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Aug. 7, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
59:06
Episode 1084 Scott Adams: Teachers Unions Should Pay Reparations, Churches Finding a Way, Peter Navarro and HCQ

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Payroll and jobs, good news Walmart and casino church services Kanye should join Presidential debates Joe Biden said what? Teachers Unions, political activism, anti-school choice CNN's Erin Burnett versus Peter Navarro on HCQ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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What a day, what a day!
Thank you.
Come on in, come on in.
There's still time, still space.
You can get the best seat if you hurry up.
Make sure your coffee is warm or your beverage is cold, depending on your personal preferences.
Unlike Joe Biden, I think everybody is different.
I don't lump people by ethnicity.
No, I don't. I believe we are all special and different and unique.
And I think that the only thing that could make this morning better, well, maybe not the only thing, but the thing that could make it the best, is the simultaneous supper.
And you are going to enjoy that now.
And all it takes is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stine, a canteen, a drink or a flask of 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 fake news.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
Go! Mmm!
Mmm! Well, I would like to share with you something that made me so happy this morning.
And I tweeted it so that you could be happy too.
There is a genre of entertainment that I had never seen before that I really liked.
I mean, it just completely made my day.
And I'll call it a genre.
I know you're going to say to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, we've known about this forever.
Why are you the last to find out?
Well, that's probably true. But here's the genre.
Young black men listening to, let's call it just for convenience, old white music.
That is awesome.
The first one is these two black teens.
Who looked like the most fun two people you'd ever know.
Listening to a Phil Collins song for the first time.
And was it in the air tonight, I think?
Now here's the thing. If you've never heard Phil Collins, and yeah, yeah, yeah, I know y'all have had your opinions.
Some people love him, some people hate him.
I personally think that his best songs are amazing.
So the video is the two young black kids and for some reason the fact that they're black helps the story, right?
You get that, right?
Just because they're listening to something that they had not been exposed to before.
And here's what makes it amazing.
So first of all, just watching them light up and enjoy the music and being maybe a little bit surprised by it is good.
So that alone is entertaining.
But here's the part that really sort of got to me.
Music for me is a sympathetic thing.
And what I mean is this.
The music that I first heard when I was with my college friends is the music that always reaches me the most and probably always will.
And it has to do with the fact that I learned very early That I don't seem to have much in the way of independent musical preferences.
You know, I'm not a big music guy.
But, if you put me in the room with people who really like the music that's playing, what I respond to is the other people.
So, if somebody else is getting just a massive pleasure at the music, I don't get it directly from the music, but I get it from the person.
And then the music seems to be what's working, but really it's the combination of the person's influence.
Because humans are mimics.
You put us in a room with anything, and we will be more likely to mimic it.
Music, probably more than most things, is mimicable.
So, when I watch this video, and then there's another one of a, let's see, what's his name?
He goes by NoLifeShack, S-H-A-Q, on YouTube.
It's a huge account, a couple million followers.
And it's a, I don't know, 20-something, I'm guessing.
Black man who's listening to various musics for the first time, and Leonard Skinnerd.
Leonard Skinnerd is the one.
Now, there's another thing here that's useful.
And by the way, persuasion is sort of the context here.
So I'm talking about music, but it's not really about music.
It's about how the persuasion works and how we are mimics.
But I'm working on this hypothesis about what makes music work.
And it's a really deep, kind of complicated, hard to understand thing.
There's something in humans where we're wired for some kind of a beat.
But what I felt when I was watching, and again, it's important to the story, where I'm going here, that the people in the videos were black.
So two black youths and then a 20-something black guy.
And I gotta tell you, that as they were enjoying the music, and then I started enjoying them, and then through them remembering how much I liked the music from my youth, it is such a bonding experience.
I feel like I'm already friends with the people in the videos.
Never met them. Don't think I ever will.
But immediately, I was bonded to them.
Like, if I met them in the street, I would feel like it would be real easy to get along with them.
Like, I would already be connected somehow.
And, you know, in our big world full of conflict and protest and such, watching the power of music pull people together makes me ask some big questions.
One of the questions is about the origin of music.
And the origin of dancing.
And I'm not too proud to say that when I watched No Life Shack, literally he couldn't help himself but move when he was listening to Leonard Skinner.
I actually danced with him alone in my studio office at 4.30 in the morning, happier than you could ever imagine.
Like just purely happy.
And he did that for me.
So I would recommend his YouTube.
It's NoLifeShack.
S-H-A-Q. Quite amazing.
Now here's the other thing I wanted to say about music.
There's something that I'm just sort of working on this as a hypothesis.
Curiosity is sort of a base impulse for human beings.
And I've said before that whenever you can invoke curiosity, let's say you're an author or any kind of entertainer, curiosity will just bind people.
You know, whether you're giving a presentation at work, whatever you're doing, if you can inspire curiosity, people will stay around.
