Episode 1039 Scott Adams： Talking With Congressman Matt Gaetz About All the Hot Topics, Then More From Me
Episode Stats
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Summary
The world is spinning around and things are getting out of control, but between all of you and me, and my upcoming guest Matt Gates, we re going to figure it all out before we do that though. Before we figure it out, though, we ve got to figure out how to make coffee.
Transcript
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Bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum.
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Hey everybody. Come on in. It's going to be one of the best coffees with Scott Adams of all time.
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That's right. Representative Matt Gaetz will be joining me if our technology works the way I hope.
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but first get in here get in here we got all kinds of stuff to talk about the world is spinning
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around and things are getting out of control but between all of you and me and my upcoming guest
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matt gates we're going to work this all out we're going to figure it all out before we do that though
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what do we do first yeah that's right it's called the simultaneous sip and all you need
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is a cup or mug or a glass a tank or chalice or stein a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any
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kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled
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pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better including the economy
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including the coronavirus including racial divide it's all better a little bit just a little bit
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uh-huh uh-huh that's definitely better all right let me uh check my technology here
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all right in a moment we'll have representative matt gates join us i have a little update for you
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while we're uh waiting for him to get on and the the technology is always you know a little uh hard
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to navigate so we'll do our best here um i got a uh an update on uh carpe donctum and rahim kasam
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two people who had been um temporarily limited in their twitter uh use for content uh in the case of carpe
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dunctum uh there was a dcma request there's an official way that somebody can request copyrighted
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material to be taken down but the question is even though it's copyrighted it's used in the concept of
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parody so it's a little bit of a gray area and then there was rahim kasam who showed showed a video
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that uh included the time of death of somebody and if a family member requests video being taken
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down because of time of death uh then uh when that happens they uh they will take it down
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now in both of those cases there i guess twitter is working with both rahim and carpe donctum
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to see if they can get them back up and also within the rules now the question that i ask is why would
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you ban the person instead of the content if you know there's just one piece of content that's
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questionable why not just block the content and say hey let's talk about this content you either
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have to remove it or we're gonna have to work something out and it turns out that twitter is
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actually looking into that as well so i think what makes this feel like an attack on conservatives or
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even individuals is that they block the whole account or they'll you know they'll limit the
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account in some way because of one piece of content which feels wrong right like just the way that feels
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like wait a minute if the content is wrong but everything else has been fine up till now why not just
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block the content and then we'll work out what's wrong and apparently twitter is looking into exactly
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that so there are some things upcoming that will be exciting in the twitter world but that that
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continues all right let me see if matt has there we are let's add representative gates
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and if our technology works which looks like it didn't he just disappeared
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so um matt uh you just disappeared when i tried to select you so um try that again and as soon as i
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see your indicator come on i'll i'll add you all right we've got uh there he is i'll bet you this will
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work just great this time because as you know technology always works just the way you want it to
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um looking better oh didn't work again this is the problem we had the first time we tried to do it
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i don't know if it's a wi-fi problem or some other kind of technical incompatibility let's try one more
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time um i've got my phone set up so if they text me to tell me what the problem is i'll know
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we're back i imagine they're trying different devices and stuff uh to get this working all right
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while we're uh waiting for that i wanted to um talk about an argument i've been seeing online
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that i think about a lot and i don't think we're doing a good job of handling it let's add let's add
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matt again watch this work representative matt gates i can hear you i think are you there
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yes finally finally score let's do this um i feel like we've now got audio privilege we should
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probably have to disclaim it yes i i feel a little bit guilty about this um first of all you have
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started a new podcast called hot takes uh which is terrific um how's that going well i uh really
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enjoy it i think that the news of the day really opens the door into the questions that we have to
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answer in the congress of whether they're questions about the nature of speech in this country or really
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what we see going on with an effort to i think dismantle america by trying to make us love her less
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and i i am just unapologetically pro-american i think this is the greatest country ever but i think
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the tactics that we see to try to uh deconstruct our history to try to take away a sense of national
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pride are are far more dangerous than just you know the destruction of a statue i think they're
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really trying to get to the destruction of the system well let's talk about that so i have not fully
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bought into the the conspiracy that there's a master plan i i believe that there are probably
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some people who think of it in the long term but what percentage of the protesters do you think have
