Episode 1281 Scott Adams: Forced Patriotism, Fake Coups and Analogies That Can Get You Fired From Your Mandalorian Gig
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Propagandized impeachment presentation
NBC news calls China an American ally?
Is "Karen" an offensive slur?
Gina Carano proved her point
Examples of Democrats now eating their own
Forced patriotism?
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Oh, you know it. You already know it's going to be the best coffee with Scott Adams.
Why do I even have to tell you?
You know the routine.
Yeah. If it could be any better than this...
I don't think it's possible.
There really isn't. But we're going to try.
Let's try to take it to the next level with a simultaneous sip.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine the other day, the thing that makes everything better.
Except the Mandalorian.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. I feel the normality returning to the country.
Wait, no, no, it's gone again.
It's gone again. We were almost normal there for a moment, but no, not at all.
Let's talk about the news.
You all saw the big news that two masks are better than one, according to the CDC. They did a little test, and they found out that two masks will reduce the infectious particles by 92.5%.
Now, what they were talking about specifically is the people who wear a regular cloth covering, like a bandana kind of thing.
If you put a real mask beneath the bandana, The two of those things would give you 92.5% protection.
Now, how do you interpret that?
How do you interpret this information?
I saw on Twitter that somebody interpreted the fact that two masks block 92%.
Let's round it up to 93%.
If two masks block 93% of the infectious particles, that means that one mask doesn't work.
Is that how you read it?
Would your conclusion from this fact be that one mask doesn't work?
If two masks block 93% of the infectious particles, don't you think one mask blocks a little bit?
And given that the second mask in this example was the least useful kind of covering, which would be just a cloth covering like a bandana, Given that we know that's the least protective, wouldn't we be able to say, without actually doing a randomized controlled trial, would it be reasonable to say that the real mask might be doing some work?
Maybe not 92.5% work, but isn't it doing something?
Now, many of you know That the amount of the viral load makes a big difference in outcomes.
So if you can reduce it by, let's say, 50%.
Let's be conservative and say that the first mask only reduced it by 50%.
Two masks get you to something bigger.
Would that be worth it?
Would the scientists be right if they had been telling us to wear one mask And one mask would only reduce, let's say, we don't know this is true, but I'm just working through a citizen trying to figure out what science is trying to tell us.
Because there's science, and then there's citizens, and then there's this giant confusing area between what science is really saying and what we're understanding.
So that whole communicating science part is the real problem area.
Science is great, except that it's described to us by people.
So if you hear your science described to you by a person, are you hearing science?
No. You're hearing just a person.
If you didn't directly do the science yourself, if you're not the one who performed the experiments...
You're not really hearing science.
You're hearing somebody else describing science.
So you're really hearing a person.
So when you say, do you trust science?
I translate that in my mind into, would I trust a stranger whose incentives I do not understand?
Never. Never.
If you're ever in a situation where you're asked to trust a stranger when you don't know the stranger's motivations or intentions, don't do that.
Don't do that.
So when we hear about science, we are being told, That we're hearing real science, but we're not.
We're just hearing somebody's interpretation.
So the best we can do as citizens, since we don't have access to science, we have access only to people talking about it, is to use whatever a little bit of sense and judgment we can to do the best we can, because science is just not available to us in an everyday decision-making way.
You just have to do without it.
If we had it, it'd be great.
I don't. I only have people talking about it.
So my common sense judgment is that if the CDC studied this carefully and found out that two masks block 93% of your infectious particles, and we know that the amount of viral load does matter,
it does seem to me that they have come close to proving that Not technically in a real scientific, randomized, controlled, trialed way, but pretty close to a common sense, clearly obvious benefit of masks.
Now, if the CDC's, the way they studied it was all...
Done wrong, then of course none of this applies.
And we don't know if they did it right, do we?
Were you there? Were you in the laboratory?
Did you watch them set up the test?
