Episode 1357 Scott Adams: The Oscars Become More Useless Than Ever, Iran Secret Recording, CNN Propaganda Trick, More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Val Demings on Ma'Khia Bryant shooting
Foreign Minister of Iran on Suleimani
Visual persuasion for global warming
Fareed Zakaria on nuclear power
Propaganda technique, the fast talking list
Marjorie Taylor Greene, America First
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Ah. That's so good.
So good. Well, I finally reached 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Yay. Maybe that'll make a difference.
We'll see. What else is happening?
I hear there was something called an Oscars last night.
I have a vague memory of something about that being relevant in the past.
But these days, movies are nothing but self-indulgent crap that nobody should spend money on or spend hours watching.
I don't think there's any reason to watch a movie anymore.
The whole industry doesn't make any sense.
And so the Oscars had a self-congratulatory party in which they all celebrated their wokeness and the immense shittiness of their products.
And I don't know if anybody watched.
Did anybody watch? Is there anybody here who watched the Oscars?
Just anybody.
I remember when it used to be sort of a must-see TV, and now it's closer to must-not-see.
I'll tell you, you would have to pay me to watch a movie.
Like, actually, you would have to give me money to watch a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
Because they're not even trying to make these entertaining anymore.
They're trying to win Oscars.
And that means everybody's got to be sad and droopy and bad things happen until you go home feeling like you want to kill yourself.
So, movies don't make any sense.
They're all crap. Don't watch them.
If I haven't told you before, there's a site called Ground News that tracks blind spots in the news coverage.
So if somebody on the left, or let's say all the news outlets on the left have a story, but everybody on the right is not covering it, or vice versa, you can see that.
And here's a really good example.
I tweeted it, but Most of you heard the news that the newest CDC advice, or there was a study that showed that it doesn't matter if you're six feet away or 60 feet away, it's all the same.
It's no risk at six feet.
And that seemed like good news for everybody, wasn't it?
Was that good news only for conservatives?
Seems like that would be good news for everybody.
But only the conservative media covered it.
The left completely ignored it.
Why? Because it doesn't fit their narrative of what they want the public to do.
It was true information that was useful and relevant, and they didn't report it because they didn't want you to know it.
I assume they wouldn't want you to know that it was that safe because it works against the narrative that you've got to mask up and hide inside.
So when you see something like that, it's a reminder that the news is not the news.
It's a narrative.
It's about managing your actions.
It's not about what you know.
So that's why that happens.
Let me ask you, when you heard the news, and I say news...
With quotes, when you heard the news that Joe Biden's climate change plan would limit Americans to one hamburger per month, was there any point at which you believed that to be true?
Because if at any point you saw that news that said that the Biden plan would limit you to one hamburger a month, and you thought that might be true...
You really need to examine your gullibility because that was so obviously not true from the first moment.
You didn't really need to wait for details on that one.
I saw the headline and I said, all right, let's see, 24 hours until that's completely debunked.
Done. Completely debunked.
The fact checker said, nope, nothing like that.
No requirement like that.
So here is my rule for that.
This is the Scott Alexander rule, not the Scott Adams rule.
And it goes like this.
If there's a story in the news that's just a little bit too on the nose and a little bit too crazy, like you say to yourself, my God, That couldn't possibly be true.
The next thing you should say to yourself is, oh, it probably isn't.
Because you'll be right about 98% of the time.
If your first instinct is, I'm not sure that's true, go with it.
You'll be right 98% of the time.
So when I heard this story, my first instinct was, nope, nope, there's no chance that's true.
And sure enough, it's debunked.
I saw a question on the internet today.
Are humans evolving to be smarter?
In other words, especially with modern education and modern everything, are we accelerating how smart people are getting?
Are we evolving to be smarter?
Because I don't think we are.
I feel like maybe it's working in the other direction a little bit.
Feels like it.
Now, It's misleading because when you look at, say, the writings of the ancients, the only ones you're going to see are the most educated, smartest people.
So it might feel like they were smarter back then.
But I ask the question, how is it that we can't figure out how to build a pyramid without modern tools?
Because the Egyptians figured out how to build a pyramid without modern tools, but we don't know how to do it.
