Episode 1057 Scott Adams： Talking With Joel Pollack About His New Book Red November, Then Victim Mentality, Priorities, Persuasion
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per minute
157.73512
Harmful content
Misogyny
12
sentences flagged
Toxicity
28
sentences flagged
Hate speech
23
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams introduces a special guest, Joel Pollack, to discuss his new book, Read November, which is already in the top ten of a lot of its categories on Amazon.
Transcript
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bum bum bum bum bum bum bum 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 time it's time for coffee with scott adams in a moment i'm going
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to be introducing a special guest whose book read november already in the top ten of a lot of its
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categories on Amazon, I was noticing, and it's only just out today, I believe. We'll
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be talking to Joel Pollack in a little bit, should my technology work the way I'd like
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it to. But before that, yeah, before that, we have to do some very, very important stuff,
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something that will change your life a little bit. It's called the Simultaneous Sip, makes
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everything better. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or
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a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like
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coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the
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thing that makes everything better, including pandemics. It's called the Simultaneous Sip,
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I feel sorry for all the people who did not take a sip just then, because their relative
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happiness is now not even close to the people who sipped. Big difference. Big difference.
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All right. Yeah, let me turn that off. People who don't know that I'm live at this time of
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day. What's up with them? Let's see if Joel has found his way here yet. Not yet. Joel,
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when you find me on Periscope, and I know you're looking forward to me right now, I will find
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you back. And I will cancel this. All right. Any moment now, my special guest will be here,
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and we will talk about that. While I'm waiting, I'll just keep my eye on that little indicator
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there. And did you know that China is experiencing massive flooding right now? I was looking at
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the pictures of it, the aerial pictures. There's a lot of Chinese cities that are just underwater
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right now. And it's this massive, you know, disaster. And I'm not entirely sure if the news
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is covering it much. It's like something of that size is amazing that it doesn't get much
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attention. All right, Joel, you will be here any moment, probably searching on Periscope
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app to find me right now. And I'll connect you as soon as you're there. All right. It looks
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like another day of protesters protesting all of the wrong things. It seems that the issue
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of police shooting black people has somehow elevated to the number one topic for black people.
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But I wonder if you were to, you know, do some kind of a survey and say, all right, could
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you rank all of your biggest problems? You know, could you rank your biggest to smallest
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problems? I feel as though the protests are about some of their smallest problems. There
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we go. I think I see you now, Joel. You just appeared and here you come. Joel, can you hear
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me? Hey, our technology is working. Hey, did your book come out today? Yes, it came out
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today. Read November. I am reading it even now as we speak and loving it, actually. I love
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your writing. Thank you. I mention you often on my Periscopes. And you, just for people who
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don't know you are, according to the book jacket, senior editor at large and in-house counsel
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at Breitbart News. Is that correct? That is correct. Now, the thing I loved about this book
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is that you, as a conservative writer, if I can call you that, author, were following around
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the Democratic primary folks and writing about your personal experience as well as the fabric
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of it. And I get it. I have to give you a compliment now, if you don't mind. You don't
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I love, there's something you do in your writing that this is just sort of a nerdy writer thing
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that you notice that maybe the regular public doesn't notice. But you do not step on a joke.
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And what I mean by that is that throughout the book, I found myself chuckling at things
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that were funny, but the way you presented them was completely factual. But the way you
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set it out just made it funny. So what I like about it is a bad writer would add the joke
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to the joke. But the material was the joke. And my favorite one there, that you added no
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joke to it because it didn't eat it, it was just a plain description, was about the so-called
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pussy hats and how they became popular. But they had to retire it because the transgender
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community argued something about the necessity of a vagina. And it was not inclusive enough
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and it went away. It would have been so easy for you to add a little joke to that. You
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know, just a little irony. Ironically, it went away. And the fact that you just played
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that straight as a writer, I just said, all right, that's some good writing there because
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it would have been so easy to step on that and you didn't. All right. So that said, your
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writing style is excellent. It makes the whole thing work. And I like the fact that I will
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let you talk in a minute too. I know my audience gets mad at me when I do this. Let me just jump
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right into that. As you were following the Democratic primary process around, you had a number of
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notable encounters. And I'm interested, how often did you get recognized just visually as
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being sort of a Breitbart kind of guy in this crowd of liberals? How often did they spy you?
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Once in a while, it became more of an issue the further in we went. And toward February of this
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year, that's when people stopped talking to me quite as freely. That's when I got recognized. Yeah.
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Now, is that because they were on to you? What changed?
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I think what happened was kind of a general paranoia. It really started at Bernie Sanders
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events. And I have to say this as a compliment to the Bernie Sanders campaign. They were the
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friendliest toward media, including me. I never had any trouble with the Bernie Sanders campaign.
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They were open to everybody. But I think they felt like their candidate was getting crowded out.
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Their candidate was getting railroaded by the establishment. And so there was this kind of
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paranoia that began to set in toward everybody. It wasn't just me. And Bernie Sanders supporters
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became less willing to talk to me the closer we got to Super Tuesday.
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Yeah. Everybody was getting a little tense by that and a little distrustful. Now, did you find a,
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let's say, a personality difference in general with the different campaigns?
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You know, you mentioned the, the, the Bernie personality, if you will, but was there,
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was there a clobature personality, for example? Did the others have a character to the crowd?
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Well, it's interesting. The one that stood out for me the most, I mean, you can imagine Bernie
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Sanders supporters tended to be young students and aging ex hippies. For example, the Biden personality
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tended to be someone wearing a union jacket, that sort of thing. But there was one personality
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that changed over the course of the campaign. When Pete Buttigieg started, it was very gay,
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his campaign. I mean, his supporters tended to be very much from the LGBT community. But once
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Elizabeth Warren faded, what was interesting was a lot of the soccer moms that supported Elizabeth
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Warren migrated over to Pete Buttigieg. And wherever I went in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg was surrounded by
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middle-aged white ladies. He had this incredible magnetism. And, and so that changed. That was
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interesting. Wow. And you had some tense encounters with some candidates, including Joe Biden. For
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people who didn't see that in the news, because you made news with that. Can you, can you tell them
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about that? Yeah. So at the Iowa State Fair in August last year, I had an opportunity to ask Joe Biden
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about the fine people hoax, because remember, he launched his campaign claiming that Donald Trump
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had called neo-Nazis very fine people, which viewers of your Periscope will know never happened. And I said
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to him, are you aware that you're misquoting Donald Trump? And he insisted that this happened. And he got
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red in the face. And he confronted me. And it was this viral video moment, it went everywhere.
