Episode 243 Scott Adams: Chinese Fentanyl, Proxy Revenge, Hypnosis and Memory, Abortion
Date: 2018-10-02 | Duration: 46:36
Topics
China’s involvement in Fentanyl trafficking Christine Ford did a research paper about recovered memories Kavanaugh: What is a fair hiring standard? What would happen if Roe v Wade is overturned? It becomes a state issue, so which states will do what? Why isn’t that being covered by the news media? Ford’s internet presence has been deeply and curiously scrubbed Carol Christine Fair’s belief that what she said was appropriate
I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
See all of my Periscope videos here…
https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL
Find my WhenHub Interface app here…
https://interface.whenhub.com
## Transcript
## [China’s Involvement in Fentanyl Trafficking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=7s)
Hello Joyce, hello Susannah. Hey everybody, come on in here. Got lots of stuff to talk about today.
Before I start, I’m going to have to mention this for a few more days just because to do otherwise would feel dishonest. Most of you know from yesterday that my stepson died of a fentanyl—presumed fentanyl—overdose. We know he had fentanyl in him. I appreciate all of the condolences and good thoughts that people sent me by social media and otherwise.
But let’s talk about that. Apparently, the government is having a hearing today about Chinese companies flooding the U.S. with counterfeit fentanyl. It seems that China might be the big source for this illegal fentanyl that finds itself in other drugs such as counterfeit Xanax, which may have been a factor in my stepson’s death.
Here’s my feeling about this: if we know that China is the source—and my understanding is still sketchy, so I may be wrong about this, I could use some fact-checking—but my understanding is that fentanyl is hard to make in your bathtub. You need something like a legitimate pharmaceutical company, even if that legitimate company is doing illegitimate things once it makes them. So it seems to me that if we know China's the source, we might already know which pharmaceutical companies specifically are the source.
In China, things are not so clean as they might be in other places because a CEO of a pharmaceutical company is likely to be connected to the government through family connections, money connections, etc. So it might not be as easy as calling them out and asking for China to do something because it might be complicated. But we know that there’s one thing China doesn't like, which is shame. I’ll be sending China a whole bunch of shame, and they can do what they like with that.
My suggestion is that they identify the perpetrators within their country and execute them. Certainly, execution is not too big a penalty for somebody who might be responsible for up to 30,000 deaths in the United States every year. What do you do to somebody who does that? Execution. I think almost anybody would agree—any country—if somebody kills 30,000 people, even in a country that doesn't have the death penalty, you’re still going to kill that guy one way or the other.
## [A Call for Government Action Against Chinese Executives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=190s)
If China doesn't want to get its house in order and help solve this problem for us—and I realize there's demand in this country, etc.—I don't really care about that right now. Right now, I care that China stops the problem. If they don't, things are going to get worse for China. I personally would not be in favor of giving them any kind of a trade deal until they fix this. There are a couple of things that China is doing that they should just be shamed for until it stops.
China doesn't like to lose face, and let me tell you China, you certainly lost a lot of face. I have to say that until this week, I actually respected China, but I’ve lost all respect now. I’ve lost all respect for the Chinese leadership because of their inability to control this continuous flow of death to the United States and other places through this fentanyl.
Now, we don’t know all the facts, so it’s a little premature. It might not be that China's government even knows what to do or who’s doing it, but we should find that out. Apparently, the United States government is confident enough to state it as a fact. If our government is stating it as a fact, we can’t be 100% sure that's true, but I’m sure enough that now China needs to answer for it.
You’re going to hear about this probably every day from me for a while. If China doesn't do something about the fentanyl problem, I favor our government solving it for them. By solving it for them, I mean extra-legal execution of Chinese citizens.
Let me say that as clearly as possible: I’m favoring, if the Chinese government can’t handle their own problem—and the problem seems to be that pharmaceutical companies are creating this fake fentanyl and shipping it to the United States—assuming that can be confirmed and that China's government is unwilling to deal with it, I would favor extra-legal execution of the people that we can confirm are behind it. If there’s a CEO or executives behind it, keep in mind we’re talking about 30,000 deaths in the United States that are somewhat directly attributable to this flow of illegal fentanyl from China. Execution is absolutely an appropriate solution if China won't do it first.
Right now, I have no respect for China. Their government has lost all respect, and it's not coming back anytime soon. If the governments are unwilling to take care of that, I would request that our government, once it's reached a degree of certainty about who the problem is in China, I would like to see the names of those people. I’d like to see a picture and a photograph of the Chinese executives that we’re specifically blaming for this because they need to be on the front page of every newspaper, every website.
