Episode 1794 Scott Adams: There Isn't Much News Today So Let's Have Fun
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Content:
Patriot Front has no known cause or leader?
Mark Hyman story on Pulitzer for Russian Collusion
Pulitzers for reporting Russia Collusion
Elon Musk meets with the Pope
NO Inflation relief checks for poor in CA?
Allegations TikTok user data went to China
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of not only American history, but civilization itself.
For those of you outside the United States, today is the 4th of July.
We'll talk about that.
Special day here.
I don't know if you've even heard of it.
But, or for that matter, what could be less important Than the holidays in a country where you don't live.
Probably nothing. That's probably the least important thing that ever happened to you.
But we're going to make this special anyway.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice.
It's time to canteen, drink or a flask of a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day.
Things makes everything better.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip and it's going to happen right now.
Go. I have been waiting for this, and it was as good as I imagined.
Well, you know that story about the so-called Patriot Front, the khaki-wearing young males who all look like they came out of the same printing press?
And they're apparently associated with a white...
They're being called a white supremacist group.
And they marched through downtown Boston carrying police shields and flags and bearing the group's emblem.
Now, what was it they were protesting for or against?
Anybody? Anybody?
They were protesting for...
what?
They were protesting against...
what?
Nothing. Nothing.
They coincidentally were protesting for or against nothing and appeared just at the time that the Democrats are telling you, gosh, these Republicans like to get together and march on things and conquer them, because that's what the January 6th hearings are.
Is it a coincidence that the group you most imagine is well-named, the Repatriate Front...
Yeah, that's right.
They're a front...
For something. Don't know what.
But they call themselves a front for something.
So they appear at exactly the time that their appearance would be most associated somewhat automatically in your mind with Republicans trying to conquer their republic by marching on the Capitol.
Coincidence? Is it a coincidence that they have no cause and they're marching?
Have you ever said to yourself, hey, let's get together, because nothing's happening, and go have a march?
Do you ever remember doing that?
Ah, we're so calm today.
There's nothing going on.
Let's get together and all wear the same clothes and put on masks and march in a foreign city where it costs us money and our time.
Why? Why'd they do that?
Was it a recruiting effort?
So here's the weird thing.
I'm reading the news, and I looked at, you know, left, right, and Axios.
They're somewhat in the middle.
And they all cover this story the same way.
They just tell you what happened.
What's missing in the story?
What's missing in the story is who are they, why were they there, did anybody talk to them and say, hey, hey, why today?
Why today? Well, like, what's happening?
Are you protesting for or against abortion rulings?
What? So they can't find their leader and they can't get a quote from the Patriot Front?
Really. There's nobody who can get a quote from their leader saying, why were you there marching?
Nobody. What the hell is going on?
There's something so ridiculous about this whole thing.
And I don't know what it is.
I mean, you know, we like to joke that they're all feds.
But I don't know.
I mean, that's just one of several possibilities.
It seems at least as likely that it's just a Democrat operation.
Or it's a foreign intelligence operation.
And when I say foreign intelligence operation, it doesn't mean that they're from other countries.
It means that all you need is enough money to bribe a leader, and you can have any kind of grassroots movement you want.
So you only have to convince the leaders.
You don't have to convince the people.
Buy off a leader, you've got yourself a protest.
I don't know if that's what happened, but since nobody's asking, I guess we have to guess.
So you have to read an article.
I don't do this often, but there will be a signed reading.
It's only because it's so good.
It's good on two levels.
One, the story is amazing.
It's not too long. It'll only take you a few minutes.
And the writing is excellent.
So I recommend it if you just like good writing, just to see what nice, clear sentences and clean thinking looks like.
And it's a Substack article by Mark Hyman, H-Y-M-A-N. I think it's free to subscribe if you want to see the rest of the sub stack.
But he's got a story about the Pulitzer honoring the New York Times and the Washington Post for their reporting about the Russia collusion.
