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Content:
What is "systemic racism"?
John Bolton's book
Matt Gaetz is linguistically gifted
Blue flu in Atlanta
Coronavirus death rate
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It's a little over lit today because I'm going to be reading off of my gigantic computer screen which creates more light than the sun.
True. More light than the sun.
But before we get going with all the news, have you noticed how much news there is?
Oh, there's a lot of news.
It's all interesting today.
So, let's talk about it, but first, let's prepare properly, and all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Does it sound like I was getting a lot of phone calls at 2am this morning and I didn't get enough sleep?
Well, you're right. Join me now.
I'm so tired I can barely remember my name, so this will be interesting.
So I just published a tweet thread on my one-week challenge for people to give me examples of systemic racism.
Because like most of you, I just didn't know what it was.
Did any of you think you knew what it was?
So let me tell you what I found out.
And I will look at my own thread here to remind myself of all that goodness.
So what I found out is everybody has different opinions of what it is.
Now, there might be some people who have the same opinions, but there are lots of different ones.
So if you ask two people, hey, describe to me, what is systemic racism?
You're going to get very different answers.
And let me give you some of them, and then you can see if you agree with these.
Alright, I'll find it.
I'm so tired.
I can't even find my own tweets.
Alright, so here are some examples I got.
I got lots of examples that would apply to anybody poor.
So let me ask you if you would call this systemic racism.
So if there's somebody who lives in a poor neighborhood, because historically there are conditions that caused it to be a poor neighborhood, they have probably a school system that has less funding because of a smaller tax base, and therefore a worse education.
And that bad education will basically ripple into the future forever.
So that would be one given example of systemic racism.
To which I say, wait a minute.
I was born in a town with a low tax base.
I went to a bad school relative to better funded schools.
So how can you have systemic racism If it applies, at least in this specific example, of an underfunded school, it would be the same.
The white kids who happen to go to that underfunded school, are they doing better?
How does that example work?
Alright, give you some more. So I reject that because it would apply to anybody who is poor, and there are lots of people who are poor of all types.
I got lots of answers that were outcome-based.
Meaning that if the outcomes for any group were different, that's your systemic racism.
To which I say, is it?
Is it? Do we have enough science to know that that's the one reason for the different outcomes?
I don't think we have that kind of science.
Now, I'm not saying that I know what's going on, because I don't.
But I would say that different outcomes...
It's not even close to getting you a reason why you have the different outcomes.
There's a lot of work you'd have to do to get to the why.
Some people told me that a non-racist system, let's say a system that doesn't have any rules that are different by race, let's say the legal system.
So on paper, the legal system is colorblind.
But only on paper. In reality, it produces disparate outcomes.
And I think most people would agree that that is true.
But is that proof of systemic racism if you don't know why you have different outcomes?
And has the why been looked into?
I don't think so.
Before I blocked Tim Pool, I had to block him because he He did some bad mind reading in public.
So I have a rule that I block anybody who attributes an opinion to me and then criticizes the opinion that they hallucinated as if it was my opinion.
And I'm not even involved in this at all.
It's like, okay, that wasn't my opinion.
And I can't really speak to the criticism of your hallucination of it.
Whenever I encounter such individuals, I block them because it's just been my experience that interacting with them just causes more of that.
Anybody who does that once, they're not going to stop doing that.
They will just come up with a new hallucination for what you're thinking.
If you disprove that one, they'll come up with another hallucination of what you're thinking.
I'm not saying that that would apply to Tim Pool specifically.
I'm saying that as a pattern I've noticed in life, My experience of life is better if I just immediately get rid of people who are like that.
I'm seeing in the comments, free Tim Pool.
But let me say clearly, it's nothing personal.
There's nothing personal about this.
I think I saw a tweet from Tim that thought, I don't know, his reaction to being blocked was to do more of what got him blocked, which is to imagine he knows what I'm thinking or why I do anything, and then saying it in public.
By the way, somebody's bringing Cernovich into it.
Here's something that Mike Cernovich has never done.
He has never assigned a motive or a thought to me in public and then criticized it in public.
And I don't think he ever will because it's a fucked up thing to do.
It's completely fucked up.
Never assign somebody a motive that they have not said themselves and then criticize them for it.
You can ask them if they're thinking that.
You can ask them to clarify their opinion perfectly fine.
But just coming up with an opinion about what I'm thinking, and then saying it in public, and it's wrong, it's not even close, and then criticizing it, that creates a permanent record That would confuse people about my opinion.
I don't want a confusing permanent record.
So I just delete people who do that.
And there are certain people who will do it over and over again.
That's all I'm saying. All right.
Back to this topic of systemic racism.
So Tim Pool's example is that, let's say there's something small that happens The snowballs.
Let's say you get a speeding ticket and you can't afford to pay it.
The next time you get stopped, maybe the cop says you didn't pay your tickets.
Maybe your license gets taken, but you still have to go to work.
Next thing you know, you're in jail.
It just builds and builds from that little infraction that you just can't recover from.