And are you an infectious disease specialist and a mass specialist and a scientist?
Well, if you were all of those things and you were there, you maybe have a pretty good idea of what was happening.
But we weren't there, and of course we know the news is mostly fake, so we don't know anything.
But I would say this is an indication that one mask probably does something useful.
It is not proof.
It is not proof.
But it's another good indication.
There's some chatter on the internet because Fox News apparently cut off the impeachment manager in mid-sentence.
So he was talking about He was showing how bad the attack on the Capitol was, and Fox News decided to go to the Five and just have entertainment instead.
Now, what do you think of that?
Did Fox News cut off news?
Was that news?
Were we watching news when the impeachment managers were We're making a show, a specific video of the Capitol assault, so that we could really feel the pain and the fear of the members of Congress.
Was that news?
Was it news about how the members of Congress felt about the assault?
Well, I already knew it.
Didn't you? Was there anybody here who was unaware that the politicians and really everybody who was at the Capitol when the assault happened, is there anybody who didn't know, given that people were literally being killed, is there anybody who didn't know that everybody there was afraid for their lives?
I feel like I knew that.
Did any of you not know that?
Did you not know that they were afraid for their lives and there was an attack and there was real violence?
Anybody. Is there anybody in the country who did not already know that?
So is it news?
The fact that somebody's making you feel an attenuated feeling about it, is that news?
Well, I guess it's news in the sense that it's part of the story, and whatever any of the players of the stories do, I guess that's news.
But once you'd seen a little bit of it, and you say to yourself, Scott?
Now, your name might be different.
Let's say your name isn't Scott.
You would think it differently.
You would fill in your name here.
But, Scott, watching more of this footage is not making me smarter.
It's not making me know more facts.
It is not giving me reason or detail.
Well, it's giving me detail that I don't need.
But what is it conveying to me?
What is the purpose of the communication that the impeachment managers are making by showing more details of the assault?
Well, could it have any reason other than to make you emotionally weakened?
Is there any other reason?
Now, I counsel you that if you can't think of another reason for why something's happening...
That doesn't mean there isn't another reason.
It just means you can't think of one.
So is this one of those cases where I just can't think of a reason that they need to show us this extra video?
Because remember, the Trump's own lawyers have stipulated that what happened at the Capitol was a horrible event.
So you've got one side arguing, hey, this was horrible, and You've got the other side saying, yeah, it was.
Totally agree. We will stipulate.
Stipulate being the legal term that says we agree with what you're saying.
Yes, it was a horrible event.
People were scared.
There was real danger, real violence.
So, if both sides agree that those are the facts, both sides agree that anybody involved in anything that was illegal needs to be punished, What exactly are we looking at?
And why are we looking at it?
The reason is obvious.
It's propaganda. It's pure propaganda.
It's supposed to make you feel a bad feeling about a certain set of people in America.
Do you need that?
Is that news?
Is it news when your politicians are making it, number one, all about themselves?
That's right. Your Congress decided that the biggest story in the whole fucking country is how they feel.
How they feel.
It wasn't really a question about the government being overthrown.
Anybody who thinks it was a real coup or an insurrection in any serious way that they would have controlled the government and changed the nature of the country or anything like that.
That's just stupid. Because nothing like that, even remotely like that, happened.
We're the most armed country in the world, and nobody used a gun.
Except the only person who used a gun was the police officer who shot the protester coming through the window.
Which I've called a good, not good in the sense that we don't wish it happened, but correct law enforcement action, in my opinion, based on what we saw.
He probably stopped some amount of more violence, as tragic as it was.
So, given that there's no information being conveyed, which is what I would call news, is Fox News really to blame for cutting away?
I don't think so.
I think that cutting away was the right news decision, because otherwise they're just exposing us to propaganda to make us feel a certain way.
And I don't really need the news to make me feel.
I like them to tell me the information, and I'll figure out how to feel about it.
But I don't need you to tell me how to feel.
