Episode 37 - North Korea is the Key to the Golden Age
Unproductive framings North Korea’s Old Plan: Spend all money on nuclear weapons and starve to death North Korea’s New Plan: Prosperity, peace, security
I don't tempt him, pom pom pom pom pom pom pom. Hey everybody, come on in, gather round. We're gonna be talking on a beautiful Sunday. The weather is all right, good enough today,
View segment →and it's time for the simultaneous sip with Scott Adams. That's me. Good stuff.
View segment →Somebody's asking me for relationship advice. Well, I'm not exactly the person you want to ask for relationship advice because my track record in that department is not stellar, but happy to tell you what I know sometime. Not today.
View segment →Let's talk about a few things. First of all, I did get to hear the entire Kanye and T.I. song. I liked it so much that I tweeted about it in glowing terms, so much so that people asked if I was being sarcastic. Hey, I gave such a nice glowing review of the song, which I really like. I like it on lot…
View segment →All right, enough about that. Let's talk about North Korea. I tweeted a link to my blog posts about North Korea starting from about a year ago. And let me frame that up for you. All right, so I had been talking, as you know, starting from a year ago and through several blog posts and many Periscope…
View segment →Did you see the—well let me come at this from a different angle. Let me tell you what a good day would look like for any of you. Imagine waking up in the morning. You know, it's just an ordinary day. You wake up in the morning, you get your coffee, you do what most of us do. You pick up your phone a…
View segment →All right, I think we've seen everything we need to see and we've heard everything we need to hear. And that's it for now. Everybody have a great day. Check out my blog post if you haven't seen my North Korea blog posts over the years. They're all there. And I'll talk to you later.
View segment →I don't tempt him, pom pom pom pom pom pom pom. Hey everybody, come on in, gather round. We're gonna be talking on a beautiful Sunday. The weather is all right, good enough today, and it's time for the simultaneous sip with Scott Adams. That's me. Good stuff.
Somebody's asking me for relationship advice. Well, I'm not exactly the person you want to ask for relationship advice because my track record in that department is not stellar, but happy to tell you what I know sometime. Not today.
Let's talk about a few things. First of all, I did get to hear the entire Kanye and T.I. song. I liked it so much that I tweeted about it in glowing terms, so much so that people asked if I was being sarcastic. Hey, I gave such a nice glowing review of the song, which I really like. I like it on lots of levels. I like it inside the song, outside the song. I like how it affects society. I like how the timing is right. I like that the lyrics are beautiful. I like how it shows two competing emotions that matter to us. You know, they're integral to what we're thinking about, what we care about.
You watched Kanye create this situation which was the perfect environment for a song, and then he put a song in it. You know, I don't know how to be. Let me just be frank about this. I don't know how to be an old white guy and like that song as much as I do, because I like it not just musically. I like it in the sense of art with a capital A.
You know, Kanye, it seems to me he doesn't produce art, he lives it. Like he is the art. You know, what he does, what he changes, the people he touches, how he makes you feel, how it changes the world, how it changes your perceptions, how it changes the way you think, who you love, what you can do, what you can't do. That's the art, right? The art is not the song. In his case, in most cases, the artist is the song.
Yeah, that's a great song. I like it. It's catchy. I think I'll hum that song. Maybe I'll download it to my iPod. That's not what's going on here. The song is really great on every level of musicality, at least for the non-musical mind such as myself. He hits all of my notes, so I love it. But it's a much bigger deal than a song. He's just taken the world and put it in real time into a musical focus point.
Have we ever seen anything like this before? You know, I'm thinking of maybe Elton John's song about Princess Di. But even that took a while, right? There was a length of time between Princess Di dying and Elton John writing a song which did in fact do a similar thing. It captured our feelings about it. But here's what's different about that. Elton John didn't kill Lady Di. You know, I don't mean that as a joke. What I mean is that his song was as an observer. He wrote an observer song about a current event that was very important to us. So it was very powerful because we thought about it, et cetera.
Kanye took that to a whole higher level. He didn't just write the song as an observer. He was the situation. He created the change that he sang about, and he included his biggest critic—not biggest, but you know, a good representative critic—to say anything he wanted to say. And in Kanye's song, you've never seen anything like this. This is way bigger than the song.
All right, enough about that. Let's talk about North Korea. I tweeted a link to my blog posts about North Korea starting from about a year ago. And let me frame that up for you.
All right, so I had been talking, as you know, starting from a year ago and through several blog posts and many Periscopes. I had been saying that the situation in North Korea that looked impossible to solve was in fact a psychological problem, not a physical problem. And that a President Trump would bring to the situation a set of psychological persuasion tools which were ideal for this exact situation to solve an unsolvable problem. Because it turns out it was never unsolvable. It was always solvable. We just had to change the way we thought.
President Trump did that. He changed the way China thought about it: its place in the world, its brand, its reputation, its friendship with the United States, its trade situation. China's way of thinking about North Korea changed to the point where what was the biggest issue with China helping with North Korea? It feels like ancient history even though it's just a few months ago. The biggest problem was that China was worried about this influx of refugees. Where did that problem go? Well, it turns out if you do things right, it was never that much of a problem to begin with. It was sort of a psychological worry that probably just didn't need to be one, as we're learning.
We believed a year ago that Kim Jong-un was not a character that we could deal with, that he was crazy, that he was afraid of this or that or whatever. We could never deal with this crazy guy. As of today, we know that we were totally wrong. At least that's the way it looks. Kim Jong-un looks like, first of all, a serious player, and second of all, he doesn't want to die in a fireball. And third, he sees a way to a better economy and a good situation, and he's taking it. Completely irrational, he seems to be somebody who's not only rational but we could really work with. At least that's as of today. Anything could change tomorrow, but as of today.
So I put together my blog post to show my thinking on the topic. And the way I framed it is that in order to do something, if you're a human being and you want to do something, it doesn't matter what it is, the first thing that you need before you do something is you have to imagine it's possible. So if I think I want to walk out that door next to me, I have to first imagine, oh, that's a door that can open. I have arms and legs. I can walk over there and open it. If you don't imagine it, you're not going to do anything. So I'm not going to try to walk through the wall because I can't really imagine that. I'm not even gonna get up and try, right?
