Episode 991 Scott Adams： Taking Your Questions and Making Your Fears Disappear
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
155.94365
Summary
Joe Biden makes a racist comment, and the rest is downhill from there. Plus, Coronavirus, the moon landing, and much, much more! Guests: Dr. David Axelrod, Dr. Carl Sagan, and Dr. Michael Bloomberg. Thanks to caller for the call-in questions.
Transcript
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As we look down on the sleeping dog and the curtains come down on another wonderful day in the age of coronavirus,
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you're wondering, what could make this day end in the perfect way?
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Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And it turns out that you came to the right place.
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You don't have to let sleeping dogs lie. No, you don't.
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Because it's time for the best time of the night. The time you've all been waiting for.
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The time when I will be taking your questions in a moment, and I will listen to your greatest fears, and then I will make them disappear.
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So think about what it is that's making you anxious. What is it you're worried about, about the future?
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In a moment, I'll let you call in, and I will remove your fears in front of the crowd.
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But first, let me catch you up on a few things.
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So the Joe Biden gaffe, I guess I call it a gaffe, in which he says,
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if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.
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So I guess the hashtag, you ain't black, has been trending, and hashtag, Joe Biden's a racist.
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Now, what's funny about this is that there's just nothing here.
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It's just Joe Biden tried to be casual, and obviously Joe Biden was thinking that when he said it, that the actual meaning was, of course, I'm the best person for the black community, which is what he meant to say.
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But, of course, the pro-Trump people have turned that into, well, it definitely means what he means, what he's thinking, what he's thinking, because I can read his mind.
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What he's really thinking is that, you know, basically he owns your vote.
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And, of course, he didn't say anything like that, nor would he say anything like that, and it doesn't make any sense.
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But everybody's pretty darn sure that's what he meant.
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So watching the conservatives just use the left's playbook to just manufacture this ridiculous, it's just ridiculous, because there's nobody in the world who thinks Joe Biden's racist.
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And, shall we mean the God, I don't know if he's weighed in on it, but I would care about his opinion, because he was there.
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I'm not sure I care about my opinion about it, or anybody else's.
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I heard somebody say that if you're not black, you know, it's not up to you to say that Biden did or did not insult anybody, or should or should not have said anything differently, or, you know, needs to apologize, or doesn't need to apologize.
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And I thought to myself, yeah, that's a pretty good standard.
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I will accept that standard and watch purely as a spectator.
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But it is a lot of fun watching the politics of it all.
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Do you ever wonder when they discover some ancient ruins that they have to dig down to?
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Do you ever wonder how it all got covered up with sand in the first place?
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Is it they're just bad at housekeeping, and they just don't notice, and after a few hundred years, it just builds up, and then their house is gone?
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Or did they all leave town for a thousand years, and they get covered with sand, and then they come back and build a city on top of the sand?
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It was, you know, I wonder who built the pyramids, too.
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So it turns out that remdesivir doesn't save any lives, so it doesn't change the mortality rate.
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But it seems to reduce the virus a bit, not enough to make any difference by itself.
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So remdesivir doesn't make much difference by itself.
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This will just be a test of how cynical you are.
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If remdesivir doesn't work by itself, and remdesivir is like $1,000, you know, per patient, right?
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And they test it, and they find out they do get a good result with some inexpensive drug.
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They're talking about, I think, I don't know, some other kind of drug.
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So they put it with an inexpensive drug, and then let's say the two of them produce a good result.
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I think they're going to pair them and charge $1,000 for the remdesivir, and whatever the other drug is that's cheap, you know, $1.50,
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Do you think that after they test the remdesivir with whatever the other drug is, that they'll keep going and say,
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all right, now we have to test it with just the other drug without the remdesivir?
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Or are they just going to say, well, all we know is that when you use them together, it works.
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But all we've tested is the two of them together.
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It would be funny if it – all right, you're ahead of me.
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Somebody – you stepped all over my great joke.
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It was coming, but apparently everybody in the comments had the same punchline as I did,
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which is, and that other drug that works with remdesivir is hydroxychloroquine.
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So anyway, CNN and everybody continues to act as though the hydroxychloroquine when given to people who only have a few days left to live makes things worse.
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And I'm thinking probably everything does at that point.
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But specifically, I'm going to take some questions about what's bothering you.
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What kind of big worries do you have for the future?
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And I will give you the positive spin on whatever it is that's bothering you.
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Do you have a concern which you would like me to erase from your mind?
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It was a tweet that I saw from Katie Hopkins, and she was saying that all of our statistics and death rates and models were hoaxes,
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and we were being programmed to live a new way of life.
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And I hadn't thought that I'd say the way of the conspiracy, but for some reason, I got off work, and it hit me, and I was like,
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We have to schedule it at the DMV, and you can't just walk in anymore.
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I would not worry about the grand scheme to change the way everybody's living.
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So there's no evidence for it other than people who like to talk about grand schemes.
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So I would not imagine that anybody's sitting behind a closed door saying,
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you know, if we can just convince them to door dash, then we've got something.
