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Oct. 24, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:45
Episode 271 Scott Adams: Saudi Alibis, Soros, Caravans, #FentanylChina, Fake News
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Hey everybody!
Hey Joanne. Come on in here.
I see you.
Kevin, you know the question of the day is what is better than coffee with Scott Adams by Periscope?
Answer? Nothing!
Nothing's better than coffee with Scott Adams, and you happen to be in the right place at the right time.
And it's time to grab your cup, your mug, your stein, your chalice, your glass, your container of beverage, fill it with your favorite beverage.
I like coffee.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
All right, first order of business.
A number of people are complaining that they're looking at my face covered with comments.
If you take your phone and you turn it sideways, boop, like this, or actually if you're watching it like this and you turn it this way, the screen will change on your device so that the comments are in a separate place from the face.
And better yet, My face will get smaller and the comments will get bigger.
You really don't want to be looking at my face in the largest possible size.
Trust me on this. Alright, there are many funny things happening in the world today.
Let's talk about them. Apparently President Trump said in his rally speech something about a hundred pictures of Comey and Mueller hugging.
So Trump puts in people's minds the image of Comey and Mueller hugging and says there are 100 pictures of it.
So somebody did a Freedom of Information Act to get all the photos of Comey and Mueller hugging and decided it was fake news.
But in the meantime, they circulated around the image of Comey and Mueller hugging.
So even though it doesn't exist, apparently there are no photos of Comey and Mueller hugging, you can't get it out of your head.
It's in there now. So here again, President Trump has used a small inaccuracy, shall we call it, to completely persuade.
How good is he at persuading?
Well, his latest approval polls from NBC, I think, put him at 47%.
Compared to Obama, at about the same time, I believe was 45%.
Keep in mind that his 47% is up from zero.
When Trump first announced his candidacy, what was his popularity?
His approval level?
5%?
Something like that? And so President Trump has gone from about 5% popularity on the day he announced to 47%.
So something like a 10 times increase in popularity?
Now, I ask you when people say to me, why do you say you think he's so persuasive?
And I say, well, he did become president with no practice, and his popularity has gone up tenfold in two years.
Has anybody else's popularity gone up tenfold in two years?
Probably not. Alright, here's some fun comments about the caravan.
I know you want to call it a mob, but let's call it a caravan.
So the big caravan, 7,000 people coming up, you've seen lots of pictures, probably.
What is it that strikes you about the pictures?
One is it's mostly male.
That's one thing. But the other is, They're not really carrying much for people who walked hundreds of miles.
Now, of course, the caravan is a lot like a fashion show.
When I was young, I used to watch televised fashion shows, usually just a clip that would show in the news.
And the clip they always showed in the news was somebody on the runway of the fashion show wearing some gigantic weird hat made in of tin cans and goldfish or some damn thing.
And being an unsophisticated I would say to myself, this is ridiculous.
Why are they having a fashion show of people wearing entirely only things that nobody would ever wear?
What is the point of having a fashion show when the clothes they're fashion showing nobody would ever wear?
They're crazy things. I was somewhat unsophisticated in those days and I did not understand that the fashion show is for the camera.
The fashion show is not about anybody buying any of those clothes.
It has nothing to do with that.
It's just to get attention for the brand.
And so they wear the most outrageous things they can so that idiots like me would say, my god, Who's gonna wear an outfit like that?
We literally used to say that when I was a kid.
We would read it, and my whole family, even my parents, would say, who's gonna wear an outfit like that?
As if that was ever intended.
So the mob is a little like that.
So when you're looking at the, not the mob, the caravan, the caravan is like a fashion show.
These are not the people who, you know, are the poor immigrants.
These are the people who are there for the camera, for the protest, for the persuasion.
The reason that they're not carrying much with them is because, obviously, there is some massive support system behind them.
Have you yet seen a picture of the massive support system?
I haven't.
Have any of you? There must be a lot of buses.
There must be gigantic, you know, trucks full of supplies and backpacks and there's probably sunscreen.
Pretty much all of the men have baseball caps to protect from the sun.
So keep in mind that when you're saying to yourself, hey, those people don't have backpacks.
They can't be real immigrants and hey, they're not carrying anything.
Where are they getting their food?
You're like I was when I was a kid watching a fashion show.
The people in the caravan are about the cameras.
