Based Camp - Why You Can't Take the Middle Ground in Politics Anymore

00:00:00.000 scott alexander right who writes slate star codex um and him just talking like as truly neutral as

00:00:08.140 possible it's important to understand that in a society where the academic system and most media

00:00:13.500 centers are controlled by one faction if you talk neutrally you are a threat to them because you

00:00:20.120 weigh things towards the the faction that's not in power which is the conservative faction

00:00:24.920 and so he very famously just really tries to give the truth in like the most non-extremist non-hyperbolic

00:00:30.980 way possible so you know he got outed by the new york times and they did this really mean piece on

00:00:37.040 him and to me that even somebody as honestly i think pretty progressive in terms of his sensibilities

00:00:43.420 as him is now pretty solidly grouped with conservatives in terms of the online intellectual

00:00:49.080 movement would you like to know more hello you beautiful human being simone you are the most

00:00:58.080 beautiful human being who's ever lived and i love you to death now today we are going to talk about

00:01:05.080 political polarization because this is an issue that has bedeviled us where we keep having people

00:01:11.640 come to us and they're like i'm going to start a non-partisan version of your foundation like the

00:01:16.140 pronatalist foundation because right pretty openly aligned conservatives and we're like that's not

00:01:21.900 gonna go well for you or they'll even try to start a full-on progressive one and i'm like that might go

00:01:27.220 better than an unaligned one but the question is is why so one i mean i think the easy answer for a lot

00:01:33.040 of people is truth has become a team sport in our society where people care less you know when they

00:01:39.520 hear a piece of like they can hear a piece of like research data right which is just like

00:01:42.960 furthering their understanding of reality and they might become upset because it makes their

00:01:48.920 side less likely to win yeah i'm fuzzy on this but i think even some psychology studies have

00:01:54.460 demonstrated that people when presented with evidence that runs against their political beliefs

00:02:00.520 and their political party's belief will become even more trenched in their belief they won't be

00:02:06.200 convinced or change their mind by that so it does imply that truth is indeed a team sport

00:02:12.540 and this is really damaging implications on reality i mean like for example germany because of the

00:02:19.480 environmentalists shut down all its nuclear power plants not good what were you thinking like this is

00:02:27.820 a you know when we complain about like aesthetic conservatism versus real conservatism this is the

00:02:33.240 perfect example of aesthetic environmentalism versus real environmentalism nuclear power bad dirty big

00:02:40.820 nuclear silos and deformed people living near them you know it's like okay that's like a weird like

00:02:46.660 aesthetic of environmentalism from the 1980s but like we should know better now especially if you don't

00:02:52.040 have any other way than to generate that power than russian oil which it turned out you didn't have any

00:02:57.120 backup plan for it was profoundly stupid and so i should say we don't just have this problem on the

00:03:03.140 right of like this like i'm gonna be you know aesthetically and i'm i'll link the video here or you can

00:03:08.660 check it out like aesthetic conservatism versus real conservative because we do have this problem

00:03:11.340 on the right but the left has it as well where they just stop caring about reality and it's just

00:03:15.540 about whether or not their team is winning so i'd say that there's sort of a few reasons why this

00:03:20.060 doesn't work but i think one of the most important was when the simone went over with me and i want to

00:03:24.580 have early in our video here you know because i watched the watch time on these and i'm like well

00:03:28.420 let's at least get the good ideas to people faster right which was do you want to go into it simone

00:03:34.080 i don't remember it what what can you remind me and i'll explain your idea was that if you try to

00:03:42.720 hold the middle ground the progressives will just keep pushing you further and further and further to

00:03:49.100 extreme positions oh okay okay i think i remember the argument i made and i think you can make this

00:03:55.040 more nuanced thing but i remember what i'd said to you at least yeah so progressives essentially don't

00:04:00.300 allow individuals to hold the middle ground ideologically well specifically i think what

00:04:04.700 happens is they more center people even if they are progressive get increasingly pushed progressive

00:04:11.720 because if they attempt to apologize or correct their behavior if their behavior is pointed out as

00:04:19.900 being problematic they will they will be further punished and then further forced to go in a very very

00:04:26.900 extreme position so yeah you basically don't get rewarded for deviating even slightly from the

00:04:34.080 most extreme positions and in many circles at least and then if you apologize if you if you engage in any