And they'll wait, because they kind of need to know how things end.
We're just built that way. And music, I think, does that.
Because music, imagine if you would, your music was one beat.
And you knew where that was going to end.
At the end of the song, it would still be.
It wouldn't matter how good that beat was, because it bores you.
There's no curiosity.
But songs, you know that if they start slow, like Lynyrd Skynyrd does, if you're familiar with the song, you know it.
It's actually too slow.
And watching the No Life Shack hear it for the first time, what you know as an audience member is, oh, the good stuff's coming.
And here's the fun.
At the slow part, he got really excited and really liked the Leonard Skinner.
It was Freebird, actually. So it was Freebird.
The song. And he's listening to it.
He really likes the slow part.
It's like, yeah. And you can tell he's really getting into it and genuinely enjoying it.
But as a viewer, you're saying to yourself, oh, I know where this is going.
I am not leaving.
I am not leaving this video until the tempo change, right?
And so the tempo changes and he just goes nuts.
But you can feel it in your body.
Like, you get goosebumps.
And it just goes right through you.
Because you're feeling it with him.
It's remarkable. And I would go so far as to say that if you were going to invent a new genre of entertainment, damn, you couldn't beat this.
Because it really has just all of the elements in it.
Um... So, there's that.
I tweeted both of those so you can enjoy them too.
I would definitely recommend that you watch them alone.
Watch it alone with headphones when nobody's watching because you're going to find yourself dancing around.
Alright, good news on the payroll and on jobs.
Jobs are down from 11.1 in June to 10.2.
Is 10.2 good or bad?
Well, it's bad in normal times, but I have to say, think back just a few months.
Just a few months ago, what were people talking about in terms of unemployment?
They were talking about 20%.
They were talking about depression.
Now, if you're keeping track of who is your better predictors, I would like to throw into the mix that I did say, no, it's not going to be a depression.
Yeah, we are going to get out of this.
And this 10% unemployment, as bad as it is, certainly among our biggest challenges right now, it's not nearly as bad as it could have been.
It's a lot closer to what the optimists were saying than the pessimists.
So keep that in mind.
Oh, as long as we're scoring things...
To maintain my credibility, as well as I can anyway, I like to confess when I get stuff wrong.
So when I get stuff wrong, if I don't say it publicly, hey, I got that wrong, then maybe I'll have less credibility in the future.
So early on, when we first were going into shutdown, and people said, hey, you know, this shutdown's bad, and we thought it would only be maybe a month or six weeks.
When I thought it would be really short, because nobody really knew.
I mean, maybe that was enough, maybe it wasn't.
But when we thought it would be short, I actually said, you know, I think the net deaths, if you take out the number of people who won't be dying on the highway, you might come out closer to like 5,000 people dead if it's short.
But of course it wasn't short.
So my 5,000 dead could not be more wrong.
So it's about as wrong as anything can be.
But the wrongness had to do with not knowing how long the shutdown would have lasted.
Because not a lot of people are going to, let's say, end their life or become addicts in four weeks because you could sort of last that out.
Maybe you could hold. It would be worse, but not that much worse.
But if you extend it for months and people lose their jobs and You know, they can't do any of the social things that they normally do.
Yeah, that's expensive.
That's dangerous. People don't get their cancer screenings, etc.
So that would be a case of me missing by about a thousand miles.
But the part I missed, that maybe we all missed, is how long we would be shut down.
That was the key element.
Alright, now here's a question that I want to ask with respect.
Which is about the church attendance during the pandemic.
You've seen a number of people who have cleverly tried to get around the rules.
I guess there was one church that did their service inside of Walmart because Walmart could be open but churches cannot.
I think it was Ralph Reed's group who used a casino to do a service because casinos are open but churches are not.
And I asked this question.
What would Jesus do?
Because it feels like...
I've always appreciated that question because it does put you into the view of, okay, if you were Jesus, how would you play this?
And the reason I ask the question, it's not a criticism.
So don't take this as a criticism of religion.
I'm pro-religion.
I think it works wonders in many people's lives.
I think that's just objectively true.
So no matter what you believe about religion...
It's just obvious it's good for people.
We seem to be wired for it.
The evidence is overwhelming, I think.
So I'm very, very pro-religion while not being a believer personally.
So I have a complete respect for it for all the right reasons.
But I have to ask, is your constitutional right to your religion, which I would say is unquestionable, That is to say, those people who say, you government, you can't tell us to not practice our religion, that's baked into the Constitution, I'm with you.
Same as if they had tried to suppress your free speech.
Totally with you. If it's in the Constitution, sorry, those are the rules.
Could somebody get hurt because of it?
Yes. Sorry, it's in the Constitution.
Same with free speech.
Free speech isn't free.
People do get hurt all the time.
But do I think we should not have free speech because somebody might get hurt by it?
