The Glenn Beck Program - October 09, 2021


Ep 120 ｜ Who Is More Evil： Government or Facebook？ ｜ Robby Soave ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

Topics
campus covid policies Facebook regulation and competition AI problem culture war Capitol riots and reactions section 230
Hosted by
Glenn Beck
Mentioned
Donald Trump Mark Zuckerberg Alexander Graham Bell Robert Metcalf Hunter Biden Ted Koppel Johnson Recent Blumenthal Zach Weissmuller Glenn Greenwald William Orton Steven Pinker Robbie Suave H.M. Warner Ben Shapiro Tom Cotton Mein Kampf Matt Taibbi Ayatollah Snapchat and 10 more
Time to Drain the GOP ｜ Guests： Asra Nomani & Victor Davis Hanson ｜ 10⧸8⧸21 The Power of One： Glenn Beck Speech

Episode Stats


Length

58 minutes

Words per minute

174.56

Word count

10,174

Sentence count

838

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Robbie Suave is a writer and editor at Reason Magazine and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He's also the author of a new book, "Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear the Future," and a regular contributor to Rolling Stone.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 In 1997, a man on a giant stage ripped an article from a magazine, shoved it into a blender,
00:00:06.480 put some clear liquid in it, hit blend, and then drank the cloudy, pulpy substance.
00:00:11.520 The occasion was the sixth International World Wide Web Conference. The man was that year's
00:00:18.320 keynote speaker, Robert Metcalf. In the 1970s, Metcalf invented Ethernet, founded 3Com.
00:00:26.860 He helped create the Internet. So why was he chugging mulch in front of an audience? 1.00
00:00:33.440 Because two years earlier, he wrote a column in which included the sentence,
00:00:38.360 I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova. And in 1996, catastrophically collapse.
00:00:47.080 He ate his words. He was so certain that he was right, that he was willing to eat his words,
00:00:54.340 and he did. History is full of horrible predictions about technology, and not from idiots either, 1.00
00:01:01.000 from experts. In 1876, an inventor offered to sell the patent for one of his inventions to 0.99
00:01:07.160 William Orton, president of Western Union. Orton was outraged. In a memo, he wrote that the invention
00:01:15.580 had too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as any means of communication.
00:01:21.040 The inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, and the invention was the telephone. In 1927,
00:01:28.100 H.M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, said,
00:01:31.440 Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? Actually, that one I still agree with.
00:01:36.920 In 1966, Time Magazine predicted that online shopping would flop because women like to get 1.00
00:01:43.640 out of the house. They like to handle the merchandise. They like to be able to change their minds.
00:01:49.080 In 1936, the New York Times predicted a rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere.
00:01:57.700 95, an article in Newsweek predicted that no online database will replace your daily newspaper.
00:02:05.660 You can find that article on Newsweek's online database if they haven't gone out of business yet.
00:02:11.900 Predicting the future is a tough game. Even the most accurate guesses have giant errors and blind spots.
00:02:18.920 It's why fortune tellers keep things airy and vague, you know.
00:02:25.140 But, if we had to guess, most of us would say that social media is a technological behemoth.
00:02:31.980 There is no way to know how it's going to play out or what turn we should make.
00:02:36.660 Will it become an obsolete relic? A ridiculous old trend?
00:02:42.960 Or will it fuse us and fuse into our society until we're inseparable from it?
00:02:50.340 We don't know. And not knowing really bothers us.
00:02:55.540 So what do we do?
00:02:56.740 We panic.
00:02:57.660 Today's guest is one of the brave souls willing to make a prediction.
00:03:02.940 His latest book, Tech Panic.
00:03:06.140 Why we shouldn't fear Facebook and the future.
00:03:10.300 It's an honest and generally refreshing take on the question.
00:03:15.520 When he isn't predicting the future, he's the senior editor of Reason.
00:03:19.700 Please welcome, Robbie Suave.
00:03:21.980 Great to have you.
00:03:35.820 Great to be here.
00:03:36.580 I think the first time we spoke was when you exposed the rape hoax.
00:03:42.840 At Rolling Stone.
00:03:43.560 Yeah.
00:03:43.920 Right, University of Virginia.
00:03:45.220 Yeah.
00:03:45.780 Many years ago now.
00:03:46.840 Yeah.
00:03:47.080 So now you're living in Washington, D.C.
00:03:51.240 And how much do you like that?
00:03:53.780 I used to love D.C.
00:03:54.600 Now I feel like it's the most miserable place on earth between the I mean, people wear masks outside by themselves on the street under circumstances that even are notoriously risk averse.
00:04:06.180 CDC doesn't think you have to wear a mask anymore.
00:04:08.100 People still do it.
00:04:09.480 They they flip out if you if you express any disdain at this.
00:04:14.220 In fact, they express disdain at you for not doing it.
00:04:16.320 What's happening to us?
00:04:18.080 I think the mask is becoming a symbol for the what I call the blue tribe the way the MAGA hat was a symbol for the red tribe for for Trump's tribe.
00:04:27.840 The mask is their version of that because it's not really about health or safety anymore.
00:04:32.040 It's just not not at all.
00:04:33.540 Yeah, not at all.
00:04:34.540 And by letting people know who you voted for, you know, University of Chicago, I just read this morning, is not only making you get the mandated vaccination.
00:04:43.100 But you have to sign your name in agreement with several statements that I don't necessarily agree with any of those statements there.
00:04:54.760 For now, it's not enough.
00:04:56.460 We saw with the SPN.
00:04:57.840 It's not enough to get the vaccine.
00:05:01.060 You now have to like it.
00:05:03.260 With the college campuses, elite liberal arts campuses, the Ivy League, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, other places.
00:05:09.760 They are implementing the most authoritarian campus covid policies of all.
00:05:16.260 And they are places where they could have less rigorous mandates because students, young people are generally fairly protected from covid.
00:05:23.260 And they're all they're all vaccinated.
00:05:24.660 Ninety percent plus are vaccinated.
00:05:26.040 And they're telling people, you know, don't take sips of water in class in class because you'd have to take your mask down for long enough.
00:05:32.140 We want you to go outside to do that.
00:05:33.760 They're telling students the cafeterias are being shut down.
00:05:36.800 Eat by yourself in your dorm room.
00:05:38.800 If you must interact with another human being, please do it outside.
00:05:41.740 And please don't make any new friends because we don't want you to expand your social circle.
00:05:45.260 These are dictates from the universities.
00:05:47.220 And we've already seen how campus kind of culture can infect the rest of society with the sort of takeover.
00:05:55.280 I'm very worried that this crop of students who will become the elites of our society will be accustomed to policies that are, frankly, insane.
00:06:04.740 I read something.
00:06:05.720 I'm going to butcher this, I'm sure.
00:06:06.960 But I read something the other day from an author.
00:06:10.940 He said, weak men make hard times.
00:06:21.020 Hard times make strong men.
00:06:23.620 Strong men make good times.
00:06:26.400 Good times make weak men weak men.
00:06:30.220 Yep.
00:06:30.700 I've heard this.
00:06:31.780 And we're there.
00:06:33.460 We, I mean, we just, we're weak. 1.00
00:06:37.420 We're pathetic. 1.00
00:06:38.960 We're pathetic. 1.00
00:06:39.700 And we're just making things really bad. 1.00
00:06:45.340 Yeah.