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a master plan versus they like the fun they're angry you know it'll burn itself out how do you break
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that down the the master marxist planners versus the people who are just having fun looting and
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protesting and and free speech i think that it it is uh driven by the money i mean i think that that
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a substantial amount of the money that has existed for the infrastructure of these organizations uh
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is fueled by a neo-marxist desire to um to shame america into a crouch both domestically and on the
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global stage and i think that there is a general grievance movement that is out there you know they'll
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show up and occupy wall street if you want them to they'll show up for a black lives matter protest if
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you want to they're just sort of in for the grievance and i think that makes up a lot of the volume of
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the humans but but the money is uh you know the the financial desire to see this this neo-marxist
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revolution combined with sort of the corporate america um white guilt payoffs so who exactly is the
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money behind this because it's hard to see anybody who could gain by more socialism because that basically
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kills i mean that that is might as well throw your money in a big pile and set it on a fire who
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who can make a who can make money by paying the united states to destroy itself well i mean i think
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that there are foreign entities that that benefit from this i mean you we have seen some reports that
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there have been venezuelans cubans that have tried to infiltrate some of the the leadership of
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these organizations to try to um fuel anti-americanism and and so division and we know
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beyond that there there are foreign influences in the black lives matter branding uh particularly
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from russia and china they use these uh racial divisions to try to stoke more anger and tension
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in our country but but i think that the that for the most part the call is coming from inside the house
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i mean i think that that within our country there is there is a grievance culture and this is the
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current manifestation how compatible do you think black lives matter leadership is with whatever the
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antifa if you can even call it that any kind of leadership or at least leading voices do you think
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black lives matter and antifa are even on the same page with each other i doubt that that is a
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sustainable coalition uh or a resilient coalition right now they're sort of you know united around
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a common enemy and sadly that enemy is our sense of national pride and national identity what those
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groups have in common is that they believe that america being that shining example uh that america being
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the best version of herself is uh is is damaging to to their sense of grievance how do you how do you
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deal with the fact that um you know america as a brand we like to you know if you love your country you
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like to put it in the best possible light but it is nonetheless true that america has a violent and
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brutal racist past that got us where we are now how do you keep your brand and your love of your country
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while still being honest about how we got here i think we could be honest about the fact that all human
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history is full of identity-based violence full of brutality full of uh you know sort of human
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competition and and the the negative impulses that that can create all of that said in a world of
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relativism i'll take the united states and our development and our promotion of values and our
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sense of inclusion over just about any other human society in all of human history because it creates the
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the the unifying principle of prosperity and opportunity for people you know my my take on
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all this and i want to see what you think about it is that when we focus on the problems we have
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taken a sort of a loser mindset which is oh i'm i'm disadvantaged you've got privilege i don't etc
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and while all of that can be true sometimes not but it certainly could be true um how does that
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change the fact that all of us have an individual strategy and if everybody followed the same
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strategy we'd all get pretty good results meaning pay attention in school don't have a baby when
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you're 14 don't go on drugs you know work hard have have some you know additions to your talent stack
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etc so they're fairly basic things to do that everybody can succeed which works actually better if you're
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black frankly because if you knew that corporate america is literally begging for more people of
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color because they need it i mean there's a lot of pressure on them so everybody has a three-lane
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highway in america if they follow the same strategy why are we focusing on the problems and our
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disadvantages which is just divisive instead of figuring out how to get better mentoring better
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education better strategy because if everybody had a good strategy they'd probably all do well
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i i think you're right i i agree that when we unify around the common opportunity that exists in this
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country for for any who are willing to work hard play by the rules uh we we draw more people to the
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cause but i i don't think that every um uh every sort of sectionalized group wants that unity i think
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that there are that there are leaders in some groups of people and i'm not even talking about
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you know racial identity i mean i think you see this geographically i think you see it politically
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where people think that division sort of creates an opportunity within their movement for their own
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advancement and for their own leadership but but i think that when you talk about focusing on on the
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positive we also have to do that with americanism and so often like for example in the immigration
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debate we're told oh well the way republicans talk about this is xenophobic it's racist my view is that
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if if we instead focus on that positive the the wonder the exceptionalism that comes with being an
