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May 21, 2023 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:08:20
Episode 2115 Scott Adams: Christie Announces, FBI Undercover Numbers on J6, Trump's VP Choice, More

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Trump VP choice speculation Is Biden lying or is it dementia? NAACP says stay away from Florida Jan 6th undercover agents Smartphones and mental health Christie announces ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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

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Good morning everybody and welcome to the Highlight of Civilization.
It's Cold Coffee with Scott Adams and you've never been luckier than you are at this moment if you're here live.
And if you're watching it recorded, second luckiest group of people in the world because this is going to be awesome.
Every day it is and sometimes it just keeps getting better.
And if you'd like today to be amazing, All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
There's a little bit of oxytocin in this one.
Yeah, it's special.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's called the simultaneous up.
Go.
I feel some of you are not simultaneous with that.
You'll need to work on your simultaneity to get the most benefits from it.
All right, well, let's talk about the news.
Chris Christie is going to be running for president.
What to say about that?
He's running for president.
And he's Chris Christie.
And he's running for president.
And if I haven't mentioned, he's running for president and his name is Chris Christie.
I feel as though everything else we say about this is a waste of words, isn't it?
Because nobody's really expecting a president Chris Christie, are they?
No.
And I don't feel, this time I don't feel like he's running for vice president.
In the past, you might have said, he might be running for vice president.
Really?
He's not really running for vice president.
So what exactly is he doing?
Maybe his job is to take out some of Trump's competitors.
Maybe his job is to take DeSantis out in a debate.
I don't know.
The whole thing seems puzzling.
Does Chris Christie think he has a chance?
Because it makes sense to run if you think there's some publicity benefit.
Yeah, you're selling a book.
If you're selling a book, that's a good idea.
But I don't really see his play, do you?
What's the play?
How in the world does that help him exactly?
Just make his speaking fees go up because he ran for president again?
I don't know.
I'm just confused by the whole thing.
Have any of you seen the video of Trump mocking Joe Biden for not knowing where to walk after he's done talking?
It's some of Trump's best work.
But now there's a video I saw on Truth, Dan Scavino tweeted around, that shows a split screen.
So you won't be able to see it well, but I just have to show you the artistry of this.
So, does it play?
Thank you.
Come on, play!
Do you think at least one time you'd get up and say, I'm running for president?
Where am I going?
Where the hell am I going?
I want to get out.
Oh, no, over there, over there.
So there's one thing I'm going to say with complete confidence.
I don't know who the best president would be.
Like, you know, let's have a little humility.
We don't really know.
I mean, it's hard to predict who the best president would be.
But there's one thing I can say for sure.
Trump would be the funniest.
He's the funniest president.
I mean, Reagan was pretty funny.
And I thought, you know, Clinton and Obama could deliver a punchline okay.
But Trump is genuinely hilarious.
If you like that kind of thing.
Anyway, I like that.
So Carrie Lake had an interesting quote that was so Trump-like.
So she was asked about being a vice president, if she wanted to be a vice president candidate with Trump, and she said, quote, I don't think he needs a vice president.
If there's ever one president who's so strong he doesn't need one, it would be him.
Now where did she learn that?
I'm going to read it again, but this time hear Trump's own voice.
It's a Carrie Lake quote, but this is a pure Trumpism.
Nobody but Trump would have ever said this until Trump existed, and now she's saying it.
But here's my take.
I think she's pacing him.
I think she's just acting exactly like he acts so that she'll look like a better choice for vice president.
Can you think of a better thing?
If you really wanted to be the vice presidential pick, could you think of a better way to say it than, he's the only president who doesn't even need a vice president.
He's so strong.
It sounds like something that Trump himself would say, or put in the words of his own doctor.
Do you remember when his doctor said he's like the strongest person in the world or something?
And you knew that Trump wrote it, which is what made it funny.
It was funny because it was obvious that Trump wrote it himself.
Well, this is that.
It's hilarious because it's so ridiculous.
But it's also hilarious because she seems to be matching or pacing Trump, basically acting like him, to be more, let's say, compatible with him.
It's pretty funny and also pretty good.
Pretty good technique.
Alright, so this story is more of the everything you thought was true was true, but if they wait long enough, your outrage is wearing off.
Have you noticed that the Democrats seem to have that technique?
Hey, we think you're, I don't know, whatever, sacrificing babies and satanic rituals.
No, we're not.
Oh, that is so ridiculous, conspiracy theorists.
We're not doing that.
Then two years goes by, and then somehow you find out every bit of it is true.
But your rage has started to wear off.
You're like, yeah, we told you.
Well, that was two years ago.
Are they doing it still?
I don't know.
I just can't get as angry about it because we're so old.
They just make you get used to anything.
And they do it over and over again.
It's like, oh, yeah, they really did do that thing.
I guess they did try to, well, OK.
Yes, they did try to overthrow the government of the United States with that laptop fake letter and the Russia collusion.
But that was a few years ago.
And it didn't work out.
And I don't know.
I just can't get mad about it like I could have in the past.
Here's something we found out along those lines.
Elon Musk was weighing in on this.
He was having the same reaction you're going to have, which is one of the reasons that the FBI says it won't release the January 6 surveillance videos is it would show, quote, too many undercover government agents and informants.
And so Musk weighed in and said, this is insane.
How many were there?
I mean, just approximately.
Like, are we talking dozens?
Are we talking up to 10?