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And by the time I bought my fried Oreos, or whatever I ate as a snack after that press conference,
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you know, you got to buy something fried. And at the Iowa State Fair, the video had gone everywhere.
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But it didn't have any effect on Biden, he still sticks to that fine people hoax, even to this day.
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Yeah, there's no effect to information. It just bounces right off of everybody.
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Now, I'm very interested, since you, you got to see Biden live a number of times, and up close,
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because you were literally talking to him in that, in that exchange. And now you've watched him
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through his basement Biden phase. Is it my imagination? Or is it obvious that he has faded
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even since January of this year? Is that my imagination? He has faded. And what's interesting
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is the degree to which people haven't reported it. But there's one moment that stood out for me,
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I was in South Carolina covering Joe Biden. And he was in a town called Spartanburg, which is a very
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nice place. And he gave his stump speech. And then it was clear he forgot to conclude whatever he was
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supposed to say at the end, he had left out inadvertently. But they had already started playing
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the music to end the presentation. And people were already filing out of the room leaving. And
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he grabbed the microphone back and said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. And then he started shouting
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over everybody. People are already leaving. But he's sort of shouting the conclusion that he
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forgot to add. And I looked at this. And I thought something's really not right here. This is just the
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strangest thing I've ever seen. But could you could you put a descriptor on how you think he might have
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changed the the sort of non sentences and the confusing stuff? Is there more of it now?
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There is more of it now. I think he's just having trouble remembering words. There was a point last
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week, he wanted to criticize Donald Trump for America first. And Biden couldn't remember the
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word first. He sort of says, Well, America, America, the same thing he did with the Declaration
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of Independence. We hold these truths to be self evident, you know, the thing the thing.
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So there's there's that. And I think he can manage it for short stretches. It's not consistent.
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He can do the debate for about an hour, but then he starts to fade. And what was interesting to me,
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and this, again, is not reported anywhere, other than, you know, in my book, basically, but Joe
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Biden never did a single spin room after any of the debates, there were 11 or so debates and Joe
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Biden did not linger after the debates to talk to reporters even once. And I think that's partly
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because he was afraid of gaffes and his campaign was steering him away from reporters, but also
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because it was just too late at night, it was past his bedtime. And I think it was a real concern for
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the campaign that people would see he had deteriorated. Yeah. Did you see him walking?
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And did he have any trouble just walking on his own? He can walk fine, can he?
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Yeah, he can walk fine. He's physically okay. For the most part, there was that moment where
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he had a burst blood vessel during I think it was the climate change town hall and his eye sort of
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seemed to fill with blood. So he has a few physical things going on. But walking seems okay.
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Yeah. A few physical things is probably an understatement. I'd love to see his medicine
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cabinet. I've got a feeling that's bristling with stuff. So which of the candidates, let's
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say, surprised you the most when you got up close? Was there anybody who jumped out and
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you said to yourself, you know, this person could have been president, they just didn't
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That would be Amy Klobuchar. She had the most presidential quality. She was a very serious
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candidate. And she actually lasted right through to the end, even though she had no money and
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very little support from the media and from the party. And in a way, she suffered from the
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impeachment because the impeachment kept the senators in Washington during a key period right
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before the Iowa caucuses. It's almost as if the Democratic Party interfered in their own
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primary. So while, you know, Pete Buttigieg could walk around Iowa for weeks on end, Amy
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Klobuchar had to sit in the Senate listening to these endless presentations. And it happened
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right at a point when she was surging in Iowa. So it really cut her campaign off before it could
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blossom. She peaked eventually, but she peaked too late.
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Well, it sounds like a systemic white supremacy because they let the white guy who didn't have
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a job wander around and get elected, or at least win the primary while the well-employed
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woman had to go to work. Well, it's terribly unfair.
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So did you find that people had, let's say, arguments that they wanted to bring you when they would
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see you in the crowd, or did they just have hate? Actually, most of my interactions with people
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right up until the end were positive. And it was reassuring to discover that the people in the
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audience at Democratic campaign events weren't really that different from people in the audience
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at Republican events. They just had a different mental map of the world. But people are basically
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the same. The one really hysterical thing that happened in terms of audience interactions was
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Beto O'Rourke had an event at an historically black college, Benedict College in South Carolina.
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And I went there, and I tried to find the event. It was on campus somewhere. The students were
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incredibly helpful. People showed me where it was. And I'm in this room. There are about 200 black
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students in the room waiting for Beto O'Rourke. And then one of his campaign staffers came over and
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basically ejected me from the meeting. And for no reason, no explanation, but they found out I was from
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Breitbart and they called the police officer over and he escorted me off the campus. And
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you know, there was no negative interaction with the people in the room whatsoever. But later on,
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when reporters said to Beto O'Rourke, why'd you kick the Breitbart guy out? The campaign said,
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well, because we felt he was threatening to the students. And I'm just like sitting there. And
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in a way, it was this weird moment because CNN, which hates Breitbart and would like to see us out
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of business. CNN actually defended me. And they gave a very negative portrayal to Beto O'Rourke's
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kicking out of this Breitbart reporter. And in a way, it was the beginning of the end of the O'Rourke
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campaign because he had campaigned as a great champion of press freedom. And here he was kicking
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people out of an event at a black college. Well, now, was it CNN defending you or were they,
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let's say, wanting to get Beto out of the race because they had a favorite?
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It could have been that also. Yeah. Beto was definitely an early favorite. You know,
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they gave a lot of coverage to him on the day he launched. But then he started jumping on tables
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and waving his arms around. And I think they decided this wasn't going to work.
