Episode 1561 Scott Adams: Talking About All the Media Manipulation and the Landslide Coming in 2022
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Bernie Sanders tweets, Elon Musk replies
Why China reopened their wet markets so quickly
NPC identifier clues
Persuasion without mandates
Democrat tipping point on believing fake news?
Rittenhouse verdict will send a message
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Well, here's a little thing that snuck up on you.
Many of you know my story that a number of years ago I lost my ability to speak.
I won't go through the whole story, but it was an exotic problem called a spasmodic dysphonia.
And I could make noise, but it wouldn't be intelligible.
My vocal cords would clench when I tried to speak.
And it's a rare disorder, and it took me three years to figure out what to do, and I found the only doctor in the world who had a surgery that could fix it.
It was risky, but I took it.
And it fixed it.
So there are tens of thousands of people in the world right now who can't speak, can't have a conversation, because they don't know that that one surgery that fixed this exists.
They go to their doctor, and their doctor doesn't know about it.
So I did spend a lot of time doing some outreach and trying to tell people that it exists as an option, etc.
But here's what I wanted to tell you.
During those years when I couldn't speak, every time I got in my car, almost every time, alone, I would repeat an affirmation.
And the affirmation was that I, Scott Adams, will speak perfectly.
Now, this was a ridiculous affirmation for two reasons.
Number one, prior to having any voice problems whatsoever, I had a terrible voice.
So what are the odds that I would go from not being able to speak at all, all the way past my normal terrible voice, to something closer to perfect?
Very low, given that the problem with my voice was literally incurable at that time.
It was literally incurable.
You know, when I first got it, even the doctor who cured it didn't have the cure yet.
He was still, you know, dicking around trying to find it.
But something happened in the last, I don't know, it feels like the last few weeks, which is, I don't know if it's because my allergies are not bothering me.
I don't know if it's because I had sinus surgery last year, and maybe it's all working out for me about now.
But correct me if I'm wrong, my voice is damn near perfect now, isn't it?
Am I wrong? Because you can't hear your own voice.
But did I actually achieve the impossible?
I think it actually happened.
What could be less likely than someone who never had a good voice and then lost their speaking ability completely?
What are the odds that they would be able to do this someday?
Have I ever told you about Prisoner Island?
I know I have, but it's worth repeating, because when you see another example of it, I think everybody should have a story of themselves.
Sort of an operating system or a code.
Maybe you could call it a philosophy, but I prefer to say it's a story about yourself.
And the story about yourself is the story that you can rely on when everything goes wrong.
There's a story of yourself.
Here's the story of myself.
Now, it's a fictional story, but it's the story that I use as my operating code.
And it's called Prisoner Island.
Have you heard of it? Prisoner Island goes like this.
There's an island in which prisoners are dropped and there's no warden.
It's just a jungle there, literally.
And you just have to figure it out with the other prisoners and survive any way you can.
And so in my story of myself, Prisoner Island, I'm dropped on Prisoner Island and, you know, I'm exactly me.
So I'm not the biggest prisoner.
On day one, the prisoners beat me up and raped me viciously.
Day two...
Day three, the prisoners beat me up and rape me viciously.
Day three, the prisoners beat me up and rape me viciously.
Come back in a year, they'll all be dead, and I will be running Prisoner Island.
That's my story.
And the story is not about, you know, going to the top of Prisoner Island.
The story is about I will go deeper than you will go.
The story is, no matter how far you're willing to go, I'm going to go deeper than that every time.
It's also the reason I've never been afraid of a human being, like even scary human beings.
And maybe you have the same experience if you're male.
If you're female, it's probably reasonable to be afraid of big, scary men.
But I'm not a big, scary man, but I've never been afraid of anybody who was.
Because I will go farther than they will go.
And they better stay away.
Because there's nothing more scary than somebody who's crazy.
And I'll go to crazy, right?
If somebody big tried to hurt me, I would go to crazy and I would just stay there.
I would never leave crazy.
Because that's what it takes.
If that's what it takes to win Prisoner Island, I'm going to do it.
So the moral of Prisoner Island is...
I'm going to do what it takes.
Now, another version of this is the millionaire's advice, which I repeat a lot.
It's the best advice I've ever heard.
I wish I knew who it came from.
It came from an actual millionaire whose name I don't remember.
And what he said was, if you want to succeed, figure out the price of success and then pay it.
That's it. That's the whole deal.
If you want to be successful, figure out the price, To be successful and then pay it.
If you do that, you will be successful.
In my case, it was working seven days a week for ten years.
That's what it took. It took me working seven days a year for ten years.
And, you know, there were other challenges there.
For example, losing the ability to draw halfway through.
By the way, do any of you know that I can't draw with my right hand right now?
I've lost the ability to use my drawing hand.
So, if you were a professional artist and you lost your ability to draw...
Like, I actually can't use my hand anymore.
It's just from overuse. It's not carpal tunnel.
It's a focal dystonia.
It's a whole different thing. It's from overuse.
And it's not carpal tunnel.
It's a focal dystonia.
It's a different thing. But...
Prisoner Island.
If you've never been to Prisoner Island and you're a cartoonist and you lose the ability to draw...
You stop drawing.
You quit. But if you've been to Prisoner Island, you learn to draw left-handed.
Is that easy?
Nope. Nope.
Drawing left-handed is not easy.
Now, I'm mildly ambidextrous, so I probably have a little leg up on that.
But, boy, am I... You know, unwilling to compromise on some things.
And so now I draw left-handed.
It takes a little longer. I'm getting better at it.
And I have an art assistant who does the finished work so I can get away with some imperfections.
But anyway, that's what I wanted to tell you.
Somehow, that affirmation that was maybe the least likely affirmation I could have ever come up with Actually came through.
