Episode 1378 Scott Adams: UFOs Confirmed, Fake News Tries Erasing Trump's Obvious Successes, Virus Gain of Function
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Abraham Accords...fake news spin
UFO segment on 60 Minutes
Mental health problems...from fake news
Vaccinated people can't spread COVID
Factory built, small nuclear reactors
Teachers unions and systemic racism
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
Well, ladies and gentlemen and everybody undefined, it's good that you found me today because you're gonna learn so much.
You're gonna have a great time.
You're gonna be connected to people all over the world.
Yeah, it's almost like one of those mushroom things.
You know how How mushrooms are all connected with a deep network of connections?
Yeah. It's exactly like the simultaneous sip, but with mushrooms.
So, if you'd like to enjoy the simultaneous sip to its maximum possibility, and why would you settle for anything less, really?
All you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice, a dine, a canteen, a jug, a glass, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it's the best thing that's ever happened in the history of civilization, and it's just about to happen now.
Go! You know, every morning I prepare for these live streams by making notes and Printing them out on my HP Tango printer.
So I've usually got quite a bit.
So I've got this page.
You can see front and back.
And then my printer printed this page.
And then, but it's not all bad.
It also printed this page, which almost has some smudges on it.
And when I tell you that you would be watching me throw my printer off the balcony, I'm not kidding.
The only thing preventing that is that other people are asleep in the house right now.
Otherwise, you would be watching me heave it off of my balcony onto my sidewalk below.
Now, I'm not promising I won't do that before the end of this live stream, if I hear other people wake up.
If I know that the rest of the people in the house are awake, that printer's going off the balcony, and you can join in the fun.
However, luckily, I've got a backup.
Technology, wah, wah, wah.
All right, here's the good news.
Texas, Governor Abbott reports that the number of COVID-related deaths in Texas yesterday was...
zero.
Zero. Texas.
The whole state of Texas.
Zero COVID deaths yesterday.
Wow. Now, it's not going to stay a zero, of course.
But, wow.
They had the lowest seven-day COVID positivity rate ever.
Lowest COVID hospitalization in 11 months.
Wow. Wow.
Amazing. So I was out last night going to dinner, and I gotta tell you, my little town is so hopping.
I mean, there is some pent-up energy, let me tell you.
The number of people who are out, you can't park, you know, stores are just packed, the restaurants, you can't get a reservation.
It is hopping where I am.
Now, is it where you are?
Traffic is crazy again.
Yeah, vaccines are working.
So, the Washington Post has an interesting analysis, if you can call it that.
And one of their claims in this article is that because Israel has the Iron Dome, which is pretty good at shooting down the incoming rockets coming from Gaza, that that's making it harder to get peace.
Because why would Israel need any peace if they're stopping 90% of the rockets?
Now, is that a good analysis?
That the reason you can't get peace is that one of the sides is too strong?
I think that we should not discourage people from having a strong national defense because it might prevent them from suing for peace that they don't need and don't want.
I would say that Israel is in a good position.
They don't need any peace.
So what is better than having a peace you don't want, and probably wouldn't hold anyway, versus having a dominant control of your own security situation?
I feel like peace isn't even the first choice, is it?
Because it wouldn't be a real peace.
There would still be terrorists doing what terrorists do.
You could get maybe the leaders to agree, but it wouldn't stop the terrorists.
So I don't think that Israel has any reason for peace with Gaza, let's say.
They just don't have any reason.
There's nothing to be gained as long as they have a dominant situation.
So You know, and Israel is getting bigger and stronger every day, so whatever they're doing is working, and they get situations like this, and they take care of it.
Probably be done in a month before it flares up again later.
Somebody says, Palestinians use peace to get money for their wars.
Well, there's definitely a monetary incentive to everything.
Alright. So, we're also seeing the news trying to ruin Trump's legacy about the Abraham Accords.
Now, watch the fake news do this.
What they're trying to do is they're trying to say that the Abraham Accords were really about The Palestinian situation, even though nobody involved in the Palestinian situation directly was even part of it.
But the idea was that if Israel and the other Arab countries got along, maybe it would isolate the Palestinians and possibly cause them to be...
