Episode 1382 Scott Adams: OMG the News is Delicious This Morning. The Big Lie Just Collided With the Big Truth
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Joe Scarborough's rant today
Audited voting machines compromised?
Meghan Markle, narcissist?
01/06, the new Russian collusion HOAX
Israel vs Hamas, who won?
Palestinians lack persuasion skill
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Wait, wait, wait.
Those of you who are listening in real time, we're going to play a trick on the people who are watching this in recorded time and fast-forwarding past the simultaneous sip.
The first one's going to be a fake-out.
Don't go for it. Don't go for it.
If you're watching this live, it's a trick.
Don't go for it. It looks like I'm sipping, but I'm not.
Ah, now it looks like I'm done.
If you're playing this on fast-forward, it looks like you fast-forwarded through the simultaneous sip, doesn't it?
Now you think this is where the content happens.
Gotcha! This is the simultaneous sip.
This is the real one. Go!
Yeah, all you fast-forwarders, you think you beat the system?
But no, sometimes the system's got a little bit of fight left in it.
And you will someday be part of the simultaneous sip.
You don't know it yet. No, you don't know it yet.
But it's coming. Oh, is it coming?
Speaking of that, my book, Catafield Almost Everything and Still Win Big, has been re-recorded in my own voice for the first time.
It was a professional actor and But by popular demand, people, especially people who watch the live stream, said, it bothers us because it's not your voice, but now it is.
So, ask and you shall receive.
It's available now at Amazon and wherever you buy audiobooks.
So, I would like to update some things which I've said in the past which were totally, totally wrong.
So, this will be the section where Scott Each crow, like lots of it.
Three crows, at least.
This is a three crow morning, so you might enjoy this.
Here are three things I've said in the past that I know now to not be true.
Number one, I've said, narcissism isn't real.
It's just people who think well of themselves.
What's wrong with that? I'm going to tell you why I'm wrong about that.
Projection. I've said, projection isn't real.
People don't actually blame other people for the crimes they're committing at the moment.
That's not a real thing.
That's a real thing.
Number three, gaslighting.
I told you, there's no such thing as gaslighting.
That's just something that happened in a movie.
Sure, some people are wrong about things.
Some people are crazy.
But there's no gaslighting.
That's not a real thing.
Gaslighting is a real thing.
Here's why I was wrong.
And in learning why I was wrong, you're going to learn something maybe kind of important.
It goes like this.
First of all, narcissism, when I was saying it's not real, it's just people who have a good opinion of themselves, and it might actually help them perform better, it turns out that narcissism Is not just thinking you're pretty great.
Because if that's all it was, a lot of people would be narcissists.
But it turns out that like addiction, have you ever been around anybody who was addicted, let's say an alcoholic?
And have you ever been amazed that when you start reading the literature, that somebody who is an alcoholic fits a whole bunch of behavior predictions That are so specific, you think, well that can't be so predictive.
Couldn't it be that just all kinds of different people, they like alcohol more than other people, and that's all it is?
Why would it be that the people who seem to be alcoholics have behavior in common?
Like, that doesn't make sense, right?
But it's true. I mean, anybody who's been around addicts knows there's a certain set of behaviors that you can pretty much rely on for this group of people.
Now, it turns out that narcissism is this sort of catch-all category for a bunch of behaviors.
And there's more than one kind of narcissism, etc.
The kind which I was speaking to when I said it's not real, I maintained that same opinion, but I was using the word wrong.
So my opinion didn't change, but my definition of what that word means is now modified.
So my opinion that if somebody's only problem is they think they're a little bit better than they really are, that's not a mental health problem.
Because I live in that world all the time, and it just helps me perform better.
I mean, let me give you an example.
When I was a kid, I believed that with no training whatsoever, I could someday become one of the most famous cartoonists in the world.
Am I a narcissist?
Yeah! Yeah, that's a completely unreasonable, imaginary hallucination of what I could do.
Now, it turns out I did that.
When I wrote my first book, I said to myself, I've never even taken a class in writing except One, you know, workshop on business writing.
And I thought, but I'll bet I could write a best-selling book on my first try.
Narcissist. I mean, what else would you call that, really?
How many people say, hey, I think I could write a best-selling book even though I've never written anything like a book?
Well, I said that.
Wouldn't you diagnose that as a little bit not quite right?
Right? So I wrote my first book, The Dilber Principle, and it was a number one bestseller for weeks.
What do you do with that?
Right? My longest fantasy that I've ever had from childhood is that someday my opinions would be so valued that I would be invited to the White House to talk to the President in the Oval Office.
An actual, literal, continuous...
I guess fantasy, if you will, that someday I would just be recognized as having opinions worthy of the president inviting me over just to chat.
And then that happened.
That literally exactly happened.
Now what do I do with that, right?
Should I check myself into a mental health clinic?
Because I've had thoughts about my own potential success that are really unreasonable.
