Dave Rubin and Colin Moriarty dissect identity politics, contrasting the left's institutional media dominance with the right's fragmented influence. They debate California's wealth disparity, advocating state division, and clash over abortion limits versus states' rights. While criticizing toxic victimhood narratives in gaming and Hollywood, they emphasize free speech alliances against perceived foundational erosion. Ultimately, they argue that respecting diverse voters and focusing on future battles rather than historical grievances is essential for preserving truthful discourse amidst online hostility. [Automatically generated summary]
Oh, well, congratulations on your continued success as well.
Well, it's funny the way that you just did that, because you did interview me in these two chairs for your podcast, which I hope most of my audience has listened to.
And for those that haven't, I think they should if they want to just get a different More insider take on what's going on in my mind and some of my history.
I actually think it was probably the best interview I've ever done, which is total credit to you.
You know, I always say at the end of a good interview that if I didn't look at my notes once, that's a good one.
Every now and again I have to look because I need to know something chronologically or a specific number or something.
I'm not even bringing notes to the table today because we've been doing We've been doing this for a while.
We met about a year and a half ago.
You were just some guy with some gaming site.
Yep.
And you tweeted something.
Now actually, I'm telling this story slightly backwards because I had had you on our show first
when I thought you were just a gamer guy.
Right.
I just thought you were some video game guy.
We're doing a YouTube week thing.
I saw your handle on Twitter, NoTaxation.
I was like, ah, this guy's kind of interesting.
He looks like a hipster, but he seems to be a conservative.
I don't know what to make of this.
And I had you on, and we do this about an hour.
I thought we were going to talk about Super Mario Brothers the whole time.
And you go into just an hour of extremely well thought out, cogent, Politics and your beliefs, and I was really impressed and I said to you, I think I said it on air, I was like, you're going to be a star in the world of politics.
No, I'm not sorry for the people that got faux offended by it, but if there was some person in Lincoln, Nebraska that really was mortified and had to stay in bed for a few days, I really do apologize about that.
But anyway, my whole kind of world blew up at that point.
I quit the company I founded and started a week later my new company, CLS, Collins Last Stand.
And it's just been a whirlwind of a year.
I mean, it's just been a wild year of learning and figuring things out and failing and succeeding and trying.
It's been 60, 70, 80 hour weeks.
I haven't had a day off all year.
I was reflecting on that a few days ago to my girlfriend.
We go to Vegas pretty often, and even when we were there last time, I was just working in the hotel room the entire time I was there.
I believe it, because for the amount of times that we try to get together, and I'm like, I'm free for this half hour here, and you're like, I got 15 minutes this way, and blah, blah, blah.
But I wanted to start with that story, because I think it's so relevant to so much that has happened since then.
In our first interview, when you did that YouTube show, you basically predicted that this type of thing was going to happen to you one day, that you would step in something politically and that then it would all blow up and all that.
And I think there's a link to everything that's going on right now with this Kanye stuff, which we're going to talk about, and a bunch more.
But it's so it's been a basically a nutty year for you, but you survived.
And I think it's important to really acknowledge that because even something like the International Business Times, they wrote a piece about you in the midst of all this, where they talked about your racist tweet.
It was, ah, peace and quiet, hashtag a day without a woman.
So no hint of racism there.
And you were the one that helped me get in touch with them.
But it was up there for a day and the damage was done.
It's all just transparent clickbait and this kind of desire to destroy.
I've been trying to take a step back from that precipice myself and the way I treat others and have really been cognizant about that the entire year that I've been doing CLS because I don't want to contribute to that.
I want to contribute to the reason, to the knowledge, and to the step-by-step process by the way you and I reach our conclusions as opposed to insulting and getting into the muck.
But we all kind of get sucked in every now and again, right?
Like, the best of us do it.
I try so hard not to, and then somebody does something so ridiculous.
It's usually an author or a journalist, so to speak, that writes one of these crazy things about someone I know, calling you racist, you know, calling Jordan Peterson this or Shapiro this or Sam Harris that.
And I'm like, I know these people.
These are my friends.
You don't do research.
You don't do any of the things that a journalist is supposed to do.
But this just seems to be proliferating throughout everything right now.
It is, but I think the Kanye situation and just other situations kind of parallel to it that are obviously much smaller, it's a sign that people are not, or there's large swaths of people that are not necessarily buying into it.
I think the major thing that the far left in the United States is making a mistake with right now is assuming that because someone like me, I don't like Donald Trump.
I mean, I'm very vocal about that.
I don't like him.
I don't think he should be president.
I'm a conservative.
I don't think he's a real conservative.
And that, just because I don't like him, I like them?
And, but also are a little uncomfortable with the way conservatism has gone, or the way, you know, kind of, I'm not really into socially conservative things and stuff like that.
Like, there's a new way forward, multiple ways forward.
And so that's their big mistake.
So they insult and they slander everyone, but they're not really getting new inheritance by doing it.
They're actually just isolating themselves and isolating other people from them.
And so that's actually kind of good for us in the long term.
In the midterms, it's gonna pay off for the Democrats and the left, but I don't think long term it's gonna be a winning strategy.
I'm not so sure that conventional thinking on this midterm thing is right, because I think the left has gone so bananas.
The media has gone so crazy.
The left hasn't come up with one new idea.
They've just doubled down on identity politics from every level, from Bernie on down.
It's just doubled down, doubled down.
That I don't know that there's anyone out there who voted for Trump, or even if you were an independent that voted for Gary Johnson or whatever else, that anyone that didn't, yeah, both of us.
But I don't know that anyone that did that is gonna go, you know what, in the year and a half, If you can get over tweets, Trump tweets and stuff like that, I don't see how you could possibly be like, I'm gonna vote, I'm gonna suddenly vote for identity politics.
I'm suddenly gonna vote for collectivism and leftism.
What may happen is that they just won't vote, in which case the outcome that you're predicting will happen.
But I think because of some of the NRA stuff, I think this Kanye thing, the general attack on free speech and hysteria, I think it actually may go the other way.
I honestly haven't heard anyone else say that, but.
It's totally, that's why, you know, And it's touching Oakland and Alameda and, you know, not so much San Jose, I guess, but parts of the valley where it's just, San Francisco just kind of fell apart before my very eyes.
And it's very sad.
There's a lot to love about that city.
And it's just, yeah, progressive politics have taken it over.
But more than that, it's just, you know, the tech industry is kind of ruining things.
You're seeing it in Venice, actually, too, where I live in Santa Monica now.
And Snapchat's in Venice.
And you see, it's amazing, you see literal tags everywhere, spray paint tags of just, you know, Snapchat, fuck Snapchat, Snapchat go home and stuff like you're seeing kind of small things like that happen there.
So it's a complicated situation.
But California overall, I mean, I love the idea of splitting it into multiple parts and stuff like that.
So that, you know, there are more Republicans in California than any other state.
Well, there definitely is a nascent Republican or conservative or libertarian movement here.
