Episode 1643 Scott Adams: All of the News is Extra Hilarious and Positive Today. Come Join Me
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Jeff Zucker kinda genius, diversion narrative
Natural gas and nuclear as green energy
2000 Mules movie by Dinesh D'Souza
Washougal High School mask rebellion
Kids in "Face Cages" reframe
Unmasked school kids are felony trespassers?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
And do you know what we're going to be talking about today?
Well, let me give you a preview.
It's going to involve truckers, zuckers, suckers, possibly tucker, and maybe a few cuckers.
That's right. Today, and only today, we're going to do a special simultaneous salute to one of the people on this list, the truckers, who would like to join me in a simultaneous sip specifically for the Freedom Convoy, the truckers in Canada, who I understand, sometimes some of them listen to this podcast.
And so if you happen to be in your truck right now and you're listening in, this is a big thank you for those of us watching Coffee with Scott Adams this morning.
And if you'd like to join in in saluting the truckers, all you need is a copper mug or a glass, a tanker, jealous, and a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
In this case, a truck.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, and a salute to the Canadian truckers.
Go. Oh, yeah.
Now, we'll talk about them in a moment, a little bit more, but what is happening?
There are so many stories, and they're so delicious today.
All the stories are delicious.
It doesn't matter what you're doing.
Be you running on the beach, Joel, Joel, or be you working out on your Peloton, Greg.
Whatever you're doing right now, even if you're taking a shower, Erica, Erica, whatever you're doing, these stories are going to entertain you.
So, I don't know, but it's starting to look like the Biden administration played Russia...
Approximately right. Because I think Russia doesn't have a play.
It's starting to look like we're going to call their bluff, and it's looking like it's going to be a bluff.
Now, it's too early to tell, and everybody will tell you, but Putin, he's got tricks up his sleeve, and he does.
But I haven't heard of what he could do that would make any sense.
Have you? There's not much of a play there.
So it could be that Biden actually, by just calling his bluff, might be exactly the right play.
We'll see. I still think the better play would be to reframe our whole situation because it just doesn't make sense to be at war with Russia in any way.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Well, here's my possibly favorite story of the day, although there are a lot of good ones today.
And this comes out of Wired.
Apparently, North Korea hacked a hacker in the United States.
It looks like they were trying to get a hold of some of the hacking tools that the hacker had.
But the hacker in the United States was a little bit better at this stuff than the North Korean hackers.
And not only did they not get anything of value, but they really pissed him off.
And so, I'd like to read to you what the article in Wired said, because it's just written so deliciously.
But responsibility for North Korea's ongoing internet outages doesn't lie with the U.S. Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency.
In fact, it was the work of one American man in a t-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks, and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of Of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.
Which apparently he successfully did.
He took down North Korea's internet.
But wait. This is just because the writing is so good.
From Wired. Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4X was himself hacked by North Korean spies.
P4X was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers, with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities.
He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value, but he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved By state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally and by the lack of any visible response from the U.S. government.
So he just decided to take down their government or at least their Internet.
And he did. So one of the themes today is when you think one person can't make a difference.
Apparently, one person always makes a difference.
There's probably nothing that ever didn't start with one person.
Even the Wright brothers, they probably didn't have the airplane idea simultaneously, right?
It was probably one of them.
I don't know which one. Orville?
Wilbur, maybe? But I think one of them said, hey, bro, I got an idea.
Bicycles to airplanes.
Everything starts with one person.
So I guess we shouldn't be too afraid...
Of North Korea.
If their internet can be crashed by one mad guy eating popcorn.
Here's more news about fusion.
Fusion technology coming.
So right down the road from me, literally bicycle distance from me, a team at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, they've done another breakthrough infusion.
Now, skipping the technical description of the breakthrough that I wouldn't understand if I read it to you anyway, Apparently, other people say, quote, the results are a big deal.
So people who do know what they're talking about say that, as I've been telling you now for a number of years, further confirmation that we're past the scientific phase and we're well into the engineering phase.
And the engineering phase is the phase that can't be stopped.
The scientific phase could be stopped if there's something you need to discover that's undiscoverable.
You know, maybe it's just not there or you can't find it.
But once you hit the engineering stage, that's sort of a virtuous, slippery slope, meaning that we are going to A-B our tester.
It looks like there's nothing that would stop us from A-B testing our way to fusion.
Five years, 10 years, 20 years.
Well, not five, but...
It looks like we're going to have some good stuff while most of us are still alive.
So that's a big deal.
Of course, we're going to talk about CNN's head, Jeff Zucker.
Now, I heard it pronounced Zucker, not Zucker.
Does anybody know the proper pronunciation?
Well, anyway, I'll do it any way I want.
But apparently, he resigned because he did not to soon enough, he says, reveal his developing relationship with a person in the CNN executive area named Alison Golust.
