A (39:13)
It was a deep and abiding sadness because as a child of the 80s, I'm watching all of the institutions that I once really believed in reveal themselves to be politically motivated, as I think is just true of the moment. I think most everybody is on a team. But let's go through the specifics. I think that this will help us actually have a fruitful conversation about this meta thing. So I'll give you what's really going on with the Southern Poverty Law center, but then I want to have a more meta conversation. All right. So the Southern Poverty Law center is being accused of funding the very hate the groups that they're supposedly trying to stop. The SPLC is their most frequently referred to as got an indictment on 11 federal counts. So a few of them are wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering. There's a bunch more. The DOJ says that they use donor money to secretly pay a bunch of bad guys, including KKK people. Now this all sounds incredibly explosive, but many are saying that the case just isn't going to hold up in trial. I'll explain the reasons. First, let's go through the specific claims. So between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid roughly $3 million to informants inside the KKK, the Neo Nazi group, National alliance and the Aryan Nations. I don't think think anyone is disputing that. So if we can set that forward, they've paid $3 million to people inside of these organizations. But the idea of them being paid informants is the important part. Now it gets weird because they move the money through shell accounts with names like Fox Photography and Rare Books Warehouse to name but a few. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says the SPLC was Manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose. That feels like a misrepresentation based on what I know now. I'll walk you through what I think is really going on. But ultimately that really is going to be the question at the center of this case. Were they funding the extremism or were they simply using the same paid informant technique that law enforcement and other investigative agencies like Project Veritas, by the way, who I love, use to get information on groups that they're trying to get dirt on on the Project Veris toss stuff makes me laugh getting all these guys on camera just saying the thing is so wild. And the fact that they just use hot people flirting with them to do it is the most amusing indictment of humanity that you're ever gonna see. So look, this is a technique that's used by a lot of people, including I'm sure some of your guys favorite groups. So you really wanna think about this at the policy level, don't think about it just at the level of this one group. Say, do I want my favorite group that's fighting in the name of the thing to be able to do this? In which case you've got to take the good with the bad. All right. A handful of legal experts are calling the indictment preposterous. A retired federal judge predicts that the case is just going to collapse once it gets to trial because one of the big claims, namely that donors were tricked into donating not knowing what the actual money was being used for. That's probably not going to withstand scrutiny. 20 SPLC donors have already come forward. They told an outlet called the Intercept that paying informants was exactly what they wanted their money to go towards. As mentioned, other organizations like Project Veritas run the same playbook coming from the right. And nobody has indicted them yet. We'll see what happens. I certainly don't expect the law fair to end if the Republicans lose or when the Republicans lose power. Now we all need to be cognizant of a growing problem. And this is where we get into the meta aspect of all this. It's really strong in the US that incentives drive outcomes. Okay, that's true globally. If hate were to go away, this is a sad truth, the SPLC would go out of business. Okay, so they're not incentivized to make the problem go away, even if that's only an algorithm running in the back of their minds. More hate in the world benefits the SPLC and any other organization, by the way, that generates donations by pushing an agenda of fighting back against a supposed boogeyman. We need that common enemy. You guys have, I'm sure, thought through the experiment of what would the world look like if we were attacked by aliens? The story goes that we would all unite. There was actually a really famous, I think it was between Reagan and Gorbachev where he said, Reagan said to Gorbachev, if we were under attack by aliens, would you come to our aid? And he said yes. Now, whether that's an apocryphal story or not, it shows the way the human mind works. We just need a way to look at each other as being on the same team. When we think of ourselves being on opposite teams, we're going to fight like cats and dogs. So given how divided we are as a nation, I think that we're going to see more and more people just be absolutely consumed by a winner take all mentality where everything is seen as this insane existential fight. And so the incentives are to. Because it's coming from, just assume, for at least a thought experiment, it's coming from a real place of belief. It's not cynical. It's. They really believe that they're on the right team. And because of what's going on with inflation, robbing people of their money, making it impossible for a middle class to exist and for them to make ends meet, they go onto teams because they, they feel like they're literally in a fight for their lives. I mean, this is just populism 101. This is what happens every time we go through something like this. And so when you're on a team and you believe you're in an existential fight, suddenly it feels completely justified to use violence. There's crazy stats coming out where more and more people think that violence is sometimes justified. Especially the younger they are, the more likely they are to believe that. And if you believe that your cause is just and the other side is evil, then it's like, yeah, we're. If I've got to make an informant that's a member of the KKK wealthy to get information on the kkk, then that's what I'm going to do. And if that just so happens to make sure that I've got job security, hey, that's wonderful. So when all of this is ratcheting up, people are going to look more and they're going to look for more and more evidence that the war that they're designed to fight is still raging and it needs to be fought harder than ever. Especially if they need that information in order to get the dollars that they need to stay in business. And every organization wants to grow. So it's like, if you can make it seem bigger and bigger and bigger, then you're going to do that. If you need evidence of that, just look at YouTube, headlines, lines. It's like, this is just the way it works. Because the human mind needs to feel like, yo, this moment is important. I need to pay attention to this one. I need to make this donation to this group, because this thing is really happening. Now, again, I'm not saying that's why they're doing it, but I am saying that's the incentive. So if you keep all of that in your head, you don't have to believe that anybody, when they're doing this is being bad or that they're evil, but that this is just the structure of the human mind. This is how this stuff plays out. So you don't have to get sucked into it. You can step outside of that fray, look back at this and go, okay, some weighting of this needs to be read to. This is a bad incentive structure. So odds are that they're doing things that if I really saw the nitty gritty of this, I would not like this at all. And then you just ask, do I still think that it's worth it? But at least then you've got your eyes wide open. And then understand that your team is doing it, too. If you're on a team, I promise you, your team is doing it. How can I promise you that? Because it's effective. And over time, groups always find the thing that's effective or they go out of business. So the groups that have lasted the longest are the ones that are most aligned with the architecture of the human mind. So just keep that in mind. Now, if that's true, then the indictment probably will fall apart. And we just all need to be aware that groups like the SPLC have fundraising incentive to make America look like it's one inch away from a race. Race war, whatever team you're voting for, whatever goal you want to see, they all have a similar what side of