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June 14, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
38:45
Episode 98 - Israel offer to Iran, How Meek and Mild Will Inherit Canada
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Time Text
Boop-boo. Bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum.
Hey, everybody.
Get in here.
I'm on a different time zone, but because you're all special, I will be sharing a simultaneous sip with you.
But one of the things I'm finding out about Europe is that there are a lot of differences between Europe and the United States.
For example, I'm in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, And they don't have all the safety precautions of the United States.
Everybody's on a bicycle with no helmets and people are zipping around.
There's no guardrails on the canal, which blows my mind.
There are miles and miles of canals all over.
They don't have any guardrails.
You could just walk right off into the canal.
The cars are parking right to the edge.
And everything's smaller.
The rooms are smaller.
The cars are smaller. The people are huge.
I think this is one of the tallest countries in the world.
But everything else is kind of small.
And so when I went to get my cup of coffee...
Look at this.
There are coffee cups here.
They're tiny. What's up with that?
Alright, let's have a simultaneous sip.
You may have a large...
Gigantic, American-sized Starbucks, if you like.
Me? I'm going to have a tiny, sad little European cup of coffee.
Simultaneous sip. Ah, but it's good.
Okay, I know this isn't a real coffee cup, but it was funny.
Now, some of you may have seen I just tweeted out a video message from Benjamin Netanyahu, who is making an offer from Israel to Iran.
Iran, which I always pronounce in my own special way.
And I thought it was brilliant.
Because he's making a direct appeal to the people of Iran, showing how much Israel cares about the people, but not so much the leadership.
And he's pointing out that apparently there's an enormous potential drought situation, an actual and could get worse situation in Iran, where as many as 50 million people might be forced from their homes by drought.
I mean, that's...
That's a big problem.
And Israel has offered to help with technology that would make them more efficient with their water usage.
And they've created a website where they have information to help them do that.
Now, I don't know how much help one can get from a website.
I don't know how much Iran is going to look at that.
But here's the thing.
Even though it's obvious there's a political motivation for really anything a leader of a country says.
I don't think you'd want a leader who was not acting in a political way.
That's sort of the whole point of the leader.
But at the same time, it seems genuine that if Israel could help with the water shortage in Iran, that they would.
Because it's good for Israel, it's good for them, it's good for relations, and maybe it gets you to a better place.
So, watching Netanyahu Turn up his persuasion to a 10 and a 10.
It's really fun to watch because I think he's on a very effective path right now.
And that path is to make the clearest possible distinction between an Iran that plays well with its neighbors and one that doesn't.
Because apparently if you play well, you get a good economy, you get help with your water shortage, you become part of the world society.
And you're safer. And if you don't play well, you don't have any of that.
You've got an economy that will be crushed, you have an unstable political system, you may run out of water, and it could be a humanitarian nightmare.
Can you even think of a problem that affects 50 million people at approximately the same time?
That sounds like one of the worst problems I've ever heard of in my life.
So Iran is going to need some help with that.
So there's just this enormous difference between where things are and where they could be.
And I feel like the right people are saying the right things to at least shake the box a little.
You know, I talk about that all the time.
Sometimes you don't know exactly how to get from where you are to where you want to be, but you usually know how to shake the box.
And if you shake it enough times and then check out what happened after the shake, it's like, oh, things have lined up a little differently now.
Eh, not quite good enough.
Shake, shake, shake. If you shake it enough, there's a good chance You'll get the variables to line up eventually.
And that seems to be what's happening.
President Trump is shaking the box.
Netanyahu is shaking the box.
But not in a sort of sadistic way, but in a let's change the variables and see if we can get a good conclusion kind of a way with a lot of people who don't want war.
One thing I think all of them have in common is they don't want any war.
Alright, I'm sure I had another topic on here.
Oh, you probably saw President Trump's reference to Justin Trudeau of Canada as meek and mild.
And weak, I think he called them weak, meek and mild.
So, the meek may not actually inherit the earth, but they might get Canada.
There might be one country where the meek can do just fine.
So, I can't say that I support the calling of names of this nature, because that's a little edgy for me.
It's not something I would say in public.
But, we observe that the President does this with great effect, and it probably won't make any difference to anything, and it's just kind of funny when he does it.
You'd feel a little disappointed if you didn't.
You know, one of the things that for some reason I didn't realize is I didn't realize how tall Trudeau is.
He's taller than Trump, isn't he?
Just seeing them stand next to each other, it looks like he might be 6'4"-ish.
Does anybody have a height on him?
