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Dec. 13, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
41:56
Episode 755 Scott Adams: Brexit, Those Pesky Russians, Shampeachment
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Hey, Kevin.
Come on in here. Good to see you.
Everybody, come on in.
Come on.
It's time.
Hello, London. Enjoy your election there.
We'll be talking about you this morning, but not until we've enjoyed the unparalleled pleasure of this simultaneous sip.
We're going to do this international version of Simultaneously sipping across the pond.
That's right, Great Britain.
Join with us. And the rest of you countries, I know you're there all over the world.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, glass, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
You know what I like?
Yeah, coffee.
Join me now for this unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
You know it does.
A simultaneous sip.
Go! Well, so we got some news today.
It happens every day.
Seems like every time you wake up, look, there's news.
So Great Britain had a little vote and decided that Boris Johnson and his party, the Conservatives, would rule the day and therefore they would get Brexit done in a few months.
And what do people say about that?
They say... My God, even Joe Biden is saying it's evidence that the far left can't win.
So even Democrats are saying that there's a perfectly good reason why the guy who looks like the poor man's Donald Trump...
Literally. Boris Johnson is the poor man's Donald Trump.
And he wins, and even Joe Biden understands why.
Because his competition was too far left, just as Joe Biden's competition is too far left.
Apparently there's going to be some massive trade deal that the U.S. and Great Britain will do now that Brexit, or at least once Brexit is behind them.
And this brings up the question of code reuse.
Now, I'm not going to say this proves we're living in a simulation.
I'm just going to point it out for entertainment's sake.
Turns out that Glenn Simpson believes that maybe there was some Russian interference.
Glenn Simpson of...
Fusion GPS, also known for the Steele dossier, is actually saying this without any irony or embarrassment whatsoever, that Russia interfered with the election in the Great Britain.
And Hillary Clinton's saying the same thing.
Oh my God!
So somebody who reminds us of the poor man's Donald Trump, meaning Boris Johnson, has an election, and the same players are saying that Russia rigged the election.
Do you think that Russia wanted to rig an election to make Great Britain more economically sound?
Because I think that's what's going to happen.
I don't even know what to say about this.
This Glenn Simpson Russians influenced the election thing.
Because it's so...
I don't even know what the word is.
Is it absurd?
Coincidental? Is it the simulation?
Is it crazy?
Is it shameless? I don't know what this is.
I don't even have words to put on this.
It's just so weird.
But it exists. Every now and then, have you ever had this experience?
I'm going to make an analogy just for fun.
It's not for persuasion, just for fun.
You ever have this situation where you're sitting at a stoplight next to a bus and for whatever reason the bus next to you starts moving backwards a little bit and then it makes you slam on your brakes because it makes you feel like you're moving forward?
But it's only because the context changed.
It's one of those weird illusions of life.
You've all had that Well, there's an illusion that I've had a few times where I've got an app on my phone for watching the news.
Well, for watching TV, but I'm usually just watching the news.
And I'm flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox News and every once in a while MSNBC. Every now and then I'll have the following experience, where I'll think that I hit the Fox News icon,
but I really hit MSNBC or CNN, and I'll be sitting there listening to the news, thinking that it's Fox News, and I'll say to myself, what the hell's wrong with the news?
What am I hearing?
And Because it'll sound just batshit crazy.
And I'll say to myself, what happened to Fox News?
And then I'll look over and I'll realize that I accidentally hit the MSNBC button.
This happened this morning.
And I swear, I'm not making this up.
I thought I'd hit the Fox News button.
I'd accidentally hit MSNBC. And while I'm doing other things, I hear out of the I hear them asking about Trump's state of mind because of the impeachment.
And I thought to myself, state of mind What kind of craziness is this on Fox News that they're going to be doing mind reading and talking about what the internal thoughts of a stranger are?
That would be stupid.
How can Fox News do it?
Oh, it's MSNBC. And then I understood.
If you don't have anything good to report for your team, you write about mind reading and things that might happen in the future.
Because they can't be verified to be not true.
The problem with the Russia collusion problem is that when you look at the facts, it disappeared.
When you look at impeachment and you look at the criteria for impeachment, it disappears.
Facts do not work against Trump, apparently.
