Episode 1038 Scott Adams: I Reclaim my Freedom of Speech Today. Sorry About You Losing Yours
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Biden suggested BS Logan Act against General Flynn
What did Obama mean by put "right people" on it?
"White Privilege" is a racist term
Hawk Newsome's skillful phrasing
Coronavirus and President Trump rallies
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bwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbw binge Kate socarebentarini, Healthcare Deterning Program Guess what?
A lot of people ask me, Scott, when will you do the best periscope you will ever do?
When does that happen?
Today! It's today!
Yeah, the best periscope I'll ever do.
It's today. And before we start, is there something we do before we get to the good part?
Yeah, yeah, there is.
It's called the simultaneous sip and look at me.
I'm back. I've got my notes.
I can do it right.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a 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, including racism, including the pandemic, pretty much everything.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip and it happens now.
Go. Well, allow me to make your day a little bit better.
It goes like this.
Many of you have contacted me, privately in many cases, and said some version of this.
Scott, I'm afraid the world is, or at least the United States, is coming apart.
Revolution is coming.
The Marxists are gaining power.
There is a racial strife.
And everything's bad and we're all going to die.
Some version of that.
And I would like to give you some perspective based on the fact that I'm old.
Yeah, you would think there would be not that many benefits of being old.
Boy, would you be wrong.
I gotta tell you, the most surprising thing about becoming my age, I'm 63 now.
The most surprising thing is that while there are obvious disadvantages, and everybody would know what those are, physical, etc., there are way more advantages than you would ever imagine ahead of time.
You just couldn't imagine.
And one of them is that I've been through this before.
A lot of times.
This thing that looks like it's the end of the world, I've seen this a lot.
But if you're younger, you haven't.
Or if you just hadn't been paying attention to the news until now, you haven't.
Now, why does it seem worse this time?
Why does it seem so much worse?
It's because the media...
Changed its business model from telling you the facts to getting you worked up and getting you worried.
So you are part of a system, social media plus the news business, which absolutely, and there's no exaggeration here, nothing I say should even be slightly hyperbolic.
These are facts that are established.
The left agrees, the right agrees, every researcher, everything I'm going to say is 100% agreed by everybody.
There will be no facts which you say, well, Scott, I'm questioning that part of your assumption.
You won't. The next thing I say, you'll agree with completely.
The business model of social media and of the news is different than it used to be.
And it's different in the sense that they're intentionally promoting content that gets you worked up so here's the first thing you need to know if you can just for a moment do this exercise this is a real thing imagine yourself in your body right wherever you are you are yourself right you are yourself and how you feel and just feel that like look around and say alright this is me I'm in my body in the world now do this take your imagination and rise out of your body And literally float above it.
Just in your mind's eye, see yourself getting smaller and smaller as you get higher and higher and away from the earth.
And now that you've got some distance, in your mind's eye you're like a satellite looking down on the earth and it's just this big ball of nonsense.
And now, with a little bit of distance, ask yourself this.
Do you think that your opinions about the news are objective Or do you think that you have been manipulated by the highest level of science we've ever applied to manipulating the human mind?
That's what social media is.
And it's what the news business becomes by testing and then retesting until they know what works and what doesn't.
From the perspective of space, you can look down and you can see yourself.
And now you can see yourself as part of that system.
And as you see yourself from above, objectively now looking at yourself, you can see all the forces attacking you.
Every time you turn on Twitter, look at Facebook, turn on the news, and you see all those forces now.
They're almost physical. You can almost see a line from those entities to you.
And these lines are affecting you.
They have to. You're affected by everything.
You're affected by bad news, good news, events, successes, failures.
You know you're affected by all of it.
And now the most effective, scientifically honed, precise technology is being directed right at your brain.
And you can see the lines, these lines of influence now in your imagination.
They're physical now.
It's not just a thought is not invisible now.
Now you can see it. You see yourself.
You're small. You see the lines coming in from all the forces.
They're the ones that are programming you.
There's something I've been saying for a while that you've heard and you understood, but you didn't really understand it until I took you to space.
And you got to look down and you can actually see the lines of influence now.
And here's the thing that you didn't understand before.
Your opinions are assigned to you.
Your opinions are not your own thoughts.
Your opinions on the big stuff, the political stuff, your opinions are assigned to you.
That wasn't always the case.
Before, when the forces of manipulation were weak, We did not have the science to know how to do it so perfectly and so strongly.
You had a little bit of freedom because you were not being controlled by external forces so much.
Of course, you always had illegitimate media throughout history, but it wasn't that big a force.
Maybe you didn't even think about these things too much.
So here's what you need to know.
There are real problems in the world, but have always been.
The real problems in the world now, as enormous as you think they are, are actually quite small by historical perspective.
As big as this is, protests across the country, coronavirus, the economy, these are real problems.
Absolutely 100% real problems that are really just this big.
They're some of the smallest problems In the history of humankind, you are experiencing the best of times that the media has told you are the worst.
Now, when I say the best of times, I don't mean the current few months, which are difficult by any standards.
Those are real problems.
But they're not real problems that are real big compared to what the civilization has handled in the past.
Imagine, if you will, the 60s.
And young people, you know, who were a gigantic part of the population, said revolution.
I grew up in a time of revolution.
When I was young, we wanted to, not we, not me so much, but young people wanted to overthrow the government.
And you had Nixon, who was a criminal.
You've had Kennedy, who was assassinated maybe by the mafia.
