Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 475: American Consensus

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Episode 475: American Consensus · Words & Numbers

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Today on Words and Numbers, JD Vance pleads for patience.
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Free speech and the FBI. A MAGA fanatic goes nuts.
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And Americans display consensus. All this and more coming up on
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Words and Numbers, the Civil original production.
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Check us out at civil.com. That's civl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
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This is words and numbers. Aunt, what's new and exciting in
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your world this week? This story comes from the FBIA
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veteran FBI employee who was then training to become a
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special agent, David Maltinski. He'd worked for the FBI for 16
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years and was almost finished with the special training that
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they go go through to become special agents when he's called
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into his into the office of his superior and given a letter
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saying that he was summarily dismissed.
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And he was being dismissed over what the FBI says is the
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inappropriate display of political signage, specifically
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in LGBTQ plus flag that he had that he was displaying at his
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workplace. Now, 1 can make all sorts of
1:22
arguments about whether an employer should allow that sort
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of thing. And the arguments become more
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complicated when that employer is the federal government,
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because First Amendment rules that apply to the federal
1:34
government don't apply to private sector.
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But this whole story becomes even more interesting when it
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comes out that that LGBTQ plus flag that he was displaying had
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previously flown over an FBI office in California and was
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given to him by the FBI. So the FBI has decided that a
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flag that the FBI gave to an FBI agent is inappropriate and
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sufficiently inappropriate to fire him over.
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Oh, yeah. But even worse than that, it was
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appropriate somehow for the FBI to fly the flag over its office
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building, but it's not appropriate for this for David
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to fly the flag at his cubicle. Well, I suspect that David's
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lawsuit is proceeding apace and will likely end with a sizable
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settlement of some kind. 11 would think, and frankly, I can
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see the need for what we might call special rules when it comes
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to people who are involved in law enforcement because you
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don't that's precisely the people that you don't want to
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display sides on any topic. Their purpose is to enforce the
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law equally, regardless of of who they're dealing with.
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And so to, to display something like this.
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And again, I, I don't have anything against the LGBTQ flag.
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It's not that, but rather I would be against, I think I
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would be against a police officer or anyone that that kind
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of role like an FBI agent displaying, how should I say, I
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was going to say political, but maybe that's even a bit too
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strong. But displaying any kind of a of
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a of a of an opinion in that fashion?
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It may be an ideological leaning of any kind.
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Right. Maybe that's the right word to
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use We. We all and and look, we all have
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ideological leanings and I know every FBI agent does one way or
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the other. But the appearance of
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impartiality is important, I think.
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You know. And I think, you know, if you
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wanted to go to what could be perceived as the exact opposite
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side, would you would you think the same about it?
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Don't tread on me flag. Yeah, I think so.
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Yeah, I think so. And, and I would submit this,
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the only flags that should be flown over governmental
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buildings of any variety are the American flag and the state flag
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in which they they exist. Yeah, yeah.
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And anything else is, I think, asking for a unique kind of
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trouble that we typically try to avoid.
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And that's going to, I think, be the bulk of our main episode
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today, right? That this idea that we we're all
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on the same page about certain things, but not about nearly
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everything. So let's maybe pay attention to
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what we have in common and let the rest drift.
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Yeah, I, I, I saw something interesting as well.
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And you might be paying closer attention to this than I am,
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given that you're an economist and all, but Donald Trump has
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really been out there beating the the table, telling everybody
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how great the economy is. And surely you've seen this in
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the last week or so. Oh yeah, I've seen that
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alongside record. And by record, I mean going back
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to 1952 record low consumer sentiment numbers.
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Yeah, and, and there's something interesting there.
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We, we, we got some hot criticism on a video from last
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week saying, well, if things are, if people are in the
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doldrums, then why is everybody traveling for Thanksgiving?
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And that, that's pretty reasonable point, right.
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So we may be looking at at one of those many instances where
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people say, yeah, everything's terrible, but it's not so awful
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for me. But yeah, I I suppose that
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happens a lot. Yeah, that's possible, except
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that the consumer sentiment survey asks specifically about
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the respondents own household and their own views on their own
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well-being. So it's not we're not asking
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them about how they think the economy's doing, but how they
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specifically are doing. Now what?
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Maybe if they answer those questions honestly.
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If they don't answer them honestly, that's still OK,
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provided however they're answering them now is the same
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as they've answered them in the past.
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Yeah, I guess that's. Right, we can make the.
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Comparison, yeah. So in in this do do they ask the
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same people over and over and over again or is it a random?
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Sample each time? No, it's a random sample each
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time. Yeah, and the numbers have been
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have been steadily falling since roughly 2018.
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So it's it's going to be fascinating to see how many
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people actually do travel on Thanksgiving.
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Yeah, I haven't looked. Yes.
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I haven't looked into it yet. But even there there's there's
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an odd thing that can arise in economics that you can see with
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certain goods. And I don't know that that's the
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case here, but it's possible. You can see with certain goods
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like travel, for example, travel goes up and you say, well,
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people must be wealthy because they're traveling more.
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When in fact, it could be, it could be the case that they
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would rather have spent the money on a cruise or something
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else or a new car and they can't afford that.
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So they're going to, they didn't do that.
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So they've got a little bit of extra money left, they're going
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to go do this thing. So it's possible that it
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actually is is reflecting something that that's wrong
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that's going on. But we'll do our best to figure
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it out over time. But the interesting thing here,
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Ant, is that as Trump is telling us that everything is great and
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and he just keeps right on saying it.
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And he says that the affordability business,
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everybody's talking about affordability.
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Now that's a Democrat talking point.