Maybe you got put in jail for something minor, but now you've got a jail record.
So it just accumulates.
But I rejected that.
Tim got mad because he didn't see my post in which I responded to him.
So he thought I didn't respond and then he got extra mad for me not responding.
But of course I had responded.
He just didn't see it. And what I responded was that that example, as far as I can tell, would apply to everybody who is poor.
How does a poor white person pay a speeding ticket?
Do poor white people just suddenly get money if they need to pay a speeding ticket?
I think this just applies to poor people.
Now, there may be a version of this that doesn't apply to everybody equally, but I didn't hear it.
Now, I did say that I'm convinced.
I think all the data suggests this, or says it pretty clearly.
That authority figures, be they teachers, cops, or judges, whatever, I think they do treat young African American males, in particular, differently on average, wouldn't you say?
That's probably true.
I mean, but we don't know why, right?
Is that the one reason?
Because I think it's true, but you only have one reason that authority figures are treating African American young males differently?
Let me see if those of you who watch me know that I'm on a sort of a non-stop path to try to get myself canceled.
Now, I don't want to be canceled, but as I've said before, you have to walk right up to the line of cancellation.
To be honest enough to say anything useful.
So if you're not right on the edge of getting cancelled, you're just not useful.
You're just not part of the conversation.
You're just way over there lying about stuff so that nobody will be mad at you.
So if you can't walk up to that line, maybe just don't be part of the conversation.
Because you can't possibly help if you're too afraid of saying the wrong thing.
So let me say something.
That I think is so inappropriate, I'll get cancelled.
See what you think.
So you and I, and most people, have been watching lots of coverage of the protests.
So when I watch the protests, and I'm watching people get into physical altercations...
I'm saying to myself, okay, what if I were in that position?
Don't you do that automatically?
You see the TV scuffle, and you put yourself in the position of somebody.
You're either the cop, or you're the protester, or maybe you go back and forth.
But it's just sort of normal.
You read yourself into the story, exactly the way when the George Floyd video came out.
What was so powerful about that is that no matter who you were, no matter your ethnicity, your age, anything, you put yourself into George Floyd's world there just for nine minutes.
At least for me, it was just automatic.
I wasn't the cop.
I was George Floyd when I watched the video.
And I think that's why every white person who watches said, ah, okay, now I get it.
Like, before, I knew what you were saying, and intellectually I understood it, but now I get it, like, in a full-body way.
Like, now I feel like, artificially, I inhabited his life, at least in my imagination, during those last moments of life.
It was horrible. Now I'm emotionally sort of compatible with what you're saying.
So, there are a lot of things we saw that, you know, make us just automatically read ourselves into this situation.
That's a long way of saying this.
If you looked at the two primary groups that were in the protest, among the protesters themselves, you had the Black Lives Matter people, and you had a lot of Antifa-looking people.
Right? When I watched any of the Antifa-looking people getting into some kind of a scuffle, here's what I said to myself.
I could take that guy.
Did any of you have that feeling?
Maybe it's just a male feeling.
I don't know how many women would think in that way.
But if you're a man, and you see any two people fighting, you automatically put yourself in the fight.
Just the same way you see a video of, you know, a tragedy.
You just put yourself there. And I put myself in the fight and I say to myself, I could take that Antifa guy.
You know, if I had to.
Not every one. Some of them are pretty big.
You know, I couldn't if an Antifa guy is six feet tall and, you know, he's pretty beefy.
But none of them looked, let's say, like they play sports.
I'm just saying. I'm just saying...
I didn't do a survey.
I don't have data.
This is purely subjective and biased.
Completely subjective and biased.
But since what we're talking about is how we're persuaded by things, I'm not telling you what's true.
I'm just telling you how I felt.
This is just my impression.
So I'm watching the Antifa guys, miles and miles of video footage, scuffle, scuffle, blah, blah.
And every time I look at them, I'm thinking, yeah, I might be able to take that guy.
I mean, I'm 63 years old, 5 feet 8, I weigh 158 pounds, and still, you know, just because I have muscle definition and muscle If you put me in a situation, I can handle myself.
I thought to myself, I could take most of those guys.
Even me. Now, I also saw many, many miles of footage of black men, young black men, who were in scuffles or some not in scuffles.
Some of them were just protesting.
And do you know what I said when I watched any of the black people in any kind of an altercation?
I'll tell you what I said.
That guy would kick my fucking ass.
I would not want to get in a fight with that fucking guy.
He looks like he could tear me a fucking part.
Now, am I being racist?
I don't know. You watch the same video as me.
Do you think that the black people looked as soft and weak as the white people?
I don't. I mean, to me, it looked like a pretty big difference.
There was a physicality difference that was hard not to notice.
Now, am I being racist to say that it was my impression that the black people in those protests were far more fit?
Is that racist?
You watched it?
What did you see? If there's anybody, and I hope there is, are there any black people on this Periscope who will just back me up on this?
Did it not look to you like most of the black people were far more fit and capable, physically capable, than most of the white people who looked like they'd been playing video games in the basement for the last seven years?
