Episode 2049 Scott Adams: Reaper vs Russia, Not Hiring Pronoun People, Avoid The Woke, Dodd-Frank
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Content:
Reaper versus Russia
Not hiring pronoun people
Staying away from the woke
Zero mules so far
My Wagner prediction bullseye
Dodd-Frank mistake?
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There's never been a finer moment in the history of all time since the Big Bang.
But if you'd like to see if you could take that up a notch, and I think we can, I think we can bump it up a little bit.
All you need is a cupper, a mugger, a glass, a tanker, chalice, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
I can't read comments and do this at the same time.
Go.
No, to answer your question in the comments, I'm very much not suicidal.
Very much not.
I know it doesn't seem like this from the outside, but I'm not having a bad week.
I know that people think I am, that I'm supposed to be suffering, but it's just not working out that way.
I'm not entirely sure why.
I mean, some of it is I just like to focus on the future.
Some of it is I like change.
I do like change.
Sometimes.
Anyway, we'll get back to that.
Let's talk about that Russian incursion on the Reaper drone.
Did you see the video?
It's pretty cool.
I don't understand the video exactly because it seems like that jet got really close to that.
Like way too close.
And it came at it from the front.
Like it came at it from the front and then it just pulled up just before it would have hit so it could dump the fuel on it.
But here's my question.
Oh, that was a rear view camera.
Okay.
All right.
I'm being corrected.
That makes more sense.
Because I could understand somebody coming up from behind and pulling up, but it looked like they came from the front, which to me looked crazy.
Okay.
Now, here's the second question.
Somebody who's an engineer.
Engineers only, please.
Could the fuel alone, and just the mass of the fuel, bend the propeller?
Because it looks like it bent one propeller.
You say no?
I'm saying yes.
I'm not an engineer, but I say yes.
But I would be surprised if it only bent one.
One propeller was clearly bent.
Not all the video showed it, but one did.
I see unlikely, I see no.
See, here's the problem.
If there was a physical contact, would it be one blade?
Can you imagine physical contact affecting only one blade?
You can?
I mean, that propeller's turning kind of fast.
Seems like the second blade would be right there, like immediately.
You know, even if it was a flying aircraft that hit, you know, one slightly, the second one is right behind it.
I don't know how the second one could avoid the collision.
I guess it may be possible, but then I don't understand how it would only be one propeller if it was the weight of the fuel.
I mean, that doesn't make exactly a lot of sense either, does it?
Somebody says totally possible.
Yeah, I would say it's possible under the same concept as If you were to jump from a high space into a body of water, it would be like concrete if you fell, right?
If your parachute didn't open and you landed on a lake or the ocean, it would be like landing on concrete.
So the mass of the liquid fuel would be very soft if you just pushed your hand through it.
But if you were to slap it at 1,000 miles an hour, your hand would fall off, I think.
So it does seem to me that the fuel itself could have damaged it.
I don't know.
I'm going to put that out there as a hypothesis.
Then the Russians are apparently trying to recover the stuff.
But was it General Milley who said, oh, we took care of making sure there's nothing useful to recover?
Do they mean they blew it up?
And if they mean that, why don't they say it?
Don't you think that it probably has a self-destruction kind of a thing?
And the self-destruction should have worked fine, because they had plenty of time between the damage to the propeller and the time it went down.
But, here's my question.
I guess I could believe that they destroyed the software.
Right?
I suppose.
Maybe you deleted the software or something.
But do you think there's no technology in the Reaper that Russia wants?
There's no chip, there's no design, no secret, nothing?
I suppose if it's just a bunch of debris spread across miles, there's not much you can get.
But it's hard for me to believe there's nothing they can get out of it.
Does that sound like a lie to you?
That there's just nothing they can get that's useful?
Now it's possible, the other possibility is that we know that Russia's already had Reapers and taken them apart.
Or they've already stole the designs.
So it's possible that we think they already know everything about the Reaper, but we can't say that out loud.
Like maybe the real answer is, well, I hate to tell you, but they don't really need to recover the debris to find out everything about the Reaper because maybe they already know.
That might be the answer.
That could easily be the answer.
All right, I have a correction.
So this is something that I got totally wrong.
I was not aware that California has one or had one committee coming up with reparations recommendations, but San Francisco was doing its own separate one.
So I guess I was confused that there were two of them.
I did wonder why one had much higher numbers.
I just thought they raised the numbers from the first recommendation.
So forget everything I said about Gavin Newsom and his committee for the San Francisco one, but Gavin Newsom did play it correctly with his committee, the statewide one, that came up with some ridiculous numbers, which is, I'm sure, what he wanted.
So that once the numbers were seen, everybody would say, oh, I guess we can't do that, and that's the end of it.
But he could say, well, I tried.
I formed a committee.
But the San Francisco one seems sillier because the people who formed the committee seem aligned with the people who came up with the recommendation.
It's all kind of the same little group.
So they're the ones who came up with the $5 million per resident, $97,000 per year for 250 years, and you can buy a home for $1.
It's hard to even say it without laughing.
Like, this is just so dumb.
But then I read that Robert Johnson, the founder of BET, he wanted something like $14 trillion set aside for black Americans.
$14 trillion.
Our entire national debt is $30 trillion.
So increase the crushing national debt by 50% and then everything would be good.
It took three years for the San Francisco group to come up with a recommendation.
What were they studying exactly for three years?
What data were they collecting?
I don't know, were they waiting for economists to give them some estimates and stuff?
And did anybody tell them that their economist did the calculation incorrectly?
I wonder if anybody told them they calculated it wrong.
Now, when I say calculated or wrong, I don't mean that the raw numbers are wrong.
I don't know.
But I do know that they didn't compare it to the alternative, did they?
They didn't compare it to the alternative.
What kind of an economic analysis says, let's look at this without looking at what it would have been if you hadn't done this?
The actual comparison Would be to the people who did not leave Africa in the first place and were never part of slavery.
That would be their, that's the control group.
So if slavery had never intervened, what would your life look like?
And what would be your quality of life?
It might be quite good.
There could be some Africans who are doing great.
Maybe you take the average.
But I wouldn't compare it to What America is doing, even though I understand they were a big part of the labor force.
Here's why.
The labor force, whether it's paid or slaves, they don't get ownership of the product of the work.
Imagine if the slaves had been voluntary employees.
I mean, that's a long way from reality.
But imagine if they had.
Suppose they'd been paid.
They wouldn't have any ownership of anything else.
They would just have their salary.
And how much were white, poor Americans at that time earning?
Well, I'm going to take a guess.
If you were poor and white, what you probably earned was enough to put a roof over your head and eat.
Probably not much else.
And I'm not going to compare voluntary labor to slavery.
I'm just saying that People were working for basically survival at the lowest end.
There wasn't that much difference in the compensation part.