And the nature of the story is that basically the Pulitzer is a way to launder fake news.
Now, that's not the way Mark says it.
That's my interpretation of his better article.
So read it in his words to see it stated well.
My own bad description of it is that the Pulitzer is basically a fig leaf for making you think that reporting is valid when maybe it wasn't so much.
And at this point, we know that the New York Times and the Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes For being duped about the biggest story in the country.
For being duped. Completely fooled about what was really going on.
In the context that at least 30% of the country didn't need to do any research at all.
And here's 30% of the country, roughly, doing as much research as the people who won Nobel, or not Nobel, Pulitzer Prizes.
I give you now my impression of 30% of the regular public analyzing the Russia collusion charges.
I don't think so.
Nope. Nope.
I'm not going to do a deep dive on this one.
Because that one is sort of obvious bullshit.
There are all kinds of flavors of bullshit.
I'm sure you've tasted them all.
You got your subtle bullshit, your slight bullshit, you got your hyperbole.
You've got all manner of massaging the facts and misleading and leaving out context.
Oh, there's bullshit in every form.
But you've never seen bigger bullshit than the Russia collusion story.
Now, am I wrong that 30% of the public spotted it from the jump?
Right? I mean, I did.
I'm not sure what exactly I was saying at the time, but as soon as it came out, I said to myself, no, no, I don't believe that Trump, who is a germaphobe, urinated on a hotel bed with a hooker, or asked a hooker to urinate on a bed for any reason.
For any reason. As soon as I looked at it, I was like, no, that does not look like that's true.
All right. Now, I have to admit that I did not, therefore, go all the way to Hillary Clinton paid for it.
My brain did not go there on day one.
I could just tell that it was fake news by the nature of it.
You just listen to it, you go, I don't think so.
And by the way, I'm pretty sure I would have spotted this had the parties been reversed.
Meaning that if the Republicans had, you know, accused Biden of the same thing, I would have said, you know, I mean, just without even doing any research, I don't think so.
I just don't think so.
I think I would have spotted it in either direction.
All right. So the Pulitzer is not a credible organization, and you hear somebody got one, you should not be impressed.
I say this because I've always wanted to win a Pulitzer Prize and never have.
So if you'd like to get your commentary from somebody who is clearly disgruntled, this guy.
Who has two thumbs and is disgruntled about not winning a Pulitzer Prize?
This guy. Yes, I'm very bitter about it.
I'm bitter about winning the prize that I put no value in whatsoever.
It's true, by the way. I am actually bitter about it.
I swear to God, I'm bitter about it.
And the reason is that other cartoonists have won the Pulitzer.
So Gary Tudeau's won, once or twice.
And I think Burke Brethage won, and then lots of political cartoonists have won.
And I always said to myself, I feel as if...
Dilber has defined the workplace in a way that if somebody deserved a Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, for commentary about the world and even having an effect on the actual workplace, honestly, with complete humility, I deserve a Pulitzer Prize.
Just based on how they're given and what they're for and the context.
And... But I don't think I've been nominated.
So you can't actually win it unless you're nominated.
I think you nominate yourself.
No, I'm not high, but thanks for asking.
Somewhere halfway into my live stream, pretty much every day, or no matter what time of day, somebody says, I think he's high.
Now, if you think that...
Now, somebody says Gary Larson is a hundred times better, and I agree, but you're off point.
You're off point. Calvin and Hobbes is also the best cartoon that's ever been made, in my opinion.
But Calvin and Hobbes doesn't get a Pulitzer because the commentary is not serious about the world.
Dilbert is actually serious commentary in humorous form.
So you have to at least be political or social in nature before a Pulitzer is applicable.
Yeah, so I feel like I'm in that domain.
All right, here's an interesting factoid, a little positivity for you.
So because of the Roe decision by the court, people are asking ridiculous questions about other things.
And one of the ridiculous questions is, will the Supreme Court somehow make it illegal to have interracial marriage?
Now, there are some predictions I make.
