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June 16, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
44:37
Episode 69 - How to Guide a Victim out of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)
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Hey everybody!
I'm a little bit early today.
Why don't you jump in here and grab your beverages?
Because it's time for what I call a crossfire hurricane of truth.
Yeah, I said that.
And it's coming to you live.
From Pleasanton, California.
Grab your beverage. It's time for the simultaneous sip.
I had to get on early.
I couldn't sleep because there was so much to talk about.
There might be a pinprick of hope that the Trump derangement syndrome bubble could break.
Now it's unlikely. I know, it's unlikely.
I'm not going to predict it.
But for the first time, you could see the possibility.
And it starts with this Laurel and Yanni thing.
I think you all know it. But I'm going to play that little audio clip.
And once you see what name you hear, okay?
I'll just hold this up to my microphone.
And what do you hear, Yanni or Laurel?
All right. Here it is.
Scott! Scott!
Can you hear it? Scott!
Scott! Alright, did that sound like Laurel or Yanni to you?
Here, one more time. Scott!
Adels! Scott!
Alright. Just kidding!
Speaking of jokes...
So yesterday, I forwarded some memes without comment.
And one of the memes, I don't know if you'll see it here, it's a picture of, can you see, let's see if I can get a good picture here.
Yeah, it's hard to say. It's President Trump hugging an African American woman who was the mother of one of the slain police officers at an event.
And of course, President Trump and the grandmother, I assume she was 90 years old, were hugging each other and they were all over each other and having a moment.
So rather than the mainstream media reporting that as a tender moment, one of the memes was, and this is a fake meme, all right?
This is not real. This is just a funny meme.
And it shows Anderson Cooper on one side.
It shows the president hugging the African-American 90-year-old grandmother.
And the fake heading says, analyzing Trump's history of aggressive hugs.
Alright, so the joke is that it's like CNN would play this with the headline that says, Analyzing Trump's History of Aggressive Hugs.
Now it's very funny, and I thought, oh, that's pretty funny because, you know, they turned it around.
So I forward this thing.
Do you know how many people thought this was real?
You should see the comments.
So the people on the right, who already have a mental picture of CNN being ridiculous, Believed that this was real.
Now, if you think I'm making fun of the people who believed it, that is not my point.
No. If you run a news network and people can't tell the difference between an obvious hoax headline and something that's real, You're doing something wrong.
You're doing something wrong here, right?
So just to be clear, I'm not making fun of the people who believed it was real because they had a point.
I'm making fun of the fact that you can't exaggerate enough to make it clear that you're even joking.
Alright. Now, a few other things that are happening, and I'm going to get to a bigger point here.
There's a whiteboard talk coming, in case you were wondering.
So, I was looking at the South China Morning Post.
Now, I don't know much about this publication.
I don't know anything about this publication, except that it's South China Morning Post, and that they probably don't have the same type of bias against President Trump as you might see in this country, both pro and con.
So this is another country talking about North Korea and the U.S. and what's happened recently.
In the U.S., You can see that the coverage of North Korea's recent announcements that, hey, maybe we won't give up our nukes.
What's up with John Bolton?
Now, in our country, it's largely being reported as, man, our president is stupid.
What a stupid president we have.
He fell for it again.
They're flattering him.
They got everything they wanted, and now they're just going to whoop and pull the football away, and they never really meant it.
President Trump's a big old dope.
He believed that. All right, that's the U.S. coverage.
How do they cover it?
As soon as you get out of the United States, right?
So the South China Morning Post, here's how they covered it.
Oh, it looks like Kim Jong Un is holding out for a better economic package.
Now, that was my first thought, is that what he said was, oh, we're not going to give up our nukes for nothing.
Now, I don't think Kim Jong Un was thinking that the U.S. and the rest of the world would give up their nukes at the same time, even though they've said something like that.
It seems to me they're holding out for something.
What? More economic promises.
So as soon as you get out of the United States, the way they cover this is like, oh, it's a negotiation.
What is it that he wants more of?
Oh, more economic aid.