They're not about migration so much.
So if you get that frame right, it all makes sense.
Here's the other thing that I find amusing.
We keep hearing reported that families, and I think it's per family, would have to spend something like $5,000 To Coyotes, which I think are mostly the cartel, to get across the border.
So $5,000 it would cost to pay the cartel to get across the border.
How many of those 7,000 people have $5,000 on them?
Or does the cartel take checks?
Because I'm very confused about whether any of these people are in that same category as the people who pay $5,000 to get across.
And I think the answer is no.
I would imagine that nobody in that crowd has $5,000.
So let's not conflate that.
These people are not looking to, you know, this particular group, I don't think they're looking for the cartel to move them across.
And you probably don't want to start the rumor that they're carrying large amounts of money with them.
I can't imagine that they're bristling with cash.
That doesn't make sense.
Alright, another topic. So not long ago, Bloomberg did a big report in which they said China had put little spy chips on a lot of motherboards so that a lot of our technology, including technology from Apple, has Chinese spy technology right on the boards.
Apple looked at its technology and said, no we don't.
There is absolutely nothing to this.
This report is 100% false.
We're the experts.
We looked at the boards and there's nothing on there that's to worry about.
So here's the interesting part.
Bloomberg is sticking to its reporting.
They're sticking to the reporting.
So, frickin' Tim Cook from Apple says, you know, we're basically one of the top technology countries in the history of the universe.
We're looking at this board and we're telling you there's 100% certainty there's nothing on there.
Could you please, you know, issue a correction?
And Bloomberg says, no, on one hand, You've got the entire Apple technology, you know, what would you call it?
The highest level of technology in the world.
But on our side, we've got this reporter.
And they're sticking with the reporter.
Good Lord! Bloomberg, what is going on there?
Let's talk about something else.
So apparently the president's getting ready to sign the big opioid reduction bill, and then among other things, there's a part of the bill, or maybe it's separate, but anyway, there's something happening right now that will...
Authorize the post office to check every package coming in from China.
I think it's a digital platform.
I don't know exactly the details of how they're checking stuff, but it's modeled on what FedEx does.
So they're taking a model which has been tested small.
Remember I keep telling you, whenever there's something that can be tested small, Do it.
Because you don't have to wonder if it's going to work.
Just test it small. And in this case, FedEx is already using this system.
So when the U.S. Post Office says, should we do this?
They don't have to wonder if it's a good idea.
They just look at FedEx.
And they say, is it working for you?
Yes. Okay, let's do that.
So you're seeing the government operate Very much the way you would want a government to operate.
Looking at a small trial, doing the research, takes a while.
Everything's slower than it ought to be, but it looks like they're getting the right answer.
Now, I also started piecing together some of the things that the administration is doing to squeeze China.
And apparently the new deal with trade with Mexico and Canada that replaces NAFTA also does something to prevent China from sending goods to Mexico and then have it appear to be coming from Mexico.
So he's closed that loophole.
So this president is closing the China Postal loophole and he's already closed through a new agreement the way that China can send things to Mexico and then pretend it came from Mexico.
So these are big deals. Now I'm in the camp that says You probably can't reduce the amount of fentanyl in the world because it's so easy to make.
They found $28 million of it in some little package.
A package about this size is worth $28 million and it might cost $10,000 to produce it.
So there's no way in the world, given the economics and the upside of being a dealer, that they're ever going to put a dent in the supply.
That said, you should still do everything you can to punish the mass murderers who are involved in it, because I think fentanyl has to be treated like a weapon of mass destruction and not like a drug.
Cocaine is a drug.
Heroin is a drug.
Fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction, and you should not treat it the same as a drug problem.
Now, while I am in favor of executing Chinese nationals who have been, you know, who we know to be fentanyl dealers, if China won't do it, I say we send in our people to kill them on their behalf, because it's illegal in China.
And if China was operating as a respectable, functional government, it would be executing them themselves.
So we could do them a favor and do it for them.
But at the same time, We're executing mass murders, people who are creating weapons of mass destruction in the form of fentanyl.
We should be treating the users in whatever is humane and workable and we've seen work before.
My understanding is that having a tainted supply of fentanyl is a bigger risk than having no fentanyl available because people will go in the black market, they'll get the sketchy stuff It's probably what killed my stepson a month ago, getting a sketchy supply.