How about those big... Heads on Easter Island.
Not quite so sure how to do that, are we?
Well, I would just like to put that out there that maybe people in general are getting dumber.
And there would be reasons for that.
Because our technology is beaming stupidity right into our brains.
Probably a good third of the country believes they can't eat more than one hamburger next year.
Right? So think about all the people who believe the hamburger story.
Did they get smarter?
Or did they get dumber?
They got dumber, right?
Because the fake news is just not true.
So to the extent that you believe any fake news, you're getting dumber.
Now, in the old days, they didn't have as robust a 24-hour news situation.
So I imagine that they were fed less fake news.
Now, of course, they knew less.
Science was backwards, etc.
But I've got a feeling that we're actually making people stupid.
That our technology is targeting the weak and just turning them dumber and less capable.
At the same time, That would be more of an average.
But at the same time, the smartest people are more easily finding each other.
Because if you're smart, you just look for another smart person, and technology lets you find them pretty quickly.
So if the smartest people are marrying the smartest people, and that's largely true, because they don't want to, you know, if you're really smart, you'll need to be with somebody else who's smart, they're going to have smart kids.
And so we're going to have one segment of society that's sort of hyper-evolving to extra smartness, while the rest of society is consuming fake news and getting dumber.
The difference in, you know, IQs is going to become a problem.
I mean, you could argue it already is, but I think the fact that in the old days you ended up marrying whoever was nearby guaranteed the smart people...
We're usually going to marry dumb people, because there are more dumb people than smart people, and you just married whoever was available and nearby.
But once you can look for another smart person, you're going to have these ultra-smart people who have bred ultra-smart kids, or maybe those kids will have problems.
I don't know.
I think I'll...
I'm just going to block you, Dean, just for being an all-caps guy.
Okay.
Time out for you.
All right. So here's a little update on the Matt Gaetz sex scandal.
How about all those details, huh?
None. How about all those witnesses that came forward?
None. How about all the confirmed illegal acts that are part of this story?
None. Three weeks.
Nothing. Does that bother you?
Three weeks this story's been out there, and nothing.
Nothing confirmed.
No human being who confirmed it.
Nothing. Now, that doesn't mean that it won't happen.
I'm just saying this looks a little bit unusual, doesn't it?
So, keep an eye on this.
As David Reboi, I hope I'm saying that right, Reboi, said in American Greatness that, indeed, this might be the longest-running, quote, sex scandal in the nation's history without an accuser.
There's no accuser, I mean, publicly, that we know about.
Amazing. More than 500 federally funded scientists in the United States are under investigation of For being compromised by China and other foreign powers.
The NIH said 500 of our scientists might be in the pocket or at least influenced by China.
That's pretty scary.
Don't you think we ought to do something about that?
As in, China should not be giving any money to anybody in our universities.
I think maybe we should tighten that up a little bit.
On Face the Nation, some big news happened.
Do you know what makes big news?
It's when something happens that you think shouldn't happen.
It's not news when somebody just does something well.
That's not news. But if something's like way out of the box, you know, like a man bites a dog, that's news.
You know, dog bites man, not so much.
Ordinary. But on Face the Nation, here's the big news.
They put a politician on TV who told the truth.
And that was national news.
I'm not joking.
A politician told the truth on television, and it became national news.
Here's the specific truth.
Former Orlando police chief, Representative Val Demings, so when she was asked about the shooting of Maquia Bryant, and that was the young woman who had the knife, who was killed by the officer who was responding as she was in the act of, it looked like, in the act of stabbing the other woman.
And She said she looked at the footage and basically said, it appears the officer responded as he was trained to do.
What? Are you allowed to tell the truth on TV? I didn't know you could do that.
So even though she's a Democrat, she decided that, I guess given that she's a former Orlando police chief, she just couldn't go on television like the other politicians and just lie about it.
So she decided to go on television and just tell a simple, obvious truth And telling the truth on television makes it world news.
It's a headline.
Because she told the truth.
That's it. There's no new information.
You know, you didn't learn anything.
Nothing was revealed.
She simply told the truth, and it's national news.
I mean, just think about that.
That's what makes news.
