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Sept. 29, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:00:07
Episode 240 Scott Adams: Why Do We Punish Imaginary People for Crimes of Imaginary People?
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Hey everybody, get in here.
Juliana. And everybody else.
Donna. Come on.
Tyler. Tyler, you're always one of the first ones.
Jason, get in here. Brad.
Ken. Oh, we're going to have a little whiteboard talk here.
It's going to make you mad.
These are the best ones.
The whiteboard talks that make you go...
Uh, I'm not sure I believe that.
You could have one of those.
But not until we enjoy the simultaneous sip.
Yes, it's time.
Grab your mug, your vessel, your chalice, your cup, your glass, your container.
Make sure it's got the beverage of your choice.
I like coffee.
and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah, now as we're all struggling with the questions about Kavanaugh and Dr. Fulker, Ford, it seems to me there are some assumptions we've made that are worth challenging.
And one of the assumptions that we're just zipping past, as if it doesn't matter, is this very basic question, which is, are you The same person as the person who did something in your name when you were a minor.
So in other words, what makes you the same person as the young you and therefore you should be punished for the crimes of the young you or held responsible for the young you?
What is it that connects you? Let's go to the whiteboard.
So here are all the reasons That the 17-year-old version of you is the same person as, let's say, the 50-something-year-old version of you.
These are all the things that make you the same person.
You might have the same memories.
You've got some of the same cells in your body.
There's a legal financial connection.
Anything you owned then that you haven't gotten rid of, you still own legally.
There's the law. The law says you're the same person.
There's your mind.
The things you thought then were part of this continuation to what you think now.
And then, of course, there's your character.
There might be more, but this is a starter set.
So, by history and by law and by tradition and by society, your 17-year-old version of yourself is considered the same person as your current self, whatever your age is.
I'm just saying 52 here.
So, we're watching this Kavanaugh situation and the assumption we've started with Is that if the person today can be determined to have done something in his 17-year-old incarnation, his 17-year-old form, then we should hold him responsible today for what this character did.
Now let's start with the first thing.
The first thing you need to know is this person doesn't exist.
The 17-year-old Kavanaugh that we've all been living with for the last week or so, and you have been living with him, right?
Haven't you had in your mind a picture of a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh doing things?
That person sort of exists for all of us.
We've seen his pictures.
We've imagined the scenes.
We've replayed the scenes as they've been described to us many times.
But here's what all of those things have in common.
They're imaginary.
17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh doesn't exist.
Literally doesn't exist.
He's an idea.
Now, the reason that we blame current Kavanaugh For what 17-year-old imaginary no longer exists, Kavanaugh did, is that we connect people with all these different ways.
So let's talk about them.
One of the ways we connect people is their memories.
The memory you have now is connected to what you did.
But what if you don't remember stuff?
And what if it turns out that your memories are not really memories?
They're sort of reconstructions.
They're not real memories.
And science will confirm this, right?
The things you think are your memories from way back then are not exactly memories.
They're the things you've manufactured from old memories.
You've pieced together photographs.
You've filled in the gaps of the things you didn't remember.
So you don't have actual memories.
Of when you were a kid, by the time you're this age, you have fake reconstructed memories.
So you're not really connected by your memories, because they're not real.
But the cells of your body, well, most of them are different, right?
You don't really have the same body cells that you had then.
What about finance?
We're connected by finance.
So legally, if I owned something when I was 17 and I never gave it away, I still own it.
Well, there might be something like his old calendars.
He still owns the old calendars, but it's kind of trivial, right?
The things he owns now are like this.
Whatever he owned then was some calendars, maybe his old baseball mitt, some baseball cards.
Realistically, there's nothing he really owns.
He didn't have any money then.
He was flat broke. So he's not really connected to his old past by, let's say, a fortune that he owned then and he still owns.
Everything he has now, he made since then, because he had zero money then.
There's a legal connection, which is that if I do something today, my tomorrow self has to pay the penalty.
And if you didn't have that, you wouldn't have any rule of law, right?
You have to hold your future self responsible for what you did now.
But there's no reason for that other than it works.
It's just a practical thing, right?
But the law also has a limit.
So things that you did when you were 17, let's say something that he was accused of doing, doesn't really connect him anymore.
Because the law does not require that something he did at 17 he would be responsible for.
Then what about the mind?
What about the mind of the 17-year-old?
Is it the same mind as the 52-year-old?
Well, no. The 17-year-old mind is like a lump of clay.
It's basically a potential mind.
It's not the way he thinks now.
It's not what he knows now.
It's not the experience he has now.
So, there's a little bit in common, maybe, but not really.
And then what about his character?
His character is certainly quite different than it was when he was 17, because the things you do when you're 17 are just stupid and reckless, and the things that you do when you're older are more considered.
