Episode 65 - Politics is an Insult Contest and Only One Player Knows the Rules

Date: 2018-06-16 | Duration: 21:22

Topics

Politics is an insult contest Chris Rock did a version of this joke in 2008… “I like people that weren’t captured, okay?” Common Filter vs. Persuasion Filter Flattery as a weapon Prediction Meltdown Bowling Contest vs. Insult Contest

Transcript

[0:06]

I’m back. It didn’t take long to come back because you can’t get enough of me and I want to talk about this fun little sideshow that’s going on. Some of you may have noticed that there’s a little dust-up on Twitter right now over some ancient history about candidate Trump. Long ago, he said about McCain—this is Trump saying that—“He’s no hero. I prefer people who didn’t get caught.” Now this was initially tweeted by Soledad O’Brien, and then I retweeted that and said, “It’s just a joke.” Now that was my short version of it, and of course the short version leaves out all the good stuff. So I was roundly attacked by, I think, Andy Richter, Judd Apatow, and a few other Hollywood writers.

[1:08]

A lot of people who know what jokes are weighed in to say, “That’s no joke.” And then I explained, of course, at a different Periscope, how it is a joke. And not only is it a joke, but Chris Rock wrote it and performed it in 2008. So Chris Rock does the joke years before Trump in which he says of McCain—I’m paraphrasing, Chris does it better—but I’m paraphrasing that, “How hard is it to get caught? We have prisons that are full of people who did that.” Now, when Chris Rock says it, it’s in the context of a comedy situation and everybody said, “That is just a joke.” Nobody takes it too seriously. When candidate Trump said it, he didn’t deliver it with the same crisp punchline and he didn’t do it in the context of a comedy show, so people said, “That’s no joke. He’s actually saying that. That’s an offensive insult.” Well, I think the fact that Chris—

[2:11]

—Rock said it first and was clearly in the context of a joke is all the evidence I’m going to provide that it was intended as a joke. But then people say, “But you’re missing the point, Scott, it was really an insult.” To which I say: yes, it was an insult joke. It was a joke whose primary point was to diminish an opponent. Let me talk about reality for a moment and then I’ll get back to this point. The difference in perspective here is as some people said, “That’s not a joke.” What they really mean is not so much that it doesn’t follow the structure of a joke, because it does. It was literally a great joke from Chris Rock that meets all the definitions of a joke. What they’re really saying is that it’s not funny and it’s really primarily a bullying insult. A bullying insult.

[3:13]

So let me give you two views of reality here and then we’ll come back to that point because until you see the context, it’s hard for me to wrap up my major point. I’ve been telling you for a while that there are at least two views of the world that are relevant to this conversation. There’s what I call the common filter on reality, which says that what we’re looking at is something called politics, and politics is made up of things such as money influencing it, and people have facts, and there’s the old boys’ network, and there’s the news, and all those things that are going into politics. So that’s the common view of the sort of two-dimensional view of life. I have introduced what I call the persuasion filter. In this filter, instead of the 2D version, politics is an insult contest in which the players are using such—

[4:15]

—things as flattery, branding, reframing, and linguistic kill shots to build up their side and to tear down the other side. Now, in the insult contest, we see that the anti-Trumpers are insulting Trump by calling him an orange-haired crazy clown, mentally unfit, racist, homophobe, misogynistic, xenophobic, Cheeto Jesus—and that’s not enough—all insults. Now, they are functional insults because the whole point of them is to win the insult contest that the people over here would call politics or getting elected. Now, the funniest thing about flattery—and do you remember each time President Trump goes overseas the news—

[5:17]

—the two-dimensional news will say, “Oh my God, President Trump doesn’t see it coming. These countries are using flattery to control him. They’re going to play to his ego, they’re going to flatter him, and then he’s going to do anything that they want. They’re using the flattery against him.” And then what happens is they roll out the red carpet and they make a big deal about it. Look at Israel right now. Israel—they’ve got a soccer team that’s naming itself after Trump. Literally, that was yesterday’s news. They’ve got signs up about Make Israel Great Again. They’re doing everything they can to flatter our president and you say to yourself, “Oh, Mr. President, you don’t see this coming. They’re centering the flattery at you. It’s going to change you. You’re going to do anything they want now to get more of that flattery because you love the flattery.” That’s how it looks over here. Let me tell you how a professional—

[6:18]

