Episode 1016 Scott Adams: News Blackout on the Protests, Let's See How the Country is Doing Today
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Why 3 months of hell are now largely over
Which American organizations are credible?
Protests, rioting, looting, violence...did empathy for BLM increase?
Bad strategies compared to a strategy for success
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
"bum... bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum"不是nowłem who eternal mer Technical It's time for the best part of the day.
Yeah, you made it.
You survived another evening.
Despite all the coronavirus, did it kill you?
No. How about those riots?
Did any of you die in the riots?
Not you. No.
You're the smart, plucky, resourceful people who stayed away from it.
And because of all that good work on your part, you've made it to this point.
This point in the universe.
We're at this moment in time when we're all going to enjoy a little thing called the simultaneous sip.
Yes. That's right.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
A handgun would be good.
But 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, the thing that cured the coronavirus and stopped the riots and the looting.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. I feel the racial tension subsiding.
That's how good the coffee is.
Well, something's happening.
Somebody says, I'm jealous of the beautiful Christina.
Well, let me talk about that for a moment.
A lot of people say to me, Scott, you're with the most beautiful woman in the world.
Is she really that wonderful in person?
The answer is no.
No, she's not that wonderful in person.
She's much more wonderful than that.
Way more wonderful.
So you should be twice as jealous as you actually are.
So start there.
Alright. There's something happening.
I don't know what it is yet.
But it's very interesting.
Did you wake up this morning and check the news and say, what's happening?
There's something happening.
So there might be something happening that we don't know about.
In other words, I feel like there's something brewing.
Maybe internationally.
I don't know what it is. It's just a You ever just get this hunch, intuition thing that just can't turn off?
It's like there's something happening internationally.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
I think that might also be brewing.
But I checked the news today to see about all the altercations and violence and see if anybody got hurt last night in the riots and protests and looting and what I expected was going to be a rough night.
But there wasn't much reporting on it.
Why? Why?
Does anybody know?
So I have some guesses.
So here are some guesses.
One possibility is that nothing made news last night.
It could be that there just weren't enough newsworthy visual events so there wasn't much to write about.
But that doesn't seem right.
Even last night we were seeing live coverage that the crowds were immense.
Immense crowds closing down cities.
Where are the stories?
Where's the news?
There's no news.
It's like it's a blackout.
No pun intended, because there was that blackout social movement, social media movement yesterday.
But it seems that the news has a blackout on the events of the protest.
Am I wrong about that?
Because it's my impression that they have somewhat agreed.
There seems to be some kind of agreement not to show the news.
Now, is that intentional?
Is it intentional that neither Fox News nor CNN seem to have covered the biggest news last night?
What are the odds that neither of them would cover the biggest news?
And when I say didn't cover it, I mean not with the details and the pictures and the violence and here's a bloody person and here's a cop and here's a video that'll make you mad.
It feels like, and this is my...
I guess this would be like a conspiracy theory speculation.
So the next thing I say, don't put too much credibility in it.
I'm just speculating.
It looks like the government...
And the news business have colluded.
That's what it looks like.
It looks to me like probably somebody in the government, this is just speculation, had the thought that the news business is making things worse because it's whipping up feelings beyond where they might have naturally been.
That's obviously true because that's what visuals do.
Visuals I encourage you to do more of it.
If you see a car on fire, if the news shows one picture of a car that was set on fire by a protester, is that going to make fewer cars set on fire in the future or more cars set on fire?
Of course more. So every time they show any kind of particular violence, if a lot of people see it, it's going to make somebody have a new idea.
So I don't think there's any question that the Coverage of the news made the news worse in terms of the protesting.
I don't think that's questionable, is it?
But at the same time, we accept that as the price of a free world and free speech and having a news business at all.
You know that sometimes it makes things worse, but we accept that.
But after, say, seven days of whatever, of coverage of the same news, that it's still a protest...
Still some bad people get in the mix.
Still some scuffles.
At some point, it's not really the same kind of news news.
It's still news, but now maybe covering it just makes things worse.
And it doesn't have the offsetting benefit that you have the first few days.
The first few days, people need to know.
So the benefit of telling us might be greater than the benefit of whipping up any extra energy.
But at this point...
So...
So correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like collusion.
It looks like the government and the news organizations on both sides of the political divide seem to have agreed to cover it less.
Or at least less visually.
Maybe fewer pictures but still talk about it, maybe?
I don't know, am I imagining this?
Because it looks like a complete blackout in the news.
And I don't know what to think about that exactly.
Because on one hand, if that's what's happening, and it certainly looks like it's happening, that would be a responsible thing to do, but it would also be a scary thing that your government is somehow involved in suppressing the news, even if it's for everybody's best interest.
That's a dangerous place to go.
Anyway. Here are a few tidbits in no particular order.
Finally, this is what I've been waiting for.
Pope Francis condemned the death of George Floyd.
And I've been thinking to myself, I don't know what to think about this situation.
I need to hear from the Pope.
Because sometimes you just can't tell what's good and what's evil.
Until the Pope is weighed in.
But now the Pope says he condemns it.
So now I guess all doubt is removed.
So I guess everybody else is free to condemn it too.
So thank you Pope Francis for clarifying that if you put your knee on the neck of a man and grind him into the dirt until he's dead, that that's condemnable.
Turns out that's condemnable.
So we got some clarity there.
That's good. Steve King lost his primary in Iowa.
I think he'd been re-elected like 10 times, but he lost.
Of course, some idiot on social media comes after me and says that the person I've been praising lost.
What do I say about that?
To which I say, what are you hallucinating?
When did I praise Steve King?
I don't even know. I didn't even know if he was a senator or a Or a house guy at one point.
I can't think of one thing he's ever done except for being taken out of context and being accused of a racist.
I don't know what he's voted for.
