Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 455: Charlie Kirk and the Death of Civility

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Episode 455: Charlie Kirk and the Death of Civility · Words & Numbers

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Today on Words and Numbers, quarterly reports.
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Swedish traffic cameras. Sex toys and NFL games.
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And Charlie Kirk. All this and more coming right
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up on words and numbers. Hi, I'm James.
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And I'm Anthony and. This is words and numbers.
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So what's new and exciting in your world this weekend?
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Well, I have more listener material.
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This stuff comes from words and numbers backstage, which you
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mentioned from time to time, but we should probably take a
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moment, particularly as we get new listeners, to explain we
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have a Facebook group. It's not, it's not open, open.
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You have to apply and then we'll admit you.
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Some might. Call it a vibrant community.
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Yeah, it's been going on for almost as long as the podcast,
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so about seven years. And people talk about all sorts
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of things there. A lot of the conversation is
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around what what topics we cover in the episode.
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And you and I are do post a lot there and participate in the
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conversation. But the interesting thing is we
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attract a lot of people. I wish we had more on the left.
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We do have some on the left, decent number on the right, but
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most of the libertarians and we attract people who are
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interested in in civil discussion, talking about ideas,
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not necessarily agreeing. And I think in large part we've
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managed and that's not to any, not to our credit, but so much
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as the people who are there. We've managed to pull this off
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for the past seven years or so, talked about some pretty
1:43
controversial stuff. And yet everything has remained
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largely Speaking of civil. I think we've kicked out a grand
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total of three people over the course of seven years.
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That's right. It does get a little heated, I
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have to say, when the perennial debate over whether a hot dog is
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a sandwich or not comes up right, Yeah, it probably comes
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up every two months. And this is not a small group.
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There's last count 1600 people on.
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There 17 it's been there. You you haven't visited for a
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while. But nonetheless, if you're
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interested in joining, by all means find us on Facebook Words
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and numbers Backstage. But this comes from one of our
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listeners, Dave Thornton, who posted on Backstage.
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It's a bit about Swedish traffic cameras, and I'll just read it.
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Most speed cameras hand out fines.
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Sweden decided to have a bit of fun with it.
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They set up a camera that still find anyone breaking the limit,
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but if you kept to the limit, your license plate went into a
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lottery to win the fine money that was collected from the
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speeders. Wow, that makes me want to speed
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a little bit. Is it why?
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So I could win all the money from all the speeders.
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No, you you don't win if you speed.
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You only. You're only entered in the
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lottery if you're under the speed limit.
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Well, how do they get your license plate if they don't
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take? A patient would presume that
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they're taking everybody's license plate.
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So if you're above it, they take your license plate, they fine
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you. If you're below it, they take
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your license plate, They put you in the lottery and it says here,
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It says here. In just three days, average
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speeds dropped from 32 kilometers an hour to 25.
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And what fascinates me with this is the the incentives.
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We're so used to thinking about government applying the stick
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that there's some rule and if you don't follow the rule, we're
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going to fine you or throw you in jail or whatever it is.
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And here Sweden is taking the opposite, while kind of the
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opposite. You still get fined if you if
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you go too fast, but they're rewarding the people who adhere
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to the law by putting them in the lottery.
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They're using the carrot as well as the stick.
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Now I will tell you about how the stick is used with traffic
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cameras in the People's Republic of Maryland, where I used to
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have to drive through on my way to Pennsylvania.
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When I lived in Pennsylvania and I worked in DC, they would just
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snap a picture and they would send it to your house with a
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bill and they would say you owe us $50.00 for.
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And the the bill was always considerably lower than it would
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have been had an actual police officer pulled you over and
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handed you a ticket, right? And and then they said the
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following. If you simply pay the bill,
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there will be no points on your license.
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Yes. Or you could come to court,
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which for me was 350 miles away. I paid the 50 every time and
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they boy did they get me a lot of times.
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I got one of those ones, not from Maryland, but from DC.
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And this thing comes in the mail from the city of of Washington.
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DCI don't know what this was. Open it up and it's this ticket.
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And I said, I'm thinking there's no way I'm going to throw it
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away figuring that this is ridiculous.
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There's no way that I got a ticket in DC, But then they show
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me a picture of my car and the date and all of that, and I'm
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looking at my calendar and I'm thinking I wouldn't complain to
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my wife. I said, this is some kind of
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scam. I wasn't in Washington On this
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date, I was in Pittsburgh. And she says, somewhat
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sheepishly, No, but I was. Anyway, that's probably the most
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charitable way to end this miserable segment and move on to
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the next one, which I actually people are making fun of for a
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number of political reasons. But I'm not going to because I
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happen to think it's a really, really good idea.
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And it comes, of all places, from the mouth of Donald J
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Trump. I'll just read you the headline.
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And this is an Axios headline for people who care about such
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things. Trump says public companies
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should not have to report quarterly results.
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Ain't that something? Why is he saying this?
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Well, I I don't know why he's saying it, but the salutary
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effect would be that companies would all of a sudden be more
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inclined to look after long term profits than try to trying to
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grab the short term profit train quarter after quarter after
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quarter. Executive behavior would change
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overnight if they didn't have to make quarterly reports.
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I don't know. I I see, I see your argument.
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I can imagine, however, they're simply evolving some private
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sector solution. Some forensic accountants are
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going to get a hold of whatever they can get a hold of and have
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websites where for $100 you can sign on and you can get their
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assessment of what the quarterly report would have been.
