Episode 1250 Scott Adams: Free Speech is Different, Q is Still a Mystery, Impeachment Hypocrites and More
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Content:
Should Kamala Harris be impeached?
Joe Biden said he wouldn't help low income white males?
New details about the capitol violence
Students are taught: Freedom of speech is dangerous?
Does news media have too much power and influence?
79% of liberals don't know they're being fed propaganda?
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So, years ago, there was a story about actor Richard Gere.
You probably already know the story.
It involved a gerbil and a visit to the emergency room.
As far as I know, there's no truth to this.
It was just a popular rumor years ago.
But here's the part of the story I like the most, is that Richard Gere never denied the story.
Now, I'm positive it's not real, but how much zen-like awesomeness do you need to possess To go for years and years without ever once denying that you had once inserted a gerbil in an embarrassing place and had to go to the emergency room to get it out.
Now, I have never had more respect for an actor than the fact that Richard Gere has never denied it.
Even though you know it didn't happen.
I mean, I think you know it didn't happen.
The fact that he would not deny that is awesome.
This brings us to Kanye West.
He's the subject of a rumor that he and Kim Kardashian would be Kardashian West would be breaking up over an alleged affair that Kanye West allegedly had with Jeffree Star, a YouTube star who does makeup.
He's a very successful makeup person.
And I don't know anymore how to characterize other people's sexuality, but I think he would...
Would he identify as gay?
I don't even know. But let's just say for the purpose of the story, he's gay enough for the story.
He can label himself however he wants, and I will respect that.
By the way, I'm not the one who mocks people for being what they want to be or for wanting to be called whatever they want to be called.
I'm fine with that. But it's confusing for the rest of us.
As long as you have some...
Understanding that the rest of us aren't going to get these things right, then I'm okay with anything you want, as long as you know I'm doing my best, right?
So Jeffree Star, let's call him gay enough for the purposes of this story.
I don't know how he identifies.
But the story was that he had an affair, Jeffree Star did, with Kanye West.
Apparently they've been friends and supporters for a while, or at least there's a connection in the family through Kim, I think.
So they know each other, and now Jeffree Star immediately laughed it off and denied it in a video.
So Jeffree Star has had flat out nothing, just nothing like that, a completely made-up thing.
And I believe there is nothing there.
But here's the fun part.
I don't know yet If Kanye West has denied it.
And I'm kind of wondering if he will.
Because there is something just infinitely cool about not denying a rumor like that.
Like, imagine being so cool that you just say, okay, if you want to believe it, it's okay with me.
And I don't know.
My guess is he'll probably deny it.
Jeffree Star did. It's a ridiculous rumor.
I don't think there's any chance it's true.
But if he doesn't deny it, he's going to go up a little bit in my esteem the same way Richard Gere did.
By the way, I plan to use this same technique someday, and it might come soon.
Someday I'm going to be accused of something so insanely ridiculous that And if you hear me not deny it, you'll know what I'm doing.
Because it doesn't mean it's true.
It just means I've decided it's funnier not to deny it.
So if you see that happen, you'll know what's happening.
You'll be on the inside. Casino mogul and billionaire Sheldon Adelson died.
And of course, condolences to the family.
But... What a weird simulation we live in, because that probably would have been enough to keep Trump from getting re-elected.
If nothing else had happened, and of course a lot did happen, but if nothing else had happened, that could have been, you know, a world-changing event just because he wouldn't be available to be his major donor.
And I got a feeling that made a difference.
So that was a weird coincidence.
Here's an update to something I've been asking for a while.
I kept asking, why is it that we haven't seen some country or state that did nothing but, I was talking about hydroxychloroquine, so that we know for sure by now that that state or country that only did early treatment with hydroxychloroquine, how'd they do? Did it work?
Did it not work?
By now we should see that, right?
So there's a similar question with the drug ivermectin, which has that similar to hydroxychloroquine, at least reputation, it's not chemically the same, but reputation in that some people claim that it would, you know, stop coronavirus and COVID in its tracks.
So Iverbecht, and it turns out, I need a fact check on this.
So I'm going to put this forward as a thing I don't necessarily believe.
In fact, I would bet against it.
So I'm going to tell you something that I just have a question on.
I'd bet against it being true, slightly.
And that is that there's a part of a state in Mexico...
Chiapas, in which they did adopt the early treatment with ivermectin in July.
And if you look at the graph of all the other states in Mexico, and compare it to that one state that used ivermectin, the ivermectin is flat at pretty close to zero deaths, and all the other ones are hockey sticks.
Now, does that prove anything?
I'll tell you what it proves.
It proves that I saw a An unsourced graph on the internet.
That's all it proves.
That's exactly the totality of the credibility of this story, is that a cartoonist saw an unsourced graph on the internet.
So I wouldn't put a lot of credibility in it.
But I did ask the question if it's real.
So we'll find out. But there's a corollary or a related question.
If you were to make a list of the poorest countries in the world, and then a second list of the richest countries in the world, which of those two lists has the lower death rate from the coronavirus?
What do you think?
Do you think that the countries that have really good healthcare systems and tracking and testing, do you think they're doing better, or are they doing worse than the countries that don't have any of that stuff?
I don't know the answer to that.
But anecdotally, it looks like the poor countries are doing better.
Now, I have to say that in the beginning, I thought that the only reason was they kept poor records, right?
In India, for example, a lot of people will just die at home, and it never becomes part of the public record.
So I thought what was happening is that, you know, Africa, for example, Probably had massive problems and it's just not being reported because you don't track it or something.
