Dave Smith and Robbie Barnstein analyze a Pennsylvania judge ruling Governor Tom Wolf's lockdowns unconstitutional, rejecting the "save one life" metric as legally baseless. They criticize the Libertarian Party for alienating voters by pandering to woke issues in 2020 rather than opposing lockdowns, a failure they attribute to ignoring advice from thinkers like Scott Horton. Smith further dismisses Joe Biden as unqualified and rejects The Social Dilemma's call for government regulation of big tech, arguing it empowers evil actors while personal responsibility remains the only true solution to social media harms. Ultimately, the episode asserts that liberty must remain absolute, regardless of emergency claims or progressive social trends. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why I Love Heshy Socks00:03:29
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Let's start the show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Tears your host.
Games to men.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
We're recording late night.
We usually do it earlier, but we recorded late tonight.
I want to say, first off, thank you to our producer, Brian, who was under the knife, I think, no more than like 24 hours ago and is still here with us running our fucking production.
He's a fucking champion who gets a lot of heat whenever I fuck up and the episode's late.
Everyone blames Brian, but they don't give him credit for all the good shit he does.
So shout out to our wonderful producer, Brian.
And of course, I am joined by my life partner, the apple of my eye, the fire, the king of the cocks, Robbie Barnstein, host of the Run Your Mouth podcast.
What's going on, brother?
How are you?
I like evening episodes.
I got a beer as well.
You got a beer?
I got some apple juice on the rocks.
I like my apple juice nice and chilled.
And yeah, let's let it rip.
Also, this is COVID times that 7:40 p.m. is late.
Oh, that's fucking yeah, Brian's on all types of shit that they gave him for his fucking surgery.
So, Brian's the one who's really partying right now.
We're going to go for an hour and then find out none of this was recorded at all.
Brian's going to be like, oh, shit, dude, that oxy was no joke.
So, yes, you are right.
But it's not, to me, I don't even think the fucking, it's not so much the COVID times.
It's just having a toddler just puts you on a whole different timeframe.
And she's up at 6 a.m. every day.
You don't have a choice.
You get right to it.
You got to get right to playing.
And it's sometimes like I'll hear people play loud music and you're almost like, who the fuck plays loud music at 7:15?
Flawed Lockdown Systems00:16:15
And then you're like, oh, all right.
You know what?
It's me.
It's totally me.
It's not you.
I'm just not, it's not even kind of an inappropriate time to play music.
Anyway, a few things that I wanted to talk about on today's episode.
One thing that I that just happened that is pretty goddamn remarkable.
I'm sure you saw this, Rob.
We briefly mentioned it.
I know you saw it.
That was phony of me.
We talked about this before the show.
I know you saw it.
Pennsylvania judge decision came down that is pretty remarkable.
I'm not familiar with this.
Oh, Rob, did you see this?
I've never felt like such a phony in my life.
I don't know why I did that.
I've like, I've never been this phony on a podcast ever.
I just like Jay Leno intro you.
So you haven't been on an airplane, Rob.
I don't know.
You had any wacky stories from the okay.
I don't know what the fuck happened to me.
This is late nights throwing me off.
Okay.
Pennsylvania judge rules against lockdown orders.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that the pandemic restrictions of Governor Tom Wolf were unconstitutional.
And this is pretty, you know, on one hand, it's almost like one of these things.
It takes so long.
Well, yes, exactly.
So, you know, when there be, I remember when like Jordan Peterson and that Weinstein guy, and there were like a few of these, you know, professors on prestigious colleges at prestigious colleges, and they'd stand up to like the woke insanity, you know, and the examples, the two examples that they were standing up to, I believe Eric Weinstein stood up because they were having a whites stay home day.
Like white people weren't supposed to come into campus.
And he was like, no, I'm coming in.
I'm a professor.
I'm not coming in because of an immutable characteristic of mine, such as race.
That is what?
Like, this is the most illiberal thing I've ever heard of in my life.
No, I'm not doing that.
And that got him in all this heat.
And Jordan Peterson's thing was that the Canadian government was compelling, you know, mandating that you call people by their preferred pronouns.
And he was like, yeah, you know, like, no, I'm sorry.
The government can't get in the business of mandating people to say certain things they don't want to say.
And they blew up.
And at the time, you were kind of like, oh, man, that's so awesome that some, you know, a couple college professors are standing up to this insanity, you know?
But then almost like a moment later, after you have that thought, you're like, how the fuck are there not more?
Like, how hasn't there been someone in every single college?
How has there not been dozens of professors in every single university who have stood up and gone, what?
This is insane.
This is antithetical to everything that a liberal arts university is supposed to stand for.
So that's kind of how I feel about this ruling.
You're like, wow, this is incredible.
Well, this is awesome.
But then you go, holy shit, how the fuck is it just finally now and only in one state that a judge has finally been like, oh, yeah, there's no authorization for any of this.
I mean, Governor Murphy in New Jersey, we talked about this and played the clip on the show.
He, in one of the only tough interviews that I've seen of any governor since all this shit's been going down, and Tucker Carlson asked him, where do you get the authority to, you know, it's like you're shutting down religious services.
I mean, that's a constitutionally protected right.
Where do you get the authority in the Bill of Rights to do this?
And his response was, well, we weren't thinking about the Bill of Rights when we did this.
And then I think he said, that's above my pay grade.
And you're like, well, that's actually supposed to be exactly your pay grade.
Oh, yeah, right.
So anyway, it's pretty remarkable, but it's, you know, it's, this is a big deal.
This is something huge.
And so the judge Uh Stickman, who's a a judge appointed by president Trump released a 66 page opinion.
I'm going to quote from it briefly.
He said, the liberties protected by the constitution are not fair weather freedoms in place when times are excuse are not fair weather freedoms in place when times are good, but able to be cast aside in times of trouble.
There is no question that this county has faced and will face emergencies of every sort, but the solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American Experiment.
Now, that's the type of shit that makes you proud to be an American like that.
That is the type of shit that turns me into a fucking.
When was the last time you heard anything like that?
Yes, like that makes me want to fucking put a fucking big American flag outside of my fucking house.
That makes me want to salute that fucking judge.
That's the type of thing that you would think maybe, if there was a party like, let's just say, hypothetically, there was a party that was dedicated to the principles of liberty.
I mean, obviously we don't have anything like that, but let's just say hypothetically there was a party, maybe they would call themselves the Libertarian Party.
Maybe you would hear something like that out of them.
That would be awesome.
That would be awesome.
Of course, you do hear that out of the Mises caucus types, but anyway.
So this has now now okay.
