All Episodes
Previous Next
June 29, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:23
Episode 122 - Civil War, #Walkaway, The Weed Poison Pill, Mike Lee, Eliminating ICE
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Yes, I'm going acapella today.
Hey everybody, come on in here.
here.
It's a crazy, crazy world, but there's one thing you can always count on.
There's one thing that always goes right.
One part of your day, That's as close to perfect as you could possibly get.
And you're upon that moment right now.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
Certainly one of the greatest pleasures in the universe.
And if you have your mug, your vessel, your cup, it's time for the simultaneous sip.
Join me. Ah!
That's good coffee.
So, let's talk about a few things.
I didn't play my new theme song, in part because I haven't asked for permission to use it that way.
Playing it once seemed fair, and I'll ask its creator, Akira the Don, if he minds if I play that more than once.
So, we'll see. But it's his song, so I'll let him decide that.
Let's talk about a few things.
So I had tweeted hastily, I now realize, I was hasty in my tweeting about Chuck Schumer's marijuana legalization bill.
I don't know the details of it, but it's a bill to get the federal government out of the business of weed enforcement.
And I thought to myself, well, that's great.
Look at the Democrats.
And the reason I tweeted it is, I try as much as possible to be as close to objective about this stuff as I can.
And I thought, I don't care who does it, Democrats, Republicans, it's just a good thing to do.
And so I retweeted it.
And then I found out what was in it.
Yeah, decriminalize is the better word.
Somebody is informing me.
A bill to decriminalize as opposed to making it legal.
Because the states still have a say.
Yeah, the bill has a poison pill in it.
But when I saw it, I just couldn't stop laughing because...
Again, I'm going to try to be objective.
So when I talk about persuasion, I'm not talking about the ethics involved in it every time, but just assume that I also have an ethical standard just like everybody else.
So if I don't mention it, don't assume it doesn't exist.
Sometimes I'm just talking about the tools.
In this case, Schumer's bill is so brilliant In its evil, you know, it's like diabolically clever, then I just have to call it out for how clever it is.
First of all, there's no chance it'll get past.
Because it has something called a poison pill.
That's something you build into.
The usual use of the word poison pill is if a company doesn't want to get taken over by another company, they pass a rule within the company that might...
I'll just give an example.
It might say, if we're ever the subject of a takeover, every employee gets a $10,000 bonus.
And then you can't take them over because the moment you take them over, the company would give all its money away to its employees so that you wouldn't have purchased anything.
So that's called a poison pill.
What Schumer did was he put a poison pill in the weed decriminalization bill, and it looks like this.
It's a tax, so they would tax weed.
So that's your poison pill.
I'll tell you the details. But Republicans are not going to vote for a tax.
They're just not going to vote for a tax.
No matter how much they like the weed part of the bill, it's got this little poison pill of a tax.
So they would tax weed.
And here's the clever part.
The tax on the weed would go specifically to minority and women businesses in apparently the cannabis industry.
So those are the two parts of the weed bill that are completely poison-pilled.
So the cleverness of it is that the Republicans are either going to have to do, they're either going to have to vote for a tax Ouch.
They don't want to do that.
Because they're almost certainly going to look for a deal where they could decriminalize weed without a tax.
But the public will not be in on the details.
They'll just say, those damn Republicans, they voted against weed.
They can't do anything right.
So Schumer's play is so evil that But clever at the same time that I can't not appreciate the cleverness, even though it's pure evil.
So yeah, it's a bill that's designed to fail for political reasons.
And once you see it, it's funny.
All right. So let's hope that we can get a real bill that has a chance of getting passed, and that would be awesome.
Now let's go to our next topic.
So I had not been paying much attention to the, quote, walk away.
You're all familiar with Hashtag Walk Away.
I guess it was started, or at least popularized, by Brandon Straca.
I understand he's a gay man who lives in New York City, and he made a video saying, and the gay man is important to this story because it's political, doing a video saying he was walking away from the Democratic Party.
Now, people have been asking me, Scott, talk about this, write about this, walk away thing.
This is growing. And I said to myself, eh, that's not anything.