Consider this: if a mass killer killed a hundred people, what would the media do? They would put the face and the name of that killer out there. Stephen Paddock, for example, would be famous all over the world. There are apparently, allegedly—not confirmed, but I think we’re heading toward confirming it—some Chinese executives who may be killing 30,000 Americans a year and know it. I want their names, I want their faces, and I want any Google search that involves these people. If they’re executives, they’re probably somewhat high visibility. I would like their family name to be the subject of a Google search so that they could be known as mass killers.
## [Message to the White House](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=497s)
For those of you who are not aware of this, there are a number of people at high levels in the White House who do sample this Periscope. I know for sure that this message got to where it needed to go. I don't mean the President, but within the White House, within the administration.
The suggestion is that we have an absolute right to know the names and see the faces of the people accused of killing 30,000 Americans a year. The 30,000 is my own estimate based on the fact that there are 72,000 deaths from overdose. The greatest percentage of those by far is fentanyl, and the greatest source of that comes from China. I’m interpolating a little bit, connecting some dots, but in a fair way. Whether that number is 20,000 or 50,000, I don’t know, but I’m going to say 30,000 just to keep it simple.
Government of the United States: as a taxpayer, as a citizen, and as a supporter of this administration, I’m asking you directly, because I know this message will go through one way or the other: I’d like to see the names and faces of the Chinese executives if you know them and if you’re sure. If you’re not sure, then absolutely don’t. But if we reach a level of certainty, I deserve to know the name and the face of who killed my stepson if you can do it.
## [Christine Ford, Hypnosis, and Recovered Memories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=577s)
Enough on that. Let’s go to some stuff that’s a little more interesting, or at least less of a downer.
There's a story about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Ford. She was co-author of a paper that involved the topics of hypnosis and memory. In that paper, it claims—correctly—that hypnosis can pollute memories. Now we have entered into fact that Christine Ford, who claims she has a 100% accurate memory of an event involving Judge Kavanaugh—who does not remember and believes it did not exist—co-authored a paper about the benefits of hypnosis for traumatic experiences.
Here’s what we know, and I’m going to make sure it’s as clear as possible what we don’t know. What we don’t know is that Christine Ford has ever been hypnotized. There’s zero evidence of that that I am aware of. But it is certainly worth asking. If the FBI is listening, that is a question that you need to ask.
Self-hypnosis, by the way, would not be the same kind of memory-altering significance as being hypnotized by another person. Self-hypnosis is almost entirely about relaxing and visualizing; there are no external suggestions coming in. Don't think of that as a memory polluter, although there might be some way that's true, it’s not a demonstrated effect. The demonstrated effect is somebody else hypnotizing someone can introduce suggestions, even accidentally.
Again, a summary of what’s in evidence: we know she had trauma, she says she was suffering from PTSD and claustrophobia and anxiety. We know that she wrote a paper saying that hypnosis could be useful for treating those things. And we know that she understands, because she co-wrote the paper, that hypnosis can pollute memories. We have no evidence that she was ever hypnotized, so we can't say "therefore X." That’s stranded knowledge. It doesn't really connect to the case unless she was hypnotized. The FBI should absolutely ask that question.
## [The Mechanics of Hypnosis and Amnesia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=803s)
Can people forget things under hypnosis? Somebody asked me online: can you hypnotize somebody to forget something? My answer is: I’ve never seen it happen. In movies, people forget that they’ve been hypnotized. But in reality, although I’ve heard of it happening, I’ve never witnessed it in any hypnosis experience that I’ve either administered or observed. I can’t confirm that, but I also can’t deny it. It would be rare, in my opinion, for somebody to have hypnosis-induced amnesia. It would not be rare to have hypnosis-induced memory changes. That’s actually common. If you don’t understand that it’s common, then you don’t understand the context of this situation.
I think it's time to pause for the simultaneous sip. I’ve given you all enough time to grab your beverage, your cup, your chalice, your mug. Fill it with your favorite beverage and join me please.
## [Kavanaugh: What is a Fair Hiring Standard?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=884s)
This next question is interesting: what is the standard of suspicion that should apply to this Kavanaugh case? Almost nobody involved in the discussion is even attempting to be unbiased or fair about it because people are too invested. I’m positive that effect influences me as well, but I’ll at least make an attempt to be as fair as possible.
Those people saying that the legal standard for guilt has not been demonstrated for Kavanaugh and therefore he should be fine—that’s ridiculous, because it’s not a legal situation. People look at the prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, who was asked to work for the Republicans in questioning Christine Ford. She did a write-up after the fact. She said that if this were a legal case, it would not rise to the level that you would pursue; there’s not enough there. She also said that you wouldn’t even pursue it if it was a civil case, which has a lower standard of evidence.