You know, I had John Kasich in here just a couple weeks ago.
He was here with Schwarzenegger to meet with California conservatives to kind of figure out how do we step back from the abyss right now that this state is going into.
And most likely, I mean, it's pretty sad.
I love L.A.
You know, from the day I moved here a little over five years ago, I have loved it here every day.
And I've been successful here and I've met tons of great people.
And it's like, man, Gavin Newsom, who was the The mayor of San Francisco, who is as left of left of left of left, he could be the governor here.
I mean, so it could get worse than it is.
You know, he'll make Jerry Brown look moderate, or make him look, you know, something else.
Without revealing the numbers that we paid in taxes, and it's not Crimea River here, but I can honestly tell you that I paid in taxes because I just wrote the check a week or two ago.
More, basically, than I made in almost any year of my life until the last two years that I ever made.
I mean, success comes, you know, my accountant was trying to talk me down, being like, it's just a matter of success, like, relax, you know?
And I'm like, I appreciate that, I respect that, but to be robbed by the state in such a gratuitous way, and I get nothing in return for it, literally nothing.
I don't know what they're doing with that money.
No, it's super sad, and I was telling people on Twitter that You know, with the financial uncertainty that comes with owning a business, especially in California, again, also 1.5% of gross receipts you owe to the state, no matter if I think you made a profit or not, which is fantastic.
I would love to hire an editor.
I'd love to hire someone full-time.
When I left, kind of funny, one of my major things when we hired two people that still work there that I never got to work with, one of my major things was like, let's pay them well.
I'm usually like, I'm in the Dagobah system. I can't make it there right now.
All right, well look, I have no intentions with you right now other than let's just shoot the shit.
I want you to question me as much as I question you.
Sure.
But I do want to dive into the Kanye thing a little bit because I think, and I'm doing my direct message tomorrow about this, I think there has been an awakening.
I mean, I think this thing is absolutely huge.
That being said, I'm not a huge fan of Kanye.
Beyond the headlines, I don't know that much about him.
But I know that this guy is a mover.
This guy is someone who truly, by what he says, can change culture.
I do know Candace personally, and I've had her on a bunch.
We were just at Berkeley last week, and I'll be in New Hampshire with her on Tuesday.
I like her a lot, she's evolving as she's doing all this.
Yeah, I think we're at a transcendent moment right now.
I think there are so many.
I think that there are literally millions and millions of people in this country and in the world who have been waking up to all of the things that we've been talking about related to political correctness and free speech and just the way that you're treated if you think a little bit differently than the mainstream wants you to think.
And he just gave them air.
He just said, hey guys, here's a little cover.
And it's interesting because when you see the people that support us, look, we're both fan funded on Patreon.
People like our content, but our content's still going up for free.
So people are paying us because they, There's like a pride in us in like, oh, you guys are saying something.
You guys are actually, they're not just doing it so that I can sit down and have an interview with any old schmuck or so that you can make some irrelevant video.
They actually believe that we're taking some position that has value.
Otherwise they wouldn't pay for it because there's a lot of other content out there.
And I think he just gave room for now a lot of other people to say, you know what, there's probably more than 20 people who think like I do, but they haven't had any cover.
And I think he just gave them cover.
And I know Candace, and Candace is going to freaking grab this thing and run with it.
And I just worry about what the media is going to do about it.
I mean, yesterday, Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, And Mediite, and Mediite used to be good.
They all ran pieces about what a far right person Scott Adams is.
Scott Adams, I've got his book here.
I never heard him, you know, yes, did he basically like Trump?
Although when I had him on before the election, he wasn't even a Trump supporter.
Yeah, he basically liked Trump.
That doesn't make you far right.
Far right has much more of a feeling about like an ethnic version of the United States or related to immigration and all.
I've never heard him really talk about any of those things.
I think a lot of that has to do, and you and I have talked about this, you hit the nail on the head, actually, with something you said to me, I think it might have been private, actually, where the moniker alt-right is so meaningless, and the so-called alt-right, which exists, a few thousand people, whatever it might be, have no systemic power, right?
They have no power, and I think people have finally started putting two and two together, that, well, equating a Dave Rubin, for instance, with the alt-right makes no sense, because Dave Rubin actually has a voice, a platform, and respectable people give him credence, so they've moved What are they called?
They've moved it a little bit, actually, to the center.
Just a little bit.
And now they're trying the far-right thing.
And they do that to me, too.
I don't know that I have really any far-right ideals, other than that I'm proud of the United States, I believe in borders and all those kinds of things, but I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-gay marriage, I'm pro-drug legalization, pro-prostitution legalization, all those kinds of things.
Very far-right positions.
And they often throw that stuff at me, but it's about It's about insulting people and sticking them with things that they can't shake, no matter what's true and what's not.
He, at the end, I said, what gives you the bravery to take these positions?
And, you know, he said it in a British accent, so it sounds better than I'm gonna say it right now, but he said, you know, when you get in the pool, you realize the water isn't that cold.
And I think that's all people need.
We're not being slaughtered out there.
Yeah, it sucks when people write shitty things about you and say lies about you and you can spend your whole life trying to correct their lies, which actually just breeds more of them because they know you'll drive more clicks and all that.
But the average person out there just wants to be able to say what they think.
And really what you just said, which is you just gave me a pretty mixed bag of political views that you have right there.
I think they're basically libertarian views pretty much.
And we're pretty much aligned on most of this stuff.
But that's what most people are.
We have some inconsistencies.
We have some things we're not totally sure about.
But it seems to me that's what they fear more than anything else.
It's not like, you don't fear the real extreme this way or the extreme this way.
You fear the real people who are kind of like, All right, I feel this way about taxes, but maybe that doesn't line up exactly how I feel about guns.
Those things shouldn't all be congruent with each other.
And I also think that, you know, people that kind of put themselves in these small chambers and these small kind of very, very thin verticals where they have to have everyone that agrees with everything they say.
First of all, these people are hypocrites, right?
These are the same people that voted for Obama in 2008 when he was explicitly against gay marriage.
So by their own logic, if you voted for Obama in 2008, I voted for Obama in 2008, if you voted for him in 2008, you were against gay marriage, right?
It's just incredibly stupid, flimsy logic put out by, frankly, stupid people.
So if you, if you, just uneducated people that don't know anything about politics, political science or history or anything like that, and they try to kind of pigeonhole people, instead of what I'd be more interested in and what I'm trying to kind of get to a point with, and I think you're in a similar boat, is let's ignore the things for once that we disagree on.
What do we agree on?
I think we're getting to a really interesting point, for instance, with marijuana legalization in the U.S., now with Cory Booker talking about it and Chuck Schumer talking about it.
This is a place where, by the way, you as a conservative should be freaking really pissed at the Republicans, and I know you don't consider yourself a Republican per se, but when Chuck Schumer is out there a couple days ago talking about states' rights related to marijuana and that these idiot Republicans let the Democrats, they let dorky Chuck Schumer get ahead of them on weed and states' rights, which Rand Paul should have been screaming about.