I don't know what this means about the world, really.
Because the number of times I've had affirmations for things that just seemed impossible, just impossible, and they happened, it's really crazy.
And it makes you wonder about the whole nature of reality, really.
I would tell you some other examples, but you can read them in my book.
All right, here's the funniest story of the day.
Bernie Sanders tweets this...
20 hours ago. We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share.
Period. Why do people say period at the end of a statement?
Do you know why? Why do people say period?
It's because they don't have an argument.
That's the only reason.
You wouldn't say period if you had any kind of an argument.
You would just give the argument. But his argument is fairness, which is a concept, as I often say, a concept that was created so that children and stupid people could have something to talk about.
Because do you know what's fair?
Nothing. Nothing.
There are things that you imagine are fair, there are things you say are fair, but there's nothing like fairness in the universe.
You can't get yourself a handful of fairness.
You can't even get two people to agree what's fair.
What is fair when it comes to taxes?
Can you define fair?
What's fair? I already pay the highest percentage of anybody in the United States as a ratio.
I also work two jobs when I don't need to, right?
So this entire profession, if you want to call it that, the live streaming and stuff, it's a huge portion of my effort, and I don't need to do that.
I don't need to do that.
But I do it because it's good for the world, good for the country, etc.
Should I pay the same taxes as someone who's doing something selfish?
Why is that fair? Why is it fair that a selfish person who's just doing work just for their own benefit pays the same taxes as I do when I'm doing this really primarily for other people's benefit?
Is that fair? There's nothing that's fair.
Fair is purely subjective.
And the moment you say it's got to be fair, period, you are signaling with extreme clarity that you have no reason for what you want.
You just want what you want.
There's no reason for it.
Elon Musk replied to Sanders saying we must demand the extremely wealthy pay their fair share, period.
And Elon Musk replied with this, and I quote, I keep forgetting that you're still alive.
I keep forgetting that you're still alive.
Now, I don't know if Elon Musk is the funniest tweeter now that Trump is gone, but he's pretty close if he's not the funniest tweeter.
Now, some of it is because of his situation, you know, if you're the richest person in the world.
Everything you say sounds a little more interesting and a little funnier because everything's, you know, amped up by that fact.
But that's a really good tweet.
I keep forgetting you're still alive.
This is why Tesla doesn't need to spend money on marketing.
Musk is the marketing.
You can't look away. Try to go a day without talking about Tesla.
Try going a full day without mentioning Tesla or Elon Musk.
It's actually hard to do.
I don't think I've gone a full day without mentioning one of them.
I don't know how long. Now, part of it is because I'm in California and there are Teslas everywhere.
So you're just surrounded with Elon Musk reminders all day long.
And people telling me I should get one.
Like, I probably have that conversation about three times a week.
Somebody telling me, why don't you have a Tesla?
I don't understand.
Obviously, why wouldn't you have one?
And I have to, like, explain all that, blah, blah.
Well, maybe I will have some one day.
All right, here's a question for you.
Let's look back. Let's go back in the Wayback Machine.
And do you remember when China reopened the wet markets?
How many remember that we thought the virus might have come from the wet markets, and then China fairly quickly, according to everything we knew about everything, they reopened the wet markets?
And do you remember how appalled you were and how reckless that seemed?
Now, think about how reckless that seemed and then compare it to all the other things that China did about the pandemic.
One thing looks terribly reckless.
Opening up the wet markets, which didn't seem necessary, because I don't think those wet markets have that much impact on the national economy, do they?
I doubt it. And they're not even phasing them out.
It'd be one thing if they said, well, we have to reopen them because people need to eat, if that's what's going on.
But, you know, we'll phase them out as quickly as we can.
Now, that's not what happened.
They just reopened them. That would seem terribly reckless, wouldn't it?
But then you look at the other things that China did.
They nailed people in their apartments.
I think they're jailing people and tracking people.
And they're insanely conservative about managing the virus.
In every other realm, insanely conservative.
But yet, but yet, in this one little realm...
Of reopening the wet markets, they were the opposite of every other way they've acted with the pandemic.
How would you explain that?
There's only one explanation.
Do you know what the one explanation is?
China knew, early on, the wet markets were not the source.
There is no other explanation.
There have been books written about whether or not this virus was man-made or it came from the wet markets.
You don't need any books.
They never would have reopened the wet markets if they didn't know it came from the lab or somewhere else.
You know I'm right.
You know I'm right.
And who else has mentioned this?
Have you heard anybody else say what I just said?
That there is no other explanation for the wet markets except that China knew that that's not the source.
There's no other explanation.
It is 100% inconsistent with every other way that they act.
It's the only way it can be explained.
Yeah. And why did you have to hear that from me?
Because did I introduce any new facts?
No. No, I introduced no new facts...
I just looked at the facts that every one of you know, and I just reframed it.
Why did the news not do that for you?
There's a lot of people in the news.
Why did you have to wait for me?
I mean, think about it.
I mean, this is another sign of how easily we're manipulated by the news.
The fact that we never even thought about this, and I didn't think about it until yesterday.
Literally yesterday is the first time that occurred to me.
Think about that. It's one of the most important questions in the country, and it's largely answered.
It's like one of the big mysteries, completely answered, and we didn't even realize it.
It was all right there. You didn't even have to look for anything.
So... All right, here's another one.
When news of the virus first came out in the beginning of the pandemic...
Do you remember that all the experts, I believe all of them, correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't see any exceptions, I believe all of the experts on viruses said, if this were engineered, we could tell by looking at it.
Do you remember that? All the experts said we would be able to tell.
We'd just look at it and you'd know that was engineered.
Right? All the public experts Now, see if you had a different opinion or a different experience personally.