We don't have confirmation, but it seems likely.
So we should certainly be looking at safe supplies for fentanyl users.
Now, I started digging into the issue of getting off Fentanyl and getting off opioids in general.
And I didn't know much about how hard it is to get off.
But here are some of the things I'm finding and this is preliminary.
So I'm just going to bring you up to the level that I've come up to, which is not high enough.
So your caveat here, your grain of salt here, is that what I'm telling you might be incomplete, but I'll try to improve on it as we go.
Here's what I know. There's a drug called Suboxone that you can take that helps people get off of opioids.
When you're on the Suboxone, taking a real opioid will make you go into withdrawal and make you very sick.
So the first thing it does is if you're on it, it keeps you from taking the illegal stuff that could kill you because you can't tell the quantities are right.
Now, this requires that you also have the Suboxone right and you're taking it on a regular basis.
The taking it on a regular basis part seems to be the problem because it's hard to get people to take any drug at the right time in the right amounts.
But, from what I've learned, if you were to take the Suboxone in the right amount under a doctor's care, your odds of being able to then wean off the Suboxone and therefore being off of everything eventually It was very, very high.
And this was my surprise.
My assumption was that getting off of opioids was, first of all, very hard to the point where most people couldn't do it.
And I think that's the actual, you know, the average is people can't get off them.
But, it does seem that if a doctor is working with a motivated person with Suboxone and they are tapering off on a very, very slow taper, that the odds of it working are really, really high.
It actually works pretty much almost all the time.
So, believe it or not, we have An actual cure for addiction.
It's just not implemented because experts differ a little bit.
It's kind of difficult to...
How long?
Somebody said how long.
The time it takes apparently differs, but it could be anything from a few months to a couple of years.
But it's not a race.
So if it takes you a couple of years and you're not suffering during the time, which is the whole point, if you're tapering slowly off the Suboxone, you're not suffering.
There's no withdrawal. Now I've heard that one of the issues with addicts using any kind of withdrawal method is that if they've ever experienced withdrawal, it's so horrible That they'll be afraid of anything that gets them off of drugs because they think that's also what could make them accidentally withdraw again.
So you need medical professionals to be watching pretty closely.
So it makes me think, so here are the parts that I'm putting together.
There is a drug which under the ideal situation pretty much fixes all addicts.
In other words, it does get them off the drug without withdrawal and without a huge problem.
But The odds of getting the right professional situation, a motivated addict, and having them follow through for two years is low.
Right? Because humans are humans.
So even though this system is pretty well tried, even though it's pretty well tried, and we know it can work, the actual...
Is somebody saying somebody died?
Is that true?
I don't want to say it out loud, but somebody's saying somebody famous died here, and I don't want to say that name until I see CNN.
I don't see anything.
That doesn't seem real. So the point there is that we may be very close to being able to completely beat opioid addiction, but it's probably about the system, not the resources.
So if we think more cleverly about opioids, we already have a way to get rid of pretty much all of it, it appears.
Now, that's my preliminary opinion.
My preliminary opinion is that Suboxone does work, but we don't have a way to make sure that people are monitored and take their pills at the right time.
Totally fixable. That's a very fixable problem.
And the way to fix it would be you would have some trials and you would say, here's what we're going to do.
This group of addicts, you're all going to be monitored very, very closely.
For example, let me just throw out an idea.
Let's say you had a system in which every addict wore We're a Apple Watch.
Now, of course, you know, there's a monetary impact in that, but I'm just spitballing here, right?
Every addict wears an Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch tells them when to take their Suboxone.
If they don't take it and they don't report back, maybe they have to send a text or use an app that says they did take it.
If they don't, they get a phone call.
From a human who says, why are you ignoring your Suboxone?
We didn't get a message that says you took it.
Then they go, oh, my watch was not charged.
Here, I'll take it. So one could imagine a way, it doesn't have to be with Apple Watches, but one could easily imagine an app, a way to check in, a series of sponsors, some way to guarantee that somebody took the Suboxone at the right amount and the right time.
If we can get a trial going, we could probably solve opioids.
That's my current opinion.
Alright, let's talk about something else.
I am fascinated by the Saudi story about Khashoggi, and I have an aha for you.
So this was my aha, the thing that made everything make sense.