It's like you're all messed up.
I mean, that's the thing.
You're all frauds in your own way.
And if you, that's the thing, if the Republicans would just stick to some basic conservative libertarian principles, man, you got almost everyone with half a brain.
I understand, and I— Or worse, by the way, because as Michael Shermer talks about, the rates of infanticide in places that you can't have an abortion go way up.
So what do we do then in a situation where, okay, you made some pretty sound arguments
and I'd be happy to have you back here with one of those guys who takes the counter on it
and we can definitely do that.
But it's not about them in this case, I think.
It's about the set of people that will say, if you show any nuance, you must hate women, or you hate babies, or you take a nuanced immigration stance, you're a racist.
And it's like, we've ceded so much power to this set of people that then you get people screaming, build the wall, build the wall, and it's like, Oh, I guess that kind of makes sense.
A lot of people just concede, you know what I mean?
If I'm stuck between open borders and build the wall, a sensible person probably is going to say build the wall.
But don't you think that reactionary politics in that way makes sense sometimes?
Because it's what you're saying, it's the rubber band effect just in video games.
Things rubber band and snap back quickly if you're not reasonable.
I think that the rubber band becomes much more taught if you're not having these tough conversations.
So it's okay to either be undecided or to have kind of a nuanced view on things, which I have a nuanced view on almost everything.
I think most people do, you know?
But it's funny you say that because, you know, there are certain things people try to peg me like, oh, I'm Some people have accused me of being transphobic because I once told a transgender person that they're free to live their lives to their exact specifications with no infringement from the government, even if you want to live as a made-up gender.
That's how I figured out, well, they are made-up genders.
It doesn't mean that you can't live that way.
I don't care.
But to act like these things are, you know, organic parts of human history, it's not true, right?
So I have no problem with you doing whatever you want, calling yourself whatever you want, and I will respect you and call you that.
It's perfectly fine with me for you to live your life.
If you're a man and you want to be genderqueer, or you're a woman and you want to be a zur or whatever, that's cool.
I have no problem with that.
I'm not gonna judge you.
I'm not gonna disrespect you.
But me saying something like, oh, this is kind of a manufactured thing of more recent times for you to find your identity in a way that makes you happy, that's transphobic.
The hatred of success, because when we look at Asian-Americans who, by and large, because of education, I mean, we know it's not rocket science, it's because of education.
This is the same thing with Jews.
They don't like minorities who succeed, which is why a couple weeks ago, I know you're a Simpsons guy, too, there was the whole thing about... Oh, no, no, I'm not, by the way.
Indians in America, from India, by and large, have done everything right.
Our doctors, our lawyers are socioeconomically successful, highly educated.
They've done everything.
Does that mean that no bigotry exists?
Does that not mean that maybe somebody was called a poo in the schoolyard and blah blah?
Of course not.
This is not a perfect system.
We've all had bad shit happen to us.
But this need that I saw from some people to then grab it and be like, we're the victims, and it's because of this cartoon, despite all of the facts, and also the fact that the character, Appu, is a beloved character on what I would say is the greatest comedy of all time, the longest-running comedy in the history of television.
Even more than Seinfeld.
Even more than... Yeah, I would say the breadth of the work, probably.
Sure, sure, sure.
But that Apu in the show, one of the biggest episodes is about, you know, the most influential episodes is about him not being kicked.
Homer at first wants him kicked out of Springfield.
I know it's hard to believe, but even white male, straight white males, you're not a straight white male, but I'm a straight white male, can be victims of... I play one on TV.
I don't know that I'd say anything that offensive.
But the point is to me, Dave, is that it's good to have complicated and uncomfortable conversations that put you sometimes in uncomfortable situations because it's just being real.
I know what's in my heart.
I know that I don't believe in any of the things that—and aren't the things that—the worst things that people call me, right?
It's not going to stop me from grabbing the third rail sometimes and saying what I need to say.
So having complicated conversations about race where you say, like, well, you know, Nigerian Americans are actually the best educated per capita.
Asian Americans from, you know, whether from Vietnam or whether from Laos or whether from China or whether from Japan are doing pretty well in the United States.
It doesn't mean that they don't experience racism.
It doesn't mean that some of them are poor.
Of course that's true, but it means that I'm super interested in what's happened.
Can we all learn from it?
Can we, the high tide raise all boats?
If we're so focused on identity, then why don't we focus on the positive things that are happening to some of these identities as opposed to only the negative things and learn and grow together in this kind of beautiful melting pot that we're supposed to celebrate and not, it's almost like a new form of segregation in a way where people almost like, You know, white people can't enjoy this, or black people can't say this, or Hispanics can't say this, or... I'm like, can't we all just ignore all of these things that have actually held us back for so long and live a 21st century life?
We have taken in more people from more walks of life who came here with less, your huddled masses yearning to be free, and all of us, virtually everyone in America, almost everyone in America, that's an immigrant story, has it better than the person who came here.
Well, you know, this is one thing where I think Trump is just completely wrong, where he keeps saying they're not giving us their best.
I'm not, again, and I'm not saying you can just let everyone in and I don't want drug dealers and criminals in, but this idea that they're not giving, yes, sometimes you're going to get some great doctors and physicists from Eastern Europe or something.
But also we need to let in people that want to make a better life for themselves.
When I see all, you know, we live in L.A.
here, there's a lot of Mexicans here, and they bust their ass.
Show me a group of people, if I can use a collective phrase here, who work harder in the freaking hot L.A.
sun all day long doing all these jobs that other people don't want for less.
But I understand where you're coming from and I'm sympathetic to those things.
But I think that by living, and that's why I think what Candace Owens, and I'm not, you know, the hugest fan of hers, specifically because of the way she treated Blair White, and I have to still meet her and I'd like to shake her hand and talk to her.
I know it's kind of a left turn, but when everything went haywire for me last year around this time, I could have been a victim.
I walked away from Kind of Funny.
I sold my shares.
I didn't have to do anything for a long time if I didn't want to.
I immediately got back in because I have to work.
I have to leave it all out on the field.
I want to know that if I fail or something bad happens that It was because of me, not because I didn't try hard enough or do enough.
And so I'd love to see people of all types, all political ideologies, skin colors, genders, sexual identities, whatever, realize that what binds us is actually our humanity, and we can get a lot of things done if we actually just work together and proceed as human beings as opposed to these isolated, alienated groups of people that can't have anything to do with each other.
So do you think there's anything that can be done that will break That monster that will really like slay that thing because I think this Kanye thing might start.
I think we've all been chipping.
I think a lot of us, you know, Jordan Peterson having the number one book has been chipping at this.
I think that thing might crack, but it seems to me that it's still getting worse.
Yesterday was just another example of something kind of happened here.
Look, all Kanye did, forget Candace for a second, all Kanye did was tweet a couple videos about Scott Adams.
