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Aug. 4, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
45:46
Episode 618 Scott Adams: Let’s Talk About the Very Bad Day
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Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
So, everybody.
How about everybody come on in here and we'll talk about the very bad day.
Now, I was trying to decide whether I would even do a Periscope this morning because it's really not any kind of a morning to have a normal day.
But instead, I think...
We should lift a cup to the surviving families, to the victims, to the first responders, just so that they know we're thinking about them.
We're not celebrating.
We're not happy about anything today.
We're all just thinking about the victims and the families.
And let us silently enjoy a sip.
All right. So, it's hard to know where to begin on a day like this.
The first thing I'd like to say is, you'd like to think that all of the horribleness was the murderers themselves and the carnage and the wounding and the death.
And those of course are the big things in terms of changing lives.
But the horror of watching the politicians respond to this It's almost as bad.
There's a gigantic crime that's happening, if you can call it that, sort of a crime above the crime.
And the crime above the crime is pretending that we know why this is happening and whose fault it is.
If you're blaming any of these shootings on any one person, whether it's the president or the NRA head or whoever else, I don't think you're really on the right page.
I doubt that there's one simple answer to this.
I've predicted, in fact, that if you count what drones can do now and will do in the future, plus these shootings, I think the days of large public gatherings may be coming to an end.
There may be a time when that just doesn't happen anymore, because you don't want too many people in one place.
Somebody will try to kill them.
Now, this latest I'm probably conflating the two shooters now.
I mean, what are the odds we would have two of these in the same day?
There's something about the fact that there were two of them on the same day that's going to make this more than twice as bad.
I think you all get that, right?
This one probably will change something.
I don't know what, but it'll probably change something.
I don't know if the change will be access to weapons.
And I don't know if change will be political, but it feels like we can't just have another regular year after this.
I mean, something has to change.
I'll tell you, every time that something like this happens, you start wondering if the Chinese model isn't better.
Right? Because the Chinese don't have this problem.
One of the reasons is that they have no privacy whatsoever.
So we might see our privacy further eroded.
I find it difficult to believe that this shooter's actions were not discoverable on social media.
I find it impossible to believe that our, you know, Google and the big tech companies couldn't identify this before it happened.
Because you'd think they probably could if they were trying to do that.
Presumably they weren't trying.
So there's that.
So I'm not saying that, yeah, I think we're beyond the point where we should argue whether or not people will lose their privacy.
We're way beyond that, right?
At this point it's just what form that will take and how quickly, etc.
But all of our privacy is now gone.
I think that with the effectiveness of modern weapons, if you count the ARs and you count the drones, because you know there's going to be a drone mass attack in this country.
That's less than a year away, maybe.
At this point, it seems imminent.
But these technologies make it It's really easy for anybody to kill a bunch of people.
If you've got 300x million people running around the country and no services or not enough services for treating them for mental health, In other issues, there's no way to stop this.
As long as we have easy access to, you know, deadly weapons, and as long as we've got 300 million people in a free society, and as long as many of them are crazy, literally, and as long as those crazy people are not treated in a way that they can be controlled, there's just going to be more of this.
There doesn't seem to be any chance that there won't be more of this.
And I would expect there to be more of it at an increasing rate.
So when you have these two super bad ones on the same day, that of course tells the story of rate.
I've told you before that people are not moved by how bad things are or how good things are.
People are moved by the direction.
So if things are getting better, people are happy even if they're not better yet.
Or at least they're, you know, they're in a much better mood than if things were moving in the other direction.
Having two in a row within 24 hours is going to tell all of us irrational people that the rate of this has doubled.
Now, that's not true.
It's way up, probably.
It's, you know, unacceptable and it's very high.
But it probably didn't double exactly.
But it's going to feel like that.
Mentally, it's going to seem like the problem doubled because of having two in one day.
Just a coincidence. Now, of course, let's talk about the blame.
Here's one of the things wrong with how people think.
We look at complicated situations and we think we can blame one thing.
That never makes sense.
In order to get what happened...