But what does work is imagining that you can see in his mind.
I've been waiting for this just for the humor element.
So the Trump administration passes this.
I don't know the technical details, but they had an anti-Semitism thing that they're pushing through.
And if you're Jewish or you're worried about anti-Semitism in any way, it's nothing but good.
Right? So the Jewish community wanted it.
Nobody really didn't want it too much.
There's some questions about freedom of speech, but basically it's an unambiguously positive thing in terms of a step against anti-Semitism.
And I thought to myself, how in the world is the fake news going to complain about an anti-Semitism Step that the administration makes.
How can you possibly complain about that?
Like, what possible thing could you say?
And it looks like they had to reach pretty deep, deeply into their bench to get somebody who was willing to say that it's really bad.
They found this guy, David Perry, to write an op-ed to say that he doesn't feel safer because of the anti-Semitism act.
And he gave reasons.
And here are the reasons.
Blah, blah, blah, batshit crazy.
I'm not even going to tell you the reasons because the reasons are just so stupid and desperate and hubris that they had to go so far into like a non-regular contributor, at least I haven't seen his name before, to find somebody who was willing to say, As a Jewish person, I'm guessing, to say that an anti-Semitism act wasn't helping.
Are you kidding?
You've got to really try hard to find out how that's bad.
Okay. Now, if he had been complaining about freedom of speech, there's a point to be made there, but not the way he did it.
All right. Lindsey Graham, as you know, is proposing that when the Senate gets the impeachment case, assuming that the House votes to impeach, the Senate takes it up next, and Lindsey Graham, very much in agreement with my opinion, might not ask any witnesses.
It might just say, let's just vote on it.
There's nothing else to say, it's a crock, and just vote it out of business.
I have said that that's brilliant, but it needs to be paired with a statement that is really, really brief and telling why the two articles of impeachment are not even applicable.
You know, that they're just ridiculous.
So, I haven't heard that the Republicans plan to do the brief statement, but I can imagine something like that will probably come out of it.
Now, some people have said, hey, hey, hey.
We want the Republicans to be able to call witnesses like Hunter Biden and Adam Schiff and all that, because we'll find out all this new stuff, and it'll be great for the Republicans.
Here's the problem, and here's why I agree with Lindsey Graham.
Once you've won the case, or made the sale, let's say, you don't want to keep selling.
You never want to keep selling after the close.
Have you ever heard that phrase? I use it once in a while.
Never sell past the close.
What that means is, let's say you're a salesperson, and you've convinced your buyer to buy, and the buyer says, okay, I'm going to buy this thing.
The moment the buyer says yes, Do not keep describing your product, because if you keep describing it, there's a non-zero chance you'll say something that will reverse the sale.
But if you just shut up, once you've got the yes, and you say, okay, is it going to be, you know, check your credit card, and you just work on the transaction, That's how you'd be trained as a salesperson.
I would argue that having watched the House grapple with the impeachment stuff, that in terms of the public and certainly the Republicans in the Senate, that the sale is already made.
They've already decided to vote against it because there's nothing there in their view, which I agree with.
But if they call witnesses, they introduce new variables, and they allow the other team, the fake news, to create new stories about it, and all it does is create possibilities for bad stuff to happen.
Sure, I know you want revenge.
I know you want to see Schiff squirming in front of the questioning.
But I believe that he can be brought up separately.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Adam Schiff could, if the Senate wanted to, or the House, I don't know how that works exactly.
But I'm sure they can call in witnesses for anything they want.
They just have to have a reasonably good predicate, I guess.
So Schiff could be still questioned in a separate process, but Lindsey Graham is 100% strategically lawyer correct.
He got it right strategically, because once you've won, just bank the win.
So that's smart.
Don't allow new variables in.
It's all good. So, Lindsey Graham, smart.
Those who say, let's keep this going because it makes the other team bad or we'll interview them and make them squirm.
Bad strategy.
Take the win. Take the win.
So, Lindsey Graham, smart.
Here's a question for you.
It's so easy for us to get all wound up with our brainwashing.
Now, I've described in the past patriotism and the feelings that you have for the country are largely the result of brainwashing.
But it's a productive and good brainwashing.
