Episode 1039 Scott Adams: Talking With Congressman Matt Gaetz About All the Hot Topics, Then More From Me
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Content:
Special guest, Congressman Matt Gaetz
Grievance culture in America
Infectiously bad city leadership
Big tech has bought off congress
8 things that lead to success
Tik Tok's danger
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It's going to be one of the best coffees with Scott Adams of all time.
That's right.
Representative Matt Gaetz will be joining me if our technology works the way I hope.
But first, get in here, get in here.
We got all kinds of stuff to talk about.
The world is spinning around and things are getting out of control.
But between all of you and me and my upcoming guest, Matt Gates, we're going to work this all out.
We're going to figure it all out. Before we do that though, what do we do first?
Yeah, that's right.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And all you need Is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or a 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 unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the economy, including the coronavirus, including racial divide.
It's all better. A little bit.
Just a little bit. And it happens now with a simultaneous hip.
Go! Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. That's definitely better.
All right. Let me check my technology here.
All right. In a moment, we'll have Representative Matt Gates join us.
I have a little update for you while we're waiting for him to get on.
And the technology is always, you know, a little hard to navigate, so we'll do our best here.
I got an update on Carpe Dunctum and Rahim Kassam, two people who had been temporarily limited in their Twitter use for content.
In the case of Carpe Dunctum, there was a DCMA request.
There's an official way that somebody can request copyrighted material to be taken down, but the question is, even though it's copyrighted, it's used in the concept of parody, so it's a little bit of a gray area.
And then it was Rahim Kassam who showed a video that included the time of death of somebody and if a family member requests video being taken down because of time of death, then when that happens they will take it down.
Now, in both of those cases, I guess Twitter is working with both Rahim and Carpe Donctum to see if they can get them back up and also within the rules.
Now, the question that I ask is, why would you ban the person instead of the content?
If you know there's just one piece of content that's questionable, why not just block the content and say, hey, let's talk about this content.
You either have to remove it or we're going to have to work something out.
It turns out that Twitter is actually looking into that as well.
I think what makes this feel like an attack on conservatives or even individuals is that they block the whole account, or they'll limit the account in some way because of one piece of content, which feels wrong, right?
Just the way that feels, like, wait a minute, if the content is wrong, but everything else has been fine up till now, Why not just block the content and then we'll work out what's wrong?
Apparently, Twitter's looking into exactly that.
There are some things upcoming that will be exciting in the Twitter world, but that continues.
Let me see if Matt has...
There we are. Let's add Representative Gates.
And if our technology works, which looks like it didn't, he just disappeared.
So, Matt, you just disappeared when I tried to select you, so try that again, and as soon as I see your indicator come on, I'll add you.
Alright, we've got, there he is.
I'll bet you this will work just great this time.
Because, as you know, technology always works just the way you want it to.
Looking better. Oh, didn't work again.
This is the problem we had the first time we tried to do it.
I don't know if it's a Wi-Fi problem or some other kind of technical incompatibility.
Let's try one more time.
I've got my phone set up, so if they text me to tell me what the problem is, I'll know.
We're back. I imagine they're trying different devices and stuff to get this working.
While we're waiting for that, I wanted to talk about an argument I've been seeing online that I think about a lot and I don't think we're doing a good job of handling it.
Let's add Matt again.
Watch this work.
Representative Matt Gaetz, I can hear you, I think.
Are you there? Yes!
Finally, finally. Score!
Let's do this. I feel like we've now got audio privilege.
We should probably have to disclaim it.
Yes, I feel a little bit guilty about this.
First of all, you have started a new podcast called Hot Takes, which is terrific.
How's that going? Well, I really enjoy it.
I think that the news of the day really opens the door into the questions that we have to answer in the Congress, whether they're questions about the nature of speech in this country or really what we see going on with an effort to, I think, dismantle America by trying to make us love her dismantle America by trying to make us love her less.
And I am just unapologetically pro-American.
I think this is the greatest country ever.
But I think the tactics that we see to try to deconstruct our history, to try to take away a sense of national pride, are far more dangerous than just the destruction of a statue.
I think they're really trying to get to the destruction of the system.
Well, let's talk about that.
So I have not fully bought into the conspiracy that there's a master plan.
I believe that there are probably some people who think of it in the long term.
But what percentage of the protesters do you think have a master plan versus they like the fun, they're angry, It'll burn itself out.
How do you break that down, the master Marxist planners versus the people who are just having fun looting and protesting and free speech?
I think that it is driven by the money.
I mean, I think that a substantial amount of the money that has existed for the infrastructure of these organizations is fueled by a neo-Marxist desire to shame America into a crouch.
Both domestically and on the global stage.
And I think that there is a general grievance movement that is out there.
You know, they'll show up and occupy Wall Street if you want them to.
They'll show up for a Black Lives Matter protest if you want to.
They're just sort of in for the grievance.
And I think that makes up a lot of the volume of the humans.
