Episode 1678 Scott Adams: How Russia and Ukraine Can Make a Deal
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Content:
DuckDuckGo rigs search results now?
AOC quiet on price of gas
Geneva banned Thermobaric weapon used?
Suggestion for solving Russia and Ukraine
Specificity of State Dept. denial, Biolabs in Ukraine
Sergey Lavrov on bombed hospitals accusation
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization itself.
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The dopamine of the day thing makes everything better.
Except apparently the Ukraine war, but we're going to fix that later.
Go! Ah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yep.
That's exactly what I was looking for.
I like to start the day with one thing that goes perfectly.
And I like to say that that went perfectly.
And, again, if you can take a compliment without being too embarrassed, I think you look fabulous today.
A little bit sexier than even yesterday, and yesterday was kind of a high point, so good for you.
Whatever you're doing, keep it up.
I think you've been exercising, probably watching your diet.
And I think your hair looks fantastic, too.
Well, in my local...
The shithole of a town?
It will be the last day of masking in schools.
So let me just put this in perspective.
Today, all the school kids in my town will go to school and they will all wear masks.
Do you know why?
They'll have masks on today because the science says that that would help.
Over the weekend, the science will be flipping.
And on Monday, it'll be safe to not wear masks.
But today, God help anybody who takes their mask off today.
Because that's somebody who doesn't understand science.
Because the science is completely different.
On a Thursday. There's no school on Friday locally, so in case you're confused about the days.
So yes, but while today is a dangerous, dangerous day for a child, it's dangerous out there, children.
Put on your masks. But sometime around midnight on Sunday...
The science flips. Sort of like, have you heard that the north and south poles, the magnetic poles, they might flip?
It's exactly like that, except with all of the variables different.
That's how analogies work.
And so, I would be really proud of any kid who took their mask off today and said, are you teaching us science?
Or are you teaching us superstition?
Because make your argument that the science is going to be different on Monday, Mr.
Teacher. Hey, Mr.
Science Teacher. How about this?
Can you imagine going into your science class in high school?
Science class. Take your mask off.
Your teacher says, put your mask back on.
You say, I'd be happy to.
You put it back on. You say, I was just wondering, since we're in science class...
Would it be an appropriate task if the science will be changing between now and Monday?
Just to see what your science teacher says about all the science.
Well, I guess United Airlines is talking about dropping vaccine mandates for employees.
That's good. So I think one by one we'll see these mandates falling away.
I'm not too worried about a permanent loss of freedom.
And in this country, I don't think we're going to see a...
Some kind of a general social credit passport.
I don't think it'll happen in this country.
But I don't think anybody needs it.
Because if everybody lives online, you can kind of see everything about anybody you want to see anyway.
So I'm not sure that that would even make a difference.
So tell me, am I wrong that the media always needs some famous person to tie to every story to give it a little seasoning?
So it doesn't matter what the topic is in politics or in the world.
It's got to be about Trump, Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk.
Am I right? Like, every story has to be seasoned with a provocative, powerful male figure.
Somebody that you can love or hate, but boy, that's the...
That's the element you want to talk about.
You want to talk about what Trump said about it or what Joe Rogan said about it or what Elon Musk did about it or said about it.
That's what matters. And we're...
Yeah, I guess it's just an observation about how the business model works.
If you want clicks, you've got to put a person on it.
Let me give you one of the most important persuasion tips of all time.
Are you ready? Best persuasion tip of all time.
Well, it's right up there.
Years ago, I was asked to draw some Dilbert art to be considered, and I emphasize to be considered for, being on the cover of Newsweek, back when Newsweek was a big thing in a popular magazine.
And they said to me, we haven't decided if Dilbert will be undercover because the other possibility we're looking at is a human model, probably a female model, who is doing something and is just a generic model being photographed doing something that tells a story.
Or it would be a Dilbert comic.
Now, do you know what I said?
I said, so you're asking me to completely waste my time.
And whoever I was talking to said, what?
Right. You want me to compete against a live human model, then they're going to do a test on it.
I guess they test covers before they ran.
They do a little test on it.
And you think that more people would buy a comic, like Dilbert's face on the comic, you think more people would buy that magazine than a human attractive female on the cover.
And I said, you're completely wasting my time.