That I'm like, oh, I'm really like 90% sure.
I'm not 100% sure. But this is the only one where I'm going to go out on a limb and say 100% sure interracial marriage will remain legal in the United States.
Does anybody want to argue that point?
I'm 100% sure it's not a problem.
Anybody? Talk about a revolution.
Oh my God!
There's probably not a single thing that we've ever discussed that would be more volatile than that.
All right, now I live in California.
If I hosted a party at my house and just invited 100 people that I know from my social circle or whatever, there would be so many interracial marriages that Now, I live in California, so maybe there's just more of it, but I almost don't see the other kind.
Where I live, it's mostly interracial.
Now, interracial depends how you define it, right?
So we're not counting just black and white.
You've got to count Hispanic, you've got to count Asian, you've got to count everything, right?
So interracial marriages where I live, I don't know.
It is so far beyond anything you could ever reverse.
Just no way.
Define racial, yeah.
So everybody might define it a little bit differently.
But here's the point I was going to say.
There's a scientific, let's say, idea that has been confirmed by studies.
Of course, we don't believe studies are necessarily true unless they agree with our biases.
And this one does, so I'm going to say it's good.
Somebody says, lull, Pleasanton is not mostly interracial?
I'm going to disagree with you.
I'm going to disagree with you. Because I said if I threw a party of my social circle, I didn't say a generic Pleasanton event.
But I don't think you could have a generic Pleasanton event that wasn't just full of at least...
You know, Asian American plus others, Hispanic American plus others.
You know, there's less black-white where I live, but the interracial part is pervasive.
I think whoever just said that Pleasanton doesn't have interracial marriages, I think you're discounting how many different groups there are.
Because if you throw in Indian Americans, you know, people born in India or not...
It's very high. Interracial marriage, very high.
In a good way. So the idea is that proximity makes people less bigoted.
In other words, if you simply spend time around people, instead of disliking them more, because you get to see all their warts or whatever, it's the opposite.
The more time you spend with people who are different from you, the more accepting you are.
Does that make sense to you?
Do you believe that? I mean, does that study sound like that makes sense?
Now, some of the examples they gave I thought were bullshit, and I'll tell you why.
One of the examples was that people who served back when the military was segregated, there was a period when there were still segregated units and then integrated units.
And if you followed up with them, you found that the integrated units...
Years later, the people who were in it were less bigoted than the people who were never integrated in the first place.
Does that make sense? And so that was part of the evidence that working together makes you less bigoted.
Do you see any problem with that study?
There's a big problem with that study, isn't there?
Let me ask you, at a time when there was a transition and there were still segregated units and then integrated units, do you think there was anything that those units had in common before the study?
Almost certainly, the ones that were integrated first were in places where they thought it would work.
Right? I'm just guessing that the units that perhaps were made up of or comprised of more, you know, old southern boys, so to speak, I've got a feeling that they didn't integrate right away.
Like maybe they needed to wait to see if the northern units worked it out and once they did, you know, everybody could do it.
But I have a feeling that the ones who decided to integrate first had something in common.
In other words, it was a group of people where you said to yourself, well, that could work with that group.
But I'll bet there were other groups...
Yeah.
I'll bet there were other groups where they just said, okay, let's wait on this group, because these are all just severe racists in this group.
So I'm not sure I believe the study.
Do you? But it also tracks with my own understanding...
Meaning that I would say that's true.
I would say that exposure makes you more open to other people.
Would you disagree with that?
Is there anybody who would disagree with that, just sort of commonsensically?
Or does your own experience say, yeah, the more time you spend with other people, the more accepting you are?
Now, I'm almost positive that that proximity thing...
Is why I'm so much more pro-immigration than a lot of you are.
I'm almost positive.
Because I have a proximity thing going on.
If you take the people coming across the border illegally, or people who have recently, maybe it's the second generation or whatever, if you take that group as a class, I've had extensive, extensive exposure to them because of where I live.
