Behind the BastardsPart One: The Religion War, by Scott Adams (with Matt Lieb)
Robert reads selections from Scott Adams's terrible novels to help unravel the great mystery: who is God, and how can we kill him?
Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. Legally the only podcast that you're allowed to listen to under the terms of the New World Orders. Fucking International Monetary Fund, build a Berg group, whatever you know it, that's the law. So hate the Buildeberg Group. Oh see, I don't actually have a bit ready for this, Mettley. How are we doing today, Matt? I'm doing great.
I am right now hidden in my bedroom because my baby is a cheap on the other side of the house and I don't want to wake her up with all of the loud.
Noises that I intend to make. That is fair, now, Matt. You are if folks are not aware, if our listeners are to wear You are the host of a number of podcasts, including a Sopranos podcast called pod Yourself a Gun, That's right, and the Wire podcast called pod Yourself the Wire.
Yes, which you can find on a feed called pod Yourself a Gun.
It's nice and confusing.
If you see Tony Soprano's face and the logo, you know it's a show about the Wire.
That's been extremely clear, now, Matt. Both of those titles are obviously a reference to the intro music for the sopranos. That's right, which which the refrain is something like woke up this morning, got yourself a gun. That's right.
Now, guys, what are we doing today? Do we have a Do we have another Scott Adams book?
Oh? Yeah, not all that long ago. We did our deep dive into Scott Adams. We talked about the life of this man. And he's got a couple of books that he wrote that he considers to be He thinks that his cartoons in time will be forgotten, but generations from now, his novels are what people will remember of him. He said this. He's gotten the record about this.
Are these graphic novels of Dilbert that were calling books? Or are these just words? No cartoons?
Yeah, they're just words, and they're they're real short. He says, they're real short because he wanted something that a person could read in an afternoon, which is a fine goal for a book. Normally I consider brevity to be an example of skill and craft, but in this case it just means he didn't tell a story right, right right.
I love starting an offul book with the idea of like no shorter, shorter, better, shorter, good, less words, more read fast.
Yeah, I'm going to publish like a big three hundred page book with a fancy title like the Origin of Mankind, and it's just going to have two words in it. Just fuck it on page one, empty space the rest of the time.
Yeah, yeah, like a dick in the middle of it, and you have to search for the dick and then when you find it, you win.
Yeah, and it's a whole book for like, yeah you can. You can just like say you finished it in a day and it out on your desk when people walk by and be like, I finish this one. Oh boy, I've been busy.
Yeah yeah, oh me, I've just been reading all these books here. You have a whole fucking shell filled with them. People are opening them up and there's nothing in them except for that dick that they find, and then they feel like they won.
Yeah. You find the dick, you email it to us, and you make a sacred pledge never to tell anyone that there's not an actual book in there. Exactly. Yeah. It's like Santa Claus. We all do it and we all benefit. So Matt he wrote these books, the Religion War being the one that we're going to talk about today, and they're terrible. And I went back and forth, should we do a book episode about this? Because another podcast I really like quite a lot, House of Decline Haus has done got over both these books with the lovely Rory Blank as the guest. And there was one other podcast that did at least one of these books. So we're not breaking totally new ground here. And I got kind of like self conscious about that. And then you know what I said, Matt, what did you say? I said, who gives a fuck? Dude? That's how I live. That's that's not what I decided, as.
Someone who does TV would rewatch podcasts of twenty year old show exactly. I'll let you know. Done doesn't matter. People need the content they want more.
This is, this is all. We all have a moral right and a moral duty to access Scott Adams's terrible books for free because they're available for free on the Internet archive. Don't ever spend money on these. Oh, we are doing no, no, and that's what we're gonna do. I love it. It's great.
You know this is nice for me because it's not a Nazi. Well, okay, let me take that back. I'm gonna rewind that a little bit it's not that it's not a Nazi, it's that it's not a guy who was in the Nazi Party in Germany in the thirties and forties, and that's that's nice for me.
Yeah. Now, Scott would have loved to be a Nazi, don't get me wrong, but uh, tragically, I mean, he probably would have been like Phipps, the cartoonist who did the illustrations for dere Sturmer, if he'd gotten the chance, because modern Dilbert is not all that far off.
But it's mostly just dog birds looking around for some Laban's realm.
Yeah, yeah, he would. He would have used the ill gotten Nazi gold to build a swimming pool shape like Dilbert's head instead of just using the money that he got from Dilbert to make a swimming pool shape like Dilbert's head.
He has wit he has a swimming pool shaped like Dilvert's head.
That's what he did. Matt. If you if you look that up, you might find something you don't want to find. So what I'm going to tell you is, you know, sometimes it's good to just have faith in things. You know, these are like this is like you know how the Holy Spirit the Catholics don't want to tell you what it is, but you gotta you gotta think it's really just a big deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's like this is like the Holy Spirit. The Dilbert head swimming pool in Scott Adams's backyard is the Holy Spirit of making fun of Scott Adams, and you just have to accept it. In the I believe it.
I believe it's an article of faith that he has this Dilbert shaped swimming pool.
He does have a tower in the back of his house shape like Dilbert's head. Anyway, Now, I should note here that The Religion War is actually the second book in the series, but chronologically it happens before the second book. We're going to read them in order, which will be my first step towards correcting Scott Adams's numerous mistakes.
Oh my god, so you're telling me now, I was assuming this was nonfiction.
You know it is? Okay, Wait, is this is this nonfiction or is this this is a novel? Well Scott Scott actually has a lot to say about that. In his first book. He's like, you know, I don't know whether I should call this fiction or nonfiction. Because fiction, uh you know, like this is this is based on like characters and stories that didn't actually happen, but it's kind of nonfiction because it has an impact on the reader. And I was like, that's not the definition between fiction and fiction. It's impact in a lot of people. And we did not have a War of the Ring. I've checked listen.
If there had been, I would have been firmly on the side of Sauraman.
He seems like he takes care of his workers, you know. Yeah, they have menus that that implies restaurants and yeah, and sometimes meat is back on the menu. Yeah, yeah, which also means that presumably there are vegan and vegetarian options. I love that. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, all right, so let's finally start the introduction to this terrible book. Let's do that. We're reading because I needed a week to not write a script about a Nazi. So The Religion War this is. This is his little intro, the prologue. The Religion War is a different kind of book. It's written in traditional fiction form, with a plot, yes, a plot in parentheses, involving the smartest man in the world trying to stop a pending war between Christian and Muslim forces. The story takes you forward to a few decades to imagine where our current delusions about reality might lead us, and in the end, it poses some questions that I think you'll enjoy rolling around in your head and jabbering about with friends while sipping a beverage.
It's not a I'm sorry, are Is he trying to sell the reader on the book they've already purchased.
Yes, yes he is, and he's trying to tell you, oh.
You're really gonna like this book. That was I think the opening to Blood Meridian.
Yeah, yeah, that's Cormack McCarthy was like, boy, I hope you enjoy the story of the judge, a psychopathic demiurge character fucking ranting about how he wants to murder birds. Yeah that's great. Good. Yeah, you know, have a good time, roll some questions about this around in your mouth with your friends while sipping a tasty beverage.