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We're doing that already with any number of things.
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I mean, if quarterlies are great, weeklies are better.
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You're absolutely right that that one of the effects this has
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is to cause the the management to be hyper focused on the short
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term. Yeah.
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And, and and it's not even that right there.
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From the Board of directors down to top management, the incentive
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structure yields higher pay for better quarterly results.
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Right, right. So that's all they're ever going
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to chase because you know you're going to be here at the end of
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the quarter. Do you know you're going to be
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here in three years? Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, except, look, I mean, this is very strange, this
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conversation, because we're all about incentives and incentives
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mattering. And here we are complaining
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about them responding to incentives.
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I'm I'm not complaining about it.
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I'm saying there could be a better.
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Incentive. Yeah.
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Something bothers me about the solution in effect being a
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squelching of information that there is information out there
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and we're going to prevent it from disseminating.
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That that's right. That would be a consequence of
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doing this. This is why I wanted to bring it
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up to you, Colt. Wait, people don't realize we
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don't talk about these things before the episodes?
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Literally ever so. You know I ask you something you
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won't tell me. You ask me a lot of things and I
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don't tell you a lot of things. Anyway it it'll be interesting
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to see how this moves forward, if indeed it does, and what sort
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of effect it has on the markets. Get words and numbers on
8:40
civil.com and on Civil's TV and mobile apps.
8:44
Regular episodes are free. Sign up for an annual membership
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to support our show and for access to member exclusive
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content. So before we leave this topic,
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let me just spitball some other things.
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I'm not advocating this, but I am throwing it out as, as you
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know, something else that you could do and that is require
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that any stock that someone buys, they have to hold it for a
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minimum period of time. Well, because in effect, This is
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why, this is part of why everybody's so hyper short run
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focused because it's a stock price goes down tomorrow, a
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bunch of people are going to start selling off the stock.
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Well, if they can't sell off the stock, you're going to be less
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concerned. I don't like that solution.
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I think I like it even less than the other one.
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Yeah, if I buy a stock tomorrow and I find out something
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horrible, horrible about it the next day, I want to dump that as
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fast as I can. But you know, this reminds me,
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my my father, when he was in industry, was a tea taster.
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And as part of his job, he would buy and sell.
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Or he wouldn't sell, but he would buy tea for the tea
9:55
company. And he said to me one time that
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the price of coffee is far more volatile than the price of tea.
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And so I'm asking him about that, you know, why that would
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be? They're relatively, you know,
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they're in the same universe of, of, of product.
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And he says it's because coffees are traded on futures markets
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where tea isn't. And so consequently, the the
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price of coffee as a commodity can be fluctuating, reflecting
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any bit of noise or news that comes along.
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Whereas the price of tea changes much more slowly because there
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isn't the futures market. And so consequently, what
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happens when the price changes slowly?
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Tomorrow some good news would come along that would otherwise
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cause the price to go up, but it can't because the price moves
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slowly. Then the next day, some bad news
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comes along that would cause the price to go down, except
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doesn't, because the price moves too slowly.
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But those two pieces of news cancel each other out.
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With coffee, you would see up down.
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With tea, it just stays long. But let's be let's be clear.
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You should stipulate that you have often spoken in favor of
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futures markets. Yeah, I I think futures markets
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are a great invention. So it's not, this is not
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necessarily a bad right. It's not necessarily a bad
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thing. It's just a thing.
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Yeah, it's a thing. So let's move on to a bad thing,
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the foolishness of the week, which is going to sound
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curiously like the foolishness of the week that we had just a
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while back. Do you remember when lunkheads
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were throwing? What am I supposed to call these
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things on our podcast? I'm going to say a few words,
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maybe just two. Sex toys, vibrators, the powers.
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With the WNBA games, yeah, the. Powers to be can bleep out
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whichever of those two words is more offensive than the other
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one. I don't really care which way it
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goes. But but now it went and look,
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everybody was quick to say misogyny, right?
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It's it's men throwing sex toys at a bunch of women.
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Shame on them. Well, hold my beer, said the NFL
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fan. Because these things are now
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hitting NFL fields and it's so bad.
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It's so bad that some clown threw a yellow one on the field
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at a Cincinnati Bengals game. They were playing the Jaguars.
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So way to go Cincinnati. Cincinnati fans have always been
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just a little off. I'm going to go out on a ledge
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and say this was a Cincinnati Bengals fan, but it was a home
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game. So, you know, this is not much
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of A of a prediction of a prediction on my part.
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But he heaved a yellow sex toy onto the field and the CBS
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broadcasters thought it was a penalty flag and announced as
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much during the game. Oh, that is great.
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Yeah. And and when it.
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Happened at at WNBA games. I remember just begging people
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to stop it, just stop it. But my God, I love football more
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than I love everything except my dog and you.
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You have to stop it. This isn't pretty.
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Next. I know a lot of what's coming
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next. The vendors, the vendors are
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going to start stalking these things, maybe with the the team
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logo on it. There are days.
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I don't even know what to say to you.
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I look forward to when somebody does this at the 18th green at
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the US Open. Right.
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Yeah, right. Because sooner or.
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Later, it's going to have to be everywhere because these clowns
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are getting attention for it and look at us giving them attention
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for it. But this one is just too
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ridiculous and, and apparently this is not the first one during
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this NFL season, which I'll remind you is in Week 2 anyway.