Nope. It's in the Constitution.
Those are the rules we're playing by.
And until somebody comes up with a better set of rules or changes the rules, we're just better off saying, hey, this is what we agreed on.
Let's stick with it.
So those people who say, it's my constitutional right to express my religious beliefs, Preferences and worship the way I want, you know, within reason, of course.
I say, absolutely.
100% support for your constitutional right to avoid, to just ignore the government.
Literally just ignore the government.
If the government passes a law tomorrow that says, you know, we're going to shoot you if you practice your religion, well, you have to overthrow the government, right?
I mean, you have to overthrow the government if they do that.
So, legally, constitutionally, absolutely.
And if you want to make the cost-benefit decision that you've looked at all the data, you've decided that this risk is worth the reward, okay.
As long as you've looked at all the risks and all the reward, that's all anybody would ask.
But here's the question. How would Jesus play it?
Would Jesus have said...
Let's say he made the decision.
And you said to him, look, we've got this problem.
We can't worship the way we want to, but we've got to work around it.
We're going to use the casino. The only downside is not the risk we're taking on ourselves because we're adults.
We can take our own risk.
You can't tell me what risk I can take.
So yeah, what do you think of that, Jesus?
And Jesus would probably say, I agree.
You are adults, and you can take the risk that you want.
But then there's this other pesky problem, which is, what happens if you transmit the virus outside of your group?
What happens if Infections spread because of it and then that went to people who were not making any kind of a religious decision.
They were just cutting your hair or whatever they were doing and now they've got the virus.
Somebody dies. Would Jesus say, go ahead and do the ceremony in the casino because You're adults and you're choosing to do it and the benefits are greater than the cost?
Or would Jesus say, you know, the people who are going to suffer here are not you.
The question of whether you should do it isn't about you.
It's not about you. It's not about religion.
It's not about your God.
It's about what risk you are willing to put other people.
Now would Jesus say, well, yeah, maybe a few people will die.
Or would Jesus say, you know, it's temporary.
Let's just hold off.
You can worship it up like crazy when the churches are fully reopened.
Man, we're going to have a party.
It'll be the best day ever.
But for now, can you just think of your other humans for a little bit?
Now, I'm not a religious scholar.
I will not pretend to speak for Jesus.
I simply put that question out there because I was raised in the...
Christian tradition.
And I find it confusing that Jesus may have supported something that was real fun and good for the worshiper, but might kill somebody who was minding their own business later.
Maybe. Maybe Jesus would take that view.
And if that's your view that Jesus would back that, I would say you're on strong ground.
All right. Rand Paul tweeted a Real Clear Politics article by Stacey Rudin, who, you need to know, is a litigator active in the grassroots movement to preserve full-time in-classroom education.
So there's a lawyer who is actually litigating, so I guess she is active in the effort to get kids back to school, and writes an article that says that social distancing and Lockdowns have no scientific support.
And I thought to myself, what?
So there's no scientific evidence at all that lockdowns work or that even social distancing, which is kind of the same thing, that they work.
Now the thought is that if once 1% of your population is infected, That there's just nothing you can do.
That you could be the most cautious people in the world, but basically it's going to get you.
It's going to get you sooner or later.
However, I would note that although the argument is sound and very provocative in the sense that what is the argument against hydroxychloroquine?
The argument against hydroxychloroquine is that there are no studies confirming that it works.
Right? There are no studies confirming that it works.
So they say don't use it.
But there's also no study confirming that the lockdowns work, you know, in this kind of situation.
So who's being anti-science?
If there's no evidence that something works, but you know for sure it'll destroy your economy, do you do it?
There's no scientific evidence that a lockdown works.
And which I believe to be true, only because it would be so hard to do a scientific study.
And it might be the only reason there's no scientific study, because it would just be hard to study.
But everybody thinks it works.
And one of the things I loved was this point that Rudin makes in the article, that human beings will imagine that their leaders made the difference.
This is a point I've been talking about a lot.
You think you can tell, Which leaders are doing a good job because you're looking at the outcomes?
It's just not a thing.
It has never been a thing.
It's not even a thing in business most of the time.
As the Dilbert creator, I've been writing about this forever, my observation in all my business experience is that managers would wait for something lucky to happen that had nothing to do with them, and then they would claim credit based on that thing they did.
That had nothing to do with anything.
So most of management is waiting for something good to happen on its own, and then figuring out a way that you can claim credit for it.
And that's not even a joke.
Anybody who's had experience with big companies knows, yeah, in a big organization, it's really about saying that you were responsible for a coincidental uptick in sales, which might have to do with, you know, nothing.
Let me ask you this.
We saw that a number of companies like Amazon made tons of money because of the pandemic.
Do you think there are no managers at Amazon who are going to say, look at what a great job I did because my profits and my segment are way up?
Yeah, they will. They had nothing to do with it.
