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Oct. 14, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:02:16

Episode 693 Scott Adams: Coup-By-Hypnosis, Kurds and Fog of War, The Kingsmen Video

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Time	Text
	Hey everybody!
	Come on in here.
	It's good to see all of you.
	It's another wonderful day.
	Monday. Can you believe it?
	Wow. And I know you're here for the Simultaneous Sip, so why would I disappoint you?
	I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
	All you need to participate in this simultaneous sip is...
	I think you know.
	It goes a little like this.
	A cup or a mug or a glass of stein, a chalice, a tanker, a thermos, flask, canteen, grill, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee.
	And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
	The simultaneous sip.
	Go! Let me tell you, ever since I got this electronic coffee warmer, my quality of life has zoomed.
	Because there's nothing better than warm coffee.
	Let's talk about the news.
	So, not hearing much about the China trade deal today.
	I suppose there's nothing to report, but I am very skeptical that there's going to be a major China trade deal that covers everything comprehensively.
	We might have some deals on some individual stuff, but I've got a feeling that the soft decoupling is going to happen at the same time as whatever agreements we make with China.
	I went shopping yesterday for some shirts.
	And started looking at labels for the first time ever.
	And I went to the Nike section.
	And I wanted, I really wanted some Nike products.
	So the bad news is Nike makes really good products.
	So I'm standing in the sort of the Nike, you know, I was looking for sweatshirts and stuff.
	And I think, oh, I like all this stuff.
	And I thought, no, can't do it.
	I had to look further.
	So I found some stuff made in Honduras, something made in Vietnam.
	And I know some of you are going to say, hey, those are just Chinese companies who have relocated because of the tariffs.
	Well, maybe, but it's still better.
	I would still rather give my business to a Chinese entity that's operating and employing Hondurans who don't need to come north of the border.
	And I don't mind that they're employing local Vietnamese and probably paying taxes in Vietnam.
	That's okay with me.
	So, from this point on, I'm going to be, well, at least as long as China is involved with shipping fentanyl to this country, I will do what I can to reduce my exposure to their products.
	Now, before you say it, yes, I know that there are probably some number of Dilbert products printed in China, right?
	I don't know if this one is.
	Let me check. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.
	I don't know. It's probably written here somewhere.
	So I don't really know where this was printed.
	But let me tell you this.
	I don't make the printing decisions.
	So I make my deal with my comic syndication company.
	They make another deal with a publisher.
	The publisher makes another deal with a printer.
	So I'm several deals away from that.
	Now, what I recommend for everybody...
	Not just me, is that I don't recommend a hard decoupling.
	In other words, if you're already doing business there, you've already got a factory there, you've already got a contract, go ahead and run it out.
	But you don't have to do new business, and you don't have to buy their stuff if you have options.
	That's all I'm saying. It wouldn't take a lot of decoupling.
	Just a little bit of decoupling is going to be a big difference.
	Because remember, a GDP, if it goes up 3%, is amazing.
	So you don't have to have that much of an impact on another economy for it to really feel it.
	Let's talk about the Kingsman video outrage.
	I believe it's time to do outrage theater.
	The story is that some supporters of President Trump held an event at the Doral Golf Club owned by the president.
	And it was, I don't know if it was just supporters.
	The president wasn't there. It was just supporters used that space.
	And they showed a loop of some memes videos.
	And one of the numerous memes was this one that was a takeoff of a movie, The Kingsman.
	In which there's a super bloody scene where the star of the movie shoots a lot of people up close, you know, puts the gun to their head one after another and just shoots dozens and dozens of people and stabs them in creative ways.
	And the meme maker, I'm not sure exactly who made this one, We replaced the heads of the people being killed with logos for the various networks, and then there were some celebrities, such as Rosie O'Donnell and Kathy Griffin.
	Now, and then the person doing the killing was superimposed.
	Trump's head was superimposed on that character.
	So it looked as though Trump was killing all of his media enemies and celebrity enemies.
	Now, what do you think was the response to that video?
	Outrage theater!
	Well, this is no good. It's too square.
	It needs to be ruffled, more ruffled.
	Let me fix this.
	Perfect. Outrage theater!
	I am so outraged because of a video.
	The video makes me outraged.
	There are many things happening in the world today, in Syria, in Hong Kong, in Africa, in all kinds of places.
	But, boy, am I outraged about a video.
	It's a video, and I'm outraged.
	I'm outraged! I'm outraged!
	Ah! Bah! Bah!
	And scene. At some point, can we stop pretending anybody really cares about this little stuff?
	Does anybody really care about that video?
	No, they do not.
	It's just a gotcha opportunity where one side can say, ah, I gotcha.
	I gotcha this time.
	You'll never get away from my mocking of your badness for your video.
	It's so bad.
	What's the funniest thing about it?
	The funniest thing about it is that Kathy Griffin complained.
	That it might spark violence against her and people like her, I suppose, meaning critics of the president, because it shows violence against critics of the president.
	And that looks like it's condoning or encouraging, at least for crazy people.
	Now, here's my problem.
