Episode 1906 Scott Adams: Ye Gets Further Cancelled, Rob Reiner Is Funny, GDP Is Strong, And More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Beta blocker induced depression
GDP numbers expected to be strong
Why SAT & ACT scores increased in California
Rob Reiner quotes his hero Joe Biden
2 Serious concerns about the GOP
1943 directive to all communists in the US
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
Ladies and gentlemen, in non-binaries and every other category of human being, including space aliens, it's the best day you've ever experienced in your life because you're experiencing coffee with Scott Adams.
Now, there are some people in faraway worlds who will not receive this signal from Earth, possibly for light years.
And we feel sorry for them because you get to see it now.
They have to wait.
But if you'd like to take it up a notch and get a little selfish, and why not?
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask or vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid I like, coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine here, the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called The Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
Go. Are you ready for the optimistic morning that you've been craving?
Not my usual, the world is ending morning.
Are you ready for the biggest dose of optimism you've ever had in your life?
Here it comes. Here it comes.
Some of you have been, and I appreciate it, very concerned about me.
Because I've said that I was in great pain every day, muscle aches and could barely walk up the stairs.
And I said to you that if this lasted, I was going to check out, meaning I didn't want to live in that much pain.
But I also told you, and this is a pretty good advice, I would never do anything in less than a year.
I would always give myself a year to work it out, no matter how bad it was.
No matter how much pain I was in, I could make it last a year, just to see if I could solve it.
And I saw, was it Matthew McConaughey?
I saw somebody's father gave them advice.
I think it was Matthew McConaughey, telling a story about his father giving him advice.
And it was some of the best advice I've ever seen in my life.
And I've actually tried to incorporate it, and it's immediately useful.
I guess you could call it a reframe.
And here it is.
Do one more.
That's it. That's the whole advice.
You can do one more.
You would be amazed how often that little bit of advice changes everything.
I tried it out at the gym.
So normally when I go to the gym, I lift until, you know, sometimes I'm counting.
I know I should, but usually I don't.
I stop when my arm is tired.
And then I said to myself, when I normally would stop, I'd say, all right, could you do one more?
And the answer is almost always you can.
You can almost always do one more.
And It's amazing how motivational that is.
Anyway, back to me.
So for the last several months, I've been in pretty much, you know, discomfort.
And it's gotten worse to the point where I have to admit, and I don't want to be banned from YouTube for saying things that would be controversial, so I'm going to try to say it as medically as I can.
I was overwhelmed with suicidal thoughts for the last several weeks.
Like, it's kind of all I thought about.
Honestly, I didn't go a minute without thinking about it.
Now, I was never close, as in I never made a plan, you know, never thought I'll put together my concept for doing it or anything like that.
It's just that I couldn't get it out of my mind because my life was not up to the quality of life.
That would have made any sense to continue.
Now, there's definitely an irrational ending of your life, but there's also a rational time to do it.
Let's say if you had Lou Gehrig's and you were in pain and you only had a month to live anyway.
There are rational reasons to put yourself out of pain.
And I thought I was in one.
I thought I was in one. So I felt depression and I felt pain and I could barely walk up the stairs.
Do I sound better today?
You can tell, can't you?
Can't you tell? Whatever was bothering me yesterday, you can tell it went away, right?
It's obvious. Do you think that I solved my problem by taking a med?
Do you think that's what I did?
Do you think I took some pharmaceuticals and solved my problem in one day?
No, you motherfuckers.
I stopped taking this drug.
And all my problems stopped.
I fucking stopped taking this.
For one day. One day.
Everything's better. Everything.
Suicidal thoughts? Completely gone.
Like it doesn't even make sense.
Like my brain doesn't even know why I would even have those thoughts.
Physical? Completely fine.
Walked five miles yesterday, half of it was uphill.
No problem. No problem at all.
And that was from the day before I was using the elevator in my own house.
Yes, I have an elevator. Because the stairs were too much of a challenge.
True story. One fucking day.
Now, this was on my list if you were wondering how I solved it.
And by the way, it's not solved.
This is blood pressure meds.
So my blood pressure is high right now.
So I could still die.
But it won't be today.
So once it was obvious, once it was really obvious that the meds were the problem, I googled it.
And I googled, it's a beta blocker.
Yep, somebody's on it.
So somebody googled this or already knows.
There are two types of blood pressure meds.
One kind, a study showed those people kill themselves more often than they should.
There is literally a study Saying that people who take drugs in this class, I'm not going to tell you the specific one.
I'm only going to tell you the class because I don't want to get sued.
It's in a class of beta-blocking blood pressure meds.
The other is an ACE inhibitor.
I don't know what the trade-off is.
But I have the kind where there's a 2019 study saying it'll make you suicidal.
The fucking drug did this.
Everything you saw of my complete personality change over the last few weeks, you all saw it, right?
If you watch me every day, you can't miss it, can you?
You saw my personality change, didn't you?
It was this. It was this little fucking thing.
Can you believe that? Like, it was that simple.
Now, it's still not simple because I have to get my blood pressure under control.
One way or another. But, oh my god.
Oh my god.
Now keep in mind that the 2019 trial, or study I guess, the 2019 study did not say that it was, you know, a randomized controlled trial and confirmative.
It was just saying people need to look into this.
That's what most studies do.
So I can't confirm that it's a problem.
I can only confirm that after every single day of feeling terrible, the one day I didn't take this, I feel great.
Mentally, physically, great.
Not a problem in the world.
So, don't you like good news?
How about some more good news for you?
That was my good news.
And by the way, by the way, a lot of people reached out to me Because they could see that I was in trouble, which I was.
That was real, by the way.
And it's the darndest feeling, and thank you.
So let me say as clearly as I can, thank you.
Thank you. Yeah, because you knew I was in trouble.
Now, I knew I was in trouble too, but here's the messed up part.
When you're the one who's having the mental trouble, you can't help yourself.
Right? So I had to actually get outside of my body and actually become like a robot to narrow it down.
