Episode 200 Scott Adams: DeSantis is Being so Inarticulate He Monkeyed up His Campaign
Date: 2018-08-30 | Duration: 59:35
Topics
DeSantis monkey reference and use of the word articulate Is he a racist, or just a dumbass? Per his critics…he thought that was a good idea President Trump’s “Sloppy Carl Bernstein” tweet China trade negotiations Fox News coverage of Mollie Tibbetts Socialism and shared resources Will Pope Francis, be able to keep his job?
Transcript
The Simultaneous Sip
Hello Boston, and Sparkles, and Johanna, and everybody. Come on in here if you’re prepared—and I think you probably are. You might already have your beverage, and if you have a beverage like I have a beverage, you know what comes next. And it’s good. It’s really good. Bitcoin 7,000? Well, I hope not, but maybe. And now, the Simultaneous Sip.
Iran and the Strategy of Silence
You know how I like to talk about the news that’s not in the news—the negative space. Sometimes you have to look at the news, and then sometimes you have to look at what is suspiciously not in the news and see if it means anything. Does it mean anything that Iran is not in the news?
There was that threatening noise about the Straits of Hormuz, and some retired military people said that would take about five minutes to clear out their entire navy. But is it my imagination, or did that—which should have been an enormous story dominating all the headlines—just sort of go away? Nobody cared. Isn’t it conspicuous that it’s not being news?
It seems to me that we may have a strategy for Iran that looks like this—and I’ll articulate it. I’m not sure I can say “articulate” anymore, but we’ll talk about it in a way that makes it look like a strategy. If I were in charge, this is what my strategy would be: “Hey Iran, or North Korea, or any of the countries that we have trouble with: we don’t hate you. In fact, we’d like to help you out. But we can’t be a trading partner, and we can’t let you be part of international commerce if you’re criminals, essentially, or aiding terrorists. So, it’s nothing personal. You can do whatever you want to do with that; we’re just not going to allow international trade to happen with you.”
Just depersonalize it. It’s nothing about anything except you’re not above the bar. That’s the minimum bar to be part of the international finance and trade relationship. It looks like that’s what we’re doing. It looks like we’re just strangling their economy in no particular hurry. It doesn’t matter if it takes a year or five years. Iran is going to start making noise about, “Hey, let’s talk.” I would expect to see that pretty soon. Expect to see Iran make some kind of noise about getting past this. That doesn’t mean that it would be easy to negotiate anything we could live with, but I’m expecting them to at least make noises about being reasonable, in part because we’re not making very loud noises about them. It gives them some space to say, “Hey, why don’t we talk?”
Retraction: China Hacking Hillary’s Email
On a Periscope either yesterday or the day before, I talked about a news story that turns out to be fake news—at least that’s my current thinking. That was the story that China hacked Hillary’s email. CNN is reporting that they looked for confirmation from the FBI, and the FBI said, “No, we do not confirm that.” So CNN is reporting it didn’t happen.
That still leaves some wiggle room that the FBI could be lying, or they don’t know what somebody else knows, but the whole “courtesy copy of her emails to China” is apparently fake. Now, that doesn’t mean that the debunking of the story is right either. We live in a world where you could never tell. But personally, I’m going to treat it as fake news and offer a retraction of anything I said about Chinese hacking of her email.
DeSantis, Andrew Gillum, and the “Monkey” Comment
Let’s talk about Ron DeSantis and what everybody’s talking about in the headlines. Publications like The Hill and CNN are painting him as a terrible racist. Their evidence goes as follows: he’s running against an African-American man in Florida named Andrew Gillum, and he has said two unfortunate things. One, he said he doesn’t want the voters to “monkey up” the good results that they’re getting with policies under the Trump administration. People say, “Wait, ‘monkey up’ isn’t even the term, and you would never say ‘monkey’ if it weren’t a black guy, so it must be obviously racist.”
On top of that, CNN came up with a video of DeSantis in public referring to his opposition, Gillum, as “articulate.” Now, most of you know that “articulate” is one of those words that racists used to use to act surprised that there was a black person who could sound smart. Generally speaking, when you see some famous white person call a black person “articulate,” your flag goes off and says, “That’s a little racist.”