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Well, OK, it's not, but OK. JD Vance, on the other hand,
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came out today or Thursday, so yesterday, and said that the
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Trump administration faces growing skepticism over this
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economic boom, he said. Here's the quote, We get it.
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We hear you. We know there's a lot of work to
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do. As much progress as we made,
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it's going to take a little time for Americans to feel that.
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And then he asks for patience. So we've got the president
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saying one thing, and now the vice president saying not
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exactly the opposite thing, but certainly not the same thing,
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right? Right.
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And. What do you make that's?
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Really, you know, it's one of two things.
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Either Vance is going rogue a little bit, thinking I got a
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plan for 2028 and I can't. I got to be seen as the more
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reasonable one, or this is going to become a concerted effort on
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the part of the Trump administration to back off the
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claim that the economy is great and then assert that the economy
9:10
is getting great. And I would actually right, that
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would be a smart play if you're looking at a collapse in the
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midterms, yes, which are are less than a year out at this
9:23
point, so. Yeah.
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And the, the, the problem is it's these tariffs that are
9:28
hanging around his neck. If it weren't for that, if
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everything else were the same, he could say probably with a
9:36
straight face, that, look, we've inherited this economy from
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Biden. It's going to take a while to
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get things ginned up. People would, I think, buy that.
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Even some economists would buy that, I think.
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But the fact that he did what he did with tariffs, there is no
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question that he's responsible for much of what's happening.
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Trump keeps blaming the Biden administration and Vance in this
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statement blamed the Biden administration and this is a
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long standing tradition in American politics.
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You could be 3 1/2 years into a four year presidential term and
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still be blaming the previous administration.
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Right, right. Right.
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And, you know, at some point, you've got to own it.
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And, you know, for me, that point has come and gone.
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And I think that's the case with a lot of independence now.
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It's even the case with a lot of Republicans.
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Now, we've said repeatedly that much of what goes on in the
10:33
economy can't be pinned on the president, both the good and the
10:38
bad. It's the economy does what the
10:40
economy does. There are some exceptions.
10:43
Yeah. The tariffs can.
10:45
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11:39
Anyway, that brings us to the foolishness of the week, and we
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stay in Magaworld for this one and this this one's a barn
11:49
burner. And do you remember that
11:52
Jackass, Jesse? Jesse Smollett, who who the the
11:57
black actor claimed that a bunch of guys in MAGA hats came up and
12:02
attacked him and it when he was walking in Chicago in the dead
12:07
of winter at 3:00 AM to go to Subway.
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What part of that story didn't make a lick of sense?
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Oh wait, all of it. And everybody knew that Jesse
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was lying right from the start, but the race element was was
12:24
right up front. And black people didn't want it
12:28
to be happening, and white people didn't want to say
12:31
anything. But the truth came out.
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And Jussie Smollett has been the butt of every joke, rightfully
12:38
so. Well.
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He went to prison for this, didn't he?
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I I I believe there was an issue of his doing some time.
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Enter the mag of people saying hold my beer.
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If we can make this even crazier, there's this woman who
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worked for a Republican representative, Jeff Van Drew.
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Her name is Natalie Green. She's 26 years old and she and a
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friend were out when a group of terrible people attacked her and
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wrote Trump whore on her stomach and wrote Jeff Van Drew is
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Racist on her back and and carved a bunch of deep, deep
13:29
lines into her shoulder, neck and face.
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It's a mess. I mean, the pictures are out
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there. Go ahead and look for it.
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Matter of fact, the site that I found it on refers to her as
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Trumpy Smollett. Anyway, her hands and feet were
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zip tied and her shirt was pulled up over her face and her
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as her friend frantically called 911 to get the authorities
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there. It didn't seem odd I guess that
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her friend didn't try to get the zip ties off her and put her
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shirt back down before the police got there it.
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And if I found you all tied up with your shirt over your head,
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I'd fix you up before the police arrived.
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Right, right. But the the police took one look
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at this nonsense and said, oh, come on, come on.
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And on her phone, she had searched zip ties near me.
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She didn't come. She didn't know where.
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To go buy a zip tie and then they found the body scarring
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artist who did the work that she paid $500 to get all carved up
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for. Was was was it actually carved
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or was it it make Oh. No, it's it's carved into her.
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Oh wow, wow. Yeah, she did it.
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She did a hell of a job on herself.
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That that this woman is clearly nuts.
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I mean, clearly. But from this point forward, we
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don't point at Jussie Smollett anymore.
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We're going to point at this one because this is the most
15:05
ridiculous version of. And you see this kind of
15:09
nonsense all the time, right? Typically on college campuses,
15:13
people will say, oh, I found this racist thing. 99.8 times
15:19
out of 10, the person who found it is the person who created it.
15:23
And then everybody says, well, we all lost our minds over it
15:27
and he shouldn't have done it, but it was to raise awareness.
15:30
This guy, it's always this kind of nonsense.
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Well, you know, if you want to raise awareness, talk like a
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human being, don't make shit up. And that's, that's what this
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person did. It's what Jesse Smollett did.
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And everybody needs to stop it. Well, this is you said about
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the, you know, the writing and the the carving.
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All of that is reminds me very much of Tawana Tawana Brawley.
15:58
Tawana Brawley back in the 1980s, Nineteen 90s.
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Yeah, she she claimed to have been graped by a bunch of white
16:07
guys and dropped in a garbage can near her house.
16:11
Al Sharpton came running to the rescue, as Al Sharpton often did
16:16
back when he had a bouffant haircut.
16:18
And it turns out that Tawana was out partying that night and
16:22
didn't want to face the wrath of her parents.
