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Sept. 25, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:23:05
Episode 674 Scott Adams: China With Brian Kennedy, Impeachment, Defamation, the Panopticon
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody!
Come on in here.
It's going to be the best morning you've ever had coffee with Scott Adams.
That's me, and you're here for the simultaneous sip plus all of the content, which is going to be good today!
So there are two parts of today's periscope.
There's the amazing part in the front that I'm going to tell you about in a moment, and then there's the incredible part that comes after that.
I don't know which one's better, the amazing part or the incredible part.
You're going to have to decide for yourself.
But if my technology works the way I hope, we're going to be talking to China expert Brian Kennedy.
I'll be introducing him in a bit.
But before I do that, before I do that, We have to have the simultaneous sip.
Yes, we do. And it goes like this.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tank or a thermos, a flask, a cantina, a grail, a goblet, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the simultaneous sip, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Go. Oh, just right.
I'm going to put that back in the coffee warmer.
And let me just check on my guest to make sure he's ready.
He is! I'm going to fire him up and then give an introduction.
Brian, can you hear me?
Brian, you are president of the American Strategy Group, a think tank.
Dedicated to understanding the strategic threats to the United States.
Also a board member and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, where you have been president for several years prior.
And during your many years there, you've directed the Golden State Center in Sacramento.
Well, you've got a lot of accomplishments here.
Let me get the highlights. I got like a whole page of stuff you've done, and it's pretty impressive.
But the parts that people here will care about is that you're the chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, China, founded in March 2019, and also you were a national security surrogate for Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016.
Did I miss anything that would be important to our listeners to understand who you are?
No, I think you got that pretty well covered.
And we're going to talk about China.
And I don't know that anybody in this country has a good understanding of what's going on over there, so I'm hoping you'll help us penetrate.
And let me start with this general question that I think you can take and run with.
What is it that you think the American public needs to understand about China that maybe they don't What are the important things we need to know in a geopolitical sense?
Well, that's a great question to start off.
And let me first say, Scott, what a great pleasure it is to be with you because you're a great national treasure.
And I think your way of thinking about the world has done more good in these last couple of years than almost anything else.
But enough of that.
China is one of those strategic concerns of the United States that most people don't quite recognize.
I comprehend. Partly because they think, we won the Cold War back in the 90s.
We've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And China, they're a new problem.
They're a new kind of serious threat.
I thought we trade with China.
We buy stuff.
Everybody knows Chinese people.
They don't seem like bad people.
They seem like good people. They're our neighbors.
They're our friends. They are?
They are, yeah, absolutely.
And so when we encounter Chinese people...
It's typically in a pretty favorable transaction.
And so it's hard for Americans to get their minds wrapped around that there is this country of 1.4 billion people half a world away that is causing us all these problems.
But of course, President Trump ran on trying to make better trade deals with China.
He didn't talk about them as a strategic threat, but just at the level of better trade deals...
President Trump made the case to the American people that, in fact, a lot of our economic downturn, stagnation, whatever you want to call it, for the middle class of the country has been caused by these bad trade deals with China.
They've taken our manufacturing, they've stolen our intellectual property, and Most Americans are only now, I think, getting their minds wrapped around that narrative of the president.
Well, can you help us understand how much is just the Chinese are good at competing and they're taking the board as it was presented to them and they're just maximizing it exactly like we would have versus something deeper and darker.
What should we assume about their intentions?
Well, at the level of...
There's two points here.
One is intellectual property theft.
The Chinese are experts at either hacking into our systems and going in and stealing our intellectual property or simply taking something that America's made, reverse engineering it, or more easily simply working with somebody in the company or the company itself To have a forced technology transfer.
They say, if you want to come to China, we have to have a patent on this, too, or we have to be co-owners of all this.
Now, I might need to break in a moment just for some clarification, if you don't mind.
My audience always yells at me when I interrupt anybody who's an expert, because they say, you're not an expert.
Let Brian talk.
You know they're going to say that. But let me just understand this in context.
An American tech company would probably routinely get a hold of a competitor's product and reverse engineer it if they thought there was some advantage they were trying to figure out.
So if China does it in just the reverse engineering sense, isn't that completely normal?
Well, in America, if Google looks at what Apple's doing or vice versa, and Apple says, wait, they've stolen something we've done, then they take them to court.
In China, if they steal the intellectual property, what's the recourse?
It's very hard for that American company to go to a Chinese court and say, Wait a minute, you've stolen what we've created here.
And the Chinese say, no, of course not.
We've not stolen anything. In fact, in these trade negotiations, the Chinese say, what intellectual property theft?
In their mind, it's just good business.
If they can steal something, they think that's just how the game is played.
In America, we would sue.
Now, literally...
I want to understand this as specifically as possible.
If we were to talk to a bunch of Chinese CEOs, let's say tech CEOs, and we said, you know, it's bad business practice and it's bad for the world and you shouldn't be stealing other people's technology, would they look at you like they didn't even understand the point?
I mean, do they even get the point?
That there's a long-term business benefit in dealing with people squarely versus just taking every advantage you could get.
Is there a difference in the culture in terms of not understanding the long-term advantage of trust and building partnerships versus, well, if you left it on the table, I could just pick it up.
Tell me about that.
Yeah, no, I think that's a great point, too.
I think in part they think that's just how the game is played.
It's often said about Chinese business deals and American business deals, first of all.
You want to sell something and I want to buy something.
If you sell it for a dollar and I want to buy it for a dollar and it's something I want, that's a good transaction.
In China, it's thought that a good transaction is one where the Chinese are able to screw you.
That's a different way of thinking.
Do they apply the same thinking locally?
In other words, when two Chinese companies are doing business, do they ever think in terms of, well, I want a win-win situation here because I want other people to trust me and work with me and I want everybody to win because in the long term that's better for everybody?
Or do they also say, no, if I got one over on you, that's a good day for me?
Well, in all the writings culturally about Chinese business, it's the latter.
If they can get away with it, they will.
It's not that they're not forced very often to play fair, but it's usually, even on the local level, it's two competitors forcing each other to play fair.
Have you ever looked into the historical, cultural reasons for that difference?
I was reading this book called, what is it, American Nations?
Something like that. It was talking about how our early business ethics, if you will, I think came from the Dutch.
So the Dutch had sort of a, we'll deal with anybody, it just has to be fair.
Everybody's playing fair, doesn't matter who you are, we'll deal with you.
But it just has to be fair.
And I feel like that came from some sort of a Christian influence.