A little more flexible, if indeed that's what it takes.
But you're seeing the news try to say that the trouble with Israel and the Palestinians is somehow negating one of the greatest accomplishments of all time, diplomatically, which is the Abraham Accords.
So watch how the news tries to make these two different things into one thing.
Now I would argue that the Abraham Accords are holding...
Meaning that the other Arab countries are not jumping on Israel and pulling out of the accord.
Obviously, it's a giant success.
Obviously. You just look at it and you say to yourself, wait, did Israel and those countries that made an agreement with it still keep their agreement?
Yeah. Even when Gaza is hurling rockets and Israel's responding, it's still held.
So it's exactly what it was intended to do, which is isolate the Palestinian situation and maybe make that easier to either deal with or to solve in the long run.
So... It is disgusting to watch the fake news try to turn a gigantic success into a failure by making it look like it was really intended to do something directly with the Palestinian violence, which it was never meant to be a direct address to that problem.
Matthew McConaughey is apparently quietly putting out feelers to see if he should run for governor.
Now apparently he polls...
So high that he might actually win if the polling were accurate and held.
Now, what do you think of that?
Do you think that whatever problems we have will be solved by a governor, Matthew McConaughey?
Well, I liked him a lot more before he did those Lincoln commercials.
Is it Lincoln? Where it just is so cringy from beginning to end?
I don't know. He apparently does have, he's got a college degree in some kind of, I think, the arts, or some kind of Bachelor of Science in some kind of communication or arts sort of thing.
And he was thinking about being a lawyer at one point, so apparently he's academically smart.
So he's got that working for him, academically, quite smart.
And he's well-meaning.
And probably liked by both Democrats and Republicans to some extent.
I don't know if he needs to be governor, because I don't know that there's a problem there in the first place.
I mean, does Governor Abbott, is he doing a bad job that I don't know about?
I mean, I've heard criticisms, but all the governors are getting criticized.
So I don't know if this is a problem that needs to be solved, but I feel like there's something terribly broken with the world if Matthew McConaughey can become governor.
Oh, somebody says he wrote a book, too.
You know, I think Reagan was a different animal because he was always political, even when he was an actor.
But I don't know.
I just don't know about actors becoming governors.
It just doesn't feel like a good trend for the long term.
You know, arguably even Arnold Schwarzenegger was kind of political before he ran for office.
All right. How many of you saw the 60 Minutes on the UFOs?
So there's more videos of alleged UFOs, which tend to be these oval-shaped objects which they never get a good picture of, but they can definitely see it on the infrared and on the radar.
So we know something's there.
I feel like it's fair to say there's something.
And when we say UFOs are confirmed, which I cheekily did in my tweet about this live stream, confirming a UFO isn't anything.
It's like confirming that there's confusion.
It doesn't confirm anything.
It just confirms that we don't know what they are.
So when you say it, UFOs are confirmed, of course people think you've confirmed aliens.
But nothing like that has happened.
Alright, so here's the question.
There was at least one part of the 60 Minutes part that I hadn't heard before.
There were four pilots in the same situation.
I guess it might have been two jets with two pilots each.
And they...
All four of them saw the same thing, they report, that there was some oval object making the ocean swirl, and then it flew away, and it went right past them, and they could clearly see it, etc.
And they didn't want to talk about it until now.
And so you have to ask yourself, what is more likely that four people really saw something That is not of earthly design, because apparently it was doing things that Earth technology can't do, or they always seem to do that.
Is it more likely that four people are lying or mistaken, or is it more likely that there are aliens who are visiting with advanced technology?
Which one of those is more likely?
Well, let's put it in context.
Most of our headlines are about things that people see that aren't there.
Right? Most of our hoaxes, and in fact, most of our headlines even today.
Today. Just pick a day.
Most of our headlines today are about things that people saw that weren't there.
It's most of the news.
Most of your experience every day involves people clearly seeing things that aren't there.
Your co-workers remember a conversation that didn't happen.
The news is reporting something that didn't happen.
I just gave you an example.
There'll be a few more before we're done.
