Spencer G. Watson and David Bloomberg examine absolutism, a tactic framing opposing views as extreme—like vaccine debates, where mask-wearing was dismissed as "absolute" despite its temporary utility. Bloomberg traces its rise to U.S. media rhetoric (e.g., Bush’s polarized language) and global political discourse, where leaders like Obama or Trump are labeled as either infallible or irredeemable. They link it to conspiratorial claims (e.g., Elon Musk’s Twitter actions) and "shill" accusations, even in reality TV, where dissent is met with ad hominem attacks. Post-October 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict, absolutism deepens global polarization, forcing binary choices that stifle nuanced solutions to complex crises. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, a podcast that would have way more guests if I knew more people that wanted to do this.
Yeah, but then I wouldn't be able to do it as often.
Oh, well, I don't know.
I'm sure we'd find a way.
David, David Bloomberg with us today.
How are you doing, David?
Good.
How are you?
Pretty good.
So I want to talk about absolutely.
Oh, go ahead.
I was going to say I'm absolutely fine.
Absolutely fine.
Okay.
Right.
Which segues right to our topic.
We want to talk about absolutism today.
Now, what the heck do I mean by absolutism?
So sometimes when you're talking with people, and it happens more often when they're kind of jerky and they don't care for your point of view, they will pretend like the opposite.
It's your view, which is the extreme, or it's the other extreme that has to be true and that this is true.
So let me explain how this works.
Let's say we're talking about vaccines.
And I mentioned that people should get vaccinated because vaccines will reduce illness.
They will reduce severe illness, especially vaccines from COVID, and they'll help to prevent you from passing it on to other people.
And then someone says, oh, I suppose we should all get vaccinated.
Oh, I suppose we should also all have lockdowns.
We should all wear masks everywhere we go.
We should wear three masks.
How do you like that?
Wouldn't that be great?
You say, well, no.
That's the parts of it, yes.
Well, right.
But at no point in that does it mean we should have more lockdowns necessarily.
Lockdowns were also not great.
We use them to buy time to get vaccines.
We, you know, hopefully we never have to have lockdowns again, that it gets so bad for that.
Also, in most countries, lockdowns were not really lockdowns.
Yeah, most really lockdowns.
They were more like curfews.
Yeah, well, or like closing around discouraging, you know, or something like that.
It's like, okay, it's not a lockdown just because you can't go to the bar.
Yeah.
People weren't on house arrest.
Yeah.
They were discouraged from having large gatherings.
In some places, there were laws against it.
And in Canada, we did actually have laws against large gatherings.
And some people found out that they couldn't just ignore that rule.
And they're mad about it.
Let me tell you, they still talk about it.
But absolutism is a, it's an argument technique that doesn't help people have real conversations.
It's meant to take everything to the extreme.
And adopting it generally in our society is part of what's led to such polarization of what we now call the two sides because they're polarized.
We have a political landscape that's much more complex than just two sides.
And absolutism is part of how we got here.
So first take on absolutism, David.
Tell me, what's your thoughts?
Well, I guess I have a cause and effect question for you.
Is absolutism how we got here?
Or did the people who want power use absolutism to get that power and therefore, you know, kind of cause it to be more important?
As a rhetorical device, there were politicians that have employed it in some jurisdictions more than others, but definitely have employed it.
But I blame radio and television more than anything.
Having seen this rhetorical vice, this rhetorical device being used in many other spaces has caused people to adopt it generally.
And that's not very useful.
It used to be that almost every politician actually had some experience at real debate and real debate.
You're generally not trying to do this that much because it's very poor logically speaking.
It's very easy to point out the flaws in this.
So in a real debate, this is a weakness.
And many politicians in the past, like we're talking 50s, 60s, maybe even into the 70s and 80s, tended to avoid a lot of this harsh, extreme rhetoric.
But those sort of things have gotten lax.
I blame the United States in this because they tend to encourage people to become politicians who don't have a strong sense of what sorts of rhetoric is useful and not useful.
And the first politician that really comes to mind was George W. Bush, was not really trained for the job of president, became president anyway.
And world be damned.
Definitely had a lot of absolutism in his rhetoric.
Ever since, there's been more and more of it on the Canadian side because we are influenced by the U.S.
And none of it's great.