So the governor uh, Tom Wolf uh, issued a statement uh, slamming Republicans who were celebrating uh this, uh decision, and he said, quote, there's no sense in debating a ruling that will be appealed.
But what's not up for debate is that our early and decisive action saved lives.
Okay, so first off, let me just say that this is bullshit on every level, every level.
So, first of all, he hasn't, as of us, recording this.
He hasn't actually filed an appeal yet.
He's just saying he's going to appeal this decision, but my guess is that he will.
Um, but it doesn't matter until that appeal happens, and if this is overturned, these shutdown orders have been deemed unconstitutional, meaning they're not law.
So right now in Pennsylvania, there are no more covet restrictions.
The judge covered everything.
He said the the government doesn't have a right to interfere with people's livelihood.
They don't have a right to force you to wear a mask outdoors.
They don't have a right to limit the capacity you can have in a restaurant.
They don't have a right to deem some businesses essential and others non-essential.
And if you, you would think right that if you were even going to pretend to be a country, you know, just like this, this is like our, our game, we pretend to be a free country that you'd have to like agree that of course, the government can't do any of that shit.
So that's the state of things right now in Pennsylvania.
Now what's going to be really interesting is to see if they still try To enforce this shit, despite the fact that it's been ruled by a judge being unconstitutional.
Because for all this shit from the left that you hear about the threats to democracy and the threats to rule of law, this is a real case of, you know, like seeing whether or not the rule of law will be upheld.
A judge just declared this unconstitutional.
That means the law is no longer a fucking law.
And we'll see how they respond to that.
I would have to think that there's got to be severe civil action suits you could bring against government if they were to try and enforce that and then it got upheld.
I would think that you would get some serious money for government for, you know, if you decided to open up your business tomorrow, and then by the way, I wonder if you can get back pay for being told that you couldn't open up your business on account of the fact that that was unconstitutional.
But even if that's not true, if tomorrow you showed up to open up your factory and then the cops still shut it down and then this judge's ruling got upheld, I mean, I can't see any legal basis for why government wouldn't be responsible to pay you whatever your business would have been earning in those days of operation.
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
I mean, I don't know the like the legality of all that, but you would think it would certainly at least open the door.
I would also think that in my opinion, I haven't given this a ton of thought, but they should be responsible for if they shut down your business, which was not constitutional, if they're trying to enforce something that then turns out to be non-constitutional, I would think they should be financially liable.
Well, yeah, I would certainly think they should be, but that's what they should be.
And well, what does the law actually back that up are two different questions?
But you might be right about that.
And that'll be interesting to see.
You know, one of the things I've said through this whole lockdown that is so, you know, outrageous and terrifying is that even when, like, there are so many things that the government does that are unconstitutional.
I mean, so many things.
Like, if we followed the Constitution, probably somewhere between 80 to 90% of the government wouldn't exist.
I mean, that's just the truth.
And there's no, you know, there's no constitutional authority for like so many of the things that we do.
There's no, there's nothing about a department of education in the Constitution.
You know what I mean?
Like there's all, but they almost always have some like gigantic stretch that they can somehow justify it under.
You know, like there's, there's certain, you know, like the commerce clause gets used to justify a whole lot of regulation, even though it's a real stretch.
And something like, you know, the fact that there'll be no, you know, like that there was no declaration of war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, like all these wars.
But then they'll say like, well, but it's not a war.
It's a, it's an ongoing military action technically.
You know, like they always have some way they can stretch it.
Now it's all bullshit.
And this is why the Constitution has failed, you know, and why it's, you know, done a very poor job.
But the thing that's different about these lockdowns is that It's two things.
Number one, you can't even stretch a justification for this shit.
There's like no way you could do it.
There's no legal mind in the world who could stretch somehow like something as blatant as saying we deem some jobs essential and some jobs not essential, and we will like arrest you if you go to work or saying something like as blatant as you can't have a political rally, you can't go to church.
I mean, this is so clearly protected in the Bill of Rights that there's no way.
But the second thing that I think is actually more terrifying than any of that is the Governor Murphy thing, that they actually haven't even tried to.
Like, no, unlike even with the like Obama's kill list and these other things, there would be people who tried to rationalize why it is legal to do this.
Nobody that I have seen, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I have not seen this anywhere, has actually tried to argue why it is actually constitutional for governors to have these lockdowns.
No one.
Like, I haven't seen it anywhere.
And even Governor Murphy himself just said, eh, we're not thinking about that.
We weren't thinking about the Bill of Rights.
So it's really something to see the Constitution actually being used as a tool by a judge to, you know, fucking get, you know, shut the shit.
In all seriousness, though, they need to figure out how this process doesn't take this much time.
I mean, like, if you're going to put in, if you're going to do laws that are this extreme, I would think the first thing you need to do is actually show up to court and have the Supreme Court say it's okay.
This is a flawed system where you get to just do it.
And then six months later, after shutting shit down and imposing on people's civil liberties, it finally shows up to a judge.
That doesn't make sense.
That's a backward system.
Yes.
Yes, Rob.
This is a flawed system, might be your understatement of the year, but you are absolutely right.
We also have to do away with, and I tweeted something about this, and someone sent back Reason Magazine actually had a really funny sketch they put out, but we got to do away with this: people will die or this save lives because that is nonsense criteria.
There's nothing that you can do that people will always die.
I can put on a belt buckle tomorrow, and guess what?
People will die.
That's what happens to every person ever.
That is a bullshit term that means nothing.
Right.
And to make the same point you're making, like on the like, conversely, if you were to make belts illegal, you can say we saved lives.
Some people hang themselves with belts.
So we know if we just round up the belts, we save lives.
Now, sure, did we go around and throw 100,000 people in a cage because they were guilty of the crime of wanting to keep their pants from falling down?
Fat people spend their whole lives like got a yanking them.
Oh, it's not a good time to be a fat person in this hypothetical world where belts are illegal.
But sure, yes, you're, but you could say, well, yeah, those people went to jail and we ruined their lives, but we saved lives, you know?
I mean, that can never be the criteria.
And this is something that politicians love to use.
It's a really, it's the most dishonest and fucking like it's made to prey on dumb people technique.
And Obama used it.
He was when he was promoting gun control.
He was like, look, we know we can't stop every mass shooting, but if we can even save one life, shouldn't we do that?
And of course, this was Cuomo and a lot of the lockdown proponents have said this: you know, if we can save one life, then it's worth it.
Well, no, that's bullshit.
That's bullshit.
And it's, you know, I do.
Sounds good.
Well, right.
Like, it sounds kind of nice.