00:04:40.980 way in a way that that signals no i really still do want to be part of this community you are forced

00:04:46.300 to become more extreme does that make sense yeah it makes perfect sense so so you can think about it this

00:04:50.880 way the progressive community it basically will say okay you want to be a part of multiple

00:04:55.440 communities you want to be a part of the conservative world you want to be a part of the progressive

00:04:58.040 world that's what you're really saying like i want to be broadly accepted within both these

00:05:02.460 communities that's what a person is saying when they're politically neutral you can't just say oh

00:05:05.700 i'm not engaging with either right um and then the progressive community comes to you and they'll be

00:05:09.920 like well you need to change what you did here you need to change what you did here you need to

00:05:13.140 apologize for this the moment you do that you have lost because then they they make their demands more

00:05:19.280 extreme and you get no reward for conceding but if you do not concede if you do not change your

00:05:25.780 behavior based on what they're saying then you are said to be a far-right outsider or a racist or a

00:05:31.660 nazi or eugenicist you know all the sorts of accusations we have appointed at us but they get

00:05:38.100 pointed at literally anyone who disagrees with progressives if you just disagree with progressives

00:05:42.060 and it's irrelevant what the facts are i mean one of my favorite things was the guy was like look

00:05:46.820 i'm obviously not a racist i have a black wife and i have black children and they were like well

00:05:52.240 that's extra sign of your racism because you disagree with us and you're around black people

00:05:57.540 so you must be victimizing them and it's like come on guys like get it together that's all you're

00:06:04.600 showing there is that you're just using the word of the bludgeon for your political enemies and people

00:06:09.680 who want to be seen within your group and they know if they get this label of racist or this label of

00:06:15.460 you know nazi or fascist or whatever that they're not going to be able to engage with your community

00:06:21.820 and so you use that you you you spread this you know as we've said hilariously progressives who call

00:06:27.500 us eugenicists they're like yes you eugenicists you're dirtying the gene pool and i want to use

00:06:32.920 the government to limit your reproductive rights in terms of the technology that you're engaging with

00:06:37.400 so that you don't dirty the gene pool with all of this weird stuff you're doing and i'm like

00:06:42.180 that is literally exactly eugenics and yet you use the title of eugenics and the accusation of

00:06:49.060 eugenics on us to try to force us to engage with your way but this is one reason but it's not the

00:06:56.100 only reason why you really can't take the middle ground anymore another reason is that you just will

00:07:01.480 have no one to support you so if we tried to take the middle ground we could be othered by progressives

00:07:07.500 while not having a conservative line of support which is really really really damaging another

00:07:16.260 thing i'd lay and it's a little sad thing because i've so taken control of the narratives that even

00:07:20.940 some conservative influencers believe this but and we have a whole video on this that's called like

00:07:25.460 the greatest lie in history which is that the progressive base is actually as racist or more

00:07:31.660 racist than the conservative base um and i don't mean like in like vague wishy-washy like a formative

00:07:37.740 action is racist i mean until obama was erect elected president fewer democrats in the u.s said

00:07:43.660 they would vote for a black president than conservatives like literally it's still the party of the clan they

00:07:49.500 just have hidden that because they control the media and and then they use like a few clowns in like

00:07:55.100 the public to try to connect racists with conservatives when the the democratic party is and always has been

00:08:01.660 the party of the clan they just do things a little differently now and and you can see this in the

00:08:06.700 actual data so so check that video but it is it is really sad so can you tell reasons why you that things

00:08:13.260 have to be so politically entrenched these days

00:08:17.420 hmm well i can go over one if you want me to go further um which is to say that if you look at

00:08:27.900 something like the educational system like we came at this and and this is actually a problem that teach

00:08:31.580 for america has because you know we have a lot of friends and like high up and teach for america

00:08:34.940 you cannot make meaningful reforms in the educational system and sideways progressives at all so teach

00:08:40.620 for america basically attempted to do this and a lot of people don't know but they're basically about

00:08:43.980 to die now because they can't get any new recruits they became known despite being the one former

00:08:49.980 number one employer for ivy league graduates and two an incredibly efficacious organization the work

00:08:54.460 they did really made a difference but it made things harder for like long-term union paying teachers