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Yeah, they figured that out early. All right. What is your best explanation of how Biden made it
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through the pack? Well, the simplest explanation is just the party establishment decided they did
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not want Bernie Sanders, a non-democrat, taking over the party the way Donald Trump, a non-Republican,
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had taken over the Republican Party. And Bernie Sanders, going into South Carolina, had won the
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first three primary contests. He was the first candidate of either party to win the popular vote
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in the first three contests of any primary. He won Nevada on February 22nd with almost 50% of the
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vote. So he looked completely dominant. He was doing incredibly well among Latino voters. And the
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Bernie Sanders supporters were already talking about his cabinet picks. I was in the spin room after the
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Nevada debate. And Jeff Weaver, his advisor, was saying, well, it's a little too early to be picking
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the secretary of education and all this. You know, they were almost there. They could taste it.
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They could feel it. And I think the party establishment, which at the time didn't believe
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they were going to win the election. Now they think they are going to win. But I think at the
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time they didn't think they were going to win, but they thought, you know what, if we're going to go
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down, we're not going to go down with this guy running the party. We want to maintain control of
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the Democratic Party. So they united against him and decided that even if they were going to lose,
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they were going to lose with a Democrat, not with a socialist.
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Do you think there were any dirty tricks that the Democrats played against other Democrats to get
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Biden through? Did the Democratic Party put their finger on the scale?
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Oh, yeah. There were all kinds of leaks against Sanders. Once Sanders became a threat, there were
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all sorts of things that were leaked, including allegations of Russia collusion, that he had been
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briefed by intelligence agents that there were some efforts by Russians to infiltrate his campaign.
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That story came out and it was reported in the mainstream media as if it was happening in real
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time. But in fact, it had happened several weeks before and Sanders had been briefed about it and it
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wasn't something for public consumption. But they basically went with the Russia collusion narrative
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But I don't think, you know, as I think about it, I don't think Bernie was taken down by any news.
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Like, it doesn't seem like there was a news report that necessarily moved the needle
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because, you know, facts, facts don't really change things. So it feels like something else
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happened. Like, you know, maybe, uh, was, was it, uh, who was the big recommendation in South Carolina?
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It was James Clyburn. He's the house majority whip and the most senior African-American leader
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in Washington today. And he came out in favor of Biden. There were also a couple other things
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that happened that were interesting. You know, when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008,
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he also had to deal with South Carolina and there the democratic party establishment is very strong.
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Uh, they've got union groups, church groups, and so forth. And Clinton, Hillary Clinton had all of
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those groups wrapped up. So Barack Obama went to the rural areas and he spoke to black voters in the
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countryside. Bernie Sanders didn't do that. Bernie Sanders was still sticking to the urban centers
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and the college campuses. And so it might've been a strategic mistake on his part. Um, but also he
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just had trouble really closing the deal with black voters in South Carolina. But James Clyburn was huge.
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I mean, Joe Biden had never won a primary in three presidential campaigns, had never won any state
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until James Clyburn came out and said, you got to vote for this guy.
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So it felt like when Clyburn gave his recommendation, he was kind of saying that
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you're not voting for Biden, you're voting for all of us, you know, sort of the,
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the established Democrats. It sort of felt like that was the change in the frame there.
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That was exactly what happened. And he gave a long speech about the civil rights movement and all sorts
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of things that Joe Biden had very little to do with. And all of that was to be defended by voting
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for Biden. And, and to be honest, when I went to events in South Carolina, it did feel a little
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bit like a family reunion around Joe Biden, that he was kind of the legacy of Obama, even though
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Obama hadn't endorsed him. It was kind of like bringing the old band back together, the good
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memories of that Obama campaign. And so Biden represented that. And that's one of the reasons
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he had a connection with his electorate, which was new because Biden had really no constituency in
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the black community before Barack Obama plucked him out of the sidelines and put him on the ticket.
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Right. But that's what it was in South Carolina. It was a sense of familiarity and a connection to
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Let me ask you about a little bit of a process. What the heck is it like being an author who
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has a new book that just came out, which I'll show again to my audience, read November, Joel
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Pollack. Excellent. I'm reading it right now and enjoying it very much. And what's it like doing a
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book tour when you can't, you can't do all the normal things you would do? Are you trying to do
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Yeah, you have to do it remotely. And the only good news is if you want to make the bestseller
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list, everybody else trying to sell a book is also in the same boat. So you're all on a level
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playing field in that sense. But the other interesting thing about it is people have time
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to read. So the market for books is still there because people are at home and they're looking
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for interesting things. But just in terms of process, you know, balancing it with an everyday
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job, I have to say that your approach systems rather than goals is really how I got this
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book done. You know, you can do anything if you break it down into small enough pieces
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and just doing it day by day allowed me to get it done.
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You know, I was I was also impressed at how you found a way for your your day job and your
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book to, you know, be part of the same process. So you could, you know, you could double up on
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your productivity there. So that worked out really well for you. What what is there about the book
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that I haven't asked that you would? This is the ultimate bad interviewer question.
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But now let me give you I'll tell you the worst book interviewer questions since I've received them
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all. I'll do it. You can't see me, but I'm opening your book on video to a random page. And then I say
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you talked about Zelensky's predecessor on page 143. Can you can you tie that to the larger Biden
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theme vis-a-vis Bernie and socialism and how that relates to Black Lives Matter? Go.
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It's like, I don't know. That's nothing about my book, you know. But no, I like to ask this because
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often an author will say, all right, I got my three anecdotes and I'm looking for the place to
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fit them in. And if I didn't give you a place, you might have an anecdote ready. I'm just giving you
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that opportunity. Well, you have the smartest audience in political media. So I could go on
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and talk about the likelihood that Democrats would bring about a socialist revolution after November.
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And I actually believe that. But on your periscope, you break it down beyond left, right,
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Democrat, Republican, you really get to the underlying meaning. So I actually had something
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I wanted to draw your attention to specifically when I thought about what I would say on your
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periscope. And I talk about this a little bit in the book. But one of the reasons the Democratic
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Party moved so far to the left was because of the media and specifically CNN. And Republicans like to
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criticize CNN because they hate Trump, even though they're supposed to be neutral. So it's kind of a
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running gag. It's fraudulent, whatever. But they did something I think that had a uniquely
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destructive effect on the Democratic Party without meaning to. And that was they held a series of
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issue based town halls. Every network holds town halls with candidates. That's fine. You can ask the
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candidates questions and so forth. But CNN decided they were going to devote airtime to specific issues
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like they had a climate change town hall. They devoted seven hours of programming to climate change.
