Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1389 Scott Adams： Ending Diplomatic Relations With China Over Fentanyl, Buy American, and Opinion Versus Brainwashing

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00:00:41.120 Yes, Sean Connolly, I agree with your statement.

00:00:46.260 So, let's talk about all the things.

00:00:49.500 Just before I came on, I saw a series of tweets by Christopher Rufo, R-U-F-O.

00:00:56.980 And I just retweeted them so you can see them at the top of my feed or the top of his feed.

00:01:02.580 And apparently he's learned that Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor,

00:01:10.440 sent key executives to a three-day white male re-education camp.

00:01:14.560 They didn't really send their white men to a white male re-education camp, did they?

00:01:31.260 To deconstruct their, quote, white male culture and atone for their, quote, white male privilege?

00:01:37.020 Well, Christopher has obtained the internal documents,

00:01:41.920 which appear to suggest that's exactly what's happening.

00:01:49.540 And let me read some of this.

00:01:51.320 So, here are some of the traits, key white male culture characteristics. 0.64

00:01:59.680 So, this comes from the training program.

00:02:02.180 It says, studying the relationship between white male culture and the history of the British Isles

00:02:07.620 can help American white men see which traits,

00:02:11.700 traits that ensure their ancestors' survival, live on in them today.

00:02:16.100 Now, presumably, they wouldn't be talking about these traits unless they were racist, right?

00:02:24.320 Or, somehow, a negative thing.

00:02:28.140 But here are these key white male cultural characteristics, according to this training program.

00:02:34.280 Survivor mentality that focuses on the future.

00:02:39.260 Okay.

00:02:40.220 A tendency to rugged individualism.

00:02:44.480 Okay.

00:02:45.080 A can-do attitude.

00:02:48.320 All right.

00:02:48.900 Operating from principles and conscience.

00:02:51.580 Focus on hard work, action, and task completion.

00:02:54.800 Striving towards success and materialism.

00:02:57.680 Measured moderation and silent strength.

00:03:01.120 Focus on status and rank over connection.

00:03:06.320 Okay.

00:03:08.540 And, apparently, these are devastating things for other cultures.

00:03:15.080 And so, white men need to be either advised of these advantages so they can correct or change them.

00:03:24.580 I don't know what.

00:03:26.640 But, if you're waiting for when have things gone too far?

00:03:31.240 Here we are.

00:03:32.240 Here we are.

00:03:34.200 Here we are.

00:03:34.320 Here we are.

00:03:37.000 Things have gone a little too far.

00:03:40.180 So, I think there's going to be some major pushback to some of these companies.

00:03:45.740 Let's talk about China.

00:03:49.760 Now, I think it's time to end American diplomatic relations with China.

00:03:56.020 Now, that doesn't mean we can't still send the messages and deal with them.

00:04:00.040 But, I think we should end full diplomatic status until they stop sending fentanyl over here.

00:04:08.180 Because, remember, they promised they would do that.

00:04:10.620 Trump got a promise to do that.

00:04:12.460 And, they did none of it.

00:04:14.780 The opening offer simply to have a diplomatic presence has to be stop attacking us.

00:04:23.920 Does anybody have a diplomatic relationship with somebody who is actively attacking their country with fentanyl?

00:04:33.040 50,000, 90,000 people, something like that, dead every year from Chinese fentanyl.

00:04:39.900 So, I've told you a number of times that the government, there's some things the government just can't do for you.

00:04:48.060 Because they've got special interests, they've got to get re-elected, etc.

00:04:52.080 There are some things that the public just has to do.

00:04:55.880 And, the first thing the public needs to do is get our politicians to end diplomatic relations with China, 0.51

00:05:02.440 subject to them stopping the fentanyl flow, which they could do like that.

00:05:07.440 So, keep in mind, it's just a decision.

00:05:10.980 If China wanted to turn it off, we've even given them the name of the dealer.

00:05:15.820 They know where he lives.

00:05:17.260 They know his name.

00:05:18.800 We gave them evidence.

00:05:20.220 They could just pick him up.

00:05:22.080 But, that won't happen.