You don't really know. There's never been a time in our history You know, if you include the civil rights marches, all the violence that came with that, these are way bigger problems.
Way bigger problems.
And the way you can test this for yourself is look at the way people are talking about them.
They're not talking about solutions so much.
No. They're talking about it in political terms.
That's how you know these are not real problems.
In the way that they're being presented.
They're real problems in the sense that they are problems and they should be solved.
You know, police brutality, etc.
Real problems do need to be solved.
But they're not nearly as big as you think they are.
And by historical perspectives, kind of easy.
Kind of easy. If I were to Let's say, go to another planet, meet another civilization, and they would say, hey, tell us about your problems there on Earth, but give us sort of a historical context.
And they'd say, well, you know, you've got your You got your mass starvation throughout history and the wars and the nuclear bombs falling on people, World War I, World War II. And then the alien would say, all right, all right, you're scaring me.
Those are really some big problems.
You say, are you kidding?
I haven't gotten started. We got the Korean War, then we went to Vietnam for no good reason.
We went to Iraq, killed a million people for reasons we don't know.
And the alien says, man, you're getting me depressed.
Fast forward to the future.
Like, is it still that bad?
Is it still that bad?
And now, of course, you've been hypnotized back on Earth, so here's how you answer.
Is it that bad? Are you kidding me?
In 2020, it's so bad, people are destroying statues.
And the alien says, well, I'm a little confused now, because you were telling me about world wars and nuclear bombs, and now you're talking about a statue being defaced.
Not really the same.
Now, I know that some of you are saying, Scott, Scott, Scott, how naive are you?
Do you not know that this is a clever plan by the Marxists?
The Marxists are controlling Black Lives Matter.
The Marxists are controlling Antifa.
And what they're doing, you think it's just some statue stuff?
Oh, Scott, Scott, Scott.
What you don't realize is this is step one, a necessary plan.
It's all been scripted and planned.
And it goes like this. First, we will suppress your free speech.
Then we will get rid of all your symbols that make you what you think you are.
And once we've dismantled all of your symbolism and your hope and your free speech, then we move to the next level of control.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe. When was the last time something that sounded like that really happened?
When was the last time anything that sounded even vaguely like that?
You know what I'm talking about, right?
Just sort of vaguely, sort of like that?
When has that ever really played out?
How about never? How about never?
Are you worried about gun confiscation?
We just sold the most guns that have ever been sold in the history of humankind in the last three months.
Do you know what the biggest conversation among civilians who don't have guns is?
When they're gonna get their gun.
I don't know anybody who doesn't have a gun who in the last three months didn't say, I'm gonna get a gun.
Nobody. I haven't heard a single person who was gunless who didn't say, I'm gonna get me a gun now.
No, I'm getting a gun.
So we are very bad at predicting where things are going to go.
But the big point is things are not nearly as bad as you think.
Here's a little red pill for you that I tweeted.
The only reason we don't treat social media as a national mental health crisis...
You would agree, right?
Social media has created a national...
Mental health crisis.
Is that statement even a little bit controversial?
It's not, is it?
Wouldn't you say that science pretty much backs that up 100%?
I don't even think there's any dissent.
I doubt anybody on the left or anybody on the right, anybody educated, anybody uneducated, would disagree with the statement that social media is a national mental health crisis.
But why don't we treat it that way?
Do you know why we don't treat it that way?
Because the things we think are important and the way we think about them is controlled by social media.
Social media tells you not to worry about social media destroying your mental health.
Now, I don't say that they don't tell you that.
What they do is, either consciously or unconsciously, it's the effect of the system, is that it's not the biggest issue we're talking about.
Somebody says Germany 1930s.
Germany 1930s had so many differences that that analogy is rejected.
And by the way, if you have to go to the Hitler analogy to debunk my point, you've already lost that rule.
That rule is 100% solid.
If your only argument is a Nazi analogy, you have self-immolated.
You've lost your argument before you started.
I was asked on Twitter today to comment on Joe Biden's decency theme.
So I guess Joe Biden is...
Sort of branding his campaign as one based on decency and words of that type.
And here's my take on that.
Nobody wants decency.
Decency is the sort of thing you say in public.
It's not anything you care about.
If you put a microphone in my face and you put a camera on me and say, Scott, you're going to be on national television.
Tell us some things you think are important.
I'll look right in the camera and I'll say, I think we need to restore decency in America.
And then you turn the camera off and I go home and Christina says, you know, I've never heard you talk about decency before.
Is that like one of your top priorities?
And I'll say, no.
I haven't even thought about that once in my entire life.
Not once if I woke it up and say, you know, decency would be good.
Somebody's using Hong Kong as an example of the slippery slope.
Nope. Hong Kong was doomed on the day that they signed their original agreement with Great Britain to be Hong Kong because the agreement itself said that it would return to China.
Hong Kong never had a chance.
There's nothing like Hong Kong.
Hong Kong had no chance of permanently being independent because of the geography and power.
There wasn't anything that could have stopped that from happening.
And while we can not like it, we also can't stop it.
So I'd say that Joe Biden's decency angle Doesn't hit any emotional lever.
And so it's just sort of dead on arrival.
It's the sort of thing you'd say if you just don't want to cause any trouble.
Joe, say something that just is easy to understand and people will not mock you for it too much because it's just sort of basic.
But it won't get anybody excited in any way whatsoever.
What would that be?