Now, if you're a cop, and you pull over some wee-looking Antifa white guy who weighs 140 pounds, and you know he's never thrown a punch, how do you treat him?
Are you worried?
Probably not. You're not really worried.
Not in the same way.
Now, let's say you pull over a guy who's your size.
He's your size or he's bigger.
And he looks like he knows his way around.
You know what I mean? He's a guy who looks like he could take care of himself in a fight.
You don't know if he's a fighter.
You just look at him and you're saying, I don't know.
He looks like he could take care of himself in a fight.
Do you treat him exactly the same as this skinny little punk white kid who you know couldn't throw a punch and if he did it wouldn't hurt you anyway?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Now, who studied that difference?
That's just one of maybe 15 differences that you would find if you started digging down into the why of things.
The thing we continually ignore is that, and I teach you this consistently, it's one of the most important rules of persuasion.
I'll say it again. The way you act when you and I are together, the way you act is up to me.
As soon as you think it's the other way around, the whole world is confusing and nothing will make sense to you.
Now, of course, you have agency and you can also make your own decisions.
And the biggest part of what you do is going to be yourself.
But until you understand how much I can change your actions, you're just lost.
You're just lost.
Let me go a little bit closer to the line of getting canceled.
Is there anybody who believes, anybody black, anybody white, anybody Asian American, is there anybody in any group who believes this isn't true, that different groups respond differently to the police?
Does anybody doubt that?
That different groups probably respond differently to authority figures in general?
Does anybody believe that every group responds the same On average, again, it's an average.
Every individual is going to be different, right?
There's no general statement that applies to every person.
Can we agree on that?
We're at least beyond that, right?
We know that averages don't mean anything for any one person.
That's the whole point of racism, that we were confused about the average applying to the individual.
But do you think that the average Asian American who gets stopped by police Well, how many differences do you see?
Number one is the average physical size of the average African American who's stopped by the police.
If you were just to say, all right, let's just weigh them.
Let's just take their height and their weight.
Would it be the same? If you're a cop, do you treat somebody the same if they're small?
Do you treat women the same as men?
You should, right? Shouldn't you treat women the same as men?
I mean, except for searching them.
You want to have a woman to do the search and stuff.
So the special cases, yes, of course there would be differences.
But just in terms of your demeanor, how much force you use, Do you think the police use the same force on women as they do on men?
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
Do you think that the average Asian American scares a police officer the same way that the average African American that they don't know anything about?
Do you think the police are having the same reaction?
Probably not. Now, is that racism?
Kind of.
Kind of.
It's kind of racism, isn't it?
But on the other hand, is it the bad kind?
If the thing you're reacting to is the physical size and the extent of the threat to you personally, is that racism?
Because I'm not talking about an average.
I'm talking about there's two specific people.
One is smallish.
One is large. I don't know.
It feels like it'd be different. Let me ask you this.
If you believed that...
If your history, your personal history, the thing that defines you, was a legacy of slavery...
And that was just a big part of your mental map, was that slavery was your origin story.
How would you naturally react to authority if that was a defining part of your personality?
Would you react the same as I would when my defining story was the founders of the United States?
Think about it. My origin story, if you will, the thing that you're brainwashed with as a kid, is that the people that I should relate to would be George Washington, Thomas Jefferson.
Oh, forget about the slavery part for a minute.
We're just looking at their good parts, because that's how I was brainwashed as a kid.
I was brainwashed to literally ignore their bad parts and say, look at these White people who were leaders and inventors and revolutionaries in a good way and they did all these wonderful things.
Oh, let's ignore the fact they were raping their slaves.
We won't talk about that.
Now, my origin story is about authority.
That I am part of authority.
I'm part of the ruling class, if you will.
Just by virtue of being a white guy.
I wasn't born into a ruling class, but it is my origin story.
Now, I encounter an authority figure.
What would be the natural way that I would respond to an authority figure if I had been trained from birth that I am one?
Right? If you're dealing with somebody who's just you at a different age, you're perfectly polite.
If I talk to a CEO or a teacher when I was a kid or a police officer or something, I saw them as part of the structure, that's me.
You know, stuff, leadership, you know, people in control, authority figures.
Well, that's either what I'm already, if I'm older, or when I was a kid, I just assumed I would be an authority figure someday.
I always thought I would be an authority figure.
So my feeling about authority...
It was somewhat positive.
Suppose your origin story was that the authority figures were raping and killing you for generations.
Do you act the same?
It'd be hard.
If you're a human being with normal brain, it'd be pretty hard to start that far in the well and find your own way out without a lot of help, right?
Most of us don't have a lot of help.
So here's my point. To imagine that everybody who has such a different origin story, such different cultural influences, to imagine that everybody as a group responds in ways that are similar enough that the only thing you need to know is what the cops did.
The only data you need to know is what the teacher did.
The only data you need to know is what the authority figure did.
I would say that's naive to the point of intentional stupidity.
Because you're going to need to know a lot more things to know what happened in any situation.
You're going to need to know the sizes, ages.