Yes, get your face retreat sits down and start reading this piece of shit and then ask your friends, hey, you read that fucking thing.
That'll be fun. It is. It does tell you the difference between you know. Cormack McCarthy is like the platonic ideal of like a real author. And then Scott Adams is Scott Adams and like Scott's like, I hope you've enjoy my book. Please sip it well, like discuss it with your friends sipping a tea. And Cormac McCarthy is like if you were to walk up to him on the street when he was alive and say, I'm interested in reading your book, his response would have been to pull a handgun, like, yeah, that's that's like a real like a real artist. Yeah, here's the prologue. In the year two thousand and seven, a brilliant and charismatic leader named al Zie began his rise to power in the Palestinian territories. He was the architect of the twenty year Plan for eliminating Israel. Now let me tell you what this plan is, Matt. This the twenty year Plan for a limit Israel. Is that we all kind of like calmly actually, you know what, I can scroll down to the chapter where he talks this all out because this is low key. So a couple of things you should note. You know how the Islam includes both Sunni and Shia, right, you know, like there's different kind of like you know how there's Catholics and Protestants in Christianity. Scott doesn't know that. So everyone's like Iran, you know, Palestine, it's all the Iraq, they're all the same. They're all in there together with like the Turks, and they're they're in the basics of this is that like, yeah, he destroys Israel and kills all of the Jews and then builds a caliphate and they launched like a low key terrorist war with all of the Christian states, and so this Christian alliance builds up using NATO as a background, and they have this like constant low ki war with the Muslims where the Muslims do terrorist attack, but they're special terrorist attacks. They're real careful not to get too big, like nine to elevens that they have to respond. And then the Christians sail around gigantic aircraft carriers kind of like occasionally killing people. It's kind of unclear what their role in the war is. And there's a number of things that get glossed over in this, including the Christian forces are made up of NATO, and the second largest army in NATO is a Muslim army. In the real world. Scott didn't google that. He actually learns just the other day that Turkey is a country. I love this. I love the mini nine to elevens thing, you know.
Yeah, it's like, you know, hey, we don't want to get it too, but you know, it's it reminds me of the famous you know question, would you rather be killed by a horse size nine to eleven or a thousand duckling size nine to elevens?
And I think I think the duckling sized ones is the way to go. Yeah, it's interesting. There's so much that's going on there, including like Scott's talking about how this is, you know, his his presumption of how things will continue if like the madness of the present era and he's writing this kind of in the not that long after the invasion of Iraq, in the post nine to eleven era.
Yeah, I assume this must have come out like, you know, two thousand and four or something, because he's like, this takes place in the year two thousand and seven.
Yeah, and I mean, well that's when that's when the destruction of Israel starts, you know. Yeah, So I there's a degree to which I understand why that's the focus. But it's also very much like, you know, if you pay attention to America, the idea that like there could be this giant caliphate that's constantly doing low level terrorist attacks against us, and we wouldn't lose our minds. Yeah, Like they don't have to kill a lot of people, they don't have to kill anyone. It has to be all that. All we need is like a TikTok to go viral, making people thrink, the Muslims of poison the water, and like twenty percent of the country will be ready to do a genocide.
Yes, yes, I love in his America. We show restraint.
Yeah, he really does. There's this mix of like zero faith and way too much faith in the country. That's that's utterly fascinating. So h Chapter one is old Man. So okay, yeah you get this. You get this guy Alsie and he he kills all of the Jews by basically convincing Israel to give Palestinians civil rights and then they vote themselves into power and then hold in the book. Yeah, gaining legal equality.
Genocide, yeah, step one.
White genocide is always wiping up the Jews. That's cool. Yeah, it's good stuff. Historically, always been the case, this architect of the twenty year genocide plan then makes a big old caliphate and everybody's happy, and he starts this low level and then on the other side on the NATO Christian side, but let's pretend Turkey's not a country. We have General Horatio Cruz, who's the guy running the Christian Alliance, and now we're in twenty forty and the war is kind of hitting a fever pitch. So the first proper chapter is old Man, and I think this is going to introduce the avatar, who will meet again in the second book. We're going to read in this series, who's the smartest man in the world? Right, Yeah, And he's he's so good at thinking through things that he's basically a wizard, but he doesn't have spells. He just is smart enough that he can he can confound and flummox people. I love.
I love being a fiction writer. Is like, all right, it's gonna be a story about it to a real smart guy. Yeah, really real smart. Yeah, his superpower big brain smart.
There's a lot of versions of this, and like better artists than Scott do it too. When every other a TV show where the premise of the TV show is the main characters like the best author around or the best musician and anytime it's time. We just got this with like at least the Weekend is a pop star on this terrible the Idol show. But like still it was a little I'm thinking, still.
So surprised you watched the entire I heard it was bad. Ever, it's the worst show I've ever seen in.
Like, worst show I've ever seen. The act it was so he's not a good actor. I enjoyed every yeah of it.
Yeah, oh yeah, I watched it, and you know, I was just really impressed with how uh they've managed to make being horny sound blame like it was. It was like, you know what it felt like to me is that, uh, Sam Levinson grew up only watching porn, porn, humb premium absolutely, and so he doesn't know about X videos. So the things that he thinks are hot are like very glossy, very shiny. And I was like, no, this guy doesn't he doesn't get you what hot is. He just thinks this is hot.
It's like it was written by a dude who like was raised like homeschooled as a kid, like raising a strict Christian household, but like from the beginning, was a little bit of a bad boy and found out how to get around the internet blockers, so we had access to like to like one partially censored porn website. But thinks he's really he's like really worldly about he's like, look, guys, and then he's like sitting at a table with like a bunch of hollywod people. All right, So picture this. She walks in the room and her skirt up above her knee. You can see you can see all the knee folds on this bitch, dozens of knee folds. It's folding like crazy around that knee. And she's sweaty always. You know, she's so shiny, sweaty, hot lady.
What's sad is they like they He was not always supposed to be on the project, and the original project sounded really great.
It was supposed to be yeah, yeah, really really great.
Instead we got fucking Li's depth smoking cigarettes in the Weekend, being believe I Willie say horny and bad at being horny so good.
So so you get the thing that is relevant about the Weekends Terrible TV Show and this Terrible book is that they both feature someone who's supposed to be the best at something right, and then they try to show it and it's like so at the end of the idol, like this character who's this like sleazy cult leader type, we see him like put on a show to convince these execs to like fund a tour, and it's supposed to be like, Wow, this is the hottest, coolest music thing ever, all these guys, and it just is like a bunch of like drug addled weirdos gyrating around the room that's like dark, and the music's kind of off, and it's like, I don't want to see this. Like I've been to a lot of awkward, drugged up parties where people gyrate weirdly in a dark room, and this is not a good example of this.
Your music executive, The idea you would sit around and watch the whole performance is the most insane thing I've ever seen.
It was.
It was a hybrid of what Robert just said, which is like a weird party with people on drugs gyritick and also like like a middle schooler's performing arts camp recital. It was.
And then they were like the same, let's.
Put this in a stadium that the show also the woman is the villain all on.