Whenever I talk to anybody smart enough to have, you know, a reasonable opinion on that question, privately, every one of them said, oh, yeah, that could be engineered and you wouldn't know the difference.
All of them. Everybody privately who had any, you know, qualifications said, yeah, you could do that and nobody would know the difference.
Now, I don't have any qualifications and I knew that.
Do you know how?
Because it's obvious.
It's obvious. All you'd have to do is experiment with, you know, mixing and matching and evolving from species to species until you got one that looked really bad.
And if you looked at it on a microscope, it would look like it evolved naturally.
Nobody would know that you goosed the evolution with selective breeding and whatever you're doing to make them mutate.
So if I do that, what's up with every expert who went on television and told you that's not a thing?
I don't know anything about viruses, and I know that you could at least mess with them to make them mutate.
And then see what they did.
You don't have to be an expert to know that, right?
So, I mean, the amount to which we are being bamboozled by this stuff is just shocking.
However bad you thought things were, they're probably worse than that.
Well, Kerry went to that climate summit, and I guess the climate summit people are all happy because they made some kind of a big agreement to reduce carbon.
But toward the end, I guess India said, you know, you know what would be better than saying we're going to get rid of coal?
Let's say we're going to phase it out.
Because we don't want to say we're going to get rid of it.
We'll just phase it out.
Because phasing it out is sort of nonspecific, so you can just keep using coal.
So I'm not sure that they got the big win.
But basically, Kerry said that we're on the right track now.
So Kerry basically said he did such a good job, and the other people did such a good job flying over there in their private jets, To talk about what we could possibly do to reduce the CO2. And they said they did a good job and we're on the right track now.
So, climate change is solved.
It's kind of a dicey situation, isn't it?
If you're the climate change czar or guy, you can either say, I went there and I failed, or you can say, I went there and succeeded and it's not a problem anymore.
We fixed it. I think he said something suspiciously close to we fixed it.
So he says, we did realize it.
Scott didn't. What are you talking about?
All right. So whenever I see this comment, we did realize it.
Scott didn't. I know you're a fucking idiot.
I don't even know what you're talking about.
I don't even know the topic. But I know you're wrong.
So tell me what it is you realize that I didn't, and I'll tell you how you're wrong.
Okay? You want to play that game?
I don't even know the topic, and I already know you're wrong, because of the way you put it.
Okay. I'm not going to see anything on that.
All right. So I think we're in pretty good shape there.
Our biggest problem now is that we've damaged all the children into thinking they have no future because climate change is going to kill them.
It's going to kill them. It's going to kill them hard.
All right. Here's a tweet by Doc Anarchy, MD. Also known as Dr.
Anarchist. A very good follow on Twitter if you like to see the contrarian views on a lot of the pandemic stuff.
And he tweets this.
He says, if you're supplementing vitamin D without getting any sunlight, you may as well be taking a sugar pill.
Agree or disagree.
If you're supplementing vitamin D just taking a pill...
It's a waste of time if you're not also getting sunlight.
Agree or disagree?
Agree or disagree?
I see lots of disagreements.
I see lots of agreements.
I'll tell you what I think I know, but I would need a fact check on this, right?
Because I'm not your doctor.
So this is what I think I know.
And this is based on what I learned during the pandemic about vitamin D. Apparently you can't go outside and get enough vitamin D. Did you know that?
It's not even a thing.
So the thing that everybody is advising you, including Dr.
Anarchy, it isn't a thing.
Did you know that? You all believe that you can go outside and get your vitamin D from the sun?
It's not a thing. Now I'm exaggerating.
I'm exaggerating. Here's what I mean by it's not a thing.
The only time it works is in some climates in some months.
I live in California, probably the sunniest place you could possibly live, and I can only get enough vitamin D by going outside maybe three months a year.
How many of you knew that?
That if I just went outside every day in the winter, even in California, where the sun's out, there's no clouds, I would not get anywhere near my vitamin D level.
Do you know that? How many of you knew that?
That you can't get it by going outside.
Can't even get close.
And here's the important part.
You can't get close.
I'm not saying you get 80%.
I'm saying you're nowhere near it.
Now, let's say that's not good enough.
So you realize that the sun isn't always good enough.
Now, in the summer in California, yes.
And in other places, they probably have a month or two where, yes.
But there are entire zones of the world where there isn't any time you can go outside.
If you live in Sweden...
Can you go outside and get vitamin D? If you live in Sweden, can you get vitamin D by going outside?
Well, you get some, but nowhere near what you need.
And that's why the people who live in Sweden and nearby, they supplement with cod oil.
That's my understanding.
So that culturally, it's a very common thing to supplement with cod oil or some other kind of vitamin D. Now, let's say you live in America or somewhere else, and you just go to the store and you buy some vitamin D in a package.
And you take your vitamin D and it's just off the shelf.
How good is that vitamin D? If you take a lot of it, I don't want to say what a lot is, but let's say you take something on the larger size of a safe dose, whatever safe is.
Is that going to help you?
Is that going to give you the vitamin D you need?
Nope. In the hospitals, they don't give you a pill because it doesn't work.
They're going to put you on a drip because apparently that does work.
But they're not going to give you a pill.
It just doesn't work.
Here's another mind blower.
You know your vitamins and your supplements that you take once a day?
Why do you take vitamins once a day?
Does anybody know? Why do you take vitamins once a day when there are so many other medicines you might take twice a day or four times a day?
Yeah, the answer of why you take vitamins once a day has nothing to do with effectiveness.
It's marketing. They tell you to take it once a day so you'll remember it.
And it turns it into habit.
Because if you take it once a day, you usually match it with brushing your teeth.
Don't you? Do most of you match your vitamin taking with your teeth brushing?