In that past day, everything or at least all the big stuff had to be the way it was.
If you changed any of it, you'd get a different result.
If nobody could find any guns of any type, you probably would have had a different result.
If we had good mental health care, you probably would have a good, different result.
If our news coverage was different, you'd probably get a different result.
If our political divide was different, you'd probably get a different result.
And if the NRA didn't exist, you'd probably have a different result.
If the Congress was unified in either direction, you'd get a different result.
Maybe worse, maybe better, but different.
So almost everything that has happened All the big stuff sort of had to happen for us to get to this exact moment.
Yeah, and I'm seeing some controversy about video games.
Let me give you a strong opinion on that.
The dumb people, when they're talking about video games, are all going to make the same loser think error.
This is actually a good example of loser think.
When somebody goes on television and says, I think video games might be part of the problem.
Immediately people will come on and say, it's not video games, it's mental health, it's five other things, it's access to guns, etc.
Let me defend the idea that shooter video games are part of the problem.
The shooter video games are part of the reason people think of doing it in the first place.
The news coverage of other people doing it This is equally part of the reason that people think of doing this in the first place.
It's not a crime you would think of if it weren't top of your mind.
You would have to have probably a lot of exposure to the idea before it became your idea.
Probably it takes the news industry to talk about it too much, like I am, I suppose.
It takes video games, it takes movies, it takes TV shows.
Our entire entertainment industry is built around watching people shoot, mass groups of people, if you think about it.
Think about some of our biggest entertainment sources, movies.
Most popular movies are about heroes and sometimes bad guys killing large numbers of people, right?
TV shows, large number of people getting killed, or a small number, but somebody's getting killed all the time.
So movies and television.
Video games, largely about killing people.
And the news.
The news is largely about killing people when you're looking at news coverage of these items and wars and stuff like that.
So we are somewhat continuously bombarded with the suggestion that that's the thing.
It's not a suggestion that you should go do it, but if it's all you're thinking about, it's what you're going to do.
There's plenty of science that would support the notion that we're more likely to do...
This is so obvious.
Even saying that science is behind it seems redundant.
It's totally obvious, I hope to all of you, that the things people choose to do come from the list of things they can think of.
That's it, right? People don't say, well, I think I'll leave the house and do something I never thought of before.
I mean, sometimes they do, but it's pretty rare.
More likely, the things you usually do are the things on your list of things to do, things you think of.
So the fact that our culture makes people think of this all the time, including right now, you're all thinking of it right now, far more likely to happen.
Now, the news, of course, is saturated with these two stories.
And I think, you know, there was a point where I was in favor of maybe not covering them.
You know, under the theory that if nobody talked about it, fewer people would be reminded of it and think of it.
But I think the Internet would keep everything alive at this point.
You know, even the news coverage wouldn't make any difference.
People would still... Still find this content, they've played their video games, they've watched their movies, they hear about other ones in the past.
So I think there's nothing you can do.
And people are going to have to deal with the fact that there's nothing you can do.
Now I think that there needs to be a real conversation about...
Oh God, I just want to slap myself for saying that sentence.
Let me chastise myself before I chastise other people.
If you see anybody say the phrase, we need to have a real conversation about, instead of that sentence, what you should hear in your head is, I'm an idiot and I have no idea what anybody should do.
Just replace that sentence every time you hear, and you're going to hear a lot.
We need to have a national conversation about gun safety, national conversation about mental health, whatever it is.
If you hear somebody say, we have to have a national conversation, and they don't have any idea, just replace it in your head with, I'm an idiot, I don't know what to do, but I need to say something.
And you watched me literally just do that.
Like that sentence actually came out of my mouth because I felt like that was somehow helpful.
It's not helpful to say we should have a national conversation.
Doesn't help. Everybody knows it.
Just doesn't help.
So don't say that.
I'm going to make a prediction.
I think automatic weapons will become illegal.
I'm probably using the wrong term.
Let's say the assault rifle, the ARs.
I think this probably is the tipping point.
It might not happen right away.
