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Nov. 23, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
50:25
Episode 313 Scott Adams: Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Clinton, China
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Hey everybody!
I know you're all out shopping or sleeping off your Thanksgiving meal.
But you know, some things you just have to do every day.
And Coffee with Scott Adams is on the top of the list.
And here we are.
I think it's almost time to grab your mug, your cup, your container, your glass, your stein, your chalice.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, that's some good stuff.
All right. I would like to begin by Talking about some of the news is funnier than some of the other news.
Number one, there's allegedly some kind of a new recording of Prince Salman, Bin Salman, and on it he is alleged to say, we don't have a confirmation here, but the allegation is that he's telling his underlings to, quote, silence Cheshokhi and do it soon.
Now, do you remember what my prediction was about Bin Salman's specific guilt in the murder?
Remember, I'll give it to you again and I'll contrast two views of the world and see which one of these two views you think sounds right.
View number one, that just like a TV movie, The Crown Prince held a meeting with his underlings and he said, look, I've got this whole caper planned.
What you're going to do is you're going to meet Khashoggi who could trick him to go into the embassy.
You're going to bring a bone saw.
You're going to kill him in the embassy.
I've got a guy who's really good with a bone saw.
He'll be on the team. You're going to meet.
I've got the schedule. Here's some plane tickets I bought you.
So go kill him in the embassy because that feels like a good plan.
That's one view of the world.
Here's another view of the world in which let's say more of a corporate view of the world.
The first one was what I would call more of an Ocean's Eleven you know sort of a movie plot.
The other one would be more like Normal life.
Here's normal life.
Here's the crown prince reading his news on his phone.
Man, that cheshogi guy just keeps saying stuff we don't like.
Ah, man. Gotta do something about this guy.
Hey, hey guys.
You know this cheshogi guy?
You gotta figure out how to shut this guy up.
Do something to shut this guy up.
Done. Now, if you're an underling and you get the order to, quote, silence somebody, what's the first way you try to do it?
Well, the first way you try to do it isn't really the bone saw.
The first way might be to bribe him.
Perhaps try to coerce him, not in good ways, but in pretty evil ways.
Maybe you try to get him to come to the country.
Maybe you try to embrace him.
Maybe you try to bring him in, and once he's in Saudi Arabia, they can control him.
But if those things don't work, do you really want to go back to your boss and say, I don't know how to silence him?
I don't think so.
I think that you figure out what you can do to make this work.
So to me, this whole murder in the embassy has the smell of desperation about it.
Meaning it's something you do is sort of a Hail Mary pass, last resort.
You know, you're going to die if you don't do this.
Because that's probably exactly what the perpetrators thought.
They probably thought, if we don't silence this guy, we're going to get killed.
And they're probably right about that.
So, it sounds to me like an underling plan.
Not really a plan that the top guy comes up with.
The top guy just says, take care of this problem.
The underlings figure out how to do it without getting executed.
They failed. Looks like they're all going to get executed.
But, could it be true?
Could it be true simultaneously?
That Prince Salman ordered the killing, but also true at the same time that he didn't know about the killing, you know, when it was going to happen or that it would happen in the embassy?
Probably. To me, the most likely explanation of events is that he had a general order out to silence him, and it didn't matter how it happened.
You just say, hey, silence them.
And the underlings, knowing that they would be executed if they didn't silence them, did what they could.
And it turns out the only plan they had was to kill them.
They didn't have a backup plan, or at least one that they liked.
So I'm not mind reading.
What I'm doing is I'm presenting two alternate explanations.
They're both exaggerated, of course.
But one is sort of the movie version where the top guy is doing the planning and he's in the room and he's all part of the operation.
And the other one is the corporal version where somebody says, go take care of that and I don't need to know the details.
Now that doesn't make him innocent.
Not really. But it does give him deniability.
And so it is perfectly believable in my view.
I'm not reading his mind.
I'm just saying what is likely based on what we're looking at and what you know about the world.
It is likely that when Prince Salman says, I did not give the order to kill him in that embassy, I would say that's more likely true than not.
But he did give the order to silence him.
I think that seems likely enough.
Alright. You remember that I was saying that I drew a diagram on my whiteboard in a prior periscope.
And I said that, given how everything is connected in the Middle East, that this could be an opening, meaning that Saudi Arabia might be getting kind of flexible right now in ways that has never been flexible before.