The fact that they all felt the need to now call him far right, That shows you they can't stop, no matter how many times we mock them for it, no matter how many times they get two retweets and we get a thousand while mocking them, or all of those things, not that Twitter is the exact scientific way we can gauge any of this, but they never see the real attraction, and they're a dying monster, but they're gonna keep going down with the ship, and what I'm afraid of is they're gonna bring down a lot of other good shit with it.
Well, it's what you said before, and I'll check you with something that you've said to me in the past, because I think it's really important, and you've said this to me, and you're right.
So keep it in mind.
Is that, just the idea, do these people really represent as big of a group or a wider swath of people as we think?
Twitter's loud.
Social media's loud.
Communism seems big on Twitter.
But communism is the most brain-dead thing that's ever happened, and there are clearly not that many real communists in the United States, right?
But it seems like it's like a thing, right?
And I wonder if it's just the same people—it's the same thing in the gaming industry, right?
With far-left gaming industry and far-left games journalists.
They just are all friends with each other and perpetuate their own stuff, but no one's really reading anything they're writing.
Like, a dude with a webcam on YouTube's doing more traffic than all of Waypoint or all of Polygon.
Well, Polygon, that was the one that, you know, I was a little out of the gaming world, and then all this shit goes down with you, and then Polygon was, like, writing things about me that were not right, and I was... And then, of course, you know, you retweet it, and you show them, and then they don't respond.
Well, what's so weird is that they want to write about you and I and some more innocuous shit, but when one of their video producers is basically called out as a sexual deviant, you don't see many things of them writing about that, which is a little strange.
Whatever world you're in, whether you're playing a sports game or an adventure game or an RPG or whatever, you're trying to, you're building something, you're accomplishing something, you may have to have teammates, and they'll do it, and you don't want people to help you do everything and cheat for you.
Like, the world of gaming, and I've been a professional in it since 2002, so it's been a long time I've been, you know, immersed in this world.
And it's becoming complicated, and I'm concerned about it because... I'm concerned about it for multiple reasons.
Some of the reasons people might not want to hear, right?
One of the things that you hear a lot now, because left-wing domination, especially of games media, makes it seem like everything's through a left-wing prism, is that people are saying now, like, well, games and politics don't belong together.
I don't want politics and games.
Oh, you're so fucking wrong when you say that.
Games and politics belong together intimately.
It's a work of art.
We should be having political criticisms of them.
My whole thing is, like, where's the conservative criticism?
Where's the libertarian or moderate criticism?
I tweeted out the other day, Eurogamer, which is actually a website I like, a pretty serious
video game website, tweeted out a piece by my friend Keza, who I used to work with at
IGN.
She was a great writer.
She is a great writer.
And she said there's a diversity problem in games, and she was talking about how there's
not enough female writers.
And I tweeted out, that's not the diversity problem in video games.
There are actually lots of female writers.
There could always be more, but there are plenty of them.
What the diversity problem is is that you can't name one conservative person on any
of these game websites' staff.
And after I left IGN, I was an open conservative.
Ever since then, you couldn't find one.
So, that's the diversity problem.
And that blew up and got me in a lot of trouble with Games Media, who apparently is scared of diverse ideas.
So I hate that that's the takeaway that people are getting because of the political kind of nebulous nature of games and how it's being written about.
I think that that's destructive.
But it's becoming more positive because games that are becoming politically criticized for things like a lack of diversity... Do you know the game Kingdom Come Deliverance by chance?
Open-world role-playing game made by a Czech studio in Prague, and they made a game based, very historically accurate game on 13th century Bohemia, right?
And the criticisms from Waypoint and Polygon were, where are the people of color?
And these guys are saying literally like, we actually have full-time historians working on this game.
This game is now being taught in Czech universities for how historically accurate it is.
Where are the people of color in 13th century Bohemia?
That's your takeaway.
So it's this kind of shit that's turning people off, right?
And I want people to engage and be like, no, that kind of criticism I guess is valid, but we need some other kinds of criticism, which is what I'm trying to do.
I once said, I think on a live stream, just as like a sidebar or just like a throwaway, I was like, you know, leftism, I think I said either leftism or progressivism is a mental disorder.
Putting that aside for a moment, I was just sort of a throwaway that I said, but when I hear you say things like that, like part of me, it rings like, I'm not diagnosing anyone with a mental disorder right now, but if you are living in a world where you are trying to find something wrong with everything else that has been created, instead of creating something that is your own, that does strike me as a type of mental disorder.
Like a cognitive dissonance between what you can do with reality.
You don't do anything with your reality, so you destroy someone else's reality.
That's exactly right, and I think this tethers back perfectly to what you were saying before about social media and kind of the assassination squads that go on over there.
If you look at some of these people, certainly in games journalism, there's some great people doing games journalism, by the way, some really, really great people.
Jason Schreier is doing a bang-up job.
They're really smart, good, apolitical people, or people that feel a certain way but don't inject it all the time into what they're saying.
So I don't want to make it seem like everyone's bad.
And my old side, IGN, I think is doing a great job, too.
If you read some of these people's feeds, there's this guy named Ethan that works at Kotaku who talks shit about me all the time.
And I often wonder, and I looked recently because someone was like, he's tweeting and making fun of you, and I looked and he got several hundred, maybe a thousand favorites about me.
But then you scroll through his feed and no one gives a fuck.
what he says about himself, about his work.
How can you work for a site like Italki and have 2,000 Twitter followers?
For years, by the way.
That to me says that you just don't resonate with people, and so the only way you can get attention
is by dragging other people down.
And I've realized, this 2018, Dave, has been really interesting for me,
because it's the first time that I've had time to think about what's happened.
Everything's settling a little bit, I'm working still a lot, but I've had time to reflect.
And I realized that I can only control what I can control, try to put a little bit more positivity,
I'm always gonna defend myself and stuff like that, but try to put a little more positivity into the world,
and focus on the fact how good people like you and I have is that when I tweet out one of my videos,
my videos do 50,000 views or something like that, nothing crazy.
But they get, you know, sometimes 500 retweets or a thousand favorites, right?
And these guys that are hurling stones can't get that kind of attention on their work without dragging someone else down.
And I just don't want to exist in that world anymore.
So a guy like that can talk all the shit he wants and be as negative as he wants, but he knows deep down that no one cares about anything he says unless he's trying to take a shot at someone.
And I don't have that problem.
And you don't have that problem, so maybe we can be all more positive together.
There are too many people relying on us, especially you.
You know, that's why I'm, and I know, you know, I know you don't like when I compliment you too much on the show, but you're doing something that's very important, because you're the proxy for these people, right?
You have to, I told you that the first time I was on the show, before anything even happened, that you were the conduit by which a lot, you speak for a lot of us, and trust me, dude, you were talking about how hard it is for you to see people talking about me or about Jordan or about, you know, Joe, who's now getting dragged in all this shit too, and who's the greatest podcaster of all time, as far as I'm concerned.
It really strikes me the same way when I see people talking shit about you, but I'm just like, you know what?
Dave's doing fine, and I'll be there when he needs me, but he's doing the good work and the silent majority supports him.