So the Khashoggi story is that the Saudis allegedly sent a hit team to kill Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Turkey.
And it was planned in advance as evidenced by the fact that they brought a body double and they brought a bone saw and all this stuff.
So the part that's hard to understand Is why the Saudi explanation was so bad.
It was so bad that even the president called it out as the worst cover-up ever.
There's actually a quote from the president, I think yesterday, talking about it's just like a mind-bogglingly bad excuse.
And you probably said to yourself, I don't really understand Why Saudi Arabia could be, you know, a modern, highly educated leadership, sophisticated, they understand the world, and with all that going for them, the best explanation they could come up with is that he died accidentally in a fight, Khashoggi this is, Which nobody's going to believe.
So wasn't that a mystery to you?
Wasn't there a mystery as like, why would the Saudis come up with an explanation that absolutely nobody's going to believe?
And I have an answer for you.
I have an answer for you.
It turns out, and let me couch this by saying, I'm not the expert, so this is what I've read from other people who have more knowledge about the culture in the Middle East.
And it goes like this.
Lying isn't the same thing in the Arab culture as it is in the Western culture.
Now, this is not my opinion.
I'm just saying that I've read what experts have said.
So much so that there's a difference in what is technically a lie.
So much so, and I'm not talking about Takiya.
I'm not talking about that.
That's a separate situation.
Yeah, even beyond that, right?
There's an Islamic...
There's an Islamic permission, if you will, to lie if you're lying to a non-Islamic person.
It's in the interests of Islam.
But I'm not talking about that.
So stop saying that in the comments.
We're not talking about Taqia.
That's a special case that Islam is promoting.
I'm not talking about Islam.
I'm talking about the Arab culture here.
Which is mostly Islamic, but we're talking about the Arab culture, not Islam right now.
And the contention is that what we would consider a lie in the West, they would not consider a lie.
So much so that somebody actually said that if you gave a lie detector test to somebody in an Arab culture, they might pass it, even though in the West we could confirm it's a lie.
How could that be? How could a lie not be a lie in a different culture?
And I'm trying to understand this, and this is the closest I can get.
So now we're talking my interpretation of something I don't entirely understand.
So if somebody wants to tell me later that I'm completely wrong, that's okay.
Now, I want to clarify that when I talk about something called the Arab culture, I'm not talking about DNA. I'm not talking about race.
I'm talking about culture.
Sort of an agreement that people make living in an area.
It's not about race.
It's not about DNA. And my understanding is this.
Could be wrong, but I think I'm close to the truth.
In Western culture, when you tell a lie, the purpose is to get the other person to believe it's true.
I'll say that again. In the West, in the United States, for example, in Europe, for example, if you tell a lie, the whole point of telling the lie is to try to convince the other person it's the truth.
That's what a lie is in Western culture.
Apparently in the Middle East, and in the Arab culture in particular, it might be more cultures, but this is the one we're talking about because we're talking about Saudi Arabia.
Apparently in that culture, and here's the part that I need a confirmation on, so this isn't 100% certain, apparently a lie doesn't have to be in the service of trying to convince somebody it's true.
In other words, In that culture, this is the proposition, you could say something that's completely not true, that you know the other person you're talking to knows is not true, and that because it would be impolite to sort of call it a lie, it's just a way to get past the topic.
So here's the difference.
In the West, a lie is something you hope somebody will believe.
The proposition is, and I'm not positive this is valid, so I'll look for confirmation of this, that in the Arab culture, sometimes a lie is just to get past the topic with no expectation that the person you're lying to would even feasibly believe it's true.
The example given in one article I read was that Yasser Arafat, who was sort of a famous liar, was once asked in a meeting to talk to some important people in the government, and he acted like he didn't know who they were.
And the Western negotiators were like, I don't know what to do now.
You're acting like these people that you clearly know.
You've never heard of them.
What do you do with that? And finally, after the Westerners were like so perplexed, because Arafat kept acting like he literally didn't know these people, his aides started laughing because they couldn't keep it up.
And then Arafat was like, oh yeah, I'll talk to him.
So in other words, Arafat was telling a lie to their face that he knew they knew was a lie.
And that that was sort of normal business.
It was just to get past the conversation, I guess.
So when you see Saudi Arabia say, ah, yeah, he died in a fistfight, or whatever it was.