Because, you know, at the time, I knew a lot about persuasion already.
But because I'd worked with Newsweek before, and the people who were asking, you know, I had respect for...
I did it anyway.
It was a complete waste of time.
Because they tested the two covers, and the one with the attractive female on it sold like crazy in tests.
And, of course, that's the one they picked.
Now... Extend this to products that have been very successful.
Let me give you the name of a product that's been very successful.
Facebook, now called Meta.
What made Facebook predictably successful?
It was about faces.
Human faces, especially female.
It started out as almost sort of a dating site workaround for Zuckerberg in college.
Anything with faces, especially female faces, is going to be popular.
Instagram, female faces.
So almost anything that's got lots of female faces on it, if you can figure out some way to make that make sense with your product, you're going to sell more.
Why does Sports Illustrated have a swimsuit model issue?
That doesn't even make any sense.
Having a swimsuit issue in a sports magazine?
How did that even become a thing?
It's because people buy more magazines if it has a female on it.
That's it. So it's not an accident that these news stories are often paired with a famous person.
It might be a coincidence that they're usually male, or maybe it's because of the patriarchy or something like that.
I don't know. I don't know if it matters that they're male or female.
It just seems like lately they've been male.
All right. DuckDuckGo, CEO. Has announced that he says he's sickened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and at DuckDuckGo they've been rolling out search updates that downrank sites associated with Russian disinformation.
Now, as you know, DuckDuckGo is most famous for being a search engine alternative that doesn't rig the results.
It just lets the natural results come out.
But they're saying now that they will rig the results if they believe that it's for the benefit of, let's say, reducing Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine.
What do you feel about that?
Do you believe that any search engine company should ever change their search results to match their politics?
Seems like a mistake.
Now, what I saw was just a tag that says something was associated with Russian media, which I'm okay with.
Are you okay with that?
If they just tag it, Twitter does this too.
So one of the people who tweets with me all the time, Chen, who I imagine has some association with the Chinese government, but he denies it.
He denies it. So Chen gets a little automatic Twitter note that says he's associated with Chinese state media, and I think DuckDuckGo wants to do something like that with RT, Russia Today, and some of those medias.
But I don't know how you can make this work, right?
I feel like as soon as you take that first step, what do you do?
What do you do? We have a lot of problems like this lately.
I was hearing Gottfeld saying this yesterday about Ukraine.
What do you do? I'm looking for good ideas.
I don't have one.
Nobody seems to have one, so what do you do?
All right. I'm okay with adding tags to stuff because I think people are sophisticated enough to deal with that.
But you do have to ask yourself...
Can't we identify media platforms in this country that are just telling you state-run, basically the state program?
I mean, does NBC tell you independent news?
Do they? Or CNN? Is that independent news, or is that just state-sanctioned Democrat news?
Or CIA news?
I don't know. I mean, we have our suspicions.
I don't know. So I don't think there's any way you can ever really even meet the bar that you set for yourself if you were going to get rid of state-run media or state-controlled media.
How do you even define it?
I mean, some of it is clearly obvious, all right?
I would say that RT is obvious.
So, okay. But what about NBC? I would say that's obvious.
But I'm not the CEO of DuckDuckGo.
And what if it is obvious?
Can you start downgrading NBC to a largely American audience of users?
I don't know. They might ask some questions.
I don't know what to think about the celebrities who are saying that we should all pay more at the gas pump and everything will be fine if we just pay more at the gas pump.
But the all-time most tone-deaf...
And usually I wouldn't even talk about a story like this, but it's just so outrageous.
So this is as Stephen Colbert said, Today the average gas price in America...
Hit an all-time record high of over $4 per gallon.
Okay, that stings, but a clean conscience is worth a buck or two.
And then he said, It's important.
It's important. I'm willing to pay $4 a gallon.
Hell, I'll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla, Cool Bear said.
He's saying he doesn't mind if you pay more for gas because not only does he not pay for gas, he's so rich he has a Tesla.
Because, you know, Tesla's not so cheap.
So, I'm not even sure that tone-deaf even covers this, does it?
That is a serious, jerky thing to say in public.
Unbelievable. Speaking of people who once were worthy of respect, but maybe not so much anymore, AOC, okay, maybe you didn't respect her, but I did.
