Episode 1006 Scott Adams: Brainwashing the Public, Enemy of the People, Social Media Censorship, China and More
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Content:
BLM and Antifa don't like each other
Will CNN ever apologize for framing General Flynn?
Looting...leads to shooting
350,000 Chinese students are studying in America
The risk of foreigners working in U.S. social media
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Come on in. It's time to talk about all the fire and protesting and looting and shooting.
Well, we hope there's more looting than shooting.
Do we? I don't know.
I guess that would be a toss-up, depending on your point of view.
But as you pour in here to experience the delight, which is coffee with Scott Adams, you might ask yourself, what do you need to be prepared for this?
Well, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Including the riots, including the pandemic, which I kind of forgot about.
It's called The Simultaneous Hip and It Happens Now.
Go! Yes, I feel the crowds dispersing.
One sip is all it took.
Well, the weather is good and the people have been locked up at home too long and it's time for some protesting.
Yeah. Some protesting.
We're all going to pretend it's all real today.
In fact, none of it's real.
It's all the result of brainwashing.
The brainwashing, of course, starts with fake statistics about who's killing who.
Most people believe they're real statistics, but they're fake.
And then, of course, the sides are chosen, and the media narratives come out, and people are assigned their opinions.
And once people have been assigned their opinions, they know which side they're on and then they go fight.
And when they fight, they burn cars and they create good visual effects.
And the people who brainwash them in the first place film the stuff that's on fire and then make money from it by selling ads to pharmaceutical companies.
I told you that I had started a new cartoon that basically is going to mock CNN. It's called Robots Read News.
It's just a robot who never moves.
He just reads the news. So here's today's.
Let me ask you, do you think that the comic I'm going to read, you don't really need to see it because it's just a robot looking at you, do you think that this accurately captures CNN? So the robot reading news says, in today's news, we frame a military veteran and actively participate in a coup against the legally elected government.
Then we'll whip up some racial frenzy and And make money from pharmaceutical ads while we film you burning each other's shit.
In other news, protesters are attacking our headquarters and we don't know what we did to deserve it.
Does that kind of describe what we're seeing?
Now the weird thing is, I told you that it's hard to make a comic that's absurd enough that it doesn't match real life.
Everything I just read is actually right from real life.
I didn't have to make up anything.
They did literally frame a military veteran.
They spent years doing that.
They did participate in a coup against the legally elected government.
They really did that. That actually happened.
And then they're whipping up a racial frenzy and they're making money off it by selling pharmaceutical ads and they are monetizing the filming of citizens burning each other's shit Because they whipped us into a frenzy and caused us to burn each other's shit.
And then their headquarters did get attacked.
I didn't make up a single thing.
Everything in this comic actually literally specifically happened.
I couldn't get on the other side of parody.
Sometimes the parody hill is too high.
You're like, I'm going to find reality and then I'm going to take it a little bit further because that's what makes it a joke.
And then you can't.
What do I take further than framing a military veteran while participating in a coup against the United States?
What's the level above that?
I don't know. What, satanic stuff?
Barely. I mean, you could say that's a little bit worse.
You could add Satan worship on top of this.
But even if you added Satan worship on top of the stuff they already did, it would only change the end result by such a small percentage you wouldn't even notice.
I mean, once you've framed a military veteran and tried to overtake or overthrow the United States...
I don't know that there's much left for parody.
So my view, sort of the persuader's view of what we're watching, I've told you that there are various filters on things, and we're all looking at today's news through different filters.
Some segment of the population is saying, damn it, there's too much bias and discrimination, and we need to protest against it.
Alright. There are those who know that they're behind all of this and know that none of it's real.
That's another filter.
And then there are people like me who only see it as its persuasion self.
In other words, I only see the news in terms of who got brainwashed to do what.
I don't see it in terms of these people are right, these people are wrong.
Other people see it in terms of power.
It's a power struggle.
The details of who did what or said what are actually irrelevant because nobody cares about who said what or did what.
It's all just being used for power.
Now power, of course, is another word for persuasion because it doesn't have to be physical power.
It could be political power, and that's persuasion.
And even a war, I would say, is persuasion because the point of killing people is to get them to stop fighting.
So I get the people who are still alive to stop fighting as well.
Your comments are funny.
