Episode 109 - How to Fix the Border “Cages” Situation Using Psychology

Date: 2018-06-19 | Duration: 48:14

Topics

A complete failure by Democrats, Republicans, President Trump Democrats won’t fix because it’s a GREAT election issue Republicans won’t fix because nobody on either side has a viable alternative The solution needs to address BOTH the short-term and long-term Republicans are the “Parental” party, long-term thinking Democrats are the “Why can’t we only eat candy?” party, short-term thinking Physical components of the issue They’re fleeing danger and hunger to come here The holding facilities are better than what they are fleeing from The holding facilities are temporary Psychological components of the Issue Public focus makes the issue important MSM riding the issue mercilessly Manufactured hysteria for political advantage Liberal propaganda? YES Very effective? YES System to allow parents to view their kids in separate holding facility? See that the kids are there and okay

Transcript

[0:07]

Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. Guess what time it is? It’s the best time of the day, which is weird because some of you will be watching this on replay and it will be a different time of the day when some of you watch it, and still, it’s the best time of the day. How do I do it? Well, you can do anything if you’ve got coffee. It’s time for Coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip. Grab your beverage, your vessel, your liquids and go. Good simultaneous sipping.

Let’s talk about the big topic of the day: children in cages ripped from their parents at the borders. Let me give you the overview, starting with what we all agree on. It’s always good to start these types of conversations that are so polarizing with the parts that everyone agrees on. Here’s what everyone agrees on: taking children from their parents is very bad. It’s not as bad as some of the news reports I was saying yesterday who compared it to taking children away permanently. Apparently, there are studies showing that if you take a child from a parent permanently and they know that’s what’s happening at the time, that causes lifelong damage. Studies show that. We don’t know what happens if you take somebody away from their parents for a few weeks when everybody knows that they’ll get back together, but it can’t be good.

[1:10]

I think everybody is on the same page that if there were any practical way to prevent what’s happening, Republicans would like it, Democrats would like it, the President would like it, and the immigrants themselves would like it. We should stop pretending that anyone’s on the other side of that, and perhaps we should talk about this like adults, which is what’s not happening in the political world. We citizens can talk like adults; we have that option. The political folks don’t have that option because the Democrats have a great, great campaign issue. The idea of children in cages is just so awful and powerful that they would be crazy to fix it. That’s your first problem: Democrats would be crazy to fix it. That’s how broken our government is. At the same time, Republicans could fix it fairly quickly. They could just say, “Hey, change the rule. Keep those kids with those adults.”

[2:12]

Wait a minute, what’s missing? What’s missing is how the heck do you do that without making things worse? If the Republicans had a way, if the President had a way to keep the families together—in that part we do have, of course, we could just not separate them—but what do you do with them? Do you make it a really good deal to come here with kids? Because in the long term, that would make it worse. Has anybody explicitly on the news in any interview you’ve seen said what I’m going to say now? We’d like to fix it in the short term, but nobody has an idea to do that that doesn’t make it a more attractive thing, so it’s worse in the long term.

[3:13]

Maybe there’s a plan like that and for some reason nobody’s mentioning it. The reason that we have this situation is that the last situation didn’t work. People are asking to go back to the last situation which didn’t work because it was causing more people to be incentivized to come because it looked like a pretty good deal. If we are to be adults in the conversation—which our government, and here I’m talking about Republicans, the White House, and Democrats, there are no adults in this conversation—don’t kid yourself. This is a complete failure of government. A complete failure of government.

[4:15]

At the same time, apparently, the professionals working at the border in these shelters, the ICE people, are actually great people doing the best they can with the resources they have. They’re legitimately there to make the world a better place. The people taking care of the immigrants have all the right incentives. They’re kind people doing what they can. They’re doing what they can, but there’s nobody in the conversation, at least on television or in the press, who is just acting like an adult. You’ve got a short-term problem that nobody likes. Stop pretending that somebody likes that. Nobody likes the current situation. Not the President, not you, not the critics—nobody. But we also don’t like the long-term situation if it makes more of this, and nobody has an idea for making that go away.

