Episode 1295 Scott Adams: The Ongoing Disinformation Campaign Against the American Public, and Tiger Too
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Content:
Elon Musk's reply to the Washington Post
Brit Hume explains Dr. Fauci
AOC, our only national leader, and future President
FAKE NEWS creation, by CNN's Chris Cillizza
Puppet-master redirection of public's attention
Peanuts and cause of death
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Go. Stretch, everybody.
Feels so good.
What a day. All right, well, let's start with all the good news.
Do you want the good news first?
Of course you do. Of course you do.
In pandemic news, the new single-shot vaccination from J&J, it looks like it has 85% efficacy.
And if you don't like the word efficacy, well, you haven't said it out loud.
Try it. Try it at home.
Say efficacy.
It's fun. It is.
It has 85% efficacy 28 days after you get it, and that's pretty good.
And it has almost an 88% efficacy Did I say efficacy?
Of blocking asymptomatic infections.
Bam! Pretty good stuff.
Would you take the single shot that gave you 85% efficacy, or would you wait for the double shot that gives you a little bit more?
I don't know. I told you that I'm going to wait until the last possible moment, because I'm not eligible yet, but I think I'll be in the next wave.
So maybe in a few weeks.
I'm not sure. Here's some more good news.
As you know, I think over 20 states have legislation to associate funding for school with the children instead of the school, so that the child could go to a different competing school, a private school, for example, and the funding would move with them, the government funding.
So that is a really big trend that's happening now.
Corey DeAngelis, you'll find him on Twitter, Does the most tweeting about this productively.
He's most involved in this.
And he does more than tweeting, obviously.
He's active in this space.
But a new study says, according to Corey, that charter schools are 35% more cost-effective and produce a 46% larger return on investment than district schools.
Do you trust that statistic?
I don't. You know, this is the sort of statistic that you want to trust because it agrees with you already.
I want it to be true that having competition in anything makes things better.
Just as a general statement.
No matter the field, if you add competition to it, it should make things better.
So I want it to be true that these charter schools are more cost-effective.
But then you would also have to factor in what happens to the school they left behind.
Did it get worse?
What happened to the average?
So I don't think things like this can be studied, actually.
So I wouldn't totally trust this number.
But at the very least, it can help you size things.
So I think, you know, this at least is evidence that charter schools are not worse.
But I don't think you could say that numbers such as this, I wouldn't ever trust them to be accurate per se.
But if there were some big problem where they spent more money and got less results, you'd probably see it.
There'd probably be big enough to see.
All right. DigitalDoug on Twitter was questioning the fact that the coronavirus numbers in the United States are over half a million deaths.
Whereas regular seasonal flu would be, you know, maybe 10% of that, typically.
And Digital Doug says, if you pay hospitals five figures for treating the flu, meaning the regular seasonal flu, and five figures more for putting patients on respirators, let's see what the regular flu numbers look like then.
So Digital Doug believes that if hospitals were incentivized, To record the regular seasonal flu, that there would be ten times as much death attributed to the regular flu.
Does that make sense to you?
Now, let me tell you how to think of this argument.
If the argument is that financial incentives cause people to code more things as coronavirus, that's a good argument, wouldn't you say?
Does anybody disagree with that?
And I say this a million times.
If you put friction on something, you'll get less of it.
Almost always.
Doesn't even matter what you're talking about.
You add friction, and you get a little less of it.
If you add incentives, again, for almost anything, you're going to get more of it.
So the argument is that incentives have been added Somewhat accidentally, because people had good intentions, but there's an incentive to say that something is a COVID infection or a COVID death when maybe it was a gray area, right? Let me tell you how to judge that argument.
If there were just as many coronavirus deaths as the regular flu, early on, pretty good argument.
Pretty good argument. It doesn't mean it's true, but you'd have to take it seriously.
Suppose the corona deaths were 20% more than the regular flu deaths in any year.
Ah, then you'd have to take that argument pretty seriously.
Because, like I said, you incentivize anything and it wouldn't be surprising to get 20% more of something that had a financial incentive.
You'd all agree with that, right?
Getting 20% more?
That wouldn't be surprising. But that's not where we are.
We're at 10 times more deaths from coronavirus.
It's real.
This argument used to make sense.
I've said it myself.
If you incentivize something, you get more of it.
But you don't get 10 times more without somebody noticing that there's something up, right?
We are way beyond the point Where questioning whether coronavirus deaths are real is a rational opinion.
It used to be. It used to be a rational opinion, which I think time has shown us did not hold up.
But you are not being rational today if you think that the issue is miscounting.
We're not even close to that being a reasonable hypothesis, but it was.
It was at one point.
So I think you need to update your thinking on that.
Here's another one. So Ivor Cummins, who you probably see on the internet, tweets a lot about the coronavirus, tweeted a graph today that shows that Sweden's excess deaths are among the lowest in Europe.
And the claim is that they did not do as aggressive a lockdown and social distancing, and therefore...
Proof positive that lockdowns and social distancing don't work, according to Ivor or Ivor, I don't know how to pronounce his first name, Cummins.
So I just tweeted this right before I came on live here, and I asked the fact checkers to check that.
Let me ask you, do you think that that's true?
Do you think that when other people comment on his tweet, do you think they're going to say, oh yeah, we checked the numbers?
And these look like the accurate numbers.
I would bet against that.
Yeah, I'm seeing in the comments there's some disagreement about whether it's true or not.
This is the kind of statistic that is just a little suspiciously too on the nose, isn't it?
I just don't believe those numbers.
Now, by the end of this livestream, I could be changing my mind.
In other words, if the people I consider good at fact-checking look at this and they say, wow, yeah, it does look like Sweden is a mystery.
They didn't lock down and they got the same result.
Or better. Alright, I just saw a comment that's making my brain explode, but I'm not going to go there.