You know, it's a little news story because it's sort of a man bites dog.
It's, you know, opposite of what you expect in your partisan politics.
So it's interesting.
But the first thing I thought was, it's not going to be a thing.
You know, it's not going to grow.
Now, it has picked up some volume.
I guess the video has been looked at five million times, which doesn't tell you anything, because the five million are mostly Republicans already.
Who knows how many Democrats are actually looking at it?
So yes, it is a thing, and there are real people who are walking away.
But there are probably people on the other side walking away for different reasons, you know.
It's hard to know if this will actually put a dent in the universe, but I'll tell you why I'm talking about it.
So I read a little bit about the thinking behind it, and I was wondering, what policy is it in particular?
Is it because...
You know, my assumption, which was incorrect, my assumption was that maybe it's policy related or maybe it's, you know, they just prefer the Republican policies after all, or maybe it's they're just seeing that the president is being effective in a general way.
That's what I thought before I read the details.
Oh, oh my viewers, this is way more interesting than that.
I don't know if you quite caught it, but let me put it in context I like to talk about the most.
You know how I talk about the persuasion filter.
It's a way of looking at the world as if everything is persuasion and the facts and reason are things we pretend we care about but sort of don't.
And I've also said that President Trump, and I said this, I don't know, two years ago, would, quote, punch a hole in the universe or put a tear in the universe so that you could look through the hole and see reality.
For the first time. Because we all walk around in this little bubble movie of our own making.
And I said that he's going to let you see reality.
At least a little bit of it.
Not all of it. Because we're not able.
But he would put a hole in your current bubble.
So you could just peek out and see what's on the other side.
And you'd say, holy cap, I'm in a bubble.
So really the most you're going to get out of this is the knowledge certain.
That you've been living in a bubble of truth that you created in your own head as opposed to truth that exists in the universe.
And apparently that's what happened to Brendan Straka.
Because here's how he describes his thinking behind The Walkaway.
It wasn't about policy.
Here's what it was about.
He realized that the Democrats were using fear to manipulate people.
That's a big deal.
That's a big deal.
That's peeking through the hole in the universe.
It wasn't about policies.
It wasn't about which leader is a little more effective.
It wasn't about who cares about you.
It wasn't about who's got the best plans for the future.
He realized that one side was manipulating them with fear and that that's all that was going on.
Well, that's not all that's going on, but that was the big picture.
The big picture was persuasion that was fear-based and the fear wasn't real.
Now you're saying to yourself, Trump uses fear to manipulate you too.
Here's the difference. The fear that Trump uses, and he does use, fear to manipulate.
He's talking about fear of people outside the country, in many cases who have actually killed lots of people, like ISIS and terrorists.
So when he's tough on the border, he's pointing to MS-13, who are real people.
MS-13 actually kills people.
And apparently we're only just learning that although immigrants as a group have an unusually low crime rate, yay immigrants!
A very pro-immigrant, low crime rate, great addition to the country.
But among the class of illegal ones who are breaking the law to get in, it turns out that the rate of murder and violent crime and stuff is far higher than their percentage in the population.
So they are literally a high crime Group, just the illegals.
Immigrants in general, awesome people contributing to the country, lower crime than average.
So Trump's fear is based on people who really exist and really are hurting people.
Those are things you actually should be worried about.
Trump's fear would be, you know, you could argue that he scared everybody with North Korea, but that's a real fear, and he got a pretty good result there, or at least seems to head in the right direction.
So, but if you look at, now look at the Democrats' version of fear.
Their fear is of your fellow citizen.
Is that a sexist term?
Can you say that anymore?
Can you say your fellow citizen?
Is that sexist?
What's the generic way to say that?
Your other citizens?
Your teammates? Your country people?
Comrade citizen, somebody says.
So, notice the huge difference there.
So Brendan Straka has realized that the Democrats are creating fear of each other.
Trump is creating fear almost entirely, I can't think of an example, of people who are outside our borders who are literally armed and dangerous.
People with actual guns and weapons who are actually using them.
It's a little bit different, right?