Because they sort of need to prove themselves as a good ally.
They need to try a little harder to make sure that they're okay with the United States, etc.
And sure enough, we saw the announcement that That the warring parties in Yemen are going to have peace talks, I think, for the first time, or at least the first time at this level, in Switzerland, I think. And that's going to happen in the next month.
Now, why that's important is that Yemen is at war, Saudi Arabia is backing the government.
Iran is backing the rebels.
And until Yemen gets fixed, you can't really fix much else.
Because you need Saudi Arabia and Iran to at least not be at each other's throats to get anything done.
And so, the first domino, as I call it, is Yemen.
Meaning that If we can get a good result in Yemen, and it looks like both sides are exhausted by the fight, so maybe we have a chance there.
If we can get Yemen to go, then we've got a little goodwill, a little bit of inertia, and maybe you can get some other stuff done.
Maybe Hamas, maybe some other stuff.
Maybe Syria. I've said this before, that the world can't tell the difference between good news and bad news.
We really can't. Because we're so bad at predicting the future that a good event and a bad event, we just can't tell the difference.
We don't know if that's the thing that happens right before the gigantic good thing, or if it's the thing that happens right before the bad thing.
We can't tell the difference.
I have speculated that the killing of Shishoki, as morally reprehensible as it is, Might have inadvertently become the straw, you know, the final straw that allowed the progress to happen.
Now, I'm not going to predict it, because predicting that everything goes well in the Middle East, sort of, you know, that's a bad prediction, you know, because the odds are always against that.
But we've never had a better chance.
That's what's different.
So if you see your leaders forego what would be maybe the best chance ever, that would be a real problem, which is different from saying that ultimately there will be a success.
Glenn Greenwald, I don't know how to pronounce it, writes for The Intercept, famous journalist, had a great article today that I tweeted around, Now, keep in mind that Greenwald is no fan of the president,
but he is one of the few journalists who is willing to say good things about anybody if they do good things, and he's willing to say bad things about anybody if they do bad things.
So in terms of willingness to be at least attempting to be objective, I would say he would be near the top of your list.
I'm not a fan of him personally.
He's kind of a dick.
I've had a little interaction with him on Twitter.
I can't say I'm a fan of him personally.
But his writing is really good.
And so what he talked about was how Trump is the first president who is willing to be honest.
So remember, he's not a fan of the president, and I'm understating that.
He doesn't like the president at all.
But he says, okay, in this case, it's the first time we've had an honest president who acknowledges that the United States has been friendly to brutal killers forever.
That that's actually just our normal existing policy that we've had forever, and it's unlikely to change.
But it's the first time anybody ever was honest about it.
And it's a really well-written article, and he backs it up with lots of examples of backing brutal people in the past.
So that part's hilarious.
And it feels like there's starting to be a turn.
If you see something that looks like progress in Yemen...
Or even if they start talking about it like there might be progress, this whole Cheshogi thing is gonna start taking on a different look.
Because the first thing that's gonna happen is the novelty is gonna wear off.
That's sort of already happened.
So that the spectacular nature of it The fact that you can imagine it so vividly and it's so non-standard what happened in the embassy, you can't get it out of your mind.
So it takes on this great importance just because it's unique and shocking.
But if you look at it in terms of the arc of history, totally normal.
Historically, even though it's an unusual way to kill somebody, historically, totally normal.
Not normal in a good way, but normal in terms of predictably similar.
So I think we will get over our outrage as we realize that it's completely consistent with history.
I think we'll get...
We'll get over the president's reaction to it because, like Glenn Greenwald says, and he's very influential.
A lot of people will see his article and it's going to be...
What the hell?
They'll see his article and they'll certainly...
I better make sure I don't have something coming up here.
Hold on a second. Nope.
Nothing on my helmet. But there's another piece of great news, just hilariously great news, that I'm going to say for a moment.
Let's talk about China.
So the reporting, which I'm not sure is reliable at this point, is that the US and China are going to get serious about trade talks at the G20. President Xi will be there and President Trump will be there.
And there's some thought that there's been enough groundwork That there might be a little bit of progress, maybe, in the G20. Again, more good news that would make the president's decisions look smart.
Not just smart, but smarter than all of his critics.
But I'm getting to the good part.
Are you ready? Do you want to hear the funniest thing you've ever heard in your life?
Well, I might be overselling this a little bit.
