Episode 268 Scott Adams: Saudi Halfpinions, Russian Missile Deals, and Midterms
Date: 2018-10-21 | Duration: 37:20
Topics
CNN Political Analyst, Julian Zelizer’s “halfpinion” article CNN shifts into alibi mode for possible election losses: Two minority vote suppression articles now on CNN Would Mueller wait till after midterms if he had anything juicy? President going hard on Russia…right before the midterms Jamal Khashoggi, does anyone care beyond the journalist level? Possible fallout from FentanylChina assassinations Wearing, tweeting, displaying the American flag just prior to midterm elections
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## Transcript
## [Introduction and The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=5s)
Ba-ba-boom ba-ba boom boom boom. That is my theme song. It's the Sunday version; it's a little slower and lazier than the weekday version, but still really good, I think you'd agree, those of you who are musically minded. Good morning Jeremy, good morning Ivonne, JP, Mike, Jean, Susan, Edie. It's good to see all of you gather around.
Have you ever noticed that one of the things about Periscope that makes it special is that it feels like you're having a FaceTime conversation with somebody you know? Because you all know me at this point, but you're not doing much of the talking; you're just sort of listening. Have you ever had those friends who do all the talking? Well, unlike your friend who does all of the talking in the morning when you're getting ready for work or you're taking a break, you're having your coffee.
Speaking of coffee, it's time for the simultaneous sip. Grab your cup, your chalice, your mug, your vessel, your glass. Fill it with liquids of your choice—I like coffee—and raise it to your lips for the simultaneous sip. One of the best parts of your entire day. Here it comes. Oh, that's good.
## [Saudi Arabia and the "Halfpinion"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=131s)
Let's talk about a few things. I've introduced in the past my views on something called a "halfpinion." A halfpinion is like a full opinion if you leave out half of it. A full opinion of anything would include all of the costs as you see them and all of the benefits as you see them of any action. If you've included both the costs and the benefits, that's a full opinion. If you've only looked at one of them—either the costs only or the benefits only—that's a halfpinion.
We're seeing a lot of halfpinions about Saudi Arabia, but they're a little bit disguised, and I want to show you one that is just wonderful. Here's the setup: there are a lot of anti-Trumpers who are saying things such as, "You've got to get tough with Saudi Arabia. We can't let them get away with doing what they did to a journalist." But what they leave out is: what do you do? Give me a suggestion. If there's a suggestion, we should put that in the mix. Look at the costs, look at the benefits, consider all of the suggestions. I'm for all of that.
But I want you to see how the alternative is being framed here and watch how this is just word salad. This is an article I just tweeted from CNN. It says: "Why Trump can swallow the far-fetched Saudi cover story." Now, as I tweeted yesterday, I think the Saudis' version of events is pretty ridiculous—that Khashoggi got in a fight and he accidentally died in a fistfight or something ridiculous. It's not really believable, but apparently, the President is showing indications that he's willing to believe it.
The President's view seems like a full opinion. If we do something to punish Saudi Arabia, it'll either punish us more than them, or it will be counterproductive to our larger interests. If we don't punish them, we lose a little in terms of our interest in protecting the press and our interest in protecting human rights, but there's not much we could have done about that anyway. At least we gain in terms of stability in the Middle East and our objectives.
So the President has a full opinion. But this writer for CNN, Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, describes the case and then here is his alternative. The alternative to pretending to believe Saudi Arabia's excuse—and let's be honest, the President, if he accepts their excuse in public, he is pretending. We all know that, right? So what is the alternative to pretending that you believe Saudi Arabia so you can get past it?
Here's the word salad alternative: "If Americans are serious about their outrage..." and we're not. So the very first part of the sentence should be the end of the sentence. If Americans are serious about their outrage—we are absolutely not serious about our outrage about this situation as a whole. There might be individuals who are outraged, but the country? No, we are not outraged.
I'll just read the rest of it: "If Americans are serious about their outrage, they need to do more than condemn President Trump." And I'm thinking, "Okay, here it comes. What's the 'more'? Tell us the 'more' that we can do that would be useful in this situation. Fill out your opinion."