00:09:01.100 because they had to change things to adopt to these new strategies and they had to compete with

00:09:06.300 young educated people who were like actually what you're doing is causing long-term damage and

00:09:10.540 they're like i don't want to change what i'm doing i'm going to the union about this and because the

00:09:14.700 union then turned against teach for america or the unions turned against teach for america now became

00:09:18.300 not cool like it becomes known as not cool among progressive circles to work for them and i'm like

00:09:21.980 you know you could just brand yourself as a conservative organization and you'd be have a whole fresh

00:09:26.380 recruit of people you could take from and they would actually be interested in your mission

00:09:30.140 because it's actually helping kids and this is something where if you do any sort of like

00:09:34.140 charter school advocacy voucher program advocacy anyone who looks at the the statistics on this would

00:09:39.100 obviously see that it helps students like it's just like reality is uh disintermediating the

00:09:44.620 education system is good for students but it hurts teachers unions and teachers unions are an incredibly

00:09:51.260 important voting block for democrats like they would not if they lost if a if a democratic candidate lost

00:09:55.980 the teachers unions they could not win an election just period like any election and because the

00:10:00.540 progressive movement is so tied with the democratic u.s democratic politics they have to then shape

00:10:07.180 reality and truth around the the interest of those political interests i.e even if it's hurting

00:10:13.340 children even if it's disproportionately hurting poor children well the truth needs to be that charter

00:10:19.820 schools are bad that even if pretending this is hurting children because or or at least that it's still

00:10:26.780 open to debate at least that scientists go both ways on the issues and economics researchers go both ways

00:10:33.100 they do not they're just like strictly a good thing if you actually look at the data not like what people

00:10:37.340 are publishing because obviously people you know like keep their jobs and stuff like that but i mean

00:10:40.220 like just look at the data it's just like so overwhelmingly obvious and and this is one of

00:10:44.220 those things where i was like and it's an interesting thing for a lot of people who want to like

00:10:47.980 help with education especially if they want to help with education in lower income communities

00:10:53.340 because a lot of people they're like yeah this could really help these people and they realize the minute

00:10:57.500 they actually try to change anything they get branded as like far right activists or far right

00:11:02.780 extremists and it's always uh it's it's somewhat humorous to me because it's like either you can

00:11:08.860 take that branding and you can continue and continue to fix things or you can bend over backwards to try

00:11:13.580 to you know accommodate them and this is why stuff was like you know i think it was mark zuckerberg

00:11:17.980 right he donated a hundred million dollars to the newark school system and over half of the money went to

00:11:23.660 a bribe to the teachers unions to allow them to pay teachers more with the pittance that was left

00:11:30.060 for good performance that was the thing that teachers unions didn't want to happen for teachers

00:11:34.700 to be paid more for good performance i mean i say a bribe of course it it went to like unpaid

00:11:41.100 something somethings basically it went just as a cash payout to members of the union in the local

00:11:46.220 area to allow them to make these other changes and this is what happens when in an issue like

00:11:51.260 education you're like okay i'm going to try to go at this from a politically neutral or even

00:11:55.340 progressively favorable position and it is created that way it is structured that way to prevent

00:12:02.540 things from ever getting better because if things got better they would have to change

00:12:05.900 and unions axiomatically hate change right like they are about maintaining the existing power hierarchy

00:12:12.140 within a field well but i mean to that to your point there that's not just unions that's pretty much

00:12:16.460 i think we've gotten to a point where many political and governmental organizations have

00:12:23.420 become extremely strong and entrenched and organizationally ossified but also very powerful

00:12:30.380 and they've gotten to the point where they've essentially grown tumorous cancers that we talk

00:12:34.220 about in the pragmatist guide to governance that are more interested in self-perpetuation than in

00:12:39.980 doing their job so the focus then becomes really protecting and entrenching rather than working

00:12:49.660 and so it would make sense that there's a lot of you know team sports and alliance creating and

00:12:54.940 and sort of power mongering and protecting right because you know the the imperative of many many

00:13:01.500 organizations both political and governmental are to just survive like they're not as we learned from

00:13:07.260 doing work in the political space they're not effective they're not actually really doing

00:13:11.100 their job they're putting most of their money and time and effort and skill into raising money and

