Episode 257 Scott Adams: The Kanye Meeting, 13th Amendment and Turkey
Date: 2018-10-12 | Duration: 41:44
Topics
CNN’s attempt to “Cultural Gravity” Kanye The alarming attacks on Kanye for trying to make a positive difference CNN weaponized its staff and Don Lemon called it a “minstrel show” CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson’s out of context, list hit piece 13th Amendment of Constitution, understanding Kanye’s point President Trump crashed Turkey’s economy to free Pastor Brunson
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=8s)
Hey everybody, get in here. Hello Allison, hello UNIX, Tyler Flea—what kind of a name is that? I can't read all of your names because some of them are silly. I just read the ones that sound like real names. Edward, Melissa, Howard, good morning. Hello Susan, hello Rick. Come on in here.
You know what time it is. I know you know what time it is; don't even need to look at your watch because when you see this, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. Do you have your coffee? Do you have any kind of a beverage? Do you have a cup, a vessel, a mug, a chalice? Fill it with beverage or enough to sip. Bring it to your lips and join me for the simultaneous sip.
I feel like the simultaneity was extra good today. Did it feel like that to you? There was a little note of chicory and maybe just a little note of simultaneousness. Same old simultaneous—there's probably a word in there and I don't know it.
## [Cultural Gravity and Kanye](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=70s)
Let's talk about Kanye meeting with the President. We've had a little time to digest it now. Remember I introduced yesterday the idea of Cultural Gravity. Cultural Gravity is the idea that it's hard to get away from your culture. Now, that could be good if your culture is all positive, but it could be bad if there's something about your culture that you'd like to escape and differentiate yourself from, because your culture pulls you back.
I watched this happening with Kanye with great alarm. I don't know if there are very few things that have disturbed me as much as watching black people come after Kanye because Kanye visited the President and was trying to make a positive difference—and may have already done so.
My perception—and I realize we're living in different movies—is that Kanye had legitimate, important issues that were of vital importance to his community. Let's say his community in this case is the world, but in the context of this conversation, let's talk about inner cities and the African American community. Kanye is bigger than that, but for this conversation, he met with a bunch of urban leaders apparently who knew the issues and understood them, and they helped coach him.
He brought one of those issues, the question about stop and frisk, to the Oval Office. In front of cameras and in front of the world, he told the President he didn't think that was a good idea. The President said, "Well, I'm flexible." Have you ever seen him say that before? It would be difficult now for the President to go hard on this idea of stop and frisk now that Kanye stood in front of the world and all the cameras, gave love to President Trump, said how much he loved him, wore his hat, and then says to him in front of the world, "I'm talking to a bunch of people from the community and they say this is a bad idea."
I don't think you understand how powerful that is. He created a situation where his influence went from "Kanye high" already—just being Kanye, he has influence—but by engineering this situation where he's in the Oval Office on camera and the entire world is watching, he puts this out here. What was President Trump going to say to that? Was he going to disagree vigorously with him in that setting? No, that wasn't even an option. Kanye created a situation in which his influence went from really, really high to "Oh my God, we haven't seen this before" except from President Trump. You were seeing some world-class influence going on.
## [The Media Reaction and CNN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=316s)
Now, what would be the reaction to that from people from his community? People who would benefit from his actions? People who would like to have a greater say in the Oval Office? People who would like to bring the country together? People who would like to see something addressed such as stop and frisk and potentially prison-related things—people who have these very high on their priorities? Wouldn't you expect full-out support?
But that's not what you saw. Instead, CNN immediately weaponized its African American staff, meaning the on-air personalities. They first brought on Don Lemon during Anderson Cooper’s show. Don Lemon gave a fairly long and impassioned response in which he was embarrassed by Kanye. "Embarrassed"—that's a powerful word. It's one thing to disagree with somebody on policy, but I don't think he disagrees on policy. It's one thing to say somebody doesn't have the background or the knowledge; that's always a fair comment. But Don Lemon referred to it as a "minstrel act." That's kind of personal, isn't it? I'm not black, obviously, but I would feel that was a pretty deep insult and that it was an insult about my color, about my culture, about my DNA.
To me, those of you are saying it's racist—I never buy into the idea that black people could be racist against other black people. I don't even know what that means. So I don't buy into any of that. It's not a racist thing at all; it felt like Cultural Gravity. It felt like here was Kanye, who had worked himself into a position where he was unambiguously able to make a difference in a positive way for the people from his community. Here he was being dragged back. It's like, "No, you can't do that. Let's talk about all the things you did wrong."