It was the pandemic. The pandemic made people stay home and order stuff on Amazon.
But there will be managers claiming credit And successfully.
They will be compensated for doing such a great job.
Look at all those sales.
Made a lot of money. You guys are geniuses.
It had nothing to do with talent.
Likewise, when all the governors and the leaders of all the countries, at the end of this, they're going to be claiming credit for the ones who coincidentally got a good result.
And the ones who coincidentally got a bad result will be blaming it on somebody else because they need to do that.
But indeed, there may be no connection between getting back to the social distancing, between any of the leadership decisions and what happens.
Now, here's my problem with the Rudin look.
While I accept that there may not be any science, For social distancing and the lockdowns, that's probably just because it's hard to study.
Almost nothing I do during the day has any science to it.
After I'm done here, I'm going to go downstairs and I'm going to eat a delicious avocado with soy sauce and pepper, despite the fact that there has not been one single scientific study to say that that's going to be the best thing I can do now.
Maybe something else is better to do.
Maybe I should wait to eat.
Maybe I should eat something different.
But I'm going to do it anyway, despite no scientific backing whatsoever.
Because some things just sort of make sense.
Now, the other thing that Rudin admits is that, obviously, indirectly admits, that if you have a vaccine...
And you can stall until you get to the vaccine.
Actually, social distancing might make sense.
It might make sense to stall if you knew you were stalling for something.
But we don't quite know that the vaccines are going to work.
I have a good feeling about them, but I don't know.
So I think in the context where you have a real chance of therapeutics, a real chance of keeping the hospitals running, And a real chance of getting to a vaccine.
And I think those are all real.
That that is the one situation in which you don't need that much science to do a shutdown.
So, while the case is strong counselor, from a lawyer perspective, it's sort of a good argument, but it's a lawyer argument.
Meaning, when I say it's a lawyer argument, I mean it sounds good.
But it's missing the biggest part, which is the whole point was to stall, to keep the hospitals open, and to make sure that we had time to get to some better treatments.
So under those conditions, actually, I think you don't need too much science to take your shot.
All right, how about this?
Why is it that Kanye West can't debate?
Is it because he's black?
Now, of course, it's not because of that.
It's because they have rules and he doesn't have enough voters.
There's some threshold that he's not going to be anywhere near.
But still, wouldn't you like to see Kanye West debate?
Now, even Kanye says he's not running for president.
He's walking. You know, so...
He's signaling quite clearly, plus the number of states that he's actually running in is limited, but he's signaling quite clearly that he's in it for, let's say, the influence or the positioning or maybe for the message, but not so much in it to win.
Still, wouldn't you like to see him debate?
I mean, come on.
Can you imagine the ratings for a debate that Kanye West...
President Trump and Joe Biden.
It would be the best thing you've ever seen on television.
And would the public benefit from having a debate that drew more people in, that drew in more people than normally would watch a political event?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think it would be actually really, really good for the republic.
Now, the fact that there are these rules about, you know, when and when they debate, I think that's independent of the fact that I could just hold a debate, couldn't I? Isn't it still a free country?
I'm not saying I'll do this, but can't I just say, hey, I invite all three of you to my debate.
It's going to be such and such a time.
And if all three, you know, they just have to say yes.
If they said yes, it's a debate.
It doesn't matter if there was some threshold that someone else cares about.
If I'm not a party to that decision, I can just have my own debate.
So there's nothing that would stop it, except for the three people not wanting to do it.
Now, would Kanye want to do it?
I don't know. I don't know.
It'd be amazing if he did.
Would President Trump say yes, if Kanye said yes?
I think so. Don't you?
Don't you think President Trump would say yes if Kanye said he'll do one and there was an event that allowed it?
I think he'd say yes.
I don't know. Would Joe Biden say yes?
Well, if Kanye and Trump said yes, I think his handlers would try to keep him out of it, but it would be fascinating if he said yes.
Anyway, I'd like to put that in the mix.
What's interesting is that Kanye seems to be doing exactly, exactly the smartest thing.
Because you don't need to be president to have power.
You just have to find a way that your message and your influence can get leveraged up.
So apparently he's going to be on the ballot in Wisconsin.
Maybe, you know, most important of the swing states.
It could be. It could turn out that way.
So he's finding this little area where if he can siphon off black votes from Democrats, he pretty much puts President Trump into office.
And I think he's largely admitted that if that happens, that's okay with him.
At least okay.
Maybe better than okay.
But here's the thing.
He's now putting himself in a position...
Where he could ask for something.
Right? Imagine Kanye West saying, look, I'm on the ballot.
I'm going to change the election.
If you'd like that not to happen, I want one thing.
Who knows what the one thing is?
If it were me, I'd ask for something about the school choice.
