Episode 1797 Scott Adams: The Biggest Problem With Conservative Thinking About Fatherhood
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Some strategic Reserve oil went to China?
Microwave cruise missiles kill electronics
Half believe cheating likely in the midterms?
Our systems are designed to ensure cheating
Whiteboard: Conservative Illusion
Good parents and drug addicted children
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And for some of you, I'm going to kick off your day just right.
Yeah. I'm going to tell you a meme joke that I just saw on the Locals platform.
In the comments section on Locals, they can post memes, unlike on YouTube.
And as soon as I signed out, one of the memes went by.
And the meme was...
The best thing about conservative women?
No penis. I just lost it.
I've been laughing for 10 minutes.
Yep. So that's a good dating tip for conservative men.
Conservative men, if you're heterosexual and you'd like a good dating outcome, stick to a conservative woman.
Because at least you'll get one thing totally right.
No penis. And that's a good start.
I mean, there are lots of other things that you have to get right.
You know, you want to have the same goals in life and like the same things.
But if you could start off and your base for your dating success is dating a woman who doesn't have a penis, you are going to be way ahead as a conservative heterosexual.
So that's my tip for you.
And if you'd like to take today's Livestream up a level?
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tankard chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask, 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, the thing that makes everything better.
Go! Oh, that's so good.
So you know how I like to pick apart the liberal thinking?
I do that a lot. Specifically, I usually rail against the fact that lefties, people on the left, Like to build systems that couldn't possibly work because they don't take into account human motivation.
You've heard me say that too many times, right?
Consistently, people on the left, they always leave out that human motivation variable, the biggest one.
It's the biggest variable.
They leave that one out. But today I'm going to be doing something similar with conservative thinking.
There is a conservative blind spot that is destroying the country.
Destroying the country. And I don't think you see it.
And I think it takes somebody who doesn't live in that space full-time to just step outside and say, you can't see what I'm seeing.
Well, let me tell you what I'm seeing.
Some of you are going to have a tough time with this live stream.
We're going to start out with some easy topics first.
But when I get to that, it's going to be a little painful for some of you.
Because you're going to see your entire life philosophy just destroyed right in front of you.
Now, it's not about God.
Don't worry. I'm not going to mess with your religion.
That stays intact.
And I'm not going to mess with any of your ethical, moral stands.
Your moral, ethical stands will all be intact, as well as your religious beliefs.
But there's a gigantic logic blind spot.
A logic blind spot.
And you've been duped by some persuasion that you don't see.
And I'm going to fix that later.
And some of you are going to have a tough time with this.
You're going to have a mental situation that's just not comfortable for you.
But others are going to have a feeling that you're seeing things clearly for the first time.
It's gonna be weird. Yeah, we'll get to it, but first we're gonna wait for some people to come in, talk about some other things.
So this is anecdotal, but I feel like if you collect enough of these anecdotals, they might add up to something.
So as you know, I had COVID over a month ago, and then I got to experience some version of long COVID. I thought I had been over it like a week ago.
Because my mental state was back to ideal.
So I had brain fog for a long time, but then when it went back, it was perfectly good.
It feels like it's, you know, same as always.
However, I also thought that maybe I didn't exercise enough during that time, or maybe I'd gotten old kind of quickly, because I was having real trouble just walking upstairs.
Just walking upstairs.
And it lasted for weeks.
And I was mistakenly under the impression that maybe just my fitness had taken a hit.
Maybe age had caught up with me.
I feel like I had pushed it off too long and like, ah, finally.
But what it was was my entire body hurt and ached so much and I was all so twisted up that just walking upstairs was actually, in one case, I actually bailed.
I actually couldn't do it.
There was actually a time in the last two weeks where I didn't use the stairs because I couldn't.
True story. Today, I can run up and down the stairs just like it's flat ground.
Like, there's no difference between the stairs and a flat space right now.
Now, I didn't realize that that probably was the long COVID. I mean, I'm not a doctor.
It's just an anecdote.
It doesn't mean it'll apply to you.
But it kicked my fucking ass.
For a month! And now we hear that having a prior infection, no matter how recently, does not protect you from the next one.
How many months in the next year am I going to lose complete months of quality of life?
Apparently I could lose two or three more months in the coming year.
Because I can get Omicron two or three more times, according to the science.
And each of those times, I would lose a fucking month.
That's a lot of time to lose.
I don't want that last month back.
Believe me, that sucked. So just be aware that if you have a way to avoid it, go ahead and avoid it.
Michael Schellenberger has a long tweet thread that's just, like, shocking.
It's just shocking.
I don't know what to make of it.
But, you know, Biden released a bunch of our strategic petroleum reserves.
So I guess the United States has some big place they store a bunch of oil in case there's an emergency.
And this was enough of an emergency that they released some to lower gas prices.
But it turns out, as Michael Schellenberger reports here, and I think Reuters reported it, and Michael's wrapping it up in a nice thread, that over five million barrels of that oil went to China and other nations.
Wait, what? That's right.
We released oil from the National Strategic Petroleum Reserves, and five million barrels went to other countries.
That feels like, including China, and that feels like not what that was intended to do.
And then, of course, there's reports that it didn't work, and some people say it worked a little bit, but it didn't work enough to make much difference.
I think the level of incompetence here is insane.
But here's the thing.
You shouldn't be surprised if oil goes on the market and goes anywhere.
Because if you've never heard this word before, Let me make you smarter.
Fungible. How many people know what that word means?
You hear it sometimes, but it's one of those things you hear and you go, I don't know what that meant.
You have to look it up.
Fungible. Oil is considered fungible, as are other things, because oil looks the same.
And if I release some oil on the market, it doesn't matter if you buy it or you buy it.
It's just oil.
And I don't know where it came from and who's selling it.
It's just oil.
So it starts out as somebody's oil, but the moment it goes in the free market, it's just oil.
And it turns out that if you release a bunch of oil in a short period of time, the only thing that can happen is that people buying oil bid for it and then buy it.
That's the only thing that can happen.
People who want oil say, hey, there's some more oil.
What's the price? Here's how much I'd pay.
Oh, somebody paid more.
I guess somebody else got that oil.
That's it. So there wasn't really any chance that releasing oil wouldn't make some of it go to China.
It's just fungible.
It's just going somewhere, and you can't really track oil.
At least you can't track it in a way that you could control it in that sense, and you wouldn't if you wanted to.
I guess the United States and China are both working on these high-powered microwave cruise missiles.
Does anything sound...
Scarier than a microwave cruise missile.
Apparently, these will be fired into the enemy's territory, and then the microwave will knock out all their electronics, I guess not killing the people.
So it kills the electronics.
So it'd be like a low version of an EMT or something.
Now, EMP, not EMT. Duh.
Yeah, it's like a poor man's EMP, I guess, although it's pretty expensive.
And it's a long-range standoff weapon.
So we could basically lob one of these into some high-tech military unit, and it would just shut down all their electronics.
And I think this is one of the things that will be knocking down drones.
You know, something like this.
But I don't really have a take on this other than could we have any more evidence that war doesn't work?
I don't think we could have any more evidence that we already have that war just doesn't work.
Like, who does it?
At what point do we realize it just doesn't work?
If you start a war, you're going to get annihilated, as well as whoever you're attacking, probably.