That's probably what he's holding out for.
That's probably what he is holding out for.
We'll find out. All right.
I want to talk about the hole in the fabric of reality that just opened up, and it might give you a way to talk The folks who are in Trump hysteria, the Trump derangement syndrome bubble, we might see a way to help them out.
And I'm going to talk you through it.
Shall we go to the whiteboard?
Yes, we shall. All right.
Here's what I call the TDS escape route.
This is possibly...
I'm not going to predict that this could work yet, but we're seeing for the first time a possible escape from the Trump derangement syndrome bubble for those people we're trying to help out.
And it goes like this.
And I've arranged this in order of roughly an escalating hoax order.
So on the left are the things that are hoaxes or illusions that are the easiest ones to talk yourself out of.
If you talk yourself out of the easy ones, you've got a chance.
It might take you on a journey to talk yourself out of the hard ones.
So let's go through them.
The world watched in wonder as people in the same room listening to the same recording at the same time could hear two clearly different words.
Some people listening at exactly the same time to exactly the same device and the same recording.
You can stand right next to somebody and they will hear Yanni while you hear Laurel.
Now, for some people, that was a big deal.
It was like mind-bending.
It was like, my God, how can two people look at exactly the same thing and have a completely different impression of what movie they're watching?
It was like you're watching two movies on the same screen, which is what I've been saying since 2015.
This is that hole in the universe I was waiting for.
It's what I told you was going to happen.
And you saw it Most easily in this, because people did not have to doubt Whether they were living in sort of a two movie on one screen situation.
Because they could see it live.
They could see it in real time.
They could repeat the experiment as many times.
They could see that everybody's having the same experience.
This was like a little pinprick in reality.
By itself, small story, it will pass.
But it's not by itself.
The very same day, we saw the media hoax in which you're seeing clips taken out of context, in which the President of the United States is alleged to have called the immigrants animals.
But that didn't happen.
And fortunately, this was really easy to show that all of the major media, not all of them, but CNN, ABC, I think NPR, a few others, clearly misrepresented a story, and it's also obvious it was intentional.
Because all you have to do is look at the full clip, and you can see that he was talking about MS-13 gang members as animals.
Something that we all agree with.
And you can also see...
It's very easy to demonstrate to yourself.
You don't need anybody else to explain it to you.
Just Google it. And you can see that he's talking about animals.
And you can see that the media quite intentionally misrepresented him.
And the intentional part is the important part of the story.
If it were an accident, you might say to yourself, Well, that doesn't mean anything.
Accidents happen. Oh, this was no accident.
Now, if you...
Look at this and you look at it and you realize, crap, I totally believed that.
I believed he actually called immigrants in general animals.
And now I can clearly see that the media intentionally duped me.
This one's easy. And then you say to them, I've been trying this online a few times just to watch the reaction, you say, well, if you fell for this one, did you also fall for the Charlottesville hoax?
And some of you are saying right now, Charlotteville hoax?
What the hell are you talking about?
That one was real.
That story, the president actually said that the people carrying tiki torches and chanting anti-Jewish slogans, he called them fine people.
That really happened. What are you talking about?
Why is it even on this list of hoaxes?
That didn't happen.
It was reported.
But it didn't happen. Let me tell you what did happen, in case you haven't heard this before.
There were not two sides.
There were four sides.
People against Confederate statues, people for Confederate statues.
That was what the event was about.
The whole event was for statues against statues.
But within the event, there were also another two sides.
Antifa and the racists with the tiki torches.
When the president said there were fine people on both sides, he was talking about, obviously, the people on both sides of the Confederate statue issue.
Now, if you believe he meant the actual literal racists with the tiki torches or anybody who was agreeing with them, you have to explain why Israel doesn't have a problem with it.
Because Israel thinks he's the greatest guy.
I would think they would have noticed this whole Charlottesville siding with the anti-Jewish marchers, if it were real.
But here's why Israel is not bothered by it.
Because as soon as you get a little distance, it's obvious it's not real.