And most people go, oh, yeah, okay.
If it saves a life, then sure, we got to do this.
But well, there's two problems to it.
Number one, if you follow that logic, then you would not only give up on freedom as me and you conceive of it, but just civilization.
I mean, like everything.
You know, like you could make crossing the street illegal.
You could make driving a car illegal.
You could make swimming pools illegal.
You could make ovens illegal.
You could make, you know, like a million different things that you could just make illegal and use that justification.
Well, actually, with more effectiveness, use that justification that, yeah, look, you'll save some lives.
If we save one life, it isn't worth it.
And so it's like, well, no, we generally choose that the vast majority of people being able to live a life is like that benefit outweighs the cost that someone might die in some situation.
But the other thing, of course, which is the point that you were getting at, is that even if you think that way, there's also the costs of whatever law you're implementing, which never seem to come into this effect.
So we could also flip this justification around on them and say, well, okay, well, then we can't have any gun control laws because while trying to do a no-knock raid or some red flag law, it might kill someone.
So if it saves one life, blah, blah, blah.
So what you have to look at is go, okay, what are the costs versus benefits of a policy?
And that's the only adult way to think about these things.
Measuring Policy Costs00:04:11
So the whole one life thing is complete bullshit.
And of course, as you were saying, that these lockdowns have cost lots of lives.
And we're really not going to know.
We really don't.
First off, the idea that this guy said, well, it can't be questioned that what we did saved lives.
Well, you know, we really don't know that.
First off, we don't know that the lockdowns have saved any lives.
We don't know that at all.
There's countries that haven't locked down, who haven't been hit as hard as places that have locked down and states that haven't been locked down that haven't been hit as hard.
And then also, you're going to have to measure the cost.
And we really don't know the cost yet.
We don't know the total cost.
And, you know, if somebody, like they talk about the suicide rate going up, but if somebody's complete life was completely destroyed in the last four months and they commit suicide next year or the year after, I mean, that's still a death that's related to that policy.
We have no idea the amount of destruction.
I just saw an article today now that I think was on CNBC.
I can't remember.
But it was an article from one of these financial news sites.
And they were saying they're now projecting 60% of the businesses that haven't fully opened yet are going to go out of business.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I'm getting a little nervous.
I'm noticing more and more on mainstream news channels that they're just reporting on projected inflation.
Like even New York Times, CNBC had Alan Greenspan going talking about what the Fed's doing and inflation coming.
And when you start seeing those people reporting on it, that gets me nervous.
Yeah, no, and as well it should.
So, yeah, and then that's another thing, right?
Like the cost in terms of inflation and debt and what that's going to, what effect that'll have on people.
Because of course, all of this was necessary, some of it possibly being necessary if you're going to do the shutdowns, right?
So all of this stuff is impossible to completely measure.
And probably in another five, 10 years, we'll have a better idea of it.
Not that we'll ever be able to perfectly measure it.
But so the if it saves one life justification is complete bullshit.
But the other thing that I was thinking about that I, of course, kind of alluded to before was when you see this and you see what that judge said.
And it's one, I'm sorry, man.
It's like, I know people get upset at me when I hit the Libertarian Party sometimes, the people who listen who are members of the Libertarian Party.
But how the fuck?
Come on, guys.
Swing State Debates00:11:20
How was this not the entire libertarian presidential campaign's message?
It was right there for you.
You know, it's like, you got to be able to see through the kind of the hype of the moment, the fear, the panic, the war fever, in this case, domestic war fever.
But you have to be able to see through that and go, no, we're going to be against all of this shit.
That's like, believe me, when Ron Paul was in Congress and he was voting against the Patriot Act and against the war in Iraq and all of these things, you know, this was right in the war fever after 9-11 when everyone's like, oh, we're so good.
And it's like, no, I'm going to stick to this fucking message.
And this is what libertarians are going to stand for.
And the Libertarian Party just really, I mean, they failed two major tests.
And by the way, it's not even that, technically speaking, that they weren't kind of against the lockdowns, you know, but they didn't make it their campaign.
And that's the issue right there, is that this was obviously the issue.
And this was their big opening because even Trump didn't really make being against the lockdowns their issue.
You know, you had to be strong enough and brave enough and clear-headed enough to be against all of these lockdowns and to really be against the riots.
You just had to do that this year.
And I know people, there are some people in the Libertarian Party who are upset that I'm not going to vote for Joe Jorgensen and Spike Cohen, as I said on a previous episode.
I'm not voting for them.
And I'm not voting for Trump.
I'm not voting for Biden, obviously.
I'm not going to vote for president.
And people can feel however they want to feel about that.
I actually think it's kind of comical to watch people's reaction to this shit where they're like, you know, oh, so you'll just sit on the sidelines or something like that.
And it's like, really?
Am I sitting on the sidelines?
I mean, I'm like, you know, some random guy with 12 followers on Twitter will tell me I'm sitting on the sidelines.
And it's like, well, I don't know.
I mean, I have a pretty big platform.
I talk to a lot of people about these ideas.
I don't really see myself as sitting on the sideline.
I just am speaking to a huge audience, and you're what, casting a vote in a state that's probably already predetermined who's going to win that state, but you're really what in the game while I'm on the sidelines?
What are you, the star quarterback or something?
Like, okay, this whole thing is kind of ridiculous.
I mean, you could make an argument if you live in a swing state.
Maybe, you know, there's some argument to getting out there and voting.
Even then, it wouldn't be for a third.
But the truth is that I'm not going to vote for Joe Jorgensen and Spike Cohen because they have not inspired me to vote for them.
And to me, right, voting for somebody who you know is not going to win, who you know has literally zero chance.
Like, Rob, you have as good a chance as Joe Jorgensen of being the next United States.
Probably.
But like, you like, you know, you've got some dirt.
You've got some skeletons in your closet, but both of you guys have a 0% chance, like, zero, you know?
And so, in that case, when someone has no chance of winning, the only reason I would vote for somebody, like I would vote for Ron Paul again if he was running, but the only reason I'd vote for him is just because I love that guy so much that he's been out there doing all this, and I want him to see one more number next to the number of people who voted for him.
Like, that's all I care about.
And I've said this, I've like I haven't changed on this opinion, but I think, you know, in election season, sometimes people get, they get emotional about what's going on.
And I'm, I'm not super emotional about this LP ticket.
I, or at least I should say, I'm not emotionally invested in them in that way.
Maybe I am emotional in the sense that some shit they've done has pissed me off and some shit they've done has made me happy.