It was a gigantic difference in obviously the ethical, moral, painful, evil part.
That part was very different.
But that's the part that would make sense to me as an estimate.
If you came to me and said, all right, we're not going to look at the economic gain Because that sort of doesn't work.
We're going to look at the pain and suffering.
It's more about compensation for the bad thing that happened.
But then the problem is that the bad thing that happened mostly happened to other people who are long dead.
So if you took the approach of we're compensating for the pain and suffering, your argument isn't as strong because the people who are directly affected have long passed.
So then you have to default to an economic argument.
Because the economics certainly, you know, they ripple forward.
So the argument that pain ripples forward is harder to sell.
Well, people in my past had a really tough time.
They were tortured and they were slaves.
So now I'm in pain.
And nobody's going to believe that.
Even if there's something to it, nobody's going to believe it.
It won't be persuasive.
But if you say early slaves created a bunch of economic benefit, But we did not benefit from it, then it sounds like something you could talk about.
Unless, the people you're talking to know how to do analysis.
If the people you're talking to know how to do this work, they'd say, alright, what are you comparing it to?
Right, you said you lost, like you lost a bunch of value, now compare it to what?
If they're comparing it to the white people, well, I think that's the wrong comparison.
Because that's not the control group.
If you were a scientist, you wouldn't do that.
If you were a scientist, you'd say, what's the control group?
Oh, the people who did not have any slavery.
That's the control group.
If you're not going to at least compare it to the control group, it's just social persuasion.
It's not any kind of analysis.
Any number you come up with is just ridiculous.
Now, if you were to compare it even to the control group, I don't know what the answer would be.
I mean, you still have to do the work.
But that would be the proper approach.
We'll never do that because the proper approach would be what?
Socially unpopular.
There are only a few people in the world who could say what I just said now and not get cancelled.
Right?
Tell me I have not already extracted value.
I've already extracted value from being cancelled.
Because I can say this.
Because it's not offensive.
There's nothing offensive about it at all.
It's simply a statement about how all scientific comparisons and all economic comparisons are properly done.
It has nothing to do with people.
It's just math.
But I couldn't even have said that and been safe.
I mean, I have said something like it, but if I had said something about it like that before and it became a viral video, I would be cancelled for that.
Just for saying that reparations are calculated incorrectly.
Oh, I could be cancelled for that.
Absolutely.
Because it would just turn into racist says, affirmations are not for black people.
You know the headline wouldn't match the story.
Because it never does.
All right.
Here's something fun.
How much do you think wokeness had to do with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank?
Let me get your... Now, yeah, we're private.
Don't be political.
Now, hold on.
Just back off a sec.
Before you answer, try to not be political.
All right?
It's hard.
I know that the politics in you wants to blame the wokeness.
But at Silicon Valley Bank, there's no direct link.
There's no smoking gun.
We decided to do only meetings about wokeness and nothing about risk management.
There's not a direct anything.
But really, most of you are saying it was a big thing, huh?
All right, so let me ask the question.
Do you think wokeness was responsible in any part with what happened at Silicon Valley Bank?
A lot of yeses.
Okay.
All right.
Let me ask a second question.
My opinion is there's no direct link.
No direct link.
But if you're saying there's an indirect link, that would be hard to prove.
I would agree that that hypothesis is alive.
Can we meet there?
Okay, we meet in the middle that the hypothesis that it mattered, somewhat.
Not 100%, but maybe somewhat.
That hypothesis is completely alive.
And the common sense, as if common sense exists, but the way to... Jack says, Woke broke you in half, Scott.
Really?
Do you think wokeness broke me?
Jack, have you paid attention to nothing in the last few weeks?
If there's one thing that's the dumbest thing you can say in the comments, it's that the wokeness scared me off.
That is such a bad comment.
It's like you don't know anything about anything.
In the world, anything about me, anything about the last few weeks.
It's like you'd have to know nothing about nothing, or nothing about everything.
It's just incredible.
The variety of mental capacity in the world just blows me away.
Because you go through life thinking everybody's at least somewhere around the average, and then you run into somebody who clearly is operating with an IQ of 70 or something, and somehow managed to log onto YouTube anyway, and make a comment in all caps.
All caps!
Scott!
Scott!
They broke you!
They broke you!
So good work there, Jack.
Anyway, what I was saying was, I don't think there's a direct correlation, but the argument for why it, let's say, the best way to say it would be, why it should be suspected, why it should be suspected, is that nobody can focus on multiple things.
How do you focus on multiple things?
Now, the quick answer to that is, well, that's just every manager, right?
Every manager has lots of variables.
They have to make all the variables work.
So this was just one more thing.
But I don't think wokeness is one more thing.
I think wokeness is such a big thing that because you can show progress in wokeness by simply doing things that the data will say are woke.
Oh, look at these things I did, this program, this hiring.
So you can prove your wokeness But can you prove you did your risk management right until the bank fails?
If the bank is just chugging along, nobody knows if you did risk management correctly or not.
It just looks like it's right.
We're still in business.
But your wokeness is really immediate.
It's obvious.
It's visual.
It's provable or unprovable.
Everything I know about management tells me that people would put more interest in wokeness than risk management because that's where the reward would be.
People chase reward.
That's why incentives work.
Because people reliably chase reward.
And chasing wokeness was where the reward was.
Now that doesn't mean it's the reason they failed.
But there's no question That a company that has that as a visible goal, it would not distort their, at least their attention.
So you could argue for sure it was a distortion of good management technique.
That's obvious.
But whether that went the extra distance and was an important variable in the end product, I don't know.
Here's another theory.
This would be more the Democrat theory, because they don't want to buy into the wokeness hypothesis.
I don't think they should, necessarily.
But they say Dodd-Frank would have made a difference.
And then I keep reading, okay, and the difference would be because, and then it's not there.
And then I'll read another article that says, but there's a widespread opinion that if Dodd-Frank, the regulation on banks, had not been weakened by the Trump administration, that maybe Silicon Bank wouldn't have had the lack of oversight that may have contributed.
To which I say, okay, and the details, the details are that the specific thing that changed was, was, and I'm keeping looking for it in the article.
It's like it's not there.
And then I finally saw somebody say, well, what they did was they changed the limit of how big the bank is.
So before they had a lower limit and the bank would have had to comply to crushing regulatory pressure.
But the little banks didn't want that, so they said, raise that rate.
So if you're below this, I think it's $250 billion in assets.
If you're below that level, we won't have the crushing regulations on you.
But above that level, they can handle the crushing regulations, and it'll make them safer.
So some say that change that made Silicon Bank more, let's say less regulated than the big ones, is responsible.
Do you buy that?
Here's what I ask you, because I don't know the answer to the following question.
My understanding is that the bank failed because they handled the risk management wrong.
There were two assumptions that they got wrong.
One was that interest rates wouldn't rise.