It's obvious. So Charlottesville is an obvious hoax.
The both sides are both sides of the Confederate statue of question.
I'm anti-statue, by the way, but I would agree with the statement that there are some good people who like it for history.
I don't agree with them, but they're not bad people.
They're not racist, per se.
Then there was the Judge Curiel hoax, in which he called the judge a Mexican.
Oh no, my God, what a racist!
He called a sitting judge who was born in this country, who was an American citizen, he called them a Mexican.
Do you know who else calls American citizens who have some Mexican heritage?
Do you know who else calls them Mexicans?
Those people. That's what they call themselves.
I told this story about an extended family member who is, I think, one-eighth Mexican, and he calls himself Mexican.
Because it's just how people refer to themselves.
If you go to your neighbor, who's third-generation American, but his relatives, you know, his heritage is Italian, and you say, describe your family.
What's he going to say? We are Italian-American?
No. People don't talk like that.
They say, well, you have to know we're Italian, and we talk with our hands, or whatever they're going to say.
The normal way that people talk It's like that.
It's the way the president talked.
There was never a story there.
And in the context he was talking about, he was talking about whether there could be bias, and certainly your cultural heritage, the feelings of your family, you could reasonably expect in a legal context that would be grounds for saying, well, maybe we should take this person off a jury.
Maybe this person shouldn't be a judge.
Now, whether it was right or wrong, it was a perfect legal strategy, totally in line, referring to the judge as Mexican, is the way everybody talks.
Who is not a racist?
Now, racists might talk that way also, but it is also the way everybody else talks.
It's just the way people talk in the United States.
Do you remember the hoax about President Trump doing the, I'm not gonna do the gestures, but his hands were up and he made a mocking gesture to a New York Times reporter who has a bad arm.
If you only saw that, you would say, my God, what a terrible person.
He's mocking a guy with a bad arm.
But if you saw the context, which is that Trump uses that same mocking expression to anybody he thinks is dumb, Then you would see that this is his normal way of mocking people.
Now, did he go a little extra with this guy?
I believe so. But I believe that probably there was a subconscious thing filtering in there and that he used his normal mocking motion.
He may have exaggerated a little bit, but I doubt that was intentional.
It seems unlikely.
Alright, what about the McCain joke?
People said, saying McCain, you prefer people who didn't get caught, that's not a joke?
Well, you could show them the clip of Al Franken telling that joke, or maybe it's just a news story.
Or you could show them the 2008 video of Chris Rock telling that same joke.
Now people say to me, oh yeah, well, okay, I get that it was a joke when the professional comedian said it, but when Trump said it, he was serious.
He was just trying to diminish McCain.
To which I say, um, right.
He was in an insult contest in which everybody was insulting each other.
They were calling him a racist.
He was calling them, you know, low-energy jab.
He was in the middle of an insult contest.
It's what everybody was doing.
And he insulted one of his critics, which is what everybody was doing.
Now, was his insult of McCain nice or proper or polite?
No. But you know what else is not nice or proper or polite?
Calling somebody a racist.
It's pretty bad.
Now, the reason that some people say, well, that's not bad, they say, well, that one's true.
Is it true?
Let's go on.
The Mexican rapist hoax.
Remember when President Trump announced, he said they're sending their criminals, their rapists, etc.
It was a little vague, and of course people took him out of context to say, he's saying that everybody coming from Mexico illegally is a rapist.
Was he saying that the babies who are coming in with the parents are the babies rapists?
Was he saying that the women who are carrying the babies are rapists?
No, he wasn't saying that.
Nor is it even slightly reasonable to imagine that he was saying that all the men were rapists.
Would it be more reasonable to assume that That some of them are rapists, some of them are not, and that he was using his normal hyperbole to make a point.
Just like every other time he talks, he uses hyperbole.
He may have exaggerated to make you feel like there was a little more danger than there was.
Is that racist?
No, that's somebody trying to protect the border.
It would not have mattered if they were Canadian or anybody else.
If it was the same amount of danger, he would have exaggerated.
Damn those Canadians.