So one hypothesis that four people could have the same crazy hallucination or just mistaken perception is That is the most common thing in the entire world.
It feels like it's not, right?
Because we all think that our perceptions are pretty good.
So we think, well, our perceptions are good.
Other people's must be at least a little bit good.
So it seems like it would be really unusual that four people would see a UFO right up close, and they'd be military people, and they'd have the same story.
What are the odds that that didn't really happen?
Really high. Really high.
Like close to 100% high.
It's the most common thing in your experience is that people see things that aren't there.
Now, how common is it in all of our experience to see a confirmed alien spaceship?
Well, so far none.
In the history of civilization?
So far, none.
Confirmed. But we certainly have lots of stories about them.
Now, if you have one situation, which is the most common situation in reality, people seeing things that don't exist, even when multiple people see it, very common, versus something that's never happened and would be extraordinary and violate physics if it did.
Kind of equal odds, would you say?
No! Not even close.
If I could bet my entire net wealth and have a certain answer, hypothetically, if you could know for sure, I would bet my entire net wealth that it's not an alien spaceship.
Now, I don't even know if it's a spaceship.
It could be anything. But maybe someday we'll know.
Here's another news that I'd say I'm a little skeptical of.
Apparently there's a story in USA Today that a woman who is a black homeowner had her home appraised twice and worried that she was getting a low appraisal because she was black.
So she decided to do an experiment in which she got a white family to pretend it was their house.
And then the third appraisal of their house was double.
Double what the first two were.
So, clear racism, right?
What else could it be?
I mean, it's in the news, so it must be true.
I can't imagine that the news would report something that's totally untrue.
But do you believe that one woman's house was appraised by two people for, I guess, $110,000 and $125,000?
And then the third one was double.
It was like 249,000 or something like that.
Do you think that sounds plausible?
Because the USA Today reported it like it's true.
No, it's not plausible.
It's not plausible.
It's not even slightly plausible.
And you should see the comments on the tweet from people who do appraisals for a living.
The people who do appraisals for a living say, nope, not possible.
Because you have to show your work.
The appraisal business is about comparables.
Finding other homes that are sold for a certain price that are similar.
If the appraisal doesn't show that the other homes in your area sold for a similar price, you're not going to turn in that appraisal.
Because your own appraisal would say it's fake.
Here are all the other houses just like yours, and then here's yours, completely different than all the other houses like yours.
And we're going to just keep it that way because we're appraising it for half of what all the other houses are worth.
Do you think that happened?
No. No, it didn't happen.
Now, some people are speculating that what did happen is that the first two appraisals, I think we do know this, was during the depths of the coronavirus problem when nothing looked like it was worth anything.
And then the third appraisal happened when things were picking up, the stock market was up by 50% or whatever, whatever the number was, and home values were zooming.
So, but still, doubled.
Do you think her home doubled?
No. I don't know what the real story is, but this is not real.
All right? And have I told you about stories that are a little bit too on the nose?
A little bit too on the nose, isn't it?
The clever black single mom.
Actually, I think she's a single mom.
I'm not sure about that part. But, you know, she's a victim of racism so bad That her home was appraised at half of its value.
No, that didn't happen.
I'm sorry. Now, if I'd seen this story and it said there's a 30% difference, I wouldn't have even questioned it.
Really. I mean, I would have been horrified if there were a 30% difference.
That would be horrifying.
But I might have believed it, but not double.
Come on. I mean, the news isn't even trying anymore when they report stories like this.
They're just so obviously not true.
Remember I told you that the disagreement between Dr.
Fauci and Rand Paul about whether Fauci had ever supported funding for gain-of-function stuff in Wuhan?
And I said to you that my theory was that they were both correct.
Disagreeing, but both correct.
And the reason I gave is that gain-of-function was probably being used in two different ways, so that they were both right.
They were just using the phrase differently.
And I feel like that's confirmed now.
Let me tell you what Collins, who's the head of the NIH, said.
Listen to his exact wording, all right?
So here he'll be denying that they were involved in any funding for a gain of...
What do you call it?
So here's what he says, quote, Let me be very clear.