By any measure...
Well, thank you, Ike.
That is far too kind.
By any measure, I fit the definition, right?
But it's not mental health, in terms of it being an issue, because it actually seems to motivate me to work harder and accomplish things.
So here's the point.
When I was saying that narcissism is not a problem, it's not a mental health problem, The mental health professionals actually agree with that.
Okay? The kind I was just describing, the very narrow kind, where you just have a pretty good opinion of your abilities, probably not a problem because it makes you happy.
It might bother other people, but that's sort of their problem, right?
So I'm going to stick with my opinion that if you were to very narrowly and incorrectly, by the way, if you were to incorrectly Use narcissism just for a high opinion of yourself.
That's not a mental problem.
So I keep that opinion. Professionals agree with me.
What I didn't know is that there's this whole set of other behaviors that come with it.
One of them is projection that only the narcissist knew.
So when I said, that's not real.
People don't literally accuse you of the thing they're doing.
Like, that would just be so on the nose.
But... And it is true that people don't do that.
Your average person doesn't do projection.
I mean, not much. Maybe they do a little.
But the narcissists do it only.
They do it continuously.
So that's just part of the personality trait that comes with the package.
The other is the gaslighting question, which I said, there's no such thing as gaslighting.
I was correct in the definition I was using, which was the original definition.
Where I'm incorrect, 100% incorrect, and by the way, when I'm done with this, I know from experience that I can say a sentence like, I was 100% incorrect, and somebody later will say, why don't you admit you were wrong?
And I'll say, what does 100% incorrect sound like if not admitting you're wrong?
But watch, it's going to happen in the comments.
And here's the difference.
Gaslighting the way it was originally invented, shall we say, was making somebody doubt their sanity, but that's your point.
You're trying to make somebody think they're crazy.
The way it's been used in popular use is not like that.
So the original definition, I still say, it's not a thing.
People aren't doing that. Nobody's doing that.
But the way it's used in popular...
Discussion, and now I would say it's common usage, so I would say that the definition...
I will respect that definition, because it's common usage now.
Which is that there's so much lying going on that you start thinking you're crazy, but it has nothing to do with the intention of the person doing it.
The person doing it is just lying.
That's it. They're just lying.
The effect is that you think you're crazy, but nobody's intentionally making you crazy...
That's where I had a difference with the definition.
But given that gaslighting is apparently something that every narcissist does, along with projection, along with lying, and here's...
You want to hear the freakiest part?
Here's the part I'm not sure you're going to believe.
But it goes like this.
The narcissist, in order to protect their fragile ego, which is apparently the source of all the other behavior...
We'll have instant memory loss when they are caught in a lie.
And it will look to you like they're just lying again.
But it's not. It's freakier than that.
It's instant rewriting of memories.
And when you see it in person, it's like, you won't even believe it.
So these are behaviors that are very specific to a certain type of person.
So let's talk about Joe Scarborough.
You may have seen this morning that he had a big rant where he was yelling and, you know, of course some of it was theatrical, but it looked like he was actually a little bit out of control.
You can't tell how much was for the camera.
But is there anything that would trigger Joe Scarborough into rage?
Anything that would look like, oh, did I mention that there's another term that's called the narcissistic rage?
Have you ever heard of it? Narcissistic rage happens when you catch somebody lying who is a narcissist.
So let's say, for example, the narcissist said, there's nothing in my hand.
But yet you could point to it and say, um, there's something in your hand.
Right there. Right there.
And the narcissist will say, no, there isn't.
No, there's nothing in my hand.
And you'll say, let me get a hundred scientists and do a study.
Yeah, we're all looking at it.
It's right in your hand. But if you catch a narcissist's cold, like there's just no way out, they have a very predictable path next.
Do you know what it is? Rage.
Yeah, if you catch a narcissist and a lie...
They won't just lie again, although they might try that first, but when they know they can't get out of the lie, they go into a rage and the problem is you and things that you've done in the past.
Apparently that is so predictable within this personality set of traits that you can just say, okay, this is going to happen next.
Caught you in a lie, narcissistic rage comes next, after that will be blaming me for something that happened a long time ago, And look how specific that is.
Blaming you for something that happened a long time ago to divert you from what's happening to today.
That's very specific.
And it's part of the personality trait, which is weird.
So was there anything that would have triggered Joe Scarborough?
Anything that would have made him look embarrassed, meaning wrong, in public?
Was there anything that would make Joe Scarborough feel wrong about something really important in public?
Well, while he was having the rant, there was a chyron, or the words that appear in the bottom of the screen, put there by his producers that was talking about how the Arizona Secretary of State says that the audit that's happening in Maricopa County is a problem, Because apparently the Republicans took control of the voting machines that have been used in 2020, and the chain of custody and the control is sloppy.