00:13:16.540 telling a certain story that will lead to more donations or more support or larger budgets but then

00:13:21.660 i also think that the larger phenomenon with the way that internet communities work contributes this

00:13:26.540 to this as well and that you know in a dominance hierarchy as you say in the pragmatist guide to

00:13:30.540 governance the way that you show your dominance in many cases is through your extremism

00:13:36.220 vis-a-vis the special interest of whatever group there is so i think because so much of political

00:13:42.060 action has become really dislodged from like oh helping a community helping policy you know changing

00:13:48.300 this i think the economy would work a little bit more efficiently this way it's really become what team

00:13:53.100 are you on that therefore the most easy way to show your status in these communities isn't by writing

00:14:00.540 policy or by working with a politician or doing local issues like making progress in local issues

00:14:06.620 but rather by showing how extreme you are in your views because that makes you even more democratic or

00:14:12.780 even more republican such a good point and i really want to you know explore this point that you're making

00:14:19.100 more here because i think it's very important for our viewers you know that the democratic party does

00:14:25.660 self-eat itself due to this weird dominance fight and you keep seeing this in local elections like

00:14:29.820 i've heard from people in local elections yeah we're outrating the republicans but due to these

00:14:33.660 internal dominant struggles and these hierarchy fights we have within our local offices over stuff

00:14:38.220 like are we hiring you know the right makeup of ethnic groups are we hiring the right makeup of

00:14:43.580 disabilities are we because that's how you show your dominance wording yeah these are all dominance

00:14:48.540 fights but you know they're they're they're absolutely so infesting the progressive side that they are

00:14:52.940 preventing efficacious work whereas we do have these problems on the conservative side as well

00:14:58.700 absolutely we have these problems but i believe that we can overcome them i believe that the dominant

00:15:05.020 faction of the conservative group can prevent these sort of virtue spirals from happening and we do this

00:15:10.220 through shaming which you constantly see on this channel individuals who engage with this type

00:15:15.900 of conservatism this is not us like being anti-conservative when we're like you know you flexing

00:15:21.900 your aesthetic conservatism is a problem and will lead to virtue spirals and will lead to problems

00:15:27.740 it is actually a problem it actually causes problems it is stupid and in a waste of time

00:15:33.580 and don't do it like just don't do it but the other thing that you mentioned there and you were citing

00:15:38.460 something that was actually really concrete that we have information on that your average person

00:15:43.260 would have information on so we ran this election thing that had us we were being funded by

00:15:47.340 conservatives uh but it it had us uh aligned with progressives a few times and so we got internal

00:15:53.660 access to some of their data like these big democratic get out to vote organizations and we learned that

00:15:59.660 they performed literally six thousand percent worse than us on a per dollar spent level and the core

00:16:08.060 innovation we had was just a b testing well and a few other really sophisticated things we were doing

00:16:14.060 but the point being is that it appeared that they hadn't like they would send these emails which you

00:16:18.300 might have seen was political emails was like borders on the email and then like internal text

00:16:24.300 that was like a page and a half of like text was like images and stuff and i'm like this looks like

00:16:29.900 a spam email from the 90s like you guys know the reason why all the companies stopped doing this is

00:16:35.020 because it doesn't work and they were like yeah but we don't want to risk experimenting with things if you

00:16:39.900 look at the emails that our org was sending they never went above three sentences usually one to

00:16:44.700 two sentences simple action items meant to emotionally engage people that's our consulting thing if you

00:16:50.460 want to like get all the information that other people pay a lot of money for when we're talking

00:16:54.940 about these sorts of political things but yeah that's literally how we did it and it to me was not

00:17:01.420 shocking to me i was thinking about like what gets me to act on an email like it has to

00:17:05.100 basically piss me off like if it's a spam email it needs to be short like people only read one

00:17:10.220 to two sentences they don't read anything long-form they don't read anything that has these fancy

00:17:14.300 images on it so take all that out and emotionally engage them as quickly as you can and that will

00:17:20.220 get them to act in the way that you you want them to act but that they that they hadn't even considered

00:17:24.780 this because and what we realized if their emails were not about doing what people when they said

00:17:29.820 were taking donations to do x or y they weren't about doing x or y they were about raising more

00:17:38.060 money they were about doing what seemed like plausibly an okay thing to be doing with the money so that

