Are our Sense Making Apparatuses Corrupted?

Jeff known by his persona, Unmitigated Ass on X joins me to talk about Canada, what he views as the philosophical underpinnings of what is going on and the corruption of our sense making apparatuses.

Follow him on X @unmitigatedass

Transcript

[00:01] Russell: All right, and we're back. Russell here with the canadian conservative podcast. And if you want to find more of my stuff, you can find it@ thecanadianconservative.com. I do articles talking about different social issues. All my stuff is on YouTube as well. I also post quite frequently on x. My handle is beside my name. Today. My guest in the studio is Jeff, who has a personality on X Twitter as the unmitigated ass. And we've been communicating for quite a while now. I thought I'd bring him into the studio and, and just talk, talk about Canada, talk about kind of the philosophical underpinnings. And one topic we wanted to discuss in particular was, are our sense making apparatuses corrupted? Jeff, welcome the show and tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:57] Jeff: Oh, thanks for having me, really. I'm just a normal person who reads too much and listens to too many podcasts and all that fun stuff. And started up a Twitter account, probably. I think it was November 1 of the close to the end of lockdown and COVID because I was pissed about everything going on. And I've just been ass posting, making jokes, and trying to educate people on what I happen to know about for the last two, two and a half years.

[01:23] Russell: So why the personality, the unmitigated ass?

[01:27] Jeff: Well, really what I was trying to think of when creating it was I wanted something that was catchy, that would, like sketch the eye, the picture. I made it out of clip art because it's funny. But I also wanted kind of a social camouflage. A lot of people slinging insults on Twitter next, you know, and I'm like, well, what do people call other people? They call them ass. They call them asshat. They call him dumbass, smart ass, wise ass. I'm like, so ass is funny. And I'm not about to change who I am. So I'm like, wow, I'll be unmitigated. I'll own this. And then from there, I, like I said, built the logo, and with, you know, clip art, bum cheeks, a kiss on the side, the trucker hat because the convoy was starting to spool up. And then I stuffed a knot of pipe in my cheeks, and that was kind of it.

[02:12] Russell: So I need to ask the most important question I'm going to ask today. Are you an ass man?

[02:17] Jeff: I am an ass man.

[02:20] Russell: Canada? What's going on in Canada?

[02:23] Jeff: I don't know. It seems like things are not as good as they used to be when I was a younger person.

[02:29] Russell: What do you think the biggest social change has been in Canada, I think.

[02:34] Jeff: A lot of the politics right now is all screwed up. I think that a lot of people decided to not even, I wouldn't say politics. It's just we've kind of got rid of our metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of a lot of how we understand the world. It's permeated for generations. And now people are confused. People are seeing stuff that's hyperbolic on the Internet. They're not able to think through things, getting a lot of partisan messaging. They don't understand that the extremes are kind of there to shake people up and make them unhappy. And from that you get a lot of knee jerk reactions, which has led to policies. The lead to where we are today.

[03:09] Russell: Well, let's talk policies really quick. So the liberal government announced recently that they are planning on a renters rights bill.

[03:21] Jeff: Yeah, it's kind of scared of that one.

[03:24] Russell: What do you think that's going to do to the landlord rental industry in Canada?

[03:29] Jeff: Well, it's going to do what a lot of regulation does. It's just going to stratify it. All the smaller guys, like your retired couple, has a rental property. Theyre going to have to fight a lot hard to stay in the market to keep doing what theyre doing while your big institutional investors are just going to be able to walk right through the regulations, pay the extra amount, cut their profits down, but continue growing.

[03:51] Russell: Kind of like the Walmart effect, almost. The small mom paw shock goes away, but the big conglomerate stays and it just centralizes even more resources and even more power.

[04:02] Jeff: Yep. Happens with every time you regulate something. Even look at the COVID lockdown, it was mom and pop shops that had to shut down. Small restaurants, big chains. Well, they kept going.

[04:12] Russell: Well, there's money to be made, right?

[04:14] Jeff: 100%.

[04:15] Russell: Well, and thinking about it, too, you know, there's a lot of, like, rental, I guess, imperiums in Canada. I can think of like one in particular, like boardwalk. They're a very big rental agency. They kind of got the, they got the formula figured out on how to build a high rise of rental buildings and how to make your contracts the way they need to be. And they're already putting a lot of strain on other people that might be renting that could offer something similar, but they're not going to have the same expertise that these kind of bigger conglomerates have, 100%.

[04:57] Jeff: Then you start thinking about, they have a lot of internal employees, could do a lot of maintenance, they don't have to hire outside contractors, all stays in house it just, again, it just spools everything up to a small percentage of the population that can actually make that happen.

[05:11] Russell: Yeah. And tying, tying your, paying your rent on time to your credit score kind of seems like a double edged sword in a way. Someone that might be struggling financially takes a credit score hit that just needs, you know, maybe if it was just your mom, pa, landlord, they could negotiate something. Hey, listen, I'm going through rough patch at work this, this month. I can't make the full rent, but maybe I can, I don't know, help out with some maintenance around the place or, you know, some type of informal agreement that everyone can agree on that you won't get a place like Boardwalk, like them being a bigger company, and at the same time, the people that are, the terrible tenants that know how to play the landlord tenant boards, they know how to play the system, they don't care about their credit score. They don't care.

[06:01] Jeff: Yeah, you're correct on that. People will just. Well, that's just it. You can't negotiate with big companies very well. You can negotiate with people you have a personal relationship with and negotiations, what I would argue is one of the big tenets of western society, the ability to talk through things, negotiate, come to new understanding. That's how we get along, that's how we sort things out. And things aren't perfect, but when you get these black and white policies like you get with giant companies like that, it's either going to be, well, in engenders a terrible spirit, you're going to have people be like, well, screw you, I'm just going to not pay my rent and I'll sit here for six months till you kick me out. And that's, that's what you get. Or you just get kicked out.