We never approved any grant that would have supported gain-of-function research on dangerous coronaviruses.
Okay, keyword, dangerous.
To see if they could be more transmissible or lethal for individuals in the human species, he added.
And then he said, that was not something that we would have done.
Now watch the exact wording here.
We never approved that kind of research.
And that's something Senator Paul might want to be a bit more clear about.
That kind of research.
So he starts out by saying, talking about gain of function on dangerous coronaviruses, And he says, we never funded that kind of research.
But gain-of-function is a big category, and gain-of-function to weaponize it is a subset of that category.
So, is it true that they did non-weaponized research on gain-of-function, but they did not fund in any way weaponizing gain-of-function?
I feel like that's what's going on.
So this looks like fake news, meaning that it looks like there's a disagreement, but they're just using the words differently, I think.
That's my current hypothesis.
Do you remember Project Veritas had an undercover video of a CNN technical director, I think he was?
And he was saying about how CNN plans to panic us about the climate, and As their next big theme that they'll weave into everything?
Well, here's your example of your CNN climate panic porn.
So, their tweet today, in an ever-warming climate, ripple effects or chain reactions could lead to altered weather patterns across the globe thanks to a melting Antarctic ice sheet, a new study says.
So, here's my problem.
What would happen Let's say we knew that the fake news was damaging people's brains because they were getting too afraid.
They were frightened to death about white supremacists under the bed.
Now they're frightened to death that the Arctic ice sheet will cause the Earth to fall apart from global change, global climate change.
What would happen to your brain if you were believing the news?
It would be massive mental health problems, right?
Now, here's my question.
If the news created massive mental health problems for profit, you know, they're not trying to give you mental health problems, but it's an outcome of all the fake news, who would report it if it were happening?
That's a problem, isn't it?
If the problem was, you know, imagine hypothetically it's a massive Mental health problem directly caused by fake news, who would report it?
Who would report it?
There's nobody to fucking report it, right?
It's one of the biggest problems in the country, by far, but the news can't report it.
This is one where even, you know, Fox News can't even report it about CNN, CNN can't even report that about Fox News, and they fight all the time.
But reporting it would require accepting that you're both at least a little bit part of that process.
So the news can't report on what might be the biggest story in the country right now.
Massive mental health problems from the news.
Now... Is there any science to support that?
Apparently, yes. Apparently there's plenty of science.
Are we following the science and reporting that the news is creating massive mental health problems?
Nope. Nope.
We don't follow the news in that case.
Will climate change become a precursor for war under the Bush Doctrine?
Well, that's interesting. I feel as if climate change and racism have The same overall quality that you can apply them to every other topic.
Everything could be something about racism.
Everything could be something about climate change.
You can make those fit.
Anything. So will somebody use it to justify a war?
Definitely. We don't know the details.
But we know climate change will be used to justify everything.
All right? Now, how about...
I just saw a mention of the New York Times article.
Ben... Was it Ben Smith?
Yeah, Ben Smith was writing in the New York Times about this story about the Jeopardy!
contestant Who won three times in a row, but the first time he held up one finger, the second time he won, he held up two to show he'd won twice.
And the third time when he held up three fingers, he unfortunately decided not to do these three fingers, but to do the...
I can't do it without...
I can't give you an example.
But he used, like a catcher in baseball, He uses these three fingers to say three.
And apparently there was a big organization of past participants on Jeopardy.
It's a thriving sub-community on the internet.
And they decided that he was really sending this secret white supremacist hand gesture.
Now, Ben Smith just rips that apart and essentially just treats it like nonsense.
And the tone of Ben's article...
Is that all of these past Jeopardy contestants, who are, by definition, way smarter about facts than the average person, were completely bamboozled by the belief that they could see a white supremacist right in front of them.
Now, UFOs some people believe exist because so many people saw it with their own eyes.
With their own eyes, they saw it.
They saw the UFOs, so therefore they must exist, right?
Well, several million people saw this poor Jeopardy!
contestant look like a white supremacist, and apparently he's not.
So, is this a mental health problem?
I think it is.
