Episode 246 Scott Adams: The FBI Report, Bullies and Male Privilege
Date: 2018-10-04 | Duration: 45:24
Topics
Dems trapped themselves with their Kavanaugh 1 week demand Bret Stephens NYT article The Kavanaugh dust-up feels a lot like “proxy revenge” Alyssa Milano’s MSNBC anti-men, anti-Trump comments China’s chip hack was a massive intelligence accomplishment Democrats challenging the FBI’s credibility over Kavanaugh BLM slogan is genius…and also racist “Believe Women” is sexist…implies don’t believe men Ye brokering sit-down between President Trump and Kaepernick
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=3s)
Papa Papa home phone boom! Hey Joanne, hey Gillian, hey dirty uncle, hey eunuchs Robbie Russell, hey Olga. Come on in here. If you get in here on time, it will be time for you to enjoy the unparalleled pleasure that's called the simultaneous sip. You know how it goes. It goes something like this: you grab your mug, your cup, your vessel, your chalice, your cup. You fill it with your favorite beverage, you lift it to your lips, and you simultaneously sip on my mark. Go!
## [The FBI Report and the Democrats' Trap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=65s)
In the headlines, the FBI has submitted its report. This report is not an investigation; it's just a write-up of some people they talked to. Of course, all of the conversation will be about whether that FBI investigation was good enough.
As I said before, the Democrats sort of trapped themselves with this demand for one week of an FBI investigation. Although the following conversation never took place, I want you to imagine it as if it had. One of the characters in this one-act play will be Dale—Dale the anti-Trumper. You could imagine Cory Booker or anybody else. The other character will be President Trump. It's a one-act play, and it goes like this:
"President Trump, you have to have a full investigation, a full investigation with the FBI looking into this. Otherwise, we can't vote. It's all wrong. We have to have an FBI investigation."
"Well, are you just trying to delay? Because it feels like you're just trying to delay. Are you killing us with delay?"
"We just want one week! Just one week of an FBI investigation, just like they did with Anita Hill. Just one week, that's all. It’s got to be a full investigation, President Trump."
"So, if I let them investigate for one week, then I would have satisfied the main thing you're asking?"
"That's right! I know you'll never do it. You're never going to investigate because you don't want the truth. All we need is one week."
"President Trump... okay. How about I say yes? Let's have that one week investigation in which we talk to people. There must be three or four people we haven't talked to who apparently have nothing important to say, or we would have already talked to them. But we will do that. I think you're absolutely right. Let's get to the bottom of this. Let's have one full, robust week of maximum FBI investigation. And then you'll be happy, right?"
"What's happening here? I don't understand what's happening here."
"Well, what's happening is you asked for something, you said it was very important, and I'm offering it to you. I'm granting a one-week investigation."
"Oh, I see the trick. It's going to be overly narrow. You're narrowing it! It's too narrow!"
"Good point. I think I'll tell the FBI to make sure they do what they need to do. We won't narrow it too much. Just talk to the people they think are necessary."
"What's happening? I don't know what's happening here!"
"Well, Dale, I'm giving you what you're asking for."
And scene.
## [The Democratic Strategy and Kavanaugh's Confirmation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=314s)
The funny part here, as I look for my power cord, is that the Democrats totally walked into a narrow ravine and surrendered. Well, we're in the narrow ravine; what happens now? I like being in this narrow ravine. Who are those guys up on the ledge? They seem to be armed. I think it'll work out.
That's sort of what's happening now. It's hilarious theater. The claim that the Democrats had—that the process wasn't fair—just went from a reasonably good claim to a pretty weak claim. Now it's not "you haven't investigated them"; now it's just, "Well, maybe you could have talked to some other people," or "maybe those people who investigated for hours at a time, the people who testified, Kavanaugh and Ford, maybe we needed to ask them more questions," as if they had something else to say.
The Democrats have a very weak hand. Here's another good week for the President. I would say that Kavanaugh will certainly be approved unless there's some new surprise today.