00:06:46.160 But I guess the good news is, at some point, it'll be so bad.
00:06:50.680 That we'll be strong men again.
00:06:51.760 I hope we get to that point.
00:06:53.500 So it must feel weird for you to be, you know, at this time.
00:06:58.900 Yeah.
00:06:59.340 Saying why we shouldn't fear Facebook and the future.
00:07:03.860 Yep.
00:07:04.480 Tech panic.
00:07:06.240 You, I'm not sure how much we're going to agree on.
00:07:08.940 And I think that's really good to have a healthy debate.
00:07:12.920 We might end up agreeing on more than, than I think.
00:07:18.620 Tell me what, tell me why we shouldn't fear Facebook.
00:07:24.380 So I think most of the revelations that have come out in the last few weeks with this quote
00:07:28.600 unquote whistleblower, although I'm not sure she told us anything.
00:07:31.540 Nothing.
00:07:31.860 We didn't already know.
00:07:33.180 And it seemed, her solution seems to be more government control and more of the sort of
00:07:37.040 limit what we're, what we see on these platforms.
00:07:39.100 You know, what's weird is her solution.
00:07:41.900 She's selling out the man. 1.00
00:07:43.920 Right.
00:07:44.100 But her solution seems to be exactly the solution Zuckerberg, the man.
00:07:49.660 Right.
00:07:50.000 Likes.
00:07:50.620 Right.
00:07:50.900 And wants.
00:07:51.280 And I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear it from another Senator that Instagram's
00:07:56.360 addiction problem is akin to like cigarettes and big tobacco.
00:08:00.660 Big tobacco is killed like millions of people.
00:08:04.000 Instagram, there are some issues and I think parents would be well advised to limit the amount
00:08:08.700 of time their teenagers spend on social media.
00:08:11.020 I'm totally, now that doesn't require a government solution, which is parents, please do that.
00:08:14.900 Yeah.
00:08:15.780 But there are a lot of kids who benefit also from social media.
00:08:19.000 We force them to stay home and to, and to avoid all social contact for the last two
00:08:23.140 years.
00:08:23.560 I think probably on net, I would bet their mental health is better because they had some access
00:08:28.960 to socialization.
00:08:30.220 It can be unhealthy.
00:08:31.220 And you know, we got to, again, we can talk about how we should limit their time using it,
00:08:35.440 but high school is tough.
00:08:37.740 I bet, I bet the majority of teenage girls would tell you that just going to high school
00:08:41.620 makes them feel sad or depressed or bullied because being a kid is hard.
00:08:45.200 Oh, and especially, I have three girls, one boy, a boy's going to high school.
00:08:51.720 That's rough too.
00:08:52.600 He has a rough time, but not, girls are vicious. 1.00
00:08:57.120 They're vicious.
00:08:58.340 They wound with words.
00:08:59.360 Yeah.
00:08:59.780 Yeah.
00:09:00.380 Vicious stuff.
00:09:01.460 Yeah.
00:09:01.620 You know, and Facebook only, I think, or, or social media only amplifies.
00:09:07.900 It can make it worse.
00:09:08.980 Yeah.
00:09:09.300 But these problems existed long before social, I mean, we were talking about the body image
00:09:13.900 problems of like glossy magazines and other things.
00:09:16.440 Yeah.
00:09:16.680 Yeah.
00:09:17.920 That's probably the main thrust of my book is that everything you're saying is wrong with
00:09:21.860 social media.
00:09:22.820 I think there are some legitimate issues there too, but a lot of this is also just present
00:09:27.160 in the traditional media, the media that predates social media, which is, and if you,
00:09:31.400 you know, if you want to get into the sort of treatment of conservative speech on social media,
00:09:35.220 this is a major issue for a lot of people on the right.
00:09:37.680 And I've agreed most of the time when they take down a piece of, you know, right wing
00:09:42.040 content or conservative content and it's a bad call.
00:09:44.560 And I've, I've said, it's a bad call.
00:09:45.780 The Hunter Biden thing, disaster, et cetera.
00:09:48.320 Still, I think on net social media is probably really good for conservatives.
00:09:53.260 Better than the three networks.
00:09:55.440 Yeah.
00:09:55.760 Better than, so the New York times will never run an op-ed by a Republican Senator again.
00:09:59.500 That was their lesson from the Tom Cotton thing, from him expressing an opinion, probably
00:10:03.220 a majority of the country agrees with that these riots are out of control and the federal
00:10:06.980 government ought to do something about it.
00:10:08.520 That opinion was considered unsayable in the mainstream media.
00:10:12.240 That's the level of hostility to conservatives, to non-liberal thought, to even to probably
00:10:16.680 far left thought, anything contrarian or that doesn't fit in the liberal bubble.
00:10:21.460 On social media.
00:10:23.020 Yeah.
00:10:23.260 They, they do sometimes take down stuff they should leave up, but I see the numbers.
00:10:27.560 I see, you know, Tucker, Ben Shapiro, other, or the blaze, other conservative news sites
00:10:34.600 actually doing really well on Facebook, which is why the liberals want to destroy Facebook
00:10:39.360 even more.
00:10:40.580 Yeah.
00:10:41.180 So, so I, I think we agree on, you know, capitalism is, and, and the internet and Facebook and everything.
00:10:52.900 It is what it is.
00:10:55.120 What you put into it is what makes it either really good or really dangerous.
00:11:00.940 It's just a tool.
00:11:02.140 Um, the, the problem, and I don't, I, I am libertarian minded and I don't like regulation
00:11:11.220 and I'm firm on no regulation, no, no more laws.
00:11:16.260 Cause it will not work out well for Liberty.
00:11:19.400 Um, but, um, I, I'm stuck in this place because I've always said private companies can do whatever
00:11:28.380 they want, but this is the one place where I, I'm beginning to feel the founders couldn't imagine
00:11:36.580 a corporation being far more powerful than a country.
00:11:41.440 You know what I mean?
00:11:42.400 Um, and that's fine, but now they're merging the two of them.
00:11:49.620 Um, so I'm not sure that the solution lies with regulating Facebook as much as it does
00:11:57.380 regulating the government and say, go back into your box.
00:12:02.000 Well, that we, yeah, that I agree with completely.
00:12:05.220 Government is the one, you know, the big tech, the marriage of big tech and big government
00:12:09.200 is scary, but the one we can have some control over, or at least theoretically because of our
00:12:13.880 constitutional structure is the government when, when, you know, Facebook takes down,
00:12:18.960 um, you know, so-called coronavirus misinformation, the lab leak theory, you're not allowed to
00:12:23.580 discuss it on Facebook, terrible call, but the white house is pushing them to do that.
00:12:27.940 They're, you know, lightly threatening them.
00:12:30.540 Everyone in the mainstream media is telling them to do that.
00:12:33.080 They rely on cues from what the New York times tells them, right?
00:12:35.840 They shouldn't do that, but they feel scared to do anything else because right now there's
00:12:39.780 a, there's an ax hanging over their head, something hanging over their head.
00:12:42.900 Everybody on Capitol Hill wants to regulate them.
00:12:46.240 Even, even Republicans want to regulate them.
00:12:48.420 Some of them do.
00:12:49.120 I think it's a real mistake.
00:12:50.220 So I think it's a mistake too, because the, the, in the end of the day, the regulators will
00:12:54.480 be progressives.