They didn't talk about anything he did right. He got in the room. Kanye was in the room! Talk about doing something right—that's as right as you can get. When President Trump said he would talk to Kim Jong Un, people said no, but getting in the room with him was probably the most important thing that will help North Korea go in the right direction. Kanye does the same thing. He gets in the room. Showing up is 90% of the thing. And he didn't just show up; he raised issues and he probably made a difference in how we look at those issues. Personally, I didn't know much about stop and frisk, but now that Kanye has said he talked to the people in the community and they hate that idea, I'm biased against it. Kanye did a good job of representing it, and as briefly as he did, it was still powerful.
## [Nia-Malika Henderson’s List Persuasion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=561s)
Then I read another article on CNN from Nia-Malika Henderson, one of CNN's regular correspondents. She writes a hit piece against him: "Analysis: Why Kanye’s lunch with Trump was a disaster." She does "list persuasion." She goes, "Here are some ideas West raised," and the context is that these ideas are just crazy crap. She has to put them in a list because individually, none of them look crazy enough. She has to do list persuasion.
Here is her list of "crazy" things he did: "Bring Trump factories and Yeezy ideation centers to Chicago." Ideation meaning a place where you come up with ideas and create a design center. Is that crazy? To bring factories to the city he's trying to support? He’s talking to the person who has influence over such things and saying that by bringing them in with his own resources, he would have skin in the game. Yeezy would bring in his own ideation centers. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? It sounds really good to me.
Then she says, "His MAGA hat makes him feel like a superhero." Of course, they take that out of context so it sounds crazy. If you put it in context, Kanye talks about how it made him feel—his armor was on, he was a Superman. Now, who else do you know who uses very visual persuasion? President Trump. Kanye doesn't just say, "I feel stronger with my hat on," because that would be a weak concept. He says, "I feel like Superman," and boom, the image of Superman pops in your head. The image of Superman's red cape pops into your head because the hat is red. That's how you communicate. You'll remember for the rest of your life that Kanye said he's like Superman with his hat on. It's instantly memorable.
Next: "That we should make the dopest, no, the flyest cars." Again, he's just talking about how America should make the best stuff. Let me put this in context. America makes cars, but they're boring. American cars are boring. Yeezy makes footwear. Footwear is boring except Kanye's footwear. His sneakers are actually way above ordinary footwear because of design. In the same way that Tesla is way above regular cars because of design. Kanye is asking why our cars aren't designed better. We can sell a lot more cars overseas if ours were better designed. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? It's a really, really good idea. It's actually a glaring hole in our capitalist system that I'd never even noticed—that cars are not well-designed except for the Tesla. Kanye is calling out this huge opportunity to make better-designed cars.
## [Visual Persuasion and Einstein](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=780s)
He says "school is boring" and "kids should be playing basketball while they're doing math." Of course, if you put it out of context, people are going to say, "How do you play basketball and do math at the same time?" That's not really the point. The point is school is boring; it needs to be redesigned and rethought. Kanye described it in a visual way. You can imagine somebody bouncing a basketball and trying to do math. Once again, he goes visual. It's quotable. And here's the important point: it's a little bit wrong. You'd have trouble playing basketball and doing math at the same time, so your brain says, "That's a little bit wrong," but then you remember it because it's visual. It's brilliant persuasion that CNN is trying to make look silly because they take it out of context.
He said that "time doesn't exist." Well, here he is agreeing with Einstein. Einstein said that time is a persistent illusion. Kanye says time doesn't exist. CNN could say, "Kanye and Albert Einstein have the same opinion on time," because that's true. But they left Einstein out of the story. They just put it on this list to make it look dumb. He literally said one of the most well-understood concepts in physics, and they make it look like it's dumb.
He said Trump and Colin Kaepernick should wear "Make America Great Again" hats at the Super Bowl. Again, visual. Instead of just saying, "Let's see if I can get the President and Kaepernick to get together," he took it to another level. He made you imagine the two people and the hats on their heads. That is great persuasion. He painted a picture and brought you into it. It's a little bit "wrong" again, because imagining Trump and Kaepernick together feels like a stretch, even though it's a real thing that could and should happen. You can't not think of it. It's powerful, out-of-the-box, and it would make a difference.
You're seeing pure genius here that CNN—because they don't understand anything he's doing—is writing off as a bunch of crazy stuff.
## [Ideation Centers and Inner Cities](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=1019s)
CNN narrowed down his whole stop and frisk thing to one bullet point: "Stop and frisk is bad." That's all they're going to say about that. Next: "The solution to police brutality is love." Of course, if you treat it as an absolute, it looks silly. This is what I call the "absurd absolute," where somebody makes a reasonable point and the critic turns it into an absolute so it looks silly.
