know.
[01:14:23]  And there's something so interesting about this dynamic, which is like, I don't begrudge Code Pink or this woman's advocacy for getting the voices out of people who are victims in Iraq.
[01:14:37]  Absolutely.
[01:14:39]  I also don't think there's any way to deny that they're being used and that Alex needs these types of people at this stage in his career or else he looks like the Nazi that he is.
[01:14:54]  Yep.
[01:14:55]  And I don't think they did anything wrong, but tactically, it was a big mistake, I think.
[01:15:02]  I mean, to include him in this.
[01:15:05]  It is, it is to take another phrase from this time, Alex was an unknown unknown.
[01:15:15]  You know, like there was no way for these people to know fully the malicious level of what Alex was, because really, nobody had done this level of maliciousness before, in a way, you know?
[01:15:28]  Like, what media outlet could you have thought of in 2006 that would be actively like, oh, I'm going to launder my Nazism through pretending that I am a fair and balanced above-the-board show, you know?
[01:15:40]  Yeah, there are very few examples I could ever think of that are as kind of insane as.
[01:15:46]  And how could you be prepared for it?
[01:15:48]  If you're somebody who really adamantly cares about the Iraq war and the Iraqi people, I'll talk to anybody.
[01:15:53]  I just need to get myself who appears to be a right-winger who hates the war.
[01:15:58]  Totally.
[01:15:59]  Then, yeah, that's I can get my message to a group of people who would never listen to me.
[01:16:04]  Right.
[01:16:04]  It all makes sense unless you know already what Alex is.
[01:16:08]  It's 20 years in the future.
[01:16:09]  Exactly.
[01:16:10]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:16:10]  So it's like, this isn't just a hindsight is 2020.
[01:16:14]  It's like, you can't blame anybody for fucking up like this.
[01:16:16]  No, but it's tragic to see.
[01:16:18]  Yeah, it is.
[01:16:18]  It is.
[01:16:19]  So we have one last clip, and it's after their interview has ended.
[01:16:23]  Alex takes some calls.
[01:16:25]  And I just, I resent his perspective.
[01:16:28]  Okay.
[01:16:28]  Eventually, I've said this over and over again.
[01:16:31]  This ought to be the headline on a story we ought to write.
[01:16:33]  America is the target.
[01:16:35]  Iraq is on with the pretext.
[01:16:37]  We need to explain.
[01:16:38]  And Bush told his biographer this.
[01:16:39]  We're the real target.
[01:16:41]  Yeah, they want to destroy our young kids.
[01:16:43]  I mean, I hate to use a child's analogy, but Revenge of the Sith.
[01:16:46]  He's a little-known senator.
[01:16:47]  He hires people to covertly attack his own planet, says the Senate won't do enough.
[01:16:52]  It's elected chancellor, then attacks his own planets again and again to become emperor, and then knocks out his own forces.
[01:17:01]  This is actually what governments do.
[01:17:03]  You know, children can understand the plot, but adults can't understand it in the real world.
[01:17:07]  Yeah, man.
[01:17:08]  So he was just interviewing a woman who is dealing with orphans and people whose families are dying in Baghdad and Fallujah.
[01:17:20]  And within a very short amount of time, he's talking with his caller about how, like, hey, we're the real targets.
[01:17:28]  This has rank disrespect all over it.
[01:17:31]  Yeah, I mean, whatever ideological differences that you may have with somebody doing that, you know, like what you are, what you should be, what you should be forced to acknowledge is that they're doing the work, you know, like whether or not you agree that it's good work or bad work, or that in the long run, it's health or any number of things, right?
[01:17:54]  Alex should be saying, you're doing the work, and I'm talking on the radio.
[01:17:58]  So we're going to start from a position of I am beneath your level of fucking give a shit, right?
[01:18:06]  So to not come with a humbleness, to not come directly towards like, hey, man, you're amazing or disrespectful.
[01:18:16]  Or conversely, not to come to it from a perspective of, I don't really care about what's happening to you.
[01:18:23]  I'm the real target.
[01:18:25]  Yeah.
[01:18:25]  And I only care about you dealing with these orphans and all this shit because they're doing that to get to me next.
[01:18:32]  Yep.
[01:18:33]  I don't really care about what's going on with you.