I think it is. I'm saying that the news should be covered by the FDA. Maybe.
Should the news be regulated by the FDA? Because it's like a drug?
You could make that argument.
I mean, it would never fly. But from a scientific perspective, yeah, you could make that argument.
So, our...
Can we say that there's a massive mental health problem because all of these Jeopardy contestants thought they saw something that didn't exist?
Yeah, yeah, we can.
To me, that looks exactly like proof of a major mental illness caused by the fake news.
538 is reporting that nearly every Republican who voted to impeach Trump, including Liz Cheney, Has been either admonished by the party or attracted at least one primary challenger.
So it really kind of suggests that Trump is still in charge of the Republican Party because he can take out anybody who opposed him.
If Trump can still take out, and I think he can, anybody who opposed him, how is anybody gonna prevent him from being nominated again?
I mean, I'm not saying you'd want to prevent it.
I'm just saying It feels like nothing can stop it at this point.
I feel like Trump can just take out one person after another until the field is clear.
So I don't know that that's going to happen, but it's certainly possible.
All right, here's some fake news alert.
So you may have seen some video clips of the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky.
And she mentioned there that we now have And this was mentioned in a tweet on This Week ABC News.
It said, let's see, she's quoted as saying, we now have science that has really just evolved in the last two weeks that demonstrates that these vaccines are safe, they are effective.
What? Wait, what?
What did I just say? Are you telling me that the head of the CDC only found out in the last two weeks that the vaccines are safe and effective?
That's what the tweet says.
And it's a tweet from This Week ABC. So that wouldn't be fake news, right?
I mean, they wouldn't just blatantly tweet out a complete falsehood, would they?
But it looks like they're saying that the CDC just figured out that vaccines are safe.
That's what the quote says.
I'm reading it with my own eyes.
It's got to be true because I'm looking at it.
Right? If you see it with your own eyes, it's true.
Isn't that what we've all learned?
No. I hope not.
No, you see it with your own eyes, it doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean it's true at all.
In fact, the tweet is completely misleading compared to the situation.
So I listened to the full clip, and the tweet is just misleading.
Of course they've known that the vaccinations had passed all the testing, Of course they knew the vaccines were safe.
There was more to the statement.
This is a RUPAR. The statement was kind of cut off so that it looked like she was just talking about the safety of the vaccines as if they had just discovered it this week or last week.
No. The specific thing she said is that we just discovered, like in the last few days, that if you're vaccinated but you also get the coronavirus, Which can happen.
You basically can't spread it.
That's a big deal.
That's a gigantic big deal.
That you can't spread it, even if you have it, as long as you're vaccinated.
That changes everything.
And that was the main context of the rest of her point.
She said, we know the vaccines are safe and effective, and recently we found out they're even better than we thought.
That's all it was. She literally said nothing except things you'd want her to say, which is we thought it was safe.
Now we know it's extra safe.
And on top of that, we know that vaccinated people who have it can't give it.
That's gigantic. Totally.
But the way it was taken out of context, I think you're going to see some fake news that acts like they didn't know it was safe or something.
Nothing like that is true.
Not that anybody can know for sure anything's safe.
There's a big news in the nuclear energy business.
So apparently there's this consortium led by Rolls-Royce that is building these smaller nuclear reactors.
And they call them the Small Modular Reactors, SMRs.
And they're going to build all these mini-reactors.
And they found some new technology to increase their output and make them even better.
So now these factory-built reactors, did you hear that?
Factory-built reactors.
They're going to build a nuclear power plant in a factory and then ship it to the location.
Do you know how big a deal that is?
That's everything. That's everything.
That's the end of climate change as a problem.
If they can pull this off, and apparently it aims to bring 10 mini-nuclear reactors into use by 2035, with the first one coming in around 2030.
Now, of course, things get delayed, but if you're building your reactor in a factory, you're going to be able to at least build it on time, or on time-ish, And I wouldn't think that they would build it unless they knew that they could get it approved and had a location for it.
So I feel like this is some of the biggest news in the world.
I'll go further. This is some of the biggest news in human civilization.
Some of the biggest news in human civilization.