And you can see it in the Patreon support, you can see it in the viewership, and all that kind of stuff.
I guess at some level there's something else interesting happening here, which I think Eric Weinstein has mentioned on this show a couple times.
I know he's mentioned it to me privately, that you need that in life.
Like what you just offered up there.
That I know you've got my back.
You know I've got your back.
All these other people.
Defending yourself all the time is exhausting.
It's exhausting and it's painful.
And it's like, that's why yesterday, I don't even know Scott Adams that well.
I've spent about two and a half hours with him.
Every moment of it, except for three minutes on each side, has been on air.
So it's not like I've ever even had a drink with the guy or broke bread with the guy.
But I basically have a sense that he's a good guy.
I think he's an interesting thinker and everything else.
But when I saw them going after him this way, the way that I see them do it to everybody, I was like, Scott can now either spend the rest of his day defending himself, which is no fun, or I can offer him a little bit of cover.
And I was like, I'm gonna offer him a little bit of cover.
Am I gonna get a little bit of hate for it?
Yeah, I am.
But I think it's, I just think it's important, you know?
And as long as we have each other's backs, we have to keep the powder dry, though.
That's the big thing that I feel like I see too much of.
Not so much from you or our sphere, but I see it in other more politically active spheres.
People always fighting.
I'm like, keep the powder dry.
Show a little bit of restraint, and then when we really do go and try to say something, I think it resonates more.
That's the only thing I'm trying to keep in mind these days, is like these little battles, these little fights, I see something that fucking annoys me every day.
Like that I want to write, how many tweets have I written and just deleted before I even posted them, right?
First of all, George, the way people treated George W. Bush is the reason we got Trump, number one.
You can draw a clear line to that, so maybe people should be a little more cognizant of the words fascism, Nazi, and all those kinds of things when you're calling Mitt Romney a sexist.
When you have a real sexist in office, Right.
It doesn't look so, you know, so that's important.
That brings us back to like, that's why I love you people.
But isn't it interesting too about like the whole thing with, with who's a Juanita Broderick and all that kind of stuff, like she's not believed, but mocked It's a little strange, but I don't know if he's guilty or not, but I always found that a little weird.
And I actually like Bill Clinton as a politician, so it's not even that, it's just pretty nefarious shit.
But nonetheless, I just think that we need to be...
You know, better to each other.
There's these extremes on both sides.
There are people on the far right that I piss off all the time.
Some of my biggest Patreon drops were when I made a video about how the Confederate flag is a flag of traitors and all those kinds of things.
Those people are easy to annoy too.
And their identity politics are pretty much equivalent, by the way, to the identity politics on the left, which is something that's not talked about too much.
80%, 90% of the people in the middle, I think, are going to be receptive, even if they don't agree with you, are going to be receptive to a normal line of thinking about any policy prescription that you might have.
Now, what I've been trying to explain to people is that as someone that came from the left, those were the issues that I was really focused on for a long time.
Am I part of the left anymore?
Obviously not.
I mean, anyone in there?
Yeah, I'm not, obviously.
I am liberal, and that has nothing to do with that.
They don't even have the numbers, but every time one of them does something, then everyone pretends it's this massive thing.
So for me to focus on that thing that really has no power, that's already been overblown, to me seems crazy.
So are there issues that I have with the right as a general thing?
I mean, we could talk about gay marriage, and I'm pro-choice, and I'm for euthanasia, and I'm for legalizing marijuana, I'm for reforming the prison systems, I'm for public education, though I would kick it back to the states.
These things should all anger these people on the right, yet I keep getting invited all these places by these crazy evil conservatives and getting standing ovations when I talk to Turning Point USA and all the libertarians love me, so it's like, when I, I can only view the world as it is, not as I magically want it to be.
The only reason we know, and I said this on Fireside Chats, the only reason we know who Richard Spencer is is because the media told us who Richard Spencer was.
I had never heard of this man before and I've been circulating in right-wing politics and in Kurdish-Soviet politics for a very long time.
And I was very vocal, vociferously vocal about the fact that, like, you've got to keep your hands to yourself.
I don't care what the guy says, you know?
You can't do that, right?
And that opened up a whole new can of worms for people that were people running around with violent tendencies and all those kinds of things.
It's like, no, that's not even a political thing.
Just keep your hands to yourself.
The left has the media in its corner, much of the media in its corner, and much of the establishment in its corner.
So it's just a more powerful entity.
Which is why I think that the fact that this battle is being waged by the Joe Rogans and the Dave Rubins and the Ben Shapiros and stuff and more independent and kind of smaller outlets doing real war with the CNNs and the MSNBCs of the world and the Young Turks of the world and stuff like that is actually a pretty awesome David and Goliath story from my perspective because we do have the numbers.
We have the support, you know?
And I think that, so I think you're right.
It bothers me a great deal when people criticize you for not having the proper guests on or not.
I like that you give people enough rope to hang themselves.
Isn't it funny when you read some of these things about people that you know,
and it's like, wow, like there's, that's the, I guess that's why it's so intimate for us.
Because we know the people.
So if you're just someone watching this and you are completely passionate about these ideas and you know all of the work that all of these people have done and all that, but if you don't actually know the person, there's still a little disconnect there.
But because so many of us now know each other, They've forced us all together, basically.
They've forced these strange allies.
You know, as I said in my first DM of the year, 2018 is going to be the year of unusual alliances.
Well, what has happened?
Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro, who disagree on literally everything.
Because they believe in the freedom of thought, the freedom of speech, these foundational things that are being eroded by the extremes.
It's just that only one of those extremes really has power.
You know, any of this stuff about, and we've talked about this ad nauseum, any of this stuff about fascism or far-right rising in the United States and all that kind of stuff, I'm like, this is insane.
Like, anyone who knows anything about the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany wouldn't see a fucking single parallel here, so I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm much more afraid of what's going on on the other side.
But here's the thing, right?
People like to tether... I've been a big advocate for Trump voters, even though I'm not a Trump voter and even though I'm not a Trump supporter, because I think they've been maligned and called stupid and moronic and all those kinds of things.
And I think that we just need to treat people that we disagree with like people, like I said earlier.
And I feel the same way about Bernie Sanders supporters.
Bernie Sanders hasn't said one cogent or reasonable thing I've ever heard him say.
But I think the people that listen to him and like him are worthy of respect, worthy of, you know, being listened to, and understanding that they've reached those conclusions based on things that maybe I don't understand or I don't see eye to eye with them on.
And the people that were into it... I did, before you go further, I was in a fight with a guy at school, Willits, in Syosset, and I did rip a guy's head off and rip his spine out, and then I spun it around and blood was getting... And then Tipper Gore was all... It had nothing to do with Mortal Kombat!
It's the same thing with DND, actually, if you trace it to the 80s.
Evangelical right-wing families values groups were the ones that were trying to shut this stuff down.
Now, they had Lieberman and Gore on their side, but these were moderate establishment Democrats.