So I think I showed you I started with all the possible things that could be, wrote them on my whiteboard, and I just went to pure analytical Scott, because analytical Scott can operate independent from emotional angry Scott.
So for a while, I just allowed myself to be like an actor.
Just act like you're rational for a while.
See what that would look like.
And that was enough to get me out.
So I was rational enough to narrow down the things.
But I'll tell you, the things I couldn't do, I couldn't do things like just make a doctor appointment that I knew I needed to make.
Because I guess the dopamine was gone or something.
So the thought and the action were disconnected for a long time.
But now I feel I'm connected.
Today, if I wanted to make a doctor appointment, I would just make a doctor appointment.
Yesterday, it seemed impossible.
All right. Enough about me.
I only mention this because I think it's generalizable.
If you're worried about your mood, check your meds.
There's a 60-minute segment I guess last night, in which the Dominion, the makers of election products, they're going ahead with their lawsuit against Fox News, and apparently it looks like they could win.
I mean, it sounds like they have a bit of a case.
I don't know how this is going to work out.
But I guess they've been getting death threats and everything else.
So that's pretty horrible.
But you can see now that the entire news business has gotten into the business of trying to destroy the candidate on the other side.
And do you think that 60 Minutes would have done this story if not for how it would influence the political world?
It feels like a story you do because you want to stop Trump from being president again.
Doesn't it? Now, I get that it's a real story.
Like, it's a real story.
But the timing of it, is this not a two-year-old story?
Or a one-year-old?
When did Dominion first sue?
This is like old news, right?
But they waited until you're pretty close to the midterms to give it a little extra juice.
So to me, this looks like...
Well, let me put this in a different and maybe more productive way.
This looks like something that CNN would not do under their current leadership.
But Anderson Cooper and his other job at 60 Minutes, CBS did it.
Now, would you agree that this is something that CNN would have done in their past formation, but maybe they would be less inclined to do today?
I like to give CNN credit.
I like to give them credit for what seems to be, from the outside, a genuine turn toward being useful.
Now, they're doing it for business reasons and their own reasons, but I feel like there's something that looks successful about that.
I've got a new tell for cognitive dissonance.
Now, this is when you've trapped somebody in their argument, and they say, blah, blah, blah, and then that's your tell, that there's no point in discussing it any further.
They've gone into irrational land.
And I'll give you one.
When you see how cognitive dissonance works...
You can spot it in the wild where before you just thought there was something unexplained.
Like you didn't understand why somebody was acting the way they were.
But it is so useful for explaining why people are acting irrationally.
I'll give you this specific example from earlier today.
Somebody tweeted something with an analogy in it.
And the analogy was comparing evolution, the biological evolution, to people working in a project which they run as a self-organizing project.
In other words, there's some commonality between those.
So I was asked to comment on this, and I pointed out that all I saw was a bad analogy.
Because the point was being made about comparing these two things, biological evolution and people in, let's say, a workplace or an organization using a self-organizing kind of a process or something.
And basically, as soon as I see an analogy, I bow out.
Now, the comment from the tweeter, whose name isn't important for this purpose, he said, that wasn't an analogy.
I was describing a system.
Now, he was describing a system, obviously, but he was also doing it in the context of an analogy.
So when he said it wasn't an analogy, I tweeted back what the analogy was.
I said, you said evolution is like this process in the organization.
Now, shouldn't that be the end of the conversation?
I say you used an analogy.
The person who used it says, no, I didn't.
And then I use their...
Tweet from like one tweet ago, like a brand new tweet from one tweet ago, you said this is an analogy for this.
Now, what are the appropriate responses to that?
The non-cognitive dissonance responses would be, oh, I can see why you thought that was an analogy, but maybe I was using it differently.
Maybe. Or maybe you say, oh yes, that was an analogy, but I'm only trying to make one narrow point about it.
Perfectly acceptable. Or you could say all kinds of things.
You could imagine all kinds of rational things you could say in response.
Maybe you might even say it's a good point.
But instead, I was accused of not being able to admit when I'm wrong.
So I was accused of not being able to admit when I'm wrong.
I just printed, you analogized this to this.
What? Now for a while, because I get this a lot, I get that you don't admit when you're wrong, but I've only recently realized that I only get it when I'm definitely right.
And the other person sees it, too.
It's the only time people say that to me.
When it's really, really obvious I'm right.
When that's not the case, they don't say that.
Because people will argue their point if they have a point, right?
So that's how you know cognitive dissonance.
If somebody has a good argument, they'll always use it.
Who doesn't use their good argument?
Everybody does.
But if they go to, you don't admit when you're wrong, well, cognitive dissonance.
Interestingly, the GDP numbers for America that are supposed to be coming out for the United States are supposed to be strong.
Like, we don't have the numbers yet, but apparently the gross domestic product Looks pretty strong.
It's going to be over 2%, which in this environment would be surprisingly good.
And at the same time, consumer spending is strong, despite inflation, or maybe because of it, I suppose.
So that's not really surprising.
And also employment stays strong.
Employment is great. And do we believe that there's some movement on deficit spending?
Because I know Biden's, you know, lying about how much he's bringing down the deficit, but it's moving in the right direction, isn't it?
I think it would have to be, because we're not doing...
Well, wait, how could it be?
We're spending so much on Ukraine.
How could it be? I don't know.
So I guess I don't understand what's happening with the national debt, because reporting's so bad about that.
But... Remember I told you a while ago that the one metric you should put most of your attention in is...
Let's see if you remember.
What did I say is the one economic metric that you should watch above all others?
It's the one you can depend on in the long run.
Employment. If your employment goes down, you're kind of screwed.
You're kind of screwed. But if employment stays high, you can pretty much get through everything.
Pretty much everything.
Now, that's an exaggeration.
You could imagine something would crumble the system.
But you're in a strong position if you've got strong employment.
As of today, let me ask you what this sounds like to you.
See if this sounds like...
What it sounds like to me.