Show like Boo done. And I mean it's one of those things. You can have all sorts of stupid shit in your plot, but if you're telling us this person is the best at something, and then you have them do it on screen, and it sucks ass right. It's the same thing with Scott, if you're telling us this guy is a super genius and then we actually see him try to be a genius and we're like, oh, you're just a guy who's roughly as smart as Scott Adams and that's not impressive. In no way is that impressive. He's the smartest man on earth. He is a cartoonist.
He writes cartoons about guy in office Holderilbert.
I love stuff.
This has not been a long advertisement for the idol, but it is.
Ah, you know what the weekend will No, I don't want to say anything bad about the Weekend. I feel bad for him. Watch listen to some ads. Forget that he had a TV show, Forget that.
Rat tail that for some reason.
Have I love it.
He's like, he's like somehow worse than Tommy wiz Oh, and I wish that a I could replace him with Tommy.
Was Oh yeah, and we're back. We're back, and we've all actually all come around and decided that the weekend having a rat tail is a mark of character, right you know. Yeah, it's like when a hot actor agrees to like wear all exactly seven pounds and wear a fake nos so that they can pretend to be the ugly version of themselves when they get hot.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really brave. Yeah, courageous, Yeah, to be ugly for you know a little bit. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Anyway, let's start this book actually, so it begins Chapter one is old man, and there's an old man in the lobby and he wants to talk to General Cruz, the Christian leader, who is described as a reddish rhino of a man, which is a little more creative than Ben Shapiro's bear of a man. I'll give him that.
Yeah, rhino is pretty good. There's a I don't is he It feels like an anti Irish slur, but all, yeah, it is an.
Anti Irish slur. That's a low key Scott Adam's trait. Cruz used his eyes the same way he used everything else, like weapons. Lieutenant Ben water Good, no.
Notes, no notes, I think Scott nailed it, crushing high five yourself, Scott, Lieutenant Ben Waters suddenly found himself in the crosshairs.
It wasn't the first time Waters had seen that look, that sort of look from a man who killed people for a living. It would reduce most people to stuttering. Waters viewed it as information, nothing more. CRUs had handpicked Waters from a thousand candidates, not because of his test scores or his combat record, both unremarkable. It certainly wasn't Waters his personality charitable.
It was his social media posts that had a lot of questionable things to say about Palestinians.
There was something else. At the age of eight, Ben Waters used the family shotgun to kill both of his parents. It was a small town, and the neighbors agreed. Ben saved his younger brother from an unimaginable fate. No charges were filed since then. The area of Ben Waters his brain that makes a person feel alive was a catastrophe of molecules. He never suffered from shame offense. Okay, so what's going on here is he picked this guy. He's this general Cruise is worried he might get too powerful, So he has this guy standing next to him with a gun at all times to kill Cruise if he becomes like crazy with power, which is like potentially a fun idea if you're introducing like your idea of this world with like the leaders always followed by this guy, he's supposed to kill him if he goes mad with power. But the introduction of this character, he doesn't explain. Scott doesn't explain why this guy's parents had to die, just an unimaginable fate. There's no like you're left to assume it was probably like moless stations. Actually, sure, there's a good reason for it.
Every time someone kills their parents, I'm gonna be honest, I'm pretty much always on the side of the kid because I'm like, there's a reason you don't just kill your parents, so you know.
You know, even that would have been better writing if we had just learned that this guy's attitude was like, I'm just always going to side with the kid who kills their parents. I used to assume I don't know what went on. I didn't listen, I didn't know any digging. I just figured kid kill his parents probably cool.
If my kid killed me, Like, listen, I don't know why, but I get I get the need to do this. We all want to kill our parents, so we're just not brav enough.
Freud said a lot about that's just why I support legalizing cocaine, because that'll let more kids kill their parents. I don't know why we're going down this road. So this old man is here and he wants to talk to the general, So Waters tells him. The old man started talking to the guards, and five minutes later they left. They didn't say, why call the marines off the roof if the old fool won't leave, shoot him? Yes, Sir, said Waters, in a way that revealed he knew it wasn't a workable plan because the Scott Adams insert is able to talk the army down from shooting him for invading what is effectively the Pentagon. The whole world are fools, muttered Cruise using a ruler to drag a battle platform from the Indian Ocean. Matt makers were a frustrated group. The old notion of a country was meaningless. Al Z dominated the entire Islamic world. Governments existed under his rule in a fashion to keep the water running, to remove gardamage, and to run in doctrination centers for children, but The real.
War about Muslims, dude, is open borders. You know, just they just want to they just want to go to the Middle East and completely erase these borders that we totally made up in nineteen seventeen.
You know, fucking bullshit dog it is. It's yet another example of this like thing you get with a specific kind of like and this is like particular. You get this with like weirdo Christian folks, right wingers who hate Muslims, but you get it also with like atheists who hate Muslims, especially in this period where they're like they have this attitude that like, well, the entire Muslim world is just always angry at America and secularism. They're just always pissed at it, right, Whereas I don't know. Again, you spend a lot of time in the Middle East, and one of the things you learn is that the people who live there are like the people everywhere else. They are mostly angry at the folks who live right next to them. Right, It's just like Texas and Oklahoma. That's everywhere in the world. That's everywhere I've ever been. Yes, yes, anyway, not to flatten politics too much, but people are generally pissed at their neighbors, because that's who you rub up against. But in this all of the Muslims, presumably Arabs and Persians and Kurds, everybody all together. You know, anyone who's just kind of in that region of the world is all a Muslim, and they're all backing the guy who killed all of the Jews. Yep, that's good. Yeah. So there's no countries anymore, and in the Christian part of the world there was still a pretense that civilian governments ruled their respective countries. In reality, crews had the power to redraw boundaries and remove so called leaders with a word. He didn't need military power to get his way, although it was available if it's suited him. Cruz was widely believed to be the only person who could stop the terror of al Zie. No one felt it was a good idea to distract him. The atheists and the smaller religions were lying low, supporting the Christian power base and enjoying safety and numbers. The most enthusiastic supporters of the Christians were the Jews who had escaped Israel after So that's good, thank you, No, I'm glad, he wrote me in there. Yeah. Yeah, no, you guys, you guys got stuck in there. You got to you gotta mention.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you for you know, I like that Scott Adams. He's like, by the way, in this future, the Jews finally show some respect.
They finally show some gratefulness for.
Christian America for helping you with this thing I invented.
I am now picturing the if Scott had gotten the made for TV movie version of this. Well, the narration goes on. It just like cuts to a guy in like a bagel shop, like saluting with a bagel at the camera.
Just walks into a bagel shop standing ovation by all Hasidic Jews in there. Yeah, turns to the camera and he goes, you're welcome the Jews and then walks away without paying for his bagel.