	You might remember that I took a very unpopular stand some time ago, a couple years ago, When Kathy Griffin got called out for holding the severed head of the president, not a real one, the president is still alive, for a photograph.
	And the world blew up.
	And what did a lot of people say?
	Oh, I'm outraged!
	I'm outraged! I'm so outraged about Kathy Griffin's holding a severed head of the president.
	I'm so outraged! Can't seem.
	So, there was fake outrage about Kathy Griffin.
	And now Kathy Griffin's giving some fake outrage back.
	But there is a kernel of some truth there, which is if we do act as though violence against our political nemeses is somehow funny and entertaining, I can see how somewhere there's somebody who's crazy enough to think, well, there's the green light.
	I guess I'll go do some violence.
	And of course, you know, this...
	This triggers a lot of people on the right to show videos of Antifa being violent against Trump supporters, etc.
	But mostly this is just political outrage theater.
	But the Kathy Griffin thing, I can't get past it.
	There's only one person in the whole world who doesn't get to complain about the Kingsman video.
	Only one.
	It's Kathy Griffin. If Rosie O'Donnell complains about it, because she's also in it, I'd say, oh, it's a good point, Rosie.
	You know, it's not the biggest problem in the world, but I think you're right, Rosie.
	You complaining about being in that video, showing people on your team being murdered, I can see why you'd be worried about that.
	And I will even join you, Rosie.
	Rosie O'Donnell, I will join you and say that that video should be...
	Which is, say, disavowed.
	And I would prefer that it not run anymore.
	I would also be on the team of saying, okay, I get that the creator was making a certain kind of content for a certain kind of consumer who probably enjoyed it and didn't take it seriously at all.
	I don't take it seriously at all.
	But I can see why maybe the world's better off without it.
	So if Rosie O'Donnell complained about that, I'd say, you know, Rosie?
	I have not agreed with you on much, but I think we could find common ground on that video.
	That's a little too far.
	But I defended Kathy Griffin for showing that joke picture of a severed head.
	Even though...
	It clearly encourages people to be violent against Trump supporters.
	Again, in a very small way, not an average person with an average brain.
	They know it's just a joke.
	But maybe, maybe there are some people on the fringe who are just saying, well...
	If Kathy Griffin shows a severed head, maybe people think violence against Trump supporters is okay.
	So you can make an argument that maybe in some small way it made the world worse that Kathy Griffin held up a head.
	But I defended her on creative and humor grounds based on the fact that it was funny, it got attention, wasn't meant to be violent, wasn't meant to cause violence.
	It wasn't that at all.
	But now she's complaining about the same thing from the other side.
	What is the functional moral difference between what Kathy Griffin did with her severed head, which I defended, and what the Kingsman video did with their video?
	What's the functional difference?
	I don't see one.
	Do you? I mean, they're not exactly the same thing, but functionally they're the same thing.
	So... Let me revise what I said.
	I said there's one person in the world who does not have a moral right to complain about that Kingsman video.
	There are actually two.
	I'm the other one.
	Because I also gave a pass to Kathy Griffin for her severed head.
	So I'm going to give the same pass to the Kingsman video people and the people who showed it, which is not the choice I would have made, not the video I would have made, But it was in a creative sense it was being made.
	In other words, there was somebody who was an artist, a meme artist in this case, but that's a legitimate art in my opinion.
	There was an artist who did a piece of art and some people didn't like it.
	If you take it beyond that, I think you're not doing a service to society.
	So Kathy Griffin and I are in the same boat.
	We're the two people who should not be complaining about that video.
	But at the same time, I wouldn't have done it.
	I think the world is better without it.
	All right. Let's talk about...
	Let's talk about Syria and the Kurds.
	I've warned you repeatedly that the fog of war makes everything that you hear about this story unreliable.
	So for the first, I don't know how long it's going to last, but we're certainly still in the fog of war.
	We don't really know what's going on over there.
	And if we're being rational, we don't know if the president made the right decision or the wrong decision.
	Why do I say that?
	Because we don't know the outcome yet.
	We know the initial outcome.
	At least we have reporting that there are Kurds dying that we wish were not dying, and we know Turkey is attacked, etc.
	So there are facts we know, or at least in a very general way we know that that sort of stuff is going on over there.
	But we don't know how it's going to shake out.
	Because that's just day one stuff.
	We just don't know how it'll shake out.
	So if you have a strong opinion that this is the best thing in the world, or the worst thing in the world, and I'm talking about moving the U.S. troops out of Syria, if you have a strong opinion on it, I don't think it's warranted.
	I think it's a wait and see.
	That's the way it looks to me.
	Now, if you're telling me that these short-term ramifications look terrible, I would say to you, yeah, it looks that way to me.
	But does that tell you that it was a bad decision?
	Not even close, because the decision was not meant to solve a short-term problem.
	It was a long-term decision, of which we've seen only the first few days impact, which don't really mean much if you're looking at a 100-year decision.
	So as tragic as it is, I don't want to minimize the tragedy because it looks like it's pretty dire over there.
	So I'm not minimizing that at all.
	I'm just saying that countries make long-term decisions, they don't make short-term decisions, or at least they shouldn't.
	So we don't really know how this will work out, but we're starting to see some things shape up.
