Episode 247 Scott Adams: Biased Judges, Amy Schumer, Soros
Date: 2018-10-05 | Duration: 45:48
Topics
Anti-Trumper says “everyone can see what Trump is like now” Judge Kavanaugh’s WSJ article and the “parent filter” Amy Schumer, the casual sex and drinking humorist, and Kavanaugh protester George Soros influence on American elections Senator Daines dilemma…attend daughter’s wedding or vote? President Trump’s innovative approach to economics
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=14s)
All the people who have names I can't pronounce—Maria, I can pronounce that. Tyler, you're always in here early; you have fast fingers. Kelly, hi. Mike, Donna, come on in here because it's time for the simultaneous sip. The people who got here first get the best sips of all. If you'd like to join me, lift up your cup, your mug, your chalice, your glass, your container of liquids, and join me for the simultaneous coffee preferred. Oh, that's good stuff.
## [Lowest Level of Awareness: 2D vs 3D Thinking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=75s)
I got in a little Twitter exchange this morning with an anti-Trumper who said—and I'm paraphrasing, as this is somebody who said this in public—here's the funny part about it: you think you're living in the same world with everybody else. You think, "Well, everybody must see what I see, right? You're seeing what I see, right?" I'm watching this, you're watching that, we're all seeing the same thing, right?
If I've taught you nothing, it's that that isn't true. I thought it was a little more obvious by now. Again, this Twitter exchange was with an anti-Trumper who said, in summary, "Everyone can see what Trump is like now. So if you support him, well, you're responsible." According to her, everybody can see what Trump is like now. I responded that this is the lowest level of awareness you're ever likely to see.
The lowest level of awareness is to imagine—it's mind-boggling—that there's somebody who can walk, talk, read, and write, someone who's smart enough to tweet so they can use a device of some sort, an adult, and yet they have not noticed that people have a different perception of who Trump is. For her to start from the presumption that we're all seeing the same thing is the lowest level of awareness that you're ever going to see.
Now, there was a point in the evolution of the civilization and the human mind, and that point wasn't long ago—it was maybe 2015. I would say if you said in 2015, "Hey, everybody's looking at the same thing, so if you're still supporting this president or this anything, well, you're going to have to own it because we see what we're getting," that was so 2015. I warned you back then that Trump was going to rip a hole in the fabric of reality and you were just going to see reality in a whole new way.
For most people, I think they've made the leap. They've made the leap from what I'd call the second dimension to the third dimension. The second dimension is where you think that everybody sees what you see. This poor tweeter was stuck in the second dimension; I forgot anybody was still there. The third dimension is that it's absolutely obviously true that we're watching two movies on one screen. We're looking at the same stuff. Some people say Kavanaugh is definitely guilty; some people look at the same stuff and say he is definitely innocent. How could it not be obvious now?
I completely understand if in 2015 somebody was still saying, "I think we're all looking at the same stuff, so if you've come to a different conclusion, you're evil." You're either evil or stupid because we have the same information. We now know that that's two-dimensional thinking and that we're all living in a world of our own creation that exists almost entirely in our own experience in our own mind. It does not mean that if somebody supports President Trump, they must be evil on the inside. It just means we're seeing something different than you're seeing.
## [Biased Judges: Kavanaugh vs. Curiel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=259s)
Here's a curious one. We're having this big national discussion about Judge Kavanaugh's temperament. Now, of course, as I've told you, temperament is a sexist term; it's an anti-male term because you don't really see it applied that much to women in a similar way. You don't see the word "hysterical" applied to men; hysterical is sort of a sexist word applied to women. Temperament seems to be the sexist word that's applied to men.
What we're watching is a lot of people saying, "Well, we've all watched the same thing. We've watched Judge Kavanaugh's emotional response in his comments in front of Congress." Some people are saying that especially his references to Clinton and the Democrats trying to get him makes him a biased judge; that he can never be unbiased because he's talked about Clinton and clearly one side is out to get him.