Are we talking thousands?
Hundreds?
You know, just give us a ballpark.
Just give us a sense of the general structure there.
Well, then Michael Schellenberger responded with some source that said it was 100 to 200 informants or agents, basically under government people.
1 to 200.
Now, when you hear an estimate like that, do you think it's more likely on the low side or more likely on the high side?
Because 200's Twice as much as 100?
Yeah, I don't know.
Where would the information come from?
There's only one place it could come from, right?
It would have to come from a government source.
Would a government source want to lowball the number or highball the number?
If it came from a government source, would they want to tell you the most it was?
Or would they find a way to sort of minimize it by, you know, maybe counting these people as not exactly undercover?
Oh yeah, they were in disguise, but they weren't, you know, technically undercover.
You know, they would lowball it.
Probably.
If it came from an official source.
Because they wouldn't want you to think it was a high number.
If there were really If there were really 200 undercover people and we're just finding that out, wouldn't that be enough to pardon everybody involved?
Now, in the past, I've said, well, not the ones who did violence.
The ones who did violence, violence is violence.
You just have to treat that separately.
But now I'm starting to wonder if even you should pardon them.
Because at some point, it's not about the individuals.
At some point, it's about The bigger picture.
And the bigger picture is you can't do that.
You just can't do that.
Yes, they would be guilty.
And yes, I think the people who did violence should be punished in a just world.
But we don't live in a just world.
Sometimes you live in a world where you've got to make a statement.
And one statement I wouldn't mind seeing Is if you're going to screw the citizens that badly and then keep it a secret, they're all going free.
They're just all going free.
Which would be a terrible travesty to the victims of their crimes.
But I'd do it anyway.
Because I think there's a bigger play here.
I think this level of wrongness needs to be met with a large statement.
To at least give us some chance of remembering not to do it again.
So, I don't know, I think he's walking directly into the Trump re-election campaign.
And I think Vivek also said he'd be doing some pardoning, so that would give them some advantage.
All right, here's a question.
Is Biden lying or is this a case of dementia?
So in a speech Yesterday, probably, or over the weekend, he said, quote, I doubt many people would have said that two years after being elected, I'd be able to convince India, Australia, Japan, and the United States to form an organization called the Quad, which, you know, is to help keep world stability.
The GOP did a fact check on that and said the Quad was re-established in 2017 under President Trump.
So the question is, Does Biden not know that he was lying?
Is the fact check itself a lie?
Because it could be that the fact check is a lie.
Or is it just dementia and he thinks he did it but it's actually Trump's accomplishment?
Although he wouldn't call it an accomplishment because it's re-establishing.
Whoever established it the first time probably gets whatever credit.
But if you're re-establishing it, it's a little less of an accomplishment.
Alright.
Well, are you disturbed by the fact that we don't know?
You know, when Trump says something that doesn't pass the fact-checking, it doesn't bother me that much.
If you've noticed.
You've probably noticed that I'm less bothered by him not passing the fact check than other people are.
And the reason is that he's somewhat transparent about his hyperbole.
Right?
If he told you tomorrow the problem with windmills is that they they're like airplane propellers and they might take off or just something ridiculous, you wouldn't think he had dementia.
Would you?
You think, oh, he just does that.
He just exaggerates, tells you the story, puts it into a visual picture.
But yeah, you know he's embellishing, and it's not meant to be literal.
So, that part could bother you, but at least you figure he's in control of his faculties.
With Biden, you actually literally can't tell.
I mean, genuinely, I don't know if he's lying, or genuinely, I don't know if this is just dementia.
What do you think?
Can you tell?
Is it a lie or dementia?
Go.
Tell me in the comments.
Lie or dementia?
No, you can't say both.
He could have both, but what is the reason for this?
Yeah, it's like evenly split.
You're evenly split there in the comments.
Yeah, no, both.
He can be both, but only one of them would explain this.
Right?
He's either knowingly lying or he's not.
That's not a both situation.
All right.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But the fact that you can't tell would be an interesting campaign theme.
Because people don't like risk.
Especially older voters and they're the ones who vote the most.
Suppose you said Joe Biden has dementia.
And you're a Democrat.
What's your take to that?
Joe Bison has dementia.
They just deny it, right?
They might even think it's true and they still deny it.
So just saying he has dementia, it's like any other political attack, it's just sort of weak and obvious and ordinary.
But suppose instead you said this, do you want to have a president where you genuinely can't tell if he's lying or if it's dementia?
How'd that feel?
Let me say it again.
Just feel it.
Don't think it.
Don't think it.
Just feel it.
How would you feel having a president where you genuinely can't tell if he's lying or it's a product of dementia?
Yeah, that's different, isn't it?
Feel how different that is.
Because I put it in a choice.
As soon as you accept that it's a choice, I've made you think past the sale.
You've thought past the sale of him being ordinary, or being okay.
There's something wrong.
So if you accept that there's something wrong, you either accept that he's a liar, which takes away his biggest advantage, his own statement, his biggest advantage over Trump.
So he's either a liar, or he has dementia, which is way worse than Trump.
So he's either as bad as Trump, which takes away his main claim to being better, or he's worse.
And you can make people think right past the sale to, well, it's one of those things.
It's got to be one of those things.
But seriously, it's actually a real question, too.
How would you feel if you couldn't tell he was lying or he had dementia?
Because the weird thing is we're used to politicians lying.