[06:43] Russell: Yeah. Like those big companies, they, they know the formula, so they know the best ways to evict bad tenants. And they, and they may not say that they do, but they keep a blacklist of tenants and they share it around of, okay, if this person comes to rent, they have a history of being terrible tenants and for using the system. So don't bring them in as a tenant where you don't have that with the smaller mom, pa, or someone that buys a house and turns into a fourplex type thing.

[07:17] Jeff: Yeah, that's definitely a concern. I also think that with tying it to credit score, it works. And it's social credit, again, social credit type thing. Right. And this can, again, someone can make a mistake, misstep, miss a month, take hit on the credit score. Well, now they're spiraling down there, and they're not actually getting better. They can't fix that very easily. Whereas, you know, again, if you had the more informal agreement between people of more similar stats status, I guess, you know, at least they can. They could talk their way through it. It doesn't have to hit you exactly on some personal record that people can check up for years to come.

[07:50] Russell: Well, you talked about, like, social credit and that. I mean, we have a social credit system. We. It may not be formalized, like in places like China, but we do have a social credit system. You know, more and more often now, companies, when they do background checks, they're saying, you will give us your social media accounts, tell us what your name is on social media, and we're going to look it up, and we're going to see just what exactly your saying on social media. And based off of what you're saying on social media, they're gonna make judgment decisions against you.

[08:23] Jeff: Yeah, well, it's probably why I stay somewhat anonymous on the Internet, at least for this account, right?

[08:30] Russell: Mm hmm.

[08:31] Jeff: I was gonna say, too, that it's kind of funny, though. I don't know. I'm noticing a pushback on that. Those people are not taking it. But then again, I could be siloed. My little echo chamber.

[08:40] Russell: Well, it seems to me like there's a good group of people, and they're perfectly fine. If you have nothing to hide, then don't worry about it. And that. And that's. That's such a spiral.

[08:53] Jeff: It's.

[08:53] Russell: It's such a downward spiral. I mean, Saskatchewan recently started saying that every single person that gets pulled over for any type of driving offense will be breathalyzed. And apparently, this has already gone through the courts, and it's already been accepted into case law as something that the police are allowed to do, because driving is a privilege, not a right.

[09:14] Jeff: Yeah, I saw that, and I was not very happy with that one. We have no presumption of innocence anymore. It's just. They're just going to start doing it. It seems like harassment. But I also am kind of curious why it's Saskatchewan and not the other provinces.

[09:29] Russell: Apparently, someone was telling me that they're already doing this in other provinces, but they just don't necessarily do it for every traffic stop. Someone also messaged me and told me that. That the military police do this all the time on military bases as well, because military police and military law is different than regular law. They. They'll. They'll just set up a. They'll set up a stop checkpoint at 04:00 when everyone's leaving work. Well, no one's had anything to drink, but they're just doing it to kind of remind people who's in charge.

[10:02] Jeff: Well, that makes sense. It also kind of pads the books. You can say, we pulled over x amount of people and found 0% at 04:00 were under the influence. Therefore, we're good.

[10:12] Russell: It makes the stats look good. And to be honest, I've tried to look at it from the other side as well, like, you know, practicing, like, you know, epistemology a little bit. Why does the other side believe that this is a good thing? And I think that if you've had someone in your family that has maybe been killed, mothers against drunk driving would say murdered by someone that was driving under the influence, or you have someone, a close family member, someone that was hit by a drunk driver, now they're paralyzed or something. You might have a different view on the use of breathalyzers for all sorts of traffic stops. I think there is an emotional component to this, and I don't think it's. It's not. I don't agree with the practice, but I can see why people would see it's a good thing if they've been in that circumstance.

[11:04] Jeff: Yeah, I can agree with that. It makes sense for people to have these emotional reactions and then want outcomes that are probably not good for people. We've seen this a lot of time. My little coterie of nerds I interact with on Twitter all the time would probably say, this is kind of like a dialectic. Right? Because you see something and then people say, hey, we want to fix this. And people go, that seems reasonable. And it shifts. But as it shifts, we're spiraling upwards towards more totalitarian control, more overview, more government overreach, and we get less and less freedom.

[11:35] Russell: Yeah, the nanny state, right. Well, we can't trust you to manage your own emotions. We can't trust you to manage your own behavior. So the state has to be in, be there to be the constant guiding parental figure for all your social interaction.

[11:50] Jeff: Yeah, well, that's actually something I put out. I should find that tweet and push it out again. I said, um, for every tax dollar you spend, is that that much less agency you give yourself? And people seem to want to outsource their agency to everything but themselves, yet they still retain all responsibility for whatever happens. Right. They're the ones that's going to get punished. It's like, well, maybe you should take some of that responsibility on yourself, and then at least the risk reward ratio makes sense, right?

[12:18] Russell: I might. I might push back against that a little bit. I think that people think this isn't going to affect me, and it's greater good for everyone else, because everyone else needs to be corrected. But me, that.

[12:32] Jeff: That's also the case. That's why these things are so difficult to actually discuss, because you have individuals who see things different ways, and they weight all these different options differently.

[12:43] Russell: Well, it's a bit classist in some ways. And, you know, yes, drunk driving is still a problem. It really is. People still get highly intoxicated behind the wheel, and then they cause accidents, and they hurt themselves, they hurt other people. And I do think that that is a problem. But then you go. You see the court system, and you see something like, well, they're getting. Like the case in Saskatchewan where that woman was intoxicated. She hit that teenager. Sorry, not teenager. Young. Young person. I think they were 19 or 20, so not really a teenager. But anyways, hit them and. And then got two years to be served in the community. That person is now paralyzed for the rest of his life, and his mother had to quit her job to take care of him full time.

[13:32] Jeff: Yeah, that's. That's a tough one. I personally would like to see harsher penalties for that, but at the same time, I don't know, that's. That's what the court's decided, and I wouldn't want to implement anything. I'd rather have the judges and the jury make those decisions, because extenuating circumstances. I'll give you actual story on that. This was years ago. I was working for a construction company as a swamper, and I actually saw a car go across the road, very high speed, hit a pole, split in half, and they saw the guy fold outside the window. Messed me up. Found out a while later that, um. Because I was summonsed for obviously being a witness for this, that he and his girlfriend had been drinking, and they had gotten to a fight, and he had died. She was the one driving, and she pleaded no contest. And I was thinking about it and trying to be empathetic and all works, and I'm like, man, they're young. Did something dumb in a bad situation. She killed her boyfriend, who was the father of her child. Phone said. I'm like, does it serve anybody for her to go to wave? For what? My knee jerk reaction? Be like, chuck her for 15 years? I don't know. Maybe she already learned her lesson, right?