I'd say, look, Whoever gives me free competition and can fix education for everybody who's poor, not just black people, because I think Kanye would be the one person who would say, how about helping poor people, rather than just black poor people?
So I think he would be a good one for that message.
I imagined he would think of it that way.
Although I can't read his mind, so I don't want to assume that I can imagine what's in the mind of anybody.
Much less Kanye, right?
I mean, if you can imagine what was in his mind, then you would be able to do what he could do.
But since you and I can't do what he can do, let's assume we can't read his mind.
So let's get away from that.
It'd be fascinating. I'd just love to see him be part of the process.
And I think it could be deeply, deeply important if he wants it to be.
Let's talk about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, now obviously he's not a racist.
I don't think anybody really could make that case.
But you can be insensitive.
You could have a blind spot and you could accidentally offend, and I think that's where he's at.
So as you all know, he made the statement that he thought that the Latin American, what was the name he used to word?
The Latin American?
Yeah, the Latino community, he said, was incredibly diverse.
And then he said, quote, unlike the black community.
So he's imagining that the Latino community is diverse, but the black community is not.
And when he went on to try to clarify that, because, of course, that caused a backlash, he clarified that the Latino community, you know, it's not just Mexico, but, you know, the South American countries, Guatemala, etc., And that's what he meant.
To which I say, Joe Biden, you know Africa's not one country, right?
In the same way that South America is not one country, which was your point.
Mexico is not Guatemala.
There are some differences.
But you know, Africa wasn't one country.
So, and of course, the black community, like every community, is full of unique voices.
So he's getting some pushback from that.
I don't think he meant any harm, but it's a great political attack.
And I think it gets more to his mental competence.
I mean, the way I read this story is that he's not verbally capable, which is different than Having some kind of racial animus.
I don't think he has that. Portland...
Portland has gone from, I don't know, scary to tragic.
It's always tragic, especially with people getting hurt.
But it's also kind of funny in a horrible way.
I'm not proud of it because I don't want to minimize The pain and suffering and the real hurt economically and physically for the police as well as the protesters.
So it's a real tragedy.
But Ted Wheeler gets rid of the feds, so the mayor succeeds in getting rid of the feds, which the story was, the mainstream media was trying to tell you that the cause of the protests was that Trump had the feds there, guarding just the federal buildings.
And once they pulled out, it didn't make a difference at all.
It made no difference.
So now you can see that the mainstream story about it was the Feds that were the problem, complete fake news.
But now the Feds are gone.
So if you didn't like it, you get to have whatever is the opposite of that.
That's what they have. So the mayor, who at one point actually joined in with protesters to show that he felt sympathy or empathy for their cause, that didn't work out well.
Because the protesters were not kind to him.
But now he's saying this.
I'm just going to read his quote.
So Ted Wheeler, mayor of Portland, he goes, don't think for a moment that you are, if you are participating in this activity, meaning the protests, you are not being a, well, actually, not just the protests, but the more violent part of the protests, you are not being a prop for the re-election campaign of Donald Trump.
Because you absolutely are.
You're creating the B-roll film that will be used in ads nationally, yes, to help Donald Trump during this campaign, yes.
If you don't want to be part of that, then don't show up.
Oh well. Oh well.
And watching the Portland protests turn into a campaign ad for Trump, which is exactly what happened.
Not just approximately, That's exactly what happened.
It literally transformed into a campaign ad for the other guy.
That is just too perfect.
It's just too perfect.
So, on one hand, tragic.
On the other hand, comedic.
I guess that's all I need to say about that.
I tweeted today that I asked people if they thought that the teachers unions should pay reparations because they are the primary cause, let's say cause of 80%, that would be my estimate, of systemic racism.
Now, they're not the initial cause.
The initial cause, you know, you could argue back to slavery and then the ripple into the future, but the ongoing cause The current day thing you could change, because we can't go back to the past.
We can't rewind history and fix anything in slavery, but we can deal with what's today.
And what's today is that the primary cause of every disparity, income disparity and everything else, opportunity, would be the teachers' unions.
Now, at this point, and I have to admit, I'm very late to this argument, because the first time you hear this, doesn't it just sound stupid?
If you had never heard this argument before, and the first time you'd been introduced to it was me saying, you know, the teachers' unions are the cause of systemic racism, you'd say, ah, I'm not connecting those dots.
Aren't those, like, completely different things?
Where are you going here?
But anybody who's dug into it even a little bit learns that the teachers' unions are basically a political organization who do a little bit of stuff for teachers which gives them their power.
So they do do good work for teachers in the sense that teachers get good negotiating and union-type strength.
That's all good. Don't want to change the fact that teachers have somebody who can negotiate for them.
Let's keep that part. But what you may not know Is that the teachers' unions have a tremendous amount of money.
Because the teachers pay into that, and I thought that that money went to mostly doing stuff for the teachers.
Wouldn't you think? But it turns out it's political.