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If we can just convince them to work from home a little bit, how does that work?
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Let's see if somebody else has a concern that I can erase for them.
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Well, I think David looks like he has a concern.
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Do you have a concern for me, a worry that I can erase for you?
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So I am in sales for a living, and I'm hoping you're good with personal things as well, correct?
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So I'm in sales for a living, and it baffles me how in the majority of my life, I'm very confident,
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and in certain ways, I can approach people with no challenge whatsoever.
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But when it comes to certain sales calls, I find myself crippled with fear and can't get any sort of real rationalization as to why.
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And do you know what kind of calls make it different?
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It's just some days you have it and some days you don't?
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No, I mean, with things primarily related to work is when I see the fear comes up more often.
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So, yes, I imagined you young because part of the solution to this is just experiencing a lot and realizing that none of it hurt you.
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So the only solution to be able to do this is to put yourself in increasingly embarrassing situations and to learn that they don't really hurt.
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And I don't think there's any other way to do it.
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Now, the ways that people do it is they sign up for, let's say, the Toastmasters or the Dale Carnegie course, or you could just approach strangers and actually just practice.
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Now, I gave some advice the other day that I was laughing after I gave it, which is it's always good to match your emotional and energy state to the task.
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Now, part of the problem might be that if you're all wound up about a meeting or a sale, you're in exactly the wrong frame of mind to take a risk because you're just too wound up to take a risk.
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But there are probably times when you think, I've had such a bad day, I just had a fight with my girlfriend, wife, whatever, you know, five things went wrong, I couldn't find my pants.
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There's nothing that could ruin this day because it's already so ruined.
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And then you say to yourself, I might as well try that thing I was going to try.
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Just, hey, let me do something to wake myself up today.
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Okay, so I would think expansively about which state of energy can get you not afraid.
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Now, I find in my life that the same situation can be, say, tense making if I'm in a certain frame of mind, but no problem at all if I'm, like, really angry, you know.
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So sometimes, you know, it's just a case of changing your state until you find one that fits the situation.
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And then if you've gone through enough of these situations, then they don't present the same issue.
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Because you know that nine out of ten calls are going to be a no.
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Intellectually, I grasp that there is no problem with that.
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But right there with my finger on the phone, it changes things.
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Have you read my book, Had It Failed Almost Everything and Still Win Big?
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So I would try reframing your situation as trying to guess something out of every call.
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It doesn't mean that you get a sale out of it, but you get tougher.
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You say, all right, I got one out of 18 yesterday.
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But I think you can reframe it as almost a sport, and it's not personal.
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These are basically strangers you're talking about?
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Oh, well, there may be people who just haven't said yes yet.
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So, you know, sales is sort of about wearing people down after a while, isn't it?
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But here's a – let me tell you a sales story.
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I had a neighbor who had gotten rich, and I had asked him about the story of his life.
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And one of his first jobs was selling salt to grocery stores.
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And I laughed, and I said, how do you sell salt?
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And he told me this story, that one day, one of his grocery stores was going to be reorganizing his shelves.
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And he said, you know, you'd have to be closed all day on the weekend.
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And, you know, he's going to be working all weekend reorganizing his shelves.
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So the salt salesman, without being asked, just showed up on Saturday and said, well, I'm here to help you reorganize your shelves.
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I thought I'd help you reorganize your shelves.
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Just helped him all day, went home, and the next time the guy did a salt order.
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So basically, he built a relationship, and then he just waited.
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And, you know, it wasn't the only relationship he was building.
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He was building relationships all over and waiting for them to bloom over time.
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So he understood it as kind of a numbers game and a question of what he was going to give them.
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So maybe one way to think of it is when you're calling people, say to yourself, all right, what am I doing for them?
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And if you can be honest about that and say, all right, I can really help these people.
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I can help them do a thing they couldn't do before.
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But, you know, I suppose if you don't believe in your product, it would be harder.
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But if you believe in your product, then you would also believe that they could be better off.
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And so think in terms of what you could give them.
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Somebody in the comments is saying that the salt salesman basically gave something for nothing
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Now that you've heard this reframing, the next time you're going to do this,
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you're going to think to yourself, wait a minute, I can think of this as a scary thing in which I could get rejected
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or I could think of this as a process in which I come out ahead every single time
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because that's literally what's going to happen.
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Every call you make, whether it works or doesn't work, makes it easier to make a call because it didn't hurt.
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You know, you were afraid, the call's over, your body feels the same, you're breathing the same, your day's the same.
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So everyone that's a no is one closer to a yes.
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Do you have a problem, a worry, a concern, a fear that I can make disappear?
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I'm from Canada and with this China virus problem, our prime minister, our leading party is seizing power
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and it's a very, very concerning issue because we don't really have a credible opposition party
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to run against him because he just refuses to even participate in the parliamentary process.
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Now, what we need is help to train our politicians to defeat this guy.
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Well, you know, but are you really worried about that or is it just a preference?
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I mean, really, is your life that much different depending on what political party is in office?