[14:42] Russell: Well, that's a lesson, but someone still lost their life and they deserve justice as well.

[14:49] Jeff: I agree. Just saying it's a tough one, right?

[14:51] Russell: Well, definitely, definitely. But it's those tough conversations that we need to have. And they can't be had by, like, I'm working my way through Phil McGraw's latest book. We've got issues. And I agree there's lot, these problems are complicated, but they can't be resolved by, as he quotes in his book, the tyranny of the fringe.

[15:15] Jeff: I agree. That's, I 100% agree with that.

[15:18] Russell: You know, we have one group on the other side that says, well, you know, they just need more education about drinking and driving. They just, and they, and they kind of just make excuses for the person. And then you have the other side to say, well, they killed someone and so locked them up for life. And what happens is these very fringe opinions on either side, they, they demand people draw to them, you know, oh, I think they should get ten years. Why ten years? Why not 30? You just, you don't care about the victims in this case, you know, well, I think they should get five years. And someone say, well, why not just two? And that, you know, they, they said they were sorry and they said they're going to pay a bunch of money into mothers against drunk driving or whatever. And it's like they just, instead of taking these nuanced opinions, they just try to draw people to the fringe edges as much as possible.

[16:08] Jeff: Yeah, that definitely happens. And it's, it's, it's sad. And that's one of those things where I have a big problem with black and white laws. There was a story in Calgary, this is a million years ago, it set me off. They had a black and white no violence policy and a, one of the students held a knife to the different students neck and this other kid punched the guy in the face and then he was expelled. Right. Like both students, the guy with the knife and the guy who saved the other person's life got expelled because it was just black and white policy. There was no thinking. And people forget that our common law system, our jury system with in law, it's set up so that we can attenuate these type of circumstances. Like, here's the rules, here's what's happened before. In these situations, however, we're going to allow evidence to be provided, context to be set, and then have people discuss it and we can work within a gradient within it. Right. Hey, maybe this person, you know, they're distraught, they feel terrible, they make amends, and we give them a little bit of extra leniency or you see other sides. Like this is their third time of doing something similar like that. They have a couple duis. This time they killed someone. It's like, well, maybe we go a lot heavier on the punishment because they're obviously not learning anything. It's something that we need to do to get that middle and get away from those two extremes.

[17:21] Russell: One of the big topics we want to talk about today, and it's the name of the show for today, are our sense making apparatuses corrupted? So when you say sense making, what do you mean by sense making? Or do you mean the five senses or what exactly?

[17:40] Jeff: Well, when we were discussing that, what I mean is how we get information is all skewed because we get so much through the media. We get it all through our phones. We don't get it from face to face as much anymore. And the systems that are set up the way they're set up, they actually skew how things work. Like with, again, with the polarization that we were just talking about, you can have the super empathetic versus the super punishment, right. It's like, well, that's not how people live. That's how people talk on the Internet. That gets you attention. Oh, yeah, but that's not how people live. Then if you go into, like, I don't know, you go into the media, they're the same thing. No one gives two hoots about the, the corner that never has an accident on. Right. But if there's an accident on yellowhead or white mud for my Edmonton friends, you know, on the freeway, you're trying it to work. Well, that's a news story because it actually affected people. So non issues get ignored and then issues that might even be rare while that's news because if it wasn't novel, no one would care.

[18:41] Russell: Well, do you think it's like a hyper fixation on things? Like, like, for example, the, the ship, the ship crashing into the bridge. There's like a hyper fixation on that incident and it has to be extracted from all potential angles at all times.

[19:01] Jeff: Wow, that, that's an interesting one. Um, I don't know. Do you follow Roswellerts on Twitter, on x?

[19:07] Russell: Yeah, I do.

[19:09] Jeff: I was thinking about them. And again, they're another news organization. And sure, the citizen journalist, but their meat and potatoes is the extreme right. I don't know if, I don't know. I'll be completely honest. I have no clue if I would have heard about chicken coops burning down or, or food warehouses burning down in, you know, Utah, ten years ago, would that have ever crossed my mind? Crossed my feet? I don't know. And that. And that's. That's one of those things, is like, we have all this data, it's all consolidated, but how concentrated is it? Is it. Is it reality? I think it's a little step away.

[19:43] Russell: And at the same time, I'll say, like, was it. There was raw alert, and there was another kind of citizen news agency that really broke that Ohio train incident years ago. And, yeah, it was like, was it two years ago, that big train derailment in Ohio with that toxic gas?

[20:03] Jeff: Oh, in Palestine? Palestine, Ohio. Okay. Whoo.

[20:07] Russell: I was. We're gonna go down that route, but.

[20:12] Jeff: Uh, no, I've been avoiding that one like the plague. Oh, no, that. I'm pretty certain that was the one in Palestine, Ohio. And they decided to set fire to it. Right. And then it was black smoke. And I think that was about a year ago, maybe a year and a half.

[20:23] Russell: Yeah. And the authorities really weren't making it into such a big deal, but it was independent journalists going in there and showcasing just how bad it really was. And that's really what spurred a lot of these changes. And then for a while, everyone got hyper fixated on every train derailment. And then people realize that train derailments happen way more often than people realize.

[20:48] Jeff: Yeah. And that's it. And that's why, again, this is a double edged sword with a lot of what's going on is, um, the attention needed to be seen. For those guys in Ohio, it was Ohio. I remember the city name, but, um, because obviously, not much was sent to help them out at the time. It took people kind of being a squeaky wheel, but then, you know, you get the people who you see one trail train to midrailment, then next thing you know, more people are seeing train derailments, small ones. And next thing you know, there's a pattern, and people start to fixate on the pattern. And again, if it happens all the time, just depends on degree of how severe it is. But we've kind of lost sense of how to process that information. Mm hmm.