If they can pull this off.
Yeah, well, portable, I think, is maybe...
Overstating it, but it looks like they can build it in a factory, maybe move one part at a time to where it needs to be and then assemble it.
But if they pull this off, I mean seriously.
This would be like the discovery of electricity.
It's that big. Because it changes climate change, it changes pollution, it would change wars.
I mean it would change the balance of power.
It would allow us to, you know, it's probably just, you know, the fact that we're getting this good at nuclear energy would allow us to populate space, because you need small nuclear reactors for space, and you need lots of people who are trained to build them, which you need a domestic industry to get that.
Now this is happening over in Great Britain, I believe.
Yeah, in the UK. But certainly if they're doing it over there and they will prove that these factory-built generators work, that could be huge.
Michael Smirconish over on CNN, and I've often told you that on CNN he's the, I would say, one of the two or three most objective people on that network.
And he says there was a survey, in a tweet he said, a survey on whether Donald Trump deserves any thanks for the speed of the vaccine.
Now, wouldn't you think...
Somebody's saying that NU scale, NU scale, is building some reactors in Idaho.
So the United States is doing a lot with small nuclear reactors too.
But do you think...
What do you think?
Do you think that people in the country believe that Trump...
Should get credit for how fast the vaccines came out?
And when I saw that, I said to myself, wait a minute.
Are you telling me that there's anybody who wouldn't give them credit for that?
Anybody? You can find...
Are you serious? You can find one person, even one person, in the whole world, can you even find me one person who would say that Trump was not directly responsible for the speed of vaccines?
Just find me one person.
Let's see how the poll went.
Half of the people say no.
I'm sort of rounding.
But basically, half of the country says no, he doesn't get credit for that.
What? And it turns out that the exact numbers, you know, it's roughly half and half, but the exact numbers line up really, really close to the 2020 election results.
So basically, even the simplest truth, the simplest truth that Trump did make a difference on the speed of the vaccines, the most unambiguous, simplest truth reported exactly the same on every network.
Like even MSNBC, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, But I think even MSNBCs would say, yeah, Trump got us vaccines faster.
Don't they? Do they even argue with that?
How in hell do half of the country not know that's true?
How in hell?
And the answer is, they just, they voted for their team.
That's all. It has nothing to do with any information or facts or anything.
It's just people voted for their team.
Rasmussen poll. Polled people to find out if people thought that Trump or Biden had better policies about Israel.
What do you think people said?
Do you think that conservatives thought Trump was better on Israel or Biden?
Surprise! Conservatives thought Trump was better about Israel.
But how about liberals?
Well, big surprise.
The liberals say that Trump was worse In dealing with Israel.
Now, again, there's always room for disagreement.
It's definitely an opinion, but...
I don't feel like this one is close.
I don't feel like this one's a close call.
I'm positive that Trump did better with Israel in terms of policy.
I don't think there's any question about that.
The Abraham Accords, of course, being a big context for that.
It's just amazing that there's a disagreement on that, which is further proof that we don't use facts or data.
So you all remember the story of the CEO of Coca-Cola getting a little extra woke and going public with his opinions on the election.
And today there's the first Dilbert cartoon on Dilbert's CEO deciding to get more political because he thinks it'll be good for business.
Maybe it won't be.
So you've got a few days of Dilbert's CEO being...
Let's say, inspired by the CEO of Coca-Cola.
Now, how many of you know Elon Musk's, one of his rules for work?
This has been widely reported, that Elon Musk has a, let's say, a philosophy for how Tesla should be managed.
And he explicitly says this.
I'm paraphrasing, but he explicitly says this.
That if you have a company rule that could show up in a Dilbert comic, maybe you shouldn't do it.
A very simple rule.
If you look at the rule and you say to yourself, oh, that could end up in a Dilbert comic strip, maybe don't do that rule.
Maybe that's a rule you should rethink.
So that's the Elon Musk theory.
And the CEO of Coca-Cola will be Testing out that concept because he did just become a character in a Dilbert comic.
We'll see how that works out for him.
All right. That is pretty much what I wanted to talk about.
Just checking my many notes.