I don't know anything about anything.
The only thing I've ever said about him is that he seemed unusually dumb.
He seemed like the dumbest guy in Congress because he let himself be accused of racism.
And again, I don't know what's in his head, so I'm not going to say he is or is not Anything.
Because that would be reading inside his head.
We can only see what he's done, or what he said.
And he basically, he got run out of office by a New York Times misquote.
He actually lost his job because the New York Times misquoted him.
That actually happened.
Now, did he deserve to lose his job?
I have no idea. In terms of, did he do a good job?
In terms of, is he a secret racist inside his head?
I don't know. I don't have any opinion on that because I don't have any information about him.
To me, he's just an empty box.
But I am sure he lost his job because of a quote taken out of context.
I'm sure of that.
So, anyway. Do you want to talk about some tough things?
Well, let me give you some happy things first.
I heard from somebody today, who shall remain nameless, that said person was feeling hopeless today.
Feeling hopeless because the riots, the looting, the protests just keep going on and on, and we've got every other kind of problem with coronavirus, etc.
I think it's the opposite.
I think today we're over the protests.
I'm not saying the protests will be done, but it looks like most of the energy of the protests has dissipated in terms of being too dangerous.
So the dangerous level of energy may have dissipated.
You'll still see lots of energy, but I think we're below the dangerous level.
The coronavirus, did it just go away?
I don't know. Let me give you the most optimistic thing you're going to hear today.
Are you ready? Here's the most optimistic thought you will hear today.
Probably nobody else is going to say this all day long.
We beat the coronavirus and the protests are largely over.
Today is the beginning.
Today is the beginning.
You're not going to feel it yet because you've still got the PTSD from the last three months of hell.
We just went through three months of hell.
I think today it's over.
I think it's over.
Now that doesn't mean there won't be some more flare-ups.
It doesn't mean there won't be people dying of COVID. There will be tragedies.
We didn't reach heaven or something.
But the two biggest problems that we've seen in a long time, I think they're over today.
Today. Now, I think that the news coverage made a difference.
I think that moving in the National Guard made a difference.
Let me be the only person in the fucking country who gives the president some credit for this.
I think he's scared...
Scared the looters.
Am I wrong? Do you think the looters didn't believe that the president was going to send in the army to shoot them in the fucking head?
Of course they believed it.
Did that make a difference?
I think it might have.
Because the whole point was to get the police to hurt somebody.
If you send in the National Guard and The military.
Let's just call it the military.
If you send in the military, you've sent in the most respected entity in the United States.
There's nobody in the United States as a group with more credibility and more respect than the U.S. military.
Am I right? So the president's instinct to send in the military, I don't think he's going to get any credit for that.
In fact, he'll probably be criticized for it.
But there's a reason the energy came out of the protest last night.
And I'm talking about the looter energy, the Antifa energy.
I'm not talking about the protest energy.
It looks to me like the president successfully...
Scared the looters into thinking that the US military was going to be sniping their heads off if they looted.
Now, I don't think that they had those orders.
My guess is they had no orders of anything like that.
But do you think the looters believe that?
All the looters know is that the people who kill for a living just got on the job.
Do you know what's the difference between the police and the military?
Well, lots of differences. But one is the police are really, really about safety.
The police are trying to keep the bad guys safe.
Let me say it again.
The police are a safety force.
They're all about health, safety, keeping you alive, and they're also trying to keep the criminals alive.
They're trying to keep everybody alive.
That's the job. If they have to shoot somebody, it's to keep somebody else alive.
But that's not the military's job.
Military is to kill.
So the president sent in the killing force that also, by good luck, the best fortune we could possibly have as a country is that we have more respect for our military than any other institution.
Period. I don't think there's anything close.
Justice system?
No. Police?
Sorry. Government?
Not even close. Organization?
Democrats? Nope.
GOP? Sorry.
Congress? Ha ha ha.
News industry? Fuck you.
We have one credible institution in the whole fucking country, and it's the military.
Am I wrong about that?
We have one credible institution?
That's it. That's all we have left.
One credible institution.
And I don't know, you know, I think that if the energy did go down last night in the protest, It probably has something to do with several different forces.
One is the protesters themselves, the well-meaning, good-intentioned protesters, who probably created enough numbers that I think they would have taken direct physical action against any looters or bad actors.
And you saw lots of individual anecdotes of that happening.
It looked like that energy was also higher.
In other words, the protective energy of the well-meaning protesters was probably sky-high.
And I think that there were able-bodied people among the good people.
Let's call them the fine people.
Literally, there were fine people who were protesting.
And I think that was part of it, that they would have taken direct action to take a brick out of somebody's hand.
The other part is that the credibility of the military...
It's so different. If you had heard a story that a policeman killed a protester or a looter, what's your first thought?
I don't know if he did it right.
I don't know if that was justified.
I don't know if that was the right amount of force.
I don't know if that guy was trained right.
Right? Because that's where we're at.
So your first thought is about the capability of the policeman because that's the topic.
It's only because it's the topic that that's your first thought.
So that would have been a terrible thing.
But, just imagine that there had been one tragic incident and it involved a military person.
And a military person acted as a military person does.
There was some threat.
They responded and somebody died.
How would you feel about that?
I don't know that that would have sparked a riot.
I don't know that it would have.
Because it would just look different.
It would feel different.
Because the entities involved are not the ones that people are hating at the moment.
They're not hating the military.
If you're a minority, I feel like the military is a job opportunity.
It's a career stepping stone.
I don't know that there's any bad feeling about the military in the minority community, but I don't know either.
I try to be careful in pointing out That none of us know how anybody else feels or thinks.
And the moment we think we do, that's where you get in all the trouble.
I did a little very informal, meaning non-scientific poll on Twitter, in which I asked people if their empathy for the Black Lives movement, and keep in mind that the key word here is movement.