That's not news.
So I'm going to back Fox News on pulling away from that.
There's another story that doesn't make any sense to me, except that we're in this weird world where you could just say anything, and the two sides would interpret it to agree with themselves.
I mean, I could go in public and just say...
And everybody who heard me, the Democrats, would say, there he goes again, saying racist stuff.
And the Republicans would say, well, I think he made perfect sense.
I think he made sense.
I don't know what you're talking about.
So we're in a world in which you can say anything.
Just any fucking thing.
And people will argue that you were right, and others will argue that you're wrong, even if it doesn't make any sense.
Here's an example. There's a headline that says, Donald Trump knew that Mike Pence had been evacuated from the MAGA mob before he tweeted that the VP, quote, didn't have courage to overturn the election.
Meaning what?
Meaning what?
If you're a Democrat, you take that statement to say that Trump didn't care that Mike Pence was in danger and endangered him further.
And endangered him further.
That's one interpretation.
Here's the other interpretation.
That once Trump heard that Mike Pence had been evacuated, which means to safety, right?
When you evacuate somebody, do you evacuate them toward the danger?
Or do you evacuate them away from the danger?
Because the president heard that his vice president was not in danger.
He had been evacuated.
And then after that, He said something about his courage.
Now, should he have said that?
I don't think so.
That's my opinion.
I think the president was not handling it right.
I think he needs to answer to that.
But the question of whether he was encouraging an insurrection or a coup is just sort of stupid.
But the separate question of whether he acted in a way that reduced...
Reduce the risk of violence, that's a separate question.
And I don't think he acted in a way that reduced the chance of violence.
So what do you make of that story?
It's a headline story, and you could interpret it both ways.
We're just at a point in the world in which it doesn't matter what the facts are.
We're just going to interpret it the way we want.
The Panda Tribune, who you should be following.
If you're not following the Panda Tribune on Twitter, you should be, because it's funny and a good account.
Notice this. The NBC News said the following.
Now, just listen to what NBC News said.
And see if you can pick up anything that's wrong with us.
See if you can find out, is there anything in this list that I'm about to read you, is there anything that doesn't fit with the rest of the list?
See if you can detect it, because the Panda Tribune did.
See if you can. Here's what NBC says.
In his first weeks in office, President Biden has made a flurry of international phone calls To American allies, including the leaders of Canada, Britain, France, Japan, and China.
Which of those doesn't belong in the list of American allies?
Is it Canada?
No, we have our little dramas with Canada, but I feel like they're allies.
I feel like Canada is a good country.
We like Canadians, even when we disagree with them on issues.
How about Britain, France?
Well, we argue with Britain and France now and then, but they're allies, wouldn't you say?
Pretty good countries.
You know, we can have our differences, but we're solid allies with Britain and France.
How about Japan? Well, World War II was a little tough, but since then...
Since World War II, I'd say quite good allies.
Quite good allies.
What's the other one in this sentence?
Oh, China. China.
According to NBC, China, which is killing 50,000 to 100,000 U.S. citizens a year with fentanyl, intentionally, the country that probably lied to us about coronavirus and is stealing our intellectual property, is giving us bad trade deals...
And selling propaganda into our markets and is closed to our investors in many ways.
They're our ally. Apparently they're our ally, according to NBC News.
Now, do you see how this works?
NBC News is allegedly a vehicle of the CIA. Did you know that?
Now, I'm saying allegedly...
Because people smarter than I am claim that this is obvious and known.
So you should look to the other people to get a confirmation of that.
I'll just say it's the allegation.
The allegation is that NBC News is the most captured of our media.
Captured, I mean, by intelligence services.
Because ultimately, any kind of media that makes a difference is going to get captured by intelligence services.
It's just a matter of time. Sooner or later, your intelligence services should, if they're doing their job, I guess you could say, if they're doing their job, they should eventually capture all of the media services in their own country and capture as many as they can in other countries too.