So we had this North Korean impasse where we couldn't imagine getting to the place that we're at right now, which is everybody's talking nice and it seems to legitimately want a solution that doesn't involve dying. So for a year I wrote blog posts which I knew would be seen in the White House. Not necessarily by President Trump, who I assume is not reading my blog, but I do hear directly from members of the administration in key roles that they are seeing my blog posts. So I knew that the imagination I was adding to the process would at least get to the White House.
I speculated, and I have no way of knowing, but it seems a reasonable assumption that when North Korea started scouring—at least there's a press report that says that North Korean operatives were trying to talk to Republicans and talk to people to try to figure out how President Trump thinks—and I thought, well, let's see if I can persuade them as well.
Now, if your job is that you've been sent by Kim Jong-un to the United States, either physically or virtually by reading the media, and your job is to scour the media and try to understand President Trump, well, if that's your full-time job, and I imagine it would be, you're gonna come across my writing. That's one of the top fifty maybe voices that people are used to hearing in the United States. I have a unique take on the president, so they're definitely going to look at the different takes. They may ignore the ten people who say exactly the same thing about the president, but they're definitely going to notice the person who got a lot of attention for saying something different that also turned out to be the best predictor of what happened.
So in all likelihood both North Korea and the administration saw a body of my writing, or at least some of it, maybe just even one of them, in which I described a situation that is identical to today. And that situation is where North Korea would just give up their nuclear program in return for security guarantees. Now what would have ever made you think that was impossible before? Psychology. You would have imagined that Kim Jong-un would simply not think that could work and therefore he wouldn't even do it. You would never even consider accepting a security guarantee in return for economic growth, you know, living and all the benefits that come with peace with the United States.
But I think when you draw the picture of it and you make the case that it's entirely doable, it might be the easiest thing to do because it doesn't involve a war. It requires somebody like a President Trump to come into the situation and simply make everybody involved think differently for the first time. And as their brains are being scrambled and they're thinking very differently, they're looking for a new way to imagine the future. And I provided at least one way to imagine you could get to a point where there's a better solution.
Now you would be entirely within a reasonable opinion to say, "Scott, you are imagining that you've had any impact on this at all." To which I say maybe. It could be that I had no impact at all. There's no way to know. Here's the things that we do know. We do know that I wrote a number of blog posts that described this situation. I know you don't know, but I'll tell you that it was always my intent to allow people to better imagine a peaceful solution. That is the sort of thing a President Trump is uniquely qualified to make happen. I don't think any other president could have gotten us to this point. So my attempt was to help the process. There isn't any way to know if it made any difference.
Now I'm going to implore all of you to take this suggestion for making this North Korean situation the best it could be. Here's my recommendation to all of you. We should not frame the situation—let's say it gets to a good end and North Korea gives up its nukes—I believe it would be a mistake on the part of pundits and the citizens and certainly politicians to frame this as Kim Jong-un backed down or he blinked or President Trump won or we beat them. Those are all unproductive framings.
This is a very big win for North Korea. It's the biggest win you can even imagine. Imagine going from spending all the money on nuclear weapons which were just going to end with them being destroyed and starving to death. That was their other plan. Their new plan is prosperity and peace and security and joining the nations of the world and presumably having internet and being able to see their relatives. Everything. I mean, they had everything to win. Kim Jong-un also has a lot to win because even if you imagine he's got lots of skeletons in the closet, things that dictators do that nobody's happy about, assuming all that's true, even with that, if he pulls this off and it looks like he will, Kim Jong-un will be a legendary figure. All right, his reputation in the world will be amazing.
Like I hate to say it, right, because you don't want to hear that, but caveat, I mean it's gonna come out of this like a legendary figure. Yeah, I'm saying legendary because I don't want to compliment him, but clearly this is worthy of praise because it would be a tremendous thing for North Korea. Now you could argue he should have done it earlier, etc. There's plenty of room for criticism. But on the big decision, is he doing it right? It looks like he is. It really does.
So the productive way to look at this is everybody coming to their senses. You know, President Xi, superstar. Kim Jong-un on this question, superstar. President Moon of South Korea, superstar. President Trump, Nobel Prize. I think it should be shared, maybe with two, three or even four recipients. You know, the Nobel Prize Committee, you may say yeah we can't give this to President Trump, our heads would explode, but they could give it to Moon, Kim, Xi and Trump. Seems fair to me. And I think that would be the best way to frame it.
All right, so I've said before that I believe this North Korea situation could be the introduction to what I call the Golden Age. The Golden Age is when all the big stuff starts going in the right direction. But more than that, the more defining element of that is that we start realizing that a lot of our big problems, maybe all of them, are psychological and mental in nature. And if we understand that, they're easily solved, as North Korea is being solved.
Take that thinking to Iran. What was our biggest problem with North Korea before? They'll never give up their nuclear weapons. Kim is crazy. Turns out none of that was true. He wasn't crazy and he would give up his nuclear weapons. The most central things that people universally believed are true. You didn't even find people on the other side of that argument. They were actually illusions.
Now that was my take on this from the start, that there are some illusions preventing us from a good result. Now imagine that you create that new knowledge for society. The new knowledge that we almost had a nuclear war over what was a psychological condition. That's important to learn because the world is learning it right now. We're learning that we almost nuked ourselves over a psychological glitch. That we thought things were true that just weren't true.
Take that to Iran. What do we believe about Iran? You may have seen my Periscope in which Joel Pollak, senior editor at large from Breitbart, was explaining the Iran situation, especially about the nuclear deal. And one of the assumptions that is a general assumption made by people on all sides—this is a universal assumption—and the universal assumption is that the leaders of Iran would prefer death and the destruction of their own country, death to their family, death to all their friends, that under certain situations they would prefer that because it satisfies some religious predictions.
I want to be the first one to say I don't think that's true. Now as I've said before, Israel has a different situation than the rest of the world. Israel has to treat it like it's true because the words coming out of Iran sure sound like they're talking that way. Iran certainly says stuff about eliminating Israel. If you're Israel you treat that like that's dead certain. There is no wiggle room. From Israel's perspective they got to treat this like it's going to happen tomorrow. But that's different from saying it's true.
So as long as Iran is acting the way they're acting, Israel has to act like it's a mortal threat and it's immediate, period. But suppose Iran could stop acting that way. Is there anything that would get them to that point of view where we could see, as we're seeing with North Korea, that the impossible really starts looking possible?