So when Saudi Arabia says, yeah, yeah, yeah, we sent him there, we were just going to kidnap him and interrogate him, but he died in the fight.
Here's the part you don't understand.
Saudi Arabia Never expected anybody to believe it.
That's the part that we were all missing.
And if it's true that the reports are, the reports are that MBS, the Crown Prince, he couldn't understand What all the commotion was.
He couldn't understand why the world was so incensed by it.
And I think he probably couldn't understand.
I don't want to read his mind, but if any of this is true, he would have been confused why his excuse didn't work.
And the difference would be cultural.
In the United States, people were saying, well, that's obviously a lie.
So you're our ally, and because you're an ally, why are you lying to us in a way that's just so obviously a lie?
And the answer is, it's a cultural difference.
That they knew it was a lie, they knew you wouldn't believe it, but that was never the goal.
The goal was never to make us believe it.
And once you realize that, that it was just something to say to get past it, You understand it differently.
I don't know if it changes your opinion or anything, but I'll just put that out there.
Now, if you've been following my Twitter or in Periscope, you know that I've been having this long conversation about George Soros and whether he's really the boogeyman or if it's Soros Derangement Syndrome.
And among the things that people have been telling me is, well, look at this video in his own words where he was a 14-year-old who was Helping the Nazis.
And then they send me to a video in which it looks like he was helping collect up the possessions of the Jews who had been shipped off to the concentration camps.
And he was helping the Germans steal stuff from the Jews and he's a Jew and therefore it's all bad.
But of course that video is edited and taken out of context.
So if you go over to Snopes, you can see the actual video in which he says he was just an observer.
So his, apparently, according to his own words, and they're the only ones we have from that time, he was observing.
He wasn't the guy who was helping the Nazis.
He just happened to exist at the same time.
So if your opinion of Soros is based on that video taken in a context, go see Snopes and that'll straighten you out.
Now the second part is the idea that Soros wants a one-world government.
Yes, Snopes is terrible, but it's just the video.
People are saying Snopes is discredited because it's left-wing.
Let me agree with you that Snopes has a political bias, but They're just playing the video.
If you play the video, you're not gonna have any question about what's going on.
So you don't have to worry about their bias in that particular case.
So the other thing is that Soros has this one world government idea.
And I started reading up a little bit about that and of course the situation is that Soros has a big complicated idea that looks entirely impractical for the most part, but because it's big and complicated people have misinterpreted it to mean that he wants to get rid of all governments and have a one world government.
What does seem to be true He wants some global organizations that do have power.
Some global organizations so that economics are decided efficiently and that you don't have big disruptions.
And I say to myself, That's not crazy to have some elements of our economics, some kind of a global structure.
Somebody says, you are naive.
Now let me do that for you, whoever said that.
You are naive.
You are naive.
I left out the reasons because I don't have any.
So... I am naive about Soros, so I'm admitting that I'm starting my journey to understand him.
What I've found so far is all indications that it's mostly kind of a Soros derangement syndrome.
So my guess is that many of you are suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, but it's the Soros variety.
Now that doesn't mean that you agree with Soros.
It could be that you think that any kind of a non-nationalist approach to the world would be bad for you or even for the world.
That's legitimate. So you could certainly disagree with him on his lefty politics.
You could certainly disagree with him that we need more global organizations that have some economic control over everybody.
I think there's also a part of it where he'd like to have some global legal system so that if North Korea was abusing its people, The world could do something about it.
If Saudi Arabia murders somebody on their own soil in their own embassy, that this global entity could do something about it.
Now that's either a good idea or a bad idea.
I haven't read the details.
It feels like it's a little problematic to me.
But it doesn't sound evil.
And it also doesn't sound practical.
Meaning that I can't imagine any world in which these things would happen.
And they're just sort of conceptually spelled out, so I can't imagine we have to worry about any of it.
So calling him an enemy, I think, is overstating the situation.
Saying that you disagree with his ideas that could never be implemented anyway, that seems fair.
But it doesn't sound like any of that global open society stuff is going to happen, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Now, he apparently also gets credit for helping Eastern Europe break free of the Soviet Union, which is a pretty big deal.
So the things that we know for sure is he's done some things that he imagines are good for the world.
So if you're thinking he's evil, that's just Soros Derangement Syndrome.