	Here's the first thing you should know.
	Have you seen all the reporting about the members of ISIS escaping?
	Do you believe those reports?
	Do you believe the initial reports about ISIS escaping?
	If you do you shouldn't.
	You shouldn't believe them.
	Let's say you're the Kurds.
	If you were the Kurds And the U.S. just pulled its troops out.
	What's the first fake news that you would create?
	The first fake news you would create is that ISIS is getting away, and it's all your fault, right?
	Now, I'm not saying that ISIS isn't getting away, because I don't know.
	I'm not there. I'm not watching.
	All we know are the reports.
	What fake news could you guarantee with 100% certainty would come out of that war zone right away?
	So whether or not there are any ISIS people being released from prisons or escaping from prisons, regardless of the truth of what's happening there, would it also not be true that there's a 100% chance the Kurds would say it's happening?
	Yes. There's a 100% chance the Kurds would say it's happening, even if it's not happening.
	Now, is it happening?
	Let's talk about whether it's happening.
	Well, here are the reports that I've seen.
	Members of ISIS have escaped.
	And then you read further, and it's family members of ISIS have escaped.
	So in other words, the reports that I've seen, and maybe you've seen other ones, because again, this is all fog of war stuff.
	The reports I've seen said that the family members of ISIS, who would also be ISIS, but they're You know, mothers, daughters, brothers who weren't fighting, that sort of thing.
	Grandpa, the kids.
	So there's some word that the family members of ISIS escaped.
	To which I ask you, why were the family members in prison?
	Why were the family members in prison?
	And were they going to just stay in prison forever?
	Is it a life sentence to be related to somebody who was in ISIS? Do you remember when President Trump said he was going to kill the family members of terrorists over in the Middle East?
	What did everybody say?
	My God, you can't kill the family members.
	You can kill the combatants all you want, but you can't kill the family members.
	What kind of monster are you?
	What exactly is happening over there right now?
	Are not the family members in prison camps forever for just being related?
	Isn't that exactly what's happening?
	What the President said and then he had to disavow and then everybody said that would be way too far?
	Are we supporting Kurds who have put in prison camps, or at least guarding the prison camps, of family members?
	I don't know. That's just an open question.
	I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't or they shouldn't be in prison.
	I'm not even saying that ISIS family members should not be in prison.
	I don't know. Because I don't know.
	I would have to know a lot more what it means to be a family member.
	So I would consider myself too ignorant to have a good opinion on that.
	But I think you have to ask the question.
	Are they family members escaping?
	Or are they combatants?
	Now, I've heard reports also that none of the combatants have escaped.
	Remember I said before that if you were the Kurds and you'd done all that sacrifice to beat ISIS and you had them in prison, if there were any chance that they would escape, the actual combatants, I'm not talking about family members now, but the actual combatants, the ISIS fighters, don't you think you'd kill them in prison?
	If you thought there was any chance they'd get out, wouldn't that be the last thing you did before the Turks overran your position?
	You'd kind of kill them in prison.
	Because the last thing you want is for them to get out.
	And I would argue that if there's a risk of them getting out of prison, and that risk looks very high, and you know that the moment they got out they would try to kill you, I don't know.
	Maybe you can kill them in prison.
	I'm not even sure that that would be necessarily a war crime if you knew that they were going to kill you any minute unless you killed them first.
	I don't know how that works.
	I guess it would depend on the specifics.
	But watch for the illegitimate news, the very illegitimate news, to conflate.
	Watch for this today.
	Watch how they conflate.
	Some family members of ISIS have escaped.
	Which may or may not be a big deal versus actual militant combatants have escaped.
	Look for that distinction because the news isn't making that distinction and I feel like that's a big deal.
	Alright, now the other thing we're seeing is that the news is that the Kurds have made a hasty deal with the Russians and Syrians so that the Russians and Syrians will come in and push the Turks back to Turkey.
	Which some would say would make the whole war there a waste because then the U.S. is gone and ISIS can reconstitute and all that.
	But here's the question I ask you.
	How much reconstituting is ISIS going to do as long as the Russian military and Assad are in power in Syria?
	And the Turks are just as interested in making ISIS go away at this point, I would think.
	I think Turkey was instrumental in arming them in the first place, but at this point I don't think Turkey wants any more ISIS. I could be wrong about that.
	So there's at least one school of thought that says that by the U.S. leaving, We force them to reach a new balancing point that had to happen.
	So as long as we were there, there was an artificial balance that could never be a permanent, stable situation.
	By pulling us out, all hell breaks loose.
	But fairly quickly, that all hell breaks loose Might turn into a stable situation, and maybe that's good for the long run.
	Now, the stable situation would be that the Russians and the Syrians with Assad as their somewhat leader...
	I'm not even sure Assad is in charge in Syria, are you?
	Is Assad just a Russian puppet at this point?
	I don't know exactly how that relationship works.
	I'm not sure anybody does.
	But... I don't What Turkey wanted, now here's the other angle that I'm not seeing discussed.
	What Turkey wanted, at least partly, maybe it was all they wanted, but one of their big goals was to repatriate or move back 2 million Syrians who were displaced by the war and came to Turkey for safety.