[21:29] Russell: Well, and it can lead to a lot of conspiratorial thinking as well. I mean, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And I think a lot of these big news things, you know, not to deviate too much off the topic, but imagine 15 years ago, you. You came to me 15 years ago, and you told me, listen, there's an island. And all the richest people in the world are going to this island. And they're filming them doing bad things to kids, and they're using as blackmail. And they've made this whole kind of imperium out of it. And it's actors, it's directors, it's politicians from all stripes of government, and it's like this kind of deep state behind the scenes thing, and there's symbology everywhere on it. And I would have told you you were nuts. I would have said, yeah, right. There's no way they could keep something like that secret. But it happened. It's real. I mean, the gilet Maxwell. Yeah, Max Maxwell there. I mean, she got convicted of trafficking to no one, apparently. So it's difficult when we say, you know, like, it's difficult when we talk about sense making, because these things that we would have thought were impossible are possible and they have happened. Are they happening as rapidly as people think or people finding patterns, you know, in a very almost schizophrenic way, like the person that reads the newspaper and thinks, you know, every four letters is one letter and they need to add them all up and it's a secret message just for them.

[23:09] Jeff: I think it's both. And I'm. I think there are both are conspiracies and weird stuff going on all over the place. And I think it gets hidden by the extremes that are more banal. It's just, that's why I think, again, it's hard for us to deal with what's going on in the world, how to understand how things are happening back to the sense making apparatuses. You'll see newspapers ignore certain things and then highlight other things. And it's like, well, why was that editorial decision made? And then you've probably seen the super cat where they have all the local news outlets saying the exact same words at the exact same time for the same news broadcast. And that happened. You know, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy fact. Was a conspiracy. Maybe. Maybe it was just a memo from whoever owns the. All the outlets. Maybe Rupert Murdoch was like, this is what you got to say.

[24:00] Russell: It could be. It could be. But that's the thing. Everyone's off. Like you said, everyone's off kilter. Like no one, you know, like the topic, sense making apparatuses are corrupted because there's so much information and no one knows anymore what is really real and what isn't. I mean, Scott Adams put it. It's two.

[24:21] Jeff: Two screens.

[24:22] Russell: Yeah. One movie, two screens.

[24:24] Jeff: No, two screens, one movie. Yeah, that's. Yeah, yeah.

[24:27] Russell: Two screens and one movie. So you and I can watch the exact same speech from a politician, and I take one meaning from it, and someone takes a completely different meaning because they're framing it from their dialectal. Dialectal framing, you know, what they believe is. Is really going on.

[24:49] Jeff: Yeah, it's actually funny. I listened to that today. I was listening to Jonathan Hyde on Joe Rogan, and they hit the bloodbath conversation with Trump. My God. And Joe's like, no, he clearly is talking about the economy. And Jonathan is like, well, no, he does a lot of asides, and it really sounds like he meant something else. And if you listen to it, and I try to sit there and objectively, and I was like, well, I can see kind of the one thing, but I don't know. Joe seemed like he was telling the truth, to be completely honest. And Jonathan, I sound like he didn't want to get himself in trouble, but that's. That's beside the point.

[25:23] Russell: Yeah. And it makes it difficult, because, again, every. There's a lot of media people out there, and they have their hot takes on things, and they have their followers, and. And I don't think they're trying purposely to dissuade them. I really don't. I think they just. They have a certain frame, and they're building everything off of that frame, and, because if it doesn't fit the frame, like, we've seen it, like, uh, what was her name? Anna Kitsparian, recently talking about dangerous criminals, and, like, just saying, like, these people are violent. We need to, like, do something about it there. It's not safe. And her fan base was just like, they were going nuts on her about it and that. So I think people build a following. They build a fan base around certain ideals, and then if they don't consistently live up to those ideals, then the viewership goes away. People turn on them. Instead of just saying, okay, well, that's just part of life. That's how things go.

[26:22] Jeff: People.

[26:23] Russell: People are driving along with you. And then eventually they say, okay, well, this isn't for me anymore. And they hit the off ramp somewhere else instead, just accepting that that's fact. They're like, no, I have to keep the viewers inside. So even when they don't believe it anymore, they have to keep the. The ruse going.

[26:41] Jeff: Yeah. And that's. That's audience capture. I think that happens to a lot of people, but, um, I'm actually pretty hopeful. I I see more and more people gravitating towards people who have been telling long term truths once they're willing to sacrifice themselves, sacrifice their audience, their stature, their reputation, to say what they feel is right, especially once, and also once they'll, you know, change their opinion when things happen. I think one of the best examples, they'll probably get some shit for this. Um, I think Tim Pool has been really good at that. He, he definitely will stand his ground on certain things. And I've seen him change over the years since I've been watching him.

[27:12] Russell: Where do you think he's changed the most?

[27:15] Jeff: Uh, when I first started watching, he was pretty much just a skateboarder media guy. And I know that he was all into gun control. I've been watching him since frick, 2016, 2017. And now he's, he's all two a all the way right past that. I don't know. I think he's just always been pretty honest. Thats actually something that ive been thinking about recently is when it comes to a lot of these things, the news used to be the news because thats what you had to trust. Right now we have so many outlets. The way you trust people is a lot more closer to a personal relationship. Youve watched this person report, talk, comment about things for years and years and years, and then at a certain point, you know where their biases are, you kind of know where their blind spots are, but you can trust them enough because youve, I don't ingest enough of their content. Now, it's obviously a different story if you just believe them whole hand, but if you can take them as being an individual, I think that's just way more powerful.

[28:12] Russell: Do you think that's personable or do you think it's almost parasocial?