If you think he has some ideas that are impractical, In other words, there are systems that wouldn't work.
I would say you can make a good argument about that.
He has said, for example, that capitalism has eaten democracy, basically.
That you can't have democracy and capitalism without them getting out of balance.
I would say that's true.
Why do we say that's true?
Because of Soros.
Soros is his own argument.
Soros will tell you that he's a big capitalist and he made billions and billions of dollars and so his influence is bigger than it should be.
He is his own argument.
His own argument is that people like Soros should not have so much power.
Think about it. That's actually his argument.
Now here's my problem with the Soros And people are asking me to talk to Lee Stranahan, and I have on Twitter anyway.
And Lee sent me a video to explain it, and I have the same complaint, which is if you can't describe briefly in the length of a tweet what the problem is, you don't know what the problem is.
It's sort of a general rule about sorting BS from reality.
If somebody can't succinctly describe the problem, they don't know what it is.
And if you ask somebody what's the problem with Soros, they'll either send you to a video that's edited to be misleading, the one about when he was 14 and in the Nazi era.
So they'll show you either fake news, the edited video, or they'll say he wants to have one government, which is a gross oversimplification of what he's saying, And it's not practical.
Nobody's really working on that.
So it's not like that's going to happen.
It's completely irrelevant.
They'll say he's funding a lot of Democratic groups.
So? So what?
People are funding Republicans too.
There are billionaires funding lots of people.
That's what makes it a fair fight, which is fine with me.
So, ask Alex Jones.
It doesn't matter who I ask.
They're not going to be able to explain it.
And if they can't explain it, it doesn't matter.
In other words, it's more derangement syndrome than it is fact.
All right, that's enough on that. I'll just summarize and say that my current opinion of Soros is that he's well-intentioned, He has some ideas that you don't like, but are also so impractical that you don't have to worry about them.
And he funds a lot of lefty groups because he thinks they have at least good social ambitions, such as Black Lives Matter, etc.
You can disagree with him.
It's not the biggest problem in the world.
All right. And here's the bigger issue.
When people on the right obsess over Soros, you just throw away all your credibility.
Because the people on the left just see it as crazy.
And there's nothing coming from it.
There's no benefit coming from it.
You can complain all day and tweet all day about Soros, but it doesn't change anything.
You know, he's not breaking the law.
He's got an opinion and you don't like it.
So you ruin your own credibility when you obsess about Soros.
That's my bottom line then.
He creates fake grassroots movements.
I think it would be more fair to say that he funds all kinds of groups, and advocacy groups are mostly fake movements.
So, I mean, that's sort of the fabric of politics, is that a lot of these movements are fake, and he funds some of them.
Some of them are on the left.
There must be some on the right.
Let's talk about this NPC thing.
I'm having trouble, I think you all know what I mean, the non-player character thing, in which there are some memes going around, might have started in 4chan or something, and the idea that the people on the left are like these characters in video games that can only say a few different sentences.
And I gotta say, it is really brutally effective persuasion because it reduces people on the left to NPCs.
You know, people who can only say one thing regardless of the situation.
And whether or not that's a fair characterization of one side, I think you could argue that.
My view of the world is that the world is full of NPCs.
And that they're not limited to one political side.
But it is really funny And it's very effective because it sets people up to fall into the trap.
So once you've labeled the other side as non-player characters, meaning that they only say predictable things like Orange Man Bad, which is hilarious every time I read it, every time they do say the things which are typically the things they say, you can say, well, there you are at PC again.
So it's brutally effective.
But here's the thing. Apparently people are being banned from social media for pushing this meme.
It just doesn't seem like it's that bad.
It seems like it's just funny.
So yeah, Twitter suspended NPC Dale, the character who was coming into my Twitter feed and under the umbrella of parody.
Was pretending to be a leftist, insulting me, but was doing it hilariously.
So I don't exactly know why he would have been banned, because it was satire.
And it was so funny that even I retweeted it and said you should follow it, because it was kind of hilarious.
But he must maybe cross some line I don't know about.
Persuasion is being banned for effectiveness, you called it.
Yeah. As persuasion gets better and better, It's going to have to become illegal.
And there's no way around that.
persuasion will have to become illegal when it reaches a point of effectiveness that we can't ignore anymore.
Dehumanizing is the reasons.