Fact check me on that.
Because on television he comes across as smaller.
And it may just be the way he stands or whatever, but you see him actually standing in a row with the other leaders, and I believe he's the tallest leader.
He's got to be at least 6'4", 6'5".
6'3".
He does look taller than Trump, though.
All right. He wears heels, somebody says.
Yes, it's true, as somebody pointed out here in the comments, that my birthday is the same day as Kanye West's birthday.
And people are saying that's a sign of the simulation.
It might be a sign of the simulation, or it could be that if you put 20 people in the room, the odds of one of them having the same birthday as someone else in the room is actually a lot higher than you think.
So the whole, hey, that person has the same birthday as I do, doesn't really mean as much as we imagine it means, because it happens more often than you imagine could happen.
All right, so apparently Kim Jong-un has arrived In Singapore.
I don't know if President Trump has or if he's about to land.
Could happen soon. Their first meeting is going to be in person.
And Fidel was 6'2".
Okay, I guess that answers some of our questions, doesn't it?
He just landed, okay.
So does anybody know when the actual first in-person meeting is scheduled?
It won't be tomorrow, will it?
Will it be today? Maybe it will be today.
So, I understand that a Chinese commercial aircraft, probably just with Chairman Kim and his own folks, that was the transportation.
And I thought to myself, that's actually the perfect situation.
Because first of all, a Chinese aircraft probably is going to have better maintenance, might be a little newer than whatever they're flying in North Korea, so it's safer.
But it's safer in another way, which is nobody's going to shoot down a Chinese aircraft, certainly not intentionally.
So it's probably just the safest thing you could do.
But it also sends this interesting message.
Which, you know, the message is that China is protecting Kim.
Literally protecting him.
They're putting him in their aircraft in the safest possible way and delivering him under their flag, essentially.
I mean, they don't say it that way.
But, in effect, Kim was flying under their banner, at least for security purposes, which I think was good for everybody.
That feels like a positive thing for all people involved.
The summit actually happens June 11th, given it's in Singapore, somebody asked.
Good question. I don't know how that works.
Maybe you're right.
Can I talk about why this simulation would favor Trumpism?
Well, I don't know that it does.
We can only say for sure that there's a lot of it.
I'm not sure that's the same as favoring it.
Now, Think about the fact that North Korea and the United States are having what we hope will be the beginning of a friendly conversation that will only get better in the future.
And while that's happening, Israel is making this offer to Iran to help with their water shortage.
And it seems to me, and I also thought I saw something about the Taliban wanting to have talks with the government in Afghanistan.
I might have that story slightly off.
But it seems to me That love is breaking down everywhere.
Or at least people are being smarter about how to deal with their fellow human beings on this tiny planet.
And maybe it's about time.
So it does seem like the summer of love.
It seems like it could be the beginning of the Golden Age, as heralded in by the Summer of Love.
It seems to me that the United States, even though we're in the warm weather, which is when you'd normally see a lot of protests, I would think.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are many big protests going on in the United States.
So our economy is humming and President Trump is asking for lists of African Americans to consider for pardons and heads are spinning everywhere and there's so much good news that it's hard to believe right now.
So the summer of love is on.
That doesn't mean we won't have setbacks.
That doesn't mean there won't be bad things that happen during the summer.
But I think there's some kind of change in the air.
There's just a change in the air.
People are thinking differently.
And if I could characterize that one change the best, see if you go with this.
It's better to be friends.
That's it. You know, it doesn't seem weird That that's something that needs to be said or realized or that that's a new thought.
Because if you think about it, until a month ago, both the United States and North Korea thought it was better not to be friends.
They thought it was better for whatever self-interest.
And now they're thinking, oh, it's better to be friends.
Same thing happened with Israel and their position about Iran.
Now, it's not reciprocal at this point, of course, but Israel is saying as clearly as possible and often and visually and from the top with no ambiguity, here's what they're saying.
It's better to be friends.
Better to be friends.
What do you see with President Trump offering pardons?
And I think you'd agree that President Trump is making a statement with the pardons because they do skew black and brown.
And he's also on record as being supportive of some legislation to get the federal government out of the weed business, which may have some benefits for African American folks who tend to get prosecuted at higher rates and with bigger sentences.
And his staff is working hard, especially Jared Kushner, on prison reform.
And that goes directly to the benefit of the people who are most often the folks who get into the system.
So, in so many ways, the president is also saying, it's better to be friends.
It's just better to be friends.
Every time.
Now, interestingly, the president is reversing things on its head with our allies.