—persuader would see this same situation. This is based on some of the work of Robert Cialdini, who wrote the books Influence and the newer one Pre-suasion, which you should absolutely read. Both of those—to understand your world, you have to read both of those books, period. What he would tell you is that the research showed that when people act a certain way, they adopt it as if they believe it. In other words, when Saudi Arabia ramped up their welcoming ceremony from whatever is normal to extra-normal for Trump, these people said, “Ah, they’re using flattery. It’s a trick.” But Trump and everybody who has a similar skill set, such as me, said, “This isn’t working quite the way you think it is.” When they roll out the super red carpet and make a big, big deal about Trump as leader and they honor him and flatter him, what they’re doing is—

[7:21]

—talking themselves into it. In other words, however important Trump was before they put on their own ceremony, they themselves—the Saudis in this example—elevated their own opinion of him because of the ceremony they put on to flatter him. All of this is working in Trump’s favor. The world is trying to out-flatter the last country that talked to Trump. Israel’s really putting it on. They’re putting on the flatter-fest like you’ve never seen. They think, “This is good. This is really going to influence Trump to be our friend.” And it does. It definitely does that. But what it does even more than that is it influences the country that’s doing it, that he’s a better, more important leader than they thought before they started flattering him. They’re convincing their own public of the importance of Trump. So it works totally in his favor. So that’s what the world looks like through the persuasion filter.

[8:25]

And flattery I include in the insult contest because what we’re trying to do is contrast. You’re trying to get as many people to flatter you so you look good while you’re insulting the other team as functionally and as effectively as you can. They’re calling Trump a racist. He’s calling them his various linguistic kill shots from “Crooked Hillary” to “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” to “Low-Energy Jeb.” Now, here’s the interesting part: two views of the world, quite different. I have said for now a couple of years that if you’re trying to sort out which is the more accurate or functional or useful way to look at the world, you should look at which one predicts the best. So if this one gives you the best predictions, use that one. That should be your filter on life. And if this one does, use that one. I would—

[9:25]

—argue that this view of the world is experiencing prediction complete breakdown. This view of the world predicted that you could never have a President Trump. This view of the world predicted that if you did get a President Trump, it would be the end of the world. It would be a Hitler-like situation. The economy would crash. He might cause a nuclear war. This is complete prediction breakdown—complete breakdown in prediction. And it might break down again at the midterms because this is also predicting a good day for the Democrats in the midterms. Don’t know how that’s going to turn out yet, but this side has been wrong about everything for two years. This side, the side that I live on, has been right about all the big stuff for two years. And I would suggest—

[10:28]

—that if it continues being right, you might want to adopt this as your better way of thinking about the world. Yeah, and somebody just put a little hashtag GoldenAge in there. When you move from this world, which is dysfunctional and non-predictive, completely useless, and just makes you angry—the people living in this world are in deep cognitive dissonance. They can’t explain their world because the things they think are true—their filter on the world—doesn’t predict anymore and therefore you have insanity. An actual type of—we hope temporary—but it’s an actual type of insanity because nothing makes sense anymore. You move over here, everything makes complete sense. It’s all backed by science. Everything that happens on the persuasion side of things is well-backed by plenty of science. There’s not really any real debate on this stuff. And as you saw right in front of you from—

[11:29]

—the earliest days, those of you who have been with me for a while, you know that I said as clearly as possible and often back in 2015 that I was going to make predictions right in front of you that would come true and would validate this view of the world. And then you watched them come true. Let’s go back to—and then the one thing that these two views have in common is the policies. So if one side says, “We’re going to lower taxes by 10%,” well, they both put a different spin on what that means. “Stealing from the poor to give it to the rich.” “No, we’re boosting the economy.” But they would both agree that 10% is 10%. So there’s this little bit of overlap in these views in the world where it comes down to the details of what the actual law becomes. Let’s take us back to the John McCain story. I said the John McCain joke that—

[12:29]

—“I prefer people who didn’t get caught” is both a serious point and an insult. He is trying to diminish McCain, who is his critic, who started it first. McCain started the insults. He wasn’t the victim; he started it. Trump insulted him back. So do you get crazy because you saw somebody who was in an insult contest insult somebody? Would you get mad if you were in a bowling tournament and you saw somebody bowling? It’s a bowling tournament; people bowl. It’s an insult contest. McCain is insulting Trump. Trump is insulting him back. It’s a frickin’ insult contest. If you live over here, your world has fallen apart. “This big orange Cheeto Hitler is insulting our—

[13:30]

—respected, cherished sacred cows! The world is falling apart! We don’t know what’s happening! What happens next? Will society fall apart?” We can’t predict anything. We’re confused, we’re off-kilter, we don’t know what’s happening. Over here, very simple. What were those people doing? Candidate Trump at the time and Senator McCain—they were two important participants in an insult contest where they were trying to brand the other one negatively while each of them were trying to brand themselves positively. They were trying to reframe things. Trump was trying to reframe McCain from the respected senator to somebody who got lucky with being called a hero. So these are the two views of the world. I would propose that you watch these to see which one predicts better. I’m pretty sure this one is—