Do you think that there's something in the Christian influence of Western business, even if you're not a Christian, you're still influenced by that ethical standard.
Do you think that just is lacking in China because there's not a religious kind of God's watching situation?
Well, perhaps.
I certainly can see in America why that made sense.
It's what you're describing.
In China, I don't want to assign them that so much as they've not really lived under the rule of law and constitutional government the way we have to where we automatically think in terms today of law and order.
Just in terms of where it comes from, China has been living under a certain form of warlordism for thousands of years to where it's all strength But where does the concept of family honor or personal honor come in?
Because it seems to me it would be dishonorable.
This is my western brain, right?
Dishonorable to screw somebody in a business deal When they would know it, it would come back and haunt you, and people would say, ah, this guy screws people in business deals.
How is that not sort of a source of shame?
Yeah, I think it's partly, that's just the way the cookie crumbles, to maybe mix metaphors.
They do have individual honor, certainly, but I do think they separate Individual behavior from business behavior.
And they think business more like they think of war, whether it's internally or externally.
And business is like war.
And all is fair in war.
And so that goes beyond any kind of personal honor they may have.
Now, and I'm assuming that the big problem is that their government has these same set of I don't know, philosophies or ethics.
And so tell us about China's government's intentions in the long run about the United States.
What do you know about that?
Well, right now I'm chairing the Committee on the Present Danger of China, and we've had several hearings.
And we've had a lot of experts talk about what the intent of the Chinese are.
It's primarily to put China on top of the world as the hegemonic power.
That doesn't mean China is going to invade the United States and we're all going to be speaking Chinese in a generation.
What it does mean is that China is in the process of building their economy into the most powerful in the world, their military into the most preeminent power in the world, and that may still take some time.
But they're going to take whatever steps are necessary to get there.
Now, is that just a natural extension of businesses, war, and we're going to take everything we can get, we're the biggest country, we'll have the most money someday, it's just our natural place to be in charge of things?
Yes, yes.
Philosophically, they see themselves as the middle kingdom, meaning the kingdom between heaven and earth.
And so they see themselves as...
Chairman Mao, he would read books of philosophy and there was one particular story about you cannot have two suns in the sky.
And that had a profound impact on him.
You can't have two suns in the sky.
There was going to be one sun and that one sun was going to be China.
And so they think of themselves in a very profound way.
We happen to be the most powerful country in the world and the richest, but that doesn't mean we're the biggest and there's a lot of indicators against us at this moment.
China has a long-term view that they're going to be that preeminent power.
Now, does the United States not also want to be the most influential country and stay that way?
I mean, because it sounds like what they want is pretty similar to what we want.
Wouldn't we want to have enough control over the Middle East?
Wouldn't we want to be able to get the trade deals we want?
I mean, if we could get deals that were better for us than them, wouldn't we take it?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Right now we have a whole bunch of environmental policies, just to take one example, that disadvantage us with regards to China.
China has all sorts of trade laws.
You know, China has access, before President Trump, to any U.S. market, or almost any U.S. market.
The United States did not have a similar access.
Now, why weren't U.S. leaders before Trump pressing For the United States to have that advantage because we thought we want China to develop.
We want other countries to develop.
And so we're not going to do everything in our power to keep all this manufacturing and wealth here.
We're going to be willing to export it somewhere else.
And that's been the globalist philosophy, I think, for the better part of 50 years, hasn't it?
But I think everybody would agree that there always had to be a time when China got strong enough that that situation would have to be readjusted.
So this is the readjustment period, right?
Right. Yeah, this is the readjustment period.
You're right in that regard.
You're certainly right that America wants to be on top, but we haven't pursued the policies that would keep us on top.
Until now. So what do you think is going to come out of the trade deal, and do you think we should decouple or try to make a deal?
Well, I mean, it'd be perfectly fine to do both, in a way.
Say decouple. Well, I'm certainly for decoupling, because I do think we can do all this manufacturing in the United States.
And I think it's irresponsible, by the way, to have our electronics...
Especially those we use in the military, but even those we use in everyday telecom equipment made in China.
That seems like just a silly proposition, given the fact about their theft of intellectual property.
So let me give you some hypotheticals here, just so I can understand how the smart people think about this.
Let's say, and I'm not saying this could ever happen, but let's say China made some kind of a promise about intellectual property that had a little bit of teeth in it.
I don't even know if that's possible, but let's say they could.
If that problem were solved, or even if we said, how about we just take technology out of it and we're not going to make that there, but everything else is still in play.
Could we make a deal if we could solve the IP stuff, which I don't know if could be solved?
If we could make that deal and we had access to their markets, yes, absolutely we could make a deal.
The problem is they say they don't steal IP. They say that.
We don't steal it. That's a problem.
And they're not going to allow any kind of enforcement regime that actually holds them to account.
They've said as much. So why are we even talking to them?
Honestly, what's the point?
Can you tell me what smart person is saying, okay, we can still work with this?
They say that no matter what we do, they're going to reach into our body cavity, rip our hearts out, and show it to us before we die.
But I like all the rest of the stuff.
So I think that still looks good.
Well, except for that one part where they reach their fist into our chest, rip out our heart, and show it to us before they die.
Is that what's happening?
Is there somebody on the team that says, yeah, we can make this happening even though the IP part can never happen?
Is there anybody on that ship?
Look, I think President Trump put Secretary Mnuchin and Robert Lighthizer, Ambassador Lighthizer, on the job to see if that's actually possible.
And so the president didn't want to arbitrarily say what you just said, that this is hopeless.
He wanted to make the case that I'm going to give it my best shot to negotiate something if at the end of the day they're not willing to have any kind of acknowledgement and enforcement regime.
Then when I walk away from this, everyone can nod their head on Wall Street.
By the way, Wall Street's the one pushing for the trade deal.
Because they want the status quo before Trump.
But someone is trying to make the case that, in fact, a deal can be made.
I don't think it actually can be made.
But President Trump's giving it his best shot.
Do you think our government, and I almost don't want to ask this question because I think you might know the answer, and if it's the wrong answer, I'm just going to flip out.
I swear to God, I'm going to flip out.
Do you think our government would ever make a deal with China of any kind of trade deal before their top fentanyl dealer, whose name we know, the address is known, I think 60 Minutes interviewed him, while that guy is still a free man?
Are we going to make a deal with China under that condition?
If President Trump understands that, the answer is absolutely no.
Thank you. On the other hand, A lot of things get presented to President Trump and he doesn't.