00:17:44.300 they could raise more money so that they could pay more salaries and this is a you know the word you

00:17:49.580 use is is wicked problem someone because it's a very difficult problem to fight at the level of a

00:17:53.500 non-profit if you're not giving to a non-profit that's not like you know it's studiously ethically run like

00:17:58.860 ours which is well that's the thing is it's really hard to find a non-profit like that because

00:18:04.060 non-profits like that do their job and either fix the problem or disassemble as soon as their

00:18:09.100 specific job is done and or fail to raise money because they were so busy doing their job and then

00:18:15.820 basically the only non-profits that persistently exist over time are extremely good at making money

00:18:21.580 at raising money and making the problem seem bigger which frankly is a lot easier when the problem

00:18:25.900 doesn't go away so i i just i think it's it's going to be really hard for people to find any

00:18:32.220 long-lasting organization that is not ossified to at least some extent by this level of corruption

00:18:38.540 and i mean i i used to use organizations like charity navigator to try to figure out like the

00:18:43.900 percentage of spending that was program spending but even those numbers are really fudged so i think now

00:18:51.500 like if i were to donate i mean like the way we donate money now is actually how i would always

00:18:58.300 donate money which is like put money toward a very specific discrete project with a start and an end

00:19:06.940 and metrics that enable me to see if it did its job period like nothing you know see no organization that

00:19:13.980 is going to have staff members that is going to have people who you know depend on it for a salary

00:19:19.020 because those people are going to be incentivized to keep the organization alive much more than

00:19:23.180 they're going to be incentivized to solve the problem i mean our non-profit spending goes to

00:19:26.540 our own projects largely speaking and it goes to our own projects where we also have the secondary

00:19:32.060 non-profit goal of you should never be donating to anything that can't become self-sustaining

00:19:36.620 and by that what i mean they can't become because when something provides something of value to

00:19:41.580 other people in our society they pay for it like that's what that's what efficiency gains are

00:19:46.780 right and so if you have actually created something that's providing value eventually

00:19:51.900 people will pay for that value and if they're not paying for that value well then you're not

00:19:54.940 creating value you're not actually helping people there is always a way to profit when you're making

00:19:59.420 people's lives better and so we look for ways that we can put you know some money down now to create

00:20:05.100 something that then spins up itself and improves the quality of a lot of people's lives but this is

00:20:10.220 very different than the way traditional non-profit organizations work yeah but it's really sad i i'd

00:20:17.420 say another thing is you know if you one thing that i've been very surprised about is you know coming

00:20:25.660 from a world where you're in the progressive community is how narrow they are in the ideas

00:20:30.220 that they accept and will allow to be voiced yet how diverse the ideas in the conservative community

00:20:36.220 are almost to a fault today which is very interesting to me you know it's it's a community

00:20:42.380 where you can have a conservative muslim and a conservative jew in in the same uh organization

00:20:47.980 who have almost literally nothing similar about their world perspectives and and then people like us who

00:20:54.460 are you know conservative atheists i guess you could call or secular christians which which have pretty

00:21:01.020 unique views yet we've been pretty accepted by most of the the voices in the movement except for some

00:21:07.260 where we could like disrupt their power hierarchy like who was the guy who called us like nerds that

00:21:11.180 no one should listen to oh ben shapiro ben shapiro yeah but other than that you know it's it's been

00:21:16.540 pretty interesting i also think that if you want to look at an example of why you can't take the middle

00:21:21.100 ground a great example that happened pretty publicly which was the guy we were just meeting was last week was

00:21:26.060 scott alexander right who writes slate star codex um and him just talking like as truly neutral as

00:21:34.300 possible it's important to understand that in a society where the academic system and most media

00:21:39.660 centers are controlled by one faction if you talk neutrally you are a threat to them because you weigh

00:21:46.780 things towards the the faction that's not in power which is the conservative faction and so he very famously just

00:21:53.420 really tries to give the truth in like the most non-extremist non-hyperbolic way possible

00:21:57.980 he always anything we care about he's always like well you may be worrying a bit more everything's

00:22:03.100 always less and as we point out you know you're talking about prediction markets because we're at

00:22:06.220 this prediction market event we're like look if you always bet that any extremely alarmist prediction