So, the only question about whether the intelligence services manage our news, the question is timing.
Is it happening already, or is it in our future?
But it's guaranteed.
There's no future in which it doesn't happen.
It might be a question of when, but of course it has to happen.
The intelligence services will always control the media eventually.
And now you can see something that looks exactly like China controlling NBC News.
Because would an American loyal to the United States who was aware of the news ever put China in a list of our allies?
And just try to slip it in there at the end of the list.
And if you didn't notice, China.
It's sort of like our American allies, including Canada, Britain, France, Japan, and China.
Just kind of slip it in there.
When you see it happening right in front of your eyes, the propaganda, the maybe foreign influence...
I mean, it looks like it.
It looks like foreign influence, but you can't know for sure.
All right, Brett Weinstein made a funny comment about the double mask situation.
He says, why not make masks doubled in the first place?
To which I say, huh, pretty good question.
If a double mask works, why wouldn't you make the single mask twice as thick?
I don't know the answer to that question.
I assume it has something to do with you wouldn't be able to breathe?
I don't know. Is that the reason?
I really don't know.
It's not like air isn't going someplace.
Anyway, it's a funny question.
I don't think he means it seriously.
Or maybe he does. I don't know.
But it's a funny question. But it reminded me of an old joke.
You know how when an airplane crashes, they'll usually find the black box and it'll be intact?
The whole airplane will be destroyed, but the black box will just be intact and then they'll figure out what happened?
To which I say to myself, this is an old joke, why don't they make the whole airplane out of that black box material?
Huh? Huh?
Now it's just a joke.
Obviously you couldn't do that, but it reminded me of that.
Matt Walsh has a very interesting string of tweets about LeBron James and the use of the word Karen.
So I guess LeBron tweeted that there was a Karen, as LeBron said, in the audience and he mocked her.
And as Matt Walsh points out, Karen is a racial slur.
And as Matt points out, if I used a stereotypical name in a pejorative way to refer to a black woman, Everyone would agree it's a slur.
I would agree. I would agree with that.
If he used a stereotypical, pejorative, you know, word to describe a black woman, I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
Would you? I would consider that very offensive.
To have some, like, special word that's like a bad word for a black woman.
Are you kidding me? That would be completely unacceptable.
But apparently it's okay for a white woman, or at least some people think so, and Matt Walsh is pushing back.
And he says that using the Karen word is no different than other racial slurs, and that LeBron is therefore a bigot.
Do you agree with that?
Do you agree?
And by the way, there's If you research Karen, you'll see reference to it as specifically a white woman.
I know that other people have used it to mean just a generic thing.
So I would like to suggest the following standard so that we just treat things the same.
As I've often said, That I am in complete agreement that any group can ban certain words about their own group.
When I say ban, I mean they get to say what is offensive to them.
And if it's offensive to them, that should mean something to us.
Why do you want to offend anybody?
What would be the purpose?
What would you gain by just offending people?
Nothing. So why wouldn't we, as just a polite society that's trying to get along, why wouldn't we allow people to say, hey, this is a bad name for the people in my group.
Use any other name, but just don't use this one.
This is just the bad one.
That's why, of course, the N-word is universally banned.
Does anybody disagree with that?
I hope not. I feel like that's a really ugly, ugly, super ugly word.
It has no place in polite society.
But I would argue that the Karen word, although it does not have that kind of historical weight or significance as the N-word, nowhere near it, I think that if white women wanted it banned, I would back them on that.
Now, if I were to use that word Karen, at least I would be a white person saying something that sounds like bad toward white people.
So I think that would be allowed, except I'm male.
So if I said somebody's a Karen, I would be sexist, but not racist.
If you're LeBron...
And you say somebody's a Karen, you're sexist and you're racist.
So I'm only sexist because I'm white.
LeBron is sexist and racist, if he uses the Karen word.
So I guess we'll have to figure out how much we care about that.