There's one thing you should be afraid of and there's one thing that's largely invented.
And enough time has now passed So that any reasonable citizen can see that the things that people said about Trump were clearly untrue.
There was a fear that he would tank the economy.
Not true. There was a fear that he would blow up the world with nuclear weapons and never get anywhere with North Korea because he's a crazy man.
He's crazier than Kim Jong Un.
Not true. And you know what?
It wasn't even true that Kim Jong-un is crazy in any way that matters for negotiating.
What else? Oh, there was a fear that he would round up gay people and put them in camps.
Obviously not true.
There was a fear that he would do this or that.
Anyway, so it's becoming more and more clear to the people on the left that they've been taken by their own side.
That their own side is using fear of their own country people.
I don't want to say countrymen.
You realize how sexist all of our old terms are.
But that is a powerful it's a very powerful thought And if this walk-away thing had been, you know, based on, oh, I think I've changed my mind and I like the Republican policies better, I'd say to myself, eh, that's not much.
You know, a few people change parties because the policy is no big deal.
But when people are talking about changing parties because they realize that they're being taken...
That they're just being taken, manipulated by fear, and that they're...
Let me put this in perspective.
Imagine, if you will, that all of the coverage of this president had been just straight, objective coverage.
That nobody ever gave an opinion of what they thought he would do or what they thought he was thinking.
What if the only coverage you'd seen...
It had been coverage of Trump as a person who does stuff, and you just observe what he does, compare it to maybe what he promised, and say, yeah, he's doing the things that he got elected for, etc.
Here's what people think of it, here's what they don't.
But if the news had not become, let's say, participants in the political process, Had they not moved from an observer watchdog role to actual participants trying to move the needle, would the left be afraid of this president?
A little, maybe, just because it's a big country and there are a lot of different opinions and a lot of different individuals, but probably nothing like we're seeing.
I would argue that Close to 100% of the fear that people have about this president is based on non-objective coverage.
Would you say that's true?
Would you agree with me that almost 100% of the fear...
I'm talking about the irrational fear.
The thing that makes people vomit and shake.
Because that's what people are experiencing.
Joke all you will about the left howling at the moon and stuff like that, but this is a real medical problem.
They've lived for 18 months in total fear.
Where's that fear coming from?
Well, they've been manipulated into believing it's coming from the president.
That it's because of the things he's doing, the things he's thinking, which is crazy, because they don't know what he thinks, and the things that in their imagination he might do.
Those things all come from the press, and the opinion part of the press, mostly.
That's not coming from the President.
What has the President said recently that would scare a citizen of the United States?
Now, I do think there's a role of the press and that the public opinion and everything has changed this president's policy preferences.
So, for example, when he was campaigning, he was talking about deporting 14 million people who are here undocumented, but otherwise good citizens.
And, of course, he's not doing that.
It doesn't look like there's any real chance of that happening.
So there's some big things that we see the public pretty much immediately cause this president to change opinions.
Take the children in cages, for example.
You know, the public had its say and it looked like The public had his say, and he changed.
Now, somebody's saying, what about the repeal of Roe v.
Wade? I'll talk about that in a minute.
Anyway, so my point is that this Brandon Straka, what he's doing is far more important than I imagined when I was just reading the headline about it, and I didn't read the detail.
Once you see his reason, That he realized the Democrats are manipulating people into this permanent unhealthy, unhealthy, unhealthy, very, very physically and mentally unhealthy, have I mentioned unhealthy, state.
So the Democrats, for their Their political, for their political benefit, have caused the entire left to be in physical and mental distress for two years?
Policy, shmolicy.
Does policy matter to you?
If you realize that your own team has made you deeply unhealthy for two years intentionally for their own gain.
Let me ask you this.
If you want to get mad, you know, you probably won't get as mad as the people who are watching this periscope.
But if you're on the left, let me ask you this.
Do you believe...
That Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are as afraid for the future as they have made you feel.
Let that just hang there for a minute.
If you're a Democrat, do you think that Schumer and Pelosi are as afraid about what might happen with this president and with the country as they have made you the voter feel?
Not a chance.
