the people in charge have decided that instead of using the police, which as you know are overfunded in Portland according to Portland, instead of using their limited police to break up violence between opposing political groups in the city, they decided to stand back and let them fight. Because they were just using things like sprays and clubs and stuff like that. It wasn't especially dangerous until the gunfire, I guess. I guess the police got involved when there were shots fired, but until then they actually just stood back and observed and they let the two opposing sides fight it out.

To which I say thank you. I have never agreed with Mayor Wheeler more than right this moment. They're letting them fight it out. I don't know what could end it faster, right? Because it seems to me that if you try to break it up and you keep them from hurting each other too much or too many people getting hurt, they'll just come back. But what happens if you let them fight it out a few times? I think fewer people show up next time. You know, if you got your head broken, probably you don't go back. I don't know.

So we'll try that, and I like it in the A/B testing sense of things. So while common sense tells you, hey, put those police in there and stop that fighting on your streets, let's try this. It could work. I'm not saying it will. I don't think you could quite predict that it'll come to a good end if you let them fight, but we haven't tried it. Let's give it a try. If Portland wants to be the test case for a "let them fight," I say put some bleachers in there and sell tickets and let's go nuts.

Well, I think I predicted to you that Afghanistan has some surprises coming. I didn't know exactly what the surprises would be, but one thing you can be sure of is that whenever you've got one of these fog of war or chaotic situations, something is going to come out of this that you say to yourself, what? How did that happen? You know, just something completely out of left field that explains everything. Now I don't know what that'll be, but there's a weird thing happening now in slow motion that I don't understand. And it goes like this.

The Americans are getting out of Afghanistan without violence, mostly, right? You're hearing anecdotal stories of somebody who doesn't want to cross a checkpoint, stories of the Taliban taking away passports, something like that. It's probably happening because I doubt the Taliban has such command and control that they can control every checkpoint. But overall, am I wrong that the Biden administration seems to think they could get the people out on time by the end of the month and that it's going peacefully now?

Here's the weird thing. You know, your unintended consequences, and we're all geniuses, aren't we? All geniuses. We can predict exactly what will happen in every international situation because we're so smart. But here's something that might have accidentally happened. The best case scenario. I'm not going to say it's true yet, and certainly I think all evidence suggests that the withdrawal was botched. So my first take, if you remember, was hold, hold, we need to find out more information. It looks botched, but wait, there might be something we don't know about, because why is it we all see it as botched but the people in charge all did the thing that was obviously wrong? Like there's something to explain that we don't know yet.

So I said oh wait. But I waited. I waited for the administration to give us its version of the story and it just sounds botched. Maybe there's more to it, but it just sounds botched so far. And I say that only from the perspective of the administration didn't really put up a fight. You know, they didn't give you an argument that they did it right that made any sense. You know, they're saying they did a good job but you know they're not really supporting that argument.

So here's the most optimistic thing you could say, and I'm not saying it's true. It's just interesting that it's possible and in fact maybe more possible than the alternative. And it goes like this. The way this came down was the least loss of death possible under all scenarios. I think that's where it's heading. That this is accidentally totally botched but accidentally gave us the best outcome. Why? Because Afghanistan fell so quickly.

What could have been the safest thing to happen in Afghanistan? I hate to say it, but if it's inevitable the Taliban is going to take over, the safest thing is to surrender right away. That's what happened. So we didn't see it coming. We weren't prepared for it, but it was the safest thing. Just complete surrender on day one, because otherwise you have the fight and you still surrender. I mean you get to the same place, right?

And then, but the second part, and the part we're obsessing on, is the withdrawal. You know, that's completely botched, right? Does everybody agree that we're all the experts and we would have gotten the people out they wanted to be evacuated? We would have done that first before we got rid of most of the military. Now we did put military back in but they're not getting people, etc. So it's still botched, no doubt about it.

But so far the Taliban has been playing it strategically very smart. And the strategically smart thing for the Taliban to do would be to give us a deadline that's a little challenging but possible. And they did that, apparently, at least according to the Biden administration. That deadline is challenging but possible. Like, you know, we have a really good chance of getting really close to achieving it. Now so far that's pretty reasonable for a group that's known for its unreasonable actions.

What happens if — I'll just put this as a hypothetical. It's not a prediction. It's a hypothetical and things are heading in this direction. What happens if the hostages — not the Afghans. Well they might be. What happens if the people we want to evacuate, including the Afghan interpreters and the people who we want to get out, what happens if we get them all out? Isn't this going to look like the biggest success of all times at the same time it was botched? Believe it or not they can happen at the same time. You can botch everything and just get lucky.

That's what it looks like. It looks like everything was botched and so far, fingers crossed, you know there's no reason to think it'll go this way all the way to the end, but fingers crossed they avoided a civil war by collapsing immediately. And if we get the people out, which looks like it's happening, it's the best thing that could have happened. Am I wrong about that? I mean if you're just counting bodies, how could we have done better than this assuming that we do get the evacuees out? Now that's a big, big assumption, right? But so far, so far it's happening.

Now I'm not saying that. You're saying it's delusional. It's not delusional because it's put in a statistical sense, right? It could happen. It's just unlikely. I mean if you had to predict, wouldn't you predict that the Taliban will not let everybody out, keep a bunch of hostages? Most obvious thing,