16:25
No, no, but for a brief, shining moment, it was the pinnacle of
16:30
racist behavior. Just like this would have been
16:33
if anybody took this lady seriously.
16:35
But but interesting, it's interesting to think about the
16:39
how this plays out because in the Tawana case and of course,
16:42
again back in the late 1980s, that it was a, it was a decent
16:49
amount of time, I want to say months.
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Oh, yeah, Perhaps longer. Quite a while before.
16:54
Quite a while before the truth came out, and before, actually,
16:58
before anybody's stopped to say, wait a minute, this doesn't
17:01
sound right, but the people would be do.
17:05
Asking those questions immediately in this case makes
17:10
me think that maybe, maybe we've turned a corner since the late
17:14
1980s. We've all become somewhat more
17:16
reasonable. I, I think that's right and, and
17:19
more suspicious, which is unfortunate, but the more
17:23
reasonable aspect of it is actually heartening because we
17:27
don't look at these things anymore and say, Oh my God,
17:30
people are terrible. We, you know, and, and you know,
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I looked at this and I thought this woman is, is ill.
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This woman has a this woman has a problem.
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And even her former employer, the representative said, we hope
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she's getting the help she needs.
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It's what else can you say about it?
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But if this isn't the foolishness of the week, nothing
17:53
is. Anyway, from there we go back to
17:58
the other side of the street and we're going to talk about today
18:03
things that apparently Aunt the American people have broad, I
18:08
would even say wholesale agreement on which, Yeah, as as
18:13
we live and breathe, we we don't hear much about what we agree
18:18
on. We don't hear reportings of what
18:21
we agree on. Right.
18:22
You don't turn on the Evening News and find things that we all
18:26
say. Yeah, that seems about right.
18:29
But it it turns out that there might well be far broader
18:34
consensus in the United States than people think.
18:38
And if it's true right now, probably been true for a long
18:42
time. Yeah, I was.
18:44
We'll put a a link to it, I guess.
18:48
Could we do that in the show note?
18:49
Yeah, in the in the comments. This this is a in.
18:52
The show notes and in the comments on YouTube.
18:54
This is a study that comes out of Gallup with in conjunction
19:00
with Kettering, and it's titled the Democracy for All Project to
19:05
subtitle Is Democracy Working? This just came out this month.
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What jumped out at me immediately before we get to the
19:13
consensus part, I'm scrolling through the report now and I
19:16
can't find it, but it showed up very early in the report asking
19:22
people their views on various things.
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I think there was a set of four or five items there and two of
19:31
them jumped out at me as the two the two things that I, I think
19:37
are fundamental to constructive dialogue.
19:40
If you've got these two things, you kind of don't have to worry
19:43
about anything else. And they are.
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The first question was, is, is violence never OK for settling
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disputes in? No, hang on, hang on, hang on.
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It was about political goals. Oh, for political goals, yeah.
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See, I'm trying to find the thing.
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I can't find it. I've got any violence it it it
20:08
is never OK for people to use violence to achieve a political
20:13
goal is the state. Yes, I've got it right here.
20:15
Yeah. It's never OK for people to use
20:17
violence to achieve political goal. 83% of respondents said
20:22
yes, that's correct. Yeah.
20:24
And yeah, think about that for think about this for a minute.
20:28
And because, and, and I don't want this to sound like anything
20:33
other than what I mean, but of course it's OK to use violence
20:38
to achieve a political goal. That's what the American
20:43
Revolution was. So is it never OK?
20:50
Well, it's almost never OK. And I bet some of the 16% who
20:54
said it's sometimes OK have the thought I had.
20:58
Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point.
21:00
I bet the 83% would be even bigger if they said accepting
21:05
things like the American Revolution they create as a
21:10
question, right? Yeah, I'm going to assume here
21:13
that people answered from from the standpoint of where they're
21:18
standing now. So within the confines of of the
21:20
world as we know it, where I am, Yeah, it's.
21:23
Ethical violence, that's never OK.
21:25
I think that's right. I really do think that's right.
21:28
But I bet there's some in that 16% who would have been in the
21:34
never OK category if. Right question if you'd.
21:38
So I think it's it's at least 83% say this.
21:43
Yeah. Right and.
21:45
And you can stop and think about that for a minute.
21:47
That's, you know, that's well, well above 2/3, which we think
21:51
of as, you know, well, that's the Super majority. 2/3 is an
21:55
insurmountable number of people, right?
21:58
You can't. You can't get to 2/3 in the
22:02
United States. That's crazy.
22:04
And yet this is well past it. So that there's something here
22:10
that's fundamental to the way with the way we see ourselves.
22:14
There. So amongst this set of of
22:17
initial questions, there were two that jumped out at me as if
22:20
you've got these two, you're OK. That was the first violence is
22:24
not OK. The second and the question,
22:27
it's, it's binary, right? So you choose one or the other
22:30
and the one says there are facts and then there are opinions.
22:34
And the other says facts are just opinions and points of
22:38
view. 88% of people said there are facts, there are opinions.
22:44
Yeah. Now, if you've got that, you've
22:46
got the basis for civil dialogue because we understand we might
22:50
not agree on what those facts are, but we understand that
22:53
there are facts and we're whatever our disagreement is,
22:56
we're going to settle it with some other way other than
22:59
violence. And that second question, it is
23:04
evidence of the incredible failure of the leftist Academy
23:11
with Ohio. Yeah.