00:22:12.460 is wrong generally you are going to make money or you are going to make prediction market points on

00:22:17.740 average however you are also going to do less meaningful things because you are going to miss

00:22:24.060 the things that actually turn out to be right in terms of outrageous predictions so you know he got

00:22:31.100 outed by the new york times and they did this really mean piece on him and it sort of forced him in many

00:22:36.860 ways to to become it it helped his his public rise a lot because to me that even somebody as honestly i

00:22:45.820 think pretty progressive in terms of his sensibilities as him is now pretty solidly

00:22:51.180 grouped with conservatives in terms of the online intellectual movement

00:22:58.140 yeah but again i think that that's actually a really great example of what it's like when you are

00:23:03.980 punished you know for for being insufficiently progressive that you know there's like nothing

00:23:09.980 you can do it's it's really crazy and also the accusations that that were made about him were so

00:23:16.620 tentative that it's it's almost a joke like they they were really accusing him of things that weren't

00:23:22.940 even true but it was enough to endanger his professional practice to make him extremely

00:23:28.860 uncomfortable of course and to sort of like really disrupt his life so it is but you know what he didn't

00:23:35.500 apologize and i think he did the right thing and it helped him yeah well i mean there was nothing to

00:23:40.620 apologize for like i'm not i'm not backing down from these positions you guys are being unrealistic

00:23:45.420 and unreasonable and you're being little turds basically and it ended up helping him now of

00:23:50.700 course he's not hyperbolic like us like our whole public image is based on being kind of bombastic and

00:23:56.060 combative a little bit i mean not in like a mean way i mean unless you're talking about yet then it's

00:24:01.260 in a mean way but other than that um not in a mean way and his is not his is not he is genuinely

00:24:07.660 like very middle line and it was shocking to me and this is actually interesting to me and is how i know

00:24:13.900 the progressives are going to eventually lose is in this power consolidation play they are kicking

00:24:20.540 out many allies through potential allies through very tentative in a way that makes it increasingly

00:24:28.140 obvious to the general public that one these groups control the positions of power in our society

00:24:33.340 two they are willing to lie to them uh pretty aggressively and three they do not have their

00:24:38.220 best interest at heart and i think at this point there's no way to win also i think it's it's just

00:24:43.740 yeah there's no way to win and if you're not in the cult you know i i think it's pretty obvious that

00:24:47.900 it is a cult and that it's a cult that doesn't have your best interest at heart anymore and that the

00:24:52.380 only way to fight them is is to unfortunately align yourself i won't say unfortunately fortunately

00:24:58.380 because they have so many beliefs that are aligned with us you know since trump was elected we're

00:25:02.300 really like oh now we sort of agree with almost everything the conservative party stands for

00:25:07.020 which is pretty interesting because before him you know before this major political realignment now we

00:25:11.820 had a lot of pretty major disagreements with the way the conservative party was structured

00:25:15.500 and it's a lot less of a a smelling pill to to target and sort of the trump and post trump especially

00:25:21.020 the post trump era although i do think trump will probably be our next president so it's not post trump

00:25:26.380 yet right we're in for an interesting future well unless they have this is going to change because i

00:25:33.820 don't see how in the age of the internet it can change but i i think it would be really great if it did

00:25:39.420 well here's how i think it's one of those things where it's it's slow in the background until it's

00:25:46.380 all at once i think anyone who is engaged with like what is actually true about reality when they

00:25:53.260 investigate the data it's really obvious that many positions that you would come to are not positions

00:25:59.980 that progressives allowed they will kick you out of your community their community for having which

00:26:04.540 means that anyone who's interested in like actually what's true about reality not what helps me

00:26:09.260 signal my status to other people that they will decide was a conservative party i mean this is

00:26:15.580 what the intellectual dark web really is when people talk about this right and and because of

00:26:20.140 that that means we get the best talent when i talk with smart young people they're like yeah i

00:26:26.220 mean i want to stay under the radar but secretly i identify as this isn't this conservatively

00:26:30.940 speaking oh man the number of times we hear that yeah and and it's because they have made

00:26:37.340 themselves the big boogeyman the big oppressor the big you know we do this this and this and the

00:26:43.820 accusations they are leveling at conservatives with little research like the racism episode that the

00:26:48.700 progressive base is actually as racist or more racist in the conservative based in like the most