[14:30]

—always going to predict better, but you can watch and find out on your own. Now, you will be amused and amazed watching the people who live in this view of the world—how angry they get at me because they don’t quite understand what I’m saying. If you saw any of the Twitter feed, the exchanges, what you saw is me continually saying things that probably made sense to you if you’ve spent some time with me in this world, but over there they kept being confused. It’s like, “Are you saying X?” And I’d say, “No, no, I’m now saying that I’m saying Y.” And then they would say, “Oh, I see what you’re saying, you’re saying W.” I’d say, “No, no, I just said I’m saying Y.” “Okay, so you’re saying X?” “No, I just said I’m on Y.” What you watch is that they—

[15:31]

—actually can’t hear you talk and process it like language or communication. It’s actually just noise that’s coming in, and then they just translate it into some other weird thing and then tell you why it’s wrong. But they’re not telling me why I’m wrong; they’re telling me something that happened just in their own heads. It confuses them, makes them angry, makes them frustrated, makes them anxious, and then it comes out as insane hatred.

Certainly, there’s nobody in the insult contest who is clean. Everybody who’s in the contest entered the contest. When McCain decided to be a politician, did McCain say to himself, “Oh great, I’m gonna be a politician. Thank God I entered the business where nobody’s gonna insult me”? No, he did—

[16:34]

—not say that. He said, “I think I’ll enter the insult contest. I wonder if there will be any insults in the insult contest?” Yeah, there will. That’s all there will be: reframing, rebranding, insulting, flattery if you can get it, insults on the other side. That’s all it is, and that is your politics. That’s all I have to say for today. Give me a little feedback. Did this help you at all? Sometimes some of these topics are sort of recasting things I’ve said before about when they’re more about the headlines; it just makes it a little more relevant, brings it home. Somebody’s saying, “What’s an LKS?” You’re looking at this—probably a Linguistic Kill Shot. So that’s my little name for “Low-Energy Jeb” and “Crooked Hillary” and the Trump nicknames.

[17:35]

Yeah, somebody said, “It’s good, but only for those who already respect me.” That’s probably true in general. Yes, people are going to agree with whatever they already respect. Now you can see why it took me a whiteboard to describe this, and you can see why my critics on Twitter are confused and angry because I’ve got this much text to make my point. So I’ll say it again. I say that the Trump comment about McCain getting captured was a joke. We know that because Chris Rock wrote that joke in 2008 and performed it. Now, was it just intended to be funny? No, I don’t mean it was a joke as in it was only intended to be funny. I mean it was a joke as in a really good insult joke. It was intended to demean McCain exactly as it did and it was—

[18:35]

—successful, I think, because it did actually cause some of us to say, “Oh, that’s sort of a good point.” Even though it’s not really a good point, that’s how jokes work. A joke works because it sort of feels kind of true, but if you think about it for even half a second, you realize it’s not really a good description of what’s happening. That’s what makes it funny.

It was said in anger and revenge—that doesn’t make it not a joke. Imagine, if you will, that Trump had said without the joke part of it this: imagine if he’d said, “You know, I’ve looked at McCain’s record and I don’t feel like that was worthy of being called a hero.” He couldn’t do that. That would have been the biggest mistake in the world. So he tried to soften it. He tried to reframe McCain, but he tried to sort of soften it with a joke format. Now, he didn’t deliver—

[19:39]

—the joke well and people didn’t take it as a joke, so he failed. So when people are saying, “Stop defending this president. Do you defend every single thing he says?” No, I don’t. Here’s an example: this was just a mistake. Candidate Trump should not have touched that joke or tried to cast him as a non-hero because it would just come back to bite him. In other words, it didn’t work. It was a mistake. It wasn’t the worst thing to try because if he’d gotten a bigger laugh and people repeated it, it might have worked. And by the way, it might have actually worked in terms of diminishing McCain’s reputation, so it might have been effective, but I don’t think it was worth all the trouble that it caused him. So it was kind of an expensive move that he might take back if he had the chance.

After he said it, he thought so too. Correct. Here’s a perfect example of—

[20:41]

—where I’m agreeing with you and you can’t hear it. Some of the people who are set in their ways—they can’t hear me agreeing with you. Trump did literally mean to diminish McCain. He did mean to do that. That was intentional. We agree. But it was also in the form of a joke because he was softening it, and he was in the insult contest delivering an insult. That’s all I have to say. Talk to you later.