There's more criticism of Dr.
Fauci from some circles.
It's being said that he's flip-flopping again about whether you need masks outdoors.
But I guess the CDC will come up with some new guidelines that will exercise common sense.
So I think we're going to be a little bit freer outdoors.
I don't know about where you live, but where I live, so it's a suburban area, if you were to take a walk...
Down a typical neighborhood sidewalk, you might run into nobody coming the other direction, like in your entire walk.
Maybe one person coming the other direction.
Today, that one person all by themselves outdoors will usually have a mask on, where I live.
Now, I don't wear a mask to walk outdoors, right?
You know, the exception is if I go downtown, because the sidewalks are packed with people sometimes.
And even that's more just to be polite.
But there's a weird thing happening, which is, have you ever been in this situation where you walk up to a door and you're with some other people and you go to hold the door?
Let's say you're a man and you're going to hold the door for another man.
And the other guy says, no, after you.
And then you go, no, after you.
No, after you. No, after you.
And men do this about picking up the check as well.
I don't know if women do it.
I don't observe that as much.
But men will be like, oh, I'll pick up the check.
No, it's my turn. No, it's my turn.
And masks have kind of turned into that.
You'll see people try to out-polite you with masks, because really now it's just about politeness.
The outdoor masking, I don't think anybody Believes it makes a difference.
But it makes you look like you're the most polite person.
So I'll be walking down the sidewalk and I'll think, okay, I'll just sort of get off the sidewalk when I'm passing them.
Give them, you know, give them six feet because I don't have a mask on.
But in my head I'm thinking I'm just doing it to be polite.
I'm not really doing it because I think it's safer.
I'm doing it because I don't know if they're worried about it.
So it's just a courtesy.
But other people are trying to out-courtesy me.
So they'll wear two masks and run across the street because they're extra courteous.
I don't think it's about safety anymore.
I believe that 100% of outdoor mask wearing is not just signaling, because that's what I'm seeing in the comments.
Somebody says virtue signaling.
I don't think that's what it is.
I think it used to be, maybe.
But now I think it's just people trying to out-polite other people.
That's it. I don't think it's virtue signaling so much as being out-polite.
I guess you could say that's virtue, but it's a specific guy.
All right. There's an interesting recording of Iran's foreign minister.
So this was a released recording that he didn't know was going to be released.
This was Zarif.
The foreign minister.
Now, here's the first question you must ask.
How do we get a recording of the foreign minister of Iran talking candidly in a private scenario, or at least off the record?
How do we get that?
Clearly, I would say there is somebody or some people within the Iranian hierarchy Who are not so pro-Iranian hierarchy.
May want some change.
So there does seem to be some continuing evidence that at least Israel knows way too much about the inner workings of Iran.
So it would seem that Iran is completely compromised in terms of sources and insiders and etc.
So that's got to worry them.
But if you recall when President Trump ordered the assassination, I guess you'd call it, or the missile strike with the drone on Soleimani, the general who was running things over there, do you remember what I said about that situation?
Remember everybody, a lot of smart people were saying, hey, this is going to cause a big war in Iran?
And what did I say?
Does anybody remember? Does anybody remember what I predicted about that?
What I predicted was that Soleimani was probably not too popular.
Carpe. It's all about politeness.
Our church dropped the mass suggestion last week.
One person was wearing one on Sunday.
Yeah, it is about politeness.
Because as soon as you tell people they don't have to wear it, they take them off.
So you know it wasn't about safety, because the moment they have permission and it's polite to take off their masks, they take them off.
Anyway, thanks for the comment, carpe.
Anyway, back to this Iran thing.
So they must be terribly compromised, but as I predicted when Soleimani was taken out by Trump, I said, I'm not so sure that the Iranian leadership is mad about that.
Do you remember that? Was I the only person who said that?
As far as I know, there wasn't anybody else in the world that I heard.
Did you? I mean, if you heard somebody else say it, let me know.
But I don't think anybody else said, hey, hold on to this.
I think Iran is going to have a muted response because they might be happy about him being gone.
And it turns out that when we hear the secret tapes from this insider, Zarif, They were not too happy with him.
