Episode 55 - Structural Racism Plus Iran

Date: 2018-06-16 | Duration: 36:43

Topics

President Trump Tweet Endorses Candice Owen The value of network resources Iranian people and their leadership Adding variables to situations Reframing thoughts on the battle of ideas

Transcript

[0:05]

I hope to do my bum-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum. Hello and good morning. It is a good morning, at least where I am. It’s sunny and beautiful and I have my coffee. If you have your beverage of choice, make it a coffee because that’s the good one. Tea works; any beverage is fine. We’re being permissive today, and it’s time for the simultaneous sip.

That’s the way to start the day. I’ve tried drinking coffee without all of you; it doesn’t taste this good. But when you’re all watching and simultaneously sipping, good stuff. So, how many of you saw Candace Owens mentioned in President Trump’s tweet?

[1:06]

How would you like to wake up to that? The President just essentially endorsed a human being. When does that ever happen? When do you wake up and find out that the President of the United States decided to endorse you as a human being? That’s pretty good. Anyway, it reminded me of a topic that I mentioned before, but I want to really take it home. It’s a question of structural or institutional racism. If we accept that the laws of the land and the Constitution say everybody’s equal, well, that’s only part of the battle. Because there’s still the hearts and minds, and there’s still built-in advantages to being born white.

[2:09]

Let’s just say what it is. I was making the point that, in my opinion, of all of the various structural disadvantages of being African American, in particular, is your lack of connection to people who have resources and can help you. The point is, people tend to hang around with the people that are like them. If you’re African American and you’re hanging around with other African American folks primarily, you’re somewhat accidentally cut off from all the resources and the network—the investments, the hiring decisions, and all of the other advice, the mentoring, and all the stuff you can get from white people. Because the white people have lots of resources, and as I said before, the greatest untapped

[3:09]

resource in the world for African Americans is that white people like to help. I say that like maybe other people don’t like to help, but of course everybody likes to help. But white people in particular, we like to help. Plus, here’s the fun part: white people have all the resources. I’m exaggerating; we don’t have all the resources, but you know what I mean.

I wanted to give you an actual live demonstration of this point. Candace Owens got retweeted by the President this morning. She’s getting lots of well-deserved attention because she’s doing a tremendous job of expressing a point of view that had been underserved. Now, I watched that tweet and I watch her work and I think to myself: wow, she’s doing really good things. What is the next thing you would expect

[4:09]

Candace to do in the natural arc of her career? Probably write a book. Now, I don’t know if she wants to write a book, but for people who get prominent and get a lot of attention in the political sphere, the normal path is to write a book. That gives you speaking income; it gives you an introduction to a lot of places that you just wouldn’t get without writing the book. And here again, I’m going to give you a demonstration of how useful it is to have friends who are white people. Candace follows me on Twitter. We’ve never met; we’ve never had any communication. Since we follow each other on Twitter, I can send her a message. Live while you’re watching, I’ve composed a message from me to Candace. I don’t know if she’ll see it because

[5:09]

imagine how much Twitter traffic she’s getting, especially today. But I’m going to send this message and it says this: “If you’re looking for a book publisher—and I hope you are—I would be happy to introduce you to my literary agent in New York City.”

Now, what would you pay for an introduction by a best-selling author to his literary agent who can almost guaranteed get you a deal? If you don’t know how publishing works—let me send this while you’re here. Okay, sent. Because Candace has expanded her network outside of the African American channel and she has created insanely good contacts in the white world where people have resources, we like to help. Good things can happen just from that alone. If there was a way to scale up what

[6:13]

she’s done so that other African American folks have the same advantage of connection, how valuable would that be? I just sent the tweet. I don’t know if she’ll ever see it, but sitting in her DMs would be a recommendation to one of the literary agents in New York City—a personal recommendation so that she would definitely get a meeting, would get a look. If the literary agent likes it—some agents are powerful enough that they can usually put a package together that the publishers want—the agent is actually the big break. A good agent can get you placed with a publisher. So, there’s an example. I try to do this sort of thing anytime I run into anybody who’s got fewer connections and could use them. Let me