00:12:55.100 The people who actually investigate these companies.
00:12:57.340 When has that ever worked?
00:12:58.140 When has more government ever worked out for Liberty?
00:13:02.920 Yeah.
00:13:03.240 Never.
00:13:03.820 Yep.
00:13:04.220 Never.
00:13:04.760 You think the, you know, the bureaucrats who are investigating these companies will care
00:13:08.780 that they took down too much conservative speech.
00:13:10.860 No, it will be, these companies are, make too much money.
00:13:13.900 That's what it'll be.
00:13:14.660 They're too big and powerful and we have to break them up because they're a threat to
00:13:17.540 our democracy.
00:13:18.200 That's the view of progressives.
00:13:20.340 And that's what it will be at the end of the day.
00:13:22.560 Do you believe that, um, that a corporation can ever, you know, cause I've, I've, I've always
00:13:32.580 mocked and hated, you know, what those dystopian future movies where they're like, I work for
00:13:39.800 the corporation and it was like, you know what I mean?
00:13:42.700 I've always hated that.
00:13:43.720 Yeah.
00:13:43.820 Um, but I kind of feel that way now because it is becoming one.
00:13:50.980 Everybody is working together.
00:13:54.100 Um, and you know, if, if social media is not taking it down, then it'll be the FBI and the
00:14:01.420 FBI is really kind of guided by the white house, but so is social media.
00:14:04.960 And it really is becoming that.
00:14:08.380 Yeah.
00:14:08.720 Well, these companies are making a lot of bad calls at the behest of their woke employees, 0.95
00:14:12.860 to be frank.
00:14:13.540 I don't think, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is actually inclined towards sort of liberal
00:14:19.580 censorship overreach.
00:14:21.060 I think there are people who work at his company who graduated from places like Oberlin and Yale
00:14:26.960 and et cetera, and they hold hostile views toward kind of basic principles of a culture of free
00:14:33.660 speech and it's really bad that our education system has produced that.
00:14:38.760 And we need to, you know, down the line, right.
00:14:40.960 When we're not going to see some change for many years, but that if we're talking about
00:14:45.520 big, what kind of big substantive changes do we need to make to not have people who, who
00:14:51.920 feel this way running all of our society, being all the elites, that's the kind of thing we
00:14:56.640 need to do.
00:14:57.120 Just, you know, regulations aimed at the companies are at the, like the last link in the chain
00:15:02.460 and they're just going to backfire.
00:15:03.820 So how do you deal with a company that just swallows, has swallowed every competitor and,
00:15:11.080 you know, Hey, I got something and they want to buy it.
00:15:13.640 God bless them.
00:15:14.900 Yeah.
00:15:16.020 But they've swallowed almost everybody and to compete against them because of regulations
00:15:23.660 that they've helped put into place, they can afford things that other companies can't
00:15:29.260 afford. So startups is, so it's not a level playing ground, uh, play, you know, playing
00:15:35.160 field. There is a market for an, the opposite of a Facebook. There is that market. Um, but
00:15:44.520 they kill you. I mean, look at what, look at, look what happened on January 6th.
00:15:49.880 Yeah. Yeah. It, so what happened to parlor for instance, I think it was very, um, suspicious.
00:15:56.000 I don't, I don't like it at all. Uh, I've criticized it. Um, now the, the reason that they take parlor
00:16:01.820 out of the app store, but they, they said there are some violences being organized on
00:16:05.120 the platform, but of course violence was being organized on Facebook and still is every
00:16:08.460 day. Uh, and they didn't do anything about that. So it does seem unfair. Now you get into
00:16:13.120 a, just a technical issue where, you know, I hear a lot, Republicans are more interested
00:16:16.660 in antitrust law now, but existing antitrust law is about harm to the consumer. Not so the problem
00:16:25.320 imposed by Facebook isn't really essentially you would need new laws to kind of address this
00:16:30.200 problem, right? The traditional monopoly is they own all of the resource or whatever the people
00:16:35.380 need, and then they can raise the price of it, but they're not chart. Facebook doesn't charge the
00:16:39.040 user for the service. So there's not, it's, it's a different kind of company. I would, I would
00:16:44.400 listen to whatever proposal is on the table to address this, but I still think that even though
00:16:50.180 they've, you know, they've crushed some competition, there's still more ways to speak online than
00:16:56.140 ever before. Like Twitter is a competitor. They have Instagram, but kids now like Snapchat
00:17:01.740 and Tik TOK. I think Facebook is kind of a dying star. They can't get new, new young users.
00:17:07.520 No, it's, it's, it's boomer book. That's what they call it. Right. And I remember when I was
00:17:11.640 younger, my space was my, was the social media site I liked and AOL instant messenger. And those
00:17:16.020 things are gone. Those things are dead. So what happened to, what happened to my space? Why did
00:17:20.700 that fail and Facebook secede? It's a, it was market competition. Facebook was a better product.
00:17:26.120 My space was glitchy. It had a bad user interface. It actually allowed too much customization. Like
00:17:32.380 you could change the layout, the way it looked to have like your favorite band in the background.
00:17:35.980 And they really wanted to focus on music. That was their value add. Whereas Facebook was initially
00:17:41.300 just a site for college students and they quickly decided, let's open this up to everyone.
00:17:44.760 And it was just better. It was a better, it was a cooler, sleeker product and they beat
00:17:49.380 my space. That's it. That's really what happened. And someone else, it's hard to imagine how anyone
00:17:52.920 else could do it, but I, it is possible that someone could do that to Facebook. In fact,
00:17:57.980 and in the, the history of web online companies that has happened a lot.
00:18:03.320 Google.
00:18:04.640 Google is very dominant. No question there. They're mostly dominant because the search engine
00:18:10.540 they offer everybody really likes, I mean, they have the best product. Uh, they, you know,
00:18:17.120 they beat, they just beat the search engines that were on the market previously. I think
00:18:20.460 they're closer to a traditional monopoly than other companies. And again, I don't like, I know
00:18:25.540 they've made mistakes where the conservative websites disappear.
00:18:30.160 Why are your mistakes always running that way?
00:18:33.360 Yeah. But, um, but I, again, the, the sort of investigation into them, the, the, the feds
00:18:40.220 were doing, uh, was aimed at, yeah, their monopoly power and was saying they really didn't like
00:18:44.920 that. It's the default search engine on Apple products. But if it, I think they pay Apple to
00:18:51.340 be the default search engine. So if somehow the government broke up that arrangement, you know,
00:18:55.320 what would happen is all of the Apple customers would just be like, well, how do I put Google
00:18:59.260 back on my phone? Right. It's what the customers want. So at some, at some level, what we're
00:19:03.120 saying is we need to bring the government in between two companies who's used, who's
00:19:08.520 willingly, who like this, this is the thing they like. And you're saying, why are we, why
00:19:13.020 are we involving the government again? Do you know what I mean?
00:19:14.640 So let me ask you this, cause this is a place where I think the government, um, maybe
00:19:20.600 should get involved. And that is, um, what I am, my thoughts, you know, my output is me.