But by now, by now, if Africa was having a massive problem just like everybody else, and whether they had good reporting or not, It would be so massively widespread and obvious and bodies piled up like cordwood that you wouldn't know it by now if they were doing worse than the more developed countries.
So does this not ask the question, what is happening?
Is it possible that the biggest comorbidity is wealth?
Because if you go to a poorer country, do they have the same amount of diabetes?
Do they have the same amount of, you know, obesity?
I don't know. It could be that having a rich country is the worst thing that could happen to you if you've got a virus going around.
Maybe the poorer countries have more exposure to various viruses.
Maybe they've got a better Immune systems, because they've been working overtime.
I don't know. But I sure want to know that.
Don't you think that...
The question of the poor versus the rich countries, that's way up on my list of curiosities.
Because... Oh, somebody says lower average age.
That's a good hypothesis, too.
So it could be that there are several things.
Weight, lower age, more time outside in the sun.
I don't know. Getting your vitamin D. But one of the things I'd look for is do the poor countries typically use the lowest cost treatments, which would be hydroxychloroquine, maybe ivermectin early.
So we don't know what's causing this, but I think we need to know that.
Here's an observation I made a while ago that the longer we go, the better this observation looks.
And this is based on my experience as owning two restaurants in my past.
And I've worked at a bunch of resorts, and so I have lots of experience in the restaurant and recreation industry.
industries throughout my life.
And here's one of the things that I noted early that I had to wait a while to find out if it's going to play out that way.
But have you noticed it's weird that our entire restaurant, recreation, travel industry just got savaged and yet the stock prices are up and the economy is doing Strangely well for the amount of unemployment from the coronavirus and the number of businesses that are closed.
How do you square the fact that the economy seems weirdly better than you think while this entire gigantic industry just got wiped out?
How do you explain that?
And the way I explain it is the way that I said it early on, which is that they don't contribute much to the economy.
If you looked at all the employees who worked at my restaurant, how many of them paid taxes?
Not much, right?
They probably didn't pay much taxes at all.
Many of them lived with somebody else who was the main breadwinner, lived at home, students, that sort of thing.
So we didn't lose much in terms of taxes, because servers just don't pay a lot of taxes, and people who work at that level in these industries.
And then the businesses themselves.
How about the restaurants that closed?
How many of them were paying taxes?
Let's say income taxes.
And the answer is, probably not most of them.
I don't know what the percentage is.
You know, the Cheesecake Factory or some big chains, of course, are making profits and paying taxes.
But I would say almost 80%, maybe higher, of the independent restaurants weren't making money in the first place.
Virtually all restaurants fail eventually.
Both of mine failed.
And it's not like I didn't know that.
I did it for lifestyle and community reasons.
I didn't do it as a smart investment, obviously.
I would like you to know that I'm smart enough not to invest in a restaurant as an investment.
You have to have other reasons for doing it, as I did.
So, my speculation is that those industries were contributing actually very little to the economy.
We enjoyed them, we want them back, but I think we discovered that they don't do much for the economy.
It just isn't a big deal. And if some other industry, say the oil industry or something, had been destroyed, it would be a really big deal.
So it looks like the House of Representatives are working on their 25th Amendment thing to get rid of Trump early, and they've got their articles of impeachment.
Are you finding that you don't care?
That's my feeling this week.
It's like, ah, they're going to impeach Trump, and I think, why do I care?
He's going to be out of office in a few days?
I can't get interested.
I just, I mean, I guess they got their reasons, but it doesn't affect me.
How about if they do the 25th Amendment?
I don't care. It's only a few days.
What's the difference? If they want to do useless things in Congress, to me that just looks like another Tuesday.
They've been doing useless things all year, why would this be the time they stop doing useless things?
So, I feel as if CNN and all the people who are anti-Trump forever, this is just a feeling.
I feel as if the people who, let's say, won, the people who are anti-Trump, they feel like winners right now.
And so as part of their winning, they're trying to enjoy it by sort of rubbing it in.
And, you know, we didn't just beat him in the election.
They would say, you know, he questions that, but they would say, we didn't just beat him in the election.
We're going to ruin his reputation, his business, his family.
We're going to destroy everything about him.
And I feel as if it's not any fun for them unless his supporters care.
Right? I mean, I care about Trump as a person because I like him.
You know, when I met him, he was very, very generous and respectful and nothing like any of his reputation.
And so I like him. You can't not like somebody that you've had a personal interaction with and they were great in that interaction.
It's just natural. It's a bias.
And, you know, I want his family to do well.
I don't want them to be punished. But the fact is, it's not hurting me directly.
So I feel as if CNN wants to really, really, really get you back and grind you down for being a Trump supporter.
And I feel like, yeah, whatever.
25th Amendment? Okay.
If you want. If it makes you happy.
Okay. I feel like it's maybe very disappointing to them that we don't care more.
Why would we care?
It's only a few days. If you care about this, you're caring about all the wrong stuff.
All right. Yes, I am next.
I know that. Here's a question.
In today's age, who do you trust?
Who are your most credible public voices?
I would like to put forward the following nomination for the most credible voice of the last, let's say the last four years, just say the Trump term.
I think that's me.
I think that's me.
Now, I'll just put that out there as the nomination of the most credible person, not most right person.
Being right is something that you can't do all the time, right?
If you were to look at all the things I've told you, and then rank them by which ones turned out to be right, which ones turned out to be wrong, and then there would be some that we don't know yet.
But I think you would find that my right-to-incorrect ratio may be the best in the world right now.