00:05:23.600 Because, they don't want it to stop, obviously.

00:05:26.360 So, we should just get rid of our diplomatic relations.

00:05:30.260 So, I'm going to start pushing that lever as hard as I can.

00:05:35.700 It seems unlikely that I would succeed.

00:05:38.360 But, it needs to be part of the conversation.

00:05:40.980 We should at least be talking about dropping diplomatic relationship.

00:05:45.720 It should, at the very least, be a conversation.

00:05:49.220 Right?

00:05:49.400 If we decide not to, well, let's look at that decision.

00:05:54.080 But, we should be talking about it.

00:05:57.000 The fact that we're not talking about it is a giant red flag that your government is incompetent. 0.99

00:06:03.960 Completely incompetent. 0.63

00:06:05.100 Now, there might be a few people who would talk about it. 0.92

00:06:08.680 You might have your Tom Cottons.

00:06:10.360 I don't know if he'd be willing to go that far.

00:06:12.040 But, we certainly need to put that offer on the table.

00:06:16.100 It's like, this is, sorry.

00:06:18.260 The opening bid to even have relationship with the United States is stop your chemical warfare. 0.82

00:06:25.560 That's not unreasonable.

00:06:27.920 It's not even a little bit unreasonable.

00:06:30.060 It's not even a picot bit unreasonable.

00:06:34.020 It's completely within the fair, reasonable, historically compatible everything.

00:06:41.800 There's nothing wrong with cutting off, or at least threatening, to cut off diplomatic relations.

00:06:48.600 And, again, we can still talk with them.

00:06:50.440 It's not like we would immediately go to a nuclear war if that happened.

00:06:53.520 And, speaking of that, I told you that if we could find out what the problem was in getting products in this country labeled as to their country of origin,

00:07:05.400 that I would persuade to maybe change that.

00:07:09.020 So, my understanding is, since yesterday, that there is a bipartisan bill, meaning that you've got your Democrats and you've got your Republicans,

00:07:18.340 who are in favor of better labeling.

00:07:20.560 Because, remember, Biden is by America.

00:07:24.000 Trump is by America.

00:07:26.540 Right?

00:07:26.980 So, both sides want this.

00:07:29.820 Why won't it happen?

00:07:31.500 Well, it turns out that big retailers and Amazon being at the top of the list don't want it to happen.

00:07:37.000 Now, part of it is that it would be a big burden on them.

00:07:41.920 And I think you could probably find a way to make that burden either phased in or less of a burden.

00:07:48.880 But their argument is that it would be a burden.

00:07:52.260 And I think it would be a burden, but it might be a burden that's worth having because the fate of the whole country depends on them taking that burden.

00:08:01.900 And I think it's not that big a burden if the entire, you know, fate of the country is involved.

00:08:11.120 Take on a little burden.

00:08:12.860 Don't mind if you do.

00:08:14.600 But here's the thing. 0.69

00:08:16.820 What would it take for Congress to get the balls, even though it's bipartisan, what would it take for them to actually pass this thing, knowing that they might get resistance from the big retailers?

00:08:29.760 Well, let me throw out a suggestion, and maybe you can tell me if it's legal.

00:08:35.960 So this is not a suggestion.

00:08:38.360 It's a question.

00:08:39.940 Would it be legal to do the following?

00:08:42.940 Get a list.

00:08:44.840 Put Congress on notice that we're going to track who votes for it and who votes against it.

00:08:50.720 And all those who vote against the idea of labeling products so we know what comes from China.

00:08:55.980 Those who vote against it, could we, and it's just a question, start some kind of a GoFundMe pack that just gives all of the money raised, however much it is, to the opposition of anybody who votes against it?

00:09:14.940 Or alternately, you would fund the campaigns of the ones who voted for it.

00:09:20.640 So you can go either way.

00:09:21.680 But don't you think that the public needs to take control of this decision if Congress can't get it passed on their own?

00:09:30.320 So if Congress can't get this passed, we need some kind of gigantic funding entity.

00:09:36.340 You know, and it could be $10 a piece.

00:09:38.540 You know, we just all chip in, and it gets to be a pretty big number pretty quickly.

