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June 22, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
30:24
Episode 114 - Resisters versus Producers, Fake Pictures and Donny Deutsch
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Time Text
Hey everybody, it's time.
You know what it's time for.
You know, I think you know.
You can hear the theme song already in your mind.
You can smell the freshly, freshly, freshly, freshly brewed coffee.
You can smell it.
You can see it. Because it's time.
Oh yeah, it's time.
Four.
Coffee with Scott Adams in the simultaneous sip.
Aww.
That's good simultaneous coffee.
I All right, we've got a number of things today.
I'm going to start with, has everybody seen?
Let me pause this here.
Has everybody seen Anna Navarro's extended cut?
I want to make sure you've seen the extended cut.
But to do that, I have to turn off my...
Make sure you check my Twitter feed this morning.
It's a good one. Oh, hold on.
...have been playing like fools and have been on TV and all over the place defending the indefensible, and now Let's see if you can see this.
It's funnier if you see it.
Let's see. It's funnier if you see it on your own device, but just so you can see it.
The fact that you, like so many others, have been playing like fools and have been on TV and all over the place defending the indefensible.
Watch. And now somehow you have to justify it, and you have to justify the fact that there's a backpack on you.
Watch. Show you the logo there.
Alright, if you haven't seen it, go to my Twitter feed.
It's retweeted there.
Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about, a few other things.
One is the President's tweet from this morning that said, Where the hell is it?
This is President Street from this morning.
It says, elect more Republicans in November and we'll pass the fairest, most comprehensive immigration bill anywhere in the world.
So that part's not the interesting part.
He goes, right now we have the dumbest and the worst, meaning the policies.
And then he says, Dems are doing nothing but obstructing.
Now here's the good part.
Remember their motto, resist.
Ours is produce.
So he's reframed their valiant resistance into being the opposite of being productive.
Which is, first of all, hilarious.
Second of all, it totally works.
But it perfectly sets up this observation.
Have you heard of anybody describe emotional intelligence?
Do you know what emotional intelligence is?
It's very similar to the idea of maturity.
A person who has high emotional intelligence Can give up some stuff in the short term, you know, will take some pain in the short term in order to have, you know, gains in the long term.
So if you have good emotional intelligence, you can go to school and work hard and get good grades because in the long term that'll make your life better.
People who do not have good emotional intelligence will skip classes because it's unpleasant.
They'll sleep in because they can't really see the long term.
They're just more about what's happening today.
That's also very similar to just the difference between children who can't see the long term and adults who can.
At this point, doesn't it feel to you that that separation has become really real in terms of the long-term, short-term difference between the parties?
It seems that the Democrats have become the teenagers in the room.
You know, the teenagers who say, well, I want to eat candy for dinner.
Why can't I eat candy for dinner?
And then you say, well, it'll be bad for your health in the long run.
And the teenager says, But I'm hungry right now and I want candy.
No, no, in the long run it's not good for you.
It's better to have protein and good diet, but I want candy right now.
So the President's little reframing of the Republicans producing while the Democrats are resisting It's really accurate, for one thing.
Now, it's true generally because the party that's out of power, they don't have many options to produce anything, but in this case, they're doing a lot of resisting.
So, I thought that was wonderful.
Now, at the same time, we're seeing that North Korea is returning remains of soldiers who died in the war, and they're also talking about reunifying families in North and South Korea that got separated by the war.
So things are just happening all over the place in North and South Korea, all good stuff, all because of this president.
And let me give you a little life strategy tip.
That you rarely, I don't know if I've ever seen this anywhere.
So this will be a life strategy tip that I doubt you've read anywhere.
Maybe you have. I haven't.
And it goes like this. Whenever you see a problem that people have used the same solution on and that solution doesn't work, but they keep trying that same solution and it keeps not working, the first thing I ask myself, this is just my little mental process, is what would happen if you did the opposite?
And I just ask that in general.
It's sort of also a cartoonist question.
The cartoonist always asks, okay, if that's the normal way, what would be the opposite of that?
For example, in the normal world, you go to a doctor and the doctor is trying hard to make you healthy.
So the cartoonist asks, well, what if you went to the doctor and it was reverse and the doctor did whatever he could to make you less happy?
Then you've got something to turn into a joke.
So my normal mental process over many years of doing creative work is that anytime I see any normal situation, I just automatically say, what if that were the opposite?