So when I look at the news and I see the protesters, and I see that Antifa and Black Lives Matter are protesting together, and they don't really like each other.
I don't know if you knew that.
But Black Lives Matter would like to have businesses and be successful.
Fact check me on this.
Fact check me to let me know if this is true or false.
Black Lives Matter would like, among other things, they have a number of things that they would like fixed, including police actions.
But very high on the list of Black Lives Matter would be just improving the life, the economic life especially, the judicial, the justice system plus the economics.
Of black life in America.
They'd like that to be better.
Now, of course, some of them may be funded by who knows what, and some of them may be more political, but as a group, they want what's better for black people in America.
Is that what Antifa wants?
Is Antifa marching for Black Lives Matter people to have better economic outcomes?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think that they're trying to destroy everything that is.
And everything that is includes a lot of black-owned businesses.
So we're very close, very close, I think, to Black Lives Matter just saying, you know, screw it, we're just going to be Republican because we can make that work.
If Black Lives Matter, this is just a thought experiment, if tomorrow Black Lives Matter said, we're going to change our strategy, If we team up with the Republicans, number one, they will accept us.
They would. You just have to agree to respect the Constitution, respect the rule of law, and play within the rules.
And then conservatives respect you every time.
It's very easy. So if Black Lives Matter, or just let's say the black community in general, it doesn't have to be Black Lives Matter involved, but let's say the black community just said, all right, screw it.
We're just going to look out for our own best interest.
We're going to pair up with the Republicans, and we have more in common with the Republicans who are just trying to make money and have good lives, because it turns out that's what we want, too.
Yeah. And maybe the black population doesn't want open borders.
Because if they have open borders, it makes the Latino-Hispanic vote that much more powerful and necessarily might work against their interests because they get marginalized by an even larger minority group that would just suck up all the attention.
So it feels like the long-term trajectory for black voters is the Republican Party, but they have to get past a mental block.
And the mental block is, number one, thinking that they wouldn't be welcome, right?
If you were black and you had been watching the fake news for your whole life, would you think that you would be welcome in the Republican Party?
How would you think you would be treated?
Well, my guess is very, very welcome.
And that's a strong guess, meaning I'm sure of it.
Very, very welcome.
Because everybody who joins the Republican Party, who simply agrees to follow the rules, just follow the rules.
Constitution, rule of law, be nice to your neighbor.
That's it. That's it.
That's the whole deal.
You do those simple things, And you will not only be embraced by the Republican Party, you'll be absorbed.
You'll just be a Republican.
So, if the brainwashing holds, then black people and Antifa will continue marching together without noticing they're on opposite sides.
Which is what's happening now.
Antifa just wants to burn everything down.
Black Lives Matter would like to build something.
To build something valuable for black people.
You don't really get that if everything's burning down.
So if black people in this country want to make some money and get serious about helping their own situation, I mean, just being selfish.
Because our system is designed to allow you to be selfish completely publicly.
That's what capitalism is.
That's what democracy is.
That you can be selfish in public.
I want to vote for this because it lowers my taxes.
I'm going to compete in this business because it's good for my bank account.
You're allowed to be selfish.
The system encourages it.
So I would say to the black community in the United States, if you want to be selfish, and I recommend it because everybody else is under this system, There's certainly a way you can do better, and I don't think it's doing what you're doing, because the Republicans do have the secret.
They do have the secret of how to make money and how to have a better life.
It does seem that they have figured that out.
And if anybody's new, by the way, I'm neither a conservative nor a Republican.
I'm an observer.
I would associate myself with being left to Bernie socially, in terms of social issues.
But if I observe who seems to be happier...
And I observe, as a third party, just, you know, uninterested party watching, it really feels like Republicans have figured out a system that works pretty well.
Here are the rules.
If you follow the rules, we love you.
We love you. You followed the rules.
So did we. That's it.
End of the story. It's a pretty simple system, and it works every time.
I wonder if CNN will ever apologize for framing Flynn.
Because certainly they could argue, well, we were just following the news where it went, and we were just reporting what other people said, and that was the news that we knew.
So I suppose they could excuse it away.
But the net effect of it is, they framed a patriot.
And not just a patriot, but a veteran.
And not just a veteran, but a general.
And not just a general, but somebody who had just been...