But the money is, you know, the financial desire to see this neo-Marxist revolution combined with sort of the corporate America So, who exactly is the money behind this?
Because it's hard to see anybody who could gain by more socialism, because that basically kills, I mean, might as well throw your money in a big pile and set it on fire.
Who can make money by paying the United States to destroy itself?
Well, I think that there are foreign entities that benefit from this.
We have seen some reports that there have been Venezuelans, Cubans that have tried to infiltrate some of the leadership of these organizations to try to Fuel anti-Americanism and sow division.
We know beyond that there are foreign influences in the Black Lives Matter branding, particularly from Russia and China.
They use these racial divisions to try to stoke more anger and tension in our country.
But I think that, for the most part, the call is coming from inside the House.
I mean, I think that within our country there is a grievance culture.
How compatible do you think Black Lives Matter leadership is with whatever the Antifa, if you can even call it that, any kind of leadership or at least leading voices?
Do you think Black Lives Matter and Antifa are even on the same page with each other?
I doubt that that is a sustainable coalition or a resilient coalition.
Right now, they're sort of united around a common enemy.
Sadly, that enemy is our sense of national pride and national identity.
What those groups have in common is that they believe that America being that shining example, that America being the best version of herself is damaging to their sense of grievance.
How do you deal with the fact that America as a brand, if you love your country, you like to put it in the best possible light, but it is nonetheless true that America has a violent and brutal, racist past that got us where we are.
Now, how do you keep your brand and your love of your country while still being honest about how we got here?
I think we could be honest about the fact that all human history is full of identity-based violence, full of brutality, full of human competition and the negative impulses that that can create.
All of that said, In a world of relativism, I'll take the United States and our development and our promotion of values and our sense of inclusion over just about any other human society in all of human history because it creates the unifying principle of prosperity and opportunity for people.
You know, my take on all this, and I want to see what you think about it, is that when we focus on the problems, we have taken a sort of a loser mindset, which is, oh, I'm disadvantaged, you've got privilege, I don't, etc.
And while all of that can be true, sometimes not, but it certainly could be true, how does that change the fact that all of us have an individual strategy?
And if everybody followed the same strategy, we'd all get pretty good results, meaning pay attention in school, don't have a baby when you're 14, don't go on drugs, work hard, have some additions to your talent stack, etc. So there are fairly basic things to do that everybody can succeed, which works actually better if you're black, frankly.
Because if you knew that corporate America is literally begging for more people of color because they need it, I mean, there's a lot of pressure on them.
So everybody has a three-lane highway in America if they follow the same strategy.
Why are we focusing on the problems and our disadvantages, which is just divisive, instead of figuring out how to get better mentoring, better education, better strategy?
Because if everybody had a good strategy, they'd probably all do well.
I think you're right.
I agree that when we unify around the common opportunity that exists in this country for any who are willing to work hard, play by the rules, we draw more people to the cause.
But I don't think that every sort of sectionalized group Wants that unity.
I think that there are leaders in some groups of people, and I'm not even talking about racial identity.
I mean, I think you see this geographically.
I think you see it politically, where people think that division sort of creates an opportunity within their movement for their own advancement.
And for their own leadership.
But I think that when you talk about focusing on the positive, we also have to do that with Americanism.
And so often, like, for example, in the immigration debate, we're told, oh, well, the way Republicans talk about this is xenophobic, it's racist.
My view is that if we instead focus on that positive, the wonder, Exceptionalism that comes with being an American, something so worth preserving and being proud of, that that also can be a more unifying call.
And unfortunately, I think we take the bait as conservatives, not even as conservatives, just as people who believe in America, we take the bait and Grant the premise that somehow there is something flawed with our founding and with our history.
And I think if we acknowledge that all humans have complications, challenges, and multi dimensions in our history, but that ours is absolutely the best, that hopefully that can prevail.
We surrendered the ground in schools probably 15, 20 years ago, Scott, and I think that we're starting to see the manifestation of the egalitarianism that we embraced in education and this cultural relativism.
You know, when you look at base problems and you're trying to figure out, all right, where's the big lever?
What's the most impactful thing we could do?
It just all comes down to school, doesn't it?
I mean, I know some people are going to say having parents, but I'm not sure you can fix the parent thing right away.
But the school thing seems like something that the government could fix if it focused on it.
It is the great equalizer.
My dad was superintendent of schools in the community where I grew up.
He was never a teacher or a principal.
He was a business person that was elected to the position because he thought that if we could improve the operations of our schools That the outcomes would be better and ultimately they were but but the you know the I think Education associations the unions I think some of the you know social justice warriors that attacked Curriculum in particular made a lot of progress while we had our eye off the ball, you know
You know, I mean, a lot of Republicans over the last 15-20 years have been focused on how do we teach your kid coding while the left has been worried about, you know, how we sand away the founding values of America.
And I think they made progress in that regard.