As of today, CNN reported, well, an opinion piece, but in the opinion piece, it was that smart people are now saying, we're definitely going to have a recession, but it'll be in 2023.
Like, it's not happening yet.
We're pushing it down a little bit.
Definitely still having the recession, but it's further than we thought.
What does that sound like?
That sounds like no recession.
Or a tiny one.
Every time they say the recession is further in our future, it makes me think it's not going to happen.
Now, I told you I'm going to give you the optimistic view today, right?
Do you mind? So on this one, don't fight me too much, because we're only here to feel good.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But I will tell you again that that strong employment number, that just keeps holding.
That just keeps holding.
And as long as that holds...
You'll be fine. You'll be fine.
Now remember, the biggest part of the economy, aside from physical access to resources, which is a challenge right now, is the psychology.
So if you know that the high employment numbers, which are good, indicates we'll be good in the long run, then you have a strong enough psychology to survive for the long run.
So we do have in place The primary pillars for climbing out of this.
It's in place. And then on top of that, you've got the Adams law of slow-moving disasters, in which when you can see a specific problem from long enough away, we always rise to the challenge.
It's only the surprises that catch us off guard.
But when we see it coming from a long ways away, I would argue that Ukraine might be one of those situations.
Although, you know, the problem's pretty bad.
But in terms of arming Ukraine, I feel like we must have had enough warning in advance that Russia might invade, that we got them enough stuff quickly enough that it made a big difference.
So I think that was the case of the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters.
Arguably, it created a different kind of disaster because nothing's going well.
All right. We saw some numbers.
It says the SAT and ACT composite scores improved in West Coast states for every racial demographic, but scores in the South and non-coastal West went down.
So how do you explain this?
This will be a little test.
I have the answer for you, but I'll give you the answer in a moment.
But how would you guess?
Why would it be that California, in particular, every group did better on SATs and ACTs?
Do you know why? Well, one person who tweeted at me today said that California dropped its SAT requirements for state colleges, which means that everyone who thought they wouldn't do well didn't take them.
So you can't compare California to anything else, and California would skew the whole West Coast.
So the West Coast numbers are just bullshit.
Because half of the people who would have scored poorly just didn't take them because they didn't need to, because they could get into college without them.
So it might be bad for the standards of the colleges, but it's good for those people who got in.
All right. However, would you be surprised that not having school for a year was bad for learning below the college level?
No, you would not be surprised.
They did a sweeping analysis of test scores since the start of the pandemic, and there's a nationwide plunge in math and reading.
More math than reading went down.
Are you surprised that not having real schools made a difference?
Or not? You know, I'll tell you.
The Republicans have only one obstacle to winning the presidency and everything else.
Do you know what that is? What is the one obstacle that the Republicans have to owning Congress and the presidency?
Oh, my God, nobody has this?
All right, one person got it.
I think a few people got it.
The answer is Trump. If you took Trump out of the mix, you're guaranteed to win.
If you run just a mainstream Republican who just wants to do Trump-like things, but without the provocation.
Yeah. But I don't think Republicans can make that happen.
Now, to be fair...
To be fair, the only reason a non-Trump Republican would be sure to win would be...
Give me the answer. Why could we be sure that a non-Trump Republican would win?
Because of Trump.
Trump created a situation in which there are very clear Trump-like Republican policy preferences...
Or largely Republican anyway.
But anybody who adopted those same stances would just walk into the job because he created a right and wrong way to be.
And now somebody just needs to adopt it without being Trump.
And it's the golden bridge to anything they want.
How about running Lara Trump?
Lara Trump is a strong, strong player.
I don't know if she has any political ambitions at the moment, but she would be a pretty strong candidate.
She has all the skills.
Everything from the look To the hard work ethic.
I follow her on Instagram for her exercise routines.
Have you ever seen Laura Trump's Instagram?
Most of her photos are from the gym or with the kids.
And her gym workout is so impressive.
Like, it makes me tired just looking at it.
Like, there's somebody who's really like a go-getter personality.
You can see why she married into the Trump family.
She seems to be a perfect fit.
So, there's a lawsuit in Missouri that might turn into a big thing, alleging that the government used big tech for censorship.
And apparently there's plenty of evidence of that.
Plenty of evidence of the Democrats talking directly to the big social media platforms and asking them to, among other things, to ban Alex Berenson, who got put back on Twitter and then said some things that got him banned again.
I think getting banned on Twitter is his primary career strategy.
And it's working. So here's a little quote from Rob Reiner's favorite politician, Joe Biden.
And I'm going to read this quote exactly as he said it.
He was asked if his age is getting to him.
And Biden said, and I quote, Am I don't have the same pace?
You know, and that old joke, you know, everybody talks about the, you know, the 70s, 50s, you know, all that stuff.
You know, I, you know, could be.
I could get a disease tomorrow.
I could, you know, drop dead tomorrow.
Well said. Well said, Joe Biden.
I don't think I could have said that any better.
Now, what does Rob Reiner think about that?
He says in the tweet, if you don't vote blue, we will lose our constitutional democracy.
To which I say...
If you don't vote blue, you'll lose your constitutional democracy.
How many things can I find wrong with that statement?
Number one, we're not a constitutional democracy.
We're a republic. Is that the same?
Yeah, we're a republic.
Seems like that should be important.
Although I don't know what the difference would be between a constitutional democracy.
Would that be a direct vote for everything, by definition?
That's the definition, right?
I don't know. So he doesn't know what system he lives in, but he doesn't want to lose the system that is not the system he lives in.
So good start for a tweet.
And if you don't vote blue, you'll lose your constitutional democracy.
So the idea would be that, I guess, the Republicans, he believes, do not respect the Constitution.
Has he ever met a Republican?
The only thing the Republicans like is the Constitution and the Bible, I suppose.
Their families. But this is sort of as close as you can get to the opposite of what your enemy is.
Like, I get that people assign names to their enemies, but it's so weird when they try to label them as the exact opposite of everything they are.
Now, I'm not saying that they're succeeding.