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They also had an LGBTQ town hall. And the problem with doing these issue based town halls is that
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the people in the audience in the room are the activists on that particular issue. And so the
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candidates compete with one another to please that audience. And so they become more and more extreme
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in the things they say. So the stuff that was coming out of the Democratic candidates, even the smarter
00:25:25.900
ones like Andrew Yang on the climate change town hall, for example, was just crazy. I mean, you had
00:25:31.420
Kamala Harris talking about plastic straws and Andrew Yang talking about forcing everyone to buy electric
00:25:36.980
cars. It was nuts. And it was just basically creating campaign material for Donald Trump because he could
00:25:42.840
just show how crazy these candidates were. And the moment of all go ahead. Well, how much of that is just
00:25:49.240
because there were so many of them and they needed something to break through. So they had to violate
00:25:57.400
I think that's part of it. I also think it's part of the way the Democratic Party is constructed. It has a lot of
00:26:03.960
different interest groups. And if you don't pay them enough attention, they claim that you're silencing them. So,
00:26:08.520
you know, there was this moment in the LGBTQ town hall where, you know, CNN had done a special event
00:26:15.700
around these issues. And there was a black trans woman who got up, in other words, someone who's
0.98
00:26:21.080
biologically male, but identifies as female, who got up in the middle of someone else's presentation,
0.87
00:26:26.720
ran to the front, seized the microphone and started screaming about how CNN was ignoring black trans women.
1.00
00:26:32.180
Well, yeah, it was hilarious. And Republicans had a good laugh because it was sort of a strange
00:26:39.900
window onto the Democratic Party. But that's what happens. If you don't give every little interest
00:26:44.840
group its platform, then people will complain about it. Well, I'd like to amplify that criticism,
00:26:51.080
which is CNN does not give enough time to black trans people. So I think they need to answer for that
1.00
00:26:59.760
a little bit. All right. Joel, thank you so much. Again, it's Red November, available now. It's
00:27:08.740
climbing up the charts. And you're going to want to read this because it's a really good read. I love
00:27:15.100
your writing style. And thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for the opportunity. And back to my
00:27:20.120
simultaneous coffee. All right. Take care. All right. That was fun. Get that book. You're going to like it.
00:27:28.840
A few other things. I asked this question on Twitter. And this is a serious question for mental health
00:27:37.420
professionals. And it goes like this. How can you distinguish between justified anger about a legitimate
00:27:46.220
social issue versus some kind of victimhood mental disorder? In other words, when does complaining
00:27:55.720
turn into a mental disorder turn into a mental disorder in the situation in which the thing you're
00:28:01.760
complaining about is real? And especially if there are people who are experiencing those
00:28:07.120
same real problems, but for whatever reason, they're not bothered by them. So if some people are not
00:28:14.260
bothered by them, but others have built a life around it and it defines them and it bothers them,
00:28:20.140
et cetera, at what point does it literally become a mental problem? Because almost anything that's
00:28:27.240
normal behavior, if it gets extended, that becomes a mental problem, right? So everybody has anger about
00:28:35.140
normal things you should be angry about. But if you have excessive anger, that would be some kind of
00:28:41.900
emotional, mental, or health care situation. Where is the line on victimhood? Now, I saw some studies,
00:28:51.680
and I tweeted it, in which people who, there is actually, so this is a valid discussion in the
00:28:59.500
healthcare world, at which point victimhood, which is natural and universal, you know, everybody complains
00:29:06.900
about bad stuff that happens to them. Everybody's a victim about something. But there's, there's a
00:29:12.460
normal and sensible way to handle that. And then there's, you know, the, the mental health problem,
00:29:17.920
if you go too far. And I think, I think we're treating all of the protesters like they're healthy.
00:29:27.940
And I don't know that that's the case. Because I don't know that that's, I don't know that they're
00:29:33.740
all demonstrating good mental health. But yet, we treat them all, like they're mentally, you know,
00:29:40.240
in a good place, they just have a different political opinion. And I'm not sure that's exactly
00:29:45.820
what's going on. You know, there are a lot of people protesting, and they have a million different
00:29:51.460
reasons, you know, slightly different reasons. But I think some of it is mental health. And not that
00:29:59.580
these people are organically damaged, but in the way that, well, this would be a bad example.
00:30:06.520
I was going to make a PTSD example. But that doesn't quite fit, because that actually is some,
00:30:12.460
some real damage there, brain wise. But I think we should not ignore that the people who are most
00:30:22.200
excited about this stuff, might just have mental health issues, in a real way, not in a political
00:30:29.980
way, and not in a joking way. In an actual real healthcare sense, there's something going on that's
00:30:37.500
not healthy. And I would make this distinction. It seems to me that people who have an abundance
00:30:44.840
mindset can handle victimhood better. Meaning they're just as much victims, if there's a real
00:30:54.120
social issue, they're just as much victims. But it doesn't bother them. Because they think,
00:30:59.780
well, it doesn't matter how much you have, because there's still plenty. You know, the amount you have,
00:31:06.120
in no way changes the amount I can get, if I follow the same process of, you know, studying and
00:31:12.680
working hard and staying out of jail. So why aren't we talking about an abundance mindset to fix
00:31:21.240
whatever is bothering the people who are protesting fairly directly, instead of just listening,
00:31:28.880
which doesn't help? How about fixing it? And there are two ways to fix it. One way is to fix the base
00:31:34.580
problem. And to the extent that it's fixable, why not? Why wouldn't you try to fix it? Of course you
00:31:39.760
it. But also recognize that the way people are reacting to the base problem, which is real,
00:31:46.880
may not be good mental health. So there's that. There's also the problem I talk about a lot of
00:31:56.660
confusing the problem with the solution. And I think that's behind the mental health part
00:32:01.660
of the victimhood. Because it's one thing to say, yes, I'm a victim. But my solution to that
00:32:08.680
is not focusing on the problem. Let's say the problem was racism. My solution is not where the
00:32:16.300
problem is. The problem is racism, let's say. But I can't solve that. But what I can do is change my
00:32:24.040
own mindset and just succeed. Now, does succeeding fix racism? Sort of. It sort of does. Because if
00:32:35.720
you're personally successful, you're far more immune, both psychologically. If somebody criticizes
00:32:41.940
you and says, hey, you know, there's something wrong with you because of your ethnicity, all you
1.00
00:32:47.940
have to do is say, hey, look at my bank account. How about that? Right? So success gives you armor
00:32:55.380
against all kinds of attacks. And I can vouch for that. And I always go back to the OJ quote.