23:13
With telling every single person that they get their hands on
23:18
that all morality is subjective. Yep, I got a poll here with 88%
23:26
saying no it's not, and like you say, and you say very correctly,
23:30
that 8088% is going to disagree on whether this fact is true or
23:37
not, right? Whether this is in fact a fact
23:41
or not. But they all agree that there
23:45
are facts, period. Moral relativism doesn't exist
23:51
in a universe in which 88% of the population claims that there
23:55
are facts and that there are opinions, and these are
23:58
radically different things. And as you say it, it is
24:02
astounding, given what we see in higher education with relativism
24:09
and also what you start to get whiffs of in in public schools,
24:13
the same kind of thing filtering down there of, well, you know,
24:16
you, it might be right for you, but it's not right for me.
24:20
It might be a fact for you, but isn't for me in that stuff is.
24:25
I cannot emphasize this enough. That runs the gamut through
24:29
higher education. You're going to see that
24:31
everywhere, perhaps, perhaps with the exception of a science
24:35
lab, where if you mix these two chemicals, they explode.
24:38
And it doesn't matter what your opinion is, that's what's going
24:41
to happen. You've, you've just gone blind
24:43
when you put the magnesium into the fire, right?
24:45
There's just no way around this. But this finds its fullest,
24:50
fullest expression. And in this nonsense, you see,
24:54
when people say things like, well, my truth is, and you don't
24:58
have a truth, there is a truth. Either you participate in it or
25:04
you don't. You may have certain aspects of
25:08
your life that other people don't share and you might want
25:11
to express those things in public.
25:14
Fine, you should do that. But you don't have a, a truth
25:18
that's peculiar to you. What a what a bunch of red hot
25:21
nonsense that is. But when, when you start to take
25:24
a look at these things, it's kind of astonishing.
25:29
The one that got me, it's weird. I didn't go right for political
25:33
speech, right, Which is kind of what you're talking about.
25:36
The combination of reasonableness paired with
25:41
reasonableness paired with a prohibition on political
25:44
violence yields certain outcomes to you.
25:47
And I, I think you're right. I, I think without question.
25:51
And it's, it's heartening to see.
25:53
The one that got me was what they called and, and here's
25:57
where you always have to pay attention.
26:00
They called it the multiculturalism section, and I
26:04
can feel everybody's backbones going straight up right now
26:08
because multiculturalism was just another stab at affirmative
26:13
action that was then later became DEI and will later become
26:19
something else because the civil rights industry stays busy.
26:24
All right, it's coming back. We just don't know what it's
26:26
going to be called yet. Just yeah, they're just going to
26:28
call it something else. And it's always a a bunch of
26:31
nonsense. But the question that was asked
26:35
did not use the word multiculturalism, right?
26:38
Isn't, isn't that something? Because I bet you'd get
26:41
different answers if you use the word.
26:44
Oh yeah, I. Absolutely.
26:46
But the question that was asked, or the statement that people
26:50
reacted to more appropriately, the United States is stronger as
26:54
a nation because it has people from different races, religions,
26:57
and cultures, 84%. 84% said yes, 84% isn't that.
27:04
That's just unbelievable. In this.
27:07
I'm so happy about it, but I'm astounded.
27:10
I am too, but let's remember it's 2025 as we speak and
27:16
there's a movement afoot to remove people who are of
27:21
different races and cultures from our presence.
27:25
But it it turns out that 84% of us think that's actually a
27:29
strength. And, and I happen to agree I'm
27:33
in good company here, but somebody like James Madison
27:36
would have agreed to who in the Federalist said, you know, you
27:39
want to have a multiplicity of interests in society because in
27:44
some way they cancel each other out, right?
27:47
When, when one group is able to take control of, of governing
27:53
institutions, it can then inflict its will with impunity
27:58
on everybody else. But if there are so many
28:02
interests and they have these cross cutting currents, right?
28:06
So think about it like this. A white person can be a
28:09
Catholic, a Hispanic is very likely to be a Catholic.
28:14
They may have very little in common, and yet they go to
28:16
church together every Sunday. And and that, that creates a
28:20
bond of a certain kind, right? And you see, and that their
28:26
children might play baseball together, they might go to the
28:30
same school, they might have nothing to do with one another.
28:34
And yet they do end up knowing each other in a way.
28:38
And that softens our hostilities toward one another.
28:42
And it makes it less likely that when one group gets a numerical
28:46
majority, they're very likely to go over after another group,
28:50
because in many meaningful respects, they are the same.
28:54
Group, right, right. It reminds me of when we used to
28:59
travel, we would spend lots of times in airports and, and at
29:04
the end I'm flying back home to, you know, flying to the
29:08
Pittsburgh airport and I get in line there at Southwest and
29:12
they're all Pittsburghers. And you can tell because I'm
29:15
typically we travel in the winter time and they've got all,
29:18
they've got this dour look of, Oh my God, I'm going back to
29:21
Pittsburgh in the dead of winter and this and, and it filled me
29:25
with such, with such happiness that they're my people.
29:29
I understand them. And and still to this.
29:32
Day I see a flight going to Pittsburgh and I look with these
29:35
are my people, you know, we have that in common.
29:38
It fills me with happiness when I see a bunch of miserable
29:41
Pittsburghers, too, because that generally means the New England
29:44
Patriots have just had their way with the Steelers again.
29:50
But we'll take that up in a few weeks when this Well, that, no,
29:54
the Steelers beat the Pats this year.
29:56
Yeah, we'll, we'll see what happens in the playoffs.
29:59
The thing that, that I think about whenever I think about
30:02
multiculturalism and I want to go back to Catholicism for a
30:05
minute. I, I was raised Catholic, which
30:09
could explain some of my worldview.