Very dumb.
But here's the part most of the stories don't tell you.
There's a part that's left out of most of the reporting.
See if you've even heard this.
It wasn't just that they bought a bunch of long-term low interest rate stuff and then when interest rates went up they had all this low interest rate stuff so they were underwater.
It wasn't just that.
It's that that would have been fine if the deposit flow had continued the way it normally did.
Did you know that?
That even their bad risk management wouldn't have been a crushing problem if the deposits had continued the way they had in the past.
But since their deposits took a hit, then their bad decision about interest rates became very obvious.
It rose to a problem when it wouldn't have risen to a problem except for the other situation.
Now, I've only seen a few people smart enough to explain that.
And they do explain it sometimes by saying it was like a Ponzi scheme, but not really.
It's not a Ponzi scheme.
Only in the sense that as long as more money came in, if enough new money came in, it could cover the mistakes made with the old money.
I guess that's the easiest way to say it.
So they had two problems and it looks like they misjudged both of them.
But I'm not sure it was as obvious when it was happening as it is to us after the fact.
Because if they were depending on the inflows and there was nothing that looked like it was going to stop it, it's risky and it's too risky and it shouldn't have happened.
But now let's double back to Dodd-Frank.
I don't know the answer to this question.
So maybe you do?
Even without Dodd-Frank, is there no reporting at all about the risk management position of a bank?
How was it that Peter Thiel knew?
How did Peter Thiel know?
He's not even the government.
It must be so obvious that the Dodd-Frank wouldn't have made any difference at all.
So I think the Dodd-Frank reporting seems like fake news.
Am I wrong?
And here's what I mean.
With or without Dodd-Frank, was this problem at Silicon Bank not so obvious that the government regulators could see it, as well as all private investors who were paying attention?
What am I missing?
It seems to me that Dodd-Frank has nothing to do with this.
So here's my stake in the ground.
I don't believe the news, just sort of in general.
The news is very inaccurate.
But I feel like the whole Dodd-Frank thing is a diversion.
Because the problem wasn't hidden deeply in the paperwork of the company.
It was the biggest top-line thing they were doing.
Hey, where's your money?
Where'd you put all your money?
Are you telling me that even without Dodd-Frank, the government can't see that?
The banks don't have to at least report what their capital situation is.
I don't believe that.
You're telling me the only Dodd-Frank requires you to tell where you put your money in the biggest, most visible way?
I don't know.
I feel like all the reporting is broken.
It's just garbage.
We're like picking through the tea leaves here to figure out what we can know about this thing.
Anyway, I think the Dodd-Frank thing is bullshit.
I think the wokeness thing is unproven.
I think it was probably an individual who was bad at their job.
I think it probably comes down to one person who was bad at their job, and then a bunch of people who were bad at knowing who was bad at their job.
You know, whoever the boss was also was asleep at the switch.
I think that's going to be the whole story.
All right.
There was a video that was viral on Twitter in which a young woman said some version of she wouldn't want to work with people who have pronouns in their profiles.
And I thought, hey, there's something that I can talk about without getting cancelled.
So I thought, wouldn't the world be better off if I say this out loud?
So I tweeted, I'll say it out loud, too.
I would never hire a person with pronouns in their bio.
It signals an anti-success mindset.
Now, last I checked, there were close to 5 million views.
And I can't tell how Twitter does this.
I can't tell if the 5 million are based on the original video that I retweeted with a comment.
Or the 5 million isn't my number, right?
Does anybody know how that works?
Yeah.
5 million views would be the original video, not the fact that I retweeted it.
So it's not my retweet that's showing.
Right?
Because I don't think I got 5 billion views on my retweet.
Right?
Somebody's confirming that.
Yeah, I think it's total.
It would make more sense it's total, wouldn't it?
But whether it was from my retweet or original, which said about the same thing, 5 million people said, Speaking as one, almost, and instantly, yeah, I would not hire somebody with pronouns.
Now, let me ask you this.
When young people are told, hey, pronouns are good, that's good, put them in your bio and lead with your pronoun, is there anybody telling them that it's going to destroy their career options?
It won't necessarily destroy their life, because they still have options, but the number of options that they have will be insanely fewer.
Now here's what it signals to me if I see pronouns.
I just met you.
Here's something I need you to do for me.
That's how it comes off to me.
Hi, we just met.
Here's something I need you to do for me.
That's a losing first impression.
Worst first impression you can make.
If you're going for a job interview, you come in telling what you can do for them, and you never stop saying it.
The only time you ever talk about what they can do for you is when they make an offer.
When they make an offer, you know, you can negotiate that and the benefits and stuff.
Of course.
Because now that's the approved time for that conversation.
That's when your boss wants you to tell him.
Or her.
Alright, your boss is looking for you to say what you need.
But you don't start with what you need.
You don't walk in and say, The beginning of this conversation, I'd like to make it clear, I'll only work under these conditions.
Nobody says that.
But when you come in with your pronouns, you're saying, here's how you're going to treat me.
And if I'm not treated in this way, I'm signaling, that could be a problem.
That could be a problem.
Oh, I might not sue.
I might not necessarily sue.
But if somebody else sued you, I'd probably back them.
I'd probably back them if somebody else did.
Because that's the way you are.
You don't like my pronouns.
So it's such a, it's a signal that somebody doesn't understand the basics of success.
The basic elements of success.
Who is it who doesn't understand that a first impression is really important?
Does anybody not understand that?
And yet the pronoun people seem to have missed the biggest part of what they're doing.
That it has an impact on other people.
Now if they hang around in their little clump of people, they probably just get praise for what they're doing.
But somebody needs to tell them this affects their career.
And not just if it's on your resume, but if it's on your social media.
Look at the comments from hiring managers.
Those are the chilling ones.
The people who do hiring for a living are, at least in the comments, are universally, close to universally, saying, yeah, I throw away every resume, even if the pronouns are only on their social media.
Like, that's really happening.
It's a pretty big problem that the woke people do not realize that wokeness is nearly the complete opposite of success.
Like all the concepts of everything from racism to wokeism.
They sound good at the moment, and if you're standing in the room with the persons you're talking about, it feels right.
But any sense of what it takes to succeed in this world is violated completely by every element of that philosophical framework.
So, if you want to be righteous and poor, that would be the way to go.
If you want to be successful, I would do the things that successful people do.
Too dangerous to hire former cartoonists.
Yes, I'm making it dangerous for all cartoonists.
So, other people said, yeah, it signals, other hiring people were saying, it signals the hires give a lawsuit.
How many of you think that somebody who has pronouns is more likely to initiate a lawsuit against the boss?
Everybody does.
Literally everybody.
I would think that even the people with the pronouns would agree with the statement that the people with pronouns are more likely to voice an important complaint in that realm.
It's a signal.