So I'm not saying you're going to see a law in a year.
But I think that this will always be the day that politicians will be able to sort of leverage off of.
And I think that they're going to make ARs illegal.
Now, there may be some hybrid law where the ones that are already out there, maybe they're grandfathered in, just like the fully automatic weapons, maybe something like that.
But I do think the ARs will become illegal.
Now, if you're wondering, is that my opinion?
I would say I don't have an opinion yet because I feel a little under-informed on the topic.
So it's a prediction.
It's not an opinion. And I'm not saying it happens right away.
But from this point forward, there's no longer a question about whether it will happen.
So that's my prediction.
The question of whether ARs will be banned, I think, just got answered.
Now, and somebody says, did they use ARs?
I don't know. Does it matter?
Probably not. So anybody who says, but what about my logic?
And they'll say, but my logic says bad people can get guns anyway.
My logic says you can kill more people with a handgun.
True. My logic says, you know, you can do just as much damage with other weapons.
True. Won't make any difference.
We're way beyond the point where your logic, no matter how accurate, No matter how true, it makes any difference.
I think that this event is big enough that it changes things.
Now, I don't know if the change will make any difference, because remember, I'm not saying your arguments are bad.
Those of you saying, if you get rid of the ARs, even in the unlikely future that you could actually do that, because it'd be hard to do, but even if you could, would it make any difference?
Maybe not. I think people might just use handguns and explosives and drones or whatever.
Who knows? It might not make any difference.
And I'm not saying it would.
I'm just saying it will happen.
I'm just saying that the weapons, the AR, whether or not they were used in both attacks is less relevant.
I think they were used in at least one.
People are telling me that it was an AK-47.
What's the difference between an AK-47 and an AR? You'll probably tell me before I can find it.
I'm not a gun guy.
I'm prone to Second Amendment, but not a gun enthusiast.
All right. So, yeah, and then people are saying, what about printed guns and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I'm going to acknowledge the following things.
Your logic of why a gun ban won't work or is a bad idea might be perfect.
All of your facts might be right.
They won't matter anymore.
This double murder, and I hate to use this phrase, but it really does become the operative phrase right now.
Let me see how I can put this.
Even 24 hours ago, if you had said in public, I'm pro-gun, and it's because of constitutional reasons, and I love my country, and I'm a patriot, I love the Constitution, the Constitution gives me that right, I'm pro-gun.
If you had said that a day ago, you would have thought of yourself as a patriot.
Someone who follows the rules, somebody who respects the past, somebody who knows the value of firearms, you'd have a pretty good opinion of yourself.
What if you said it today?
What if you said exactly what you would have said 24 hours ago and you said it in public?
Now, of course, you'd want to wait a little bit.
We all know that saying things, you know, when situations are brand new is bad for them, but suppose you wait till tomorrow.
You come out in public and you say, I'm a person who supports people having the right to own these weapons that just killed large groups of people twice in one day.
Who are you then?
Are you the patriot?
Because 24 hours ago you could have said those same words, had those same ideas, those same thoughts, and you would have thought of yourself as a patriot.
You might even have thought of yourself as one of the people defending the freedom of the country because if things really went bad, an armed citizenry might be the thing you need if your government suddenly and unexpectedly went completely in the wrong direction.
So, 24 hours ago, you could have said to yourself, you know, I'm a patriot.
That's why I support this.
I realize there's a big cost to it, but it's such a big freedom.
I like it anyway. I'm a patriot.
If you say it tomorrow, let's say you let some of this die down a little bit, but it's still fresh-ish.
If you said the same thing tomorrow, how would you feel about yourself?
Would you feel the same way about yourself?
I don't know. You know, because I'm not really describing myself with those feelings.
I think you'd feel, at this point, that you're part of the problem.
I might be wrong, but that's the way it looks to me.
It looks to me like until today, because of the horrible coincidence of two of them that are so similar on the same day, That what you could have said yesterday would have seemed fair enough.
You would have said, like all the benefits, I know there's a cost, but I still prefer the freedoms.