[7:16]

give you another example. Have you ever seen a comic called “Pearls Before Swine”? “Pearls Before Swine” is one of the top comics in the world right now. What’s interesting about that is that Stephan Pastis, the author of the comic—one of the things that he did to transfer from being a lawyer, which was his primary job, to one of the top cartoonists in the world, is he called me. He contacted me, I forget how, and said: “Can we have a meeting? Could we go to lunch? I want to pick your brain about how to be a cartoonist.” In the beginning, I gave him some attention that he wasn’t getting when he was starting out, and that actually created the first attention he

[8:18]

got to get published, at least in newspapers. He was already online. We met in person and I gave him lots of in-person advice. Who could give better advice on being a cartoonist? If you were going to go to somebody and say, “Hey, I’d like to get some advice on being a cartoonist,” you’d want to go to somebody who literally wrote a book on it and is succeeding as a cartoonist. Because he had easy access to me, his career was a lot easier getting started and now he’s a huge success. How unfair is it that he was so comfortable talking to me because he’s a white guy and I’m a white guy? It was one less thing that could have been a form of hesitation or friction. If that same benefit were opened up to everyone, it could be a

[9:21]

better world. So, that’s my point there.

Let’s talk about Iran. I’m a little bit early on my thinking about Iran and where that’s all going, but let’s do some speculation about the situation to see if we can get an early indication of where things might be heading. One of the things I keep hearing is that although the Iranian people are surprisingly pro-American—or at least they don’t have a problem with Americans and they say Americans are nice—the leadership of Iran, we believe, literally wants to kill us, kill Israel, and kill America. Maybe die in a giant fireball or something like that. What is your first impression when you hear that? That there

[10:24]

are people who are willing to die, destroy their own country, destroy Israel, and destroy the United States, and yet they’ve been in power for a while and have not destroyed themselves or done something that would cause us to destroy them. It’s been many years of these crazy, suicidal people in charge who haven’t actually crossed the line where we would clearly just wipe them out, or they have not fully committed to even wiping out Israel.

What does it look like for Iran to be fully committed? Take the Iraq war. If you remember your history, Iraq had a stronger military, but they couldn’t make too much headway attacking Iran—this is back in Saddam’s time—because the Iranians were like human sacrificial whatever, just running toward the Iraqi army with incomplete weaponry, just getting

[11:24]

slaughtered. But they were so brave and so committed that Iraq just couldn’t conquer Iran, even with superior firepower. So, we’ve seen what it looks like when the Iranian leaders and the Iranian public are committed to something. When they’re committed, there doesn’t seem to be any limit to what they’re willing to do. But then we look at their language about “Death to America” and it doesn’t look like that kind of commitment.

As I’ve said many times, if you’re Israel, you have to treat that risk like it’s a hundred percent chance of happening. Israel has no wiggle room; they have to treat it like a war that’s already happening. You saw that there are reports where Israel attacked an alleged Iranian missile site in Syria. So, they’re very much treating

[12:25]

it like they’re in the middle of a war, and they have to; it’s deadly serious to them. But what we’re trying to do is understand where the leverage is, where the buttons are, what might be in play that we didn’t think was in play, what might be an illusion, etc. In that world, we can be a little more permissive in our thinking because we’re not Israel, who is at imminent risk of being destroyed. They have to treat it like it’s just a fact, hundred percent. You would never want to talk a man in that position out of it because it’s the only rational position.

But let me toss out some ideas. One of the things that made North Korea work—two things, I think, made North Korea head toward a good result. One is that we added variables to the calculation. North Korea had been

[13:27]

nukes or no nukes, nukes or no nukes. Very few variables. We wanted them not to have them; they wanted to have them. Well, we’re done. But when the reunification variable was added in, and then maybe the uncertainty that we had a crazy president who might attack them any moment, suddenly there were all kinds of variables at the table. We had a president who was willing to negotiate, a president who could get along with crazy dictators better than any other president. President Trump took a situation with only a few variables, North Korea, and he added a bunch of variables. I think Kim Jong Un added some variables himself because he may have been the first one who brought up reunification; I don’t know how those conversations went. The point is, if you can’t get a result, you can sometimes add variables. When you’re looking at the Iranian situation, we don’t want them to have nukes and