And more generally, I would say I don't want to spend time near any cluster of white people who have been poisoned with the wokeness narrative.
And I'd say stay the hell away from white people who have that mindset.
So I was looking at some of the people who believe the headlines and they were saying, you're a racist.
Now, is it a racist?
Is it racist to not want to be around people who have been infected with a certain mindset?
Is that racist?
If you take away the hyperbole, of course I said it in the most provocative way, but the context, for anybody who missed the context, was mindset.
Did anybody hear me say I don't like the genetic makeup of somebody?
Did I ever say that?
Did I ever say, I think some group of people are born with some characteristic and I want to stay away from them because of the way they were born?
No.
That's literally the opposite of anything I've ever said.
Mike's an NPC.
So on my NPC list, one of the things is backpedaling.
When all you do is clarify your position, there's always an NPC who says, oh, there's the backpedaling.
Or the fence sitting.
Those are all the NPC comments.
Now, it's not backpedaling to re-describe exactly what you said the first time.
The entire context was people being infected with the woke virus.
Let me ask you this.
If you knew there were a bunch of people who had the alpha version of COVID, Would you want to spend a lot of time in the room?
Suppose you didn't know which ones had COVID and which ones didn't.
Is that racist?
Would that be racist?
No.
You're just saying this identifiable group of people has a little more COVID at the moment.
For whatever reason, I'd rather stay away from the virus.
But if that same group of people, no matter who they are, had a wokeness virus where their priorities were about the identity as opposed to success, that's the best way to say it.
My definition of wokeness, that's the quickest one that gets to the point, it's a preference for identity over success.
Because you can't play both at the same time.
I mean, you could try, but it's not going to be as good, because there are too many conflicts.
For example, you know, I gave you the whole list before, but if you're looking at the past and, you know, the evil of the past, that's the opposite of a mindset of, I can do anything, nothing's going to stop me, you know, look at the future.
It's just opposite.
So that's the way I think of it.
So stay away from people who have that mindset, and that's why when I had my Little provocations.
That's why black conservatives, even if they were shocked by the way I introduced the topic, once they heard what I was saying, the black conservatives were like, oh, I see what you're saying.
I'm probably better if you didn't say it that way, but I see what you're saying.
It was a mindset thing.
If it had been a black thing, do you think black conservatives would have given me a pass?
What do you think?
Do you think black conservatives would have said, oh, I don't mind you being a racist because I'm a conservative?
Said no black conservative ever since the beginning of time?
No.
No.
Black conservatives know what racism looks like.
It's not something like mystery concept.
They know exactly what it looks like.
They looked at my situation and said, no, that's a mindset thing.
I get it.
That's a mindset thing.
All right.
How badly does TikTok own our media in this country?
Because the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are reporting that the Biden administration wants to look at having an American company buy TikTok so that we wouldn't have this data security problem.
I don't even see this story on CNN or Fox News today.
Did I miss it?
Like, I looked at the front pages.
Like, this is news from late yesterday.
But it was on the Fox website?
I guess all I'm saying is it's weirdly under-reported in the general media.
But the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal focused on it.
So, I'm wondering, is there something happening here that I don't know about?
Like, you don't usually see this.
If you don't study the media, here's what you need to know.
If the New York Times reports on a thing, they're what's called newsmakers, like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
They make the news, and then the lesser entities decide to talk about it because the news has been determined.
This is the important framework of how to see today that's set by the big outlets, like New York Times.
And then the others all just got to get on board and talk about it.
But that didn't happen this time.
Why not?
Why didn't that happen?
I've never seen this before, that I can think of.
I've never seen the biggest publications talk about it, and then the minor ones sort of act like it's not too important.
There's something going on.
There's some kind of distortion in the system.
Yeah, I mean, I assume some China effect.
But here's what we know.
So the Democrats apparently are more interested in keeping TikTok alive.
We understand that they think they get their message out to their base a little bit better because they appeal to younger people and TikTok's a younger person sort of thing.
So you can understand why the Democrats want to keep it alive.
But in the telling of the story, even in the Wall Street Journal, correct me if I'm wrong, if I read this wrong, but I don't think the Wall Street Journal mentioned any risk other than data security.
What's that tell you?
It tells me the Wall Street Journal is corrupted by China.
Because the big risk, and at this point the Wall Street Journal should know, is the influence risk.
But if the Wall Street Journal reported the influence risk, China wouldn't like that.
The data security risk is one that China can't argue about.
That's just pretty straightforward stuff.
Data security?
All right.
What are you going to say about that?
No, you shouldn't have any data security?
But the conversation China doesn't want to have is that they can push the heat button, literally it's called the heat button, and make anything go viral, which means they can program American young people with one button.
Not that's not hyperbole.
That's an actual literal scientific direct cause and effect known completely.
Every part of this is known and confirmed.
They can Change your mind in America with one button, just by making one message more prevalent than another.
That's all it takes.
Persuasion is mostly repetition from the source that you trust, basically.
And the Wall Street Journal, I think, didn't even mention that.
How do you interpret the weird holes in the coverage?
That even though the Wall Street Journal is covering it, because it's a huge business story, that they don't even mention the biggest risk?
The whole reason that it's like a major problem, they're talking about the little one.
It won't solve, oh, that's right.
And some of the argument is that it won't solve the security concern.
Some say selling it won't, that's what TikTok says.
TikTok says selling it won't solve the security concern.
That's a diversion.
The security concern, again, is the small problem.
That's the small problem.
If they can make you just think about that, then they get to keep their persuasion button.
That's the big problem.
So, the Treasury Department's been stalling on this, and there's talk about having an American company buy it.
But then, there's talk about having an American company only buy whatever assets would control the safety of the data.
And maybe still the he button is in China.
That's not a solution.
But it's probably what we're going to do, because the public doesn't understand the real risk.
So they'll accept, oh, the government says there was a problem, and we solved it.
And then the Democrats will say, well, I'm glad they solved that problem they identified, even though it wasn't the right problem.
And it wasn't the big one.
All right.
The Pentagon and the Justice Department are in favor of killing TikTok.
And it's not happening.
Just hold that thought in your head.
The Pentagon and the Justice Department, which are, you know, under the control of the Democrats, essentially.
The Pentagon and the Justice Department are in favor of killing TikTok.
And it's not happening.
I don't know if I mentioned that the Pentagon and the justice system are in favor of killing it, and it's not happening.
But also, did you know the Pentagon and the justice system are in favor of killing it, and it's not happening?
That's everything you need to know right there.
Took them two years, and they have everything they need to know.
The Pentagon wants to stop it.
It's a national security problem.
How is this not getting through?
Now obviously the answer is it is getting through.
And the Democrats just want TikTok for political reasons.
Now you know what else is not being discussed?
The availability for children.
Because those are two different questions.
One is do you let children use TikTok?
A terrible idea.