But Hillary Clinton...
She was just at an event, and she did an interview with the Guardian newspaper.
And this is what Hillary Clinton said about immigration in Europe.
So she's talking about European immigration, and she says, talking about Germany and Angela Merkel, And she said they need to send out a stronger message that they won't always be able to provide refuge and support.
This is Hillary Clinton, quote, I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration.
Pause. I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame, Clinton said, referring to the rise of populists like Trump and movements like Brexit.
Yes, got that right.
If Europe doesn't properly deal with the migration issue, quote, it will continue to roil the body politic.
So she went on a little bit, but Hillary Clinton just gave a full-throated endorsement of President Trump's racist policy about immigration.
Now, I'm, of course, taking her words for more than she actually said, but it's hard to hear them any other way.
Because when you see Hillary Clinton saying, hey, you European countries, you better slow down migration or immigration, because it's going to turn into nationalism and Trump and everything else.
It looks like she just agreed with everything Trump has been saying on the very thing that she spent the last three years criticizing him for.
Now, I'm not talking about the details.
I'm not saying she's backing a wall.
But I'm saying that she has now completely endorsed, publicly and clearly, with no ambiguity whatsoever, tightening of immigration.
What is that?
Racist. Isn't it?
Isn't it racist, according to Hillary Clinton, to act aggressively to curb immigration of people who are just trying to have a better life and they're going to countries that might allow that to happen?
So Hillary Clinton just became a Trump supporter.
She's not going to say it, but it just happened.
Here's another question for you.
Do you remember for the past three years, every time you checked a headline in CNN, it said that President Trump was a racist?
Have you seen that in a week?
Kind of went away for a week, didn't it?
Here's why. Well, let me make sure that's true.
I'll go to the CNN's homepage and see if there are any headlines about Trump is a racist.
Nope, nope, nope.
Nope, nope, nope. Nope, nope, nope.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Nothing about that.
Trade war. Blah, blah, blah.
Nope. The only thing on the entire first page of CNN that looks like you could define it as racism, and I'm not making this up.
What I'm going to say next, I swear to God, I'm not making up.
I'm looking at the entire CNN homepage with all the different headlines.
There's only one of them that speaks to racism.
And the title is, Clinton, Europe must curb migration to halt nationalism.
In other words...
Clinton is telling people to halt immigration.
It's the only reference to racist behavior is about Hillary Clinton on the front page of CNN. I'm not making that up.
I'm looking at it right now.
Of course, I'm exaggerating when I say that her talk about controlling immigration is racist.
I'm making fun of the fact that that's what people have been saying about Trump for the past three years, and he has now been spectacularly proven right.
How much more right can you be than your biggest enemy adopts your opinion?
Is that as right as you can be?
Has anybody ever been more right?
I don't think so. Now, what has changed in the past week that erased Trump is a racist from the headlines?
Several things. One is CNN and the like, they overplayed their hand by saying, President Trump, why is it he's only making fun of, he's only criticizing black women?
Remember that? A few weeks ago they were saying, why is he keep criticizing black women?
And then, the very next week, he praised Stacey Abrams, he praised Ron Gillums, without reservation.
He didn't give any negatives.
He just praised them both as being sort of awesome individuals who did a good job.
They lost, but they did a good job.
And then he also praised Nancy Pelosi, who, if you had not noticed, is a woman.
And again, he was not doing it sarcastically.
He was doing it quite legitimately, actually complimenting her effectiveness, saying he could work with her.
Gillum is a man, somebody asked.
But the point is that he was accused of saying things against black people and women and The very next week, all of his criticisms were against white males and suddenly the frame didn't hold.
So now we have the whole narrative about why does he only go after certain kinds of people clearly proven not to be the case.
We also saw last week, I think it was, Trump and his whole family giving a full-throated endorsement to prison reform, which is very popular in the black community, and you even saw Van Jones praising the president on that narrow point.
And then you see Hillary Clinton backing Trump's immigration policy, essentially.
So they're going to have to find some new things to complain about.
Now, at the same time, you may have seen the story that North and South Korea, they dismantled or blew up some important guard posts on the demilitarized zone.
And you saw videos of North and South Korean military smiling and shaking hands.
Now, you could say, okay, that's not denuclearization.
And you're right. But if I've taught you nothing, the direction of things matters more than where you are.
Where we are is we don't have a denuclearization deal.