Now, here's an interesting factoid: because the Democrats treated Kavanaugh as a solid block of "no" votes, there were no Democrats who were saying "maybe." Because they voted along party lines and it was clear that they would before any accusations came out, it made it safe for the Trump administration to do any kind of power play they want. Once the Democrats had signaled so completely their lack of willingness to be part of the system as we know it—the advice and consent—once they gave up all legitimacy as part of the process, it was no longer reasonable to negotiate with them.
While they're asking for another nominee, you could imagine that in some earlier time, if half of the Democrats had a problem with him and maybe a few Republicans were wondering too, in a normal, collegial working situation, the President might say, "You know, there are enough people concerned, we've got to get this right. We're going to take all these opinions into consideration and maybe move on to another person."
But because the Democrats were a solid block, it is absolute permission for the Republicans to vote as a solid block and simply counter the other side. You want a little bit of balance of power; you don't want one power to be able to walk over the other outside of the system. But it's less of a problem if the majority is getting what it wants, which looks like that's going to happen. The Democrats gave up all credibility by voting as a solid block without regard to really any information, and so the Republicans have the same total free pass to vote.
## [The Bullies and Male Privilege](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=500s)
The larger question is: can we let somebody like Kavanaugh be taken down by accusations of things he did when he was 17? Can we live in that world? The answer is solidly no.
I also suspect that a lot of male voters are going to be defecting to the Democrats. I don't know if you'll have a lot of female voters defecting to Republicans over this—probably some, because it's a big country. But I would expect that for every Republican woman who might say, "I'm going with the Democrats on this one because of this issue," there might be 25 men who say, "I don't want to live in a world where an accusation is enough."
There was a great article by Bret Stephens in The New York Times about how he's apparently no Trump fan, but in this particular case, he prefers the bully. It's one of those strange situations where if the bully is on your side, you kind of like a bully because you don't want to get bullied. The best person to stop you from getting bullied is a bully.
In high school, bullying is a thing in every school. In my high school, the biggest, physically most dangerous, toughest bully was a friend of mine. I liked him; we did a lot of stuff together, we played sports together. So when lesser bullies attempted to bully me, it didn't really work because the biggest bully was on my side. I don't think I planned it that way, but Trump is kind of like that. He's the bigger bully.
There are a lot of men looking at this situation saying, "I'm not sure this is fair anymore." Remember, it wasn't long ago that the complaint against men sounded like this: "male privilege" or "white male privilege." When I hear stuff like that, I say to myself, "Okay, that's actually a real thing." Not in every situation—I don't think the unemployed ex-steelworker in the Rust Belt has got a lot of white male privilege—but I would say there's definitely a white male privilege that exists. When somebody complains about it, I'm going to say that at least you're talking about something that's a real thing. You can say, "All right, I may not agree, but it's a legitimate conversation."
## [Proxy Revenge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=688s)
Does it feel like it went past that? Past that to outright anti-male behavior? To me, it felt like the Kavanaugh thing was proxy revenge. Proxy meaning a stand-in. There were a lot of women, and probably a lot of Democrats in general, who felt like victims. A lot of women who were literally victims of men in their past, and a lot of Democrats who feel like victims just because their party is not in power and they're afraid of Trump.
The attacks on Kavanaugh were partly naked politics, but they seemed to be fueled—the energy and enthusiasm behind them—wasn't just about abortion. As I've said before, the states would probably keep the abortion laws largely intact in most places. This seemed more like a revenge situation. Did it feel that way to you?
It felt like people I didn't know were taking revenge on people like me, people like Kavanaugh, because they were very angry about other things that have happened. That is such a big, important thing that you have to stop. You can't have a civilization where people get proxy revenge. This was revenge against Trump; it was revenge against every man who had ever wronged them; it was hatred of white people by some people. These are generalities, but it felt like anti-white, anti-male, anti-Trump proxy revenge. For the public, it felt like revenge. For the politicians, it was more of a power grab in which they were manipulating the emotions of their people.
## [Alyssa Milano and "Cult-Like" Claims](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=812s)
Did any of you see an interview that Alyssa Milano gave on MSNBC in which she actually speculated that Trump had some kind of cult-like mind control going on? As she said it, you actually saw the hosts on MSNBC—the group that probably hates Trump more than anybody—just looking at each other. When she's talking about his cult-like mind control abilities, even they weren't on board.