It's in the Constitution.
I'm a patriot. You could have said that.
And I would have said, well, even if I disagreed with you, I would have said fair statements.
Those are legitimate opinions, even if I disagree.
Today? Tomorrow?
Tomorrow? Can you say that?
Can you say about yourself, you're not part of the problem?
It's harder. I mean, of course, there will be people on both sides of this and they'll fight for their position.
Now, it makes you wonder if there's any kind of middle ground.
I haven't heard any, but let's just speculate for a moment.
Why if people were allowed to have ARs Let's say they were allowed to buy them under the condition that all of their social media friends and family were notified.
Let me ask you that.
Suppose somebody proposed a rule that says the following.
You can buy an AR just the way you can today.
If it's legal in your state, you can go ahead and buy it.
Or an AK. I don't know.
Is that even legal? I still don't know what an AK is because I'm not a gun guy.
But let's say there are no changes to the laws that say you can buy a weapon, so the Constitution is protected.
But let's say that there's an added requirement, which is if you go in and buy a new weapon, there's an automatic report that goes out to your social media following that says you have purchased this weapon, And if anybody in that social media group or the family has a concern, here's the email or the phone number of law enforcement.
And if law enforcement gets a bunch of notices, maybe they go out and install a gun lock.
Maybe if somebody's got too many complaints, That the gun is taken away until something is remediated, until there's some kind of counseling.
Something like that. Now, I'm not trying to design a bill on the fly, and I'm not even telling you that would be a good idea.
I'm telling you that something's going to happen.
And if you don't want...
These weapons to be completely illegal and confiscated.
You might have an interest in finding some middle ground just to keep it from going all the way to where you don't want it.
And the middle ground might be something that uses technology, something that takes advantage of what's changed in society.
Social media is one of them. And there may be a way to do a deeper dive on the risk for a new buyer.
You know there is, right?
It's not as if we have to wonder if that would work.
How many times have we seen these situations where somebody buys a gun and there's somebody in their circle, a family member or somebody, who had a feeling that no good was going to happen?
There's somebody who knew that.
Let me give you another example.
Suppose you buy a gun, and again, I'm not going to suggest this as a good idea.
I'm just going to throw out some ideas, let them percolate.
Maybe they'll remind you of something that is a good idea.
Somebody says, please stop.
I will block you.
Suppose you had a law.
And it could be just in a state, it wouldn't have to be federal.
They said if you buy a new gun that has a high killing power, so let's say we make some distinction between, let's say, a shotgun and something that has potential to fire a lot of rounds in a short period.
Let's say that if you buy one of the effective killing machines, That you give up your privacy on all social media platforms and your phone.
Let's say that your phone is opened to a third party Let's say, scrutiny, should you buy a major killing thing?
Now, it doesn't mean that necessarily that your local police force could see it.
You could anonymize it.
You could, for example, say, all right, if you're going to buy one of these weapons for 12 months afterwards, might be two years or whatever, but let's say 12 months, your social media, all of your email, everything about your phone will be transmitted to a third party, Who will keep it private so long as there are no problems.
So in other words, it'll only be reviewed by people who don't know who you are.
You know, strangers in another country, for example, who are just looking at the data without the name.
And if they see something, and they say, oh, whoa, this person just bought a gun and they just visited some websites that look a little sketchy, I'm going to report that.
But if they don't see anything, all they see is somebody bought a gun, they've looked at some websites on hunting, they've talked about, you know, going to the shooting range.
Well, maybe you let that go.
So, I'll just put that out there.
There's probably something in between.
Having all guns for crazy people, which is our current situation, and having no guns for sane people who might actually have a legitimate use for them.
So if we're only talking about those two extremes, we're not being useful because those two extremes are the least likely place we're going to end up.
Somebody says, no thanks, Scott.
That's like China.
Well, remember...
We're not talking about choosing between the good option and the bad option.
And that's the part people typically get wrong.
People who are bad at making decisions will look at any idea and they'll say, that idea has some downside, so I won't consider it anymore.