We're not talking about black people.
And we're not talking about Black Lives Matter members.
So it's about the idea of it, the movement.
And I said, did people feel that their empathy for the Black Lives movement was higher or lower because of the protests?
And over 70% of the respondents said it was lower.
In other words, over 70% said the protests Move things backwards, that they are counterproductive, that people have a worse feeling about the movement.
Now, you say to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott, You told us it was an unscientific poll, but seriously, your followers are all, you know, certain kind of people, if you know what I mean, certain kind of people, meaning mostly Trump supporters.
Probably 75% of my Twitter followers are Trump supporters, I would guess.
And so you would not be surprised if they would have some negative feelings about the protests and the lawlessness, etc., and that that would be conflated with the good intentions of the fine people.
So, here's the thing, though.
What's the point of persuasion?
The point of persuasion is not to talk to yourself.
I think it's true that the Black Lives Matter people persuaded Black Lives Matter people, in other words, the people marching with them, etc.
I think they persuaded each other, right?
Probably persuaded each other of something, I don't know.
But did they need to persuade each other?
I don't think so.
You know, in politics, it actually makes sense to talk to your own team.
Because it's so hard to get somebody on the other side of politics to agree with you.
It's just so hard that your best play is to talk to your own side only.
Just persuade your own side and see if you can get more of your people to show up at the polls than the other side can make show up.
But nobody in politics is really persuading the other team.
They're not even trying. That's partly why you see the division.
Nobody's even trying, because it doesn't work.
But that's politics.
That's in terms of the political parties who are actually running for office.
But the larger politics, which is the issues, if you want to move an issue, you have to persuade the other side.
And in this case, the other side is anybody you think doesn't agree with you already.
Is there anybody who needs to think that the police need some extra training or regulations or restrictions or whatever it is?
Who's on the other side?
Who are you trying to persuade?
According to this unscientific poll, 72% have a worse opinion of the people involved when the point of it was to give you a better opinion.
The entire point of it, of Black Lives Matter, Is to raise the opinion of other people about black lives.
Or am I wrong about that?
The whole black lives matter is about how you feel about it.
They're not saying change the law.
I haven't heard any suggestions.
They're not saying change this or that.
They're saying change your mind.
Black lives matter is literally about changing your mind.
It's about persuasion. And they persuaded opposite as hard as you could possibly persuade.
It's the worst strategic blunder maybe you've ever seen of any movement of all time.
Now, I'm going to treat the black community with respect.
I always do, but the next thing I say is with respect.
I'm going to frame it that way, because what's in the middle of this little frame of respect is going to be a really bad criticism.
It's going to be really bad.
But the reason I'm framing it with respect is that I wouldn't say this unless I respected the people I'm talking to.
There's some things you just wouldn't say unless you respected them.
So let's get that right first.
Your strategy sucks.
It's terrible.
Your strategy is terrible because it got you aggressively the opposite of what you wanted.
Let me be as honest as I can.
Do you think black people are more likely to get jobs after this than they were before?
Because before this, black unemployment was at a record low.
Do you think that's going to repeat?
I don't think so.
Not because of anything I'm going to do, but you've made things much, much worse.
And I think a lot of people are going to say, I just don't need the trouble.
I'll just pretend the other person has a better resume.
Nobody will know. I think racial discrimination got a lot worse Probably a 10-year setback.
And it's not because people don't care.
People started agreeing.
On day one, people were all on the same side.
That's my cat going crazy over there.
People were all on the same side.
And the protests, which caused the looting and the other things that came with it, have made things so much worse.
And the truth has to be told with respect.
With respect, all your leaders are incompetent.
The leaders of Black Lives Matter, they're all incompetent.
Because they got you exactly the opposite of what you wanted.
And we have now heard one constructive suggestion.
We're all ready.
The whole country is ready for a constructive suggestion.
Even a constructive suggestion along the lines of, we don't know what to do, but if we could pull together the right people, we could figure it out.
Anything. The lack of a constructive suggestion has discredited the movement in a way I don't think you could possibly appreciate.
Because the point of persuasion was to persuade people like the people listening right now.
It wasn't to persuade yourself.
If you persuaded yourself, that's terrific, but it bought you nothing except more division.
If you're trying to persuade the other side, you've failed as hard as anybody could ever fail.
It's the worst failure I've ever seen of any political strategy of all time.
And I'm talking about all political strategies of all time.
The Democrats are running a brain-dead sack of dust for president, and even that's not as bad a strategy as this was.
The worst strategy ever.
Now, the first few nights of protest, even with any bad that came with it, that was totally acceptable, honestly.
You know, you could understand some emotionally outburst because the situation that triggered it was so awful.
You can imagine it, and you can also sort of get past it pretty easily.
Because you could say, man, that was pretty bad.
I can see why people reacted.
But after a week...
Where you know there's going to be trouble, and you do it anyway?
Well, that's just discrediting your entire point.
So, you know, I'd hate to put it in the darkest terms, but, well, I'm not even going to do that.
So, here's what I don't think we should do anymore.
We should not infantilize We, meaning people who are not black, should not treat them like infants.
And that's the most racist thing you could do, is to not speak honestly, if you're trying to be helpful, and you're trying to show respect, which you always should.
If you're trying to be honest, and you're trying to show respect, and you're trying to be helpful, you have to say that the strategy of Black Lives Matter is a complete, absolute failure of the highest level, because it makes the people they want to persuade think less of them, not more. And in fact, I said the other day, the Black Lives Matter logo, you know, the brand, what would you call it, the slogan?
The slogan itself, the words Black Lives Matter, are divisive.
And although they've been very successful as an attention-getting brand, they're divisive by their nature.
And so, of course, they made things worse.