So the NPC thing is dehumanizing.
Well... I guess...
Yeah, I mean, technically and practically speaking, the NPC meme is dehumanizing.
But it's dehumanizing in a silly way.
It's not dehumanizing in a dangerous way, in my opinion.
To me it seems dehumanizing in sort of a rhetorical, funny, persuasive way that I wouldn't worry about.
But, I don't make the rules.
Wouldn't it take persuasion to make persuasion illegal?
It might, but there will be plenty of it.
Have you noticed that the calling of Trump supporters and Trump, a Nazi, has largely fallen off?
No.
Have you noticed that?
You just don't see it anymore.
And I continue to use my technique of when anybody comes after me personally, without, you know, if somebody criticizes my opinion, I'll usually engage with them.
But if they go after me and say, well, you're such an idiot, which is a typical tweet that I get, you're such a jerk, you're an idiot, you're an asshole.
Then I label them as Nazis for their personal politics, being against the people and not the idea, and then I block them.
The quality of my web traffic has gone way up.
Like it used to be, it felt like every third tweet was from somebody calling me some kind of bad name.
But since I started aggressively labeling them as Nazi, just one sentence, I say, I block Nazis, goodbye, and then I block them.
So I make sure that they see the message before I block them.
And it's been wonderfully successful.
It's completely changed my experience.
Because every time I get insulted, I have fun now.
Because I think about what happens when they see my response when they've insulted me and I've labeled them a Nazi in public and then blocked them so they can't respond.
It makes me happy every time and I never hear from them again.
And because, you know, if you have a hundred followers, it's going to be three of them that are problems.
So it doesn't take that long to weed out the small group who are creating all the problems.
Yeah, so there's a little bit of a Let's talk about the fact that the president said he's a nationalist.
So he says he's a nationalist, which causes his critics to say, oh, a nationalist.
You mean white nationalist.
And I'm thinking, if that's the best the left has, they are so out of ammo because...
Being a nationalist is pretty much the job description of the president, right?
Would you elect a president who said, you know, I like America, but I don't love it.
Yeah, I'm kind of pro-Estonia.
You know, America's okay.
I'm running for president, and America's just okay, but I like Venezuela too.
I'm not sure that's the president you want.
I think the president you want is the one who puts the U.S. first, who would be called a nationalist.
So the fact that that is even a talking point, the fact that the left is using that as their best attack this week, it was their best attack.
The best thing they had this week against the president is that he used an accurate word to describe the job description of a president.
That was it. Now, many of you, I think by now, have seen my tweet, which has been terribly popular.
And I'll read it to you in case you missed it, because it's so darn good.
And it goes like this.
As I look for my own tweet, it goes like this.
The Republican slogan is Jobs, Not Mobs.
The Democrat slogan goes like this.
There really aren't that many murderers in the caravan, if you consider how many people there are.
And we're up to 5,400 retweets, which is a lot for me.
And the reason that something like this gets retweeted a lot is not just because I worded it funny, but because it feels right.
You know, people accept the first part that the Republican slogan is jobs, not mobs.
So that part's true. The second part that the Democrat slogan is, there really aren't that many murderers in the caravan if you consider how many people there are.
Sort of strikes people as the best message that's coming out of the Democrats right now.
And now obviously I'm wording it in a funny way, but that is actually the message.
The message is there aren't that many murderers in the group.
And I'm not saying that they're wrong.
I think it actually is true.
I saw some statistics yesterday that the immigrant class as a whole is actually lower crime than non-immigrants.
Although I do wonder if they included all immigrants versus immigrants coming across the southern border.
So I don't know if they make any distinction there.
But I'm starting to think that the Democrats have completely blown through their powder right before the midterms.
Have you ever seen a midterm setup That was more perfect for one side.
I mean, the Republicans just have to giggle themselves to bed every night this week because there is just...
Oh, and then in the news, Avenatti lost his court case and he got kicked out of his office and something happened to him.
And he owes $5 million or more.
So it's just non-stop good news now for the president.
It's just one thing after another.
The illegal immigrants that are victims of crime don't report it.
That's a good point. If you assume that every population commits more crime against its own people than others, you would have to say, for example, black-on-black crime The reason there's so much of it is that obviously you commit crimes against whoever's around.