So, the entire discussion is whether or not we should hold responsible the person who does exist for the activities of an imaginary Literally imaginary character.
Because the past doesn't exist.
There is no young Kavanaugh.
You can't find him, you can't touch him.
He is literally imaginary.
We have constructed young Kavanaugh in our minds, and now we're going to hold old Kavanaugh responsible for it.
Now, if there were a legal reason to do that, or if he were the same physical person, or if he were rich then and he still has that money, you could really say, There are some good reasons why a 17-year-old is the same guy.
But by tradition, by law, by feelings, he's connected.
But does it make sense?
If he did everything that he was said to have done, and I have no reason to believe that's true, Other than the credible accusations, but they're matched by credible denials.
So, well, there's no allegation that he did an actual rape or an actual murder or one of those things where you just have to say, well, for practical reasons, we have to treat him like he's the same person now.
But realistically, realistically, He's not really the same person.
So we are literally looking to punish a person for the activities of an imaginary person.
That's not far off the truth, is it?
Do you think I'm far off the truth?
Somebody says, Scott, geez, take a position.
The people who are the dumbest people in this conversation...
are the ones who are sure he's innocent, or the ones who are sure he's guilty.
If you're sure about either one of those positions, you're the dumb people in the conversation.
Now you can say the odds are very high that it's won, or the odds are very high, or it tips one way or the other, and I think that would be reasonable to say.
But if you're positive that he didn't do it, or positive that he did do it, you're the dumb one in the conversation.
You're not even close to a reasonable position, because we don't have any evidence that would put you on one of those extremes.
So, here's the question.
Do you want to live in a world where people can be punished for the activities of imaginary people?
17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely imaginary.
He's not connected to current Kavanaugh by character.
Everybody who is a witness agrees that whatever 17-year-old Kavanaugh may or may not have done, he's definitely not this guy now.
He's not connected by money.
He's not connected by the same body cells.
He doesn't have the memory.
He doesn't remember, because nobody does really, but nobody remembers exactly what they were doing as a teenager.
We think we do. You know, if you're 20, you might.
But if you're 52, you don't remember what you did as a teenager.
It is literally an imaginary, conceptual person, a conceptual person who actually, literally, physically doesn't exist.
And that person, that imaginary person, his activity is alleged, alleged.
We're looking to hold this real-life person who does exist responsible for it.
Now, there's a reason that we don't treat minors the same as adults.
There's a reason. Because they're not the same people.
That's a pretty good reason, right?
If you were born, let's say by the age of 12, you were functionally the same person as you would be as an adult.
In other words, if your 12-year-old self Could be as adult as your adult self.
You would be charged as an adult at 12 years old.
Because you'd be pretty close to the same person.
But we know that's not the case.
Your teenage brain is just not the same.
It's not developed.
So blaming somebody for what they did as a baby...
And let's take the current logic back.
If we can blame him for what he did at 17...
Could you also blame him for what he did at 12?
And why not? What would be the difference in philosophy?
If he's guilty at 17 when he doesn't have a developed brain, why wouldn't he be equally guilty at 12?
What about 6?
Should Brett Kavanaugh be blamed for the things he did when he was 6 years old?
And if so, what's the difference between that and his 17-year-old self?
They're both imaginary.
Neither of them are his adult self.
Neither of them have anything important in common with his adult self.
They're as close as you can be to different creatures as anything could be.
So let's talk about the pause.
I talked about that in my periscope yesterday.
I was not entirely against the pause.
The pause introduces some risk that they'll kick up something.
Maybe it'll take too long. So there is certainly some risk.
But there was also some risk of ignoring half of the public who demanded it.
That's a risk too.
So you had two very big risks.
One of them is smarter.
And I think that we're on the smarter path because we could get To a credible result on the path we're on, there are some risks that we won't, but we could.
But if we were to just slap him in the court, that would largely guarantee we didn't have a credible outcome.
So one of them has a possibility of being credible.
The other way, just slapping him in the court, guaranteed a permanent problem.
So, we're probably on the right path, even though it introduces a new set of risks.
Somebody said, he did nothing at 17 times.
Did you watch his testimony?
Did you watch the part where I said, if you're sure you know what somebody did at 17, and they're 52 now, you're not the serious adult in the conversation.
So this is something you should ask yourself.
Are you positive you know what happened?
When these two were teenagers.
If you're positive, whether it's positive he did it or positive he didn't, if you're positive, you can confirm that your brain isn't working.
It's one of those few times that you can be sure your brain isn't working, because usually when your brain isn't working, you're also not smart enough to know it.
But here's one that's really clear.
If you can look at this and be positive, it happened or didn't happen, there's something wrong with your brain.