She's really quiet about the price of gas lately.
And the progressives are all, you know...
This would all be fixed if you did some more impractical things, such as instantly add lots of green technology that works all day long.
How about getting right on that and instantly adding some economical green technology that works all day long and at night, whether the wind blows or not?
So I think AOC started out with a sort of hyperbolic opinion that I could support.
I mean, I could support it as a, let's say, as a technique, not as a political policy.
But I could support her saying, you know, hey, we're all going to come to doom if we don't do something about climate change.
Sure, it was extreme, but, you know, that's how you get stuffed up.
I don't complain when Trump says outrageously hyperbolic things, if it works.
You know, if it gets you in the direction of some place you want to go.
But unfortunately, the current situation with gas prices and energy makes AOC not look like a clever operator who's using hyperbole in exactly the right effective way.
No, she looks a little bit stupid.
This is a tough place for her to be.
I've got a feeling she's going to disappear for a while.
Because if she puts her head up about any issue in public, somebody's going to ask her about gas prices.
She basically has to hide it until gas gets under $4 a gallon again, doesn't she?
Am I right? The best thing about having gas at $4 an hour is it makes AOC shut the fuck up.
Because that's exactly what it did.
You were complaining about gas prices being too high until I told you one of the benefits.
It makes AOC stop saying things in public.
Am I right? I'm right.
All right. But I don't think we can ignore that rising gas prices are insanely...
Expensive. At the same time that gas prices are up, employers are telling people to come back to work and stop working at home.
What do you think of that?
Don't you think employers should maybe say, yes, if working for homework during the pandemic, maybe it should still work?
Maybe it should still work.
At least for a while.
Somebody says, bad idea?
Yeah, well, you should work remotely and save money.
So you can save even more money by working remotely.
So Russia has confirmed using a thermobaric weapon.
I literally almost said a thermobarbaric weapon.
Like, that would have been pretty clever, but it wouldn't have been planned.
So their thermobarbaric weapon, which apparently is hellacious, like it sucks the oxygen out of the area and your lungs catch on fire or you're filled with liquid or some damn thing, but it's not a good way to go.
As if any of them are.
But I guess it's banned by the Geneva Convention to be used on civilians, but apparently they do get used on military targets.
Apparently the United States...
Can you confirm this?
The United States uses these bombs, right?
But on military targets, we say.
The mother of all bombs is one of those.
Yeah, so used in Afghanistan.
So... Here's my question.
Imagine if Russia had never been a major arms dealer.
One of the precedents that Putin sets by being a major arms dealer is that selling weapons to somebody isn't the same as being in the fight.
Right? That's Russia's own...
That's the standard that they set.
It's their own standard.
Because remember, they gave lots of MiGs and stuff to North Korea.
I'm sorry, to North Vietnam.
So Russia has a long history of giving pretty serious weapons to other countries, including countries that were, at least the Soviet Union, countries that were on the other side from us.
So if the standard is set...
That, hey, I'm just selling weapons.
I'm not in the fight.
That's Russia's own standard.
Why are we walking away from their own standard?
Because before they would launch a nuclear weapon, let's say the U.S. got some MiGs from some NATO country and got it into the country in Ukraine.
Let's say that happened.
Would Putin then launch an immediate surprise nuclear attack?
Not likely. Like, he'd talk about it first, right?
Wouldn't he talk about it first, as in, if you don't get those planes out of there, I will nuke you?
I mean, don't you think there'd be a little bit of warning?
Right? Now, what would be the response to that?
The response should be, Russia, can you explain your standard?
Right? In fact, actually, we should do this today.
We should ask Putin to define their standard for military sales.
What standard does Russia use to decide what kinds of weapons to sell to whom?
Ask them for a public statement of their standard and then use it.
Because their standard is they'll sell anything to anybody who'll buy it, right?
I'll bet. I'll bet they don't use any kind of other standard.
And if they tried to say that they have some standard like that, it would just be laughable.
But I think that you should put them on the spot.
I think we should directly ask Putin and Lavrov.
Lavrov's in public. He gets asked questions in public.
Ask him specifically, what is Russia's policy of what kind of weapons to sell or provide?
And does that make them a combatant?
And then use that standard to put any fucking weapon you want into Ukraine, if that's what you want to do.