You know, look, he has to delegate a lot of this to other people.
But the fentanyl thing is so simple.
It seems so cut and dry.
No, there's chemical warfare, biological warfare against the United States.
It's crazy. Right, but it's ambiguously easy to identify whether China is acting against it, because that guy is either alive or dead.
We know his name, we know his face, we know his address, and we know China knows it.
We know the guy, the specific guy, who is killing tens of thousands of Americans.
If that guy is alive, I can't imagine that President A wouldn't understand that concept and B would ever put us into a trade deal with mass murderers.
I just don't see any way that anything but decoupling is going to happen here.
If I had to place a bet on decoupling, how good a bet would it be?
I think it's probably, my own judgment today would be 80-20.
That we're going to decouple again, you know, from China.
Simply because their rhetoric has changed.
In fact, it's become more strident.
They have the anniversary of their revolution coming up on October 1st.
They see Trump, you know, having to run for real circumstances.
So they're not going to make a deal now if they can wait and make a trade deal possibly with Elizabeth Warren.
What is it that China can do that India can't do?
And is there anything stopping us from saying, look, we tried China.
But now India is our best friend.
Watch what we do together. Because obviously Modi and Trump get along pretty well.
Oh look, I think India is a very advanced country.
And I don't see why there's anything.
I think you're right.
We should be doing business with India.
And other people around the world.
There's no reason China should be locking all this technological manufacturing.
And if, you know, look, if China wants to compete, they can compete.
But they have to do it fairly and openly.
And right now they're not willing to do that.
They think they can bully their way through almost anything.
Now, let's talk about the Uyghurs.
The Uyghurs. The ethnic minority, they're Islamic and they're being rounded up.
I saw a video. Kyle Bass had it.
Do you have a sense of whether that video was real news or fake news?
It showed, I don't know, hundreds of Uyghurs lined up and handcuffed and sitting there with things over their heads and stuff by the Chinese government.
Do you think that was a real video?
You know, I don't know.
I've not gotten any confirmation.
One way or the other.
It's hard to know. Right, but we see what they're doing in Hong Kong if that's in parallel.
Right. And so I can imagine they're doing that to the Uyghurs.
The Uyghurs, they like even less than the people of Hong Kong who are ethnically Chinese.
So I can imagine Uyghurs very badly.
And so that is...
Look, I think at some level they want people to see just how violent they are.
They want people to see that they're willing to do anything.
For a lot of people in the West, that will scare them.
And so if China can get scaring the West as well, that's a benefit to them.
Yeah, you wrote a great article on that.
Where can people find that?
I think that was on thehill.com.
But I think it's also on presentdangerchina.org.
So your view is that China gets a twofer with Hong Kong.
One is that if they prevailed, and I believe they will in the long run because they have the long view of things, it will first of all give them more control that they want, but it also shows the world, hey, there's not a line we're not willing to cross, so... Make sure you're nice to us.
That's the basic idea?
That's the basic idea.
In America, we have a mental aversion to violence.
We don't like violence.
And we're willing to do internally almost anything to avoid it.
So when you see other countries engage in that kind of violence, we take a step back.
Now again, not President Trump talking about the liberal media and It almost operates at a subconscious level.
Whatever we can do to make them happy, maybe they'll stop hurting their own people.
So they're almost keeping part of their people as hostages.
And they're tough. Look, they know how to invade 1.4 billion people into doing what they want.
That's the height of sophistication.
So can you give us a...
A little summary of what the average, let's say, middle class and higher Chinese citizen can or does see on the Internet.
In other words, how much of the external truth are they seeing versus just China's version of truth?
I think they're mostly seeing the truth.
I think there are times in which people can avail themselves of the truth, mostly through Western contact.
But by and large, it's exactly what the government wants them to see.
And also, they know they live in a kind of electronic surveillance state.
And there's credit scoring.
And if you're a study in China, in the middle class, and you're doing okay, you have a wife, a kid, a job, a car, a house, are you going to risk that in China for trying to Illegally get your way into and access Western information that your own government may be earned.
How many Chinese citizens are going to college in the United States?
Do you have an estimate for that?
I think right now it's about 50,000.
Almost 60, I think.
And would it be fair to say that those people are getting a full taste of non-China propaganda?
Or are they also maybe surveilled by China so that they can't even do a Google search without China knowing it?
Do you have a sense of how tracked they are when they're in this country?
You know, well, it's hard to do all that.
They certainly can be tracked.
Whether China would expend resources on that, they certainly have the resources to monitor those Chinese nationals who are in this country.
But again, once they're sent here, they're part of the Chinese elite.
And those folks will self-regulate to a large degree because they want to go back home to China and be part of the Chinese elite.
But I get what you're saying about self-regulating and certainly their self-interest is let's just go back to China and live my great life.
But they would still be infected with a set of knowledge that would not be common to the Chinese people and it feels like that would seep out.
Absolutely. So let me ask you this.
Are we better off or worse off because we host so many Chinese students at our universities?
Are we sending them back with like a little freedom virus that maybe they don't even know they have but time goes by and they're like, you know, I saw how America does it and I'm just not going to put up with this anymore.
Are we winning or losing by educating their elite?
Yeah. Probably, unfortunately, we're losing because we're exporting a knowledge base that they wouldn't otherwise be able to easily acquire.
And they're taking that back and making China.
The state of communism is still holding over the lives of those people.
I'm not saying it's a total waste.
I'm on the board of Catholic High School, for instance, and we have 30 kids from China.
And two of them, you know, we heard this story recently, two of them FaceTime their parents.
It's an all-boys school.
They're 17 years old.
They FaceTime their parents.
Both these boys tell their father that they love them.
And their father told them they love them back.
And this was time in 17 years that had happened.
Both sides had said, I love you.
Now, I find that mind-blowing.
That never in 17 years, my son and father said, this is after being in America at a Catholic school for three years.
It's an infection, whatever you want to say.
But... So what would you think of this idea?
Suppose we said, hey China, we're going to send back one student for every fentanyl death in this country.
Do whatever you want.
That's just our new system.
We're just going to pick one, send them home, And there are 50,000 of them here, so that should take a little over two years to get rid of every Chinese student.
How long would it take? In other words, I'm asking how important is it to China that they can get educations here?
How long would it take before the elite said, wait a minute, my kid can't get the finest education because we're killing their citizens?
I mean, do we really need to do that?
I'd like my kid to get an education.
How long would it take before that would change minds over there?