00:19:31.900 It's mine, my data, what I do, that's mine. Um, things would dramatically change if you could
00:19:40.840 just opt into that or say, no, you don't get any of that unless you want to pay me. Wouldn't
00:19:47.620 that flip the power back around to, because really when it's free, you're the product,
00:19:53.740 you know? Um, and I don't think people, I don't know if people really still get that. Um,
00:20:01.240 but, uh, hard to put Pandora back in this box or she doesn't go in the box. She opens the
00:20:06.460 box. Anyway, hard to shut this box. I think it's just her box. I'm not sure. She doesn't
00:20:11.780 live in the box. Sorry. Um, uh, so you don't think there is a way to get information back?
00:20:17.520 Europe has a different approach to a lot of these things. They, in the speech versus privacy
00:20:22.800 trade-off, they're way more interested in privacy and, and we are way more interested
00:20:28.460 in speech in, in, in being able to speak, even if it's makes people uncomfortable or if
00:20:33.740 it's revealing private information about people, that's the way our first amendment kind
00:20:38.060 of understanding has gone. And there are a lot of benefits to that. You know, you can't,
00:20:42.060 I mean, you can have, you have hate speech laws in, in England, in France, et cetera. Um,
00:20:46.520 in ways that I think are cruel and abusive to people, but they also can have right to be
00:20:51.480 forgotten where you can, it's a, you can petition Google to have your search results taken out.
00:20:56.420 Um, and, and they, there's a process to do that. And Google, Google grants a lot of those
00:21:01.440 in accordance with the law. I, I like privacy too. Um, I don't, I think it's unfortunately
00:21:07.320 some of those things are a non-starter because of how our courts interpret the first amendment.
00:21:11.440 There's only so much you can do at the end of the day.
00:21:13.880 So when you say don't fear Facebook, I, I fear the collusion, but the part that I do fear,
00:21:23.240 and it's not a Facebook problem. It is, um, it's an AI problem. Um, when you can predict
00:21:30.800 and you know someone much better than they know themselves, you can move and sway, uh, for instance,
00:21:40.760 just the search engine and the, uh, the search results for, um, politicians, you know, you can just
00:21:49.900 by, by ordering them differently, you can sway people, um, that kind of stuff. How do you deal
00:21:58.120 with, uh, these companies being able to, it's kind of the trap of what's free choice worth?
00:22:08.880 You're getting really philosophical here.
00:22:10.260 Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, no, I mean, these are the conversations I think we should be having
00:22:14.260 where the world is dramatically changing and that, you know, it was called propaganda. And then
00:22:22.520 because propaganda got a bad name, they changed the name to advertising. Right. Now we're being
00:22:28.940 marketed to without even knowing we're being marketed to, and it can be very dangerous in
00:22:35.140 the wrong hand. It can be dangerous, but I think the left is very concerned about this because they
00:22:39.200 just hate capitalism. Whereas I like, uh, I see advertisements when I watch TV and most of them
00:22:45.680 are irrelevant to my interest. I live in DC. I'm not going to buy a car anytime soon. And I see tons
00:22:49.840 of car commercials. Whereas on Facebook, I get ads for things I might actually buy. So there's a
00:22:54.520 manner in which this is not nefarious. Now, sometimes it's nefarious, but in terms of the
00:22:59.060 propaganda and, you know, political, that kind of stuff, but I still have to compare it to everything
00:23:03.700 else. Like cable news is a 24 hour infomercial for one political view or the other, depending on
00:23:09.180 which channel you're watching. Um, there's so much open, you know, encouragement of here's how,
00:23:14.920 what you should think that I have no problem with. Everyone should, should make use of their
00:23:19.780 first men right to advocate for whatever they want. I don't really know that social media is
00:23:25.120 doing that in any more direct or nefarious way than any of the traditional media comes. The New
00:23:30.360 York times endorses people for president. They tell you who to vote for directly. So it's weird
00:23:34.560 for them to complain that Facebook is, you know, Facebook convinced everyone to vote for Donald
00:23:38.560 Trump. And that's why he's president when you told people to vote for him. Right. But I think
00:23:43.320 there's a difference on being open and being nefariously in the shadows. You know what I
00:23:49.980 mean? I have no problem. You want to tell me what your opinion is and this is what we do
00:23:54.040 here. Okay. That's cool. I know who you are and I can choose in or out. But when you are,
00:23:59.620 no, we're completely, all we are is a search engine. Right. You want to find an answer.
00:24:04.940 We're stacking the deck. So you believe the answer. They have a black lives matter,
00:24:09.520 you know, banner in there, but they're neutral. No, no, no. They're absolutely not completely
00:24:14.320 neutral. We should dispense with that farce. Not, that would be a, not making that claim whatsoever.
00:24:18.860 So, yeah, I think there are problems. I just think on balance, they've been good for heretical 1.00
00:24:26.520 views because we used to have decades ago, we had just a small number of media companies and you could
00:24:32.880 only say something that was in their narrow range. Now the conversation, those people have no control
00:24:37.300 of the conversation and they hate it. They want control. They want to shut down Facebook and
00:24:42.460 everything else so that they can again be the people who decide what we're talking about.
00:24:47.300 They, again, it's really, it's the weirdest thing for. They hate speech. They hate free speech.
00:24:54.100 They really do. They do. They do. And it's so weird that companies that were built on you be you.
00:25:01.660 Yeah. You be you. Yeah. Now don't want you to be you. You be you. If as long as you fit into this
00:25:08.560 category, it's so bizarre. I mean, they're collapsing the idea of this is very philosophical, but with the
00:25:15.340 new kind of woke left, the idea of the individual is kind of anathema. You have to be part of some
00:25:20.920 group identity. And I don't have any I'm a libertarian. I'm not really a social conservative.
00:25:25.360 I don't have hostility to these kinds of group identities they're talking about. I just think
00:25:29.320 but at some level, that's just your characteristics. That's just who you are. And that's great. But
00:25:34.700 you're just you. You don't have to subsume you to whatever group identity you're choosing.
00:25:39.860 I think that's one of the biggest problems. If you if you were a conservative, but you didn't
00:25:47.900 say that Donald Trump was the greatest person to ever live and all of the claims he made about
00:25:55.960 the most luxurious hotels you've ever stayed in. If you didn't buy into that, you're like,
00:26:02.280 no, I don't really for a while there. Right. You were dead. You were dead. That was weird.
00:26:08.700 It was really weird. Because that's what I expect from the left. Yeah. And they're light
00:26:15.700 years ahead. But still, the conservative side is toe the line where where is.
00:26:23.360 Have I just misread America for so long that I really thought that we could disagree on things
00:26:32.540 and get along? Or is that America just not reflected? I have such a bias against I hate
00:26:39.460 the idea. Things were better in the past and they're bad now because that's it's sort of
00:26:43.100 a cognitive bias. There are a lot of ways in which the past was bad. But it does. It does
00:26:48.420 feel like this has gotten worse or the ability to be the polarization has gotten worse.
00:26:54.220 I think because it has. I think we are. You know, we we used to be able to get along because
00:27:01.640 we all at least thought we all believed in the Bill of Rights. You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:27:09.380 We're Americans. That's what makes us American. Hey, you do what you do and I'll do what I do.