Now, it has to be pointed out that you can't spell Alison Golust without all and lust.
We'll call that a coincidence.
Now, he says he's only leaving because these two divorced people who were adults had a consenting relationship in which they both had sufficient power and a 20-year relationship.
So it doesn't look like anything bad happened in terms of what anybody would care about.
But here's what I love about this story.
Everybody would agree, whether you love or hate Zucker, That he's really smart.
And he was sort of a boy wonder and did a lot of things early.
And so he's a smooth operator.
And look what he managed to do.
He managed to time his own scandal, if you could even call it that, it's so small, after all of these CNN scandals that were so much worse.
So when you hear, oh no, Jeff Zucker has some kind of sex-related scandal, what is it?
Are you kidding me?
Two consenting single adults?
What? Who are both similarly powered?
It wasn't like a power indifference of any meaning.
That is good timing.
There is a man who knows how to make an exit.
Now, apparently he was going to leave at the end of the year anyway, and the ratings were in the toilet.
So everything was looking like he probably wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.
So I think he seized on an opportunity to get out early when, I'll bet you, I'll bet you, he didn't want to be there.
Because when you've already quit, or you know you're going to be gone at the end of the year, how much fun is it to work for those months when you've already quit?
That's like the worst thing, isn't it?
What could be a smoother move than finding out a way to leave in scandal?
I'm leaving in scandal because of my relationship with a consulting adult of similar power.
Oh my God!
I don't think this could be any smarter.
And then because he quits, he also cuts off the ability or really the incentive to ask more questions.
Do you think that he wants to answer more questions about this situation?
Nope. Because some of those answers might not be...
Maybe exactly favorable to him or to somebody else, right?
So he gets out of having to ask any questions.
He gets out what his scandal, if you could even call it that, I don't think it is at all, but because of the context of all the worse accusations, it looks like he's the best person at the CNN. Really?
That's all you had?
That's all you had? Your whole scandal was that?
Well, you're like the purest person in the whole network there.
So it was kind of genius.
And I think that he used a diversion narrative.
So I think by connecting it to, you know, these sexual improprieties, he's created a diversion that is clearly trying to take us away from whatever it is he doesn't want us to ask about.
It is so clever.
You know, for somebody who was in a situation, and, you know, he was in a situation, right?
So he knew it was going to come out and it was going to be a story.
You can't handle a thing better than this.
This is really well handled from a public relations timing, everything else.
It makes it look like he just fell on his sword and he just got everything he wanted, including a woman, apparently.
Now, the most surprising things about this story were I just learned that Jeff Zucker and Brian Stelter are two different people.
Did you know that?
They're actually two different people.
I just thought it was sort of a Superman situation where Brian Stelter would be, you know, you wouldn't know him, mild-mannered, but then he would put on those wire room glasses and then he would be Jeff Zucker.
That's what I thought it was.
But it turns out they're just two completely different people.
I believe the backstory is they met at a thumb convention of some sort.
People look like thumbs.
But anyway, that had to be said.
You know, this is the news that has to be said.
It's not even the news that...
It's illuminating. It's just the stuff that has to be said.
Sometimes just things have to be said.
That's all. Well, speaking of nuclear stuff, forget about fusion, which is probably going to happen too, but the European Union just went ahead and reframed I like to use that word.
They reframed nuclear energy, as well as natural gas, as maybe green energy.
What? What?
It's about time.
How many times have I, and lots of you as well, is just something everybody in this audience has probably said a million times, that it's the greenest of the green energy, and You know, as Michael Schellenberger often points out, one of the reasons that we haven't contributed as much to greenhouse gases is because of natural gas use.
So it is perfectly sensible that the European Union will press ahead with it.
Now, it's a proposal.
It doesn't mean it's going to get approved, right?
So it's just a proposal.
But the fact that this is even being proposed...
By the European Union shows that there's a big shift in mindset.
And this is one of the very few times you see the extreme right or just maybe the entire right and the entire left converging on the same solution.
It's kind of weird, isn't it?
I think everybody's...
And didn't I tell you, and other people told you, right?
I'm not the only person to say it.
But it was inevitable we were going to get here.
The easiest kind of persuasion is when it's going to happen anyway.
It's really hard to take something that wasn't going to happen and then just make it happen.
That takes a lot of skill, a lot of work, a lot of energy.
But sometimes things are going to happen on their own, and you just give it a little fake because or a little push.
And at this point, that simple reframing, just think how important it is to reframe things.
If this proposal becomes reality, the European Union will have reframed nuclear and natural gas as green solutions.
What does that do to everything?
Better, right?
It makes everything better.
Everything in the whole world better.
I was talking yesterday. I mean, that sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't.
It's not an exaggeration.
It literally will just make everything better.