You're going to need to know expectations, what their history is.
Just a million things.
Their income. I could go on.
Alright, let's see what else is in the news today.
The fun stuff is the John Bolton book.
So one of the great stories in the John Bolden book, which looks like just made-up stuff to me.
Now, we've seen a number of these tell-all books, and they all have that same quality.
The worst thing in the book doesn't have other witnesses.
Have you noticed that? All these tell-all books have the same quality.
There are a few little bombshell things in there.
They're like, oh man, you can't believe this happened.
And what's the next thing you find out about it?
No witnesses. Except for the person who wrote the book.
And if there were other people in the room, they don't remember it happening.
They didn't see it.
Huh! What a coincidence!
So the John Bolton one, which is hilarious, is he says that the president said to President Xi of China that Trump allegedly told Xi that building concentration camps for Uyghurs was fine and he should do more of it.
Now, do you think there's any chance that happened?
No. There's no chance that that happened.
And then, you know, as soon as I read that, I'm like, okay, start the timer.
Timer's running at one, two, there it is.
There's the guy who was in the room, I think it was Lighthouser or something, who said, I was in the room.
I don't remember anything like that.
Now, I think you'd remember something like that.
And, of course, the story had translators involved, so there's a pretty obvious place Where things could have gone wrong if there were translators involved.
All right. Now, the other thing you don't know is what Trump's inner strategy was.
So you don't know.
Anytime you see a story of Trump dealing with Putin, Trump dealing with President Xi, Trump dealing with Kim Jong-un, the criticism stories will typically be of the form, Trump gave them too much.
Right? You've seen it for Kim, Putin, and now President Xi.
President Trump, oh, he's such a great negotiator, is he?
He gave them too much.
And it'll be a specific point of something he gave them.
In North Korea, the point was that he let Kim do some short-range rocket testing that technically, you know, that he said was okay and that probably wasn't.
With Xi, I guess it was something about the tariffs being reduced if Xi would buy more products, which he never did, more foreign products, which he didn't do.
And then, of course, you all know the Putin stories.
Now, all of these stories are the out-of-context type.
If you're looking at a negotiation, which is, first of all, a long-term affair, if you're talking country to country, and has lots of elements...
Some of those elements may not have anything to do with the thing you're talking about.
So in other words, you could be talking about a trade deal, but what you really want is a nuclear missile deal.
And everything's sort of connected, right?
So maybe you can give something away on a trade deal, but you get something back in some other way, etc.
So all of these are out-of-context stories.
The other thing you don't know is if Trump gave up something...
With the hope that that would soften them up, maybe set the stage, so that later when you ask for something, you could say, look, we gave you this.
Show of goodwill.
You got it. Now we're asking you for this.
I'd like a similar show of goodwill.
Because reciprocity, if I've taught you nothing, is very powerful.
Now, does reciprocity work In international deals?
Well, I think that's a real question.
Because if you're dealing with somebody who sees themselves as your enemy, doing something nice for them with nothing in return might be just free money.
Hey, thanks for the free money.
We're going to kill you anyway. But if you were dealing with, let's say, Great Britain, if you're dealing with France, and let's say there was a situation in which the United States...
Could do something that would benefit them and we didn't have any immediate thing that we would give back.
You know, it wasn't a tip for tat.
It's just something we could do for France.
We had the ability.
We had the opportunity. We could do it.
They couldn't do it for themselves.
So we just do it because we're allies.
Is that a good play? Yeah.
Yeah, it's totally a good play with an ally.
So Because you assume that allies are often going to be in a situation where you need to ask a small favor, sometimes even a big favor.
But if you've primed the situation with reciprocity, France someday will say, you know, it's sort of like Lafayette, we are here, you know, sort of situation, that even military alliances, the reciprocity of a military alliance can last generations.
So the fact that we fought on the same side as Great Britain, same side as France in their area, not in their country in the case of Great Britain, but those feelings can last generations.
So yeah, reciprocity is very strong.
So if you see the president testing reciprocity, in other words, giving something that clearly any objective person would say, ooh, It looks like you gave a little bit too much there and didn't ask for something in return.
You'd have to ask yourself, is he testing the waters?
Is he just testing to see if it does work?
Because imagine if that worked.
Imagine if you were dealing with somebody who really did just want to have a deal that works for both sides.
They weren't trying to destroy your country.
They just wanted something that works now and will work in the future.
Reciprocity is worth testing.
Now, if it doesn't work, you go to Plan B. Plan B just got implemented.
Plan B is where Trump just signed some document to hold the Chinese authorities responsible for the Uyghur prison camps.
That's what Plan B looks like.
Now, when you treat somebody like an ally...
But they're not. What if two things can happen?
Either you've just given them free money.
Oh, thanks for that favor.
You're going to get nothing in return, and we're going to destroy you.
That's bad. But, persuasion-wise, you can sometimes turn somebody into something by treating them like that thing you wanted them to turn into.
In other words, you could actually turn an enemy into a friend by acting like a friend.
Not every time.
None of this persuasion stuff works every time.