All right. Is there anything I forgot to talk about today?
Um... Mustafa says, we can colonize Mars, but your printer won't work when we get there.
Yeah. Yeah, that's probably true.
Alright, anything else I forgot?
Alright, we should...
About the teachers' unions.
Let me ask you this.
Is it my imagination...
Or have the teachers' unions completely destroyed all their credibility?
Now, they still have tons of power, so maybe that won't change at all.
But I feel as though the teachers' unions were a lot more popular a year ago.
And I've been hammering on them for a year.
Corey DeAngelis has been doing an amazing job hammering on the teachers' unions, trying to get school choice a little bit more accepted.
And I feel as if there's been a big change.
Now, I've been trying for a long time to paint the teachers' unions as the primary source of systemic racism, because they are.
If you fixed education, everything else would go better, right?
There'd still be racism. You can't eliminate that sort of thing totally.
But if everybody got a fair shot at an education, which they don't have now, I feel like the problem of systemic racism would get a lot less, even though it would never go to zero.
So... I'm getting lots of suggestions here for how to destroy my printer.
I like the trebuchet.
I might have to build a trebuchet just to see how far I can...
Did I pronounce that right?
To see how far I can toss my printer.
Alright, let's see. My sense is the teachers' unions are still big, but now very brittle.
Yeah, I think so.
I feel as if we're getting close to the breaking point.
Now, apparently there is more of a waiting list for classic charter schools than there are spaces.
So that didn't make sense.
But there's a waiting list for charter schools.
And as long as there is, that pressure is going to continue.
And I think there are a lot more prominent people willing to take on the teachers' unions.
Now, have I told you that the government gets to be in charge until they just can't do their job?
And then the citizens are in charge.
Now, that's not written in the Constitution, right?
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, if your leaders are incompetent, you can just take over and just make the decisions for them.
It doesn't say that.
But it's true.
Sometimes, just for whatever reason, our leaders just can't leave.
For example, in the coronavirus, Leaders can't lead the way we want them to because leaders have to focus on safety over lifestyle.
Makes sense. You don't want them to change that.
But it requires that toward the end of the pandemic that the citizens take control.
And I'll tell you, in my town, it looks like it's already happening.
I mean, the masks were pretty much off yesterday.
A lot of you want to see my printer being destroyed.
I'm just watching the... The comments go by.
Anyway, my point is with the teachers' unions, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can go as hard against them as they'd like because the teachers' unions are too strong.
So they could fund you to be removed from office if you go against them.
So politicians are the wrong tool for fixing school choice because they're too weak compared to the teachers' unions.
But I don't have that problem.
The teachers' unions can't hurt me.
I mean, they could try, but what are they going to do?
The teachers' unions can't hurt Corey DeAngelis.
The teachers' unions can't hurt any blue check person who retweets anything that he or I say about the teachers' unions.
And so I would say that this is yet again another case where by design, you know, what it is that it means to be a leader in America and how you get your money and how you get re-elected, by design our political leaders can't help us on this.
It's sort of going to have to come from the parents and the public So I think the public has just got to take control of this decision.
At some point, there's going to be enough public force that the politicians will just have to cave.
So we have to be more powerful than the teachers' unions, or the teachers' unions get everything they want.
So, what does social media give you?
How many times have I told you that our current form of government is no longer a republic?
This is real. We're not a republic anymore.
We are something closer to an influencer-based democracy.
Meaning that we let the leaders pick up the garbage and make sure we have the military and do the basic stuff, right?
But the moment our leaders can't do a decision, they're just the wrong tool for the job, as they are with coronavirus, once it gets to the end of it anyway, The public just takes over.
And when I say the public takes over, there are usually some influencers, some handful of influencers, who have enough influence that pretty soon they start moving the numbers.
If you look at the school choice preference polling, and you look at it today compared to a year ago, pretty big move, right?
There's way more interest in In school choice than it was even one year ago.
Where did that come from?
None of it came from our leaders.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but name the leader who's always talking about school choice.
Who? Now, I know that Republicans talk about it all the time, but it's usually just in a list of There's no leader you can say, well, that's the school choice person.