You know, there's something that you and President Trump and I have in common in terms of mindset, unless you disagree with this, which is, even if I'm looking at an optimistic future or, let's say, a rosy picture of America, I do that strategically.
In other words, I know that when I put my positive thoughts into the universe, I just get a better result, even if they're unrealistic.
I feel like that's just an intentional strategy, but if you look at it not as a strategy, it just looks like you're loopy and crazy and you don't care about problems and you don't care about other people.
Could you talk to that?
Is it a strategy, or is it just the way you see the world?
I think particularly with President Trump, he believes that he can will positivity into existence.
He believed that in business, he believed that on the campaign trail, and yeah, he does it in government.
It's infectious. It is an infectious style of leadership to try to draw people to their highest achievements.
And President Trump is unique in that he can, at times, create a competitive environment in which people literally have to, you know, create more and more optimism, more and more progress, more and more success, just to stay at the table.
And I like that.
I think that it also breeds a meritocracy around the president.
And it's why, frankly, some people don't last long.
If they're unwilling to get with that type of a leadership style, they find themselves out of the government.
As for me, I think we still have a lot to be positive about, and I think that we have to frame our vision and our values in a way that draw people to our cause.
Look, we might not want to admit it, but the dominant political movement in America today is this Black Lives Matter movement, and the way, I think, to Combat the downstream effects of that is to unapologetically embrace Americanism and then, as you've done on social media, push back against the tactics that just try to silence people.
I mean, this whole characterization of white privilege is a racist characterization.
It's racist because it is telling someone, because of the color of your skin, you have a diminished contribution to make to our country and to our conversation.
And I just don't think that anybody should be told based on their background or their skin color that they have a diminished contribution to make.
Now, not many politicians are willing to say that because they're afraid of being called racist or privileged for saying it.
But I think that when you tell people the truth, that is ultimately the most productive and most optimistic thing you can do.
You know, here's the way I put it.
You come across a kid in a well, trapped at the bottom of the well.
Is the first question you ask, how did you get there?
Because it depends how you got there.
If you fell in the well one way, I'm not going to help you.
But if you fell in the well the other way, I'll help you.
How does that make sense? Kids at the bottom of the well.
You don't care if he's black, you don't care if he's white.
Kids at the bottom of the fucking well.
Can you help him out?
And I think that we get lost in the past.
It's like, well, this kid got in the bottom of the well because his parents were drug addicted and blah, blah, blah, but this other one had a history, a legacy of racism and slavery that has rippled into the future, which is a real thing.
I don't think anybody would doubt that there's a ripple effect, but once you're at the bottom of the well and you're a baby, It's just not your fault.
And thinking about how you got there is so unproductive when you should just say, baby at the bottom of the well.
What can we do about that?
All right. What would you do about the protests?
Especially the CHOP, the Seattle place.
Do you think the president should be more involved, either verbally or with assets?
How would you handle that? Look, the bottom line is we can't let these things get set up, because once they are, they do get fortified.
I mean, there are a lot of guns in that place, and let's just have some honest talk about this, Scott.
We could march the National Guard in there and take the CHOP, the CHAZ, over in a matter of moments, but there would be loss of life.
And I don't know that this country is ready to handle that.
And so I'm grateful that in Washington, D.C., as they've tried to set up an autonomous zone, the president, the chief of staff have ensured that that will not happen.
The weak leadership in Seattle, though, can be contagious.
I think as Americans look at what is going on, it affects our sense of security and safety.
And it also tells the permanent criminal element that they have more latitude now.
They have more latitude in my town and in your town Because of what is going on in Seattle.
Now, ultimately, I really do view it as more akin to the Occupy Wall Street thing.
I think this ultimately fizzles out.
But if I were the mayor of Seattle, there would be no way that anybody would be stopping the delivery of care and ambulatory services and police services.
To people who are in need.
I think it is infectiously bad leadership, and I'm grateful that the President isn't allowing this to be set up anywhere else, particularly in our nation's capital.
But you would agree, this is a really, this is a tough one, because as you said, just one death, especially caught on camera, as we know that magnifies it, it would just take one death by a government gun, and we're right back to square one.
So, you know, I don't know that anybody is smart enough to know How long to wait?
How much force to put on it?
But I saw this interesting development, which is apparently the businesses will be able to sue the city.
And I always say, if the government can't work it out, the insurance companies will.
Because ultimately, everything gets priced for risk, and it just won't be affordable to be, you know, Well, but think about the impact on the marketplace, right?
If my business interruption insurance risk profile is different because I'm in a liberal city that is going to defund and dismantle the police and keep them from going in certain areas, then what will happen is it'll be easier to get necessary business interruption insurance in places where you have strong leadership where the law will be enforced so what that will do is create more blight more flight of capital out of these places and and frankly while that will inure to the benefit of of states like Florida it's not good for the country to to have such a depressed sense of confidence I'm starting to wonder if there aren't some urban areas that just can't be fixed.