It would probably change it immediately.
The elites very much want their children educated in the United States.
They want them exposed to Western, you know, Western educations.
The genius of my idea is that they would know exactly why their kid got kicked out, and they're going to make a big stink about it.
And so we would be weaponizing one person after another, one set of parents after another in the elite, to go back to their other elite and say, you know, maybe this isn't going to work out just the way we want.
I like the part where we kill Americans, but I don't like the part where my kid can't go to college there.
Just putting that out there.
No, I think that's a good idea.
Now, Todd, I noticed some people are saying they can't hear me very well.
So if you've seen my periscopes, you know that they say that all the time.
You can hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you fine.
And the replay is usually fine.
Some people have problems on their end with their connection and then they start complaining.
And some of it is trolls just saying the sound is bad.
They're trying to just interrupt the program.
So, I've got a number of other topics, but I want to give you as much time as you want to get your message out, because I think it's important and people don't hear from this.
What should I have asked about China?
What's a theme that you'd really like to make sure we understand?
Well, I think the next phase of this whole trade debate is going to be around the fact that China defaulted on their sovereign debt.
And that President Trump right now is trying to find the opening of their markets and the theft of intellectual property.
I think one of the big things coming up is going to be the fact that China defaulted on their sovereign debt.
Define sovereign debt in this context for the audience, because I don't think they understand this is historical, different government system debt, right?
Yes, yes. Back in the last century, early in the last century, when they had their revolution from the state of the republic, global capital money, bonds, the way the U.S. government has U.S. treasury bonds, China had China bonds.
And they went and they raised money to have their revolution or consolidate their revolution and For China to become the country it is today, even though they are from a republic to a communist government.
Well, they hope that they quit paying back, again, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds here, other than to say China is a global system where they engage in trade, borrow money, Now, let me go with the present, then we can jump back.
Right now, China's talking about coming to Wall Street over the next five years and having new sovereign debt and debt of their state-owned enterprises for between $1 trillion to $3 trillion over the next five years.
No freaking way unless they pay off the debt they already have, right?
And you would think before they do that, they pay off the debt that they previously owe.
Now, they paid the British back in the 19th century because Margaret Thatcher stood up to them, and they were negotiating Hong Kong and a bunch of other things.
But now they want to come back to American cow markets.
They have made good on this debt.
Wow.
And the president knows about it, and the administration, I think, we're going to see is all over that money that 20,000 families in, I think, 46 states own.
And the Chinese money, and the American people money.
Can I interrupt you?
The audience is going nuts.
Let me just say to the audience, I'm not going to reboot.
There's nothing I can do about it.
I know you're having a little crackling with the sound.
You don't have to all tell us.
A few of us told us, and now I understand, all right?
So the sovereign debt, in other words, these are bonds, what do you call them?
Are they bonds? Yes. Yes, they're bonds.
So I've pushed the idea that China likes their social credit scoring system, but they might like less if we created, and I mean literally created, some kind of a business system.
Credit scoring system and score them unworthy of business because you've got your debt that they won't pay, you've got your China deal that they're trying to abrogate, You've got the stealing of the IP. You've got the fentanyl, etc. And I think you could just make a checklist and say, if anybody's got five of the things on this checklist, they're not creditworthy.
And just make it a banking issue because banks are completely risk management objective.
It's not political. It's just risk management.
You think in a rational world, that's exactly how it would work.
You know, in the case of the biggest election, any investment house would have to show to any initial investor.
Is Wall Street a powerful lobby on China?
Is Wall Street firms, the Goldman Sachs and the Morgan Stanley's, that are going to be out there selling Thank you.
Thank you. Well, maybe there's some solution where the investors and the public says, well, I don't want to deal with a Wall Street company that would take such a bad loan on because why would I invest in that company?
They've got troubles. Brian, I'm going to move on to another topic.
I think we hit the big stuff.
Do you feel like we hit the big stuff?
I do. And thank you so much.
Where can we find you on Twitter, let's say?
It'll be on thepresentdangerchina.org, and then the Twitter handle is at B-R-I-T-R-A-V-Kennedy.
All right, at B-R-I-T-R-A-V-Kennedy.
All right. So follow him on Twitter.
I'm going to disconnect you now, Brian, and go on to some other stuff.
And thank you so much. That was really, really good.
I think the audience loved it.
Appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. Thanks.
All right. That was terrific.
Great, great context.
I got a few other things.
Remember I told you the first part would be amazing?
And then I told you the second part would be incredible.
Well, we're in the second part now.
How lucky you are. Let's talk about a few things.
Number one, if I ever have a nemesis, you know, like a proper nemesis, I want it to be Jerry Nadler.
Can you think of a better nemesis?
That guy just reeks incompetence and loser.
And I've...
Have you ever seen anybody who just says, I'm the penguin and you're Batman?
More than Jerry Nadler.
I mean, I would actually feel like Batman if Jerry Nadler were my nemesis.
And I think it also has to be said that Nancy Pelosi has been replaced by the wax museum version of Nancy Pelosi.
But she has recently announced Something like an impeachment, but it's not an impeachment.
It uses the same words, but it's different.
And I was wondering how Pelosi could make it work that part of the Democrats want impeachment, but it's the worst idea ever, so what do you do?
Well, apparently she found a solution where she can tell the people she's doing impeachment and then go do something that's not impeachment.
Because it's like looking into the process of becoming maybe something that could be impeachment that maybe we would vote on later.
And AOC is like, yeah, I got impeachment.
Wait, what's impeachment mean?
I thought that meant that the House gets to vote on it.
No, it just means that some of you are talking about maybe doing something?
Oh, okay. Well, let's call it impeachment.
Because as long as it's bad for the president, it's all good.
It's all good. I heard that donations to Trump went up.
And I have to say, it might have been the first time in memory that I can think of I was actually inspired to donate money.
Now, I didn't do it for the same reason I don't vote.
As soon as you vote or donate money, you become committed and then it's hard to be objective at all.
So I try not to do those things.
I was certainly, I felt it.
Like I could feel the tug.
And it wasn't because it was merely a take-asides, you know, this is good for Trump, this is bad for the other team.
It wasn't that at all. It was the idea that the government would weaponize impeachment.
I think you have to be punished for trying to weaponize impeachment for political gain.
And I don't think anybody's looking at this, at least anybody.
I think the Republicans are not looking at this and saying, oh yeah, they got good reasons to impeach.
I mean, it looks like it's political to all the smart people.