And two, does anybody use TikTok because it can influence our elections and blah blah blah.
And somehow these articles just sort of gloss over that it's damaging to children.
Clearly damaging to children.
Obviously damaging to children.
Yeah, everything about this is corrupt.
So the Democrats have literally chosen China over the United States in terms of security, and Democrats over their own children.
They're choosing power over the well-being of their own children.
And it's obvious, and it's direct.
It's not indirect.
This isn't like, did wokeness have some kind of an impact on Silicon Valley?
I don't know.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
But this is direct.
Everybody knows that a 13-year-old on TikTok is going to have some mental health problems.
We all know that.
And we're not doing it.
It's just amazing that the Democrats can do this right in front of us.
Right in front of you.
And it makes no difference at all.
It's like the government could not be more broken.
Alright, here's Vivek Ramaswamy talking about Silicon Valley Bank.
And I'm going to disagree with him here, even though I've endorsed him.
He talks about...
So I'll give you the lead up.
He goes, SVB's ESG report lists a litany of, quote, cross-function working groups, including a sustainable finance group that monitors progress against their climate commitment and monitors operational greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.
And then Vivek says, he sums up by saying, taxpayers shouldn't vindicate Silicon Valley's political hubris.
Does that make sense to you?
That taxpayers shouldn't vindicate their political hubris?
No, that doesn't make any sense.
Because the leaders have all been punished.
The leaders aren't getting a benefit.
They lost their jobs and their reputations.
They got cleaned out.
The investors got cleaned out.
But Vivek is Treating the depositors, who did nothing wrong.
Depositors trusted their government.
And they shouldn't have.
Because I would have trusted the government to be watching the banks.
Didn't you?
Didn't you think the government was watching, you know, at least the capital allocation part?
I just thought that was basic government stuff.
You said no?
Some people said no.
I just assumed they were.
But I also assumed that most depositors feel that the government's got their back.
So, confusing the depositors, who were just victims of this, with the management who were culpable, and then the investors in the bank who, at least they were professional investors, so, you know, they were taking the risk that You know, any investor takes.
So you can't feel, you know, two crocodile tears for the investors and the managers.
But to act as though the depositors, who are the victims, I don't see how that could possibly hurt us in the long run if we don't let the victims be victims.
I feel like the management got punished enough That it would make them not want to do it a second time?
Is there anybody who's going to look at Silicon Valley Bank and say, all right, all right, if we do the same thing and we manage poorly, OK, this could work out.
At least our depositors will be covered by the government.
And the only bad thing that will happen to me is I'll lose my job and my reputation.
Okay, I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna do it.
Because the depositors are covered.
I feel like Vivek is just completely wrong on this.
What do you think?
As soon as you conflate the depositor risk with the bank management risk, you're in crazy town.
That doesn't make any sense.
Vivek is totally right.
So you think the depositors who are innocent should suffer Because the management did something and the government was not doing their oversight.
So therefore the depositors should suffer.
Okay?
So people say yes.
As long as you can say yes to the full proposition, then at least you have a consistent opinion.
I respect consistent opinions.
I don't agree with it because I think there would have been a bank run.
I think the risk of a bank run was too big.
So that the benefit to you It was probably large.
Probably large.
Now, none of us know whether the bank run would have happened or not, or even if it happens yet.
But it definitely would have made a higher chance.
I don't think there's any doubt of that.
Would you doubt that there was a higher chance of a bank run if the depositors had not been covered?
How about that?
Would you agree that there would be higher risk?
But we don't know if it would have happened.
It just would have been a higher risk.
Okay, so here's my wrap-up of that.
That's not a higher risk I would tolerate at any level.
The risk of a bank run, you want that to be zero.
Like 10% risk of a bank run?
No thank you.
Nope, nope.
I don't want a 10% risk of a bank run.
If I can bring that to five, I'm gonna spend a lot of money to do it.
All right.
I saw Sam Harris was getting some attention for saying that, he was using Candace Owens more as an example, I think, that he said she isn't worthy of having opinions on vaccines or climate change.
Do you agree with that?
Do you think Candace Owens, I hate the words he's using, not worthy of, I think he means not credentialed enough, but not worthy, says Sam Harris, of having opinions on vaccines and climate change.
Well, let's compare her to the experts, shall we?
I think he raises a good question.
Should you trust Candace Owens more than the experts?
Here's my first question, Sam.
Have you compared their track records?
Seriously.
Have you compared everything Candace Owens has ever said on all kinds of topics?
Because we all talk about all the news.
She doesn't talk about some of the news, she talks about it all.
All the big stuff.
Have you looked at what she said about everything, every part of the pandemic, every part of anything else, and compare that to the experts?
If you tell me that you know she did worse than the experts, I would say, how do you know that?
How do you know that?
Where's that evidence?
Because anecdotally, I don't see it.
Do you?
I do see things that, in my opinion, she got wrong, which would be true of every person.
Being wrong is not any kind of a criticism, really.
More of an observation.
We're all wrong.
Like, everybody gets to be wrong if you do this kind of work.
So, I would just put that out there, that I don't think there's any evidence that she has not beaten the experts, because she does have one skill.
She has lots of skills, but one skill that stands out.
What would that be?
What would be a good Candace Owens' skill, right, BS detector, that is correct.
Her BS detector is pretty good.
And somebody with a good BS detector can beat the experts.
They can beat the experts.
All they do is they focus on the ones that are obviously wrong.
Now, if you said, I'd like to use Candace Owens as my doctor for all of my medical issues, well, I would think that would be a bad idea.
I would go with an actual doctor in that case.
But, if the medical community tells you that, let's say, oh, I don't know, that drinking alcohol might be good for your health, how about that?
That's the one that I called in as bullshit 20 years ago, and now it's more and more clear that that was never true.
Am I a doctor?
Would Sam Harris think that you should listen to me over the medical community?
Yes, you should.
Yes, you should.
In that specific question, yes, you should.
Because I identified the bullshit, the reason for it, the entire mechanism of why anybody would have said it, the reason that some of the studies agreed with each other.
I laid it all out.
It was all right.
Every bit of it was right, as far as we know.
That's the current understanding.
Having smart people with BS detectors tell you that something from the medical community is not true, there are people who can do that and do have a little track record of doing it.
Again, not everything.
Not everything.
But nobody gets everything right.
All right, here's an example of the experts.
All right, trust the experts.
By coincidence, there were two tweets that were right next to each other physically on Twitter in my feed because I was looking for long COVID.
One of the stories was from Scientific America and it said that long COVID is a neurological disease and maybe 16 million people have it.
And it's even young, healthy people and, you know, other estimates say it could be like 40% of people who had COVID might have long COVID and it's really bad and blah, blah, blah.
Do you know what they don't mention anywhere in the article?
Do you know what's not mentioned?
It's a whole big Scientific America article about long COVID.