Now, look when people when when authors whose thing is not writing about military stuff right about fantasy future military stuff, it's usually bad, which is fine, But you know, I wouldn't normally criticize someone for this, but I am going to criticize Scott Adams because he's I hate him. So here's his description of the weapons system that the Christians have developed in order to fight what appears to just kind of be a constant, low level like suicide bombing using drones campaign, which is what the Muslims. So that your enemy is every couple of days they kill like three people with a drone bomb, right, Like, that's the that's the the opposing side, right, So here's what they've built to counteract that. Battle platforms were a recent addition to Cruise's arsenal. They were the size of cities floating on the ocean, vastly more powerful than the aircraft carriers they replaced. The platforms could be assembled in days, ringed by destroyers, and monitored by an umbrella of satellites. Nothing could penetrate their perimeters thanks to NATO's technical breakthrough of forced particle beams that could slice through incoming metal like a hot poker on a cobweb. The rest of the world, which was mostly Alsi's territories and a sprinkling of non aligned powers, used conventional missiles that were no match for the particle beam defense grid. Now here's the thing, here's the thing. A couple of things, A couple of for one thing. Maybe it is realistic that this is fundamentally a weapons system that would be no use in the war that they're fighting. That's not what Scott, he wants us to think. This is cool, but like it is like useless for fighting like a low level terror campaign that's just a bunch of mild terrorist attacks, right for a lot of I mean for one thing, like he's like they're even more powerful than aircraft carriers we have, but the enemy just has like some drones with grenades, like aircraft carriers are fine for that, you know, like you don't need But also, well, why why are you how is this supposed to help? Like? How is how is controlling the oceans supposed to help? When your enemy is not opposing you in a direct military manner? Why is this useful? Yeah?
I am I am generally confused also as to like the amount listen.
The amount of people. It sounds like that al Zie is killing.
Is he's doing an occasional terrorist attack every couple of days, killing a couple of people. Yeah, And the entire world is like, oh man, we gotta fucking wipe these fools off the map because because literally a billion people have a murder rate of three per day.
Yeah, that's pretty good. I'm just sadestly, man's that's better than we're doing right now. That's not bad. Americans kill a lot more Americans than these guys all the time. It's a little I no, like, yeah, we shoot I don't know, like thirty five thousand something like that of us get shot to death each year in this country. At least, like they are they breaking those numbers? Is Alsi's campaign even doing that many Americans anyway, fascinating question. So Cruz has accepted that he's going to have to kill all two billion Muslims to win this war. I mean, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. I will give it to That's fine, Like that's a bad thing to do. But in terms of characterizing this dude, it's a bad guy, which he is. This guy's not the hero. Give Scott that, that's fine. The tall wooden doors of Cruz's war room open to a stream of military advisors, admirals, and generals. There were twenty five of them, one from each of the dominant NATO countries. So what about Turkey, the Muslim majority country? About Turkey? Turkey? What the fuck? He just doesn't know? They had no decision making power. Cruse had the monopoly on that, but they were useful in maintaining the illusion that NATO enjoyed some sort of democratic input. It was thin fiction, the sort of war that a wartime population was happy to accept. The Joint chiefs of Staff of the United States had become over addressed, advisors, symbolic and useless. The NATO generals were more loyal to cruise than their own civilian governments in times of extreme danger. And again they're trying to be like, everyone's this load of cruise because it's the only guy who can beat this man. But like, we're not. It's not ever established what he did to earn that, Like, there's a vague mention of battlefield victories. All he talks about the Muslims doing is carrying out terrorist attacks. Which where are the battlefield victories? What are the what's the fighting this for doing?
He's the best of the best, you know, again, when he was doing battles, doesn't matter where, you know, he was best at it.
It's okay. You could you could establish this early on by being like when he was a captain in the field, you know, he was an embassy. Dude, he stops a terrorist attack, right and like yeah something, but like, no, we don't. We don't get that Sky has this, like it's okay whatever. Cruse gets angry that they're not murdering this old man who has somehow gotten through his defenses and demanding to talk. So he grabs an M sixteen.
Uh.
He flips off the safety so at least Scott knows that guns have safety. He did a little research for this, all right. Yeah, credit little bastard. He's up to something, Cruse muttered, watching the floor indicators. He's just sitting in a waiting room right now. Yeah, he's He's in his big meeting room with all of his generals. It is like his Sabbath moments. They're all gathered in their masses, you know. Yeah, and this guy's.
Man in the waiting room just kind of being I'm just waiting to see the general.
He's breaking his way through all of the layers of security that NATO has put up by just like being a smart old man and talking his way through. We don't need to hear her see any of.
This obviously, is he's getting through every single defense of the entire Christian world army.
Okay, this is just this guy being frustrated that nobody is able to stop this old man by murdering him or just like holding him, you know, like what cops would actually do if like a crazy old man was at a military base, probably just like taze him, you know, put his hands behind his back. But he's really he's really smart. I assume, Yeah, this doesn't make much sense either. So he decides he's going to flee because someone in the room that he's just been in is leaking war plans. We're not told why. Yeah, the general is gonna leave. Yeah, he's got he's gonna bounce someone of my staff. Someone in that room is leaking war plans. We're gonna put some distance between that old man and me because the smell's wrong. Once commanded control is secured, I'll deal with the leak and the old man get the car. And then we're informed that he has a portable device that lets him fire a missile at wherever he wants to, launched from a site in South Dakota that fewer than a dozen people on Earth knew about. So there we go. I guess that's yeah, that he's going to murder all these guys in order to secure absolute power. Even though he already has absolute power.
I've got an app that'll blow up any McDonald's in a thousand mile radius.
Cool, Yeah, why are we needed? Yeah, it's good stuff. How do you explain plan to explain it to the world, waters, His assistant, who murdered his parents, asks, I won't have to explain anything. The world will assume it was an attack from one of Alzi's fanatics. Hundreds of buildings had blown up in the past two years alone. The military had stopped analyzing the remains of each explosion long ago, assuming correctly that they were all the work of al Z. No one would request an inquiry about this blast because AlSi would be the universally presumed perpetrator. Really tight ship they're running over in NATO, we just say, whenever a building blows up, we assume it's this guy. You don't do anything about it, you know, Yeah, that's yeah. Let's try the next chapter here, Horatio Cruz takes over NATO. Okay, interrogation. So they've captured the avatar, and we finally get a description of this old man who's been slowly talking his way through the NATO defenses. The avatar was sixty two years old, but could have been mistaken for ninety gaunt, clad in a threadbare delivery man's outfit from an earlier time. His silver gray hair was short and untamed. Looking a picture of Scott Adams, and I think we'll see why that's important. A red plaid blanket covered his shoulders, clutched tight in front. Thirty years ago, as a package delivery man, he met the prior avatar, from whom he learned the secrets that brought him to the fifth level of awareness. But it took a terrible to learn of the water, he learned the way. Humans are not genetically equipped to handle this kind of knowledge, and he was no exception. The awareness aged him prematurely. He understood too much about reality, and with that knowledge came an overwhelming responsibility and an incalculable stress that spread to every cell of his body. That's why Scott needs the Gilbert swimming pool, you know's the only way to know too much. He reduced incalculable shelf.
He's got to do, you know, he's got to do the backstroke in order to like inuntenses shoulders from you know, knowing who runs things, you.
