Dave Smith: belief

Transcript context

…Okay. This is not mine, but this is Gene Epstein, who’s a … is a really brilliant economist and a great guy. And he told me this once and I just always loved it, and so I call it Epstein’s case, not that … Different Epstein, Gene Epstein. No relation. I want to be clear on that. Okay. Let’s call it Gene’s case for radical optimism, and the way he put it was he goes, “So imagine you were sitting around in 1845 and you’re at the height of the slavery and you were like, ‘Hey, in 20 years slavery is going to be abolished across the West.'” And if you told that to someone, they’d be like, “Dude, slavery has existed for all of human history. Look around. It’s not going anywhere. You’d have to be out of your mind to think we’re 20 years away from abolishing slavery.” And yet we were, I mean, it’s just the greatest thing in the history of the world, and unfortunately America had to fight a bloody civil war to get there, but many other countries did and they just walked away from what had been the status quo forever and just stopped doing it. And now, look, you can argue there’s slavery by other names and things like that, and to some degree, paying an income tax is some degree of slavery, but there is not chattel slavery in the way that there used to be, and that is an incredible advance for humanity. And then the other example he would give is he was talking about how at the beginning of the Reagan administration in 1981, that the neocons … because when he was trying to have detente with Russia, the neocons were in the press, being like, “He just guaranteed another 100 years of Soviet dominance.” And if someone had just been to you like, “Hey, listen, calm down, in 10 years there won’t be a Soviet Union.” It’s just been like, “Okay, nice idea, but you’re out of your fucking mind.” And yet that was true too. And you can see some dynamics even in our politics today where … Three years ago I was really concerned about whether they’d shut the whole thing down, us I mean. During the COVID times and during times where it was like everyone I knew was just getting strikes on all their channels, and if you just even wanted to talk about how there are people being vaccine injured, you’d lose your YouTube channel, people getting kicked off Twitter left and right. And I just saw it and I was like, “Dude, the grasp is just getting tighter and tighter and tighter. The regime is not going to allow these alternative voices in here. And they’re just getting too big and they’re going to shut this whole thing down and I’m going to have to figure out what I’m going to do after that.” going to allow these alternative voices in here. And they’re just getting too big and they’re going to shut this whole thing down and I’m going to have to figure out what I’m going to do after that.” And I was totally wrong. The trend totally went in the other direction, and things are now at a point where it’s like, I couldn’t even imagine it. I never would’ve envisioned Elon Musk was going to get $44 billion together and buy Twitter and then he was … And so I just think that if you zoom out, I think that the regime has lost their monopoly on propaganda, and this opens up enormous possibilities for what … I remember so vividly, 2002. 9/11 happened in late 2001, we invaded Iraq in 2003, but all of 2002 was a massive propaganda campaign. Just constantly laying down the blueprints for this war that we knew George W. Bush was about to launch. And it was, “They have weapons of mass destruction. They were in on 9/11. They’re friends with Al-Qaeda. They’re going to hand this weapon that they don’t have off to the terrorists they’re not friends with, and then they’re going to nuke Kansas.” By the way, this is also, sorry for rambling a little bit here, but this is also one of the reasons why when the Jew haters will say things like … They’ll be like, “Oh, look, all of the Jews support Israel,” or, “70% of the Jews vote this way,” or, “70% of the Jews support the …” It’s like, listen, I don’t like blaming … Or even when the Palestine haters will say, “70% of Gazans support Hamas,” or whatever. It’s like, okay, look, I remember a time in this country, I know I’m going back 20 years, but every right-winger in this country was completely convinced that we have to go invade Iraq because he has weapons of mass destruction, and you’re some type of leftist homo if you don’t agree with that. That was the entire culture in this country. And it was the one thing that the New York Times and Bill O’Reilly and CNN and the Washington Post all agreed on, they were all on board selling this war. You could not do that today. They could not get away with that today, because if they did, how do you control this entire problem? You tell me, how do you control Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson? How do you get these guys to go … They’re not going to go along with it. And in fact, they’re almost definitely going to have people on their show who are just tearing it apart. And so I just look at that and I go like, “Yo, I mean, we’re at a place now where we have this world of possibilities that would’ve seemed impossible just so recently.” And so just thinking, all of that rambling stew, whatever all that was, that leaves me feeling very, very hopeful for the future. Yeah, there’s a lot of social and political progress in that rambling stew over the decades and the centuries. For me, probably some of the technological progress is really exciting. Me personally, it just fills me with hope whenever I see the rockets go up … To clarify-…

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