I think the internet has also played its part too in generally proliferating this idea that everyone should have their own way to say these things.
And they try to get their point across in shorter and shorter time.
And it's easy to be extreme in a short time space.
It's hard to be nuanced in a short time space.
And this is another thing that's chased out the nuance in our conversations and led to more absolutism.
Yeah, I think, you know, I also do think you're right about, you know, that radio and TV, the media, like, you know, shows like the, you know, Rush Limbaugh's show at the time.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, he was definitely a fan of this method.
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it didn't matter.
You know, Democrats were evil.
The left was evil and Republicans were correct.
And so that was that.
And I remember being on message boards at the time, and there were, you know, there was definitely a lack of logic in certain cases.
It was interesting because when there was a Democrat in office in the presidents, in the White House, they would attack, attack, attack.
Then when there was a Republican in there and people pointed out problems with the Republicans, they couldn't defend because they didn't actually have any logical ability.
They just knew they were right and the other side was wrong.
And so it was interesting to see that at work.
Like these people who were so good at attacking absolutely could not defend anything.
They thought they were, you know, but, you know, and I even had those conversations with, you know, in person sometimes.
There was a guy I worked with who was a Republican.
And, you know, this will date this conversation back a few decades here, but there was, you know, somebody was talking about something that the Democrats were doing.
And his response was, oh, yeah, well, what about Marion Berry?
And for those who may not remember, Marion Berry was the mayor of Washington, D.C., who got caught with Hookers and Blow on camera, I believe.
And so, you know, that was his response.
It's like, well, what does that have to do with anything?
All you're pointing out is that that particular person was breaking a number of laws and yeah, shouldn't be mayor.
And, you know what?
Fine.
But how does that address the points that we were making?
You know, and well, that's the only way they knew how to respond was by attacking someone else.
Right.
What about him?
Yeah.
Yes.
And that's just this absolute.
You know, the Republicans were right and the Democrats were wrong.
And that was that.
Right.
And that's only gotten worse.
So I want to introduce a concept that I call the absolute enemy.
So the absolute enemy is never stated this way, but all the rhetoric leads to the conclusion that this is happening to a certain politician from the perspective of the other side.
And people will recognize this immediately, I'm sure.
The absolute enemy is a political figure that's on the opposite side of whatever issue you're on.
The absolute enemy is always wrong.
They are never correct about anything.
Everything they do is bad.
So Obama.
Well, from the perspective of the people on the right, Obama is the ultimate absolute enemy.
He's even a bigger enemy than Biden.
And Biden's the president now.
No, but Biden was his vice president.
So everything goes back to Obama.
Obama caused racism.
Did you not?
I'm sure you've seen that online.
Obama caused racism until Obama became president.
No one mentioned this at all.
Yeah.
We were on the right track until they let this guy in.
Yeah.
I mean, he, he, you know, all the things that have gone wrong.
Well, I use wrong in air quotes because it's not wrong.
But all, not all of them, you know, but all the things that are wrong are Obama's fault, even though, you know, that was, you know, what, six, seven years ago now.
The existence of an absolute enemy leads to the idea of the existence of an absolute ally who is the antithesis of the absolute enemy.
The absolute ally is good and everything they do is good and right and just, and they never do anything that's wrong.
And that's where that sits.
So Trump.
So, well, to the people on the right, that is Trump.
And the people I've talked to on the right side of the political spectrum now are much more in this mold of seeing things as black and white, an absolute enemy, an absolute ally, all this stuff.
They believe that Trump is their guy right down to the bone.
It doesn't matter what he does.
And it really doesn't matter what he does, apparently.
They support their guy.
And the other side is the enemy.
And it doesn't matter what they haven't done.
Those are just things that they're still planning to do.
And you can't let your foot up on their neck.
You have to, you know, really crank down on them and not give them an inch.
But there are people on the left who do see this this way as well.
There are people who see Obama as everything Obama did was right and good and just and he never did anything wrong.
And of course, as soon as people are more reasonable on the left than they are on the right, as in as soon as people who are on the left of the spectrum can admit that they're the person who they elect on their side isn't perfect, it does make it look like one side is shiny and perfect and the other side is muddled.
Whereas the side that's willing to admit their faults is the one that should be more trustworthy, right?
Except that that doesn't seem to be the case.