	Turkey wants to relocate them back in Syria.
	To which I say, that's a pretty good goal, isn't it?
	Wouldn't it be a worthy goal for Turkey to move Syrians back into their own country?
	What was preventing Turkey from moving Syrian refugees back into Syria?
	Am I wrong that it was the Kurds?
	Can somebody fact check me on this?
	Was it not the Kurds who believed they had carved down a little homeland for themselves in Syria?
	Were they not the problem?
	Preventing two million Syrians from going back to their own home?
	Fact check me on that.
	Somebody says, not the Kurds.
	But if it wasn't the Kurds, why is it that the Turks have to conquer the Kurds in order to move the refugees back?
	It's possible I'm missing some gigantic factual point here.
	So, here's my question.
	Why are we not talking about the Turks' moral authority to move refugees back to their own homes?
	Doesn't Turkey have a moral authority to do that?
	I mean, obviously they may be doing it for their own benefit, for their internal purposes, but doesn't it make sense from a moral standpoint that Turkey moving refugees back to where they came from and probably want to return...
	I don't know that that's bad.
	And what was preventing it from happening?
	Feels like it was the Kurds.
	Who's reporting on that?
	And again, am I just missing something?
	Because I might be missing something important here.
	But it seems to me the Kurds were a problem, even though they were allies.
	You can be both. It's a complicated place.
	You can be our best friends and our allies and still be the problem.
	There's nothing that would make that impossible.
	So, it looks like what's happening is that Syria and Russia are moving in and they're going to team up with the Kurds.
	Fingers crossed that doesn't turn out bad for the Kurds or anybody else.
	But, I don't know, it's a dangerous situation.
	But the idea is that then the Syrians, Russians, and Kurds working together might be able to repatriate those two million people because then they would be repatriated into friendly political territory, Syria.
	And as far as I know, I don't know that the ones who left were necessarily running from the Syrian government, were they?
	Or were the ones, the refugees, were they running from ISIS?
	Or were they just running from fighting in general?
	So there's so many things we don't know about the two million refugees and all that.
	So we're still in the fog of war.
	It's hard to have a firm opinion.
	But I would say that the way it's shaping up is that the early reporting is probably BS, meaning the ISIS escaping is probably family members and I'm not sure how much we care.
	If family members get out.
	And secondly, I don't know that this hasn't already led to the very best situation.
	It's possible that as of today, assuming that this Syrian Russian Kurdish agreement becomes productive, and assuming that Turkey can still repatriate its two million people, but they don't have to be an army to do it.
	They can just say, hey, Syria, Russia, Kurds, if you want to be in charge of that area, here's two million refugees.
	They're all yours. How does that work?
	So would Assad take them back?
	Is that even an option?
	And where did the Kurds get this homeland?
	Somebody says, you're fumbling through a genocide.
	Scott. Well, here's the thing.
	I don't know what that means, to say I'm fumbling through a genocide.
	I'm saying that it's a murky situation.
	Is whoever said that, do you have a clear picture of what's happening?
	Or did you just feel like coming in and saying something ugly?
	Is there somebody here who has a clear picture of all that's happening now and also everything that's going to happen?
	Because if you don't know what's going to happen...
	I don't know how close you are.
	Now, the other big question is, what do we owe the Kurds?
	Because we fought together against this common enemy, ISIS. Does that give us some obligation to the Kurds forever?
	Well, it depends how you look at it.
	If what happened was the Kurds helped us be our enemy...
	Then that's one framework in which you say, oh, we owe those Kurds.
	They helped us. We are loyal to you forever.
	But is that what happened?
	It's not like we hired them as mercenaries and they were fighting a war that only helped us.
	It looks more to me like we helped the Kurds in a problem that was much bigger for them.
	Meaning that the Kurds had an ISIS problem in their territory.
	I mean, their neighborhood.
	And we help them eliminate ISIS from their neighborhood.
	Don't the Kurds owe us?
	Isn't that the way it works?
	We armed the Kurds, we fought, we died to get rid of the risk that was far more of a risk in their neighborhood than it was to us.
	It was a risk to us, but not nearly as much as it was to them.
	Don't the Kurds owe us?
	Now, I'm saying that just to be provocative.
	I don't think they owe us.
	But what I'm saying is that being on the same team for a limited engagement doesn't make you bound to each other forever in other ways.
	For example, have you heard of World War II? It was a big thing.
	It was in the news. There was this thing called World War II in which the United States teamed up with Stalin.
	Stalin was on our team.
	So it was the United States and Stalin beating the Nazis.
	Now, did that make us indebted to Stalin forever?
	No. We were just on the same team fighting the same enemy for a while and then it was over.
	And the Kurds seems more like that to me.
	There are no analogies that are perfect.
	So if anybody's looking for the error in the analogy, I get it, I get it.
	Analogies are not exactly the same, blah, blah, blah.
	I'm just making the case that it is not automatic, that because you fought on the same side for a while, that either of you owe each other anything after it's done.
	After it's done, the reason that you were doing it is done.
	And then it's a new decision.