Shouldn't be a surprise, actually.
And it's a tragedy.
And watching this tragedy unfold, I've got to say, is sort of heartbreaking.
Because we were right on the edge of making things better.
And I think it was the political leaders...
Who decided that, wait a minute, instead of coming together over this massive agreement over how people felt about the George Floyd video, instead of bringing this together, which so easily could have happened, it was the leaders who pulled us apart.
Imagine if the leaders of Black Lives Matter had said on day one, we just noticed that everybody feels the same about this.
Let's work with this.
Let's use this. We just made the biggest gains we've ever made through no effort of our own.
It was this tragic incident that brought everybody to the same page.
Let's work with it.
And what'd they do instead?
I think they said, if we try to work with this and try to be productive, it will be bad for us.
Us being the leaders.
I believe the leaders of Black Lives Matter have thrown the black community under the bus.
Because the black community had The biggest opening of maybe all time to just really make a gain.
Just work with us.
Just take yes for an answer.
Yes, we'd like to fix whatever's wrong with the police.
Yes! Yes!
Do you know what Black Lives Matters could do to fix the police problem?
Here's a persuasion...
Here's persuasion advice that I know they won't take.
And it's because the leadership is completely incompetent.
And they're completely incompetent on the persuasion level, specifically.
Because they're not thinking of what it takes to persuade other people.
They're thinking, as most people do, by the way, this is the most common persuasion problem, is to think you're persuading yourself, or to think that you're persuading other people and that they think the way you do, and so therefore you're just persuading yourself.
It's the biggest problem in persuasion.
And that's where it is.
Let me tell you how you could get white people to fix the police problem for you.
You ready for this? I'm gonna, again, treat the black community with the respect that I don't think anybody gives them.
I'm gonna give you the truth.
I will respect you enough to give you the truth that I don't think other people are telling you.
Here's what you could do to fix the police problem, if you care.
Because I'm not seeing that anybody cares, honestly.
I'm seeing that they care about the issue.
I'm not seeing any evidence.
Seriously, I'm not being provocative here.
I don't see any evidence that any black person cares about fixing it.
Because what that would look like is, here are some suggestions.
Can we get together?
Can we have a meeting? Can we meet you, Mr.
President, at the White House? Anything.
We're forming a committee.
Can we get some white people to help us out?
You know, to make sure we have the diversity of opinion.
Anything like that. But there's nothing we see that looks like any interest in fixing the problem.
Now again, I can't read your minds and I want to not do that.
I want to have the humility that I don't know what you're thinking.
I can only tell what you're doing.
I can't tell what you're thinking.
I can't get in your heads. And as soon as you think you can, that's where you go wrong.
So let me tell you, I've been holding out on this, it's the secret weapon, it's the strategy that will work 100%, and let me tell you this, this strategy could get you all the way back to the agreement we first felt when all of us saw the George Floyd video.
That's how strong it is.
The thing I'm going to tell you next is so strong persuasion-wise, It would take you from a huge loss.
I mean, I think the black community lost 10 years of gains in the last week.
I really do. It's tragic.
But this one trick I'm going to give you would bring you all the way back to the day we saw the video and we're all on the same side.
And here would be the persuasion trick.
Black Lives Matter should release the statistics on white people who have been killed by police.
And they should say, hey, White people.
Look at how many people have been killed by the police who are white.
Turns out there are more of them than there are black people killed by the police.
Turns out, if you were to look at the statistics, you would be surprised that there's actually not a black problem per se.
But there's definitely, in terms of the statistics, you wouldn't find it.
But in terms of the lived truth, it's got to be true that black people get pulled over and hassled more That's probably true, right?
I don't know what the statistics are, but it feels like that's true.
So, if the black community wants to persuade the white community to do something practical about the police, they just have to say, we just noticed it affects everybody.
That's it. It's the same strategy that cured AIDS. So the gay community used a brilliant strategy, I've used this example before because it's the best example you'll ever see.
AIDS was thought to be a gay problem.
The trouble is, if only gays care about it, there are not enough people to fund it, to change laws, whatever you need to do.
I don't know if there's any laws that need to be changed, but to fund it and research it and all that.
So the gay activists, and by the way, there's a little bit of speculation on my part.
It's just observing what happened.
At some point it became, hey, this is everybody's problem.
You could get it all these different ways.
Heterosexuals can get it, etc.
Once it became everybody's problem, then enough resources got directed toward it, and we got in much better shape in terms of therapies.
So the best thing you can do is to tell the people you don't think are helping you That it's their problem, too.
Now, how did Black Lives try to tell the white public that it was their problem, too?
By destroying all their property.
That was their persuasion.
I think we can convince you that this is something you need to pay attention to by destroying the retail stores and shutting down your economy.
How well did that persuade the people that they wanted to persuade?
Not at all. It worked in the opposite direction.
Hard. Hard.
If they wanted to persuade white people to say, holy hell, this needs to be fixed.
What are we doing about police?
Are they being trained right?
Are we measuring the statistics right?
Let's make sure we've got good statistics.
Let's make sure that whatever this problem is, we've really researched it as thoroughly as we can.
If you want to get white people involved in fixing the problem, acknowledge that it's our problem.
Just acknowledge it. Simply acknowledge it.
Here are the statistics.
It's a big problem.
Can you work with us? Because we feel it more in the black community.
I think that's true. Don't you think that the black community feels that more than the white community?
I mean, it's obvious. There's protests about it all the time.
How many white people were protesting police brutality?
None. None. I mean, about police brutality, about white people.
So, it's a very simple strategy.
All Black Lives Matter has to do is acknowledge that they're not the only ones with problems.
That's it. That's it.
The day that the leader of Black Lives Matter goes on TV, and this will never happen, by the way, goes on TV and says, look, this isn't just a black problem.