Look at them trying to get into the country.
I didn't put on the birther hoax.
A lot of people say, well, it must have been a racist thing that he had that birther thing, because why else would you question somebody's birthplace?
Well, ask Ted Cruz.
He questioned Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president for being maybe Canadian, which he's not.
But he questioned it. After watching President Trump operate for a few years, do we imagine that President Trump ever leaves any line of attack unused?
He does not.
If your father has been linked to the Kennedy assassination, do you think he'll bring it up?
He will! Do you think there's any rock laying on the ground that he will not pick up and throw at you if there's a rock on the ground right in front of him?
No. The pattern is very clear.
He will use every single rock, the good rocks, the bad rocks, the sketchy rocks, the rocks that don't make any sense.
Rocks are rocks. He's going to throw them all.
You've seen that as clear as day.
The Bertha thing he would have done to anybody.
Doesn't matter what the ethnicity was.
Now let's get to the Russia hoax.
We're seeing some reporting now about, is it Crossfire Hurricane was the name of the actual operation to overthrow the United States from the inside?
So the coup attempt, it seems, it's being reported this way, is that Brennan and Clapper and Comey and Strzok and a number of other people were all in on sort of a explicit or at least understood effort to use semi-legal methods with hoaxes together to get rid of a sitting president.
By far, maybe, if you don't count wars, Probably the biggest story in the last 50 years in the United States, not counting war.
The biggest story is this internal coup in the United States, which is largely being soft-pedaled by the media who wanted you to believe that the problem was on the other side.
Now, we don't know if Mueller has something we haven't heard about.
Maybe we'll be surprised.
But I'm suspecting that it won't be long Before people realized that the Russia stuff was always a hoax and that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was a real thing and that you've been bamboozled.
Now, if you start with this one, imagine trying to convince somebody that they're hallucinating about all the Trump stuff.
Imagine starting with the Russia hoax.
You say, well, you know, I don't see evidence.
And then the other side says, well, look at all these indictments of these unrelated, well, they're somewhat related to President, but not in the terms of the crimes.
And People are going to see Yanni here, and some people are going to see Laurel, and there's just nothing you can do about it if you start here.
If that's where you start trying to convince somebody they're hallucinating, you're not going to get very far.
You've got to back down the tube.
You've got to start with one where they agree, they can see it, they can feel it, and they can start to doubt their own ability to see reality.
Now, to be fair, I'm showing you how to get the people who are in Trump Derangement Syndrome out of their bubble.
I'm not pardoning anybody on the right for their own bubbles.
So people on the right have been in their own kinds of bubbles in different times for different reasons.
I'm only talking about one side right now, but I'm not ignoring that the other side is just as easily fooled, just in different ways.
So just running through this again, if you can convince somebody that it's easy for people to hear two completely different things while looking at the same stimulus, Yanni and Laurel, you can show them the videos of how the animals quote that's the big news today is obviously a hoax.
Charlottesville, I think that's obviously a hoax.
If you watch Israel's reaction to this president, I don't think there's any question about what happened here.
The two sides are pro-statue, anti-statue.
This was always the worst of them.
Hoax-wise, this was the worst by far.
The Judge Curiel thing, everybody uses the same kind of language.
It's just a normal way that everybody talks.
I will bet you $1 million that this judge has referred to himself with the word Mexican privately at some point.
The arm mocking hoax, you can just see the other videos that show he uses that mocking thing.
The McCain joke, was it a joke?
Well, it was a joke when Al Franken said it.
It was a joke when Chris Rock said it.
It was a joke when President Trump said it.
But he did also mean to diminish McCain, which was sensible because they were in an insult competition called an election.
We just talked about the Mexican rapist hoax.
Obviously, nobody in that situation thinks that all Mexicans are rapists.
It's a ridiculous thing to believe, and it's as ridiculous.
Let me give you the example.
So just to make this fair, I started out this by showing you the, you can see it a little bit, the fake meme that was a fake CNN story showing the president hugging an elderly black woman and Anderson Cooper on the side, and then a fake title that said, analyzing Trump's history of aggressive hugs.