Apparently he was sort of acquiring too much power, making decisions outside of the leadership of the country, and they didn't like it.
And so, I think I'm the only person who got this right.
That Iran itself, the leadership anyway, would have mixed feelings about one of their top generals being assassinated.
And sure enough, their response was kind of small, right?
They had to do a little something, and they did, but kind of a small response.
And now we know from the insider that they might have been a little happy about that.
The other thing we learned is that Russia apparently was trying to kill any kind of Iranian deal with the United States that would be good for both Iran and the United States.
Think about that. I mean, just think about that.
Russia actively basically was spoiling relations between the United States and Iran because, of course, they would like Iran to be more in their camp, as would China.
And Zarif was even complaining that the current situation makes Iran depend on Russia and depend on China.
How would you like to depend on Russia and China?
And those are your two options.
Turns out Iran doesn't like that.
Do you know what they would really like?
To depend a little bit more on the United States.
To have a little bit of competition there.
So they don't have to depend on China.
They could do something with us.
Make a little competitive situation.
Surprised? No.
It turns out that what Iran would like, and really like, is to do more business with the United States.
Somebody says, where is this recording?
Well, look on my Twitter feed.
You'll see some links to stories.
And then I think, I don't know if you'll hear it, because it wouldn't be in English.
So I don't know. And if you're doubting whether it exists or it's accurate, I like where you're heading on this.
I think it's accurate, the story.
But if there's somebody out there doubting whether it's even true, I like how you're thinking.
Because it could be not true.
It's possible. I just think it probably is.
But I'm biased.
So I feel as if we've never been this close to doing something useful with Iran.
Now, of course, we can't let them keep their building nukes, etc.
But I feel like they really want a deal.
And I don't think that if they were not worried about their integrity of their country, I'm not so sure they wouldn't want to work with the United States.
Maybe you have to wait for the Ayatollah to pass on.
But I feel like we're this close.
I've said it before, we're only one Ayatollah away from peace.
That's not necessarily true, because the next leader might be worse.
You never know. But I feel like it's ready to tip in our direction.
So here's some persuasion updates.
In 2014...
48% of the country believe global warming was caused by human activity.
So fewer than half.
But fast forward from 2014 to 2020, of course, it's a little dated already, and we're up to 57%.
So now it's a clear majority believe global warming is caused in part by human activity.
The Biden states are 59% agreeing with that, while the Trump states are at 52, which is not that far away.
So whether a state went for Trump or Biden in the last election, more than half of them believe that global warming is caused by human activity, some part of it.
And then 43% believe it will harm them personally.
So the question of whether it exists, separate from the question of whether it will harm them personally, so more people think it's a thing than think it will hurt them personally.
Sounds about right, doesn't it?
Sounds about right. But here's the punchline to it all.
So this was an NBC article I was reading.
And in the article it says, But the extreme weather events of the past few years, from hurricanes and floods to deep droughts and wildfires, might have played a role.
In other words, the speculation is that people saw all these big weather events, fires and hurricanes, they tied it to climate change, And it made more people believe that climate change was a problem and that it was real.
But do you see any problem with this?
It turns out, and do a fact check me out here, but isn't the disaster evidence the least reliable of all the evidence?
In fact, it's sort of in question whether we can see the signal For climate change in any of this, right?
I need a fact check on this because I think there's some disagreement among scientists.
My understanding is that even the climate scientists don't see a clear signal that these big events are caused by climate change.
Can somebody fact check me on that?
So just that there's some disagreement on that.
That's the last I knew, unless it's been updated.
So, in other words, people are persuaded by the thing that is least true, or at least we have the lowest confidence that we can see it in the data.
But it's visual.
It's visual. There's pictures of hurricanes or pictures of fires.
You know, I breathe the smoke.
People see the cleanup.
As soon as you turn something visual, the persuasion goes through the roof.
So I think all we're seeing here is that the disasters are visual, and even though they should be the least persuasive part of the argument compared to stronger evidence, it's the most persuasive.
I mean, that's just how crazy people are, that the lowest credibility thing is the most persuasive.
It probably is, because it's visual.
All right. Apparently Europe is talking about letting people visit if you're fully vaccinated this summer.
