GcuzVQGmRWg.srt

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Stromboli is not happy with the tangled 
mass,

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but then the crowd reacts very 
positively and then that confuses the 

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conscience because he thinks,
well look,

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this is horrible.
This guy's a tyrant like Pinocchio,

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making a fool of himself.
Everything turns into a tangled mess,

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but the crowd goes crazy and well,
the inner fool,

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that can be entertaining,
right?

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So it's hard to tell when the crowd,
especially out of spectacle,

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because that's this crowd is at a 
spectacle.

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You just don't know exactly why it is 
that they're responding positively,

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but you definitely give them what you 
want and you can see this look on 

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strombolis face.
It's like this false.

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Again,
this false kindness and generosity,

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public facing and oh well.
Anyways,

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the conscience is very confused and I 
really think this is an important thing 

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because I've often thought I spent a lot
of time thinking about Hitler and I was 

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thinking,
well,

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how do you get into a state like that?
You know,

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and you think,
well,

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he's a dictator and he led his people 
down a bad path.

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It's like,
that's not right.

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That is not what happened.
They had a conspiracy together and went 

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down a bad path.
Now think about it this way.

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If one person thinks something about 
you,

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it's like whatever,
right?

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But if five people tell you that,
well,

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what?
Then then to start to start not taking 

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that seriously.
It's kind of narcissistic.

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Right?
And if it isn't five,

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let's say it's 15 people tell you the 
same thing or act the same way towards 

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you.
It's like probably you should clue in,

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well what if you're a politician and 
you're trying out a bunch of different 

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ideas and you're good at interacting 
with the crowd,

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you're charismatic,
you watch the crowd,

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but you're not necessarily all that 
articulate.

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You don't have your values all straight 
now,

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but you're kind of angry too,
and maybe that's because you spent a 

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bunch of time in World War One,
world war one in the trenches,

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which was like no joke and all your 
friends got blown up you and then you 

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were unemployed and then you tried to be
an artist and that didn't work out even 

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though you were moderately talented and 
then maybe the economy fell apart 

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completely on you.

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Hyperinflation and then maybe there was 
a communist menace coming in from the 

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east and they're genuinely was and so 
you're not the world's happiest clam at 

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that point and you're talking to people 
who aren't that happy either because 

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they were also badly defeated in world 
war one and then they had a terrible 

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treaty.
They had decided they lost part of their

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territory and so the crowd's not happy 
and neither are you and there's reason 

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for it,
and so you start talking to them.

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You don't know what you're upset about 
and neither does the crowd,

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so you start to articulate some things 
about why you might be upset and some of

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them fall flat,
but you're paying attention to the 

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crowd,
so you stopped saying those things and 

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some of the things make the crowd really
wake up and listen,

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and so you start seeing more of those 
things.

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Right?
It's an.

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It's an unconscious dialectic between 
you and the crowd.

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It's mediated by consciousness,
but it's not like you're sitting there 

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saying,
although you might be,

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I'm going to this crowd more what it 
wants to hear.

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It's more sophisticated than that,
and so you do that thousand times and 

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you do that to ever increasing crowds 
and the crowd really starts to go mad 

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and they basically tell you that you're 
the savior of the nation.

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It's like at what?
How many bloody people have to tell you 

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that before you start to believe it,
you know?

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I would say with a typical person,
100,

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we'll do it now.
That'll get you going,

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man.
If 100 people tell you specifically why 

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you're special,
you're going to be thinking.

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Even if you're kind of humbled to begin 
with,

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you're going to be thinking,
Geez,

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there's got to be something to this man,
but if it's a million people and they're

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roaring their approval.

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Well,
and then when it's a whole nation,

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it's like good luck withstanding that.
There's just not a chance.

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How are you going to withstand that?
Now you could be like Gandhi and you 

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could have taken that into account 
beforehand because he did he read 

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tolstoy by the way,
he was a student of tolstoy and that's.

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It's very interesting because tolstoy 
was the person who developed the 

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techniques of nonviolence that gone to 
USD and tolstoy was also a deeply 

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religious writer apart from his novels,
which are not,

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I wouldn't say really in the religious 
category,

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although they're profound,
um,

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tolstoy stressed humility with 
nonviolence.

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He really stressed that and that's what 
Gandhi took to heart.

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So he lived a very,
very,

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very,
very simple bare bones,

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ascetic life.
And that was to kind of see if he could 

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keep his damn ego tamp down.
Well,

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the groundswell was building behind him,
you know,

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when he dressed really simply and he 
didn't own much and he ate very simply 

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and he just tried to stay away from the 
whole materialistic success element that

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would be an element of what would turn 
them into an actor and also inflate his 

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ego.

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And you know,
he seemed to do that pretty well.

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You know,
he certainly.

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Well,
he led a nonviolent revolution that 

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resulted in the,
in the independence of India.

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It also produced a terrible civil war 
and the separate separation of the 

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Muslim Indians from the Hindu Indians.
And,

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but I don't think you can precisely laid
out at the feet of Gandhi,

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right?
But,

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but what I'm saying is that you have to 
be an extraordinary person.

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You have to be extraordinarily wise and 
you have to take ridiculous precautions 

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if you're going to put yourself in the 
public sphere like that and expose 

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yourself to that kind of adulation 
without becoming a puppet of the crowd.

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And that's what happened to Hitler.
I mean it's not like he wasn't also a 

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conscious manipulator and surrounded 
himself by people who are propagandists 

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and all of that.
So there was a conscious element,

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but you got to think these things 
through and see how that dialectic 

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develops.
Like he learned how to appeal to the 

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darkest fantasies of the crowd.
He was really,

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really good at it and that was a 
dialectic process,

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right?
The crowd told them what they wanted to 

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hear and it's the crowds a mob at that 
point.

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So I don't have to take responsibility.
The fact that I'm screaming my approval 

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when I'm surrounded by a million people 
so I can scream my approval for whatever

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I want forever.
Whatever dark revengeful fantasy might 

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be playing out in my imagination because
I'm not going to be held accountable for

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it.