Now just as the people on the right were fooled by this, not all of them, but a number of people, a number of people who were pro-Trump Believe this was real because they were primed to believe it was real.
This is ridiculous.
There's no way that this could ever be a real headline.
But it was so easy to believe because you'd believed that CNN had been so bad for so long that you just said, oh man, they just went a little extra far this time.
So as easy it was for the right to be fooled by that hoax, That's how easy it is for the left to be fooled by these hoaxes that I present to you in increasing levels of hoaxy believability.
Alright. Now, I'm not going to suggest that this is enough to convert people.
But you're starting to see it.
You're starting to see it a little bit.
All right, what else are we missing?
Yes, the MS-13 animals comment, we already talked about that, how that's just taken out of context and another hoax.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
With the animals hoax, the one that's going on today, it's really, really clear that the media has misreported that.
CNBC's John Harwood is trying to defend it as really saying animals.
It's mind-boggling.
But it's no more mind-boggling than Laurel or Yanni, right?
If you hear that there's somebody on MSNBC who you think is honestly trying to report, and they're not even hoaxing, they're like, yeah, no, he really said animals about every immigrant.
He really said that. I think that they might actually believe it.
But it's quite objectively, clearly, obviously not the case.
Somebody says, so should we ignore everything he says?
So in my book, Win Bigly, I teach people how to identify cognitive dissonance.
And one of the forms that you can identify is this.
It starts with the word so.
And then there will be a misstatement of what you said that's in an absolute.
So somebody just left a comment.
So, are we supposed to just not believe anything he says?
So that was the form.
Starts with so, and has a ridiculous absolute, like, believe anything he says.
So whoever asked the question, you've just discovered yourself experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Read my book and you'll see that I describe that very exact pattern that you asked the question as a clear tell for somebody whose brain is just flipped into an uncomfortable place.
Now the reason that you asked it that way when you said, so, are you saying that everything the president says is meant to be a joke?
On the surface, can't you tell that nobody would say that?
In other words, everything that followed the word so is so obviously not true and it wouldn't be true to anybody because it's created as an absolute that's just absurd.
So, are you saying everything that the president says is a joke?
No. Nobody would say that.
Nobody would say everything he says.
So that's how you know you're in cognitive dissonance.
If you find yourself saying so, followed by a ridiculous restatement into an absolute, then you know that you're on this path here, but you're not getting that far.
you've been blocked.
Alright.
Yeah, so some people are calling the some people are calling it hoax news that that That the Israelis killed a bunch of citizens as opposed to a bunch of Hamas fighters who were trying to get in for bad purposes.
Here's my take on all of that sad business.
First of all, let's say that the victims, it's a tragedy.
We wish that it had not happened.
But, let me say this.
Both sides got what they wanted.
Hamas did this event so that there would be a death toll.
That was the point.
There wasn't any other point except to inspire some violence, create some losses on their side, because that's the PR win.
So Hamas got what they wanted.
And I'm sure that whatever number is reported dead, you can assume over there that everything's an exaggeration.
So if Israel said we only killed two people, it's probably five.
And if Hamas says you killed 60 people, it's probably some number less than that.
So we can't really entirely trust anything that comes out of there.
It's all going to be exaggerated for effect.
But Hamas got what they wanted.
What they wanted at the end of that day was some of their people dead because that sacrifice was one that they thought would be advantageous to them.
What Israel wanted was to defend the border in a way that was unambiguously badass and that they wouldn't allow any wiggle room when it came to the border, which they accomplished.
So I've been saying for a while that the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan has always been sort of a fake-out because neither side really wants peace.
You know, you can find individuals who say they want it, but in terms of government to government, neither government really wants that.
I mean, Israel would prefer their strong position.
They've got kind of a vice grip on everything.
And the Palestinians prefer the victim role because it keeps their government in place.
As long as they've got a cause, then whoever their governments are, they stay in place.