The direction of things is all good.
So psychologically, you should always put greater weight on the direction of things.
That's how people think.
It predicts the future better than where you are.
And So things are going well in North Korea.
Compared to any historical comparison, things are going well and they're trending, trending positive.
I would say that the peace talks in Yemen are a concrete example.
We don't know if they'll work out.
Probably the first time you have a peace talk, it doesn't work out.
You have to work at it a little bit.
But it seems to me like we might be on the border of something good in the Middle East.
And you will see that the President will get credit for helping to tamp down ISIS. You'll see the president get credit for maintaining good relationships even though there's a good reason not to, the Khashoggi affair.
You might see him get credit for being in the background pushing the Yemen thing, maybe because of Khashoggi.
That may have been the impetus to make this possible.
We might not ever know that.
We see the economy doing well.
By the way, let me talk about the stock market for a minute, because one of the things I often say is that when regular journalists talk about the stock market or the economy, they're usually a little underqualified.
Now, they're more qualified than the viewers.
Most people who cover the news know a lot more about the economy than the people who are watching the news.
But there's still, it seems to me there's a lot of context that gets left out.
So here's the thing. The stock market has taken a dump in the last few weeks.
What should you make of that?
Does that mean the economy is bad or turning bad?
And let me give you some context.
Number one, the thing you should know about economics, there is one indicator that rules all the other indicators.
If you were going to look at all the complicated economic indicators, and you were going to try to find what's the one thing that is the most predictive, it's not exactly the stock market, because stock markets sort of go up and down.
They're frothy. The biggest indicator is the rate of employment.
If you can move people from unemployed to employed, What that does to the economy is guaranteed to be good.
I mean, almost nothing else can happen that will turn that into a bad situation.
So as long as you have strong employment, you can look at the stock market going up and down and not care too much because it will probably trend higher over time.
The other thing you need to know Is that the healthiest thing for stock markets is that they pull back 5 or 10% every now and then.
Because stock markets tend to get overbought, and that can be especially a problem for the tech stocks.
The big tech stocks, they can either go way up or way down.
It's typical, historically, for the tech stocks to get ahead of the market and then they pull back.
But when they pull back, there's such a big percentage of the market, it takes the rest of the market with them.
Especially the indexes.
The first thing you need to know is that employment is the thing you should care about.
As long as that's good, everything else is going to work out.
It'll be spotty, but it's definitely going to trend in the right direction.
Next thing you need to know is that this kind of pullback is just completely routine.
And indeed, it's healthier if you have it Than if you didn't.
The worst case scenario is that the stock market just keeps going up.
You don't want to live in that world.
Because you're coming for a big disappointment.
Because then it's going to drop 30% and that's going to be disruptive.
5-10% pullback.
Very healthy. Expected.
Guaranteed. Healthy.
Good for the world. And that's how you should see it.
And the last thing you should know is that it is completely typical for markets to go lower before the end of the year.
Because a lot of people are selling stocks they made profits on.
And there's uncertainty toward the end of the year.
People are taking vacations.
They don't want to be watching their portfolio.
So a lot of the professional money managers will sell their positions just so they can go on vacation.
They don't have to watch them in case they need to do any quick selling.
So what you should be surprised at is when the stock market doesn't go down at the end of the year.
The most normal situation is that it goes down at the end of the year, just like we're seeing.
Now, can I support that theory?
How much do I believe what I just said?
Well, I believe it enough so that the only stock I was looking to sell, I sold a few weeks ago.
And the reason that I sold it a few weeks ago had nothing to do with the individual stock.
I had made that decision separately.
The timing of it was because I didn't want to get caught in the end of the year Downpull.
If I was going to sell it anyway, I didn't want to sell it in the last six weeks of the year because the odds of the market going down in the last six weeks of the year are really high.
Somebody just said me too.
So among people who actually understand markets and follow economics, etc., many of us probably trimmed our stock-owning positions around October.
End of October. That would be a good play.
You don't want to wait until mid-November because other people are catching up to the idea by then.
And by the way, there's a similar impact before summer.
It's very common for stocks to sort of fall down a little bit in the summer.
Not every time, but it's common.
So when you see the media report on the stock market, That's the context.
That what you're seeing is completely normal and it doesn't matter that much compared to employment.
If you get employment right, things work out.
All right.