It's like everybody loses now.
That's different than how it used to be.
Rasmussen has a new poll, shocking, of course, in that about half of the people in the country believe the elections are not credible, or at least not guaranteed to be fair.
So here's what Rasmussen says about it, about election integrity.
50% of the people they polled think cheating is likely in the midterms.
Likely. 50%.
Likely.
What? 50% say it's likely.
Now, I feel like people probably interpret the question differently.
That's part of it. Certainly, everybody should have said there might be some.
It's a big country, 50 states.
There's going to be some cheating.
Even the people who think that the elections are good enough, and that's plenty of people, even they would say, well, here and there, there might be a smattering of cheating, but it's not going to make any difference.
So, it's not clear how people thought they were answering the question.
Were they saying, yes, there will be a smattering of it, or yes, it will change the outcome of the election?
We don't know what they were thinking when they answered it, so beware of that.
And a majority fear of the upcoming midterm elections could be tainted, right?
Of course. Fear is always appropriate in that case.
And 52% of likely U.S. voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election.
Now, isn't it interesting that you could get banned from Twitter for saying something that a majority of Americans believe is true or are leaning toward?
Interesting. You could get banned from social media for the majority opinion in this country.
The majority opinion.
You know, everybody understands that you could get banned for a minority opinion.
You know, you've said something so awful that the majority of people wouldn't have anything to do with it.
But now you can get banned for the majority opinion, the common opinion.
What the hell is social media for if you get banned for the most common opinion that people have?
All right. Yes, I saw in the comments you reminded me to say.
So, Alex Berenson is back on Twitter.
So we don't know the facts of it because I guess Twitter and Berenson's legal people signed some kind of a non-disclosure agreement to not say what the deal was.
But apparently he was successful in making his case that he should not have been banned and he's back on Twitter.
Somebody says, sorry Scott, you wanted him banned forever.
No, you mind reader.
I never said that.
That's not even close to my opinion.
Have I ever said that somebody should be banned for their opinions on social media?
That could not be closer to the opposite of my opinion.
Now, I've been telling you lately that there's something that's happened in society that's really different.
Do you remember when we would just disagree on stuff and we would see different movies?
You know, for several years I would say, hey, we're looking at the same stuff, but it seems like we're seeing different movies.
We're in a new phase beyond that.
We've gone beyond seeing different movies.
Now people see the thing as the opposite of the thing.
Here was an example.
I'm probably one of the most outspoken free speech people in the public domain.
Not once have I ever said somebody's opinion should be squelched.
I've always said the opposite.
And here there was a comment even on a subscription service.
A service that somebody's paying actually to see my opinion, extra opinion.
And somebody who's paying and really paying attention thinks that my opinion is the exact opposite of my actual opinion.
We can't tell the difference between a thing and the opposite of a thing.
And that's going to be a theme that you'll see for the rest of this live stream.
There are people who are absolutely sure they're looking at a thing and seeing the opposite of a thing.
That's different than seeing a different movie.
A different movie isn't necessarily the opposite.
It's not yes, it's no.
The different movie is just a different narrative.
You know, two narratives can fit one set of facts.
One might be right, one might be wrong, but it's a narrative fitting facts.
That's where we were. We actually have gone beyond that.
We're all the way to we can't tell the difference between a thing and the opposite of that thing, of that very thing.
Also, you'll get more examples, and then it'll blow you away.
All right. So a lot of people don't trust the vote.
But here's my main point.
Do we have any other situation in which the majority of the country thinks a system is broken, and it couldn't be that hard to fix it, and yet there's no effort whatsoever by any politician to fix it?
Now, by fix it, I don't mean to make it accurate, because I don't have any inside information about how accurate it is.
How would I know? What I mean is fix it so that half of the country doesn't think it's broken.
It might be just information.
Could be. Maybe we just need to be better informed and then we would trust it.
Maybe. But probably it has something to do with the fact it was designed so you can't audit it.
Let me say it again, since it might be the last moment I'm ever on social media.
If a system is designed so you can't check the result, And the outcome of the result is really valuable to some people.
It really, really matters what the outcome is.
And you can't check after the fact to see if it was done right.
What's going to happen in that case?
Every time. Every time, there's going to be cheating.
You don't know when.
Might not be on day one.
Maybe it didn't happen in 2020.
How would I know? But you can guarantee it will happen.
The system is designed to make it happen.
Let me say that in the strongest possible way.
Our systems are designed to make cheating happen.
Why? Because that's what human motivation would get you with the system as designed.
Human motivation says that when people can cheat and there's a big payoff and they're not going to get caught or they think there's a good chance they won't get caught, there's bad behavior every time.
There's no exception to that.
Sometimes you have to wait a few days.
It doesn't happen on day one every time.
But you guarantee it happens.
We actually have an election system which, by its design, what I mean is since you can't audit the electronic parts, you can only audit the counting the ballot parts and some of the local stuff.
But once it gets into the digital Pathway.
You're done. You can't see that.
That's all invisible. You can't follow your vote all the way to the final database.
Now, under that situation, is that a system that is designed to give us accurate outcomes, or is that a system designed by intention to guarantee cheating?
Which is it? Engineers?
Do I have any engineers who are watching?
Of course I do. Just the engineers, please.
If you're not an engineer, I'm going to ask you to stand down for a minute.
Just the engineers.
Is the election system designed to guarantee cheating or to prevent it?
Which is it designed to do?
Engineers only. Guarantee.
Right. Alright, I believe that if I were to present what I just did to a room full of engineers, how many people in the room full of engineers would say that this is a system designed to guarantee cheating?
What percentage of engineers would agree with that statement?
A hundred percent.
A hundred fucking percent.
Right? Now, if you're not an engineer, And you've got an opinion about the integrity of the election system?
Well, then you're a fucking idiot.
Unless you're agreeing with the engineers.
Trust the engineers.
This one's a no-brainer.
This would be like asking a doctor the following question.
I'm no doctor, so I have to ask you this question.
If you took a gigantic railroad spike and you drove it through the head of a living person until it came out the other end...
Would that cause any damage to the person, possibly death?
And the doctor would say, you know, that's actually an easy one.
I'm pretty sure if you asked any doctor that question, we'd give you the same answer.
That would be very painful. Probably lead to death.
Would any doctor ever get that question wrong?
If you drove a spike through somebody's head, would it hurt them?
No, they would get that right every time.
Do you think any engineer is going to get this question wrong?
If you design a system that can't be audited, and the people involved really, really have a good reason to cheat, and they have access to it, is cheating going to happen?
And is it designed to guarantee it?
No engineer gets that question wrong.
You might. You might if you're not an engineer.
You might get that wrong. And by the way, that wouldn't even be on you.
Because you're not trained to be an engineer, right?
Right? It makes a difference.
It makes a difference.
The people trained to design a system are the ones you want to talk to.
How do we do? You're trained to design a system.
Here's a system. How does it look?
Don't ask yourself if you're an English major.
Don't ask your partner who's the history major.
They're not going to help you. Ask an engineer.
And we act like engineers don't exist or something.
I think engineers are the most ignored group of people in society because they have the most value to add because of the thinking part.
They can think.
They're really clear thinkers.
And we ignore them like they don't count when we talk about political stuff.