Now, the people who think he should be impeached may also think he should be impeached, but even they know that whatever the heck it is that Pelosi is doing is political.
and I don't think impeachment was meant to be a political tool and so the ultimate bosses of the process are the voters and we voters can vote in two different ways by giving money well three ways if you count speaking out in public and then voting so I got a feeling that the citizens of this country who have some respect for the Constitution I'm going to say,
you know, that wasn't exactly what we had in mind with impeachment.
Maybe we should punish you a little bit with our votes and our money.
So somebody said on the comments here that the transcript is out.
Tell me in the comments, since I can't look at it, is anybody saying there are any surprises in there?
Any surprises?
I doubt there would or he wouldn't have announced it.
Let's put a pin in that because we need to see what the transcript says to catch up with that story.
Alright, here's an idea that's like the scariest thing you've seen.
I mentioned it before when I was referencing a tweet by Naval and he mentioned the Panopticon.
The Panopticon is A building where somebody can observe you, but you can't observe the people we're observing.
It's a one-way observation.
And the idea is that we, the citizens, are the ones who are being observed, and the observers are intelligence groups, and we can't see them observing us.
They can only see us. And that's a bad situation, because it's unequal, right?
Somebody's observing, but you can't observe them back.
This thought comes from a Twitter user, Ancilla.
You can find her at N, as in neighbor, C-I-L-L-A. And she talks about this a lot.
It's sort of a primary topic.
So if this interests you, you would want to follow her.
At N-C-I-L-L-A. Two L's.
L-L-A. And the thing about this thought, this came from her.
Anyone that's born now gets all of their blackface or anything else, whatever else you've done bad in your past, registered by the watchers and it can be used against you later if you ever run for office.
Think about this.
The people watching, the intelligence people, can watch anybody.
If you start emerging, let's say you're AOC, Do you think our intelligence agencies are watching AOC and monitoring her one way or another?
Probably, in some way or another.
I believe that anybody who seems to be rising and gaining political power could be, because we saw it happen with Trump.
I imagine it happens with others.
There are ways to watch them without breaking any laws.
For example, You could say you're watching somebody else, and well, they were on the phone call too.
That's what we do when, if they call a foreign leader, you can listen in.
So there are probably a number of little clever ways that they can kind of find out what you're up to, find out your deepest problems.
And here's the problem.
If the intelligence agencies have blackmail information on everyone who runs for office, who's in charge of the country?
Not the people who get elected.
And that's sort of our situation.
We have become a panopticon where the Trump situation clearly shows you that the intelligence people can find a reason to watch you if they want to.
And they want to.
If they're watching, they can effectively blackmail 100% of candidates because everybody's got something.
You know, even if it's just embarrassing, it might not be a broken law.
And doesn't that effectively put us already, like right now, today, I'm not worrying about the future.
I'm talking about right now.
Doesn't this mean the intelligence agencies are in charge?
And I say, not as long as Trump is president.
There is something about Trump that makes him uniquely immune from, I don't know, everything?
I can't imagine another candidate who would have survived anything that Trump is accused of.
Anything. Absolutely anything.
There's nothing he's been accused of that anybody else could have survived.
I don't know how he does it.
Well, I sort of do know how he does it.
I mean, in a general sense, he's got a unique situation.
One part that's unique is that he's been transparent forever.
About not being an angel and having some skeletons.
So when people find some skeletons, they say, hey, you've got a skeleton.
And he says, I told you that.
You elected me anyway.
And then you go, ah, okay, that's not a bad point.
So the people who elected Trump seemed to be completely clear-eyed that they were getting a street fighter, not an angel.
And that's what they chose.
Enough of them chose him to become president.
So I think he might be, and I've said this before, the last legitimate president.
I think Trump might be the last legitimate president because nobody else could handle the blackmail.
Anybody else is just going to cave and like, it's just easier to do what you want.
I don't need that trouble.
It's just easier to do what you want.
So that's the situation we're in.
Our republic has been lost to the intelligence agencies.
We won't know it until the next president, whenever that comes.
Four years? Six years?
Eight years? All right.
Let me give you an update on CVS. So I went on an angry rant yesterday about CVS, the big drugstore around here, that they would give me literally, this is not a joke, a six-foot-long receipt with lots of text and offers that are too hard to use.
And then I complained to them and they said, oh, you just have to ask the cashier and she'll put you on a digital receipt.
And then I complained that that process It would require me to get an email and according to the cashier, I would click on a link and I would have to connect my shopping experience and receipt from the email to my account and then I could get discounts in a digital way.
And I said to myself, well that's great but I still hate you for not telling me that there was an easier way that was so easy.
I just went into the cashier and said put me on the digital receipt and she did.
Probably took, I don't know, 10 seconds.
She just pushed the button.
Say, okay, you got digital receipt now.
And I thought, really? Nobody told me I could just do this?
But here's where it kind of fell apart.
So I get my first email and I say to myself, let me see how easy it is to do this step which they insert an unnecessary step where I have to click something to connect it to my account.
The obvious reason that you have to do the extra step is so you will not do it, meaning it's one extra piece of friction that you might forget, you think the email is a spam, you say, CVS is sending me offers, I don't know.
So it's obviously designed, obviously designed to screw the customer, obviously.
If that's not obvious to you, consider the fact that when you click on your receipt to connect it to your account, it already knows it can do that.
It knows who you are because it sent you the receipt.
It sent you the receipt because it knew which customer account you're part of.
It didn't need you to click it.
You did not need to click it.
They have both databases and you click it and they put them together.
Why do I have to click it?
Because they want me not to click it, right?
All right, so that was my starting point from yesterday.
So I get my email and I go, okay, I'm going to see how this process works.
And I look for the part where you click it.
It's not there. It's not there.
There's nothing to click.
Or if it is, I couldn't find it.
So now this came from the customer response person who responded to my complaint.
So she gave me the easier way to do it and it doesn't even exist.
Or if it does exist, I couldn't find it.
I read the whole email.
I didn't see it. So it's either intentionally hidden in the email or it doesn't exist.
So now I don't have a paper Which I could use inconveniently.
I could use that to get a discount.
Now I never will get those unless I change it back.
Now I get a digital one that I can't use in any way at all.
CVS, this is the worst customer experience of all time.
I hope somebody at CVS sees this.
Because you have to know, I've never seen on any company in any way Other than maybe a company that won't return your call at all or something.
I've never seen a more despicable, unethical, blatantly abusive process than that.
It's almost unimaginably despicable.