Well, America's going to return to decency.
Alright, that's as close to nothing as an opinion could be.
And if Joe Biden is serious about returning to decency, you would think he would be speaking a little bit more about destruction of public property, looting, and violence in general.
But I don't hear that. I don't hear him being against decency unless it's directed, of course, at his political rival.
Speaking of Joe Biden, there was a little news item.
Did you catch it?
There was a little small news item yesterday that apparently the smoking gun has been found and that he's one of the key architects of a coup against the legally elected president of the United States, President Trump.
Oh yeah, that's a little bit of news.
Now, any news like this is subject to re-evaluation and finding out it's all wrong 48 hours later, so I remind you of that.
But at the moment, it seems that a Peter Strzok memo suggests that Biden was the first one to float the idea of using the Logan Act Against wrongly accused General Flynn.
Now, it's in the note.
Now, does that mean it's true?
Well, you can't know that the note accurately represented the actual meeting, so there's always that uncertainty.
But you're going to believe it.
I mean, if it's on the note, you're going to treat it like it was true.
Given that we all understand the Logan Act is transparent bullshit, by the way, I would like to introduce a term today.
There are lots of excuses for things and rationales for things that you might call bullshit.
But the Logan Act, as a means of getting at General Flynn, might be the bullshittiest The idea that an American citizen,
especially one who's Who's in the incoming administration, can't have a conversation with a member of another country.
So whoever came up with the idea of the Logan Act as their way at Flynn is clearly the person who kicked off the coup, wouldn't you say?
I would say that Biden has been identified now as the co-conspirator with Obama of the coup.
Now, will that ever be American history?
Let me ask you this.
Who writes history?
Well, you think history is written by the winners.
And that's true in a national sense.
If a country beats another country in war, then the winning country gets to write the history.
But what about a history that's disputed within the country?
It has nothing to do with another country.
Do you think history will show that, based on Strzok's note, that we could determine that Obama and Biden conspired to use a transparently bogus, bullshittiest excuse, the Logan Act, which by the way, there's nobody who thinks that's a real thing in terms of something that should be or could be, you know, something that somebody would go to jail for.
And if it's true, And this is also in the handwritten note from Strzok, that Obama said, make sure you use the right people.
What's that mean? What's it mean when the president says to a subordinate, make sure you use the right people?
Because if he meant use your best people, seems like he would have said that.
Can't read his mind.
You know, we're deeply involved in mind reading.
Here, because it's necessarily important, because the intentions of the people are the whole story.
If you don't understand their intentions, then you don't understand what happened.
Because things either accidentally happened, or it was a coup against the United States elected president.
Those are big differences.
But my brain cannot conceive of why you would use the phrase, use the right people, When what you meant was, use your best people.
Do you have to say right people?
If you mean use your A-team, use your best people?
Doesn't really seem like a phrase you'd use, does it?
Now again, can't read his mind.
Can't read his mind.
But the way this will be received is that we have the smoking gun It seems now completely clear that Obama and Biden used the power of the government to try to take out a political rival, and in this context, taking him out would be literally a coup against the United States.
Now, based on what we know today, and again, this could change tomorrow, right?
It could change tomorrow. Tomorrow we might find out, oh, he writes notes and he makes stuff up.
Maybe we find another Strzok note that is so clearly fake that it makes this one look less credible.
Anything can happen, right? So every conclusion is preliminary in today's world.
And then it's also revealed that Comey thought the call with Kislyak, Flynn's call with Kislyak, was fine.
So given these three data points, Biden suggesting the Logan Act, Comey saying that the phone call was fine, in other words, obviously no crime, and Obama saying use the right people instead of use highly qualified people or the A-team or the best team.
I would say that if you wrote the history of the United States, it should say that the Obama-Biden administration committed It's essentially an act of treason under the cover of law.
So I would call it an act of treason, but under the cover of law, so not technically...
Or is treason the right word?
Whatever it is when you overthrow the country, your own country.
But let me ask you this.
Do you think the history books will record that?
Because I think that's the truth.
And let's say it gets confirmed that everything we've heard is actually what happened.
The history books will never write that.
That will never be your history.
And you can watch it in real time, because you're alive now.
How long will it take for the history of this period to be written?
It's sort of being written as you're alive.
So you get to watch the history books being written.
Now, just to be clear, there will certainly be published books That make the same statements that I just made.
But there will be books that don't make that statement or say it's BS or hyperbole.
But what will we teach in schools?
What will high school kids learn?
What will college students learn?
Will they learn what I just told you?
Nope. Not even a slight chance, in my opinion, that they will learn that.
Alright, let's talk about Bubba Wallace, who in my opinion gets cooler every day.
So I have a very positive opinion about Bubba Wallace, only limited to the few things I know about him.
So I don't like to endorse anybody's complete anything, because God knows what else he's ever done in his life.
Who knows if I like that or not.
But we know he's a very successful athlete, we know he's very charismatic, and we know that he was fooled, essentially, because somebody very credible told him this noose was hanging there and he believed it.
Believing people who are credible It's not really a big mistake.
It was a big impact, but as mistakes go, I mean, that's such a small mistake, I'm not even sure you'd call it a mistake, really.
But here's his statement, and I told you before he issued his statement about this, I told you what form it should take to be perfect, and I think he hit it.
So his actual statement is about as perfect as As you can play this.
And it's almost identical to what I said should be the forum.