In other words, when you send your kid to first grade and your kid is taught to put his or her hand on the heart and do the Pledge of Allegiance and stand for the flag and all that stuff, this begins a long process of indoctrination and brainwashing.
In order to have a strong country, you need to have a sort of a strong, common core-based belief system that the country is good and it's worth protecting and you should die for it and all that.
So we do a really good job of brainwashing our citizens.
But that brainwashing lasts forever.
It doesn't go away.
When you're an adult, you're not less brainwashed.
You're the result of that brainwashing.
But you think that you're thinking independently.
You imagine that you have independent opinions, but nothing like that is happening.
So here's the provocative thing I want to put out there.
Your first reaction to this is going to be based on your brainwashing.
So you're going to have a really negative reaction to what I say next, but not because it's wrong, and not because you have a reason against it.
Just monitor this in your own mind.
Monitor how you have a strong negative reaction to it, and then separately, look how there are no reasons.
All right? Here it is.
Let's say Russia influenced our election.
Given that the election, and let's say it's a future election, so we don't even have to talk about 2016.
Let's just say Russia or any other country, doesn't have to be Russia, could be China or somebody else.
Let's say they do influence our election.
And because elections are always close, most of our elections are going to be close to 50-50 because people just vote the party.
But let's say that instead of one side winning by, let's say, 52% to 48%, let's say that there was outside interference and it reversed the result so that the winner had 48% of the vote and the loser actually had more votes, 52%. Is that a problem?
Here's the part you're going to hate.
It's not even slightly a problem.
It's not the smallest problem in the world.
It's no problem. It's not a trivial problem.
It's no problem at all.
Now, don't you reject that?
Isn't your brain saying...
Of course that's a problem.
Are you kidding me?
That means that Russia or China are basically in charge of our country.
They're the ones deciding who it is.
They're obviously going to pick the one that's good for them and bad for the United States.
It's terrible! Right?
Well, let me point out first of all the obvious thing that the person who got the least amount of votes actually won the election.
Do you have a problem with that?
No, because it's called the Electoral College and we've accepted that that's our standard.
So as long as the standard was met, you know, we're okay with the person with the fewer votes getting elected.
But let me tell you this.
No matter who was the one who had the 48 and no matter which side had the 52, reversing it still gets you to something like half of the people in the country happy with how it turned out.
If half of the people, roughly speaking, are happy about the result, no matter which way it goes, because it's close to 50-50, who cares?
Do you think that in an election in which the result is about 50-50, do you think that the people in either side really know which is good for the country?
Obviously not. We're just not that smart.
We're not smart enough to know that the person who just barely lost versus the person who just barely won, we're not smart enough to know which one of those would be a better president.
It wouldn't make any difference, at least in terms of predictability, it wouldn't make any difference.
It would make a difference in outcome, but not a predictable one.
So, here's the thing.
Of course, of course we should try as hard as we can to get rid of all foreign interference because we don't want the credibility of our elections to come into question.
I'm just telling you that in terms of the outcome, not that big a deal.
In terms of how it looks or feels or the credibility of the system, all that stuff's important and you need to, you know, drive that to zero.
But, As long as our elections for president are always something like 50-50, you can't really make a compelling argument that the one who barely lost is turned into the one who barely won that somehow that's destroying the republic.
Somebody says, oh God, it has nothing to do with this.
Well, why don't you tell me, Bankster News, what it has to do with it?
Because I just told you, it has to do with the credibility of the system, etc.
We all agree on that.
I'm only compartmentalizing for a moment and saying that you can't really tell if the country is worse off.
You can tell that your candidate didn't get elected.
You can tell you're unhappy if your candidate lost the election, but you can't necessarily tell that the world is better off or worse off.
All right, enough on that.
When you saw President Trump's tweet about Greta Thunberg, you've all seen it by now, in which he sort of gently mocked her and told her to chill out and she had some anger management issues, but it was a pretty gentle brushback.
I would call it gentle.
And that's appropriate because she's not an adult.
She just wouldn't have been right to go any harder at her.
Let's just put it that way. And how did the president's critics react?
Oh, pretty predictably.
Chris Silliza, big Trump critic on CNN, the headline of his article is, We should all be appalled by Trump's Greta Thunberg tweet.