Let me give you a little update on a story you might be following.
It involves my internet conversation.
With a fellow who used to work at Gawker.
Yeah, he used to work at Gawker, but now he doesn't work at Gawker.
His name is John Cook, and he lists in his profile that he's the investigations editor at Business Insider, former executive editor of Gawker Media, and editor-in-chief of The Intercept.
So, in other words, he's a news person.
He's a news person.
That's important to the story.
He tweeted at me, this was a reference to the, Jake Tapper is drawing my comic Dilbert this week, and that will go to charity for homes for our troops.
And if you see my pinned tweet, you'll know how to get there if you want to participate in the auction to buy that.
Anyway, a lot of bad people weighed in.
To explain why they were so unhappy that Jake Tapper would be working with somebody as bad as me.
Now, of course, conservatives weighed in and said, Scott, why are you working with somebody as bad as Jake Tapper?
So we both got a good dose of it.
But John Cook of Gawker...
Oh, and have I ever mentioned that Gawker was my nemesis and that they ran many...
Completely fake news pieces about me.
I don't know how many, but a few.
So this person, ex of Gawker, he tweets this.
And he's tweeting it to...
I think that he was tweeting it to Jake.
Or at least it was part of Jake's Twitter comments.
So John Cook says...
It is extremely wild to see the Louis Farrakhan Policer.
So he's calling Jake Tapper a Louis Farrakhan Policer because Jake called out Louis Farrakhan for anti-Semitic stuff.
So that would make him the Louis Farrakhan Policer.
So he says it's extremely wild to see the Louis Farrakhan Policer teaming up with Scott Adams, who is basically the Louis Farrakhan of in-cell white nationalists.
But hey, it's for the troops.
Now, I said, I commented back to John Cook, and I quote, No wonder your piece of shit Gawker publication got its balls cut off.
My lawyers will be contacting you.
Now, immediately, the trolls rushed in to say, Scott, Scott, Scott, you don't know anything about the law.
Because the law says people can insult you in public.
That's not illegal.
Is it? Well, I'm going to give you my court case.
I'm going to give you my legal case.
Now, you're probably going to say, Scott, Scott, Scott, don't embarrass yourself.
You're not a lawyer.
Don't act like you're smarter than a lawyer.
Lawyers will tell you there is no case here.
Scott, Scott, Scott. But let me make my case anyway.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present the following argument.
This statement that I am basically the Louis Farrakhan of incel white nationalists has within it a joke but also a statement A fact.
The joke part is that I'm the Louis Farrakhan of incel, so the first part, pretty funny.
I'm okay with a good joke, a good analogy that makes, at least, you know, just because it's not funny to me, I'm not the guy who says humor is objective, I think this would be pretty funny to the people who would read his tweets.
So I'm going to say, it's pretty good.
You know, you made this Louis Farrakhan analogy, and I'm thinking his people probably liked it.
So as a joke, well done.
But here's the thing.
Jokes can also include statements of facts.
If something's a joke, it doesn't mean that everything in it is intended not to be true.
In fact, your best jokes are based on something true.
Have you ever tried to write a joke about a person and say something that wasn't at least based on something true or something you believe to be true?
It's hard to do.
Jokes don't work as well, it's kind of rare, unless there's some kernel of truth to them and then the joke is sort of built around the truth.
So let me read you this sentence again.
And let me tell you what part is the truth part, meaning the alleged truth, not the actual truth.
So what he says, basically, the Louis Farrakhan of incel white nationalists, if you were to hear from a credentialed editor-in-chief and journalist of news organizations, let's say Business Insider, Let's say he was at the, what was that?
He was the editor-in-chief of The Intercept.
If that person says that I'm a white nationalist, do you say, well, that's obviously hyperbole?
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me suggest this.
Had he called me a Nazi, I believe everybody reading it would have said, pfft, it's the internet.
Everybody's a Nazi on the internet.
Doesn't mean a thing. Would we agree, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that had he called me a Nazi, there would be nothing to talk about?
We're agreed, right? Suppose he had said, I'm a racist.
And it's not true, just like I'm not a Nazi.
Would that be legally actionable if he called me a racist?
Because he's a journalist, remember?
No, it would not.
Because journalists call people racist all the time.
All the time. And people who read it, I would say, generally, any normal person would say, everybody's calling everybody racist.
There's probably nobody in public life who hasn't been called a racist.
It sort of comes with it.
So we would agree, would we not, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that had he called me a racist, that would be nothing the legal system would care about.
Had he called me a Nazi, Everybody would have known that was hyperbole.
But suppose someone who works for news organizations, Business Insider, for example, or The Intercept, for example, and has a high-level job such as an editor-in-chief.
Now an editor-in-chief is going to be pretty careful about facts.
And if somebody calls you a white nationalist, Isn't that a little bit more specific?
And isn't that kind of different when you hear it than racist and Nazi that are obviously just hyperbole?
So the joke part is that I'm the Louis Farrakhan of Incel.
That's the joke part. And I acknowledge that's kind of funny for his followers.
But when he says white nationalists, Do you think that the average citizen would see that as untrue?
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ran a poll.
So I actually polled 100 people.
I paid for this poll, and I have it in my hands.
And it shows that 63% of the people polled would have assumed that because this came from a journalist, That they get the joke part, the Louis Farrakhan part, but they would reasonably assume that the white nationalist part was fact.
And then I asked them, if he had said I was a Nazi, would you assume that was a fact?
And it came in as zero.
Zero people would think Nazi was real.
But 63% in my poll, and I'll present this as Exhibit A, Said, yeah, if somebody who's actually a journalist said you were a white nationalist, I'd probably think there's something to that.
Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have not taken that poll, but you know damn well I could.
And you know how it would turn out?
Maybe it would be 63%.
Maybe it would be 38%.
Maybe it would be 20%.
Still actionable.
Ha, ha, ha. Now, other people said, what is the definition of defamation?
I think I wrote that down somewhere.
That would be terrible if I didn't write that down.
But let me tell you, and somebody on Twitter, who's a lawyer, I guess, said, oh, I'll run into the case of the New York Times versus Sullivan, 1964.
So I guess in that New York Times versus Sullivan, it was decided that people insulting or saying things about public figures are not going to have the same treatment as if it was private citizens saying something about each other.
So if you're If you're an elected politician and the news business says something about you that's untrue, you've got a real tough case.
But I'm not in the news business.
I'm not an elected official.
I would be more in the category of something called a public figure.