But I don't believe that, like, okay, so I said when I debated Nick Sarwak, and this was one of, I think the, like, I started the debate, and intentionally so, because this is my style, but I started it with saying a very contentious thing in a room full of people who almost all were in the Libertarian Party.
And I quoted Nick Sarwak, who had said that as chair, the party is paramount.
And I said flat out at the beginning, I said, I don't care about the Libertarian Party.
And I want everyone to understand where I'm coming from.
I don't care about the Libertarian Party.
And I don't.
I still don't.
I don't care about the party.
What I care about is liberty.
That's what I care about.
And if the party is an effective vehicle to achieving liberty, then great, then wonderful.
Then I'll support the party.
And if it's not, then I'll drop it like it's nothing because the only thing that matters is the end goal, which is liberty, like real liberty in real human beings' lives.
That's what I care about.
I care about the philosophy to the extent that it can lead to real liberty in real people's lives.
I care about the liberty movement because I think that's the best shot at leading to real liberty.
That's it.
It's all about the end goal.
So the people who are upset that I'm not like supporting Joe Jorgensen and Spike Cohen, it's like, well, okay.
If I thought that was the best thing for the liberty movement, I would be all for that.
I would be bumping Joe Jorgensen every show, but I don't.
I don't think it'll help anything.
I think these people don't realize, you know, it's like these people who are like, oh, we got to get Joe Jorgensen in the debates, or, oh, we got to get her on Rogan's podcast, or all this.
It's like, okay, and then tell me, just break this down for me.
And then what?
Then what happens?
I remember back in.
You make more people not like her.
Well, right.
I mean, what do you think is going to happen?
There's as big a risk as there is reward to all of that.
I don't know.
I don't see any benefit to that.
Even Spike Cohen, who's a much more talented communicator than her, I'm not sure he's a great idea to get on Rogan's podcast.
He might go off, you know, he might say one of these fucking left-wingy things that he's known to say, like there's a transgender genocide going on or some shit, or promote Black Lives Matter and literally turn off a huge portion of people who might be open.
If you're a parent, they're like your goth, drug-addicted kid, you try and keep in the house.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm not trying to push them.
I don't think they're good for the liberty movement.
And by the way, so far, I've been proven right on this.
Like, believe me, I'm not actually that influential in the greater scheme of American politics, right?
Like, how about like moving the needle?
Wait, we're two months out.
What have they done?
Where's the liberty movement?
This is where it would be happening right now.
They're not going to win.
It's all about the message.
It's all about how many people they're inspiring on the way to November.
Well, okay, we're less than two months out now.
And what do you got?
What's happening?
Oh, that's right.
The Libertarian Party, the party that's sitting on libertarianism, they're sitting on the most brilliant, beautiful political philosophy in the history of man.
And what are they viewed as in society?
They're viewed as a fucking joke.
How do you have such a great philosophy and such a poor image in the public?
I'm sorry.
That's a fucking problem.
You know, so in 2016, there was a big movement, like a bunch of the Cato Institute types.
They'd run these articles like, let's get Gary Johnson in the debates.
Gary Johnson could be a game changer if he was in the debates.
And I remember actually talking to Kennedy.
Sorry.
What's a public policy?
Yeah, like, so I remember talking to Kennedy in the green room before we filmed the show.
This was back in like around 2016, around that time when they were trying to get Gary Johnson in the debates.
And I remember saying to her, I go, what is Gary Johnson going to do to Donald Trump?
Like, what do you think?
I mean, he, Rand Paul was up there with Donald Trump.
Okay, he's a pretty libertarian-leaning guy.
He may not identify as a libertarian, but certainly on that stage, he was by far the most libertarian.
How did he do?
He knew, by the way, he knows a lot more than Gary Johnson does.
I mean, sure, Rand Paul has some policies that aren't exactly libertarian, and he didn't run a great campaign in 2016.
But, you know, Gary Johnson has some policies that aren't libertarian, and he didn't run a great campaign in 2016.
But so I'm talking to Kennedy.
Now, Kennedy is the libertarian at Fox News.
That's who she is.
Okay.
She's the only game in town, and she's fantastic.
And so I said to Kennedy, I go, well, you know, when Gary Johnson ran as a Republican in 2012, he was in one of the debates.
I go, does anyone remember him doing anything in those debates?
And Kennedy, I shit you not, goes, I don't think Gary Johnson was ever in one of the debates.
And I was like, no, no, no, he definitely was.
And she was like, I don't think so.
I don't think you're right about that.
And I was like, no, I'm definitely right.
And I pulled up on my phone the video.
It was a Fox News debate.
And Gary Johnson, a libertarian, was in there.
And Kennedy, the libertarian at Fox News, didn't even remember that Gary Johnson was there.
That's how, that's how much he didn't move the needle.
It wasn't even, no one even remembered that he was in the room.
And by the way, the only reason I remembered he was in the room was because he said a few really nice things about Ron Paul in that debate.
And I remember being like, all right, there you go, Gary Johnson, say some nice things about Ron Paul.
So anyway, it's just, it was nothing.
And so a lot of times, in the same way that those libertarians were like, we got to get Gary Johnson in the debates.
It's like the same ones were going, we got to get Joe Jorgensen in the debates, or Dave's got to push Joe Jorgensen more.
It's like, for what?
For what?
Who is it who listens?
Like, if I'm pushing Joe Jorgensen, let's just be real here.
Who is it who listens to me who's then going to go listen to Joe Jorgensen and be like, whoa, my head's exploding.
Like, oh my God, she kind of says some of the things Dave says in a much less impressive way.
Defining True Liberty00:11:23
Like, what do you want me to say?
And the other stuff that I just think people, like, look, here's my thing, right?
I believe that I want to do what is the best thing for achieving a libertarian society.
Like, I always want to do that.
Now, first and foremost, I always just try to tell the truth.
I think that's the best thing I could have.
Like, the relationship I have with you, the listener, the viewer, is that you know, I will always tell you the truth as I see it.
That doesn't mean I'm right about everything.
I'm only right about 99.9% of things, as I've established before, but I will always tell you the truth.
I'm not lying to you.
So, I'm not going to lie to people.
And even if I did like think it was like, it's not the best thing for the liberty movement in my perspective, from my perspective, for me to push Joe Jorgensen.
I think the best thing for the liberty movement is to let people fucking know, like let like the larger libertarian voices out there have to let people know that, hey, the fucking woke shit doesn't speak for us.
That doesn't fucking speak for us.
We're in a very unique moment in 2020 in American history, a very fucking unique moment.
I don't think anyone could argue with that.