So, we have two bits of evidence that DeSantis is racist. Let me say as clearly as possible: he is a dumbass. We can be sure about that, at least. It’s pretty dumb to use that word “articulate” at the least. He’s pretty dumb to make monkey references in this day and age in that context. Is it racist? I’ll talk about that next, but at a minimum, it was dumb.
Why do I say it’s dumb? If you’re arguing with me, it means you’re not watching the news. He walked right into a trap. If you walk into a trap that’s an obvious trap, you can still blame the person who laid the trap—sure, nothing would have happened without the trap—but if you see the trap and you walk right into it, you’re a dumbass.
The minimum that DeSantis has to explain is why he’s a dumbass. That’s not based on mind-reading; that’s based on the fact that he did things which I would have considered obvious mistakes. There are things I wouldn’t have done had I been in my right mind and in that situation. Let’s not defend everything he’s done; at the very least, he was a dumbass twice.
The “Articulate” Word Choice
Let’s talk about the theory that those are signs he is a racist. Suppose DeSantis had said instead of “articulate,” “My candidate is very persuasive in talking about his socialist policies.” Would you have considered that racist? To say that he is very persuasive?
You might not know unless you look it up, but “persuasive” is a synonym for “articulate.” It’s not the concept that’s the problem. He could have easily said, “My opponent is a smart guy, he’s very persuasive, he does a good job representing his side, but I have other opinions.” That would not have sounded racist. But the actual choice of that specific word is given as a signal. His critics are saying that he intentionally used that word as a secret dog whistle, and that he also said “monkey” as a secret dog whistle.
Let’s work through the thinking of his critics. According to his critics, he was intentionally using those words to let voters know he’s a racist. The critics’ theory of DeSantis is that he was thinking privately—they’re reading his mind—“Well, obviously this is what he was thinking.” They think he believed sounding like a big old racist would help him get more votes. Just let that marinate for a moment. DeSantis’s critics believe that in his private thoughts, he was thinking, “I’m not sure people can tell my critic is black. I’d better send some obvious dog whistles. I’ll send the ones that are so obvious that it will be headline news and I’ll be called a racist for the rest of my life. Yeah, that could work. I’m going to get some extra votes by outing myself as a giant racist while I’m running for governor.”
I don’t see the downside in this! He executed his plan to get more votes by framing himself as a huge racist—and here’s the best part: he’s framed himself as an inarticulate racist to get more votes. That’s what his critics think he did.
As I said, no matter what he was thinking internally, we can conclude he was certainly a dumbass. But was he that dumb? There’s dumb, and then there’s dumber than a stone. It’s dumb to use those words because anyone his age and level of experience should have known to avoid those phrases. He wasn’t smart enough to avoid them. But was he so dumb that he thought his voters couldn’t tell he was running against a black guy? I’m pretty sure they saw pictures of his opponent. However dumb you think his voters are, I’m almost positive they noticed he was a white guy running against a black guy. Did he need to tell them?
The critics are saying more than that. They’re saying he’s also telling us his opponent is smart, because that’s what “articulate” means. “Articulate” means you’re really good with words, you’re persuasive, you’re smart. You can’t really be articulate without also being smart. So, he thought making himself look like an inarticulate idiot would somehow get him more votes because his voters are even dumber than he is?
I know by tomorrow there’ll be a headline in The Hill saying “Cartoonist Defends Racist.” I’m not doing that. What I’m saying is I don’t know what he’s thinking, but it’s obvious that he chose two words that are clearly a mistake based on the fact that there was a bad result and the fact that you and I would have seen it coming.
Unconscious Bias and Pattern Recognition
I completely agree that there was a time in history that if a white person said a black person was “articulate,” it was nothing but racist. But you are running against a candidate who absolutely belongs where he is. Andrew Gillum has a hell of a resume—he’s been a mayor. When you call somebody who has reached that level of success “articulate,” does it mean the same thing? At what point do you modernize your thinking to the point where it’s just another way to call somebody a good representative of their team’s policies?