[14:28]

missiles and we don’t want them to be funding bad people. How could we add some variables to that? Well, one way to add variables is to expand the conversation until it’s about peace in the Middle East. You make the conversation about Hamas, about Hezbollah, about Iran, about Israel. You add variables. This is just a general concept: if you can’t get a result with the variables you’re working with and you have a chance to expand the variables, it gives you more options for peace. Would Iran be funding Hezbollah and Hamas to cause damage to Israel if there was a comprehensive peace plan in which all of those parties were getting at least enough of whatever it was they wanted short of destroying Israel? We don’t know because we haven’t done that, but it’s possible.

[15:28]

The other thing that we might discover is that the alleged belief that although all of the citizens in Iran are perfectly rational and nice people that we’d like to have over for dinner, we believe the leadership is actually, literally crazy. We believe the same thing about Kim Jong Un. We believe the same thing about every dictator who’s on the other side. It’s the normal thing you believe—that the other side is irrational. Might be true this time; you do get your Hitlers now and then. You can’t say that any leader is rational. You just don’t know. But I think we should push against that hypothesis and there might be a way we reach an agreement where it doesn’t matter

[16:29]

so much how crazy they are.

Now, let me give you a reframe. I save the crazy stuff for the end of my Periscope so those of you who stick around get a little bonus. I’m working on the following reframe about Iran. Remember I said that in order to get a good deal in these big international negotiations, the other thing you need, besides more variables, is you need both sides to have something that looks like a victory path. North Korea figured out how to have a victory path because reunification is something that will make Kim Jong Un a legendary figure forever. I mean, Kim Jong Un is going for the long ball quite wisely, I think. It’s too early to know right, but it

[17:29]

looks like Kim Jong Un just said: “Hey, I’m going to go for the long ball. I’m not just looking for a good result. I want to be like the Royal Family is to Great Britain.” I’m not sure that’s where they’re heading, but it looks like he’s shooting for the whole enchilada.

Is there a path where Iran and the rest of the Middle East—let’s say Hamas and Hezbollah—is there a path where they could have a victory while Israel stays a country, gets recognized, and nobody’s trying to destroy the United States or fund terrorists? Is there any path that we can imagine that Iran has short of destroying the United States, destroying themselves, and destroying Israel? I’m going to suggest the following reframe. Listen to this and see if this makes sense to you.

[18:31]

In the original days of the founding of Islam, they had a certain set of tools for war: swords and stabby-stabby things. Technology was modest. In Muhammad’s day, they used the tools that they had. Now, how could you spread religion in the days of Muhammad? What techniques could you use? Weapons. You use the only tools you could. If you started with the belief that God, Allah, wants you to spread your religion, what was the one and only way you could do it? Kill people. You would conquer. Now, what happened as the technology of war improved? If you see a modern radical Islamist do

[19:34]

a terror attack, are they likely to use a sword and a spear? Probably not. They’ve probably upgraded their tools. There’s no Islamic prohibition about using better tools of war. They could use swords; that was fine. Now they use machine guns and bombs—better technology. But it’s the same philosophy: they’re trying to use conquest, beheadings, and stuff. They’re trying to use those tools to further the spread of Islam. If there were an even better weapon invented, would they be allowed to use it?

Here’s your thought experiment: if Islam had an even better weapon to further the spread of Islam—conquest, you could call it—could they use it? The answer is of course they

[20:34]

could because that’s the history of Islam. If there are new tools, there’s nothing that stops them from using a new tool.