In other words, maybe you just have to find a field somewhere and build a new city where you get things right from the start.
Do you think the urban areas, do you think Baltimore even can be fixed?
I don't know if there's any amount of money you could put in there because The basic problem is that the leaders are too easily bought, if we can be honest.
If you're a mayor, it's just too easy to be bought off by the wrong people.
No, it's so interesting you say that because right now, as you and I are talking, Joe Biden's team is out there vetting all of these urban mayors for potential selection for vice presidency.
And I mean, my guess is that it's going to be very difficult for any of them to pass that because you're right, a lot of it is pay for play in these urban cities.
And it's one of the reasons why, despite very high taxes, Despite a ton of money flowing in from the state and federal government, quality of life isn't really improving for the people.
And so that begs the question, well, is the Trump strategy of the opportunity zone the right antidote?
And frankly, I've got some doubts about that.
I don't know if when you pit one community against another, if that's really the role of government.
If you're a Wawa and you're deciding where to go build 50 stores, is it really right for the federal government to say, well, if you build them in community A instead of community B, we're designing that outcome to try to direct the flow of your capital.
So I think time will tell whether or not the Democrat strategy of building the largesse of government, abandoning your people, and then just sort of being along for the ride for the Neo-Marxist revolution is the right play, or whether this kind of Trump play of opportunity zones and seeing if you can socially engineer economic success is the right way.
I mean, I think ultimately the way every American society flourishes is when the uniquely American institutions flourish, when we have strong families, when we have strong churches, when we have I think the institutional strength is probably better than the government economic engineering or just the government theft.
You know, I'm going to take the third path.
You know, as you laid it out, there are kind of these two general approaches.
I think the third path is let's be more organized about testing these different approaches.
Because, you know, I don't think anybody's smart enough to know what works.
That's the problem, right? If we were smart enough, we'd just be doing that.
Oh, that works. Let's just do that thing.
We're all smart. But if you don't know, you've got to test it.
And then you've got to make sure that your test is really telling you what you think it is, so it's got to be designed right.
But it seems to me that we should just be focusing on, all right, here's a place that's trying this thing.
Here's a place that's trying the other thing.
We'll check back in six months or a year, see how it looks, do more of that.
Well, and that is the promise of our great federal system, right?
But the problem is that you drain that promise when you have corrupt people that now, in some of these urban areas, are trying to externalize their conflict, right?
Like, the mayor of Seattle has a problem in her own community, and so she blames Donald Trump for being a racist, as the reason why.
And that is the most unproductive, I think, way to resolve this, rather than the testing strategy you laid out.
You know, if I could fix the world, it would look like this.
You'd have teams of, let's say, consultant-type people who could be brought in unrequest, not forced in, to a city to say, look, we're just going to have this external team run your city for a year, fix things up, get rid of the corruption because they're sort of uncorruptible because they're well paid and they come from somewhere else.
And at the end of the year, we'll have an election and try to put somebody in.
But the big problem is that the money is corrupting at the local level, and if you have people who can be corrupted, they will be.
I don't know that there's anything that can be done about that, unless you bring in almost like untouchables.
I talk about it as like government in a box.
Just bring in the government in a box.
Like a chia pet, just add water and your government will grow.
But I think part of that type of engagement requires fair, free, open, honest discussion and debate.
And I was listening to your intro, Scott, about these voices that have been taken offline and the different dynamics and equities that are being balanced.
And I have to share, I was quite taken when I saw a tweet from Republican leader Nikki Haley recently that when she observed what was going on online she was troubled by it but any more regulation would just put lawyers and bureaucrats in charge and that that really is an equally bad ill And so she presumed that we just have to sort of sit back and accept the fact that free speech is eroded in our country.
And that's loser talk to me.
I don't believe that we just kind of surrender to the cancel culture.
And just as we're hearing in the social justice space now that it's not enough to not be a racist.
You have to be anti-racist.
There's only two groups of people.
There's racists and there's anti-racists.
So I want to apply that to the cancel culture.
I guess there's either the people who cancel or the people who uncancel.
And I want to do some uncanceling.
I think that even if people have said things that are controversial or uncouth in an unguarded moment or in an impassioned moment, we ought to have the opportunity to invite people The best of the contributions people can make to our discourse, and we should not be so frail as a nation that we cannot hear things that offend us and then respond to it with more productive speech.
So that's my riff on where we are on the cancel culture.
So if there were some more government, let's say, muscle or regulation, let's call it, on the social media platforms, what form would that take?
What would that look like in your preferred world?
I believe that digital media platforms availing themselves to the benefits of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act should be required to be transparent about the extent to which their platform truly is content neutral.
And I think that there is the common carrier approach, but there is simply a A demand for transparency that can be built into the exoskeleton of the Communication Decency Act to say, okay, well, if you don't want these liabilities for being an aggregator or a curator or a content developer, then you have to open the kimono and demonstrate that it is, in fact, neutral.