And so the Arizona Secretary of State says that they should replace every voting machine that was under the control of the Republicans for a time, because the fear is, are you ahead of me yet?
Did he get there yet?
Alright, for those of you who aren't at the finish line yet, I'll just complete this.
So the Arizona Secretary of State has confirmed that voting machines which are not connected to the internet are so vulnerable to hacking, they should be replaced physically.
Not just, you know, reset them, not just erase the memory, but physically throw them away.
Now, wasn't a big part of the big lie that if something wasn't connected to the Internet, it couldn't be hacked?
But now we see from the Democrats They're saying if you have our machines not connected to the internet, and you've ever touched them, they're not secure.
Now imagine being Joe Scarborough, and you've been selling to the world that not only was there no fraud, but there couldn't be, and you'd be a fucking idiot if you thought it was even possible.
Do you see it now?
What would happen if the biggest claim you've been making on television for months, that there's just no way that any of this could have been insecure, and you just proved that it was insecure because your own team just said so?
What's that make you do?
Well, the theory is, if you imagine that he was a narcissist, I'm not saying he is, because I can't I certainly can't read minds, and I can't diagnose people at a distance.
But as a mental model for you to keep in your mind, to simply explain the world, ask yourself this.
Does Joe Scarborough ever think that his opinions are, say, better than other people's?
I would say yes.
Everybody in that job has that opinion, including me.
Does he ever say condescending things about people who disagree with him?
That's his whole show. His whole show is saying condescending things about people he thinks he's better than.
They're called Republicans.
So he certainly fits at least the description of somebody who would be in that category.
That's not a diagnosis.
It would be totally irresponsible for me to make a diagnosis of somebody that I've never met in person.
But watching this is so delicious.
And I'm not sure that the public at large has connected the dots yet.
I think that by this afternoon, at least Fox News will have realized that the Democrats have proven their case, that the system wasn't secure, because it can't be.
There's no such thing as a secure system when you have technology involved, because it just requires one bad actor to have access to it.
That's it. Have I ever told you that the way to destroy an illusion is to embrace it?
How many times have I told you that?
Every time I show you a new example, that point will get a little bit stronger in your mind and will be more useful to you.
If you were to say, hey, I think That it's impossible to totally secure voting machines, so therefore, it might be a problem.
And then the Democrats say, you fool.
Thank you, Patrick.
You are too nice.
And then the Democrats say, you fool.
The courts have shown no evidence of widespread fraud.
There is no proof of anything.
Therefore, You're all foolish and you're conspiracy believers, etc.
But instead of that, what the Arizona audit did accidentally, but imagine if they'd done this intentionally, what they did accidentally was take control of the voting machines and make the Democrats complain that the voting machines are too insecure.
They actually embraced the Democrats' own belief That, hey, who can hack a machine?
Does it matter if we have these controls?
Why would it? Why would it possibly matter if we have full control of these machines in a locked room with people doing stuff that you can't see?
Why would it matter? Why would it matter?
We embrace your point.
Yes, Democrats, everything you've said about this is true.
So, if you don't mind, we're just going to spend a few minutes with these voting machines behind closed doors doing things that couldn't possibly make a difference.
Right? Right?
Things that couldn't make any difference.
We've all agreed on that.
And do you know why those machines are completely safe to be behind closed doors with just Republicans?
Because the courts...
I've found no evidence of widespread fraud of any voting machines controlled by Republicans behind closed doors.
100% no finding of a problem.
Do you think I'm demonetized yet?
Do you think this live stream is going to be monetized by the time I'm done?
Nope. No way.
There's somebody watching this right now, who has an official job with YouTube, who is saying to themselves, holy shit, I've got to demonetize this fucking thing right away.
Now, I'm intentionally making it a little hard, because nothing I said is anything but completely reasonable and obvious and a headline.
Well, thank you, Matt, for making that observation.
So that was the best part of today's news, but we've got some more.
How about Chris Cuomo?
He's being criticized for giving advice to his brother, the governor, because Chris Cuomo works for CNN and CNN reports on the governor.
And I say, leave him alone.
Come on.
Leave him alone.
You know...
I get the point, right?
One works for the news organization, and they cover the governor.
Everybody gets the point. But nobody doesn't know they're brothers.
Like, we can handle this.
We can adjust a little bit in our brains and say, oh, they're brothers.
We can handle this.
Do you really want to live in a world where you can't talk to your own goddamn brother and give him advice?
No! No!
We got lots of things to criticize people for, right?
Plenty of things to criticize either Cuomo.
You know, you got stuff. Don't criticize them for talking to each other.
They're frickin' brothers!
Giving advice? Of course!
Of course you should give advice.
Should he do it on air, somebody says?
What's the difference? They're brothers.
The last thing you want is to criminalize brothers talking to each other, or at least even discourage it.
Of course they can talk to each other.
My goodness. If we're complaining about that, we've really gone off the rails.