Because that was what the marketing was intended to do.
Because if you think, oh, once a day, and it's in my medicine cabinet, well, I'm brushing my teeth twice a day, you know, there we go.
So everything you knew about vitamins is probably wrong.
Years ago, I tried to start a company in which I was going to make a vitamin-fortified product called a dill burrito.
So a burrito with various flavors.
But they'd be so fortified that if you only ate that burrito, you'd have enough of everything for the day.
And then anything else you ate would be a bonus.
But you'd have everything you need if you did one burrito.
Do you know it was impossible to do that?
It couldn't be done. And when I studied, can you get enough vitamins and minerals from just a good diet?
Do you know you can't come close?
How many of you knew that if you have a really good diet, you just, let's say it's a Mediterranean, pick whatever's your best diet.
One that's got lots of nuts and vegetables and green leafy vegetables and you're eating lean protein.
You're doing everything right.
How close do you get to the daily recommended vitamins and minerals?
Does anybody know? With a perfect diet, how close do you get to your recommended vitamins and minerals?
Maybe 30%?
That's it. You don't want to get close.
If you do the math of what you eat and what vitamins are in there, because it's usually on the packaging or you can look it up, and then compare that to what the government says you need, it's not even close.
You cannot eat a balanced meal.
Now, go to your doctor and And say, should I take a multivitamin?
What's your doctor going to say?
Well, it depends. But your doctor might say, no, you don't need a multivitamin if you're eating a good, balanced meal.
Is that true? Well, it might be true that you don't need it, which is a separate question from, can you get anywhere near the recommended minimums?
You can't. There is no such thing as eating a good diet that gets you to the vitamins and minerals that you need.
You can't get there. Not even close.
Do the math yourself.
You can prove it to yourself. You know, I did the math.
So very much like vitamin D, we have this myth that you can get it.
Do you know how you can get more vitamin D? Neither do I. Neither do I. Do you know how you can get enough vitamins and minerals in the right kind of usable form?
Beats me. I don't think it's possible.
I don't think there's any way to do it.
Because the supplements don't make that much of a difference.
And a good diet doesn't get you anywhere near it.
So, can you get all your vitamins and minerals?
I don't think so. Can you get all the vitamin D you want?
As far as I know, no.
There isn't any way to do it.
Unless you're hospitalized.
And then you can. So, some of these things that we just take for granted are just...
It's sort of like that don't go swimming within an hour of eating.
How many of you still believe...
That it's dangerous to go swimming within an hour of eating, because you'll get cramps.
Do any of you still believe that's true?
Yeah, it's been debunked.
Yeah, I mean, when I grew up, that would seem to be true, even though it was obviously not true, because we always ate and went swimming.
We never got any cramps.
It was pretty obvious that it wasn't much of a risk.
All right. I found a new way to determine who the NPCs are, the non-player characters, the people in our environment, assuming we are a simulation and not a real society, which I think is fair, the odds are we're a simulation.
How do you tell who are the NPCs and who are actually avatars that are in the game?
Well, I don't know, but I'm looking for tells, and here's one of them.
Some of my critics keep telling me that I have a flaw, and that when the data changes, I sometimes change my opinion.
And they say this in public.
They say it in public.
That when I change my opinion based on the data itself changing, or having new data, that that's a flaw in me.
That I should keep my same opinion no matter what we learn.
And they say this right out loud, right in public.
Now, they can't be real people, can they?
How could they possibly be real people?
They have to be NPCs.
They must be programmed with some limited number of responses, and that's just one of the limited responses.
Because nothing that could think independently would have that opinion, right?
All right, here's another one.
My critics keep telling me that I'm wrong...
When I make a statistical prediction, if I say something's like 75% chance of happening, and then it doesn't happen, people say you were wrong.
That might be an NPC situation, too.
Because if I say there's a 75% chance of something happening and it doesn't happen, that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
I mean, I could also be wrong, because I may have calculated the odds incorrectly.
But that's a different error.
You're not wrong about what happened, because you just put a statistical likelihood on it.
That's all you did. So if you think that means somebody is wrong, or you feel you have certainty when no certainty is called for, here's another tell.
If you're certain you made the right choice on the vaccination, you might be an NPC. Now, the exception would be people who have specific medical problems, right?
There are some people who have the extremes, and you could be pretty confident you made the right decision.
But if you're anywhere in the middle, and I think I'm somewhere in that middle zone where it's not completely obvious which way to go, you know, because I'm fit, but I have, you know, one comorbidity.
I don't know if it's the bad one, you know, asthma.
Who knows? So I can't calculate my own risk.
If you think that you can tell if I made the right decision, you might be an NPC, because I can't tell.
I can't tell if I made the right decision.
Let me ask you right here.
So I decided to get vaccinated.
So I have two shots so far.
I haven't made a decision about the booster.
Probably I'll get one.
But I haven't made a decision yet.
I'll wait as long as I feel comfortable waiting before I make a decision.
How many of you are positive I made the wrong decision?
Go. Not people who think I likely made the wrong decision.
But how many are positive I made the wrong decision?
Go. I think I scared away all the NPCs.
It's unknowable. Right.
So why would anybody criticize me for my choice?
How could you criticize anybody for their choice if they're anywhere in this middle zone where I am?
Most of you are in the middle zone, right?
Most of you don't have a clear-cut, you know, I have three comorbidities or a clear-cut, I'm 12 years old and I don't talk to people, anything like that.
Mandators.
Now, there is also a persistent rumor that I'm a big supporter of mandates.
Does anybody think that?
How many of you think I'm a big supporter of mandates?
That's literally the opposite of what I am, isn't it?
Now, I think this came from saying that the first two weeks, we were going to lock down for two weeks, I definitely favored that.