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american something so worth preserving and being proud of that uh that that also can be a more unifying
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call and unfortunately i think we we take the bait uh as conservatives not even as conservatives just as
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people who believe in america we take the bait and grant the premise that somehow there is something
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flawed with our founding and with our history and i think if we if we acknowledge that all humans have
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uh complications challenges and multi-dimensions in our history but that ours is absolutely the best
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that hopefully that can that can prevail but you know we surrendered the ground in schools so you know
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probably you know 15 20 years ago scott and i think that we're starting to see the manifestation
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of the um just the like the the egalitarianism that we embraced in in education and this this
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cultural relativism you know when you look at base problems and you're trying to figure out all right
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what's where's the big lever what's the most right impactful thing we could do it just all comes down
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to school doesn't it i mean i know some people are going to say having parents but i'm not sure you can
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fix the parent thing right away but the the school thing seems like something that the government
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could fix if it focused on it it is the great equalizer my dad was superintendent of schools in the
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community where i grew up he was never a teacher or a principal he was a business person that was
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elected to the position because he thought that if we could improve the operations of our schools
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that the outcomes would be better and ultimately they were but but the you know the i think
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education associations the unions i think some of the you know social justice warriors that attacked
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curriculum in particular made a lot of progress while we had our eye off the ball you know i mean a lot
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of republicans over the last 15 20 years have been focused on how do we teach your kid coding while
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the left has been worried about you know how we sand away the uh the founding values of america and i
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think they they made progress in that regard you know there's something that you and president trump
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and i have in common in terms of mindset unless you disagree with this which is even if i'm looking
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at an optimistic future or let's say a rosy picture of america i do that strategically in other words i know
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that when i put my positive thoughts into the universe i just get a better result even if they're
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unrealistic and and i feel like that's just an intentional strategy but if you look at it
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not as a strategy it just looks like you're loopy and crazy and you don't care about problems and you
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don't care about other people but can you could you talk to that do is it is it a strategy or is it just
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the way you see the world i think particularly with president trump i mean he believes that he can will
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positivity into existence you know he believed that in business and he does that on the campaign trail and
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yeah he does it in government it is infectious it is an infectious style of leadership to try to draw
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people to their highest achievements and and president trump is unique in that he can at times
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create a competitive environment in which people literally have to you know create more and more
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optimism more and more progress more and more success just to stay at the table and i like that i think
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that it it also breeds a meritocracy around the president and it's why frankly some people don't
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last long you know if they're if they're unwilling to get get with that type of a of a leadership style
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they find themselves out of the government as for me yeah i think we still have a lot to be positive
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about and i think that we have to we have to frame our vision and our values in a way that draw people
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to our cause look we might not want to admit it but the dominant political movement in america today
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is this black lives matter movement and and you know the the way i think to combat the downstream
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effects of that is to unapologetically embrace americanism and then as you've done on social media
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push back against the tactics that just try to silence people i mean this whole this whole characterization
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of white privilege is a racist characterization it's racist because it is telling someone because of the
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color color of your skin you have a diminished contribution to make to our country and to our
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conversation and and i just don't think that anybody should be told based on their background
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or their skin color that that they have a diminished contribution to make now not many politicians are
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willing to say that because they're afraid of being called racist or privileged uh for saying it but i
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think that when you tell people the truth that is ultimately the most productive and most optimistic
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thing you can do you know here's the way i put it you you come across a uh a kid in a well trapped at
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the bottom of the well is the first question you ask how'd you get there because it depends how you
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got there if you fell in the well one way i'm not going to help you but if you fell in the well the other
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way i'll help you how does that make sense kids at the bottom of the well you don't care if he's black
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you don't care if he's white kids at the bottom of the fucking well can you help him out right so and
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and i think that we get lost in the past it's like well this kid got in the bottom of the well
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because his parents were uh you know they were drug addicted and you know blah blah blah but this other
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one had a history a legacy of uh racism and slavery that has rippled into the future which is a real
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thing you know i don't think anybody would doubt that there's a ripple effect but once you're at the
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bottom of the well and you're a baby it's just not your fault and and thinking about how you got
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there is so unproductive when you should just say baby at the bottom of the well what can we do about