That's a different argument. I'm not saying that being a Republican is better than being a Democrat.
That's a different argument. I'm just saying that the entire brand of the Republicans is, can we please follow the Constitution and make sure the elections were valid?
And that turned into, we're a bunch of anarchists trying to overthrow the country for our fascist ways.
So that's what he thinks.
If you were going to correctly criticize the GOP or the Democrats, what would that look like?
Because right now we just call the Democrats a bunch of communists and socialists, and they call the Republicans a bunch of fascists and Nazis and vice versa.
But if you were actually going to be serious about your criticisms, what could they say about the GOP? They could complain about abortion.
They have a very different opinion there.
They can complain about the government telling you how to raise your kids, interestingly.
Have you noticed that Republicans are generally on the side of keep the government out of our business, except when it comes to the trans rights stuff?
And then they want the government in the business really hard.
Have you noticed that? That's one of the reasons I'm not...
I'm not wading in deeply into the trans argument.
It's because the Republicans are requiring the government to tell the parents what to do.
Well, no, not only for kids.
You want, correct me if I'm wrong, but Republicans want the government to tell parents how to raise their kids.
Is that not right?
I thought that's the whole argument.
I'm saying no's. So reframe that in the way that you would put it.
I would think that the way you think about it is protecting children, right?
The way you think about it is protecting children.
Is that right? But in order to protect children, do you not have to overrule their own parents in the case of the trans surgeries?
And again, I'm not pro-trans surgeries.
I'm not giving you an opinion on it.
I'm just asking for a clarification.
I'm saying only no's, but I want to see your argument.
I realize it's just Twitter comments and stuff, so it's hard to put an argument in.
It's about the age of consent.
No, it's not. It's not about the age of consent, because it's about the parents.
See, if you were saying the government should control directly the children...
That's a different argument. That's not the argument being made.
The argument is that the government should control the adults so that the adults don't raise their kids the way they want to.
Am I wrong? Now, let me ask you this.
Would you like that argument used on you?
Let's say that somebody does a study someday and finds out that if you teach your child to believe the Bible is literally true, That they'll have a bad time in life.
It'll be like a disadvantage for them.
And then the government says, alright, you can't teach your children that because there's a study that says it's bad for them.
You're on board with that?
Because in that case they would be trying to stop child abuse as they see it.
Because it's the as they see it part that you can't get past, can you?
Now, let me say that I completely understand the argument...
Of stopping trans surgeries on minors.
I completely understand that.
It's easy to understand, right?
You don't have to convince me.
Completely understand. But there's no stopping the fact that you took the decision away from the parents.
That's just a fact.
So if you're okay with that, then you have a consistent point of view.
But you have to know that that could come back and bite you, right?
That's going to come back to you.
If you are successful in overruling the parents, that will come back to you.
Somebody says worth it?
It might be. It might be, but you don't know what's going to come back if what comes back to you is worse.
No, I'm not trolling.
Yeah, you might be new here.
So those of you who know me better and have been on this livestream longer, you know what I do, right?
Number one, I'm not trying to change your mind on this topic.
Because I don't have an idea what the best answer is.
I really don't. Because I think you have two absolutes that I can't deal with.
One absolute is the absolute of protecting children.
If you can do anything to do it, you should do it.
That's an absolute. Because you're human.
Forget about the law.
It doesn't matter what the law says.
You're a human being.
Protecting children is going to be like right at the top of your list.
But right at the top of your list also is keeping the government out of your family decisions.
Those two things are inviolable rules in my mind.
So to me, you have two impossibles.
And picking one of those impossibles, you have to.
You have to, because you live in the real world, so you've got to make choices.
I actually don't know what's right.
Because here's the problem.
I'm convinced that some percentage of those children who have the surgery when they're minors grow up thinking that they're happy they did it early.
Now, you might say, but they think they're happy, but they're not.
Now, I said some percentage.
Some percentage.
It might be 5%.
I don't know what the percentage is.
It might be 5%, it might be 10%.
And you could argue that that's a good enough reason.
You could say, well, if it is 10%, and I'm just throwing in a number, I have no idea if it's 90% or 10%.
But people do convince themselves that they made the right decision.
It's cognitive dissonance again, right?
Some number of people...
Hold on here, this will make you feel better.
Some number of people...
If they were party to the decision themselves, let's say a kid who really wanted the surgery and parents agreed, that kid, in theory, even if that were a bad decision, that kid should grow up to think it was a good decision.
Would you agree? Because once you've committed yourself to the decision, it's far more likely that your brain will convince you that it was a good decision over time, because that's how brains work.
Independent of this, I'm saying any decision, forget about trans, any important decision you make, no matter how good or bad, you're very likely to convince yourself later that it was good.
Now, here's the exception to that.
When it involves something as deep as your sexuality, I think your sexuality is probably going to bubble up.
Like, it doesn't matter how much cognitive dissonance you're experiencing, that's probably the one thing that can cut through it over time, right?
Like, if you're seriously gay, your biology is going to be tapping you on the shoulder for as many years as it takes for you to say, all right, I'm finally gay.
So I think this is an impossible situation.
The whole trans surgery thing is impossible.
But if you said to yourself, I'm sure there are far more people who are injured than not, and protecting children is higher than maybe even the Constitution.
Maybe even the Constitution.
I wouldn't argue that.
So let me be as clear as possible.
I am not disagreeing or disavowing any of your opinions on this topic.
And that's different than a lot of topics.
Typically, I'm quite willing to say your idea is bad and mine is a little bit better.
I mean, you've seen that a million times.
But on this one, you're on your own because there's no right answer here.
And if you take the greater benefit, the kids can wait and make the decision later.
That's reasonable. That's reasonable.
I don't know if it's right, but it's reasonable.
And then you've got to bring it down to circumcision.
It's ugly.
All right. Have you noticed that when Democrats insult Republicans, They like to point out that neo-Nazis are often right-leaning.