And I love what he's been saying about the relationship with the allies, because the press keeps saying stuff like, so now you're telling us, President Trump, our relations with our allies, Germany and Great Britain and Canada, now they're worse, right?
And Trump just looks at him and says, 10 out of 10.
Our relationship is 10 out of 10.
But we also have to talk about this trade stuff because that needs to be fair.
It's perfect. He won't give a millimeter on us being less friends with the people who are already our friends.
There are only two possibilities that the president has held out.
The people who are not our friends, it's a much better deal if you become our friend.
Doesn't matter if you're Putin.
Do you think he said as clearly as possible, the president, that it's better if Putin is our friend?
Yes. Better if President Xi is our friend.
Better if Putin's our friend.
Better if Duterte is our friend.
It's just better if you're our friend.
And he's saying it in lots of different ways and lots of different contexts.
But the second thing he's saying is that if you're already our friend, meaning our allies, It's not going to change.
That's a pretty powerful thing.
We can have all kinds of disagreements, but as I tweeted recently, no matter what kind of words we have with our allies, no matter what happens with France,
no matter what happens with Great Britain, if those countries were attacked by an unfriendly force, The first thing that those countries, our allies, would hear is something in an American accent that sounded like, hold my Diet Coke, just before their enemies were vaporized.
So the United States, we're really good at taking care of our friends.
If there's one thing we're good at that I think people will agree, I suppose anybody can disagree with anything.
But generally speaking, we have a pretty good track record when people say, we're on your side.
That works for us.
It's a very American thing.
If you're on our side, it's tough to get off our side.
Once you're on the team, we don't like to let you go.
Yeah, look at Japan.
Look at Germany after World War II. You can go right down the line.
And even with all of the words that we're exchanging with Mexico, if Mexico were ever attacked by, let's say, some third-party force, would Mexico have to worry?
Not. Not.
The United States would vaporize their enemies in one afternoon.
It would be over. Nobody can attack our little buddy Mexico because the United States wouldn't let it happen.
We could have all the disagreements we want on tariffs and trade deals and immigration and stuff like that, but we're not going to change the basic feeling, the basic relationship.
Once you're friends with the United States, we'd like to keep you that way.
And if you're not our friend, we'd like to make you one, and it's a good deal.
I guess I said that too many times already.
What else is happening? I'm just waiting for Christina to...
Tap me on the shoulder any minute.
Yeah, so John Cusack is calling for some kind of protest in the street to remove the legally elected president.
I'm not sure that he's exactly called for a coup.
Not in those words.
There's still room in his language to assume that he means through peaceful protest, whatever.
I'm actually worried about the mental health of the people who are watching this president that they thought was a monster continually do things that are not monster-like.
And in order for them to keep with their prior thought, they're going to have to imagine conspiracy theories.
They're going to imagine that fake news is real.
They're going to imagine that although he hasn't done something, he might do something bad.
They're going to imagine that although his actions look okay, his thoughts are bad and that's bad enough.
So there's going to be A serious unwinding of sanity, whatever's left of it, of the folks who have been so public about their disapproval of this president.
Yeah, I heard that Bill Maher suggested that it might be good for the economy to crash a little bit just to get rid of President Trump.
I'm not sure I'd make a big deal about that.
That sounds more like hyperbole.
When he says something like that, it probably is closer to, well, maybe if the economy slowed down, he wouldn't be such a lock to win re-election.
I would take it in that vein.
I like to be consistent.
How many times have you seen me defend the president by saying, okay, that's hyperbole.
You don't take that as literally as it sounds.
So I'm going to do the same thing with...
With Bill Maher. Don't take that as literally as it sounds.
He's not hoping for a depression, something like that.
But he might legitimately think the country is better off, given how bad he thinks the president is for the world, that the economy pulls back a little.
Just to make the president less secure in the job.
That might be real. But I wouldn't worry that that's full-on, let's crash the economy to get rid of this president.
I imagine if you asked him follow-up questions, he would agree with what I just said.
But I don't know. And likewise with John Cusack, you should assume that there's some hyperbole in his tweets, so don't take it as literal coup.
Now, keep in mind that when you say, I don't think either one of the people I mentioned is joking, keep in mind that the other side, the people who disagree with you, think exactly the same thing when President Trump tells a joke that you're positive is a joke.
The thing I'm here to tell you is that you can't tell the difference.
You can't really tell when the other side is using hyperbole and when they mean it just the way they can't tell when you're doing it.
So I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm just saying that it looks more like hyperbole all around than it does look to be as if any of them mean it seriously.