Because if you make energy less expensive and more ubiquitous, even if you didn't care about the climate, Just having more inexpensive energy makes literally everything better.
And this energy is green and green enough, in the case of gas, that it's just all good.
It's a reframe with no downside, basically.
Very rare. Well, here's the most interesting news of the day.
I want to tell you...
That what I'm going to talk about is all true, because it would be so, so interesting.
But we're going to have to wait to see what the evidence is, right?
So I'm going to say, get your popcorn, because this could either be really, really good, or it could be Al Capone safe.
We don't know yet, right?
This is going to be binary, though.
This is either going to be really, really big, or nothing.
And it's a Dinesh D'Souza movie coming out called 2,000 Mules.
Mules being a description of couriers or humans who take things, usually illicit, you know, illegal stuff from one place to another.
And the claim on the teaser or the trailer for the Mules movie, the 2,000 Mules movie, is that...
Now, this is the claim... Now, I'm not going to tell you this is true because I don't want to be cancelled by social media for something I don't know about, right?
I'm just going to tell you this is the claim in the trailer.
That they have cell phone, I think it's cell phone or cell phone tracking, right?
And they have video to show that there are these 2,000 humans who delivered a large number of ballots to a large number of the same boxes in exactly the places where the numbers looked a little sketchy.
You know, the places that mattered.
Now, if this is true...
It's like the story of the decade.
It would be bigger than just about anything that's ever been big.
If it's not true, then it's Al Capone safe.
Well, it was interesting.
I'm glad we watched. So I guess the only thing I can say about it at this point is use your judgment.
But somebody says it's an old story, but I don't believe that...
I don't believe anything with evidence.
I think it's the evidence that's the new part.
I mean, if it was speculation, maybe that's old.
But speculation doesn't mean much.
Yeah, if it's an old rumor, That doesn't count.
It's the evidence that makes the movie or doesn't.
We'll find out. All right, so I'm not promoting it or not promoting it.
I'm saying this is a very big claim.
And if Dinesh D'Souza does not back up this claim, he'd have a lot to answer for.
So I think given how much he has at stake...
I hope for his sake, he's going to deliver.
But watch and see.
I saw an interesting tweet by Mike Cernovich, which is sort of an overuse of an adjective because everything that he tweets is interesting.
He sort of has that gift that just everything is interesting that he does.
But he tweeted about Trump having actual luck.
Cernovich was saying that he thinks luck is an actual thing and that Trump has it.
And I just wanted to add to that that luck seems to happen to people who discover they can author the simulation.
I feel as though there are some people who just have the feeling that they can make stuff happen.
And there's something about that feeling or that intention, I don't want to call it a belief, that seems to make the universe give you what you want.
Now, it could be just a subjective...
You know, selective memory kind of thing.
But it does look like it, right?
It just has that feel that some people are writing the simulation.
Speaking of Trump's luck, how lucky is it that Biden followed Trump?
Pretty lucky. Let me give you...
Here's why.
So... This is Rasmussen.
Rasmussen results said, asked the question, is Biden administration immigration policy better or worse than Trump's?
Now, wouldn't you say, is it fair to say, that Trump's immigration policies not only got him elected, you know, was probably the main thing, But also the most controversial and the thing that everyone pointed to that had some connection to every racist accusation about it.
So I think you'd say it's sort of the biggest issue in the Trump era.
And 52% of the respondents said the Biden administration is doing worse at the very thing that they were trying to fix.
52% say he's doing worse.
But how many people say that Biden is doing better at handling immigration?
28%. 28%.
28% think the hordes of people coming across the border is a sign of good management of the border.
28. Well, 28 is roughly a quarter.
A quarter is roughly 25.
25. 25%.
Exactly the number who get every poll wrong.
Well, here's my final comment about Whoopi Goldberg, which is really a comment about us.
So this will look like a comment about Whoopi.
It's not. This is about us.
You know, we humans.
Here's what I saw.
I'm just going to characterize the whole Whoopi situation.
I saw a person acting perfectly human.
Perfectly human. Now, that's not perfect, because humans are not perfect, right?
But there is something that I would call a perfect human, and it goes like this.
You have flaws, or you make mistakes.
Would you all agree that to err is human?
Making mistakes is 100% universal.
It's just a requirement of being human.
So... A perfect human is one that makes a mistake and then handles the mistake, here's the important part, handles the mistake in a good form.
So here's Whoopi, who made, you know, let's say observers would say a mistake in how she handled the references to the Holocaust.
Then what did she do?
She listened to their concerns and She showed empathy for the concerns.
She adjusted her opinion fairly quickly.
She did a little research, said she'd look into it further, do some more thinking.
She apologized, recognized out loud and in public, recognized the damage or the hurts it may have caused.
And then after doing everything perfect...
A perfect human.
Flawed? Yes.