I'm going to start writing probably more about Iran for the same reason I wrote about North Korea. I want to at least see if we can get to the point where we can imagine something good happening over there. That doesn't make it happen. You know, the imagining isn't enough but it's a necessary condition. And I would postulate that what got us from impossible to now almost solved in North Korea, it was only the mental shift that said I think we can make this work. Because until President Trump thought he could make it work, why would he do anything? Why would President Trump have done any of the things he did unless he thought he could make something work? So obviously he believed it.
Take this back to the power of positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peale, who coincidentally was the pastor in President Trump's church when he was a kid and was also a big influence on me as the author of that book, "The Power of Positive Thinking." So when I saw President Trump become president I said to myself, I think he can solve this North Korea thing. And by the way I thought that before he was elected.
Though let me do a little aside here. I have been shat upon for the past two and a half years for saying positive things about President Trump's skill. People say to me, can't you see what he's doing to the country? He's helping people feel the racial divide and the sexism and the whatever other criticisms are saying about him. And I would say, well, but I think he can do good things. Yet all that's true. People are feeling more racially divided. That's all true and that's all bad. But I was hoping that his special tool set would give us some wins that we just couldn't get with another president. This is the main one I was thinking about. You know, terrorism, economy, North Korea. Those have always been my top three.
So I thought, well, you know, we can at least get those big three wins, but it might be expensive in terms of racial feelings and other feelings that have been stirred up. Now people have said to me, are the ends justifying the means? You know, that's the bumper sticker response to that. It's like, yeah, I know you think you could do some good stuff but do the ends justify the means if it's so expensive to get there? To which I say yes. Yes. If you gave me a choice between making you feel that the president is a racist or being destroyed in a nuclear fireball, I choose making you feel uncomfortable. I don't like that those are my choices, but they were my choices. My choice was to make other people feel uncomfortable or at least be part of the movement which would end up that way, which could never be comfortable.
You know, why would I feel happy about making other citizens uncomfortable? Could never be happy about that. But I believed that he had a skill set that could get us some big wins that a Clinton could not give us. We're seeing now that play out. I believe he's goosed the economy in a way that the mental game of the economy he's played right. He's made us feel optimistic. There's lots of feeling that the reduction in regulations, the changes in taxes, the negotiation with trade, we're feeling this overall positive feeling that gets translated into the economy. Jobs get better. Great. The ISIS, he put the boot on them. President Mattis and a lot of the other countries of course and our allies. It wasn't just us but he was part of a productive outcome there. And then North Korea might be the big one.
So if you're asking me do the ends justify the means, assuming North Korea comes in the way it looks, I got to say yes. Now allow me to officially apologize to everyone in the country who has been offended by this process. The process meaning President Trump, anything he's ever said, everything he's ever done, anything that people on the right have said or done that would offend the people who were legitimately offended. You know, I'm not going to say they shouldn't have been offended. All right, there's plenty of stuff that could get people offended. What I'm saying is my intention was that we would always get to this place and it's a bigger win. And the price to get there, I'm sorry to say, came quite a bit under the comfort of my fellow citizens. And to you I apologize.
I apologize that you had to take that burden and that you are still accepting a burden that you did not ask to take that was pushed on you. And I for one apologize for that. But I also appreciate it greatly. I appreciate that the country held together and that we got to this point.
So I think Iran also has a potential. I can imagine a solution and it comes from these two assumptions which are not true yet, meaning they're not validated to be true. They may be true or false but they're not credible or validated yet. These are the two assumptions I'd like to push on Iran. One, that they're crazy and would ever prefer death to all of their families and friends and themselves in the country for anything. All right, I'll push against that assumption. I would also push against the assumption that there's no way to solve it as long as you have the unsolvable problem of Iran wants Israel to go away, etc.
I'm not positive there's no solution to that. But okay, yeah, I shouldn't boldly predict on Iran. Let me drastically change the topic for a minute.
Did you see the—well let me come at this from a different angle. Let me tell you what a good day would look like for any of you. Imagine waking up in the morning. You know, it's just an ordinary day. You wake up in the morning, you get your coffee, you do what most of us do. You pick up your phone and you see what's new today. And the first thing you see on your phone is that the President of the United States has just tweeted a job recommendation for you. Imagine waking up and the first thing you see in the morning is the President of the United States just wrote a tweet making an unsolicited job recommendation for you by name and named you personally. That's what happened to Greg Gutfeld this morning.
So because the White House Correspondents' Dinner apparently was not a rocking success and the humorist who worked that job did not get good reviews, at least from the president, at least from the right—I don't know how the left felt about it—but so the president suggested that Greg would be a better choice for the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And I was thinking, what would it be like to be Greg? You know, wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, have some coffee, let's see what's on the phone. That must have been a cool moment.
My recommendation for Greg is don't take that job. Do not take that job. If you do, we'll all watch. We'll support you. But I just don't know if that's the best place to be.
All right, what else we have going on today? Michelle Wolf, that was her name, the humorist. And Michael Wolff was the guy who wrote the book. Wow, it turns out the president doesn't have much luck with Wolffs.
All right, I think we've seen everything we need to see and we've heard everything we need to hear. And that's it for now. Everybody have a great day. Check out my blog post if you haven't seen my North Korea blog posts over the years. They're all there. And I'll talk to you later.
I don't tempt em tempt him pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in gather round we're gonna be talking on a beautiful Sunday the weather is all right good enough today and it's time for simultaneous it with Scott Adams that's me good stuff somebody's asking me for a relationship advice well I'm not exactly the person you want to ask for a relationship advice because my track record in that department is not stellar but happy to tell you what I know sometime not today let's talk about a few things first of all I did get to hear the entire Kanye and Ti song I I liked it so much that I tweeted about it in glowing terms so much so that people asked if I was being sarcastic hey I gave such a nice glowing review of the song which I really like I like on lots of levels I like it inside the song outside the song I like how it affects Society I like how the timing is right I like that lyrics they're beautiful I like how it shows two competing emotions that matter to us you know they're they're integral to what we're thinking about what we care about you you watched you watch Kanye create this situation which was the perfect environment for a song and then he put a song in it you know I don't I don't know how to be let me just be frank about this I don't know how to be an old white guy and like that song as much as I do because I like it not just musically I like it in in the sense of art with a capital A you know Kanye it seems to me he doesn't produce art he lives it like he is the arced you know what what he does what he changes the people he touches how he makes you feel how it changes the world I would change your perceptions how it changes the way you think who you love what you can do what you can't do that's the art right the art is not the song in his case in most cases the artists the song yeah that's a vase song I like it it's catchy I think I'll hum that song maybe I'll download it to my i.