00:27:13.560 And we believe in these Bill of Rights. When we would violate those those rights for blacks
00:27:20.040 or Native Americans or whoever, it would start to grind and eventually people would be out 1.00
00:27:26.600 in the streets protesting and we would return back to the actual meaning. We're not even talking
00:27:33.660 about rights anymore as as things that are are immovable and, you know, given by a higher
00:27:43.020 power than government. So government can't reach into them and change them. I think that's
00:27:50.000 what we've lost is we don't have an unum anymore. We don't have. I mean, what what is it we agree
00:27:58.400 on? Well, I also think the stakes feel higher because they are higher because the federal government
00:28:04.800 is more powerful and does more things. So it used to be easier for us. We could disagree and
00:28:10.220 go our separate ways or be friends. And because your rules are not going to be forced on me
00:28:15.080 and my rules are not going to be forced on you. Correct.
00:28:17.100 But now whoever wins will be forcing their rules on literally every person who lives in
00:28:21.700 this country. Do you believe that there is because I don't believe in the Republican Party.
00:28:27.200 But do you believe that. A reset of this system, I mean, because when when your computer starts
00:28:34.300 acting like this, you turn it off and turn it back on again, turn it on and turn it back
00:28:40.320 off again. Yeah. And it reboots back to the original program, factory settings. Yes. Factory
00:28:45.820 settings. We do. We do turn it on and turn it off and turn it on again. Do you believe that
00:28:56.000 we are so far from those factory settings that whoever is in charge is just going to write the
00:29:02.240 new code? Yeah. I mean, I hear this, unfortunately, a lot, even from people on the right. They say,
00:29:07.420 no, when we take power, we have to use it. We have to wield it in a very like their Boromir 0.96
00:29:12.080 talking about, you know, the ring at the at the gathering. It's a gift. We have to like
00:29:16.260 you cannot use this tool is hostile to our views, to our limited government views. We can't use it to
00:29:21.880 accomplish limited government. You can use it to to get, you know, repeal bad laws, to reduce
00:29:27.260 regulations, to get rid of pointless bureaucracies. But don't don't try to force don't
00:29:33.160 create these new institutions to enforce your worldview that in four years will not be enforcing
00:29:38.320 your worldview and probably won't even be enforcing them in the meantime, because they'll be staffed
00:29:41.740 by progressives. So don't like don't fall. And I see a lot of people on the right falling into this
00:29:46.740 trap. I mean, the fact that Trump was not he did some things I agree with and some things I disagree
00:29:51.580 with. But I don't think anyone would say fairly that he accomplished a massive decrease in the size of
00:29:56.660 the federal government, right? No. So we just tried it. It's not going to work. So you have to
00:30:02.580 don't use the tools, break the tools. That would be my advice.
00:30:12.660 I've blown your mind. How do you know? I'm just trying to think how you hold things together. I mean,
00:30:18.140 my, my, our culture, the culture war is, it's terrible, terrible. Um, you know, I go back,
00:30:28.240 we were talking earlier about the invisible hand of the market, the market, it is just a tool. And if,
00:30:35.060 you know, moral sentiments, if you're not a moral society, the market's going to give you immoral
00:30:43.440 things, because that's what you want. So how do we, how, how do we change this? How do we change?
00:30:51.020 How do we use the tools that we're not supposed to fear? Right. To, to hold us together in a reset?
00:31:01.460 We have to, we have to cling to things that are not political and try to zealously guard against
00:31:08.220 them becoming political. We need to, you know, think about community in a healthy way, not in a,
00:31:15.260 not in a, we have to force everyone to think one way or the other. We have to look outside
00:31:20.400 the structures of government for your, for your kind of social cohesion. Um, and this pandemic has
00:31:27.040 probably been the worst thing for that of all time, because the rule of this pandemic was don't
00:31:32.360 socialize, don't keep those, those social ties. Those should fray because we have to do that for
00:31:38.100 our health. There are many unhealthy things about, about the restrictions we have decided will be
00:31:44.220 fine that the government can snap its fingers at any time. If anyone anywhere is in danger of
00:31:49.380 contracting COVID-19, we're going to shut down all the schools and all the community services,
00:31:53.400 and you'll have to wear masks and don't see anyone really bad, really, really, really,
00:31:58.720 really bad. People should stop like following those. I mean, the, and then, and of course the
00:32:03.840 only people following those are the people, the elites don't follow those. The mayor of every,
00:32:09.200 you know, blue city is not there still having birthday parties and weddings, et cetera. Um,
00:32:15.820 that has been the, the pandemic has been toxic in, in that way in that. I mean, it's, it's
00:32:22.080 ripe for like a French revolution type thing. Honestly, I mean, I feel this and I'm a, I'm not
00:32:27.400 really a resentful or populist type person whatsoever. And even I am like off with their
00:32:32.420 heads. These people who, who, who will order you to wear a mask, but they're, they'll, they're not
00:32:38.000 going there, you know, get met gala Emmys, et cetera. It, it really infuriates me. It's, it's
00:32:43.760 absolute craziness. Yeah. So why is, I keep, I keep wondering what is the hold on people? Cause
00:32:54.200 I, I mean, we don't have anything because of social media. Everything's been destroyed. We
00:33:01.100 don't have trust in anything anymore. And I don't know if it is because of social media,
00:33:07.280 although I think the left played a big part of this. Um, but we also destroyed ourselves.
00:33:13.200 There, there wasn't anybody who said, no, I, I'm staying true to these principle. I mean,
00:33:19.580 name the media organization that deserves any credibility right now. There is no specific
00:33:26.500 media organization that deserves credibility. People need to, but you know what this is,
00:33:31.360 I still think this is a benefit of social media because now I'll see on social media. I see content
00:33:35.860 from all sorts of media organizations and I get to, you know, read many perspectives and then decide
00:33:41.600 which one I think is right. I think the media environment of the pre-social media era produced
00:33:47.700 a lot of really bad policy, really bad foreign policy. I think a lot of reckless intervention
00:33:52.780 that was cheerleaded on the front page of the New York times and other places that was unthinkingly
00:33:57.500 celebrated. Now you have a lot of the non-interventionist, uh, even on the right, there's a lot of
00:34:04.000 healthy anti-interventionist sentiment in dissident, non-liberal media comment. And I,
00:34:10.740 even on far weird, weird, far left stuff too is sometimes has a lot of value. People like Glenn
00:34:16.100 Greenwald, Matt Tabe, et cetera, um, who have been able to thrive in a non-traditional media
00:34:21.920 environment. That's part of, that's part of the breakup that social media provided that is in some
00:34:26.800 ways we're, we're more informed. We're capable of being less informed because there's a lot more
00:34:30.780 bad information out there, but sometimes the bad information is actually good information.
00:34:35.040 How do we know? We don't want one person in charge of deciding it.
00:34:37.520 No, we don't.
00:34:38.220 I don't want Mark Zuckerberg to be that one person in charge of deciding it.
00:34:41.140 Ted Koppel thought he should, I mean, Ted Koppel actually said to me,
00:34:44.420 there should be license. Everyone should have a license. Um, and we in the, in the mainstream
00:34:51.520 media should vote on who gets those license. And I was like, no, no Ted, no, that's a bad idea.
00:34:58.360 And he was specifically directing it. I think somewhat to me, like you shouldn't have one.
00:35:03.380 Yeah. It's like, who, who, who made you God?
00:35:06.400 But like, like newspapers caused the Spanish American war, right? The, the, the coverage of
00:35:11.940 the main, um, every innovation in the communication space, I actually have a lot of anecdotes about
00:35:16.940 this in my book. They're really funny. Every innovation in the communication space had the,
00:35:21.780 whatever the previous communication thing was saying, this will be the end of the world. The,
00:35:25.720 the New York times coverage of like radio, when it emerges, there were psychologists who talked
00:35:30.460 about how radio, well, we're just all dead now. We'll never have a conversation with a human being.