To some people, that's like admitting weakness.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, if you acknowledge that your candidate is not perfect, then they will jump on it.
And it's the same way that anti-scientists jump on things in the science world.
So what'll happen is, let's say that there's a paper published about some fossil and they find this fossil and they say, well, we're not sure exactly where it fits in the timeline.
It could be here.
Right.
Some creationist is going to take that out of context and say, see, they're just making it up.
They're making it up.
They don't know where it goes.
And that's because it's all wrong and false.
Because they don't know everything about it.
They must know nothing about it.
Right.
Right.
And so anytime a scientist has admits to not knowing everything because scientists know you don't know everything, then the anti-scientists will jump on that.
You know, and it's, it's just, it happens in every one of these debates, whether it's anti-vaxxers, alternative medicines.
You know, it's the, you know, the anti-vaxxers were saying this about COVID cases early on.
Like, oh, so you're saying your vaccine isn't 100% effective?
Well, then what good is it?
It's like, well, if you're on an airplane and your plane is going down and you've got a parachute that's 90% effective, are you going down with the plane or are you taking the parachute?
Yeah.
I saw a really good analogy for this just yesterday.
Seatbelts don't prevent all injuries or even all deaths in cars, but having them and using them reduces a large number of those deaths and injuries.
So is that a sign that we shouldn't use seatbelts because they haven't absolutely solved this problem of deaths in cars?
Well, obviously not true.
We would have far more if we didn't do that.
So when you move that to vaccines, yeah, there's vaccines that aren't completely stopping every problem from a disease.
But that's not a sign that says we shouldn't use them.
That's a sign that we need to learn more and make them better.
Right.
And that's the, you know, that's the absolutist way to do it.
But it's always, well, there I go, using an absolute term.
It's almost always the people who are, you know, they're attacking those who are trying to make it seem like make it more real, explain the realism.
Even something as silly as on the show Big Brother, and I don't know when this recording will air, but on the show Big Brother, there's one guy who is an experienced debater and one guy who yells a lot.
And they were having an argument.
And the debater is like, well, I understand your viewpoint and I respect you.
And yes, from your viewpoint, it may look like this and da, da, da.
And the yeller is just yelling because that's what he does.
He yells, he talks over.
So they had a little bit of an audience in that there were several other people there.
And you're wondering, who are they going to believe?
The guy who is very forceful and insisting that he is right, or the one who is admitting that, well, maybe from your viewpoint, it may have looked a different way.
Yeah, that's it's difficult.
I mean, that's a callback to an episode we did some time ago about confidence, right?
That the passionate person might seem far more confident and therefore be more believed than the person who is willing to see both sides.
And I think that's the situation.
Now, I'm happy to report that most of the people there did seem to believe the debater, not the yeller.
So he obviously was able to use enough logic to overcome that situation.
But part of that was also because the yeller was really bad liar.
But we go to the national stage and being a really bad liar doesn't seem to matter because of the absolute enemy, absolute ally situation.
I mean, let's look at some of these that were more or less recently, recently within the past number of years, the Trump impeachments, where there's plenty of evidence of what Trump did.
But the Republicans in the Senate were like, yeah, we're going to ignore, we're going to ignore that evidence because we don't want to eject the party leader.
It's better for them politically to not do that thing.
Right.
You know, similarly in Texas, another impeachment situation where at least some Republicans in the House did overcome this to actually impeach the guy.
And it gets to the Senate and they're like, yeah, no, we're too afraid.
We're not going to do that.
We'd rather have him as our ally than as our enemy.
And so they were cowards.
And I mean, it doesn't even have to be something like that.
Time and time again, we see that people who support a politician ignores their faults, while those who oppose it will attack the exact same faults.
Like Republicans are attacking Biden for saying he's too old while ignoring that Trump is only three years younger.
And if you look at his statements, he has made it clear that he is not mentally all there.
Like he recently, as of this recording, said he ran against Obama.
He did not.
He said that he prevented World War II.
He did not.
And now, are some of these probably just slips of the tongue, stumbles of the tongue?
Yeah, he meant to say World War III.
Okay, fine.
But if Biden had said any of these things, a big stretch to say that he prevented World War III.
Let's also add that in.
Yeah.
Not just a slip of the tongue.