Maybe. Could be the best in the world.
It feels like it is, just anecdotally.
Now, if somebody does a detailed study and finds out that's not the case, maybe.
I mean, I haven't done a detailed study.
But here's why I put myself forward as your most credible voice.
Think of the things I told you were BS early, right?
Russia collusion, told you it was BS, the fine people hoax, the bleach, drinking bleach hoax, the secret sonic weapon in the embassy, The fact that originally the Vegas shooter, they thought he was ISIS. I told you he wasn't.
I told you Q was BS early, early, early, and took a lot of abuse for that.
I took years of abuse for telling people that Q wasn't real.
Now, I also got the first election of Trump right.
The second election of Trump will end up on my official scorecard as incorrect.
So even I will agree that given that Biden will be inaugurated, it looks like, I would agree that I would score that as an incorrect prediction.
I would just simply add the asterisk that there's a question, some people are questioning, the credibility of the election.
And certainly, even if you don't question the credibility per se, It's an observable truth that there were rules changes and the coronavirus change that probably changed the outcome.
So even where I was wrong, take a look at why.
Was I wrong about the number of people who supported Trump versus the other side?
Don't know. Because the election didn't go the way elections normally go.
There was the mail-in ballots, etc.
that changed the whole dynamic of everything.
So we don't know.
But I will take that as being incorrect.
I think that would be fair.
So I'll make the following claim.
Number one, I am not bought by anybody, so nobody pays me.
Every once in a while somebody asks me who pays me.
If I could get paid by somebody directly for this, I don't think I'd take it, because then it would defeat the whole point.
The point of this Is that there was this big opening in civilization for somebody you could think, well, at least he isn't lying.
I guess that's the only thing that I would say is the fairest statement you could say about me.
At least I'm not going to lie to you.
Because I don't have any incentive to do that.
I'm not protecting...
Some paycheck somewhere.
My benefit personally would be to do the best job of predicting things accurately, right?
There's no other way for me to be well off, except doing something that's a service to the people watching.
So I would just say that since I don't have any incentive to lie to you, and that my track record might be the best in the world, I mean, if it's not the best in the world, I'd say top 20% easily.
Keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out what is real and what is not, and it might avoid things such as few people storming the Capitol.
All right. How is it...
That the Republicans in Congress have not introduced articles of impeachment for Kamala Harris for exactly the same behavior that Trump looks like he'll be impeached for.
Don't know yet. Now, Trump is being blamed for, let's see, the exact article of impeachment for Trump says this.
That Trump willfully made statements that encouraged and foreseeably resulted in imminent lawless action at the Capitol.
Now, if you just change at the Capitol to in Portland or in cities across the United States, doesn't this statement hold true for Kamala Harris?
Did Kamala Harris willfully make statements that encouraged and foreseeably resulted in Imminent lawless actions in Portland and other cities around the country.
That is so completely obviously true that how do you not put that into an impeachment?
How do you not do that?
I feel as if Republicans are sort of letting their supporters down.
You tell me there's not one Republican with enough balls to To at least call them out on consistency?
Put it together in an actual impeachment.
Now, I suppose you have to wait for her to take office, but on day one in office, they should file the articles of impeachment.
Now, I don't know if Biden has similarly said similar things.
He may have, but I don't think so.
I think Biden has been more circumspect about what he encourages and what he doesn't.
And by the way, you know I'm no fan of Joe Biden as a president, but if it's true that he resisted, and I don't know if that's true, but if he resisted directly supporting You know, the summer riots that were clearly going to cause a lot of death and destruction.
If Biden didn't do that, well, that's a pretty good mark on his side, isn't it?
I'll need a fact check on that.
I don't know. I don't know if he did or didn't, but I don't feel like he did.
I don't remember it.
And if we're being fair, we would have to give him credit for that.
But you would also have to impeach Kamala Harris.
Same standard. All I'm asking is the same standard.
That's all. Is it too much to ask that the standard be similar for both sides?
I don't think that's even unreasonable.
If Trump gets impeached for this exact behavior, you have to impeach Kamala Harris.
You have to.
Or at least attempt it.
If it's not even introduced as an article of impeachment, Actually, I don't know the process.
Maybe the process will stop them.
But it doesn't feel like trying for the Republicans.
It looks like they've just given up.
Hillary Clinton continues to make things worse.
The pattern that we've noticed is if things are bad and you want them to be worse, well, call Hillary.
She has a way. So I guess she did an op-ed and she says that the Capitol insurrection, if you want to call it that, protest that led to some insurrection, she said that it was all based on white supremacy and that that's the real cause of the riots, like the bottom cause is white supremacy.
Now, I happen to be pretty immersed in In the MAGA world.
I just don't see it.
What the hell is she looking at?
Is she looking at news reports?
Because I sort of live and breathe and have existed in this full Trump-supporting world for four years, and this white supremacy she's talking about, I've just never fucking seen it.
It hasn't been in a private conversation.
Where is it? Now, if she's saying that there are too many white supremacists who are also associated with the right, I don't know, maybe.
I don't know how many there are.
I don't run into them where I am.
So I don't have an opinion on that, whether there are too many of them.
But I certainly have an opinion that it's not like some giant force that's moving the Republican Party.
If I were to rank White supremacy, as to where it is on the list of causations, where would it be compared to, I don't know, let's just pick randomly some other thing to compare it to.
How about Hillary Clinton calling all Trump supporters white supremacists and deplorables?
How about the way Hillary Clinton talks about and treats and ignores a large segment of the population?
