ver. And then of course that's what we want to happen. So if you saw that none of those suspensions had been reversed that would be DEFCON 25, worst thing in the world. You should be worried about that. But if you see things you think didn't seem right and you see some number of them get reversed, you start to see something that looks like balance returning to the system. It's sort of a system that will get out of balance probably on a regular basis but the public will weigh in and balance will be found. There will always be a few people you think should not have been banned but that will just always be the case. We live in a world where people don't have the same opinions. So I would say continue to watch this. You should continue to be very concerned about it. But at the moment it's showing signs that the slippery slope is not some direct march to getting rid of all conservatives. And that doesn't seem to be the case based on the evidence.

All right, I almost don't want to talk about this next topic but I'm forced into it. I really don't want to talk about this. I can't tell you how much I don't want to talk about the thing I'm gonna talk about next. But I have sort of an obligation to do it. It's actually just painful. I swear to God it hurts me and I don't mean that as an exaggeration. I feel physical discomfort on this next topic. I have to defend AOC. It gets worse. Wait a minute, it gets worse. I'm also going to defend Rashida Tlaib. I don't know how to pronounce it. Both of them are getting the fine people treatment this week. Do you know what the fine people is? That's where people took President Trump's quote about the fine people in Charlottesville. They dropped out the second part of his statement where he said I'm not talking about the Nazis and the white supremacists. So they cut that part out and then people think that he's saying the opposite of what he was saying.

Now when I point that out to people who believed that the president called racists fine people, what do they do? Let me give you some context so you see the puking already. People will be signing off like crazy here in a minute. When I point out to people that they just didn't read the transcript totally and when they do it's obvious that what they believed about the president was a hundred percent wrong and is completely clear because it says so right in the words, what do people say? Do they ever say, even once, do they ever say, "Oh my God, I guess I read that wrong. The whole time I've been duped. I changed my mind to the opposite of what I thought for three years"? Nobody does that. Or two years, whatever it is. Nobody does it.

I'm watching exactly the same thing happen with AOC with her "the world is going to end in 12 years because of climate change." When AOC said in whatever interview that if we don't do something about climate change the world will end or be destroyed in 12 years, I read that and I heard it when I listened to it and I said to myself, oh she doesn't mean literally the world is ending in 12 years. It's obvious in context that this is just hyperbole and that what she really means, to me it seemed obvious in context, that what she meant was if we don't get really, really serious in the next 12 years it'll be too late. Twelve was sort of a random even number. It could have been 10, could have been 15. I don't think that part was important. She was just saying if you don't do something super, super aggressive in the next decade-ish it's gonna be the end of the world. And the world meaning bad things happening with climate change. It doesn't really mean the end of the world. So when she says the world is gonna end she doesn't mean literally we all die, just bad things are gonna happen. When she says 12 years she doesn't mean 12 years. It should be obvious to anybody who heard that that she was using hyperbole.

Now when I point that out what do people say to me? They say exactly what they said on the other side when they heard the fine people statement wasn't true. Did they ever say, "Oh well now that you explained it to me I get it. He didn't mean fine people were racists. He meant the other people"? No, they never said it. They say, "I heard it with my own ears. It was literally what she said. Scott, stop trying to gaslight me. She said clearly and unambiguously in these words that in 12 years the world will come to an end because of climate change. How can you say she didn't say it? She said it directly in exactly those words." It's just the fine people thing in reverse. It's the other side having the same mental breakdown as the liberals do when they hear the fine people thing.

So here's what AOC said. That was my original interpretation. I think those of you who've been watching me on Periscope know that I never took the bait on that twelve-year thing. I'm not the one who ever thought that was ever serious. I didn't think she meant it seriously. I thought she assumed people would understand the context. But not so. Here's her tweet on it. So AOC says this is a technique of the GOP to take dry humor plus sarcasm literally and then quote fact-checking. And that's exactly what people were doing. They were taking her statement which was not a serious literal statement and they're fact-checking it as if it could have been meant literally. It's embarrassing. It's really kind of embarrassing because that's exactly what's happening. And she's so right.

Now let me stop for those of you who don't know this. I'm no fan of AOC's policies and I think she's a racist. I don't like her at all. But it's also true that she's good at persuasion. So I'm willing to say that she has some qualities which are high-end while I can disagree with other parts because I'm an adult. I can do that. So she gives her examples. She goes like the quote "world ending in 12 years" thing. Then she says you'd have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it's literal. I kind of agree. That's exactly what I thought when I saw people taking it literally. I thought to myself, subversion. Are they joking? Are they pretending they're taking it literally? You couldn't really be taking this literally. And then I observe that people are at least acting like they're taking it literally. And people are piling onto me on social media like exactly the same way the left piled on to me about the fine people thing. And they have the same attitude and they say it the same way. It's like it's Groundhog Day. All we did is change the topic but the way people are responding is identical.

"I heard her say it. Oh let me get the quote for you. Are you confused about the quote? Let me show you the exact words, Scott. How could you say there's something so clear? These exact words. How could you possibly say she doesn't mean it?" Well here's how I can say that. I know how words work. If you know how words work, in my case I'm a professional writer so it's sort of my professional career responsibility to know how words work. And in particular I'm sort of a world expert at knowing what a joke is. Thirty years has been my job. I know what a joke is. I know when somebody's serious. I know when they're exaggerating because I know how words work apparently. And I've told you this before. At least a third of the country doesn't have a sense of humor. And I mean that in the literal sense. The same way some number of people can't carry a tune. I would be one of them. The same way some people are blind. You know people have all kinds of different capabilities. And about a third of the public literally can't recognize a joke unless it's really obvious. And so she calls it dry humor and sarcasm. I don't think those are exactly the right words. She should have said hyperbole. But she doesn't want to say it probably because she doesn't want to lose the urgency that she put into the original statement because people sort of believ