00:35:34.680 You'll be this mindless listening ape. Now, um, the, uh, the phonograph, the New York times 0.99
00:35:40.220 wrote an editorial calling for Alexander Graham Bell to be killed for inventing the phonograph.
00:35:44.960 Oh my gosh. Isn't that funny? Uh, every, every kind of thing prompts this sort of panic. And
00:35:51.000 because all of these things have had some downsides, but I don't want to succumb to,
00:35:55.120 I mean, I remember video games where there was a whole freak out, violent video games are gonna
00:35:59.560 make all your kids into crazy, you know, school shooters. It turns out that now the research shows
00:36:05.980 that not only is that not true, probably the tiny, small, small, small minority of kids who are
00:36:12.040 inclined to violence probably are made less violent by violent video games because they have an outlet
00:36:16.860 for their violence other than actually going out and committing real violence. So that whole idea
00:36:21.860 was not true. And, and, uh, Scalia wrote what is the greatest Supreme court opinion in my opinion
00:36:27.380 of all time in the, the Schwarzenegger, California video game ban, where he says, these are expressive
00:36:33.520 ideas just like, well, Grimm's fairy tales are violent and obviously we can't ban those. It's a great
00:36:39.120 decision that I would encourage everyone on the right. Who's in a kind of, you know, panic about
00:36:44.320 social media to, to read this. And he, he, he said, cooler heads should prevail on the opposite
00:36:48.740 side. I have a story you probably don't know. Um, when the, um, motion picture was put together
00:36:57.460 by Edison. I have a, an original copy of the, the, um, investment, uh, you know, uh, portfolio and in it,
00:37:10.940 he says the last couple of lines are we will now forever know the truth because it will be recorded.
00:37:19.840 And one reporter says this, one person says this, we'll know because we'll have it on film.
00:37:27.920 Like that didn't work out. Nope. That did not work out. Smart people can be very stupid in some ways.
00:37:34.140 Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, um, Donald Trump and sure. His being banned. Yeah. The Ayatollah 1.00
00:37:42.380 is not ban. Right. Uh, um, which is embarrassing and humiliating and ridiculous that these companies
00:37:49.940 have these different practices. No disagreement. Yeah. Um, how Trump was on social media for almost 0.61
00:37:56.920 the entirety of his presidency. They kicked him off at the very end. I think they probably showed him
00:38:02.900 honestly, I feel like we're going to disagree with this probably more leniency than they would have
00:38:07.220 someone not in his position. I think there are multiple times he tweeted something that if he were
00:38:11.000 anyone else, they would have banned him. Um, they've also, I've seen the court cases. There
00:38:15.140 are people who sued Twitter saying that Donald Trump's tweets, lefty people represent violence
00:38:20.700 or harassment or something. And, and we're suing you telling you, you have to take Trump off Twitter
00:38:26.360 and Twitter. And it's said, we're not going to do that. And here is the relevant law section 230
00:38:31.000 that, that we, because of this law, we don't have to do that, which is funny because Donald Trump
00:38:36.440 has tweeted about getting rid of this law. Right. But this law actually empowered them to keep
00:38:40.920 him on the platform. So that's an example of another way that, you know, changing these
00:38:45.460 kinds of regulatory things I think would be bad. And also, but wait, isn't that still just bowing
00:38:52.180 to the pressure from little groups? Right. And they bow, he's the president of the United States,
00:39:01.400 former president. You, you, he has no, there's no one who has used social media more effectively
00:39:09.040 than him. Yeah. Good or bad. He, he got his ideas out. He did. He used it very effectively. Now he
00:39:18.560 could, but I think it's, he could talk to the people in any format he wants. Like he could be
00:39:24.700 on TV all day. He could, you know, every, everyone will point a camera at him if he starts talking,
00:39:29.880 but he loves Twitter. He wants to be on Twitter. That's his favorite one. Right. And he, they,
00:39:34.920 they finally said, look, I think they should let him back on the platform. I've openly said that
00:39:39.200 I don't, I, I don't think their decision to take him down in that, in the moment when they did it
00:39:44.500 was necessarily wrong. Um, I, I attended the Capitol. I covered it. The, the Capitol riots on
00:39:49.840 January 6th. You were there. I was there. Part of the clan. I was not there. I was there as a covering
00:39:54.960 it. That's what you say. Right. Yes. Yes. No, that was me in the, right. In the, with the horns.
00:40:00.800 I did get, I got tear gassed in the face, uh, because there was a cloud of tear gas and I
00:40:04.800 couldn't get away from it. And I thought to myself, well, how bad could this be? It's time
00:40:08.280 for, you know, time to have a real journalist, you know, experience. I'm tough. I can take this.
00:40:13.360 Several seconds later, I'm like crying. I'm like, this is horrible. This is so horrible.
00:40:20.020 So it was, it, look, it was a bad day. It wasn't an insurrection. They weren't in danger of
00:40:24.240 overthrowing the government. I agree with that, but it was still a pretty bad, embarrassing thing
00:40:28.280 that they did. It was very embarrassing. And Trump, he should have calmed. I think he had
00:40:32.560 a moral responsibility to lower the temperature and he didn't do that. Yeah. I think that was
00:40:38.680 his, that was his real error. I thought that that was a turning point for a lot of Americans
00:40:45.080 that supported him when he didn't immediately come out with the same reaction that I think
00:40:51.080 99% of Americans had stop. Yeah. Stop this. This has got to stop. And they, you
00:40:58.260 had, you know, the left came to town, they smashed every window in sight for the summer
00:41:02.740 of protest right before that. It was, it was horrible. It was condemned. It should have
00:41:07.080 been condemned more strongly, obviously by people who weren't doing that. But then Trump
00:41:13.040 supporters came to town and, and they wrecked the place a little, not, not every street,
00:41:17.340 but they did not, you know, respect the buildings at all. And there was a, there's a little bit
00:41:22.600 of excuse making for that. That doesn't sit right with me because you should not, you shouldn't
00:41:26.840 smash the windows of places. No. And I think people are just getting so frustrated and they
00:41:30.700 see the left doing it and it seems to be working for them. So I'm going to do it too. And that's,
00:41:35.080 you can't, it doesn't work for anyone. No, it does not. It doesn't work. Um, let's talk a little
00:41:40.160 bit about section two 30. Sure. Um, because it's not, you say it's not what everybody thinks it is.
00:41:49.380 And what I think what everybody thinks it is, is, um, government protection from litigation.
00:41:58.420 So Facebook is, um, a publisher, which I can be sued if we put something on the air, that's not
00:42:07.340 right. I can be sued. They said, we can't have this if we're going to get sued every time. Um,
00:42:14.500 which makes sense, but that would make you that, that would, um, yeah, you'd just be a publisher
00:42:21.380 and not a editor. Right. Is that right? Yeah. Once you start to edit, you have the right to be sued
00:42:30.140 because you're editing. But the issue is they have to do some, everyone, I don't care who it is.
00:42:35.440 Anyone who says, no, these platforms shouldn't do any kind of moderation. They should just,
00:42:38.880 you know, be, they, they're not publishers. They should just allow anything. I will show you things
00:42:43.200 and you'll say, well, of course I want that taken down. Right. Everybody wants craziness.