I said to myself, "Did you say the same thing about Judge Curiel?" Do you remember the Judge Curiel case? The Judge Curiel case presumed that because he had Mexican heritage, he was not unbiased. He was not a Mexican citizen—he was second generation—but because his whole family had heritage from Mexico, you would imagine that he had a lot of family influence. In all likelihood—we don't know, but in all likelihood—members of his family were anti-Trump because the media had set up that fight. They turned Trump being strong on immigration into some kind of an anti-Mexican thing.
That's what half of the country was seeing. It was completely reasonable in that context, in the legal context, to say, "Well, there's a situation here that has a unique potential—I can't guarantee it, but a potential impact on the bias of this judge." Is that fair to say? Is it fair to say that if this judge is likely surrounded by family members who don't like President Trump, that that could have at least the appearance of bias in his decisions?
People pushed back on that and they said, "No, you can't call a judge with Mexican heritage potentially biased because that's racist." Well, it was crazy then because people are biased machines. That's what we are. We are pattern recognition machines, and when we see patterns, we're influenced by them. In the legal context, it's perfectly appropriate to say, "I think these patterns are having a larger than normal influence on a judge; maybe this judge should recuse in this specific case."
Likewise with Judge Kavanaugh, just so we can be consistent: either judges are never biased by their situation, or judges are biased by their situation. It can't be true that both are true. It can't be simultaneously true that Judge Curiel could not be biased by his family—which is weird, because if there's anything that's going to bias you, it's going to be your family—while what is bothering Judge Kavanaugh is, to a large extent, the effect on his family too. He's feeling that this is coming from one direction, the Democrat, Clinton-friendly part of the world, and so he called it out.
I would only ask people to apply the same standard. If you're willing to say that this judge has shown a political opinion and that makes him unqualified to be a judge, just be consistent. I'm not asking you to change your opinion; I'm asking you to be consistent. If it's true that Kavanaugh could be biased by his situation in a way that would make him ineffective as a judge, stick with your opinion, but also extend it to Judge Curiel. His ethnicity wasn't really even the issue; it was that his family is very likely to be influenced by this, and it would be hard to imagine that his family doesn't influence him.
I'm of the camp that biased judges are the only kind. There's no such thing as an unbiased judge because they're human. There's no such thing as an unbiased human. There are, however, judges who can learn to read and interpret the law in a way that they can do in public, and other people can say, "Okay, you're probably biased on the inside, but I'm looking at your opinion, your reasoning, and your conclusion, and I would say that was fair compared to the law." You've got two judges here who are accused of bias in a way that should make them ineffective. I say pick a side. Either judges are biased by their situation and their environment, especially things involving their family—of course they are—or they aren't.
## [Kavanaugh and the Parent Filter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=626s)
You saw maybe Judge Kavanaugh wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. In it, he said—and I'm not going to quote him because I don't want to take time to look it up—but essentially, he said that his primary audience for his testimony and statements in front of Congress was not necessarily the public at large, or just the people in the room, but that his primary audience was his family.
Where have you heard that before? Who was the first person who told you that? If you're evaluating whether Brett Kavanaugh was exactly accurate when he said how much he drank, or if he was exactly accurate about the meanings of those words in high school on his yearbook, I said to you: he's talking to his family. You cannot judge a man who's talking in front of his family because if he's talking in front of his family and he's talking in front of you, he's not thinking about you.
If his family is in the room, or you know they're part of the audience—his family, the people he cares the most about, his children that he's trying to raise, trying to be a good role model—if they're in the room, he doesn't care about you. Do you want him to be different? Do you want him to care about you when his family's in the room? I don't. I want him to care about his family. If he could sit in that room and care more about me, or more about Senator Feinstein, or even more about getting the job than the example he's setting for his family, the way they exist as a cohesive family unit, their reputation, and what experience the children would have when they're dealing with their friends... if you think he could ignore his family in favor of giving the technically correct answer about something trivial like things he did when he was 17—and I'm not talking about the alleged allegation, I'm talking about the drinking and the comments in his yearbook—well, I haven't seen anybody else call it out for what it was.