And if you look at sort of the creative approach, if you look at President Trump's success with North Korea, all he did was take the normal approach and just he did the opposite.
Because the normal approach had failed for 70 years in a row.
So the normal approach was, hey, we can't talk to this guy until he gives us everything we want.
You know, the different leaders for North Korea, we can't talk to them.
That would be giving them credibility and all the things they want.
We can't talk to them. So Trump did literally just the opposite.
So if 70 years in a row the old thing didn't work...
He just said, well, what if I did the opposite?
Because there really wasn't much of a downside to talking to him.
But the upside was potentially the end of nuclear confrontation.
And that's what happened.
So, look for that in your daily life.
Look for situations in which you ask yourself, what if I just did the opposite of what everybody else is doing?
What would that look like?
Let's talk about that Time Magazine photo of the little girl who is crying because it appears she had been separated from her parents at immigration, but now we know that she was never separated from her mother, that the fake news got the story wrong.
Now, I've seen a number of Trump supporters rush in to say, I knew it was all a lie, you know, the fake news is blowing this out of proportion, etc.
I'm not going to make you happy right now.
I know you like me to tell you things you already agree with.
But, I can't be this inconsistent.
I'm going to be consistent with everything I've said before.
You're not going to like it.
You're not going to like it.
That photo of the little girl crying because she was separated from her parents wasn't true.
She was not separated from her parents.
It was a fake picture.
But, I hate to say it, it was directionally accurate.
It was directionally accurate because children were being separated from their parents.
Some of them, I'm sure, cried.
So does it really matter in any real way that that particular picture was faked?
No. It has no impact.
The fact that that picture was fake doesn't change the underlying truth.
At most, it's a very small point about some fake news, but it doesn't change the story in any way.
So, the reason that I say I'm staying consistent is because my entire...
Approach to President Trump is that when he says, my God, there are so many people here in my crowd, there must be 30,000 of them, and it turns out there are really 23,000 of them, but it's an overflow capacity and the energy is there.
Is that a lie? Well, technically, it is inaccurate.
But, directionally, it's true.
He's got a big crowd and there's lots of energy, and directionally, it's close enough.
So, I would like to be the only consistent person on the planet Earth today and say that if a picture is technically inaccurate, But generally it's true of the bigger picture.
That's not going to be the thing that I'm going to complain about.
Because I don't complain about it on the right.
I'm not going to complain about it on the left.
Now that doesn't make the whole story legitimate.
I'm just saying that children were separated from parents.
That's the fact we all agree on.
If we have a picture that tells that story, well, the fact that it's not technically accurate, I don't care.
Now do you remember... It wasn't long ago, certainly in my youth, there was a saying that just sounds ridiculous today.
And the saying goes like this, pictures don't lie.
Right? Remember when that was the case?
Pictures don't lie? And now it turns out that that's all they do?
Remember the pictures of Trump and Merkel and the G7 huddled around and all looking angry?
And you thought to yourself, well, that picture doesn't lie.
And then you see the very next picture where they're all laughing and Trump is actually touching Merkel on her hand in a friendly way, like just moments later.
Well, that picture did lie.
Totally lied. Remember the picture about Trump feeding the goldfish with Japan's Abe?
And it looked like he, you know, these were video, but it looked like he was just being a rude guy throwing all of his fish food in there.
Well, when they show the whole picture, you can see that Abe did it first.
Trump followed the system.
So there was a time when pictures did not lie.
I believe we're in a time now.
Yeah, somebody just said it before I did.
Pictures only lie.
That's their purpose in the political context.
In the political context, All pictures lie.
I say that as someone who is often in the media.
I'm often the subject of the story.
And they use my picture where I'm like, you know, there's one picture I took in which I was literally posing in different positions when the photographer, so I would pose like this.
And I was doing these weird poses.
And there was a reason for it.
You don't need to know the reason.
But some of those funny poses made it into the public domain, I guess.
And so when somebody runs a story about me, they run this picture.
And so when you look at it, you think, I don't like that guy.
I wouldn't want to see a guy looking like that.
You wouldn't want to be talking to your friend who looks like this.
You'd say, I think I'll need another friend.
So the picture that they run about me is, of course, a lie of sorts.
It's meant to put me in a certain light.
And, yeah, you can find example after example after example.
"Pictures lie." Now, let's talk about open borders.