"They need to push through a thorough reevaluation of U.S. foreign policy." Okay, so far that's something you could do. You can thoroughly reevaluate U.S. foreign policy. That's probably a good thing to do every now and then no matter what. So far we're good. "They need to push through a thorough revaluation of U.S. foreign policy that makes human rights a much bigger priority in how we handle business beyond our borders."
What does that mean? To make human rights a much bigger priority? What does it mean? It's already a top priority. It doesn't mean anything. This is how the folks with halfpinions pretend they have full opinions, and it looks like this. I'll use a different example: I'll say, "We should not put murderers in jail. Murderers should not be punished." And if you ask me why? "Well, we should do a thorough evaluation of our penal system to make sure that we're not punishing people in a way that's unconstitutional."
I just said nothing. It's just word salad. You see this a lot. The alternative to Trump's apparent plan—we say "apparent" because we don't know what he's thinking, but his actions so far would suggest that he's leaning heavily toward giving Saudi Arabia some kind of a pass on this—the alternative to that is to "push for a thorough reevaluation of the U.S. foreign policy that makes human rights a much bigger priority in how we handle business beyond our borders."
The alternative is blah-blah-blah. If there's only one choice and the other choice is words that sound like they work in the sentence but don't actually mean anything, you only have one choice. Can you criticize a President who has one choice and takes it? We are only pretending there's another choice, and I can't consider this a valid criticism of the President when there is no other choice discussed.
## [Context of Journalists Killed in Mexico](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=501s)
Do you know how many journalists were killed in Mexico last year? Do you know the context of this Khashoggi murder? Is the context that rarely does a journalist get killed in another country? Sadly, that is not the context. The context is that journalists get killed all the time in other countries. I believe the number for Mexico in one year was 16 or 18. Something like that.
How upset did we get about all of the Mexican journalists who were killed in the past year? We did not get upset. Should we have been upset about 16 journalists being killed right on our border in a bordering country? Yeah, we should be a little bit more upset about that than one person in a Saudi embassy, but we're not. I think it's more fair to say that we're just not concerned about it at all, frankly.
## [CNN and the Midterm Alibi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=562s)
Now, here's some foreshadowing you're going to enjoy. There's a little bit of worry starting to seep out on the left about the midterm election. Do you see it yet? Have you seen that the confidence in the midterms has now very clearly turned into worry?
One of the ways you can see it on the CNN homepage is they have two stories about minority vote suppression. There are two stories on the front page of CNN about minority voter suppression. One of them is "County tosses hundreds of minority ballots" and the other is "Black senior citizens pulled off the bus taking them to vote."
Watch how many minority voter suppression stories you see because they need to create the alibi in case the midterms don't go the way the Democrats want. They're setting the stage to say, "Well, we've been reporting about all this minority voter suppression, so you can see that the result didn't go our way not because of Russia, but because of minority vote suppression."
They had that Russia interference thing going for them in the presidential election, but now that's probably not going to work for the midterms because we're watching them too carefully. They need a new excuse and they're already lining it up. It's going to be minority voter suppression.
## [Russian Missile Deals and the Mueller Investigation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=685s)
Speaking of Russia, you may have seen in the news today that the President has decided to pull out of a Russian arms treaty agreement which apparently they're violating like crazy—the production of shorter-range missiles that would endanger Europe. I say to myself: hey, what kind of Russian collusion is that?
It kind of comes at a good time, doesn't it? Imagine you're going into the midterms and your news source has told you that Mueller isn't going to talk until after the midterms. Why would Mueller wait until after the midterms? It's a good idea to wait; you don't want to interfere in the midterm election. I'm glad he's waiting, but it does make you wonder.
It makes you wonder what Mueller has. If Mueller had the goods on President Trump, would he wait until after the midterms to tell the country? Maybe if he's a straight shooter he might actually wait no matter what the evidence suggested. He might wait until after the midterms just to be a good patriot and not interfere with the election. But if he had some kind of a smoking gun and it was clear to Mueller that something important had happened with Russia and had changed the election, and President Trump is working with Putin or anything like that, I feel like you'd want to tell the country so that they could vote accordingly.