Ayatollah clarified very strongly only death to Zionism policy toward Palestinians.
Is there a date on that clarification?
So the background to that is I had said in a Periscope recently that we should ask the Ayatollah to clarify what does he mean by death to Israel and Israel has to be eradicated and other things.
And I'm asking for clarification because somebody made a comment here that he has clarified that he means Israel's policy of Zionism and its treatment of the Palestinians.
But I don't believe I've seen that news.
So are there any confirmations that anything new has happened?
Same day as Tweet on his website.
Okay. I'm going to need to get a little more...
I got a little more clarity on that.
And a little bit more confirmation that he really said that, because there's also the translation problem and everything else.
Greater Israel Project.
I don't know what that is. Is there something called a Greater Israel Project?
That doesn't sound like something Israel's opponents would like at all.
How can you change anti-Israel mindsets?
I'll tell you how.
Do you know what a person can't simultaneously be?
So it's hard for people to hold in their heads two opposites.
It's impossible for me to say, this cup is small, at the exact same time I say, this cup is gigantic.
I can't hold those in my head.
I've got to pick one. My brain just forces me to pick one.
So you watch what Netanyahu has done, and I talked about this in the beginning of the Periscope.
He made a video in which he made an unambiguous offer of friendship and help on the issue of water shortages in Iran.
Now, if he keeps that up, and we've seen some consistency so far, where he keeps offering friendship steps that are real, you know, they're legitimate physical things, you know, more water, here's our technology, here's our advice, here's our assistance in some ways, potentially.
If you keep doing that, you break the frame.
Let me give you an example of this that happened naturally.
Before I tell you this story, I want to confess that this might be a fake memory.
This could be a false memory, but it's a long time ago.
I think it's true, but even if it's not, it's going to prove my point the same.
It seems to me that when the Soviet Union was in business and the Cold War was going strong, we were under the impression that we had to be their enemies and they needed to be our enemies.
And then, again, this is the part you have to fact check.
I believe there was a massive earthquake in Russia proper, or the Soviet Union anyway.
I think it was in Russia proper.
And it was a type of earthquake that's so big that you really do need international help.
And what happened was that the citizens of the United States in particular raised a tremendous amount of money by donating to some fund to help the Russian recovery.
And I believe the United States also immediately offered our specialized resources for that kind of stuff.
Was that 1989?
When that happened, I remember saying to a co-worker, there goes the iron curtain.
I said, that offer to help you in an emergency, meaning the United States, so quickly and unambiguously, Helping the Russian people because they needed help.
There was nothing in it for us.
It was literally no quid pro quo.
We gave and asked nothing in return because they were human beings.
We had things we could offer.
They needed those things.
That's it. If anybody ever figures that out about Americans, that Americans are so easy to figure out, it's like, be our friend.
We'll do anything for you.
We're really, really helpful people.
It's like the most defining characteristic of Americans is if you're not actually actively our enemies, we're going to help.
We're really, really helpful and we like that about ourselves.
It's one of the things that makes us feel good about ourselves.
It's deeply ingrained in our cultural makeup.
So when the United States went in so strongly and quickly and unambiguously and with no strings attached to help Russia during the time of the Iron Curtain, I told my friends at the time, and I think this was my first accurate prediction in world events, I said, from a psychology perspective, their frame just got broken.
They just realized that being our friend is a good deal.
They didn't know that before.
It was like maybe that wasn't an option.
But we proved it so unambiguously with the help on the earthquake recovery that I said, now it's just a matter of time.
The psychology just broke and now it just needs to ripple through the system until people's minds can't hold their old frame.
It wasn't long before things changed.
Now, if I got any of those facts wrong, let me generalize it to say that if you have an enemy and you're trying to change that situation, you only have two ways to do it.
Crush them and defeat them, which is more rare in the modern world because everybody seems to be able to survive any kind of war these days and get weapons and fight back and be terrorists themselves.
It's just hard to just totally vanquish a foe anymore.
Maybe those days are over.
But the second way is to start acting like a friend and see if you can get them to act that way too.
So... I think that's what's happening.
And Israel has figured that out.
And I think you're going to see them trying to figure out ways that they can be good to the Palestinian people, good to Iran, and good to anybody else who needs them to be good to them.
So that's all for now.
I'm going to go do something else.
And tomorrow I'm flying.
Probably won't talk to you tomorrow.
But I'll see you the day after.