Once again, we see an overreach that is almost certainly going to activate more men than women. To the degree that the Democrats have branded themselves as the anti-male party—and that's what it is now—I would say that wasn't long ago that I would have said the Democrats were more pro-women, and I would have said that might be a good idea. I like the competitive democratic process where there are parties that are different and have a distinct point of view.
There's nothing inherently wrong with having one of the major parties be far more heavily female-centric. But I think they overshot the mark and have been emboldened to become bullies. They've become flat-out anti-male in a way that the Republicans are unambiguously not anti-female.
The Republicans do have a number of policies about reproductive rights that a majority of women would not prefer. But there's nothing in the Republican philosophy that's based on a dislike or an animus toward women. In fact, it's the opposite. The reason conservatives are pro-life includes female fetuses, if you want to be specific. The Republicans are specifically trying to protect women from immigration crime and protect women from being aborted, but they do not give them the same reproductive options in some cases. There's no hatred about it; it's just a difference of what's the best way to organize society. On the Democrat side, there's actual hatred.
This Kavanaugh situation has a non-zero chance that historians will look back at this as the worst mistake a political party ever made. You could argue that when Hillary Clinton said her "deplorables" comment, that was a gigantic problem, but that was one person making one comment in one place. The whole Kavanaugh thing really is about the whole party because it's an organized, party-wide attempt. I think historians are going to say it just looked so anti-male that they just shot themselves in the foot.
## [China’s Chip Hack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=1060s)
There's a story today about how apparently China managed to cleverly insert a very tiny, grain-of-rice-sized chip on a lot of circuit boards that ended up as components in a lot of different technology in different countries. This little chip would give them the ability to control those machines or monitor them or spy on them. Apparently, it's a really big deal because there are so many devices that have this spy chip on them.
I have two reactions to that. Number one, apparently it was a pretty awesome spy accomplishment. If you're just trying to assess how good a job it was, how capable the Chinese are—how well do they spy?—it's an A+ spy operation until they got caught. Who knows how much it helped them until then? That's some good spy work.
## [China, Fentanyl, and the Trade War](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=1184s)
In isolation, you would say to yourself that all the countries are spying against each other. If we could have done it to them, we certainly would have. But when you throw that in with the fact that the majority of artificial fentanyl is coming from China, and we assume they could do a lot more to stop it—it may be intentional.
They have massive hacking and spying operations against us. They're killing maybe 10 to 40 thousand people a year with their fentanyl that they could stop. They're stealing intellectual property, which is the basis for our entire economy now. I hope they're being helpful in North Korea, but one has some doubts about that now.
Given all of that, how interested am I in reaching a trade deal with China? A lot less interested than I was a week ago. China, I just want you to know that you've certainly lost face. You got caught with the spying, you're not willing to do a good trade deal with the United States, and you're encroaching on the South China Seas. I would say, China, your brand is the worst I've seen it in years.
China, you should be ashamed. The proper feeling for Chinese citizens should be shame because you're exporting death to your customers. Shame on China. Shame on President Xi for this situation. I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to US companies because of a trade war, but my vote—and the government might need to prop up some US industries because of this—is to go hard on China. Go as hard as we need to go for as long as we need to go. If that takes down the Chinese economy by 20%, that's not our problem. It's time to put China on notice.
I had been not a China hawk until they were implicated in the death of my stepson this week, who died of a fentanyl overdose. For those of you who don't know, we'll be burying him on Saturday. There's no way to know that that specific dose of fentanyl came from China, but apparently most of it does. So China, you are my enemy as long as this is going on. You should be ashamed. I've never been more supportive of President Trump's trade war than I am right now.
## [Democrats and FBI Credibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=1370s)
The other funniest thing going on is that we've been watching President Trump criticize the FBI because it was allegedly politicized about the election. People like McCabe, Strzok, and Lisa Page were allegedly politicized, and it made the FBI look politicized. But what did the Democrats say the whole time? "The FBI is not politicized. You should trust the FBI. Stop criticizing the FBI."
Then the FBI does these extra interviews for the Kavanaugh situation, and what does the left say? "That's not good enough! What kind of FBI investigation is that?" Well, the first thing is, it's not really an investigation; it's just a background check. Logically, there's nothing in common with what Strzok and Page were doing and these interviews. Completely different people, completely different situation.
