I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Let's dive right into part two of my conversation with renowned comedian and political commentator Dave Smith. I look at America. I share a lot of the deep concerns that you have.
I look at a couple things. One, the nature of the human mind as manipulatable. And I look at the nature of the cycle that a governmental body runs through and how it tends to either ossify and it just becomes so rigid that it breaks, or it becomes so corrupt that it becomes like a gigantic cancer that can't do the things that it's actually meant to do. And I think obsessively, because I actually, by my nature, I'm optimistic and interesting people that follow me for a long time feel like I gobbled an entire pharmacy of black pills.
Because as I orient myself to. Basically, I succeeded in the system. So the system worked extraordinarily well for me. And when Covid kicked off and I suddenly needed to orient myself to help people that I.
Cause I didn't understand money printing. So I thought, oh, my God, all these people that I've just been working side by side with in the inner cities, they're about to get absolutely demolished because they don't understand money, they don't know how to save, they don't understand entrepreneurship, so they're really gonna get brutalized by this. And I started learning about finance so that I could help them, and because I know how to make money, but I never understood investing money or the nature of money. And it felt like somebody lifted up a curtain, and I got to see behind the curtain to see how the world really works.
And so the largely the focus of the show has become that. Because if you don't understand how the world actually works, then you're the mark. And in trying not to be the mark, I'm trying to figure out which of these things make sense in theory and which of these things make sense in practice. Because I would very much like to find myself in a situation where we can.
Because it isn't a hundred percent the time that you have the debt problem that we have, that you end up with bloodshed. So there. There is some narrow window that we can go through where we can unwind this in a more sensible path. But I want to find out what those real strategies are.
Yeah, so that's why exploring the edge cases, whether that's what's happening in Ukraine, what's the real nature of that, whether it's what we're doing with the debt, what's the real nature of money printing, all that, whether it's what's going on in Gaza. Libertarianism is not something that I have a great degree of understanding in. But, but while I understand the principles, I worry that in a fight maybe it's the right way to think about in a time of peace. Yeah, like when you have a high functioning country and you want to subdivide it even more.
Like, I get that. I'd rather see that happen like stronger states rights than suddenly Texas isn't a part of the US and you know, there's some crisis and bloodshed over that. That seems like a pretty horrible outcome knowing the weird year that we're in right now. What, what do you see in the near term moving forward?
Does the 2024 election go well? Is it, is there literal bloodshed? I mean, we had an attempted assassination on a former president. What do you see in the near term?
That's a good question. And it is tough. This is a tough one to predict because it's so unlike anything I've ever seen. And even literally just on my way here, before we record the show, I just watched RFK drop out and endorse Donald Trump.
And so there's, right away there's another like kind of X factor that I wasn't, you know, I guess I've been thinking a little bit over the last couple weeks, but I certainly wasn't taking that into account a month ago. And especially after just, you know, as we're recording this, it's just yesterday was the last day of the Democratic National Convention. And this whole convention was like unlike anything I've ever seen before. And so we're kind of running through a real, a very interesting test in how propaganda works and how the machine works.
There's something really fascinating about this to me that I don't know that I completely understand. You know, I'm to some degree outside of political tribalism. This is something that I get both criticized for and complimented for. I'm not sure if I deserve either.
But I'm not a partisan at all. I'm not even a partisan to the Libertarian Party and I'm a member of them, but I just don't. Sometimes I'll support people not in the Libertarian Party because I think partisanship is stupid. But there is, as somebody who never really never supported Donald Trump, certainly never supported Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or any of those people.
It's kind of wild to watch where there's been a lot of people. One of the major criticisms from Democrats of like MAGA people is that they're a cult like that. You're just, you know, you're just blindly following Donald Trump no matter what he does. And there is at least a kernel of truth to that accusation.
I mean, Trump kind of has a cult like following, and people really do love Donald Trump. But I've certainly found myself on the other end of some angry Trump supporters when I've criticized Donald Trump for something I don't think he did a good job in. And they will, they do defend him with a blind loyalty, at least a lot of them do. That is off putting to me.
However, I must say I find the cult of the Democrats to be like a thousand times creepier. There's something so much creepier to me about worshiping a machine over worshiping an individual. And the way that they're able to like, pull Joe Biden out and put Kamala Harris in. And there's not one person in the United States of America who's like, nah, like, I can't support her.
Could have supported Joe Biden, but can't support Kamala Harris. Like, that person does not exist. And they count on that. They just totally know that's true.
Joe Biden, six weeks ago, these people would have given that reaction to Joe Biden. This week, Joe Biden speaks on Monday, and it's like, I get out of here, old man. And no one even cares. No one even cares.
As the same way you will about the Trump supporters. Try pulling him out and putting someone else in. They'd be like, nope, we liked that guy. We don't like this next guy.
And you'd have. Even if they got another good Republican who MAGA kind of likes, if you pull Donald Trump out and put someone else in, you'd be like, I don't know, are they gonna get 50% of Donald Trump's voters to vote from maybe 60%. But there'd be tens of millions of people who, like, wouldn't go along with that. On the Democratic side, it's like, there's no one.
It's just the machine. If they had picked Gavin Newsom instead of her, the exact same reaction would have been there for Gavin News at the end. And there's something really. So anyway, I'm getting away from your question, but my point is, I'm almost watching this like a science, science experiment at this point.
I'm like, how fuck can they actually do this? Can they actually take someone who none of you liked? We all would have agreed six weeks ago. We all would have agreed pretty Unimpressive person, but now she's a rock star.