It's also massive ego overcoming reality here.
That's Trump.
But if Biden had said, and made any of these slips of the tongue, they would be all over him and be accusing him of mental infirmity.
You know, I mean, he, he, he slips on a, you know, he slips getting off his bike and they're like, ah, he can't be president.
He's too old.
Whereas, you know, Trump can't even walk up a ramp.
You know, and I mean, it's just the same things that their guy does are not okay when the other person does it.
Yeah.
Well, that's hypocrisy, right?
Yeah.
Well, and but you're right that it stems, it's wrapped up in this absolutism idea, the idea that it's okay to be hypocritical because the other guy is a bad person and our guy is a good person.
And so I have a concept that I don't have a single episode about, but I bring it up once in a while.
I call it the dishonesty of zealotry, whereby a person knows they're being dishonest, but they engage in that dishonest behavior or whatever anyway, because they think that what they're doing is a good thing.
So if a person is zealous enough to believe that, for example, all vaccines will kill people who take them, then they might willfully distort facts.
They might attempt to change facts.
I mean, we had a surgeon general of Florida who actually changed statistics before they were published on the state website.
And everyone called him out on it and said, look, that's not true.
That's not supported.
You just changed it with your, you know, you might as well just change it with a pen, stroke it out, put another number in.
Like, what are you doing?
That's not even close to true.
And maybe he was wrapped up in this exact thing or not.
It's hard to say, but I've seen a lot of people who engage in dishonest behavior just out of sheer passion for the side that they're arguing for.
Yeah, that actually leads into the next point that I was going to, because, you know, another example is the way evangelicals and other religious people have supported Trump and other Republicans, despite the fact that those people clearly don't have a religious lifestyle.
You know, I mean, an evangelical supporting Trump just is absolute, you know, ridiculous.
There's no way that should happen.
But because they believe that Trump and other Republicans will support Christian nationalist laws and judges, well, that's okay.
And back when I did a lot more arguing against creationists, I used to call it lying for God.
You know, you believe, you know, you believe in the literal creation story.
You believe in, you know, Jesus is Lord and Savior.
And therefore, if you have to lie a little bit in order to get more believers and save those souls, well, you know, it's a small sin for a greater good.
Right.
And it's the same thing here.
They will throw their support behind these horrible people who do not live godly lifestyles.
And it doesn't matter.
Yeah.
So I've noticed this thing happening in the last somewhere between 15 to 20-ish years or so in our political discourse.
And it's come right along with the ramping up of the polarization of the two aspects of the political spectrum, as we laughingly call it.
It's just a line.
It's really, it's not a line, but because we're so polarized now, it's just a line.
I've heard the same thing being said about every leader of Canada and also every leader of the United States.
And in some cases, even some of the leaders of the UK.
And it wouldn't surprise me to hear that some other nations that I don't pay as much attention to have had this said about them.
Most particularly, likely, I think the English-speaking ones, Australia, you know, New Zealand, et cetera, are the first to come to mind.
But they've all had this particular thing said about them that the leader is attempting to destroy the country.
And this is sometimes they say they're attempting to ruin the country.
And they don't say destroy.
But the idea that they're trying to get across is that the person in charge is actively attempting to ruin what we've built here in our fine nation, whichever nation it is.
And I've noted this and I've tried to point out to people right away that that's not true.
And I know it's not true because if they are, if that were true, they're incredibly incompetent at this thing.
Like, think about it.
They have all the power and they're still unable to do it.
Come on.
They're obviously not trying to destroy the country.
It might be that some of them were indifferent to the outcome of the country after they're gone.
That I think was definitely true of Trump.
And I actually had very strong feelings about George W. Bush, but I realize now that those strong feelings were exaggerated.
They didn't need to be as strong as they were.
He did actually care about the nation.
He just had a much different view about which direction it should go because comparing them, George W. Bush actually peacefully handed over The keys.
And when Obama was president-elect and hadn't become president yet, but the economy crashed, George W. Bush talked to Obama about what Obama thought George W. Bush should do because Bush knew that it was Obama's mandate.
He knew that he was handing this thing over, and whatever direction he steered the truck was going to be the direction that Obama was going to have to take it in.