Am I right?
We're completely accustomed to politicians lying, and it doesn't bother us in the same way as if you didn't know.
If you know somebody's lying, that gives you some clarity about how to act.
Oh, I'll call them a liar.
I'll check the fact-checking.
I'll vote for the other person.
It gives you a very clear statement of what to do.
But if you don't know if that's dementia or lying, what do you do?
What do you do?
It's very confusing.
If as a persuader and a leader, you're trying to get people to buy into your message, and your message is, I'll give you some certainty, it's really helpful to make the voter feel confused.
I don't like being confused.
I'd rather the evil I know than this big unknown.
I don't know.
Will he start a nuclear war because he has dementia?
I don't know.
But it's out there.
It's a possibility.
So that's what I'd do if I were Trump.
I'd go after that question.
So the NAACP has come out with an advisory for black people.
A formal travel advisory.
Now I didn't know that the NAACP gave formal travel advisories, but the news says that they do.
And if the news says that they do, well then I guess they do.
And their travel advisory is for Florida.
Saying that the state has become, quote, hostile to black Americans under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' leadership.
On a seeming, they go on, on a seeming quest to silence African American voices, the governor of the state of Florida has shown that African Americans are not welcome in the state of Florida, the travel advisory reads.
So, you know what happened next, right?
I mean, the world is very predictable.
Once the NAACP said that black people should stay away from Florida, they were obviously cancelled for being racist and everybody was disgraced.
And we're disavowed.
Wait, I'm being told that none of that happened.
Well, that's confusing.
Well, I thought that's what happens.
I thought if you advised One group of Americans to avoid another group of Americans over racial reasons?
Well, I thought you'd get cancelled for that, but... Well, now I'm all confused about this story.
They didn't get cancelled?
I mean, they just told black people to keep the fuck away from Florida, and I don't... I'm reading between the lines, but help me out here.
Was the NAACP saying that the black Americans Should not go to Florida because there are black people there?
That's not what they're saying, right?
I believe they were saying that the black people in Florida would be okay.
No danger from them.
But the danger would come from the non-black people.
Sort of the Ron DeSantis looking people, you know what I mean?
You know?
Wink wink.
The people who kind of look like Ron DeSantis.
You know?
Politicians.
Wink wink.
Leaders.
Wink wink.
And we're totally okay with this, right?
Nobody's getting cancelled.
Totally okay with it.
How is this different from what I said?
Do you think I should double down now?
Would this be a good time to double down?
I'm already a disgraced cartoonist.
You want me to double down, don't you?
Alright, here it comes.
Question number one.
If you're a white American, does it make sense to go where there's high crime?
Would you be safer in a high-crime neighborhood or a low-crime neighborhood?
Well, you'd be safer in a low-crime neighborhood, wouldn't you?
Now, would low-income neighborhoods typically be the ones with high crime?
Yes or no?
Yeah, a low income neighborhood typically is going to be higher crime.
So if white Americans are looking at low income black population areas, would it be riskier for them to go there in terms of crime?
And the answer of course is yes, but not because of race, because low income, high crime, it would be a dangerous place whether you're a black American or a white American or Asian American or anything else.
So we would all agree that staying away from high crime areas is a good idea, regardless of race, right?
Now, can you name the most dangerous poor area that is primarily white?
Can you just name a couple, because I think this conversation needs some examples to round it out.
Name some cities or areas where there's a lot of crime, they're noted for their high crime, but they're primarily a white area.
Can you think of one?
I don't know, Appalachia?
So the thing is with Appalachia, there's not high density.
So usually you need high density before you get to the serious crime.
Well, I don't know of any, but let's assume that the real issue there is income, okay?
So low income comes with high crime.
Now what about, so would you say that it makes sense for white Americans to stay away from areas that there's high crime?
Yes, everybody would agree with that.
Because whether you're white or black, you should stay away from areas where there's high crime.
Now what about if you're a white American, and you're just having a job, and there are a lot of, let's say it's a blue collar job.
Let's say you're in the middle income.
You're in the middle income, you might not have a college education, but you've got a serious job.
Maybe you work a union job, that sort of thing.
If you're a white person and you work with black co-workers and black bosses, are your odds of being sued for being a racist higher or lower than if you're a white person working with all white people, or even a mix of Asian Americans and white people?
Indian Americans and white people?
Much higher.
But let's say we perceive it to be higher.
Because if a bunch of white people are working together, they never, I won't say never, but it would be very rare for white people to sue other white people for racial discrimination.
Right, that'd be sort of a weird situation.
So if you're white, you have a higher risk if your co-workers and maybe your boss are black, because you'd have a risk of discrimination that you wouldn't have otherwise.
But what if you get into the high-income, high-education group?
Let's say you're in a college environment, and you've got a number of colleagues, highly educated, very successful, good incomes.
Are you as safe in a mixed environment where you're a white person, you've got black colleagues and white colleagues and Asian-American colleagues and Hispanic colleagues?
Or would you be safer if they were all white?
Or a mix of everything except African-American, let's say?
Well, I would say that your reputational risk of being accused of being a racist would be the highest in the high education and high income group.
Would you agree?
Because it's the high education, you get the Ibram Kendi's, you get the CRT people, you get the people who have been educated, formally educated, to think that white people are the cause of systemic racism.
So that's how their education frames their reality.
So there are three situations in which white people have a higher risk, reputationally, crime-wise, being sued.
