Episode 108 - ACB Doesn't Need Notes. Tiger King's Doc Antle Charged With Wildlife Trafficking. Big Tech Mind Control. Mexico Weed.
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Summary
In the wake of Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court, hot takes and hot takes on her confirmation are all over the airwaves. First, we take a look at how the Democratic response to Judge Barrett s confirmation is different than the reaction to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
Transcript
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you ever watch this guy on television you all were not telling the truth and you should not
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be trusted congressman matt gates thank you for what you did for your country tonight be offended
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with the democratic whip not house republicans like a machine matt gates
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welcome to hot takes i'm congressman matt gates let's talk about the news judge amy coney barrett
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making all the news with no notes providing her legal brilliance putting her acumen on display
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time and again i'll give this to the democrats though they seem to have a tremendous amount
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of focus when making this confirmation about two things abortion and health care and it's noticeable
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that in their treatment of amy coney barrett they're very different than during the kavanaugh hearings
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during the kavanaugh hearings there seemed to be a lot more willingness to show personal hatred
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personal disdain this appears to be with some exceptions mostly about trying to ripen these
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issues of health care and abortion take a listen to this exchange on the issue of roe versus wade
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and just how masterfully judge amy coney barrett handles it do you agree with justice scalia's view
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that roe was wrongly decided senator i completely understand why you are asking the question but
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again i can't pre-commit or say yes i'm going in with some agenda because i'm not i don't have any
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agenda i have no agenda to try to overrule casey i have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and
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decide cases as they come is roe a super precedent how would you define super precedent
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i i actually i might have thought someday i'd be sitting in that chair i'm not i'm up here so i'm
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asking okay well people use super precedent differently okay the way that it's used in
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the scholarship and the way that i was using it and the article that you're reading from
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was to define cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for
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their overruling and i'm answering a lot of questions about roe which i think indicates that
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roe doesn't fall in that category and scholars across the spectrum say that doesn't mean that
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roe should be overruled but descriptively it does mean that it's not a case that everyone has accepted
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and doesn't call for its overruling there was also a lot of discussion about obamacare about health care
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and legislation that is still being reviewed for its constitutionality obviously no person that would
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potentially serve on the court would be in a position to issue pre-rulings on matters that
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could come before the highest jurisprudential body in the land here is an exchange on obamacare give us
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an insight how you can be so unequivocal in opposing the majority decisions in nfid sebelius
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and in king and burwell but have an open mind when it comes to the future of the affordable care act
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or the affordable care act of the affordable care act of the house center.
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Sure thank you for that question senator durbin because it gives me an opportunity to make my position clear
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sure thank you for that question senator durbin because it gives me an opportunity to make my position clear
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when i wrote and i at this was as a law professor about those decisions i did critique the statutory
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interpretation of the majority opinions and as i've mentioned before my description of them was consistent with the way
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that chief justice roberts described the statutory question but i think that your concern is that
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that because I critiqued the statutory reasoning that I'm hostile to the ACA, and that because
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I'm hostile to the ACA, that I would decide a case a particular way.
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I'm not hostile to the ACA, I'm not hostile to any statute that you pass.
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And the cases on which I commented, and we can talk at another time, I guess, about the
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context, the distinctions between academic writing and judicial decision making.
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So to assume that because I critiqued the interpretation of the mandate or the phrase established by
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a state means that on the entirely different legal question of severability, I would reach
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a particular result just assumes that I'm hostile.
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Republicans did a great job as well, allowing Judge Coney Barrett to express her judicial
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I think that one of the Senate's newest is, in fact, one of the Senate's best, Senator
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Here's his exchange with the president's nominee.
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This bedrock principle of American liberty is now under attack.
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That is what is at stake when we read these stories attacking Judge Barrett for her faith.
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That is what is at stake when my Democratic colleagues repeatedly questioned Judge Barrett and many
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other judicial nominees about their religious beliefs, about their religious membership, about
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their religious practices, about their family beliefs and practices.
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That is an attempt to bring back the days of the religious test.
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That is an attempt to bring back the veto power of the powerful over the religious beliefs and
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sincerely held convictions of the American people.
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And that is what is at stake in this confirmation hearing.