[5:17]

While our terrible government tries to figure out how to make this go away, let’s talk about some things that we could do in the short term to at least make it not as bad. It’s impossible to fix that by waving your hands, but how could you make it less bad? I’m going to talk about the psychology of it separate from the physical part of it. If you were to take away the psychological part of the story, you’ve taken away the worst part. The psychological part is that children are being taken from parents, and there may be language issues and sophistication issues. People coming from deep poverty don’t really understand what happens to their kids and may not believe it when somebody says, “Now we’re going to take care of them. This is for everybody’s well-being.” Do you believe that? You’ve got this psychological trauma.

[6:18]

How do you solve the psychological part separate from the physical part? Keep in mind that the people who were making this arduous, dangerous, terrible trip all the way to the border are people who are in desperate situations. They’re going from a desperate, dangerous, hungry, uncomfortable situation to detention, which is at least safer. At least that’s the intention. You’re separating people to keep it safe. Separating the men from the women keeps the women safe; separating the children from the adults keeps the children safe until you can sort out what’s what. At least people got physically safer, but psychologically much worse. At least they’re getting fed probably better than they were, but still, psychologically, it’s horrible.

[7:19]

Things are getting sorted out a little bit, maybe they get into the right process eventually, but psychologically it’s a horror. How do you fix the psychological part in the short run so that the parents are not in trauma, the kids are not in trauma, and yet you’re doing the right thing keeping them safe? Remember, the separation of the children and the parents is, at least by the professionals doing the work, primarily to keep everybody safe. Let me give you some ideas. These are just brainstorming kind of ideas. You can say they’re terrible later.

[8:20]

I talked about maybe providing iPads so that people could make calls, but the more I thought about that and saw pictures of the facilities, I thought, well, where would you put those iPads? How do you share them? So I’ve got an improved idea. Have you seen the telepresence robots? It’s basically a Segway bottom—a little roller bottom that is stable—with just a pole and something that looks like an iPad on the top. It’s a robot that you can use remotely, so it can zip around.

[9:20]

Imagine if you will that each of the facilities has a robot or two that’s just going around all the time, showing the people, showing them getting food, showing them taking a nap, and that each facility could look in on another facility. For example, if you saw the robot come by and they said, “This is the child’s facility at X,” and your child is in X, then you can walk over to the robot and say, “Hey, can I see the other side? Can I see the kids in whatever facility?” There may be some way. By the way, here’s the name of one of the companies that looks like one of the leaders in this space: it’s called Double Robotics, and it’s referred to as an iPad robot.

[10:22]

The beauty of the Double Robotics thing is that the robot would move around. I’m dealing with the psychological part. Imagine you’re a parent and you have to only imagine what’s happening with your child. Imagine you don’t know where your child is and you’re just imagining the facility. Well, even if that child made a phone call or had an iPad in front of them, you’re still seeing just the face of the child or the voice. If you’re a parent, that’s not good enough. You want to see what’s happening. That’s where the robot could come in. The robot could give you the full 360 eventually.

[11:23]

That’s one idea. Again, we’re not talking about this solution because nobody has suggested a solution that doesn’t make things worse in the long term. If somebody comes up with one that makes things better in the short run and the long term, I’m all over that. Let’s not pretend there are two sides. Everyone is on the same side, but politically, it’s easy to take sides here. Regarding the robot, somebody is talking about privacy. I don’t believe there’s a privacy issue that would matter to the people involved, and if the only people who are looking—and it’s not being recorded—are the people who are looking live from one facility to another, as long as the robots don’t go in the bathrooms or the showers, I think you’re fine.

[12:24]

“Parents would panic because they don’t see their child.” Well, one way to deal with that, for example, is if you imagine that the kids probably line up to get food. I haven’t been there, but I imagine there’s some point where people get in line to get food. At that point, you take the robot and you just go down the line and you look at every face. Doot-doot, doot-doot, doot-doot. Then you turn around and you go back. Doo-doo, doo-doo. Parents would not see their kids maybe the first minute, but they might see their kids eventually, which would be better. You’re right, there might be an issue of not seeing the kid on the first pass, so they might feel a little worse. Maybe the very first time you show it, you do it when the kids are in line for food so you make sure every kid gets shown at least a couple times a day.