Alright. Let's talk about something else.
So, fact checkers, check me on that Sweden death thing.
Elon Musk continues to be the most interesting of the billionaires.
Maybe just the most interesting person in the country right now while Trump is taking a little break.
And I guess he was asked to comment on a Washington Post story that was critical of Tesla.
And as you know, the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who you could consider a competitor to Elon Musk, because they're both trying to conquer space, if you will.
And they're trading places as the richest person in America.
It goes back and forth.
And here was Elon Musk's reply to the Washington Post hit piece on Tesla.
When asked, he said, quote, give my regards to your puppet master.
Musk replied to the paper's request for his story.
Give my regards to the puppet masters.
Now, could there be a more perfect response?
If you put together a team of experts in communication, and said, all right, team of experts, we're going to have to respond to this.
What are you going to do?
And the team of experts would have said, well, we'll put out this statement, it'll be hundreds of words, and it will say...
Tesla denies the allegations and we make good cars.
Right? Elon Musk, in one, how many words?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
In seven words, just annihilated this thing.
Give my regards to your puppet master.
Now, what's beautiful about it, It's not just the comment that there could be some bias in the story.
And by the way, I don't know that the story has any bias.
I mean, I'm not alleging that.
But as a comment about the story, it's golden.
It's just perfect. It's the smallest comment you can make that packs the most powerful punch.
Because you can't really think of anything but what Elon said.
Right? You've already forgotten what the story was.
I didn't even read the story, but if I had, I would have forgotten it already.
Because all I'd be thinking is that Elon Musk says the Washington Post are puppets to Bezos.
It's just more interesting, right?
So what Elon Musk does is he simply does things more interestingly than other people.
Fact check me on this.
Tesla doesn't do standard marketing, does it?
In advertising? Can somebody fact check me on that?
I thought that was true, that they don't do regular ads, because they don't need it.
All you have to do is put a bioweapon defense in your car, and you don't need advertisements.
You have something to talk about.
Yeah, I'm seeing people confirm it.
I think that's true. So what Elon Musk does is brilliant.
He just acts more interesting than other people.
And he doesn't need to advertise.
Now you have to be able to pull that off, right?
Because this comment from Musk was probably just off the top of his head.
So you can't do that, right?
You could try.
But being this interesting spontaneously, so that the headlines just go with your interesting comment instead of the thing you're commenting about, that's skill.
And maybe you don't have it.
Alright, Steven Crowder, you know him from Louder on Crowder.
I have a question about the story.
The story this morning was that he had been suspended from Twitter after saying that he can confirm that some people voted at addresses that do not exist.
That's his claim.
Don't cancel me.
Please, please, please, please, don't cancel me.
It's not even my opinion.
It's his opinion.
I'm just talking about it.
Please, please give me another minute of social media.
All right. But when I was commenting about the story, Stephen Crowder replied to me on Twitter.
So I don't know how banned he was if he's already replying to me on Twitter the same day that I heard the story.
So I don't know if he's back or I got the story wrong.
Did he get banned from a different platform?
Can somebody clear that up?
Did he get banned and he's back on already?
Or did he get banned from a different...
Oh, it was a 12-hour ban.
12-hour suspension.
That makes sense. All right, 12-hour suspension.
Let's go with that, because that sounds right anyway.
And as I have told you, my new theme is that if somebody gets banned or censored...
Let's say if they get censored, I'm going to send them some money for being censored.
So I want to make it, and I know a lot of people are on the same page, that individually you might buy his shirt or his mug from his store.
I tweeted the address of his store.
And to you it's $10, but basically you're just voting for freedom of speech.
It's a $10 vote.
To support freedom of speech whenever you see one of these situations happen.
So buy Stephen Crowder's stuff.
I want to say, while I'm at it, that I do not agree with all of the things Stephen Crowder says.
Doesn't matter. That's not what we're here to talk about, right?
And I'll tell you, just so I'm on record with it, I'm not a fan of his argument that there are two genders.
I know you hate it.
Here's my argument. The two-gender thing is a social construct based largely on biology.
I mean, it's not just invented out of nothing.
It's based on observation and biology and stuff like that.
But it's a convenience.
Society categorizes things for convenience.
And it is convenient and useful to have Two genders, because then you just have two bathrooms, and you can keep rapists away from women.
There are lots of good reasons that we narrow it down to two, but it's social reasons.
I think a more productive way to look at people is that there are 7.5 billion people, rounded off, whatever it is, and they're all different.
Every one of them is just different.
They're different sexually.
They're different mentally, different physically, different health-wise.
We're just all different.
That's the healthiest way to look at the world.
It's not two genders, except for convenience.
Now, if you argued, should we keep it two genders because we can't afford to have a bathroom for every option, I would say that's a conversation that's reasonable.
You can reasonably say, yeah, I get that everybody's different, but we can't have a different bathroom for every person, etc.
I would like my own bathroom.
I'd like to be my own gender so I could not have to share a bathroom when I go to the mall.
It's just my own bathroom.
People like me, whatever I am.
So the only thing I would put in your head is that while it's perfectly reasonable, perfectly reasonable, To argue that you should limit things to two genders for practical reasons, that's very bad for a lot of people, because they don't feel they fit into a category, right? So you have to make practical decisions when it comes to how to organize society, and not everybody is going to win.
But I think we should be more compassionate.
The people are just different.
And not worse, not better, just different.
And just take that as our model.
I would like to give a shout out to Brit Hume.
He made another wonderful comment today on Twitter.
And I've been watching him for a long time.
You know, Fox News Association there.
And I don't think I've ever seen Brit Hume say something that wasn't reasonable and backed by evidence.
And I don't know if you can say that about everybody that you see on TV. And it takes a while before you realize.
I was sort of realizing it today.
It's like, I've never seen Brit Hume say anything that was bullshit.