Pod that's not what's going on here the song is really you know great like on every level of you know musicality at least for the the non musical mind such as myself he hits all of my notes so I love it but it's a much bigger deal than a song he's just he's just taken the world and put it in real time into a musical focus point though I don't know have we ever seen anything like this before you know I'm thinking of you know maybe Elton John's song about princess die but even that took a while right there was a there was a length of time between you know princess died dying and Elton John writing a song which did in fact do a similar thing it captured our feelings about it but here's what's different about that Elton John didn't kill lady die you know I don't mean that as a joke what I mean is that his song was as an observer he wrote an observer song about a current event that was very important to us so it was very powerful because we thought about it at cetera Kanye took that to a whole higher level he didn't just write the song as an observer he was the situation he created the change in that he sang about it and that he included his biggest critic not biggest but you know a good but we'll say a good representative critic to say anything he wanted to say Eden Kanye song you've never seen anything like this this is way bigger than the song alright enough about that let's talk about North Korea I tweeted a link to my my blog posts about North Korea starting from about a year ago and let me let me frame that up for you all right so I had been talking as you know starting from a year ago and through several blog posts and many periscopes I had been saying that the situation in North Korea that looked impossible to solve was in fact a psychological problem not a physical problem and that a president Trump would bring to the situation a set of psychological persuasion tools which were ideal for this exact situation to solve an unsolvable problem because it turns out it was never solved unsolvable it was always solvable we just had to change the way we thought president Trump did that he changed the way China thought about it its place in the world its brand its reputation its friendship with the United States its trade situation China's way of thinking about North Korea changed to the point where what was the biggest issue with China helping with North Korea it feels like ancient history even though it's just a few months ago the biggest problem was that China was worried about this influx of refugees where did that problem go well it turns out if you do things right it was never that much of a problem to begin it was sort of a psychological worry that probably just didn't need to be one as we're learning we believed a year ago the Kim jargon was not a character that we could deal with that he was crazy that he had he was afraid of this or that or whatever we could never deal with this crazy guy as of today we know that we were totally wrong at least that's the way it looks Kim jong-un looks like first of all you know a serious player and second of all it doesn't want to die in a fireball and third sees a way to a better economy and a good situation and he's taking it completely irrational he seems to be somebody who's not only rational but we could really work with at least that's you know as of today anything could change tomorrow but as of today now so I put together my blog post to show my thinking on the topic and the way I framed it is that in order to do something if you're a human being and you want to do something it doesn't matter what it is the first thing that you need the first thing that you need before you do something is you have to imagine it's possible so if I think I want to walk out that door next to me I have to first imagine oh that's a door that can open I have arms and legs I can walk over they can open it you don't do anything you don't imagine so I'm not going to try to walk through the wall because I can't really imagine that I'm not even gonna get up and try right so we had this North Korean impasse where we couldn't imagine getting to the place that we're at right now which is everybody's talking nice and it seems to legitimately want a solution that doesn't involve dying so for a year I wrote blog posts which I knew would be seen in in the White House not necessarily by President Trump who's I assume is not reading my blog but I do hear directly from members of the administration in key roles that that they are seeing my blog post so I knew that the imagination I was adding to the process would at least get to the White House I speculated and I have no way of knowing but it seems a reasonable assumption that when North Korea started scouring at least there's a press report that says that North Korean operatives were trying to talk to Republicans and talk to people to try to figure out how President Trumbo thinks and I thought well let's see if I can persuade them as well now if your job is that you've been sent by Kim jong-un to the United States either physically or virtually by reading the media and your job is to scour the media and try to understand President Trump well if that's your full time job and I imagine it would be you're gonna come across my writing that's one of the top fifty maybe voices that people are used to hearing in the United States I have a unique take on the president so they're definitely going to look at the different takes they may ignore the ten people who say exactly the same thing about the president but they're definitely going to notice the person who got a lot of attention for say something saying something different that also turned out to be the best predictor of what happened so in all likelihood both North Korea and the administration saw a body of my writing or at least some of it maybe just even one of them in which I described a situation that is identical to today and that situation is where North Korea would just give up their nuclear program in return for security guarantees now what would have ever made you think that was impossible before psychology you would have imagined that Kim jong-un would simply not think that could work and therefore he wouldn't even do it you would never even consider accepting a security guarantee in return for economic growth you know living and all the benefits that come with peace with the United States but I think when you draw the picture of it and you make the case that it's entirely it's entirely doable it might be the easiest thing to do because it doesn't involve a war etc war it requires somebody like a president Trump to come into the situation and simply make everybody involved think differently for the first time and as their brains are being scrambled and they're thinking very differently they're looking for a new way to imagine the future and I provided at least one way to imagine you could get to a point where there's a better solution now you would be entirely within your reasonable you know within a reasonable opinion to say Scott you are imagining that you've had any impact on this at all to which I say maybe it could be that I had no impact out of anything there's no way to know I can't here's the things that we do know we do know that I wrote a number of blog posts that explain that describes this situation I know you don't know but I'll tell you that it was always my intent to allow people to better imagine a peaceful solution that is the sort of thing a president Trump is uniquely qualified to make happen I don't think any other president could have gotten us to this point so my attempt was to help the process there isn't any way to know if it made any difference now I'm going to implore all of you to take this suggestion for making this North Korean situation as best you know the best it could be here's my recommendation to all of you we should we should not frame the situation let's let's say it gets to a good end and and North Korea gives up its nukes I believe it would be a mistake on the part of pundits and the citizens and certainly politicians to frame this as Kim Jong um back down or he blinked or President Trump you know won or we beat them those are all unproductive framings this is a very big win for North Korea it's the biggest win you can even imagine imagine going from spending all the money on nuclear weapons which were just going to end with them being destroyed and starving to death that was their other plan their new plan is prosperity and peace and security and joining the the nation you know the nations of the world and presumably having internet and you know being able to see the relatives everything I mean that they had everything to win Kim jong-un also has a lot to win to win because even if you imagine he's got you know lots of skeletons in the closet things that things that dictators do that that nobody's happy about assuming all that's true even with that if he pulls this off and it looks like he will Kim jong-un will be a legendary figure all right his his reputation in the world will be amazing like I hate to say it right