I'm not sure that's what we want to do, but at least be smart about it.
So I don't think that we should be tiptoeing about what weapons we put in there.
However, I do think that there's some weight to the argument that adding some MiGs to the mix wouldn't fix anything.
What do you think? I don't think adding those MiGs would have made any difference, do you?
I feel like it wouldn't.
Compare adding MIGs to adding drones.
Right? Would you rather add drones or add MIGs?
To me, it's no question.
I'd take the drone every time, wouldn't you?
And... Yeah.
And what about the handheld stingers and anti-tank stuff?
How many anti-tank...
And anti-aircraft handheld weapons.
Do you have to get into the hands of Ukrainians, who I understand, I understand from Ukrainians themselves, they're very, I won't say warlike, but they're unusually brave.
I'm not even sure what the word is.
But apparently you don't want to mess with Ukrainians.
Am I right? It's like, you don't want to mess with anybody in Afghanistan because it's not going to work out for you.
It's just not going to work out.
But apparently that seems to be somewhat true with the Ukrainians.
If anything we're hearing about people coming into Ukraine to fight is true, they also came into Afghanistan, I guess.
Yeah, we'll talk about the Nazis separately.
I see your comments.
All right, um...
Here's a question I have.
How far can a Turkish drone fly?
In the comments, can a drone launched from Ukraine reach Moscow?
Yes or no?
Can a drone launched from Ukraine?
I'm seeing almost all no's.
No, it's not a setup for a joke.
All no's, really.
Well, I'm talking about a one-way trip.
In case you're wondering, yes, I'm talking about a one-way trip.
So I'm seeing some yeses and some noes.
I'll bet the yeses are right on this.
All right, what's the distance to Moscow?
What's the distance from Kiev to Moscow first?
And then give me the distance for the miles.
469 miles is the distance to Moscow?
And then...
But the range is about 1,000 miles.
All right, well, I don't know.
Don't know.
Global Hawk drone, that's a different kind.
And Well, it's interesting that we don't have an instant answer on that.
I have such a well-informed audience here, usually I get an answer faster.
But I think the answer is yes.
If you're reading the comments the way I am, it looks like more likely yes than no, but I'm not going to bet on it.
And here's the question. At what point can Kiev start bombing Moscow?
Now, I suppose if they did, all hell would break out in Ukraine, so that would get pretty bad.
But I'm wondering about it as a communication process.
Because apparently the Russian public has a completely different idea of what's going on.
And I'm not suggesting it, by the way.
Let me be clear. When I talk about military action in Ukraine or Russia, I need some witnesses just so it doesn't look like I'm backtracking later.
I'm never recommending it.
Is that clear? If I say, if somebody did this, it looks like it would work, that's not me recommending they do it.
I'm just working through what is likely to happen, what would work, that sort of thing.
More about predicting where it's going.
So think of me as predicting where it's going, not recommending any particular action.
Because if you ask me what to do, I have no suggestion.
Well, I will give you a suggestion in a little while, but I think all suggestions have a low chance of working at this point.
All right. Rasmussen asked this question in poll.
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been president?
46% of U.S. voters said no.
38% said yes.
What do you think?
What do you think? What do you think?
I think no. Yeah, I think no.
There's no way to, of course, there's no way to predict that.
But that's my instinct.
And I would feel fairly confident, fairly confident in no.
All right. Rasmussen also asked, who do you trust more to handle U.S. national security, Republicans or Democrats?
And by the same, almost the same percentages, 46% trust the Republicans.
Now, that's not too far from just the number of Republicans plus independents who are really Republicans, right?
So basically, that's people who are Republicans or Republican-ish saying they trust themselves.
So I'm not sure that's telling us much.
And then...
Yeah.
All right. Here's my one suggestion on solving Ukraine and Russia.
Are you ready? All right. So I'm going to talk generically about how you fix an unfixable problem.
So Russia is unfixable because Putin got himself in a position where he can't lose, but maybe he can't win.
At least not win in a way that he doesn't lose more than he wins.
So Putin is trapped.
And Zelensky doesn't have a way really to win the war, per se, and he's not willing to lose, and apparently as long as they get funding, they'll probably eat K-rations and shoot at people forever.