But in our minds, the credibility of the FBI is sort of the summary of both of those stories. So now the left, who has been defending the FBI for all of its goodness, has to look at this situation and completely reverse their opinion.
Assuming Kavanaugh gets approved, it's going to make Trump look stronger. It's going to make Trump look more like he is fighting on the side of the underdog, the falsely accused. It's going to make every accusation made against Trump himself—the various women who made accusations against him—look less credible just by osmosis. Just by association with this story, because the stories coming out of the Kavanaugh case were extraordinarily non-credible. At least two of them were. One had at least a credible person who has no eyewitnesses to her story, and that's the most credible one. All of this lack of credibility transfers to Trump.
## ["Believe Women" and the Hit to Credibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=1491s)
What the Democrats would like is that women be believed when they make claims. That is at the top of their stated list. Of their stated objectives, the thing clearly and consistently said by the Democrats is, "We need to be in a world where women are believed with these accusations."
What is the outcome of all this Kavanaugh stuff when he gets confirmed, which I think is going to happen? What will happen to the credibility of women? Way, way down, wouldn't you say? Again, I'm not talking about truth. Truth is beyond our grasp regarding what happened 35 years ago. But in terms of credibility—do you believe it enough to act on it?—women have taken the biggest hit to credibility I've ever seen.
If you were a woman and you wanted to be part of a party that was helping you, you would have to see that the Democrats have destroyed the credibility of women with this Kavanaugh thing. Only because of the overreach. Only because at least some of the claims—and I'm specifically talking about the gang rape claims—are so wildly unbelievable that they morph in your mind as one big, non-credible, false accusation. "My god, women will do anything to stop this white man."
None of this is necessarily fact-based, but it's how it feels to all of us. I think women took a gigantic hit on this because their credibility will be forever Kavanaugh-ed. Every time a woman makes a claim of this nature, a man going through the system is going to say, "Well, that sounds a lot like Christine Ford. That sounds a lot like those accusers of Kavanaugh that I didn't believe because those particular ones didn't reach my level of credibility." It's not good for anybody.
For every woman who may have gone over to the Democrats because of this issue, don't you think that the number of men who turned against the Democrats might be ten times at least? I don't think it's close. It looks like this is just massively positive for Republicans. The people who were on the fence are going to look at this and say, "That is an ugly party." Did the Democrats literally organize fake sexual abuse accusations against a white male in public to stop him? We'll never know, but it sure looks that way to a lot of people.
## [Senator Hirono and the "Shut Up" Moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=1799s)
Senator Hirono from Hawaii, who said that men should "shut up," might be the worst thing that ever happened to women. Is it Hirono? I forget the name of the senator, but when she said men should just shut up and step up, it started with the "shut up." No man says, "Oh, men should not step up." But when the first part of that is "shut up," I would say that was the worst catastrophe for women in ten years.
Can you think of anything else that was worse for women than a senator believing it would be okay to just go anti-male and not take it back? No apology, no nuance—just "men should shut up." Probably the most destructive thing any woman did for the cause of women. I can't think of anything worse. It was one thing to suspect that there were a lot of man-haters on the Democrat side, but to actually have it explicitly stated and then not taken back? I believe nobody on her side really criticized that. I didn't see a lot of Democrats saying, "Yeah, I think she went too far."
This is largely a catastrophe for the power of women in society. Women have massively lost credibility. The Democrats have shown themselves as anti-male. They've shown a willingness to embrace "guilty until innocent" as long as it's a man involved.
I always hate the arguments that say, "Imagine if this had happened to Obama," or "What if a Republican had tried this?" I hate those arguments, but I think we could agree in this case that if the candidate for the Supreme Court had been a woman and she had been accused with flimsy charges, there isn't the slightest chance that Democrats would say we should believe the accuser. If the accuser was a man and the candidate was a woman, I don't think there's any chance Democrats would have said the standard here is that you should believe the accuser. Not a chance.