because you don't want to hear that but Cuba Drago I mean it's gonna come out of this like a legendary figure yeah I'm saying legendary because I don't want it I don't want to compliment him but clearly this is worthy of praise because it would be a tremendous thing for North Korea now you could argue he should have done it earlier etc there there's plenty of plenty of room for criticism but on the big decision is he doing it right it looks like he is it really does so I the productive way to look at this is everybody coming to their senses you know President Xi Superstar all right Kim jong-un on this question superstar you know president moon South Korea superstar president Trump Nobel Prize I think you should be shared maybe with two three or even four recipients you know the Nobel Prize Committee you may say yeah we can't give this the president Trump our heads would explode but they could give it to you know moon Kim she and Trump seems fair to me and I think that would be the best way to frame it all right so I've said before that I believe this is the North Korea it could be the introduction to what I call the Golden Age the Golden Age is when all the big stuff starts going in the right direction but more than that the more defining element of that is that we start realizing that a lot of our big problems maybe all of them are psychological and mental in nature and if we understand that they're easily solved as North Korea's being solved take that thinking to Iran all right what was our biggest problem with North Korea before they'll never give up they'll never give up their nuclear weapons you know Kim is crazy turns out none of that was true he wasn't crazy and he would give up his nuclear weapons the most central things that people universally believed are true why you didn't even find people on the other side of that argument just weren't you they were actually illusions now that was my take on this from the start that there are some illusions preventing us from a good result now imagine that you create that new knowledge for society the new knowledge that we almost at a nuclear war over that was a psychological condition right that's important to learn because the world is learning it right now we're learning that we almost nuked ourselves over a psychological glitch that we thought things were true that just weren't true take that to Iran what do we believe about Iran you may have seen my my periscope in which joel Pollak senior editor at large from Breitbart was explaining the the Iran situation with especially about the nuclear deal and one of the assumptions that is a general assumption made by again people on all sides this is a universal assumption and the universal assumption is that the leaders of Iran would prefer death and the destruction of their own country death to their family death to all their friends that under certain situations they would prefer that because it satisfies some religious predictions I want to be the first one to say I don't think that's true now as I've said before Israel has a different situation than the rest of the world Israel has to treat it like it's true because the words coming out of Iran sure sound like they're talking that way right Iran certainly says stuff about eliminating Israel if you're Israel you treat that like that's dead certain there is no wiggle room from Israel's perspective they got to treat this like it's going to happen tomorrow but that's different from saying it's true so as long as their array is acting the way they're acting Israel has to act like it's a mortal threat and it's immediate period but suppose around could stop acting that way is there anything that would get them to that point of view where we could see as we're seeing with North Korea that the Impossibles really starts looking possible I'm going to start writing probably more about around for the same reason I wrote about North Korea I want to at least see if we can get to the point where we can imagine something good happening over there that doesn't make it happen you know the imagining isn't enough but it's a necessary condition and I would I would postulate that what got us from impossible to now almost solved in North Korea it was only the mental shift that said I think we can make this work because until President Trump thought he could make it work why would he do anything you know why would president Trump have done any of the things he did unless he could thought he could make something to work so obviously he believed it take this back to the power of positive thinking norman vincent peale who coincidentally was the pastor in president Trump's church when he was a kid and it was also a big influence on me as the author of that book the power of positive thinking so when I saw a president Trump become president I said to myself I think he can solve this North Korea thing and by the way I thought that before he was elected though let me do it a little aside here I have been shat upon for the past two-and-a-half years for saying positive things about president Trump's skill people say to me can't you see what he's doing to help people feel and the racial divide and you know the sexism and the whatever other criticisms are saying about him and and I would say well but I think he can do good things you know yet all that's true people are feeling more racially divided that's all true and that's all bad but I was hoping they his special tool set would give us some some wins that we just couldn't get with another presence this is the main one I was thinking about you know terrorism economy North Korea those have always been my top three so I thought well you know we can at least at least get those big three wins but it might be expensive in terms of you know racial feelings and other feelings that have been stirred up now people have said to me is the you know is the are the ends justifying the means you know that's the bumper sticker response to that's like yeah you know I know you think you could do some good stuff but do the ends justify the means if it's so expensive to get there to which I say yes yes if you gave me a choice between making you feel that the president is a racist or being destroyed in a nuclear fireball I choose making you feel uncomfortable I don't like that those are my choices but they were my choices my choice was to make other people feel uncomfortable or at least be part of part of the movement would which would end up that way which could never be comfortable you know why would I feel happy about making other citizens uncomfortable could never be happy about that but I believe that he had a skillset that could get us some big wins that a Clinton could not give us we're seeing now that play out I believe he's goosed the economy in a way that you know the the mental game of the economy he's played right he's made us feel optimistic there's lots of you know feeling that the reduction in in regulations the changes in taxes the negotiation with trade were feeling this overall positive feeling that gets translated into the economy jobs get better great the north isis he put the the boot on him president you know mattis and a lot of the other countries of course and our allies wasn't just us but he was part of a productive I'll come there and then North Korea might be the big one so if you're asking me do the ends justify the means assuming North Korea comes in the way it looks I got to say yes now allow me to officially apologize to everyone in the country who has been offended by this process the process meaning the president Trump anything he's ever said everything he's ever done anything that people on the right have said or done they would offend the people were legitimately offended you know I'm not going to say they shouldn't have been offended all right there's plenty of stuff they could get people offended what I'm saying is my intention was that we would always get to this place and it's a bigger win and the price to get there I'm sorry to say you know came a little bit you know came quite a bit under the comfort of my fellow citizens and to you I apologize I apologize that you had to take that burden and that you take is still you know you you are accepting a burden that you did not ask to take that was pushed on you and I for one apology you know apologize for that but I also appreciate it greatly I appreciate that that the country held together and that we got to this point so I think Iran also has a potential I can imagine it solution and it comes from these two assumptions which are not true yet meaning they're not validated to be true they may be true or false but they're not credible or validated yet these are the two assumptions I'd like to push on Iran one that they're crazy and would ever prefer death to all of their families and friends and themselves in the country for anything alright I'll push against that that assumption I would also push against the assumption that there's no way to solve it as long as you know that you have the unsolvable problem of Iran wants Israel to go away etc.