30:12
I'll just leave it at that. And I, I went to Catholic High
30:15
School in the great city of Waterbury, CT And we were
30:21
associated with the Sacred Heart High School.
30:23
And we were associated with Saint Anne's Church, which was
30:26
on the, the corner more or less adjacent to the school.
30:31
So every time we had to have a big mass for something, we'd
30:34
drag our asses down to Saint Anne's.
30:36
And if you know anything about Catholicism, St.
30:39
Anne's, that's a French, French Canadians all have Saint Anne's
30:43
churches, but that's, that's just a French Canadian church
30:47
and everybody knows it. And yet not a lot of French
30:51
Canadians in Waterbury, CT. Well, at least not in 1985 when
30:57
I was in high school. The neighborhood that that
31:00
church was in had in fact been a French Canadian neighborhood.
31:04
And as often happens, the French Canadians showed up poor, got
31:09
well off, and moved. You don't move a church.
31:14
It stayed. Who took their place in the
31:16
French Canadian neighborhood? Over time, the correct answer
31:20
turned out to be Puerto Ricans. So the people around Saint
31:25
Anne's church were Catholic Puerto Ricans, and they would
31:29
all go to Saint Anne's on Sunday and hear Mass in French.
31:37
Oh my God, that's funny. Did it, did it not occur to
31:42
anybody that they should probably change the language
31:44
given the parishioners? No, it was a distant third
31:48
language for them, right It it might as well have been a Latin
31:52
Mass for that. Oh my God.
31:54
But but the French Canadians who had lived there would come back
31:58
for mass. So French Canadians and Puerto
32:03
Ricans would be in the same room.
32:05
They were functionally the same people, right?
32:07
But yeah, but there was, there was no reason to think of them
32:11
as such unless you walked in and saw it.
32:13
And that's the kind of multiculturalism that I think
32:17
about, right? And or the kind when I, I went
32:20
to Iraq and I was trying to explain to my students what it
32:25
was like to live in the United States because they really
32:28
wanted to know. They when I first got there they
32:33
they asked me what gang I was in.
32:36
They thought all. Americans were in gangs.
32:39
All Americans are either Crips or Bloods.
32:43
And I had to explain, no, you need to watch fewer music videos
32:48
and more documentaries because getting the wrong idea here.
32:53
But I, I started talking in class and I and you know, that
32:57
given that their culture was 98 or so percent Muslim, there are
33:03
certain realities that flow from that, certain social realities.
33:07
And one of them is that they're all up in each other's business
33:10
every day of the week because they see each other constantly
33:15
right there at the same institution together all the
33:19
time. And I saw the same sort of
33:21
outcome when I was living in northern Utah, where?
33:25
Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds like what you've said
33:27
about, yeah, the Mormons. Exactly the same, but but one
33:31
day I was trying to explain what it meant not to know what my
33:35
neighbors were up to. And I said, look, I've lived in
33:37
the same house for 10 years. I only know one of my neighbors
33:42
names and I don't know where any of them go to church or if they
33:47
even do. And they they couldn't believe
33:50
it. But I always thought that was a
33:53
real strength. There are some things that we
33:56
just leave in the private space. Everybody goes off and they do
34:01
whatever the hell they want. And you know, I can go to the
34:05
Greek festival the same way the Greeks can come to the Irish
34:09
Fair. And we all did that back where I
34:12
came from. We all thought it was great.
34:15
Nobody thought it was cultural appropriation.
34:18
We thought it was fun to go see how other people lived.
34:21
And it was interesting and we would ask them questions and
34:24
they delighted in the questions because it showed that other
34:28
people actually appreciated what they saw.
34:31
And that's The thing is I'm listening to you.
34:33
I'm I'm picturing your view of I'll use the word
34:37
multiculturalism as people bringing their various cultures
34:41
together and sharing them, whereas actually so often it.
34:44
Should have been met. Right.
34:45
Yeah. The official multiculturalism is
34:48
the opposite of you have your culture and it does not mix with
34:51
my culture. I mean, that dates back to that.
34:54
We tried that in the United States, basically 19, Yeah,
34:58
prior to the 1960s. They should have called it
35:01
cultural balkanization because that's really what they were
35:04
pushing. And, you know, when cultures
35:07
come into contact with each other, yeah, there's sometimes
35:11
some conflict, but there's always evolution.
35:15
This, this culture takes the best of that.
35:18
The other one takes the best of these three.
35:21
Look, we have Taco night here at my house once a week.
35:26
I learned to cook tacos from a woman who spoke no English in a
35:30
Taco truck in Pomona, CA. It was the best Taco I ever had.
35:35
It was unbelievable and I I talked her into letting me come
35:39
into the truck to watch her cook.
35:41
I have taught scores of people how to make pasta sauce the way
35:46
my mother did my Italian mother for decades.
35:50
I I would love to have seen that someone looking like you talking
35:56
their way into a Taco truck, into the Taco truck with someone
36:00
who doesn't even speak English. She probably thought that she
36:02
was being held up. No, no, it was the easiest thing
36:06
in the world because I walked up and I started talking to her and
36:09
she said no, no English, no damn it.
36:13
And I, I looked at a guy and I said, you speak English?
36:15
And he said yes. And I could tell already that he
36:18
spoke Spanish. And I said, tell her that this
36:21
is the greatest thing I have ever eaten and I want to see how
36:24
she does it. And he did.
36:26
And she beamed and she just waved her arms and said yes,
36:30
yes, yes, that's great. She just got great.
36:34
She point, she pointed at everything as she did it.
36:36
And I figured it out and I've been cooking it ever since.
36:40
Turns out you don't just brown the meat.