Maybe not, but you have to ask yourself whether he would. I feel as though we have ruled out the possibility of whatever the worst-case scenario looks like. If Mueller had some kind of a smoking gun, "we've got the goods on the President" sort of thing, I feel like we'd know by now. It's almost certain that the Trump collusion thing has fallen apart and all they're doing is waiting for the paperwork and the report.
At the same time, the President just canceled this missile deal with Russia, and that doesn't make sense for a colluder. The voting public is going to look at this: President Trump going hard on the Russians right before the midterms. The timing is pretty good for the President.
## [Does the Public Care About the Khashoggi Story?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=868s)
I don't know how many things are going to line up in the President's favor before we start noticing. What's the worst thing happening for the President right now? The worst news for the President is the Saudi Arabia situation.
Here is what's interesting about it: the Saudi Arabia situation has the left media solidly against the President, as usual, questioning how he's handling Saudi Arabia. That's the left media. But this is my intuition about my fellow citizens on both the left and the right: I feel as though even the political left, even the Democrats, don't care about Saudi Arabia. What I mean by "don't care" is they too would rather get a good result in the Middle East—the larger picture—than they care about one Saudi who got killed in the Saudi embassy.
I think the worst thing that the President has against him is not even resonating with the people who don't like him. It seems to exist only at the journalist level. Has anybody ever met anybody in person who cared about this story? I'm actually curious. Have any of you met a co-worker or family member, have you heard anybody who's actually outraged about this journalist being killed by the Saudis—and outraged to the point where they think we should act against our own national interest to do something about it? I haven't seen one.
Do you remember seeing on CNN where they went out to the street and they were interviewing people and saying, "Are you outraged and should we do something about this murder of the Saudi journalist?" and then they would talk to the people on the street? Oh, that's right, that didn't happen. Why is CNN not doing focus groups? Where's the CNN focus group of citizens that they asked how much they care about the Saudi story? I haven't seen a focus group because it seems to me that no matter how you chose those people, you couldn't put together a small focus group with anybody who cared. I don't think you could find a single person unless they were actually journalists working in the Middle East.
## [The Fentanyl War with China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=1051s)
Let's move to another story. As you know, I have been railing against fentanyl China because they have illegal drug labs in China, apparently associated with some big gang over there—the Zheng gang or something. Their drugs might be killing something like 30,000 Americans per year. Keep in mind that the entire Vietnam War saw the deaths of 58,000 Americans. In two years, China will kill more Americans than the Vietnam War. That's not even counting the wounded—how many families have been wounded by the death or the addiction of a child?
China is essentially at war with the United States, except it's not the government, which is weird. There are Chinese citizens, drug cartel types in China, who are at war with America for all practical purposes if you look at the size of the death toll. I had said that if we can't get the Chinese government to execute these fentanyl top dealers—just the drug lab people, not the small dealers—if we can't get China to do it, we have moral cover. We are morally within our right to treat it as a war situation and to go into their country undercover and murder—it wouldn't be murder, it would be just—well, would it be murder? Depends how you see it. But we'd be killing those people extra-legally, in other words, without the legal system.
One of my smarter followers said, "Wait a minute, you're suggesting that we ignore due process and kill Chinese citizens? What would be the blowback from that?" Imagine the United States killing Chinese citizens in China, murdering them because they're the fentanyl lab people. What would be the blowback from that? Well, it would send a very strong message. Would China go to war with us if we killed their criminals for them—the ones that they want to also kill? Not if we got the right people. If we got the wrong people, they might be upset, but if we get the right people, no. They would have to say something publicly, maybe, but maybe they wouldn't even do that.
My guess is that they would not mention it. Play this in your mind: we send our wetwork people—I'm sure we have them—or we hire somebody in China to kill them. Let's say the Chinese government learns that the U.S. is behind the murder of a criminal fentanyl lab owner in China. Does China make an international thing of it? No, because China does not want to be known as "Fentanyl China." They don't want to be known as the country that can't take care of their own business. They don't want any more publicity on the fact that they kill 30,000 Americans a year while they're trying to negotiate trade deals.