Oh, and make sure that you see my blog post that I posted today, in which I, as a public service, I tried to put in one place all of the incorrect things that people think about President Trump in terms of, is he a darn racist, or are you imagining it?
So I laid out the two movies, so you can see the two movies essentially side by side, effectively.
Because you've all had the experience of playing whack-a-mole with anti-Trumpers.
And it goes like this.
The anti-Trumper says, President Trump's a racist.
And you say, what would be an example of that?
And they say, here's my example.
And you say, oh no, that's fake news.
Let me show you the link. Let me show you why that's out of context.
What do they do then? Well, maybe that one's fake.
But what about this one?
And that's also a fake.
And if you have 20 fakes, which is roughly the number of fake news stories there are just on that topic alone, it's hard for anybody to imagine that they're all wrong.
So I decided to put them all in one place and show you that they're all, if not wrong, at least the Trump supporters have a completely different interpretation of events.
So while the country is believing that the Trump supporters might be all racists who have some knowledge they're supporting a known racist and therefore they must be themselves, It is far truer, and I think unambiguously true, that the supporters simply don't see the movie that's playing for the other people.
So if Trump supporters saw Trump the way his opponents see them, we'd feel the same way.
Wouldn't everybody have the same feeling?
It's like, oh man, if anything they said was true, or we believed it was true, let's step back from assuming that any of us know what is reality, because that's always dangerous.
But we all have our own assumptions, and certainly in the Trump supporter movie, they don't see a racist.
They don't. And they don't hear that whistle.
They just don't hear it.
They're in a completely different frame.
So even if you assume the worst about the president, you could not paint the supporters the same way because they're just in a different movie.
All the athletes are calling him racist.
Yeah, you know, right now it's unsafe to back the president if you're a public figure.
Now, Kanye made a big step in trying to make it safer.
But here's the problem.
He's Kanye. So, since Kanye already has a reputation of being pretty far out of the mainstream, you know, at least in terms of creativity, in terms of, you know, he's been open about being bipolar.
We all saw him do his thing with Taylor Swift at the award ceremony.
So when he does something out of the box, it doesn't necessarily make the rest of the country say, oh, well, if he's doing it, maybe I'll follow him.
But it's still a big deal because he did break the frame.
It just isn't the kind of break that everybody's going to be able to get behind because he's a polarizing character.
So the people who really like him and respect him may be influenced by that.
The people who already had a negative opinion about him won't be influenced at all.
So what you would need for a big change to happen is somebody who's an absolute mainstream A critic of the president who just says, you know, I can't hold my criticism any longer.
You know, I was with all the rest of you, meaning Hollywood.
And I criticize them.
You can look at my Twitter feed.
It's non-stop criticism.
But hey, I like the economy.
I like black unemployment being low.
I like North Korea. Maybe something happens in the Middle East.
That's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.
But somebody's going to do that.
Well, let me make this a prediction.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nobody who you might describe as like right in the center of the resistance who has changed their opinion.
Have you seen it? I don't believe we've seen it because, you know, Kanye is just such a unique character.
It's just hard to, you know, it's hard to generalize him to anything else.
But until you see that, well, Van Jones is interesting.
Now, Van Jones hasn't switched positions.
He has, you know, I consider him an enlightened thinker who is willing to do what works.
So he's working on the prison reform thing because he's a good addition to that.
Farrakhan, again, he's not a mainstream character.
So it would take somebody like Van Jones, doesn't have to be him, but somebody like him, who's right in the middle, he's not controversial in and of himself, but is willing to say, look, based on evidence, I think we have to rethink this.
We may not see it, but I'm going to predict that you're going to see it.
LeBron going to the Warriors?
Nothing's impossible, is it?
David Brooks might.
You know, you might need a person of color.
David Brooks moving from a conservative to a Trump supporter is not news.
It's interesting. Well, there's news.
But it's not the kind of thing that changes the world.
People say, well, that's interesting.
And move on. You need a person of color.
And in this context, black is better.
I was going to not say that, but in this context, black is better.
So if you see a mainstream critic of the president who also happens to be black change their mind, it's going to shake the planet.
Yeah, we haven't seen that.
All right. Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to be one of the athletes...
Dave Chappelle, somebody said.
You know, Dave Chappelle would be a perfect example.
I'm not saying he will or should or anything like that.
But in terms of an example of someone who is right in the middle and has credibility...
Dave Chappelle has a weird kind of credibility, doesn't he?
Normally you don't think of comedians as being credible, but there's just something about the way he presents himself, the style of humor.
There's just something very credible about him.
Alright, that's all for now.
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