And I think an appeal process could be required by the government that would shed a lot of light onto the decision-making that goes into What is promoted?
What is suppressed? What is banned?
What is allowed? But a lot of these that we saw from the Undercover Project Veritas video on Facebook, that it's not so much company rules that are changing things, but there are individuals making judgment calls and there are lots of them.
How do you change that? I think that if that process becomes more transparent, it will be easier to identify the sort of corrosive and rotten places within it.
Right now, we don't even get a peek.
We're told these are private companies.
We the government, we the people, really just have to accept whatever our Silicon Valley free speech hall monitors tell us.
And there is no mechanism by which to vindicate our own voice.
And I think that You get to that element of the people who are running it.
Also, I think there have to be consequences.
When folks like Project Veritas, and they are fantastic, by the way, when they go find these things out, I think that there should be investigations.
There should be reviews. The problem, Scott, just to be candid with you, is that big tech has bought off Congress.
And it's not that hard to do, because Congress can't really act if a small group of people are opposed to it.
So if you go and deploy three lobbyists for every U.S. senator, If Big Tech goes and starts hiring the children and spouses of members of Congress for jobs, which by the way they do all the time, then it really retards our ability to demand the transparency that would fully realize our First Amendment rights.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of rule that says you can't vote if your kid is involved in one of those companies.
I wouldn't mind that. And tell me, given that police reform got stalled because literally nobody in Congress wants the solution so much as they want the issue, apparently, I'm accepting you from that.
What would you do to break the logjam?
And let me just throw this idea on top.
I think there needs to be a national...
Education about police and race, just so we're all on the same page about what the data is and what the options are, what's the plus and minus for each of these yes on chokeholds, no on chokeholds, and talk it through.
Would it help to educate the public so that the public can push Congress, or is there a better way to get something done?
Well, right now in Congress, it is all virtue signaling with very little virtue.
On the police reform front, I would support various repositories for the type of training, data, and information that you described so that we are all singing out of the same hymnal.
You know, now it sort of feels like people are striking up different chords and different notes at different times.
But on the specifics of the policy, there are areas of agreement.
Like, I am not going to defend no-knock warrants.
To me, like, if the government is entering your home and they are not telling you why, that is a problem.
And where I'm from, we have the castle doctrine.
Somebody comes in your home with the intent to do you harm, you know, you have the ability to respond with lethal force.
So I do think that there are ways to improve policing, like changing the no-knock warrant system.
But right now, Democrats don't want a bill.
They want the ability to blame Republicans, and I think that that too often is just sort of where we go to in Washington, D.C. The solution here, Scott, is going to come, I think, still at the local level.
I think you see places developing different technologies, strategies on policing.
They work to different degrees.
I think best practices will be copied around the country, and hopefully that's a way to continue to improve the profession.
But I'm certainly not going to be a part of demonizing, demoralizing, defunding the profession.
And the craziest thing about this bill the Democrats have, it seems to want to put law enforcement At an equal level of force with the people that would terrorize our communities.
Since when did we believe that we ought to go into a fight equally armed and manned with the gangs and cartels?
I mean, I want other people enforcing the law of protecting our citizenry to have an overwhelming advantage in force from those who would do us harm.
When we talk about eliminating the police, I have surprisingly been open to the idea, but only if you start from scratch and develop a community with that expectation.
In other words, you might have less privacy, more video surveillance, more neighborhood watch or something.
You couldn't get rid of the police entirely, but I'll bet you could take it down 50%.
Well, my view is informed by the vulnerable.
One of the major moments in my life was when I was nine years old and I was in the car with my mom who was in a wheelchair and she was mugged.
We had to call the police.
When you're there with a mother in a wheelchair, you start to realize how vulnerable some of us are.
And we need strong law enforcement for the protection of the vulnerable.
And so I'm heavily informed by that, and I'm so grateful for police that respond in those circumstances where they're needed.
All right, so I don't want to take any more of your time because I know you've got a country to run here.
It needs your help.
I've got to say, I've been watching a lot of people on TV, on the news, and certainly on the Republican side.
You are by far the best communicator the Republicans have.
There's nobody even close at this point.
And I think that speaks well for your future.
So thanks for coming on, Congressman Matt Gaetz, and make sure everybody takes a look at your podcast, Hot Takes.
If you just Google it, you'll find out where that is.
Anything else you want to add, Matt?
Just that I'm grateful to be on, and hopefully next time I will take fewer than five attempts to connect for a little coffee with Scott Adams, but much appreciated, my friend.
All right. Thanks so much.
Have a great day. Alright, that was fun.
Now, a couple things I've got on my list.
There's an argument that I've been hearing that conservatives make that I think is weak.
Now, you know me.
I'm not taking the left or the right side on things.
I like to go with the argument.
So it doesn't matter whose argument it is.
If it's weak, I want you to know about it.
And the argument goes like this.
So people will say, hey, the The black community in this country is complaining about economic equality, but, say the conservatives, can you explain that the more recent black Africans who have immigrated more recently are doing far better economically?