Yeah, my Apple stock is taking a dump at the moment, but it's hard for me to imagine that there's a serious competitor to Apple.
So I'm going to hold on to that.
Do not take stock advice from me.
That's not stock advice.
Nothing you heard should be construed as stock advice or financial advice.
Please. Facebook made an interesting announcement just before Thanksgiving, which is what you do when you don't want anybody to see your announcement.
If you don't want somebody to see your announcement, you do it right before the weekend or right before a holiday.
And Facebook's announcement was that it turns out they were aware that they hired a company to embarrass George Soros, because apparently George Soros had funded some individuals who were part of organizations that started a dump of Facebook campaign.
So some Soros-funded activists were active against Facebook, and Facebook hired some people to essentially out them, to explain how Soros was connected to all this.
So you've been watching me for the last month or so, asking people to explain to me why Soros is so evil.
Because I keep hearing it, but nobody's giving me examples that they could back up where I could see it too.
For some reason it was invisible to me and I was puzzled by that.
Why so many people would be so sure at the same time that That I couldn't tell.
I was looking at the same news, I thought.
So a lot of people tried to inform me and they gave me lots of information that they thought meant something that I didn't.
So, for example, people said, it means something that when he was 14 he did something in Germany.
And I said, no, that doesn't mean anything to me.
Personally, that means nothing.
People say he made his money by speculating and tried to crash countries and stuff, to which I said, I get that.
I don't like that. But it has nothing to do with the complaint.
You're not really complaining about that.
You're complaining about him using his money for political reasons that you don't like.
So let's talk about that.
And the best I could come up with The best explanation anybody came up with in that process was that Soros funds groups that push for identity politics.
In other words, he funds things which, if they were successful, would make the world a worse place, even though he thinks it would make the world a better place, presumably.
And then I see this Facebook example And here's where I feel like some kind of a switch flipped in my head between being neutral and being anti-Soros.
And it was that there was this alleged grassroots movement to get people to quit Facebook, but the activists behind the grassroots movement were not grassroots.
They were paid by Soros.
Now, in that scenario, that's pretty disruptive, meaning that it's something that if anybody else did it, any other American, if anybody else paid somebody to make a fake organization to take down a major American company, it wouldn't matter who it was.
I would say that process is not good for the system.
I am now persuaded.
So those of you who are trying to persuade me that Soros is evil, I am now on your side.
It doesn't mean that in his internal thoughts he's evil.
The evidence suggests that's not the case.
Meaning that I don't see evidence that Soros is trying to make the world a worse place, in his mind.
And that his view of what it takes to be a good world It's not that different than other people.
So my objection is only that he's using his money to corrupt systems that are our systems.
If he was corrupting somebody else's system, I would care less.
But if he's corrupting the American system Of democracy and, you know, basically, let's say, if he's corrupting the operating system for the American experience, and he's doing it secretly, it would be very different if he did it publicly.
If Soros said, hey, I gave money to these guys who are trying to take down Facebook, and the reason I'm doing it is X, I would say, ah, free speech.
Okay, free speech is good.
I'm okay with free speech, and I'm okay with...
People doing what they need to do as long as they are upfront about it.
But the fact that he's funding people and it's hard for us to know who's getting funded and how that's affecting people, that is unacceptable.
So yes, I think that Soros could be seen as an enemy of the United States in the same way that Tom Steyer would be an enemy of the United States.
So if I wanted to make Sort of an equivalent class of badness.
I would say that Tom Steyer, similarly bad.
Now the two people don't have anything in common, right?
They're very different, very different objectives, and what they want is very different.
So I'm not saying they're the same people.
I'm saying that if you're going to rank I'd say Tom Steyer would be sort of in the same category.
Somebody mentioned the Koch brothers.
I'm not positive about this, but my understanding is that the total amount of money the Koch brothers have ever put into politics is actually small compared to Soros.
Maybe somebody could fact check me on that.
Is it true that the amount the Koch brothers has done, as big as it is, It's small compared to what Soros has done.
Although Soros has also spread his money to other countries, so I don't know how you do the apples and oranges there.
So I don't know enough about the Koch brothers to have an opinion about it.
Somebody says, at least Tom Steyer is open about it.
Yeah. So I'm not saying that they're the same guy doing the same thing.
I'm just saying, if you were going to say...
What's the level of badness to it?
It's sort of a Tom Steyer level of evil.