Who'd just been appointed to a high position in the government by the legally elected president of the United States.
Name one thing that Trump has ever done that's true, that's the hard part, it's true, it really happened, and it's worse than what CNN and Schiff and company did framing Flynn and trying to overthrow the government of the United States.
If you were to make a rank Of all the bad things that anybody's done on either side, all the worst things that Trump has done, the worst ones.
And then you compare it to what the anti-Trumpers are known to have done.
So now we know that they framed Flynn.
Now we know that they were running a coup to overthrow the government.
We know that now. That's no longer in question.
And I ask you, on a scale of 1 to 10, Where would you put framing a veteran in the United States, where would that be on the scale of 1 to 10?
That's a 10. Now, maybe you could say, you know, rape and murder are the only 10s and everything else has to be less than that.
Okay. But in terms of how it offends me, not in terms of the impact on the victim necessarily, but in terms of how it offends my sensibilities, framing a veteran is a 10 for 10.
That's a 10. If you try to get on the other side of that, I don't know what that would be.
Like I said, murder and rape are arguably a lot worse for the victim.
Not arguably, they're a lot worse for the victim.
But they're not morally worse.
They're just worse for the victim.
Morally, they're 10 out of 10, just pinning the dial to the worst fucking things you could ever do.
Now, Now let's do the exercise.
Alright, that's what the anti-Trumpers have done.
Framed a veteran knowingly, lied about it for years knowingly, and then they tried to overthrow the government through this thing.
Alright, now let's do the worst thing that Trump ever did.
Well, yesterday there was a tweet about looting and shooting.
Where's that on a scale of 1 to 10?
A 1? A 1, maybe?
On a scale of 1 to 10?
Alright, so that's the worst thing I can think of now.
Alright, what's the other worst thing that President Trump has done?
And I don't think you can count a mistake.
Because you might say he made a mistake doing this or that.
But I'm not talking about mistakes.
Let's talk about things that people did intentionally.
Things they knew they were doing, okay?
So let's see, he's accusing Joe Scarborough of murder, and there's no evidence to suggest that there's any murder or crime, any crime, much less any murderer.
So how bad is that on a scale of 1 to 10, compared to a coup and framing a veteran?
So where is...
Where is tongue-in-cheek accusation about Scarborough that literally nobody believes?
Well, I take that back.
People who already believed it may want to keep believing it, but they already believed it.
People who had never heard the rumor just sort of laughed it off.
Anybody who's a little bit smart about politics knows that the president was saying it just for the effect, not because he thinks it's true.
So where is that on a scale of 1 to 10?
Two? Two, maybe?
Would you give that a three?
It's literally just words that nobody believes.
Saying words that nobody believes because they know you're just saying it for the effect, on a scale of one to ten?
One? Two?
How about calling those countries, remember when the president called those countries shithole countries?
Where is that on the scale of one to ten?
Well, first of all, he was talking about their economic situation, obviously, in context.
That's like a zero, because it's not even real news.
It's more like fake news, because obviously he didn't mean it racially.
I think smart people know that, that it was just about the countries themselves not necessarily producing people who had gone to good colleges and stuff and may have potentially less economic value.
That was the nature of the question.
His infidelity, somebody says.
Yeah, what about the President's infidelity?
Scale of 1 to 10.
Don't care. How about a 0?
Because I don't care. That has nothing to do with us.
How about the President allegedly paying Stormy Daniels a 1?
A 0? These are all nothings.
Literally, am I missing something?
Can somebody list the worst thing that Trump has done?
Yeah, somebody says golfing.
Yeah, he golfed when there was some business to do.
Zero. It's not like he's not always available.
Zero. So the fact that anybody thinks these things are roughly even is amazing.
Now, just for fairness, it looks like Leland Vitter of Fox News was reporting on-site at the protests around the White House last night, and he was Surrounded and threatened by Antifa.
It looked like it was all Antifa and not Black Lives Matter, but I only saw a clip, so I can't say that for sure.
But it looked like it was all Antifa, who was yelling because he's at Fox News, Leland Vitter is, and they surrounded him, and the police wouldn't help, apparently, until later some riot police came and did help.
So we see that the rioters don't care who it is, whether it's CNN or Fox News, so you can see that the rioters are not taking a side.