Let's talk about Meghan Markle.
So Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are making a spectacle of their mental health problems.
And it turns out Meghan Markle is being accused of being a narcissist.
And so I looked up what the accusations about her are to see if she fits into any of these categories of really specific personality traits.
And there are about 30 of them, so I haven't mentioned them all.
But one of them is habitual liar.
People say she is.
I don't have any evidence of that.
She would marry for fame.
Well, okay. Center of attention?
Yeah. Always plays the victim?
Yeah. Is vindictive?
Apparently. And the other one that is really specific for a narcissist, a dangerous narcissist now, is they try to separate you from all your friends and Because your friends will talk you out of listening to the narcissist.
And indeed, Meghan Markle apparently got Harry to move out of his entire country and leave the royal family.
Nobody but narcissists does that.
That's like the narcissist playbook, you know, step one.
Get them away from all of their other friends who can tell them what's happening.
So I guess Meghan Markle, a lot of her staff quit.
She's caused every problem.
She controls Harry by telling him that she's suicidal, so he's going to have to...
And because Harry lost his mother, famously, when his wife says, I'm going to kill myself unless you do everything I want, what's Harry going to do?
Is Harry going to lose the second most important woman in his life because he could have done something?
No. No, he's going to do absolutely anything that Meghan Markle asks him to do because she said she'll kill herself otherwise.
Now, there are a lot of people in Great Britain who are not so happy about Meghan Markle and have some bad things to say about her.
And I didn't really understand that until I looked into it.
Oh my God! Somebody needs to save poor Harry.
Because he doesn't know what's going on.
But I think everybody else does.
He is basically just a victim.
So there's this thing called...
What's it called?
Narcissistic abuse.
And narcissistic abuse...
Just read the Harry and Meghan story.
That's it. It's all there.
Every part of it. So it's the clearest case you'll ever see.
But I'm no professional, so I certainly am not diagnosing anybody with either a personality disorder or a mental health problem.
I'm just saying that some people fit into a pattern that makes them predictable.
So here's the only takeaway.
If there's somebody in your life who looks like Meghan Markle, or looks like maybe Joe Scarborough, and you're saying to yourself, I don't understand why they do what they do, do some research on all of the personality traits that go with the certain characteristics, or a certain personality, I guess, and then you can actually predict next steps.
You can actually write it on a card and say, oh, checklist.
Oh, checklist. Oh, checklist.
And you just look for it.
And you will be blown away that these personality traits, they move together.
Meaning that if you've got three of them, you've got six of them, is what I'm saying.
That, you know, there's something magical about how they operate together.
But it makes them very predictable.
How about fake news through history?
We're hearing that the BBC had this guy, Martin Bashir, who forged some documents to get an interview with Princess Diana back in the 90s.
He actually forged bank documents to get her attention.
He had some story that she would be interested in so he could get an interview.
This isn't quite fake news, but This was the BBC. This is the BBC. I mean, really?
And they've got a guy who's just faking documents to get an interview?
That's pretty unethical.
You have to wonder what else they're doing that's unethical.
Ted Cruz is getting into a little hot water, I think, by mocking the US military's ads for recruitment.
And there's a meme going around showing the Russian recruitment ads, which are all manly and like, you know, it's like dark colors and gray, you know, manly men with muscles doing stuff, things like that.
But, and then next to it is the American version, which is very woke.
Very woke. And Ted Cruz actually used the word pansies.
I don't know if he's still going to be a senator by the end of the day because I feel as if the LGBTQ community or anybody who's mad at bad language is going to get on him for using that word.
But we'll see if he survives that in our extra woke world.
But I have a contrarian view that Given that the woke army has conquered hetero males in America, what do you think the Russians are afraid of?
If you were a Russian hetero male and you just saw that the hetero males in America had been squashed, wouldn't you be a little bit afraid of them with weapons, whoever did the squashing?
Because whoever beat all the hetero males in this country into submission, which is largely our current situation, That's a pretty powerful force.
I'd be afraid to be on the other side of that group.
They seem pretty deadly.
If we sent an army of women, do you think we'd do worse?
I don't think so.
Certainly there's a difference about how much weight you can carry if you're on the ground.
But if you're flying a jet or controlling a drone or launching a missile, it doesn't seem like you need too many muscles.
Well, BBC arranged for the former most senior judge in England to look into it, the Bashir thing.
That's the only reason we know. Yeah, there's so many things that probably people have gotten away with that we'll never know.
Do you remember when I made the prediction that I got mocked for?
I said that if...
Trump lost that Republicans would be hunted.
Well, now apparently 400 Republicans have been rounded up as part of this Capitol protest, which CNN calls an insurrection because they're not really news.
And it seems to me that I've been waiting to find out what will be the new Russia collusion hoax.
Because you know that the left and CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC, you know that all those entities will eventually land on a new hoax to keep Republicans out of office.