00:26:53.500 traditional sense the accusations like oh these conservatives are racist they're just obviously not true from the

00:26:58.620 data and and and then they use these words to be like why would you associate with these racist

00:27:04.060 conservatives and when you look at the data and you don't see this as being true you're like wait

00:27:09.180 have i been lied to and nothing galvanizes people against you like lying to them like convincing them

00:27:15.020 to malign or hate somebody based on something that turns out to be entirely fictional and that is

00:27:22.620 exactly the stance and tactics that the progressive party is using so aggressively right now and then on

00:27:28.140 top of all of this when you're in this status signal you know fight you know within the progressive

00:27:32.700 party to be accepted by this community you know desperately simping to be accepted by this

00:27:37.420 completely narcissistic unrealistic demigod that you won't have kids because that's not what you're

00:27:43.980 focused on right and it's sad but it's it's it's sad that so many people have been caught up by it

00:27:49.340 that it has so many positions of power in our society but it's just so astoundingly inefficient now

00:27:53.740 of course we have the fear that they then use ai or they use government control in a way similar to

00:27:59.340 like what china is doing that they they they shut down people's ways to make income like they did

00:28:04.940 with the trucker protest like anyone who is even like reasonable on the trucker protest they would

00:28:09.740 like literally shut down their bank accounts in canada like we have seen how far they have had to go to

00:28:16.060 keep control when they are obviously not on the average citizen side when they are not on the working

00:28:21.260 classes side anymore when they are the party of racism now and yet they need to hide all of this when they

00:28:27.340 they have organizations like antifa that literally act like like nazi fascist goons like you look at

00:28:33.820 what the the people were doing in the lead up to the uh election of hitler and you look at like these

00:28:39.580 goons who would go out and rough up people and like agitate was in protest and they they like dress they

00:28:45.020 act they talk like antifa antifa's goals are like literally actually fascism and yet they they call

00:28:50.780 themselves anti-fascist and you see pretty quickly oh these guys are actually like transparently evil and

00:28:55.500 actually transparently support fascism and what they want from a government the government that

00:28:59.500 fascistly enforces their values on anyone who thinks differently than them i mean i think that

00:29:04.220 this is all pretty transparent to people and that they're going to lose the control they have now

00:29:09.260 yeah we'll see i think that it can get a lot worse first personally

00:29:15.180 but we'll we'll we'll fight we're here we will win we've got plans in action across many domains and

00:29:24.940 we know other people who do too and as we always say if this podcast had a motto it would be thank

00:29:32.380 god the forces arrayed against us are not as competent as they are malevolent if we lived in

00:29:38.300 that timeline where they were competent as well oh i wouldn't want to be there but they are

00:29:44.540 wildly incompetent and when our money goes 6 000 fold further per dollar spent to things like

00:29:51.500 our foundation versus theirs they just can't compete they're not nimble enough because they don't get

00:29:57.580 people who relate to truth they get to people who relate to status seeking yeah so it goes well i love

00:30:07.340 you and i love you know not being on the oppressive not allowed to talk about certain things side of

00:30:15.980 the spectrum because i guess i i kind of grew up there and it it wasn't just not being allowed to talk

00:30:23.820 about certain things it was not being allowed to admit certain things about yourself and that

00:30:31.500 wasn't great for me i really like it on the other side so thanks for me bringing me over there for

00:30:37.660 showing me i had the right to do it reminds me of a scene from madagascar where they have the fun

00:30:43.260 side of the island and then the not fun side of the island and they're like you're always welcome

00:30:46.860 on the fun side of the island just come over it's a party over here you don't need to be so sad and

00:30:53.100 angry at everyone and this is true progressives on average are much sadder than republicans they

00:30:58.300 have been since pew started recording this data and and i and i just love that scene and i've even

00:31:02.860 gone back to watch it i'm like the the the the fun side of the island scene because that's the way it

00:31:08.220 is when you when you join the conservative side and you realize that all the fun people are already

00:31:13.260 over here and we're all having fun and you're welcome over here and we are not the boogey man that

00:31:18.140 you have been told yeah well speaking of fun let's go play with our kids yeah i love you i love you too

Based Camp - October 04, 2023

Why You Can't Take the Middle Ground in Politics Anymore

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