But what if all the ideas have downside?
What if the current situation has downside?
What if there's no situation that doesn't have an enormous downside?
Well, that's where we are. We're in a situation where every option has an enormous downside.
Enormous. I mean, if we keep it the way it is, you're going to see more and more of this.
It's obvious. It's obvious at this point that you're going to see more of this.
If you get rid of guns, People are going to say, we lost a basic fundamental constitutional right.
The government can now dominate us because we don't have any weapons, etc.
And by the way, I like to throw this in every conversation of guns.
The dumb people...
And I think you have to distinguish in the argument about guns.
There are some things that are philosophical differences.
There are priority differences.
And there are differences on maybe how much knowledge people have about different things.
But there's also a part of the conversation that's just dumb.
You know, there are just some dumb things.
And I think the dumb parts have to be called out as well.
And I was going to make a point, but I just forgot what it was.
I'll get back to it. Yeah.
Now, the other thing people are going to note is that there's a similarity to these shooters.
They seem to be young white guys.
They may be racist.
They may have been radicalized.
They may have something wrong with them.
But in all cases, they're kind of lost.
There is a generation of young males who are What's the best way to say it?
Worthless. Worthless.
And I don't think that's true about most people.
Most people have a value.
You could go to work, you could have a family, you could join the military, you could help people.
Most people, you can have a baby.
Most people have a purpose and a use in life, but there is a growing number of people who probably won't be able to have any kind of a useful job, may have trouble finding anybody to marry them, to have a child, don't have interest in the military, don't have any use.
There's a whole generation of people We're kind of worthless in the modern society.
Now, that's not a value judgment.
That's more of an economic statement.
So if you could take the opinion out of it and just look at it as an economic thing.
Most people have an economic value to society, and that gives them meaning.
It gives them purpose. It makes them connect.
It makes them belong. They know where they fit into everything.
So I'm saying an economic value to take some of the personal stuff out of it.
But there's a whole bunch of young men who will never have the talent or the tools to be valuable.
They will not be inventing anything.
They will not be saving any lives.
They can't have babies.
They may not even be able to marry somebody who can have a baby because they're not popular and They can't nail down somebody that they want to be married to.
So they're sort of like societal zombies who have access to weapons of mass destruction.
So what happens when you make a whole class of people feel completely worthless and then give them access to unlimited killing power?
Well, you're gonna get this.
So, I do think that the thing that will get the least attention is that there's a segment of society that is finding their experience of just being alive in this world to be so unpleasant that shooting people and dying looks like a good alternative.
You have to be in a bad shape for you to wake up and think, you know?
I think I'll go randomly kill people.
Something's got to be terribly wrong.
This is what men going their own way talk about a lot, the incels, etc.
I saw a stat about...
I'm making up these stats, but it's sort of directionally true, that on Tinder, Something like 2% of the men are getting all of the women.
And of course that makes sense, right?
Because if you're one of the really, let's say, good-looking guys or valuable guys on Tinder, you're not there to find somebody to settle down with.
So on Tuesday you're with one, on Wednesday you're with one, and you have all of them.
So you have your pick of all the women.
So I think the number of women who end up hooking up with a guy is close to, you know, the majority of them.
But the number of men who ever, ever connect on Tinder is like 2%.
Because why would a woman, you know, swipe a guy that was unattractive?
It's always the same guys. So because technology...
Let's put it this way. In the old days before technology, people fell in love and hooked up with whoever was nearby, because you had to.
I'll give you an example.
In high school, I guess my junior year in school, there was a prom.
This was before the internet.
And I had a small class.
There were sort of 20 girls, 20 boys in the entire class.
And so there were 20 girls that were my age that were in the pool of potential people you could ask to the prom.
Well, half of them had boyfriends by then, so really there were 10 girls that you could ask to the prom.
That's it. In my whole universe where I grew up, there were just 10 girls.
Left who didn't already have a boyfriend that you could ask.
And I'm not really good at getting around to stuff.