You didn't elect me.
Had you elected me, I could say nothing about this comment.
I would agree with you.
If I were an elected official, And somebody said I was the Louis Farrakhan of incel white nationalists.
I wouldn't have any case. I'm an elected official.
And probably that was settled pretty much in that court case.
But there's a but.
But that decision allows that you could still be liable to public figures like me.
So if I were a political figure, I wouldn't have much to go on.
But I'm not. Not only am I a public figure, but I have a unique quality to my career.
The unique quality to my career is that I'm a brand as well as a person.
That's not true to most people, right?
I am basically the Dilber brand.
Right? That's different.
So I'm a political person who's not like...
I'm not... I'm not the gardener.
I'm not putting down gardeners because I love gardeners.
I'm just saying that a gardener would not stand much to lose if somebody tweeted at them that they were a white nationalist because they'd be like, I don't even know anybody who's going to read that tweet.
I get the same amount of lawn mowing business whether somebody on Twitter called me a bad name or not.
I couldn't prove any financial loss.
But if you are a brand and somebody puts on the internet that you're a white nationalist and then that can be demonstrated that has been tweeted and viewed by thousands of people, which would be easy to demonstrate, you could also demonstrate that it's obvious that any brand in the United States would be injured and badly by being branded as a white nationalist.
That would be an easy case.
So ladies and gentlemen of the press, I give you this.
I am not a political figure and I'm not bound by those more strict rules.
I love those strict rules.
They should be strict. Keep them strict because we don't want politicians suing newspapers every day for insults.
That's great. But if you are a private citizen, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and you are Personal reputation was connected to your brand and somebody on the internet who is a journalist, not a regular citizen, someone who has editor-in-chief of a news organization in their profile so everybody can see who they are.
If that person says, even jokingly, blah, blah, blah, white nationalist, and I show you the survey that says how many people believe that that was probably true, I have demonstrated, first of all, it's obvious that a brand is damaged by being a white nationalist.
Do you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, agree with that point?
I don't need to show you my spreadsheet of the actual damages.
I simply have to show you that it's a public idea, that it's false, that the person who showed it could have easily known it was false, and by the way, If they are reckless in checking the facts, they're still guilty of defamation.
So just because they're a journalist doesn't mean that just being wrong is going to protect them.
If they're wrong and they did a good job of trying to be right, they're safe.
You don't get sued for being wrong if you did a good job of trying to get the right story and you just got it wrong.
That's a perfect defense.
What did John Cook Put any time into finding out if I am a white nationalist or not.
I would contend he did not because if anybody would put in a minute of study would have found out that's obviously easy to disprove.
So here is the test case that I do not believe there is a precedent.
So all of you lawyers who tell me, Scott, Scott, Scott, you've got no case here.
Here is the test case.
He was operating under the flag Because it's in his profile what his job is.
He was under the flag of legitimate, well-known news organizations.
Right? That's what makes this different.
Secondly, the other thing that makes it different is me.
I'm not a regular person.
I'm not a political elected person, in which case I'd have no case.
I'm also not a regular citizen, in which case I would also have no case.
I'm a special case.
I'm a regular citizen who is associated with a brand and known worldwide to some extent.
Demonstrating that I have been damaged and that he did not do any care would be easy.
Now imagine that I hired the best lawyer in the world whose name I already have.
So just imagine.
Just imagine that I've already started the process of contacting the Darth Vader of fucking lawyers.
Just imagine that, hypothetically, because it's actually happening.
The worst lawyer you would ever want to see on the other side.
Just imagine that's happening right now.
Now, secondly, imagine that I'm a trained hypnotist.
Oh, wait, I am.
Imagine that I'm unusually persuasive.
Oh wait, I am.
Imagine me working with the Darth Vader best lawyer in the world, the last person you'd ever want to see, who one imagines is quite persuasive, him or herself.
How would you like to be on the other side?
Still want to bet against it?
I don't think you do.
So let's find out what happens.
I'm also thinking of suing Jezebel.
I was looking at a piece they wrote where they quoted something I did say and then immediately after the text of what I did say, they summarized it as the opposite of what I just said and what they just published.
Again, easy to prove that it was intentional because I don't even have to look at another source.
The actual page says what I said and then the writer says, well, and he's saying the opposite of that.
There's not a jury in the world who would see that that person summarized what I said correctly.
Easy lawsuit and very damaging.
I would say that Jezebel, I could sue for $100 million in lost revenue.
I hate to brag, but they probably did cost me $100 million because almost no woman Who would, let's say, be in charge of hiring me to be a speaker or something like that?
They're going to Google me, and the Jezebel article comes up.
It says terrible things about me.
Would you hire somebody to be a speaker if you could Google, and one of the search results is like, ugh, he said that?
Now, I didn't say that.
I didn't. But they're going to think so.
My licensing business and my speaking business have both collapsed.
A lot of it is because of the Trump stuff, but even before that, there was a huge disappearance of mostly female followers.
I had a substantial female fan base for Dilbert.
When the fake news came out, it was pretty widespread when it happened, and I just watched those numbers just disappear.
So yeah, I could demonstrate a pretty clear correlation between here's when Jezebel did their thing, here's all the people who repeated it on social media, it's all discoverable, and then here's what my income did.
Easy. So...
I'm looking at the comments and I'm waiting for people to say what people were saying on Twitter for the last two days.
They were saying that I don't understand the law and Scott, Scott, Scott, how could you be so dumb?
I'm not really seeing anybody saying that here.
Maybe that's just because you're more supportive of me as opposed to my argument.
Somebody asked, is Business Insider owned by the Washington Post?
I don't think that's exactly the case, but Jeff Bezos is a major investor in Business Insider, and he owns the Washington Post.
So they're both Jeff Bezos properties, which I hate because I got to tell you, Amazon is just the best company ever.
You know, they've had their hiccups, right?
Like everybody, but damn, do they get the customer experience right?
I mean, it's like... It's like an eighth wonder of the world.
I will disagree with Bezos politically, but as a technological entrepreneur, wow!
Amazon literally just impresses me every time I use it.
I can't even use that thing without going, wow, that was surprisingly good.
Let me give you one extra tidbit that's only for the people who stayed this long.
I like to make sure there's a little gift at the end for anybody who sticks with it.
You probably know the story that I was taking some beds to deal with a sinus infection thing.
And the weird thing that came out of that was I regained my sense of smell and taste that I had not had for over a decade.
Completely unexpected. I didn't realize I had some kind of polyp problem in my eustachian tubes.