00:33:04.080
OJ Simpson was famous for saying, allegedly, that he said, I'm not black, I'm OJ, which is the
00:33:13.320
extreme version of that. You know, he had made such a successful, you know, until he killed
00:33:19.460
somebody, allegedly. He had made such a successful career that you just thought of him as OJ. He
00:33:27.680
had transcended, you know, identity. But that's the extreme example. All right.
00:33:34.240
Today in Dilbert, I'm still trying to get canceled. I think I'm getting closer. So I've got a theme
00:33:45.900
this week of the boss character in Dilbert is being accused of being a white supremacist.
00:33:53.940
And if that doesn't get me canceled, I don't know what will. But we're running that right now.
00:33:59.340
And at the same time, I want to tell you that I've had a bit of an evolution about this white
1.00
00:34:06.840
supremacy charge complaint observation, whatever you want to call it. You may have noticed that
00:34:14.420
the term white supremacy has very much changed in about a month. Let me ask you if you've noticed
00:34:21.960
this. Is it not true that a month ago, if somebody said somebody is a white supremacist,
00:34:27.600
that the understood meaning from both the person saying it and the person hearing it,
00:34:33.260
they had the same understanding that it meant white people who thought they were superior to
00:34:38.500
other people? Am I right? A month ago, that's what you thought it meant. And the people who
00:34:44.940
were saying it apparently thought it meant that too, most of them. Again, you know, everybody's
00:34:51.380
different. There are lots of different people with different messages. But sort of a general
00:34:54.940
theme is that a month ago, it was about a person thinking they were superior to other
00:35:00.140
ethnicities. I spent about a month saying that that doesn't exist. Saying if it would be easy
1.00
00:35:07.400
to prove it exists, that there's such a person who thinks that white people are superior to
00:35:13.720
other groups, and in all things that you can be superior in. And I said, I've never met
00:35:19.300
one, and I doubt one exists. And if you notice that in the last month, nobody produced one.
00:35:27.960
Nobody said, aha, Scott, I only need one example to prove you wrong. You know, if you say Bigfoot
00:35:34.640
doesn't exist, you only need one Bigfoot to prove you wrong about the Bigfoots. And likewise,
00:35:41.840
you only needed one example of somebody who would say it out loud and say, yeah, that's exactly what I
00:35:46.900
believe. Didn't happen. And in that month, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but my understanding is
00:35:56.160
that what white supremacy means now is different. And it seems to have evolved. And it's evolved to
00:36:04.820
a place where I actually agree with it. Surprise, right? So the current definition of what white
0.98
00:36:12.240
supremacy means in the context of Black Lives Matter and the protests, the current, I mean,
00:36:18.460
really current, I mean, like, today versus one month ago, that current is that it really refers
00:36:25.740
to the fact that the system doesn't have all the mobility that you need. So there's the people at the
00:36:31.600
top who are mostly white. It's hard to dislodge them. And it's hard to get up to their level,
1.00
00:36:39.540
because you have a system that's a little bit ossified. It's a little bit hard for anybody to
00:36:44.800
work up from having no money to having a lot of money. It can be done. It's just not that common.
00:36:52.180
So when it happens, it's a news story, right? One of the reasons that I was a news story for decades
00:36:57.400
is that I managed to solve that problem of going from poor to not poor. And I did it with Dilbert,
00:37:05.820
so it became a news story. And a big part of the story was the success part, not just the comic part.
00:37:13.180
So I would agree that if you want to use the term white supremacy, it's provocative, and I don't
00:37:21.720
think I would use it, but I understand why it's being used. It's about a system that just doesn't help
00:37:29.000
people up anymore. Let me give you an example of that. When I was 21 and entering the workforce
00:37:37.720
after college, you could rent a place for just about nothing and live in the city, San Francisco.
00:37:45.740
So you could just get a roommate, and you could afford your rent, and you could eat on a very low
00:37:51.420
paying job, which I had. My job paid $735 a month, and I could have, you know, a one-room apartment
00:37:59.800
and rent it in the city and take public transportation, and I could live. And then I could build my way
00:38:07.320
up. But I also could afford college. So I could afford a college, and I could afford housing and
00:38:16.360
living while I worked on my career and stuff and learn things and eventually put together
00:38:21.440
enough, you know, skills in my skill stack and tried enough things that it finally worked
00:38:26.980
out for me. That situation doesn't exist anymore. If you are, I'll just pick for my example, if
00:38:36.320
you're a young person of color, can you definitely go to college? You know, you could probably get
00:38:44.200
scholarships and stuff, but it's tough. Could you rent an apartment in a place that was a good job
00:38:50.760
market? It's tough. So I would agree that there is some solidifying of the rich, mostly white,
00:38:58.820
not entirely, but mostly white, and more men than women. It is a little frozen. And if you said to me,
00:39:09.580
is this a system which is stable and should last forever, I'd say, I don't think so. I don't think
00:39:17.560
that our current system should be protected. Surprised? Because the people on the left are saying we want
00:39:25.500
to dismantle everything. And I actually believe that that is necessary. But how do you dismantle
00:39:33.740
everything? How do you do that? How do you do it without breaking everything? Well, I was preparing,
00:39:42.520
I was going to prepare a special periscope on that very idea. Now, I think it would be a gigantic
00:39:48.700
mistake to just break everything without something new and better to replace it. That'd be the worst
00:39:55.240
idea. But I do agree that you need some way that, to pick an example, a young black man who was born in an
00:40:04.800
urban environment can look at his prospects and say, yeah, I can do that. I can get an apartment on my own.