Look at how many white people got killed by police.
Can he work with us? Do you know how many people would say yes so hard that it would be deafening?
Look how many white people got killed by police.
Can you work with us? Yes!
Yes! How about yes as hard as you can yell yes?
Take yes for an answer.
That's what a strategy would look like.
Alright. Somebody on Twitter So I tweeted yesterday that the protests, with all the badness that came along with the protests from the people who were not the fine people, that it set things back and probably will end up in more deaths of black people than if there had been no protests because of extra poverty.
And so somebody looked at that statement, that poverty would kill more black people than the police will, And decided that that was a case of my white privilege.
So somebody tweeted at me that it was a sign of white privilege that I believe that more black people will be killed by poverty than the police.
Now the first thing I thought was, what?
I don't even know how that makes sense.
I can't connect those dots.
But I tweeted back that I lost three separate jobs for being white and male.
True story, dumb fuck.
I just add that curse word at the end because it gets her attention.
But a lot of people don't believe that's true.
Some of you have heard the story.
You've heard of two of them, but there's one of them I've never mentioned in this context.
So here are the three times I lost jobs for being white and male.
First time was my job at a bank.
My boss called me and she was a woman.
And she said, we can't promote you because you're white and you're male.
Directly. She said that the company got in trouble for not having enough diversity, and so they couldn't promote you if you're white or you're male, and she was calling me in to tell me directly.
And again, directly.
This is not something that I read between the lines.
It's not something that I thought about afterwards and thought, maybe they were trying to discriminate against me.
Nothing like that. In direct words, She said, I'm afraid you won't get promoted here, because you're white and you're male, and the orders have come down.
We've got to slow down on that.
So I quit. So that was the first job, career you could say, because I thought my career was going to be in banking.
So this was early 80s, I think.
So I went to Pacific Bell.
It was the local phone company at the time, and I got on the management fast track.
So they had a little program where they identified people who were maybe going to be senior management someday.
I was finishing my MBA. I looked like a corporate guy on the way.
When it was about time, I'd been seasoned enough and I was about ready for that big promotion.
Because at the phone company, you could make a ton of money back in those days.
The jobs were really good at the management levels.
They paid a lot with bonuses and stuff.
And I was ready for that big one.
It was called a director level.
And I was thinking, next year or so, I'm going to get the big bump.
My boss called me in his office and he said, That he couldn't promote me.
He just wanted to warn me.
He couldn't promote me because I'm white and I'm male.
He said it directly.
Those very words, you're white, you're male, can't promote you.
And he said that management had just sent the word down that they couldn't promote any white males because they too had gotten in trouble, didn't have any diversity in senior management.
So that's two entire careers that went down the toilet because I'm white and male.
And black people tell me I don't understand the effects of discrimination.
Now of course I don't understand them in exactly the way any black man or any minority or even any woman would experience them.
Of course not. But the only point I'm making is that you also don't know my life.
You don't know my life.
You don't know my life.
Just like I don't know yours.
The third time it happened was after Dilbert was successful.
Now I'd quit I'd given up on my corporate careers because of those experiences, and I started working on my side hustle, if you will.
My side hustle was trying to get some comics published, and that went pretty well.
Now Dilbert took off, and of course I had to find a place I was working for myself.
So I needed a job, or I didn't have a boss who would tell me that I couldn't be promoted because of my race or my gender.
So I thought, I've got to work for myself, I guess.
So I became an entrepreneur, if you will.
And cartooning was one of the things I tried.
So that worked out. And then the Dilbert TV show was created.
You know, fast forward in time.
I created the Dilbert TV series on UPN. UPN is a network that doesn't exist.
I think WB bought them or something.
But at the time, they were the small network.
And I intentionally took a deal with a small network because I thought I could be a big fish in a small network.
And if you're the one they give attention to, you have a much better chance of success.
So I thought, ah, Dilbert would be kind of a big deal on UPN. It could be like The Simpsons made Fox a big network.
You know, The Simpsons was a big deal for Fox's history.
I thought, well, I could do that for UPN. So we go over there and we have a successful first season and we get renewed.
Yay! Got renewed.
In the second season, UPN decided to make a strategic change.
They decided that they would become a network focused on African-American content.
So UPN decided to become the African-American content channel, and that was the end of my show.
Now, the reasons given were other reasons, right?
They moved it to a bad time slot.
The ratings went down because it was in a bad time slot.
And then they say, well, the ratings went down, so you're cancelled.
But of course the ratings went down because they moved the time slot.
That's the only reason it went down.
So I lost my TV career because the product I make was not oriented for the African-American community.
So those are three enormous inflection points in my life based on racism.
Am I interpreting that incorrectly?
Would you not say that racism is exactly what I experienced and that on three separate occasions it knocked me off a pedestal?
Now, here's the most provocative thing I might ever say.
So I'll try to say it as carefully as possible.
Again, with great respect.
I always respect people.
Just automatically.
It doesn't matter who you are. I always respect people.
What I don't respect is strategies.
People have bad strategies.
I don't respect the strategy.
I always respect the person.
Now, I think bad strategies come from bad...
I don't know.
Maybe you've never seen a good strategy, so you just don't know what it looks like.
It's not something that necessarily common sense will get you to.
I don't know if you can come up with a good strategy just by thinking it through.
Sometimes you have to see examples.
That's the best thing. Oh, I'll do it like they did it.
That's the whole point of case studies in business school.
You want to see examples of a lot of stuff, then you know what to pick from.
I'm going to make a provocative claim that no matter your color, no matter your gender, and no matter a lot of different things, anybody who used the strategies that I've used Has succeeded.
That's it. It's very provocative.
Anybody who's used the strategies for life that I've used has succeeded eventually.
I told you my story that racial and sexual discrimination was a huge problem in my life.