Do you think that That this group of Trump supporters watching their jobs being sent to China, do you think that that might have had something to do with it?
How about Joe Biden saying that he would focus the relief effort, the money for the coronavirus support stuff that he's going to do?
How about him saying in public and out loud that the only group he wasn't going to help were poor white people?
Joe Biden said that in public, that the only group he wasn't going to help were low-income white people.
That actually happened.
Now, he words it in the more positive way, where he'll say, I'm going to focus on women-minority-owned companies.
I think those are the two categories, women-minority-owned companies.
Now, poor white males, or low-income white males, are neither women nor minorities.
And so Joe Biden stood in public and said, I'm going to help this group of people.
But the group of people who are primarily associated with Trump supporters, low-income white males, he said, I'm not going to help you.
He said that in public.
It was a speech.
Now, do you think that might have had something to do with the attitude of the protesters?
Suppose I said to you, I'm going to give a speech, you're going to help everybody except black people.
Would I expect that Black Lives Matter would care about that and perhaps organize some kind of protests?
I would hope so.
I will join them.
If any politician in this country ever says, I'm going to help everybody but black people, well, I'm going to be on the street pretty fast.
I would hope you would too.
If they ever said, we're going to help everybody except women, I hope you would be on the street immediately.
I would. But Joe Biden said right in front of the whole world, I'm going to help everybody except low-income white people.
And low-income white people just sat here and said, I guess that's normal.
I guess that's normal.
We lost the election, so I guess only other people get help now.
Do you think that had nothing to do with the protests that turned into more than protests?
Of course it did.
Of course it did.
Do you think if Trump supporters had not been largely emotionally and fiscally abused for years, do you think they would act the same?
I don't think so. Do you know why there were not that many rich white people protesting?
I'll put myself in that category at the moment.
I've been a poor white male.
At the moment I'm a rich white male.
Do you know why I'm not like on the street?
Because I don't have a problem.
Do you know who I am?
I'm Joe fucking Biden.
That's who I am. I'm a rich white person who is watching other rich white people, like Biden, throwing poor white people under the bus because it's good for rich white people.
Biden gets to keep his job and his reputation and everything if he discriminates against people who look like him but don't have money.
Because apparently that's okay.
He did it in public.
He didn't do it with embarrassment.
He was not asked to apologize.
He said it right out loud like it's okay.
It is so not okay.
And the trick, of course, is that white people, the press, the media, the popular narrative, treats them as one group.
What happens when you treat any other group as if they're like all the same?
What happens if you say, well, Hispanics, they're all going to do this or they're all going to do that?
What happens? Well, the first thing that happens...
I hope, is that every Hispanic in the world raises their hand and says, what the hell are you talking about?
We don't all vote the same.
We don't all think the same, act the same.
You know there's a lot of variety in that group, right?
That's the first thing you'd hear.
If you heard all black people did this, the first thing you'd hear is, what are you talking about?
People are all over the place, right?
There's no one black opinion.
But when it comes to white people, you can take the rich ones who are doing great, lump them in with the low-income people who just don't have anything going for them, and act like it's all an advantage group.
And we all just like, sounds good to me.
So Joe Biden up there throwing the poor members of the demographic group he belongs to under the bus is quite common in this country.
Very common. So Hillary, you are the cause of the problem by far.
Trump doesn't get a pass for the things he said that were more proximate to the actual violence and death.
But you can't say that he's the problem.
He was the trigger.
He might have been the match.
But there was a lot of gasoline.
And he wasn't the gasoline.
He was the match.
And in our system, we blame the match.
You don't blame the gasoline.
But the gasoline is there.
Whether you blame it or not, it's still there.
You don't not count that.
All right, if you want the ultimate red pill, figure out who was behind boosting the Q movement.
Some of you already know the answer to this, right?
So the most official story we have about where Q came from and what that was all about, I would have to say I have deep, deep skepticism about what we think we know about that.
But the official story is that a few users came up with sort of a prank idea that was just sort of to make people think differently, they said, and that the prank grew out of control.
Now the out of control part appears, according to reporting by Reuters, to be boosted by Russian troll accounts.
So in other words, it was a prank, they got a little traction, But it didn't go big until lots of Russian troll accounts, largely on Twitter, etc., started boosting it.
I guess there's part of the story where user Tracy Beans started writing about the Q stuff, and I guess it could be identified fairly conclusively that the traffic that she was getting for those posts was coming from Russian entities.
So Russia was boosting her message, And that was sort of the beginning of the big Q movement.
Now, given that we know...
Chuck says, it's wrong that it's Russia.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Let me acknowledge that point.
So there's a skeptic here who says that even though Reuters is reporting that you can clearly identify that these were Russian accounts...
You can clearly identify that they were boosting this message, but maybe that's not true.
Could it be that the news is just fake?
Could it be that whatever intelligence agencies or whoever did the research just made it up?
Yeah. We actually live in a world where just because you read a story in Reuters that says we know that Russian troll accounts were pushing this, it doesn't mean it's true.
Literally, I don't know what credibility you put on it, but no more than 60%.
I'd say a story in Reuters accusing Russia of influencing the election in a specific way, I'd give it 60% credibility.
So whoever was saying, you know, it's ridiculous that I would believe that Russians were behind Q, I would say I don't discount that.
I don't discount that that's just a made-up cover story.
But I think it's a little more likely that it's true.
Just a feel. But let's extend this.
So now the Q movement has created this...
These bad events in the Capitol.