Not even a slight chance.
And you know what?
You could tell.
You could tell just by looking at them.
Have you ever seen an actual anti-Trump or like a citizen, you know, like just a regular citizen who has fear of the future for the country because of the president?
Have you watched them? This is no joke.
Their fear is physical.
They are physically shaking.
You can see it in their eyes.
There is a deep, real fear.
Who put that there?
Their own people. Their own leaders.
Do those leaders share that fear?
Not a chance.
And I base that just on looking at them.
Because when you look at a citizen talking about it, you can see the fear.
You know, it's not that hard to...
I'm not... Somebody said mind reading.
And by the way, when you accuse me of mind reading, because that's one of the things I say about other people, thank you.
Because that's exactly what you should be thinking.
You should... If that's your filter on this, you're way ahead.
And you should keep me honest on that, right?
So if you see me doing it, call it out like you just did.
And then you can...
Call it out and I'll correct if possible.
So what I'm basing this on is watching people physically react to fear.
You see a physical reaction to fear in the citizens that you don't see among the professionals.
And if they had a real fear, they'd be shaking, they'd be vomiting, but you're not seeing it.
So there's that.
Let's talk about a few other things in no particular order.
We're seeing some calls to eliminate ICE. So, you saw, what's her name, who just won in New York, the primary, Octavia Cortez, I don't know. It's going to take me a while to learn her name.
But now, Kirsten Gillibrand or whatever, Ocasio, okay.
Ocasio Cortez, thank you.
So now there's actually a sitting Democrat who's also said, yeah, we should get rid of ICE. But let me explain to you what get rid of ICE means.
Yeah, it means change the name.
Right. So those of you who have ever worked in a big company, you know how this works.
We've certainly got to get rid of the marketing department.
The marketing department will eliminate the marketing department by changing its name to another thing.
As long as you have the function of ICE, and I don't think anybody has said that we should let people come in and stay.
Once they get it through the border, that's okay.
Just let them stay. Hey, they made it across the border, which we don't have.
They made it across the wall that doesn't exist.
I guess it's just fair to let them stay.
Nobody's really saying that.
So when they say eliminate ICE, what the hell does that mean?
Change ICE to NICE. Oh my god, that's so funny.
And do you know why that would be easy?
Because N stands for National.
What's the rest of ICE stand for?
Immigration... Can somebody tell me what ICE stands for?
Immigration something enforcement?
What's the C in ICE? Somebody tell me what the C... Oh!
Customs? Immigration Customs Enforcement?
Is that it?
So why couldn't it be National Immigration Customs Enforcement?
Why can't ICE be nice?
You know what would be hilarious?
I'm not suggesting this, but it would just be hilarious.
If Trump changed the name of ICE to Nice, so that when the Democrats try to eliminate it, they're eliminating Nice.
Because if you eliminate ICE, Well, everybody wants to eliminate ice.
Where's ice good except in your drink?
You don't want ice on your jet.
You don't want ice on your roads.
You don't want ice on your windshield.
But in ice, well, we like ice.
We like ice everywhere.
So I don't think that'll happen, but it would be hilarious.
Now looking at some other things.
So Roe vs.
Wade. Let's talk about that. So how many of you know what the polls are in terms of abortion rights, a right to choose, whatever you want to call it?
If I had to ask you, I'll just do a poll.
Don't look it up. Just answer from the top of your head.
Which do you think has more support in this country?
Abortion rights or banning abortion?
Which one do you think is more popular in this country?
Abortion or banning abortion?
Banning? I'm just looking at your...
I think your comments are a little bit behind because so many people are talking about ice and nice.
All right. But my point was that I'm not sure people even know what the majority opinion is.
But let me make a larger point that I've made before.
And every time I make this point, you can see it applying to a new category.
My point is that it used to be that we elected people to be in the government, the government went and made decisions, and then sort of told the people what decisions they'd made, and then we decided whether to re-elect those people or not.
So that's sort of the original political system.
Then social media happened.
So social media didn't exist when the Constitution was written.
Does anybody believe that the Constitution would be exactly the same if Thomas Jefferson was on the Internet?