They're not taking a side, they just want to destroy things.
At least the Antifa people, not the Black Lives Matter people who are the opposite and would like to build something.
How many of you think George Soros is behind the riots?
Can I see that in the comments?
How many of you think that George Soros, not only, and here I'm not talking about funding groups which in turn fund any of the people who are there.
So we know that Black Lives Matter, for example, receives funds from a group that Soros is part of the funding of that group.
He's not the whole funding, but I think he's part of it.
How many of you think that George Soros is causing all the trouble?
So I don't know if we'll see any comments on that coming through.
Here's the thing. I don't think it's George Soros.
It's just the news.
The news is the one who gets people to think of the world the way it is.
The news is the reason that people are hitting the streets.
That plus good weather, that plus having been locked up for weeks, is what we're getting.
That plus there was a trigger of George Soros Floyd being killed on camera, and that obviously was the trigger.
Let's talk about how Facebook versus Twitter handled the president's tweet in which he said, what's the exact quote, where there's looting, looting, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.
That was the quote. Now apparently that quote has some history with, I don't know, George Wallace and It has some racial history, but I would really be surprised if the president was thinking of it that way, or even knew that it had a racial past.
His claim when he clarified it, which I accepted under the 48-hour rule for clarifications, if you don't know the rule, the 48-hour rule for clarifications goes this way.
If you say something in public, or even private, And somebody takes it away that causes trouble.
In other words, their interpretation of what you said is they're outraged by it.
You have 48 hours to either apologize if it's what you really said and what you really meant, and an apology is warranted, or to clarify.
To clarify that that's not what you meant.
And my rule is that even if you think the clarification is bullshit, You should always accept it, because otherwise you're just reading people's minds.
People should be able to be the only source for their own opinion.
In other words, nobody should tell me what my opinion is, but I can tell you what my opinion is.
I should not tell you what your opinion is, ever.
Under no circumstance should I tell you what your opinion is.
But you can tell me what it is.
That's always fair. So anyway, let's skip ahead to how Facebook and Twitter took that tweet.
So the way Twitter handled it was they put a warning on it and said that it glorified violence.
Now, the phrase, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, is sort of a, it's a unfortunately playful phrase.
And if you use an unfortunately playful phrase for what might be a slaughter of civilians, Twitter is saying, I think you're sort of acting like you're a little happy about the shooting that's going to start about the looting.
Now hold that interpretation, and now we're going to compare it to Facebook, all right?
So summarizing, Twitter says, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, is a little bit too pro-shooting.
So that got a flag.
Facebook, according to Mark Zuckerberg, they wrestled with the same issue.
And here's where they came down on it.
They decided to leave it intact, and the reason they did was that in Zuckerberg's opinion, I assume other people's opinion as well, at Facebook, that it was giving useful information to the public.
And that useful information is that if the looting continues, there will literally be people getting shot.
Now, should the public know That the President of the United States is sending people that could shoot them based on whether they're looting or not.
Do you think the public has a right to know that their own government has just announced publicly they're going to send people to shoot them?
Yes! Yes!
Yes! Yes, the public has a right to know if the government is sending armed people to shoot them.
Maybe. I mean, depending on the situation.
So, you know, we don't assume that the National Guard was going to go down there and mow people down, and when the President clarified, his clarification was that, you know, it could be the public taking matters into their own hands, and gave some examples where it's already happening, because there was a looter who got shot by a shop owner.
So he used that example.
Now, I don't know if the President was only thinking about shop owners taking matters into their own hands.
I don't know if that's the only thing he was thinking of.
But I also don't think it matters.
Because his statement was factually correct.
The statement was that looting leads to shooting.
Looting has already led to shooting.
It's a fact. It's a fact.
It already happened. There was a looter.
He got shot because he was looting.
Will there be more people tonight who are shot if they're looting?
Almost certainly. If there is mass looting tonight, you should expect people to get shot.
I'm not glorifying it.
I'm just saying you should expect it.
So I would say if you were to compare Facebook's approach that the public has a right to know that their government is sending people maybe to shoot them if they're looting, you know, and depending on the situation.
Nobody wants to shoot anybody.
Versus Twitter saying it glorified violence.
Now, of course, I think Twitter allowed you to see it, but you had to work a little bit more, something like that.
