Episode 266 Scott Adams: How to Solve the Middle East, jobsNotMobs and Midterm Turnout
Date: 2018-10-19 | Duration: 21:59
Topics
Never waste a good crisis (Khashoggi) When you can’t do something…and you can’t do nothing The human caravan has made immigration visual, persuasive
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=13s)
Get in here. Today will be the best Coffee with Scott Adams you've ever seen. Now, I don't want to over-promise, but I think I can deliver today. That means it starts with this simultaneous sip. Grab your cup, your vessel, your mug, your stein, fill it with a beverage of your choice, lift it to your lips with me, and enjoy the simultaneous sip. Oh, that's good stuff.
## [The Rise of #JobsNotMobs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=74s)
Let's start with the fun part. Some of you saw that President Trump tweeted the hashtag #JobsNotMobs last night after he tested it down at the rally. Apparently, he got a good enough response at the rally that it turned into a tweet. Some of you saw the hashtag developing on social media. I should tell you that I am not the originator of it, but I helped. I was one of the people who helped to popularize it.
We can see this amazing situation where something is created on the internet—an idea. I think it took six days for it to be created on the internet by somebody I don't even know. I just saw it somewhere and repeated it. Ali Alexander had a post talking about mobs and whether that was good by itself, and he was suggesting some improvements to it. I chimed in, copying what I saw on the internet, which was that somebody had said "Jobs Not Mobs," and it turned into a hashtag in about ten minutes.
It took six days from a good idea to the President's mouth. Have you ever seen anything like that before? There is something truly special about this time where a good idea can start anywhere and it can go anywhere in six days—and that probably was a long time. Just think about the world you live in where if you've got an idea, just as this random unnamed Twitter user had—and I wish I could give them credit, but I was not smart enough to note who said it first; I just saw it on the internet in somebody's comment and I thought, "Oh, that's good. That could go somewhere." Think about that. Now I'm going to dovetail into the coolest thing you've ever heard in your life. I don't like to oversell it, but here it comes. It’s going to be the coolest thing you've ever heard in your life—well, top ten maybe.
## [Never Waste a Good Crisis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=196s)
It goes like this. I'm going to bring together a bunch of concepts that you've heard before. Wait for the big reveal because it's a good one. Have you ever heard the saying, "Never let a good crisis go to waste"? I'm not sure who said it; might have been the Mayor of Chicago. But the idea is that sometimes if everything's going to hell, it creates an opportunity. Yes, Rahm Emanuel, who weirdly I met one time in a hallway—sort of a small world situation. I met him once years ago.
So, that's your first thing: never let a good crisis go to waste. And the Saudi Arabia thing is a crisis. Nobody knows what the heck to do. Now, here's another concept that I've told you a few times: the edge of doom looks amazingly similar to the edge of victory. Sometimes it feels like you're on the edge of losing everything; it's just the worst possible moment—sort of a darkest-before-the-dawn situation. We're often confused by those two situations because they look so similar: the edge of doom and the edge of victory. Think about that, and we'll get back to it in a moment.
## [The Saudi Arabia Dilemma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=257s)
Here is our situation with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia seems to be guilty of murdering a journalist in their embassy. I think we all agree that if it had not been a journalist, we would not be talking about it. The fact that it's a journalist makes it a story because it's no longer about one critic being murdered; it's about free speech being murdered. It's about journalism. It's about the press. That pretty much guarantees—yeah, he's a columnist, an opinion writer, but still—he's part of the press. This pretty much guarantees that it will stay a story and will stay a priority. It's not going to just go away.
But it is true that every story's temperature comes down from its highest peak. Public opinion on the Saudi embassy thing started sky-high, but over time, everything gets a little bit less attenuated. President Trump is waiting, as his critics say, for Saudi Arabia to come up with a credible excuse that he can maybe accept so that he doesn't have to punish Saudi Arabia in some fashion.
But let's talk about that. Is there any way to punish Saudi Arabia? Could we punish them militarily? No, there is no chance that we're going to militarily do anything with Saudi Arabia; they're an ally. Could we penalize them within their political system? I don't think so, because they don't really have a political system that's really penetrable from the outside. Could we punish them economically? In theory, yes, but the only way we could do it is by hurting ourselves just as much and hurting our interests. We would have less influence over them because they're not buying our jets; if they get their jets from China, China has influence over them because they need parts and service from the country that sells them the stuff.
So, if we can't do it militarily, we can't do it politically, and we can't do it economically, what do you do? You also can't do nothing. Here is your setup: you can't do something because you can't think of what to do, and you can't do nothing. Who are you going to call? Who do you call when you can't do something and you can't do nothing because of the way people will regard it?
## [A Master Persuader Solution for the Middle East](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=442s)
That's right, you would call a Master Persuader. Somehow you have to solve the unsolvable psychological part. The psychological part is that they have to be punished, assuming that the charges hold up—and it looks like they will—and they have to not be punished. The only way you can do that is to find a solution where parties can look at the same thing, the same events, and some people could say, "Man, they got punished good," and other people, such as Saudi Arabia, can say completely legitimately, "We did not get punished."
How can you come up with a solution that is punishing them and also totally not punishing them? Can it be done? I'm going to tell you how. It goes like this: you want Saudi Arabia to do something that they don't want to do, but that could be construed as something so positive that it's a penalty without being a penalty.