It's just not working right.
That said, how many of you are positive?
How many of you are positive?
You know the answer, whether guilty or innocent, it doesn't matter.
How many of you are positive?
100% positive.
Now, by the way, when...
When Dr.
Ford said that she was 100% positive about her memories, that should have eliminated her from credibility.
So the moment that Dr.
Ford, who should be an expert in this field of psychology, should be an expert about how memories get formed, or at least she works in that field, she should not understand this stuff.
For her to say, under oath, That she's 100% certain should have disqualified her from any credibility.
There's nobody who has her training who can say under oath, I am 100% sure I don't have a faulty memory.
Can't be done. So she should have completely destroyed her credibility by claiming 100% certainty.
Here's what an honest answer would have looked like.
Well, senators, I work in this field and I know that sometimes people will believe their memories and they can be 100% certain even when they're wrong.
That said, my internal feeling of certainty is 100% and I've had this same memory for a long time.
It meets all the characteristics of something that I would consider a high probability, but if you mean technically and scientifically, nobody can ever be 100% sure.
But on a human level, yes, I'm as close as you can get to total certainty.
Some answer like that, I would have said to myself, well, that is scientifically correct and it sounds honest.
But when somebody who is an expert in this field, or at least works in the field, says that I'm 100% sure, under oath, that, my friends, is a lie.
It's a lie. Because you know that she knows that memories can never be 100% certain.
You know she knows that, right?
So when she leaned in and looked at you and said, 100%, at that moment, on the most important question, there's a 100% chance she was lying.
Because her training would have told her that memories that are not 100% accurate are common.
And that you can't tell the difference.
The most important thing to know is that if you have a false memory, you can be 100% positive it's true.
So the fact that she said, my memory is 100% positive, true, indicates she's lying.
Now, in terms of persuasion, it was probably good because most people don't understand the nuance of memory.
And it was a public event and she was trying to persuade people.
We'll get rid of the Nazi?
Her lawyer demanded that answer.
Yeah, from a lawyer's perspective, it might have been good play, but it was also unambiguously a lie.
Now, it might be true that she's 99.9% certain.
And if she had said that, I would have said, pretty good.
99.9?
I'll take that.
That sounds like an honest answer.
She is at least allowed that there's a possibility that false memories exist.
And she knows that they do.
That would be an honest answer.
It wouldn't work to her favor, probably, but it would be honest.
But she was a teen, not a doctor in that hearing.
Yeah, I've heard some people say that she was acting like a teenage girl.
I didn't really pick that up.
You know, you can't really...
That just didn't seem persuasive to me in any important way.
She used a baby voice.
You know, people speak differently.
It just doesn't mean anything.
So I saw close-up pictures of Dr.
Ford in which it looked like her pupils were dilated.
But I couldn't tell if they were always dilated or if it was photoshopped or anything.
But I was definitely looking to see if there was anything in the eyes that would tell me anything.
Because remember, we're being asked to make very subjective judgments based on our professional guesses about whether one of them looked credible or not.
In that context, and the reason that people appear in person is that you can look at them.
There's a visual element to believing people.
And when I looked at her eyes in close-ups, it looked like the pupils were dilated.
Now, I'm not a doctor.
Should you believe me when I say it looked like her pupils are dilated?
You should not. There's no credibility here whatsoever because I don't know if they were photoshopped.
I don't know if they were more dilated than they would normally be.
I'm just telling you my opinion.
So because this is an opinion theory, We're all giving our opinion whether she looked credible or opinion whether she didn't.
My opinion of what her eyes look like is legitimate, because all of it's just weird opinion and a lot of it has to do with how things looked.
So I had to ask myself, what is it that causes eyes to dilate?
And I don't know the answer, but none of the answers are good for her side.
Somebody's yelling, get real!
What does that even mean?
So is there anybody else who's willing to say in public that they're positive 100% she's guilty, meaning she's lying, or positive 100% that she's telling the truth?
Anybody want to say that in public?
Because you should be embarrassed to say that.
It should literally be embarrassing to say you know what happened.
It's not embarrassing to say you're very certain.
Being very certain is completely legitimate.
To be confident in your opinion, that's legitimate.
But to say there's a 100% chance you're right, there's something wrong with your brain.
It's not operating efficiently.
Bombards body analysis.
So a lot of people have pointed me to something called Bombard.
That must be your last name.
Bombards body language analysis.
I don't...
What's the best way to say this?
I'm not aware of the science that would say that's credible, but I don't dismiss it.
So to me it's entertainment, but I'm not getting anything else out of it.
So it is entertaining, but I can't tell if it's scientifically valid.
I don't know how you would tell. The vocal fry, a lot of people talked about that.