So I don't know that there will ever be government requirements in the United States for any vaccinations or for any passports.
I tend to think not, but a lot of people are going to want it.
A lot of people are going to want to prove that they got their vaccinations just for private reasons, private business reasons.
So here's a big change, speaking of persuasion.
Fareed Zakaria on CNN is strongly in favor of nuclear power as really the only hope or something that's necessary, let's say, for remediating climate change.
So even a major CNN personality is saying, yeah, nuclear is the only way to go forward if you want to take care of a host of problems.
That feels like a big deal, doesn't it?
And I've said before that there's no such thing as a good president.
There are only presidents that fit the situation better.
And I would say that Biden might be exactly the right president because he could convince the left.
Trump would never be able to convince the left to do nuclear because it's Trump.
Biden is already sort of lukewarm on nuclear, so he wouldn't be going against anything he's ever said before.
And he could convince Democrats to go with it, I think.
And he could make it a green thing, and I think he could make it work.
So I think this is one of those cases where Biden is actually, weirdly, probably the right person.
You know, I said for four years that Trump should have made lots more noise about nuclear.
A big mistake, in my opinion.
I think his administration did a lot and really good stuff.
So the Department of Energy A-plus for pushing nuclear in all the smart ways forward.
But I didn't see Trump speaking at all, really.
I don't remember even one time.
He might have. So we're seeing the persuasion work in the right direction there.
Here's an example of some CNN propaganda, and I want to I want to call out the technique, because you see this technique a lot.
You'll see it more on Fox News, if I'm being honest.
So you'll see the technique a little bit more on the Fox opinion channels, or the opinion shows.
But here's the CNN version of it, just to be fair, that they're not the only ones who do this trick.
They make three statements about the 2020 election, and here's the trick.
The first statement... You will recognize as true.
The second statement, you'll say, well, that's true-ish.
Not completely true-true, but it's in that direction of true-ish.
And then the third one is just complete bullshit.
Just complete bullshit.
So that's the technique.
One you agree with.
One that's pushing your credibility a little bit, but you might still agree with it.
And then the third one is the persuasion.
Complete bullshit. But since the other two felt kind of compatible with your thinking, you go to the third one.
Yeah, Hannity is the one who does it the most.
Hannity is an expert at this, by the way.
Every time you see Hannity do a A fast-talking list.
Look for this trip.
This trick. Where he'll start with things that are clearly true.
True, true, true. And then he throws one in that has no backing whatsoever.
It's just an opinion. But it's on the list of true things.
Alright, so let me tell you what the things are that CNN used for their technique.
Now this is an opinion piece.
And the context is this.
The title of the article is Trump Still Constantly lying about 2020.
So that's how they frame it. And it says, most Trump supporters still believe his lies about 2020.
According to recent polling, and then they talk about blah blah blah, 76% of Republicans think there was, quote, widespread fraud in the election.
76%. What do I tell you about all polls and 25% of people who answer?
25% of people who answer polls will just be whack.
It doesn't matter what the question is.
You could always depend on 25% of any public just being completely clueless and just being dumb, really.
So, anyway, 76 believed that there was widespread fraud in the election.
So here are the three statements in this list from CNN. Number one, there is no proof...
Of massive vote rigging.
True. Right?
A lot of you have suspicions, and you've seen statistics and things like that.
You've heard stories. But as far as I know, this is completely true.
There is no proof of massive vote rigging.
Right? Would you agree with that yet?
Now, that's different from saying it exists or doesn't exist.
Saying there's no proof is very specific, and I think very true.
I'm going to say I'll give 100% that we don't have a publicly acknowledged proof of such thing.
True. Then the next one, a little bit less true.
A little bit less true, maybe?
Let's see. Audits in key states confirmed the accuracy of the results.
Huh. Is that true?
Did the audits in key states confirm the accuracy of the results?
Or... Did they only confirm the accuracy of the audit?
Right? Because an audit is specific to what they're looking at, right?
I don't believe there was an audit of all the election.
Now, if somebody did an audit of all parts of the election, from the electronic part to every part of the ballots, then I would say that you could say, depending on how the audit came out, You could say that those audits confirmed the accuracy of the results.