Here’s the reframe: Nuclear weapons are not as effective a tool for spreading Islam as the internet is. In the old days, your best tool for spreading Islam was a sword. Then maybe you thought your best tool was guns and explosions, mortars, missiles, and nuclear weapons. But look at North Korea. Did their nuclear weapons help them? Not so much; it actually caused a problem. Look at Iran. Were their nuclear weapons helping them? Not so much. Even the development of nuclear weapons caused this problem. They’re not

[21:37]

spreading anywhere because of those weapons. But imagine that in the year 2018 and beyond, we have this thing called the internet. Let’s move the war of religion from the battlefield—where we used old tools because that’s all we had; you use the tools you have, you don’t use the tools you don’t have. Now we have better tools. Spreading Islam is a battle of ideas. The internet is what you use in the battle of ideas. Could Iran translate their version of Iran, without giving up anything—no sacrifice—to a war of ideas in which we say: “Look, Iran, not only are we not going to block you on social media, we’ll give you a full platform. You can take your ideas anywhere you want, you just leave behind the weapons that were

[22:40]

effective”? The point is, killing people to spread your religion is the old technology. The new technology is persuasion and communication. If Iran does not believe that exposing people to their ideas, their persuasion, and their information about Islam is enough, then they don’t have confidence in their own God in the battle of ideas. In the battle of ideas, is God going to let them lose? I guess the only way to find out is just to do it.

Now, I see some of the comments and you’re making exactly the right comment. I agree with my critics who are in real-time saying some version of this:

[23:41]

“My God, you’re so naive. You don’t understand how they think. To even imagine that they would want to move from the war of physical violence to the war of ideas—you’re so dumb, Scott. This could never happen.”

Just keep in mind, you were saying that before President Trump got elected. Not you necessarily, but look at how the world thought about the odds of Trump getting elected. It just seemed impossible, but then it happened. What were the odds that President Trump would speedily solve North Korea? How much of the world thought that was even remotely possible? Not many people. I saw Trump coming a mile away, and you all watched it in real time. You saw me go out on a limb in 2015 and bet my entire

[24:44]

reputation on it—my income, my reputation. I bet everything on it. And then I doubled down by describing for the past year how we could get a good result in North Korea with a President Trump, and that reunification was probably part of it, and this war on companies instead of just countries would probably be a key.

And here we are. I’m telling you also that I don’t see anything that would rule out a big win for everybody, except the way we’re thinking about it. There are no physical limitations to thinking differently about the situation. But you would have to give Iran and the various opponents of Israel a win—an unambiguous win. If you asked me, the unambiguous win is to take the battle from the field and put it into the war of ideas where it belongs.

[25:44]

The internet is exactly where you should be discussing religion. If Iran is not confident that their God will display their ideas more effectively, then they’re questioning their own rule. Or let me put it another way: the only way this isn’t a good idea is if Iran doesn’t believe their own God. Because if they believe their God, they’re going to win on the battlefield of ideas, as long as we don’t limit their traffic.

Now, the interesting thing about this idea is that the biggest obstacle to making it work is that even conservatives in the United States don’t give a fair hearing on our social media. You might find that Twitter and Facebook are the biggest obstacles to success if they

[26:44]

are censoring thought about Islam that they don’t like. If we’re censoring them just because we don’t like it, then I don’t think we’re playing fairly. You can tell logic and directives from God if you truly believe. What I’m saying is that the suggestion of moving from the physical battlefield to the internet and the battle of ideas is that there’s nothing un-Islamic about that. It’s perfectly compatible, as far as I know. I’m not going to present myself as the expert on Islamic thought, but if it’s true that Islam allows you to upgrade your tools of war, then the best tool of war for persuading people to

[27:45]

change to your religion at the moment, in 2018, it’s not bombs. It just doesn’t work that well. We saw the Caliphate didn’t get that far. It’s almost like God was trying to tell the Caliphate: “Use the internet, idiots. Stop trying to beat military forces that are far superior.”

Sharia is not compatible with American values. That is correct, but that’s why you battle it out in the war of ideas on the internet. Having presented that idea, your objection should be: “I can’t believe that Iran’s leadership would buy that big change in thinking to say, ‘Let’s move our battle to the internet.‘” If that’s the only problem with it, it’s

[28:48]

not impossible. If that’s the only problem, it’s not impossible. So, this is not a prediction. I’m just telling you that if you can’t even imagine how this all could be solved, well, it might be a failure of imagination. You hear me say this a lot, right? Sometimes we don’t act because we can’t imagine there’s anything that could work. Let’s say you sit there and say: “Okay, what if I do that? No, that wouldn’t work. What if I do that? No, that won’t work.” So, what do you do? You just sit in your chair because you can’t imagine anything that would work. I’m telling you I can imagine a good result, and it’s where you take it from the war of weapons to a war of ideas. You can’t tell me that’s not the natural place for discussions of Islamic thought.