Know what I mean. He's rich we're supposed he looks poor, but the Avatar's got a fuckload of money. He has his own Victorian home in San Francisco, so that's pretty nice. He got most of his money from the previous avatar, but he also invests money because he's so good at at knowing Patternskay, Scott is really giving us a lot about himself here.
Yes, No, he's describing himself. I think you're gonna have to explain to me what you mean by avatar here. I mean, like, this is what is uh, what are we talking about here?
Well, the avatar is this line of the smartest people in the world who pass on their knowledge about reality, which is mostly weird little brain tricks that Scott Adams picked up that he that he like affirmations and ship. Right, Okay, so it's all the ship from Scott Adams is.
Terrible problem James Cameron thing.
No, I figured notatic about big big jim Big Jimmy anyway. I mean, so, uh god, what matters. What matters is Scott Adams in describing the Avatar is describing himself, and it's beautiful. He was painfully lonely. The last Avatar hadn't advised him to avoid personal relationships. It was just obvious that he had to. No one could understand the Frenches. He could no longer talk to normal people without leaving them changed in some way. It was unfair.
He was.
He was just divorced.
He was the most divorced, smartest divorce man in the world.
The only thing larger than the NATO battle platforms was the amount of divorced in this one man's art. You know who else is divorced man? The sponsors of this podcast. Every single one of them was left by their wives for good reason, and very much for good reason. We're really proud of of there. I don't know why I'm continuing to go on about this anyway. Yeah, why don't you divorce us and listen to these ads? We're back and we're you know, divorced as hell. Uh, super divorced. That's that's what Scott was trying to avoid by by by hiding. As the avatar is. Now his divorced energy has been passed on to us. I have a race car bed Matt. You're really into pickleball? Yeah, yeah, it's just been a calamity over her.
I like to take over various tennis courts and say hey, fuck you undivorced, and then play pickleball.
Sophie's dressing like one of those one of those guys from a nineties movie who like moves in with with the main character who super divorced X and is like, you know, I don't know. I'm thinking actually of the movie hot Rod here whatever, Yeah, great movie anyway, Well, off topic, back to the Avatar. No ordinary person could understand what it was like to be an avatar. Even when he did talk to people when it was absolutely necessary, he was still utterly alone. He felt as though he was one short gasp from insanity. Most of the time, he felt certain that he had a special role to play, that he was chosen, that he alone could save the world from upcoming destruction. Other times he felt he must surely be mad, because only insane people think like that, and they, as did, he have no capacity to know which category they really belonged to. Ah, so smart, that's so smart. How'd you think of that? You know? Too long?
I was convinced he's the smartest person in the world. Writing story about the smartest person in the world. This is my favorite genre of.
Novel, and you get a lot of I think when people like make fun of Scott a lot of like, wow, this guy really should have gone to therapy. I don't think that's the answer for Scott. I think what Scott needed was like a normal, a full time job that didn't pay him seven hundred million dollars, where like he had to he had to like strive for something with a group of other people and like be confronted sometimes the limits of his own capability and you know, his his his shortcomings and work with other people to seal those up. That really would have been good for Scott.
In a just timeline, in a just society, he would have been a middle manager who's only making a handful of people's life.
Hell as opposed to what he became. I think, like, honestly, if you if you make Scott working like I don't know, like a road work crew right where he's getting out there every day. He's doing something hard, but it's also something every day you can see like, oh, we finished paving this chunk of road, and like that's some progress. People are going to use this right and you're you're out with other people, they're going to call you on your bullshit when you say insane things like you know he would have he would he wouldn't have a pool shaped like Gilbert's head, but I think in his soul he'd be a happier man.
No, you have just a bunch of affirmations on his wall that just says, you know, work will set.
You free, but set you I think would have set Scott free occasionally broken. Sometimes work sets yeah free. Look, I don't know why. I don't know why. We're going down the baby out with the bath water sometimes. Yeah right, yeah, Okay, So the avatar has got to look among other things. And by the way, he's supposed to be in an interrogation room here that hasn't been introduced. We're just learning about the avatar again here. Uh. So he's looking for his replacement because he's gonna die. He's old. Uh, he doesn't know whether or not it's fair for him to pass it down to somebody. And then yeah, finally we get actually back to the story. I'm sorry, really, I am, said, the avatar, cuffed to the wall in eyewing for what getting caught ground the thick necked interrogator with an oversized forehead and stubby fingers as he moved his cart full of pain tools nearer his subject. I'm sorry for what I have to do. This will end quickly if you tell me everything, said the interrogator. That's why you're here. What do you think you got the pain tools? Yeah? I do kind of want to know more about these pain tools. I want to know what they are. You know, Yeah, seems like fun. He's like, that's why I'm here to tell you everything, which you know, is what the avatar is about to do to get out of this interrogation thing. Yeah. Smart, Yeah, he's going to use his smarts before I turn your guts into jam. How about you tell me this is the interrogator. How about you tell me everything I need to know. It's a little courtesy I like to extend to my guests. Nobody has ever taken me up on the offer, but I feel it's only fair to put it out there. Jesus, this interrogator's like, this is so much worse than torturing a man. Let's say you figure out what questions I need to ask and then you just answer them. If you make me ask the obvious questions over and over, I'm gonna get tired, and that makes me cranky. You don't want that very well, replied the avatar, and again I'm truly okay. So he's doing this thing where like the torture is like, you're gonna tell me everything or I'm going to kill you, and the avatar clearly is going to like do some brain jiu jitsu that destroys this man. Who's But it just keeps going on for several pages of him being like, all right, I'm about to do my brain jiu jitsu. You want to do it, Yeah, do it. I'm gonna do so much smart that you're gonna be like wow. Yeah. So a page and a half goes by. Tell me something brilliant, old man, mocked the interrogator. Convince me you're the smartest man in the world, and I'll let you go. I don't think the smartest man in the world would believe that you're sincere. The interrogator flashed an executioner's grin and turned up the voltage. He moved the electric paddles towards the old man's chest. This is just to get your attention. Do me a favor and don't die right away. Who is patrick, asked the avatar. The interrogator froze for a moment, then quickly boiled. How do you know, my brother? What bullshit is this? What else do you know about me? The old man looked into the eyes of his interrogator and took a deep breath. I know that you were raised Catholic, but as an adult you pick and choose the parts you want to believe. You think it's okay to hurt people as long as it's in the interest of the greater good. You convinced yourself that you'd still go to Heafen's so long as you accept Jesus before you die. You were treated unkindly as a child, especially by the older boys and by the better athletes. You don't sleep much because every time you close your eyes, you see your victims, and you hear their voices just before you drift off to sleep, and it pulls you back your restlessness. Sometimes you try to stop the voices by drinking. The drinking works to an extent, but it has ruined your relationships. The interrogator dropped the paddles and stepped away from the old man. Just kills himself, so he just and now. The avatar explains that he did a cold read, which like it's not even a good read. That's whatever. I'm sorry.
That's also not something that's smart, that's all. That's literally just something con.
I have to assume that the reason why he guessed Patrick, which this dude reacted strongly to, is because he's Catholic and every Catholic man has a Patrick in there. Of course. Yeah, very simple, very simple. Also, like half of the Catholics are I don't know, like living in Latin America, Like I don't know how many Patrick Patricio.