Now, Now, I saw an interesting article yesterday in which it said that the primary motivation of the Gazans, so here we're talking about the citizens of Gaza who so here we're talking about the citizens of Gaza who were the ones who were protesting.
So let me ask you if you can even tell me, what do you think was the primary motivation in an article by somebody who spent a lot of time over there talking to a lot of folks and had...
He wasn't guessing. It was a writer who actually was in Gaza recently talking to folks and asking them, what's your issue?
What is it you're trying to accomplish?
So tell me, in your opinion, what do you think was the biggest issue, according to one reporter who talked to a lot of people in Gaza, what is it that is their biggest issue?
What's their biggest complaint?
I'll bet none of you will get it.
Because we don't see it reported that way here.
Oppression? Not exactly.
Economy? Not exactly.
Land? Not exactly.
Economics? No.
Nope. They got the land stolen from them?
Nope. Food?
Nope. Nope.
Hamas? Truth? No jobs?
Nope. Bad economy?
Nope. Existence of Israel?
Nope. Land, housing, freedom, living conditions, education?
Not one of you...
Oh my God, I'm going to swear.
Not one of you got the same answer as the reporter who actually talked to the people in Gaza.
Not one of you. Self-determination?
Nope. Voting? Nope.
Race? Nope. Nope. Nope.
Humiliation. The answer is humiliation.
And I don't know that this is true, so I'm going to put a little skepticism on this.
But somebody who actually, a reporter who actually spent a lot of time there just recently, And talked to the actual Gaza citizens and said, what is the issue here with Israel?
They did not say economy.
They did not say, we must kill the Jews.
They didn't say that.
Now, they might think that also, but their top reason was dignity and the feeling that they were continually being humiliated.
Do you know what it reminded me of?
It reminded me of Black Lives Matter and the feeling that the problem with the police is not just in their view.
Forget about what is true and what is not true.
We're talking about how people feel about stuff right now.
But in the view of Black Lives Matter, the police are targeting them and there's a humiliation element to it and there's just more to it.
Now, do you believe that? Do you believe that the primary motivation of the protesters, not the fighters, not the Hamas people who actually want to get rid of Israel, but do you believe that the crowd was mostly motivated by a feeling of humiliation?
Because I'm not quite buying that, but I'm not ruling it out.
So, my opinion is there might be a whole bunch of different motivations.
I think a whole lot of people have different motivations.
Now, people have said today, wait, if you have all these different motivations over there, how could you ever have one plan that makes everybody happy?
Because they're not even complaining about the same thing.
So, one plan is unlikely to make all these people happy with different opinions of what the real problem is.
But I think... I think there is a way with persuasion that you can convince people that what their problem is that they thought it was, was something slightly different.
So let me say this, because this will be one of the most important things I ever say, but because it's in the wrong context here, it'll probably just go right by.
If you have a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of different opinions of what the problem is, your problem is you can't just give them one plan and say, here's my plan.
I solved all of these different problems.
There's probably no plan that does that.
So the first step is to make them think that all these different things they're complaining about are really all one thing.
So there's a step before the plan.
So before the peace plan, the first step is to persuade people that all these different ways they're expressing their Concern, some people say it's the humiliation.
Some people say it's our historical homeland.
Some people say, you know, it's economics, whatever they say.
You have to find something that they all agree is the one best way to convey their problem and everybody else's.
And then when you have it down to one problem that's got a name and you can say, okay, here's the one problem.
It kind of captures all that other stuff.
Then you've got some hope of creating a plan that deals with that one issue.
But first you have to collapse the problems.
And we haven't done that yet.
So you've got to figure out all the things that people are worried about over there and try to collapse them into the one or a few things that you can make a plan to deal with.
Scott, you sound like a Christian, somebody says.
I'm not, but it wouldn't surprise me that I sound that way.
So I see somebody saying in the comments that they want victory over the Jews.
Here's my question that I give all the time to a lot of people in different contexts.
Almost never do people only want one thing for one reason on one variable.
Sometimes. But it's kind of rare.
So when somebody says, all they want is to defeat the Jews...