It's obvious that we're now in that cycle where we go from hoax to hoax.
And I wondered what the new one would be.
And apparently the new one is going to be this bipartisan commission to look into exactly what happened on January 6th.
Now you notice that January 6th gets a date name, like 9-11.
As soon as you put a date on it, it's the date that lives in infamy, right?
It's like Pearl Harbor Day, 9-11, January 6th.
You see the branding cleverness?
If you can get the public to talk about it by its date, instead of just saying that thing that happened in 2020, As soon as it's got a date name, it rises in importance in our mind.
As soon as you've got a new story about it, it rises in importance in your mind.
And the more new stories you have about it, the more angles you have on it, the more we'll be thinking about it, the more important it will seem in our minds.
So it seems that the January 6th thing will be the new Russia collusion hoax.
They'll turn it into an insurrection and Way more than it was.
Part of why, I assume, part of why they're asking for such a gigantic budget to protect the capital has a little bit to do with the fact that they might actually be afraid, and probably a lot to do with the fact that it puts it in the news.
How do we put it in the news again?
Well, let's have a bipartisan commission, and then the news will have to talk about January 6th.
How about... Well, so basically, every angle that they can find to talk about January 6th, they're going to do it.
So that's your new hoax for the coming, at least through the midterms.
They might have another one after that.
Here's another hilarious story.
You know, there's an Israel ceasefire.
So apparently that's gone into effect.
And ABC has credited Joe Biden's, quote, quiet diplomacy.
The quiet diplomacy. That's right.
Joe Biden is being credited for the ceasefire with his quiet diplomacy.
Do you know what else could be part of Joe Biden's quiet diplomacy?
Anything that happens that's good.
Lindy, you're way too nice.
Yes. So should, let's say...
Any good thing happened in the world, what do you think the news story will be?
Well, there's Joe Biden with that quiet diplomacy again.
He's rocking the quiet diplomacy.
In fact, he's doing so many things secretively and behind the scenes that you'd be amazed at all the quiet diplomacy.
I mean, he's just quietly doing stuff.
I know, I know, you'd like to see it.
We all would. But give him some space.
His quiet diplomacy is fixing lots of things behind the scenes.
You just don't see it. But it's quiet, very effective, behind the scenes.
The other possibility is that Israel just decided to stop firing at Gaza because they had already degraded their tunnels, degraded their missiles, degraded their leadership.
Got as much as they could get without a land invasion, which wasn't going to work for them anyway.
So was it the...
Quiet diplomacy. Got that quiet diplomacy.
Was it that? Or was it the fact that Israel was done?
I feel like it had more to do with the fact that they were done.
Soup and fluffy pillows, exactly.
That was a comment I'm reading.
I'm not just babbling. So I would say that the entire event has been a gigantic public relations victory for Israel.
Now, you might disagree, and you might say to yourself, but wait, they've got tons of criticism, killing babies, blah, blah, blah.
And as I've said before, look for the persuasion.
The persuasion will tell you what's really happening.
And The photos of the missiles coming into Israel are far more dominant in your mind than the fact that there are innocent people and children being killed in Gaza because you probably didn't see those pictures.
I asked this in a prior livestream, and something like half of you had never even seen a picture of a victim.
But every one of you had seen the missiles, lots of them, going into Israel.
So Israel not only wins the battle...
That's good. Shows how much military strength they have.
That's good. Embarrasses the military leadership of Hamas by tricking them into the tunnels and then bombing them.
That's good for Israel.
So Israel looks strong, capable, and resolute.
I always think even their enemies would say that now, right?
Right? It would look like Israel is strong, very capable, and resolute.
Probably exactly what they want everybody to think.
The Abraham Accords held.
How big a deal is that?
Gigantic. Because didn't you wonder if the Abraham Accords were maybe a little brittle?
Did you wonder? I don't know if this will last.
Well, it lasted through this with not even a bump.
I would say that's gigantic.
Gigantic. Thank you, Pam.
So I think Israel just won like crazy.
Now, of course, the critics emerge, and they're calling Israel an apartheid state, which they absolutely are not.
So let me say this as clearly as possible.
Israel is not an apartheid state.
I'm saying that so I don't get kicked off the live stream.
So, let's dig into it a little bit.
Now, to be an apartheid state would require that people of different ethnicities were treated differently under the law.
Is that a true statement?
Oh, thank you. Oh, I see some people are making contributions...
To counter any demonetization that's coming.
You don't need to do that.
But I do appreciate it.
Just a word on incentive.
I don't really need more money.
But when people are incentivizing me this way, it totally works.
Even if you have money, I don't know why.
We're just wired that way.
It's like a dog who isn't hungry is still going to do a trick for a treat.
So when you offer me treats...
I do tricks. I'm not too proud.
It works. Incentives always work.
You know, if there's anything I've ever taught you, is that incentives always work.