[28:17] Jeff: Probably a little bit of both, depending. I mean, to be. Lex Friedman was talking with Jordan PEteRsoN there not too long ago on one of his podcasts. Talk about how all his friends are, have been dead for hundreds of years. Right. And I was thinking about that with a lot of my friends, and I read a lot of books, listen a lot of stuff like that. And it's the people I spend most time with tend to not be people IRL. That's why I think it's important to maintain good interpersonal relationships, because there's a value to the people who are in the virtual world or in the written word, but there's also value to actual people because they know you better. So I think some of these relationships are definitely parasocial. You'll see out there. I think there's some people, especially the ones like maybe pay for the old only flans or something like that, that probably isn't healthy. Whereas, you know, having faith in somebody that you see on the Internet because that's where you get your news from, because you've watched them grow over the years, I think that's a lot healthier and probably more healthy than just trusting wholeheartedly, whatever the newspaper says.

[29:24] Russell: I agree. I think it's, I think it's a very dangerous game that we're playing in some, some aspects with some people, though, with their, because some people do have influence and they do have power and they know that and they try to get people to literally deny reality because of it, and they, and they monetize off of that and they, I don't even think they believe it necessarily. I think it's like a game and they're just seeing the people that are watching them believe it almost to their detriment. But the person that's directing it doesn't even necessarily believe it. I use a classic example, the Westboro Baptist church. Do I actually think that most of them are. I think some of them in there are probably pretty, you know, steadfast to the cause. But I kind of always got the impression, like, I remember I was in college when we kind of first started talking about them and they were on YouTube, youtubers a lot newer. And I remember I was looking, I was like, are these guys really as evangelical as they say or are they just really pushing free speech, the first amendment. They're looking to find who is going to pushback and how can they make money off of it. It seemed to me more like they were trying to make money off of who's going to stomp on my free speech here so I can take them to court and make a, make some coin.

[30:53] Jeff: Ah, that's, that's another tough problem we have these days is that a lot of these people are one or the other, like grifting and, or true believers, and some of them are both. And that makes it even more difficult. I remember hearing that one of the main areas that psychopaths pile up is in the media. And obviously, you'll get the narcissism of. Well, of media in general, including social media and all the new media that we have now. So when it comes to. Yeah, things like, I don't know, the oak, I don't know what to say about that past. The outcomes tend to be similar regardless if they're, if they're lying for their own benefit in a cynical way or if they're true believers, the.

[31:31] Russell: What do you think the outcome is in general?

[31:35] Jeff: Ah, short term, I think a lot of people are going to get duped. Long term, I hope that people start to figure it out. And it may take a while, but I think people will become a lot more discerning. I think that's actually inevitable. It's something I've thought about myself for a long time because I've been on the Internet since it pretty much existed. I remember dialing up on 14, four modems. And funny enough, I was pretty fricking young at the time because I'm not that old now. But a lot of the stuff that came up over recently with your, I would say, like the QAnon crowd, a lot of these illuminati stuff, it's like, man, I was, well, looking at that, those conspiracy theory videos in like, 2008, 2009, right?

[32:14] Russell: Oh, yeah.

[32:15] Jeff: And then you temper yourself over time and you learn to get more discernment. Actually, Joe Rogan's talked about that quite a bit, on how he used to be hardcore into all conspiracy theories. Now he's like, because he went through that forest, he came out the other side. Now he knows what is a lot more likely and what's a lot less.

[32:31] Russell: Likely when we talk about gamifying things as well. A great book, old book, it's called games people play by Eric Bernie. It's the. It's the science behind transactional analysis. Like right now, Jeff, you and I are playing a game. We're playing the podcast conversation game. We talk about ideas. We bounce them off each other. We try to gain knowledge. And at the end of the day, it's a game that we're both mutually playing. And Eric, Bernie really tries to break it down into. There's good games, like the one we're playing right now. And then there's bad social games. Um, that's the one where the frigid wife is a common one. For example, the. The wife is mad at her husband, so she denies. So she starts denying him, uh, sex. And she starts, you know, saying that he's worthless, things like that. And she rebukes all of his advances. And after a while, he's just like, well, guess I'm not going to get anything from her. So then he just starts focusing on other things. He turns the game back on, drinks a bud light, whatever, realizing that she's losing power in the game. She'll start dressing more provocatively, maybe she'll drop something on the floor, and she's, whatever. Not wearing underwear, whatever. Then he thinks, okay, well, things are advancing again, right? So then he makes a pass at her, and then she says, oh, see, this is all you ever think about is sex. This all you ever think about. And it's a game, right? And it can't necessarily end the right way. And I just wonder how many of these. How much. How much we've gamified all the media, gamified our system, where people don't even realize they're. They're involved in a very complicated game that's going to have very, very bad outcomes.

[34:22] Jeff: Yeah, that's. That's definitely a concern. I just want to comment on that example you gave. It's just really funny on that one because obviously it's not a long term game and sounds like it's set on a lot of pretenses. And by pretenses, I mean lies. Right? There's obviously a lack of communication. There's not a lot of honesty. And I think that's been seen with, with social media, with the media in general, is that, you know, there's been. A bunch of liars have been lying to us. And it's funny how nobody wants to buy their publications anymore. A lot of people don't want to watch the local news now that it does get moved online. And it's. There's an age component to it, but they have to be subsidized now, which is another lie, which is another falsehood, whereas there are people out there who. Yeah, they're still gamifying. Um, I could probably name some people that you would know that I have my opinions on that are pretty big names in canadian news media that are really good at the gamification, at getting attention, at saying the hyperbolic stuff. But they're able to do some pretty good work at the same time. And all they really need to get started is a cell phone and Internet connection. And funny enough, I actually trust a lot of them a lot more because at least I could see the overt lies, and it's not so hidden in institutional power. Does that make sense?

[35:38] Russell: It does. But why do you think they're lying in the first place? Why not just be truthful?

[35:43] Jeff: Because truth's a slow game. Truth is a slow game. There's a zig Ziglar quote from a long time ago. I remember hearing. It goes, lies can get you to the top, but only truth can keep you there. And people are short sighted. I think that's one of the biggest issues we have today, is that everything is a. Is a very short timeframe. They want success. They want results. They want attention today, now.

[36:05] Russell: Instant gratification.

[36:07] Jeff: Yeah. And then they get rewarded because we have a big dopamine pump on the. On the Internet. Click that, like, button, subscribe, share, retweet. Right. And that just. That just compounds things. And it makes. Might increase the pathologies that we see.