I'm not positive there's no solution to that right so and Bochy yeah I shouldn't I shouldn't Bochy predict Iran let me drastically change the topic for a minute did you see the well let me come at this from a different angle let me tell you what a good day would look like for any of you imagine waking up in the morning you know it's just an ordinary day you wake up in the morning you get your coffee you do what most of us do you pick up your phone and you see what's new today and the first thing you see on your phone is that the President of the United States has just we did a job recommendation for you imagine waking up and the first thing you see in the morning is the President of the United States just wrote a tweet making an unsolicited job recommendation for you by name and named you personally that's what happened to who Greg Gutfeld this morning so because the White House Correspondents Dinner apparently was not a rocking success and Lee the the humorist who worked that job did not get good reviews at least at least from the president at least from the right I don't know how the left felt about it but so the president suggested that Greg would be a better choice for the White House Correspondents Dinner and I was thinking what would it be like to be Greg you know wake up in the morning you're like Oh have some coffee let's see what's on the phone what that must have been a cool moment my recommendation for Greg is don't take that job do not take that job if you do we'll all watch we'll support you but I just don't know if that's the best place to be all right what else we have going on today Michelle wolf that was her name the humorist and Michael wolf was the guy write the book Wow it turns out the president doesn't have much luck with wolves all right I think we've seen everything we need to say we've know we've seen everything we need to see and we've heard everything we need to hurt here and that's it for now everybody have a great day check out my blog post if you haven't seen my North Korea blog posts over the years they're all there and I'll talk to you later
I don't tempt em tempt him pom pom pom
pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in
gather round we're gonna be talking on a
beautiful Sunday the weather is all
right good enough today and it's time
for simultaneous it with Scott Adams
that's me good stuff somebody's asking
me for a relationship advice well I'm
not exactly the person you want to ask
for a relationship advice because my
track record in that department is not
stellar but happy to tell you what I
know sometime not today let's talk about
a few things first of all I did get to
hear the entire Kanye and Ti song I I
liked it so much that I tweeted about it
in glowing terms so much so that people
asked if I was being sarcastic hey I
gave such a nice glowing review of the
song which I really like I like on lots
of levels I like it
inside the song outside the song I like
how it affects Society I like how the
timing is right I like that lyrics
they're beautiful I like how it shows
two competing emotions that matter to us
you know they're they're integral to
what we're thinking about what we care
about you you watched you watch Kanye
create this situation which was the
perfect environment for a song and then
he put a song in it
you know I don't I don't know how to be
let me just be frank about this I don't
know how to be an old white guy and like
that song as much as I do
because I like it not just musically I
like it
in in the sense of art with a capital A
you know Kanye it seems to me he doesn't
produce art he lives it like he is the
arced you know what what he does what he
changes the people he touches how he
makes you feel how it changes the world
I would change your perceptions how it
changes the way you think who you love
what you can do what you can't do
that's the art right the art is not the
song in his case in most cases the
artists the song yeah that's a vase song
I like it it's catchy
I think I'll hum that song maybe I'll
download it to my iPod that's not what's
going on here the song is really you
know great like on every level of you
know musicality at least for the the non
musical mind such as myself he hits all
of my notes so I love it but it's a much
bigger deal than a song he's just he's
just taken the world and put it in real
time into a musical focus point though I
don't know have we ever seen anything
like this before you know I'm thinking
of you know maybe Elton John's song
about princess die but even that took a
while right there was a there was a
length of time between you know princess
died dying and Elton John writing a song
which did in fact do a similar thing it
captured our feelings about it but
here's what's different about that Elton
John didn't kill lady die you know I
don't mean that as a joke what I mean is
that his song was as an observer he
wrote an observer song about a current
event that was very important to us so
it was very powerful
because we thought about it at cetera
Kanye took that to a whole higher level
he didn't just write the song as an
observer
he was the situation he created the
change in that he sang about it and that
he included his biggest critic not
biggest but you know a good but we'll
say a good representative critic to say
anything he wanted to say
Eden Kanye song you've never seen
anything like this this is way bigger
than the song alright enough about that
let's talk about North Korea I tweeted a
link to my my blog posts about North
Korea starting from about a year ago and
let me let me frame that up for you all
right so I had been talking as you know
starting from a year ago and through
several blog posts and many periscopes I
had been saying that the situation in
North Korea that looked impossible to
solve was in fact a psychological
problem not a physical problem and that
a president Trump would bring to the
situation a set of psychological
persuasion tools which were ideal for
this exact situation to solve an
unsolvable problem because it turns out
it was never solved unsolvable
it was always solvable we just had to
change the way we thought
president Trump did that he changed the
way China thought about it its place in
the world its brand its reputation its
friendship with the United States its
trade situation
China's way of thinking about North
Korea changed to the point where what
was the biggest issue with China helping
with North Korea it feels like ancient
history even though it's just a few
months ago the biggest problem was that
China was worried about this influx of
refugees where did that problem go well
it turns out if you do things right it
was never that much of a problem to
begin
it was sort of a psychological worry
that probably just didn't need to be one
as we're learning we believed a year ago
the Kim jargon was not a character that
we could deal with that he was crazy
that he had he was afraid of this or
that or whatever we could never deal
with this crazy guy as of today we know
that we were totally wrong at least
that's the way it looks
Kim jong-un looks like first of all you
know a serious player and second of all
it doesn't want to die in a fireball and
third sees a way to a better economy and
a good situation and he's taking it
completely irrational he seems to be
somebody who's not only rational but we
could really work with at least that's
you know as of today anything could
change tomorrow but as of today now so I
put together my blog post to show my
thinking on the topic and the way I
framed it is that in order to do
something if you're a human being and
you want to do something it doesn't
matter what it is the first thing that
you need the first thing that you need
before you do something is you have to
imagine it's possible so if I think I
want to walk out that door next to me I
have to first imagine oh that's a door
that can open I have arms and legs I can
walk over they can open it you don't do
anything you don't imagine so I'm not
going to try to walk through the wall
because I can't really imagine that I'm
not even gonna get up and try right so
we had this North Korean impasse where