So they try to ruin the Republican brand by saying, you know, that's what the neo-Nazis are.
They also vote conservative.
So that's what the Democrats say about Republicans.
And what do the Republicans say to insult Democrats?
They say that Rob Reiner is a Democrat.
So here we've got the balance.
So Republicans say that...
Democrats say that Republicans are neo-Nazis and that Republicans say that Democrats are like Rob Reiner.
I'm going to score that a tie.
Roughly a tie.
Okay. I saw somebody refer to Rob Reiner, George Takei, and John Cusack as the Democrats' Three Stooges.
Three Stooges.
And then this made me wonder.
So every now and then you see people move from one party to the other, right?
So you've seen a number of notable people who used to be one thing and then they moved to the other party.
And I think this is probably just in my mind, but I'm noticing a pattern.
I feel like the pattern is that when somebody moves from Democrat to Republican, they tend to be, let's say, an ex-member of Congress or Or a billionaire.
Or an entrepreneur.
Or an investor.
Like a famous investor.
But who exactly moves from Republican to Democrat?
Steve Schmidt?
Rick Wilson?
Do you see a pattern?
I'm not sure.
I think I maybe have selective memory.
Right? Liz Cheney, right.
So, Kinzinger.
So, does it seem to me that there's a certain type of person who's moving one way and a different type of person who's moving that way?
Am I right? It seems like the lightweight people are moving Democrat and the heavyweight people are moving Republican.
By heavyweight, I would say somebody who's been in Congress, right?
That's a pretty serious person.
Somebody who's already a billionaire from their own work.
That's a serious person.
And, you know, venture capitalist, etc.
All right. I don't know.
I'm probably wrong that that's a correlation.
But it looks like one.
I saw a video of a 1943 communist directive in which, first of all, it has wonderful old-time talk.
Do you know old-timey talk?
If you see any video or audio from the 40s, all the men talk like this.
Whenever they're on video, they seem to talk in a way that is only common to people who are talking on video in the 40s.
Why is it that the people on the video in the 40s would talk like this?
But today, nobody talks like this, because they did in the 40s, but they do not anymore.
Is there some reason why people talked like that before?
And they don't talk like that now?
Were they all imitating somebody?
Radio voice or something?
Yeah, maybe they were imitating radio voice on video.
Oh, that's a good theory. That's a good theory.
They were imitating radio voice when video was still young.
Oh my God, I think you answered the question.
I've wondered about that all of my life.
And that probably is the answer, right?
Yeah. Because when you're on radio, you're acting with your voice.
When you're on video, you're trying to be more of a whole person.
That makes sense. Huh.
But let me...
I want you to listen to this.
If I can find it quickly.
Oh, here it is. It's in the United States.
It read... In 1943, the following directive was issued from party headquarters to all communists in the United States.
to all carbonates.
Read, "When certain obstructionists become too irritating, label them after suitable build-ups as fascist or Nazi or anti-Semitic and use the prestige of anti-fascist intolerance organizations to discredit them.
In the public mind, constantly associate those who oppose us with those names which already have a bad smell.
The association will, after enough repetition, become fact in the public mind." "In 1943, the following…" So, repetition and association.
Repetition and association.
Those are the two... Maybe two of the strongest parts of hypnosis and persuasion.
Repetition and association.
And in 1943, communists were taught to label anybody who was against them as fascists or Nazis and to associate with more credible organizations that would also have those accusations.
Does that sound like 2020 through 2022?
Yeah. It's exactly.
It's exactly. So the 1943 communist playbook is being rolled out here right now.
And the thing is, it's working.
Yeah. The thing is, it works.
This was actually really good advice for bad behavior.
All right. You know, the other day when I was mocking the Democrats for saying that cost reductions were reducing inflation, when those are just completely different concepts, you know, one is about the value of your money and the other is about just what did something cost today?
They have some connection, but they're different concepts.
And Nancy Pelosi, on a video interview, said on the news, quote, when I hear people talk about inflation, we have to change that subject.
Now, That's being taken out of context to make it look like she just doesn't want to talk about inflation because it's bad.
What she says is inflation is global.
What we should be talking about is ways we can lower your expenses.
In other words, your health care expense immediately or your whatever expense.
And do you think that...
I'm kind of...
Scott's finally waking up.
I'm kind of surprised that she made that distinction.
Because I think it was working for them to conflate the cost reductions with the inflation.
Because Biden was doing it and I think it worked.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm literally the only person who told you they were doing that.
Am I right? Have you heard one other person in any news or any other place tell you they were knowingly conflating cost reductions and inflation?
I think I'm the only one.
And then Nancy Pelosi is saying it directly, that the Democrats were actually conflating them, and she says they shouldn't.
Now, I don't know if she improved the argument.
I think that her argument is more accurate, so I'll give her credit that she's more accurate.
Oh, somebody says Ben Shapiro pointed out the difference between inflation and cost reduction, which makes sense.
I would imagine he would.
Alright, so, next topic.
So it looks, I was really interested to see if the performer formerly known as Kanye, now Ye, I was really interested to see if he could be cancelled.
Because I was starting to think he might be uncancellable.
But I think they've done it.
And it looks like, you know, there's more movement toward everybody cancelling him.
And I think even his old agent, I think his own agent or somebody he worked with, Ari, wants to cancel him.
So basically all of Hollywood and anybody who's associated with or supportive of the Jewish community has pretty much joined forces and he's canceled.
He's canceled.
He's canceled. So, but here's...
Do you want to hear a good conspiracy theory?
All right, this is not mine.
So this was suggested to me on, you know, on a message.
So I won't say it was suggested in case they don't want their name known.
But... The idea is that Kanye already said, before any of this ugliness happened, he had said that he wanted to get out of his deals with Gap and Adidas.
I can't think of a better way to get out of your deals.
Now the question is, could he possibly have done this intentionally?
To cancel the deals he wanted to cancel?
That couldn't have been cancelled any other way, probably.
Is he that smart?
I don't know. I don't know.