[29:52]

Can I imagine myself with hair? Somebody asked that. One of the jokesters on here said, “Can I imagine myself with hair?” The funny thing is that I always think to myself: sometime probably in my lifetime still—I’m hoping I have another 30 or 40 years left—I’ll probably have a full head of hair, but I’ll be 95 when it happens. Somebody will say, “Hey, take this pill and we can solve that problem.” For 70 years, I’ll be like, “Yeah, I look like a desiccated fruit, but I got great hair.”

Give me some feedback on my idea of expanding the Iranian question to the whole area and saying: “Hey everybody, let’s move this to the war of ideas because the borders aren’t going to change.” What about the pleasure of

[30:58]

killing infidels? Well, I don’t think the leaders enjoy that pleasure. “War of ideas is not a fair fight,” oh, so somebody said in the war of ideas it wouldn’t be a fair fight. In other words, somebody is saying that Islam would not do well just on the internet in a war of ideas. I think you’re wrong. I think Islam would thrive, and in fact, it already is. We don’t have to wonder, right? It’ll only work if they think they have a chance of winning the idea war. Do you think that someone who really believes that God is on their side thinks they would lose an idea war? If it’s a fair idea war and nobody’s censoring?

[31:59]

I don’t think people think that way. I think they think if God’s on their side, they’re definitely going to win the idea war. Would it work on you? It’s really not about individuals; it’s about populations.

So, it looks like I have a tepid response. Is that true? It looks like most of you are not committing. Does anybody think that my reframe would be productive, as in it might actually make a difference? Because imagine if you would the United States saying consistently: “Look, you’re fighting in the wrong place. You’re fighting on the battlefield; that’s just not modern times anymore. Civilization is leaving you behind because the battles are

[32:59]

battles of the mind now.” We can effectively arm Iran with better weapons than they have now, and that’s not even a joke. If what Iran wants is to wipe Israel off the map—but not in a military way, because every once in a while they clarify, or maybe they’re shading their true intentions—when they talk about Israel, it’s like: “Well, we don’t mean destroy all the people. We mean Israel as a functioning state.” They would want it not to be a Jewish state.

Well, here’s the thing: the war of ideas gets you to a place where Israel has to open up their immigration and demographics. If Israel was not in a

[34:02]

legitimate state of permanent war with their various neighbors, what would they have to do? History would almost force them to start allowing more Muslims into the country, and in the long run, Israel stops being the Jewish-only state. Now, if I said, “Hey people in Israel, do you want to stop being a Jewish state?” they would say: “No! Look at all the work we did to get here. Everything we’ve sacrificed, everything we’ve done, is to get our own state. Why the heck would we ever want to lose that?”

The answer is: when it doesn’t matter anymore. Israel exists as a Jewish state in large part—I mean, there are historical reasons, irrational reasons, and rational reasons—so it’s never one

[35:05]

thing, but a big part of it is that it’s necessary. Someday it won’t be. It just won’t be necessary. If the Israelis and the Muslims were living together in peace and happiness, nobody would care that much about the composition of the leadership of the country. As long as everybody was happy, everybody would be okay.

“You are wrong,” says somebody. To be determined. Somebody says, “Islam has nothing to offer to the West.” I say we don’t know that. We know that in its current form it’s associated with violence, and that’s not very attractive to a lot of people. But what if it were

[36:06]

not? What if Islam lost its bad characters and became literally a religion of peace? Would Westerners say, “Hey, I don’t want any of that religion of peace stuff”? You don’t know.

Which sect of Islam? Well, that’s part of the idea—the war of ideas. Islam needs to work out its own positions in the war of ideas along with everybody else. That’s enough for now. I’m going to go and I’ll talk to you later.