Now, I don't think that anybody listened to me and therefore that's why they did it.
This is a fairly standard thing that a good PR agency would guide you to this.
But it's especially well done.
So here's the statement. Let me tell you what's good about it.
So he starts off by saying it's been an emotional few days.
Now, so first of all, he's pacing you.
Because it was sort of an emotional few days.
You've been feeling it, right?
When you heard it, maybe you got a little emotional.
So he's pacing you.
Yeah, he's emotional. You're emotional.
Good form. So he's pacing the audience.
Then he says, first off, first off.
First off, right?
He says first off, so he's signaling, here's the important part.
I want to say how relieved I am that the investigation revealed that this wasn't what we feared it was.
He wrote, I want to thank my team, NASCAR, and the FBI for acting swiftly and treating this as a real threat.
So see what he did.
He emphasized that the important thing is how people responded because it was so well-intentioned and really perfect.
You know, I'd have to compliment NASCAR. So even though NASCAR, you know, You could say he made a mistake, and you'd be right, because it's obviously a mistake.
But they kind of still came out looking pretty good, meaning that NASCAR, I thought, presented themselves to the world in a very positive way by backing one of their people.
Now, you could argue that they're being politically correct, etc.
But it didn't really play that way.
It played more like sincere people who actually care about this, and they care about their teammates, they care about their sport, and actually felt what they did.
So I think it was all sincere.
So then he goes on.
And here's the magic part of this.
Wallace says, I think we'll gladly take a little embarrassment.
See how he framed it?
He framed his role in it perfectly.
Perfectly. He did not say...
I mean, basically, he's just saying, here's how to frame me.
Frame me as silly, basically.
He said, I think we'll gladly take a little embarrassment over what the alternatives could have been.
Ah, that's so good.
That's so good.
Because... Because he frames it as these two choices.
A little embarrassment or it could have been this bad thing.
Now there is a third choice, right?
A third choice is he made some kind of a boneheaded mistake.
But the way he framed it was a little embarrassment.
That's really good.
Really good communication.
Really good persuasion.
Whoever advised him, and this is obviously the work of professionals, that as smart as Wallace appears to be, because he looks like a smart guy just based on his interviews, he can't come up with this.
This is not something that an athlete comes up with unless they really had some background in this.
This is professional work and it's done well.
And then he says, make no mistake, though some will try.
This should not detract from the show of unity we had on Monday and the progress we've made as a sport to be a more welcoming environment for all.
Yes. Perfectly done.
Congratulations to Bubba Wallace.
My guess is that his, despite this, I think that his reputation and brand will come out ahead.
Just because of the way he handled it.
All right. Apparently, General Flynn can sue the Department of Justice if his prosecution is continuing to be shown in bad faith.
And it looks like the recent ruling by the appeals court demonstrates that the prosecution was in bad faith.
There's enough objective evidence that he can actually sue the Department of Justice to get his six-plus million dollars back.
How much do you want him to do that?
A lot. Some of you do.
All right. Let's talk about Kung Flu.
So the latest little anti-Trump media is to try to make Kung Flu sound like a super racist thing.
And of course, to make it sound racist, you would have to leave out the following obvious fact, which I feel I can speak to as a white person.
So as your, let's say, spokesperson for all white people.
I just appointed myself.
You don't have to like it. Here's what you need to know.
I've never met a white person who thought kung fu, the actual sport of kung fu, was anything but kind of awesome.
Have you? Is there any white person who thinks that the actual practice of kung fu is anything but kind of awesome?
That's it. It's just a positive thing.
Like karate. Does anybody have a bad opinion of karate?
No. How about judo?
Jiu-jitsu? Do you have any negative feelings about them?
No. Not at all.
So when I hear kung fu, I just have a positive thought about it.
And the fact that it's associated with its origins and its creation is in Asian countries, does that make me think less of a country?
In fact, I don't even know where it came from.
Did China invent Kung Fu?
Or do I have the wrong country, probably?
That would be typical of me.
I am not informed on my Kung Fu.
But given that Kung Fu is considered nothing but positive, literally you couldn't find a negative opinion about Kung Fu.
And it's associated with a certain part of the world, its origin.
Doesn't that also make that kind of a positive thing for where it came from?
So you can try to turn that into a racist thing, but at the very least, Kung Fu would have to be a bad thing to be racist.
Otherwise, it's a provocative way to call attention, as the president does, to the origin of it.
So, as I pinned my tweet today, I've decided to reclaim free speech.
Now, as you've noticed, freedom of speech has been narrowed and narrowed by what other people are telling you is polite or appropriate to say.
And there have always been words that you wanted to stay away from.
For example, I personally find that word offensive.
I don't even know how I could get it out of my mouth.
It's the worst of all words in the entire English language.
I think I could say this safely.
It's literally the worst word in the English language.
So if you, let's say, roll back the tape to a few years ago and you say, Scott, do you find yourself oppressed Because white people can't use the N-word?
And I would say, no.
No. Is that a big ask?
Is that like really inconveniencing you?
That you can't use the worst word in the whole freaking language?
The most insulting, demeaning, worst word ever?
No. It's no big deal.
Now, does that reduce my freedom of speech?
Yes. Yes.
You know, in a practical sense, not in a government legal sense.
But in a practical sense, that word and your freedom to use it in polite society is effectively removed.
But you don't really miss it, right?
You don't really miss it, so it doesn't bother you.