When Kavanaugh wrote that editorial and said, "My primary audience was my family," let me interpret that if it wasn't obvious to you. "My primary audience was my family" means that on the little stuff—how much he drank, did he black out, did he say some inappropriate things in a yearbook when he was 17—he lied. He just admitted he lied, and he told you why in very clear language, in my opinion. Apparently, it wasn't clear enough because I think I'm the first person saying it. Have you heard anybody else say this?
Now that you hear it, it's obvious, right? Once I explain it to you, it's obvious that when he says, "My primary audience was my family," he is explaining that low-level stuff that everybody's saying—"Well, if he lied about how many beers he's had, he must have lied about raping somebody," or whatever. He's not accused of rape, let's be clear about that.
I believe he just told you the most adult thing you've ever seen in your life. He just came out and said, "Listen, adults." In his Wall Street Journal editorial, he's talking to adults because his children probably are not the audience for the Wall Street Journal. He's saying, "Adults understand I was in public, but my primary audience for some of these questions was my family." Is there anything else you need to know?
If you're such a freaking idiot that you're going to say that he lied about how much he drank in front of his daughters, now that he's told you explicitly that's what he was doing, I think you have to see this in a different light. The parent filter. Thank you, yes. You have to put the parent filter on this. He wasn't a judicial candidate or a supreme court nominee every minute during that testimony—of course he was, technically, in every sense—but depending on the question he was answering, he was changing his mode. He was putting his dad mode on there for a while, and he has a pretty long history of showing that he's willing to give it up for the kids. He coaches, he sacrifices for them. This is a guy who gives it up for the kids; we know that about him. Keep it in context.
## [Amy Schumer and the Branding of Protests](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=993s)
You may have seen that Amy Schumer and an actress—I don't know what she's in, but Emily Ratajkowski—were protesting the Kavanaugh situation and they got arrested. Now, here's a problem with Hollywood. I'm usually not the one who rails against the famous people in Hollywood who have bad political opinions. I believe it is true as a general statement that famous actors and famous Hollywood people seem less informed than the average person. But maybe that's an illusion because the average person is pretty uninformed.
Let me put it this way: Hollywood people seem consistently less informed than the professional pundits who are also on television talking about issues on either side. I usually go easy on them for the obvious reason that I'm a little bit famous. I'm obviously better known for being the creator of Dilbert, and I would not want the Hollywood filter to be put on me because I feel like my education and the way I approach politics is additive. I don't think I'm in the same category with some of the famous folks, so I normally go easy on them.
But here's the problem: if your situation is a potential drunken sexual assault—and that's what this all gets to—the complaint is about drunken sexual assault. Who are you going to send as your representative to speak out against drunken sexual assault? I'm going to pick as my worst choice Amy Schumer. What is she famous for? If you know her act, she's famous for talking about getting inebriated and having a lot of casual sex. Now, I'm completely in favor of both of those things. She can have as much casual sex as she likes, and I like her a lot as an artist and as a humorist. I'm a big fan; I think she's terrific and I have no moral qualms. I'm not judging her as a person or judging her lifestyle.
But if you're going to put a famous face in front of "let's not get drunk and have too much groping," she would be the worst choice. I'm in favor of her having a voice and exercising her free speech and trying to make a difference, and those are all good things. I think she's well-meaning. But as the face of this movement? Very bad.
And if you think she's a bad choice, it turns out Emily Ratajkowski is perhaps a slightly worse choice even than that. I'm going to show you the picture. Here she is. Her sign says, "Respect female existence or expect our resistance," which is a lot of words, not as clever as it could be. But "respect female existence"—this is what she wore. This is what she wore to the protest against women being objectified. Here's my little protest tip: if you're protesting about women being objectified, probably don't go like that.
All I'm saying is—and again, I don't know this actress, I don't know Emily Ratajkowski, I don't even know how to pronounce it and I apologize to her for that—I believe she's probably a good person who thinks she's doing the right thing. I like people getting involved. I even respect the fact that she obviously knows a lot about diet and exercise and fitness. If you were to ask me my personal opinion of her, I'd say she looks like a pretty solid citizen and she's getting involved in an important issue. All I'm saying is: if you're going to put a famous face on this movement, she is not your right choice unless you dress down a little bit to make your point.