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that all right uh what would you do about the uh the protests and the especially the the chop the
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seattle place do you think the president should be more involved either verbally or with assets how
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would you handle that look the bottom line is we can't let these things get set up because
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once they are they do get fortified i mean there are a lot of guns in that place and let's just
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have some honest talk about this guy we could march the national guard in there and take the chop the
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chas over in a matter of moments but there would be loss of life and i don't know that this country
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is ready to handle that and so i'm i'm grateful that in washington dc as they've tried to set up an
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autonomous zone uh the the president the chief of staff have ensured that that will not happen
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the weak leadership in seattle though can be contagious i think as americans look at what
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is going on it affects our sense of security and safety and it also tells the permanent criminal
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element that they have more latitude now they have more latitude in my town and in your town
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because of what is going on in seattle now ultimately i i really do view it as more like
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akin to the occupy wall street thing i think this ultimately fizzles out but if i were the mayor of
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seattle uh there would be no way that anybody would be stopping the delivery of care and ambulatory
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services and uh police to people who are in need i think it is it is infectiously bad leadership um
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and i'm grateful that the president isn't allowing this to be set up anywhere else particularly in our
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nation's capital but you would agree this is a really this is a tough one because as you said just
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one death especially caught on camera as we know that that magnifies it it would just take one death
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by a government gun and we're right back to square one so you know i don't know that anybody is smart
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enough to know how long to wait how much force to put on it but i but i saw this interesting development
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which is apparently the businesses will be able to sue the city and i always say if the government
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can't work it out the insurance companies will because because ultimately ultimately everything
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gets everything gets priced for risk and it just won't be affordable to be you know to be bad
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government anymore just can't well but think about that think about the impact on the marketplace right
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if my business interruption insurance risk profile is different because i'm in a liberal city
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that is going to defund and dismantle the police and keep them from going in certain areas
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then what will happen is it'll be easier to get necessary business interruption insurance
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in places where you have strong leadership where the law will be enforced so what that will do is
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create more blight more flight of capital out of these places and and frankly while that will
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inure to the benefit of of states like florida it's not good for the country to to have such a
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depressed sense of confidence in areas that have embraced these values you know i'm starting to
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wonder if there aren't some urban areas that just can't be fixed in other words you know maybe you
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just have to find a field somewhere and build a new city where you get things right from the start
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do you think the urban areas do you think baltimore even can be fixed i don't know if there's any
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amount of money you could put in there because the basic problem is that the leaders are too easily
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bought if we can be honest if you're a mayor it's just too easy to be bought off by the wrong people
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no it's so interesting you say that because right now as you and i are talking joe biden's team is
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out there vetting all of these urban mayors for potential selection for vice presidency and i mean
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my guess is that it's going to be very difficult for any of them to pass that because you're right
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a lot of it is is pay for play in these urban cities and it's one of the reasons why despite very
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high taxes despite a ton of money flowing in from the state and federal government quality of life
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isn't really improving for the people right and so that begs the question well is the trump strategy
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of like the opportunity zone the right antidote and frankly i've got some doubts about that like i
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don't know if when you when you pit one community against another if that's really the role of
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government like right if you're a wawa and you're deciding where to go build 50 stores is it really
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right for the federal government to say well if you build them in you know community a instead of
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community b we're we're designing that outcome to try to direct the flow of your capital so i think
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i think time will tell whether or not the democrat strategy of you know building the largesse of
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government abandoning your people and then just sort of being along for the ride for the for the
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neo-marxist revolution is the right play or whether this this kind of trump play of uh opportunity zones
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and and seeing if you can socially engineer economic success is the right way i mean i i think
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ultimately the way every american society flourishes is when the uniquely american institutions
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flourish when we have strong families when we have strong churches when we have empowered parents
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with school choice uh you know and by the way in florida we just signed the largest expansion of school
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choice in our state's history so we'll be a laboratory for that concept i think i think that's the
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institutional strength is probably better than the government economic engineering or just the government
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theft you know i i'm going to take the third path you know the as you laid it out there are kind of
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these two general approaches i think the third path is let's be more organized about testing these
