Episode 1864 Scott Adams: Dilbert Takes On ESG, Scott Takes On Extremists, Ukraine Persuasion
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Content:
The useless people from both political parties
Dilbert starts hard run at ESG today
Zelensky's persuasion talent
NO option for Russia winning in Ukraine
Alex Berenson on fertility fall off after vaccination
Lindsey Graham's flexibility and unpredictability
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Good morning everybody and welcome to a highlight of your life and civilization itself.
One of the best things you'll ever experience.
I know you're probably feeling a little bit of a goosebump tingle already as the goodness and awesomeness starts to spread from the tip of your head to the bottom of your toes.
Wow, what a good day you're going to have.
And boy, did it start out well.
It's starting out with...
You know. You know where this is going.
You know. And all you need is a cupper mug or a glass of tanker gel.
So sign a canteen jug 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 It's the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes extremists extreme.
It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now.
Go. Hmm.
I'm feeling a little more extreme.
Is anybody feeling that?
Is it just me?
I'm going to try that again. Test, test.
Yeah, yeah. More extreme.
I'm feeling so extreme right now.
One more sip, and I don't know what's going to happen today.
Do I dare?
This could be risky business.
Search my soul.
Search my soul. Am I ready for this?
Yes. Oh, my God.
My God. I think my eyes are going to be like this the whole time.
Well, I am continuing to experiment on why I fall asleep when I write, but not other times, because I'm not really tired, I just fall asleep when I write.
And listen to this fascinating hypothesis.
There are two hypotheses that I'm testing now.
So I've eliminated the temperature of the room.
So the setup here is that if I go to Starbucks, I don't fall asleep when I write.
But if I do the same thing at home at the same time, fall right asleep.
So I've eliminated the temperature, because these are the things I can control for in both places.
I've eliminated temperature as the issue.
I've eliminated caffeine as the issue, because I do plenty of it in both places.
I've eliminated the fact that there are other people around, which definitely helps, but maybe about 20%.
So there's some larger variable.
I'm down to two variables to test, and both of these come from suggestions from other people.
Now, what we're testing here is the idea that this collective experience that we're having right now It is like a collaborative intelligence.
And I'm actually using you, collectively, to solve my health problem.
Because I'm trying to figure out why I keep falling asleep when I try to write.
Except at Starbucks. And now we're down to two hypotheses.
One is that the executive function of your brain requires glucose.
And when I drink coffee at home, I drink it black.
And I don't even have anything with sugar in my house.
I have no sweets in the house whatsoever.
None. Because I live alone, so I can just get rid of anything that would be bad food.
I just don't have any. So I might be undersugared.
Isn't that weird? I might be undersugared.
Now that's just one hypothesis.
And the hypothesis goes like this.
That when you think really hard, your brain uses glucose really, really fast.
And so that as soon as you go deep into the writing mode, which takes a tremendous amount of energy, you have to build a separate world and live in it.
That's like the maximum amount of mental energy you can expend.
And it uses up your glucose and you just fall asleep.
So the Starbucks beverage that I get is not black coffee.
I need to try that next.
Instead, I get a sugary little...
Treat banana bread.
Always the same. And some drink whose name I can never remember.
It's a cold drink with a shot of coffee and some non-milk thing in there.
I don't know. So it's not a latte.
I don't think it is. But But now I have two hypotheses.
One is that glucose brain thing, but the other one I just heard today, that I need to match it with fat.
That if I have the caffeine with fat at the same time, it will slow down the caffeine buzz and give me more of a controlled release.
What do you think of that?
I don't think that one doesn't fit the facts too much.
I don't think. Because the high I get at Starbucks is somewhat immediate, and it lasts for an hour or two.
So, the general statement I'm going to make about this is, this is what you should be doing with your life.
This is one specific example that applies to me only, but the process is what you should be doing.
You should be looking for everything that's not working, like you're tired at a certain time, You don't think well at a certain time.
You should be experimenting continuously.
Alright, what if I change the time?
What if I put my feet on the floor instead of having them crossed?
Just be continuously experimenting.
So try that. I've also noticed that I can write well when I'm on vacation.
And when I'm on vacation, I always write in the morning.
And I always pair it with room service.
So I'm usually eating fruit and fatty things at the same time I'm having my black coffee.
So I feel like diet is really going to be the answer.
Because it's the one thing that crosses all the situations when the other variables are different.
We'll see. Maybe dopamine?
Maybe. Rasmussen Poll says Trump and the MAGA Republicans...
It was asked how many people would agree with this, that Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic.
48% of likely U.S. voters agreed with that quote, that MAGA Republicans represent their extremism, represents a threat to the foundation.
Basically, that's That's all of the Democrats plus a few rhinos and you get to 48% pretty quickly.
So that's exactly what you'd expect.
Now, are you tired of all the accusations of extremism coming from the Democrats?
So I'm going to try to dismantle that today.
See if we can make a difference.
And here's my current take, which I'm going to ride for a while.
So it's not just today.
We're going to ride this.
And it goes like this. We have framed the question completely wrong.
Because we keep saying, are there some bad people on the Democrat side?
Yes. Therefore, they must all be bad if they're supporting those people.
Are there some bad people on the Republican side?