They literally spend, depends on the union, because they're different unions, but they could spend 30 to 40, 50 percent of their entire budget fixing elections.
In other words, putting money into, you know, especially the local elections, where they have so much money, they can change who gets elected.
So the teachers' unions extort the teachers, get this big pot of money, maybe half of it they spend on union-y stuff that's good for teachers, but maybe the other half, and we're talking about lots of millions of dollars here, It goes directly into political campaigns, political activism, and not even directly related to teaching.
Now, if you said to yourself, Scott, of course they're putting money into political stuff because every group has an interest in what laws get passed, etc.
I'm not talking about any of that.
I'm talking about general Democrat policies for just unrelated to school.
Now, as long as the teachers' unions have money...
They can affect the political process.
And as long as they're affecting the political process, one of the things that they're also doing is guaranteeing that they stay the way they are.
And the way they are is no competition for teachers.
So the union doesn't want the people that are protecting the teachers to have competition from another school that might lower the bargaining position of the teachers.
That part actually makes sense.
It makes perfect sense.
But it's also just perfect sense for the teachers.
It's not perfect sense for the union.
It's not perfect sense for the republic.
It's not a free market situation.
And we know that competition and free markets are really the only solution to anything that doesn't work.
If something doesn't work, you've got to be able to offer an alternative, and that's what the teachers' unions prevent from happening.
Because any politician who pushed First school choice is going to get the full weight of millions of dollars of teachers union money pushed against them in the next election.
They'll get primaries and everything else.
So I would say that if you fixed education, you would do the most that could be done among the things that are actually practical.
It's the most you could do to fix the situation for the black community.
Because good education gets you good income, fixes everything.
Better health care outcomes, fewer people in jail, and even if the police stop you, they're going to say, oh, you know, I've had only good experiences.
So it's basically the alpha problem, and I'm going to modestly say that 80% of ongoing systemic racism comes directly from the school unions.
It's very direct. There's no indirect argument here.
It's very direct. And maybe 1% of the total problem in the black community is police abuse.
Maybe 1%.
Now, I'm not saying that all police are good or that we shouldn't work on that.
Seems like a pretty big problem, especially if the problem of policing affects you mentally and emotionally.
It's a big problem. I don't want to take away from how big that problem is.
But as big as it is, it's about 1% of your total problem for systemic racism.
About 80% school unions is my estimate.
Here's one of those fake news situations where the headline is opposite of the story.
And by the way, I'm going to get to the part where Peter Navarro name-checked me on CNN yesterday and changed my whole day.
That's coming up next. But there's a story.
It's one of those Twitter things where they collect the story and then they put the headline on it.
So here was the headline.
That hydroxychloroquine is not effective, according to scientists.
So what does not effective mean?
Well, that's pretty clear, right?
Not effective means don't take it.
That's completely clear.
If a drug is not effective, do not take it under any conditions because there's only a downside.
But then you read the actual details that this headline alleges to summarize, and the headlines are that it is unlikely to be effective.
Unlikely to be effective is is the opposite.
Because what would be unlikely to be effective?
40%? 40% chance?
If there was a 40%, which would be less likely than, you know, 60%, so if there was a 40% chance it would work, and it's completely safe, as nothing's 100%, but as safe as a drug can be, and it's really cheap, under those specific conditions, You would take it.
So, saying that it's unlikely says you should take it, as long as the safety and the cost are just dead simple, well-known, not an issue.
So, you can see the fake news trying as hard as they can to turn, well, it might be worth a shot, talk to your doctor.
Now, obviously, talking to your doctor has always got to be in there.
But not effective is opposite of Of unlikely to be effective in this situation.
Journalists, do they know that?
Would a journalist know that they had created a headline that was literally opposite of the details of the story?
I don't know if they would.
I don't know if they would because they don't seem to work in terms of probability.
They seem to work in terms of it's true or it's not true.
All right. So, after I got off Periscope yesterday, some of you know this story.
If you follow me on Locals, I gave you the sort of behind-the-scenes.
So, yesterday I'm just in my studio, right where you see me, and I've been working, doing something else.
A few hours had passed, and I thought to myself, you know, I'm going to fire up my computer and see what the news is.
Because you know me, I like to follow the news.
So I think, let's see what the news is, and I turn to my computer.
Typing away and pull up the news.
And I'm the news.
And I'm like, ugh, I want to watch the news.
I don't want to be the news.
Don't make me the news.
And the news was this.
So Aaron Burnett on CNN was in a testy exchange with Peter Navarro, economics advisor to the White House, the president.
And Navarro was trying to make his case in the sort of risk management sort of sense.
But, you know, TV is very limiting, especially if the person you're with is talking over you.
So neither of them could quite say what they wanted to say.
They were sort of on top of each other and time was limited, etc.
So toward the end, Navarro said, and I will quote, so imagine me...