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Probably time to be a little more serious, given the times
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that we've been living through. Yeah, people don't realize that,
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you know, we're on a schedule and we haven't recorded in
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probably over a week. And in the time between our last
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recording and now, Charlie Kirk was murdered.
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And we're not, we're not exactly going to talk about Charlie
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Kirk's murder today as such, but we are going to talk about a a
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raft of what I consider to be related issues.
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So where would you like to begin?
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Well, let me start with something that surprised me, and
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that is. The.
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The apparent effect it's had on people.
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Now, granted, this is AII come from a, what I'm about to say
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comes from a biased standpoint in that most of the people in my
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orbit are libertarians, conservative types.
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But there was this profound sense of loss and, and, and I
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felt it as well. And I don't know, I mean, I,
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I've never met the guy. I've watched his, his clips
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quite a few times on YouTube. I think he's a very smart guy,
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but he was one guy amongst many others that I watched as well.
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But it really it, it touched me. I'm still don't understand why,
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but it was enough that to to for me to note that something
15:50
profound happened here. I'll.
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Say two things following exactly what you have just said.
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The first is, is it clearly touched a nerve and it touched a
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nerve that I was more or less unaware of.
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I didn't see the response, the massive response on what I would
16:13
call the positive or sympathetic side.
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I, I didn't see that coming. I mean, I saw, I saw Koreans out
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having a remembrance in public in Seoul, South Korea, right
16:26
there. Wow, This really crossed a lot
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of different lines. Now, Speaking of lines, I think
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this event shows us, I'm choosing my words very carefully
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here. This event shows us that a line
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has been crossed. I don't think this was the
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crossing of that line. I think this is a symptom of
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that line having already been crossed.
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We have gotten to the point and I'm and I, I think I know why
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and how, but that that can wait for a few minutes.
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We've gotten to the point where we no longer recognize or treat
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people as ends the the sacrosanct nature of the human
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individual is no longer the driving force in most people's
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lives. And I think you saw this a week
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earlier when that poor Ukrainian girl whose name I can't possibly
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pronounce was knifed to death on a train.
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I mean, think about what happened to her.
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She got out of Ukraine and made it to the United States.
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She should have been safe for the rest of her days.
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And she was killed for no, I, I want to say for no good reason.
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I guess there are good reasons from time to time for, for the
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taking of a human life. They are rare and they are not
17:58
to be celebrated. But when you look at these
18:03
things, the media didn't even cover.
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Her killing. There were zero stories about
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it. It took off because people
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started talking about it. Yeah, yeah.
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And not surprisingly, I'm going to blame social media for a lot,
18:20
if not most, of our problems in the not too distant future in
18:23
this conversation. But in in that instance, nobody
18:28
would have ever known she she lived or died were it not for
18:33
people pushing it on Twitter. And you wonder, aunt, how we got
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here. And look, you and I know the
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numbers, right? We're we are not a violent
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nation. No, we're not.
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Yeah. We're just simply not.
18:46
And anyone who who doubts that dive into the numbers
18:49
themselves. Yeah, it doesn't mean there's
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not. Violence.
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No, But. But violent crime is down some
18:55
80 to 90% since 1993, when it was at its highest.
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It's ticking up a little bit right now.
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I checked the, the data just recently, but a massive
19:07
increase, so-called doesn't bring us even part of the way
19:12
back to 1993. When you're dealing with numbers
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that are so small, any jump in the numbers looks like a massive
19:19
increase. How did we get here and how did
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we get to the point? And I'm, I'm, I'm really
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troubled by this past week. I'm really troubled by it.
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And I I honestly believe a line has been crossed and I don't
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think that we're going to get back anytime soon.
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Let me. Throw out one possibility and in
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my guess is there isn't any one thing you can point to.
19:42
But, but if I were to point to the first time in my life that I
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saw something that to my mind directly is in the direct causal
19:55
chain to what we've just seen, it was when I was in high
20:01
school. And I first encountered people
20:05
starting to talk about and they kind of talked about it
20:09
somewhat. How should I say?
20:10
They were embarrassed to say it, but they talked about truth
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being subjective, subjective truth.
20:18
And and that picked up speed. So that go from my being in high
20:23
school to my first job as a college professor.
20:27
And it was something people weren't ashamed to say anymore.
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Now, it wasn't, it wasn't the majority of people, but there
20:35
was a cadre of people who said, yes, Truth is not objective, I
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would hazard. To guess, it is a majority of
20:45
college professors in the humanities.
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Yeah, yeah. It's all I ever heard.
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I I was such an outlier to to such a dinosaur to believe in
20:55
something of an of an eternal truth.
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I would point outlook. All you people believe in the
21:00
truth too. You're telling me that we should
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behave vastly. Why is it just your preference?
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If so, I don't care what your preference is.
21:11
And they'd say, no, it's justice.
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Well, what's justice? Does that share in the nature of
21:17
the truth? Or is it different for
21:19
everybody? Because if it's different for
21:21
everybody, again, I don't care. And on and on and on.
21:25
When you scratch at people who claim there's no such thing as
21:29
the truth, they spout truth claims all day long, right?
21:33
Yeah, in in the defense of, of people who fall under the
21:36
objective truth banner, when I've had deep conversations with
21:40
them, what I find is, is them feeling that the guy who says
21:48
truth is objective wants to impose his truth on the, on
21:53
what, what they're calling his truth on their person.