Now, when I say I favored it, I mean I didn't disagree with it, which is different than favoring it, I guess.
I would say I didn't push back on it because I thought, well, it's worth a try.
If there are enough experts that think this is worth a try, and it's the fog of war and we don't know any better, two weeks is like a good risk-reward kind of thing.
But after that, it sort of rapidly became clear that that wasn't going to be the answer.
Yeah. But I did say the first two weeks was worth a shot.
Low risk. Then start persuading against mandates.
Well, you think I'm not?
Do you think I haven't persuaded against mandates?
No. I tell you almost every time I'm on here, I'm against it.
But I think the mandates are really just a power question.
Just a power question.
The public has the power, but they have to take it, right?
It's not automatic.
They just have to have enough people on one side, and then they just take the power.
The golden years. Yeah, I think the golden years are right on track.
Sometimes it looks darkest before the dawn.
But all of this stuff that's happening that's making us rethink civilization fairly fundamentally is what we needed to do.
You know...
Yeah, I think the Golden Age is still looking very good, actually.
I'm very happy about it.
The only thing that scares me is inflation at the moment.
Let's see... I saw an interesting thread by Michael Bang Peterson, who has many qualifications that make him qualified to say this sort of thing.
And his thread, I'll summarize it.
He thinks that trying to force the unvaccinated will only strengthen their resistance and cause terrorism.
What do you think? So his view is that once you've got all the easy to persuade people on board, that if you try too hard with the unvaccinated people, it's going to backfire.
That feels right to me.
So everything I know about persuasion says yes, yes, and yes.
Completely right. So, let's say that you wanted to persuade this group...
But you didn't want to make it mandatory.
Because you honestly believed it would be good for them and good for the world, but you still want to give them their freedom to make the choice.
How would you persuade them?
Now, you could argue that it's unethical, right?
You could argue that it would be unethical to persuade people.
But I'm going to give you what I think is the most ethical...
Persuasion. And even this is a little sketchy.
It goes like this.
The fake because.
The fake because.
But maybe a little bit real in this case.
Here's what I mean. Imagine, if you will, that there's something that the anti-vaxxers have in common.
Is there anything they have in common?
I think so. I think within the conservative anti-vaxxers, what they have in common is probably conservative.
Wouldn't you say? And also pro-gun.
Wouldn't you say? So this will never happen, but I'm going to give you an idea of the concept.
Suppose Biden said, you know, damn it, the most important thing in the country is to get people vaccinated.
Now, I'm not saying that.
But suppose he did. Suppose he believed it.
And he was doing what he thought was best for the country.
So there's no bad intention in this hypothetical.
And suppose he said, you know, this is our biggest thing.
Here's the deal I'm going to make.
For one year, or let's say as long as I'm in office, I won't sign any gun legislation.
But you have to get vaccinated.
We have to get to 85% vaccinated, and if we don't, I'm going to sign every gun law that Congress gives me.
But if you get vaccinated at 85%, I'm going to back off.
I'm just going to wait. I'm not going to say I'm against it or for it.
I just won't sign anything for my term.
Nothing on guns. What do you think?
Now... Now, if the gun idea is too radical, and it is, I mean, I use it for effect, imagine if there's something else.
Suppose he said to you, I won't raise taxes.
I won't raise taxes...
If you get vaccinated, up to 85% of you.
Is there anything that Biden could offer or the government could offer that would get you to say, damn it, I was sort of close to the edge but, you know, leaning on vax, but now you offered me something that, ugh, I kind of do want that.
How about this?
Are you ready? How about this one?
Since critical race theory is not taught in schools, it should be easy to get people to agree to remove it.
Because nobody, as Adam Dopamine pointed out on Twitter today, nobody is complaining.
If you asked to get rid of Bigfoot in the schools, would anybody complain?
Well, not in a normal way they wouldn't complain.
They would call you crazy. But they wouldn't complain about it because they'd say, well, we don't have Bigfoot in our schools, so, yeah, you can get rid of it.
The left is saying they don't have critical race theory.
So why would they complain about getting rid of it?
So why not offer...
I'll tell you what. I'll create a commission to look for critical race theory in schools, and we'll get rid of it.
But you've got to get vaccinated.
Again, that will never happen.
But the point is, is there any kind of a deal Biden can make so that he's not forcing people to turn into terrorists by resisting the mandates?
Could he buy their cooperation as opposed to forcing it?
Because if somebody agrees to the deal, yeah, okay, damn it, I'll take that deal, then they don't become terrorists because they say, well, this is the deal I agreed to.
Anyway, I don't see the exact way to solve this, but I think thinking of it in terms of a deal might be more productive than thinking of it as a mandate.
Does anybody agree with the concept that turning it into a voluntary deal of some sort is the only way this could work?
It's got to be turned into a non-mandate that still has some persuasive power if you wanted to do it.
Now, you may be opposed to anything that moves people toward vaccinations, but that's a separate question.
Here's another way to get things done persuasively.
As I was saying, since the left says that critical race theory doesn't exist in schools, only in colleges, because it's a college-level course, And the right says, sure it does.
We can see plenty of examples of it in the written documentation.
It's all over. One way to do this would be to argue, no, no, CRT is there.
And then they say it isn't, and then you're kind of done because you're arguing definitions.
The other way to do it, and this is good persuasion, is to enter their frame.
Now, you have to kind of know what you're doing.
To make this one work.
This is sort of a high level of persuasion.
But if you enter their frame, it means accepting their frame and then breaking it from the inside.
And so let's say you accepted their frame that it doesn't exist.
That there's no CRT. You know it's there, but you accept their frame.
