Aug. 13, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
12:06
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| Yep, I'm back. | |
| Back for a second bite of the apple. | |
| Two periscopes in one day. | |
| How lucky can you be? | |
| But every now and then, I need to dip back into the social stream to solve the big problems. | |
| So I thought I'd take a swing at it. | |
| Now, I always start with optimism, which is I can solve that problem, until somebody tells me I can't. | |
| I do have a pretty long track record of doing things that seem impossible to observers. | |
| So I thought, why don't I take a swing at this NFL kneeling situation? | |
| I'll give you some background first. | |
| If you think way back in the Colin Kaepernick era, when he was the first one kneeling and he was protesting police treatment of African Americans, and I said, and still say, that is a good protest. | |
| Now, by good protest, I don't mean you liked it. | |
| I don't mean that it's good for football. | |
| I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that it's entertaining. | |
| I'm not saying it belongs on a football field. | |
| None of that. What I'm saying is that the fact that he got our attention and he did it in a way that was completely peaceful and, in fact, the conversation that Colin Kaepernick started is still ongoing. | |
| So, you're hearing my dog coughing in the background. | |
| So, if you're going to rate Colin Kaepernick's effectiveness at getting attention for an issue, A+. That doesn't mean you like it. | |
| You can hate what it's doing to football. | |
| You can disagree with the message. | |
| You can have all kinds of criticisms. | |
| But you can't argue with the fact... | |
| That he made you think about something you weren't thinking about before and made the country think about it. | |
| A plus. But things evolved. | |
| The president got involved. | |
| He reframed it as more of something that's disrespectful for the country. | |
| The president, by his office, is sort of the keeper of the brand, the American brand, and he didn't like it. | |
| He didn't like that this was working against the brand, and even though the message was about police treatment, the president said, well, it's also disrespectful to the flag, and that part I don't like. | |
| Now, of course, because he's so influential, the president, a lot of people bought into that framing and started to see it more about anti-American, anti-flag, which really was not the point. | |
| It was not the point at all. | |
| The point was originally and continues to be about the police. | |
| Now you might also remember that when Black Lives Matter was essentially amplifying the same message that I offered to Black Lives Matter and also offered to Kaepernick in public, not privately, but in public I've offered through my blog and Periscopes that if there's any specific suggestion for how to go about making things better that I would help amplify that, | |
| which I did. So Hogg Newsome came up with a set of specific suggestions and I talked about them on Periscope. | |
| And by the way, I think it was my most widely watched Periscope. | |
| These were specific suggestions about changes, rule policy changes that the police could consider That might make things better. | |
| I'll give you just a couple of quick examples. | |
| One of them is that one of the suggested rule changes is that if a perpetrator who's in custody says he or she needs medical treatment right away, that the police don't act like doctors, but rather they get them the treatment. | |
| Now, I don't know if that's a good idea because maybe it causes people to To use that loophole to try to get away. | |
| There may be reasons that that's not a good idea. | |
| But it's certainly a specific suggestion. | |
| And it's certainly something that you could test. | |
| And then compare it to people who are not doing that. | |
| And then you'd be moving forward, even if slowly, and that would be progress. | |
| So that's a simple one. | |
| But here's the part that's missing from the... | |
| Let me give you another one. So, and Hoek also suggests that if a police officer lies on a police report, and the topic of the police report, and this part's important, if the topic was about, let's say, a shooting of an unarmed person, and if they lie on the police report about the shooting of an unarmed person, that they go to jail. | |
| The police officer does. | |
| Now, again, This might be more complicated than that suggestion would lead you to think. | |
| There might be more to this, and if we haven't heard all sides, you don't want to jump in and say, oh yeah, that makes sense, because you've only heard part of it. | |
| But here's what's missing, and I thought I would take a run at filling in the missing part. | |
| So you've got protesters saying, hey, we want something changed. | |
| You've got at least a few suggestions that are specific from Black Lives Matter and specifically from Hawk Newsome. | |
| And you've got, now we're seeing police organizations coming out against the NFL. Specifically, I think some police association came out against the Miami Dolphins because some of their players protested. | |
| Here's what's missing. Where's the actual conversation where somebody in charge at the police level is engaging on these suggestions? | |
| Where's that? | |