She's a beacon of joy. She's a phenomenon. And all these things like, wow, can they actually make that happen? And then, you know, I just think there's major questions over whether Donald Trump would be allowed to get into the White House again.
I mean, are we really having free and fair elections? You know, according to YouTube? Yes. And I'm not allowed to question that.
But you know what's rattling in between my ears? I don't know. I don't know if that's true. And I mean, look this.
I'm not trying to say anything that I don't know. And for people who do follow my stuff, I'm not, like, a conspiracy kook. I don't just, like, jump on conspiracies if I don't have solid evidence that they're true. But everything we do know about that last assassination attempt is pretty wild and pretty, you know, enough to scratch your head and go, wait a minute.
What? What? Like, I mean, of all the targets, if you're in the Secret Service, of all the different people, Donald Trump has to be the number one who. You're like, listen, this guy is the most likely to deal with this type of thing.
And you know that the entire establishment has been stoking hatred for this guy, and that half of the country hates his freaking guts with a passion. And not, like, in the same way that, like, yeah, there's a lot of people who hate Joe Biden, but no one on that side kind of feels like if Joe Biden was gone, then the problem's gone. Just like no one feels that way about Kamala Harris right now. No one thinks if she's gone, then the problem is gone.
Everyone knows there's just another one of her waiting right behind her. But on the other side, they do at least seem to have the attitude that, like, this guy is the problem and if he were just gone, we wouldn't have this problem anymore. That is essentially the CNN MSNBC narrative that democracy is about to be obliterated all because of one guy, and if he just wasn't there, this would all be fine. And so in that environment, you're telling me that this kid is on videotape scoping out the roof for over an hour before he gets up there, and then he's allowed to get up 130 yards away from the former president and have a direct shot while people on the ground are screaming, that man's got a gun.
And the president isn't rushed off State. And again, just coupling that with all the other things they've done to this guy, I'll just say it's just starting to look like what it looks like. And so will they try again? Yeah, maybe.
I don't know. Maybe they will. Or maybe something else crazy happens. So the long and the short is there's just so many variables this time.
I have no clue. My gut tells me that the whole Kamala Harris thing is astroturfed and fake and that if there was a real, fair election today, I think Donald Trump beats her. I could be wrong about that. And in some ways, maybe we'll never find out, because I don't know.
I don't know if there's going to be a free and fair election. Now, when you say that it's fake, in what way? Just that the beast, the machine, the blob, whatever you want to call it, the mainstream media is so behind her and so painting her so perfectly, asking no real questions, that people just like, word. I have my shortcut.
I know what to do. I know how to vote. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, like, there's no question that there is, like, tremendous relief amongst people who are Democratic voters because they were kind of being forced into this weird Emperor's New Clothes game for a while where they had to, you know, pretend that they didn't see what was right in front of their face. The crowd reaction, by the way, at the.
At the DNC when Biden spoke was weird. They kind of had a weird reaction. And these are like, rah, rah, cheerleader events, you know? And as he's speaking, you can feel the tension amongst the crowd because it's just like a reminder.
It's such a crazy reminder that it's like, yeah, yeah, remember. Remember last month when you had to pretend you didn't see a problem with this guy? As, like, he is. He gets up there and he's not.
He's not even like somebody at a nursing home. He's like, the guy at the nursing home is not doing very good. Like, he's not even doing good for a nursing home. It's really something.
And so I think there's relief amongst people, but I don't know, man. Look, I don't really know what the answer to this is. I can tell you that. They keep coming into me.
I've gotten like, 30 to 40 text messages about Kamala Harris since she's been the nominee, and I don't. I've only. I donated to Tulsi garbage campaigns. The only Time I've ever donated to a Democrat, ever.
I don't know how to get my number. But there's. I know that there was something. There was $90 million that was immediately.
It was. Was held back from Biden and immediately released into Kamala Harris campaign after that, after his resignation or whatever. Exactly. That was.
And that she's. And then since then, she's raised, I think, over 100 million more. And they say a lot of it's come from small donors. Clearly, a lot of it's come from big donors.
Then I've seen some of these, like, investigative reporting going around saying, like, there's a lot of people who are on these small donor lists who claim they never donated anything to her. I don'. I just. I can tell you that I feel when these propaganda waves come on and we're in the middle of a big propaganda wave, and it's almost like, you know, like, okay, you know, when the war in Ukraine first broke out and how every single person would say unprovoked, like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and everybody.
Every powerful person, when they talked about it, they always start with the word unprovoked. Vladimir Putin. But an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. After a while, you're like, why do you have to keep saying that?
Like, it's almost like your own guilty conscience in some weird way. Like, you have to say that because otherwise we might all learn that it was. You know, it's like. The example I like to use is, like, it's like, if you came outside and there were, like, some of the kids in your neighborhood, and, like, a dog bit one of them, and you were like, oh, what happened?
And they were like, okay, well, we weren't throwing rocks at the dog. And then the dog bit us. So we were just right here, not throwing rocks at the dog, and then this dog just bit us, and we were just hanging out, not throwing rocks at it. And, like, by the fifth time, you're like, I think you were throwing rocks at this dog.
Like, why do you keep saying that? And in the same sense, it's like they have to keep telling you how much energy she has and how much everybody loves you. It's just very clearly, like, you're trying to will this narrative into existence. To what degree they'll be able to do that?
I don't know. I'm kind of surprised they've been able to do it to the degree they have already. Man, I think it's gonna work. I think it's gonna work.