You should pay attention to the engineers.
All right. Well, apparently I was trending on Twitter twice yesterday...
For two different but related thoughts.
Here's the part where things are going to get uncomfortable for some of you.
Anybody want to stick around for that?
It's going to get uncomfortable.
I mean that. Like, that's not just a weird teaser.
It's going to get uncomfortable.
Here it comes. Now, the people on Locals, I trust you.
The reason you subscribed is that you liked A little edgier, uncomfortable stuff.
On YouTube, it's going to be a different experience.
If you just wandered in here, you're not going to like it.
So that's your warning.
Go away now. All right.
I'm going to explain to you the problem with conservative thought about parenting.
It goes like this.
Now, if anybody's new to me or my live stream, let me give you some background.
I often refer to myself as left of Bernie, partly because that's not real.
There's nothing left of Bernie.
In a few cases, I actually literally am left of Bernie, but those are just exceptions.
So I identify most with conservatives because they're better at designing systems that understand human motivations.
And the economics and the business major in me says, well, you have to include those in your plan because they're so important.
So very compatible with conservative thought on most things.
There is one thing that conservatives get completely wrong, and it's a logic problem.
You think it's not a logic problem, and that's the illusion.
So let me set it up for you.
We will not be talking about your moral, ethical, or religious standing.
I have no complaints with any of that.
That's all good. Keep that exactly the way it is.
So keep your moral, ethical, religious beliefs.
They will not be assaulted in any way.
Okay? I'm only going after the logic.
Okay? Because, can I ask you, is there any conservative here who is opposed to thinking better about a topic?
Nobody, right? You would only be opposed, I think, I think you would only be opposed to something that went against your most important ethical, moral standings.
And we won't be doing any of that.
None of that. Because that I respect.
Okay? So here's what I view as the conservative worldview.
And this is relevant to teen addiction and the younger male teen shooters.
So that's the context, okay?
We're going to limit it to that context for now.
And I would say the conservative says, if this is you, and you is just any person who might be a parent someday, you're an adult in the world, this is you.
And the conservative thought is that there are many books and organizations, and maybe you can listen to Christ, and you can get advice.
And if you look for these sources, you could be part of a great two-parent situation, And that the statistics and all common sense and all experience are all compatible with the fact that that gets you good outcomes.
Now, I quickly, quickly want to add a caveat.
Because this is the part of me that's left of Bernie.
This is my opinion.
This is only one way to do it.
Probably the best way.
Probably the best way.
So, will you agree with me if I say it's the best way?
I don't lose you if I say that, right?
If you're a conservative, and I agree with you on the biggest point, this is the best way.
Statistically. But I would like you to agree with the following point, if you will.
We'll negotiate a little bit here.
So I'm going to agree with you on this.
Absolutely. Statistically the best way to go.
I need you to agree on this.
Plenty of exceptions. Can I get you to say that?
Plenty of exceptions.
Here would be an exception.
And not so much to the great parent role.
You can't really beat two great parents.
That's unbeatable.
But it's hard to get.
So suppose you had one good parent and one bad parent.
Would that always be better?
Than one single parent who's a superstar.
And maybe with help.
Not always, right?
And I'm not doing anything about gender.
You know, that's a situation I think we could just leave out of it.
Frankly, I don't even think gender has anything to do with this.
Now, I know maybe you do.
But I'm saying two strong role models probably get you a good outcome as well.
So if you'll let me agree with you...
That this would be the optimal situation.
Can you agree with me that there would be exceptions?
There would be somebody who could make it work with a different model.
It may not be preferred.
It might not be your first choice, but they could make it work.
All right. Do you see the logic problem?
I'm going to ask you first to see if you see it.
Do you see the logic problem?
Not the philosophical problem.
The logic problem.
Does anybody see it? It assumes two parents?
No. That's just a goal.
So, a goal doesn't assume anything.
It just says, we'd like to get there, right?
What is the problem with the logic?
I'm not talking about your motivation, your religious belief, nothing about that.
Just the logic. All right, here's the problem.
There's no way to get from here to there.
You're making me think past the sale, right?
The sale is that you can get from here to there.
But here's the problem.
All of this stuff, it already exists.
And we're not there.
If you could get people from here to there, and all it would take is the things that already exist, the problem's already solved.
Do you see the problem?
So conservative thought is thinking past the sale.
Literally a persuasion slash logic problem.
If you can't solve this problem of how do you get somebody to buy into this, then you have nothing.
So what this is is literally nothing.
But conservatives say, I think we're done here because we have a workable plan.
The workable plan is to promote two-parent households.
There are resources to help you do it.
There's nothing else that needs to be done.
There must be something wrong with your character or your motivation if you're not doing it.
Now here's what's wrong with that.
The myth...
First of all, how do you get these two good parents?
Let me give you...
The best way I can explain this is with an analogy.
Now I want you to disagree with the analogy because that's what we do.
But it's the only way to make the point.
So analogies are good for making a novel point, but they're not good for telling you what's going on with your stupid situation.
So here's the analogy.
In order to save gas, you should flap your arms really hard and fly instead.
So you would save a lot of gas prices by just flapping your arms and flying.
What is wrong with that prescription?
Do you see any logical problem with it?
It's making you think past the sale.
You can't flap your arms and fly.
But conservative thought takes you past the sail and says, why are you paying for gas when you can flap your arms and fly?
And then I say, but you can't flap your arms and fly.
And then the conservatives say, dude, all you have to do is take advantage of the many resources that teach you how to flap your arms and fly.
And then I say, if any of those resources worked, Wouldn't everybody be flapping their arms and flying?
Because that seems like that would be like something everybody would want to do.
Now, you're saying that the analogy doesn't work because the analogy doesn't fit, right?
Well, then you're on the wrong page.
Here's what you're supposed to take from the analogy.
If it's not possible to do it, it's not really a path to a solution.
It's wishful thinking.
It's literally imaginary.
All right, let me give you another entry.
I'm going to take several attack points, okay, until one of them gets through.
Here's the first attack point.
You imagine there's a single woman.
She has unprotected sex with a man she barely knows because they were both drunk.
The woman decides to keep the baby.
Now... So what's her path?
Does she say to the man who slept with her once and doesn't even like her and barely knows her name, does she say, hold on, we've created a problem here where if we keep going, we're going to have a one-parent situation and we know that's not optimal, so can I fix that by suggesting,
single person who had sex with me once, that maybe you should read some books on fatherhood, Go seek some help from some organizations, possibly seek help from Christ, and get some good advice, and then you can solve this societal problem by finding out a way to be a good husband and staying with me and we'll live forever in happiness.
What? How is that ever going to work?
The conservative view is built totally on an illusion.
The illusion that you can take any two people and if you train them upright, they'll have a happy marriage and the kid will be good.
No. It's the people.
The problem with marriage is the people.
And you can't fix that.
How about murder?
Can we get rid of murder by writing books about how you shouldn't murder anybody?
How about other problems?
How about drug addiction? Can we get rid of drug addiction by writing a book that says if you get drug addicted, it'll be bad for you?
How's that working? No, you can't educate people to become different people.
And you can't make people who shouldn't be married be happily married.
The people who decide not to stay together, don't they have reasons?
You act like there's no reasons.