And it's three different situations, but it's all three income groups among black Americans.
So you would have more danger to go into a high-crime, low-income area of any kind.
But in the United States, we couldn't even think of one that's mostly white.
Now, that doesn't have to be a racial reason.
It's just a correlation.
The same advice holds.
Whether you were a black man or a white man, you wouldn't want to go into a high crime area.
So that makes sense to stay away from high crime areas, regardless of the racial composition.
But you'd agree that within the middle income, you know, middle America, only black people accuse you of being a racist, if you're white.
So you have much higher risk.
And what is the risk?
If you were a white person working with black co-workers, What are the odds that eventually you would be accused of being a racist?
Incredibly.
Incredibly accused.
Pretty high.
80% maybe?
So you'd be guessing.
We'd all be guessing.
And it depends on the situation.
No two situations are alike, etc.
No people are alike.
So I'm not, you know, just to be clear, I'll insert this in the middle.
Under all conditions, you should judge individuals as individuals.
Does everybody agree with that?
There's nobody who disagrees with that in 2023, is there?
That on a one-on-one basis, whether it's for romance, business, customer, boss, client, under every one of those situations, nobody can win with Bigotry or discrimination.
Against individuals.
You can never win.
Because the person you discriminate against loses.
And then you lose access to 90% of the talent and beauty of the country.
So it's not good for the person doing the discriminating.
It's not good for the company, if they work for a company.
And it's not good for the victim.
It literally has no purpose.
Like, even normal crime has a purpose.
Well, at least the criminal maybe got away with something, right?
At least the criminal got off better, sometimes.
But with regular one-on-one discrimination of an individual, there's no winner.
It doesn't pass the sniff test of being just a reasonable thing to do.
However, those categories are not Comprehensive.
In other words, if you added together all of your social patterns, they should be based on individuals only.
Hiring, business, the entire commerce world.
If you add that to your social situation, it doesn't cover every situation.
The one situation that's not covered by all those, judge everybody individually, is your legal and physical risk.
When you're managing your physical risk, you're not judging individuals.
You're judging larger risks.
So if you're a white person, associating with black Americans has become super risky, in a way that it didn't used to be.
It used to be that if you went to a high crime area, again, it doesn't matter what the race is, you're in a high crime area.
Everybody knows that high crime areas are high risk.
So that part nobody argues with.
But what's different is the middle class has been weaponized against white people and white males especially.
So if you were a white male and you had a choice of working with black co-workers or white co-workers, everything else being equal, only one of those situations gives you an 80% chance of being at least threatened with a lawsuit.
You'd at least have to worry about the threat of it.
And if you're hanging around with college-educated, high-income, mixed group of people, you're far more likely to be accused of being part of the problem.
So you have a reputational risk at the high end, you have a physical risk at the low end, and a lawsuit risk in the middle.
So there you have it.
And by the way, there's nobody in the world who argues against what I just said.
Nobody.
There is not a single person who disagrees with one word of what I just described.
But I did get cancelled for it.
And by the way, I didn't get cancelled for what I said.
You know that, right?
It wasn't what I said.
Of course not.
It was that some people thought other people would be offended.
So they had a business risk, which they managed, and I've never criticized the people who canceled me, at least in terms of the business decision.
As a business decision, they had to do what they had to do.
But that's my point.
My point was that I lived in a world in which there was one group of people who might cancel me, and another group who might support it, And the two of them worked together and I got cancelled.
So that mostly was a problem with the public and then the business people had to just respond to the public.
They did what they had to do.
All right, well you got really quiet.
You got real quiet when I did this.
Anybody disagree?
I don't think I've ever seen so much agreement at one point.
All right.
Well, that's me doubling down.
Teacher of the Year, an ex-Teacher of the Year in California, has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old boy at Yequipa High School.
And can we just be honest about this?
Have we reached a point where we can actually talk about that honestly?
Because I've got free speech and you don't.
Why is that a crime?
Now, I do agree that maybe she needs to lose her job.
Fair enough?
Can we all agree that, you know, in terms of being a teacher, that's a pretty big line to cross, right?
So you cross that line, you can't be a teacher.
So I'm okay with that part.
But don't you need at least a victim?
Now, I realize that all victimless crimes, you know, maybe they still need to be illegal for the benefit of society, but can we stop pretending that a 16-year-old boy is injured for life for hitting his teacher?
I mean, not hitting her, but you know what I mean.
Can we just pretend, can we just stop?
We just have to stop being this stupid.
This is so stupid.
Yeah.
Get her out of the school.
But jail?
That's just so crazy.
So crazy.
And by the way, I do have a double standard.
So I would not say the same thing if the genders were reversed.
You're all on the same page with that, right?
This is totally... I'm not being... I'm not being equal in terms of the genders.
This is completely a sexist opinion.
But it's one that I'd, you know, I'd bet my life on.
If you had to bet your life on one opinion, I would bet my life on this opinion being a good one.
I'd bet my life.
Yeah, there's no wiggle room on this one.
All right.
So a local TV actor, Ken Rosato, he got in trouble.
I think he's either fired or pulled off the air or something.
Because in a hot mic moment, he referred to his His co-anchor by the C-word.
The C-word.
He used the C-word and got caught on a hot mic and was immediately fired.
Now here's the good news about this.
He was a man, his co-worker was a woman, and he used the C-word and boom, gone.