Extraordinarily. Well, this is if you've ever heard Eric Weinstein talk about the idea of kayfabe and how if you consider yourself tribally a Democrat, you were having a hard time when it was Biden because it was just so obvious. I remember, like you, I. I'm not on the side.
I just want to know who's going to lead the country to the goals that I think are going to lead to human flourishing. That's my shtick. And I was at the debate for RFK where Trump and Biden were off on their actual debate stage, and then he had hired a space so on there. It was legitimately depressing.
It was just boring. They were like, Biden clearly just wasn't. Wasn't capable. And you hadn't heard all of the people going, oh, my God, this is obvious now.
So I'm just like, I cannot believe that they're going to be saying that this guy was fine. Like, this is bananas to me. And then RK at least had substance, which was interesting. But the whole thing of it was this maddening sense of being inside of the Truman Show.
And sure, I'm just an extra, but it's like, I'm so aware that I'm a part of a TV show, that I'm just like, God. So then when everyone flipped on him, the way, the speed with which, the veracity, the language, I was like, this was planned ahead of time. Like, it had to be. It was just all too similar.
And I'm sure you have seen the super cuts of like, this is bad for our democracy. This is bad for our democracy, or this is a threat to our democracy over and over and over and over and over and over. All the same exact words. It's.
It is a exploitation of the fact that humans are tribal. They are manipulatable. They want to be manipulated. They want to believe.
Like, just give me the words I need to say because I already. I'm prescribed to, to being a Democrat, Republican, whatever. So they want you to give them the way to beat somebody in a debate. And once they have their words, which is why the mainstream media just repeats like, simple phrases over and over and over.
So it's like you have them. Oh, and here's just a stupid statistic, something that rhymes is like 70% more likely to be believed to be true. And anything you repeat goes up dramatically in perception of truth, even when people know it's a lie, if they've simply heard it over and over and over. There's this process in the brain called myelination so you make a stronger connection of memory with that thing so that it's calorically easier to remember that untrue thing.
And that creating that super highway creates the sense of like, oh yeah, yeah, this is true, it is, it is people's limbic systems being knowingly hijacked. But they're, and this is the worst part, they're giving them the thing they want, which is please just tell me what to say to my mother in law who thinks that she loves Trump and I just need to tell her that Kamala Harris is better. I just gave you the talking points and so it works so well, especially if you can capture the energy. That was the thing that I thought was very impressive was the ads were dope, the music was awesome.
It felt upbeat, energetic, like they just really leaned into all the youth and vigor that had been drained out by Biden. It's crazy, but I think it'll work. Let's talk about what is going on in your closet this time of year. Most people realize half of what they own isn't even worth keeping.
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And this is why I was kind of alluding to before, they study this stuff and are really, really good at it. And there's a reason why, because it's very effective. I would also say that there is even outside of politics, right? And this is why I'm somewhat sympathetic to people who fall for this stuff because there is, you know, for all of us don't know anything about the vast majority of things.
And in order for us to survive, we, as we were talking about before, we get into specialization. And with that comes expertise and with that comes trusting experts. And I certainly do this constant, you know what I mean? Like there's whatever.
It's like I'm not handy at all. But you know, my hot water heater broke down the other day and I do realize when the water isn't hot anymore and then you call your hot water heater guy and they're like, well, you need a new hot water heater. I'm like, yeah, it looks like I need a new one. Like I don't know, maybe I don't need a new one.
But he told me I did, and I have to trust him. And I do this with my mechanic, with my, you know, like, with my plumber. There's a million different people I'm just kind of trusting, and they have the expertise, so I defer to them. And so I understand where.
And even in those fields, too, you know, we all have this. This type of thing where, like, if you just learn something and then someone asks you about it a few days later, you might present it as if you just know that even though you just found it out, like, a few days before. Because we all kind of have our own narcissistic, you know, thing. And, like, you're kind of like, oh, I like to sound like I know what I'm talking about or whatever.
And so when it comes to politics, most people have a lot of other things to worry about, and God bless them, you know, thank Go. Everybody doesn't obsess over politics the way I do, because we would all starve to death if we did. And, you know, it's good that other people are focused on making food. But, you know, you turn on CNN and a guy in a suit who's an expert is talking to another guy in a suit who's an expert.
And it feels a lot better for you to just remember what they said and then go say that to your friend. And now you kind of sound like you know something about it. So there's that aspect of it, too. Just regular human being, just how we are with everything.
Except this one area happens to be particularly corrupt and filled with liars. But so the flip side, I would just say to what you were talking about before, which is, again, what's so fascinating about being alive today is that so you have this. So say there's a tactic, right, of repeating things over and over again. And before, say, the Internet, you might not have even noticed it.
Like, even someone paying attention, you may not have noticed that. Like, they're saying the same exact thing in the same, you know, Michael Malice we mentioned earlier. He was the first one to point out to me. I thought it was a really great observation.
He goes, this was back when Joe Rogan was getting viciously attacked overtaking Ivermectin. And he goes, notice how they all say horse dewormer. There's like 5,000 things that ivermectin does. They picked this one.
And every single one of them will say it over and over again. Horse dewormer. Horse. Horse dewormer.
Horse dewormer. It's like they drill home this one thing. You know what I mean? But now, so in the 90s, if you're watching CNN all day, you just kind of leave and you're like, horsey.