When somebody doesn't stay with a spouse, it's because the spouse is beating them, one is an alcoholic, one doesn't have a job, is a bad role model.
You can't fix that.
You can't fix that by telling them to read a book.
Do you know anybody who ever took an unhappy marriage and turned it into a good one by reading a book?
Well, maybe you think you know one.
Alright, let me tell you the most absolutely maddening The illusion that conservatives have.
Maddening. It goes like this.
I showed tough love to my children, and they turned out great.
Therefore, the method I used to parent is one that can be generalized to other kids in other situations because my method clearly worked.
How many of you believe that?
How many of you believe...
That there are plenty of examples of people who did good parenting, they did the right things, and they got a good outcome with their kid.
Therefore, good parenting can fix your kid as well.
How many? Yeah.
Do you know how many people told me today on Twitter that all you needed to do for helping your drug-addicted kid is to seek help?
Seek help. That's the conservative depth of thinking on addiction.
If you had maybe loved your child better and sought help, well, you'd be okay now.
There is no help.
That was the point of my tweet thread that got a lot of attention.
There is no help. If your teen is troubled and male, there's no services.
There's no therapist who could make a difference.
There's no anything.
There's nothing. And somebody said to me, well, therefore, are you recommending that we give up?
Did you hear that?
Or lose hope?
And I say, no. Because you know why?
Any individual kid can still break through.
Any individual kid can still break through.
So you always have hope. Because you don't know if your kid is one of those kids.
So you always have hope.
And you should always do whatever you can.
But the main thing that's going on is how you manage the kid.
You're having an illusion, and you are fucking the whole world.
Let me say it again.
It's not just a harmless little illusion.
It's not a difference of agreement.
The conservative view...
That good parenting fixes things, like most of the time, is just fucking the world because it's completely based on a hallucination.
It's based on anecdotal thinking.
I know somebody who parented well.
They got a good outcome. Therefore, parenting works.
No. You never had a kid who was a problem kid.
It's always the kid.
You can't change kids.
Have you noticed that there are kids who are raised exactly the same way, same parents, same family, same town, same school, and they turn out completely differently?
Have you seen any families where one of them is a criminal and one of them is a priest?
Yes. Yes, you have.
Okay, that's a bad example of it.
Right. Every bit of science and evidence is screaming at us that the parenting isn't a big deal.
It's screaming at you that the differences in the individual are everything.
Now, that difference in the individual, which is being ignored by conservatives, is the same as When the people on the left ignore human motivation.
It's a blind spot.
And it makes everything that you think after that blind spot nonsense, right?
So my problem, the reason that I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican is that you're operating on different illusions.
And I can't buy into a preferred illusion.
I mean, not one that doesn't work.
I like illusions that work, for example.
So here's the other thing. You can't fix a dad by giving him a fucking book.
You just have to get over that.
There's no evidence that's ever worked.
There's no evidence that ever will work.
None. Now, I will give you the edge cases.
I will give you the edge cases.
There are people who don't know how to parent, and they learn a little bit better, and they get better, and that's good.
So everybody should try to get better.
But if you think that you can just say, well, we already have the solution, and you walk away, you're the fucking problem.
You're the fucking problem.
Because you think it's already solved.
All people have to do is try harder, be better parents, read a book, trust Christ.
No, these are absolute magical thinking solutions.
You can't do any of that stuff.
If any of that stuff worked, People would do it.
But you have this magic...
Not you. So let me not make this personal.
There are people who have the magical belief that you can fix a defective father with a book or an organization or a Christ.
And I'm going to give you, yes, you can in the edge cases, but it's nowhere near the big solution.
And sure, you should try.
And sure, you should always have hope.
All right? Somebody says, I think you're confusing conservative with a control freak.
No, I don't think I am.
But I hear what you're saying.
All right? All right, let me give you some of the bad thinking that I got when I talked about this.
And the reason I'm making a big deal about this is that I'm going to give you another analogy.
You know how nuclear power was considered too dangerous and not really a solution to anything for decades?
And it turns out that that was all an illusion.
Nuclear power was the solution for climate change.
It is safer than the other alternatives.
And most of the problems have been solved.
So you saw me going crazy on, you know, persuading that people To believe that nuclear power is now the best solution.
And now that's the case, right?
So you saw both the left...
Well, actually, mostly the left.
You saw the left finally get past their illusion.
Their illusion was nuclear was bad, and now they have actually overcome that.
Do you know how big a deal it is that the left has overcome an illusion?
The illusion about nuclear power?
It probably changes the world.
I mean, it's really, really big.
Because if we didn't get past that, we weren't in trouble.
But we did. It looks like we're past it.
So nuclear is good now.
I'm going to do the same thing, or try to, with this myth of the good parent solving your problems.
If you can drop that myth, You open up new possibilities for maybe finding something that works.
I don't know what that is yet.
I'm just telling you that you have to drop an illusion before you can even see the field.
You got to get rid of the illusion of the effective parent.
Again, there are no absolutes here.
Better parenting is better.
Right. So somebody's going to go away and say, Scott says the way you parent doesn't make any difference.
No. No.
No. I'm not saying that.
But I know some people are going to say that.
No, I'm saying it's not the solution.
It's better to parent better.
It just isn't going to solve anything.
Scott's cognitive dissonance on display.
Well, let me test this.
If I'm the one who has cognitive dissonance, how do you explain...
That kids who are raised exactly the same way can turn out completely different.
If you can explain that with something that doesn't sound like nonsense, then you would be right that I would be the one in cognitive dissonance.
But that's your challenge. Now, you have to give me one like that in order to test me.
So give me the test like that, and then you can see which one of us has cognitive dissonance.
It's pretty easy, this is. Pretty easy.
All right. Free will, of course, is an illusion.
So if you thought that it was free will or any of those things, those are also based on hallucinations.
All right. Here's the problem.
I once knew this troubled teenager who ate a ham sandwich, and within a year of eating the ham sandwich, had turned his life around.
Is that evidence that the ham sandwich changed this kid's behavior?
Or is it evidence that some people just figure it out?
It's evidence that some people just figure it out.
So many of you had stories for me about your troubled youth, who you did X or Y, and whatever X and Y was.
It turned that kid around, and therefore, doing X and Y works.
No, it doesn't.
It's the ham sandwich.
All you know is that you did something, and then something happened.
That's all you know. You don't know that that's what worked.
But you think you do. And that illusion is what is blinding you to the possibility that there might be some way to fix this problem.
And it's definitely not the belief that 90% of what you do, parenting, makes a difference.
You need to reverse that.
If you think it's 90% about how you parent and 10% about the genes of the kid, you are completely wrong.
Reverse it. It's about 90% genes and about 10% parenting.
That 10% parenting is going to get you the following benefits if you do it right.
Punctuality, maybe.
Good manners, maybe.
A preference for hard work, maybe.
There are definitely some things you can get from good parenting.
And loving your spouse?
Maybe. So am I saying that you can't get anything good from good parenting?
You can get all kinds of great stuff.
Yeah, the feeling of security, all kinds of great stuff.
But it's in the 10% in terms of how much it's going to affect their long-term outcomes.
Are we 90 seconds or less from Scott going full eugenics?
Does that make sense?
Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to point out some of the bad thinking here as my argument for how this is triggering cognitive dissonance in some of you.