Just my personal opinion.
I'm not saying that they're violating the law.
As far as I know, none of them are violating the law.
But in terms of trying to ruin the system, in terms of being actors which are unproductive in a very high level, Soros, Tom Steyers, pretty similar.
All right. Yet Zuckerberg supports Soros, somebody said.
Well, I'll bet he doesn't support him so much at the moment.
What would Soros' goal be?
Okay.
You know, that's a good question.
So somebody says, what is George Soros' objective?
And I've been trying to figure that out too.
And I will caution you that we cannot read his mind.
So it may be unknowable what Soros is thinking.
But I'll give you what I would call the obvious explanation, which doesn't have to be the only explanation.
The obvious explanation is that he made his money, In very bad ways.
And he knows it.
Meaning that even to Soros, his money is dirty.
And that he has too much of it.
And that maybe he can buy back a little bit of moral comfort before he dies.
Maybe he can put some good back into the world.
Because he may have some guilt.
Yeah, so there could be a guilt motive.
There could be a legacy motive, especially important to his children.
His children and their children.
So if the Soros offspring want to live in a world in which their name means something, it could be that he's trying to do something good as he sees it.
Now, my understanding is that Soros got, and somebody needs to fact check me on this, that he got activated during the Bush administration and the Iraq war.
And that when Soros saw the United States go to war against Iraq, In Afghanistan that what he felt was it looked like Nazi activity.
In other words, he thought that Bush, I'm not even sure which Bush, I think Bush Jr., was acting like a Nazi by attacking other countries, killing lots of people for reasons that were not good enough, according to Soros and according to probably most Americans at this point.
And so, It looks like Soros has just decided that Republicans are basically Nazis.
So the weird thing about it is that while people are blaming Soros for sort of being a Nazi when he was 14, which is not technically true, he seems to be primarily motivated by fighting against Nazis.
Now that's not wrong, is it?
But the problem is, if you happen to be an American, you're part of a system he's attacking.
The reason he was attacking it is because he thinks it's run by Nazis.
Republicans equals Nazis in the Soros formulation.
Now, if you're looking at George Bush Jr.
attacking Iraq, and you say, hey, that's acting like a Nazi, it's not that far off.
It's not that far off.
I mean, we have the benefit of hindsight, right?
At the time, people thought it was maybe necessary for whatever reasons.
In hindsight, it's some pretty evil stuff.
It's certainly not a proud time in American history that we destroyed Iraq and killed however many people who were largely minding their own business.
So, somebody says, Bush was a Nazi?
I'm not saying he was a Nazi.
I'm saying that, according to Soros and lots of other observers, some of the things he did with the military We're too close to Nazi behavior to be comfortable with letting it go on.
So the weird part about Soros is that he seems to have legitimate sounding concerns about real evil that we would agree is evil.
But he also has so much money that he's funding lots of different things.
And some of those things have political objectives that you don't like and I don't like.
But they're all different. You know, is Black Lives Matter the same as some immigration group in Hungary?
I don't know. They don't seem to have that much in common.
So, it could be that when you put that much money out there, some of it's going to end up in the hands of bad people, and that's going to look like it's on Soros.
And it probably should be.
So... So that's my view of Soros.
I doubt that in his mind he's doing anything bad, but he's clearly messing with American politics in a way that gives him more power than the American public would like him to have.
And some of that power is apparently secret.
So his power is not only immense because of his money, but it's hidden.
Those are the two things that the system can't abide.
We can't have somebody with that much power and also it not be transparent.
It would be bad enough.
Somebody's asked me if I'm mind reading.
I don't know how many times I have to clarify the easy stuff, but I'm going to do it again for you.
I'm not saying I know what Soros is thinking.
I'm saying that based on the reporting and based on what he's putting his money into and the things he's actually said, that he saw the Bush administration as sort of Nazi-ish.
And it would be hard to imagine any other motive for funding these groups than that he thought it would be good for the world.
Because it doesn't seem like it could possibly be good for George Soros.
Do you think George Soros is funding these groups because it's good for George Soros?
I would say that's the weakest hypothesis.
Because he's 85, he doesn't need the money, he's trying to give away money.
He's not giving away 18 billion dollars because he thinks he'll make a profit on it.
So if anybody out there says, Soros is giving away 18 billion dollars so far, Because he thinks he can make a profit on it.
You do not understand how money works.