You know? You're right. There is no CRT. But you know it would be great if we could do a full audit and give that to the conservatives and prove to them that there's no CRT. Would you let us prove your case?
Let us help you, because you're making the case that there's no CRT, and the conservatives are not believing you.
So let us do an audit.
We'll call out each of the instances that we think might look like it, and then you can show us how that's not actually part...
could not be called critical race theory.
So how about we help you make your case?
That's entering their frame.
Now, how does anybody object to you helping them win their argument?
It's hard, right? No, we're on your side.
We're going to help you win this argument by auditing and proving there's no critical race theory.
I'm not saying that would work.
It's just an example of how to enter somebody's frame and break it from the inside.
Usually, on things that are really, really contentious, that's sort of the only way to do it.
I don't think there's a second way to do it.
Alright, it looks like the polls are speaking loudly that some ABC poll that's a new one said that 51% of registered voters say they'd support the GOP candidate in the district and only 41% say the Democrats.
That's the biggest lead for Republicans in this poll in 40 years.
The GOP has the biggest lead in 40 years.
Do you know what this doesn't include?
Massive Democrat retirements, which are also predicted.
So we have an unprecedented poll differential.
Also, on top of it, unprecedented number of Democrats going to retire.
On top of it.
And we're only 11 months in, people.
This is just the first year of the...
This is just the first year of Biden.
And it looks like just everything just keeps getting worse, according to the public.
So, you know, people talk about the Great Reset.
Well, apparently the Great Reset is coming in 2022, but it's not what people thought it would be.
It looks like the Great Reset is people realizing that the Democrat policies just didn't work and that your news is all fake.
Now, there is a possible tipping point coming.
It goes like this.
If you're on one side, let's say you're a hardcore Democrat, and you're watching the news and you find out that your news source got something wrong...
And they sort of fooled you.
You say, well, they got everything else right.
I'm going to give them a pass for getting that one thing wrong there.
Then they get a second thing wrong.
You say, well, damn it, that's two things wrong.
But still, all the other stuff is right.
So, you know, nobody's perfect.
Two things wrong. I'll let that go.
But we've now reached a level of hoaxes that are confirmed hoaxes That it's sort of crazy to imagine that this is anything except planned, organized, persuasive, and the new texture of the news, that it's fake.
I feel like the Democrats are going to notice...
They're going to eventually notice that everything is fake.
At least the political news is pretty much 100% fake news.
And I think that...
There's some tipping point that's coming where even the Democrats are going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I've been believing this stuff for the last five years, and now I can see that all this stuff lately is fake.
What about this stuff I believed?
We're right there. Now, people go to their teams so strongly that massive amounts of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance will keep them where they are despite all evidence changing, all data changing, despite better arguments, despite anything they find out.
It's really sticky.
But it's not unbreakable.
Cognitive dissonance is super strong, but not unbreakable.
There is some amount...
That will convince you that Hitler did actually kill a lot of Jews, if you know what I mean.
There had to be some point in World War II. I'm no historian, so this may be a bad example.
There had to be some point where people were just denying the obvious.
Don't you think? People were like, oh, that can't be happening.
I don't think that's really happening.
Is it? Is it really happening?
I don't think it's really happening.
Because you would have to act radically differently if you knew what was happening.
But then they reached a point where you just couldn't possibly deny it anymore.
So no matter how much cognitive dissonance you have, it's still vulnerable.
It's just hard. And I think we've reached the mountain of fake news that's confirmed fake news that even people on the left are going to say, oh God, I didn't realize how bad it was.
And I have to admit, I didn't realize how bad it was either.
I thought it was bad.
You've watched me talk about the fake news for five plus years, some of you.
So obviously I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.
Did you? I mean, this is actually surprising.
I'm pretty skeptical about how bad things can be with information.
But even I didn't know it was this bad.
I mean, I was kind of fooled.
And I was definitely leaning very hard in the fake news direction.
And I'm actually amazed.
All right. General Flynn suggested in some conservative meeting, I guess, recently, if we're going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.
One nation under God and one religion under God.
So I want to say officially that General Flynn is dead to me.
So I was a big supporter of him getting out of his legal jeopardy, because I didn't think any of that was fair.
But this opinion is a sufficiently crazy town that you need to start ignoring him at this point.
Now, he'd said some other things that I thought were sketchy, and I thought, uh...
But that's a different issue.
You know, he's still being legally railroaded.
So I was more about the legally railroaded part.
But once you see him free and talking, he's a nutjob and you shouldn't pay any attention to him.
Like, the worst thing in the world would be for him to have any authority in government, I think.
Now, this is nothing against your religion, by the way.
I'm pro-religion.
I'm pro-religion.
But it's the United States.
Still the United States.
And one religion?
No. No, no, no.
No and no. Oh, somebody's saying Flynn did not say that.
Does anybody else have that?
Is that fake news? Is the quote a fake news?
Because I'm looking at something that's in quotes...
But is it fake news? I'm actually willing to believe that.
All right. Send me a link to anything that would show that's fake news.
So I'll read it again.
So this is in quotation marks.
So allegedly this is a quote.
And you're going to tell me today with a link that it's fake news.
Or maybe taken out of context?
Is there a way that this could be taken out of context?
Because it doesn't look like it could be, but...
That's how you get fooled.
Are both sides reporting it?
Well, Fox News reported it, and he's their guy.
So... But that's a good question.
CNN, you'd think, would want to say bad things about him and report that, but I think I only saw it on Fox News.
Or did I see it the other way around?
Scottsdale is saying it's too on the nose.
You're right about that. It is too on the nose.
But you don't usually see something in quotation marks.
Well, it could be fake news, yeah.
Based on what we've seen, this could be fake news.
Why don't we put a pin in this, and you'll tell me tomorrow if it's fake news, okay?