Not very much, as it turns out.
The K word, yeah.
So one of the biggest stories on the internet is that actress Gina Carano, I hope I'm pronouncing it right, who is a former MMA fighter and until recently, she just got fired from her job, but she was one of the stars of the Disney Plus series The Mandalorian, which is based in a Star Wars universe.
The main character is this masked Helmeted, you know, fighter, Mandalorian he's called.
And Gina was one of the other stars and she played a badass, you know, just a badass mercenary, I guess.
And she got fired for saying some things that would be somewhat typical of a Republican to say on Twitter.
So basically you could pick any standard Republican who uses Twitter and say, all right, what did you say, standard Republican?
And that's kind of what she has said in the past, standard Republican stuff.
And there was a call for her to be fired for it.
And the biggest complaint they had is that she made a Holocaust or Nazi reference to the fact that Republicans are being...
Identified and discriminated against.
Now, what happened to her when she said that Republicans are being treated like the Jews were in the Holocaust at the moment?
The public ganged up on her and got her fired.
So, did she prove her point?
Yes, she did.
Yes, her point was that having...
Conservative-oriented views would put you in a discriminated situation.
And then she was proven right by being fired for having those very same views, which her point was, if you have these views, you could get fired or discriminated against, right?
So she proved her point.
The funniest part of this story is The left is saying that she basically minimized the Holocaust because the Holocaust was about literally exterminating and killing six million Jews.
How could you compare that to some people losing their job in the United States?
One is gigantic, the other one's pretty bad, but these don't weigh the same.
Is that point good?
No. That's not a good point.
It's true. It's true that they don't have the same weight.
That's true. Nobody's going to argue that.
But the way Nazi analogies are used in this country is as an analogy to make some hyperbole to make your point.
When the Republicans had been called Nazis from 2015 to 2021...
Did anybody who was calling Trump a Nazi think that he was really going to exterminate 6 million people?
No. No, it doesn't work that way.
They used it with hyperbole.
They used it exactly the same way she did.
And she backed it up.
When she said that a certain class of people would be treated harshly, that being the whole point, And then she was treated harshly for being one of those people.
Her point completely proven by the fact that she got fired.
That said, of course, we don't want to minimize the Holocaust.
And that's one of the complaints I've had from the beginning when Trump supporters were being called Nazis, etc., is that it minimized the real thing.
So either... Pick a standard.
And I think it's hilarious that the left doesn't understand that they've been doing that to the right for decades now.
And then somebody complained on Twitter, somebody on the left complained, that every time one of these right-leaning characters gets cancelled, that they end up making more money.
To which I tweeted, I hope so.
That would be my goal.
My goal is that everybody who gets cancelled for...
Let's say ordinary speech, it would be one thing to get cancelled for actually using the N-word and actually saying racist stuff or actually inciting violence.
Yeah, I mean, if you get cancelled for that stuff, that's your own damn fault.
But if you get cancelled for what is absolutely routine, even if you disagree with it, it's routine.
Language? Yeah, I think I'd like to see those people get rich.
So I would like to see...
What's her name? Gina Carano, actress and ex-MMA fighter, do well.
So if anybody wants to make her a job offer or something, go ahead.
Let's make her rich. In a new segment that I'm going to call Eating Their Own, Eating Their Own, this is what the left is doing to themselves now that their common enemy, Trump, is at least mostly off the stage.
So these are the examples in just today's news.
Just today. So the AP has an article in which it looks like they've turned on the Lincoln Project.
Remember, the Lincoln Project were the alleged Republicans who had turned on Trumpism and basically joined the left in attacking Trump.
Now, the AP is...
Basically accusing that of being sort of a grifter scam.
I'm using my own words to characterize their story.
But the essence of it is they collected $90 million and set up a structure where you couldn't exactly tell where it went.
Meaning that out of that $90 million, some amount of that went to the people who organized the Lincoln Project for all of their good work organizing the Lincoln Project.