I don't believe that tells you anything, except that she was nervous as she should have been.
Thank God for Lindsey Graham, people are saying.
Let's talk about the State of the Union.
I'm seeing a lot of people who are concerned that the country, the republic, We'll be torn apart by this.
And people are thinking already, it's already being torn apart.
You know, we're in completely different realities now and things are going to fall apart and we're going to impeach the, you know, starting to impeach everybody.
We're going to impeach the president and impeach the Supreme Court and they'll be marching in the street and all of that.
Let me give you the optimist view of what's happening.
Number one, our country has never been stronger.
In all of the important ways.
We've never been stronger.
Individually, we're less racist and less sexist than we have ever been.
When you look at the news, it would be easy to imagine that things are falling apart because that's the nature of the news.
It's supposed to wind you up.
If the news doesn't wind you up, you're not going to be clicking on stuff.
And they need you to click on stuff like a chicken with a pellet.
So when you're watching the news, talking about it, just imagine yourself as this chicken.
You're in an experiment and there's a pellet here.
This is what you should imagine.
You're the chicken and here's the pellet and here you are watching the news.
Here's some more news! Pellet!
Pellet! So that's my impression of us watching the news.
If you remove yourself from that chicken-eating-a-pellet world, this artificial world that the big tech companies have created and put you in this little mental prison where you think that the stuff that's on TV is important and real and critical and the world is going to blow up, And if you want to stop it, you better click.
Click. I better click.
I can save the world if I click.
If I just stay on Twitter a little bit longer, I can save the world.
It's going to fall. That's a big artificial thing that you're feeling.
So the first thing you need to know is that, relatively speaking, there aren't that many people as a percentage who are even paying attention.
The vast majority of Americans are sort of barely aware that there's something going on with the Supreme Court.
Barely aware. So those of us, no matter how excited, mad, angry, scared we are, it's not because of the facts.
The facts don't matter.
Because we don't have access to them.
We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
We don't know who did what in 1982.
We're not really dealing with SPACs.
We're dealing with a media that evolved to learn how to tweak you and get you excited.
So the excitement you're feeling The fear that you're feeling is artificially generated.
It's not real. It's not based on actual facts because we're completely divorced from them.
We're in this little bubble in social media, within the news.
Those of us who are junkies like myself who watch the news all the time, we have this artificial feeling of what's going on.
That's entirely imaginary and created by the economic entities that know how to tweak your brain just right.
So that's the first thing.
Second thing is the system that the founders created, the government, the Constitution, is really, really strong.
I mean, what we're dealing with now It's just nothing compared to what this country has been through before.
Everything that we have right now is a smaller risk than everything that happened for the last 200 years.
We are currently at the lowest risk to the Republic in our entire history.
Right now. Like right today.
Why do we have the lowest risk to our Republic?
Let me give you a good reason.
What are we talking about?
Remember I always told you to look for the blank space?
Don't look at the painting where most of the paint is.
Look for that corner where there's a little nothing because that's what makes it a painting.
It's not a good painting unless one part of it isn't so busy.
That's what makes good design.
So we're in this world where What you should be looking at is what we're not talking about.
What we're not talking about is the economy.
Why are we not talking about it except to say it's good?
Because the economy is freaking amazing right now.
Our economy right now is the economy that's never been seen anywhere.
Based on its size as well as its Solid elements.
It is the strongest economy in the history of civilization.
So we don't need to talk about it.
Because it doesn't make anybody unhappy.
What about militarily?
Safer than we've ever been.
Right now. Let me ask you, is the United States safer right now than it has ever been in its entire history?
Pretty sure that's true.
You know, and also we're physically safer than we've ever been.
We're wearing our seat belts, you know, we figured out what kills people, we do less of it, etc.
We're probably safer than we've ever been in history.
And almost everything that's big and important, you know, health, finance, war, the threat of nuclear war, all of that, all of that is better than it's ever been before.
And I will even include, I believe that, you know, if you're looking at race relations, if you look at the news, it looks like it's worse than it's ever been.
Wouldn't you agree? If you're following the news or social media, you'd say, my God, hair's on fire.
You know, racial relations is worse than it's ever been.
But it isn't.
If you have any two people, like real actual physical people, not concepts in the news, not things that people said on TV, but two people.
Black person, a white person.
Introduce them, you know, two strangers, you put them in a room.
Are the odds of them getting along better in 2018?
Or worse than at any time in history?
Well, I'll tell you the answer. Better.
Better. Alright?
You put a black person and a white person in a room, two strangers, and just say, okay, two of you, randomly, we're selecting you.
We're going to put you in a room. Do you two get along?
Do you respect each other?
Do you listen to each other?
If one of you gets hurt, would the other one help?