The same people that are trying to shut games down today, the people that are trying to scrub violence and sexuality and all these terrible things that are happening in video games, are left-wing people.
It's their identity politics.
It's just that they're the Christian right of the 80s.
And it's like really weird to see how they become what they hate, or are supposed to
hate.
So when you talk about Sam Harris and you talk about Ben Shapiro, these really great
thinkers.
I've been listening to a lot of Sam Harris' show recently, and it's, you know, when I've
And he has such a great audio gate on his microphone that I can tell where it's just
the perfect sound.
The fact that these people are getting together, I think, is a great sign.
Because it's people understanding that there's a foundational erosion.
There's nothing—everything I'm built on, it doesn't matter.
If the foundational erosion of freedoms of expression, freedoms of speech, what's going on with the guy in Scotland that got fined for the— That's insane.
That anyone of any ilk would think that something like that is okay, that shows that we have a foundational erosion.
Did you see this freaking tweet by the Yorkshire police about this guy that they're putting in jail for eight months because he drove through a like a toll and was caught on video giving the finger to the toll and they said don't it was something like don't they were like it was a real threat like don't do this or you'll end up in jail too.
And I think one of them tweeted about how they took all this marijuana or something.
I'm like, I would have smoked that marijuana.
So I tweeted them.
You can't do anything to me, British police.
You can't touch me.
But there is, Dave, there is, and I think you would agree that there's just a foundational erosion that I think people of all sides, and I think there's totally intellectually smart people on the far left that can help.
There's a YouTuber that I'm actually quite interested in that I watch her, and I don't mean to misgender her because I think she identifies as her, ContraPoints.
I totally disagree with everything this person says, but I look at it and I'm like, this seems very reasonable, educated, academic, and so I'm seeing reasons to hope that everyone's gonna come together.
I know that that seems to be a theme of what I'm saying, but I just... In order to sharpen our knives and load our guns, we have to soften a little bit, so that when we get involved, the things we're getting involved in trying to change really matter, as opposed to fighting every fucking fight.
How much do you think it's just that we don't understand, we as Americans here, don't understand how good we have it?
Like to me it almost seems that any great shift we could have right now, like yes, could there be some like massive shift really towards freedom and free thought and we all start being nicer to each other and tolerant, I suppose something like that could happen.
And as I said, I think there's pieces of it that because so much of this political correctness stuff is crumbling, that maybe there is some interesting second enlightenment happening somehow in the future, something maybe.
But it seems to me that if something was to really break, like if we had a real movement one way or another, it would go the other way, which would be much worse.
That our freedoms would be much more restricted and that our ability to communicate would be a lot more difficult and all that.
I mean, I would literally, maybe not literally, but I would, that's the kind of thing where there are so many people like me and you, I would go down fighting to make sure that that didn't happen.
That would be a klaxon call that you couldn't possibly ignore.
It's the same thing like when people, there are certain realities that are never going to happen.
So I'm watching this movie, and I had just spoke to all of these kids
for an hour about freedom, I got the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
I'm watching this thing Churchill and you know Hitler's on the march.
They think the country's gonna crumble.
The king and the royal family is thinking about moving to Canada.
I mean it really was that dire.
And all of these appeasers around Winston Churchill, you know what I mean?
All of these guys from Chamberlain on down and all of the people plotting against him and thinking we can negotiate with Hitler and maybe France or Belgium will fall but we'll be okay.
And I sort of think that's what we're in right now.
That what you just said is, I will stand here.
I will stand here and I will put my flag in it and this will be the hill that I will go down on.
And I think maybe that's what's happening.
We're getting a braver group of people now.
And I'm proud to be in that group.
Yeah, you're at the vanguard.
I don't know what happened.
The reason I asked you what happened to you or what is it about you, I don't know what the hell happened to me that put me here.
I know they call it red-pilling and I like that term because it's true in the sense, you know, I'm not one of these guys that uses a lot of the other, you know, the cuck and the SJW and Snowflake because I feel like that could just be totally turned around on you.
Like I said, the identity politics exists on both sides.
But that term red-pilling really makes sense because some people really just see reality for what it is, right?
All of these other arguments are distractions to these, you know, you could probably identify, if we sat down and really thought about it, you could probably identify four or five hills that are worth dying on, right?
And I certainly think that something like freedom of speech and freedom of expression is like, that's like the inner keep.
And it also showed the power of a community in the right sense of a community, a community based in individuals who weren't going to take bullshit from the power structure that was relentlessly attacking them in the name of political correctness.
I mean, Gamergate has just leaked into Everything now.
That's what people say is that that was really the beginning of like the rise of Trump.
I don't know if you would there's because there's probably multiple tethers that I wasn't aware of at that time that were also connecting from things that I was I was I'm in this fandom so I remember that yeah but yeah if something began there but people need to figure out a different way to effectively get their message across because I don't think that was it This is very important from Super Chat.
Just want to say thanks to Colin for introducing me to The Rubin Report.
Been a proud patron of the two of you since the infamous tweet from last year, so thank you.
Let's jump back to Super Chat.
Dave, you've talked about how the left is coming for Asians next.
Would like to ask the two of you why Asians still vote and associate left, and how do we change that?
Also, how do we balance identity politics with kinship?
I like the second part of that.
I mean, real quick on the Asian thing, we sort of hit on this already, but if you're going to have quotas of we're going to have a certain amount of people based on color or based on some other immutable characteristic that have to get in, you're going to harm the people who work the hardest, not, I shouldn't say work the hardest,
who, if there's a group that's overrepresented by working the hardest and succeeding the most
and becoming the most educated, which in many cases is the Asian community,
then they are going to be directly hurt.
So identity politics is actually, because it's an assault on success.
So if you're gonna say, we're gonna keep helping these people,
it doesn't just magically happen, it comes at the expense of someone else.
There's only a certain amount of jobs, there's only a certain amount of slots at universities
Because it was not your, Your oppressions don't make you stronger, they actually make you in competition with the people that you're supposedly in cahoots with.
I think that they're going to plateau on sales over the next couple of years because I think they blew their load already with Zelda and Mario.
They had to do that.
So they were in a position where You know, Wii U was terrible, it's a terrible console, and they were getting killed, but PS4 is, and to an extent Xbox One, but PS4 certainly, I think, is still trouncing in overall numbers worldwide.
But I said that Switch would sell twice as many units as Wii U, I think they're gonna exceed that, and it's a nice step in the right direction, I just don't know if they have the software at the cadence that they're gonna need it over the next four or five years.
And remember, I mean, I can tell you, I have sources, PS5 games are in development, PS5's not that far away, and that thing's gonna make the Switch look like a child's toy.
So they're going to have to deal with that intergenerational kind of conflict as well.
They do, but with hardware being so much weaker, I mean the hardware now, Switch is still weaker than PS4 and Xbox One, so they're getting ports of games that are, Doom is a good example, that ran at 60 frames on PS4 that's running at 30 frames on Switch.