It's probably true that most of the people on the Palestinian side have a problem with the Jews and would like, they'd probably enjoy that.
They'd probably enjoy, oh, if there was a way we could have a victory over the Jews, sure.
But is it their top concern?
Or is the humiliation, the economy, what's happening with my family, how do I get water?
If we had a peace, would it be fair with access to electricity and water rights and highways and everything else that's important?
You know, if you could take away, if you could solve the physical stuff, would the average person say, well, okay, I got a good economy, I got my own country, my family's doing well, I've got water, I've got electricity, but I have to defeat the Jews!
Some, some would.
For some, that might be their top issue.
But I have a feeling, not most.
That's just a feeling.
And it's based on the fact that people aren't that different under the hood.
Everybody cares about their religion and their feelings until they're hungry.
And then eating is just more important.
Somebody says, seriously, do you even understand the issue?
My starting point for anything in the Middle East is that I do not understand the issue.
So that's number one.
I, Scott Adams, do not understand the issue well enough to speak about it in public the way I'm speaking about it in public.
So that's the first thing that I take as true, and I hope that you'll accept that as true as well.
The second thing, then somebody says, well then stop discussing it.
Well that gets me to point two.
Point two is, nobody else understands it either.
On that part, I'm completely convinced.
Now, you say to yourself, oh, Scott, my God, your ego, how can you believe that there's nobody who understands this issue?
How can you believe that people who are there, who live it, the scholars, the people who are immersed in it, how can you say they don't understand the issue?
Laurel and Yanni.
Laurel and Yanni.
Sure, there are people who know way more than I do.
Way more than I do.
Do they know what they're talking about?
Nope. Because they have a bias.
There's probably nobody over there who knows a lot about the area who doesn't have a pretty clear bias.
And if they have a bias, They're hearing Laurel.
Some of them are hearing Yanni.
But if you think that all of their knowledge, all of their scholarship, all of their experience, if you think that gives them a leg up on my opinion, which I just told you, is completely uninformed.
If you think that they have an advantage on me because they have that deeper understanding, then you don't understand anything about how the world works.
Because the people with the most understanding are also going to be the most biased and the least likely to actually analyze information objectively.
So the window that I take on this is persuasion.
The world of persuasion is relatively simple.
Meaning that a person can learn that field easier than a lot of other fields.
The Middle East is very complicated, but the overlay is persuasion.
And so the general things I'm saying, which is that we probably don't have a good understanding of why people are doing what they're doing, that's safe to say.
That's fair to say.
It is also true, and I can say this without being an expert on the Middle East, I can say that if you went and talked to somebody and said, tell me your biggest problem about your situation or about Israel, let's say you're talking to a Palestinian, and they told you, they said, my biggest issue is A. If you know persuasion, you also understand that that's not necessarily true.
Their biggest issue might be B, C, or D, but they're going to tell you A. For whatever reason.
They might even believe it. So the persuasion filter on this says that people don't know why they think what they think.
They don't know why they're mad exactly.
They're giving rationalizations for their reasons.
And if you're a big old expert, if you know a lot about the Middle East, you're going to listen to what people say, and you're going to listen to their rationalizations, and you're going to say, well, that's the reality.
I guess there's nothing we can do.
But if you know persuasion, you're going to listen to their reasons and you're going to say, oh, those are just rationalizations, just like everything else in the world.
They're no different from everybody else.
They are rationalizing something that is probably just a feeling.
So if you can find a way to deal with the feeling, you can get them to rationalize things differently, too.
So an understanding of persuasion is a useful overlay to this conversation.
I don't want to present myself as knowing enough to speak as an expert.
I'm never gonna get there.
But we're all trying to raise our understanding at least to get to a better level of knowing the landscape over there.
All right. The IG report is coming out pretty soon, people say.
Somebody says, fail.
I can always tell the people we're in cognitive dissonance.
Why I said, listen, if you disagree.
Well, I think it's useful to know what people say, even if you believe that they're rationalizing.
Okay, that's enough for today.
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