21:56
And, and I've had, I've had fabulous conversations and
22:00
actually ended up coming to agreement with people who
22:03
started off by saying that they believe truth is subjective.
22:06
When when I say look, just because I say it's objective
22:11
doesn't mean I know what it is. In fact, there may be objective
22:15
truths that aren't even knowable at all.
22:19
My. Training would would would have
22:21
me tell you that the best you can do, the absolute best you
22:26
can do is to have a true opinion.
22:29
You can happen to be right, and it takes a lot of work to happen
22:34
to be right and. And where you end up in your
22:37
case of of the, the true opinion or in my case of objective
22:42
truth, and maybe it's not known or not knowable.
22:45
The fact that it's objective means that we can iterate, we
22:50
can get closer to it or further away from it.
22:53
And there will be things that we can point to, for example, when
22:57
society is more harmonious, clearly we're living closer to
23:03
the truth, whatever that is then we are when society is in
23:08
upheaval and people are killing and murder and and stealing all
23:11
of this and. And let's be clear, the North
23:14
Koreans are not living harmoniously.
23:17
Yes. Yes, because because it.
23:19
Has to be harmoniously in a context of freedom.
23:23
Yes, so. Everybody doing the same thing.
23:26
That's not good enough. Yeah, just.
23:27
Be Just because people are behaving in a lawful manner
23:31
doesn't necessarily mean that you're harmonious and and.
23:35
Let let's talk about the truth a little bit here, because Charlie
23:40
Kirk hadn't even been announced to be dead yet when the flood of
23:49
online experts showed up telling me exactly who was responsible.
23:55
Well, I mean, how do you know that he hasn't been caught yet?
23:59
And look, look what I just did. Maybe it was she probably not a,
24:05
a, a, a woman 'cause I, I understand what statistics look
24:08
like. But it could have been.
24:11
No, literally nobody knew. And yet everybody went.
24:15
I, I heard that it was somebody from the the crackpot left and I
24:19
heard it was somebody from the alt right, whatever the hell
24:22
that is. How do you know we haven't
24:25
caught him yet? Nobody has the first idea.
24:28
Oh, he scratched trans things into the bullet casings.
24:34
Wouldn't that be a really good redirect that literally tells
24:38
you nothing until you catch the guy and then you can backwards
24:43
engineer what you found? But that could have been a right
24:47
winger saying, well what will throw them off my scent
24:51
immediately. Oh I know, that's what any smart
24:54
person would do if a smart person decided to murder a
24:57
public figure, which I advise against in the strongest terms
25:01
possible. Dinesh D'souza and.
25:04
And we really don't call out people by name here very often.
25:08
But Dinesh D'souza's behavior was like such a little troll,
25:13
like the little troll that he is.
25:15
And if he's listening, I dare you to come on and talk to me.
25:19
I dare you. What did he say?
25:22
He said he was, oh, this man was obviously radicalized at
25:26
college. And this pissed me off a little
25:28
bit. And I got to tell you because
25:31
where did he go to college? Utah State?
25:34
You're right. Yeah, for how?
25:36
Long one semester. What in in what manner?
25:42
Online? Who's a COVID student now?
25:46
I could tell you a couple of things here that other people
25:49
might not know. There is literally no one who
25:53
has ever been radicalized at Utah State but you.
25:56
You were a professor at Utah State, Yeah.
25:59
On two separate occasions, yes, I might, dare I say it, know
26:03
what the hell I'm talking about. But.
26:06
But more than that, aunt, he was there for one semester online.
26:11
Whatever he became has nothing to do with his time at Utah
26:15
State, nor do I think it has anything to do with the
26:18
Technical College that he went to thereafter.
26:21
How do I know? Radicals tend not to teach at
26:24
technical colleges. So, Dinesh, the Hell's wrong
26:28
with you throwing gasoline on a fire?
26:33
Oh, that's what gets you more attention.
26:35
And what? What have we seen?
26:38
People looking for attention, But at what cost?
26:44
At the cost of our very civility.
26:46
A terrible thing happened. And I saw instance after
26:50
instance after instance of people blaming whoever they
26:54
didn't like, and then instance after instance after instance of
27:01
people celebrating. Neither of those two things is
27:05
appropriate in a civilized society, Inappropriate all the
27:10
way around. And now people on the right are
27:15
going after everybody who celebrated, trying to get them
27:18
all fired. So the very cancel culture that
27:22
they preached against for years correctly cancel culture that
27:27
was being applied to them from the left without question.
27:32
You'd have to be an idiot to say it didn't happen.
27:36
Now they're turning around and doing the same thing.
27:39
And look, I, I, I don't, I don't want to make a case that
27:42
everybody should be immune right there.
27:46
There are some jobs that, you know, if you're a cop and you're
27:50
jumping up and down celebrating someone's murder, you may
27:54
deserve to get fired. And there are all kinds of jobs
27:57
like that. There was a Secret Service man
27:59
that got fired over it. Good.
28:00
He deserved that. Some school teachers are in a
28:03
lot of trouble right now. Good.
28:06
But I, I don't see what the guy works at Subway, what he's got
28:10
to do with anything, right? Yeah, yeah.
28:12
The difference being that the your first examples, these are
28:16
people who more than deal with the public.