Yes. Yes.
Therefore, all Republicans must be bad if they're supporting those people, even if they're not.
So nobody's really supporting the other people.
But sometimes it's easy to be accused of that.
So I'm going to change the frame.
It's no longer going to be about Democrat and Republican when it comes to extremism.
When it comes to policy, It's definitely Republican versus Democrat.
So I'm not going to lose the model that it's in the middle, the reasonable stuff, budget questions.
That's Democrat versus Republican.
But when you're talking about the extremists on both sides, they have something in common that I don't think can be ignored.
They're not useful.
They're not helping.
The people who were violent on January 6th, no matter what else you want to say about them, Whatever you want to say about their intentions, the rest of their life, how well informed they were, any of it.
Were they useful?
Was it useful to be violent on January 6th?
It wasn't. And I can't imagine that they thought it would be.
Now, how about Antifa?
Now, Antifa, if you look at the protest, you might say, well, that was good communication.
But if you look at the violence that happened from some subset of Antifa, was that useful?
No, it didn't help Antifa at all.
It didn't help them at all.
So why do we keep accepting the frame when the Democrats say, hey, you've got some extremists over there, why are we disagreeing with that?
Now who they're calling the extremists is a little bit different, right?
They're extending that down into rank-and-file ordinary MAGA people.
But I think the better play is to put both the extremists in the same bucket of useless people.
Because there are definitely Democrats who disagree with you who are trying to be useful.
I think. Pretty sure.
I believe there are Democrats with good intentions, believe it or not.
Likewise, Republicans with good intentions.
So why do the people with good intentions, who just happen to disagree with each other, why do we allow ourselves to accept this frame where the extremists are the ones that we need to talk about?
Why don't we just say that all of the extremists on both sides are not useful?
That's it. That's the high ground.
The high ground has always been here waiting for us.
If Trump took it, and he's the last person who would take this high ground, but if he took it, it would be all over.
All he'd have to say is, look, you're either useful or you're not.
This whole Democrat versus Republican thing gets overblown unless you're talking about policy.
If you're talking about policy, yeah, go ahead.
Be a Democrat. Be a Republican.
But if you're talking about violence, fuck you.
Fuck you if you're talking about violence.
I don't care what party you are.
I don't care that you also like something I like.
Fuck you.
You're in the bad bucket.
And if you're a Democrat and you're trying to paint me as being an extremist because somebody I don't know is one, fuck you!
Fuck you, right in the bucket with you.
You go in the bucket with the extremists.
The violent people and the people who are accusing good people of being bad people because rangers were violent, fuck you, right in the bucket.
All the useless people right in the same fucking bucket.
Democrats, Am I saying that all Democrats go in the bucket?
Nope. I know a lot of Democrats that are worth quite a bit.
Very useful, good intentions, trying to make the world a better place.
Might disagree on the method, but definitely their intentions are the right place.
So let's put all the useless pieces of shit in one bucket and stop acting like The good people have anything to do with the buckets.
I'm using bucket instead of basket, just to put some distance there.
Hillary Clinton? She goes in the bucket.
Right in the bucket. Jim Jordan?
Yeah, throw him in the fucking bucket too.
Right? Is Jim Jordan any different than Hillary Clinton?
Nope. Nope. Oh, no.
Okay, now it bothers you, doesn't it?
Now you're bothered, aren't you?
No. There's no difference between those two people.
Jim Jordan is Hillary Clinton.
They're both useless.
Throw them in the fucking bucket.
How about Tom Cotton?
Tom Cotton. Useful.
Useful. How about Rand Paul?
Useful. Useful.
How about Manchin?
Useful. I might disagree with him, but useful.
He's trying. Right?
Lindsey Graham's a little weird one because he seems like half in the bucket and half out.
That's a tougher one. You know, Biden's barely there, so I'm not sure that counts.
Yeah. AOC is more about AOC. I think she's a special case.
Yeah, you need to decry the extremists on your own side, and you need to do it this way.
Do not simply decry the extremists on your own side.
Don't fall into that.
That's a mistake. Decry extremists and say, yeah, I would decry all those people who are violent at the Capitol, but I would also put Hillary Clinton in that same bucket.
People have gone too far.
The people who have gone too far and are clearly in it for some purpose other than being useful need to be called out.
They're not being useful.
I would say Kinzinger and AOC are special cases.
Because whatever is going on with those two is really about them.
The fact that we even imagine it's about us is sort of, I don't know, it's probably a waste of time.
I mean, that's two people talking about themselves.
Yeah, and Kinzinger...
I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to anyway.
Kinzinger signals mental illness.
Now, let me be clear.
I'm not capable of...
You know, diagnosing somebody's mental illness.
I don't have that skill, and it would be unethical to diagnose him if I did, because he's not my client.
But as a consumer of what he is presenting, you know, I get to consume what he presents.
And what he presents, the way I consume it, it feels like mental illness.
Doesn't it? I can't take him too seriously because of that.
But I also don't lump him with other people because whatever's going on with his situation, it just seems about him.
It doesn't really seem about us.
So he doesn't bother me at all.
All right, well, the high ground is completely open, so all the useless people, I'm putting them in the same bucket.
And if you try to do...