Perfectly flawed. You know, if you believe that God created us, well, then that's what he wanted.
It was a perfect creation.
And if you don't want that interpretation, you just say, well, you can't get any better than that, so that's as perfect as a human can be.
And then she handled it with perfection.
Literally a role model of how to be a perfect human.
I don't think I'm exaggerating at all.
That was a role model of how to be a perfect human.
And she got suspended.
One comment on locals, you're an idiot.
Well, I guess that covers it.
I believe there's a weird thing happening in which meme logic is replacing real logic.
Now, I've told you before...
That analogies have been substituted for logic quite often.
And when you see it, now you recognize it, right?
That somebody's just using an analogy because they don't have an argument.
And you say, wait a minute. Like, I get that that has some similarities that remind you of what we're talking about, but it's actually not what we're talking about.
And there are enough differences that your analogy would make me argue some completely different situation.
So get out of here with your analogies.
But I think that a lot of people actually don't have the mechanisms or the resources to think logically in any complicated situation.
Because all human capability is unevenly distributed, right?
So there's a whole segment of the population that uses analogies to think, which is suboptimal.
But I think there's a new thing happening, which is people using memes to think.
So Susan Sarandon, actress Susan Sarandon, She tweeted this meme today.
It showed a bunch of, I guess, police officers at the funeral for the fallen officer.
And here's what the meme that she tweeted said.
Now, this is what I call meme logic, all right?
So this is not real logic because the meme doesn't actually make sense.
And you'll agree the meme doesn't make sense.
But she says, so, if all these cops weren't needed for crime that day, doesn't that mean they aren't needed any day?
Now, that's meme logic.
It's just that form.
It's like, oh, if we don't have to do this, then why do we have to do this?
Or, if this is true, why is this true?
Now, meme logic isn't real logic, because, of course, these were just people who either got backfilled, they probably picked a time of the day when it's low crime, You add up the people who are on vacation with the people who came in and out of town.
Of course, there was a perfectly good explanation of why there probably was plenty of people covering the crime.
At the same time, there were plenty of people there.
And anybody with half a brain would know that immediately.
But this meme logic, sort of like an analogy logic, I just worry that people are going to, or already have, That 25% of the public just looks at a meme and says, well, that's good enough for me.
You can follow that logic.
All right. And if you think that's crazy, keep in mind that research shows that when something rhymes, we think it's true.
Think about that. When something rhymes, we're more likely to think it's true.
As in, if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.
That's why Johnny Cochran did it, because the science supports the rhyme as being persuasive.
I think memes are as persuasive as a rhyme, because they're both little earworms.
So, yeah, anyway, probably the same effectiveness.
Here's a question for you.
What do COVID and the Holocaust have in common?
I will not say anything insensitive about the Holocaust.
What do COVID and the Holocaust have in common?
Two things.
Number one, COVID looks to be on target to killing about six million people.
That's actually Holocaust numbers.
So we've literally, you know, not in any hyperbolic way, but actually, literally, COVID and the Holocaust are similar numbers.
Here's the second thing they have in common.
There is a large group of people who don't believe either one of them happened.
And that will always be true.
There will always be people who think that the Holocaust didn't happen.
Even though the official number is 6 million dead.
And there will always be people who think that COVID didn't really happen.
Even though the official number is 6 million dead.
Now, I want to be real clear.
I'm not saying anything about the Holocaust.
I'm just saying it's a weird...
It's just like a weird parallel.
Right? No, I'm not saying the Holocaust.
Let's not do any Holocaust denying I don't need any trouble.
All right. I think this is true, but it might be a testing artifact, so I need to fact check on this.
It looks to me like the number of cases of COVID started plunging about a week ago.
Really steeply.
At least that's what the numbers say.
Is that just a data problem?
But the deaths are still high.
The deaths are still high if, in fact, the cases have plunged.
The deaths are still high because it takes two or three weeks for the deaths to clear, right?
So it takes the people who are sick and are going to die.
It might take them a little while to actually die.
So, in theory, we're already past it.
I think. I mean, we could be surprised by some new variant or something.
But I think that the drop in cases says that nobody knew, or at least there are not enough new people getting it, that in three weeks we're going to see new deaths based on what's happening today.
I think we're at the endemic.
But let's talk about the people forcing some of us to wear masks.
So the latest story is Mayor Garcetti of L.A. He got his picture taken with Magic Johnson, too, which is really bad for your political record, apparently.
Don't get your picture taken with Magic Johnson.
So first Newsom did it without a mask, and then Mayor Garcetti did it.
But Garcetti made it worse by saying he was holding his breath.
He was holding his breath.
Now, here's what I love about it.
There's something transparently absurd about it.
When your political leader says he was holding his breath, and they think he followed it up with, if it'll make people happy, he'll stop cheating with his mask, is he not telling us directly that he believes the masking is ridiculous?