Warmer, huh? You know, but now you see a compilation on the Internet, and it's almost like their own weapon gets turned on them because now you can use it to UN program someone and go, yo, what are the odds they're all saying the exact same thing. I mean, I was just talking about the other day. It's amazing.
You watch Bill Clinton, one of the best public speakers, you know, in the last 30 years in American politics, in last 50 years in American politics. And he's up there, and in the middle of this Bill Clinton speech, he just goes, and Kamala Harris brings joy. And you're like, oh, what a shocker that you picked the same word. What a weird coincidence that you had the exact same word.
You also thought joy, you know, but so. And then, I'm sorry, I'll wrap on this. But one of the things that is interesting to me if you kind of zoom out a little bit, is like, okay, so the George W. Bush administration lied us into war in Iraq.
And they, like the case for this is undeniable. They knew Saddam Hussein did not identify weapons of mass destruction. The neocons and his administration had been trying to fight this war since well before 9 11. They knew he wasn't involved in 9 11.
They even wrote in a Project for the American Century that they would need another Pearl harbor type event in order to get the wars in the Middle east that they wanted. So they just lied through their teeth. Now, what were the consequences of that? But aside from the war and the hundreds of thousands of dead people and the trillions of dollars wasted and all of that, the consequences were enormous.
I mean, like, you have conservatives today who have no trust for the FBI and the CIA and the military. That was unthinkable 20 years ago that you'd be in this situation. And so a lot of these government lies, especially on massive issues, they have. They have slowly and then all at once eroded trust.
And, you know, I remember because I was. I was totally against the lockdowns at the beginning of COVID You know, I had easy priors to be against the lockdowns of libertarian. And I think government's corrupt and people ought to be free. So it was pretty easy to be against the lockdowns from my perspective.
But I remember getting so much pushback from people about how dangerous this was to not be for lockdowns. And when it really. When the floodgates, really, people really started listening to me about it was when the Black Lives Matter protests happen. And the entire media flipped on a dime and said, no, no, no, you can go outside now.
You can go outside. It's okay. Cause you're protesting racism. And it was like, how do you feel about George Floyd?
How do you feel about Black Lives Matter? How do you feel about COVID That's bullshit. You know what I mean? Like, it's bullshit that because of science, yesterday you had to stay inside, but today you can go protest racism.
You know? And so there is this thing where the more desperate they get with the propaganda, it can also backfire now. And so that's. That's the thing that's really fun to me.
It's like, yeah, this is why I'm not as convinced as you that it's going to work. It's like, yeah, maybe. Maybe it will. But there's a whole lot more people aware of propaganda now.
And especially with the Internet, it just gives you this tool. It's like, now, like, the son who's onto all this stuff can go talk to his mother and father and be like, you know, they're playing you. Oh, and by the way, here on my phone, here's a clip of them all saying the exact same thing. You see what they're doing to you?
And so I just think we have a fighting shot to beat this thing in a way we never did before. Yeah, I'll agree with that very wholeheartedly, which is why I do my podcast. Like you, I think people do respond to ideas. I just think that the political machinery is probably right.
You're really all pitching to the independence. You're pitching to the small group of people who will actually take in new information and make a new decision. I am just terrified by the number of people that either are manipulated and don't realize they're being manipulated, or the people who actually want to be manipulated, which is a very fascinating thing. There's an old 80s song by the Eurythmics, and the line is, some people want to abuse you, and some people want to be abused.
And I always thought, whoa, that is dark, but nonetheless true. Right. And I have to ask, now that I have you on in particular, help me think through Israel, Gaza. What I really want to understand are the base assumptions that drive your thinking.
So I've watched a lot of debates on this, and what I find is people don't argue with a level of base assumption and so they end up, take Norm Finkelstein when he was on Lex with Destiny. And what was driving me crazy as a viewer was Norm said Israel shouldn't exist, the state of Israel should not exist. And every word out of his mouth after that is simply in line with that. And so if you don't go, okay, well, if it just ought not exist, then the only thing we should be talking about is out of me trying to convince you that it ought to exist, or us talking about what we do with the fact that it exists.
And we have to, in his paradigm, unwind it. But of course they don't. They just go back and forth about what deal was offered when and all that. And it's like nor has been very clear his base assumption is it should not exist.
So as you, somebody who's not partisan, as you think through what this very complicated conundrum is, what are the, I mean, handful, I would assume, of base assumptions that you have that guide your thinking? Well, I guess my starting point is more that that people have rights or that people ought to have rights and it's immoral to violate the natural rights of human beings. And that includes, you know, the, the right to live your life, to own property, to not be killed or, or you know, injured or things like that, unless you're initiating violence against somebody else. So that is kind of my starting point for all matters political is like self ownership, private property rights, and the non aggression principle.
So that's how I try to judge all of these conflicts, including the one between Israel and the Palestinians. I do not agree with Norman Finkelstein on that. I don't remember that part where he actually said Israel shouldn't exist. It was a long debate though.
But I do agree though that let's say the way Israel was founded was illegitimate and immoral. I think that Norman Finkelstein, and he's a very left wing, I think, socialist type, and I'm a hardcore laissez faire libertarian. And so I do think while we, and I've learned a lot from him and he has like an encyclopedic memory of every UN resolution that's ever been passed on the subject. And it's very impressive, but I do think that there's probably some fundamental disagreements there.
And so in a sense, you know, I would say, look, even if you want to say what the Europeans did to the Native Americans was horrible and was illegitimate at the time that it was done, my conclusion from that would not be, therefore the United States of America shouldn't exist. And we should all go back to Europe or something like that. It's like, I don't think that's right. I think the fact that injustices have happened in the past shouldn't warrant injustices happening in the present or in the future.