But then more and more things get added, and the realm of things you can talk about shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, and at some point you have to say to yourself, okay, that's far enough.
Because remember, I always tell you that the slippery slope isn't real because eventually there'll be a counterforce that pops up.
Here it is. So I'm one small example of the counterforce.
So here's something I tweeted today which I'm not allowed to say.
And that's why I pinned it.
Because I'm going to reclaim that space.
Now, I'm not going to push all the way back to, I need to say the n-word.
There's no other word that can work for me.
No. I'm not going to be a jerk.
I have no interest in offending people whatsoever.
There's nothing...
I don't get any advantage from that.
Why would I do it? So, without wanting to offend anybody, and wanting to be helpful, which I always am, I tweeted this.
White privilege is a racist term.
In my opinion, anyone who uses it is either a racist, an idiot, or an asshole.
But rich privilege is a thing.
Obviously, rich people have privilege.
So, that's my statement.
Now, I would say that...
Maybe a week ago, I would have been cancelled for saying this.
And I think only one troll has come after me so far.
I swatted him down.
But to me personally, the term white privilege, and I think a lot of you would have the same effect, is nothing but racist.
Because what it does is it basically throws poor white people under the bus.
Now, I'm not a poor white person.
Not anymore! I used to be.
I used to be a poor white person.
But I also had an education, so I wasn't disadvantaged.
I had a way to get money.
So just being clear about that.
So certainly being educated is an advantage.
Being tall is an advantage.
Good looking. Healthy.
Healthy is an advantage.
Where you're born. Who your parents are.
Not being a drug addict.
Not having mental health problems.
We have a world full of advantages.
If you're going to pull out one of them and say, oh, this is the special one, that's the bad one, you can't have that special advantage, even if you imagine it exists.
So let me be as clear as possible.
White privilege is not imaginary, but everybody has a little bit of privilege for different things.
There is also black privilege.
What would be an example of black privilege?
Well, freedom of speech.
Black people have freedom of speech in a way that white people simply don't.
I don't think there's even a black person who would disagree with that statement.
It is objectively clear that black people have more freedom of speech.
And I don't find myself complaining about it too much.
It's just something you notice, but it doesn't really affect your life too much.
It's like, oh, yeah, there are a few things you could say that I couldn't say.
How much does that affect my life?
Not at all. Not at all.
It's no big deal. So, do I care that tall people get paid more?
Because that's established beyond any doubt.
Do I care? Yeah.
Yeah, I care.
Because that's an advantage I don't have.
I wish I did. How about handsome people, strong people, healthy people, people whose parents were awesome?
There's a million kinds of advantages.
Picking out this one privilege or one advantage that you're being white doesn't matter if it's true or false, it is just racist.
It is racist to talk about white privilege in exactly the way it's racist to talk about a high crime rate in the black community.
Why do white people cross the road if they see, let's say, 10 black youths, let's say 20-somethings, Coming the other direction, and you don't know what their deal is.
Is that racist? Every group has their own privilege, and let's just acknowledge it.
Why not just say there's lots of privileges?
Find your advantage and talk about that.
So I no longer acknowledge the category of black problems.
They're just problems.
And by the way, Ed Latimer, I think he pushed me over the edge on this.
Do you all know Ed?
Ed Latimer on Twitter?
So he's African-American, but he doesn't buy into the...
Let's say he's not drinking all the Kool-Aid.
So when you see his advice, and that's mostly what his Twitter feed is about, is sort of blunt, truth advice from his perspective.
First of all, his advice is typically brilliant.
It's some of the best, most usable, functional Way to frame your reality that you'll ever see.
So it's really important. And he tweeted the other day, I don't have the exact tweet, but the essence of it was that your problems aren't special.
So this is Ed saying, your problems aren't special.
And I wish I had the exact quote, but he said something like...
No matter what your problem is, there's somebody in the world who has that same fucked up problem and fixed it.
No matter what your problem is, somebody's had that problem and fixed it.
Now, that's just the most useful way to see the world that you'll ever know.
That's almost a recording that runs in my head all the time and always has since I was a kid.
Which is, yeah, you've got problems.
They're not special.
And somebody has had your fucking problem before, and they solved it.
So how about that?
How about maybe you figure out how to solve your problem?
So that's my new frame on this.
I'm no longer going to have a conversation about fixing black problems, but I'll have lots of conversations about fixing poor people's problems.
Just people who are poor.
If anybody wants to have a conversation, and actually I'm deeply involved in this whole category, because I think where this needs to go is lowering the cost of a good life.
From housing to energy to your phone bill.
Just making all that stuff affordable so that somebody who didn't get a great start in life can still get into a good life and then build from there.
In other words, if you handled all your basic living requirements at a low income, well then maybe you can take some classes.
Maybe you can work on building your skills and get to the next level.
So if you want to work on the problem of how do poor people of any type rise up, I'm all over that.
Acknowledging, of course, that as a percentage that would be far more helpful for black people than other groups just because of the way the percentages work.
But I don't want to talk about black problems anymore.
Now, could I have said that a week ago?
No, a week ago that would be considered racist, and I believe that it will be considered racist today.
So I expect I'll get some blowback.
But what I'm doing is what some of you can't do.
You couldn't have pinned that quote because you would get fired.
So the things that I'm going to be saying in the next few weeks are almost entirely things that would get every one of you fired.
You don't need to retweet me, okay?
You don't even need to follow me.
In fact, it's going to be dangerous to follow me.