Are you appalled?
It's funny, I don't feel appalled.
And I'm willing to say that if a Democrat had made a tweet against somebody who was maybe on the right, probably wouldn't be appalled.
If you're appalled by this, you need to seek help.
You need to maybe give some professional help if the president's gentle tweet about Greta Thunberg, who clearly can take a joke because she put the tweet into her profile immediately.
Now, some say that her handlers did that, but obviously she would have had to agree to it.
I don't know how this can bother you so much.
Now, and so Liz is making the point that it's not a partisan position that you should be appalled at the president's tweet.
It's a moral one.
It's a common sense one.
Now, that's weird because if it's common sense, why can't I see it?
If it's a moral position, why can't I see it?
Why is it invisible to me?
Isn't common sense supposed to be common?
If it's not common, it's not common sense.
I would think I would have most of the common stuff.
But to me, it just looked like good fun.
Honestly, it didn't look like anything but fun.
It looked like the president was having fun with a non-issue, which is, you know, who's Times Person of the Year has no importance to the world whatsoever.
So the president just has a little fun with it, and then Greta Thunberg has a little fun with his little fun.
Both of them get a little bit of attention.
Does Greta Thunberg like attention?
No. Well, I don't know if she likes it internally in terms of her mental cognition of it, but I know it's useful.
Every time the President of the United States talks about her, she becomes more important.
And then there was Patton Oswalt.
You probably all know Patton Oswalt, comedian.
Who tweeted, the president is a stupid a-hole, and if you voted for him, you're a stupid a-hole, and if you still support him, you're a stupid a-hole.
And then he wrote, oh no, this tweet is going to make all the stupid a-holes not like me.
Now, remember what I said about, I feel as though you could divide the world up in terms of how people think about Trump.
You... You imagine that it's broken up into people on the left and people on the right.
And you imagine that the people on the right like him and the people on the left don't.
But there's another filter on this that I don't think can be ignored.
And Pat Noswalt is a perfect example of it.
I think people who had been bullied as children have a really triggered feeling about Trump because he is a bully.
Now, he's the bully that half of the country hired with complete and full disclosure that they knew exactly what they were getting because the president offered to bully the people that his voters wanted to get bullied.
Other countries, China, ISIS, Democrats.
They basically signed up to have a bully do some bullying for them.
So, I think that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who have been bullies or, at best case, have not been affected by bullies, who are okay with it, because they just see a strong character who can do some strong things that they need.
But if you're Patton Oswalt, what are the chances that you were bullied as a child?
Pretty high, right?
Everybody who's not 6'4 and ripped with muscles has been bullied as a child.
Some worse than others, but I swear it just looks like a psychological problem.
Now, somebody said my wife calls him a bully.
I would say also that in addition to bullying in the male-to-male way, There's sort of a perpetual problem that all women have.
If you're a woman, you can't walk outside without some male concern.
In other words, you're going to get whistled at, you're going to be approached, it's dangerous.
Just being a woman in the world is sort of a tough situation.
So it's not exactly like bullying, but you certainly have had the experience, if you're a woman, I would imagine this is close to universal, you have the experience of, let's say, I don't want to say powerful men because that makes it sound like it's a positive in some way, but men who have bad intentions and act bad.
So whether you would call that bullying or sexual harassment or whatever else, it feels the same probably.
So I really think that explains so much of what we think is politics because it's so attenuated and of what seems like normal behavior.
Some of it, of course, or a lot of it is the fake news, getting people worked up.
Now let's talk about China. The president has tweeted that there's some kind of a positive movement on China trade deal.
The leak has something to do with $50 billion of agricultural purchases from China, and maybe they'll tighten up on their stealing of intellectual property.
Now, that wouldn't be a complete trade deal.
There are other thorny issues, including financial, etc.
And... Here are a few thoughts.
Number one, let's say that this so-called phase one gets done.
This one's sort of trivial in the sense that it's the easy stuff.
You know, it's the thornier issues they're holding out.
But it certainly makes sense to me that if we have ongoing relationships with them, That aren't going to change right away, that we should optimize them.
So it makes sense that if we're already doing this kind of business with China, that we would want the best deal we could have to do more of this kind of business.