Are you seeing a lot of stories today about what influenced Q? Because to me it looks like it's an obvious disinformation operation.
Now I'm no expert in intelligence operations, but I know just enough to know this looks exactly like one.
Which doesn't mean it is one, it just looks exactly like one.
Now, what are the odds there's something that should have been an intelligence operation?
In other words, if Russia didn't boost these signals, why not?
Were they not trying? They should have.
It would have been the obvious play.
We would have done it if the situation had been reversed, I hope.
So, there's a lot we don't know about this Q situation, but the big question I have is, why did we stop hearing about Russian involvement?
Why did that stop?
Did some other force start influencing Q? What about China?
Do we think that Russia was all over this Q stuff, but China decided to give it a pass?
Maybe. Could be.
But anyway, if we ever figured out who was behind all the Q stuff, and I don't mean the founders, and I don't mean the people who subscribe to it, but rather there's somebody behind the curtain...
Who's just feeding stuff in there a little bit or boosting things?
I think it's at least Russia, and we don't know who else it would be.
All right. So, here's what Christopher Hill on Twitter said, Twitter user Christopher Hill says about this Q stuff.
He says, one of the most convincing reasons that Q was or is a professional operation...
Is that Q has not posted since December 8th.
I'll need a fact check on that, but here's the claim that Q has not posted since December 8th.
And then Christopher goes on, he says, there is no internet troll in the history of the internet who could resist this past month.
Well, that's kind of true, isn't it?
What kind of troll or political commentator would, especially Q, Would not comment this month?
A whole month?
Doesn't that tell you that whatever the forces behind Q hoped to accomplish, that they're done?
Right? It feels like that whoever was boosting it got what they wanted, and now they just stopped.
So they don't need to post anymore.
All right. So we continue to find increasingly disturbing things about the people who are in the Capitol building on the assault.
And today's reporting says there was somebody there with a military-style automatic weapon.
Now, because this is the popular press and the fake news, what do you think a military-style automatic weapon means to a journalist?
Probably not automatic, right?
Probably not a fully automatic weapon.
Because those are hard to get.
You can get them, but you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars and jump through some hoops and buy it from somebody who already owns it, as opposed to buying it in the usual way.
So it's possible.
I mean, it's possible somebody had a military-style automatic weapon, but I would think it's just as possible it was misidentified and that it was semi-automatic.
Just guessing. But they also said that there were 11 Molotov cocktails, and no matter what these weapons were, there were enough weapons that this was a way more dangerous situation than I first thought.
I think one of my first tweets about the protests that had turned into a Capital assault.
I was just joking about it.
I literally just thought it was funny, because it looked like a bunch of Trump supporters, they were going to shout and make some trouble and stop some traffic or something.
But it looked like that's all it was going to be.
Now, of course, I wish I could take that back, because there was nothing funny whatsoever about what happened.
It was very unfunny, and people died, etc.
So I certainly take it pretty seriously now.
But here's the thing.
Every time we find out more about how many weapons got into the Capitol...
It's just increasingly obvious that the shooter who took out the woman who died coming through the window, it's just increasingly obvious that was the right decision.
Because they didn't get through, right?
Isn't it true that the shooter stopped them at that doorway?
Because nobody came through after he killed the first one, right?
Now, if that's the case, and again, the fact-checking here is wild because the reporting, who knows what's true anymore.
But if that's true, that there were that many weapons who got inside, and that police officer who took the shot stopped them from breaching another barrier, that's the best shooting you've ever seen.
That's not even gray area.
Right? That feels like an absolute justified...
You should get a medal.
Now, was the person specifically who got shot, should they have been shot?
No. The specific person who got shot was not that dangerous per se, but was part of a mob that was dangerous and well-armed, and I think you have to treat them the same.
Because if she had gotten through and other unarmed people had gotten through, then the armed people would have been through too.
What do you do? I would have taken the shot.
So, even in retrospect...
Now, one of the things that people said to me is they said, Scott, you were saying that it was okay to take that shot because a police officer had been killed just minutes earlier, so that's how dangerous this was.
And people said to me, Scott, there's no video of a police officer being killed by the MAGA people.
To which I say, well, there is a video...
Of one being beaten to the point where he wasn't moving.
I don't know what happened to him.
But does that change the point?
I don't think it changes the point.
And then other people said, but the person who took the shot didn't know that the other person, the cop, had been beaten, whether to death or not.
So if you don't know that that's happening, it's not a good shot.
To which I say, yes it is.
He made a judgment call about how dangerous the crowd was, and he called it correctly.
You know, this cop is being treated very badly for being right about everything.
He was right about how dangerous the crowd was.
And his actions probably saved lives, even though he killed somebody who I don't think should have been killed.
But on the whole, on net, probably saved lives.
Alright, so there's a real big question on free speech, obviously, duh.
When the president gets kicked off of social media and other people are being kicked off, I guess 70,000 Q supporters have been kicked off of Twitter.
My guess is that that's the biggest reason for my drop.
So I've lost maybe 50,000 or 60,000 users in the last day or so, a few days.
My guess is the majority of them were Q accounts or Q-boosting accounts, so I don't miss them.
I'll be happy to get rid of them.
But we don't know what else is on there.
All right, so here's my issue.
When freedom of speech was originally built into the Constitution and it was part of our founding principles, You couldn't really hurt anybody with freedom of speech.
Well, let me take that back.
You could hurt somebody, but you couldn't take down the whole country.
Because if you're some crazy farmer who's saying things that aren't true, well, nobody knows.
You're just a crazy farmer talking to your neighbors.