Am I right? Is he not telling us, as directly as anybody who's a politician can, that he thinks the whole thing is just absurd?
I think so.
So while some people are sort of mocking him for saying such a ridiculous thing, I feel as if that ridiculous thing came with a wink.
Am I over-interpreting that?
Maybe reading too much?
I could be. But I feel that even if it's a subconscious wink, it's a wink.
That we're in the endgame.
We need to get rid of the masks.
A couple more updates.
There's an L.A. supervisor, Catherine Barger.
She's calling on officials to get rid of the mask mandate, partially because of these leaders without masks.
Oakdale, California.
A number of students in the district are refusing to wear masks.
And high schoolers, they're all being sent to a gym.
Literally, the kids are in cages.
They put the kids in a cage.
Because if the kids leave the school, I think that affects their budget and there's some problem for the school itself.
But if they lock them up in the gym and say you can't leave, they're literally in jail for not being masked.
What do you call it if you're in a room and they don't let you out?
It's kind of jail, isn't it?
So basically, Oakdale is jailing students for not wearing masks.
Meanwhile, I had my faith restored in our youth because many of you have seen it, the viral video of a Washougal High School In Washington state, where a very gifted young leader among the students was organizing them to protest by gathering in mass in the parking lot,
leaving their mass there, entering the school, and waiting to be sent home, and then politely being sent home.
But here's what impressed me.
I don't know what live streams or podcasts that family watches, but let's just say his advice was extremely compatible with what I've been saying, which is you are not...
You are not treating the teachers as the enemy, because they're not.
It's not their idea.
It's the state. So don't be disrespectful to the teachers.
Don't be disrespectful to the Walmart greeter.
Don't be disrespectful for anybody who wasn't their idea.
So that's what he said as he was organizing it.
And very eloquently, and told them the whole plan.
He said, we go in en masse, we'll be kicked down en masse.
That's bad for the school.
That's what the protest is supposed to do.
Make it uncomfortable for the school without creating any actual health problem or any danger.
Very organized, very respectful, very legal, very perfect.
My faith is restored.
Faith restored. So good job there.
But I think we've got to get kids out of their face cages.
Even if they're not physically locked in a room, their faces are in cages.
Imagine, if you will, a meme or a viral video in which a number of kids wearing their masks asks parents to please help them get out of their face cages.
Mom, Dad...
Will you please help us get out of our face cages?
Viral video. Every kid makes one.
Put it on a tic-tac. Just talk to your mothers.
Just make the video to your mom, your dad, to parents.
Ask directly. Ask directly to be released from your face cages.
To live a normal childhood.
Ask. You don't even have to demand.
Just ask. Because do you know how hard it is for parents to deny a child who's suffering?
Real hard. It's real hard.
You can make the system break faster than adults can.
Because you know what? When adults complain, do you know what people say when adults complain?
Walk it off. Suck it up.
You're an adult. Do you know what happens when a kid asks a parent because they're in pain to stop something?
People are going to act.
They're going to act right away. Yeah.
So, kids, you have the power.
TikTok it up. But apparently the teachers will be fighting back.
There's this audio from an assistant principal at Ludon County Elementary School that says that any maskless kids will be charged with trespassing, which holds a 12-month, it's a felony there, 12-month jail sentence, $2,500 fine potentially.
And let me just state this as a little advice.
To the assistant principal of the Lewdown, or Lewdown, I don't know, County Elementary School.
If you need lawyers to keep kids in your school, you're doing something wrong.
That's it. That's the whole advice.
If any part of your strategy requires lawyers...
And you know lawyers will get involved if anybody's getting charged with trespassing.
If any part of your schooling strategy involves lawyers, you're doing it wrong.
You're doing it wrong. All right, here's a little report from my neck of the woods from Twitter user Rick's Place.
He reports, he says, interesting, I was in Northern California Walmart five days ago, and it was 100% masks.
So that was five days ago.
He says, today it was about 75%.
Something changed.
I think it was actually the hashtag Feb1 that Scott Adams and Greg Goffeld have been pushing.
Well, I don't know if that's the case, but I do think that people are sort of over it at about the same time.
I'm being told that the pronunciation of that school is Loudon.
Loudon. Thank you.
So if you have other reports of places that are demasking at a high rate, send them, because people are herd people.
What it will take for masks to come off is for masks to come off.
You need some people to go first so that the people who are, you know, less, let's say, more risk-averse, that it's safe enough for them to go next.
So you need some kind of a...
People need to hear that other people are doing it or it's not going to happen.
So here's a little hypothesis I'm working on, which is that...
And I guess you could disagree with this.
Now, remember, what comes next is a gross generalization.
So this is not meant to apply to you or your family or anybody specific.
But as I tweeted this morning, I think American culture used to be about working hard and buying a lot of stuff that you can impress your neighbors.