00:09:42.580 And if you made it a pack, could you donate all that money legally?

00:09:49.640 Just distribute it evenly to all the people who voted for it, or distribute it equally to all the opponents and primary challengers for anybody who voted against it.

00:10:01.080 And just put them on record.

00:10:02.300 And the first thing we need to start with is to find out who voted for and against it, and to let them know, before they vote, that it's going to put a big financial pressure on them in their next election.

00:10:18.220 So it's just a question.

00:10:20.760 Could such a thing be done legally to have some kind of a fund that we could all pay into to get the government to do what we want them to do?

00:10:29.620 Because it seems to me that big companies, retailers, Amazon, etc., would have enough lobbying muscle that they could get enough politicians to say no to this.

00:10:43.860 So the only way this is going to happen is if the public is bigger than these other forces.

00:10:50.680 So that's the question.

00:10:53.180 So if anybody has some good ideas how this could happen, but we need a list of anybody who votes against this, and we need to take them out.

00:11:02.660 Because this isn't really regular politics.

00:11:06.340 How we deal with China is not just an economic question.

00:11:10.280 It's a big economic question, but it's not really about the economics.

00:11:14.580 It's about the long-term viability of the country.

00:11:18.040 It's about being able to compete in the future with our biggest threat.

00:11:24.360 So I don't think that this situation is like a regular political situation.

00:11:29.840 And if our politicians simply are too constipated or cowardly to get this done, the public has to make them do it.

00:11:40.360 So remember, we're beyond the phase where the politicians are in charge.

00:11:46.760 They're not anymore.

00:11:48.960 The politicians are not in charge.

00:11:51.620 They're only in charge of the stuff we don't care about.

00:11:55.040 Right?

00:11:55.460 So if they want to pass a bill that says the new national bird is something, yeah, they can do that.

00:12:04.260 Why did I tweet out a fake Matt Gaetz story?

00:12:08.740 They used a quote from a different part of the speech, says Abe.

00:12:13.680 Let's talk about that.

00:12:14.880 By the way, tweet me a correction to that if you have a correction to that.

00:12:21.860 So that's what we're going to do with China. 0.93

00:12:27.340 There's a story about the Black Lives Matter co-founder who stepped down from the organization.

00:12:34.960 It's Patrice Cullors.

00:12:36.900 And, of course, she got a little heat because she bought some real estate. 0.99

00:12:44.840 Now, of course, the fake news is reporting that she bought $3.2 million worth of real estate.

00:12:52.680 Now, when you hear that, do you say to yourself, well, she just spent $3.2 million.

00:12:58.580 I guess she's doing pretty well.

00:13:01.820 That's not really what happened.

00:13:03.780 She owns real estate worth that much, but we don't know how much is loans. 1.00

00:13:08.000 We don't know if some of it might be rentals that she's paying against the loans.

00:13:13.020 So we don't know how much money is actually involved, but it looks significant.

00:13:16.520 And she says she's going to quit to focus on her book and film deals because Black Lives Matter is working just great so she can step away now. 1.00

00:13:25.940 Now, is it too soon to call her a white supremacist?

00:13:31.260 Is that too soon?

00:13:33.020 Because my understanding is that if you act this way, you're sort of a white supremacist, meaning that it looks like she's just joining the power group.

00:13:49.880 She's just becoming a person who's got money and in charge and has a good situation.

00:13:57.640 I feel like she became a white supremacist.

00:14:00.020 Is that too far?

00:14:03.020 Am I taking that too far?

00:14:04.360 Because I don't think I am, actually.

00:14:07.660 I don't think that's hyperbole.

00:14:09.480 If you were to just accept their description of life and just apply it to their own situation, I feel like that's fair.

00:14:18.900 Because the white supremacy thing isn't so much about an individual.

00:14:23.620 It's about a situation.

00:14:25.320 And she just became part of the situation.

00:14:27.160 So, I think she just joined the white supremacists by their definition, not mine.

00:14:35.480 So, that's interesting.