28:19
They're considered leaders in the public.
28:22
In some sense, we have to be. Able to rely on them.
28:26
Yeah. To to implement the requirements
28:29
of justice in in an even handed way.
28:33
And if they give us evidence that they can't do it, it's
28:36
exactly the same for me as finding out that one of my local
28:39
cops here in Tucson is secretly a member of the clan.
28:43
You may need to get fired over that.
28:48
You've told us what you are. And in that job, you can't be
28:52
that. But we, you and I, have always
28:56
been First Amendment absolutists.
28:59
Well, not quite absolutists as we've just pointed out, but
29:02
pretty damn close. And people are allowed to say
29:07
whatever they want, no matter how horrible.
29:11
And and I will point out how horrible they are, but I will
29:16
never say that they don't have the right to say what they want
29:19
to say. I'm going to ask how we got
29:22
here, right. How did we get to a place where
29:25
people say this kind of nonsense just as a matter of course,
29:30
Yeah. But I think.
29:30
That's that's the important distinction, asking how we got
29:35
here, because the fact is this isn't a First Amendment issue.
29:39
We're not talking about the government silencing these
29:42
people, but what we are talking about is in the fact that you've
29:46
got to live with consequences of your decisions.
29:49
Well, if you're in a public facing role and you say
29:53
something like this, well you're going to have to have
29:55
consequences of that. I.
29:57
But but I saw something yesterday or today that was very
30:01
instructive and it was a mother posting a video of her two
30:05
children and she said the best thing happened today.
30:12
And the kids, probably 4 and 6 little girls, said Donald Trump
30:17
was killed. OK, I know where they're getting
30:21
it from. They're getting it from the
30:24
person behind the camera. And when she said no, they said
30:28
Elon Musk was killed. So it's not a one off.
30:35
And and again, we're seeing people losing sight of the
30:40
sacrosanct nature of the individual.
30:42
They've lost sight of it. And I don't think we're going to
30:45
get that back anytime soon, but. Let me let me point to the flip
30:50
side of this, which I was pretty impressed.
30:53
Stephen King was one of the people who came out and tweeted
30:58
immediately, and his tweet was something about Kirk advocating
31:02
stoning gaze to death. And somebody pretty quickly
31:09
showed him whatever evidence was necessary.
31:12
And King comes back and he tweets, he says I was wrong and
31:16
I apologize, and he deleted the post.
31:20
That's a classy move. I don't know man, I've seen a
31:23
lot of posts from Stephen King. Not a classy guy.
31:28
Well. Maybe not, I don't, I don't
31:30
know. But in this particular case,
31:32
that was a classy move. Got his.
31:34
Hand caught in a cookie jar. Yeah, now you can say, well, you
31:38
know, he's afraid of of people not buying his works.
31:42
In fact, there was some bookstore in in Europe that said
31:45
they're taking his books off the shelf.
31:47
He's a multi millionaire over. He doesn't.
31:50
He didn't have. To care about any of that, yeah.
31:52
Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm willing to give
31:54
him the benefit of the doubt and say he actually meant this.
31:56
And, you know, more power to him.
31:59
Yeah, I. I saw a lot of people
32:01
celebrating the deaths of someone they disagreed with, and
32:05
I tried to rack my brain. Did I ever in my life celebrate
32:10
the death of another human being?
32:12
And I don't think I ever did. Somebody might remember
32:16
something that I don't. And if you do, please tell me
32:19
because I I want to be right when I say these things, but I
32:22
just, I just don't. And I've been in some heavy
32:25
places when some important people were killed and I took no
32:29
joy in it. None whatsoever.
32:32
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33:36
numbers. That's one word for 50% off an
33:39
annual subscription. Let me turn the attention for a
33:43
moment to to Charlie Kirk himself because I, as I said, I
33:49
used to watch his clips or I still do watch his clips on
33:51
YouTube all the time. They fascinate me.
33:54
And and after all of this, I started watching the more of
33:57
course, they're showing up in my feed more anyway.
34:00
And two things occurred to me as I'm watching these.
34:04
One is he his approach. And, and let me preface by
34:10
saying that there are a handful of things he says that I
34:13
disagree with at least one thing he says.
34:16
I think that he's actually logically incorrect.
34:19
But but nonetheless, he has. He's one of the one of only two
34:25
people I've ever observed who engages in debate in this
34:29
fashion. The other one was Milton
34:31
Friedman, who honestly is interested in understanding what
34:38
the other person is saying and treats the other person with
34:43
respect while at the same time maintaining the thing he
34:47
believes he's able to separate the persons from the discussion
34:53
from the the topic. That's a that's a fabulous trait
34:59
and and it encompasses what we started off with, this idea of
35:03
human respect. That's where it starts.
35:06
Of course, it's easy to respect people who agree with you, but
35:09
to respect people who disagree with you despite the fact that
35:12
the disagreement is persistent, that's quite a talent.
35:16
Well. He was, by any estimation, A
35:20
cheerful guy. Yeah, he didn't seem to.
35:21
He didn't seem to take a lot of it personally.
35:23
And people said horrible things to him and and that's, that
35:27
seemed to be just fine by him, right?
35:30
And he would, he would invite them to keep coming back and
35:32
saying more things. And look, I'm not a Charlie Kirk
35:36
expert. I'm I'm not getting into any of
35:38
that. I'm I'm just saying this was a
35:41
human being with a wife and two little children who incidentally
35:46
watched him die. And people celebrate this.