However, I would say that to the extent that there are Native Americans still around, which there still are some, they ought to have their full rights protected. And so I would also, like I say in Israel, I don't think it's practical or morally correct that Israel should cease to exist and all the Jews living there should go back to Europe or something like that. But I do think it should at least be acknowledged that the way Israel founded the country involved violence, violating a lot of Palestinians natural rights. And at this point you got to stop doing that and you got to allow them to have their natural rights.
And that means either a one state or a two state solution. I'm kind of open to either, although I personally tend to lean toward a two state solution. Let's talk about who's profiting from your personal information. Someone is making money from your data every single day.
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Okay, that certainly all makes sense to me as somebody who's on the outside of this and that I haven't studied it nearly as much as you. What is the pushback from people who are being sincere? Not bullshit pushback. Well, I mean, I guess I do, generally speaking find that the.
The pro Israeli side of the argument typically relies on a double standard in terms of the value of Palestinian life versus the value of Israeli life. And I do think they tend to rely on a kind of very one sided rewriting of the history, which is, you know, I mean, again, I'm not, I'm trying really here to take on the best argument and not take on the worst argument. But I mean, I'm just saying that like in, I mean, I've been in debates where people have presented it as like, Israel never did anything wrong and the Palestinians were always just the aggressors and Israel was always just defending themselves. I think that probably the best version of the other argument is that, well, Israel has to do whatever they have to do to defeat Hamas, and it's horrible that they have to kill these innocent people along the way, but if they don't, then more innocent people will die as a result of that.
I think it's. And you know, they have to get the hostages back and they have to have a false reminder from Hamas. I just, that's kind of the best argument I could think back and I think it's a very flawed one. And you know, I think that there's certainly no guarantee that more people would die if Hamas is short of being completely annihilated.
I don't think, as all the intelligence reports seem to indicate, it's possible for Israel to completely eliminate Hamas short of killing every man, woman and child in Gaza. And I think that this type of military campaign is likely to produce a lot more Hamas or Hamas like groups. Okay, is this a moral framework that you use to assess the conflict? Yes, I mean, there's a practical component to it as well, but yes, I would say primarily it's a moral component.
Okay, and when you go into the practical component, what framework do you use? Is it like realpolitik? Is it diplomacy? What's the framework?
I mean, I think that the framework would be what's best for the United States of America, what's best for Israel and what's best for Palestine. But primarily, what's best for the United States of America being my primary concern. What is our interest in this? Well, you know, there's in actuality our interest is that, number one, there are the same interests that support all of these wars like war.
There are people who are ideologically very like on a foundational level, who are in very powerful positions, believe that protecting Israel and protecting Israel's interest is the most important thing that the United States of America can do. And I think there are also. Do they give reasons for that? Because, so I'm not so new to this that I don't have, you know, an understanding of basically what's going on.
But the one thing that I have not spent any time researching is other than that this is a very long standing ally. And I certainly, hey, if we've told somebody we're going to do something, we should do it. That to me is going back to this is a moral thing. If you tell a friend that, hey, if XYZ thing happened, I'll show up for you and you don't show up.
That's bad from my moral calculus. Well, I mean telling a friend you're going to do something really, really immoral, then maybe it's better to break your word than to do that immoral thing. Well, I would hope that you just never offer to do something immoral in that sort of part of the pact because then we can tease it apart. Right, so you're taking a moral lens on this and so that it makes it very easy to start asking those questions.
I will give the US that it's just understood if you're doing something that's immoral, we're not going to back you. So I think these are tease outable things. So for now I'll say the moral lens is the right lens. That the US is not going to do something they think is immoral.
But this is an ally that they have made a promise to. They don't yet feel that we've gone so far past whatever GR own that this is obviously immoral. Because I think the Biden administration even is hedging their language. Please tone it down.
Please don't do this like they're, they're saying those things. So I don't want to pretend they're not. So I get it, it's going to be super gray. It's not, you know, just a super clear cut line.
But anyway, that moral framing, they are there to help an ally who they don't believe has gone too far, if you will. But what I don't understand is, and I just don't understand what is the historical relation between the US and Israel that has brought us together so closely. Is it just that it's the only democracy, Western style democracy in the Middle East? Well, that is certainly what a lot of people say, that it's the only democracy in the region and so we have to support them.
There's, I've heard people make arguments that we have a lot of common enemies and therefore that's why we have to support them. I've heard people make arguments that, you know, there's a, they're a good trading partner and we, you know, our militaries help each other and things like that. Again, I just think. I think all of these arguments are very, very flawed.
And that's not out of any, like, hatred of Israel as a country or certainly of hatred of Jewish people or anything like that. But I do just think that there's. I think all of those arguments are wrong. I think essentially Israel is not a democracy.
They. They. You kind of. I mean, they are a democracy inside Israel proper.
However, you know, they've had control of Gaza and the West bank since 1967, and none of those people have any voting rights or any rights whatsoever, for that matter. And I just don't think, you know, I mean, maybe you could get away with that for like a few years after a war. You occupy an area and then turn it over to them being independent. But if you've kept an area totally controlled for, you know, since 1967 and none of those people had any voting rights at all, I don't know how you can consider yourself a true democracy.
I think the term apartheid state makes a lot more sense. Okay, and do you believe the narrative that Israel does not want to be controlling that area? They'd rather be hands off? I know.