I've never seen him even spin a story.
And you can tell when somebody's spinning a story, right?
That's the most common thing.
So just a shout out for being one of the most useful people ever.
And the news business. When he talks, I feel that whether I agree with him or not, it's just not bullshit.
It's just like an actual honest opinion based on data and stuff.
It's so rare that I call him out.
It's like, all right, because I'm going to be talking about people doing the opposite in the pit.
And what he pointed out was about Dr.
Fauci, and it explained to me...
Why I'm not as bothered by Fauci as almost everybody else seems to be.
Fauci has sort of become, you know, our coronavirus Grinch, right?
He's sort of the Grinch of the coronavirus, and everybody wants to hate him.
But I haven't ever felt that.
And I was trying to figure out why.
Like, why is it that, you know, Fauci could be right or wrong, but I don't have bad feelings about him at all.
Brit Hume explains it.
Indirectly, he wasn't trying to.
But he says, remember, in this tweet he said about Fauci, he said his job is to fight the COVID outbreak.
He has no responsibility for children's mental health or education.
The economy is someone else's problem.
So are missed cancer, screening, suicides, and other collateral damage from lockdowns.
And that explained it.
It explained my own opinion to me.
And that is that I only saw Fauci as a bad cop.
And as a bad cop, he's excellent.
It's not his job to tell you what to do about the economy.
It's not his job, as Bray Hume points out.
It's just not his job, the other stuff.
So when you're evaluating Fauci, evaluate him on his job.
But also, you're an adult, so you can say it's not the only word on everything.
He's not in charge of the economy.
He's not in charge of children's suicides, etc.
I mean, he cares about those things, obviously.
He's a human, and he's American.
So, of course, he cares about those things, you assume.
But that's why I'm not bothered by him, because I see him in context.
If you see him out of context and you imagine that he is responsible for the economy and those other things, then he would be doing the worst job ever.
But he's not. He's only responsible for his little wing, and he's acting exactly like a guy who's responsible for that little wing.
So just keep that frame in mind when you're judging him.
I think he's very valuable.
Very valuable. I don't agree with him on everything.
But I think he's very valuable.
You've just got to keep him in his box as to what his job is.
That's a very good addition from Brit Hume.
Of course, the Tiger Woods accident is all the headlines because it's Tiger Woods.
But what are the odds that the best golfer of all time can't drive straight and ended up in the rough?
I feel as though this simulation is just messing with us.
Because, really? Really?
The best golfer in the world, he can't drive straight, and he ends up in the rough.
That doesn't even feel like a coincidence.
It just feels like the simulation ran out of ideas, and it's just recycling stuff.
But of course, everybody cares about Tiger Woods.
One of the things that Tiger Woods does, and I don't think he gets enough credit for it, he does get credit for it, but...
Can you think of anybody in the world, right?
But I'll say the United States just to keep it local-ish, but it would apply to the world.
Is there even one person who doesn't like Tiger Woods?
Besides maybe his ex-wife, I don't know.
He's like the most popular person ever.
And I think that his contribution to Let's say social cohesion and any racial stuff.
He's one of the most productive, useful, best things that's ever happened to America just by being good at golf and being at least partly black, which people see as black.
So I don't think we can understate his contribution to the betterment of our social situation.
Just by being black, somewhat, and excelling.
And, you know, being such a star.
And being so likable.
I mean, I think he's just good for the world.
There was a sports guy who got in trouble, Andy Scholz, because he sort of speculated that painkillers were part of the story, whereas there is no evidence of inebriation, but he hasn't been blood tested yet.
I would like to say that maybe Andy Schultz did get a little ahead of himself by speculating that he wasn't surprised about Tiger Woods' accident because Tiger Woods has a history of painkiller use and maybe overuse.
I think he went to some rehab for it.
But it is premature.
It would be premature if Somebody says 7.30 a.m., and he crashed that bad.
Well, that could be...
If he were taking any kind of painkillers because he had pain, and he did have back surgery recently, you would take them at any time of day, right?
You'd take them whenever they were prescribed.
So, yeah, that could certainly be a factor, but I don't feel like it explains it, does it?
How do you explain the extent of the accident that he went so far I don't even think drugs can explain it, right?
I feel like there's at least one other thing that we don't know about, and even if he has some painkillers in his body, I don't feel like that's what happened.
Somebody says he was probably texting.
I don't know. He could have been texting, but it just looks like something else happened, unless the speed was so high that we're fooled by it.
On the plus side, the SUV that he was in, the Genesis GV80, apparently performed well, because the entire front part of the cart was crushed, but Tiger survived in a pretty bad accident.
So, shout out to the makers of the Genesis GV80, Vehicle.
Assuming the vehicle was not part of the accident, it looks like it may have saved his life.
So there's some good engineering there.
Romney is saying that if Trump ran in 2024, he would easily win the nomination.
What do you think about that?
Do you think Trump would easily win the nomination?
I feel like he would, right?
Because you'd have a number of people running, And he would certainly get at least 25% of the vote, just like the last time.
And that would be more than any of the others individually got.
So just the fact that he's the biggest fish who would be in that lake, the biggest one gets nominated.
So it does look like Trump...
I would agree with Romney that if he ran again, he'd at least get the nomination.
I would be very skeptical that he could win the election...
He may be too crippled by the assault on the Capitol, but he could win a nomination.
Now, that brings up the second question of who are the leaders in this country anymore?
I feel like we have this gigantic vacuum of leadership, both on the left and the right.
Now, there are certainly people that are being talked about for running for president, but none of them have really the The kind of star power that we're used to.
And maybe it's just the Trump effect.
We have an expectation of a certain amount of star power, but maybe that's unrealistic.
So here's my take.
And I want to tell you that if you will be bothered in the future about me saying that AOC, like Trump, has real skill, even if you don't like your policies, You probably don't want to follow me, because I'm going to be talking about it a lot.