How much of the 90 million, do you suppose, went to the organizing members?
We don't know.
The only thing that the AP reports is that maybe a third of it was used on ads.
A third? And of 90 million, only 30 million was used on the thing which the group was trying to do.
The rest of it was consulting.
Now, I suppose they were trying to consult as well, but how much of that went to the consultants?
What was the word that Rick Wilson used the most when talking about Trump?
Grifter. A grifter.
Somebody who's making money off a situation somewhat disingenuously.
I don't know. But the AP, which you would associate with the left, or at least if you're in the right, you would say they are associated with the left, have turned on the Lincoln Project.
So that's story number one.
Number two, Instagram has banned Robert F. Kennedy.
Instagram just banned Robert F. Kennedy.
And why do they do it?
Because he repeatedly, they say, So, he's a member of the left.
This happens to be one of the areas in which some members of the left and some members of the right agree.
Now, I'm not on that team.
I suspect the vaccinations are probably more good than bad.
It's interesting that a member of the left just got banned on Instagram.
Now remember, there's no Trump.
So if they need to create action and controversy and all this, they're going to end up acting against themselves.
So that's example two.
Number three, Jeep, the company that makes Jeep, they pulled Bruce Springsteen's Super Bowl ad...
After it was revealed he was arrested for a DWI and reckless driving in November on Jersey Shore.
So Bruce Springsteen, associated with the left, has been pulled from his commercial now that they found out he had some DWI. However, the DWI appears to be fake news, which makes it even better.
So he got pulled off, his commercial got pulled, Probably for fake news.
Now, the part that's real is he was arrested for a DWI. The part that might not be real is that he was drunk.
Because even the...
Apparently the breathalyzer actually showed he wasn't.
Not even close. He did have a shot.
So I guess a police officer...
He pulled over in his motorcycle to take some pictures with some fans.
Somebody offered him a shot.
He took it. A police officer saw it.
They pulled him over. They tested him, and his alcohol level was way below the drunk level.
So he didn't do anything illegal, except, I don't know, took a shot in front of a cop, I guess, before he got on his motorcycle.
So it's probably fake news, and he's going to get semi-cancelled for that.
That's example number three.
Number four. I told you the story about how...
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, had cleverly decided just to not play the National Anthem and just get rid of the whole problem.
Just don't play the National Anthem.
Well, the NBA, once it was discovered that they'd gone over a dozen games without playing it, somebody said, hey, where was that National Anthem?
Which is hilarious that it took 12 games to figure it out.
I have a feeling Mark Cuban is laughing about that.
That it took 12 games before anybody even noticed.
It's like this big issue.
It's such a big issue that they played 12 games nobody even noticed.
And yet we act like it's a big issue.
Didn't even notice.
When it wasn't happening. But here's the fun part of this story.
The NBA decided that they would force the Mavericks to play the National Anthem, and indeed they did.
I think it was last night against the Hawks.
So Mark Cuban relented and decided to go with the NBA. Now, here's my take on this.
I like patriotism.
I think it's a necessary glue to hold society together.
I think it's more good than bad.
You could imagine it turns into jingoism and whatever.
But I think patriotism is far more good than bad, and I'm in favor of brainwashing our children to make them patriots, because it keeps the country together.
But what about forced patriotism?
Because it seems to me that Mark Cuban was sort of forced to play the national anthem.
Do you know what I feel like when you show me the flag and say, would you like to stand, and show respect for the flag?
I feel proud.
I feel good about it.
Like, I feel everything about that just feels good to me.
I like our flag.
I really like our country.
You know, even if I complain about it.
I really like it. So, patriotism, 100%.
I'm all on board with patriotism.
But what about forced patriotism?
Let me tell you what I think about forced patriotism.
Fuck you.
The moment it's forced, fuck you.
You're not going to force me to do it.