Yes. Yes.
Individually, as individual people, we are less racist, less sexist, less bad than we have ever been in our entire history.
But on TV, when we play our parts and we take our teams and we argue about who's discriminating against who and we're battling for power and we're trying to get votes, that's a whole artificial Weird little world that most people aren't even involved in.
Most people aren't even paying attention.
They're just going to soccer practice, and their kid's best friend is some other ethnicity, and it's all working out fine.
Everything's great, right?
Am I sure about the economy?
Yes, I am sure.
I'm not 100% sure, because only crazy people are 100% sure.
But yes, I'm about as confident of that as you can be confident about the economy.
There's always some uncertainty.
Take climate hysteria.
Now, when we say climate hysteria, we've already sort of thought past the sale.
And the sale is, is it a real danger or not?
And the answer is, we don't know.
There's certainly good scientific evidence that people create CO2, and CO2, if you add it to the atmosphere, could raise the temperature.
So that much I think everybody's agreed on now, that humans are raising the temperature, or should.
Over time we should, but we don't know how much.
We don't know if we can remediate.
We don't know if it will be out of control.
Those things we don't know, but they scare us to death.
So there's a lot of stuff we don't know that could kill you, but that would be everything in the world.
Everything we don't know could kill us.
That's just a general statement, and climate's in that category, although it's got a lot more scientific backing.
So I am always confident that society will rise to get rid of these challenges like climate risk.
I think that we'll figure out how to remediate that and we'll be in good shape when we figure that out.
Talk about Trump's comparative silence.
He has been, by Trump's standards, pretty quiet.
He's letting the process play out.
Now there are a few things that we can determine from this.
One of the things we can determine from the fact that Trump is being kind of quiet is that he doesn't want attention to be taken away from this question.
So we have a weird situation where both sides think that they will benefit by focusing on the Supreme Court situation.
So the Democrats must think that they get an advantage by focusing on it, and the Republicans must think they also get an advantage.
One of them is probably wrong, unless they're both just talking to their base, in which case they're both right.
So the more they can...
The more they can focus on this, the more they can get their base involved, and maybe that's the only thing that matters for the midterms.
For the midterms, the only thing that might matter, when I say the only thing, I'm exaggerating, of course.
What I mean is the most important variable, the one that you can move, is how many of your own base you get to show up at the polls.
That's probably going to be the most important thing.
And this Supreme Court thing motivates both sides.
So both sides have temporarily said, let's just stop talking about all the other things in the world because this is really good for our own side and the other team is going to get ahead of us if we don't do the same.
Let me ask you this.
If Brett Kavanaugh got either delayed past the midterms or somehow got drummed out and didn't get confirmed, what would that do to Republican turnout?
So if you're worried about the fate of the republic, let me ask you this.
If the left succeeds, let's say Democrats, if Democrats succeed in stymieing and stopping Brett Kavanaugh, and then we get into the midterm election, what's that going to do to Republican turnout?
Well, we know Democratic turnout will be higher because they'll say to themselves, aha, we've got an opening.
If we can get control of the Senate, we can also control the next nominee.
But that's a little bit of a conceptual moonshot, don't you think?
It's a bit of a moonshot that they could delay it, and then they could also get control of the Senate, and then from there on they would be in charge of the Supreme Court.
So that could motivate Democrats, but they would be motivated by a long shot.
Are people motivated by long shots?
Just generally speaking, if I said to you, look, if you do something that's inconvenient, there's a series of events which might happen which if they line up just right, and if the stars are right, and if you wait long enough, there might be a situation that's favorable to us.
So how about doing something inconvenient right now?
It's not motivating, right?
Even though you can see the chain from I will go vote, that vote will be part of many votes.
If we get enough, someday in the future we'll get this advantage.
It's just not motivating.
People care about what itches right now, what hurts right now.
Now imagine you're a Republican and you're in a situation where Kavanaugh just got declined.
What do Republicans do When they've got a problem to fix and all they need to do to fix the problem is to get off the couch and take care of business.
What do Republicans do when there's a well-identified problem and all you have to do to fix that well-identified problem right now, immediately, right now, fix it.
Make the feeling go away, fix it.
You have to get off the couch.
You have to go vote.
I just described Republicans.
If you could come up with any simpler explanation of who a Republican is, good luck.
Here's my summary of a Republican.
If you need to take care of business, you take care of business.
Period. That's it.
That's like all Republicans right there.
If you have to take care of business, let's do it.
Let's take care of it.
I like to use this example.
There's a car wreck.
The car that wrecks catches on fire.
Whoever gets there first to try to help is going to be in trouble.
They're going to have to put their hand into the burning car to help somebody get out.
A Republican stops in his pickup truck.