They don't always work completely, but they always work a little.
Alright. So, I told you that the best persuaders are the ones who use fear and visuals.
Right? So, there are pictures.
If I were to...
Say, show me a picture of any rules or laws that are different in Israel that treat any of the ethnic groups differently.
Can you show me a picture?
Show me the photo.
Show me the photo of this alleged apartheid going on.
You can't, right?
Thank you, Nikki, and sense of awareness and all of you.
But you can't really think of a photo, can you?
Think of an image in your mind, any kind of a famous picture or a person maybe.
Sometimes if you can associate a living human with something, that becomes like a brand for the thing.
Some quiet diplomacy from Canada.
Thank you, Victoria. So here's my point.
Israel has the persuasion advantage because the complaints against them are not visual and they don't scare you.
Are any of you afraid of apartheid in the Middle East?
Nope. Nope.
Doesn't affect you at all.
You're definitely not afraid of it.
Like, you might complain about it or say, things need to change.
I get that. But you're probably not afraid.
Linda, you were way too nice.
Thank you. So here's my observation.
For some reason, the Palestinians have no persuasion skills whatsoever.
Have you noticed that?
It's not my imagination, is it?
That if you were to say, what is good persuasion, and how would you do it, and then you look at everything the Palestinians do, they don't even overlap a little bit, do they?
It feels like they've never even been exposed to the idea that negotiating and persuasion are like skills.
It just feels like flailing and anger and whatever, you know, revenge and religion and all these things.
But you don't see anything that looks like technique.
But when you look at the Israeli way that they handle the PR part of it, lots of technique, right?
Let me ask you this.
Most of you believe that there are differences in the laws.
Of how people are treated based on whether they're Jewish or non-Jewish in, let's say, any part of Israel, occupied, unoccupied, etc.
You believe that there are differences, right?
Have you seen the list?
Have you ever seen the list of here are all the things that you can do if you're Jewish living in Israel, or any part that they can control, and here are the things you can do if you're non-Jewish, But a citizen, and you're living in that area.
Have you ever seen the list?
There are lots of articles, but if you read the articles, it's all hand-waving.
Let me read to you an example of an article about the unfair treatment of the Palestinians.
I'm reading the article.
There is unfair treatment of the Palestinians.
Okay, well, I guess there'll be some examples.
Well, there's some generic...
Statement about something technical, about land that's disputed.
I don't even know.
That's it.
No picture, no summary, no list, no article.
You really can't find what the point is, can you?
So here's your assignment.
Find me a list, a clean, simple list, That says, these are the things you can do if you're Jewish living in Israel.
These are the things that you can do if you're non-Jewish in Israel.
Just compare them. Somebody's made the list, right?
What happens if it doesn't exist?
What would you think if you can't find it?
I would say, if you can't find that list, the Palestinians, maybe they're not even interested in persuading.
Maybe they don't even care.
It's like they wouldn't even know how to do this.
You don't think there's anybody in the squad who could produce a list of what's the problem, like what's the specific complaint.
You have to ask why the information is not presented to you in any kind of a clean way.
So here's a comment.
The only difference is that the Arabs in Israel are not required to do national services in the army, but many Arabs have voluntarily joined.
I believe that you are a victim of extreme propaganda.
If you think the only difference is whether you're allowed to serve, I think you have to look at the larger picture of all the territories there.
So the real question is not just living within Israel proper, but any Gaza or any of the areas that are controlled by Israel.
So, that's that.
Rasmussen says that 52% of conservatives, who are likely U.S. voters, watch...
Who watch TV news watch Fox.
So about half of conservatives who are likely voters watch Fox News.
But there's a growing competition with Newsmax getting 17% and 9% going to OAN. And then 20% conservatives prefer some other network.
And I guess the only reason I'm pointing this out is that especially if Trump does something...
Thank you, Mitchell. If Trump does something that creates, I don't know, some kind of other conservative platform, that Fox News' stranglehold on conservative thought might be getting a little distributed.
I don't know if it'll make any difference.
I don't know if the world will be exactly the same because of that.
But I always note that if CNN and MSNBC ever join together as one network...
They would be a lot more dominant, and Fox News had kind of a monopoly there that's fading away.
I think they'll still be the dominant voice for a long time, but a little bit is being picked away.
Now, here's something I've said before, but man, every day I am reminded that I should tell you this again.
If you're not following Glenn Greenwald on Twitter, you're missing one of the best shows ever.
Just one of the best shows.
You just have to follow him for the entertainment alone, but you're going to learn some things that you're just not seeing in the other press.
It's not just that he might have some information that's not available elsewhere in some cases, but he's simply framing things in a way you haven't heard them, and it's shocking when he does it.
Here's an example. You know economist Paul Krugman, He came out with an article, I guess, recently basically mocking cryptocurrency.
So it's Paul Krugman saying cryptocurrency is sort of an empty nothing that will not likely amount to much.