And my opinion is they're better than the people who are already here.
Sorry. Now, when I say better, I don't mean smarter, taller, better as sports.
I don't mean their DNA is better or anything like that.
Not in some way that you should care about.
I don't think they're better.
Here's how I think they're better.
I just love the fact that they beat the odds, that they took on something enormously risky and dangerous to get to the United States to better their lives.
In my opinion, and I know how distasteful this is for some of you, some of you are just going to hate this, especially on the 4th of July, but to me, America is not a border.
We have to have a border, and I'm big on having strong borders and protecting them, So, separate the fact that I think functionally you have to have a strong border, more strong than we have now.
But, I think America is a way of thinking.
I think America is a vibe.
I think America is a point of view.
And the people who come here illegally, not all of them, I mean, they all come for their own reasons, but to me they come with more of an American vibe than the people who are already here.
And just were born into it and didn't work for it.
Now, that's just a bias, right?
Could I prove it?
If I did a study, would it be backed up?
I don't know. I have no idea.
It is a complete bias that is informed by proximity.
If you spend enough time around the people who came from below the border recently, you will love them.
That's my opinion. If you spend enough time around anybody who came across the border, you could have a really good opinion of them.
And it will definitely influence what you think about how tough we should be and sending people back or amnesty or all that.
It completely changes once you've had direct exposure.
Now, if the only thing you've done is watch Fox News and see these armies of brown people coming across the border, it does look like an invasion and it looks scary.
But if you're in it, like you're seeped in it, as I am, not people who just came across the border, but if you're seeped in the culture, it's very embracing.
And it's not scary at all.
If you wonder what your future looks like if you're not in California, California is often your future.
For good or bad.
What happens here just happens a little faster.
So we're maybe, what would you say, five years?
California is about five years, maybe, depends on the topic, ahead of what's going to happen everywhere.
And if you live here, I don't know anybody who has extended exposure to the recent immigrants who doesn't love them.
I don't. Now, I'm sure they exist, and it has a lot to do with the town I live in, right?
We're a pretty open town. So things are pretty good, like mentally, where I live.
There's not a lot of hate, a lot of acceptance here.
So, I'm just giving you my view.
Now, if you say, that's not how it feels where I am, well, that's the point.
That is the point. It doesn't feel like that where you are.
But here's what I don't see.
I don't see anybody who is really surrounded by the immigrant culture who doesn't love them.
I don't know anybody. In fact, privately, when people talk, they say, yeah, they're awesome.
That's what people say behind their backs.
So how would you like to be that?
How would you like to be the immigrant community that when people talk about you behind your back, it's almost always positive?
I mean, that's pretty good.
Talk about managing your brand.
That's pretty good. All right.
Elon Musk visited the Pope, and the big news that came out of that is that I expected it would be like matter and antimatter, and that when they shook hands, There would be some kind of a black hole or explosion, and both of them would disappear in a giant fireball.
That didn't happen, which shakes my confidence in everything I knew about reality.
But I also wonder, what was the thinking of either Elon Musk or the Pope?
Don't you say to yourself, huh, I wonder if the Pope converted Elon Musk from being a non-believer.
Elon Musk believes in the simulation.
I wonder if the Pope tried or had any success moving Elon Musk to become more of a believer.
And then I ask myself, well, which one of those two is more persuasive?
Pope, A+. You don't become the Pope unless you've got some serious Catholic skills, am I right?
There's a lot of work to become a Pope.
That's not an easy entry-level job.
So you have to say that the Pope probably is a real persuasive person, wouldn't you say?
But he's not as persuasive as Elon Musk, which is interesting.
Very rare situation.
Somebody visiting the Pope who's verifiably, in my opinion...
Verifiably more persuasive than the Pope.
I'll bet that's almost never happened.
And it's probably almost never happened when the person who's more persuasive is not a believer.
So what I'm wondering is if Elon Musk had any luck convincing the Pope to abandon his religion.
I mean, there's no reporting on it.