The difference between the games on the next generation and Switch are going to be even more marked.
I just love that I can be playing on the television and then just like if I got to get up or if David wants to watch TV or something I can just take that thing and go into the room.
Brian on Patreon, why are you guys continuing to use Twitter?
Why continue to give that platform support?
Your followers slash patrons will follow you elsewhere and share your content from new locations, so why stay and allow bad actors to benefit from your presence?
I'd like to answer that one, but I'll throw it to you first.
It's like, yeah, we can work on things, and we've discussed, and I think there's a lot of discussions happening, it's not just us, about what are the alternatives to Twitter, to Facebook, to YouTube.
Yeah, YouTube's the big one.
Right, but at the moment, you know, we need to go where the people are.
I mean, to me, Twitter, although I have no doubt that shadow banning exists, and I actually just DMed Jack about it this morning, because I simply don't see tweets.
because it's not that they've written something out there like a memo is going down for a jack all the way down I
think It's just engineers that are talking to things.
It's guys at YouTube that are messing around with the algorithm so that our videos don't go out to the feeds.
Why do literally hundreds of people keep telling me they're being unsubscribed, and then when I tell YouTube that, what they tell me is that people don't know how to click the subscribe button, or they were never subscribed in the first place.
I just think that solo movie is probably going to be terrible, and I think too much of a good thing is, that's a saying for a reason, and I would have loved, you know, Rogue One was great.
You know, well, I'm sure that everyone has seen this online, but in LA here on Sunset Boulevard, there's this massive billboard for Avengers, for the new one, Infinity War, and it looks like the Star Wars ones, you know what I mean?
Where they have them all sort of facing out, looking at another- Right.
It's like, did you guys literally just copy- I get Marvel owns both the unit, but are you- is that what you're doing?
You're gonna literally just brand these all the same?
As for Star Wars, look, I loved Force Awakens.
I think it's pretty damn perfect.
Yes, was it a little derivative?
But the amount that they had to lift, that J.J.
had to do to reboot that, bring in the old actors, tie it all together, get people to forget the prequels, I think it was pretty freaking perfect.
Last Jedi, when I saw it in theater, I walked out of there, I felt like I got, like, punched in the gut.
There were so many inconsistencies, not explaining who Snoke is, that ridiculous scene at the casino.
I think, you know what, I'm going to listen to it obviously, but I think they're defendable, and after watching Last Jedi again, I was longing for them in a way.
At least, put the acting aside, put some of the stiff dialogue aside, the stories are there.
We're the only place that gets Rosh Hashanah off and all these kinds of things.
October was like a fucking goldmine of days off.
It was awesome.
Columbus Day we got off, so yeah, everything, October was, and my birthday's in October, so everything was great in October.
But there's something about Long Island culture that is inherently Jewish, and like I knew people that wouldn't get into, like I straight up knew people that would not get into German cars, like families.
Right, like that's how serious it was.
And so I have a kinship to Jewish people based on that experience.
And so I consider that kind of like the non-genetic part of me.
Well, basically, he's a comedian who admittedly, like, goes to where the line is and intentionally jumps over.
I've had him on the show.
I like him.
I don't see a real parallel because I think you go out of your way to be respectful, where I'm not saying he's not respectful, but he's intentionally trying to poke the bear.
It's just a different thing.
I happen to like both of you, but I don't really see it there.
Yeah, I want to say, just to clear things up for people that are listening that might be curious, some people think that I did that tweet intentionally as like an exit, like an escape, you know, hatch from kind of funny, because I wasn't happy there.
And I wasn't happy there, but I never did it to hurt anyone.
So yeah, that's true.
I don't really try to like do any, I don't, I don't target individuals.
I do find that most of us on this side of it, if I can use that term, really try not to... How often do you find anyone on my show really ransacking and attacking a specific person?
We constantly are talking about ideas, and yet we're dealing with a set of people who are constantly attacking us as people.
So I'll just condense a few here.
A lot of people are asking about your relationship with the Kinda Funny staff.
No, I mean, a lot of the past year has been about grappling with what's happened and kind of, did I fight hard enough?
for the soul of the company.
Did I give people enough information to let them know what was really happening there?
And there's an eagerness for me to do that because I think people would see my side
if they just knew more.
But I've put that to bed in my mind.
I've forgiven what I feel like has been done to me from that situation,
from the people that I think have done things to me from that situation.
And as far as Greg is concerned, who's kind of, you know, was my best friend for many years, I reached out to him a couple months ago.
Totally outside of kind of funny, I have no interest, you know, I mean, I'd be perfectly happy to be on one of the shows, but that's not the reason.
I don't really care if I don't do any kind of funny stuff anymore.
But I reached out to Greg as a person just to be like, let's, you know, let's talk.
We have this friendship that far predates any of this stuff, and he wasn't really interested in talking to me, so.
Really?
I'm sorry to interrupt, but the thing I want to say is that someone approached me and was like, if something happens to him, you're going to be, you know, shit happens every day.
He gets in a car crash, he had cancer, he gets sick.
You're going to be full of regret for the rest of your life that you didn't bury this hatchet.
You can't control the outcome, but at least extend the hand.
And I don't know that you'll want me to say this publicly, but in the midst of while that was all happening, and I was really just getting to know you in the middle of that, you made it so clear to me how you wanted to make sure that you didn't throw them under the bus in the process of that.
And I think a lot of people would not have taken that.
I've never wanted to talk about individual relationships and the way things broke down from an individual standpoint.
Because I don't think it's really anyone's business.
I know that a lot of people witness that, but I don't... Unless we're all around to tell that story one day, in the most fair way possible, I don't think it's really... But I've forgiven and moved on.
This is on Patreon, and there's been a couple like this.
Do you have any advice on having a career in an industry where you're an ideological minority?
You were able to be as successful in games journalism, but how did you find a balance between saying what you think and not rocking the boat so that it hurts your career?
I don't know what they heard and what they didn't.
That was all the good stuff!
I gave you guys the whole secret and then it cut out.
But all I was trying to say to recap is IGN was very good to me.
They never tried to shut me up.
You need to find people that understand who you are.
Also understand that old media is waning and dying.
Being in the in crowd with them is irrelevant.
There are certain sites that still get it, like IGN, but there are many sites like Polygon, Waypoint, and stuff that won't even exist in a few years.
The game development and publishing scene is way more politically vibrant.
It's just that a lot of those people are unwilling to say it because they are concerned.
And I brought up that game Kingdom Come Deliverance to you before.
The more the press went after that game, the more it sold.
And the one thing that I forgot to say is that it sold like a million copies in like a few days.
And I tweeted out publicly where I was like, I wonder when publishers are gonna figure out that by getting on the bad side of Kotaku, bad side of Waypoint, the bad side of all these sites, that they're gonna sell more copies of games.
But there's way more ideological, and I'm not gonna out anyone, I'm good friends with a lot of people in publishing and developing that are Libertarian Republican Trump voters.