But what I like about this story is that it would have worked the other way around too.
If there had been a hot mic moment and the woman Wait, what?
Oh, she wouldn't be?
Oh, she wouldn't be fired for calling her co-worker a dick.
What would be the question that you would ask if you heard that story?
Is there any question that would just jump to your mind?
See, she called her co-worker a dick on the air.
What?
Is there any question that jumps to mind?
Oh yes, yes.
You speak it because she had Tourette's?
Probably there was some behavior or set of behaviors that collectively Brought her to the point where she would say that word.
It was a dick.
And we would like to know what those behaviors were, so that we could judge her in context.
Because certainly, this acting out of context, it's very important to know what was the whole situation, so you know who's really the bad one in this case.
So let's read this story, because obviously it works that way too.
So why did he call her the C word?
Let's see.
Checking for that part of the story.
Checking, checking, checking, checking.
Because that's not in the story.
Don't you think that's important?
I mean, he didn't just use it because it was a term of endearment.
She did something.
That a living, breathing, functioning human thought was so bad that using that word in front of other people in a business setting felt right.
At the moment when he used the word, yeah, I'm sure he regrets it now, but when he used the word, it felt right.
And you don't want to know why?
We have no curiosity About what she may or may not have allegedly done that would justify that language.
Wow.
Okay.
All right, I was laughing because I saw a tweet by, I think, Amaze.
So it's a tweeter who goes by, no, not Amaze, Amuse.
A-M-U-S-E?
Is it Amuse?
I think it's Amuse.
Anyway.
You referred to the story about Obama being banned from Russia.
We'll talk about that.
But just the reference to Obama, just a description of the story, referred to Obama as disgraced ex-president Obama.
Disgraced.
Now, that made me laugh because I'm a disgraced cartoonist.
And so I actually, I had to look up disgraced.
Because I wasn't positive I knew what it meant.
You know, it's sort of not a word you use that much.
So disgrace, the definition means you used to have a good reputation, but then usually through your own actions you have a bad reputation.
But I thought about that and I thought, well wait a minute, if I'm disgraced, that's a quality of the observer, not of me.
Think about it.
What makes me disgraced?
Am I disgraced to myself?
In my own view of myself, am I disgraced?
Not really.
Not really.
It never even occurred to me.
Honestly, the thought of feeling disgraced has never occurred to me.
So it's a condition that exists outside of me.
And outside of Obama as well.
So Obama just does what Obama does, and other people call him disgraced.
I do what I do, and other people call me disgraced.
Should I care?
It's a weird insult.
If somebody had said to me, let's say, you don't work hard, that would bother me, because I do work hard.
I'd be like, ah, you got your facts wrong.
But disgraced is purely a chemical reaction that's happening in the brains of other people.
How much should I care about the chemical reaction happening in your brain?
Not at all.
Not at all.
So disgraced always makes me laugh.
I've thought how I would introduce myself in public should I ever be invited to appear in public again, which I'm not sure what the odds of that are.
But I would ask my person who introduced me to refer to me as disgraced cartoonist because I love the fact as a cartoonist that I had a good reputation according to somebody else and that it was destroyed through my own actions.
I kind of like that.
I know I'm supposed to feel bad about it, but I don't.
Because it just doesn't feel personal.
It just doesn't feel like it's about me.
It's like watching a story.
It just doesn't connect with me at all.
All right.
So Russia's banned, I guess, 500 Americans for various things, including some CNN hosts who said things they didn't like.
And my first question was, if they banned 500 Americans, and I know I was on a top 10 Democratic hit list, how do I find out if I'm on that list?
Did anybody see the list?
Because I read stories about it with no list.
Wouldn't the most obvious thing you'd include in a story, a story about a list, you don't put the list?
Where can I go look up whether I've been banned from Russia?
As if I would ever go to Russia.
If you have my job, which is talking about the news and talking about the war in Ukraine, do you think I would ever go to Russia?
I mean, seriously.
That would be the most foolish thing I could ever do in my life.
I mean, my electronics would be, you know, completely corrupted.
I mean, I wouldn't be able to make a private phone call.
I mean, I would just assume that I'd be watched from the moment I landed.
You know, anybody who's in the news is going to get a pretty thorough going over if they go to Russia.
Same with China.
I've had people ask me if I would visit China, sort of as a tourist, to which I say, you don't understand anything.
You don't understand anything about the world if you think I could go to China.
Are you serious?
I also can't go to Mexico.
You know that, right?
There's no way in hell I would take a vacation in Mexico, given what I talk about in public.
Too dangerous.
Yeah.
But I'd love to know if I'm on the list.
So we heard that there's some news that says the FBI was abusing access to a database that apparently has lots of private communications from Americans.
I guess it was the Patriot Act that allowed them to spy on foreign nationals.
But in the process of spying on the foreigns, if they talk to anybody who is a citizen, they could keep both sides of the conversation.
So they had these ways of legally capturing information that they weren't supposed to be looking at unless it was some terrorist reason, I guess.
But apparently there were a few instances where the FBI accessed this private data about Americans when they were not allowed to.
So that's pretty bad.
Let me see how many instances.
Oh, only two.
Two.
I'm sorry, not two.
It was 28.
28 times the FBI accessed.
I'm sorry, it wasn't 28.
287.
Wow, that's a lot.
287 times the FBI accessed this private information.
Hold on, it's not 287.
No, it was not 287.