And the reason I'm going to be talking about it a lot is that AOC is the only leader in the country right now.
Now, I don't like the things she's talking about in every case.
Some of it I do like, actually.
So I'm not agreeing with her policies.
But I would say she's the only national leader we have at the moment.
I know that's a big statement, but I think it is.
And she is very wisely, which...
I mean, I think she's guaranteed to be president eventually.
I just don't know when.
So here's my prediction.
AOC is guaranteed to be president eventually.
Guaranteed. Unless there's some new scandal that we don't know about.
But if she just keeps doing what she's doing, she will be president.
And here's the thing.
You can back a leader that you don't agree with if they're leading.
At least they're leading.
I backed Trump, as you know, even though there were a number of things that he wanted to do that I would not agree with, such as deporting 11 million people when he took office.
Now, I knew that he wouldn't do that, and he didn't.
But... I can back a leader who has things and their policies I don't like.
As long as they're a leader.
Because you need the leadership, right?
You can't do without it.
And I would say AOC is now the only national leader, if you don't count Trump, who's sort of on hiatus at the moment.
I'm watching the comments and watching people throwing up.
People are going into spasms.
No, she's not a leader.
She's a fake leader.
Calling her a fake isn't saying anything because all leaders are putting on a show.
So she's putting on a show, and if you say to me, but wait, she's fake because she's just putting on a show, I say, what did you think Trump was?
He was a guy who was smart enough to know how to put on a show, and it worked.
Same skills. All right, so AOC is in the news again because she took on the...
Biden administration for reopening the Texas migrant facilities, which in the past have been called kids in cages, although the actual cage cage may be down the road if the numbers keep coming in the way they are.
But still, it's a facility where you're locking up kids, and AOC came out publicly, and even though it's her own party, she said, this is not okay.
And she said, never has been okay, never will be okay, no matter the administration or party, she tweeted.
That's leadership. That's leadership.
All right, I'm going to delete you.
All right, let me give you a rule here.
Everybody who says that when I talk about AOC's skill, that I'm really having a crush on her, you're just going to get blocked.
Because I don't want to deal with that level of high school mentality.
People can be female and also good at leadership.
Can we not accept that that's like a thing?
So goodbye to Kent.
All right, if anybody else wants to suggest that my real interest in her is because she's a woman, I'd like to block you right away so I don't have to deal with that anymore.
Okay? Alright.
Who else would you say?
I'd like to see in your comments.
I've made a claim that some of you don't like, that she's the only national leader at the moment.
Because she's going against her own party.
You're not a leader if all you're doing is agreeing with your side.
Did Trump always just agree with his side?
He didn't. That's partly why there's so much trouble, right?
He was always fighting with his own side.
If you're not fighting with your own side, in addition to the other side, you're not a leader.
You're just a team player.
So until you see somebody cross their own party line, you're not talking about a leader.
You're just talking about a political hack, basically.
So AOC has done it twice in the past week.
I forget what the other one was.
But we have one leader in the country, like it or not.
Give me another name of somebody who would fall into that camp.
I'm seeing Rand Paul Tulsi.
Tulsi's a good name in that.
I would say Tulsi, compared to AOC, would be...
I hate to say this because I really like Tulsi Gabbard as a political voice.
But I feel like she's the Mike Pence to AOC being Trump.
I hate to say that.
That's really not a fair thing to say.
But Tulsi doesn't bring the heat, you know, the energy.
And partly because her personality is sort of low-key.
So she brings capability and good things that you like and would be a very capable president, in my opinion.
I could get behind that.
But I don't know if she has the star power.
Quite. It would be an interesting contest.
How would you like to see a presidential contest someday between Tulsi Gabbard and AOC? Just woman versus woman.
That'd be pretty interesting. I could get into that.
That would be fun. And maybe time.
Maybe it's time for two women to be running for president.
That would be the real shake-up, wouldn't it?
Somebody says she's charismatic and dangerous like many evil leaders of the past.
So she's added some nuance to what AOC has, to what she's saying about border and getting rid of ice and opening the borders and stuff.
And all of it sounds crazy, right?
When you first hear it, you're like, what are you talking about, opening the borders?
That's the worst idea I've ever heard in the entire world.
But if you actually hear her talk about it in more depth...
What she's talking about is figuring out how to do it.
And the idea is that there might be a big idea of just rethinking everything that would make aggressive border control not necessary.
It doesn't mean it would be bad for the United States, but there's the feeling that you could get from where we are to some better place, and we don't know what the path is.
Now, what do you think of that?
What do you think of the fact that AOC's plan for immigration is, we'll do something that nobody's thought of yet, and I haven't thought of it either.
But it'll be really good, and it'll fix things.
What do you think of a plan like that?
Is your first thought, oh my god, she doesn't have a plan.
There's no plan. Right?
That's your first thought. Here's my first thought.
That's the leader I want.
Now, I'm not saying AOC. I'm saying I want a leader who talks exactly like that.
That's exactly what I want to hear.
I want to hear that here's where we want to get to, here's where we are, and we have no idea how to get there, but damn it, we're going to figure it out.
We're going to figure it out.
And if we can't figure it out, well, at least we tried.
That's the leader I want.
I don't want somebody who says, you know, I'm not even going to try to get there unless I know all the steps.
When Kennedy said we're going to the moon, did he say we already know how to get to the moon?
No. The reason Kennedy is called such a great leader for saying we're going to the moon is specifically because, wait for it, we didn't know how to do it.
I mean, we figured we could figure it out, But we didn't know how, when he talked about it.
We don't know how to fix immigration such that strong enforcement would not even be necessary.
We don't know how to do that.
AOC says, let's figure it out.
I like that.
I don't know if we can figure it out, but I also would not have known if we could figure out landing on the moon.