Now, one of the comments here was that I'm very close to eugenics.
Did anything I say suggest that I'm, like, on the precipice of eugenics?
No. All right.
So here's some of the good thinking from other people.
So here's some advice I got, and I won't even tell you who.
Well, no, somebody named John.
Let's just say that. And this tweet, I think this describes a dominant conservative thought.
See if you agree with this person's comment.
So this is somebody disagreeing with me on Twitter.
See if you buy into this. He says, you, meaning me, you understand the problem but not a solution.
That is correct. That's what I'm saying.
I understand the problem and that nobody has a solution.
So that part's good. If you want to raise a child, he says, to become a good man, be a good man.
So that's the proposition.
That you can turn a child into a boy, into a good man, by being a good man.
What's the evidence for that?
We'll keep going. Your son will watch you his whole life.
You want him to treat women with respect?
Treat his mother with respect.
You want him to be a hard worker?
Blah, blah, blah. You show him by going to work every day.
You want him to stay away from drug use?
You stay away from drug use.
You want him to have a good marriage with your wife?
Show him what a good marriage looks like.
In essence, be a good person every day of his life, and he will be too.
Make sure your children know you love your wife and vice versa.
Show them what that means, the good and the bad, and in between every day.
This has a lasting effect on them.
They will pick up the habits of the people they spend time with.
Your bad behavior will become theirs.
So basically, the summary of that is that a bad dad could become a good one by just modeling this good behavior.
How practical is any of that?
So let's say there's a drug addict who bangs a woman and then leaves.
She has a baby.
Was that meth addict supposed to come in and model all these good behaviors and really show love to the woman whose last name he doesn't even know and pretend to be a good husband?
None of that's real. None of that's real.
I mean, you start with any real-world situation, and you can't imagine how any of this could work.
So the leap of imagination it takes to go all the way from good parenting is a good thing to imagine that therefore you can create good parents, that's thinking past the sale.
So let me say it again, going back to the first point.
The sale...
Is can you create good parents who would do better than bad parents?
That's the sale. And the conservatives think all the way past that.
That's the part nobody can figure out.
They go all the way past it to, it would be good to have two parents, so we're done here.
Because there are books on how to do it.
Your whole argument is a straw man.
No, it isn't.
No, it isn't.
Is the straw man that conservatives think that having a strong two-parent household is better?
That's not a fucking straw man.
That is exactly what conservatives think.
Good Lord, what is wrong with you?
All right. Do I have any personal bias in this story?
Yes, I do.
And I'm going to tell you my personal bias.
So you can see probably one of the reasons that I'm more, let's say, engaged in this than other things.
You ready? Here's a story I've never told before.
Well, I don't know. Maybe I've told it in general form to some people.
My grandmother used to babysit for me.
So it was common if my parents were busy, I would be with my grandmother for the day when I was a little kid.
My grandmother was a poorly educated woman And she believed, among other things, that if you were born left-handed, it might be the sign of the devil.
And so when her son, my uncle, was born left-handed, she punished him until he used his right hand for general tasks, which he ended up doing.
And... And she also believed that all behavior problems of children could be solved by enough punishment.
So in other words, if a child wasn't doing what you wanted, the only reason is because you had not amped up the punishment enough.
So any behavior could be fixed by the right amount of equal punishment.
Now, the problem was that I had a health problem, which she and her Incredible ignorance interpreted as a behavior problem.
Let me say it again. I had a health problem that I couldn't control.
It's resolved now, so you don't have to worry about it.
I'm not going to get into it. It was a health problem, and she believed it was a behavior problem.
Do you know what she did when her punishments of me were not sufficient to change my behavior because it wasn't something I had any control over?
Do you know what she did? She increased the punishment.
Yeah. And do you know what happened?
No, it wasn't bedwetting, but, you know, good guess.
Good guess. So it wasn't bedwetting, but if you want to use that as your model, that would be a good one, right?
Because I don't think anybody intentionally wets a bed.
So it wasn't that, but that's a good one.
Now, what happened when the new level of punishment wasn't enough either?
What did she do? She ramped it up.
She ramped it up. So my childhood experience was literally being trapped in a house with a torturer.
Because she believed as you believe, many of you, not all of you.
But she believed as all conservatives believe.
She was conservative. She believed that good parenting could fix my problems.
So my genetic problem she tried to fix by punishment.
And that's the model that you have.
The conservative model is that my grandmother's method should have worked.
She just didn't apply enough pressure.
Right? But sometimes the problem is organic, as it was in my case.
There was no choice involved in anything I did there.
So if you have a kid who is an addict, is an addict just like everybody else.
What do you say, conservatives? Is somebody who is an addict genetically just like everybody else?
Or do they have like a thing that you can't see that makes their behavior look like it's a choice?
Well, if you didn't understand anything about people and addiction, you would say to yourself, that person is choosing to do those drugs, and I think I can punish them out of it.
How's that going to work?
It won't. So the moment you believe that punishment can correct a fucking genetic problem, you have a really broken philosophy of life.
Once you understand...
By the way, we're going to get to the other comments.
There's somebody here who says, I should be investigated for killing my son.
The reason I was trending on Twitter...
Is it people like Keith Olbermann and I think some other people?
They came in and they read my tweet and they interpreted it as I wanted to kill my own son or that I did kill my own son or that I let him die with some neglect or something.
Now do you imagine that I actually tweeted anything that said that?
This is where that really thing comes in.
So you haven't seen my tweet threads perhaps but you've seen the comments about them.
Just ask yourself, really?
Really? Do you think that I tweeted in public something about being happy?
And Eddie here says, you kind of did.
He goes, you kind of did.
No, I didn't. And that never happened.
You actually are having a hallucination.
Go read it again.
It's in public. I mean, I don't have to make a case.
Just go read it again. See what it says.
And if you have problems reading it, ask a friend.
The reason it has, I don't know, some thousands of retweets is because there were thousands of people who read it correctly.
There's not one person who would have retweeted it if I was celebrating the death of my child.
Nobody would have retweeted that.
So ask yourself, why is everybody retweeting it if you think I'm saying I'm celebrating the death of my child?
The problem's on your end.
Clearly, the problem is out of your head.
Nobody would tweet that.
Nobody did. All right.
Let me tell you some of the other things.
Here's what somebody else thought I tweeted.
This is Craig Rozaniecki.
This is how he interpreted my tweet this morning.
He says, what you're contending here is that killing teenage males who are subjectively deemed dangerous, in quotes, and have yet to commit a crime would serve the greater good.
So here's somebody who literally thinks I tweeted this opinion, that killing a teenage male before they did anything wrong would be good for society just because they might be dangerous later.
Really? Really?
Does somebody think that I tweeted that opinion?
That killing people before they commit a crime would be good for society?
Craig does. Craig thinks I actually tweeted that.
Now, can you see the problem?
That's cognitive dissonance, right?
So Craig is literally hallucinating some opinion that nobody would have.
It's not only an opinion I don't have.
Nobody would have that opinion.
Why would you think anybody would have that opinion?
That should have been the tip-off. Nobody would have that opinion.
So, basically, if I said something in a tweet any time this week that shocked or offended you, here's what I can guarantee.