Comparisons of who was violent and who wasn't violent, that doesn't help.
Because we'll just disagree about what was violent and who was violent and whether it's ever called for, etc.
But I think we would not disagree on this question.
What is useful?
Does anybody in Antifa think it was useful for some of them to do violent stuff?
Probably not. It didn't help their message.
Does anybody in the MAGA movement think it was useful that some of those protesters got violent?
Probably not. It didn't help.
It was useless. So can we at least agree that we know what useful looks like and we know what not useful looks like?
We know what those look like.
And don't put yourself in the same bucket with useless people.
Well, Dilbert started its hard run at ESG today.
So the first in the series is out today.
I tweeted it if you want to see it in its fullness.
But let me read it to you.
So here's Dilbert and the gang, and the boss is saying in the first panel, Our company has a low ESG score, and I hold each of you responsible.
And then the boss says, take Dilbert, for example.
He's not diverse, he pollutes, and he rarely asks for your pronouns.
And the boss finishes in the last panel, he says, we can't fix the world overnight, but targeting Dilbert for abuse is a step in the right direction.
And so it begins.
Shots fired. So here's how I intend to play this.
So there'll be several more ESG jokes coming.
In fairly short order, it should start to become known that Dilber thinks it's ridiculous.
And then people who also think it's ridiculous will start retweeting it.
And then the boss who's in charge of it will start to get these sent to him by email or printed out and slipped under the door of the office.
Now, mockery is very powerful.
In theory, mockery could dismantle this.
So we'll see. Now, I can't do it alone.
It would require other people to amplify it.
So that's the part that's unknown.
So I did my part, and I'll be doing a lot more.
And if anybody wants to amplify this and make it go away, I'm on board.
Let's see if we can make this happen.
Happy birthday, Maggie.
We have a birthday here.
All right. So what do we know about Ukraine?
Well, fog of war and CNN went in to try to verify the claims, the claims being that Ukraine is recapturing some substantial amount of territory.
But CNN could not confirm it because there's no real reporting from the danger areas.
So we only know what Ukraine is telling us so far, sort of bumped up against what Russia is admitting is true.
Now Russia seems to be admitting that they've moved forces, which suggests that they are accepting that Ukraine has recaptured some territory.
But Putin, of course, imagines that they're just strengthening their defense.
Maybe there'll be a counter to the counter, or maybe they don't care about the stuff that got retaken, and they're just going to double down on protecting the stuff they care about.
Could be anything. So we don't know exactly what's happening over there.
Do not know. But have you noticed that the way people are talking about it has completely changed?
The conversation today from people who are serious, and that doesn't include me, right?
I'm not a military person, so what I say about war, you know, great assault.
But people who actually know what they're talking about are talking about the destruction of Russia.
Not completely, but in terms of maybe Putin being pushed out or Russia being diminished totally.
And Who was the first person who ever said that in public?
It was me. It was me.
I'm the first person who said, you know, it's starting to look as if Russia might not just lose the war, but they might lose a lot more than that.
Like, there doesn't seem to be a bottom to the well of where Russia could end up.
You think, oh, they have oil, so as long as they have oil, they'll be fine.
I don't know. I think they still need the rest of the world more than China.
I mean, otherwise they'd just become a Chinese slave state, right?
If the only thing they can do is make oil and sell it to China, they're gone.
That's the end of Russia.
Because China would just own them at that point.
Yeah, I guess they could sell it to India as well.
So we don't know what's going to happen with the oil yet.
Oil is fungible, so maybe they can just always sell it everywhere.
But if they can't get spare parts for their processes, it doesn't matter how much oil they produce.
They can't do anything with it.
Oh, I'm getting a 1 out of 10 today.
I'm being rated a 1 out of 10.
But watch me pull it out.
Oh yeah, maybe it's a low start.
But watch this. Watch this.
Alright. Here's the message that I would send if I were the Ukrainians.
I would send this message to the Russian military.
You know you're not fighting for anything but Putin's ego.
You're not fighting for anything but Putin's ego.
And that's the end of the war.
You just get that message to the Russian soldiers.
You know why? Do you know why?
Because it's not replacing anything.
There's nothing there.
The story of why are we here?
There's nothing there.
If you're a Russian soldier and you turn to the other Russian soldier and say, do you know why we're here?
What's the other Russian soldier going to say?
I think the Russian soldiers could say, something, something about NATO? Or was it something, something about Ukrainians or Russians?
But it doesn't feel like it, because they're shooting at us.
If they don't think they're Russians, why are we here?
So here's my point.
It is very difficult to dislodge an idea that's taken hold, that's taken root.
It's very hard to turn a Democrat into a Republican.
It's very hard to turn a Republican into a Democrat.
Very hard to turn a, you know, a Muslim into anything, a Christian into anything, right?
Sometimes people change on their own, but you can't really change people's strongly held forever opinion.
But, There's a gigantic hole in the Russian soldiers' brains right now.
And that hole is, why are we here?
And it has not been filled with anything.
The why are you here is, we'll shoot you if you try to leave.
I think. That's a nothing.
That's no reason.
So any reason you give them will become their first impression.
Because they don't have a first impression.
They don't have anything like a reason for being there.
Ukraine can give them the reason.