A criminal case has to be "guilty beyond reasonable doubt." A civil case has to be "more likely guilty than not." It’s a preponderance of evidence situation. Rachel Mitchell said you've not reached the highest level, but you’ve also not reached the lowest level under the law. But this was never a legal competition. It's useful context, because if she had said the opposite, it would be news. The fact she says it’s not that high a standard tells you where it is.
It doesn't tell you he should be hired, because the job applicant standard is entirely different. What is the standard for hiring? Let’s say you had someone applying for a job and you know there’s a rumor about them. You assess there’s a 10% chance it’s true that this person did some heinous crime—say it was a sex crime. Would you hire an employee who had a 10% chance that they might be a rapist? Probably not. If you could hire other people, you wouldn’t take that chance.
Would you hire somebody who was 10% likely to have been guilty of a sex crime but probably won’t do it again? A lot of people say yes, a lot of people say no. Personally, if this were just a normal job interview, I would be on the side of not hiring Kavanaugh. I’ll say that again, because there are so few people willing to be unbiased. If I thought the odds were 10%, I’d say no, let's look at somebody else. Why take a chance if you have other qualified judges?
But this is not a normal job interview. This is a situation in which there are big themes being tested. They’re big themes about what kind of civilization we want to be. On top of the job interview are far bigger issues: can we change politics in this way permanently? Will everybody be judged on what they did as a minor? Will everyone be judged on whether they had some drinks in the past?
## [The Preservation of the Presumption of Innocence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=1293s)
The decision on Kavanaugh comes down to this: would you accept a 10% chance that he did the deed if you knew that to reject him, you also had to accept that you've permanently destroyed a key tenet of civilization, which is "innocent until proven guilty"?
It’s not a legal case, so we don’t have the technical legal requirement. But it is generally accepted that we should act that way by analogy. When you’re hiring somebody, if they’re accused of something and there is no proof, it would be good social process to act like you don’t know anything—because you don’t. Your suspicions should not be enough to derail somebody’s life.
Would you accept a candidate with a 10% chance of having groped somebody while drunken at 17 years old, who then lived an exemplary life since then, to retain the glue that holds us all together? That "innocent until we really know you're guilty" thing is essentially the underpinning of pretty much everything we care about.
If a black man comes in for a job and I say to myself, "There’s nothing to make me suspect this particular applicant, but I know that the crime rate of black people is higher than other groups," the Kavanaugh case gives you permission to not hire that person based on a 1% worry. The Kavanaugh situation says you don't need to know somebody is guilty; you just have to be worried about it. Is that enough? The glue of civilization will fall apart if we can destroy a man because there might be a problem.
How about destroying somebody for trivial lies? Kavanaugh is accused of being a liar about the amount he drank in high school and the meaning of some words in his high school yearbook. Let's say he did lie about unimportant things that happened when he was a teenager. Should that be disqualifying?
If a guy comes in for a job interview and you say, "I want to know about your character—have you ever had alcohol?" and he says he's a social drinker. Then you ask, "Did you ever drink enough to be drunk when you were 17?" and he says yes. Then you ask, "Have you ever been so drunk you couldn't remember what you did?"
That is a stupid question, because everybody who's been pretty drunk has memory lapses. What does the applicant say? They probably lie. If they say "no," do you just say, "Get out of my office because there's a very high chance you're lying to me"? That is insane.
We’re dealing with taking an X-percent chance that somebody did something at 17 that would be heinous if true, but we also know that none of that has happened as he has become the person he is now. Do you accept that in return for unraveling one of the key threads that keeps civilization together? My prediction is no way in hell. Civilization will not give up a foundational building block.
## [Perspective on the Current State of the World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=1784s)
Somebody pointed me to a piece by Victor Davis Hanson talking about how the Kavanaugh situation suggests civilization is in big trouble—that things have never been this bad.
I say baloney. There are definitely things that are bad, but it is also unambiguously true that we're better than we've ever been. If the thing we're arguing about is what Brett Kavanaugh did when he was 17—if that’s the biggest problem in the news—we are in really good shape.
Take a breath. Imagine you're a time-traveling observer. You go back to the mid-1940s and there’s a world war. You look at the '60s and there's marching in the streets. You’ve got AIDS out of control and nuclear proliferation. Then you fast forward to 2018 and the headlines are about what a Supreme Court nominee did in high school. If that’s what we’re talking about, we’re in good shape.