36:41
There are other steps. White people, when they make
36:44
tacos, brown the meat. They throw some onion in and
36:46
they call it good. That's that's not how you make
36:48
that. That is not how you make tacos.
36:50
And if you want to know, send me an e-mail and I'll tell you.
36:53
James and I are delighted to be working with Civil.
36:55
For years we have been pushing people to think about how we can
36:59
make the world a better place. Civil's mission of upgrading
37:02
society fits exactly with what we have been talking about for
37:06
years. Civil helps us by allowing us to
37:08
do what we do best, which is researching topics that are
37:12
important and communicating these to our listeners in ways
37:15
we hope they find enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
37:19
content, including our podcast Words and Numbers and our new
37:23
lecture series, Words and Numbers Live, visit civil.com.
37:27
That's civl.com. I want to get back to this study
37:32
from Gallup because there's some, there's fascinating things
37:35
in here. You know, we've just talked
37:37
about a couple of them, but almost almost everything in
37:40
here. And it's interesting because I'm
37:42
going to, I'll tell you the opposite in a moment, but almost
37:44
everything in here has the respondents agreeing
37:48
overwhelmingly, like 70%, eighty percent, 90% agreement in One
37:54
Direction. And if there was so much
37:57
agreement throughout all the questions and there's what, 28
38:01
pages in this report, I was interested in places where there
38:07
wasn't agreement because there were a few.
38:10
I wanted to know what's going on there.
38:12
And I found a couple here. One question was that change,
38:17
does change happen too fast or is it happening at the right
38:22
pace? I believe they're talking about
38:24
with societal change, and that was split pretty evenly, 49
38:29
percent, 49%. So it's happening too fast.
38:33
Know what's happening at the right pace.
38:35
I would bet my life that if you controlled for age it wouldn't
38:39
be split at all. Let's look at that, see if I can
38:43
find it easily here, because all of these questions that they
38:49
ask, they breakdown like that by age, by education, by political.
38:54
Affiliation. I would bet anything that young
38:56
people think it's happening just fine and old people think it's
39:00
happening too fast. Yeah, so here it is.
39:03
Over the past 25 years, cultural changes have happened too fast
39:08
versus they've happened at a reasonable pace.
39:10
And that's, that's the split 5050 there.
39:14
And I am not, oh, I'm not seeing that broken.
39:18
I'm not seeing that one broken down by age.
39:22
But I know, yeah, because I did see it somewhere else in here
39:24
broken down by age. And it is, as you suggest,
39:28
there's not a huge difference, but there is a difference that
39:31
the younger people say that, yeah, change is happening at the
39:35
right pace. Older people say, no, it's not.
39:38
And you get a split. Democrat, Republican, as you
39:40
would imagine, right, Because Republicans being conservative,
39:44
they're more resistant to change.
39:45
Democrats less so. And so you, you get that
39:49
difference there. But put everybody together and
39:51
it's 5050. There's another question that
39:53
came out roughly 5050. Government should be responsible
39:57
for meeting people's basic needs.
40:01
I thought for sure. That was going to go over 50%
40:07
that yes, government should be responsible for basic for
40:11
people's basic needs. And yet it's split almost,
40:14
almost exactly. Close enough that the difference
40:17
is probably random noise. And I, I find that one very,
40:21
very difficult to swallow. I believe it's true.
40:25
I, I don't want to give the wrong impression.
40:26
I believe that it's correct in in.
40:30
I believe the numbers are correct, but it bothers me that
40:35
half of the population thinks the government should cover
40:38
them. Yeah.
40:39
Now the the opposite side of the question was the one side of the
40:42
question was government should be responsible for meeting
40:44
people's basic needs. The opposite side of the
40:46
question was the individual's people should be responsible.
40:50
So those were the two options you had.
40:53
Interestingly, or maybe not interestingly, when you break it
40:57
down by political affiliation, Democrats go hard like 70%
41:03
toward government should handle the basic needs.
41:07
Republicans go equally hard, 70% toward individuals should,
41:12
should satisfy, should handle basic needs.
41:14
And this is this is something I've seen a lot as I travel the
41:20
country. I was giving a talk in North
41:22
Carolina recently and usually the people I'm speaking with are
41:26
rural, rural people and consequently tend to break
41:32
Republican. There was a woman sitting next
41:34
to me who clearly broke Democrat and seemed to be new to the
41:39
whole group. In turns to me, I guess figuring
41:44
that I was a college professor, so I was a kindred spirit, turns
41:47
to me and asks what's up with all the Republicans in the room
41:52
And and I said to her. Election.
41:55
Take a look at the election mass.
41:57
Well, I said this is something it, it's not surprising to me
42:01
because I've seen the same phenomenon.
42:03
You can see the numbers as well. When you have low population
42:07
density like you have in rural areas, people tend Republicans
42:12
strongly. It's in the high density areas
42:15
like the cities that they tend Democrat.
42:19
And I wonder if we're picking up the same thing here, that when
42:24
you're in a rural environment, you there government is scant.
42:30
You can't rely on government. You rely on yourself, your
42:33
family, your neighbors. And so naturally you, you look
42:37
at government not as something that can help, but that's
42:40
something more often than not gets in the way.
42:43
Meanwhile, in the high density areas in in the city, there's
42:46
government all over the place. You need something you call up
42:48
or you go to the office and they do whatever they do.
42:51
You're talking about a physical presence, which I I appreciate,
42:55
but let let's not forget that. Boy, do I want to say a
42:59
majority. I think I do.
43:01
A majority of welfare checks are mailed out to rural addresses.
43:05
Yes. Yeah.
43:06
Right. So so there's that.