Maybe I love the idea of it was like it was, you know, Officer Weinstein, and he just looks at him and he goes like, tell me about Rachel. It's like, Rach, how do you know it my extended family?
Did you know her name? Did you know Rachel? Of course? Oh, it's great, you're a lot about it.
He's like basically, you know, he's like he's kind of modeling it after every smart guy character you've seen in fucking anyhow.
It's a fucking cold reading, right, yes, yeah, it's it's it's remarkable as opposed to I think a fun version of this character when he's every time he's in like a situation and he's got to boil someone's brain. It's just a Ponzi scheme. He just gets him to invest in a Ponzi scheme.
Yea exactly, just starts explaining crypto. Five minutes later he gives them forty you're.
Shaaned up in a fucking dungeon. What do you even as a return on your four oh one k? Right now? What if I were to tell you I could double your money in under six months and all I'm got in need is a check for twenty grand and a picture of your feet For feetpigs dot com, here's Scott explaining cold reading. For centuries. Phony psychics abused a version of the cold read the dup global customers. It's nothing but good observations combined with educated guesses and generalities like that a Catholic man has at.
Patrick in the You know, it seems like so many and whatnot?
Yeah, but it seems like so much more to the person hearing it. Some fake psychics weren't usually skilled at noticing clues from a person's appearance or mannerisms and making guesses that sounded uncannily accurate. The avatar was the best of the best, able to recognize patterns, so subtle that even the most skilled phony psychic would have found an amazing Today's situation was especially easy. The interrogator was clearly Irish. Someone in his family was probably named Patrick. By the way, he's Irish because earlier the avatar notices that he has a drinker's nose. That's literally it's so good. I love this.
I love this, and like listen, I knew that the dilber guy was like racist, he's awkwardly racist, but I like that he's like old timey racist.
I do you know what? You know? What's progressive about this is that we start with the idea that all Muslims everywhere secretly just want to wipe out the Jews, which is very racist. But then we move on to the idea that like every drunk irishman loves a Patrick. You can't get through that.
Yeah, no, that's fucking iron clad fact right there.
That destroys this man, right, we can. That's how the avatar gets out right, we don't, we don't need to continue on to hear he's he's ruined.
Every day you see your don and you want to get your real fight right every day, your master of baking Jesus Christ is that, like, how did you know this? How could you possibly have known that every time my master made I cry?
Good? That's good stuff. We're going to move along a little bit because I want to get to kind of the crux of this book, because the basic idea here is that the Avatar is working to stop a cataclysmic, apocalyptic you know, nuclear exchange type deal between the Christians and the Muslims, and the best way to do that is to get everyone to stop believing in religion at once. Because obviously this is another like you know, Scott has this interest, this fun mix of like Christian conservative stuff, but he's not a Christian. He's like coming out of the internet atheist community. So he has this fundamental belief that like the cause of all of the problems is that all of these people believe these irrational religions, right, which is, by the way, mostly bullshit. Like the cause of it is that even when you look at like Christians here who are pushing these bullshit laws, they're not largely doing it because like they're irrational Christians. They're doing it because like certain types of people make them fundamentally uncomfortable, exactly because they're racists and they would be racist about something if Christianity wasn't the justification.
In fact, like, that's what I noticed about the kind of evolution of the internet atheist because I remember back when I used to be like I'm a proud atheist or whatever, and it was completely in reaction to like, you know, conservative Christians and everything else. And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, this seems like a very interesting front for people to just say some anti Muslim shit.
Yeah.
It became just a way to be Islamophobic without saying, you're as, I hate all religion, but I only talk about.
Islam, Yeah, exactly. It's it's that same like that old stand up thing where it's like I'm racist against everybody. It's like, yeah, but there's only two slurs you use. Man. Although to be fair for Scott as the trailblazer, he is he really that's the first. That's the first. Like that's like, that's like a degree of racism against the Irish that, like the British in the nineteen seventies would have been like, well this is a sorry, yes, I prolist never to do an English accent again. And here I perfect flicted it up on you. That's what it sounds like. So Scott obviously the only thing that can resolve this conflict between because it's a conflict between these two irrational religions as opposed to like a conflict between there's like bombings and like people's families have been killed and they're fisted about that. Anyway, it's an irrational religious conflict, right right, right.
It has nothing to do with colonialism or imperialism. That's words that people use to master fact. It's about religion.
So if he can just get everyone to stop being religious all at once, you know, he can sit and Scott has all these weird ideas about like persuaders and influencers and to be for one thing that I think Scott is a little bit ahead of the curve on He has been really obsessed with the idea of like influencers and connectors and shit since the early two thousands. He's got a few years on most folks on this. So his his like obsession with Trump as a master persuader because he believes Trump is like a messianic figure who's so good at persuading. He's going to like usher in a new age of human evolution by teaching us all persuasion tricks. That's why Scott wrote his terrible book Win Bigley. So his attitude here the avatar is kind of like moving through the world and the major characters of this conflict looking for like the influencer. There's one person who, because of their network of social ties, right, could get an idea out in a way that will cascade sort of algorithmically, and then convince the whole world overnight to stop being religious. That's that's the plot of this book, right. Yeah, he's gonna find this person at this cafe.
So we're gonna start a YouTube channel and.
I'll do it. That is kind of why he does his YouTube is he secretly thinks he's he's the master persuader and if he can just like tell the right joke to people, it'll change the world. Yeah, they would just stop throttling me in the algorithm. Everyone would be smart like me. Yeah, that's that's why he's gotta he's gonna really saddle up to Elon Musk. Finally, finally, so the avatar rolls up in front of this cafe. Uh, he had never felt a pattern like this. As the hydro cap that's a hydro powered cab pulled away. The avatar stood on the sidewalk trying to get a lock on the pattern, but he had failed. His stomach growled, and the avatar smiled, realizing his hunger must have been clogging his intuition. But now the pattern was gone, softening to a vibration. Patterns did that, sometimes rising and falling for no apparent reason. The avatar walked towards a restaurant next to the building, Stacy's Cafe. It was the oldest business on the block, looking out of a place nestled in the modern architecture of the San Francisco Metropolitan Area area. The avatar entered and was greeted by a bartender from behind a large oval bar. Hi, can I help you one for lunch? We're closed behind three between three and five. Can you come back at five? A pink haired woman in her sixties on the other side of the room interrupted the Avatar's response. She was waving a half eaten plate of food at the chef and getting agitated. Look at this presentation. This is crap. My name is on this business, and you want to serve crap. If people want crap, they can make it at home. The Chef's eyes were locked in a death stair with the pink haired woman as she dramatically slapped the dish on the table. I want you to care about this place as much as I do. If you don't, I can replace your ass tomorrow. The pink haired woman her rumped and turned away, then turned back with an afterthought. That reminds me, she said, in a softer voice that seemed as though she was channeling an entirely different person. Have you written down all your recipes so I can fire you at any time? I want? Almost, I have a few more to do, said the chef. Very good, give me a hug. What the fuck is this the bear? Yes? Kind of the bear? Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just that, like she's this woman who's in this. This is supposed to be charming, that she moves between.