I think it was back in 2005, they withdrew and it's like, hey, cool, you guys do your thing. We're just protecting the border. Does that narrative just ring completely false? Yeah, I mean, you know, like, I think if you don't want to be occupying an area, then, you know, well, they're sure going about it all wrong if they really don't want to be occupying that area.
And, you know, the pullout in 2005 is totally. Let's just say what actually happened there is much different than the way it's spun by a lot of pro Israeli people. And it is true that they ended the military occupation and they. And they ended the settlements in Gaza.
Something. I'd have to double check the numbers on this. But if you go to get something like 8,000 people that they pulled out of those settlements, and then in the next year they put like 15,000 in the West Bank. And you can read about this in their own writing where they essentially said that they were like, well, the whole, you know, the whole purpose of this is to freeze the peace process because now we can say, hey, look, we gave them their own state here in Gaza, and this way we can keep building up in the West Bank.
If you go search Smotrich, Google Smotrich and formaldehyde. He said, what we're doing here is essentially putting the peace process in formaldehyde. And yes, it's true that since 2005, Israel has not technically militarily occupied Gaza as they had from 1967 to 2005, as they do from 1967 to this day in the west bank, but they put a total blockade around the country and they control who and what goes in and out. They control the airspace, the sea, space.
I guess there is no airspace anymore because they don't have an airport. They control how far you can fish off the coast of Gaza. I mean, they have, they have the thing under complete control. It's, as Sheldon Richmond put it, where he said, it's as if the prison guards all left the prison and surrounded the prison.
And then they said, look, we freed everybody. That's not really freeing everybody, that's just imprisoning them without there being guards in the prison. And so, no, I don't think there has been a ton of deals on the table over the years to give the west bank and Gaza some degree of autonomy. And the pro Israeli side will say, well, it's these, the Arabs just always keep turning down the deals and we offer them all these deals and they keep turning them down, but at the end of the day, you don't really even need a partner to stop occupying a place.
You could just stop occupying them. And so I don't, I don't buy into it at all that. They really sure do hate that they have to do this, but they've just had to do this or over 50 years. Do you think that the Israelis believe that the Palestinians are a security threat?
Sure, yeah. No, absolutely. And I mean, you know, when you say the Israelis there are obviously like, you know, we're collectivizing here and there's, there's people in the, you know, there's the war cabinet and some soccer mom are not all the same people. I think it's, I think it's pretty, it's probably widely believed and for good reason that there are legitimate security concerns.
Terrorism is something Israel has been dealing with since its inception, essentially. Okay, the base assumption I run about why the, the right wing coalition that Netanyahu represents wants to put it on formaldehyde, wants to sponsor Hamas, wants to make sure that they stayed in power long enough. Maybe he even turned a blind eye. My thinking won't change whether he turned a blind eye, was completely taken off course, but that he, because he believes that they're a security threat of significant enough proportion that they have to be dealt with in Some way that that drives all the thinking.
Now, the policy might be a terrible policy, but if I'm right about the underlying base assumption, I at least then understand meaning I can re articulate their decision making process. Not that I agree with it, but that I can re articulate their decision making process. Do you think there's anything else underlying that that keeps them wanting to blockade? So they're not the prison guards aren't in prison, but they're still standing outside the prison.
So, okay, so there are these hard right wingers in Israel a couple clicks to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu, who he's now allied himself with. A lot of this is because he had lost all the liberals so badly that he kind of had to ally with some of the more far right wing parties. They are constituencies which are a minority, to be sure, in Israel. They I think are largely motivated by religious beliefs and they believe that Judea and Samaria as they call it, is supposed to be part of Israel.
And there's a lot of their holy sites and stuff are in there. So I think those guys are largely motivated by wanting the west bank, by wanting the west bank to be part of Israel. And of course, Netanyahu did show up to the UN a couple weeks before October 7th with a map of Israel that included the west bank and Gaza all as Israel. But they certainly don't care about Gaza as much as they really care about the West Bank.
That's why the settlements continue to this day in the West Bank. And so I don't think exactly that they are first and foremost motivated by the security concern, although the security concern is there and it is real. I mean, it's not as if there aren't Arab terrorists who are trying to kill Israelis. Benjamin Netanyahu, I've always thought, is more motivated by kind of not that it's a religious thing with him, but that it's more like a legacy thing, that if he gets the west bank is part of Israel, then he goes down as the next great Israeli prime Minister and all of that stuff.
Now, I'm not saying that security concerns don't play into this, but the truth is that Benjamin Netanyahu, up till October 7, at least in his rhetoric, was almost always downplaying the threat of Hamas. We can control the height of the flame was what he bragged to his other Knesset members. There orb members in the Knesset. And so I don't know.
You know, I'm sure it's true for certainly for a lot of the Israeli people. That is a Major concern. There's an. Understandably so.
I mean, these are people who, you know, lived through the second intifada. Many of them lived through October 7th. You can understand where their concern would be security issues. This was also the concern of many of the people who were opposed to abolitionism in the United States of America.
Many of the people who didn't want to abolish slavery, they had real security concerns. If you freed all these slaves, all these people you've been enslaving for so long, they were going to try to kill you if you gave them their freedom. But I can also understand why they had those concerns. You know, like, those are legitimate concerns.
The thing is that you just go like. It's an old Thomas Jefferson quote. Right? Which he said, I always butcher this.
I bring up a lot, too. But where he said, we have the wolf by the ear and we can neither afford to hold onto it nor to safely let it go. And that was him talking about the slavery dilemma. So what are we gonna do?