I wouldn't have known. I was somebody who challenges us.
AOC challenged the country to figure out how to do this without being cruel to people coming across.
Is it impossible?
If you say it's impossible, check your thinking.
It might be impossible.
I can't see a way to do it.
I don't think you can see a way to do it.
But I don't want to live in a country where my leader agrees with me, right?
I don't want my leader to say, oh, you can't see how to do it?
I guess we can't do it.
I guess we can't go to the moon.
Anybody? Anybody? Can somebody build a rocket?
Anybody in the audience? None of you?
Nobody knows how to build a rocket to the moon.
I guess we can't go. You don't need that kind of leadership.
You need the people who say, we're going to make this work.
We don't know how yet.
But we're going to make it work.
We don't know how. Now, or she's crazy.
In the comments, somebody says, or she's crazy.
Well, let me put it to you this way.
If she were crazy, you'd see it in lots of different ways, I think.
It would be sort of obvious.
But if she's smarter than you think she is, she would talk like this.
She says directly, I don't know how to do it.
If she said, I do know how to do it, but I'm not telling you, well, then she's crazy.
Or if she said, I do know how to do it, and what she described clearly wouldn't work, such as just throwing the gates open and opening the border.
But she's not saying that.
She is smart enough to know that that wouldn't work.
And she doesn't know what would work.
But she has a moonshot idea about how to get there.
All right, Chris Silliza, let's talk about the fake news.
So I love how CNN creates news out of nothing using the opinion people.
And they're not alone.
I suppose Fox News does the same.
But this example shows you how it's done.
So Chris Eliza, in a larger article talking about a number of things, talks about Senator Johnson said last week that he didn't believe what happened at the Capitol was, quote, an armed insurrection.
So there's a quote from a senator saying he didn't think it was an armed insurrection at the Capitol.
And then Silliza finishes that sentence with, comma, despite ample evidence that it was.
So it's just put out there like common knowledge.
Despite ample evidence that it was an armed insurrection.
To which I say, I didn't see any.
Did they report some ample evidence that it was an armed insurrection?
I didn't see any evidence.
In fact, I saw lots of evidence that it wasn't.
I mean, lots and lots of evidence that it wasn't.
It was just individuals who wanted a different election outcome or wanted transparency.
But he just puts it out there in an opinion article as if that's just an established fact.
Now, if you were a CNN consumer and you weren't, let's say, following news every day, but you read this article...
Wouldn't you accept that this must be just an established fact?
Never happened. Nothing like this established that as a fact.
In fact, it's obviously not true.
You don't even have to be an expert to know that's not true.
You just look at the photos of the actual assault.
They're obviously not trying to overthrow the government.
They could never have had any plan that says, if we put the Viking hat guy and the...
Zip-tie guy in this room that's empty, they will control the government of the United States.
I mean, it's just ridiculous. So this is one example of CNN, their technique for perpetuating fake news.
Tucker Carlson had a real interesting piece about the disinformation campaign in this country, so-called disinformation campaign, and There's a part I don't quite agree with Tucker,
but sadly, I've had enough experience disagreeing with Tucker and then later agreeing with him that I'm not going to say that just because I disagree with him on a minor point, I'll tell you in a minute, that he's necessarily wrong.
So don't take that from it.
I'm just saying I'm not on the same page, but he could be right.
We'll find out. And here's his point.
That there was a researcher who found out that around 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street stuff was happening, and remember, Occupy Wall Street was really about going after the rich, the Wall Street rich, those rich people.
So it was an anti-rich movement, anti-rich people movement.
Have you heard about that lately?
When was the last time you heard about Occupy Wall Street and all those rich people?
It just sort of went away, didn't it?
What replaced it?
Well, what replaced it is the narrative that the biggest problem in the United States is race.
It was just replaced.
So instead of going after rich people, it turned into the races going after each other.
And who...
How did that happen? How'd that happen?
Did it just sort of naturally happen?
Did it evolve into happening and there was no decision-making?
Well, here's where I might be on a different page from Tucker, because the suggestion, or at least what I took from it, I could be misinterpreting it, but I took from Tucker's piece that there was some intention there by...
Important figures who are the puppet masters of our society to make people stop focusing on the rich, because the rich people don't want that, and give you a diversion, something shiny.
Here's something to back Tucker's point.
He says that, let's see, when people were asked how many unarmed, the key word is unarmed, People have been killed by police, specifically how many unarmed African Americans were gunned down by police in 2019.
So they do a survey and they say, take your best guess how many unarmed, keyword unarmed, black citizens were gunned down by cops that year, presumably meaning killed.
What do you think people guessed?
Democrats guessed 44% of liberals said they believed it was about 1,000 or more per year.
That's because they listened to the news and social media.
And they believed 44% of liberals, almost half, believe that the number is close to 1,000 or more.
Now, let me ask you something.
If police were killing a thousand unarmed black men a year in this country, you couldn't keep me off the street, right?
Like I would be in Black Lives Matter, like I would be a charter member, dues-paying member.
If this number were anywhere near that, you would have to leave your house, you would have to protest, you would have to defund the police.
You would have to, if this were even close to true.
But of course it's not.
The real number is under 30.
So liberals think it's a thousand or more a year.
You would act very differently if it were a thousand or more a year.
You would act very differently.
So you can almost understand why there's this big difference.
There's a news...
Black hole, no pun intended, in which liberals just don't know what's happening.
And conservatives do.
So actually 25% of conservatives even thought that.
What? What kind of news are the conservatives watching?
Because I don't know any conservative news sites that have reported this incorrectly or suggested that it was anywhere in that range.
But even the conservative news Talks about what CNN talks about.
In other words, the news covers the news.
So maybe wherever you watch, you could be misled.
But just think how big a deal that is.