There's no chance that that's true.
There are a lot of racists on here today.
More than, it's, is it my imagination Or are there more racists on this feed than normal?
I think whenever you mention Soros, you get the anti-Semitic folks who have the secret...
By the way, here's a suggestion.
Why doesn't Twitter have a filter so they can filter out anybody who has a cartoon in their profile?
You know, somebody who's hiding their identity?
There should be two levels of profiles on social media.
Let's say Twitter. We'll just talk about Twitter.
There should be two types. One of those types One of those types would be a fake account, and you can follow anybody who's willing to let you follow them.
But I don't want to see comments from people who have hidden identities when I don't.
If I also had a hidden identity, that would be fair with me.
If I had a hidden identity, and my critics had a hidden identity, Game on.
We'll all just, you know, do our thing.
Somebody said, what about Naval?
Naval's a special case because he presents his real identity with no ambiguity.
It's just his icon is just not a picture of his face.
So I'm really talking not so much about the icon, but it's the icon, lack of picture, plus the lack of identification.
Yeah, there's no idea who they really are.
So if you really are a real person and your real identity is in your profile, it should be in the picture too, ideally, but that part is optional.
I think I should be able to block all the people with fake identities.
Who disagrees with me?
If I could block all the people whose identity I can't determine from their profile, for me, 85 to 90% of all the unpleasantness would go away.
And then it would be my option whether I wanted to see them or not.
Somebody says I disagree strongly.
Give me an argument for disagreeing.
Why can't I have the option of not listening to people who don't want to give me their identity?
Anonymity is right. No, people would keep their anonymity.
Anonymity would absolutely still be allowed, but I would have the option of not listening to it.
So you have the option of free speech, which I would never want to take from you.
But don't I also have the option of going into a quiet room and not listening to you?
You can't take that right away.
Why can't we both have our rights exactly the way they're spelled out in the Constitution?
I have a right of privacy.
I can go somewhere and not listen to you.
You have a right to say whatever you want.
I just don't have to listen to it.
Somebody says, I don't troll.
Why punish me? I wouldn't be punishing you.
I would just not be listening to you.
Why should your free speech be as powerful as someone who is willing to put their name behind it?
And why shouldn't I have the option of deciding whether I should listen to it or not?
Somebody says you do have the option.
I don't believe that's true.
You have the option of turning everybody off.
And you do have the option of individually turning them off.
I want to do them, you know, in one fell swoop.
So we do get people saying, yeah, I wouldn't...
I guess there would be some question about parity accounts.
I suppose I would treat parity accounts a little differently if they're labeled parity.
Have you noticed that the parity accounts, in order to stay on Twitter so they don't get booted out, typically in their profile they'll say, this is a parity account, and they'll say it as clearly as possible.
Because if it wasn't clear, I think they would get booted off the system.
So I think parody accounts could stay.
They're actually funny most of the time.
Somebody says, don't block me please.
Well, I'm not going to block people just for having a comic in their icon.
I would only block you if you were being a troll.
And you didn't show your identity.
So any negative opinion I get on Twitter from an anonymous profile is instant block now.
It doesn't even matter if I like their opinion.
I don't even care about the validity of the opinion.
I just choose not to listen to it.
I have enough opinions from people who are willing to, who would give me their identity.
All right.
It's 747, and this is when I usually stop, and so I'm going to.
You can get in trouble at work for your views.
Yes you can. Yes you can get in trouble at work for your views.
And that would be a perfectly good reason to have an anonymous account.
I absolutely support your right to be anonymous online.
I've been anonymous online in the past.
I've had anonymous accounts.
Maybe you've heard of it. That's another story.
So I'm completely in favor of anonymity.
but why don't I have the option of not listening to it?
You're scaring your followers.
Don't worry, I'm only going to get rid of trolls.
I'm not getting rid of people who have opinions.
And by the way, I don't block people for disagreeing with me.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
But I don't know if I've ever blocked anybody just because they disagreed.
That's not block-worthy.
I like the disagreement.
In fact, I had one this morning.
Somebody disagreed with a point of fact, which if they're right, I'm going to change my opinion on something.
And so I've asked for some clarification and a link.
So, disagreement's great.
I'm not going to block anybody who isn't literally just crawling for fun.
Yep, you can stay as anonymous as you like.
You're totally safe in my Twitter feed as long as you don't use it as a weapon.
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