I don't know exactly how they flagged it.
I would say that Facebook had the right answer on this one.
So I'd say Twitter...
Had the suboptimal response compared to Facebook, which got it right.
Now, here's the way I grade things like this.
What I don't do is say, oh, I'll give Facebook an A, because they got it right, and I'll give Twitter less than an A, an F or something, because they didn't get it right.
That's not how I'm grading this.
Here's how I'm grading it.
Exactly like the pandemic.
It's the same standard. Remember I told you early on that I'm not going to blame any governor, any leader, any mayor for making a mistake because nobody knew the right thing to do.
I was going to grade people on whether they corrected their mistake.
And that's the standard I think we should always use.
You can't really expect people to guess the right decision when nobody knows the right decisions.
So similarly, as Facebook and Twitter are trying to work their way through this unfamiliar world of adding a little bit of context or truth to what's happening, trying to see if they can make the world a little better in this one dimension, they don't know what's the right answer.
They don't know the right answer.
Facebook doesn't have the right answer for every one of these situations.
I think Zuckerberg got it right this time in this very specific situation.
He got one right. In my opinion, Twitter's response was less good than Facebook's.
But what just happened?
Twitter got to see how Facebook responded.
Facebook got to see how Twitter responded.
Both Twitter and Facebook got to see how the public responded and how the government responded.
Now we're all smarter.
That's good. That means the system is working.
People are trying stuff, and then they see what happens.
So Facebook tried something, and then Twitter tried something, and they tried different things.
One of them worked better than the other one, in my opinion.
Does that mean that the next time they both get in a similar situation, they're more likely to be similarly A-plus?
Far more likely.
Far more likely that getting it wrong leads to getting it right next time.
So, I'm not complaining about any of this at this stage.
I think you should expect...
Both Facebook and Twitter, and you can throw Google in there for good measure.
I think they're going to be making a bunch of minor mistakes.
Minor mistakes, meaning that on a scale of 1 to 10, it doesn't really change life or doesn't make you less happy.
It just doesn't have a big impact on society in general.
These are very small, small little things that we're blowing up because they represent bigger things, right?
But the real world is not in any way bothered by what either of them did with one tweet, even the president's tweet.
What we're bothered by is that it might signal a trend, so people are trying to get ahead of the trend and move it the direction they want it to move.
But I would say we're in a very positive place in the sense that we're trying things and we're learning and improving.
If you can try something, learn and improve, you're in the best possible world.
And I think that's where Facebook and indeed Silicon Valley has that as sort of the DNA. You know, the DNA of the tech industry is try it.
Try it, measure it, test it, you know, adjust.
So that's what they're doing. It's all good.
Let's see. It's a very strange time in terms of the news, because I've talked this far without mentioning the pandemic, except for how it locked people up for weeks.
The pandemic is still going on, right?
Did we just forget the pandemic?
Somebody says, Facebook has you fooled.
Watch and see. I'm going to block you from that.
Because when you say, has me fooled, you are reading my mind.
Remember? You can tell me your opinion, but what the person I blocked just did is told me my opinion.
They told me what was happening inside my mind, which was that I was fooled.
How do you know? How do you know what's in my mind?
How do you know what I'm fooled by?
You don't. Again, tell me your opinion.
Don't tell me my opinion.
Only I can tell you my opinion.
There's no exception to that.
Somebody says Scott's in Karen mode.
That Karen thing is funny every time.
I don't know. I suppose it'll get old, but it's still funny every time.
So anyway, Trump is going hard at China.
That would be the biggest story in the world, except for all these other stories.
And some of the things he's looking at are...
I didn't realize this until recently.
There are 350,000 Chinese students in the United States.
And I'm talking about students who live in China and are just studying here.
In other words, they're residents of China.
Is that cool with you?
Are you cool with 350,000 Chinese students when we know the government of China is using some portion of them, obviously not all of them, as spies?
I think we ought to shut that down right away.
So I don't see any excuse for letting China, who is essentially proven to be an enemy of the United States, To be educating their elites.
Because it's not the poor people who are coming here for an education.
It's the children of the elites who come here to get a name-brand education.
We should stop that right away.
There's no excuse for educating the elites of your enemy.
China's an enemy. If I were in the government, I would not use that word.