That's for sure. If I want to do it, I'd love to.
But if you're going to force me, fuck you.
We don't work that way.
The country, it doesn't work that way.
Now, I know what you're going to say.
The NBA is a private organization.
They can have their own rules, just like a platform could have terms of service.
And they're just enforcing their own internal rules.
Why is that my issue?
To which I say, it's not really.
If internally they want to do this, it's good for their business.
That's fine. But there's this other part of the story where apparently the Texas governor threatened the Dallas Mavericks that they would pull their tax benefits if they didn't play the national anthem.
Now I've got a big fucking problem.
It's one thing.
When your private organization says, hey, our organization would do better if we play this national anthem.
Fine. That's fine.
Private organization.
Mark Cuban can be in the organization, or he can sell his team.
You know, that's okay.
But the governor of Texas is the government.
He's the government. And the government...
Just twisted the maverick's arm.
Now, we don't know if Mark Cuban cared about what the governor was saying.
We don't have any information that says that Mark Cuban made a decision based on what the government said.
But they did put pressure on him.
Real pressure. Like real money pressure.
That is as unacceptable as anything could ever be.
So let me say this to the governor of Texas.
Fuck you. Fuck you for trying to make the NBA play the national anthem.
If the NBA wants to play the national anthem, great.
Great. But if the government, any form of government, is pressuring them to play the national anthem, fuck you.
Fuck you hard.
That's over the line.
That's way over the line.
That is way, way, way over the line.
That doesn't work in this country.
Now, I'd like to think that Mark Cuban's decision was based on the NBA's preference, not on the government's preference.
But if any part of this decision was because of the government's influence, you should lose your job for that.
The governor of Texas should lose his job for this.
He should be impeached.
In fact, I think that's an impeachable offense, to try to force somebody to be patriotic and to show it in a specific way.
I think that's impeachable.
Or should be.
I doubt it is. That is my show for today.
Yeah, it's like forcing religion.
It's exactly like that.
Not exactly like that, but you know.
You know the point. Alright.
Is there anything I forgot today?
Somebody says, no, that's my governor and my tax dollars.
Government tax dollars.
Texans tax dollars.
So you're saying that the governor was just representing the people of Texas, and so it was the people of Texas who would like the Mavericks to...
Play it. Well, I see what you're saying.
I see what you're saying, that the governor was representing the will of the people.
That doesn't make any difference.
You get that that doesn't make any difference, right?
If the people were directly in charge, I might be persuaded, but they elected a government, and the government can't do that.
At least, I think it should be impeachable if they do it.
It doesn't matter if the people want it.
That is completely irrelevant.
Suppose the people wanted the government to suppress your freedom of speech.
Is that okay? A bunch of people want it.
Yeah, we really want our government to suppress freedom of speech.
So then it's okay? Because the people want it?
No. No, it's not okay.
The government can't do those things.
There are things that the people can do, the things that individual private companies can do, but there are things that your government just can't do If you're doing it right.
Why does capitalism need tax money?
It's a fair question.
Why does your local community support athletic teams?
And I would say that at least part of that is the national anthem.
Weirdly. Part of the reason that a government would put tax money toward a sport, which you could say, well, it's just entertainment.
Why is my government spending my money on somebody else's entertainment if you don't watch sports?
And I think the reason is that sports are a big unifying element of society.
And because you do the Pledge of Allegiance...
It actually creates more patriots, gives you something to fight about that's symbolic instead of real fighting.
And I do think that having a sports identity is a real part of a brand for a city.
I do think that the intangibles are pretty big.
Now, how do you measure the intangible benefits compared to the tax dollars which you could measure more easily?
Well, it's a judgment call.
It's a judgment call.
You can't know how much benefit you'll get because it's all these weird patriotism is better, community has a better brand, the city has more of a reputation.
None of that you can put a dollar amount on.
But it's not irrational for the city to want to get those benefits.
Somebody says because it generates tax revenue.