Here's the reason.
Putin's ego. You're fighting not for Putin, not for Russia.
Putin's individual ego.
Because this is a disgrace on the Russian people.
It's a disgrace on Russia's country.
It's a disgrace on their history.
It's a disgrace on the soldiers.
It's a disgrace on the Russian military.
But if they prevail, it would look good for Putin.
So Putin is the only one who can gain by your death.
So you're fighting for Putin's ego.
Now, you get that message to the Ukrainian military.
And remember, the important point here is it's not replacing an existing belief.
It's just empty.
Whoever fills it is going to own that space.
And Ukraine hasn't filled it.
They can, but they haven't.
How good is Zelensky at persuasion?
Well, let me read to you a little bit of what Zelensky said.
I'm going to read this with emotion, like I'm Zelensky.
All right? So here he is doing a public address as if speaking to Putin.
And Zelensky says, do you still think that we are one people?
Do you still think that you can frighten us, break us, persuade us to make concessions?
You really didn't understand anything.
Didn't understand who we are.
What are we for?
What are we talking about?
Read my lips.
Without gas or without you?
Without you. Without light or without you?
Without you. Without water or without you?
Without you. Without food or without you?
Without you.
Without you, cold hunger, darkness, and thirst, for we are not as scary and deadly as your friendship and brotherhood.
But history will put everything in its place, and we will be with gas, electricity, water, and food, and without you.
How good is that?
How good is that?
It doesn't get any better than that.
Without you.
Now, here's what happened.
There's a deeper level happening here.
One is that the persuasion is amazing.
It's like really, really good.
Because he's got this repeated theme.
The without you theme just keeps repeating.
Yeah, I know they lost electricity.
That's why he's talking about it.
The reason he did this is because he knew that Russia would come after their water and food and electricity, as they have.
So here's what I would say just happened.
You just found out how the war ends.
You can now confidently predict how it ends.
Here's why. Putin...
Really, really wants to take over Ukraine, or at least control the parts that he has.
Putin wants it.
Would you agree that he wants it?
He wants it badly.
At this point, it's really important.
He wants it. Agreed?
We'd all agree that Putin really wants it.
Do you know what Zelensky just said?
Did he say he wants it?
Did Zelensky say there's something he wants?
Nope. Nope.
Zelensky fucking decided.
He decided. This is a decision.
It's not a decision until you say, you can take away my fucking food and I'm going to do it.
You can take away my light, my water, my safety, and I'm still going to fucking do it.
That's a decision.
Putin just has a desire.
Zelensky made a fucking decision.
And the soldiers who were fighting for Zelensky, in my opinion, it's hard to say from a distance, may have made that decision as well.
How about the Russian soldiers?
Have they decided to win?
No. No.
They're just trying to survive. At this point, there's no doubt about the outcome.
It's clear. If you want to place a bat, it's easy now.
I don't know, you know, we don't know the details, but it's very clear that Russia is fucked.
And do you know why Russia is totally fucked?
It's because Zelensky just decided.
He just decided.
It's over. The war is over.
Now, it's not over in terms of the future death and destruction.
It might take years.
But you can rule out Russia wins.
That option just disappeared.
No option for Russia wins.
That one's gone. Now, you could certainly have a lively discussion of what winning looks like if you're Ukraine.
Here's what I think winning looks like if you're Ukraine.
You get back at least maybe the territory before the invasion.
Maybe not all the way to Crimea.
But you get back at least much of the territory since the invasion.
And you weaken Russia permanently.
That looks like what's happening.
It looks like Russia will be permanently weakened in terms of international cooperation, etc.
And that Ukraine will build back.
I see somebody saying that I'm going full Western media propaganda.
You fucking idiot.
Let me speak to my troll here.
It might be true that what I'm saying is compatible or similar to what propaganda says.
But do you understand I said that long before anybody was saying this?
I've been saying the same thing since pretty much day one.
So nothing's changed.
The fact that it sometimes intersects with what propaganda is saying is a coincidence based on the fact that somebody has to win.
You get that, right? There were two teams.
Either Russia was going to win or Ukraine was going to win, speaking in binary terms.
I had a 50-50 chance of being right.
So no matter which side I'd gone on, if I had said, well, Russia's definitely going to win, what would you say?
Would you then say, oh, I guess you decided to be part of Russia's propaganda because I happen to have the same opinion as their propaganda?
There were only two options, and there are two propagandas.
So no matter which way I went, you were going to say I agreed with somebody's propaganda.
Because you're a low-level troll, and you don't seem to be able to follow any kind of nuance whatsoever.
So I'm going to put you in the extremist bucket with all the useless people.
All right. So we'll see what happens.
Let me ask you this.
Ah, never mind.
Um... Maggie Haberman has a book on Trump.
There's the least surprising thing in the world.
What would be less surprising than Maggie Haberman writing a book about Trump in which he doesn't come out looking good?
So here's something that Maggie Haberman says.
That at some point in the transition, when Trump was still in the White House, but after the election, when he knew he had lost, or at least the election said he'd lost...
He said he told the aides that he had no intention of departing the White House.
Do you believe that?