Wow, that's a lot.
287 times the FBI accessed this private information.
Hold on, it's not 287.
No, it was not 287.
It was 287,000 times.
It was 287,000 times they accessed the data they weren't supposed to access.
But if you're worried about that, it's OK.
It's OK.
Calm down.
Calm down.
It's all right.
Because from the time that we learned this until now, the FBI fixed it.
They improved their training and their procedures, and now Now that's sort of, it's old news.
Nobody's happy about it, but there's no reason to talk about it now.
It's been two years, the new system, it's nothing to worry about.
Even Elon Musk took note of that.
So yes, the FBI has been quite abusive, it seems.
Now, I ask this question.
If 287,000 times the FBI have accessed private data of citizens, do you know what I'm going to ask next?
How do I find out if they have accessed my data?
Do you think I've talked to any foreign nationals in the last few years?
Yes, I have.
Yes, I have.
Do you think I've talked to anybody that, at least in my imagination, I could imagine that Homeland Security would be tracking?
Yes, I have.
Nobody dangerous.
We're talking about upstanding citizens, but still, citizens of other countries.
Do you think they looked at my personal data because I've ever had a conversation Where's somebody from another country?
Probably.
Probably.
And I can't find that out, can I?
If I sued the government, could I find out if they looked at my data?
I could FOIA the FBI data.
Is that a thing?
I could FOIA them, huh?
I could see it if I use a legal process.
I wonder if anybody's doing that.
Because there must be people like me who could say reasonably, uh-oh, I have talked to people from other countries, and that includes some politics.
Sometimes politics were involved.
Yeah, well, somebody said Tom Fitton does FOIA all the time.
Don't you think Tom Fitton, by the way, Tom, if you listen to this, don't you think that Tom Fitton should do a FOIA to find out if his information has been looked at?
Because he would be on the short list with me of a few hundred people that you'd expect they would definitely want to look at if they were doing it for political reasons.
So if you assume that the thing you're worried about Is that they were doing it for purely political reasons.
I would want to know if they looked at Tom Fitton's personal information.
Wouldn't you?
Because don't you think he's had at least one conversation for somebody who was a citizen of another country in the last few years?
Probably.
Most high profile people do.
We have international connections.
So that's pretty alarming.
Here's the news from Russia.
Either Russia has totally captured a Bakhmut or, as Zelensky says, no that didn't happen.
But at least we can go to CNN to confirm and CNN says we can't confirm either side.
So we have no reporting on a Bakhmut.
We have no idea.
Because it's basically a pile of rubble at this point.
But who cares who controls a pile of rubble?
So there's a whole lot of nothing happening there.
All right, here's a little question that AI helped me with, because it's a good search engine.
I saw an opinion piece by CNN's Sanjay Gupta, and he was talking about how hard it is, and it must be twice as hard for him.
So imagine being a doctor, and he's got three teenage daughters.
And they all use cell phones, of course, smartphones.
And as a doctor, and somebody who's really plugged into the news, he knows that smartphone use is not good for his daughters.
Wouldn't you say?
Surely, I'm not reading his mind.
Obviously, he writes articles about it.
He's very aware of the risk to his daughters.
Do you think he banned smartphones from his three daughters?
Because he's a doctor.
He's very aware of the risks.
So it's easy, right?
Just ban him from your daughters.
Of course not.
Of course not.
Because he's like every other parent in the world.
Basically just trapped.
If you didn't let your teen have a smartphone, you couldn't live with the teen.
You couldn't live with them.
They would never, ever let you off the hook.
Unless you were like physically abusive or something.
So there's no way to win on this.
There's no winning play at all.
So, and of course you know that the smartphones are associated with a huge increase in mental health problems among people.
And so, I asked myself this question.
What is it that these, what is it that the smartphones do that causes people to have mental health problems?
What's the primary active ingredient?
Some say addiction.
I'm looking for something else.
They are dopamine, isolation, Keep going.
Attention, almost there.
Desire, oxytocin, cognitive warfare, social media peer pressure.
All right, here's mine.
I had a hypothesis which I checked, and then you can tell me how I did.
My hypothesis is that mental health, we've evolved as a species so that our mental health has a lot to do with how we feel compared to the people around us.
For example, if there were no people around you, would you feel social anxiety?
Well, no, because there are no other people.
Would you feel jealousy?
Well, no, because there'd be no other people.
Would you feel body image issues?
Well, only if the people around you were all superstars and you weren't.
Which is unlikely.
So here's what I think.
I think that the humans evolved to compare themselves to their little tribe, the people who are immediately in their presence.
And if you compare yourself to the people immediately in your personal life, how do you come out?
How do you look?
If you only compare yourself to the people you see in person, you look pretty good, don't you?
Oh yeah, baby!
You're looking pretty hot today.
Oh yeah.
I look handsome compared to the people I hang out with.
Sorry.
Big insult to the people I hang out with, I guess.
But, right?
But if I turn on Instagram, I'm the ugliest person I know.
If I look on Twitter, people are just killing it with their great tweets and their deep research and their smart articles and they've got substacks and, you know, they're killing it.
But if I look around the people around me, they're having more normal lives.
I feel pretty good about myself.
So I used AI and I asked the following question.
How much of mental health involves comparing yourself to your peers?
Just think of the question.
How much of all the mental health problems there could be are directly related to comparing yourself to your peers?
Here's what AI said.