They never mentioned the possibility that it's a vaccination problem.
Now, I don't think it is.
But how do you rule that out?
How in the world do you keep that out of the article?
That's a giant tell.
It's a gigantic tell for this being a plant by the pharma industry.
What it looks like is we're being primed for drugs that treat long COVID.
That's what it looks like.
It does not look like this was a real article.
It looks like a fake article, meaning that it was influenced by somebody who has a longer-term agenda.
Because I don't think you could write this honestly without at least saying, you know, half the country thinks it's the vaccinations, and we don't really know.
It did point to a study, which I had not seen, that said that the vaccination, if it had any beneficial impact on long COVID, it was sort of in the 15% range, 1.5, and that wasn't as much of a benefit as they had imagined.
Now let me ask you this.
If you knew that long COVID was real, and not the kind that lasts a month, but the kind that lasts apparently the rest of your life, if you knew that was real, Would you take a 15% chance of reducing it by accepting whatever the risk of the vaccination itself is?
Say no.
Well, so you would say that more than 15% No, let me do the numbers right.
It's not 100% of people get long COVID.
So it's a 15% chance you would help a little bit on something that's only a percentage of the population.
So first of all, you wouldn't know if you would be the one who got long COVID or were susceptible.
And then there would only be a 15% chance that if you were in the group who might get it, it would be better.
Now, if you were, let's say, older and you had comorbidities, the speculation is that the worse your COVID is, the higher your chance of long COVID.
But clearly, at this point, the long COVID doesn't seem to be a big factor for vaccinations.
Now, that was one of my biggest variables.
One of my biggest variables was, well, I don't know, but I don't want long COVID.
So if it makes any difference to that, I'd like to reduce my long COVID risk.
But, I don't think we know anything about anything.
The very next article that was next to this one, saying that long COVID has all these problems, there's another expert saying, yeah, it's the shots.
It's the vaccination.
Yeah, it's not long COVID, it's just the vaccination giving you these long problems.
Do I believe that?
No.
But I don't rule it out.
How can I rule it out?
But also, how can I believe it?
So basically, it's a claim that I just look at and go, I don't know.
Could be.
So my best guess is that both COVID and the vaccination harm some people.
What do you think?
Best guess, both the vaccination and the COVID will harm some people.
Now, if you think you know which one would harm them the most, I think that gets into pretty vague territory there.
But it could go either way.
I would say I'd be open to it going either way.
Now, given that I was far more concerned about long COVID than death, I don't know.
I guess we're just all guessing.
In the end, we're all guessing.
I know you weren't.
You were reading the tea leaves correctly, weren't you?
From the very beginning.
From the very beginning.
Well, we all think that, but I won't talk you out of it.
To me, I would say that both the... Here's my take.
While I think it's likely that both the vaccination and the COVID could hurt some types of people, I don't know which group would be bigger, and I'm not sure I would ever believe any data that told me one way or the other.
I feel like we're in territory that you will never be able to trust any data in that realm.
I don't think I ever would.
But I will say this for sure.
Some portion of it is fake.
Some portion of what people are reporting as long COVID is certainly not.
I just don't know what percentage that is.
So there's, on top of whatever is almost certainly a real medical thing, on top of it, there's definitely a mass hysteria.
There's a mass hysteria about the shots, and there's a mass hysteria about the COVID, and long COVID.
If you see somebody with long COVID, how do you know they wouldn't have had a problem Anyway.
Well, how do you know?
If you take a bunch of people and make them sedentary for two years, and you ruin their mental health, and you make them fat and overweight, and then they complain later that they have a constellation of different symptoms.
See, here's the tell for a mass hysteria.
This is what would make me believe long COVID was real.
Every time we see long COVID, it's the same symptom.
Yeah, it's always brain fog.
Let's just say.
But people don't do that.
They say, oh, I have 15 different problems.
And the next person will come in and say, well, I have 15 problems, too.
They're not even the same as the last person.
That's a tell for mass hysteria.
Not a guarantee.
Not a guarantee.
It's entirely medically possible that one thing could cause a variety of symptoms in lots of different realms.
It's just unlikely.
It's just unlikely.
If you see that possibility, you go, well, maybe.
But a mass hysteria would be like, I don't know, 80% of the time, that would be the explanation.
Probably, probably 80.
So too many, too many explanations for a thing means it's probably false.
And too many symptoms for a thing is a real strong signal that they're not all real.
If something is real, to either the long COVID or the long vaccination, I guess, if there's something real, probably the total constellation of symptoms is in the, you know, three or fewer.
But when you see 15, There's something else going on top of whatever's real.
There's something not real happening.
Same thing I said about the so-called sonic secret weapon being used on the embassies, which we now believe did not exist.
But yet, there were all these people with real problems.
The people who were diagnosed with all kinds of problems from what they thought could have been a secret sonic weapon, they had real problems.
So just like these COVID people, and maybe vaccination injury, but we don't know, they probably have real problems.
But people do.
People just have real problems.
All right.
Rasmussen did a poll on Trump and said 52% of likely voters view Trump favorably.
Does that sound possible?
We're talking not We're not talking Republicans, we're talking all registered voters.
52% of them have a positive feeling.
Do you think it's because things are going so poorly that everything Trump did looks smarter?
Which was one of my best predictions, wasn't it?
Do you remember when I predicted that?
When he lost, I said, every day he's going to look better.
And part of the reason I said was because the Democrats either have to do what he did, the stuff that works, or they have to do the opposite of what he did, and it's going to fail miserably, and you're going to see it.
Such as the border.
Biden just sort of had to do whatever Trump didn't, and huge failure.
Everybody can see it.
What about the war in Ukraine?
We know how Trump usually handled stuff by threatening and being so unpredictable that nobody wanted to mess with him.
Don't know that that would have worked every time.
Don't know that it would have worked in this specific case in Ukraine.
But everybody can see that he had a process that worked and Biden's got us into a major war.
Like it's hard to miss that.
Everybody can see that the economy seemed good under Trump and now not so good.
Now, of course, the Democrats will blame Trump for weakening Dodd-Frank, but they'll never explain how that's connected.
Maybe it's real.
Maybe it's real.
I wonder if there's just a polling problem here.
But typically you'd get Trump under-reported, right?
His supporters would be under-reported, typically.
But now it seems the other way.
I don't know.
This one's a puzzler.
All right, let's check on a couple of my predictions.
Now, some of you get annoyed when I tell you I got a prediction right.
But you should understand that that's what we do here.
I make predictions, and then later I tell you if they were wrong or right.
And that's how you can judge whether I'm good at predicting.
And then maybe we learn something about what kind of things you can and cannot predict.
So part of the fun is I have to check my predictions.
Right?
So the bragging, if I get one right, I can't help that.
Because I do the ones that I get wrong as well.
How many of the 2,000 mules have been found so far?