Suppose it’s true that on some automatic, subconscious level, the reason DeSantis chose either of those words was because he was subconsciously influenced by the fact that he’s running against an African-American man. Suppose it was unconscious. If it wasn’t conscious, is he still a racist? Can you be an unconscious racist?
The answer is yes, because a hundred percent of people are reflexively racist, meaning unconscious, not thinking about it. To be good people in the year 2018 is not to abandon the fact that your brain is a bad pattern recognition machine—which is what it is. Your brain looks for patterns and then it acts on those patterns, but it’s not very good at it. I’m writing a book about this, by the way. We’re not really good at recognizing patterns accurately. We just see them and we say, “Every time I see somebody with a hat, they give me a dirty look. People with hats hate me. I hate people with hats.” That’s not a real pattern; it’s just something you thought you noticed.
It is impossible on the reflexive level to avoid this, where we all evolved with the natural instinct to prefer the people who look the most like us. If you’ve got a twin, you like that twin better than anybody else. You probably even married people who look like you. So, is DeSantis a reflexive, automatic racist on an unconscious level? Yes, of course. Just like every one of you. Just like Gillum is. Just like every single person.
The test is whether you can think past it. Can you use your higher levels of thinking to be a better person than someone who judges based on patterns? The people who are saying DeSantis is a horrible racist are judging based on a pattern. Someone in the comments just mentioned that my girlfriend, Kristina, looks nothing like my “rat-ass.” That’s true.
The thing that makes people good or bad is not whether they were born with bad pattern recognition, because that would be all of us. The higher-level thinking, the more ethical behavior, is: can you notice when you’re doing it and then avoid it? With DeSantis, there’s no evidence that he’s an actual racist. There is evidence he’s a dumbass who used words that make him look like one. There may also be evidence that he was subconsciously influenced because the vocabulary seeps into your thinking.
Mind-reading and Standards
I’ve noticed over my adult life that whenever I’m talking to someone who is black, the odds of me having to use the word “black” as a color for something in the environment approach a hundred percent. I can’t figure out why that is, other than I’m unconsciously influenced by the fact that I’m talking to somebody who is black. I’ve caught myself and tried to work around the word. If you’re playing chess, do you want the white pieces or the black pieces? It feels like there are a million reasons you would say the word “black” just talking about the environment, and I think to myself, “Am I only saying this because I’m talking to somebody black?” We might actually be influenced by our environment; it seeps into your choice of words automatically.
If we are mind-reading based on a person’s choice of words that otherwise have normal meanings, we’re being idiots. vocabulary seeps into your thinking, which is not an indication of how he would act, or what he thinks is how he should be. It’s not an indication that he’s going to teach his kids to be racist or that he’s sending secret dog whistles. It’s an indication that when you enter a topic, you tend to introduce words that are about that topic automatically.
He’s still a dumbass for using those words. But to go the extra level and judge his inner thoughts—which we cannot see—to be racist? I ask you: would you want to be judged by that same standard? Should you be punished because other people believe you have inner thoughts that are bad? Is that the world you want to live in? I would like to live in a world where if people do bad things, they have consequences. But if you want to be judged by someone else’s opinion of your personal inner thoughts that you have not expressed, we’ve got big problems.
Sloppy Carl Bernstein and Trump’s Tweets
Let’s talk about “Sloppy Carl Bernstein.” There are too many people in the news with “Steen” or “Stein” in their last name because I have a terrible time remembering which it is. Is it Feinstein? Bernstein? I think it’s “Steen” in both cases. By the way, if you were just watching this out of context, you would say, “My god, that guy must be anti-Semitic,” because he’s making fun of people with Jewish last names. If you saw anything out of context, you would make assumptions about me, but I think most of you know that I’ve mispronounced just about everybody’s last name on this Periscope at one point or another.
Let’s look at the President’s tweets. He’s been busy. It looks like he gave Jeff Zucker a nickname: “Little Jeff Z.” Here’s a tweet from three hours ago: “The hatred and extreme bias of me by CNN has clouded their thinking and made them unable to function. But actually, as I have always said, this has been going on for a long time. Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, and AT&T should fire him to save credibility.”