And the major issues of the day are the fucking government lockdowns, the fucking Black Lives Matter protests, and the riots, and the crumbling cities all across this fucking country, and the culture war.
Those are the fucking issues that are going on right now.
Okay.
You have to fucking like you.
This is the problem, right?
What Joe Jorgensen and Spike Cohen did was completely unnecessarily divide the libertarian base.
They split the base for no reason and for no benefit.
There was no reason to do this.
And they did.
And it's not like one thing or two things.
It's several things over and over again.
It's Joe Jorgensen's must be anti-racist tweet.
It's fucking her comment about all lives matter, that chick being fired.
It's Spike Cohen's constant praise of Black Lives Matter.
It's Spike Cohen's comment about how there's a long post about how there's a transgender genocide and all of this shit.
And this is what people need to fucking understand, right?
Like the wing of the Libertarian Party, which is, you know, the fucking, like, as I've said before, it's the top people in fucking positions of power within the Libertarian Party and the absolute bottom loser brigade types, right?
Like those people.
And who cares about the ones at the bottom?
They're irrelevant.
But the ones at the top, the fucking Nick Sarwaks of the world, the fucking, you know, those people, they, the way they feel about racism, and I'm not talking about anti-white racism, right?
I'm talking about the racism that they're talking about, the way they feel about the alt-right, okay?
The way that if anybody, you know, if there's one sniff of something, you know, like it literally is a controversy to those type of people that I once said I'm sympathetic to the alt-right, even though I could never get on board with it, right?
Like that's a controversy to those people.
Okay.
So if you have that feeling about the alt-right, right?
Like if you have that feeling about racism or systemic oppression or anything like that.
So just imagine, okay, if the alt-right controlled the entire corporate press, all of academia, all of Hollywood, and all of professional sports and every major corporation in the country.
Imagine then how fucking sick of the alt-right you would be.
Imagine it wasn't just a couple hundred people in Charlottesville and a few fucking trolls on Twitter.
Imagine it was all of the, like the entire powerful elite were those people.
And someone started pandering to them.
Can you imagine how you'd just be sick of it?
Well, that's how people feel about the woke shit.
And when you start speaking, like just making up this bullshit about how there's a transgender genocide or saying we must be anti-racist or any of this shit, there is a whole segment of the population that instantly dismisses you.
You're done to them.
And this is what they did for no reason.
They committed movement suicide because they were too tone deaf and let too many of these fucking left libertarians run their fucking Twitter and all of this other shit.
And they squandered the fucking moment.
And I'm sorry to be like the bearer of bad news, but that's what happened here.
Look, there is a fucking month and a half left.
Maybe they can go prove me wrong and have some big moment and lead some type of libertarian movement.
I hope that's the case.
But when that doesn't happen, come back and realize that, you know what?
It was actually a good thing that some of the fucking like bigger voices in the liberty movement were calling them out for that shit and protecting our brand and letting you know that it's like, no, no, no, no, we're serious people who stand for fucking free markets and, you know, are opposed the state.
That's what we are.
We stand for fucking property rights, the non-aggression principle.
This is a very serious philosophy that a lot of very brilliant people have, you know, mapped out over the years.
And this here, this ain't it.
So I am sorry, but I'm not going to support these guys.
I'll probably keep my mouth shut about them from here on out.
But it's just like people got to understand, man, like when you're wading into a culture war like this, this is, you can't be completely tone deaf and you can't have the wrong type of people.
And by the way, I will just say this, that they had fucking Scott Horton as an advisor for free advising the campaign.
And I know exactly what he was telling them.
He was telling them all the right things to do and they didn't want to listen to him.
They could easily have come to people like me, like Tom Woods, like a bunch of other people, and gotten some really good fucking advice.
They could have done that and they didn't want to because they thought it was a better move to play the woke card and to not piss off the left libertarians at the top of the libertarian party.
Okay, so you guys made your fucking choice.
You chose that.
That's fine.
Like, you look, what could I say if someone chose to not want to talk to me and talk to someone else who knows better?
Okay.
But we'll see if they knew better or not.
You ended up going this route.
And here's the thing is that it already collapsed on them because they basically went the route of saying, not just saying like, we're fucking, like, we think Black Lives Matter has some legitimate grievances.
They went the route of saying, we're with Black Lives Matter.
And like, some of us called very early on that this Black Lives Matter thing wasn't so great.
It wasn't just saying the literal words, Black Lives Matter, you know, just like fucking North Korea isn't literally a republic of the people or whatever they call themselves, right?
People's Republic.
That's not North Korea.
So it's not just the words.
We were like, hey, there's an organization of Marxists.
There's real deal Marxists in the streets.
They're an identitarian racist movement.
They're looting.
They're committing arson.
They're committing assaults.
They're committing murders.
This is a really big problem.
And they went, no, no, no.
We're not listening to the Dave Smith libertarians of the world.
We're all in with Black Lives Matter.
And the riots and the violence got worse and worse and worse to the point that even Joe Biden had to fucking tuck his tail and go, oh, actually, the riots are a really big problem, but it's Trump's fault.
You know?
And now they're left out there like, oh shit, we sucked up to this fucking base.
You split your own base for no reason.
And then you turned all of these people off.
I've used Tim Poole as the example before, but he's a great one.
He's a guy who gets millions of fucking views, who's very open to the libertarian message.
But just like I said, like how you would feel if the alt-right controlled all of the press, academia, Hollywood, and professional sports and corporations, as soon as he saw that you were going for the woke shit, he was like, nope, not going to do that.
And he's voting for Trump now.
They took a guy who was fucking interested in the Libertarian Party, who's got millions of views, and now he's voting for Trump.
So if you can't see that and recognize what a fuck up that was, I don't know what to tell you.
But I will tell you this.
This is how politics works.
As soon as the election's over, then it'll be time for a lot of people to start getting the point that I was making, like the LP types.
Most people who listen to the show already get what I'm saying.
But the LP types, they'll start going, oh yeah, this was a terrible showing.
She did way worse than Gary Johnson.
Oh yeah, what happened here?
And we'll start looking at it.
And that'll be that.
So I don't know.
Anything you want to add to that?
Yeah, fucking epic rant, man.
I got the front row seat for it.
I agree wholeheartedly from day one.
I hated what they were doing.
And it's nice to see that it was a losing strategy.
And I agree with everything you said.
Hey, look, maybe they're going to go out there and get 10% of the vote and we're going to look like assholes.
But no, not going to happen.
And I also, the other thing I'll say is that I don't buy all the excuses that people are making.
You know, there's a lot of people going, well, this is a year that it was just going to be really hard for a third party.
This is the easiest year.