So you've got an unfixable problem, which could turn nuclear, so it's got all kinds of upside risks, downside risks, I guess.
What do you do? Here's the generic things you can do.
Number one, you can shake the box.
You introduce a new variable or variables that just change everything.
And then you see if that makes a difference.
If that doesn't work, you just shake the box again.
And just keep shaking it until there's something different enough that you can make a deal.
The other version of shaking the box is adding more rocks.
Because right now, we've got...
You know, a deadlock, but it's a deadlock that involves only the variables for this topic, largely.
The more variables for other topics that you can throw in there, the more likely you can get a good result.
Meaning that, in the beginning, you want to keep a deal simple.
Like, what's the simplest deal we could make?
You stop fighting, and we'll stop fighting.
You know, something really simple?
But if simple doesn't work, and it's not going to work in this situation, then your only other thing to do is not just keep trying to do the same thing that doesn't work, but you're going to have to throw some new variables in there.
And you need to go big.
And this is something that a Trump could do that I don't think a Biden can do, is think big enough.
I think Trump had the ability to think so big that you couldn't quite wrap your head around it right away, like build the wall, Build the wall is just too big.
You can't build that wall.
There's thousands of miles.
How are you going to get a wall that will be...
So basically, Trump is the expert at saying things that are impossible to do.
They're so big. And that just changes everybody's thinking.
So it changed how we thought about border security, with or without an actual physical wall.
It changed how we thought about it.
It made it a higher priority. And so that's sort of a Trump-specific skill to go so big that it actually changes how you think about things.
It's not just a little variable you throw in there.
It just changes the whole way you think about it.
Here's how I would do it with Russia.
I would explicitly offer them a deal to be our friend and not China's.
In public. In public.
I'd say, look, here's the deal.
Instead of thinking of this as a Ukraine-Russia problem, let's think of this as about the future of civilization problem.
Let's recognize that Ukraine, as bad as it is, and it's horrible, is only a small part of a larger picture.
And if we don't fix the larger picture, we'll have infinite Ukraines.
Nobody wants that.
And so the deal should be something like this.
And when I say something like it, I only mean this big picture.
Number one, agreeing to some kind of deal for neutrality, not for Ukraine, so you make it bigger.
You try to reach a deal that countries can declare neutrality and the entire world will support them.
So you don't say this is about Ukraine.
You say this is about all the other countries.
It's about Taiwan. It's about everybody.
That if... If you haven't been attacked yet, and you've got a country, then just everybody will support you.
There won't be any exceptions to it.
Now, of course, China would have a problem with that, but that's China's problem.
So what if you said to Russia, here's the deal.
If you stop hacking us and doing every bad thing that you do to us, if you stop interfering, we will add you to the team, we will make sure that Putin looks like the greatest leader Russia has ever had, We will make it look like the Ukraine thing was a success, but we'll say that the success was controlling those independent Russia regions, keeping Crimea, which was going to happen anyway.
So basically, give Putin a win, but tie it to really big future stuff in which Russia has to move into our orbit, and vice versa, and away from China.
Now, could Russia do that?
Probably not.
Probably not.
But it's more of an example of the size of it.
You know? And maybe you say, look, here's the deal.
We want two things that the world has to agree are permanent.
One is the major countries always have access to, let's say, pipelines and ports.
How about that? So the major powers always must have access, permanent access, for pipelines, trade, roads, and ports, period.
But the trade-off is that a country like Ukraine, who wants to legitimately say we're going to be demilitarizing and we're going to be independent, they get all the support in the world as well.
That's the trade-off.
The Nazis are still going to be a problem to deal with?
Yeah. I don't know if that's anybody's biggest problem there, though.
Logistics, who enforces it?
You know, there are lots of things to work out.
But the point is, is there something that Putin could get out of this that's bigger than anything he hoped for?
And I don't know, but I'll bet we could promise him something.
I'll bet we could promise Putin something's bigger, a bigger win than he had even imagined he could get.
But it would have to be in return for a permanent friendship deal.
Just a permanent friendship deal.
If there's any way to do it.
Now, I suppose there is a cultural element here that I don't appreciate.
Which is, can Russians ever stop trying to overpower their neighbors?
And I think that's a real question.
Is there something baked into the culture that says, if I can conquer this little country next to me, why wouldn't I? Is that just part of the culture?