	Have you ever heard of the concept of a sunk cost?
	If you haven't, you should read LoserThink.
	Because there are some things that once you've spent it, once somebody is already dead, once your money is already spent, you can't go back in history and fix it.
	You have to make each decision today based on what today looks like going forward.
	If you make your decision today, you say, okay, the fighting with the Kurds is yesterday.
	We did that and now it's done.
	Now what decision do we make today based on today's variables?
	Today's variables say, perhaps we did what we wanted to do.
	We're not a police force.
	The locals are in the best position to keep ISIS tamped down.
	It's time to leave.
	That's the decision you would make if you understood how sunk costs work.
	The things we've already done with the Turks was great, but it's also already done.
	We did not ever make them any kind of a deal for permanent protection.
	It was never an agreement.
	We never voted on it.
	Congress never said yes.
	I don't even think it was implied.
	It was maybe expected by them.
	It was maybe desired.
	Well, certainly desired. But I don't think we made any kind of commitment like that to say we will stay with you forever and we will protect you against all forces no matter what they are, even if they're NATO. I don't believe we ever made that commitment.
	So if you want to learn how to think about sunk costs, And other ways to look at the world that just allow you to look at it the way other people would look at it.
	You don't even have to say this is the one way to look at it.
	But my book that you can pre-order now, and I wish you would, because it'll be available November 5th.
	But pre-orders help me a lot because it boosts the sales in the beginning and then it gets on the bestseller list and that becomes self-sustaining.
	So it helps me a lot if you pre-order from Amazon or any place you pre-order books.
	And that's one of the topics.
	One of the topics is knowing how to separate the past and call that a sunk cost as a concept from economics.
	But the book teaches you simple concepts like that Some costs would just be one tiny part of the book.
	But it teaches you a number of thinking techniques across different disciplines that are just as easy to pick up as that one is.
	So let me ask you this.
	Do you think ISIS is happy that the Russians and the Syrians look like they're going to take full control of Syria back?
	I don't know that ISIS is happy about that.
	Because whatever we were willing to do to ISIS, and it was pretty bad, I'm pretty sure the Russians are willing to do even more.
	So, I don't know.
	We'll see how that goes. The thing I'm wondering now is whether or not Turkey will require a safe zone on the border.
	If the Russians and the Syrians effectively occupied that land that the Kurds were holding, With our help, if they effectively occupy that, that would get rid of the safe zone.
	And is Turkey okay with having no safe zone?
	Because I think part of it was to keep the bad guys from crossing their border, right?
	So I don't know if Turkey has a way to stand down.
	Maybe they do. Maybe Turkey can just say, okay, Russia, Syria, if you're going to take care of this, just stay on your side of the border and we'll stay on our side.
	Maybe. I don't know.
	Matt Taibbi wrote that great article, I think I talked about it yesterday, in which he characterized the deep state actions against the president as a permanent coup.
	One that is happening right in front of us.
	And what is interesting about Matt Tybee's piece, and people were confused why I recommended it so highly, because he said some bad things about President Trump.
	And people said, I can't stand this writer.
	He lost all of his credibility because he said bad things about Trump.
	But that's actually why he has credibility.
	Because he's not a Trump supporter, he's very much not a Trump supporter, and says so in clear language, and at the same time says, it can also be true that there is a coup happening right in front of us.
	I haven't seen anybody do that before.
	I don't know that I've seen anybody who's a legitimate...
	You know, somebody who's well-informed and has a public platform who would say, you know, it's true.
	The president's got these flaws and I wish he had not been elected.
	But at the same time, I'm not blind.
	There is a coup happening.
	And what Matt Tybee said is that no matter what you think of the president, there's no way that the coup isn't the bigger problem.
	Because the coup is actually replacing the form of government in the country that keeps the entire planet stable.
	It effectively makes the The panopticon, if you will, makes the intelligence services in charge.
	And the way Taibbi, I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly or close, the way he describes it is also the way I see it and most of you see it.
	You see that there's some unholy alliance between current and past intelligence and law enforcement folks and the media.
	You can see, for example, NBC. It's been widely reported.
	NBC is essentially an organ of the CIA. Now, by the way, if you didn't already know that, you probably said to yourself, Scott, whoa, you jumped the shark.
	I was with you because a lot of the things you said sounded reasonable.
	You sounded like you're sane.
	But you just said that NBC is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA and that can't be true.
	Well, look it up.
	Turns out that's one of the most well-documented things in the news.
	Glenn Greenwald writes about this.
	And not only is it true, it's demonstrated.
	It's as true as anything could possibly be true.
	There's nothing more true than that.
	This is not like Russia collusion.
	It's not like conspiracy theories.
	This is one that pretty much everybody understands if they're paying attention.
	So, and that's why, you know, you see Brennan and Clapper on certain outlets, but not others.
	Brennan is always an NBC or MSNBC person, I guess.
	So Matt Tybee calls it out that we have a coup that's in progress.
	It's clearly a coup.
	And it's far more dangerous than whatever President Trump might do with all of his impulsiveness, etc.
	So, Naval Ravikant, who I mention often, smartest person in the world, in my opinion, he tweeted this.