35:52
What? What the hell is wrong with
35:54
these people? Now I start.
35:57
I think I know what's wrong with them.
35:59
If you've got something to say, go ahead because I'm about to go
36:02
on a rant. Before you go on a rant, I start
36:05
off by saying there were two things that occurred to me as
36:07
I'm watching these his videos. The 1st is his approach is very
36:14
Friedmanesque. The second in this never
36:19
occurred to me prior, but after his shooting and I'm watching
36:25
this thing, it occurs to me he quite possibly would have ended
36:30
up as president. I I.
36:32
Think that's right? Actually, I don't know if that
36:35
was his goal, but it was well within his in his reach and what
36:40
that means. Is there was a path that this
36:43
country could have taken that I think would have ended up very
36:47
well for people on both sides, left and right?
36:50
Now it's closed. Now we can't.
36:52
We can't go down that path now, Now we'll now.
36:54
We'll never know. And there there's another
36:56
terrible thing to to mention. Maybe I'll start my my little
37:01
rant here because not only am I seeing a bunch of abhorrent
37:07
leftists celebrating a death, now I'm seeing a bunch of
37:12
abhorrent rightists asking Donald Trump, literally asking
37:17
Trump to declare a civil war. And I saw a bunch of them all
37:23
dressed in exactly the same way marching through a California
37:27
neighborhood saying they were taking it back.
37:31
This is going to end very, very badly.
37:34
Trust me when I tell you. But how did this happen?
37:39
What's because, you know, aunt, when we were young, we knew
37:44
horrible people. They were out there and we knew
37:48
bullies. They were out there and, and I
37:51
mean actual bullies, not what the left would have you believe
37:55
Bullies are not now. We think anybody who says a
37:57
snide thing to you is a bully. It's bullying if there's blood
38:01
on the floor. Right.
38:03
Yeah, period. But we had bullies and we had
38:09
horrible people and and we had idiots.
38:13
And I would submit with my relatively solid understanding
38:19
of ancient history, and, and modern history too for that
38:22
matter, that we had them in exactly the same proportion that
38:26
we do now, because nothing ever changes.
38:31
Are people worse now than ever? No, they're exactly the same now
38:35
as ever. So what's the intervening
38:38
variable? We had all these village idiots
38:41
Once Upon a time. You remember them.
38:43
This is a phrase nobody likes to use anymore, but everybody of
38:48
our age and older remembers the village idiots.
38:53
This was a phrase we all used at the time to describe them, and
38:58
it was incumbent on the rest of us to do a few things.
39:01
We looked out for them because they didn't understand how life
39:05
worked at all. And we made sure that they had
39:09
things like food, right, a place to stay.
39:12
This is usually a matter of family, but not always.
39:16
And then we made sure that they brought no harm to others
39:20
because that was a real, a real problem with idiots.
39:24
And, and we looked after these people, not like they were our
39:29
own, but close. It was close.
39:33
I treated them the way I treated second cousins, right?
39:38
That they were in my orbit, They belonged there.
39:40
And that's just that. But the village idiots never got
39:45
to meet each other. They didn't know the village
39:48
idiot from the next village. Imagine if all the village
39:52
idiots found each other. They would be a force.
39:56
And that's exactly what social media has given us.
40:00
And not only had the village idiots found each other, the
40:02
mean rotten people have found each other too.
40:05
And the bullies? They've found each other.
40:08
And these are our camps now, and we're all stuck in one.
40:13
And I hate it. I hate it.
40:15
And when I say a line has been crossed, it was crossed the day
40:20
that all of these people were able to find their own miserable
40:24
kind and organize. And we'll never be able to undo
40:28
that. So if we can't undo that, and we
40:32
can't absent an EMP of some kind, that just takes out
40:36
everything. So we can't undo that.
40:39
And we cannot change human nature because we have never
40:44
changed human nature. This is our world, and I don't
40:49
like it. Well.
40:51
Yeah, I'll, I'll give, let me take a more positive view here.
40:56
I think this social media is different in magnitude rather
41:04
than type of earlier inventions like the printing press.
41:11
I'm sure when, when the printing press came along, all of a
41:15
sudden it was easier, not nearly as easy it is with social media,
41:19
but it was easier. I add into that near universal
41:23
literacy and and now you got something similar.
41:27
Now what happened is we learned, we learned how to deal with
41:31
that, and it was a tool. We figured out how to use it.
41:35
I don't think social media has been around nearly long enough
41:39
for us to figure out how to use it.
41:41
Oh. I, I would stipulate to that no
41:43
matter what we, we have not, I don't think we'll ever be able
41:47
to, but that's a discussion for another day.
41:51
The printing press only worked in One Direction and you had to
41:55
be pretty well off, which means you had to be pretty reasonable
42:00
and good at certain things with human interaction to be able to
42:04
afford a printing press any. Idiot can get.
42:07
Online right now and say whatever stupid thing he wants
42:12
and if it just so happens to get someone killed, no big deal.
42:18
And I want to point out something else.
42:21
When one group of politicians consistently, and I notice the
42:29
word consistently, I am not simply talking about Donald
42:34
Trump. I want to go all the way back,
42:36
probably well overtly to George W Bush from then forward, when
42:44
those on the left consistently portray right right wingers from
42:52
George W Bush forward, but probably a lot further back as
42:57
literal Hitler. He's literally Hitler.