we couldn't imagine getting to the place
that we're at right now which is
everybody's talking nice and it seems to
legitimately want a solution that
doesn't involve dying so for a year I
wrote blog posts which I knew would be
seen in in the White House
not necessarily by President Trump who's
I assume is not reading my blog but I do
hear directly from members of the
administration in key roles that that
they are seeing my blog post so I knew
that the imagination I was adding to the
process would at least get to the White
House I speculated and I have no way of
knowing but it seems a reasonable
assumption that when North Korea started
scouring at least there's a press report
that says that North Korean operatives
were trying to talk to Republicans and
talk to people to try to figure out how
President Trumbo thinks and I thought
well let's see if I can persuade them as
well now if your job is that you've been
sent by Kim jong-un to the United States
either physically or virtually by
reading the media and your job is to
scour the media and try to understand
President Trump well if that's your full
time job and I imagine it would be
you're gonna come across my writing
that's one of the top fifty maybe voices
that people are used to hearing in the
United States I have a unique take on
the president so they're definitely
going to look at the different takes
they may ignore the ten people who say
exactly the same thing about the
president but they're definitely going
to notice the person who got a lot of
attention for say something saying
something different that also turned out
to be the best predictor of what
happened so in all likelihood both North
Korea and the administration saw a body
of my writing or at least some of it
maybe just even one of them in which I
described a situation that is identical
to today
and that situation is where North Korea
would just give up their nuclear program
in return for security guarantees now
what would have ever made you think that
was impossible before psychology you
would have imagined that Kim jong-un
would simply not think that could work
and therefore he wouldn't even do it you
would never even consider
accepting a security guarantee in return
for economic growth you know living and
all the benefits that come with peace
with the United States but I think when
you draw the picture of it and you make
the case that it's entirely it's
entirely doable
it might be the easiest thing to do
because it doesn't involve a war etc war
it requires somebody like a president
Trump to come into the situation and
simply make everybody involved think
differently for the first time and as
their brains are being scrambled and
they're thinking very differently
they're looking for a new way to imagine
the future and I provided at least one
way to imagine you could get to a point
where there's a better solution now you
would be entirely within your reasonable
you know within a reasonable opinion to
say Scott you are imagining that you've
had any impact on this at all to which I
say maybe it could be that I had no
impact out of anything there's no way to
know I can't here's the things that we
do know we do know that I wrote a number
of blog posts that explain that
describes this situation I know you
don't know but I'll tell you that it was
always my intent to allow people to
better imagine a peaceful solution that
is the sort of thing a president Trump
is uniquely qualified to make happen I
don't think any other president could
have gotten us to this point so my
attempt was to help the process there
isn't any way to know if it made any
difference now I'm going to implore all
of you to take this suggestion for
making this North Korean situation as
best you know the best it could be
here's my recommendation to all of you
we should we should not
frame the situation let's let's say it
gets to a good end and and North Korea
gives up its nukes I believe it would be
a mistake on the part of pundits and the
citizens and certainly politicians to
frame this as Kim Jong um back down or
he blinked or President Trump you know
won or we beat them those are all
unproductive framings
this is a very big win for North Korea
it's the biggest win you can even
imagine imagine going from spending all
the money on nuclear weapons which were
just going to end with them being
destroyed and starving to death
that was their other plan their new plan
is prosperity and peace and security and
joining the the nation you know the
nations of the world and presumably
having internet and you know being able
to see the relatives everything I mean
that they had everything to win Kim
jong-un also has a lot to win to win
because even if you imagine he's got you
know lots of skeletons in the closet
things that things that dictators do
that that nobody's happy about assuming
all that's true even with that if he
pulls this off and it looks like he will
Kim jong-un will be a legendary figure
all right his his reputation in the
world will be amazing
like I hate to say it right because you
don't want to hear that but Cuba Drago I
mean it's gonna come out of this like a
legendary figure yeah I'm saying
legendary because I don't want it I
don't want to compliment him but clearly
this is worthy of praise because it
would be a tremendous thing for North
Korea now you could argue he should have
done it earlier etc there there's plenty
of plenty of room for criticism but on
the big decision is he doing it right it
looks like he is it really does so I
the productive way to look at this is
everybody coming to their senses you
know President Xi Superstar all right
Kim jong-un on this question superstar
you know president moon South Korea
superstar president Trump Nobel Prize I
think you should be shared
maybe with two three or even four
recipients you know the Nobel Prize
Committee you may say yeah we can't give
this the president Trump our heads would
explode but they could give it to you
know moon Kim she and Trump seems fair
to me and I think that would be the best
way to frame it all right
so I've said before that I believe this
is the North Korea it could be the
introduction to what I call the Golden
Age the Golden Age is when all the big
stuff starts going in the right
direction but more than that the more
defining element of that is that we
start realizing that a lot of our big
problems maybe all of them are
psychological and mental in nature and
if we understand that they're easily
solved as North Korea's being solved
take that thinking to Iran all right
what was our biggest problem with North
Korea before they'll never give up
they'll never give up their nuclear
weapons you know Kim is crazy turns out
none of that was true he wasn't crazy
and he would give up his nuclear weapons
the most central things that people
universally believed are true why you
didn't even find people on the other
side of that argument just weren't you
they were actually illusions now that
was my take on this from the start that
there are some illusions preventing us
from a good result now imagine that you
create that new knowledge for society
the new knowledge that we almost at a
nuclear war over
that was a psychological condition right
that's important to learn because the
world is learning it right now we're
learning that we almost nuked ourselves
over a psychological glitch that we
thought things were true that just
weren't true take that to Iran what do
we believe about Iran you may have seen
my my periscope in which joel Pollak
senior editor at large from Breitbart
was explaining the the Iran situation
with especially about the nuclear deal
and one of the assumptions that is a
general assumption made by again people
on all sides this is a universal
assumption and the universal assumption
is that the leaders of Iran would prefer
death and the destruction of their own
country death to their family death to
all their friends that under certain
situations they would prefer that
because it satisfies some religious
predictions I want to be the first one
to say I don't think that's true now as
I've said before Israel has a different