You don't need to know the details.
But they put me on this thing called prednisone and some heavy antibiotics.
And fairly quickly, my taste and smell came back and I still have them.
Imagine that. Like, how cool is that?
But here's the funny part.
The reason I went to the doctor in the first place is because I was losing my hearing.
So my hearing returned, too, because it all turned out to be related to the same things.
Now I have my hearing back, so I got my taste back, I got my sense of smell back, and I got my hearing back.
I'm not done yet.
If that was my whole week, that would be amazing.
But I'm not even done.
This week, I learned that I thought I had allergies, the worst allergies people have ever had.
I'm talking about half a box of Kleenex a day allergies, just all the time.
It doesn't matter if it's spring or fall, just all the time.
The exception is when I smoke marijuana, which immediately stops the symptoms.
But generally speaking... I'm sorry, allergies all the time.
Now, I also have asthma.
Now, the asthma is triggered by the allergies, so I had to treat them both all the time with different meds and neti pots and, you know, you name it.
So it was this lifelong thing.
And guess what?
Turns out I don't have allergies.
Because when the sinus infection was treated, I have no allergies for the first time in my adult life.
Let me say that again. I don't have allergies.
I've gone, let's see, 40 years-ish, having the worst allergies I thought anybody ever had every day, all day, except when I smoke marijuana.
And it was triggering me to asthma.
And I might not have either one.
I'm completely free of allergies.
They're gone. And so I said to my ear, nose, throat person, I said, you know, my allergies went away for the first time in my life.
And I said, is it possible that I had this sinus infection for decades?
Because that doesn't seem possible, right?
Could you have the same sinus infection for decades?
And she looked at me and she goes, yup.
This week, I got my hearing back, my sense of smell, my sense of taste.
I found out I don't have allergies and presumably won't ever have them again, you know, if I treat this.
And I don't have asthma.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
If I'm not running the simulation, I don't know who is.
So somebody's asking if it's connected to voice loss.
Indirectly. Because the voice loss that I suffered, there were three and a half years where I couldn't speak.
I got all kinds of issues.
That happened because of a normal respiratory problem that I tried to speak too hard and then I locked into the...
Talking problem. And that's the way it happens for most people.
They strain their voice and then it triggers something in their brain and then they lose their ability to speak.
So I got that fixed, obviously, or you wouldn't be listening to me.
Now there's a better part.
Are you ready? So I finally got off the prednisone and off the worst of the antibiotics.
One of them was just kicking my ass.
I mean, it just made me feel sick all the time.
Here's the best part. Do you know what one of the side effects of both of those drugs, the prednisone and the antibiotic, they had a number of side effects and I had pretty much every one.
But there's one side effect that you might find interesting.
It can make you aggressive.
Have I seemed aggressive lately?
Yeah. Yeah.
Pretty much. Yeah.
I don't think I've been much more aggressive than I have in the last several days.
Now here's the interesting part.
I had friends contact me.
I was very worried because they could see what looked like a change in behavior and I was being unusually angry.
Because for a while I was just blocking trolls, but for the last several days I've just been using them for target practice.
I'm just obsessed with mocking them into irrelevance.
Now, I don't need to.
I just liked it.
I enjoyed it.
So here's the part that you can't recognize from the outside.
Yes, I could feel the anger.
Yes, I could tell that I was more angry than normal.
Yes, I could tell that I was being more aggressive, not just online, but just a little more aggressive.
But here's the part you don't get.
Well, you'll get it easily when I explain it.
I didn't feel bad.
Along with this aggressiveness and the anger is a feeling of power.
Yeah, somebody here was ahead of me.
There is a feeling of confidence and power.
Yeah, weight gain? Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. I ate like a pig.
So, yeah, I gained a little weight, but lost most of it already.
It's easy for me to lose weight, so I just, you know, I was back in a couple days.
So, yeah. So, while people were worried about me and saying, my God, you know, you must be having a terrible time.
I hope you're okay. I kept thinking, what?
Why is anybody worried about me?
I'm having a great day today.
I'm yelling at trolls.
I'm railing against CVS. I'm getting ready to sue people who have it coming.
Now, one of the tricks I've told you before is that when you have a bad day or a bad few days, that you can batch up all the things that you put off because you didn't want the trouble.
How many things in your life have you put off because you don't want the conflict?
You don't want to complain about that thing.
You don't want to get that person mad.
Well, that's all gone.
I think I'm coming off of the effects now.
But certainly, my personality completely changed.
Now, this is also instructive for those of you trying to understand addiction.
Because a lot of people think, hey, oh yeah, Bill Pulte was doxxed yesterday.
Can you freaking believe it?
Bill Pulte just trying to give money away, his own money, and getting other people to give money to people who deserve it.
And for his work, he got doxxed.
And it caused him a lot of trouble yesterday.
Can you believe it?
Can you believe anybody is that evil?
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
I would be swearing if this were yesterday, but I think I'm coming off the effects of the drug.
Anyway, my point was, there are people who don't understand addiction.
When a person is making a decision for the first time to do a drug, there's something like what you would call free will, but I don't call it that, but something like a decision that's being made to do a drug for the first time.
But once they reach addiction, which happens pretty quickly, if it's an opioid, for example, Once they reach addiction, they aren't the person who can make decisions anymore.
They're now a new person.
They're a combination of who they were plus this drug, and that makes a new creature.
And that new creature doesn't have the will or the capacity to say no to the drug.
So the worst opinion about addiction is that that person should just try harder and use their willpower.
Darn it, I can avoid heroin.
Why can't you? A complete understanding of how the brain works and what it makes to be a person.
The drug and the person are a new entity.
I can tell you my stepson, who died a little less than a year ago from fentanyl, when he was using, because he was badly addicted for years, when he was using, you almost couldn't recognize the person.
I almost had to kick the shit out of him one day because it was like a zombie situation.
He was conscious, but the lights were out.
There was nothing like a human in there anymore.
Just complete lack of the original boy.
He just wasn't there anymore. Now, when he would briefly clean up, he would turn back into the boy that I knew and loved.
But when he was using, he wasn't even that boy.
He was just a different creature.
And we had to deal with it like a creature.
You couldn't even deal with it like a person.
It was just a creature. So, if you're wondering why I was so angry, that might be why.
It probably was the meds I was on.
Those are known side effects.
And it was, I did feel different.
But I didn't feel bad.
I didn't feel bad. So if you're feeling sorry for me, don't.
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