00:40:13.960
I can get the skills and training I need. That just doesn't exist the way it used to. So yeah, that's worth
00:40:21.720
fixing. And so I think it's absolutely, and I have to say that I have also evolved in my thinking
00:40:29.360
to the point where if you see all the ways the system is stacked against everybody who doesn't
00:40:36.800
have money, you could easily say that that has a racial component that is highly correlated to that.
00:40:44.340
But here's the only thing I want to add to the understanding. For every person of color who says to
00:40:50.280
themselves, those rich white people in power, you know, they just want to keep their power and
00:40:56.500
their white supremacists and stuff like that. Here's the thing you need to know. Those white men who are
0.69
00:41:03.200
in power, they will throw me under the bus much faster than you. So let me just say that to a successful
0.97
00:41:14.120
white man who's rich, he's a CEO, he's a leader or whatever, the least valuable human in the world
0.96
00:41:21.920
is me, another white man who is not successful, let's say if I had not been. And indeed, I've told
0.51
00:41:33.540
you this story when I was a young man and my all-white, mostly male senior executive said,
00:41:40.800
we just got in trouble for having no diversity. And the way we're going to fix it is by punishing
00:41:46.920
unsuccessful or not yet successful white men. Successful white men threw me under the bus
0.98
00:41:56.340
three times in my life. Three times in my life, successful white men have shoved a stick so far
0.96
00:42:06.140
up my ass that I could taste it. You didn't need that, but I thought I'd throw it in there.
1.00
00:42:13.180
So if you think I love successful white men, you would be very wrong because they're all assholes,
1.00
00:42:20.860
if I may be honest about it. Successful white men, pretty much all assholes. Now what would happen
1.00
00:42:28.800
if you replaced the successful white men who can be assholes with, let's say, all black men or black
1.00
00:42:38.400
women? It would take about a month before they were all assholes because successful people don't want
1.00
00:42:44.700
to give up their stuff. They don't want to give it up to poor white people. They don't want to give
1.00
00:42:49.720
it up to people of color. They don't want to give it up to anybody. So the magic trick that Black Lives
1.00
00:42:57.780
Matter has played is to imagine that that top 1% of successful white people who also do not want to
00:43:06.620
help unsuccessful white people, that the white people are all some kind of team. We're not. We're
00:43:16.440
not. White people are not a team. The successful people will throw the unsuccessful people under the
0.85
00:43:23.640
bus in a heartbeat to protect their position. What's the best thing you can do if you were
00:43:29.460
Mark Benioff? Mark Benioff is a successful white guy, billionaire who runs Salesforce. What would be
00:43:40.280
the most self-interested thing he could do? The most self-interested thing he could do as a successful
00:43:47.260
white billionaire is to throw unsuccessful white people, mostly men, under the bus.
0.99
00:43:55.080
It's the smartest thing to do. Wouldn't you do it? Of course you would. Of course you would. Because
0.99
00:44:01.160
the alternative is you're a white supremacist. Why would you choose, oh, I'll be a white supremacist
0.99
00:44:06.520
when you could be a hero? Now, that said, Mark Benioff is actually an awesome person who is very good for
00:44:14.780
the world, so I have only good things to say about him. He's genuinely a good person who is just a
00:44:21.040
good force in the world. But the fact is, you know, white people are not some big unified group
0.66
00:44:28.960
in that sense. All right. I want to thank all the bitter and broken people who had bad comments about
00:44:36.200
my recent wedding. You know what all the comments were, of course. It's all age-related jokes.
00:44:41.500
And, you know, money and beauty and blah, blah, blah. And it was kind of entertaining, though.
00:44:50.260
So Christine and I have some fun looking at the haters. Because, first of all, they're all sexist,
00:44:58.240
which is funny. So most of the people who complained, well, a lot of them tended to be on the left.
00:45:05.320
And, you know, there were just people who were my critics in general, so it was just one more
00:45:08.980
reason to pile on. But one of the most common things they said was that Christina was marrying
00:45:15.220
me for money. Now, what is the assumption that's built into that? There's an assumption built into
00:45:24.340
that statement, isn't there? The assumption is that she didn't already have money.
1.00
00:45:28.180
Where did that come from? Why would they make the assumption that the attractive woman would not
00:45:36.560
have her own money? Right? And, you know, it's not for me to delve into my personal situation more
00:45:45.920
than I should. But why would you make that assumption? You would only make that assumption
00:45:50.300
if you were a sexist. So the people who were saying, oh, yeah, of course she's marrying you
00:45:56.580
for your money, are making a big assumption, which is not in evidence in the facts.
00:46:04.580
I was watching a Jordan Peterson interview with, who was it? Ben Shapiro. And Jordan Peterson
00:46:16.460
was making this comment about evolution. And I'd never heard it framed this way. It was kind
00:46:22.580
of eye-opening. And he said that men decide which men get to procreate. And I thought, what? That
00:46:32.800
doesn't make sense. And he explained it this way. That men naturally organize into competitive
00:46:39.080
pyramids, where you're competing for a job, or you're competing at a sport, or whatever you're
00:46:44.780
competing at. And it always creates a hierarchy. So if you create a sport, and it becomes basketball,
00:46:52.580
then at the top of the hierarchy is Michael Jordan. So it's a male thing to compete. This
00:46:59.060
is Jordan Peterson's explanation. It's a male thing to compete. And that competing has the
00:47:05.720
functional purpose of identifying the people who are good to reproduce with. Meaning that
00:47:13.720
if you're competing on brains in the academic situation, the smartest person will rise up and
00:47:19.660
they'll get Nobel prizes and book deals and stuff. And then women will identify, they'll
0.99
00:47:26.820
be able to see which men have been promoted by other men to be the most, let's say, the
00:47:38.980
So I've never heard that before of you, that it's men who decide which men get all the mating
00:47:44.620
opportunities by their competition. And that women are simply responding to what men have
0.97
00:47:51.340
presented. It's like, oh, you men work that out. And when you're done competing, you'll tell
00:47:57.120
us which ones won. And then we'll choose them for our mating. And I thought, that's just a completely
00:48:04.060
different frame on things. And I thought, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense. All
00:48:10.220
right. Let's see. Did you see the story about Sleeping Giants? Sleeping Giants is a small organization
00:48:24.440
far left, and it had two principal people. And what they did was they would try to get advertisers
00:48:30.940
not to advertise on conservative networks, such as Breitbart. So they went after the Breitbart
00:48:37.140
advertisers successfully, I guess. And they went after other advertisers who were associated
00:48:43.940
with conservative content. And they were very successful in being bad human beings. Now, when
00:48:51.660
I say they're bad human beings, I don't, you know, I don't always say that about many people.