Now, I believe that was actually intentional.
Sorry, I've just got this weird itch today.
I think it was intentional, and if I understand my history right, that in the 50s, the government wanted to create a consumer population.
People would want to buy stuff.
Because if people wanted to buy stuff, that would keep industry cooking and the economy would go.
Which worked wonderfully.
So I think the advertising industry learned how to manipulate people into craving whatever the neighbors had.
You know, wow, we've got to have a better car or a better house, all that stuff.
Now, so you can think of that as sort of the operating system or maybe the primary, let's say, theme of the country.
It was working hard, acquiring things, and part of the payoff is looking good to the neighbors.
Now, I'm not saying that's good or bad.
I'm just saying it was.
Right. Maybe a CIA thing.
But the things we can agree on is that the government was behind it.
They successfully brainwashed the public, and it probably made the country stronger.
All kinds of negative effects, too.
But it probably made the United States what it is, that consumer mentality.
But now I would argue that that is falling away, or is partially being replaced, that instead of hard work to buy stuff, which you could argue wasn't exactly a high-level goal, is being replaced by working hard to understand which groups are the biggest victims.
Now again, I'm not going to say what's a good or ethical or moral thing to do.
I'm just going to observe.
I'm just looking at it like I'm looking like an engine.
I'm not judging the carburetor.
I'm just saying, well, the engine needs a carburetor.
I'm not judging the fuel injection or anything.
So how do you do as a country if you're trying to have a competition to see who's the biggest victim...
Versus the old way, which again, I'm not saying it was good or bad, the old way where you're competing to buy the most stuff, which pretty directly helped the economy.
I don't think either of them are healthy, right?
It feels like both of them end badly.
So we had one theme that at least it was good for the economy, but had lots of downside, especially if you weren't successful in that economy.
So what would be better?
Is there a new frame or theme?
Could we reframe how our, at least, American experience is expressed?
Here's how I would do it.
I would say we're a country that has a strategy that works for everybody.
But it's a different strategy.
So more of a... Find your own adventure situation.
So we should be thinking of ourselves instead of a nation of victims or a nation of winners who are buying nice cars, we should be a nation where you could be anything.
You could be the person who bought the nice car, or you could be the awesome person who helps people and never drove a nice car, but it wasn't important to you.
Why can't both of those things be good, and why can't we say we're the country that gives you any strategy you want?
We'll give you a strategy for a lower-income life that's very meaningful.
We'll give you a strategy for a high-income life that also could be meaningful.
Or a high-income life that's just buying a bunch of crap and enjoying it.
But why can't we have a life where if everybody doesn't have a strategy, a way to go from wherever they are to wherever they want to be, then it's the strategy we fix.
Because I think we're almost there.
Strategy. And what I mean is, to use the perfect example, if you were a low-income black kid in a bad neighborhood, is there a strategy...
To make it in this world.
Well, only if you can survive the school, meaning only if you can get something like a good enough education.
If you can get a good enough education, which is probably the thing we need to fix, which is why you would put all your effort there, because that's blocking the strategy of a whole segment of the population.
Their best strategy is do well in school or learn a trade, which we also don't provide in a large enough amount.
So if you were talking about strategies, it would be more of a forward-looking, positive, everybody understands that everybody needs a strategy.
But we don't agree that everybody needs the same outcome, right?
So we're arguing over outcomes when we could all be agreeing on...
Everybody's got a different way they can succeed, but everybody should have some way.
Some way. If you don't have any way, then society maybe needs to help you get away.
Whether you use it or not, that's up to you.
Still has to be up to you to use it.
Yes, and also we need to reframe, I think, the value of work.
Okay.
All right. Remember yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I told you there's this new study, meta-analysis, that was showing that the lockdowns didn't make any difference in terms of COVID mortality.
And I told you my first instinct was it looked like BS. And today I was looking at Andres Beckhaus just ripping it apart.
So he pretty much disemboweled the study in terms of his credibility.
I won't give you his argument.
You can read it yourself.
And the only thing you should take away is that I don't know if any of the studies or the meta-analysis were valid.
Or I don't know if the lockdowns worked or didn't work.
I just know I haven't seen anything I would trust that says they worked.
Could we agree on that?
Just in my case, I guess you would have a different answer.
But I haven't seen anything I would trust, because at this point, who trusts anything?
But I haven't seen anything I would trust that would suggest that the lockdowns worked.
Somebody says, Andres is wrong 80% of the time.
Now, that sounds like a statistic you're not going to be able to back up.
All right, Ian Bremmer tweeted this about, this was from a Gallup poll.
So here's how things have changed in two years, basically during the pandemic, 2020 to 2022.
So in the poll, people were rating how satisfied they were with these things.
So in 2020, people were, 84% of people were overall satisfied with the quality of life.