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Now, the Constitution says that people of faith, like Judge Barrett, are welcome in high office,
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welcome in any office, welcome throughout our public life here in this country.
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And I would just say to my Democrat colleagues that these years now, this pattern and practice,
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as we say in the law, this pattern and practice of religious bigotry, because that's what it
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When you tell somebody that they're too Catholic to be on the bench, when you tell them they're
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going to be a Catholic judge, not an American judge, that's bigotry.
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The pattern and practice of bigotry from members of this committee must stop.
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Now, the coldest take during these judiciary hearings likely came from Senator Hirono, who
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for some reason felt like we needed to discuss Judge Coney Barrett's sex life.
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I guess it just wouldn't be a day in the Senate Judiciary Committee with a Supreme Court nominee
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To ensure the fitness of nominees for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench or to any
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of the other positions for any of the committees on which they appear, I ask each nominee these
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Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or
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committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?
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Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?
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Now, what does it mean to ask someone if they've ever requested a sexual favor that wasn't desired?
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Is willingness or want to kiss someone a sexual favor?
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I mean, so if you really break this question down to its most literal essence, Senator Hirono
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is asking if this nominee has ever been rejected at any time that you've been an adult, if that's
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in fact what a sexual favor is, not a sexual exchange that's improper, but any sexual favor
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of any kind that you've ever sought since being an adult that was unrequited.
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If I was nominated for anything and I had to answer for every time I'd ever been rejected
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Now, that wouldn't indicate any impropriety, but give me a break.
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I mean, the notion that you have to sit there and walk through like any circumstances where
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anyone has ever rejected you as an adult is just beneath the dignity of the Senate.
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The Supreme Court deals with the most complex legal questions that our society has to answer.
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I think whether or not someone got turned down for prom is probably less relevant than
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their legal acumen, but they know that, and they know that Amy Coney Barrett has a tremendous
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legal acumen, and so they are doing anything they can to distract because they know this
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is a qualified nominee, and it's my expectation she's going on the court.
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Doc Antiel of Tiger King fame has been charged with two felony counts of trafficking lion cubs stemming
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from the movement of cubs from South Carolina to Virginia and what is alleged to be a commercial
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transfer to a Virginia-based expo for these big cats.
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And Doc Antiel was interesting in the Tiger King documentary, not just for his treatment
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of the cats and animals, but for the women, for the way that he would recruit these women
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into the tiger operation and then seduce them into his life otherwise.
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Now he's saying he greatly disputes the charges, that he and his family have not been involved
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in animal cruelty, and he looks forward to clearing his good name.
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So we'll see what happens with Doc Antiel, but he seems to have really ceded a lot of the
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interest in a lot of these kind of roadside, weird, bizarre zoos that were featured in Tiger
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King. A lot of those folks had studied with him, worked with him, probably a bunch of them
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got their first cats from him, though that is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
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And some of the attention that these folks are getting from Joe Exotic to Doc Antiel following
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Tiger King might not precisely be the attention they wanted. We'll keep following the story.
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The National Pulse.com has a piece up by Thomas Farnan, how the Russia lie doomed the Durham
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investigation. America is now more than four years into the Russia lie, and nobody has gone
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to jail for it. The Spygate conspirators have escaped prosecution and instead are smiling
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smugly on the sets of their swank CNN gigs. The stranger than fiction truth is that the DNC and
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the Clinton campaign joined with the CIA, the FBI, think tanks, private contractors, and foreign
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intelligence services to raise a false Russian flag over the Trump campaign. It's an interesting
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piece, check it out. I do think it lets some of the Republicans off the hook a little bit. Folks like
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Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy and then Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte did not authorize a single subpoena
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when we knew the Russia hoax was a lie and had the opportunity in real time to expose it, to catch the
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real criminals, and to restore confidence in the president and the presidency, and to vindicate the
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voters who selected Donald Trump as president from these vicious attacks, not just on Trump,
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but on them, by the media, by the Democrats, even facilitated by some of the Republicans.