If Thomas Jefferson had the Internet and understood the Internet as part of the fabric of culture, Might have added a few things.
May have adjusted the Constitution to allow for that.
Because we went from a point where the people's opinion took a long time to sort of bubble up and become powerful and maybe have some impact on the elected official.
So there was this very indirect Kind of connection between the public and then what happened.
They influenced it, but it was sort of a vague, messy process.
Today I would say that public opinion crystallizes so quickly.
You saw it happen with the issue of the children in cages, right?
Instantly the public crystallized on an opinion that was opposite the government's in this case.
And the government just bent Just immediately bent.
It's like, alright, you got it.
Now, actually, physically doing this is nearly impossible because there are not enough resources in the short term to do everything we need with immigration and take care of the families the way everybody would like it to be done.
But we're in a world where the public rules.
Now, in this new world, Which is not the world in which Roe v.
Wade was passed. Roe v.
Wade was passed in the old world where the governments and the courts were sort of in charge.
Today, even if the courts kicked Roe v.
Wade back to the states, Jeffrey Toobin says 20 states would immediately ban abortion.
And that might be true. That might actually be true.
And those 20 states would immediately hear from the corporate entities that do business there, and the penalty would be pretty big.
And we may need a few states in which abortion is illegal, and maybe people want to go live there.
But it would be weird to want to move into a state Where abortion is illegal because it reduces your own rights.
And the people who are against abortion weren't planning to have one no matter where they were, so they don't have a reason to move there.
Let me put it in a clearer way.
If a state bans abortion and they can get away with it because of some change in the Supreme Court, there will be no reason to move into it But lots of reasons to move out of that state, both for individuals, especially young people, which would be the death.
You know, if your young people move away, that's sort of the death of your state, right?
So if a state creates a reason for people to leave, both corporations and individuals, and it creates no reason to move in, because nobody moves to the state just to have abortion banned, you know, it just wouldn't make any sense.
So it would be sort of a death sentence to those states.
But we'll see. So there's my...
Somebody says, want to bet?
So I'll make a prediction that you can hold me to.
If we get to the point, and that's the big if, that Roe v.
Wade is weakened by the court, it's going to take a while.
There probably will be states...
That pass anti-abortion laws.
My theory is that it won't be 20, because all 20 won't be able to get away with it in the first place.
You know, their own voters won't let them get to it.
And that the few states that pass it will be shunned by businesses, tourists, corporations, etc., to the degree that it would be a self-kill shot.
And it's possible that those politicians who pass those laws would be swept from office in the next election.
Because what motivates people more than this issue?
Nothing. So I think, yeah, would Texas be hurt?
Yeah, I would think that any big state that changes their situation with abortion laws, they're going to be in trouble.
All right, so that's enough of that.
I'm seeing this trend that I didn't know if I wanted to talk about or not.
You know, sometimes there's something that you think everybody else is thinking, but you don't want to say it.
You don't want to be the first one to say it.
And it seems to me that the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, Are having this weird gender situation where the left seems to be dominated by female themes or preferences,
maybe? And the Republican side is being dominated by sort of a male-centric view and women who like living in a world of, you know, certain kind of men and a certain kind of situation.
So there's like this real difference.
And yeah, and somebody said the thing that's...
That you shouldn't say out loud, but I don't know how to ignore it anymore.
Yeah, I don't want to use the negative words for it, so let me put it this way.
Alright, let me give you a context to make this less horrible.
When... In our history, when people started talking about, hey, gender is not just A or B. People are not just men or women.
And maybe, for example, the brains of LGBTQ people are a little different and that they're actually born in a unique situation that is not ambiguously one way or the other in our binary thinking.
I used to reject that, saying, you know, like everybody else, you know, when it was early thinking, you just said, you know, there's always outliers, but it's basically men and women.
I have now completely changed my thinking.
And that my current thinking, and this has sort of evolved to this, is that there's this big continuum of largely, I would say, chemistry.
That seems to be more important than your actual physical junk.
And your physical junk is less important to who you are, male or female, than your chemistry.
Because we can see that there are...