	He said, I still don't see how the unarmed half of the country is going to overthrow the candidate elected by the armed half of the country.
	So, it was a provocative tweet that there's a slow-motion coup happening, and It looks like the unarmed half of the country is somehow going to overthrow the armed half.
	And so Naval reasonably asked, how the heck is that going to work?
	And so I answered by tweet.
	And my answer was this, by convincing them it didn't happen.
	What you're watching is the first coup by hypnosis.
	Let that sink in.
	You're watching a coup By hypnosis.
	And by hypnosis, I like to use the more provocative word for persuasion and influence and dirty tricks and all that.
	But in effect, not in effect, quite literally, it appears, all evidence suggests, that the media and the intelligence folks, the Democrats, the people who are sort of loosely affiliated in the anti-Trump world, Are running a coup that is made partially invisible through psychological tricks.
	Now those psychological tricks are obvious to some of us.
	Those people who sort of study these things can see it like you're reading it from a book.
	But those of you who are not steeped in the ways of persuasion, it would be invisible to you.
	For example...
	You do understand that half of the world thinks that the president has already done such fraudulent and criminal things that it's obvious he should be removed and jailed.
	Half of the world has been hypnotized into thinking that the president has committed actual crimes that are not only numerous, but proven, and that it's just right there and you can see it.
	Now, I don't know how they explain the fact that he's still in office and there doesn't seem to be any legal action against him, other than maybe they're waiting for him to get out of office or something.
	But something like half of the country has been hypnotized into believing that the president has already committed crimes worthy of impeachment and that they can see them.
	This is the funny part.
	That they can see them.
	And if you ask them, well, I can't see them.
	Can you give me an example?
	You get crazy shit.
	Okay, I was doing this yesterday with, I won't name names, but let's say a prominent person was debating me yesterday privately and saying that it was obvious that President Trump was going down for his various financial fraudulent dealings.
	And so I asked for an example.
	And the examples given were what-if examples.
	What if we see in his taxes a problem?
	What? What if the impeachment process allows somebody to find out something about some money laundering or something he's alleged to have done?
	What if he didn't account on his taxes in a certain way?
	That would be illegal. To which I say, I'm pretty sure you can what-if anybody into jail.
	What if you murder somebody tomorrow?
	What if your house is not really yours and you stole it?
	What if a lion comes into your room and kills you?
	Well, you can what-if anything.
	If that's the best you have, but you're believing that the what-if is the same as facts, You're in some kind of a hypnotized bubble reality where the deep state does hypnotize you.
	You're actually seeing stuff that isn't there.
	Let me give you my best example.
	The hypnosis is always more clear when you're dealing with somebody who is, under normal circumstances, very rational.
	And that's why Fareed Zakaria is a perfect example.
	Now, I've been watching Fareed's content, mostly on CNN, for years, and I'm a big fan.
	So Fareed Zakaria is very well informed, very good at his job, very smart, and I would regard him as one of the more rational players in the public eye.
	Very rational guy.
	I'm going to paraphrase, so I hope I don't get this wrong, because I promise I'm not trying to misinterpret him to get some kind of political point.
	I think this is a fair statement of his opinion, in part.
	He was saying that he had been against impeachment to the president, or against the impeachment process, up until recently.
	And one of the main things that changed his mind...
	Just wait for this. And remember, I'm pointing out Fareed because he's so rational.
	Super rational, proven intellect.
	Okay? And he said this.
	I think I've got this right.
	If I'm misinterpreting him, I will be happy to apologize if anybody points it out.
	But I think this is what he said.
	He said that the problem is that the impeachment inquiry that's going on, the president is resisting.
	And that it's the resisting of that That makes it an impeachable situation.
	To which I say, the impeachment thing is illegitimate.
	The president knows it's illegitimate.
	And here's the best part.
	His resistance is completely within the legal framework.
	In other words, he's resisting.
	They're making a legal argument.
	The legal argument will be taken to various courts, and then those courts will decide.
	All evidence from this president is if the court decides that he has to do something, he's going to do it.
	There is no history to suggest that the administration will do anything except follow what the courts tell him to do.
	So here's this hyper-rational guy.
	And again, I mean this completely seriously.
	Fareed Zakaria is a serious intellectual force and very credible in general.
	But he actually said in public, like it made sense...
	That the president using ordinary legal mechanisms, obeying the law in the sense of following the legal process, and resisting what is clearly an illegitimate impeachment process that is only for political purposes, that somehow that resistance is the evidence why he should be impeached.
	Now, for those of you who are not hypnotized, does that make any sense to you?
	That is not what rational people say.
	It's not the opinion of somebody whose brain is working independent of influence.
	He's got a very strong brain, and I think, this is just my impression, you know, I'm not a mind reader, but I believe that his intentions are to be accurate and fair.
	I don't believe he's saying this just to make a political point.
	I think that he believed when he said that the president has crossed the line into impeachment territory by resisting through normal legal means, totally appropriate legal means, participating in a witch hunt.
	Is that a real opinion?
	Seriously? Now, if you are not a trained hypnotist, and most of you are not, but I am, one of the things you learn is cognitive dissonance.