43:08
And that's government providing basic needs.
43:12
So. Right.
43:13
You know this. How do you square that?
43:16
And and how do you even, how do you comprehend basic needs?
43:19
I understand that when you're doing a poll, you can't drill
43:23
down into everything. You have to at some point say
43:26
that's the question we're going to ask.
43:28
But what's what constitutes a basic need, right?
43:32
Is it housing that that seems to be a basic need for everybody?
43:36
I don't want to provide it for everybody.
43:39
Food certainly is on the list. Medical care probably on the
43:43
list. Boy, you know, we we've gotten
43:47
to 6070% in the economy, we've gotten the 6070% of the economy
43:52
without even talking about the hard cases.
43:56
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
43:58
So I, I don't know what to make of it.
44:00
It's just disheartening that 50% of the people would give
44:03
government that kind of authority.
44:06
Yeah, yeah, because it comes with strings attached always.
44:11
In fact, it's interesting. I lived for a number of years in
44:15
the middle of West Virginia, very rural area.
44:18
And when I first moved there, they were talking about they,
44:23
there's a bridge in the village that need to be refurbished.
44:27
And they're talking about, you know, having some fundraisers
44:30
and doing this and that. And I, I kind of looked
44:33
quizzically at them and said, well, certainly there are state
44:36
grants we can apply for. Oh my God, You know, you would
44:41
have thought that. Well, you could think all kinds
44:44
of things. But the fact is people were
44:46
astounded that I would say that. And I said, what?
44:48
The money is out there, why don't we look for this?
44:51
And they said in response, yes, the money's out there, but it
44:55
comes with strings attached. We're going to have to do things
44:58
the way they want it done, and we're not prepared to do that.
45:02
Love those people. Yeah, yeah.
45:04
And they're they're actually correct.
45:07
And you know, you can probably get a group of people together
45:10
and fix a bridge. I'm just saying, yeah, and
45:14
that's what we did. Yes, that seems perfectly
45:16
reasonable to me. Get back to me when it collapses
45:19
and four people die, and then we'll probably have to have
45:22
another conversation. But you know, I take the point.
45:26
The one that grabbed my attention the most, I think in
45:31
the one that surprised me the most, let's put it that way, was
45:35
about the influence of the wealthy.
45:38
And you know, we talk we we talk about this.
45:40
Are you you wanted to talk about this too.
45:42
I could tell by the look on your.
45:43
Face, I've got. I've got a note on that.
45:45
I'd forgotten it. Yes, yes.
45:48
All right, well, I'll just kind of tee it up for you and then I,
45:52
I think I'll have something to say after you as well.
45:55
But the the statement was wealthy individuals and
45:58
businesses interesting should be limited and how much they can
46:03
advance political candidates or causes they support.
46:07
Now that's a violation of free speech and property rights.
46:12
You know, no. Matter how you, no matter how
46:14
you cut it, if you're saying people and we, then we can argue
46:19
about businesses later. But if you if you're saying
46:21
people should not be allowed or should be limited, you're saying
46:27
that you can only speak so much and you can only spend so much
46:31
of your money in the way you want to well.
46:33
All right. 80. 3% yeah and 83. I interpret it with a little a
46:39
little more charity. I read it less as as people
46:44
looking to squelch others freedom of speech than it than
46:47
it is people wanting to stamp out cronyism.
46:53
I I this shouldn't? Have an inside track.
46:56
I, I think that's ultimately right.
46:58
And you know, you call it cronyism.
47:00
I refer often to oligarchy. You know what?
47:04
When a, a very small group of people is able to capture a
47:09
certain portion of the government, either by their fame
47:13
or their money, whatever the reason, you now have a problem.
47:19
It's a government problem in the end because the government
47:23
allows itself to be captured. But if you expect people in the
47:28
government to be, you know, good people, but you're out of your
47:32
mind. They have never been and they
47:34
never will be. Some of them are, but as a rule,
47:38
they're not. And I've, I've said this many
47:41
times before, people who achieve the highest levels of power,
47:46
whether you like them or not, are more often than not
47:51
psychopaths. That's how they got there.
47:55
They crawled over the the bodies of everybody else who was trying
47:59
also to get there. Well, that's not a prescription
48:03
for, for decency, but 83% think we have a problem.
48:07
And this is, I think, the same question ultimately as what are
48:16
we going to do about these billionaires?
48:19
I think it's the same question. Yeah.
48:22
And you and I typically say the the more correct answer is not
48:25
to do much, but the more more correct answers that you have to
48:30
watch out for Oligarchy or cronyism if you prefer.
48:34
Yeah, when I, when I have conversations with people about
48:37
billionaires and, and I, I drilled down with them.
48:41
What really is your problem with billionaires?
48:44
Putting aside the the crazy people who who think that
48:47
economic exchange is 0 some and they tend to be a minority.
48:53
Most people boil it down to if this guy's got billions of
48:57
dollars he can buy off politicians and that I I'm I'm
49:02
with you. I don't think the problem is he
49:03
has billions. The problem is the politicians
49:05
for sale. But that's I can see that
49:07
problem. And and those people aren't
49:11
wrong. Yeah.
49:14
They're they're not wrong at all.
49:16
So, you know, so stipulated how we would choose to address that
49:21
problem and it is a problem might differ, but again, I guess
49:27
in some way I'm in that 83% too and so are you.
49:32
Yeah, in fact, I would have. Answered.
49:34
I would have said no to the question the way it's written,
49:38
but again, I understand the spirit of it and I agree with
49:41
the spirit of it. Yeah, I wanted the question
49:44
expanded a bit because it asks about the wealthy and business.