[36:22] Russell: How much of this, like, you know, the corruption of how we make sense of the world in that is due to, like, cluster B personality disorders?

[36:32] Jeff: I don't think that there's that much more of them, and I don't think they settle all the agenda, but I definitely think that having a cluster B personality disorder, it gives you an advantage. Gives you an advantage. With the way everything is set up.

[36:45] Russell: Right now, I want to dive a little bit deeper into that. What advantages do you think are built into the system for the narcissist and the antisocial personality disordered person and the histrionic?

[36:59] Jeff: Well, histrionic, you know, that just means being a drama queen. That gets attention, that gets people to pay attention to you. And obviously, if you agree with the person, there's one way of looking at it, but you can enjoy it. But if you disagree with the person, there's also the sick, perverse pleasure you get from seeing them flop from side to side, from mania to depression. The narcissism should be pretty simple to understand because, you know, people who like themselves want other people to like them. And it's. A lot of times it's faux. It's fake, right?

[37:27] Russell: Oh, it's very fake. It's a highly manufactured image, and that's.

[37:32] Jeff: What we get to do now. That's actually one of the reasons I gave up on Instagram and Facebook. I don't use them anymore because a lot of people put stuff up there. And I'm like, I know you personally. In real life. This isn't you. This is bullshit.

[37:44] Russell: Yeah, online they got the. Oh, look, it's foodie gram day. And they're all happy, and they got the nice outfit in the kitchen and. And all that. And you're like, yeah, I know you. I know you're miserable. I know your kids drive you crazy. And I know that you don't wear those clothes ever. And. And I. And you just. And you can see it's like. It's like a stage play, almost.

[38:05] Jeff: Yeah, a hundred percent. This is actually one of those facts that I think a lot of people know, but maybe not. But a lot of the girls who take pictures themselves in the bathroom mirror, they're actually not taking a picture of themselves in the bathroom mirror. What they're doing is they have a high quality camera taking a picture of them holding their phone up as a selfie. And that just, again, it's just this fake reality. It's a hyper reality, as Bo Girard we put it. And everything is curated. And I actually feel. I feel sad for the younger generation that grew up with all this because they think that that's real. They see people, you know, they see people their age and they're hanging out on cruise ships and stuff like that. It's like, well, did they rent it? Are they taking a tour? You know, is that the one thing they've done in ten years? But you only noticed it because that's what they post all the time. It's just all curated and fake. Now, I hate to put it that sharper point on it, but it's. It's just what it is.

[38:56] Russell: And what do you think the long term consequences are going to be for this younger generation? I mean, we grew up when the Internet just came out and we saw, I don't know about you, but I saw a lot of stuff online that was absolutely insane, like the Afghanistan, Iraq war on live leak and some of those sites and all that. And again, parents had no idea what the Internet was. We did know what the Internet was. And so we're just on the Internet. No one's really monitoring. And so we're just exposed to all this content, whether it be extremely graphic, violent content, or even extremely pornographic content. And there was really, for a lot of kids, there was no filters whatsoever. The parents were like, I don't know what the Internet is, but the kids are on it and they're quiet. And so I actually have time to relax for a minute. And so whatever, they're going to be fine.

[39:51] Jeff: Yeah, I think a lot of them going to be screwed up. Things are going to be screwed up for a long time until they process a lot of that stuff, because a lot of those things are actually traumatizing, I would say. And I know that's kind of the word of the day, but it's. It's true that when you witness things that you're probably a little too young for, it does leave a lasting mark and it takes a while to process through it. And I couldn't imagine today being preteen girl or something like that and getting shown some of the shit that's on the Internet. It would turn me off of a lot of things. And even being a young boy, I remember, you know, we went on rotten.com and gore gallery and all that stuff.

[40:24] Russell: Oh, yeah, ogres.

[40:26] Jeff: And you're like, oh God. And that, that sits with you. It even sits with me now. Like, uh, watching a lot of the stuff that gets put out with these wars on Twitter and the rest. It's like, I don't know, at least I'm smart enough now. I'm like, you know, I don't need to watch this. I understand the evil and the tragedy this befall this world. I can move on. So I couldn't imagine someone who, you know, is still in their developmental years having to deal with that hundred percent.

[40:52] Russell: Well, and there was talk in Canada about, you know, passing some type of measure that, where people would need to register to be able to access these websites online. And there was a lot of discussion on both sides about the idea of censorship and the idea of a social credit system and the government regulating the Internet. And then there was the other side, the issue. People saying, like, these kids are just being exposed, especially children being exposed to such sexualized and pornographic material at a younger and younger and younger age. And we don't really, even to this day, we don't really understand the, the full effect that's having on people as they're getting older. I mean, I've, I had a guest on John Euler before and he was saying that the reason why they're seeing more sexual assault from, from younger and younger boys, teenagers, and that is because of the hyper sexualization online that they're exposed to, people are saying, well, then we need to regulate the Internet. Most porn sites now before, years ago, you would have to actually, I know you just clicked yes, but said you have to be 18, access this website. And if you, and if you hit yes, you're agreeing that you're 18 to enter in here. I know that's not stopping anyone from not hitting yes, but it's like, you know, is there a responsibility for these sites to try to reduce minors from entering these sites? And does that need to be government regulation? Does it need to be parents? I think it needs to be parents, but a lot of parents don't even think it's that bad. In fact, a lot of these woke parents seem to think that the more their kids exposed to degenerate pornography and sex stuff, the better they're going to be.

[42:42] Jeff: That's definitely a tough one. I inherently always lean against government intervention. I'd rather have this sit on the parents lap by far. But when it comes to this stuff, I actually don't know. I don't know how to deal with it. I think the timeframe for people getting aware of how to deal with it might be a little bit longer, there might be a lot more lasting damage. But on the other side, if you just say, hey, everyone has to sign in with their. Their government issue at id, and everything gets tracked and traced, and everything you see do say, I think that might have a long term worse outcome. It actually might not even take that long before it becomes a worse outcome.