We gonna make them all citizens and then they have Second Amendment rights? You tell me that people who are just enslaving can go buy a gun, now they're come kill all of us. And you can understand why that's a legitimate concern. But any decent person looking back at that now also recognizes that you're right.
Yeah, you can't enslave people, you know? So I do think there are security concerns on the Israeli side, and I think even legitimate ones. The thing is that you just. You can't hold the wolf by the ear forever.
Certain point you gotta just pull the band aid off and say, like, okay, we're not gonna be in the business of occupying other people anymore. Yeah, it's interesting. And look, everything is so different. And I fully understand that.
But given what happened in Japan and Germany In World War II, the fact that even with all of the horrendous atrocities, we were able to help rebuild and then get the hell out. So, look, there's geography. I don't know. I was asking about that.
I don't know about the get the hell out part, but we did help rebuild. Really? Do we have anything you would consider an occupying force in Japan? No, I'm not suggesting it's an occupying force exactly.
But I'll just say that the military presence in Germany and Japan, they get the hell out part comes a lot later than the rebels part is all I'm saying. Yeah, that'll open a can of worms that unfortunately, I know we don't have time for but the one last thing that I want to map your base assumptions around is the argument that you're going to hear a lot is the lack of moral equivalence between what happened on October 7, which is a barbaric act of terrorism versus a military response to a barbaric act of terrorism, plus them having hostages. Does that make sense to you? Does that ring hollow?
Is it? Yes, that's the right way to think about it, but the response is just disproportionate. Or how do you think that? No, I mean, so I understand it, and it does make some degree of sense to me, but I think it's the wrong way to think about things.
And I think that on a, you know, on a human level, there's sometimes more advanced societies and more advanced governments. What they end up doing is they institutionalize things and they make things much more advanced and less primitive and barbaric. And so it's very easy to see, you know, say, like, if you're, you know, if you're driving around in Mexico, and it's kind of a famous thing in Mexico, right? And if you get pulled over by a cop, you can often just throw them a few bucks and they'll leave you alone.
And it's very easy for us to look at that and go, like, look at the corruption down there, you know, and clearly it is a much more corrupt system. It's a much more nakedly corrupt system. Our corruption comes in different forms. Now, if you get pulled over by a cop in the United States of America, probably don't try giving them money.
That's almost certainly not going to work. That's just not the way our corruption works. Because our corruption isn't primitive and barbaric. Our corruption is more like the.
The prison guard union will lobby to keep mandatory minimums for marijuana. Now, that's a much more sophisticated form of corruption that doesn't feel quite as gross and primitive, but it's on a much more enormous scale. And the result of it is that people's lives are ruined over something that's clearly very, very corrupt. Every bit as corrupt as paying off a cop to leave you alone.
And you can argue, much more corrupt. And so on a human level, I understand where someone breaks out of their cage and comes out to, like, just rip apart any person that they come across. That feels a lot different than like, someone pushing a button and sending a missile into a building that kills 40 people. Even if that guy only killed 15 people, it still seems much more primitive and corrupt.
And there's not nothing to that, like, you know, if you, if you had to go out to lunch with like an IDF pilot or a Hamas terrorist, you'd probably pick the IDF pilot. Like, that's a more civilized person who is kind of doing a job and can probably compartmentalize that and not be a monster at home. Whereas I'd imagine that Hamas terrorist is probably unable to compartmentalize that is probably a nightmare to live around or to go to lunch with. However, the fact that this terrorism, if you will, is so much more sophisticated and so much more systematized does not really remove from what it is.
And you know, as somebody, like I have two little children, I think that most people out there who have kids, or maybe I'm nieces and nephews or like some kids, you know, if somebody were to kill your kid, I don't know that it would be like, it would be of much relief to you to find out that, like, don't worry, it was just collateral damage in a strike. Don't worry. We knew your kid was in that building, but we knew a bad guy was also in that building. And so we decided to blow up the whole building.
You know, on the other side of that, it's still the same thing that happened to you. Like, the same crime is the same crime that happened to you. And so there is this kind of tendency for us to even, like, even to look at things like terrorism versus collateral damage, you know, what do you call it here? Look, if there was a really bad guy and he was a murderer and he went into a school and, you know, he's using them as human shields or whatever, you know, and he's hiding behind all these kids and, and then the local police department came and just blew up the school and killed all the kids.
And we wouldn't sit here and go like, ah, that's collateral damage. And hey, it's on this guy because he was using human shields, we'd be outraged at the local police department and we would be like, you guys are a bunch of monsters who just murdered all of these children. Now, I understand for practicality reasons, things are a little bit different when you're dealing with conflicts within, you know, a police forces jurisdiction and within different territories. But in terms of the moral act, like if you're on the other side of that, if you for a second put yourself in the Palestinian shoes, you can understand.
But that's just like a totally unacceptable thing to say to them. Like, no, it's terrorism when anyone breaks out of Gaza and kills people in Israel. But we can absolutely decimate Gaza. And you'll just have to accept that that's, that's just collateral damage.
I think that's an unreasonable thing to ask a group of people to accept. I get why it's unreasonable to ask a group of people to accept it. And I think that you have accurately identified that not only will it just be totally meaningless to them, whatever weird distinction you're trying to make, you're also going to create more people that will hate you and they will come and kill you later. And so from that perspective, it's just a God awful strategy.