Let's say, for example, you had a terrible accident, you were a man, and you lost your stuff.
So let's say you were in an accident, and your genitals were destroyed in the accident, but you otherwise lived.
Everybody would still call you a man.
Your actual genitalia wouldn't be the defining element.
And so here's how I see the world at the moment.
There are definitely people who are almost entirely female in all the chemical ways.
And there are people who are almost entirely male in a very high testosterone way.
But the overlap is extreme.
Meaning that, let's see, so that where my arms are overlapping is where you could have this vast middle zone, is where you can have a man who is at least chemically similar to a woman, and you could have a woman who is at least chemically more similar to a man.
And so there's, you know, people are sort of all over the place on this.
Dr. Peterson disagrees.
I think that might be one of the things that we disagree on.
So it comes down to this.
What is it that defines whether you're a man or a woman?
Some would say your genitalia.
I think that's simplistic.
Some would say your DNA. I would say the DNA is just one of the drivers of your chemistry.
And that I think your chemistry...
It's probably the thing that makes you think the way you think and makes you feel the way you feel.
And that's a more productive way to look at the world as this vast range of different chemistry.
And some of it has male genitalia and some of it has female.
Somebody says human sexuality is behavior.
Well, your chemistry is going to drive your behavior whether you like it or not.
You could put somebody in handcuffs and stop them from acting on their chemistry, but short of that, chemistry wins.
Somebody says there were no gays among hunter-gatherers.
There's not even a slight chance that's true.
There isn't the slightest chance that's true.
Now, It might seem to you that there are, well, I think I'll leave it there.
Let's just say that there seems to be a chemistry difference between the Democrat Party and the Republicans.
Would you say that's true?
Let me just...
And by the way, this is all speculation.
Before anybody says that I'm anti-science, let me just say that this is a hypothesis based on observation.
There's no science that I would be aware of.
But it's an observation.
Yeah. It does seem to me that the...
Well, let me put it another way.
The men...
In the Democrat Party, largely are submissive to the women.
That is to say, if a man and a woman ran for president on the Democrat side, I think the woman would have a huge advantage.
Because there are lots of Republican men who would vote for women far more than there are Republican women who would vote for men.
Is that true? I think that's true.
On the Republican side, probably there's less caring about gender, just in general, because as I've said before, when the name Nikki Haley comes up among Republicans, people say, hell yeah, she's our next president after Trump.
So on the Republican side, I see that it probably doesn't make as much difference.
All right, let's talk about...
I had one more point I wanted to make here.
Oh, so when we're talking about the Supreme Court nominees, the name Senator Mike Lee keeps coming up.
And I'm not sure why, because apparently he was not on the original list of potential Supreme Court judges that Trump had.
But for some reason, he keeps making the short list in the press.
I don't know what they know that we don't know.
But I saw a video of him, I tweeted this yesterday, in which he was being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.
He did not seem to be willing to do anything about the big tech companies' alleged or actual discrimination against conservative free speech.
And instead he said he would leave that to the market because you could always use a different search engine than Google.
No you can't.
No you can't.
Here's why you can't use a different search engine than Google.
Google is not just a product, they are a mind control technology.
Google controls our minds and they're so sticky, like if you've already got your Gmail and you've got your Google Wallet, you've got your Android phone, maybe some of us.
Once you're in that architecture, you're so stuck in there and it's so hard to get out that for all practical purposes, The big tech companies are virtual monopolies.
Maybe not in the technical sense, but they're virtual monopolies because they've learned how to manipulate thought in a way that prior corporations had never done.
They're just better at it.
So probably in the old days, it didn't make too much difference.
As long as there was an alternative, you could say, oh, you know, as long as an alternative exists, I can go to DuckDuckGo, and I can go to Bing, and I can do a search.
It's not really a thing.
But today, the big companies are so good at mental manipulation and creating addiction and controlling your mind That getting away from these ecosystems that you get sucked into, it's not really the choice it used to be.
It's a choice on some legal level, but not on a practical level.
On the practical level, you just can't change.
There will always be some of you who duck-duck go your way.