I don't know. If it is, maybe there's nothing you can do.
Can Americans? Yeah.
I don't think the American personality is such that we need to conquer anything at this point.
At this point. All right, well, that's the big question.
Apparently, China is backing Russia's propaganda domestically, so the Chinese audience is hearing Russia's version of things.
Great. So that does a further indication that China and Russia are in bed together.
Are you following the story about the bio labs in Ukraine?
So we got some ambiguous information about there might be some kind of U.S. associated bio labs in Ukraine.
Well, the Department of State said this in a statement.
The United States does not have chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine.
Let's parse that sentence a little bit.
I'll read it again.
The United States does not have chemical and biological weapons labs in Ukraine.
Well, there are a few things that this does not cover.
It does not cover a chemical lab that's separate from the biological lab.
Is there such a thing as a chemical and biological weapons lab?
Because the thing they said they don't have has an and in it.
We don't have a chemical and biological weapons, but do you have a chemical lab and do you separately have a weapons lab?
Or do you just call them different things?
Do you have a different name for them?
Do you call them research facilities and not labs?
It says the United States does not have them in Ukraine.
Does that mean the United States hasn't funded somebody who has one?
It doesn't say anything about funding one.
It doesn't say we had one until last week.
Did we have any until last week?
Did we just close them yesterday?
Because it's a little bit silent on whether we ever had them.
So I would say that the specificity with which they have denied this is very sketchy.
Very sketchy.
Wouldn't you say?
Now, I don't think this is a real story or a big story.
I think this is mostly a fake story.
I don't think there's necessarily anything here that we have to worry about.
But maybe. Who knows?
I mean, how do we know?
So my guess is that the whole biolab story is...
There's probably something at the base of it, but maybe not something we necessarily have to worry about too much.
And I'm going to say that the Wisconsin...
Election claims, you've heard claims, seems to only appear in right-leaning media that there have been found irregularities in the 2020 Wisconsin election.
However, when I put that out to my skeptics, it doesn't appear that that's going to hold up.
So if I had to bet, I would bet the Wisconsin claims of fraud will not hold up.
Sorry. And the reason I say that is because the news never jumped to any other of the major media.
It didn't even really make it to the, say, the high-end, right-leaning media.
It never got out of the swamp of the rightest of the right-leaning stuff.
Now, does that mean it's wrong?
Let me be clear.
Let me be clear. I don't see how 50 states could all run legitimate elections.
To me it seems ridiculous to imagine that when we see how well everything else in the world works, have we not watched everything else in the world fail from our experts in everything, right?
Literally our experts in everything have, you know, failed.
But sure, our election experts in 50 different states with high stakes and high gain for cheating and really no comprehensive audits in most cases, that all that worked out.
That the only thing that works the way we want it to is elections.
And there are 50 of them.
50 separate entities running elections and yet it's the only situation in the entire world in the history of humanity that it all worked out and it was fair and everybody did their job and nobody cheated in a major way.
That's what we're being asked to believe.
In the context of seeing literally every organization being corrupt and terrible.
Except for our voting systems in all 50 states.
Why even our smallest little states, those scrappy accomplishers, even they got it right, we're told.
So I don't have reason to believe that the Wisconsin claims are going to pan out, because remember what I said?
Who remembers my prediction at the very beginning of the claims of election fraud?
I said that whether or not there's fraud, I can guarantee that 95% of the claims of fraud will not be real.
Do you remember that? Does anybody remember that?
One of my best predictions.
That we may never know if there's any real fraud, because 95% of everything that's offered as fraud will be debunked.
And that will make it all look like fraud.
So we would never know if there was any real stuff in there.
Because 95% of it is going to be unreal and it'll just disguise any real stuff that might have been there.
And by the way, let me say clearly so I don't get demonetized.
I'm not aware of any proven fraud in the 2020 election.
Not aware of it.
All right. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Apparently Lavrov is saying that hospital that was bombed was really actually taken over by militants, and it was the Ukrainian soldiers who were in there, not any patients, and that it's all fake news.
And then the World Health Organization says there have been 24 verified attacks on health care facilities in Ukraine so far.
Do you think that that means that Russia has a policy of attacking hospitals?