And I know that you heard Coleman Hughes address this on Joe Rogan, but I found his argument pretty compelling, which is that this is actually. Hamas is very intelligent. You can think what you want, but it is an unbelievably effective strategy to turn the Western world against Israel. To be willing to let your people die, to not want them to leave because you know they're going to be bombed, to have specifically done this to court a response, and that you want the footage of the women and children just being slaughtered endlessly.
That's a, that's a really smart strategy. And if we go, well, we're just gonna let them get away with it because we're afraid to kill them. And to have this footage and quite frankly, just to do such a horrible thing, then they can, you know, peck us to death forever. Coming over and doing these potshots, killing 100 here, a thousand there, 500 here.
It would really be the perfect get out of jail free card. And I don't see how you can let that stand. So. Yeah, but I mean, I think there's a, there's a false binary being created there because it's not a choice between doing what Israel is doing and just letting them get away with it.
I mean, it's like, look, look, after this is true with all terrorism, with all asymmetric warfare in general, that they're always trying to prod you into an overreaction because that's the whole game, right? Like Osama Bin Laden didn't think he could take down the United States of America by knocking down the Twin Towers, but he did think he could get us to invade Afghanistan and bankrupt ourselves just like they had done with the Soviet Union. And so, okay, so the answer then is to not invade Afghanistan and bankrupt yourself, but that doesn't mean you couldn't have done the special ops attacks that took out 90 plus percent of the AL Qaeda bases, which is what we did immediately after 9, 11, by Christmas of 2001, almost all of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had been destroyed. We then invaded the country and decided we were going to fight a regime change war against the Taliban, which went on for another catastrophic 20 years.
So, look, before Netanyahu, Israel always dealt with their terrorism problem with target assassinations, special ops, things of that nature. They never dealt with it as just a problem for the regular old military to go in and just totally decimate the place. And so look, nobody's suggesting that you shouldn't find and target the people who are directly involved in October 7th. No one's suggesting you shouldn't do everything you can do to get the hostages out.
But if the game from Hamas was that, which I think it was, I think Coleman's correct about that, was that we're going to provoke Israel into this overreaction that will turn world opinion against them, when they certainly didn't have to do it in this reckless of a way. And who knows how many of their own hostages Israel's killed? I mean, they admit to a few, but who really knows when you see these cities destroyed, who's really accounting for where all the hostages were? I think that, again, it's not a choice between how we do absolutely nothing and let him get away with that, or we level the place.
The truth is there were a lot of different possibilities for how Israel could have responded to this, and almost all of them would have been a much better idea than what they've done. So is your base assumption that keeping with the things that Netanyahu has said himself that have come out, that he wanted this frozen peace, he wanted a moment to be able to get rid of them, that really, it was just this attack happened to meet a threshold where it was like, okay, now we can do the real gloves off and get to what we really want, which is just the total decimation of Gaza itself. You know, my best understanding of the situation is that Netanyahu's plan for propping up Hamas was that he would thwart the creation of a Palestinian state and it would kill the peace process. And then he could embark on negotiating with the other Arab countries with Abraham to make the deal with the Palestinians.
And he essentially felt like that was working. And he, in his own words, Hamas was the fire which. Whose flame they could control the height of. I don't think October 7th was part of the plan.
I think it has totally decimated his legacy. And he knows that. And now he's in this desperate game of number one, trying to. You know, it's like it's not like 9 11.
That happened like on George W. Bush's first year, you know, like he's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history and it just happened at the end. This is like. And he's the guy who took the hard approach that we're going to thwart a Palestinian state and we're going to prop up Hamas and all of this stuff.
I think he realizes he's politically done after this and so now he's searching for some type of victory and he also knows that as soon as the war is over, he's over and so he's kind of got to keep the thing going. So I don't necessarily think think it's as sinister as like he wanted this war all along. I think he had awful, reckless policies that ultimately culminated on October 7th and is now in a politically impossible situation and seems to be, you know, as John Mearsheimer has pointed out, seems to be almost in some type of like psychotic self destructive spree here that he's unable to like pull himself back in from. And how do you make sense of the fact that the, that Hamas won't get back the hostages?
Oh, I mean I think that it's as easy as. Look, part of it is what you and Coleman were just saying, that they see this as a victory. They think that they're turning world opinion against Israel and they are, they're not wrong about that. And then also I think part of it is that that's the leverage that they have.
So they're trying. I mean there's been all types of like negotiations going on and there's been some of them that are probably the fault of Hamas, some are the fault of the Israelis, some of the fault of the Americans. But Hamas just the other day was board said they would work out a deal, return the hostages, but they didn't agree to Israel's terms. So I think they do see this as their last bargaining chip, which it kind of is.
And they're trying to get the best deal they can. Brother. This is a much bigger conversation. I know that we're out of time.
Hopefully this is the first of many. Thank you for walking me through all of the basic assumptions. I think it is a super helpful way to really map somebody's thinking. Where can people follow along with you?
Oh, partoftoftheproblem.com is where my show streams. If you want to support us, you can go over there. And then it's of course YouTube and Spotify and all the other places that you can get Internet shows and comic Dave Smith. If you want to come see me out on the road, that's my website.
I love it. All right, anybody that's deeply invested in the Israel, Hamas, Palestine drama, please forgive that. I know we are just scratching the surface and there's much more complexity that we did not get into. I do not consider this a full exploration.
I did want to start the conversation with Dave, so thank you guys for sticking with us this far and hopefully it will be a part two at some point in the future. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe everybody, and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.
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