## [The "Dog That Didn't Bark": Roe v. Wade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=1907s)
Here’s what’s missing from the discussion about Kavanaugh that signals it’s an illegitimate debate. It’s people lining up by political parties, that much is obvious. But here’s the dog that didn't bark: how many of you know what happens if the Supreme Court overturns *Roe v. Wade*?
I feel like the public believes that means abortion would be illegal. My understanding, subject to fact-checking, is that if the Supreme Court boots it, all that means is that the federal government gets out of the business of saying what's legal or illegal, and it goes to the states.
At the time of *Roe v. Wade*, having the federal government get out of it would mean it would mostly be illegal because the states would want it illegal too. But now it's 2018. How many states would make it illegal? California wouldn't. Where I live, there would be no change. The biggest Democratic states would experience no change.
You would have a country in which there were states where it isn't legal and states where it is, and people can move states. Moreover, people in the states where it's illegal will 100% find strategies to go to a neighboring state. There may be crowdfunding or charities that help. It probably will get harder in some situations, but the pro-choice folks will figure out the system. Maybe you have an app and say, "I live next to a clinic, and I will let you stay in my room while you're traveling."
The net outcome of any change in *Roe v. Wade* would end up being a far smaller change than the news is reporting. Very smart people are thinking the same thing. Why don't you see that reported? Have you seen any report on which states are likely to keep abortion rights just the way they are? If you haven't seen that report, you are being manipulated or poorly served by the news.
Abortion is really the only thing behind the Kavanaugh thing. Has your news source informed you what would happen if *Roe v. Wade* is overturned? They have not. Fox News doesn't want to show you, CNN doesn't want to show you, MSNBC doesn't want to show you. There is no attempt to show you what would happen. If you don't know that, you do not have an informed opinion on this topic.
## [Temperament as a Sexist Attack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=2215s)
If you were defending Kavanaugh, please stop saying that when people say they don't have a memory of something, they're "confirming it didn't happen." It’s embarrassing. It is not true that not having a memory of something from 35 years ago is the same as saying it didn't happen. Every time we act like it is, it just makes us look like idiots.
Regarding temperament: the Kavanaugh haters are going after him for having the "wrong temperament." Saturday Night Live made fun of it. It’s ridiculous, because anybody in that situation has my permission to get as mad as they want to be. That has nothing to do with what he would do while ruling on a technical legal matter.
Kavanaugh has been a judge for a long time. I think we’d figure out if his temperament was a problem by now. But my point is this: let us not pretend that the temperament insult is anything but an anti-male attack. Just like when people call women "hysterical"—which is considered sexist, and I agree with that—women don't get accused of having a "bad temperament." It’s because men are big and scary and dangerous that temperament is even on the table. If a hundred-pound woman has a bad temperament, nobody even cares because she can't hurt you. But with him, they’re implying he’s large, male, and dangerous. That’s just sexism.
## [Google and the Scrubbing of Christine Ford](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=2459s)
Mike Cernovich has reported that not only did Christine Ford's social media profiles get scrubbed, but apparently even basic Google searches are turning up empty in ways that they wouldn't. I don't have all the details, but I trust Mike’s information is accurate in the sense that there's something unusual about how deeply she got scrubbed.
Let’s put some facts together. Christine Ford is engaged in a highly political thing that has impact on the midterms. She has claimed that she put in a second front door to host Google interns. So we know she has a Google connection. There are credible allegations that her internet presence was scrubbed in a way that only somebody like Google could do.
Is that enough information to say that the FBI should find out whether Google scrubbed her history? If Google did scrub her history, Google is interfering with the election, and I would say that would be jail time for some people. The FBI should be investigating Google. There's enough suspicion based on the facts to suggest an FBI probe. We should find out if Google is illegally interfering with American elections.
## [The Normalization of Hateful Rhetoric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIfH4VNkvc&t=2649s)
Speaking of fair, there is a professor named Christine Fair. She was recently booted off of Twitter after she tweeted something hateful about "entitled white men" and how they should be castrated and killed.
The shocking thing is not that she got kicked off of Twitter; that was appropriate. The shocking thing is that she thought it was okay to say that. In order for her to say those things in public, she had to think that it was a common enough thought that it would be safe for her to say it. That’s the scary part. We’ve actually gotten to the point where suggesting killing and castrating white men feels like something you can say in public.
All right, I think that’s enough for today. I’m going to talk to you tomorrow. And every day for a while now, I’m going to remind China: China, we’re coming for you. We’re going to come for you hard. So get ready, China.