[13:26]

Somebody says, “Crazy idea: let parents be with their children.” You may have just signed on. If anybody knew how to do that… the hard part is, apparently, the children are not necessarily belonging to the adults. Sometimes the children are brought in as a bargaining chip or a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” They’re taking kids for nefarious reasons. If we knew that there were real parents, it would be easier to pair them, but the problem is there’s an incentive to bring fake kids or real kids who are not your kids under the guise of them being your kids. Those of you who say, “Just put the parents and the kids together,” or “Just don’t separate them”—that is a childlike view of the situation. That absolutely would be the best situation in the short run, but if you ignore the long run, that sort of incentive would make things worse. You’re not really an adult in the conversation. Somebody is saying, “Build the wall.” The wall is going to take a while, and it’s not going to stop people from trying to do this for a long time.

[14:27]

You need a short-term situation and a long-term one. Here’s another idea along the same lines. Do you remember when Uber was brand new and how you felt the first time you could look at your app and you’d know where the Uber car was? Do you remember how psychologically that was completely different from just hoping your taxi showed up? A completely different psychological thing. Could you imagine, for example—and maybe they have this, but I don’t know about it—imagine if you will that there’s some kind of electronic signboard or something else that tells the people in there how long they’re likely to be there? They don’t know exactly every time; sometimes it takes longer. But there might be some way, I’m just brainstorming here, that the people there could see a countdown clock. It would at least give them an approximate time.

[15:28]

They could say, “Okay, I’ve been here for a day, but I can see on the clock this is sort of a day-and-a-half situation. I can make it half a day. I’ll see my parents in half a day.” Oh, by the way, I know they’re looking at me on these robots. Psychologically, you could transform the situation from “I don’t know what’s going to happen” to “I do know what’s going to happen,” and from “I don’t know what’s happening with my children” to “Oh, there are my children. I wish I were there, this is terrible, but at least I know they’re getting food and I see my kids smiling.”

That’s the macro idea: separate the physical problem, which is literally people kept in cages or facilities that they can’t get out of. You could call it a cage, you could call it not a cage, but here’s the rule: if it’s your kid, it’s a cage.

[16:32]

If it’s somebody you don’t know, it might be a holding facility. Let’s stop kidding each other about what we call these things. If it’s your frickin’ kid, that thing’s a cage. That’s the end of the story. If it’s conceptual immigration mitigation and you don’t have to see it, and it’s not your kid and it’s nobody you’ll meet, then maybe you have the freedom of saying, “Well, it’s a containment detention halfway facility shelter.” You can use other words for it. But if it’s your kid, that’s a frickin’ cage. Let’s not “word-think” this and think that we’ve done something.

Also, let’s forget about this “Obama did it too.” It’s true, it’s helpful, it gives us context, it’s useful, but it doesn’t mean anything because Obama is not the President. It just doesn’t mean anything, so stop acting like that’s some kind of an excuse. It’s not.

[17:32]

I’ve told you many times about the power of visual persuasion. Imagine any of this conversation without the word “cage” or the photos that showed people in cages. Some of them were actually from 2014, but the detention facilities… I just saw pictures on Business Insider showing—I don’t know what you’d call it—but it looked like a fenced-in inner area within a larger area that looked like a big cage. You could say it’s not a cage, but if you’re in a container that you can’t get out of, I’m going to call it a cage.

[18:34]

The visual of this, which we didn’t have before—where at least people didn’t spread them around as much during the Obama administration—allowed it to be a concept. Apparently, since they were doing less of it or trying to do less of it, it was less of a political issue. But now, when there’s more of it and there’s pictures, the Trump administration is going to need to do something because they’re getting beaten badly on this. There’s nothing that I can support in this conversation—well, I can’t support anybody in this conversation. It is true that the Trump administration is trying for a long-term solution, but the way they’re handling it was so poor that I can’t give them a pass on this whatsoever, just because of the way they’re handling it.