And that's a current opinion based on current situation.
And Glenn Greenwald retweets Krugman and says, Krugman, 1998.
Quote, so he's quoting Krugman in 1998.
The growth of the Internet will slow drastically as the flaw in Metcalfe's law becomes apparent.
Most people have nothing to say to each other.
By 2005, he predicted back in 1998, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machines.
So, it's one thing to see Paul Krugman just say cryptocurrency is a big nothing.
But it's another thing to see what his last big prediction was.
So, you really have to watch Greenwald.
He does a tweet like this, meaning it's just as savage, almost every day.
And you think...
This is just good stuff.
So, anyway.
That is what I had to say for today.
And what are your bets?
Did I get demonetized today?
If I don't get demonetized today, I'd be really surprised.
Really surprised. So I hope you appreciate...
And I know the people who are doing the Super Chats payments there.
I know you appreciate it.
I hope you appreciate how often I will demonetize myself intentionally because otherwise there's just no way to talk about the news.
You just can't talk about it unless you get demonetized.
Now, I have not yet received a warning...
From YouTube. And my understanding is you don't get banned forever until they've given you some warnings.
So I haven't gotten any warnings.
So demonetizing is the mildest thing they do.
Now, for context, nearly...
I don't know the percentage.
It's maybe 95% or so of the things they demonetize later will be re-monetized.
In other words, when we ask for a review...
The actual official reviewer will say, no, there was no reason to demonetize it.
Think about that. 95% of the times I get demonetized, which I assume has the effect of making it less visible to people, because why would YouTube make more visible something unmonetized?
It wouldn't make sense to their business model.
So one assumes that demonetizing me is a way to reduce my voice.
I don't know if that's the intention, but it's an assumption I make.
The ethical skeptic.
I think I've read some of his work.
Thank you for all of this.
Sparky, etc. Dallas is asking me, what do I think about Crowder?
You know, I usually don't make comments about other Individuals who are just doing a job, so to speak.
I will note that he's hugely popular, and so he must be producing good content.
I've enjoyed a lot of it that I've seen.
I don't watch it every day, but what I've seen has been very entertaining.
So I would say he's certainly got something that's working out.
But of course, he crosses the line a little bit more than most people.
That's part of his appeal. Part of the reason that you like Crowder is that you think he's going to do something dangerous for himself.
And that he does.
He does a lot of dangerous stuff for himself.
So that makes him popular.
The closer you get to danger, the more popular you are.
That's just the way it works. Is Trump a narcissist?
Somebody asks. Well, I would say that the finest way to answer that question...
In terms of surgical precision, is that, like I said before, there's a benign narcissist, and then there's a dangerous kind.
If Trump's narcissism, let's take the assumption that he has it.
I'm not making that claim because I can't diagnose people.
But let's assume he thinks that he's better than other people.
He did become president of the United States, And accomplished, in my opinion, some pretty amazing stuff.
In my opinion.
You know, Project Warp Speed, Abraham Accords.
I mean, really some impossible-looking stuff.
So, would it be a mental health problem to have somebody think, oh, I can do things that other people can't do, but then he does them?
Well, like, what do you do with that?
Is that a problem?
Did anybody get hurt?
Well, remember I told you long ago, I had this theory, and I've been using the word bully, that Trump seems to trigger people who have had some experience with a bully, but maybe people who have experience with that personality type.
You know what I mean? So, If Trump was, let's say, mean to his staff or he lied a lot, which the fact-checkers would say happened, you'd have to ask yourself, but did it hurt you?
Did any of that make a difference?
Because the weird thing about having a narcissist as your president is it's the right job.
You finally found a personality that fits the job perfectly for some tasks.
Now, do you always want somebody with that mindset to be your president?
I don't think so. I don't think you want anybody with any mindset to be your president forever.
It's good to cycle in different personalities because they have different traits, different things they can accomplish.
Is it possible that Biden got a better result than Trump would have in the Middle East?
I don't know. I don't know.
There's no way to know. Skip says, Trump's self-esteem is too high for him to be a narcissist.
Well, the theory of narcissists is that they secretly have low self-esteem, but what we see of them looks like high self-esteem.
So that's the theory.
So you wouldn't know what his inner thoughts are.
You would only see his external stuff.
All right. Let's just look at your comments for a moment here.
Yeah, those of you who are saying that Trump can't be a narcissist because he has high self-esteem, you're on the wrong path.
The theory is that they look like high self-esteem while secretly, in a way that you can't tell, have low self-esteem.
Now, I'm not saying that is Trump.
I'm saying that's the theory of what the word means.
I would also point out that everybody in the media, let's say the hosts of CNN, the hosts of MSNBC, are they narcissists?
Almost definitely.
What happens when a narcissist newsreader person feels that their opponent is a narcissist, let's say, Trump?