But we didn't do that kind of audit, did we?
Nope. So this one is like, we confirmed the accuracy of the results.
The results is sort of where the persuasion is starting to come in.
Because all they did is confirm the accuracy of the thing they audited.
That's not the accuracy of the election, just of the thing they audited.
All right? And then they go to the third one, and here's where it just completely leaves the field of evidence.
Number three, an elected officials from both parties, so it must be pretty true because both parties are saying it, said the vote was free and fair.
How do they know?
What kind of evidence is that?
That the officials from both parties said the vote was free and fair?
Let me explain to you how the world works.
Let's say you go to the people in charge of the voting integrity for a Democrat state.
And you say to them, hey, Democrat, how was the voting integrity of the election that went the way you would like it to?
What would the Democrat official say in that situation?
Totally fair and free election.
And also it went the way we wanted it to.
Could you expect anything else?
I don't think so.
Since it was that person's job to make sure their election was good, you're really asking people to give you their own opinion of how well they did at their job.
Do people often say, you know, now that you mention it, I did a pretty bad job at election integrity and we don't even know who voted.
Nobody says that.
It's completely ridiculous to ask the people who are guarding the henhouse if the henhouse was guarded.
Because they're going to say yes.
Now let's say you talk to the Republicans.
What would happen if a Republican, whose job it was to manage the integrity of the election, they're asked, how did you do?
Did you manage the integrity of the election?
No. Even a Republican's going to say, yes, I did, because that was their job.
Of course they're going to say it was a good job.
It's the job they did.
Who says I did a bad job?
So here's the three again, just so you can see it.
There's no proof of massive vote rigging.
Completely true. Audits in key states confirmed the accuracy of the results.
The results? No.
Just the accuracy of the stuff they audited.
And then the last one, election officials from both parties said the vote was free and fair.
Do they know? Would they know?
Of course not. I mean, they could know if we all knew.
I mean, if there was some obvious thing, they would know, we'd know, the news would know, if it was some obvious thing.
But if you're asking the wrong people, how are you going to get the right answer?
These are... These are probably the wrong people to ask, and politicians are going to give you the answer that gets them re-elected, right?
So it's the least credible group you could ever imagine.
But if you were a CNN viewer, and you were sort of not a critical thinker, you would look down here and say, well, this is pretty convincing that Trump's lying, and look at all this evidence that he's lying.
It's right here. There's three good evidences, but in fact, there is not.
All right. Here's another fake news story, except I can't tell which way the fake goes.
It's either fake that is happening or fake that is not.
And that is this conservative representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, allegedly was going to launch this caucus called America First Caucus.
And I guess her office had confirmed that she was working on this, etc.
And then some kind of a flyer came out, which people are calling a first draft that got released accidentally.
And this flyer about this alleged America First caucus, which may or may not be a real thing, it's a little unclear now, apparently the first draft had this statement in the flyer.
It says it called for common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.
Did you catch that?
Do you believe...
That there were elected officials, even Marjorie Taylor Greene, who you know to be pretty extreme in terms of what she's willing to do in public and willing to say.
But do you believe that even she would put out a document that said they're fighting for a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions?
Who would write that?
I mean, really. Who in the world would write that on a document and think that that would be okay to release it?
Now, I spend about half of my time on these live streams saying that the accusations of racism are usually overblown and it's political and it's not really race.
But how in the world...
Would any elected official think it would be okay to put in a document saying we should stick with our Anglo-Saxon traditions?
I don't believe that anybody associated with thinking about this platform or caucus, I don't believe that they would have written that down.
I don't know what they were thinking, but I don't believe that anybody who was an elected official would have used these terms.
Now, somebody says, what the hell is wrong with that?
Really? Is there anybody else who wants to, who needs an answer to what the hell is wrong with it?
I want to see in the comments if anybody is on that same side.
Define Anglo-Saxon.
What's wrong with that? People are saying that it's British.
What's wrong with the British tradition?
I'm looking at more of your comments and we'll see where you're on on this.
It's not true, Scott.
Yeah, I think that this flyer thing may be not true.
It's exclusionary, somebody says.
It means English common law, somebody says.