So, and he wanted that to be as smooth as possible and compare that directly with Trump, who did do an insurrection on January 6th, but also at the same time, unbeknownst to everyone else,
instructed his State Department to immediately negotiate a peace in Afghanistan and don't tell anyone, least of all the people on the ground, and have the date be just after the keys get handed over so that it's as much chaos as possible and just screw the soldiers on the ground who have to scramble, screw the military establishment that has to get caught with their pants down and they don't even know what's happening.
And yeah, I mean, when you compare these things, it's obvious that one of them didn't care and was completely indifferent to the outcome.
But in every other case, the idea that this exact phrase has been used to describe presidents and prime ministers on both sides of the aisle, it was used to describe Stephen Harper, Trudeau.
And for anyone who's from the States or UK, who doesn't realize those guys were opposites.
They hated each other.
They still hate each other.
There's still people who in the west of Canada that want to bring Harper back, hope that he could maybe come back and haven't yet realized that he can't.
Well, it's not only politicians.
I have seen that on Twitter about Elon Musk.
I have seen that as recently as today, as we're recording it.
He wants to destroy Twitter.
He wants to destroy Twitter.
And it's like, you know, because that's the it's it's more the conspiratorial explanation of things.
You know, well, he could only be making these decisions if he wanted to destroy Twitter.
No, he could just be really stupid.
And he is, you know, and we've talked about that maxim before: you know, don't ascribe to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
And I can't remember the name of it.
It's not exactly that, but it's close and we've mentioned it before.
And it generally how I live my life because he has done all these different things that people are like, aha, see, Twitter was useful to help spread democracy.
And the Saudis invested a lot of money in it.
And they want to kill Twitter.
He literally owns it.
If he wanted to kill Twitter, he could just turn on the switch.
Yeah, he could just turn it off.
You know, there's literally, it's even, he has more power over Twitter than any president has over a country.
Yeah, he's absolute power.
He can fire literally everyone.
He can just say, I'm alone in this room with all the machines that run this.
We'll see how long it goes.
I mean, so, yeah, to say now, you know, like I said, do I think he's doing a good job?
No, he's doing a terrible job.
And he's blaming everybody else and their brother.
But do I think he wants to kill Twitter?
No.
He just wants it to be what he imagines it should be.
You know who I blame for that?
I blame Richard Pryor because he was the star of a movie called Brewster's Millions.
And it was such a good movie and lives in the hearts of so many people that they imagine that there are rich people who need to do the thing that Richard Pryor did in Brewster's Millions, which for anyone who's unfamiliar, full spoilers for Brewster's Millions, it came out pretty sure it was close to 40 years ago.
Richard Pryor played a character whose job it was to waste and spend a ridiculous amount of money in a very short time, at which point he would gain a much bigger prize.
The concept of which was this extremely strained concept that is so far-fetched and unbelievable, but it was just a comedy movie, so no one really cared.
It's not like he was trying to make a spy movie that was supposed to seem real, it was just an excuse to watch a brilliant comedian in a brilliant comedic role have to do these funny things.
But this is, I think this is what people think when they think about Elon Musk ruining Twitter.
They think he has to ruin it so he can get some other much bigger payday.
And they have no idea what that could possibly look like.
What mechanism could possibly be at play?
Like, what do you think he did a short sell on it in addition to buying the entire thing?
Like, what kind of crazy scheme would that be?
Spend $40 billion so you could make a little bit on the other side.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
Right.
Right.
But they have this, because there's people who have seen this in a Hollywood plot that they liked, that wasn't believable, but that they liked, they are able to imagine that it's come to life in this other figure, this person of Elon Musk, who's obviously intelligent.
He obviously knows way more than us.
He's obviously has something else going on that we don't know about.
He must know what he's doing.
And if he's ruining Twitter, he must have a reason.
And the reason can only be making more money, right?
Because obvious.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to me because it shows how easily some people, even people you wouldn't expect, can jump to conspiratorial thinking.
Because sometimes the people who say this are the ones who will argue against conspiracies and with whom I frequently agree on many other things.
And then they'll come up with this and I just kind of bury my head in my hands.
Like, no, no, he's just incompetent.
That's all.
There is no further explanation needed.
He is just a dumbass.
Yeah.
Right.
So I have a little bit more in my notes here that I need to make sure I get to.
In some situations, absolutism is used to manufacture an answer.