Depression.
Anxiety, low self-esteem, jealousy, body image issues, and social isolation.
And I feel like that was a partial list.
The main thing that the phone does is make you compare yourself to other people in a very unhealthy way.
And all of these mental health problems, according to AI, these are directly related to comparing yourself to the wrong set of comparisons.
Now have you heard anybody say this directly?
I don't know if I'm coming up with something that's useful or maybe it was obvious.
Is it obvious to everybody or did this add something?
I can't tell.
I can't tell if this added anything to what you already knew.
It does add something.
So it makes me wonder if there's anything you could do with that insight.
Is there anything you could do to keep the benefits of social media But also get rid of the comparison problem.
Somehow.
I don't know.
But they would give you something to work with anyway.
All right.
Then I would also say, what is the point of life?
Here's another one.
If people have a meaningful life, would you say that they're less likely to have mental health problems?
Is that fair to say?
You have meaning in your life.
You wake up, you know what to do.
You know why you're doing it, and you get to work.
Yeah, it's almost one of the best things you could do for your mental health.
If you didn't have a smartphone, what would you think is the purpose of your life?
Go.
Pre-smartphone, what was the purpose of your life?
Probably family, children, you know, take care of yourself so you can take care of your community, right?
And you naturally were focused on those things.
Why?
Why was your focus just naturally on having a family and stuff?
Because that's what was around you.
The things that were immediately around you were families.
Right?
Now, introduce the smartphone and all day long you're looking at single people who are killing it.
All day long.
Single people.
Or married people who acted like single people.
Right?
There's a whole genre of women who often are married who have Instagram pages that sure look like they're single, if you know what I mean.
Sure looks like they're advertising for another guy, even though they wouldn't say that's why they're doing it.
So the smartphone changes your field of relevance.
Your field of relevance was almost entirely people with families.
Do you remember when you grew up, if there was an older adult who was not married?
People called the down, right?
And there were the outliers.
Oh yeah, this one's unmarried at 40 years old or whatever.
But today, the unmarried person who's killing it has got a million followers on Instagram.
And it looks like they're having a good life.
And you probably see more of them than you see in your real life.
Because in your real life, you might have several contacts a day.
But on Instagram, you can scroll through and see a hundred different lives.
And they're all killing it and they're single.
Yeah, the smartphone's killing you.
Destroying the country, no doubt about it.
I have spoken.
Now, since we don't know if I will still be here tomorrow, saying the things that get people cancelled all the time, only because I'll probably get extra cancelled, but it doesn't happen on the weekend.
Did you know that?
If I say something provocative on a weekend, Nothing happens because it's all the professionals who come to work on Monday.
They say, who can we take off the chessboard today?
Oh, here's this person who said something controversial.
So I want to give you an update on my scheme of registering as a Democrat.
So I told you that after I got cancelled, And I had virtually zero problem with any conservatives or Republicans.
It was entirely Democrats.
That I registered as a Democrat, because if the Democrats are going to brand me as a racist, I'm going to join their team.
And I thought that it would shut up some of my critics, because I reasoned that my critics were so shallow that they never cared what I said.
They only cared I was on the other team.
Or they thought I was on the other team.
It wasn't necessarily.
But, so all I had to do was join their team.
And I've trotted it out when some critics come after me on Twitter, just to see what happens.
You know, I get the, but you're the, you know, you're the racist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then I just say, I'm a registered Democrat.
And the whole conversation takes a different, yeah.
Then they become curious about that.
Then suddenly they forget about all their accusations, and now they're just curious about that.
It's actually really effective.
Now it's a hypnosis trick.
The hypnosis trick is a distraction, basically.
You take them out of their model, and you bring them to another frame where they don't have as strong an argument.
So as soon as I say, I just registered as a Democrat.
I'm one of you.
It just takes them out of their frame.
They don't know what to do with it.
It's like, oh, well, what's that mean?
Because first they have to figure out what it means.
And then they have to figure out if they care.
Then they have to figure out if I'm really on their side or not.
It just changes the conversation totally, which is what I wanted it to do.
All right.
Do you think agencies know how we vote?
Yes, I think they do.
I think you could tell how people vote just by looking at their social media.
Don't you?
So yeah, anybody on social media, it's obvious who they vote for.
Or at least directionally, it's obvious who they vote for.
Would I move to Mars?
Only if the United States continues to fall apart, which is a possibility.
All right.
All right.
They could be voting for me.
Yeah, Daniel Penney broke his silence and said it wasn't about race.
Did Daniel Penney really need to say it wasn't about race?
Why do we even ask that question?
I mean, I realize that it's a good thing he did.
Like, it's good for his defense, etc.
But why was that even ever a question?
Was the guy that he restrained doing black stuff?
Did he get restrained for being black?
I don't recall that part of the story.
I recall he was doing stuff that people do if they're dangerous and mentally challenged.
I'm pretty sure he took down a person.
I don't think he took down a black person.
Still getting compliments?
Good.
Good, good.
All right.
For the people who hate him, it is about race.
That's true.
But that's not what he was answering to.
Did we go to the moon?
Does Russia really say we didn't go to the moon?
They don't really say that, do they?
Is that officially what Russia says or just some Russians say that?
I just saw a comment that says Russia says we didn't go to the moon.
Officially, they're claiming that?
Are you saying that Putin has ever said that?
Putin's never said that, right?
That we didn't go to the moon.