We don't know what they talked about.
But I don't know. I'd be a little worried if I were a Catholic and my Pope spent 10 minutes with the most persuasive person on the planet who also thought we lived in a simulation and that my religion wasn't real.
I'd be worried about it.
I'd be worried about that.
No, I'm just joking.
But it is weird that the world's biggest non-believer, or at least most famous for being a non-believer, would visit the Pope, of all things.
It's a wonderful world.
I'm glad that you did. Well, in California, a lot of Californians are getting what they call inflation relief checks.
Inflation relief checks.
And so I was quite excited about this because I live in California, and so I thought, oh, I can't wait to get my inflation relief check.
Let's check the eligibility.
Eligibility. I will not be receiving a check.
I will not be receiving a check.
But I'm not alone.
The other people who will not be receiving a check for inflation relief are the poor.
So the middle class will be doing pretty well, but the poor have been completely excluded because since they don't pay taxes, they don't have direct deposit and bank accounts, the government can't easily find them and give them money.
So instead, and wouldn't know how much to give because it's based on your income anyway, so the poor get nothing and the rich get nothing, but the middle class will do pretty well.
I don't know. Is that a partial win?
I feel like we could have done better at giving all the money to the poor.
Am I wrong about that?
Wouldn't we have done a little bit better at giving all the money to the poor instead of, oh, none of it?
Now, I'm all in favor of doing things that are good for the middle class, but if you have only one pot of money, and you've got poor people, middle class, and rich people...
Half of their decision was pretty good.
Let's not give it to rich people.
Okay, I mean, you could argue that the money came from the rich people, so you'd just be giving it back.
But all right, forget about that.
The rich people can at least afford it.
But then when you're deciding, you know, afford not to get it.
So then when you're deciding, should we give this money to the middle class or the people who need it much more, they decided to give it to the people who didn't need it as much.
Yes, you're wrong, somebody says in all caps.
Okay. Yeah, I guess the poor people don't vote, so there's no point in giving them relief checks.
Well, here's a little thing that makes me scratch my head.
Have you seen the pictures? I don't know if these are real.
So, you know, you tell me if this is even fake news.
It might be fake news. But there are long lines for Tesla charging in the public charging stations.
And apparently it takes you half an hour to an hour to get a charge.
And there's long lines suggesting that the people at the end of the line would have to wait, you know, six hours just to charge their car.
Is that real? Because...
This has got no content.
The trolls are active today.
Imagine being a troll.
Like, that was the best thing you had today, was to yell at me in capital letters.
Like, well, the best thing I got going today in my life is I got on a live stream and made everybody a little less happy with my comments.
That's what I did today.
But do you think that it's true that the Teslas are lined up for hours to get charged?
Here's my degree in economics.
My degree in economics tells me the following...
You would not build a network of charging stations to fulfill 100% of all possibilities.
That would be cost prohibitive.
You would build a network of charging stations that could handle 98% of all situations.
Today's the 2%.
You know, the holidays are the 2%.
That's when everybody's traveling at the same time.
So it seems to me likely...
That the charging network is only designed for the 98% of the time when traffic is normal and not designed for the 2%.
I'm just making up 2%.
But not designed for that small number of times when everybody's traveling.
Am I right? So that's probably a real problem.
But I don't trust the news enough to know...
If it's just something that happened once.
I mean, we might already be past the line.
I don't know. Or is it getting worse?
Who knows? You know what would be interesting is if just private people started charging people's cars in their own driveway.
You know, just run an extension card up to the driveway, put up a sign, charge your Tesla, 20 bucks, or whatever it costs.
And couldn't private people sell charging cars?
Just park in my driveway, plug it in for an hour?
Yeah, you could, right?
So maybe something like that will happen.
So there's an ongoing debate about TikTok and whether or not China has access to information because it's a Chinese company.