00:14:36.600 Did you see a video, I tweeted it around this morning, before the 2018 midterms, that both Senator, then Senator Harris, and Senator Klobuchar were both on video talking about how the voting machines could easily be hacked?

00:14:57.320 In 2018.

00:14:59.320 In 2018.

00:15:01.660 That's right.

00:15:03.040 Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, on video, in very clear statements, saying, hey, we've got trouble here because these election machines can easily be hacked.

00:15:17.200 What does that do to your head?

00:15:22.140 Does your brain just blow up?

00:15:25.420 Because, as funny as it is to watch CNN and MSNBC gaslight the country, and they are just gaslighting you, by the way. 0.99

00:15:36.360 I used to not use that term because I used to define it the traditional way, which is somebody trying to make you crazy. 0.53

00:15:44.100 They're not trying to make you crazy.

00:15:45.620 They're just trying to sell you a different reality.

00:15:49.240 But I guess people are calling that gaslighting now, so I will adopt the common usage.

00:15:55.380 So, you think you're just getting gaslighted by the media until you see that the Democrats themselves are exactly the same opinion that anything can get hacked.

00:16:06.680 Because anything can get hacked.

00:16:09.800 There's no exceptions. 0.97

00:16:10.940 This whole it's not connected to the Internet stuff, that's just garbage.

00:16:16.860 Because you could connect it.

00:16:18.560 You could put a flash drive in there.

00:16:21.020 It could have been connected before.

00:16:23.120 You could have an insider.

00:16:25.360 It just doesn't mean anything that it's not connected to the Internet.

00:16:28.020 All right.

00:16:33.540 There's big news from Joe Biden.

00:16:35.780 I don't know if you saw it, but he got ice cream yesterday.

00:16:41.540 He got ice cream.

00:16:43.140 Wait, that's not the whole news.

00:16:45.160 That would be kind of weak, right?

00:16:47.420 If the whole news is Joe Biden went to get ice cream, that wouldn't be much of a story.

00:16:53.380 But luckily, it's deeper than that.

00:16:55.800 We know the flavor.

00:16:57.980 And it's chocolate chocolate chip or chocolate crunch or something.

00:17:02.500 Yeah, it's chocolate chocolate chip.

00:17:04.480 So, not only did he get ice cream, but we know the flavor.

00:17:10.380 And it's a pretty good example of the press coming down hard on him, I think.

00:17:15.380 Now, if President Trump had gotten ice cream, and let's say he had ordered vanilla, what would people say about him? 0.92

00:17:28.580 If President Trump had ordered vanilla ice cream, that's right, racist. 0.99

00:17:34.420 Racist, only the white supremacists get vanilla ice cream. 0.99

00:17:37.820 But not Joe Biden. 0.99

00:17:38.980 He got the extra, extra chocolate, and I think he's on brand there.

00:17:42.740 So, doing a good job.

00:17:45.380 And I like that they show us that he's not completely institutionalized yet.

00:17:53.500 He can actually walk outside and eat an ice cream and tell people what flavor he got.

00:17:59.900 So, if you thought that he was incompetent, well, look again.

00:18:03.940 Could he be incompetent and still eat an ice cream cone in public?

00:18:07.160 I don't know how.

00:18:09.300 I mean, that's pretty good evidence that he's on the ball.

00:18:13.560 He can even get ice cream.

00:18:16.180 Well, Biden's talking also about taxing the top 1%.

00:18:20.120 And I would like to say once again, I think you need to make a distinction in the top 1%.

00:18:29.140 I think that people over 50, or you could pick a number, but people who spent their whole life trying to build up, you know, a certain situation, and then you change the rules just before they retire.

00:18:43.520 I don't feel that's quite fair, especially the capital gains tax part of it, before people retire.

00:18:50.400 Now, I wouldn't be so upset if it got phased in, you know, it hits the young first, and there's less of it.

00:18:59.060 There's less of it as we go.

00:19:01.860 But at the moment, the Democrats are doing what they always do, which is penalizing success and penalizing hard work and completely ignoring the effect of human motivation.

00:19:14.720 There is a tax rate upon which I will quit working.

00:19:18.600 Like, literally, I will just retire.