At the same time, I think decoupling is happening.
And what I mean by that is that it would be kind of crazy to make new business with China if you're not already trapped into it.
So Jim Cramer has said it directly now, that our economy is so strong that we can walk away from China.
Steve Bannon has said it.
I say it. Kyle Bass says it.
Gordon Chang says it.
So you're seeing more and more people who...
are associated with both left and right saying maybe we can just walk away.
But I don't think there's going to be a walk away or a comprehensive Chinese deal.
Neither of those are going to happen in isolation.
I think that we'll do some deals, we'll keep trying to improve things where we can, but that new business just won't go there because it's too much of a risk.
It would be humiliating and embarrassing and Also risky, business-wise.
I suppose this will be a test of the Dilbert influence, because if you're willing to do what is so easily mocked by a Dilbert cartoon, doing business with your enemies and expecting that that's going to work out, well, you deserve what you get.
So, and then because the China deal apparently is silent on the question of fentanyl, I'm going to withhold judgment on this so-called phase one deal because if all it is is, you know, a tweak to business that's ongoing anyway and it's good for our farmers, why not?
You know, it's good for the farmers, why not?
But... We have to decouple.
And the fentanyl thing, until their top fentanyl dealer, whose name they know, whose address they know, whose face they know, they know exactly where he is, until China kills that guy, and I mean kill him, I mean actually execute him, until that happens, You can't really get serious about doing business with China or continuing to do business with them in the long run.
So I think that we see hints that China might be having a debt issue.
Some companies over there are too highly leveraged and they might be in trouble and that might make things better.
But Is it directionally positive?
Somebody's asking in the comments.
Directionally positive.
Well, check the stock market.
The stock market will tell you.
Let's see what the stock market is doing today.
I think the answer is probably up.
Stock market is close to flat, but just slightly up.
And most of the other things that I track are up a lot or a little bit.
So it looks like the market has decided that China...
Not that big a thing. Now, I ask you to check your prediction filters.
Somebody says, what about genocide?
Yeah, there's... I think the Uyghur situation is continuing to increase in visibility, as is the Falun Gong that they're using for parts.
They're killing the Falun Gong, reportedly, taking their body parts and selling them for transplants.
So I can't see that China's reputation will do anything but continue to deteriorate over time.
So China is moving, pretty much everything is moving in the wrong direction.
Now, let me suggest a solution for Hong Kong.
Are you ready? Here's a out-of-the-box solution.
Not Hong Kong.
I'm sorry. North Korea.
Here's a North Korea peace plan that you did not see coming.
Are you ready? It goes like this.
The United States declares peace.
And surrenders to North Korea in the context of the North Korean War that, at least on paper, has been going on for generations.
Are you ready? So the United States declares peace, you know, says formally that the end of the North Korea conflict is over.
Maybe it takes a congressional offer.
And we surrender to North Korea.
Do you see where it's going yet?
And then we say to North Korea, well, here's the deal.
In return for surrendering, because it's not an unconditional surrender, it's a conditional surrender, which is fine.
There are unconditional surrenders and there are conditional surrenders, and both of them can work.
So we say it's a conditional surrender and it looks like this.
You get to North Korea.
You have to wait for the punchline, because I know that the first part of this sounds terrible to you, but wait for the punchline.
It's worth it. So we say to North Korea, it's a conditional.
What we want is to be able to monitor your nuclear weapons, and you can keep them.
Are you ready? I haven't got to the good part yet.
So we end the war formally.
We surrender to North Korea.
We give them the victory.
Say, well, you win. We can't defeat you.
We surrender. All we ask in return is that you don't point your nukes in our direction.
But if you wanted to point your nukes toward China, we think that would be pretty smart.
Because China's your biggest threat.
And once we've surrendered and declared an end of hostilities, perhaps we can be part of your defense against our common enemy, China.
I'm looking at the comments.
One says, absolutely not.
And the other says, awesome! Now, somebody's laughing at me and saying, Scott, Scott, Scott.
China and North Korea are partners.
Don't you understand?
They're allies, Scott.
You stupid bastard, Scott.
Here's what I understand.
Do you think that Kim Jong-un is more afraid of Trump or President Xi?
Which one poses the biggest risk to North Korea?
