A (13:56)
Do you know what cognitive dissonance is? I've done a lot of homework. Why I was using it wrong. And it is common usage. You know, sometimes we get things wrong so consistently, so constantly that it changes their meaning, but we use cognitive dissonance to mean what? You know this is wrong and you're doing it anyway. That's how we use cognitive dissonance, right? That these people are just choosing to believe something that they know is wrong. That's not cognitive dissonance. And this isn't a big brain in the weeds. So what? You know, pennywise pound foolish? No, it matters because we actually need a lot more cognitive dissonance. We need more. And I'm not saying we all need to take drugs and alter our realities so that we don't have to deal with it. No, I'm saying the opposite. We got to lean in to what we know to be real and to be true. Need two things. One, fuck right and left. Focus on right and wrong. You and I are the same. We are both American citizens, okay? That's what we are. Critical thinkers, citizens. We care about the country, probably have a bunch of shared concerns and values. That's the truth every time we measure it. Most of us care about the same things, believe in the same things. So we need to get rid of right and Left and get back to reasonable. We are Americans. That is all. George Washington was right. The parties have killed us. They should be removed and turned into just packs and no longer have any control over our process. I believe in all that. But let's deal with. Right now we need cognitive dissonance. Why do we need more delusion? Because that's not what it is. We're using it wrong, I think. And in part, in using it wrong, we have. We have ignored, masked a really, really powerful insight. Cognitive dissonance is the resulting feeling from the awareness that you are behaving in a way that is inconsistent with what you believe to be true. It is the result of. Of doing that. The upset that you feel naturally when you know you are not acting in a way that is consonant, consistent with what you believe, and then you feel a certain way about it. That's the dissonance. The dissonance is the upset at knowing I'm about justice, I'm about the Constitution. And now you're saying this guy shouldn't have had a weapon. And now you're saying that the protest is the problem. And now you're saying that us chasing after citizens and people who may be, or misdemeanor or this, that's raids all over and violence. That's what I voted for. No, no, no, I didn't. I didn't vote for that. I wanted you to enforce the law. I wanted the bad hombres gone. And if other people who are here illegally, man, if we don't come up with some alternative, then they gotta go, too. But you didn't sign up for rounding them up like rats and dead Americans. You didn't sign up for that. And that should make you upset that what I wanted is not what I'm now forced to support. And in that feeling, that cognitive dissonance, there is a chance for change. You see what I'm saying? Similarly, I didn't. Hold on. I'm against what Trump's about. I'm against these reductive policies. I don't want to abolish ice. I'm not going to be quiet during that. I'm not going to support that. That we have no law enforcement mechanism. How they do it, the amount of resources they have, what the purview of their responsibilities are. Yeah, yeah, let's debate that, man. It's gotten way too big. It's gotten too intense. But I'm not owning this. Defund, abolish that, that. I'm not going 100 degrees, 100 miles an hour in the Opposite direction. That. That doesn't feel right. That's really powerful, man. You need that. My father called it your gut. Your gut. What does it tell you in your gut? What's right? What's the right thing to do? Are you doing the right thing? Is it the right thing to do? My father used to say it all the time. Is it you doing the right thing? You know the right thing? You know when it's not right? That's cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance isn't the problem. Cognitive dissonance is the fuel for the solution. You know that what you see in Minnesota is wrong. You know, killing Alex Preddy and calling it anything but that was wrong. You know that. You know one of ours, all of yours, is wrong. We are not at war with a foreign power. We are at war, increasingly, with ourselves, and it has to stop. Minneapolis, what happens if they do it in Los Angeles? I mean, are you serious? What happens if they try it in Washington, D.C. what happens if they try it in New York City, in Boston, in Dallas? The scale, the explosiveness, the violence, the bloodshed. Hell, yeah. I'm afraid I'm. I'm not hyping this. I'm scared. Why do you think I said that to Scott Jennings? I didn't threaten him. I don't want to hurt Scott. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't like bullies. I was bullied as a kid. I believe that I have been built and by personal design to fight bullies. My concern was realized days after. Just days after I said it. If you keep up with the. Yeah, I'm calling them illegals. Yeah, I'm saying that. Yeah, I wanted them. I want to marginalize them. I want to treat them like less than I want this fight. I'm saying. And what are you going to do about it? What? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna stop me? Punk. You little punk kid. How are you gonna stop me? I wanna know how you're gonna enforce that. Hold on. I don't wanna move on in the conversation. How are you gonna enforce that? How are you gonna make me stop saying it? He was taunting. He was being obnoxious. He was being a bully. And what he was saying is, yeah, I'm gonna say it, and you can't stop me. It wasn't a censorship point. Having the right to say something doesn't make what you're saying right. And let me tell you, if the irony is lost on your stupid ass, that your resistance to me telling you that saying something like illegal, is rude and reductive and helps escalate tension. If your response to fighting against that, of countering that is, fuck you, Fredo. If that's your response, you're making my point. If your response to me saying, you know, using an ugly term for people who aren't legally in the country only escalates the tension, is to escalate the tension in a way that you think is the equivalent of calling them an illegal is the equivalent of calling me as an Italian American. Fredo, by the way, you want to hear something crazy? I don't even believe in Italian American. Like, what the. What does that even mean? You see what I'm saying? I am an American, and my ancestry is Italian, and I'm a simple one, okay? Like, literally both sides of my family. My mother and my father and their parents and their parents and their parents were all from the same two towns in Italy. So I'm a very simple analysis. I'm not even your typical American. That is more a function of the melting pot. But Italian American, what is that? I'm American. My ethnicity. Yeah, I have Italian blood, but I'm American. My Italian is mezza mezza. So. So I care about my culture. I care about my roots. I care about the rituals. I care about the traditions. They matter to me. The identity matters to me. It matters to me that I am Italian, but it's nothing compared to me being in America. It's. It's nothing. It's a feature. It's not. It's not my soul. It's not my. My. My identity. I'm an American. I don't even get the Irish American. We're Americans. We're Americans. That's all we are. I'm a black American. I'm a white. No, no, you're an American. And see, and once you focus on that, this other shit becomes so obvious and so offensive. We need more cognitive dissonance. That's what we need. We need more people to know just what's right and what's wrong. Killing Alex Preddy. We was wrong. Comma. But that. No but. No but. No but, no but. That's how you get into this Kyle Rittenhouse bullshit. It was okay for that young, dumb, misguided kid to show up with a weapon of death, which is what? The AR15 is not for hunting. It's not for target practice. It's not for skeet. It's to kill people. That's what the thing's designed to do. Well, it's my right. Well, then keep that same fucking energy. Then it was Preddy's right also. And by the way, that is right. It was his right. I may argue with it, but it's his right. And for you to say that it's a problem now should expose how what you're defending is. And you should feel that that's the cognitive dissonance. And now don't make the mistakes that go along with justifying cognitive dissonance that I'm upset. What should you do about it? Do something better. Do something to fix it. Do what's right. Instead of, yeah, but that's justification. Instead of, yeah, but they're still worse. That's identification. That's you putting coping skills in to deal with your cognitive dissonance, your feeling of upset because you know your bullshit. You know there's a hypocrisy here. And instead of dealing with it, you're dismissing it by using one of these other psychological devices. I can't believe I missed this for so long that I didn't hone in on it. Just Google it. Just Google, what is cognitive dissonance? Okay. And how do people hide from cognitive dissonance? How do they cope with cognitive dissonance? And you'll see all these psychological terms come up that mirror our political tactics and tools. And social media just enables all of it in the worst way by being designed to amplify outrage, animus, and therefore division. Alex Preddy was a bad shoot. Now, what do I think happened? I think what they did with the woman was wrong. I think him stepping up to help her was right. But dangerous. Why did he carry his weapon? I don't know. It doesn't matter. Did he use his weapon? Did he brandish his weapon? Not that I see. And I see what they saw. So then what happened? Where's the negligence? Isn't this murder? I don't know that it's murder. Why? Because when I see the agent who makes that first abrupt move to shoot, it looks like they're surprised. It looks like they're reacting to something. What could that have been? Well, in the video, you see the weapon being removed. So he wasn't brandishing the weapon. The weapon's being removed. I didn't see him hold the weapon at him. He had a phone in his hand. What could have happened? It's got to be investigated. Find the facts. Do what justice demands. But in that investigation, I think one of the factors will be what we've seen. Is there a chance that with those multiple officers, that when they decided to make a move on this guy, which they should not have, in my opinion. But when they made that decision, might one of them had said weapon when they were taking it off him. How do we know he didn't tell them he had a weapon? I don't know. That's part of the investigation. He didn't brandish it. Did he tell him he had it? He may have. Oh, he was supposed to. If he didn't, then it's all on him. Bullshit. Bullshit. If he didn't announce to you that he has a weapon, then it's okay that you killed him. No, that's not how negligence works. It's not how the law works. Okay. Duty, breach, cause harm. Who had the duty? The cop. What was that duty? To be careful in the use of force. To work reasonably off what is known and what you've been trained to do. Did you breach it? Ah, that go. Did he brandish the weapon? I don't see it. You don't see it either because it didn't happen. Did he announce that he had one? I don't know. That's part of the investigation. They definitely discovered that he had one. And pretty quickly. Now, did the guy who discovered it tell the other officers? Got the weapon. Weapon secured. Weapon secured. I don't hear it. Mighty have said gun. Might that have been what startled and surprised an officer