Let me clarify that, because if this is taken out of context, it's going to look worse than I mean it. I'm completely in favor of women wearing anything they want wherever they want. I have no problem with women dressing any way they want, and I don't believe that gives anybody a right to attack them. There's no retrograde thinking like that going on. I'm just saying that for a branding purpose, it's a little bit off-brand.
## [George Soros and Foreign Influence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=1420s)
Trump went full Soros today. He actually mentioned George Soros being a funder of protests. You might wonder why I don't talk about George Soros. I don't know what to think about all the George Soros stuff. My initial thoughts about it all was that it was just a conspiracy theory on the right; that George Soros funds some organizations who are involved in some things, but is it a big deal or is it just a convenient person to blame for stuff? I never really had a sense of it.
If you try to look into it, the rabbit hole just goes down forever and you can't really tell what's true. If you read anything written on the right about George Soros, you get three sentences in and you start scratching your head and you say, "Yeah, I don't know how true any of this is." It just feels too impossible to be true, which doesn't mean it's not true, it just doesn't pass the sniff test with me.
But I'm sure it is true that he gives to groups, and some of that money ends up in the protest groups. That's probably true. But I don't know how important it is. And then I say to myself: where is the dividing line between being active and funding things and trying to be a good cause in the world, and influencing an election from a different country?
If George Soros is doing what he is accused of doing, shouldn't the U.S. be sanctioning him? Here's where the disconnect is: if we don't like other countries influencing our elections, and he seems to be universally accused of doing exactly that by funding groups who are protesting and clearly trying to change the outcome of politics, why isn't that foreign interference? Why isn't the U.S. actively acting against him as we would if Russia did it, or if China did it?
One of the reasons I don't talk about the Soros situation is that none of it makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense that the people who have the power—the Trump administration and their supporters—are accusing him of all these things but then acting as though they're not happening. What we're saying and what we're doing don't seem to have any connection.
I'm told Soros is a U.S. citizen. Does he live in America, though? He's a Hungarian-American investor, born in Hungary and then an American citizen. Does he live here? He emigrated to England, but where is he now? Does he live in New York? I can't believe that he lives in New York and he's in favor of open borders unless he plans to leave New York.
If it is okay for Soros—who is an American citizen, as you've informed me—to influence our elections directly, would it be okay if he lived in another country and did it? Suppose he was an American citizen and he lived in Russia. Would it be okay for him to try to influence our elections if he lived in Russia? It's an interesting question. I guess I just have more questions about Soros, and I don't think we completely understand what's going on with that.
## [Senator Daines' Wedding Dilemma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=1799s)
Is it still true that there's a senator who's planning to miss the vote? I think he's a Republican. Senator Daines. He might miss the vote on Kavanaugh because his daughter has a wedding. They might hold open the vote overnight. You've got a Republican where every vote is necessary, but his daughter has a wedding on that day.
What would you do? If your two choices were your daughter's wedding—which is kind of hard-coded at this point—or being the important final vote to change the course of the courts for maybe generations, what do you do? If it were me, I'd go to the wedding. But here's what I would also do: I would go to my Democrat friends.
Suppose he asked his Democrat friends, once they knew that the vote was going to go for a confirmation, to provide a volunteer? Just one person who is a Democrat to vote his way so that he can go to the wedding. Wouldn't you like to see that? Now, that person would have a little bit of a problem in their own district because they'd have to explain, "No, it wasn't a real vote; I was just voting so this GOP guy could go to his daughter's wedding."
It would be nice. But here's a better suggestion: if we get to the point where we know which way the vote's going to go, and the only difference is whether this poor guy gets to go to his daughter's wedding or he doesn't, I think the Democrats should vote unanimously for confirmation. Because if the Democrats voted unanimously for confirmation, no single Democrat could be singled out as the one who flipped. It would be a bigger story and it would say, "Yeah, we've had this huge fight over this thing, but when it got down to the final thing, we're human beings." The human thing to do would be to preserve the vote the way the GOP was going to get it anyway. Why not be nice people? Why not give some cover for a colleague? It would be a good look for the Democrats because they would take the human element as a priority. I don't see any of that happening, by the way.