43:02
Well, if somebody's Hitler, of course you're going to kill him.
43:07
That's what you do. If somebody is Hitler, that's
43:13
the only rational response to Hitler.
43:16
Why do people keep using this rhetoric?
43:18
It notice. It's, it's not just I, I'm with
43:20
you, I understand. But it's not just that they're
43:23
calling him Hitler. They dislike what he's saying
43:27
and so rather than engaging on the thing that they don't like,
43:33
they're attacking him. And you see this with with
43:35
Charlie in his video. Someone so many people come up
43:38
and start just calling them names because they don't, they
43:41
don't even know him. They can't possibly dislike him.
43:43
They dislike what's being said. My favorite thing was, you know,
43:47
you're a fascist. OK, what's a fascist?
43:49
Define that for me. Nothing empty set, right?
43:53
Yeah. No.
43:54
Give me an example of one thing I've done that would fall under
43:58
fascism. Crickets.
44:01
And yet I have heard people many, many times refer to
44:07
Charlie Kirk as healer. They've done it with Trump.
44:10
They've done it with our, you know, every Republican president
44:13
from George W Ford, probably Reagan, although I don't
44:21
remember it specifically because we weren't all vividly connected
44:26
at the time. It wasn't so easy to call
44:29
somebody something and have anybody pay any attention to
44:32
you. I mean, it's got to stop, but I
44:36
did. Notice they so many times people
44:38
are calling him racist. And of course there's he's got.
44:42
There's far too many more quotes that I could possibly look at in
44:45
a year, let alone in preparation for our conversation.
44:49
But I started looking up things I could find where I was looking
44:53
specifically for instances in which someone called him a
44:56
racist and and why. And a lot of these examples are
45:00
him talking about the Civil Rights Act or him talking about
45:05
DEI. And and if you look at it and I
45:09
don't want to say there people are taking things out of
45:10
context, it's I think it's it's entirely different thing people.
45:14
Are taking things out of context.
45:16
But I think that's too, I think that's too easy.
45:21
I think what's going on here is he's saying something that
45:24
people don't like, that something involves race.
45:31
And so immediately, he's a racist.
45:34
Well look, you can call a white man a racist in today's climate
45:39
without any evidence. Without, right?
45:41
Yes, yes, I'm not. Saying that white men, some,
45:45
some white men someplace aren't racist.
45:48
I'm saying if you call someone a racist, you better have a stack
45:53
of papers to prove it. And and that's not required
45:57
anymore. You could just sling the mud.
46:00
And I'm I'm tired of it. Imagine what people could do if
46:04
they just cleverly edited our conversations.
46:07
They could make us. They could make us sound like 2
46:10
monsters. It wouldn't take but a couple
46:15
hours. The one thing I did do, somebody
46:18
posted, well, Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, right?
46:21
Because he said he's a big First Amendment or Second Amendment
46:25
advocate. And some people are
46:28
unfortunately going to die if if we cling tight to the to the
46:32
Second Amendment. I said, huh, I guess that's
46:37
straight from the Department of Irony.
46:40
But then I, I said, I wonder what he actually said about the
46:44
Second Amendment. And I went and looked it up and
46:47
it was easy to find and the part that everybody was quoting, 1
46:52
little snippet at the bottom. But there was a whole chain of
46:57
very solid reasoning that led to that.
47:00
Very solid, you know nothing wrong about it.
47:03
Nothing crazy, just reason. It's what happens when you focus
47:09
on the person instead of the argument.
47:11
Someone who was concerned with refuting the argument would read
47:14
all of that and deal with that, or at least.
47:18
Admit that it exists. You know.
47:21
Maybe reading is too hard for some of these people, but what's
47:26
really been Lost Aunt isn't the ability to reason, it's the
47:29
desire to reason. And I'm not sure that we ever
47:34
really had much of A desire to reason because I'm, I'm on
47:38
record as saying over and over again that human beings don't
47:42
change over time. And if you, if you think I'm
47:45
spouting nonsense, I encourage you open the Old Testament, have
47:49
a have a good read, because all those characters in there are
47:53
going to be like people, you know.
47:55
And if you don't want to do that, we'll go read ancient
47:57
Greek philosophy, Plato wrote in dialogues.
48:00
There will be characters in every dialogue that you will
48:03
notice are just like you. This, this is thousands of years
48:09
ago. Nothing has changed in thousands
48:12
of years except our abilities. We haven't changed.
48:19
What we can do has changed. And we don't use I would
48:22
imagine. That it's so much more
48:25
gratifying not to look at the arguments, but to attack the
48:31
person because that engages the emotion and you can win, right
48:36
You're. And you've got your allies, and
48:38
you know who your enemies are. Right.
48:41
But if you if you engage the topic, that's entirely different
48:45
matter. There's not the emotional high,
48:49
and I would argue there's not even a winner in the sense that
48:54
there is if you attack the person.
48:55
Because if you and I are having a disagreement and we attack the
49:01
problem, regardless of which of us is correct, we both learned
49:07
were before. Because it's you and I versus
49:10
ignorance rather than you versus me.
49:13
Yeah, you and I have been so long together.
49:16
So long we might as well be married, right?
49:20
It's been it's been that long. And we have had severe
49:25
disagreements. And I know for a fact I have
49:28
changed your mind. And I know for a fact you have
49:30
changed mine and I never see it as winning or losing because I
49:34
think I always win. Right.