If it's not fake news, I think you need to be done with General Flynn forever.
But if it's fake news, then we will all revise our opinions.
Okay? Yeah, the fine people stuff was in quote, exactly.
So it could be just taken out of context.
But because this has so much context in it, I suspect that's not the case.
But you'll let me know.
I'll be open-minded to this being fake news.
All right. The Rittenhouse prosecution has asked for reduced charges.
And can you help me on the facts?
Was it reckless endangerment with a firearm or something?
Is that what they want to go for now?
Yeah. Can somebody give me a fact check on that?
Reckless endangerment with a firearm?
Something like that? I'm seeing some yes.
So, do you think that there's anything in this case that would suggest reckless endangerment with a gun?
Here's what I think. What do people think guns are for?
Isn't this exactly what a gun is for?
It's like the whole point of a gun.
Which is, there's a dangerous situation that people might need some protection.
And so he brought a gun.
Is it reckless endangerment to bring a gun to a situation where people are in danger and need protection?
That feels like exactly the right thing to do.
Secondly, when he was handling the gun, was he handling his gun in an unsafe way?
I didn't see any evidence of that.
It looked like he was keeping his barrel down, and it looked like he had some training.
It looked like he knew firearm safety.
Just from the outside, it looked like that.
So that didn't look reckless.
And then how about the actual acts in which he was shooting people?
Was that reckless endangerment, or was that just pure self-defense?
I'd say it was pure self-defense.
Now here's the question that maybe the prosecution will ask, which is, did he bring this upon himself by bringing a weapon into a place where a reasonable person would have known that could have attracted trouble?
What do you think? Is it reckless to take a weapon into a place that you know it's going to attract attention?
Again, I say, that's what a gun is for.
A gun is to go into that situation, right?
That's exactly what a gun is for.
To go into a situation where things are unpredictable and dangerous and people might have bad intentions for you.
That's what the gun's for.
So, I would say there's no chance of, in a common sense way, that reckless endangerment makes sense.
But in a legal way, who knows?
Who knows? Maybe he can sell this.
Maybe because he went so big, trying to ask for murder charges, and he's not going to get that, I don't think.
Maybe that's like a big first offer, and then the jury says, oh, okay, well, you talked me down for murder to this reckless thing.
Yeah, we don't want people...
We should make an example of him.
We don't want people bringing guns to situations, so yeah, let's just give him some reckless endangerment, and maybe that'll keep other people from coming.
Now, the jury is not supposed to think that way, right?
The jury is not supposed to make an example of you.
That's exactly what they're not supposed to do.
They're supposed to just judge that the facts either make it a crime or not a crime.
Um, but I don't know how you could stop people from thinking that way.
If you put me on the jury, I would definitely be thinking, what message are we sending?
I'm not supposed to, but I would be, just like everybody else.
So, on one hand, you could imagine that the jury might say, well, you know, for the social good, we're going to give them a little bit of a, you know, maybe even jail time.
I don't know. How much is reckless endangerment worth in terms of jail time?
Uh, I would like to think it would be time served, if that's what happened, but I don't know.
I would say that reckless endangerment is a pure opinion.
What do you think? In this situation, it would be a pure opinion.
It would not be a finding of fact.
It would be pure opinion.
And we don't put people in jail for opinion.
Well, we do, but we're not supposed to.
They should be just doing a finding of fact.
So I think reckless endangerment is not something that is subject to fact.
To me, that looks like pure opinion.
You can imagine situations that are just obvious to everybody, but this isn't one of them.
Certainly, it's probably good to have this law in the books, because there have to be cases where somebody is just playing with a loaded gun and somebody gets killed, and yeah, they need to answer for that.
But that's not what happened here.
He wasn't playing whatsoever.
Here's how I would have taken this.
If I saw the prosecutor asking for murder, and then I saw that the prosecutor had no evidence for that charge, what would I do for the lesser charges?
What would you do? Let's say you thought the lesser charges might actually be fairly valid, but you watched a prosecutor ask for murder with no evidence for murder.
You watched that happen right in front of you, and then they go, oh, how about this lesser charge?
How's your attitude now?
You put me on that jury, I would not convict him for jaywalking if there were 100 witnesses and 50 videos.
Because once I found that they tried to railroad this poor bastard with a murder charge with no evidence, no evidence, once I learned that, there is nothing I would convict him for.
And I was sitting in that jury trial and I would lie my fucking ass off.
I would say, no, I don't see the evidence for this reckless endangerment thing.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, don't see it.
Even if I did see it.
Now, in truth, I don't see it.
Based on what I've seen, but I'm not in the room.
So, I mean, I don't see it.
But if I did see it, even if I saw that the facts totally supported reckless endangerment, I'm letting this guy get off a period.
That's not even negotiable.
I'm sorry. Not negotiable.
You do this to an American citizen?
And by the way, let me be as specific as I can.
If Kyle were black, I'd be saying the same thing.
If Kyle were, you know, an illegal immigrant, I'd be saying the same thing.
No exceptions. If the government tries to put you in jail on ginned-up charges, I don't care what else you're charging him with.
He's walking. I would hang the jury so hard, even if it came to fisticuffs.
There's a limit to how much you can push the public.
That would be my limit.
I don't know what your limit is, but that would be mine.
It wouldn't matter how much evidence they had for these lesser charges.
No fucking way.
No fucking way. And again, doesn't matter what ethnicity is, doesn't matter his gender, has nothing to do with that.
This is just a justice turned upside down, and we don't stand for that in this country.
We don't stand for that.
I've said before, and I'll say it again, that I think only one thing holds this country together, and it's our court system.
Nothing else keeps the country together.
It's the fact that even when we hate the decisions from the court, we respect the system.