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different approaches because you know i don't think anybody's smart enough to know what works that's the
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problem right if we were smart enough we'd just be doing that oh that works let's just do that thing
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we're all smart but see if you don't know you got to test it and then you got to make sure that
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your test is really telling you what you think it is so it's got to be designed right but it seems to
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me that you we should just be focusing on all right here's a place that's trying this thing
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here's a here's a place that's trying the other thing we'll check back in six months or a year see
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how it looks do more of that well and that that is the promise of our great federal system right but
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but the problem is that you you drain that promise when you have corrupt people that now in some of
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these urban areas are trying to externalize their conflict right like the mayor of seattle has a
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problem in her own in her own community and so she blames donald trump for being a racist as as the
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reason why and and and it's that that is the most unproductive i think way to resolve this rather than
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the testing strategy you laid out you know if if i could fix the world it would look like this you'd
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have teams of let's say consultant type people who could be brought in unrequested not forced in
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to a city to say look we're just going to have this external team run your city for a year fix
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things up get rid of the corruption because they're they're sort of uncorruptible because they
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they're well paid and they come from somewhere else and at the end of the year we'll have a you know
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have an election and try to put somebody in but the the big problem is that the money is corrupting at
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the local level and if you have people who can be corrupted they will be i don't know that there's
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anything that can be done about that so unless you bring in almost like untouchables and and yeah
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i talk about it as like government in a box just bring in the government in a box with the intention
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that it's like a chia pet just add water and your your government will grow well but but i think part
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of part of that type of engagement requires fair free open honest discussion and debate and you know
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i was listening to your intro scott about these these voices that have been taken offline and the
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different dynamics and equities that are being balanced and i have to share i was quite taken
00:26:42.340
when i saw a tweet from a republican leader nikki haley recently that when she observed what was going on
00:26:49.020
online she was troubled by it but any more regulation would just put lawyers and bureaucrats in charge and
00:26:55.680
that that really is is uh a an equally bad ill and so she presumed that we just have to sort of sit back
00:27:02.900
and and uh accept the fact that free speech is eroded in our country and that's loser talk to me i don't
00:27:09.900
believe like i don't believe that we just kind of surrender to the cancel culture and just as we're
00:27:15.500
hearing and you know the social justice space now that it's not enough to not be a racist you have to
00:27:20.660
be anti-racist there's only two groups of people there's racists and there's anti-racists so i want to apply
00:27:26.500
that to the cancel culture i guess there's either the people who cancel or the people who uncancel and i want to i
00:27:32.820
want to do some uncanceling i think that even if people have said things that are controversial
00:27:37.500
or uncouth in an unguarded moment or or in an impassioned moment we ought to have the opportunity
00:27:43.960
to invite the best of the contributions people can make to our discourse and we should not be so frail
00:27:50.000
as a nation that we cannot hear things that offend us and then respond to it with more productive
00:27:55.540
speech so that's that's my riff on where we are on the cancel culture so so if there were some more
00:28:00.480
government uh let's say muscle or or regulation let's call it on the social media platforms what
00:28:07.500
form would that take what would that look like in your your preferred world i believe that so digital
00:28:13.760
media platforms availing themselves to the benefits of section 230 of the communication decency act
00:28:19.500
should require should be required to be transparent about the extent to which their platform truly is
00:28:25.520
content neutral and i think that you know there is the common carrier approach but there is simply a
00:28:30.700
a demand for transparency that can be built into the exoskeleton of the communication decency act
00:28:37.320
to say okay well you know if if you don't want these liabilities for being an aggregator or a curator or a
00:28:43.280
or a content developer then then you have to open the kimono and demonstrate that it is in fact neutral and
00:28:50.100
and i think an appeal process uh could be required by the government that uh that would shed a lot of
00:28:57.300
light onto the decision making that goes into what is promoted what is suppressed what is banned what is
00:29:04.040
allowed but a lot of these that we saw from the undercover uh project veritas video on facebook
00:29:10.220
that it's not so much company regular rules that are changing things but there are individuals making
00:29:15.900
judgment calls and there are lots of them how do you change that i think i think that if that process
00:29:22.580
becomes more transparent it will be easier to identify the the the sort of corrosive and rotten
00:29:29.760
places within it right now we don't even get a peek we're told these are private companies we don't have
00:29:35.060
to be in we don't we the government we the people uh really just have to accept whatever our silicon
00:29:41.580
valley free speech hall monitors tell us and and there is no mechanism by which to like vindicate
00:29:47.980
our own voice and i think that uh that you you get to that element of the people of the people who
00:29:54.520
are running it also i think there have to be consequences when folks like project veritas and
00:29:58.960
they are fantastic by the way when they go find these things out i think that there should be
00:30:03.500
investigations there should be reviews the problem scott just to be candid with you is that big tech has
00:30:08.560
bought off congress and it's not that hard to do because congress can't really act if a small group
00:30:14.360
of people are opposed to it so if you go and deploy you know three lobbyists for every u.s senator if big
00:30:20.280
tech goes and starts hiring the children and spouses of members of congress for jobs which by the way they
00:30:25.400
do all the time then it really retards our ability to demand the transparency that that would uh that
00:30:32.120
would fully realize our first amendment rights yeah i wouldn't mind seeing some kind of rule that says you
00:30:37.680
can't vote if your kid is involved in one of those companies i wouldn't mind that um and tell me what
00:30:45.280
given that uh police reform got stalled because literally nobody in congress you know wants this
00:30:51.940
wants the solution so much as they want the the issue apparently you know i'm accepting you from that
00:30:57.760
what what would you do to break the log jam and let me just throw this idea on top i think there needs
00:31:03.100
to be a national education about police and race just so we're all on the same page about what the
00:31:10.520
data is and what the options are what's the plus and minus for each of these yes on choke holds no on
00:31:16.740