Anybody?
Did we find those 2,000 mules?
The ones who allegedly We're dropping off all of those ballots.
And we had cameras, we had cell phone data.
No, we didn't have cameras everywhere, but we had cell phone data.
I believe zero have been found.
Can somebody confirm?
We found zero.
Do you remember my prediction?
My prediction was the lack of finding a mule, even at the beginning.
was a huge red flag.
And I said, you're going to have to wait to see if they find a mule.
If they find no mules, that's all you need to know.
If they do find mules, if they had found two mules, I would be pretty persuaded that there are more mules.
But zero mules.
Zero.
So I'm going to call this an accurate, maybe not prediction, But a framing of it.
The accurate framing was there's something obviously missing, which is at least one mule, and that if that's not produced in a fairly short amount of time, let's say give it a year.
A year?
Is a year enough?
I think a year's enough.
Give it a year, and then form your opinion.
So we've given it a year, and now I form my opinion that it was not persuasive.
Anybody disagree?
So I think that I'm going to claim that as a reasonable take.
It wasn't a prediction because I couldn't predict which way it would go.
But it was a reasonable take.
It was a wait and see take.
And I think that was the right way.
All right.
Here's one that I can't even pretend not to brag about this one.
This is going to be a little bit braggy.
I've been telling you that I think Putin is trying to degrade the Wagner group.
And he actually wants his own side to get ground down so that Wagner doesn't have too much power in Russia after it's done?
Well, it turns out that's a growing opinion.
So this is from CNN, I think, talking about the Wagner group.
And apparently there are people who know what they're talking about who are now agreeing with that take.
Let me read this from CNN.
This is Pergrosian, the head of the Wagner Group.
He's spent heavily on recruiting as many as 40,000 prisoners to throw into the fight.
But they've had staggering losses and are complaining about not having enough ammunitions and not having reinforcements and stuff.
All while accusing Russia's Ministry of Defense of trying to strangle his forces.
So right now, Wagner, the head of the Wagner Group, Pergrosian, is saying what I said.
That it's intentional.
It's not a shortage.
The rush is trying to take him out.
Now, if he's the only one who said it, well, that wouldn't be that persuasive, because maybe that's just a way to get more ammo.
But, here's what CNN says, quote, many analysts, many analysts, That Russia's military establishment is using the Bakhmut meat grinder to cut him down to size or eliminate him as a political force altogether.
That's what I predicted.
Now, am I the first person you heard say it?
Yes or no?
I believe I'm the first public person who said, it looks to me that Putin wants to kill his own general.
And now that is, according to CNN, it's what quote, many analysts think, and it's what Prokhorchin thinks himself.
Now, can you give me the win for that?
Do I get the win for that?
I suppose it's too early to know for sure, right?
Can't know for sure, because it was a little bit of a Putin mind-reading situation.
But I did front-run the experts.
So I guess that's the only thing I could claim.
I'll claim that I saw it earlier than the experts are saying it in public.
They may have seen it earlier privately.
Now, I think that was one of my best predictions.
Now that prediction, here's what you learn from the predictions.
What you learn is which kinds of predictions will work.
I believe that when I make a prediction that's based on organizational infighting, you should pay attention.
All right?
I'm really, really good at the category of organizational intrigue and infighting.
It's sort of the whole Dilbert realm.
It's what I do for a living.
It's figuring out how people deal with each other in group situations.
So I think I just saw it faster, because my brain is tuned to, you know, group intrigue.
Like, group intrigue is what I focus on and write about every day.
It's group intrigue.
And this was group intrigue.
One group against another.
So I think I just had a filter that works.
Now what should you not believe me on?
I think I'm also pretty good at detecting BS.
You know, not 100%.
But there are definitely things you shouldn't trust me on.
I'll give you an example.
When I predicted who Trump would pick for a vice president.
Don't believe me on that.
That's something that You'd have to be a real insider to even know what's going on there.
Because there's lots of deal-making and, you know, what state is this, and who did this, and who likes whom, who gets along personally.
I can't predict any of that.
But... I can't predict any of that.
All right.
I saw a story, I think this was also CNN, where nearly 90% of blueberries and green bean samples had concerning findings of insecticides.
Like, a lot.
Like, 51 different pesticides.
Now, not on each bean, but beans in general, I guess, have 51 different pesticides.
And I guess there are some types of foods that have fewer pesticides, but blueberries and beans have tons.
Now, have we not been told by experts forever to eat some more blueberries and beans?
Am I wrong that blueberries and beans have always been, like, right on the high end of things that are good for you?
And science didn't stop to tell us, however, however, we don't like to say this, they're very, very good for you, and also coated with poison.
Well, but the blueberry's good for you.
Can I buy a blueberry that's not coated with pesticides?
Well, that's not what we're talking about.
That's another issue.
But if you could get the blueberry, like if you could somehow get it out from underneath all the pesticides that have, you know, completely absorbed within it, if you could do that, that blueberry would be good for you.
And then you say, all right, all right, if I could get the pesticides off it that I can't, the blueberry would be good for me, hypothetically.
But Are you the same people that told me that the food pyramid was the way to eat?
Well, yes.
Yes.
Wait a minute.
And that was complete bullshit, wasn't it?
Maybe.
Maybe a little bit.
So why would I believe anything you say about blueberries being good for me?
Because we're scientists.
We're scientists.
I don't know what to believe.
My current belief is that our food supplies are killing us.
I don't think that's a strong statement.
I think that our food, that in the same way that maybe Dodd-Frank didn't do a good job on regulation, maybe, I don't know, I feel like our food industry is unregulated in the sense that they can sell us poison and we can't do anything about it because we don't have options.
Like even the free market can't help us because we don't have good options.
Now I kind of get that you need the pesticides to get the quantity, but is it literally true that we decided to keep people from starving but we'd have to poison them?
So you won't starve, so you're not going to die this week.
But I guarantee you, your 60s aren't going to work out well for you.
Because you've been eating poison for 60 years.
I feel like that's a conscious choice.
That we couldn't grow enough food without making it unhealthy.
So we choose unhealthy food and go, well, it's the best we can do.
Grow your own.
So I've been doing an experiment with my own health.
When I can, which is harder than you think, I'm trying to go a full day with only eating things that don't have preservatives and weird stuff on it.
So I'll add some butter to some broccoli, but I won't go crazy beyond that.
And I feel completely better.
I feel that when I eat clean, I actually feel better, and it feels immediate.
It doesn't feel like I don't know, you know, in general, maybe those days were better.
No, it feels like today, I actually feel better.
Because I've been doing this lately, especially.
And when I look at any kind of packaging that's got, you know, this full paragraph of chemicals in it, if I avoid those, the ones that have like the full paragraph of chemicals, you know, my nasal passages don't clog up.
I don't get inflammation.
Like it doesn't hurt to stand up.