00:48:56.340
I mean, that's a pretty extreme statement to say that you're a bad human. Now, when I
00:49:03.000
say that you're a bad human, I mean that you're working hard to make the world a worse place.
00:49:08.640
That's different than somebody who's in a bad situation and, you know, they had to steal
00:49:12.820
to feed the family or something. So I'm not talking about, you know, crime tends to be situational.
00:49:18.440
But if you're really dedicating all of your time to making the world a worse place, you're
00:49:25.380
not a good person. And these two people dedicated all of their time to making free speech less
00:49:34.060
available. Because even though the government allows you to have free speech, if the market
00:49:40.480
shuts you down, says, yeah, we're not going to advertise on that platform, therefore the
00:49:44.840
platform goes away. It's really working full time to have less freedom of speech. Now, I
00:49:50.420
certainly would have agreed with them, or at least supported the idea, that if they were
00:49:55.620
trying to shut down specific messages, like, oh, I disagree with that specific message, that's
00:50:02.700
fair. But shutting down all speech from somebody who has a certain, you know, political view
00:50:11.360
is pretty much Nazi, fascist, bad human being behavior. But here's the punchline. The two
0.62
00:50:20.640
people were a white guy and a woman of color, Nandini Jami. And apparently the white guy totally
00:50:31.220
screwed the woman of color, according to the woman of color, and minimized her contribution
0.99
00:50:37.060
and acted like she wasn't part of it until she just got disgusted and pushed down to her
1.00
00:50:42.480
left or something. So the fact that this super woke organization that exists just to make the
00:50:49.400
world worse had a falling out because even within the two people, there were only two people.
00:50:55.340
And even they couldn't get along racially. They had a racial problem with just two people
00:51:01.820
who were trying to be the wokest, leftist people in the world. Neener, neener. All right. If you
00:51:09.760
want to see a good example of persuasion, man, this is good. Listen, and I tweeted this so you can find
00:51:16.520
it in my Twitter feed. Listen to Tucker Carlson interviewing Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who was
00:51:24.040
one of the two people, the couple who defended their home with the guns. And the police came and took
00:51:30.020
their guns away. Now it's the second time he's been on Tucker. So if you do a Google search,
00:51:35.260
make sure you get the one that just happened. So, and listen to McCloskey, who is of course a very
00:51:42.420
successful attorney. And man, can you see why he's successful? That was some of the best
00:51:50.420
persuasion technique I have ever seen. And, and he was really good. And let me give you just one
00:51:59.120
example. I always talk to you about visual persuasion, how important the visual part is,
00:52:05.440
but you can do visual persuasion by showing an actual picture, which is visual, or you can describe
00:52:12.100
a story that people imagine it visually and you get the same impact because your imagination gives
00:52:18.360
you the picture. When he was describing his situation with the police coming, I'll try to
00:52:24.640
paraphrase it, but he described it this way. He said that the police, he's, this is his first statement
00:52:29.940
was pro-police. So first of all, can you beat that? Can you beat the first thing that comes out of your
00:52:36.940
mouth being pro-police? No, that is just smart. All right. It's smart for this case. It's smart for any
00:52:45.140
future case. It's just smart. So he says, the police were very professional. And then here's the party.
00:52:51.000
He says, my wife asked, he said they were almost apologetic. Now, and you can imagine it, right?
00:53:00.680
Now he says, the police came to confiscate his guns, but they were almost apologetic. Can't you see the
00:53:07.020
movie in your head? You see it, right? You see the police showing up, you see McCloskey and his wife,
00:53:13.160
and you see their demeanor being almost apologetic. So it's like a movie and you can see it. And then he
00:53:20.660
furthers the movie and he said, my wife asked if she could take their, take a picture, but she asked
00:53:27.220
if they would turn around so that their faces were not shown because we wanted to protect them
00:53:32.920
from, you know, any ridicule or anything if their faces showed up. And they agreed. Now, you see the
00:53:42.240
picture, right? In your mind, you see the police saying, oh yeah, we'll do that. Oh, I get it. Thank you
00:53:46.260
for protecting us. Turned around, took the picture. You see the movie in your head and you're seeing
00:53:52.360
the police loving this couple, agreeing with them, feeling guilty that they have to take their guns,
00:53:57.960
but they're very polite and professional. And the couple appreciated them so much that they had a
00:54:03.080
good interaction. It was a positive experience. Oh man, that's just so good. It's just so good.
00:54:09.640
And that's not the only thing he did. Like he used contrast, he used pacing, his demeanor when he
00:54:18.060
talked about it. By the way, this is a topic which I've never mentioned and I keep thinking of it,
00:54:24.340
so I'll put it in this one. If you sound defensive, you sound less persuasive. If you sound defensive,
00:54:35.220
you sound less persuasive. Listen to McCloskey talk and you don't see anything defensive sounding.
00:54:45.640
It is a defense. I mean, he's defending himself, but it doesn't sound defensive. He is simply talking.
00:54:53.800
Now, if you can pull that off, if you can pull off the, I'm simply describing things confidently and
00:55:00.060
with a smile that says, I'm in control, and you just hear it straight, it can be, it convinces you
00:55:07.860
that the speaker knows what they're talking about and is credible and then that's more persuasive.
00:55:15.260
Let me do, if I can, my impression of every unpersuasive pundit on TV. I'll see if I can do this
00:55:25.320
impression and I have to have a topic to talk about, so I'll talk about, President Trump had
00:55:32.060
a tweet that was offensive. All right, let's, I know it's hard to imagine, but imagine that for a
00:55:37.380
second. Here would be a conservative who's defending it, who is too defensive. Well, you know, if he does
00:55:49.000
these tweets, blah, blah, blah, you know, and, and, and, you know, I don't, people are getting so excited
00:55:53.660
about, what are you getting so excited about? It's just a tweet. You see what I'm saying? That sounded
00:55:58.780
like you're trying too hard. You're trying to persuade people with your attitude, not with, not
00:56:06.620
with your words. The lawyer is just giving you words, but man, they're just packed with visual content
00:56:14.100
and contrast and technique. I mean, he's really, really good. So you got to see that. All right.