So it works hand in hand with a logical fallacy that's called bifurcation.
Bifurcation is the idea that there are only two possible solutions to a problem or a choice that's in front of you.
And so usually when a person is using absolutism with bifurcation to manufacture an answer, what they'll do is they will present everything as having just two extremes, and then they'll try to eliminate one of the extremes and say that one is undigestible or really, really bad in some ways that are irreversible.
They might even say this one, at least it has these pluses, right?
But there's only really two real options here, and you have to choose one.
And that one's terrible, by the way.
So you pretty much just have to choose this one, right?
You got no choice.
Yeah, I mean, in the commercials and interviews that are running as we're recording this for Ron DeSantis, he has been basically the point of his commercials have been: if you elect me, I will kill people at the border because it is either I kill people at the border or you support fentanyl overdoses.
Yeah, wow.
So, yeah, either you support him with his murder or you support fentanyl.
But he doesn't call it murder.
He makes it sound like it's justifiable.
These are actual commercials running for him saying, I will kill people.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's a perfect example.
But, you know, more generally, yeah, it comes up a lot.
Know, like either you support this candidate or you support gay hippies selling drugs in preschools.
You know, and the worst part is that you know that part was made up and it's less bad than the actual Ron De Santis.
Yeah, I uh, the exam the, the number of examples of this are pretty staggering.
Because they're so regular now, because they're they're almost ubiquitous, like I feel like I could rename this podcast Pointing Out Ubiquity.
And it would be, you know, it would almost make sense.
I think that would be a lame name.
So I'm not going to do that.
I was going to say, is that name already taken?
Maybe.
I haven't checked.
There were a lot of names that got used up during the shutdown.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it is a thing I like to do, to point out the things that you don't think about a lot because they're everyday things that are ubiquitous.
We're exposed to them so much that we don't even realize they're there anymore.
Some of the things that are used to manipulate us are those exact things, and we have to point them out.
We have to consciously think about them because our intuition isn't going to help us with those things.
We have to talk about them and work through them.
Yeah.
I mean, even in supposedly non-political areas, like when I am doing a survivor or big brother podcast, or I write something, you know, just write something online about somebody there.
Now, my podcasts for those shows follow a format that encourages logically taking apart gameplay piece by piece.
Yeah.
Like, here is what you are supposed to do to win the game.
Here is where they didn't do it.
But there's always someone in the comments or on social media who says, you just didn't like them because you like this other person better.
And it's like, or other things of that sort.
You know, you didn't like them because they have red hair.
You know, you didn't like them because they were too young.
Whatever.
Too many earrings or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, no, no.
I mean, just the other day, I had one person who said, I was only saying bad things about the person he was defending and no one else.
And I was like, well, no, that's not true.
Here, here, and here are where I have said similar bad things about another very different player.
And he literally ignored that.
And his next response was, prove it.
I literally just told you where you can find it.
But in his mind, that was the only possible reason.
There was this like, you know, the bifurcation.
It was either you're with me or you're against me.
And there's no way you can do this.
And they really get freaked out when you also say some good things about them.
Then they have to adjust in their mind and say, oh, you're just saying that to try to cover for the fact that you hate them.
Technically, they're right, David.
Yeah.
Technically, all the nice things you say about people are to just get along with other people.
So in the way that sociology is a real science, they've hit the nail on the head.
Yeah.
But still, they're disingenuous and they need to think harder about what's really happening in the world.
Yeah.
Another favorite of mine in this area is when someone disagrees with me about something and they reply, you must have never watched this show before.
Which is, and, you know, for people who are listening who don't know why Spencer's laughing so much, it's because he knows I've been watching and covering these shows for over 20 years.
I've watched every episode of every season, some of them several times.
Yes.
And a person could have easily found that out by just looking in my bio on any given social media.
But no, if I disagree with them, obviously I'm some new idiot who doesn't know anything.
Yeah.
People like to think that any smart person would come to the same conclusion that they just came to because they're a smart person.
Right.
And that therefore, anyone who comes up with a different conclusion either isn't smart or doesn't have all the info that they have.
Right.
Or they're just the enemy.
Well, or they're lying.
Yes.
Yeah.
Because they're a shill.
They're paid by the other side to say this.
Right.
Right.
Yes.
I'm in the pocket of big whatever player.