So a lot of you are sort of okay with this, right?
Let me ask you this.
If you're not white, how does this sound to you?
Now, I get it that you don't want to be politically correct about everything, but would you at least agree with me that saying stupid things in public doesn't help anybody?
Right? Would you agree?
That saying stupid things, even if you think, you know, you want the right, etc., it doesn't help anybody to be stupid in public.
This is really stupid.
This is like super stupid.
I can't even call it racist, because it goes beyond racism to just stupidity, really.
Because there were a lot of ways to say this that would not sound racist.
Now, I'm going to use the phrase, sound racist, because if what they're arguing is that we have a culture that evolved that's a good one, that's a good argument.
But to put this Anglo-Saxon label on it, even though I know that's where it came from, even though I know it's accurate, even though I know scientifically, data-wise, factually, it's just statements of fact, I'll agree with you.
But how could you be dumb enough not to think this was just shooting yourself in the foot?
There was no other better way to say this than the one way that sounds like white supremacy.
There's something totally wrong with this story.
So when Marjorie Taylor Greene called it a first draft, I would certainly find out who wrote that first draft, and I would like to find out if it's somebody who is on her side or somebody who's trying to take her out.
Because this reads more like somebody trying to take her out.
Because that would take her out.
And maybe it will.
Because if you believe that she was behind anything that said, we need to pursue our common respect for Anglo-Saxon political traditions, that would pretty much take her out of the race for the future.
Now remember, I'm being very careful here.
I'm not criticizing the factual accuracy that it's an Anglo-Saxon tradition.
And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, because it seems to have worked up until now.
I'm just saying that if you're an elected official, and you basically go in front of the world...
And she didn't do this, right?
She's disavowing this language.
But to imagine that anybody would say, yeah, we're going to just do white culture, because that's the good one.
Yeah, we'll call it Anglo-Saxon, but what we really mean is white culture...
Who in the world thinks that's a good idea?
Now, you might like the culture, but would you say it that way?
In a country where people are hyper-sensitive about where things came from and who gets credit and racial stuff, it would be the dumbest thing anybody ever said.
And so it's not even clear at this point whether they were serious about this America First Caucus or what.
But let me tell you, anybody who is so dumb that they would use this phrase, Anglo-Saxon, even though it's accurate, even though there's nothing wrong with it, you might as well...
Let me say what this would be equivalent to.
Using this term...
The Anglo-Saxon political traditions would be like saying you wanted to wear a KKK robe and hood, but not because you're making a political statement.
Rather, you like the fashion.
And arguing that, no, no, no, it's just a fashion statement.
I'm not even in the Ku Klux Klan.
I just like this look.
And you might misinterpret it, and I think that's on you.
You know, there's some things that are just so obviously dumb, and that would be one of them.
This is another one. You can't really treat it as anything but dumb.
So, very dumb. But, that said, I do think that we completely undervalue, as a country, we undervalue the economic value of culture.
I do think that if we don't protect the American culture, and I think that it can evolve over time, it doesn't have to be stuck in one time, but I think we have to treat it differently.
Here's how I would have treated this same topic.
I would make it a rate of change argument.
Rate of change.
The same thing I would say about immigration in general, is that immigration is neither good nor bad.
There is a rate that's good, and there's a rate of immigration that's bad.
But not immigration.
Immigration itself is not good or bad.
It's just the rate that makes it good or bad.
Likewise, with this cultural evolution, let's say, because culture always evolves.
It can never stay the same. But I would say that if culture evolves too quickly, you're in real trouble.
If it evolves in a managed way where everybody can get used to it, probably fine.
Might even be a positive.
Probably a positive, I would say.
So every time somebody says Anglo-Saxon or not, like it's binary, that's just a bad argument.
And it sounds racist.
So go with what makes sense, which is you want a functioning culture so you don't become China.
And with China, I've heard...
I'm not sure this is exactly the total explanation, but I've heard that in China the fear of failure is so high that they can't take good entrepreneurial risks because they don't want to fail.
So that's a cultural advantage that the United States has, that you can fail all day long.
And especially anybody with a Christian background will say, hey, everybody makes a mistake.