I mean, and then this question was not asked, but how many liberals believe that President Trump once said that neo-Nazis were fine people?
I'll bet it's over 80%.
Could be 90%.
I'll bet 90% of liberals believe that that fake news actually happened.
Most conservatives know it's a hoax.
If you look at the full transcript, he said the opposite.
But, man, it is so clear that the real problem in this country is a disinformation campaign from the media.
And it's hard to discount it as unintentional, isn't it?
It's really hard to look at this set of facts and say, well, nobody's doing that intentionally.
Although I'm not sold that the case has been made, that there are shadowy puppet masters.
Who are they? What are their names?
When did they have a meeting?
Did they have a meeting, or did they just know what to do?
So that part, I'm not quite buying that it was a plot.
But you can buy that it happened.
You can simply observe that the movement against Occupy Wall Street disappeared at about the same time that the word racism took off in mentions in the media.
Now, there were also events.
There was a George Floyd event, other tragic events, so there were reasons.
But were all of those reasons present in 2011?
Did the country become more bad racist since 2011?
I don't think so. I feel like we probably got less racist, just like every single year of the United States.
Probably every year of the Republic, people on average have gotten a little less racist.
It feels like it to me. You know, maybe any given year might be different, but over time.
So wouldn't you say that racism is probably, somewhat, Less than it was in 2011, when apparently that wasn't even a big issue, relative to the Occupy Wall Street issue being bigger.
In other news, there's a flight, American Airlines flight, that reported a UFO sighting, doesn't mean it's an alien ship, just unidentified, that looked like a cruise missile that just went over their plane.
Now, do you believe that there was an unidentified long tubular object that went right over an airplane that was not known to flight control?
And the way they asked the question was, they said, the pilot said, do you have any targets up here?
Because he thought a missile just went past him at a target.
And he was wondering, is there anything in the air near me?
Then I need to worry about because somebody shot a missile at it?
I'd be worried about that.
Now, of course, we don't know the answer to this.
We don't know that anything got shot into the air or that any big missiles landed anywhere that we don't know about.
So it's just a mystery.
That's all it is. If I had to guess, I would say they didn't see anything.
Maybe they saw a shadow of some kind.
I don't know. So my guess is they didn't see anything, but we'll find out.
There's a story about a woman who's a trophy hunter getting a lot of heat for killing a giraffe, cutting out its heart, which is pretty big, and holding it up for social media.
Now, if that wasn't bad enough, apparently this one woman has killed over 500 big animals, lions, leopards, elephants, etc.
500! And she was really, really excited and couldn't handle herself properly.
When she learned that she could kill an adult giraffe.
Now, I'm not anti-hunting per se.
You know, there are some times when it makes sense.
And if she had gone big game hunting once or twice, I wouldn't like it.
But I'd have a different opinion than if she did it 500 times.
If you kill 500 big animals, you're just a serial killer Who doesn't want to get in trouble with the law?
It feels like that's just a serial killer vibe, doesn't it?
I don't know. But she's pretty happy with herself.
I also wonder if she owns a pet.
Imagine if you had killed 500 mammals for fun.
Does she have a dog?
Does she? Does she have a dog?
Because that dog would be really nervous.
I mean, would she ever look at her dog and think to herself, I love my dog, but oh man, it would be fun to kill it.
I'd love to just shoot my dog.
If you've killed 500 mammals, you don't think she fantasizes about shooting her own dog?
If she has one. Anyway, Biden is allegedly...
I think we need some confirmation on this story because I saw it in an Asian publication, but apparently Biden is considering an executive order to push alternate supply chains to go around China, specifically for tech stuff like chips and batteries and rare earth stuff.
Now, if that's true, that Biden has an EO coming...
In which we're going to build out a separate supply chain that doesn't involve China, I would be giving Biden a lot of credit for that.
Now, I would think that he wouldn't do it if Trump had not gotten the ball rolling in turning the opinion of the United States citizens against China.
If Trump had not made it possible for Biden to do this, I don't think he could have.
So if this happens, I will give Biden credit.
Because, you know, that's the rule, right?
If something good happens under his administration, I'm going to give him credit, but we can put an asterisk next to it and say, you know, it wouldn't have happened without Trump.
But still, Biden has to do it, so he gets credit if he does it.
And this would be very important, but I don't know if it's true yet.
Apparently, Biden has not declared yet that the Uyghur situation in China is a genocide.
I guess Trump made that declaration just before he left to sort of leave it with Biden as a problem.
And Biden, he has not decided to do that.
Canada, however, the parliament voted Monday to pass a non-binding motion classifying China as being involved in a genocide.
So Canada, good work.
United States, look at Canada.
Come on. Biden, Canada did it.
You can do it. Do it.
Do it, Joe. Do it.
All right. And I remind you that we are in a war with China and they're killing 70,000 people a year with fentanyl, which they easily could stop because there's one guy in charge of it.
We've already told them who his name is.
They know where he is. He's still doing it.
So China has decided explicitly to send us fentanyl and kill us and to not stop it.
If we sent them some fentanyl their way, it would not be inappropriate.
Probably not a good idea.
But it would not be morally wrong to fight fire with fire.
That's just my opinion.
That's just my opinion.
Somebody says, where is Jack Ma?
I don't know. He's got a problem.
Alright, my next segment is called Experts Are Dumb.
And I've been having an online conversation with a number of doctors and ER doctors and pediatricians who are very mad at me for having opinions.
Oh, they're very mad at me.
Because if you've noticed, I am not a doctor.
And apparently you can't have doctor-related opinions if you're not one because they'll be pretty mad at you.
Pretty mad! But here's what I've learned.
The whole question about the seasonal flu, the regular flu, killing 50,000 people a year, which I am skeptical of, I've been learning more about that.
And when I hear that children were dying from it, I had some questions.
And here's what I've learned.