Which seems amazingly high.
I can't believe we ever were at 84%.
But during the Trump administration, I guess 84% were happy with the overall quality.
Now that's down to 69%.
Satisfaction with the system of government, it was at 43%.
Which is usually just, it means whoever's in power, they like it for a while, the other side doesn't.
It's usually a little of that.
Now that's done to 30% giant drop.
Satisfied with the economy, down from 68% to 33%.
68% to 33%.
Now, that might have happened anyway, under any president, because inflation was going to kick in about now.
And then our role in the world, 43% were satisfied, now 37%.
Now, how does anybody who wanted to pick Biden over Trump, how do you rationalize this?
How in the world do you rationalize that you got what you thought you wanted?
I just don't know how you can do it.
I mean, you really have to try hard.
Because even if you were in the group that is satisfied, you'd have to notice that the other people are not.
You'd have to at least notice that the majority are not and that it's moving in the wrong direction.
Well, here's the other news that somehow is connected to what I just was talking about.
But Biden announces they've killed the ISIS leader.
I guess in Syria they got him.
And I always wonder, do we always have an ISIS leader queued up in case we need one to kill?
I feel like we always know where one is.
And if the news cycle is going against you, you know, you reach into your bag of tricks of, you know, diversion narratives.
Say, all right, we need a diversion narrative.
Give me the list of ISIS top three people.
Ah, itty, meeny, meeny, moe, moe.
Oh, okay.
Can you drone this guy?
By the end of the day, we need a little more positive spin on things.
And so, sure enough, apparently we killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Kurashi.
And as you knew, as you already knew, that was the head of ISIS. So, is it my imagination...
Or is everything heading in the right direction?
Except maybe inflation.
Am I right? It feels like everything just sort of suddenly is moving in the right direction except inflation.
Everything else looks fairly good.
I say except inflation like that couldn't take us down.
Yeah, energy? No, I think energy, if you count the long run...
And nuclear and gas, even those look like they're going to move in the right direction.
Maybe not right now, but they look like they would.
Would I describe America as an oligarchy?
No. Because in the oligarchy, you imagine a small group of people are in charge of everything.
America is more like competing interests.
So there's sort of like a set of Usually there's at least one billionaire involved.
There could be a set of billionaires that really, really care about one international issue and another that really, really care about something else.
And then there'd be some cross-pollinization of some of the billionaires from one might also care about this third thing.
I think it's always that.
I think it's always the...
There are big influencers for every topic, and they just own the topic until somebody takes it from them.
A multi-tocracy, yes.
Somebody says staph infection from head scab picking.
Be careful. I don't know, did you notice me doing something on my head?
So I actually do have a head scab because I had some, you know, just precancerous stuff that I get burned off every, frozen off every few months.
Routine stuff. But boy, does it hurt when it happens.
Oh my God, it hurts. What's your solution for inflation?
I don't have a solution for inflation.
That might be one thing that's beyond even my powers of solving.
But I will tell you this.
I never understood...
How far we could push the debt and still be okay.
And I still don't.
So, given that we're already way beyond the point of what most of the experts would have said would be collapse, aren't we something like...
I don't know what the number is, but maybe somebody is more plugged into this.
Wouldn't you say we're something like five times the size of debt beyond collapse?
No. Meaning that we never really knew what would cause a collapse in the first place?
Or are we on the path to certain collapse and everybody was right all along?
Now we're only about 1.25 times.
Well, I think that would be comparing it to a historical high, which is a good comparison, actually.
Comparing it to history would at least tell you that we've done it before.
And I think World War II was the biggest debt problem, right?
Oh, here's a debt-to-GDP ratio is what matters for collapse.
That's correct. So debt-to-GDP is what matters for collapse.
It's always the ratio, not the number.
So somebody says debt of four times GDP would equal collapse.
That sounds like somebody knows that.
Solution for hyperinflation is an economic reset.
I don't know, is it?
30 trillion if interest rates rise.
So I guess we're all guessing.
But I do wonder if there's a crypto play here.
I also wonder if crypto is our way to be free of the elites, or is it just another way the elites will control us?
It's starting to look like crypto is just going to be another way that the elites control us.
Because won't they be able to see all of our transactions at some point?
I feel as if the current banking system gives them at least a little bit of blindness.
You know, they'd have to do a little bit of work to find out about stuff.
But isn't crypto going to be the opposite of secure at some point?
Even if only for legal requirements, I suppose.
Can't they just force it to be transparent?
Or not accept it, or make it illegal if it's not.
So I understand the concept that it's decentralized, that should keep the government out of your business, but I don't believe it.
I don't believe it would work.
I believe the government could get control of anything.
You just give it enough time.
You are less informed than you need to be.
That's certainly true.
When it comes to crypto, I'm less informed than I need to be.