You might want to unfollow me and just check my Twitter feed if you're interested.
So I wouldn't necessarily think it's a good idea to follow me in the coming weeks.
But here's what you need to know.
Here's the larger picture.
I do not have any negative intentions.
I'm not trying to hurt anybody.
I'm not trying to hurt anybody.
I'm not even taking sides.
All I'm saying is, I'm done with white privilege as being something I will accept as polite conversation.
It's just not polite conversation.
It has no place in public discourse.
If you want to say there is rich person privilege, I will agree, and I'll say, yeah, you're talking about me now.
Do I have privilege?
Hell yes! Are you freaking kidding me?
Do you know how much extra privilege you get when you're rich?
It's fucking amazing.
You should try it.
You should do whatever you can to get it because it's so good you won't even believe it.
So yeah, there's rich privilege and I will do whatever I can that makes sense for my skill set, etc.
to help poor people, whatever they look like, to get what I got.
I would like poor people to get what I got.
Extra freedom. You want some extra freedom?
I think I can help.
You know, that's why I wrote the book, How to Fail Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
You will see on Twitter, literally every day, people refer to that book and say how it changed their life.
How they learned how to stack skills, how to use systems instead of goals.
Pretty simple stuff. But just those simple reframings allowed them to build their life substantially in usually a year or two.
Fairly quick results.
So I would love those sorts of useful tools to be more widely available to people who need a hand, whoever they may be.
Talking about black problems is just being a sucker to the manipulation of social media and people who are jockeying for power and the political process.
I declare myself a free person.
I declare myself a free person.
I'm free. I don't have to frame it the way you tell me to frame it.
I don't care that I'm not ignoring it, because statistically there's something there.
And there are real ripples from slavery.
It's all real. It's just not special.
That's the difference.
The problem is real.
It's just not special.
So is it my imagination, or has Facebook just turned into a digital photo album run by bigots?
Why does Facebook stay in business?
Have you ever asked yourself that?
Because it's sort of weird at this point, isn't it?
That Facebook is this gigantically successful, profitable business, and it's nothing but a digital photo album run by bigots.
That doesn't even make any sense, does it?
And you have to ask yourself, why is this happening?
And the answer is kind of dark.
I use that word intentionally.
There's something very dark happening that allows Facebook even to be a business.
And here are a few of the things. Number one, it is a psychological manipulation app.
The point of Facebook, in terms of what it's doing to you, the user, is it's almost like farming.
It's almost like you, the public who uses Facebook, are like the livestock, and they're giving you a little shot of this, a little growth hormones and stuff.
So basically, you're just this experimental livestock, and Facebook feeds you all this psychological manipulation, and then they can measure how worked up you get about it.
Oh, this one got somebody really angry.
This is making them really angry.
Let's promote that one.
Now that we know this makes people angry, we'll put that in the front of the algorithm.
So the first thing that's pure evil about Facebook is that it is a psychological manipulation business model.
And by the way, I don't think anybody would argue with that characterization.
There are people within the company who would agree with that.
That's objectively, observably true.
Psychological manipulation is the primary thing they do.
But then there's the business model of selling advertising.
You've probably heard that advertising doesn't work.
Now it does in some special cases.
But for most people it just sort of doesn't work.
Now I know that because I've advertised lots of stuff.
Different things from books to restaurants to everything.
And so I've seen Facebook ads being used a lot.
I've never seen them work.
Not once. Now, do you think that the people who buy the ads know it doesn't work?
Well, the people who buy the ads, at least the biggest ones, the ones that have the most money, the ones that matter the most, are not the people like me who would buy an ad and test it out, that sort of thing.
We're talking about a big corporation who would make a big corporate buy.
The way that's done is that there would be an ad agency, and the ad agency makes money by getting a company to buy the biggest amount of advertising.
Because the more advertising they buy, the more the agency can charge because they're involved in a bigger deal.
So the ad agency has an incentive to lie and manipulate the corporate leaders who do the buys.
Do they have the power and the technique and the persuasive ability?
These are ad agencies literally trained to psychologically manipulate people.
That is their skill. They've learned that.
They only get to work at a top ad agency because they have the skills to manipulate minds.
And those people with those skills come in and sell their service To some Facebook person who's in charge of buying ads, and they say, this is the greatest stuff in the world, it'll make you a star.
And by the way, you probably don't need to be told this, but Facebook employee, if you were in charge of a really big budget, you'd probably get paid more.
You might get promoted for being somebody who was in charge of a big budget, and people would think that's important.
So, Facebook employee that I'm selling this service to, You know that your career will be better the more you buy because that's the bigger your budget.
So I'm going to give you some bullshit that's not true and you don't believe it about how well advertisement will work.
You're going to take that bullshit that you don't believe but you're going to sell it to your boss because if he buys the bullshit that's now went through two filters and he thinks this advertisement's going to work or she Thinks this advertisement is going to work.
Notice how inclusive I am.
Then your career will be better.
So what's happening is you're seeing the advertisement which basically doesn't work except in some specific cases.
A specific case would be, for example, a new product that somebody didn't know existed and they needed it.
It's like, oh, I didn't know that existed.
So in those limited cases it can be useful.
So that's their business model.
It's basically people selling bullshit to people who want to believe it's true because that will be good for their career if they act like it's true.
So there you go.
That's Facebook.
And now we know from the...
There was another undercover video, this time again by James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.