But since I'm not in the government, I'm just a citizen observing.
China's killing 50,000 Americans with fentanyl.
They did the Wuhan flu.
They should have done a better job warning us about that.
They're stealing our stuff.
Apparently they're not even attempting to live up to the trade deal they just signed.
They're taking over Hong Kong.
I got this far saying all the bad things that China's doing.
And I didn't even mention yet organ harvesting of political prisoners.
I mean, you only need one of these to make them your enemy.
And, of course, the concentration camps of the Uyghurs.
I mean, really, we can't be friends with this country.
Still like the people.
Chinese people, great people.
But the government of China...
I heard that there's an entity in China called the National People's Congress.
Is that true? National People's Congress?
And they're literally NPCs?
National People's Congress?
And I thought, what are the odds that that's a coincidence?
Anyway. So apparently Trump is going to make, quote, a series of announcements on China in the coming days.
And among them might be restricting Chinese graduate students and Here's a question for you.
This is a very provocative question.
And I shouldn't ask this question out loud.
But I'm going to do it anyway.
So knowing in advance how much trouble this question is going to cause, I'm going to ask it anyway.
Because I think you can handle it.
Why is it that you have to be born in the United States to run for president?
Why is that? Isn't that racist?
Why is it that you could be governor, you could be anything.
You could be a plumber, lawyer, doctor, as long as you're a citizen.
Well, if you have a legal right to work here, whatever that looks like, you can have any job except president.
Why is it you can't be president?
That's the only thing?
That's clearly racist, isn't it?
Because the whole point of you can't be president is that we think you would have loyalty to your home country, even if you'd lived here all of your life.
Take somebody like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Do you think there's any chance that Arnold Schwarzenegger is more loyal to Austria, where he was born, Versus the United States that made him Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I don't think there's any question.
Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly is an American in every way that matters.
Just this technical thing, he was born in another country.
So he can't run for president.
Now, isn't that racist?
I mean, in the case of Arnold, maybe not.
But it also restricts everybody else who was born in another country.
Was Ilan Omar was born in another country, right?
Can Ilan Omar ever run for president in this country?
No, right?
She was born in another country?
I think I'm right about that. So why is that fair?
Isn't that racist? Feels a little racist, doesn't it?
All right, well, so this first part was just a set up.
I just persuaded you a little bit.
So I wanted you to think about that, but that's not even the topic.
I haven't introduced the topic yet.
I just wanted you to wrestle with that thought a little bit.
Now we'll talk about the topic.
The reason that anybody thinks it's okay, that you have to be born in this country to run for president, and I think there's fairly widespread agreement, Part of it is that it's just historically there and, you know, things that are already there you don't question as much.
You're just used to it. So some of it's that.
But the other part of it is that the presidency is unique.
There's nothing like the presidency.
Would you agree? That if I said, hey, if you could be a plumber or a governor, why can't you be president?
And the answer is, there's no job like president.
Being a plumber is not similar to being president.
And even being a governor is not similar to being president because the governor doesn't have any international responsibilities.
It's the international stuff that you worry about when you've got a president who maybe, you think, maybe, possibly has a little bit of loyalty back to the country they were born in.
It's racist.
It's racist to make that assumption, right?
But still, It's the only time that we allow that little bit of racism to eke into our national system because we think the stakes are so high.
The stakes of having a president who is not 100% loyal to this country, the stakes are so high.
You just wouldn't take a.001 chance of that being wrong, right?
But if you get somebody who was born in this country and raised in this country, what are the odds, I mean really, what are the odds someone born in this country has any other country as their primary loyalty?
Pretty low. So, it's a rule that applies in this special case.
But I'm wondering if there isn't a new special case.
Are you ready? Here's the topic.
Everything else was just to get you ready.
So, so far I'm just softening up the room.
Here's the real point.
Are you ready? Why do we let people who were born in other countries work as social media businesses in this country?
Now, The first thing you should say to yourself is, oh damn, that's racist.
That's super racist.
Right? It's super racist sounding.
But let's talk about it.
If in the end you decide that's just too racist, I would say that's a reasonable opinion.
I wouldn't argue with that.
If you say, no Scott, you've gone too far.
That's just racist.
I would say that's a responsible opinion and I'll accept that.
And so therefore we shouldn't do it.
But I ask you this question.