	And unlike those of you who have just sort of read about it, you know it exists, you know that people have it, hypnotists learn to spot it more regularly.
	In other words, our framework has cognitive dissonance so built into it that we see it everywhere.
	You know, maybe we see it too much.
	But to me, this is just a classic example.
	Because I believe that Fareed probably saw this as an entirely rational thing to say.
	But when I see it, because I'm not rabidly anti-Trump, I look at it and I say, that doesn't make any sense at all.
	Resisting a witch hunt, using completely legal, normal process in the courts, It's nothing.
	It's literally nothing.
	There's nothing there.
	And yet he's decided that would be reason enough to overthrow an election.
	I mean, how do you get there?
	Except being hypnotized.
	So, and again, I use the word hypnosis.
	My digital assistant is listening to me.
	So, to get back to Naval's point, how can the unarmed half of the country overthrow the armed half?
	And the way that they'll do it is by making the country think it didn't happen.
	The intelligence agencies are experts at this stuff.
	The reason that people are experts at intelligence is because they understand how to hide things, how to fool things, how to fake things, how to have secret identities, how to sneak around.
	All of the things you learn to be an intelligence professional would teach you how to hypnotize the public.
	And it looks like...
	No, I won't say it looks like.
	This is what's happening.
	Statement of fact. There are members within the government and the media who do work together.
	We all agree, that's a fact, right?
	We know that the intelligence people are not, at least some number of active ones and retired ones, are not fans of the president.
	And we can observe right in front of us that they have created something out of nothing.
	They have created a hypnosis system Persuasion reality, which they're trying to fit into people's heads, and if they do, they will have achieved a bloodless coup.
	And they're actually making a really good attempt at it.
	Let me ask you this, to put this in perspective.
	One of the biggest stories, and what everybody's talking about, is the Ukrainian phone call that the president made.
	And here's... Let me give you a thought experiment.
	Imagine a world... Just an artificial world in which there's a person who has never followed the news, has never seen the news pro-Trump, never seen the news anti-Trump.
	And yet they understand, you know, what a president is and they know how the system works and everything.
	But for some weird reason, they have never watched a single news coverage.
	Okay? And then you take to that person this story.
	You say, so the president was on a phone call with the head of Ukraine.
	There were some reasons to suspect that the guy who's polling first to be president in the next election might have some serious financial conflicts of interest, which would make it very dangerous to be president.
	So the president talked to the president of Ukraine and said, can you help me out?
	With this investigation of this fellow who looks like he obviously has some connections that would be a problem if he were elected.
	And, by the way, just some background, we have a treaty with Ukraine for investigations, and while it would be maybe more appropriate that this sort of thing is handled at the staff level, in other words, the FBI is the right entity, for example, it's good if the leaders talk, and so the leaders were queuing it up, To make it easier for the underlings to do what they needed to do.
	So in this thought experiment, I've just described this to someone who's never watched the news.
	They've never seen the CNN. They've never seen Fox.
	What do they say about the phone call?
	Do they say that president is a traitor and he sold out the country for political gain?
	Nope. No, they don't.
	Probably never. I'll bet you could have a thousand people in a row and not one out of a thousand would hear that story the way I just described it and say, you know, that guy, you know, you didn't mention this, but it's obvious from the story that the president's a big old traitor and he's selling out the country for political gain.
	Nobody would have that interpretation.
	Everybody, I believe 100% of people who had not been exposed to the hypnosis of the news, if they had not been exposed to that, would have just heard the story and say, yeah, alright.
	And then let's say you said, okay, but I don't want to bias the experiment.
	I will tell you, Some people don't think it's right for the president to ask a foreign power to do something that could have an effect on the election.
	Now what do you think about it? And again, this is somebody who's never had any exposure to the news, no pundit, no opinion whatsoever.
	What would they say about it? They might say, yeah, I can see it.
	I can see their point.
	How important is it?
	Important? It was a phone call.
	It's not important. Yeah, I can see why some people are saying you shouldn't do that, but it's definitely not important.
	And by the way, it was also his job.
	Yeah, I can see. It's just not important.
	Do you think you could get one person to say that the president should be impeached if you could describe that situation to them without the pundits telling people what to think?
	Now, I've been telling you this for a long time.
	The public does not form opinions on politics.
	The public does not form opinions.
	Their opinions are assigned to them.
	You can tell because you just go on social media and all the opinions are the ones you just saw on the news.
	Almost never do you see somebody with a unique opinion.
	That's why Matt Taibbi stands out.
	The reason that I tweeted that around is not because I agreed with the opinion, because he said some things about Trump that I would not agree with, and some predictions that I wouldn't agree with.
	What was unique about it is that you hadn't seen that opinion before.
	Matt Tybee had maybe the first opinion you've ever seen that wasn't assigned to him.
	Think about it. Matt Taibbi wrote a public opinion piece in which, as far as I can tell, he might be the only person whose opinion was not assigned to him by the media.
	Here's another one, Glenn Greenwald.
	There are things that Glenn Greenwald says that I just don't like at all, don't agree with.
	So he and I are not philosophically compatible.