Let's just make it stereotypical.
And the Democrat stops in his or her Prius.
So you've got a Republican who stopped and a Democrat who stopped.
And one of them has to risk themselves to pull the burning people out of the car.
While you're thinking about it, the Republican already did it.
The Republican already did it.
Because the Republican looked at it and said, okay, big risk to me, but it's obviously the right thing to do.
So, take care of business.
Yes, this is going to hurt.
I might be scarred.
I might be burned. This could be really bad for me.
But, it's also clear what I have to do.
With Republicans, when it's clear what you have to do, they just take care of business.
They don't think about it. There's nothing to think about.
I know what to do. Now I'll just do this.
Republicans? Well, they might talk about it a little bit.
Well, let's talk about the concept.
Is it fair? The Democrats are going to say, I could put my hand in there, but would that be fair?
Is that fair to me? Why is it the black guy has to do it?
Why must the woman do it?
The Democrats are going to be talking about the concept of it.
Is this the right way to go?
Is this fair?
What about this?
Well, the Republican has already pulled the person out of the burning car.
So this midterm election is sort of like that burning car.
The Republicans are looking at it and saying, if I have to vote to fix this thing, well, that's what I'll vote.
I'll vote. And I think Democrats are mad, but I don't know if their chain of reasoning and conceptual, someday this could be better if I vote.
I just don't know if it's as immediate and clear and obvious that they need to do something differently.
Yeah, who changes tires?
Somebody said. Alright, so I would say that the Democrats have painted themselves into a weird little corner that they don't know.
The first corner that they painted themselves into is by saying we only need a week for this investigation of Kavanaugh.
Now because they have been saying it will only take a week for a long time, they're kind of locked into that week.
But what can be done in a week?
Nothing. There's almost nothing that can be done in a week.
by any large organization anywhere on any topic ever in the history of large organizations.
Large organizations Can't do anything in a week.
Now, there will be activity, so when I say anything, that's obviously an exaggeration, but the most they can do in a week is talk to a few people, write up some reports, have their bosses look over the reports, rewrite them, have their bosses look over the reports, rewrite them again, change some paragraphs, show it around, get some signatures, get some approval, rewrite it again, edit a little bit, Talk to the person that you talked to once.
Make sure that you rewrote it best.
Show it to them again. Have them edit it.
Show it to your boss again. That's what a week looks like in any big organization.
Nothing important is going to happen.
There will be no physical evidence sought or obtained.
Probably there will be no new people on the list of people they talk to.
Probably those people will say some version of, I wasn't there.
Which is an easy report to write.
I talk to Mr.
or Mrs. So-and-so, and they have no recollection of anything that would be useful.
That's my job for that whole day.
You're an FBI agent.
You fly across the country, get the interview, sit down, take out all your materials.
You're recording it, maybe video recording it.
You've got your notes.
You say, okay, it took me 18 hours to organize this and to get here.
Finally, now I'm in your kitchen.
Tell me everything you know about that night.
And the person says, I don't have any memory of that night.
That's it. And then the FBI agent writes down, does not have memory of the night, but he doesn't want to pack up and leave.
So he's got to ask, or she has to ask, that same question 50 different ways.
So, you don't have any memory of the night, but do you have any memory of any nights around that or like that?
No. Do you remember anything about that night?
No. Do you remember these two people together on any night?
No. It's going to be a big nothing unless somebody new comes forward.
Now, if somebody new comes forward, the credibility of the left will collapse a little bit more because each time something new comes forward, it is less and less credible, which makes the average of all of it less credible.
It makes it look more like a plot.
So, I would say that Kavanaugh's odds of getting...
Eventually confirmed are close to 100%.
So my prediction is you will get confirmed at the end of the week, or even if it takes two weeks, you'll get confirmed.
So that's my prediction.
But if Kavanaugh is denied the seat for any reason, Then I'm going to go on record with the red wave.
Okay? So you've been waiting for my prediction for a year.
I'm going to commit to this prediction.
Here's the prediction.
If Kavanaugh gets confirmed, the left will think, well, you know, we tried, but we kind of expected that would happen.
It won't be that motivating.
Because it will be an election happened.
The elections have consequences.
This guy is at least qualified.
Everybody agrees he has judge qualifications.
They just don't like his political leaning.
So I think the left sort of gets used to it after a while.
But man, if he doesn't get on the court...
The right is going to vote like you've never seen anybody vote.
You're going to see the kind of voting...
You'll probably see...
You would see record Republican turnout.
It would be the biggest Republican turnout probably in history.
And Republicans would act as one.
Like, you wouldn't need a leader...
You wouldn't need any charismatic person to come out and say, Republicans, go vote.
Because they would just vote.