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History should judge harshly those Republicans who had power when we were in the majority and fought
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against Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows and Ron DeSantis and Andy Biggs and myself as we were doing all we
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could to expose the lies, the crimes, and the criminals. We'll keep working hard, but we lost really
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important time. And I do think where the Farnan piece is accurate is that that loss of time really
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did impair our ability to get justice where it is so badly needed. So remember what the Democrats,
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the Obama administration, the Biden folks did, but also remember that there were a lot of Republicans
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who let us down. Mexico is set to become the largest legal marijuana market in the world. The Los Angeles
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Times has the story. The Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the ban on marijuana in the country is
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unconstitutional, and they gave the Senate until December 15th to pass marijuana regulatory policies
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that are permissive, that allow people to engage in the cultivation and use. Now you've got that
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battle underway. And my favorite part of this story is that the pro-marijuana activists have literally
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created a fragrant garden outside of the Senate where they grow marijuana plants and where they freely
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walk around lighting up joints. So the senators on their way in and out of work are literally having to
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pass in and out of this man-made marijuana jungle that was developed by the activists. Now you get
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some of the interesting features of this regulatory battle in Mexico that we saw in the United States
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and Canada. And I had a big role in that. I wrote Florida's first and second marijuana regulatory regimes.
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They've been subsequently altered. And I think over time, in many ways, they've been approved. You've got
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some folks in Mexico now saying that the interests in the United States and Canada, the growers from
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California, from elsewhere, outside of Mexico are having an outsized role in what those regulations
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look like, that it's going to create a gourmet market for the higher end and more efficient and
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effective and elite operators. And by the way, that's exactly what I did in Florida. That's what I wanted to do
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in Florida because we wanted to institute a uniquely medical regime. We weren't there on adult use back
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when I made these laws in 2012. And so we really wanted only the best, most reliable entities to
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operate in the state. And we wanted to make sure that if we had to get rid of them, we could pull them
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up root and branch, that they would be vertically integrated so that there wouldn't be any bad actors
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that could be blamed if you had a license holder engaging in conduct that wasn't contemplated by
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the law. Now in Florida, I think we have a more sophisticated system than that which I originally
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developed. We allow for more horizontal integration, more specialization. And I think that Mexico is now
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grappling with those issues. Here's my advice. Start with the best, open up more opportunities for
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people. And there will be innovations that grow into different niches in the market, whether that
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is in the medical field and the different types of ailments and the different types of strains
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that can accommodate those ailments, or whether there are matters of preference that continue to
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evolve in the adult use market. It'll be interesting to see how Mexico deals with this. But hey, anything
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that reduces the power of the cartels, and that brings this industry into an open and honest
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Is big tech engaged in active mind control? Fox News has the story. Ex-Google staffer warns social media
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apps are big tobacco for our brains. Tristan Harris is a key figure in the Netflix documentary,
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The Social Dilemma. He joined Bill Hammer. Take a listen.
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This is, I think, the most deep and subtle issue of our times, and I believe it's actually an
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existential threat to democracy, which I'm sure we'll get to, because these things have become
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sort of what we rely on. We have three billion people have a brain implant that's a remotely
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controlled brain implant, because especially in the coronavirus times, we are relying on these things
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to make sense of what's the reality out there in the world. We're staring through our binoculars
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while we're home, many cases. They have become the fabric for our sense-making and the fabric
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of our choice-making, the fabric of how children develop. You know, kids who are spending hours a
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day on YouTube to sort of do learning. Parents, their kids in front of YouTube, they come home
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at the dinner table and they say, yeah, mom, dad, the Holocaust didn't happen. And you wonder,
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what is going on here? Why does it feel like everyone's going crazy around the world?
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It's because of this business model that's at the heart of these technology companies,
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which is that they make more money the more time they get you to spend. And if you had to choose
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between two Facebook feeds or two TikTok feeds, and let's say every time you swipe up on one feed,
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it gives you more affirmation, more view of, yes, you are right, the other side is wrong.
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That's one feed. Imagine another feed called the challenge news feed, where every time you swipe,
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it challenges your view of reality. It shows you a different perspective or a different statistic.
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Which of those two feeds is going to be better for their business model of holding your attention?
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And remember, this is someone who worked at Google, who understands how these tech corporations work
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to at times addict us to the worst elements of our own personalities and our own vices. And
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certainly, it is a warning that we should heed.
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Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. Give us a hand and throw a five-star rating
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