For Since the time of Trump's introduction to the political process here, at least running for president, people have been talking about something called open borders.
And people were pretending, I thought, That there are actually some people who are literally in favor of open borders.
And I thought to myself, well, that's not true.
There may be a few crazy people who are in favor of open borders, but not really.
I thought to myself, there aren't really serious adults who are talking about open borders.
Didn't you used to think that?
That that wasn't even a real thing?
I went through the entire campaign, the election, and not once did I ever think there were real people who wanted open borders.
In the same way, I didn't think that all Trump supporters are racist.
It just sounded like one of those ridiculous things that people say about the other side.
It's like, oh, you're all racist. Oh, you're all open borders.
None of it's real, right?
But I'm starting to think that there might actually be people who are in favor of open borders.
And so I wanted to ask, is there anybody here?
I doubt it.
But is there anybody on this Periscope who actually literally favors open borders?
Somebody said, I told you so.
Somebody said, I am.
I'm not sure that's real.
Because if I can find an open borders person, I'd like to interview you on Periscope.
I don't know what you would say because I don't know the argument for it.
I've never heard one. Has anybody ever heard an actual argument for why open borders works in the long term?
Because in the short term, if you have low emotional intelligence or you're a child, Open borders sound great.
It's like, hey, don't put anybody in jail.
Let everybody be.
Let's all love each other.
That makes perfect sense in the short run.
But in the long run, how do the open borders people imagine things going?
What does it look like, their world, if they got their way?
Well, so I'll be looking for somebody who can present that point of view.
Now you saw, I think you all saw that the NFL players, did I already talk about this in a periscope?
The NFL players, some of them anyway, put together a proposition for lowering, or at least reforming prisons in one sense, not in the big sense, but in the small sense, By letting a lot of drug offenders who had served a long time, or depending on the severity of the drug crime, they suggested a fairly mass, would you call it a pardon or commuting of the sentence.
And I thought, well, that is productive.
You know, the people who came up with that idea are producers.
They're not resistors.
They're producers. And so, immediately, you know, given that most of you are probably Trump supporters, if you're on this Periscope, and that means that most of you have been accused of being horrible racists.
If you've been accused of being horrible racists, and then you saw the story yesterday of the NFL players who were saying, hey, let's maybe commute or pardon people who are in prison too long for these drug crimes because they disproportionately target minorities.
Did you see many Trump supporters resist that?
I saw a few, but they were just the law and order people.
It's not legal, yeah.
Yeah.
To me, it looked like people were pretty open to that on the Trump side of the world.
And I believe that you're all supposed to be racist, right?
You're all supposed to be on the other side of that.
And I don't know, it looked to me like...
Some of you saying that you are racist.
I'm not sure what that means in your case, but...
Nope, nope, nope.
Nope.
So what are the nopes?
I'm not sure what people are saying no to.
No that you didn't have a problem with it.
But the people I saw seem to be quite in favor of at least considering that.
Let's talk about Donnie Deutsch.
Did all of you see the Donnie Deutsch comment?
I don't know if it was on Morning Joe or something, in which he said that the people who voted for Trump have to be held responsible for his evil.
That's some serious Hitler stuff right there, isn't it?
Now, I call Donnie Deutsch the poor man's Anthony Bourdain.
I don't know why, I just always thought they were the same guy, except one was the poor man's version.
And when you hear something like, all Trump supporters have to be held accountable, that's pretty chilling stuff.
That is really chilling.
And that's pretty Hitler-like.
So Donnie Deutsch Hitler has gone on the record as being against people and citizens.
And I don't know.
I don't know how he lives with himself.
I'm not sure how you can have that kind of a hateful opinion and live with yourself.
But apparently he's okay with it.
Yeah, and what exactly is it that Trump supporters are supposed to be responsible for?
The good economy? The peace in North Korea?
What exactly?
Because it seems to me...
Here's just a mental...
A little mental...
What do you call it?
A mental... Dammit, what's the word?
A mental experiment.
What's the word for a mental experiment?
A mind experiment?
Ah, there's a phrase for it.
Never mind. But imagine if the press had never complained about Trump as being a racist.
Just suppose the press had done nothing but report what they saw.
Would we have this much racial animosity?
I don't think so.
And that's the biggest problem in the world, right?
So it seems to me that the...
And let me make some distinctions.
The issue we had with the children in cages...