And here is the one about Carl Bernstein: “CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake. Sloppy Carl Bernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country.”
He’s calling him “Sloppy Carl Bernstein.” My first impression was that he’s reusing his insults. I thought Michael Moore was “sloppy,” and I thought Steve Bannon was “sloppy,” but now Carl Bernstein is “sloppy.” Not only did Carl get insulted, but he got a third-hand insult. You can imagine the President tweeting and thinking, “I’ve got to give this guy a nickname. How about Crummy Carl? No, that’s no good. He’s not worth a fresh nickname. I’m going to give him a stale nickname that used to belong to Michael Moore.”
The Trade Squeeze: Mexico, Canada, and China
North Korea is getting interesting. The path probably looks like this: because North Korea and the United States are not as belligerent as before, meaning the President and Kim Jong Un seem to have some kind of chemistry, we are able to withstand the little bumps of the negotiations.
Right now, China is allegedly being soft on North Korea because it puts pressure on the United States, and maybe that has to do with our trade negotiations. Trump is taking North Korea off the table by saying he has no reason to spend money on war games. It looks like he’s going to negotiate a trade deal with China first, then get back to North Korea. But before he can get China to the table, he has to get Canada and Mexico to the table.
If we get Mexico and Canada on board for trade, and then maybe get something going in Europe, China will have a harder time explaining why they’re the odd country out. Its own citizens will ask, “Why is it that only China can’t reach an agreement? Is it because we’re asking for too much or because we’re being unreasonable?” I think you’re seeing the squeeze play from both sides. You have two very capable negotiators, Trump and Xi Jinping, using every tool at their disposal. It’s kind of interesting.
Critiquing Fox News: The Mollie Tibbetts Anecdote
When I see words like “neo-imperialism,” those are labels that signal to me that somebody is not a clear thinker. The labeling stuff is like a flag; usually, that’s not a deep thinker slapping those labels on things.
Now, I’m going to change my criticism from CNN to Fox News because I’m a fair pundit. I criticize them for making such a big deal out of the tragedy with Mollie Tibbetts, the woman killed by someone who is here illegally. I argued, as did Geraldo Rivera on Fox News, that focusing on this one crime comes off as racist. You can have opinions on the border, but if you’re focusing on an anecdote, it’s because you’re doing it to persuade. You’re doing it because of the racial difference. To me, it’s illegitimate to focus too much on any anecdote, but it’s also very effective.
It comes off as racist. I’m not saying I can see the inner thoughts of the people at Fox News, but like using the word “articulate” or “monkey,” you should know that everyone is going to see this as a little bit racist. I think that was a bad programming choice, but good persuasion.
The Labeling of Socialism and the Uber Analogy
The other complaint I have with Fox News lately is them going after the “Bernie proteges,” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I see Fox calling them socialists or communists and oversimplifying their positions. That just feels illegitimate; it’s persuasion, not reporting.
I have a question for those of you who label them socialists: Is Uber socialist? What Uber does is allow many people to share a car. It’s an organized process with a driver who has ownership, but Uber is a way to share resources. Is Uber a socialist idea? Somebody says, “It’s voluntary, so it’s okay.”
So, you would all agree that sharing resources is not inherently socialist because Uber does it. You do it in lots of different contexts. If you go to a hotel, it’s a shared resource. Suppose one of these socialists came up with a plan for single-payer healthcare, but they said it’s optional. Universal healthcare for the half of the country that thinks it’s a good idea, and the other half can do whatever they want. They can use the free market.
Would you be okay with a half-socialist solution where you don’t have to be part of it, you don’t have to pay for it, and if it all goes wrong, it has no impact on you? Would you care if half the country chose a public option that was siloed off? Somebody says, “It’s still state socialism, so it’s bad.” No, you have to give a reason. In this scenario, the socialist silo would be competing against a free market. If the free market did a better job, people would be free to jump over.