00:42:48.180 Right. And I agree with that, but, um, the rules don't equally apply. I mean, it's clear there's an
00:42:56.700 editorial opinion. It's not just editing. It's editing for a certain opinion. Why should that be
00:43:05.800 protected by the government? New York times isn't, I'm not right. You know, honestly,
00:43:12.160 if I wanted to square this, I would probably say, well, maybe other media companies should have
00:43:16.240 that. I don't like suing everyone willy nilly. It's a gift to, I support tort reform. It's a gift
00:43:20.940 to trial lawyers who are the most reliable democratic party people anyway. Um, so you're
00:43:26.500 right. Section 230, it's not like the first amendment. It's not something sacred. They
00:43:30.200 could change it if they want to. I just think the immediate consequence of changing it in any way
00:43:34.300 would be less conservative speech online, because if you subject them to greater liability,
00:43:39.040 they're just going to take down more stuff. They're going to, or they're going to have a
00:43:43.220 system where only people they trust can post at will. And who's that going to be? It's not going
00:43:48.240 to be you. It's not going to be me. It's going to be the mainstream media. It's going to be blue
00:43:52.680 checkmark people. There could be some system where only if you have a blue checkmark next to your name,
00:43:56.580 can you post everything else has to be reviewed by our attorneys to make sure we're not going to be
00:44:01.440 sued for it. This does not benefit the right at all. Like it's so obviously bad that I can't
00:44:07.420 believe anyone has seriously considered doing it, but they have. So let me, um, uh, let me go to
00:44:13.800 the places where, um, it's, it's quite obvious to some that it's bad, but you don't want to squash
00:44:22.780 it. I would imagine you don't, I don't. Um, uh, I, I, I've always believed more speech, not less. Let,
00:44:31.160 let ideas stand on their own. You know, um, I'm glad we didn't ban, um, Hitler's writings. I know 0.89
00:44:40.760 when I first read Mein Kampf, I'm like, what part of this did, were the Germans surprised by when he
00:44:48.960 started killing all the Jews? He said it right here. Um, and so I, I think, you know, you, you want to
00:44:57.240 expose people to everything. When I was at CNN in 2006, the people who believed we went to the moon
00:45:05.460 was I think 6%. And I had seen the problem with credibility already with people. And I said,
00:45:14.760 that number is going to grow. And if we don't start being true to who we are, once people don't believe
00:45:24.380 anything, they'll believe anything, they'll believe anything. That number now on, we didn't
00:45:29.080 go to the moon, I think is 14%, 13 or 14%. Um, and QAnon, QAnon is, I mean, I, I hear stuff from QAnon
00:45:40.920 and I'm like, are you, are you kidding? You don't believe that, do you? Um, how do you, what do you deal
00:45:49.500 with that? How do you deal with that? I, I struggle with this because I think there's a certain level
00:45:54.080 of involvement in it that is not quite so scary and is in some ways, though it seems weird, is like,
00:46:01.660 um, is like people who believe in astrology or, or it's almost, it's almost like a video game or
00:46:06.820 something or, or, or, uh, it's like an online game where you're, oh, you're finding clues. You're doing
00:46:11.160 some kind of like detective story where it's not, do you really, really believe it? Or is it just kind of
00:46:16.220 something you're involved in? And people have believed, um, people believe kooky things for
00:46:21.680 like forever. People used to believe, I, I was talking to a Steven Pinker, who's a Harvard, uh,
00:46:27.120 a lot of great books. Um, you know, he points out that, you know, people used to kill animals and
00:46:32.020 then look for signs like in their blood, right? They're, they're, we used to torture animals for
00:46:36.620 fun. We used to, people used to believe that, that, that, you know, the, if, uh, if birds landed on
00:46:43.260 the trees in a certain way, that meant the comets coming and we're going to like, people have
00:46:47.020 believed kooky things. Now there's a political flavor to everything. And QAnon has this political
00:46:52.840 flavor that, that feels like weird and new, but I don't know how many of these people actually,
00:46:59.400 maybe the, the, the most committed people are the ones like being tricked by the FBI into doing
00:47:03.320 something, the, the, the kidnapping plot, the, my, my former, I'm from Michigan originally. Uh,
00:47:09.680 the more you read about that, the, the, the kidnapping plot of the governor, the more you
00:47:13.380 see it was just, you know, people sitting around complaining and then kind of got talked into
00:47:19.380 it by these, by federal officials where they're, and they used to do that. They did this by the
00:47:24.020 way to a lot of Islamic people, but every time there's a bust of a so-called, you know, ISIS
00:47:28.280 affiliated person, well, this person never met anyone from ISIS. They're a radical teen saying
00:47:33.580 radical bad stuff online. And then they meet with a law enforcement officer who's like,
00:47:37.900 Oh, you could purchase explosives for me. And now you're not great. Now you're going,
00:47:41.740 now you're going to jail forever. No, there's no actual threat that was averted here. And
00:47:45.880 you know, they get to throw a clap, clap for the feds. There's no threat was averted. It's all,
00:47:51.680 there's a lot of, and actually this is one thing I admire about Trump especially, and that has been
00:47:56.080 good. He's brought, he's made the right more suspicious of what he calls the deep state for
00:48:01.340 absolutely valid reasons. There, there is, there are. And the more he said, I remember the first time he
00:48:06.840 said things like the press is an enemy of the people. I'm like, Oh God, what are you? Right.
00:48:12.940 And then the more you watch their reaction, the more you're like, well, you know, kind of, yeah.
00:48:19.400 Yeah. You know, and the deep state, when I first heard that, I thought so conspiratorial, but
00:48:25.380 if you understand it as, no, just a group of career people that are politicians and, and, uh,
00:48:34.200 you know, salaried people that just think, I don't care what the president says. I'm going to be here
00:48:38.540 a lot longer than he is. Right. That's the deep state. It's not a star chamber. Right. It's just
00:48:44.200 people who think they know better. The state department. Right. The generals who are, you know,
00:48:48.760 just feeding totally wrong information about the state of Afghanistan to president after president,
00:48:54.480 after president, knowing they'll outlast this guy, knowing they can't make themselves look
00:48:57.920 bad. I mean, and Millie has just totally embarrassed himself, but, uh, it's, it is a deep state. What
00:49:06.000 can you say? It is. So, um, on that, we've had the Hunter Biden story and the media and everybody
00:49:15.900 has turned that around and made you look like, not you, but well, me look like a conspiracy theorist
00:49:22.800 for believing it and going, you know, I think we should at least look into this. I mean, there's,
00:49:28.640 how do we, how do we navigate the world we're in? Uh, you're right about it's, um, it's always bad.
00:49:38.780 I mean, I, I, in some ways pine for the days when, uh, you know, we had to sit down together
00:49:48.000 as a family or whatever and watch a show at eight o'clock on Thursday night, because it kind of
00:49:53.520 brought all of us together. You know what I mean? I never thought of it that way. I always thought
00:49:58.580 this sucks. I can't wait until you can get it when you want to get it and watch it how you want to 0.95
00:50:02.960 watch it. But there was some good things about that. And television was going to destroy us.
00:50:08.520 You know, it was destroying the fabric of America. This is the same thing. I agree, 0.72
00:50:14.360 but it's on steroids and it's so much faster. People do need to turn it off more. I, when I say
00:50:21.340 don't panic, I also don't mean make this your entire life and submit, submit yourself to it.