I don't see anybody branding themselves as anti-Semitic to cancel a deal.
That feels like something that literally nobody would do.
But maybe. You know, the reason that yay is yay and I'm not is because he does things that I wouldn't do, right?
The very fact that the thing that made him him And the reason we talk about him is he doesn't do what you and I would do, so who knows?
Who knows? I doubt it.
It doesn't seem like a good play.
It doesn't sound like a smart play, so I don't think so.
But it was interesting. Now, if he hasn't clarified or corrected, what is the right way to go on this?
And I've said this before, but...
If somebody said, so here's your racism bigotry test, okay?
If somebody said to you, let me tell you, my sixth grade teacher when I was a kid taught the class in direct language that Chinese people were good at business.
That was the most racist thing anybody ever said that I ever heard in public, like from a person with authority.
And I think he mentioned, I'm not positive, but I think he mentioned the Jewish community too.
I think he said, oh yeah, you know, the Chinese and the Jews are good at business.
Now, I don't know if that's true or false.
Like, if you were to do some kind of a study, would you find out that they had more success than other people?
I don't know. I have no idea if that would test out.
But you're not supposed to say it.
The only thing I'm sure of is you're not supposed to say it.
Even if you're sure it's true, you're not supposed to say it.
But here's my question.
Have we gone so far...
And are we such assholes that we will cancel somebody for complimenting us?
That's where we are. Kanye's entire complaint about the Jewish community, and it's been a few days, so now that the temperature's come down a little bit, so we can talk about it a little more objectively.
Objectively speaking, he was really pissed at Jews for out-competing him.
If somebody's out-competing you, And what he's not saying, here's what he's not saying.
They cheated. Didn't say that.
They broke the law.
Didn't say that. They colluded together to do something against me.
He didn't exactly say that, although that one you have to wonder about, because he did talk about the group collectively.
He did not say that they were organized, but he did talk about them collectively.
I think that's a clarification you ought to fix.
So, I'm seeing some disagreements.
Let's play with the disagreement.
In my opinion, he said that the Jewish people that he was dealing with in the business world were doing a really good job for themselves, and he wishes that black people, and himself in particular, could meet that level of aggressive business attitude or success or something.
And I did not hear the insult in that.
Did I miss it?
Can somebody tell me what the insult was?
was.
So where is the insult?
Oh, it's a compliment used to discriminate against Jews.
Okay.
Okay, you don't feel that stretching it a little bit?
Your point actually makes sense.
But that doesn't stretch it a little bit?
Because here's the thing.
If you're making the Hitler analogy, and of course it's impossible not to in this case, right?
If you're making the Hitler analogy, I do believe Hitler was kind of close to that, wasn't he?
Like, didn't he say, you know, this group is...
Being too successful, so we have to stop them.
But that's not what Kanye says.
Did you see Kanye say anything about stopping them?
I didn't see it. Didn't see it at all.
Now, he did insult Jared Kushner, but that sounded personal.
He painted Jews as immoral, somebody says.
I didn't see it.
Give me like a quote...
That you think, and I'm not denying it, I'm just not aware of it, give me a quote that you think was Kanye calling them immoral.
Because what I heard is that he said he was Jewish too.
So that sounds like the opposite of calling somebody immoral, if he was identifying with a group.
Now, I don't buy that identification, but, you know, it was part of his communication.
No, he's not. I don't think he's technically Jewish.
He was saying that black people are Jewish.
there's some argument for that that i don't understand um all right uh are lopsided contracts immoral I don't know. Are they?
Do you think Ye signed a lopsided contract?
Now, I understand that he was unhappy with some of his partners about things he thought he was going to get.
Black Hebrew Israelites...
Yeah. I'm not that interested.
The answer, Liquid Swan, is no.
In case you're interested, there's a long delay between when my ex-wife and I decided that things were done and when you heard about it.
So there was a lot of time in between there.
All right, the lopsided contract.
Don't you think Ye thinks that he would like to be in a position to have lopsided contracts?
Do you think that if Ye could have any kind of contract he wanted, he would sign one that's really fair to everybody or one that was lopsided in his favor?
As long as everybody won.
Like, I don't think he would punish somebody with a bad contract.
But I think as long as they won and he won more, you don't think he'd sign that contract?
I think he would. And I think he would compliment anybody who could get away with it.
Because it would just be business.
Yeah. Anyway, it does look like the cancellation is going to work.
Now, the only way I imagine he could get out of it would be if he has enough resources that he can start his own chain of retail stores, which I think is a possibility.
Like, he might just start his own chain or something, or make parlor work or something.
But he is in trouble.
I don't think he anticipated this much trouble.
I mentioned before that Yeh was thinking of building a mini-city that's sort of designed after his own aesthetic and maybe a city about all things he likes or whatever.
And I would like to add this.
I'm going to a meeting tonight in my little city where they're talking about turning one of the roads into part bicycles, part roads.
If I were to design a mini-city, here's how I'd start.
I would put the schools in one place, in the center, so that the school system is equal distance from everybody, and that's the most important thing.
And then I would have a hub-and-spoke bicycle and electric conveyance, like scooters and stuff, only, walking and bikes.
There would be a hub-and-spoke that would all go to the school in the center.
So that if you were on a bicycle and you wanted to get from anywhere to anywhere else, you could go to the center and then that would connect you to all the other paths to wherever you want to go.
So you would build it first as a bicycle-friendly city because e-bikes and e-conveyances will be the thing and they will replace cars.
There's no doubt about it. If you've had an e-bike experience, you know These are going to be everywhere.
There's no doubt about it.
As soon as you touch one, you're like, okay, this is going to be everywhere.
There's no doubt about it.
Sort of like the first time you held a smartphone.
The first time you got a smartphone, did you ever think to yourself, well, this will go backwards to the flip phone?
Even though it barely worked, you knew that was the future, right?
When you held it in your hand, there was no doubt.
And I've told this story about the first time I saw the internet when there were two websites in total that were public.
That's it. The whole internet was two websites when I first saw it.