Now, did I tell you that as soon as all this Queen stuff gets out of the news, and today's probably the week that the Queen stuff dies down, as soon as the Queen stuff is out of the news, oh look, Maggie Haberman has a new book with a claim that can't be confirmed.
Oh, it's an anonymous report of an insider who said that Trump was going to stay in the White House.
I'm touching my nose now.
If you're listening to it and not watching, a little bit on the nose, isn't it?
A little bit on the nose.
What's the one thing that you worried about, if you were a Democrat?
That Trump literally was trying to stay in the White House, even having lost the election.
Oh, and then conveniently, conveniently, it took Maggie Haberman, the most famous liar in the media, and I believe I can say that without being sued.
Is she not the most famous liar in the media?
Would you agree with that characterization?
Is there anybody who's more famous for lying?
Well, Schiff, I guess.
Adam Schiff. All right.
Well, anyway, it's right on schedule as the fake news likes to be.
It replaced that slow news period with the usual anonymous source.
Who's right on the nose?
Right on the nose.
All right. Alex Berenson is pointing out that he had predicted that the birth rate in Sweden, was it in Sweden?
I may have the wrong place.
I think it was Sweden. Would drop in the second part of the year because that would be nine months after women who were capable of being fertile were getting their vaccinations.
Was it New Zealand? Oh, New Zealand, New Zealand.
Sorry, yes, New Zealand.
Thank you for the correction.
New Zealand it is.
So the idea was that the data shows that the fertility in New Zealand dropped off a shelf nine months after the women who could have babies got vaccinated.
So what would you say about that?
What's your take on that?
And by the way, even the critics say that the data looks accurate.
How about that? Even the critics completely agree that the data does show that nine months after-ish, vaccinations, the fertility just fell off a cliff.
What do you think of that? Game changer?
Are you convinced?
Remember that the critics say the data is accurate.
They're not arguing with the data.
Do you know what else the critics say?
Take a guess. What else do the critics say after they tell you, yeah, the data is accurate?
What else do they say? They say it's been like that for the last 20 years.
It always falls off at the second part of the year.
Always. Every year.
Just like this. Same pattern.
It's just a seasonal thing.
I guess people bone more in the winter and have more kids in the summer or something.
I don't know. But whatever it is, it has nothing to do with COVID. Now, here's the funny thing.
How many of you were completely ready to accept that as pretty damning evidence?
Especially when I told you the data was accurate.
Yeah.
So Andres Bacchus pointed that out in about a minute, right?
So as soon as people were good at looking at data, look at the data, it looks completely different.
And other people had pointed out the discrepancy, too.
Now, here's my take on Alex Berenson, which I update now and then.
So this is my most current take.
I'm glad he exists.
So, you know, if he didn't exist, I would want to invent him.
I want somebody looking at all the numbers and saying, I don't trust you, government.
I think you're lying.
You better do a better job of proving it.
These numbers could be interpreted two different ways.
I think you're lying.
You need that guy, right, or woman, and you need lots of them.
And I'm glad we have them.
I think that they were an important force during the pandemic when we were trying to sort stuff out.
You need some kind of a, you know, what do you call it?
Loyal opposition or something like that.
Now, having said that, here's the second shoe to drop.
I believe almost his entire...
The reason for fame is that he consistently misreads data.
I feel like that's his entire act, is misreading data.
And that once somebody comes in and says, "Hmm, that's not exactly how you read this data," then he just moves on to the next data and finds another one he can misinterpret until you find out that Andres Bacchus comes in and tells you you read it wrong.
So that's my take.
Now I'm not going to say he's never been right about anything.
I don't know of any, you know, I don't know his full catalog of predictions, etc.
I'm just saying that the ones I'm aware of, the ones I'm aware of, have all been him reading data wrong, or the data itself was wrong.
Sometimes he reads it wrong, sometimes just the data's bad.
Like I said, even if he were wrong about everything, and I doubt he was, my guess is that he was probably right 20% of the time or some amount.
And that was useful to society.
So I'm going to give him respect for doing what he did.
He may have done it for his own purposes, as people want to do.
But I like that he exists.
And if he keeps at it, that's fine with me.
As long as we've got...
The ability for other people to put it in context when it needs to be.
What was something he was right about that the consensus opinion agrees with?
Let's say the consensus of medical experts.
Is there any case where medical experts have come to agree with him?
No, not on masks.
The medical experts would still be on the other side of him from masks.
Natural immunity...
You know, I don't think the natural immunity thing was...
I think everybody always thought natural immunity was good.
Like everybody. There was nobody on the other side of that.
Well, ignored...
Was it really ignored?
I don't know if it was ignored or the argument was that if you had natural immunity...
The argument was that if you had natural immunity...
The vaccination would still help, right?
I believe that's still the medical community's opinion.
So I'm not saying who's right.
So let me be specific about the question.
I'm not dealing with who's right or wrong.
I'm just saying has the medical consensus, I'd like an example, because there might be one, there might be some examples, where the medical community as a whole, the consensus, eventually came to be where Alex Berenson was before them.
Has that ever happened?
But what's an example?
What would be an example?
Well, some people are offering examples that don't look like examples to me.
But I'm open to the fact that he well may have been right on some important things.
I just don't know any examples.
On stopping the spread.