But it's a good play to simply act like you're a friend, and it will cause the other person to not know what to do.
Well, I thought we were kind of frenemies, but this person keeps acting like I'm an actual friend.
That is very persuasive.
It's worth a try.
I don't think it worked.
In the case of China, I don't think it worked.
But it was worth a try. What's the other thing Bolton is saying?
So he had a couple of crazy things.
Oh, I think he says that Trump claimed he didn't know if Great Britain was a nuclear power.
Now, is that true, first of all?
Is it true that Trump wasn't sure if Great Britain was a nuclear power?
So I have a few different takes on this.
Number one, it's probably not true.
The story itself is probably no more true than Trump telling China that he was on board with them building prison camps.
It just, on its surface, it's probably not true.
But let's say it was.
Let's say it was true.
How could you explain that Without the explanation that the president is mentally incapable or under-informed or something.
Is there any other way to explain it?
Let me offer you a few possibilities.
One, he may have been asking if they're bluffing.
In other words, he may have been asking, yeah, technically Great Britain can make a bomb, but can they really...
Launch one. I mean, do they really have as much as they would like you to believe?
Or are they using the belief that they're a nuclear power, which is a little more hyperbole than truth?
Because they obviously have some kind of nuclear capability.
But is it more like North Korea, where we're not sure if it works?
Because it hasn't been quite tested?
Or is it the kind where, oh yeah, it's solid.
The Great Britain...
Nuclear defense, just like the best countries in the world.
Now, what was the context?
Was it just making sure that it's real?
Because I would consider that a fair question.
Wouldn't you? Because Israel says it's not a nuclear power, right?
If you know there's at least one ally who is lying completely about his nuclear capability, in this case Israel saying, what nukes?
We got no nukes.
Is it possible that another ally could be lying in the other direction?
Oh yeah! We got nukes!
Our nukes are the best!
And maybe it's not exactly true?
It's worth asking.
So I'm not saying that's what happened.
I'm just taking you through an imagination exercise to show that sometimes when you say, well, there's only one explanation for this.
Sometimes there are multiple.
Let me give you another one. How many times in your life have you found yourself being, you know, the educated, smart person that you are, not knowing the fact that was just embarrassing?
That it was so embarrassing That for some reason you just have a little skip in your brain and it was a fact that everybody knows and just for whatever reason you didn't.
All the time.
All the time.
All the time. Yesterday, last night, I wish I could tell you the story but I can't.
There was something that Christina said and I said, what?
Seriously? That's a thing?
And she looked at me like, Like, where have you been all of your life?
Yes, it's a thing. And of course, it is a thing.
So, just last night, I had a very specific, you know, experience where I don't think I'm mentally incapable.
I don't think I'm stupid in an overall way.
But sure enough, there was that little stupid thing that I did last night that even I think was stupid.
Like, even I think it was like, why didn't I know that?
How could I go through my whole life and not know that?
Everybody knows that.
So it's a very common sort of thing.
Has the president lost a step because he's in his 70s?
Of course. Of course.
That's why I say don't elect presidents in their 70s if you have a choice.
And I'm going to tell you something that you're not going to want to hear.
This might go down kind of hard.
If Democrats had run a candidate in his or her 40s or 50s, it would have been hard for me not to support them.
Honestly. I mean, I would have had to look at it pretty hard.
Because I do think age is a factor.
And it's a big one. And I don't think we should just keep ignoring it.
And I wouldn't say a different thing for Biden as I would for Trump.
You know, everybody's different, and it's pretty clear that Trump's in way better shape than Biden.
I mean, I wouldn't compare them in that sense.
But nobody over 70 is operating the same.
You gotta ask that question.
Alright, let's talk about some other things.
I pulled up on my computer here the CNN homepage next to the Fox News homepage to look at differences.
And the Bolton thing will just sort of come and go.
But let's see some other things that CNN thinks are news.
So you've got the news about Representative Swalwell asking GOP to state that Black Lives Matter...
And then I guess Matt Gaetz said, absolutely.
And then he answered, with all lives matter.
So he's very good at provocation.
But the way he does it is just so clever.
Because instead of saying the wrong way to do it is, do you believe black lives matter?
And if you just say...
All lives matter? Then you've fallen into the trap, and you're a racist, and why don't you care about black people?
But if you look at this little nuance that Gates added to it, so Swalwell asked, can you say absolutely that black lives matter?
And he answered yes.
Absolutely yes.
All lives matter. That's different.
If you don't add the absolutely yes part, And then you just go with all lives matter, well, you're sort of a racist.
But if you say absolutely yes, you've agreed with the statement and then you've extended it to all people who are valuable.
And then if you're Swalwell and you laid the trap, and then you think he fell into the trap, but he's hovering over the trap, and you're thinking to yourself, I know I dug a big hole.
And I know he fell into it, but why is gravity not taking him to the bottom of the hole?
Why is he hovering above it?
It's because Gates is linguistically gifted.
I mean, there's no other word for it.
He's just gifted in that way.