Go. Do you believe that Russia has an express policy of attacking hospitals?
Do you believe it or not?
I'm seeing all no's.
Thank you. Well, I'm very impressed.
I am so impressed with all of you.
Because... We don't know what's going on there, but the most popular lie during a war is that the other side bombed your hospital.
Am I right? It's the number one most popular guaranteed to happen lie.
Suppose Russia had never bombed any hospitals.
Do you think there would be a story with details and pictures about Russia bombing a hospital if they had never bombed any?
Of course there would.
Of course it would. Because it's every time.
You don't even have to wonder about it.
You could have set your timer.
From the first bomb that went off in Ukraine, you could have set the timer and say, all right, seven days until the first story about a hospital being bombed.
Now, here's my question.
Is there any military who has ever intentionally bombed a hospital because there was, let's say, an overall strategy that demoralizes the public?
Somebody says, yes, the Nazis, but ask yourself if that was propaganda against the Nazis.
Because I'm not even sure the Nazis bombed hospitals.
The Japanese and China.
See, here's the problem. When I ask you for historical examples, I'll bet all of the historical examples that you believe are historically true, I'll bet they're all not true.
I'll bet it's never been true.
Because can anybody explain the strategy?
I don't think it makes sense as a strategy.
Well, Nagasaki, of course, that was...
You know, that was a civilian attack, of course.
Yeah, so certainly, yeah, I mean, Hiroshi, Nakasaki are special cases.
Dresden, yeah, I mean, we certainly see examples of civilians being targeted.
So I'm not questioning whether militaries target civilian population centers.
That's a given. But specifically hospitals?
Before you've leveled the whole town, you're going to go after the hospital first?
I don't know. Call me skeptical.
It feels like exactly the opposite of what a good strategy would be.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is almost everything I wanted to tell you, except that Here's something for YouTube.
The people on Locals have known this for some time.
I'm going to say this publicly just because I'm a public figure, but other words, I'm not going to be talking about it.
I am separated slash going through a divorce.
Only reason I'm telling you that is if you see my ex-wife on a date, or me, don't worry about it.
Because it's a process that's been going on for some time.
So if you see either of us out in public, you don't have to alert the media.
We've moved on.
So it was a tough pandemic for some of us.
I don't think you have to worry about...
I'm not looking for any sympathy, please.
Please. No sympathy.
None is deserved. Things are good until they're not good.
If you're wondering what happened, I don't know.
Have you ever gone through a breakup and when you're done, you weren't really sure why?
Because there were so many reasons.
There were no reasons and then there were 100 reasons.
And then if you go from no reasons at all to 100 reasons, it means you don't really know what the reason was.
So, I don't know.
Peace me. But...
But just be kind...
Just know I'm not going to give you any more information on it.
Life happens. I spent a little more time on Prisoner Island this year than I was planning to.
But Prisoner Island only goes one way.
And if you don't recognize that analogy, it comes from what I call my operating system.
My operating system is my central idea of who I am.
It always stays the same no matter what's happening to me.
And I use Prisoner Island as my story that runs in my head all the time.
It goes like this. That there's an island of just prisoners and I'm dropped on the island because I've been probably unjustly accused of something.
Yeah, of course there's a prenup.
And I get dropped on Prisoner Island.
The first day, the prisoners beat me up because there's no law there.
And they beat me up and leave me for dead.
Second day, they beat me up and steal my clothes and leave me for dead.
Third day, they beat me up and rape me and leave me for dead three days in a row.
But if you come back in a year, all the people who touched me will be dead, and I'll be in charge of Prisoner Island.
So that's the story that runs into my head.
So whenever I find myself in a situation, shall we say, that's not so positive, I tell myself, okay, I'm on Prisoner Island.
First three days, not going to be good.
Check back in a year.
Because in a year, I am going to crawl through whatever this is.
I'm going to eat a mile of shit if I have to.
I'm going to do whatever it takes.
But in a year, I'm going to be in charge of Prisoner Island, and everybody who touched me is going to be dead.
So I just take that attitude to anything I'm doing, and I find it helps a lot.
All right. Alright, but be kind, okay?
So I would ask you to be kind to her.
She doesn't need or deserve any bad vibes.
And just recognize that, you know, life has some ups and downs.