But I am going to say something that I don't think depends on crypto.
Does it depend on crypto to say that the government can probably penetrate anything?
Because even if the technology is designed so it can't, they can just put people in jail until they have anything they want.
Can't they? If they have the control of you physically, then they have the control of your crypto wallet.
They'll just put you in jail until you give up your number.
Am I wrong? If they can control your body, they control your wallet.
It doesn't matter if it's crypto or something else.
I'm not wrong, am I? I'm saying, FYI, the US backs ISIS in Syria.
Well, I don't know the details there, but it would certainly suggest there's a reason why we know where their leader was.
Surprise! Who knows?
I don't know who we're backing against who.
Yeah. So, you know, I worry that the crypto thing is all an illusion.
Sorry. And by the way, I do own crypto.
I do own crypto, so I don't want it to collapse.
And I own it because I think that there's more chance it will go up than down.
But I don't think privacy is going to be a feature.
I think it's just going to be...
It's going to be convenience, but I don't think it'll be privacy, I'm afraid.
Or at least no more privacy than you have now.
I think it'll be the same kind of privacy.
Because think about how they can control businesses.
So the way the government would control you is not directly.
The government would say, all right, Amazon, now that you're taking crypto, they don't, I guess.
They don't take crypto. But let's say they did.
Let's say Amazon tomorrow says, we're going to take crypto.
The same day the government could say, and this is just an example, the government could say, okay, Amazon, we'll put you in jail unless you require every time you take crypto that we have access to the transaction.
What's Amazon going to do?
They're either not going to accept crypto, so there's a limit to where usefulness of it, or they're going to say, okay, well, you're going to have to agree with it on your end, and I'm going to have to pass that along to the government, or else you don't get your stuff.
So I think the government can press companies that you need to live your life, and then the companies will press you, and then just pure convenience will make you say, well, oh hell, I'm not going to die on this hill.
I just want my T-shirts or whatever I'm buying.
What about Hunter? Haven't heard much about him, have we?
If someone makes a bad joke, should I laugh politely or should I be more honest?
I would say if it's somebody that matters to you, that has either power or you want to date them, maybe laughing politely would be the better play.
I'm generally in favor of being polite in all situations.
Did Hunter sell an NFT?
Is that what I'm saying?
No.
Best advice on marriage?
Best advice on marriage.
Now that would be a micro lesson, wouldn't it?
Let me see. Alright, so let me give you the best advice.
So this would be not based on my own experience.
Alright? So don't read into any of this about my own experience.
This would be based on other people's sort of like general experience.
The main reason that people get divorced is money.
Right? I think that's still true.
The main reason people get divorced is money.
So number one, you've got to be on the same page on money.
Number two, you've got to be on the same page on kids.
And if you don't work that stuff out before you get married, well, don't expect it to work.
Just don't expect it to work.
So you've got to get the money and the kid thing work.
Thirdly, you have to give up all of your social media passwords and live like you're one person.
Because I don't think...
I think in today's world, social media is such a pressure on marriages that you might need to agree on that in advance.
In fact, would you marry somebody who said no to that?
I know you all want to ask me about my situation, but that's not the topic.
So I guess part of the reason I'm putting it this way is that the way the world is organized at the moment, where everybody can earn their own money and everybody has access to everybody else, so you've got all that temptation and risk going on, that the only people who should get married are in, I would say, a thin strip of people who meet those requirements.
Now, it could be that there's something special about the two of you, that you don't worry about the social media part.
But you've got to get the kid thing and the money thing right.
That part you've got to get right.
Newsweek now disagrees with Scott and says that masks don't work.
I can always look at a comment and know when the commenter has the wrong information, even when I don't even know what the story is.
So I don't even know what the Newsweek story is.
But I guarantee you that you read it wrong.
I'll bet you the story says that some masks don't work as well as N95s.
Or, and, it might be and or, and or the story says that they're not going to help much against Omicron.
And Omicron's sort of a new game.
So that wouldn't disagree with anything I've ever said.
All right, yeah, boot point.
I hope I'm doing a better job holding to my commitment to be post-pandemic.
But there's still some mop-ups, things we need to do to get our rights back.
So when I'm talking about it, I'm really going to be talking about the mandates from now on.
I'm going to focus on the mandates as the only thing that seems to matter, in my opinion.
Yeah. I saw a...
Yeah.
So Denmark's...
Let's just watch Denmark, see what happens.
If Denmark survives, then...
I saw a Dana Perino tweet.
She checked on Denmark this morning.
And apparently Denmark has survived the lifting of the sanctions.
They survived. Still there.
Go Denmark.
Go Denmark. All right, Boo got her tube out.
Did I tell you that? My cat Boo got her feeding tube out.
And wow, is she happy.
She's so happy. And so am I. She seems to be doing fine.