And so, say the conservatives, it can't be because you're black, because the Africans are doing fine, but the people who have been here for a while are not.
Of course, one argument to that would be there's a ripple of racism or disadvantage that's built into the system from slavery to today.
That would be one response.
But I think there's a far more obvious response, far more obvious, which is that if you're in another country, whether it's Africa or anywhere else, it's kind of hard to get to the United States.
How do you immigrate to the United States?
It's not easy. So first of all, you're going to be a capable person if you can even get to the United States.
Secondly, you probably have to demonstrate they have some education, you know, that you can support yourself.
I don't know exactly what the rules are, but my guess is that there's a self-selection process, right?
Exactly. I'm seeing it in the comments.
The people who are immigrating are self-selecting Because they're motivated and ambitious, and they feel that the American system is suited for their ambition.
If you told me it doesn't matter what country they come from, it doesn't matter what their ethnicity is, if you tell me I'm going to compare a bunch of people who made it to an entirely new country, learned a new language, and were so motivated they thought they would go across the world and fit into the system and work hard and succeed, that group's always going to do well.
There shouldn't be any surprise that people who self-select for motivation, proper risk management, going to the right place where the energy is best, all of that is predictive of success.
It has nothing to do with ethnicity.
It's a self-selected group who are motivated.
Every self-selected, motivated group of any group is going to do pretty well compared to everybody else.
So I would say that the argument of, hey, what about the people who came recently from Africa doing well, it doesn't say what you think it says.
So I would drop that argument, frankly.
All right, I'm seeing a lot of folks say, as I said earlier in the interview, or the conversation with Matt Gaetz, that A lot of people are saying that President Trump is being too weak in this current protester situation.
And I don't think that's demonstrably true.
So the thinking goes that if he acts weak, Republicans won't respond to that.
They'll feel like he's not doing his job.
But I do think people understand that the federal government does and should Wait for the local government to invite them in.
And when your federal government is Trump, and you've been accused of being a tyrant racist, and that's one of your worst accusations, if you've been accused of being a tyrant racist president,
do you want to send your military in unrequested, unrequested being the important part, to almost certainly kill somebody and almost certainly they're going to be a person of color just because of the numbers of people in the area at least one and then the whole problem starts up again so I think the people who say he should be acting strong I'm not sure he has the options that you think and I think that it might be a far stronger play than you think To simply let the energy dissipate.
Because dictators don't do that.
Racists don't do that.
You know, just letting the temperature come down.
Because, you know, once it comes down, you've got a new set of alternatives.
Now, in the case of the autonomous zone, I think that's a special case.
Because, you know, they do set up a little bit of defense, etc.
And here's how I would handle that.
Here's how I would do it.
If I were the mayor and I wanted to clean out that area, I might just invite the public to do it for me.
Now, I haven't thought this through, but just bear with me for a moment.
The advantage that the protesters have over police is numbers, right?
The police have guns and training and all that, but the protesters, mostly they just have numbers.
But they don't have numbers compared to the actual population that lives there.
And the actual population that lives there isn't really engaged.
They're just sort of hanging back.
But what if they all came to the street and said, we got your message, we heard what you said, and there are going to be 10,000 of us standing behind this line of police, and we're just going to march with them and help them clean up stuff as they clear the people out.
So imagine a model where there's a bunch of police, deeply outnumbered by the protesters who are in the occupied zone, and behind the police are 10,000 citizens who are not armed, and they're just there to clean up.
Literally there to clean up.
And so the police come in, and just at every foot that they gain, slowly and as nonviolently as possible, directly behind them, The citizens come in and reclaim the territory, clean it as they go, and it's just a show of force, basically. But the show of force is just the number of bodies.
It's not that they're armed or that they're violent, and you'd want them to be completely uninvolved with the violence.
I got this idea from some small town in Washington State where I saw a video of one of the conservative ex-military people saying, you better not try it in our town.
And his explanation of it was that however many protesters there were, there were going to be more people from the town and they're armed.
And numbers matter, right?
If you had a lot of people from the town relative to the number of protesters, well, the protesters are going to behave themselves.
They're not going to set up an autonomous zone.
So I don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea, but I thought I'd put it out there.
I tweeted this morning, it seems to be pretty popular, that if anybody who does these eight things will be successful, and anybody who doesn't just won't be, which of these eight things are unavailable to people of color?
I'll just read them, and then keep in your mind, can anybody do these things, or is it reserved for white privilege type people?
Number one, focus on a useful education.
I put the word useful in there.
You know what that means, right?
An education that has some commercial value.
So you focus on a useful education, which means, you know, get good grades and then you have a chance to go to college.
Stay out of legal trouble, obvious.
Stay away from drugs, obvious.
Now, that doesn't mean you didn't experiment or you got drunk on the weekends.
I'm talking about becoming a drug addict.
Don't do that. Don't become a parent too soon.