And if people are segregated by populations, mostly by choice, you're going to be committing crimes against your own population.
So if the immigrants largely stick together, you would expect that they would be committing more crimes against each other than they would be committing crimes against the rest of the population.
And as somebody said, an illegal immigrant who is the victim of a crime, let's say a sexual abuse, is not going to report it.
They don't want to get into the legal system.
So, given that, wouldn't it be literally impossible to know what the crime rate is for illegal immigrants versus the rest of the population?
You might be able to know for legal immigrants, but if you're measuring only legal immigrants, you're getting people from all over the world.
And, no surprise, they're law-abiding and they want to be in the United States.
If you were to look at only the people who came across the southern border illegally, And you only looked at the crimes that they committed against people outside of their own community, because those are the ones people report.
The ones inside the illegal immigrant community probably don't get reported.
You get a totally misleading view of what the situation is.
Now, just to be clear, I'm just talking about the facts of it here.
I'm not giving you an opinion.
I am a moderate on immigration.
We need to do a better job of immigration.
But I'm not a hard ass about the nice people who come across and just want a better life.
My empathy is pretty high for the immigrant class.
But we certainly need a better system and I don't have any good ideas.
Alright. My mom is labeled National Realist.
Is that what she labeled me or labeled you?
Oh yeah, so Megyn Kelly made a comment that's getting her a lot of negative attention.
I think there's a little too much schadenfreude there about Megyn Kelly.
It makes me sad to watch people be so happy about bad news for Megyn Kelly because I just think she's always been good at her job and I don't think she deserves what she's getting.
I don't want to pile on Megyn Kelly.
I'll just say that people are piling on her and it doesn't look good to me.
Yeah, I think she's likable and she has good intentions.
The fact that she came hard at President Trump, it didn't work out for her.
but I can't feel good about that.
All right, she was, yeah.
If you break down what Megyn Kelly said, and I'm not even gonna repeat it, 'cause just even talking about it is sort of standing on the third rail.
But she said something that was taken out of context to make her look bad.
And that's all you need to know.
It was just fake news.
Taken out of context news.
It wasn't fake. It was just taken out of context, which turns it fake.
Nikki Haley said Venezuela and Cuba are behind the immigrant invasion.
So I've heard that.
So I'm hearing the rumors that there are people behind it.
It's like China's behind it and Venezuela's behind it and Cuba's behind it.
I don't know about that.
I'm going to say that I'm highly skeptical of that.
Could be. I'm not ruling it out.
But I'm going to be highly skeptical that there are these other countries that are behind it.
I'll wait for the government to say it.
And I'm not sure Nikki Haley's speaking authoritatively on that, or if she just knows that they're contributing in some small way.
We don't know. I'll wait for more information on that.
So I don't have an opinion yet.
All right.
Just looking at your comments.
uh Read the conservative treehouse about what?
About the Venezuela thing.
Pence said Venezuela too.
That would be interesting. Why would Venezuela try to do that?
It feels like a weird play.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but all it does is strengthen President Trump.
You know, have they not noticed that yet?
Have they not noticed that Trump is getting stronger?
The only thing I can think of is that the entire idea of this is to get some violence going.
They must want the United States to at least, you know, one person with a gun to start shooting people at the border.
They must be looking for violence, otherwise none of this makes sense.
So apparently there have been bombs left at Soros' house this week, bombs left at Bill and Hillary Clinton's house, and somebody's saying something here about CNN, but I haven't seen any reports about that.
How much of the country do you think realizes that much of the media is a propaganda arm?
All of them. I think the whole country gets that now.
Talk about the bombs.
So somebody's saying CNN got a bomb.
Yeah, I don't know if all these bombs that are going to people...
There was an Obama bomb threat, too?
Hmm. Yeah, that's going to...
Assuming that's all true, that's going to stoke the claims that the right is where all the violence is coming from.
So... Pence said that Venezuela was funding the organization.
How does Venezuela fund anything?
How does Venezuela have a penny?
I don't know. There's something about the Venezuela story that's not quite connecting for me.
So I'm going to say that even though our government is pointing at Venezuela, I don't know how important that is.
Latest... Huh.
So all kinds of bombs are being mailed to people.
Well, I'll look into that, but I don't know.
That's just a, looks like a law enforcement issue.
I'm not sure I have anything to say about that.
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