situation than the rest of the world
Israel has to treat it like it's true
because the words coming out of Iran
sure sound like they're talking that way
right Iran certainly says stuff about
eliminating Israel if you're Israel you
treat that like that's dead certain
there is no wiggle room from Israel's
perspective they got to treat this like
it's going to happen tomorrow but that's
different from saying it's true
so as long as their array is acting the
way they're acting Israel has to act
like it's a mortal threat and it's
immediate period but suppose around
could stop acting that way is there
anything that would get them to that
point of view where we could see as
we're seeing with North Korea that the
Impossibles
really starts looking possible I'm going
to start writing probably more about
around for the same reason I wrote about
North Korea I want to at least see if we
can get to the point where we can
imagine something good happening over
there that doesn't make it happen you
know the imagining isn't enough but it's
a necessary condition and I would I
would postulate that what got us from
impossible to now almost solved in North
Korea it was only the mental shift that
said I think we can make this work
because until President Trump thought he
could make it work why would he do
anything you know why would president
Trump have done any of the things he did
unless he could thought he could make
something to work so obviously he
believed it take this back to the power
of positive thinking norman vincent
peale who coincidentally was the pastor
in president Trump's church when he was
a kid and it was also a big influence on
me as the author of that book the power
of positive thinking so when I saw a
president Trump become president I said
to myself I think he can solve this
North Korea thing and by the way I
thought that before he was elected
though let me do it a little aside here
I have been shat upon for the past
two-and-a-half years
for saying positive things about
president Trump's skill people say to me
can't you see what he's doing to help
people feel and the racial divide and
you know the sexism and the whatever
other criticisms are saying about him
and and I would say well but I think he
can do good things you know yet all
that's true people are feeling more
racially divided that's all true and
that's all bad but I was hoping they his
special tool set would give us some some
wins that we just couldn't get with
another presence
this is the main one I was thinking
about you know terrorism economy North
Korea those have always been my top
three so I thought well you know we can
at least at least get those big three
wins but it might be expensive in terms
of you know racial feelings and other
feelings that have been stirred up now
people have said to me is the you know
is the are the ends justifying the means
you know that's the bumper sticker
response to that's like yeah you know I
know you think you could do some good
stuff but do the ends justify the means
if it's so expensive to get there to
which I say yes yes if you gave me a
choice between making you feel that the
president is a racist or being destroyed
in a nuclear fireball
I choose making you feel uncomfortable I
don't like that those are my choices
but they were my choices my choice was
to make other people feel uncomfortable
or at least be part of part of the
movement would which would end up that
way which could never be comfortable you
know why would I feel happy about making
other citizens uncomfortable could never
be happy about that but I believe that
he had a skillset that could get us some
big wins that a Clinton could not give
us we're seeing now that play out I
believe he's goosed the economy in a way
that you know the the mental game of the
economy he's played right he's made us
feel optimistic there's lots of you know
feeling that the reduction in in
regulations the changes in taxes the
negotiation with trade were feeling this
overall positive feeling that gets
translated into the economy jobs get
better
great the north isis he put the the boot
on him president you know mattis and a
lot of the other countries of course and
our allies wasn't just us but he was
part of a productive
I'll come there and then North Korea
might be the big one
so if you're asking me do the ends
justify the means
assuming North Korea comes in the way it
looks I got to say yes now allow me to
officially apologize to everyone in the
country who has been offended by this
process the process meaning the
president Trump anything he's ever said
everything he's ever done anything that
people on the right have said or done
they would offend the people were
legitimately offended you know I'm not
going to say they shouldn't have been
offended all right there's plenty of
stuff they could get people offended
what I'm saying is my intention was that
we would always get to this place and
it's a bigger win and the price to get
there I'm sorry to say you know came a
little bit you know came quite a bit
under the comfort of my fellow citizens
and to you I apologize I apologize that
you had to take that burden and that you
take is still you know you you are
accepting a burden that you did not ask
to take that was pushed on you and I for
one apology you know apologize for that
but I also appreciate it greatly
I appreciate that that the country held
together and that we got to this point
so I think Iran also has a potential I
can imagine it solution and it comes
from these two assumptions which are not
true yet meaning they're not validated
to be true they may be true or false but
they're not credible or validated yet
these are the two assumptions I'd like
to push on Iran one that they're crazy
and would ever prefer death to all of
their families and friends and
themselves in the country for anything
alright I'll push against that that
assumption I would also push against the
assumption that there's no way to solve
it as long as you know that you have the
unsolvable problem of Iran wants Israel
to go away etc I'm not positive there's
no solution to that right so and Bochy
yeah I shouldn't I shouldn't Bochy
predict Iran let me drastically change
the topic for a minute did you see the
well let me come at this from a
different angle let me tell you what a
good day would look like for any of you
imagine waking up in the morning you
know it's just an ordinary day you wake
up in the morning you get your coffee
you do what most of us do you pick up
your phone and you see what's new today
and the first thing you see on your
phone is that the President of the
United States has just we did a job
recommendation for you imagine waking up
and the first thing you see in the
morning is the President of the United
States just wrote a tweet making an
unsolicited job recommendation for you
by name and named you personally that's
what happened to who Greg Gutfeld this
morning so because the White House
Correspondents Dinner apparently was not
a rocking success and Lee the the
humorist who worked that job did not get
good reviews at least at least from the
president at least from the right I
don't know how the left felt about it
but so the president suggested that Greg
would be a better choice for the White
House Correspondents Dinner
and I was thinking what would it be like
to be Greg you know wake up in the
morning you're like Oh have some coffee
let's see what's on the phone what
that must have been a cool moment my
recommendation for Greg is don't take
that job do not take that job if you do
we'll all watch we'll support you but I
just don't know if that's the best place
to be all right what else we have going
on today Michelle wolf that was her name
the humorist
and Michael wolf was the guy write the
book Wow it turns out the president
doesn't have much luck with wolves
[Music]
all right I think we've seen everything
we need to say we've know we've seen
everything we need to see and we've
heard everything we need to hurt here
and that's it for now
everybody have a great day check out my
blog post if you haven't seen my North
Korea blog posts over the years they're
all there and I'll talk to you later