Imagine me just looking at the news and seeing this.
If you've never had this experience, it's just so trippy, because you feel like the news should be separate from you, but then when you turn on the news, oh, damn it, it's me.
I am the news today.
And this is what Navarro said.
He said, I reach out to all your viewers.
Scott Adams, you know Scott Adams, right?
He's the guy who wrote the Dilbert cartoon.
He did a beautiful 10-minute video on Twitter, and the thesis of the video is that CNN might be killing thousands of Because of the way they've treated that.
So I would just ask, I'll let Scott Adams' video be my defense on this.
Now, if you thought that went over well, you haven't been following things closely.
So Erin Burnett says, with an angry look on her face, Can I just say something?
I find that to be offensive, because he's a comic strip writer, said Burnett.
I just said that because I want to be clear.
I just said that Dr.
Fauci, and then she said she wanted to hear from the experts.
Now, of course, it took about five minutes for the Daily Beast to create a story that says Navarro refers to Dilbert cartoonist for hydroxychloroquine.
Now think of that headline, that the White House refers to the Dilbert cartoonist for their argument about hydroxychloroquine.
Not so good, right?
But it's okay, because obviously an article about a video would have a link to the video.
Well, I saw it's there today, but I don't think it was there yesterday.
Maybe I missed it. In The Hill, they treated it a similar way and didn't link to the video.
So not only did a story about my video not talk about the video at all, But it didn't link to it in most of the hit pieces that came out immediately after.
Now what does that mean?
Can you imagine, can you even imagine, that if I had said something in that 10-minute video that was crazy, is there any chance that wouldn't be a headline?
No. Because once the White House says, look at this, It sort of ties them to my presentation.
You don't think that CNN and the others who came out to mock us, you don't think that they would like to mock what was in the video?
Don't you think that they'd like to say, and then he said, the craziest thing, and here it is.
Here's the clip of Adams being stupid.
No. No.
They all treated it as if I was giving medical advice.
Do you think I gave medical advice?
Well, I would say that I gave risk management advice and that I broke down the arguments for and against hydroxychloroquine with respect to experts on both sides.
So I would say that what I did is what Aaron Burnett does.
Right? I'm not a doctor.
I'm simply letting the public know what doctors are saying.
That's what Aaron Burnett was doing.
She and I were doing the same job.
The only difference is I did it way, way better, if you saw the video.
Now, Navarro, his background is economics, and that's his job.
My background is also economics.
I've got an economics degree, an MBA, and I did financial analysis and prediction models and stuff for 16 years.
At least I had a 16-year career.
Much of that was that stuff. So I'm not only completely educated in the right way to look at this stuff, but I have vast experience in it.
I mean, a lot of experience at looking at stuff like this and breaking it down to what the argument is.
And then just looking at the risk management.
So what I presented, of course, was not medical.
It was just framing the argument and showing it as a cost-benefit in which you should look at all the costs and all the benefits.
And do a risk analysis, a risk management analysis.
But was there anybody who covered the story who said the White House economist wanted you to see something written by somebody who has a background in exactly this stuff that breaks down the argument.
There's no medical recommendation.
It just breaks down the argument in a way that you can see what the point is.
Did anybody report that?
No. No.
But, and I looked at my traffic and impressions, and it really looked like there was something happening there.
I'm not going to make that accusation yet, but it did look like there was a lot of suppression.
Now, here's what Navarro did completely right.
And I've taught you this so many times.
One of the keys, well, 50% of persuasion, I like to say, is getting your attention.
You can't persuade somebody if they're paying attention to something else.
I mean, I suppose you could cleverly, but it's not much of a thing.
Now, and I've taught you that the way President Trump gets attention is what I call a little bit wrong.
So if you say something that you want people to focus on, but you insert into it Something that is unambiguously going to make people say, oh, that's wrong.
I got a question about that part.
Then that's a home run.
Trump does it over and over and over again, which is why you can't turn away.
Everything he says, you say, I know what you're trying to make me think about, but why does that one thing bother me so much?
It just feels non-standard.
I got to look into this. And you've seen other people who are good at persuading do the same thing.
You've seen me do it...
Well, you just watched it today with the Black Lives Matter question about the teachers' unions.
If you take the teachers' unions and just say, oh, they're doing a bad job, people might pay attention or might not.
But if I add to that, they should pay reparations?
What's that do to your brain?
The reparations part is the part you're supposed to say, that doesn't sound right.
And that's what binds you to the topic.
It's the thing that I added that doesn't fit that makes it perfect.
Now, that's intentional. In my case, I designed my message to add the little bit of wrong right into it.
And you saw that. That's very intentional, very designed.
You see Mike Cernovich do this routinely.
People who know how to persuade will put a little bit of provocation into it to just lock your attention onto it.