One of the benefits, the great advantages of the Christian tradition is the whole forgiveness thing.
Yeah, we're all sinners.
Try to do better.
That's really powerful.
We all make mistakes.
Try to do better next time.
Nothing could be better than that.
That's like the healthiest cultural strength you could ever have.
So I think that the Republicans do just a terrible job, a terrible job of making the argument for culture as an asset.
They should argue that culture is an asset.
It's our advantage over China.
It's probably our advantage over most countries because also built into this Tradition that I'll call the American tradition is a level of trust and commerce that is the envy of the world in some ways.
Our court systems, as flawed as they are, envy the world.
Envy of the world. Our ability to make a deal with a stranger.
It's the envy of the world.
In the United States, you can make deals with strangers.
And you can feel pretty good about it most times, right?
You don't have to do deals with your friends just to know you're not going to get screwed.
So that culture is absolutely the fundamental thing that makes the United States a strong country.
And as long as we're arguing about it with just dumb language like Anglo-Saxon, even though it's true, even though it's accurate, even though there's nothing wrong with being Anglo-Saxon, The communication and the persuasion of that is an F. And that's just an F. And it's an issue that needs an A+. If you're even going to deal with culture, it's important, and you've got to do it right.
But it's treated as...
Anyway, it's being done wrong.
All right, just looking at your...
You're so PC, Scott.
Am I? Am I politically correct or am I polite and more task-oriented than the rest of you?
I would argue that I'm just task-oriented.
In other words, I'm in favor of whatever works.
If something doesn't work, I don't care how politically correct it is.
I'm not interested.
So I think that's the filter you should put on me.
Some things work and some things don't.
One of the things that works is politeness.
Treating each other with respect pretty much always works, right?
So if I'm in favor of, let's say, correctly, you could argue with correctly, but let's say, use a different word, if I argue in favor of treating transgender athletes or transgender anybody with the kind of language that they would like and the respect that anybody would want, Is that politically correct?
Or is that just not being a dick?
I mean, there's a big difference between being politically correct and just being polite, treating people with some respect.
All right. Yeah, so there's a good dividing line I'm seeing in the comments.
Somebody said that a politically correct person would kneel for the Black Lives Matter stuff.
I wouldn't do that in a million years.
There's nothing that could make me kneel to somebody else's political preference.
That would never happen.
So if you're worried that political correctness is driving me, there's a good example that I would never be on the side of kneeling for somebody else's political opinion.
That's just not going to happen.
How would you deal with it?
You mean the kneeling thing?
I would object, but politely and respectfully.
You know, if you're going to not kneel, it probably would be helpful if you had a little bit of a body of work or some tweets or some kind of background that would say you're not a racist.
Like, and shouldn't you always have that anyway?
Don't you think if people...
People look into your past words and actions.
Shouldn't they find some good stuff there?
Like the time you supported Martin Luther King or something.
I mean, that would be about the smallest thing you could do.
But there should be something in your history that says if you don't kneel, it's not because you joined the Klan.
You're just not buying into that.
Um... Alright.
Wireless taser, somebody says.
Well, that's a different topic.
Somebody says, MLK has been debunked.
Well, well, let me say this about our heroes.
As far as I know, all of our heroes are fake.
You knew that, right?
It doesn't matter if it's George Washington or Martin Luther King, so forget about ethnicity.
Nothing about ethnicity.
We manufacture heroes because the hero embodies something that we want to be part of our culture.
So when you say MLK has been debunked, it actually doesn't mean anything.
Because what you're talking about is the human.
And the human's irrelevant.
The actual person who was...
Martin Luther King, you know, with the body of him and the brain of him, he's completely irrelevant.
What matters now is the packaging of him as a An icon as a symbol of a certain set of things that you think you want to promote.
So you can't debunk that.
You could say that the person did not equal the icon.
That's all of them. None of the people are all good.
There's no such thing as a famous person who didn't have some issues.
Yeah, and even MLK would not have claimed he was perfect, etc.
And of course, that's the tradition, the Christian tradition, is that whether or not MLK strayed in whatever ways he's being accused of, it's still okay, right? You can still sin and get to heaven if you turn things around.
