Based Camp - October 04, 2023


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


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

192.03436

Word count

6,080

Sentence count

4

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about political polarization and why it's a problem, why it exists, and what we can do about it. We also talk about the problem of political polarization in general, and how we can fix it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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 0.99
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 0.92
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 0.90
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 0.98
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 0.64
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 0.94
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 0.98
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 0.82
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 0.95
00:07:49.500 just have hidden that because they control the media and and then they use like a few clowns in like 0.97
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 1.00
00:15:27.740 it is actually a problem it actually causes problems it is stupid and in a waste of time 1.00
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 0.96
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 0.75
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 0.97
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 0.99
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 0.68
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 0.89
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