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Well, if they're allowing our national police to throw together a sweeping gun ban without any legislative process,
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So this is going to be a very big problem coming in the near future.
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Well, suppose everything went the way you don't want it to go.
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Don't you think you would just look like Canada but with fewer guns?
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If our legislative process is no longer a thing and they're circumventing and dictating what can be allowed in the process,
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Oh, well, you know, the slippery slope is usually something you don't need to worry about.
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So typically things go until they have a reason to stop.
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And right now if something's going in that direction, it's because it doesn't have a reason to stop.
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But everybody in Canada has a reason not to become China,
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whereas it's not true that everybody in Canada has some concern about guns.
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So you could pretty much count on the sliding to stop once everybody's on the same side,
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which is, oh, no, we don't want to be a dictatorship with no rules.
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We just want to clean up a few things that were our preferences but maybe not other people's preferences.
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I'm getting massive comments about my nose whistling.
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So my nose isn't whistling, but you are hearing a whistle.
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Actually, I do know why, but it's a long story.
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I would say I don't know a whole lot about the Canadian political process,
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But I will tell you that I can't think of any reason there was any year of my life that I was less happy because of who was in power,
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and I wouldn't worry about the slippery slope because it will stop when it needs to stop,
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maybe a little bit after it needed to stop, but not full China.
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I don't think I talked him out of that, out of his fear.
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Do you have any kind of worry or fear that I could make disappear?
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Well, if you have any questions about Canada, you can ask me because I actually live up here.
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But I did want to ask you something else, and that was you once talked about something called a humility fetish
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that the anti-Trumpers have, and I just noticed that there are a lot of people, say, on my Facebook
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and on my social media, family members, and I don't think it has anything to do about politics when it comes to Trump.
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There's something about him that they just cannot get over,
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and I was wondering if you could comment on that because it's almost like I hate to use the word trigger
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because it's being overused, I think, but there is something that just drives them into irrational behavior
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Well, I have opined that Trump comes across as a bully, and if you have been bullied in your life,
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that's all you can see, and everything is all about that,
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and everything sort of emanates from we hate him because he's a bully,
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and then we'll find all the other reasons if we look for him,
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whereas people who have not been bullied or were the bullies themselves
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look at him as just a harmless and entertaining person
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who may or may not have the skills that they're looking for.
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whether you've been abused by somebody that he reminds you of.
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As I say, it doesn't seem to be about anything he's done.
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These aren't people who I consider stupid either.
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They're like really smart people who have just been driven into this insane hatred.
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Yeah, you know, anybody who's cocky has as many admirers as they have haters.
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You remember when Muhammad Ali was, you know, you're probably too young,
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but he was famous for being, you know, bragging and being cocky,
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and there are a number of athletes who have made a name the same way,
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People believe that, you know, this is somehow their genuine self.
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They're not just putting on an act for the cameras.
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So, yeah, people just hate any kind of confidence or arrogance or cockiness.
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I don't think there's much of a mystery to that because Trump has a lot of those things,
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He gives people a lot of reasons to get worked up.
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On the affirmations, I just took a chance on the affirmations.
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And someone who I hadn't heard from in a long time, I just picked them kind of randomly.
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And I wrote down for a couple days, this person will text me.
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So a couple months go by, and I basically forget about it.
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And I haven't heard from this person for a long time.
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And so that was probably about four or five years ago that I graduated.
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So this is a person who I'm not in contact with very often.
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Yeah, it's funny because the very first time that somebody told me
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And it was that somebody got somebody to call them out of the blue that they
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wanted to call that they hadn't heard from in years and years and years,
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Now, of course, as the people in the comments are saying,
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coincidence is coincidence, and there are going to be coincidences.
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So as I was advised the first time I tried affirmations, and it worked out so well,
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and then I said, well, it's probably just a coincidence.
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You almost have to try something that just couldn't happen on its own,
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and it has to be more than one thing, or you're not going to know anything.
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Well, that's why I picked this person, because I didn't want to pick a person
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I wanted to pick someone who, you know, the odds of them getting in contact with me
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I wanted it to be someone who, you know, would be less than 50-50.
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I kind of just wrote it down, and I did that for, I'd say, three or four days.
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When that text came in, I was just like, damn it, Scott, damn it.
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So now are you going to try it on something else?
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Maybe raise your sights from getting a text to getting something better?
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Well, I'll tell you, before I even heard you talk about this,
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I got this idea from Jim Carrey in an interview.
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He was talking about how he wrote a check to himself.
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Obviously, mine wasn't a million dollars, but it was an amount I wanted in my bank account.
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So I literally took a screenshot of my online bank account, and I wrote the number.
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And it was a reasonable number, you know, it wasn't crazy.
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Yeah, have you watched the Michael Jordan documentary?
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I mean, there's a little bit of that at play there, too.
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I kept meaning to watch that, so I'm glad you reminded me.
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All right, I'm going to wind it down for tonight.
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I hope some of you had similar kinds of problems, and maybe some of that helped you.
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And in the meantime, I will see you right early in the morning.