[19:35]

That doesn’t mean there’s a better solution. If anybody had a better solution, I think they would have suggested it. It’s not a solution to just stop doing it, because that just gets you back to the problem you had that you were trying to fix before. You just change the problem. If anybody has an idea, I’m all over it. If there’s any way we can get some Double Robotics iPad robots into, let’s say, just a few facilities to see if it makes any difference, I’m sure you could get funding for it fairly quickly.

“Scott watches news, sees pictures, reverses course.” I don’t think I’ve reversed course, have I? What would be something that I said before that I’m not saying now? I’m not aware of any reverse of course. I’m framing it differently, but that’s different than a reverse of course.

[20:36]

“Yes, you have.” Here is what you think is a reverse in course: somehow you imagined that I was in favor of kids in cages. You must have somehow imagined that. Is there anybody who was in favor of that? I don’t think so. I criticized everyone. The Democrats have quite masterfully turned this into a political weapon that’s quite powerful. So if we’re talking about just the persuasion element of it, the Democrats are just kicking ass on this.

[21:37]

There’s no question about that. But if you’re talking about the human element of it, this is a complete government breakdown. “You’re wrong, only the media are outraged.” I don’t think that’s the case. It is true that Republicans are less bothered by this because they’re looking at the long term. I’ve made this point before: it seems to me that the Republicans, or just conservatives in general, are sort of the parental party. They get that this will hurt in the short term, but in the long term, it’s going to be better. The Democrats are kind of stuck in the short term, which is: “Why can’t you give us all candy? I don’t understand why can’t we just eat candy?”

[22:38]

Then the parents say, “Candy’s okay once in a while, but you have to have a meal or else you’ll die if you just eat candy.” And then the children say, “But I like candy and I don’t like roast beef, so why can’t I just eat candy?” That’s sort of where we are. “Why can’t I have candy?” versus “How do we fix it in the long term?” But the long-term people are totally blowing the short term, and the short-term people are completely ignoring the long term. That’s why I say you’ve got two parties in complete failure mode. Complete failure mode, both sides, and the White House. I can’t think of anything else, can you? Well, maybe healthcare. I think healthcare is in complete failure mode as well. Immigration and healthcare are complete government failure mode.

[23:40]

Democrats, Republicans, White House—across the board, complete failure. Is there anything else happening today? Immigration is good as an attack because it’s complicated. Whenever you’ve got a situation that’s complicated, you have the opportunity to attack because people can’t check your facts. The Russian thing was complicated; that worked great as an attack. The OIG report—people are seeing whatever they want to see because it’s complicated. Nobody understands taxes, nobody understands trade, nobody really understands… so wherever you have these complicated situations, and immigration certainly is complicated, they got you reeled in on this one.

[24:42]

“They got you reeled in on this one, Scott.” You hear me talk about cognitive dissonance. Whoever just said they’ve got me reeled in, if you had a reason, I’m pretty sure it would have been there. You just don’t like the fact that I just made your opinion look ridiculous, whatever your opinion was. People who just say, “You’re wrong, Scott,” or “They reeled you in,” or “You’re really gullible”—you would give me a reason. It wouldn’t be that hard. You’ve got a lot of characters here; you could fit something in. Maybe not the details, but you could say, “I think you’re wrong about there being no solution because there is.”

[25:43]

“Reasons already stated.” Give me one. Give me one reason that tells me my take on this… “Sometimes you’re not fully informed.” That’s what I just said. “You fell for the emotion.” Okay, so somebody is saying that I’m falling for the emotional argument. The answer is: the emotional argument didn’t exist until recently, but now that it is here, it’s a fact. The emotional argument is not imagination because the way people are feeling is the fact. They’re feeling a certain way. Not only are the parents and the children feeling a certain way being separated, but the public is feeling a certain way. These are new facts.