What happens when the narcissists square off against each other?
Well, it looks like exactly what you saw.
It looks like the fake news acting like they've never made a mistake, projecting all of their flaws onto Trump, while Trump acted like he never made a mistake and projected any flaws he had onto the news.
I think it was a battle between narcissists.
But the question is, are all narcissists bad all the time, or is there anything that they do for us that's good?
And I've always argued that Trump has a productive brand of narcissism, partly because he ties his ego to the country.
If you tie your ego to the United States by being president and being associated with patriotism, etc., you really don't have an option of doing a bad job.
You kind of have to work really hard to do it right, because otherwise you don't look good.
That's the whole point. The last thing I want is somebody who has a low self-esteem and says to themselves, you know, Russia is pushing us around a lot, but on the other hand, we do deserve it.
You know, China is sending a lot of fentanyl to the United States, but you know, we have to take some responsibility.
It's us that's taking the fentanyl.
Right? So if you get somebody who has what I would call a Healthy personality with no personality disorders, no mental illness whatsoever.
I don't know if you want that person for president.
They might be a little bit too reasonable for getting the job done.
Yeah, Lux Life says all those with presidential aspirations are narcissists.
I feel like that's true.
I feel like that's true.
And some might do a better job of pretending they're not, but it feels like a safe statement.
How about people who do what I do?
How about people who do podcasts, people who are news readers, etc.?
Are they narcissists?
I'd have to say yes.
Right? You know, you've watched me for a while.
Oh, let me ask you to diagnose me.
This will be fun. Those of you who have watched me for a while, you know that it's hard to untangle what is somehow a natural narcissist from somebody who is a public personality, you know, a celebrity, if you will.
Because celebrities, their job is to show off.
And it's what we do.
I put myself in that minor celebrity category.
So I show off all day long, but I also tell myself it's my job.
Am I rationalizing?
So diagnose me.
Do I have a problem that you would associate with any of those characteristics of narcissism?
Does Mike Pompeo still have Trump fooled?
Sparky asks. Well, I don't know exactly what that means.
I'd have to have an example for that.
Somebody says, a narcissist destroys others.
Yeah, I don't feel like I do that, but I don't think also narcissists know they're narcissists.
I feel as though one of the characteristics is that you are pretty sure you're not So if you're open to the possibility, it almost proves you're not.
But am I such a narcissist that I know that if I tell you I'm aware of my narcissism, I'm an extra cool narcissist?
See, you can't really untangle it.
Because it is natural and even desirable, I would say, for people to protect their ego and to protect their image and to protect...
And even to fight that their point is right and the other side is wrong.
I guess it's just a matter of degree.
A reverse narcissist is somebody who believes they're the worst.
Yeah, which would you prefer?
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.
Patrick says, I would be the only narcissist that makes you feel at ease.
Well, that is my job, but of course the trouble is, what if I'm one of the...
Apparently there's a kind of narcissist who gets their supply, that's the word they use, who gets their benefits from acting like they're not a narcissist.
And I think, oh my god, I'm one of those.
Because in public, I'm always trying to help people who are not me.
So you'd say, well, that's no narcissist.
Nobody's going to be continuously trying to help other people if they're a narcissist.
But it turns out that's a special kind of narcissist.
Somebody who's showing off by trying to help other people.
And if they succeed, well, then they get some credit, right?
So aren't they really narcissists?
But I would say it's productive.
Can't there be productive narcissism?
Don't you want people who have capabilities and resources to try to help other people, and in return, they get credit.
They get respect.
Do we want that to go away?
I don't think so.
So I think there are cases, Trump being one, and I try to be, in the category of people who...
I totally love it when people have a good feeling about me.
Don't you? Is that wrong?
Should I feel guilty that if I do something worthy and people say good things about it, should I feel bad that that makes me feel kind of good when people say good things about me?
I don't know. Where's the line?
If you show off for a living, which is what I do, Where's the line?
I think I'm a productive narcissist.
Meaning I probably...
Well, I try.
I don't know if I do. But I try to add more that I'm subtracting.
At least it's my intention.
I don't know if I'm pulling it off.
Alright, Michael says...
Is narcissist a behavior word or a motivation word?
How can we read motivations of others?
The motivation of a narcissist, according to the experts, is just to protect...
Their fragile self-esteem.
And that everything is an outgrowth of that.
So that's the assumed motivation, whether that's accurate or not.
Michael says, I'm not a narcissist, but I'm a boomer.
Close enough. I accept that.
I accept that characterization.
Well, many of you think I'm not a narcissist, but it probably has to do with the fact that you agree with me.
I'm fully hedged on this trade.
Thanks. Alright, so that's all I have for today, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
And tomorrow, I don't want to get your hopes up, but tomorrow is going to be the best Coffee with Scott Adams of all time.
And I don't even know what the news is tomorrow.
I'm just that confident that's how good it will be.