49:37
Yes, yes, I win. Either way, either I was right
49:40
all along or I'm right now. Yeah, but isn't.
49:44
That great. And yeah, sorry, people don't
49:48
behave this way. Certain subset of people behave
49:52
this way, but people in general absolutely don't.
49:58
And I can, I can predict with relative certainty that what
50:03
we've seen in the last week is going to get worse.
50:06
It's going to get worse and it's going to get worse pretty soon.
50:10
I worry about what form will that take?
50:14
Violence I I worry that this episode will be wholly pointless
50:19
by the time it comes out. People are people are going to
50:23
do what they always do. They're going to look to get
50:27
even. And this is the rhetoric you're
50:31
hearing from President Trump and Vice President Vance.
50:35
We're going to get even. Well, I know what that means.
50:39
Everybody knows what that means. Yeah, and that, that never ends.
50:43
If you want an example, look at what's going on today with
50:45
Israel and Palestine. That conflict dates back at
50:49
least 2000 years, probably 4 to 6000 years.
50:54
And I'm not saying one side's right and one side's wrong.
50:56
What I am saying is what has, what has enabled it to persist
51:00
is each side, whenever it loses, decides I'm now going to get
51:04
even. Yeah, there.
51:05
Was a curious thing at the one of those human experiments that
51:09
you probably can't do anymore because of the Irbs at various
51:14
colleges. If you don't know what that is,
51:17
go look it up. It just prevents you from doing
51:20
any kind of human research in any realistic way.
51:23
But a group brought a bunch of young kids from Belfast to the
51:27
United States, Catholic and Protestant, and put them in the
51:31
same neighborhood. They didn't fight, they just
51:36
didn't. They were back in Belfast.
51:38
They'd already be trying to kill each other.
51:41
Put them in a different context. No, not so much.
51:44
So if there's hope, it's that kind of hope, right?
51:47
The changing of institutions, that mold behavior, it's not in
51:53
the changing of the people, because you will never change
51:57
people. They have a nature.
51:59
It's not particularly good. And it flares up like this when
52:04
they get hot with each other. And the only way to bring any of
52:10
this under control is to turn the heat down.
52:16
But you can't. There's no magic wand, right?
52:18
There's no oven. So it's going to get worse
52:20
before it gets any better. Yeah.
52:22
And so the question is how, how do you turn the heat down?
52:24
The the first thing you do is you take a deep breath and you
52:27
you try and disengage, try and disengage your emotion and think
52:34
about take seriously human respect.
52:39
Every every human deserves respect for for the mere fact
52:43
that they're human. It doesn't matter whether
52:45
they're left or right or this was.
52:48
So terrible that the governor of Utah got on TV and I thought he
52:52
really was quite marvelous. I, I think he now is
52:57
presidential material, but we'll see as, as time goes.
53:02
But he said, I was hoping that this wasn't going to be one of
53:08
us. I prayed that it wasn't going to
53:11
be one of us, that it will be somebody from another state or
53:16
from another country, but not one of us.
53:20
That's a perfectly reasonable thing to think.
53:24
What was? What was the headline on every
53:26
tweet that came out? Governor wished it was a Muslim.
53:32
He didn't say any such thing. He said, look, I am the governor
53:37
of the state of Utah, and I think Utah is a wonderful place
53:40
filled with wonderful people, and I really hope that whoever
53:44
did this was an outsider. That is not an unreasonable
53:49
thing to say at all. People.
53:51
Jumped right up his ass over it. If you can't give a man a minute
53:56
to think through a reasonable thing that he just said in a
54:00
time of tremendous duress and pain, what good are you?
54:04
And this takes me to my to my first piece of advice for
54:08
someone who's looking to actually put human respect into
54:12
practice. Begin by listening. close your
54:17
mouth. Listen to what the other person
54:19
said, not what you think they said, not what you hope they
54:23
said, what they actually said. And if you're if it's unclear,
54:27
ask for clarification before you start coming to conclusions
54:31
about what the person said. Yeah.
54:34
And take a look, a long look at the so-called public figures
54:40
that you follow. If they're not asking questions,
54:45
if they claim to know exactly what happened literally before
54:51
anybody knows what happened, they're lying to you.
54:53
And if you act on it, you're lying to other people.
54:58
Careful who you trust. I think that's probably about it
55:02
for, for this topic. And it's been just a
55:06
heartbreaking week in so many ways.
55:10
And, you know, I, I don't want to fill up the public space with
55:14
something that makes it worse. And I, I don't think we did that
55:19
today. I think this was OK.
55:21
I was worried about it, but I think it's OK.
55:26
We're walking down a very dark path.
55:30
And if you're on that path, you need to get off that path.
55:36
We have to develop institutions now that take social media
55:40
communication into account, right?
55:44
We were given a bunch of institutions to keep us from
55:47
killing each other, but that only worked when we dealt with
55:50
each other face to face in small groups, in a world in which you
55:55
could travel 3 miles an hour on the best of days.
56:00
We don't live in that world anymore, and the institutions we
56:03
do have are insufficient to address these problems.
56:07
What are we going to build? I don't know, but we need to
56:12
build something and we need to do it fast.
56:15
Anyway, till next time man, take care of yourself.
56:19
See you. Next time James Words and
56:21
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56:24
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