00:19:22.940 Now, I have enough money that I don't have to work, but I am incentivized by money, even though I have money.

00:19:31.580 And I don't know why.

00:19:32.860 I mean, it's just like a dog with a treat.

00:19:34.680 You know, if the dog's not hungry, they'll still take a treat.

00:19:37.320 They'll still do a trick for a treat.

00:19:38.560 And, you know, I'm a little bit like that.

00:19:42.620 But if my tax rate goes to, oh, God, 100, which it looks like it's going to, you know, 60% or something would be my effective tax rate.

00:19:51.100 Closer to 70, probably, if you counted all my taxes.

00:19:54.780 I just don't think it would be worth working for 30 cents on the dollar, you know, at my age and given that I don't need the money that much.

00:20:02.760 So I think I would just quit.

00:20:04.000 And I produce, I don't know, how many millions of dollars of, you know, activity, if you count the ripple effect of, you know, I make a book, somebody buys a book, et cetera.

00:20:15.620 So there's a ripple effect.

00:20:17.280 But I would take, just me, just one person, I would probably take 10 to 20 million dollars out of the economy the day he changes the tax rate, if you count the ripple effect.

00:20:30.200 So don't do that.

00:20:34.000 So here's something that's been bugging me all day.

00:20:38.280 And it goes like this.

00:20:39.560 If you're bad at persuading and you have an opinion and you express your opinion in public, but you're not really good at persuading people, what would people call that?

00:20:51.580 They would just call it your opinion, right?

00:20:53.440 Here's my opinion.

00:20:55.000 It's not expressed very persuasively.

00:20:56.980 Most opinions are not.

00:20:59.720 So that's just my opinion.

00:21:01.880 But what would happen if somebody had an opinion and they were really well trained at persuasion?

00:21:08.080 So when they gave you your opinion, it was necessarily really packaged well to change your mind.

00:21:16.060 What is it then?

00:21:17.540 Is it still just an opinion?

00:21:19.020 If it's expressed in a persuasive, weaponized form that will actually change your decisions and maybe even change your actions in life?

00:21:30.520 I would argue that that's not an opinion anymore.

00:21:34.380 I would argue that that's brainwashing. 0.91

00:21:37.320 Right?

00:21:37.520 So why is it that an untrained, unskilled person can just have an opinion, but somebody else who might even have the same opinion, but is trained and skilled, is now a brainwasher?

00:21:56.760 Because it really asks some questions about free will.

00:21:59.400 And I've been watching this second documentary.

00:22:03.160 There's a new documentary about the NXIVM alleged cult.

00:22:08.700 And I've been watching it.

00:22:10.820 It's on Starz.

00:22:11.880 It is called...

00:22:14.160 What's it called?

00:22:18.980 Well, you can find it.

00:22:20.100 Just look it up.

00:22:20.780 It's not the vow.

00:22:22.320 It's the new one.

00:22:23.020 But I've been watching that, trying to learn all the, you know, whatever persuasion tricks were used in this.

00:22:30.040 And I'm picking up a lot of good stuff.

00:22:32.880 And this one really, really asks the question.

00:22:39.360 Because if you listen to the story of, you know, one of the people who's the main focus of the documentary,

00:22:46.760 the woman says in her own voice, she says that she made all the decisions on her own.

00:22:56.220 But she also believes that she was sort of brainwashed and manipulated into them.

00:23:02.920 But the only part that wasn't fully disclosed seemed a little bit trivial to her complaint.

00:23:10.980 For example, when they got branded, they didn't know that it was Keith Ranieri's initials.

00:23:17.040 They were told it was some other thing.

00:23:19.360 Now, that didn't change her decision about getting branded.

00:23:23.020 I mean, maybe she would have not done it if it were initials.

00:23:26.240 But maybe she would have.

00:23:27.260 I don't know.

00:23:29.100 It was just something she didn't know.

00:23:31.160 She did decide to get branded. 0.93

00:23:33.100 She knew exactly what it was.

00:23:34.540 Because a trained physician did the branding, because it was the physician who was part of the organization.