So I think nine of them had been asked before I got serious about it.
And who do you think was left?
Well, it wasn't the pick of the litter, if you know what I mean.
So I looked at my choices and I said, I think I just won't go to the prom.
Now what's interesting about that is I was a class vice president or something like that and I was actually in charge of the prom.
I was actually one of the people who put it on.
So I was one of the organizers who put it all together but I couldn't even get a date because there was no internet and I was a little socially awkward and slow and There was no option.
I didn't have an option to have a date, except some options that I wasn't too enthusiastic about.
So if you took the internet away from me, I don't go to the prom.
So, but... Things are different now, and I imagine that we still have the same situation where if you're in the lower end of the socio-valuable, attractive strata, that you just don't have a chance of doing the things you want in this world.
And then you add on top of that that we can directly observe all the people who are doing so well.
There's a contrast problem.
Because not only do you know that you're not killing it, but you look at Facebook or whatever, and you can see that other people are telling you they're killing it.
And then you say, wow, the difference between me and people who are succeeding is gigantic.
I might as well just go end myself.
So I really think we have to deal with the fact that there's an enormous segment of people who are economically worthless.
They're not worthless as people, so I'm not insulting them as human beings.
Everybody has the same value as a human being.
We all agree to that, I think.
But economically, there are people who just will never fit in.
And if we don't fix that, they're going to do stuff like this, just to go out in the blaze of glory.
So, the worst thing you're going to see today Is people blaming Trump for the rhetoric?
Now, if they were blaming Trump for the laws about guns, I would say fair criticism, even if you disagree with it.
It would be a fair criticism to look at your leaders and say, all right, leaders, your laws about guns are suboptimal and might be contributing to some of this.
That could either be true or false, but whether it's a good idea or a bad idea to make that criticism, it's reasonable.
It's certainly reasonable to question all of our assumptions about gun laws when something like this happens.
But if you take it to the next level, Here's almost one of the worst things you'll ever see in your life.
It's so bad. If you take it to the next level, you will allow the illegitimate fake news media to frame your president for their own crime.
Right. And you see it happening already.
The so-called fine people hoax has come back today in force.
So you're going to see whoever it was who mentioned that already.
So it's already been mentioned.
And if you're new to this, the fine people hoax is the hoax that says that President Trump called the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville fine people.
When in fact, if you look at the transcript, his actual words were, I'm not talking about the white nationalists and neo-Nazis, they should be condemned totally.
So people see the false edit where he was talking about good people on both sides, and before he clarifies that he's not talking about any of those people as being good people, they cut it, they edit it, so it looks like he's praising neo-Nazis.
If he fell for that, whose fault was that?
If you fell for the fine people hoax, whose fault is that?
Let's say one of the shooters was influenced by the fine people hoax.
See where I'm going?
If that shooter believed that the president called neo-Nazis and white nationalists fine people, if the shooter believed that, whose fault was that?
Not the president, because he very clearly, very clearly said the opposite.
It's on video.
It's in the transcript.
It's in major news stories.
It's been written about extensively that it simply didn't happen.
But if that is the sort of thing that people hear, and it radicalizes them, whose fault is that?
Is it the fault of the person who didn't say it?
Or is it the fault of the people who said he did say it when he didn't?
Whose fault is that?
Let's take the shithole comment.
If President Trump had called African nations, or some other nations, I guess it was a little more broadly than Africa, but he called some countries asshole countries.
Suppose, since that happened in a smallish meeting in a room, suppose nobody had ever used that illegitimately as a political weapon.
Suppose they had just sat in the room and said, I wish you'd used a different word for that.
Suppose the professionals had been professionals and not people trying to score a knockout against the president.
Suppose they hadn't talked about it.
Would you have ever known?
No. Would the shooters, if they were influenced by, let's say, the president's opinion, would they ever have heard the report that was illegitimate and didn't really happen?
Would they have watched that report and said to themselves, oh, I guess the president is giving us permission to be bad to a certain segment of people?
No, because the shooter never would have heard that story.