[26:43]

If somebody is crying, it doesn’t help to say there’s no reason to cry. You have to deal with the fact that they’re crying. So I’m dealing with facts. Independent of what I personally feel about this situation, America has now worked itself into a lather so that their emotional feeling has been ginned up to the fact level. It’s what we have to deal with. When I say that the government has failed, they’ve allowed this emotional thing to rise up and they’re not handling it in any kind of an efficient manner. The moment you say “children ripped from parents” and “children in cages,” there’s no other side to the argument. The moment you pretend there’s another side to that argument, you’ve lost the argument. You should never take the other side once the words “children, cages, ripped from parents” are in the conversation.

[27:45]

Everybody is on the same side. What’s different is what suggestions people have to fix it. It’s the only thing that’s different. There’s nobody on the other side. There is one side that’s giving a long-term solution without the short-term; there’s another one that is offering a short-term solution without a long-term. These are not serious players. Nobody’s a serious player if they’re not looking at both the short term and the long term. That’s a complete failure of government right there.

The suggestion is the parents stop breaking the law. Well, that’s a practical suggestion. Why don’t you go talk to those people in poverty in El Salvador and tell them that they should stop trying to get across the border? I’m sure that will help. “Short term/long term is a false dichotomy.”

[28:48]

It’s a false dichotomy that nobody is making because you need to do both. Why is immediate deportation not an option? I’ll give you a few reasons. Number one is that all of us are under-informed about immigration. A lot of the people coming across are not Mexican citizens. If they were Mexican citizens, it seems like it would be easier just to say, “Here’s the door, go back on the other side.” Presumably they’d just try to get in again. But if they’re from El Salvador, you can’t deport them to a different country. You can’t deport an Salvadoran refugee to Mexico because there’s somebody on the other side of the door in Mexico saying, “Hello, it’s Mexico. What do you have for us?”

[29:49]

“How about you take some Salvadorans who don’t live in Mexico?” And they go, “Thank you, no. No thank you. Close the door.” How did they get into Mexico illegally? They just came up the southern border. “Why not be sad about American criminals being separated?” I am sad about that.

“Drop off in Canada—who pays for their trip?” Good question. “It’s all manufactured hysteria and you fell for it.” No, I think you’re not listening to this. I’m saying that there is a manufactured hysteria and that the country has fallen for it. So now it’s a real thing because people are dealing with it as their top issue.

[30:51]

You are correct in saying that if people were to rank the things that matter the most to them, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the top. Two weeks ago, I don’t know if it was in the top fifty, probably because you’d never even heard of it. So you’re right that this is a ginned-up hysteria which is still centered around a real problem. It’s a real thing that children are being separated from their parents, which is not good for the children, but there’s certainly a difference between a child in a cage and a child who’s staying with a relative because their parent went to jail. Those are fundamentally different. Any time we try to think in these weird analogies like concentration camps, or jail, or school, or camp, or the Holocaust, or why is it like going to jail—none of those situations are the same. These are just things that remind you of other things.

[31:56]

When I tell you that it’s bad for children to be taken away from adults, I’m not buying into this hysteria. I’m talking about the news that’s on the front page—the thing we have to deal with because it’s the thing that’s moving in the country. The fact that your logic says we shouldn’t worry about it is irrelevant because we’re already worrying about it. In other words, your world is the things that you see and feel and experience and care about. That’s your reality, and that reality has changed for all of us. Our reality is different because the way we see things and feel and care about has been manipulated by the Democrats, primarily. Really effectively. Very, very effectively. When somebody says you fell for the propaganda or the hysteria, keep in mind that this is the type of thing that could bring down a government.

[32:56]

It’s the type of thing people rally behind and say, “Oh, it’s Hitler coming.” So it’s a big deal psychologically. Remember I said in the beginning that the physical part is actually people going from a horrible situation—trying to make it all the way up to the border, thousands of miles through danger, underfed and everything else—they’re actually physically in a better place because they’re fed and they’re cared for. They’ve got healthcare for the first time. They probably have showers for the first time in however long, if ever. So physically, they’re actually in a better place. Psychologically, the world is reacting to it in a certain way and that reaction is real. Those of you using magical thinking, saying, “I think there’s no problem because in my mind there isn’t one”—that’s not really the world you live in.