00:23:42.120 And a lot of different women did it. 1.00

00:23:45.100 And it was done in phases.

00:23:47.120 So, you know, women could see that other women had done it before they did it. 1.00

00:23:52.220 So they had lots of information about it.

00:23:54.300 They could look at other people's, et cetera.

00:23:57.280 So, but there was also a point where they had to give some so-called collateral,

00:24:02.660 which they were worried would be used for blackmail.

00:24:07.980 Now, there's no evidence that any of it was ever used for blackmail.

00:24:11.540 But, but they were afraid it would be used.

00:24:15.540 So that's coercive, right?

00:24:17.800 But they also were told exactly why.

00:24:22.660 They were told that they wanted to, that they were being asked to give blackmail information

00:24:29.000 so they would be obedient.

00:24:31.000 And they agreed.

00:24:33.540 They agreed to it.

00:24:35.740 So at what point does the person who's agreeing to all this have full responsibility?

00:24:42.880 And at what point do they not have responsibility because the person they were working with was a brainwashing manipulator?

00:24:50.860 It's sort of a weird gray area, isn't it?

00:24:55.720 A little gray area.

00:24:56.900 Now, there are other charges against Keith Ruinari that involved underage girls and some other stuff.

00:25:04.580 And I don't have an opinion about that stuff.

00:25:06.820 If, if any of that's true, that's between the legal system and Ruinari.

00:25:11.840 So I wasn't there.

00:25:13.860 So I don't know what did or didn't happen.

00:25:15.720 But you really have to ask yourself whether the cult, so to speak, has any responsibility for making their own decisions.

00:25:25.620 You know, do you believe in free will?

00:25:27.200 Well, if you do, it feels like the people who are there, it's kind of there on them.

00:25:34.240 But if you don't, then they were led into this situation by this super good persuasion.

00:25:40.440 Now, how many of you know what was the persuasion purpose of the brands?

00:25:46.460 I want to see if you know, if you can figure this out.

00:25:48.940 If you've watched me for a while, maybe you read Wynn Bigley.

00:25:52.840 Tell me, what was the persuasion purpose of the branding?

00:25:59.080 And I'm going to look in the comments and see if anybody knows what that was.

00:26:04.080 Pacing and leading, no.

00:26:05.680 It's not pacing and leading.

00:26:07.620 Consistency, you're close.

00:26:09.920 You're close.

00:26:12.440 Taking action, no turning back, skin in the game, a little bit, a little bit.

00:26:18.920 Commitment, sunk cost, belonging.

00:26:22.500 I'm looking at all your ideas.

00:26:23.960 Ownership, memory mnemonics, skin in the game, group action.

00:26:27.760 Well, there definitely was some influence because the other people were doing it.

00:26:33.420 That was part of it.

00:26:34.220 But that's just what got them to do it.

00:26:36.300 What was the point of the brand?

00:26:37.980 Family, it's a big ask.

00:26:41.440 Thinking past the sale.

00:26:44.160 Wow.

00:26:45.560 You know, none of you got it.

00:26:48.060 None of you got it.

00:26:49.540 I don't think.

00:26:51.340 But maybe I missed a comment.

00:26:53.840 Reciprocity, no.

00:26:54.600 Identification, recognition, marketing, conformity, belonging.

00:27:00.920 I'm looking at your exclusivity, obedience.

00:27:04.080 All right.

00:27:04.300 Let me just tell you.

00:27:05.860 Cognitive dissonance.

00:27:07.960 All right.

00:27:08.580 That's the play.

00:27:10.100 Getting the brand would, in every case, trigger cognitive dissonance.

00:27:16.260 The cognitive dissonance works this way.

00:27:18.380 Hey, nobody in their right mind would get a brand, right?

00:27:24.020 Even the people who got the brand would be completely aware that nobody in their right mind gets branded.

00:27:30.880 I mean, not this kind of brand.

00:27:32.620 I know it's done by some people who do it, you know, voluntarily as part of a body modification.

00:27:38.220 But nobody would get this brand if it made any sense, and they were thinking, right?

00:27:46.140 But they did.

00:27:47.380 So if you can get somebody to do something that even the person knows is absurd, what happens?