And they would make phone calls and they would make sure that their lazy son-in-law or their lazy cousin also voted.
They would offer them rides.
They would call around and say, everybody, I'm just checking in.
Are you going to vote? Just checking in.
No, I forgot to register.
No, I got to work that day.
No, I don't have a ride. Well, here's the URL to tell you how to register.
I'm going to check in on you in a day to make sure you're registered.
And then, if you need a ride, I'm going to stop by and I'm going to give you a ride.
The Republicans will just do that automatically.
It will just become the most instantly self-organized red wave you've ever seen in your life.
And it will be breathtaking.
If Kavanaugh gets declined.
If he doesn't get declined, I think it's going to be maybe the Democrats will have a little edge.
It'll be a closer situation.
But I have to admit, there's a small part of me That just wants to see that happen because of how amazing it would be?
I don't want this to happen and I don't predict it will.
But if Kavanaugh does get thwarted, if he actually is denied the confirmation, I'm a little bit interested to see how that goes.
And I'm not saying that there will be civil war, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not saying there will be violence.
I don't think there will be.
I think there will simply be the most awe-inspiring, fantastic, public...
It's almost like the country is a human body.
If you think of it this way, the Republic, you know, the country is sort of like a body and when it gets a disease or, you know, it gets some kind of tumor or something, you know, the white blood cells organize and the rest of the body just sort of shuts down for a while until the white blood cells can do their job, you know, if they can do their job and to get rid of the problem.
If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, Republicans are going to be like all these white blood cells that don't need to be told what to do.
They don't need to be told what to do.
They're going to be on the phone with their lazy cousin.
They're going to be talking to their co-workers.
They're going to find out anybody who's even slightly Republican.
And they're going to say this.
Do you have a ride?
Do you have a ride? Do you need that URL to sign up to vote?
Can I take you to lunch and walk you through registering to vote?
Can we get together and I'll make sure that you...
Can I call you in the morning to make sure you woke up early enough?
Republicans are just going to do that.
And it will be the biggest awe-inspiring sort of democratic amazing thing you've ever seen in your life.
It will be the highest Republican turnout You have ever seen.
And it will be like the talk of a legend forever.
So when you worry, what could go wrong?
Is the country falling apart?
Are the wheels coming off?
That's just news talk.
We are as solid a country as you could ever have.
And more solid than it's ever been and moving in the right direction.
And if the worst case scenario happens, which is let's say the Democrats thwart what should have been a polite confirmation if they turn it into a bloodbath and he doesn't get confirmed, That won't lead to a revolution.
It will lead to an outbreak of democracy like you've never seen.
The Republican response to not getting their way in the system is to stay within the system and try harder.
Because Republicans like the system.
They're not going to break the system.
They're going to use it harder.
And that will be phenomenal.
There's a little part of me that I kind of like to see it.
I just sort of like to see it.
Because I think it would be healthy for the country to have an outbreak of democracy, if you will.
Like an outbreak of legitimate concern for the health of the system.
Alright, I've talked about that too much.
This is propaganda talk like you've never seen, somebody said.
Well, what part of it would you consider propaganda?
Now, we live in a country where anybody who says anything that's smart or effective on the other side, you know, the other side is going to say, oh, that's propaganda.
You're an apologist.
You're such an apologist.
Somebody said, no, I want to see him rejected.
If you're worried about this outcome and you're a Republican, just keep this in mind.
You're either going to get this nomination or you're going to get a red wave.
You probably won't get both.
I don't see you getting both.
But you're going to get one or the other.
And you should decide which one you want more.
Yeah, Jeff Flake.
Is that interesting or what?
The whole Jeff Flake situation.
I love the fact that he's a lame duck and he doesn't have to run for election anymore because he ended up being the only one who mattered, didn't he?
Jeff Flake turned out to be the only one who mattered.
He decided to wait a week and then they had to because they needed his vote.
So it turns out we don't have a government per se.
You know, if you looked at what happened this week, did we have a government?
We didn't have a government.
We had a Jeff Lake.
Jeff Lake was the government this week.
The guy who already quit.
The guy who's only barely in the government because he's just waiting for the replacement.
That guy. The lame duck.
He's running the government.
He made the only decision this week that mattered.
He decided he wasn't going to vote unless we wait a week, so we're waiting a damn week.
Jeff Flake, the guy who's not even going to be in the job pretty soon, he's running the government, weirdly.
Options three is they find dirt.
So you mean find more dirt on one of them?
Yeah, I think the...
I think the odds of the FBI finding, let's say, negative new information about Dr.
Ford are very high.
She has never been the subject of an FBI investigation, and she has never opened, and of course she's never opened the questioning.
To the larger question of her own credibility.