You know, maybe something could get in a newspaper, but even that's going to be local.
So freedom of speech was basically a non-dangerous thing that had a great upside Like, it would be a great way to bind the country and maintain our freedom.
But it didn't really have a downside.
Except maybe, you know, your neighbor would get hurt or something.
But it wouldn't destroy the whole country.
But then you add social media.
And suddenly...
An individual, let's say Tracy Beans, a perfect example.
One person who did not have any kind of fame or platform at the time was able to become very large because of the magnifying effects of social media.
And so her message about the Q stuff became big enough that you could argue it started a chain of events that ended in the attacking of the Capitol.
So, you can't say that freedom of speech is the same thing that it used to be.
Because now one person can bring down a country.
One person. Just one person with a sticky idea and maybe some Russian trolls that boosted and next thing you know, one person's free speech can bring down the whole country.
Now, Let's take this analogy.
You know analogies are not persuasive.
But I'm going to give you some context.
Most of you are conservative if you're watching this live stream.
I think the majority of you probably are.
And you probably also are big supporters of the Second Amendment, and you believe that individuals should be able to own weapons.
But I'm guessing that many of you, if not most, would say to yourselves, yeah, a private handgun, or even maybe a rifle that's got more killing power, some of you would say, yeah, that's appropriate.
But can you build, let's say...
Chemical weapons in your garage.
And the answer is you can't.
Because if you were to make chemical weapons in your garage, then you would have the power to kill, you know, I don't know, hundreds of thousands.
So we don't treat the ability to have a gun and kill the people who are just around you, as bad as that is, you know, mass shootings, etc.
But it's still limited to where the shooter is.
Whereas there are other weapons, you know, could you build a nuclear weapon in your garage if you knew how?
The answer is no. That's not legal.
So we do already have a principle, which is we say you can have this freedom up to the point where it would destroy too much stuff.
So that's the way we treat guns.
You can have freedom to have a little bit of firepower.
But you do not have the freedom to have a tank or your own F-35, even if you could afford it.
So, with freedom of speech, we ended up accidentally moving in the same direction as guns, meaning that a little bit of free speech is great, just like having a gun for defending your house.
A little bit of things can be great.
But, too much firepower and you've got a new problem?
Free speech that can allow one person to tell a lie that destroys the whole country?
That's a different level.
So, appreciate that the social media platforms, even if you don't like what they're doing, and there's plenty of reason not to like it, they don't have options.
What the hell is the option?
Should we allow individuals to destroy countries?
If I put that question to you just that way, do you think a random citizen should have the ability to destroy the country even accidentally?
They're not even trying, just accidentally.
What would you say to that?
Would you say, yeah, that's okay.
Let individuals destroy the country.
I don't know. It's a tough question.
So... I don't know how you deal with the fact that freedom of speech went from largely harmless, and more good than bad, by far, to absolutely lethal.
And it's because our ideas can spread more easily over social media.
So... Anyway, just keep that in mind, that this is not as easy a question, because freedom of speech is not what it used to be.
If one person can destroy a country, maybe you need some kind of control.
But here's the problem.
Suppose you accept, and I think we, as a country, not you necessarily individually, but as a country, we seem to be accepting...
By not resisting enough.
That's the accepting part.
We're not resisting enough to change it.
So we'll probably accept that the president could be kicked off of social media for the reason that he was causing a dangerous situation.
Now, I am somewhat famous for telling you that the slippery slope argument is not real, meaning that everything has a reason to go to where it does, and then there's a reason for it to stop, and that's the whole story.
Things that don't have any friction will happen, and then friction will appear, and then things will slow down.
So the slippery slope thing I have not accepted as a concept, because unless you have a reason for the slip, Don't expect it to happen.
But if there's a reason, let's say an incentive is added for, let's say the government changed the tax laws, so if you get a puppy, you get $10,000 in tax relief.
How many people would get puppies?
A lot!
You'd have a lot of puppies.
So you don't need the slippery slope, To look that when you change the incentives, you make it positive incentives, you'll get more of it, you make it negative incentives, you get less of it.
And that's just basic, right?
So, here's the thing.
If we allow that freedom of speech can be limited when there's a physical danger, such as you can't yell fire in the crowded theater, and now that's been extended to you can't question the reliability of a vote once it's been certified, because that would be dangerous for the country.
What about the next topic?
Let's say climate change.
Suppose science, as is the exact case, believes that climate change is a gigantic problem.
Lots of people could die if we handle it wrong.
What happens if you say the wrong things about climate change?
Because now we have a precedent.
Can Twitter kick you off for having an opinion which counters the scientific consensus?
I would say we've proven yes.
Because once you've established the standard that as a private company they can decide what is too much danger, it's not a question of free speech because they're private companies.
It's a question of danger.
Would you call it dangerous to support messages against aggressively fighting climate change when the scientific consensus says that's dangerous?
I think you should expect that the situation is there's no resistance to social media kicking off climate skeptics.
There's no resistance to that.
Because we just watched it happen with Trump for the reason of being dangerous.
It would be easy to make the argument that climate change wrongness would be dangerous.
Easy. Easy. I mean, you don't even have to work at that one.
If you get climate change wrong...
In either direction. If you spend too much on it, that will kill people.
Because that's money that could have been used more productively somewhere else.
If you don't spend enough, that's going to kill people.
So if you're on the wrong side of that, how can social media keep you on there?
Take any other topic.
Let's say immigration.
Depending on what policies you put into effect on immigration, does it not change the mix of danger?