And once again, we're seeing that the people who manage the Facebook algorithms and others are literally racists.
They're literally racists.
And you hear it in their own words.
They're not hiding it.
Pretty much just hate white Trump supporters.
All right. So that's a business that just doesn't need to exist.
Robert Johnson, the black entertainment television founder, I think he must be a billionaire, he said in an interview with Fox News, this just made me laugh, if you want to know what kind of mental model makes you a billionaire, This is it. So don't think of it just in terms of the comment is kind of funny.
Think of it in terms of, oh, that's why he's a billionaire.
This is why he's a billionaire.
It's this type of thinking.
And he says, Johnson said that those who are destroying statues across the country, quote, have the mistaken assumption that black people are sitting around cheering for them saying, Oh my God, look at these white people.
They're doing something so important to us.
They're taking down the statue of a Civil War general who fought for the South.
Now, I could not love that better.
Because really, do you think that there are black people sitting around saying, thank you white people for taking down those statues.
We thought we had some problems to solve, but man, I think you've taken a bite out of it.
We thought we wanted to make more money and have more freedom and less discrimination, but we didn't know that what we needed was for white people to knock down statues.
The whole thing is ridiculous.
And to watch the way Robert Johnson just so succinctly just took the piss out of the whole thing and summarized it so clearly, you can see in just this little quote You can see why he's a billionaire.
You take this mindset to anywhere, you're going to have some kind of success.
BuzzFeed is reporting that the cities that had the big Black Lives Matter protests are not seeing any coronavirus spikes.
Oh, we're so surprised.
Are you surprised that when people march for what BuzzFeed would say, Would support as a good cause, and of course, less racism is a good cause, and less police brutality is a good cause, that when you march for a good cause, the coronavirus doesn't touch you.
Now, they've got reasons, of course.
Maybe it's because it's outdoors.
Maybe, and this is the funny part, they're saying maybe it's because the protesters were wearing masks.
And they showed a picture of a bunch of protesters wearing masks.
And I said to myself, I've seen a lot of pictures of protesters.
I didn't see a lot of masks.
There were definitely masks.
Maybe 40%? What would be your estimate of how many had masks?
30-40%? I don't know.
I guess it depends which one you're looking at.
There were some where they had a lot of masks.
And of course now, if you want to see the future, let me predict the future.
Black Lives Matter protesters do not spread coronavirus, but wait, wait, there's some new information coming in about the future.
Yes, Trump rallies do create coronavirus hotspots.
Yep, I think we're going to find that out.
Now, it could be it's also true.
The thing you can't rule out is it's also true, because when you pack people tightly together Inside a building and they don't have any masks, which would be a Trump rally, and they're yelling, which would be like a choir.
If the Trump rallies do not cause a spike in coronavirus, I'm gonna be amazed.
But the truth is, even if it didn't, I think it would still be the news.
So let me say that again clearly.
I'm no medical doctor.
But everything we've heard so far, especially that a choir singing together is guaranteed to spread the coronavirus if any of them have it, because it's the being close for a long time and exhaling a lot and singing.
So the Trump rallies are almost designed to create hotspots.
I mean, you couldn't come up with a better way to do it.
And let me say as bluntly as possible, because whenever I get painted into the corner of saying It looks like I'm agreeing with everything Trump does.
I don't agree with everything Trump does.
Indeed, having now watched the rallies, I would have to say they're a bad idea.
Very bad. In fact, it makes Trump supporters look stupid.
Honestly. It just makes them look stupid.
Now, I don't think Trump supporters are stupid.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that the look of it is a really bad look.
Honestly, when I watched the rallies, I had a different feeling than I'd ever had before.
I used to watch them as just entertainment.
It's like, oh, that's pretty entertaining.
And look at the size of that crowd.
That's a lot of energy. And that's all I would think.
The last two I thought of, I thought, that looks stupid.
I'm not saying that people are stupid.
I'm saying that the idea of packing people in together without masks and then running continuous footage of those people is the worst possible look, really.
Now, some people are saying, yes, but freedom?
Absolutely. Yeah.
If you want it to look like it's a bunch of people who are very concerned about freedom, even more than health, that's what you got.
So if your priority was freedom, it would probably look terrific to you.
But if you're trying to convince somebody who's not already on your team, probably a bad way to do it.
And you didn't see that much energy in the rallies, so it's not getting the benefit of thought.
So in my opinion, if the President held more rallies, I think it would just be a mistake.
I think it would work against his interests, frankly.
That's just me. Alright, Hawk Newsome is making some news.
I know Hawk. He's a leader of Black Lives Matter in New York.
And when I was talking to him, I was trying to see if we could find some solutions, like specific things that we could recommend.
We got a little bit of progress on making a list of things that you could actually do.
And I think some of those were considered in the Tim Scott Bill and the Kamala Harris Bill, etc.
So some of them have bubbled up, not necessarily because of us, but they were just good ideas.
And I broke my contact with Hawke because he needed for his purposes to be more provocative than I was willing to be associated with.
In other words, He was more willing to call white people racist and suggest indirectly or directly that maybe violence could be productive.
And those are thoughts that I didn't want to be associated with.
So I broke contact with him.
But he's making news again.
And I want to break out something he said because I think it needs some interpretation.
So he said, quote, "If this country doesn't give us what we want," in terms of fixing systemic racism, etc., "if this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down the system and replace it," Newsom responded.
All right. And I could be speaking figuratively.