A gigantic problem.
In fact, arguably the biggest problem, my biggest career impediment was Race and gender discrimination.
I just told you the story.
I didn't make that up.
But here's the second part.
And of course, I wrote the book behind me.
I had to fail almost everything and still win big.
And I talk about developing systems, and I talk about building your skill stack, which is what I did.
And I would argue that anybody who did what I did has a good life.
Meaning that, of course, you could have health tragedies, so there could be exceptions.
But generally speaking, here's what I did to succeed.
I'm going to tell you what formula I used.
I want you to tell me if this would not work for black people.
So here's the formula.
I was in a small town with My parents didn't go to college, didn't even know much about what that was all about.
We didn't have money.
I won't go into the details, but we were, I'd say, lower middle income.
You know, we had enough to eat all the time, etc.
So we never were hungry.
We had used cars.
Let's put it that way. A lot of used stuff in my life.
And here was the strategy I used.
My mother said, just do really good in school and basically everything will work out.
That's it. Basically stay in a jail.
Don't do anything that would derail you permanently.
Don't get anybody pregnant.
Don't be a drug addict when you're a teenager.
Don't get in jail.
And just really pay attention to your school work.
Now what did that get me?
Well, so I graduated and had to get a scholarship to the college that I wanted.
So, I got a scholarship.
How hard would it be to get a financial scholarship if you were a black student who did good work and stayed out of trouble?
Not hard, right? If you just do well in school and stay out of trouble, you could get a college scholarship if you're black, I think.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you could go to college.
If you go to college, and again, you stay out of trouble, You don't get somebody pregnant when you're too young to support them.
Just basic stuff.
If you do those things, and you're a black man, let's say a black man, just to have a specific example, you're a black man with a college education in the United States, how do you do in life?
Good. Every time.
Because do you know how many corporations want to hire a qualified minority?
All of them. All of them.
All of them. Yeah, every one of them.
Do you know how many corporations are looking to hire more white people?
Not a fucking one of them.
None. None.
Do you know your white hiring people, just to pick an example, let's say the hiring manager at the big corporation sees you walk in and you're a black man, And he's looking at your resume, and you're a black man with the right qualifications for the job.
What is the hiring manager, the white hiring manager, what do they feel like when a black man walks in and he's got exactly the qualifications you're looking for?
They fucking salivate.
They salivate.
Because it fixes their problem.
Do you know what that white hiring manager's biggest problem is?
Can't hire enough qualified minorities.
He wants to. It's in his job description.
The freaking hiring manager won't even get a good bonus if he can't figure out how to get some diversity because it's so important in big corporations.
So you tell me that there's not a strategy for everybody to succeed in this country if they're If they're smart enough to go to college.
Now, not everybody's smart enough to go to college, right?
Doesn't matter your gender or race, right?
It's just lots of different people.
But if you just change that to, instead of go to college, learn to trade.
Learn to trade. That's it.
Somebody stayed out of trouble, didn't get anybody pregnant, didn't become a drug addict, didn't join a gang, learned a trade, became a plumber.
How's that black plumber going to do?
Great. Because plumber's a good job.
Great. So, let me give some tough love on the question of structural racism.
This is going to get me cancelled so hard.
I don't know. I think I like danger or something because I'm only doing this to be productive.
That's the first thing you need to know.
I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it would help somebody.
Everything I say is with respect and with the intention of making the world a better place.
So, with that said, loving all the people, but being rough on this strategy, I'm going to give you some tough love, strategy-wise.
The strategy of saying that the problem with the world is structural racism and that you need to dismantle the mechanisms of white supremacy is, and I don't want to pull any punches, the dumbest fucking strategy of all time.
It's going to make these riots look like they're brilliant.
It would make them look brilliant.
The dumbest fucking strategy for making things better for black people is to complain that the problem is structural racism And that you have to dismantle the white supremacy.
Because, again, who are you persuading?
Are you persuading your own side to feel bitter?
Because persuading your own side to be bitter and hate white people doesn't get you a job.
It really doesn't. Strategy-wise, it doesn't get you a job.
It might lose you a job, but it's never going to get you a job.
And here's why, a little bit of detail on that.
Let me prove this by asking a question in the comments.
I want you in the comments to back me up on this or to refute me.
So if this is not true, tell me.
Most of you, I'm guessing, are white.
I think 90% of my typical viewers are white.
I wish I had more African-American viewers.
It would make it more fun. I think that's the ratio.
So just working with that ratio, look at the comments and I'll ask you this question.
Do you know what the fuck ratio...
Let me say it again.
For the white people watching this, do you have any idea what the fuck institutional racism is?
Do you have any fucking idea what that is?
Because you're supposed to fix it.
You've been asked to fix it.
Wouldn't it be nice if the thing that you've been asked to fix, the only really ask, that there's only one ask coming out of the Black Lives Movement, which is to fix this institutional racism.
What the fuck is that?
Do you think I don't want to fix it?
I would totally fix it.
Do you know what? Here's a little tip about white people.
We love to fix shit.
It's like baked into the most basic thing about white people.
If you want to understand white people, here's a tip number one for white people.
We fucking love to fix stuff.
Help us. Just tell us what to fix.
Don't tell us we got some structural racism.
No fucking use whatsoever.
If you're trying to make it worse for black people, that would be the way to do it.
Every time I hear structural racism, With no definition, no detail, no specific thing to do, every time, I get pissed off.
Is that what you're shooting for?
Was the point of your persuasion and the way you want to make things better for the black community, was it your strategy to simply piss me off and give me nothing I can help with?
Because that's all you're doing.
That's all you're doing.
You're just fucking pissing off white people.
Because we don't know what that is.
Love to know. Love to help.
If you don't understand that white people like to help, you don't know anything about white people.