Build a talent stack.
Assemble skills that work well together to make you special and valuable.
Be useful to others.
This is the most unappreciated one.
You have to create a set of skills and, I guess, a personality, if you will, That other people say, hey, that could be helpful to me.
I would like that person as a friend.
I would like to mate with that person.
I would like to hire that person.
I would like to buy from that person.
So become a useful person.
You know what it looks like.
Just be useful. As opposed to being selfish all the time.
Favor systems over goals.
That's the longer description, but a system is something you do every day to get you closer to a variety of goals, such as a system for your fitness, a system for your diet, a system for networking, a system for promotion, etc. So develop your systems.
They would be different for everybody, but you have to have systems.
And then learn basic risk management.
Now that's sort of a general statement.
But a lot of people do things that just are bad risk management.
I'll give the obvious example.
Let's say you wanted to invest in stocks, but you had never been taught risk management.
So you say, ah, I've got $10,000 I've saved up over the years.
I'll put it in this one stock.
Well, that shows that you don't know risk management, because that's just a bad idea.
You never put all your money in one stock.
You spread it around and hope that the winners cancel out the losers.
So that's just one example.
But there are a million examples in life in which you can look at and say, okay, if nobody told you the odds, it wouldn't be obvious.
Like the example of diversification.
As soon as you hear it, you say, oh yeah, it kind of makes sense.
But if you'd never heard the word diversification, it just wouldn't be obvious.
It just wouldn't be obvious that you should do it.
And all of life is like that.
The risks... Need a little bit of guidance to know what makes sense and what doesn't.
So my contention is this, that of course there are weird exceptions if somebody has a health problem, etc.
Those are obvious. If somebody shoots you, you may not have a successful life, obviously.
But if you do these eight things, which of them are unavailable to you?
Anybody in this country.
There's nothing on this list that's unavailable.
Everything on this list is available to everybody.
And I don't know anybody who can do these eight things, which are not terribly hard, because some of them are just don't do something, don't do drugs, don't commit a crime.
It's not hard to not do things.
It's hard to do things sometimes, but it's not that hard to not do things.
Except for peer pressure, etc., I guess.
There's a new kind of racism lately, which is a weird kind.
When I say new, I don't mean it never existed before, but it's more prominent.
It goes like this. How often does a white person in June of 2020, where a lot has changed about how we're thinking about the world, even from last year, How many white people who are hiring or looking to work with somebody would be afraid of working with a black person not because they were racist themselves you know even though arguably everybody's a little bit racist because we're all biased but let's just say it's somebody who has no history and no conscious thoughts of racism which is about as close as you can get and That person has an option of hiring one of two people.
Let's say they're both qualified.
Both qualified.
Does the white person in June 2020 say to themselves that they're equally risky?
They don't think so.
Because would you hire somebody that you think hates you?
Right? It's one thing to not hire somebody because you are a racist.
Very illegal, immoral.
It's one of the great evils, right?
So if you're the racist, that's pretty bad.
But what if you say to yourself, you know, I watch television, and if I were a black person in America, I'd have an attitude right now.
I'd feel, if I had been consuming the same media that everybody else is feeling, and I were black, how would I feel about white Americans in June of 2020?
Maybe a little bit of an attitude.
Maybe a little contempt.
Maybe a little thought that there's a little privilege there.
Maybe you think that you're a little bit more racist than you thought even a year ago.
So is it reasonable or is it racist?
I guess it would be racist by definition, so I answered my own question.
But don't you think that there's a...
Yeah, I'm seeing in the comments that there's a little bit of agreement there.
It's actually a new form of racism In which people will say, I'm not a racist, but I'm pretty sure that if I hire a black person, they will think I am.
Why would they think that?
Because the black community is, let's say, reinforcing, through Black Lives Matter especially, is reinforcing that basically all white people are racist even if they don't know it.
Think about that.
The message is that all white people are racist even if they're not aware of it.
So would you hire somebody who believed you were a racist?
I would not.
Let me demonstrate my free speech here for a moment.
If I had two candidates, equally qualified, and I have no racial animus or feelings or negativity of my own, at least on a conscious level, but I'm positive that the person I'm talking to, let's be specific, let's say it's a black candidate.
And I'm positive that this person follows the news and is politically active.
What are the odds that that black person has a good feeling about me as just a generic white person?
Don't you believe that they think I'm a racist?
Because I think that's the message that Black Lives Matter wants all black people to accept.
That all white people are racist all the time, but not always consciously.
I don't think I would hire somebody that I suspected thought I was a racist.
Am I wrong?
Now, by definition, that would be racist and also illegal, right?
Wouldn't that be illegal? Wouldn't I be sued for thinking that somebody would discriminate against me?
That's different, right?
I'm not saying that this form of racism didn't always exist, but it went from something I don't think I ever would have thought about even once.
Let me put it this way.
Two years ago, I wouldn't have even thought of that.