Yeah, so some of it comes back.
That's correct. I don't believe the governments see it as a profit investment.
I think it's still a loss, but it is nonetheless true that some of the money comes back in different ways.
Sports are modern versions of Romans, bread, and circuses.
I think that's true. Anything that gets the public entertained and diverted...
It's probably good for society, because all that energy needs to go somewhere.
It basically siphons off a lot of aggression, in a way.
Now, I don't know if there's any science to suggest that's a good thing, but it looks like that's what's happening anyway.
Scott, yearly subscription options on locals anytime soon?
I haven't heard anything about that.
Maybe that will be an option.
But we are looking into changing the fee structure so you can follow more people at a reasonable fee.
Andrea Mitchell has egg on her face.
I don't know what that story is.
Is that something breaking news?
Alright, so that's all I've got for today.
And I will talk to you.
Oh yeah, one other piece of news.
I saw a press release from Fox News saying that the Greg Goffeld show, which you're used to watching on Saturday nights, is going to be every night.
Or five nights a week, I think.
So, Greg Goffeld, great job.
And I assume he's still going to do the five at the same time.
So he will have probably two of the biggest shows on Fox.
Now, why does Greg Gutfeld succeed where others in his business have not?
Well, one reason is he's not committed to being crazy about one team.
He's willing to say, this team did this good, this team did this well.
So he is more certainly...
As far away as you can get from the, let's say, the Hannity side of the world and a lot closer to the, hey, let's look at the facts and try to figure out what makes sense and what doesn't make sense part of the world.
And that apparently is working.
So congratulations to him on that.
All right. And that's all I got for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Alright, Periscope is down.
Google, Fallon Fox.
Why should I do that? About transgender athletes and women's sports.
Now, when I talk about the transgenders, everybody hears it wrong.
So, everybody who thinks they disagree with me on transgender sports, they probably don't.
Because they don't quite understand what I'm saying.
It's like you can say A, and people hear B, and then they just want to talk to me about why I'm wrong about B. I never said B. I only said A. What I mean by that is that if you reorganize sports so it doesn't just have a women's group and a men's group, then everybody can just play with the level of talent that is appropriate, and men and women would be matched on teams normally.
It wouldn't just be transgender.
And then you'd have the same amount of winners and losers, but it would be distributed differently.
If your issue is a few college athletes Let's say women who would not get scholarships.
Why do you care? There are so few scholarships, and it only goes to people who were born genetically gifted and also were lucky enough to have a parental situation that could support their sport.
Why should they get any awards?
Why do they get a scholarship?
Why does that even make sense?
So if some women don't get scholarships...
Do you care? Why do schools even do sports?
I'm not even sure it's useful.
So the fact that...
Let me put it another way.
No matter how many women or men get trophies for sports, I won't get any.
How many did you get?
How many trophies did you get?
Probably none. I mean recently.
Maybe you got some in high school.
But how many trophies did you get this year?
Did you get any? I didn't get any.
This whole trophy thing affects this tiny, tiny, tiny little group of people.
It's not you.
It's not me. And why are we even caring about it?
Just reorganize the sports so everybody can play at the level that they play at.
Forget about these stupid scholarships.
If colleges want to give them, well, who cares?
If they're private universities and they want to give a scholarship, They can do it for any reason they want.
And I don't see any reason why you need to have sports winners who get the trophy and get the scholarship.
Society doesn't need that.
It has no value at all.
So, my point is not that if you kept sports exactly as they are, transgender athletes wouldn't distort things in a way that people don't like.
Well, that's clearly true.
It's clearly true that the transgender athlete in some situations would dominate women's sports.
That's just true.
But how much you care about it is the crazy part.
It can be true and not important.
But I don't...
I don't support keeping sports exactly the way they are.
I think that they should change to simply let people play with the level of talent that is equal to their skill.
That's it. Forget about the whole gender thing entirely.