And Brendan Carr, he's on the FCC, and he's asking Apple and Google to drop the app because it's sending data to China Now, TikTok had assured us it's not going to do that, but apparently it's confirmed that some of the data was available in China.
And I think at this point, if we were fooled about what data is going back to China, and TikTok was involved in fooling us, you have to take it out of the App Store.
Now, I don't know if these two things are true, so let me say these are allegations.
See, the allegation would be that people were concerned that China, the government, would have access to all this private information in TikTok.
And TikTok said to the world and to us, no, don't worry, because we moved our data into China, so China doesn't have access to it.
But it turns out that was incorrect.
And apparently it's been verified, that's the allegation, that that data was available to China.
Now, under those circumstances, can you let that company remain in business?
I don't think so.
What does your business and managerial leadership instinct tell you?
If a company lied to you about something that basic, Does the Chinese government have our private information?
No! No!
No, no, no.
Chinese government? Heck no.
There's no way the Chinese government is going to get any of this information.
It did? Oh, well, yeah, I got a little of it.
And when I say a little of it, they got a lot of it.
But, you know, next time we'll fix it.
Well, can you fix it for sure next time?
Because you said last time that they couldn't get it, and then they did.
But why would we trust you the second time?
Why would we lie to you?
Have we ever lied to you?
Yeah. You literally just lied, allegedly.
You literally just, allegedly, lied to us.
You said they didn't get it, and then we proved that they were.
Why would you act differently the second time, given that the Chinese government probably really wants that information?
Why would we trust you when you say it's not going there?
And the answer is, you can't.
And they proved that you can't trust them by lying about that very exact thing.
You don't even have to say, they're liars in general, so we worry that they would lie about this specific thing.
You don't even have to do that, because you could say, they just lied on this very specific thing.
Why in the world would you trust them to not lie again on that very specific thing, which is the most important thing, probably, which is exposure to the data in China.
So Trump and his administration wanted to get rid of this, and their instinct was to get rid of it now and fast and just do it.
But they were stymied by whatever forces.
So here we are. So if you signed up on TikTok, good luck.
China knows a lot about your preferences.
I'm seeing a comment that my only contact with the immigrant community is when they mow my lawn and clean my house.
Not true. Right?
So I don't think you listen to anything I just said.
If you live here, you're steeped in it.
It's just everywhere. It's just everywhere you go, it's everywhere.
It's in the personal life, it's in the schools, it's every business you go to.
When I door dash, sometimes a person speaks English.
So if you live here, you're steeped in it.
It's not something that you see in passing.
You're in it.
You're swimming in it. Alright.
Some of you are wondering what happened with the special live stream I started last night.
I already explained this to the people on Locals, but if there's anybody on YouTube who saw me tweet about it, I started one that I had to bail out of because something came up.
So that's all you need to know.
So it doesn't exist.
If you're looking for it, it was never completed.
And I may or may not complete it today or later.
I would like to read for you some of the best, most important words ever written.
Do you want to hang for that for a minute?
Now, I want you to listen to this not only for the meaning of the words, but for how well it's written.
Because remember, one of the things that we've learned is you want short, clean sentences.
But in the old days, they didn't write these short, clean sentences.
They wrote these amazingly big, long, complicated ones.
It's really hard to write a really amazingly long, complicated sentence and then have people read it and be inspired and understand it.
Like, you've got to really be a good writer to do that.
So I'm going to read you some of the best writing I've ever seen in my life, which violates a lot of rules of writing.
And I want you to see if it has a historical meaning that is still relevant today.
So see if there's any relevance to this today.
You might recognize this.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.
A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
My favorite sentence.
I love that. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
that to secure these rights, governance are instituted among men, derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whatever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long-established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly, all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurposes, Usurpations.
Pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.
It is their right.
It is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies.
And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
And so they did.
And so they did.
And that, ladies and gentlemen...
Is the best writing in the history of the world.
I would argue. And on that note, let's have a great Fourth of July in the United States.
And the rest of you, I hope you take a moment today to appreciate freedom.