There's no way I would have missed that.
If that had ever been a news story, I don't know how I would not know that.
Yeah, I'd need a source on that.
Oh, their NASA equivalent did?
Well, that doesn't count.
Finished my update about being a registered Democrat?
Well, I think I did.
So, just being a registered Democrat makes people lose the thread when they're trying to criticize me?
Because you realize it's never about the criticism.
The criticism is never the point.
Literally nobody cared about what I said.
You know, my so-called rant?
Literally nobody cared.
Would you confirm that?
None of you cared, did you?
I mean, it didn't affect your life, did it?
No, so the way people act is based on whatever political message they want to send.
So they use me as a carrier vehicle, if you will.
I was sort of a truck that they could carry their message.
But it's not really about the truck.
The truck was just any truck.
They can put their message in.
It's never about the truck.
All right.
Is there any story I should have talked about?
You should be seeing the reframed book.
I'm thinking August.
That would be like a stretch goal.
But the editing is nearing the climax, which is a very long, tedious process.
I'm hard to edit because I I have sort of a, just my flow of consciousness is hard to make sure you get rid of all the overlaps and the redundancies and stuff.
So it's pretty hard for me.
Now it's too early to reorder.
It's not listed on Amazon yet, but probably in, if I had to guess, maybe end of June.
If things go well, end of June, maybe, for a reorder?
order?
All right.
There's something going on in the comments over on YouTube.
There's somebody named Helena, but I don't know what it is.
Well, thank you, Bob.
Yeah, you like my framing of is he lying or is it dementia?
That's really strong.
That is really strong persuasion.
Oh, speaking of candidates.
So my understanding is now that RFK Jr.
and Vivek Ramaswamy have both come out being pretty pro Bitcoin.
Can you fact check me on that?
Because there's some big Bitcoin event going and I think they both had some involvement in that.
So doesn't that really Bitcoin is sort of that dividing line between the old school politicians and the new ones.
And it's funny that I call RFK a new one.
He's 69.
What?
69?
But at least in terms of his mentality, RFK Jr., he plays young, doesn't he?
He actually works for all ages, which is weird.
I've never seen that before.
It might be a Kennedy thing.
But he seems to work for young and old, because he's got sort of young thinking, but he's chronologically senior citizen.
And he's in great shape, so that makes him look young as well.
Well, I do love I just love the undercard fight for the presidency.
Because I think the undercard is all the fun stuff, right?
They're the ones with the interesting ideas right now.
All right.
Have I hypnotized you over the last five years?
Well, one thing I tell you all the time is that we don't We don't come up with our own opinions on politics.
Your opinions are assigned to you by your preferred media.
If your preferred media is me, then it would not be any coincidence that you sometimes quote me or sound like me.
Because the thing that caused you to want to listen to me for five years was not because you disagreed with everything I say.
So there should be the Venn diagram of your opinions and my opinions.
Should be pretty close.
Here's what I'm shooting for.
I've never said this before, by the way.
I'm shooting for a 60 to 70 percent agreement with my audience.
I think most people are shooting for, you know, 99.
Because that's where you make the money.
Hannity has the business model that makes money.
You say what your audience wants to hear, and you leave it at that.
And you just keep doing it for 25 years, and you live the Hannity lifestyle, which I'll bet is pretty good.
I don't know what Hannity's net worth is, but agreeing with your audience is a real good business model.
CNN does the same thing, but they do it poorly, apparently.
The reason I go for 60-70% is that I don't want you to leave without value.
Because that's sort of a personal thing.
It's the same reason I don't like to take an advance for writing a book.
I don't like to get paid before I've proven value.
If I give you value, and then you give me money for it, yay!
That makes me happy.
But if I get paid and then maybe the book isn't good or it doesn't sell, I'm not happy with that.
I mean, I know I should be dancing in the streets because I got paid for not doing good work, but I'm not happy with that.
I can't be happy at all.
So, I don't want to do a show where you all agree with me and then go just nod your heads afterwards.
Because that would not be adding value.
That might actually be subtracting value.
I would rather agree where it makes sense, and then if we disagree, at the very least you're going to hear the best argument on the other side.
Now, that's what I'm shooting for.
I'm not saying that my argument will be the best argument.
I'm saying the point of it all is that you mostly agree so that you don't mind spending time here.
But when you disagree, you're going to hear a good argument from the other side.
That's all.
Whatever you do with it is up to you.
But that's the value I'm trying to present.
J-Lib says, in all caps, Scotty, your persuasion has never been weaker.
And yet, you're here, aren't you?
Do you know what the number one rule of persuasion is?
J-Lib?
Attention.
And you just can't stop looking at me and talking to me.
And I didn't even know who you were until just a moment ago.
So, J-Lib, Now that you've learned the first rule of persuasion, and you can see that I'm totally nailing it with you, because you just can't stop looking at me and talking about me.
I own you right now.
So, and Jalob, how would you know whether I've persuaded you or not?
Because you think all of your opinions came from you.
None of your opinions came from you, Jalob.
They all came from other people.
And then if you liked him, you kept him.
So you don't think that I've influenced you, Jaleb?
I have.
Because you can't move your mind away from me right now.
You're stuck.
I've got you locked into a head grip like a marine on a subway car.
I hope it works out for you.
Alright, that's all for now and YouTube, I'm going to say bye for you and I'll talk to you in the morning.
Bye for now.
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