And I knew it was going to be huge.
You could just tell.
And everybody who saw it knew the moment they saw it, this is going to be gigantic.
So e-bikes are like that.
You don't understand yet how big e-bikes are going to be, and e-scooters and e-things.
It's because the battery technology finally reached a point where they're awesome.
So that's how I'd build my city.
And then there's a story about the Israeli Air Force bombed an Iranian drone factory located in Syrian territory.
So apparently the Iranians were shipping the drone parts to a Syrian territory place that they had control of and building the drones there.
Now, is that why Iran can say these drones did not come from us?
That's probably their trick, right?
Joe Hoft did a piece on me yesterday.
I suppose I should go look at that.
Joe Hoft or Jim Hoft?
I don't know which Hoft you're talking about.
All right. I'll look that up.
So there goes that Iranian drone factory.
What happens if Russia can't get...
It is Jack.
What happens if the Russians can't get Iranian drones?
That's a pretty big deal, isn't it?
In terms of the war direction.
Yeah, lithium recycling is cracking up fast, that's true.
All right, they'll have to surrender.
How many kids can you fit on an e-bike?
Well, they would have their own e-bike.
So... Jenny says, Scott, duped by batteries and green energy, thinks everything always improves like chip processing speed.
Does that sound like something I say?
That I'm duped into believing that batteries and green energy will improve like chip processing speed?
Does that sound like something I said, you stupid bitch?
By the way, if you haven't already noticed, In personal relationships, tell me if this isn't true.
One-on-one, if you're talking to somebody in person, if a woman criticizes a man, the man will hold back.
True or false? If a woman criticizes a man in person, the man will hold back.
Of course. Now, not only will the man hold back physically, of course, because you're not going to create a fight, but you will hold back verbally as well.
Will you not? True or false.
That a man will hold back verbally as well.
Because, you know, you don't want the husband to come over and punch your lights out and stuff like that.
But here's the problem, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is just a hypothesis I'm developing.
My belief is that women have taken that safety to the internet, and they believe they can shit on me without any pushback.
And so, because I like to train them that that's not the case, as soon as they criticize me unfairly, I call them stupid cunts.
Because I'm not going to hold back on social media.
On social media, if you come after me, it's going to be 100%, well, I might even exceed what you did.
Like, if you come after me with an 8 out of 10 awfulness, I might give you a 10, and I wouldn't feel bad about that at all.
Do you know why? Because I'm not a sexist.
That's why. Because I did not grow up around weak women.
My mother wasn't weak.
My sister isn't weak.
No women in my family were weak.
So if you come at me hard, I'm going to fucking slap you back on social media.
In person, I would act the same way.
In person, I would just suck it up.
Because in person, you do have to take into account there's a physicality difference there.
And I would go easy on somebody who did not have a physical equity with me.
I would just treat them differently.
But online?
No. No, I have no filter online.
If you come at me with bullshit, I'm going to come at you with everything I've got just for fun.
And I don't even care about you.
Just to be clear, I don't care about you at all.
I just enjoyed the fact that you gave me a free punch, and I thought, oh, a free punch.
I would love to call somebody a fucking piece of shit right to their digital face.
It's fun. You should try it.
Have you ever, like, just seriously insulted somebody right to their face while they're live?
It's way more fun than you think it is, because you don't get to do it in real life.
But on social media...
Yeah, come at me. You would cry?
No, you wouldn't. Anyway, but the basis for this, I know somebody's going to say, he's a misogynist because he says bad things about men.
To which I say, you fucking idiot?
No, I call everybody the same way.
You've seen me treat men on social media.
Do I go easy on men on social media?
Never. Never.
I never go easy on men.
I just cursed one out this morning.
It's like a daily occurrence for me.
All right. Treat everybody the same, I say.
Exactly. Well, I don't think that's...
I don't think that's all that happened today, but did anything else happen today that I care about?
What's your... What's on your mind?
Yeah, you're right.
I don't reserve the C word for women.
That's a generic insult.
Treat everyone like they know jujitsu.
Opinion on the phrase, the walls are closing in.
Well, I mean, it's a punchline phrase now.
It's But I do worry that we're getting too used to the fact that the walls never do close in.
Yeah, there was some ABC producer that disappeared, but we don't know why.
Mayo Clinic, an executive health program, a one- to three-day physical exam.
Huh. You got canceled by Sertovich by saying, why don't man eat real protein instead of powdered stuff?
Paddy got canceled by Sertovich for asking about protein sources.
Sertovich is the best canceler on the Internet, I think.
Somehow he's turned cancelling into an asset or something.
He cancels so aggressively.
I've told you about addiction, right?
Addiction is not caused by getting what you want and then wanting more of it.
Addiction is caused by not being sure you'll get what you want But you get it often enough that you're really craving each time so you get addicted.
But if you follow Cernovich, your odds of being blocked for making a comment are so high that it feels like special.
I'm still here.
He's somehow... He's managed to make his Twitter feed like a club where he can turn you away from being ugly.
It's kind of amazing to watch.
Paul Joseph says, Where did Cernovich even come from?
Now that is one of the most interesting stories in the world.
Because where he came from is nowhere.
You should read his origin story.
Talk about somebody who did it himself, just by figuring it out.
I mean, he literally figured it out.
Like, how do you go from nothing to something, and he just figured it out.
And then it was really hard, and then he did it anyway.
So, I mean, sometimes it's that easy.
Figure out what you need to do, it's really, really hard, and then do it anyway.
I don't know about Dylan Mulvaney.
How do you lessen debate experts and increase STEM experts?
Well, how does he...
Somebody says, how does Sernovich have more followers than I do?
He tweets better.
That's it. He's clearly one of the best tweeters on all of Twitter.
I mean, you'd have to put him in the top ten of any group.
You find Carrie Lake more persuasive than DeSantis.
I'd say that's a tie.
Because they both persuade their base, and both perfectly.
I mean... A DeSantis-Carrie Lake...