All right. Every poll on everything about race is complete bullshit.
Can we disagree on that?
Every poll...
About race and racism and who's racist and who trusts who and race and this.
At the moment, it's just all bullshit.
Because I don't think people are in their permanent minds.
I think people are in their temporary minds.
Meaning that they're so influenced by the images on TV that they're in a mode which is not their ordinary mode.
So everything's attenuated.
And of course, the reason for that is that the technology to do that is so good now.
Let's talk about that, the blue flu.
So last night I was on Twitter quite late, and I'm watching mostly Mike Cernovich's Twitter account and others, and they're talking about Lots of reports that were people getting individually from people they knew in Atlanta that the police were calling in sick.
So it was a call out, not a walk off.
So they were calling in sick to protest the charges against the two police officers, one of whom killed the suspect, shot him in the back as he was running away, the gentleman who had the stun gun.
So So we've got that going on.
And I'm watching on Twitter this giant theme of how many police are not going to work.
And then I open up the news, because it was the biggest thing on Twitter.
And let's see.
Alright, I'm on CNN. And let's see if they talk about the blue flu.
Hashtag blue flu.
Looking down lists.
Going, going, going. Going, going, going.
Don't even see it.
It's actually not even on the homepage.
Or I don't see it.
I mean, it's not called out anyway.
Alright, so that's the biggest story from real people on the internet.
And assuming that the reports are true, that's a really big deal.
Why would it not be on CNN? Alright, let's try Fox News.
Now you'd expect to find it here, right?
There it is. Top left, right where you'd expect to find it.
Multiple Atlanta officers have resigned.
Oh, actually, talking about resigned, that is different.
That's not the blue flu.
So they'll keep going, go lower on the page.
Not there. Not there.
So neither Fox News nor CNN have, at least prominently, anything about this blue flu.
Why? Why?
Is it because it's not news?
Well, let's check OAN. Let's see if we've got that as a headline.
I don't know where to find them.
They don't have a website.
Are they only broadcast?
One number... Oh, okay.
You've got to go to the right URL and then it helps.
Okay. One American News Network, OAN. Alright.
Suicides of Veterans.
Going down the list on the front page.
I don't see it yet.
It's not being called out.
So I believe you, when you say in the comments that it was covered, maybe it was covered in broadcast way, but I don't see it on that page.
Somebody here said it was on the Washington Post page.
WashingtonPost.com.
Let's see if it's there. Washington Post.
Nope. Don't see it.
Maybe I'm missing it, but at the very least it's not being called out.
Okay? So, the other thing that you didn't see in the news is coverage of the protests.
Why not? Here's what I think...
Somebody in the comments says, don't order an OAN shirt.
There's a story about that.
You probably saw. So, is it, would it be true that nothing bad happened in Atlanta and that the police didn't have any real problem?
Maybe a few people, maybe a few people.
Somebody says it's on Washington Post.
I'm looking at it right now. I'm on the homepage.
I'm looking at the homepage right now.
Don't see it. So it might be a story somewhere deeper down.
But does it feel to you that the news might be collectively underplaying it?
Do you think that the news industry, they all said to themselves, let's not make this a story because all the police everywhere will walk out.
Do you think that the news has decided To manipulate the public, both the left and the right, into not making this, which could be a local Atlanta problem, not making this a national problem.
Because it does seem to me that this could easily become all police walking out or calling in sick for a week.
Somebody says Hannity talked about the blue flu.
But you do see that it's not on the written news pages.
There are individual pundits.
You can expect to talk about it.
But it's not being treated as news, is it?
Likewise, were there protests last night?
Does anybody know if there were any protests last night?
Because I don't see any evidence of it in the news.
Were there giant protests last night that are just not being covered?
If that's true, wouldn't you say that the news has abdicated its responsibility for news and have now accepted their role as manipulators of the public?
Does it not seem to you obvious that the news business is not trying to be news anymore?
They are trying to manage your psychology directly.
Because they're not covering the two biggest stories in the world.
Not the biggest stories in the world, but two of the biggest stories in the country for today.
It looks like they're completely ignoring left and right.
Or am I completely confused and those stories don't exist?
Are there no protests?
Maybe. How would I know?
How about deaths from coronavirus?
Can you think of a bigger story than that?
What would be a bigger story than the number of people who have died of coronavirus since people started going back to work?
That's like big, right? That's big.
So I'm going to look for the death rate, not the number of people who were infected, right?
Because if the death rate's going down, it doesn't really matter too much if the infection rate's going up.
I mean, it matters, but in a different level of mattering.
Because it could be that we're just getting better at treating things.
It could be that we have enough immunity that, I don't know, maybe the people who could have it the worst already got it.
I don't know. But something's going on that those lines are disconnected now.
More infections, more infections, and not just because we're testing.
That's part of it, but not just because of that.
While the death rate's going down.
So if the death rate is continued to go down, Let's say it went down today and yesterday.
Or it went up today and yesterday.
Whichever direction it went, or even if it was flat.
Wouldn't that be the biggest story, right?
The death rate from coronavirus.