Did Berenson say that the vaccinations would not stop the spread?
If he said that, then he would get that win.
By the way, I said that.
Do you remember that I predicted that the vaccinations would not work as vaccinations?
So he and I agreed on the one thing that he got right.
And I said therapeutics would be the thing that saved us.
That plus the attenuation of the virus itself.
Yeah, okay. Well, at least I got that right.
By the way, I would like to claim the following...
I make the following claim.
You ready? The following claim.
I'm the best predictor in politics, even though I've got some obvious stuff wrong.
I'm the best predictor on the pandemic, by far, even though I got some stuff wrong.
And I'm the best predictor on the Ukrainian war...
Even though I got at least one thing notably very wrong.
Now, I'm not going to claim being right about everything, but on the three topics that I know the least, military, science, and what was the third and what was the third thing?
Saying what if is not a prediction.
You'd have to give me an example.
I don't know about the Andrew Tainz prediction, but we'll see.
Anyway, I put that out there.
So politics, military, and science.
Those are the...
Oh, and by the way, how about nuclear power?
How about nuclear power?
Now, of course, in each case, I'm taking guidance from people who know what they're talking about.
But wouldn't you agree that as a cartoonist, I was way ahead of the pack on nuclear power being the solution for climate, right?
Now, that was based on help from, you know, Mark Schneider and, you know, Schellenberger and other people who are smarter than I am.
But so now I have the best take on climate change.
Of anybody in the world.
Which doesn't mean that other people didn't agree.
But if you agreed, you also had the best take in the world.
So, yeah, and then the simulation.
I believe I also have the best take on evolution and the simulation, but that's just me.
Do I take any meds for blood pressure and cholesterol?
That's an interesting question.
And the answer is yes.
I take a low dose of blood pressure meds.
There's a genetic component.
And although my lifestyle is pretty close to ideal for low blood pressure, even that isn't enough at a certain age.
But I don't take any cholesterol pills.
Oh, Alex Jones has Andrew Taint on today.
Andrew Taint is on Alex Jones.
That's funny. Don't be fooled by it.
Let's see this. Don't be fooled by the propaganda saying Ukraine has made huge gains.
They have made gains but not major.
That's what I think. As I was saying yesterday, it's like a postage stamp compared to the whole of it.
Russian and pro-Russian forces control over 120,000 square meters.
This week, the UA gained back control of 2,000.
So Ukraine has gained back 1.6% of what Russia controls.
That's good context.
That's very similar.
If you saw my live stream yesterday, I said, keep in mind, That if you put a postage stamp on the floor of the room you're in, that's how much Ukraine has recaptured.
They got that postage stamp back.
Now, it turns out that the postage stamp was a major rail hub, so its importance might be as big as a square foot, but it's still a square foot in a big room.
Now, momentum matters, and the news likes momentum.
So what you can say is Ukraine has some momentum.
But I will agree with the statement that to conclude that Russia has lost militarily at this point would be way premature.
So my prediction is based on the fact that Ukraine has decided and Russia probably just wants.
And that that is completely predictive, even more than what's on the battlefield.
Because at this point, I think we could all conclude that the battlefield is changing who has the advantage in what situations, but that it seems to be closer to a tie.
Would you agree? That in a straight-up battle, it's a little bit closer to a tie than most people imagined it would have been.
Yeah. Putin is giving up a lot for this war.
What makes you think he hasn't decided?
Because you wouldn't decide in that case.
If you imagine you were in Zelensky's position, you can imagine it would be easy to decide.
You'd be like, all right, we've had enough.
There's no amount of pain you can give me now that I won't take this to the end.
You can imagine easily being in that position.
Putin is still having nice dinners out and the lights are on and he's not running out of money.
He doesn't have a need.
There's no need at all.
So he doesn't need to decide to do anything.
He just wants things more than he wants other things.
Anybody in that position would be in a position of want.
But you put yourself in Zelensky's position, you can easily imagine you would get to the point of deciding.
Conditions for Russian soldiers will not improve.
Probably not. Probably not.
All right. Well, I feel like those were all the things I needed to talk about today.
So I'm going to...
Destroy ESG for you, or take a shot at it.
I'm going to make this whole extremism thing that the Democrats are using against the Republicans.
I'm going to turn that into a low-ground idea.
The high ground is that all of the useless people, and it doesn't matter if they're violent, you can be useless in a lot of different ways.
Violence is just one of them.
So I'm going to lump all the useless people in one bag, and if you don't like Jim Jordan being in the same bag as Hillary Clinton, then you have to argue which one of them is useful.
Which one of them is useful?
If one of them is useful, I'll take them out of the bucket.
But at the moment, neither of them are useful.
They're just partisans.
Jim Jordan is a useful partisan.
Now, by the way, I don't have anything specific against Jim Jordan.
He was somewhat a random name picked out.
I mean, he's basically the Republican's answer to Eric Fang Fang, whose last name I couldn't remember there for a moment.
Yeah. Swalwell, yeah.
I mean, he's basically just the Republican Swalwell.
Now, I do think that Swalwell lies more, but that could be my bias as well.
I don't really know. What are you yelling at?
Are you calling me a dumb fuck in all capitals?
Trying to figure out if that was for me or for somebody else.
