Jan. 4, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
06:45
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| As we kick off 2017, I thought my first direct message of the year should offer up at least one solid prediction | ||
| for the next 12 months. | ||
| While 2016 was the year of fake outrage, I suspect that this year will be the year of misdirected anger. | ||
| Before I get into this misdirected anger, I want to take just a moment and share with you guys how I ended 2016 by taking a digital shutdown for about 10 days, which basically seemed like the perfect way to end such a crazy year. | ||
| Going off the grid was truly the only way I could recharge the batteries after the haywire 2016 we had here at The Rubin Report. | ||
| Not only did we take The Rubin Report independent, creating a fully fan-funded show back in June, but we started a production company, we built a studio, then we moved into a home, we built another studio inside our home, and a whole bunch of other stuff. | ||
| Let's just say that if I never drive another U-Haul in my life that it'll be too soon. | ||
| Of course, on top of all this commotion, we had to actually put on the show that we do every week, and yeah, there was that whole American presidential election thing. | ||
| Add this all up and toss in the constant beeping, vibrating, and buzzing of this little device, and I think a little time off the grid was well-deserved and probably beyond needed. | ||
| I spent the last ten days with friends and family, eating, drinking, laughing, arguing, and most importantly, not staring into this black mirror. | ||
| A couple times I went into my pocket to reflexively look at Twitter when I had a moment of nothingness, but even the desire for that lessened after a couple days without it. | ||
| I felt calmer and more present, and actually slept better. | ||
| I also ate food without taking pictures of it and filtering it. | ||
| I didn't tweet about Carrie Fisher's death, may the force be with her, or wish anyone a happy new year on Facebook. | ||
| About a week into my digital hiatus, I had a friend over and I was telling him about how I felt about being off the grid. | ||
| While I was really impressed by what I was doing, he looked at me wryly and said, so basically you're just living like it's 1996? | ||
| This off-the-cuff remark by my friend really framed why an online shutdown is so important to do now and again. | ||
| All I did for these last 10 days of the year was live life without the constant access to video, audio, information, and interaction that we're so obsessed with these days. | ||
| While it seemed like a huge thing for me to do, I was just living the exact same way we all lived only 20 years ago and for millennia before that. | ||
| It was only a couple years ago when we were talking about how the 24 hour news cycle was too fast. | ||
| Now it seems as if the news cycle is virtually minute to minute and you can be as engaged in it as the very people who are making the news in the first place. | ||
| All of this really does go a long way in explaining why so much of our political discourse seems so awful now even compared to just four years ago. | ||
| There's no thinking, no nuance, and no honesty anymore. | ||
| We've traded those vital tenets of a healthy society for reaction, generalization, and spin. | ||
| Add a mainstream media pumping out fake news and an online media that is fueled by clickbait garbage, and our ability to find the truth in the noise is becoming more difficult by the day. | ||
| This is the Catch-22 of any new technology. | ||
| With the incredible advances we get, like you right now watching this in any part of | ||
| the world, we also get parts that drag us backwards, like the misinformation and time | ||
| wasting nonsense. | ||
| This all leads me to where I want to go with the Rubin Report in 2017. | ||
| One of the reasons that I focus so much on the false cries of racism and bigotry, which now mostly come from the left, is not only because it stifles conversation and honest debate, but also because of what it leaves us with without these two vital components of a free society. | ||
| Once you've removed rational conversation and open debate, you aren't left with much more than anger and violence. | ||
| Since the election, I've been saying how much I had hoped the left would take a look at its tactics and do some introspection after Trump's win. | ||
| Unfortunately, I haven't seen much of this happen. | ||
| The left's lack of self-awareness, coupled with the righteous indignation that their intellectual opponents are bigots, can only be a recipe for disaster. | ||
| Let me give you two possible ways that I think things could shake out this year. | ||
| Let's say the Trump presidency is an absolute disaster. | ||
| The economy crumbles, we get involved in some intractable war, and he makes terrible appointments to the Supreme Court. | ||
| In this case, virtually everyone will be against him, and rightfully so. | ||
| The media, which obviously already hates him, will call him out. | ||
| The left, which also already hates him, will continue to do so. | ||
| And the right, which is playing along with him, but still weary of him right now, will see that the ship is sinking and that they have to find some new blood. | ||
| Even the dreaded alt-right will fall into line if the country is heading in the right direction. | ||
| In short, what should happen when a president is doing a bad job will happen. | ||
| Now let's look at the flip side of all that. | ||
| Let's say that under Trump the economy takes off, we don't get involved in any crazy military adventures, and Trump governs mainly from the center. | ||
| The media is still going to go from outrage to outrage and tweet to tweet, the right will be thrilled with him, and the average person in the center will be happy that there's a little more money in their pocket. | ||
| The left, however, will have an impossible dilemma on their hands. | ||
| If the economy is good, and we aren't at war, and most of Trump's policies are centrist, how can you give credit to someone who you've spent the last two years calling Hitler? | ||
| They'll have painted themselves into an intellectual corner which can only lead to misplaced anger. | ||
| But I suspect that instead of looking at their own policies and behaviors that led us there, we know that they'll only double down on those very same tactics. | ||
| After all, even if the economy is great and the country is going in the right direction, how can you give credit to a racist, homophobic bigot? | ||
| And even if you were to acknowledge that the country was going in the right direction, then your own side would turn those tactics on to you. | ||
| Trust me, I should know. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Nobody likes being called gross and racist. | ||
| It's this name-calling instead of honest reasoned debate that got us here in the first place. | ||
| All that said, I have high hopes for 2017 and I plan on putting those hopes into action by making the Rubin Report more relevant and engaging than ever before. | ||
| I think we can take the fake outrage of last year and the misplaced anger that's heading our way this year to continue to build this new center. | ||
| It'll mean talking to people we disagree with and, as Ben Shapiro says, putting facts over feelings, but I believe that it's a worthy cause to fight for. | ||
| Either that or we can just forget the whole thing and join the Bigoteer Brigade. |
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