49:48
And I'm thinking to myself, well, what about celebrities?
49:52
Yeah, they have a unique access to to the public microphone that
49:56
the rest of us don't for the same reasons.
50:01
Maybe they should be restricted in some fashion.
50:04
Yep, maybe athletes too, right? Why?
50:06
Why should they be? Around their minds, celebrity,
50:09
be it sports or Hollywood or anything else, yeah, whatever.
50:13
One one other thing I I want to look at maybe we can close with
50:17
this one is this interesting contradiction question.
50:22
Democracy is the best form of government. 70 plus percent
50:28
saying yes it it and you get more as you imagine it's more as
50:33
you go out to the extremes of Democrats and Republicans say
50:37
saying democracy is the best form of government.
50:40
But you know you've got a huge number.
50:41
But another question, our democracy is performing well.
50:47
Now the numbers about 25%. So simultaneously we're saying
50:51
that that democracy is the best form of government and we're
50:54
saying that is not performing well at all.
50:57
And I want to throw the blame here at the feet of the voters
51:03
did if democracy. If you think democracy is not
51:07
performing well. Well, the problem is very few of
51:10
us are actually involved in it. I don't know.
51:14
I I think given everything I just said about politicians and
51:17
who will rise to the top regardless, probably expecting
51:23
too much. Oh no, I don't mean I don't mean
51:25
that. What I mean is people need to
51:27
get out and vote. Yeah, we have this disagreement
51:30
all the time. I think people need to get out
51:32
and not vote. I think that's the better answer
51:37
of of the two. I I respect your answer and I
51:39
get it. But I think you make a bigger
51:42
point by not voting at this point.
51:44
If 15% of the people voted in the midterms or 8% or 3%, then
51:51
we would have something to talk about.
51:53
We could say, look, seems to us the American people are
51:56
withdrawing their consent. Yeah.
51:59
You know, we, we, we talked about that in passing on an
52:02
episode a few weeks ago. And and I altered my position
52:07
based on what you said slightly. And I'd like to revisit this the
52:12
next time a major election rolls around.
52:14
Yeah, it's really something to talk about.
52:16
Make a push. I I would make a push for people
52:20
to to actively go and write in none of the above, Yeah.
52:24
That's definitely. Nice, you could.
52:26
Every ballot has a write in space right In none of the above
52:30
let people let politicians know that you're willing to get up
52:34
out of your chair and go and vote there.
52:36
Therefore, they're going to pay attention to you because you're
52:39
somebody who's active. And yet you're also saying that
52:42
you don't like any of the options in front of you.
52:44
I, I don't think it would ever get reported because it wouldn't
52:47
get tallied. It would be, it would fall into
52:49
the category of other. Oh really?
52:52
You don't think? There's somebody in the back end
52:54
that that puts these together. What happens if a bunch of
52:57
people write in the same name? I I think if it becomes an
53:00
issue, you'd get the number, but it it's never an issue, right?
53:05
The the Times writing candidates have been successful almost
53:09
zero. It doesn't.
53:10
Wouldn't it be fun? Wouldn't it be fun?
53:12
We got a whole bunch of people to say none of the above.
53:15
Would be hilarious. Yeah, it would be hilarious.
53:17
But as as we come towards Thanksgiving, we're not quite
53:21
there yet. We're going to have a a
53:23
Thanksgiving Day episode, I believe.
53:26
I believe it comes out on Thanksgiving.
53:28
We're out on Thursdays now. Yeah.
53:30
Yes. That's right.
53:31
Yeah. Thursdays.
53:32
So we will be out on Thanksgiving for your amusement
53:36
when you've had enough of your family.
53:39
But this, this episode has been kind of heartening.
53:42
I love seeing that the American people, by and large, agree on
53:48
all kinds of things that any group of reasonable people
53:51
should agree on. Yeah, and not just agree,
53:54
overwhelmingly agree. Overwhelmingly and and where you
53:57
take it from there doesn't really matter, right?
54:00
You can, if you have this broad wholesale agreement, you can
54:04
have retail disagreements and choose to go this way or that
54:10
over time, as long as that wholesale agreement remains,
54:15
that's that's really the bedrock upon which everything is built.
54:19
And we apparently have it to a far greater degree than I or
54:24
almost anybody else would have predicted.
54:26
So hey, there you go. So on that happy note, I will
54:29
remind you to be nice to each other, but apparently I almost
54:32
don't have to given what I'm seeing in.
54:34
This. Report But I did get an
54:36
interesting comment this week from our good friend Zachary
54:40
Arnold who says be nice to each other even when the people don't
54:45
deserve it. He said when you say that maybe
54:50
it's you who don't deserve it, that might be right.
54:54
So if you don't deserve it, maybe start to earn it.
55:00
Go be nice to each other. It's OK, it's easy enough and I
55:04
think. He meant you, James Harrigan.
55:06
No, he he specifically did not. He said I don't owe you, so you
55:10
shot right up. What a perfect place to end.
55:18
See you next time, man. See you next time, James.
55:20
At Words and Numbers. We spend a lot of time talking
55:23
about what's going on in the economy and the government, but
55:25
fundamentally, all of this boils down to one thing.
55:28
The greatest threat facing modern society is a lack of
55:32
respect. The people who disagree somehow
55:34
find it difficult, if not impossible, to discuss their
55:38
differences in a civil manner. We at Sybil are interested in
55:42
upgrading civilization by encouraging people to engage
55:46
with new ideas and ultimately engage civilly with each other.
55:50
If you share this idea, please join us by subscribing at
55:54
civil.com.civl.com.