Someone literally said to me that there was a challenge and one guy won it, obviously.
One has to win all of them.
And someone actually said the show paid all the other people to throw the challenge.
Yeah.
The show paid all the other people to lose.
What world does this even begin to make sense?
It makes sense in wrestling.
Yeah, I mean, but that's because the whole thing's a show.
You know, it's not a real competition.
But this is, I mean, it doesn't even make sense.
Like, there's no, there's just no reason that it would ever happen.
But that's the level to which the shill thinking has risen.
You know, I mean, if you say anything anywhere, you're a shill of some sort.
You're a paid shill of some sort.
Yeah, and it solves every problem.
Yeah, right.
It does.
Yeah.
Except, you know, I would no one has any principles, David, except for the principle that will get them more money.
And therefore, paying people to do anything is a viable solution to everything.
Yeah.
And anyone who comes to a conclusion that you didn't come to is either because they're not smart, they don't have the info, or they're paid to come deliberately to the other conclusion because money will cause anyone to change their mind about anything.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
I wish I were a paid shill nearly as much as I have been accused of it because I would have a lot more money.
So you're saying I can get paid to do this?
I know, really?
Yeah, you're doing these podcasts for free.
Yeah.
And God, you could be in the pocket of big pharma, in the pocket of, you know, big, I don't know, what else do you talk?
Big logic?
Yeah.
Big logic.
Yeah.
Big rationality.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of money in that.
I should start accusing people of being in the pocket of like big fear or like big absolutism.
I don't know.
See where that goes.
So we should mention that if you, if you want to catch any of the arguments I have on Twitter, you can follow me on Twitter at Spencer G. Watson.
I occasionally snag a big fish and get in a big argument with a celebrity on there.
That's always fun.
But where can they find you, David?
On Twitter for now, until Elon crushes it.
I am at David Bloomberg.
I am also at David Bloomberg on some backups in case Elon does crush Twitter, although not on purpose.
Like on Blue Sky and Mastodon, much less active there, but still there.
I am at David Bloomberg TV on Threads.
And the TV is there because Threads is connected to Instagram.
And that is also my handle for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, where I, you know, don't discuss bifurcation and logic and rationality, but rather reality TV.
But sometimes, as we just discussed, those two things manage to intersect with each other.
Sometimes.
Yeah.
And if anyone has any comments, concerns, complaints, they want to tell us what we got wrong on this episode, they can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And with that, I think we'll sign off.
So, all right.
Until next time, David.
Post script.
This episode was recorded in late September.
At that time, there hadn't yet been an attack by Hamas that has begun a renewed conflict in Israel.
For that reason, we don't mention it when discussing the polarization of political discourse that leads people to ultimatums and extreme viewpoints.
Since that new conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces began a month ago, I have seen a sharp rise in the sorts of absolutist arguments that we discuss in this episode.
Part of me wanted to scrap this episode entirely and re-record it with this conflict in mind, but I opted for this approach instead.
The simplification and reduction of extremely complicated events to force people to pick a side tends to empty the political discourse of all nuance, consideration, and empathy.
As each side tells you that you must pick their side or you are actually helping the other side, you may find yourself in a no-win scenario in which two groups, both with a strong sense of righteousness, shout at you with their emotionally charged rhetoric.
It may seem easy to pick a side in that scenario as each side aims their metaphorical cannons of judgment at you, but I still urge caution.
We cannot face an increasingly complex world by constantly steering society toward the simplest solution.
It is easy for people on this side of the planet to attempt to dictate political and moral strategies for people on the other side of the planet.
But it needs to be said that people who are grieving fresh losses from generations of conflict are unlikely to listen.
To raise your voice here to attempt to get their attention will ultimately fail.
But you will succeed in creating further divisions in this political space.
It will lead to new morality tests for politicians who shouldn't be any part of that conflict.
It will lead to new difficulties in having critical conversations that could be used to encourage peace.
As the mob on each side grows in number and calls for greater reciprocation to address the grievances of their chosen side, we will be less likely to find real, workable solutions.
And not just real workable solutions to the conflict in Israel.
It will also be more difficult to find a solution for any other complex problem we have.
Think about this as people demand the correct virtue signal from you regarding a conflict you didn't start and that you're not actually fighting.