It's like you're blind and stupid if you don't understand how much white people just automatically.
We're just like the most helpful people in the whole fucking world.
Here's another strategy.
Let me give you an example of this.
This is a very concrete and fresh example.
I saw Jack Murphy, who you should follow on Twitter.
He had a great video.
I've told you this before. Last night, too, he was in the middle of the protest live streaming.
It was the best video you could have seen last night from any source, professional news crew or other, was Jack Murphy.
It was just him with his camera because he went into the middle of the action.
And unlike almost everybody else who owns a phone, he knows how to hold the phone steady.
Have you noticed that? You watch anybody else's live stream, and they'll be walking through the crowd like this.
All right, I'm in the crowd.
Do you see what I'm seeing?
And you're like, no, I don't fucking see anything because you're moving the camera too much.
Can you hold that still?
Love to see what you're seeing.
So anyway, that's a pet peeve.
So Jack Murphy knows how to hold the camera still.
It's like part of his skill stack.
There's this tiny little skill.
It's like, I'll bet I'll be better than everybody who does this if I just hold the camera still.
Sure enough. So beyond that, he has lots of other talents.
But somebody tweeted at him and he had responded that I and Jack Posobiec had signal boosted him.
In other words, we've promoted him online just as I did just now.
Now, why do I promote him online?
Why do I do that?
What's in it for me?
I've done Jack's podcast, but of course that also was helping him to boost his signal.
Why do I help him?
It's a strategy. It's a white person's strategy.
And it works every time.
And it goes like this. I just do things for people.
That's it. I do things for people.
I do things for lots of people.
Ed Latimer would tell you the same story.
Ed Latimer, African-American.
He's built his following on Twitter up substantially.
He's got lots of really fun and really useful advice and framing of things, etc.
And he's one of the most productive, useful, strategically sound people you'll ever see in your life.
I also boost his signal.
Why do I do it?
Because that's who I am.
How did I get here?
Like, how is it that you're listening to me and I've got a famous cartoon strip?
How did I get here? Other people.
Other people boosted my signal.
Why did they do it?
I don't know. They just did it.
And it's good.
When you boost other people's signal, that's a strategy.
Does this come back to me?
Maybe. Probably.
Karma. Some way.
I don't know. Does it help me directly?
Not at all. Does it help me indirectly?
Probably. It's a strategy.
It's also the most common Silicon Valley strategy.
When I was going around talking to people with my startup, and I'd be asking for advice and or funding or whatever, and the most unusual thing that would happen is they would offer me something for nothing.
And I would think, what?
Everywhere you went in Silicon Valley, you'd have a meeting, and then when I was done, they'd say, you know, anything you need, if I can help you, I'll help you connect to people.
If I help you meet somebody, if you need some advice, you want to talk through something, give me a call.
But unlike sort of normal social chitchat, they all meant it.
They all actually meant it.
It's one of the most basic strategies of Silicon Valley that if you help other people, it gets back to you.
It's this virtuous This virtuous system of people helping each other where they can.
They're not taking the shirt off their back.
They're giving advice and connecting people and sending an email and stuff.
Pretty easy stuff. But so is signal boosting.
So, this is just an example of where if there's institutional racism, I would look for a strategy to root it out.
In other words, I think if the black community focused on improving its strategy, that it actually wouldn't even matter that structural racism existed.
And let me say that a little bit more clearly with Samit.
If your strategy is good enough, you can slice through obstacles.
The so-called structural racism, I believe, is a real thing, but it's sort of amorphous and hard to figure out where the buttons are, where's the user interface so I can get past this structural racism.
What do I do?
Get a strategy.
If your strategy is good, you'll slice right through it.
It'll be like it wasn't even there.
It will still be there.
But one of the things that I think is a framing problem Is that you have to remove the structural racism to succeed.
And you don't.
And you can't.
You don't need to remove it to succeed.
You need a good strategy.
And it doesn't need to be removed.
You need a good strategy.
And worse, if you tried to remove it, you can't.
You can't. It's just sort of too big and amorphous.
It's sort of like, you know, I'd like to get the air out of this room I suppose you could do that if you tried hard enough.
But the point is, strategy is where they should be focusing.
No, I don't want to use the word should.
I'm trying to train myself never to use the word should, because it's sort of a fighting word.
You think it isn't, but it is.
You tell somebody they should do something, and they'll just stiffen up.
Don't tell me what I should do.
So let me take the shoe down of it and say this.
To the black community, with ultimate respect and affection, I say this.
Your strategies suck.
You've been duped by your leaders who are incompetent.
If you had better leaders, they would be focusing you on strategy.
Let me put it in the starkest possible terms.
If you were to replace whoever the hell is your leader, I don't know, I don't even know who it is, With Ed Latimer, African-American man who's good at strategy, you would fix all of your problems.
I'll say it again.
If Ed Latimer were even advising Black Lives Matter, even as an advisor, he doesn't have to be the new leader or anything, just advising, he would advise you on strategy and you would slice right through any racial discrimination.
Still be a problem, still be emotionally disturbing, still don't want it, still evil.
It's still all those things, but it would be like it wasn't there.
You would just slice right through it.
Likewise, some of you may know, I was born not very tall, not good looking.
Not tall, not good looking.
Got glasses, lost my hair early.
Short, ugly, glasses.
Not good looking, balding.
Did any of those things slow me down?
Well, some are going to say, no, because you're white.
It's easy, you're white.
No, I just told you, I lost three jobs by being white.
How much of a problem is it statistically to be short and ugly?
It's a pretty big problem.
How do I solve the fact that there is institutional Discrimination against short, ugly people.
I can't.
I can't.
It's too big and amorphous and there are no buttons.
How do I change the fact that people discriminate against shorter people and ugly people?
I can't change that.