00:27:55.040 Cognitive dissonance.

00:27:56.520 That's the trigger.

00:27:57.940 The trigger is to get somebody to do something that they know to be irrational.

00:28:02.160 If you can get somebody to do something that they know is irrational, their brain has to rationalize it.

00:28:11.440 There are two ways that their brain will rationalize it.

00:28:14.960 Number one, man, I am really loyal to my leader.

00:28:19.160 I am so committed to this thing.

00:28:21.180 This thing is great.

00:28:23.220 This organization I'm in is so great that I would get a brand for it.

00:28:28.700 That's how great it is.

00:28:29.720 Isn't it just a confidence scheme, Maple Bob acts?

00:28:35.480 I wouldn't say it's a confidence scheme.

00:28:37.920 I just wouldn't use those words, but I know what you're getting at.

00:28:40.720 No, cognitive dissonance is the play.

00:28:43.320 You get somebody to do something that's so wildly irrational that they have to explain to themselves why they did it,

00:28:51.360 and then they reprogram themselves to say it must have made sense because I'm so committed to this group.

00:28:57.040 But here's the problem.

00:29:02.880 There's no persuasion that works with everybody the same way.

00:29:07.320 There's lots of persuasion that is very consistent,

00:29:10.920 and you can expect most people to be influenced in just the same way.

00:29:15.540 And the other thing that can happen is that some number of these people will rationalize that they were brainwashed.

00:29:29.600 So if you get the brand, and you know it's crazy and irrational, you have to rationalize it.

00:29:37.100 Most of them probably said, oh, I'm extra loyal.

00:29:39.900 This is such an important organization that I'm committed for life, blah, blah.

00:29:45.880 And probably that happened to most of them.

00:29:47.720 But you can predict that there were like 150 people, I think, in the group.

00:29:53.320 And of 150, you can predict with certainty that at least one of them is going to say, wait a minute.

00:29:59.940 The reason I did it is that I was brainwashed.

00:30:03.260 Now, that one was the one that there was an effort to rescue her and deprogram her. 1.00

00:30:09.200 Now, let's say your normal people get a hold of you, you know, the people from the outside that you've been cut off from.

00:30:15.560 So the normal people get a hold of you, and they say, it's crazy, it's crazy, it's crazy.

00:30:19.460 And all the normal people say the same thing.

00:30:21.460 It's crazy what you did. It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy.

00:30:24.860 You would expect that person to now reinterpret their experience as, I must have been brainwashed.

00:30:32.820 Because, yeah, you're right.

00:30:34.380 All of my friends, all my family are saying the same thing. They're right.

00:30:37.520 I would never make this decision in my right mind if I'd thought about it, if I knew the whole situation.

00:30:43.240 I never would have done this, which is probably true, by the way.

00:30:46.680 They probably wouldn't have.

00:30:48.460 But here, Finn, we'll take care of you.

00:30:55.700 We found a narcissist here, Finn Chopes, and we're going to remove him. 1.00

00:31:02.140 The narcissist, you can always identify, because they go after the person, or the personality, or the way you said it.

00:31:11.560 Everybody who does that, I now recognize.

00:31:14.020 It took a while to figure out that there's a specific personality characteristics that's real unpredictable.

00:31:20.640 So those are people who want you to think that they're better than me.

00:31:23.640 So they're going on here just to tell you that they're better than me.

00:31:27.480 That's all.

00:31:28.120 That's all you needed to know.

00:31:29.860 No specific problem.

00:31:32.100 I'm just better than this guy.

00:31:34.440 So those are, yeah, those are your peacocks.

00:31:37.400 Bye-bye, peacock.

00:31:38.540 So that's an axiom.

00:31:47.620 So one of the super chat comments is that there was some fake news on the Matt Gaetz quote.

00:31:56.960 And I saw the video, so I'll be interested.

00:32:01.180 Maybe you can tell me what's the fake news.

00:32:02.980 So be alerted that we have at least one report that the news I'm going to read to you is not real.

00:32:10.360 So you've been warned.

00:32:11.580 It might not be real.