[43:18] Russell: Oh, 100%. 100%. And, I mean, I will say this right now, I'm not in favor of that. I don't think that that's the right way to. To tackle it, but maybe making resources for blocking pornographic websites more available to parents and. And having better actual research done on the effects of, you know, hyper violence and hypersexuality on young minds.

[43:44] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, there is some good resources. Um, you got me thinking about. So it was probably about a year ago, maybe a little bit more. I, uh, I found. I used to watch noble tofu. If anyone who knows who noble tofu is, he's a. He's a Twitch streamer, plays a lot of super Mario world hacks, and I watched him through COVID, and he did a podcast with a gentleman who used to be in the Internet crimes against children unit, and they did a two hour interview, and they talked about a lot of precautions parents can take. A lot of the dark, dark stuff that goes on a lot of. And how to prevent it. I'm going to make sure I repost it. I'll send it off to you in DM's. But something that parents can do, at a minimum, would be watch that two hour episode, suffer through the, you know, the millennial humor, and. And get what's valuable of that, because a lot of this can really screw your kids up for life. And a lot of stuff is going on behind the scenes that, I don't know, parents should probably be aware of, and parents should probably be, uh, doing some sort of proactive approach, some sort of prophylactic to make sure their kids are going to come out okay on the other side.

[44:48] Russell: Well, I think for a lot of parents, it's difficult as well. When I was. When I was younger, when I was a kid, both my parents worked, and that. And one point, my mom didn't work. Once my dad got a different job, and. But no matter what happened, unless it was some major extenuating circumstance, every night at 530, we ate supper as a family, and it didn't matter. Didn't matter unless it was truly extenuating. We sat there and we ate supper as a family. Now, mind you, this is before smartphones, this is before. This is still when plasma tvs were out, when that was a thing, before the more modern tvs kind of took over and people didn't have tvs in every room type thing. But we ate supper every day and we debriefed about the day. There was always a debrief. Everyone kind of talked about their day, how things were going, things that were bugging them, stuff like that. And it's like a lot of families don't have this anymore. Everyone grabs their supper at different times because dad has to work late or mom has to work late, or the babysitter's there, or they bring fast food home and everyone grabs their stuff and they scurry off to their different areas to do their own thing. And so there's this missing unity of the family unit. And because of that, kids really feel like they can't talk to the parents because they don't know their parents. They don't know that they can talk to their parents about things that are upsetting them or distressing them.

[46:22] Jeff: Yeah, this is actually where I'll get pretty authoritative when it comes to family unit. Force it. Sorry, dad forced that to happen. Sorry, mom. You gotta force it. You don't want to be, like, too forceful because obviously that's not gonna engender any spirit of trust or, or communication, but you have to force that. You have to make it an actual priority. And I'll admit that, um, during my twenties, I. Sunday nights, I didn't want to go see mom and dad. I didn't want to have to deal with that. I just wanted my Sunday for myself. Um, and now, as my parents are older, I'm older. I wouldn't give up Sunday dinner for the world. I absolutely love it. I think that I liked it too, as a kid, being able to talk to my parents. And if that is really sunken for families nowadays, I think that's a terrible tragedy. I think people need to get back and talk to the people who know them best, who actually love them the most, that want the best outcome. I think those are the people you spend the most amount of time with and the people who don't know you. You should probably spend a lot less time.

[47:17] Russell: Do you think the school system is trying to become the parents for the children, like a surrogate parent these days?

[47:26] Jeff: Yes. However, I will put the caveat. I think at least in western Canada, we're a lot better at not being that way than other places in the world. But 100%, I don't know if you've looked into the WISC model, what's going on all around with castle and the rest.

[47:42] Russell: Tell me about the Wisc model.

[47:44] Jeff: So the WISC model is like, the whole school, whole child. I. Whole community. I don't know that much about it. I read tweets from my favorite people on Twitter about this, but the goal seems to be to push all sorts of social life into the schooling area. So that would be not just education, that would be community. That would be. That'd be healthcare, psychology and all the rest. Push it all into a centralized place, and that it just. It shouldn't be doing that. And that's why you hear a lot about parents rights these days and parents not having rights. And again, like we talked about quite a while ago at the start of this thing with taking the educations, well, you have a few bad parents out there, and now suddenly the state should be. The state should be the parents, and all parents should have no rights.

[48:31] Russell: Well, it's the old adage, won't someone just think of the children, damn it.

[48:35] Jeff: Reverend Lovejoy's wife. Yeah. Oh, somebody please think of the children.

[48:42] Russell: 100%. But it's. It's not thinking about the children for any type of real safety measure. It's just, you know, it's just a form of control. I. I think about, like I was talking today, I was at the vape shop today, picking up my nicotine vape, and I was talking with the owner, and she was saying that the government's really, really cracking down right now on the vape industry, and they want to get rid of flavored vape, and they want it just to be the flavor of tobacco, and that's pretty much it. And ban everything else because they think it's going to get kids addicted. And won't someone think of the children? And. And she's like, you know, it's an entire industry that's going to get quashed, and everyone's going to go back to big tobacco. Because if you're inhaling a vape and it tastes like tobacco, well, we might as well just go get tobacco. Someone just needs to think of the children here. Well, we need to eliminate entire industry that puts the profits of big tobacco and all the high taxes on tobacco products at risk. And we have to stop that because we need to think of the kids.

[49:50] Jeff: Yep. It's pernicious. It's effective, too. Right? You know, this. This bad thing happened, ergo, we need to do this thing. That's. That's how the dialectic works, man. It's just every time, it's like, government needs to fix this, government needs to fix this. All based on edge cases, all based on knee jerk reactions, and next thing you know, the government just controls it all.

[50:09] Russell: And then because the government controls it all, the government expands even bigger and it just becomes a self expanding apparatus.

[50:18] Jeff: But. But if the government can set the culture, and the culture can create the man, the man can create the state. Oh, we could spiral that off into a utopia. Next thing you know, we'll all think the same, right?

[50:29] Russell: Well, I might have to kill a few million useless eaters along the way, but, uh, we'll get there, right?

