I think I solved one of my biggest mysteries: why people hate me so much, and why they think I'm better than them. I don't have a good answer, but I think I know why they don't like me.
00:04:17.480I'm way below average, in my own opinion.
00:04:20.740So one of the reasons that I work hard to try to, you know, produce some value in my lifetime as it is, is that I think I need to add some value.
00:05:15.700And, you know, I told you yesterday that one of the reasons I like the LGBTQ community, like a little extra, and I've added R and I to that.
00:05:27.640So now it's LGBTQRI to get Republicans and incels as well.
00:05:33.280So you get all the non-standard stuff in one bucket.
00:05:39.960So I think if you understand my context, which is I'm not telling you that I'm better than you or anybody's better than you or anybody's better than anything.
00:06:15.400I don't feel like that's where I would excel, probably.
00:06:18.560But if you drop me into a Scrabble competition, I'd probably do okay.
00:06:27.100But do I say to myself, I'm better than you because I could beat you at Scrabble, but you could beat me at protecting your house or something?
00:06:36.840It's just somebody has one skill, somebody has another skill.
00:06:40.300So if I could simply allow that your opinion of me could probably never be as low as my own opinion of myself, and by the way, I'm not complaining about that.
00:06:51.600I like keeping my own opinion of myself, you know, as low as possible because I think that keeps me out of trouble.
00:08:51.980Now, I like to give the shout-out that I always give Fox News, no matter what you want to say about them, you know, you can all be critics.
00:09:03.100No matter what you want to say about Fox News, the one thing you have to give them is that they're better managed and better produced than anybody.
00:09:11.780Now, your brain automatically goes to the hosts, right, of their talent.
00:17:14.480But he's still saying, well, he's sort of getting the job done, and it's hard to remove somebody once they're in office and just replace the VP.
00:17:34.840I don't want Trump to be president because he's too old.
00:17:38.080If he's the only choice versus Biden, then you have to make a choice.
00:17:42.620But if I had a choice, I don't want presidents that old if I have a choice.
00:17:47.820But I actually agree with Bill Maher that once Biden is in there and they know they can just put him in front of a lectern, and here's the key part.
00:17:59.780Apparently, it doesn't matter what Biden says.
00:18:14.640You know, if you had told me that a doddering old dementia patient could do the job of president, I would have said, well, obviously not.
00:18:25.200But after two years of watching it, my opinion is whoever his handlers are the ones running the country, one assumes.
00:18:33.800But I haven't seen, I have not yet seen, maybe you could correct me, have you yet seen an instance in which Biden being mentally degraded has actually made a difference?
00:20:59.820You know, if you'd stopped with four capitalized wrongs, I would say to you, that argument is weak.
00:21:08.660But when you throw in that fifth wrong, well, I have to take that under consideration now because you make a strong case.
00:21:15.800I saw a great thread by Konstantin Kysin, and I don't know anything about him except that he says he's been a translator for years.
00:21:30.340And he helped translate Putin's speech.
00:21:33.600Now, apparently, if you hear Putin's speech translated, and you hear the whole thing, not just a little clip, you get a completely different idea of what he's all about, which is a huge mind spinner.
00:21:51.780Because didn't you think you sort of knew what he was about?
00:21:57.340It turns out that if you listen to his words, that what Putin is really bitching about is decades of American bullying, basically, and America trying to put his boot on every little country, including Russia.
00:22:14.760So, let's see, looking at a funny meme going by.
00:22:19.700So, Putin's argument is that America does everything it can financially, economically, militarily, and in every possible way it can influence things to keep down everybody who's not America, and that would include Russia.
00:22:38.520And so, really, Russia is fighting for all the little guys who are being abused by the American hegemonomy, hegemonomy, hegemonomy, hegemonomy, hegemonomy, hegemonomy, hegemonomy.
00:23:38.520I don't know if that's really what Putin cares about, but apparently he's been saying it forever, and it does match up with what you observe, right?
00:23:50.660Is it not observable that America does try to put his boot on anybody it can?
00:24:28.820If your worldview is that the United States has just gone too far, doing everything up until Ukraine, and then it tries to get control over your next door neighbor that you think you sort of own, yeah, I can see why that would start a war.
00:24:47.340So, it all makes sense in terms of Putin's view that only Russia maybe is strong enough to stand up to the hegeonomy of the United States.
00:24:59.800But the other view is that he's just a tyrant who wants more stuff.
00:26:01.640But, it does seem that the reporting is saying that the Ukrainians have surrounded
00:26:09.5205,000 Russian troops that are trapped in one area in one of these four regions.
00:26:17.560Now, the reporting, again, who knows how much is true, the reporting is that the Russian troops that are trapped asked for permission to retreat and were rejected.
00:26:30.840Meaning that their choices are to fight to the death, somehow break out on their own, you know, or go out on the fence or something.
00:26:40.740But basically, the Ukrainians have 5,000 trapped Russians that they're just going to kill.
00:28:20.900And I don't think it's about Ukraine anymore.
00:28:23.740I think the battle for Ukraine is over in terms of strategic interests.
00:28:28.700I think at this point, the United States is trying to put a death blow on the entire Soviet military.
00:28:36.920And I believe, you know, I heard General Keene say the other day that if somehow, you know, Russia used a nuke or somehow brought the U.S. military in,
00:28:49.340Keene's view is that the U.S. military plus NATO would just eliminate the Russian military, or at least all the assets on the ground.
00:29:04.020Do you think that there is so, at this point, because we're watching Ukraine kick the shit out of the Soviet military just using, you know, our weapons and logistics, I assume.
00:29:15.480If we actually used our best weapons and all of them, I feel like the Russian, the entire Russian military would be destroyed in a week or something.
00:29:29.320Now it would be bloody and nobody wants that, right?
00:29:33.800But to me, it looks like the U.S. strategy has changed from protecting Ukraine, because I think they think they've done that.
00:29:40.820And yes, they're battling over the annexed areas, and that will continue, but that's going to continue no matter what, because Ukraine's not going to give up, as long as they have resources from us.
00:29:54.720So I feel like we've completely changed our goal.
00:30:00.900I think the goal is complete collapse of the Russian system, and that we're doing that either to get rid of Putin or to get him so flexible that he would join our team.
00:30:19.420And I do think that this is the time to negotiate, because in my view, I think Putin can see that there's actually a very serious chance, I think more than 50%, that the entire Russian military is going to collapse.
00:30:37.780I mean, actually, like they can't even give an order to mount a defense.
00:30:41.940I think there will soon be a point where they can't even order a military movement.
00:30:49.680They won't be able to order an attack.