That even if you don't have a...
An underlying problem that has a name to it, the regular flu can kill you if you're a child under specific conditions.
And I guess the specific condition is a high viral load with some kind of difference in the architecture of your lungs that would make you somewhat unique, and maybe something about the immune system not being developed.
I don't know about that.
That there's something different about the children who die from the flu, both in exposure level and architecture of the lungs.
Now, that sort of opens up the question of what it means to be healthy.
What's the definition?
Would that be a definition of a healthy child dying from the virus when 99.9% of children don't and don't even get close to death?
So would you say that that's a healthy child when they can't survive the environment that they are meant to be in?
So if you say, yes, that kid is completely healthy, because if they didn't have access to this virus, they'd be fine.
But what would you say about a bubble boy?
Somebody who, if they left their bubble, almost any kind of infection would kill them.
When they're inside the bubble, do you call them healthy?
Because they are. They could live out their whole life without a physical problem if they don't get infected.
So is that person healthy?
See, you can see how the definition of what healthy means is driving the discussion.
It's not about what's happening.
It's about what you insist is the word you're going to use.
That's word thinking, I call it.
It's people who think they're arguing, but they're really trying to hold on to a definition or win by defining the word the way that works for them.
Here's my definition of healthy.
It's different from the medical definition.
It's more of a common sense definition.
It goes like this. If you are not capable of surviving the environment for which you are naturally born into, such as just living in the atmosphere...
I don't know that I would call that healthy.
I would call that somebody who has a major health problem because the normal environment operating just the way you think it will will kill them, but it wouldn't kill 99.9% of people who had exactly the same exposure.
I would call that unhealthy.
By definition. But, in a medical sense, if they have not been exposed to the thing that's going to hurt them, doctors are going to say, no, that's perfectly healthy.
It's the virus that killed them.
That's kind of a definitional problem, isn't it?
Aren't we both talking about the same thing?
That you need the virus, but you also need the person to have a specific situation going on.
And if you call that specific situation perfectly healthy, It just happens to cause you to die if it comes in contact with something that is commonly in your environment.
I'm not sure I would call that healthy.
So I don't know that there's a disagreement about that other than what word you want to use for it.
But on top of that is the question of why we don't hear about people dying of the regular flu.
When they're allegedly dying in the same numbers as people who die from car accidents and overdoses, and we hear about them all the time.
We personally know people who have died from those other things.
Almost every adult does.
But I don't know anybody who died from regular flu.
Then somebody on social media said, Scott, you're finally on our side now.
We've been saying the same thing about coronavirus.
That the way it's counted is probably wrong.
To which I say, wait a minute.
No, I am making the opposite point.
Completely opposite point.
If you think that me questioning the statistics of regular seasonal flu is sort of the same argument as the people who are questioning the number of people dying from coronavirus, you have 100% backwards.
They're opposites.
The question is, why does my observation, as just living in the world, not agree with the science?
In the case of the normal flu, there's a disagreement.
My observation is I haven't seen anybody die of regular flu.
Now, I'm not saying that children haven't died.
There are enough reports that that's obviously true.
But how come I have so many examples of COVID... I observe people I know who know other people, etc., who have really died of COVID, and there are half a million of them.
In the case of COVID, the science says a whole bunch of people are dying.
My observation is that a whole bunch of people are dying.
Completely compatible.
Observation and scientific opinion totally match.
Now, that doesn't mean they're both right, but at least they match.
In the regular flu deaths, my observation is nowhere near the scientific opinion.
That's the problem.
I'm not making a statement about what the answer is to unravel that.
It's a question. It's a legitimate question, meaning I don't have the answer, and I'm not telling you that the question tells you what to think about the answer.
If you jump to a conclusion because I ask a question, that's sort of on you.
Because I'm not jumping to any conclusions.
I actually don't know why this mystery endures, that the observation and the science don't match.
All right, so...
Let's see, what else have we got here?
Let me ask you this question, just to make it more provocative.
If somebody has an allergy to peanuts...
Allergy to peanuts...
And they go forth in the world and they encounter some peanuts and they die.
What does the death certificate say if you are allergic to peanuts, you're exposed to them and then you die?
Would the death certificate say killed by peanuts?
What do you think? Would the death certificate say that?
Killed by peanuts.
Cause of death? Peanuts.
No. No.
But if you get exposed to the virus, let's say the regular seasonal virus, the cause of death would be the virus.
But why isn't the cause of death with the peanut the peanut?
And the answer to what the death certificate says is anaphylactic, if I'm saying it right, anaphylactic shock, right?
That's what the death certificate would say.
Now, you need both the person to have a biological genetic propensity, and then you also need the peanut.
If you only have one or the other, the person is alive.
Both situations.
Gotta have a peanut, gotta have a natural reaction to it.
How's that different from the virus?
If you only have the virus, And 99.9% of the people, let's say the seasonal virus, not the coronavirus.
If you only have the seasonal virus, and your body is like 99.9% of all other bodies, no problem.
It's only when you have both situations, a virus plus a body that by its design or nature can't handle it.
So in one case, you say the cause of death is the virus.
In the other case, you say it's the reaction to the virus based on peanut plus whatever you naturally have going on.
You see that they're handled differently, right?
Now, my only point is we're talking about definitions of words.
It's maybe not a real argument.
All right. Analogy.
Now, an analogy can help you understand a concept, which is what I just did.
It doesn't help you win an argument.
So it would not be true that, therefore, peanuts are handled this way, therefore I'm right about viruses.
That would be irrational, because it's just two different situations.
But if the peanut thing makes you ask the question, hey, if you need two things...
The pina and the person being in a special situation, it helps you think differently about the other one.
So helping you think differently is what it does.
It's not like a reason.
So that's the difference.
Why doesn't pointing out hypocrisy work?