Suppose somebody says you can't do massive, loose immigration because there'll be too much crime happening in the country.
And let's say social media says, eh, don't like that message.
A little bit dangerous.
So you just can't say it anymore.
Or you get banned from social media.
You can pretty much take every topic, because there's no topic that doesn't have a dangerous opinion with it.
Almost every decision that's big that a government makes decides who dies and who doesn't.
That's why they're big government decisions.
These are life and death.
Even if it's an economic decision, it's life and death, right?
Because people do kill themselves if they have bad economic situations, etc.
They have less good health outcomes, etc.
So what I would expect is that literally every topic would become a question of...
is what you're saying dangerous?
Instead of saying, is it right or useful, it's going to turn into, is it dangerous?
And every topic is dangerous.
Every one. So, we have now created for ourselves a practical way to eliminate free speech, which is to give that power to the social media companies, Now, they didn't ask for it.
It was just an evolution of their success.
Once they became so successful, they effectively control speech, even if the government says you can say anything.
If social media says you can't say it on our platforms, well, then you're like the farmer in the field.
You've been reduced to crazy farmer in the field who can't hurt anybody or help anybody.
So, I don't see how that can change.
And There was a survey on, let's see, some students were asked their feelings about free speech.
And it turns out that a large number of students believe that freedom of speech is dangerous and should be limited.
That's right. Students in school today, and I'm looking for the actual number here, because I know I wrote that down, and I will find it in one minute here.
Damn, I'm really bad at taking notes, let's say.
All right, well, I remember that it was a large percentage of students who said, oh, here it was.
Yeah, a large percentage of students in some survey said that they don't care about freedom of speech anymore.
Now, when I was a student, I was taught that freedom of speech is the bedrock right, and if you don't have freedom of speech, even for unpopular ideas, that you're guaranteed you'll lose your country.
If you're a certain age, were you taught that?
That without free speech, You're pretty much guaranteed to lose everything.
That's what I was taught.
Apparently, that is not what's being taught today.
Today what's being taught is that free speech is actually dangerous because it would be discriminatory toward minorities and It would be bullying and all those things.
And by the way, those things are all true.
It is bullying, etc.
Oh, here's the statistic.
Nearly 40% of students believe government should restrict the speech of climate change deniers.
So the very thing I was talking about.
So at the moment, right now, in this UW-Madison students survey, 40% of them say the government...
The government should restrict the speech of climate change deniers.
Why? Because they think climate change deniers are dangerous.
If you apply that standard, that's the end of the country.
And we are. So we're on a path which, if we stayed on it, would guarantee the end of the country.
I don't think there's any other way it could go.
Now, my expectation is there'll be counter forces and too many things to predict.
So I don't think things go in a straight line.
And I'm actually not worried that it's going to go that way.
I think we'll find a way to correct.
But at the moment, the way we're training students, apparently, is to not think that free speech is good and rather that it is bad.
Now whose fault would that be?
Do you know what I'm going to say next?
Whose fault is it that students are being taught to destroy their own country?
Because that's what would happen. If you treat free speech as a danger, you're teaching the students to destroy the country.
It's the teachers' unions.
Always. The teachers' unions.
It's the teachers' unions that decide what the students are saying or not saying.
They eliminate competition because they have so much power.
So there's no other voices.
The teachers' unions are destroying the country.
Unambiguously, right in front of you, no doubt about it, the teachers' unions are destroying the country.
Now, when I say that I'm an optimist and I believe that we'll figure out ways to adjust, that would be the first way.
The first way to adjust would be to either parents just massively taking their kids out of school.
That could happen.
To teach them at home or something.
But I think the teachers' unions pretty much have a reckoning coming.
I don't know what that will look like.
James Todaro, MD, made this observation today.
He said in 2019, he said this on Twitter, in 2019 the courts ruled that Trump was not allowed to block critics on Twitter because it was, quote, unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
So we know that the president...
Would not be allowed to block people.
Now, of course, the president is the government, and free speech is a question of government, not a question of individual private companies.
But in 2021, Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Snapchat, and Discord are given carte blanche to discriminate away.
So the president was not allowed to block people because it would block free speech.
But the private companies are explicitly allowed to do exactly that with all the same bad outcomes because they're private companies.
So... Wow.
So here are some other examples of things that you know are going to become questions of not free speech but a question of whether you can say something that might be dangerous.
Could you speak out about pro-gun rights?
If the standard is you don't want to say things that could get people hurt.
No. You couldn't say pro-gun stuff.
You won't be able to talk about religious affiliations, probably.
The food pyramid.
Think about the food pyramid, which was completely bad science.
The government put out the food pyramid.
Could you criticize the food pyramid?
Under current guidelines, the private companies could throw you off for being correct in criticizing the food pyramid.
You would have been correct. Now, time has proven that you'd be correct, so that's not controversial.
We now know that the food pyramid was in fact not science.
But if you had said that, Could people have said, well, you're going to cause people to eat poorly with your bad science, so therefore that's dangerous.
Can't talk about that.
I think that's where it's going.
So I've been...
One of the weirdest things about being me at the moment is that I know my time is coming.
I know I'm on the list of people who are targeted for destruction.
I mean, that's obvious. And I spend a lot of time wondering how they'll do it.
It's like, I know I'm going to get...
I'll say, figuratively speaking, murdered.
But I don't know what weapon they're going to use yet.
So I'm just saying, I wonder if they'll do this.
Or I wonder if this is how they'll get me.
Here are some of the ways that I think are possible.