Here's the idea. You say to Saudi Arabia: "We need you to recognize Israel, and we need you to fund the recovery of the Palestinians." So, that's your bill. Now, the Palestinians you own financially. We may throw in that we're going to let Saudi Arabia guard the Temple Mount. I don't know a lot about the Middle East, but I understand that there's a big discussion about who gets to guard the Temple Mount.
Remember: don't let a crisis go to waste. The Saudi Arabia situation is a crisis. It has created in Mohammed bin Salman a need to do something, and the something he needs to do has to be bigger than murdering and dismembering a journalist, an opinion writer, whatever you want to call him. It has to be bigger than dismantling and murdering and torturing somebody who's a member of the press. What is bigger than that? Not many things. Oh, is it the Al-Aqsa Mosque? I'm sorry. As you can tell, I'm not an expert on the Middle East.
But suppose you came up with this situation: "Saudi Arabia, we need you to do something big, and we need you to come back to being a member of productive nations." This is the time to lean on them to get something done that's much bigger than this. Middle East peace is achievable, maybe because of this.
## [Middle East Leverage and Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=627s)
We've never had more leverage on Saudi Arabia. At the same time, we have good relationships with them—or we did until this. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has been friendlier to Israel than anybody else. At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Israel would like to form a bloc against Iranian influence. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has to do something that to some people would look like a huge penalty and to others would look like a victory.
Think about it. I know that some of you are sitting home a little bit stunned right now because for the first time in your life, you might have even got a little tingle on your arm. You might have realized that for the first time in your life, this could actually happen, and there might never be a better time.
By the way, this is not my suggestion. I've asked the person whose idea this was whether I can reveal the identity, and I haven't got an answer. I wanted to do this Periscope before I got an answer. Let me check and see if I have an answer because I'll give credit where credit is due.
I'm looking at a message from the individual whose idea this was. I asked if they mind if I mentioned them, and the answer is ambiguous—if it would help, but not necessarily. So, here's what I'm going to do: I'm not going to give you the identity unless this gets some traction. I may rethink this, but rather than distract you by putting another name on it, let's just keep the idea clean. If it gets some traction, there's a record of the conversation so that credit will go where credit is due.
Do you see this as a possibility? Sounds okay? Not going to work? Well, if you're President Trump and you see an opening like this, you're at least going to bring up the topic, aren't you? Because it's at least good enough to put it on the table. I think we have a strange group of players right now. You've got, in my opinion, the strongest players in Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel that you've ever had. If you look at the leadership of those three countries, it's the strongest three we've ever had. They're all deal-makers. They're all smart. They're all innovative. They're all willing to try new stuff. They're all willing to take a risk if it's the right kind of risk. We've never had the right people like this before. It's just sort of perfect.
## [The Caravan and Midterm Turnout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=1008s)
What else is going on today? Let's talk about the caravan. I think everybody's got the same take on the caravan. Immigration as an issue used to be a concept. If you're talking about too much illegal immigration, you would use statistics and you'd say, "Well, the crime rate is this and there are X number of people and they're bringing crime." But if it's just a concept, it's not very persuasive. Concepts are not persuasive. Images are persuasive.
The human caravan has put a picture on immigration just when the Republicans would benefit the most. I don't know who organized the caravan, but it was almost like it was made for Republicans. I can't imagine anything that would be more positive for turning out the vote and for turning some people on the left against them, because the caravan looks scary.
Now, before you jump on me and say, "Racist, racist, racist," it's scary because they're just a lot of people. It's not because they're brown; it's not because they're coming from south of the border. I know somebody's going to say that. It's not that. But if you put a whole bunch of males—and the pictures I saw were more male than anything else; I only saw a few pictures but they seemed like they were 90% male—if you see a bunch of able-bodied male folks in a big crowd coming your way, you don't feel good. You think, "Oh, this looks dangerous." So, independent of what it actually is, the way it's going to feel and look and just play in terms of our psychology is very pro-Republican at this point.
You may have seen I tweeted an article in Breitbart by Joel Pollak in which I predicted that it would be the highest turnout we've seen in who knows how long for the midterms. I think Republicans might be setting a trap, and it might be the same trap that they set for the presidential election, which is to understate their future actions. If there was anything that could describe the Republican brand, it would be something like "more action than words."
I think you're going to see more action than words in a way you've never seen before. The Republicans are going to like winning, and they're going to like how they feel if they can get another surprise win. I'm still not predicting a win only because I don't know enough about the details of the specific races; I'm not predicting a loss, I'm just assuming that the experts know more about it than I do at this point. But the turnout will be extraordinary. It may also be true that the Democrats have an extraordinary turnout, and so that's the part that's unknowable. But I think Republicans are going to surprise.
## [Double Nobel Prize and the Final Toast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfsgVSjMN4&t=1189s)
I think that's enough for now. I'm going to sign off. We may see President Trump be the first double Nobel winner, because there's totally a possibility that sometime in 2019, the President will wrap up North Korea and have a workable Middle East peace plan. It's totally possible. You could have never said that before, but it is totally possible now.
I'll keep you on that positive note. Wait, before we go, let's drink to that. Let's drink to hashtag #JobsNotMobs. Let's drink to peace in the Korean Peninsula. Let's drink to maybe peace in the Middle East someday. Let's drink to more winning. I'll talk to you later.