This was the year.
This was the year.
I completely agree with you.
Don't give me any of this bullshit.
This was the year.
I mean, first of all, you've had government encroachment of civil liberties in like unprecedented way.
They've just, the government themselves destroyed the economy.
And it's not like traditionally when the government destroys the economy and they're like, no, no, we didn't.
It was greed or it was something else.
You know, no, they're like, no, we destroyed the economy.
Yes, we are telling you we destroyed the economy.
Like the Fed printing, the money printing, I mean, like the spending at an all-time high, the fucking, you know, of course, like I said, the fucking, you know, Marxists in the street.
I mean, it's like, what, what a great year to be a libertarian.
And look what the fuck happened.
They fucking, you know, it's almost out of a cartoon that can you imagine, right?
Like if there was anything, if the elites had not become so unimpressive, like, you know, and they were elites, like the way elites are supposed to be, you'd imagine around, say, the day after election day, around November 4th, 2016, the Democrats would have gone, all right, who are we running in 2020?
Because this guy, Donald Trump, you know, I mean, look, you have a guy in Donald Trump who's like very divisive.
Half the country fucking hates his guts.
A large portion of the people voting for him really don't like a lot of things about him, but they're willing to tolerate it because they see the other side as such a threat.
Trump's Divisive Appeal00:07:16
He's a guy who's, let's just say, goofy.
He's failed on a bunch of his campaign promises.
He's not, you know, we're still living in a lawless America.
I want to remind everybody of that.
Still wars raging.
The trade shit is all bullshit.
He's, let's just say, not like, like he, he is instinctually brilliant, but he's not well read, let's say.
He's not a deep thinker.
He doesn't have an understanding of like a deep understanding of any policy issue.
This is a guy who's very beatable.
And clearly the Democrats hate him more than they've ever hated anyone.
So obviously they'd be like, well, we're going to right now just start, you know, focusing on who the fucking nominee is going to be.
And we're going to find a young, intelligent, smart, charismatic guy that can just clean his clock.
And here we are, less than two months out, and they've got Joe fucking Biden.
You had it.
By the way, this is part of the reason why I joined the Libertarian Party because I foresaw all of this shit.
I knew that, and I said this, this is all on record.
You can go back and look at this, but I said, I go, you know what?
2016 was a golden opportunity for the Libertarian Party and they fucking blew it.
And in 2020, they're going to have another one.
It's going to be Trump versus another shitty corporate establishment Democrat.
I couldn't have, in my wildest dreams, imagined it'd be a senile old man, but I thought that it would be someone shitty.
I knew it'd be someone shitty.
And this was the opportunity.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
You can say things like, okay, and this is a fair point that people will make.
They'll say that, well, you know, they're really that she's not getting the media opportunities that Gary Johnson got.
And that's true.
That's no question about it.
That's one of the advantages of running a Gary Johnson Bill Weld.
If you have two former governors that are liked by the media, then they will bring you on.
Of course, once they were worried Gary Johnson might do well, they brought him on and fucking destroyed him.
But that's true.
They got more media attention.
And no question, Justin Amash, if he had won, would have gotten more media attention.
I mean, he's a sitting member of Congress, so they'd have to give him more attention.
That's true.
But okay, so you got to get a little bit creative.
And the thing is, here, like, it's not really that.
It's not rocket science.
What you have to do is make yourself a story that needs to be talked about.
And the fucking easy things to go after that were all over the place were like, like, what you have to do is take positions that are so offensive to the corporate press that they're going to have to bash you on these positions and then be really prepared to defend them.
Like, number one, the easiest one was we, there should be no government restrictions on anything because of COVID.
And then right away, they'd have to cover this.
Like, if you were really running a campaign, people are going to die.
People are going to die.
And then you have to be prepared to tell them, I don't care and back it up and back it up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't care.
People are going to die because of what you're doing.
And you know what?
You don't have a right to do that.
We either have a constitution or we don't.
Forget a threat to democracy.
You're a threat to America.
You just destroyed the whole rule of law system.
You guys are now, the corporate press is promoting dictatorship by governors.
And you have to actually be prepared.
This is the thing.
You have to be prepared to really back this up and really go through the science and really show where the lockdowns haven't saved any lives and all of this shit.
And then you should have like, if you're just going to go, the problem with like just saying the woke shit is it's kind of like, okay, well, look at you now.
The media still doesn't care to have you on and you didn't fucking differentiate yourself at all.
So that's where you are.
And where you are is a failure, unfortunately.
And I hope we have another opportunity in 2020.
I mean, in 2024, but I don't know that we will.
These were two, 2016 and 2020 were golden opportunities.
And the real trouble of it is that we like libertarians, and it hurts me to my core, but the truth is that we let at this point, I think, all of the Ron Paul momentum slip through our fingers.
I shouldn't say all.
I'll take that back.
There's a lot more libertarians out there because of Ron Paul.
And there's a lot of them that still care.
And they could be rallied together.
They could be.
But 2012 was a long time ago now.
That's eight years ago.
In 2024, it'll be 12 years ago.
That's a long time.
That's a long time to let it slip.
And that's why the Rand Paul campaign of 2016 was so heartbreaking.
The Johnson campaign in 2016 and now this campaign.
That's what's heartbreaking about it.
Is that yet an opportunity to really, you know, the obvious move that you'd want is to unite libertarians to getting on board with this ticket.
Libertarians right now, they'll probably, Trump will get more libertarian votes than Joe Jorgensen will.
I guarantee it.
I don't mean LP party members.
I mean fucking libertarians.
And that's, that's, you have no one to blame if you can't even carry your own people.
You have no one to blame except yourself.
And it's a shame.
It's a shame that this is what happened, but I'm not going to, you know, hold back and not tell the truth as I see it because some people really want to get more votes for their candidate.
I'm sorry.
I'm not going to do that no matter who the candidate is.
So, all right.
You know, I wanted to talk a bit about this social media thing, but we're we talked a lot more about this stuff than I thought.
Was there anything else in the news that you wanted to mention, Rob?
Social Media Dilemmas00:06:23
Um, no, let's get into the Netflix thing.
Brian's all hopped up on painkillers, he's good for it.
All right, well, I'm drinking beers, I don't give a shit.
Let's rock out.
All right, well, we could do it.
Maybe we won't uh, we won't spend too long on it because I do have uh a few things that I have to take care of tonight, unfortunately.
But so, I, I, I watched uh, the other day, um, this Netflix documentary, the um, the social, what is it, the social experience?
Fuck, god damn it, I should remember the title.
The social social dilemma, yes, that's it, the social dilemma.