| Now maybe it's happening, but I don't know where that's happening. | |
| Do you? Is there anybody in the administration who's talking about it? | |
| Is there any working group? | |
| Is there anything like that? | |
| I don't believe there is. | |
| So I'd like to kickstart that a little bit and offer that if there's somebody who's high up in any police organization who would like to just have a conversation about some of these suggestions, To give us a sense whether they're even worth pursuing. | |
| Because it might be that when you hear somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, and I'm certainly not one of those people, if somebody actually understands police work and the situation on the ground, if they hear these suggestions and say, oh yeah, that's something we could work with, haven't we moved the ball forward? | |
| And if they say, no, it won't work, And here's the reason why it won't work. | |
| Haven't we also moved the ball forward in the sense that we've engaged? | |
| We've satisfied Black Lives Matter primary point, which is, are you taking us seriously? | |
| Do we matter? And if you're not even having a conversation on the details and on the specifics, it's hard to say that you think they matter. | |
| I mean, maybe you do in your internal thoughts, but if you're not acting like it matters, that's a tough argument to make that you're hearing the message, hey, you know, do our lives matter? | |
| So, in a demonstration that black lives matter, and let's not play with the logo. | |
| I know you all want to jump in and say, oh, lives matter, but that just makes things worse because that's just a given. | |
| You don't need to state that all lives matter because we're all on that page. | |
| But do we hear the message that black lives matter and that there might be an issue there? | |
| Yes. I hear that message and I'm willing to do something about it with actual actions. | |
| And so I publicly invite somebody who's high up and I'd want somebody who's got some decision-making experience. | |
| Somebody who's maybe the head of an organization, a police organization or Perhaps the chief of police of some major metropolitan area, you know, chief of police of Chicago would be perfect. | |
| Just somebody who could come on and just engage with the specific suggestions. | |
| I don't know if the good ones are bad, but I know you've got people saying we've got a problem. | |
| You've got the police saying, hey, stop complaining about police. | |
| And I don't see anybody talking about the suggestions. | |
| So let's make that happening. | |
| Now, am I the right person to do that? | |
| Absolutely not. I'm totally not the right person. | |
| But I might be able to kickstart it. | |
| You know, if we could come up with someone who is willing to engage on the suggestions, then maybe suggestions could be added or modified. | |
| But at least it would be some kind of an ongoing conversation. | |
| And isn't that way ahead of where we are? | |
| One of the things I love about the current situation with government, and maybe the Trump administration makes us think this way, a little bit more entrepreneurial, a little bit more, hey, citizens, do it yourself. | |
| Don't let the government solve everything. | |
| So perhaps we're in that world where I can get on Periscope and I can say stuff like this. | |
| I'm 100% sure that The right kind of people are going to hear it, meaning people who work in law enforcement are going to hear this, and some of them are probably going to contact me and say, oh yeah, I know somebody, or here's somebody who could get in that conversation. | |
| I just want to see if there's anything there. | |
| Is there any idea that came out of any of this for making the world better that would move the ball forward? | |
| One of my ideas was to have some kind of a national database in which we're tracking which communities are doing a good job, which ones are not, and maybe we could compare and then that gives you something to work with. | |
| It's like, why is this community doing so well and this one isn't? | |
| Is there anything you can learn? | |
| If you don't have a big database to really, you know, that you can trust, I don't know if there is one, then Then you can't really move forward. | |
| You gotta be measuring stuff. | |
| If you're not measuring stuff, you're not really doing anything. | |
| So that's my offer. | |
| I offer to work with any law enforcement people who are in a position to make a difference and know what they're talking about to just engage in some of the ideas and just give us some feedback. | |
| Are we in the right arena? | |
| Are any of these ideas, even things that aren't already being done, Because it could be that everything I just suggested is actually the current policy. | |
| How the hell would I know? I don't work in the police field. | |
| So let's find out. | |
| Let's find out if we've got some ideas and they can make a difference. | |
| That's all I had to say for now. | |
| I'm trying to move the ball forward. | |
| Black lives matter. Listening to you, I hear it. | |
| And black lives do matter. | |
| And I'd love to hear your suggestions. | |
| Which I have already, but I'd like to hear more of them, and I'd like to connect you with somebody who has something to do with policing, who can maybe help us figure out if these are good ideas. |
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