The guilty party is whoever leaked that quote.
And I've said this before, and it's going to take a while to catch on, but I'm going to keep saying it until it does.
Here's my rule.
If you take something from one context...
Where a message is contained, let's say one person talking to one person or one person talking to a small room, if you are the one who takes what happened in that private or smallish conversation and make it a public statement, you are the one responsible for the message, not whoever said it first.
The person who changes the context is responsible for how it is received.
If we don't have that rule, you get more of this stuff.
Here's why. The people who are illegitimately reporting that the president called neo-Nazis fine people, literally the opposite of what happened, who's to blame?
Clearly the people who are saying it, not the original person who said the correct thing.
If people are upset and racially divided because the president said S-hole countries in a smallish meeting of professionals, why is the country upset about that?
Is it because the president said it in a small setting in which it's pretty clear he didn't mean it racially?
Or is it the fault of the person who took it out of that meeting?
Leaked it, and then the people who were repeating it out of context, which completely changes the meaning.
It's definitely the people who took it out of context.
They are absolutely to blame, but the way we currently think of the world, we automatically blame the person who said it, even though the context in which they said it and the intention with which they said it were completely different than how it looked when it was taken to a new context.
Likewise, the President's comments about all, not all, that's what the critics say.
The President's comments that the Mexicans included rapists and criminals.
Most people should have heard that and said to themselves, oh, what he means is that there are too many criminals coming across the border.
Certainly it didn't mean they're all criminals and rapists.
Certainly the president did not intend to mean that the women and children coming across the borders are rapists.
Any reasonable reading of what he said, the way human beings talk in the normal world, should have told you Clearly and unambiguously that he's saying too much crime is coming in, not that they're all criminals.
Because they're all criminals is so stupid on its surface that nobody would say it ever.
Nobody ever said that the children coming across the border, the Mexican border, are rapists and criminals.
But they're part of the people coming across.
So nobody should have ever interpreted that to mean that they're all criminals, or even that there are more criminals in the Mexican genetic pool than there are somewhere else.
Nothing like that was said.
But he did use some unclear hyperbole that allowed people to imagine that's what he said for political gain.
Now, whose fault is that? Would you blame President Trump For having a bit of hyperbole that definitely could have been said more elegantly and maybe more kindly to the group that he was talking about.
Yes, you can say that the president should have worded that better.
There definitely was a better way to approach that.
But... The guilty people are the people who turned that into, I think the president is a racist and half the country are also racist because they voted for him.
Whoever created that second message is causing mass shootings, is causing racial division, is causing the problem.
And I can go right down the line and you can see the similarity.
There's the thing that happened that probably is no big deal.
Somebody said something in a meeting.
It wasn't really meant the way it was taken when it was taken out of the meeting.
And then it's turned into a big deal by the people whose business model requires them to turn things that are not a big deal into a big deal.
It's the business model.
They have to do that to make money.
And of course, the political party on the other side has to stretch it in and exaggerate it and reframe it until it's the worst thing in the world.
So if you're blaming, and I'm going to say this, it doesn't matter what party we're talking about.
We see more of it with President Trump, his words being taken out of context, because naturally he's the president.
But it wouldn't matter who it was.
If the same thing were happening, and I'm pretty sure I've supported people on the left a number of times, When their words were taken out of context.
And I say the same thing.
It doesn't matter who it is. If you take somebody else's words out of context and you present them out of context, you're responsible for that message, not the person who said it in a different context.
The person who said it in a different context is responsible for that context.
Because you can't separate a message from the situation in which it was said.
And yet we do.
If you were to blame people for deepening racial feelings, who would be the biggest violator, shall we say?
Who would be most responsible for the racial division?
Is it the person who says things that could have been said better, or the people who pretend it was much different than what was said?
It's definitely the liars who take it To somewhere else.
They're clearly the ones who are most responsible.
All right. But we will, of course, not do any rational things today because that's not who we are.
We will posture and try to gain advantage and be our usual horrible selves for another day.
I hope tomorrow will be different.
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