	I'm not a fan in terms of his opinions.
	But I'm a big fan in terms of his credibility.
	Because he has opinions that you just don't see anywhere else.
	Because he's willing to say, hey, maybe both sides are bad.
	How about that? You just don't see that.
	A little bit similar to Matt Taibbi's opinion.
	So, keep in mind...
	That you have a situation in which the intelligence agencies with all of their training and persuasion are working with the media and all of their platforms for persuasion and that collectively they're creating a hypnosis-based reality that is sucking more and more people into it such as Fareed Zakaria and they're buying into an artificial view of the world that is so strong that they could take over the country In a bloodless coup,
	completely believing things that aren't true.
	And that appears to be the situation.
	That appears to be the situation as far as I can tell.
	So my best, to the degree that I could be objective, my best objective opinion is that you're seeing a permanent coup situation in which people who have way too much ability The intelligence people plus the media, they have a lot of ability to form opinion.
	They're using that to do what guns used to do.
	So that's the situation.
	All right. There's some breaking news that Hunter Biden is stepping down from the board of a Chinese company.
	Now, you can imagine what the pundits said about that.
	Was it Brit Hume who said it best?
	I wasn't doing anything wrong and I'm going to stop doing it right away.
	Somebody said, but why?
	If it was never wrong, why do you have to step down?
	Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
	If it was ever appropriate, you shouldn't have stepped down.
	But... If it was always inappropriate, well, thanks for finally admitting it and stepping down.
	So there was no way for him to win.
	He couldn't stay there and he couldn't step down.
	He had two bad decisions.
	Maybe stepping down was the less bad of the bad decisions.
	So that's interesting.
	I think it's hilarious that one of the effects of this election is that Trump will cause Hunter Biden's income to go way down.
	I mean, think about how much money Hunter Biden is going to lose because Trump is after him.
	It's going to be a lot.
	I mean, millions. I mean, Hunter Biden's entire lifestyle is probably just completely rearranged now because however rich he thought he was going to be, well, maybe not so much now.
	Oh, I'm seeing the hashtags here.
	So I understand that Project Veritas is teasing that there's some video coming out from inside CNN. Is it out yet?
	I have not seen the news on that, so sometime today we're gonna see that.
	Can anybody give me an update in the comments?
	Has Project Veritas dropped yet?
	So we'll all be looking forward to that.
	The slaughter meter. The slaughter meter is at 100% unless the deep state and the media working together accomplish their coup ahead of time.
	Let me ask you this. 18 months before an election, how much do you really need an impeachment?
	Do you really need that?
	Can you have any credibility if you're trying to impeach somebody while there's an election on?
	It would be one thing To impeach somebody the day they got elected for their second term.
	Because then, you know, maybe you could save three or four years of whatever badness you're trying to avoid.
	But if you're trying to impeach somebody while we're in the, you know, we're starting to heat up for the actual election, there's no way to, that can't be supported.
	The only way you can support that is to prove somehow that the president is in an immediate danger.
	That leaving him in there one more minute would be bad.
	So if you can even get him out of there a few weeks early before the end of his term, that would help.
	Unless you can make the case that the danger is immediate, there is no question that it's political.
	And if you've bought into any of the things they're saying about the president's behavior that is clearly insane and illegal, according to the hypnotists, Well, ask yourself if that's an independent opinion.
	Because it's not.
	You've been assigned that opinion.
	All right. That's about all I've got for now.
	Did I miss anything?
	Somebody says they're not trying to impeach, they're trying to influence elections.
	Yeah, well, I think they're trying to do whichever they can get away with.
	So if they could impeach, they would.
	If all they can do is influence the election, they will.
	And that's all we got.
	Somebody says, how do we stop the coup?
	Well, that's a good question.
	You could vote for Trump.
	That would probably do it.
	You know, assuming that the Senate is not willing to go along with the coup, and think about it, the Senate is the only thing protecting us from a coup.
	That's it. If not for a Republican majority in the Senate, the coup would have already worked.
	Think about that.
	If you didn't have a Republican majority in the Senate, the coup would have already worked.
	They would have already removed the president.
	That's mind-boggling.
	For nothing.
	The hypnotists and the coup plotters would have already removed the president, except for a Republican majority in the Senate.
	That's just mind-boggling.
	All right. Somebody asked for a WenHub update.
	I'll give you that in a bit.
	I'm working on some stuff here that maybe will be worth talking about real soon.
	Mockery is probably the best approach.
	I don't know. I don't know if mockery will get them off base.
	Any predictions on the coup?
	Yeah, my prediction is that It will cause President Trump to win in a landslide.
	So, I believe that between now and Election Day, the coup masters will be sufficiently unmasked that people are going to be really angry that they fell for one coup.
	Fell for one scam after another.
	I mean, I don't know how people can look at the whole Russian collusion situation and come away from it thinking, well, it was a good try.
	Or, well, I think there was still something there.
	It just seems to me that even some Democrats, or at least independents, are going to say, you know, I think you've fooled us too many times.
	Uh... Who do they want to rule?
	Well, everybody wants to rule.
	All right. That's all I got for now, and I will talk to you all later.

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