This. Yeah.
Yeah, she's supposed to be fun and sassy. So she decides to order for him because everyone should eat. She believes the food that she likes, which is a vegetable crutee. So Stacey made hand signals to the bartender, who was still wiping water spots off the bar glasses. He nodded and started to pour a chardonnay. Stacey pulled out a chair and sat down across from the avatar. I think I have a headache or a tumor or something. I gained two pounds this week and my hair is falling out in clumps and I have gas. Don't say I didn't warn you. Thank you for the warning. I don't know how I do this job every day. I'm gonna quit, I swear I am, except it wouldn't work because I own the place. I'd fire myself if I could, but I don't want to pay the unemployment benefits to myself. Hey god, this is just such a great character. Is fun? Yeah, we get along and she and the avatar start talking about modern politics.
Right, to be clear, these guys they're they're both in their mid sixties.
Right, yes, yes, they're both. They're both old people, and they're both kind of Scott Adams. Okay, that's important here. So the avatar tells her that he's trying to figure out how to stop a war, and she's like, how can a guy like you stop a war? You couldn't even feed yourself until I decided to have pity on your s and you dress like a hobo on crack. What's up with that? Would it be okay if I answered the first question? Stacey laughed, Okay, if you do a good job on that, I'll let the other one slide go. Think of humanity as a giant software program. Our bodies are the hardware, and our ideas are the software. Sometimes the software gets a virus. What are you talking about? Interpretation. I have never heard this concept before. Yeah, you must the smartest man of the world. Religions are a virus in computer programming, right, uh you know, yeah, it's I guess this is sort of a very boomer attitude towards the Internet, where it's just like, well, the computer's always got a virus on it.
Right, Yeah, yeah, you can't virus click.
The links that infect your all Ta Vista, right.
My mccaffee software every day tells me about new virus.
I keep buying more of it, more virus keep coming. Buy a new mccaffee every day. I buy three new mccaffees, and now not one virus. I got a Muslim virus, I got two virus. I got Irish virus. It is also, yeah, he is low key being like yes all like Islam is a virus, you know. Yeah, to beanity is a virus too, But I'm not less concerned about the exce.
This is all just a way of like, it's just how you get to Therefore we must eradicate blank.
Yeah. No, And the biggest virus of all is being Irish. You know. That's really what Scott's getting at. Yeah, there is so much more anti Irish racism in this that I expected. Bill's Irish, so he must know a Patrick, yet he must just know he must love a Patrin. No, I love Patrick in the family. Yeah that is yeah, from hearts, Yeah, from his from his drinkers knows that he loves a Patricks. Must be that's really quite amazing. So in this next part, he's talking with this lady about I was going to and he explains his concept of a prime influencer. I'm looking for the reboot button metaphorically speaking, I'm looking for the one person who is connected to everyone else in a chain of influence, the prime influencer. That is why I am visiting today. So like, that's that's the thing. Everyone's connected to this person. And by the way, it have to be this lady, right, Yeah, it's her. It's Stacy, I thought, you know, and she's like, I don't believe in this because people never change their mind. You don't believe people can change their opinions, ask the avatar. Come on, who buys books written by conservatives? Conservatives? Who writes books written by liberals? Liberals? People only listen to what they want to hear. Nobody changes anyone's mind, even if the argument is very good, hasn't happened, never will. The avatar sat back in his sheet, adjusting his napkin on his lap. I can see why you would have that view, but in reality, everyone knows one person who could change his opinion on a particular topic, usually a different person for each topic. And it's not the argument or the logic that matters to people, but the source. Humans are driven by examples, by role models, not by logic. So you're saying someone could make me a devil worship er even if I didn't want to be. That's nutty. A year ago you would have said that no one could convince you to wear pink tinted hair, but you seem to have embraced the trend enthusiastically. Okay, so Scott's Scott's this lady, is like nobody changes their mind and Scott like, no, no, no, that's nuts. Everyone can have their mind changed by one person who's their specific influencer and can hack their brain on it. That's right.
Yeah, yeah, it's their favorite podcaster tells them.
Then they will change their minds. That is act. I mean, that is how the world works. That's true. That's why adds. You know, Joe Rogan has convinced me to eat nothing but raw liver.
Uh yeah, I look that this is all just him going on a quest to find the Joe Rogan.
He's looking for the Joe Rogan. That is what he believes though, right like when Trump comes out, he's convinced that Trump is this prime influencer, which is like that. By the way, this is another thing that like these weird online atheist types all did, which is they all found a way to reinvent religion for themselves. Right, they gave up they don't believe the Jesus that the Christians believe in, but they did like have to invent another Jesus for themselves, like God's yeah, exactly one way or the other. They all do it, right, Yes, not all atheists, but all of these weird internet atheists that Scott is right. Yes, I'm not saying this is a general trade of atheists.
It's a specific yes, like I'm an atheist, but I just don't say it because then all being subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I don't want well.
And it's it's also like you know, we were talking about how like you've got people who will like use religion as the justification for the way I want to kill certain people. But the real thing is that, like they just hate certain people, right right. The religion rarely is the thing that inspires it purely. It's like something else that comes out that may but and it's the same thing. You've got all these the soda folks who started out as being like lefties in the early two thousands, like Jimmy Dore and whatnot, and they're all preaching like hard right shit right now, and they're all super racist, and they're all really anti trans and whatnot. And it's because like, yeah, what matters isn't Actually it's like whether or not you're a giant piece of shit, you know, I think it's primarily the thing and people will people will if you're a big piece of shit, and you hate people. You know, if you're inclined to pretend you're to be like left wing or whatever, then you'll find some reason why communism wants to kill all the trans people, or like first in the d transition or whatever. And if you're a Christian, you use Christianity for that. But I think it's just like, you know, some people are fucking assholes, and Scott Adam's an asshole, right, so he's going to get rid of religion and the Irish one presumes. The avatar decided to test her light of thinking with an argument that was common i'llbe it flawed. If God exists, he must be smart to design the world so perfectly. Everything is in perfect balance. If any of our natural laws were altered in the least life would be unsustainable. Only an omnipotent genius could create such a perfect balance in the laws of physics, physics schmisics. If God is so smart, why do you fart? The avatar waited for the rest of the argument, but there was none. The two strangers stared at each other for a moment before being overcome with a wave of laughter that brought them all to tears. So, yeah, that's a.
Love writing, writing, and getting a real good laugh. Got a real big laugh on the joke.