But I can have a strategy that is so powerful I can slice through it like it didn't exist.
And I did. I sliced through it like it didn't exist.
And anybody with a good strategy, ask Ed Latimer, who you should be following on Twitter anyway, because he's great.
Ask him. Ask him to back me up.
Strategy overcomes just about everything.
So, CNN continues to make things worse.
I don't know how they sleep at night.
Honestly, it makes me wonder if they're self-aware of how much worse they're making things in this country.
I really don't know.
Because they act like they believe they're making things better, but they're so not.
Here's an example.
They ran an article on US black and white inequality in six stark charts.
And they showed income inequality and health care.
And they were quite shocking because the differences are...
They should...
If you're a good person, they should bother you to see the giganticness of the differences.
But here's what was not on the charts.
Let's say a comparison by strategy.
What I'd like to see, you know what would help me?
Do you know what would help the black community more than anything?
Not this. This makes things much worse because they framed it in terms of inequality.
So if that's how it's framed, that's sort of how you accept it and then you go forward, ah, there's inequality.
Here's what would have been useful.
To do a comparison of black and white citizens who followed the same strategies.
Have you ever seen that?
Compare to me the people who early in life said, here's my strategy.
This is how I will succeed.
Stay in a jail. Study in school.
Don't become a drug addict.
Don't get anybody pregnant before I'm ready.
That's my strategy.
So how about showing me the chart With just those four things, everybody who had that strategy, how'd they do?
How do the incomes compare?
Now, if you show me that chart, and there's a big difference, I'm going to say, well, I think you found the discrimination, because how do you explain that?
Same strategy, different results.
Discrimination would have to be assumed to be the primary thing.
But the thing is, It would look a lot different, and it would also change the frame.
It would change the frame to, whoa, are you telling me that all the people with this strategy did well?
Well, maybe that's something.
All right. So Attorney General Barr has threatened to release the Antifa communications that would show which elites, and I guess that means elite Democrats, And politicians played a role in coordinating the riots.
Now, of course, you could call them riots or protests or looting or anarchism or whatever.
The words matter, but I'm not sure they matter in this case because everybody knows what you're talking about.
So how much do you want to see the Antifa communications?
I think Antifa will be shown to be not very popular.
And now Black Lives Matter...
Oh my God.
You know, I said Black Lives Matter, their strategy is the worst I've ever seen to try to get what they want.
But they've also allowed themselves to be paired with a domestic terrorist organization.
They've allowed themselves to be, like, paired with them.
It was easy to stop, because after the first few nights, they could have just said, we don't want to march with Antifa.
That's all they had to do.
Do a few nights of protest and say, look, Antifa, we're not with you.
Go do your own thing.
Because we don't support what you support.
Could have done that, but didn't.
They were being inclusive, I guess.
But it worked against their interests in an enormous way.
So AG Barr is going to take down Antifa, and every time that Antifa gets down, you're going to think of Black Lives Matter, because now they're paired in your mind.
So any bad thing that comes out of Antifa is going to slop over in your mind, even though it's not fair.
Totally not fair. But that's not how minds work.
Minds don't work on fairness.
They just pair things irrationally.
So it could not be a worse week for the black community, in my opinion, in terms of their strategy.
Virginia protesters lit a house on fire with a child inside.
The police chief called it, and I quote, unacceptable.
Fair statement.
You know, when somebody lights a house on fire that has a child inside, the first word that comes to my mind is unacceptable.
You really should think this through.
Before you set a house on fire that has a child inside, I would like to recommend that you consider all your options.
Maybe Maybe consider that there are some acceptable things to do, but that this one, you know, I don't want to make you feel bad, but I feel as though you've picked a suboptimal, dare I say, unacceptable, a little bit unacceptable to burn down a house with a child inside.
And I would agree with this, Police Chief.
It's unacceptable. It really is.
All right. I've probably done enough to get cancelled.
What do you think? So I'm going to leave you with the positive thought.
I think the energy has come out of the protests.
I think everybody got the message.
I think the coronavirus, for whatever reason, is becoming less of a problem.
I think the economy is going to come back.
I think retail was going to die on its own and probably wasn't.
If you know about retail rental space, the landlord makes money whether the retail shop makes money or not because they still have to pay the rent.
So I don't know that the retail stores made any money.
I don't. So I'm not sure that the economic segment that just got wiped out I just don't know if it's a big deal.
Now, it's a big deal to jobs, but if the economy comes back in general, I think there'll be enough jobs.
We'll get there. So, I would say that today is a day you should feel very optimistic.
Summer's here. Coronavirus on the run.
And I think that the protests made their point.
Everybody heard it. It's time to get back to business.
And of course, as I make this offer all the time, if there's any way I can help, I am always available to do it.
Why? Why would I be available to help?
Why would I help when there's nothing in it for me?
It's a strategy.
It's a strategy.
If you can help people, it's eventually going to get back to you.
So you can call me selfish if you want, but I'd like to help.
That's all for today. I will talk to you.
I don't know if I'll be on tonight.
If it looks like the protests are going to turn into riots tonight, I might do another live stream tonight.
But if it's settled down, I think I need to take a little time off.
Just from the evening broadcast, not the morning.
And if you would like to support me, which I would appreciate, There's a subscription service to see this content, plus stuff you don't see anywhere else, especially my comic, Robots Read News, which will probably get me cancelled eventually because I do lots of edgier stuff.
I get to swear in that comic.
I like to use all the curse words I can because I've got 30 years of not being able to say provocative things in newspapers.
So it's a very freeing experience.
But I'm also putting some micro-lessons on everything from writing to humor to talent stacks, etc.
So I'm trying to make the Locals subscription service really additive.
And I'll try to be pumping that up as we go.
If you want to find that link, you can go to Locals.com or you can find the link in my Twitter profile.