One is the controversial association play.
They just have to find a photograph of me with somebody that you already hate.
And just say, well, a photograph.
So they're basically the same person.
Which is proven by the fact that they're standing next to each other in a photograph.
So... Or there'll be some other association that they'll find.
So the first way you can bring down somebody like me is find some controversial association.
It won't be real, but people won't care.
The other is to associate me with domestic terrorism.
And that's already started.
So the terrorists who got into the capital...
Already on Twitter, you see people blaming me for supporting terrorists.
How would you like to be me right now?
So that's already happening, but in a lower-level way.
I would expect to see more of that.
The other way is just a pure fake news story, where they just take something I really said, so that when people check, they'll say, oh yeah, those are his words.
There he is on video saying it, or there's his tweet.
But take it in a context and then add a narrative to it so something innocent turns into something awful.
So that's definitely going to happen.
Now that's happened to me dozens of times in my career, but none of them were kill shots.
Somehow I survived. But probably they need a bigger one, like a bigger fake story, the kind that nobody can get away with.
So I'd expect to see that.
You should expect to see a sensational fake news story about me that most people will believe is true.
I could use the wrong pronouns.
That could get me taken out.
I could do that easily.
Or I could express an opinion on yet another topic that somebody else labels dangerous.
For example, I might say, as I often do, that while I don't have an opinion about the science of climate science, I have strong opinions about the economic projections over 80 years, which are clearly BS. Now, if I say that those economic predictions are clearly BS, have I done something that would maybe limit the aggressiveness that people are using to take on climate change?
Maybe. Sounds like a dangerous opinion.
That's the kind of opinion that could get people killed.
See where I'm going?
I could very easily be thrown into the dangerous opinion category, and it wouldn't even be untrue.
Are my opinions dangerous?
Yeah. Yeah, they are dangerous.
I would say my opinions are dangerous.
Because every opinion on a big topic is dangerous.
If my opinion turns out to be right, it's still dangerous.
If the people on the other side of my opinion turn out to be right, it's still dangerous.
These are just dangerous topics.
Somebody dies no matter which way you go.
So there are several ways that I can be taken out.
I'm sort of curious which way will become the primary way.
And then the number one way would be economics.
So if I get kicked off of all banking in terms of this stuff, if I get kicked off of banking, that would be the most direct way to do it.
So I would expect that.
That's common. All right.
Rasmussen did a little poll and asked this.
They said, does the news media have too much power influence Too little or the right amount.
So what do you think people answered to the question, does the news media have too much power and influence?
Well, conservatives, 75% of them, said the media has too much power and influence, and you're not.
I guess the only thing that surprises me is that it's that low.
Wouldn't you expect the conservatives to be closer to 90% plus?
Saying that the media has too much power.
If you're a conservative and you're in the 25% who don't think the media has too much power and influence, what media are you consuming?
What are you looking at that makes you think they don't?
Just a question. So that's conservatives.
75% say media too much influence.
Moderates, no surprise, they're moderates.
Only 41% of them.
Say that the media has too much influence.
How about liberals?
Liberals, self-identified liberals, only 21% of them think the media has too much power and influence.
Think about that.
If you're a left-leaning person, let's call them liberals, only 21% of them have noticed That the media has too much power and influence.
79% of liberals haven't noticed the power that the media has?
We have a problem here.
I mean, a big problem.
Because even liberals apparently perceive the media to be on their side.
But they think that their side is just being right.
They don't even understand that the media is a double propaganda machine, where the right is just propaganda for the right, the left is just propaganda for the left.
Liberals don't even know that.
How would you like to go through life not even knowing that?
That the media is biased?
That would be like being blind to the most basic reality of your entire environment.
That's shocking.
I think that Rasmussen poll will be available to the rest of you sometime soon.
I got a little sneak peek.
So... Is this feed skipping for anyone else today?
That's a good question. Anybody having any problems with the quality of the feed?
Typically the feed quality questions are your own connection, typically.
Lost friends because they believe the news?
Yeah, I've lost friends because my friends believe the news was actually news.
It's a real head shaker.
Alright, so YouTube is smooth sailing.
Most of you know that Periscope will be discontinued as a product sometime in March, I think.
I believe Twitter has some kind of a different video product, but I don't know the details.
But between now and then, I would recommend that if you're on the Periscope live stream, that you at least check out the YouTube live stream.
And see if you prefer it, because that's the one that'll go forward.
At Locals, I'll probably add some...
I think they'll have some livestream in a few months.
All right. I'm glad that it's working for most of you.
So I'm not...
Rumble doesn't have...
I do have a Rumble account, so I mirror these livestreams.
They end up on Rumble, but they don't have a livestream option yet.
You prefer Periscope, huh?
Twitch.
Yeah, I probably need to get on Twitch, but I haven't done that yet.
Alright, that's all we need. That's all for today, and I'll talk to you later.
Alright, Periscope is off.
A couple more minutes here on YouTube.
Somebody says, don't do Twitch.
Twitch doesn't seem like my perfect platform, but I don't know too much about it.
Switch to Rumble.
Rumble doesn't have live stream.
So I am on Rumble.
You just have to see it after it's done.
Scope just crashed.
No, I just turned off Periscope.
The terms of service of Twitch are too much.
Oh, that could be. Twitch tends to be biased toward younger people, so I can imagine that my content would not be right there.
Tracy Bean's house burned down.
Do not smear her.
Well, I feel sorry for her house burning down, but I don't think it's a smear to say that she was one of the early people talking about Q. Is that a smear?