00:32:13.040 I did see Matt Gaetz say it in his own voice.

00:32:16.560 But how many times have we been Rupard?

00:32:20.240 The fact that you saw it on video, and you watched it with your own eyes, and you heard it with your own ears,

00:32:26.320 doesn't mean it happened.

00:32:28.200 It could be that what was cut off before that or after that, there may be some context missing.

00:32:36.040 Somebody says, but it is fake.

00:32:38.740 Can you tell me how it was faked?

00:32:41.760 Was it faked with an edit?

00:32:45.600 I tweeted, replied it to you.

00:32:48.500 Well, let's see.

00:32:50.920 Because probably there's like a different...

00:32:54.400 Let's get to the bottom of this right now.

00:32:56.600 Because it certainly looked like fake news.

00:33:00.120 It was a little too on the nose.

00:33:01.900 But I had a theory about why it would be that.

00:33:05.020 So let's see if I can find those comments.

00:33:09.260 Oh, there's like a zillion comments here, though.

00:33:14.300 Let's see.

00:33:18.400 I don't see anybody doubting this.

00:33:20.920 All right.

00:33:23.380 Well, you've been warned that there's a counterpoint to this.

00:33:31.080 Yeah.

00:33:31.980 All right.

00:33:32.560 So I don't know what the truth is.

00:33:34.100 Some people say it's fake news.

00:33:35.900 But if it were not fake news, this is what I would say.

00:33:39.600 What is it that made President Trump, when he was running for the first election,

00:33:47.740 what made him so interesting?

00:33:52.520 What was it that sucked all of the energy out of the air everywhere else?

00:33:56.540 The way that Trump did it was to be outrageous and to say things that you knew couldn't be right

00:34:05.680 or that you knew were too far or that you just couldn't believe he said it.

00:34:11.140 But it was still compatible with the base.

00:34:14.280 How many people who are pro-Second Amendment, and by the way, I'm seeing lots of people saying it's fake news,

00:34:21.120 so just you can assume it's fake news until we sort it out.

00:34:24.960 But with this many people saying it's fake news, you're probably right.

00:34:29.140 But let me make the point more generally without knowing whether this is real or not.

00:34:34.940 The general point is that Matt Gaetz would be smart enough to know that staying offensive

00:34:41.980 all the way through a primary would be how he'd win.

00:34:46.000 Because you can imagine that he would say something like the Second Amendment, blah, blah, blah.

00:34:52.640 The news would want to talk about it all the time.

00:34:55.660 But the base would say, yeah, maybe the Second Amendment, right?

00:34:59.960 So a lot of people in the base would sort of silently agree with him.

00:35:04.140 And that's what Trump had going for him.

00:35:06.880 A lot of people would sort of silently agree with Trump, but they wouldn't go that far themselves.

00:35:12.360 And you can't look away because it's so provocative.

00:35:16.240 So Matt Gaetz has that skill.

00:35:18.360 He has the skill to make himself interesting all the time.

00:35:23.020 And that's a really predictive skill for getting pretty far in a presidential race.

00:35:29.840 All right.

00:35:30.580 Can somebody tell me in the comments why it's fake news?

00:35:36.860 Is it because there was something that was clipped?

00:35:40.840 It's not a fake edit, the one I saw, is it?

00:35:45.060 All right.

00:35:45.580 So maybe somebody can tell me why they think that's fake news.

00:35:48.320 At the moment, I don't have any evidence one way or another.

00:35:51.060 Somebody says it was edited.

00:35:56.020 Well, I'm going to have to see that.

00:35:57.480 Maybe somebody has a couple of videos back-to-back.

00:36:03.780 So it was edited.

00:36:05.000 All right.

00:36:06.760 All right.

00:36:07.400 All right.

00:36:07.820 I'll go take a look at that.

00:36:09.300 And let's just assume that this is not likely to be real news.

00:36:14.040 And I will talk to you tomorrow.

00:36:17.300 We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 28, 2021

Episode 1389 Scott Adams： Ending Diplomatic Relations With China Over Fentanyl, Buy American, and Opinion Versus Brainwashing

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