00:50:27.020 Turn your phone off. Sometimes log out, stop using social media sites that aren't contributing to your
00:50:32.940 own wellbeing. You don't have to be on them. Some of the people advocating the most for,
00:50:37.580 for restrictions or breaking up these companies. What I think they are is that they're addicts 0.87
00:50:41.680 and they think everyone's an addict when you like the social dilemma, that Netflix documentary about
00:50:45.940 how terrible it was. It's all these X Google people, X Facebook people. Well, they're the
00:50:50.320 most online people of all. They're talking like they invented like their Manhattan project scientists.
00:50:54.740 We invented the greatest, most powerful, destructive thing ever. And now we're warning you
00:50:58.280 and it's so great and we're so great for inventing it, but it's really bad for you. Maybe it's bad for
00:51:02.200 you. Maybe if you're, you know, most people can walk into a casino, not bet away their life savings.
00:51:07.580 Some people, they would bet every, they can't do it because they're addicts and they should,
00:51:13.540 they should not do it. I think we're, I think we're, uh, at a, uh, a point where we don't
00:51:20.920 agree on something. No, maybe we don't try to, I mean, no, but I mean, try to, uh, try to tell
00:51:27.940 people, yeah, put your phone down for the day. Just, they will all tell you. Oh no, no, no,
00:51:33.540 I can't, I can't. Wait a minute. 10 years ago, you could, everything was, I say this to my wife
00:51:39.400 all the time. She's like, no, I have to be able to, why, why? I don't have a phone. I don't carry a
00:51:45.740 phone. I'm fine. Um, why does everybody have to have that? You tell them to turn it off and most
00:51:55.420 people are like, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Have to have to have this. Yeah. It's not healthy.
00:52:01.940 It's very bad. Yeah. We need to, I hope these companies will seriously consider, um, implementing
00:52:11.500 things that, that make it easier to turn them off some of the time. Maybe they won't,
00:52:17.760 but they're right now going to face regulation. They are going to be regulated one way or the
00:52:22.240 other, unless they, unless they can fix themselves, unless they can give some, they don't want to
00:52:28.080 fix themselves, but they don't want to be regulated. They're going to be the one, they're going to be
00:52:30.780 the ones who write it. Well, well that won't be good. I know Facebook supports section 230 reform
00:52:35.280 because they know it's going to put Twitter out of business. And right. And you know,
00:52:40.120 also that the government, they don't, we're talking about people who are a thousand years old.
00:52:47.960 They, the ger, the gerontocracy. Yeah. I mean, they talking to these people about AI or anything
00:52:56.040 on the horizon, they don't have any clue is what they're, so they're just going to go to their
00:53:02.340 friends in Silicon Valley and say, why don't you write some stuff up and how would you regulate it?
00:53:10.120 That's what FDR did with GM and the big three automakers. Every hearing where you have these
00:53:15.100 senators yelling at Zuckerberg and Dorsey and everyone else, I mean, they're embarrassing.
00:53:18.800 They have no idea what they're talking about. Recent Blumenthal was yelling at someone from
00:53:23.560 Facebook about Finsta. And he's like, get rid of Finsta, take down Finsta. You have to eliminate
00:53:29.160 Finsta. Finsta is not a feature that it's just having a fake Instagram account. It's just something
00:53:34.040 users came up with. It's not a service they offer. They can't. And she's trying to explain this
00:53:38.560 and you can't, he's so old. He doesn't know. That should disabuse anyone of the notion that
00:53:43.700 these people are competent. I think it was Johnson, Congressman Johnson, I think that was talking
00:53:50.380 to a general. And he said, he's, they were talking about the bases on, I think the Philippines.
00:53:59.820 And, uh, he said to the general, are you concerned at all? If we have too many people on that side of
00:54:08.220 the Island that the Island will capsize and the general without missing a beat went, no, sir,
00:54:17.160 that's not anything we've, we've considered, uh, Oh yeah. It's our, the, uh, the people running our
00:54:28.180 government are not good. A lot of the people, uh, running and I think to a greater extent working
00:54:33.100 at these companies are not good. They're hostile to our values. They're hostile to, um, classically
00:54:37.960 liberal values, free speech values, and it's very bad, but what can we really sleep realistically do
00:54:43.100 about it? It doesn't, I don't know that it's a lot from a policy standpoint and I don't want to
00:54:47.940 make things worse. And I just don't want to give power back to the media environment we had before
00:54:52.840 this, because for every bad thing we have now, I, I honestly, I think it was worse when I was a young
00:54:58.060 person before that, the, the dominance of the people who really hate you, who really disagree
00:55:04.020 with your values, who won't let you hear a single different perspective and just want you to listen to
00:55:08.500 them. Those are the people that would come to power again. If we broke up these companies.
00:55:15.140 Let me ask you one last question. And I don't know if you're, I'm sure you've, I'm sure you're
00:55:19.900 involved in cryptocurrency. Yeah. That's another place where the powers that be are actually talking
00:55:29.120 about making the post office a bank. Yep. I mean, if that's not a thousand year old thinking,
00:55:36.960 I don't know what is, they've got to stop cryptocurrency, um, because they lose all
00:55:44.360 control. Once, once you don't control currency, you, you lose, oh, I vast amounts of power.
00:55:55.680 Crypto could very well be the solution to some of the problems we're talking about. I am not an
00:56:00.500 expert in this subject. I'm very interested in it. I'm just frankly not an expert, but a lot of my
00:56:04.500 colleagues at Reason Magazine write about a Zach Weissmuller is someone people should look up if
00:56:09.300 they're interested in this. And he writes very persuasively about how this could be the future,
00:56:14.660 a future where there is less central control, where there is privacy, where a lot of the things we're
00:56:19.320 talking, we're, we're worried about concentration can be addressed by this, uh, the decentralized
00:56:24.520 internet. It is possible. And so there are, and that's all going to be innovation. That's not
00:56:29.340 going to be the government doing anything. At best, that will be the government not doing anything.
00:56:33.360 Right. So there, that, that could be the solution to a lot of what we're talking about.
00:56:37.920 Generally speaking, I can't get a feel from you, whether you are hopeful for the future
00:56:42.920 or you're just like, we're doomed.
00:56:45.680 I think I'm hopeful for the future. I think things tend to get better.
00:56:48.820 Our political conversations have gotten worse and the government always gets bigger,
00:56:52.460 but there's a lot more to life and we should, we should enjoy that. And it's been a bad,
00:56:57.800 it has been a bad two years. I don't think it, I don't think things can be as bad as they were
00:57:02.040 last two years. I've been wrong before.
00:57:04.040 You know, everybody that said last year, that's what they said. 2021 can't be as bad as 2020.
00:57:09.860 My personal 14 days to slow the curve are over. Let me tell you, I am going to enjoy my life.
00:57:17.100 I don't care what Dr. Fauci or any other health official says ever again. So we will,
00:57:23.700 it will be better. We will make it better if it has to be.
00:57:26.180 God bless. Thank you.
00:57:27.200 Thank you so much.
00:57:28.100 Name of the book is Tech Panic, Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future.
00:57:37.800 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend
00:57:43.440 so it can be discovered by other people.
00:57:47.100 I'll see you next time.