So let's find it. We'll go to CNN homepage.
Let's see. Stuff on DACA, DACA, DACA. Florida has the makings of the next epicenter.
All right, so we'll dig into that if there's no other story.
All right, so that looks like the only one.
So on CNN, they have a coronavirus story, as they should, and it's highlighted.
So so far, we're good.
It's a big story, and it is highlighted.
Let's dig in. Let's see how long it takes them to say the death rate.
Ten states saw a record number of new cases.
Infections. So we've got lots of new infections.
That's the first sentence.
Shouldn't the death rate be in the first sentence?
Would you be more concerned about getting coronavirus or fucking dying?
Which of those seems like news?
Ah, he's got the coronavirus.
98% of people are fine.
Or, he fucking died.
Which of those is news?
Well, according to CNN, getting the virus is the news, not the dying part.
All right. And it talks about Florida becoming a hotspot, and other states also have problems.
Talk about the president saying Wednesday in an interview that the virus is, quote, dying out, which of course all the data says is not true.
But what about the death rate?
If the president had noticed that the death rate was getting smaller every day, would it be inaccurate to say the virus is dying out?
Yes, it would be inaccurate.
But it would look different, wouldn't it?
If you knew that the death rate was trending towards zero, the death rate, and your president said the virus is, quote, dying out, is that like a 100% lie?
Or is that really focusing on the important part, the part where people die from it?
It would violate the fact-checking for sure, so it would not be true technically.
But if you could ignore the death rate, I don't think you're playing this straight.
Somebody says more tests because more infections because of more testing.
Apparently that's not the whole story.
So if you think the only reason there's more cases is because we're testing it more, that has been debunked.
I'm pretty sure that's not true.
Testing is part of it, but there's also just more of it.
I believe the experts say.
Alright, so now we've got a whole list of how they're trending.
So surely the death rate will be in this.
It's like a whole details about coronavirus.
Point number one, no.
No, it's all about infections.
Every one of the points is about infection and none of them are about death.
Let's keep going.
Let me just cancel death or search for it.
D-A... Nope, the word death is not on the page and nowhere in the article.
But surely Fox News will do better.
Let's see. Fox News.
Biggest story? A lot about John Bolton.
A lot about police.
A lot about racism and John Bolton some more and DACA and DACA and DACA and And protests outside Portland mayor's home.
So the only protest coverage on Fox News is outside the mayor's home.
Was that the only protest?
Don't know. Because...
All right, so neither Fox News nor CNN are highlighting the only thing I care about, which is the death rate from coronavirus.
Let me ask you, what would the stock market...
Let's say the stock market as a proxy for the economy as a whole.
What would be more important to the economy as a whole than the coronavirus death rate?
Go. I'm not even going to wait for your fucking answers.
There's nothing more important in the whole fucking world than the coronavirus death rate and the news doesn't fucking cover it.
Do you get what's happening yet?
What are they covering? John Bolton's obvious bullshit about the president being in favor of prison camps for Uyghurs.
That's what they're fucking covering.
Disgusting. Alright.
Let me say this about the police officers who were charged in Atlanta.
I watched the video.
You watched the video.
Can we all agree the video lies?
Right? Because if you and I watched the video and you said, oh, that's obviously a crime committed by the police, and somebody else watches the video, let's not make it me.
Somebody else watches and says, I'm watching the same video, and the police acted responsibly under the situation.
Video lies.
If video did not lie, we would all look at that video and be on the same page.
We're not. Video lies every fucking time.
Not sometimes. If you think that, well, yes, sometimes a video can be a little bit misleading.
No. By the time it's a headline story, it's misleading.
It doesn't mean the whole story is wrong.
But there are extenuating circumstances, important details, things that would add context.
The video is a lie.
Let me suggest this.
I believe it should be illegal to show that kind of video.
Now, free speech, blah, blah, blah, it'll never be illegal.
But are there not plenty of videos that social media scrubs for various reasons that are good for society?
Is it good for society to see, let's say, a brutal murder that didn't have any context?
No, that's not good for society.
Is it good for society to keep online, let's say, the KKK's program or whatever the KKK is producing?
No, that's not good for society.
And so there are these special cases where you see that we do self-censor.
At least in the private realm.
The government can't tell you not to look at something like that.
How about certain types of pornography?
Child porn. There's a good example.
Child porn generally considered harmful and therefore even though there's freedom of speech that exception is carved out and we're okay with it.
Because of course you're going to carve out that exception.
So Here's my question.
Is society well served by showing videos of specific police encounters which you know with 100% certainty will be misleading?
How do you know that it will be misleading?
Because it's a video.
They're all misleading.
They don't know how not to be misleading.
Now, a video can be true completely, but you don't know by looking at it.
You can't know that by looking at it because videos in general are so misleading that no matter how certain you are on any specific video, you shouldn't be.
You should not be certain of any video.
Forget about doctoring.
Forget about deepfakes.
That's bad enough.
I mean, in the future, your certainty should go even lower.
But you should not feel any sense of confidence by looking at a video of anything.