to open fire? Do I think he's like, I'm gonna kill this? No, I don't know that. I did see that at play with Renee. Good. Absolutely. Why you say you after you shoot her in the head? Doesn't sound like fear to me. It sounds like anger. Right. Like outrage, like animus. This is different from what I've heard so far. Could have been negligent. What do you mean? So how is it negligent? You're saying it's not wrong? No, of course it's wrong. But it's like, why it happened. It could have been that the guy thought he said gun, saw him moving, didn't understand, not well trained, makes a bad choice and fires, and then all the other ones fire. Why? Because that's what you do when you're unseasoned. Especially. But seasoned officers do it sometimes also. Why? Because they make a bad choice or something that seems reasonable in the moment and later does not seem as reasonable. That very well could be the explanation of this. But I'll tell you what, the guy's not a domestic terrorist. And I'll tell you what, being desperate to show that he is is the fucking problem. Where is the cognitive dissonance where is that tapping into your upset that you know that this is wrong and that you're quiet about it, or you're distracting from it, or you're trying to blame somewhere else for it instead of dealing with that conflict? Embrace it. Embrace it. The obstacle is the way Ryan Holiday stoicism. Embrace it. Man, this is not justice, man. This is not law and order, man. This is not what is warranted. This is not what I want to see and that is enough. Yeah, but that's bad for Trump. It is not bad for Trump. 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I'm sorry that I didn't have a platform during the phase of the pandemic when we started to learn that a lot of our underlying assumptions are were wrong and that the government had been wrong about things, whether it was the need for distancing, the need for anything, the need for vaccines, the money, any of it. I'm sorry. I wish I could do it differently. I wish I had been more muscular with the brother and sister Democrats when they were thinking about riding the Biden train for a second term, when such a big part of why he got a term was because it was only going to be one and everybody knew he was at the end of his powers. I should have been stronger about how they were fucking up this process and getting themselves into a position where they seemed like Trump was a less risky choice. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if that's what you need to hear. The idea that I've been repeating the same mistake is. I try. I wish. I wish I had done things differently. I wish, I wish that I could go back and say, hey, you know what? You can't give him the benefit of the doubt about how they're going to enforce the Law, let's have the fight right now. Let's have him spell out, what do you mean, how are you going to secure the border? Oh, okay, all right, that makes sense. And. And you want to do more of what? Yeah. Okay, all right, fine. And then. And what else are you going to do? You're going to get them all out of the country? 10, 15, 20, 25 million. I mean, doesn't that tell you right there that they don't even know what the hell they're dealing with? Biden let in, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25 million. You're okay with a 250, 300% increase in a number within two seconds. They don't know. They just wanted to make it as big as possible. Why? So they could justify doing as much as possible. Yeah, but I'm good with this. No, you're not. No, you're not. No American citizen is good with federal agents flooding cities, flooding municipalities, flooding your community, looking for people who may have committed a misdemeanor. People who are not here legally in the country is not why everything costs so much. Okay? It's not why you don't have the job you want. It's not why you don't get the pay you want. That's not why not. But for. If every illegal entrant in America disappeared tonight, God willing, not dead disappeared in some benevolent way, they were similarly situated in another country that's more accepting of them and life was better for them. Let's try to create some kind of positive karmic energy. Do you think that all the prices go down? You think you got dollar gas? You think you're making 55 bucks an hour instead of 25? You think that all your taxes go down because they're. They're the ones destroying all the emergency rooms? You really think that's why the cost of health care is what it is? That is all bullshit. It is an article of convenience to blame somebody to put less pressure on this administration to change what they said they would change. Nobody voted for what you see in Minneapolis. And the but for is not the governor and not the mayor. They are not the but for in the analysis, but for the administration deciding that this fraud, alleged fraud in Minnesota was a way to go after the Somalis and make them a metaphor for how bad immigrants are ruining and responsible for our affordability crisis. That's what this is. Two things can be true. And you have people who aren't legally in the country all over the place. And we had an election where people said they wanted the law enforce. That's true. Nobody said, I don't give a fuck how you enforce it. Nobody. So but for the administration doing this the way they're doing it, we're not where we are. And I think the federal government needs to go first. Of course. They have to lead. Leaders lead. You are the supremacy clause. You are the supreme power. You are the law of the land. Now, the state reserve rights, right, the 10th Amendment's a real thing. Right. But the government has to go first. That's not weakness, that's strength. And they don't have to get the fuck out. They can just pull back, get them somewhere warm, put them somewhere, put them 100 different places. No third amendment violations. You can't put them in people's homes and meet with the local leaders and say, look, are you going to let us into the jails and the prisons so we can get the guys that you have? Are you going to let us do it that way? You got to say yes. I mean, what? Why? How is it reasonable otherwise? I don't understand the arguments as to how that's not reasonable. Let me know, maybe I'll change my position. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we're going after this will kind of operations we want to do. And then you pick where you want to be a part where you don't want to be a part. But we got to be able to do better than this. We got to be able to do better than this. And I think the federal government has to go first. But on our level of critical thinkers of citizens, man, you gotta destroy, destroy right and left. And I'll tell you why. You're being forced to own too much shit that you don't want to. If you're on the right and if you're on the left, you can oppose what's going on without being on some opposite team. You can oppose how this administration is using its power and its mandate. As an American citizen, you don't have to be on the opposing team. Why? Because the opposing team may be better on some things and not others. And why make the compromise? There is no reason to compromise. I'm against this. As an American citizen, I will not vote for you. If you are in favor of doing things this way, you don't have to be in this. Why? Because you wind up getting into a battle of just which side is worse. This binary zero sum. You only win when they lose. So there is no reason. There's no currency, there's no power in accommodation and cooperation and collaboration. In a negotiation, there's. There's no upside to getting anything done. If all you have to do is have your side convinced that the other side is worse, that's what you'll do. And you'll do it because it's easier. And if you want power and you want to keep power, that's easier for you than fixing anything. So you're playing into the problem by picking a side. Pick the American side. This is wrong. Alex Preddy was killed. It was wrong. No, don't say that because the president's in your. Fuck that. Oh, no, don't say that. They should work with them because then you're getting soft and then you're giving Trump a win. Fuck that. I want better. I want reasonable. Forget right and left. Let's get back to right and wrong. And we need more cognitive dissonance. Tap into that feeling in your gut, man. I'm sick of owning what Trump is doing. I'm sick of justifying it. I'm sick of twisting it and rationalizing it. I did not sign up for this. I do not want that. I own a small business. These tariffs are killing me. I'm not going to give him two years when he said he could fix it in two weeks. I'm not going to own that shit. I'm against it. That doesn't make me a Democrat. It doesn't make me a socialist, it doesn't make me an anything. And if I believe in enforcing immigration law, it doesn't make me a Nazi. But if you back people who do terrible things in that moment, then you are backing what is wrong. Tap into that cognitive dissonance and don't justify it. Be saying, but they're worse. But, you know, if you look at it this way, then it's okay. And if I choose to believe that Alex Preddy is the problem, then it's all right. But look at what you got to swallow, man. Christy, no. Made it easy for you. One of ours, all of yours. Who's the yours? Who's the you? Think about it. What good answer is that? Oh, well, it's the illegals who are killed. Legals. Illegals killed Brene. Good. Oh, no, but they've killed other people. Really? They have. Okay. And you think that the level of threat that illegal entrants pose to our safety are women and children warrants this kind of enforcement? Really? So if that's how we do. If that's how we do threat assessment, you're telling me we shouldn't be having Raids on the fentanyl guys, huh? You don't think that warrants it as a threat to us as much as what illegal entrants are doing to us? Really? You think our top threat, that we should have the most federal agents with a budget bigger than Israel's defense budget running around the country looking for these people because they warrant that level of data? That's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. And once you know it's bullshit, you know, then why they're doing it? They're not doing it because they represent the threat that warrants this. Then why are they doing it? And that's who the U is. They're doing it to expose and put down their political opposition. And that's why, as goes Minnesota, so goes the country. I'm not calling for rebellion. Not at all. I'm calling for resilience and reasonableness. How they're doing this is wrong. If you're not here illegally, of course law enforcement is an issue. Of course. It has to be upheld, of course. But how you do it matters. And yes, state and local should work with you when it comes to getting dangerous people who are a threat to us. We're sitting in the jails or the prisons. Of course that's not a slippery slope. You could do it, but we got to stop watching and we got to stop waiting and we've got to stop making accommodations because we got to fit it into two sides. Right and wrong is so much more expansive than right and left. Meaning what? We know what's right and wrong. Right and left is debatable on so many things. What, tax, how much, who, when, how often? You can debate these things. You can debate these things. Killing that kid, Alex Preddy, that's not debatable. That was wrong. Okay? And it's going to keep happening. So if you don't want it to happen, what do you want? You want change? I want it to be right. How do you do it right? Not like this. I mean, come on, this is simple. This is not complicated. Is it hard?