When Navarro pointed to my video, it was not only a good summation of his argument, so that part is just good sense, but because I'm the Dilbert cartoonist, you can't look away.
You can't look away, because that part's just wrong.
Excuse me, why is a comic writer...
I guess that's what Aaron Burnett called me.
Why is a comic writer...
Talk about, you know, U.S. policy and medicine and how does that make sense?
So it was that bit of wrongness which guaranteed it would be stories on multiple fronts, but the fake news thwarted both of us.
It was an excellent, excellent play because what should have happened is they should have drawn attention to the video.
People would go in with all the wrong impressions about maybe I said something medical.
They would look at it and they'd say, This is actually just a pretty clean breakdown of risk management.
That's all it was. And it should have been this perfect moment where everybody came in mad and found out, oh, I was mad at the wrong thing.
This is just an argument.
But instead, the fake news suppressed it and gave headlines that are completely misleading.
Now, I've talked before about the Gell-Man effect.
The Gelman effect, he was a physicist who noticed that when stories about physics were there, he knew they were wrong.
But if there was a story on some topic he was not already an expert on, he thought, well, that's probably right.
Which, of course, doesn't make sense, you know, statistically.
Probably the news in general is wrong, which would make more sense.
Now, I experience this daily, right?
Because there's always some story or report about me.
And I know if it's true or false.
But you don't.
You don't. So when other people were watching this story, they probably believed the headline.
They probably believed that there was a crazy cartoonist who was making medical advice.
Probably medical advice.
So anyway, if I had the ability to be embarrassed, maybe I would be.
But I just don't have it.
And then here's the best part.
So it's been a full day now, or close to a full day, and not one critic who watched the video had a complaint with it.
Do you hear that?
Nobody who watched the video, nobody.
So it was Peter Devaro pointing to my video, and while his arguments were attacking like crazy, And he says, well, look at this video as a summation of the argument.
Nobody criticized it.
Not a single point.
Not a sweeping generalization.
Nothing. Because there's nothing in it to criticize.
It doesn't really take a stand, which is much to disagree with.
It just clarifies the existing risk management decision.
And then in the article in the...
I think it was the Daily Beast...
And they were talking about Navarro when he...
And they're quoting him.
This is an actual sentence about a U.S. official in this country.
And they're quoting him and they say, quote, this is Peter Navarro.
Let me tell you why I got involved with this.
He barked. He barked?
What kind of writing is that?
I'm pretty sure he talked.
Let me say what this should have said.
Let me tell you why I got involved with this, he said.
How about he said?
Because that's what happened.
I watched it.
There were words that came out of his mouth.
He talked. He said it.
Did he bark it?
So words like barked and botched and stuff are how the fake news takes no news at all and turns it into something.
So... I was thinking about doing a parody fake news article in which you just use insults instead of news.
Because if you think about it, the fake news mostly replaces the actual news with personal insults.
Think about it. Once you see that filter, that news has been replaced with insults, it's hard to unsee it because that's basically what happened.
Insults get clicks?
News? Maybe not.
Alright. Somebody says, Ezra Pound botched civilization.
Yeah, botched and barked.
They're kind of similar.
They're just such powerful words.
Alright. Yeah, I need to do a robot reading some news again.
I've got to get back to that.
He mansplained it?
Yeah, mansplained is another one.
You can make something look dumb just by saying, instead of, he explained it, well, he mansplained it.
It's like, oh, that guy.
All right. Slaughterbutas at 100%.
At the current time, it is hard to imagine any outcome except Trump winning.
I mean, I have to admit, in other elections, I could imagine the future with a A president from either party, whichever candidate.
But I don't even have a vision of what a President Biden would look like.
It's just like this empty space.
I literally can't even imagine it.
So that might be influencing my opinion.
But I saw a teaser from Rasmussen this morning that the president's approval was up.
I think the president's approval is going to continue improving.
I think the economy will improve.
I think people will just sort of get acclimated to whatever the virus situation is.
And I think that Biden will continue to decline.
I heard there's a rumor that Biden has selected his vice president, but we'll wait to hear about that.
Now, if it's Kamala Harris, I'll probably get on Periscope as soon as I see the announcement.
If it's not... Well, I'll wait until the regular periscope and I'll say, well, got that one wrong.
But if it's Kabul-Harris, you're going to have to give it up for me.
You're going to have to give it up because I called her as the head of the ticket, as the nominee, in 2018 and stuck with it.
If she becomes the vice president with the Biden administration, the candidate, she's effectively the top candidate.
And that would be my best prediction ever.
Alright. People are still saying it's Michelle Obama and still saying it's going to be Hillary Clinton.
Let me bet everything I have that it's not Michelle Obama.
I will bet my entire net worth and I will borrow.
I will borrow money just to bet it's not going to be Michelle.
You know, she's the most popular woman in the world, I understand, but I believe she has zero intentions for that kind of a life.
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