They would be more quiet about it than we would. Do you know who would help cover up if the United States killed a Chinese citizen who was guilty of being a fentanyl lab criminal? China would cover it up faster than we would because it's the last thing they would want anybody to know—that we were in their country augmenting their own legal system because they couldn't get it done.
Now, the practical matter is we might not be able to identify those people, but to the extent that we have zero doubt about identity—if there's any doubt about identity, that's a whole different question—but if we don't have any doubt about who's the boss of the drug labs, I say full speed ahead. If China won't kill them, we shall kill them for them. That's my view as a citizen.
## [Midterm Persuasion: The American Flag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=1298s)
Let's talk about influencing the midterm election. I have a suggestion for you which I'm positive is legal. Let me think this through. I'm going to say it, but I'm pretty sure it's not against the law. If it is, somebody inform me and I'll take it back.
The idea is this: let's say three days before Election Day—let's say the Sunday before Election Day—you tweet or share an image of a flag, an American flag, with no words. Do not say "Please vote," do not say anything about the other side, do not say any message. Any message you put on the flag in the example I'm going to give you detracts from its power.
The reason is there have been studies—Cialdini talked about it—of persuasion in which the American flag biases people to vote Republican. I don't know if the same effect would hold over social media, especially since people are siloed. Republicans will see Republican messages and Democrats will see Democrat messages for the most part, so those flags might not even be visible to the political left. But that's not the point in this case.
The point of doing this would be to make people think about America. My speculation is this: if you show a bunch of patriotic images to Republicans on Election Day, I believe that motivates them to get off the couch and vote. You don't need to put any words on it, and if you do, you're diminishing the power of the message.
But if you're a critic of the current government, if you don't think America is great and you don't want it to be great, if you think America has overreached, what does the American flag do to you? Probably turns you off a little bit, doesn't it? I would think that the American flag has this unique quality in which it's our symbol for all of us, but probably at the moment, given the hyper-partisan politics, it probably is a motivational symbol for Republicans which would cause them to vote in greater numbers, and it's probably an anti-motivational symbol for the other side.
Given that I have never tested this hypothesis, but it makes sense in terms of everything we know—my intuition, my experience—they all suggest that this would be a powerful thing to do. Is it legal? It certainly would be legal if you all just tweeted your opinions and said, "Hey, go vote Republican." That would be completely legal. But is it legal to do something that isn't as obvious, even if it's a little bit more persuasion-powerful?
Simply tweeting that people should vote—people are going to look at that and say, "Yeah, that didn't change anybody's mind," so they can ignore it. But a billion American flags could actually move the dial. There probably is no stronger symbol for Republicans and probably independents as well than the American flag. It would be hard to think of any single picture that moves us that way, outside of the realm of violence. The flag has the biggest visceral impact on us. It moves our bodies.
Have you ever gotten goosebumps from the flag? I have. How many of you have ever gotten goosebumps from seeing a flag? I'm actually interested in that question because I'll bet it's a lot of you. Which gets to my next point. I'm just waiting for the comments to catch up with me. The question was how many of you have ever felt goosebumps from looking at the American flag? You can see that the "yeses" are starting to come in.
One of the ways that you can determine what is powerful persuasion and what is not is whether it physically changes you. Something that makes you laugh is a physical change that was somewhat involuntary, and that means that's good persuasion. Something that makes you cry—actually physically cry—is good persuasion because it made your body do something. The American flag gives you goosebumps. Goosebumps are a physical change. If your persuasion gives somebody an immediate physical change, that's powerful.
That's the only kind of persuasion that you should be looking for. You should only look for persuasion that causes a physical change in the other person—not a mental change, not an idea change, not a "thinking of things differently" change, not a "my facts are better than your facts" change, not "my logic is better than yours." None of that moves the body. The body moves based on feelings. The flag has brought people to tears, it has given them goosebumps, it's given people every kind of feeling you can have, but they're primarily positive feelings overwhelmingly for Americans.