I’m testing your definition of socialism. If your definition is that as long as you have a choice, you’re okay, then it’s a question of whether the government is involved. Let’s say the government is not part of it. Let’s say the socialists self-organize, like a Kaiser HMO, and it’s siloed off. Their taxes would pay for their own healthcare, but the other half of the country has nothing to do with it. It’s not your government, it’s not your money. Under those conditions, would you say that is socialism?
When you label something “socialist,” it sweeps it off the table because it lumps it in with every other socialist thing in the past that didn’t work. It conflates it with communism. There are plenty of situations where we share resources to lower costs. There are components of socialism that work. If you could take away the bad components and keep the good parts—like everyone having healthcare because they opted in voluntarily—is that socialist?
The Venezuela Comparison
What I described might not be practical, but it would meet the requirements for you not being involved in socialism. The Venezuela example drives me crazy because comparing Venezuela to America is like me comparing Uber to healthcare. If you’re trying to make a specific point—like “Hey, there’s a shared resource”—people get caught up in the details. “Wait a minute, Uber has an app, that’s different than healthcare!” No, that’s not the point.
When I hear anybody say Venezuela is failing because they’re socialists, I say to myself, “They are socialists and they are failing,” but we need to dig into this more. There are clearly European countries that are a little bit socialist that are working out. It could be that what’s wrong with Venezuela is the privatizing of businesses, for example. Venezuela is not failing because they have universal healthcare. It’s failing because of specific policies.
Europe has been socialist on the backs of America; that’s a good point. We effectively subsidize Europe by being their military. Somebody said, “Uber is not Venezuela, Scott.” That’s the dumbest thing anybody’s ever said on my Periscope. After I just gave a description of how analogies work, somebody thinks I’m saying Uber and Venezuela are the same thing? How dumb can you be?
Lazy Rhetoric: Hitler and KKK Comparisons
“Hitler was a socialist.” Here are things I hate because they’re stupid: “Hitler was a socialist” and “The KKK used to be Democrats.” Those two things are so freaking dumb that when I hear them, my brain struggles. Those things can be true without having any relevance to today. It is not true that because Denmark has socialized medicine, they’re on the verge of creating the Holocaust. Saying the Nazis were socialists doesn’t tell you anything except that Hitler was a monster.
And the fact that the KKK may have been started by Democrats? I don’t care because the past is gone. If somebody is 18 and they register as a Democrat, do I hold it against them that in the 1930s there was someone who was also a Democrat in the KKK? It’s ridiculous to bring that into the future.
Pope Francis and the Abuse Scandal
How many of you think the Pope can keep his job under the current controversy? There’s a semi-credible allegation that he knew about child abuse and was soft on it—that’s a bad choice of words.
Stop using Hitler and ancient KKK history to make points about 2018. It’s rhetorical. “Socialists tend to be authoritarian”—that might be true, but it’s not always relevant.
Every time somebody gets called a socialist, I think the person saying it is not credible. If you say there’s an element of socialism you don’t like, that’s valid. But just shouting “socialism!” is the right’s version of the left shouting “racist!” When the left is out of ammo, they say, “You’re all racists.” When the right is out of ammo, they call the left “socialists.” It’s just an “out of ammo” thing to say.
Full socialism would eventually require force, but I have never heard anybody suggest such a thing. Even the people talking about socialism appear to me as Trump-like persuaders who really just want healthcare and education. It seems to me that if America wants to be great, we should have at least as good an education and healthcare system as other countries. We can’t be that great without figuring out how to do those things. I think you get there with something that looks more like innovation, not because the government made your taxes higher.
Does capitalism require force? Of course it does. You are in a system that only exists because if you got outside of it, the government would literally kill you. You are in a system at the end of the barrel of a gun. You don’t get a choice about paying your taxes.
What’s my prediction on the Pope? I was asking all of you to get a read on the public feeling. Very few of you said he needs to go. The predominant opinion was, “Let the Catholics work it out.” The fact that there wasn’t much highly emotional concern here leads me to believe the Pope will stay in office. There isn’t enough emotional momentum to force him out. They do forgive, though I’m not sure the forgiving kicks in until there’s some apologizing and recognizing what was done wrong.
I’m going to sign off now. We’ve gone long enough. Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you all later.