It wouldn't matter if this situation had been reversed Doesn't matter who's the black person, who's the white person in the video.
If it's a video, it's a lie.
If society could just learn that one thing, if it's a video, it's a lie.
Because we believe the opposite.
I saw it with my own eyes.
I looked at it.
I saw it with my own eyes.
That would be the lowest level of awareness about your reality if you say that about anything.
I saw it with my own eyes.
Therefore, I know everything. If you don't know that that's not a thing yet, you've got much to learn.
All right. So, I watched the video and here is my subjective opinion.
Now, all of us are operating with incomplete information.
So when I tell you what my subjective opinion is, at the same time, and without stopping for punctuation, I'm going to say, could change completely as new information comes out.
So, this is my opinion that could change completely when new information comes out, and it definitely will.
Definitely will. We will learn things about this case that we didn't know, and those things will matter.
Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
But, because we're all operating on what we think and feel and our current understanding, I'll give you my current understanding, just subjectively, of what I saw, and especially about how the police department and the prosecutors are handling it.
It looks like a white lynching.
To me, it looks like black people are going to lynch.
And yes, I'm using that word to be as provocative as it sounded.
Provocative for good purposes.
I'm not just trying to cause trouble.
It looked like a lynching.
I'm not going to use any other term.
Because I think we agree that lynching doesn't specifically limit it to a rope on a tree, right?
It's more of a term of art, if you can call it that, in this realm of race relations.
It would be a term that we all understand a black person being targeted and killed for race.
Now, in this case, these are two white cops that, in my opinion, This is what I see and feel.
Doesn't mean it's true, right?
And I'll always make that distinction.
It's just what I saw in the video.
And it's what I know now could be completely different a day from now.
And I allow that that could happen.
But at the moment, I register it as a white lynching.
And when I heard that the police were doing this call-out, What was my reaction?
My reaction was, yeah, you don't want to leave a city and all these innocent people in the city.
You don't want to leave them helpless because as soon as the bad people realize that the city is undefended, it's going to turn into some joker situation, right?
And it's going to happen quickly.
On the other hand, that's less of a problem, in my opinion, than a public lynching of anybody.
It wouldn't matter if it's two white police officers, certainly.
Well, let me put it in the starkest terms.
If you were to say, what's worse?
The police do a call out and they allow some crime to be rampant and could affect a lot of people.
People could die.
Probably multiple people could die just because there's less police, although they don't really stop people from killing because they get there after the killing is done.
So maybe it wouldn't be that much difference in terms of killing, but there would certainly be a lot more property damage.
I think that's fair to say.
So let's say all of that property damage and maybe extra violence, etc., of the police not going to work and calling out.
Compare that. Would that be worse then?
Lynching a black person in public with, let's say, the authority of the government of the United States.
Which one's worse?
No contest.
Lynching a black person in public under the authority of the United States in a way that is obvious to the viewer that it's an illegitimate Any penalty would be illegitimate, and lynching, of course, would be the worst of the worst.
So, if it were a black person being lynched by the government, I think we'd all agree, it doesn't matter what color you are, we'd all agree, like, okay, that's my top priority.
That can't happen.
I'm going to stop everything for that.
Do I care about climate change?
If the government is publicly lynching a black person, no.
I don't care about climate change.
I don't even care if I think climate change was going to destroy the whole frickin' world.
At the moment, it's not my biggest problem.
At the moment, my biggest problem is that the government is lynching citizens based on their skin color in public, and they're not even hiding it.
That's my biggest fuckin' problem.
So do I care that the citizens of Atlanta are unprotected?
Yes. Yes.
I care a lot.
I don't want any innocent people of any type anywhere to be victimized.
Who does? But still, as enormous as that problem is, at least in our minds, of lack of police in a city that has some crime potential, As big as that is, it's nothing compared to lynching somebody with government approval in public.
It's not even close. So, I support the police doing the walkout if that's what it takes to move forward their side of the debate.
Do I think that the police should be innocent of their crimes?
I will hold my opinion on that.
Because I think there's a lot more to find out.
And it could be that there's something, I don't know, that changes my opinion.
But I will take what I'll call the Jesse Waters view of that event.
That when the gentleman who got killed aimed the taser at the cop's head, if that taser had hit the cop, the cop's gun would have been in play.
We don't know necessarily he would have dropped it.
We don't know necessarily that the person with the taser would have picked it up.
We don't know that he would have used it if he did pick it up.
But you don't need to know any of that.
You just need to know that the risk has moved from smallish to, holy hell, we could die.
As soon as that risk went to, you just made a play for my gun, Well, then I say, let's let the legal system look at that and see what it does.
All right, I've talked enough for today.
Is there any news that I missed that matters?
There's something on DACA happening, but I haven't read into that yet.
Roberts casts a swing vote as, let's see, the Supreme Court upholds Obama-era DACA program.
Okay, so basically...
Basically, it's a ruling that says we're not going to change anything in that regard.
So, it's news, but it's news that there isn't going to be a news, I guess.