I mean, just basic pain of life goes away if I just eat clean for two days, basically.
Try it!
So here's a recommendation.
I know that you would not enjoy the food if you tried this.
Because it'd be like, you know, eat a lean steak and have some vegetables with, you know, little or nothing on them.
Maybe a little butter or pepper or something, right?
And just try it for two days.
Try for two days eating nothing that has a paragraph of additives.
And feel if you feel different.
I believe you will.
I believe you will.
So no fast food, nothing from a can or a process box.
Just like if you can hold the broccoli in your hand and get organic, right?
Now I don't think the pesticides Give you any immediate bad feeling.
I just worry about them in the long term, sort of a cumulative thing.
But the additives, I believe, immediately make you feel bad.
I believe they immediately make you feel bad, as in the same day.
The sulfites are, yeah, my big problem.
Sulfites are just my nemesis.
And by the way, did you know that sulfites are not always listed in the ingredients?
There's some kind of law that allows them to not list it.
It's one of those.
It's the thing I'm allergic to, and they don't have to list it.
So, how happy am I about that?
I think I'm right about that.
I need a fact check on that, but I think I'm right.
All right.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, Brings us to the conclusion of my prepared remarks.
I like to think we're doing important work here.
What do you think?
Important work?
Let me ask you a question.
Because I have to, maybe I've asked this before, so it's going to sound like I'm asking for a compliment or something.
I'm not.
I'm actually, I'm curious about this.
And I'm more curious what the YouTube people say because the locals people are going to get the right answer because they know me better.
But the YouTube viewers, probably they're more new people in this stream than normal.
How many of you on YouTube would say that I have an influence on national political events?
That I personally have an influence on national political events?
Yes or no?
All right, so I'll let you know.
On locals, everybody's saying yes.
And you're correct.
You are correct.
I thought there'd be more of a mixture on YouTube.
But if you think the answer is no, ask yourself why so many people are saying yes.
Right?
Yeah.
Now, to my point about whether I was cancelled for political reasons, right?
Now keep in mind that nobody on the political right cancelled me or believed that I should have been cancelled.
I think none.
On the political left it was pretty much universal.
I should be cancelled.
Knowing that I influence politics, do you think the cancellation was political?
Do you think it was political?
Having just answered that I moved the needle on politics.
Yeah, yes.
Now, was that obvious in the fog of war?
On the day that I was cancelled, was it obvious to you that it was a political move and it wasn't so much about anybody's outrage?
Was that obvious to you?
Locals people say yes.
YouTube, it's a little mixed.
Some people are saying no.
But now it's obvious, isn't it?
Would you agree it's obvious now?
And I would say that the best evidence of that is that black conservatives didn't have a problem.
They had a reaction and some curiosity, and that's all perfectly appropriate.
But when they heard the context, they were like, OK, that makes sense.
So if you believe that this was because I said something outrageous, and that's why I got canceled, That's actually fake news.
That is actually fake news.
It is yet again another prominent example of a, you know, basically a hoax.
I don't want to call it a hoax because that implies some kind of intention.
But with or without intention, and I would also say, regardless of what the thought process was of the people who cancelled me, it's still political.
Because they wouldn't have made the decision if I were black or a Democrat.
Everybody knows that.
Every one of you knows that if I'd been black or just a Democrat, I wouldn't have been cancelled.
Of course not.
Of course not.
It is 100% political.
Which doesn't mean it wasn't offensive.
Because remember, I did it to be offensive, to attract attention to what I thought would be a useful point.
And still will do that, by the way.
It still will be useful.
I just have to clean up some things on Prisoner Island first.
Progress is good, by the way.
Progress is good.
Now, do you think that I've already moved the battleship of opinion?
Because do you think on day one I could have gotten most of the people on YouTube to say, yeah, it's obviously political?
No.
There's no way to do it on day one.
If I'd said that on day one, you would have laughed at me.
You would have laughed.
You would have absolutely laughed.
Oh, yeah.
It's political.
I got it.
I got it.
It's totally political.
You would have mocked me mercilessly.
But once the fog of war clears, and you can see that it lined up completely politically, it didn't even line up by race, of all things.
The opinions did not line up by race.
It was only by politics.
It was all political from the beginning.
All right.
John says, I think the battleship is sunk.
John, you have no faith in me.
This isn't the first time I've been cancelled.
It's the fourth.
Or fifth.
I'm more cancelled than... I have so much practice getting cancelled for my gender and my race.
It's the fourth time.
Two corporate jobs.
One TV show, because they decided to have a black-only night, and they cancelled mine.
And then this.
Four cancellations that would not have happened if I'd been black.
That's just a fact.
That's four cancellations, two careers, no, three careers, four careers.
I've lost four careers for not being black.
Being female would have helped a little bit, but being black would have really helped.
Now, do you believe those claims, by the way?
Do you believe my claim that I really was told by my bosses directly, you can't be promoted here because you're white?
Yeah.
Anybody who is white and lived through the 80s and 90s, you all know it's true.
Every one of you knows it's true because it happened to you.
Somehow black America never heard of this.
Which always amazes me, which has nothing to do with black America.
You know, there are just as many things that black Americans know that I don't know.
So it's just, it's more about the bubble.
But there's a prominent journalist, I think Chicago paper, who has, he kept bothering me online because he thought my claims of being discriminated against for being white and male in my corporate jobs, he said I was making it up and that I couldn't You know, he wanted proof.
And I kept saying, you need proof from one person?
You could literally drive to San Francisco, flag down any white guy in his 50s, and say, hey, were you working here in the 80s and 90s?
Yes, I was.
Were white people, and white men in particular, discriminated against directly, in direct language, or not?
What would every 50 year old white guy who lives through that time tell you?
Oh yeah, massively.
Yeah.
It might not have happened to that one person, but they would all know that it happened to their brother, their cousin, their father, their mother, not their mother, but every 100% of them.
So I'm thinking, how could a journalist, and then here's where the trail died.
Since I was unwilling to produce the names and identities of my two bosses from the 80s and 90s, both of whom are likely to no longer be with us, because I think they were both older than me.
So they'd be in their 70s, and certainly retired by now.
And I'm not going to drag them, because I like both of those bosses, I'm not going to drag them through this.
The last thing they want to do is be contacted by the press to fact check this.
So I decided not to.
I said that I could, but then when I thought about it, I was like, that'd be kind of a crappy thing to do to them, so I don't want to do it.
And I thought it would be good enough to say, literally ask anybody.
You don't need me, just ask anybody, and you'll get the same answer.
Anybody who was white and male and lived through that time.
And he wasn't willing to do it.
And so I just tweeted, hey, did it happen to you?
And hundreds of people say, oh yeah, it happened to me.
It doesn't have any impact.
People are pretty locked into their beliefs.
So anyway, I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube for tonight.