Oh, my God, imagine that.
Now, I don't think it'll be 2024, but imagine a DeSantis, Cary Lake, and I don't know who would be president and who would be vice president, but that would be and I don't know who would be president and who would be UK has a new PM?
Should I learn the name of the new UK Prime Minister?
Or should I just put some lettuce on the counter and call it a day?
Yeah, wait a month. Would you advise Trump for a...
Are you saying would I advise him whether he should run?
I can't advise him on that.
That's just personal.
Would I advise him in general?
No. Not in the sense of having private meetings to advise him.
No. Because then I would have to disclose that, and then I would no longer...
It would hurt my sense of independence, if I have any.
So I'd rather say in public what I think he should do and let all of you wrestle with it, and if any of that gets to him, good.
Chinese stocks are down 15%.
Since when? Today?
They didn't drop 15% today, did they?
Can you give me a fact check on that?
Chinese stock market, did it crash today?
15%. Do you know what I call that?
A good start.
Because I'm just getting started.
They shouldn't have killed my kid.
China doesn't know they're in a death match with me.
Now, I don't know if I can make any difference.
I just know things tend to go my way in the long run.
I don't think we want them to completely collapse, but we might want them to be licking their wounds a little bit. but we might want them to be licking their wounds Yeah, I saw that...
Three people died from buying cocaine from the same source, but it wasn't cocaine, it was fentanyl, mostly.
Yeah, 15% isn't much of a drop.
By the way, the way you should look at our current stock market pullback, how much are we down from the high?
25%? Maybe less now, 20%.
Give me a fact check.
How much are we down on our own stock market high, the United States stock market?
Down 20% or 25%?
Something like that? Not 7%.
I think it's pulled back up a little bit to maybe 25%.
All right, so somewhere in that neighborhood.
Here's how you should think about that.
That's exactly what it was supposed to do.
Before the U.S. stock market went down, you know, so it's bouncing around in that 20 to 30 percent range.
Let's say 25 as my talking point.
If it's around 25, or let's say the average of the bottom, that's exactly what it was supposed to do for a healthy stock market.
Let me put it another way.
It would have been much worse if the bubble had increased.
If your stock market has a history of getting ahead of itself and then pulling back 25, getting ahead of itself, pulling back 25, you're in good shape.
You would love it to be, you know, maybe more graceful, but that's exactly what you needed.
So if I told you before, this is a Mark Twain observation, that people can't tell the difference between good news and bad news, Like, that's literally true.
You can't tell the difference between good news and bad news.
So before the stock market correction, I was really worried about the stock market.
Do you know why? Because it was too high.
And to my mind, it looked about 25% too high.
And when the correction came and it went down 25%, do you know what I said?
Oh, perfect. Perfect.
Perfect. We're now back where we need to be.
Because the worst thing you could have is your risk and your reality be out of whack.
You want your risk and your reality to be somewhat rebalanced every now and then.
So our risk went up, so you had to rebalance it.
So that's the most optimistic thing I can say about the stock market, is it was supposed to go down 25%.
It had to, and you'd be really in trouble if it didn't.
And I think Warren Buffett probably called it, etc.
Now, my biggest problem when the stock market was high is I was trying to figure out how to conserve cash because I was sure it was going to go down 25%.
But unfortunately, my conserving cash coincided with my divorce.
You know, and the cash is the first thing that you move around because it's easy.
So I missed out on this drop.
So I was cash poor at the time that I would have gone in hard.
And I was still going hard, but all my cash is sitting somewhere I want it to be right now.
All right. And some people are saying it's not done, but that'll always be the case.
All right.
You see more electronics not made in China?
Well, that must have started a long time ago, or you wouldn't be seeing it now.
How has your perspective changed from 20 years ago?
Wow, that's a big question.
I think that's too big of a question.
In some ways, you probably feel the same.
In some ways, you're always the same person.
But I've seen things in the last few years that I've never seen before.
So I would say that my automatic response to what's a conspiracy theory Versus what is completely true is very different.
If you told me before that the Democrats had run the Russia collusion scheme And completely got away with it, meaning that nobody went to jail.
I would have said, no.
No. Come on.
Really? And if somebody said that 50 former and current intel people signed a lie and the news put it on the air, I would have said, well, you can't give 50 people to do that.
I mean, seriously.
How are you going to give 50 people to put their name on a lie?
And it happened. It happened.
Or how about the entire news industry would report that Trump called neo-Nazis fine people, which of course never happened.
Now if you had told me that that could happen when the proof that it didn't happen is as easy as looking at the video, you just look at it.
Just don't look at it in the edited form.
You just have to look at it In the larger forum, and that's the whole story.
If you told me that the news could have pulled that off, and that it's still succeeding, to this day, almost all Democrats think that really happened.
And likewise, the drinking bleach and all the other hoaxes.
None of those would have seemed believable to me five years ago.
You know the famous hoax list, the hoax quiz that I put together, it's got 16 hoaxes on it?
If you'd showed me all of those hoaxes five years ago and said, do you think anybody could pull these off?
I would have said, no.
I mean, you can get somebody to believe anything, but you're not going to get, like, all Democrats to believe all 16 of these hoaxes.
And then they did. They got all Democrats to believe all 16 of the hoaxes.
Now, if you think that's only because they're Democrats, then you've missed everything I've taught you.
It's because they're human.
It has nothing to do with being extra gullible.
It's not that. It's just that they're human.
If you don't think that that could happen to you, well, that will be the surprise you have coming.
All right.
Greater emphasis on the boob.
All right, just looking at your comments for a moment.
I think we've done what we needed to do.
And thank you for sticking with me when I was going through my grumpy...
Wrong medication problem.
If you missed the beginning of the livestream, I figured out my problem.
My blood pressure meds were making me suicidal.
Like, actually, literally.
But now I stopped taking them, so all good.
I feel great. I actually feel...
Let me be clear.
I feel great.
Just completely solved.
Except I have high blood pressure, so I have to figure out that.