I've said before that Black Lives Matter was both genius and terrible as a slogan. Talking about the persuasion benefit of the slogan itself, if you can compartmentalize for a moment, it was genius in the sense that it makes you immediately say, "Well, what about other people? Other people matter too." And then you're immediately called a racist because you have not embraced that Black Lives Matter. As a clever trap, it's like, "Do you still beat your wife?" There's no right response.
But here's the problem: it was also racist. It's just racist because when you say "Black Lives Matter," you are indicating that there's something special going on with their race. It's the opposite of a colorblind society. It's the opposite of everybody being treated the same.
When women started to characterize this as "Believe Women," that didn't look like "Believe People," did it? If you see somebody carrying a sign that says "Believe Women," isn't that just sexist? There are lots of victims in the world. I would guess the majority of victims of violence are probably male, just because men are closer to violence all the time. I don't see anybody saying "Believe the accuser," which would be a non-sexist way to say it. But "Believe Women" is really registering in my mind as "Don't believe men." My brain can't process that as an objective statement. It just sounds like you should believe women over men.
That is such an overreach and such a violation of what the Constitution was about—such a reversal of hundreds of years of progress toward equality—that I've got a feeling men reached their limit.
I have a personality characteristic: I am not bothered by things as they get worse and worse until they reach a certain level, and then I just go from zero to one. I've got a feeling that men looking at this Kavanaugh situation were trying to be reasonable, trying to look at the rule of law. But by the time you get to "Believe Women" and you look at that sign, you say to yourself, "Where are the men in this equation? Do we not believe them?"
It feels like men are just going to snap. I think we missed all of the in-between pushback because society doesn't let men push back. We live in a world where men don't really speak freely. Between the reasonable "Oh yeah, I hear you, let's be reasonable about this" and "Believe women, deny this guy a job, and ruin his life based on an accusation," that's a big gap. Men were largely silent during that whole gap. But when it hits the point of "Believe women over men," I think a bit just flipped.
I am not yet ready to predict a Red Wave, but it is lining up that way. Certainly, it will be the biggest gender difference in the vote that we've ever seen. You're going to see far more men voting for Republicans, far more women as a percentage voting for Democrats. I think that will solidify the Democrats as the anti-male party. They used to be the pro-women, pro-ethnicities party, but they've just completely forgotten about black people as far as I can tell. When was the last time you saw the Democrats talk about something that would be good for African Americans? I don't remember seeing it.
## [Kanye, Trump, and Kaepernick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZXy4tWyKg&t=2477s)
Speaking of Kaepernick, Kanye has tweeted that he has offered to broker a meeting between Kaepernick and President Trump. How great is that? That's like the coolest thing that's happened all year. How much do you want to see Kanye West literally introduce Kaepernick to President Trump in the Oval Office and then close the door?
I want to see that a lot. That doesn't mean they have to agree. They could walk out and Kaepernick could say, "You know, this didn't work out for me." But it's definitely the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do is to keep complaining and not get in the same room and talk about what you can do about it. Kanye unambiguously has the right approach. Let's put them in the same room.
Look at the space that Kanye has carved out in society. I've been telling you this since 2017 or something: whatever you think about his capabilities, you need to increase that opinion because you have a seriously effective person here. He's not slowing down. Let's call him Ye—he's changed his name from Kanye to Ye. I'm not quite on board with the change only because when I talk about it in public, I'm not sure all of you know of the change. He's still in transition.
Let's say Ye pulls this off. It would be exactly the right thing for Kaepernick to do and exactly the right thing for the President to do. It would be an example of citizen activism—one of the best examples you'll ever see. Why would Ye do this? Because he can. He has the ability to do this thing that maybe nobody else has in the whole freaking seven billion people in the world. Can you think of one other person who could put those two people in the same room and sit there with them and be considered a reasonably objective arbiter?
Where did Dennis Rodman go? Dennis Rodman has sort of a substance problem that can't be ignored, but I have a lot of respect for Dennis Rodman's political opinions. He doesn't go deep on the policies, but he's a very open-minded, practical person. I have a lot of respect for Dennis Rodman for his politics, so I wouldn't mind seeing him in the room either—but not on this issue.
That's all for now. I'm going to go do something else. I will talk to you all later. Let's keep checking the news and find out how this FBI investigation turns. Talk to you later.