If you were shocked or offended by anything I tweeted, either you didn't understand it, Or you're Keith Olbermann.
There are two possibilities.
Now, Keith, as you know, is my mascot.
And so when I say anything that trends or is provocative, Keith likes to come over and misinterpret it and then get worked up, which is part of the fun.
He's like a chord jester.
So I'm always happy to see him.
Let's see. It's more bad thinking.
Here's another example.
Here's some advice I got.
So how to fix this whole dad problem?
So here's some conservative advice in a tweet.
Somebody said, it is a spiritual issue.
Requires the repentance of individual hearts that eventually multiplies through society.
Okay. So then what do I do?
Okay, hold on. Let me read it again.
It's a spiritual issue.
It requires a repentance of individual hearts that eventually multiplies through society.
So what do I do differently?
How does that help me?
All right, here's another one. Somebody said, I don't know how we can fix it, but we can encourage engaged fatherhood and discourage abandonment through policy.
Yeah, we can have policies that don't make it easy and economical to leave.
We could do that. So if I understand this, if you fixed our policies to make it easier to stay together and harder to leave, we could create a situation where people who desperately don't want to be married have to stay together.
That should work out, right?
Wouldn't you love to be a kid of two parents who desperately don't want to be together?
Hate each other's fucking guts at this point.
With good reason, because they were bullshitty to each other.
But they stayed together anyway.
So I think that'll be good.
Good for the kid. Do you see any problems?
No. This is the quality of a lot of conservative thought.
You can just encourage people to stay together.
Why the fuck would you want to do that?
Is that the only way you can make this worse?
The only way you can make it worse is keeping that fucking father in the house.
The guy who left, I don't think mom wanted him.
I don't think anybody wanted him.
There's a reason he left.
He's a leaver. The fact that he left probably shows you something about what would happen if he stayed.
To imagine that you can fix a problem by putting horrible role models really close to your kid does not seem like good thinking.
That is not a philosophical preference.
That's just illogical.
It doesn't think through what happens if the guy stays.
If the guy stays, what?
Abuse? Bad role model?
Here's some more bad thinking.
As the father of an adolescent son who struggles with substance abuse and self-harm, I appreciate your wise message that there is no hope.
What? He's being sarcastic.
It's good that there is someone as smart as you to set us straight.
So he's saying he has a son with things and he believes that what I said is there's no hope.
No. There's tons of hope.
You know what the hope is? The hope is that your kid has good genes.
And that he's going through a rough patch.
It's very, very common for young men to go through a rough patch.
Anybody? Is there anybody who was a young man who went through a rough patch and then worked it out?
Any of you? Any conservatives here who went through a rough patch and then worked it out?
Yes. So would you lose hope knowing that, I mean, I'm just, there are yeses streaming through here, right?
Men and women, right?
It's not limited to men.
Of course, it's the most common thing.
Why would I tell somebody to lose hope when it's extremely common for people going through a rough patch to get out of it?
But do you know, you can usually tell which people those are.
Not always. But there are people you look at and you say, okay, that one's not going to get out of it.
But there are other ones you say, I think that one could.
I feel like this one's just going through a rough patch.
But if you get this one through it, I think they can make it work.
There are others you know they can't.
But you can hope. So yes, there's always hope.
I'm never going to be the one to tell you not.
There's no hope. All right.
So I guess that's...
All right.
I guess that's my main point.
Those of you who are parents, and you're good at it, and you also got good results, shut the fuck up.
You're ruining everything.
Let me say it again. Those of you who are really good parents, and you did all the right things, and you got a good outcome with your parents, you need to shut the fuck up.
Because you're ruining everything.
Because you're operating under the illusion that you've got good outcomes because of your good parenting.
You're so wrong.
You're so wrong.
Your good parenting helped, and I applaud you for it.
And I'm very impressed by anybody who's good at it, because I'm not.
I wouldn't say that I'm good at it.
So, I'm very impressed with good parenting.
But stop telling us that's what worked.
That's not what worked.
What worked is you got lucky.
You got lucky. You had two kids and they both worked out.
What would you have said if you treated two kids exactly the same and one of them became a criminal and a drug addict and the other one did not?
What would you say then, good parents?
Would you say then, you only parented one of them well?
Is that what you'd say? No.
You would change your opinion to my opinion if you had that experience.
Your opinion would immediately change to, oh shit, it doesn't matter what I do.
Wouldn't it? Just think about it.
You're a great parent, one of your kids turns out great, the other one doesn't, and you're treating them the same, as far as you can tell.
You would immediately change your opinion about the importance of parenting.
Because you would see it with your own eyes.
I'm doing everything right, but it's not working.
So all of you parents who have two good kids, let's say, just an example, and you did good parenting, and they turned out great, shut the fuck up.
You're ruining the country.
You're the reason we're not looking for other solutions.
You are causing an illusion to fall over the eyes of other people to make them think that, God, all I have to do is this easy stuff.
All I have to do is this easy stuff and I'll get good results just like these good parents.
No. You good parents shut the fuck up.
You're destroying the country by your illusion that what you did got you the right.
Now, the cognitive dissonance is pretty strong over on YouTube.
This is an interesting difference.
You can't see both platforms, but I get to see the comments on both.
On the subscription service, this is a population of people who have a higher level of critical thinking.
And the reason I know that is that it's what we talk about every day.
They're literally in class for critical thinking.
And so when I give this point, I look at the comments on locals and mostly they're agreeing.
Because they've studied critical thinking enough to get there.
On YouTube, I see John just yelling WRONG in all caps.
So John, let's take John.
John, you're yelling WRONG in all caps.
Give me a one-sentence reason.
It doesn't have to be complete.
But just give me, like, a sense of what I got wrong.
Just, like, what's the part I got wrong?
John? Because otherwise you're just experiencing cognitive dissonance and you're proving it.
Well, John got really quiet.
No, John. I'm asking you.
You're on. John, the floor is yours.
I'm wrong about all of it.
Just tell me what part.
One sentence. It's easy.
Just go ahead. Oh, John went away.
John disappeared.
When John had to actually explain his opinion in public, he disappeared.
John, John, John.
So somebody's saying that it's 90% about genes is dead wrong.
Well, let me make the argument about 90% about genes.
That's the reason that two kids turn out differently, different genes.
Now, if you have an answer to how that can happen, same parenting, two different outcomes, if you have an answer to that, John just answered twice.
All right, let's see...
John answered twice.
Let's see where he is. There's so many comments here, I have to go back.
You are blaming conservatives.
That's not a reason, John.
Okay, John, that's not a reason.
I'm blaming conservatives.
That's not a reason or an argument.
Okay. John is just in cognitive dissonance.
So he believes he's giving me answers, but he's just, like, saying words.
Have you noticed that presidents always take credit for what happens that's good and they always blame the other guy for what happened bad?
You know none of that's real, right?
You know that Biden isn't exactly responsible for all of the inflation.
He didn't help.
But we accept that the people in charge are causing all the outcomes.
That's not real. You know that's not real.
Well, I told you this would be an uncomfortable show.
Now, let me ask this question.
Is there anybody here who watched this who had a traditional conservative view when I started and at this point is asking themselves, holy shit, did I get everything wrong and the parenting doesn't make that much difference?
Is anybody asking themselves that question?