Thank you, Rob.
I appreciate it.
I guess, uh, by the way, I'm outing myself from the last episode that I didn't cancel Netflix.
I'm sorry, that cuties thing was really fucking horrible, but you know, I really watch very little TV.
I went back to rewatch it.
Oh, Rob, you piece of shit.
Uh, so there was this documentary, um, and I gotta say, I guess I would recommend it.
Like, it was a fairly interesting documentary.
It was, uh, I thought the well, I'll say this: one, the fucking thing that was brutal about it, that like the documentary part was good, but they did that thing where they have like um acting in the middle of a documentary, which by the way, if there's any documentary filmmakers listening, just cut that out.
Why do they do that?
You know, like they'll just be in the middle of a documentary, and then to like really prove their point, they cut to like a family, you know, who's like all like on their social and happy eating pants.
It just sucks.
Oh my god, it's like they, they, of course, you have like the worst actors and the worst thing, and it was so like, oh, it was awful.
But they were getting into, you know, basically, it was a bunch of people who worked for big social media companies and Google and, you know, and who had left and were really upset about the implications for humanity of where this stuff is going.
They make some interesting points, but I really, I really disagreed with the core message.
Which is the call for regulation.
I didn't see it, but I'm sure it's the call for regulation.
And they don't even make that a really big part of the movie, but that is where it goes toward the end.
It's the core focus of it.
Obviously, well, they kind of just spend the whole movie laying out the problems, and then toward the end, it's like, and obviously, then without seeing it, can I just break down what I'm sure it was about?
You got to go, anyone who's interested in this topic, you got to go Google Jordan Lamier.
He wrote a book, Who Owns the Future.
I'm just going to assume he was in this documentary because he's like the core intellectual behind it.
But the idea is that all of us by engaging in using these networks, people are tracking everything that we do.
Google at its surface is an AI company.
And so, what they try and claim is that since all of us are giving over our data for free to these companies and they're using this big data, we should be getting paid for it.
And government should be coming in to create legislation to ensure that we're properly compensated.
That's generally the premise.
Do I have that right?
Yeah, kind of.
I mean, what they get into, sure, there's a lot of that in the film, but what they get into is basically that, and there's some fairness in what they're saying, is that basically most people who use these services have no idea what's actually going on here.
And I think there is a fair point to be said with that.
You think of Google as a tool that gives you, you know what I mean?
That like gives you the information you ask for.
And you think of Facebook as a place to, you know, message your aunt or see pictures of your nephew or something like that or see friends from high school.
And the reality is that you are the product and that they're basically like figuring out all of this shit and that there are these algorithms.
And then I suppose like the more complex algorithms they consider artificial intelligence that are basically figuring out ways to manipulate you to use their service more and more.
And most people aren't aware of this and the implications of this are really going to fundamentally alter.
how societies, you know, interact, how people interact with each other.
And by the way, I think there is a lot of truth to that.
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say there are certain unique places where people will basically put the idea that human beings are so stupid, we need government to help them.
So one of them is that when it comes to this big data manipulation and using services that are free, that if people offer us shit that's free, it might make us miserable and we're going to continue to use it because it's free.
And then you start looking at it and you go, hey, this makes human beings miserable.
And it also is collecting their data in order to essentially make these corporations stronger and better able to manipulate people.
We need someone to step in and do something about this.
And that's where they fuck up.
Once they step in and go, hey, we need government to step in and change this situation, you're putting the most evil player into the game to try and rectify something with, if anything, I'm just saying worst case scenario, if these fucking, you know, social media corporations were that evil, like let's just say they were the worst and most evil players in the world in the world.
So like the enemy of the enemy is my friend.
At least we're diversifying power a little bit.
The idea that government's going to step in to help us and protect us from some other player is just fictional and wrong.
Well, yes, I agree.
And then beyond that, you know, what's one of the things that like kind of jumps out at me about it is that you go like, okay, so there are some things about this that are a little bit troubling.
But the most troubling aspect of it is always the fact that it can involve government.
So the most troubling aspect of this is that then the government can get their hands on all of this data that the social media companies are collecting about you.
Even from even from the point of view of the people in the film, the most troubling aspect is that it can alter elections or all of this other stuff.
So the issues are always when it comes down to governments.
Fake News and Bias00:11:16
Like that's, I mean, look, I like, I'll say this, okay?
And I think this is completely consistent with libertarian philosophy.
But I do, so in the same way that you, like, fraud is still, would still be illegal in a libertarian society.
And so just, you know, giving some or like misleading, you know, I think it falls under the umbrella of fraud, but like misleading a consumer in like a very material way would be illegal.
Like an easy example of that is like, you know, if you sold someone something, you know, if you sold someone sugar, but it was actually rat poison, that's a fucking crime.
Like you can't do that, obviously.
You know what I mean?
Like no libertarian would be for that.
And so I do think, and also just another example, right?
Like in a libertarian society, and not just a libertarian society, but in like almost any society, right?
Like if you, you know, like you'll go to a restaurant where they don't have their prices on the menu, like nice restaurants usually don't have prices there.
But if you wouldn't know of such things.
Okay, fair enough.
But some nice restaurants, some do, to be fair.
But a lot of restaurants will not have prices on the menus.
Now, if you were to order a steak and they came down and gave you a bill at the end of your meal and they went, oh, you owe us $100,000.
You would be like, no, I'm not paying you that.
And any judge in the world would be like, no, you don't owe them fucking that.
Like, they, you, if, if you're going, and this is all just something like applied within reason.
But if you're going to charge something like that, you have to let them know before they eat the steak.
Like, it is no reasonable person could assume that this is what you're going to do.
So there's an onus on you to let the customer know if you want to do stuff like that.
And I do think that there is some onus on these companies to be more upfront about what it is they're doing.
And I don't think the terms of service agreement stuff is anything that would like hold up in a legal order based on reason.
It'd be like, no, you can't like sneak all of this shit into a fucking five-page fine print thing that nobody actually reads.
You have to, it should just be known and there should be some type of option that's like, hey, just so you know, we're sharing your information with all of these customers, with all of these businesses, blah, blah, blah.
This is what we're doing.
And I think that would be reasonable.
Like, I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to expect.
That being said, what like 99% of this shit is, is like when it's not government involved, it's like, okay, so some they're taking all of your information so some company can sell you pants because they think you like this type of pants.
Like that's what most of that shit is.
And like, for example, when my wife was pregnant, so when for those of you who don't have kids, there's a whole lot of shit you got to buy for kids.
You know, you need fucking a stroller and a changing table and a crib and like a thousand other things you have to buy when you have a kid.