Even when we hate the judge, we respect the system.
And even when we hate the outcome, we respect the system.
Because the system is pretty well designed relative to, you know, what your alternatives are.
It's a well-designed system.
And as long as the courts continue to have our trust, and I think they do.
I mean, the Supreme Court's sort of a special case because that's politicized.
But the courts in general do have our trust.
They're not perfect.
But we don't think that they're trying to be imperfect, right?
It looks like a mistake when something goes wrong.
So that's...
I think we have to appreciate...
That's the jewel in the entire republic.
If we lose that, we lose everything.
And I would argue that every country that can't reproduce our republic, or any kind of a democratic system, any country that can't make one of those, it's because the court system doesn't work.
Until you get the court system right, nothing works.
And I would imagine that there are big cultural differences...
In terms of the mindset that makes a jury trial work and people don't want to automatically railroad people and whatever.
And there's something about the American experience that makes us somewhat absolutist about this courts need to be working stuff.
And I would say we do a pretty good job.
Warts and all, we do a pretty good job with the courts.
And I respect them.
Yeah, certainly people do get railroaded.
And, you know, the legal system has a process for that, too.
I mean, you can sue.
So we even have recourse when there are injustices.
So, you know, we all wish it could be better, but it's probably as good as you can get.
Yeah, and I was going to say, it has a history that goes back to Great Britain primarily.
France a little bit, too.
You historians, let me know.
Gohan Fall says, prosecutors have political bias against the Second Amendment, shouldn't be involved with gun cases.
There can't be a bias in the courtroom.
Well, yeah, I mean, every lawyer has a bias, right?
You can't get rid of bias in lawyers.
That wouldn't make sense at all.
The January 6th committee will further shred our America.
Maybe, but look at 2022.
I feel as if the public is rising up, meaning that the public is watching and they've made some decisions.
I don't think those decisions are going to change.
We need a J4 committee.
Yeah. What do you think of Liz Cheney's mental state?
You know, I don't care too much about Liz Cheney.
I suppose I'm supposed to because she's in the news a lot, but I don't know.
I just don't really care what she says or what she does.
Should I? I mean, I get that she's contrarian and stuff, but really, is that interesting enough?
I don't think so.
Name a sport that wouldn't be more entertaining if they allowed fighting like hockey does.
Yes.
Tennis would be a lot more entertaining.
By the way, I've said this before, but all of the sports in the world are broken.
They're all broken. Tennis is broken because the rackets got so good that anybody with muscles can hit the ball harder than the opponent can return it, especially a serve.
So you should get rid of the serve.
Tennis would be fun if you got rid of the serve.
And in fact, there is a version of tennis in which you get rid of the serve.
And I've played it. It's way better.
How about soccer and out of bounds and off sides?
Just get rid of that shit.
Soccer would be so much more fun if you got rid of the offsides rule, totally, and you didn't have out-of-bounds.
So indoor soccer has that advantage because the ball just bounces off the wall.
But get rid of out-of-bounds.
Get rid of all the time-wasting stuff.
Make the goals bigger so there's more goals, so it's more fun to watch.
And, yeah, pretty much every sport except football is ruined because either our attention span changed or something about the equipment pretty much every sport except football is ruined because either our attention span changed or something about the equipment changed
Football is a modern enough sport that I think it grew up with technology and it grew up with sort of modern everything.
Ice hockey has the problem that it's hard to watch.
I think ice hockey is probably more fun to play than to watch.
And I think you have to have played hockey to actually enjoy watching it.
You don't know what you're talking about on soccer?
Yes, I do. Do you know how much soccer I've played in my life?
I've played a ton of soccer.
It was my primary sport for years.
And yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about.
I know why the offside rule exists, and I prefer not having it.
I'm also, for your golf ball is the last place you saw it.
Okay, golf is completely ridiculous.
You heard about the golfer, some pro golfer, who made all of his golf clubs specialized to be the same length?
And then he started winning.
Because they make golf clubs different lengths for no good reason.
It just makes it harder to play golf because every stick is a different length.
So he just made them all the same and didn't lose anything.
He just got better. And yes, you shouldn't spend your time looking for the ball.
So golf would be great if there was nobody behind you and you didn't have to spend all your time looking for a ball.
Because looking for a ball is like shopping.
Or like work. Looking for the ball feels like work to me.
It doesn't feel like anything.
He also gained 30 pounds to have more power.
Oh, the guy who did that has a degree in physics?
Well, that makes sense. Because he did the only smart thing that anybody's ever done in golf.
Golf is a good walk ruined, yeah.
Who said that? Was it Mark...
Twain or somebody. Did they have golf during Mark Twain's time?
He had massive muscle changes, right?
Oh, put RFD trackers in the balls?
Yeah, there's got to be some way to find your golf ball.
I also don't think driving should be part of golf.
Here's some controversy. I don't think that driving...
Same with serving in tennis.
Serving ruins tennis, because you're just always waiting and picking up balls and stuff.
But driving should just not be...
It should just be chipping and putting.
Because the people who can drive well...
It's just a genetic thing.
You know, they can just hit it a mile because they've got whippy skills.
And if you don't have that, it makes golf really not fun if you're playing with somebody who does have that.
You know, because you're halfway to where they are and they're waiting for you.
So just make it all chipping.
Chip in the button, and then you've got a good sport.
Yeah, I know most of you like it just the way it is.
And that's fine. All right.
I think we've done all the live streaming we need for now.
Now, I think you'll agree that this was the best show you've ever seen from me today.
And I think you would agree they just keep getting better.
It's amazing, isn't it?
It just keeps getting better. I got one more paid comment here.
If they drive it, they should play golf while the golf cart canning out is out of bounds.