It wouldn't have even been a glancing thought across my mind that if I hired a black candidate, that black candidate would certainly not like me and would feel a little bit racist.
I didn't think that two years ago.
That's something that Black Lives Matter taught me.
So while they're training, let's say training and educating their own public, let's say, the black public, to distrust all white people for being racist even if the white people don't know they're being racist.
Under those conditions, have the Black Lives Matter not taught white people not to hire black people?
Because that's what I'm hearing.
I'm hearing it would be bad for me to hire somebody who had a bad feeling about me, and they're being trained to have a bad feeling about me.
So, obviously, you can't do that legally, so I don't recommend it.
It's not a recommendation. It's a statement and an observation.
Somebody said something happened to Hawk Newsome, but I'm not up on that, so I can't comment on that.
And apparently TikTok has been reverse engineered.
So you know the app TikTok?
I don't know how valid this story is, but there was a story of an engineer who reverse engineers apps for a living.
So he's reverse engineered lots of different apps.
But when he reverse engineered TikTok, allegedly, he found a hornet's nest of obvious spy intention.
And things that were designed just to make you not know what it does.
And that his recommendation after reverse engineering it is that you should not have that app anywhere near you because it's just spying on you and collecting your personal information.
So that's somebody who reverse engineered it and he's quick to point out that he has also reverse engineered I guess the Twitter app and some other apps and said that they don't have that.
So if you're saying, oh, they're all the same, Twitter, TikTok, it's all the same.
Apparently not. Apparently not.
If you reverse engineer the Twitter app, you just don't find anything scary.
It's just an app.
If you reverse engineer the TikTok app, according to this one story, I'd like a little more confirmation.
When you hear one story from one source, In today's day and age, you've got to put that little skeptical check mark next to it.
Put the skeptical check mark next to it, but there's one report that the TikTok app is just filled with spy code.
Obviously, the Chinese government can control anything that TikTok does.
You've got that.
The DOD has said this for a long time about TikTok.
Why is it still legal?
Why can a child walk into your house with a TikTok app?
And by the way, you don't have any idea how dangerous that app is.
You might find out soon, but I don't think you've thought it through to know just how dangerous that is.
It's not a small thing.
If you were going to size it, let me put a size on it.
If you were going to size the risk of the TikTok app Compared to other dangers in your world, what size would you put on it?
I would put it the same size as radical Islamic terrorism.
Bigger. Because terrorism probably doesn't have an option.
There's no real risk that terrorism will destroy the whole country of America.
That's not really a possibility.
Because the nature of it probably couldn't happen.
But Could an app destroy civilization?
Actually, yes.
Actually, yes. So if you have an app, just a piece of software that has the potential to destroy civilization, you would put it on the same level as, let's say, North Korea having nuclear arms.
That sort of a level.
So in terms of the level of risk, it's the highest military level of risk.
Should it be weaponized?
And it can be. It can be.
And in fact, it's not even hard.
That's the problem. The problem is it's not hard.
If it were hard, that'd be a different argument, but it's not hard to weaponize it.
All right. Um...
Why is the government so slow to act with regard to tech?
Well, I think it's several things.
One is, you know, lobbyist and money and money influence.
That's part of it. Maybe the biggest part.
Part of it is that they don't understand.
How many...
Let me ask you this.
So I just described to you the following chain of events.
China can control TikTok because it's a Chinese company.
Their algorithm can control what you see, therefore they can make anything popular such as, for example, oh, how about a prank where people will buy tickets to or sign up for the Trump rally but not go?
Was that going to be viral by itself?
Ask yourself, would that have been viral just because some kid made a viral video about, hey, we should prank the Trump campaign?
On TikTok, an app for children, you think that a political point, a political thing, was going to be the big viral thing on TikTok?
An app for 12-year-olds?
I don't think so. But it could be.
It's possible. But you don't know.
Now, if it becomes popular on TikTok, what happens?
It goes to Snapchat.
So, TikTok is a skews to the young people.
Snapchat does, too.
But Snapchat also has young and older people.
At least, you know, not old-old, but older.
So anything that's popular on TikTok will eventually become viral on Snapchat.
Once it's on Snapchat, it's everywhere.
It's Instagram, it's Facebook, it's Twitter.
So, can the Chinese government send any message they want all the way through our social media network?
Yeah. Easily.
It's not even hard.
In fact, we probably just watched it happen.
You just don't know.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm saying TikTok instead of TikTok.
Those of you who are accusing me of being a boomer, you are so right on that.
I embrace it. I embrace my full boomerism flaws, and I do not apologize for them.
Somebody says there was no link on Snapchat to Trump's rally.
Really? You can say with some confidence that nowhere on Snapchat there was any mention of the TikTok prank.
Really? That's pretty knowledgeable of you, that you know all of the things on Snapchat.
But in any case, whether that one moved to Snapchat or not, that's the obvious path that other things could take.
All right. I think that was all I wanted to talk about today.