[33:58]

The world you live in is that people are pretty torqued up about this for psychologically manipulative reasons, and that’s real. Now you have to deal with the reality that people are torqued up. My personal feeling on this doesn’t really have much to do with anything. “Cloward-Piven”—what’s that mean? “Let them have sit-down dinners with their parents.” I don’t know if they’re all physically near each other, so I think there’s a distance and a quantity of people problem. I don’t know that that’s practical. By the way, the critics have to be held to task to come up with their alternative plan and describe what it leads to.

[34:58]

Starting with a few would be helpful, especially if they could come back with stories of, “Hey, everybody looks okay over there.” There’s a Cloward-Piven solution? I’ll look that up. Oh, overwhelm the system. That doesn’t sound good. You’re saying that the ordinary people are not talking about it. Well, let me ask you this: what are your friends saying about this? Tell me the reaction from friends, because I’ve seen lots of people realize that it’s a big issue politically. I’ll have to admit I don’t know that I’ve seen anybody in person…

[35:59]

I haven’t really talked to too many people in person about this, so I guess I haven’t talked to anybody about it. “Your girlfriend is crazed over this.” Somebody’s saying it’s not an issue. Just reading your comments… “Friends don’t care about it.” People are saying, “Yeah, my aunt cried for 30 minutes after watching CNN.” I don’t know how many people have to be moved by this for it to be a big issue. If 10% of the public is deeply affected by it, that’s enough to change the world. This is something I’ve talked about before: if you have an issue that everybody is a little bit concerned about, it probably is an irrelevant issue, even if everybody’s on the same page and everybody’s concerned about it.

[37:02]

If they’re just sort of concerned, that doesn’t move the needle. But if you have 10% of any public who are super emotional and care about an issue—somebody’s saying closer to 2%, but 10% is better for the example—that moves the needle. 10% of people really, really caring changes the world.

Somebody saying it’s a “Democrat talking point.” It’s more than that. A talking point suggests that it doesn’t make much difference in the real world, but this is something which has taken on a bigger feeling. Politically, it’s dynamite. It’s a nuclear bomb politically.

[38:05]

Somebody says, “We can see through the hysteria, you should too.” What is it that I said that suggests I don’t see through this hysteria? I literally described this as the people being in a more comfortable situation compared to the danger that they took to get here. It’s temporary; they are cared for physically in every way. Of course, we have to have laws that work in the long term. Is there anything that sounded like hysteria in that? And the public is worked up about it—that’s just a fact, right? And the psychology of the people involved could be probably a lot better because when kids and parents can’t see each other, there is a psychological stress. Is anybody disagreeing with anything I’ve said so far? Your characterization of me as an ironically comic character who can’t see the whole picture, I believe, does not match the facts because I just described it in a way that I think 100% of you would agree with.

[39:07]

If 100% of you agree with me, tell me one thing you don’t agree with. Go. Tell me one thing you don’t agree with. “I’m a biased liberal.” No, that’s not something that you disagree with. Tell me what I said that you don’t agree with. “That we should care.” I’m not telling you you should care; I’m telling you people do. That’s an observation that you agree with. I’m not saying you should care; I’m saying people do. That’s the fact. Other people care—you agree with that. Don’t pretend that you disagree with me because you don’t.

[40:09]

Somebody says, “I don’t agree it’s a nuclear bomb.” So somebody doesn’t agree it’s a good political issue. I think the experts are going to be pretty much on my side on this. Here’s how this works: the fact that it gets a lot of attention is what makes it important. Because it’s the sort of story that the news is going to ride mercilessly, it will rise in the calculation of voters. In their minds, it will rise in importance just because it’s getting this much attention and it has the phrase “children in cages” as part of the conversation. That’s just the fact. Whatever gets the most attention is what the public will perceive as important. Even if you individually, Bob, don’t agree, that’s irrelevant. That you think differently than the public—the public is going to be moved by what the news coverage is, and the news coverage is focusing on this as a Hitlerian move, and that’s going to move the needle.