choke holds and and talk it through would it help to educate the public so that the public can push
00:31:22.060
congress or is there a better way to get something done well right now in congress it is all virtue
00:31:27.680
signaling with very little virtue uh on the on the police on the police reform front uh i i would
00:31:34.360
uh support various repositories for the type of training data and information that you described
00:31:41.720
so that we are all singing out of the same hymnal you know now it sort of feels like people are
00:31:46.880
striking up different chords and different notes at different times uh but on the specifics of the policy
00:31:52.220
there are areas of agreement like i am not going to defend no knock warrants to me like if the
00:31:58.940
government is entering your home and they are not telling you why uh that is a problem and where i'm
00:32:04.400
from we have the castle doctrine somebody comes in your home with the intent to do you harm uh you know
00:32:09.020
you have the ability to respond with lethal force so i do think that there are ways to improve policing
00:32:14.700
uh like like changing the no knock warrant system but right now democrats don't want a bill they don't
00:32:22.800
they they want the ability to blame republicans and i think that that too often is just sort of where we
00:32:29.380
go to in in washington dc the the solution here scott is going to come i think still at the local level i think
00:32:36.340
you see places developing different technologies strategies on policing they work to different degrees
00:32:42.660
i think best practices will be copied you know around the country and hopefully that's a way to
00:32:48.320
to continue to improve the profession but i'm certainly not going to be a part of demonizing
00:32:52.300
demoralizing defunding the profession and the craziest thing about this bill the democrats have
00:32:57.420
it seems to want to put law enforcement at an equal level of force with the people that would terrorize
00:33:04.960
our communities like since when did we believe that we ought to go into a fight equally armed and
00:33:11.300
with like the gangs and cartels i mean i i want other people enforcing the law protecting our
00:33:17.820
citizenry to have an overwhelming advantage in force from those who would do us harm yeah you know when
00:33:24.060
we talk about eliminating the police i have uh surprisingly been open to the idea but only if
00:33:30.160
you start from scratch and develop a community with that expectation in other words you might have
00:33:36.620
less privacy more video surveillance you know more net more more you know neighborhood watch or
00:33:42.840
something but you couldn't get rid of the police entirely but i'll bet you could take it down 50
00:33:47.060
percent well my my view is informed by the vulnerable you know one of the one of the major moments in my
00:33:54.080
life was when i was nine years old and i was in the car with my mom who was in a wheelchair and she was
00:33:59.300
mugged and like we had to call the police and you know when when you're there with a mother in a
00:34:04.400
wheelchair you start to you start to realize how vulnerable some of some of us are and we need
00:34:11.500
strong law enforcement for the protection of the vulnerable and so i i'm heavily informed by that
00:34:17.580
and i'm so grateful for you know police that that respond in those circumstances where they're needed
00:34:22.360
all right so i don't want to take any more of your time because i know you've got a country to run
00:34:28.160
here uh it needs it needs your help i gotta say i've been watching a lot of people on tv on the news
00:34:35.640
and certainly on the uh the the republican side you are by far the best communicator the republicans
00:34:41.880
have there's nobody even close at this point um and i think that that speaks well for your for your
00:34:48.520
future so thanks for coming on uh congressman matt gates and uh make make sure everybody takes a look
00:34:55.520
at your podcast hot takes if you just google it you'll find out where that is anything else you
00:35:01.620
want to add matt just that i'm grateful to be on and hopefully next time i will take fewer than five
00:35:06.440
attempts to connect uh for a little coffee with scott adams but much appreciated my friend all right
00:35:11.420
thanks so much have a great day all right that was fun now a couple things i've got on my list
00:35:20.080
um there's a an argument that i've been hearing uh that conservatives make that i think is weak
00:35:29.040
now you know me i'm not taking the left or the right side on things i like to go with the argument
00:35:35.220
so it doesn't matter whose argument it is if it's weak i want you to know about it and the
00:35:41.220
argument goes like this so people will say hey the uh the black community in this country
00:35:46.120
is complaining about you know economic equality but say the conservatives can you explain that the
00:35:54.600
more recent uh black africans who have immigrated more recently are doing far better economically
00:36:01.980
and so say the conservatives it can't be because you're black because the africans are doing fine
00:36:08.620
but the people who have been here for a while are not now um of course one argument to that would be
00:36:15.960
there's there's a ripple of uh racism or disadvantage that's built into the system from slavery to today
00:36:23.380
that would be one response but i think there's a far more obvious response far more obvious
00:36:29.100
which is that if you're in another country whether it's africa or anywhere else
00:36:33.640
it's kind of hard to get to the united states how do you how do you immigrate to the united states it's
00:36:39.700
not easy so first of all you're going to be a capable person if you can even get to the united states
00:36:46.580
secondly you probably have to demonstrate they have some education um you know that you can support
00:36:53.960
yourself i don't know exactly what the rules are but my guess is that there's a self-selection process
00:36:59.640
right exactly i'm seeing it in the comments the people who are immigrating are self-selecting
00:37:05.700
because they're motivated and ambitious and they feel that the american system is suited for their
00:37:11.600
ambition if you told me it doesn't matter what country they come from doesn't matter what their
00:37:16.560
ethnicity is if you tell me i'm going to compare a bunch of people who made it to an entirely new
00:37:22.520
country learned a new language and were so motivated they thought they would go across the world
00:37:27.620
and fit into the system and work hard and succeed that group's always going to do well
00:37:32.940
there shouldn't be any surprise that people who self-select for motivation proper risk management
00:37:42.460
you know going to the right place where the energy is best all of that is predictive of success
00:37:49.100
so it has nothing to do with ethnicity it's a self-selected group who are motivated
00:37:53.880
every self-selected motivated group of any group is going to do pretty well compared to everybody
00:37:59.680
else so i would say that the argument of hey what about the people who came recently from africa doing
00:38:05.780
well it doesn't say what you think it says all right so i would i would drop that argument frankly
00:38:12.340
all right i'm seeing a lot of folks say as i said earlier in the interview or the conversation with
00:38:20.780
matt gates that a lot of people are saying that president trump is being too weak in this current
00:38:27.740
protester situation and i don't think that's demonstrably true so the thinking goes that
00:38:37.520
if he acts weak republicans won't respond to that they'll feel like he's not doing his job
00:38:44.680
but i do think people understand that the federal government does and should wait for the local
00:38:53.660
government to invite them in and when your federal government is trump and you've been accused of
00:39:00.460
being a you know a tyrant racist and that's your your one of your worst um accusations if you've been
00:39:10.680
accused of being a tyrant racist president do you want to send your military in unrequested
00:39:18.420
under requested being the important part to almost certainly kill somebody and almost certainly they're
00:39:26.340
going to be a person of color just because of the numbers of people in the area at least one and then
00:39:32.460
the whole problem starts up again so i think the people who say he should be acting strong
00:39:37.880
i'm not sure he has the options that you think and i think that it might be a far stronger play than
00:39:47.440
you think to simply let the energy dissipate because dictators don't do that racists don't do that