Your bias is with Swalwell?
Are you kidding? I'm not exactly pro-Svalwell.
You've seriously insulted Jordan.
Well, have I insulted Jordan?
Or have I insulted his method?
What has Jim Jordan done for you that was useful?
I'm sure you like the fact that he fights back.
But if he fights back with the me-tooism, or you did bad things too, is that helping you?
All right.
I know you like that he's on your team, and that's cool.
all.
If he does something useful, I will call it out, okay?
How about we do this?
We'll forget about what anybody's done so far.
We'll just start fresh.
If Jim Jordan does something useful tomorrow, I'll say so, okay?
Is that fine?
And if he does something that's not useful, I'll call that out.
And then we can watch it ourselves.
But when was the last time somebody in Congress did something useful?
It doesn't happen often.
So just the fact that he's in Congress kind of, you know, puts a cap on how useful he can be.
I mean, except for his vote.
And even his vote.
You could replace him with anybody who was Republican and the votes would all be the same.
So I'm not even sure that part's useful.
You can hold that same standard for everyone.
Well, you could. Why not?
Oh, supporting Trump is the most useful thing you can do.
Is it? Is supporting Trump the most useful thing you can do?
No, I disagree. No.
No, supporting America is the most useful thing you can do.
I'm not going to support Trump at the expense of America.
I mean, if I believe that was the trade-off.
I'm not saying it is. But if you're thinking in terms of supporting a person, you have to check your bias.
You shouldn't be fighting for a person.
So I guess maybe that's my problem with Jim Jordan, is that he's fighting for the person.
Now, he's also fighting for Republican values and stuff.
But the way he presents it, it feels a little bit too much about the person.
And that doesn't feel useful to me.
If he were fighting for concepts, then...
Rand Paul, for example, often fights for a concept.
Sometimes I don't even agree with it.
But I love the fact that he's so clear about what his point is.
It's always about the concept.
Rand Paul is very good at keeping to the concept and not the person.
I'm trying to think if there are any exceptions to that.
Have you ever seen Rand Paul?
Well, he goes after Fauci, but that's based on specific accusations.
That's not some general, you're bad because I disagree with you thing.
That's pretty specific.
Oh, you love taunting us with totalitarianism.
What? Am I taunting you with totalitarianism?
Where did that come from?
I don't even understand that.
Yeah, Lindsey Graham is an interesting character.
I'm not entirely sure you can ever wrap your arms around who he is.
Graham seems flexible.
If I could use the most unbiased word.
Yeah. So that flexibility makes people trust him less because they can't predict him, right?
If you can't predict him, you get a little afraid.
So predictability has quite a value.
And he doesn't have that right now.
But I do like the fact that it gives him more power.
By being unpredictable, he can be a tiebreaker in close cases.
So that does give him power.
And I guess I would agree with...
I don't disagree with the way he handles it for his own purposes, but the way he handles it, his flexibility to see both sides, does make him less predictable.
So if that bothers you, then that's reasonable.
Yeah, because you'd then be betting on him as a decision-maker in an unbiased world, or an unbiased decision-maker.
And you'd have to...
Somebody mentioned Thomas Massey, who sometimes watches this livestream.
Thomas Massey is probably the most interesting member of Congress.
Because he always goes with the concept.
He's just really strict about going with a clean concept.
Now, I don't always agree with him, but I love that he exists.
I love that he's putting stuff in our head, and I love that he, as far as I know, give me a fact check on this.
I'm going to ask for a fact check.
Has Massey ever backed anything that was irrational?
Like something that just didn't make sense?
Because most of the politicians have.
Have they not?
They've backed something that's either internally in conflict or doesn't make sense with their own policies or looks like they must be bought off or something.
But correct me if I'm wrong, he just gives you a clear idea of what he thinks is important and then he just sticks by it.
As annoying as that can be, when you're just trying to get stuff done, it can be really annoying to have somebody sticking to principle.
But maybe it's good there aren't too many of them.
If you had a bunch of them, maybe everything would crawl to a halt.
Yeah, he would be systems-oriented.
Why is Trump in Washington D.C.? I don't know, but my first guess would be media.
What do you think? I think Trump is in Washington D.C. for some kind of media appearances, maybe.
Even though the media would go to him.
I think he gets more clout if he comes to Washington.
It's probably just part of his getting ready to announce.
He may just need to talk to a bunch of people who are up here.
Could be just work in the town.
Oh, you think he might be here to testify?
Would we know that? Republicans need to go on strike until the government is fixed.
Well, if that would work, but I don't think it would.
Should Trump announce now or next year?
Well, if you believe that the Republicans are likely to win in the midterms, then Trump should not stir the water up.
Right? Because you don't want to make the midterms about Trump.
That would be the biggest political mistake of all time.
In fact, Trump could probably...
Cause a blue wave by announcing before the midterms.
And even though people expect him to run, the announcing changes everything.
Yeah.
Oh, so the Queen's funeral is on the 19th, so you'll get a new bunch of fake news about Trump on the 20th.
That? Oh, there's somebody here questioning whether my IQ is only 182 instead of the reported 185.
I'm deeply insulted by your doubt.
Trump is going in the bucket. .