In the long run? In the long run, I don't know if it's China, but I'll bet we could convince them it is.
So here's the thing.
Let me boil this back to assessments.
Lots of smart people have said, and they might not be wrong, lots of smart people have said that North Korea will never give up its nukes.
There's just no way it will ever do that.
Let's say that's true.
Is it also true that they can't be convinced to point their weapons at their biggest risk, and not at us, who just declared peace, surrendered, and maybe we remove some assets from South Korea, some military assets. That may depend on other factors as well.
But what if we just say, North Korea, we love you guys.
Why don't we just be friends?
We surrender. And maybe you could help us protect against the common risk that we both hold, which is China and Russia maybe.
I don't know how Russia works in here.
So the whole idea boils down to this.
If you believe it's true that North Korea will never get rid of their nukes, what's your best outcome if they're going to keep them?
Well, attacking North Korea is a terrible outcome.
So we don't want to attack them.
Having them continue to have nuclear weapons and develop them and point them in our direction is a terrible outcome.
We don't want that.
But keeping their nuclear weapons but agreeing to point them at their enemy instead of us, we might be able to live with that.
We might be able to.
I don't know. You know, all of the options are bad, right?
If you only have bad options, you have to pick the least bad one.
If you have an option that is both possible and better than that, I'd like to hear it because you might have an excellent idea.
What about all the starving North Koreans?
The starving North Koreans would be fed if they have peace with the United States because then the trade sanctions are off.
So North Korea gets food.
They get to keep their nuclear weapons.
They just have to work with us to point them in a different direction.
That's all. Just point them in a different direction.
Now, I realize that the problem is that it's easy to retarget your nukes.
And if they ever got mad at the United States, they'd have all these nukes and they could point in our direction.
But isn't that true of Great Britain too?
Great Britain has nukes.
If they ever got really mad at us, they could point them at us.
But we're not worried about it because they're an ally.
Israel has nukes.
If they wanted to, they could point them at the United States.
But we're not worried about it because they're allies.
North Korea could keep nukes if they became allies.
And what would prevent North Korea?
Somebody says, Scott is not very bright.
Well, you just got blocked.
Um... And remember, I'm completely open to you telling me why an idea won't work.
So that's perfectly good.
But Scott's not very bright.
Scott is so naive.
It's not really a reason.
What about Iran, somebody says.
I think Iran looks like it's self-solving.
It looks like Iran's economy is...
Iran is going in such a bad direction and they've got a huge young population who's going to want their internet and they're going to want their capitalism, I think.
So, I think Iran is just wait.
You know, I love what the President has introduced.
President Trump Let's say he's solidified a way of thinking that we always had, but we only used it periodically.
And that way of thinking is, if you have an economic option, you just always use that.
You know, use economics first and military last.
So that's what the President is doing with Iran.
It's economics first, military last.
It's what he's doing with North Korea.
We're not attacking North Korea.
It's economics first.
And the beauty of this method is, let me put it this way.
If you only ever did economic sanctions rarely, it's just, you know, in the rarest case you would use them, I don't think they'd be as good.
Because if you only use them rarely, it looks just like war.
But, if you were to say instead, the following countries are economically, let's say, they have a good business record, then you could say, we're going to do as much business as we can with all the countries that are reliable business partners.
Forget about military, just business.
If they're reliable business partners, we'll do business with you.
Don't care about your government or anything else.
But, If you're not a reliable part of the international economic system, you're completely shut out.
And I think that's where we're heading.
I think we're heading to a point where the downside of being a bad actor is just being shut out of the international economic system.
So why hasn't Venezuela rolled over yet?
I have some real questions about Venezuela, right?
Venezuela.
Why are we hearing more about Venezuela today?
Didn't it seem to you as if Venezuela was on the cusp of something bad or good happening?
Something was going to happen and then suddenly it's just not even in the news?
What's happening in Venezuela?
Are they still eating their pets?
How come that just went out of the news?
So you have to ask yourself what's going on there.
They're almost out of gold, somebody said.
Well, maybe. Yeah, and I guess our frenemies in other countries are propping them up.
Oops. My lights just went out.
I wonder why.
I'm going to go find out why I just lost power, and I will talk to you.
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