00:39:57.480
you know just just letting the temperature come down because you know once it comes down you've got a
00:40:03.900
new set of alternatives now in the case of the autonomous zone i think that's a special case
00:40:09.700
because uh you know they do set up a little bit of defense etc and here's how i would handle that
00:40:17.400
here's how i would do it if i were the mayor and i wanted to clean out that that area i might just
00:40:25.800
invite the public to do it for me now i haven't thought this through but just just bear with me for
00:40:33.240
a moment as men the advantage that the protesters have over police is numbers right the police have
00:40:40.820
guns and training and all that but the protesters mostly they just have numbers but they don't have
00:40:47.380
numbers compared to the actual population that lives there and the actual population that lives
00:40:53.340
there isn't really engaged they're just sort of hanging back but what if they all came to the street
00:40:58.840
and said we got your message we heard what you said and we're and there are going to be 10 000 of us
00:41:06.760
standing behind this line of police and we're just going to march with them and help them clean up
00:41:12.400
stuff as they clear the people out so imagine a model where there's you know a bunch of police
00:41:17.580
deeply outnumbered by the protesters who are in the occupied zone and behind the police are 10 000
00:41:25.520
citizens who are not armed and they're just there to clean up literally there to clean up and so the
00:41:32.060
police come in and just at every foot that they they gain slowly and as as non-violently as possible
00:41:38.880
directly behind them the citizens come in and reclaim the territory clean it as they go and it's just a
00:41:47.360
show of force basically but the show of force is just the number of bodies it's not that they're armed
00:41:52.640
or that they're violent and you'd want them to be completely you know uninvolved with the violence
00:41:57.900
um i got this idea from some small town in washington state where i saw a video of one of
00:42:05.040
the uh conservative ex-military people saying you better not try it in our town and his his explanation
00:42:12.320
of it was that uh however many protesters there were there were going to be more people from the town
00:42:18.240
and they're armed and and numbers matter right if you had a lot of people from the town relative to the
00:42:27.460
number of protesters well the protesters are going to you know behave themselves they're not going to
00:42:33.840
set up an autonomous zone so i don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea but i thought i'd put it out
00:42:39.540
there um i tweeted this morning it seems to be pretty popular that if anybody who does these eight things
00:42:46.960
will be successful and anybody who doesn't just won't be which of these eight things are unavailable to
00:42:56.560
people of color all right i'll just read them and then keep in your mind can anybody do these things
00:43:03.280
or is it reserved for white privilege type people number one focus on a useful education i put the
00:43:11.560
word useful in there you know what that means right an education that has some commercial value so you
00:43:18.340
focus on a useful education which means you know get good grades and then you have a chance to go to
00:43:23.900
college stay out of legal trouble obvious stay away from drugs obvious now that that doesn't mean you
00:43:29.880
experiment you didn't experiment or you got drunk on the weekends i'm talking about becoming a drug addict
00:43:34.460
don't do that uh don't become a parent too soon build a talent stack you know assemble skills that work
00:43:43.180
well together to make you special and valuable um be useful to others this is the most unappreciated
00:43:50.880
one you have to create create a set of skills and a and a i guess a personality if you will that other
00:43:59.800
people say hey that could be helpful to me i would like that person as a friend i would like to mate with
00:44:06.320
that person i would like to hire that person i would like to buy from that person so become a useful
00:44:11.760
person you know what it looks like just be useful as opposed to being uh selfish all the time
00:44:19.340
favor systems over goals that's the longer description but a system is something you do
00:44:26.760
every day to get you closer to a variety of goals such as a system for your fitness a system for your
00:44:33.800
diet a system for networking a system for promotion etc so develop your systems they would be they would
00:44:41.320
be different for everybody but you have to have systems and then learn basic risk management now
00:44:47.360
that's sort of a general statement but a lot of people do things that just are bad risk management
00:44:53.980
i'll give the obvious example let's say you wanted to invest in stocks but you had never been taught
00:45:00.780
risk management so you say i've got ten thousand dollars i've saved up over the years i'll put it in
00:45:06.800
this one stock well that shows that you don't know risk management because that's just a bad idea
00:45:12.740
you never put all your money in one stock you you spread it around and hope that the winners cancel
00:45:19.200
out the losers so that's just one example but there are a million examples in life in which you can look
00:45:25.220
at and say okay if nobody told you the odds it wouldn't be obvious like the like the example of
00:45:32.040
diversification as soon as you hear it you say oh yeah kind of makes sense but if you'd never heard
00:45:38.580
the word diversification it just wouldn't be obvious it just wouldn't be obvious that you
00:45:43.460
should do it and and all of life is like that the the risks need a little bit of guidance to know what
00:45:51.020
makes sense and what doesn't so my contention is this that uh of course there are you know weird
00:45:57.640
exceptions if somebody has a health problem etc that those are obvious if you get you know if somebody
00:46:03.580
shoots you you know you may not have a successful life obviously but if you do these eight things
00:46:11.460
which of them are unavailable to anybody in this country there's nothing on this list that's unavailable
00:46:19.940
everything on this list is available to everybody and i don't know anybody who can do these eight
00:46:27.140
things which are not terribly hard because some of them are just don't do something don't do drugs
00:46:33.060
don't commit a crime it's not hard to not do things it's hard to do things sometimes but it's not that
00:46:43.720
except for peer pressure etc i guess there's a new kind of racism lately
00:46:50.700
which is a weird kind when i say new i don't mean it never existed before but it's it's more
00:46:58.420
prominent it goes like this how often does a white person in 2020 you know june of 2020
00:47:06.840
where where a lot has changed about how we're thinking about the world even from last year
00:47:11.720
how many white people who are hiring or looking to work with somebody would be afraid
00:47:18.220
of working with a black person not because they were racist themselves
00:47:24.880
you know even though arguably everybody's a little bit racist because we're all biased
00:47:29.600
but let's just say it's somebody who has no history and no conscious thoughts of racism which is about as
00:47:37.340
close as you can get and that person has an option of hiring one of two people let's say they're both
00:47:44.760
both qualified both qualified does the white person in june 2020 say to themselves
00:47:52.220
that they're equally risky they don't think so because would you hire somebody that you think hates you
00:48:02.620
right it's one thing to not hire somebody because you are a racist very illegal immoral
00:48:11.840
it's you know it's one of the great evils right so if you're the racist that's pretty bad but what
00:48:19.300
if you say to yourself you know i watch television and if i were a black person in america i'd have an
00:48:26.460
attitude right now i'd i'd feel if i had been consuming the same media that everybody else is feeling
00:48:33.260
and i were black how would i feel about white americans in june of 2020
00:48:39.340
maybe a little bit of an attitude maybe a little contempt maybe a little thought that there's a
00:48:47.080
little privilege there maybe you think that you're a little bit more racist than you thought even a year
00:48:52.740
ago so is it reasonable or is it racist i guess it would be racist by definition so i answered my own
00:49:00.980
question but don't you think that there's a yeah i'm seeing in the comments that there's a little bit of