## [Economic Innovation: Obama vs. Trump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=2172s)
People tell me I've jumped the shark. Dilbert is entering its 30th year. For 30 years, it's been one of the top comics in the world. And for at least 25 years, I get about one message a week in which somebody tells me, "Well, now you jumped the shark." It was okay yesterday, but now you've gone too far. I always laugh when I see it.
Let's talk about 3.7% unemployment. As we enter the zone of the midterms, it gets harder and harder to say that the economy is all Obama's good work. I'm one of the few people in the world who is willing to say Obama did a good job and Trump is also doing a good job. I think it's possible to hold both of those thoughts in your head. They did different things, and different things had to be done at different times.
I think Obama was probably a good fit for that emergency situation because he was a calm voice and the economy was going off the edge. You didn't want any extra risk introduced into the system. But once things get moving along pretty well—which Obama did—I think that Trump's extra juice of cutting taxes, cutting regulations, being the cheerleader-in-chief for American industries, negotiating tariffs... I do think that added the extra juice. He was the one who put extra risk into a system that was ready for extra risk.
You don't want extra risk in 2008 because the economy was on the precipice. But once you're strong, you don't want that same calm voice. Obama would be exactly the wrong leader for 2018. He might have been exactly the right leader for 2008 or 2009, but today you need more of a cheerleader. You need a marketer, you need somebody to put a little energy into it, you need some juice and enthusiasm and optimism. This is all President Trump's bread and butter. So I think he gets credit for an innovative approach.
## [Breaking News: The Cloture Vote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=2418s)
Breaking: U.S. Senate votes to advance the nomination. CNN says the vote is underway. Susan Collins is a "yes" for now but will announce her final decision later.
Kavanaugh was not just confirmed; the vote was for cloture. We've learned so much about our government because of the Trump years. Did you know what cloture meant last week? Cloture is a vote to close the debate so that you can later have the real vote. It's only a vote to stop arguing; it's not the final vote. This vote means that they've agreed to vote tomorrow.
There were enough votes to advance; they just got 51 votes. Manchin and Murkowski flipped. Voting to close the debate doesn't have to be the same as voting for the nomination because you could vote to close the debate and then vote against the proposition. There's nothing wrong with that. So there's still a little bit of mystery.
## [Predictions and Final Thoughts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5SI147aHg&t=2542s)
You know that I predicted from the start that Kavanaugh would get confirmed. At this point, it's sort of a done deal. My prediction was that Republicans would say, unless there was some new information about Kavanaugh's past, that they would take the win. They would look at the bigger picture, which is: we can't have a world in which this sort of accusation derails somebody. To me, it seemed like they would favor the bigger picture—that uncorroborated accusations of 17-year-old behavior cannot ruin your career when you're in your 50s.
Historically, the cloture vote is the litmus, meaning that if the cloture vote goes one way, the vote itself will go the same way. So, the vote is tomorrow at 4:00 PM.
You may be wondering where I will be tomorrow at 4:00 PM. I will be delivering the eulogy for my stepson, my 18-year-old stepson, who died on Sunday because of a fentanyl overdose, maybe from China. Fentanyl China—the country of great shame. They should bow their head in complete shame as the likely cause of the death of my stepson.
They must live with forever shame for being that country. Fentanyl China. I'm always going to put that name in front of them. They're just Fentanyl China. That's the first thing you think about regarding someone who's killing 30,000 of your people a year. If China is killing 30,000 people a year with their illegal fentanyl, then "Fentanyl" should be their first name. Much of the illegal fentanyl comes from China, though there's stuff coming from south of the border as well.
Thank you all for your good thoughts. I'm going to sign off. I have a eulogy for my dead stepson to write. That's my job today, and I'll talk to the rest of you later.