It would be funny if Trump were not running and his strategy was to take all the fire from Democrats until DeSantis can jump in.
I don't think that's happening.
What act of the movie are we in?
Well, interestingly...
I love that question. So I've told you how life seems to, and it's just probably a coincidence, seems to follow a three-act movie format.
At the end of the third act in a proper movie, the hero is in so much trouble that you, the viewer, can't imagine how this problem could ever be solved, and then, amazingly, the hero solves it anyway.
And I would argue that we've seen a few three-act movies.
So certainly when Trump won the first election in 2016, that was sort of the end of the third act.
And then the fourth act would just be sort of watching him enjoy the victory or something.
Then he runs, but then he loses and gets impeached twice.
So it looks like you could count the first election as one proper movie with a third act, but you could also look at the entire arc of the three terms, which is his four years, the four years of Biden, you could call that his extended third act.
Because it looked like not only did he lose the presidency in a bad way, but it looks like he lost it in a way that would lose his position in history as well.
So it's as bad as you can lose.
That's what a third act looks like.
If Trump comes back and wins, then this was the third act.
If he doesn't run or he doesn't win, then it didn't take the quality of a movie.
But for this to conform to the movie ending, he has to win again.
Which is, I have to admit, As someone who does this every day now, talking about politics and such, and having a great interest in it, like it just sort of excites me to see the new story of the day, I kind of want things to follow a movie form, because that entertains me the most.
So I'm very biased by wanting Trump to win because it completes the movie.
Does anybody have that feeling?
And it's completely independent from, you know, I like his policies or his justice.
It feels like the movie isn't complete, right?
He needs to win to validate his first term and to invalidate all the things that people did to cause him the third act.
And that's the sort of thing you can't Measure in a poll.
Because people don't talk like that.
Nobody says, you know, this movie feels incomplete, so I need Trump to win.
You wouldn't talk that way.
But it might be the way you feel.
Because we're so tuned to a three-act that we reflexively imagine that after the third act, the hero prevails.
So even Democrats, look how hard the Democrats are trying to stop Trump from running.
They're trying to make sure he can't even legally run again by, you know, legal means.
Now, that shows some major fear.
So what does it show that the Democrats expect?
It shows that they're afraid to death that what happened was the third act and not the fourth.
And what do Democrats fall for all the time?
Art and fiction.
Democrats basically live in a fiction-based world, and then they try to make the real world fit their fiction, and then they get upset about it.
But they live in a fiction world, and that fiction world requires Trump to win, just as much as it does in your fiction world if you're a Republican.
In all of our heads, Trump needs to win, because the third act already happened.
And this is the hero's recovery.
So when people start to expect it, even if they don't want it, what happens?
If both sides expect it, because it just feels like something that's supposed to happen, they don't want it, but they all feel like they expect it, it happens.
They basically breathe it into existence.
And that's what's happening.
The Democrats are breathing life into Trump.
That they are giving him life because they're treating him like what?
What are the Democrats treating Trump like?
They're treating him exactly like the hero of the story who just experienced the third act.
That's how they're treating him.
Because they can feel it at this point.
It's almost visceral, isn't it?
You can almost feel his return.
It doesn't feel like it can't...
I can't even imagine it not happening anymore.
It's hard to imagine him not returning.
It's hard to imagine.
Can I ask you one thing? - Yeah.
Can you all stop saying the 81 million votes means something?
Because if you haven't heard this explanation, there are simply more people who live in the country than there were when Obama was running.
The change in the demographic nature of the country explains the entire election.
There's no mystery there.
So if you think the fact that 81 million people voted for Biden is proof that something bad happened, there's nothing like that happening.
Nothing like that.
In eight years, it did make that much difference.
Now, your common sense can't imagine it could make that much difference.
But it did.
You just look at the numbers and you say, "Oh, that's just demographic." By the way, does anybody disagree with that?
Yeah. So somebody's saying, in eight years, really?
And that's my point, is that your common sense can't imagine that in eight years anything could change that much.
But remember, we have an aging population.
There's a whole bunch of people reaching voting age.
Was it about, what, a 10% The ratio does not care about the absolute number.
The ratio would be, if you're arguing that you think Trump got more votes, that's a different argument.
But if you're arguing that the fact that one of them got 81 million, that doesn't mean anything.
That just means how many people there were in the country.
Your shy Trump voter idea did not come to pass.
That's because there was no need for a shy Trump voter after the first election.
In the first election, it made sense, but basically everybody outed themselves by the end of the first term.
I don't think there was anybody who needed to be shy once he was president.
So I don't think that I said there were shy voters, did I? The second time?
Maybe I did.
I don't remember.
Somebody says I'm giving lefty propaganda.
Least counties and most votes effort.
Hold on. You changed the argument.
So you can't say I'm wrong by changing the argument to something I wasn't making.
So here's somebody who's combined the total number of votes with the fact that there were counties that seemed off.
Right? The counties that seem like the vote couldn't possibly be right, those are real questions.
But that's separate from how many people voted.
You don't have to connect those.
That's electricity. Right.
Alright, I believe I've done my duty for today, and maybe more.
Probably one of the best things you've ever experienced in your whole life.
And I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube, and I'll be talking to the local people a little bit more.