If the presidency requires you to be born in this country because the stakes are so high, how do you feel about somebody who was born in China and is in charge of the social media algorithm?
What size is the risk?
Is that bigger than the risk of, say, being a plumber?
Who was born in China?
Yeah, it's a bigger risk.
Is it a bigger risk than being, say, a mayor or a governor?
Well, a mayor or a governor, they don't have any international dealings.
It wouldn't matter if they did have a little bit of loyalty back to the place they were born, because it wouldn't really express itself.
It just wouldn't be an issue.
But if you had a little bit of loyalty to communist China, Or just, say, China, or just any other country.
If you had a little bit of loyalty to them, is it safe to put somebody who might, might, almost certainly doesn't, I would say the vast majority of people who are born in other countries and are working in tech businesses, the vast majority of them are just doing their job.
Well, it has nothing to do with anything.
They just go to work, do their job.
That's the end of the story. And those people, of course, should be able to do whatever they do.
But there are certain jobs within social media which could make a difference in terms of what the public sees and what they don't see.
If you're in charge of what the public sees and doesn't see, should we make the standard for that as high as the presidency?
Because the presidency has its own standard that you have to be born in this country.
Is there one extra exception if you're managing what the people in this country see and know and think?
You're actually managing the minds of the American public.
Is that another exception?
Is that an exception that's so glaring that you'd have to at least consider That that's some similarity to the risk involved of having a president who even has any chance, just an even slightly, slightly chance, of having a little bit of loyalty to some other country.
Even a little bit. Somebody says, you've pissed me off, Scott.
I'm going to breakfast instead of listening to this.
Well, I've done my job.
So, here's the point.
It's a provocative thought.
I'm not going to recommend that anything be changed or that the law be changed.
But I think you have to ask yourself why there's a difference between the presidency, which feels a little racist that you can't be born in another country.
I mean, if you came here as a baby, I'm literally a baby.
You don't even have a single memory of the other country.
And you can't run for president in this country raised as a complete American.
And you can't run for president?
Well, that's racist. So if we allow that, and by the way, maybe we shouldn't.
I think that should be at least on the table.
We should at least look and see if there's any other situations that are similarly risky.
So maybe you get rid of both of them, and that would be consistent.
Or you say, oh, they're similar.
Alright. Somebody says, this is a dangerous line of thinking if bias is allowed to determine the answer.
Well, I don't think bias is what would be part of this.
It would be a risk management decision.
And it would be overtly racist, Exactly the way limiting who runs for president is overtly racist.
There's nobody who disagrees with that, right?
Not allowing somebody to have a specific job because of where they were born, if they're legal citizens of the United States, there's no way to say anything about that except that it's racist.
It has a reason.
The reason is safety of the country.
But that doesn't make it not racist.
Somebody says, it's not racist.
Well, it's not racist in intention.
So I'd agree with you that.
It's not racist in intention.
And it's not racist if you want to say that countries are not racist.
So, for example, you could say, well, if you're born in Canada, you also can't run for president.
And that's not really racism because it's Canada.
To which I would say, no, the way we use racism in the popular vernacular...
Is anybody who's different in a cultural, social way.
And Canada is. So, amend the Constitution if you want to change it.
Yeah, that would be the only way you could change that, is to amend the Constitution.
That is correct. Private versus public roles.
Oh, well that's a good point.
So the social media companies are private businesses, the government is a public business, and that's a distinction which we should at least put into the mix.
But where I'm going with this is that the social media companies have Not by intention, but they've evolved to the point where they're part of the government.
So although they are not written into the Constitution, these social media companies are actually, you know, they have the levers of democracy at this point.
So given that they act like governments in terms of their effect on our thoughts and our minds, maybe they should be treated like it.
Somebody says, I'm sorry, I don't get how it's racist.
Well, I'm using the word racist in the way the left uses it, which is anybody who's from another country and they've got anything that's different about them.
It doesn't have to be race.
So I'm using racist without race being part of it.
Racist just being a different country that you came from.
You can call it xenophobic or anything you want, but you know what I'm talking about.
Alright, do we allow top military to be non-citizens or in top defense jobs where they've had access?
I don't know the answer to that.
I think the answer is yes, right?
You can be a general in the U.S. military no matter where you were born.