Because remember, they have to look into her credibility, not just the allegation itself.
They have to find out, has she ever had medical problems, mental problems?
Has she ever been on any kind of psychoactive prescription or other drug?
Has she ever made a claim about somebody that we don't think was true?
They're going to find out a lot about her.
What are they going to find about him?
Well, I think they're going to find out about him that he drank more beer than he admitted in high school.
But given that we have all these quotes from Kavanaugh himself saying, how many times did he say, I like beer, I drank beer, we drank beer, I like beer?
So if it turns out that he drank a little bit more beer at 17 than he allowed as his adult version while talking in front of his daughters, don't forget that Kavanaugh was talking in public.
So when you're saying, how much beer did you drink at 17, he's not just talking to the audience.
He's talking to his daughters.
And do you think he wanted his daughters to hear, oh yeah, man, I was hitting the beer like crazy.
Like I drank until I passed out every night.
It was great! His daughters are listening.
Of course he's going to say, I liked the beer.
Everybody did, but I didn't take it too far.
What else do you want him to say?
Don't you want him to lie in that situation?
Now, in my opinion, he was exaggerating slash lying the degree of his drinking.
It is also my opinion, I'm glad he did.
Because it didn't really have much to do with the accusation, but it had a lot to do with what his daughters were going to hear.
You know, this is somebody who is looked up to by apparently a number of Sports teams, you know, teenage girls teams that I think his daughters are on, etc.
So he has this wide population of teenagers.
This is weird, right?
He's got this wide population of teenagers who look up to him as a role model.
And then he's asked in public, did you drink much beer when you're 17?
There are two answers to give.
One is the exact honest answer.
Yeah, I drank a lot of beer.
Terrible role model.
And he also doesn't give on the Supreme Court, which of course is more important, and that beer he drank as a teenager doesn't really matter to anything.
So what was the more responsible thing to do for someone who is a role model to lots of teenagers, not just his own?
The responsible thing to do is the same thing every one of you are doing to your teenage kids.
Right now, and everything that your parents did to you when you were a teenager, the responsible thing to do is to lie, lie, lie.
If Brett Kavanaugh is the good person that he is alleged to be, he should have lied to that Congress.
He should have said, when I was 17, I did like to have a beer now and then, but I didn't take it too far.
That is a responsible thing.
lie. Do I care that this person who is a role model played down his drinking at 17 that really had made, you know, no practical difference to the accusation, but it probably made a big difference to the people who would be influenced by, oh man, he's a Supreme Court judge and he was a drunk when he was 17.
I guess I can do that.
Supreme Court. Here's to the Supreme Court.
Alright, so if he lied about his beer drinking, Thank you.
So let me say this to Brett Kavanaugh.
If you lied, so speaking now to Judge Kavanaugh himself, if you lied about how much beer you drank when you were 17, thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Because... You are a role model, specifically to, you know, not just the country, because the whole role model to the country thing I don't think is nearly as important as the fact that in his actual life, there was a pretty large population of teenagers who looked up to him, and he was a leader, a coach, a dad, to a number of them.
So if he lied about his beer drinking at age 17, Thank you.
Just thank you. That's it.
That is the only reaction you should have to that.
Thank you. Because that was a responsible thing to do.
Somebody said, I'm not going to lie to my kids.
Well, if you don't lie to your kids, you didn't do anything good.
I'm sure you did. But...
Somebody said he was number one in his class and went to Yale.
How could he do that as a drunk?
Well, you could still drink a lot and get good grades.
Those are not mutually exclusive. Lying is not responsible.
What a ridiculous statement. Well, here's the thing.
Lying about that very specific thing because it would be bad for real-life high school people is a responsible thing to do.
Because, keep in mind, how many adults saw Kavanaugh play down his beer drinking and believed it?
Even the people, let me ask you this, Is there anybody who heard Kavanaugh say his beer drinking was sort of a casual, no big deal thing?
Is there any adult, whether you were pro-Kavanaugh or anti-Kavanaugh, is there any adult who believed that to be true?
I don't think so, right?
There's no adult who saw that and said, yeah, yeah, that looks true.
Is there any adult, let's talk about the yearbook, is there any adult who heard his explanations about the yearbook and said to themselves, oh yeah, that's probably exactly what it was, these things just look worse than they are?
Probably not. Probably not.
I think most responsible adults, either pro-Kavanaugh or anti, said, He was 17.
It's just not a look you want to put out there.
It's not what you want to influence other people to do.
It's not something you want to portray as being okay.
He is a role model.
He's like a bigger role model than anybody we've ever had in politics for a long time.
So if he lied about those trivial things, I hope he did.
All right. That's all I got for now.
I'll talk to you later. Hey, Avatar John.
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