I could be speaking literally.
It's a matter of interpretation.
Like, let's be very real and observe the history of the 60s.
Anyway, he makes good points that violence has been productive and a part of American fabric and including gun ownership, you know, and why are we so afraid if black people have guns, etc.
So those are actually some good and interesting contextual points.
But here's the part I wanted to point out.
He says that we'll burn down the system and replace it, and then he says, all right, and I could be speaking figuratively, and I could be speaking literally.
It's a matter of interpretation.
Now, who says something, and then in the very next sentence, they tell you that you could interpret it in two different ways?
Who does that?
Because normally when you communicate, don't you tell people what you mean?
Here's how I do it.
Well, there are two ways to interpret this.
I want to be clear that this is the way I'm saying it.
Isn't that the way you would communicate if you wanted people to actually really understand what you're thinking?
You know, I know there's two ways to see it, but I'm telling you this is the way I see it, and I'm communicating it this way.
I'm not talking about that other way to see it.
Bohawk did a completely unexpected thing.
Oh, no, if you think this is going to be a criticism, you're on the wrong page.
This is going to be a compliment to skill.
Now, I've told you I'm going to be consistent about this.
Regardless of whether somebody has the political opinions that I do, if they employ skill, I'm going to call it out.
Because I think you need to learn the skill part, and then you can apply it to your own moral and ethical world.
But this was very skillful.
It looks like just a weird sentence, but it's really skillful, and here's why.
Hawk is talking to two separate audiences, and he found a way to talk to them simultaneously, which I've never seen before.
He needs to talk to his radical base in a way that suggests he's on board with actual violence, like burning stuff down, because they need to hear that.
Now, am I reading his mind?
No, he told me that.
He told me that directly.
He told me that he needs to be more radical or he would lose his base.
Direct language. There's no interpretation here going on.
So, was this language, in which he says burn down the system, does that speak to his base?
Yes. Very well.
And how do they interpret it?
They say, looks like burning down stuff is on the table.
Looks like a little bit of violence Hawk is in favor of.
So that's how they would interpret it.
Later, if he's challenged, and he will be, by white people, he'll say, hey, you could take this as figurative.
And I said that when I said it.
I said you could take this as figurative.
So take it as figurative.
And then white people who don't like his message won't, and they'll just have their own opinion, but they were going to anyway.
But... The white people who are sort of supporting Black Lives Matter but don't want to think they're part of anything violent do have the option of interpreting it as figurative.
In other words, he found a way to talk to the, let's say, Antifa and the white protesters who are siding with Black Lives Matter.
He found a way to talk to them.
At the same time, he was saying essentially the opposite thing.
To Black Lives Matter.
And he pulled it off.
He actually pulled it off.
Because everybody who reads this is just going to see what they want to see.
And I've never seen anybody say it directly.
He goes, it's a matter of interpretation.
He actually put that right into the original statement.
You've never seen that before.
And if you had imagined that this was a good idea, and you were not trained in this, you would say, that's not a good idea.
How is that a good idea to say two things that are opposite and say you can interpret it any way you want?
How is that not the worst idea in the world?
Here's what you're missing. Hawk is good at this.
He's really good at this.
You don't know how smart he is.
I do. I spend enough time talking to him that he's really smart.
And he does understand this stuff.
And this is not an accident.
The fact that he found a way to square a circle that I would have thought wasn't even a thing, he pulled it off.
Now, I'm not supporting his message or anything like that, so don't take it like that.
I'm just saying skill-wise, pretty good skill.
All right. If you thought there was going to be a fair election, I don't think there's any chance of that now.
You can see that Twitter is starting to kick off the voices that are pro-Trump.
So Rahim Kassam, his account got locked yesterday.
To me, that was the last straw.
You know, Carpe Dunctum and who also got permanently blocked.
But between those two, I think that that's now kind of transparent to what's going on.
Before I would have said, well, you know, maybe this is confirmation bias.
Because they always had a reason for anybody who got, you know, filtered or blocked or whatever the words are.
There was always a reason.
And, you know, they've got guidelines.
So if it fits the guidelines, there's a reason.
You can't necessarily think that's any kind of a larger political act.
But as we see the specific examples, they start to form a pattern that's pretty clear.
So the standards seem to be enforced in one way, but not another.
And it does look like the standards are being used as an excuse, a convenient way to kick off the voices that are effective.
So watch for people who are effective, To be kicked off.
We'll see how that goes.
I think I've covered most of my important points.
Just let me check my notes here.
Talk among yourselves.
Yes, I think you did.
Alright. So that's all for now.
I did go over, I do have an account on Parler.
Parler is the tiny competitor to Twitter.
The problem with Parler is I think it's just going to be conservatives go there.
If it turns out to be the conservative Twitter, then you're just going to have a left-leaning Twitter and a right-leaning Twitter, but it'll have a different name.
And all it does is divide us.
So I have very mixed opinions about Parler.
I don't think it makes sense unless you also keep your Twitter account, but you all get to make your own decisions.
So I would do it in addition to Twitter.
But I wouldn't do it instead of Twitter, unless you're really trying to make a statement of some sort.
Because Twitter, unfortunately, whether you like it or not, is too important to your business life for most of you.
Alright, if it's not important to your business life, then do what you will.
Alright, that's it for today.
Hope you enjoyed it, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Oh, somebody's telling me that parlor is pronounced parlay.
Is that true? I hope it's not true, but it might be.