And, you know, you can imagine that would get bigger, etc.
But in a realistic way, these big companies have a control over us.
And I'd be real worried about a Senator, Mike Lee, who...
Likes the big corporations more than he likes freedom of speech in this case.
So that would be a pretty risky Supreme Court choice.
But I don't think it'll happen actually.
Alright. I think those were my main points today.
You may have conspicuously noticed that there's a story in the headlines that I haven't talked about.
I didn't tweet about it yesterday.
I'm not talking about it today.
I'm not a big fan of talking about these big events that some idiot with a gun does.
I definitely don't like to talk about it when it's fresh.
But I will say one thing in the interest of being the last credible person in the world, according to me.
And here it is.
So the question is, has the president's Treatment of the media as the fake news and the enemy of the people.
I think he actually said that in those words.
In one quote, he said, you know, Trump isn't the enemy of the people that...
No, he said, the press is not the enemy of Trump, it's the enemy of the American people, something like that.
And the big debate, because people are terrible, so they think that the politics of it is what we should be talking about instead of the victims.
So the thought is, hey, President Trump has somehow caused this to be more likely.
Now, that was the initial reporting, and then of course we found out that this guy had a personal vendetta against the newspaper.
But one does not make the other one not count.
So if you're stuck in the world where you think you did it because of Trump, or you think it had nothing to do with Trump, those views could be close to the wrongest views.
Wrongest? I don't even know if that's a word.
The most wrong view? It seems to me, and I'm going to be consistent with everything else I've said, I believe that, for example, music and video games do influence some people, but not very many.
So some people who are on the edge And maybe they just needed one little extra push.
I think that music sometimes can do it.
If it's sort of angry, violent, suicide-y music, it could do that for very few people.
But definitely, if you're looking at millions of consumers, there's somebody who's going to be pushed over the edge.
Just because people are all over, some of them are on the edge.
And I think that while there's no way to know, and there never will be a way to know, whether this one individual was on the edge, and let's call it the dehumanizing of the press pushed him slightly over, I would say it can't be known,
can't be known, cannot be known, There's no way to know if this individual was in any way influenced by the fake news Trump approach.
But here's what I will say seems fair.
The continuous dehumanizing of everybody could have an impact.
For some very few people who are on the edge and not completely mentally in control of things.
So I think you can simultaneously say that dehumanizing each other and dehumanizing in this case means that if somebody is the enemy to your country whether you're calling them a Nazi or whether you're saying they're the enemy of the people 99.99999% of all people hearing that will know it's politics and hyperbole and it's not going to change their opinion about grabbing a gun and shooting anybody.
But somebody?
Somebody? So let's take it from that perspective to the Civil War.
So apparently there was a poll that said something like a third of the public Thinks that there's going to be a civil war.
And among Democrats, the number is much higher.
So there are a pretty big number of Democrats who believe there's a possibility of a civil war.
I'll give you my odds at pretty much zero.
And the reason that there won't be a civil war is that the group that has the most power and the most guns Trump is largely doing what the people with the guns and the real power, both politically and because they have guns, they're kind of getting what they want.
So their incentive to be violent is super low.
And the people who, you know, are getting worked up by Schumer and Pelosi and the people who are manipulating them into this unhealthy fear situation, they're not really the ones with the guns.
So there may be a lot of marching in the streets.
You can imagine that there will be individual acts of violence, but my prediction for a revolution in the next five years is zero.
Zero. That's my prediction.
Alright. And I'll go back to Brandon Straka's point that the left has scared people into bad health.
They are actually a menace to society at this point.
And they're doing it for manipulative For personal reasons.
They're doing it for politics.
They're not doing it to help their side.
If they were trying to help their side, they would come up with some good policies and they wouldn't be scaring the pants off of their own people.
And if they were going to scare them, they would scare them about real things, not things they made up.
So there are real things like terrorism and poverty, crime.
There are real things to be afraid of, but they made up some new ones so that the people who would not normally be afraid of those things had something new to be afraid of.
All right. I think I've said enough for now.
I'm good to call it a day.
▲
Export Selection