Yeah, very funny. So I'm going to spoil the rest of this book for you. That winds up being the key to destroying religion, right, is that this woman is the prime influencer, and by getting her to tell this joke to people, it spreads to everyone else in the world. And then they give up Christianity and Islam, and they give up their wars. And I'm gonna switch ahead to him explaining all this. The major religions changed after the war. Modernized was the word used most often for the disintegration of primitive beliefs. The free flow of ideas caused dangerous religious thoughts to perish unto the weight of common sense, most notably the idea that God was limited by a human personality with human wants and human intelligence evaporated. Now the mental health profession handled people who believe that God was talking to them directly. The voting public never got a chance to elect such people, whether they were charismatic or not. Religions came to be seen as true that lent flavor to holidays and encouraged good behavior, nothing more. The public didn't know who had said it first, but it was the most powerful question in human history, and nine words. It overturned centuries of tortured logic and magical thinking. It pushed superstition into a cage and gave common sense room to maneuver. The cause of the religion war sprung from one colossal religious misunderstanding that God thinks like humans, except smarter, and that we people can comprehend his intent. That crippling misunderstanding was swept away in a single wave of clarity. The question was translated into thousands of languages, published billions of times. In English, it was if God is so smart, why do you fart right again? It's this like we just have to puncture religion with a funny, fucking logical puzzle and then it'll go away. It's just this trap around people's brains. It's not that like people want land or resources and have been fighting over them and so are angry about the history of conflicts between peoples and are able to use sort of religion or politics to kind of justify continuing them. It's not that people are like greedy. It's not that people get like scared about folks who live far away from them. It's not any of that shit. It's that their minds have been enraptured by religion and you can get common sense to maneuver if you tell a smart joke.
It's like, honestly, the most fucking like buttoned up, fucking elitist it's it's it's got like smatterings of liberalism in there, especially circa around this time, and just uh, and just a sort of ignorance that was so prevalent at the time was basically that everyone uh in the Middle East, they're all just fucking stupid and angry, and so they all believe in this like magic spaghetti monster and so you know they're at war because the spaghetti monster says so. And it's like a way to completely ignore literally any history that has happened within that region. And you know, it's it's great. It's you know, I love when the stupidest man in the world writes himself as the smartest man in the world.
It is it is very fun because again it doesn't take all that much like to learn that the reality is more complicated, right. I remember one of the big moments for me of like, you know, just going into fucking Iraq and talking to people in camps and stuff, a bunch of whom had been Isis supporters kind of early in Isis's reign was them explaining like, well, you know, we supported them because the cops under the old government, for like religious sectarian reasons, had punished and abused our family. And they like, yeah, they killed my brother, they killed my uncle, they tortured, you know, my dad. So when Isis came and they said that they were, you know, getting rid of these shitty ass police, we were like, maybe this will be better. It's not like the Iraqi government was anything to write home about, like we think, and then it turned out they sucked. So now we're fighting, and it's like, yeah, look, there's always you know, there are brainwashed fucking extremists out there, variety of ways, but the vast majority of people's motivations make sense, even if they're bad, even if they're doing bad things, it makes sense, right. It's like the Nazis. The Nazis didn't get like enthralled by Hitler magically. They wanted other people shit, yes, yeah, that's why they did it, very.
Very human reasons, and you know, like the I think we have a tendency to take every kind of like villain or anyone who's in opposition to whatever. You know, the fucking American cultural hegemon has to say and go like, oh, it's because they are all fanatical. They must be crazy to believe that we in any way could be an enemy. And I think just in general, it's like, oh, you have to understand how absolutely fucking regular people are, and you know how villainy is not necessarily this thing that comes from like, oh, everyone's a psychopath. It's like, no, it's actually much more simple and uh and that makes it ten times as like complicated and scary sometimes, you know. But yeah, I'm like, I'm just like getting flashbacks to me like in college and just being like an atheist and just being like fucking like, yeah, man, fucking.
I'm so smart. I don't even I don't even believe in God, you know, yeaheah, it's almost yeah. The idea that like you're both saying that like, look at these look at these silly religious people who are like denying sort of the you know, they've gotten their minds washed and they can't understand like the true complexity of reality. But also everyone does things for one reason, right, like everyone, All of the Muslims have one motivation and it's killed all the Jews. And if you kill all the Jews, then all of the Muslims support you. Right. All of the Irish have one motivation and it's their friend Patrick. It's their friend Patrick.
And you know, just checking down a nice fucking Guinness after a hard day's look.
So you know, look, take the wisdom of Scott Adams with you into the world. Is I think what we're trying to say here. Absolutely, And the next time you see a man with a drinker's nose, tell him about his beloved Patrick, ask him about Patrick. Mind.
Yeah, I'm like, I am low key impressed at the way he went after the White Ethnics in this. You know, there was a time finally when Scott Adams was cool.
He could just go after the Irish. Oh my god, I am looking forward to Uh. I assume in the sequel to this he finds a way to destroy Saint Patrick's day.
Yeah, yeah, turned out all the snakes we needed to get where these goddamn Irish.
You get, you get a lot about like his thought process, because Scott is I think a fundamentally pretty and curious person, and so he just doesn't do really like he didn't know that like Sunni and Shia like exist as divisions of Islam. Didn't even do the basic research to the second largest army in NATO is like a majority Muslim nation and his his, He's just like decided, Okay, well, what's something a guy could notice? Well, if you can notice if somebody's got like a red nose because they're drinking a bunch Okay, who drinks a lot Irish people? What's an Irish name? Saint Patrick's day, Patrick Boom Boom.
Got it.
I just got a whole fucking point to a story. So funny.
He's just like taking his calendar and he's marking on I need three hours to write this?
Is this?
For sure was stream of consciousness. Yeah, this guy is not putting a lot of thought.
I think he just used the like talk text app and just was.
Like, well, man, God bless him. You got anything to plug here?
Oh? Man, Well, I'm writing a book about the scourge of the Irish.
No, actually I do.
Uh you know this wire podcast the wire you watch podcast pod yourself on gun is the name of the feed, and uh it is essentially a show where we denigrate Irish Americans in the form of McNaulty.
So you know, here's all of the wire is a behind the bastards on McNaughty. It really is.
It's behind one specific bastard, Jimmy McNulty uh and his grubby little Irish wiener and uh yeah, if so, check that out, check out the frodcast.
Uh.
It's a show where we talk about, you know, everything except for the wire. Yeah, a lot of fun, I do it Vince Vancini and oh right, I almost forgot. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area or any of the surrounding areas, on Tuesday, October seventeenth at eight pm, specifically, my wife, Francesca Iforantini and I are going to be headlining the San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club.
So yeah, please come out to that.
It is a Tuesday at eight pm, October seventeenth, Bortt Voice, My wife and I are gonna be co headlining. There's gonna be some other great comedians coming out. It's gonna be a lot of fun. You can get your tickets at Punchlinecomedyclub dot com and yeah, October seventeenth. Please come out. It's going to be so good, I swear to God. I mean, at the very least you're gonna get to see my wife and I kiss, like live on stage. It's a sex show. Anyways, come out to that, man. I'm so glad I remember to say this. Otherwise I'd have to record this audio later and then send it to you and have you figure out a place to put it in the edit, and that would just sound weird. Anyways, got thank you for having me on for, you know, to talk about something light like, you know, the Irish and how religion bad. You know, smart people are influenced by some douchebag they see online.
Yeah, and and check out more Scott Adams and our upcoming podcast with Scott. I don't want to make any more like anti Irish kind of jokes, So we're done. We're just done with the episode. There you just so everyone knows. I love Irish people everything that you Irish create. Scott for being racist, which is why I'm stopping. The bit.
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website fo Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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