I don't know the answer to that, except I'll speculate.
And I've said forever that pointing out somebody's hypocrisy never makes them change their mind.
And the reason is they know they're doing it.
So the people who are being hypocritical, they know they're being hypocritical.
They're doing it because they're taking a side.
They're on a team. So if you point out to somebody, hey, you're being hypocritical, you're not telling them something they don't know.
You have not introduced new information.
They never meant to be serious.
They're just making an argument because they think it might work.
That's all. That's all.
So, yeah, hypocrisy, pointing it out, will never change anybody's opinion.
I've never seen it, have you?
Have you ever seen anybody change their opinion because somebody said, hey, you're a hypocrite, and then the person says, oh, yeah, yeah, I hadn't really looked at it that way, but now that you mention it, I'm a hypocrite.
I changed my mind.
I think I'll not be a hypocrite.
No. They will immediately tell you the situations are different.
That's it. They'll just say, ah, it's a different situation.
I'm not a hypocrite. Did the butter kill the man with a heart attack?
Butter's good for you. You have to use a better example.
We used to think butter was bad, but we learned it is not.
I believe that's the current science, is that butter is not bad for you.
All right. Like eating meat, but being against killing giraffes is hypocrisy.
Yeah, so I don't eat meat, so I can say anything I want about giraffes.
But I don't think that the big game hunting and killing animals for food, that is not the same thing.
I can certainly understand that you have to kill something to eat.
That's different. No meat for you?
Why? The only reason I don't eat meat is because I don't digest it well.
I do eat some fish, but I don't love it.
I just do it for the health benefits.
Alright. Somebody says, big game hunting supports big game.
Well, the experts, based on reading about it this morning, A lot of experts are saying that that is a ridiculous argument and that big game hunting does not support big game.
There's an argument that it does, but smart people say that's a ridiculous argument.
I don't know who's right, but it doesn't sound like a good argument to me.
Somebody says, let's see, Robo Steve says, Scott, tying himself in knots, trying to defend his nonsense.
Is that a reason? Is that a good comment right there?
Tying myself in knots, trying to defend my reasons.
Let me tell you, if you think...
Let me ask the rest of you here.
Many of you disagree with me on lots of different things, which is part of the fun of coming here, right?
If you agreed with me all the time, I don't know, it would be as much fun.
But... Would you say, for the benefit of Steve here, that even when you disagree with me, am I irrational often?
Are my arguments unreasonable?
Even when you disagree with me, don't you think that at least the arguments got some merit?
I mean, you might think I have a fact wrong, or maybe you think I haven't considered everything.
But do you think my arguments are twisted in pretzels?
It's hard to know, based on the comments, whether people just agree with me and so therefore I look brilliant.
If you agree with somebody, they look brilliant in general.
Yeah, I would like to suggest that whoever says I'm tying myself in pretzels with my argument, I'm not saying I'm right all the time or anything like that.
But I don't think you'll find the arguments are too irrational.
And when they are, people point it out and sometimes I adjust.
All right. Somebody says, sometimes you can say, maybe I got that wrong, though.
That flu thing was like a pretzel.
Well, give me an example.
See, here's my contention, that those of you who are having the And whoever says sophistry as well.
Those of you who say, that's sophistry, or you're twisted in pretzels, my observation of living life and being a trained hypnotist is that those people are experiencing cognitive dissonance.
And that's exactly what it feels like.
So if you're...
My take on my argument was, well, I understand your argument, Scott, but I disagree with it because of this reason or this fact or this priority.
You probably are not experiencing cognitive dissonance.
You're a person with a different opinion.
If you listened to my opinion on the regular flu stuff and you concluded that it didn't make sense, that it was all like pretzely and sophistry, You are almost certainly experiencing cognitive dissonance.
And the reason I point that out is look at the other people's comments.
When you see, let's say, I'll just pick a number for arguments, 75% of the people say, I completely understand your argument, even if I don't agree with it.
And then 25% say, I think your argument is pretzel logic and sophistry.
Almost always you can depend on those people being the cognitive dissonance ones, and the people who say, I see the argument, but sometimes I disagree with it, this reason or that.
Probably just different opinions.
Alright. So, that's all I got for you.
And now, I take my leave, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Bye for now. Alright, YouTubers, I've got an extra minute.
By the way, on YouTube, I'll just tell you guys, I created yesterday on the Locals platform, a subscription service, a lesson on how to become a cartoonist.
Now, separately, I'll do a lesson on how to draw a cartoon, but the business side and what tools to use and how to think about it and how to break into the business and sort of the general setup of how someone would become a cartoonist is now on the Locals platform.
Locals.com. Just search for my name.
The reason I did it is not because I think a lot of people want to become cartoonists.
What you'll find is a whole lot of non-obvious suggestions, which I think you'll find interesting, just the non-obvious ones.
And it'll also give you an idea about breaking into any kind of field that is unfamiliar.
So if you look at the concepts that I talk about with cartooning, really?
Richard McCarthy, did you really just send me $100?
You're a saint. You know, I have to say that it's weird.
It would not be telling you something you don't know that I'm rich.
The Dilbert cartoon did a good job for me.
And I don't do this because of the money, right?
But I do monetize.
I do monetize, and that does make me work harder.
I'm pretty sure that I do more work because it's monetized.
Actually, I'm positive.
There's no doubt about it.
I do way more effort and put more into it because it's monetized, even if I don't need the money.
When I just saw that notice come in, somebody just gave me $100.
I don't know why exactly, but I did something that somebody said, that's worth $100.
And I've got to say that while I don't need $100, that you made my day.
Because I just feel like a compliment, right?
But a compliment with money.
That's a real compliment. You don't have to wonder if it's insincere, right?
It's $100. That's sincere.
So thank you for that.
That actually moved me because it's just a vote of confidence, and I appreciate it.