I think almost all Trump supporters also did not want children separated from kids if there's a way to avoid it.
So that was something that I thought the press did a pretty good job of surfacing something that people cared about.
The president looked at the public's reaction and then he tried to adjust.
I'm not sure the adjustment will make everybody happy, but to me that looked like the system working perfectly.
There was an issue. The press surfaced it.
The public weighed in.
The public wanted a change.
The president saw the public asking for the change, both his side and the other side.
And the president implemented a change, all within, what, a week?
That would be almost a perfect example.
Oh, a thought experiment, thank you.
That would be almost a perfect example of the system working exactly the way you'd want it to.
Surfaced the problem.
The government reacted.
Now, so there are real cases where there are problems that have to be surfaced and then dealt with.
But the larger issue of are all Trump supporters, you know, Nazis and monsters, is Trump going to round people up and put them in concentration camps and kill them?
All of that stuff comes from Donnie Deutsch and Morning Joe and the Ilk.
The people who are blaming you, Trump supporters, for being Hillers are the ones causing the problem.
President Trump, if you take every one of the things he said and put it in an objective language, it all just goes away.
Let's take Charlottesville.
The fake news said, oh, he's siding with the white supremacists.
That didn't happen.
That's something they made up.
He sided with the people generally.
It was a protest about pro-statue or anti-statue.
And he was saying, well, there are good people on both sides of the question of pro-statue and anti-statue.
The news illegitimately said, ah, he's Hitler, and he's saying that the white supremacists are good people.
He didn't say that. And in fact, when he was asked for a clarification, He clarified very clearly.
No, I don't mean that.
I'm not talking about those guys.
Now, if the news were even a little bit legitimate, they would have said, oh, the way he said that was a little confusing, so he asked them to clarify, and thank goodness he wasn't supporting the white supremacist.
He clarified, we're all good now.
That's what real news would have looked like.
What we have now is illegitimate news in which they gin up stories and make things look worse than they are.
Likewise, the children in cages.
Had the news been made any attempt to be objective, they still might have raised the story that people wanted to act on and wanted to change.
But it wouldn't have looked like this.
It would not have looked like this is the next step to the death camps, you know, which is essentially how it was covered.
Take Melania's jacket story.
If we had a real press, they would have looked at that and said, I wonder what that means.
And then Melania's spokesperson said, ah, it's just a jacket.
And they probably would have been skeptical of that, which they were.
And then when the president clarified, he said, ah, it's about the critics, really.
I said to myself, well, that's how I took it.
I took the jacket to be talking about her critics, because she's been piled on just mercilessly by the critics.
Now, the way the president said was the fake news, and that's a subset of the critics, so we're not that far off.
It's the same concept. And rather than the...
The media saying Melania made a statement about the press before going to do this generous and good thing of visiting these children.
That would have been an objective way to cover it.
It's like, oh she's making a political statement about her critics on her way to do this good thing.
So what the hypnotized anti-Trumpers don't understand is that their opinions did not come from themselves.
This is the biggest misunderstanding that the left has.
The left believes, you know, the anti-Trumpers, they believe that their opinions came from their own minds.
They believe that they looked at data and Informed opinions.
Nothing even remotely like that has happened.
Nothing like that happened to anybody.
And by the way, it's the same on both sides, right?
So both sides are under the impression that they've looked at the data, made their objective opinions, and now they've got an opinion.
There's nothing like that happening.
The reality is...
That there are very influential people and organizations on both sides.
Those influential people and organizations are providing people their opinions, and the people once provided with an opinion come to believe it's their own opinion.
That's how normal people work.
I'm not describing anything that's broken.
I'm not telling you something new or revolutionary about people.
This is just how all people are built.
We believe we have opinions and we believe they came from our own mind and thoughts and resources and everything else.
Not true. There are very few people Like the president, like CNN, like Fox News, people like me, who are influential, and after we've done our influencing, the people we've influenced believe they made up their own mind.
It's just not what's happening.
So when the anti-Trumper say, we're going to get you with our pitchforks and our resistance, they believe that That they have come to this independent thought and that they must resist.
Nothing like that happened.
They have been given their thoughts and they're acting upon them as they have been provided to them.
I need to get off this periscope and do something else in a minute.
So I'm going to end it now.
There's a libertarian on the Rubin Report arguing for open borders.
Alright, well I'll look for some people arguing for open borders and I will get back to you.
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