[01:18:35]  Yep.
[01:18:35]  If it didn't involve me, I wouldn't even talk to you.
[01:18:39]  Yeah.
[01:18:39]  No, every time they're every true crime show where they're interviewing psychopaths is like, that's their reasoning 100% of the time.
[01:18:47]  Yeah.
[01:18:47]  And I think he should be more insulting to this person or less.
[01:18:51]  Exactly.
[01:18:51]  One of the two.
[01:18:52]  Either one is better than this weirdo, fucked up shit.
[01:18:56]  Yeah.
[01:18:57]  But also interviewing Code Pink.
[01:18:59]  Insane.
[01:19:02]  Insane.
[01:19:02]  Yeah.
[01:19:03]  You just go back and you never know what you're going to see.
[01:19:06]  You really don't.
[01:19:06]  You know, and it just reinforces what we've been saying that, and it's, it's, I, I, you know, I don't know if it still means anything, but the so many times it's like, don't go on these shows.
[01:19:20]  Don't have these debates.
[01:19:22]  Don't have them on your show.
[01:19:24]  Don't legitimize any of that shit because even this person is going to be used.
[01:19:30]  Even this person, of course, you're going to be used.
[01:19:33]  You know, yeah, maybe not, maybe not like every single instance.
[01:19:37]  Don't do it, but be very careful.
[01:19:39]  Yeah.
[01:19:41]  People are less careful than they should be about that sometimes.
[01:19:44]  Yeah, I agree.
[01:19:47]  Fucking hell, man.
[01:19:48]  Tough.

=== New Hope and Rogue Ones (01:47) ===

[01:19:49]  So I guess the past is still interesting.
[01:19:54]  Like, at least this is a lot of curveballs.
[01:19:56]  It is.
[01:19:57]  Alex is mad about MySpace.
[01:19:58]  That's what.
[01:19:59]  I mean, I love not being able to think, oh, well, this is the part of his show where he's going to do this.
[01:20:05]  You know, like, that's huge.
[01:20:07]  We've been in the past and we've been talking a lot about Milosevic.
[01:20:10]  And now, if I asked you, hey, what do you think is going to happen today?
[01:20:14]  No idea.
[01:20:14]  Not MySpace.
[01:20:15]  No clue.
[01:20:16]  He's going to passive, aggressively start up a MySpace.
[01:20:19]  Interview somebody from Fallujah?
[01:20:20]  Absolutely not what I expected.
[01:20:22]  Fucking insane.
[01:20:24]  Now, and then you also get the Emperor Palpatine comparison from the past while we just watched the State of the Union.
[01:20:35]  I mean, what other way is there to describe what happened?
[01:20:38]  Well, yeah.
[01:20:40]  Thanks for the reminder.
[01:20:41]  I mean, it's fun if you think about it as the Revenge of the Sith, right?
[01:20:44]  Well, because then a new hope happens.
[01:20:46]  Exactly.
[01:20:47]  Well, I mean, back then, here's the problem, right?
[01:20:49]  Back in the past, you'd go straight from Empire, Revenge of the Sith to New Hope.
[01:20:54]  Now you got to go through a full and or and a Rogue One before you get to a new hope.
[01:20:59]  We got a shit ton of stuff to get through.
[01:21:01]  We got work to do.
[01:21:01]  We got work to do.
[01:21:04]  So let's get to that.
[01:21:05]  Let's go steal those plans.
[01:21:06]  Let's get some Andor, some Rogue One moving, and then we'll get a new hope going.
[01:21:12]  So we'll get to work on that.
[01:21:14]  But until then, we have a website.
[01:21:16]  It's KnowledgeBike.com.
[01:21:18]  Oh, yeah, we'll be back with another episode.
[01:21:20]  But until then, I'm Neo.
[01:21:21]  I'm Leo.
[01:21:21]  I'm DZX Clark.
[01:21:22]  I am the mysterious professor.
[01:21:25]  Yeah, And now here comes the sex robots.
[01:21:29]  Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.
[01:21:31]  Thanks for holding.
[01:21:33]  Hello, Alex.
[01:21:34]  I'm a first-time caller.
[01:21:35]  I'm a huge fan.
[01:21:36]  I love your work.