[50:35] Jeff: Hegel would be so proud.

[50:37] Russell: Yeah. What's your favorite book you read this year?

[50:42] Jeff: Oh, this year? Well, this year's just starting, right? So I can't really say there's not. Not too much good on this year, but within the last year, I would still say one of the best books. I don't even know if it was within last year, but Michael Malus's the White Pill is probably one of the best books I've ever been through. He just does such a good job. He does such a good job talking about something that we don't talk enough about, which is the horrors of communism, specifically in Europe. I also. And second book would be G. Van Fleet's Mao's America can't recommend enough. Currently, I'm stuck trying to get through Logan Lansing and James Lindsay's the Queering of the American Child. And it's. It's good. The thing is that I know it all because I've known Logan for a while, and I've been following James's works for forever. So I'm like, I know this, I know this, I know this. But it's laid out so well. But I'm like, ah. Like, I want new stuff to know. I don't want to talk about. About Halpern or. I don't think they get into Cliff yet, but Dyer or any of those people anymore. But I'm going to force myself through because it's worthwhile. Read. If you do not understand queer theory, you got to get that book.

[51:52] Russell: Best book you've ever read.

[51:54] Jeff: Oh, that's tough. I can't. I don't like putting best, but fiction wise, I think my favorite fiction book of all time would be his dark materials by. I can't think of his name. Philip Pullman. I think that's way up there. I'm also a big Kurt Vonnegut fan. I think Slaughterhouse five is a must read. But on the nonfiction side, 100% people need to read the Lucifer principle by Howard Bloom. It is. It's kind of the bridge, the gap between Dawkins, the selfish gene, and Jordan Peterson's work. Funny enough, if you actually read that book, as well as it's kind of seconds part, the sequel, global Brain, that's where the lobsters come from. It's not Jordan Peterson. It's Howard Bloom.

[52:40] Russell: Best horror book you've ever read.

[52:43] Jeff: I don't like horror books. No, not really. I don't know. I've read some Stephen King. I just. They're never compelling.

[52:50] Russell: What about, like, dystopian horror?

[52:53] Jeff: Dystopian? Oh, the road. Cormac McCarthy. That guy sets a vibe that the.

[52:59] Russell: Road is definitely screwed up. But I, but for myself personally, the most dystopian horror book I've ever read by far is I have no mouth and I must scream.

[53:10] Jeff: Oh, I'm gonna have to look that up. Definitely want to read that.

[53:14] Russell: It's a short story. It is very dystopian view of the. Of AI and what AI will end up end up being. You can actually listen to it for free online. And the author that. The author of the short story actually dictates it, and he does. Does a really good job at emphasizing certain points.

[53:36] Jeff: Yeah, I'm definitely putting that on a list. Oh, I totally forgot. You know, for dystopian, I mean, 1984, that's. That's just given, right?

[53:45] Russell: 1984. Yes. Yes. Extremely dystopian. I read brave new World years ago, and I kind of dismissed it a little bit. Now I read it. I read parts of it again recently, and I think we're far more likely to end up in a brave new world situation than we will a 1984 situation.

[54:09] Jeff: I think it'll be a conglomeration of both. But I do agree with you that it's more likely to be a huxleyan world. But that book, man, Huxley's a terrible writer.

[54:16] Russell: He really is. It's a difficult book to go through.

[54:21] Jeff: Well, during the pandemic, my mom was locked in, so we started a book club together, and I was like, well, you like to read. Let's read some non romance books. And I made it. That's. And I warned her. I'm like, Mike, you're going to hate this. But it has good talking points. It's just I don't like the way he writes. I think his style is crap.

[54:39] Russell: Well, I know in high school, I read Fahrenheit 451, and although I enjoyed the premise of the book, I thought the writing style of that book was terrible.

[54:47] Jeff: Yeah.

[54:48] Russell: Yeah, I struggled through that one.

[54:51] Jeff: It's funny how that works. Oh, look, we got electric kool Aid, acid test. That's definitely on the list. I just haven't got there yet. I actually want to bring it up because it's just been. It's. It comes and goes in the common culture is people are like, what the hell's with Lex Fridman? How's he a. How's he a thing? Right? And I'm about three quarters of the way through the idiot by Fedor Dostoevsky, and Lex Friedman's just the main character. He's Prince Michigan. That's. That's who he is. He's just trying to be that. So if any guys read russian stuff, give that a go. Might give you some context.

[55:24] Russell: Is there any final points that we didn't touch on that you wanted to mention before we wrap up here?

[55:32] Jeff: Hopefully the Oilers are winning. I missed the game so far. Not really. The main thing I would hope people do is just take a bit more time when they're dealing with information. Jacques Collille, if anyone knows doctor Rollergator out there on the Internet, he put up one about Jacques Collul. He talks about the current events, man, and just go look that up and read the whole statement. You can just go to Goodreads. He talks about how a lot of people get caught up in what the current event is, and they never take time to digest what they have, interact with what they've read and contemplated it. And I think that's one of the main issues we have with not making sense of our world, is we'll see a 32nd clip, and we'll make an opinion instantly, and we have to comment instantly. And all that does lead to bad outcomes. It just leads to poor interpretations. You haven't got the nuance. You haven't thought through. You don't know what's going on. So taking a step or two back, take a breather, you know, contemplate what you learned, and then moving forward is probably a better way to go. That's. That's what I'd like to leave people with.

[56:32] Russell: Awesome. Well, Jeff, I really appreciate you being on the show today. You're definitely the ass man of the show, and I appreciate that. I just want to give a quick plug here that you can visit the website, the canadian conservative.com, and on there, I do articles, and I also have done a few articles for wrong speak publishing as well, if you want to check those out and make sure you follow. Jeff, what's your Twitter handle?

[57:03] Jeff: Jeff, I am at unmitigated ass. And specifically, the a is capitalized for a reason. It's a joke. I also am on substack. I'm unmitigated. Jeff, I think. I don't know. I just started playing with that platform. Find me on Twitter. I do a bunch of weird stuff on there. See if you can deal with it.