It's a stream of no's.
Nope, nope, nope. A few yeses.
That's about what I'd expect.
A little bit. Alright.
This is like day one of convincing people that nuclear power is a good idea.
On day one, you don't get much impact.
On YouTube, as it all knows, best show ever.
Interesting. If one of my kids turns out to be a mass shooter or a drug addict, I will take responsibility for it as their parents.
But responsibility is not even the topic, is it?
See, that's another thinking, like a logic hiccup.
Nobody was talking about responsibility.
It wasn't even the topic.
Can bad parenting destroy a kid?
Of course. Of course.
Here's what I think. There are plenty of people who made it through bad situations.
But I think it's the kid.
It's the kid. Yeah.
And let me ask you this.
How many of you have children that turned out completely different but were parented the same?
Let me ask you that question. Because that's the key question.
In the comments, how many of you have children where you parent them the same and they turned out differently?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
How is that not the end of the conversation?
Seriously. Because when I ask you if I'd convinced anybody, I got mostly no's.
But when I ask you, have you raised parents and learned for yourself, with your own eyes, that the same treatment gets you different outcomes, it's mostly yes's.
How do you explain that? If you know that parenting doesn't get you the same outcome, how do you think that parenting gets you the same outcome?
Because you know it doesn't.
How can you say two things that you know are to be opposite, and many people I think said them in the last five minutes.
You'll always raise your second child differently.
Not different in the ways that matter.
I see what you're saying. Somebody's saying that you raised the second child differently than the first.
And I think that's a thing.
And I can see that that would have some small differences.
But I don't think it makes one of them a drug addict.
That seems like a bridge too far.
Somebody says we all got parented the same.
That's why we're all drug addicts.
No, you're mostly likely drug addicts because your parents have those genes.
If you know somebody whose parents both have the alcoholic gene, do you know anybody like that?
Both parents and both of their family members, they're all alcoholics.
Are you going to make that go away with good parenting?
No. Now, unfortunately, if they got the gene, And they have access to alcohol.
It's going to go in that direction.
Right. Alcoholism is about genetics.
You truly don't understand our framing, says Greg.
Greg, I don't think everybody's framing it the same, but say more about that.
So that's the kind of comment that I consider additive.
It's incomplete, but it's additive.
So somebody's saying, I don't understand...
The conservative framing.
So that's a good start.
Where are you going with that?
Different friends, sets, and experiences.
Right. Which would also argue that it's not the parenting.
So if, let's say, your kids also have different friends and the friends are a big influence, which of course they are, that would be one reason for a different outcome.
But again, the point is it wasn't the parents.
That's my point. It wasn't the parents.
All right, I guess that...
Oh, you're framing this as a conservative problem.
Oh, okay, let me address that.
So the issue is that I'm framing it as a conservative problem.
Here's the slight nuance that I think can get you on my side, John.
I'm not saying that only conservatives have this blind spot.
I'm saying that the Conservatives focusing on this blinds us to the possibility that there might be some way to solve it that we haven't thought about.
In other words, it makes us focus on something that looks like a solution, when in fact it's not.
Now the part that's unique to Conservatives is that they talk about it.
So what is not unique to Conservatives is that they're in this situation.
Everybody could be in this situation.
What's different is that the conservatives, and I think you'd agree with this, as a political point, is one of their main points.
But the left does not make it a main point to have two parents.
Is that okay? Does that fix the framing?
The framing is just who's focusing on it, and I think you'd agree on that.
What are the other solutions?
I don't know. But I'll tell you the process for finding a better solution.
The process first would be to understand the limits of what parenting can do compared to genes and other outside experience.
We should understand what the limits of that are.
That's very big. So education on that point.
Secondly, A-B test.
This is my answer for everything.
And this is the perfect situation.
And one of the things I would test would be group parenting.
Group parenting.
So that's something that accidentally happened in my life in my first marriage.
Just by complete coincidence, the two stepkids had friends who there were two in the family that were the same ages and same genders.
And so there were, I think, four or so families that had kids that were the same age, best friends, same genders.
And so you could all take turns being parents.
So one day they'd all be at my house and I was the parent.
Next day they'd all be at, you know, Quinn's house, and he's the parent.
And so the kids would get complete role models from a variety of people.
And I would actually ask my own stepkids, like, who do they see as, like, really strong parents?
And they would name somebody.
They'd say, oh, yeah. They'd usually say, my friend Quinn, actually.
If you listen to this, Quinn.
By the way, that's the first time you heard that.
The kids would actually say, oh, yeah.
Quinn, he's great.
Like, best dad.
But I don't think that he would have made a difference with my stepkid.
And I do think he's a great dad.
I think he does as well as it can be done, at least as far as I can observe.
All right. I feel like I got to the end of that point.
Now, let me ask you this question.
Do you think that I've made a case that there's an illusion there about genes versus parental influence without degrading the fact that the parental influence is very important?
Very important. I'm totally with you on that.
It just isn't the big thing.
So, if I've made that point, Then maybe that could free you up to at least consider we should try some other things.
And I think the other things are going to have to do more with bringing more people into it.
It could be something about how to fix schools.
Because it's my observation that schools socialize your kid more than parents.
It'd be hard to measure that.
I guess it depends what age you're talking about, etc.
At the youngest age, it's the parents only.
At some point, it's the school almost only, by the time they're teenagers.
So if you were to fix the school system, so let's say it could plug in some of the blocks of whatever resources are needed or education, that would help.
So there are lots of things you could try, but you're not going to know if they work until you try them.
So I say, try a bunch of stuff, record your observations, see what works.
Don't look to me to have answers.
I can only tell you processes for finding answers, which is good.
Yeah, I think the whole it takes the village thing was right on point.
And I think that we just...
I mean, it wasn't really implemented in any useful way.
Is that a nanny state?
I would say the opposite. Opposite.
It would be more like individuals getting together for mutual benefit.
And it does seem to me that, you know, families getting together for mutual benefit is exactly what I did.
So like the experience I described was exactly that.
Bunch of families coordinated their activities for the benefit of all involved.
And I thought it was awesome.
It was a great way to live.
And I don't know, I'm pretty sure you can reproduce it.
All you have to do is do a little matchmaking to create what happened to me accidentally.
That can only work organically?
Yeah, but somebody would have said that about online dating at one point, too.
You know, you imagine that online dating, let's say the first day anybody invented it, people would say, that's not going to work.
I need to meet people in person in the organic way.
But online dating does work, and people get married and they like it.
So you could certainly match families with some kind of an online app.
Scott equals Hillary Clinton. - Okay.
In that one way.
In that one way that I think that bringing in outside resources to help a family that doesn't have all the resources they need...
Actually, how is that not conservative?
Somebody just blamed me for being Hillary Clinton and it just occurred to me that I'm expressing the most conservative thing anybody could ever say.
Like... Deal with your neighbors and be good to each other?
Try to help out your neighbor?
Your neighbor tries to help out you?
Is that communist?
If your friends help you put up a barn, are you communist?
Because you're going to help them, right?
Like they help you put up your barn, maybe you help them when they need to put up a barn.
Is that communist? Or is that Christian?
That feels conservative to me.
So just because Hillary Clinton said you need a village, that doesn't make it wrong.
Doesn't make it wrong.