So that's my suggestion if you want to see if you can influence the vote for Republicans: tweeting different images of the American flag. Here are the two tricks that you should really be careful about. Number one: don't put any words on it. Number two: don't start too early because people can get used to anything. If you start now, the flag meme will be overused by Election Day. In other words, we'll become flag-blind. We'll just see too many flags between now and Election Day that they won't mean anything by Election Day. Of course, it's still the flag, so it'll mean something, but you'll be taking a little of the energy out of it if you start too early.
I would say start around the Sunday before Election Day. The reason I'm picking that is people make their plans a few days in advance. People need to start thinking about Election Day to make sure they've opened their schedule, they know how to get there, they figured out where the polling places are, that sort of thing. You don't want to do it too early, you don't want to add words, and you don't want to use the same image of the flag every time. You want to mix that up as well.
Some of you might use clip art, some might take a photo of a flag, some might use a close-up, others might show a flag being raised. You want some variety. It's all flag, but different pictures so the mind doesn't get snowblind to it. Remember those tricks: no words, just the flag, start three days before, and use different images. It's okay to retweet other people's images, but if you see too many of one kind of flag, throw in another one just to keep the variety up. That would be an interesting test.
## [The Legality of Persuasion and Color Symbolism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTkCotfFoI&t=1860s)
Can you explain why that would be illegal? The reason why I wonder if it would be illegal is that it's too powerful and too clever. It's the sort of thing where—let me make a bad analogy. Let's say you were thinking about being a murderer and you were going to commit an attempted murder, so you took a snowball and you threw it at somebody and hit them in the back with it. Even if your intention was murder, you did such a bad job of it that if the police caught you, they'd say, "It's a snowball. It really couldn't have killed this person." So maybe they'll charge you with some small annoying thing, but that's not really attempted murder even if that's what you had in mind. It's battery or assault and battery.
Likewise, if you're trying to influence the election but you're not good at it, nobody cares. If you tweet something that shows your opinion, it's just free speech. It doesn't move the dial; nobody cares about it. But this flag thing has at least the potential to be so persuasive that it would short-circuit your rational processes and it could influence an election result in a way that changes the history of the world.
When you take something that wouldn't be a problem if it's done poorly and small and then you ramp it up to super effective, the legal system starts to look at it differently because it starts to matter. I don't see exactly why it would be illegal because it's something that Americans are doing for their own election. We already express our opinions; there should be no problem with expressing your love for the flag. But if it's too powerful, you could imagine how, if it's not illegal today, maybe someday it will be. I don't know how you would make good persuasion illegal, but my opinion is that it would not be illegal. You can easily imagine how the law would catch up to technology and they would do some tests and say, "Holy heck, every time this flag thing happens, the turn-out goes up on one side." So maybe we should think about "no flag memes" before Election Day. It will only matter if it works.
Is "Red Wave" better than "Blue Wave"? Red Wave frankly doesn't sound like a positive thing, does it? When I think red, I think blood and communism. So when you say Red Wave, frankly, the persuasive power of that is kind of weak because that's sort of a negative. A Blue Wave feels like the ocean. I like the ocean, surfing—it's a nice day, there's a nice blue wave out there. But a Red Wave? Yeah, red tide. Red tide's no good. Nobody wants a red tide. Red Wave is sort of something you run away from. So there is an unfortunate disadvantage for the Republicans on that symbolism.
"No campaigning within 50 feet of a polling place." Well, that's a perfect example. I was trying to think of an example where if you did something minor it wouldn't be illegal, but if you did the same thing in a more effective way, it would become illegal. If you're campaigning right around the polling place, that has been made illegal because it's effective. That's the only difference. Now, it's effective for a different reason because it might be intimidating, but it's only illegal because it works. In Massachusetts, that's 150 feet and you can't advocate for anything.
I think I've said everything I want to say. Have you noticed that the news is less interesting when the President isn't doing something provocative? But you know what today is? Today is Sunday, provocative tweet day. So I would expect the President to thrill us all with some Sunday and Monday tweets. Watch out for that. That's all I got. I'll talk to all of you later.