00:49:06.440
agreement there there's it's actually a new form of racism in which people will say i'm not a racist
00:49:13.580
but i'm pretty sure that if i hire a black person they will think i am why would they think that because
00:49:21.500
the black community is let's say reinforcing through black lives matter especially is reinforcing that
00:49:28.700
basically all white people are racist even if they don't know it think about that the message is
00:49:36.420
that all white people are racist even if they're not aware of it so would you hire somebody who believed
00:49:42.940
you were a racist i would not yeah well let me let me demonstrate my free speech here for a moment
00:49:50.040
if i had two candidates equally qualified and i have no racial animus or feelings or negativity of my
00:49:59.760
own at least unconscious level but i'm positive that the person i'm talking to let's let's say let's be
00:50:07.760
specific let's say it's a black candidate and i'm positive that this person follows the news
00:50:13.440
and is politically active what are the odds that that black person has a good feeling about me
00:50:21.560
as just a generic white person don't you believe that they think i'm a racist because i think that's
00:50:29.080
the message that black lives matter wants all black people to accept that all white people are racist
00:50:36.980
all the time but not always consciously i don't think i would hire somebody that i suspected thought
00:50:45.620
i was a racist am i wrong now by definition that would be racist and also illegal right wouldn't that
00:50:54.280
be illegal wouldn't i wouldn't i be sued for thinking that somebody would discriminate against me
00:51:02.000
that's different right so i'm not saying that this form of of racism didn't always exist but it went
00:51:11.780
from something i don't think i ever would have thought about even once let me put it this way two years
00:51:17.680
ago i wouldn't have thought of that it wouldn't have even been a a glancing thought across my mind
00:51:24.560
that if i hired a black candidate that black candidate would certainly not like me and would feel a little
00:51:34.560
bit racist i didn't think that two years ago that's something that black lives matter taught me
00:51:40.000
so while they're training let's say training and educating their own uh public let's say the the black
00:51:49.600
public to distrust all white people for being racist even if the white people don't know they're being racist
00:51:55.500
under those conditions have the black lives matter not taught white people not to hire black people
00:52:01.480
because that's what i'm hearing i'm hearing it would be bad for me to hire somebody who had a bad feeling
00:52:11.220
about me and they're being trained to have a bad feeling about me so obviously there's no you can't do that
00:52:19.140
legally so i don't recommend it it's not a recommendation it's a statement and an observation
00:52:25.680
somebody said something happened to hawk newsome but i don't i'm not up on that so i can't comment on
00:52:33.300
and uh apparently tiktok has been uh reverse engineered so you know the app tiktok uh i don't know how valid
00:52:44.680
this story is but there was a story of an engineer who reverse engineers apps for a living so he's
00:52:52.740
reversed engineered lots of different apps but when he reverse engineered tiktok uh allegedly he found a
00:53:00.600
hornet's nest of obvious spy intention and things that were designed just to make you not know what it
00:53:09.420
does and that his recommendation after reverse engineering is that you should not have that app
00:53:15.860
anywhere near you because it's just spying on you and collecting your personal information
00:53:20.220
so that's somebody who reverse engineered it and he's quick to point out that he has also reverse
00:53:26.340
engineered i guess the twitter app some other apps and said that they don't have that
00:53:32.460
all right so if you're saying oh they're all the same twitter tiktok it's all the same apparently
00:53:39.120
not apparently not if you reverse engineer the twitter app you just don't find anything scary
00:53:45.460
it's just an app if you reverse engineer the tiktok app according to this one story i'd like a little
00:53:52.800
more confirmation when you hear one story from one source today in today's day and age you got to put
00:53:59.260
that little skeptical check mark next to it so put the skeptical check mark next to it but there's
00:54:05.300
one report that the tiktok app is just filled with spy spy code all right and obviously the chinese
00:54:13.440
government can control anything that tiktok does so you've got that um so the dod has said this for a
00:54:21.800
long time about tiktok well why is it still legal what why why can a child walk into your
00:54:29.160
house with a tiktok app and by the way you don't have any idea how dangerous that app is you might
00:54:36.420
find out soon but i don't think you've thought it through to know just how dangerous that is it's not
00:54:44.480
it's not a small thing it if you were going to size it let me let me put a size on it if you're going
00:54:51.080
to size the risk of the tiktok app compared to other dangers in your world what size would you put
00:54:58.980
on it i would put it the same size as um radical islamic terrorism no bigger no bigger because uh
00:55:08.920
terrorism probably doesn't have an option there's no real risk that terrorism will destroy the whole
00:55:14.620
country of america that's that's not really a possibility because the nature of it yeah probably
00:55:21.240
couldn't happen but uh could an app destroy civilization actually yes actually yes so if
00:55:31.360
you have an app just a piece of software that has the potential to destroy civilization you would
00:55:38.680
you would put it on the same level as uh let's say north korea having nuclear arms that that's sort
00:55:45.080
of a level so in terms of the level of risk uh it's the highest military level of risk should it be
00:55:51.900
weaponized and it can be it can be and in fact it's not even hard that's the problem the problem is it's
00:56:00.060
not hard if it were hard that'd be a different argument but it's not hard to weaponize it all right
00:56:07.060
um why is the government so slow to act with regard to tech well i think it's several things one is
00:56:17.080
you know lobbyist and money and money influence that's part of it maybe the biggest part part of
00:56:23.120
is that they don't understand how how many let me ask you this so i i just uh described to you the
00:56:30.720
following chain of events china can control tiktok because it's a chinese company their
00:56:36.740
algorithm can control what you see therefore they can make anything popular such as for example
00:56:42.520
oh how about a prank where people will buy tickets to or or sign up for the trump rally but not go
00:56:50.440
was that going to be viral by itself ask yourself would that have been viral just because some kid made a
00:56:59.860
viral video about hey we should prank we should prank the trump campaign on tiktok an app for
00:57:06.520
children you think that a political point a political thing was going to be the big viral
00:57:12.800
thing on tiktok an app for 12 year olds i don't think so but it could be it's possible but you don't
00:57:20.720
know now if it becomes popular on tiktok what happens it goes to snapchat so tiktok is
00:57:28.260
skews to the young people snapchat does too but snapchat also has young and older people at least
00:57:37.080
you know not old old but older so anything that's popular on tiktok will eventually become viral on
00:57:44.540
snapchat once it's on snapchat it's everywhere it's instagram it's facebook it's twitter so can the chinese
00:57:52.780
government send any message they want all the way through our social media network yeah easily it's
00:58:01.600
not even hard in fact we probably just watched it happen you just don't know oh i'm sorry i'm saying
00:58:10.860
tiktok instead of tiktok uh those of you who are accusing me of being a boomer you are so right
00:58:17.400
uh that i embrace it i embrace my full boomerism flaws and i do not apologize for them uh somebody
00:58:30.260
says there was no link on snapchat to trump's rally really you you can say with some confidence
00:58:39.280
that nowhere on snapchat there was uh any mention of the tiktok tiktok prank really
00:58:48.440
that's that's pretty knowledgeable of you that you know all of the things on snapchat
00:58:54.400
um but in any case whether whether that one moved to snapchat or not that's the obvious path
00:59:01.640
that other things could take all right i think that was all i wanted to talk about today