w it probably thought it was real. Wouldn't you say, before you knew it was fake, wouldn't you say that that sounds real? It actually does, because as absurd as it sounds, it's not more absurd than the news that you'll see today. Somewhere there will be more absurd things in the real news today. No difference.

As part of our understanding of why things aren't the way they used to be, Adam Dopamine on Twitter, Adam MD, points out that Eisenhower missed one key element when he warned us about the military-industrial complex. So remember, Eisenhower gave a big speech in his day and said watch out for the people who make the weapons working with the people in government to make money by starting wars, essentially. And sure enough, it looks like there's some of that going on.

But the part Adam Dopamine points out is you should include the news in that. It should have been the military-news complex, because unless the news is complicit, you can't get away with it. So you really need that whole complex. And I think that's a useful foundational understanding. You know, follow the money, but there's somebody running cover for the money and diverting you. So there's somebody on the bank heist team whose job it is, when the bad guys run out and turn left and the police arrive, it's his job to say he went that way and point the wrong direction. And when I say "he," I mean all right.

What do these people have in common? Let's see if you can get this in the comments. Here's your quiz. Three people. What do they have in common: Alex Jones, Adam Schiff, and Kim Kardashian? What do they have in common? Something major. And it's not the funny stuff, something real.

Dog punchers? That was a good guess, but we have no information about Alex Jones ever punching a dog. So that was a good guess. Somebody said they're all dog punchers, and I thought Kim Kardashian probably, Adam Schiff definitely, but no information about Alex Jones. He might be a dog lover. So it was a good guess, but I don't think it fits.

All had sex tapes? That's a good guess. Yeah, probably, but that's not what I was going for. All have dated Pete Davidson? Checking the list. Yeah, that too. Well, okay, I didn't realize there were that many coincidences. There are quite a few of them.

But here's what I was going for. I was going for they're all in the same line of work. They're all in the same line of work. Let me read them again: Alex Jones, Adam Schiff, and Kim Kardashian. Same job, different bosses, same job. And here's what their job is. It's attenuated reality. Attenuated reality. They start with something that's like reality-ish, but they create something that's not reality from it for the purpose of getting attention, and then they can monetize that attention or turn it into power. In the case of Adam Schiff, maybe also monetize.

So none of them are different in my view from wrestling. When you were a kid, did you ever watch wrestling and you thought to yourself, people are saying this is fake, but I'm not so sure. This wrestling looks real to me. I think they're really fighting. And then later you learn it's an attenuated reality. It's not reality. It's sort of a base reality. There's fighters and there's a ring and there's an audience, and people probably get hurt and there's contact, but it's attenuated to get your attention. It's more interesting.

Alex Jones is an attenuated reality. He takes things that at base are true but adds to it. You could call it theater. Theater would be exactly the right word. Yeah, thank you, Sean. And is it a coincidence that Adam Schiff actually had some scriptwriting ambitions? I think he's written a few scripts, so he actually has a theatrical background. And Kim Kardashian, there was recently a story that there was some family meeting or something that was in the reality show, but the complaint was that they scripted it and it was an artificial gathering in which they pretended something was real. To which I said, you just figured that out?

Is there somebody who watches reality shows and thinks they're actually watching just them filming what's happening? Is there anybody doing that? Is there anybody who still thinks wrestling is like a real sport? I wonder. Do people think that when you watch Alex Jones, do you believe that the purpose is that you're seeing reality? Is that what you think you're watching? Because you should watch Alex Jones, the Kardashians, and even Adam Schiff doing any of his public stuff as the same thing. They start with reality, they attenuate it in ways that get your attention for their own purposes. But to imagine that any of that is real is a serious misunderstanding. I won't call it parody and reality, but if you think that attenuated reality and reality you can treat them the same, I think you should rethink that. These are obviously attenuated reality situations.

There's a new documentary or a movie, I guess you'd say, coming out about Alex Jones, I think at the end of July. So we'll talk more about that. But I was looking at a little trailer for that, and you see just a snippet of Alex Jones defending what he does. Now his defense is this: that he believes what he says to be true, and that sometimes he's wrong. And I look at that and I think, maybe. You can't really rule that out, can you?

Think about it. Think about how easy a target Alex Jones is, and then I'm going to give you his defense. It's really simple. It's a very simple defense. He believes what he says but sometimes he's wrong. And I hear that and I think, all right, nobody has ever presented evidence that he doesn't believe what he says. Am I wrong? And then here's the second part. Here's the mic drop. Alex Jones asks us why we treat him differently than the New York Times, which also presumably believes what it says but sometimes they're wrong. Like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like really wrong. Like wrong, start a war wrong. Like that's as wrong as you can be.

And Alex Jones says, why would you treat me differently? We both believed what we said, and we both could be wrong. To which I say, oh, that's actually a complete defense. There's nothing wrong with that defense at all. The only way he could be thwarted in that defense is if there's some recording of him saying, you know, I make all this stuff up. Now apparently there is some evidence that he likes the conspiracy theory domain, so that part I think he said directly. I believe that's also part of the trailer. But that doesn't mean he doesn't believe it.

And I'm not entirely sure that believing things is a real thing anymore. I feel as if we all choose things to believe, and that the reality is now so obviously subjective that we're a little bit aware of the fact that we're just choosing a reality. Does that feel true in a small way? But you can see that this is like a trend. It's a socially expanding trend that people understand that what they believe or what they act on as their reality, they know is a selected reality, a decision reality, not an actual reality. It's just one they choose to live in.

And I think that conspiracy theorists often are making almost a lifestyle choice to say I'm going to live in a world in which I treat this as true. It's just a choice. And on some level maybe they know it isn't true. Because did you ever see somebody who had a religion that wasn't yours and you talked to them? You're like, I don't know what's going on with this other person. So whatever your religion is is probably the real one. But suppose you're talking to somebody who got it all wrong. They had the wrong religion. And you look at them and you think, but do they actually believe that? Like actually, you really, really believe that? Like if you put a gun to the head of a loved one in their family and said I'm going to kill your loved one, you know, I have some way to know the truth, it's not possible, but I have some way to know what you're really thinking. Do you really believe your own religion? Like all of it? Like all the important parts? Do you believe all of that?

And I think you'd find that people say, well, okay, I mean if it's the life of my loved one is on the line, it is sort of a chosen belief. And while many of you are still saying no, that's not true with me, I'm act