[41:09]

It’s absolutely powerful. How does it rate with Russian collusion? Similar. Similar. Somebody else saying, “You’re falling for the hysteria.” Did you just sign on? What part of me saying that people are physically being better taken care of than they were when they were coming across, but psychologically it’s bad for the parents and the kids—you agree with it. And you see that the public is getting worked up. Did I say that I’m suffering some hysteria over this? Is there anything I said that would suggest that comment makes sense? I think I’m going to block anybody who says that again because that’s just not even trying.

[42:11]

You’re not even trying. “More liberal propaganda.” It is liberal propaganda, but it’s really, really good—meaning that it’s effective. It’s doing what the propagandists wanted it to do. It’s very effective. Somebody says, “Oh, so you’d like to capitulate and lose?” No. Did anything I say sound like I want to capitulate?

“Ripping children from their mothers.” I’m not saying that’s my characterization; I’m saying that’s what the news is reporting. “Child Protective Services.”

[43:14]

Somebody probably wants me to mention that Child Protective Services does remove children from adults. In those cases, the adult that they’re being removed from is an immediate danger. That is not the situation here. Now, it’s another reason that I say analogies are not thinking. If you have made any of the following analogies, you are not part of the thinking class. I’m going to be fair because these are on both sides of the political spectrum. If you’ve made an analogy to Hitler, you’re not thinking. If you made an analogy to Child Protective Services, you’re not thinking. If you made an analogy to school—which I did, but people didn’t realize I was joking when I did it… I was actually mocking somebody else’s analogy but it probably didn’t look that way on Twitter.

[44:16]

If you’re making an analogy of this to anything else, you’re not part of the solution. You’re not thinking because this isn’t like anything else; it is only its own thing. If you can’t deal with it on its own merits and you have to rely on an analogy to make your case—whether you’re making it that it’s more like Auschwitz or the other side is making it that it’s just like child protective custody or how is it different than any parent going to jail—those are just different situations. They’re just different and they have to be treated that way. But I would agree with you on the big point that there are normal situations in which children and parents are separated.

Would Trump visiting and seeing them happy help? I wondered about that, but probably not.

[45:22]

There are too many ways that could go wrong. Somebody says it’s like a criminal being taken from their kid. No, that’s an analogy. If you can’t deal with the actual situation, just leave the conversation. If what you want to talk about is somebody else’s situation that’s different, you’re just not part of the conversation. So don’t pretend that you are. You’re talking about another situation with different variables. “It’s like daycare,” somebody said. Interesting. No one mentions Kate Steinle here because it’s not really important to this conversation. There’s nobody on the side of more crime from illegal immigrants. There’s nobody on that side. You don’t need to mention the obvious. “Stop taking in 250 kids—what do you do with them?” They’re already on our side of the border.

[46:24]

“Why are they not considered invaders?” Well, that is word-thinking. Word-thinking. You can call them whatever you want; it doesn’t change what it is. It doesn’t change what you do about it. Changing the name for it doesn’t change your strategy.

“We need more immigrants for farming.” I believe that’s true, actually. I believe that we do need more workers than we have, especially for the farming segment, but that’s a separate issue. I think I’ve said too much about this already. I’ll tell you, I’m way more mad at the quality of thinking about this than I am about the situation itself, because it’s the quality of thinking that’s so poor.

[47:24]

The analogy thinking and the failure to recognize a short-term and a long-term problem—those are just gigantic failures in thinking which allow, by the way, your government to be worthless. Ultimately, the responsibility is that the government—Democrats, Republicans, the White House—have all failed us on this. On immigration in general, they’ve failed. But they can get away with it because we, the citizens, rely on analogies that are stupid and ignore the long-term/short-term difference. As long as we do that, our government can do anything it wants because the citizens just aren’t in the game at all. That’s all for now. Talk to you later.