Alright. It's distributed versus centralized.
Yeah, I guess that makes a difference.
Alright. Did you check out the abortion jokes on Drudge Report?
Abortion jokes?
I wish I had not read that comment.
You know, as a professional humorist, I don't have too many guardrails on what I think is funny.
If you do it professionally, you know, you get tired of G-rated material and you want something edgy.
And, you know, the edgier the better.
But I don't think I could ever laugh at an abortion joke.
That's just me. I mean, if you want to, I'm not going to complain about it.
Somebody says, check it out.
Now, are they actually funny?
They're actually funny?
Well, maybe.
All right.
The jokes are not undrudged.
They're... I don't know. Now I like you even more.
Well, thank you. I laugh about Holocaust jokes, somebody says.
No, too soon. Too soon.
Um... John says, in all capital letters, if Scott couldn't properly parent, no one can.
John, I would like to call you out as exhibit A of what's destroying the country.
It's you, John. It's the people who say that good parenting, that'll fix everything.
You are the problem.
Evil Genes is a book.
I guess that teaches you that some people are just unfixable, right?
What age were your kids?
I don't want to talk about that.
Elon Musk doesn't pass the Theranos?
I don't know. I'm still plus on Elon Musk.
I haven't seen anything that would change that.
Your traditional conservative view is misinformed.
Does anybody think that I misstated conservative opinion about the value of the two-parent home?
Did I misstate conservative opinion?
Somebody says yes a little bit.
What would you add to it or change?
Yes, you always do.
What would you add to it or change?
For those of you who say it's misstated.
You may now...
Oh, I see. Conflating nuclear...
No, I'm not conflating them.
Too binary. No, it's not binary.
I never presented it as binary.
I always presented it as a spectrum.
That would be on you, not on me.
The 100% personality.
Public eye conservatives with normies...
Biological dads have profound influence.
Of course they do. I'm not disagreeing.
You conflated abusive punishment with conservative ideas of good parenting.
No, I didn't.
No, I didn't do that. So, who would do that?
Who would do that? Well, just ask me, really?
Really? Did I say that abusive parenting and parenting were sort of the same thing?
Of course not. Nobody did that.
I'm saying abusive parenting exists, that's all.
And you don't disagree with it.
So I'm going to conclude that what you think is me not understanding conservatism is you not understanding what I said.
You did. I conflated abusive parenting with just good parenting.
You thought you actually saw that?
Did you? Because I talked about people who are good parents, and I talked about people who are bad parents.
Is that conflating them?
Now, the grandmother's story...
All right, here's the problem.
Let me give you a general statement for understanding me and everybody else.
You must go through life very confused if you think people are talking in absolutes, because you heard it that way.
If you heard something as an absolute, that's not on me.
Let me say that again.
If you thought I said something as an absolute, that's not on me, because I don't speak that way, and never have and never will.
There are no absolutes.
So if your complaint is that I said that all parenting is abusive, if you think you heard that, that's completely on you.
Nobody would say that.
Literally nobody would say that.
And I certainly didn't.
But I did make a point that there are some parents who are very bad and they can't tell the difference between a behavior problem and something else.
Yeah, don't believe your lying ears.
You're making...
They're making you respond to the lowest common denominator, yeah.
You chose a village?
Okay. You claimed more punishment is the conservative strategy.
Nope. Nope. No, that is your imagination.
I claimed that there was one person with that thought.
If you thought that I said every conservative is like my grandmother, that's completely on you.
Completely on you. No, it's not inferred.
Here's why it's not inferred.
It's never inferred.
It can't be inferred.
It's not inferred by me.
It's not inferred by the next person you hear talking.
Nobody ever infers absolute.
If you believe somebody...
Write land bane that says you did.
No, if you believe that anybody else is talking in absolutes, especially me, you have a problem and you need to deal with it.
It's not my problem.
There is no way that you should interpret anything like this conversation in absolute sense.
That's all on you.
I'm sorry. It's all on you.
Did your parents know about your bad grandmother?
Not until later.
When you're real little, you know, when you're five years old, You just think anything's normal?
You don't know what to do about it?
Alright. I think I'm being addicted to your disagreement, so that's not good.
What was the purpose of the grandmother story?
The purpose of the grandmother story, which apparently got lost on some people, the purpose of the grandmother story is that she couldn't tell the difference between what was my genetic makeup and what was my choice.
She couldn't tell between my choice and my genetic makeup.
And that is the problem that conservatives in general have.
Not everyone...
Well, thank you, Wilma.
You claimed your grandmother adopted a conservative strategy.
That is a conservative strategy.
Did you think it was universal?
Did you think it was absolute?
Because that's on you.
It is absolutely a conservative strategy that you meet bad behavior with punishment.
Is that wrong? It's not a conservative strategy to punish bad behavior?
Did that change?
Somebody says, no, it isn't.
Come on. Are you just arguing just to argue?
Seriously, it is not a conservative strategy to...
To have penalties for wrongdoing.
Okay, you're not being serious now.
You're not being serious.
Of course it is.
Of course it is. Jesus Christ.
An example?
An example is raising children.
It is a conservative belief that if they do bad things, you give them consequences.
You act like that's not a thing anymore or something.
Oh, my God. All right, so I think we're just in cognitive dissonance at this point.
We can't fix this. Do Democrats punish bad behavior?
And the answer is no.
No. Now, when I said that, did you say that's an absolute?
He's saying that there's no...
No! It's never a fucking absolute!
It's never an absolute!
We're talking in general.
Every conversation you have about conservatives versus liberals is always in fucking general, right?
Yeah, you know a guy.
You know a guy who's not like that.
It doesn't. That's not the...
You're not helping.
That's not helping, that you know a guy who's an exception.
Let me ask you this.
Who's in favor of letting people out of jail?
More Democrats than Republicans, right?
It's a generality. Who's in favor of letting kids just make their own decisions and be free-range chickens?
Is it in general more the left or in general more the right?
It's in general the left.
If you can't deal with generalities and you insist that I'm talking in absolutes so you can find some fucking problem to complain about, do not be part of the solution because you don't have the skills.
If you can't understand that people almost never talk in absolutes, And that's what's hanging you up?
Well, that's an absolute.
His grandmother represents all conservatives.
No. The modest proposal, yeah.
All right. So, you had a grandma.
That's funny. Well, thank you.
I'm right about this one.
All right. The strategy wasn't flawed.
Your grandmother was.
All right. Here's the problem.
Could my grandmother have been smart enough to know what was a genetic problem and what was a behavioral problem?
Because nobody else knew.
Nobody else knew. I mean, it looked like a behavioral problem.
I'll have to admit that.
It looked like it. So, no, that wasn't even a problem with my grandmother.
Really? Alright, that is all I have today, I believe.
I have cursed enough and I have made my point.
Now, given that you watch this live stream to be challenged, Which is why it doesn't have a million viewers.
It would be easy to have a million viewers.
Do you know how easy it would be for me to have millions of viewers?
It would be easy. I would just say what one side believed.
I would just keep telling them what they wanted to hear.
It's easy. I mean, anybody can be...
I'm not going to name names.
I was going to name names of some of your favorite people who are making a lot of money and doing great by saying all the obvious stuff.
I could do that. But it doesn't feel like it adds value.