Would it help police brutality if there was just more love? Imagine if every time a police officer saw an African American young person, the African American made eye contact and said, "Hey, I love you man, thanks for keeping us safe." I'm not saying that will ever happen, but just go with me on the analogy. Would that make black people safer in subsequent arrests? What would be the logical outcome of showing positive affection toward the police? You know the answer: they would be safer because police officers, being biased like everybody else, would say, "Oh, I'm arresting one of these people who keeps acting nice to me." It absolutely would make a difference. But if you turn it into "that's the only thing you need to do," it sounds silly. It's not silly; it is a very active thing you could do tomorrow. It would be insanely persuasive.
He also talked about how the President should have the "best airplane"—the iPlane. This was in the context of design and making America greater. America should have the good stuff. The President's plane should be crazy good. Kanye is suggesting it be more obviously awesome because it sends a better message. The President presents himself as the image of the United States. It's a perfectly reasonable idea.
The thing that inner cities are missing—a lot of people don't realize this—isn't money. There's plenty of money, private and public, to invest in cities. We're not out of money; we're out of ideas. Giving tax breaks to spur industry by itself doesn't help if you have no ideas. You need an ideation center where the community can look at ideas and say, "Yeah, if we did this, the community would be totally on board."
Kanye is the first person you've ever seen who explained the entire solution in conceptual terms. You need the energy—he brought the energy. You need the tax breaks—we could get those. You need investment—he can bring investment because he brought the energy. You need ideas—he said he's bringing the ideation centers. He's bringing the biggest thing that's missing. What did CNN report? Did they report that one of the most important things that's ever happened for the urban world just happened? No, they saw a circus. They saw a "minstrel act" according to Don Lemon.
## [The 13th Amendment Controversy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=1729s)
Kanye has said we should abolish the 13th Amendment. This is being reported with puzzlement and mockery. He’s being mocked for not understanding history. I'll confess I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I looked up the exact words.
Here is what the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States..."
The critics are saying, "Wait a minute, why is Kanye opposed to banning slavery?" But read that amendment again. Does the 13th Amendment ban slavery? It doesn't. The 13th Amendment puts slavery into the Constitution. It says it's okay "except as a punishment for a crime." This is the problematic part. Our Constitution says you can turn somebody into a slave if they've been convicted of a crime.
Do they have to be guilty of the crime? No. They just have to be convicted. What would be a good way to get a lot of slave labor? Convict a lot of people for minor crimes. In effect, this prison system has become, by analogy, like slavery. This is extraordinarily clever, but I don't think it's sunk in yet.
Kanye is doing a "Trump move" here. The Trump move is to do something so provocative that you can't look away. Even though the provocative thing might not be technically, historically accurate, it moves your mind to a new place. And that new place is where he wanted your mind. It’s not the details; it's the destination. He moved my mind to the fact that I didn't know the Constitution of the United States approves of slavery as long as you have a conviction.
When he says we have to get rid of the thing that says slavery is okay under the right conditions, I'm on board. He's moving your mind to a place where the prison system—the institutionalizing of black youth en masse—needs to be rethought. He's doing it by pairing the idea of slavery with it. It’s a pretty good point.
Kanye's approach is so similar to Trump's way of operating that I don't think it's a coincidence. I think Kanye is actually learning. He's picking up systems and processes from watching.
## [Turkey and Pastor Brunson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRRz6b-2UUE&t=2221s)
Somebody is reminding me that Pastor Brunson has been freed from Turkey. Turkey jailed this guy—he was a Christian—on what were apparently trumped-up charges. Turkey takes an American pastor, puts him in jail, and puts their finger in the eye of the United States.
What did President Trump do for one person? Did he say, "I'm not going to burn any bridges over one person"? No. He slapped enough sanctions on Turkey that the entire economy just crashed. Full disclosure: I have some investments in a Turkish cellphone company, and it totally crashed. My investment went down 65%. The entire economy of Turkey was stomped on for one Christian who happened to have an American passport.
And you know what I say? I had a lot of money on the line and I got crushed, and I thought, "Holy cow, this is good, actually." I would have been okay if it went to zero. Because it’s not really about that one American. The fact that he was willing to coldly and calculatingly take out the entire Turkish economy—a NATO ally—over one American? He has my total support.
What is the next country going to do? Do you think another country is going to grab an American and keep him for no good reason? If they do, goodbye economy. We know what happens now.
I loved that it didn't seem like Trump was making a big deal about it. He just said, "You’ve got to give this guy back. Here are your sanctions." Then he stood back and waited. Trump likes to put time on his side. He put the pressure on and said, "Now it's up to you. If you want an economy, you know what to do." It was your entire economy versus one American. You decide.
That's enough for today. I'm going to go do something else and I will talk to you later.