00:56:23.620
There was a interesting story of a African-American man in Michigan who was wrongly arrested based
00:56:32.720
on some bad facial recognition. So that's kind of scary, isn't it? Now, one of the, the knocks
00:56:40.400
on facial recognition is that it's, it has a harder time with black faces. I guess it doesn't
00:56:48.480
pick up the contrast as well or something. I don't know. But here's the things that are
00:56:54.660
interesting about this story. So the way it worked was some facial recognition was used
00:57:00.480
on, I think, some video from a security camera of somebody committing a crime. They got a match
00:57:07.640
for this man who ended up being wrongly accused. They went to his house. They arrested him.
00:57:15.480
They arrested him in front of his family, took him into the police house, and then they showed
00:57:21.580
him the security video of the guy that they thought was him doing this crime. And here's
00:57:29.540
how the innocent black man responded to that. He took their picture. He held it up next to
00:57:36.780
his face. And now I'm paraphrasing because I wasn't there, but I imagine it went like this.
00:57:43.660
Do you think this fucking looks like me? Are you serious? Do you think all black people look
1.00
00:57:48.580
alike? Look at the picture. Look at me. Look at the picture. Look at me. It's not fucking
00:57:54.180
me. And then they looked at the picture and they looked at him and they said, yeah, that's
0.99
00:58:01.940
not you. And they let him go. Now, when I read the story, it was a story about the dangers
00:58:09.420
of facial recognition. But is that what happened? Is that what that story told you? That the
00:58:15.600
facial recognition was bad? Because here's what I heard in that story. If those police officers
00:58:22.340
had brought with them to the man's home, the picture that they showed him at the precinct
1.00
00:58:28.980
instead of arresting him to go show him a fucking picture. Are you kidding me? They arrested
0.99
00:58:35.460
him to show him a fucking picture. And they couldn't do that when they were at his house. Nobody
1.00
00:58:41.360
had a phone. Nobody had a photocopier. They couldn't bring the fucking picture with them to
00:58:47.480
say, I'm looking at you now live. I'm looking at the picture. Okay, that's not you. That's
0.99
00:58:53.980
all it would have been. But here's the second part of it. So the first part is when you see
00:59:00.820
a story about facial recognition and picking up the wrong people, ask yourself if it was
00:59:06.360
a human problem or a technology problem. This was clearly a technology trigger because they
00:59:15.560
had a wrong match. But the problem was a human problem. Because if the humans could tell the
00:59:21.360
difference when he was in the precinct, they could surely tell the difference when they
00:59:26.760
were standing at his doorstep. And it could have gone a little bit differently, don't you
00:59:31.120
think? All right. Now, here's the punchline. Not all facial recognition software is the
00:59:39.900
same. So do you think that every facial recognition would have gotten a wrong hit? It would
00:59:47.800
not. And in fact, I'll bet all of the competitors to that facial recognition software immediately
00:59:55.560
ran his picture through their system and found out whether their system worked or not. So do
01:00:01.580
not assume that a bad facial recognition software is the same problem to society as one that works.
01:00:11.840
And there are ones that can identify black people and there are some that have more trouble.
01:00:18.120
But we need more of a human process. You don't want to ever have – well, let me suggest
01:00:25.580
I've been talking about creating a digital bill of rights, which I'm working on. One of the digital
01:00:34.080
bill of rights that we need is something about facial recognition, right? Because it's a big,
01:00:39.520
scary thing. And if you don't get it right, it could be problems. Here's what I would recommend
01:00:46.080
as potentially a bill of digital rights involving facial recognition. That nobody can be arrested
01:00:54.160
based on a machine decision. You get that? Nobody can be arrested based on a machine decision.
01:01:03.920
Because that's what happened with the black person who was innocent and got arrested. The machine
1.00
01:01:11.080
told the police to go arrest this guy. It shouldn't have, but it did. And then they did. And then they
01:01:17.200
found out he was innocent. That should never happen. The machine should – at the very most,
01:01:22.960
the machine should tell you who to talk to. But once you talk to them, you got to bring the photo
01:01:28.640
along and you got to make a human decision, all right, you don't look like the photo, right?
01:01:32.720
So there should never be an automatic arrest until a human being has evaluated the evidence. Does that
01:01:40.400
make sense? You can never let a machine cause an arrest. It's got to be a human decision every time.
01:01:47.120
Otherwise, we'll never be comfortable with the technology. All right. And the last thing you'd
01:01:55.120
want would be like a machine would be to generate a bunch of arrest warrants or something and just
01:02:00.960
sort of automatically generate them and the cops just act on it. You don't want that. All right.
01:02:06.240
All right. Remember that story about the Russians putting a bounty on American soldiers? And that was a big
01:02:18.400
story for a few days? It turns out that the punchline to that is that the intelligence
01:02:23.920
people were not sure that it was true. So that whole thing was this big national story and the
01:02:32.640
president has to be impeached for the second time and all that. None of it was really true.
01:02:39.120
I mean, there was, it was true that it was a rumor, but it's not true that our intelligence
01:02:44.160
people decided it was true. It was just one of the things, one of many things that they heard,
01:02:49.840
looked into it, couldn't see that anything was, you know, credible there, let it go.
01:02:55.680
All right. It's amazing. When you, when you watch that happen, it's, it's hard to,
01:03:02.160
it's hard to think you live in a country with good information. All right. That is all for now.
01:03:07.440
I'm working on a micro lesson on what to do if your spouse has TDS.
01:03:13.120
Uh, and you'll see that soon. And, uh, I also have an idea for, uh, fixing socialism and capitalism
01:03:25.760
and making them coexist. Do you believe it? Yeah. It's a brand new concept in which socialism and
01:03:34.240
capitalism could live side by side in the same country and you'd all be happy. Uh, we'll see if
01:03:40.560
I can pull that off and I'm preparing that even as we speak. That's all for now. I'll talk to you later.