On the chance that YouTube is gonna blow up again, or the glitch in the matrix is gonna get us, we'll do as many, we'll do a bunch more here, and then we'll do everything else in rapid fire on Patreon, and Colin's on the Patreon too.
So let's just do a couple more here.
Okay.
Hey Dave, as a Hispanic female and a migrant from Texas to Michigan, racism, jokes or not, mostly comes from Mexicans, and it's hilarious.
Why is it hard for whites to laugh at themselves on the left?
I mean, it's a good question.
It's like they've become hysterical for everyone else because they think that makes them moral.
And actually, I think it's what everyone now says, this phrase, it's the small bigotry of low expectations.
You think that you must be offended for everybody.
No one else can take a joke, so you must take offense.
No one else can accomplish anything, so you must help everyone.
And actually what you're doing is belittling them in many cases.
And I wonder, as I'm getting back into stand-up now, it's like I wonder what would happen to Don Rickles these days, who did it with love, but he would be... But then there are guys like, I love Anthony Jeselnik, who is like super fucking inappropriate, and he manages to thrive.
I saw Ricky Gervais live at Dolby Theater a couple months ago, and he goes into this whole thing, and I think it's actually reflected in his Netflix special, I think it's probably the same thing.
Yeah.
a lot of transgender jokes and all that kind of stuff.
And what I was surprised by was that there were a few groans
and stuff like that, but people were laughing and clapping and having a good time here in liberal Los Angeles.
I think it goes to show you that people know how to laugh at themselves, and I actually think it's actually
extremely racist to think that you need to be offended on some other person's behalf because they can't be
offended for themselves.
And they can't tell you, you need to tell them what they're supposed to feel.
This is a good one, because it gets to a lot of what we were talking about earlier.
How do you grade someone's motivation?
When President Trump says, quote, sending their best, why would it necessarily mean the smartest, the brightest, and most successful?
I would need to know the exact quotes that he has said, but I've heard him say that they're not sending us their best in the context of meaning they're not sending us their most educated or people that can help society in that way.
But as far as grading someone's motivation, I would say I really try not to...
Impugn people's motivations.
I mean how people mock me for it How often on this show do I say the road to hell is paved with good intentions?
I try mostly you said it earlier I mean, I mostly believe that these misguided people are misguided not evil.
Are there evil actors?
Are there bad actors?
Are there manipulators for sure?
So I think you have to really try hard not to do it, but we all do it.
I thought he was a really nice guy, but the system, you know, this is the line I keep using about, you know, you wanted a panther in a china shop to knock over a couple of things, but leave the china shop, but no such thing as a panther in a china shop.
You get a bull in a china shop.
But what I would say to your point, though, on the hopeful side, if you want some values that you really believe to be instilled in the president going forward, is that the chaos right now and the Kanye situation and all of it, it is all connected.
And I believe out of the chaos may be a sane conservative, you know, a Ben Shapiro type conservative.
Well, I'm sure you have some differences with, but that type of conservative will be able to grow out of this.
This special case of Trump, whatever you want to call that, that thing can't sustain itself forever.
It just can't.
But what has he done?
I'm not talking about tweets, I'm not talking about character, I'm not talking about mocking everybody and all that, but is there something policy-wise that he's done that you think is beyond the pale?
It's fuel on the fire when you're supposed to be putting the fire out.
Politics is a game.
And to get what you want, you need to play the game sometimes.
So if this is something you want to do, this is something that you need to kind of sneak in maybe after the midterms, not immediately just to piss more people off and have rallies at fucking airports and shit like that.
So it's not, you know, I believe, I don't necessarily know that we need a wall, but I believe in immigration control.
And I go as far as to say that we need to amend the Constitution to get rid of birthright citizenship, which, by the way, is a totally uniquely American thing.
There's almost no first world country in the world that does it.
So there's things like that where I'm like, yeah, immigration reform, great.
Treating veterans better?
Of course.
Those are great things.
But again, you need a better messenger.
And I think that Kasich would lose.
Remember that the Reagan-Ford primary in 76 and the Carter primary in 1980 both didn't work out well for the incumbent.
One is that I don't feel like I was doing it the way that I wanted to do it.
People... So give me a second if I might, Dave.
When I launched Collins Last Stand, people thought I was going to take the piss out of the SJW and the snowflake and stuff.
A lot of people that weren't familiar with me, not knowing that that's not really who I am and those aren't terms I use, which is why I led with the Third Amendment video to be like, this is what it's going to be.
And the viewership declined a little bit, but I wasn't even worried about that because I don't really care about that.
I'm Patreon supported.
But I felt like everything was turning into an argument.
Everything was turning into, like, you can't just have a conversation.
You can't just bring a point up.
I would do a video about the things that Trump did wrong.
People would have a problem with that.
I'd do a video about the things Trump did right.
People would have a problem with that.
So I was like, you know, I've got to step back from this, focus on the more gaming and culture-centric stuff that I'm doing with Fireside Chats and SideQuest, and figure out a way to approach it.
I'm going to announce specific details soon, but basically I'm probably going to bring the show back once a quarter.
Superchat, talk about how the trauma from 450 years of slavery and racism has caused blacks like Candace and Kanye to marry white and join the Fox News chatterbox.
And this is just a silly premise.
So are you saying that black people shouldn't marry white people?
Should Asian people not marry Latinos?
You know what I mean?
And this Fox News thing, yes, does Candace go on Fox News?
Yes.
The only one that will put me on of all the networks is Fox News.
I don't get invites to the others.
Who defended Jordan Peterson or who put Peterson on?
Fox News.
Who put Brett Weinstein on?
Fox News.
So you can say all you want about Fox News and Hannity this and all that, but it's like, who's consistently putting these people on and who isn't?
And the other thing is that just, Because history, terrible history, and no one's had a worse history in the United States than black people.
I mean, there's no doubt about that.
But do you want to, it's like what Candace was saying, and I think she's a much more effective messenger than me, of course, but like, do you just want to dwell in that space, or do you want to take advantage of the fact that finally you don't have to live in that space anymore, and your parents didn't, and maybe your grandparents didn't, Jim Crow?
But, like, that things are getting better.
Like, it's an improvement.
I'm not saying it's perfect.
I'm not a black man.
I don't know what that's, like, to deal with.
And I think that there are terrible things happening in prisons and with cops and all that kind of stuff.
No doubt about it.
But it's, it's like we don't need to fight those battles anymore.
We should fight newer battles.
Someone brought up the point to me, which I think is a great point, like, abolitionists served an amazing role in American history, an amazing role, beginning even before the Revolution, right up and through 1863 and 1865, ultimately.
You don't need abolitionists today.
Union organizers gave us the weekend and the eight-hour workday a hundred years ago.
You don't need them anymore.
Now we have it, right?
So let's fight the new battles.
That might be in the same sphere, that might have overlap, Venn diagram overlap with those old things.
But we're fighting old battles, and it's keeping you stuck in the past, and that's a big problem.
And I don't know why you'd choose to do that to yourself, you know?