So I'd like to buy a few of these.
And then every day in my fucking social media, I'd get advertisements for more baby shit because they have my data and I'm buying baby shit.
So they know I want it.
But like a lot of the time it was something useful.
You know what I mean?
And like, certainly, I probably bought a lot of shit that I wouldn't have bought because the advertisements were popping up in front of me.
But I don't know.
I'm not like, it's not like they have the people designing these algorithms have agency, but I don't.
I could not buy it if I didn't want to buy it.
Like it's that, that's on me.
Now, one of the other points they make in the documentary.
By the way, that's an element, but there are some more nefarious elements.
There's mood manipulation.
Yes.
There's the information that they show you.
And then there's also bigger picture.
The well, some of the argument has to do with automation, and that's bullshit because automation benefits all of society.
And they try and pretend like they're going to displace jobs and that that's a loss.
And that's not true.
Oh, that's all bullshit.
That's all bullshit.
There is something, and we have to take a step back and go, I don't fully understand the relationship between some of these tech companies and government and that they would exist without government.
And that includes Google.
But there is something a little bit disconcerting about what the next generation of AAI technology is and the fact that all of us are willing contributors and that every time we search anything into Google, we're giving them a very important insight into what are the questions that human beings have.
What are the issues that we want to solve?
What's the information that we want to know?
So there is some next, like next level and next generation stuff that's not great.
But just to bring it back to the kind of libertarian message, I don't think that the worst aspects of that are free from government or that there's anything that government can do to help us here.
Well, yes, that's the important kind of.
And by the way, there's some new technology things that are coming about that are already making changes to this.
Had an advertiser not far back, UBDI, which allowed you to profit off your own data, which is also something that's going on with the Brave browser.
And so it.
Yes, and that's that's kind of like the thing that they don't account for is also that people can get this knowledge and then they can, you know, like different entrepreneurs can develop different software to adapt to it.
So there's a lot of stuff there.
Look, one of the points that I thought was really strong that they made in the documentary was about the effect that it has on children, particularly young girls.
I do think that all of this looking on they have to look good.
That's a that's a benefit to society.
You know, but like, no, look, Jonathan Haidt was in the documentary and he made a very powerful point.
He's he's phenomenal.
And he made a very powerful point about how this is really affecting like young girls' self-image and depression rates and suicide rates.
And I think raising awareness about that is really important.
However, I really do think that, look, man, this is like on parents.
And okay, I understand you can't change the entire culture, but like, yeah, if something's damaging your child, you have to come in there and hopefully we can raise awareness and more parents can come in there and just be like, yeah, no, I'm sorry.
No Instagram account, 14-year-olds.
Like, you don't get that.
You don't need it.
And so, no, like, you're not going to have that.
And to me, it's like, when, like, I kind of hate this thing.
And don't get me wrong.
I understand.
And maybe it's because my daughter's not even two yet.
Maybe I'll feel a little bit different when she's a teenager.
But I understand being upset about the culture and being like, God damn, I wish I didn't have to put my kid into the current culture that we have right now.
But I hate this thing where parents are like complaining and up in arms and asking the government to do something when the solution is right in front of you.
Like, let's have a little bit of personal responsibility.
Like, government, come in here and get my 14-year-old off her phone.
No, I'm sorry.
You get your fucking kid off your phone.
Like, that's your job.
You're paying the phone bill.
You get your kid off your phone.
You know, like at least part of it has to be on you.
The other thing, and then I got to wrap and get out of here.
But the other thing that's just, you know, would make your blood boil about the documentary that made mine boil as well is that they go, the big problem is all this fake news that's out there.
You know, it's a, and it's really interesting to see these people.
Of course, they're all left-wing.
And let's just have CNN Fox.
That's it.
What else do we need?
They don't even realize.
And when I say left-wing, it's like you could just look at them and realize they're left-wing.
You know, like they're like, the problem is people are saying climate change isn't real, you know, and like this shit.
And the thing is, they don't even realize their own bias.
Like, and that happens a lot with people.
When you take your own bias as a given, then you just go, well, I'm just being unbiased here.
But you're not.
You have a bias.
You just, you take it as a given.
So what you're basically saying is that it's like, well, now all this fake news can get out to people.
But what you're taking as a given that you're not even like really inspecting is that it wasn't fake news before that.
That back when we only had three networks and fucking, you know, seven trusted newspapers, that that was real news, but it wasn't.
That was bullshit.
So to me, I look at it more much more like when you had three networks, you're like 100% of the news was fake news.
And now that you have this fucking, you know, like the internet news, it's like 98% of it's fake news.
But at least now the truth has a little bit of a shot.
You know what I mean?
Like the truth has a little bit of a shot to get out there and reach more people.
And so I just see like what they were calling a negative, I see an overwhelming positive.
And then of course they repeat the tired fucking talking point that Vladimir Putin, you know, like interfered in the election.
Can I just say something on that note?
I saw a conflicting study and I didn't read the whole thing because it was like 60 pages from some NYU professor, but it caught my eye and I think it holds true.
But because of social media, you actually have more like knowledge of alternative opinions.
So even myself, I've somewhat, I mean, obviously, I'm not a woke person, but I somewhat understand that there's a large contingency of people with a certain point of view.
And I would say I police myself more than if I wasn't even aware of those people's existence.
It somewhat has permeated my own thoughts and logic because I know that people hold that point of view.
If it wasn't for social media, I wouldn't even know that they exist.
And that kind of goes both ways.
So the idea that social media is just in the ecochamber actually isn't true because you're actually shown more point of views because you know that they're out there.
Well, that's a good point, but I would also just say, and I really do have to wrap, but I would just say that they take it.
This is one of the things that they take as a given in the movie that they really don't examine at all.
But they go, you know, it's having this effect of polarizing people.
Well, number one, that may or may not be true.
It may or may not be true that social media is polarizing people.
But more fundamentally than that, why are you taking it as a given that that's bad?
I mean, like, that's a question worth asking that no one ever should, the people who complain about the polarization of the country never really seem to say, well, why is it better to be unified than polarized?
I mean, being certainly I could understand if you're saying we're polarized and we're going to fight a civil war, that's worse.
That's worse.
But maybe we're unified and we're going to go fight some other war.
That might be worse.
So I just think there's a lot of things there that require deeper thought and, you know, deeper inspection than was given in the movie.
But it was, it was an interesting documentary if you can get past the fucking horrible acting that really should have been cut out of all of it.
But we got to wrap on that.
Make sure you guys go listen to Rob's podcast, Run Your Mouth.