In the way that you can say AOC is sort of a climate change leader, like it or not, I mean, she's associated with it.
But who is the leader who's going against the teachers' unions?
They just talk about it.
Trump talks about it a little bit.
He doesn't really try too hard, right?
Right? Yeah, so my point is that the public does run the country at this point via influencers, via social media, which eventually will push the news business, which will eventually push the politicians.
But for these complicated ones, it's the public.
The public is already in charge.
Used to be Betsy DeVos.
Yeah, but Betsy DeVos, when you have that job, You just don't get much attention if you're in the cabinet.
Yeah, all the Republicans talk about it, but it's not like a big theme.
It's not like climate change or anything.
It should be, but it's not.
Did you hear the story?
There was just a massive amount of fentanyl that got captured at the border.
Massive amount. Now you know that that mostly comes from China.
So now we know that China is killing us with fentanyl intentionally.
And we know that the coronavirus came from the Wuhan lab.
We don't know the details of that.
But would it be fair to say that we are already losing a chemical and biological war to China?
So China is polluting our atmosphere, which will cause us to spend massively on climate change, because they're polluting it, sending us fentanyl and coronavirus.
It's basically full-scale World War III chemical warfare, chemical biological warfare.
We're in it. I mean, we're in the middle of a gigantic war that just took half a million casualties this year, but we just act like it's something else.
So I'm not on the side that says that China released any kind of virus intentionally.
I think that would be crazy.
Like, you know, Even if you could imagine they had some kind of a way they could come out ahead by doing it, I just don't see any leader doing that.
Just don't see it.
That would be fair to say, tell.
Are you saying, Paul, that I'm going into too much hyperbole?
That's how the big lie works, bruh.
What is how the big lie works?
How many of you believe the big lie?
Meaning that it's proven that the election was fair and untainted, and that anybody who suggests it's not is part of the big lie.
How many of you watching this video buy into the notion that that's the big lie?
How many of you? Because that's pure...
Brainwashing. If you buy into that phrase, the big lie, you've bought into one of the most blatant, pure brainwashing persuasion plays of all time.
Because you can't really know what happened in the thing you didn't look for, or you haven't looked for completely.
You can't know something isn't there if you didn't look.
So the certainty with which the big lie is branded as, you know, we know this to be true, that it's a lie, it's amazing.
It's amazing that that's even legal.
Let me go further.
It shouldn't be legal to use the phrase the big lie.
It shouldn't be legal.
Because it does make a claim that's not true, And that not true claim that we know for sure what the result was either fair or unfair, my take is that we couldn't know.
It's unknowable given that nobody was looking for it and it wasn't transparent.
So it feels like it should be illegal to just blatantly do fake news like that.
The great thing about education is that the teachers' unions are being hollowed out by local individual decisions.
That's right. There will be enough people who are going to homeschool that two things are going to happen.
One, it's going to make it more obvious that the schools need to compete or fail.
And number two, the homeschooling, if you get more and more people homeschooling, then the technology and the systems which do homeschooling will just get better.
And apparently they're really good now, so they'll just keep getting better.
All right.
Yes, teachers are good and teachers' unions are bad.
Not unions are bad, but teachers' unions are bad.
Somebody says the big lie is that Biden won.
That's no more smart.
If you're going to say that we know for sure...
Either way, that's just not where the smart people should be.
Here's the smartest opinion, because it's mine.
Defenestrate the printer.
Maybe I will. The smartest opinion on the election credibility is that we can't know, because we haven't looked for it, So we don't know if it was fair or not fair.
It's unknowable. But we do know that the system has installed a president.
So the system did what the system did.
So I'd say that the system gave us a president, and that's fine.
Somebody says, Scott's ego is taking over.
Well, you get banned for that.
What will I do? I'll just hide you so you don't exist anymore.
Keep in mind that all criticism is welcome, but you have to give a reason.
Scott's ego is taking over.
It's not a reason.
And if there's somebody here who operates without their ego, please let me know, because I would like to meet such an amazing person.
All right. Oligarchs do work.
I don't know what that means. Logic arguments, please.
